Nightmare Assassins Threaten Danger in a Dreamy Landscape

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman gives the reader a familiar storyline--assassins chasing a fair maiden through a dangerous world, helped by a good-hearted man. In this Gaiman's writing stars a creative, alternative London [London below]. The quests of the two characters--one to find out who killed her family and the other on how to return to the real world--keeps the two main characters apart for a good share of the story. Gaiman creates a dreamy world where nothing works quite as expected, but just right enough to keep the reader anchored.

Actually, no one tilts and teeters as much as Richard Mayhew, the well-meaning, spineless hero. The poor man is first caught up in our time-driven, wealth-chasing modern world.  A chance meeting with a bleeding girl on the streets of London throws him into an alternative world of London below where he tries to save her from nightmarish assassins. Fate has given him a alternative to a mapped out social rut stifling his soul. But Mayhew wants nothing more than to return to the real world.

The black-suited, kitten-maiming assassins are the run-from highlight of the book. Believe it or not, they even provide the comic relief. Unfortunately, it's the background that stars in this book rather than the progtagonist who remains rather blah in spite off his battle to return to London above. None of the human characters are as sharply drawn as the minor ones named for physical location in London above. Still, a wonderful, creative read.

Take a look at the sample and other reviews--all 2,000+ of them, mostly 5-star--ones

Amazon          Barnes & Noble         Rakuten-kobo

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Other Interesting Reading

Ever wonder what writers think of their writing. I happened to click this blog on Twitter. You might be interested since it gave me a chuckle. Like, "Oh, so true." Read about Nighttime Blabbing.

The Bookmuse always writes interesting, useful blogs for writers. Anyway, I find they always jerk my chain when I read them. It seems I always forget more than I know. Becca Puglisi recently wrote on on Character As Mirrors. Lots of her comments put life's little tragedies in perspective.

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My Writing Rut

Got my editorial comments back for On the Run, complete with cuts, additions, and new chapter suggestions. Every time I think I'm done and ready for copyediting, someone throws ice cubes over my head. Grumble. Grumble. Yeah, like most writers, I think editing and revising are never done.

Also got a new cover for the book. What do you think?

First Cover

Second Cover

It's been an arty week akround here. I've also been getting new ad banners for There Be Demons made. Here's an example.

You can read a sample and the reviews on Amazon and Rakuten-kobo.

Finding New Favorite Authors -- Do You Read Different Authors than Your Regulars?

Somewhere around Thanksgiving I figured I was in a reading rut. I kept traveling to the same worlds over and over again. I needed to read more writers than my regulars. So, I bought I bunch of books [mass paperbacks] by their covers and blurbs alone, hoping to find a new author who'd enchant me with his/her world.

Net Result: My to trade pile grew.

Which wasn't all bad.

One of the more fun of my holiday adventures was taking the grand kids

to my favorite book trading store so I had to replenish my trading balance anyway.

Then, I switched tactics. Thought I'd buy a couple of short story collections and ended up laughing at myself. 

What types of short story collections did I search?

1) The-what-looked-like a major author collection  -- Chicks Kick Butt -- turned out to offer the same old types of heroes, villains and situations. Not surprising since the writers probably established the cliches.

2) A fan fiction anthology of friends writing in a friends' world -- Elemental Magic, new tales written in Mercedes Lackey's elemental magician's world. The series is one of my favorite re-reads. 

The "fan" stories were definitely spotty and felt like an old home week for the Marion Zimmer Bradley fans who took advantage of her early welcome to young fans to write in her Darkover world years ago. Nice to see they have grown in their careers. None of the stories  tempted me to look for their newer works ... and some turned me off.

3) For the heck of it, I re-tried a group of novellas based on the same premise: a hero home from the Napoleonic wars needing to find a bride fast. Four romance writers created surprisingly different story lines, all of which I enjoyed. But I hardly ever read romances unless there's a strong mystery component.

4) The "all star" collection was the biggest disappointment -- Songs of Love and Death edited by George R. Martin and Gardener Dozois. I had high hopes the cross-genre collection of fantasy, science-fiction, and romance would reveal a new writer or two. After all the collection featured some of my favorite favorite authors -- Neil Gaiman, Jim Butcher, Yasmine Galenorn, and Tanith Lee. But I had read all the authors already.

Guess my blog readers'll be the ones to suffer. I'll keep talking about the same writers, though boredom might be enough to  make me actually get the snafu at Amazon fixed so I can download to my Kindle.
 

 So, what do I plan to do when I'm not reading?

This past year I've been playing with social media marketing, rather limply if truth be told. Did beat  the indie averages but that's not saying much. So I am thinking of concentrating on writing again for 2014. One possible conclusion: to try my hand at writing short stories again as well as working on my novels and novellas.

So, I've decided to consider subscribing to Duotrope to market my stories -- if I write them -- and to find anthologists who are actively publishing short story collections. You'll know how I fare on both writing and reading fronts.

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 Are you still searching for a way to publishing success?

Here is a quote from my dream agent, Janet Reid, that'll give you an idea about what you need to do after you finish your manuscript -- if you want to find an agent to negotiate your way into the major publishing houses.

 
"Under no circumstances do you send anything before it is revised, polished, revised, honed, revised, perfected, revised, reconsidered, sweated on, bled on, revised and then finished."

You can read the full blog about when to bother an agent with your manuscript by clinking the link.

Thinking About Where Do Book Series Begin? End?

My obsession with series continues. You can blame it on The Grumpy Dragon and its suggestion that I write a sequel to There Be Demons. The thought's scary like jumping off a cliff without a parachute.

Why? All the novels that have come out of my computer so far have grown organically as my characters careened from one situation to the next. The Demons sequel demands a outline. Why? Because if there's a middle, there logically has to be an end. Seems to me setting up the situation is the easy part. The rest has to build an expand on what happened before.

What are your feelings on this?

Cricket McCrae, aka Bailey Cates, poured gas on my fire, aka questions. She's the author of the Magical Bakery Mysteries among others. I recently read the last two in the series ... trilogy? ... close together -- Bewitched, Bothered, and Biscotti and Charms and Chocolate Chips. Yeah, the titles reek of cozy cutesie, but I read and enjoyed them anyway -- without having to control my gag reflex. McCrae/Bailey has a light touch with murder. I'll take my smiles where I can find them.

The first book,  Brownies and Broomsticks, sets up the series when Katie Lightfoot moves to Savannah, GA. She hopes to start a new career helping her aunt and uncle set up a bakery. Lightfoot's running from a bad job, a relationship gone teminal, and a mother who forgot to tell her she was a witch-in-waiting. The most important "man" in her life is the stray mutt who sets himself up as her familiar though the book sets up two possible suitors.  The storyline follows her trek of discovery -- including a knack for sleuthing when her uncle becomes the prime suspect in a murder. 

Bewitched, Bothered and Biscotti has Lighfoot learning her magical abilities mean more than charming the baked good with herbs and good intentions. She continues finding murdered bodies and solving crimes, in spite of police opposition. She's also in the enviable situation of choosing between two hunks -- one with magic and one normal. Lightfoot also comes to terms with the fact she's a witch and learns about the various permutations the Craft can take. The most important revelation in the second volume is that Lightfoot is more powerful than a common hedge witch ...only she has no one to teach her.

Charms and Chocolate Chips continues Lightfoot's journey -- and leaves me hanging. Is the book the last of a trilogy or the third in an ongoing series? 

Lightfoot is becoming part of the community now and is volunteering for a local conservation group when the director is murdered, supposedly because she opposed the sale of a swamp to a consortium who wants to build a golf course. She settles on the normal guy for romance, but she doesn't know if she can make it work, especially when she puts him in harm's way. 

Her mother coming to Savannah to reconcile with Lightfoot makes me wonder if there will be more Lightfoot mysteries. Many of the protagonist's problems are wrapped up in an acceptable way in this book, including a reconciliation with her mother. I can see where the series could go on as Lightfoot solves more murders in Savannah. But took a look at the author websites, but didn't find any clues as to the writer's intentions.

So what about the writing craft aspects of these novels? I especially admire how McCrae/Bailey draws her characters. Even the tertiary ones are well-rounded. The plots twist enough to be interesting. Her villains are well motivated. McCrae/Bailey puts together a nice paranormal mystery, based on nice people you wouldn't mind knowing. Maybe even make you wish you did know people like them.

McCrae/Bailey stirs up a nice, cross-genre confection. I'm stuffing all three volumes in my overloaded book shelves. Five stars to the series as well as the individual books.

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Writers write, right? Sometime during the day, I know I'm supposed to write. I try. Really I do. I even have a schedule. Toy with Forbidden Fruit in the evenings. [I still want to publish more novellas about the my Half-Elven world.] 

In the morning, I was working on edits for Black Tail's War. Now, I'm launching a new project. Why?

1. Taking Vengeance is finally up on Amazon, Nook, and Smashwords. I need to promote it.
2. I've submitted The Noticing One, a short story, to Amazon singles.
3. Since it worked the first time with Night for the Gargoyles, I'm writing a short story set in the world of the sequel to There Be Demons. Even have a tentative book title, Crossing the River.

Think that's enough on my plate.

Oh, I've been offering Taking Vengeance free on Smashwords to people who follow me on the various social media that consume too much of my time. The code is EG75E, and it's good until 30 November 2013. Link to buy

If you like it, I'd appreciate a review. Just a short paragraph. No Master's Thesis.