by john | Aug 7, 2011 | Vampires, Writing
With the release of Knight Moves this week, I thought I’d drop a little sample in here for you guys. As always, the book is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Once I get print copies formatted, they will be available online, at cons and here.
Chapter 1
I woke up with a beautiful woman staring down at me, her brown curls cascading over my face. I smiled into the dark eyes of Detective Sabrina Law. “This is a nice way to start an evening. I love the way your hair smells.” She straddled my waist fully dressed, but I had faith in my ability to fix that. Then I noticed she wasn’t returning my smile. Her expression wavered between betrayed and furious, and her green eyes were red-rimmed. I smelled the salt on her cheek and raised my head a little, surprised when she pulled back, scowling.
“Don’t move,” she said in a low, tense voice.
Not being one to listen much, I tried to sit up, then realized I was handcuffed to my bed. While not my normal thing, I wasn’t going to ask questions until I realized that the handcuffs were silver-plated, and that my skin was starting to blister from the exposure. I pulled experimentally at the restraints, got nowhere, then tried to move my legs with a similar lack of results. I started to get a little worried. When I saw that Sabrina still hadn’t so much as cracked a smile, I really started to worry. When I noticed the silver stake she had pressed against my chest, I became downright concerned.
“I didn’t mean it. Those jeans definitely do not make your butt look big.” I smiled, giving my best disarming look, to no avail. No surprise there. I’d always been the guilty-looking one, even before I became an undead creature of the night.
Sabrina looked down, disgust and anger coming off of her in waves, and poked the stake a little harder into my chest. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t shove this overgrown toothpick into your heart right now.”
“Ummm… my sparkling personality?” I tried one more time for humor, but my jokes were falling flatter than usual.
“Not even close, you parasite.” She pulled her arm back as if to jam the stake home, but just before she perforated me, she very quietly asked, “How could you?”
“How could I what?” I asked, just as quietly. I figured if a little quiet time was what the situation demanded, I shouldn’t argue. Besides, I had no idea why she was angry. I was no stranger to inspiring violence in other people, especially women, but this time I couldn’t come up with anything I had done to her specifically. And since it was close to impossible for me to get blackout drunk anymore, my memory was pretty solid.
“You know what, you monster!” She poked the stake into my chest a little. I couldn’t see what was going on, but I heard a sizzling sound as the silver came into contact with my blood.
I hadn’t known my blood would boil when touched by silver. “No, really, I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about! And you know my “stupid face” by now!” I tried again to twist away from the pointy bit.
“You murdered a girl tonight, Jimmy. You drained her dry and left her in a construction site. I saw the body, and I know a vampire kill when I see one. She was just a kid, and you threw her aside like a piece of garbage. I thought I knew you. How could you do that?” The look of betrayal in her eyes hurt almost as much as the silver stake. Almost, but not quite. Really, not even close to as much, but it still hurt.
“Sabrina, what the hell are you talking about? You know me better than that! I could never do that to someone.” I pulled against my restraints, desperate to do something, anything to make her stop looking at me as though I were a monster.
“I don’t know anything about you.” She just kept looking at me, eyes full of betrayal. That part hurt the worst, the look.
I twisted around again, then looked her in the eyes. “Sabrina, I swear to you, I didn’t kill anyone tonight. I didn’t even eat takeout! I was here all night with Greg watching Being Human reruns on Netflix. Go ask the svelte avenger if you don’t believe me!”
“No need to go anywhere, Detective. He’s telling the truth. And please get off of my partner. You’re distraught, and I’d hate for you to make a mistake and let him live.” Greg Knightwood, my partner and roommate, stood in the doorway to my bedroom wearing, of all things, baby-blue footie pajamas. A forty-year-old vampire in footie pajamas. I wasn’t sure which was worse, that I had to be rescued by the fat half of our Laurel and Hardy duo, or that he did it wearing footie pajamas. I finally decided that the pj-wearing was the worst part.
“Besides, I think he’s starting to enjoy it a little too much,” Greg added.
Sabrina blushed and got off of me, but she didn’t remove the cuffs. “Why should I believe you, Greg?” She got right up in my partner’s face. To be precise about it, she got way over my partner’s head because she had a couple inches on him, especially in her ass-kicking, dark red leather boots. I guessed when you were going to kill your friend, you dressed for the occasion.
“Because I didn’t shoot you in the back of the head.” Greg raised his 9mm, then holstered the weapon. I wasn’t sure where he kept a holster in his jammies, but right then I wasn’t interested in asking a whole lot of questions. “Now, shall we have a drink and talk about this like civilized people?” He turned and walked toward the living room. Sabrina watched his retreating back for a moment, looked back at me, then followed him.
“Hey kids, not for nothing, but you wanna uncuff me first? I gotta pee.”
Like it? Click Here to buy on Amazon. Barnes & Noble info coming soon.
by john | Aug 1, 2011 | Appearances, Real Life, Travel, Writing
Okay, there’s a lot going on, so I’m going to try not to ramble. I know, but I’m going to try.
First, The Irish Curse opens Thursday night, so I hope you’ll come check it out if you’re in the Charlotte area. It’s really a pretty good show, and by the time we open I should know all my lines!
Then Saturday, again for you Charlotte-area peeps, I’ll be teaching a workshop for the Charlotte Writers’ Club on Self-Publishing and Self-Promotion. If you’re interested in getting your work out there or getting more eyes on the work that you’ve already got out there, join me at the Providence UMC at 9AM. There’s more info to be found here. It will be a good time, and I think there’s plenty to share.
Knight Moves WILL be released August 14th, I’m happy to announce. This date is special to me for a bunch of reasons, most of which having to do with it being my 38th birthday. It also coincides with the first anniversary of me putting The Chosen on sale, so I’ll have managed to publish four novels in a year’s time, which is pretty good, if I do say so myself. Check out my Facebook page for more info on the online virtual release party I’m doing for the rest of August. I’m going to release the book at $2.99 through the end of the month, then it will go to its normal price of $4.99. I’ll also be taking pre-orders for the print version here as soon as I get it added to the Paypal widget over on the side of the page.
Just in time for Dragon Con I’ll have my next book out, so on Saturday night at Dragon Con I’ll be having a book release party! I’ll have some copies of Knight Moves with me, and some snacks and booze, so if you’re going to be at Dragon, let me know and I’ll get you the room number. I’ll also post it to Facebook and Twitter. Hopefully I can get one or two people to join me in this endeavor, so we can have a rockin’ part-ay!
Then in October I’ll be back in Columbia, SC for RoundCon 2011.1 – return of RoundCon! This will be the second RoundCon to feature a creative track, and I’m heading it up. That’s what happens when I open my big mouth! I’ve lined up some fantastic guests already, with more on the way, so keep your eyes peeled and if you’re anywhere near Cola-Town, come hang with us!
So that’s a lot of stuff going on, and somewhere in the middle of all that I have two books to finish and publish, and a 20th High School Reunion to go to!
by john | Jul 29, 2011 | Appearances, Writing
I know, all you’ve gotten out of me for a couple weeks now is a bunch of guest posts and my whining on Facebook about rehearsals and edits. So strap in, kids, there’s an honest-to-God blog post, written by me, coming. This may even be it.
Last weekend I was fortunate enough to weasel my way onto a couple of panels at Fandom Fest 2011 in Louisville, Kentucky. This was the first year Fandom Fest has had a literary track, and I met up with Stephen Zimmer at ConCarolinas back in June. He told me about the show, and I pestered him until he put me on a couple of panels. While I was there I met some great folks and wormed my way in as an impromptu moderator for a couple of panels that didn’t have one assigned, which was good practice for RoundCon 2011.1, coming up in October, which I’m heading up the literary track for.
Yes I know the grammar in that sentence was awful. But if you hold your head just right, it sounds better.
So, Fandom Fest. This is a fantasy/sci-fi con attached to a horror film fest, which made for some disturbing cosplay, but AWESOME t-shirt vendors. I picked up a couple of t-shirts from old movie posters, including the Texas Chainsaw Massacre shirt (in French) and the Fast Pussycat, Kill Kill shirt. I also got one that says “Quint’s Shark Fishing Tours, Amity’s Favorite since 1976,” which I kinda love. So I spent too much money on t-shirts. But I managed to avoid buying any books. Mostly because I just don’t read in print anymore. Everything I read nowadays is on my kindle or iPad, so I only buy print books when I really want the author’s autograph. And I’m not much of an autograph hound, so I don’t buy many print books.
Anyway, moving on. There were a TON of writers and publishers there, Stephen really did an awesome job in organizing things, bringing together a great lineup of talent and setting up some awesome panels. But he got boned by the con organizers, and being the nice guy that he is, Stephen stepped in to run a bunch of other stuff on top of what he was already slated to do, so he couldn’t really enjoy the weekend like he should have. And he had to bear the ire of any writer who didn’t have their stuff go perfectly. I didn’t see this happen, but it always does when you let humans get involved. He did the best job he possibly could have, but he was doing the work of four people, and it almost killed him.
And the hotel almost killed all of us. If you’re ever planning an event in Louisville, I strongly suggest you avoid the Fern Valley Hotel and Conference Center. It wasn’t really worth the $69 con rate. Not by a long stretch. The air crapped out on Friday, and the facility never recovered. There weren’t enough bartenders, and they weren’t particularly pleasant. The banquet services food was abysmal, and I actually walked out of the restaurant after waiting almost ten minutes for someone to bring me a menu and a glass of water. All the hotel facilities were terrible. The place felt, and smelled, like a Comfort Inn from circa 1980, and all they’d done was glass in the exterior entrances. The doors barely worked, and the hallway outside the room was hotter than anyplace I’ve ever been. And I’ve been to Vegas in July. One afternoon I went back to my room for an hour or so between panels, and when I left my room, the door handle was so hot I used a towel to open the door!
All that said, the con was still a good time, and I’d go back if it were in a decent hotel. At least something on the level of a Courtyard or Holiday Inn Express. All the people were nice, and I learned a TON. Not so much about the craft of writing, but that’s not what I was there to learn. I learned a lot about small press publishing, how it works and who some of the players are. I learned that just like everything else, there are major and minor players in the small press market, and I started to identify who was who. I’ve been thinking of shopping The Chosen around to small presses, because it could use a little editorial love, and I’d like to see what we could do with print sales if I had just a little better exposure. The book has decent e-book sales, so I’d like to keep those rights if possible, and the small press world is the only place I can find anyone willing to do that for me. But if the right offer came along, with the right developmental and promotional package, I’d sell all the rights.
Most of the writers there were published with small presses, and typically small presses that were exhibiting. There were a couple of folks who had New York publishing deals, or had them in the past, and a few self-pub folks like me. It was a good mix of writers, and I had a lot of fun hanging out with them in bars. Now I’m really looking forward to Dragon Con, where I can reconnect with these guys, as well as my other writer pals that I’ve made over the last year.
That’s enough drivel for today, I’ve got to go work on edits for Knight Moves. The hopeful release date of August 14 is looking better, but a lot depends on my proofreaders and my cover guy. I did knock together a temporary cover that I can live with if I have to, but I’d really like to relaunch the back stories with new covers and drop them all three at the same time. We’ll see. But it’s written, and I’m almost through with the first round of edits, so I have high hopes for getting it into people’s hands in the next two weeks!
by john | Jul 26, 2011 | Book Spotlight
Why Write Crime Fiction?
(or any other kind of made-up stuff that never happened…)
by Mary Anna Evans
Author of environmental thriller Wounded Earth
The protagonist in my thriller Wounded Earth, Larabeth McLeod, is the kind of woman who changes the world. I love her for that.
She sees a problem—polluted water or soil or air—and she invents a way to fix it. She uses that knowledge to found a company that employs lots of people. The world is a better place because she’s in it, and that’s one of the reasons readers cheer her on. The man who is stalking her, a man so evil that he calls himself Babykiller, is so angry at the world and at humanity that he’s willing to strike back in some terrible ways. Larabeth doesn’t intend to let that happen, despite the fact that fighting back could cost her everything.
Characters like these are a gift from God for a writer like me. They matter, but sometimes I ask myself, “Do I?” Don’t you ever doubt your place in the universe?
Someone please tell me I’m not the only neurotic soul who wonders whether she has earned her spot on the planet on any given day. When undergoing a bout of end-of-the-day emotional accounting, I feel good about having made sure my daughter had a balanced dinner or about recycling the cans that held the Coca-Cola I probably shouldn’t have drunk.
Mopping the kitchen floor and dusting the furniture don’t give the same karma-improving feeling. The floor and furniture will be dirty again tomorrow, so how exactly have I made the world a better place by cleaning them today? And don’t even get me started on laundry…
So where does my profession rate when it comes to making the world a better place? Am I wasting my time and talents by spending my days writing thrillers and mysteries? Should I go back to environmental engineering, where I have the opportunity to help our society learn to clean up its messes?
Really, one could ask these questions about any work of art. Lovely music, pretty pictures, graceful dancing, exciting stories…none of these things put food on the table. Yet art is what makes us human. It is the only tool we can use to communicate the wordless feelings in our hearts. I can’t show you my soul, but I can paint a picture of what’s in it. Even better, I could write you a story.
Human beings have been telling stories for all of time. Before we settled in cities, before we learned to grow our food, before we could even light a fire to cook that food, we told each other tales that shared important knowledge or that beat back the terrors of the night. Crime fiction is simply a descendant of those old, old stories.
I consider crime fiction to be the literature of justice. I introduce my readers to a world of my own design, then I set it askew in a dramatic way. Murder can do that. Then, slowly, I labor with Larabeth (or Faye Longchamp or whoever is my protagonist of the moment) to set that world right.
This isn’t always possible in real life. Crime goes unpunished and murderers do walk free. But in the tightly controlled world of my creation, justice can be served.
Sometimes, I dance along the boundaries of that justice. What is just is not always what is legal, and what is legal is not always what is just. By exploring that gray and murky boundary, I ask my readers to consider how they want their world to be. When they close my books, they go back into that world with ideas that are slightly different than they were before. Maybe they will be gentler with people who are different from them. Maybe they will stand up and say so when something is just not right.
I hope so. Because I think that asking people to think hard about right and wrong is an excellent way for a writer to earn her place in the universe.
Mary Anna is the author of environmental thriller Wounded Earth, as well as the awardwinning Faye Longchamp archaeological mysteries and Red Adept’s top short story collection of 2010, Offerings. All her work is available in ebook form. Wounded Earth and the Faye Longchamp mysteries are also available in print.
Website: http://www.maryannaevans.com/
Personal blog: http://maryannaevans.blogspot.com/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=527135843
Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/maryannaevans
Group blog: http://theladykillers.typepad.com/the_lady_killers/
by john | Jul 21, 2011 | Appearances, Real Life, Theatre, Travel
I’m driving halfway to Louisville today, stopping off in Charleston, WV for a hopeful repeat of my last few trips there – in other words a little extra green in my pockets (and I need it after dusting off three buyins in our home game last weekend). Then Friday I finish my trek to Kentucky.
I’ll be doing a short reading Saturday night at 10PM – probably a brief segment from Hard Day’s Knight and maybe a piece from The Chosen. Then Sunday morning I’m on a panel about finding alternative sources of writing income, which I’ve certainly done plenty of in my day. That panel’s at 9AM (ouch!), then I’ll hang around the con for a while before driving back to West Virginia, crashing for the night and finishing the trek on Monday. My plan is to spend every morning writing, then be at the con all afternoon and evening, so you can probably find me wherever cheap, crappy beer is served.
I also have to spend a couple of hours each day drilling on my lines for The Irish Curse. Rehearsals are going very well, and I think it’s going to be a great show, but our off-book date is Sunday, so since I’m not there I’d damn sure better have my lines down when I get back on Monday night. I also have Tuesday written off as a vacation day, so if I still have line issues I may stay home and work on them all day Tuesday. Probably not, though, because if I have a spare vacation day I should save it for opening week, when I know I’ll be absolutely exhausted.
This has been a great time, working on the show, but my word count is in the toilet. I just don’t have enough energy for three things – work, writing and theatre. So writing has been relegated to a back seat until the show opens, which I’m less than thrilled with. Lesson learned – if I’m going to do a show, pick a time when I don’t have a book in progress.
Knight Moves is at the editor’s right now, so I’m looking hopefully at an August release. If I can get the edits and rewrites done, and a cover done I’m going to push to have it out by my birthday, which is August 14th. That also marks one year since I release The Chosen, so I’d have released four books in my first year, and I think that would be pretty good output. I also have a couple of other exciting things percolating, but they’re not quite ready to talk about publicly yet, so I’m gonna go try and hammer out a couple thousand words, then pack and drive for half a day.
