Lisa Emme's Blog, page 23

An Interview with a Vampire

It’s Vampire Week and to celebrate Isaac has graciously agreed to participate in an interview. Stop by Compelling Beasts and visit. It will be illuminating to say the least.

This is really Tom Mison. When they make Dead and Kicking into a movie, he totally gets the part of Isaac if he wants it ;-)

What Writers Owe Their Characters

lisaemme:

I can totally relate to this article. I was possessed by Harry’s story and had to tell it. It was like an addiction that didn’t let up until I typed ‘The End’ on book three. Even now, there are bits and pieces of further adventures starting to gel in the recesses of my mind. When they are ready to get out, when they finally bubble to the surface, I will have no choice but to tell that story too.

Originally posted on Author: Helen Cox:

Photograph: Eric Richards

I wasn’t planning on writing a fiction book when they came to me. It was 10.30 on an otherwise uneventful Thursday evening. I had curricula to plan. And several non-fiction projects on the boil. I didn’t have the head-space for anything else but Esther, Jack, Mona and Walt were not the kind of people to take no for an answer. Particularly Esther. Headstrong, acerbic and drier than the most remote corners of Tatooine, she was insistent I tell her story. For a few moments she may even have possessed me. I can’t think of any other reason I opened that clean Microsoft Word document and typed ‘Chapter One’ at the top of it.

Sighing, muttering that I should already be asleep, I listened to Esther. She told me about her life working at the Starlight Diner in New York. Two thousand words later I clicked ‘save as’, and labelled the…

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Vampire Week

Vampire Week is coming to Compelling Beasts and I’m taking part.  Watch here for updates when my contributions go live throughout the week.  In the meantime, I thought I would give you a little background on the vampire mythos of Harry’s world.

Vampires

Vampires and how they are portrayed can run the gambit.  From the traditional

to the modern/futuristic

From campy

to sexy

to the definitely not-so-sexy.

In Harry’s world there are different types of Vampiro or vampires, with different abilities and powers.

Cutters – These are the wannabe vamps.  They are the Goths that like to play at being vampires.  They are called cutters because of the practice of keeping a small razor blade to slice the skin so they can suck blood.  Most cutters are just posers, but some have the potential to be true vamps.  The ones with potential will actually gain energy from blood, kind of like a high.  Cutters are not undead but they hang around real vampires in the hopes of ingratiating themselves to a powerful vampire in order to receive the ‘Kiss’.

Vampires – are the most common of the Vampiro. They are undead and have retractable fangs.  They must drink blood to survive.  They can still eat and drink but without a daily dose of live human blood they will begin to lose their essence.  Vampires can be of varying power.

Vlads – Powerful vampires are called Vlads. Vlads can go out in the day but tend to have an aversion to direct sunlight.  No vampire, no matter how powerful can be out in the light of the dawning sun.

Princes, Kings, Emperors (and their corresponding female titles) – These are the higher power levels of the Vampiro hierarchy and much more rare.  Depending on how powerful, they can draw life essence from a mere skin to skin touch.  Some can absorb it from their surroundings.  They don’t need to get it from a blood meal.

The Magister – the top vampire in a territory.  The more powerful the Magister, the bigger the territory.

Dhamphirs – Most vampires are made in the traditional way through the Eternal Kiss, but there can also be born vampires. These are people that are born with the vamp ‘gene’ that will kick in on their first death to make them undead.  Dhamphirs are very rare and result from the successful mating between a male vampire and a female human.  While alive, they don’t need blood, but they can get a euphoric high from it.  They may also have some special powers including supernatural healing, super strength and speed, telekinesis, and telepathy.

Here’s my dream casting of the major vampire roles in Dead and Kicking:

Fun Friday – A Day Late

Saw this and it made me laugh.  Thought I would share.

Reviews are Essential!

This was originally posted over at Precipice Books a couple of years ago but still applies.  I’m really trying to get my foot in the door on Amazon and especially on iTunes.  Apple iTunes is a huge potential market for ebooks. The more favourable reviews and likes I have there, the better my chances of getting noticed.

If you have already left a review at an online retailer or Goodreads, thank you! Please consider going to Amazon and iTunes (you have to log on to the iTunes store) and leaving a review there as well.  It will really help me out.

Harry and the Bechdel Test

‘The Bechdel Test’ was inspired by cartoonist Alison Bechdel‘s 1985 tongue-in-cheek comic strip ‘The Rule’ which became a basic measure to see if women are fairly represented in a film.

Anita Sarkeesian, creator and host of the FeministFrequency, does an excellent job explaining what the Bechdel Test is all about.  Basically, for a movie to pass the Bechdel Test, you must be able to answer ‘yes’ to the following questions:

1: Does it have at least two female characters?

2: Do they talk to one another?

3: Do they talk about something other than a man?

Simple, right? Well, you’d think so, but a surprising number of Hollywood movies don’t pass the test. What is even more surprising is the number of films you would think should pass but don’t. This is because, as Anna Waletzko discusses in her Huffington Post article, the Bechdel Test may be an excellent tool in triggering discussion, but it is a superficial measure of female empowerment in film.

Despite these limitations, it can be argued (as in this article by Charlie Jane Anders) that the test is important because it is often a part, or the beginning, of a larger and more complicated conversation about female representation in movies.  It serves as a measure of how we are doing at promoting and increasing the opportunities for women.

So how did I do with Harry in Dead and Kicking?

1: At least two women?

Yes, besides Harry there are her roommates, Holly and Tess, as well as several other supporting women, including the two sisters and mother of the the main character Nash.

2. & 3.  Do they talk about something other than a man?

Yes.  There is a fair amount of banter between Tess and Harry especially, and very little of it is about a man.  There are also plenty of conversations between all the female characters THAT ACTUALLY MOVE THE PLOT FORWARD.

I’ll take that as a passing grade.

Want More Harry?

It’s a little like closing the barn door after the horse is gone, but I thought I would make it official.  Here’s the cover for Harry’s second book.  Tooth and Claw is set for release January 5, 2015.

Available for pre-order Now.  Check your favourite online retailer!

Amazon

Kobo

iTunes

Barnes & Noble

Available in print January 5, 2016

Last Stop on the Tour

We’re wrapping things up at Stormy Nights Reviewing.  Thanks for coming along for the ride.

Haven’t got your copy of Dead and Kicking yet?  Get yours today at your favourite online retailer.

Available in all digital formats!

Amazon

Kobo

iTunes

Barnes & Noble

Also available in print!

Chapters

Createspace

Barnes & Noble

Amazon

Goodreads Giveaway Results

So as part of my launch week marketing for Dead and Kicking, I decided to try using a Goodreads Giveaway. The Goodreads Giveaway system is pretty simple.  Basically you don’t have to do much except tell Goodreads how many copies you want to give away, where you’re prepared to mail them, and when and how long you’d like the giveaway to run. The good folks at Goodreads take care of the rest. They run it, pick the winners and send you their addresses, freeing up time for you to do something else like obsessively stalk you book and see how many entries you have.

I had read a great article with tips on using the giveaway that suggested the shorter the giveaway the better, so that’s what I went for.  I chose one week, which seems to be the shortest time allowed (I originally tried to set it to 3 days thinking I’d have several giveaways instead of just one, but it wouldn’t let me) and offered up 3 signed copies as prizes.

Since it irks me when I try and enter a giveaway only to find out it is restricted to the US only, I tried to open mine up to as many countries as possible and then crossed my fingers and hoped the winners were in the US which would be the cheapest for postage (it’s actually cheaper to mail a book to the US – a different country! – than to Saskatchewan, the province right next door to mine).  I fully admit to omitting some countries from the draw because I thought the postage would be horrendous and the likelihood of the book actually arriving low.

Now the goal of a giveaway is not to gain reviews.  In fact Goodreads states that only 60% of your prize winners actually read and review your book (and the author of the article I mentioned earlier thinks it’s actually much lower).  I hope that my winners are in that group and do leave a favourable review, but I’m not counting on it.  The real goal of a giveaway is about getting your book on the virtual shelves of fellow readers.  The real goal is SALES.  You want Goodreads users to add your book to their ‘To Read’ list so that in the future they will spot it and go ‘oh yeah, that looked interesting’ and then buy your book. The more entries you get in a giveaway, the more people there are that have seen your book and shown an interest in it.

Although I don’t have any sales numbers to back it up, I would have to say that my giveaway was a success.  I more than surpassed my expectations for the week.  Over one thousand people saw my giveaway and entered the draw.  That’s one thousand plus potential buyers.

My three winners were all located in the US, so postage was reasonable.  Because I decided to give signed copies away, I wasn’t able to send directly from Createspace, but it also allowed me to write a personal note to each winner.  I’m hoping the personal touch might help get a review or two for my effort.  Time will tell.  As to sales, well, time will tell with that too, but overall, I would definitely consider the Goodreads Giveaway a worthwhile tool in the indie author’s marketing toolbox.

A Quickie – Tour Stop 9

Very quick stop at Paranormal Romance And Beyond.  From Belgium yesterday to the southern USA today; Harry’s going to have jet lag! There’s another chance to enter to win a signed copy of Dead and Kicking. Better hurry! Contest closes tomorrow night.