Samantha MacLeod's Blog, page 26

Death & Beauty Preview

I’m getting excited about my Baldr/Hel romance, Death & Beauty, due out this June. (You can read the blurb here, my friends.)

And, just to get you excited too, here’s a sneak peek…

Death & Beauty Preview

A long rectangle of golden light spilled across the darkened hallway. I walked toward it, the echo of my own footsteps growing as the noise of music and feasting faded behind me. Slowly I became aware of a different set of voices, and I held my breath, listening.

“—reports that new arrivals have slowed somewhat, at least in the Northern corner. And travelers to the darkness are holding steady.” It was a man’s voice, nasal and droning.

“Thank you.” That was a woman, a full and rich female voice. It practically rippled with authority. “And the East?”

“Certainly, your Majesty!” Another woman, this one younger and excited. “Steady there as well. This year’s harvest must be holding.”

“Wait. Elenore, we have a visitor.”

The voices fell silent. There was the soft rustle of clothing and scuff of shoes against stone. I blinked as a light swung into the hallway.

“Yes?” It was the man. He was tall and thin, with a very prominent nose and full lips. He held a lantern.

I raised my hands in front of my chest to show I had no weapons and gave him a broad, easy smile. “I beg your pardon, good sir,” I said. “I’m seeking the Lady Hel.”

His face scarcely moved, but I sensed a strange interplay of repressed expressions. Amusement, perhaps?

“Let him enter.” The woman’s voice spoke from behind him.

“Very well,” he said, bowing to the side.

I thanked him and entered. The room was sparsely furnished, with a low hearthfire and several chairs. A small dais stood at the end of the room, with a table and simple black chair.

On the chair sat a skeleton.

A moving skeleton.

I pressed my lips together and held my back stiff, fighting the urge to scream. An enormous blue eyeball jerked in the skeleton’s head as it examined a ream of parchment on the table, its bony fingers flicking through the pages. The skeleton’s lower jaw moved, and the woman’s rich voice echoed across the room.

“One moment.”

Then she turned toward me, and only my decades of warrior’s training with Óðinn kept me from running.

She wasn’t a skeleton.

She was half a skeleton.

The right side of her face and body was a young woman with sallow skin and stringy, dark hair, wearing a utilitarian brown dress. And the left side of her body was dead. As I stared, something sleek and dark shifted inside her exposed rib cage, disrupting the tatters of her dress. I was suddenly very grateful I’d not eaten anything at that feast.

“You’ve found me,” the skeleton woman said. “What do you want?”

I swallowed hard against the bile rising in my throat. “Gracious Lady, my name is—”

“Stop. Stop it.” The bones of her fingers clattered as she waved her hand in the air. “I know who you are, Baldr Óðinnsen. And I can guess why you’re here.”

“Oh, really?” I gave her my most winning smile.

It was met with a flat stare from both her living and her dead eyes. “Let me guess. You’ve come to offer me your heroic assistance, anything I desire, in exchange for one tiny, little favor.”

I tried to widen my smile. “Perhaps, dear Lady.”

She snorted. “Stop. Please, by the Nine Realms. It’s just Hel. And am I on the right track, Baldr?”

“You are most perceptive,” I admitted.

“So you’ve come to ask a boon. And what did you have in mind as an exchange, son of Óðinn? Were you going to offer to ride out against my enemies? To defend my borders? To act as my champion in single combat?”

I bowed so low I was almost even with her feet, one clad in a simple sandal and one made of bone. With, if I wasn’t mistaken, a single maggot in the ankle. I tried to concentrate on the foot with the sandal.

“I would consider it my honor and my duty, my…uh. Hel.”

She laughed. Her voice rang out, bouncing off the walls and growing in strength. I stood up, puzzled. Her attendants were laughing too. The tall, thin man at least had the dignity to attempt to cover his mouth, but the young woman was laughing openly.

“I…I’m not sure I understand,” I said.

Hel wiped her living eye with her skeletal hand. “Oh, you fool. We’re dead! What borders do we have to defend, Baldr Óðinnsen? Niflhel echoes the world above, and it belongs to only us! What enemies do the dead have?”

She stood. The effect was quite disconcerting; I could see her femur rotating in her pelvis.

“And why would I need a champion? Who would dare attack me?”

I swallowed, thinking fast. “Let me teach you,” I said…

*

Stay tuned for more, like a sign-up sheet for ARC copies!

Honeymoon now in Paperback!

My erotic novella about the continuing adventures of Loki and Caroline is now available in paperback!

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Why paperback, you ask? And why now?

[image error]Yes, I dedicated my erotic novella to my grandmother. She’s cool.

Mostly because it’s now really easy to turn an ebook into a paperback. Amazon’s Kindle page even has templates you can download. Seriously – the hardest part was picking a font.

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And now Honeymoon can be part of your world… I mean, bookshelf… for only $9.99!

Pick up a copy here, my friends.

If you’d like to know what you’re getting yourself into, you can read a preview from Honeymoon here, or a very naughty excerpt here.

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Making It: Indy Publishing & Money

I start my third job today.

If you count caring for small children as a job, I suppose it’ll be my fourth job, but I’m talking about actual, paid work here. In addition to royalties from my writing, I’m an adjunct philosophy professor (the pay for that one is actually worse than it sounds), and I just picked up an extra teaching gig.

Why?

For the money.

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Before I published The Trickster’s Lover, I scoured the internet, trying to find out how much money writers actually make. And I discovered that, with a few exceptions (thank you, Jessi Gage!), writers are pretty damn cagey when it comes to talking about money.

(Yes, there is an entire book about writers and money called Scratch, but those are hoity-toity literary writers, not indy-published erotic romance writers.)

“When I’m published,” I vowed to myself, “I’ll be honest about the money! I’ll post it to my blog, by God!”

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In September, I published The Trickster’s Lover. And then I got cagey about the money, aside from the occasional vague post like this.

Here’s the truth:

I’m embarrassed.

My novel got good reviews, and yes, it sold. But not like I’d hoped.

But I did make a vow to talk about the actual finances of independent publishing. And hey, I already talk about sex. Why not add another forbidden topic to the mix and be totally, 100% explicit…about money?

So here it is:

The Trickster’s Lover came out in September. In November (somewhat unwisely, as this came out right after the election) I published my Loki/Caroline novella Honeymoon. And, in February, I published my short story Persephone Remembers the Pomegranates.

Trickster’s Lover sells for $3.99 currently, although I’ve sold most of my books during .99 sales. Honeymoon and Persephone are both .99. I’ve been paid for my sales through January of this year.

In five months, I made $355 (that’s about $70 a month).

As a small business, Samantha MacLeod has not yet broken even. I’ve spent more money on advertising, cover design, and the like than I’ve made from my sales, partially because I made some bad, optimism-driven decisions early on.

But I am at the point where my business is self-sustaining; I’m only spending money I’ve earned. For a five-month-old business, my husband assures me, that’s not too shabby.

It’s just not enough to help ends meet around the MacLeod household. Hence, like almost all the other writers, and all the other artists, I’ve got day job(s).

And no, I’m not going to dramatically fling back my hair, slam down my laptop, and declare I’m never writing again.

[image error]I do still reserve the right to throw myself on a bed and sob.

I’m going to keep plugging away after work, or while my kids are napping, or late at night, as the artist types do. Because the stories are still there, damn it, and they want to be found.

So there you have it.

Totally explicit talk…about the financial realities of indy publishing erotic romance.

HOT, BABY!

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April 8th…

Date of the first s’more of 2017!

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Bring on camping season!

(Maybe after the snow melts, tho’)

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My Wildly Unpopular Opinion…

I’m just going to come out and say it:

I don’t like mates.

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I know, I know – this is crazy talk, especially coming from a paranormal romance author whose next novel is called The Wolf’s Lover.

Fated mates is the troupe in paranormal romance. Twilight did it. Kresley Cole does it. Basically, it’s white on rice in the paranormal romance world.

The details vary, but PNR mates are almost always some take on, “I can only love my fated mate.” In Cole’s Immortals After Dark series, some of her fantastical creatures can only orgasm with their fated mates.

[image error]That would suck, yo.

Yes, I’ve read books with fated mates. I’ve even enjoyed some of them. But overall, the whole mates thing just does not work for me.

Why not?

Lemme break it down for you.

What’s sexier?

The dashingly handsome alpha male werewolf grabs you in his burly arms, stares into your eyes, and says, “I love you. Because it is physically impossible for me to fall in love with anyone else. Or even have sex with anyone else. It’s basically you or lifelong celibacy, baby.”

OR…

The dashingly handsome alpha male werewolf grabs you in his burly arms, stares into your eyes, and says, “I love you. Because I’ve been around a bit and, after experiencing what the world has to offer, I choose to be with you. Cause you’re the best, baby.”

[image error]*dreamy sigh*

Plus I think it’s a cop out.

I know it’s hard to describe why exactly two people fall in love, because love is irrational and ineffable. But come on now, if a Disney kid’s movie can do it in one musical number, we don’t need to rely on some mystical, destined force to explain love.

[image error]Right?!?

And finally, I have a philosophical bone to pick with this whole mates thing.

It just doesn’t send the right message.

According to the amazing blog What If?, if we all have one destined soulmate, then only one out of every ten thousand people will find true love. (Check out the post – it’s fantastic.)

Ahhh, science. Is there anything more romantic?

So, if our fiction goes on and on about how amazingly awesome it is to have your special mate  – literally the only person you are physically capable of screwing for the rest of your life – we might get this misguided idea that love is a magical, sexual connection you either have or don’t have from the outset, instead of realizing love involves a sexual connection AND having conversations with a person until you actually get to know them and realize you kinda like them.

Then maybe you’ll decide you only want to screw one person for the rest of your life.

Or not…

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Coming Summer 2017: Death & Beauty

My little side project about Baldr and Hel (mentioned here) has officially taken on a life of its own.

I’ve got a title. I’ve got a blurb. And now… I’ve got a finished rough draft, too.

Yes, I just typed “THE END.”

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Of course, “THE END” is pretty damn far from the actual end, at least for me. I still need to have several cycles of revisions, incorporate feedback from beta readers (want to be a beta reader? email me!), and do the line edit. Plus I’m starting my third job in exactly one week…

Still, I’m nothing if not optimistic!

Here’s hoping you’ll see Death & Beauty in a virtual bookstore near you in, shall we say, June..?

And just to get you excited, here’s what I’ve got for a blurb!

Death & Beauty Blurb

Baldr the Beautiful is dead.

Desperate to get back to his role as Óðinn’s favorite son, Baldr strikes a bargain with Hel, the terrifying half living and half skeletal queen of the realm of the dead. He offers her the only thing he’s got: knowledge from the living world. Hel gives him three days. If he can teach her something new, she will return him to the realms of the living.

But the icy Hel seems completely impervious to Baldr’s charms. What’s worse, she already knows everything. By the end of the third day, Baldr realizes he’s only got one chance left to impress her.

Returning to his former life looks like it’s going to depend on Baldr the Beautiful seducing the most formidable woman in the Nine Realms.

*

What do you think, my virtual friends? As always, feedback is much appreciated!

What Spring Looks Like in Maine…

Well, this March looked just like winter!

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But, if you look closely, you can see the snow covering our boat actually melted.

Spring is in the air!

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Book Review: The Gospel of Loki by Joanne M. Harris

Wow, did I have mixed feelings about this one.

I enjoyed a lot of aspects of Harris’s thoughtful, creative re-imagining of Norse mythology, but much of this novel had me cocking my head and going, “Huh?”

[image error]Not the cover, though. That cover is AWESOME!

I’ll start with the good…

Many of the characters are great. Sigyn is awesome.

Granted, Loki’s long-suffering wife in Harris’s novel is nothing like the Sigyn in my Loki novel. Still, this portrayal is excellent; she manages to be touching, hilarious, and just the right combination of tragic and comedic. Harris nailed it here.

Much of the world-building in this novel is also fascinating (with one exception…I’ll get there). Harris’s mythological universe is like a cross between the Eddas and Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series. And, most of the time, it really worked. I could get Ironwood Forest, the Dreaming, even the constant struggle between chaos and order.

And hey, there’s Loki!

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Harris’s Loki is a convincing, heartbreaking, unreliable narrator. That’s tricky to pull off, and I commend it.

But… Not all the parts worked, and even those I liked didn’t work all the time.

It was interesting to see what aspects of Norse mythology Harris used, and what she ignored. Many of the stories – Thor as a bride, the abduction of Idunn – come straight from the text. But some things don’t; Loki’s origin, for instance. In Harris’s novel, he’s a being of pure chaos called into physical form. Which is cool and all, but in the Eddas he’s a Jotunn, with named parents.

Still, that’s part of the fun of playing with myths. You can take what you like and improvise wildly with the rest.

A change I didn’t quite understand was Harris’s treatment of Loki’s sons, Vali and Nari. Their fate in the Eddas is just about the worst thing imaginable, and I’m not sure why Harris shied away from it. Her decision to gloss it over felt like a missed opportunity.

And that one exception to her world-building? It was Asgard, realm of the Æsir and the setting for much of the novel.

I understand the need to modernize these myths, but I think Harris veered a little too far into modernization with Asgard. The realm of the Æsir just wasn’t coherent. Sure, I’ll accept that gods shape-shift and have alternate battle forms. But it’s really pushing my willful suspension of disbelief to think they would say, “Chillax.”

Landscape descriptions in Asgard suffered from a similar problem. Loki says his housing doesn’t have running water, or complains about the curtains in Sigyn’s house, and I’m thinking, “Wait, didn’t these stories take place in pre-history?”

I’m not going to say someone’s depiction of Asgard is wrong – I mean, my Loki novel has Thor saying “bumping uglies” – but those details pulled me out of the story and left me scratching my head.

And then there’s the ending.

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Obviously I’m not going to tell you how this novel ends. Even I’m not that evil.

And I won’t say I was expecting rainbows and unicorns. The Norse myths themselves don’t exactly have a surplus of rainbows or unicorns. But I felt like Harris was building up to something. There was a fair amount of scheming, some planning, a dash of foreshadowing…

Then it was over.

It wasn’t bad, exactly, but it didn’t quite leave me lying in bed, smoking a cigarette.

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So. Lots of good, lots of head-scratching, and a whole hell of a lot of Loki.

You can find The Gospel of Loki for yourself right here, my friends.

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Drinking the Blood of the Trees…

This past weekend was Maine Maple Sunday, so we took the kids out to visit a maple syrup farm!

[image error]yummmm….

Yes, maple syrup comes from maple trees. There are even origin myths for maple syrup and maple sugar, which was a winter survival food for the Native Americans.

In the early spring, when the nights are cold and the days are (kind of) warm, sap starts to flow in the sugar maple trees. Apparently, the sap only contains enough sugar to make syrup if days are warm and sunny, and nights dip below freezing. So maple syrup production is limited to cold, Northern states.

(And you, Canada.)

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Early spring is when you can put a tap in a sugar maple tree and collect the sap (no, this doesn’t hurt the tree). Maple sap is clear and only mildly sugar-y.

To make maple syrup and sugar, you need to boil the ever-loving heck out of the sap in the sugar shack.

[image error]The Sugar Shack at Nash Valley Farm

Maple sap is boiled for hours to become syrup, which drips into the huge, silver jug. It takes 40 gallons of sap for one gallon of syrup, which is why one gallon of maple syrup costs over $50.

[image error]The wood-fired maple syrup evaporator

My husband (the scientist) looked up the chemistry of maple syrup once we got home. Maple sugar is apparently exactly the same as regular sugar – it’s a combination of glucose and fructose.

And the rest of maple syrup?

“Oh, it’s pretty much exactly what you’d expect to find in any type of blood,” he said. “It’s just tree blood.”

So maple syrup is… distilled tree blood.

[image error]Delicious!

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“Unapologetically hooked me from the beginning”

Sarah at The Critiquing Chemist just posted a review of The Trickster’s Lover!

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“The Trickster’s Lover surprisingly blew away any expectations I’d been harboring, quickly capturing my complete and undivided attention,” Sarah writes.

“As such, this novel serves as a much needed reminder regarding how refreshing it is to step outside of your comfort zone and read books that you might not normally. With that being said, once I started this book, I couldn’t put it down, surprised with how much I was thoroughly enjoying this tale, which weaves together Norse mythology and romance.”

Thank you so much, Sarah!

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Sarah also raises some great questions in the spoilers section. And yes, Sarah, I plan to answer all the questions in my next book(s)… if/when I ever finish writing and revising them!