Steven E. Wedel's Blog, page 38

After Obsession blog tour and giveaways

I tell ya what, this working with a major publisher is A-OK with me. Bloomsbury sent out around 90 advance reader copies (ARCs) of the book to review bloggers, and those reviews are starting to show up online. I'm going to link to a few of them here, 'cause I likes to share.

The first is by my good friend and critique partner Gayleen Rabakukk (who doesn't even know she's thanked in the back of the book because it was left out of the ARC). Gayleen is doing an interview/review/giveaway at her...

Wraparound Dust Jacket

The UPS man brought me a gift today. I had no idea what it was, as I wasn't expecting anything, and the envelop he left behind was pretty thin. I tore it open and found anthrax.

Just kidding! It was porn.

No, wait! It was this:

Okay, the picture doesn't do it justice. Here's what editor Michelle said about it: "We've printed on foil (but with a matte finish), which is why it is shimmery in certain light, and flat in others." Trust me, it is very cool.

Coming to a bookstore near you on September 1...

Harry Potter

Okay, I have to admit that I have watched all the Harry Potter movies, but had not read the books. I'd been meaning to, honestly, but hadn't gotten around to it. After seeing the last film, though, I hunted down Sorcerer's Stone and began reading it. I'm really liking it. It's written for a younger audience than I'd imagined, probably because the actors grew so fast, but it's a really engaging story.

Unfortunately, that means I'm now reading four books in the little bit of reading time I...

New Werewolf Saga Book Finished

By finished, I mean a first draft. But hey, after three years of working on it, that feels like a major accomplishment. The first draft came in at just over 100,000 words.

I have another project to get back to before I begin the revision process on Nadia's Children, but I thought I'd say a few words about this fourth book in The Werewolf Saga since it's so freshly minted.

First of all, many, many, many thanks to the readers who have read the previous books and have followed this blog and...

Old Friends: A post mostly about books

I drove 21 miles for a used book today. The book cost $3.50. I'm sure the gas it took me to get to Second Chance Books and back cost me more than the book. I could have bought the book for a penny, plus $3.99 shipping, from Amazon. But I wanted it NOW! No, I needed it.

You see, I began reading Terry C. Johnston's Carry the Wind waaaaay back in February. Along the way, I read a few other books, going back and forth, and finally finished this one last weekend. After 694 pages, it just ended...

Interview

NRU: Mr. Wedel, superhero movies are all the rage today. If you could be a superhero, who would you be?

WEDEL: I would be Procrastination Man.

NRU: Procrastination Man? Why? What would your power be?

WEDEL: I would zip around the globe, destroying things that keep people like me – in my mundane alter ego – from doing their real work.

NRU: Can you elaborate on that?

WEDEL: Of course. You see, like right now I should be rewriting the last few chapters of this young adult book I've been working on...

The Deer Hunter

My wife and I watched The Deer Hunter last night. Neither of us had seen it, though it's been on my to-see list for a long, long time. There were several things that struck me as I watched this 1978 Academy Award-winner for best picture. Your comments on the following are welcome.

Religion played a significant part in the lives of these characters. How many times did we see the spires of their Greek Orthodox church? I don't know, but they appeared often. Today, that isn't so common in movies, ...

Fantasy series

LiveJournal Tags: fantasy,reading,patricia a. mckillip,c.s. lewis,j.r.r. tolkien,lloyd alexander,ursula k. le guin,robert e. howard,Margaret Weis,Tracy Hickman,terry brooks,dennis l. mckiernan,stephen r. donaldson,h.p. lovecraft Before getting into horror fiction in about 1982, I pretty much read nothing but fantasy. I loved a good fantasy series, and would read them over and over during junior high and early high school. While poking around on Goodreads.com recently I came across an author name I hadn't thought of in a while and it reminded me of just how much I enjoyed a trilogy of her books. So, I thought I'd list my top five fantasy series here, then ask you to discuss them, and add your own. Mine are in no particular order. Oh, and I didn't include J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings because, like most people of my generation, it being the best ever just goes without saying.

Riddle-Master by Patricia A. McKillip – This is the series that inspired this blog. I have the three books in tattered old paperbacks that my parents had to special order back in the days when Enid didn't have a book store. In 1999 the three volumes were collected into one book, seen here. It's the story of a young prince with three star-like marks on his forehead. He travels from his island of Hed in search of adventure. You can see the Tolkien influence here, particularly with the emphasis on riddles (as in Bilbo vs. Gollum), but this series is easier to read. Also, the second book shifts the focus to the female heroine, something that was pretty unusual for it's time. Even as a boy reading this series, I had no problem with the switch to a female perspective because the story was still just as interesting. This was a real comfort read for me as an early teenager and I would love to pick it up and read it again right now. If there was but world enough and time …

The Prydain Chronicles by Lloyd Alexander – As I recall, this was my first exposure to fantasy literature. Before this I read mostly dog and horse stories, but I was lucky enough to be put in an advanced reading class in seventh grade. We met in the library and were guided through our readings by the librarian and this was one of the first books she had us read. (Some of my all-time favorite reads date back to that class.) The first book, The Book of Three, is the only one we read in class; I read the rest on my own as fast as I could get them. This is where I learned about story arc, as Taran, the assistant pig keeper, longs for adventure, then is thrust into it. He meets a cast of unforgettable companions and has many adventures before … Well, I won't give it away. This was also my first introduction to Celtic mythology. This series is aimed at a younger audience, but I love it still and remember fondly every turn and twist of the five-book story.

Earthsea Cycle by Ursula K. Le Guin – Looking at Goodreads now, I see that Le Guin is still writing this Cycle. However, I only care about the first three books. That's all there was for years, and when the fourth book came out in the mid-1990s I eagerly grabbed it up, and soon wished I hadn't. So, my discussion here is only going to include The Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, and The Farthest Shore. This one is significant to me because it taught me that magic has to have a price. Also, like McKillip's series, the second book shifts to a female point of view, and in this case it is that second book that is my favorite. In fact, The Tombs of Atuan might even be included in my all-time list of favorite books, and I can't quite say why. Usually I don't go for female-oriented books, books set in the desert, books that have an Egyptian feel to them … but this one has all of that and I love it.

The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis – This one is such a no-brainer that I almost didn't include it here. I read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe in the same class where we read The Book of Three and was hooked on the series. I think this series is a little more uneven than Alexander's, and I really don't care for The Last Battle much at all, but there is so much good stuff throughout that this one is a must-read. My favorite of the series is The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, with The Magician's Nephew a close second. It was with Lion that I first learned a story could be about more than what was simply on the page. I like the movies being made from this series, but really, you have to read these to fully appreciate them. Reading about Lewis's conversion to Christianity and his relationship to Tolkien also deepens the experience of reading this series.

Conan by Robert E. Howard, L. Sprague De Camp, and Lin Carter – Filling in this fifth spot was a tough choice. Choosing to go with this version of the Conan cycle will be seen as controversial to many fans, too, so let me just say I went with nostalgia and importance in my literary development. For those not in the know, Conan the Barbarian is the creation of Robert E. Howard, a sad man who wrote pretty much invented the sword-and-sorcery genre before blowing his brains out when he was 30 years old. He wrote several Conan stories, and left many more stories and fragments behind, but there was much in the way of a chronological order. De Camp and Carter took most of what was available, sorted it, wrote new material to fill in the gaps, and came up with a 12-volume series that is out of print now. I was introduced to Conan through the first film, but the series became a bridge for me to move from fantasy into horror, as I went from Howard to Lovecraft without even knowing at the time that they men had been great friends. Darker and sexier than anything listed above, this was a series I enjoyed as a pubescent teenager and still appreciate today.

Honorable Mentions (because I just love them too much not to)

Dragonlance: Chronicles by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman Dragonlance: Legends by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman Shannara Trilogy by Terry Brooks The Iron Tower Trilogy by Dennis L. McKiernan The First and Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever by Stephen R. Donaldson

Fantasy series

LiveJournal Tags: fantasy,reading,patricia a. mckillip,c.s. lewis,j.r.r. tolkien,lloyd alexander,ursula k. le guin,robert e. howard,Margaret Weis,Tracy Hickman,terry brooks,dennis l. mckiernan,stephen r. donaldson,h.p. lovecraft

Before getting into horror fiction in about 1982, I pretty much read nothing but fantasy. I loved a good fantasy series, and would read them over and over during junior high and early high school. While poking around on Goodreads.com recently I came across an author...

Thoughts on becoming a YA author, part 1

LiveJournal Tags: horror,young adult,writing,after obsession,publishing As we slowly approach the Sept. 13 release of After Obsession, the book co-written with the awesome Carrie Jones, I'm seeing an increase in hits to my Web site and am getting a few messages from new readers. This is great. Mostly.

I've looked forward to this, believing that readers who like After Obsession will want to read more of my books, so sales of my werewolf books will pick up. But I'm not so sure that's a good thing. Keep in mind that I was a teenager during the splatterpunk movement in horror. Shocking was good. Sex, violence, violent sex, sexy violence … that was the norm. And it carried over to the writing of Shara, which was originally finished in 1993. Shara, in wolf form, has sex with a wolf and I describe her being stuck on the the dogknot. That's just one scene. Murdered by Human Wolves has the rape scene, which really isn't that graphic; I'd compare it to the devil's copulation with Rosemary in Rosemary's Baby. Call to the Hunt has one werewolfy oral sex scene that was graphic enough The Oklahoman refused to review the book, calling it pornography (which it certainly is not). Of course, the worst of the bunch is my ghost story Seven Days in Benevolence, where I really tried to be as shocking and gross as possible. By the time I got to Ulrik I'd toned things down, at least in the sex department.

I've let my high school students read my werewolf books. Mostly seniors, some juniors, and these are kids I know and can warn and sometimes check with their parents. Nobody's been shocked. Nobody's complained, and most of the kids claim to like the books.

The other day I was contacted by a young reader with many questions about the writing process. She found me because of After Obsession. Well, she's only 14. This got me to thinking about crossover readers a little differently. I wouldn't have let my own 14-year-old daughter read my books (if she'd asked). Now, because of Carrie's huge following, there's a possibility that many other young readers may pick up my adult books and find that they are not … well, not for young adults.

Two months after Bloomsbury releases After Obsession, Bad Moon Books will release Amara's Prayer, a very sexual adult novel. By this I don't mean pornographic. The sex isn't there just to be there, and that's never been the case with me. But there is a lot of sex, and there's a fair amount of detail about the act because it's integral to the story. It isn't a book for the YA audience.

It's an interesting scenario. Since the adult books are from small presses, maybe very few of the After Obsession readers will notice them. Maybe parents who let their kids read paranormal young adult romances are okay with their kids reading about werewolves with dogknots. I don't know.

Maybe I'm being too uptight about the whole thing and it isn't even an issue.