Where Do Your Favorite Films Take You?

I don’t watch a lot of movies. I’ve got a day job, a night job and an active toddler. Plus I like to read, cook and travel, and every once in awhile I break for sleep. So I’m very selective in what I watch. (Please note that this, as it's often been pointed out to me, is not the same as having good taste.)

Movies are designed to suck you in to a different place, the same as books, the same as any storytelling. Except the price of admission also gets you surrounding darkness and a comfy chair. This is my movie wish list, the roster of places I'd like to go without leaving home, in 2012.

Out Now – Norwegian Wood – This is a Japanese film based on the book by acclaimed novelist Haruki Murakami. I’m a huge Murakami film. His stories are unique, thought-provoking and bewilderingly magical. Or magically bewildering. I’m intrigued to see how this one has been adapted to film.

January – Underworld: Awakening – I will watch Kate Beckinsale in that vinyl/leather suit, as this character, until her husband Len Wiseman stops making these movies. That is all.

January – Haywire – I watch a bit of the MMA, and while Gina Carano isn’t a superstar in the sport, she knows how to fight. Add Steven Soderbergh, a consistently good director, with an amazing cast (including Michael Angarano, whom I adore), and I’m hoping we have a gritty action series with a female lead in the making.

March – The Avengers – Superheroes. Joss Whedon. Need I say more?

May – Brave – This is a Disney/Pixar animated film about Merida (voiced by Kelly Macdonald), the daughter of a Scottish king. She defies an age-old custom, bringing chaos to her lands, and must discover true bravery in order to save her land. It’s your standard hero story, but with a heroine. And she’s accompanied by her triplet brothers, which I assume will be hilarious.

July – The Dark Knight Rises – The darker side of Gotham is fascinating, and this reboot has maintained a good balance of action and character development. And Christian Bale, even when using that throat-rolled-in-gravel Batman voice, is magnetic.

August – Premium Rush – I have a soft spot for Joseph Gordon-Levitt, as well as couriers. While some of his film choices have been questionable, it’ll be interesting to see him in an urban action role in this bike thriller. That's right, a Bicycle Thriller.

What movies took you on a ride in 2011? And what or who are you looking forward to in 2012?

Regan Summers’ electronic novella Don’t Bite the Messenger, starring a vampire courier with a price on her head, debuts on 1.16.12. Order now at: Carina Press Amazon Barnes & Noble

Readers: Are you tired of paranormal romance yet?

Besides being an author, I am also a reader, and like any good reader of romance novels, I often turn to reviewers to help me field my options. You might not realize that two of the biggest review sites – Dear Author and Smart Bitches, Trashy Books – also come together and do a regular podcast, which I must say is always hilarious and probably shouldn’t be listened to while you’re working (or pretending to work). Trust me on this. You will laugh. Out loud. A lot.

Anywho, Sarah and Jane were recently answering letters from readers, and the question was posed, “Do you think we’ve finally reached the saturation point on paranormals, or will it simply undergo some sort of change?” The question was prompted because best-selling author Linda Howard announced on her Facebook page not too long ago that her paranormal “Warrior Rising” has been put on indefinite hold. Linda went on to explain that “the bottom has dropped out of the vampire market, and (the publisher doesn’t) want to risk the book.”

Not too long ago on Twitter, agent and author Mandy Hubbard tweeted, “I've never had a ‘do not send me x’ list on my guidelines, but guys: I can't imagine being able to sell vampires or werewolves now. #pubtip”

I know this topic has been discussed before, but as someone who writes primarily paranormal stories, so far based on werewolves, I find this trend – if true – to be a little unsettling. But as a reader, I find it even more disturbing.

I still love reading paranormals! I love vampires and werewolves and angels and…you name it. In fact, the last book I read was the vampire anthology “A Vampire for Christmas” published by Harlequin, and I loved all of the stories in it.

Both Jane (of Dear Author) and Sarah (of Smart Bitches) agreed they believe that paranormals are still going strong, with the trend leaning toward angels and demons and paranormal mashups these days. Hey, sounds great to me, but seriously, publishers? Don’t get rid of all the vampire and werewolf stories. I do love me a good bloodsucking romance, you know?

But that’s just my opinion. I’d love to know yours. Are you sick to death of paranormals yet, or are you still rubbing your hands together and murmuring, “Keep ‘em coming, guys?”

5 Things Meme

This is a "get to know each other better" meme.

Here we go.

What five things were you doing five years ago?
1. being a photographic model
2. losing my dearest old German Shepherd friend Harry to cancer
3. providing academic research support and full secretarial services for my daughters in their various studies
4. working hard towards publication
5. learning to massage

What are five things on your to-do list for today (in no particular order)?
1. continue researching spaceship propulsion options
2. revise a good chunk of Wild Times Bk2
3. write next scene of my ghost story in space
4. cuddle baby grandson Gabriel
5. cuddle baby grandson Sebastian

What are five snacks you enjoy?
1. smoked and marinated tofu cubes
2. fresh pineapple
3. canned pear halves in their own juice
4. Walkers ready salted crisps
5. Digestive biscuits

What five things would you do if you were a billionaire?
1. buy a fully-crewed luxury bluewater yacht and travel the oceans with my family
2. learn to fly a plane and buy one
3. set up all our kids for life
4. sponsor hundreds of kids in the third world through a charity
5. buy, maintain and staff several hospital ships for poor people in the third world through a charity

What are five of your bad habits?
1. comfort eating when ill or upset
2. overactivity during remissions, often leading to sudden relapses through stupidity
3. fighting against tiredness to continue working on things that excite me (often leading to... etc.)
4. determined optimism
5. confronting bullies head-on

What are five places you've lived?
1. Wallasey
2. Portsmouth
3. Chatham
4. Gibraltar
5. Plymouth

What are five jobs you've had?
1. lifeguard
2. sailor
3. intelligence gatherer
4. investigator
5. writer

How about it? Will you give us your 5 Things list in the comments?

I Heart Novellas

I first started my love affair with novellas while I was pregnant with my second child. I didn’t have time to sink into a novel, but I didn’t want to give up reading. I also didn’t want to stop writing as I'd just discovered how much I loved it. (I’d also reached the conclusion that trying to learn how to craft a story in 80k was going to take me forever). So novellas ticked several boxes.

• Quick romance fix
• Quicker to write=faster learning curve on things like black moments and HEAs
• I could experiment with different genres in both my reading and writing

Since then I’ve read scads of them. Sometimes I was reading to see what a publisher was buying, other times because I was looking for something different to read (I mean who knew contemporary cowboys could be so hot? I’d dismissed them for so long after the historical ones didn’t work for me).

 

Sometimes I just wanted to try a new author. When I buy something that’s only 20k long I know it’s not going to be a big story. I know it’s going to be short and intense and that I’ll be leaving the characters after just an hour or two…but I don’t care. I’m reading for that bite of pleasure.

 

Do you love novellas?

 

 ~~~

Brightwater Blood, 31 January, avilable for preorder now:

Samhain Publishing and Amazon

 

To survive, they’ll have to think outside the circle.

   

Were-lion Lachlan Garvey is closing in on the Brightwater women, the last of a Shamanic line that the Council wants eradicated for their murderous use of magic. One minute he’s in his animal form, examining a dead body in a patch of charred grass. The next, he wakes up human—naked, shot and lying in a circle of his own blood.

 

Dayna Brightwater is sure the man she’s bound with a blood spell is the one who just murdered her twin sister. Yet even if she did have the stomach for revenge killing, she doesn’t have the power. But what to do with him now? If she lets him go, he’ll kill her, too.

 

Trapped in the path of a deadly magical fire, Lachlan has to think fast—and talk faster—to convince the beautiful Shaman he’s innocent. As the roaring flames creep closer, Dayna must choose. Trust Lachlan and use magic to save them both…or flee. And live with the knowledge she caused his death, proving that no Brightwater is capable of love.

 

Warning: Contains a naked hero who’ll do anything to save his life...including saving hers.

42 Questions For Writers

Do you ever find yourself presented with the opportunity to interview authors? Do you ever find yourself unable to come up with any questions that aren't run-of-the-mill, "Did you always want to be a writer?" style questions? Do you ever find yourself drawing a huge blank when it's your turn to blog and so you go through all your saved notes searching desperately for inspiration and run across a really long list of questions for authors?

Perhaps you haven't had any of these experiences, but in the off-chance that you do one day, I thought I would share this list of 42 questions that you may enjoy asking authors or answering yourself should it be your turn to blog and you're drawing a blank for various reasons.

Feel free, in the comments, to answer any of these questions yourself. Everybody pick one!

***

1. What do new acquaintances do when they find out you're an author? How do they usually find out?

2. Do you like booksignings, writers' conferences, and otherwise appearing in public as your author self?

3. How has your career or your writing day changed due to all the changes in the industry right now? Can you see your "job requirements" changing more in the next five or so years?

4. If you weren't a writer, what would you be besides wealthier and possessed of a great deal more free time? Oops, am I making not-writing sound very appealing? Okay, what would you be besides empty and depressed because you weren't telling lies for fun and profit?

5. Is writing your primary outlet for creativity or do you have others you'd like to share?

6. What's one very annoying thing about being an author?

7. What's the most appealing thing about a writing career that keeps you going back for more, time and again?

8. What's the biggest "outpouring" of writing you can remember--marathon writing sessions, etc--and how did you recover from your hyperproductivity? (Note: if you are always hyperproductive, skip this question, because I hate you.)

9. What was the most marked creative or writer's block you can remember having, and how you did you recover from your brain drought?

10. What do your family and friends think about your writing career?

11. Let's say you were going to be devoid of a computer, the internet or any type of word processor for a year, but you would have an ample supply of pens, pencils and paper. Would you keep writing?

12. If you would keep writing, what if you were also going to be devoid of research materials for that year? How would you write around that?

13. Let's say you wouldn't even have paper and... Ok, let's not say that. This is an interview, not a nightmare counselling session. Speaking of which, in your current WIP, what do you think your protagonists would have nightmares about and why?

14. What might your protagonists seek counselling about and why?

15. What author would you like to interview, and what would you ask him or her?

16. What's the strangest thing that has inspired a story idea in you? (The story doesn't have to be published yet...it can be still a story germ.)

17. What's the best or most interesting research you've ever done for your fiction?

18. Where's the most remote-from-you location you've set a story and what did you do to research that?

19. What television programs or movies would you say bear the most resemblance to the type of books you write?

20. What's one of your least favorite parts of writing a new story?

21. What's one of your most favorite parts of revising an existing story?

22. Of all the fictional worlds you've created, where would you most want to visit and why?

23a. Of all the fictional protagonists you've created, who would you most want to go on vacation with and why? 23b. What about if you had a lot of work to do around the house? 23c. And what about if you were flunking the maths?

24. What is your ideal writing environment?

25. What less than ideal writing environment do you have to settle for?

26. How many fistfights have you put in your stories?

27. How many stories have you written in which the world was saved?

28. And what's your current in-story body count?

29. If you were going to write a story set in your hometown, how would you cleverly disguise the people you know so nobody would sue you? Or maybe you shouldn't tell us that part...

30. If you were going to write or already have written "your" version of a fairy tale, what fairy tale would you choose and how would you juggle things around?

31. Weather extremes: where have they shown up in your books and how have you relied on your own experience to share them?

32. How have you used something from your childhood memories to bring something in one of your novels alive?

33. How many times have you managed to work cats into your novels? What about gnomes?

34. Let's say your next book is going to be entirely from the point of view of the protagonists' cat. How do you think your authorial "voice" might change?

35. Would you need more or less money up front if the book was going to be from the point of view of the dog? I mean, it would be a lot shorter that way, with much smaller words, and the butt-sniffing would inject some base humor, but still. There's a higher chance a book by or about a dog would be a literary let-down, so it would be a risk for your reputation. Thoughts?

36. What's on your TBR shelf?

37. What's for dinner?

38. Do you like any household chores at all? Which one do you most revile?

39. Do you like my hat?

40. What kind of hat are you wearing?

41. What kind of tool are you? (I am probably a monkey wrench. For obvious reasons.)

42. What's the meaning of life?

Come on...let's see if we can get all 42 q's answered! By someone other than me.

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

Feeling Fictional

A funny thing happened on the way to writing this post. Originally, I planned on writing an homage to Charles Addams, whose 100th birthday was yesterday. I remember as a child being fascinated by the books of macabre, very "grown-up" cartoons I found on my parents' living room shelves.

 We always had a lot of books, some of them strange, the result of several generations of eclectic tastes, but these were definitely among the most "out of place" objects in an otherwise typical suburban living room. Another was an almost-ten-foot-tall original oil painting of an angel guarding two small children, but that's another story!

As I researched photos and videos to add to this post, I stumbled across this:

This is a house a very young Charles Addams walked by every day, going back and forth to school. It's thought to be one of the houses he used for inspiration when depicting the house his cartoon Addams Family lived in.

I also had a friend whose family lived in a not dissimilar house... the real one, that is, not the cartoon! I always loved that house. And when I wrote my first book and was looking for a suitably atmospheric house, I drew on the experience of visiting there to give my characters a perfect home.

When I sat down to write this post, fairly early in the morning for me, I brought my breakfast with me, to eat at my desk. Which is kind of when it hit me. See, today's breakfast is one I'd had some other characters eat.  In fact, simple as it is, I more or less invented it specifically for those characters. That I was eating it now meant my fictional life was bleeding over into my physical life...kind of the reverse of what Charles Addams did with that house. The more I thought about that, the more I realized how very much I do that.

My characters frequently go to fictional events that are similar (if not identical) to actual ones I've attended. They often live in fictional towns that are conglomerations of real towns I've either lived in or visited. We frequently have similar interests. I have a tattoo that originated with one of them and whenever I update my resume I have to remember that I really can't claim their job experience as my own. That last one is a lot harder than you might think. My daughter and I recently discussed the (extremely unlikely) possibility of opening a real-life bakery based on one I've written about.

I suspect this blurring of the line between fact and fantasy is fairly common among authors. It certainly makes for a more interesting life than all those hours spent behind the keyboard would suggest.  I think readers often have a hard time keeping it straight as well. I've recently had two readers express an interest in having me cook for them. I think they really want my professional chef character, or maybe my baker, but they're not available.

However, if peanut butter and jelly is what they want, I'm their gal. Just as soon as I finish this next scene...

What about you? How much of what you read do you attempt to replicate in your own life? Or, if you're an author, how much of what you live finds its way into your books?

And finally, happy birthday, Charles, from a child who was relieved to learn she was not the only one in the world with a macabre sense of humor.

Find out more about PG Forte, here or here or follow her on twitter @pgforte

Happy New Year the Ancient Egyptian Way!

I hope everyone had a Happy New Year and is now settling back into everyday life, like I’m doing.

Since my book Priestess of the Nile comes out from Carina this month, I started thinking about the New Year in Ancient Egypt. If we were living in the land where my story takes place, we’d actually be celebrating somewhere in July, pegged to the rising waters of the Nile and inundation of the fields to start the planting. Making it hard to do adequate planning, the Nile can begin flooding anywhere within a roughly 80 day time frame.

Egypt was nothing if not organized, with a structure going all the way down from Pharaoh to local authorities, with armies of scribes keeping track of everything in neat lines of hieroglyphics. This eighty day window didn’t work for them. Can’t have Pharaoh on standby waiting for the river to rise!

Lacking instant communications the Egyptians had to have a system that would allow everyone in the country to know the moment the New Year had begun, so all could be in sync with Pharaoh.

The solution they found was grounded in science and mythology, like so many ancient cultures. The star Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky. A quirk of its heliacal rising – the moment when it first becomes briefly visible above the eastern horizon just before sunrise, after a period of time when it had not been visible - makes it a perfect marker to anchor the calculations of the ancient New Year. Each day the star rises further and further in the sky until it disappears again, only to reappear a year later.

Sirius or Sepdet as the Egyptians called it, was a trustworthy predictor of the Nile flood season. The first new moon after Sepdet reappeared in the sky was the first day of the New Year. Even if the Nile hadn't begun to rise, that day was also deemed to be the official start of the flood.

The Egyptians believed the Nile flooded each year as Isis, Queen of the Great Ones (who appears in my novella) wept over the death of her husband Osiris. The bright star was said to be the goddess herself. Not to worry, Osiris rose from the dead with help – some legends credit the hero of my story, Sobek the Crocodile God, with assisting Isis in saving her husband. Osiris was considered the source of all life, including the vegetation that would grow after the Nile flooded with his wife’s tears, spreading rich black mud on the waiting fields.

This post isn’t long enough to go into the intricacies of the Egyptian calendar but there were five days of feasting and observances at the end of each year. The beer flowed freely according to some accounts I’ve read! New Year’s Day was the Opening of the Year and on Day 15 special offerings were made to ensure a good flood. Given the 80 day variation in the start of the flood, this Day 15 observance was pretty sure to fall during the actual rising of the Nile, thus making Pharaoh appear all knowing as he should be.

And their year would be off to a good start, life going smoothly!

What one thing are you hoping to see go differently in your New Year?