Friday, April 25, 2014

Guest Post: Author Annie Cardi

When your mom thinks she's Amelia Earhart, navigating high school, first love, and family secrets is like flying solo without a map.

Driver's ed and a first crush should be what Alex Winchester is stressed out about in high school - and she is. But what's really on her mind is her mother. Why is she dressing in Dad's baggy khaki pants with a silk scarf around her neck? What is she planning when she pores over maps in the middle of the night? When did she stop being Mom and start being Amelia Earhart? Alex tries to keep her budding love life apart from the growing disaster at home as her mother sinks further into her delusions. But there are those nights, when everyone else is asleep, when it's easier to confide in Amelia than it ever was to Mom.


Now, as Amelia's flight plans become more intense, Alex is increasingly worried that Amelia is planning her final flight - the flight from which she never returns. What could possibly be driving Mom's delusions, and how far will they take her?

THE CHANCE YOU WON’T RETURN started when I a line popped into my head: “My mother thinks she’s Amelia Earhart.” I was really intrigued by the idea of a family dealing with this delusion, and what that means for main character Alex in terms of identity.

Throughout the book Alex returns to the question, “If you could be anyone else, who would you be?” To celebrate the release of THE CHANCE YOU WON’T RETURN, I thought it would be fun to answer Alex’s question myself. In no particular order, here are a few people I’d like to spend some time as:

Julia Child: Pretty much one of the coolest people ever. She was in her 40s when she learned how to cook (way later than you’d expect someone tackling a challenge like that) and brought culinary skill and adventure to thousands. I really like her attitude about creating and taking risks and being passionate—even if that means making mistakes sometimes. She also got to live in France and had an awesome marriage with her husband, Paul.

William Shakespeare: Four hundred-ish years after his death, and he’s still one of the most acclaimed and well-known writers in the world. His characters and stories are still relevant (I mean, did you see the recent movie adaptation of MUCH ADO?), and he invented words/phrases we still use today (let’s just say I’m feeling like a “green-eyed monster”).
 
JK Rowling: Obviously. Jo, if you ever want to hang out, I am so there.
 
Fred Rogers: Pretty much the greatest human being ever. He was so kind and thoughtful and changed both children’s television and public television forever. He connected with generations on a deep, beautiful level and understood the value of a good cardigan.
 
As a writer, I appreciate that I get to be in the heads of my characters and get to understand their experiences and pain and joy and anxieties and hopes. But it would be pretty cool to be JK Rowling for a little while, too.
If you could be anyone else (for a little while, at least), who would you be?
 
About the Author:
 
 
Annie Cardi holds an MFA in creative writing from Emerson College and a BA from the University of Virginia. Her short stories have appeared in The Georgetown Review, Vestal Review, Juked, and others. In 2011, PEN New England selected her as a winner of the Susan P. Bloom Children’s Book Discovery Award for the manuscript that would become her debut young adult novel, The Chance You Won’t Return. Annie lives near Boston with her husband and a portrait of a sea captain.
 

 

Thursday, April 24, 2014

Guest Post: Author Esther M. Friesner

Some lies lead to true adventure...

Maeve, princess of Connacht, was born with her fists clenched. And it's her spirit and courage that make Maeve her father's favorite daughter. But once he becomes the High King, powerful men begin to circle—it's easy to love the girl who brings her husband a kingdom.

Yet Maeve is more than a prize to be won, and she's determined to win the right to decide her own fate. In the court's deadly game of intrigue, she uses her wits to keep her father's friends and enemies close—but not too close. When she strikes up an unlikely friendship with the son of a visiting druid, Maeve faces a brutal decision between her loyalty to her family and to her own heart.

Award-winning author Esther Friesner has a remarkable gift for combining exciting myth and richly researched history. This fiery heroine's fight for independence in first-century Ireland is truly worthy of a bard's tale. Hand Deception's Princess to fans of Tamora Pierce, Shannon Hale, and Malinda Lo.



Oh, the Places I Haven’t Been!
I’ve just flown back from Ireland, and boy, is that old joke tired.  (If you don’t know which old joke I mean, See Below *)  It was a business trip.  The heroine of Deception’s Princess (and its sequel, Deception’s Pawn) is the legendary Queen Maeve of Connacht, so I had to check out her home turf in order to write about it.

Except I didn’t do that. 

One of the most Frequent of the FAQs I encounter as an author is “Have you ever been to the places you write about?”  It’s second only to “Where do you get your ideas?”  Whenever someone asks me that question about the Princesses of Myth books, I must say “No.” 

Young Helen of Troy’s exploits in Nobody’s Princess and Nobody’s Prize carry her from Sparta, through greater Greece, to the wild lands bordering the Black Sea and home again.  Nefertiti’s adventures in Sphinx’s Princess and Sphinx’s Queen are set in Egypt.  Have I traveled to Greece or Egypt?  No.   (I have visited Japan, the setting for Himiko’s story in Spirit’s Princess and Spirit’s Chosen. I’d love to return, and I’m pleased beyond belief that I was able to write about such a lovely country, but that still leaves me two-to-one on the side of Haven’t been there, haven’t done that.)

Wait a minute.  How dare I?  Behold, one of the first lessons for aspiring writers, namely: Write about what you know.  How can I know a place if I haven’t been there? Should I add this to my Guilt-of-the-day list?

Again. . .No.  If you’re going to have a happy go at writing, you need to understand that Write about what you know does not mean Write about only those things you have experienced firsthand.   (Wow.  Italics and boldface and underlining?  I must really mean this!)  To quote a great Western philosopher, “Well, d’uh!”  If it weren’t so—if we could only write about our firsthand experiences—a huge number of my fellow fiction-mongers would be in deep, deep trouble.  Or dead.  Or undead.  Or--a fate worse than undeath—they’d be the perpetrators of some very dull books indeed.

If we could only write about our firsthand experiences, a lot of fantasy and science fiction could never see the light.  We’d never be taken along on journeys through Middle Earth, never matriculate at Hogwarts, never have it out with Lord Vader aboard the Death Star, never chill to the knowledge that “Winter is coming.” 

And I’d never be able to write about a single character who’s carrying a Y chromosome.

Here’s another thing to bear in mind:  Even if I had been to Ireland, I still could not say I’d seen Maeve’s Ireland.  The same goes for Helen’s Greece, Nefertiti’s Egypt and Himiko’s Japan. To do that, I’d need more than a plane ticket; I’d need a time machine.  (TSA would not approve.) 

Okay, so how do I visit the places I haven’t been and—due to lack of time-traveling abilities—I could never go anyway?  Here’s the short list:  

1. Books.  That’s a given and--since I love ferreting around in libraries—it’s also a pleasure. Heavily illustrated books are research jackpots, particularly those where the artist looks at relics, ruins, grave-goods and monuments, then uses her imagination to create a picture of what all of these things must have looked like when they were new, in use, and part of my characters’ everyday lives.  Funny thing:  Children’s books are among my favorite resources because they are more picture-enriched tend to be more enriched with pictures.

2. Websites.  Long live the Internet!  Sometimes I feel as if I can find anything about any culture at any point in history at the click of a mouse.  But I always double check what I learn from one website against what several others have to say. On the Internet there are facts and then there are “facts.” 

3.  Tourism resources.  I’m lucky enough to live within commuting distance of New York City, the location of many nations’ tourism offices.  They’ve always provided me with materials about countless aspects of the countries I’ve researched, including some containing priceless information about historical sites.  More pictures!

If I didn’t live close to NYC, I’d look up the tourism office I needed online and send a request for information.  Failing that, I’d ask to a local travel agent to give me a hand.  I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how helpful people can be when you tell them you’re trying to write a book!  And speaking of people. . .

4. People.  Some people have been to the places I haven’t and are eager to share their experiences.  Sometimes their stories go outside of the cities and give me a sense of the land that I would not have been able to get from my other research. (A friend of mine who has been to Ireland tells of how his camera—in perfect working order before and after—refused to take photos at one isolated, prehistoric site.  Apparently something didn’t want its picture taken.  I never got chills like that off the Internet!)

5. Pause for Thought.  This is essential.  This is where I take all of the hard facts and pretty pictures that tell me about Ireland, Greece, Egypt or Japan now and think about how they differed then.  I think about how living in a particular place and culture would affect my heroine.  Most of all, I think about how her society’s values would not be the same as today’s.  Slavery was a fact of life in ancient Egypt, so Nefertiti would not be raised to think of it as wrong.  She’d have to reach that conclusion on her own.  There were no coins in Helen’s Greece.  If she wanted to travel, she’d have to come up with a way to pay for her needs on the road.  Celtic warriors of Maeve’s time decorated the entryways to their houses with the preserved heads of their enemies.  She wouldn’t look at them and say, “Ew!”; she’d be proud to see how many trophies her father had brought home. 

And the most important thing I must think about on my travels to lands and times I’ve never been is this:  Helen and Himiko and Nefertiti and Maeve are not modern girls playing dress-up.  They don’t enjoy the rights we take for granted.  Even though they are princesses, they are still subject to the commands of their fathers and considered less important, less valuable than their brothers.  If they want the freedom to be themselves and make their own choices in life, they have to fight for it. 

I get to go along on their journeys, and I wouldn’t trade these travels for any all-expense-paid real trip in the world.

About the Author:
 
Esther M. Friesner was educated at Vassar College, where she completed B.A's in both Spanish and Drama. She went to on to Yale University; within five years she was awarded an M.A. and Ph.D. in Spanish. She taught Spanish at Yale for a number of years before going on to become a full-time author of fantasy and science fiction. She has published twenty-seven novels so far; her most recent titles include Temping Fate from Penguin-Puffin and Nobody's Princess from Random House.

Her short fiction and poetry have appeared in Asimov's, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Aboriginal SF, Pulphouse Magazine, Amazing, and Fantasy Book, as well as in numerous anthologies. Her story, "Love's Eldritch Ichor," was featured in the 1990 World Fantasy Convention book.

Her first stint as an anthology editor was Alien Pregnant By Elvis, a collection of truly gonzo original tabloid SF for DAW books. Wisely, she undertook this project with the able collaboration of Martin H. Greenberg. Not having learned their lesson, they have also co-edited the Chicks In Chainmail Amazon comedy anthology series for Baen Books, as well as Blood Muse, an anthology of vampire stories for Donald I Fine, Inc.

"Ask Auntie Esther" was her regular etiquette and advice column to the SFlorn in Pulphouse Magazine. Being paid for telling other people how to run their lives sounds like a pretty good deal to her.

Ms. Friesner won the Nebula Award for Best Short Story of 1995 for her work, "Death and the Librarian," and the Nebula for Best Short Story of 1996 for "A Birth Day." (A Birth Day" was also a 1996 Hugo Award finalist.) Her novelette, "Jesus at the Bat" was on the final Nebula ballot in the same year that "Death and the Librarian" won the award. In addition, she has won the Romantic Times award for Best New Fantasy Writer in 1986 and the Skylark Award in 1994. Her short story, "All Vows," took second place in the Asimov's SF Magazine Readers' Poll for 1993 and was a finalist for the Nebula in 1994. Her Star Trek: Deep Space Nine novel, Warchild, made the USA TODAY bestseller list.

She lives in Connecticut with her husband, two children, two rambunctious cats, and a fluctuating population of hamsters.
 
 




































































































 

 

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Burn Out Blog Tour, Author Guest Post & Giveaway!!

A futuristic blend of Beth Revis's Across the Universe and Lenore Appelhans's Level 2, Burn Out will satisfy the growing desire for science fiction with a thrilling story of survival, intrigue, and adventure.

Most people want to save the world; seventeen-year-old Tora Reynolds just wants to get the hell off of it. One of the last survivors in Earth's final years, Tora yearns to escape the wasteland her planet has become after the sun turns "red giant," but discovers her fellow survivors are even deadlier than the hostile environment.

Holed up in an underground shelter, Tora is alone--her brilliant scientist father murdered, her mother and sister burned to death. She dreams of living on a planet with oceans, plants, and animals. Unfortunately, the oceans dried out ages ago, the only plants are giant cacti with deadly spines, and her pet, Trigger, is a gun--one of the bio-energetic weapons her father created for the government before his conscience kicked in.

When family friend, Markus, arrives with mercenaries to take the weapons by force, Tora's fury turns to fear when government ships descend in an attempt to kill them all. She forges an unlikely alliance with Markus and his rag-tag group of raiders, including a smart but quiet soldier named James. Tora must quickly figure out who she can trust, as she must choose between saving herself by giving up the guns or honoring her father's request to save humanity from the most lethal weapons in existence.


Meet JAMES from BURN OUT 

James is a quiet soldier who has orders to seize the bio-energetic weapons created by Tora’s father. Tora has sworn to protect the weapons so they don’t fall into enemy hands and struggles with her conflicting feelings toward James. James is also the medic for the army and Tora becomes more confused when he saves her instead of killing her.  In this scene, James uses his profession to express his feelings for Tora.

“How ‘bout here? Does it hurt when I touch here?” he asked in a professional tone, yet both his hands slid down toward my hips and his lips almost touched mine. I was no doctor but this was definitely not part of any medical exam I’d ever seen. My legs turned to jelly and I trembled. When I sighed, James raised a finger to his lips. Oh yeah, the com system.

Ultimately, Tora learns that James has some complicated reasons for being involved in the weapons hunt and that being attracted to him doesn’t mean she can trust him.

 
About the Author:
 

Kristi Helvig is a Ph.D. clinical psychologist turned sci-fi/fantasy author. She muses about Star Trek, space monkeys, and other assorted topics on her blog and Twitter. Kristi resides in sunny Colorado with her hubby, two kiddos, and behaviorally-challenged dogs.
 
You can also find Kristi on Facebook and Goodreads
 
Grab a copy of BURN OUT on:
 
 
And now for a fabulous giveaway!!  If you want a chance to win your very own copy of BURN OUT by Kristi Helvig just enter with the form below and cross your fingers that your name is announced on Monday, April 28th.  This contest is open to residents in the U.S. and Canada.
 
Good Luck!!
 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Guest Post: Author Toni De Palma

Fighting the Devil brought Cooper and Grace together. But without a little evil to spice things up, the everyday life of a normal teenager is pretty dull. A summer job crewing on a billionaire’s yacht in sunny Italy might be just the ticket to rekindle passion. While the setting is perfect, the winding, sinister back streets of Naples are also the perfect playground for a scorned Lucifer to wreak havoc. And if evil doesn’t rip them apart, the sultry billionaire’s daughter and the sexy First Officer might be what it takes to finally destroy Cooper and Grace’s love forever.

Casting The Devil's Temptation
 
My book, The Devil's Temptation (Book 2 in the Devil series), was released March 14th!
 
I know some screenwriters write with certain actors in mind who they'd like to play the part of the character they're creating.  So for fun, I thought I'd cast the actors for the characters in my latest novel, The Devil's Temptation (Books 2 in the Devil Series).
 
Cooper is a football player.  He plays running back for his high school team.  He's fit without being a muscle head.  With dark hair and crystal blue eyes, he's the kind of guy girls take notice of, but he's pretty unaware or too concerned with keeping his girlfriend Grace happy to really notice.  Playing Cooper is...

 
For Grace, I need a girl with a heart, but has the potential for showing her rebellious side.  Elle Fanning fits the bill for Grace.
 
 
Stefania is an Italian femme fatale.  She is conflicted, sultry and her secrets run deep.  An actress who can play it sexy as well as give a subtle, nuanced performance is necessary.  Dye her hair black and add an Italian accent and Blake Lively is perfect.
 
 
About the Author:
 
 
I grew up in Brooklyn, New York and when I was a kid I loved to wander the streets with my best friend John. We'd disappear for the whole day, returning conveniently when it was time for dinner. During the summer, I'd dance in the spray of the johnny pump (the fire hydrant). Some summers I'd spend in Ischia, the Italian island where my dad was from.

I have always loved to travel and wander. My most valued possession is my passport. I love to write stories that take me and my readers places and of course I love traveling places to do the research for my books (can you say write offs!). I write Middle Grade and YA both contemporary and paranormal romance but I like to read everything and discover new and unusual books.
 

LinkWithin

Related Posts with Thumbnails