If you could read my mind: What a tale my vampire's would tell

Hi all! :) I know you've missed me but I have been busy on vacation, (sounds like an oxymoron huh? ;) with editing and on a cruise (where I had to pay for internet time by the minute) so my absense wasn't without it's reasons. As you may have guess this time I'll be spaking about telepathy and mind control (with a nodd to the great Canadian singer Gordon Lightfoot) First off though (as always)

Shameless plug: My book The Newfoundland Vampire will be on in April 2012 (with Pat's very skilled and gracious help) and Tasha’s books (I've read both and highly recommend) are out now.

When a lot of people think of vampires a power that often comes to mind is hypnotisim, mind control or some kind of telepathy. A vampire's gaze is often used in novels and movies as a way to control a human, even if it's just long enough to take a nibble on their neck ;) I didn't bother with the gaze part and I don't mean crushing someone's will but just the ability to make people act just a little different than they may have otherwise would be an incredibly usefull tool. For my book I took it a few steps further but first a few questions. What would you do if you could read someone's mind? What behaviours would incourage or discourage in others?

I'm a poker player (very much an amatuer sadly) and I can only dream of how this would help at the table (especially since I pretty much lost steady for 4 nights on a cruise). Just the ability to see someone's card or make them fold at just the right moment could make you a fortune and eventually piss a lot of people off :-) Just imagine though the simple things like waiting in line, getting into a sold out show, getting away without a parking ticket, life sure would be easier with a little mind influencing action.

But I'm way off topic. What I saw for vampires is that they could not only influence people's action but also animals. How useful would be to quiet an annoying barking dog? Or stop a cat from spraying the furtniture? For a more extreme situation nothing would be better (or more surprising) than having a crocodile or other large animal show up to fight for you when the going got tough. Furthermore I thought that one vampire who creates another would have a special bond and could communicate telepathically over any distance and could read weak-willed or young vampires minds. Vampires though would also have the ability to shield their thoughts from anyone, it would just take time and skill to do so. (hey you can never be too careful right? :)

The temptation to control human behavior would always be present (and could also be a ton of fun at parties ;) and the ability to communicate without words to another vampire would be incredibly convienent and useful. Well I'd go on but I've got this funny feeling in my head, kind of like a sexy female voice almost whispering for me to finish putting away the dishes ;-) Until next time dear readers I am...

Creating a Mythology for your world

Hi all :) A little over a week I know but ideas take time to form in my head. So this week I'd like to talk about vampire myths, powers and the fun/struggle of creating creatures for story but first these messages.

Shameless plug: My book The Newfoundland Vampire will be on in April 2012 (Pat is hard at working editing now :) and Tasha’s books (I've read book and highly recommend them) are out now.

I think one of the things authors who write in the fantasy/paranormal/science-fiction/horror/YA genre (among others) enjoy the most is creating powers for their creatures/heroes. Most geeky people imagine what it would be like to have super-powers and write you write characters you get a chance to live out that thrill vicariously :)

For me I wanted to develop the powers of my characters (who are vampires of course :) with detail, consistency and still have some fun along the way. For me the challenge was that vampires have such a long history in book/films/history (myths rather..or are they? ;) that it was tricky at time to not muddle the powers I thought of with those already done.

For example as my esteemed editor Pat and Penumbra Publishing pointed out, if vampires are unholy why would they only be affected by Catholic symbols such as crosses and holy water? If vampires existed thousands of years ago (as mine do) they would have to be affected by other holy symbols that the Romans would have used. As usual she was right and I decided that my vampires (since they don't "die" to be made a vampire) were not strictly unholy at all and therefore symbols and devices of faith did nothing to them.

Then you get into other details like how does sunlight affect them, how exactly does their telepathy work, can they sense others of their kind and so on. The fun part was taking a very well know creature like a vampire and adding some twists to it (some of which I've already discussed in a previous post). One of my ideas was to have vampires be able to control any animal (not just rats or wolves as in Bram Stoker's Dracula) to a much stronger degree than they could a human.

The other challenge was to establish a set of guidelines that the reader can learn and then stick with them throughout the novel. That doesn't mean there can't be some freak/super-vampire that defies a few of the rules but he/she/it certainly still needs to abide by most of them.

Finally it's funny how little details matter so much, initially I wrote that my vampires front teeth became fangs. This would have made them very comical bunny-rabbit type monsters =) What I meant of course was the traditional cuspid or canine teeth.

What challenges/fun aspects do other people face when they create a world? I'll admit I took it a little easy with just one supernatural creature. How do authors handle create many different types of powers/creatures? I'll leave you with these questions, I've got some packing to do. My next post will be from sunny Florida. Now that I've made some of jealous ;) until next time dear readers I am..

TUESDAY TIPS AND TIDBITS – Two deadly writing sins that will ruin any book

Two serious ‘writing sins’ authors often commit can ruin a story and make the reading experience less than satisfactory. I’m not talking about authorial failures like bad plotting or poor dialog. I’m talking about two behaviors or attitudes authors often exhibit when writing. These are: ignorance and arrogance. Each alone can mar a story, but combined, they can be deadly.

IGNORANCE. This one is pretty straightforward. A writer who is ignorant of (or chooses not to bother confirming) accepted grammar/punctuation rules can make reading difficult, even unpleasant for readers. Likewise, a writer who doesn’t know enough background or support information about a subject that is crucial to his story can end up making the story seem implausible, even laughable. Things like police procedures in a murder mystery, or the logistics of space travel in a science fiction novel, should be based on reality and known scientific concepts to seem authentic to the reader, even if these fictional truths or technologies are purely inventions of the writer’s imagination.

So, the mystery/thriller/crime writer who doesn’t know the business end of a gun from a gum-shoe should at least spend a little time in the library or on the internet looking at how the police force in his story’s setting is structured, and take a look at some gun sales web sites to figure out the difference between a rifle and a pistol. Likewise, if a science fiction writer isn’t good at extrapolating scientific fiction ‘factoids’ from known science facts, then at least a quick visit to Wikipedia should be on his list of things to do before publishing his story. There are also many free web sites that explain various grammar grapplers, including comma usage, dialog punctuation, and so forth. There are even a free online dictionaries and encyclopedias available, although sites whose information is provided by volunteers should be double-checked elsewhere for accuracy.

It’s OK for a writer who is not sure of any aspect of his story to go ahead and finish a first draft and put in a few notations like ‘look this up later.’ But eventually that research aspect of writing has to be done. With all the sources available, there is no excuse for a writer to remain ignorant about the basics of writing or factoids necessary to lend authentic details to his story. But, sadly, many writers ignore this at their peril and to the detriment of their stories. At that point, writing flaws cannot be chalked up to ignorance, but instead laziness.

ARROGANCE. This is the worst of the deadly writing sins. And at the risk of stereotyping, I am going to go ahead and say that writers of high fantasy are the most prone to be guilty of this bad writing attitude. Paranormal fantasy writers can oftentimes be strong runners-up. The reason for this, I think, is that writers of fantasy believe that the fantasy genre gives them unlimited license to write any damn thing they want and, by virtue of ‘because I say so,’ expect their readers to accept it without question. That belief is simply not correct in the world of writing well.

Writers who use magic as the basis for fantastic things that happen in their stories have to first define the rules of how magic works in their world. The rules must be consistent and work as expected. That doesn’t mean there can’t be surprises. But any surprise that deviates from the rules laid down by the writer better have a believable explanation and a prior ‘fair warning’ set-up in the story so the reader doesn’t cry, “Foul!” Alas, many a quest/fantasy writer will pull the most unbelievable surprises out of his elven hat simply because of the arrogant belief that this is his story, and he can do whatever he wants with it. And if readers don’t get it or like it, then they are not true fantasy fans. (Yes, there really are authors who hold fast to this belief. None of them are published though, and if they are, their books are not very popular.) This type of literary snobbery can be seen in literary fiction too, where an author will write some stream-of-consciousness BS without any concern whatsoever for the difficult reading experience it creates. Why? Because, in this author’s mind, it’s not about the reader, it’s all about the author and whatever he feels like writing at the time. This kind of inappropriate, self-centered attitude most often stems from inexperience and a lack of understanding of what makes great literature great.

The same holds true for writers of every other genre. Science fiction wannabe writers too are guilty of thinking that concept trumps everything, even logic and believability. I recently posted an article at http://penumbrapublishing.blogspot.com about fiction flawed concepts. But poorly supported concepts are not all that can plague science fiction. What I find most of the time when I read science fiction is that the author simply doesn’t think things through about the logistics of what is supposed to be possible in his science fiction universe. Time travel, faster-than-light space travel, and other technologies that clearly have not been invented yet in our reality, should have a believable timeline for becoming available, especially if the story is a futuristic extension of our own world reality. Oftentimes in less than 300 years, there are human colonies on other planets that have clearly had to be there for 300 years to reach the level of technology and the number of past generations apparent in the story, yet there’s no believable timeline for how and when those people got to those colonies before they physically should have been there to fit the story’s claims. Again, arrogance is most often at fault, with the author believing that the genre of science fiction gives him free license not to have to support his story hypotheses with facts or pseudo-facts based on facts.

And when you have cross-genres like science fiction romance, any attempt at explaining the technology that would be necessary to support the story usually just flies out the window with the spaceship. I have read some science fiction romance that was written by a former physicist, and that was technologically believable. But in that case, the author did have the science background necessary to make the fictional version of science believable. What happens in most science fiction romance, however, is that the romance totally outstrips the science fiction so that you just have a bunch of oddly dressed hunky men running after women on a spaceship. They could just as well be oddly dressed hunky men running after women on a desert isle, and the story would be no different because the believable science fiction basis for the story simply hasn’t been established well enough by the writer. Those kinds of stories are usually called ‘futuristic’ because they don’t even pretend to compare to ‘hard’ science fiction that’s more about the technology and the concept than personal character interaction. Unfortunately, there is no ‘futuristic’ genre category choice on most book distribution retail sites, so ... let the reader beware.

LOSE THE ATTITUDE, WRITER DUDE. On behalf of all readers out there (including me), I beseech newbie writers and lazy writers and writers wanting to try a new genre ... get rid of any notion that some genres gives you free license not to write well. Get rid of the snobbery of attitudes such as, “Those readers just didf’t understand what I was trying to do with this story.” Do your homework and research whatever you need to in order to make your story the best it can be in your hands. Think of the reader before your own ego, and write not for the market but for the reader hiding within you that wants to read an excellent story. When you do that, your story’s closer to being publishable.

Pat Morrison, Penumbra Publishing

TUESDAY TIPS AND TIDBITS – Mr. M, the Self-Published Author’s Worst Best Friend

Who is this mysterious Mr. M everyone keeps saying you, the self-published author, simply must meet? Maybe you’ve already got a significant other in your life, and you don’t want any demanding complications from some smarmy dude everyone’s all gaga over. Well, everybody needs friends – especially the author who self-publishes a book. And every single self-published author who wants to sell books needs to be very close friends with Mr. M. He’s the person when it comes to book marketing.

Oh! There’s that dreaded ‘M’ word – marketing. Go ahead, you can say it out loud without fearing Freddy Kruger’s going to come flying out of the bathroom mirror or your bedroom closet and rip your face off – or whatever thing it is you fear, that you subconsciously have told yourself will happen if you even say that dreaded word.

There’s nothing to be afraid of except fear itself – as long as you take a realistic approach to marketing. And if you’re an author who’s thinking about or has already decided to self-publish, then good ol’ Mr. Marketing is going to have to become a familiar acquaintance. No, more that that. Mr. Marketing is going to be your very favorite friend, good buddy, best pal. Mr. Marketing is going to go everywhere with you ... to work, to school, to your mom’s house for Sunday dinner. He will even go on dates with you, whether you’re single or doing the married ‘date night’ thing. Mr. Marketing is going to camp out in your apartment, or house, or basement hovel, or wherever you call home. So you might as well keep a spare set of PJs and an extra toothbrush for Mr. Marketing, because he is going to be the last face you see before you close your eyes at night, and the first face you see in the morning when you stare blandly off into space over your cereal bowl. Mr. Marketing is going to be your second shadow from now on, so get to know him as well and as quickly as you can. That is, if you want to sell more than ... say ... five copies of your book. Total. For however many years you have your book out there for sale.

And let me tell you, Mr. Marketing is not an easy guy to get to know. He’s quirky, unpredictable, and fickle – and he loves to play practical jokes. What do I mean? Well, you know that awfully-written teen-slasher romance some gal in your writers’ group self-published five months ago? Yeah, Mr. Marketing’s going to make that an astounding bestseller (at least a bestseller in the awfully-written teen-slasher romance genre). And just to make things more interesting, Mr. Marketing will ignore your repeated pleas for some kind of recognition – any kind, good or bad – for your book that hasn’t sold any copies in the last three months, despite the all the book blogging and promotion flogging you’ve been doing. The fact that you’ve given up your bed for Mr. Marketing and have taken to sleeping in the chair with your laptop means nothing. If left up to Mr. Marketing, all your hard work at self-promotion could end up producing zero results. So take Mr. Marketing’s advice, but don’t leave it up to him to make the magic happen. That’s your job – and yes, you did sign up for it when you decided to publish your own book.

You’re probably saying right about now ... Mr. Marketing sounds like a real demanding pain in the rear, like one of those pesky distant relatives who comes to visit and then never seems to want to leave. And really, who wants to go to all that extra trouble to befriend some self-absorbed snark like Mr. Marketing? Why doesn’t he just go make a nuisance of himself somewhere else? Who the heck would even want a despicable scoundrel like Mr. Marketing for a friend, anyway?

Well, you, for one. Not because he’s a likable guy, but because he knows people. And he knows stuff, like how to make connections with your readers, how to get the word out about your books, and how to meet real people whom you can call real friends. Mr. Marketing is the type of guy you have to study. Sometimes he gives up his secrets grudgingly. But once you figure out all his little quirks and plans and shortcuts, you can be well on your way to becoming an author who sells tens of thousands of copies of your book, rather than ten ... period.

And the truth is, Mr. Marketing doesn’t really care whether you like him or not, because he has many, many, many other writers out there just begging to be his friend, promising to do anything if he’ll just show them some of his winning secrets. Mr. Marketing doesn’t need you at all. You need him. But there are a few important things to remember before you open your door wide and invite Mr. Marketing in...

MAKE FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE. Mr. Marketing’s number-one secret that self-published authors need to know is ... drum roll please ... how to make friends and keep them. How to meet influential people who can help you on your quest to be a successful author – and actually get them to help. In short, how to get in good with the right kind of friends in the book and reader business. To do that, you need to follow Mr. Marketing’s example and network. (Sorry, there’s another nasty term nobody wants to use.) I don’t mean just go to writing conventions and pass around your business card or a collection of writing samples on a CD to a bunch of strangers wandering around. I mean really meet and talk to people. Learn to schmooze and be a pleasant partier. Practice the gift of gab but know when to shut up. Never say bad stuff about anyone to anyone, because Mr. Marketing, with his quirky sense of humor, will make sure it gets back to the wrong person, pronto. In short, be you, but make sure you are always the best you can be.

MODERATION. While Mr. Marketing may be camped out in your living room, don’t let him take over your life. Another of Mr. Marketing’s most important secrets is that successful authors have a life outside their writing ... a life they share with family and friends. Maintain a balance between work and play, and work and life. Maintain a good work ethic. Take care of your health. Take care of your family. Take care of your day job to keep food on the table and a roof over your head. In the merry-go-round of life, don’t fall off the carousel horse as you grab for the brass ring.

PERSPECTIVE. Another important thing to remind yourself of periodically is to keep things in perspective. Self-promotion is not always about you, and it’s certainly not always about your book. People are constantly bombarded by infomercials and ads, and they tire quickly of repetitive sales pitches. If that’s all they hear from you, they’ll stop listening. If you want to attract a reading – buying – audience, make sure what you have to sell is something they want to buy. If Mr. Marketing teaches you anything at all, it’s that blogging, tweeting, facebooking, conferencing, book signings, and all that stuff is not about the book or about you ... it’s about life, about the connections life offers, about what you have to offer your readers. The key is to turn things around so you can answer one question and answer it well when prospective readers ask, “What’s your book got for me?”

GIVE AND YE SHALL RECEIVE. Be a good friend, and you will have good friends ... friends you can count on when the chips are down, friends who will tell their friends about you and your book. Friends who know friends who might give you some newsworthy exposure or in some other way boost your chances of getting the word out about your book. Team up with other like-minded authors to share the burden of promotion. Treasure and respect those professional bonds, because you never know when something surprising and good will come your way.

And finally, just be a good person. Think positive. Treat others as you would have them treat you. And treasure the people in your life who make your life worthwhile. Enjoy your life and don’t take anything for granted.

WRITE A DAMN GOOD BOOK. After all the hype and promo and sales pitches are done, at the end of it all better be a really good book. Otherwise everything Mr. Marketing can do for you will be wasted.

There are many things that are necessary to make a book good. Good editing, good cover, good marketing approach. But for your book to be great, it should have a life of its own, a life that sprang from the essence of what is important to you. This is what should be in your book. Whether it’s humor, horror, romance, children’s bedtime stories, or nonfiction, your book should be personal enough to mean something to you. If it does, chances are it will mean something to the people who read it, who will tell others to read it, and then like a chain reaction, you will have marketed your book.

This will happen only because you put what was important to you in your book, and you believed in yourself and your book. If you believe in you – in your book and your ability and perseverance to make your book a success – you’ll do what it takes to make your book the best it can be, what it needs to be to fulfill its destiny in the world of reading and the lives of your readers.

If Mr. Marketing teaches you anything worthwhile, it will be that – and that’s what will sell your book!

Pat Morrison, Penumbra Publishing

Book Review: Vampire in the Outfield by Walter Knight

Okay, so I lied in the title of this blog post as this isn't a book so much as a short story.

Now that I've gotten that out of the way I can say that I gobbled down this story. I'll go ahead and say this is some of the best vampire fiction I've read in awhile.

Now, is it serious vampire fiction? Absolutely not, and that was the point. It was also why I loved it. I think I laughed through the entire thing.

Vampire in the Outfield is about a young man who wants to play baseball more than he wants to do anything else. The only thing is...he isn't very good...hence the steroids. Then he comes across a hot piece of....you know...and she turns him into a vampire. Now he has to deal with that age old question....can vampires play baseball?

Well, yes they can...still, it is a bummer...being a vampire and not being able to pose for all those publicity shots. After all, vampires have no reflections. He doesn't fly or sparkle either...and now, he has to take on the evil empire, namely, the New York Yankees.

Vampire in the Outfield is a brilliant, tongue in cheek comedy about the world of vampires and baseball. It is quick and satisfying, which is a rare combination, and as such I am recommending it to anyone that has a sense of humor.

Walter Knight is also author of: America's Galactic Foreign Legion, a series of books licensed and produced through Penumbra Publishing.

Book Review: Blood and Sunlight: A Maryland Vampire Story by Jamie Wasserman

Blood and Sunlight: A Maryland Vampire Story is one of my two favorite vampire novels on my kindle. This is actually the first vampire novel I added because I fell in love with the cover. I wanted to post a review so that if you haven't read this book, you can do so before the second title Blood and Moonlight is released in June-2011.

I'll tell you why I love this book before giving a brief summary. First of all, vampire e-books are overdone, and most of them are just like the one before it. This one isn't, it is a darker series and Wasserman is simply put-a great story-teller. There is something about his writing that makes it impossible not to enjoy this book.


Blood and Sunlight brings you into twenty-three year old, college drop out Melanie's haunting and disturbing world. Her life isn't that great anyway when she learns the truth about vampires...but not in the way you'd expect. After a whirlwind of possible evil threatens to wash away Melanie's last hopes to hang onto her fairytales...she finds salvation in a very unlikely place.



Coming Soon 

 For Ordering Information about Author and Buying Info:
Penumbra Publishing
Jamie Wasserman Author Site