the league of reluctant adults

Happy Monday, Leaguers! Today, Cathy Clamp is here to dish on the latest release she wrote with C. T. Adams under the pen name Cat Adams. THE ISIS COLLAR comes out on March 13. Give her a big League welcome! **** So what’s with all the Zombies, anyway? I know most of your regular League members, but the lovely Jaye Wells was the one to suggest I drop by today to talk about our upcoming release, THE ISIS COLLAR. “Our” meaning myself and C.T. Adams. I’m the Cat. She’s the Adams of Cat Adams. We’ve written a lot of books together, in the Tales of the Sazi and Thrall worlds, along with our new series, The Blood Singer but this one was freaking FUN to write because it’s about ZOMBIES! First, our heroine Celia Graves is half vampire. Oh, sure, you say, like a thousand other heroines. But Celia is different. She doesn’t really want to be a vampire. She doesn’t want to be a siren (the other part of her heritage) and she really doesn’t like getting involved in all this crazy psycho stuff tha...

Publishing wonks and mouthy authors often talk about what's the next big thing in fiction. What will be the new vampire?!? Is chick lit dead and what will replace it? Amish space opera will be the next big thing! It's exhausting. And I've noticed it's not often that we take the time to ask you, the reader, what you want. Well, today's your lucky day. Let us know what kind of stories you want to see. Since most of us are paranormal romance or UF authors, we'd love to hear what you'd love to see more of int hose genres, but don't feel limited by genre. What kind of stories are you looking for and not finding right now? We just ask that you p lease be respectful because The League is not about bashing the work of our colleagues. Annnnd go!

Warning: Very Long Post! In the past few weeks and over the last couple of years I’ve been hearing a lot of complaints from writers that basically boil down to “I’m being screwed by a contract clause.” And this isn’t just from new authors who had no prior experience with publishing contracts, but also from experienced authors making the jump to independent e-book publication, boutique/small press and other scale/medium shifts. Many of you may be aware of problems with Dorchester publishing about two years ago in which they dropped print publication and went to electronic only, or instances of Kindle price drops that took authors by surprise, and the recent news that L. J. Smith has been ousted from her long-running bestseller series The Vampire Diaries by the enforcement of her work-for-hire contract. All of these cases and a lot more are the result of one party or the other misunderstanding, not reading, or mis-interpreting/abusing a clause in their publication contract. Lest you be...

Not that I have anything against Valentine's Day. It is what it is and if you enjoy it, great! And if you don't, great! (See, easy to please here.) Besides, by the time you read this I'll probably be in recovery from getting a portion of the nerves on the left side of my spine burned out. (Don't worry - it's out patient. And hopefully painless. After all, if the nerves aren't firing, what's to hurt, right? Maybe. It's been a long time coming and a last ditch effort to try to get me some relief from years of chronic pain. And hey, if I'm lucky and it works..I'll be able to go back a few weeks later and get the rest of them fried. ) Still - doesn't exactly put me in the mood for romantic blogs posts, so I'm just going to skip all that and plug my upcoming release, A Sliver of Shadow! Which comes out February 28th! And continues the story of Abby, Brystion and a certain perverted unicorn by name of Phineas.  (And a slew of new char...

Cross-posted from Organized Chaos . I've been having a bit of a reading crisis this year. In 2011 I read a crap-ton of books--over one hundred. This year, I've read one and a half. Yeah, forty-three days into the new year and I've read one and a half books. Half might not even be accurate; I think I put it down at about a third. I can put part of the blame on the weather. Winter depresses me, and I don't want to do anything except plop on the couch and be a potato. Cracking open a book feels like too much work; television viewing requires a lot less brain power than reading. Another part of the blame can go to the overwhelming tower that is my To Be Read pile. And it doesn't help that more great books are coming out ALL THE TIME. I can't make any real progress, and I can't seem to choose between them, so I let that intimidate me into just not reading anything. Yes, bad Kelly. The other day, I skimmed a review of a book I'd read and loved, and it made m...

Today we have something a little special. James R. Tuck, is the author of the Deacon Chalk Bounty Hunter series. His first novel, BLOOD AND BULLETS came out this week and rather than do a standard interview, James and I decided it might be m ore fun to provide an interview between two of our characters. Of course, given that James's main character is a monster hunter and most of my characters are monsters, a face to face meeting would have been out of the question, so this one starts with a phone call from Evelyn (my ex-reporter nukekubi featured in BURNED... which came out last week) to Deacon. Call it a fact finding mission. Let's skip past the niceties and straight to the questions, shall we? --- Evelyn: You're a monster hunter, one of the most important questions for a nukekubi (who has never killed a human, but has slain many vampires) is this: How do you define monster? Deacon: A monster does evil shit. Simple and straight to the point. I used...

Through the 7th!  1. Awesomeness.  I’m so excited that Pat Rothfuss and the worldbuilders team has EXCEEDED the goal of $250,000 donated to Heifer International, an incredible, fabulous charity!! There is still time to donate (it runs through the 7th). Not only do you give to a great cause, but for every $10 bucks you put in, you are eligible to win books and many many other mind-bendingly wonderful prizes. It’s the ultimate win-win lottery. A ton of league books are in there, and so much more. Check it out here and here . Heifer International is awesome! 2. Comma freakout.  I have been close-proofing Devil’s Luck, my novella about my character Simon, which I am going to self publish. I have had it professionally copyedited, but am now reading it over and changing things around and suddenly I feel like I don’t know how to use commas anymore! Commas used to be so natural for me, but when I really think about them, then my underst...