But It's a Dry Heat

Archive for the ‘Urban Fantasy’ Category

Unholy Ghosts

In which I actually like an urban fantasy novel….

I first heard about Unholy Ghosts over on Dear Author, where a mild kerfuffle (very mild, by Internet standards) went down in the comments over the protagonist’s drug use. I remember it being a matter of the Hugs Not Drugs crowd showing up and getting their pearls in a twist. Looking at the thread now, the bulk of the “controversy” seems to be over author’s comments on her book, her “warnings” not to read it if drug use is a trigger for the reader. Oh, boy, my Swiss cheese memory. At any rate, it caught my attention despite my growing (and ironic? hypocritical?) aversion to urban fantasy (UF).

As I’ve said before, I’m just not feeling the love for the cookie-cutter, ass-kicking, swaggering, loner heroine who typifies a lot of UF titles. I find I can’t relate to them at all.

Consequently, I’ve left a long trail of “Did Not Finish” urban fantasy novels in my wake lately. One exception being Lauren Beukes’s Zoo City and now, Unholy Ghosts. Naturally, as a reader and a writer, my question is (more…)

Scrambled Brain and Ham

It’s done. The art show season for 2011 is o-vah. Finis. No mas. Which leaves me loads of time to … finish painting the dining room. Before Christmas.

I need a holiday from the holidays.

As I write this, it doesn’t have a cover image yet (I’ve seen the prelim, but I don’t know if it’s official), but The Canvas Thief is up for pre-order at Amazon. (Also has the author name listed as “Patricia Kirby,” but that should get fixed soon.)

Anyway…I came across this saying by Louisa May Alcott and decided it was the perfect fit for an old drawing on my hard drive. What would we do without books? Face reality?  Shudder. (Click image for larger view.)

The Music of Chaos, Now in Print!

Buy a book or the cute greyhound will have to go back to a miserable life of racing, stuck in a tiny crate all day, fed horrible food, abused.  You wouldn’t want that to happen, would you?

Then buy a book, save a puppy dog.

Shorter sales pitch: The dead tree version of The Music of Chaos is now available!

There they are. Some of my author copies of The Music of Chaos, my debut novel.  I tried to enlist the Wonder Horse‘s help in selling, but his version of marketing involved chomping his big, yellow teeth on the books. (Everybody’s a critic.)

My author’s copies arrived yesterday.  Prompting the immediate response of, “Oh, crap. Now I’ve got to sell my book in two formats!”

I love the idea of an ebook. But there’s something about holding your book in your hands, the smell of ink and glue, that makes any writer all … giggly.  Like a schoolgirl. Titter.

Here’s the short version of the book blurb:

“Blind dates are always a train wreck.”

By day, Regan O’Connell is a highly respected project manager.  By night, she’s a Wolfe, a paranormal agent working for a vampire syndicate.

Her two worlds collide when a co-worker sets her up with tall, dark and sexy Jason Lake.  Jason is a Holder, a member of an ancient, all-human organization dedicated to policing the activities of things that go bump in the night. Things like half-vampire Regan.

Falling for the wrong guy is the least of Regan’s problems. There’s a murderer on the loose, and his favorite weapon is chaotic magic, an erratic force with the power to rip holes in the fabric of the universe. And the best way to catch the killer is to get close to Jason, the man who is not only her enemy, but her prime suspect.

Buy it now (please) at Decadent Publishing or Amazon.

For those who want instant gratification, you can download the ebook version: Decadent Publishing, Amazon/Kindle, and B&N/Nook.

Or you can sample a chapter–FREE.

 

Editing, Tweeting and Drawing

I have a whole pile of partially written blog posts sitting on my desktop.

But I’ve spent the past week and change working through the print galley for The Music of Chaos.  In the interest of actually getting something done, I’ve resist the urge to fiddle around on the web.  Well, sort of …. there’s my recent fascination with Twitter.

Ah, Facebook, how quickly I fell out of love.  Actually, I never really was in love; it was just a fling, bought out of boredom and “everybody else is doing it.”

I’m a lurker. Twitter, unlike Facebook, is a lurker’s paradise.  With Facebook, since everyone has their profile locked out of privacy concerns (self included), there’s no skulking around on the edges, watching someone’s interactions to determine if they’re worth knowing.

With Twitter you can follow almost anybody. And it’s full of obnoxiously funny people, the kind of folks who like to slay sacred cows and turn ’em into steaks.

Technically, I’m doing Twitter all wrong.  As a good little author type, I’m supposed to be following people in the publishing industry and sucking up to interacting with them.  Ass kissing. Networking.

Except, I’ve never been much good at networking. Not now; not back in the days of a grownup job. If I thought someone was interesting, I’d pursue friendship. If not, I didn’t bother.  Yeah.  I know.  “Who you know” is how things get done, but I bailed on a 8-to-5 career expressly because I couldn’t shovel the requisite bullshit.

Not about to start now.

In the meantime, here’s a doodle of Talis, my emo, dark elf  in The Music of Chaos and its sequel. I haven’t done much drawing lately and I’m afraid any progress I made in learning to draw people has been lost.  So I’m going to try and get a least one little drawing, even a scribble done, once a week.

Have a great weekend.

The Canvas Thief

So I stopped procrastinating and put the contract for The Canvas Thief in the envelope.  It’s now crossing the continent, destination Canada.  Actually, the fact that Harlequin/Carina Press–yes, as in Romance novels–is in Canada is news to me.  Shows how much I know about what has (sort of) become my genre.  (There’s a long blog posting about my weird relationship with romance sitting on my hard drive. I keep fiddling with it, trying to explain my is-shoes with romance tropes in a way that doesn’t alienate every romance reader/writer out there.)

The Canvas Thief (which, I hope will get a new title because I suck at titles) is a hybrid of romance, urban fantasy and suspense. Set in Santa Fe, New Mexico, it’s the story of an artist who accidentally brings two of her graphic novel characters to life.  It’s set in the same “universe” as The Music of Chaos and Breas the vampire is a secondary character.

Since I set out to write romantic fantasy, not a romance, it doesn’t adhere to some romance novel requirements.  Like that the hero and heroine meet in the first chapter, if not first page.  In The Canvas Thief, they meet in Chapter Four.

That could, I guess, change during editing. I’m pretty malleable, editorially, but I’m rather adamant that this story not have the usual forced, first page/first chapter meeting of H/h seen in many romance novels.  It just doesn’t work. Not for this story.

Magic Bites

Some spoilers for  Magic Bites and The Hunger Games, herein.

In which the curse of high expectations strikes. I’ve really been looking forward to Magic Bites by Ilona Andrews.  While I found the novel readable, it was ultimately disappointing.

The problem?  I was hoping for something more than the standard, tough-as-nails, chip-on-her-shoulder, loner heroine that typifies the urban fantasy(UF) genre. Magic Bites’s heroine, Kate Daniels, unfortunately, is not a departure from the trope.  I love strong female characters, so my disinterest in tough girl UF protagonists puzzles me.

To get to the heart of my aversion, I first looked at one my newest, favorite fictional strong woman: the Hunger Games Trilogy’s Katniss Everdeen. Katniss is no girly girl.  She is the ultimate (more…)

A Taste of the Chaos

Once upon a time, for a short while, The Music of Chaos was a webcomic. Because nobody (not even Edward of Twilight) does moping and angst like I do, I decided I would never, evah get the manuscript published.  In a fit of pathos, I turned it into a graphic novel.

About 90 pages in, I came to my senses and went back to trying to sell the story to publishers.

Over at Romance Writer’s Revenge blog, I was asked to tell my story of the Call with The Music of Chaos.  This is where most authors get to describe the giddy excitement, the celebration, that came with signing the contract and publishing their book.

My version of the story, at least with the final acceptance that led to publication, could be summed up as “a shrug.” The Music of Chaos has had a total of four acceptances. (Plus a NY editor who loved the early chapters. Story for ‘nother time.)

Two of the publishers, I turned down.  One because the publisher had (and to this day still has), butt-ugly Poser-generated covers. Another, because the publisher had the contract from hell.  Secondary rights were mis-identified as primary rights; it was riddled with contradictions; and it took all rights including a merchandising clause that gave them rights to the webcomic.  Actually, it even gave them rights to artwork (not created by me) in an illustrated anthology.

Did I mention this was a little known, epublisher who has about as much chance of selling TMOC merchandise as I have for winning American Idol? Yeah.  Ridiculous.

Anyway, poor Decadent Publishing got TMOC when my enthusiasm for publishing was running on fumes.  But they’ve proven, so far, to be a good home for the story that wouldn’t give up (even if its author did).  My book was edited, edited, and just when I thought it was safe to open my email– “It’s back!” –edited some more. Which is, as Martha Stewart would say, “…a good thing.”

Wanna read a sample?  Chapter One can be read in its entirety, here.

It’s Free, It’s for Me, Gimme Three!

Well, just one.  Just today, March 18th, 2011, I’m over at Romance Writer’s Revenge.  One commenter will win a free copy of my ebook, The Music of Chaos.  Stop by.

It’s a really fun blog.  I recommend visiting regularly.

Stroking the Ego

Bad reviews are inevitable, but good reviews  soothe some of the other anxieties that go with this biz.

Yesterday–Monday, blargh–I cautiously opened my email.  Lately, I’ve been approaching my email account as though it were an angry cobra.

The reason? I’ve got a novel in submission and it’s been out long enough to possibly be due for a response.  My last sub to this particular market scored a rejection after a quick month. Having passed the month goalpost a while back, I’m now torturing myself with the possibilities.  Like…they are actually considering it;  or, maybe it’ll score a revise and resubmit;  or, it’s sitting, ignored, in an editor’s mailbox; and worst of all, that my rejection went out weeks ago and was lost in e-space.

And then my head exploded.

I was therefore, delighted to find a link to another good review for The Music of Chaos in my email.

I found this bit especially nice:

The plot of this story is exciting and has many layers, the detail is extraordinary, and I was unable to put this book down until I got to the last page, and I didn’t want to put it down even then. Hopefully there will be another Regan O’Connell story soon; I can never get too much of my new favorite anti-hero Breas.

Yeah. I’m fond of Breas, too. Breas has absolutely no tact.  So he’s a hella lot of fun to write because he can say all the horrible things that decent people can only think. The review in its entirety can be found here.

As for the sequel…I’m workin’ on it.

Courage Is

A quick doodle that got out of hand.  Featuring Talis, a dark elf, and a character from my novel The Music of Chaos. (Click image for full view.)

This is totally non-canon since Talis is a pacifist. I was listening to the song “Courage” by Orianthi and this image came to mind. The Music of Chaos is set in modern day Albuquerque, NM and Talis’s usual apparel is blue jeans and a ratty T-shirt, not the D&D get-up he’s sporting here.

Talis is one of those characters who originates as a bit of background flavor and then devours page space like a rottweiler on a steak. He started out as a passing character in a single chapter.  Literary oblivion was the fate I’d chosen for him, since the chapter didn’t advance the story at all.  Then I made the mistake of giving him a drop of backstory.  The drop became a flood as I got more and more fascinated with him.

Before I knew it, he was Regan O’Connell’s (the protagonist) best friend. And then he started popping up in every short story I wrote.

One of these days, he’s getting his own novel.