Killer Career - Morgan Mandel

Thanks to Morgan for letting me have a copy of this one.

I went to see a play called Revenge when I was a teenager. It was one of those slightly odd plays where two actors played four roles and one other guy was found dead hanging on the back of a door. The experience was entertaining and a little odd. The play lacked a full cast and world building, it wasn't the full theatrical experience really, it lacked many of the things it should have required to make it work, yet it was definitely entertaining and I had a fabulous time.

Killer Career was a little like that. It didn't dazzle with it's twists (a life time of agatha christie and you've seen most of them) it had only three fleshed out characters and a small group of extras, the set was present but consisted of a few desks and computers and dinners rather than being a fully developed world. It should have been unsatisfying. As it happened it was a delightful read. I was having a wonderful time in this mystery romance romp and can only imagine that Morgan had a fantastic time writing it. Tyler was neatly balanced to begin with to ensure that Julie's initial interest was totally viable, Dade was a darling but reacted in a typically possesive manner to certain events which sold him to me, Julie was believable and likeable and the rest gave them some context but didn't really exist in any meaningful way, except perhaps Avery.

I'd been looking forward to getting my hands on one of Morgans books and I wasn't dissapointed. I have been working long hours this week with special olympics and was failing at reading everything I picked up, putting it back on the shelf a few pages in, but this hit exactly the right spot. It's a cute cover two.
If you want a read that will keep you grinnning all the way through you can't go far wrong with Morgan.

Ravenous Romance Day with Sèphera Girón

Howdy, everyone! Your hostess Inara here, back from an invigorating walk on the beach in the beautiful San Francisco fog that marks our summer months, at least in my neck of the city.

Dave and I live in the Outer Sunset, also known as 'the Outside Lands.' Gotta love that name. It conjures up Lovecraftian images, at least to my morbid mind. The Outside Lands are a great place to live if you love the fog, the beach, and like not having to fight for a parking space. For me, living four blocks from the beach is a treat beyond imagining. I've always been a water baby, but never lived close enough to walk there before, at least not without an hour or so's lead time. Now I'm out my door and at the beach in five minutes. And while I love the sun (and spent much of my youth basking in the sun and perfecting my So. Cal gal tan), walking on a near deserted beach as fog drifts around me is a surefire guarantee to conjure up my muse (a mercurial gal named Zin, known for unexpected absences and fits of melancholy) and get me back on track with my writing.

All creative people have their own ways of harnessing their creative energy and today we have horror and Ravenous Romance author Sèphera Girón sharing her own experiences with hunting down and harnessing her muse.

Please welcome the lovely and talented Sèphera to Unbound!

CHASING THE MUSE

By Sephera Giron

Sometimes writing is like marriage; you get that seven year itch and so need to scratch it.

I’m a full time author and I also freelance edit to pay the bills. I’ve been very fortunate to be able to stay home writing and raising my sons for well over a decade, maybe even twenty years now. Of course, I’ve had hundreds of part time jobs like most authors, and they were mostly waitressing type jobs. I taught musical theatre and was an office manager at a dance studio for 8 years in the evenings. I have a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Fine Art Studies with a minor in Psychology because even in picking my university degree, I couldn’t decide between writing, acting, and music so I took them all as well as throwing in dance and painting.

In University, I met a filmmaker with an English accent. In fact, we met at our summer job working in an English pub and discovered we both attended the same university and even had mutual friends. Yes, it was the accent that melted me first, shallow as that sounds since he was born in London, England and came to Canada as a teenager. Then it was the long hair and the infectious “joie de vivre” that Sagittarians tend to have. I think artistic types go for “different.” We married quickly and over ten years had two children and then got divorced. We’re still good friends, but not compatible in a marriage situation.

In the years that followed, my writing career took off and in not having a husband; I had more time to explore other ideas that activated my muse. While raising my sons, I delved into occult studies, learned to read tarot, became immersed in the fetish scene, and kept my fingers in the arts.

Both of my boys took theatre and dance at young ages, keep that ADD/ADHD focused, you know, and I was able to rejoin the theatrical passion that I had set aside for far too long. My younger boy was a dance major in high school and started acting in community theatre, and mom was right there with him, ASMing (Assistant Stage Manager). This past year, we shared the stage in EVITA and it made my heart sing. In the fall, I’ll be back to ASMing again while he has a part in FOOTLOOSE.

My main love is writing and my favourite genre is erotic horror though I’ll write anything if the characters speak to me. Over the winter, I wrote a book a month for a few months for Ravenous Romance, and it was very exhausting and I had to stop that frantic pace. With more books and stories to deliver, I need to take a deep breath and find a new muse.

To go back to the beginning of this blog, I want to say that the muse is a slippery animal. You can find your muse in depression, unhappiness, happiness, and deadline crunches. The muse will appear when he wants to appear, not when you WILL him to appear. As a professional author, I don’t have the luxury of waiting for Mr. Muse to come galloping up to my doorstep to whisk me away. If I have a story to deliver, I have to deliver it, whether I have Mr. Muse there or not. However, it’s oh so sweet when he appears.

This past weekend, my muse came back after a frighteningly long absence. The reason my muse came back was because I stepped away from the desk and immersed myself in people. Not my fellow local authors or parents of other kids or my same old friends from the fetish clubs but around new and different filmmaker types, screenwriters, and movie actors. The buzz is different, the sensibility is different.

I went to Buffalo to act in a small role as Ruby, the wife of a cult leader, in SLIME CITY MASSACRE. In the hours waiting to say my lines, I hung out with other actors and extras. The girl who plays my daughter, (girl, yeah, she’s in her twenties!) had brought her brother and other friends to the set. They were all Spanish, from Madrid. Their accents were so delicious. My father is from Spain and it was exciting to have a Spanish daughter. Also exciting was that her brother was cast as my “boyfriend” in an orgy scene and we kissed a few times. For the camera of course. Listening to their stories, and boy do they have interesting stories, was very inspiring for erotica novels. You will likely see something inspired by them over the next year.

As well as the fabulous Spaniards, the man who plays the lead in SLIME CITY MASSACRE, Kealan Patrick Burke, is also a horror author like myself, and he has an Irish accent since he is originally from Ireland. Listening to him speak reminded me of how I used to like to listen to my ex-husband and his brother lapse into their English/Scottish accents while they were drinking. The Irish accent is different of course, and very different for me who lives in the suburbs in Ontario where there’s mostly Canadian accents.

As well as accents from handsome young men inspiring Mr. Muse to return, the whole experience of not sitting at my desk was very good for me. I wasn’t at a convention selling myself. I wasn’t ASMing in a role of responsibility. I wasn’t being “mom” at some event. I was RUBY, the creepy cougar, and it was a joy.

Several other horror authors were on set playing extras and it was inspiring to talk to them as well. There was a special effects guy who had amazing stories, many quite horrific, yet true, and his dead pan way of speaking kept me in stitches whether he meant it or not. The shoot continues on and I’ll be going back on the weekend. My second husband, who is part Irish but has no accent, will be playing a homeless person. I’m excited to have him on the set for a day though he’s not staying. I’m staying a few days though and I’ll take more pictures of the film that you can see on my facebook.

Since SCM is a creepy B movie filmed in creepy places, my mind is racing with new ideas for stories. I have to deliver a horror story this month and now I have found my muse again. I’m working on LORD OF THE THIGHS for Ravenous Romance and meeting new people has given me new angles for characters. I’m thinking now too of a Spanish soap opera type book...lol. You would not believe how much stranger truth is than fiction...or maybe you would.

So, my point of all this rambling is that if you have lost your muse, step away from the desk. Do something totally different that will introduce you to different types of people. You never know what is going to jump start those creative juices back to flowing again.

Thank you, Seph, for such a thoughtful and entertaining post! Now we'd love to hear from everyone else about what YOU do to jumpstart your muse and get your creativity back on track. As usual, there are snacks, drinks, and comfy chairs. Settle in and hang out with us! I'm starting the morning with a Belgian chocolate mocha. Want one?

Inara

JC De La Torre - Mythology in fiction.

On the other side of guest blogging, I am delighted to welcome JC De La Torre to Un:Bound to talk about working with established mythology when creating a new story. His books deal with a lot of ancient gods in new ways. His books are available from amazon

I will be reviewing it pretty soon and I am enjoying it so far.

My thanks to Jason for joining us it is lovely to have you here and on that note I shall hand you over:

Mythology in Fiction

By JC De La Torre

Business is good for those who enjoy writing about mythology. Everywhere you look, you see tales of vampires, wizards, and gods taking over the fantasy genre. Of course, elements of mythology have always been there. Fairies, elves, gnomes, dwarves – you name it, it’s been written about a million times. We’ve all seemed the genre established, so the challenge is finding something that conforms to what the reader expects while coming up with something fresh – a story different than what they’ve read before.

It’s been done extremely well of late, as evidence by the expanding popularity of the genre. Still there are so many different aspects of our fantasy passion that has yet to be explored and as an author; I tried to apply that in my fantasy thriller series, Rise of the Ancients. As I wrote the first two installments of the series, Ancient Rising and Annuna (released on July 31^st), I wanted to weave the fall of Atlantis with a religion that impacted the world for quite awhile – the mythology that was the Greek gods. Considering how important the deities were not only to Greek culture, but the Romans as well – who took their likenesses and applied their own Roman names to them – I felt that there would be believable substance for a story to actually consider the Greek gods were as real as you or I.

In fiction, you can invent your own mythology around the lost continent – but if you aren’t true to the source you get scenarios like flying cars and laser beams, while interesting to the story, may not really be plausible in the mind of your reader.

I had to dig further into antiquity, to the earliest recorded mythology – the Ancient Sumerians and their Annuna deities – gods from heaven.

It came together as a benevolent race of ascended beings planting the seeds of life on our world. It would incorporate the pantheon of religious belief, including Jewish and Christian tradition.

It’s funny, when I began writing my first novel in the summer of ‘04, Ancient Rising - Rise of the Ancients Book I, the gods and Atlantis were a subject that had been ignored for a long time. Sure, comic books had tackled Atlantis and the gods, there were a handful of novels that had Atlantis or the gods as a major theme including Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Avalon series and Clive Cussler’s Atlantis Found but interest in mythology seemed to deaden out in the 90’s. No one was interested in retelling or re-imaging the old myths.

My own personal interest in Atlantis came from my love of ancient history and reading a non-fiction (or semi-fictional, depending on how you view the subject matter) novel by an author named Herbie Brennan called the Atlantis Enigma that introduced me to the mythology of Atlantis and the theory of ancient astronauts. As I researched Atlantis, I grew interested in Greek mythology as a method of distribution for my own ancient astronauts fiction.

Similar to the way Stargate used Egyptian deities posing as gods called the Goa’uld, I used our known Greek mythology, combined it with the ancient Sumerian and Babylonian stories of the Annunaki (another Brennan inspiration) and even sprinkled in Jesus Christ. I threw it all in a pot, stirred until I came up with a wild tale about a devastated widower who was greeted by the Greek god Hermes and set on an Indiana Jones-meets-Clash of the Titans type adventure.

While I’d love to believe I started the trend, I know its more due to the success of Riordan’s Percy Jackson series and Thomas Greanias’ Atlantis saga that have brought mythology back into the mainstream. Video games like God of War introduced Zeus and the other gods to a new audience. While we know Percy Jackson’s movies are coming, I also recently saw an article that said that Dreamworks optioned Scott Mitchell Rosenberg’s comic mini-series Atlantis Rising.

I have a feeling that the gods are going to be with us for awhile.

JC De La Torre is the author of fantasy thriller Rise of the Ancients - Annuna, released on July 31st to retailers everywhere.

Guest Blogging

Right, I really hope i've got my posting dates right but I just stuck up my guest post for World in a Satin Bag, talking about my book club an dthe general lack of imagination of non SFF fans.
It's here if you'd like to go and take a look. (And say nice things, please, I am so nervous posting on someone else's turf)

Who Killed Amanda Palmer - Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman

I can't believe it was back in April that we first heard about the coffee-table book project featuring photos of Dresden Dolls and solo artist Amanda Palmer in various "death poses" with accompanying stories by Neil Gaiman. Well, last week a FedEx box finally arrived at my doorstep, and upon opening it the beautiful, morbid sight above greeted my eyes, ensuring that any plans I entertained for the rest of the day were now put aside.

I've been through the Who Killed Amanda Palmer a couple of times now, sometimes listening to Palmer's album of the same name (it was released last September), sometimes not. It's a gorgeously designed book, each photograph a story on its own. Gaiman's presence is to tell the stories behind the pictures, and he takes a delight in mimicking various styles - a page from a young girl's diary detailing her discovery of poor Miss Palmer's body, wrapped in plastic in the nearby lake (a nod to Twin Peaks and the iconic reveal of Laura Palmer's body), to yellowed typewritten pages, picture captions and more traditional stories.

However, as much as Gaiman's stories bring to the project, the real draw is in the images themselves. Palmer shows not only is she utterly fearless in exposing herself to controversy (the book is very NSFW), but that she has a wicked sense of humor - one picture is of a cleated foot sitting on top her head. The caption simply reads : Nema, Age 10 = 1, AFP = 0. Another has Palmer dressed in traditional German dress, a beer stein dropped on the floor and a clarinet shoved down her throat. Not everything is as funny: in her attempts to be killed over and over again Palmer shows a quiet beauty in dread, and brings the theatricality and drama that inhabits everyone's death, whether there's an audience for it or not.

You can take a look at the Who Killed Amanda Palmer, listen to the album (which is great), and see videos of the project over at www.whokilledamandapalmer.com.

Short Fiction from Polly Tuckett

A freebie folks. Polly kindly provided me with one of her short stories which has taken up permanent residence on Un:Bound here. Enjoy.

Oh and because Stacia Kane rocks and her new book Demon Inside comes out tuesday I thought it was a good time to use this little image i grabbed ages ago.
My review of the previous book, Personal Demons is here if anyone fancies revisiting it.

The Reef

Another visit to the Reef since it's a friday and I am just vegging out watching Criminal Minds.
(the term the Reef is nabbed from a Clive Barker book).

Some random filtering from the blogs I read.

Bitten by Books report on the results of the Prism Contest
Booksbound (no relation) look at some cool book gadgetry
Stacia Kane is giving away a copy of Demons Inside
Edward Champion has a little fun with the taxonomy of book bloggers
Forces of Geek point out that not all vampires sparkle thank god.
Straight from Hell toast's the geeks and quite rightly too.
Kim Harrison talks to the BookSmugglers about inspirations

things to look forward to & things to look back at.

We have some lovely things coming up. I am going to be interviewing Morgan Mandel for her blog tour on 18th August 2009. I am guesting over at World in a Satin Bag while SMD is away, not sure exactly when but I am working on my post.
In september and october I intend to head over to Short Fuse, I will let you know how they go, the topics are Pride and Halloween.
More reviews of course.
But with all these good things coming up I started to feel reflective.
I want to share one of my favourite books from early childhood. It belonged to my brother an dI use do thave to make the dangerous and terifying pilgrammage across his huge corner room to his bookshelves to steal it on a regular basis. When he felt like being a good older brother he'd read it to me, when he didn't he'd lock me in the attic or something equally horrifying in vengance. I diced with death and mental damage every time I went for a clandestine read.
Three bears and the spooky old tree. It may be utter rubbish, I have no idea I have never seen a copy since my brother moved out when I was about 11. I remember it made my hair stand on end I an dthe friendly snow white dwarfs on my lightshade always took on a darker purpose after reading it and that Piers' room had windows on two walls and I hated going in there at night because I hated to turn my back on a dark window and he never drew his curtains. This book brought me a lot of joy and although Piers had others from the series it is this one that I remember and adored. I think I just liked a good scare. I moved onto the Usbourne guide to the supernatural (also stolen from my brother) and eventually Clive Barker and Graham Masterton (the latter I moved on from pretty quickly). I am not such a horror fan now, but as a teen I couldn't get enough and it was worth the sleepless nights (I am rather impressionable).
I'd love to get my hands on a copy of Supernatural World again. I used to read it over and over walking around the playground at school.

Wednesday!!

Just a quickie. Hey folks, just wanted to pop in and remind you it's wednesday and next week that will mean Ravenous Romance day. Now Inara doesn't answer to anyone (sassy sword fighting wench) so I will find out what the post is about when you do, presumably then next wednesday! I love these posts and I really love that I don't know who is coming to play or what they will be talking about.
Kiss Kiss my dah links.
(also, how cool are those lips, I founs them online).

The Life of Pi

This was the July village book club book and true to form I read it in a rush today, the day of the meeting. At least Sarah reminded me we were at mine this month so the house was clean and I had wine.

Anyway, we all enjoyed the book, personally I was entertained by Pi's adoption of the nickname and his approach to religion, though parts of the book are slow. Once the voyage on the lifeboat begins things are grimmer but flow better and it's really quite good. There are bits that stretch the boundary's of disbelief (as long as the rationale is clear we are happy, when it gets a bit mystical we got a bit lost). As a whole it's an interesting and largely entertaining book, a bit grim in places and not exactly a happy ending, but not depressing.

I don't know whether it's because i'd been discussing it with the lovely Mark C Newton, but the ending of the book deals with perception of truth and it's that which will stick in my mind, along with the Tiger, Richard Parker. A tip if you are thinking of reading this, knowing the history of the name Richard Parker in terms of sea voyages adds an extra dimension.

All in all a good read and an interesting novel, but not an author or a book I am likely to seek out in future but I can see why it has been so popular.

Up the Irons!

In case any of you were wondering, the documentary in question was IRON MAIDEN: FLIGHT 666, and it was frickin' awesome!

Just wanted to put that out there...

David Gemmell - The King Beyond the Gate

Having been callously shunted aside by a veritable cornucopia of content (not to mention an annoying amalgamation of alliteration), I am forced to deliver my Monday review on this, a Tuesday.

Believe me, it has NOTHING to do with the fact that I was somewhat lazy last night and fell asleep watching an Iron Maiden documentary.

NOTHING, I tell you!

Besides, it's fitting that my review of The King Beyond the Gate comes close on the heels of Hagelrat's great interview with Debbie Miller, part of the steering committee for the David Gemmell Legend Award (found here).

When I started my long journey back towards fantasy, David Gemmell's Legend was one of the books I picked up, as an example of the "heroic fantasy" genre. As my review of that books states, I loved it. Gemmell takes all the wonder and epic-ness that are numerous 1,000+ page novels, and distills the action to its essence, usually in about 300 pages. He's a prime example of saying more with less, and Legend showed that you don't need a trilogy to tell a thrilling tale.

The really great thing about Gemmell's premise for his Drenai Saga is that it's the land, more than the characters, that connect the stories. The King Beyond the Gate takes place a good 100 years after events in Legend. Despite the heroics that came before, the land of Drenai has been corrupted by Ceska, an insane leader who has used ancient technologies to create Joinings - horrific were-beasts made from former soldiers and the like. For reasons of his Tenaka Khan, half Drenai and half Nadir (and a direct descendant of the two opposed leaders from Legend's great battle) wants Ceska dead, and he'll go to any lengths to ensure that happens. A former member of the Dragon, am elite group of soldiers that fought for Drenai, he now must make due with an assortment of characters to hold off the very kingdom he had sworn to protect before.

There are definite carryovers from Legend - the mystical Thirty return to assist Tenaka and his friends, and there are numerous references to major characters from that book. But The King Beyond the Gate serves as a great stand-alone novel that's only further enriched by knowledge of the book that came before it. Gemmell again uses his journalistic skills to keep everything moving at a quick pace, and the only time this backfires on him is when it comes to defining the romance between Tenaka and his lover, Renna (I think) - everything happens so quickly that the romance, similar to how it did in Legend, feels a little mechanical.

But that's a small price to pay for what is a great book of what it means to defend your way of life, and the prices we have to accept to do that. In order to win, Tenaka must take hold of his heritage as the King of the savage Nadir, and though you want him to be the different leader, the one who manages to introduce compassion and brotherhood to the Nadir and Drenai, both Tenaka and Gemmell know where the path ultimately has to go, and The King Beyond the Gate's epilogue, with its few sentences, reminds us that even fantasy is slave to the greed and machinations of man.

Mark Charan Newton - Interview

I really do love my life. One of the main benefits of doing Un:Bound, apart from all the awesome bloggers and readers i'm getting to know and the books I would never have read, is interviewing and sometimes meeting authors.

On Saturday I had the very great pleasure of meeting Mark Charan Newton, author of the fantastic Nights of Villjamur. We went for coffee in harborough. Unfortunately the coffee shop is a little noisy so I would recmommend listening on speakers rather than headphones to the audio interview, especially since Mark isn't as shouty as I am. If I figure out how to clean up the files I will repost but in the meantime the audio interview is up.

To tempt you a little about the morning:

I asked Mark how he ended up in publishing and he talked about his time at Ottakers on the shop floor, meeting George Mann and his progression throughBlack Flame and Solaris in editing and into marketing for TheBlack Library Yes he is a gaming fan and apparently seeing a giant space marine every time you enter your office is a good way to start the working day.

We discussed the second book and although he won't be drawn on plot too much he did reveal it takes palce mostly on the northern edge of the empire, in a much harsher environment. He described the main city aas a "violent extreme place" and the book as "more gothic..more sinister". We will see new characters and more focus on the forthcoming and inevitable war. Frankly I don't know if I can wait, I am dying to see it.

Mark talked openly about having to be more conservative than he would have liked to get published but being published and selling well (2nd print run in hardback in a recession) gives him more freedom to let loose a bit more this time.

Obviously I had to ask him to weigh in on the "suspension of disbelief" conversation introduced last wednesday by Isabel Roman. We talked around the subject a bit but the conclusion was coherancy is key. I can get on board with that.

Beyond that there was some discussion about the cahracters of Villjamur and the role of the online community in publishing. Mark believes and he may well be right that the cover is the key to marketing. While some authors may be able to trade just on their names I would agree that a good cover can really lodge a book in your mind and pull you to it. The NoV cover is by Benjamin Carre who doesn't do a great deal of cover art but whose work Mark is a fan of, so he was delighted with the cover (me too).

The conversation meandered around a bit and as the coffee shop filled up it gets a little louder. I really need to do some editing.

I'm afraid we couldn't keep recording as we wandered off to take piccies in our local Waterstones so I wil just have to tell you that when I harrassed some poor woman in the sff section telling her NoV was a good book Mark piped up to tell her the author was a git (or words to that effect) and general silliness ensued, it didn't take her long to realise Mark must be the author but sadly she didn't immediately buy the book and demand he sign it (well I tried).

Seriously Mark is a delight to talk to and definately passes the pub test and I really recommend checking out the recording, in spite of the bodies, sorry, coffee beans being ground loudly in the background.

Shark Island - David Miller

This one came direct from the author and in the interests of full disclosure he and my mum have a mutual friend which is how I found out about the book.

Ned and his sister Hanna are enjoying the holiday of a lifetime on Kaitan Island (which means Shark Island obv.) when they are woken in the middle of the night by a boat approaching. The book kicks straight into the action so we meet the kids waking up, scared and hiding while their parents are beaten up and kidnapped, leaving the children alone on the island.
These are not the pirates of Treasure Island, these are the modern pirates with speedboats and machine guns that hijack tankers and shoot people.
The kids are stuck on the island with no idea what to do next until they are found by Jik, one of the sea gipsy's they met on their way to the island. From there the adventure kicks up a pace, with corrupt leaders and polis and a brutal regime. The kids learn to depend on each other and never giving up on their parents they follow the clues and try to stay alive and free.

On the downside, i didn't really connect with any of the characters and although some pretty unpleasant things happened and the kids had some real dilemmas to deal with I never felt emotionally invested in what happened. On teh other hand if I was a ten year old boy I don't think i'd give two hoots that the book didn't make me cry when the kids thought their parents were dead (I cry pretty easily at books and films). So it's not exactly a deal breaker.

The really good elements are the relentless action and the humour and fun slipped in. I think the writing is probably pitched right for the target audience and although i'm not it, I slipped though this book quickly and really quite enjoyed myself. It's a little dark in places and strongly flavoured by David's familiarity with Malaysia which really brings the places and peoples of the book to life. Although handling it delicately Miller doesn't shy away from the brutality of the regime and the kids at one point are faced with signing documents they can't read that could potentially spell a death sentence for some men they know probably did them no harm, but then the action moves on again and there isn't time to dwell.

It'll keep the kids up late with their flashlights under the duvet, which is something I am fully in support of. You might just want to wait till a friday night to let them start it.

Polly Tuckett - Interview

(apologies to Chris for musceling in on his posting day)

Polly Tuckett is a short fiction author and one of the organisers behind Short Fuse, a spoken short fiction event taking place monthly in Leicester and Brighton. The Leicester events have attracted support from local station Radio Leicester as well as a varied audience.

The interview in full is available on the sidebar or here.

We got together for a chat about how Short Fuse started & where it is going next. She began Short Fuse in Brighton with a freind due to a shared deisre to promote a form of writing which is difficult to source and lends itself to being heard. There are hopes for a festival in the future.

Polly is an entertaining reader and is running creative writing workshops focusing on sharing the works out loud. It is a very different skill. Her written work has been published in a number of journals, mostly in America and we hope to be able to offer a sample on Un:Bound very soon.

Asked about the appeal of the short story she talked about its versatility and the ability to work writing in around the rest of a busy life.
We also discussed the lack of a forum for short fic writers, poets recieving much more support and acknowledgment. I discovered a wealth of literary life I had no idea excited in Leicester, the writing school the East Midlands based literature network in which Damien G Walter is actively involved.

Short Fuse presently has an application in for an arts council grant to enable the purchase of recording equipment to bring the readings to the internet, which is an idea I wholeheartedly support.

My review of my first Short Fuse event is here and it was a fascinating and entertaining evening. I hope it continues its success and am looking forward to the future shows.

Young and Un:Bound

This is just a quick announcement to say we have launched a youth review blog. Our reviewers are MJ 9 and Zobdy 12 and they will be reviewing childrens books and some Young Adult. We are hoping to bring on board a third young reviewer soon.
So if you have kids or are a big kid at heart then check out this younger perspective on suitable books for children and early teens.
http://youngandunbound.blogspot.com/

Would be Witch - Kimberly Frost

Tammy Jo is magic with cake decorating, but unlike her mother and aunt that seems to be the extent of her power and it has nothing to do with witchcraft.
When Tammy Jo has her locket stolen at her friends party, complete with the family ghost who resides in it she finds herself getting in deeper and discovers she may not be so devoid of magic as she first thought. As she and her new cat try to find her locket and stay alive she finds herself drawn into dealing with Bryn who is on her family's "strictly no associating" list and getting caught between the handsome lawyer she doesn't trust and the ex husband who won't let her be herself. Hmm I see lots more fun times ahead with this one.

This book is witty and charming and full of small town fun and Tammy Jo is a delightful character but the cat Mercutio, not only saves her life repeatedly but definitely steals every scene he is in. Well every would be witch should have a cat.
The opening with Tammy choosing her pride over her job had me cheering her on and grinning and I was sold. I was rewarded with a story of vampires, werewolves, disbelieving sherrifs, bitchiness, zombies, ghosts and jealous ex husbands. It has all the trademarks of good urban fantasy but with a lighter more umm Buffyish tone.
I wasn't going anywhere till I was done, so I read this in one sitting and am really looking forward to the next one.
Finally the cover, totally fits the book and very cute!

Rosemary & Rue - Seanan McGuire

As the lovely Mark pointed out today, a cover really can make or break a book, without a massive marketing budget the cover is your advertisment. This is a Chris McGrath cover, which makes it an excellent advert for urban fantasy.

Seanan was kind enough to supply me with a copy of the first October Daye novel for review and I am a seriously happy bunny.

I love a good fairy/faerie tale, I love Kelpies lurking on corners and Selkies in the sea and psychotic queens and endless deceipt and not saying thank you and changlings. Toby Daye delivers all of this.

It's a murder mystery effectively, set mainly within our world. Toby returns from her time in a fish pond (seriously read it) to discover her life has crumbled while she has been away and just as she starts putting it back together she is forced into solving the murder of her friend. Thing is, the investigation might kill her first.

McGuire's writing is absorbing and easily draws you in and then slams into you with relentless action. It's a good thing, this is how Toby's life feels, brief moments of respite (often unconcious) then chaos and action and getting punched, kicked, stabbed, shot and everything in between. There are a number of potential suspects and I figured it out a few pages before Toby did, but not by much and I really felt for Toby when the truth came out.

New reading for Dresden Fans out this September.

This weeks programme

I think this next week of blogging merits mention of some of the highlights, we have an audio interview with Polly Tuckett organiser of Short Fuse, Leicester. I discovered a whole wealth of activity in the Midlands I was completely oblivious to before.
We also have an audio interview with Mark Charan Newton author of sci fi (fantasy, noir) Nights of Villjamur who is an absolute delight.
I will be posting a review of Rosemary & Rue by Seanan McGuire and no doubt there will be other stuff too.

Debbie Miller Interview - DGLA

If you are a fantasy fan and you haven't been living under a rock for the last 6 months or so, then you have probably heard of the David Gemmell Legend Award.
Well here at Un:Bound we are very pleased to introduce author, gracious hostess of Wonderlands and the DGLA forum and member of the DGLA steering group....
Debbie Miller also known as Miller Lau.

Debbie graciously agreed to be grilled on the awards so without further ado:

First of all could you tell us a bit about yourself and how you became involved in the DGLA?
Sure. I first met David Gemmell when I was an aspiring author, around 18 years ago – he was teaching a residential writing course and he was an inspiring teacher who became a much-loved and respected friend. It was a huge shock when he passed away, and myself and some of his other friends quickly decided that it would be great to have an Award to commemorate David and his contribution to the genre. It took some time before the project got off the ground for various organisational reasons – also we wanted Stella Gemmell’s blessing, so we wanted to wait until the time seemed right to broach the subject

A change was made to the voting system early on, can you tell us what the thinking was behind the change and do you feel it was the right decision?
Initially we were just following the model set by other literary Awards, and most of them have a panel of Judges. However, we felt uneasy about this, as the temptation for any Judging Panel is to analyse and examine the ‘worthiness’ of the books in literary terms. We wanted the winner to be the book people simply loved the most and enjoyed reading the most.
We who work in the Fantasy genre producing commercial (Heroic or Epic) Fantasy, were kind of resigned to the fact that however many people loved our books, we were unlikely to ever win an Award – of course, as people have been quick to point out, there is the prestigious ‘World Fantasy Award’ already in existence, but that Award is also decided by a judging panel; in fact I believe the Shortlist is also selected by the panel in the first instance...

David himself only won one Award in his lifetime – the ‘Prix Tour Eiffel’ in 2002 for ‘Legend.’

What were the highlights of the first year of the awards?

Well, there were so many! Firstly, watching the votes begin to come in and realising that readers and fans of the genre thought we were doing something worthwhile. Also, realising just how international the vote was – 73 different countries! It showed that anywhere English language fiction is being read in the world, Fantasy is being read.

Then the Awards evening itself of course – all a bit of a blur now! So brilliant to see everyone turned out in their finery, and the atmosphere in the Magic Circle was just electric. As I was so busy in the immediate run-up to the theatre portion of the evening, I didn’t actually see Raven Armoury’s magnificent trophy until the point it was presented… amazing! I should point out that Raven Armoury is generously donating the wonderful laser-etched ‘Snaga’ every year.


Will there be any changes to the format next year?

Probably not, we are hoping to build on what we’ve achieved so far. We have a meeting scheduled for September where we will be discussing minor issues that have arisen this year and also the possibility of adding a couple of new catagories – I must stress, possibility… at this stage – we won’t do it unless we feel we can keep up the quality of what we’ve done so far.

Interest in the award has kicked off some ongoing discussion online about fantasy. There are fantasy fans coming out of the closet in it's defense and other people asking why it needs defending since it's validity should go without saying. Could we persuade you to weigh in on the role of fantasy†fiction within literature and the various attitudes towards it?

Ah. How much bandwidth do you have? ;-)

Of course Fantasy’s validity should go without saying – but you know, it really doesn’t. To be honest it baffles me why Fantasy is dismissed or even reviled in so-called literati quarters – it does mean that to become a Fantasy author, you really do have to love the genre (or develop a really thick skin!) I’ve been told I’m not a “proper writer” to my face… And in fact, we work harder than any other genre at our craft – nothing can be taken for granted with Fantasy, we have to build worlds, establish religions, political systems, design costumes, weapons, the lot, before we have set out the canvas to tell our story.

Chick-lit? boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, girl has vague existential crisis and goes shopping… lol! That’s a flippin’ sub-plot!

More seriously, I don’t understand why people cannot always see the jewels at the core of our genre – at best, we are creating a modern mythology, using an unfamiliar, created setting to look back at our own world. Heck, even at worst, we entertain, divert and amuse people, sometimes at difficult times in their lives. Where is the problem with that?

I appreciate that Fantasy fiction does not appeal to everyone, I would just urge readers to try a few of the genre classics before dismissing the genre as an irrelevance. If pressed right now for 3 such ‘must-read’ classics… hmmm… ‘Tigana’ by Guy Gavriel Kay, ‘Legend’ by David Gemmell and ‘Small Gods’ by Terry Pratchett.


Stepping back from your involvement in the awards, as an author yourself, what role do you think awards play in literature of any kind and is that affected by whether they are judged by a panel or voted by the public?

As an author, I would say being Nominated for an Award is a lovely, life-affirming thing. Writing is a solitary pursuit and writers have notoriously fragile egos (!) just being told you’ve been nominated means that you’re doing something right; you have honed your craft into something worthwhile and people like it. So when people say they were “thrilled just to be nominated,” I am inclined to believe them. I would be! (But as Founder of the DGLA, sadly will never be nominated for the one Award it might be possible for me to win!)

On a wider scale, I’d say Awards are all about raising awareness, whatever mechanism they use. Obviously we favour the publicly voted system as IMO, it gives people a greater sense of inclusion – but any literary Award is ultimately a success if it gets people talking about books and trying new writers. An Award can justifiably claim to be enriching the cultural landscape if it achieves these goals. It’s easy to get enmeshed in the semantics of voting systems, judges, or whether the ‘right’ book won – but ultimately it’s all about getting people reading and enjoying literature.


Ok moving away from DGLA completely while I have you here.... Can you tell us a little bit about your books (in both identities) to whet our appetites?

Ah well, at the moment, I am ‘writer without portfolio’ so there’s not much to tell. I am working on an exciting new project, but it is not a commissioned work yet. Previously, I published as ‘Miller Lau’ – ‘The Last Clansman’ series with Simon & Schuster and ‘Swarmthief’s Dance’ with Tor UK – however, sadly the ‘Swarmthief’ series was cancelled by Tor – something which I feel just terrible about for my reader’s sakes, but over which I had no control. I hope to get all my Rights back for the series very shortly, so it will hopefully be re-issued in the future.

And just for fun, where is your favourite place to read?

In bed, definitely! I rarely fall asleep whilst reading and have a stack of ‘To Be Reads’ on my bedside cabinet threatening to topple off and concuss my dogs, which sleep near the bed!


Thanks again for joining us, it's been a huge pleasure to have you at Un:Bound.

You’re welcome – thanks for having me J

So there we have it. Head over to Wonderlands to become part of the awesome fantasy community full of authors, artists and fans, or to the DGLA site to keep up with all the developments for next years awards.

Suspension of Disbelief - Ravenous Romance Day with Isabel Roman

Welcome to our next addition of Ravenous Romance Day here on Unbound. Picture me sitting with great dignity in a leather armchair, a decanter filled with Port or Claret or an ice-bucket holding several bottles of champagne for that matter) within easy reach on a side-table. Oh heck, it's me. I've got all of the above, as well as plates of crackers, cheese, meats, and fresh baked baguettes spread out for your nibbling pleasure. A fire crackles in the picturesque fireplace behind me. It is, of course, pouring rain outside and quite chilly.

Yes, I know it's the middle of summer. And many of you are currently hugging the air-conditioning vents, lying in pools or fanning yourself while slamming down ice water. I'm asking you to suspend your disbelief and join me in my imaginary cooler climate (not to mention imagining me beha ving with great dignity) as I welcome my fellow Ravenous author,Isabel Roman, here to talk about the suspension of disbelief in writing.



All authors, all movie-makers, need in some way, shape, or form for their audiences to suspend disbelief. Whether it’s Star Trek to believe we can beam someone across light years, or Wolverine where mutants exist, or Die Hard where one lone New York cop can do everything Bruce Willis did. The person telling the tale wants the audience to be invested in the lives of the characters.

Creating a universe where an audience won’t say “Come on!” or “That’ll never happen!” requires a delicate balance. We’ve all sat through movies or read books (or started them at least) where the moment something happens outside the believable, we stop watching or toss the book aside.

That moment is where the creative forces behind the project drop the ball.

I recently read a book, I won’t name names, where the villain caught a teacup with his pinky, didn’t spill a drop of tea, and handed it back to the heroine. Give me a break! An author has to know how far to push the limits with the audience. We’ll readily accept vampires, witches, and mummies, but when you make the terrible mistake of having an ordinary guy catch a teacup midair like that, you’ve lost your audience.

In my Dark Desire of the Druids series, I ask my audience to accept that Magickers exist. Everyone knows about them, it’s not a secret. There’s even a department within the British government to deal with these Magickers called Witch Hunters.

Ordinarily, you might not accept there are true, real Witch Hunters in the world, but presented as fact within a universe, it could be made believable. You can’t be tentative when creating a universe such as this. While dealing with magicks and so on, there’s still that careful line between what people will generally accept as “Well, that’s magick”, and what they’ll say as “That’s ridiculous.”

A skilled writer can create any universe from mice living in a viable community on the moon to cannibalistic humanoid underground dwellers.

Most time the fault doesn’t lie with the actual universe, but with the characters within that universe and their actions. The teacup really got under my skin, as you can see, lol, but you can’t have your characters so perfect. Even Superman had issues! In the end, my non-expert advice on this is to take your extraordinary universe and have real personalities inhabit it. Flaws, complexities, annoyances, and all.

What world would you set your novel in? What’s realistic enough for you as the writer and me as the reader?

Thank, Inara and Unbound! For having me, my Druids series is available from Ravenous and in print and Kindle from Amazon. I’m currently working on a non-paranormal historical for Ravenous, and polishing the last in my Wicked Seduction series for them. As always, if anyone has any further questions, comments, or whatever, feel free to email me! Isabel@isabelroman.com

(Please do post comments! We love the extended conversations between writers and readers (and other writers) that happen in these posts! And, as always, food and drinks will be available until the last person leaves!)

Poll Results and Ninja Mind Power!

I'll be back a little later tonight (or early Wednesday Thursday - who are we kidding here?) with my review of David Gemmel's The King Behind the Gate, the second book in the Drenai Saga, but I wanted to take a few moments to review our first poll and give a warning to any readers of Un:Bound who reside in the greater New York area.

First, the poll: It looks like the overwhelming majority of respondents (42%) took the optimistic yet cynical "I'll always have the originals" response. I suspect for many the appeal of reaching 42%, which of course is the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything, was too good to pass up. 28% squealed with joy over the prospect of having their beloved series turned into film or television content, and 23% howled in frustration, lamenting the inevitable ruin of a piece of the childhood.

4%, constituting one person, couldn't figure out how the poll worked. That person's medication has been increased, and we hear they're doing much better.

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And now a word of warning for those people in the New York/Long Island area. I was browsing the local Barnes & Noble next to my office, looking for an empty chair where I could do a little lunchtime reading, when I came across the following books, laying on a now-vacated seat:

Ladies and Gentlemen: remain calm. Someone out there is determined to use their newly acquired Ninja Mind Power on you, and possibly perform a Vital Strike Point somewhere on your person.

Be vigilant, be smart, be ready.

The Awakening - Kelley Armstrong

Before I get into the review a quick reminder that our scheduled Ravenous Romance visit is this wednesday, I hope lots of you will pop by for the party. Inara mixes the best cocktails!

Also coming soon a review of Rosemary and Rue by Seanan McGuire and interviews with Polly Tuckett one of the organisers behind Short Fuse and a short fiction writer and Mark Charan Newton who needs no introduction since Nights of Villjamur has gone into it's second print run in hardback.

Ok The Awakening is the second of Armstrong's new Young Adult series. The series is based in the Otherworld created first in what was to be a standalone Bitten, but took off into a popular and brilliant series kept fresh by changing narrators and shifting focus.

The Darkest Powers books are similar in tone and don't pull any punches as a result of the YA branding. In the first book Chloe thought she was having a mental breakdown and found herself in a home for umm troubled kids. It wasn't long before she figured there was more to both the home and her breakdown than it seemed at first. IT was deliciously claustrophobic which really gave a sense of panic and being trapped which seemed in keeping with a mental home.

The Awakening shows the group of escapees learning to trust each other and deal with their gifts while on the run. They also learn a great deal more about the reason there is so much interest in them and what happened to the others. Kelley is extremely skille din managing her story arcs, each of the first two novels in this series provides satisfaction to the reader and some answers, while leaving no doubt that there are more mysteries to explore and that it is going to be hell waiting for the next installment.

My understanding is, that although these novels effectively take place in Otherworld the situation of these kids allows for the books to be kept seperate from events in the adult novels. Maybe the lines will blur in future but for now it is definately a benefit in these books. If you are a fan of the adult books you should enjoy these just as much, if you have never read Armstrong but enjoy adventure and the supernatural then these are a really quick and entertaining way to dip your toes before launching into Bitten and the rest of the Otherworld series. Either way you really ought to be reading it. These stand out among the crowd of urban fantasy hitting the stores.

Midnight Alley - Rachel Caine

This review will contain *spoilers* for the first two Morganville Vampire novels, but not for this one.

It was never going to be possible to maintain the simple People Good/Vampires Bad dynamic of the first book and to a lesser degree the second, for long and keep things moving and believable. Book three is where the morality really gets blurred. Human and Vamp alike have done pretty terrible things but now Michael is a vampire too and although Shane is deeply conflicted neither Claire nor Eve can imagine him being an evil bloodsucker. Add to that Claire is going to have to learn to understand what contracting herself to Amelie to protect her friends has cost her but is her dangerous and strange assignment really so bad? Does she even want to fight it really.

There is much more depth and complexity to this book and although we are reminded that vampires are not all hugs and puppies it's the humans who are the real villains of this book. There is even a turnaround in relationships with old enemies, everything becomes more confusing as the kids from the Glass House start to grow up and handle the wider consequences of their well meaning choices.

The writing is great as always and this series is developing as one of the better YA Vamp sagas. Fun, deep and exciting. Oh and I get the glow in the dark ones, the covers aren't as representative of the series but hey they glow in the dark!

I need your help.

Ok here's the thing. One of my friends commented that he didn't really get the site, it just went round in circles (all roads lead to the blog y'know).
So here is what I am asking of you all (lurkers included)..
Go to the home page www.unboundblogzine.com and take a good look around.
Let me know which features are helpful, what you would never use, whether the layout works for you, is it clear what's actually going on, what haven't I thought of that you'd like to see here, is the design too bland or does simple work for you?
I need the good and bad things feeding back so I can redesign where necessary.

Things to keep in mind....
my design ability and understanding of dreamweaver are quite limited so nothing too cleaver please.
I do this in my limited free time, so whatever features need to be updatable on a weekly rather than daily basis.
I make no money through this as I don't want advertising or affiliation, so nothing that is expensive to add please.

I promise to try not to be defensive or easily hurt by the feedback. Either pop it in the comments here or email me at unbound at unboundblogzine dot com and pop FEEDBACK in the title.
Oh and while you are at it, let me know if you'd like any of our gorgeous shiny new bookmarks, I can send them anywhere in the world.
Thanks for you help folks.

Grimspace - Ann Aguirre

I have seen a lot of people reviewing Ann Aguirre's new novel Blue Diablo and loving it, so when I saw Grimspace on the shelf I grabbed it.
First of all I love this cover, it's almost urban fantasy in style but has clues it's a sci fi which actually is about right for the book, which shares it's style with UF but is definitely SF.
Anyway Grimspace begins with Jax being held prisoner and tortured mentally to find out why a ship she was navigating through Grimspace crashed. Jax is unusual she is 34 and had completed an unheard of number of jumps without breaking down.
When a stranger breaks her out of her cell the adventure really begins. There is lots of running around space trying not to get killed and to find out the truth about the Corp and the crash. Lots of getting shot at and some romance in amongst it all. Jax and the rest of the crew are believable and consistant and Aguirre's humour makes this a very enjoyable read.
I'd recommend this for Urban Fantasy fans wanting something different or fans of character driven Sf like Scalzi.

Witch Craft - Caitlin Kittredge

I was very lucky recently and won some ARC's from Caitlin, including this one. The fourth Nocturne City Book takes place about 6 months after Second Skin. Luna gets drawn into a case of mysterious fires, which appear to have a supernatural origin. Things quickly spiral and the case is a lot more than it first seemed and Luna finds herself fighting Selkies, followed by Harpies and trying to stop a group of witches from doing something that would be very very bad for her City.
There are some intersting new characters introduced again in book four and Luna starts to learn a lot more about the supernatural than she has been aware of before. Caitlin's writing, always good, just keeps getting better. Fagin is just the right balance of sexy and irritating, Luna is now trying almost too hard to be human which makes sense at this point in the longer story.
There is plenty of action and some proper detective work and worst of all for Luna, there is a traitor within her team. As always Caitlin's humour gives all the characters extra depth and provides a few lighter moments and some fun exchanges.

Speaking of Adaptations...

Once again, it appears Clive Barker is getting screwed.

For someone with such an incredibly fertile imagination (I unabashedly love and recommend everything the man's written with the exception of the kinda mediocre Galilee, which I admit warrants a re-read), the film adaptations usually leave a lot to be desired. He seemed to be getting back on track with THE MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN (which I reviewed here), based on a story from the celebrated Books of Blood collection, only to have it unceremoniously dumped into half a dozen theaters before getting released to little fanfare on DVD.

Now it looks like BOOK OF BLOOD, taken from the same collection, is going straight to DVD without any theatrical release. In both instances Barker has been working closely with the filmmakers to get tones present in his original work correct, and BOOK OF BLOOD was supposed to be the introductory film in a series based on his most famous collection (DREAD and PIG BLOOD BLUES are also in the works).

If stuff like this keeps up, we're going to have little hope for some great adaptations of his major work. Who wouldn't love to see Weaveworld, the Arabat series, or Imajica brought to life with the love and care the HARRY POTTER films have?

You can get the whole story here, including a trailer, from /Film

Quick Update

Hi all, yesterday was a long day away, otherwise I would have popped in to point out that next Wednesday is Ravenous Romance day, so if you like a little romance in your life, or you just want to know what topic the gang are taking on this time pop back next Wednesday.

I am reading the Witch Craft ARC, the fourth book in Caitlin Kittredge's Nocturne City series and should get a review up some time tomorrow.

Cathy's Ring - Stewart, Weisman & Brigg

Ok, so Cathy's Ring follows on from Cathy's book and Cathy's key which I haven't read. It was supplied courtesy of Bloomsbury, with thanks.

Cathy has so far discovered that her father isn't dead, he's an immortal and so is her boyfriend. So was her boyfriends dad till Jewel sprayed him with the anti immortality stuff and then shot him. So clearly there is a supernatural element.

Ok so about four pages in and I was fascinated. The target audience of this book is a little confusing, the protagonists are in their late teens and the action comes thick and fast, but the book reads as a kids adventure. There are obviously sexual relationships going on but again we never see more than kissing, and there is a body count, but it's pretty clean and quick.

It's enjoyable though, amusingly written from Cathy's point of view and plenty of adventure and action. I had a good time with this one. There isn't much depth or character development, although thought has been given to background and motivation beyond the book, which was well worth the effort here.

It's billed as interactive. I went online and listened to some of the answer phone messages, it was a nice touch, and the little evidence pouch held a gorgeous poster and a cute little silver coloured plastic ring (for #12.99 i'd have liked them to stretch to metal, but hey) and the early teen girls I think this is aimed at will adore those.

Cathy takes time out a few pages in, once you're hooked, to catch you up on the other books so you don't need to have read all three which is nice. All in all a neat package and a fun book.

Outside Genre & Look! A Poll!

The original title of the post was going to be "No Genre For YOU!" - kinda a spoof of the classic Seinfeld "Soup Nazi" episode. I didn't like the title (it sounded too mean), but I liked the picture of the Soup Nazi, so there's the story behind why he's at the top of this post.

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Since I don't technically have anything genre-related to post today, I thought I'd experiment with the Polling feature on Blogger. Lately it seems like everything's getting optioned for either the big or the small screen. Casting and pre-production is already underway for the massive miniseries HBO is making of Geroge RR Martin's A Game of Thrones, talks are gearing up again for the Shia LaBeouf-led adaptation of Y: The Last Man, and my beloved TRON is getting the update/remake/sequel treatment as we speak.

So check out the poll in the upper-right corner of the site and make your pic - polling ends Sunday night at 11:00 PM. If you have any comments about a particular adaptation one way or the other, leave 'em in the comments, and I'll come back with the results next Monday.

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I mentioned before that I've been slow on the genre reading (hence the dearth of reviews by me on the site recently), but that doesn't mean I haven't been reading, or even writing up what I have read. June was a fruitful month for nonfiction, and for those who are interested, I humbly submit the following reviews as evidence that I have been reading lately:

• In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan - a manifesto for eating healthier by focusing on whole, unprocessed foods.
• The Spiders of Allah by James Hider - a LibraryThing Early Reviewer's copy about the Times UK Middle East Bureau Chief's time in the Middle East, and an examination of religious fundamentalism as seen through the eyes of an atheist.
• Easy Riders, Raging Bulls by Peter Biskind - a look at the "New Hollywood" of the 1970s from the mouths of the major players, both in front of and behind the camera. A great look at what made the 1970's such a great time for film, and how it imploded in itself.
• Precious Metal, ed. by Albert Mudrian - an expanded collection of Decibel Magazine's Hall of Fame series, which examines "classic" extreme metal albums with the participants themselves.

I don't normally read that much nonfiction at a time, and with the heat and craziness at work, it's definitely time for some decompression, so I'm happy to say I just settled down with The King Beyond the Gate, the second Drenai book from David Gemmell.

Coming soon

I am delighted to announce that Mark Charan Newton has confirmed for a face 2 face with me in my little town.
It's happening in the second half to July and with a little luck I will have an audio file at the end of it to share with you all.
Mark's first book Night of Villjamur has just gone into a second print in hardback so many congratulations Mark and I can't wait for the interview!

Turn Coat - Jim Butcher

I promised myself I would wait for the latest installment of the Dresden Files in paperback, then I renegotiated and settled on only buying the hardback if I saw the Chris McGrath cover (love that guys work). Then I had a really really bad day, so I just bought it, curled up with it and read the misery and stress out of my system.

In Turn Coat Harry finds himself trying to protect and prove innocent his long time accuser and would be executioner, now fellow warden, Morgan. Once again Harry and by association his apprentice Molly have their necks on the line because Dresden insists on doing the right thing even if it's totally dumb and not always the best solution. He gets drawn into treachery within the White Council, conflict in the White Court of Vampires and the presence of a Black Council is becoming harder to deny.

I love these books and I am particularly fond of the ones where Dresden isn't embroiled in fairy plots. I like those too, but the more detectivey ones are better and this requires some proper gumshoe work. This is classic Dresden, a wrongly accused man on the lam coming to Harry for help, multiple layers of intrigue, life is good to me. Again, if you are new to these books you really need to start back at the begining, or at least int he first three or four books and if you aren't new you don't need me to tell you to read this one. If you haven't read them before then all you need to now is it's noir style wizardy urban fantasy action at it's finest and if you like any of those things you should give it a try.

Cover Art Quickie

When I interviewed Steven Savile last weekend I cribbed various cover shots from the net, including the temporary one of the new thriller Silver. For anyone who is interested the official one is now out and I nabbed it off the Variance blog.

It's a pretty thing, I love it.

Worlds Worst Hostess & The Reef

Ok, last night I went to the pub with hubby to cheer us up after a really bad day. Turns out not only was it bookclub night but I was supposed to be hosting. Ooops. I got back to discover that rather than spend the night on my doorstep they'd gone elsewhere. I took wine to the elsewhere and was forgiven, then mocked, extensively. I feel it may take some time to live that one down.

The book was Coraline, my choice and the reactions were mixed. None of these people generally read either childrens books or fantasy and the biggest problem seemed to be that they were unable to allow themselves to be absorbed by the world. They did enjoy some of the peripheral characters and they all loved the Cat. Still, I think what it taught me is not everyone falls into alternate worlds as easily as I do, or that I actually never developed after turning 11. Either way i'm still glad to be able to lose myself in the fairy tales of my childhood and give myself sleepless nights quaking at the horrors of button eyed OtherMothers. Immature I may be, but happy I definately am.

The Reef: this was an idea by Clive Barker long before the internet started producing serch engines, back when it as just psychologists and professors reading encarta and your desktop at work was a mere dummy terminal. The idea was that a whole load of computers (practically a beowulf cluster) were hooked up together to search the youthful net for items of interest (in this case paranormal/demonic activity). It acted like a coral reef filtering bits out of the water.

Anyway, in that vien, and not something I am going to make a regular feature of, but becaus eI haven't finished Turn Coat or Orbus yet, here are a few things on my googlereader reef today.
Dark Wolf has some Sullivan cover art going on
Short Story giveaway at Fantasy & Sci Fi Lovin'
Morgan Mandel asks How do You Sell Books?
SciFiGuy exposes some gorgeous cover art
Schmoozing gets some consideration by Helen Ginger
Dave Brendon reviews Avempartha
Smexy Books offers up her June reading list
Consider the Joy of YA Author Blogs with Persnickety Snark

Normal programming will resume tomorrow, but today is a good day for visiting someone new online.