Monthly Archives: February 2011

A Healthy Future

by Jeffrey Thomas

In early 2007, Gail Z. Martin and I were among the first wave of authors to release books through the then brand new imprint, Solaris Books. Well, actually Gail headed that wave, as her novel THE SUMMONER was the first novel released by Solaris. My own novel was DEADSTOCK, a science fiction thriller set in my multiverse, Punktown, with a private eye named Jeremy Stake at its center. Gail continued her Chronicles of the Necromancer series through Solaris, and they let me bring Jeremy Stake back for a second outing with BLUE WAR.

Since then, we have both gone on with other books for other publishers. My next novel set in the gritty and dangerous far-future city of Punktown – close on the heels of BLUE WAR – was HEALTH AGENT (Raw Dog Screaming Press, 2008). HEALTH AGENT also took the form of a noir thriller, but this time starring “health agent” Montgomery Black, whose role is preventing the manifold health risks Punktown can fall prey to. Black and his partner/lover are given the task of investigating a brilliant but sociopathic performance artist who calls himself Toll Loveland. Loveland’s approach to art takes the form of biological terrorist acts, such as infecting people with a lethal disease. After attending one of his performances, before Loveland’s threat is fully comprehended, both Black and his partner are exposed to and contract the aforementioned deadly plague. With time running out as the disease ravages him, Black hopes to both avenge himself and his lover, and protect the rest of Punktown’s citizens from Loveland’s threats. But Loveland’s monstrous games have only just begun…

Actually, HEALTH AGENT was written in the late eighties, but languished as a handwritten manuscript for years. At the time of its writing, the AIDS epidemic was still something new in the public eye. But this fact should hardly date HEALTH AGENT; I don’t recall AIDS having yet been eliminated, and we are always dreading the next avian flu or even biological attack by some hostile group. Another interesting fact is that I took a year off in the middle of writing HEALTH AGENT, in order to write another novel, but somehow was able to come right back into what may well be the most twisty, tricky, labyrinthine plot I’ve yet devised. In fact, HEALTH AGENT might just be my favorite of my Punktown novels to date.

As I have mentioned, HEALTH AGENT was released several years ago, but I hope it will garner more readers; maybe those who read and enjoyed the more widely distributed DEADSTOCK and BLUE WAR would be willing to check it out. I think they’ll find themselves in for a healthy dose of thrills, scares, and suspense.

So I thank Gail – not to mention J.F. Lewis, Sabrina Lewis, and Tina McSwain — for letting me stand at the podium for a while. Gail’s been very supportive of me over the past few years, by featuring me in her podcasts, so she’s well deserving of my gratitude and indebtedness. Now back to you, guys!

P.S. — If you’re interested in purchasing HEALTH AGENT, please head on over to the publisher’s web site, here: https://www.rawdogscreaming.com/agent.html

You can listen to the audio from when Jeffrey was a guest of Blog Host, Gail Z. Martin’s Ghost in the Machine podcast here:  https://www.audioacrobat.com/play/WXnzLmn4

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Crisis Apparition

Paranormally Speaking
By Tina R. McSwain

One group of “ghosts” that often goes unmentioned is the “crisis apparition”. These spirits are not technically of the haunting variety. Their appearance is usually a brief single event caused by their death.  This event marks the passing of a loved one. These manifestations  most often occur at night or in the early morning hours. Typically the spirit will visit a loved one either to deliver a positive final message or to bring news of their passing. It may seem to the recipient that they are dreaming.  But this is not the case.  The experience is usually described as a loving and peaceful exchange, not the terror we expect from a haunting. Most crisis apparitions occur within 12 hours before or after the death of the “visitor”. Usually this spirit will appear to only one person, but it can appear to two or more family members as well. Although this type of case would not be investigated by ghost hunters, the reports of this phenomena lend some credence to the subject of ghosts and paranormal activity as it is repeatedly experienced by the general public.

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Paranormally Speaking

By Tina R. McSwain

Crisis Apparition

One group of “ghosts” that often goes unmentioned is the “crisis apparition”. These spirits are not technically of the haunting variety. Their appearance is usually a brief single event caused by their death.  This event marks the passing of a loved one. These manifestations  most often occur at night or in the early morning hours. Typically the spirit will visit a loved one either to deliver a positive final message or to bring news of their passing. It may seem to the recipient that they are dreaming.  But this is not the case.  The experience is usually described as a loving and peaceful exchange, not the terror we expect from a haunting. Most crisis apparitions occur within 12 hours before or after the death of the “visitor”. Usually this spirit will appear to only one person, but it can appear to two or more family members as well. Although this type of case would not be investigated by ghost hunters, the reports of this phenomena lend some credence to the subject of ghosts and paranormal activity as it is repeatedly experienced by the general public.

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Freebie Friday from Mur Lafferty

Our guest bloggers this week, Mur Lafferty has graciously agreed to share a free excerpt of Marco and the Red Granny at Smashwords!

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/31661

Hear it free at Hub- https://www.hubfiction.com/2010/09/new-hub-podcast-serial-by-mur-lafferty/

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A Life of Their Own

by Gail Z. Martin

Long-running series can be lots of fun because they take on a life of their own.  At the same time, it can be intimidating for new readers because once several books in the series are out, it can be daunting to get “caught up.”  That was the challenge I faced when I wrote The Sworn, which just came out in stores at the end of January.  It’s my fifth novel, and it’s set in my world of the Winter Kingdoms with many of the same characters as my first four books.  But I wanted to create a gateway into the world where someone new could enter without having to read the first four books (of course, I hope they’ll decide to do that later) and still enjoy the book.

Creating that kind of gateway changes how you write, because you can’t take for granted that every reader has the same collective memory about the places, events and characters.  At the same time, since you’re hoping that many of the people who’ve read your other books will want to read your new one, you don’t want to bore them by spending too much time recapping what went on before or re-introducing characters they already know.  It’s quite a challenge.

Before I wrote The Sworn, I paid attention to how other series writers handled the issue.  I noticed how they referred to important past events that had spoiler potential but which had to be explained at least in passing.  I noticed how subsequent books introduced long-running characters.  And I tried to examine from a reader’s perspective where I thought the situation was handled well and where it left me confused or bored.

I learn a lot from paying attention to how other authors handle certain types of plot issues.  It brings a whole new dimension to the way I read, because on one hand, I’m reading for plot and action just like a “regular” reader.  Then the writer side of me is busy looking under the hood to see how the other author handled the “mechanics” of the story.  I guess it’s like eating out at a restaurant when you’re also a chef.  You enjoy eating food that tastes good, but you can’t help wanting to peek into the kitchen to see how it’s cooked!

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The Writer’s Den

by Crymsyn Hart

Every writer has a special place where they write. To some it is their home office. To others it is wherever their laptops take them. Being such a mobile society, we can travel to the ends of the earth as long as we have a strong signal to connect. Besides that, every author that I know has a little slice of heaven where they can relax and let their mind’s wander.

I have several places where my muses feel comfortable.

One is my home office. The walls are lined with dark images from my favorite artist Joseph Vargo and to balance the darkness, I have pictures of goddesses on the opposite wall. This office serves a dual purpose for my day job too.

A glimpse into my strange world.

Originally, we were going to set up my office in one of our more spacious closets. We got the idea from an issue of This Old House magazine actually, but it turned out that with all the equipment I got for the day job it just wouldn’t fit.  And the puppies would keep bugging me. If that happened, then no writing would be happening at all. So I had to convert our second bedroom into an office.

The other place I love to write is a favorite coffee shop where they make the best chai. The smell of coffee in the cafe and the taste of the chai helps transport me to another world. And if I don’t find myself in either of these places then I’m sitting some place outside, on a nice day, and using my Blackberry to type. It’s nice to have an actual place to go, but my writer’s den is really inside my head, tucked away in a corner of my brain where I can get cozy and get to the business of creating other worlds.

What does your sanctuary look like? Do you have a particular place you love to write? If so, let us know.

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Paranormally Speaking

By Tina R. McSwain

Poltergeist

The word itself comes from the German language for “noisy ghost”, a poltergeist is just that. This type of haunting is usually manifested by strange knocking noises or banging, and loud movement of objects. This movement of objects can sometimes be violent, such as items being thrown off of dressers, tables, shelves, or walls.  While this type of entity may respond to questions with raps and taps, there is no audio or EVP produced. Also absent is an apparition of any kind.

The key difference between poltergeists and other types of hauntings is the origin of the manifestations. Some believe that an actual spirit is present, but the traditional cause of the disruption is believed to be an adolescent girl from the haunted family. It is thought that some girls, at or near the onset of puberty, can develop a psychokinetic ability. This means that they can move and affect objects with their thoughts by use of mental energy. Whether they are purposely causing the chaos or merely unable to control their powers is a subject of debate.  The activity itself will eventually subside, but it cannot be driven out or exercised.  As the young girl begins to mature and understand the changes in her body and learns to deal with the  emotions that come with that process, the angst or fear experienced at first begins to subside, thus diminishing the activity altogether.  

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Poltergeist

Paranormally Speaking
By Tina R. McSwain

The word itself comes from the German language for “noisy ghost”, a poltergeist is just that. This type of haunting is usually manifested by strange knocking noises or banging, and loud movement of objects. This movement of objects can sometimes be violent, such as items being thrown off of dressers, tables, shelves, or walls.  While this type of entity may respond to questions with raps and taps, there is no audio or EVP produced. Also absent is an apparition of any kind.

The key difference between poltergeists and other types of hauntings is the origin of the manifestations. Some believe that an actual spirit is present, but the traditional cause of the disruption is believed to be an adolescent girl from the haunted family. It is thought that some girls, at or near the onset of puberty, can develop a psychokinetic ability. This means that they can move and affect objects with their thoughts by use of mental energy. Whether they are purposely causing the chaos or merely unable to control their powers is a subject of debate.  The activity itself will eventually subside, but it cannot be driven out or exercised.  As the young girl begins to mature and understand the changes in her body and learns to deal with the  emotions that come with that process, the angst or fear experienced at first begins to subside, thus diminishing the activity altogether.

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Stay on Target!

by

J. F. Lewis

Run for your lives!  It’s the return of the Little Green Notes!  Gah!

(NOTE: If you’re just joining us, the notes in question are green Post-it notes that have been stuck to my office wall ever since I received the revision letter for STAKED (then called WELCOME TO THE VOID (and later BITE ME (but eventually STAKED))) and I began working on what would sort-of- kind-of-almost-be the draft that was eventually published.)

Number five is:  Meander Less

Now, there’s nothing wrong with a certain amount of meandering.  In the Void City books, Eric meanders all over the place, telling an anecdote here or there, but the key (as much as I can tell… and as with all my advice, your mileage may seriously vary) is to make sure you don’t go too far off the reservation without a reason.  Case in point:  El Segundo.

Eric went there, but what happened is a story I’ve yet to tell.  The events, however, are a part of Eric’s back story, so it’s appropriate to fill in the details as they apply to his current narrative.  But if I wanted to tell the whole story then I’d write a book called EL SEGUNDO (or more likely a one word past tense title so that it matched the other books…(UNSUNG, maybe?)) and spill the beans about the whole sordid affair.  And some of my readers would probably dig that.  But there something important is gained by both me and the reader when I fail to tell that story first:  It gives the characters a past.  They seem like they’ve already had adventures together and that “history” lends them an air of reality.  In addition, readers who enjoy digging out every little hidden piece of the Void City universe have something to put together, a puzzle to solve.

In STAKED, all anyone knew about Eric’s time in El Segundo was that it happened during the 1980’s, Eric met Talbot (his enigmatic shapeshifting Mouser pal), Eric was dating Irene at the time, demons were involved, Eric caught fire a lot, and something very very big went down.  In ReVAMPED, more info was doled out.  That “Big Thing That Went Down” was the end of the world.  Eric stopped it.  Not because he’s a hero (because he isn’t), but because he was there.   By the end of CROSSED, readers have enough to put even bigger chunks of the story together… Talbot broke a huge taboo of his people: “Knowledge gleaned from the akasha is not for those who cannot see its light” and was exiled for it, and…

It’s fun to know, but only parts of it directly impacted the three novels.  In fact, I could have gone back farther than that.  Eric fought in World War II and Korea while he was still alive.  In fact, he left the seminary to enlist, because he felt it was the right thing to do.  A novel about a would-be priest becoming a soldier, losing his faith trough the perils of war and being put back together again by the woman who loved him?  That would have been a whole other novel, set well before Eric was even a vampire.  In fact, if we wanted to REALLY start at the beginning, back in France there was this order of knights and this very powerful vampire, oh, but wait, before that there was this other vampire named Percival, oh, but before he was a vampire he was a wizard.  But, wait, no.  Before THAT, there were a brother and sister who…

Yeah.  The story has to start somewhere.  And when you stop telling the story and start telling another one you’re meandering.  Like I just did.  Well, unless you aren’t.  😉

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The Birth of Ideas

by Mur Lafferty

It’s become a cliche by now- people always want to know where writers get their ideas, and writers never know what to say. They joke that they buy them at a store, or get them from a guy in Poughkeepsie. The people always seem very impressed that such a wonderful idea would come from such a creative mind. But really. We do know where ideas come from, but that’s like saying “where do you buy all of your clothing?” You buy some things from one store, wacky t shirts from cons, fun socks online, and more. All sorts of places.

Ideas do have a generation point, though, and I simply call it a “what if.” For me, it’s triggered by something slightly odd, and then I take it as far as I possibly can. I’m offering my latest novella, Marco and the Red Granny (available via audio at Hub magazine and via Kindle and Smashwords in ebook form), up as a subject for idea generation.

Fact- writers, while creative individuals, stimulate the imagination, not the five senses. More than one person can view a painting, or taste a pastry, or hear music, or watch dancing, but writing, and reading, are solitary. And although you can use eyes and/or ears to take in a book, the true beauty of the art takes place in your head, not on the page you’re looking at. No one wants to watch a writer create. The closest thing we get to pleasing audiences is live readings, and even then we rarely get to read the whole work. Sometimes this makes me bitter.

So when President Obama was having his big inauguration hurrahs, I heard a news report on a nobody fashion designer who was an overnight sensation because Michelle Obama chose his dress to wear to one of the balls. And I imagined being the name someone shouted out when someone cried out “who are you wearing?” But no one can wear a novel.

Or can they?

So that was my trigger, my “what if” moment. What if you could wear a novel? not wear it like making a dress of the paper from a book, but to experience the novel in a dress as if you could experience a painting screen printed onto fabric. Well, we couldn’t do it, but probably some alien people could. Then my mind concocted Marco, a down and out artist, who couldn’t get a break. And the break was a literal ticket to the moon, to get a patronage from these aliens who had created the new cultural artistic hub of humankind, Sally Ride Lunar Base, nicknamed “Mollywood.”

So yay. I had Marco, bitter and hungover and not sure why he got called on to get a patronage while he’s at the low point of his career, on a shuttle. I wanted his seat companion to be an irritating old woman, and I based her on a woman I once sat next to on a plane who took my “leave me alone” headphones to mean “Please touch this woman on the arm to get her attention so you can tell her the important news that a Macy’s is coming to Raleigh.” But I after they talk a while, I realize I want this woman to be more than she appeared, something that you don’t expect from a little old lady.

What if she were violent? No, better, famous for her violence. A reality show star. A gladiator? On the moon, the low gravity would allow for a little old lady to excel in hand to hand combat.

And the Red Granny was born.

Introduce some aliens who view art and reality shows – anything that creates passion within the human soul – on equal footing, and I had a story.

Ah yes- one more weird trigger. Remember that Marco was hungover during his shuttle flight? Well, the shuttle does a short jump to the moon, and I remembered beloved SF author Douglas Adams’ character from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Ford Prefect, suggesting that beer cushions the systems of people who are transferred through space. I used that, and then the Red Granny said the throwaway phrase about the Alcoholic’s Guild and how she hoped the wouldn’t find out that hangovers were removed by shuttle jumps.

Whoa. Alcoholics Guild?

Incidentally, this is why I can’t be an outliner. Because stuff like this doesn’t come to me when I outline. I have to be writing and have a character say something throwaway and then realize they are mentioning things that will change the course of the book. My ideas work like Dominoes- I get an idea and push one over, and then follow the stream of falling bricks to see where it goes.

So that’s where ideas come from. Mine, at least. For this novella, at least. What about yours?

You can listen to the audio from when Mur was a guest of Blog Host, Gail Z. Martin’s Ghost in the Machine podcast here:  https://www.audioacrobat.com/play/Wy6cjX0k

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