Patti O'Shea's Blog, page 203

Character Relationships

Please stop over and visit me at Sia McKye's Thoughts Over Coffee blog! I'm talking about the relationships between characters in In the Darkest Night. Not only the hero and heroine, but with others as well.

In the Darkest Night Is Available Now!

"A riveting thrill ride." Publishers Weekly (Starred review!)

In the Darkest Night releases today! Woot!

Kel Andrews has spent the last year living with nightmares and flashbacks. Unwilling to share what happened, he's withdrawn from his family and the Gineal council has removed him from his position as a troubleshooter. But when a woman shows up asking for protection from a demon, Kel reluctantly agrees to help--and finds himself facing an unexpected adversary, one he doesn't know how to figh...

Twitter Contest!

I'm running a Spread the Word on Twitter Contest to help get out the word about In the Darkest Night coming out today! You can find the full rules and information on what you need to do on my website, but the gist of it is:

Follow me on Twitter @Patti_OShea (Twitter is a FREE social networking site).There will be 4 posts throughout the day that start "PLZ RT" All you need to do to enter is retweet one or all of those posts. If you retweet 3 posts, you have 3 entries in the contest. If you...

Appearances

I'll be making a couple of guest blogging appearances this week for the release of In the Darkest Night. Please visit me here:

March 30th

The Raven Happy Hour Blog

Mandy Roth's Nocturnal Journal

March 31st

Sia McKye's Thoughts...OVER COFFEE

And please comment and say hi, so I don't feel lonely. :-)

From the Journal of the Gineal Council Leader

September 29, 2009

Today, the council removed Kellan Andrews from troubleshooter duties. The frantic expression that crossed his face concerns me, but I'm more fearful of what would happen if he remained active. We'd hoped that since he'd refused help, he'd work his way through this on his own, however, that didn't happen. Worse, he's taken dangerous risks with his life on many of his assignments. We can no longer enable his death wish.

As council leader, I've access to information that mos...

Assignments, Open - From the Files of the Gineal Council

Name: Farran Monroe

Age: 25

Identifying Information: Tàireil; Weak magical powers (per troubleshooters who encountered her).

Appearance: Height - estimated at 5' 6"; hair color - chestnut; eyes - blue; possible facial scar (If power is as weak as suspected).

Last Known Location: Seattle, WA

Last Seen by the Gineal: June 2009

Notes: Monroe actively worked to steal the dracontias from the Gineal dragon mage. Supposition is that she was coerced by her family, all of whom were deemed to be strong mag...

From the Files of the Gineal Council - Personnel

[image error] Name: Kellan Andrews

Age: 29

Occupation: Troubleshooter

Status: Suspended - 29 September 2009

Notes from the Healing Temple:

05 February 2009

The patient's injuries are severe. Signs indicate he was tortured repeatedly and at length for weeks. Damage to nearly all internal organs, including heart, lungs, kidneys, spleen, and liver. Possible brain trauma. A team of healers has been assigned to work in shifts, ensuring that energy reaches him twenty-four hours a day....

Maybe Nothing For Posterity

There was an article in the NY Times about how archivists are trying to figure out how to preserve the electronic files of writers such as John Updike and Salman Rushdie. This raised some discussion on one of my writers loops and one of the topics that came up was how writers can't stop fiddling with stories. You see, no story is ever done, it's simply published--to paraphrase some famous writer whose name I can't recall.

I can tell you what it's like for me. This idea comes in--it's new, i...

Writers and Formatting

Wow. Lately I've seen editors talking about people submitting queries in bizarre, hard-to-read fonts. All I can think is WTF? These writers must not want to be published very much.

I started writing when I was 14. By the time I was 15, I knew I wanted to do more than scribble in my notebook--I wanted to do this professionally. So I asked my mom to drive me to the library and I checked out a bunch of books on how to write and submit.

Yes, when I was 15 years old I knew better than to submit...

Rainbow Notes

I make notes. All the time. Anywhere. This is why I travel with a steno pad in my tote bag. I used to make notes on random pieces of paper, but it became too hard to find anything and I felt disorganized. The steno pad lets me keep all my notes in one place.

It's not perfect. One day I might be making notes on idea three and the next day on idea two and the day after that on idea four, and this means that my information is all mixed up. If you paged through the pad I have with me today,...