A lot of writers have this dream or play this game: if (insert title here) was to be turned into a movie, who would I cast? While The Valley of Ten Crescents could make for a fun fantasy flick (especially the upcoming book, Red Moon Rising), I think Botanica Blues would make for a great weird short film. A PI looking for answers in the city, a case bigger than the police can handle with an explosive ending and a Lovecraftian bent? I’d watch it! But what would a Casting Call for Botanica Blues look like? Well, obviously it would be filmed in New York. Jacob Riis or Baruch Houses would work for the opening, set in Quintana and his abuela’s apartment. The crime scene and the botanica would be somewhere in Loisaida, though a storefront in El Barrio would suffice. NCU is basically New School University and I had the library in the Graduate Faculty building on 5th Avenue in mind for that scene; it’s been a few years though, so it may have moved. St. Alps Tea House on 3rd Avenue was the basis for the noodle shop Yang and Quintana eat at. And Quintana’s sister’s apartment is based on a mashup between the Norwood section of the Bronx and Bushwick in Brooklyn. Pretty much any small office would serve for Quintana’s office but I imagined it being in Chinatown or on Grand St. in Manhattan as it’d be an easy commute for our private investigator. Parking might be a bitch but yo, that’s New York. What about the actors, what would their casting calls look like? [LUIS QUINTANA] 28-35. Latino actor, medium build; should be able to pull off younger look for flashback scenes. Confident, male lead who hides a disturbed past. Capable of speaking with a Nuyorican accent. [ABUELA QUINTANA] 65-75. Female, Latina, any build. Must speak Spanish convincingly. Small speaking role. [DETECTIVE HUNTS] 35-50. Male, any ethnicity. Lead detective on the case in question. Serious, dry sense of humor, seasoned at his job. Small speaking roll. [ANGELA YANG] 28-40. Female, East Asian ethnicity. Medical Examiner on yet another gruesome case, friends with Luis Quintana. Has seen many strange things as an examiner. [DANNY] 20-25. Male, Latino. Young Botanica owner. Capable of pulling off Nuyorican accent. [MARTIN] 20-30 Male, any ethnicity. Army buddy of Quintana, deeply affected by an incident to take place during a flashback. [RIVER] 18-24. Female, any ethnicity. Librarian at NCU Library. Alternative look preferred. Small speaking roll. [PRIEST] 50-70. Male, any ethnicity. Catholic priest who appears towards the end of the film. Slightly creepy. No lines. In addition, extras for small parts, some with lines would include cops on the crime scene, Luis Quintana’s family members, NCU students and the crowd at the end. I’ve never written casting calls before, but I think this is a decent start. Unfortunately I don’t keep up with actors. Who do you think would make a good Quintana? Play the perfect Yang?  

I don’t usually plug people’s crowdsourcing projects but I might have to change that. Crowdsourcing platforms like IndieGoGo and Kickstarter are amazing tools creators can use to market and get the support they need to get their books, games and products off the ground while involving you, the awesome readers, players and users. And there are so many great projects being put out there, I would be remiss to not talk about about them. Today I want to talk about Innsmouth Free Press and their crowdsourcing campaign on IndieGoGo for Sword and Mythos. I really like Innsmouth Free Press. A lot. They’re a micropress out of Canada that puts out reviews, a magazine and releases anthologies. I have both Historical Lovecraft (you can read my review here) and Future Lovecraft and if you are into weird fiction at all, you really should pick them up. Silvia Moreno-Garcia and editors such as Paula Stiles and Orrin Grey know how to pick them. One of the reasons I love Innsmouth Free Press is because of their willingness to acknowledge Lovecraft’s issues (i.e. his pretty obvious racism) and charge forward with the genre, encouraging stories that flip race, sex, gender, class and everything on their head, inspired by the Mythos while rejecting the ugliness and cruelty of -isms from yesterday and today. It is possible to write about Cthulhu and not have mongrel cultists. Innsmouth knows it. We know it. They show it with the stunning, twisting and troublesome fiction they put in their anthologies. And now they have an IndieGoGo! As if kicking the issues in the Weird genre wasn’t hard enough, they’re striving to expose and cut it out of Sword and Sorcery too. Lovecraft and Howard were good friends as some of you may know, and their fiction and worlds intertwine in many a story. The IndieGoGo is for Sword and Mythos, and anthology meant to bring these two iconic genres together. Innsmouth Free Press wants to be able to pay the contributing writers professional rates for their stories and put out more anthologies, novellas and other works of fiction out throughout the year (one of the future titles is called ‘Jazz Age Cthulhu.’ Yes. Please). If anyone is going to pull it off, it’s Innsmouth Free Press. So get thee to IndieGoGo and support them! $5 gets you a postcard from Canada and $10 gets you a DRM-Free ebook of Sword and Mythos when it comes out. There are lots of other reward tiers that will allow you to get access to some of the titles I mentioned above. Silvia Moreno-Garcia has wrote about Sword and Mythos and the fun genre Sword and Planet (think Pirates of Dark Water. Now never unthink it) to get you even more excited about this new ground that is just waiting for Cthulhu to stomp all over? Who would win in a fight? Conan or Cthulhu? I don’t know…

As of today, Self-Made Scoundrel, the second book in The Valley of Ten Crescents is now available in the Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Kobo stores! We put a lot of hard work getting it ready, getting it to GeekGirlCon and making it available at the above etailers. Even though it’s the second in the series, it still takes place before Thieves at Heart, so feel free to pick it up if you haven’t checked out the other titles in The Valley of Ten Crescents. I’m really quite pleased to have the second book out. It kind of makes the whole thing feel a bit more…real, if that makes any sense. I should have taken pictures of myself trying to sort through the MS and editing this thing, though to be honest, most of the pics would probably show me looking very calm. I do all my stressing in my head. We’re excited to offer the e-book and the print book to all of you! Check it out and hope you enjoy Derk’s adventures!

So we’re back from GeekGirlCon 2012/our trip to Portland, OR and boy howdy, did we have a blast! GeekGirlCon was AMAZING. In a bigger space than last year, the wonderful individuals who organized the Con still managed to create a well organized, fun event with amazing energy. Everyone seemed happy to be there. The cosplayers were awesome. The staff was killer. We had a lot of fun talking to people and selling. Caytlin Vilbrandt and I did a panel on Kickstarter (you can read a recap of it here) and I got to be on a panel about Geeks Raising Geeks with many other fine mothers. I went to Storytime with Susie with Small Boss and Admin took Small Boss to an awesome mask making workshop! Did I mention it was super fun? I saw a lot of people who attended last year, back for more and it was great to see and hang out with new people. Can’t wait to see what they come up with for 2013. We’ll be there. After GeekGirlCon we hightailed it to Portland, OR to see family and friends after being away from them for about 8 months and for Admin’s birthday. By the power of a barbecue and the internet we were able to see about 85-90% of everyone we wanted to see, I would say. Small Boss got to hang out with her fellow geek girl and baby cousin, IzBiz and I was able to speak to adults in real life. It was kind of magical. We were loathe to leave but depart we did, into the California Redwoods where: Small Boss got the flu?! We thought it was a bad corndog/chocolate milk issue but she had a fever. So we didn’t see as many of the Redwoods as we would have liked to but I did get to see Regular Show for the first time. On account of her illness we got back to our homebase a day early where: The Admin got the flu. HA! Actually, it wasn’t funny. But it was a convenient time for him to get ill, since he was technically off of paycheck work. So…yay? Anyway, everyone is no longer ill and we’re back at our homebase. So what’s next? Well, here’s a list. First of all, Self-Made Scoundrel, the second book in The Valley of Ten Crescents series will soon be available on Amazon.com, Barnes and Nobles and Kobo! It will be available in ebook and print and we’re SO EXCITED to get it out to you. All our hard work, available for purchase on the internet! The manuscript for the next book(s) have already been sent to my editor, Annetta Ribken. This is the REST of the material I have written for this series. The (s) is for the fact that we’re trying to sort out how many more books we have left. Originally we had plans for three more but with what we have and where there is space for more material, we might be able to give you all of Tavera’s adventures in one or two more books. They will be released, Techno-Hermes willing, by late 2012, early 2013. Techno-Hermes is a trickster deity but we are hard working and have senses of humor. So we’ll let you know about that. If we are in fact going to be wrapping up this chunk of Tavera’s story, we want to finish it with a bang. There will probably be a Kickstarter and some neat items offered related to the story. I’ve already gotten back a little bit of exciting feedback and have been researching a bit. AUDIOBOOK. Anna Meade is working on the Thieves at Heart Audiobook and the first chapter is done and sounds really good. Seriously. When this is available you will all be very pleased with it. Small Boss starts kindergarten. This means I will have more free time. This will affect the volume of work I am able to produce. Or possibly the amount of video games I will be able to play or books I will be able to read. I’m hoping work. Also, I can’t believe my spawn is going to start being indoctrinated by someone else. I have a few projects simmering which will all come to fruition as time, inspiration and keyboard slamming allows. This includes: an RPG sourcebook. A collection of weird short stories inspired by a song by a gothic rock band. A cyberpunk short story/novella influenced by one of my favourite German films. A graphic novel/webcomic set in the same world as The Valley of Ten Crescents but in a very different locale. And well, who knows what else? We are moving in approximately 245 days, give or take a week or two. Unless something goes insanely wrong, we will be moving (back) to Portland, OR. This is a good thing. A lot of our friends and a lot of our family are in the Pacific Northwest. Our old gaming group is there. So we’re going to be going kind of nuts, trying to get a lot of stuff done before we move. It’s not the biggest move we’ve done (GA to CA was a lot longer and nuttier, as we had never even seen our house in person before we moved in) but it’ll be a doozy. Work must be acquired. We will be trying to buy a house. SB will be starting another school.But once we get to Portland, we will be staying put. Unless something crazy happens. You never know. But we fully intend to stay there as long as humanly possible; to be honest, we’re kind of anxious to get there already. Hopefully work will make the time go more quickly! So that’s the news for now. More to come in the next few days as we hammer out Self-Made Scoundrel, the next books and make new, amazing t-shirts available to you. The Self-Made Scoundrel ones are awesome. Also, I got a Thieves at Heart shirt for GeekGirlCon […]

Yep, it’s that time of year again. That time when Back That Elf Up starts flailing around the house, thinking about GeekGirlCon, making plans, packing things and getting ready release our next book, Self-Made Scoundrel. The book is done and we have boxes of books sitting in our sala, waiting to be schlepped to Seattle for it’s print debut. At 103,000 words it’s a doozy of story, more than twice as long as Thieves at Heart. It deals with Derk from age 12 to around the time that Thieves at Heart starts off. It deals more with the official politics of the Valley, the role of the Church and what people who aren’t thieves do. There’s action, romance, some fun new faces and some old ones as well as bits that will wind up rearing their heads later in the series. I’m excited to have laid down more of the foundation of the Valley with Derk’s story, as well as get into his character. He’s a complicated guy. He’s idealistic but not a terribly good person. Romantic. Some would say handsome, hahaha! But there are plenty of other characters to love and hate as well. I’ve heard from one reader they’re a fan of Jezlen. We’ve been busy shipping off books and shirts, getting things printed for the Con and we still managed to send off the next book(s)’ manuscript to my wonderful editor. Lots to do now, still plenty in store for the future! I’ll be boothing at table 105 at GeekGirl Con with the wonderful ladies of Walking on Broken Glass so come by! We will have all our titles available digitally and again, print copies of Thieves at Heart and Self-Made Scoundrel. Come get your book signed! Hope to see you there!

What have we been doing these past few weeks? Well, we’ve been working on getting Self-Made Scoundrel in the can, working with Amy Clare Learmonth and Jack Cayless on art for the book, getting ready for GeekGirlCon and Indie+, writing articles for Troll in the Corner and STILL, the Admin managed to get together a Free E-book Promotion – Summer Solstice Free Fantasy! That’s right, in honor of the Summer Solstice, a whopping 23 authors have come together to offer 29 books for FREE to get you through those summer months (or winter months if you’re in the Southern Hemisphere). Be whisked away to fantastic lands as you sit by the pool, barbecue at the grill or relax on the beach. If you were wondering what to add to your summer reading list, you can’t go wrong with many of the titles. So what are you waiting for? Click the image and start downloading your free fantasy!

Enter for a chance to win free copies of Botanica Blues and Little Girl Lost.

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