I've said before that the Taming of the Shrew is not my favorite Shakespeare play. And I was not much of a huge fan of the Heath Ledger, Julia Stiles version (10 Things I Hate About You) either. But I started thinking about it and realized that in many ways, the character of Petruchio was an outlier, a template for any number of "alpha-hole" romance novel heroes who are just nasty to the women who eventually come to love them. Sigh. It's all Will's fault!
Here's a Sunday quote from the play.
Sunday, June 26, 2016
Friday, June 24, 2016
A retelling of Swan Lake
I admit this book caught my eye when it came up in the "also boughts" section for Bride of the Midnight King. I'm always interested in fairy tale retellings, and especially interested when writers venture away from the same three or four stories that get told over and over. (Beauty and the Beast, I'm looking at you!)
I've never actually seen Swan Lake performend; probably the closest is watching Black Swan, but the story really does have all the elements. This one goes on the TBR pile.
I've never actually seen Swan Lake performend; probably the closest is watching Black Swan, but the story really does have all the elements. This one goes on the TBR pile.
Thursday, June 23, 2016
Another for the TBR list: Wake of Vultures
I don't usually read reviews when I'm deciding to read a book or not. Reviews are subjective and I know there are lots of books that I've loved that have not sold well. And I was not a big fan of Gone Girl, even though the book has thousands of reviews.
But I was reading a review of a friend's book and curious about the reviewer. This book came up in his "reviewed list" and he was SO enthusiastic about the urban fantasy that I have to check out Wake of Vultures.
But I was reading a review of a friend's book and curious about the reviewer. This book came up in his "reviewed list" and he was SO enthusiastic about the urban fantasy that I have to check out Wake of Vultures.
Labels:
Gone Girl,
Urban Fantasy,
Wake of Vultures
TBR: Flicker
This looks like a fun urban fantasy with fae instead of the usual werewolves and vampires. (Even though I write about vampires, I'm pretty tired of the same old same old.)
Labels:
fae,
Urban Fantasy,
vampires,
werewolves
Freebie Fiction: Spite
My historic, horrific take on "Sleeping Beauty" is free right now. Get your copy of Spite, a longish short story.
Tuesday, June 21, 2016
Guest Post: Patricia Abbott
Novelist Patricia Abbott, whose debut novel Concrete Angel is a nominee for the 2016 Macavity Award for Best First Mystery, discusses some of the thorny issues facing writers of crime fiction.
The Difficult Centerpiece of SHOT IN
DETROIT
SHOT INDETROIT is the story a female photographer desperate to find artistic success.
Through her relationship with a mortician, she comes up with the idea of photographing
young black men who have died in Detroit over a six-month period. I wrote the
character of Violet Hart as ambitious, a loner, a pest in getting what she
wants. An artist in other words. She lives on the outskirts of conventional
society--at least in her mind--reasoning that an artist is given license to
bend societal norms. Or is she? Does Violet exploit the men she photographs or
does she honor them? Is it somewhere in between? These are the issues I
wrestled with in writing SHOT IN DETROIT. Both in creating a character who
thought like this and in making her the book's centerpiece. And was I guilty of
the same transgressions?
I set SHOT
IN DETROIT almost totally within Detroit. It's a city often accused of
exemplifying transgression: the murder capital of the world plunged into
bankruptcy, suffering the lowest rate of high school graduation in the country,
imprisoning the most black males, enduring the most extreme poverty. The art
and literature coming out of Detroit was edgy, bleak, transgressive. How could it not be? To find a Detroit prompting a
different story, I'd have to have set it much earlier. Even in Joyce Carol
Oates' brilliant THEM, set in the fifties and sixties in Detroit, the plunge is
well underway.
Early
readers of SHOT found Violet a difficult sell. An agent gave me this advice:
change her name, make her younger, give her girlfriends, find her a best friend
who isn't a gay Filipino who sells drugs. Make her more appealing to women:
they buy the books. I took some of his advice. But each time I stepped farther
away from the Violet in my head, the story felt off-beam. If the central
premise of the novel was going to work, Violet could not be the sort of woman
who sat on PTA boards or lunched with former sorority sisters.
Labels:
Concrete Angel,
Detroit,
Joyce Carol Oates,
Patricia Abbott,
Shot in Detroit,
Them
Monday, June 20, 2016
Cover Reveal: Deus Ex Magical
My alter-ego Kat Parrish will be releasing a new paranormal romance novelette next month called Deus Ex Magical. It's my first story set in the Pacific Northwest and my first foray into paranormal romance. The cover is by Serena Daphn and you can find a gallery of her covers (she does premade as well as custom covers) here.
I love the play of color and black and white. And that hot pink really pops. I am very pleased with this cover!
I love the play of color and black and white. And that hot pink really pops. I am very pleased with this cover!
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