Carniepunk Giveaway and Tour!

So, I'm sitting in my kitchen working at my laptop, as far as you know, when the doorbell rings. As any normal human being would, assuming there was a solicitor at the door or a sappy-eyed child selling diet-busting candy, I reached for my gun and slipped to the floor to avoid detection. Creeping across the hall, I lifted my head just in time to see the bestest shit-brown truck that ever existed barrel away leaving a puffy beige package on my doorstep, just like an unwanted baby...or THIS...

YESSSSSSS!!! Carniepunk ARCs came!!! Now, some of you may know that this literary wonder was the brainchild of my friend and fellow Reluctant Adult, Kevin Hearne, author of such Iron Druidness as HOUNDED and star of a certain Single Ladies Dance Spectacular, featured here (feel free to witness that particular madness as you continue to read toward the inevitable contest):

As excited as I am about my story in CARNIEPUNK (July 23rd), THE SWEETER THE JUICE (a post-apocalyptic zombie horror-comedy, with drug-addicted trannies and port wine stains), I'm just happy that this beast of a book will soon be in the hands of our friends and fans! As I was saying, Kevin brought this up quite a while ago and was diligent in making it happen. Much more than I would have been, because...wait, what, celebrity gossip? Distractible is the word you're looking for. 

Anyway, as many of the League of Reluctant Adults as could make the time (Kevin and myself, Jackie Kessler, Kelly Meding, Allison Pang, Nicole Peeler, and Jaye Wells) and some other fun folks (Rachel Caine, Kelly Gay, Hilary Jacques, Delilah S. Dawson) offered up stories and time and lickety split (I don't know what that means, but it sounds dirty) and with the help of Suzie Townshend, agent provacateur, the anthology was snapped up by the lovely and talented Adam Wilson over at Simon and Schuster, some other folks joined on (Seanan Maguire, Jennifer Estep, Rob Thurman) and now it's in my sweaty palms, pages puffing with moisture. 

 You want it? Well, I'll tell you how to go about that little miracle in a sec, but first...a TOUR! So excited are we that you'll be able to read this treasury of weird that we've organized a very brief regional tour. TEXAS to be exact. Me, Jaye Wells (Red-Headed Stepchild), Nicole Peeler (Tempest Rising), Kevin Hearne (Hounded) and Liliana Hart (Breath of Fire) will be visiting barbecue joints, roadhouses and occasionally a bookstore for signings. You can read all about that on our event's facebook page! Go there and invite your Texan friends now (as that's part of the contest). Don't worry, there are lots of parts to the contest so you'll get your shot even if you pussy out on helping our little tour be a success. No worries, we hate it when people come to see us, preferring rather to stare blankly into quiet spaces while our books gather dust... Sorry. 

 Where was I? Ah yes, contest. Simply use the rafflecopter widget below to enter and follow us and do all that shit and you could WIN! The contest is open internationally and will go for a couple of weeks. I'll announce the winner on May 6th! Now get to it! a Rafflecopter giveaway

CarniePunk!

So if you haven't heard by now, the CarniePunk anthology officially has a cover and a release date of July 2013!

Featuring several of our own Leaguers, we've got some delicious short urban fantasy stories for you to read!


A star-studded urban fantasy anthology featuring bestselling authors Rachel Caine, Rob Thurman, Seanan McGuire, Jennifer Estep, and Kevin Hearne, whose stories explore the creepy, mysterious, and, yes, sometimes magical world of traveling carnivals.

The traveling carnival is a leftover of a bygone era, a curiosity lurking on the outskirts of town. It is a place of contradictions—the bright lights mask the peeling paint; a carnie in greasy overalls slinks away from the direction of the Barker’s seductive call. It is a place of illusion—is that woman’s beard real? How can she live locked in that watery box?

And while many are tricked by sleight of hand, there are hints of something truly magical going on. One must remain alert and learn quickly the unwritten rules of this dark show. To beat the carnival, one had better have either a whole lot of luck or a whole lot of guns—or maybe some magic of one’s own.

Featuring stories grotesque and comical, outrageous and action-packed, Carniepunk is the first anthology to channel the energy and attitude of urban fantasy into the bizarre world of creaking machinery, twisted myths, and vivid new magic.

OOO


Rachel Caine is the New York Times bestselling author of the Morganville Vampires series, the Weather Warden series, the Outcast Season series, and the new Revivalist series!

Delilah S. Dawson is an artist and an associate editor on CoolMomPicks.com. She lives with her family in Atlanta, where she is currently writing the next Blud novel.

Jennifer Estep is the New York Times bestselling author of the Elemental Assassin urban fantasy series for Pocket Books and also writes the Mythos Academy young adult series.

Kelly Gay is the author of an urban fantasy series featuring Charlie Madigan. A two-time RITA Award finalist, she resides in North Carolina.

Mark Henry is an adult urban fantasist, comedic horror writer and unrepentant smart-ass. His work has been translated into garbled slurs by notable alcoholics. He lives on the fringe of Seattle society with his saintly wife and assorted hairy monsters.

Hillary Jacques is an up-late, Alaska-based author of speculative fiction. Her romantic urban fantasy Night Runner series is published under pen name Regan Summers.

Jackie Kessler writes about demons, angels, superheroes, supervillains, and, in her semi-secret identity as a YA author, Riders of the Apocalypse. She lives near Albany, NY, with her Loving Husband and Precious Little Tax Deductions.

Seanan McGuire is the New York Times bestselling author of the InCryptid series and the October Daye series, which earned her the John W Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2010. The Newsflesh trilogy, published under the pseudonym Mira Grant, earned her the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2011.

Kelly Meding was born and raised in Southern Delaware and discovered Freddy Krueger at a very young age, and has since had a lifelong obsession with horror, science fiction, and fantasy. She writes the Dreg City urban fantasy series and the superhero-based MetaWars series.

Allison Pang, a biologist in a former life, spends her days in northern Virginia working as a cube grunt and her nights waiting on her kids and cats, punctuated by an occasional husbandly serenade. Sometimes she even manages to write. Mostly she just makes it up as she goes. She loves Hello Kitty, sparkly shoes, and gorgeous violinists.

Nicole D. Peeler resides outside Pittsburgh to teach in Seton Hill’s MFA in Popular Fiction. When she’s not in the classroom infecting young minds with her madness, she’s writing manga and the Jane True urban fantasy series.

Rob Thurman is the New York Times bestselling author of the supernatural thriller All Seeing Eye, the gritty urban fantasy Cal Leandros series, the Trickster Novels, and standalone thriller-suspense novels.

Jaye Wells is a USA Today-bestselling author of urban fantasy novels about magical vampires and junky wizards. She loves to travel, drink bourbon and do things that scare her. Jaye lives in Texas.

A Corpse of Mistaken Identity

I can't tell you exactly how the word Zaomancer first popped into my head, but I can give you a good idea.

Usually those moment of character creation happen very much on the back burner for me. Eric Courtney, from my Void City series, came from some point between High School and college when I was playing in a friend's roleplaying game. Eric's mad, murderous daughter Greta just showed up on the page as I wrote, but the protagonist of my new novella happened on a three-way call one afternoon.


I'd just heard about the death of a very cool guy in fandom. Giving his name might be a little disrespectful as I'd just met him and spoken with him for all of thirty minutes (valuable minutes I hope readers will find once they see the epic fantasy I've had lurking on my WIP list for the past several years). My friend Rob and I were talking about random stuff and my friend Richard cursed.

"What's wrong?" I asked

"I have to resurrect a database," he grumbled.

That's all it took. One nanosecond I had no idea for a character who could use the breath of life to raise the dead, imbue life into inanimate objects (aging himself in the process)... and the next second he sprang to life fully formed with not only some truly long reaching implications for the Void City gang, but a slew of novels, novellas, and short stories to adventure in all on his own, too.

What I said out loud was, "That's what we need: a resurrectionist."

But... I didn't like the sound of resurrectionist and neither did my wife. Thus Zaomancer.

I can't wait for folks to see how Richard a.k.a. Marlo Morne gets along with Greta when they eventually have their big adventure, but if you'd like to see a glimpse of him in his own little pocket of the Void City universe, just a short side trip away in Birmingham, Alabama, you can check him out in A CORPSE OF MISTAKEN IDENTITY.

 

Posted with Blogsy

My shocking and woeful cover drama...and yet another new cover!

Cross-posted from the Thrillionth page...

So, as I told everybody in tarnation on Wednesday, Mr. Real got an awesome new cover! And now I’m not going to use it!!

Not the new cover anymore!

I was so excited about the cover, too! Because the angsty guy image captured the sweaty and muscular and tortured nature of my athletic hero, Paul. My fabulous designer and I were so psyched to find him. (Su of Earthly Charms, who I can’t recommend enough! She is amazing!)

We got the angsty guy image from a royalty-free stock site, where you look for pictures you like and then pay for the rights to use them. It’s where pretty much everyone who doesn’t have thousands of dollars to spend on a live model shoot or exclusive custom art or photography gets their images. The thing is, different people can pay to use the same photo. That’s why you often see the same images on different books.

And why you see funny posts like this one that my naughty friend Chris makes in her “Misadventures in Stock Photography" series. 

So, I wasn’t too shocked when, as soon as I released the cover, I discovered angsty guy had appeared elsewhere. It’s an awesome photo! I can’t believe more people didn’t buy the rights to it. Here, a few other books I found out about after releasing my cover:

The big problem here: Juliana Stone!! *shakes fist at Juliana* (not really, she’s actually really nice). But I learned her e-novella, TO HELL AND BACK, far right, releases the exact same day as mine and it is the same genre.

Why?!?! Whyyyy?!?!

There’s nothing illegal about our having the same photo – her publisher and I both paid the same money to get the non-exclusive rights to use it. But Juliana and I are both working in the paranormal genre, both have black color schemes, and both release on OCTOBER 30!!! What are the odds of that you ask? (Shoutout to Jeffe Kennedy). 

The odds you will discover your awesome photo of a sweaty tortured guy 

is already being used...

So, needless to say, I was totally mortified to learn all this. Mostly because of reader confusion. I don’t want readers trying to buy my book and getting Juliana’s, or vice versa. That’s bad for both of us, and for our readers. So I immediately went to work on thinking of what to do!!

My scientific decision-making process 

on what to do about this cover problem!!

Anyway, designer extraordinaire Su and I talked about keeping angsty guy and just making the cover look radically different, and she mocked up a few ideas, like one with angsty guy in a field of electric blue with lightning, and one where he’s pulled way up to the front. But, none was as fabulous as her first one. This guy begs for a cover of angsty darkness.

In the end, I decided I needed a new model.  Juliana’s was out there first, and hey, I have no shortage of angsty, hot, tortured heroes coming up in the Code of Shadows series to use that photo for, but, just not on the same release day. I don’t want readers to be all WTF on release day.

I think it’s the right thing to do in this case, though I feel like a total freak for changing the cover around again. And, not to embarrass Su of Earthly Charms but she has been so amazing and nimble in getting all this handled. And responsive and talented and fabulous. And managed to whip out an amazing cover.

Anyway, Here is my new NEW cover!! 

The total, final, for sure cover!!!!

I’ll confess, I love this cover just a tiny bit more for this book, because I feel this model beautifully captures the tortured hotness of my hero, Paul, who is a fighter. Also, I love the big title, too, how it pops. And I feel like the layout looks fresh. And I swear to you, this really IS the last cover.  PLEASE! Let there be not clones to cause confusion. Pleeeeease!!! *klunk*

 I am so grateful to everyone for all your support and all my pals who gave me advice, and retweeted my cover news....and I'm sorry to all bloggers who put up my cover and now have to change it. Okay. Deep breath!! 

About Mr. Real:

Mr. Real is a paranormal romantic suspense/spy novel. Quick description: 

A lonely girl uses an occult computer program to bring a sexy spy from a TV ad to life. The actor/fighter who plays the character  - and has come to hate him – is not amused. 

It comes out in print and ebook on October 30th. More info here.

Still breathing

Where have I been? Trying to stay alive, brothers and sisters.

Big secret project numbero uno: Working on the next Felix Gomez story. To be published as an ebook, soon. Title: Rescue from Planet Pleasure

Big secret numbero dos: My YA novel, the University of Doom, with its own website, ribbed for your viewing pleasure. Depending on the breaks, expect the manuscript to to be published with fanfare worthy of the Second Coming! Or as an ebook.

I'm juicing the buzz with these Lego videos.

The Hallowed Ones: authorly interview + lightning giveaway!

I've been so excited about THE HALLOWED ONES, the debut YA novel by author and pal Laura Bickle featuring an Amish heroine fighting terrifying vampires. And yesterday was her release day! And today she's here. 

A bit about the book: 

Katie is on the verge of her Rumspringa, the time in Amish life when teenagers can get a taste of the real world. But the real world comes to her in this dystopian tale with a philosophical bent. Rumors of massive unrest on the “Outside” abound. Something murderous is out there. Amish elders make a rule: No one goes outside, and no outsiders come in. But when Katie finds a gravely injured young man, she can’t leave him to die. She smuggles him into her family’s barn—at what cost to her community? The suspense of this vividly told, truly horrific thriller will keep the pages turning.

Welcome, Laura! 

CC: Laura, first, congratulations on the great reviews! All I hear is that it’s just riveting and scary and exciting and impossible to put this book down.

LB: Thanks so much! I’m over the moon to hear that folks are enjoying it!

CC: I think it’s interesting and dramatic that you have this Amish character, Katie, battling chaos and evil. Especially because I think of Amish settlements as places of great quiet and order, quite the opposite of chaos and monsters.

LB:  The chaos/order dichotomy is a key theme in the story. Katie is on the verge of her Rumspringa, the time when she can experiment a bit with the outside world. She wants to explore controlled chaos, the kind of exhilaration that we all want with pushing limits and determining what risks are good ones. It’s the bright side of chaos that makes us feel alive.

Instead, the outside world is overtaken by chaos. Katie’s community is a safe haven, but she knows that evil and silence are waiting beyond her fence. She learns bit and pieces of the story of what happened, but can’t know for sure.

And order does have a dark side. The Elders of Katie’s community fear contagion and declare that no one is allowed in or out of their land. Katie becomes aware of the constraints of order as she questions rules that disturb her own moral compass.

CC: Do you have an attraction to spaces of order?

LB:  I think there’s something very comforting about order. I crave it, but rarely achieve it. I mean, my desk is a disaster area.

CC: Is there something protective about Katie’s Amishness, or is it more about who she is?  

LB: Being Amish, Katie is a very quietly strong girl. Her background has given her a great deal of pragmatism and inner fortitude, and these are qualities she’ll need in order to survive.

CC: They say that fiction is more honest than non-fiction in many ways. I think that’s true. What’s most honest bit in this book?

LB: There’s a line that I love. It’s spoken by one of the older Amish women as she and Katie take on some difficult, gruesome tasks: “God smiles upon those who quietly do His dirty work.” The underlying lesson for Katie is that one’s actions prove one’s character. 

CC: Are you surprised by how people find THE HALLOWED ONES super scary, or did you go for that?

LB: I did intend for THE HALLOWED ONES to have a traditional horror vibe. Katie has to do some tough things because no one else can or will. I wanted the violence to have a purpose in forging a strong heroine…so I don’t recommend it for the easily-squicked.

The creatures that Katie must battle are nasty monsters. They want to devour pretty much everything they touch. I think that there’s something atavistic about the fear of contagion and of death, and I wanted Katie to feel that fully.

CC: As a fellow animal lover, I think you’ll understand why I’m asking this question: Katie raises puppies to make spending money. Do any dogs or puppies get hurt?

LB: Gah! No. If I even contemplated it, I’d be smothered to death by the cats that own me.

CC: Ravens figure into this tale. Can you say a bit about that?

LB: As an Amish girl, Katie is very connected to the natural world. One of the first signs she receives that something has gone terribly wrong in the world is the ravens – they leave in a great, thunderous black cloud.

There’s a legend about the Tower of London…that if the ravens ever leave, then the kingdom will fall. As a result, there are some ravens that are kept there with their wings clipped.

But it makes you wonder if there’s something the animals know that people don’t.

CC: Does this series follow your heroine, Katie, through all the books, and how many do you have planned?

LB: There will be two books. The second one, THE OUTSIDE, is also told from Katie’s perspective. It will be released by Houghton Mifflin Graphia in spring 2013.  

More about the book here. Excerpt here. 

LIGHTNING GIVEAWAY! 

Up for grabs: one copy of THE HALLOWED ONES, (print or ebook); print available wherever the Book Depository ships (which I believe is the whole world, so international) or in digital form, from the vendor of your choice, assuming they have a way to give it as a gift. 

Rules: 

1. International okay. 
2. Your email should be on your comment or I should be able to click to it from your name. 
3. To be entered, you must make a real comment on the interview or answer this question: What about you would a scary vampire have to fear most? 
4. Contest ends Thursday morning CST a few minutes after I turn on my computer. 

Anthology Announcement

Several of us (including my fellow Leaguers Kevin Hearne, Mark Henry, Jackie Kessler, Allison Pang, Nicole Peeler, and Jaye Wells) have been sitting on this news for a few months now, and it's finally time to spill the beans!

From Publisher's Marketplace:

Fiction: Sci-Fi/Fantasy: CARNIEPUNK, an anthology which combines the carnival setting and the world of urban fantasy, a place of deception, where monsters wait silently in the dark, featuring short stories by authors Rachel Caine, Jennifer Estep, Seanan McGuire, Rob Thurman, Delilah Dawson, Kelly Gay, Kevin Hearne, Mark Henry, Hillary Jacques, Jackie Kessler, Kelly Meding, Allison Pang, Nicole Peeler and Jaye Wells, to Adam Wilson at Pocket, for publication in August 2013, by Suzie Townsend at New Leaf Literary & Media.

I'm so excited to be part of this anthology with so many other amazing authors!  And the concept was a lot of fun to work with.  My story is called "Freak House" and is set in a completely new world, unrelated to my Dreg City and MetaWars books.

The anthology is coming out in August 2013 from Pocket.  We'll keep y'all updated as I learn more!