As you can see by my topical motivator, today’s guest author has ties to Potter Fandom. That’s because she is notorious for having written several well-known parodies. The best known of which, Henry Potty and the Pet Rock has won Indie Excellence Award and USA Book News National Best Book Award.

 

I’m speaking of Valerie Frankel.  This September is a big month for Valerie. Henry Potty and the Pet Rock will be released in a new special edition in which the hero faces sparkly vampires and silly slayers in the Try Wizarding Tournament and then unites all the franchises into the Order of the Takeout in a special edition that will be released this month.  She will also have a nonfiction book released through McFarland books entitled . From Girl to Goddess: The Heroine’s Journey in Myth & Legend. From Girl to Goddess explores the heroine’s journey and how it differs from the hero’s by examining women’s mythology from all over the world.

Valerie has also had a number of short stories and essays released in anthologies and journals. including Inside Joss’ Dollhouse, The Prisoner and Philosophy, Rosebud Magazine, and The Oklahoma Review. She has spoken at Worldcon and recently at the Harry Potter theme park at Universal Orlando.

Valerie’s own heroine’s journey began in the land of Harry Potter: England.

“My notes on the heroine’s journey and my Harry Potter parodies both date back to the year 2000 when I was living in England, touring castles and getting serious about getting published,” Valerie said.

During the close of the old millennium, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the fourth book in the Harry Potter series had just been released. Valerie became inspired to write both a parody, and her heroine’s journey book.

“There was only one Harry Potter spin-off on Amazon, so there was definitely room for some goofiness. Meanwhile, pop culture fans of all ages were seeing the similarities in Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Narnia, and more.”

Valerie said that fans of YA literature branded the hero’s journey as the “Chosen One Plot.” These fans bought g essay collections on their teen heroes, as well as  Joseph Campbell and Christopher Vogler’s groundbreaking works on the hero’s journey.

“I thought those books were the perfect expression of the theory I’d come up with after reading all those wonderful fantasy adventures…or rather, half my theory. Where was the epic heroine, whose journey was so similar to and yet different from the hero’s?” Valerie said. “Dorothy doesn’t get a sword. Lucy’s told not to use her dagger, but she saves the day with her healing potion. Lyra faces the dark lord, only to discover him a withered, useless humbug. Coraline defeats her Other Mother and saves her family. Clearly, the story of the heroine’s journey needed to be told.”

Valerie said that she is working on another book about the hero and heroine’s journey in YA fantasy. Her working title is  The Heroic Journey of Harry Potter, Bella Swan, and Alice in Wonderland.

In addition to writing, Valerie reads a book a day for fun.

“ I like fantasy as epic as possible, though I certainly read classics, YA, and retold fairytales. I think of all the thousands, my favorite is The Fionavar Tapestry by Guy Gavriel Kay. Wildwood Dancing by Juliet Marillier gets a special award for being so lyrically beautiful. And Terry Pratchett deserves many awards just because.”

Valerie has plans to visit several conventions in the Bay Area, including like Corflu, Potlatch, and Westercon. She is also scheduled to appear at Worldcon and World Fantasy Con as well as Wiscon.

You can find more information on Henry Potty and the Pet Rock as well as Henry Potty and the Deathly Paper Shortage at www.HarryPotterParody.com

Girl to Goddess: The Heroine’s Journey in Myth & Legend  also has its own website at www.calithwain.com

Another motivator courtesy of Motivated Photos.com

Since last November (the start of Nanowrimo, in fact) I have been slowly working on a novel. At this point, I’ve written about 60,000 words, and I will be finished with both my first and second drafts by the beginning of November. Possibly sooner.

When people ask me where I find time to write, I usually tell them that people who want to write can’t not write. But I’m never sure that I convey what I mean. It’s more that writers place such as high value on writing that other distractions don’t merit when compared to writing time.

Human beings have a large number of distractions that can keep them from writing. Video games, television, moves, the internet, reading (That’s Stephen King’s secret plot to knock out the competition. He keeps them so busy reading the sheer volume of his work that no one can possibly write.)

If you are in high school or college there is the social life. If you have kids, there is their social life (soccer practice, dance lessons etc.).

Writers simply put such a high premium on writing that they either cut other things out, like the television (And really, who is going to care about who won American Idol or whether Lindsey or Paris got arrested again in two years, anyway?), or they fit the writing around things they can’t cut out (It’s called losing sleep.)

In the case of my novel, I simply chose to take 12 months to get the book on paper instead of 4 (and wrote extra short stories along the way). But when you consider that I have in the past shoved a novel out of my brain in 3 months and then spent the rest of the year writing short fiction, it’s really about the same amount of productivity.

***

FYI: Tomorrow's author spotlight will be Valerie Frankel, Author of the Harry Potter Parody Henry Potty and the Pet Rock.

   Today's motivator comes to me courtesy of MotivatedPhotos.com

Today’s author spotlight is on Emilie P. Bush, author of the Steampunk adventure novel Chenda and the Airship Brofman.

Chenda Frost is the young widow of the reclusive Commander Edison Frost of the Republic Airship Service. His death was ruled a suicide but foul play is suspected. Candice Mortimer is a geology professor who was Edison’s good friend twenty years ago. Chenda finds a letter and some jewels hidden in a secret compartment of her dead husband’s desk. In the letter, Edison requests her to join Candice in a secret mission to help the Republic defeat the Tugrullian Empire. “Chenda and the Airship Brofman” is highly recommended for fans of young adult science fiction/fantasy. Chenda is an adorable young girl who quickly matures into a responsible woman who is determined to fight the Tugrullian Empire. This expertly crafted, fast paced novel is filled with mystery, suspense and romance. I have a feeling that Chenda will fall in love with the handsome, young chauffeur, Daniel, whose father served aboard the Valiant Eagle along with Commander Edison Frost. Candice Mortimer is also a strong, brave woman with a sense of humor. She will become good friends with Chenda and help her find a mystic, Pranav Erato.

Chenda is Emilie’s first novel, and she said that she is very pleased with it.

“Every month it picks up speed sales wise. There is a buzz around it. People are passing their copies along to friends and that pleases me!” she said.

The book is set in a world unlike our own, where several types of alternate power --not just steam --developed as the dominant technology. For example, the airships in Chenda’s world are powered by photosynthesis created with algae.  Emilie said that she had a lot of fun building Chenda’s world.

“The key and challenge to world building is to make the rules to your worlds and stick with them. I wanted Chenda to live in a world that looked similar to a past version of our own, but had a few major differences. The Republic has lots of available electricity, but no radios, telegraphs or telephones. That was a rule I made and had to live with, even when it was not convenient, but the challenges made for an even better story in the end, I think.”

Emilie said that she wrote the first draft of Chenda in only three months.

I had a compulsion to write that first novel, a “you’re going to die a horrible death if you don’t write”. That and a lot of insomnia, so the rough draft of Chenda was written in about three months.”

Despite the short time it took to write the novel, Emilie said that she didn’t have to make major changes to the rewrite.

This is part 2 of an interview with author Emilie P. Bush. To read part 1, go here.

In addition to The Gospel According to Verdu, Emilie said that she is working simultaneously on another novel, which she called a modern mythological fantasy.

“I’m sleeping better these days, but am not writing as quickly,” Emilie said.

When she’s not writing, Emilie said that one of her hobbies is to carve bone.

“I started carving bone because I saw a pendent that I wanted to buy as a gift for a friend for a very special milestone in her life. It was lovely but expensive, so another friend handed me the raw materials and just said, "Try." I used to process my own bone from the butcher's shop - by far the cheapest way to acquire raw materials but is gross and stinky. Now I get bone from a knifemaker's supply company.”

You can find more information about Chenda and the Airship Brofman and the forthcoming follow up novel, The Gospel According to Verdu at coalcitysteam.com. Both the book and Emilie have a facebook page. The facebook page for Chenda and the Airship Brofman is here. Emilie's Facebook page may also be found here.

You can purchase Chenda in Kindle form as well as paper format from Amazon.  

Today’s blog is inspired by a similar topic that Rhonda Eudaly recently covered. I’ll call this topic Don’t be that guy.

There are very few hard and fast rules in the business of writing. One of the ones that nearly everyone will tell you is that you should never be unprofessional to an editor. You should especially, avoid responding to a rejection letter.

It may be tempting to fire off an angry letter, especially since you’re convinced that your work is deathless prose. But all a rejection really means is that your work wasn’t a good fit. There are plenty of reasons why stories get rejected.

• ·        The story didn’t meet the word count. When an editor says ‘no more than 7,000 words, they meant it.
• ·        The editor just bought three stories with a similar theme. Yours is just the fourth singing cat story to land on their desk this month.
• ·        The market isn’t a horror science fiction market. So the editor just can’t buy ‘Ragnar and the Zombie Leeches from Mars’ even though it really is good.
• ·         The story just wasn’t to the editor’s tastes.
• ·        The story was to the editor’s tastes, but the ending was unsatisfying.

Whatever the case, if the editor can’t use a story, an angry letter won’t change their mind. What it will show that editor is that you aren’t professional. This means that they aren’t going to look at any of your future work either.  (If this is the only story that you’ve ever got in you, and you’re never going to try and sell something else, maybe you should take up a new hobby instead). 

Beyond that, they are probably also going to tell all their other editor friends that you are someone that they don’t want to work with. (Editors do talk to one another. They like to get together at conferences and talk shop. If they’ve had a bad experience with you, they will remember your name. You will become one of their cautionary tales.)

So don’t fire off an angry letter. If you feel the need to write one, do so. Then burn it. Or stick it in a file and revisit it in five or ten years when you are older and wiser and more mature. Then you can laugh at your youth and inexperience. Or be embarrassed that you thought that ‘Ragnar and the Zombie Leeches from Mars’ was deathless prose. 

Or, if you feel the need, send it once you’ve won the Hugo, the Nebula and the Pulitzer Prize for Literature, and have been knighted by the Queen of England for service to the Crown.  Then you can feel secure that those editors who once though so little of your work are now crying themselves to sleep a night knowing that they will never have the chance to work with you.

But somehow, if you hit that level in your writing career, I think you may no longer care about those rejection letters.

 ETA: Also? There is an amazing writer's resource for men's dress clothing here: http://hackthis.livejournal.com/561614.html

I knew some of this stuff from buying my husband's suits, but the detail is just incredible.

“One of the guys said he saw your sister,” Mr. Ed reported.

“Where?” Out of the corner of her eye, Celeste saw the weird, mantacore-like shadow of the statue grow a new limb.

“She was climbing on top of the Alice statue,” Ed said.

            Celeste leaped from her own toadstool and threw her cell phone straight at Alice without looking. She dropped to the ground and rolled under Alice’s mushroom.  Over her, Becky Sue’s voice blistered the air with curses. Celeste guessed that her sister – or that thing driving her sister – hadn’t expected the sudden assault.

            The phone clattered and slid down the side of the mushroom. As it dropped over the edge of the mushroom cap and into Celeste’s view, the weird, club-like weapon slammed into it, smashing the phone into the March Hare’s knee.

            Celeste flinched away as the device fell to the ground in a shower of pieces. She flattened herself against the mushroom stem. Above her, Beck sue slammed the tip of the weapon into the edge of the mushroom cap and dragged it along the rim. The shards of obsidian sent out sparks as they ground against the metal.

Then Becky Sue withdrew the weapon and stuck her head over the side. Her eyes looked like a big jungle cat’s: as if she was picturing the fastest way to bring Celeste down and tear out her throat.

She’s possessed, all right.

“Hi, Sis!” Becky Sue sounded drunk-cheerful.

“Hello.” Celeste crab-crawled around the stem of the mushroom to keep it between her and her sister.  “Why don’t you put down the museum’s tacky Aztec club-thingy before you break it?”

Today’s author spotlight is on Rosemary Jones. You can read part 2 of the article here.

Rosemary is the author of the Wizards of the Coast Novels Crypt of the Moaning Diamond and City of the Dead. Both novels are set WotC’s the Forgotten Realms universe.

Rosemary categorizes her books as “Dramedy, Dungeons & Dragons.”
 

“I like writing about people and how they would naturally function in some pretty strange settings,” Rosemary said. “Someone said that my fiction features ordinary folks who do the behind-the-scenes work in the fantasy, and that seems about right.”

Rosemary said that Crypt of the Moaning Diamond follows a group of sappers (a real life military job dating back to Biblical times) as they try to survive in a one very bad day in the monster-filled underground lair, not lose their little white dog in the chaos, and find lunch because the camel ate their breakfast.

City of the Dead is set in the Forgotten Realms city of Waterdeep and follows the story of Sophraea Carver a girl who was raised next to Waterdeep’s massive graveyard, the City of the Dead, where her family works.

“In the book, Sophraea relied on her wits rather than any magical powers to solve her problems with ghosts, ghouls, werewolves, and the cute wizard who kept following her,” Rosemary said.  “I like to write about the people who might not be the natural heroes of a fantastic sword-and-sorcery novel, like one-eyed dwarf with a habit of taking his pet dog everywhere with him or a funerary family’s complicated relationships.

“I tend to draw from historical fact to bolster the fantastical. Medieval war camps were not tidy places: folks brought their horses, dogs, hawks, and camels to war. My first novel begins with the camels breaking free and trampling the supplies of my Siegebreakers. Of course, this leads me to sending e-mails to my editor like “can I have camels camped outside Tsurlagol?” or “can I put a living topiary dragon in Waterdeep’s graveyard?” Luckily, she’s very open to me being “quirky” and the readers have been equally supportive – and I appreciate that!”

Rosemary also has short stories appearing in three anthologies this year. Her story “Dusty Bones” Appears in the anthology Realms of the Dead. “Two Out, Wendigo” appears in Close Encounters of the Urban Kind. Her next short story out is entitled “Junker’s Fancy,” Which will appear in the forthcoming anthology Zero Gravity.

“I’ve just finished stories requested for three more anthologies, and have invitations for two more this year, but I don’t have publication dates yet.” Rosemary said.

This is the second part of an interview with author RosemaryJones. You can read the first part here.
Rosemary said that she began writing for WotC because she lost a contest.

“Wizards of the Coast created a competition to find someone to write a novel based on the Goddess of Pain as part of a series about all the gods in the Forgotten Realms pantheon.. The winning outline won a contract. I suggested a romantic comedy with Pygmalion overtones – apparently a funny novel about the patroness of torture and destruction was not what they were looking for. However, I and several other writers ended up on a short list of authors approached about other projects.”

  -- The Goddess of Pain in the Forgotten Realms Universe. And in Rosemary's hands, the potential subject of a romantic comedy.

When not writing Sword and Sorcery, Rosemary is a reviewer for the Seattle Examiner. She has also co-authored a series of books along with her mother, author Diane McClure Jones on the subject of collecting children’s books.

:My mother started writing and selling novels when I was in grade school. I do know that some of my stories about friends in high school eventually ended up in her young adult novels. These days she still “borrows” bits from me for her tales. We just had a phone conversation today about what type of GPS a young vampire would have installed in her car.  The advantage of having a writer as a close relative is that you can call up late at night and say things like “I’m not sure about this, what do you think?” And, of course, when we were co-authoring our series about book collecting, we did a lot of back and forth about how we wanted to organize our work, who was responsible for writing what, and cross-proofing.”

According to Rosemary, ink runs in her blood. Her maternal grandfather was a newspaper editor and her mother, Diane McClure Jones is the author of a number of YA novels for Scholastic, Avon and other New York publishers.

Rosemary said that growing up in a family of writers taught her to treat her writing as a job.

I grew up with the realization that writing is a job, just like electrical engineering (which is what my father did), and it’s not necessarily glamorous, or high-paying, or even sensible at times. My first nonfiction contract with a now long-gone publisher was very rocky experience:  my editor quit to raise lamas and the book was basically orphaned.  Although highly frustrating at the time, it helped to know that similar events happened to other writers (my mother went through a patch of losing agents and editors to pregnancy: she used to joke she was turning into the fertility goddess of New York publishing). If anything, it’s made me fairly realistic about the business side of writing.

“All roads lead to my keyboard,” Rosemary said.
 

You can find information on Rosemary’s forthcoming stories as well as her upcoming appearances at http://www.rosemaryjones.com/

Just for fun, go to a fanfiction website like Fanfiction.net. Read through any of the stories at random. (It's a guilty pleasure. Like chocolate or watching bad telenovelas.) You may not realize this, but a lot of what you read is like an editor’s slushpile.  Okay, maybe it’s not as polished as the slushpile that they are reading over at TOR, but you get the idea.

One thing that you may have noticed as you scan through the fiction offerings is that a lot of these works look alike. There are a few thousand Lord of the Rings stories in which an author proxy falls from the sky into Middle Earth, boy band stories where an author proxy is picked at random from a crowd to go on an adventure with the band members, Harry Potter fanfiction in which Harry and Ginny have a soooouuuuullll bond. You get the idea.  

If you think that original fiction is free of clichés, you have another think coming.
 

Sooner or later, every slush reader must deal with the writer who makes a deal with a devil for fame or at least an acceptance letter, the medieval time travel story in which the futuristic time traveler is seen as a witch because they are different/strange/technologically advanced, talking cats, talking swords or a narration of the D&D game that you played last night.

Clarksworld Magazine has a great list of clichés to avoid. In fact, many of the magazines out there have a list of clichés that they don’t want to see.

Cliches become clichés because they work well the first time they are done. The second time they may still be not bad. But over time they start to seem old and tired. [Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was brilliant. But we're nearly out of Austen books that we can use. (but for the record? Mansfield Park and Mummies is one of the best mashups of the bunch.)] As a writer, if you want to increase your chances for acceptance, you should avoid writing clichés.

Occasionally, a cliché is not a plot point so much as an unwritten thought that is recycled endlessly. For example, when writing fantasy or science fiction, it’s okay to give your character an exotic sounding name (who wants to be rescued by Bob the barbarian?) but you should probably make it something you can pronounce (You may have to read your story out loud at some point, and you’ll just look silly if you sprain your tongue trying to prononouce Xex’anthis’ell’ellea). Apostrophes have been a bit of an overused shorthand for ‘exotic’ in both fantasy and science fiction.

One way to make a cliché fresh is to find a new spin on an old story. Vampires were (excuse the pun) done to death prior to Twilight (for better or worse). Now they are fresh again (I repeat, excuse the pun).

Another way to avoid clichés is to read as much fiction in your own genre as possible. By reading, you can get a feel for what is trite or done to death.

Finally, have a good reading group or a few fellow writers look over your work. Other writers who have read extensively are also very good at spotting clichés.

Today’s Author Spotlight is on Danielle Ackley-McPhail. Danielle is the editor of the just-released Bad-Ass Faeries3: In All Their Glory.

  

Think all faeries spend their days picking flowers and dancing in circles? Think again! We bring you tales of urban conflict, of lurking assassins, of defenders of the home front. Eternal battles...between good and evil, right and wrong, Seelie and Unseelie...fought by timeless warriors whose battle cries echo throughout both history and legend. Discover fae fighting the good fight with every turned page.

Danielle is also the author editor of the anthology Dragon's Lure and the author of The Hafling’s Court: A Bad-Ass Faerie Tale. Danielle based this novel on a series of short stories that have appeared in the Bad-Ass Faerie anthologies. The stories feature a faerie biker gang who call themselves The Wild Hunt M.C.

 

Danielle said that the stories were inspired by an uncle of hers who happens to be a biker.

“The most interesting thing about that one was how much fun I had researching biker slang,” Danielle said. “I had too, the main character is based on my uncle, so I had to get the details right.”

Danielle said that even though the main character in the novel was based on her uncle, she didn’t tell him that he was the inspiration for her faierie story.

“It wasn't that I looked at him and said "hmm...he would make a good faerie," Danielle said. “It was more that I needed a bad-ass biker and he fit the description :) I couldn't bring myself to tell him what I was doing so I had to write the first story, and then I sent it to him and asked him if he would please read it and let me know what he thought. I must have done a good job because I wasn't disowned.”

Danielle said that her offbeat writing comes from the fact that she is the self-proclaimed Queen of the Outcasts.

“Captain Kidd was my however-many greats grandfather's half brother,” Danielle said. “he used to winter over in Waretown. I don't have any more details than that, but Grace Kelly was my father's second cousin. We never saw her, but her brother came to one or two family events. Of course, before my time. Still, I have and always will consider myself a pirate princess by association.”

Danielle said that she has done a number of unusual things, not only for the sake of research, but also just for stubborn contrariness.

“Once we were at a Celtic festival in upstate NY and we were watching all the men and boys throwing a caber and I just knew I could do that too,” Danielle said. “The elderly gentleman overseeing the demonstration area tried repeatedly to talk me out of it but I insisted.”

Danielle said that she very nearly didn’t manage to throw the caber.

“ Frankly, I was very lucky I didn't snap my neck. The first couple of times I didn't get the balance right and the tree trunk rolled across my neck, but I kept at it and by the time I was done the guy bowed to me in respect and kissed my hand. I've been a legend in my own mind ever since.”

Danielle’s upcoming appearances include a multi-author event at Between Books, which is an independent bookstore in Claymont, DE (www.betweenbooks.com), on August 14^th from 2 to 6pm.

She will also appear at an Author Fest event at a library in Toms River, NJ on September 25

 October 3 she will appear at the Collingswood Book Festival, in Collingswood, NJ (www.collingswoodbookfestival.com).

Danielle Ackley-McPhail can be found on LiveJournal (damcphail), Facebook (Danielle Ackley-McPhail), and Twitter (DMcPhail). To learn more about her work, visit www.sidhenadaire.com. 

“Like Kurosawa I make mad films.
Okay, I don’t make films.
But if I did, they’d have a samurai.”
– One Week, Barenaked Ladies

Home is the Hunter is one half of Double Dog number 3, a flip-book in the style of the old Ace Doubles. The novel is paired with Lazette Gifford’s Farstep Station.

The book is an incredibly short read - due partially to it's shorter length and partially to its pacing. I devoured the book completely in 2 days.

Home is the Hunter is the tale of a samurai for the space age. The book has the same feel as a Kurosawa movie or one of the Kurosawa-inspired spaghetti westerns. Fans of contemporary movies such as Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai will find many of the same themes in Home is the Hunter.

The novel takes its title, and some of its thematic elements from the Robert Louis Stevenson poem Requeim.

Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.

The story centers around Rad Dan Janor, a jet-setter with no real purpose in life. After an accident leaves Rad in the hospital with severe third degree burns,  his father cuts him off from all support.  Rad is immediately recruited by the head of The Compact, a major spacefaring corporation that specializes in ideas (Think Firefly's Alliance). In exchange for The Compact's healing treatments, Rad agrees to become an assassin named Hunter, and to take out key members of the Freekor mercenaries. The Freekor Mercenaries are an only slightly more civilized version of Firefly's Reavers. Civilized  in that they only attack a planet if paid to do so. But they will pretty much do the same thing to a planet that the Reavers would do to one for fun.

Rad/Hunter immediately goes through training, learning to build new faces out of synthetic skin, change his movement, accent and language to fit each role and master both his own body and dozens of weapons. In the process he makes his first connections to other human beings and finds both a sense of belonging and purpose. Each person that he encounters in his training symbolizes some aspect of himself. Hansen, his handler, is the cold part of Hunter that is required but still despised. Dal the weapon's master and Hunter's friend represents the part of Hunter that is devoted to duty and consummate perfection, as well as the softer side of his life that must remain hidden. Renna represents Hunter's past filled with excesses. When Renna disappears from the story (I won't say how), it symbolizes the casting off of this past.

Hunter is a complex character. As Rad he is an empty vessel. One with an attractive face, but no substance. As Hunter he has no true face of his own, yet his character and moral code become fully defined.

The book's prose seems fitting given the subject material: A person who has been stripped of identity. Given the complexity of the story, it seems hardly fitting that this novella was only 118 pages. I felt that each point of the story could have been explored more fully. Even so, Home is the Hunter is a compelling read.

“You’ve been here before,” Matteo looked at both of them. “Can we break down this door if we need to?”

            “It’s a solid piece of wood,” Lucky said.

            “And it is probably spelled from the other side,” Celeste added.  “We could probably go through the wall, though.” She looked speculatively at the drywall next to the door frame. “Dad once told me that people make doors so sturdy because burglars never think to make their own entrance.”

            “Let’s save that plan as a last resort.” Matteo drew his gun.  “Maybe if you knock, he’ll let you in.”

            “He probably will,” Celeste admitted. “If for no other reason than to torture me along with my sister.”

            “Or, he may just blast you through the door,” Lucky said. He looked at her thoughtfully, and then looked at Matteo.  The police officer nodded in understanding. Then the two of them stepped away from Celeste.

            “You two should take your act on the road,” Celeste grumbled.

If you ask Author Tamela Quijas about her kids, she might tell you that she has 12. That’s seven children and the four novels that she has published in the past year. Tamela is the author of romance novels with a touch of evil, a bit of adventure and a dash of mystery. Her first of the four novels is Angel’s Fire, Demon’s Blood. The next two out are Blood of the Beast and its sequel Blood Moon. Her last title out this year is My Lord Raven.

“Angel’s Fire, Demon’s Blood, Blood Moon and Blood of the Beast are paranormal romances,” Tamela said. “My Lord Raven is a re-release of an original work entitled Dante's Lady, which is a contemporary romance.”

Tamela said that she is currently working on a new novel entitled Moonlight Deception, a historical western that she said lacks the blood and gore of her paranormal novels.

“I’m hoping it will receive the same warm reception my other novels did from my fantastic fans,” Tamela said.

When she’s not writing, Tamela likes to spend time with her husband, her seven kids and two grandkids.

“We love to travel. Our favorite destination is Disneyland.”

Tamela said that she is also an avid blogger.

Seriously, I'm all over the web!  I love social networking and enjoy writing back and forth to friends, so you can find me on facebook, twitter and myspace.  I do have a blog site that I absolutely love though. There, you can find my thoughts on just about everything and anything. My blogsite highlights my work as well as that of my fellow authors, but my site isn’t only about the latest romance novels on the market. Stay for a while and you’ll find my reviews on books and the latest movies, fantastic author interviews, sneak peeks into upcoming book releases, recipes, other interesting blogsites, as well as being granted an exclusive look into my world.

You can find Tamela’s blog at http://tamelaquijas.wordpress.com

I just finished reading Neil Gaiman’s book American Gods, which came highly recommended to me by a friend. It was a good read and it kept me engaged, even though the book was the size of a standard doorstop. But I found that I didn’t enjoy it as much as I thought I would.I doubt that it was overhyped. I think that for me, it was just the wrong book at the wrong time.

I won’t spoil the book by going into detail. Instead, I’ll confine my analysis to a little bit of self-examination. I honestly think this is a book I would have enjoyed reading more about 2 years ago. Instead, when I picked it up last fall, I read one chapter and put it down.  Because I hate to leave a novel unfinished, I picked it up again. And gave it a second try.  I found it better this time around, or I was in a better mood and overlooked things I didn’t like before.

There are a lot of things I should have liked about this novel. The story deals with finding America, the open road and mythology, all subjects that I enjoy quite a bit.

I think part of why I didn’t enjoy it as much as I should was that I’ve seen Gaiman’s influence in stories since then. I liked these stories. So perhaps I overdosed on them somewhat. (Yes, I am looking at you, Supernatural. Large bits of your plot were lifted directly from this and Sandman, weren’t they?)

Consequently, American Gods didn’t feel quite as original to me as it would have felt If I had read it 2 years ago.

I have read bits of Gaiman’s Sandman series, and I think that perhaps what was done well in this novel was done better there. This just had more. And I’m not sure that having more was better. So perhaps instead of spending $10 dollars on this, I should have spent four to five times that amount on the collected Sandman series.

Which brings up an interesting point: When it comes to enjoying a reading experience, timing is everything. Last fall I read a novel by Cherie Priest called Boneshaker. This novel is an interesting experiment in alternate history that seems to be hitting right as steampunk is going mainstream.

Although alternate histories have been around for a while, and Priest’s alternate Victorian-era Seattle feels fully-realized, the most compelling aspects are the airships and zombies. Two dissimilar genres that Priest brings together in just the right way at just the right time.

To complete this, the cover seems quite iconically steampunk: A close up of a woman’s face. She is wearing a pair of goggles with an airship reflected in them. (I even though that boneshaker was the airship, initially.)

The story was a fun read that I might not have picked up two years prior. But it was the right time for my frame of mind.

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She turned to find that Matteo had a duffle in his hands.  “Where did that come from?”

            “I keep it in the trunk of my cruiser for occasions such as this,” he said. He unzipped the duffle and produced a trench coat, fedora, sunglasses, gloves and rolls of Ace bandages. “It’s my going out clothes.”

            “You’re going to look like The Invisible Man,” Celeste said.

            “In H.G. Wells’s novel he wore goggles, not glasses,” Matteo said.

            Celeste looked down at her watch again. She thought that the minute hand had gone backwards. “I was thinking of Claude Rains in the classic horror film.”

“The film got so much of the story wrong,” Matteo’s voice sounded muffled as he wrapped one of the bandages around his head. “It reduced the story’s hero into a back-stabbing coward.”

“Don’t confuse the protagonist and the hero,” Celeste said. “Dr. Kemp is the point of view character, but Griffin is the hero.”

            “You have a very flexible definition of morality if you think of Griffin as a hero,” Matteo said.

            “Says the man who wants to steal an ancient cultural artifact from two museums.” Celeste watched in fascination as Matteo tied off the bandages and pulled a turtleneck over his head.

            “I never said that I wanted to steal it,” Matteo said.  “I simply let you assume that.”

            “And let’s not leave out the fact that you came from a culture where cutting out someone’s heart was an acceptable religious practice. And then there is the fact that you drink human blood. I think that between the two of us, my system of morality is less bent.”

            Matteo sighed. “I suppose we should just drop this line of conversation.” He pulled on the fedora, coat and gloves.

            “Aren’t you going to be hot?” Celeste asked.

I am very sorry that this week’s Author Spotlight is coming in as late as it is.  I am attempting to leave town early this weekend and am behind on work.

Today’s author spotlight is on Dayton Ward. Dayton is the author of novels, media tie-in novels, game tie-in novels and short stories. His most recent book, Counterstrike: The Last World War, Book II was released in May from Pocket Star.

“As the title suggests, it’s a sequel to a science fiction novel which came out back in 2003, The Last World War,” Dayton said. 

Dayton also recently had a short story published in the Yard Dog Press Anthology A Bubba in Time Saves None. He will have a short story in October published in the Flying Pen anthology Space Horrors.

In February, Dayton will have a Star Trek novel released and is working on several Trek-themed projects for publication in 2011. Dayton is also currently writing an episode of a zombie apocalypse audio drama series entitled HG World.

“It’s my first time writing an audio drama, so I’m excited to see how it turns out, and how my scribbling sounds when it’s given life by voice actors who know what they’re doing,” Dayton said.

Dayton said that while he mainly writes in the Science Fiction genre, he is also working on a novel that blends the boundaries between Science Fiction, Fantasy and Noir. 

“ I have no idea what I was smoking when I came up with the original notion. It’s on the back burner right now, since my editor at Pocket Books does an exceptional job of keeping me busy, but I’m hoping it’s something I might work on after I finish my next novel.”

When not writing or working at his day job in data processing, Dayton said that he spends a lot of time trying to corrupt his two daughters into liking science fiction.

“I’m doing my level best to indoctrinate them into the world of geek,” Dayton said. “My oldest daughter, all of three going on four, loves to watch Batman and Superman cartoons, and play with Star Trek toys, so I consider my efforts in this arena to be a resounding success.”

You can read part 2 of this interview here.

In addition to Superman and Batman, the Ward household watches plenty of classic movies and current TV shows.

“I love old movies, and can be sucked into a longtime favorite like Stalag 17, The Day the Earth Stood Still or The Great Escape no matter what time it’s on, or how far along it might be when I find it while channel-surfing. Some of the current shows I’m watching (and loving) are Burn Notice, Leverage, Eureka, NCIS, and The Big Bang Theory, but I’m discovering a guilty pleasure in shows like Deadliest Catch and Ice Road Truckers. I’m hopeless.”

Dayton said that he also subsides on a steady diet of sports.

“I’m not a “sports nut,” but I do love watching football and beach volleyball. I’m lucky enough to be married to one of those very few special women who likes football, too—to the point that she’ll get mad at me if I only have two tickets to a game and want to take my father instead of her. Her response is usually something like, “How about *I* take him and *you* stay home?” Dayton said.

For writing advice, Dayton said that it’s important to know the difference between wanting to be a writer and wanting to be an author.

“I constantly encounter people on internet message boards or at conventions who tell me they want to be a writer, or that they’re working on a story, or that they’re taking notes in a notebook for the story they’re going to write one day,” Dayton said.  “They always ask me how they can be a writer, and then spend an inordinate amount of time asking the sorts of questions that tell me that what they want is to be an author; someone who’s written something, but they don’t really want to invest the time and effort required to be a writer, because...you know...that stuff is work. All the questions they fret and worry over simply won’t matter unless they start writing, finish what they start, and put together a story for an editor to read.”

Dayton is just back from an appearance at San Diego Comic Con. Although he has no more plans for appearances this year, he said that this may be subject to change based on his schedule.

You can find Dayton on the internet at his website http://www.daytonward.com, or his blog http://daytonward.livejournal.com.

“Entries there can vary from updates on my writing to reviews of movies or TV shows to just commenting on whatever news nugget catches my eye. Though I sometimes rant about this or that topic, I generally try to keep the atmosphere at the blog “light.”

 You can also find Dayton on Twitter http://www.twitter.com/daytonward and Facebook http://www.facebook.com/dayton.ward.

Tor recently posted a blog that takes a look at what they call ‘rural fantasy.’ This is a subject dear to my heart, because I’ve used this term to describe what I write.  Urban Fantasy is fantasy in an urban setting. Vampires and Trolls and Werewolves in a modern setting, usually a city. Think of Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files or Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake series.

Rural Fantasy, on it’s surface would seem to be fantasy in a rural setting. Technically, this makes rural fantasy a much older genre, because all fantasy prior to the urban fantasy craze has been rural fantasy.

Urban fantasy is in many ways a rediscovery of folklore.  As the world became industrialized and people moved from a dispersed agrarian culture into mechanized centers of civilization, the old ways were left behind.  

Urban fantasy seems to have at its roots the idea that the creatures of myths and legends came into the urban setting with us, but remained hidden and forgotten. Until some point when they choose to stand up and say ‘here we are. We’ve been here all along.’

If urban fantasy is a departure from high fantasy, then rural fantasy written as a reaction to urban fantasy is not the same beast as Tolkien’s works. So what, then is it?

Rural fantasy stories have rural sensibilities. They often deal with the attitudes of people in rural communities – family, community, a sense of pride over place and belonging, the continuity of traditions long held. In many rural fantasy stories, the denizens of the countryside have never forgotten that they live with something fantastic (or perhaps monstrous) in their midst. In some cases, as monsters stand up to say that they have been here all along, the folk in rural towns nod their heads sagely and say ‘well yeah. I knew that.’

One of the most popular examples of the rural fantasy that is out at the moment is Charlane Harris’s southern vampire series. The protagonist of the series, Sookie Stackhouse lives in northern Louisiana. Her nearest neighbor is a vampire who has owned the same house since the Civil war. His neighbors accept him because he is ‘one of their own.’ Later in the series, when were-creatures also announce their presence to the world, the rural townsfolk take the announcement in stride because many of the weres are known and liked as pillars of the rural community who don’t cause trouble.

Rural fantasies also emphasize the isolation – from people and resources – that occur in rural areas as well as the self-reliance that rural people have because of this isolation. Because of this, it’s unsurprising that a lot of rural fantasy has some element of mystery or horror in it.

Sometimes these stories read as cautionary tales with a hint of American Gothic Horor– A person from the big city comes to the country to find that the townsfolk are hiding something from them. Richard Dansky’s Firefly Rain is one such book. The main character, a prodigal son returns from the city to his country homestead to find his former friends hostile toward his city behavior and secretive about what is going on at his family homestead.

Perhaps because of the confusion over what, exactly, constitutes a rural fantasy, many fantasies with urban fantasy plot points with a rural setting are place in the subgenre urban fantasy. Perhaps this is for the best. With the list of subgenres becoming more fractionalized daily, maybe another sub-brand of fantasy would just be more confusing.

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