J. David Core's Blog, page 18

Media Blitz: Sanguinary and Bound by Blood on Sale

Join the Night Shift for a SALE!
 February 2 – 4, get Sanguinary for $.99 and Bound by Blood FREE from Amazon!


Night Shift Novel 1

Only fifty years left before vampires rule the world.
When Dallas police detective Cami Davis joined the city's vampire unit, she planned to use the job as a stepping-stone to a better position in the department.
But she didn't know then what she knows now: there's a silent war raging between humans and vampires, and the vampires are winning.
So with the help of a disaffected vampire and an ex-cop addict, Cami is going undercover, determined to solve a series of recent murders, discover a way to overthrow the local Sanguinary government, and, in the process, help win the war for the human race.
But can she maintain her own humanity in the process? Or will Cami find herself, along with the rest of the world, pulled under a darkness she cannot oppose?

Only $.99, 2/1 – 2/4:  http://www.amazon.com/Sanguinary-Night-Shift-Book-1-ebook/dp/B00MR5VGV8/
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Night Shift #2 ~ A Novella

Sometimes the monsters in the dark are real...

As a child, Lili Banta ignored her grandmother's cryptic warnings to avoid children outside their Filipino community in Houston. When many of those other children fell ill, Lili ignored the whispers in her community that a vampiric aswang walked among them.

Years later, Lili returns to Houston to work for the Quarantine Station of the Center for Disease Control—but she is plagued by dark, bloody dreams that consume her nights and haunt her days. When a strange illness attacks the city's children, Lili is called in to find its source, and maybe even a cure.

But in order to save the city, she must first acknowledge the sinister truth: A monster stalks the night—closer than she ever expected....

FREE 2/1 – 2/4: http://www.amazon.com/Bound-Blood-Night-Shift-Novella-ebook/dp/B00PB3AIGC/


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About the Author

Margo Bond Collins is the author of urban fantasy, contemporary romance, and paranormal mysteries. She has published a number of novels, including Sanguinary, Taming the Country Star, Legally Undead, Waking Up Dead, and Fairy, Texas. She lives in Texas with her husband, their daughter, and several spoiled pets. Although writing fiction is her first love, she also teaches college-level English courses online. She enjoys reading romance and paranormal fiction of any genre and spends most of her free time daydreaming about heroes, monsters, cowboys, and villains, and the strong women who love them—and sometimes fight them.
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Connect with Margo
Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/author/margobondcollins
Email: MargoBondCollins@gmail.com
Website: http://www.MargoBondCollins.net
Blog: http://www.MargoBondCollins.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MargoBondCollin  @MargoBondCollin
Google+: https://plus.google.com/116484555448104519902
Goodreads Author Page: http://www.goodreads.com/vampirarchy
Facebook Author Page: https://www.facebook.com/MargoBondCollins
Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/mbondcollins/


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Guest Post: Gender in Genre Writing by William Galaini

Cover art by Christopher M. Jackson

Today's guest post comes to us from William Galaini. He is the author of The Line, a sci-fi tale involving time travel and modern themes.

Suspended in the nothing between timelines, the station Janus is an unseen marvel: the greatest technological achievement in human innovation. From Janus, Gustavo and his hand-selected team of historians and engineers venture into the past and observe history, unseen and unnoticed.

But they are not alone.

Another traveler is shattering history. Unhindered by desires to remain scientific and uninvolved, the intruder’s technology is far advanced with methods more brutal and a present more terrifying than anything Gustavo and his team are prepared for. As they apply their intellects and skills towards solving the mystery of the ferocious interloper, they discover than they have its full attention. 

William grew up in Pennsylvania and Florida. His mother gave him an early love of reading, especially when it came to the great classics of science fiction. He is also a history buff and fascinated by mythology and folklore. His various vocational pursuits include being a singer in a professional high school choir, manager of the call center at a luxury resort, U.S. Army medic, prison guard, and middle school English teacher. As such, he is perfectly suited to breech a solid metal door, humanely restrain the enemy within, and politely correct their grammar all while humming Handel’s Messiah and drinking a lovely cuppa tea.

He currently hangs his hat, rucksack, and tweed smoking jacket in Northern Virginia.

~][~ ~][~ ~][~ ~][~ 
Administrator's note:   Today’s guest post tackles the touchy issue of gender tropes in modern genre fiction. As a male author who writes crime and mystery fiction (from a female narrator's POV none-the-less,) I often find myself tempted to fall into the same old stereotypes that have long defined the genre. One need only look at the cover of a dime store novel to see the streetwise dame in distress motif and the grizzled probably somewhat older gumshoe (Spade, Marlow, Hammer) who she will ultimately inexplicably throw herself at.    These tropes have their counterpart in sci-fi as well, the genre our guest calls his own. In fact, the only real difference being the grizzled anti-hero of mysteries is generally replaced in space opera and fantasy by a clean-cut Lothario (Kirk, Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers) who is more of an actual hero than an anti-one. You know, all the characteristics that defined Zapp Brannigan.   It's also significant to recognize that in my genre, the "woman sleuth" sub-genre is the fastest growing sub of them all. So the topic of avoiding these pigeonholes in today’s post-feminism, Bechdel aware landscape is a particularly interesting one for me.
Dave
Ah, genre writing…where the heteronormative, straight-jawed men battle hordes of Nazis/ninjas/cyborgs/cultists or an awesome combination of any two of those. Or three. If you manage all four, you’ve got something special going on. Sorry. Genre writing. RIGHT. In regards to fiction writing, genre leans toward the more pulpy side of literature. Maybe you are thumbing through H. Rider Haggard’s adventures in Africa or engrossed in Heinlein’s troopers of the Starship variety. Either way, when you pluck a book like this off the shelf you have expectations of the genre. You want aliens, slithering monsters from the deep, and buried civilizations with names nobody can remember. At no point do you pick up a genre novel and think, “I can’t wait to read a misogynistic adventure!” and if you do, just grab Twilight and call it a day. In genre, especially with science fiction and fantasy, we have grander and more ambitious desires. Yet we are still saddled with a predominant focus on masculine idealism that panders to the primal insecurities and lusts of a youthful male demographic. Why are our fun, adventuresome books so shackled by brutishness? Aren’t genre books supposed to be loaded with ideas and imagination? Why are the Conan stories, filled with some of the loveliest prose in fantasy writing, loaded with minimally dressed, curvy women who are accomplishments for the male character to either achieve or lose? Why do we have so many damsels in distress or femme fatales misleading our male characters down treacherous paths? Can our genre stories evolve beyond their mid-century, male-centric growth spurt? And what would that look like? Would progressive genre stories still look and read like the pulp we love? Let’s explore the question and worry behind it. Genre writing has exploded into the mainstream, and we see people sporting their geekcred with Marvel t-shirts and Firefly memes on their Facebook page. Genre stories are BIG and men, women, children, and the elderly alike adore them. They appear, despite much of genre fictions boy’s club origins, to be bridging all gender and racial gaps. Some areas still need work, but it is happening. And it has been happening for some time! What’s more, I will give you several examples of how the titans of our genre have treated women magnificently. Let’s talk about Isaac Asimov. In his series “I, Robot,” we find an amazing female character in Dr. Susan Calvin. She is a calculating woman with a controlled exterior, but tender and compassionate on the inside. Dr. Calvin might be my favorite female character in written science fiction and nobody blinks when she arrives or comments that she is a woman. None of her characters are fazed by her gender, and it in no way deters her or complicates her life. Susan isn’t defined by a male, and her conflicts do not revolve around her sexuality. Interesting how progressive “I, Robot” is given that it was published in 1950. When compared to its film counterpart starring Will Smith, Dr. Susan Calvin is tossed into the roll as sidebar eye candy, her entire narrative stolen by a hulking man. And of course, the film gave her a shower scene and held her at gunpoint. Don’t worry, though, she saves Will Smith by blind-firing an automatic carbine. Because she can’t handle a weapon. Because she’s a woman. We’re not done. When we think of pulp genre and its tropes of adventure and exploration, a film that rages to the surface almost instantly is Indiana Jones. My god, Raiders of the Lost Ark is a crazy good movie. I cannot wait to show that film to my son so he can see how excellent genre films can be without a mountain of digital noise propping them up. I also can’t wait to show him my favorite scene in the whole film, one that involves Marion Ravenwood playing mind games with the smitten Belloq in his tent. She turns his male expectations against him, knife drawn, and regardless of her betrayal, Belloq is still delighted by her. Marion embraces her femininity, uses it as a tool when needed against lesser men, but still carves out a life in the frozen parts of the male dominated world. I think we all loved Marion. Such a shame the two following films replaced her with a screeching prima donna and a seductive villainess. These two incidents are hardly isolated. In quality genre writing, we find that male dominance is not required for them to be effective pieces. You can still have your tropes that involve train-car fight scenes and sinister aliens without needed to diminish women. Ripley, of Alien and Aliens, will be a paragon of womanhood and motherhood while beating the tar out of her rival female villain, the alien queen. Robin, of Stross’s Glasshouse, changes gender and still is a complete badass either way without flinching in a sword fight. Some of our best genre works are flooded with equal and honorable treatment of their female characters. I’d go even further and say these works are fantastic and enriched because of their equal and honorable treatment of their female characters. So why is Conan flanked with toys in the shape of women, and why are so many horror and science fiction stories loaded with busty women running upstairs, desperate for a man to save them? Is this type of writing pandering to primal male desires in an effort to earn their dollar? Is this type of writing lazy and unintelligent? Yes to both. “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public,” as H. L. Mencken put it, and when you watch a movie like Transformers that has the protagonist’s underage daughter being violated by the cameraman in IMAX while you are sitting next to your kid, Menken’s validity is reinforced with terrifying efficiency. There is no excuse for poor representation of female characters, and the genres we love are no longer stifled by male gatekeepers to a boy’s club. And not only can I cite examples of how misogyny is exclusive of genre stories, but I can write genre stories that prove it wholesale. My first novel, The Line, was to be a hardcore time travel work of earnest science fiction. I chose my main character, Mary, to not only be a historian but an archivist of their time travels and discoveries. This was intentional because nearly all of history has been recorded and peer-reviewed by men, and historical feminist revisionism is a mindset that is still in its infancy. I wanted a woman’s perspective of American history, World War II, and West African conflicts. Writing a woman was terrifying, but not as challenging as I expected once I finally calmed down about it. I simply wrote a brilliant, calculating woman with a hard edge to her, and as long as I kept the conflict within the context of her character and not her gender, The Line held up. My beta reading team was all women, every single one with a master’s degree, and the first question they were asked after reading it was “what gender was the author.” None of them felt that The Line was overtly written by a man. My second novel, Withered Zion, had a rape scene with one of my male main characters. Rape is often a present danger against female characters in genre writing, but I wanted to be clear and brutal in regards to a male being raped. Sometimes we might read a rape scene in a novel, and it is clearly a male writer sexualizing and glorifying the rape in an attempt to make it sexy and forbidden. You’ve read that book. So have I. And it infuriated me. Go ahead, Mr. Heteronormative-Misogynist. Try and get off on my male protagonist being raped. My third novel, currently in the works, has a homosexual main character. It is about Hephaestion breaking into Hell to rescue his true love, Alexander the Great. I’ve had a gay friend read it as a gay litmus test of sorts, and he gave me the go ahead, and it was far easier than I thought. Basically, I thought of my character, how I’d feel if I were him, and the rest was simple. He doesn’t prance around, squealing, “gosh, I am so very gay,” just like a female character doesn’t prance around announcing, “gosh, I am on my period.” I will say that a love scene between two men gets very tangled when it comes to pronouns. That was the sole challenge in the novel so far. So, there you have it. Three works of genre that I wrote that either promote feminism overtly, illustrate that men are as susceptible to sexual crime as women, and has a homosexual character doing exactly what I would do in his position. The trick is to never take your audience for granted, always have people investigate your work and give you earnest feedback in regard to your intentions, and listen to that feedback. Your genre work isn’t about you. It’s about your character.“Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public,” as M. L. Mencken said. But let’s not forget: those gender-equal classics and the new genre works that smack of feminism like Firefly and Buffy are hardly driving folk broke, either.
Info on William's book, The Line, can be found at the Amazon page, at Barnes & Noble and on Goodreads. He can be found on Twitter @WGalaini 

The Thrills & Mystery Podcast Debuts Today

On January 5, 2015 at 8 AM Eastern Time, the Thrills & Mystery Podcast makes its debut.

A weekly fiction podcast featuring crime stories, noir, thrillers, mysteries, adventure and other tales of high intensity written by many of today's up-and-coming indie-writers and publishers. 

The show can be found at Thrillsandmystery.com, or by searching for the podcast by name on iTunes. In the meantime, enjoy this brief sample.




Also, as a side note, the three published editions of the Lupa Schwartz Mystery series are now available through Google Play.

Opinion: Free Speech and Bad Taste in re The Interview

I watched The Interview last night. It’s a silly movie with a ridiculous plot, but it’s funny in a way that only dark humor can be. I had decided that I wanted to watch it long before the controversy began over the movie. (I wouldn’t call it a film. That’s a highbrow word used to define art-house/Oscar contenders.) I like Seth Rogan and James Franco. Always have ever since their Freaks and Geeks days. I enjoyed Pineapple Express and This is the End. So I was looking forward to spending my Christmas day in a movie theater enjoying the two of them being ridiculous together. That’s it. I had no political agenda, and I didn’t assume the movie had one either.
Now, I’m not going to bother analyzing or deconstructing the free thought issues or the geo-political ramifications of Sony buckling under to hackers who may or may not have been acting on behalf of the North Korean government. Rather, I’m going to answer an annoying meme which has been riding coattail on the political discussion associated with Sony’s decision to yank the movie from most movie theaters. That meme being that the film crossed some imaginary line by making a joke of the assassination of a living political leader.
Crossed a line? What line? It was an American comedy movie. A farce. It was over-the-top, socio-political mockery. There is no line.
Did it cross a line because it was a comedy about murdering somebody? If so, then a lot of American movies have crossed that line over the years: Arsenic and Old lace, The Trouble with Harry, Throw Mama from the Train; and some of them were about true stories where actual people were either murdered or attempts were made: I Love You to Death, The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom, Fargo, Bernie. Comedy’s about death and suffering are as old as comedy itself. Humour noir can be found in the writing of Voltaire (Candide,) Edgar Allen Poe (The Cask of Amontillado,) even as far back as Aristophanes (The Frogs.)
So what line does The Interview actually cross? Did it cross a line because it suggests that governments make assassination attempts on foreign dignitaries? Because it is not the first movie to make that claim: Inglourious Basterds (American service men attempt to assassinate Hitler,) Assassination Attempt (Germany conspires to kill FDR, Churchill, and Stalin,) JFK(movie which posits that the Kennedy murder was a giant intergovernmental plot and cover-up.) Or is it simply wrong to spoof the leaders of foreign governments? Because that has been done before as well by everyone from the Three Stooges to Charlie Chaplain to Dan Aykroyd and Chevy Chase.
Perhaps it crossed a line because it suggests that the American government utilizes celebrities and other non-government persons to do its dirty work. If so, somebody should have told George Clooney he was off base when he made Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. And nobody better ever make a movie about the 1960 plot to kill Castro where the CIA asked for mob boss Sam Giancano’s help. And speaking of celebrity spies, Mata Hari anyone?
Or maybe it crossed a line because since 1976 it has been American policy that we do not assassinate foreign leaders. “Yeah, right,” said Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, and Hugo Chavez.
Was it line-crossing because Kim Jong-Un is a living person, and it’s wrong to make a comedy movie about a real person’s fictional death? If so, this is the second time Rogan and Franco have made that gaffe. In This is the End Michael Cera playing Michael Cera is impaled by a light post, Rhianna as Rhianna falls into an abyss, and Jonah Hill as Jonah Hill is engulfed in flames among others. Other movies where actual living persons are fictionally killed include Bill Murray in Zombieland, and Alec Baldwin in Team America: World Police. There was also a film made in 2006 in Britain about the fictional assassination of then living and acting US President George W. Bush. The film was called Death of a President, and it pissed off a lot of people, but nobody tried to ban it, and it got little attention because – frankly – it wasn’t that good a movie.
The bottom line is that The Interview doesn’t really break any new ground nor does it flout any unfloutable taboos.  It’s satire and it’s a black comedy, and whether it’s a good or bad movie doesn’t really matter. They had a right to make it, and we have a right to watch it. Good taste, bad taste, appropriate or not, that’s a personal matter for individuals to decide for themselves. 

Return of the Dragon now available online!

My graphic novel, The Return of the Dragon , is now available for purchase from Amazon for the kindle and for purchase as a physical copy from Createspace and all online retailers.

   According to legend, King Arthur of Camelot did not die at the battle of Camlann. He was taken by the faeries of Avalon to await the time when he will again rise to prominence and lead the world in a new Camelot. 

    A mysterious influential leader with ties to no countries has emerged on the world stage. Arthur Penn has influenced most of the nations in the UN to adopt a new charter: one without veto powers and a new cooperative form of economic inter-dependence at its core. The US and Russia are dubious and are the last two hold-outs in establishing this new utopia of federated yet autonomous governments.

    Ferapont Vernyy and Karen White are sent by their respective governments to meet with Arthur at a secret compound in the Olympic Mountains in Vancouver. They are both drawn in by his principled charm and magnetic personality, but neither is comfortable with his nocturnal nature … and neither understands his urgency to come to consensus. 

    A modern take on the Lancelot/Guinevere/Arthur saga with a vampire twist, The Return of the Dragon is a graphic novel blending elements of political intrigue, romantic fantasy, Arthurian legend, and vampire lore.

Eventually, I hope to also make it available through Comixology, and perhaps a few other comics related sites. It's presently enrolled in KDP select, and is available for the kindle at the low introductory price of only $2.99. Or you can get it for free if you are enrolled in KU. I will be raising the price after the holidays, and there may or may not be a countdown deal or a few free days, but I'll only be announcing that through my newsletter and eBook related marketing sites.

Thriller, horror, mystery, adventure, crime stories wanted for new podcast

A few months ago I announced that I was beginning a website for mystery/thriller/crime writers and their fans called thrillsandmystery.com. The basic idea was for indie pulp writers to post a fraction of a short which readers would upvote for inclusion in an anthology. But the community never got excited about that idea. So I’m tweaking it.
Beginning next year, I’m adding a podcast element. Once a week I’ll release an audio version of one of the stories, so people who find the website can subscribe to the podcast, or vice versa. Stories included in the podcast will be bookended with front and back matter promoting the featured writer so we can promote your website,  your blog, your Amazon author page, or your newsletter, or whatever you like.
Stories featured on the podcast will also appear in the anthology, and the writer can have the option to read his/her story him/her self if he/she prefers.
The idea here is discoverabilty. This only works if we blog about it, share on social media, mention it in interviews, etc. I’m paying for the webhosting out of pocket. There will be an rss feed and availability through iTunes. And all YOU have to do is submit stories and tell people about YOUR story.
So come on, dust off that revenge story you wrote a few years ago, or finish that heist yarn you began but never finished, or write up that nightmare you had last week where you were being chased through an old vacant apartment building, and submit it. I don’t ask for any ownership, just the right to podcast it and include it in an anthology.
I haven’t updated it to include the podcast yet, but here’sthe submission page. 

What are you waiting for?

Something to Read, Omnibus Edition

Cover design by http://bluevalleyauthorservices.com/E... this year I participated in two editions of a charity anthology collection to help raise funds for Children's Hospital charities through Wallace and Grommit's Grand Appeal. The three collections were entitled, Something To Take On The Ride, Something For The Journey, and Something To Take On The Trip. My stories, A Routine Sunday and The Not Wanting, appeared in issues one and three respectively. To date, those projects have collected £250 or nearly $400 American. Now all 100 stories have been collected into one omnibus edition which was first made available on Amazon for "Black Friday" sales on November 28 of this year. Soon, a paperback version will also be made available.

The collection features stories by authors of such renown as Kevin J Anderson, David Gerrold and Ron McLarty. There is a dedicated Facebook page for the Omnibus version available here.

UPDATE: Here's the Amazon page! eBook, Paperback

Author Interview: Ted Cross, Author of The Immorality Game

Today we feature Ted Cross, author of The Immorality Game.  Ted has spent the past two decades traveling the world as a diplomat, all the time dreaming about writing fantasy and science fiction. He's visited nearly forty countries and lived in seven, including the U.S., Russia, China, Croatia, Iceland, Hungary, and Azerbaijan. He's witnessed coup attempts, mafia and terrorist attacks, played chess with several world champions, and had bit parts in a couple of movies. He currently lives in Baku, Azerbaijan with his lovely wife and two teenage sons.
Here’s how Ted describes his book which releases today: Moscow, 2138. With the world only beginning to recover from the complete societal collapse of the late 21st Century, Zoya scrapes by prepping corpses for funerals and dreams of saving enough money to have a child. When her brother forces her to bring him a mysterious package, she witnesses his murder and finds herself on the run from ruthless mobsters. Frantically trying to stay alive and save her loved ones, Zoya opens the package and discovers two unusual data cards, one that allows her to fight back against the mafia and another which may hold the key to everlasting life.
Who are your influences?  So many fantastic writers have influenced me, but the main ones are George R.R. Martin, Tolkien, Ursula Le Guin, Colleen McCullough, Stephen King, and Richard K. Morgan.
When did you begin writing? I always did well with writing in school, but I always thought I was too much of a procrastinator to actually write a novel. As I got older, though, stories kept invading my daydreams and they got more and more insistent. I still didn't seriously consider writing these stories out until I read A Game of Thrones by Martin. I had an 'a-ha' moment there, because the way he wrote, with each chapter rotating between different POV characters, really appealed to me and fit well with what I wanted to do with the first book I wrote (an epic fantasy I plan to publish next year).
How do you come up with your stories, characters, character names, POV, etc? In different ways. The first was one that evolved over decades beginning in my teens with my love of role-playing games. I was never satisfied with any of the novels I read based on such games--I always felt they condescended a bit to readers. I wanted a great writer to write in a role-playing style world, but treat it seriously.  Cover Illustration © Stephan Martiniere
Do you work from an outline?  Not really. I mostly wing it, though I do write out a list of plot points once things begin to get a little complex. 
Tell me about your favorite scene in your novel.  The scene I loved most is one that I know some readers won't like. You're in the middle of a sci-fi novel and suddenly a chapter starts with what seems purely like a fantasy story. It turns out later that it's just a very realistic virtual reality game that one of the main characters likes to play. But this scene plays an important role in the book, not just to establish how amazingly real virtual reality becomes in the future, but also in one of the climactic scenes.
Can you tell us a little about your writing philosophy?  I like to be extremely patient. I'll let each coming chapter simmer in my imagination for as long as it takes for me to be satisfied that I 'have it'. I can write one or more chapters a week when things are hopping, but when a chapter isn't really ready in my mind, I'll stop writing for weeks or even months until I can get it right. Each of my two completed novels has taken me more than three years to write. I do hope I can work faster when I retire!
Have you ever tried writing in any other genres?  Like I said, my first novel was epic fantasy. I do believe I'll mostly stick with fantasy and science fiction, though I do have some story ideas outside of these genres.

Do you have any interesting writing-related anecdotes to share? Oddly enough this debut novel of mine began entirely as back-story to one of the characters in my epic fantasy! I get very detailed with the back-story of my books, and the particular back-story of one of the characters in the fantasy was so compelling and unusual to me that I eventually decided to write it. How a sci-fi thriller can lead to epic fantasy may sound odd, but it ends up being quite logical, based upon some hints within this first book.
Ted can be found at his blog: http://tedacross.blogspot.com/as well as on Facebook and Twitter. His book can be found in electronic format at Goodreads, Kobo, Google Play and Amazon.com and will soon be available at Nook and iTunes. He also plans to make a paperback available shortly.

Author interview: Ted Cross, Author of The Immorality Game

Today we feature Ted Cross, author of The Immorality Game.  Ted has spent the past two decades traveling the world as a diplomat, all the time dreaming about writing fantasy and science fiction. He's visited nearly forty countries and lived in seven, including the U.S., Russia, China, Croatia, Iceland, Hungary, and Azerbaijan. He's witnessed coup attempts, mafia and terrorist attacks, played chess with several world champions, and had bit parts in a couple of movies. He currently lives in Baku, Azerbaijan with his lovely wife and two teenage sons.
Here’s how Ted describes his book which releases today: Moscow, 2138. With the world only beginning to recover from the complete societal collapse of the late 21st Century, Zoya scrapes by prepping corpses for funerals and dreams of saving enough money to have a child. When her brother forces her to bring him a mysterious package, she witnesses his murder and finds herself on the run from ruthless mobsters. Frantically trying to stay alive and save her loved ones, Zoya opens the package and discovers two unusual data cards, one that allows her to fight back against the mafia and another which may hold the key to everlasting life.
Who are your influences?  So many fantastic writers have influenced me, but the main ones are George R.R. Martin, Tolkien, Ursula Le Guin, Colleen McCullough, Stephen King, and Richard K. Morgan.
When did you begin writing? I always did well with writing in school, but I always thought I was too much of a procrastinator to actually write a novel. As I got older, though, stories kept invading my daydreams and they got more and more insistent. I still didn't seriously consider writing these stories out until I read A Game of Thrones by Martin. I had an 'a-ha' moment there, because the way he wrote, with each chapter rotating between different POV characters, really appealed to me and fit well with what I wanted to do with the first book I wrote (an epic fantasy I plan to publish next year).
How do you come up with your stories, characters, character names, POV, etc? In different ways. The first was one that evolved over decades beginning in my teens with my love of role-playing games. I was never satisfied with any of the novels I read based on such games--I always felt they condescended a bit to readers. I wanted a great writer to write in a role-playing style world, but treat it seriously.  Cover Illustration © Stephan Martiniere
Do you work from an outline?  Not really. I mostly wing it, though I do write out a list of plot points once things begin to get a little complex. 
Tell me about your favorite scene in your novel.  The scene I loved most is one that I know some readers won't like. You're in the middle of a sci-fi novel and suddenly a chapter starts with what seems purely like a fantasy story. It turns out later that it's just a very realistic virtual reality game that one of the main characters likes to play. But this scene plays an important role in the book, not just to establish how amazingly real virtual reality becomes in the future, but also in one of the climactic scenes.
Can you tell us a little about your writing philosophy?  I like to be extremely patient. I'll let each coming chapter simmer in my imagination for as long as it takes for me to be satisfied that I 'have it'. I can write one or more chapters a week when things are hopping, but when a chapter isn't really ready in my mind, I'll stop writing for weeks or even months until I can get it right. Each of my two completed novels has taken me more than three years to write. I do hope I can work faster when I retire!
Have you ever tried writing in any other genres?  Like I said, my first novel was epic fantasy. I do believe I'll mostly stick with fantasy and science fiction, though I do have some story ideas outside of these genres.

Do you have any interesting writing-related anecdotes to share? Oddly enough this debut novel of mine began entirely as back-story to one of the characters in my epic fantasy! I get very detailed with the back-story of my books, and the particular back-story of one of the characters in the fantasy was so compelling and unusual to me that I eventually decided to write it. How a sci-fi thriller can lead to epic fantasy may sound odd, but it ends up being quite logical, based upon some hints within this first book.
Ted can be found at his blog: http://tedacross.blogspot.com/as well as on Facebook and Twitter. His book can be found in electronic format at Goodreads, Kobo, Google Play and Amazon.com and will soon be available at Nook and iTunes. He also plans to make a paperback available shortly.

Author Interview: Margo Bond Collins, Author of Sanguinary

Today’s post features and interview with Margo Bond Collins, author of urban fantasy, contemporary romance, and paranormal mysteries. She has published a number of novels, including Taming the Country Star, Legally Undead, Waking Up Dead, and Fairy, Texas. She lives in Texas with her husband, their daughter, and several spoiled pets. Although writing fiction is her first love, she also teaches college-level English courses online. She enjoys reading romance and paranormal fiction of any genre and spends most of her free time daydreaming about heroes, monsters, cowboys, and villains, and the strong women who love them—and sometimes fight them. Her latest release is a vampire yarn entitled Sanguinary. Here’s the blurb:
Only fifty years left before vampires rule the world.
When Dallas police detective Cami Davis joined the city's vampire unit, she planned to use the job as a stepping-stone to a better position in the department.
But she didn't know then what she knows now: there's a silent war raging between humans and vampires, and the vampires are winning.
So with the help of a disaffected vampire and an ex-cop addict, Cami is going undercover, determined to solve a series of recent murders, discover a way to overthrow the local Sanguinary government, and, in the process, help win the war for the human race.
But can she maintain her own humanity in the process? Or will Cami find herself, along with the rest of the world, pulled under a darkness she cannot oppose?
Who are your influences?That's a tough question! Because I'm a college English professor, I've spent my whole life reading. I think every writer is influenced by everything he or she reads—along with every life experience and every interaction with the world and the people in it. That said, I think that my love of the old tales of heroes and monsters (The Odyssey, Gilgamesh, Beowulf) along with my love of eighteenth-century literature (Eliza Haywood, Jane Austen) and recent urban fantasy (Carrie Vaughn, Rachel Vincent, Ilona Andrews) probably combine to create the strongest influences on the stories I tell.
When did you begin writing?The first story I remember actually writing down was basically fan-fiction of The Wizard of Oz. I wrote it in long-hand in a yellow legal pad. I’ve been writing ever since.
How do you come up with your stories, characters, character names, POV, etc?I take inspiration from everything around me! Mostly, though, a character shows up in my head and starts talking. Currently, my favorite quote about this is one from Neil Gaiman: "You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we’re doing it."
Do you work from an outline?Sometimes. I used to be a total pantser (writing by the seat of my pants), but now I often sketch out the series of event.
Tell me about your favorite scene in your novel. Ooh. The scene where Lili realizes that the voices in her head are real—she's not crazy, but rather is infected.
Can you tell us a little about your writing philosophy? Write every day. That's it. Sometimes it's hard, sometimes it's easy—but it's always valuable, because continuing to write no matter the situation allows the writer to treat it as a job.
Have you ever tried writing in any other genres? I'm always trying out new genres! Most of what I write is urban fantasy, but I'm working on a three-book contemporary romance series at the moment (due out in 2015 with Entangled), and I have a science fiction book twirling around in my mind right now.
Do you have any interesting writing-related anecdotes to share? I'm in the process of working on a sequel to my urban fantasy Legally Undead, which is set in the Bronx, where I lived for several years. On my last trip there to visit friends, I took a walk around my old neighborhood to take some pictures of likely places for various scenes. New York City is great because it's full of strange little nooks and odd buildings—and I came across a tiny building that looked exactly like the top of a castle tower that had been sawed off and dropped down on the street. It was a business of some sort, so I decided I had to see the inside. But when I marched in with my camera and asked the people in the front if I could please see their back offices, they declined, vehemently, in very strong New York accents. They clearly decided I was insane—but that's okay, because I decided that there must be nefarious villains committing evil deeds in the back offices (what other reason could they possibly have for declining to let me see the whole building, right?). And in my book, the back part of the building, which has no windows, is a vampire stronghold.

Excerpt    It hit me, hard, that no matter how I twisted it around in my head, Reese was going to be more than just an informant to me. I didn't know if I could trust him, this cowboy-vampire I had been thrown together with. But something about him sang to me, like a tune just out of hearing, almost recognized—a song of protection and death. And I wanted to dance to it, almost as much as I wanted to escape it.
   The department wouldn't force me to stick it out, wouldn't expect me to team up with a vampire for anything more than the most superficial of connections.   I could walk out at any time.
   But I wouldn't. He'd help us find and stop whoever was killing these women.
   That's why I'll stay in this.   "I'll tell you everything," I said to the vampire snarling at me. "But I'll need your help."Reese's lip dropped back down, covering the fang.
I was glad—it was easier to contemplate joining forces with him when he wasn't reminding me that he was one of the monsters.   "Talk," he said.   I shook my head. "Not here," I said, speaking quietly. How good his hearing might be was only one of the many things I didn't know about vampires.   He slid up to the bar beside me.   "We can't leave," he said, equally softly. I had to lean close to hear him.   "Why not?" I asked.   "Mendoza all but dared me to Claim you, back there." He didn't look down at me. "If I don't bleed you at least a little before we go, he'll be suspicious."   At his words, the half-healed bite mark Reese had left on my shoulder throbbed once, sending a hot pulse throughout my entire body.
   I wanted the response to be revulsion.
   Almost everyone who went undercover with the vamps came out addicted to their bite. The ones who could still string two sentences together, like Garrett, stayed on the force.
   The others . . .
   The press portrayed us as bumbling and stupid—and maybe we were. Sending detectives in against humanity's worst nightmare? We were like little kids trying to hold back the dark with matches, bound to get our fingers burned, and worse, maybe burn the house down around us.I paused and swallowed.

Sanguinary is available in electronic format from Kindle, Nook, Kobo, or in paperback at Amazon. 
Margo can be found at her Amazon Author Page, through her website: http://www.MargoBondCollins.net, her blog, on Twitter: @MargoBondCollin, Google+, her GoodreadsAuthor Page, her Facebook Author Page, her Pinterest, or contact her via her Email: MargoBondCollins@gmail.com.