by | November 6, 2012 · 2:00 am

The Magic of Magic-making

By

 

J. F. Lewis

 

One of the best parts about working in a world of one's own creation is the ability to populate it with cool new powers and abilities. Not just monsters and magic, but the rules behind them, the internal consistency which lets readers know not just what your characters can and cannot do, but also serves to set your creations apart.

 

Take Atticus, the ancient (and awesome) Druid, from Kevin Hearne's Iron Druid series. He's powerful as long as he can make contact with nature, with the soil, but trap him in the middle of the street over lifeless pavement and he's in trouble. True he has ways to store power and there are trick up his sleeve, but the countdown to powerlessness has begun. As readers we know it and the tension is immediate.

 

Magic has to have defined costs and limitations, a balance which lets the mystical make sense… makes it ring true. It must seem like a tool, not a cheat. When I was writing A CORPSE OF MISTAKEN IDENTITY, I knew that Zaomancy would need to fit those same rules. My main character, Richard, would literally be bringing the dead back to life and breathing the breath of life (zao, if we accept Richard's choice of Latin) into inanimate objects. For that to work, there needed to be a price… a balancer and a set of rules.

 

In the initial draft, that balance took a while to figure out and fine tune. I explored a fair number of options, but the one I kept coming back to was age. Each zaomancer only has their own life's breath with which to play and using their powers ages them, sometimes slowly, but always in direct proportion to how much death they are trying to overcome. It simple, the price of life is… life itself, just not all at once or the heroes would be pretty short-lived.

 

Once you have the rules, the framework, then you have to combine them with cool plots and fun characters. A Zaomancer, for instance, who has been lied to about the corpse he's about to bring back to life, a newly turned vampire who has just realized she can't have chocolate anymore, or maybe even a necromancer who is the hero rather than the villain (Hi, Gail!). The sky is the limit, but make them your own and your reader's will love them.

 

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by | October 31, 2012 · 8:00 am

Days of the Dead

I’m holding my annual Days of the Dead blog tour celebrates Halloween, Samhain, Dia De Los Muertos, All Hallow’s Eve—you get the picture!  It’s an online party—with downloadable party favors—and you’re invited!  You can see where I’ve spread the goodies out across all my partner sites at www.ChroniclesOfTheNecromancer.com. 

The Stuff of Nightmares

I write what sometimes gets classified as “dark fantasy.”  Depending on whose definition you use, that tends to mean it’s mostly adventure but with many of the darker elements that used to be reserved for horror.  That can include malignant magic, gruesome deaths, supernatural monsters, and a sprinkling of natural disasters.

So it’s a logical question to ask: which scenes that I’ve written creep me out the most?

Ah, where to begin.

Writing is a cheap form of therapy.  The trade-off is that when you’re published, it’s also public, kind of like putting yourself on the couch in the display window of a department store.  If an element doesn’t bother me, I’m not likely to put it into a story, because I won’t be able to rely on it moving a reader.

Luckily, I’m not in danger of running out of material, as I’m rather easily frightened.

I really don’t like driving or walking around alone in the dark.  I’d like to think that I’d be a lot braver if I were a martial arts expert or a Navy SEAL, but the truth is, unless you’re fully encased in body armor and heavily armed, bad things can happen to you when you’re alone in the dark.  So of course, my characters find themselves in situation after situation that requires wandering through dangerous territory in darkness.

Serial killers creep me out.  (And if they don’t creep you out, please don’t tell me, because then I’ll be a little creeped out about you.)  The Buka character in The Sworn and The Dread was a Ripper-esque psychopath who terrorized a city that was already on its last nerve.  He was important to the plot, but I can’t say I enjoyed writing his sections.

I’m a mom, so I really hate it when bad things happen to kids (or dogs). The scenes in my books where innocents get hurt are the scenes that I find most disturbing to write, but they’re necessary to establish the stakes of the game, and to evoke the reader’s understanding of why the hero will go to extremes to eliminate the perpetrator.

I think that writers write about things that scare them as a way of gaining control over the unknowable.  And I suspect that readers read about things that frighten them because it imparts a sense of vicarious victory when the good guy beasts the evil in the shadows.

So here’s to the things that creep us out, without which stories would be a whole lot safer—and much less interesting.

Please enjoy this excerpt from “Among the Shoals Forever,” my short story in The Mammoth Book of Women’s Ghost Stories: https://www.4shared.com/office/e5deWqV_/An_Excerpt_from_Among_the_Shoa.html

And an excerpt from “Buttons”, my short story in the Magic: An Anthology of the Esoteric and Arcane here: https://www.4shared.com/office/20nwnf1S/Buttons_excerpt_1.html

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by | October 24, 2012 · 8:00 am

Days of the Dead—Get Ready for Ice Forged!

For any fan of the supernatural, this week is the best time of the year. Samhain, All Hallow’s Eve, Halloween, Dia De Los Muertos all in one week—what’s not to love?

What’s up this year? For starters, Ice Forged—the first book in my new Ascendant Kingdoms series—will launch January 8. It’s available now for pre-order, but you can read four different excerpts for free on my Days of the Dead partner sites—and three sites will be offering giveaways where the lucky winners can get their hands on a copy right away!

I’ve also got two new short stories in two different UK anthologies, Magic: An Anthology of the Esoteric and Arcane (from Solaris Books) and The Mammoth Book of Women’s Ghost Stories. And even better, I’ve got free excerpts!

Drawings for signed copies of Ice Forged, so make sure you enter—you can’t win if you don’t play!

What are you waiting for? You can get in on all the Days of the Dead fun on a treasure hunt/Trick-or-Treat just by visiting these sites. And please, “like” my TheWinterKingdoms page on Facebook when you visit to get the goodies!

Here’s where the action is:

Remember—each partner site with an excerpt from Ice Forged has a different excerpt!

I’ll end with my favorite childhood blessing: “From ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggedy beasties and things that go bump in the night—good Lord, deliver us!” (Even better, deliver the books so we can read all about it!)

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by | October 19, 2012 · 8:50 pm

Lots of news—and a chance to get your hands on Ice Forged!

by Gail Z. Martin

I’ve been quiet for a while, but there’s a good reason!  I’m finishing up the sequel to Ice Forged—and Ice Forged won’t be in stores until January 8!

So here’s what’s up this Fall—and how you can connect:

  • Oct. 13 – 14 I’ll be one of the guest authors at the Carolina Renaissance Festival.  I’ll be signing copies of The Sworn and The Dread, and I’ll be doing a drawing for an advance copy of Ice Forged!
  • Oct. 24 – 31 is my annual Days of the Dead blog tour.  I’ll have more details soon, but you can count on excerpts from Ice Forged (and some giveaway advance copies!), all-new interviews and Q&A from me, a new podcast or two, and some surprise “treats” from my fellow authors in the form of free downloadable excerpts! Watch for details by email, on Facebook at The Winter Kingdoms and on my www.ChroniclesOfTheNecromancer.com site.
  • Nov. 9 – 11 I’ll be at Philcon in Cherry Hill, NJ—I don’t know my panel schedule yet, but I’ll post it on Facebook once I get it.
  • Dec. 2 I’ll be signing books at Books a Million in the Carolina Mall in Concord  NC(formerly Walden Books) from 1 – 3 pm
  • Dec. 8 I’ll be signing books at Books a Million in Concord Mills in Concord NC from 1-3 pm
  • Jan. 8 Ice Forged comes out!  (You can preorder online now!)
  • Jan. 12 I’ll be signing Ice Forged at the Books a Million in Concord Mills NC from 1 – 3 pm
  • It’s official!  I’ve been invited to Arisia in Boston Jan. 18 – 20
  • Also official!  I’ve been invited to Chattacon in Chattanooga, TN Jan. 25 – 27
  • Feb. 2 I’ll be signing Ice Forged at Park Road Books in Charlotte from 2 – 4
  • Look for me at Shevacon in Roanoke, VA Feb. 8 – 10
  • I’ll be back in Roanoke for Mysticon Feb. 22 – 24

I’ll be doing some cool things on GoodReads for Days of the Dead and for Ice Forged’s launch, so if you aren’t already connected, please “friend” me to be in on the news!  And if you haven’t “liked” The Winter Kingdoms on Facebook, that’s another place to get some exclusive goodies!

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by | September 17, 2012 · 9:43 pm

Paranormally Speaking

By

Tina R. McSwain

Things that make you go….hmm

In the past two weeks, there have been two articles on preparing for a Zombie Apocalypse, one from the US Department of Homeland Security, and the other, telling us that the US Military and local Law Enforcement Officers will recieve training on how to deal with the problem.

Links to follow:

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/06/homeland-security-warns-the-zombies-are\ -coming_n_1862768.html?1346969251&ncid=webmail6

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/17/zombie-apocalypse-training-halo-corp_n_1889724.html?ncid=wsc-huffpost-cards-headline

Hmm….indeed!

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by | August 29, 2012 · 10:33 am

When the room is spinning….

by

Crymsyn Hart

After finally recovering from an inner ear infection that left me reeling for six weeks, I think the room has finally stopped spinning enough for me to focus on things. It was hard though to make the ground stay put when I was on vacation a couple of weeks ago, but I firmly told it not to move and it did. At least for a little while.  However, it did not work so well with my characters.

While all I wanted to do was write and let my muses have full run of my hands, that did not work out so well. Every time I sat in front of the computer, it went a little fuzzy and my eyes seemed to cross. So I recommend when you are dizzy not trying to type anything out unless you can deal with the spinners.  It gets even worse when your muses decide to twirl and twirl inside your mind, which made me even dizzier and then they wanted to talk to me and write. So I ended up with a pen and a notebook.

In many ways writing by hand is cathartic and I enjoy it a lot. On the other hand, I can only do it for so long before my hand cramps up and I get more work done by typing rather than by writing longhand. But it is great because that is all I used to do when I was writing in high school.

So my lesson while being sick, even if the room is spinning and your muses resemble a whirling dervish, writing is still possible, even if I can’t read my own chicken scratch.

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by | August 16, 2012 · 9:31 am

The End of the World As We Know It

by Gail Z. Martin

My newest book, The Dread: Book Two in The Fallen Kings Cycle, confronts a medieval world on the brink of a “War of Unmaking.”  Plague, famine, civilian unrest, pretenders to the throne, usurpers, traitors and a foreign invasion—along with betrayals large and small—have set the monarchies of the Winter Kingdoms on a collision course with war.  The stakes are huge, and no matter who wins and who loses, neither the kingdoms nor the main characters will ever be the same.

Sure, I drew on ancient Asian, Sumerian, and Celtic/Norse mythology, as well as my own fevered imagination to conjure up this war-torn world, but I’m certain that the angst in modern headlines had some subconscious influence over the decision to set in motion a cataclysm that changes the course of history.

I also blame some of it on my undergraduate training as a historian, taught by professors who saw flashpoints in history more as a confluence of trends rather than the handiwork of a single “great man.”  Where a single individual rises to such prominence as to seem capable of personally changing history, I’ve been taught to look deeper, to see the societal, religious, financial, cultural and other shifts that made it possible for the “great man” to come to the fore and achieve such prominence.

Personally, I find this a more interesting reading of history than seeing an endless procession of heroes and villains who are larger than life.  And as an author, I think that the idea that those who become heroes and villains stand astride the crest of a great flow of other circumstances makes a story much more intriguing as well.  While my characters always have choices, both they and the readers should feel that other forces are pressing toward particular options, or making other choices unsatisfactory.  Sometimes, the hero chooses to swim against the tide. In other situations, he (or she) rides the swell, realizing how little control they have over the rushing torrent, trying to make the best of it.  Throw magic, active deities, and two groups of immortal enemies into the equation, and all bets are off.

Part of the fun for me with epic fantasy is having a big enough canvas to set up this kind of cataclysm and bring the reader along for the ride.  The story that begins in The Sworn: Book One of the Fallen Kings Cycle, finds its conclusion in The Dread, but those who have been with me for all four preceding Chronicles of the Necromancer books will find old loose ends tied up and unfinished business brought to a close.

So is this the end of adventures in the world of the Winter Kingdoms?  No.  But my surviving characters do deserve a little rest!  So while the survivors rebuild, I’ll be bringing out a brand new series, The Ascendant Kingdoms Saga, from Orbit in 2013.  Time to start the mayhem all over again!

You can find The Dread in stores and online everywhere.  For more about my books, please visit www.ChroniclesOfTheNecromancer.com, and like me on Facebook.com/WinterKingdoms.  I blog at DisquietingVisions.com, host author interviews at GhostInTheMachinePodcast.com, and tweet @GailZMartin.

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by | August 9, 2012 · 9:29 am

What are some things you learned from writing fantasy?

by Gail Z. Martin

Q:  What are some things you learned from writing fantasy?

A:  One thing I’ve learned is a definite respect for the hardships which our ancestors endured—plague, famine, lack of clean water, lack of indoor plumbing and central heat, high mortality rates from curable conditions, etc.  At the same time, I’m intrigued by how much joy they were still able to take from life through family and friends, small comforts and conveniences, celebrations and holidays, and good food when there was food to be had.

I’m in awe of what they were able to do with the technology that they had to work with, whether it’s the invention of war machines such as those DaVinci designed, or the creation of complex water and sewer systems, or the sheer temerity to sail across an ocean without modern communication and navigation tools.  And then there’s the cooking.  I’m amazed at the complicated recipes they created to be cooked over open flames or in “ovens” without any reliable temperature control!

I’ve learned a lot about medieval weapons and society, not in a bookish sort of way, but by needing to apply what I learned from history and then live with it in the skin of my characters.  It’s one thing to read about something.  It’s another to put yourself into the moment and have to live with it.

I’ve also learned how much contemporary stories rely on instantaneous communication and modern travel speeds, neither of which were available in the medieval world of epic fantasy.  This has major plot ramifications.  If something happens on one battlefield, there is no way to get word to someone hundreds of miles away faster than a horse and rider can travel, unless you use magic (but magic must be unreliable to avoid being a cheat).  We don’t think about those kinds of delays today, but they were very real throughout most of history.  If a character needs to go to a distant place, they’re constrained by how fast a man can walk or how fast a horse can sustain a gallop.  Especially in battle scenes, these two issues are crucial, because there is no good way to communicate among far-flung  battlefields, no way to know real-time information, no fast way to move an army from here to there.  These kinds of things make a big impact on how you can tell the story, what can be known by your characters, and what options are open to them.

I’ve also learned fun things, like word origins.  For example, people have been retching since 1540,  puking and heaving since the 1600s, but only barfing since the 1960s.  They’ve been pissing since the 1300s and leaking since the 1500s, but they didn’t start to pee until 1788.  If your character needs to do one or the other, you’ve got to get the historically correct term. These things are important for a writer to know!

 

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by | August 2, 2012 · 9:36 am

Warrior Queen Mommy Wars

by Gail Z. Martin

I survived the Mommy Wars of the 1990s.

Back then, it wasn’t enough to make a decision on what was right for your individual family in terms of going back to work after having a child.  According to the media-induced frenzy, it was necessary to state your choice as a moral absolute, and to regard those who made a different choice (regardless of their rationale or circumstances) as the enemy.  Oddly enough, when about 80% of women with small children went back to work in some capacity, the Mommy Wars lost steam as a polarizing issue and we all went on with our lives without experiencing the apocalypse.

I bring this up because while it takes a village to raise a child in the most positive sense, those same villages often impose tight culturally-proscribed limits on how “good” mothers are supposed to act.  What happens when your vows as queen and heir to the throne conflict with your responsibilities as the mother of a young infant?

Most of the kick-butt female characters in modern fantasy are conveniently single and childless (with the exception of the Carpe Demon series).  In my book, The Dread, one of my main characters, Kiara Sharsequin Drake, must make a no-win decision.  When her father, King Donelan of Isencroft is murdered by a usurper’s assassin as the kingdom stands at the brink of war with a looming foreign invasion, Kiara, as heir to the throne, is the only one who can unify and lead her people.

Seems like a clear choice. Except that Kiara is married to King Martris Drake of Margolan, a marriage that is both love match and political arrangement, and she has just given birth only a few months before.  Her infant son is not quite “right,” and no one knows exactly why.  She is also a few months pregnant with a second child, one who might stand to inherit both thrones if the first son is incapable of ruling. The crowns of two kingdoms hang in the balance.

“Family” issues make it even harder.  The two kingdoms have a long history of mistrust.  Many within Margolan view their new queen as an outsider with questionable motives.  Many in Isencroft view the marriage and resulting joint throne as tantamount to treason.  A usurper backed by a powerful foreign force has landed to stake his claim to the Isencroft throne.  Martris Drake has already taken Margolan troops to fight a multi-pronged foreign invasion.

Should Kiara stay or should she go?  If she stays, she abandons her own kingdom in its moment of dire need.  But by doing so, she could remain with her infant son and protect him amid the instability of what has become a world war.  If she goes, leaving her son with trusted protectors, her new subjects will consider it desertion, and her political enemies will brand her both a faithless queen and a bad mother.

As I wrote The Dread, I realized that while kings are rarely censured for their suitability as fathers, history makes many judgments about how well queens performed as mothers.  (Remember the criticism lodged against Queen Elizabeth II during the Princess Diana years?)  This made Kiara’s subplot all the more interesting to me because she not only had political choices to make and physical hardship to face, she also had to confront personal, social and cultural expectations around her role as a mother. There’s no way she can make everyone happy.  No matter what she chooses, she’ll feel agonizing guilt (ain’t in the truth), and she will be her own harshest critic.

To my thinking, bringing in the Mommy War dynamic makes Kiara easier for readers to identify with, because while few people in real life are warriors and fewer still are royalty, if you have children, you’ve felt pulled apart when one set of urgent duties conflicted with your beliefs about how a “good” mother should act.

How does she resolve it?  Imperfectly.  As most of us, I suspect, have done in real life, she weighs her options, looks at the pros and cons, tries to envision the long-term repercussions and potential damage, and then makes her choice, knowing that no matter what she chooses, a part of her  heart will break, and half of the onlookers will vilify her.  If you’re reading this and you’re a mom, you’ve been there, and so have I.

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by | July 25, 2012 · 4:54 pm

Two or More Names

 By

Crymsyn Hart

Writing can be hard and it can be fun depending on how are characters are doing that day. If they are in a bad mood, then good luck trying to woo them. Sometimes, the characters break into multi-personalities and make life interesting.

Besides the characters, even the authors can have a bad day or we can split into other personalities as well. It seems that is what is happening to me lately. Other authors write under different names for various reasons. Some is to protect their personal identity. Others do it because they write in different genres and it would clash with another identity. That is where I’m at.

I don’t write under my own  name because of the industry I work in. Besides that I write erotic romance novels and also horror. Erotic Romance and Horror don’t really mix so I’ve had to come up with another name for the horror genre as it is more explicit. So we will see where it goes.

I never thought I would want to write under another name because I could not think in another personality. However, that has been happening lately. It’s hard to have another voice inside my head. Some people think I’m crazy. Maybe I am. *Evil Laugh*

But now I have two personalities that will be inundating the market. I can only hope that I won’t have another personality spring forth. Others do, and that is awesome. I just wonder if I’ll be able to juggle three.

We shall see.

 

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