So Much Magic, So Little Time

Magical systems in various fantasy novels I've read would make for a fascinating academic case study. Some systems involve elements. Some involve wands. Some involve lots of mumbo jumbo. Some involve extensive schooling at places like Hogwarts. Because I'm lazy, though, today I'm just going to talk about my own magical system in the world of Pack and Coven (Carina 2012) and Witch Interrupted (Carina 2014).

In these two romances, the primary supernatural species in my world are witches and wolves. No demons or mages or elves or unicorns or invisible men or what have you -- just witches and wolves. There's something special about the two species, which I don't want to spoil for people who haven't read the books, but it's probably pretty clear that the magic users are the witches.

When a writer develops a magic system, she has to ask herself a lot of questions. What magical skills do the practitioners actually have? How do they get juice for the spells? Are they born with it or is it Maybelline? What about training? Can they write books faster and better with it? Heal the sick? Can they convince their kids to clean their rooms? And, always, what are the downsides and limitations to using magic? Magical systemization is a subject that has been extensively discussed in the publishing world, and rather than recreate the wheel, I'll share a bunch of links from some well known and less well known sources:

http://www.brentweeks.com/extras/writing-advice/2-writing-fantasy-tools-techniques/#magic

http://brandonsanderson.com/sandersons-first-law/

http://www.writing-world.com/sf/martin.shtml

http://hollylisle.com/fantasy-is-not-for-sissies-real-rules-for-real-worlds/

http://www.web-writer.net/fantasy/

http://io9.com/5936277/12-questions-to-ask-yourself-about-the-system-of-magic-in-your-fantasy-novel

http://www.wikihow.com/Create-a-Unique-Magic-System-for-Your-Book

But. I was talking about MY magic system, wasn't I?

After much deliberation (okay, after about twenty minutes), I decided that my characters' magic would be plant based. Their power would come from inside themselves, to varying degrees. To shape the power inside themselves into something magical, my witches funnel their power through these organic components, giving the power shape and purpose.

To research, I bought a bunch of magical herb books, wild plant guides, and things like that. I read up on gardening, prices of spices and herbs, and tea blends. Some of the books listed historically consistent uses for herbs and plants while some had stuff in them that seemed as made up as -- my books! (http://www.amazon.com/Cunninghams-Encyclopedia-Magical-Herbs-ebook/dp/B007SNROEC/)

The material I researched added a great deal of complexity and consistency to my basic magical system. While I didn't restrict myself to the information in the books any more than I restricted myself to real Wiccan witches (nope, my witches are as made up as my magic), the herb books made for interesting reading, and I found myself buying more tea as a result.

My tea stash doesn't have a magical effect on anything but my counterspace, but it's definitely a side effect I have enjoyed.

What's your magic like? What's your favorite fictional magical system? What are some common things you see as well as some unique things you might have seen in your reading?

Jody Wallace
Author, Cat Person, Amigurumist
http://www.jodywallace.com  * http://www.meankitty.com  

Meet the Author - Jody Wallace & Meankitty

 Continuing our series of interviews with the Here Be Magic Authors, today we're talking with Jody Wallace and the famously infamous MeanKitty. Jody's giving away one free book - read thru the conversation to find out how to win!

Tell us a little about yourself:  

 I write paranormal romance as Jody Wallace and steamy romance as Ellie Marvel. The rest of the time I obey the whims of Meankitty. She’s thinking of starting up a review site just so she can badmouth my books. I’m telling you, it’s not an easy life I live.

What prompted you to start writing?

 I got in less trouble when I told my mom all my “lies” were actually “fiction, Mom, jeez.”

What’s your writing process? Where do you write?

 My writing process is to come up with some AWESOME premise that makes it onto the page if I’m lucky, because I usually think that shit up at three a.m. or when I’m driving or at some other inconvenient time. When I work on my books, I write in my shabby maroon recliner, which makes me feel like I’ve been punched in the spine after about 2000 words. That’s when I know I’ve done enough for that day.

Which three books would you take to a desert island and why?

 Everything You Need to Know to Survive on a Desert Island, for obvious reasons; The Complete Works of Some Old Dead White Man From Centuries Ago Who Wrote a Shitload of Books, because I suspect life on a desert island will give me insomnia; and Everything Else You Need to Know to Survive on a Desert Island that Volume 1 Forgot to Mention, because I believe in the power of revision.

 Which five people (real, fictional, historical) would you invite to dinner and why?

 I would invite my sister to dinner, because she can’t cook; I would invite my BFF Cathy P. in Alaska to dinner, because I’ve never actually met her and presumably the dinner invite would inspire her to visit; I would invite Yoda to dinner, because I don’t think he’d eat much and we’d all get a kick out of him saying, “Eat or do not, there is no try” to my 6 year old; I’d invite Spiderman to dinner, because my husband is his biggest fan and it would really make him happy…of course Spidey wouldn’t show up, but we’d know it was because he was out fighting crime, so it’s totally okay; and last but not least, I’d invite Susan B Anthony to dinner on Election Day, because she never got to see women in the United States voting, and we’d have some nice sandwiches while we stood in the long lines at the polls.(VS sez: Wow, can I attend that dinner??? Sounds like FUN...)

What’s your guilty pleasure?

 Vintage clothes. I buy them in thrifts and SAY I’m going to spruce them up for modern wear…but really, what are attics for?

 

How do you celebrate when you finish a novel?

 I refuse to cook or clean! This is different from normal days where I have totally valid EXCUSES not to cook and clean.

What has surprised you about being a published author?

 That I have not been elected Queen of the Literary Universe yet.

Do you do a lot of research for your books?

Yes! No. Wait, sometimes. Maybe. I’d have to look that up.

Have you ever used an incident from real life in one of your books?

 Oh, very much. When I was in West Virginia that one time and met those werewolves, I totally had to use my magical herbal witch powers to keep them from turning on the night of the full moon. I saved their hairy butts! They were all at a concert that night, see, and people with their thousands of camera phones would have blown their cover. I told them they should go to the monster truck rally, but nooooooo, wolves are such One Directioners.

Quickfire:

Favorite TV Show: Hubby says it’s Castle. Since Firefly isn’t on anymore.

Cats or Dogs? CATS. (VS sez: Right, duh, I shouldn't have even ASKED that one. Hope MeanKitty forgives me!)

Tea or coffee:  coffee

Boxers or Briefs: On my head? Briefs. On my husband? Boxers. On my husband’s head? Well, he refuses to cooperate with that.

Sweet or spicy: Sweecy.

Favorite food: Sweecy stuff.

Favorite time of the year: Fall

Finish this sentence  “I believe in the Magic of….Broadway. No, that’s a lullaby, sorry.”

What are you working on next? The sequel to Pack and Coven.

What one question do you want to ask your Readers today? Who wants a free book? No, really. Go to my website and look at all the stories I have available. First person to email me and mention this interview gets an ebook of their choice.

Where can your Readers find you online? NOT IN THE COMMENT S SECTION OF POLITICAL BLOGS. I’m not allowed. You could check www.jodywallace.com and www.meankitty.com if you want, though.

Buy Links for books:

 Stalking Evan: http://www.jodywallace.com/books/stalkingevan.htm

Pack and Coven:  http://www.jodywallace.com/books/packandcoven.htm

Hackles

There's no sugar-coating it. The hero of Pack and Coven has hackles. He's a wolf shifter, and that's how he's built. So I thought, instead of doing a standard "new release woohoo" post today, I'd list 10 things that raise Harry Smith's hackles.

1) The thought of being anybody's boss but his own. Harry may have an "alpha" gene, but in my imagined world, that doesn't define an individual's character. It's more of a genetic ability. So even though he's alpha, Harry can't stand the thought of having to graduate to management, so to speak. Heck, he can't even boss his cats around. (Although, who can boss cats around??)

2) Well-done steaks. Horrors! That's just not how meat should be eaten. Not that people or wolves should eat it raw -- we're not savages and we don't want tapeworms -- but abusing a nice T-bone with charring should probably be a crime.

3) Cruelty. Harry is a live and let live sort of guy. That doesn't mean he thinks it's all right to be cruel to other people who presumably don't deserve it. In fact, Harry's such a mellow dude that he's friends with most of his ex-girlfriends and has been known to hook them up with their future spouses! And he still gives them discounts at his garage.

4) Handcuffs in bed. On him, anyway. Let's just say there was an incident with a lady alpha shifter in his past which involved handcuffs and a camera and leave it at that.

5) Hooking up with other alpha shifters. In part because of what the lady did with the handcuffs and the camera, and in part because two alpha shifters who get together tend to attract a pack which they then have to manage (see #1), Harry avoids that kind of entanglement.

6) Having to do his own cooking. See #2. He's not that good at it, and food is a pleasure not to be ruined with poor preparation. To quote Harry, "Hell, a man who could cook could probably talk him into a lot of shit too, but men never showed up with pie. Sometimes a six pack, which wasn’t as persuasive."

7) Crappy little econo-cars. Why drive a car that can barely do sixty, down hill, when you can drive a Porshe or a motorcyle or a sensible, full-sized pickup truck? Especially if you need to outrun pack wolves who want to hunt you down and force you to join them.

8) Confrontations. These raise Harry's hackles literally! But Harry also doesn't see the point in expending his energy and time fighting with people when he could be chummy with different people. Of course, his avoidance of conflict makes him a bit unprepared to handle it when the local pack decides they're going to conscript him, but he has made some friends in his life who can help.

9) Conservative werewolves. These are the ones who believe no wolf should be independent from a pack, who believe males should outrank females, who believe humans are inferior instead of just different, who believe democracy is for weaklings, who believe all sorts of things Harry disagrees with. These wolves are not his friends.

10) The woman he loves being in danger. From conservative werewolves. Who are cruel and who want to conscript him. This is the one situation that raises Harry's hackles enough that he's willing to do anything required to save her, just as he knows she has been doing for him.

***

On my blog, there's a contest for a $25 gift card running until February 29, so be sure and stop by and tell me what food YOU would order at a tea room! Harry orders steaks, perfectly cooked steaks, and the tea room owner keeps them in stock just for him.

I'm also on the Carina Press blog on the afternoon of February 22 where my rascally cat, Meankitty, forced me to post her "improved" version of the Pack and Coven cover and blurb.

You can see the blurb and buy links for Pack and Coven at my website if you're interested.

Sincerely,

Jody W.
When is an alpha not an alph-ass?
Pack and Coven: http://www.jodywallace.com

Lazy or Efficient?

I am, at heart, an energy efficient person. Some might call this trait laziness, but if it weren't for people like me, we'd never have wonderful inventions like the cotton gin, the car or the, oh, I dunno, the apple slicer, to free up our valuable time for other tasks. Happier tasks. Writing and reading books, for example. (apple image from Wikipedia)

No longer do those of us who like our apple in lovely, biteable wedges have to spend 4 minutes chopping at it with a sharp knife. We can do it in 30 seconds with an apple slicer and return to the couch where our book awaits. Quit laughing. Those 3.5 minutes might make all the difference in finishing the chapter before the kids get off the bus.

In fact, clever devices like the apple slicer can inspire us to greater heights of efficiency. I just prepared a big pot of beans, something I didn't want to do because I was in the middle of a scene, but hey, we gotta eat. The bean pot called for beans (check), diced tomatoes (can! no salt added!), diced bell pepper (frozen this summer!), seasonings (packet!) and chopped onion. Man, I hate chopping onions. I'm a delicate flower, you guys. My lacrymal glands get so irritated when the onion mist hits me, it's unsafe. I can't see what my fingers and that aforementioned sharp knife are up to through all the tears.

So I looked at my three little onions. And I looked at the apple slicer. And I looked at my three little onions. And I looked at my apple slicer. I think you can do the math here, and then I had time to write this blog post without *any tears*.

Whether my experiment will be a success remains to be seen. The pieces of onion weren't exactly a fine dice. It may mean certain people under the age of 10 yell about how much they hate onions since they can actually SEE the onions in the beans. And it may mean I'm kind of awesome.

Which got me to thinking about my writing. (Arrogant much?) Well, that and the fact I'm supposed to blog about my writing, seeing as Here Be Magic is a writer blog and all. I do this efficiency thing in books, too. I look at an apple slicer -- or, say, an alpha male werewolf -- and I think, "How is this device used? Why is it used this way? Can I use it differently? Will it be efficient? Will I cry? Will I lose sight of the knife? And will the chunks of werewolf that remain be too big for the story?"

Pack and Coven, my February Carina release, has an alpha male werewolf. Who is kind of an onion. He'd rather gnaw off his own foot than be in charge of a pack. That sounds like WORK. And the female protagonist is a lot older than he is and frequently bosses him around. She's an onion that needs to be sliced, too. (Onion image by http://www.sxc.hu/profile/Ayla87)

Again, it remains to be seen if onions chopped with an apple slicer are delicious or if an alpha male werewolf who doesn't want to boss anybody around is popular with readers. The reason the apple slicer is not commonly used on onions might be because it does a crappy job, and the reason alpha male werewolves are not usually protrayed as less than commanding might be because readers don't like them that way. But, as with the onions and the beans and the ten minutes I gained today, I'm willing to take the chance, and I hope readers will too.

You can meet Harry and June here in the first chapter at my site: http://www.jodywallace.com/snips/packandcovenexcerpt1.htm

Jody Wallace
So much cyberspace, so little time!
www.jodywallace.com  / www.meankitty.com

PS The bean soup with apple-chopped onions was not hated.
PPS If you like holiday stories, I have a free holiday short you can find out about at my site and a contemporary holiday romance that just went on sale today, November 29.

Spooky Tails for Halloween

This is my first time blogging with the great group of authors at Here Be Monsters, I mean, Here Be Magic, and it appears we've got a scary, spooky, creepy Halloween theme going the past several posts. Nicole North wanted to know what you're afraid of http://herebemagic.blogspot.com/2011/10/what-are-you-afraid-of.html while Selah March listed a few horror-centric TV shows airing this October: http://herebemagic.blogspot.com/2011/10/tv-for-scare-junkies.html. Veronica Scott talked about acting on stage http://herebemagic.blogspot.com/2011/10/all-worlds-stage.html (which is pretty horrifying to an introvert like me!) and JK Koi is already getting ready for Christmas, which should scare just about anyone: http://herebemagic.blogspot.com/2011/10/antho-for-christmas.html.

(Image credit: Scaredy cat drawn by the daughter of Liz Kreger for an interview we did at my blog.)

I don't partake of many horror movies, and only made it few a couple seasons of Supernatural. Granted, I hear I should have stuck with it in order to witness the glory that was Dr. Sexy, MD, but my favorite episodes were always the funny ones. The ones where the frightening moments were relieved by humor (Jensen Ackles screaming like a little girl in the episode "Yellow Fever" comes to mind) so my blood pressure could have a chance to ebb to a healthier level. Tension and excitement, sure. Chases and fight scenes and heroes or heroines racing to the airport before their true love can fly off forever... Definitely.

But horror?

Thus it came as a bit of a surprise when the initial idea for my February 2012 Carina novel, Pack and Coven, occurred to me. Werewolves and witches -- and some of the werewolves are really bad news. There's chases and fight scenes and people getting hurt. The hero and heroine at one point sure wish they were taking off in an airplane, but the entire story takes place in a rural, mountainous area in West Virginia with no airport easily at hand.

The thing about this book, though, is that amidst all the chaos and tension, I leavened it with plenty of humor. Our hero, aptly named Harry, is a biologically "alpha" male wolf shifter in a world where two alphas are required to keep the bonds of a wolf pack intact. The local pack lost their male alpha, and they really want Harry to step up. Really, really want him to step up, to the point of trickery, coercion and force. Harry would rather chew his own foot off than be in charge of a bunch of wolves. He considers himself an independent and had never planned on joining any pack.

Just when it seems he's not going to have a choice, we meet our heroine, June, a powerful witch who's determined to help Harry escape the life he doesn't want to live. The trick is going to be making sure he doesn't realize witches exist...and keeping her ginormous crush on him to herself at the same time.

So while Pack and Coven has some of the trappings of a horror novel with werewolves, rituals and an ominous, rural setting, it also contains humor, sex and some really great pie.

So what are some of your favorite funny horror movies or not-totally-terrifying tales of ... tails?

Jody Wallace
www.jodywallace.com * www.meankitty.com