From the Backlist: Never Make an Author Mad

 

Art by Omven on DeviantArt

Welcome to our posts from the backlist! Today's spotlight was written August 2011 by the spooky-wonderful author Karina Cooper. Check out her hilarious, somewhat disturbing take on why it's best not to poke the bear, if the bear be an author!

Hope you enjoy!

You can find Karina Cooper on Goodreads!  

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Friday, August 26, 2011

Reasons Why You Never Want to Make an Author Mad *

by Karina Cooper

Come on, you've seen us. We're all very lovely people, us authors. We smile at the cameras, sign books, hug fans, and so on. Surely, making an author mad must be akin to swatting at a dust bunny, right? I mean, what are we going to do? Cry into our keyboards?

I mean, can't you just see the gorgeous Vicki Petersson cackling with glee as she comes up with creative ways to use a coin slot machine and a pair of dice to off somebody . . .

. . . let's not discount Merrie Destefano, who knows all the good places in New Orleans to hide a body, or Joss Ware, who knows seventeen ways to dismember a man beyond recognition. Juliana Stone knows what kind of wounds look like animal attacks—"I have no idea, officer, it looks like a jaguar attack to me."—and Pamela Palmer who is an engineer, and you know how devilishly clever engineers are. I wouldn't mess with her with a twenty-foot pole and a getaway driver on speed dial.

Ahhh, authors. So innocent, and yet...

Mwahaha. . .

Well. Sort of.

See, yesterday I found myself in the middle of a task that I do actually need for this current run of books I'm plotting. And as I scrolled through pages and pages of data, I thought to myself, Karina, it's a damn good thing your profession is what it is.

Because how else am I to explain why my internet history is full of information on modern day torture techniques?

That's right. Let's talk about reason number one: We know how make you scream. We've researched it down to the last details—certainly not for ourselves, oh, no, but what out characters know, we know. And if we're carrying around a character who is an inquisitor, or a character who was tortured, or worse, we know.

Would we use it? Oh, of course not, officer! We'd never use this information for evil. We're entertainers, not in the business of making the things we know actually happen. Right?

Heh. Heh heh. Right.

Reason number two to avoid making us angry? We know how to hide the body. We've thoroughly researched it. Currents, erosion, garbage truck route details, you name it, we know it. We're a little obsessive when it comes to details, you might have noticed. After all, how else can we guarantee that the extra we offed in chapter 4 doesn't come to light until chapter 15?

The devil is, in fact, in the details.... 

 

* Note: This post is entirely tongue-in-cheek and not actually a commentary on the likelihood of authors to commit heinous crimes against real, living people. This is a joke. A post devoted to the rather hilarious fact that we tend to research the most horrible things in our bid to get it right.

Murder is bad, mmkay?

Read the entire POST.

 

Enjoy!

 

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Speculative Fiction (Fantasy/Thriller/Sci-Fi/Urban Fantasy) for adults and teens.

 

 

We're a group of best-selling authors providing news, reviews and interviews from the darker, more speculative side of fiction.

Fiction that makes the heart beat faster...

 

From the Backlist: "Character Development and Pacing" -- by T Frohock

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T Frohock is the author of two fabulous Los Nefilim novella series. The first is a trio of linked novellas; the second a novel trilogy. And lookout for her standalone Miserere which is being rereleased on 21 January -- we think that rocks, too.

This post centers on The Second Death, the third of the linked novellas, but the ideas in terms of character development are gold for all writing, particularly (but not exclusively) in its longer forms.

Character Development and Pacing--Make Room for Quiet Moments

by T Frohock

... One thing readers seem very unified about is the relationship between Diago and Miquel, and the quiet family moments that involve Diago's son, Rafael. These are what some readers might call the boring bits, but I never do. I place these familial scenes within the story, not just for character development, but also to help the pacing.

When I worked in radio--many, many, many years ago--I was told to think of the musical segments as waves. Begin with a soft tune, then choose songs that gradually build the tempo until the third or fourth song was upbeat and fast before moving the pace back toward softer music.

The technique was all about pacing the music so that the sounds would be pleasing to the listener. We do the same thing in stories by making the action rise and fall in a logical manner.

Even in shorter works, such as novellas, readers need a little breathing room between the action scenes, or in cases such as The Second Death: Los Nefilim, Part 3, before the action takes off. Most often, I use these scenes as a break from the action, but every now and then, I start the story with them, especially in one like The Second Death.

The logic behind beginning with an intimate scene in The Second Death was to bring the reader back up to speed with what had transpired in Without Light or Guide: Los Nefilim, Part 2 while adding enough new content to keep the reader engaged. My key to making these scenes work is keeping them short and intimate through the use of dialogue.

In this snippet, which is about 600 words, I am reminding the reader of how other members of Los Nefilim view Diago, and by extension daimons, through the peripheral character Lucia, an angel-born Nefil who hates daimons. Since I didn't want to give any spoilers, I had to choose one of the more innocuous conversations for this post.

For those new to the series: Rafael is Diago's six-year-old son, and Miquel is Diago's partner.

Diago followed Rafael into the bathroom and picked up his comb.

“No! No!” Rafael ran his wet fingers over his unruly locks. “You don’t need to comb it, Papa. I’m Gitano.” He shook his head. “My hair is wild like my spirit.”

“Wild spirits in this house comb their hair.” Diago grabbed a towel and wiped his son’s damp fingers. Stray hairs drifted into the sink’s basin and joined those of Miquel and Diago. He wiped the strands off the porcelain. “It looks like a family of bears lives here.”

Rafael giggled and raised his arms over his head, hands clenched like claws. He roared until the comb snagged a tangle. “Ow!”

Diago leaned forward and kissed his cheek. “Then stay still. Even bear cubs don’t wiggle when their papas comb their hair.” 

“Bears don’t comb their hair.” The child’s busy fingers found a chip in the sink’s porcelain. “When I’m grown up, I’m never combing my hair.”

“Don’t you want to look nice for Ysa today?”

He picked at the sink’s scar. “I want to stay home today.”

“You can stay with Lucia and Ysa for a little while.”

Rafael said nothing.

“Don’t you like playing with Ysa?”

“Yes.” Rafael rubbed his thumb around the chip.

“So?” Diago worked his fingers through a snarled lock and held his breath. Had he and Ysa fought? A generous girl, Ysa could sometimes be overbearing, but Diago had never known her to intentionally hurt another person. “Why don’t you want to go?”

He shrugged.

Diago kept his tone even as a suspicion caught up with him. “Is it Lucia?”

A moment passed and Diago thought Rafael wasn’t going to answer him. Finally, his son nodded.

“And what does she say?” Because it was Lucia, it had to be something out of her vicious mouth.

Another shrug. “Just things.”

“What kind of things?”

“She said I should never go to Morocco, because I am small and dark like a monkey. She said someone would see that I am daimon and stuff me in a bottle and make me a jinni. Then she laughs like it’s a joke, but her eyes are all hard and mean.”

Jesus.

Lucia. Ysabel’s governess made no secret of her hatred for Diago, which was fine with him, but taking her pettiness out on Rafael was a step too far.

Diago was careful to keep his anger out of his face and voice. He didn’t want Rafael to think he was upset with him. Instead, he took his son’s shoulders and gently turned the child so he could see his face. He realized a river of tears would be preferable to the hurt he saw in Rafael’s eyes. “You know what? You can come with us this morning. I’ll bet Father Bernardo has someplace where you can sit and draw pictures while we talk, hmm?” He smoothed Rafael’s hair and glanced into the hall to see that Miquel had joined them. How much had he heard?

Diago didn’t have long to wonder.

Miquel came into the bathroom and stood behind Diago. “Pick him up.”

Diago lifted Rafael so he could see himself in the mirror. Three faces, three shades of skin that passed from Rafael’s light gold to Diago’s tawny flesh, and finally Miquel’s dusky brown.

Miquel made a great show of assessing their faces. “You know what, Rafael? I am darker than you.”

“Miquel is Gitano, too,” Diago whispered in Rafael’s ear. “And everyone thinks he is very, very handsome.” Including me, he thought as he examined his lover’s reflection.

A ghost of a smile touched Rafael’s mouth.

“And your papa is part daimon like you,” Miquel said. “No one has stuffed him in a bottle and made him a jinni.” He reached around Diago to touch Rafael’s chin. “No one is going to mistake us for monkeys, or jinn.”

“That’s right,” Diago said. “We’re a family of bears.”

Rafael gave a soft roar and the mischievousness returned to his eyes.

Quiet moments don't have to be boring. Just remember to use them to keep the story moving forward and the reader will remain engaged. This particular snippet precedes a very violent scene, which has a lot more impact, because the reader is allowed to experience a gentler moment with the family prior to the violence. By seeing how Diago, Miquel, and Rafael interact here, their subsequent actions, and the risks they take, are believable to the reader.

The other overriding theme that runs through this section is Diago's dual nature, which is an important part of the story. While Diago is growing more comfortable with both his heritage and his place within Los Nefilim, he is sacrificing the daimonic side of his nature in order to fit in. Before it's over, Diago will be forced to rely on his daimonic nature to deceive an angel. In doing so, he discovers the birth of a modern god—one that will bring about a new world order from which no one can escape.

The Second Death is coming ...

The year is 1931.

The city is Barcelona.

The war between the angels begins in earnest.

Whose side are you on?

To read the original post in full, click here.

And to find out more about the author, her books, and what she's working on now, go here. 

The Year of the Villain #4: “Elidor” and Formless Evil

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Happy May Day everyone, especially all those in the Northern Hemisphere. J

Being May 1, that means it’s time for another Year of the Villain post (in our wonderful Fantasy genre, of course!) – #4 to be exact. As the title indicates, I’m looking at Alan Garner’s Elidor and formless evil.

I say “evil” rather than “villain” because, being formless, there is no one antagonist, nor yet a gallery of villains, as in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.

Elidor is a children’s book, but like Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea, I believe it’s very readable for adults, particularly the sense of constant unease, morphing into outright menace, created from the outset. 

Original cover

The protagonists are four siblings, in the tradition of CS Lewis’s The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, although in this case it’s three brothers – Nicholas, David, and Roland – and a sister, Helen. Again similar to Narnia, it’s the youngest sibling, in this case Roland, who is the main point-of-view character.

Although the story is chiefly set in our world (i.e. it’s an early urban fantasy), initially the four stumble through a portal into the world of Elidor, which has fallen beneath an all-consuming darkness. Three of the four fortresses that once guarded the land have fallen to the dark and the lord of the fourth charges the children with taking the realm’s four treasures – the spear, sword, stone, and grail of Celtic myth – back to our world to keep them safe.

Audiobook cover

Yet the darkness, too, can cross between worlds so the children must still contend with it in order to keep the treasures safe. What they face, though, is never clearly defined beyond a darkness that stains walls and congeals in the corners of rooms. Its power manifests as static on television sets and eyes at keyholes, looking in from the other world. Warriors serve it, with terrifying persistence, but the children can no more name them than the darkness. The exact nature of both remain a mystery.

Thus proving, in Alan Garner’s expert hands, that the unknown, and allusion rather than explanation, may be more terrifying than a named and clearly understood villain, however powerful. Because make no mistake, the sense of menace, and outright terror, remains constant throughout Elidor. 

Ebook cover

© Helen Lowe

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About the Author

Helen Lowe is an award-winning novelist, poet, and lover of story. With four books published to date, she is currently completing the final instalment in The Wall Of Night series.
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Helen posts regularly on her “…on Anything, Really” blog, monthly on the Supernatural Underground, and tweets @helenl0we.

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Previous “Year of the Villain” Posts:

January:      Ushering in 2024 -- & the Year of the Villain

February:    The Year of the Villain #1: The Lord of The Rings Pantheon

March: The Year of the Villain #2: Ursula Le Guin & “Earthsea”

April: The Year of the Villain #3: Tigana and Brandin of Ygrath

The Los Nefilim omnibus is here!

When I wrote the novella, In Midnight's Silence, it was essentially a stand-alone; I had no intention of furthering Diago's story in novella form. However, when my editor asked if I had more novellas planned, it was exceptionally easy for me to devise the stories Without Light or Guide and The Second Death, both of which would build on the first.

I talked about writing the novellas as pulp novels here on the Supernatural Underground with my post Writing Serialized Novellas--The Shadow Knows, and even as they follow the noir format, there is something a little different about Los Nefilim.

The protagonist Diago is gay, and rather than looking for love, he is already in a committed relationship with a member of Los Nefilim, Miquel. Although Diago and Miquel share intimate moments, the characters are not fetishized, because the stories aren't about falling in love and sex. That was a conscious decision on my part based on comments made to me by several readers, who were very tired of seeing gay men portrayed as always being on the prowl for sex.

If you give Los Nefilim a surface reading, the novellas are simply three adventure stories. If you look a little closer, you will see that they aren't about Diago accepting himself--or his father issues, or his son--as much as the tales are about the necessity of having supportive friends and family to help a person grow.

Diago's story has been a great deal of fun to write. In spite of all of the cool aspects of angels, daimons, and Nefilim, I think I enjoyed writing the intimate scenes of family and friends with Diago, Miquel, Rafael, Juanita, and Guillermo the most. Each of these small moments helped peel back another layer of not just Diago's personality, but of the unique people who surround and support him.

If you haven't had a chance to check out the individual novellas, Harper Voyager Impulse has now released all three novellas in an omnibus edition:

Collected together for the first time, T. Frohock’s three novellas—In Midnight’s Silence, Without Light or Guide, and The Second Death—brings to life the world of Los Nefilim, Spanish Nephilim that possess the power to harness music and light in the supernatural war between the angels and daimons. In 1931, Los Nefilim’s existence is shaken by the preternatural forces commanding them … and a half-breed caught in-between.

Diago Alvarez, a singular being of daimonic and angelic descent, is pulled into the ranks of Los Nefilim in order to protect his newly-found son. As an angelic war brews in the numinous realms, and Spain marches closer to civil war, the destiny of two worlds hangs on Diago’s actions. Yet it is the combined fates of his lover, Miquel, and his young son, Rafael, that weighs most heavily on his soul.

Lyrical and magical, Los Nefilim explores whether moving towards the light is necessarily the right move, and what it means to live amongst the shadows.

The Los Nefilim ominbus is available in an ebook edition right now at Amazon, Apple, Barnes and Noble, HarperCollins, and Kobo.

Currently the mass market paperback is available for pre-order and will be published on June 14, 2016. You can find the pre-order buttons for Los Nefilim at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, HarperCollins, and don't forget to check with your local independent bookstore--find the store closest to you at Indiebound.

So if you've been waiting for the series of novellas to conclude before purchasing them, now is the time! If you'd rather sample each novella--In Midnight's Silence: Los Nefilim Part One, Without Light or Guide: Los Nefilim Part Two, and The Second Death: Los Nefilim Part Three--they are all still available as ebook editions at $0.99 each.

Will there be more adventures with Diago, Miquel, and Rafael? I can't say right now. A lot will depend on pre-orders and sales, but in my heart of hearts I hope so. I already miss Diago and his friends and their unique world.

If you're on the fence as to whether or not the stories are for you, there was a lovely review for the series at Fantasy Faction.