Author Tahlia Newland has offered me the opportunity to join in this blog tour. The idea is simple. I answer a series of questions on my writing process and my current work, then I tag new authors to answer the same questions, and the chain carries on, a pattern of infinite growth. Unfortunately, the authors I hoped to tag could not participate. Ah well. Suppose every branch of a tree kept growing and sprouting new twigs that grew into branches and divided. It would be one cancerous tree, and eventually someone would attack it with a chainsaw. But I had lots of fun answering the questions.

I want to thank Tahlia for tagging me . Check out her website here.

What am I working on?

Right now I’m revising a suspense novel, Darkroom, for about the sixth time.

Kelly Durrell, assistant curator at a small museum, befriends Day Randall, a footloose and immensely talented photographer. While Kelly is home attending her sister’s funeral, Day disappears. Kelly is too grief stricken to care until Day’s boyfriend, art collector Gregory Tyson, asks for her help. He’s determined to find Day. As Kelly searches for her missing friend she finds herself drawn into a world of dangerous people. She begins to question Tyson’s motives. What is he really after? How far will he go to get what he wants?

And will I ever finish this novel? The story is radically different from the first draft I wrote some years ago. Maybe I should have left this one in a virtual drawer, but something about it keeps pulling me back. I hope it will have that effect on readers.

Why do I write what I do?

My stories come from a bleak place. Though I’ve been lucky enough to find love and joy in my life, my imagination thrives in the dark. The darkness of my stories puts some readers off, but it’s so much a part of my worldview that I can’t change it without losing my authenticity. If I wrote lighthearted romance readers would sense the phoniness.

How does my work differ from others of its genre?

I write urban fanstasy and horror as well as straight suspense. I also like to mix genre elements. But I’m hardly the only writer who does these things. In the end only one thing sets my writing apart from others in my genre: its voice. Voice encompasses a writer’s prose style, imagination, and worldview. It’s a quality hard to define but easy to recognize. Like a singer’s voice it can’t be acquired, only developed. You can often recognize a writer’s work by voice alone. And of course some voices are more accomplished and versatile than others. Not everyone can write a first-person narrative with an unforgettable voice. Mark Twain sure could. He’s one of the greats.

Sometimes I think stylistic rules (which, let’s face it, change through time) hamper the writer who is trying to find his or her voice, but without rules the new writer usually produces awful prose.

How does my writing process work?

Voice is important to my writing process. It can slow down my writing. If a paragraph sounds wrong — off key or discordant with the rest of the piece — I can’t proceed until I’ve solved the problem. If it sounds right I can move along at a steady pace. I know voice shouldn’t matter so much in a first draft, but my creative process depends on it. Fortunately I’ve reached the point where I can find the right note quickly, but sometimes I fail to catch false notes until I read through the draft later. They make me wince.

I wish I could write faster. Commercially it’s a good idea to produce two or three books a year. But what’s the point if they suck?

 

About Tahlia Newland:

She writes heart warming and inspiring contemporary fantasy and magical realism . You can also call it metaphysical fiction. She has  been writing full time since 2008, and is also a respected reviewer with over 300 published reviews. All her novels have been awarded a place on the Awesome Indies list of quality independent fiction, and have received the AIA Seal of Excellence. Two of her novels, You Can’t Shatter Me and  Lethal Inheritance, also received a B.R.A.G Medallion for outstanding independent fiction.

An Animal Life: The Beginning by Howard Krum with Roy Yanong and Scott Moore follows a group of students through their first semester at University of Philadelphia School of Veterinary Medicine in the 1980s. For readers interested in what vet school is like, this novel offers a full experience of demanding class work, raucous parties, and sometimes painful personal growth.

The omniscient point of view is skillfully done. It gives the authors leeway to explain aspects of veterinary medicine in technical detail so readers can understand what the students are learning in class. But the analytical perspective on the action is less suited to expressing the characters’ emotional lives and motivation. Too often we are told rather than shown who characters are and what they want.

In an intensive and useful glossary, the authors give a tongue-in-cheek definition of An Animal Life as  “A book series . . . [that] may be an upcoming blockbuster movie or TV series.” They offer a “Suggested Soundtrack” of popular songs to accompany each chapter. Their music selections are knowledgeable and clever, and the objective omniscient point of view has a cinematic flavor, but the story isn’t presented in a way likely to attract Hollywood.

The book makes demands on the reader. It takes some knowledge of biology to understand the chapters about vet school classes. (Those pre-med biology courses back in college came in handy here.) The illustrations by Patty Hogan help, but they’re difficult to see in the Kindle book. The story, while interesting, isn’t exactly a page-turner. The narrative plods through that first semester of vet school, developing the various subplots sporadically. Despite the potential for suspense, there isn’t much.

On the other hand, a screenwriter might transform this promising raw material into the hoped-for blockbuster.

The story has several plotlines, but two stand out: a romance between two first-year students and a medical mystery.

Jack, a former cop, is attracted to Anna, who suffers from Lou Gehrig’s disease. Although she has feelings for him their personalities aren’t altogether compatible, and various missteps and misunderstandings keep them apart. Their story follows the conventional pattern of romance novels without the usual emotionalism. Both know Anna will die young, but the story is almost over before they become close enough to acknowledge it. The title suggests the story will continue, and I’m curious to know whether the two will get together.

Because of the point of view, Jack and Anna occasionally seems like puppets, doing what the plot requires rather than acting from character-driven motivation. Jack’s infatuation with pet-food PR slut Avery is one example. We’re told that Jack resists sex with Avery because he’s waiting for “the one,” yet Avery has him enthralled. That kind of paradox is certainly possible, but readers aren’t shown enough of Jack’s thoughts to understand why this intelligent, experienced man gives in to juvenile lust.

The medical mystery begins when animals and birds in the area begin to die in startling numbers. A zoo vet and a pathology instructor work to discover why, but corporate interests at the zoo are less interested in the truth than in avoiding bad publicity. This conflict culminates in one of my favorite scenes as an Aussie thug employed by the zoo tries to intimidate the vets.

An Animal Life succeeds most completely on an intellectual level. I learned a lot about what veterinarians do and the challenges they face. The book raises the ethical dilemma of caring for animals while exploiting them for food, experimentation, and entertainment. An Animal Life offers no solution and has no ideological agenda — all the characters except Anna are unapologetic meat eaters — but it reminds us that humans and animals are part of the same ecosystem. Our treatment of animals has environmental consequences. On a personal level, the story depicts callousness and cruelty toward animals as character flaws, kindness toward them as a mark of goodness, and respect for them as essential in a veterinarian.

I noticed smatterings of punctuation errors concentrated in certain parts of the book, an uneven job of proofreading, but by and large An Animal Life is well written and worth the time of any reader who cares about animals and enjoys biology.

The Fourth Season is the fourth and final book in a mystery quartet by award-winning Australian author Dorothy Johnson. (The others are The Trojan Dog, The White Tower, and Eden.) I read the book with the disadvantage of not having read the earlier ones, so I knew nothing about the protagonist, Sandra Mahoney. She lives a complicated life with two children, an ex-husband, a live-in partner, and a fraught friendship with a police detective. She also has a reputation as a cyber-security expert. Of course Sandra’s history comes to bear on events in The Fourth Season.

The story centers on two murders: a student killed and dumped in a lake and a scuba diver killed and dumped in a public swimming pool near Sandra’s house. Sandra takes an interest in the first murder because her partner, Ivan, was in love with the student, Laila Fanshaw. He becomes an immediate suspect. It doesn’t help that he turns uncommunicative and selfish, staying out all night and neglecting their young daughter, who adores him. Then a stranger, Don Fletcher, phones Sandra and offers her money to investigate the case. Also a suspect, he wants the real murderer caught. Sandra has qualms but needs the money. She takes the case.

She discovers Laila’s passionate interest in environmental causes—in particular protecting the waters around Australia from exploitation by oil companies—and the passion that her beauty and energy aroused in those who knew her. Ivan isn’t the only one who fell for Laila. Various suspects emerge, including a prominent politician. Sandra’s snooping results in her being followed. After the scuba diver’s body is found, a phone call to the police places her car near the swimming pool. It becomes more and more obvious that Sandra and her children could be in danger.

Johnson writes polished prose and constructs a solid plot with masterful pacing. The story held my interest even though Sandra’s investigation consists mostly of her talking with the various people involved, and some of the conversations end without her learning much of anything. The most action-packed scene that she instigates is sneaking into Laila’s house to steal evidence. Much of the story concerns Sandra’s relationships with her children, with Ivan, and with Detective Sergeant Brook. The complex lives of these characters are as compelling as the murder mystery.

Sandra’s first-person narrative shows her intelligence and perceptiveness. She reads people well and knows how to draw information from them. But the narrative point of view keeps her on the periphery of the action. Lacking authority and tied by domestic responsibility, Sandra can go only so far. She must depend on Brook for crucial information that he isn’t always willing to share. She has a vital stake in the outcome, but the story’s climactic event unfolds many miles away from her. All she can do is wring her hands and hope things work out.

I would have preferred a protagonist more at the center of the action. Despite Sandra’s intelligence, I wondered why Don Fletcher comes to her and why the killer feels so threatened by her. She seems like an unprepossessing woman. The earlier novels probably establish Sandra as a formidable investigator, but in The Fourth Season she comes across as a gifted amateur snoop. At times I felt I was reading a cozy without the coziness.

But in the end, the problem isn’t this beautifully executed novel but my expectations. I want a story with pulse-pounding action centered on the protagonist, and Johnson isn’t a writer who sacrifices realism to deliver cheap thrills.

I’m delighted to welcome back author Tori Ridgewood. Blood and Fire, second book in her Talbot Trilogy, has just hit the virtual shelves.

What chance does one witch have against five vampires? Alone, not much. But Rayvin’s allies are gathering…

The battle between good and evil supernatural forces heats up in the long, cold November nights of the former mining town. But how will Rayvin’s motley crew of spellcasters and shapeshifters cope when they discover the threat they face is even greater than they imagined?

Crouching to prod the fire, Grant thought over the options now open to him. It wasn’t safe to go back to Talbot, at least not until he had gained a better understanding of what had happened to him. He needed more than a measure of control over this thing. Once he had that, he could go home and set things right. Destroy de Sade once and for all. After all, was that not the purpose of werewolves? To be an equal adversary for the undead?

The next question was not as simple. Just how did a werewolf train himself? Was it even possible for him to remain cognizant and in control when his body was no longer human?

A knot of sap crackled and snapped. He amused himself with the thought that the fire was speaking to him.

The thought that he was merely delusional, that being able to magically transform into a vicious four-footed animal was a hallucination, the product of slow starvation and exposure, nearly made him laugh aloud.

If a fire could speak, its language would be visual, he decided. He relaxed his eyes and let the glowing embers form shapes and letters.

The wind blew in from the open cabin door, swirling around him and carrying the clean scents of snow, damp wood and earth, mixed with the rank odour of animal carcass from his footprints in the snow…and something else.

Grant held very still.

The something else was faint, but recognizable. Vaguely comforting. It made him think of an old wet dog. Or an old man who had not washed in a long time. Some combination of the two.

A cluster of coals fell in a rush of sparks. The noise drew Grant’s attention, even as the strange smell made his nose twitch and his nostrils flare.

The collapsed, blackened piece of wood strongly resembled the face of a man with strong, mature features. It was broad in the forehead, with a long nose and wide, round eyes. A scattering of red embers looked like a bushy beard covering the mouth and jaw.

It couldn’t be possible during the day, but it seemed to Grant that he could hear the borealis sing.

Solomon. The name that belonged to this face. It was spelled out clearly for him, just for a moment, in the leaping flames.

A few more sticks collapsed, changing the image. An a-frame cabin on a lake. A short, blunt mountain nearby, and a small lake in the shape of a teardrop. The mountain had sheer sides.  Grant thought he recognized it, had even been rock climbing on it in his youth. Mount Cheminis, near Dark Lake.

Yes. Grant understood. He blinked, and the images were gone. Exhaling, he got to his feet and went to the door. The scent of wolf and man now seemed to clearly mark a trail through the trees, to the south-east.

Someone had sent him a message. His gut wanted to tell him that it was Rayvin, though logically that couldn’t be right. How the hell could she contact him from so far away? She’d done it before, sent him a mental plea for help, but she’d only been a few blocks away. And was it at all possible that she knew this character?

Great, more questions without answers.

He may have screwed up on his first battle with the monster, but at least he’d learned that he wouldn’t be able to fight on his own and win. He needed help. Wherever this information had come from, it felt right on some level. The sooner he could find this Solomon guy, the sooner he’d learn how to get control.

With control, de Sade and his little army wouldn’t find him as easy a target as before.

“Welcome to the family,” the bastard vampire had told him. Yeah, well—think of me as the black wolf in your little flock.

His mind drifted to the image of the small, red-headed witch who had chosen the vampire over him. Had she sent him the vision, the way she’d called out for help before? If she could still do that, what did it mean?

“Wait until you get a load of me,” Grant whispered aloud, as he turned back into the cabin.

He quickly filled the rucksack with a small aluminum travel pot, three more cans of beans whose dents were less severe than the others, a can opener, some boxes of pasta and rice that were still intact, and some sticks of dry kindling. He took the grey blanket, rolled it into a short, fat, sausage, and strapped it to the bottom of the rucksack in place of a sleeping bag. With the stub of a pencil he’d found in a drawer, and a scrap of paper, he wrote a quick inventory of what he’d taken. Once the bastard vampire was taken care of, Grant had determined that he would go back and try to make some compensation for what he had ‘borrowed’.

Grant used a cloth to close the door behind him, and then turned his face to the woods in order to once again find the scent of the unknown wolf.

Speed was definitely a gift that he could get used to, in this strange new life. He’d moved faster than Usain Bolt, even, reaching the edge of the small lake below Mount Cheminis by noon.

Casting his eyes around the shoreline, Grant fashioned a makeshift cup of birchbark and filled it with fresh water from the lake. The sun had just passed its zenith in the sky above, but with the temperature low, he could barely feel its warmth on his back. He scooped in some of the purification tablet he had crushed on a rock, trying to measure it proportionally to the amount of water, swished it around a few times to help it dissolve, and then waited for the iodine and assorted chemicals to work.

“You don’t need to do that.”

He started. The little man standing next to him had approached without a sound. He was no bigger than an eight-year-old child, and he was completely bald, except for his full beard and his eyebrows. He had a barrel chest, and sinewy forearms showed where the sleeves of his lined flannel shirt were rolled back. Grant looked at a pair of child-sized battered work-boots, only a few feet from his face. He sensed that the man was assessing him just as carefully.

“I don’t want to take any chances,” Grant answered, finally. His breath condensed in the chill air. He stood, casually, still swirling the cup of water. “You never know, these days. Decades of mining, acid rain, human presence. There are bugs in that water we probably don’t even know about.”

In response, the hermit took his hand out of his jeans pocket, brushed it against his chest, squatted, and leaned over a near dip in the rocky shore. He lowered his hand into the cold black water, and scooped up a palmful. Lapping it up, he shook off the remaining drops and wiped his skin dry again. “I drink this every day, buddy. Do I look sick to you?”

Grant laughed shortly. “Kudos to your immune system. I think I’ll stick with my iodine.”

His visitor shrugged, gazing across the lake. “You’re a long way from the trails. Where’s your gun?”

“I’m looking for someone by the name of Solomon. He’s supposed to live around here.” Grant watched his face for a reaction. The other man only continued to squint against the glare of the sun, a short distance above the horizon. “Have you heard of him?”

“Maybe.” He picked up a rock and weighed it in his hand. “Who’s asking?”

Grant wanted to laugh again, but he didn’t. He hadn’t really known what to expect, or even that he’d actually find the stubby little mountain in the dream or vision or whatever he’d had. The A-frame cabin further down the shore was evidently occupied, given the smoke rising from its chimney. From what he could see, there were no other cottages in the near area. Logically, then, this man was Solomon. What reason could a hermit have for concealing his identity? Was this some kind of epic quest moment, where the hero has to prove that he is pure of heart in order to receive wisdom from the sage? Grant had always believed in honesty. Still, he proceeded cautiously. “Do you believe in the supernatural?”

“You’re a cop, ain’t you?”

“What makes you say that?”

The bald man stood, cracking his back with an audible grunt of relief. “You always answer a question with another question?”

Grant shrugged with one shoulder. “No, but since you’re obviously being careful, I should be, too.”

“I’ll tell you what,” the stranger said, slowly. “You show me some balls, toss that so-called pure water and take a drink from the goodness of Mother Nature; I’ll show you Solomon.”

Grant regarded him with a half-smile, and deliberately poured out his birchbark cup. He should have been dead weeks ago, anyway. Maybe his new physiology would protect him from beaver fever, maybe it wouldn’t. Either way, he needed answers. The other man watched with narrowed eyes as Grant bent down, cupped his hands, and drank from the lake.

“Okay?” he asked, wiping his face on a clean part of his bright orange sleeve. “Where’s Solomon?”

The little man burst into laughter. He opened the snaps on his work-shirt, still laughing, and pulled his t-shirt over his head. As he stepped forward, his face elongated and sprouted fangs under a black snout; his eyes yellowed as grey fur grew out of his skin, and his back snapped, the bones expanding and rearranging themselves into a canine form. Grant stepped back in horror, holding his hands out in an instinct to defend himself, backing along the edge of the rocky outcropping. The stranger’s laughter became a series of yipping howls that echoed against the trees. The massive wolf shook itself, rippling its fur, and scratched its impressive nails on the granite as the howls lowered to a growl. Grant’s skin prickled, recognizing the attack posture of the biggest timber wolf he had ever seen.

Then it lunged into Grant’s outstretched arms.

The animal hit Grant’s chest like a bag of cement, knocking him back and down into the water.

His feet left the rocky ledge that formed the shore, but the boots he had taken from that hunter’s cabin stayed where they were. In the seconds that he was airborne, he felt it all clearly, as though it were taking place in slow motion: his ears registered the snarls of the animal snapping at his neck and the ripping of cloth under the wolf’s sharp nails, and from his own body’s transformation. His ribcage, expanding and elongating, pushed the threads of the bright orange fleece past their limits. His pants shredded and tore as his pelvis moved and sharpened, and a tail burst out of the base of his spine. Grant’s shocked cry became a canine yelp and a whine. Two writhing, growling animals hit the water at the same time and vanished beneath the surface.

 BloodandFireCover

About the Author:

After her first heartbreak, Tori found solace in two things: reading romance novels and listening to an after-dark radio program called Lovers and Other Strangers. Throughout the summer and fall of 1990, the new kid in town found reading fiction and writing her own short stories gave her a much needed creative outlet. Determined to become a published author, Tori amassed stacks of notebooks and boxes of filed-away stories, most only half-finished before another idea would overtake her and demand to be written down. Then, while on parental leave with her second baby, one story formed and refused to be packed away. Between teaching full-time, parenting, and life in general, it would take almost seven years before the first novel in her first trilogy would be completed. In the process, Tori finally found her stride as a writer.

Tori Headshot 1At present, on her off-time, Tori not only enjoys reading, but also listening to an eclectic mix of music as she walks the family dog (Skittles), attempts to turn her thumb green, or makes needlework gifts for her friends and family members. She loves to travel, collect and make miniature furniture, and a good cup of tea during a thunderstorm or a blizzard. Under it all, she is always intrigued by history, the supernatural, vampire and shapeshifter mythology, romance, and other dangers.

Tori is currently working on Crystal and Wand: Book Three of The Talbot Trilogy. She lives in Kirkland Lake, Ontario, Canada with her husband and two children. She is a full-time teacher at a local high school.

Buy Blood and Fire at Amazon, Smashwords, or Lulu.

I don’t remember much from the summer I was thirteen, months of boredom punctuated by moments of emotional violence involving my father and/or my stepmother and/or my grandmother and/or me. I lived with Nana in a trailer behind the tavern Dad owned. The trailer had a small yard with a dusty cacti garden and a fence that separated it from the parking lot. I spent some time with my younger brother, who was staying with Dad, but mostly I sprawled on a couch in the trailer, reading library books while the swamp cooler in the ceiling gurgled and whirred.

This cover is NOTHING like the Ivanhoe I barely remember.

From that forgotten time, one moment remains in my memory. I finished Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe and felt desolated. I stared at the last page, the final sentence. How could it be over? I really needed to get up and walk around, maybe get a glass of Kool-Aid from the fridge. Instead I turned to the first page of Ivanhoe and began reading the story again. I was obsessed by a novel that I can barely remember now.

The reasons for the obsession are obvious enough. What pudgy teenager with pimples wouldn’t prefer a world of chivalry and adventure to sordid reality? And fiction wasn’t my only escape. I loved movies. I saw Lawrence of Arabia half a dozen times and The Great Escape at least ten. Movies without a single female character. It must have been a relief; I wasn’t exactly comfortable with my emerging sexuality.

Now decades have passed and my life is happy. Of course I suffer pain and disappointment, the same as everyone else, but nothing like the constant anxiety and misery of adolescence when books and movies were my refuge. So why haven’t I changed? Why did I reread thousands of pages from George RR Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice? Why did I reread all five books of Karen Marie Moning’s Fever series? Why have I spent the past few days watching all 55 episodes of the NBC urban fantasy Grimm?

Nick-Grimm-Season-3-grimm-35260010-500-185Grimm could be described as Law and Order with monsters. Nick Burkhardt, a detective in the Portland, Oregon police department, begins having disturbing visions of people morphing into monsters. Then his dying aunt shows up and announces that he is a Grimm and like his ancestors is able to see the true faces of these creatures in their unguarded moments. Yes! The monsters of Grimm’s fairy tales exist, and dozens of them live in Portland. Not the trendy neighborhoods of Portlandia, but the dark and gritty back streets where danger threatens and the darkness is drenched in eerie green.

The hero.

Nick’s aunt leaves him a trailer full of ancient books, potions, and weapons so he can hunt  down monsters and kill them. That’s his job as a Grimm. It’s a long tradition. The monsters expect decapitation, or worse, at his hands. In every episode he faces down another terrifying creature. He dispatches the nasty ones and befriends some of the not-so-bad ones. Geeky wolf man Monroe becomes his unofficial partner as he navigates the world of the supernatural. Eventually he shares his secret with his partner on the police force and with his girlfriend.

A howling good time

Nick discovers that the supernatural world has its own hierarchy and Machiavellian politics in which he is supposed to play a particular role. Some creatures want to assassinate him while others try to exploit his talents. He also has an object, left to him by his aunt, that certain people are determined to steal from him. The overarching story is his struggle to survive and find his place in a world he doesn’t understand.

I know why I enjoy Grimm. The series has an original concept, inventive plots, appealing characters, and a noirish visual style. The writing is literate with allusions to W.B. Yeats, Emily Dickenson, and various mythologies besides Grimm’s fairy tales. But none of this explains its hold on my imagination.

Habits formed in childhood are difficult to change. Maybe there’s nothing more to it than that. But often I don’t enjoy real life—the tedium, the labor, the difficulty and frustrusion, the questionable meaning of it all. I would rather escape into exciting fictional worlds where darkness and danger are caged within the story, where everything makes sense.

That’s why I sit at the computer and create a world of my own. And why I become lost in the worlds of other artists.

Photos from FanPop.

romance, literary fiction

The Awful MessRecently divorced, Mary Bellamy buys a house in the small town of Lawson, New Hampshire. The breakup of her marriage hasn’t shattered her. Far from it. She’s glad to be rid of her childish, self-centered ex. She envisions a contented life as a single woman with a cat and a secure job as an editor–a job that requires her presence in the office only occasionally. She’s definitely not looking for romance, but it hunts her down anyway.

Soon after moving to Lawson, Mary becomes acquainted with Arthur Tennant, rector of the Episcopal church. Arthur is married and off limits. The marriage is far from happy, though, and Arthur is lonely. One evening he shows up at her house with wine. They drink, they talk, they have sex. Mary considers it a one-night stand, the unfortunate result of too much wine.

Meanwhile, a handsome young cop shows an interest in her. Mary reluctantly agrees to go out with him. To her surprise, she enjoys his company and gets along with his fundamentalist father.

Just as things seem to be going well, a series of misfortunes threaten to destabilize her new life. Her job turns out not to be secure after all. Mary might be laid off and lose the income that makes it possible for her to afford the house. Her ex-husband comes slinking around. He dumped Mary because she was apparently infertile, but now he’s unhappy with his new young wife.

Then catastrophe strikes. Mary discovers she’s fertile after all, pregnant with Arthur’s child. It has to be his. She hasn’t had sex with with anyone else. Soon everyone in Lawson will know she’s pregnant and the speculation will begin. If the secret is revealed, it will destroy Arthur’s life.

Author Sandra Hutchinson tells the story with economy, grace, and an occasionally comic touch. Lawson is not Hawthorne’s Salem, and the townspeople react in unexpected ways. Even the minor characters are complexly drawn. Particularly impressive is the treatment of the cop’s father. A less thoughtful writer would have made him the stereotypical fundamentalist Christian–intolerant, irrational, and unforgiving. As with much else in the novel, it’s not that simple.

The Awful Mess: A Love Story is an intelligent, entertaining novel that faces the truth about life’s difficulties without descending into bleakness.

Discover Authors

Today’s guest, Laurie Boris, makes a strong case for creating characters that are less than perfect. 

I’m a bit different from some authors. Instead of outlining and building a character from scratch, I let one fall into my head. I follow him or her around as we find the story together. So sometimes (oh, who am I kidding; it happens nearly all the time) I get to work with characters who are a little broken, a little damaged, or who don’t always make the choices I want them to.

This means I often hear the same comment from my early readers: I wanted to SLAP her!

If it’s any consolation to them, sometimes I want to slap her, too.

Yet to write a book any other way, for me, would feel wrong. It would feel like I’m forcing a character to do something contrary to his or her nature. Readers can sense this. It can make the characters’ journeys feel fake, like the author is moving them around on a chessboard to suit the needs of the plot.

When Sarah Cohen popped into my head for Sliding Past Vertical, oh boy, did I want to slap her. Probably more than any of my other heroines. She meant well. Underneath, I could sense that she meant well, and didn’t want to hurt anyone, but some of her decisions had unintended consequences because she wasn’t thinking them through. I really felt for Emerson, who still loved her after she broke up with him in college. Stop hurting my book boyfriend, I wanted to yell at her.

spv_v3But I had to let her do what she was going to do. That’s one of the most important lessons I learned from her. As I write a book (and for a while afterward), the characters feel as real to me as the people I come across in the supermarket, on the train, in the gym. That’s what some readers say they love about them. Yet real people don’t always make the best choices, especially if they are in trying situations. They make the ones that feel like the best thing to do at the time. And knowing this has not only helped me feel more compassionate toward other people, it’s helped me feel more compassion for my characters and for myself.

I haven’t always made the “right” decisions in my personal life. Who has? Through writing, and especially when I’m given the gift of a character like Sarah, it helps me grow and helps me learn more about forgiveness.

In a novel, though, if a character never learns anything or changes in some way because of what she experiences, well, what’s the point of having her in the book? It’s a question writers often ask themselves while a story is in development. Sarah, as much as I wanted to sit her down and talk some sense into her, deserved to stay because she had to go through a transformation. She had a lot to learn. I had to be compassionate enough to let her do that on her own, without pushing her around or making her be someone that she wasn’t. And maybe that’s why she came into my life.

Discover Authors

A warm welcome to today’s Discovery tour guest, Pavarti K. Tyler.

This week, my erotic romance Sugar & Salt released and I’ve been having oodles of fun posting reviews and talking about erotica with readers.  But in the mix, I don’t want to forget the Literary Fiction novel that came out in July.  Not that long ago in the scheme of publishing.

White Chalk, is a very personal story for me.  While it’s not autobiographical and I am not Chelle, I could have been.  So could you.  So could the kid sitting on the bus next to you on your way to work tomorrow morning.  The thing is, we never know what someone’s like is like behind the walls of their mind.  It takes very little to change the trajectory of a life.  A teacher who takes a special interest in a troubled child can save them, point them in a new direction, or take advantage and shatter their understanding of love.

About the book:

WCFinalCover-200x300Chelle isn’t a typical 13-year-old girl—she doesn’t laugh with friends, play sports, or hang out at the mall after school. Instead, she navigates a world well beyond her years.

Life in Dawson, ND spins on as she grasps at people, pleading for someone to save her—to return her to the simple childhood of unicorns on her bedroom wall and stories on her father’s knee.

When Troy Christiansen walks into her life, Chelle is desperate to believe his arrival will be her salvation. So much so, she forgets to save herself. After experiencing a tragedy at school, her world begins to crack, causing a deeper scar in her already fragile psyche.

Follow Chelle’s twisted tale of modern adolescence, as she travels down the rabbit hole into a reality none of us wants to admit actually exists.

Rachel Thompson, Award-Winning Author of Broken Pieces

Tyler combines shades of ‘Lolita’ and ‘Catcher in the Rye’ in a completely new way, drawing you in with poignant characterizations. ‘White Chalk’ goes deep into teenage angst with understanding and clarity. Savor, share, and use this poignant book as a primer on the brutal effects of abuse, neglect, and self-esteem.

I am delighted to welcome today’s guest, Deborah J. Lightfoot, author of the magical Waterspell series.

The Awesome Indies Discovery begins today and runs through December 14. Featured are eight simply awesome writers whose books have met high standards of quality and been approved for the Awesome Indies lists. I am pleased and proud to be in such distinguished company. Now here is my contribution to the tour. I’m also giving away review copies of the complete Waterspell trilogy.

WATERSPELL
by
Deborah J. Lightfoot

Magic, mystery, murder, and romance …
The Waterspell Trilogy:
An intricate save-the-world fantasy adventure with complex characters, cosmic calamities, and the gothic sensibilities of Jane Eyre

~~~~~

I wrote much of Waterspell while living in the tropics in a house that was open to the breezes of soft summer nights. Often I worked late, gripped by a writer’s high, my fingers flying over the keyboard while the world slept. Vaguely I would catch the hoots of owls and the fragrances of night-blooming flowers wafting in on the breeze, but I wasn’t really occupying the same universe as the house that held me. On those magical nights, I was living with—and in—the characters of my medieval fantasy. I saw through their eyes, thought their thoughts, and felt their anguish. I didn’t merely sympathize with their pain: I felt it.

Waterspell_Book_1_cover_AIA_badge-330My writing became an out-of-body experience as my consciousness melded with my characters. Nothing existed in those moments except my pulse-pounding rush to capture not only their words and actions, but also their deepest secrets. I saw behind their masks. I knew things they’d never told anyone—hidden things they had not fully acknowledged even to themselves.

In the small hours of the night when exhaustion finally drove me from the keyboard, I sometimes found myself thinking, as I headed for bed, that I would like to read more of the story which had so riveted me. Then I would realize that I couldn’t read more of it until I had written it. The experience was like being split in two. The hours I spent out of my body, my mind at one with my characters, made for confused dreams as my essence struggled to leave the world of Waterspell and return to Earth.

When at last the writing was done and I could declare the trilogy finished, I cried a little to be parting from my characters. They were real to me. For the better part of 16 years they had lived in me, and I in them. We had spent a life together.

Waterspell_Book_2_cover_AIA_badge-330But now they were moving into a wider realm. The books were published, and readers began responding. I’ve been deeply gratified by the emotional connections that many readers have forged with these idiosyncratic characters of mine. Reviewers have called them complicated, original, mesmerizing.

Beyond Character: Going Deep

But as thrilling as it is to see my creations become real in readers’ imaginations, I’ve now found myself hoping for reviews that will give equal time to the story’s deeper themes.

One of those themes deals with the human need to belong. We all want to fit in; we want a place and a community to call our own. My protagonist, a teenage misfit named Carin, is homeless and rootless as the story begins. Her quest is to find the place where she belongs. Or more accurately, her challenge is to make a place for herself in a world where she does not really fit.

Waterspell_Book_1_cover_AIA_badge-330That’s one subtext of the story. Going still deeper, camouflaged amongst the underpinnings of the trilogy, is a commentary on environmental exploitation, ecological devastation, and Nature’s powers of regeneration, if we’ll only give Earth the chance to heal. That theme is nuanced enough that I wouldn’t expect most readers to pick up on it until late in Book 2. And even when this subtext is more fully explored in Book 3, it’s far subtler than the adventure, mystery, and romance of the trilogy’s surface layers.

Even so, I’m hoping to connect on those deeper levels with readers who enjoy a good fantasy adventure, but who also want more from a book than simple entertainment. Come for the characters, love or despair of them as you will, but please know there’s more happening in the depths of Waterspell. On the surface, the story may seem medieval. Down below, however, it’s as contemporary and relevant as the latest natural disaster or planetary catastrophe to strike our Mother Earth.

If you’re interested in environmental literary fiction or you like characters who’ll keep you up nights, I invite you to sample Waterspell Books 1, 2, and 3 at any online bookseller. The three books of the trilogy—The WarlockThe Wysard, and The Wisewoman—are the beginning, middle, and end of a continuous story, and best read as a set.

Review copies are available in all formats. Please contact me if you’d like to review.

 

Discover Authors A warm welcome to today’s guest, Kate Policani, accomplished author of The Convergence series. Kate is also the creative mind behind Discover Authors. Thank you, Kate, for inviting me to participate in this tour. aia_low-res_sm-150x150   djabbim-cover-new-audiobook

Don’t Judge a Book by Its Magic

(Book 1 of The Convergence series)
By Kate Policani
Genre: Fantasy, Romance, Paranormal

The fabulous Awesome Indies have granted this book with the Seal of Approval. Since its last appearance on Discover Authors, my first Convergence series book has donned a new cover for ebooks and is Now available on Audiobook! 

Giveaway

One comment on this post will win a code for a free audiobook at audible.com! Let me know what you think of the new cover and the audiobook reading. The talented Heidi Baker  has narrated the first book in The Convergence series. This tale features a lot of humor and loads of fun. As an added bonus, you can HEAR what all those crazy words sound like. Hear a sample

Buy on Audible

Buy on Amazon

Buy on Itunes

Discover Authors

I’m honored to welcome today’s guest, Tahlia Newland, author of the award-wnning Diamond Peak series.

Diamond-Peak-Series

THE MIND-BLOWING FINALE TO THIS AWESOME FANTASY SERIES IS OUT NOW!

Yes; it is quite literally mind-blowing.

Don’t miss out on the award-winning Diamond Peak Fantasy Series. Each book in this new adult contemporary fantasy has been awarded an AIA Seal of Excellence in Independent Fiction.  (That means it’s pretty good.) Book one has also been awarded a BRAG medallion for outstanding independent fiction. Get the full series now and read some real magic.

WHAT READERS ARE SAYING ABOUT THE SERIES

A beautifully written, exciting fantasy-adventure with vibrant description.” Krisi Keley, author of Mareritt.

“A most exemplary work, a real joy to read. The colour, depth and vitality of both the writing and the narrative is stunningly good: the exploration of motives, outlooks and hopes of the characters quite intoxicating. It ranks as a true work of literary accomplishment.” Clive S Johnson, AIA reviewer.

“In a new twist on fantasy, Tahlia puts characters in fantastical situations, but they are actually fighting everyday situations that have to do with hate, greed, envy, and the like, as Ariel and Nick fight demons that prey off your emotions. Her characters are rich in real life experiences, following on life’s journey of emotional ups and downs. I love the relationship between Nick and Ariel. It’s so pure with the promise of young love and the maturity to put it on hold while they fought the demons they were pitted against. In a race to save Ariel’s mother’s life, Ariel discovers who she is and what she is capable of. This is a gripping series that I would recommend to anyone. It has a great moral compass to encompass the ages.” Cynthia Shepp, editor/reviewer

“I can’t even begin to describe all of the action you’ll find in this highly imaginative journey. This is a fantastic depiction of a fight between good and evil.” Crazy Four Books. 

ABOUT THE SERIES

Lethal InheritanceStalking ShadowsDemon’s Grip and Eternal Destinytake place in the hidden realm of Diamond Peak, a place that interfaces with the ‘real’ world, and is inhabited by demons and the Warriors who hunt them. Diamond Peak exists on a more subtle layer of reality than the one we normally see and can only be seen and entered by those who have refined their perception sufficiently to become attuned to its frequency.

sword_sparklesweb

Inside, rocks move, reeds whisper, people fly and sadistic demons feed on and stir up negative emotions in their human prey. Warriors seek to climb the mountain and defeat the Master Demon who resides at the peak, because his death will free the world of all demons. To attain this goal however, the Warrior must pass through the territories of his bodyguards, the heads of the demon clans, and face their inner demons before they can subdue the outer ones.

The layers of meaning within this series are rich, the symbolism profound and the characters’ experiences, though cloaked in fantasy, are the journey we all take through life whether we know it or not. It is a journey of self discovery on the profoundest of levels. It is the journey to enlightenment.

These are no ordinary books. The magic within them is real. The powers of the characters are within your grasp and their success can be yours.

dp-is-calling

 Run  and Ariel’s Dream are prequel short stories to the series. They are FREE in all major ebook stores and includes chapter one and two of book one, Lethal Inheritance. Book one is out in paperback and book two, Stalking Shadows, will be available in time for Christmas.

See all the books on my
Amazon author pageKobo author pageB&N author pageSmashwords author pageApple author page

SPECIAL OFFER

If you buy book one before the 15th of December and send me a copy of the receipt. I will give you book 2 for free and enter you in a draw to win the full series.

Email your receipt to CP(at)centrepieceproductions(dot)com.  (The email address is written like this to avoid being picked up by spammers. Replace (at) with @ and (dot) with a period.)

 Thanks to Kate Policani for organising the Awesome Indies Discovery Tour of which this post is a part.

Please help spread the word by sharing this post.

Today I’m pleased to host James DiBenedetto, author of the fascinating Dream series.

I was absolutely thrilled a couple of months ago when the first book in the Dream Series, “Dream Student” won the Awesome Indies seal of approval – it was a very nice bit of recognition.  It’s also sold several hundred copies, been turned into an audiobook and gotten dozens of great reviews.

And, honestly, I’m really proud of it.  What I’m most proud of is, ironically, the very thing that makes the book difficult to categorize: the way it straddles genres and balances several different aspects of Sara’s life.

Dream StudentIt’s not exactly a traditional romance novel; it isn’t a straight-out thriller; it’s not primarily a coming-of-age story; or a slice-of-life.  It’s all of that – or elements of all of those.  I tried very hard to maintain a balance in the book (and in the later books, as well) – showing Sara’s dreams and following them as they lead Sara into danger, but also giving plenty of attention to her day-to-day life.

And in the reviews, I can see that one of the biggest factors in readers’ reactions is what they expected the book to be.  Some people loved the time spent on Sara’s everyday activities and her friends and the minutae of college life; but others, who I think came to the book looking mainly for a suspense-filled thriller, didn’t like that at all.

Personally, I do think those parts of the book are important (obviously, since I wrote them!).  On a basic level, I wrote the story I wanted to read, but on a story level, I do think it’s vital to ground characters in their world, and make their lives relateable to readers – once readers can truly see themselves in Sara’s shoes and see their daily lives reflected in hers, then her supernatural dreams will be that much more effective, and readers will be willing to accept them and follow Sara as she tries to handle them.

Which leads me back to the question: what do I call this book, how do I pitch it, what genre do I stick it into?  I’ve been calling it a “paranormal romance/suspense” novel, and I’m still not happy with that, but it’s the best I’ve been able to come up with…