R. Lee Smith's Blog, page 30

Weekend Writer Warrior 8/25

If you’re looking for my Hot Heroes post for HD Thomson’s blog hop, you can find it here.

Today’s WeWriWa is from The Last Hour of Gann, picking up where Wednesday’s Hump Day Hook left off and continuing with tomorrow’s Sunday Sneak Peek. Feel free to catch up if you’re just joining me, and don’t forget to leave a comment if you want to enter my Gann Giveaway! One lucky winner will be drawn just as soon as I’m ready for the book to go live. You can keep an eye on my progress with the Work-In-Progress widget in the sidebar. Just remember that, like all my books, The Last Hour of Gann contains graphic violence and strong sexual content, so if you want to enter the drawing, you have to tell me so each and every time you leave a comment. Thanks for reading!

“How far away would you say the fire burns?” asked the abbot.

It was a fair question. Meoraq was one of perhaps a hundred men in Xheoth this night who had ever been beyond the city’s walls. To speak in measurements of distance had only the most abstract meaning to most citizens, but this man had surely made pilgrimages in the past to be in a position of such authority now and so Meoraq considered the question fairly.

“The shadow of the Stepped Rise falls before it,” he said at last, “and is not illuminated by it. It could not be less than thirty spans.”

The other man grunted thoughtfully. “To see a flame at thirty spans…What city lies in that direction?”

Hump Day Hook 8/21

If you’re looking for my Hot Heroes post for the HD Thomson blog hop, you can find it here!

Hump Day Hook is a weekly blog hop where writers are invited to hook readers with just a few paragraphs from a work in progress or published work. Visit their site by clicking on the button below for a list of other participating writers and share the love!

As he meditated, one of the acolytes was jostled suddenly forward by the crowd, stumbling hard against Meoraq’s back. Meoraq spared his immediate bows and apologies a distracted grunt, but the damage was done. With a few shouts and clapped hands, the courtyard was cleared of all but the highest members of the priestly caste. The next man who drew near to speak apology was the abbot, whose name escaped Meoraq for the moment, but who seemed an amiable sort, for one of his caste.

They watched the fire together in comfortable silence. The rain and the wind both grew stronger, making the gesticulations of the flame wilder and more desperate even as it began to die down.

“It seems to be beckoning,” the abbot remarked.

Meoraq acknowledged him with a grunt, but his interest intensified. It did look like a beckoning arm now, less like the clutching one he had first imagined it to be.

Sunday Sneak Peek 8/18

If you’re looking for my Hot Heroes post for HD Thomson’s blog hop, you can find it here!

Sneak Peek Sunday is a weekly blog hop in which writers are challenged to post six paragraphs, no more and no less, from a published work or work in progress and then invite other writers, readers and random bloggers to read, critique and comment. Visit their site by clicking on the button below for a list of other participating writers and share the love! Today’s Sneak Peek is from Meoraq’s first chapter in The Last Hour of Gann. Obviously, it contains one major spoiler, but if you’ve been reading my other snippets from The Last Hour of Gann, you probably suspected the colonists from Earth weren’t going to land safely on planet Plymouth after all, so yeah…big burning tower of fire that Meoraq sees in the distance? The wreck of the first deep-space starship, The Pioneer. And that is all you need to know, so read, enjoy, and don’t forget to let me know if you want to enter my Gann Giveaway!

In the city of Xheoth, in the state of Yroq, in the world and the hour of Gann, a pillar of fire rose up in the east, reaching like a desperate hand to heaven. It was a cool night, but not a cold one, and rainless although the wind was strong over the city, and so there were many who saw this miraculous sight. Uyane Meoraq, Sword of Sheul and well-honored in His sight, was one of them.

He supposed that was a smallish sort of miracle in itself. He spent enough time under the open sky that, given his leisure, he preferred a closed hall for his evening meditations. But the hall was engaged this night for the young initiates of Xi’Xheoth to take their oaths of ascension and so Meoraq took himself to the rooftop courtyard instead. He saw the fire that he might otherwise have never seen and therefore, there must have been some significance to the vision meant only for him. He meditated upon that as he watched it burn.

The sky had been filled with omens for many years, they said, but this was the first Meoraq himself had seen and he was a Sheulek—God’s Striding Foot—who had spent most of the past twelve years in the wildlands. And this, this was far more impressive a sign than the occasional glimpses of light or colors that some claimed to have seen behind the ever-present clouds. For hours, that blazing arm strained upwards and its many fingers grasped at salvation, but though it fell with each strong gust of wind, it always rose again.

Behind the low walls that separated the temple’s courtyard from those of the city’s ruling Houses, Meoraq could see smaller flames spark to life as braziers were lit, until it seemed all Xheoth had come out to see. As a man who often went many days without seeing another living man or hearing any dumaq voice but his own, sights such as these still had power over Meoraq. He admired the city as he admired the fire in the sky. Walls a quarter-span thick, now alive with lights, formed a perfect ring around the protected fields where cattlemen and farmers labored. In the daylight, from this same vantage, he would be able to see the lush colors of living crop against the dead wastes of the world outside the city walls. But at night, on this night, the fires of so many braziers seemed a wondrous proof of life, a miracle in itself, and as precious as any burning pillar Sheul had sent to be seen.

Meoraq bore it a grateful witness, keeping his own company as the rooftop over the temple-district filled with on-lookers. Although they kept a respectful distance, every backwards glance showed Meoraq more priestly robes: acolytes, monks, scribes, oracles and even the young candle-wards came to stare until it seemed there could not be a man left in the rooms beneath his feet.

Hours passed, each one marked by the tolling of bells throughout the city, not quite in sync with one another. It began to rain, dampening not only the fields below—the sweet, green smell of freshly-wetted manure billowed up at once and Meoraq breathed it in, still thinking of fields, of farms, of life—but the enthusiasm of many of those watching. Braziers all across the city roof began to gutter and die, breaking the perfection of the ring they had so briefly formed, but some stayed regardless of the discomfort. Meoraq was one of these. There would always be rain and he would always have days when he had to walk through it and nights when he had to sleep in it, but this fiery arm might never come again and he still had not determined its meaning.

 

Weekend Writer Warrior 8/17

If you’re looking for my Hot Summer Heroes post for HD Thomson’s blog hop, you can find it here!

The Weekend Writing Warriors blog hop is a weekly event in which writers are invited to share eight sentences from one of their works for other writers, readers and random bloggers to read, critique and comment on. Visit their site by clicking on the button below for a list of other participating writers and share the love!

Today’s snippet concludes the scene in the kitchen between Amber and Nicci (and because it concludes it in only seven sentences, I went back and repeated a sentence from last week.) Tomorrow, I skip ahead about fifty pages and start a new scene with Meoraq. Don’t forget to enter the Gann Giveaway for a chance to win a free ecopy of the book! I’m plugging right along on those edits!

* * *

Good news, everyone! (Fifty points to you if you read that in Professor Farnsworth’s voice.) Some time ago, I signed up with an indie publisher to help me get my book out there in formats that confound me, and she has just informed me that as of today, all my books are now available on Barnes and Noble’s NOOK! Starting tomorrow, she will begin the laborious and thankless task of submitting the books to Kobo, ARE and the Apple store as well, so now when I say the Gann Giveaway will award a free ecopy of my book, I don’t just mean for the Kindle! Just be aware that after submitting to Apple, it may still be six weeks before the book makes it through their hellish screening process in order that I not end up in adult-filter purgatory.

She looked at herself in the bathroom mirror and saw a big (fat) unsmiling (mean-eyed) stranger (bitch) who’d bullied her only living relative on the day of their mother’s funeral.

“It had to be said,” whispered Amber. She rinsed her mouth and washed her face and put her hair up. “Sometimes you just have to say the bad stuff.”

She went on out past weeping Nicci and off to work like it didn’t matter. In a way, it didn’t. They simply didn’t have any choice.

 

Hot Heroes of Summer Blog Hop

I’m back for another blog hop hosted by H.D. Thomson at http://www.hdthomson.com, the same folks who brought us the Bad Boys of Summer. Since summer ain’t over yet, they’re keeping the heat on with a look at Hot Heroes. At the last writer’s convention I attended, I visited more than a few panels discussing that very subject, particularly as they apply with the growing popularity of paranormal romance. After all, not of all our heroes could make the cover of Teen People. Fangoria, maybe, but never Teen People. Heck, I’ve got eight books out—soon to be nine—and only one of them has a hero that could even pass for human, and that’s just if no one looks too close.

Beauty and the Beast is one of the oldest romances ever told, with variations in virtually every culture, whose message inspired and continues to inspire authors, screenwriters, playwrights and especially audiences for centuries. Today’s romances are full of aliens, shifters, fairies, demons, dragons and demi-gods and are they hot? Can I get a hell-yeah! You just have to look for it a little harder. The real question is not are these heroes hot, but where does the hotness come from? A vampire, at least, can still have a great smile, but a werewolf’s grin is hardly a romantic gesture.

At the writer’s convention, one of the things I heard again and again was to emphasize the traits to which your (mostly) human audience can relate. In each of my heroes, I found the button that said ‘hot’ to me and I mashed that sucker like it was Call of Duty. There are heroic archetypes and I embrace them shamelessly. Every writer wants to create something original and memorable, but I think there’s a lot to be said for knowing what the rules are before you break ‘em.

However, I also heard that you should de-emphasize your hero’s inhuman qualities. “Always have your shifter shift in the bedroom,” one said. “No one wants to feel fur on her back.” And, man, I cannot disagree enough. I say, if you’re writing paranormal, your writing for people who want to read paranormal. They not only want fur on their back, they want teeth on their neck and claws pricking at their thighs. They want to shiver when they hear the dry rasp of scales on skin, feel cold metal where it meets the scarred warmth of a cyborg’s last true flesh, smell the coppery blood and ancient spice in a vampire’s kiss. My heroes have horns, wings, spikes, scales, antennae, fur, fangs, claws, exoskeletons, mandibles, hooves, tentacles…and let me tell you, I de-emphasize nothing in a sex scene. Hotness is not about good looks; it’s about putting the reader in that moment with that man. Of course it helps if your hero isn’t dripping cold slime during a passionate moment, but here’s the thing—if he’s hot enough, even a little cold slime can be sexy.

I’ve gone a bit off-topic, so I’m going to go a little further. A long time ago, I read the world’s worst book. I’ve forgotten the title, but it had to do with gruesome murders and disappearances in an edge-of-nowhere-type town where a kind of alien conservation program turned out to be responsible. It seems humans were the perfect genetic template for a variety of functionally extinct aliens, so the main aliens were kidnapping Earth women, removing their bones so physiology wouldn’t be an issue and then breeding them with horrible monsters. I was twelve or thirteen when I read this, so I’m sure there were fine points I’ve lost over the years, but one thing I’ve never forgotten is the bit where one gelatinous captive smiles up into a chittering bug-thing’s faceted eyes while he lovingly scooped matter from a pouch on his body into hers. I know what you’re thinking right now. You’re thinking, “Ew.” And you’re right, of course. That’s gross. But I direct your attention back to those two words that—for me, anyway—changed the context of that entire scene. That she smiled. And that he did it lovingly. And as hokey as the whole rest of the book was, those two words made it unforgettable, because there was a story in that—in two aliens who found some way, despite the horrific nature of their shared captivity, to come together and to make love—and it was a hell of a better story than the one the author wrote. (Yeah, yeah, there’s people out there who hate my books too.) Once upon a time, a boneless abductee and the last chittering bug-thing in the universe fell in love and, folks, we should all be so lucky.

Now, I can hear you out there asking me why I’m telling you this (and muttering that you’ll never be able to scrub your brain clean enough to get that image out. Yeah, it’s been with me over twenty years. Sorry). To answer that, I’ll give you yet another piece of advice from that writer’s convention, in which we were all informed that a writer should have a goal. Oh, and it can’t be to sell books. That, to quote Dr. Lecter, is incidental. A good writer tells a good story, this panelist said, but a great writer writes for a reason. “Ask yourself,” she said in her sternest, most professionally authorial tone, “what is your goal?”

Well folks, my goal is to write a sex scene someday that involves tentacles, is romantic and is not ridiculous. Not exactly The Great American Novel, but that’s the goal and I stand by it. “What is hot?” asks H.D. Thomson. Might as well ask what is love. (Baby, don’t hurt me…shut up, brain.) Hot is what you find when you love the one you’re with. Maybe he’s the Beauty and maybe he’s the Beast, but if he’s the reason you’re reading the book, he’s a Hot Hero—cold slime and all.

For more insights on hotness and the heroes we want to sweat with, check out the other authors on H.D. Thomson’s Hot Heroes blog hops for lots of giveaways and great reads. And feel free to check out the rest of my blog and if you like what you read, please leave a comment and enter to win an ecopy of my newest book, The Last Hour of Gann. One lucky winner will be drawn from the old hat when the last edits are done and the book goes live (sometime in September).

Hump Day Hook 8/14

Hump Day Hook is a weekly blog hop where writers are invited to hook readers with just a few paragraphs from a work in progress or published work. Visit their site by clicking on the button below for a list of other participating writers and share the love!

Today’s Hook, like all my snippet-producing posts for the immediate future, is from The Last Hour of Gann, picking up in the kitchen with Amber and Nicci where Sunday’s Sneak Peek left off and concluding with the Weekend Writer Warrior snippet on Saturday. You read that right: concluding. There would have been another fifty pages or so of Amber’s scenes after that, but I thought it might be nice for the reader to meet Meoraq, so beginning with next Sunday’s Sneak Peek, we will skip ahead to his first chapter. So read, enjoy, and don’t forget to let me know if you want to enter my Gann Giveaway!

“I do know that, actually, because I was there and I talked to them. I also know that the next three ships are already booked, so it’s this or nothing. Well,” she amended ruthlessly, “it’s this or go on the state or start whoring. I guess we do have options.”

Nicci sniffled and rubbed at her face.

Amber picked up the brochure on the ship and made herself read it. It took a lot of time and when she was done, she could not remember a thing she’d just read. She’d hoped it would settle her twisting stomach some, but if anything, the wait and the silence and the sound of Nicci sniffling made her feel even sicker. She folded up the brochure and put it down, talking like she’d never stopped, like she didn’t care, like she was sure. “The best part is, the five years I spend on the planet counts as improved education when I get back. Not as much as a degree would, but some. My salary cap will be raised and I’ll even be eligible for college credit, just like if I’d been in the army.”

She waited. Nicci kept sniffing and wiping.

“Fine,” said Amber, sweeping the papers together in a single stack. “You stay here and have fun with the whoring. I’ll miss you.”

Nicci didn’t call her back as Amber walked down the narrow hall to the room that the sisters had shared since Mary brought baby Nichole home from the insurance company’s birth clinic. Amber put the papers in the drawer with her shirts and socks, then changed out of her funeral clothes and into her work uniform. She went into the bathroom and threw up in the sink. She tried to be as quiet about that as possible and she didn’t feel a lot better when it was done. In the other room, she could hear her baby sister crying again. She looked at herself in the bathroom mirror and saw a big (fat) unsmiling (mean-eyed) stranger (bitch) who’d bullied her only living relative on the day of their mother’s funeral.

Sneak Peek Sunday 8/11

Sneak Peek Sunday is a weekly blog hop in which writers are challenged to post six paragraphs, no more and no less, from a published work or work in progress and then invite other writers, readers and random bloggers to read, critique and comment. Visit their site by clicking on the button below for a list of other participating writers and share the love! Today’s Sneak Peek, like all my snippet-producing posts for the immediate future, is from The Last Hour of Gann, picking up where yesterday’s WeWriWa left off and continuing with Wednesday’s Hump Day Hook. So read, enjoy, and don’t forget to let me know if you want to enter my Gann Giveaway!

Amber could see this sweeping, silent argument hammering away at Nicci’s defenses. Ever since the Ebola attack at the UN summit, there had been a dramatic end to the prohibitions on biological warfare. These days, it was fight fire with fire, and now it seemed every country was bragging about the bugs they could grow. Super-polio, rabies-13, dengue, hanta, yellowpox and God only knew what else. They lived in the city. They were a target. It could happen any day.

“Well…” Nicci ran her wet eyes over the papers on the table without seeming to really see any of them. “Can’t we go on the next ship? When we know it’s safe?”

“No.”

“There’s going to be more!” She reached tentatively for the Manifestor’s pamphlet, but withdrew her hand without touching it. “We can take the next one, okay?”

“No, Nicci. They only pay people to be colonists for the first ship, because it’s the first and everyone wants to wait and see what happens. After it gets there safe and sound, the Manifestors stop paying and start charging.”

“You don’t know that!”

Weekend Writer Warrior 8/10

The Weekend Writing Warriors blog hop is a weekly event in which writers are invited to share eight sentences from one of their works for other writers, readers and random bloggers to read, critique and comment on. Visit their site by clicking on the button below for a list of other participating writers and share the love!

Today’s WeWriWa is from The Last Hour of Gann, picking up where Wednesday’s Hump Day Hook left off and continuing with tomorrow’s Sunday Sneak Peek. Feel free to catch up if you’re just joining me, and don’t forget to leave a comment if you want to enter my Gann Giveaway! One lucky winner will be drawn just as soon as I’m ready for the book to go live. You can keep an eye on my progress with the Work-In-Progress widget in the sidebar. Just remember that, like all my books, The Last Hour of Gann contains graphic violence and strong sexual content, so if you want to enter the drawing, you have to tell me so each and every time you leave a comment. Thanks for reading!

Not a vaccine. The Vaccine. And even Nicci, who obviously tried so hard to understand as little as she possibly could, knew what that was. Because before the Director had been the leader of a bunch of space-happy freaks, he’d been a doctor, and much as he would like to say that his greatest contribution to humanity was the ship that would carry the first colonists to another world (and he said that a lot), he would probably always be known best for the Vaccine, which worked itself all the way down into your DNA and made it so you could never get sick again. Here on Earth, people paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to endure the agonizing year-long process while the Vaccine was introduced, but the Director was just giving them all away to his happy little colonists, who’d get them painlessly in their Sleepers, which was the perfect application process, according to the brochure. No more worrying about that niggling little 14% failure rate or the greatly exaggerated reports of the birth defects caused by genetic drift. They’d just wake up, secure in the knowledge that now they were cured for life of every possible virus—of the flu, of HIV, of whatever alien illness might be crawling around on Plymouth. Of everything.

Hump Day Hook 8/7

Hump Day Hook is a weekly blog hop where writers are invited to hook readers with just a few paragraphs from a work in progress or published work. Visit their site by clicking on the button below for a list of other participating writers and share the love!

Today’s Hook continues the scene in the kitchen between Amber Bierce and her sister, Nicci. Feel free to catch up if you’re just joining me, and don’t forget to leave a comment if you want to enter my Gann Giveaway! One lucky winner will be drawn just as soon as I’m ready for the book to go live. You can keep an eye on my progress with the Work-In-Progress widget in the sidebar. Just remember that, like all my books, The Last Hour of Gann contains graphic violence and strong sexual content, so if you want to enter the drawing, you have to tell me so each and every time you leave a comment. Thanks for reading!

“When we get there, the ship lands and becomes like the staging area for the colony. We’ll be building the colony up around it—farms and stuff, I guess—but civilians like me won’t be responsible for much. I guess it’ll be pretty hard work, but it’s only supposed to be a six-hour shift, which is less than I’m working now. I got one of their silver civilian contracts, which means five years—Earth years, that is, and it doesn’t include the transport time. They’re going to pay me twenty thousand dollars a year, plus five thousand just for being a fertile female of childbearing age.”

Nicci looked up, her tears hitching to a brief stop in her throat. “W-what?”

“Plus another ten thousand for every kid I have while I’m there, but I’m not having any. I told them that, and they said that was my decision, but I still have to take my implant out before I go. They won’t pay for that, but they do pay for a full medical exam and I’ll get all my shots so I’m clean to go. By a doctor,” she added. “Not some insurance company’s medico. Plus, I’ll get the Vaccine.”

Sneak Peek Sunday 8/4

Sneak Peek Sunday is a weekly blog hop in which writers are challenged to post six paragraphs, no more and no less, from a published work or work in progress and then invite other writers, readers and random bloggers to read, critique and comment. Visit their site by clicking on the button below for a list of other participating writers and share the love! Today’s Sneak Peek, like all my snippet-producing posts for the immediate future, is from The Last Hour of Gann, picking up where yesterday’s WeWriWa left off and continuing with Wednesday’s Hump Day Hook. So read, enjoy, and don’t forget to let me know if you want to enter my Gann Giveaway!

“Oh what? To Neptune? Saturn?” Nicci uttered a shrill, fearful laugh and shook her head. “They’ve never taken it to this other place! This…This…”

“Plymouth,” supplied Amber, not without rolling her eyes a little. The Director of the Manifest Destiny Society was simply full of the pioneering spirit. “They’re calling the planet Plymouth.”

“I don’t care what they’re calling it! I don’t want to go!”

“You don’t have to. But I am,” said Amber again, and watched her baby sister start to cry. “The trip’s going to take about three years, they said, but we’ll be in Sleepers the whole time. That’s kind of like in the movies, when they freeze you, only we won’t actually be frozen. We won’t feel anything and we won’t age, although the guy said sometimes the umbilical…the place where they plug you in leaves a pretty gnarly scar. Those weren’t his exact words—”

“Amber!” Nicci wailed.

She waited, but that was apparently the sum and substance of Nicci’s argument, so after a moment, she just went on.