It's Going to be a Long Wait Until May!

Joe Hill has a new book out. The Fireman. It publishes in May and if the reading gods are with me, I'll be lucky enough to read it in manuscript for one of my clients, a film company developing the film version of Hill's novel Heart-Shaped Box. They know I love the man's work--yes, even Horns, which was an interesting idea even though iI didn't think it worked as a movie. (Through no fault of Daniel Radcliffe, who was great in it. And there's one scene he has where the character's mother tells him what she really thinks of him that will break your heart.)

Neon Noir and returning to my roots

My name is Katherine Tomlinson and I'm a short story writer.
There, I've said it.
Yes, I write longer stuff.
Yes, I still write non-fiction.
Yes, I write scripts and teleplays and web series episodes.
But in my heart, I am a short story writer. I say this knowing that even masters of the short story form don't really make much money from their work. Paying markets for short stories are few and far between, although the mystery, science fiction, and fantasy genres are putting up a valiant fight to keep the short story form alive.
I've been concentrating on longer work of late, trying to ignore the siren call of the short story. I'm writing something for Gerri Leen's "Dark Goddess" anthology, and every time the new "Dark Markets" comes out, I see one or two "calls for submission" that pique my interest. Most of the time I ignore that little tingle of electricity and go back to working on my novel. But every so often, I see an opportunity that I cannot ignore. Like the one for a crime fiction story that's "Neon Noir."  Inspired by the 80s with all the fashion and music and awesomeness that decade possessed.
I lived through the 80s.
I got this.

Beauty and the Beast retold in Christine Pope's Wolf of Harrow Hall

"Beauty and the Beast" is one of the most beloved fairy tales ever told. Right now there are two different film versions being developed. Christophe Gans' gorgeous French language version is available on YouTube. And if you go on GoodReads looking for a retelling of the tale, you're directed to a list with 1006 results, one of them my own novelette The Summer Garden. (There are 2611 retellings of "Cinderella" so that's even more popular as source material.)

Christine Pope likes "Beauty and the Beast." She retold it in her novella Breath of Life, which kickstarted her Gaia Consortium Series. And now she's used the story as a basis for a lush, snow-bound love story called The Wolf of Harrow Hall. Part of her Tales of the Latter Kingdoms series--all stand-alone fairy tales--Wolf has a gorgeous cover by Ravven, and an original new mythos that explains the nature of the beast. Buy it now at Amazon and on other publishing platforms.

Drunk on the Moon--Werewolf PI Roman Dalton is back

Roman Dalton, the werewolf PI created by Paul D. Brazill, first appeared on the pages of Dark Valentine Magazine, a orint and digital publication I published. We ran a second adventure of Roman's and soon after that, Paul invited me to join him and a group of other writers (Kate Laity, John Donald Carlucci, Allan Leverone) to contribute a story to his anthology of Roman Dalton stories, Drunk on the Moon.
It was a lot of fun playing in Paul's sandbox and I enjoyed writing my story, which included Persian fire demons, albanian gangster werewolves and a whole lot of weirdness.
There's a new eidtion of the anthology out now with a deliberately retro cover, and newly slicked up stories. Right now it's free on Kindle, so if you like urban fantasy and hard-boiled noir, you should check it out.

Leaving Berlin by Joseph Kanon, a review

In Joseph Kanon’s book, Leaving Berlin, an American Communist writer returns to Berlin as a spy and discovers that the woman he once loved is now a Russian spy. This is a nicely atmospheric, character-driven spy thriller set roughly the same time as Kanon’s previous book TThe Good German. We’re immediately dropped into the complex political and ideological situation that was postwar Berlin, and Kanon does an excellent job of introducing us to the various characters with a minimum of fuss. The city (as much a character as any of the humans) is haunted for Alex, and a series of flashbacks fills in his complicated relationship with his former lover . (All of Kanon’s books have a woman like Irene, even Los Alamos, and we’re reminded of the line from The Good German, “You should never have come back to Berlin.”)

This is Alex’s story and he’s an intriguing protagonist. He’s a man being manipulated, but he doesn’t come off as weak or passive. His friends—like the playwright Bertolt Brecht—and his admirers—almost everyone—respect his work, which is passionate and anti-Fascist and brave. But it’s not simple—nothing is simple in Berlin.

City of Dragons by Kelli Stanley

I have been a fan of Kelli Stanley's wonderful historical mysteries since my friend Cormac Brown gave me a copy of her "Roman noir" Nox Dormienda. When Kelli came to Los Angeles to sign the first book of her San Francisco-based historical mysteries, City of Dragons, I bought a copy and had it autographed. I loved the book and have since read two of the three sequels. The heroine is Miranda Corbie, a private eye with a past and a passion for justice.

I recommended City of Dragons to the book club I belong to in Bellingham--the Bellingham Mysterians--join us on Facebook--and it looks like this one is a winner. (We don't always agree on the books we read.) If you love historical mysteries with social issues wrapped up in the plot, you will LOVE these books. And if you love elegant book covers, the whole series has wonderful covers.

The Angel Artifact

Sometimes you get a story bunny that just will not leave you alone, no matter how often you push it aside. The last time that happened to me was when the "Vampire Cinderella" idea pushed me to write Bride of the Midnight King.  I know where this one came from--hours spent refining my entry into the "Be James Patterson's co-author" contest, along with thinking about under-used supernatural beings in paranormal books.
The idea is that a little kid, a girl, I think, finds an angel feather in the woods. It's big--bigger than she is, anyway, and looks like a piece of brushed steal sculpture until you touch it. She brings the angel back home and takes it upstairs to show it to her little brother, a kid with some congenital and fatal disease who is bed-bound. And when he touches it,he's healed.
And consequences ensue.
I figure there are several of these angel feather artifacts scattered all over the world and some have been used for harming as well as healing.
How do you destroy such an artifact? It's not like you can throw it into the fires of Mt. Doom.
And of course, word of this object would get out.
And the government would probably get involved.
Maybe now that I've written this much down, the idea will be happy to sit in the back of my unconscious.
i know there's something there, but not sure what to do with it.

Sunday Shakespeare Goodness--Helen Mirren's TEMPEST for free

I've seen a lot of productions of Shakespeare's The Tempest. I've seen a Comnedia dell'arte production iperformed solely n Italian during the a cultural "Olympics" that accompanied the 1984 L.A. Summer Olympics, I've seen a production in San Diego with three oversized seashells as the only set (Ellis Rabb played Prospero) and I've seen two more traditional versions, one with Anthony Hopkins and Stephanie Zimbalist and one with Christopher Plummer as the vengeful mage.

When I found out Helen Mirren was going to do a female version of the play with Julie (The Lion King) Taymor directing, I was intrigued but somehow I never managed to catch the 2010 production. But now, thanks to YouTube, I can see the whole movie for free! It was worth the wait. Djimon Hounsou plays Caliban, who has the best line in the play (and one of my favorite lines in all of Shakespeare) when he says, "You taught me language and my profit on't is I know how to curse." 
This was Shakespeare's last play, the culmination of a career, a master at the top of his game.
Enjoy it here.

Finding Clarity, Setting Goals

Yet another book for the TBR pile. I'm always looking for ways to map out the path of my life because there have been long stretches where it feels like I've been wandering down random paths in search of something. This book has been recommended to me by a number of people, so my first goal is to sit down and read it.

Nuclear sun over Bellingham

Photo by Shay Y. Roberts

Most of the time, Bellingham is silver and green. But sometimes, when the light is just right, the city is bathed in molton gold.

Henry Rollins has something to say and it's worth listening to

One of my favorite Henry Thoreau quotes has to do with not wasting time--"as if you could waste time without injuring eternity." Who knew that Henry Rollins and Henry Thoreau were brothers under the skin? Wonder what kind of a tattoo Thoreau would have gotten if he was the kind of guy who got inked?

Angelfall by Susan Ee--a review

In a post-apocalyptic world, a human joins forces with an angel to rescue her little sister as a resistance movement launches its first mission against the supernatural creatures.

Definitely in the dystopian tradition of Hunger Games, this story of a world in which paranormal creatures rule the night has a fine, feisty heroine, an intriguing anti-hero angel without wings and a quest. It’s well-written but derivative (especially for readers of the genre in general and Hunger Games in particular).

PENRYN YOUNG is 17 and basically in charge of her family—her mentally ill mother and her disabled sister PAIGE—in the wake of world-wide apocalypse involving angel attacks. Everyone on earth saw GABRIEL, the Messenger of God, killed in Jerusalem and since then, angels have hunted and killed humans for their own uses.

            Penryn is uniquely suited to protect her family since her paranoid mother signed her up for a series of self-defense classes. That’s good because her mother is off her meds and unpredictable and her sister is useless. The family has been hiding out on the top floor of an apartment building, but the bands of roving gangs have been scavenging closer and closer for days. Penryn realizes it’s time to move and despite her mother’s terror of the night (when the streets are empty of humans but filled with all kinds of predators), she wants to move at night. With her mother pushing a shopping cart and Penryn pushing her baby sister in a wheelchair, the trio sets out.

A picture is worth 1000 words #2

THIS IS WHAT MY WORLD LOOKS LIKE WHEN I THINK OF DONALD TRUMP BECOMING PRESIDENT.

I don't often get political. It says right on my blog header that I identify as a feminist, and so I don't feel the need to hit people over the head with it. And I'm pretty passionate about a couple of things--free speech, sane gun laws--and have posted about those issues a few times. I don't think that political beliefs are ever simple. I was brought up by an Eisenhower Republican and a die-hard Democrat who once voted for John Anderson and I would have to be stranded on another planet before I skipped voting.  My father died three days short of an election day in 1985 but it didn't matter beause he had voted by absentee ballot the week before. Yes, my father voted on his death bed. He would have been appalled at the political circus we now call presidential politics.
I am appalled.
I am old enough to remember George Wallace's hate-mongering campaign.
I saw the infamous anti-Barry Goldwater "daisy/nukes" ad in a political science class in college. (This ad was so memorable and potent it practically won LBJ's election single-handedly. And it's now available on YouTube. But it only ran ONCE.  That's how powerful it was.) 

So this election cycle is not my first. I was 19 the first time I voted, one of the first of a generation that was allowed to vote before we reached our "majority" of 21.  That was during the Vietnam War when the rallying cry for lowering the age to vote was, "Old enough to die? Old enough to vote."
Western Illinois University, which has successfully predicted the winner of the presidential election for the last 40 years has released their prediction for 2016. They think it's going to be Bernie Sanders. Which means they think it is NOT going to be Donald Trump. And that is good news to me. Because this country does not need the fear-mongering, hate-filled, "I got mine "message Trump is preaching.

I never understood the Adolf Hitler cult of personality or how anyone could have voted him into office. But now, when I look at Trump speaking (and watch with the sound turned off) and the cynical way he manipulates crowds--I sudddenly see just how easy it was. It's all fun and games until a demagogue gets elected. And if Donald Trump wins, he will take this country down a very dark path.
I now return you to our regularly scheduled blog about food, fiction, and France. 

Dragon Rose by Christine Pope is FREE!

Isn't this a beautiful cover? It's by Ravven, who also designed the covers for my novelette Hunter's Kiss and the first of my Time Flood novels (see sidebar). Dragon Rose is one of the books in Christine Pope's series "Tales of the Latter Kingdoms," which are stand-alone retellings of various fairy tales. Dragon Rose is inspired by Beauty and the Beast, and it's a lovely version. You can find Dragon Rose here.

Aixa and the Scorpion--an excerpt and a freebie

I'll be giving away part one of my three-part urban fantasy series  (La Bruja Roja) for the next five days.  I originally wrote the series under the pseudonym Delia Fontana and over the year or so it's been available, Joy Sillesen has played with the covers, trying out everything from a neat grunnge graphic to the current trio of very paranormal covers. I've loved all the covers and wish I could use them all. This excerpt is from the opening of Aixa and the Scorpion. If you'd like to read more, go grab the freebie on Amazon. And I would LOVE a review if you like it.

   AIXA AND THE SCORPION

When you live in a place called Sangre de Cristo, it almost goes without saying that sometimes not-so-ordinary things are going to happen. In the years I was growing up here, Sangre was mostly just a sleepy little border town straddling the line between Texas and Mexico.

Americans crossed the border in search of cheap drugs and cheap booze and donkey sex shows and Mexicans traveled in the other direction looking for jobs and opportunities and green cards.

We didn’t get many tourists in Sangre de Cristo, so while we weren’t entirely immune to the problems faced by people in Matamoros or El Paso, we were mostly insulated from the bad stuff.

At least we were until 2006 when the drug wars exploded and the fallout left towns on both sides of the border radioactive with cocaine and machismo.

By then I was already living in Austin, taking classes at UT, and trying to figure out my place in the world.

I am a modern woman, but I am heir to an old, old tradition. And the power that I have skips generations. It’s why my mother, who was born in Brownsville, fled the U.S. in the final weeks of her pregnancy, determined that I should be born in Mexico so that I’d be a citizen of both nations. Both nations and two worlds.

She died giving birth to me, which is like something out of a 19^th century novel. My father, who had loved her very much, never forgave her for leaving him and basically abandoned me in Sangre de Cristo to grow up in my abuela’s house.

For my 14^th birthday my father sent me a present—a Bratz doll—and then two weeks later showed up in Sangre de Cristo knocking on my grandmother’s door with more presents and a sheepish smile.

Friday Freebie--Hyde by Lauren Stewart

I'm always up for a re-imagining of the old horror classics--I've watched more bad Frankenstein reboots than you can imagine--so this book caught my eye. It's the first of a three-book series (isn't everything a trilogy these days?) and it comes with a 4.3 rating on Amazon (from 318 readers). I like the cover of Hyde, and think the trio of covers work well together. the author makes it clear this is a sexy book with dark themes and I'm okay with that. It's described as an urban fantasy and that's still one of my all-time fravorite genres. I can't wait to see what Stewart has done with the Robert Lewis Stevenson classic.

Dear Mr. You by Mary-Louise Parker

I've always liked actress Mary-Louise Parker. She's done so many different kinds of parts and has always been relatable. (I found her adorable in Red.) But it wasn't until a year or so ago that I discovered she's also a writer, and a very good one.

Dear Mr. You is a collection of "letters" Parker has written to the men who entered and departed from her life with varying degrees of damage and joy. It's a book any woman will relate to. By turns funny and bittersweet--she is REALLY hard on herself sometimes--Dear Mr. You might be a great present to give your mother for Mother's Day--especially if she's a fan of Weeds.

For a sense of her personality, check out this interview from the Washington Post. It also deserves shelf-space next to Carrie Fisher's memoir Wishful Drinking.

Apocalypse Sky

Years ago, I submitted a story called "Monochrome" to an anthology with the premise that suddenly all the color was leached out of the world and writers were asked to explore how that would affect them. "Monochrome" wasn't a great story and it didn't make the cut but I think of that story often when I see the apocalyptic chiaroscuro sunsets we get here in the Pacific Northwest.

Say what you will about the pollution in Los Angeles, it made for some extraordinary, Technicolor sunsets. Here we get sunsets in black and white--gorgeous dark blacks and whites like some heavenly cinematographer was shooting the world in black and white. It's another kind of beauty but it's taken some getting used to.

And I want to write a story about it.

Next for the TBR pile: The Merchant by V.R. McCoy

I actually heard about this #SupernaturalThriller on Twitter. (Yay for social media.) It's got gangsters and vampires and crooked politicians and the Big Easy. What's not to like. I don't know this author but at 99 cents, what do I have to lose?  Can't wait to read it.

Ghost Storm Giveaway

I love finding new writers by reading "gateway" books being offered as cheese for signing up on thier mailing lists. This cover caught my eye today and looking around at Jessie Costin's site, I'm pretty sure I'm going to love her YA paranormal books. What I  liked about this cover was the colors. Bonus--it's the two Pantone colors of the year!  But the colors drew me in because this is not the same old/same old book cover. You can buy Ghost Storm for 99 cents on Kindle or you can get it free by signing up for the newsletter.Go here to sign up.

The blurb sounded interesting too, sort of a YA version of Haven. I like that the stakes for the heroine go beyond her love life. Another thing I like about Jessie Costin is that she promotes other writers on her site. That's how I heard about D.S. Murphy and her mermaid fantasy Shearwater. (It's been very, very well reviewed and only been out for three months, so it's on the ever-expanding TBR bookcase.)

The next best thing to being in Paris

Is paging through this gorgeous book by Girls Guide to Paris founder Doni Belau. I love the beautiful graphic cover of Paris Cocktails, and the photographs are gorgeous. If you buy the book directly from the author's site, you get bonuses plus a discount, so go here.

In praise of Kinuko Y. Craft

Artwork: © Kinuko. Y. Craft, All Rights Reserved,

  www.kycraft.com

The first piece of Kinuko Y. Craft's work I ever saw was this beautiful, strange illustration of a leopard woman drinking from a pool. Or at least that's what it seems to be to me. I wish I knew more. (The painting is called "The Transformation of Angarred" and I don't know anything about the story it's based on.) It immediately spoke to me, taking me to a place beyond reality and I wanted to write a story to match it. Craft calls herself a "storyteller," and it's true. Even if you don't know the story that she's given life in her art, A story suggets itself to you.

Kinuko Y. Craft's beautifully illustrated hardcover retelling of Beauty and the Beast (written by Mahlon F. Craft, Kinuko's husband, an artist/photographer) arrives from Harper Collins this July. You can pre-order it here and you should, because it looks exquisite. And while you're there, you should pick up a copy of Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, their previous collaboration,  as well.On her site, you can buy signed posters she created for the Dallas Opera House. They're a bargain for their beauty and this one is going to be my birthday present to myself:

Artwork: © Kinuko. Y. Craft, All Rights Reserved,

  www.kycraft.com

March Mystery: Aunty Lee's Chilled Revenge by Ovidia Yu

There are a couple of copies of Aunty Lee's Chilled Revenge up for grabs in the early review section of Library Thing and I would so like to snag one because I know it's not going to show up in my local library any time soon. (My local library is so strapped for cash that you're kind of out of luck if you don't want the new James Patterson or Debbie Macomber or Stephen King).  To be fair, it's available in a trade paperback priced under $15, which is about what it costs to go to a movie at my local theater, so one way or another, it's on my TBR list.

The book is set in Singapore where Aunty Lee is a widow who runs a "home cooking" restaurant. This is not the first of her adventures and I've already ordered Aunty Lee's Deadly Specials and Aunty Lee's Delights. I've always been a fan of feisty, crime-solving widows, from Dorothy Gilman's Mrs. Pollifax to Cabot Cove's Jessica Fletcher.

Decadent Asparagus Saute

Courtesy of freeimages.com

I never used to like asparagus. The lovely thing spears cost a fortune in Los Angeles and by the time the price came down, the stalks were thick and woody and just not that tasty. But here in the Pacific Northwest, those thin stalks are available virtually year round and the vegetable finds it ways to my plate a couple of times a week.

You may be saying to yourself, ugh, asparagus, but trust me. If you make it this way, it's so yummy you'll find yourself looking at the produce section a different way. And it's super easy.

Slice one yellow onion thinly and place in a large skillet along with two tablespoons of olive oil.
Saute the onions until they're golden and translucent (about ten minues.)
Slice the woody parts off the asparagus and cut them into pieces. When the onions are soft, add the asparagus peces to the oil.
Sprinkle with salt if you use it.
Sprinkle with garlic powder or add a spoon of minced fresh garlic.
Slosh some hot sauce over it. (I used Cholula with lime.)
Saute until the aspragus starts to get soft/crispy.
Add about a half-cut of chopped walnuts and continue to saute.
Divide in half and serve over brown rice OR simply eat the whole lovely pan yourself. It's incredibly filling and very satisfying in an "I can't believe this is good for me" kind of way.

Why yes, I do judge a book by its cover

I'm a big fan of BuzzFeed Books (and you should be too) and I just now got around to looking at 34 of the Most Beautiful Book Covers of 2015." As promised there are 34 stunning covers, although the one I liked best was this one for Satin Island by Tom McCarthy. It was designed by Peter Mendelsund, He's also done some stunning covers for New Yorker Magazine, and his work is elegant, minimalist, classy, timeless. He's also a writer, and his book, What We See When We Read, is a book that's now on my TBR--a study of why words evoke images.
their "
I thought thr Satin Island cover was so gorgeous I looked the book up and to my surprise, there's a totally different cover on the book listed on Amazon. It's the one below left. I thought that was odd, but decided it must be a variant cover for a foreign edition. I checked on Amazon.co.uk and found yet a third cover.It has something of the watercolor feel of the original cover I saw and I like it better than the first variant but I don't like either as well as the cover that was used in the BuzzFeed article. I have to wonder. Was the publisher doing A/B testing with the cover?

I know which book I'd pick up first. How about ou?

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.