Blog - Carmen Fox

September 29, 2014 The Write Path 5 Comments

THE WRITE PATH with Elizabeth Fountain

THe Write Path

Elizabeth Fountain

In my series The Write Path, my guests talk to me about their books. Today I welcome author Elizabeth Fountain, who will be discussing You, Jane with me.

So let me hand over my mic. The next voice you’ll hear will be Elizabeth’s.

1. What is your book about?

You, Jane is about a lot of things: the power of storytelling, the importance of facing your demons, of making conscious choices, and of knowing how to accept love when it’s offered. I think ultimately it’s about how we all have the power to write our own happy endings, if we are fearless enough to use it.

2. What do you think attracts readers to your main characters?

Jane is funny, smart, talented, and deeply flawed. She’s facing the end of her 30’s with questions like “is there anyone out there for me?” and “can I find what I’m supposed to do?” and “will I fulfill my purpose in life?” and “did I feed my cat already?” In other words, she’s all of us. She has a special power – the stories she writes in a trance come true, in ways she can’t control. But we all have special powers that get the best of us at times, don’t we? Jane is at a crossroads in her life: she’ll either take charge of it, or drink herself into oblivion. She’s not completely sure which is the best path, but she’s fully engaged in the dilemma.

3. What message do you hope the reader takes away from your book?

A recent review on Long and Short Reviews called You, Jane a book that makes you think. I loved that, because those are the books I like to read. I love stories that show me something different, puzzling, intriguing, and ultimately, perhaps, unanswerable.

4. What do you think was it about your book that attracted your editor?

When I first submitted the manuscript of You, Jane to my editor for consideration, I truly thought it had a 50/50 shot of becoming a workable story. It was still a bit of a mess, but it held something that kept me from giving up on it. So, I thought “why not?” If she’d said no, it wouldn’t have shocked me. After the “yes” came several rounds of substantial revisions, each version made better by my editor’s honest and thoughtful input. Editorial comments are routine; editorial compliments still thrill me, because if the person who sees all my mistakes still loves the book, that’s saying something. And my editor for You, Jane paid me a terrific compliment: she asked eagerly for my next manuscript.

5. Comparing the ideas you had before writing the book with the finished product, would you change anything if you could travel back in time?

There are some mechanical things I would fix – tightening up some time sequences, for example. But the funny thing is, I didn’t really know what this story was about until it came time to write up the marketing stuff. That’s when the theme of writing your own happy ending came to me, and as I re-read You, Jane, I realized that’s what it was about all along. My fear of time travel would be that if I went back in time “knowing” the theme, I’d somehow muck it up. You know, like those Star Trek episodes when the crew had to be very, very careful not to change even a detail of the past, because it would change the future, but of course just the crew being in the past had already changed it, so they might wink out of existence at any moment. But then, if they didn’t exist, they wouldn’t have gone back to the past and changed it, and… well, you get the idea.

So no, no time travel for me.

~*~
Website: http://lizfountain.wordpress.com
Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/ElizabethFountainAuthor
You, Jane on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/You-Jane-Elizabeth-Fountain-ebook/dp/B00KPLKNKG/
You, Jane from the publisher, BURST! – http://champagnebooks.com/store/index.php?id_product=330&controller=product

Write Path

Bio:
Elizabeth Fountain left a demanding job as a university administrator in Seattle to move to the small town of Ellensburg, Washington, and pursue her dream of writing novels. She started writing in grade school; fortunately, most of her tortured high school poetry and song lyrics are lost to posterity. Her first book, An Alien’s Guide to World Domination, is a tale of people, aliens, and dogs who face the impossible, and do it anyway. You, Jane is her second novel, a tale of magical romance and the power of storytelling, published by Champagne Book Group in June, 2014. Liz takes breaks from writing to teach university courses, spend time with family and friends, and take long walks while leaning into the diabolical Kittitas Valley wind. Liz strives to live according to a line from British singer-songwriter Chris Rea: “Every day, good luck comes in the strangest of ways.”

September 28, 2014 Divide and Conquer, Interests and hobbies, Promotion, Urban Fantasy 3 Comments

BOOK TRAILER ON A BUDGET

You’re just starting out as a writer and don’t have a lot of cash. The little you have, you want to expend on necessities like swag and perhaps one or two ads or blog tours, right? What about book trailers? Probably not in the budget.

Think again.

You may not afford a fancy book trailer, but you can afford a video collage. Which is really just another term for…book trailer. Let me tell you how.

How it started

Okay, so I’m a bit of a gamer. A few years ago I got into creating my own tabletop games. I have now invented five games. My friends love them, and I’ve even sold a few to friends of friends. In addition to a cool concept, I needed artwork to represent my game’s theme. I love learning new things, so I downloaded a few apps onto my iPad.

Touch Draw – A general image program that lets me add text to pictures, manipulate photos and so on.
Cut-out – A program that lets me cut out individual elements from other pictures and stick them onto the background of my choice.
Instablend – One that allows me to blend two image into a superposed image.
Snapseed – And a program that allows me to age, distort, reverse or add effects to pictures.

You don’t have to get these programs. They just happened to be the ones I tried out on my iPad and I got quite good at using them. There are hundreds more out there, not to mention entire suites for your PC.

What about the book trailer?

Patience.

My book Divide and Conquer is due to be released in February 2015, so I haven’t received an official book cover yet. However, I wanted a picture I could show around, a picture that represented what the book was about. Which is why I produced my first photo collage.

I found photos either from my own collection or off the Internet. You can buy stock photos or use any of the thousands of free stock photos available with a few key strokes. Since Divide and Conquer is set in Seattle, I needed a photo of the Space Needle, the most iconic symbol of this great city. For my two heroines, Lea and Nieve, I needed women in the right poses (one crouching, one in the midst of a kick), and two faces I liked. Nieve fights with a hanbo, i.e. a mid-length fighting stick, and Lea has a dagger. Finally, to add a threatening feel, I needed fog, which their enemies use to hide themselves and their prey.

Next, I cut out the elements I need. Using the same app, I assembled the pictures one by one. I stuck Nieve’s face onto Nieve’s fighting pose and gave her a hanbo. I stuck Lea’s face on Lea’s crouching body and gave her a dagger to hold. Next, I cut out my finished Lea and my finished Nieve and stuck them, together with the Space Needle and a plume of black fog onto a white background.

The result was a bit crude, I admit. Not to worry, because I used an app that transforms photos into a sort of pastel watercolor, which really appealed to me.

Finally, I added text in the font I’d already used for my website name banner, and I was done. I nowhad something to show around and guest-blog with. As long as I make sure people understand this is just a collage, it won’t interfere with my book cover once I receive it.

What about this book trailer/video collage I promised?

Actually, we’re closer than you think.

I downloaded a movie app (iMovie). You can make your video from scratch or use one of the templates they have, which is what I did.

If you use a template, all you do is add photos and text to it, then click save. It already comes with its own music. For the pictures, I made up similar ones to the ones I used for the photo collage and details from the photo collage itself. I also made up a title page. A dark alley. A dark alley with text. A dark alley with more text. The Space Needle. The Space Needle with text. And so on. In the end, I simply added these photos in the right order to the template.

Yup. That was it. I’m very pleased with the result. You can see for yourself if you check my margin on the right, or on You Tube. The template didn’t give me enough space to tell my story through text, so I added text to some pictures. The key is to keep the text short, because some pictures are in view only a short time (the template will even tell you for how long). You can add or delete photos and play the video until you achieve the perfect result.

When you’re done, add it to your web page, show it off on your Facebook page, upload it to Youtube, or just watch it by yourself at night, reminding yourself that your book is a reality.

By the way, you can just as well do this on the computer or on an iPod or on you phone. You just need to find the right applications. And by the way, it only takes a few hours of tinkering with your new apps to learn how to use them proficiently. Once you do, you’ll be able to use your new skills until your writing affords you a full team of publicists to do the job for you.

If you have any question regarding the apps I used and how to work them, leave a comment. Or just let me know how you like the result.

September 22, 2014 Books, Writing craft Post a Comment

WORDS OF FEAR

Vocabulary Builder

In fiction writing, finding the right word is not always simple. I own many word collections I whip out now and again, for reference or for inspiration. Today, I share one of those lists with you. This one including words of fear.

Fluttering hearts and clammy skin aside, plenty of verbs, adjectives, and occasionally nouns help build an atmosphere of forboding or outright terror. Play around with them, add your own, but most of all, use them.

Then build your own. Further lists of words I own are alternatives for the various ways we can move from place to place, i.e. synonyms for walk, plus alternatives for pull, push, words that go great with the heart for kick-in-the-teeth viscerals, and so on. Let me know if you have any preferences. I’m happy to share.

www.carmen-fox.com

September 20, 2014 Books, Reviews Post a Comment

BOOK REVIEWS AS LEVERAGE

Book Reviews Influence Authors

Britney Spears

The best books are the ones that grab the reader, and the best readers are the ones that feel engaged.

When something is precious to us, we want to hang on to it, keep it a secret, defend it with life and limb. Not so with books. Great books need to be shared. They drive us to talk about them, analyze them, and perhaps even reference them.

We readers kick back with a neat mojito and wait for the next installment to be released, trusting the author won’t let us down. After all, sequels are expected, but they’d better live up to the promise of our first foray into that new world.

But what if we had a say in how plots develop, what trials our favorite characters must overcome next, and who should date whom?

In genre fiction, we do have a say. Except, we rarely use our power. With millions of books to choose from, we can be fussy. Writers do their best to be visible, but at best they manage to keep up with the crowd, not stand out from it. Only one factor distinguishes a good author from a successful author.

Readers.

Without us, they’d have a snowball’s chance in the Californian sun of getting their work out there. Sure, reviews are meant to help other readers. But the main beneficiary is the author.

Amazon is throwing obstacle after obstacle at new authors, apparently in the name of providing a better and more transparent service to their readers. You need an insanely large number of independent reviews (and only Amazon decides what constitutes independent) to be featured in their “Other readers who bought this also bought this” list. Sometimes they won’t even allow reviews unless the reader bought the book from them. It’s a great marketing model, but hell on an author’s bottom line.

Other companies, like Barnes & Noble, have taken huge losses because Amazon continues to monopolize the book market. Let’s not even mention independent book stores that aren’t so much waving readers into their shops as they’re drowning. Yet book reviews can drive sales, which is what these places need to get out of the water.

Goodreads, which is incidentally owned by Amazon, is a fantastic place for readers to exchange ideas and to talk openly about the books that gripped them. Here, you can find new fodder for your mind through friends and those you trust, simply by checking out their bookshelves and reading their reviews.

Okay. Authors and book sellers need reviews. I have ’em. What do I do next?

As should be apparent by now, an author can only survive in this wilderness if kind readers leave reviews and use word-of-mouth to spread their enthusiasm.

As readers, we should write informative reviews where we can, but even short reviews can help an author get their books to a greater audience. We stuff a lot of work into reviews, consider each phrase. Except, we do not use our words to line our coffers. In turn, let’s demand to be heard.

How?

We can join authors’ Facebook pages, contact them on their websites or email them directly. But messages can get drowned out or might not make it through their websites’ filters. So why not use our reviews to offer ideas or suggestions? Authors, especially debut authors, will read just about every review they can get their hands on.

I’m not implying we tell them how to write their books, but what’s to stop us from adding that we’d love to see more of one character or one plot element in the sequel?

I’m not just a reader, but also a writer, and if my readers have ideas, hell yeah, I wanna hear them. Once I open up my fictional world to someone, we share that world. But to truly share something, you got to be willing to relinquish a measure of control over it.

What’s the harm in giving the readers what they want, so long as it doesn’t compromise my integrity? You want me to explore my characters’ pasts? I can totally do that. You want to see more of Kirk, my chain-smoking gargoyle? It’s a done deal.

What if I have nothing to suggest?

Even without specifically offering advice, reviews influence authors. They encourage them to write more and faster, and tell sellers like Amazon we want these authors to do well.

The number of stars you leave also does a fair bit of communicating. If a book warrants two stars or less, you wouldn’t even finish a book, let alone write a review. Some do, but I’m not sure what they’re hoping to achieve. Are they trying to warn other readers or are they simply trolls, looking to destroy an author? Above that, three, four and five stars leave a lot of scope for impressing on an author and other readers how you felt about the plot and the characters.

So please, please, please. Next time a book pulls you into its world, write a review and post it on Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk (same login details), Amazon.ca, B&N, Waterstone’s, Goodreads, your blog,… You’ll be helping the author, but also helping yourself.

September 18, 2014 The Write Path 6 Comments

THE WRITE PATH with Keith Wayne McCoy

THe Write Path

Keith Wayne McCoy

In my series The Write Path, my guests talk to me about their books. Today I welcome author Keith Wayne McCoy, who will be discussing The Travelers with me.

So let me hand over my mic. The next voice you’ll hear will be Keith’s.

1. What is your book about?

My debut novel “The Travelers” was released by Champagne/BURST in February. It is basically a mainstream novel with a supernatural background. The very beginning, Prelude, describes a planet somewhere in the Pegasus Constellation 5 decades earlier in which a mother with two small children attempt to escape a fallen planet. Despite the obvious technological advantage her people have, residents are starving and finding sustenance for their children via stellar transportation to other worlds. Starving, the three board a ship.

In 2004, on our planet, Guy Turner, a black filmmaker, has an encounter with the now elderly mother and is drawn into a supernatural mystery involving James and Jess Bennett, a World War II GI and his British war bride who encountered the same woman on the luxury liner QUEEN MARY in 1947 but are now divorced. They had left Southampton with only each other but arrive in New York as a family. A hectic attempt is made to bring the old woman and the Bennetts together again one last time. Only 10% of the novel takes place on another planet and 90% takes place on the liner and an ancestral home in southern Illinois.

2. What do you think attracts readers to your main character?

Jess Bennett is an enigma from the beginning. She became a raging alcoholic after the deaths of the children she and her husband were entrusted to raise as their own. Jim moves to California while Jess remains in southern Illinois. I have found that both men and women readers are attracted to the character of Jess. She is a mystery and the veil of secrecy surrounding her evidently interests readers.

3. What message do you hope the reader takes away from your book?

I hope that as an author, I have brought forth the powerful bond of parenting and the language of grief all humans share through this novel. Guy is depressed and teetering dangerously close to a nervous breakdown and to his chagrin finds that he has more in common with Jess than Jim.

4. What do you think was it about your book that made it so easy to attract your editor?

My first editor with Champagne was Monica Brit and she also served on the acquisitions team. She told me the book haunted her for days. If a reader is solely interested in a science fiction tale, they will be disappointed as “The Travelers” is a character study of normal human beings facing supernatural forces. My former college writing mentor told me after reading the MS that if it were a movie, “It would be a David Lynch version of the film “Ordinary People”.

5. Comparing the ideas you had before writing the book with the finished product, would you change anything if you could travel back in time?

If I were able to change aspects of the novel, I would have lengthened the reunion between the old woman and the Bennetts. Also, Guy thanks Jess upon meeting her the first time that he appreciated her flying out for the documentary about QUEEN MARY but later, he realizes she had never flown as she was scared to death. I would have made her reply that she had taken a train in the beginning.

Thanks again, Carmen for the opportunity to visit with your readers. It was a pleasure

Media links:

www.keithwaynemccoy.com
Amazon

September 15, 2014 The Write Path Post a Comment

THE WRITE PATH with Olga Godim

THe Write Path

Olga Godim

In this series, my guests talk to me about their books. Today I welcome author Olga Godim, who will be discussing Eagle En Garde with me.

So let me hand over my mic. The next voice you’ll hear will be Olga’s.

1. What is your book about?

Olga Godim

My recent novel Eagle En Garde is about a young mercenary officer Darin in the imaginary country of Talaria. The plot follows Darin during one tumultuous summer of his life, and all his troubles are connected to the fanatical sect of Cleaners.

For several decades, Darin’s country has been surrounded by a magic-resistant spell. The king and many others wish to break the spell and invite magic back, but the Cleaners resist.
Darin doesn’t participate in the disputes. He is a soldier, not a philosopher. Then he accidentally overhears the Cleaners’ hidden agenda to destroy all magic workers in Talaria, including witches and elves, and his orderly life turns upside down. His sweetheart is a witch, his daughter is a half-elf, and he has many elven friends. He can’t allow the Cleaners’ scheme to succeed, can’t allow innocents to suffer. But what could he do, alone against a horde of zealots? His only choice lies in trickery and deceit to outsmart his enemies. And the anti-magic spell on the border suddenly becomes his only ally.

Originally, this book was conceived as part of the series, book #2 of Darin’s adventure, but book #1 has never materialized. For a long time, I thought about #1 as more of a back story, but now I started thinking that maybe it could become a full-length novel, a prequel. I just have to write it.

I talked to Darin about it, and he agreed. In Eagle En Garde, he is already an officer, a lieutenant of the mercenary company Eagles, commanding a hundred men. He is only twenty four, the youngest lieutenant in his company’s history. I asked him when he was promoted, and he told me his fascinating and poignant story.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I was nineteen when I made lieutenant, but I don’t talk about it often. It’s not a pretty tale. I mutinied. My mutiny saved ninety of my comrades and killed eight of them.
I was still a soldier of the Eagles at the time. Our phalange was under contract to deal with the pirates who harassed coastal villages. The pirates learned about our contract and prepared a trap. First, they ambushed us, and seven of our men, including our lieutenant, were gravely wounded. We left them with a healer in the foothills of the mountains, in a camp, and pursued the pirates into the caves, but that was a trap too. The pirates collapsed the entrance to the caves, so we couldn’t get out.

We wandered the caves for several days and almost lost hope. Ninety of us, hungry, thirsty and terrified. Our supply of oil for the torches was almost gone. Then I found a possible way out. It was blocked by another, older landslide. After we pushed all those rocks out, we could free ourselves. But there was a catch: our camp with the wounded was directly beneath that blockade. I could see it through the gaps.
I told our highest ranking officer, the sub-lieutenant, but he refused to act. He said he couldn’t give the order and condemn our wounded to a certain death. But I knew if we didn’t get out soon, all of us would die in those caves. Or start eating each other. Ninety vs. eight is a clear math, especially for a military leader, but only an officer could give that order. So I said: “If you’re afraid to face the consequences, I refuse to obey you. I’ll assume the command and give the order.” I was already on track for promotion, and our guys trusted me.
He stepped aside and let me command the mission, but it was a mutiny on my part, and it resulted in all the wounded killed…by us, by the avalanche we created when we pushed those rocks out.

We got out and destroyed the pirates, but everyone knew what happened. I felt responsible. Eight people died because of me, seven wounded and the healer. I had to pay the price. I returned home with everyone else and told the Captain. Mutiny is punished severely by any military organization, and I knew what I faced. The Captain ordered me flogged – 40 lashes. It’s the harshest punishment under the Eagles’ Code and it’s almost never used. Many of the men were unhappy about it; they considered me a hero, but I wasn’t one. A hero sacrifices his own life. I sacrificed the wounded. I deserved retribution.

After the punishment, while I still stood in front of all my friends, with my back bloody from the whip, the captain promoted me. He said I had the courage to make the right decision, the decision that should’ve been made by an officer. The only problem was: I didn’t have the rights to make it. So he assigned me those rights retroactively.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I think his story deserves to be told.

2. What do you think attracts readers to your main character?

I don’t know what might attract the readers but I know what I like about Darin. I think of him as an all-around good guy. He is a troubleshooter, smart, courageous, and loyal, plus he is kind to all those less fortunate than he is. I would like to have him on my side if I was ever in big trouble.

Recently, there has been a fad in fiction to make the protagonists flawed. Some are recovering alcoholics or drug users. Others have trust issues or harbor secret vengeance plans. Multiple varieties of ‘noble’ flaws unfold in recent books (never greed or pettiness, have you noticed?), but I don’t side with such writers. I think that all those flaws, especially substance abuse, camouflage a weakness in a character, a metaphorical hole or cracks in the soul.

Darin’s soul doesn’t have holes. It’s beautiful and undamaged. That’s what is called integrity. Some readers might say he is too perfect, but again, I disagree. I’d want him as a leader of my defense force. I’d never want him as a husband. He wouldn’t compromise lightly nor can he be manipulated. He is not an easy man to live with. He is a hero, a champion, not a compliant family guy. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t pair him up with anyone in this novel or the next one. Farther down the road, he might find his match but not yet. I guess he is too busy saving lives to dive into a romantic entanglement.

3. What message do you hope the reader takes away from your book?

This is an interesting question. When I started writing this series of books I didn’t intend to convey any message or preach or anything. I just wanted to tell stories, to entertain the readers with my heroes’ adventures. My novels are all high fantasy, so what kind of a message could there be for modern readers, right? But my characters express my world view. They think a bit like me. I suppose it’s inevitable, if a writer is true to herself. Now, when I look at the novels I have written, some published, some not, and some only in the first draft stage, I see a message coalescing, and it has to do with my disbelief in bureaucracy and my mistrust of people with power. What I say in each novel is: “Don’t accept unconditionally what the authorities, secular or religious, tell you. Think first. Doubt. Ask questions. Make your own decisions.” I guess my skeptical nature shows in my fiction, whether I wished it or not.

4. What do you think was it about your book that made it so easy to attract your editor?

An editor should feel an affinity with the writer’s style and story. It’s a matter of personal taste. I suppose my editor Nikki Andrews from Champagne Books liked what she read. She accepted two of my novels. Almost Adept was published in January 2014, and Eagle En Garde was released in May 2014. Both novels are set in the same world but tell stories of different characters. Working on them with Nikki was educational and a pleasure.

I’ve had a different experience with an editor too, not so positive. Before I signed on with Champagne, I had a contract with another publisher for Almost Adept, but the editor assigned to the story hated my protagonist. She couldn’t even read the manuscript to its conclusion. She sent it back to me, demanding that I change the story and the protagonist. I refused, and my contract was canceled.

Of course I was upset at the time, but now, looking back, I don’t regret the choices I made then. We were not a good fit, that editor and I, which is mandatory for a successful editing job. Moreover, her passionate rejection of my protagonist was actually a good sign. She detested my heroine as if she was alive. My story inspired strong emotions – a cause for celebration for any writer.

I was much luckier with Nikki and Champagne, but the main thing is to write to the best of your abilities, to revise your story several times before sending it to any editor.

5. Comparing the ideas you had before writing the book with the finished product, would you change anything if you could travel back in time?

If I could design this book and the entire series about Darin from scratch, with the knowledge and experience I have now, I would probably try to infuse it with humor. I don’t think I was ready for humor when Darin’s adventures first came to me.
Humor is the hardest thing to achieve in fantasy. There are few examples, the most successful being Terry Pratchett, although in his case it’s more satire than humor. I wasn’t even sure I could write humor until recently.

Olga Godim

This April, I published a collection of short stories in the urban fantasy genre, Squirrel of Magic, where every story has an element of humor. The readers seem to like this book. All the stories in the collection are united by the same protagonists, a young modern witch Darya and her familiar, squirrel Beatrice. Together they kick butts of the bad guys and help friends in trouble. Their escapades include, among others, disarming a bomb, thwarting a bank heist, and finding a stolen fashion show. Of course there is humor in those stories. How could I write about a telepathic squirrel assisting her crime-fighting witch without a giggle or two?

Media links:

Website: http://olgagodim.wordpress.com
GoodReads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6471587.Olga_Godim
BookLikes: http://olgagodim.booklikes.com/
Wattpad: http://www.wattpad.com/user/olga_godim

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

September 13, 2014 Interests and hobbies Post a Comment

COMIC STRIPS WITH ComicTycoon

The Joy of Making Your Own Comic Strips

I’ve been playing around with pictures for a while now. I produce my own art for my tabletop games and for my book collages and videos.

Yesterday I got a new iPad app for making comic strips, Comic TycoonHD. I’ve been drawing comics for years, primarily making fun of my work place and the co
mplicated language we use in our translations. With this app, I’ll have the chance to produce strips that don’t rely on my dubious art skills and jittery handwriting.

Overall, I’m very happy with it. The downside so far has been that the app shuts down at random times, making constant saving a necessity. Redoing panels over and over gets annoying. Still, the results are promising.

In future, I’ll use my own photos. But for now, stock photos will do. For your
amusement, I have posted two of my non-work examples.

Comic strip

September 11, 2014 The Write Path Post a Comment

THE WRITE PATH with Julie Eberhart Painter

THe Write Path

Julie Eberhart Painter

In this series, my guests talk to me about their books. Today I welcome author Julie Eberhart Painter, who will be discussing Kill Fee with me.

So let me hand over my mic. The next voice you’ll hear will be Julie’s.

1. What is your book, Kill Fee, about?

Author interview

The mystery unfolds, starting with feisty bridge players, many older and more brave as they age. They have nothing to lose.

Although it’s a murder mystery, the underlying pulse is “What do people do in a pinch, and how do they handle their ambitions and far-reaching goals?”

Always in the background are the suspects, villainous Dorian and the avaricious relatives with agendas that have nothing to do with bridge.

2. What do you think attracts readers to your main characters?

Ishmael Merlin Dickey is a poet with an overwhelming desire for fame—and a little drinking problem. He wants to be the next Derek Walcott, the Caribbean Pulitzer Prize winner for Omeros, his epic poem. Ishmael has no lid on his desire to make himself famous, and latches on to the action any way he can.

The McNishes, two very old sisters and bridge partners in the game the heroine, Penny, runs, are the busybody gossips. They can make anything worse. When Penny’s uncle dies during the opening scene, they’re the first to tell the police he was murdered. The man was in his eighties.

The comic relief, as if this bunch needed any, is Penny’s Indian Hill Mynah bird, Bilgewater, the foul-mouthed fowl. He spent his formative years in a waterfront bar where he learned the expletives he uses to shock Penny’s visitors, especially Don, her new boyfriend and attorney.

Everybody loves Bilgie; he’s over the top. All my characters are colorful. Women can relate to Penny. “Pretty” Penny is deemed to be “too pretty,” but she’s a smart and determined sleuth.

Although it’s well animated, readers who don’t play bridge might not “get” the specifics of the duplicate game, where the object is to play the hand better than other pairs with your chosen partner.

Kill Fee is not a Tickets to the Devil kind of book, about duplicate tournaments. I doubt anyone would read the book for that information. This story is about a group of conflicted adults who sometimes resort to nefarious behaviors.

When Penny attends an environmental conference of magazine editors to sell her story, we see her away from the bridge table and plunged into a more serious situation when another body drops. The two deaths are linked, but the reader must pay attention at the beginning to figure that out. In my writers’ critique group only one person out of ten immediately picked up on the clue to the motive.

Author interview

3. What message do you hope the reader takes away from your book?

Reviewers like a good time, and the book was well liked. The publisher, Champagne Books, awarded it Best Book for 2011 in April of 2012. My Medium Rare novella was a runner up at Champagne Books in April in the humor category.

The message develops naturally. The old folks think Penny is a tart, but they will come to respect her and race to her aid by the end of the book. One could say part of the message is about fair play and starting over.

4. What do you think was it about your book that convinced your editor to publish it?

In a few words, it’s funny.

For me, I loved this character, Penny. When I wrote the first draft, I sent it up to Atlanta to a very good friend, my former duplicate bridge partner. We met in 1967 during her frisky years. She was beautiful and daring. I thought of her as my Little Iodine (from the old comic strip). As a divorcee, she did all the things that I didn’t have the starch or the freedom to do.

After reading the book, she phoned me here in Florida, where the book takes place in contemporary time.

“Julie, I just love Penny!”
“You’d better,” I responded. “She’s you.”

5. Comparing the ideas you had before writing the book with the finished product, would you change anything if you could travel back in time?

This book would never have taken so long if I had written it today. It was my first mystery. While my husband scuba-dived around St. Lucia, where Derek Walcott lived before becoming a Harvard professor, I sat on the porch at the topmost cabin of the Anse Chastenet and began to write. I must have rewritten the book fifteen times, especially after I developed the sequel, Medium Rare. That book brings with it Penny, Don and Bilgewater, but the other characters from Kill Fee are background as Penny meets new challenges when her friend, the psychic associated with the local hospice where Penny volunteers is stabbed to death with her own knitting needles.

Contact

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/813977.Julie_Eberhart_Painter

https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/6926263-serendipitous-shades

http://twitter.com/julieepainter

https://www.facebook.com/julieeberhart.painter

September 10, 2014 Divide and Conquer, Interests and hobbies 2 Comments

MONTE MOORE MAKES MAGIC

How My Characters Got Their Looks

See the picture? Let me introduce you to Lea and Nieve. They are my girls. Aren’t they stunning?

Let’s turn back the clock to 2013. One day on Kickstarter, I spotted a campaign I couldn’t afford to miss. One of my favorite artists, Monte Moore, was crowdfunding his latest book, Mischief. It’s no secret I’m a little bit geek about a lot of things, but I go 100% fangirl over his art. Crazy fangirl. Not that surprising, since his paintings are truly magnificent. He’s done everything. Art for Star Wars, comic book covers, games, and pin-up art. Yup. I love it all.

One of the pledges involved a commission for a painting of two characters of your choice. At the time, I was neck-deep in writing Divide and Conquer. I was drinking, eating and breathing Lea and Nieve day after day. I knew every nuance of their psyches, from how they felt about politics right down to their particular brands of humor.

But here’s the problem. I’m not a visual person.

Oh, I can pick out and describe gray net curtains, a stained carpet, the scratch marks on a sofa. But my mind is unable to fill in the gaps or to create a three-dimensional space. I’m worse with faces. If anyone mugged me on a sunny day and the police quizzed me about the criminal’s features, I’d probably get their gender right.

That’s what happened with Nieve and Lea. I had the most basic details: the leather uniform, their weapons, Nieve’s striking white-blond hair and white eye lashes against tan skin, the tattoo on her shoulder. But the rest of their appearance was hazy.

Then the Kickstarter campaign blew into my lap. Owning a genuine Monte of MY characters? I had to pledge. So I carpe-d the diem and hopped on the Monte bandwagon. At his request, I sent the specifics as I laid them out here, nothing more. I figure, he’s the artist. I’m not. Who am I to tell him how to do his job? I wouldn’t tell a lion tamer how to tame a lion either, right?

Divide and Conquer was approaching its heart-thumping finale. My proud and bold statement The End was followed by months and months of revisions and editing. Then the email I’d dreamed of. I got offered a contract.

Snoopy dance!

Lea and Nieve would soon come to an e-reader near you. A paperback version is also on the horizon.

You know those smiles that bite into your cheeks and become painful? I had one of those for days.

Anyway, my website now needed a “Books” page, with a blurb and a cover, but I wouldn’t get a book cover for many months. As a quick fix, I used my iPad to produce a book collage. A visual representation of some of Divide and Conquer‘s crucial elements: the Seattle Space Needle, a dagger and a fighting stick, and the fog called up by their enemies. But look here. Lea and Nieve had no faces. Just blurred indications of where their noses, eyes and mouths should go.

Why? Because, even after two years of sweating over Divide and Conquer, I still didn’t know what the girls looked like.

Then a week ago, I opened another one of those grin-inducing emails. My painting was done. And. It. Is. Extraordinary. Monte’s cleared the level of my expectations with miles to spare. I simply can’t stop staring at the picture. It’s pure magic. I’m torn between showing it to everyone I know, and hunching over it with a snarl so no one steals it (that’s also why I watermarked it).

To see Lea and Nieve for the first time… Heck, the feeling is indescribable. Lea is unbelievably pretty. Her features, her dagger and her uniform are jaw-droppingly intricate. Nieve is, well, I can’t take my eyes off her. And let’s be honest, only a special kind of woman could draw your gaze from Lea.

I’m over the moon and hope you love it, too. For the first time, my girls have faces. Thank you, Monte.

If you’re interested in learning more about Monte Moore, check out his website.

Monte M. Moore
Artist/Writer/Designer
web: www.mavarts.com

September 8, 2014 The Write Path Post a Comment

THE WRITE PATH with Carol McPhee

THe Write Path

Carol McPhee

In this series, my guests talk to me about their books. Today I welcome author Carol McPhee, who will be discussing Alaskan Magic with me.

So let me hand over my mic. The next voice you’ll hear will be Carol’s.
Carol McPhee

1. What is your book about?

Alaskan Magic tells the story of fifty-something socialite Amanda Bennington who faces a crisis in her life when her husband ditches her for a much younger model. To counter her difficulties adjusting to a more spartan life, her father encourages her to visit her mother’s sister who lives in the wilds of Alaska tending wounded animals. Complications from a raven and other wildlife in the boondocks are minor compared to the bush pilot and natives that stumble into Amanda’s new environment.

2. What do you think attracts readers to your main characters?

My readers seem to enjoy the depth of my characters and the unexpected twists in their lives before achieving a happy-ever-after status. I prefer strong heroes evenly matched with strong heroines. I also like to present in them the same powerful perseverence it takes to finish a novel.

3. What message do you hope the reader takes away from your book?

I never start out to deliver a message. Sheer entertainment is my goal and when readers take the time to tell me of their enjoyment, I’m completely in heaven. Often readers let me know of parts that resonate with them and sometimes the section is not planned to stand out. Readers interpret their own meanings dependent on their life experiences.

4. What do you think was it about your book that made it so easy to attract your editor to publish it?

I’ve had no problem attracting editors to any of my 15 or so novels, so I must be doing something right. All I know is that to lose oneself in acts of creativity for hours every day is an unbelievable blessing.

5. Comparing the ideas you had before writing the book with the finished product, would you change anything if you could travel back in time?

If I could travel back in time I wouldn’t change anything about the writing of Alaskan Magic. I’m a seat of the pants writer and it always amazes me when characters and plot fall together to produce a storyline that works well.

Interested? You can find out more about Carol and her books on her website carolmcphee.webs.com

Other books by Carol McPhee:
Something About That Lady – contemporary romance
Undercover Trouble – romantic suspense
A Spirited Liaison – touch of paranormal
A Structured Affair – romantic suspense
Shadowed Pursuit – romantic suspense
Be Still, My Heart! – contemporary romance
Means To An End – romantic suspense
Jeweled Seduction – romantic suspense
None So Blind – contemporary romance
Natural Persuasion – romantic suspense
Natural Obsession – contemporary romance
Retreat To Danger – romantic suspense