Where have all the women gone?

One of the things I hear a lot is that women don't write epic fantasy.  Kameron Hurley (a double Hugo Award-winner) talks about that and many other topics in this new book, due out next week. Tor.com has posted an excerpt. you can read it here.

All Involved by Ryan Gattis...a review

This novel, inspired by the events of the L.A. Riots in 1992,  interweaves stories and points of view in a cinematic way (think CRASH or SYRIANA) with the authenticity of actual events told the lens of Gattis’ multi-cultural cast. It makes a wonderful copansion piece to Anna Deavere Smith’s TWILIGHT, her one-woman, multi-character theater piece about the L.A. riots that erupted in the wake of the verdict in the Rodney King case.

 And while much of the L.A. riot coverage focused on the clashes between the African-American and Korean communities, this novel also gives us a snapshot of one complicated extended Hispanic family (both blood family and gang affiliations). Gattis has done a terrific job of getting inside the heads of his characters, particularly Lupe (aka Payasa). .

The characters here are complex and mostly sympathetic, and the adage “Live by the gun, die by the gun” has never seemed so apt.

There’s not a whole lot of story here, but what there is, is absorbing. The plot has a lot of different threads that are woven together, with unexpected connections every step of the way. This is a lot like CRASH, and it’s visceral.  No one group is singled out as the good or bad guys and Gattis does a terrific job giving us viewpoints from all different directions.

For the TBR Pile--THE GENE

I love popular science as a genre and this book caught my eye in a newsletter from Simon & Schuster. Muhkherjee also wrote the amazing The Emperor of All Maladies (subtitled: A Biography of Cancer), so I have high hopes for this book about what it means to be human when we can write and overwrite our own genetic code.

I like the cover too--it's clean and graphic and stands out in a thumbnail. (When you're an indie writer, you tend to notice things like that.What I didn't realize is that this cover is actually the cover of the audio book. The book has a slightly different cover. It's got much the same feel but it's not, at least in my opinion, as eye-catching or appealing.

The Beast Prince

This retelling of Beauty and the Beast popped up this morning when I went to Amazon to see if anyone had left a new review for The Summer Garden. I'm always interested in what other writers have done with the story since I'm so fond of the story myself. (And while the Disney version of the story looks pretty, I Cannoot. Wait to see the Guillermo del Toro version with Emma Watson. It was a really smart script and it will look fantastic.)

Cover Reveal Dark Dream

This is the cover for the first book in my new series The Dreamer's Daughters, which will publish this fall. It focuses on a trio of sisters, all who have the ability to work dream magic because I've been fascinated by dreams my whole life. Mostly because I rarely remember mine. I do dream in color, and I did once have that anxiety dream about being in college and having an exam in a class you never attended. (For me, the class was advanced calculus and even in my dream I knew it was a dream because I am math-challeged.)

The designer is Veronica R of IndieElaborates and I purchased it from The Book Cover Designer.

Once Upon a Curse--17 Fairy Tale Retellings

I just bought Once Upon a Curse (it's a boxed set selling for 99 cents on Amazon) that's chock full of fairy tale retellings. The only story I've read before is Christine Pope's "The Queen of Frost and Darkness," a Snow Queen retelling that originally ran in Dark Valentine Magazine. 

It's a fantastic collection. Here's the review I just posted on Amazon:

 Witches and warriors, demons and darkness, brave women and true love, and a vampiric take on a classic fairy tale—it’s all here in this boxed set, and more besides. Because many of the stories have layers to them that remind us of other stories and folk tales and ballads, like the silver dagger Yarrow carries in the collection’s opening story, “Yarrow Sturdy and Bright,” by Devon Monk. This is a fierce, feminist take on “The Pied Piper,” and it sets the tone for the stories that follow.

The stories run the gamut from reimagined Celtic folklore like Anthea Sharp’s “Fae Horse,” a wild ride on a NightMare to Christine Pope’s lyrical Russian take on “The Snow Queen.” C. Gockel’s urban fantastic version of Cinderella features a wildly sympathetic stepmother, a “stepsister” who’s a 15-year-old gay kid exploring his own fabulosity, and a whiny “princess” whose diva antics are consistently amusing.

The teaser trailer for Beauty and the Beast

Disney has just released the teaser trailer for their live-action Beauty and the Beast. And it looks lush.

Bite-sized Beauty and the Beast

My retelling of Beauty and the Beast, The Summer Garden, is free this week on Amazon. Because we all need a free fairy tale every once in a while.

Summer of Shakespeare #3

Yes, it's that time of year again--Summer of Shakespeare time. This will be SoS number three, and there will be Shakespeare geekery coming out your ears by August 31. The festivities begin June 1, so "brush up your Shakespeare" as Cole Porter urged you to in his musical Kiss Me Kate, based on his play The Taming of the Shrew (one of my least favorites).

Freebie Fairytale Fiction

A Dream of Sun and Roses is still free on Amazon, so if you're looking for a short, futuristic fairy tale (based on Sleeping Beauty) you can get it here.  I like rewriting fairy tales, not so much because I don't have ideas of my own, but because I like telling the stories in my own way. But at a certain point I realized that everyone picks the same five fairy tales--Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and maybe...Red Riding Hood.  When I started my "Modern Magic Series," I knew I wanted ten stories in all, so I had to go beyond the obvious. (Plus, outside of doing a werewolf take on Red Riding Hood, I didn't really see much I could do with the story)

Here's what I came up with:

Fashionista (Cinderella)
While My City Dreams (Rapunzel)
Hunter's Kiss (Snow White)
Hero's Kiss (Beauty and the Beast)
Beauty Sleep (Sleeping Beauty)
Unknown Road (East of the Sun, West of the Moon)
Hideous (Ugly Duckling)
Midnight's Daughter (The Twelve Dancing Princesses)
Lady in the Water (The Little Mermaid)
Soul Kiss (The Snow Queen)

I have covers for almost all of the stories--some women buy shoes, I buy covers. The amazing Joy Sillesen of Indie Author Services created some, and I bought the others as premades from various sources. Hunter's Kiss was created by Ravven, whose work is exquisite. I bought two of her premades last year as a Christmas present to me. I also picked up a couple on The Book Cover Designer. I know people can be sniffy about pre-mades, but there's some gorgeous work there.

The Time Traveler's Almanac

I am a fan of short stories. I'm a fan of time travel stories. So this collection of short stories (edited by Ann VanderMeer and Jeff VanderMeer) sounds like it's right up my alley. And I would never have known about it if I hadn't stumbled across the cover in a review. I love this cover. I love that the butterfly is a call out to one of my all-time favorite short stories, Ray Bradbury's "A Sound of Thunder." I remember reading that story for the first time and just being stunned by it. It was my introduction to Ray Bradbury and, most likely, the beginning of my life-long love of the short story form.

This is not the first cover this book has. When I went searching for it on Amazon--because to see it is to buy it--an older cover came up. And for me, the older cover was not as inviting. Maybe it's the background color. I used to work in print magazines and one of the things we were always doing is gathering data on which covers sold the best. (Covers with white backgrounds were not that popular.) For me this alternate cover looks like it might be a work of popular history or popular science. It doesn't say "fiction" to me the way the butterfly cover does. But either way, this book is on its way to me and I can't wait.

Freebie Fiction

I'm going to be running free promotions for various books all the rest of this month and into June. I'm staring with A Dream of Sun and Roses, a long short story which was originally written for an anthology of future fairy tales that never happened. It's a version of Sleeping Beauty. The other freebie availale right now is Unsanctified, a horror  story with spiders and other creepy stuff.

Weekend Flash Fiction

                                DARKLING      

                       by Katherine Tomlinson                                 

The sun didn’t rise on Thursday.  The blogosphere, which never sleeps, outpaced the news channels in reporting the situation, but CNN had posted a graphic (Black Thursday!) by 11 a.m.  The parade of pundits began that afternoon, with self-styled experts throwing out phrases like “Little Ice Age” and “global hydrological cycle.”

Dr. Nicholas Solarz, whose theories on nuclear winter had been published in the Journal of Geophysical Research, seemed to be everywhere at once, basking in his moment of geek glory. He talked a lot about the surface temperature of the earth being 300 Kelvin and predicted that without sunlight, the temperature would drop by a factor of two in weeks.

When these statements were met by puzzled looks from anchor-people who couldn’t do long division without a calculator, he explained that 275 Kelvin is the freezing temperature of water and that in a month; the planet’s surface temperature would be down to 150 Kelvin.  Then he had added, somewhat unhelpfully, “You do the math.”

But to do the math, people needed to know the difference between the Kelvin and the Celsius temperature scales and have a passing grasp of the concept of “absolute zero” and most everyone had enough problems just converting Celsius to Fahrenheit.  Also, a fair number of viewers thought Dr. Solarz was saying “Kevin” and wondered who he was and what he had to do with anything.

Shakespeare Fan Fic--Macbeth

Weirdos

by Katherine Tomlinson

 

The cops eventually showed up at school. Cate knew they would. When a guy like Kingman Duncan gets killed, people pay attention. Questions get asked. The police want answers. So we were expecting them and we had answers ready.

It was a week after Homecoming but the posters were still up all over the school.

Go fighting Scots!

Dunsinane H.S. rules!

As far as the cops were concerned, they had a whole high school full of suspects, kids who might have stabbed Duncan. Studies have shown that popular kids get bullied as often as the misfits do. My experience suggests they probably deserve it.

I wasn’t going to shed any tears over dead Duncan and neither were my sisters.

We didn’t do it, but we knew who did.

We weren’t going to throw him under the bus.

Unless we had to.

The cancer you've never heard of...

I had never heard of Angiosarcoma until just over a year ago when a friend of mine collapsed in pain while at work and soon after learned that his spleen had essentially exploded as a result of the disease.

What is Angiosarcoma?  Angiosarcoma is a cancer of the inner lining of blood vessels, and it can occur in any area of the body. The disease most commonly occurs in the skin, breast, liver, spleen, and deep tissue.

Cancer of the inner lining of blood vessels. Who even knew there was such a thing? Seriously, there aren't enough major organs for cancer to infest, it has to invade the inner lining of blood vessels?  Even the Wikipedia article on the disease is really brief. By the time my friend knew he had this aggressive cancer, it had already spread all over. He fought it as hard as he could with heart and courage and humor. But it killed him anyway.

There used to be a tagline for American Cancer Society PSAs. "Help fight cancer in YOUR lifetime." It's too late for my friend, but maybe not too late for someone you know. If you have a spare dollar and don't know where to put it, here's a place.

Angiosarcoma Awareness, Inc.
P.O. Box 17421
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33318
www.cureasc.org

400 Years Later--William shakespeare is still relevant!

Caliban's Drabble

In honor of #ShakespeareWeek

Caliban’s Drabble

They say that two wrongs do not make a right. That is a concept that was unknown to me until the Duke and his daughter came to the island and took it for their own. My mother offered the duke friendship and welcomed the girl, but he saw her as an enemy and with his magic imprisoned her.

He took my birthright and in return, he taught me language, which I welcomed, for it allowed me to curse and I often had need to curse.

And to bemoan my wretched fate.

Fuck language.

Fuck curses.

I want my island back.

 

Ian McKellen and Judi Dench in Macbeth

Yes, #ShakespeareWeek continues with another fabulous YouTube find, the 1978 Royal Shakespeare Company's version of Macbeth starring Sir Ian McKellen and Dame Judi Dench. Yes, Shakespeare royalty. You can see it here. The production is stripped down, minimalist and intimate, with semi-modern dress. McKellen was 39, when he played Macbeth, Judi Dench, 44. McKellen, at 5'11" is nearly a foot taller than Dench, and that physical disparity makes her seem almost fragile at times. But watching her face as she gives voice to her ambition--bemoaning that Macbeth is so full of the milk of human kindness--and the way she seduces her husband into regicide, you have no doubt that this is one DANGEROUS lady.  It's a terrific production.

YouTube finds: Helen Mirren's version of The Tempest

I've been wanting to see this forever but somehow never did. But now that it's #ShakespeareWeek, I went looking for Shakespeare on YouTube to see what sort of Shakespeare goodness I could find. Imagine my delight when I discovered the full movie is up. Directed by Julie Taymor, who conceived he fabulous stage version of The Lion King, the movie is a visual treat and stars Helen Mirren in the role of Prospera. Shakespeare productions are always fiddling around with the sex of their protagonists, much in the way the playwright himself played with it, but here the sex-change works beautifully in a way that female Hamlets never have for me. If you love the play--and I do, I've seen around seven productions of it--check it out here.

Surprising Shakespeare Brand Name

so it's #ShakespeareWeek and I was Googling around looking for Shakespeare silliness and I discovered that there's a Shakespeare brand of fishing equipment. I know Shakespeare isn't the first name that comes to my mind when I think "fishing" so I went looking for something he might have said about the sport. (Was fishing a sport back then? Or was it just another way to catch dinner?) Turns out there is a famous quote from Hamlet:

“A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm”

Celebrate Shakespeare Week

By reading three strange tales (and a bonus "Drabble") inspired by the Bard. Shakespeare Noir.

Shakespeare Week

It's #ShakespeareWeek and Goodreads is celebrating in a creative way. They've asked various authors to imagine a deleted scene from a play. They start off with Christopher Moore's deleted scene from Julius Caesar and it's just as hilarious as you would expect. Read it here and get in on all the fun.

Youtube finds: Night Heat

I love Youtube. Every once in a while when I'm looking for something to watch while I'm eating lunch or dinner, I'll head over there and see what I can find. Rummaging around on Youtube is like going through the stuff in your parents' attic; you never know what you're going to find. I can't remember what I was looking for when I stumbled across episodes of Night Heat.

Night Heat was a Canadian cop show that originally aired between 1985 and 1989. In the LA market, it played late night, and from the first episode I watched, I was hooked. It was a contemporary of Miami Vice (1994-1990) but the two shows could not have been more different in look and feel. Where Miami Vice was all neon noir and hip sountracks and pastel clothes, Night Heat was gritty and down to earth, the cases more personal, more intimate.

Interview with Gerard Brennan

 Gerard Brennan's latest novel is Undercover, a Belfast cop thriller. His short stories have appeared in a number of anthologies; including three volumes of The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime and Belfast Noir. He co-edited Requiems for the Departed, a collection of crime fiction based on Irish myths which won the 2011 Spinetingler Award for best anthology. His novella, The Point, was published by Pulp Press in October 2011 and won the 2012 Spinetingler Award for best novella. His novels, Wee Rockets and Fireproof, were published as ebooks by Blasted Heath in 2012. He graduated from the MA in creative writing at Queen's University Belfast in 2012 and is currently working on a PhD.

What was the first short story you ever published (and when)? Were you paid for it?

I wrote a story called ‘Pool Sharks’ after I spent a weekend in Wexford. We were lucky enough to score a lock-in at the local pub and things got a bit messy. I became obsessed by the fact that we could have gotten away with murder that night. Then the hamster wheel started spinning and the story was born. This was back in 2007, when I’d started to get serious about writing. The story got accepted into a horror/crime anthology titled ‘Badass Horror’. And yes, I got paid! I still get paid for it from time to time, in fact. The publisher, Tim Lieder, is passionate about compensating his writers. Fair play to him.

Did you find it hard to transition from short stories to longer works?

Not really. I just needed to catch an idea that wanted to be a novel. Then I sat down and put the hours in.

Review of Gerard Brennan's FIREPROOF

Mike Rocks has a bad attitude. Sent to hell for murdering a man, he doesn’t seem to be taking his fate all that seriously. Despite having his own personal demon tasked with tormenting him for all eternity, Mike is not impressed. And that presents a problem for Lucifer. Big Red really can’t have it getting around hell that Mike is impervious to the pain of damnation so he offers him a job. He wants Mike to “take a crack” at developing a new religion—Satanism, of course. Mike jumps at the chance and no sooner has he signed the phonebook-thick contract than he finds himself back in West Belfast, with a handsome new face (he thinks he looks Italian) and a thirst for vengeance as strong as his thirst for a pint. He quenches both at his former local, and that’s when things start to go sideways.

Back in hell for a tune-up with Lucifer, Mike finds himself on a short leash with an imp on his shoulder kibitzing on his every move as he puts the devil’s plan into operation, starting with a sales pitch to a group of not-too-bright teenagers. What follows is a dark (very dark) comedy of crime and punishment with trenchant observations on pop culture and religious dogma gracefully woven into the fabric of the story.

A review of Monica Hesse's mystery GIRL IN THE BLUE COAT

Girl in the Blue Coat was just published last week and already it's started collecting some buzz. that's not surprising. It's a book with a genuinely twisty plot, memorable characters, and a well-researched and immersive sense of time (1943) and place (Amsterdam).

This novel begins like a classic "locked room" mystery, although the mystery isn't how someone was killed in a locked room but how someone escaped from a locked room and for what reason? Monica Hesse's novel is set in 1943 Amsterdam, a place controlled by the Nazis whose will is enforced by the "Green Police" who can stop anyone, anywhere, for any reason.

As the story opens, Hanneke Bakker is riding her bicycle on her delivery rounds when she's stopped by a handsome young Green Policeman. Flirting with him, she manages to fluster him enough that he shoos her away, telling her he doesn't have time for silly little girls like her. But she's not a silly girl; she's a black market operator who sees what she's doing as an act of defiance against the occupation, no matter how small.

Another Boxed Set full of Best-Selling Authors

Before my book Bride of the MIdnight King was picked to be in a boxed set (For The Love of the Vampire), I didn't really know that boxed sets were a "thing." I noticed them every once in a while on Book Bub ads, but had no idea they were usually such great deals. They're like sampler chocolate boxes where you can try out a lot of new writers for not a lot of money--usually either free or 99 cents.

 In the past month I've seen a lot of boxed sets featuring some of my favorite writers--Christine Pope, Stacy Clafin, Rebecca Hamilton--going by.  And here's a boxed set that's just gone up, featuring 29 best-selling authors (some of them INTERNATIONAL best sellers.)  Edge is only 99 cents on all platforms including Amazon. You better believe I've already snagged my set!

Reflections--what the camera sees

I have terrible eyesight. So when I snapped this picture of the pond near my house, I didn't notice the reflections of the trees in the water. If I enlarge this photo on my phone, the texture and play of color is really something and I find myself wishing I could take Annie Leibovitz' MASTER CLASS on photography. There's so much I don't know technically, but I sold my SLR camera when I left L.A. and now I just snap pix with my camera phone.

I love taking pictures with my camera phone. An Instagram account is in my near future, mainly because I love looking at other people's photos too. (And yes, I'm on Pinterest, where one of my boards is called REFLECTIONS.)

A review of A Darker Shade of Magic by Victoria Schwab

In Victoria Schwab's novel, a pickpocket and a mage must join forces to save the interconnected worlds in which they live. 

A lot of work has gone into building the world of this book, a flat-out fantasy adventure with several very engaging characters and enough treachery and magic to fuel a season of GAME OF THRONES. 

This is a book that’s suffused with magic—blood magic, elemental magic, you name it. The magic builds from the small to the epic, and the magic battles are very satisfying. (Fans of this kind of material may see some parallels to Katherine Kurtz’ fantastic DERYNI CHRONICLES, which are history-based and use an alternate Wales as their location.)

Even more free books!!

I love the cover of this paranormal boxed set. Like the tagline says, this is not your normal paranormal cover with its gray/blue/violet color palette. Get it free here.

The weekend of Free Books!

Like sci fi? Dystopian? Fantasy? Sci Fi and Fantasy Romance?  Then you're in luck. there's a 90-book giveaway going on this weekend over at Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Promotions. Click here and start downloading.

Free!!!Whipping Boy by Katherine Tomlinson

I'm getting ready to release the sequel to my short mystery novel Whipping Boy and thought I might whip up some interest by giving the digital version of the first book away free. You can find it on Amazon here.

Interview with Amelia Mangan

Amelia Mangan is a writer originally from London, currently living in Sydney, Australia. Her writing is featured in many anthologies, including Attic Toys (ed. Jeremy C. Shipp); Blood Type (ed. Robert S. Wilson); Worms, After The Fall, X7 and No Monsters Allowed (ed. Alex Davis); The Bestiarum Vocabulum (ed. Dean M. Drinkel); Carnival of the Damned (ed. Henry Snider); and Mother Goose is Dead (eds. Michele Acker & Kirk Dougal). Her short story, "Blue Highway," won Yen Magazine's first annual short story competition and was featured in its 65th issue. She can be found on Twitter (@AmeliaMangan) and Facebook.

You’re originally from London. What brought you to Sydney and how long have you been there?

My dad went to prison for fraud when I was seven, so my mum and I came over here to stay with my grandmother. I've lived here ever since (in Australia, not with my grandmother), so that makes twenty-six years come August.

You’ve published a number of short stories, was it hard for you to transition to longer work like Release?

Yeah, longer work's tougher, no question. First drafts of short stories usually take me about ten days to complete, which means it's out of my system quicker and I can move on sooner. The thing about longform work is that you really need to be sure you like these characters and this world enough to soldier on with them for months, maybe years at a time, and even if you do like them enough to do that, there's gonna be points where you get thoroughly sick of them and begin to cast longing glances at your notebook full of ideas for other novels. But if the idea is genuinely good - and bad ones will reveal themselves relatively quickly; they're unsustainable and blow over like cardboard - then it's worth pursuing to the end.

Was Release your first novel? How long did it take to write?

It's not the first novel I attempted, but it's the first I ever finished. I'm a little embarrassed to say it took eight years, mainly because I was at university and then did the postgrad thing and, basically, life and physical exhaustion got in the way for a bit. At one point I came dangerously close to just destroying the file and salting the earth behind it, but reason (I won't say sanity) prevailed.

Do you have a “process” for writing? A certain number of pages a day? Or words a day? Do you write on your birthday and holidays? Take weekends off?

I try to do at least five hundred words a day, but if I don't meet that, I don't sweat it (unless I'm on a deadline, of course). My feeling is that, even if you only get one sentence down in a day, you're a sentence ahead of where you were the day before. And I hate that whole "REAL WRITERS WRITE EVERY SINGLE DAY OF THEIR LIVES NO EXCUSES I DON'T CARE IF YOUR WHOLE FAMILY DIED" thing that's become prevalent in writing communities; I see how it can be useful to some who find it difficult to actually sit down and do the work, but too often I see it used as a stick for writers to beat themselves with when they fail to meet that self-imposed standard. And writers don't need any more excuses to hate themselves.

Do you listen to music when you’re writing? What’s most often on your playlist?

Not while I'm writing - I need silence for that - but adjacent to writing, absolutely. Everything I've ever written has a playlist; a few of the ones on Release's (Irma Thomas' "Ruler of My Heart", Wanda Jackson's "Funnel of Love", the folk song "In The Pines", Patsy Cline's "Walking After Midnight") made it into the text. The style and tone of the music on each playlist varies according to the style and tone of, and emotional state I want to evoke with, each individual story, but PJ Harvey seems to show up on all of them eventually - which, seeing as how she's my favorite musician, is not entirely surprising.