Here be Magic

Daily Pitfalls of THIS Writer

2013-05-19T00:01:00.000-04:00

While I could produce a list of all things publishing related such as plotting, editing, publishers, royalties, and the list could go on... This about MY everyday pitfalls.

I like to think of myself as efficient, managing time well to get done what I need done. And for the most part I do accomplish my tasks as needed, when needed and on the timetable I schedule. However, I HAVE stumbling blocks.

Room in my house.

The minor of my pitfalls that take me from writing include meal making, vacuuming, laundry, dish washing, letting dogs out, letting dogs in and remodeling. My house has been under construction for 30+ years. That’s the downfall of being in the construction business and having my husband die before it’s all done. I’ll be lucky to finish it all before I too die. Still, I like doing the work even though it draws me away from writing.

Then there is yard work. If I want a pretty yard, it’s all up to me. And I have a big yard. I have to mow it, weed it, (maybe not weed it as much as I should) and plant it...that includes a veggie garden, of which brings another chore of canning what I can’t devour in a short amount of time.

A tiny portion of my 5 acre yard and barn.

Then there is working at home. Everyone I know treats me as if I don’t work at all. They don’t believe that plotting a story takes time, or writing takes concentration. They don’t think they’re interrupting by coming over to chat or dragging me to the store. Okay, so they don’t actually have to drag me. I do like to shop. But really... I have only so many hours in a day and I need to get my edits done.

2 of my 8 tvs

I’m also a big television watcher. I have one (or two) in about every room in my house. The programming I’ll sit through may be bad, mediocre, good, or excellent. Everyone has their own opinion on what makes something worth watching. So, I’m for forming my own decision on what's good and what's not. Unfortunately, it’s a big distraction. I can’t very well watch the television and my computer monitor at the same time. Though I try.

Cookies at my computer.

Finally, my greatest pitfall is food. I love to cook. I love to eat. Therefore, I struggle with weight gain. My life has always been endless yo-yo dieting. But the worst struggle comes from sitting all day in front of my computer. I have a tendency to eat junk food. I nibble M&M’s, potato chips, peanut butter and bananas, cookies while reading what I’ve written. It’s a mindless act that many think they have a remedy for, but anyone that struggles with their weight, knows, this is can’t be fixed by anyone other than me. So here I am, thinking every other minute of the day, should I get up and do some walking, only to find I’ve walked myself to the kitchen.

So what pitfalls do you encounter in your day?

Brenda

www.BrendaWilliamson.com
~ Seductive in Any Era ~

Looking Forward - Acts of Faith and Their Rewards

2013-05-18T06:00:00.000-04:00

Writing is an act of faith. ~ E.B. White

When you start telling a story, even if you have a scene-by-scene outline, you still don’t know that you’re going to finish the story, or do justice to your vision for it. If you’re writing for publication, there is always that nagging doubt that the story – even if you have a contract – might not make it to readers.

But it doesn’t matter.

A writer can’t not write. Life is full and hectic enough before you start filling your head with fictional people and conflict, with desires and heartaches and loves. Once a writer begins to regularly empty his or her head of these things, it fills up even faster. Writing is a release, a wish and a promise all at once. It’s an act of faith.

So are most things in life.

Relationships. That first word out of your mouth after you’ve checked your shirt and your breath and crossed the room to talk to someone who’s caught your fancy.

Travel. You pack the car and turn the ignition and drive down the road, firmly expecting the road to continue and your destination to exist when you arrive. Gasoline will continue to fuel your car and gravity will keep you rolling around the Earth until your arrival.

Work. You endure. You study. You learn. You adapt. You learn diplomacy. Because you will keep being paid and, every now and again, when you raise your hand above your head, another rung will have appeared on the ladder.

All acts of faith.

I’m writing the third book in the Night Runner series. It’s the first book I’ve written – other than a few sweet endeavors which are and always will be mothballed – without a rolling outline. The characters, now a novella and novel deep, are substantial. They know what they want, and they want it bad. The obstacles are higher that before. The villains are closer than ever. But Sydney Kildare keeps rolling forward and Malcolm Kelly keeps pivoting. They’re a half-step ahead of the forces that threaten to break them. Not a comfortable position, but better than the alternative.

And I keep writing because their story, their romance, their faith in each other, is on the verge of blooming and demands to be told.

*takes a deep breath*

This post got a bit more serious than I wanted. What else am I looking forward to that I expect will be there when I reach for it?

Summer. That’s a big one. The average temperature this time of year in Alaska is 60F. It’s currently 30 and freaking SNOWING. Someday the sun will return to Alaska…someday.

Clearly I need some distractions. Do you need some, too? Here are some things I (along with several other members of Here Be Magic, I’ve noticed) am looking forward to:

Almost Human - coming to Fox this fall

EPIC - coming to theaters May 24th!

There are also tons of amazing fantasy book releases schedules for 2013 and early 2014. I'm salivating particularly hard over Magic Rises by Ilona Andrews, and the CARNIEPUNK anthology *wink*. What are you looking forward to?

***

About the Author

Regan Summers lives in Anchorage, Alaska with her husband and alien-monkey hybrid of a child. She loves reading, traveling, small plate dining and terrible action movies.

Her Night Runner series from Carina Press is available wherever e-books are sold.

Website - Twitter - Facebook - Amazon - Barnes & Noble - Carina Press

Paranormal/fantasy heroes: A list of some characters who inspire my muse

2013-05-17T04:00:00.000-04:00

A friend and fellow author did a similar post to this recently, and feeling inspired (I mean, who doesn’t want to write about hunks, er, I mean heroes?), I blatantly stole her idea, which I’m sure she stole from someone else, so all’s fair, right? Plus, I really couldn't come up with a better topic to blog about today. What are you gonna do?

Anywho. She did a list of her favorite heroes, from TV, film, and books, and gave an explanation of why they were hero-worthy to her. I’ll dive right in and offer up six of my own favorite paranormal and fantasy heroes. I really could have done a list of 100 of my favorite heroes, but I randomly picked these six. Can I please note that I also came thisclose to including some of the heroes created by Here Be Magic contributors, but since I haven't read everyone's books yet, I didn't think it was exactly fair to single anyone out. But it was tempting. Jax Garren, I'm looking at you. And you too, Veronica Scott. Points finger at Eleri Stone. And...I'll stop embarrassing myself now.

Damon Salvatore

Feel free to leave your own favorites in the comments section. I adore being introduced to new characters!

Damon Salvatore. To be fair, I haven’t read The Vampire Diaries books, but I watch the TV show every week. Ian Somerhalder is just…wow. Love him. He took a character I thought was only eh in the first few episodes of this show and developed him into a complex bad boy who’s constantly torn between his own gratification and his love for his brother and friends. He’s relentlessly unpredictable as a result. And yes, I watch The Vampire Diaries and I’m not a teenage girl. Back off.

Bones, from the Night Huntress series. I love, love, love Jeaniene Frost’s series of books and fell in love with Bones just as the book’s heroine Cat did throughout this series. Gotta admire a man who joins a secret agency devoted to killing his kind simply to be near the woman he loves.

Dean Winchester

Dean Winchester. Supernatural is my favorite TV show for a reason, and Dean is that reason. He is THE alpha demon hunter on television. Jensen Ackles, who portrays Dean, rocks socks. And I wouldn't want to mess with him if I were a demon. Just sayin.'

Mouse Guard. Please tell me you didn’t just ask yourself, “What the heck is Mouse Guard?” OK, given my utter weirdness, it’s a fair question. Mouse Guard is a comic book written and illustrated by David Petersen. It’s set in a world of sentient mice who live in medieval times paralleling the same period in human history. The Mouse Guard are essentially guards/soldiers who help the other mice survive attacks and the such. I don’t even know how else to describe it, or one character to single out as the best hero, but if you’re open to comic books, this one is awesome. Plus, they're mice with swords!

Legolas Greenleaf from The Lord of the Rings. Confession time. I suffered through the books (please don't pelt me with rocks), but I enjoyed the movies, mostly. There was one character who stuck with me, and it was Legolas. The reason? I was drawn to his kindness and gentle nature, and he had some mad skills with that bow and arrow. Plus, he was kinda cute and all.

The Doctor. I’m a recent convert to this SF/F show from Britain thanks to Netflix, but I’m totally hooked on Doctor Who. What can I say? I’m a sucker for quirky, smart, and witty heroes who brandish nothing more than a sonic screwdriver when slaying aliens, monsters and the such. Plus, bowties are cool.

There’s my list. What’s yours?

Good Madness

2013-05-16T06:30:00.000-04:00

"May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art - write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself." ~Neil Gaiman

I've been thinking about good madness as I build the next project. It's crazy and fun and kind of scary at the same time. Words like grotesque, freak, and deviant keep showing up. I even bought the Deviant Moon tarot cards because something just screamed at me when I saw them.

This is the kind of project that I could become obsessed with.

Is that a good thing?

As a reader, I think it is. Some of my favorite books are ones that are almost startling and creepy the way they seem to suck me into their world. I remember the first time I picked up Laurell K. Hamilton's Guilty Pleasures.

Willie McCoy had been a jerk before he died. His being dead didn't change that.

From the very first line, it was different. I knew I was going to be in for one wild ride and I gobbled those books up as fast as I could (at least up to Incubus Dreams; thereafter's another story). They were filled with magic and dreams and good madness, a sort of twisted up world that was so strange and violent and bloody...yet compulsively good too.

I read those books like I was in a frenzy. Trapped in a sort of madness that was good. Very good indeed.

What about you - can you recommend a "Good Madness" sort of series that became a crazy good obsession? Something you just couldn't help reading, whether it was shocking or exciting, strange and twisted, or just wickedly lovely in some way?

Assuming I can drag myself away from my own madness, I'd love to add more obsessively good books to my towering TBR pile!

Here Be News

2013-05-13T06:00:00.000-04:00

New releases this week

Book three of Tales of the Underlight

It's all been leading to this.

Jolie Benoit has become a skilled agent of the Underlight, relying on her savvy to complete assignments while Sergeant Wesley Haukon was out of commission. But an unexpected clue to the Order of Ananke's diabolical scheme rattles Jolie, and she turns to Hauk for comfort.

It's been years since Hauk took comfort from the touch of another person, though his love for Jolie is deep and powerful. Uncomfortable in his skin, scarred by a terrible fire, he is unable to give in to the pleasures that Jolie so desperately wants to grant him.

Meanwhile, the Order is lurking in the shadows--and when they strike, the blow is swift and terrible. Hauk and Jolie scramble to fight for their community, but with the future of the Underlight threatened, no one is safe. And Hauk will never be the same...

Discover how it all began in How Beauty Met the Beast and How Beauty Saved the Beast.

Buy

Book three of Facets of Passion

Danielle Sosna has no problem denying herself in order to achieve her goals--after all, that attitude landed her a dream job at Vogue Paris. But in New Orleans for one last assignment before heading overseas, she's faced with the most decadent of temptations. Seductive Cajun chef Bobby Prejean takes Dani's strength of will as a challenge, and offers her a night of wild indulgence--if she will agree to obey his every command...

Dani can't resist Prejean's invitation to join him in a world of carnal desire, complete with fetish costumes and masks. Determined to keep her emotional distance, she gives Prejean everything but her name. A night becomes a week, as she spends Mardi Gras suspended...in the delicious space where pleasure meets pain.

Too late, she realizes the cloak of anonymity has not protected her--and that chasing her dream might come at the expense of her heart.

For more Facets of Passion, check out Sapphire and Platinum, available now!

Buy

Links of Interest

Why everything you know about wolf packs is wrong: "The notion of a supreme pack leader who fought his way to dominance and reigns superior to the other wolves in his pack informs both our fiction and is how many people understand wolf behavior. But the alpha wolf doesn't exist—at least not in the wild."

LEGO steampunk! "The Lego steampunk line is set to debut in July and will include steampunk-inspired designs like a hover-mobile and "mad science ray."

Something Greater: An Epic Discussion of Epic Fantasy, Part 1

Scalzi about the RT Booklovers Convention: "This is something that I think might be worth noting out loud: At a largely female-oriented convention, as a man, I was never excluded, resented or made to feel unwelcome."

Here Be Magic Group Announcements

Cover Reveal for Witch Bound, Book Two in the Twilight of the Gods series by Eleri Stone. Coming June 24th!

Thanks to everyone who stopped by for Fantasy Week last week. In case you missed any of the posts, you can find them here:

5/5/2013 - Angela Highland Fantasy Week Why Fantasy?

5/7/2013 - Jane Kindred Fantasy Week Epic Fantasy: Where’s the Love?

5/8/2013 - Jeffe Kennedy Fantasy Week Braving the Fantasy Debates - Not Only Epic, but Romantic

5/9/2013 - Nicole Luiken Fantasy Week Enriching the Scene

5/10/2013 - Shawna Thomas Fantasy Week Epic fantasy: Does it have to be so long?

5/11/2013 - Ruth A Casie Fantasy Week Why Historicals?

Be sure to join us for our next spotlight June 2-8 on Urban Fantasy!

He Said. She Said. We Snorted.

2013-05-12T11:58:00.000-04:00

Ruby releases tomorrow!

Thus I have my Pimping Party Prom dress on and am shamelessly cross-posting this at the Word Whores blog as well.

And, to complete the pimpage, here are a couple of reviews posted to today for it here and here. One is also in French, should you care to stretch those neurons you haven't used since high school.

So, this week's topic is "Dialogue Tags: He Said, She Asked, They Exclaimed ... when to use what."

I'm a really bad person to kick off this topic because, if there's one thing my Carina editor, Deb Nemeth, consistently hammers me for, it's dialogue tags. If she and I were married, this would be the one thing she'd say she'd change about me. She'd say it to the marriage counselor with a deep and heartfelt sigh, while I sat on the other corner of the couch, arms folded defensively.

Because I don't WANT to change. I feel like she should love me for who I am.

See, this comment comes directly from my most recent round of edits with her:

Most of the line edits are to correct punctuation surrounding dialogue. You have a habit of punctuating tags as beats and vice-versa. This technical aspect to craft is something I’d appreciate you paying closer attention to when you self-edit book three before sending it in to me, not only because it’s rather time-consuming to make these corrections, but because I’m always afraid the copyeditor and I won’t catch them all. Use the comma + lower case only for bona fide tags, a period + initial cap for beats. Note that laugh, snort, told, said it (as opposed to plain said) are beats, not tags. Let me know if this isn’t clear.

How she hurts me.

Really, I think she'd be happy if I just used "said" a lot more. The thing about "said" as in:

"I hate when you harp on my dialogue tags," she said.

is that our readerly eyes go right over it. It's nearly invisible. Studies have actually shown this. Our brains process what the character expressed and register the "she said" part like punctuation. But you guys know me - I'm just not that sweet and obedient. My characters don't just SAY things - they snort them! They laugh out words and sometimes they hiss them!

(This is another of my editorial world pet-peeves - there's this "rule" that you can't have someone hiss what they're saying unless there are sibilants in the word. So you can have

"Sheer bliss," she hissed.

but not

"Get out," she hissed.

I don't know about you people, but I can totally hiss "get out." I may or may not walk around the house hissing words that my editor inSISTS can't be hissed.

Not that I'm bitter.

Amusingly, one of my publishers - Ellora's Cave - officially reversed their policy on the hissing thing. So my EC characters can hiss anything they damn well want to while my Carina ones can only hiss with sibilants in the words. I don't know where Kensington will weigh in yet.

The upshot for me is, even though my editor - who really does love me in every other way - calls this a craft issue, I view it as an editorial one. Some editors care passionately about dialogue tags, others do not. I had one editor who really disliked parenthetical asides. (You can just imagine how well we got along.)

For me, it's voice, which I'm going to stick to as much as I can. I'll bow to editorial decisions and house style, which is part of being a professional writer, but if I can get away with a bit of dialogue snorting, I'm going to do it every time.

After all, she knew it when she married me.

Fantasy Week - Why Historicals?

2013-05-11T00:15:00.000-04:00

Years ago I did a lot of international travel for business. But I can remember my first trip overseas very clearly. It was a two week trip to five European cities. I brought six novels thinking I would catch up on my reading—there never seemed to be enough time at home with three small children. I finished one and a half books before I landed.

My idea of Lyn Kurland's magic forest

My days were filled with client calls with the local bank directors, but most late afternoons, evenings and the weekend I was on my own. I filled the time with walking tours of the city, sometimes in groups other times using the track provided by the hotel. Each time I came face to face with history; the Grand Place in Brussels, the Place de la Concorde in Paris, and HamptonCourt in England. As I went on to the different cities I tried to hear the sounds, smell the aromas, and see the sights from a different perspective, a different time. Stories by Julie Garwood, Jude Deveraux, Johanna Lindsey and Lynn Kurland had me enthralled along with Clive Cussler. I know, he's not exactly romance but his Dirk Pit stories always start with some historical fact or thread that's crucial to solving the mystery. I read my books at night and visited places were I could imagine the stories unfolding.

Historical facts mixed with chivalry and magic made the most compelling stories to me. The romance of the middle ages and Renaissance with their knights and princesses and their myths of druids, fairies, and fae tossed in for good measure all drew me in. Time travel stories and the ability to change the past, protect the future, or simply experience a different time made all things possible. Personally, I want my fiction based on fact but I don't necessarily want the cold truth of reality. I know that history doesn't always end with a happily ever after but taking a little poetic license to alter history just a bit to make it all work out is what I enjoy reading.

My new story, The Guardian's Witch, is a historical fantasy about the special knight and the woman he must protect.

In 13th century England, in order to save the man she loves and prevent being married off to another, Lisbeth Reynolds, born with the ability to see things before they happen, must make a crucial decision. Dare she rely on her knight, Lord Alex Stelton, to find a way to save them both or does she trust her magic and risk exposure and persecution as a witch?

The book releases July 1 and is currently available for pre-order at Amazon and B&N.

Fantasy Week - Epic fantasy: Does it have to be so long?

2013-05-10T04:30:00.000-04:00

Do you need 1000 pages to tell an epic fantasy story?

I’ve heard this question a lot lately. Honestly more likely framed as why is epic fantasy so long?

I cut my reading teeth on authors like JRR Tolkien, George RR Martin, CS Lewis.

(Notice how they all have initials. Honestly that’s why I should have gone SL Thomas.)

Game of Thrones - Clash of Kings at 1006 pages? I honestly won’t bat an eyelash. Bring it on.

But the question remains. Why are these books so long? In today’s fast-paced society, people don’t have patience for a thousand-page book. Novellas and shorts are popular for a reason. Get to the happily ever after in six hundred pages or less, please.

I get that.

So shouldn’t epic fantasy follow the same pattern?

I honestly think it would be a tragedy.

From Merriam Webster - Epic: extending beyond the usual or ordinary especially in size or scope.

Epic fantasy gives you vistas. Vistas need words. It gives you the history of kings back a hundred generations. It gives you mythologies. It gives ruins of civilizations that lived before the one your heroine is currently fighting for. It tells you not only the color of the king’s hair, but what’s on his banner and why. It gives you not only the names of the characters, but their fathers and grandfathers. Why. What. When. Where.

Good epic fantasy doesn’t just take you to a world; it builds a world from the ground up: Currency, politics, food, geography, history. Nothing is left to chance. Once you enter Martin’s seven kingdoms or Tolkien’s Middle Earth, you will have felt you could navigate the culture, sit at dinner with the commoners or even royalty and not miss a beat or wonder where the spoons are.

So couldn’t you condense this a wee bit... you know to attract more readers. Because not many readers want to dive so deep into a world.

Yes. And no.

I admit, in today's world, not many readers want to pick up a tome. So can we hold on to the tenants of what makes epic fantasy epic without drowning in minutiae?

It's a fine line.

My Triune Stones series began as a single book. A single book that is now four books. Journey of Dominion, which will release on May 20^th, is the second in the series.

And while the series is firmly epic fantasy, when rewriting it for publication, I recognized the need for action. I deleted many musings, many descriptions of beautiful scenery because they just didn’t move the plot forward.

Even epic fantasy authors must adapt and change with the times. That said, by their very nature, our stories will still be too slow paced for some readers. But if you have patience, the story will weave around your imagination, drawing you into a land where magic happens, where villains desire power, heroes are ordinary people, just like you, who do extraordinary things that not only affect them, but the entire world. There may be dragons, fairies, airydh, magic rings, magic stones, elves, white walkers, secret glens and woven through it all, a sense that it has all been there for time beyond time. Unless, of course, our hero fails.

Journey of Dominion - a legend’s fall.

May 20th, 2013

Don't forget to check out the other awesome posts for Fantasy week!

Fantasy Week - Enriching the Scene

2013-05-09T04:00:00.000-04:00

When I read fantasy I want to be immersed in a new world, one that may resemble our own slightly, but that the existence of magic has made fundamentally different. One of the things I look for in fantasy is the depth and richness of the world and I strive for the same in my own writing. Writers call this world-building, and it is more than a history. It is clothing, food, architecture, language, culture and customs, often for several different peoples or races. It is geography and biology, flora and fauna, climate and a dozen other things.

Some writers spend months inventing hundreds of years worth of history for their worlds before they set pen to paper. I don't (okay, can't) work this way. World-building is something that I layer into my story, adding details and building up through successive drafts.

Here is an example of an early draft of a scene from chapter one of Gate to Kandrith:

EARLY DRAFT:

The uncobbled side street she was running down was almost pitch-black with only the moonlight gleam of puddles to guide her. Her slippered foot slid and the skirts of her gown trailed in muck, becoming sodden and chilly. They clung to her legs, slowing her progress.

She started to edge backwards, farther away from Claude and his servants. A sanguon ran up holding a lamp, panting. "Here, milord."

"Don't wave it in my face," Claude said irritably. "Go look for her."

How many others were there in the dark, searching for her? Sara struggled to remember how many had ridden with the coach. The driver, Claude's bodyservant and one or two guards.

The lamp was easy enough to avoid. Sara backed steadily away from the splash of yellow light and listened hard. Another curse from Claude as he stepped in something unpleasant and over there a small splash, someone moving through a puddle.

I liked the scene, but felt the setting was too generic. It could have been any muddy alley in any fantasy city or even a historical novel. I wanted to show that my world was different and new and interesting. More subtly, I wanted to show that my main character grew up in a different culture and has been shaped by her beliefs.

NEW VERSION

Sara ran, guided only by the moonlight gleam of puddles. The skirts of her gown trailed in muck. The sodden material clung to her legs.

"Sara!"

Sara tried to speed up, but her foot slipped in the mud. She found herself slowing, her drugged body unwilling to run any farther. The jazoria inside her whispered to stop, wait, let herself be caught. Let Claude take her. Anything to make the horrible, clawing need go away.

No. She would not give in.

Sara looked around, trying to get her bearings in the dark. Which way lay safety? She moved farther away from Claude and stumbled upon a raised path.

"Lady, it isn't safe, not here." Claude's slave, Gelban, spoke this time. "Do you know whose temple you're at?"

Temple? Most temples were scrubbed free of mud by diligent dedicants. Only one--

"I don't want to say His name, Lady," Gelban said.

Vez, God of Malice. She'd entered His temple. Sara's heart jumped as her memory supplied an image of temple courtyard full of black mud with Vez's statuary facial features rising up out of them. She must be walking on the obscenely long, lolling tongue, about to pass through Vez's mouth into the courtyard. Although Vez's assassin-priests had been outlawed over one hundred years ago and his worshippers driven into hiding, no one had dared pull down the God of Malice's temple.

"You don't know who might be out here in the dark," Gelban said. "Please, come back to the carriage."

Sara tried to think. Was Gelban right? The dark seemed suddenly malevolent. All types of scum were rumoured to come out at night to search the mud for the gold coins thrown by those buying a curse. She could end up with her throat slit or sold into slavery. In comparison, the early wedding night Claude wanted was nothing.

"Where is the little twotch? We've lost her." Claude swore with surprising viciousness.

Her determination to escape Claude hardened. Ducking her head to avoid the sharp statuary teeth, Sara entered the mouth and the Temple of Vez.

Inside, her foot came down in ankle-deep muck. The mud in the courtyard was said to be studded with sharpened stakes. Vez only wanted worshippers who hated enough to be careless of losing a little blood. And if they died later... the God of Malice played no favourites.

Not only is the second version considerably more creepy, but changing the setting from an anonymous alley to the Temple of Vez gave me a chance to salt little chunks of world-building into the action like diced potato in a stew. If you try to shove a whole potato’s worth of information or backstory down your reader’s throat in one lump, they may choke on it.

Similarly, the world-building needs to be integrated into the scene: my character has a reason to be thinking about something that everyone in her world grew up knowing. Nor is the information included here a mere footnote: Vez is the force behind my villain and important to the story. Going off on a tangent about history or architecture is as off-putting as adding sugar to your stew.

What are your favourite fantasy worlds?

Braving the Fantasy Debates - Not Only Epic, but Romantic

2013-05-08T11:16:00.003-04:00

My world seems full of fantasy discussions and parsings lately. Like Jane Kindred, who posted yesterday, I was also at the RT Convention last week. Unlike her, I feel right at home among the romance authors - much more so than at World Fantasy Con last fall, which I also attended along with Jane.

(Is she stalking me or am I stalking HER? Hmmm...)

A popular tail-sniffing question at all of these conferences is "What do you write?" This is largely in lieu of the real question, which is more along the lines of "Are you a successful writer I should be interested in talking to and should I know who you are?" My answer has always been complicated, but for now I reel off "fantasy, fantasy romance and erotic contemporary romance."

People nod at this, sometimes looking a bit glazed over. It's really not kosher to reply with more than one genre, but sue me - I've always been an eclectic kind of gal and I'm used to getting funny looks.

The thing is, to me, it all feels more or less like the same thing. Or, at least, like a continuum. The erotic contemporary romances of my Facets of Passion series have no magic per se, but I write post-apocalyptic ones (Blood Currency) that feel much the same, only in a more broken world. I'm working on edits for MASTER OF THE OPERA, a modern retelling of Phantom of the Opera, which is contemporary, erotic and also full of magical realism. The Covenant of Thorns books are about a modern woman - a scientist - trapped in Faerie. When I was shopping it (before I knew better), I called it "an urban fantasy that takes place in a non-urban landscape."

You all should have just SEEN the way the agents' eyes would roll back in their heads when I said that. One might have frothed at the mouth a little bit.

Even my own agent, who loves my work and says she wants to make me the Queen of Fantasy Romance (which apparently does not come with a tiara - what a gyp), said of one of my books "it's like epic fantasy and urban fantasy had a lurid affair and this is their baby."

Now I've been assigned yet another genre - my trilogy coming out in 2014, The Twelve Kingdoms, is being called Adult Fantasy by the publisher.

I just roll with it.

Because, really, on a fundamental level, genre is irrelevant to me as a storyteller.Yes, it's meant to convey a promise to readers, but this dividing and sub-dividing is not something that really serves anyone. If we have to spend all this time and effort parsing the difference between fantasy, fantasy romance, epic fantasy and epic fantasy romance, obviously we're not clearly communicating anything at all. When I mentioned I was writing this post, @e_bookpushers, a reviewer for The Bookpushers and fan of all kinds of fantasy, with and without romance, commented "Sometimes I think we subdivide to far and use descriptive terms that turn people off."

This is where we see the eyes glaze over.

After all, those of us in our 30s and 40s remember an era before the Young Adult (YA) "genre" even existed. I think that's part of what's happening now. So many of us writing variations on the Fantasy theme grew up reading a melange of books - Judy Blume and Judy Garwood. Anne McCaffrey, Ann Tyler and Anne Rice. Orson Scott Card, Jack Chalker, Margaret Atwood and Mary Stewart.

We all started as readers and, as readers, we didn't really care what genre a book fell into, as long as we could find more like it. That's the key - helping our readers, and ourselves, find more of what we love to read.

I suspect that, more and more, that will occur through blogs like this one. And like The Bookpushers. Maybe we've moved past the need to describe books with a one- or two-word label. We can talk more broadly and allow more room for stories that don't quite fit neatly into a product mold.

As Miranda says in The Tempest, arguably a fantasy story, "How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, That has such people in't!"

Brave new world, indeed.

Epic Fantasy: Where’s the Love?

2013-05-07T00:00:00.000-04:00

Welcome to the second installment of Fantasy Week, the first in a series spotlighting the different speculative fiction subgenres we write in here at Here Be Magic.

I’m a fantasy writer, not a romance writer. I say this repeatedly to anyone who will listen—not because I think there’s anything wrong with romance; au contraire! I think romance belongs in everything. But I want to make sure no one is disappointed when they read my books expecting a traditional romantic plot with the push-pull of a hero and heroine trying to resist one another and failing, full of erotic tension and the eventual surrender of both in the unequivocal HEA. Don’t get me wrong; I’ve got that, too, but it’s only a part of the story.

My agent recently confirmed as much when I tried to write a traditional romantic suspense to sell to an established line. “I love your writing, as always,” she said. “But this isn’t really feeling like a romance to me.” Try as I might, I just can’t resist the allure of building my own world, creating my own mythology, and dragging my characters on an epic journey fraught with peril and rife with high stakes that can bring down entire kingdoms—or entire worlds.

Nevertheless, I spent the past week enmeshed in a different kind of alternate world: the world of the romance writer, at the RT Booklovers Convention. Because despite the fact that I don’t write romance, I can’t write fantasy without it. Fantasy without romance feels like it’s missing one of the most epic of adventures—the adventure of the human heart.

And that puts me smack-dab in the middle of a publishing conundrum. Romance readers are often a bit intimidated by the epic-ness of the epic fantasy. And fantasy readers have a tendency to be a tad suspicious when something looks like romance—despite the fact that at their core, many fantasies have a love story, though often underdeveloped. As a kid devouring both romance and fantasy, I always wished the fantasies had more of the former, and the romances more of the fantastical.

So there I sat at RT, surrounded by romance writers and readers, and feeling just as much a fish out of water as I did last November at the World Fantasy Convention. I’m some kind of chimera that can’t be classified. I have chocolate in my peanut butter. I may even be Frankenstein’s monster, stitched together with parts that work well together though they’ve come from different origins, but seeming a little scary and misshapen to those who’ve never seen one of me before. “What do you write?” people would ask. “Epic fantasy,” I’d reply, and then quickly add “with romantic elements” before they came at me with torches and pitchforks.

To most people who haven’t read the genre, when they hear “epic fantasy,” they think of 1,000-page paperweights full of elves and orcs and dragons, page after page of painstaking descriptions of drab medieval customs and complicated court intrigue with names no one can pronounce, and lots and lots of swords and sorcerers. And to be sure, books with those elements are epic fantasy, but none of those things are required to make a book an epic fantasy. What it requires, generally, is a uniquely invented world that is not our own, a protagonist whose problem is much larger than herself (her people and her world are depending on her and she usually has to fight someone powerful to save them), and magic. And what’s more magical than love? I say it fits right in with the epic.

Some of my favorite epic and romantic fantasies are Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel’s Legacy series—its court intrigue woven together through highly charged erotic scenes, sacred prostitutes, and a healthy dose of BDSM; Lynn Flewelling’s Nightrunner series, with its sexy, fae-like m/m lovers as medieval Sherlock Holmesian detectives who are also scoundrels and thieves; and J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter. Yes, Harry Potter is as epic and romantic as they come.

So, really…what’s not to love about epic fantasy?

Don't forget to check out Sunday's kick-off post for Fantasy Week from Angela Highland on why she reads fantasy, and be sure to stop by every day this week for a new post from one of our fantasy writers.

Here Be News

2013-05-06T09:37:00.004-04:00

Our new releases this week

Book three of Alliance of the Amazons

Zach Hanson is a tech wizard, capable of creating and improving gadgets--including remote nuclear warhead launchers. But he's always known that he's destined for something more, something greater, something...supernatural.

Powerful Air Amazon Gina Himmel is one of four sisters called to protect the world from those who would do it harm. Demigods in league with an Ancient have been taking over the bodies of leaders in the military and technological sectors, and Gina is sent to San Francisco to watch over Zach.

Under Gina's protection, Zach is introduced to a world of ancient deities, rogue gods and the bold, brazen Amazons who keep humanity safe. Amidst the whirlwind of battle, Zach and Gina discover a love that could give them the power to save the world...or destroy it.

Meet Earth and Fire in The Reluctant Amazon and The Impetuous Amazon.

Buy

***

How far will a good man go to save his home and loved ones?

Lord James Dupree must recover his family's stolen Luck, the elven talisman that has protected the Dupree lands for generations. Without the talisman, the Dupree vineyards are failing and creditors are closing in. The Luck is his only hope of saving his home and his family from poverty and ruin.

Despite his abhorrence of slavery, James wins an elven slave in a game of cards. The slave, Loren, provides the only chance to enter the Lands Between and recover the stolen Luck. Despite James's assurances and best intentions, Loren does not trust his new master and James finds it all too easy to slip into the role of slave master when Loren defies him.

As the two work together through hardship and danger, James finds himself falling in love with Loren. And when a hidden enemy moves against them, he must choose between his responsibility to his family and his own soul.

Buy

Fantasy Week

We're all speculative fiction writers at Here Be Magic but we run the gamut from epic fantasy without a shred of romance in it to full out paranormal erotica. Over the next few months, we're going to spotlight the different subgenres and hopefully let you get to know our authors better and where they fall within that range. This week is Fantasy Week.

5/5/2013 - Angela Highland Fantasy Week Why Fantasy?

5/7/2013 - Jane Kindred Fantasy Week

5/8/2013 - Jeffe Kennedy Fantasy Week

5/9/2013 - Nicole Luiken Fantasy Week

5/10/2013 - Shawna Thomas Fantasy Week

5/11/2013 - Ruth A Casie Fantasy Week

Here Be Magic Group Announcements

"The journey is the thing" =>Romance writer Jeffe Kennedy discusses her sexy novels in an interview on KOB4

Fantasy Week: What draws me to reading fantasy?

2013-05-05T17:36:00.001-04:00

Hi again, Here Be Magic readers! As part of Fantasy Week here on the blog, I'm here to talk about a very basic question: why fantasy, and not urban fantasy?

Anybody who's paid the slightest bit of attention to the publishing industry over the last several years, whether as an industry professional or simply as a reader, probably knows that urban fantasy has generally outsold more traditional fantasy for some time now. There are exceptions, of course--George R.R. Martin and Patrick Rothfuss immediately come to mind. But time and time again, the people I hear about who are the better-selling names in the SF/F genre are urban fantasy. I've heard more than once about authors who've made the jump from writing traditional fantasy over to writing urban fantasy, just for the sake of strengthening their careers. And clearly, at least for the time being, it's the intelligent career choice if an author wants to increase her chances of getting her book into the hands of readers.

As a reader, I certainly have my own share of urban fantasy in my library. As a writer, I've got my own urban fantasy series, The Free Court of Seattle.

I could tell you that Tolkien was a critical influence on my early reading years, and that he was closely followed up by Terry Brooks' original Shannara trilogy as well as David Eddings' Belgariad and Mallorean series. I could mention Esther Friesner or Gael Baudino or Mercedes Lackey--especially Lackey, given that her first Valdemar novels came out when I was just getting into college. And of course I could mention Elfquest yet again, which in its long and venerable history has generally always been about as non-urban as it's possible for fantasy to get.

All of which would be true, but none of which would really answer the question of what draws me to straight-up, no-qualifiers, fantasy?

Locale. Sometimes I don't want to be reading about an alternate, magical version of the real world; sometimes I just want to be reading about another world entirely. Don't get me wrong--in the hands of a gifted writer, our own world's magic and complexity can be made to shine. And there's great wonder to be found in the idea that magical things may be lurking right around your neighborhood corner. But I learned very early on, thanks to the authors I've mentioned above and many others as well, that the boundaries of my imagination need not be limited to just our own world.
Worldbuilding. This is where fantasy really gets a chance to shine, for my money. Sure, every fantasy novel ever written is going to have a society in it modeled on aspects of the real world; we can't escape that, since we are after all all writers living in the world we know, so of course we're going to be extrapolating out from that. There will still be connections to and reflections of our own world. But oh, the fun of just taking all those bits and pieces of the world we know, mixing and matching them, honing and crafting them, until something emerges that we can call our own.
Adventure! Huh! Excitement! Huh! A Jedi craves not these--ahem. Er, sorry, wrong genre. Which is not to say urban fantasy can't be adventurous; certainly, the Dresden Files come to mind as an example of urban fantasy chock full of adventure. For me as a reader, though, fantasy tends to provide the kinds of high adventure plots I find more appealing. Good old-fashioned quest plot? Sign me up. Hard treks through wilderness country? Bring it. Defeating an ancient rising evil? On board. And I go as well for smaller-scale adventures--thievery capers, mixing it up with mystery and solving attempted or actual murders, just to name a couple of the sort that Patricia Briggs wrote before she switched over to urban fantasy. Anne Logston did quite a few smaller-scale fantasy adventures too, with the tales of her elf thief Shadow.
Escapism. Some might actually look on this as a negative, if they're of the school of thought that says that a fantasy novel needs to be dark and gritty and realistic. But escapism comes hand in hand with adventure for me, and dammit, escapism isn't a dirty word. I have enough of dark, gritty realism in the real world. Give me a big, bold colorful escapist fantasy and I'm a happy reader.

I've tried to pull in both adventure and escapism in Valor of the Healer, to make it the sort of fantasy novel I like to read as well as the sort I like to write. For those of you who've bought it or may choose to pick it up, I hope you'll let me know if I've pulled it off!

What do you think about the fantasy genre in general, readers? Tell me about your own favorite reasons to read a fantasy novel in the comments!

--
Angela Highland is the author of Valor of the Healer, book 1 of the Rebels of Adalonia series. As Angela Korra'ti, she writes Faerie Blood, book 1 of The Free Court of Seattle. Come say hi to her at angelahighland.com!

Round Robin: The Final, Mindboggling Chapter

2013-05-02T15:47:00.001-04:00

For links to previous chapters: http://herebemagic.blogspot.com/p/round-robin-story.html

Without further ado...

PART FORTY-TWO: THE GRAND FINALE
(Note: The answer to the universe may or may not be in this chapter.)

By Jody Wallace (www.jodywallace.com)

Aurora, her eyes and nose red from weeping, screamed and dropped her bouquet. Her white dress, covered in tiny gems, glinted blue as the glow from Dash’s shapeshifting power faded.

“Oh, thank Horus!” she cried.

Beside her, Ainmire’s eyes bugged out with rage. He was a tall man with a face like someone who’d smelled something bad. In contrast to Aurora’s crystalline white, he was dressed completely in...hot pink.

Well, that was unexpected.

“Hello, there,” the old abbot said, standing on tiptoes to peer past Aurora, who was quite tall. There was no golden cord around the wrists of Aurora and Ainmire yet which meant she and Dash were in time to stop the wedding. “Aren’t you newlyweds supposed to be on a honeymoon?”

“Off with their heads!” Ainmire demanded, quite unoriginally.

Male soldiers, including Stride, moved forward to grapple with Dash. That left Delphie unattended. None of the djinn dudes would risk touching her and granting her any wishes.

Quick as a barghest, Delphie skipped forward, up the steps and straight for the evil king, hands outstretched.

“Oh, no, you don’t.” A lime-haired female blocked her access to the angry king. She was stealthy, agile...and familiar. “Troublemaking pixie.”

“Hey, I know you.” There was no mistaking that hideous fluorescent hair. “You were Aurora’s maid—and you’re a spy.”

“You’re daft,” the woman declared. She dodged right and left, the same as Delphie, preventing her from approaching the king. “I am loyal to my Queen Aurora.”

“Seize the pixie!” Ainmire thudded his gaudy brass scepter on the ground. “Her life is also forfeit.”

“No!” Dash bellowed. He sparkled blue for a moment...and nothing happened. Struggle as he might, he’d apparently used the last of his power to sprint himself and Delphie into the palace. Beside him, scimitar at his brother’s throat, Stride bowed his blond head in failure.

Well, rats. If Stride wasn’t even going to rebel, knowing the truth like he did, this was definitely a pickle.

Several female guards converged on Delphie, their brass armor gaily festooned with ribbons. Delphie fought dirty, but she was small and they were many. Within moments they had pinned her.

“Why is my life forfeit?” Delphie demanded. “Or Dash’s? I married him so his death sentence would be lifted. Your own abbot performed the ceremony. You can’t just make up new laws on the spot.”

Could he? He was a king, but from what little Dash had shared about djinn hierarchy, it sounded like their laws were already set in stone.

The large audience, which had been silent, began to shift and murmur. It was composed of female djinn on one side and male on the other, with a glowing blue line down the center. If Dash was right about Aurora’s secret marriage and this wedding revealed it, Aurora and her husband, whomever he was, would be executed along with Delphie and Dash. Also, the Clan Aurora women in the audience would be slaves to Ainmire for a year and a day.

Since the males could compel wishes out of an entire clan of female djinn, that would give Clan Ainmire unlimited power. They could use it against other clans. They could use it off world. Delphie was beginning to see why this situation—executions aside—was a dire suck fest.

“Ask your husband why you’re both as good as dead,” Ainmire said with a sneer. He strode forward, his chest puffed out like a pigeon. Her captors dragged her down several of the dais’s steps so she had to crane her head to look up at the king. “For one, he molested my betrothed yesterday. He will have his hands cut off before his head for that.”

“Whatever, your Craziness.” Delphie jerked at the women restraining her, and they gripped her tighter. “He didn’t molest Aurora or even try to.”

“I have it on good authority they touched one another.” He glanced at the green-haired spy who’d fought Delphie, and she scowled.

Oh ho. Perhaps the spy girl didn’t like her job. Perhaps Ainmire was holding something over her poorly-dressed head. Delphie could work with that.

“So what?” she told the King. “Djinn can’t have friends?”

“Non-clan members of the opposite sex aren’t allowed to touch royalty,” Ainmire explained pompously. “It’s automatically counted as molestation. Why am I surprised you don’t know this or anything else about our ways? The main reason you and your treasonous husband are sentenced to death is because he didn’t quench you, you filthy little outlander. That is treachery beyond anything else.”

“Oh, he quenched me, all right,” Delphie said, sparing a wink for her furious, struggling husband. “Like, four times. Bet you can’t quench anybody that good.”

The king’s skin turned an unattractive beet color with rage. “Ignorant wench.”

“Seriously. I’m not even thirsty.”

Ainmire, studying her with evil intent, steepled his fingers like some stereotypical prime dimension movie villain. Delphie considered what Dash had told her about Ainmire—his dark, twisted imagination and his hatred for other fairy species in particular.

She really didn’t want her wings torn off by rabid griffins!

“You think you can come into my world and steal our magic?” Ainmire ranted. The crowd murmured louder, in agreement. “You deserve death. You deserve worse than death. Pray that I execute you quickly.”

Some guy in the audience shouted, “Yeah!”

The crowd grew restless—lots of shuffling and thumping. Oh, dear. Fighting the king and the soldiers was bad enough. She didn’t want to fight five hundred djinn too. “If it’s all the same to you, I’m going to pray that you don’t execute me at all.”

“Shut up, you unquenched hussy,” spat the king. “You and your traitor husband get no say.”

It occurred to her she probably should have found out about this quenching stuff before now. Every time it had come up, nobody had explained it. Quite frankly, nobody had had time to explain it.

They kept calling her an outlander—someone from outside their secret dimension. They really got their drawers in a tizzy over that. Xenophobia? Maybe. Or did their fear stem from the fact she could snag wishes from people, like she had Stride, and they couldn’t snag wishes from her? That gave her a pretty huge advantage.

It would give anyone from outside a huge advantage. Outlanders could enslave the djinn. Hence this being a Very Secret Dimension whose residents were believed to be a myth.

It was almost understandable Fart Face wanted to execute her for stumbling around here.

That being said—no way.

“I am quenched,” she declared, putting her plan into motion. “You can’t kill me or you’re breaking your own laws.”

The crowd, bloodthirsty at this point, watched the proceedings as if it were a special show, hosted just for them. Considering how speedy her wedding to Dash had been – I do, I do, and now you’re wed – this might end up being the longest, most exciting wedding ceremony in the history of the djinn.

“Enjoy your last breaths, outlander. Don’t waste them on lies.” Ainmire turned his back on Delphie and addressed a horror-stricken Aurora. “My betrothed, I really must thank you for your part in giving me this wonderful wedding gift.”

Aurora’s skin blanched to the same white color as her wedding gown. “If we could talk in private for a moment, Ainmire, I could explain--”

“I love having choices,” Ainmire said, interrupting her. “Do I execute first? And if so, which traitor? Or do I marry my dear, beloved Aurora? Decisions, decisions.”

Delphie kicked one of the guards holding her, but the brass plating on the guard’s shin prevented Delphie from doing any damage with her spike heels.

“I told you, I am quenched,” she yelled. “And I can prove it.”

She hoped. She only had a half-formed idea of what it meant.

“You think you can touch me to prove it?” Ainmire laughed. “I’m not a stupid troglodyte. I’m not falling for that.”

“No,” Delphie said. “I’ll touch Dash and prove it. I’m quenched, so he won’t feel the tiniest bit of a wish compulsion.” Ainmire wouldn’t know, yet, that Dash possessed the secret to break the compulsion entirely. Aurora, without Dash here to prove it, wouldn’t have told him. And now that Delphie had met Ainmire, she didn’t think anybody should give him anything but a boot to the ass.

“Like that would work.” Ainmire thrust at her with his scepter. Replacement phallus, much? “You and that traitor were bound with the golden cord in marriage. There are no wishes between you but those of the heart.”

Oops. Delphie glanced frantically around the room for another idea, and her gaze locked with Stride’s.

All the misery in the world burdened that man. She almost felt sorry for him, if he hadn’t been such a tool this whole time. He clearly didn’t want to kill his brother, or her, or Aurora. In fact, if she wasn’t mistaken, the man looked like he’d rather be dead right now than where he was.

“Then I’ll touch some other djinn. What about him?” She pointed at Stride.

Aurora pressed trembling hands to her mouth.

“No,” she pleaded. “Don’t touch him. Ainmire has more wish compulsions owed to him than you can get from Stride. He will outwish you, pixie.”

“But I won’t be getting any wishes from Stride,” Delphie said, fingers crossed for luck. “I’m not looking for a wish battle here. I just want to prove I’m quenched.”

“Ah,” the king said. “That might work. Enforcer, I order you to touch her.”

Stride, his expression pained, walked across the room and held out his hand. “Do your worst, pixie.”

Delphie jerked her arms free of the female guards holding them. “I need that, thank you very much.” She clasped Stride’s broad hand in her own.

Nothing happened. No flash of blue, no compulsion, no nothing. Thank goodness her hunch had worked and he was still immune to her after she’d stolen wishes from him yesterday.

She raised herself onto her tiptoes and kissed her brother in law on the cheek. “Give this to your brother, would you?”

“Enough!” Ainmire bellowed. “Fine, I’m convinced. You have been quenched. But your husband is a traitor who molested my betrothed. He shall die.”

Ainmire threw back his head and laughed: “Muahahahaha!”

Oh, good gravy.

“You sure you want to do that?” she asked the king when he’d finished posing for the cover of Villians Today. “Dash holds the secret to solving the wish compulsion entirely, and if you kill him, it dies with him.”

The crowd started whispering amongst themselves so urgently, it sounded like the hiss of a giant cobra.

“Have any female djinn touch him,” Delphie suggested.

“You quenched him,” Ainmire accused. “It can be done to djinn too.”

“How could I quench him? I’m quenched myself, and I can’t grant wishes either.”

With a flick of his scepter, Ainmire directed the green-haired spy to touch Dash. And when she did, the male guards holding Dash steady, nothing happened.

Dash grinned.

Stride grinned.

Aurora’s cheeks gained some much needed color.

“How did you do this thing?” Ainmire asked, eyes wide. “I demand you tell me, or I will execute you both on the spot.”

“With this magic herb.” Delphie withdrew the bottle of catnip she’d been planning to give her husband on their honeymoon. Their second honeymoon. She shook most of the herb into her hand. “Watch what it does to him.”

With the female guards following her step for step, Delphie crossed the room as well and sprinkled some catnip on Dash. Immediately, he began to sparkle with blue power. A tiny whirlwind erupted around him, and then POP! He morphed into his magnificent gryphon form—only four times the size she expected.

What a man! The guards holding him scuttled away, terrified. Dash raised himself to his hind legs and roared, pawing the air. His golden wings flapped, sending ribbons and flowers and other weddingy type things flying through the air.

The audience screamed. Many began rushing the exit. Basically, pure bedlam erupted.

Ainmire’s scepter clattered to the ground from nerveless fingers. “Shapeshifting is not a skill I’ve gifted to my clan! What is the meaning of this?”

“When a djinn is transformed by this herb, grown only in the Earth Two dimension, he or she gains the power of, ah, telekinetic translocution...ah...” Delphie sought impressive enough words to get Ainmire to come closer. “Anyamungus pyrographicamogorum.”

Ainmire goggled at her. “What the what?”

“It means I’m an all-powerful djinni,” Dash said, in as exasperated a voice as possible. His beak clacked as he gnashed it. “The most powerful being in the entire dimensional stratosphere!”

“Then why did you allow us to capture you so easily?” Ainmire growled. “You are a ridiculous liar.”

“And you’re a creepy xenophobic shut-in who has no idea of the advances in the magical sciences we’ve been making on Earth Two,” Delphie retorted. “Can’t you see he doesn’t want people to get hurt in the chaos? We only want to stop this wedding. I think you know why.”

Ainmire’s expression glinted with greed—and understanding. Oh, yes, he knew about Aurora’s secret wedding. Delphie resisted the urge to fist pump, since that might reveal how excited she was that she was right. Boy, was she gonna rub that into Dash later! Along with some edible massage oil.

“If I have all the power in the universe, I won’t need her paltry lady clan,” Ainmire said, casting Aurora a slitty-eyed glare. “Tell me more.”

“If I just had more fairy dust, I could show you. You let us all go free, and I’ll give you the power instead of Dash. There can be only one, you know. Unfortunately, I’m fresh out of dust.”

Ainmire snapped his fingers at one of the female guards. “You there. With your last wish, order Stride to fetch me some fairy dust.”

“The good stuff,” Delphie said. “None of that bottom shelf White Sands crap.”

The guard complied. Stride strode off, and within moments returned with a small wooden box.

“Madam Pixie.” He presented it to her and bowed. “Your dust.”

She mixed it with the last of the herbs and quirked an eyebrow at Ainmire. “Don’t be so standoffish. I have to touch you to assign Dash’s power into you.”

She put one hand on Dash, as if preparing for a transfer ritual, and held the other out to Ainmire. She could have snagged wishes from any of the male djinn during the hubbub, but it had to be Ainmire. She had to compel him alone.

Ainmire, almost as if he couldn’t believe he was falling for this, touched her skin.

The wish compulsion flared blue between them, so bright it hurt her eyes. Apparently royals really packed a wishy punch.

Ainmire fell to his knees. “Noooooooooooooooooooo!”

“Haha!” Delphie cackled. No “muahaha’s” for her—she wasn’t the villain here. She was the hero! “You there! Stupid King Ainmire! I wish you’d get up and do a stupid dance!”

Ainmire hopped to his feet and began cavorting. The rage on his face pleased Delphie to no end—and apparently a lot of other people too. Lady guards hugged other lady guards. Male guards pounded each other on the back. What was left of the crowd, the intrepid ones more curious about the proceedings than they were scared of a giant gryphons, cheered and whistled.

And Aurora...hugged Stride? What was up with that?

Dash sparkled back into his original form. “You wasted a wish on that?” he fussed.

“Oh, I’ve got two more.” She began to clap her hands along with King Ainmire’s horrible capering. “Kick those legs. One, two, three!”

The abbot came to Delphie’s side, still holding the golden cord of marriage. “You must not let vengeance and meanness drive you, my child. Do what needs to be done with a modicum of cruelty.”

“What about little more cruelty?” she asked, her eyes still on Ainmire. Every time he managed to cavort closer to one of the female guards, she backed away from him, laughing. Why he didn’t attempt to out-wish her, she didn’t know. Maybe it had something to do with the fact he was too compelled to obey her?

“Delphie,” Dash whispered into her ear, his hand at her back and his voice a purr. “The sooner we get this over with, the sooner we can finish our honeymoon.”

Oh, right. She’d given him catnip. Yes, time to finish this.

“I wish you would tell us all,” Delphie ordered King Ainmire, “how you installed an illegal spy into Queen Aurora’s staff long before the wish feud began.”

“That is considered criminal,” the abbot said. “Any wishes owed between djinn, any wish compulsions granted to those who aren’t outlanders, must be registered on the rolls. It keeps us in balance—keeps us in harmony, so that we can live our lives in security and secrecy. Surely Ainmire wouldn’t...”

“I did,” Ainmire snarled. “I have spies everywhere. I am going to take over the world. Muahahahaha!”

What was left of the crowd gasped. Ainmire opened his mouth, probably to tell everyone about Aurora’s illicit wedding so she would still be in deep doo-doo too.

“I wish you’d shut up now,” Delphie said quickly.

Ainmire did. As soon as he did...he bolted. Silently. But he bolted.

“I wish you’d come back and take it like a man!” Unfortunately telling him to shut up had been her last wish. Perhaps she shouldn’t have used the first one to make him dance like a monkey after all. “Oops.”

Dash blurred into Ainmire’s path and stuck out one muscular arm. Ainmire bounced off it and to the ground, clotheslined. “Fairy dust. Infinity bottle!” he yelled at Delphie.

She ran forward, threw a whole honking handful of dust on Ainmire, and stuck out the bottle. “Get in there,” she said.

Since this wasn’t White Sands dust, her desire and intent structured the magic correctly. Ainmire, a look of total horror on his fart-smelling face, shrank smaller and smaller and smaller until he was suctioned into the bottle.

Delphie hoped he liked the smell of catnip, because he was going to be stuck inside this infinity bottle for a long, long time.

“Well done,” the abbot said. “You have spared our new king from the necessity of beginning his reign with an ugly execution.”

“What?” Delphie asked. Wouldn’t they need to have elections or something?

Stride, looking a lot less miserable and strangely noble, stepped forward to the edge of the dais. “My people,” he said. “I hereby renounce Clan Aurora’s debt to Clan Ainmire due to the perfidity of the previous ruler. There will be no year and a day of service. You are all free to go.”

“Why are you the king?” Delphie asked.

“The King’s Enforcer is the king’s heir,” the abbot explained.

“Thank you, King Ainmire,” Aurora said, coming to stand beside Stride. Wait, no, he was Ainmire now. Holy Dryad, these djinn naming conventions were hard to keep track of.

Hell, she was just gonna call him Stridemire.

“And there is still the matter of a royal engagement and wedding,” the abbot said. “The clans agreed it should take place, and that still stands.”

Stridemire and Aurora glanced at each other, and Aurora’s cheeks turned pink.

“All right,” she said.

Wait a minute. Delphie stared at Aurora, and then Stridemire. If the abbot tried to marry them, the truth about Aurora’s secret marriage to a commoner was still going to come out, and she was still going to get executed. Why would she so easily agree to this royal wedding?

Dash slipped an arm around Delphie. “It’s all right, wife. You’ll see.”

The crowd settled back into their seats and quieted. Aurora and Stridemire stuck out their wrists, and the abbot placed the golden cord around them.

“We do,” they said, before the abbot spoke.

“Well, eager to get to the honeymoon, are we?” The abbot chuckled “Then let it be so!” The abbot waved over the cord that held their hands together. It glowed a bright blue—and then remained as solid as ever, on their wrists.

Delphie gaped. “When we got married, the cord disappeared into our skin.”

“Hm.” The abbot waved his hands above the cord again. “Let it be so!”

The cord glowed blue...and did nothing.

The abbot cast a sharp eye over the couple standing before him. Delphie noticed their free hands were clasped between them. And she remembered, too, that they’d embraced when Ainmire had been vanquished. Were they not worried about wish compelling each other?

“I gather the two of you are already wed,” the abbot grumbled. His body blocked the audience’s view of their extended wrists. He deftly whipped the cord into his voluminous robes. “I’m disappointed. You got illicitly married and you didn’t even ask me to do it. I’d be offended if I weren’t so glad to see the back of that rascal Ainmire.”

He raised their clasped hands over his head and turned to the crowd.

“May the cord that binds these souls never chafe, and may their love burn ever bright as the seven suns of Palafinia. Let their only wishes be those of the heart. I now pronounce you husband and wife until the end of time.”

A blue glow burst from the royal couple and out through the crowd like a sonic boom. They began to cheer, throwing hats and headdresses into the air. And someone threw a shirt. Then someone threw shoes, and a dress, and another shirt, and...

Delphie gaped as the djinn in the audience started ripping off their clothes and chasing each other around like satyrs. Giggles, cries and excited screams filled the air as Aurora and Stridemire watched their subjects with indulgent smiles.

Delphie liked an orgy as much as the next pixie—when she was single, that is—but a djinn orgy seemed like it would have certain wish compelling consequences.

“Oh, don’t look like that.” Dash’s hand dropped lower, to cup her rear. “The wedding of a royal couple gives the joining clans a certain...temporary immunity. Wouldn’t you jump the closest guy you saw if you’d been celibate for years?”

“No,” Delphie said, leading her sexy new husband to a more private location. “As long as we’re still married, I would only jump you.”

THE END...FOR NOW.

***

Jody Wallace
Author, Cat Person, Amigurumist
http://www.jodywallace.com * http://www.meankitty.com

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Interview with Casper, the Guardian Angel

2013-05-01T00:00:00.000-04:00

It took a lot of persuasion, but Casper has finally consented to an interview. So here are the questions I put to him.

JN: What was your life like growing up?
C: Before I became a guardian angel, I lived in a village in what we now call Germany. Life was hard. We faced famine, bitterly cold winters and disease. It was almost a relief to go off to war.
JN: How would you describe your personality?
C: Quite laid back for a former warrior. Someone who’s been an angel for two thousand years gets in touch with their inner Zen.
JN: Do you have a motto or code you live by?
C: Do my job and do it well. My current job is caring for Allegra Fairweather. It’s full time work that keeps me on my toes.
JN: What one thing would you take to a deserted island?
C: Allegra.
JN: Where would you go on vacation?
C: To Allegra’s beachside house in Hawaii.
JN: What is your most distinguishing characteristic?

C: My golden wings.
JN: What is your major skill or talent?
C: Flying, appearing and disappearing at will.
JN: If you had to pick another career, what would it be?
C: I can’t think of anything I’d rather do than work with Allegra.
JN: Who are your closest friends?
C: My closest friends live on Cloud 9, but I can’t mention their names.
JN: What’s your favorite color?
C: Sky-blue.
JN: Favorite food?
C: Pit-roasted boar.
JN: Who do you love?
C: Do I really have to answer that? You know who she is.
JN: What are your future plans?

C: To spend more time with the love of my afterlife.

JN: Thank you, Casper. Readers can catch up with your latest adventure in Night of the Dark Horse.

Bio: After growing up in a beachside suburb of Sydney, Australia, Janni Nell travelled overseas, working in the UK before returning to Sydney, where she now lives. When Janni isn’t writing, you can find her line dancing, walking the dog or working in her vegetable garden.

Follow Janni on:

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The Doctors Mason

2013-04-30T00:06:00.000-04:00

It's only appropriate that the last stops on my Clockwork Mafia blog tour are here and the Carina Press blog. The only bad part? I'm on my way to the Romantic Times Booklovers' Convention today, so I'll be a little hit or miss. In the meantime, I wanted to share a little taste of Henrietta's past...

The Doctors Mason

Henrietta clutched the piece of paper to her chest. Such a little thing, but it was going to change her world. No more pretending. No more pats on the head.

Blowing out the breath she'd been holding since she exited the steam carriage, she pushed open the heavy door in front of her. The hinges groaned like they hadn't seen use in years. Odd. Her father worked here every day. "Father?" she called into the depths of the lab.

The only answer was the ghost of her own voice echoing back at her. When her attempts to ignite the gaslamps failed, she stepped into the gloom. Where was he? She'd already checked the hospital. She rested a hand on the nearest bench and narrowed her eyes at the apparatus before her. In the darkness, she couldn't tell, but it looked as if it had been abandoned mid-experiment, the fluids inside congealing.

She shook her head. Preposterous. Her father was merely taking a much needed day off. Uncommon to be sure, but not unheard of.

Squaring her shoulders, she returned to the street, shutting the door tight behind her. A steam carriage pulled up almost as soon as she raised her hand to hail it. She climbed inside and gave her address to the driver as he closed the door. As the carriage lurched away, she gripped the door, only letting go once they were rolling smoothly along the road. And now the fingers of her glove were coated with dust. Wonderful. The one day she tried to present herself as pristinely as possible and a filthy carriage door did her in.

She plucked the fingers of the gloves until she was able to pull them off. If she'd carried a bag, she would have tucked them inside, but there was nothing for it. She'd just have to carry them along with her precious slip of paper. Surely he wouldn't notice the gloves. He noticed so little about her these days. But all that would change now. She sucked in a breath so full and deep it made her shudder with anticipation.

The driver let her out in front of the big house she shared with her father. Not so long ago, her mother had lived here too. A painful lump formed in Henrietta's throat as she remembered her mother's long and painful battle. Her death had been tragic in many ways, but it had also been a blessing in that she'd finally been free from the agony. If she'd only known how her husband would change after her passing, Louisa Mason might have held on longer. Might have lived forever, in fact. But that was a child's dream. Henrietta lived with both feet firmly planted on the ground of reality.

The front door swung open at her approach, their maid grinning as she swept Henrietta inside. "Welcome home, Miss Mason, or is it--"

"Until I speak to my father, nothing has changed. Is he in the study?"

"Understood, miss. But no, your father hasn't been home since early this morning."

Strange. He hadn't been at the lab or the hospital. Where could he be? "Thank you. I'll wait for him there. Please let him know when he returns home."

"Of course, miss."

Henrietta crossed the foyer, her books clicking on the marble tiles as she rounded the staircase and stepped into her father's study. Old lab equipment and books on all matter of science lined the mahogany cases along the wall, framing the massive desk in the middle of the room. Sucking in the scent of books and knowledge, Henrietta settled into the armchair near the window and waited.

A noise startled her awake, and the sun that had shone bright in the sky outside had disappeared, replaced by its pale reflection on the surface of the moon. She blinked. Her father hadn't come for her?

Suddenly the door swept open and he hurried in, gaslamps sputtering to life. "What is so important you spent all evening in here?"

No hello. No how are you. Only admonishment veiled in concern--lightly veiled at that. Henrietta stood, smoothing her skirt, and picked up the sheet of paper from the table next to her.

When she held it out to her father, he didn't spare it a glance. "Child, go to bed. This isn't anything that can't wait for morning. I've been at my laboratory all day and I'm exhausted."

What? "Firstly, Father, I'm not a child. I haven't been for some time, but this piece of paper you dismissed places me as your equal."

"Impossible." Now he snatched the medical license from her fingers, brows knitting together as he read it.

"Not impossible. I told you I wanted to be a doctor. Now I am. I did what everyone said couldn't be done. You didn't need a son, Daddy, I can be just like you." But as he continued to frown, his other words nagged at her. "And why did you say you were at the lab? I stopped there. It was dark and empty."

His eyes shot to her for a second before returning to her license. "I have a new laboratory I'm working from much of the time. That's not your concern. As for this--" He waved her license. "--the timing couldn't be more ideal. I've recently secured another trading ship and they have need of a medical officer. It will be the perfect place for you to hone your skills." He looked up at her at last, blue eyes so like her own glowing in the light of the gaslamps.

"A trading dirigible? But, Father, I--"

"I'll hear no more of it. If you want your own practice some day, you need experience. This is the perfect answer. Good night, child, and congratulations." He handed her license over to Henrietta's limp fingers and strode to the door. As he left, he doused the lights, cloaking her in darkness and the despair of a daughter who could never be what her father wanted...could never be a son.

Clockwork Mafia:

His career and vengeance on the line, Carson Alexander must prove a connection between Senator Mason and the mafia. He lucked out happening across Mason's strikingly beautiful daughter, only to have her slip through his fingers. On a desperate hunt to track her down, he never expects his search to take him into the brutal Badlands.

With a mechanically enhanced enforcer after them, only Carson knows the extent of the danger they face. He'll have to win over Henrietta's trust, and her heart, before it's too late...

Buy at:

If you aren’t going to be able to see her next week at the Romantic Times Booklovers’ Convention—or even if you are—you can also find Seleste around the internet:

Here Be News

2013-04-29T08:00:00.000-04:00

Our new releases this week

Inventor Henrietta Mason is retiring from airships and adventuring to return home to Philadelphia. Determined to erase all trails leading to her late father's duplicity, she dismantles his lab and removes all records of the Badlands gold. While in the city, she can't resist the lure of a charity gala but winds up regretting the whole experience. Well, everything except a heart-racing dance with a certain U.S. Marshal.

His career and vengeance on the line, Carson Alexander must prove a connection between Senator Mason and the mafia. He lucked out happening across Mason's strikingly beautiful daughter, only to have her slip through his fingers. On a desperate hunt to track her down, he never expects his search to take him into the brutal Badlands.

With a mechanically enhanced enforcer after them, only Carson knows the extent of the danger they face. He'll have to win over Henrietta's trust, and her heart, before it's too late...

Sequel to Badlands.

Buy

Just another typical week in the life of a paranormal investigator.

I had barely arrived in Ireland to investigate a pooka terrorizing the villagers of Dingaleen when I got called to ride the fairy horse myself. When a pooka calls, you answer--and hold on for dear life.

Unfortunately, the beast tossed me into a bog. Fortunately, my gorgeous guardian angel fished me out. Just barely.

You see, Casper is still weak from tangling with an evil spirit on our last case. So he's not even much help to me in the land o' the green. The powers-that-be are even hinting at retirement...

But I won't lose Casper. Not now. Not ever. As luck would have it, I have a chance, albeit a slim one, to save him and get the answers I need to solve the pooka case--if I just take a wee trip through Fairyland. Except angels aren't welcome there, humans can't eat, drink or sleep there, and time is running out.

An Allegra Fairweather Mystery

Buy

Links of Interest

Thor! The Dark World trailer.

And lots of discussion about Loki's hair.

Dan Blank talks about Anxiety and the Creative Process.

Convention season is coming up. Here's a great survival guide from Seleste deLaney.

Here Be Magic Group Announcements

Jeffe Kennedy’s ORO, the fourth book in the Facets of Passion series, will appear in Carina Press Erotic Holiday anthology, coming out November 2013. More details here: http://carinapress.com/blog/2013/04/announcing-the-2013-holiday-anthology-lineup/

In case you missed it, last week we did an experiment in flash fiction starting with the prompt, "There is a rocking chair in the middle of the forest. How did it get there?" See our answers here and here.

Coming up soon....
The Here Be Magic authors write in a variety of speculative fiction subgenres from epic fantasy to steampunk to paranormal romance and we wanted to take some time to spotlight each of these. Up first is Fantasy Week starting May 3rd!

A Seed... Part Two

2013-04-27T04:00:00.000-04:00

Recently, I challenged my fellow writers to come up with a short story based on a single image: a rocking chair in the middle of the forest.

Today is a continuation of yesterday's stories. If you missed them, they're all here.

****
Jody Wallace

The waiting was the hardest part.

Clara rocked mechanically in the creaky glider. As soon as her feet hit the leafy ground, she pushed off with her toes. Back, forth, back, forth. The night creatures chirped and rustled around her, an eerie counterpoint to the horrible song jangling through her head.

If she kept this up, she was going to get seasick. Either from Tom Petty’s musical stylings or her nervous rocking. But she’d been here eighteen nights in a row, and she only had three left before it would be too late. It was getting to her.

The waiting was the hardest part.

The ring of mushrooms gleamed in the moonlight like river rocks. Perfectly symmetrical. Clearly not of the human realm. Sliced and sautéed with butter and a splash of red wine, they’d be more useful at this point. Except for the fact they were deadly poisonous.

Perhaps she could trick Furlicht into eating them, and it would solve her problem without the waiting.

Unfortunately, he only ate what his own hands prepared.

Clara forced herself to stop anxiously rocking and pressed a hand to her roiling stomach. She should have taken the meal he’d offered before he’d dismissed her from the day’s training—food his own hands had prepared—but she’d been so anxious to get here that she’d run.

Was the grimoire wrong? She’d found it in his library, covered in dust. Not one he’d notice gone, she hoped. When she’d performed the ritual, it had hurt like being burned alive.

Had she sacrificed her soul for nothing? Had the tribute had been deemed insufficient? She was only half elf, after all.

The waiting was the hardest part.

That’s why she’d stolen the chair. She wasn’t sure it made the waiting easier, but the padded cushion in the seat was sure easier on her ass.

A panther yowled deep in the woods, close to the feyland veil. The noise shivered through her, reminding here there were creatures in these woods a lot more dangerous than a panther. That one, she could control. If only Furlicht were as simple.

If only Furlicht hadn’t noticed her ears.

If only she’d ignored him when he had.

If only that pale glow in the ring was something besides the full moon.

Clara rubbed her sleepy eyes. A bright spark puffed in the center of the ring. Another. Five. Ten. Their tiny explosions highlighted the mist rising throughout the clearing.

Holy crap. Holy crap. She jumped out of the chair and stumbled toward the mushrooms. The sparks combined until she had to shield her eyes from the glare. A wind whipped up, tangling her hair, swirling debris so hard it stung when it hit her.

A figure materialized in the center of the ring. Large, red, radiant. Horned.

Uh-oh. That was no elf.

***

Furlicht returned to human form when he reached the clearing. Clever halfling. She’d hidden her tracks well, proving how right he’d been to choose her. But now this nonsense would end. In two more days, they’d be joined, and she’d devote herself to...

He sniffed. Sniffed again.

Sulfur? Here?

That’s when he noticed the precise ring of scorch marks in the center of the clearing and the old rocking chair beside it.

The dark grimoire—the one he’d thought lost—under it.

Furlicht wasn’t the demonstrative sort, but when he finished bashing the chair to splinters, he realized an unpleasant thing. Because of who and what he was, he was superb at playing the villain. It suited him. His powers, his ugly face, his suspicious nature.

What woman would have him, what feyling would apprentice to him, if not forced?

Clara. Oh, bright Clara, whom he’d prayed would come to understand. It wasn’t as if he could go amongst the humans himself, not with their cellphone cameras and disbelief in the old ways. Meeting Clara had seemed fated. Had he been such a villain that she would give up her soul to escape?

Now he was going to have to be her hero, and she’d probably never forgive him for it.

****

Ruth A. Casie

The berries Olivia had gathered tumbled forgotten from her hands. A tremor touched her lips while the vision slammed behind her eyes. She didn’t doubt the vision’s truth. Sometimes a bright light, warm and comforting, accompanied the vision; other times the wind howled, cold and disturbing. Today, panic clearly filled the air.

She spun around trying to pinpoint a direction and abruptly stopped. Facing east, she licked her lips nervously and tasted the sweetness of the river. Her head snapped west and she watched the sun begin to dip behind the mountain and she ran. As she careened down the narrow trail, the outstretched branches tugged at her dress, pulled off her shawl and clawed at her face and arms. She took no notice. The cadence of her footfalls beat out a mantra, not yet, not yet, not yet. She rushed on faster, mumbling enchanted words under her breath.

She exploded out of the forest and stood on the wide riverbank. She scanned the area closely looking for signs. The old chair was under the canopy of trees, the boundary of her clan’s territory. She had dragged the chair there the day Colin left. How many days, weeks, months, ah yes, years ago? She came every evening and sat in the rocking chair to watch for him, to pray for him, to cry herself to sleep for him.

“Thank goodness,” she murmured and let loose a heavy sigh. She strained to make out the shadows in the darkening forest. The last red gold ray of sun was slipping behind the mountain. “Oh, Colin, you promised you’d come back to me in the red gold of sunset. How you promised to come back to me.” She gathered her strength. “How I love you.”

“Aye Lass, that you did and I didna tell you a tale.” Colin got up from the chair and turned toward her.

She looked at the warrior who was gone these two score years. “Colin?”

He said not a word only looked deeply into her eyes with a passion that made her heart skip a beat.

“I’ve waited Colin,” her eyes misted over.

“Yes, Livy. Come to me my love,” his hand reached for her.

She looked up the rise to the house noisy with family. A moment of fear ran through her and she quickly turned back to Colin relieved to see him still there. Her eyes slowly traced from his outstretched arm, up his broad strong chest but it was his eyes. “Oh,” she signed. She closed her eyes, how she loved those piercing gray eyes, how she had longed to see them again.

She took tentative steps towards him and suddenly turned and rushed back to the planted flowerbed in front of the rocking chair. On her knees she dug until she pulled out a small package wrapped in a swatch of tartan. She got up, sat in the rocking chair, and fumbled to remove the contents. At last a gold band spilt into her lap. She slipped it onto her withered finger. “Forever with you, my love,” she whispered seeing the passion in his eyes. She went willingly into his arms feeling light and young again.

“For eternity,” he whispered in the wind.

A Seed...

2013-04-26T03:30:00.000-04:00

One of the questions writers are asked the most is where do you get your ideas. The answer to that question depends a lot on the writer. My answer is everywhere and sometimes that everywhere starts with a single concept or even image, and usually, a question will follow. A conversation I “overheard” on the treadmill inspired Altered Destiny. My epic fantasy series began with a dream and a name, Ilythra.

I was discussing this with my husband—who is not a writer...or even a reader. He likes movies—and he commented that a writer’s brain fascinated him for this reason. We started talking about how a writer, depending on their choice of genre, could take the same image or concept and write a very different story.

Which leads to this blog. (Glad I was going somewhere with this, aren’t you?_ ; )

I asked our Here Be Magic writers if they’d like to have some fun with an experiment. Many of them did. I gave them an image and asked if they’d write a short story. Now obviously we all write some subgenre of science fiction/fantasy but the differences in each story are astounding!

So here is our writing image: There is a rocking chair in the middle of the forest. How did it get there?

*****

Nicole Luiken

"Zane! Zane! Come see! I just teleported something!"

Zane stared at the empty spot on the patio for a long moment before venturing, "Am I supposed to be seeing something?"

"It's what isn't there," his cousin Jed said triumphantly. "I teleported a chair to another place."

Zane blinked, coming fully awake for the first time. "A chair? Do you mean Katie's special rocking chair? The one she dragged me into four baby furniture stores to find?"

Jed frowned, his glasses slipping down his nose. "I think you're focusing on the wrong thing. I. Just. Teleported. Something. Scientific breakthrough? Eureka?"

Zane stared at him without an ounce of humour. "Bring it back."

"Zane!"

"The baby has colic. Katie and I hadn't slept in three weeks until she got that chair. Now bring it back. You do know where you sent it, right?"

"Of course." Jed looked offended. "I used GPS co-ordinates."

Zane relaxed. "Okay, good, that's good. Let's drive out there and collect the rocking chair before Katie and the baby get back from her Mom's."

Jed flushed. "Well, uh, there's one small problem. See, I didn't want to risk hurting anyone so I set the co-ordinates for the middle of the national Forest. There, uh, aren't any roads."

Zane took a step forward; Jed shrank back. The sound of wheels on gravel brought them both to a halt.

Zane exhaled sharply. "Jed, you're my cousin and I'm fond of Aunt Margie, so I'm going to give you a word of advice. That's Katie now in the driveway. Start running. Now."

****

Cindy Spencer-Pape

Cautiously, his big feet barely disturbing the pine needles and dry leaves of the forest floor, he approached the chair. It was too clean, too perfect to have been dumped here, to new to be the remains of some long-crumbled cabin. So how…

A song in the distance swirled through the clearing. He caught his breath, easing back behind the nearest large tree as a woman wafted toward the chair. She was beautiful, inhumanly so, her hair sparkling gold in the dappled sunlight that filtered through the branches. She carried a wrapped bundle in her arms as she moved toward the chair, crooning in a voice that was too beautiful to be real. She seated herself, hugged the bundle—it had to be a child—to her chest and began to rock.

He blinked, almost shocked to see the vision didn’t go away. Had he hit his head? Fallen somehow and now become delirious with exposure? He was a man of science. He didn’t believe in fairies or ghosts, or…

She stilled, turned to look at him, as though she’d heard his thoughts. Piercing eyes of the deepest forest green narrowed as she held his gaze. Whoever she was, whatever she was, now she knew he was here, and she wasn’t pleased at the intrusion. She tipped her chin in an imperious gesture, drawing him closer. He complied, almost as if pulled by an invisible string.

She pulled back the blanket covering the baby’s face. He made himself look. A vision of his future? The past he couldn’t recall? He focused his eyes on the child.

And then he screamed.

****
Shawna Thomas

He stared at the old rocking chair. At times he’d hated that chair. It reminded him of the life his wife had forsaken to marry him, of the things he could no longer give her. It was a finely made chair, the kind passed down from one generation to another. Quality. Like Serene.

The wood had paled to gold where loving hands had rested, but elsewhere the chair shone deep mahogany in the filtered light. The sun had crested the trees, but here, under the thick canopy of new leaves, the air held on to winter’s chill. He shivered. Rays of dusty light pierced the darkness, highlighting the bracken-littered forest floor. Old ivy and the occasional fern grew thick near the trunks of the ancient trees, but here, in the clearing, only thin grasses grew from the rich soil. Grasses he imagined would bear flowers later in the spring. He almost smiled. Serene would like this place. He could almost see her there, rocking in the chair, their babe in arms, her dark eyes flashing with mirth. Even weary Serene had a ready smile.

If he strained, he could almost hear a faint melody as though the mahogany wood had absorbed her songs. Many nights he’d drifted to sleep to the faint creak of the runners against their rough wooden floor playing accompaniment to her sweet voice.

When the king had offered free land to anyone willing to settle in the new lands, he’d jumped on the chance. A man could work all his life for another man and never accomplish anything. But living by your sweat and blood? That was living. At least that’s what he told Serene. He’d finally be able to get ahead, give her the life she deserved. She’d kissed him, told him he was silly, but packed up and put everything they could on the old wagon. It was a good land, full of promise, except for the small problem of the Svistra to the north. The king had assured them they’d be safe. There was even a fort nearby.

He stared at the chair again. Had it moved? No, that was just the wind dancing through the thick foliage overhead, caressing the old wood with shadows.

He’d tried to talk her out of bringing it. Told her there was no room for the awkward chair. He’d make her another once they arrived, but she wouldn’t hear of it. Her grandfather had made it for her grandmother, back when they lived far south of here where the sun shone and the air was sweet with the scent of ripening fruit. He’d managed to carry it north with them. She insisted they would to the same.

Once Serene had made up her mind, there really wasn’t anything you could do. So he tied it to the top of the wagon, nestled between the baby’s bedding and their clothes. He had to admit, it made a nice shelter for the babe at night as they slept under the stars.

Like with most things, he eventually had to admit that Serene was right. The rocking chair belonged with her.

He glanced around the clearing. It was a sacred place, he could feel it in his bones, but the gods would forgive him. And if they didn’t, what more could they do?

It had happened so fast. One moment she was laughing... the next...

He stared at the chair once more, watched the shadows play and wished so hard, he thought his heart would press out of his chest. And then he turned, walking away from the clearing, leaving the old rocking chair to stand guard over the two freshly dug graves underneath.

****

Veronica Scott

Eolynd was fascinated by The Rocking Chair in the woods, from the age of five, which is when first she saw it. She and her brothers and sisters were berry picking with their mother and other village children.

“Look, someone’s left a new chair here in the clearing,” Eolynd said, tugging on her older sister Mairea’s hand. “I want to rock in it!”

“No, little one, you can’t sit in that chair.” Her older sister’s voice was hushed.

“Why not?”

“Twas left here by the Elf King himself.” Mairea glanced around uneasily. “it’s a trick, an enticement for the unwary.”

“Truly?” Eolynd retreated a step, chewing her lip and thinking this over.

Her sister made the sign of the evil eye. “See how there’s a ring of moss around it and nothing else grows within five feet?”

“If you sit in the chair, the Elf King takes you to his hidden realm and you’re never seen again,” said one of the older boys from the village, grabbing Eolynd and swinging her high in the air. He was the red headed one who liked to keep company with Mairea.

“What happens to you there?” Eolynd wanted to know as he set her down.

“We need to be picking berries, not standing here gawking at the Elf King’s chair,” her mother said. “Just you listen to your elders and stay away from that thing.”

“But – “

“Enough, girl. There’s work to be done.”

As she grew older, Eolynd often went to the little clearing in the pines to admire the chair. It seemed rooted in the mossy earth, like a tree perhaps, although it was clearly meant to be a rocking chair. Had it been there so long the earth was swallowing it up? The center of the chair’s back was a beautifully carved woodlands scene, with a proud stag filling most of the center. At a certain time of day a shaft of golden sunlight poured directly on the mysterious item, revealing intricate flowers and leaves carved into the arms and the rockers. The Chair never aged, its wood always gleaming and shiny, no matter how much snow had fallen in the winter or how hard the summer sun baked the forest.

Years passed. Mairea married her red headed suitor and started a family which soon grew to five children. Eolynd’s other siblings became adults, those who didn’t die in the Great Sickness, which also carried off Mairea and both of Eolynd’s parents.

The world became a darker place, with rumors of a war raging between the lord Eolynd’s clan owed alliegance to and invaders from beyond the seas. Most of the men in the village went off to serve as soldiers in the war, leaving the women to keep life going as best they could. Only a few elderly men and younger boys remained and that wasn’t enough the day a marauding band of the enemy fell upon the village, slaughtering everyone they encountered.

Taking Mairea’s youngest girl in her arms, Eolynd fled the carnage and the violence, running headlong into the woods with no clear idea of where she was going. Behind her she heard the screams of the dying mixed with the harsh war cries of the enemy.

And then she heard the baying of the hounds that ran in a fearsome pack with the invaders and her blood ran cold. They’re hunting down the survivors. They’re hunting me!

Now she fled like a terrified doe, the toddler clinging to her silently, but the sound of the dogs came closer and closer. Without clear thought Eolynd ran to the clearing and slid to a halt beside the Chair, silent and beautiful as always.

“I can’t run any more,” she said to the child in between panting breaths.

“They’re coming, Auntie.” The tiny girl hid her face in Eolynd’s skirts. “I’m scared.”

She stroked her hand through the child’s tangled black hair with one hand and leaned on the Chair for support with the other. The wood was satin soft under her hand, cool and faintly scented. The elf king takes you away. That’s what the legend said. “How much worse can it be, to live as a servant of some kind in elfdom?” she said out loud.

Picking up her niece, she sat took a deep breath and sat in the chair, pulse racing.

For a moment nothing happened. The shouts of her pursuers grew louder.

Eolynd scooted back more firmly, holding the girl. “Please, please, elf king, if you exist, take us away.”

Thunder rolled overhead in the clear blue sky. The chair rocked under her. Startled, Eolynd made an attempt to rise but her tired legs wouldn’t obey the command.

“You know the consequences of sitting in my chair,” said a deep voice from the edge of the clearing.

With a half shriek, Eolynd turned to see a black haired warrior astride a magnificent stag, with two wolves sitting on either side. The man was handsome, with a thin golden crown on his brow and rich green and purple raiment. An uncut emerald glinted dully in the massive ring on his finger.

“Yes, yes, I do. Please, the enemy soldiers are coming. They’ll kill us as they’ve done to my entire village. Can you – will you, save us?”

The stag paced forward and the man smiled. “And your name, maiden?”

“Eolynd. This is my niece Roschae.” She patted the child on the shoulder.

“Devonn, king of Elfdom, at your service.” He dismounted, landing beside the Chair. Bowing he, said, “I’ve waited a thousand years for the woman brave enough to sit in my Chair and become my Queen, as the legends foretold.”

As thunder rumbled through the skies, Devonn handed her up into the saddle, placing the child in front of her and led the stag from the clearing, the two wolves trotting behind. The trees closed in behind them, creating an impenetrable barrier. Already forgetting the specifics of her ordeal, Eolynd hugged Roschae and looked eagerly ahead, to their shining destination, off in the distance.

And when the bloodthirsty enemy soldiers burst into the clearing, they saw only an old tree stump, gnarled and bent, hollowed out with age.

(Me again)

Come back tomorrow for more of these awesome stories.

Here Be News

2013-04-22T09:28:00.002-04:00

Our new releases this week

THE FINAL PLEASURE

A sensuously erotic sci-fi romance

by Linda Mooney

He fully expected to die, until he met a woman who gave him every reason to live.

Those condemned to death are sent to Doora IV, one of four prison moons in the Doora system. Webb Grace realizes that he has less than a month to roam the moon's tunnels before he's taken above and ejected into the airlessness of space. However, before he's released, he is allowed to spend his last night in pure carnal exploration with a Lady Lay.

Myka Tolbert is a Lady Lay. She is one of the few women on the maximum security prison moon who treats the condemned to their Final Pleasure, a last sexual fling, before they’re executed. In return, her sentence is shortened one week. She hopes she lives long enough to earn her freedom.

A chance meeting between her and Webb gives the con more than a reason to live, but also the belief that he can escape Doora IV and his execution. But first, he has to figure out how, and then he has to find a way to bring along the woman who has managed to touch his heart.

They never foresaw all hell breaking loose before he could act.

Warning! Contains expired food, exploding moons, land squatters, dirty dealings, fraudulent contracts , transparent walls, revenge, cold showers, a death board, pink jumpsuits, and life measured in ten minutes intervals.

ISBN 978-0-9859300-3-5

Word Count: 54,000

Now Available at Amazon

www.amazon.com/The-Final-Pleasure-ebook/dp/B00C0F8BGS

Barnes and Noble
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-final-pleasure-linda-mooney/1046311975?ean=2940016303659

and All Romance eBooks

https://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-thefinalpleasure-1148091-143.html

Links of Interest

Netflix released all 13 episodes of the first season of Hemlock Grove. The critical reviews are...well, not good but I'm on ep 3 now and I really like it so far. Anyone else give it a try?

Defiance kicked off on SyFy. Haven't decided how I feel about this one. It has potential but I feel like I keep getting burned by SciFi series that sound great but fall flat after the first show or two.

Via io9: One of the first religions inspired by the internet "File-sharing isn't just a good way to get the latest episode of your favorite TV show. It's also a religion. Kopimism is an officially-recognized faith in Sweden, and has established a church in the US too. Its credo? Copying information is holy."

You Know You're Obsessed When...

2013-04-21T03:58:00.000-04:00

A funny thing happened to me this evening. I was watching TV with my husband and PBS had a special on featuring musicians and singers from the 60s performing their classic hits. My husband was in music heaven, but I found myself getting more and more depressed the longer I watched.

It took me awhile to figure out what was happening. It's not that I didn't love the music. It's not that all these people are getting old and--since this was obviously shot some years ago--some of them are actually dead now. It's not even that I was feeling old. No, I finally realized that these were all songs I'd listened to extensively while I was writing In the Dark, which is partially set in the late 60s. I was depressed because I was hearing the music from one of my character's point of view, rather than my own, and they were bringing up memories of his lost love.

I think that might be something only people who love fiction beyond reason can understand. And that of course got me thinking about what other odd habits we share...which led to this post.

You know you might be obsessed with a fictional character when you find yourself living your life--but in someone else's head.

You know you might be obsessed with a fictional character when songs on the radio stir up memories from their life, rather than your own.

You know you might be obsessed with a fictional character when you're tempted to add jobs to your resume that you only imagined having.

You know you might be obsessed with a fictional character when you visit the real life location that was the basis for your favorite fictional locale...and marvel at how much it's changed since the "last time" you visited, forgetting that you'd never "actually" been there before.

You know you might be obsessed with a fictional character when, while shopping, you stumble across something that would make a perfect gift for so-and-so and you're just about to buy it when you remember: so-and-so isn't real.

You know you might be obsessed with a fictional character when you know more about the tastes and preferences of the made-up people who live in your head than you do those of the actual people who live in your house.

That's my list. Now, what about yours?

In the Dark, the first book in the Children of Night series, is FREE for the rest of the month at: Amazon, B&N, Sony or directly from Samhain.

An Acute Case of Writer Brain

2013-04-20T04:00:00.000-04:00

I have a morbid imagination. Not just ‘vivid’, actually ‘morbid’. Left to itself, my brain loves to come up with worst case scenarios.

Let me give you an example. After getting home from picking up my middle child from school, I didn’t bother closing the garage door since I knew I had to leave again shortly to pick my husband up from work. I did a few things inside, then flew out the door, jumped in the car, and started to back up only to realize the back passenger door was open. I got out, slammed the door shut, climbed back in and resumed my journey. Twenty blocks later, I felt something pushing on the back on my seat. My five-year-old daughter does this all the time when she’s in her car seat—except my daughter wasn’t with me that trip. I was alone in the car. I told myself I must have imagined it.

A block later, it happened again: definite pushing on my back through the car seat. I suddenly remembered the open garage and open car door. All those urban legends about people who drive away without looking in their back seat and are carjacked by axe murderers began to flash through my mind. My adrenaline spiked, and I froze at the wheel. My God, I have a stowaway.

The light turned green, I kept driving. I looked in the rear-view mirror, but couldn’t espy anybody in the back seat. I relaxed a little when I realized there was no room for an adult axe murderer. However, a child could remain out of sight. My mind started pulling up scenarios of some stupid kid planning to steal my car for a joy-ride and accidentally stowing away.

Another stoplight. More pushing on the back seat as if the kid was squirming around trying to be comfortable. I considered announcing in a tough voice, “Okay, stowaway, end of the road. Get out of the car.” But I worried. What if it was a juvenile delinquent with a knife? Then my brain veered onto a side track: What if it was an eight or nine year old and he ran away when I stopped the car? I would feel terrible abandoning an eight-year-old in rush-hour traffic in an industrial area. What’s the etiquette in such a situation? Should I drive him home or just offer bus fare?

Ten more nerve-wracking blocks. I pulled into the parking lot at my husband’s place of work and shakily stumbled out of the car, keys clutched in my fist. The back seat was, of course, empty.

This is not the first time my imagination has done me a disservice, nor will it be the last.

I worry about all the everyday stuff that probably most people do--my kids, finances, the possibility of a car accident on icy roads—plus a lot of more far-fetched stuff. I cannot go into the bank without the possibility of a bank robbery crossing my mind. I make plans for what I would do if some disaster happened—aliens invading, zombies, Armageddon, plague.

Turning these worries into stories is quite frankly a self-defense mechanism. That way the horrible things aren’t happening to me, but rather to characters in my books.

Oh, and if you’re wondering what caused the mysterious pushing-feeling on the back of the car seat, here’s my eventual conclusion: I shoveled snow earlier in the day, which caused back spasms.

Either that or our newly purchased used car is haunted.

If I wasn't a writer, I'd be...

2013-04-19T08:44:00.001-04:00

An interior designer/decorator! Yeah, I was pretty surprised at this realization myself. I’ve already had one successful career in the IT consulting industry and working on my second with my writing. When I renovated my ENTIRE house a few years ago, it was a major undertaking.

That's my living room, BTW, with all the boxes along the right wall the new kitchen cabinets. Shudder, right? It's totally gutted back to the bare bones!

I was excited, apprehensive, and okay a tiny bit terrified. Or perhaps it was a LOT. I designed every aspect of the renovation which ranged from some structural changes to a lot of cosmetic things. I updated/upgraded EVERY SINGLE room in the house. Actually the outside underwent some pretty substantial changes as well. I selected every fixture, fitting, color and finish. I designed every tile layout. I picked the design for each molding and trim we used. I even designed the layout of the kitchen myself from a completely blank slate. I worked with the guys every day on each step of the process and you know what I found? I absolutely LOVED everything about it. I learned I love looking at furnishings catalogs, tile books, paint chips, architectural accents. I loved everything about the process, especially the sense of immense satisfaction I get when I can sit back in any room of my house and think… I did that. So, if I wasn’t a writer I’d definitely be in the design/decorating/home improvement industry.

What about YOU? What do you think you’d be doing if you could absolutely choose anything you'd like to do, anything at all?

Rebeka's Favorite Recipe

2013-04-17T01:17:00.000-04:00

This is a favorite recipe of our bookish scholarly heroine, tossed back to the 17th century. Rebeka was ecstatic when she found the ingredients for this recipe on Doward’s wagon (the traveling tradesman). Imagine her surprise when Lord Arik brought home a fine salmon along with a strong appetite. She couldn’t wait to tempt him with her offering(s). Luckily for both of them, this recipe takes less than ten minutes. This is the 21st century version.

PS…Rebeka served the salmon to Arik in the Great Hall. Tantalized, he licked the sticky glaze from his fingers never taking his eyes off of her. But that’s a totally different story that you will find in Knight of Runes.

PPS…My son makes this recipe whenever he wants to impress his roommates, their parents, his current lady friend. With a side of whipped potatoes and a vinaigrette salad, all you need is a decadent chocolate cake to finish off the meal.

Rebeka’s Salmon with Brown Sugar Glaze

Ingredients:

¼ cup packed light brown sugar

2 Tablespoons Dijon mustard

2 Tablespoons chopped fresh dill (or 2 teaspoons dried)

4 (6 ounce) salmon fillets

Salt and Pepper

Instructions:

1. Preheat the broiler

2. Spray the rack of a broiler pan with nonstick spray

3. Mix the brown sugar, mustard and dill together in a small bowl.

4. Salt and pepper both sides of the salmon and place on the broiler pan and spoon the brown sugar glaze on top. (You will not use all of it – it keeps forever in the fridge)

5. Position the broiler pan about 7 inches from the heat and broil just until its opaque, about 6 minutes

NOTE: Don’t turn the fillet. The glaze works well on chicken and pork.

What are you going to cook tonight?

Here Be News

2013-04-15T07:56:00.000-04:00

Our new releases this week

The Rook

An assassin hired by vengeful elven rebels to kill the calculating Duke of Shalridan, Julian walks into a trap and barely escapes with his life. Healed by a beautiful captive in the dungeons, he's enthralled and vows to free her from the duke's clutches.

The Hawk

A Knight of the Hawk duty-bound to cleanse elven magic from Adalonia, Kestar has a secret--and heretical--ability to sense the use of magic from afar. He knows something suspicious is happening in the duke's keep, but he has no idea how deep the conspiracy goes.

The Dove

A half-elven healer with no control over her magic, Faanshi is the goddess's to command. She's always been a pawn of the powerful, but after healing two mysterious and very different men, she faces a choice that may decide the fate of the whole kingdom...

Book one in the Rebels of Adalonia

113,000 words

Only $2.69! Buy it here!

Links of Interest

In case you missed it, the Fantasy Cafe is running an excellent series of posts on women in SFF this month.

Erin Morgenstern has an interesting post up on writing and publishing and paths where she talks about her experience with traditional publishing.

This made me happy. I was looking for Something Wicked This Way Comes on ebook just last week. Ray Bradbury Classics Finally Coming as eBooks. April 23!

An interview with Guy Gavriel Kay. His answer to how he writes credible females is really interesting.

In case you were wondering Which centuries are the most popular in today’s historicals? A chart.

Here Be Magic Group Announcements

Cindy Spencer Pape has a new Facebook page just for the Gaslight Chronicles. Check it out here!

Jody Wallace sold a during/post-apocalyptic sf romance novel to Entangled Publishing for release in early 2014. Angeli, hopefully the first in an sf adventure trilogy, involves a mouthy heroine who believes in angels, an AWOL angel hero who isn't an angel at all, and a race to stop the end of the world.

From PG Forte:

For the next two weeks, In the Dark (the first book in my Children of Night series) will be offered for FREE at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Sony.com.

When you live forever, you’re bound to make a few mistakes.

1969 San Francisco. World-weary Conrad Quintano should have known better than to fall in love with a human—much less Suzanne Fischer, the barely legal, adventure-seeking hippie beauty known as Desert Rose. And the very last thing he should have agreed to do was to raise her babies and protect them with his life. But even twelve-hundred-year-old master vampires can find it hard to reject a deathbed request—especially when issues of love, guilt and blood are involved.

Present day. Raised in virtual isolation, twins Marc and Julie Fischer have always known they are vampires. But they never knew their parentage—or their unique status in the vampire world—until their “uncle” Damian comes to fetch them home. The family reunion, however, isn’t what they expect. They’re thrust into a world for which they’re totally unprepared. And the father they expected to see, Conrad, is missing.

How to find him…and whom to trust? Solving the mystery of betrayal and vampire family values will prove the Beatles had it right. All you need is love…and an occasional side of blood.

Product Warnings

While reading this book you may experience any of the following, an increased desire to wear flowers in your hair, dress in tie-dye or nap during the day. Other symptoms may include an intolerance to sunlight, an aversion to garlic-flavored tofu and a pronounced urge to bake…or get baked.