With a handle like Gothic_Angel, I had to Twitter-friends her – and then I learn she not only reviews books, but she’s also a writer with a book coming out! Here it is, peeps, take a look at the Stolen cover…
Keren needs to know what YOU think: should she keep this cover or change it? You can reach her by commenting here, or…
Keren’s Goodreads profile
Keren’s Facebook
Keren’s author blog
The Trick: Axel is the brains behind the popular Coffin Hop for horror writers at Halloween. The Treat: his book hot Sinatra just came out and he’s talking inspiration. Enjoy, peeps ♥
“Where do you get your ideas from?”
“uhhhhhhhhh…”
It’s a dialogue transaction that every writer knows like the back of their QWERTY hand. Sometimes we hear it so often that the ol’ mental third round bell rings and we lunge out of the corner screaming “YO MOMMA GAVE ‘EM TO ME”. Sometimes we stuff our hands in corduroy pockets and mumble an apologetic “here and there”. And sometimes, someone as lovely, talented and congenial as Anne Michaud asks, and you dig deep and give honestly in the name of art and entertainment.
My latest experiment in the fictional pursuits, Hot Sinatra, is a throwback to the pulp fiction of the 20’s and 30’s, typified by the likes of Hammett and Chandler, James M. Cain, Erle Stanley Gardner, Carroll John Daly, Raoul Whitfield and the like. Stories about hard men who used fists and guns to save endangered dames and foil the plans of nefarious millionaires and dangerous gangsters. The language was highly colloquial and tied to the time and place, most of it actually created by writers with no ties to the real nitty gritty of crime in the 30’s. More often than not, the criminals and gangbangers picked up their slang from the pulp mags, like Black Mask and Detective Story. Today’s idea of “Detective Fiction”, and the archetype of the “square-jawed, two-fisted hero”, came directly from those pages of adventure and crime-fighting.
Chief among my own inspirations from the era was Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe, main man of most of Chandler’s oeuvre. Marlowe was smart, but tough, wily, but always just naïve enough to fall for the wrong girl, or the wrong explanation. I love the idea of an everyman hero who is actually a far sight beyond the everyman. Smarter, nobler, more loyal, and always letting his own morality hobble his potential. He never quite makes the big payoff. He always misses happiness and contentment by a hair’s breadth, and always because he tries to be a better kind of man. Maybe it’s my own struggles with the dreaded potential, or the idea that, maybe… just maybe, this will be the day that karma pays back. Whatever it is, the contradictions inherent to those characters intrigue me.
So I sat back, filled to the brim with hundreds of pulp detective stories, and thought about how to best approach such a story. I wanted to bring it into a modern setting, but without the lazy fallback of everyone wearing zoot suits and talking like bad Bogey impersonators. I didn’t want to pull a Romeo + Juliet and just throw archaic language in the mouths of modern characters. I settled on making my protagonist a man-out-of-time, struggling to fulfill the expectations of a real-life Phillip Marlowe, personified in the ghost of a dead grandfather. It gave Mossimo Cole the background to act more like a stand-up guy of the 30’s and speak in the kind of rambling, self-reflecting narrative voice that Raymond Chandler perfected so many decades ago. It also gave me occasion to work in some of the reverence and respect I have for my own grandfathers, one who was a kind, but serious man, who led a very hard life. The other is one of the most generous, gregarious and charming storytellers I have ever known.
So many other inspirations fell out of me like surging rivers of pop-culture ephemera, everything from punk rock to tattoos, from Sinatra to my own horrible coffee addiction, and a liberal dose of my own misspent youth and experiences with alcohol abuse and self-destructive nihilism.
One last inspiration I really should mention is that of my dear departed friend, Ryan “Foxy” Fox. Much of that previously mentioned “misspent youth” was spent in the company of Foxy. He was that one dude in a million, who lit up every room he entered, and left with the friendship and goodwill of every single person present. Foxy was a whirlwind of energy, a constant source of mirth and merriment, and the best friend a guy could ask for. He was a rockabilly rebel, lead singer and guitar-slinger of The Nightstalkers, wild and unkempt and exploding into every corner of the world. His untimely death left everyone he knew with a hole in their hearts, and my own is still scarred and empty in that spot. I didn’t plan on writing him into the story, but he came out, loud and strong and alive as ever. I like to think Foxy is the real heart of the story, and the one person Mossimo Cole could never live without.
In the end, I think my little novel has come out pretty damn well. It has been lauded for its voice, for its ability to invoke the Phillip Marlowe’s and Sam Spades of yesterday, while remaining a thoroughly modern story of love and violence, crime and comedy. I like that. I’m proud of that, and I sure hope you’ll give it a chance.
Hot Sinatra is available now in paperback and eBook formats from most online retailers and retail outlets including Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble
Axel Howerton is the author of the quirky neo-noir novel Hot Sinatra, the mini-anthology Living Dead at Zigfreidt & Roy, and a bevy of short stories and hidden gems. Axel is the co-creator of the annual Coffin Hop author extravaganza and the long-time editor of http://www.eyecrave.net. His work has recently appeared in Big Pulp, Fires on the Plain, Steampunk Originals, A Career Guide To Your Job In Hell and the holiday anthology Let It Snow: Season’s Readings For A Super-Cool Yule. Axel is currently working on several projects, including a Steampunk novella for the Empires of Steam & Rust series, and a bottle of Irish whiskey.
He lives in Western Canada with his two brilliant young sons and a wife that is way out of his league. You can visit Axel online at http://www.axelhowerton.com
Well, it happened to Steve McHugh: his self-published book Crimes Against Magic was a great success! And his second just came out, so I needed to pick his brains about it…
How to you tackle a sequel? You’ve got your characters, you know them already, so is it more about plot and making them suffer more?
SM: It is a little about making them suffer. You always make the characters you like suffer the most. You give them difficult situations and see how’d they’d react. So in a way it’s more about the plot, by the time you get to the second book you should know how your characters will act in a given situation. Sometimes you’re surprised, because the way you think they’d act isn’t how they actually do. I think they grow as a person the more you write them, and like any person they evolve in your mind.
Steve’s been writing from an early age, his first completed story was done in an English lesson. Unfortunately, after the teacher read it, he had to have a chat with the head of the year about the violent content and bad language. The follow up ‘One boy and his frog’ was less concerning to his teachers and got him an A.
It wasn’t for another decade that he would start work on a full length novel, the result of which is Crimes Against Magic.
He was born in a small village called Mexbrough, South Yorkshire, but now lives with his wife and three young daughters in Southampton.
A giant spider, a killer mermaid, a mad neighbor, zombies and a very dark soul – monsters, everywhere. Wanna see what girls can do to them? Check out my collection of 5 dark novelettes. Here’s a peek at DEATH SONG…
Something catches in the back of my throat. I hide my face in my hands to quiet the sobs. But then, something ain’t right. Air moves around me and I stop. I look between my fingers, but the blur of my tears thickens everything: the bathtub, the towels, and someone on the floor.
A woman’s in here with me, door still closed and locked. An exhale, like after a deep swim, and a smell, like the swamp close to my empty home. A chill runs down my back, I wipe my eyes, rub and scratch them to see more clearly. And I do.
Two gray hands scratch the floor tiles, nails green with algae, putrid flesh sagging on her legs, arms and torso, hair so long and wet and heavy, it drags her down. Diluted, impossible to focus on, like little waves rippling over her body from head to foot, seaweed in the water. Scales and fins, mermaidlike, little knives, those are. And they scrape the floor, like a fork on a plate. It’s her—Limnade.
She opens her mouth of scissor-teeth and the rotten smell of fish wraps around my throat like two hands trying to choke me. “You can’t be…” I don’t finish my breathless thought and jump backward, knocking over the dish of decorative soaps. Blurry waves, vision impaired, out of focus, unreal. She crawls toward me, eyes unblinking, lethal, hands inches from me: my legs refuse to move, as my body feels like stone. Frozen, hypnotized, a statue. Then I hear something coming from within her…
A melody, reminding me of something lost, tickles my ears. It drags on until the sweetness turns sickly, vibrating into a full-on super-scream, hyenalike, enough to pop my ears and make them bleed. Her large mouth deforms her face into one gap of black, the cry so high and strident, I scream from the pain.
Limnade stares at me, everything but her fades away—Jo’s nice bathroom, Jo’s new life, Jo himself, none of it matters anymore. Her fingers brush my forehead, they’re cold and sticky like clams. And I let the darkness take me away.
NEW RELASE! THE HAUNTING SEASON
New Adult/Horror Recommended for readers 17+
Be careful what you let in…
Siler House has stood silent beneath Savannah’s moss-draped oaks for decades. Notoriously haunted, it has remained empty until college-bound Jess Perry and three of her peers gather to take part in a month-long study on the paranormal. Jess, who talks to ghosts, quickly bonds with her fellow test subjects. One is a girl possessed. Another just wants to forget. The third is a guy who really knows how to turn up the August heat, not to mention Jess’s heart rate…when he’s not resurrecting the dead.
The study soon turns into something far more sinister when they discover that Siler House and the dark forces within are determined to keep them forever. In order to escape, Jess and the others will have to open themselves up to the true horror of Siler House and channel the very evil that has welcomed them all.
Available now!
Title: The Forgotten Ones
Author: Laura Howard
Genre: NA Paranormal Fantasy Romance
Expected release date: May 15, 2013
Age Group: New Adult
Cover Designer: Stephanie Mooney
Book Description:
Allison O’Malley just graduated from college. Her life’s plan is to get a job and take care of her schizophrenic mother. She doesn’t have room for friends or even Ethan, who clearly wants more.
When Allison’s long-lost father shows up, he claims he can bring her mother back from the dark place her mind has sent her. He reveals legends of a race of people long forgotten, the Tuatha de Danaan, along with the truth about why he abandoned her mother.
Share on Facebook and/or Twitter and you could win a $50 Amazon (or B&N) Gift card!
![tourbanner[3]](https://annecmichaud.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/tourbanner3.jpg?w=300&h=94)
When an author has a new book coming out, I’m always curious as to what inspired them for the story, so I jumped on Amy’s blog tour wagon and invited her to tell us more about Incendiary ♥
AB: In 2007, my best friend, Molly, had sent me a book for my birthday. It was entitled: I Am The Messenger by Markus Zusak. The book is about Ed Kennedy, an underage cabdriver who has a coffee-drinking dog named The Doorman and a secret crush on his best friend Audrey. Ed has a peaceful routine until the day he inadvertently stops a bank robbery. After that day, Ed becomes the messenger.
The book, written in the first person present tense, was funny and heart pounding and sad and euphoric. It read like you could step into Ed’s shoes, breathe his air, see what he is seeing. In short, it was amazing. But, there was a message at the end of the story that struck me as if it was written just for me. It says, quote: “Maybe everyone can live beyond what they’re capable of…I’m not the messenger at all. I’m the message.”
I knew instantly that I had to try to write a book because maybe I was able to live beyond what I always thought I was capable of.
At the time, I didn’t realize I wanted to be a “writer;” I only knew that I wanted to see if I could produce a story worth reading. I know it sounds counterintuitive because you’d think that it would be a logical conclusion that I wrote a book so I could be a writer, but for me, it was more like I became a writer because I had to write a book—I had to tell a story. I didn’t have“be a writer” aspirations, maybe I did when I was younger, but when I began writing Inescapable there was no real fantasy of becoming an author. Inescapable just began as an experiment to see if I could write a book—I wanted to see if I was capable of writing a story and then LIKING what I wrote.
The inspiration to write about angels came about while I was reading “The Raven” by Edgar Allen Poe. I stumbled across a stanza that had the word “Seraphim” in it. I was annoyed that I didn’t know exactly what that word meant because I’m preoccupied with words. I googled it and found that Seraphim are angels, and not just any angels; they’re the highest rank of angels in Heaven. Angels have ranks? I had thought. Really? I did some research and discovered that a theologian in the fifth century named Pseudo-Dionysius the Aeropagite wrote about a hierarchy of angels. The angels from my stories are loosely based on Pseudo-Dionysius’ writings, but I took a lot of poetic license in my writing.
It took me several more months to work out that I could do it, that I could write. I kept saying to Tom (my husband), “I should write a book, don’t you think? Do you think I should write a book? What if I wrote a book?” Finally, Tom gave me his MacBook and said, “Here, write a book!” Translation: Sheesh, woman, stop bugging me! * (But in a cute, sweet way.)
He never got that laptop back.
I named the first file: Here We Go. I began to write with the thought that it was just for me and that I would never show it to anyone—it was just an experiment to see if I could do it. That mindset gave me the freedom to write anything I wanted. Everything I wanted. I was under no obligation to censor it in any way because, hey, I was the only one who would ever read it, right?
It was ON.
Soon after I started writing, I began to hear the characters I created. Literally. They would wake me up in the middle of the night—talking. (I know it’s weird, but really, really cool, too. BTW, Russell talks the most and is always the funniest.) I call whatever it is that happens “catching the stream” because once I began to hear the characters speak, it was like I was floating easily down a river. I just had to type what they (the characters) said. They sometimes took me places I never expected the story would go. It was literally like I was watching a movie in my mind and I just needed to describe it in words so that it made sense on paper.
Then, in about four months, I finished it. (The rough draft, that is.)
A strange daring happened to me after that: I let the story escape from my computer and into the dreams of others…and now I can’t stop writing. I can’t wait to tell you what happens next…
Five novellas based on Devin O’Branagan’s bestselling novel, Witch Hunt!My Review: When I began reading Witch Hunt: Of the Blood, I never expected to be thrown into such a realistic world of love, betrayal, acceptance and rejection. Not only was I amazed at how each story portrayed a different aspect of the Hawthorne clan by depicting one of its character, but the overall anthology feels more like a complete novel than a multiple authors book.The witches world is pretty much ours, albeit their fright to be discovered, judged and killed, for the most part.
I never thought it’d be that easy to identify with witches, but the one that stood out the most was Krista Walsh’s Circle Unbroken. Well-written, poetic and unique, this tale strike me not only in originality but for its compelling plot – my favorite of the lot.
Anyone who’s a fan of witches, historical elements or just a book rich in flavors, pick this one now.
Chatting with… Krista Walsh
It must have been a treat to work with characters of someone else to tell your own story – how did it come about and how did it change your own approach to writing?
KW: I first read Devin O’Branagan’s original Witch Hunt novel last year and loved it – especially the story set during the Salem witch trials. When Devin and I started talking about a possible anthology sequel, I was honoured to be asked to participate and grabbed Bridget’s character right away. It was only when I started writing that I realised how tricky diving into someone else’s world can be. In order to maintain consistency and a seamless continuation from the original, I had to find the balance between recreating the voice of Devin’s Bridget and exploring the voice of my own. The difference of 9 years between the stories gave lots of freedom to create my own story, but it was definitely a new way of working with characters.
How did the research process go – did you already know about witches, Salem and all that jazz, or did you have to dig to find out about it?
KW: For this story I lucked out. Witch trials of all kinds are my passion subject, so I’ve been reading up on them for years. It was a relief to finally have a chance to put that reading to use. For the sorts of magic I used throughout the story, I have Devin to thank because of how well she set it up in Witch Hunt. My research focused more on the smaller details of the setting and era, which was good fun.
Will you be writing about witches in the future?
KW: Witches always have a place in my writing. I have three completed novels in the editing stages and they’ve all involve historical witchcraft or modern day sorcery. I love the possibilities that witchcraft can offer a story, something that has limits and doesn’t just solve problems, something they have to work with, and sometimes against. The novel I’m working on editing now is called Evensong, which is a story about an author who gets trapped in his own fantasy novel (and yes, there’s an enchantress in this one as well).
Krista Walsh enjoys writing literary fiction, as well as historical and dark fantasy. Publications include contributions in the Day of Demons and Bleeding Ink anthologies. She currently lives in Ottawa, Ontario.
Learn more about her at www.theravensquill.com
Follow her on Twitter at @krista_walsh
Pile of skulls, one of them with a clowns nose
WIN a softcover copy!
Anne Michaud 