Coming at the end of the month--A bite-sized psychological thriller

I've been wanting to play around with the psychological thriller genre for a while and even though I'm working on A Woman Presumed, the idea for this one popped into my head and just wouldn't leave. It seems to me that Love Note is going to be short, probably not more than about 12,000 words, so it's yet another not-novel I've written during NaNoWriMo.
Sigh.
The cover was designed by bukovero of the Book Cover Designer, whose website is here. What I like about this cover--other than the great font--is the electric blue of the background. I found it really striking.

Interview with Christine Pope

Christine Pope is a novelist who defies categorization. She's equally at home writing contemporary romance and science fictionized fairy tales. She writes short stories. She blogs. She keeps up with Kindle boards. She is my hero! This year she's been especially prolific and if I didn't like her so much, I'd hate her. If you like well-plotted, character-heavy fiction with a romantic edge, you owe it to yourself to discover Christine's work, if you don't know it already.

Let's talk about the books.

Your new book, All Fall Down, is the first of your "Tales of the Latter Kingdoms." What are the "Latter Kingdoms" and what is the book about?

The "Latter Kingdoms" are a group of countries spread across one continent in a fantasy world that's more Renaissance than medieval in terms of technology, the arts, politics, fashion, and so forth. Since I plan for the series to be set in a variety of these kingdoms, I wanted the series title to reflect all of them. All Fall Down is mainly set in a kingdom named Seldd, a land that's rather backward compared to many of the other countries on the continent. It's about a young woman named Merys Thranion who has been trained as a physician, and how she's captured as a slave and brought to Seldd, at first to heal a nobleman's injured daughter. But she comes up against a far more difficult situation when the plague appears for the first time in hundreds of years. And behind her surface struggles is her growing affection for Lord Shaine, her master. Physicians in her Order are not supposed to form personal attachments, so poor Merys really has to go through the wringer on multiple levels in the book.

Did you originally intend to write a series? Will each story in the series be stand-alone or will there be "cross-pollination" of plots and characters?  Can you tell us a little bit about the second book in the series, Dragon Rose?

You know, I really didn't think about writing a series. I just started writing several different books set in this world, and then I sort of realized partway through that they were a series, although one connected by milieu and not any overarching quest or storyline. All the books in the series are standalones, although events in some books may be mentioned in passing in others. For example, the next book in the series, Dragon Rose, has a brief comment about the plague that dominates the storyline of All Fall Down. Dragon Rose takes place about five years later in a neighboring kingdom called Farendon. It's a very different book, somewhat inspired by the Beauty and the Beast fairy tale, but with an almost gothic tone.

Your book Blood Will Tell and your novella Breath of Life are both set in the Gaian Consortium world. What do you have planned for other books in that series?

I have two more books planned right now, but I'm sure there will be more than that. The first one is called The Gaia Gambit, and it's another planet-hopping romance/adventure story with an adversaries-to-lovers relationship at the center of it. That one is planned for a spring release, depending on what happens with my other books. The next book after that is called Marooned on Mandala, and it also has a Zhore hero (the same alien race we first meet in Breath of Life), although the heroine is very different. She's a Gaian ambassador who gets flung into a world of hurt when the ship she and the Zhore are on crash-lands on an uninhabited planet. I actually got the idea after a fan commented that she really wanted to see another book with a Zhore hero. Your wish is my command! 

Breath of Life is a lovely sci-fi take on the classic "Beauty and the Beast" fairy tale. Do you have any plans to science fictionize other fairy tales?

See my comments on Dragon Rose. I really don't have any plans to do more science fiction fairy tales, although I am going to do some set in the "Latter Kingdoms" world. I have some ideas jotted down for a Red Riding Hood–inspired book called The Wolf of Harrow Hall.

You've published a couple of books this year. Anything else coming out this year? What's in the queue for next year?

Dragon Rose is slated for release in December. It's finished and has gone through its first edit, and I'll be sending it out to beta readers in October. For 2013 I'm planning on releasing The Gaia Gambit, the next Gaian Consortium book; Desert Hearts, a sequel to my paranormal UFO romance Bad Vibrations and the second book in the Sedona trilogy; Binding Spell, another "Latter Kingdoms" book; and possibly Marooned on Mandala and (I hope) Angel Fire, which will complete the Sedona trilogy. In addition to all that, I'll start getting the rights back to my small press–published books in 2013, so I'll be editing and updating them as needed and then releasing them with new covers.

It's November...Hit the ground running...

Up until last year, I'd never heard of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). Last year, thanks to Facebook in particular and social networking in general, it was everywhere with its challenge to write 50,000 words in just one month. (That's roughly 1666 words a day if you don't have your calculator handy.) I can do 1666 words a day standing on my head. The tricky part is linking them together to get 50,000 words of a novel...

The idea is that you're supposed to start something new on November 1st and then emerge a month later with 50,000 words. Of course, 52,000 words is not quite a novel-length manuscript, but no one seems to quibble abut that.

I've decided to use the NaNoWriMo challenge as a spur to help me finish my novel Misbegotten. It's been sitting in a file on my hard drive for awhile now. I'm afraid if it stays there much longer it will never see the light of day. (Although, since some of its characters are vampires, that might be a good thing.)

There are widgets and applications that can help writers keep track of their word counts. Some of them are here. But I'm going to do it the old fashioned way. My friend novelist Christine Pope tells me to think of a novel being built one chapter, one short story at a time. I'm taking her advice to heart. I already have roughly 25,000 words of Misbegotten written. If all goes well, this time next month, I'll have 75,000 words. And that is a book.

Wish me luck...