Guest author: D.A. Lascelles, on why it's all my fault

And now for something completely different...

This week's guest author writes fantasy and alternate worlds and all kinds of bizarre things, including the sexy stuff - and apparently it's all my fault. Including the state of world publishing and the Kennedy assassination. I do try.

But I dunno. I'll take the credit. Dave's stories are pretty cool. When you read a lot of romance, like I do, you tend to forget there are things other than heroic characters and endless happy endings. It's great to read from a different angle.


So, no doubt in order to make like the Royal Navy and give me my forty lashes - ooh, baby - and to say interesting things about publishing and erotica vs porn and why we can't all please everyone - please welcome small press and indie author D.A. Lascelles...


I blame Erica Hayes.

For everything (yes, she was there on that infamous grassy knoll some decades before she was born on a completely different hemisphere, she is cunning like that).

But in particular I blame her for the presence of two short stories I have recently published. If she hadn’t challenged publically on social media, if she hadn’t herself been so adept at writing erotica, then I probably wouldn’t have done it and the world may have been saved. Well, OK, I probably would have still done it but I wouldn’t have had anyone to blame but myself.

I’ve often teased Erica about her work being pretty much thinly veiled pornography. It’s one of the things we often discuss on social media along with the disparity between UK and Australian weather patterns. If you have ever read any of her excellent Shadowfae series you will see what I mean. It is the most glorious expression of erotica I have ever read – sheer poetry in its style, rich in visual description and gorgeously hot scenes. Or, as I once said on Facebook and which she promised to put on a book cover sometime: ‘Almost but not quite entirely unlike porn’. Paraphrasing Douglas Adams, of course… The standard she sets is enormously high.

So, I was challenged to do something to match the quality of Erica’s erotica. {ED: flattery will get you nowhere... actually, no, that's not true. See me later...}

I had previously worked with her on a Paranormal Romance anthology (the Shades of Love anthology) and in that I focussed on developing my writing of romance plots, though the sex scenes in my contribution (the novella Transitions) were of the ‘fade to soft candlelight’ style rather than explicit. To match her challenge, I realised I had to up my game. So, for my recent collection of shorts, Lurking Miscellany, I worked on two urban fantasy stories with a sexy theme.

One was a sequel to Transitions. Called Transformations it follows the characters on a night out to a Goth club where they encounter a very sexy person with unusual gender switching abilities. This was partly inspired by my own experiences in such a club, in fact the very one that is described (which is unfortunately no longer there). Our heroes face concepts of desirability and get into fights before saving the day.

The other, An Element of Desire, gets a little racier. In this, our hero Simon is an environmental activist with the ability to manipulate the elements through communication with the spirits that control them. He meets a woman for whom he feels the most immediate and insistent attraction. From their initial meeting it is not long before things get very hot and heavy… For some reason I decided to have the female character in this dressed in PVC. Well why on earth not?

Did I succeed in my challenge? Well, I will leave that to the readers to decide. I would however say that it is certainly worth a writer challenging themselves to do something outside their comfort zone. If you are finding the writing process too easy you may be slipping into familiar territory and while that may mean you are sticking to what you are good at, it can also mean you are boring your readers by retreading old ground. Rather than stick to this comfortable old armchair of the familiar, why not try to strike out into the unknown? If it gives you a gut wrenching feeling of fear as you consider this, even better. Often, when you get that feeling it means you are doing something right.

Self publishing has opened up the market to experimentation. I am quite fond of the traditional route of publishing, but it has one major flaw – each book published represents such a huge financial risk for the publisher that they tend to be very careful about their output. If something is not likely to sell they stay well away from it. The advance a publisher gives to an author on acceptance of a manuscript is basically what they are willing to bet on the success of that book. They are saying that the book will make at least this much in profit, so they can give that to the author and not lose any money themselves. Ditto the amounts they spend on advertising, cover design, distribution and printing. 

The more they invest the more convinced they are they have a winning concept. Books that are on the fringes of popularity, or attract only a niche audience or which are so radical they break conventions rarely if ever get published by this route. Similarly, books which might offend a majority of people such as those including the extremes of sex, drugs and rock and roll. However, they can be self published and when they are the financial risks are significantly smaller (although the profits can be equally small) meaning it is more viable to produce. This means that in the current book market, it is a good time to be radical and do something different.

So, why not push yourself to do something different? There will be an audience for you out there somewhere, even if it is one the big six don’t consider worth selling to.

D.A Lascelles is the author of Lurking Miscellany, Transitions (Mundania Press) and Gods of the Sea (Pulp Empires). He lives in Manchester UK. You can sometimes see him writing about Zombie porn on http://lurkingmusings.wordpress.com/ but he mostly blogs about books, vampires, science fiction and Terry Pratchett. He is inordinately proud of the fact that one of his Pratchett articles was referenced on the French version of the author’s Wikipedia page.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DaLascelles
Twitter: @areteus
Buy links for Lurking Miscellany: Kindle ~ Paperback

Guest fantasy author: J.M. Bray with MENDING THE SHROUD

Today please welcome paranormal author J.M. Bray, as part of his blog tour for his contemporary fantasy/romance MENDING THE SHROUD. Here's J.M:
 

Thank you so much for having me by for a visit, Erica. I really like the site. The July 1 release of Mending the Shroud  went by in a blur of tweets, Facebook posts, emails and well wishes. I'm constantly encouraged by the support of the writing community with great authors, like you, who pitch in and lend a hand...umm...or blog as the case may be.
The tour continues, and stops are still being added so click the banner and check out the great sites still to come!

About mid-way through writing Tearing the Shroud, I realized that the characters were not done with me. They had a tight hold and refused to let go. So, while still doing the legwork for book one, I jumped into work on Mending the Shroud. The story poured from me relentlessly and here we are to celebrate the results. If you haven't read Tearing, you won't be lost in Mending, but I think you might enjoy it more. You can find a bunch of buy links at Goodreads.

The story picks up a month later and we are instantly thrown back into the lives of Vincent, Jule, Flea, and Knife. What happens with Vincent and Jule's relationship? Is the Master, the evil force behind the Tearer, through with things? How did the events change the four friends? Who, or what, is Mr. Brown and how did he get all his wealth? Will they survive the events that unfold? All these questions and more are answered in Mending the Shroud.

I'm hard at work on Shrouded, book three, so keep your radar on and your eyes peeled for more of the Trilogy:

About the Book
The second in the fresh, exciting romantic fantasy Shroud trilogy takes up where Tearing the Shroud leaves off – with the lives, the loves, and the mythical world beyond our own. 

After accepting bodily possession and saving the world, Vincent thought his life would get easier. He thought wrong.

The Shroud may not have torn wide open, but it did tear a little, and the retribution for the failure is coming hard, fast, and directly at Vincent and the people he loves.

His only hope is to once again accept possession from Coleman and do battle with the deformed, terrifying Kafla. But this time, he's not alone. Jule, the woman he loves and hopes to marry, is possessed as well, and together the four of them become a formidable team.

Together they hope to stave off the invasion and take the fight to the Realm, but only a supreme sacrifice can mend the Shroud and save both their lives and their worlds.

Mending the Shroud Links

Goodreads - Amazon - AmazonAU - iBooks 

About the Author

J.M. Bray lives in Southern California with his college sweetheart and their two dogs. After a lifetime together, they are happier than the moment they met. When not writing or working his "day job", he loves to cook, play the guitar, and travel with his wife. Every chance he gets, he races an old Porsche named "Tuffy" at tracks in the southwest.


Connect with JM
NEW AND IMPROVED Website: www.jmbray.com
Twitter: @jmbraybooks
Email: jmbray@jmbray.com
Blog: http://blog.jmbray.com
Facebook Author Page: https://www.facebook.com/JMBray.books
Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/jmbraybooks/

author interview: Terry W Ervin II

It's my pleasure to welcome Terry W Ervin II, author of FLANK HAWK, a post apocalyptic fantasy novel with a difference. And zombies. And dragons. And Nazis. And... well, it's got everything, really.

Terry was kind enough to provide me with an advance copy of his book for review. I really enjoyed it. Here's what I said about it (my first blurb! yay!):

"A curious blend of epic fantasy, modern techno-thriller and non-stop action-adventure, Flank Hawk is a compelling and original tale of a brave young mercenary pitched in deadly magical combat against the undead techno-armies of the Necromancer King.
Whether you like swashbuckling wizardry, fierce dragon battles, modern military hardware or sword-slashing zombie mayhem -- Flank Hawk has it all."

Terry's running a contest at his website where you can win the chance to name a character in his next book. Check it out! And here's a link to Terry's blog.

EH: Tell us a little about Flank Hawk (without giving too much away, of course!)

TWE: Flank Hawk is a post apocalyptic fantasy novel. It’s about a farmhand (Krish) that signs on to fight in his lord’s militia to fend against the Necromancer King’s annual attacks to disrupt crop planting. It turns out to be much more and Krish is swept into events he’d never dreamed of.

I know this may be an easy out, but the teaser on the back of the novel’s cover hits all of the high points:

What happens when fire-breathing dragons battle Stukas for aerial supremacy over a battlefield? Can an earth wizard’s magic defeat a panzer? Krish, a farmhand turned mercenary, witnesses this and much more as he confronts the Necromancer King’s new war machines resurrected from before the First Civilization's fall. Worse yet, a wounded prince tasks Krish to find the fabled Colonel of the West and barter the royal family’s malevolent Blood-Sword for a weapon to thwart the Necromancer King’s victory.

Flank Hawk is set in the distant future where magic exists and brutish ogres are more than a child’s nightmare.

In the end, it’s a novel about friendship and loyalty, and sacrifice.

EH: There are so many different plot elements – where did the initial idea for this series come from?

TWE: The initial thought that sparked the novel occurred while I was driving home from work in my 1990 Ford Ranger. I was thinking about a few of the books I’d recently read (or more accurately reread), Zelazny’s Guns of Avalon and Harry Turtledove’s World War: In the Balance. One of the main turning points in Guns of Avalon occurs when Prince Corwin finds a way to get gunpowder to function in the magical city of Amber. In the Balance is about an alien invasion during the height of World War II. The disparity in technology between the invaders and humanity is a major element in the novel’s conflict. Then I began to ponder, what would happen if a dragon encountered a World War II aircraft? Okay, maybe one can see how the line of thought formed. From there I began to devise a world where such an encounter could take place.

Then came the people and creatures that would inhabit the world, how it came to be, and the long-running, multilayered power struggle that would come to influence events in the plot that I was devising. Finally, came Krish and Lilly, Roos and Road Toad—the main characters in the novel.

EH: Flank Hawk is an intriguing mixture of fantasy, sci-fi, horror and others – when you started writing, did you start in one particular genre? What made you want to branch out?

TWE: I guess the mixture is what makes it difficult to describe Flank Hawk to potential readers. I knew it was going to be a fantasy novel but with elements of science fiction included, providing the foundation for magic’s existence in the post apocalyptic world. The horror aspect, mainly the zombie hordes that Krish faces, is intensified by the horrors of war. For Krish it’s not distant but rather hand-to-hand combat, sometimes against animated corpses that were once his friends and comrades in arms. Of all the creatures and dangers Krish faces in the novel, he dreads fighting zombies the most. I could say more, but the context of the novel explains it best.

So, I wouldn’t say I branched out. I used and fused different genre elements together to tell the story. The result is a unique mixture and I don’t think there’s anything out there on the shelves exactly like it. But in the end the novel is about the characters with the genre elements providing the texture and backdrop to their story.

EH: The cover is beautiful – did you have any input into the artwork?

TWE: Yes, the artwork is awesome. Christine Griffin (the artist) really brought two of the main characters, Krish and Lilly, to life. In addition, the Stuka and dragon hint at the uniqueness of the story Flank Hawk contains. And yes, I get a lot of questions about an aircraft being in the sky with a dragon.

Back to the question. I had a lot of input on the cover. Christine Griffin had a list of questions about the novel, its content and characters. We exchanged ideas and various covers of other fantasy novels, and then she decided upon the basics of what would be included. Later, she sent a rough sketch, which I thought was right on target. She then requested details about the characters so that they would be consistent with the story. I also sent information about the aircraft and dragons, so that they could be accurately portrayed, and she ran with it, using her skills and talent.

The result speaks for itself.

EH: Tell us about your journey from unpublished writer to getting your first contract – did you sell through an agent? Submit direct to the publisher?

TWE: The first novel I wrote is a science fiction novel. It made it out of the slush pile with one major publishing house, only to have the full manuscript passed on (some would say rejected) about a year later. I tried another major house without success, but with the third, it’s out of the slush pile once again and is sitting an executive editor’s desk, awaiting a decision. And all of this submitting and sitting in slush piles and climbing up the editorial ladder takes time—a lot of time. So, while my science fiction novel was out on submission, I did what all good writers should do: I wrote another novel. Along the way I also completed almost two dozen short stories and articles, most of which found publishers—no major pro markets but they found good homes and earned a me a little money to justify the expenses of ink and paper and the occasional envelope and postage.

Flank Hawk didn’t have much success with the bigger houses. The editors that said to send them my next project after reading my science fiction novel weren’t taken with Flank Hawk, but it did catch the eye of some smaller publishers. It made it out of the slush pile for full reads twice before finally having success on the third jump out of the slush pile. The editors at Gryphonwood Press were intrigued with Flank Hawk, thought it was not only a good story, but one that would sell, and decided to take a chance on me and my novel.

With the discussion of long waits in slush piles, one would rightly assume that Flank Hawk wasn’t submitted through an agent.

EH: Tell us about your writing process –do you plan everything out before hand, or fly into the mist?

TWE: Oh, I plan. Not that everything follows the plan, but I think it’s important to have an idea where a novel should start, where it will end, and major events that get the story from the beginning to the end—minimum. For me it’s like planning out a vacation. You plot out the highways you intend to take, where you’ll stop and visit before moving on, etc. And with any vacation, there are detours, unexpected surprises and stops to see the sights that aren’t exactly what was expected or hoped for—and those photos and stories are omitted from the album.

Having a good plan, I think, helps keep the story consistent. Creating whole worlds and cultures and even devising how magic ‘works’ by the seat of the pants as I write would mean an awful lot of inconsistencies by the end, resulting in a massive amount of revision and rewriting.

EH: I hear there’s a second book planned – can you tell us a bit about that?

TWE: Yes, there is second First Civilization’s Legacy novel in the works. I have the basics of the plot. Where the story will start and how it should end, and most of the plot events along the way. The actual writing, I suspect, will begin in December.

Krish will be back, still serving as Grand Wizard Seelain’s bodyguard, and the Colonel of the West was correct—they’re gonna want that malevolent Blood-Sword back. You might be able to guess who’s asked to go and fetch it. As for the reason—well, that will have to wait to be learned when the next novel comes out, hopefully in 2010.

Oh, and as a final note, I am running a contest for folks to put their name in for a drawing to name a character in the next First Civilization’s Legacy novel.

guest author: alex bledsoe

Yesterday, I mentioned I was happy about this book. So here it is:

The Sword-Edged Blonde
by Alex Bledsoe

A princess is missing, and typically a king would be willing to pay in gold for her return. But before he realises it, sword jockey Eddie LaCrosse is swept up in a web of mystery and deceit involving a brutally murdered royal heir, a queen accused of an unspeakable crime, and the tragic past he thought he'd left behind.

In order to uncover the answers he seeks, Eddie must delve into the dark underbelly of society while digging deep into his own private history, drawing past and present together. Vast conspiracies, women both beautiful and deadly, and a centuries-old revenge scheme are only a few of the pieces in a lethal puzzle.

A starred review from Publishers Weekly: "Bledsoe's genre-bending first novel is both stylish and self-assured: Raymond Chandler meets Raymond E. Feist."

Alex's website is here, and his blog is here. You can look at the book on Amazon here.


Full disclosure: Alex and I have the same agent. So it's kinda my job to read his book :) but it's not my job to like it so much. 

The hero, Eddie, is a fantasy private detective. And no, I don't mean an urban fantasy private detective. This is old-school fantasy, with all the boring bits left out. Mysterious murders, evil dwarves, vengeful goddesses and lashings of hot swashbuckling. 

How cool is that?

The Sword-Edged Blonde reminded me of The Lies of Locke Lamora, but more character-focused.



So without further gushing, please welcome Alex Bledsoe, author of The Sword-Edged Blonde, released today from Tor. Yay!

The Friends of Eddie LaCrosse
by Alex Bledsoe

I created Eddie LaCrosse, the protagonist of The Sword-Edged Blonde, more years ago than I like to think about. He was the hero of a story I wrote while a high school senior to impress the new, young, sexy teacher; of course, I never found the nerve to actually show it to her. Back then he was known as "Devareaux LaCrosse," for no good reason that I can recall. But even in that earliest draft he was a "have sword, will travel" kind of guy and he crossed paths with a femme fatale named Rhiannon.

Over the intervening years, he developed into his final version thanks to my own reading tastes. And despite the fact that the novel is undeniably high fantasy, the influences on the main character came from an entirely different genre.

Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe, the original smart-ass detective, was a huge influence. Marlowe had a quip for all occasions, even if he sometimes kept them to himself. He also had a rigid moral code that helped him navigate the ambiguous mean streets he prowled. While Bogart was the definitive film Marlowe in The Big Sleep, the one most like Eddie was played by Elliot Gould in Robert Altman's film version of The Long Goodbye. This Marlowe's refrain is, "It's okay with me" -- until it's not.

Ross Macdonald's Lew Archer was a more human and connected version of Marlowe. He lacked the wit, but he made up for it in his ability to ferret out the emotional reasons people did horrible things. That skill -- to quickly and accurately judge people -- is probably the quality of Archer, and Eddie, that I envy most. And unlike the other characters on this list, Archer also tried and failed to have a normal life. Eddie, in his young adulthood, went through a similar experience.

Andrew Vachss' Burke gave me the idea of having a dark period in Eddie's past where he did questionable things before acknowledging his own conscience. Burke, a product of foster homes and state institutions, spent time as a mercenary and compensated for his lack of biological family by connecting with a group of similarly isolated outcasts he knew he could trust. Eddie had a similar dark period, and he's also slowly built up a network of people he trusts, even if no one else does. His secret goes back to the Archer effect: he is able to understand why people do what they do.

And finally, the biggest influence of all was Robert B. Parker's Spenser. Witty, well-read, tough yet vulnerable, he became my favorite literary character from the moment I finished Pale Kings and Princes. I gave my youngest son the middle name Spenser; I gave Eddie the character’s insistent wit (unlike Philip Marlowe, Spenser hardly ever keeps his ironic comments to himself) and willingness to find the best solutions in the gray area between good and evil. Spenser also isn't a womanizer. He has a steady romantic partner through most of the series. While I don't want to give anything away about future stories, Eddie has also outgrown the need to chase every peasant blouse that passes before him.

When I write about Eddie LaCrosse now, I no longer see these pieces. He's come alive in my imagination, and the longer I work with him, the more he departs from his influences. But these sources can't be denied, and I would never try. Instead, if you find you like Eddie in The Sword-Edged Blonde, I'd point you toward the characters listed above. They each have their own worlds, but you'll find traces of them in Eddie's.