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Wednesday, November 2nd, 2016
(It’s lovely to be featured, but I wish I’d known about it! I’d have dropped a link here much sooner!) Novelisty featured a “heat-rating” and a few pertinent details about the book, as well as included the back cover copy and an excerpt. If you want to read the first chapter or so, head on over to Novelisty’s 31 Days of Halloween. Sunday, October 26th, 2014
Readers first met Jonmarc Vahanian in my Chronicles of the Necromancer series, where he is a strong secondary character but not the main protagonist. Even so, he’s always been a favorite of mine, and he was certainly a reader favorite as the series progressed. In those books, we meet him at age 29, a wary and bitter smuggler with a mysterious and disreputable past who is hired as a bodyguard and guide by four young noblemen who have witnessed the murder of the king and need to get out of the kingdom fast. Of course, Jonmarc becomes much more than a guide, playing a role as friend, king-maker, lord of Dark Haven and Champion to the Queen of Principality. Over the course of the Chronicles of the Necromancer books and the Fallen Kings Cycle, we watch Jonmarc grow and change, confront enemies from his past, fall in love and step into roles he would never have believed possible. But the readers always wanted to know—what about before? How did Jonmarc end up becoming the best swordsman in the kingdom? Why did the king of Eastmark place a bounty on his head and issue a death mark? And how did a guy who grew up in the Borderlands, far from the palace in Shekerishet, end up with a blood grudge against a powerful dark mage like Foor Arontala?  Gail Z. Martin I’d always had three books in my head of Jonmarc’s story. So I decided to serialize the books as a progression of short stories. Each story is complete in itself, but taken together, eventually readers will have Jonmarc’s whole saga. The stories run around thirty pages or more, so there’s time to tell a complex tale. Raider’s Curse, the first story in the series, was an immediate hit. Fast-forward nearly two years. There are ten stories in what I think of as “Season One” of Jonmarc’s adventures, taking him from the death of his family through his time with Maynard Linton’s caravan, and up to the point where he joins a mercenary group in Principality. Readers of the Chronicles series will recognize the key events, but the short stories tell the full story from Jonmarc’s point of view, giving insights into Jonmarc and other familiar characters like Linton and Alyzza the mad mage that you won’t find in any of the other books. I’m now working on “Season Two,” which starts off with the story Bad Blood. This group of ten stories will take Jonmarc from his time with the mercenaries through his stint in the Eastmark army and into Nargi. If you’ve read the Chronicles series, you know what that means, but this is your chance to experience it through his eyes. I am having a blast working on the short stories. It’s a lot of fun to be back in my world of the Winter Kingdoms, since the series is currently on hiatus while I write the Ascendant Kingdoms Saga. (I have six more books planned for Tris and his friends. They will get written at some point.) Serializing the Jonmarc books as short stories is a little different way of writing, since instead of chapters that lead up to a big climax as you’d have in a normal book, each short story is complete on its own yet linked to the others. But it’s been great to revisit old friends and reveal a lot of secrets I’ve kept for many years about who these familiar characters really are. The short stories are available on Kindle/Kobo/Nook for .99 each, and I post a new short story each month. I hope you’ll check them out, and discover the Winter Kingdom’s most intriguing rogue! My Days of the Dead blog tour runs through October 31 with never-before-seen cover art, brand new excerpts from upcoming books and recent short stories, interviews, guest blog posts, giveaways and more! Plus, I’ll be including extra excerpt links for stories and books by author friends of mine. And, a special 50% off discount from Double-Dragon ebooks! You’ve got to visit the participating sites to get the goodies, just like Trick or Treat! Details here: www.AscendantKingdoms.com. Trick or Treat: Enjoy an excerpt from Dark Haven here: http://www.ascendantkingdoms.com/books/chronicles-of-the-necromancer/dark-haven/dark-haven-chapter-one/ And a bonus excerpt from Caves of the Dead, one of my Jonmarc Vahanian Adventures short stories here: http://www.ascendantkingdoms.com/short-stories-and-more/the-jonmarc-vahanian-adventures/jonmarc-vahanian-adventures/an-excerpt-from-caves-of-the-dead/ And a second bonus excerpt from Blood and Iron by my friend Jon Sprunk here: http://www.blackgate.com/black-gate-online-fiction-an-excerpt-from-blood-and-iron/ And a third bonus excerpt from my friend Danielle Ackley-McPhail’s Badass Faeries series here: http://www.badassfaeries.com/excerpts.htm Sunday, September 15th, 2013
Now, Lies has been published and is currently available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. The wheels of distribution grind very slowly in some parts, but it should soon be available via Kobo, XinXii, iTunes and elsewhere very soon. I’ll let you know when that happens. In the meantime, here are the links to: Friday, March 16th, 2012
The “morgue” in newspaper parlance are the file cabinets holding all the research materials, notes and photos that went into producing a news story. All the pieces are usually filed together in a single folder by year or story. Sometimes the photos have their own morgue. Depends on the newspaper. Pretty inefficient, really. While a lot of those records are filed electronically now, most of it still goes down the same way because who has the time to turn scribbled notes and library research into electronic documents when you’ve got to write the next news story? And really, that stuff almost never gets looked at again unless it’s a really big story that has repercussions years later and needs to be referenced again. Or, the newspaper runs one of those “Five years ago, Ten years ago, etc. columns. Writers tend to have ideas folders (stuff where they put ideas they’ve had, but aren’t ready to be written yet, snippets of overhead conversations, inspiring photos, etc.) and “trunked” files: a place for those stories that were written, but never got sold for whatever reason. I have another file I keep, my “Culled from ‘XX Manuscript'” file: this is the place where I copy and paste the stuff edited out of my manuscripts. It contains idle scenes, verbose paragraphs, misplaced character thoughts in long and short phrases. It’s a file that makes me feel better when I’m editing: I can take all that “hard work” which should never see the light of day, and keep a record of having written it. I tell myself I’ll go back there one day and make use of it. I’ve never, ever done so (unlike my morgue or ideas folders…) But this past week while I was doing some major edits, I realized that that file contains a lot of good stuff even if it wasn’t polished enough — or well thought out enough — to use in the current manuscript. It’s plenty good for inspiring ideas when you need a kick. Here’s Your Prompt:
Good luck! Thursday, February 23rd, 2012
I’m sitting here saying the same thing as my current manuscript is no longer recognizable: It’s taken a left turn into erotica. You regulars will know that I write dark fantasy and science fiction. (Those of you who came here after googling “erotica” know that now, too.) So, it’s as surprising to me (as you) that I’ve written three complete — and soon to be four — scenes in my current manuscript that are so steamy, I had to step outside in the cool air for a minute before I sat down again to finish them. (And nobody’s even had sex yet!) I was reluctant to release them to my critique partners for their review. (But they enjoyed them — even the men — so that’ll show me to want to hide my work.) What’s strange to me is that I think the male lead in the erotica section is going to become a major character. At first, he was a walk-on. In the second scene he tempts the book’s main character, not only with the promise of really good sex, but with heart’s desire: healing a demonic wound which will not heal. I can’t decide if she’ll go all the way with him in this next scene. If she does, she damns her immortal soul. But she’ll be whole again, gain a huge amount of knowledge about something, and have incredible sex all night long. She just might be tempted. After all, her immortal soul is only lost to her if she dies. There are ways to cleanse it before that happens, right? Yeah, I’m still working out the sticky bits of the plot. This is what happens when the characters start talking to you and they refuse to play the roles you’ve cast them in. I can’t wait to see how this turns out. But I’m curious: as a reader, would you be willing to pick up a book not quite like the last you read by an author, or would you bypass it in favor of something else? Friday, January 27th, 2012  “Taking Our Geese to Market” 1909 W. H. Martin Decades before the software program Photoshop was a gleam in anyone’s eye, photographer W.H. Martin was creating photo montages. Judging from the few postcards I’ve seen, his themes were mostly agricultural, with some based on “old wives tales.” All the ones I’ve seen tell a tall tale. According to Wikipedia:
See Wikipedia for more information about tall tales. Here’s Your Prompt:
Wednesday, November 2nd, 2011
Writing fiction is hard. And starting over from scratch is even harder, I’ve found. Except for some free writing in class the last few weeks, I haven’t written anything on my work in progress: not since I lost 25 pages of the manuscript. I’ve been in a terrible funk. And hopeful. Hope is a terrible thing sometimes…and crippling. Over the last few weeks, I’ve tried to recreate my lost work, but the words just aren’t flowing. In the back of my mind, I’ve constantly been thinking:
And as long as there’s been a smidgeon of hope in my mind that the dratted pages will turn up, I haven’t been able to write a word…because why should I re-write these chapters when I know they’ll appear at some point? But the fact is, it hasn’t turned up. No one’s called me about it. And I’ve looked high and low, and called a lot of places and dropped in on several more (some more than once) and so I know it’s it’s worse than misplaced: It’s lost and I’m never getting it back. (Okay, I said the words. Maybe, if I say them enough times, I’ll believe it.) Yeah. I’ve not quite given up hope. But I’ve got to fake it, or I won’t be able to move on. It’s not like this writing should be hard. I know what happens. I know where the plot turns. I know about that secret reveal in Chapter 15. And this version will likely be better since I’ve already written it once. It’ll be the second draft, for 25 pages, halfway through the novel. I’ve written a few hundred words between yesterday and today. Not great progress, but it’s more than I’ve done in a month. Have you ever been paralyzed by hope? How do get past it? Tuesday, September 20th, 2011 Word count meant a lot more to me when I worked for the newspapers. I hated being assigned “20 inches” to write a story, and then having to cut it down to 15 when a fire broke out on Broadway and that story required some of my space. But word counts are important in non-fiction, too (even if the advent of the ebook has us writing longer and longer works.) I’m currently working my way through a finished manuscript that’s about 125,000 words long. Ideally, I’d like to cut it back to the 85,000 – 95,000 word range, but I’d be happy with 100k. So, after debating about several scenes which I removed, I’m left with tightening up the manuscript’s wordiness to pull it together. To tighten it up, I’m omitting:
Here are some things you can do to tighten up non-fiction:
* Unless it’s an opinion piece, of course! What tricks do you have to tighten up your prose? Friday, May 20th, 2011 I’ve hesitated to toss up a photo to use as a prompt because it’s just too easy to get into the habit of doing something lazy, but I just couldn’t pass this up. The most recent edition of Imker Freunde Magazin (Bee Keeper’s Friend) from Germany wafted pass my day-job desk this week and the cover photo caught my eye. The object on the right in the photo is some kind of beekeeper’s post, covered all over in bees. The swarm is so large, that the bees have even pooled on the ground around the post. The little girl on the left has attracted the bees’ attention, and some have come to investigate her. One looks like it’s trying to crawl into her pocket. A few are close to landing on her. The second photo is from inside the magazine, taken from another point of view. The bees are closer, and the child looks…excited? Frightened? Here’s your prompt: What’s happening in this picture? Write a poem, a song, an essay, a news story. Anything. Just tell us what’s happening.  
Friday, May 13th, 2011
Fear of this day is so large it’s got TWO Greek names. You may refer to it as either Friggatriskaidekaphobia or Paraskevidekatriaphobia. A few of my favorites from the wikipedia list of phobias:
The wikipedia entry also contains a list of phobias related to animals (such as Ichthyophobia, the fear of fish) and biological instances (such as Hydrophobia, the fear of water, which is a a symptom of rabies). Very informative. It’s fun to joke about phobias, but for some, they’re true fears which interfere with a way of life, often for the worse. In college, I had a friend who developed a pervasive fear of social situations (Sociophobia), so bad, that by the end of the semester she could not leave her dorm room. She had to be medicated to be removed, and never completed her degree. George Lucas’ famous character Indiana Jones has a near-paralyzing fear of snakes (Ophidiophobia) which often hinders his heroic exploits. It’s a great plot device: his fear has a tendency to get in the way of the action, causing tension and raising the stakes, as well as adding depth to the character. Keep this in mind while you’re working through this exercise. Here’s Your Prompt: Today’s prompt is an exercise in character building/story planning which is a large part of writing. Choose a plausible phobia from the wikipedia list (or any other resource, or even make up your own) and apply it to a character your currently writing about, or one you’re thinking of starring in your next story or novel. Think of the possibilities that phobia has for influencing your character’s actions, both within the framework of a tale, and as backstory. Is it possible that an entire story can be created from the fear? Make a list of how your chosen phobia can interfere with every day life, make is plausible, but stretch. For example, what if your character, like Indiana, suffers from ophidiophobia, but she lives in New York City? There aren’t many snakes to be found in the city, so how can her fear affect her? Maybe she walks to her job every day, but the zoo has erected a tremendous billboard on her route with the photo of a large, striking rattle snake. She can’t even look at it. Her fear is so strong that she needs to find another route. And taking that route starts your story in motion. What happens when she has to find another way to work? After you’ve made your list, determine which items or situations can be used as scenes. Then, get to work writing them! |
Writers - Maryland Writer's Assn. |
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A Blue Collar Proposition–the third book in the Charm City Darkness series–was featured over at Novelisty.com on October 1 as part of their 31 Days of Halloween!
Start with a young man whose family is murdered by raiders. Throw in a cursed amulet and a vengeful blood mage, magicked monsters, bounty hunters and a nomadic caravan, and you’ve got the backstory for the Jonmarc Vahanian Adventures series of ebook short stories.
I wrote a story a while back called Lies. It 
My background is journalism, so naturally I have my own morgue.
Bugs Bunny fans will recognize the phrase, “I knew I shoulda taken that left turn at Albuquerque.”
Wherein I whine just a little bit after having done a stupid thing…
In honor of Friday the 13th, I think a writing prompt on phobia is in order.