Alex Gabriel's Blog, page 2

New Cover for “Love for the Cold-Blooded”!

Several readers mentioned they found the original cover of “Love for the Cold-Blooded” bland – so I enlisted the talented, amazing and endlessly patient Joanna of Book Cover Master Class to design a new one. I am very happy with the result. Thank you again, Joanna!

Click on the image to check out the full glory of the dramatically posed hoagie – ahem, hero – with his imposingly billowing cape! The little mind control ray! The snakes! The jaguar! The cheeky minions peeking over the cape! And, of course, the heroically shirtless Silver Paladin, aka Nick!

(I’m only sad Nick isn’t slinging a Ghost Matter t-shirt over his shoulder. Alas! Clearly this was a day when he was forced to leave his lab.)

I hope this cover reflects the light-hearted, whimsical nature of the book, while also alluding to the superhero theme, flirting with its comic book origins, bringing out the affectionate parody / satirical homage element, and – not least – emphasizing that this is a book wherein readers can expect to find men without shirts.

The print cover is even lovelier, you guys. Just saying.

What do you think?

As an aside on the subject of cover models, let me just say: argh. Finding this one took a long and painful search (sifting through endless archives of half-naked men; I’m sure you can picture my suffering). He still doesn’t quite match my mental image of Nick, but he’s like the fictional movie version. In my mind, this is the underwear model who portrays the fictionalized character Golden Warrior in the films within the novel’s world.

Still Waters

Usually, I have a hard time writing to prompts – but I risked it for the Goodreads M/M Romance group’s “Love Is an Open Road” event, in which group members write free image- and prompt-inspired gay romances. And I am very glad I gave in to temptation, because I was lucky enough to snag the perfect prompt for me! It’s by Kathleen, and reads simply: I only have two words for you: ginger merman! Everything else is up to you.

My myth-inspired novella “Still Waters” is roughly 30k long and will be published this summer – first in the M/M Romance group, then in all the usual places. And it will be entirely free!

This is the book’s blurb – extract to follow.

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

A reformed nix.

Drakjan has been living as a harmless freshwater merman for so long he sometimes almost believes in the lie himself.

Almost.

A deadly hunter.

Hraban has dedicated his life to taking down creatures like Drakjan, protecting those who cannot protect themselves.

An uneasy truce.

When fate forces them together, the nix and the hunter discover a dangerous attraction… and a threat that can destroy everything Drakjan has come to love.

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

(Why, yes. Faced with a prompt consisting of two words, I still managed to avoid complying with both of those words, if you want to get technical. Ahem.)

Writing about Beavers, Demigods and Shadowy Government Agencies

Right now, I have three books lined up waiting to be written… plus a challenge story involving a ginger merman, and a potential sequel to First Contact. I also have what seems like a negative amount of time, but I refuse to let that stop me. Time is a state of mind. Ahem.

Amazingly enough, I already have titles for most of these stories – and even a book cover for one of them! I really do seem to have overcome my title impairment of yore, I’m glad to say. So really, there’s very little standing in the way of me just finishing them already.

The merman challenge story is up first, and will involve beavers, corpses, lots of singing and (probably) no fluff at all. Possibly a Little Matchgirl and/or other eldritch horrors. We shall see.

After that I want to return to an m/m urban fantasy I’m already about a third of the way into. It needs to be extensively rewritten for reasons of both creeping chastity and general plot, but I think I have a good handle on how to tackle this now.

This story is a dystopian fantasy featuring demigods, various religious cults, organized crime and shadowy government agencies. It’s not necessarily a good thing to have divine powers, as my hero can tell you… and as for the gods, you’d better hope you stay under their radar.

A second m/m fantasy – as yet in the planning stages – is a world-hopping story with a twist, a non-heroic hero, a lot of identity issues… and a devil along for the ride. ;-) The plot has yet to come together properly in my mind, but I’m very enthusiastic about this second story; writing it should be a lot of fun. I hope things fall into place in my head soon.

Lastly, there’s a mainstream-ish science fiction epic that I’ve been working on, on and off, for a decade or so. I’m very fond of it, and I do want to finish it one of these days…

And of course, there’s always the chance of random story ideas ambushing me out of the blue. That does happen rather a lot.

Falling in Love with the Cold-Blooded

Several people have asked where I got the idea for “Love for the Cold-Blooded, Or: The Part-Time Evil Minion’s Guide to Accidentally Dating a Superhero”. I’ll try to answer this as briefly as possible… which is still not very brief at all.

You rang?

A little over a year ago, a friend recounted several interesting anecdotes from an article about serving the extremely wealthy. There was a family who entirely forgot about one of the many estates they owned, for example, while the estate in question was kept in top shape by staff: a ghost mansion running smoothly along in constant readiness for a visit that never came.

My friend also mentioned that most of the fiction she read got the details of extremely rich people’s lives wrong. Hmm, I thought. Yes, I’ve also read stories like that, and those details have always rung false to me. Fictional characters living in a billionaire’s mansion check what they have in the fridge and fix themselves a sandwich, making a mental note to go shopping because they’re almost out of ham; they call out for fast food; they forget to do the laundry; they discover they’ve run out of their favorite cereal, and squabble over who ate the last portion; they split chores like making breakfast and doing the dishes. All perfectly ordinary activities – all things that a very rich person living in a mansion would never ordinarily do.

What might a story that got it right be like…?

So I got hold of the article, did some research, and the core idea of Pat’s job as night manager to the Andersen Estate – and Nicholas’s two-steps-removed-from-normal life – was born.

Flying people with capes!

The idea of writing a novel set in a superhero world has been rattling around in my mind for a very long time. It was always clear to me that the protagonist would not be a hero, because I have problems with heroes, super and otherwise. All of the other details were up in the air, however.

Then, superhero movies had their renaissance, and I rediscovered my love for the genre, largely through Magneto and Professor X. (As an aside: You can’t tell me those two aren’t canonically an item. Also, guess which one is my favorite? I’m very predictable in some things…)

When my friend mentioned that article, things began to come together in my mind.

Unexpected creeping chastity.

Another factor that came into play was the troubles I was having with the m/m romance I was then in the middle of writing – an urban fantasy full of gods, demigods, mobsters and menacing cults. This story had progressed to the point where the romance absolutely needed to get off the ground. The scene I’d planned for the first kiss was right there, and… nope. No go.

No kissing. No romance. My story had been hit by creeping chastity. The main character had very real other problems, and was light-years away from thoughts of romance and/or sex.

So when I took a break from that still-unfinished book to start Love for the Cold-Blooded, I decided to take measures to ensure these new guys could not turn unexpectedly chaste on me. I am glad to say this worked perfectly. No creeping platonic feelings here!

A bunch of other stuff I like…

Of course, many additional factors came into play, as well. The character constellation is one I love: Two extremely different characters who complement each other, and who learn to value each others differences. I also love romance between people who are or should be enemies, or at the very least opponents. And I wanted to write a “look again”-character like Pat: A guy who presents himself like a douchey dudebro jock, but is – at second glance – actually very different… all while retaining an undeniable streak of douchey, dudebro-ish jockishness.

So, in four incomplete nutshells, that’s how “Love for the Cold-Blooded” came to be. There’s a lot more to it than that, but I do think I caught some of the main points!

 

The article I mentioned is “You Rang? Mastering the Art of Serving the Rich” by John P. Davidson (Harper’s Magazine, January 2014).

Villain Cookies

Are supervillains attacking your city? So sorry for the inconvenience. Here, have a cookie.

Yes, I made villain cookies – double chocolate, of course (Nick’s favorite). If you can identify all the villains, I will be extremely impressed!

If you want to make your own and don’t have any suitably villainous cookie cutters handy, here’s a template with the shapes I made. Bear in mind that I’m not an artist, though.

I also made diagonal cake a while back. It’s not very pretty, but that makes it all the more authentic – and it tasted great. ;-)

This concludes my baking spree of baked goods featured in my books… for now. (Insert deranged evil-mastermind-type laughter here.)

 

The Quest for Titles

I love titles. Titles are essential; they are the first part of the story the reader comes into contact with. They can be works of art in their own right. They can add additional meaning, provide interpretation or focus, sound allusions… their potential is near-endless.

There are titles I admire, titles I love more than their stories, and titles I love despite having no interest in their stories at all. There are titles I don’t initially like, but that later reveal themselves to be perfect. And, of course, there are titles I dislike; that I find awkward, ugly or ill-fitting, or so lacking they do their story an actual disservice.

For a long time, finding titles was a trial for me. I used to put off finding a title until the last possible moment in hopes that there’d be a quote in the finished story I could use, or else that something would occur to me at the last second. It usually didn’t, leaving me to spend a day or two frantically leafing through books of poetry and the collected works of Shakespeare in search of a title.

Let’s just say that I ended up with a very mixed bag of titles. Sometimes one of my beta-readers would come up with a great title; sometimes I found something more or less okay myself; and sometimes, desperate, I made Truly Unfortunate Title Choices.

Seriously. If there were a contest for Worst (And Vaguely Pretentious) Title, I could compete.

At one point, I even started a community for the title-impaired. I also invented a title meme, which was huge fun, even if it didn’t solve my title issues.

And then, one fine day, I thought of an awesome title. It was lovely and evocative, and it fit the story perfectly. I couldn’t believe it. The next few titles were torturous as usual – but then, another good title happened. Slowly, good title experiences began to edge out bad title experiences.

Right now, I even have awesome titles for two stories I haven’t written yet.

Unfortunately, I have no idea what brought about this change, and so no way to bottle and sell it and make a million dollars. I only hope that talking about it will not cause title luck to flee me again. My best guess is that years and years of torturing my not naturally title-inclined brain eventually caused it to contort itself into a more title-friendly shape. Alternately, maybe the fickle and capricious Title God took pity on me. Who knows?

Sources of Titular Inspiration

If you’re desperately looking for a title, maybe one of these sources will help:

poetry (try Blake, Swinburne, Keats, Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, or any other poet in the world, ever)
lyrics (again, by anyone ever)
the Vagrant Story room list (yes, seriously – this is amazing stuff)

Example Titles Using These Sources

Poetry

Merciless Beauty

The Cuckoo Song

The Author’s Epitaph, Made by Himself

Full Fathom Five

A Litany in Time of Plague

Air and Angels

The Forerunners

A Place of Wind and Flowers

Dreams Serpent-Shapen

Light, Light, and Light

Lyrics

A Whisper in Water

The Ocean Miles Away

Path of Cinders

Bury Me Alone

A Kiss On the Wind

When the Lifespray Cools

The Going Water and the Gone

Monsters and Madmen

Vagrant Story

Dust Shall Eat the Days

Those Who Drink the Dark

The Body Fragile Yields

Running With the Wolves

Underdark Fishmarket

Paper Love: “Love for the Cold-Blooded” paperback giveaway

Given my abiding love of the printed book, it won’t come as a surprise that I’m publishing my longer stories in both ebook and paperback form. Love for the Cold-Blooded is available already – and it looks great! (Sorry for the low-quality phone pic… it does look great, seriously.)

Even if nobody except me ever orders a paperback copy, it’s been well worth all of the work just so I can have one for myself.

In case anybody else would like to have a copy, though, I’m hosting a giveaway on goodreads. Why not sign up? With a bit of luck, you could win a free paperback copy of “Love for the Cold-Blooded”.

Goodreads Book Giveaway


Love for the Cold-Blooded. Or
by Alex Gabriel

Giveaway ends February 09, 2015.

See the giveaway details

at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Ebooks or printed books? My answer is YES, absolutely.

My first ebook reader was a Rocket eBook. It must have been, oh, 1999 or 2000 or thereabouts. The Rocket eBook was a giant, chunky and heavy thing, and it was absolutely wonderful. It was also incredibly sturdy – I used it intensively for almost a decade, dropped it repeatedly, and lugged it along on every trip and vacation. I might still be using it today if it hadn’t stopped being compatible with my PC. It still worked fine at that point – the battery life had shortened and it was a bit battered, but that was all.

Nobody I knew had ever heard of an ebook reader when I first got the Rocket. Reading it in public was a sure way to start a conversation.

Go back a few more years before the Rocket.

When I was young, I would finish a good book and reluctantly emerge back into the Real World, longing for the next book. If only there were some way to have a single book that would magically change to be whatever book I wanted to read, without lengthy delays for ordering the sequel, waiting for it to be shipped, picking it up after weeks or months…

I pictured this magical book as an actual book with blank pages that would fill up with new text, and that came in different formats (small paperback, large paperback, comic book, …). I never, ever expected that this wish would one day come true. And yet, it has. My reading miracle is here, and it is called the ebook.

So, yes: I am a huge fan of ebooks.

I am also a huge fan of the printed book. For me, there is something wonderfully material and real to paper books. I love the way they look and feel. You can hold them in your hands, stack them next to your bed, leaf through them… and you can put them on your shelf, like fictional worlds just waiting for you, worlds you can return to whenever you please.

It feels wonderful to be surrounded by printed books in my living space. To me, they are like the physical manifestation of fictional worlds and characters I love; memories, promises and possibilities. I love old books for their history and beauty, too, and printed non-fiction books for more practical reasons.

I can’t imagine loving one form of books less because of the other. I want to have them both.

I don’t think that ebooks are a threat to the printed page, or will replace printed books in the long run. I’m certain printed books and ebooks will coexist in perfect harmony. I’m extrapolating from my own feelings on the issue, of course, but while I’m sure some readers will read only paper books or only ebooks, most – I can’t help but assume – will want to have both.

On the love of narrative clichés

I have a confession to make: I love narrative clichés. Not all of them, of course, but certain well-used plot ideas get me interested every time. Undercover in a gay bar, pretending to be a couple, amnesia, enemies forced to work together – yes! Sign me up!

Sure, these plots have been done many times before. But the same is true of every plot; after thousands of years of fiction being created all over the world, there isn’t a single plot or theme that hasn’t been put through its paces in countless different ways.

The magic is in the details. Originality is in the writing. It’s in the storytelling, the specific set of characters, the way they meet the challenges that confront them, how the author uses familiar themes in fresh ways and plays with existing conventions. I’ve read absolutely amazing, fresh and original books built around a basic premise that sounds tired and worn.

Given my love of narrative clichés, writing “First Contact” was an act of pure self-indulgence. Cops undercover as a couple in a gay bar (okay, a bdsm club run by the mafia – but that’s details)… ;-)

Do you love any narrative clichés? Tell me about it!

Going live!

All of my titles are now available on Amazon! Well, to be exact, they’ve been available since just before the holidays… I merely neglected to announce it due to a complete lack of sleep, followed by a seasonal break for cookies, Scrabble and too much good food.

I am ridiculously happy and excited, as well as somewhat nervous.

Next up:

Making all five titles available on Smashwords and Barnes & Noble
A paperback version of Love for the Cold-Blooded (due in early January)
Paperback versions of Learning How to Lose I to III (due later in January)