Custom Cover art by John Donald Carlucci

Looking for original art to use for your cyber fairy series? Craving something out-of-the-ordinary for a fairytale retelling? Portland-based artist John Donald Carlucci has you covered. This fantastic painting filled with gorgeous detail--I'm particularly fond of the code inside the golden apple--can be yours for $250.  Interested parties can inquire here.

Fairy tale giveaway!

More than 50 books are up for grabs in this giveaway, including The Summer Garden, my retelling of Beauty and the Beast. Here's the link.

Cover reveal...The Waking Dream

I am finishing up a new novella that will be included in the Dark Rising boxed set anchored by NYT  and USA Today bestselling author K.N. Lee. The boxed set will publish May 1 and is currently on pre-order for 99 cents on Amazon.

The theme of the boxed set is dark romance and my story, "The Waking Dream" features a woman who was fathered by Morpheus, god of sleep. She and her sisters are dreamwalkers, but unlike her sisters, my heroine does not have to be ASLEEP to enter another's dreams.

I found this beautiful cover by Natasja Hellenthal of Beyond Book Covers, who is currently selling her work through The Book Cover Designer. Her covers run from $69 to $89, which is a bargain these days.

I actually bought the cover before I had a story for it (a bad habit I have--I have a stockpile of covers; enough to last me through the decade). But I knew at some point I would have the right story and now I do. 

Meet author L.C. Ireland

Leslie Colleen “L.C.” Ireland is an arts specialist in Ogden, UT. By day, she works as an arts advocate and teacher for public schools. By night, she writes children’s plays and fantasy novels. She loves playing Just Dance, Pokemon Go, and any Zelda game. Her novella Shatter the Sky appears in the Magic Rising boxed set of paranormal romances, published today. 

Connect with L.C. on:

Twitter  

Facebook

Instagram

On her website.

What does LC stand for and why did you decide to use that for your byline? I was named after two of my aunts, one on my mother’s side and one on my father’s side. One aunt is named Leslie, the other’s middle name is Colleen, thus my full name is Leslie Colleen. But I’ve always gone by “L.C.” My parents brought me home from the hospital calling me L.C.

You began your writing life as a playwright. What drew you to novels? I was that kid who dreamed about writing books before I could even read. One day I realized I was already writing and publishing my own plays, so why not books? So I sat down and made myself start writing.

You write and direct plays. Have you ever acted?  I did act in grade school and a little in high school. Unfortunately, I had an “undesirable” body type and found that getting roles was really difficult no matter how hard I worked or how well I sang or acted. I found a lot more success in directing. I started directing when I was 15 and knew that was what I wanted to do for a living.

Magic Rising!!!! Publishes this week

My novelette Vaikus (that's the Estonian word for "silence") is in this great boxed set, due for release on the 22nd!!Right now it's available for pre-order here for 99 cents. My story involves a gargoyle, a traveling theater group, and an ancient evil. As always, these boxed sets offer a terrific variety of stories (dragons!) by an exciting collection of authors. Many of the contributors have their "letters" (USA Today) and  "big letters" (NY Times best-selling) so I was thrilled to be a  part of the set.

Sunday Book Giveaways!!

So many, many, many books today!
Click here for the Instafreebie Science Fiction and Fantasy March madness lineup.

Want more? Of course you do, because life is all about the Extra.

Scroll through the offerings in the Mystery Magic Adventure giveaway.

Sunday Sci Fi--the Next Big Thing

I  have a minor in geology and always had a soft spot for trilobites. I wrote this story for a contest a few years ago. 

The Next Big Thing

Priscilla Newnam had seen some peculiar things in her 87 years, but she had never seen anything like the bug that crawled across her spotless kitchen floor one sunny July morning as she was eating her oatmeal.
 

  For one thing it was huge, at least a foot long, maybe more.  And it was strange in a disturbing way.  It looked like what you’d get if you mated a roachy bug to a lobster.  She decided it probably was some kind of mutated crustacean that had somehow crawled up from the harbor and found its way into her house.  And now she was going to have to deal with it before she’d had a chance to finish her coffee.

riscilla Newnam had seen some peculiar things in her 87 years, but she had never seen anything like the bug that crawled across her spotless kitchen floor one sunny July morning as she was eating her oatmeal.

There wasn’t much that Priscilla Newnam was afraid of but the sight of the creature scuttling across her kitchen linoleum was…unsettling.  Priscilla’s husband Tom had been a lobster man, and once or twice he’d brought home some strange things he’d found in his pots.  There’d been a yellow lobster once, a freakish thing that he’d sold to the owner of a clam bar in Massachusetts who wanted to keep it in a tank to attract customers. 

A reporter and photographer from the Cape Courier had come up to the house to interview Tom.  The photographer, a young fellow named Julien Thibidoux, had take Tom’s picture holding the yellow lobster up by one claw.  Then Julien had taken a picture of Tom and Priscilla just because he wanted to and sent it to them later.  That had been nice of him.  She still had the picture on her bedside table.

As she watched the thing move from one end of the kitchen to the other, Priscilla decided that she was going to play the “age card” and turn the problem over to someone else.  She hardly ever did that because she didn’t want people to start thinking of her as an old biddy, someone who’d outlived her usefulness. But just this once, she decided she would call animal control and let them deal with it. 

Patricia Abbott picks her favorite short stories

Edgar Award finalist Patricia Abbott, author of Shot in Detroit, Concrete Angel, and a new collection of short fiction, I Bring Sorrow and Other Stories of Transgression, has written more than 150 short stories that have appeared in print and online publications. She won the Derringer Award in 2008 for her story "My Hero." She is co-editor of the anthology Discount Noir. She has published two previous collection of short stories, Monkey Justice and Other Stories and Home Invasion. She also maintains one of the most entertaining blogs around, Pattinase, which features everything from author interviews, to a regular Friday column, "Forgotten Books." I don't know anyone I'd rather talk short stories with. Here are her favorite picks today. 

My Ten Favorite Short Stories (today)

Since I have spent most of the last twenty years writing short stories, I also read a lot of them. For me, a good short story is closer to a good poem than a good novel. It manages to tell you something, hopefully something important, in a few pages. I always read them in one sitting. (Except perhaps here for the Munro story which is quite long.)

Here are a few of my favorites. Ask me next week and they might change but for now this is the ten. Incidentally nearly all of them are available in PDFs online.

1. So Much Water, So Close to Home, Raymond Carver

A group of men on a camping trip stumble on a dead girl as soon as they arrive, but do not let this detail interfere with their good times. Truly a chilling story and there is a good film of it called JINDABYNE.