Book Blogging and Other Fun

I just learned that submitting to potential bloggers is kinda like submitting to editors – yet for whatever reason, I find it way more awkward.

So far, I’m booked for March for a blog-tour with Reading Addiction Tour Group, and it’s kinda neat to see the people adding the book go up on Goodreads.

They’re still looking for vacancies – so if you’re a book blogger and you’re looking for something, my book and others are up for grabs on this page. The tour page says they want around 100 readers per blog, but I’m brand new at this so your guess is probably better then mine. I stopped really reviewing books on my livejournal a few years ago, but I had no idea how valuable reviews were to authors. I probably shouldn’t have been so random with mine then, but, eeeeh.

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2013 Prix Aurora Awards

If you’re Canadian, you can start nominating Canadian material for the 2013 Prix Aurora Awards, more details here.

 

I don’t have any preferences at this point in time – I’ll probably have to take a look at the eligibility list to start deciding who I”ll vote for. 

Guest Interview: Celia Breslin

I’m not currently doing a theme of interviews, but today’s guest is up-and-coming Champagne Author, Celia Breslin, and she’s here to talk to us today about her debut novel, Haven!

Celia Breslin lives in Northern California with her family. She writes urban fantasy and paranormal romance about vampires, mermen, The Fae, and assorted other sexy and mysterious creatures of the Otherworld. Her debut novel, HAVEN, releases July 2013 from Champagne Books (BURST imprint).

You can connect with Celia via her website, Facebook, and on Twitter.

 

Tell us about HAVEN.

Short answer: Vampires, mayhem, and love. 

Long answer: Here’s the back cover blurb…

Chosen by Destiny. Bonded by Blood.

San Francisco nightclub owner Carina  “Rina” Tranquilli works hard, plays hard, and never allows the death of her parents and her twelve-year memory gap to get her down. But her life takes a left turn when a witch attacks her on her twenty-fifth birthday.

Three hauntingly familiar vampires emerge to reveal she possesses a latent power. To protect her from their enemies, they admit to wiping her memories clean and abandoning her as a child, but now they need her help. As she struggles to evade her new protectors and even newer enemies, she meets Alexander, an enigmatic, undead musician. Insta-lust flares, leaving her wanting more.

With evil’s minions hounding her every move, and everything she thought she knew turned on its head, Carina must harness her burgeoning power, unravel her vampire family’s web of deceit, and fight to have a love life…without getting killed in the process.

In HAVEN, do you have a favorite character? How about least favorite?

In truth, all of my characters have a piece of my heart. But I hope my heroine Rina will forgive me if I confess her “uncle” Jonas is my favorite. An ancient vampire originally from England, Jonas embodies extreme violence in a pretty package.  He’s a man of few words, dark and moody, fiercely loyal and violently protective of those few people he loves (such as Rina).

I adore Jonas so much I gave him his own short story, a prequel to HAVEN entitled “The Vampire Code.” It’s in the edit stage at the moment, after which it will go out on submission to Champagne.

Dom,  I, Rina’s brother, is my least favorite. I’d like him better if he’d lose the huge anti-vampire chip he’s carrying around on his gorgeous Italian shoulders. He might just do that in the next book. TBD. J

Tell us a bit about your writing style – is there anything you find really easy or, really hard?

I prefer to write novel-length fiction and write in both first person and third person, depending on what my characters want. For HAVEN, Rina was such a dominant personality that I had no choice but to allow her to tell the tale.

My stories typically unfold in a linear fashion and follow a basic, somewhat skeletal outline. If I try to jump around and write scenes out of order, my Muse gets cranky. If I try to work from too detailed of an outline, my Muse throws a tantrum and veers wildly off-script. It’s a fascinating and fun process.

Do you have anything else in the works we should know about?

Why yes, I do.  A paranormal romance featuring one sexy-as-hell and wicked-smart human-merman hybrid, one sweet lit geek (his love-interest) and a slew of mostly evil mermen said hybrid must battle to save the girl.  

Also in the works: the second book in Rina’s vampire world. My girl is none too happy at the onset when an archenemy sends a gift-wrapped box of blood to her house…

Who would win in a race around the world: Superman or The Flash?

Superman

Do you play a musical instrument of any sort?

Piano

In the spirit of sharing, tell us about another author you adore.

Oh, there are so many. Currently, I have to read (and reread) everything by Laura Kaye and Kresley Cole.

Would you like to leave a shout-out to anyone?

Yes, thank you Leia, that’s so kind of you. I’d like to *throw confetti* and *pop champagne* for my friend and critique partner Amber Belldene. Her debut novel, BLOOD VINE, a vampire paranormal romance, releases last week from Omnific Publishing. Congratulations, Amber!

Even though I don’t know her, I’ll extend the congrats to Amber as well! Thanks for stopping by today, Celia, and I hope to have you back here perhaps sometime in June leading up to Haven’s release. 

In completely unrelated news, this has been a hectic tour (I’m a paramedic, 96 hours on the pager and you go a little something something on your last day…) and I might be a little slow on moderation of comments. There’s a large system coming in – where I’m located we either get missed or we get hit, and my net might go down – so my apologies if I’m a little bit slower on the uptake then normal.

 

Winnipeg Sci-Fi Author wins Prestigious Award

Ask and you shall recieve! I just got this message in my email, and I’d like to pass along some congratulations – I’m not going to blather, I’ll pass the message along, italics means it was lifted in its entirety out of the email I recieved from the EDGE Newsletter. I got zero affiliation with the author and/or EDGE besides my appearing in the last Tesseracts.

http://www.edgewebsite.com/books/alphanauts/an-catalog.html

Edge Science Fiction & Fantasy Publishing is delighted to announce that author J. Brian Clarke won the the inaugural A.E. Van Vogt Award for his novel Alphanauts. The award includes a $1200.00 honorarium (The largest in Canadian Science Fiction writing) and a certificate.

Congratulations as well to finalists Karl Schroeder for Lady of Mazes (Tor) and Matthew Hughes for The Other (Underland Press). The award is sponsored by the Winnipeg Science Fiction Association. The Award is for a book that must be a first-edition full length science fiction novel or full-length science fiction short story anthology, written by an author linked to Western Canada by birth or residency.

A web site dealing with the award, celebrating A. E. Van Vogt’s contributions to Canadian writing, and Brian J. Clarke’s win, will be announced ASAP. It will provide details as how one may enter for the 2013 award.

About A. E. Van Vogt (from Winnipeg Science Fiction Association posts)

April 26, 1912, Alfred Elton Van Vogt was born on a farm in Edenburg, a Russian Mennonite community east of Gretna, Manitoba, Canada. By July 1939, he had written his first Science Fiction story and had it professionally published. He continued to write in Winnipeg until 1944 and it was during this time that one of his major stories “SLAN” was written. By 1995 he was awarded the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award by the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) . He has been the ONLY Canadian Science Fiction Writer to be awarded this major title.

I guess this means I add Alphanauts to my ever-growing ‘to-read’ pile. And if you’re planning on submitting to the next Tesseracts Anthology, get your stories in pronto, I think they’re due by month-end.

Release Date Hiccup/Free Reads

Tower of Obsidian‘s release date has been postphoned for another month – we ran into some technical issues (I blame shawmail) and none of us wanted to give up on quality so I’ll post something official when it’s up and we’re good. (Well, maybe I wanted to give up on quality a little but the good shoulder angel smacked some sense into me).

I was putting on my thinking cap as to how to keep this blog entertaining – I like to support Canadian-related publishing stuff, so I think one of my things will be to semi-regularly post links to Canadian Sci-fi/Fantasy publishers when they announce information, even if I have no affiliation, but just to keep things in the loop. Anthology announcements, contests, that sort of stuff. That’s not to say if someone is having a fun international contest I won’t pass the message along, but for whatever reason, I’m really partial and like to see the Canadian publishers do well.

Speaking of my publisher, however, a bunch of the authors released an anthology to showcase their work. I have absolutely no affiliation with said anthology (Me write romance? HAH!) and the only thing I know is my beta has something featured in it – I have no idea what, he gave me some stories to look over a few months ago and I don’t even know what made the cut.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/B00AX26K86/ref=sib_dp_kd#reader-link

You can download them for free on: 1/11, 1/26, 2/25, 3/4, 3/25.

Our imprint is starting a similar collection for the sci-fi writers – it’s going to be months away and I might not even make the cut, but I’ll be sure to let y’all know once I have more information.

So anyway – my book is postphoned but coming soon, I’ve got a few interviews coming up from other Burst/Champagne authors in the next month and I might start rambling sooner than later about random things that get my attention. In the meantime, back to the drafting process – I’m trying to finish this darn novel to start the sci-fi projects. Till next time!

Writing Resolutions

I might as well jump on the bandwagon.

 

My usual deal in terms of writing has just been write a novel every year – which I’ve pretty much done consistently post-uni besides last year, but I’m just finishing up the last manuscript. I started a new one for nanowrimo in November but I’m kinda meh about it – honestly, my bigger drive has been working on my digital coloring (for whatever reason, my penciling has gotten way better – it’s like I’m getting more fluid). I think if anything, I need to get quicker with my editing. There’s nothing wrong with letting stuff percolate and get better, but I think I might go over it a few too many times nitpicking.

Most of my ‘what I want to accomplish’ goals are ones that don’t pertain to writing much – last year was a huge change for me as I transitioned from ‘job’ to ‘career’ and I put a major dent in my student loan (the loan which I had most of the money up front, and then life went ‘Ahahahah, oh really?’ about three years ago) but I might as well commit to something concrete:

In 2013, I will:

1) Finish any lingering editing manuscripts that I was working on in 2012.

2) I will write a new novel.

3) I will write a novella in a different genre or subgenre then the novel.

Sounds easy enough, now that I have 346 days to get on it. That lingering editing involves a manuscript I’ve been rewriting all of this year and a bunch of other stuff – heck, now that I think of it, I have a sequel I started two years ago that’s been sitting around in the ‘work on me when you’re not busy pile’ that I don’t think changed a word at all last year. So I guess #1 really is “Clean up your old projects”. This should probably involve me going through my old writing folders on this laptop and organizing. Just the idea of moving things to their rightful spots fills me with dread but, at least my submissions folders are always up to date and organized.

 

As for reading resolutions – eh, I always say I’m going to get around to reading Brave New World. Maybe this year – maybe not. My kobo ereader is nice – I just discovered I can preview the first chapter of new books on it – but I’ve got a bunch of titles waiting to be read, so we’ll see if I ever get around to Huxley some time this decade.

 

Ah well – it’s 2013 – let’s see how I look back when we get to 2014. Cheers, everyone.