the league of reluctant adults

I've been trying to figure out why I refuse to panic over the Swine flu, despite the fact that the WHO seems to want me to cover my house in plastic and vaccinate everyone who enters, including my daughter's pet rabbit. Obviously people who have more education than I do are concerned, so I should be shaking in my shoes. I mean, it's killed like 1800 poor souls. Not as many as the regular flu (which wipes out between 250,000 and 500,000 lives every year) but, as the WHO says somewhat hopefully in its memos, the potential is there. I've decided it's all in the name. Swine flu. Or worse, H1N1. Come on, really? You science types have done it yet again. Totally stunk up a perfectly horrifying prospect with a crap descriptor. What you should've done was call Stephen King. Now that dude knows how to name a flu. If the WHO has released a letter to the public that said, "Captain Tripps is on its way to your town," I'd be so freaked by now I would...

A while back, JD entered our Rosemary and Rue ARC contest, but this was a contest with a catch, she'd have to review the book and become our very 1st guest reviewer.  We plan to do this as often as we can, so if you're an author who wants in, let Mark know. And here it is... ************************** I have to be honest, straight up – knowing I was reviewing ‘Rosemary and Rue’ made me read it with more of a critical eye than normal. My reading habits are exclusively for escapism so rather than reading this book for the sake of a good story (which is why I put my hand up for it in the first place), I was constantly thinking, asking myself and the book questions like ‘What does that character mean by that?’; ‘Why did that happen?’; ‘Where is the story headed because of this event?’    As a consequence, I figured out who was behind the mystery before the protagonist did. While the motive eluded me for a bit longer, I still worked it out before the protagonist. I finished the book...

Thom asked: "What was the secret origin of the League? What is the determining factor that seperates an LRA writer from the others? Basically, how did the cool kids get so cool and what makes them cool in the first place?" Dear Thom, The secret origins of the League are secret for a reason. If we told you we wouldn't have to kill you, but we would have to offer you as a sacrifice to Paco, Jackie's pet werechihuahua. He's small but he's mighty. Don't go there. Trust me on this. As for what separates the League writer from everyone else? Well, the truth is a League writer can't just be a good. No. A League writer must piss excellence. Also they can't have told us no when we asked them to join. That's pretty much our criteria. Now, on to the coolness question. I can't speak for the other Leaguers, but I became a cool kid by generous use of predatory snark and a devil-may-care personal style. In fact, I'm so cool, I'm actually a dork. P...

The winners of this week’s cover flats are… Jessica Kennedy Daelith Hockeyvampiress Jennifer Allen Lori Email me(at)markhenry(dot)us-- NOT mark(at)markhenry(dot)us that one will get you nowhere–and I’ll hook you up with the flat and somethin’ else swaggy. Have a good weekend y’all.

If you don’t have a twitter account but love making fun of horribly offensive television, well now you have a reason to follow me and Tor editor Heather Osborn on Twitter. Every Thursday we do a Twitter Commentary track of that week’s Toddlers and Tiaras. All you need to do to join in the fun is… 1. Set up an account at http://twitter.com 2. Follow mark_henry and HeatherOsborn 3. Record Toddlers and Tiaras 3. Start watching at 4:30 PST/7:30 Eastern and follow along on Twitter. It helps if you have an auto load twitter feed app, like Tweetdeck which you can download wherever. Get to it, bitches!

So... I think the idea is that we band of merry lunatics should answer the questions in the main LRA: WTF post in our own post so they're easy to find. And if I'm wrong... well, my being wrong is not particularly new to anyone. ;P I'll answer some of the questions in character and others... Eric: Good lord, would you stop talking about questions and f*cking answer one? [Enter, one vampire in "Welcome to the Void" t-shirt and jeans.] Me: Right okay, so Kiyote asked "How do you organize your writing? Outline or no? Notecards? anything?" Good question, Kiyote. I'm a panster so- Eric: I can believe that. Me: Believe what, Eric? Eric: I can believe you got pantsed a lot. Wait. That would be a Pantsee. Never mind. Go back to talking about your pants. Me: I start out with a character and a situation, an idea for a central conflict and rough idea of what the theme of the book is. Eric: Theme? [Eric raises an eyebrow.] Me: Yes, a theme. Eric: You're sayin...

As you all know, we're nothing if not helpful here at the League. Basically, we're givers. You know that. So to service you all as you deserve to be serviced, we're starting a new, um, service. Introducing the League of Reluctant Adults WTF? (LRA WTF? for short) feature. That's right, friends, we're answering your questions. Have a burning question about writing or publishing? We know some shit about writering and publishifying. Got a burning rash? We could probably recommend a good salve. Pretty much nothing is off limits. However, we reserve the right to delete anything offensive (our standards are pretty low though) or skip anything boring. Your questions will be answered by someone though. And you never know when one of our characters will step in to give you their two cents. So get busy, people. Help us help you. Do it now.

...but there are times where I can be quite productive. Take this past weekend. Pal-o-mine/Douche Extraordinaire, Mario Acevedo, showed up at my house and demanded we write a screenplay together. While there's nothing unusual about this occurrence--and, in fact, you might be saying to yourself, 'Damn it, Mario told me I'm the only one he's writing a script with'--it is quite unusual to knock out a first draft in 4 days. *shines up knuckles* AND...I'm kinda proud of the estimated 115 page (read minute) finished product... Here we are busting out either filthy sex, or hyper-violence, hard to tell... And, YES, that is a copy of Lynn Chancer's Sadomasochism in Everyday Life, thank you very much. My bookcase overfloweth with handy dandy sexuality-related texts. So, yeah, the rumors are true. There's gonna be an Acevedo/Henry script floating around out there. We don't know what's going to happen with it anymore than you do, but I'll be sure to let...

Happy Release Day to Michelle, Jennifer, Jeanne and Richelle! May this be the first step in the League of Reluctant Adults' eventual world domination!! Tune into my blog tomorrow for an interview between TALL DARK AND FANGSOME author Michelle Rowen and myself, in which we discovered that we are both charming and hilarious. Molly

The discussion at our house began, as many of them do, over something funny that happened on TV. We were watching part of the Little League World Series and trying to figure out why most of the kids on the Saudi Arabian team were blond-haired, blue-eyed boys with American accents. They were playing the kids from Japan, and during a timeout the Saudi pitcher asked his coach if he could (pause to put his glove beside his mouth when he remembered he was miked and the other team might have a spy watching the coverage somewhere else in the park), "Throw a curve ball inside." Yeah, he didn't whisper it quite low enough, so the whole world caught it anyway. My son (age 17) said, "Why did the kid bother whispering? The other team's from Japan. It's not like they can understand him." I gave him my you-know-better-than-that face and said, "Dude. Every kid in every developed country in the world learns English fluently. You know that. Why American kids...

The trivia contest at my blog is now open! The rules are simple. Send answers for five questions about NICE GIRLS DON'T HAVE FANGS, to my e-mail address. THEN provide a link to another blog, Myspace, Facebook, Yahoo Group, Tweet, Goodreads, or Shelfari post where you mention the release date of NICE GIRLS DON'T DATE DEAD MEN... as a good thing. You MUST come back to my blog's comments section and post those links in one response to qualify. The first person to answer all five questions correctly AND post a link in the comments section will win a complete signed set of Jane Jameson books - NICE GIRLS DON'T HAVE FANGS, NICE GIRLS DON'T DATE DEAD MEN and NICE GIRLS DON'T LIVE FOREVER. (I will ship internationally.) I will announce the results on Monday night. Thanks for playing! Molly

On Tuesday, August 25th, the League takes over the world! With books! And you can order 'em RIGHT NOW to ensure our global domination... TALL, DARK & FANGSOME Book 5 in the Immortality Bites series By Michelle Rowen Sarah Dearly's vampire life is not all B-positive cocktails. A curse made her a nightwalker, the most vicious vamp there is; the charm she wears to curb her deadly tendencies is losing its juice; and a hunter from hell is turning up the heat. Gideon Chase will kill the ones she loves most if she doesn't obey his orders – that includes breaking up with master vampire Thierry and turning Gideon into an immortal vamp via her bite so he can escape a doom of eternal hellfire.

Making things worse are Sarah's growing feelings for Gideon, a bad boy who keeps showing a vulnerable side…but is it for real? Will Sarah's dark side take over? Or can she cure herself of the nightwalker curse in time to stop Gideon and finally get the chance to live happily ever af...

My husband, David, recently flew from Nashville to LA for a conference. He's a people-watcher, so when he sat next to a guy who was editing a manuscript and checking query emails, he immediately concluded - literary agent. David's not a shy fellow, so he said, "You're literary agent, huh?" His seatmate got this "deer in the headlights" expression and tried to change the subject. David laughed and said, "Don't worry, I'm not going to spend the next three hours pitching my book." David explained about me being an author, the query process that led me to my agent, Stephany, and how much he's had to learn about the publishing industry in the last couple of years. They talked about how crowded the vampire romance genre is and what Stephenie Meyer accomplished with Twilight. The agent asked if I managed to go to RWA this year, as he had a client there. After the flight, someone pointed out that David spent the entire flight talking abou...

(This is being cross-posted from The Biting Edge because I thought everyone would like to see Mario peeing) Austin Airport Sunday 4:30 PM The one true thing about all conferences is that just about every writer I know is happy when it’s time to go home. This is true even at a writer-friendly, writer-oriented con like ArmadilloCon. The programming was interesting and unique. The presenter’s diverse. I had my pal Mario there with me. Still, I can’t wait to go home. Now—here’s the good stuff. We arrived on Thursday, a day before the official start of the Con to spend the day with Mario’s sister, Sylvia. She was a great hostess. She opened her home to me, a stranger, and even when I told her Mario lied and we WEREN’T lovers, hastily made the appropriate arrangements and I had my own room. She didn’t even mind when I said I wanted her to dish the dirt on her brother. Well, she didn’t have any dirt (evidently Mario was a PERFECT child—I wonder what that fairytale cost him) but she did have s...

So here's the latest gossip via some TV show I can't remember the name of because I live in a fantasy world most of the day so I'm lucky to recall the route to the grocery store. There are scientists piping messages out into the universe in the hope that some alien race, way the hell out there, has a funnel taped to its ear. These messages contain lots of info including music and math problems and, oh by the way...every little detail you'd ever wanna know about our DNA. No. I'm not kidding. Because apparently not one of these eggheads has ever seen a single episode of Dr. Who. Or they would totally understand that all the superior beings will have to do once they secure this information is develop a virus that's fatal to creatures with our DNA, shuttle it into our atmosphere and drop it in any large city. I figure we have two options. We can evolve. Which, considering these scientists are supposed to be our best and brightest, I don't see much of a ch...

I am a HUGE fan of Charlaine Harris ’s books. Not least because reading Dead as a Doornail inspired me to write Tempest Rising . I’d never read a fantasy book like it (not because they’re not out there, but because I hadn’t read fantasy for about 10 years), and the tone was so different from the "serious" fantasy I loved but I’d always known I could never emulate. The first thing that struck me about Harris’s novel was that, while the heroine was heroic, it was in an entirely human way. She was heroic because she bore her “disability” with grace, always managing to be polite and respectful (values she held important) despite the horrors her mind picked up on a daily basis. She was heroic because she remained open, despite the fact that most people would have shut themselves off from experience or hope after living the way she had. Another thing I adored about the series was it indulged in all the fantasies I’d always riffed on, in my own mind and with my family, about the ...

With your help, I won the Funniest Paranormal Author poll at Bitten by Books.  So I'm payin' up. The secret special prize goes to... Karen W. (who, incidentally, voted for Jackie) So email me(at)markhenry(dot)us and I'll get you your prize, Mademoiselle!!

I have a lot of friends with very varied interests, and they're alway sending me links to cool stuff. Oftentimes, the one link leads to other links. And people are always asking me, "Where did you hear of that? Where did you get that?" So I decided to blog about Things I Like. Some of these things I have, some I want, some I just think are wikkid. The first Thing I Like is Ida Maria . She (and her band) are Norwegian. I really like Norwegians (Hi Kristin!) in general, but I really, really like Ida Maria. AND I just got to see her in concert! They were AMAZING. And could she be cuter? Really? Another band I'm really digging right now is War Tapes . They're such babies, but I love the lead singer's dark bedroom voice. And their copious amounts of ridiculous, flat ironed hair. Plus, the bassist chick is hot. Another Thing I Like are my Gelaskins . I've got one on my iPhone and one on my Macbook. I chose the art by Gianluca Mattia , because I'm obsessed wi...

I still remember the first pair of white jeans my mom ever bought me. I put them on, tore out of the house, and ten minutes later I was twenty feet up a tree. The stains never came out. Which is why, to this day, I cannot wear pastels. I'm still trying to figure out how to break it to the kids. How about something like, "Dudes, your mom isn't really a Spring. I just have Sugar Maple Ascension Syndrome. I hear it's hereditary too. So now you know why we never built you a treehouse. Or lived in a second story apartment. By the way, how do you feel about Tarzan?" In case you were wondering, yes, I have climbed a tree in the past six months. And yeah, it was damn fun--but my jeans were definitely blue. How about you? How long has it been? Did you have a treehouse as a kid? Or even want one? Should we form a construction party and come erect one in your back yard, like, tomorrow? I know somebody with an extra mini-fridge if you can find an electrician w...

Many of you know that the biggest paranormal review site, Bitten by Books , does these periodic polls. What you might not know is that for their most recent question, who's the funniest paranormal author, a veritable buttload of Reluctant Adults have been nominated. As it stands we're getting out butt kicked by Kerrelyn Sparks. But you can change all that. Simply CLICK HERE . And vote for either Mario Acevedo, Michele Bardsley, Dakota Cassidy, myself (Mark Henry), Jackie Kessler or Michelle Rowen.  Then come back here and let us know we'll enter you to win a special prize. A. Special. Prize!

So by now we've all heard about Pride & Prejudice & Zombies , by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith. It's gotten a lot of great reviews, and seems to have spawned a new sub-genre of its own. Rumors are the author (Seth, not Jane) received over half-a-million dollars for two more books, one of which is Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. The mind boggles. So in the interest of fun and brain-challenging exercises, what are some other classics novels that could make it with a paranormal twist? What would you like to see? My choices: The Three Musketeers: Blood Vendetta -- Undead Cardinal Richeliu returns with a vampire army and a plan to take control of France. Estella, the Vampire Slayer: A Heroine of Great Expectations -- Before Rupert Giles, there was Miss Havisham. Before Buffy, there was Estalla... Whatcha got?

For those of you who follow my blog , you know that my parents are finally moving from the house in which I grew up. So my last weeks of vacation were partially spent going through the stuff I still had packed up in their basement and in my old room. It was pretty surreal, on a number of levels. But one of the things I found was a DVD I'd bought probably a year ago to give to my niece. As my memory is a sieve, I, of course, forgot, and it's been sitting in my room for nigh on 12 months. The DVD is a movie I probably watched 100 times as a child, The Last Unicorn.* Here's the weird edited montage version from YouTube: *Yes, this movie was first a book, by Peter S. Beagle. It's a very good book, but I didn't read it till much later and, in truth, I didn't latch onto it the way I did this film. I lived and breathed this movie for months at a time. I remember remembering it so clearly . . . but upon watching it again, I realized that all I really remembered were ima...