Diversify Your Reading Challenge!

hiya undies!
you may or may not remember from
a few months back that malinda lo (Ash
and Huntress) and i went on a five city stop
diversity tour. it was a lot of fun and we thought
it was a success, helping to generate some
interesting discussions and dialogue.

our next big endeavor is the summer reading
challenge for librarians and bloggers. a librarian
can win over fifty middle grade and young adult
novels for her/his library and a book blogger can
win it all for him/herself! for those of you who have
love for young adult or middle grade novels or have
tweens teens, you really have to check these prizes
out! to enter as a blogger, you simply need to
read some diverse MG or YA novels then write an
(at least 500 word) essay about your thoughts and
experience. the winning essay will win the grand
prize! malinda and i hope it's a fun experience that
helps to broaden every participant's reading list!

bringing up diversity with readers is always
interesting (and often can be awkward or tense).
in the case of our endeavor, we're hoping to
spotlight and showcase books that feature lgbt
and/or people of color as main protagonists or
secondary characters who play a major role.
often, readers will say, a good story is a good story.
what does it matter if the character is gay or of
a certain race? it doesn't matter to me!

then others may pause to think of the last time
they actually read a novel that featured side
characters that weren't straight and/or caucasian
(much less the lead protagonists), and realize that
in fact, they can't think of an example.

see. that was me as a young reader.
traditional fantasy had always been a favorite
genre of mine, and like so many teens, i leaped
straight from mainly middle grade books (the young
adult market wasn't as huge as it is now) into the
adult fantasy shelves. and it wasn't until i was
an adult and wrote Silver Phoenix that i realized
despite the dozens of novels i've read and loved,
i had never read a character in any of those books
that looked like me.

of course, as dramatic as i can be (hell, i am
a writer after all =), i can't say that i'm scarred
for life because of this. obviously, i was a book
lover, read widely, and went on to write as a tween
into my twenties. but it wasn't until Silver Phoenix
(written in my thirties) that i created my first fully
asian character with ai ling!

and if how a character looks like, what her cultural
background may be, what his sexual orientation
may be, if none of this truly matters... if a good story
trumps all. then why is it that we aren't reading more
stories with more diverse characters in them?
shouldn't stories be more reflective of the current
world that we live in?

and that's why malinda and i created this challenge!
for full details, click here. and i promise, the book
prizes are out of this world and the different types
of stories and genres abound!

i challenge you!
happy summer reading! 8)

Burn, Baby, Burn

[REVISED: The winner of the Burn the Night contest is: Heatwave16. Please contact me at Jocelynn DOT drake AT gmail DOT com so you can collect your prize]


The roof the roof the roof is on fire
We don't need no water let the **** burn
~"The Roof Is On Fire" -- Bloodhound Gang

This fire is out of control,
I'm gonna burn this city,
Burn this city...
~"This Fire" -- Franz Ferdinand

Something inside of me
Has opened up its eyes
Why did you put it there?
Did you not realize
Something inside of me
It screams the loudest sound
Sometimes I think I could
I'm gonna burn this whole world down
~"Burn" -- Nine Inch Nails

The final book in the Dark Days series, Burn the Night, has finally hit the shelves. Mira and I are ready to sit back with a Martguerita (a Bloody Mary in her case) and watch the world burn. Mira and Danaus have risked their necks on a number occasions during the past several years to satisfy my curiosity and now they are ready to kick back in a well-deserved retirement.

When I started writing so many years ago, I focused on writing only stand-alone novels, where you only saw the same characters through a single book and then moved on to a new set of characters and world with the next book. I thought a series only appeared in fantasy novel with dragons and warlocks. And then I discovered the wonderful world of the paranormal with Anne Rice. She introduced me to a world where the same characters appear over several books in a contemporary setting. This was genius! You could see the evolution of a character over several books, put them through one trial after another, pitting them against dark moral dilemmas.

I never expected to fall in love.

Now, I had always cared about my characters when I was writing, but things changed when I started working with Mira and friends. Even when I was away from the computer, I could feel them following me through my day. I could hear Mira's sarcasm in my head, see Danaus's knowing smirk, and feel the heat of Rowe's narrowed gaze. I spent close to seven years working on the books in the Dark Days series so they were almost constantly in my thoughts. I cheered at their triumphs and I cried when some dear died.

Am I insane?

Oh, I freely admit that I am quite mad at this point. Mad as the Hatter and the March Hare. But then, that's just the way of things.

Yet, here at the end of all things, with the world burning down around us, I have to say that I would do it all over again, but I would add more heat.

Have you started the Dark Days series yet?
The Dark Days series follows an outcast vampire with a fiery temper to match her ability to manipulate fire as she is forced to team with a vampire hunter as they attempt to stop a dark race from attempting to destroy mankind. At every turn, Mira is faced with betrayal and danger, forcing her to trust the most unlikely of all companions. Danaus is a vampire hunter with a tragic secret that he has carried with him for nearly two thousand years. What drives him out every night to risk his life against the most dangerous of all predators?

The reading order of the Dark Days series is (click to read an excerpt):
Nightwalker
Dayhunter
Dawnbreaker
Pray for Dawn
Wait for Dusk
Burn the Night

Also, there is a prequel story in the Unbound anthology. In addition, another prequel novella is set to be released this fall in e-book form, featuring a closer look at Mira's relationship with her old lover, Valerio.

Here's a quick contest! Tell me who your favorite vampire is in the comments to enter to win a signed copy of Burn the Night! I'll announce a winner Friday night. (Contest open to US and international readers) And come back on Saturday. A little birdie told me there's going to be another awesome contest.

NIGHTSPELL giveaway!

The winner of the Nightspell giveaway is Ilona, whose favorite ghost book is The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde. Congratulations, and thank you everyone else for entering!

Almost exactly a month ago, my second book, Nightspell, was released. It’s a stand-alone companion novel to my first book, Mistwood, with one cross-over character. Since the book has now been out for a month, I can even tell you who that cross-over character is: Clarisse. Rokan’s manipulative, scheming sister is back… and this time she’s in a kingdom where the dead and living co-exist uneasily, and where the arrival of a determined barbarian princess is about to change everything.

You can read the first three chapters of Nightspell at the HarperCollins website. Or, if you don’t feel like clicking, here’s the very beginning:

Darri didn’t see the ghost until he was upon her, a solid weight that dropped from the branches above and threw her sideways off the saddle. Because he was solid, she didn’t realize at first that he was dead. She hit the ground with a thud and rolled to her feet, pulling her dagger from her boot. By the time she was standing, she had already thrown it.

The dagger plunged into the man’s chest with a thunk, and he laughed at her. He was a large, ruddy man wearing a fine set of riding clothes and a short cape. As he laughed, his body slowly faded, so that even in the torchlight Darri could see the trees through him. Her dagger dropped straight down through his body and disappeared into the dark mass of ferns that covered the forest floor.

And of course, there’s a giveaway: I’m giving away a personalized signed copy of Nightspell. For a chance to win, post a comment on the thread and mention a ghost book you really enjoyed – whether from your childhood or more recently.

Contest ends on Sunday, July 10, at midnight. I will randomly select one winner and post their name at the top of this post – and if you leave an email address in your comment, I’ll notify you by email as well. Open internationally.

Fresh Meat Straight from RWA 2011

Hello there!

No need for confusion or panic. A hacker has not taken over the Supernatural Underground blog- just a newbie. I'll be possessing the feed on the 3rd of every month, hopefully providing a very fresh take on all things writing, publishing, and things that go bump in the night.

My debut novel, Diaries of an Urban Panther, comes our July 5th. So when I say I'm new to this, I'm not lying. Like straight from the fridge and into the fire.

New to paranormal though? No way! I've marinated my brain in all things PNR for the past hhummph number of years. So when I got the e-mail from Pamela Palmer to join the group, i shrieked so loud I scared my co-workers (which, frankly, isn't a new thing). I mean, come on. Palmer? Garey? Sparks? I supposed that i would only be appropriate to say that i devoured their books when researching Diaries. But being upon their ranks now is just the cherry on the top of the contract.

Romance Writers of America 2011 provided me an opportunity to meet the wonderful ladies of the Supernatural Underground. All of them were so welcoming, even when I fan-girled my foot into my mouth (there's a reason I'm a writer and not a public speaker). Juliana Stone has already declared a shifter showdown between her jaguars and my panthers.

Okay- enough with the gushing and the name dropping. This blog is about paranormal romance, not my complete adoration for my fellow bloggers. I just want you to know that as well as being a writer, I'm a fan of the genre.

More about me? Well, I've been writing since about third grade and I finished my first full length novel at 17, which is just too angsty to ever see the light of day. Through college and now the full time day job, I daydream about epic wars and secret magical conspiracies. Mostly, I write shapeshifters. Well, shapeshifters and fairies. Okay, shapeshifters, fairies, and demons. Frankly, it's all in there somewhere and if its not in Diaries, it will probably end up on the menu sometime soon.

As you can see, fresh back from RWA and excited about my launch on Tuesday, I need to get my thoughts together, focus on finishing the second in the series, and probably do some laundry. But I promise to think of something a little more substantial for you guys to sink your teeth into next month.

Happy reading!

Amanda Arista

Diaries of an Urban Panther- out July 5th

1 Year On: Plus An Award for "The Heir of Night", More Earthquakes & Delivering "The Gathering of the Lost "

An Award for The Heir of Night:
Last month I was running to stand still, getting organized to attend Natcon and pushing hard to finish The Gathering of the Lost (The Wall of Night series, Book Two.) In the meantime I’ve run like crazy—made it to the convention and best of all, The Heir of Night won the Sir Julius Vogel Award for Best Novel 2011 (jointly with Lyn McConchie's The Questing Road; Tor)—how awesome is that? I have to tell you that I was absolutely over the moon and my NZ publicist, the wonderful Karen, bought champagne, so it was a sparkling evening all around! If you want to read more, I did a post about the whole evening on my blog, here.

More Earthquakes:

Immediately afterward, of course, I had those winged shoes on again and was back in the writer’s study and working hard to meet the 1 July deadline for final delivery of The Gathering of the Lost. Things were running tight, I thought, but should be do-able—and then on Monday June 13, Christchurch (the city where I live in New Zealand) was rocked by two further major earthquakes: a 5.7 followed an hour later by a 6.3. Given the nature of the subsoil here we immediately got what is called “liquefaction”—liquified sand and water pushed out of the ground to flow everywhere and settle as a grey sludge. But not, I hasten to add, inside our house as happened to some: we only got it outside. (May I say: phew!)

Nonetheless, it still needed to be dug out—and I was close to despair as I wondered how I could possibly do the necessary digging and finish Gathering. My man said that he would take care of it and I knew he meant it, but this really is not a 1 person job: it’s definitely a case of two being both company and lightening the burden of work to be done. So I knew I really couldn’t just leave him to it—but in the end, I didn’t have to. Over a period of four days, a number of different friends turned up to help out. “You finish the book,” they said. “We’ll do the digging out.” And they did—in the wintry rain, as well, some of that time.

Needless to say, all their names will be in the Acknowledgements section of Gathering when it is published in March next year, but I would just like to list them all here, anyway: Andrew (that’s my guy); Joffre; Dave; Caroline; Susi; Peter; Fitz; Ram; Shane; and Chris. I said it to their faces a couple of weeks ago but now I’m saying it again here: guys, you rock! And without you, I would not have met my deadline for the book.

Delivering The Gathering of the Lost:
Which I have now done: hurrah! Woot!! Handsprings & cartwheels!!! Getting to that final line is just the best feeling—not just because you’re done, and in my case done with a day to spare (hurrah again!)—but also because I now feel that I have written the book I wanted to. The Gathering of the Lost is my third novel, but the second in The Wall of Night series and as such it needed to expand the story begun in The Heir of Night and take it new places. This expansion includes the characters as well—I felt they needed to develop and grow, but also be poised on the edge of that next stage in the adventure, which will unfold in the third-in-series (working title: Daughter of Blood.) I felt, when I put away my pen (I jot long hand notes as I type) and closed the laptop yesterday, that I had completed a book that delivered on all those objectives. Dear readers: I felt satisfied. And although this is no guarantee that you will feel similarly satisfied next March, I believe it considerably enhances the chances of this being so. [Grins.] So yes, a feeling of a job well done, and now a little playing catch-up, a little r’n’r—and then onward, to Daughter of Blood.


1 Year On:
And then I realized, as I sat down to do this post—fingers flyin’ over the keyboard yet again!—that it is exactly 1 year today since I posted my inaugural blog on the Supernatural Underground. How cool is that?! I have really enjoyed this past year, getting together with you all on the first day of every month and talkin’ about what we all love: fantastic stories, the writing & reading life—and definitely having a spot of fun along the way. Needless to say, I’m really looking forward to more of the same over the next year, but in the meantime, may I say—you are all awesome and it’s a pleasure to spend time with you here!

---

Supernatural Underground author Helen Lowe is a novelist, poet and interviewer. Her latest novel, The Heir of Night, the first of THE WALL OF NIGHT quartet, is published in the USA, UK, Australia & NZ and forthcoming in The Netherlands and France. The Heir of Night recently won the Sir Julius Vogel Award 2011 for Best Novel, and received a Catanetwork Reviewers’ Choice Award in 2010. Helen’s first novel, Thornspell, (Knopf, 2008) won the Sir Julius Vogel Award for Best Novel, Young Adult 2009 and was a Storylines Children’s Literature Trust Notable Book in the sme year. Helen blogs every day on her Helen Lowe on Anything, Really site and on the first day of every month right here on the Supernatural Underground.

Birth of a book

*** Charity Donation Completed to the *** 
*** Humane Society of the United States ***
Thanks, everyone! :)

Nine months from today, my book Deliverance: Mortal Path 3 will be released. If it were a human baby, we'd be talking a few cells. Fortunately the book's further along than that! I can't tell how thrilled I am to have a title and a release date. The cover's still under wraps.

There's been a gap between books 2 and 3, one that a professional writer ordinarily doesn't have. I'd like to share with you the reason why. (Warning: grab your box of tissues or skip this post.)

One thing I never, ever believed in was writer's block. I felt that people who claimed to suffer from it were whiners who just couldn't work their way through difficult periods. I never suffered from it.

Until my sister fell ill.

She and I were very close. Yes, past tense. She was a few years older than I was and blazed a trail through childhood and being a teenager for me. She's the one who broke the news to me that there was no Santa Claus; that says a lot right there. She didn't mind taking little sis along once she got her driver's license and later on helped me sneak out of the house to meet my boyfriend. We'd lie on the floor under the Christmas tree and dream about what our lives would bring. As adults, we could practically read each other's minds. She was a fifth grade science teacher and later a teacher of the severely handicapped, saying she felt called to do it. She wanted to be a writer too, but could never seem to get started. She wanted me to write her grand idea and put her name on it. I didn't, because I thought that if I encouraged her enough, she'd write it herself. Now I wish I had helped her get her science fiction novel, The Ice Princesses, published. It came to her in a series of vivid dreams. Why was I such a stickler about it? Because I knew she could do it if she tried. I should have been more generous and less high-minded.

She had a respiratory illness (not lung cancer) that caused her to get a tracheotomy. She hated it. She couldn't talk, and I was a terrible lip reader. If we weren't on the same page so much, we would have lost communication. As it was, we couldn't talk on the phone. I got her a laptop and tried to engage her that way, but she just wasn't up to it. She bounced from hospital to nursing home (she needed more care than I could provide, for which I felt terribly guilty) to hospital and back. Six times. She coded a dozen or more times, not getting enough oxygen to her body. She was afraid to go to sleep at night, because that's when the codes happened. As hard as this was on her, it was hard on me too, though I tried not to show it.

My sister, who could coax a smile from the most reluctant child, was in pain and prayed for release. She wouldn't consider suicide because of her religion. She wanted to be moved to a hospice, but according to her doctor, her health was improved in some ways and he was still hopeful for a better, stable life for her. I was cheerful when I visited her. Sometimes she had good days.

Was I writing during these months? Not really. A paragraph or a couple of pages a day, and sometimes I had to go back and rewrite it because it was, as a writer friend of mine once described her first draft, pea-green dreck.

Faster than I could have ever thought, her ashes were in a golden cube. I'd never seen human ashes before. When scattered according to her wishes, they clung to leaves instead of sifting down to the ground as I'd thought they would. The result was a large gray circle of vegetation. We happened to be in a hot, dry period, and night after night I would think about that gray patch and hope for rain to wash her cremains to the ground. It finally happened, and suddenly I was a changed person. I was able to smile, I wrote fiercely and well, and I focused on the good memories. And all it took was a thunderstorm.

It seems a little odd to have a book giveaway after a story like that, so here's the deal. If I get thirty or more comments (you can talk about your own experiences if you wish--I'm a good listener) by July 2nd, I'll donate $50 to my sister's favorite charity, the Humane Society of the United States. Sixty comments or more, and I'll donate $100. Encourage me! It's a good cause.

xoxo,
Dakota

A New Member (Monster) in the Family

Congratulations to jfort (Tonya) for winning the signed copy of Eat Prey Love! Thank you all for the great comments! I loved reading them all. See you again next month!

I've been working my way down a long list of things to do in preparation for the national RWA conference next week in New York City (selecting just the right clothes and shoes, preparing presentations, packing up bookmarks and postcards, etc.). Another item on the list-- make myself presentable (a daunting task, to say the least!) Is it too late to lose twenty pounds by Monday? Also on the list: promote the booksigning!! So here goes-- if you're in the NYC area, please come to the Marriot Marquis Times Square on Tuesday, June 28th. Over 400 authors will be signing their books from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. You can find out more information here--http://www.rwa.org/cs/literacy_autographing

Oh, and there's the other little item on the list. Book #12 in the Love at Stake series is due next month. Yikes!! So, I'm furiously working away. Or trying to. Because while I'm writing, a little creature occasionally sinks its teeth into me. No, it's not a vampire. It's the new member of our family-- my daughter's kitten. When she adopted him, we called a family meeting to discuss the all important issue: what will we name him? My daughter wanted a German name, so we compiled a list and then voted for our favorite. This was the list: Klaus, Manfred, Siegfried, Sigmund, Hansel, Barnaby, Ludwig, Nicolai, Fritz, and Dietrich. Which name did we choose? Ludwig! We decided to use the nickname Viggy, which I really liked because it reminded me of Viggo Mortensen (sigh). So let me introduce the new member of our family-- Ludwig von Kittyhoven.

We should have named him Frankenstein. The little monster comes equipped with a ready arsenal: sharp teeth, little claws, and a never-ending supply of energy. Even now, as I write, I can hear my husband fussing at him. "No biting! Be a good boy!" Good luck with that. We spray him with water, but the ninja warrior simply runs away to plan the next attack. Nothing slows him down. He's a top secret stealth weapon. If you dare to walk through the house, you will be attacked, and you'll never see it coming. If you go into the kitchen, he'll jump you, just to remind you that it's been thirty minutes since he last ate and he's in danger of starving to death.

My husband is fussing at him again. "Stop scratching the chair!" My daughter's response, "Aw, he's so cute!" And I squeal when he jumps on my lap and dances across my laptop, doing strange things to my manuscript. When I shove him off, he retaliates by attacking my feet. So now I write with a spray bottle handy, and my feet encased in boot-shaped house shoes.

In honor of our feline warrior, I'm giving away a signed copy of Eat Prey Love, which features Carlos, the Brazilian were-panther. Just leave a comment about a pet of yours or whatever strikes your fancy. I'll post the winner in a few days. And I'll hope to see some of you Tuesday at the booksigning!