S.A. Bolich brings romance to a Civil War ghost story, IN HEAVEN'S SHADOW

I do love a good genre-bender. Historical fiction meets paranormal romance in S.A. Bolich's latest book. She stopped by to tell us about In Heaven's Shadow and the research behind it.

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When should love end? The question behind In Heaven’s Shadow

by S.A. Bolich

How can you build a life with a ghost? I mean, really, why would you want to? On the other hand, who says you can’t? In the case of poor Lilith Stark, the heroine of In Heaven’s Shadow, just about everybody!

Who wouldn’t love a man who foreswears Heaven to be with you? Poor Joab found the love of his life a bit late, and only got two years with her before the war came along. He’s not ready to move on, and Lilith sees no particular reason why he should. But how would you react if your neighbor suddenly announced that her dead husband had come home from Gettysburg a ghost and had taken up residence? Suppose she was a little “odd” anyway, with a certifiably strange father? And suppose you thought you saw rainbows following her around on occasion, or caught her talking to people who weren’t there? How hard would she have to talk to convince you it was all true?

Yup. Even today, society would likely still commit her first and ask questions later. Just imagine how upset 19^th century sensibilities would be.

The Civil War was an era when “community” meant people helped each other and knew everything about one another and got in each other’s business without question or qualm. The backdrop of the war just made it more essential for people on the home front to get along. With so many men off fighting, the burden on the women at home was truly remarkable as they fought to keep houses and families and farms together and food on the table while raiders from both sides stole everything in sight. I grew up on a farm (Lilith’s hatred of hoeing comes straight from my childhood of maintaining the kitchen garden), but before I wrote this book I really didn’t have a bedrock appreciation for the amount of sheer manual labor our ancestors put in every day. Lilith and her neighbors need to pull together—but she has tossed a rock into the pool of settled truths that are all they have left to depend upon. With the war already looming over this prim and proper corner of Virginia like the scythe of the Grim Reaper choosing another victim, they’re just not up to her overturning all the notions of life and death and faith that keep them going from day to day.

Yet how can she turn her back on the man she loves just because he’s dead? What a delicious dilemma.

I have always been fascinated by the Civil War, and I love fantasy. As a history major in college (yes, I’m one of those geeks!) I set out to write historical fiction, but there was always that fantasy element that kept drawing me away. At last, with In Heaven’s Shadow, I got a great chance to combine paranormal with “straight” history and magic and come up with a Civil War ghost story that is also a very different sort of love story.

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Learn More about S.A. Bolich on her website.

Purchase In Heaven’s Shadow as an ebook on Amazon, Smashwords, B&N, or directly from Taliesin Publishing. 

M. Garnet switches genre gears for latest story, EYES OF DANGER

Please welcome M. Garnet. When I learned that her most recent publication was a switch from her usual fare, I asked her to talk about why she decided to write a contemporary romantic mystery this time around.

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Anne, I want to thank you very much for inviting me as a guest on your blog.  There is a lot to say about my story EYES OF DANGER due to the fact that it is a little different than most of my published books, so the opportunity to talk about it with your readers is something I appreciate.

When I put up an introduction for my release of this story I said “I locked up my vampires in the closet and turned off my telescope”.  My fans who have read my stories will understand what I meant by that strange little sentence.  I have written several stories about love that included space travel with strange events and strange individuals.  There is something that I love to write about sexy aliens.

I also have had a reasonable amount of success writing about Vampires including a series called BLOOD SISTERS of which the third in the series, MISERY was awarded a four star award from Romance Review saying it was ‘an outstanding read’.  Some would say I should stay with what is selling.  I want to say here that I do love my vampires and I have the fourth in the series with the publisher at this moment.

But, there is always something that draws me back to the contemporary mystery genre so I just can’t resist plowing through my old notes and emailing all my great research contacts to get back into a modern thriller with love pulled apart in the middle of evil government types with too much power.

With this story, I wanted to bring my reader along with the heroine into a web that she got lost trying to understand as she fell in love with a pair of dark eyes.  I needed to surround her with some real locations, actual threats and true ways of getting away and safe.

For some authors research can be tedious and boring.  For me it is exciting and a great way to learn.  On top of that, because of my long and interesting life, I have had the surprise to find that I have a plethora of people that I know personally who have first hand knowledge on things that most of the citizens around us never even saw on the evening news.  My list of people I can dip into involves retired Navy Seals, Experts on Police and Federal armament and every military type you can think about.  My email reaches out to those in almost every US state but also those who personally experienced time deep inside the working process of both the government and the largest businesses that run this world.

The cover may not have a half naked vampire or very sexy alien on it, but still my favorite artist Carmen Waters did an outstanding job doing artwork that was stunning.  Pardon the pun but it is ‘eye catching’.  I also have to give credit to my editor Tex Burd who keeps me out of any trouble that might make me look like I slept through all the courses on Lit 101.

This is the third in the genre of contemporary mystery love story I have written but, I will have to warn my fans, it won’t be my last.  I just hope that there are some fans and perhaps some new ones that will find this story with a strange turn at the end interesting enough to recommend it to others.

Again Anne, thanks for this opportunity. 

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Learn more about M. Garnet on her website.   

You can purchase Eyes of Danger at Extasy Books.

Beth Barany: Epigraphs in HENRIETTA AND THE DRAGON STONE #yalit #fantasy

Today's guest, Beth Barany, writes magical tales of romance and adventure to transport readers to new worlds where anything is possible. She's the award-winning author HENRIETTA THE DRAGON SLAYER, a young adult fantasy novel (Book 1 of the Five Kingdom series.) Beth also helps authors create successful careers, via her coaching, consulting, speaking, and online courses. Don't forget to enter the giveaway at the bottom of this post!

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Fairy Tale Elements in Young Adult Fantasy 

by Beth Barany

Hi Anne, Thanks for having me on your blog! I’m excited to share a little bit about my latest young adult fantasy novel, Henrietta and the Dragon Stone, book 2 in my Five Kingdoms series, and to offer fun prizes! More on the later at the end of this post.

When I wrote Henrietta The Dragon Slayer, book 1 in my Five Kingdoms series, I was inspired to share about the Five Kingdoms world I created through songs, poems, and sayings. I love fairy tales and folktales, so I wanted to add elements that sounded like oral lore, tales handed down from the ages, songs, sayings, and other elements of Henrietta’s life.

I did that by creating made-up poems, songs, and other lore. I put them at the start of every chapter, lending another texture or counterpoint or hint. After I added them, I learned they were called “epigraphs.”

Wikipedia defines them epigraphs well: “In literature, an epigraph is a phrase, quotation, or poem that is set at the beginning of a document or component. The epigraph may serve as a preface, as a summary, as a counter-example, or to link the work to a wider literary canon, either to invite comparison or to enlist a conventional context.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigraph_(literature))

I created more epigraphs for book 2, Henrietta and the Dragon Stone, and even expanded and excerpted ones I created in book 1. Here are a few of my favorites from that book:

The Dracontias, dra-con-ti-as, emphasis on the second syllable, is the most powerful gem in all the Five Kingdoms, and more powerful than all the other so-called Kingdom Stones. This one and only Dragon Stone unifies the kingdoms and empowers its user. But beware its one fatal flaw.

—from the Fire Wizards Compendium

In and out, Fate weaves her spell

She jumps out and runs from here to hell

All that remains

Is alive and well

So, do hold tight

Do hold fast

Do not let go

Of your heart, dear child

—The Weavers of Yore chant

From Romania, a valley town born

The Dragon Slayer strides

As the crow flies west down the river ways

The Dragon Slayer strides

Tempered at the castle mount

Tested on battlefield and in cave

The Dragon Slayer strides

The Dragon Slayer strides

—From Ode One of the Valley version of “Song of the Dragon Slayer”

More about Henrietta and the Dragon Stone (Book 2):

A new story of young adult epic fantasy adventure by award-winning author, Beth Barany.

Book 2 in the Five Kingdom series of the continuing adventures of Henrietta The Dragon Slayer.

What if everyone you loved was threatened by a force you couldn't see or fight?

Henrietta the legendary dragon slayer wants to return to her village for a heroes’ welcome. But an unknown sorcerer rides after her and her Dragon Stone and aims to destroy everyone she cares about. Can she claim her newfound powers sparked by the Dragon Stone and keep her loved ones safe, or will the sorcerer destroy everyone and everything she loves?

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Purchase Henrietta and the Dragon Stone (Book 2) on 

Smashwords, Kobo, Amazon, Barnes & Noble

Learn more about Beth Barany on her website.

Raffecopter Giveaway until 2/28/2014:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Beth is giving away 3 prizes!

·         A $25 Amazon gift card

·         One print copy of Henrietta and the Dragon Stone (US only)

·         One jumbo bag with a Henrietta and the Dragon Stone image

Sandra Barret on BLOOD OF A TRAITOR and developing culture in #SciFi

My guest today is Sandra Barret, whose latest work is Blood of a Traitor, Book 2 in her Terran-Novan Universe series. Here Sandra discusses a very difficult question: how the concept of culture might be used in futuristic sci-fi.

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How Writing The Other Taught Me "You know nothing, Jon Snow"

by Sandra Barret

Okay, I'm mixing my metaphors (and my genres here), but that Game of Thrones expression so perfectly matches my reality after trying to write about someone from a culture different from my own.  My latest science fiction novel, Blood of a Traitor, has two main characters.  Kay is short, sarcastic, and a little too much like me (or my inner me anyway). And then there's Ayaan - tall, African, and Muslim (or a version of Muslim I extrapolated from current liberal Muslim trends).

I did my research like a good little writer. I got books, I hunted blogs. I created a character that I felt was well rounded and represented someone who isn't common in our stories.  After sitting through the Arisia convention's panel on Writing for The Other, I realized I fell short of the mark.

I did focus on one item that was critical to Ayaan.  She chose to follow her religion when family and the military frowned on it. It was core to who she was, and that I think I represented well.  Where it weakened was in the supporting cast of characters.

Now before I continue to bash my own book, I think the story and characters are great (call me biased).  But for my own goal and what I set out when I created this book? Yeah, didn't quite make it.  I fell into a few common holes. The biggest one, I like to call "Why Aren't There Kenyans on Pluto" (referencing comments from that Arisia panel).  The mistake I made was to assume that some far flung future, complete with human genome enhancements and galactic space travel, would automatically strip away major cultural differences.  My story cultures are different, but on a planetary scope. Within the planet, each is homogenous. 

One recommendation from the panel was to evaluate the Jewish culture, as something that has spanned millennia, experienced wide scale Diaspora, and yet both retained and shed aspects of what was core thousands of years before.  And then recognize the differences within that culture. It too is not monolithic. People mingle with other cultures, adopting parts here and there.

So for my next book in the series, I hope to be less like Jon Snow....and maybe I'll put Kenyans on Pluto? Side by side with Canadians, Brazilians, and an alien or two. Or Brazilian aliens, or Kenyans who integrated cultural aspects of those aliens.  They may self-identify as Plutonians to outsiders, but amongst themselves, don't strip away their heritage. Keep it, enhance it, and let the characters be real.

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Learn more about Sandra Barret on her website.

You can purchase Blood of a Traitor on Amazon as print or e-book.

T. J. Wooldrige finds magick for THE KELPIE

Here's a delightful essay by T. J. Wooldridge about the phases of research she went through for her middle grade novel The Kelpie. Makes me want to go to Scotland! 

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When Magick happens Outside the Pages...

by T. J. Wooldridge

It started at my friends' art studio.  I'd taken a weekend away from home and dedicated it to my current Work In Progress, The Kelpie. I was about a third of the way through the book and I found myself getting lost in the castle I'd created for my characters to live in. The bout of writer's block was caused by a lack of information, so I went to remedy it by researching castles in Scotland and Scottish castles people might still live in.

Of course, being me, I also wanted to know if the area of Scotland I was imagining might even have castles and such. I knew just about enough about Scottish geography to know I didn't know close to what I needed to know. (Hopefully that makes sense?)

But I had a picture in my head, as clear as anything, and I knew driving directions and how long I'd figured it took my characters to get to various places. So, on one set of tabs, I was pulling up castles and inhabited castles in Scotland and using copious amounts my very generous friends' printer paper and ink. In another set of tabs, I was playing on Google Maps.

Come to find out, the place in my head really existed. There happens to be an area on the eastern coast of the Scottish Borders (the area bordering England) that's an hour's drive east of Edinburgh, has a whole lot of land, is near tourist and fishing villages, and... wait for it... actually has ruins of an ancient castle. The location of my characters' castle fit perfectly where there currently exists a farm. That you have to hike through and by to get to aforementioned actual castle ruins.

Only an hour's drive away from that area was this other lovely place, the Traquair House, or, the Oldest Inhabited House in Scotland. Which looks like a castle. It's AWESOME!

I went home from that weekend with my friends with folders of research and drawings and maps and other fun research. As well as a wish to go to Scotland and explore for myself.

Some year or so later, my husband was called to work overseas for his job for a whole year. We decided to plan his vacations of places we could meet that we wouldn't normally have a chance to visit otherwise.  Of course, I had to insist we go to Scotland. (It didn't require a lot of insistence; Scotland is where they make Scotch, and my husband is as much a fan of hiking and ruins as I am.)

Organizing the vacation was left to me, so we would spend half of it in the area my novel would take place. Including a luxurious stay at Traquair House.

The Traquair House--besides providing me with an authentic Victorian princess-like bed to sleep on and an antique desk where I handwrote several postcards in fountain pen--also had actual secret passages and a fabulous history Hiding Important People during various wars. It also had a full-sized hedge maze and many hiking paths and abutted a nature preserve: all details I'd figured into my book before I knew this place even existed! On top of that, I got to interview the 21st Lady of Traquair about living in a historic home.  I was already in editing stage at this point with my publisher, so I was quite relieved to find out how little I'd have to change. I'd gotten almost all my assumptions and guesses about things correct!

And then came visiting the actual area where I'd place my MacArthur family castle. We stayed at another beautiful bed and breakfast and picked our hosts' brains about what might, in fact, happen if tourist children and local children started going missing, and there were bodies. (I assured them many times that this was for a novel! Hazards of interview-based research...) There was little I had to change based on these interviews, too.

Then, finally, finally, we got to hike along the nature preserve and we sought out the castle ruins. (Locals frequently tell tourists not to go out there because it is a somewhat dangerous hike with more than a few cliff-edges right over the water.)  Besides being teary-eyed and entranced the whole hike and thinking, "Oh my God! I'm IN MY OWN BOOK!", I was looking for any more details I could add to make things more authentic.  There were only a few, but they counted and I added them in: there's a man-made staircase of wood and packed earth for a particularly difficult and wet descent, mist is constantly rolling in and out even in June, there is a Hitchcock-ian amount of birds who all nest on the cliffs during June... and I severely underestimated the amount of sheep poop involved.

All of those were easy fixes. But I'm still in awe at how much the actual location, the facts, and everything else that I'm quite sure I never knew prior happened to be real.  It really was like magick to write... and it was magickal--and a little scary--to experience what lived in my head to explode into real life I could see, touch, feel, taste (yay, haggis!)... and smell (not-so-yay on the sheep poop.)

In speaking with other writers, this isn't all that unusual an experience, either! Other writers get shocked when things they "make up" turn out to be real... so, perhaps there is a little bit of something magick that's clicked on in a writer's mind.

Have you experienced any magick in your work that's leaked from the pages and your brain into real life?

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THE KELPIE

by T. J. Woolridge

 

I can't honestly say I was joking when I suggested to my best friend, Joe – Prince Joseph, eldest son of England's Crown Prince – that we could probably find something the police had missed in regards to the missing children.  After all, eleven and twelve year olds like us did that all the time on the telly and in the books we read…

When Heather and Joe decide to be Sleuthy MacSleuths on the property abutting the castle Heather's family lives in, neither expected to discover the real reason children were going missing:

A Kelpie.  A child-eating faerie horse had moved into the loch "next door."

The two barely escape with their lives, but they aren't safe. Caught in a storm of faerie power, Heather, Joe, and Heather's whole family are pulled into a maze of talking cats, ghostly secrets, and powerful magick.

With another child taken, time is running out to make things right.

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Learn more about T. J. Woolridge on her website.

Buy The Kelpie on Amazon, at B&N, and at other online and brick & mortar retailers.

Kristi Petersen Schoonover on writing in flashback

I'm pleased to welcome Kristi Petersen Schoonover. Kristi writes short and long fiction in the horror vein, including her newest story, "This Poisoned Ground." Today she offers some great advice about a tricky technique: writing a scene or whole story as a flashback.

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Five Tips for Firm Flashbacks

by Kristi Petersen Schoonover

2011 brought an opportunity to pen a Poe-inspired, modern gothic romance under 10,000 words. My work is already influenced by Poe, so I thought the writing of my most recently published piece, “This Poisoned Ground,” would be “no sweat.”

I was wrong.

The trouble was in the telling of a love story that spanned decades. In order to properly weight the horrific ending, the reader needed to understand that there was a developing situation over a long period. How should I do that? I couldn’t write the sentence ‘they argued for thirty years’ because then my ending wouldn’t be justified—the reader had to see how awful things were. Conversely, I couldn’t start at the beginning of their relationship and spoon it out because the story would crawl (true of all lengths: Don’t ever fill any space with things that don’t need to be there).

It could be done through flashback—a fully-fleshed out scene in which we bring the reader to the past, to the time before the current story is happening. A flashback is also meant to illustrate an intangible, such as “Mom was mean” or “they were madly in love.”

But flashback’s a sticky wicket: There’s a right way and a wrong way, and doing it right can be a challenge. Here are my five tips for firm flashbacks.

Ask. Is what’s being shared only illustrated effectively through flashback? Or can it be mentioned in the character’s current thought process? “He remembered when Dad drank seven sodas a day” doesn’t need a flashback built around it if it’s just a description to flesh out Dad’s personality. If, however, it sparks the beginning of Dad’s diabetes and the protagonist’s emotional response, or is integral to conflict between them, the answer to the flashback question may be yes.

Pivot. In real life, a memory/reflection is triggered by something—an object, statement, smell, song. Use these “triggers” to usher in the flashback, making for a smooth transition. Does the protagonist find a cup her mother had given her, making her recall a specific incident which would reveal some critical aspect of their relationship? Use the cup to usher in the scene. In addition, be sure the pivot piece plays a role—no matter how minor—in the current time of the story; don’t use it as a throwaway device.

Ground. Ground the flashback in time and place, and be clear: “twenty years ago, back on their farm” is preferable to “When I wore bell-bottoms on a Wednesday at fourteen minutes past the hour.” And yes, separators can offset a flashback, but a # symbol doesn’t substitute for solid grounding.

Trim. Only show the critical bits. If the point is the protagonist has finally flipped her lid and it takes place at a restaurant, we may not need to see the couple meeting there, ordering, et cetera, but we DO need to see that when dessert is served, she tries to stab someone with a fork after a couple of lines of incendiary dialogue.

Time. Make sure the length of the scene is appropriate. Too long, the reader is pulled out of the current story; too short, the reader could get disoriented. If it’s too long, consider breaking it up into a few flashbacks—or be certain that everything depicted is really necessary. If it’s too short, it may not need to be rendered in flashback; consider a brief mention within the current time instead.

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Blurb for "This Poisoned Ground": 

They say you hurt the ones you love most. No one ever talks about when they hurt you back.

Just after dawn on the hottest day East Providence has endured in a hundred summers, Todd, a bit of a ladies’ man, finds his prized rose bush dead. This is only the first in an ever-more-ominous series of events, and someone…or something…is trying to invade his home.

In the tradition of “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “Ligeia,” and Aura comes a gripping tale of love, lust…and regret.

“This Poisoned Ground” will be in wide release January 28. For now, it is available for 99¢ in all e-formats at the publisher’s website.

To learn more about Kristi Petersen Schoonover, visit her website.

Matthew Guerruckey on using Marvel's comic techniques in storytelling

I got to know Matthew Guerruckey when I contributed some stories to his wonderful online literary magazine, Drunk Monkeys. He's a writer as well as an editor, and I'm delighted

that he's joining us today to share a very interesting (and practical) perspective on storytelling.

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HOW TO WRITE FICTION THE MARVEL WAY

By Matthew Guerruckey

I ended up a writer, but my earliest ambition was to be a comic-book artist. One of my first memories is of lying on the shag carpet at my grandmother’s house drawing stick figure superheroes. (Superman was a blob with a cape and a curl, Batman was a blob with a cape and pointy ears).

The first college course I took was on the Art of Cartooning. It was my first formal training, not only in art, but in storytelling. While other writers were analyzing Hemingway, Woolf, and Fitzgerald I was doing the same with Peanuts, Looney Tunes, and Marvel Comics. During that time I came across an instructional book that remains my favorite to this day: How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way by Stan Lee and John Buscema.

Stan Lee is the co-creator (along with artists like Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko) of some of the most enduring characters in pop culture history. In 1962 alone Lee and his artists created Spider-Man, The Fantastic Four, The Incredible Hulk, and Thor (that last one with an assist from ancient Norse legend). Stan imbued his comics with a folksy, alliterative charm. The same goes for How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way. Stan boasts that by reading the book you will be able to tell your own stories in the “mildly magnificent Marvel style”. In spite of its cheesiness, the book contains solid tips on how to approach not just comic art but any kind of storytelling.

In the book, artists are advised to begin drawing the figure using basic shapes, like circles and cylinders. After those basic forms are in place, you scribble lines to fill in the rest of the figure—after all, the drawing will be erased and covered in pen later. At that early stage there’s no such thing as a wrong line.

That holds true for writing as well. A common cause of writer’s block is the fear that your words must be “correct” right away. But if you look at that rough draft as a scribble, you’ll see that there are no mistakes. In the same way that a comic artist traces over their previous work to refine their drawing, you’ll rewrite each word until it finds its proper inflection.

How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way can tell you how to write a scene as well. It presents several examples of ”boring” composition, and then next to them shows the correct “Marvel” way of drawing the same scene. Their examples seem like self-parody, filled with extreme angles, high drama, and zero subtlety, but it’s an important lesson. Every scene you write should contain enough drama, even if it’s subtly portrayed, to keep the reader engaged. You don’t have to be a garish showman like Stan, but continually crafting interesting moments is the key to holding a reader’s interest.

In drawing comics, you absolutely have to know what your story is and how it will be told before you begin drawing. The medium demands it. Fiction does as well. If you don’t know why you’re writing your story and where you would like it to go (even if the ending isn’t set in stone), your readers won’t know why they should be reading it.

But the most important thing I’ve learned from comics about writing isn’t contained in the pages of How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way, but spread out over the collected works of Lee and his collaborators. For decades on end they just kept creating. Some of it was garbage, some of it was genius, but they kept at it, and the garbage made way for the genius and the genius elevated the garbage. Keep writing, no matter what it is, and you have no idea how far you can go. Excelsior! 

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Check out Matthew Guerruckey's lit zine Drunk Monkeys and his indie publishing company Marginalia Publishing.