Monday, October 19
Welcome to HERE BE NEWS, where each monday we bring you all the latest from the fantasy romance authors at Here Be Magic:
Wednesday, October 16, WIP-It Wednesday! Read an excerpt from PG Forte's upcoming All Through The Night.
Thursday October 15, Embrace the date! Author Maureen Bonatch give us reasons to celebrate October 15th at HERE BE MAGIC.
PG Forte writes magickal tales of love from yesterday, today, tomorrow. A little steampunk, a little supernatural, a little sci-fi...and a whole lotta heat!By Maureen Bonatch
Welcome to the inaugural post of our new feature, WIP-It Wednesdays where any of the authors of HERE BE MAGIC might drop by to give you a glimpse at one (or more) of our Works-In-Progress.
PG Forte: Here's a brief (unedited) excerpt from All Through The Night-— Ugly Christmas Sweater story featuring characters from my Children of Night series.
“Well,” Drew said after a moment, shaking off his melancholy mood yet again, pushing the memories away more firmly this time. “I don’t know how we got off onto that sorry tangent. Let’s talk of something more pleasant, shall we?”
“All right,” Heather replied agreeably. For the rest of the way home they chatted about entirely mundane matters: holiday decorations in the stores they passed, people they knew in common, the weather, and—apparently most important of all—what sort of present Heather should get Marc for Christmas.
Drew nodded in commiseration, trying hard to quell the small flare of jealousy. “I can see how it would be difficult. What do you get for the vampire who has everything?”
“Exactly. Only it’s not a joke. I know I’m never going to be able to top last year’s gift, but I’d like to at least try and get him something a little bit memorable.”
“What did you get him last year?” Drew asked curiously. Heather smiled in smug satisfaction. “Ancient scrolls. In Latin! He said it was the best gift he ever got.”
“Ah, that's right. I was there when you gave them to him, wasn’t I?”
“Yes, you were.”
“I remember now. That was quite a night.”
He remembered more than just the scrolls themselves. He remembered Heather’s excitement at having found them, the pleasure she’d taken in presenting them to Marc. It was the first time Drew had seen her since Marc had taken her under his wing, so to speak, and he had been amazed by the progress she’d made. She was no longer the bedraggled feral kitten he’d kicked out of his bar. She was delightful, enchanting, sparkling with newfound confidence. Looking back, Drew was pretty sure that was the night he’d first started falling in love with her.
Ironic, really, that those scrolls should illustrate so perfectly exactly why he and Heather could never be together. She thought the scrolls were ancient. He’d been alive long before they’d been penned.
PG Forte writes magickal tales of love from yesterday, today, tomorrow. A little steampunk, a little supernatural, a little sci-fi...and a whole lotta heat!
Monday, October 12
Welcome to HERE BE NEWS, where each monday we bring you all the latest from the fantasy romance authors at Here Be Magic:
New!
MIMSEY
Humorous Fantasy Romance
by Linda Mooney
Word Count: 24.5K
$1.99 e / $6.99 p
Mimsey Goddess lives a simple life, chatting with Nim, her pet sloth, scaring a robber or two, saving the occasional life…you know, normal things for a demi-goddess. For centuries she’s enjoyed this life, scratching the sexual itch when she feels it, moving on when the need arises. But when she meets Silas, he brings up feelings she’s never felt before.
A routine stop at the market for Silas Barnett turns into anything but when he helps stop a robbery, and he’s intrigued by the old lady brave enough to take on the crook. Never having much of a family of his own, he’d always wanted a feisty grandmother like her, and he can’t help but want to spend time with her.
Though as much as he likes her, Silas doesn’t exactly see Mimsey in the same light as she wants him to, so she introduces him to Maude—young, beautiful, yet another lady throwing Silas for a loop, and after one date she has him completely under her spell. Still, she’s not what he’s looking for, and Mimsey feels guilty for forcing it.
When a jealous tattletale sticks her nose where it doesn’t belong, Mimsey must answer to the higher powers. For she’s committed the ultimate crime according to the gods and goddesses—she’d fallen in love with a mortal. And she must pay with his life.
Warning: Contains a lethal cantaloupe, a weekly poop, beer, third time's the charm, a vicious revenge, and a chance at love for two people who never expected to find it.
My name is Alexis Hembree, and I’m a cop. My partner and I are good at our jobs, except we don’t tend to work what others would call a “normal” beat. For some reason we draw evil to us like flies to sugar.
Sometimes there are things in this world we can’t explain or anticipate. But when they cross that line between their existence and ours, when they show up, we have to deal with them as best we can.
Some cops fight criminals. We fight something that never should have existed.
303 Lexington St.
It was a crack house. Except, in this case, drug dealers went in but they didn’t come out. Not alive, anyway, but in body bags. What’s more, if everyone who went inside ended up being shredded to death, who was doing the killing?
Georgie Porgie
The killer targeted women. Young, old, prostitutes, business women, it didn’t matter. One moment they would be walking down the sidewalk in the middle of town, and the next what was left of their bodies would be found in a nearby alleyway. Devoured. That’s why I had to be the next one to walk the streets. To draw out whoever was doing this. To be his next victim.
The Goodbye
He murdered young girls by crucifying them with ice picks. He was slick, elusive, and heading for our city. My partner and I were damned and determined this murderer would get no further. Unfortunately I couldn’t keep my head on the job. Neither could I ignore the weird-ass dreams I was having about this deviate. This case was becoming more personal, more foreboding, and more dangerous with each passing day. And there was no damn way I could avoid what I dreamed would be the final outcome.
~ ~ ~
With the cold weather quickly setting in, Lark is trying to
ensure she has what she needs to make it through another
bone-chilling winter in the cabin in the woods, but something has
decided to pay her a visit. The question is, who? Or better yet,
what?
There is a human invading his sanctuary, and he is
determined to get rid of her. Humans in the past have left of their
own accord, but not without a threat from him. However, this one is
proving difficult. But she’ll go. One way or another, he will make
her.
The thing is demanding that Lark leave, but she has nowhere
to go. No one who cares. So she's determined to stand her
ground.
After all, what does she have to lose, besides her life?
~ ~ ~
The handwritten account of one woman's struggle to survive in a world gone DEAD.
Something has happened to the world, and now the living are gradually becoming the living dead. This is the story of one young woman's struggle to live a life that has no future.
PG Forte writes magickal tales of love from yesterday, today, tomorrow. A little steampunk, a little supernatural, a little sci-fi...and a whole lotta heat!
Last fall my teen werewolf novel Feral came out. I intended to do a book trailer for it, but never managed to make the time/find the money for it. Just for fun, here’s the script:
In a small northern town on the edge of a deep forest
Lives a Pack of werewolves...
SOUND EFFECT: wolves howling
They abide by three simple rules:
1/ Don’t let the townies know your secret
2/ Exile those born to the Pack who can’t shapeshift
3/ Don’t stay in wolf form too long or you’ll go feral. Kill all ferals.
SOUND EFFECT: escalating music, dramatic pause
Chloe is about to break all three.
CLOSE UP: girl's terrified face
SOUND EFFECT: wolves howling, branches breaking
VIDEO: girl running through the woods
CLOSE UP: wolf snarling
I wrote my first book at age 13 and never stopped. I write SF/fantasy and paranormal for both teens and adults. My latest novel is Feral.
During the month of October, you can get all three of these books for just 99c each!
My name is Alexis Hembree, and I’m a cop. My partner and I are good at our jobs, except we don’t tend to work what others would call a “normal” beat. For some reason we draw evil to us like flies to sugar.
Sometimes there are things in this world we can’t explain or anticipate. But when they cross that line between their existence and ours, when they show up, we have to deal with them as best we can.
Some cops fight criminals. We fight something that never should have existed.
303 Lexington St.
It was a crack house. Except, in this case, drug dealers went in but they didn’t come out. Not alive, anyway, but in body bags. What’s more, if everyone who went inside ended up being shredded to death, who was doing the killing?
Georgie Porgie
The killer targeted women. Young, old, prostitutes, business women, it didn’t matter. One moment they would be walking down the sidewalk in the middle of town, and the next what was left of their bodies would be found in a nearby alleyway. Devoured. That’s why I had to be the next one to walk the streets. To draw out whoever was doing this. To be his next victim.
The Goodbye
He murdered young girls by crucifying them with ice picks. He was slick, elusive, and heading for our city. My partner and I were damned and determined this murderer would get no further. Unfortunately I couldn’t keep my head on the job. Neither could I ignore the weird-ass dreams I was having about this deviate. This case was becoming more personal, more foreboding, and more dangerous with each passing day. And there was no damn way I could avoid what I dreamed would be the final outcome.
~ ~ ~
With the cold weather quickly setting in, Lark is trying to
ensure she has what she needs to make it through another
bone-chilling winter in the cabin in the woods, but something has
decided to pay her a visit. The question is, who? Or better yet,
what?
There is a human invading his sanctuary, and he is
determined to get rid of her. Humans in the past have left of their
own accord, but not without a threat from him. However, this one is
proving difficult. But she’ll go. One way or another, he will make
her.
The thing is demanding that Lark leave, but she has nowhere
to go. No one who cares. So she's determined to stand her
ground.
After all, what does she have to lose, besides her life?
~ ~ ~
The handwritten account of one woman's struggle to survive in a world gone DEAD.
Something has happened to the world, and now the living are gradually becoming the living dead. This is the story of one young woman's struggle to live a life that has no future.
I heard it said recently that authors make the worst book reviewers. My immediate reaction was that this couldn't possibly be true. We authors love books. We love reading them, obsessing over them, fangirling over other authors. We discuss them to death...and, occasionally, we even love writing them. Whenever a group of authors get together, the books we've read or the ones we're writing form our main topics of conversation...followed closely, of course, by discussions of food, wine, shoes, and sometimes business.
Who knows better how difficult writing can be? Why wouldn't we be the best, most forgiving, people to review books? Well, I've given the matter a lot of thought, and I think I've figured out why.
I think the problem is that we're too serious about writing. We're too invested--in both the process and the end results--we take it too personally. Also, there's our inner critic. We have to ruthlessly squash the tendency to critique in order to get any words at all down on paper. So I guess it's not that surprising, after all, that the instinct to pick things apart would explode out of the gate when we finally unleash it on someone else's book.
Here's a list, in no particular order, of things that have annoyed me as a reader--things that, not always, but for the most part, I'm reasonably certain wouldn't have bothered me one iota before I started publishing.
1. Continuity problems. This has always bothered me to some extent, although not as much as it does now. I like to think the reason me is that I pay attention, and it bugs me that others (other authors, that is) don't. But I suspect the real reason is that it's an issue is that I obsess over and struggle with so much in my own work. But books where the author seemingly can't recall details from one book to the next (or worse, within a single book) make me furious. We've all changed characters' names, and find-and-replace doesn't always get the job done--mostly, I think, because there's always some part of our brains that continues to think of that character by his or her former name. So I give gratuitous name changes a pass. But things like eye color, age, height, and all those little quirks we lavish on our characters to make them stand out--those shouldn't change. If they do, it's a problem for me. I feel like I shouldn't know your characters better than you do.
2. Location, location, location. I love fictional locations that are based on real locations that I'm familiar with. I love being able to pick out the actual places that inspired the author, as well as seeing where imagination took over. BUT, if you're going to set your story in the real world, in a place I feel a personal connection to, I'm going to hate absolutely everything you write that departs, in any way, from my experience of the place.
Case in point: I spent hours, recently, ranting about a series set in the Oakland Hills; wondering why the characters, on a trip from Tilden Park to the Berkeley Marina would head right toward Albany, when they hit San Pablo, rather than left toward Emeryville. And I felt unreasonably cheated when they ended up not going to the marina after all (even though it shouldn't have been surprising, I guess, since they clearly would have gotten lost, the way they were going!) since I'd volunteered at the Nature Center there for nearly ten years.
3. What's on your menu? In my first series, it often seemed to me that everyone was always eating or drinking or cooking. And I was good with that. I enjoyed testing or inventing recipes that matched my characters' individual tastes. Then I began writing about things like vampires and angels, automatons and demi-god tree-shifters and, over time, food began to disappear from my books. Other than cookies, of course. Apparently all my characters enjoy those.
So, I guess it was only natural that I'd begin to critique dishes (or vintages) that I was reading about. Occasionally, I've tried to recreate the dishes I've read about (that's not new. I still recall, when I first read Pippi Longstocking as a child, pestering my mother for open-faced, flatbread sandwiches like Tommy and Anika ate. Recently, I tried my hand at buckwheat scones--because they sounded amazing when I read about them. FYI: a little buckwheat goes a loooong way. Too much, and you get very dry scones.
More and more often, I find myself complaining when an author (or a character's) tastes differ too much from my own. Which I freely admit is absolutely ridiculous, and I suspect might have more to do with this being 2020 than anything else.
4. Paranormal details. Going back to those aforementioned vampires, I only started writing them because I was so critical of various vampire quirks that my daughter basically challenged me to write my own version if I did didn't like what I was reading. This is one area where I've actually become less critical. Yes, I still have very strong opinions on what the rules should be governing the ways in which vampires, shifters, ghosts, the Fae, etc should behave, but apparently writing my own was exactly the antidote I needed.
5. Careers, hobbies and assorted interests. This takes us into "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" territory. If I've done it, known someone who's done it, researched it for a book, or always wanted to do it, I'm going to be hyper-aware of tiniest discrepancy between what I've experienced, and what you're showing me. It's an obnoxious trait. I annoy myself with it. But there it is.
As I've been compiling this list, it's occured to me that part of the reason I've been so critical lately could have to do with fact that I'm not writing as much as I used (because reasons). It's sort of a: "those who can do, those who can't critique," scenario.
Of course, it could also be because I simply have more time to read now, but I don't think so. I think I just really am much happier, overall, when I'm actively working on my own books. Which is good to know, honestly, because I've 've been so sporadic lately, that I've really started wondering if there was any reason to continue.
Getting my inner critic to chill TF out once in awhile? That's definitely a reason.
PG Forte writes magickal tales of love from yesterday, today, tomorrow. A little steampunk, a little supernatural, a little sci-fi...and a whole lotta heat!
