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Fictionista, Foodie, Feline-lover

Sunday, February 19, 2012

Drunk on the Moon--werewolf PI Roman Dalton adventures

Last year, Paul D. Brazill, creator of the werewolf PI Roman Dalton, asked a number of writers to participate in a "shared world" project. The idea was that each writer would write a story using his characters, and those "chapters" would be released as ebooks on a monthly basis, then everything would be gathered into one anthology for print and ebook.
The publisher for the project was Trestle Press and you may have heard about what happened next.  If not, you can read the details here. At any rate, Paul pulled the project from Trestle and it has found a new home at Dark Valentine Press.  I'm very pleased about that because I have a story in the mix ("A Fire in the Blood") and being a part of the anthology reunites me with a number of writers who appeared in Dark Valentine Magazine.
It also means that the incredibly talented Joy Sillesen, my co-publisher, has redone the cover through her Indie Author Services.
Drunk on the Moon will be out in spring. Watch for it!

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Feminist Fiction Friday--Quotable Women

I’ve been thinking of women writers and of Virginia Woolf in particular. She of course is the author who famously wrote that women need money and “a room of one’s own” in order to write. And anyone who struggles to balance the demands of a day job against a need to write will say “amen” to that.
But I started wondering what other writers had to say about sexism and found some real gems.  (Who knew Robert Louis Stevenson was a feminist?)
The following quotes are from the Quote Garden, an absolutely fantastic resource for the perfect quote on just about any subject compiled by quotation anthologist Terri Guillemets.
“For it would seem ... that we write, not with the fingers, but with the whole person. The nerve which controls the pen winds itself about every fibre of our being, threads the heart, pierces the liver.” --Virginia Woolf, Orlando:  a Biography 
"I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naïve or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman." --Anaïs Nin
“Why is it that only girls stand on the sides of their feet?  As if they're afraid to plant themselves?”--Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams, 1990
“The little rift between the sexes is astonishingly widened by simply teaching one set of catchwords to the girls and another to the boys.”--Robert Louis Stevenson
“If there’s a book you really want to read but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it!”—Toni Morrison



Coming soon on Feminist Fiction Friday...interview with Jennifer Parsons

Jennifer Parsons is the founding editor of Luna Station Quarterly, a magazine focused on speculative fiction written by up and coming women authors. Coming Friday, March 2.

L.A. Nocturne II is coming!

My new collection of stories from the Misbegotten universe will be available next month and Joy Sillsesen has designed a really "hot" cover for it.  Joy's "Indie Author Services" is about to offer a steal of a deal on indie book covers so if you're looking for something eye-catching and elegant, check out her site herehttp://indieauthorservices.com/blog/.

Monday, February 13, 2012

Tales of the Misbegotten: Customer Service

As I inch toward completion of my novel Misbegotten, I keep fleshing out the paranormal version of Los Angeles where the story takes place. My main character, paracrimes reporter Kira Simkins, does not appear in this story, but she shares the same basic outlook as the protagonist. Neither is especially fond of the vampires who now run their city.


CUSTOMER SERVICE

Even before the recession hit, I was struggling. My part of L.A. there’s a dry cleaners on every corner, all of them bigger than me, all of them offering coupons and discounts and while-u-wait service. You need a gimmick to compete and even with a gimmick, you have to keep the price down. It was my daughter who came up with the idea of targeting the needs of the paranormal newcomers who arrived in droves after the city went bankrupt.
Illustration by Mark Satchwill
She put up big signs that said “Stain removal a specialty” and “Discreet and Professional Service.”
We bought ads on Voogle, the vampire-centric search engine, and offered downloadable coupons and two-for-one deals and deep discounts to bring the customers in. We stayed open late.
Business picked up.
We never had to deal with the vampires direct, of course, they always sent their renfields. Most of them were pleasant enough, and usually a bit embarrassed to be dealing with their employers’ dirty laundry.
I made it easy for them by being matter-of-fact, but there were times when even I was taken aback by how badly stained the clothes were.

Thursday, February 2, 2012

Feminist Fiction Friday--A Celebration of Women Writers

One of the best websites I've seen for celebrating women writers is called A Celebration of Women Writers. Among their many resources are special collections tagged to various themes. Right now the featured Special collection is for pre-1923 Utopias and Science Fiction by women. The online reading guide includes offerings by Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle (1623-1673), African-American writer Pauline Hopkins (1859-1930), and Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935).  Browse their extensive list of authors to meet more writers, many of whom have been forgotten or ignored.

                   ANONYMOUS WAS A WOMAN

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

I am disappointed in Harry Knowles

I have been a fan of Ain't It Cool News since the site first went up. I check it out several times a day. I tend to cringe at the writers' cheerful disregard for grammar, spelling, and boundaries but Harry Knowles is a force of nature, a man who took his love of all things pop culture and turned it into an institution as influential as Comic-Con.
And yet today, when the death of Don Cornelius is being mourned across all media, there's no mention of him anywhere on the site. At least not as of 8:41 PST. Not even an RIP DON CORNELIUS.
There's a link to the upcoming HBO movie about Sarah Palin. There's a news story about yet another attempt to reboot Robocop. There's a quick note about Kevin Bacon signing to do a pilot for Fox. All interesting bits of news and infotainment.
But no mention of Don Cornelius.  Really? I wondered if something had run earlier in the day and I missed it when new stories (a link to a movie called Red Lights, a promo for G.I. Joe:  Retaliation) hit the queue, so I checked.
As it turned out, no.  No mention of Cornelius and his signature sign off, "Wishing you love, peace and soul."  No mention of his place in pop culture. But there is a great photo of Karl Urban in his Judge Dredd costume.
Maybe it's a generational thing. Harry was born in 1971, the same year that Soul Train appeared on the air. Or maybe it's an oversight. There is a lot of news on the site today--a story about a Jackie Brown prequel happening, a preview of Volkswagen's new Super Bowl spot, an interview with Sara Paxton about her new horror movie. So maybe there just wasn't room on the site to mention his passing.
Too bad.
If you ever saw the show, then you know what I mean when I say it was "a stone gas honey."
Don Cornelius has left the building.