Harper Fox's Blog, page 9

Sammies Tonight!

Samhain Sammies Awards tonight! To celebrate, I'm giving away a couple of signed bookplates and e-copies in a little contest over at the Cafe. Pop along if you have a moment and say hi!,

http://groups.yahoo.com/groups/samhaincafe

Sammies Saturday!

The great big Samhain Sammie Saturday is almost upon us! Samhain Publishing will be awarding their 2011 Readers' Choice Sammies on Saturday 24th March, from 2pm to 10pm EDT, at the Samhain Publishing Cafe, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/samhaincafe/
The Salisbury Key is up for best ebook, and Driftwood for best print. All the nominated authors have been invited along to the cafe to talk about their books, share excerpts, anecdotes and general fun, and I would love to chat with you there. Hope you'll find time to pop along!

Sammies Competition - Samhain Publishing

It's voting time for a great competition from a terrific publisher. Here is the info you will need, as sent to me by Samhain. My Driftwood and The Salisbury Key are up for votes, and there is such a brilliant array of books by other authors, I reckon you'll be spoiled for choice. I would, naturally, be thrilled to be chosen. :-D 


"Curtains up! Light the Lights! The SAMMIES are coming, all right!

That’s right Samhellions, it’s time to vote for your Samhain Publishing favorites for 2011. The SAMMIE Awards ceremony will be held on Saturday, March 24, 2012, starting at 2 p.m. EST in the Samhain Publishing Cafe.(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/samhaincafe/)

The categories that require your vote are:

Reader’s Choice Best Cover Art eBooks 2011

Reader’s Choice Best Cover Art Print Books 2011

Reader’s Choice Best eBook 2011

Reader’s Choice Best Print Book 2012

Please go to http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/BQG585R to cast your vote. Voters are permitted three choices per category. Voting begins today and runs through March, 19, 2012.

The survey allows each participant to vote once. The blue links for each book/cover are hot and will take you to Samhain Publishing site so you can look at the cover or read the blurb for each book listed. Cast your choice for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place in each category. Then scroll to the NEXT button at the bottom of the page, this will take you to the next category. Repeat until you get to the last category. When you have voted for your choices, be sure to click on the DONE button at the bottom of the last page so your vote will count. Remember, each reader gets to vote once for the poll.

We’re asking everyone to participate by casting your vote. After all, these are the Reader’s Choice categories! Your opinion counts!"

Spring and Scrap Metal

Snowdrops and celandine leaves are appearing under our hedge, and that other interesting bud in the far corner of the garden is - yes, I do believe it's Scrap Metal, my next release from Samhain, publishing 27th March but available to pre-order from Amazon now - http://www.amazon.com/Scrap-Metal-ebook/dp/B006H9B70U, or (for my UK readers) http://www.amazon.co.uk/Scrap-Metal-ebook/dp/B006H9B70U/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1327507056&sr=1-1. I adored writing this book and can't wait for the release. We're off to Arran again in March and it will be strange and poignant to revisit the scenes where I first dreamed up Nichol and Cameron, and saw *that* perfect abandoned farmhouse which instantly became Seacliff in my mind. You can see it here in the Scrap Metal section of my "inspiration" website page, http://www.harperfox.net/inspiration/ and maybe you'll understand why I just had to write a story about it, although tragically I couldn't find any strapping young farmer willing to pose as Nichol and complete the picture. :-D

I'm going to make a video trailer for this one soon - having had such fun with Winter Knights - and this time I'll have the great privilege of a specially commissioned original soundtrack from my composer friend RI Archer. You can't beat having talented friends!

And my Salisbury Key paperback winner is...

Iolo1234! Congrats, Iolo. Thanks for entering the comp, and I'll be delighted to send you your autographed copy. Drop me a line with your land address to harperfox777@yahoo.co.uk.

Thanks to all who entered. I wish I could have given out books all round. Hope you are enjoying the festive season, however you're celebrating xxx

I have a shiny autographed print copy of The Salisbury Key to give away!

Here's my little Solstice giveaway, as promised - one nice signed copy of The Salisbury Key. I don't want to mash anybody's brains too much seeing as how we're all running around getting ready for festivities, so to enter, all you need do is pop over to my website - link below, and click on The Salisbury Key to find the excerpt - and leave a comment, either here on my LJ or on Facebook, answering me this:-

Dan and Rayne are in the underground chamber. In which wall of the chamber - east, north, west or south - does Dan discover the Neolithic stone?

http://www.harperfox.net/books/

I'll put the names of all my brilliant correct-answer givers in my Festive Random Name Picker Hat and select a winner on Boxing Day (26th December).

Best festive wishes, all!

Harper xxx

We Have a Winner!

Thank you so much to everyone who came along and commented on my Men Under The Mistletoe blog post. It was lovely to talk to you all and I wish I could bestow books all round! However, I'm delighted to say that Linda Natusta popped up from my random name picker. Linda, it will be my pleasure to send you out a print copy of the anthology as soon as I get my author copies from Carina. Congrats! xxx

thanks to all you lovely people

Thank you so much, all, for taking part in the Men Under The Mistletoe antho blog tour, and all of you who left comments on my Dark Side post. I'll be picking a winner for the print edition over the next couple of days. xxx

Men Under The Mistletoe - The Dark Side of Christmas

Hi, everyone, and welcome to the second-from-last stop on the Men Under The Mistletoe tour. It’s been a fantastic week so far, reading the other authors’ blogs and excerpts and getting a chance to catch up with so many of you here and on Facebook. As most of you will already know, Carina have done a limited-edition run of very special print copies of the holiday anthology, and I will be giving one of mine away, autographed and dedicated, to one lucky winner today. To be eligible, just leave a comment on this blog and I’ll pick a winner with Random Number Generator.
 
All right – on with my topic for today! When I started writing Winter Knights, one of the first things I did was provide Gavin with a sparkly pen. It was a frail thing. I wanted to show Gavin working alone in his hotel room, surrounded by cold and encroaching winter darkness. The pen had been a gift from his lover, Piers, and the frailty was important. At that moment, Gavin didn't realise all the light in his world came from Piers. It's one of the design flaws of our humanity that we so often don't realise our light sources until we switch them off or lose them.

And Christmas is a bad time to have that happen. After all, whatever you're celebrating - Chanukah, Diwali, Solstice - it's all about the lights, about the fires we draw close to in a cold dark season. Darkness at this time of year has a particular quality, a direct relation to the keen sharp brightness of the lights on the tree. It's not just the absence of candlelight, firelight. It's something more active than that.

Which for me, as a writer, is just great. You can't ask for a better canvas, a better set of contrasts. Snow and night, a candle in the window and beyond that utter blackness. The story of Winter Knights is the restoration of light into Gavin's life as he realises his mistakes and gets a chance to redeem himself. Here's a few examples of how I gradually drew him back out of the dark, until finally he's right there in the light of common day, having to deal with the lover he's hurt so much.

Light strafed my eyes, a blood-red streak through their closed lids. I didn’t want to know about it and irritably turned away. But the beam came again, and stayed on me this time. Reluctantly I lifted my head. I couldn’t remember sliding off the rock to make myself a bed on the wet cavern floor, but it had been getting very comfortable. The light stabbed my eyes open. I saw, in dazzled flashes, a man at the end of a rope, being lowered down into the cave. He was wearing an orange rescue-worker’s jumpsuit. I wondered why I didn’t feel more saved. 
*
I knelt in the snow. I couldn’t get any farther. The whole Tyne valley lay before me, carved out by stupendous glacial floods, peaceful now in the coils of its silver snaking misfit river. The moon had set but the skies were so clear I could see every farmhouse, every drystone wall and snow-burdened hawthorn, by the diamond light of the stars. 
*
I was standing on a deserted street. The mist pressed closely all around me. A single streetlight cast an aureole into it, coruscating white and diamond-blue. Should have been a wrought-iron gas lamp, I thought sleepily. The modern concrete post and bulb almost let the place down. A scatter of houses, their windows all dark in these Christmas Day small hours, extended off into the distance. 
*
Nothing in this scenario was as I’d imagined it. No candlelight, no long slow build-up: just the two of us grappling fiercely, the brilliance of sunshine bouncing off snow making our every touch, every shared look impossibly intimate and real. His chilly shins scraped mine. I spread my legs for him, clasped his hips between my thighs and grabbed his backside. 
*
I hope you've enjoyed this little glimpse behind the scenes. If you'd like a few more visuals from Winter Knights, you might like the trailer I made for the book. It's at the bottom of my web page here.

http://www.harperfox.net/books/winter-knights/

Now I'll hand you over to Josh, Ava and KA for a look at some of the contrasts in their work, some of the ways they bring light out of the darkness, switch the emotional gears or ring the changes! Ava leads us off in great style.
  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~I’m going to be gloomy and go in the opposite direction. From the first part of My True Love Gave to Me, where warm light turns to cold darkness for Alexander, where as the sun sets, love turns to pain.

The sun warmed his shoulders and glinted off the horses’ coal-black coats. The chill wind held a definite bite and the threat of a cold night, but it wasn’t enough to make him regret taking the curricle. The weather was ideal for a December drive through the countryside. But what made the day perfect was the man sitting beside him.
***

With a nod, Thomas slowed the team and turned the curricle onto the narrow drive. Tall trees blocked the setting sun, their branches casting the long winding path in cold twilight shadows.

***

    The crunch of dirt beneath his boots bounced off the trees, unnaturally loud. Then he went still and peered into the blanket of darkness surrounding him. The weak moonlight was just enough to make out the indistinct shapes of the trees. But he swore he had heard…
    There it was again. The faint rhythmic pound of hooves. 
    His heart leaped into his throat. The most profound relief, sweet and pure and light as air, began to wash over him. 
    Then an ice-cold chill vanquished every trace of relief.
 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 
And here’s KA Mitchell . I didn’t mean to set tough homework, honest! I loved these excerpts and I’m sure you will too.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Man, this was a hard assignment. I do angsty sometimes, but not really dark, and "The Christmas Proposition" was pretty darn fluffy. The best seasonal light and darkness bits I could come up with were from this scene where Bryce wants to have sex in front of the Christmas tree. Mel, the narrator, wasn't even expecting a tree to be in his living room. He's gone a bit sour on the holiday experience and uses sarcasm as a shield against everything. At one point he claims that his shoes aren't too tight and his heart isn't three sizes too small, but Mel's a bit of a Grinch.
 
 
“Beautiful.” Bryce pulled me to his side. “I always wondered what kind of Christmas tree a tree farmer would have.”
 
No kind, usually. The year my grandmother died, she had the audacity to do it in the middle of peak season and we got out of the habit. I guess the same couldn’t be said for my sister-in-law.
 
“Well, I wanted to get an artificial one, preferably one with the fake snow glued on—”
 

*

 
I could see the lights of the tree reflected in his wide pupils, the tree and me. My blond curls doing that weird hat-head thing, my lips dark against my winter-pale skin.
 

*

 
Devastatingly, utterly beautiful in the glow from the tree lights.
 
Right then I couldn’t have hated Christmas and all these stupid illusions of happiness and light more. Because by the time December 25 dawned this year, the man in my arms, my ass and goddamn him, my heart would be gone for good.
 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 
And finally I place you in Josh’s tender hands for one last poignant tug of the heartstrings...

 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Well hello there, buckaroos! If anyone could make the dark side of Christmas appealing and romantic, it's Harper. She asked us each to come up with a snippet that illustrated the contrast of light and dark within our story, or a moment of epiphany, and I selected this scene well toward the end of Lone Star, when Mitch has at least achieved enough emotional distance and equilibrium to see his past -- both the people and the place -- with a little clarity. Of course with that clarity comes the recognition that we don't always get second chances. 
 
 
When he’d said goodbye, Mitch walked outside for a breath of fresh air. The winter sunlight gilded the buildings and turned the rich golden-flax winter tones of buffalo grass white. A white and black warbler swooped overhead and disappeared, twittering, beneath the eaves of the silvered barn.
 
Across the corrals he could see a deer grazing the stubby ground. Just an ordinary deer. He smiled faintly remembering the night before, but his smile faded at the memory of Web walking away that morning.
 
Mitch strode toward the tall, gray water tower. This time of year, the landscape was pretty barren, but in the spring and summer there would be an abundance of wildlife and flowers. Honeysuckle and purple salvia and cardinal flower would attract hummingbirds. Songbirds like the color-splashed painted buntings would arrive to feast on agarita, beautyberry or the black cherry trees that grew behind the house. It was pretty here in the spring. Hot as hell in the summer, but even then there was a raw, rugged beauty to the land.
 
Why had he hated it so much growing up?
 
Of course, he hadn’t always hated it. There was a time when he could have been happy here. If Web would have met him halfway.
 
It wasn’t all Web’s fault, though. If Mitch was honest, he hadn’t wanted halfway; he’d been insisting on everything, the whole enchilada. He’d been unhappy and desperate and he’d thrown out an ultimatum with his usual charm.
 
And Web had refused. Whatever he told himself now, Web had refused.
 
The older, wiser Mitch—the Mitch who had survived getting the shit knocked out of him by his father—recognized that Web had probably had a point or two.
 
Web’s refusal to give in to Mitch’s ultimatum had spurred Mitch into achieving his ambition of becoming a professional dancer—failure had no longer been an option.
 
And now?
 
Maybe Web wasn’t so far wrong. Mitch was about to be handed everything he’d worked and trained and sacrificed for. This was no time for second-guessing the decisions he’d made and it was sure as hell no time to trade off a bird in the hand for two in the Texas Hill Country bush.
 
 

Carina Press blog day with the Men Under The Mistletoe authors

It's an all-day takeover at Carina Press today with me, Josh Lanyon, KA Mitchell and Ava March. We're already up and running with our favourite festive cookie recipes, and there's rather a nice prize to be won. Later on we'll be plunging into what the future holds for our beloved protags in a Christmas Yet To Come. We'd all love to hear from you so do pop along and have a chat with us! xxx

http://carinapress.com/blog/2011/12/the-visions-of-sugar-plums-cookie-exchange/