Urban fantasy v. epic fantasy

May 14, 20145 Comments

Today I’m happy to have fantasy author RJ Blain here with a guest post on why she strayed from epic fantasy into the realm of urban fantasy for her newest novel, Inquisitor, and the differences between the two genres. Inquisitor goes on sale Friday – be sure to stop back for an excerpt from the book, details about the author, and more.

Urban Fantasy vs Epic Fantasy

My first two novels, Storm Without End and The Eye of God, fall under epic and traditional subgenres of fantasy, making them rather different than Inquisitor, my debut urban fantasy. This is something I get comments about fairly frequently, because most fantasy writers pick one or the other, rather than both.

I’ve even had people suggest the only reason I wrote urban fantasy was because it’s a popular genre. Sure, it’s popular—but so is Game of Thrones. That’s epic fantasy, with boobs and blood, but definitely epic fantasy.

For the record, I’m not much of a fan of Game of Thrones. So yes, I am an oddity.

So why write both? The answer is pretty simple: I like both. It’s natural for me to pursue my interests. That’s why I write; I find it engaging, interesting, fun—and best of all, other people seem to like my books.

I write epic fantasy because I have a story to tell. I write traditional fantasy because I have a story to tell. I write urban fantasy because I have a story to tell.

While my reason for writing these three subgenres is the same, how I write them is totally different.

No campfire? The horror!

May 7, 20148 Comments

Today, I’m happy to have Mark R. Hunter here to talk a little about his newest book, The No-Campfire Girls. A fellow member of the Ink Slingers League, he’s a pretty funny guy with a pretty insightful take on that most dreaded of questions posed to writers: “Where do you get your inspiration?”

Take it away, Mark!

Sometimes I’ll finish a manuscript, look back over the story, and think: “Where the heck did this come from?”

On the other hand, sometimes it’s pretty clear where I got my story idea.

Storm Chaser? “Hey, I think I’ll write a story about a storm chaser.” Of course, after the initial idea things went wildly out of control, starting with the fact that my storm chaser became, technically, a disaster photographer. But Disaster Photographer didn’t have quite the same ring to it.

Coming Attractions? My unpublished novel about effort to save a drive-in movie theater was birthed while I was sitting in a drive-in movie theater. Usually in those places it’s not birth that’s going on, but conception.

Okay, maybe I do know where most of my ideas come from. The newest book, The No-Campfire Girls, can be traced easily to its source, which was an attempt by the Girl Scouts to shut down my wife’s beloved childhood camp.

I don’t use the word beloved lightly.

And she’s not the only one: A grass roots campaign sprung up, probably from the roots, of people across the area who wanted to save their camp. My wife and I came back from a visit determined to find a way to help them.

The problem:

Blogging U. rocks my face off

April 26, 2014May 14, 201417 Comments

Over the last twelve days, I’ve been participating in WordPress’s Blogging 201 course (no, I did not grab the badge – I don’t know why). It’s been an absolute blast, and it’s also what prompted the recent design changes you may (or, if you’re like me and real observant, you may not) have noticed. Today is Day Twelve, and today’s assignment is to create a poll or survey to gather more in-depth feedback about what readers like and dislike about my blog.

I’ve been toying with the idea of adding a poll recently, anyway, so the timing of this seems like a great big hint to go ahead and do it. If you’re a regular reader here…

A wobbly review

April 2, 201415 Comments

I’m a bit late with this review. But, you see, I was waiting for my kids to finish reading the book so they could help with my review, and they’re slow. Or busy. Sometimes it’s hard to tell at our house, as 90% of the time, we’re all running around like chickens with our heads cut off.

Meanwhile, I read this in three days.

According to the author’s website, Snort and Wobbles started as a joke. I remember fondly its debut on authonomy and am quite pleased to see it finally in print. But what’s it about? Here, take a peek at the blurb:

Dragons are not real. Everyone tells you that. So what do you do when you are eight years old and meet a dragon living at the bottom of your garden? You have the adventure of your life!

When Wobbles and her family move into their new home…

Children of Shadows

March 31, 2014March 31, 201420 Comments

Today I’m proud to host my friend and fellow author, Joleene Naylor, as she tours the blogosphere promoting her latest Amaranthine novel, Children of Shadows. She was kind enough to tell me why she writes about vampires, and some of the challenges she faces in doing so. And stay tuned afterward – there’s a giveaway going on with some pretty awesome prizes.

Holy crap – I didn’t realize I just copied her words almost exactly till I glanced down just now. *sigh* Oh, well – to the guest post! 🙂

Hello! My name is Joleene Naylor, and I’m the author of the Amaranthine vampire series. I’d like thank Kay for hosting me today as I tour the blogosphere promoting my latest release, Children of Shadows.

A question most people ask me is why I write vampires. The truth is, it’s not the only thing I like to write. I’d actually like to do a fantasy series one day. But, right now I don’t have anything interesting to say in that genre. I don’t see any wrongs that need righted, or gaps that need filled, like I did with vampires.

When I started the Amaranthine series in 2005…

Thoughts for the day

March 25, 20144 Comments

No, it’s not blood. Someone had fun with the ketchup while Mommy’s back was turned.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately, mostly in a research vein as opposed to reading for fun (although I do enjoy my research). Here are a few things I stumbled across today that really spoke to me:

Real, life-long security comes not from the barrel of a gun or from being able to spy on your fellow citizens like a Stasi informant; it comes with less harsh extremes of wealth and poverty and increased access to health care and education. -David Byrne

Take a bunch of wolverines. Throw them into a roaring F5 tornado. That’s a toddler. It’ll tear through your home, shrieking and whirling about, scooping things up and depositing them elsewhere. It’ll lose things. It’ll destroy other things. It’ll change direction in the hair’s breadth of a moment — “I’m doing this no now I’m doing this other thing wait what’s that over there.” -Chuck Wendig

Then last year, after my illness, turning 40 and most recently the death of a good friend, I realised that life is just too damn short NOT to be doing what I love. The planets kind of aligned, one of those epiphany moments. -Sophie Tallis (emphasis mine)

All three articles are worth checking out in full (I truly related to Chuck Wendig’s post – I have two toddlers of my own, after all, and have felt the pain of a Duplo block embedded in my foot that he so hilariously references). Happy Tuesday, y’all!

Howdy!

March 24, 20142 Comments

The weather’s been a bit wild lately.

So I’ve been away for a while (yes, I know, a week isn’t exactly an eternity, but since I usually try to pop in here every couple of days, it is a while). I’ve been feeling a bit under the weather lately, so I haven’t been overly active anywhere.

But! I can say that within the next week, I’ll have a couple of bookish-type posts going up, as I’m currently reading Snort and Wobbles by the talented Will Macmillan Jones. Tadpole and Bubbles will be helping me craft a review, which I’ll post here as soon as we’ve finished. Then on Monday, I’m hosting the lovely Joleene Naylor as part of a blog tour for her recently-released book Children of Shadows, the sixth offering in her Amaranthine series.

And as our weather has given us no end of crazy lately, I hope to be back to posting some more lousy haiku in the near future. It’s not the only thing that’s crazy around here, but hopefully I’ll be back to my old self in no time, now that I’ve been to my doctor (again). So, in the meantime, I hope you’re all lovely and that you have a fabulous week, and I’ll see you when I see you! 🙂

How Star Trek improved my confidence in my writing skills

March 15, 20142 Comments

Seymour and I have been rewatching all things Star Trek since we were dating; we’ve taken care of the original series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and all the movies (although we’re not big fans of the reboot and I haven’t yet seen Into Darkness). We’re halfway through our Enterprise rewatch at the moment (which is great because it means I’m that much closer to a rewatch of my beloved Voyager), having started Season 3 the other night. Seymour’s been telling me about how awful the third season is; he’s not a big fan of the temporal cold war story arc or the Xindi story arc and frankly, I kind of agree with him on the temporal cold war thing.

Anyway, the point of this is that the season premiere of Season 3 had me laughing. And facepalming. The words, “What the hell?!” kept running through my head. Sure, it started off okay – recap of the season finale, Xindi council meeting, theme song (which sucks now – they completely ruined it by jazzing it up). But then they unveil the new command center, and that’s where it all went wrong:

Camera skills

March 4, 2014March 5, 20147 Comments

IMG_20140301_104334 Apparently, I’m not too shabby with a camera. I’ve been an amateur photographer for a good decade and a half now (a little over that, actually), ever since I got my first camera for Christmas, and it’s something I love. Most of the pictures that accompany my poems are ones that I’ve taken (unless otherwise noted). It’s so much fun; I can’t imagine not having a camera to play around with. And, while I do miss my old film cameras, it’s nice that with my DSLR, I can take as many pictures as I want without having to worry about paying to have bad pictures developed. Of course, this has also made me a little more careless, I think, in my composition, but such is life.

But I digress. When I post something new here, I usually head over to Facebook and share the link in a couple of groups I’m in. Last week, my post “Lonesome Call” gathered a bit of attention there, as someone found my photo of a lone tree in a field near my hometown particularly inspiring. She crafted a whole poem around the image, which I was quite flattered to read. Apparently it’s been making its way around the web via Facebook, from what I can tell. If you’d like to take a look for yourself, you can find it here.

If you decide to check it out, I hope you’ll enjoy. 🙂

How to keep things straight (or maybe not-so-straight)

March 1, 2014March 6, 201511 Comments

Today I’m excited to have Jim Webster here with a guest post. His book, Justice 4.1, releases today from Safkhet Publishing, and it sounds like a fantastic read. But don’t take my word for it – here’s the blurb:

When a journalist is shot down in a backward area of Tsarina, Haldar Drom of the Governor’s Investigation Office is sent to investigate. He uncovers a hidden medical facility dedicated to the production of Abate, a drug used for population control, as well as evidence of the implantation of pre-created embryos in women brought to Tsarina for the purpose. He also discovers a deeper plot with far-reaching political ramifications. A senior member of the Governor’s family, Doran Stilan, is running a personal feud with the major pirate/Starmancer Wayland Strang. Indeed, he begins to suspect that Stilan may even be angling to take Strang’s place.

The medical facility is destroyed after it is attacked by mercenaries hired by Strang, and Drom has to travel off world to untangle the threads of the conspiracy.

Arriving back on Tsarina, he has to deal with a failed Starmancer attack, punish the guilty, and arrange for Doran Stilan to get what’s coming without undermining the position of the Governor. To do this, he’ll need skill, know-how, and a whole lot of luck to ensure that the guilty face justice.

Talk about an action-packed book! That’s a lot of things to keep track of. With that in mind, here’s Jim to tell us a bit about how he keeps everything straight (or not-so-straight) while writing: