R.I.P Ray Tomlinson--inventor of email

Tomlinson is not that common a surname. It means "son of little Tom" and according to "Behind the Name," it is the 315th most popular surname in England. (It's below Norris and Morton and Bibi --258th). David Tomlinson, the noted British character actor, was in Mary Poppins, and as far as I know, that was the first time I'd ever seen my last name in a context unrelated to me and my family. The gorgeous Eleanor Tomlinson plays Demelza on the rebooted Poldark series, and of course, there's football player LaDanian Tomlinson. There's also perennial TMZ darling Louis Tomlinson, the One Direction singer who is mostly known at the moment for his nasty custody fight with his baby mama. Sigh.
None of these people are related to me. Nor was Ray Tomlinson, the man credited with "inventing" email. I love email. I remember before there was an email and email is better. Really.  (And I say this as someone who still handwrites "thank you" letters.) I wish I'd written Ray Tomlinson a "thank you" letter or at least a "thank you" email, because his invention changed my life. Rest in peace cousin.

A Romance for St. Patrick's Day

I found myself wondering if there were any fantasy romances out there involving leprechauns and as it turns out, there's a really good one, Kathy Bryson's Feeling Lucky. The book won all kinds of awards when it was published in 2014, and earned a ton of praise from reviewers for being sweet as well as sexy and also for being something different.

Kathy Bryson has written several more books and I wish she lived in the PNW instead of Florida, because her author profile says she's a Shakespeare geek too and I'm looking for someone to go to plays with. You can follow her here.

the Best Urban Fantasy Short Story You'll Read Today--and it's free

I found this short story listed in "The Best Short Stories You've Never Read" from HuffPost Books and it sounded so engaging I immediately clicked over to it. King Oberon and Queen Tatiana in the modern age. Look for "A Tiny Feast" on the New Yorker's site.

What is it?

There are times when I can't buy a creative idea and there are times when I honestly can't turn it off. (Mostly when I'm on deadline for some chore I find tedious.) But there's been something going on in my backyard for a while that is just fascinating to me.

The house we rent was built in the seventies, but we live in one of the oldest neighborhoods on this side of the city. So who knows what was here before we were. (Pretty sure it's not a graveyard but hear me out.)

About a week after we moved in, we found a single rusted razor blade lying in the grass. So ... was someone out here shaving one day, letting the rain wash off the lather? About a month after that we found a small, olive green "plastic soldier" of the sort made memorable in the W.D. County short story "Plastic Soldiers." (If you haven't read "Plastic Soldiers," you need to spend 99 cents right now and go buy Speedloader, an anthology that also contains stories by Nigel Bird and Matthew C. Funk, whose writing is also always worth reading. But "Plastic Soldiers?" It's a one-of-a-kind story. Brutal to read and absolutely unforgettable. I've read a LOT of short stories, and it's probably in my top five, right up there with Harlan Ellison's "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" and Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" and "the Rockinghorse Winner" by D.H. Lawrence, and Ray Bradbury's "A Sound of Thunder." "Plastic Soldiers" should be taught in high school English classes.) But I digress.

Over the year we've lived here, various things have shown up in our lawn, sort of like dinosaur skeletons uncovered by scouring winds in the western states. Today this thing showed up.  It's made of wood and about the size of a gobstopper candy. It's made of wood and the spikes unscrew.  It's hard to tell how old it is but the scientist in the house thinks it could be many decades old. Wood decays at different rates. It'll take a downed pine tree 200-300 years to decompose, a spruce tree (what you find a lot of in the Pacific Northwest) will only last 50-100 years. So--what was this thing? A child's toy? Nowadays, we'd keep something like this out of a kids' hands for fear of choking hazards. But it doesn't seem strong enough for any industrial application.
But what it DOES seem good for is a story prompt.
"The Yard of Lost Things."
What would you do if things suddenly started appearing in your yard, dug up by your dog, or revealed by a hard rain? Would some of those items be valuable? Would some of those items be dangerous? Would some hold clues to murder? Or a wedding ring lost by a woman gardening 100 years ago?  I find the possibilities endlessly seductive. I want to write that story. But as it happens ... I'm on deadline. So it's going to have to go into the file for now.

Woman in the Rain: A Picture is worth a thousand words -- or more

One of the things I do on a regular basis is shop for images on sites like Bigstock, Dollar Photo, and the like. Sometimes I'll buy a month long subscription and download tons of images I think I might like to use for the blog or for one of the various content-provider jobs I have, or as the basis of a book cover.

I've been playing with the idea of a new paranormal series about a woman who can bring the rain. I have one novelette in the series (Let It Rain, see cover below right) that will publish this summer, and if people like it, there will be more stories.

I'm fascinated by rain. I grew up in a place that was ravaged by two hurricanes when I was in high school. I know how destructive water can be when it's unleashed on land, whether it's a tsunami or a hurricane, or just a flash flood. (In fact, WATER is the most destructive force on earth.) I lived in Los Angles for decades and the whole time I was there, the state was in a state of drought. Meteorologists promised that this, an El Nino year, would bring relief. It hasn't so far, not really. Instead, it's dumping water on Seattle, which has had its rainiest year in more than a century.

Define irony. Bringing more rain to the Pacific Northwest is like bringing coal to Newcastle. And I can't help but think that if there WERE such things as water witches, they'd be in high demand in L.A. I'm talking about people with powers beyond water diviners and water dowsers, a character who could literally make it rain. Where would the rain shadow be? What land would suffer drought in the wake of her magic-working? 

March Mystery: Time of Fog and Fire

Another for the TBR pile, the lastest in Rhys Bowen's Molly Murphy mystery series. Don't you LOVE the cover? Criminal Element has posted an excerpt here.

Fairy Tale Retellings: Five Enchanted Roses

I really like "Beauty and the Beast" and I'm always up for new versions. (The gorgeous movie version by French director Christophe Gans is available on YouTube. You should check it out here.)
This is a book that's on my TBR list. Five different retellings of the classic story.

A Book to Watch Out For: THE LOST PROPERTY OFFICE

One of the things I do for a living is work as a "reader." This is the best job ever and reading great books before they're published is one of the perks. I've just read a debut novel by James Hannibal. It's terrific. It will remind you of everything from Suzanne Collins' Gregor the Underlander to Time Bandits. The young hero has a great talent/power and his adventure is filled with twists and turns and dollops of really intriguing history and magical artifacts. The characters are nicely drawn, especially the hero's pesky little sister. The book is available for pre-order now, for publication in November. Mark your calendars and mark my words--this is a terrific book and, I suspect, the start of a terrific new series.

In honor of Oscar night: Poster reveal ONE UNDER THE SUN

I wrote a science fiction movie last summer called One Under the Sun. Directed by Vincent Tran, it stars an international, multi-cultural cast headed by actress Pooja Batra. the movie is in post-production now and being shopped around to film festivals and markets. I cannot wait to see it. And in the meantime, here's the poster.

The Most Interesting Book I'll Probably Never Be Able to Afford

I love libraries. I've had a library card since I was in first grade and I support them with my patronage and my donations. But I now live in a small town with a limited library budget, so often, I don't even bother to check if they have more obscure titles, I just go looking for them on the Internet. You can even find used books on Etsy now, which is kind of off brand, but I love Etsy almost as much as I love libraries, so I'm not going to complain.
I found this book, Designing Sacred Spaces by Sherin Wing while searching for something completely different. And I found myself fascinated by it. I am interested in architecture and in the design of sacred spaces and by the time I'd finished reading the sales copy, I was ready to hit "buy with one click." Except...the Kindle is $90 and the hard copies range from $67-$75.  I spend more than I probably should on books but even I balk at spending that kind of money. Sigh.

The book comes with a slew of glowing reviews and sounds like a provocative and thoughtful examination of architecture as an expression of culture. So it's on the pile and maybe one day I'll run across a copy while scouring a used book store. 

TBR: Jeannie Lin's classic steampunkfairy tale retelling 'The Warlord and the Nightingale"

I love fairy tales and love reading modern versions and re-imagined versions. I especially enjoy it when writers work with material that's not as well known. (I love "Beauty and the Beast" and "Cinderella," but they're not the only fairy tales out there, you know?)
Jeanie Lin writes beautifully and this lush story is set in the universe of her "Gunpowder Chronicles," steapunk tales set during the Opium Wars. It is a retelling of "The Emperor and the Nightingale," and you will enjoy it.

Learn more about Jeannie Lin here.

Paper Menagerie and Other Stories by Ken Liu

I read Ken Liu's "Paper Menagerie" for Brian Lindemuth's "Short Story a Day" challenge a few years ago. The story made me cry. I was putting together the Nightfalls anthology at the time and I wrote to Liu and asked if he'd be interested in writing a story for it. He sent me the most gracious "no" I've ever received and I would love him for that even if I hadn't read this lovely, lovely story.

"Paper Menagerie" won pretty much every award out there and it's no wonder at all. it's readily available online, so if you haven't read it, go do so now here. And then go out and buy this collection. You owe it to yourself if you love good writing.

Parabormal Sisters Under the Skin

I'm watching Lucifer, which I'm enjoying despite the in-your-face, on-the-nose soundtrack--it's Castle with the devil!--and I can't help noticing how much series star Lauren German looks like Yancy Butler, star of another of my  guilty pleasures, Witchblade. They even have the same sexy, smoky voice.
See what I mean?

It's interesting to me that both series are based on comic books/graphic novels. Lucifer has been teasing viewers with the possibility that German's character (a cop) has some sort of super-power, but we don't yet know what it is.

I like that Lucifer is set in L.A. The  show gives it a candy-neon gloss that makes it look like a glittery wonderland at night.It looks like they also do some shooting in Vancouver, and you can always tell when they switch from L.A. to Pacific Northwest exteriors because of all the green. Witchblade was set in New York and my favorite scene in the whole show was one filmed in a snow-drifted cemetery with stone angels. I like shows that are based in real places and not in some anonymous "Metro" that's clearly Toronto (like the setting for Forever Knight.)

Anyway, I like that these two shows offered something different in paranormal.

Vampires in the Church

What if there were a vampire pope? What if there wer vampire priests? I googled "vampire priest" and got a lot of hits for the Paul Bettany movie Priest, which has a plotline about "vampire wars" and "priests." As far as I'm concerned, the more Paul Bettqany movies the better, but I've seen this one and it's a dark, comic book-y sort of fantasy and not what I was thinking about.

Untapped in Urban Fantasy

Now that I've started thinking about urban fantasy and how it's not really being exploited beyond the shifter tropes, I can't seem to turn it off. I once wanted to write a story about the OSS interacting with a vampire in Eastern Europe, and I may have to pull out those notes (yes, they predated my computer) and play with them. Because it occurred to me that if you were a werewolf or a vampire, you would make a most excellent spy.

Googling around with "vampire spy" led me to the Nathaniel Cade series by Christopher Farnsworth. The first book in the series, Blood Oath, sprang from the seed of a story that Farnsworth heard about President Andrew Johnson pardoning a man who was accused of being a vampire. There are apparently three books in the series to date and producer Lucas Foster has plans to turn the "President's Vampire" series into a movie. Sounds good to me.

Paranormal Politics

So, I'm watching the smackdown that has become our political process and thinking to myself, you couldn't make this up. And then i found myself wondering if there are any urban fantasies about politicians. I've seen books with vampire Mafia and the like, but what about vampire politicians? Or other paranormal creatures. Has anyone written such a book and if they have, why haven't I heard of it?

So I went a-Googling and let me tell you--there's not much out there. First hit was a definition of "poltical fantasy" that basically sounded like it was describing Brave New World or Animal Farm, which is not what i had in mind. I also got a link to PG's Ramblings, a really cool blog that talks about books (especially SF and fantasy) and movies and tech. (The author works at CERN, which is as cutting edge as cutting edge science goes. He seems to have really eclectic tastes and I look forward to reading it regularly. But still not what I was looking for.

How hard is it to find a paranormal politician in a book??? If you type in the search term "vampire politician," it takes you to a Wikipedia page about Jonathan Sharkey, a professional wrestler with politial aspriations, and a story about another candidate who likes to LARP who accused his opponent of being too liberal. Sigh.

I clicked around for quite a while--a most excellent distraction from what I was supposed to be doing and I never found what I was looking for. Which makes me ponder the eternal chicken/egg question. Are there no political paranormals because no one's interested in them or would readers read them if they were there? Inquiring minds want to know. And the wheels of my imagination are turning. Because what a spectacular game of chess it would be if there were paranormals in the political arena.

L.A. Nocturne Collection--Urban Fantasy short stories set in Los Angeles

One of the first short stories I ever wrote for Dark Valentine Magazine was "Tired Blood," a tale of a vampire so old he'd developed dementia and forgotten he was a vampire. I liked the setting of the story so much that for the next few years, I kept writing stories set in my version of Los Angeles where the normal and paranormal co-exist. This fall, the novel based on that story, Misbegotten, will be published. (Better late than never.0 And as a run-up to that publication, I have released this colleciton of the "Misbegotten" short stories.

Some of these stories originally appeared in the collections L.A. Nocturne and L.A. Nocturne II, others have never been collected; a few were written just for this volume. I'm happy because the stories run the gamut. There are ghosts, shapeshifters (and not the usual kind), djinn, mermaids, sorcerers, demons, angels, and a were-bear. Also fairies. And unicorns and a centaur.

There are also vampires. Lots and lots of vampires. And a werewolf or two.  But not, I hope, your standard issue alpha wolf guys.  I hope you'll check out the collection. I had a great time writing these stories.

Pondering the paranormal

I write urban fiction and am about to release my L.A. Nocturne Collection of stories set in a paranormal-infested Los Angeles (with a handful of stories set in the Middle East.) Looking through them I see a ghosts, djinm, a succubus, a couple of mermaids, more than a couple of vampires, some fairies, but only a couple of werewolves (and one werebear and a couple of shapeshifters.) I even have some zombies. But I was thinking about werewolves. They're not my favorite and yet, suddenly they're everywhere. Especially billionaire shifters and step-brother shifters and seal shifters. (I find myself thinking how interesting it might be if a SEAL was actually a mer-man.) I was thinking about the werewolf books I've liked and only a few come to mind. They are:

Wolf's Hour by Robert McCammon. I'm a huge McCammon fan anyway, and I started reading his work when you could buy his paperback originals (like this one) for something like five bucks at the supermarket. (Remember those days when paperbacks were cheap enough you could chuck two or three in with the frozen vegetables and the ground turkey and never think twice?) This one features a spy who's also a werewolf during WWII and it's a treat.

Lycanthia by Tanith Lee. I so miss Tanith Lee. I have read almost all of her books, some of them so long ago that I could probably enjoy reading them again. This one was great with its decadent, Gothic deatails--old mansions and secrets. 

Those two books are the ONLY two werewolf novels I can think of off the top of my head. So I did a little Googling around to refresh my memory.
I like Carrie Vaughn's Kitty Norville stories but I put those in a different category from "real" werewolf stories. Ditto Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake series (which I loved, loved, loved, when i first started reading them). I've never read Patricia Briggs' popular Mercy Thompson series, although Moon Called has been on my Kindle for forever.

I saw the movie Blood and Chocolate, which is based on a novel by Annette Curtis Klause, and it made me curious to read the original. I looked up a list of werewolf novels on Good Reads and out of the first 50 of 725, I hadn't read ANY.

But i have an idea for a series that might work with werewolves and I'm wondering if I can bring something fresh to the "canon," something beyond silver bullets and full moon madness. It's going to be interesting to see. Because it's clear that readers want more shifters!

Another Boxed Set! Be Witched

Lately I've been sampling boxed sets and as often is the case, once you go looking, you discover they're all over the place. This one caught my eye because the cover of one of the stories included uses the same image as one of my covers. (Yes, we all use the same five stock photo places.) I like my cover better because Indie Author Services did an awesome job of combining images, but still...

This one looks really interesting to me because as much as I like vampires and weres, I am ready for different kinds of magic. Looks like this collection delivers that. It's 99 cents and available for all ereading devicdes. You can find it on Amazon here. (I'm Kindle-centric, what can I say?)

Whimsical Pet Mugs for Your Favorite Dog Lover

I'm not always a fan of "whimsical," but artist Stephen Brandt's amusing dog breed illustrations make me happy. And now they can make you happy too. Check out his store on Cafe Press here.

Review: 7 Against the Dark: Urban fantasy boxed set

Seven Against the Dark: Seven Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance Series Starters by Annie Bellet

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


My very favorite thing in this book—which is full of delightful details—is in Kate Danley’s book “Maggie for Hire” about a “magical tracker in L.A. who carries a silver stake her sister had engraved for her at Things Remembered. I loved that detail and I very much enjoyed the story with its magical objects and deep dark secrets.

Danley’s book is only one of seven novels in this bundle and every single one of the books is a lot of fun to read. Annie Bellet’s “Justice Calling” gives a star-making entrance to its sexy tiger-shifter Aleksei Kirov “Justice of the Council of Nine” but it’s the author’s setting—Wyld, Idaho—that elevates the book from its genre. The small town where the heroine runs a comic book and tabletop gaming store is “the shape-shifter capital of the west,” and we can visualize exactly the kind of town it might be. The heroine, jade Crow, has a sense of humor and her reaction to Aleksei is a deadpan, “So, you know, not your average comic book or tabletop gaming enthusiast.”

There’s another heroine named Jade in the book, Jade Calhoun, the empath at the heart of “Haunted on Bourbon Street.” Her description of a “craft shop” run by Bea puts us right in the center of magical New Orleans, and Deanna Chase, like the other writers in the bundle, gives a lot of weight to sense of place.

This is true even when the “place” is one the author made us, as Anthea Sharp did in “Feyland.” Her writing is drop-dead gorgeous, near poetry at times, and lines like, “She smelled of stars and roses,” convey the magical quality of the Dark Queen of the Faeries.

Christine Pope’s “Darkangel” is also firmly rooted in its sense of place, and provides a practical look at the issue of a witch finding her consort. (Let’s just say Angela McAllister has to kiss a lot of frogs before she finds the literal man of her dreams.) One of the hallmarks of this book—like the others in the collection—is the strong sense that there’s a whole world contained in the pages of the book. Angela’s witch clan has rules and taboos and allies and enemies, and all of this is worked out beautifully.

Ditto for Helen Harper’s “Bloodfire” with its casual scattering of paranormal creatures into the mix. (A group of shape-shifters avoids admonishment because there are “water-wights terrorizing pleasure boats on the Thames.”)

I also enjoyed Colleen Gleason’s vampire hunter historical urban fantasy “The Rest Falls Away” with its Jane Austen world (so much better than “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.”) The book gave us not just a sense of place but also a sense of time.

Boxed sets are great introductions to writers and series. I’d only read one of these writers before, but now that I’ve read the others, I’ll be back for more.




View all my reviews

Yay! A new book from Terry McMillan!

I Almost Forgot About You is coming out on June 7. Can't wait.

Love Paranormal and Urban Fantasy? Here's something JUST FOR YOU!

For some reason, it seems to be the season of the boxed sets. This one, featuring the first books in seven paranormal and urban fantasy series is free wright now. Free. Who doesn't love free reads? Get it on Amazon here.

A Valentine Witch for Valentne's Day

I'm a big fan of the novelette-sized story--I've written a whole series of novelette-sized fairy tale retellings--and I've been enjoying the paranormal romance novelettes from writer Shay Roberts. This one is set in North Carolina, where I went to college, and he totally nailed the perculiar vernacular of the local barrier islands. (Ocracoke Island was always one of my favorite places, but the local accent is hard to decipher. It's said to be very close to what Elizabethan English sounded like.)

I reviewed Valentine Witch (see my review here), and hope that the writer will come back to the setting and the characters later.

Interview with Jolie Du Pré

Author/editor/blogger Jolie Du Pré  is the creative force behind For Love of the Vampire, a boxed set of paranormal romances launching today with novellas from eight writers including herself. She stopped by Kattomic Energy to talk about vampires, books in general, and the challenges of the writing life

Welcome Jolie!

Who’s your favorite on-screen vampire?

Damon Salvatore of the The Vampire Diaries!

If you could be any paranormal creature, what would you be?

I would be a vampire!  They’re strong, sexy, and they live forever!

Do you have a writing ritual? For example: Do you have a set page/word goal of writing a day? Do you write on your birthday? Do you ever work on two or more projects at once?

I write with a set number of words per day.  Plus, I always give myself a deadline. 

Do you have a favorite among the books you’ve written?

My favorite of the Pierce series is book 4.  I love the sex scene I created.  LOL!

What are you working on now?

Actually, I’m working on books for a new pen name.  They are not paranormal related.

What’s the last good book you read? Or:  What’s on your TBR pile?

Prosperity for Writers: A Writer's Guide to Creating Abundance by Honoree Corder. She gives simple, yet effective solutions for getting you back on the right track, mentally, for achieving your goals as a writer.

Interview with paranormal author Olivia Leighton

 FOR LOVE OF THE VAMPIRE, a boxed set of paranormal romance novellas will be published tomorrow and  author Olivia Leighton, whose work is featured in the set, dropped by to talk about vampires, and books and writing. Welcome Olivia!

Who’s your favorite on-screen vampire?

Hands down Elijah from the Originals.

If you could be any paranormal creature, what would you be?

I like a lot of characteristics of a wolf shifter, but nothing beats the draw of being a vampire to me.  They are cat-like in a way - sexy, stalk the night, can move silently, etc.

Do you have a writing ritual? For example: Do you have a set page/word goal of writing a day? Do you write on your birthday? Do you ever work on two or more projects at once?

When I sit down, I try to write as much as I can in two to four hours, then I’ll go back and edit/add to/take away from.  Since I have a full-time job and a boyfriend who works odd hours, I try to fit my writing in around those two things.  If that means I write on my birthday, so be it.  I enjoy writing anyway, so it would be a good way to spend my birthday!  And yes, I have several projects, but it’s normally in the form of working on book covers.  (I’m also a professional graphic designer.)

Do you have a favorite among the books you’ve written?

Honestly, I think the Vampire and the Owl is my favorite.  I like the thought of being a snowy owl shifter, and I’m quite fond of the town of Gilmer, TX which the story is set in.

What are you working on now?

I’m working on a spin-off tale from Unbroken.  This one will focus on Daniel Collins (the vampire) and the woman seeking revenge on him from changing her back in the 70s.

What’s the last good book you read? Or:  What’s on your TBR pile?

- The last good book… It would have to be Champion by Mary Lou.  Funny thing… I read mainly YA dystopian tales even though I write PNR.  I have a shelf full of books, one side contains books I read and the other books I need to read.  The read stack features books like Champion and Angel Fall.  The TBR stack includes Young World and Hemlock.

The usual vampire in PNR seems to be a pale white straight male (whether sparkly or not) and a lot of readers seem to like it that way. Do you venture outside the paranormal norm with your characters?

 I don’t like to make my paranorms stray too far from their cookie-cutters, but I do like to put my own twist on things.  For example, my vampires can be killed with steaks, but they need to be steaks crafted from petrified wood.  UV rays can still burn them, but if they have a special tattoo, it protects them and they can be out during the day.

Interview with Christine Pope

Best-selling author Christine Pope has new book out in her paranormal romance series "The Sedona Files."  I thought this would be a good time to ask her a few questions.

Falling Angels is the next-to-last book (oh no!) in your “Sedona Files” series. When you wrote the first, Bad Vibrations, did you know you were going to chronicle the second generation of your characters?

Frankly, I didn’t even know it was going to be a series. Back then, I really didn’t know what I was doing, and thought writing standalone books was the way to go (hint: it isn’t, at least in the vast majority of cases). But then I began to think how about how I could expand that one book into a series, and started working out the bigger-picture arc of the alien conspiracy/invasion that’s always going on in the background (and sometimes the foreground) of the books. As for the second generation, after I was done writing Angel Fire, I realized I really wanted to tell Grace’s story once she was an adult, and it sort of fell into place that I’d create a second trilogy that takes place approximately twenty-five years after the end of Angel Fire. So that’s why I wrote books for the daughters of the heroines of the first trilogy: Grace (Kara from Desert Hearts’ daughter), Callista (Kirsten from Falling Angels’ daughter), and Taryn, the daughter of Persephone from Bad Vibrations. 

Check out the trailer for The Sedona Files:

You’ve got several established series out there—the Witches of Cleopatra Hill, the Latter Kingdom books, the Gaian Consortium stories—but it seems like you’re always coming up with something new for your readers. What’s next?

The Gaian series has been ended (although there’s a prequel short story coming out in an anthology in February 2016), and I’ll be wrapping up the Sedona Files and the Latter Kingdoms books this year as well. I do plan to write more Witches of Cleopatra Hill books, and more books in my Djinn Wars series. There are also plans in the works for a post-apocalyptic zombie trilogy to launch in late 2016. That one will still be romance, just darker and grittier than some of my other books (and no, the romance is NOT with the zombies). After that…I’ll have to see. I have concepts for several new paranormal romance series (and possibly another science fiction romance series), but none of those would launch until 2017 sometime.

In your PNR, you’ve had witches, ghosts, demons, and now zombies. Have you ever been tempted to write a vampire or werewolf story? 

Well…in a word, no. I know they’re popular, but I like writing about paranormal characters that haven’t been used as much. That said, the newest Latter Kingdoms book (which I’m writing at the moment) does actually include a version of one of those paranormal characters, but I don’t want to say much more about it than that. 

A Vampire a Day: Of Saints and Shadows By Christopher Golden

I'm a fan of Christopher Golden's. I've mentioned that I'm an admirer of the illustrated novel Baltimore, which he wrote, and his Joe Golem: Occult Detective series is wildly entertaining and I love the world it's set in--a mostly drowned New York where the poor people live in the watery areas and the rich live uptown. I didn't know that there are actually multiple volumes of Baltimore, so hooray for that. (Here is a list of his books, if like me,  you don'thow many books he has for you to discover and enjoy.)
I love that Golden writes in multiple genres, and for teens as well as adults. I love that he writes video games and comic books as well as novels. (Is he the ultimate geek or what?  I'd love to run across him at #SDCC some time.) He's also very open to fans approaching him on his Facebook page and from his posts, he seems like a really decent guy.
I found Of Saints and Shadows in a used bookstore, captured by the cover, which uses familiar vampire tropes (crosses, daggers that look like fangs, red backdrops) in a way that seemed elegant and decadent and interesting.
I didn't know at the time that it was the first in a series--I'm not sure it WAS meant to be the first in the serie (it was published nearly 20 years ago), but it was urban fantasy of the first order. I LOVED his protagonist, Peter Octavian.
This novel has pretty much everything I crave. Golden has created a really rich world and mythos for his vampires (who lust after the "blood song") and the backdrop of the Venice carnival is particularly gorgeous. (Why should all the vampire stories be set in Paris?)
You will REALLY like this one and there are half a dozen sequels in the series to enjoy after this one.

A Vampire a Day: Jim Carrey in OONCE BITTEN

this 1985 movie is a take on the Countess Bathory legend about a countess who bathed in the blood of virgins. In this iteration, Lauren Hutton's vampire Countess must drink the blood of a virgin to maintain her eternal beauty. But this is the 80s and virgins aren't that easy to find. Until...Mark Kendall (Jim Carrey) comes along.

the movie was made five years before Jim Carrey broke out in In Living Color and nine yearss before he starred in the trifecta of films that turned him into a superstar--Mask, Ace Ventura, and Dumb and Dumber. Once Bitten was released to 1095 theaters nationwide--it didn't even get a release in Carrey's native Canada--and grossed just a little bit more than $10 million. Even twenty years ago, that was a pretty poor performance.Janet Maslin, legendary critic for the New York Times gave it a thumbs up ("Call me crazy, but I liked it") but she was pretty much the only one. It's really a TERRIBLE movie, although i have friends who like to wallow in 80s kitsch and claim that it's actually a perfect time capsule of L.A. in mid-decade. Which may be true, but I don't have a lot of nostalgia for either the time period or the city.

A Vampire a Day: The Blood Gospel by James Rollins and Rebecca Cantrell

This is book one of the Order of the Sanguines series and I picked it up because I'm a huge fan of James Rollins' Sigma series of thrillers. This book pretty much has everything I like. Were you a fan of Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code? Then you will like The Blood Gospel. Vatican secrets? Ancient books that hold secret knowldge. A beautiful archaeologist. Plus--VAMPIRES!

I don't know Rebecca Cantrell's writing and I found myself wondering how the two writers actually collaborated. I've collaborated on scripts, but never on fiction and I'm always interested in the process. And why is Rollins' name bigger on the cover? I like the design of the cover but it does make Rebecca look secondary. And how do the two authors know each other anyway? Inquiring minds want to know.

At any rate, this is a fun book that delivers as a supernatural thriller.

A vampire a day: Shakespeare Undead by Lori Handeland

Continuing with the theme of Shakespeare.  This is one of my favorite historical mashup books. I remember reading an interview where the author talks about how she cooked up the idea when all those ABRAHAM LINCOLN VAMPIRE HUNTER/PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIE books were out. I loved the idea of an undead Shakespeare (also used in ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE) and I really lked this book. I haven't read the sequel, ZOMBIE ISLAND, but I like the cover.

I'm a membe rof the Lori Handeland's FULL MOON CLUB--you get all sorts of nifty swag when you join--and a fan of her Night Creatures, Phoenix Chronicles, and Sisters of the Craft series. She's written more than 30 novels and they run the gamut from paranormal stand-alones to the series, to straight-out romances. I like it when an author I like is prolific. Go Lori!

How TV networks see Shakespeare

You know how people always say that if Shakespeare were alive today, he'd be writing for television? Well, GalleyCat jusr published this great infographic that shows how network execs would break down each play. Check it out here.

Shakespeare Noir--shameless self-promotion!

Because this is the year I get everything out there, I collected my three Shakespeare Noir stories, a drabble (100-word story) and a Shakespeare rant into one volume. I'm pleased with the stories, only two of which have been published before. Eventually, I'd like to add more to the volume, but I've promised my writing mentor that I'll concentrate on longer works for a while. ("But I love writing short stories," I whined to her. And she suggested I take a look at my monthly royalties for my other collections and make the choice.)

If you like noir and you like Shakespeare, you might enjoy this collection. Shakespeare Noir will be free for five the next five days.

A Vampire a Day: House of Night Series by P.C. Cast & Kristin Cast

I was skeptical about the setting of this vampire eries. Tulsa, Oklahoma? I wasn't really feeling it, but the writers (a mother/daughter team who formerly wrote under one name), convinced me with the opening scene--a visual of the big PRAYING HANDS sculpture at Oral Roberts University. And then they introduced readers to a series of landmarks they'd claimed for their own characters and I went Googling around to find the Art Deco train station and the estate they used. That train station is beautiful. Abandoned and haunted.

The authors also did a good job of coming up with an explanation for vampirism that involves science not the supernatural. It has to do with "junk DNA" and the condition is triggered by puberty. I liked that a lot. What didn't quite work for me was that the vampires start getting spontaneous tattooing on thier faces and bodies the stronger they grow--that's the MARKED of the first book's title. It's kind of a trope that werewolves have tattoos, and also "hunters" of various kinds, but I hadn't encountered tattooed vampires before.

I' was interested in the heroine, Zoey, who has a Native American grandmother and a complicated home life. (Her mother married a religious nut who thinks being marked as a vampire is worse than being a devil worshipper. that storyline plays out over the course of several books and it's heart-wrenching.

A Vampire a Day: Blood Thirst by Richard Matheson

I first encountered Richard Matheson as a writer on Twilight Zone. He wrote some of the most memorable episodes, including the Richard Donner-directed, William Shatner starrer "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet." He also rwote the classic novel I Am Legend.This is a compilation of vampire fiction from the last century that's available in both paper and hard cover. If you want to buy it new, it'll cost you around $15, but Amazon's sellers have it for a penny and postage, which is probably my favorite way to buy books. The book was written in 1997, so it predated a lot of influential vampire storeis, from Twilight to True Blood, but this is definitely a book I need in my library.

A Vampire a Day: Vampire's Mail Order Bride by Kristen Painter

Like many Kindle owners, I subscribe to the newsletters that advertise free ebooks. Every day. And I scroll through them to see what looks interesting. I've discovered a lot of new writers that way--a free book? You're not risking anything--and I like looking at the covers.

This book caught my eye because of the title. I am not a fan of the cartoony illustration style of chicklit/PNR covers, but I was intrigued enough by this one  to read the product description. (I haven't read the book yet.)

The author has a series called NOCTURNE FALLS and the series seems to be very popular. This book has almost 400 reviews and a 4.6 rating. It is also currently #3 in the free kindle store. That's number three out of millions of books. (To give you an idea, Bride of the Midnight King is currently free and I'm THRILLED to have it ranking 974 in the free kindle store. Number three is amazing. Mad props to Kristen!) I look forward to reading this because it looks like a good time. I'll let you know...

Now the 70s really are over: R.I.P. Glenn Frey

A Vampire a Day: L.A. Banks' Vampire Huntress Legend series

One of the things that has always bugged me about vampire stories is that most of them are about white male vampires. Most of the mythos in these books is derived from Eastern Europe and except for a few things, hasn't really changed since Bela Lugosi first donned his cloak,. Where are the Chinese vampires? Where are the Turkish vampires? Where are the African vampires?
You can find some African-American vampires on screen. (Essence Magazine put together a gallery of their favorites from Vonetta McGee to Eddie Murphy to Grace Jones.) But there are still not that many black blood-suckers stalking the pages of paranormal romance novels.

A handful of authors have multi-racial casts, but as often as not, they get tagged  "urban," as if vampires, like actors who play James Bond, have to be white. (Seriously, for a while there the rumor was that Idris Elba was in the running to be the next James Bond and that would have brought a LOT of people back to the franchise, including me. Although I'd also like to bring Judi Dench back. Maybe as a vampire.)

A Vampire a Day: Anno Dracula by Kim Newman

In an alternate Victorian England, a vampire woman and the human man she comes to love investigate Jack the Ripper, who is killing vampire prostitutes.

Newman’s novel is very ambitious.  In addition to giving the Jack the Ripper tale a new spin—and who doesn’t like Jack the Ripper stories?—the book turns history on its ear, adding a potent element  by adding a vampire police state storyline  that results in anti-vampire riots and other conflicts and clashes.  Readers may be reminded of the graphic novels of Alan Moore, which include both V FOR VENDETTA and FROM HELL, also a Jack the Ripper tale. 

There is also the relationship between Charles and Genevieve, which has more nuance than the usual human/vampire interaction and is a lot more grown-up.  The characters here—and there are a LOT of them—vary in stages of development but a lot of them are really fine.  It’s not necessary to know that one character is real and another fictional in order to enjoy the story.  What we get is a feel for the inhabited world, a Dickensian abundance of people (and vampires) who overflow the pages and seem real.

French words--Free

I'm always looking to improve my French vocabularly and was delighted to see that 1000 French Words in Context is FREE today on Amazon. Go snag it!

QA Vampire a Day: Christmas with the Vampire by Shay Roberts. FREE!!

Yes, the season is over, but isn't Christmas a state of mind? Christmas with the Vampire  is a novelette set in Prague with a backdrop of a medieval town nearby. It's a fun take on the Santa Claus myth and a nice coming-of-age tale. It's available free on Kobo and Amazon.

Cover Love: Girl Waits with Gun by Amy Stewart

One of my favorite things about Pinterest are all the "boards" with beautiful book covers on them. I don't make my own covers, but cruising those boards is not just fun, it's inspiring. I've always loved fonts and retro images and this cover is a beautiful design executed in a beautiful way. Plus, it really makes me want to read the book. It's based on the true story of one of the first deputy sheriffs in the country. You KNOW there's a great story there.

A vampire a day: Taliesin meets the vampires

I first heard of this site when they reviewed Bride of the Midnight King. It was a great review that compared me favorably to Tanith Lee. (Squee!!!) If you're a fan of vampire stories, this site should definitely be on your "to be read" list. They have a newsletter as well, so you'll never miss anything. And speaking of Bride of the Midnight King. It's free between now and the 20th.

A Vampire a Day: Laurell K. Hamilton's "Anita Blake" series

The first book in the series, Guilty Pleasures, is the very first urban fantasy novel I ever read. I LOVED it, despite the cheesy cover. (I looked for an image of that original cover but could not find it, but more about covers in a minute.)

I loved that Anita lived in St. Louis and not in the over-used locations of New York and Los Angeles. I loved that Anita initially thought of all the creatures she encountered as monsters. (Well, she was willing to make an exception for Jean-Claude, the vampire master of the city.) Anita had a lot of powers. In addition to being a kick-ass vampire executioner, she could also raise the dead. And the series had a lot of intriguing supporting characters, which helped make her universe seem real.

I stopped reading the books about the time that Anita got "torn between two lovers." (The other is a werewolf.)  The writer was veering off from the kind of crime-type plots you see in other UF books (like Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden/Dresden Files series) and exploring other dimensions of the character. Anita's her character, Laurell K. Hamilton can do what she wants. But I was kind of disappointed. Because I loved Anita just the way she was. Sigh.

It wasn't just the stories that evolved, though. Hamilton's publishers put the series' covers through a series of upgrades. When I bought the first book, it had an illustrative cover and the vampire on the cover looked like someone had just drawn a couple of triangular fangs sticking out of his mouth. Seriously. I remember my brother making fun of the cover.

Once the books started to sell--and they've sold a lot, according to Wikipedia, the covers started looking a lot more uptown. check them out.

I like the cover font on the cover to the left but pretty much HATE the imag. the artsy one was the redo around the time the book Obsidian Butterfly came out, or at least, that's the first time I noticed the new covers. I thought they were elegant, very "lit fic" in feel.

I'll have to go back to the series sometime, just to catch up with Anita. I'll always be grateful to Laurell K. Hamilton for introducing me to urban fantasy, which wasn't even really a genre when she started chronicling Anita's adventurs among the undead.

A vampire a day: Auld Lang Syne by Katherine Tomlinson

Bigstock

AULD LANG SYNE

I got a few quizzical looks when I signed in.  It’s possible some of the women working at the registration desk remembered me but I doubted it.  Back in high school I’d had lank brown hair, bad skin and had carried an extra 30 pounds.  I’d spent my four miserable years at Woodrow Wilson High School being invisible and dreaming of better times to come.  Better times had come.  I looked good for my age.

I spotted Alicia Cooper almost at once.  Alicia Womack, now.  Everyone had expected her to marry Tommy Womack ever since they’d been crowned king and queen at our senior prom.  I hadn’t gone to the prom.  I wasn’t asked.  I’d spent that night sobbing in my bedroom while my poor mother tried desperately to distract me with vanilla milkshakes.  I was inconsolable but I drank two of the milkshakes anyway.  I did things like that in those days. 

I never really thought I’d come to a reunion but as the years slipped by, the notion of making an appearance at my 50^th began to seem attractive.  I’d long ago lost touch with everybody, but the reunion committee had set up a group on Facebook, so I was able to get all the information I needed.  I sent in my reservation, made my travel plans, and bought a new dress. 

The banquet room at the Sheraton was decorated with huge black and white photographs blown up from our senior yearbook.  There wasn’t a picture of me.  I’d skipped school the day pictures were taken. 

A Vampire a Day: They Thirst by Robert McCammon

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a huge Stephen King fan. I think The Stand is a monumental book. I first read it while home sick from school with a horrible case of the flu and believe me, the chapters covering the spread of the plague scared the bejesus out of me.
But as much as I love The Stand, I think Robert McCammon's post-apocalyptic novel Swan Song is even better. I first read that while staying in a series of really awful motels during my first cross-country drive. I'd drive for 10-12 hours and then read until I couldn't read any more. I pulled into L.A. with a bad sunburn on my left arm--I didn't have air conditioning in my car--and about 100 pages left of the book.
They Thirst was the first of McCammon's books I ever read. Then I read Wolf's Hour, which is a Nazi/werewolf thing. I liked both of them. They were pulpy fun, the sort of horror novels you could read in a single sitting.
Like King, McCammon defies categorization. He writes horror, yes, but other things as well. I'm a big fan of his short stories, particularly one called "Night Calls the Green Falcon," which Birdman reminded me of a bit.
McCammon disappeared from publishing for nearly 20 years, and that's a shame. He has a new novel out as of last year and it's on the ever-growing TBR pile. 

For the TBR pile: Cobweb Bride by Vera Nazarian

"He came to them in the heart of winter, asking for his Cobweb Bride."  That's the first sentence of this book and that was all it took to hook me.

Cobweb Bride  is FREE today at Amazon and the cover called me. I liked it so much I did the "look inside" to see who designed it and turns out the writer herself is responsible. Good job Vera! I wish I had that skill.

This book sounds like it's just up my alley--a historical fantasy based on the Persephone myth, a story of a woman chosen to be Death's bride.  And bonus:  it's the first in a trilogy. I'm looking forward to reading it.