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Afraid Of the Dark

Sunday, October 31st, 2010

Last night, the History Channel had a show on called Afraid of the Dark. It was two hours long and I was ready for bed long before it was over, but it had an interesting premise. The first question was is being afraid of the dark something hardwired into the human DNA or is it a learned response? Unfortunately, I didn’t see that question answered.

My personal theory is that both reasons hold some sway. I think the hardwired part comes in because we don’t have the nighttime vision that other animals do. In the daylight, we can see threats coming, but at night? Not until they’re right on top of us. But it’s also learned because that’s when the bad guys come out to play.

The other thing that was hugely interesting to me is that there’s a scale of darkness that goes from 1-9. New York City is a 9 because of all its lights, and according to the show, a ship would have to sail 300 miles away from NYC to reach a 1 on the darkness scale–far enough for the curvature of the earth to block the lights.

According to the show, there is no place left in the continental United States that is a category 1. I’m guessing there must be some up in Alaska, but wow. The other interesting factoid was that city dwellers can see about 1% of the stars that were visible to Galileo with the naked eye. That was another wow moment.

Thanks to NASA for the image. If you’d like to see the full-sized picture, click on it. It’s linked to the Astronomy Picture of the Day.

Anyway, the show went on to list reasons why we’re afraid of the dark. It started with being eaten alive and looked at an area between Tanzania and Kenya which is a level 2 darkness area and what the people who lived there had to do to protect their village from lions. That was seriously OMG stuff. I didn’t realize that lions attacked human villages or that 100 people a year in Africa die from attacks.

I’m afraid I missed the rest of the show because it started so late. I was hoping the History Channel would replay it, but they’re too busy showing Swamp People and stuff like that. Um, what? Dear History Channel, how is Swamp People related to your channel? At least Afraid of the Dark looks at historic reasons why humans fear the dark. Catching alligators just doesn’t seem to fit your charter. But then that’s another blog.

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4 Things To Learn From the Crazy Daffodil

Friday, October 29th, 2010

I live in Minnesota. October is when the weather starts turning and we do the work it takes to get the yard ready for winter. For me that includes cutting down all my flowers and mulching the garden. All my outdoor work is done now, but I have a flower I didn’t cut down.

You see, in my garden there’s a crazy daffodil in bloom. Yes, it’s blooming in Minnesota in October. The temperature this morning was 35 degrees.

The flower has been up for four weeks now. Even if the cold didn’t daunt it, I would have thought time would have taken its toll. It hasn’t, not yet. Every time I look out the window I can see this flower stubbornly clinging to life, a bright spot in a landscape that’s becoming more and more barren every day. And I got to thinking that there’s a lesson to be learned from this daffodil.

Do the unexpected. This flower is remarkable because it decided to bloom in October. If it had bloomed in April or May, it would have been just one more daffodil.

Don’t give up. By persisting in the face of adversity (and MN weather is definitely adverse), the daffodil brought joy to one person. Me. :-) And I relieve that joy every time I look out the window.

March to your own drummer. So what if all the other flowers are resting and waiting for next spring? The daffodil wanted to bloom now, so it did. It didn’t care what the others were doing.

Bend, don’t break. We’ve had some horrific winds Tuesday and Wednesday and it’s still windy today, though 25 mph is much better than 55 mph. There are large tree branches on the ground all over the place, but the daffodil moved with the wind and is still blooming beautifully in the garden.

Of all the things I thought of, I think the most important is to persevere, to hang in there even when the going is tough. It reminds me of something said during The Last Lecture (available for viewing on YouTube as well as iTunes): The brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough.

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Jarved Nine Short Story

Tuesday, October 26th, 2010

The Troll Bridge is available for download on Kindle now! This is a short story that I wrote for The Mammoth Book of Time Travel Romance and it’s a story set largely on Jarved Nine. I had a lot of requests from fans of Ravyn’s Flight and Eternal Nights to make The Troll Bridge available on its own and I’m happy to finally be able to do this! It’s only in Kindle format right now, but I have plans to make it available on other ereaders as well. It just might take me a little while.

Amazon doesn’t have the description posted yet, so let me tell you a little bit about the story.

Troll Maglaya is the hero. He’s a member of Wyatt’s Special Ops team from ETERNAL NIGHTS. He wasn’t introduced by name then, but he stayed in my head and wouldn’t go away. I knew that somehow, some way I had to write his story, so it was hugely excited to get that opportunity. His heroine is Lia Stanton. She’s someone who’s played it safe her entire life, but when she’s sent to cover a test at a particle accelerator as part of her job in corporate communications, she finds herself flung down a wormhole. The next thing she knows, she’s on Jarved Nine forty years in the future. Alex (that would Lt. Col. Alexander “The Big Chill” Sullivan) thinks she’s a coalition spy and assigns Troll to guard her while the rest of the team searches for the coalition transport.

Aside from Alex, Damon also makes a brief (non-speaking) appearance. Sasha is in the book, too. She wasn’t introduced in ETERNAL NIGHTS either, but she’s the ex-wife that Flare was still carrying a torch for in EN. Because it’s a short story, things happen quickly between Lia and Troll and I didn’t get to unfold the suspense plot at all. If I had, it would have been a 100,000 word story and Mammoth Books didn’t want that length. :-)

As I mentioned on Sunday, The Troll Bridge takes place about 7 years after the epilogue of ETERNAL NIGHTS. In those intervening years, Flare, Gravedigger, and Z Man have gotten married. Someday, I hope to write those three men even if I can only do it as short stories because I just love all of Wyatt’s team to death.

Here’s the extremely awesome cover for the story:

The Troll bridge cover

Find The Troll Bridge on Amazon

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Blood Feud Is On Kindle!

Sunday, October 24th, 2010

Last year, I wrote a short story for The Mammoth Book of Vampire Romance 2, called Blood Feud. Until now, it’s only been part of the full collection and I wanted people to be able to buy it on its own if they only wanted to read my story. It took me a little while to find the time to figure it all out, but Blood Feud is now available in Kindle format!

Demons and vampires have always been enemies, but they reached an uneasy truce. A truce now threatened by a demon who is murdering vampires.

Isobel is a troubleshooter for her vampire clan and she’s ordered to work with a demon to find the killer. She never expected her new partner to be Seere, the demon lover she’d abandoned.

The last thing Seere wants is to fall under Iso’s spell a second time. But as they work together to find the murderer, Seere learns that what burns between them is more explosive than any Blood Feud.

If you’ve read my Nocturne Bites story, Demon Kissed, Blood Feud is set in the same world. In DEMON KISSED, when Andras makes reference to the demon prince being in love with a vampire, he’s referring to Isobel and Seere from BLOOD FEUD. There’s a third story in this world coming out in 2011 from Nocturne Bites as well. I think the title is going to be SHADOW’S CARESS, but I have no idea on the release date yet.

Anyway, I’ve been working on this plan to upload Blood Feud on my own for a while. I had this awesome cover made and then procrastinated on the actual conversion for Kindle upload. It was a little tedious to format, but it went much easier than I expected.

Blood Feud cover

I know not everyone reads on a Kindle. I’m going to try to format for the other readers as well, but I can’t promise when I’ll manage to get it done unless I can upload the file in the same format that Amazon took. Somehow I’m guessing it won’t be that easy.

And as I’m typing this, I’m working on getting The Troll Bridge uploaded for Kindle, too. TROLL BRIDGE was part of The Mammoth Book of Time Travel Romance and is set on Jarved Nine. It takes place about seven years after the end of Eternal Nights, Wyatt and Kendall’s story. I know a lot of fans of the Jarved Nine series have been asking for this to be available as a stand alone, so I’m excited to get this out there.

Blood Feud for Kindle

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You Might Be Obnoxious If…

Thursday, October 21st, 2010

This brave new world of social media has sent scads of authors into the wild, all trying to scream loudly enough to garner attention for their books. The unfortunate thing is that too many of these people seem to have no common sense on where the line is between promoting themselves and being obnoxious.

So here are some hints. (With apologies to Jeff Foxworthy.) You might be obnoxious if:

1. You promo yourself so much on Twitter that people who don’t follow you are filtering out your tweets. Bonus points if most/all of your tweets are promotion related.

Yes, it’s true. For the past two months, an author who I shall not name has been tweeting promo after promo after promo. Other authors who I do follow are retweeting these posts. Even with the new-style Twitter Retweet which means I only see a RT once, I still have been inundated. By an author I do not follow! I ended up blocking her on Twitter and filtering out anything with her name on Tweetdeck. I can’t imagine actually following her.

2. Someone accepts your friend request on Facebook and you post your book cover on their wall, complete with review snippets, book summary, and links to your website and blog. Bonus points if you hop over as soon as FB notifies you of the acceptance.

This has happened. More than once. The first time an author does this, I remove the post. The second time they do it, I unfriend them. This is very tacky behavior.

3. You send your newsletter to someone who did not sign up for it. Bonus points for not including an unsubscribe link.

Do I even need to explain why this is wrong? First, if someone wants your newsletter, they know to request it. Secondly, I’m not your target audience. Yes, writers read, but we’re still not your target audience.

4. Promo your blog post on published-author-only loops. Bonus points if you do it every time you blog. Double bonus points if your topic is of no interest to most published authors.

Do I need to say it again? Published authors are not your target audience. Really. I have to believe that after a couple times, few bother to click over anymore, but even if these blog promos are driving traffic to your site, it’s not the traffic you’re looking for. Numbers are less important than having the right kind of numbers. I can guarantee you, though, that there are people muttering about you and not in a positive way.

5. You send event invites on Facebook, MySpace, or some other social networking site a) for book signings (bonus points if they’re 1500 miles away from me). b) For every guest blog you do. c) To tell me that your book is still available. Bonus points if you send private messages with this information.

Just don’t. Facebook has a wonderful feature called LISTS. Sort your friends into lists. Put authors on one list. Do not send them your promo stuff. We did not friend you because we love your books. We friended you because you asked, and because networking is a good thing, we accepted. This doesn’t mean I have any interest in your work. Sorry. If I love you more than any other author, I’ll let you know and then you can add me to the Readers List.

6. Try to refriend me after I’ve unfriended you. Bonus points for resending friend requests over and over.

I only unfriend the obnoxious on Facebook. If you’re no longer a friend, there’s a reason for that. Don’t send another friend request. Definitely don’t repeatedly send friend requests. I’ve blocked two people permanently for this. It’s beyond obnoxious and borders on stalkerish behavior.

There are a lot of other obnoxious things authors do in the name of promotion, but these are the things that have been happening a lot lately. If you’re irritating me, how many other people are you irritating? Think about it.

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Light Bulb!

Tuesday, October 19th, 2010

While I was at work today, I had an idea pop into my head. I love it when this happens. New ideas are always shiny and perfect, not yet tarnished by trying to make them actually work with words or as a story. :-)

Right now, I don’t know if this is part of a book/series I’m aware of–it could be a missing piece for something I already have in mind. I don’t know if this idea might be it’s own separate story–I’ll spend time mulling, turning it over to see if it’s strong enough to support a book. I’ll also see if new characters turn up. At this point, I don’t even know if the idea is something that I’ll end up not using.

At least not using in the foreseeable future. When the idea about Deke came in, I wrote down “Deke Summers PI is an animated cartoon figure. The soul of a man, the real Deke, is trapped inside the cartoon.” Or words to that effect. I had no story for this at all. For ten years, the note sat and then one day Ryne showed up and it turned out Deke was her hero. Even ideas that might appear to go nowhere can turn into something later. At least it can be a piece of something later.

New ideas bring an adrenaline spike for me. Hey, new shiny is always exciting. It pushes everything else aside as I run scenarios, trying to see how (or if) it will work. I’ll turn it around, look at it from different sides. I’ll try to piece it into ideas that are in queue to be written. Sometimes the reason they’re not what I’m working on is that something is missing.

If it turns out to only be a snippet, I’ll be disappointed. But I’ll write it down and hope that some day it will fit into a project. But I’m wishing for more than this. We’ll see.

* * *

The Raven Halloween Hunt is underway! Follow the link for the rules and prizes, but you can probably guess books are involved, right?

There are lots of awesome authors involved and lots of awesome prizes, so be sure to check it out. The contest lasts for the month of October.

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Z-Man

Sunday, October 17th, 2010

Blogging about Flare got me thinking. His story would have been the first in a three-book series, and while I had a good handle on him and Sasha, his heroine, I didn’t have that same grasp on the other two stories. This got me thinking further about how in all the series ideas I’ve had, I know less about each book down the line.

For example, I know Flare and Sasha. I know their history, I know their growth arcs, I know them. The second book would have had Gravedigger (also from Eternal Nights and Nadia. I know some stuff about them, but not enough to write them. I don’t know either of them well and have no idea how either of them needs to change.

Which brings me to the third story. I knew five years ago that the hero was Z-Man (I know he’s mentioned in The Troll Bridge, but I’m sure about EN). I had a very vague sense of him, but nothing strong. I have no clue who his heroine is. At all. Because I was working on his story as part of the overview I put together for proposals, I tried to give him someone, but she changed a couple of times while I was working on it and was never set. None of those women stuck, I’m guessing because they weren’t the right ones.

So as I mentioned, Flare was talking. On Thursday, Z started, too. He’s revealing his background to me. At least a little bit. Five years ago, he told me he was a sniper and that you couldn’t do that job if you didn’t have your head screwed on straight. (Which was about the sum total of what he passed along way back when.) Now he’s telling me he grew up in northern California and that he’s part Hawaiian and part Japanese, as well as having European ancestors.

And that’s what’s kind of funny. Five years ago, I went looking for pictures of my three guys and was never happy with his. Every time I looked at Z’s image, I knew something was wrong, that it was close, but just not quite. It’s cool to know I was right and to know why.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the project I’m supposed to be working on right now. I hate to force Flare and Z back out of my brain, but I’m afraid that’s what I’ll need to do. Too many characters, too many stories, not enough time.

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Flare Revisited

Friday, October 15th, 2010

I had an old character start talking to me out of the blue yesterday. I can guess what brought him back in so strongly–I’ve been thinking a lot about this world recently. Maybe it’s because I’m trying to put Troll’s story (The Troll Bridge) out in e-format, but whatever the reason, Flare is hanging around now.

Flare was a secondary character in Eternal Nights. He’s the hero’s (Wyatt Montgomery) second-in-command, the chief warrant officer of the Spec Ops team. I had a story arc for him, Gravedigger, and Z-Man all worked out after finishing EN, but I never finished the proposal.

To explain how thinking about Troll could bring Flare in, Wyatt’s Spec Ops team has Flare, Gravedigger, Z-Man, Troll and two other members who haven’t told me anything about themselves yet. The guys are good friends and Flare kind of feels like they’re all kid brothers and looks out for them.

When Wyatt was missing, he worried about him something fierce (the whole team did). He worries about Digger being involved with Nadia. Everyone on the team thinks she’s going to hurt him. (Nadia is Digger’s heroine, so no, she won’t, not ultimately.) He worries about Troll getting himself in hot water with all his women. (Troll’s story is written and happens 8 years after EN, so he hasn’t reformed yet in the timeframe Flare is showing me.)

If you think California surfer dude and visualize a blond man with sun-bleached hair, you’ll have a good idea what Flare looks like. Hey, Flare was a surfer dude before he joined the army. His full name is Francisco Cantore, but he picked up his nickname as a teenager and has gone by it rather than his real name since then. (Flare is a surfing term, and if I could remember the definition, I’d share it, but that was five years ago when I was writing Wyatt and Kendall’s story.)

His heroine is his ex-wife, Sasha. Some of the stuff that (I think) got cut on revisions for EN had Wyatt thinking about how Flare is still in love with his ex. Sasha is a civilian psychologist who specializes in helping military members and their families. She’s sent as a contract employee to J9 because the army is concerned about the mental health of the men and women stationed for extended periods of time light years away from Earth. (It’s a kinder, gentler kind of military in my future world. ;-)

I’m torn right now. I really don’t have time to work with Flare, not with other projects I’m either writing or want to write, but on the other hand, I love him. I’ve loved him since I met him in EN. He’s been quiet today, so maybe yesterday was just one of those things. We’ll see.

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Imagine

Wednesday, October 13th, 2010

Having a writer’s imagination is both a blessing and a curse.

The blessing part comes in with the stories. As a kid, my parents dragged me to a lot of boring functions because we had to go as a family. I’d just slip off to some corner and daydream. You see, I’ve always had characters and stories in my head and I’ve always pulled them out whenever I get bored. Instant entertainment.

I still do it. I have “bedtime” stories. That’s what I call the stories I’ll never write, but are an entertaining way to send myself off to sleep. I test scenes in my books while I’m inputting data at work. I used to daydream while I drove, too, but traffic has become so hideous, I can’t do that any longer.

Imagination combined with a lot of hard work and many, many hours has allowed me to share my stories with the world, something I’ve wanted to do since I first started writing when I was 14.

There are drawbacks to having this imagination, though.

Don’t talk medical or injury stuff around me. Please. I can visualize everything no matter how horrible it is. Sometimes I can almost feel it happening to me. I’ve been known to cover my ears with both hands and go lalalala like a grade schooler to block out the conversation. I can’t hear this stuff. Really. I feel stupid, believe me, but it’s better than imagining some horrifying sensations happening to me.

Someone’s late or I don’t see them online when they’re usually there. Instantly my imagination takes flight, picturing all kinds of dire things. Car accident, illness, home invasion–you name it, I can think of it. I’m already a worrier, this makes it worse.

Hypochondria. This is something I fight myself on a lot. Remember that episode of The Brady Bunch when two pages of a medical book stick together and Peter thinks he’s dying? There’s a line, something like: I thought my aches were from playing baseball without a mitt. I don’t even need a medical book. Any ache, even one with a logical explanation, can incite images of dying from some dread disease.

And strange noises? Burglars or the refrigerator is going to explode or there’s an animal in the house. Really, there’s no limit to the options that come to mind. Especially at night.

Creating mountains out of molehills. Yeah, I’m good at this one. Give me bits and pieces of information and I’ll embroider them with my imagination and come up with all kinds of wild things. This is good while writing, not so good when I’m coming up with conspiracy plots or coups and other stuff.

I probably forgot other things I can blame my imagination for, but the bottom line is I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I like having stories whenever I want them and I like the voices in my head. And maybe someday I’ll learn to control the more wild ravings of my mind.

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Kiss of Death

Monday, October 11th, 2010

I’ve been watching the baseball playoffs, but not enjoying it as much as I could because all the teams I’m rooting for have been losing. The Twins? My number one team? Out in three games straight. It’s doubly painful because it’s the hated Yankees, a team that buys its championships instead of building from within and finding their own players. But this is another topic.

So Twins are out.

In the other American League series, I’m rooting for Tampa Bay. My support had them losing the first two games, but fortunately, they’ve overcome my blight and have tied the series at 2-2. I’d like to see them make it back to the World Series and win this time. They’re a team that was built the right way–by developing their own players in the minor league system. I just hope whoever wins this series can take down the Hated Yankees. I seriously don’t want to see those aging mercenaries make the World Series again–but that’s another post. :-)

Things aren’t going any better for me on the National League side. I’m watching the Phillies/Reds as I type. If the Phillies win one more game, the Reds are done. Score is 2-0 Philadelphia right now. It’s a shame because the Reds haven’t been in the post season in about 15 years or something like that. I’d like to see teams that haven’t gotten there in a long time make it.

The Braves are my number 3 team. I have four teams I root for: Twins, Cubs, Braves, Dodgers. They lost the first game to San Francisco, but won the second. Maybe my jinx was over with. Maybe. Or maybe not. While I wasn’t watching, the Braves went ahead in today’s game 2-1. As soon as I put on the TV, the Giants rallied and won 3-2. (You’re welcome, Carolyn.)

I feel like I should offer apologies to the fans of all the teams I’m rooting for. Apparently my support alone is enough to cause defeat.

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