L.R. Lam's Blog, page 16

Friday Photo: May 27th, 2016 + UK False Hearts Giveaway

Happy Friday! Every week, I post a photo with something I got up to recently. More are on my instagram, which usually consists of cats, food, art, books, and travel.

Photo credit: Pan Macmillan

Photo credit: Pan Macmillan

Photo credit: Andrew Hall

OK, this is three photos but just LOOK at how pretty the finished copies of the UK edition of False Hearts are! There’s shiny silver foil, spot varnish, a red belly band and RED STAINED PAGES. I still haven’t received my copies (come on, postman, bring them today), so I’ve been drooling at these photos. I can’t wait to hold physical copies and cuddle them and sniff their pages. What, that’s not weird, right?

Elsewhere on the internet:

If you’re in the UK, you can win 1 of 10 copies of finished False Hearts over at Maximum Pop! Books. There’s also a Q&A with me and I talk a little about Shattered Minds, the next Pacifica thriller, for the first time.

Maximum Pop also has Pantomime & Shadowplay featured on this quiz about LGBT+ YA.

Tor.com has also put up the first chapter of False Hearts if you haven’t read it yet.

If you want a signed first edition of the UK version of False Hearts, you can get them at either Goldsboro Books or Forbidden Planet. If you want either the UK or the US versions out of those territories, a reminder that the Book Depository offers free international shipping (but these won’t be signed copies).

The book comes out in 18 days in the US and 20 days in the UK. :-O I’m going to be pretty promo-heavy the next few weeks, but I’m not going to apologise for it. I’ve worked hard on this book and I want to give it the best chance it can to find readers. Go go, Bonkers Book!

False Hearts Sweepstakes & Civilian Reader Interview

There’s a chance to win a galley of False Hearts over on tor.com. US/Canada only. Simply comment on the post to enter. UK folks, I think there’ll be some giveaways coming up, so stay tuned.

I also have an interview up on Civilian Reader today.

 

A Free False Hearts short story: “Through the Eyes of a Bluebird”

Photo credit: Nigel

Last week, my short story went up on tor.com. It’s a tie-in story called “Through the Eyes of a Bluebird.” Tor.com introduces it like so:

Welcome to Mana’s Hearth.

In the world of Laura Lam’s False Hearts , this mysterious little commune outside San Francisco exists in stark contrast to the biotech “perfection” of the not-too-distant future. It rejects outsiders and modernity both with irritating success, like a splinter beneath the skin, or a defiant middle finger. Those of the Hearth offer only the occasional glimpse of life within. But take care that you take nothing for granted during your visit. What you’re about to see is only the tip of a very, very deep iceberg.

The story follows Tobias, a worker at a company called Sudice, who has been chosen to observe the Hearth on the sly. Only the leader of the cult, Mana-ma, knows what’s truly going on. It’s meant to be a little taster of the world and feel of False Hearts. Please do give it a read and tell others it’s available. If you enjoy the story, please consider pre-ordering or picking up a copy in June! This story will be on tor.com for three months for free and then I’ll be self-releasing it as an e-book.

Happy reading!

Friday Photo: May 20th, 2016

Happy Friday! Every week, I post a photo with something I got up to recently. More are on my instagram, which usually consists of cats, food, art, books, and travel.

 

This week I was wrapping up the Shattered Minds edits and have been proofing Pantomime. Keiko was cuddling on my lap and Mowgli stood on the book and licked his nose. Cute, but not helpful.

Friday Photo: May 13th, 2016

Every week, I post a photo with something I got up to recently. More are on my instagram, which usually consists of cats, food, art, books, and travel.

I’m cheating with two photos this week, as I’ve had some exciting book post today! First I have the Pantomime proofs, for one last readthrough before the paperback release in November (it’s out now worldwide in e-book). Then we have the US hardcover sleeves for False Hearts! Yay books!

Monthly Roundup: April 2016

2016 is already over a third finished! It’s going by quickly.

Writing:

This month, most of my work was on the Shattered Minds structural re-edit. At the end of March, I was 49,115 words through it, and at the end of April I was at 89,439 words (10 days into May and it currently stands at 103,498 and I’m on the LAST CHAPTER and procrastinating by writing this post). I think this section of the manuscript needed fewer large overhauls than the beginning, but a lot still changed. I also wrote the grand total of 570 words of another project and 3271 words of nonfiction. If I half the editing word count, then in April I wrote about 22,493 for a yearly total so far of 119,355 words.

This month I had no school visits and no freelance work.

Travel and life:

Woohoo, Mauritius! I put up some photos of my trip a little while ago here. At the very end of the month, I also went to Edinburgh to see the Beltane fire festival with Elizabeth May.

Life slowed down a bit in April. I took 13 days off completely this month, which is how much I took off the previous 3 months combined. I needed that bit of rest and lazing around reading, swimming, and exploring the island. It was a nice breather before everything gears up towards publication.

Plans for next month:

I plan to finish Shattered Minds edits, edit Masquerade, proof Pantomime again for the paperback re-release in November, try and squeeze in some words on a collaborative project, and write more guest posts/essays for False Hearts publication. I’ve signed up for a free 2 week screenwriting class through Future Learn and the University of East Anglia and will complete that. I have one school visit scheduled so far, and me and my husband also have to start working on getting our flat ready to sell or rent, as we’ll possibly be relocating later in the summer. May and June are both going to be incredibly busy, but let’s bring it on.

Friday Photo: May 6th, 2016 + A Few Links

Every week (err, except for the last few weeks), I post a photo with something I got up to recently. More are on my instagram, which usually consists of cats, food, art, books, and travel.

Photo credit: Elizabeth May

This is not my photo–Elizabeth May took it when we went to the Beltane festival together last week in Edinburgh. How awesome is this snap she took of the May Queen? It’s much better than the few phone pics I attempted. You can see more of her photography on her instagram. The festival was really amazing, though quite cold. I’d definitely want to go again next year.

A Few Links:

I wrote a guest post for Fantasy Book Cafe for their Women in SF&F month. I highlighted the female characters in False Hearts. 

If you’d like to read the prologue and chapter one of False Hearts, it’s up on the Tor/Forge blog! 

Books Read in April

1. Black-Eyed Susans – Julia Heaberlin

For fans of Laura Lippman and Gillian Flynn comes an electrifying novel of stunning psychological suspense.

I am the star of screaming headlines and campfire ghost stories.

I am one of the four Black-Eyed Susans.

The lucky one.

As a sixteen-year-old, Tessa Cartwright was found in a Texas field, barely alive amid a scattering of bones, with only fragments of memory as to how she got there. Ever since, the press has pursued her as the lone surviving “Black-Eyed Susan,” the nickname given to the murder victims because of the yellow carpet of wildflowers that flourished above their shared grave. Tessa’s testimony about those tragic hours put a man on death row.

Now, almost two decades later, Tessa is an artist and single mother. In the desolate cold of February, she is shocked to discover a freshly planted patch of black-eyed susans—a summertime bloom—just outside her bedroom window. Terrified at the implications—that she sent the wrong man to prison and the real killer remains at large—Tessa turns to the lawyers working to exonerate the man awaiting execution. But the flowers alone are not proof enough, and the forensic investigation of the still-unidentified bones is progressing too slowly. An innocent life hangs in the balance. The legal team appeals to Tessa to undergo hypnosis to retrieve lost memories—and to share the drawings she produced as part of an experimental therapy shortly after her rescue.

What they don’t know is that Tessa and the scared, fragile girl she was have built a  fortress of secrets. As the clock ticks toward the execution, Tessa fears for her sanity, but even more for the safety of her teenaged daughter. Is a serial killer still roaming free, taunting Tessa with a trail of clues? She has no choice but to confront old ghosts and lingering nightmares to finally discover what really happened that night.

Shocking, intense, and utterly original, Black-Eyed Susans is a dazzling psychological thriller, seamlessly weaving past and present in a searing tale of a young woman whose harrowing memories remain in a field of flowers—as a killer makes a chilling return to his garden.

2. Cam Girl – Leah Raeder (Elliot Wake)

Vada Bergen is broke, the black sheep of her family, and moving a thousand miles away from home for grad school, but she’s got the two things she loves most: her art and her best friend—and sometimes more—Ellis Carraway. Ellis and Vada have a friendship so consuming it’s hard to tell where one girl ends and the other begins. It’s intense. It’s a little codependent. And nothing can tear them apart.

Until an accident on an icy winter road changes everything.

Vada is left deeply scarred, both emotionally and physically. Her once-promising art career is cut short. And Ellis pulls away, unwilling to talk about that night. Everything Vada loved is gone.

She’s got nothing left to lose.

So when she meets some smooth-talking entrepreneurs who offer to set her up as a cam girl, she can’t say no. All Vada has to do is spend a couple hours each night stripping on webcam, and the “tips” come pouring in.

It’s just a kinky escape from reality until a client gets serious. “Blue” is mysterious, alluring, and more interested in Vada’s life than her body. Online, they chat intimately. Blue helps her heal. And he pays well, but he wants her all to himself. No more cam shows. It’s an easy decision: she’s starting to fall for him. But the steamier it gets, the more she craves the real man behind the keyboard. So Vada pops the question:

Can we meet IRL?

Blue agrees, on one condition. A condition that brings back a ghost from her past. Now Vada must confront the devastating secrets she’s been running from—those of others, and those she’s been keeping from herself…

3. Beside Myself – Ann Morgan

Beside Myself is a literary thriller about identical twins, Ellie and Helen, who swap places aged six. At first it is just a game, but then Ellie refuses to swap back. Forced into her new identity, Helen develops a host of behavioural problems, delinquency and chronic instability. With their lives diverging sharply, one twin headed for stardom and the other locked in a spiral of addiction and mental illness, how will the deception ever be uncovered? Exploring questions of identity, selfhood, and how other people’s expectations affect human behaviour, this novel is as gripping as it is psychologically complex.

4. Revenge – Yoko Ogawa

Sinister forces draw together a cast of desperate characters in this eerie and absorbing novel from Yoko Ogawa.

An aspiring writer moves into a new apartment and discovers that her landlady has murdered her husband. Years later, the writer’s stepson reflects upon his stepmother and the strange stories she used to tell him. Meanwhile, a surgeon’s lover vows to kill him if he does not leave his wife. Before she can follow-through on her crime of passion, though, the surgeon will cross paths with another remarkable woman, a cabaret singer whose heart beats delicately outside of her body. But when the surgeon promises to repair her condition, he sparks the jealousy of another man who would like to preserve the heart in a custom tailored bag. Murderers and mourners, mothers and children, lovers and innocent bystanders—their fates converge in a darkly beautiful web that they are each powerless to escape.

Macabre, fiendishly clever, and with a touch of the supernatural, Yoko Ogawa’s Revenge creates a haunting tapestry of death—and the afterlife of the living.

5. An Accident of Stars – Foz Meadows

When Saffron Coulter stumbles through a hole in reality, she finds herself trapped in Kena, a magical realm on the brink of civil war.

There, her fate becomes intertwined with that of three very different women: Zech, the fast-thinking acolyte of a cunning, powerful exile; Viya, the spoiled, runaway consort of the empire-building ruler, Vex Leoden; and Gwen, an Earth-born worldwalker whose greatest regret is putting Leoden on the throne. But Leoden has allies, too, chief among them the Vex’Mara Kadeja, a dangerous ex-priestess who shares his dreams of conquest.

Pursued by Leoden and aided by the Shavaktiin, a secretive order of storytellers and mystics, the rebels flee to Veksh, a neighboring matriarchy ruled by the fearsome Council of Queens. Saffron is out of her world and out of her depth, but the further she travels, the more she finds herself bound to her friends with ties of blood and magic.

Can one girl – an accidental worldwalker – really be the key to saving Kena? Or will she just die trying?

6. Cruel Summer – Juno Dawson

A year after Janey’s suicide, her friends reunite at a remote Spanish villa, desperate to put the past behind them. However, an unwelcome guest arrives claiming to have evidence that Janey was murdered. When she is found floating in the pool, it becomes clear one of them is a killer. Only one thing is for certain, surviving this holiday is going to be murder…

A compelling and psychological thriller – with a dash of romance.

7. Masks and Shadows – Stephanie Burgis

The year is 1779, and Carlo Morelli, the most renowned castrato singer in Europe, has been invited as an honored guest to Eszterháza Palace. With Carlo in Prince Nikolaus Esterházy’s carriage, ride a Prussian spy and one of the most notorious alchemists in the Habsburg Empire. Already at Eszterháza is Charlotte von Steinbeck, the very proper sister of Prince Nikolaus’s mistress. Charlotte has retreated to the countryside to mourn her husband’s death. Now, she must overcome the ingrained rules of her society in order to uncover the dangerous secrets lurking within the palace’s golden walls. Music, magic, and blackmail mingle in a plot to assassinate the Habsburg Emperor and Empress–a plot that can only be stopped if Carlo and Charlotte can see through the masks worn by everyone they meet.

8. Black Iris – Lead Raeder (Elliot Wake)

The next dark and sexy romantic suspense novel from the USA Today bestselling author of Unteachable.

It only took one moment of weakness for Laney Keating’s world to fall apart. One stupid gesture for a hopeless crush. Then the rumors began. Slut, they called her. Queer. Psycho. Mentally ill, messed up, so messed up even her own mother decided she wasn’t worth sticking around for.

If Laney could erase that whole year, she would. College is her chance to start with a clean slate.

She’s not looking for new friends, but they find her: charming, handsome Armin, the only guy patient enough to work through her thorny defenses—and fiery, filterless Blythe, the bad girl and partner in crime who has thorns of her own.

But Laney knows nothing good ever lasts. When a ghost from her past resurfaces—the bully who broke her down completely—she decides it’s time to live up to her own legend. And Armin and Blythe are going to help.

Which was the plan all along.

Because the rumors are true. Every single one. And Laney is going to show them just how true.

She’s going to show them all.

9. Inception: The Shooting Script – Chrisopher Nolan

Inception, writer-director Christopher Nolan’s seventh feature film, joins the epic scope of The Dark Knight with the narrative sophistication of Memento. The story of a group of thieves who specialize in invading the mind through one’s dreams, Inceptionexplores the Nolan’s signature psychological themes of memory, paranoia, and self-doubt as the protagonist, Dom Cobb, is pitted against a hostile subconscious spurred on by personal demons and regrets from the past. In a conversational preface, Nolan discusses with brother and frequent collaborator, Jonah, the genesis of the idea for the film and the decade-long process it took to write it. Detailing the results of Nolan’s efforts,Inception: The Shooting Script includes key storyboard sequences, full-color concept art, and an appendix on the workings of the mysterious Pasiv Device that Cobb and his fellow extractors use to initiate the dream-share. An exclusive exploration of a highly original concept, Inception: The Shooting Script is the record of a writer-director at the height of his craft.

10. Borderline (The Arcadia Project #1) – Mishell Baker

A year ago, Millie lost her legs and her filmmaking career in a failed suicide attempt. Just when she’s sure the credits have rolled on her life story, she gets a second chance with the Arcadia Project: a secret organization that polices the traffic to and from a parallel reality filled with creatures straight out of myth and fairy tales.

For her first assignment, Millie is tasked with tracking down a missing movie star who also happens to be a nobleman of the Seelie Court. To find him, she’ll have to smooth-talk Hollywood power players and uncover the surreal and sometimes terrifying truth behind the glamour of Tinseltown. But stronger forces than just her inner demons are sabotaging her progress, and if she fails to unravel the conspiracy behind the noble’s disappearance, not only will she be out on the streets, but the shattering of a centuries-old peace could spark an all-out war between worlds.

No pressure.

Total in 2016 so far: 36 books

Tracking my Reading:

Character diversity (fiction): Black-Eyed Susans (main character has PTSD and perhaps schizophrenia), Cam Girl (trans and bi characters, black secondary character), Beside Myself (drug addict lead who also hears voices), Revenge (all Japanese characters, I believe), An Accident of Stars (lots of diversity everywhere), Cruel Summer (gay lead, black secondary character), Masks and Shadows (one of the leads is a castrato), Black Iris (BPD lead, more bi characters, an Iranian primary character), Borderline (BPD double amputee lead, plus secondary character diversity)

Books by POC, queer, or disabled writers (as far as I know): Cam Girl, Revenge, An Accident of Stars, Cruel Summer, Black Iris, Borderline

Books by female or nonbinary authors: Black-Eyed Susans, Cam Girl (nb), Beside Myself, Revenge, An Accident of Stars (nb), Cruel Summer, Masks and Shadows, Black Iris (nb), Borderline

Books by people I know: Cam Girl, An Accident of Stars, Cruel Summer, Masks and Shadows, Black Iris 

Nonfiction: none

Books on my bookshelf I own but have not read, or something that’s been on my TBR list for absolutely ages: I’ve been meaning to catch up on Elliot Wake’s backlist for ages.

Ten Snaps: Mauritius

I spent the end of March to the middle of April in Mauritius. I’ve been wanting to go since I was a teenager. My husband’s dad is Chinese-Mauritian, and we visited with him and Craig’s mum. A lot of Craig’s dad’s extended family was visiting from Canada, plus we saw lots of Mauritius-based family. We had a lovely time, and it was hard to choose my ten favourite photos from the trip.

Obligatory smug holiday snap, in Trou aux Biches, where we stayed.

2. The sunset on our first night in Trou aux Biches.

3. Early in our trip, the whole family rented a bus, and 49 of us drove up into the mountains to pick guave de Chine, a fruit that grows in the wild. We picked loads and Craig’s mum later turned it into jam, which we had on toast throughout our stay. This is me eating gateau piment, or a lentil deep-fried cake with spring onion and chili, and drinking Pheonix, the Mauritian local beer. I don’t drink beer that often usually, but a cold can of this was very refreshing in the heat and humidity.

4. This is Mangal Mahadev the tallest Hindu statue in Mauritius. It’s Lord Shiva. Most of Mauritius is Indian or African Creole. As most of the Mauritians I’d met were Chinese, I thought there’d be more on the island, but Chinese-Mauritians are less than 2% of the population. This was near a really beautiful Hindu temple.

5. We went to a reservoir that had beautiful views of the mountains in every direction.

6. We visited a shrine in Port Louis, the capital of Mauritius. It was beautiful.

7. Swimming at Rochester falls. People were jumping off of the top! Also note the very sunburned tourist in the upper left-hand tourist. This was one of the highlights of my trip.

8. Big waves in the south of the island. You definitely wouldn’t want to swim here. We also visited La Roche qui Pleure, which is a rock that has naturally formed into a face shape. When the waves crash onto it, it looks like it’s crying.

9. I’m still amazingly pleased at how well this photo came out. These are birds on the giant lily pads at the Botanical Gardens in Pamplemousse.

10. Cap Malheureux, a lovely small beach by a wee red-roofed church.

There was a lot of eating of food, swimming in the ocean, melting a bit in the heat, being bitten by mosquitoes, and reading of books. I only had one bad sunburn on the trip, but I also barely tanned, though my freckles are out in full force again.

One day, thanks to a family friend, I went to a librarian event in Port Louis and met a few Mauritian librarians and was able to tell them a bit about False Hearts. There were a lot of events with family, including dancing after a meal in a former plantation in the mountains, and going to a nice hotel to watch dancing and drink cocktails. Mauritius wasn’t a total paradise–there were sadly a lot of stray dogs and cats and clear evidence of poverty, despite the many fancy resorts peppered throughout the island, but on the whole the island is developing.

The first week, I still did a bit of editing every day, but by the second week, I realised this would be my last chance to relax for months, and so I threw myself into doing nothing but reading and chilling out, and it was great. We’re back in Scotland it snowed today, so the holiday is definitely over! I have a very intense summer coming up, but bring it on.

More Mauritius photos are up on my instagram.

Monthly Roundup: March 2016

This is late, since I was on holiday the last two weeks in Mauritius, so everything slowed down!

Last month was busy, busy.

Writing:

Most of my work this month was working on Shattered Minds edits. I started the new draft on the last day of February, and on the last day of March, I was at 49,115 words. It takes me around the same time to edit 2k as it does to write 1k, on average, but it’s really hard to judge how many of these words are new. I also worked a bit on other projects when I stalled on tricky bits in Shattered Minds, for another 4,719 words. In nonfic, such as posts on here and publicity posts for False Hearts, I wrote 11,898 words. So if I divide the editing words in half, I wrote around 41,154 words in March, for a yearly total so far of 96,862 words. Whew.

I also did a bit of freelance work and had visits to Napier University, Kemnay Academy, and Milne’s Academy.

Travel and Life:

I stayed with my friend Elizabeth May again when I was down in Edinburgh for Napier, and also had new author photos taken. I stayed with my aunt and uncle-in-law when I went north to Kemnay and Fochabers for school visits, and at the very end of the month I flew to Mauritius. This month saw the end of my life drawing class, which I really enjoyed. I wanted to sign up for the next semester, but I think I’ll be travelling too much to be able to commit to it. Hopefully I’ll be able to keep up my art practice on my own.

The rest of this month will be playing catch up on what I’ve fallen behind on while on holiday. I did some work the first week I was away, and then the second week I let myself do a lot less and actually recharged. I feel refreshed and ready to tackle the edits! *strong arm emoji*

How have you done this month?