Publishing

  • Publishing,  Writing

    New Book: A VERY MEOWY CHRISTMAS

    My latest paranormal romance novella, A VERY MEOWY CHRISTMAS, is now available!

    I cannot tell you how much fun I have writing these lil’ novellas. They’re short, they’re sweet, they’re funny, and everybody gets to live happily ever after, which we certainly need in these times. I genuinely hope you like it as much as I liked writing it. :)

    Being cool as a cat is harder than it looks when unexpected love strikes!

    Single dad and bobcat shifter Mason has moved to Virtue to raise his toddler in the safety of a shifter community. But minor catastrophe strikes when his daughter escapes to play in the woods, and the last thing Mason expects when she’s found is to meet his mate. His bobcat insists it’s meow or never, but Mason isn’t ready for the complication of a new relationship.

    Veterinary student Chrissy has always known about Virtue’s shifters, and even dreamed of finding fated love of her own, but that didn’t prepare her for a lost bobcat kitten who turns into an adorable little girl. She can hardly believe it’s fur real, but Mason really does seem purrfect.

    Mason needs to take it slow. Chrissy hasn’t yet wrapped up veterinary school. On the surface, it seems impawssible, but as they spend time kitten around, Chrissy and Mason realize they’re already building holiday traditions of their own, and that together, they’re going to have a very meowy Christmas.

    A Very Meowy Christmas is a sweet, short romantic comedy that will be mewsic to your heart as this charming shifter romance with a guaranteed happily ever after promises that love is meow and forever!

    A VERY MEOWY CHRISTMAS is available now! (affiliate link)

  • CEMurphy,  Publishing

    DB Jackson returns! Again!

    I’m delighted to once more have my friend and fellow writer DB Jackson on the blog for a series of not-terribly-serious interview questions!

    1. Let’s start with the obvious. Give me the ten-cent shake-down on A PLUNDER OF SOULS.

    PlunderofSouls_hi_comp150 The Thieftaker Chronicles are historical urban fantasy, and the books tell the story of Ethan Kaille, a conjurer and thieftaker (the eighteenth century equivalent of a private detective) living in pre-Revolutionary Boston. Each book is a stand-alone mystery set against the backdrop of a particular historical event leading to the American Revolution. The historical events are real, as are many of the characters; I’ve inserted fictional murders into the historical narrative, along with a cast of characters who comprise Ethan’s social circle and clientele.

    In A PLUNDER OF SOULS, the third book in the series, I bring back a character who is to Ethan something like what Moriarty was to Sherlock Holmes. Nate Ramsey, first appeared in “A Spell of Vengeance,” a short story I published at Tor.Com in June 2012. Ramsey is a fun character, in kind of the way that Hannibal Lecter is a fun character. Like Ethan, he’s a powerful conjurer. He’s also brilliant, cruel, vengeful, and a bit mad. In the original short story, Ethan is hired to protect two merchants who have been threatened by Ramsey. Ethan does his best, but Ramsey gets the better of him, with tragic results, and then escapes Boston.

    Now Ramsey is back. It’s the summer of 1769, and Boston is in the midst of an outbreak of smallpox (as it really was that summer). Ethan is hired to investigate a series of grave robberies, and soon discovers that corpses have been mutilated in grotesque ways, and that at least some of what has been done to them seems to be meant as a personal warning to him. What results is a little bit mystery, a little bit ghost story, and a whole lot of epic magical warfare. I won’t reveal more, except to say that Ramsey is an even more formidable foe for Ethan now than he was in 1763, when the short story took place.

    2. I personally claim to never ‘cast’ my novels with actors, although there are instances where that is untrue. Do you ‘cast’ people for your characters? Anybody you want to confess to?

    I’ll admit that there are times when I do this. I don’t like to because, as you have said to me in the past, it’s sometimes counterproductive to put such a specific image in the minds of our readers. But there have been characters who just lend themselves to this sort of thing. And the truth is, it can also be fun to imagine the movie versions of our books. So, that said, I can definitely see Sephira Pryce, Ethan’s beautiful and deadly rival in thieftaking, being played by Olivia Wilde. Wilde is gorgeous and alluring, but there is also something a bit edgy about her beauty. Hers is not a soft look, and with the right costuming and makeup she could totally make the role of Sephira come to life as I’ve written it.

    For Nate Ramsey, I think that Michael Pitt would be a really good choice. He totally looks the part as I envision it, and the kid’s got chops.

    Ethan is a much harder call. I would want a slightly older actor — Ethan is supposed to be in his early forties by this point in the series, and he has lived a hard life. Maybe Ewan McGregor or Clive Owen. Or Mark Wahlberg. I need to think about this one a bit more.

    3. If you had one shot with a time machine, what one historical event, place, or person would you want to visit?

    Wow. I’m not just saying this because of the Thieftaker books. Really. But I would have to choose the period right around the writing and signing of the Declaration of Independence. I have a Ph.D. in U.S. History, and while my doctoral dissertation dealt with twentieth century issues, I found the Revolutionary period fascinating. I guess that’s why, when I finally got around to blending my love of fantasy with my passion for history, this was the period in which I set my books.

    It’s not just the events themselves that are so fraught with drama and intrigue. It’s also the personalities: Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and Benjamin Franklin. Brilliant minds; engaging speakers; willful, ego-driven politicians. And they were bandying about ideas from so many sources — Cato, Locke, Hobbes, Pitt, Hume, and others. It was a heady time intellectually as well as politically and militarily. That’s where I’d want to go.

    4. I know you like jazz. Who’s one of your favourite artists, or what is a favourite album?

    Yeah, I’m a huge jazz fan, and I listen to a lot of instrumental jazz when I work. I know that some authors can’t have any music at all going when they write, but I find that the improvisational quality of the music actually fuels my creativity. In particular, I’m a fan of “cool” jazz from the late 1950s. My favorite artist from this time — no surprise here — is Miles Davis, and my favorite albums of his are KIND OF BLUE, ‘ROUND ABOUT MIDNIGHT, and MILESTONES.

    Among more recent jazz artists, I love the work of Roy Hargrove, Nicholas Payton, and a relatively obscure, but truly excellent group called Sphere. All of them remain true to the spirit of that older jazz sound, placing a premium on melody, virtuosity, and improv. It’s great stuff, and as I say, listening to it actually helps me write.

    5. When are you going to finish reading The Walker Papers so we can get started on that collaboration? (WHAT?! Nobody said my questions couldn’t be self-serving!)

    [Laughing] Well, if you’d slow down with the writing a bit I could at least catch up with the series!! I’ve read the first two books in the series and am now reading COYOTE DREAMS, and loving it so far. My reading time these days is eaten up by books that I read as a beta reader for friends, or so that I might give a cover blurb. Time for pleasure reading is not always so easy to come by. It also didn’t help that I got totally sucked in to your Negotiator trilogy, which also took up some time. (I know that there are more Negotiator books now, but I have my fingers in my ears and I’m saying “la, la, la, la . . .” really loudly so that they don’t distract me.) In all seriousness, I am totally psyched to read the rest of The Walker Papers and get working on our story. It’s going to be a blast.

    And by the way, HIS FATHER’S EYES, the second book in the Case Files of Justis Fearsson (forthcoming from Baen Books — book I, SPELL BLIND, comes out in January) is finished and turned in. So I’ll be sending a copy of the manuscript your way so that you can read it!

    Ed: 1. Olivia Wilde & Clive Owen totally work for me for those characters. Or Sean Bean 10 years ago, for that matter.
    2. I don’t know much jazz–far less than I should, because I love it–but my god, KIND OF BLUE. What an album.
    What an album!
    3. Technically there are only Old Races short story collections out now, not Negotiator books, but that’s being fussy. :)
    4. For the readers: David’s got a new urban fantasy series coming out, I’ve already read book 1, we’re gonna be doing a Walker Papers/Fearsson Files crossover story, it’s gonna ROCK!

    DBJacksonPubPhoto800 D.B. Jackson is also David B. Coe, the award­winning author of more than a dozen fantasy novels. His first two books as D.B. Jackson, the Revolutionary War era urban fantasies, Thieftaker and Thieves’ Quarry, volumes I and II of the Thieftaker Chronicles, are both available from Tor Books in hardcover and paperback. The third volume, A Plunder of Souls, has recently been released in hardcover. The fourth Thieftaker novel, Dead Man’s Reach, is in production and will be out in the summer of 2015. D.B. lives on the Cumberland Plateau with his wife and two teenaged daughters. They’re all smarter and prettier than he is, but they keep him around because he makes a mean vegetarian fajita. When he’s not writing he likes to hike, play guitar, and stalk the perfect image with his camera.

    Find DB at:
    his website
    his blog
    facebook
    twitter
    goodreads
    amazon.com

  • CEMurphy,  Crowdfunding,  Publishing

    Magic & Manners: Chapter Four

    In celebration of the 201st anniversary of PRIDE & PREJUDICE’s publication, I humbly submit for your reading pleasure the fourth chapter of MAGIC & MANNERS.

    Yeah, okay, so I was going to do this as a crowdfund, and I got the project page all ready, and I was going to launch it last night and I had a terrible spasm of “maybe this isn’t a good idea.” So I delayed the launch, and this morning I’m more able to interpret the spasm as “push that button and this becomes work,” which…takes the fun away.

    I’m going to keep writing this. I’ll keep posting chapters, too, as I see fit. It’s *possible* that when I’m done I might run some kind of Kickstarter or something to pay for editing, cover art, layout, etc, because I’ll want those things done properly before I publish this project, but for the moment I think I’m going to just keep toodling along haphazardly and posting chapters when I feel like it and stuff. Or when the screams of hope and agony become sufficient as to convince me to do so. :)

  • the essential kit
    Publishing,  Writing

    Escaping Stockholm

    By reader request, I’m posting Judith’s entire Escaping Stockholm essay as one post, too, for ease of linking and perhaps ease of discussion. I shall, however, put it all behind a cut tag straight off, in order to not re-flood the friends’ list. :)

    If you wish to break it out and read each section individually, here you go:

    Part One | Part Two | Part Three

    Otherwise, onward!

  • the essential kit
    CEMurphy,  Publishing,  Writing

    Escaping Stockholm: Part 3

    Introducing the third and final part of author Judith Tarr’s inspired rant on the changes in the publishing industry, and the expectations we writers have come to live with and accept.

    Escape from Stockholm: An Epic Publishing Saga
    Find Judith Tarr on LiveJournal | on Twitter | & at Book View Cafe

    Part One | Part Two

    This is no longer the only game in town.

    Oh, she’s acknowledging it when she says she can’t deal with it, but she’s not thinking about what it really means. Or how she can make it work for her. She’s living in Stockholm, where Daddy Agent and King Publisher have her convinced she’s this helpless, delicate little creative type who can’t possibly take her career into her own hands and succeed.

    We had that in 1983, too. Bad agents, bad deals, publishers’ decisions that killed books and careers. The difference then was that authors couldn’t go much of anywhere else if they wanted to get those books to stores and reviewers and readers.

    Now they can.

    “But the work! The skills! The crowds!”

    True. It’s work and it needs skills. And there’s an awful lot of what used to be the slushpile clogging the system, only now it’s the Kindle free-and-cheap collection.

    But you aren’t a newcomer. You have a backlist. A readership. A platform as they say in the PR business. If you can use it to get higher advances, good. You should. We used to push, back in 1983 and 1993. Pushing doesn’t seem to happen as much or as strongly now. The options have shrunk. Terms have become worse and worse, along with the dwindling advances. The walls have closed in. There’s just not the same amount of negotiating room as there used to be. Authors to have to take it or leave it, more and more.

    Or do they?

    The tipping point is here. The point at which you realize you can make more money self-publishing or crowdfunding than you can get as an advance from a publisher.

    So the question is, What can a publisher do for you that you can’t do for yourself?

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