Where do you get those wonderful ideas? A guest post by Katie Stewart

Let's all welcome back Australian fantasy author Katie Stewart. Previously I interviewed her about her debut novel, TREESPEAKER. Today she's here to tell us about one of her newer YA fantasy works, MARK OF THE DRAGON QUEEN.

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Kira has led a sheltered life, brought up by her widowed father, whom she adores. When he is arrested and imprisoned for a murder he allegedly committed 18 years before, she is devastated. So when she overhears an ex-student of her father's planning to visit the prison, Kira decides to go, too. However, the student - Arun - is not who she thinks he is, and she soon learns that her father has not always been the man of integrity she has known for fifteen years.

Caught in a rebellion against the Lord High Councillor who would return the country to Wizard Rule, Kira finds that there is one more lesson she has to learn - about herself. Success depends on her, but is she willing to make the sacrifice it will require? 

Something many readers seem to want to know is where an author got the idea for a particular story or novel. As a writer, I’ve learned that ideas can come from anywhere and everywhere - from major events to tiny things that might stay for years as a seed in the mind, until the right novel begs to be written. As Neil Gaiman puts it:

“You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we're doing it.”

In my "real" life – the one where I’m not pretending to be a writer – I work in the library of a small, private country school. It’s a great job, with a lovely crowd of people, and even if all my books were suddenly to become best sellers, I wouldn’t quit work entirely. In fact, my third book, MARK OF THE DRAGON QUEEN actually owes its existence, in part, to my job.

Two years ago, the school, along with the rest of the world, went through a financial crisis. Budgets were cut, including the one for the library. We had no money to buy books. No new books meant that there was little to do beyond the regular book changes with the children and shelving. So I found myself sitting for many hours, re-covering old books just for something to do. To ease the tedium, I listened to my iPod; more specifically, I listened to the musical, Les Miserables, which I’d just discovered and fallen in love with (I know, I’m a little slow on catching up with these things). As I listened to the story, I began to wonder what would happen if, instead of trying to escape from gaol for years, a man had to try to avoid going into gaol? What if he was given the chance to stay out of gaol, simply (or not so simply) by not doing what he had done wrong, ever again – with the punishment being death if he did? So, for example, what would happen if they’d killed with their right hand and were never allowed to use their right hand again? I mulled that over for a while and MARK OF THE DRAGON QUEEN, in which the protagonist’s father has managed not to use magic for eighteen years, was born.

Of course, the novel didn’t come together as a whole right there. It took a long time of what Ursula K Le Guin refers to as "composting" before the whole plot began to gel. Characters had to be found in the image library of my brain, a whole lot more what ifs had to be thought of and worked into a plot. It was like my first efforts at knitting as a child – it generally hung together, but was full of holes. In fact, I’d written quite a chunk of the first draft before I worked out exactly how the story would end. I’m definitely not a planner.

It seemed the more twists I put into the story, the harder I made it for myself. To start with, I had a main character who was very much concentrating on her father’s problems. That made it difficult to keep the perspective on target. Often I found myself slipping up, letting the father become the main focus and I had to rewrite whole sections. There was a prophecy which seemed to say one thing, but of course, there’s always a twist with a prophecy. That was tricky. Worse, it meant doing something horrible to one of my characters, a character I was very fond of, forcing me to write a scene that I hated myself for. I think it would have been easier to kill him off. On the other hand, his plight does give me a stepping stone into a sequel*.

To compost properly, you need the right tools. The ingredients have to be stirred and turned over. This was done with the help of members of my favourite critiquing site, Critique Circle . A hardy group of four to six other writers read my book, chapter by chapter, telling me what was good and what didn’t work. They encouraged me and chastised me for not writing quickly enough. Normally a writer wouldn’t have someone critique a first draft, but I tend to edit as I go, so what they read was reasonably edited, even if I wasn’t always entirely sure what I was doing! Then, when I’d completed the first draft, those same wonderful people read through the second draft. I don’t think I’ve ever been enthused about writing quite as much as I was with this book, and it took less than a year to get it completely written and edited. Actually getting it to the publishable stage took longer, because I’m not fond of the nitty gritty of e-publishing. I procrastinated wherever possible – designing the cover, working on the next book. However, I did get there in the end and MARK OF THE DRAGON QUEEN was published on New Year’s Day this year.

I never know what the theme of my book is going to be until it’s written. My books tend to be about relationships, and this one definitely is, with the main character’s love of her father being pivotal. It’s also about judging people on who they are now, rather than who they used to be, and about the opposition between love and power and how the two can’t exist together.

*I’ve had quite a few people asking me for a sequel to MARK OF THE DRAGON QUEEN and it will come – in time. I’m tentatively calling it ELLYETH'S HARP. At the moment, I’m working on the sequel to TREESPEAKER, which I hope to have out by mid-year. I’m also working on a children’s story which I originally wrote as a short story for my adopted son. It’s about a little Korean adoptee who finds an imugi – a Korean mythical serpent - which has come to Australia to discover the crystal that will allow it to become a dragon. That’s taking a bit of research, but I love research. It’s my favourite procrastinating tool.

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Thanks, Katie.

You can find more Katie at:

Website: www.katiewstewart.com

Blog: http://kates-scribbles.blogspot.com.au/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Treespeaker

Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/Skate60

Forced Perspective: The difference between Heroes and Villains, A Guest Post by Liana Brooks

Today I have a guest post from Liana Brooks as part of her blog tour to promote her super-hero/villain romance novella, EVEN VILLAINS FALL IN LOVE. It was just released by Breathless Press. 

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In photography there is a technique called Forced Perspective that manipulates perception to change how you view objects, like making the moon look like a light bulb, or making a distant lighthouse look like a toy. In the movies, this is the trick that makes Elijah Wood and Ian McKellen look like one is Hobbit-sized and the other is tall. It's the trick that historians use to make you remember King John (1166-1216) as a horrible, whiny man-child who never moved past Prince John (a different person entirely, the prince lived from 1905-1919).

Forced Perspective is what defines a hero and creates a villain.

Consider for a moment the long list of things that are considered impolite - even outright criminal - by modern society: punching a stranger in the face, breaking into to someone's home, spying on someone, eavesdropping, murder... Any person caught committing these offenses would be considered a criminal. Done with enough flair and pomp the person might be considered a villain.

Unless the person in question wears black spandex, drives a funky car, and calls himself Batman.

Let's pretend that vigilante justice is excusable because "Batman never kills anyone" and then consult the actual text of Batman's life. Class, please open your comic books to Batman Incorporated Volume 2 wherein Batman is fighting the immortal Lord Death Man... and shoves him into a rocket so Lord Death Man can resurrect and die for the rest of eternity.

Holy overkill, Batman! Why didn't someone stop to consider the advantages of rehabilitation?

Batman should be the ultimate villain in our modern era. He's the one percent. A man who runs roughshod over the law not because of divine right, mutation, or superior morals but because he has more money than everyone else. Let me repeat that. Batman is a hero because he's rich.

That's it. That's his superpower. "By the trust fund invested in me I get to run this town!" Yet, through the miracle of Forced Perspective, Batman has been a superhero since 1939. This product of the children's welfare system is 73 this year, and still acting like an angsty 15-year-old who didn't get a date to prom.

Seriously, Bruce? Most people call a therapist.

This is how Forced Perspective works in literature. It makes a hero out of someone who ordinarily wouldn't be considered a good person. Robin Hood was a thief. Luke Skywalker was a terrorist. Superman was an alien who came and forced his views of right and wrong on our people.

I admit, I had fun playing with Forced Perspective in EVEN VILLAINS FALL IN LOVE. I took someone who was technically a criminal, technically a super villain, and made him almost a hero. Doctor Charm gets what he wants through sneaky and underhanded ways, but when his back is up against the wall he makes the right choice.

Choice is the theme throughout the Heroes and Villains series. When you have superpowers, whose side are you on?

Feel free to leave a note for me in the comment section. Defend Bruce Wayne, tell me what superpower you would have, and whose side you'd be on if you had the power. And, don't forget, I'm running the EVFIL in the Wild contest until May 5th. Send me a picture of EVFIL on your e-reader for a chance to win a $10 gift certificate to Sock Dreams!

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Thanks, Liana.

More from Liana can be found at her author website, Twitter, and Facebook.


Her book can be purchased from Breathless Press and Amazon.


EVEN VILLAINS FALL IN LOVE has a Facebook and Goodreads page.


Liana Brooks was born in San Diego, California. Years later she was disappointed to learn that The Shire was not some place she could move to, nor was Rider of Rohan an acceptable career choice. Studying marine biology  so she could play with sharks seemed to be the only alternative. After college Liana settled down to work as a full-time author and mother because logical career progression is something that happens to other people. When she grows up, Liana wants to be an Evil Overlord and take over the world.


In the meantime, she writes sci-fi and SFR in between trips to the beach. She can be found wearing colorful socks on the Emerald Coast, or online at www.lianabrooks.com.

Magic's in the Blood: Guest post by Marion Sipe

Today we have a guest post from author Marion Sipe about her fantasy, A SIGN IN BLOOD, which is free today on Amazon.

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Hello all!

I'm Marion Sipe and today I'm here at Unnecessary Musings (Thank you, J.A.!) to talk about my epic fantasy novel A SIGN IN BLOOD. I worked long and hard on it, sometimes despairing of it ever being finished, but mostly I loved every minute of it.

I really enjoyed writing these characters and discovering over the course of the story (and its many edits, revisions, and drafts!) how exactly they related to one another and the world in which they live. Most of the characters in A SIGN IN BLOOD don't quite fit anywhere, and Liral and Sadin or no different. Liral is supposedly a queen, but all her life she's been called 'slow' and told that she is incapable of ruling. Liral's mother has always been a larger-than-life figure, adored by her people and respected by the Factors and Factrixes. After her mother's—suspicious and quickly hushed up—death, Liral has been like a shadow in the court, under the thumb of the Factors' Council and unable to break away.

Sadin, on the other hand, is Full Rank Clergy, a respected and high position which allows him much more freedom than most among his people ever experience. Yet, he's haunted by the memory of one brother's death and the other's abandonment of him. Though his still-living brother, Bastian, is a priest at the same temple, the two of them have never been close. Sadin tells himself that he doesn't need his family, and that the temple and its clergy have become his family, but the anger still simmers just below his surface.

Both of them have position, status, but neither is happy, or safe. They both belong within their constructed worlds, and yet they don't. They both desperately want control over their own lives, but the methods they'll use to achieve that are very different indeed. I enjoyed writing both of them because neither is straightforward. There's a lot of complexity and emotion, often hidden or repressed, and neither of them is entirely aware of their own motivations.

Liral's world is very different from Sadin's, until they collide and both of them have to decide who to fight for, and who they will make their enemies. It made writing these characters very fun. They both surprised me now and then, and sometimes I wasn't even sure what one or the other would decide until it came time for them to make the decisions.

And both have to fight quite a lot. And, well, both get their butts kicked occasionally… Okay, so they get their butts kicked fairly often, but neither Liral nor Sadin has ever been a one to give up easily. Will that be for good or ill? 

 Go grab a free copy and find out!

To learn more about Marion Sipe, A SIGN IN BLOOD, or her other works, visit Visions and Revisions.

The Dangerous Task of Writing a Sequel: A Guest Post By Chrystalla Thoma

I am above all and foremost a reader – have been since I learned to read, and even before that, when I blackmailed my parents into reading to me every night before falling asleep. Such a long addiction and deep love of stories can only mean that I’m a demanding reader. I can’t stand clichés. I frown at wooden dialogue and flat characters. I can’t abide plot holes and bad prose.

See how difficult I am? But I think we all are, when it comes to something we truly love.

As luck had it (or fate, or just natural predisposition), I ended up a writer. Since then, I find myself divided between two opposite camps – on the one hand, I am the creator, the founder, the writer, and on the other I am the world’s most demanding critic.

No wonder I feel I’m going crazy some days.

Series are a particularly touchy topic for me. I love them. Since I’m an escapist and want my books to be thick as bricks so that I can lose myself in them forever, series accomplish this to the utmost degree: they allow me to be lost in a greater world.

But series are tricky to write well. Very often, the first book is amazing, but midway through the second book things go awry and by book three you want to strangle the author – not so much for the waste of money, but for the destruction of the magic.

Cue dramatic music: I decided to write a trilogy (Elei’s Chronicles). I wrote the first book, Rex Rising and released it last summer. Meanwhile, I began working on the second book, Rex Cresting.

Cue percussion. Stress. Fear. Insecurity. Will my second book deliver? Will the third?

As a result, I pestered my friends and beta readers (critiquers) for months with questions such as “is this too melodramatic”? “Is this a good sequel?” “Is this crap?”

I swear, I’ve never felt such stress and angst about writing a story. First books are easier: you set up the characters, the premise, the conflict, the world. But the second book has to follow through and develop those characters more, bring the conflict to the next level, give hints as to the resolution that is coming in the final book.

I now sympathize with all writers who write series. A marvelous idea can degenerate in the second book and fall to pieces. Wonderful characters can step over that thin line that turns them from likable to disagreeable. The writer walks a tightrope.

And have I succeeded with my second book?

Too soon to tell. Besides, I’m too close to the book to be able to see it critically right now. I have done my best. Now it’s up to the readers to tell me whether it fulfilled promises made in book 1 or not.

Let’s hope it has.

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Thanks, Chrystalla.

Chrystalla lives in Cyprus with her husband and her hoards of wild books. She writes fantasy and science fiction and is now starting a non-fiction book about the dragons of the world. She is interested in parasites, ecology, Indian recipes, love in all forms and medieval music, not necessarily in that order. She is currently writing Book 3 of the dystopian sci-fi YA series, Elei’s Chronicles, and a gay sci-fi novel with androids and lots of mayhem.

Mayhem, in fact, is her middle name. You’ve been warned.

Chrystalla is all over the internet:

Blog: http://chrystallathoma.wordpress.com
Amazon profile: http://www.amazon.com/Chrystalla-Thoma/e/B001JOWZCC
Twitter: http://twitter.com/chrystallathoma
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Author-Chrystalla-Thoma/117863861560579
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4397966.Chrystalla_Thoma
Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/Chrys

Elei’s Chronicles series (YA dystopian science fiction):
Rex Rising (on sale this week for .99 cents)
Rex Cresting Rex: Equilibrium (coming summer 2012)
Also: Hera (a novelette set in the world of Rex Rising)

Guest Post by Kristie Cook: Why we need the escape of paranormal romance

Today, we have a guest post by Kristie Cook as part of the VBTC Romancing Your Darkside Book Tour.

She's going to talk to us about why readers need the escape of paranormal romance.

In addition, she's giving away an ebook copy of her paranormal romance novels, Promise and Purpose. No fancy contest requirements, just leave a comment and we'll use random.org to pick a single winner for both books.

Now on to the guest post:


Why We Need the Escape of Paranormal Romance


Paranormal romance has been around for decades, experiencing highs and lows along the way, but the genre seems to have experienced an explosion of interest in recent years. The Twilight Saga may have played a significant role in grabbing readers who had never read the genre before and made them lifelong fans, but there are a number of series and authors who could have played the same part. I think timing has had a huge impact – when and where our world was when Twilight came out and where it still is as readers continue to devour paranormal romances and contemporary fantasies.

With everything going on in our world, from wars, famines and natural disasters to failing economies, job losses and loss of homes, people are living in survival mode. Our minds are constantly running at full-speed, working overtime to ensure our families stay afloat. Problems bombard us from all sides, but solutions are often out of reach or even non-existent. We don’t know what to do but just keep going as best as we can.

We can’t afford the money and/or time to take much-needed vacations, but the need for escape is even greater than ever. So we escape into fiction – books, movies and television. And many are finding that they want their escape to be just that – a removal from the current world, from normal daily stresses and from having to use our brains too much on genres that require intense focus.

With paranormal romance, we get problems that may be somewhat similar but also different than our everyday human ones. We also get main characters who eventually solve those problems, a relief when we can’t solve our own. We swoon over alpha males because we want someone else to take care of us, although we know in the real-world we’d never put up with their arrogance and control. We take the role of the strong, independent heroine who does things we’d never bring ourselves to do in real life. And we lose ourselves in the heat of the passionate moment.

I love writing this genre because I love reading it. All of these elements come together in stories I wish were written, but they’re not, so I write them. I’ve always enjoyed the foundation and rules of our real-world setting combined with the freedom to incorporate the impossible from the fantasy world. And I’m a sucker for romance and the sexual tension and heat that comes along with it.

Some may say paranormal romance is frivolous or a guilty pleasure. But, really, what’s wrong with a little guilty pleasure, especially in our lives today? Escaping to the insanity of a fantasy world helps to maintain our sanity in our own world. After all, at least we’re not dealing with overbearing, control-freak partners, creatures who want to suck our blood or rip out our throats during sex and villains who can wipe out all of humanity in a half-second. It helps to make our own lives more bearable and we can all use every bit of help we can get right now.

What do you think? Have touched on any of the reasons you read paranormal romance? Do you have anything to add? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

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Thanks, Kristie.

Remember to leave a comment for your chance to win  Promise and Purpose.

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Kristie Cook is a lifelong, award-winning writer in various genres, from marketing communications to fantasy fiction. She continues to write the Soul Savers Series, with the first two books, Promise and Purpose, available now and the third book, Devotion, coming February 2012. She’s also written a companion novella, Genesis, coming October 2011.

Besides writing, she enjoys reading, cooking, traveling and riding on the back of a motorcycle. She has lived in ten states, but currently calls Southwest Florida home with her husband, three teenage sons, a beagle and a puggle. She can be found at:

Author's Website & Blog: http://www.KristieCook.com

Series Website: http://www.SoulSaversSeries.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/AuthorKristieCook
Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/kristiecookauth
Tumbler: http://www.tumblr.com/tumblelog/kristiecook
Google+: https://plus.google.com/102746226001674797330/posts

Virtual Book Tour-Guest Blog: Zachery Richardson-Author of Chronicles of the Apocalypse:Revenge,Everything is Nothing.

Today, I'm hosting urban fantasy author Zachery Richardson as part of his Virtual Book Tour for his urban fantasy book Chronicles of the Apocalypse: Revenge, Everything is Nothing. Click on the graphic above to check out the rest of his blog tour.

Today, Zach is going to share with his thoughts on books and Hollywood.

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Books & Hollywood: An Author’s Dream and Nightmare

Before I get into this, let me say that I am an avid lover of Hollywood. Though I’m an author by trade, I was raised on more movies than books. This was largely due to my ADD, but that’s another story for another time. I love movies, and the only industry that gets even half as much of my money is the video game industry. And because of the love I have for you, Hollywood, we need to have a long talk about how you treat authors.

Specifically, you need to adapt our material more faithfully.

Don’t get me wrong; you’ve done great work before. Lord of the Rings and the Twilight Saga are the best book-to-film adaptations I’ve ever seen. With Rings, you took an enormously detailed world and managed to not only capture the richness of the world, but you condensed and streamlined the narrative in such a way that one could (and I would) make the argument that the films are largely better than the books, particularly if

we’re talking about the extended cuts. Even more faithful to the original novels are the Twilight movies. Sure, there wasn’t nearly as much history or detail to the world, but the books themselves were big and seemed to scream “massive cuts incoming!” You stayed truer to the source material with those books than I ever expected. And sadly, there’s a reason for that.

Eragon.

I thought about adding Harry Potter to the list, but though I have many problems with the film series, they are small and the films have remained genuinely faithful to the source material. I can’t say the same for Eragon. Seventy-seven documented changes were made from the book to the film and most of them are significant. Six characters that play important roles in subsequent books were cut out of the film entirely. Still others have their personalities changed significantly, and of the other changes, forty-three of them were made to the plot itself, and many of those changes directly contradict events in later books! Because of this, the film not only bombed at the box office thanks to bad reviews and terrible word of mouth from fans of the book but also made it virtually impossible to adapt Eldest, the second book in the series. Had the movie been truly faithful to the source material, it would have allowed Hollywood to adapt the other novels as well, and most likely create a film series on the level of Lord of the Rings.

As both an author and a lover of film, I would dearly love to see my novel, Chronicles of the Apocalypse: Revenge, Everything is Nothing, brought to life on the silver screen. With its brisk pace, numerous action scenes, and story of both revenge and redemption, I feel like it would be a great candidate for a summer blockbuster. But I know Hollywood’s track record with books, and it’s filled with more Eragons than Twilights.

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Check out Zach's book (available both in print and electronic formats) at his website here:

"When you sacrifice the lives of your wife and children to prevent the world's most powerful clan of assassins from unleashing the Apocalypse, what does that make you? And what do you do when you learn that it was all in vain? For Jin Sakai, that sacrifice turned him into a mere shell of a man, filled only with guilt and hatred. When he learns that it was a sacrifice made in vain, he instantly sets out on a violent one-man war to tear the assassins' clan down around their ears. After all, who better to destroy them than the man who brought them together?

Things soon turn down a darker path as Jin uncovers the disturbing truth behind his family's sacrifice; a truth he was never meant to learn. Undone by the revelation, Jin is consumed by doubt and confusion and very nearly loses his life. It is only later when he meets Leah Lawson, a woman who overcame her own dark past, that his doubt and confusion vanish and he begins to see a path that will not only lead him to his revenge, but to his redemption.

Unfortunately, there is far more going on behind the scenes than Jin realizes. Forces are at play that have been manipulating the course of his life ever since he was born. By setting out on his quest for vengeance, Jin unknowingly cements his destiny as one of the key warriors in the apocalyptic war that’s brewing just beneath the surface."

You can also find him on YouTube.

Thanks for sharing, Zach.