My co-writer Howard takes over!

Greetings. This is Howard Barr, stepping in for Mrs. Sparks while she's working on the copyedits of her upcoming book-- that is, MY upcoming book, Wild About You.  I have been growling in anticipation, waiting for her to finish my book so I can finally meet my mate. She promises me that my heroine will be beautiful and brave and everything I have ever wished for.  Will she be a were-bear like me? Mrs. Sparks is refusing to say, even after I growled at her. Excuse me now, it's time for a coffee break.

Four bear claws later...
Mrs. Sparks has informed me that I can lure more readers to this blog if I offer you a prize.  Would anyone like a fresh deer carcass? Oh, now Mrs. Sparks tells me it should be something easy to mail. And not dripping blood. That woman is so bossy.  So I'm going to give away whatever I like. After I have another coffee break.

Five cinnamon twists later...

I found a tote bag of with some signatures on it-- Suzanne Brockman, Terri Brisbin, Susan Squires, Carla Neggars. They must be authors like Mrs. Sparks. I ate all the donuts out of the bag, so now that it's empty, I'm giving the bag away.  Now Mrs. Sparks is fussing at me that I can't just give away an empty bag. Why doesn't she do her copyedits and leave me alone? All right, I'm going to put two signed books in the bag. Forbidden Nights with a Vampire by Mrs. Sparks and Real Vampires Hate Skinny Jeans by Gerry Bartlett.  Mrs. Sparks was reading that book the other day and laughing. She should have been working on my book.



So, if you want a chance to win the bag and signed books, you'll need to leave a comment. I don't care where you are in the world. Just say something nice, or I'll have to growl at you. Now Mrs. Sparks is telling me that my growl doesn't scare anyone, that I'm just a big honey bear. Humph. Tell that to the fresh deer carcass. Good luck to you all, and thanks for stopping by.  Remember Wild About You is coming out at the end of November. And now it's time for another coffee break. Would you like to join me?

Self-publishing and learning new skills

I’ve been jumping into the self-publishing pond over the past six months. At first it was just short stories that I was giving away for free if I could (Amazon make you set a price and so I’ve set 99c for them). Then I decided to get into it a bit more, to create some deadlines for myself, and my most recent publications was a novella.

‘The Right Connection’ is a 40k fantasy romance that I wrote way back in 2002 and was just LOOKING for the right thing to do with it.

I don’t see self-publishing and traditional publishing as an either/or proposition. I think that the modern author is going to be able to use both to build their audience and career.

Certainly, you need to be careful of things such as competing publications clauses in traditional publishing contracts, but I see self-publishing as being able to help your bricks-and-mortar books by spreading the word and building your name.

A thing I really like about self-publishing is the new skills that you have to develop. For starters, if you’re not going to pay for an editor to polish your work, then you need to learn to edit your own work. I do that, although I use beta readers to help me identify the strengths and weaknesses of the work.

Then there’s the cover art. Again, you can pay for it, or you can find some talented friends willing to do it for you or you can learn to do yourself. I’ve been slowly and surely getting better at the covers and I have to say I’m really proud of the cover I created for ‘The Right Connection’.

You have to learn to typeset work. You have to learn how to write your own blurbs. You have to learn to devise and enact promotional plans.

I strongly believe that challenging yourself to step outside what you are good at and learn something knew is important in terms of your creativity and becoming a better writer.

For all you Supernatural Undergrounders, you can read my new self-publication, fantasy romance novella 'The Right Connection' for free. Go to Smashwords http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/157245, type in the voucher code QL55F and you can get whatever electronic version of the book you want for free.

***

Time after time, the missions to retrieve the stolen children have failed. This time, rules will be broken in a last-ditch attempt.

Taylor Wilson is a respected soldier in the Land Corps with a terrible past that has scarred her. When she’s offered the opportunity to work on the mission to save the children taken by the socolapede, Taylor’s ready to jump at the chance until she finds it means she has to connect with a man.

At first, Roden is everything she feared—brash, overbearing, uncompromising. But as she comes to learn of his honour and strength, Taylor not only loses the fight against connection, she loses her heart too.

Can she form a connection with Roden strong enough to save the children? And if they succeed, do the two of them have a future together?

The Right Connection is available at http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/157245 or http://www.amazon.com/The-Right-Connection-ebook/dp/B007Z5UWVK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1336799853&sr=8-1

Ian Somerhalder Foundation Book Club

Serendipity can take you to the strangest of places . . .

Last year I made a small online contribution to ISF and moments later, to my surprise, I got an email from the CEO. She happened to be online at the same moment and noticed my name come through. Turns out the ISF CEO is a Kim too, Kim Klingler to be exact. We exchanged a flurry of emails that morning (for me) and evening (for her).

After we got over our serendipitous names (and some common interests and astrological placements), she asked me what inspired me to donate. I told her about the series I was writing and my concern with issues of environment, extinction, technology, consciousness, geo-engineering, education . . . She said she'd put them on her TBR list as soon as she got a chance.

We chatted off and on over the months until in January 2012 I got an email that floored me. She was swearing up a storm, (mouth like a sailor that woman) frothing over how much she loved the books! She’d read Path of the Stray in two days and thought it was everything she’d ever wanted to incorporate into an eco-education-enlightened-law-of-attraction-entertainment-sex-magic-epic SF/fantasy series and asked if I would like to collaborate with ISF.

I said Hell YES and the results is the Ian Somerhalder Foundation Book Club featuring Path of the Stray. If you haven't seen the trailer yet, have a peek.

 

I want everyone at Supernatural Underground to feel personally invited to join me, Ian, Kim Klingler and all the ISF Team at Goodreads.com where we are creating a community think tank, talking about characters we love, (or love to hate), discussing the scenes and events that move us, and playing with ideas that support our connection to all life, the environment, mind, body, spirit, personal power, law of attraction, astrology, magic, self-awareness and consciousness.  I'm donating all proceeds from Path of the Stray to the IS Foundation. They are making a difference to the whole world!

Hot vampire AND eco-evangelist, advocate for endangered species and environments! What's not to love?

Kim Falconer is a Supernatural Underground author writing epic science fantasy novels set in the worlds of Earth and Gaela. Kim’s latest series is Quantum Encryption.

You can find out more about her at kimfalconer.com or her blog The 11th House. She posts here on the 16th of every month.

Remember the Small Things

SandyG265, Barbara E, and BN100 you all three won! Please contact us at sablegrace@ymail.com (sablegrace at ymail dot com) with your mailing address and which book you'd like to receive and we'll get them right out to you. Thanks for sharing with us!

Yesterday, we celebrated the second anniversary of my husbands heart bypass surgery. This was the scariest thing to date that we've had to go through. We've lost loved ones. Buried our parents. Watched our kids grow up to have kids of their own (and yes, that's scary LOL) but nothing comes close to that moment when you go in for a routine test and find out that you're facing a life changing operation.

He doesn't remember much of those days few days he spent in the hospital the two days before his surgery. Or the days of and after for that matter. But he does remember my tears, and my fears, and every year, on the anniversary of his operation, he has me tell him the things he can't remember because he doesn't want to forget what we went through because we never want to be in that place again.

It's the same thing in everyday life. It doesn't matter if they're good times or bad ones. Remembering is the key. It is so easy to forget a challenging time that you've gone through. Sometimes, it's for your own sanity that you let the emotions fade away. Other times it's just life stepping in and those events you swore you'd never forget fade away as new ones take its place.

Even the good times fade away as new events fill the spots in your memory banks. It's those small things that make the big events so special and it's so easy to overlook those. So today, read a rejection letter that gave you the determination to push onward toward that first sale. Or the bad review that motivated you to write a better book because you wanted to prove the critic wrong. Take down the photo album and laugh and cry over the memories you've trapped inside. Don't keep them buried anymore, share them--and yes, even the embarrassing ones--with your spouse, kids, or best friend.

I know, it seems strange for someone to tell you to remember the bad or sad or scary times you've lived through, but here's why you should never forget: How can you appreciate where you are now, and the joys you've been given, if you forgot the stumbles, slips and falls that got you there?

With remembering in mind, we're going to pick two lucky winners. Leave a comment for your chance to receive a signed copy of either Ascension or Bedeviled (Winners choice)

May 2012 News

Darkness Becomes Her
Offspring Novel
May 29, 2012

They live ordinary lives, but they are extraordinary. They are the Offspring, children of a mysterious experiment gone awry—and they are in terrible danger.

Power Junkie: Lachlan McLeod spent wild years astrally projecting himself into other times and places. But he doesn't get out much anymore—not after the fatal mistake that cost him a precious loved one.

Pixie Fugitive: Jessie isn't having a bad day. She's having a bad lifetime. After the terrifying act of supernatural violence that destroyed her family, she's been on the run for years. But now her ruthless enemy is drawing closer . . . and her own powers have finally awakened.

They're two people who don't play well with others. But they're going to have to learn to, and quickly. Because they're the only two people in the world who can save each other—and their passion is the only thing that can save the world.


Watch Kim Falconer's book trailer for Path of the Stray.





Congratulations to Helen Lowe and Kim Falconer! They made the Gemmell Award finals and you can vote to support them! Click here to vote for Helen and Kim.

Does It Get Any Easier?

Often new writers ask me if it gets any easier with subsequent books. I'm not always sure whether they're talking about the words or the stories, but my answer to both would be yes. With qualifiers.

I've often heard it said that writing is a muscle, and I've absolutely found that to be true. The more you exercise it (the more you write), the more easily the words come. 'Born writers', those who were writing books as soon as they were old enough to write, might not always see it that way. I suspect that many of them don't even remember what those early attempts at writing stories was like, they were so young at the time. I remember. If you know anything about me at all, you know I used to be an engineer. (The IBM kind, not the train driver.) I remember clearly my first attempt to put story to paper, and it was NOT easy. Slowly, it got easier and easier, the words coming more quickly as my writing muscle strengthened. I'm not sure I'll ever call writing easy. And I'll probably never be a particularly fast writer. But yes, absolutely, the whole process is a thousand times easier for me now than it was when I started. Without qualifiers.

The qualifiers come in when I talk about the stories themselves, or the plotting. In general, the plotting, or story development, is also a thousand times easier than when I started. Considering I knew nothing of story structure back then, that's probably not too hard to imagine. (Physics, thermodynamics, operations research, yes. Anything to do with creative writing, no.) In each of my early books, I learned something new. Usually what not to do next time, or what to look for when I started to have trouble. In general, the books come together pretty easily once I figure everything out these days.

But every now and then, one of the characters (almost always a difficult one) throws a wrench into the works and sends me scrambling. Jag, the hero of Rapture Untamed was one such character. He was the resident bad boy, and not in a nice way. The guy was an ass and, at first, flat out refused to be the hero of his own book. The heroine, Olivia, and I had to drag him to it, kicking and screaming. He had it in him, even if he didn't see it.

Another problem character has been Melisande, the heroine of A Love Untamed, Feral Warriors book 7, which comes out in December. There's nothing quite like the challenge of making the villainess of one story (Hearts Untamed in the Bitten By Cupid anthology) into the heroine of another. And as you can imagine, she wasn't the least bit cooperative about it. It took four tries to get her story right, but in the end, I came to love her. As did Fox/Kieran (her intended mate), although I will say, he saw her far more clearly than I did at first, and fell in love with her while I was still fighting with her.

My latest character challenge? The vampire Arturo Mazza from my Vamp City series. I hesitate to call him the hero just yet because, like Jag, this male has a looong way to go to earn that title. And no real interest in claiming it. Unlike Jag, he has five books to get there (or I have five books to get him there). Arturo is a bit like Damon Salvatore in the Vampire Diaries in that while there's honor and goodness deep inside of him, they don't always show. Arturo is one manipulative, dangerous vamp. It will take Quinn Lennox, the heroine of the series, a long time to fully understand this male. I understand him just fine and can already tell that I'm in for a rough ride. I'm pushing up my sleeves, ready to dive into the writing of book 2. Wish me luck!


P.S. A Blood Seduction (Vamp City book 1) comes out May 29th. RT BookReviews calls it: “A  wonderfully intriguing and chilling launch!” Check out the book trailer, below.

Titles and such...

Happy Wednesday everyone!  I'm super happy today because not only is the sun shining here in the land of Canuk, BUT I have the entire day to write.  No errands to run, or kids to deal with.  I have leftovers so I don't even have to cook! WIN!

HOWEVER, I need a title.  Badly. And sadly (hey a rhyme!) My title well is pretty damn dry.  So, I thought, maybe you guys can help me out!

In March I had a novella release, WRONG SIDE OF HELL.  Here is the Blurb...

With battle lines drawn and evil forces gathering in the shadows, the League of Guardians is all that stands between chaos and the human realm…
Logan Winters, an elite hellhound shifter, wants to forget his allegiance to the League and the pain he’s suffered because of it. But when he’s ordered to retrieve Kira Dove from purgatory and bring her back to life, he can’t refuse. Not only will her death affect the balance between the realms, she’s also linked to a past he can’t forget.

Kira Dove, a young woman murdered before her time, wanders the gray realm, alone and vulnerable. The one bright spot in her life is the memory of a mysterious protector who saved her once before. As she makes her way through this terrifying place, she can’t help but wonder…will he come for her again?

As Logan races to save her, he knows he faces a nearly impossible task: How can a hellhound survive in the one place he shouldn’t ever be? The wrong side of hell…

NOW I've got to come up with a title for the second novella in the League of Guardians series and um, I'm at a loss.  The second book will continue Logan and Kira's story as they journey toward a safe haven and get to know each other a little better.  There will be action, some sexytimes and danger.

I like the following words:

KINGDOM

SHADOWS

LIGHT

ROAD .....and it should tie into the previous title somehow.....

So, if anyone can come up with a cool title, leave it here in a comment and I'll choose one to submit to my editor.  The words above are ones I like but if you've got something that sounds great, WOOT! The winner will receive their choice of either WRONG SIDE OF HELL or the new novella which shall remain nameless for now, when it releases in October!

Let the games begin and be as creative as you like!