Between the Covers - Book Review #12

Well, another hospital visit for continued health issues has led to more bed rest, pain meds, and me falling further behind in my blogging. I have Godzilla size stack of books to review and while my eyes are half-open tonight, I think I'll get one of these installments out for you, my constant demon hunter/reader.  These three selections are all good, so choose and enjoy!

1) Herb Magic for Beginners: Down-to-Earth-Enchantment by Ellen Dugan was not as good as her other books I've read, but still one for the witchy library. I wish the book had gone into a little more detail on a few topics, but it did broadly cover herbs for beginner magical purposes. And what I really liked -- the herbs she discussed are very common and easy to grow or find at your local health store/metaphysical shop. She uses her by now familiar humorous and conversational tone to discuss herb growing, proper tools and gathering times, and a slew of herbal spells for any practical situation. If you're looking for an in depth read, though, skip this one. But if you're looking for a non stuffy beginner primer, than this one's for you!

2) Naked City is one of Ellen Datlow's latest urban fantasy short story collections. As usual, an entertaining read with lots of my faves in the business, including Holly Black, Patricia Briggs, and Kit Reed. This collection breathes new life into the Fair Folk and I discovered some new authors. I highly recommend it to anyone who loves a good fairy story, the urban fantasy genre, or is looking for something new.

3) Hedgewitch: Spells, Crafts, & Rituals for Natural Magick by Silver Ravenwolf is written in the same style as her classic To Ride a Silver Broomstick. However, I found this one more conversational and approachable -- basically, less stuffy. The book is intended to be used as a course over two short weeks, but you can pace yourself and take as long as you need. I just read the book. I haven't actually participated, yet, but all the materials needed are easily attainable and not too expensive. This book is also in my opinion, less about ceremony and more about getting in touch with your own witchy self and the earth around you, which I liked. You could easily adapt this for a coven or a grove as well, if you are not a solitary practitioner. It also makes great research for any fantasy writer.

4) The Fairy Godmother, the first Five Hundred Kingdoms fantasy novel, by Mercedes Lackey does not disappoint. I will be reading every single book in the series. The great thing about is this series is that the books stand alone; you can read them out of order and you don't really miss integral plot points. This first one explains how all the fairy godmothers in the kingdoms are selected and trained. There's romance and intrigue and everything a great fantasy novel should have. I recommend it for a good escape. Better yet, it sets gender stereotypes on their head and gives feminine power more oomph!

As always, happy reading and happy writing!

WOOD, A New Novella by Robert Dunbar, Author of Willy and Martyrs and Monsters

“Blessed is the beast that knows its purpose.”

Something has begun to creep in from the woods at night … something that stalks a young girl along deserted streets …

WOOD

by Robert Dunbar

$2.95 for Kindle or Nook

To learn more about this or other titles from Uninvited Books, visit www.UninvitedBooks.com.

Learn more about Robert Dunbar’s work at www.DunbarAuthor.com.

An excerpt from WOOD by Robert Dunbar:

Boundaries shift.

Towns and cities grow in spurts, sometimes encroaching upon places better left alone, areas that through a sort of negative geography remain neither forest nor park, neither rural nor urban. No proper designations exist. Unnamed and unclaimed, such regions appear on no map. They never have. Perhaps always they seemed too insignificant: half a lot, a strip of woodland, an acre of bog. Dead space. Easily overlooked or deliberately ignored. As though, all along, people knew … or at least suspected.

Yet such places exist everywhere. In every village. Every suburb. Ask any child. They form the terrain of all the darkest fairytales, the landscape of nightmares.

Alleyways through the worst sections of town inevitably empty into overgrown fields, scruffy and menacing and strewn with rubbish. Bad places. Dwellings on these outskirts slouch toward bitter soil. Boards splinter. Bricks crumble into gravel. So many futile walls loom, intermittent with tilting fences of all variety, a plethora of barricades (as though residents sincerely believed it could be kept at bay). Behind cinderblock barriers, chains rattle as dogs howl out their rage and fear. It is not wilderness that creeps up against these blighted neighborhoods.

Perhaps someday mankind will invent a term for that which seeps in, someday when the cities have decayed and the suburbs have withered and the bad places have inherited the earth. Perhaps, at last, the survivors will know Hell when they see it.

* * *

Critical Acclaim for books by Robert Dunbar

WILLY

a novel by Robert Dunbar

“Profound.” ~ The Reading Review

“Unique.” ~ Midwest Book Review

“Compelling.” ~ Literary Mayhem

 

MARTYRS & MONSTERS

a collection of short fiction by Robert Dunbar

“A masterpiece.” ~ Dark Scribe Magazine

“Provocative.” ~ GUD Magazine

“Exquisite.” ~ Book Love

 

THE SHORE

a novel by Robert Dunbar

“Breathtaking … a tour-de-force.” ~ Dark Wisdom

“Intense and wholly original.” ~ Dark Scribe Magazine

 

“The way great horror should be written.” ~ HellNotes

THE PINES

a novel by Robert Dunbar

“Dark, foreboding, menacing, eerie ... seductive.” ~ The Philadelphia Inquirer

“Superb … a masterpiece.” ~ Delaware Valley Magazine

“A work of art.” ~ Shroud Magazine

SHADOWS, Supernatural Tales by Masters of Modern Literature

an anthology of ghost stories

edited and with an introduction by Robert Dunbar

“Superlative and memorable.” ~ Tomb of Dark Delights

“Prepare to be entertained.” ~ Book Love

“Required reading for any serious connoisseur.” ~ Shroud Magazine

Chas Hendricksen, Marketing Director

U N I N V I T E D B O O K S

www.UninvitedBooks.com

Between the Covers - Book Review #9

It's time for another installment of Between the Covers! I've still been recovering from a foot injury, so my reading is off the charts. Here goes!

1) The Space Between by Brenna Yovanoff is a devilishly delightful Young Adult urban fantasy suitable for adults. Daphne, the daughter of a demon and a fallen angel, is determined to find her missing brother Obie. She'll need the help of the only human who knew him, Truman, a suicide survivor with a severe drinking problem and a death wish. Daphne falls in love with Truman, though she is unfamiliar with human emotions and extremely worried about controlling her hellish desires. I loved this book.Yovanoff's version of Hell is wonderful and her characters are charming. Beelzebub is a favorite of mine in this one. I recommend this book to anyone who's burned out on hell stories or paranormal romance. This is a unique book.

2) The Everything Wicca & Witchcraft Book  by Marian Singer is a skip. The information included is useful, but the format is annoying. All the little green blurb boxes distract from the main dialogue. The facts don't add much to the book. And I found the order of the information presented to be a little backwards and the style of writing felt rushed. This book isn't very useful.

3) 7 Days of Magic by Ellen Dugan is a must-have for any witchy collection. This book explains in plain terms the correspondences between the days of the week, deities, herbs, colors, and other witchy knowledge to give your spells, charms, and rituals the most bang for your broom. I highly recommend it. It's a quick read and a reference keeper. Another plus, her spell supply lists are simple, affordable items. Whether you are a witch or just looking for some great writing research, this is the book for you.

4) The Ancient Art of Faery Magick by D.J. Conway discusses the different types of Fae, including guided meditations and rituals to bring more faery magick into your life. I tried a few of the meditations and rituals out myself. I found them inspiring. This book isn't a dry read and is quite interesting. It would be useful for writing research or for a witch who wants to get in touch with her/his inner Fae. And these rituals won't bust your wallet.

5) Medicine Road by Charles de Lint is another beautiful addition to the Newford series with a mystical look at the world of magick from a Native American perspective. Alice Corn Hair (a shifter jackalope) and Changing Dog (Jim, a shifter red dog) are given one hundred years by Coyote Woman to discover their true love. If after one hundred years the two haven't succeeded, they must return to their animal form forever and leave behind the world of the two-leggeds. Time is running out. Alice has found her true love in Thomas, but Jim is still single. Will he find true love and be able to stay in the human world or will Alice have to say goodbye to her one true love forever? Read and find out. You're guaranteed to fall in love with this cast of whimsical characters.

6) Yarrow by Charles de Lint introduces us to Cat Midhir, a writer with a horrible case of writer's block who soon discovers something or someone is stealing her dreams in dreamtime and cutting her off from her beloved cast of characters, who actually exist in their own world! Will she succeed in fighting the eater of dreams stalking her and her friends or will she lose her writing cast of characters forever? Read and find out. This book will not disappoint.

Between the Covers - Book Review #8

My library card is getting a serious workout while I rest up in bed from a nasty fall I took over a week ago. I have seven picks for you this week, so get ready!

1) I finished The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree over my Christmas break, but haven't blogged about it, yet. This is Susan Wittig Albert's new cozy mystery series set during The Great Depression in Darling, Alabama. The ladies of the Darling Dahlia Gardening Club set out to solve the murder of a local girl with a colorful past. There's even talk of missing buried silver from The Civil War and ghost haunting. This cozy series opener is a hit and just as good as her Beatrix Potter tales and the China Bales' series. I highly recommend it for longtime fans and new readers.

2) If you're looking for a short, informative introduction to the world of herbs used in magick, you might enjoy A Beginner's Guide: Herbs for Magic and Ritual. This book by Teresa Moorey discusses making your own incense, herbal uses in magic, astrological correspondences, essential oils, and cooking magically with herbs. She covers a few basic herbs that are easy enough for anyone to find or grow locally. However, I would recommend looking into another book, if you're expecting an in depth read.

3) If you're studying to become a witch or researching Wicca and rituals, then the classic, To Ride a Silver Broomstick: New Generation Witchcraft by Silver Ravenwolf will fit nicely in your library. This book covers all the basics in a friendly conversational tone. Topics discussed include Wicca ethics, The Charge of the Goddess, creating your own sacred place, dedication and purification rituals, networking with other witches, spells, consecrating tools, meditation, divination tools, and a slew of other information. I highly recommend this book for any witch or anyone interested in learning more about Wicca.

4) A Circle of Cats is a quick, delightful read for adults. The book is intended for 8 years and older. Illustrated by the enchanting Charles Vess and written by Charles de Lint, the story follows the tale of Lillian, an orphan who enjoys playing in the forest. Lillian is bitten by a venomous snake one day and falls asleep under the ancient beech tree where cats go to dream. The cats take pity on her and save her life by making her one of them, but Lillian longs to be a little girl again so she can go home to her aunt. She seeks the help of the Apple Tree Man. Will she get her wish? Read and find out. You won't be disappointed!

5) Charles de Lint's Little (Grrl) Lost is an imaginative tale about the Littles, a group of magical people standing just six inches tall. Set in Newford, this young adult novel follows the story of T.J., a teenage girl having a hard time fitting in after moving from the country and giving up her horse, red. She befriends Elizabeth, a runaway Little with a punk attitude and wardrobe to match. Elizabeth is on a mission to prove she can live on her own and discover the origin of the Littles. She's heard rumors that her people can fly and seeks out the help of a local author who can help solve the mystery. This is a great read for adults and teens alike. It's a wonderful introduction to de Lint's fictional town of Newford or a fabulous welcome back!

6) The Undead Zombie Anthology edited by D.L. Snell and Elijah Hall from Permuted Press wasn't all that memorable. It wasn't bad, but truthfully, after letting the stories sit for a few weeks, not one really remains stuck in my head. If you're a lover of zombie fic, this one shouldn't be passed up, but if you're expecting something earth shattering, this isn't the collection for you. The stories are written well, but they just catch my interest.

7) Normally, I don't read traditional crime fiction, but I picked up T. Jefferson Parker's The Fallen at my local library book sale and I loved it! The main character, Robbie Brownlaw, is a cop with a unique ability; he's a synesthesist. He sees colored shapes while people are speaking, allowing him to tell if they are lying or not. This is a result of a nasty fall he took while trying to save someone from a burning building. The strain of his recovery and his new gift has worn thin for his longtime girlfriend, Gina, who leaves him. While coping with the loss of the love of his life he sets out to solve the murder of a local cop turned Ethics officer for the city, who many didn't like because of his dedication to justice. It looks like Garret committed suicide, but did he really. Read and find out. This plot has a few twists and turns to keep you interested. It's not fluffy and Parker's main character has a great tone to him.

Happy reading and happy writing to all!

Between the Covers - Book Review #7

Time for another book installment, folks! I've been reading a bunch on vacation, since I haven't been sleeping well. I have three picks for you.

1) My first pick is The Enchanted Cat by Ellen Dugan. Ms. Dugan has been a practicing hedgewitch for almost twenty years. Her book is user-friendly and written in an entertaining, conversational tone. The Enchanted Cat is specifically tailored to anyone looking to bring a little cat magic into his or her life or to deepen your relationship with your four-footed friends. I found this book practical and enjoyable and look forward to applying some of the spell work in my own home upon returning from vacation. I highly recommend this book to anyone who doesn't like a stuffy witch read, but wants to gain great knowledge.

2) My second pick is Clive Barker's Mister B. Gone. I don't know how this book slipped past me when it came out in 2007, but it did. This is the published memoir of Jakabok Botch, an unlucky demon with no real skills who is captured by human poachers. Mr. B., as his demon friend affectionately nicknames him, chronicles his adventures in our world above. This book is an entertaining read, but I don't find it to be the complex plot I've come to know and love from Mr. Barker, though I still recommend it. Just don't expect it to be a thick read like Imajica or Coldheart Canyon.

3) My last pick is Christopher Moore's Bite Me: A Love Story, a snarcastic novel of teenage Abby Normal with a quirky and lovable cast of vamps and other assorted characters. Chet, the vampire cat of San Francisco, has unleashed a vampire cat posse on the unknowing citizens of San Francisco bay area and Abby Normal and her friends are in a race against time to stop the feline rascals from spreading and rescue their own vampire friends from being hunted by a group of angry vamps. Just as witty and entertaining as always, this book is a must-read for any Moore fan, though it took a few chapters to get into for me. This is because the book is told from multiple characters' P.O.V. and Abby Normal's is an adjustment, since she is very much a product of teenage webspeak angst. LOL

Vampires Suck and That's Why We Love Them by Guest Blogger Billie Sue Mosiman

If you look really close, you might find Billie Sue Mosiman in this picture.

About Billie:  After keeping journals and diaries in her teens and aspiring to be a writer, Billie Sue Mosiman studied English Literature as her major at the University of Alabama. Hoping to experience the Hippie Revolution in 1968 in order to further her writing, she traveled to San Francisco and then to Long Beach, California where she met her husband-to-be. Throughout her twenties and early thirties, she wrote short stories and finally began work on novels. She had three NY agents before going with the William Morris Agency in 1982. Her first novel, WIREMAN, was sold in 1983. In ensuing years, she published thirteen novels and more than one hundred fifty short stories. One novel was nominated for the Edgar Award for Best Novel and later another novel was nominated for the Stoker Award for Superior Novel. She taught writing for AOL online and Writer's Digest. She was an editor, a columnist, a book reviewer, and published articles and poetry. Today she travels frequently and is writing a new horror novel, BLACK WINGS.

Vampires Suck and That's Why We Love Them

by Billie Sue Mosiman

Nora asked me to stick up for vampires since she'd had a guest blogger who did the same for zombies. First off, let me say I like zombies just fine and dandy. I've written a zombie story that you can find in my hardcover collection of short stories, DARK MATTER. (This story will soon be in an e-book collection.)  But I've written about all sorts of paranormal creatures, so I'm an equal opportunity lover of the non-human. These sorts of characters give writers the freedom to explore completely different worlds and even emotions that might be different from what we feel as humans. So I love them all, take that as a given.

Until I wrote LEGIONS OF THE DARK, I had written only of the vampire in a few short stories. I was contacted by DAW Books to write a trilogy of vampire novels and I had to think it over a little while. Though I had admired Anne Rice's INTERVIEW WITH A VAMPIRE, recognizing it as a book that would become a classic, and though I had written vampire short stories, the thought of an entire trilogy of novels seemed a daunting task. Did I love the vampires enough to want to live with them through three or four years of writing? Most importantly for me, did I have anything at all to say new or fresh about vampires? I couldn't answer the last rhetorical question until I wrote the books; I knew that, so that left the questions of how much I cared about vampires and was it enough to sustain me through lengthy works? I finally answered yes and dove into the first of the VAMPIRE NATION CHRONICLES in LEGIONS. I discovered I loved the characters—which is the most important thing to me when writing—and the fact they were vampires had a lot to do with it. They could live forever, given they did not meet some unforeseen accident. They were the repositories of vast amounts of historical knowledge. They had heft, they had weight, they even, in some instances, had duties to preserve and even help mankind. No, they do not sparkle. No, they are not weepy and weak. No, they are not just creatures to represent sex, either gay or heterosexual. These are unhelpful stereotypes. My vampires were great creatures, nearly god-like, with longevity that boggled the mind, and with distinctly human emotions. It always seemed to me that whether you were alive as a human or dead as a vampire, you would still be beset by all your earthly problems and desires. That would not change.

CNN interviewed me by phone for their CNN site when I was writing VAMPIRE NATION CHRONICLES and asked me why I thought people loved vampires so much. I said I thought it was because we are mortals and we live with the notion we would die. The vampire does not die, his immortality is what the mortal longs for deep in his soul, therefore the vampire mesmerizes us; we admire and envy him. For we will all die. We will lie in a grave or become ashes in an urn. We know this and it is a thought we must live with—the hardest reality any human faces. As we read the novels of vampires for a small time we become that immortal being. We live his long, long life, we follow him through centuries, and we revel in his life, even if he is among the “undead.” For that time immersed in the novel we, too, are immortal.

Except for an angel, the vampire is one of the only fictional creations that is truly immortal. Now that I am writing about fallen angels--ANGELIQUE and the forthcoming novel, BLACK WINGS—I have a large overview of writing about the immortal and after a long career of writing realistic suspense thrillers, I've discovered that the immortal is more fun. Whether he has fangs or wings, whether he can disappear or fly, he is not me, he is not US, and as a writer, I can explore all sorts of avenues that are blocked to me when writing about real people.

In LEGIONS OF THE DARK, I was able to explore and examine the vampire life of a young girl just becoming vampire. In RISE OF THE LEGEND the story progressed with her son, Malachi, whose father was human, making him a half-breed—a dhampir. In HUNTER OF THE DEAD Malachi has to hunt down the monster vampire who killed his wife and took his only child. The trilogy gave me a broad canvas where I could carry through and follow generations of vampires. I grew to love these creatures more than ever before because I recognized their humanity and that is what we care about most in our fiction. In subsequent lifetimes, do we grow more moral or less? It was a question I wanted to explore and a trilogy of novels afforded me the time and space to do it.

This trilogy of novels has moved my work away from criminal suspense thrillers into dark fantasy-horror territory and it seems that is probably where I was headed all along. I was one of the first female authors to ever write about serial killers, one of the first to use that term, and I plumbed the subject for many years in my writing while doing copious research and study of famous serial killers. Today I write of a different creature in the vampire and the fallen angel where I can deal with an even greater evil than that displayed by the monstrous human being. In the end it appears my entire career of work deals mainly with evil, terror, the innocent taken too early, the wrinkled, dry, uncaring heart, the corruption of the soul. As I hoped to entertain, I was doing my own exploration of the questions that I hoped to answer for myself--what is evil, are we born into it or do we acquire it, how does a heart and mind allow itself to commit atrocity against a fellow man, where are we going and where have we come from? Is there redemption? Whether I write of the damaged human man or woman or the immortal creature, the questions are all the same because in the end it has to do with the condition of spending time on earth in a body--live, undead, or supernatural.

So I have no quibble with the zombie or the werewolf or the vampire or the angel or the ghost. I love them all equally well, but so far, my work has concentrated on vampire and angel so I can say for sure that we don't have to settle for one or the other, pin all our love on one, or disrespect those who choose an immortal that is not the one we have chosen to write about. We can have them all. We can love and enjoy them all. I know I do.

MY E-BOOKS ON THE KINDLE

MY BOOKS ON THE NOOK

MY WEBSITE AND BLOG

How We Came up with The Laura Cardinal Series Covers by J. Carson Black

Please welcome author and guest blogger, J. Carson Black of the popular Laura Cardinal crime fiction series. For one week only, you can purchase The Laura Cardinal Novels at $4.97.

J. Carson Black is the critically-acclaimed author of the Laura Cardinal series: Darkness on the Edge of Town, Dark Side of the Moon, and The Devil’s Hour. Her phenomenally successful Kindle Edition of her crime thriller, The Shop, has sold more than 60,000 copies since its publication date in March 2011.

Born and raised in Tucson, Arizona, she was inspired by Stephen King’s The Shining, to write her own horror novel, a ghost story titled Darkscope, set in the historic mining town of Bisbee, Arizona. Darkscope was published by Kensington Publishing Corp. and she never looked back.

Now the award-winning author of eight novels published by NAL, Kensington Publishing Corp. and Dorchester Publishing–and in France, Germany, and Norway, Black has partnered with digital publisher Breakaway Media to publish her novels in the digital space. She lives in Tucson, Arizona. More information about her work can be found on her site.


How We Came up with The Laura Cardinal Series Covers 
by J. Carson Black

When my publisher (and husband) Glenn McCreedy at Breakaway Media and I decided to put up my three Laura Cardinal crime fiction thrillers, the first thing we thought about was cover art.

Readers of crime fiction and thrillers would be our primary audience. So we asked ourselves these questions.

What should a thriller look like?

Should the books be unified in some way?

Should they have the traditional look of a big publishing house? And if we chose to go that route, what kind of product did we envision?

We knew right away that we wanted to emulate the look of a big publishing house. But what kind of book? Hardcover? Trade paper? Or mass market paperback? We decided to go for the premiere option—hardcover. Hardcover is big, weighty, and looks important. We wanted to add that kind of “weight” to our books, to signal that my thrillers were worthy of such treatment, and so we studied the hardcovers that were nominated for Edgars last year. The Edgar Awards are for crime fiction, mystery, and thriller, so our books fit right in.

We noticed right away that the fonts were simple and big. The background art was good, but it was the backdrop for the title and the name of the author.

Looking at the Edgar Award covers and the covers of some of my favorite thriller/crime fiction writers: Michael Connelly, Robert Crais, Joe Finder, etc., we got a general idea of the subject matter, and learned that the cover art itself was secondary to the name and title. But the books had a certain “thriller look,” which I can’t really define except to say, after looking at hundreds of them, we know it when we see it.

We unified the book covers by using the same, simple print font, and made that font as big as we could.

Then we went looking for images. DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN starts with the discovery of a body in spooky band shell in Bisbee, Arizona. It’s a concrete inner-city park. I found an image that looked exactly like the entrance to that park. The building in the photo was built in the same era, just after the turn of the last century. And I loved the dramatic red color and the neon sign, which really seated the book in crime fiction. There was a car that looked like the car my bad guy drove. My husband was fooling around with the image and turned on the headlights of the car, and that bit of luck really made the cover. It’s the perfect focal point—to the right and slightly above the horizon, which is good composition. The last thing we did was ad bits and pieces of words the Internet predator used when communicating with the girl he killed.

DARK SIDE OF THE MOON: Part of the book takes place on the freeway through the Mojave Desert. We found a stunning photo of a road through the desert. We incorporated the same large, tall, simple font we used for DARKNESS. The colors were different enough that you wouldn’t mistake one book in the series for the other. We put the cover up, but as beautiful as it was, it lacked…something. Glenn wanted to put in a small nuclear symbol (which figures into the story). It looked like a stupid little kite-shaped sticker---awful! Then it occurred to us: Don’t go small – go big! A nuclear symbol is a scary thing. So we made it larger, and that symbol really made the cover.

THE DEVIL’S HOUR was the first cover we ever did. Three young girls are kidnapped years earlier and are believe to have been killed, but one returns home to her family nine years after the kidnapping. Where are the other two? At the heart of this story is Evil with a capital “E,” and we wanted to personify that malice with an evil man. I went through IStock Photo looking for “scary men,” and found a wonderful shot. His eyes are crazy mean. We cropped his face just above the mouth. We knew we’d have to have something for the lower part of the book, and it was difficult. We found a blue sky (a sunset) with black silhouetted trees, which looked like the sky and trees right outside my window in Tucson, Arizona. It worked. But we didn’t like the black line that divided the blue part of the cover from the top part. A mistake on Glenn’s part put a thin blue line above the black line we’d used---and it worked! A happy accident.

You won’t mistake one book for the other two because they are all different colors, but they are unified enough by the fonts to brand the books as J. Carson Black books---thrillers and crime fiction.

Recently, we decided to bundle all three Laura Cardinal mystery/thrillers into one book. Now what?

We came up with dozens of ideas, but at last hit on something simple. A Ouija Board plays a part in THE DEVIL’S HOUR. I went looking for a Ouija Board and found a beautiful one ---spooky and old, which gave the cover a feeling of ancient evil. We wanted the background to be simple, but planned to use strong contrasting colors for the cover and the lettering. The reddish brown of the Ouija Board was great. We fooled around but I knew in my heart that I wanted a lime-colored green for my name. Since we were selling THE LAURA CARDINAL NOVELS, we decided to go big with my name, J. CARSON BLACK.

It’s important to brand your books. Are they romance? If so, what kind? It’s important, too, to link them in some way, so people can think, “That’s a so-and-so book.” And it’s important to differentiate them so the reader won’t by the same book twice.

Excerpt from Imaginology - A Short Story

This story has been an ongoing project for years, constantly evolving. I am finally happy with the finished product and getting ready to send it out for submissions again. This is the sixth version of Imaginology. This short has its origins in my childhood fascination with gory shark attack tales and pictures. Having been bullied myself as a child, I wanted to write about a  strong character who prevailed. The story took a darker turn than I intended, but I like it that way. This is the opening to Imaginology, a very normal day that quickly goes to hell.


Imaginology

by Nora B. Peevy


It was Saturday afternoon at the pool and Billy’s father toted a blue inner tube, flippers, and an orange beach bag crammed full of towels and sunscreen. Mike Chase, Billy’s classmate, stood poolside, tubby in his orange and brown swimsuit, his hair greasy and sweaty. Just looking at Mike made Billy want to scurry in the other direction, but George, Billy’s father, marched oblivious to any danger. His father’s comical bone-white knees jutted out from his too-short blue Hawaiian print shorts. Billy wished he could fade into one of the blue and white striped lounge chairs flanking both sides of the pool, as his father slathered sunscreen on his freckled shoulders. Billy’s red cowlick wavered like an alien antenna in the slight afternoon breeze.

"Go get 'em, tiger. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”

Billy shielded his eyes from the sun, watching Mike Chase. His stomach hurt with the reminder of the last time Mike beat him up at school this week; he’d taken a few blows to the stomach. Billy dipped his big toe in the water. The smell of chlorine burned his nostrils as he entered the shallow end, keeping one wary green eye on the bully. Mike stole a little boy's beach ball, flinging it into the deep end at a pretty girl in a pink bathing suit, gabbing with her friend.

The water wasn't too cold as Billy waded out to where he could barely stand and sank down like a crocodile, keeping only his eyes above the surface, hoping to remain unnoticed as Mike turned in his direction. He’d only come swimming at his parents’ urging. He’d rather be home in his room reading his comics.

Billy dove underwater and swam through a jungle of legs and feet, hoping Mike hadn’t spotted him. His lungs burned. He needed air soon. He kicked to the surface, sputtering to find Mike Chase looming in front of his face -- mean, ugly Mike Chase, water dripping from his flaring horse nostrils. 

"Hi Seal Boy! Wanna do a trick for me? It's called duck and dive!" Mike swung his fist, his face red with exertion from swimming to catch Billy.

Billy dove right under Mike’s fist and swam off towards the ladder in the deep end. Escaping into line for the high dive, he felt water dripping on his head. He looked up to see Mike towering over him.

"Bark, bark, bark! C’mon and bark, Seal Boy!" Mike jabbed Billy in the ribs with a fat finger before he hopped back in the pool to snap the strap of a girl’s bikini top.

The other kids in line laughed as Billy tried to ignore them, waiting his turn. Two kids stood in front of him and then he was next. He stared straight ahead. His ears burned red, wanting to shrivel up and fall off. He wouldn’t cry. He just wouldn’t because that would only make it worse. Billy continued to wait, shuffling his feet and staring at the wet cement. He climbed the twenty steps to the diving board with Mike Chase barking at all the way and plummeted into the pool, letting the water rush over his ears, drowning out the other kids’ laughter. For a moment, everything was blue and calm -- quiet and safe.

End of Excerpt

Bookin' It Reviews - #1

Master Houdini couldn't resist putting in his two whiskers worth of opinions for my latest book review. As you can see, he highly approves of my reading selections as a headrest for scholarly cats with creative leanings.

I also changed my book review post title. I got bored. It happens. *grins*

Here are three fantastic selections for all you bookworms out there.

1) A Choir of Ill Children by Tom Piccirilli. The book is riveting. I read it so fast I couldn't believe it. This is a southern gothic novel -- very twisted. In the town of Kingdom Come, a backwards southern swampland with a habit towards floods of biblical proportions, live Thomas and his brothers, three conjoined triplets fond of deviant behavior with no qualms about hiding a dark family secret from Thomas. The cast of characters is as bizarre as the ones from the 90s hit T.V. drama, Twin Peaks. If you love weird, this one is for you. Superbly written and darkly damning, you can't miss it.

2) A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness is the perfect way to celebrate the beginning of fall and the Halloween season. This novel is the first book in the All Souls Trilogy. The next is expected out in 2012. Deborah Harkness combines historical fact with fantastical fiction in this tale of a witch with an exceptional family lineage -- the Bishops of Salem witch trial fame. Diana Bishop is a scholar studying alchemy manuscripts at Oxford in England, when she meets a mysterious vampire, Matthew Clairmont. After researching an intriguing and long-lost alchemy manuscript with a spell attached to it, Diana alerts all the demons and vampires to its location. The manuscript supposedly holds the key to the origin of vampires and demons. Matthew Clairmont falls in love with the beautiful and bewitching Diana Bishop while protecting her from the supernatural forces hell-bent on getting the manuscript's location, but there is an ancient covenant the two have broken. Two different kinds of supernatural beings cannot be romantically involved. Now, fighting for their lives and the precious alchemical book, Diana and Matthew must face even greater supernatural forces than expected. This book is a delight and I cannot wait for the second. And never fear -- this is nothing like an Anne Rice novel. It's waaaay better.

3) Welcome to Bordertown: New Stories and Poems of the Borderlands, edited by Holly Black and Ellen Kushner, returns Bordertown fans to the urban fantasy setting they love. Carrying on the Bordertown tradition, authors such as Neil Gaiman, Patricia McKillip, Charles de Lint, Jane Yolen, and Emma Bull give you a whole new set of tales set in the city bordering our world and the world of the Fae. This book will not disappoint. It is as lovely as the original Bordertown tales and a real treat for urban fantasy lovers. All of the stories are great. It is hard for me to pick a favorite to mention here, but let's just say that there are spell-boxed motorcycles, talented Celtic musicians, Green Men, and more in  this collection guaranteed to satisfy. I highly recommend it.

As always, happy writing and happy reading!


Excerpt from Into the White - A Short Story

I'm still searching for a home for this one. Inspiration struck when I researched mourning customs online one day and Victorian mourning jewelry. I discovered there's an entire profession dedicated to recording a loved one's likeness, as they are ill and crossing over into The Beyond (whatever that may be for you.) I wondered, "What would happen if I wrote story about this profession?" And Into the White came forth from the sea of my imagination.

Into the White
by Nora B. Peevy


“Death doesn’t scare me. Pain scares me. I wanted it to be quick -- a flash of lightning in the dark. I didn’t want to be a piece of fruit rotting on a vine.”

I nodded to Sean, quiet. My name’s Demetrius. I’m a memorial portraitist. It’s my job to record the likeness of the dying, to give them companionship and their families some closure. People often ask me where they go when they die, and my reply is always the same, “Where do you want to go? Because that’s where you’ll end up.”

 Truthfully, I don’t know what lies beyond death’s door, but I do know what lies before it, people who are suffering. What harm is there in easing their pain before they go? Most of them, like Sean, just want someone to listen. I squinted, erasing a line here, smoothing a line there, and shading in another shadow with my charcoal, the soft whisper of my pencil recording life passing on paper. Sean is dying of cancer, something I am trying not to focus on because of my own scare right now.

“I used to do what you do.” Sean’s lips, cracked with sores, bled. The nurses gave him some medicine, but it didn’t help much. Of course, that is not the way I drew him. He hired me, not his family. And he wanted his portrait done, minus the physical imperfections Death bestowed on him.

“Really?”

I sat up in my hospital chair; it’s one of those supposedly comfortable recliners, inevitably always broken and more uncomfortable than the nights I spent as a kid, camping on the hard ground in my backyard. It isn’t often I meet someone in my profession. It’s sad; a fellow artist lies before me, underneath a piece of generic hospital art with a plastic-lined pillow and a bland beige blanket tucked in around his shrinking frame. I wonder if I will have the same courage as Sean does when I go; I don’t know. I won’t sleep well on crunchy pillows, though.

I tried imagining Sean in his youth, picturing him as a grand character from The Great Gatsby with a quiet, regal aura about him. I find a sense of calm in his eyes, misty with cataracts, but once a bright blue. He’s suffering from dementia or so the nurses say. Frankly, I have no idea what they are talking about, but maybe, he’s having one of his good moments. Still, it is sobering to think it will be me lying in a similar bed one day. I shift in my chair, imagining the quiet tumor growing in my groin. I want to scream and run away and rip myself from my own skin.

Sean reached a shaking hand for the glass of water beside his bed and I noticed he wore a wedding band.

“What did your wife think of your profession?” I worked on perfecting his hands as he spoke.

“Oh, she didn’t mind it. She likened me to a spiritual counselor for the dying. She always loved my work -- said I had the eye of an eagle and the hand of a gentle shepherd. I drew her portrait for our first wedding anniversary.”

“That’s nice.”

“Do you see them leave?”

 “I’m sorry. I don’t understand -- see who leave?”

 “The people whose portraits you draw. Do you see them pass over?”

 “No. I’m usually not there when that happens.”

 “But you’re one of her helpers.”

 “One of whose helpers?”

 “Why, Death’s. You’re one of Death’s helpers, aren’t you?”

“I wasn’t aware that Death needed any helpers. I thought it was a one-person job.”


End of excerpt

Author Teresa Frohock Discusses Giving a Successful Book Reading

Please welcome guest blogger and author, Teresa Frohock.

Raised in a small town, Teresa Frohock learned to escape to other worlds through the fiction collection of her local library. She eventually moved away from Reidsville and lived in Virginia and South Carolina before returning to North Carolina, where she currently resides with her husband and daughter.

Teresa has long been accused of telling stories, which is a southern colloquialism for lying. Miserere: An Autumn Tale is her debut novel.

Teresa can be found most often at her blog and website http://www.teresafrohock.com. Every now and then, she heads over to Tumblr and sends out Dark Thoughts http://teresafrohock.tumblr.com, links to movies and reviews that catch her eye. You can also follow Teresa on Twitter http://twitter.com/TeresaFrohock and join her author page on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/pages/Teresa-Frohock/134892453223242.

I’d like to thank Nora for asking me to share my experience with giving a book talk. It’s not something I gave a lot of thought to when I was writing my novel. That’s a good thing, because I am such an introvert, I probably would have hemorrhaged at the very idea of standing up in front of people and reading them scenes that I wrote at two o’clock in the morning with a box of Kleenex at hand.

I’ve done two book talks now; one went splendidly, the second one not-so-good.

The first talk I gave was at my release party. It went extremely well, lasted about forty to forty-five minutes, and I was very comfortable sharing why I had written the novel with family and friends. I even read a few pages for them. They were an appreciative audience and that helped immensely.

The second talk I did was at the library where I work. That was a lot scarier, not because I was speaking before complete strangers, but because these were co-workers and colleagues.  I knew I would be nervous; however, I had no idea that my brain would immediately cease to function the moment I got behind the podium. Since the first session had gone so beautifully impromptu, I thought I would be able to do it a second time with nothing more than a bulleted list of speaking points.

Not so.

I experienced some form of Vulcan mind-wipe, stuttered horribly, and suffered long pauses of silence. Frankly, I couldn’t possibly imagine anyone being as interested in this stuff as I am. I mumbled when I read passages from the book, because I was sure they would hate it and see it as trite. I only became comfortable toward the end of the talk when I was engaged with the audience. It was horrible—for me and I’m sure for my audience too.

Since I have an opportunity to redeem myself at an upcoming function, I decided to make a list of things that will enable me to do a better job. Other than the obvious pointer of practice, practice, practice, I thought I would share some things I intend to do differently in the future:

Ask the coordinator of the event how long they want you to talk. I try to keep the talk at forty minutes with plenty of time for questions and answers after the talk. This time-frame gives me twenty minutes to play with, so if I find a topic really engages the audience’s interest, I can expand on it.

Have everything written down. This is where I really blew it on my second talk. I should have had everything that I wanted to say written down. BUT! [you say] Doesn’t that kill the spontaneity of the talk? No. If you get up behind the podium and your mind suddenly goes blank, you’ve got actual words in front of you. This enables you to fake it until you feel yourself engage with the audience. You don’t have to use it, but it’s there if you need it.

Turn off the negative voices. You know which voices I’m talking about: the ones that say, “I’m not good enough” or “OMG, he’s yawning, I’ve bored him death” or my personal favorite “They don’t want to hear about my book, they want to hear about a REAL writer.”

Those voices. Turn them off. You ARE good enough, people took time out of their schedules to be with you and hear about YOUR book, not Neil Gaiman’s books or Stephen King’s books, but YOUR book. There are hoards of other book events going on all the time. If people have come to hear you talk, then it is your responsibility to talk about your book. Speak well of it.

Plant a friend in the audience. Sounds silly, but if you find you can’t turn those voices off, ask a friend to go with you. Have them sit in the back. If at any point during the talk, the voices start to yammer, look up and make eye contact with your friend. The friend’s job is to smile and nod encouragingly at you. After a while, it will feel like you’re talking to your friend and not a group of strangers.

Pay attention to the time and your audience. If people start to wiggle in their chairs, it means their butts are going to sleep; this often interferes with brain waves for some reason. If you see people getting squirmy, either call a break or try to wrap things up, depending on what you’ve worked out in advance with the coordinator of the event.

Have fun. This is not about impressing people with your vast literary knowledge. If people want to hear about Literature-with-a-capital-L, they will take a college course in Literature-with-a-capital-L. People want to hear your story too. They want to know that you’ve endured the same trials and tribulations toward publication that they have. They’re not expecting you to divulge some deep literary secret; they just want to hear about your book; what motivated you to tell this particular story and how you went about the process. If you’re having fun, they will have fun, and that is what it is all about.

A book talk is a lot like teaching; you need to know your subject, but it’s also a performance art. Both of my audiences were incredibly tolerant of my failure and my success, and they were pulling for me to do well, I could see it in their eyes. Admit to them that you’re nervous, there’s nothing wrong with that. Most importantly, be yourself. You and your novel are worth their attention. Your audience knows it or they wouldn’t have come to hear you talk.

Miserere Book Trailer

Miserere: An Autumn Tale (http://www.nightshadebooks.com / July 1, 2011)

Exiled exorcist Lucian Negru deserted his lover in Hell in exchange for saving his sister Catarina's soul, but Catarina doesn't want salvation. She wants Lucian to help her fulfill her dark covenant with the Fallen Angels by using his power to open the Hell Gates. Catarina intends to lead the Fallen’s hordes out of Hell and into the parallel dimension of Woerld, Heaven’s frontline of defense between Earth and Hell.

When Lucian refuses to help his sister, she imprisons and cripples him, but Lucian learns that Rachael, the lover he betrayed and abandoned in Hell, is dying from a demonic possession. Determined to rescue Rachael from the demon he unleashed on her soul, Lucian flees his sister, but Catarina's wrath isn’t so easy to escape. In the end, she will force him once more to choose between losing Rachael or opening the Hell Gates so the Fallen's hordes may overrun Earth, their last obstacle before reaching Heaven's Gates.

Read the first four chapters of Miserere FREE here http://www.nightshadebooks.com/Downloads/Miserere_%20An%20Autumm%20Tale%20%28Sampler%29%20-%20Teresa%20Frohock.pdf