Finally Published!

Weee! Earlier this month I FINALLY published Nenfari and Dark Moon Gates! LOL you'd think I'd have blogged about it before now, right?

Dark Moon Gates is the first installment in the Witches' Gates Saga.

Willa, high school Junior and witch-in-training has a problem. No, not the ordinary problem of being a lonely, geekish misfit, though sure, she can add that to her list. And not the problem that she's got a crush on a delicious and evasive lord of Faery, and her mom's got the hots for him too. That's the easy stuff.

Teachers at her school are disappearing. The substitutes are faery Sidhe in disguise, and they're trying to uncover the identity of the child who will, according to prophecy, open the Gates to Faery. That kid happens to be Willa's 3-year old brother Arrie.
 
Since opening the Gates means the humans will invade and ravage the realm of Faery, the Sidhe plot to sacrifice Arrie at the dark moon, two weeks away. If they manage to do it, the Gates will close forever and the human world will perish for lack of magic. They haven't discovered Arrie's identity yet. They're narrowing down fast.
 
Then there's that pesky detail in the prophecy: Willa will be struck blind if she manages to stop Arrie's sacrifice.

You can download a free sample of Dark Moon Gates.

At nineteen, assassin-in-training D'hara, is a disappointment to her parents, and especially herself.

Without the mysterious "Change" that should have come at puberty, her father the Khalji cannot make her an advantageous marriage. Nor can she follow in the path of her mother, the High Assassin. Their line has held that title for eight generations. D'hara will break the chain if she does not become fully Assassin caste.

In this city of political intrigue, cunning manipulation and betrayal, the only one D'hara can trust is her beloved born-for slave, Aldrar.

Now, Aldrar's newborn infant is in peril, chosen for ritual sacrifice as the ghostly slave of another princess. D'hara must brave the wrath of the Prophet God's priests and the hazards of the city Below to save him.

A dark Sword & Sorcery fantasy set in a violent world where poison and backstabbing prevail, Nenfari is the first story in the Assassin's Flower Series. You can download Nenfari FREE at Smashwords.

If you like my stories, I hope you'll review them on my Smashwords book pages.

Tathea - What I'm Reading

I adore the Charlotte and Thomas Pitt detective series, and having just begun reading the William Monk mysteries, I was thrilled to find Tathea, the first "fantasy" novel by Anne Perry.

The book begins with Ta-Thea, empress of Shinabar in the middle of coup. Her husband the Isarch and her small child have been murdered, and she escapes her would be murderers and  the palace with the help of a member of the guard.

Arriving in the Lost Lands, the home of her mother's people, she seeks to understand the meaning of life and the loss of her child. She finds an ancient hermit who warns her that her journey will cost her greatly, but she is determined to go.

From there, she sets off on a spirit journey with the Mariner, Ishrafeli. When she returns from these adventures she finds herself in possession of the Book of Truth.

Seeking to bring the word and love of God back to her people, she finds herself constantly challenged by Asmodeus and his minions.

As a non-Christian, I had some challenges with the fact that the book is a thinly-veiled Christian parable. Yet, I feel that in most part, it conveys the underlying message of Christianity in a better and clearer way than the Bible itself (on the occasions I've tried to slog through that book).

The character of Tathea herself is powerful and compelling. She endures hardship after hardship with an indefatigueable courage and grace. Though her falls from and rises to power are a rollercoaster, she clings to her faith even through pain and highest cost.

Fleeing through the desert, near the beginning of the book, she comes upon a woman who is mourning at her husband's grave. "You must have loved him very much," Tathea says. The woman replies that no, she didn't even like him much. She goes on to say:

    "Because he had life," she answered. "He had a chance to be brave and to seek the truth, to honor and defend it. He had time in which he could have faced fear and overcome it; to know himself without deceit, excuse or self-pity; to bear pain without bitterness. He had days in  which to laugh, to see beauty, to fill his heart with gratitude. He could have been kind and brave and generous...Above all, there were people he could have loved and learned to forgive. He is gone, and who is there in the world that is poorer?...Now all his chances are finished. Of course I weep for him!"

This scene sets the tone of story's message, and the trials, triumphs, sacrifices and betrayals that Tathea faces through her dark journey of the soul.

There are some messages in Tathea that I can't agree with, such as when Isadorus leaves his beloved mistress so that he will not break troth with a loveless marriage. With others, I agree, such as Tathea herself refusing to consummate a union with the man she loves because she loves his wife Eleni also, and knows he loves her as well.

Above all, the message is that mankind is given Choice, and has the ability to rise or fall on his own actions.

The writing is so clear as to be almost liquid. Soaring and gliding through light and shadow with an agility that seems near effortless. Much of the first half of the book reminded me of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, though I can't say exactly why.

This is not to say that it's an easy read. The book is long - over 500 pages - and it took me several weeks to read, as at certain points I needed to put it down and give myself a break. It is a book that will make you think, and examine your own beliefs and your own faults, triumphs and failures, whether or not you agree with every precept.

Tathea is a book that you may love or you may hate, or very possibly some of both. It is not a book that you will forget soon.

Sex Wars - What I'm Reading

It's post-Civil War New York. So what's the first thing you'd think of? A woman President, of course!  Based on the first real-life woman to ever run for the Presidency, this book is a rich tapestry of the Who's-Who of late Victorian NY. First we have Victoria Woodhull, a real life woman who starts out as a spiritualist medium attempting to get in the graces of millionaire Cornelius Vanderbilt who is seeking to make contact with his dead son, then becomes the first woman stockbroker and later aspires to the highest post in the land. Through Victoria we meet suffragette Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her friend Susan B. Anthony. as well as orator and statesman Frederick Douglass, Horace Greely and a host of other historical characters.

Contrasting the scheming and glamorous Victoria, we have a second fictional protagonist, Russian Jewish immigrant Freydeh Leibowitz, living in a tenement and who makes her living manufacturing and selling condoms.

Enemy to both, is Anthony Comstock, a moralist crusader who founded the New York Society for the Supression of Vice, and worked to make illegal the delivery or transportation of "obscene, lewd or lascivious" material or anything related to birth control. Playwright George Bernard Shaw worked to make a mockery of him, coining the word "comstockery," as "censorship because of perceived obscenity or immorality," but at the moment, he's thwarting both Victoria's rise to power and Freydah's livelihood.

Victoria Woodhull

Rich in history, intrigue, politics and betrayal, Sex Wars by Marge Piercy is brilliantly researched (Did you know that a married woman couldn't sign legal documents?) brutally honest and seething with sensuality as Freydah and Victoria battle the gender wars of their time.

Go Somewhere Strange - Keep Your Story Going

One of the tricks I like to use when I get blocked on my writing is to throw in an oddball location. The more incongruous to my story so far, the better.

So make a list - where's the last place you'd expect your characters to show up? Here are a few ideas:

The circus
A child's birthday party
A biker bar
A witch's sabbat
A parade
An antique sailing ship
The zoo
A greenhouse
A tour bus
A petting zoo
A nunnery
A dude ranch
The kitchen of a fast food restaraunt
A photography studio

Now if you're writing a story about a biker, then a biker bar won't be an odd place for your character to show up. And if your protagonist is a clown, then the circus or a child's birthday would be a normal location. But a biker in a nunnery? A clown on a sailing ship? That might spark some ideas.

Whole plots have come out of oddball locations. Put a second-rate Las Vegas singer in a nunnery and you have the beginnings of the plot for Sister Act. Throw an alligator egg into a birds nest and you have Flap Your Wings by P.D. Eastman. Have two kids run away to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and we end up with From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg, one of my (many) favorite books as a kid.

Focus on Contrast

Send your steady churchgoing mother of three to a strip joint or bordello to help out a friend in trouble. Put your fashonista in a soup kitchen or a homeless shelter. Throw your urban Sam Spade detective into a small Midwest town.

Why Are They There?

In Willa, I use a chase scene to get my characters through a petting zoo and onto a tour bus. And after that they get in even more trouble. Lets say your character is a fashion model turned amateur detective. What might bring her to any of these locations? Well she could be following a clue, obviously. Or maybe she's doing a fashion shot on a sailing ship when she finds a dead body hanging from the rigging. Perhaps your biker protagonist is conned into taking a friend's kids to the zoo.


Who Do They Meet?

At the zoo, the obvious characters might be:
A zoo keeper
A small child
A stall owner selling anything from touristy trinkets to cotton candy
A tour guide
The mother of a lost child

At a dude ranch:
A cowboy
Any number of patrons, also vacationing there
A horse or cow with a bad attitude
A wild mustang that needs to be saved from the knacker

Pick a character or two who would also be unlikely to interact with your character - or who might be at odds with them - and you have the makings for at least a chapter, if not an entire book.




Do The Research

If things start taking off, be willing to do more research into the location. For instance, learning that your local zoo has a herpetology expert might give you more information on snakes, and even if your character doesn't end up at the zoo, they may get bitten by a snake, or snuggled by a python.

Visit the circus and learn that each clown has their own personal makeup scheme. Or learn something about the rigging on ships and the history of figureheads or the difference between a belaying pin and a fairlead.

Or go into that fast food joint and find out what's in the Special Sauce. Of course you might not ever eat there again, but maybe the guy who works the fryer will tell you a story that leads to something else.

There's always the possibility that learning something new will spark a new plot direction or an entire book.

You Might Never Use It

Be prepared for the possibility that the scene you end up writing may never make it into your book. That's fine, if it gets you writing again and sparks other ideas. Even if the scene doesn't end up in your story, it may give you better insight into your character and how they react in strange situations. After all, this is just an exercise, right?

Or it may spark something that becomes a flashback, a future chapter or an entire new book.

So take your character somewhere weird and have fun.

"I'll Not" Write This Way and Other Regionalisms

Maybe its a southern thing. Two of my favorite authors (I won't name names but they both happen to be from the south) use the contraction "I'll not," and related contractions: s/he'll not, we'll not, they'll not, you'll not, they'd not, s/he'd not, I'd not.

It drives me buggy. One of these writers I've only caught in the act once or twice. The other one, I can count on her doing it at least three to four times in each novel. I read her work anyway, because she's a fabulous writer and I enjoy her style. But every time I come across it, my suspension of disbelief gets zapped to heck and I remember I'm reading a book.

Okay, color me nitpicky. As I understand it, the correct phrase would be "I won't, she won't," etc. Now I'll be the first to admit that I don't have the right to be the grammar police. For me, good writing is about learning the rules well enough, and then learning when to break them. And I start sentences with conjunctions. In fact the grammar checker on my word-processing program hates me. It often accuses me of writing sentence fragments. So I turn it off.

Maybe it is a regional thing. Her characters are from Georgia, and what do I know about how they talk there? So I deal.

Then one day this author brought in a character who was supposed to be from New York. And yes...you guessed it. He said, "I'll not."

At this point I had to take a short break from the book. I'm from New York. I know how we talk. New Yorkers do not talk that way. In fact we only say "do not" when we're ticked off or making a point. Otherwise we say, "don't."

So the moral of the story, if you're writing about a character with a background that's like yours, write the way you speak. If you're writing about someone from a different place, find someone who's from there and ask them to read over the dialogue. Or better yet, have them read it to you, over the phone or on voice chat.

What regionalisms have you noticed in your writing or another writer's and does it make "y'all" crazy. What good uses of regional dialect have you found?