Thea Harrison's Blog, page 31

Blog Post: Writer Wednesday author and editor Steve Weddle, plus giveaway!

From Thea:  I’m so pleased that author and editor Steve Weddle has come to visit my Writer Wednesday feature today.  Like Dan O’Shea and Joelle Charbonneau, Steve is another one of my agency siblings represented by the Donald Maass Literary Agency.  This is his bio taken from his website:

Steve Weddle grew up on the Louisiana/Arkansas line, holds an MFA in creative writing from Louisiana State University, and currently works for a newspaper group. He lives with his family in Virginia.

In 2009, Weddle and six crime fiction writers created DoSomeDamage, where he blogs weekly.

In 2010, Weddle and John Hornor Jacobs created Needle: A Magazine of Noir, one of the top journals for contemporary crime fiction. 

His short fiction has appeared at Beat To A Pulp, Crime Factory, and A Twist of Noir and in The First Shift, Off the Record, and D*cked anthologies.

In this blog post, Steve talks about linked stories.  To give you just one example of linked stories, this is what I’ve been doing with my Elder Races novellas that feature a mysterious Tarot deck.  I loved Steve’s blog post which gave me an opportunity to learn what he has done with linked stories.

Steve’s also having a giveaway.  As always, the details for the giveaway are at the end of his post.

~~~

So I’d written a couple of stories about this character, Roy Alison, and my agent suggested a novel. This was after my first mystery novel went back into the drawer and my second mystery novel never made it out of the drawer.

A novel about this Roy Alison guy? Maybe. One of his stories, “The Ravine,” was picked up by Keith Rawson for the CrimeFactory anthology First Shift. http://www.amazon.com/Crime-Factory-The-First-Shift/dp/098284364X/ That was the first Roy story, which takes place in the northern parts of Louisiana. I also had a few other stories about that area. One was a story based on that “Day In The Life” song from The Beatles. That story was in Off The Record, an anthology Luca Veste put together to benefit two children’s literacy charities. http://www.amazon.com/Off-The-Record-Charity-Anthology/dp/1470975858/ Another story I did was for the D*cked anthology, tales of horror and hilarity inspired by the aura of Dick Cheney.

I had these stories, all taking place in the same area, the rural Ark-La part of the Ark-La-Tex. And they had a similar vibe, a similar feel. Something between rural noir and literary fiction.

I was reading Raymond Carver, Anne Beattie, Alan Heathcock, Bonnie Jo Campell, Chris Offutt, Donald Ray Pollock, Denis Johnson, and a host of others. I was writing maybe a story or two a week. I also pulled out my MFA thesis in poetry, revamped some of those pieces into stories that had been lingering at the back of my head for, well, some years, shall we say.

I started putting these together and filling in threads, thanks in no small part to the prodding of my friends, my family, and the world’s best agent, Stacia Decker. We ended up with a couple dozen linked stories.

The girl found in the story from the D*cked anthology? I have another story that precedes it, where you find out what started to go wrong. In another story, that incident just barely threads through, as a completely unrelated story develops. So you’ve got the story of a community, not just a story about Roy Alison.

My collection, Country Hardball, isn’t so much a bunch of stories I wrote during a certain period of time. I’ve read collections like that and they’re great. I’ve been reading three such collections by David Means. Basically, this is a collection of David Means stories the New Yorker and Harper’s published in 2009. This one is a collection of stories the New Yorker and Esquire published in 2010. And so on. I love these collections. They’re great individual stories. In fact, recent guest blogger Dan O’Shea has a great collection of stories called Old School. (And I have a deal for you if you’ll buy Old School – I’ll send you a link for an audio version of Dan reading one of my Country Hardball stories. http://steveweddle.squarespace.com/book/)

But those collections are not linked stories in the way Donald Ray Pollock or Chris Offutt have worked their books.

I’ve heard what I’ve done – and others have done — called a novel-in-stories. This doesn’t seem to be exactly right. I think a novel is a specific thing. A novel is a 300-page book with a main storyline and maybe a couple of side-tales that weave through. I’m not trying to put a technical definition on the thing, by the way. Just trying to say that it’s different from putting together two dozen stories, where the first and seventh one dove-tail in this way and a thread that starts in the fourth story stitches its way through five more off and on. Characters disappear after the third story, only to be talked about in the seventh, and washed up on a creek bed in the eleventh.

This is different than a collection, too, which, as I mentioned, seem to be gathered through some sort of writer’s chronology.

In a book of linked stories, you get to see characters, places, stories from different points of view. Denis Johnson’s book Jesus’ Son is a prime example.

In a book of this type, you’re not boxed in by lost key on page 24 that has to reappear on page 187 as a significant clue. In a book like this, you’re focused on the individual stories themselves, the glimpse they give you, each one being, to borrow an Evan Dando line about a girl, “the puzzle piece behind the couch that made the sky complete.”

Writing these stories, in a way feels like working a thin narrative in terms of being sparse with the writing, not bogged down by the weight of the overall. And, in a way, it feels like embedding each story with a kind of thickness between the words, that shadows leaning away from edges that let you know the thing is real.

To me, a book of linked stories can be the best of all worlds. A reader can dip in and out like a short story collection or can start the long swim through a stream that winds along for 250-pages. Instead of fragmented enjoyment or a neat whodunit solution, a book of linked stories brings in a whole geography of being, of understanding, a way of joining together all the shards, all the glimpses we have of these people, these places on these pages.

~~~

For a giveaway, Steve is offering to one commenter a choice of one of the books on his webpage here.  On offer is Dan O’Shea’s Old School, which is featured on the page, or any of the titles down the side of that page.

Answer the following question to enter the giveaway:  which (if any) linked stories have you read and liked?

Giveaway ends on Friday May 18th at 12 noon MDT.

Blog Post: This week’s Writer Wednesday winner

The winner of this week’s Writer Wednesday, with guest author Laura Wright, is Leann!  I’ve emailed Leann separately–congratulations!

And my apologies–this time I was late posting the winner because I simply lost track of what day it was.  I’m setting an electronic email reminder after I post this.

Happy reading, everybody.

Thea

Blog Post: Love Bites Anthology and book trailer

Help celebrate this awesome anthology.  From the Love Bites website:

The authors are donating all of their proceeds from Love Bites to the Animal Adoption Foundation of Hamilton, OH, a charitable organization.

Anthology includes:

~Love Unleashed by New York Times bestselling author Lori Foster

~Smookie and the Bandit by New York Times bestselling author Brenda Jackson

~Molly Wants a Hero by national bestselling author Virna DePaul

~Dog Tags by USA TODAY bestselling author Catherine Mann

~Mane Haven by national bestselling author Jules Bennett

Watch the awesome book trailer and see how many authors you recognize!

 

Blog Post: Excerpt from LORD’S FALL (Elder Races book five)

I’ve been asked on Facebook if I would post an excerpt from LORD’S FALL (Berkley, November 6th), so I’m offering up one here today.  This is a segment from Chapter Two.

Enjoy!

~~<>~~

When [Dragos} reached Manhattan, he spiraled down through the frigid air to land in a large, cordoned off area in a parking lot by Four Pennsylvania Plaza.  After he shimmered into a shapeshift, he let go of the cloaking spell and strode toward the main entrance of the massive, round Madison Square Garden building.

He glanced up as he approached.  The banner had gone up weeks before.  It was several stories tall and very simple.  It read SENTINEL GAMES, with the dates for this week down below, along with the simple graphic of a gigantic, crimson dragon rampant.

That’d do.

The 20,000 x 10,000 foot arena seated 19,500 and it had all the latest multimedia technology, with giant television screens to show spectators in close-up the details of what occurred down below.  The arena had undergone extensive renovations over the last several months, heavily subsidized by Cuelebre Enterprises, down to and including the Cuelebre Enterprises Executive Suite, which perched above the rest of the arena like an aerie.

All the tickets for the week of Games were long gone.  The tickets were for four hour slots and had been free on a first come/first serve basis to any Wyr or resident of New York State who applied.  The first ones to go were on the last day, when the final round of contests would take place and he would name his next seven sentinels.  A limited amount of seating and suites had also been made available, for an exorbitant price, to any of the other Races who were willing to pay.

And they were all willing to pay.  Dignitaries from all the other Elder Races, along with many human nationalities, would be attending.

People would watch the Games for a variety of reasons.  Some would be evaluating the strength of the Wyr demesne, and making notes of the personalities involved.  The week would showcase a lot of talent, so no doubt some would be head hunting, including Cuelebre Enterprises for a selection of opportunities outside the sentinel positions.

Also, many Wyr would gain a sense of security from knowing their demesne remained strong and capable of handling any threat.  Still others would watch for the blood sport, which was barbaric, of course, but Dragos had never made any bones about the fact that the Games themselves were barbaric.  They were supposed to be.  PETA members were completely outraged and utterly confused.

The week long event would also be televised on pay-per-view cable worldwide, which would help to defray some of the massive cost, but the bottom line was the Games still remained the single most expensive project he had personally sponsored in generations.

In this case, profit was not the point.  This was governance, a calculated, lavish display of wealth and an exercise of raw, brutal strength.

Just as humans had many different countries splattered across the globe, all the other Elder Races had different demesnes—in the continental U.S., in Europe, Asia, Africa and other places.

All except for the Wyr.  The Wyr had different communities, such as the gargoyles in northern Scotland, the wolves of the Great Steppe in southwestern Russia, the gazelles of the African plains and the mysterious, ancient kraken of the North Atlantic who rarely interacted with others or came to land.

But there was only one Wyr demesne, one Wyr ruler.

Cuelebre, the Great Beast.

And there had been only one event like this in the last thousand years.  That had been the first Sentinel Games, when his original seven had fought their way to their current positions.  Then, he had recruited the most Powerful of the Wyr throughout the world.  They had come together to establish who was the strongest amongst them, and they had fought for the chance to rule by his side.

He had been working toward this point since Tiago and Rune had left positions last summer.  This time the worldwide recruiting and screening effort had been conducted electronically.  Notices had gone out, job application forms had been posted, and an entire team of recruiters and H.R. personnel had spent the last several months screening and checking references for all the applicants.

They had arrived at a short list of four hundred and forty eight contestants, and most of those were predator Wyr.  There were any number of lions, of course, and several gargoyles.  Dragos liked the gargoyles.  They were community minded, and when they changed into their Wyr form, their stone-like surface was almost impossible to penetrate in hand to hand combat.

There was one of the two other known thunderbirds in existence aside from Tiago, a clash of harpies, and a very interesting, rare individual who was mixed Race but whose Wyr side was strong enough that he could shapeshift.  Most interesting of all to Dragos, there was a rare pegasus.  While Powerful immortals, as herbivores pegasi were peaceful creatures, and it was unusual for one to seek out such a public, potentially violent position.

All-predator sentinels made for a hawkish group, a fact that was brought home to him when Pia, with her more peaceful outlook, began to sit in on conferences and voice her opinions.  It might not be a bad thing to have a pegasus as a sentinel—as long as he could establish his prowess in physical combat.  If he couldn’t fight worth shit, there was no point.  The pegasus could go push some pencils in a bureaucratic position somewhere.  Right here?  It was call of the wild, baby.

The shortlist of contestants also included all five of his current sentinels, who had to participate in the Games to prove they were still the strongest and the best, because while the Wyr demesne adopted modern technology, legal concepts, and principles, at its heart it was still a feudal system.  It had to be; his sentinels needed to be the strongest and most capable of taking down any other Wyr who might go rogue, and they also had to be capable of leading a world-class defense against any potential attackers.

Might did not always equate with right, but it did provide damn strong security in an uncertain, often brutal world.

Still, the participation of the five sentinels was probably just a formality.  Probably.  The only stipulation Dragos had made was that they fight other contestants, because the point of their inclusion wasn’t to find out which of them was the strongest against each other.  The real question was, were they stronger than anybody else?

Everyone was on edge, and more tempers than just his had flared frequently over the last few weeks.  Crews had been laboring overnight to put the last touches on the combat arena.  It was a simple area, a huge cordoned off space with a sand-covered floor.  The sand could be raked in between bouts to get rid of the blood.

Because there would be blood.

With all the paperwork and formalities out of the way, the Sentinel Games had just one objective:  beat your opponent by any means possible.  One fight, Wyr-to-Wyr.  No weapons, no second chances, no holds barred.

There was just one rule:  don’t kill anybody.

At least not on purpose.

Blog Post: Writer Wednesday author Laura Wright and Giveaway!

From Thea:  I’m delighted to have paranormal romance writer Laura Wright on my blog this week.  Laura will always stand out in my mind for making a reach out to me to befriend me in the early days of my Elder Races series launching last year.  She has been kind, open, funny and supportive, and I’m thrilled to have her here this week.

 ~~~

Serious Series Lurve!

Laura Wright

The Black Dagger Brotherhood. The Hunger Games. The Fever series – omg, Barrons!

It’s a sickness – this Series Lurve, ain’t it? – but one I actually love contracting!

Do you remember your first series lurve? I totally do! And back when I first started reading romance, series wasn’t the thang – the way it is now. It was mostly stand alone books – or the ones I was reading anyway.

First in the Velvet quartet

Anyway, my Aunt introduced me to Jude Deveraux, and it was her ‘Velvet’ series that totally reeled me in and gave me my first case of serious series lurve. It was pure genius! After reading the first book, Velvet Promise, I had completely fallen in love with the characters and I so didn’t want to let them go. I wanted to know where things went after the story’s ending, what about this character and this one.  (And so the sickness beginsJ) When I found out it was a series, and I could continue on with the characters and meet others, I was so stoked!

Now, series are everywhere – it seems to be the way we writers write and plan and sell. 3-6-8 books. It’s a blessing for both the reader and the write, I think. Just as I love continuing on with characters that thrill me as a reader, I adore it as a writer too.

My latest series obsession is the FEVER series by Karen Marie Moning. I’ve never felt so in love, so drained, so pained, and so sad that the leading man doesn’t exist, in my life.

Cue the sobs..

Oh, the delicious Series Lurve.

What about you?  What series are you in lurve with at the moment?

~~~

Thea again: Laura has very kindly offered any one of her Mark of the Vampire (MOTV) series to a lucky commenter, along with an MOTV swag bag!  (I don’t know what’s in an MOTV swag bag, but it sounds exciting!)  Contest ends 12 noon Friday, May 11th!

Blog Post: Writer Wednesday winner (a little late, sorry!)

I’m sorry to be announcing this week’s Writer Wednesday winner a little late.  My day has been filled with technical difficulties… but Jeannie Smith is the winner! Congrats, Jeannie–you get to pick one of Moira Rogers’ backlist for your prize!

Thanks so much to Bree and Donna for being on my blog this week.

Happy reading, everybody!

Thea

Blog Post: Brenda Novak’s Annual Auction for the Cure of Diabetes

I learned of Brenda Novak’s Annual Auction for the Cure of Diabetes this year from people on Twitter, and Thursday morning I emailed them and offered to donate something for next year’s auction.

Much to my surprise, Brenda’s fast and proactive assistant Anna replied almost immediately to me.  She told me it was not too late to join THIS year’s auction.  One thing led to another, and now I have two donations up for bid.

ONE:  Win a coffee date with me at the Romance Writer’s of America July Conference in Anaheim:  http://brendanovak.auctionanything.co...

TWO:  Win the Elder Races series to date (four paperbacks, 2 e-novellas):  http://brendanovak.auctionanything.co...

I hope you will consider bidding on these, or on any of the many other items up for bed.  This is a wonderful cause, and I’m honored to participate in some small way.

All the best,

Thea

Blog post: final piece to my treadmill desk

The final piece to my homemade treadmill desk arrived from Amazon today.  This is the end result:

The laptop holder is a Surf Shelf I bought from Amazon.  Because the packaging was damaged, I got mine for $35. With the materials to build the keyboard shelf, the whole thing (NOT counting the treadmill) cost me under $60 to set up, along with a little elbow grease and perserverence.

I like the laptop holder a lot, because it holds the screen in a position where I can walk upright and look ahead, instead of having the laptop on the shelf below–that didn’t work for me.

Now all I have to do is figure out how to type and walk.

Blog Post: Writer Wednesday guest author Moira Rogers and Giveaway!

From Thea:  I’m very happy to have friends and talented paranormal romance writers Moira Rogers for this week’s Writer Wednesday visit.

You might have noticed the odd plurals in that sentence… and that is because Moira Rogers is actually the pen name for a successful writer team, Bree and Donna.  Thank you, Bree and Donna, for coming to visit!

They are offering a giveaway this week, and the details follow at the end of this blog post.

~~~

Bree: So, when Thea asked us to guest post, I begged her for a little inspiration.  This is because I have a well documented terror of guest posts, seeing as my idea of a blog post involves photoshopping berets on to bunnies and pretending they’re an army sent by Keith Melton to destroy me.

Donna: Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean Keith isn’t out to get you.  Ahem.

Bree: But she offered me several ideas, including one I sort of loved: a fictional freebie list.  Five fictional characters our spouses would have to forgive us for ravishing if we happened upon them in a sexy situation.

Donna:  I don’t understand why these need to be fictional, BTW, since I have one of these for real.  (George Clooney, Taylor Kitsch, Jon Hamm, Scarlett Johannson, and Joe Manganiello.  They haven’t shown up at my house yet, for some reason.)

Bree: Well, they don’t HAVE to be fictional. But everyone on twitter already knows your actual list, Donna.

Donna:  Mmm. Taylor Kitsch has to have Tim Riggins hair, otherwise I’m subbing him out for Eion Bailey.  What were we talking about, again?

Bree: Fictional characters. Like Tim Riggins. Except maybe not, because I’m not sure I would put him on my Fictional Freebie list.  No offense, Tim Riggins.  If fictional athletes are on the menu, no one tops my first literary love–Calvin O’Keefe from A Wrinkle in Time. (Wait, maybe my list is going to turn into fictional men I’d marry. Because I’d marry him. Fictionally.)

Donna:  Stu Redman from Stephen King’s The Stand.  Perfect husband material.

Bree: So is Helo aka Lieutenant Karl Agathon from the Battlestar Galactica reboot. I think he might actually literally be the most honorable man in the galaxy. And he’s hot like burning.

Donna:  If we’re talking about the whole galaxy, I want Clint Barton, AKA Hawkeye, from the Marvel universe.  I love a man with good aim. (That sounded so dirty.)

Bree: Yeah it did. But hell, why restrict ourselves to this galaxy. Anne Bishop’s Black Jewels books gave me Lucivar, and I’ve never loved a cold-blooded killer more.

Donna:  This is where you lose me.  I’d rather have Nathaniel Eaton, captain’s son and true hero of The Witch of Blackbird Pond.  What a ginger dreamboat.

Bree: I’m going straight for a prince, then. Rohan, Prince of the Desert in Melanie Rawn’s Dragon Prince.  Not only was he killer in a knife fight, he was smart. SMART with a capital S-M-A-R-T. Brains are so sexy.

Donna:  If we’re going for smart men now, I want Atticus Finch.

Bree: Well, it was smart men or historical men.  Though if you’re taking Nathaniel Eaton, that frees up Mr. Darcy for me. Because, well, come on. Do I even have to explain?

Donna:  Okay, fine.  A scoundrel.  I call dibs on Rhett Butler.

Bree: That’s quite we have going.  I picked a scientist, a spaceship pilot, a warrior, a prince and a broody gentleman.  I’m…not sure what the common denominator is there.

Donna:  For mine, it’s integrity.  They all have it in spades, and it guides them in everything they do.  That’s hot.

Bree: You’re right. Honor.  I find honor very sexy.  So now we leave you with a question, readers…who are your top five fictional loves, and what trait ties them together?  Can you find the common theme among your favorites?  Let us know!

~~~

Thea again:  Bree and Donna are offering to one lucky commenter their pick from Moira Roger’s backlist, which can be found here:  http://www.moirarogers.com/all-digital

So after you enter the giveaway by answering Bree’s question in a comment, go shop and daydream about which digital title you would enjoy…

As with all my Writer Wednesday guest contests, this giveaway ends at 12 noon MDT, on Friday May 4th.  Good luck!

Blog Post: Thea and Viv’s Big Adventure!

Have you ever noticed how good things tend to come in clumps?  Well, this is the third good thing today…

My delightful friend, NYT and USA Today Bestselling author Vivian Arend and I have back to back releases at Samhain in June.  Mine is DEVIL’S GATE, with a release date of June 5th, and Viv’s is WOLF LINES, which is out the following week on June 12th.

So I was quite excited when Vivian suggested we do a blog tour together to celebrate our releases.  One thing led to another, and this was how Thea and Viv’s Big Adventure was born.  Hoopla! *throws confetti*

I’m delighted to share with you the awesome graphic that the talented and ingenious digital artist Angela Waters created for the event–and I really think it says it all.  Vivian is traveling today, but she will be sharing the graphic on her website too, perhaps this evening when she reaches her writing cave for the week.  Look for this graphic for the ten days of our blog tour.  There will be giveaways, silliness and lots of fun!  Well, there may be silliness on my end of things.  I’m positive that Vivian is never, ever silly.

*cough*  Almost positive.

 

 

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