Andrea

Romancing Dragon Con

Posted on August 31, 2011 | by Andrea | 1 Comment

It is time to gear up for things that go bump in the night, come from beyond, or below, or from a time past or a time which hasn’t yet occurred. That is Dragon* Con in Atlanta Labor Day weekend each year. I’ve been attending the last few years, sitting in on the Writer’s Track to catch up on the writing news and trends and to rub elbows with old acquaintances.

There is a kickoff parade which stops traffic and has eyeballs popping. Fans of various genres, TV shows and movies, are garbed in superb costumes. To see Storm Troopers marching down Peachtree Street flanked by elves, fairies, the steampunk crowd and vampires is something Atlanta has come to expect. I snap photos of strangers and marvel at their attention to the smallest detail in creating their costumes, then head for the exhibition hall for a gander at the most spectacular fantasy art. I usually find a trinket or two to take home.

Celebrities from film, television are on hand to meet their fans. William Shatner, who must have more energy than a nuclear plant, usually appears. Carrier Fisher is on the list, along with Lea Thompson, Kate Mulgrew, and dozens more representing decades of favorite fantasy and science fiction shows and movies. Authors of the fantastic abound too, including such chroniclers of vampires and other creatures of the night as Sherrilyn Kenyon, Charlaine Harris and Chelsea Quinn Yarbro (who was writing great romantic vampire fiction long before the current run on the blood banks).

I’ll be looking for the cast members from The Vampire Diaries, my current fav TV show. (I must count as the equivalent of several teenagers.) Sarah Canning and David Anders from TVD will be there, and maybe more. There will also be a Vampire Diaries open casting call for paid extras during the con. I would give it a shot but I haven’t seen anyone over 40 on the show.

Dragon Con is great SF/Fantasy fun. Why is a romance author joining in? Because I have big plans for dark things. Before next year’s Dragon*Con Parade marches down Peachtree Street, I’ll have a paranormal tale of my own ready for readers. Nope! No peeking between the covers yet! But if you come to Dragon* Con and see a romance writer amid the superheroes, Starfleet captains, Cylons, hobbits, wizards, and other strange visitors to our world, please say hello.

PS: If you are a Dragon Con fan/attendee, I’d love to hear what draws you to the con.

Guest Blog At Pink Fuzzy Slipper Writers

Posted on August 16, 2011 | by Andrea

My guest blog, interview style, on the Pink Fuzzy Slipper Writers site proved to be a fun event. The Fuzzies welcomed me with a warm pink glow and had me feeling special all day and beyond. They have been blogging for several years and I am just rounding the learning curve. I loved seeing what they have been doing and learning who is e-pubbing as well.

They posed some interesting interview questions. I’ll list the questions here — stop by and read my interview and meet the Pink Fuzzies for my answers.

What would you like our readers to know about you?

How did you get started writing and why?

Are you a reader? Who are your favorite authors?

What themes run through your books?

Who was your favorite character of all you’ve written and why?

What genre is your favorite to read?

What genre is your favorite to write?

Do you have a current work-in-progress and can you tell us a little about it?

How many books have you published through conventional publishing?

How did you come to the decision to indie publish your backlist?

How difficult were the format requirements?

Did you do the formatting or did someone help you to get your backlist uploaded?

How did you decide which indie publisher was right for your books?

Can you tell us a little about the process of preparing and uploading previously published books?

Where are your books available?

Which venue is most successful at this point?

Theirs is a great blog to follow and has posts for every mood and interest. A big thanks to them for hosting me and to Scarlet Pumpernickel for the invitation. I loved doing it!

Romantic Heroes And Their Loves

Posted on July 16, 2011 | by Andrea | 3 Comments

Writing a romance you get to fall in love with a new guy for a while. When the book is finished and in the hands of readers, you say goodbye to your hero and move on to the next man in your life. Breaking up is sad and difficult but in your writer’s heart you know he’ll be back and no matter how many fans and new sweethearts he has, you will always be his first love.

The heroes in my novels have been flaxen-haired, ebony-haired, had blue eyes and brown and shades of each, though I admit a weakness for the black-haired, blue-eyed heart-throb. They are generally tall and muscular, sometimes lean and fit. They have amazing prowess and are generally the sort of men who have to peel women off them.

A little dark and dangerous in spirit, but good deep down and an ever ready champion of those in need. Those are the loves of my life. Bad boys, good hearts.

Roman Toller in Dark Splendor is blonde and bold and forgets he is supposed to be a gentleman way too much. Ryne Sullivan in Whispers at Midnight looks nothing like my predecessor love, Roman, but is equally negligent of his gentlemanly skills. Dark-haired Tabor Stanton in Delilah’s Flame has good reason to forget how to treat a lady, and he does.

Blame Lilah Damon. She deliberately forgets she is a lady of society. As Delilah she is bawdy and bad and adventurous and bent on revenge and really good at making men pay for their wrongs. Tabor doesn’t like the price and sets another.

Lilah is a redhead. I always thought it would be fun to have red hair. And it is! I’ve tried it twice as heroines in my books. Those girls have pluck!

Amanda Fairfax in Whispers at Midnight matches wits with Ryne and loses her heart just where she wants it to be found. Beauty, fierce determination that neither ghosts nor villains could break. Amanda gets her man and more.

Silvia Bradstreet, my first heroine for romantic readers, has all a damsel in distress must. She is lovely, vulnerable, curious to a fault, drawn to Roman, a man she cannot trust, and trapped on an island where there is no escape. Did I mention she has the wardrobe of a princess?

Slipping into the skin of a heroine is as heady as gazing into the blue, amber, green or gray eyes of a hero. It is love.

Fall in love again, in a past century. Roman, Ryne and Tabor will make the heart beat faster. Silvia, Amanda and Lilah will renew what you love about being a woman, or what you are looking for in one.

Watch out for villains. They are sure to show up in another post. Like the heroes and heroines from my heart, the bad guys never behave as I expect. Listen for the knock.

Dark Prelude, a prequel to Dark Splendor, now available

Posted on June 23, 2011 | by Andrea

Dark Prelude, a novella-length prequel to my sexy Gothic romance novel Dark Splendor, is now available free from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Apple, Smashwords and other ebook retailers. Dark Prelude is an expression of thanks to my readers. It is yours to download and enjoy.

If you have read Dark Splendor, (and I thank you if you have), you know the protagonists first meet aboard the Eastwind. What you don’t know is that the story almost began a different way.

Handsome sea captain Roman Toller and his irascible brother Morgan made their appearance in London some days before boarding the Eastwind for a journey to their Uncle’s private island off the Georgia colony of 1751. Their days were spent indulging in food and drink, their nights in debauchery with the damsel of the day.

Across London, lovely and resourceful Silvia Bradstreet was scrapping to keep her life together until she could escape on the same ship. Her days were occupied with work and worry, her nights with fear and dread of her Uncle Hollister who had made her a servant in his home.

That the three of them should meet was inevitable but how and when became a study in fate, a glimpse of how a single event can change everything. But that is more my story than theirs. I wrote the first few chapters of my first novel Dark Splendor and sent it off to an editor at Signet Books. Those chapters earned a multiple book contract for me and swelled my heart with joy that I was about to become a published author.

With the papers signed and the deadlines established, my editor said, “Start the book where those chapters end.” A novice at this game, I dared not question but agonized over the loss of my golden words in those first chapters. She was right, of course. I realized that later as I dealt with length restrictions. With a new beginning, the story veered in a new direction, thus Dark Prelude is more character study than missing chapters. Nevertheless, I tucked those early pages in a file and kept them.

Today they have become Dark Prelude, a novella that explores the lives of Roman and Morgan and Silvia and how things might have been had they first met a few hours earlier. If you have read Dark Splendor, or when you read it, you will see that, indeed, a single event that does or does not take place changes the course of many lives, and, sometimes, a book.

Dark Prelude is a gift to my romantic readers, both new and old. It is a chance to chuckle at the antics of Roman and Morgan and to appreciate Silvia’s tenuous relationship with the two of them. Hopefully, you will decide to follow up with Dark Splendor or another of my books. If not, enjoy the read and meeting these three characters who are dear to my heart.

Writing Your Life

Posted on June 15, 2011 | by Andrea

Fiction is my forte, but when I taught Creative Writing, many of my students wanted to write life stories about their own lives or those of a family member or friend whose life they wanted to honor.

Excavating personal history is not so different than researching for a historical novel, so I put together courses for Writing Your Life and for Journaling. If you are a journaler, you’re going to make life much easier for someone to write your life story or for yourself when you tackle the job one day.

Helping my students develop the craft and skills for writing personal stories was the easy part. The barrier they met was getting their work published. Meaningful events and people in our lives may not have the wide appeal publishers are looking for in memoirs, biographies or autobiographies. Those doing shorter pieces met the same barrier with periodical publishers for their essays and profiles. If these devoted writers and chroniclers wanted more than spiral bound copies of their work and could not afford self-publishing costs with hard or soft bindings, they were out of luck.

Not so today. Epublishing sites like Smashwords.com offers writers of family histories, personal stories short or long, the opportunity to make their precious memories available to friends, relatives and others with wide distribution in ebook form and the choice of also offering print on demand.

If you have always wanted to preserve or share a family history or transmit your cultural heritage to younger generations, start interviewing your elders or writing down your own memories. Include family legends and family folklore. Smart phone apps and digital recorders can make that task easier and some even put your words directly into a print file.

If technology mystifies you, draft a son, daughter, grandchild or friend into scanning your work into a Word file. Gather photographs and copies of any documents you might want to include in your book and note where they belong in the account you are writing.

12 tips for writing a personal story:

Decide on the person or event to write about.
Decide on the format and whether to do a factual account or reminiscence.
Collect photographs and documents to include.
Decide what point of view to use to capture the essence of the person you are writing about.
Outline the book or piece and write a fast first draft.
Research supporting details and re-interview if needed.
Revise and add dialogue, humor when called for, and accurate setting descriptions to make the story live.
Have the subject read and check for accuracy and a qualified editor check the manuscript for needed edits.
Design or have designed an appropriate cover.
Write a long and a short description of your book.
Format according to the publishing venue you have chosen.
Upload to the epublisher according to guidelines.

Spread the word! Family members and others will treasure your work in years to come.

Vampire Love

Posted on May 23, 2011 | by Andrea

Handsome, beautiful, desirable. Vampires haven’t always been so. As a child I saw a few vampire movies in which the vampires were horrifically ugly and frightening instead and would be victims were saved by wearing or waving a cross.

Around the same time a comic book I read had a vamp named Kitty who was no looker but who claimed she wasn’t really bad in spite of hovering around a town randomly attacking and draining to death her victims. Townspeople had no clue a vampire was the culprit in those savage killings.

In the last scene a woman stepped out her back door with a bowl of milk and called, “Kitty, kitty, kitty”. Vampire kitty swooped in for the kill. Blood dripping from her fangs she shrugged and said. “I don’t want to kill them but they call me.”

To my kid’s mind, it could happen. I had cats. I put on my cross necklace and wore it for years. Eventually, I grew up. Vampires got better looking, more sophisticated, even desirable. I’ve been a vampire fan since.

My good fortune is that the TV series The Vampire Diaries films near where I live. The show is based on the L.J. Smith book series by the same name. To date I haven’t met any of the actors but have watched the shooting a few times. I absolutely love the show even though I am not in their demographic. It is beautifully cast and beautifully set. Romance and danger, handsome vampires, humans and even werewolves, and a lot of heart stopping action (literally).

Recently I had the pleasure of attending a tea on the grounds of the home of Mayor Lockwood, one of the characters in Vampire Diaries. That night on the square in Mystic Falls, (Covington, GA) a mock vigil was held for the characters who have met their demise in the first twos seasons. Great fun ruled as fans from all over lit candles and said goodbye. The event was sponsored by Mystic Falls Tours and V.R.O. Radio. I won a terrific autographed photo of good-looking Gino Anthony Pesi, Maddox on the show, in a charity auction.

Lovers of the paranormal, check out The Vampire Diaries. If you wouldn’t leave your window open for one of the vampires on this show, you may already need a transfusion.

As a writer I’ve got my own vampire camping out in my head with all the other unwritten characters whose stories are waiting to be told. It’s about time I got him out of there with my own version of Vampire Love.

http://mysticfallstours.com

http://www.thevro.com

Clenchless

Posted on May 11, 2011 | by Andrea | 2 Comments

More observations about Romance covers with the arrival of the cover for the soon to be released Dark Prelude, a prequel to Dark Splendor.

Sometimes there is no clench, no romantically entwined couple at all on the cover. Sometimes elements from the story perfectly capture the mood, tone and setting of the book or story. Add just the right title and just the right shades of color and the impact is magic.

I am taken with the cover for Dark Prelude and am reminded by its effect on me just how much covers matter. Covers likely lead to the first click or the first reach that has a reader looking for more. In a glance there is a sense of what the story is about and a hint of the adventures between the pages.

Dark Prelude is a novella which gives a glimpse into the lives of Silvia Bradstreet and Roman Toller in the weeks before they meet. If Dark Splendor were a movie they would be the scenes on the cutting room floor later added to the director’s cut version of the film or shown as extras on the DVD release. In the case of Dark Prelude, they are the editor’s cuts because of length constraints.

The early chapters might have taken Dark Splendor in a slightly different direction. In Dark Prelude, Roman and Silvia meet a few hours earlier and certainly with a bang. The Dark Prelude cover perfectly captures significant elements of the story I wanted to convey. The quill and ink seal someone’s fate, the sailing ship is a way to escape, intrigue hangs heavy as the fog.

Thanks again to my publisher at TroveBooks.com and Frauke Spanuth at Croco Designs for so amazingly capturing my abstract ideas for the Dark Prelude cover.

Unclenched

Posted on May 4, 2011 | by Andrea

Romance covers have evolved. The clench, that passionate embrace with the love-charged gazes, ruled romance covers for decades. Historicals generally featured a pair of stunningly attractive models in period costume and in a daringly posed clench who were photographed then painted in acrylic on canvas. The clench cover was effective when books were displayed on shelves in book stores, superstores and grocery stores in abundance.

Over time the women featured on romance covers have evolved from support role heroines to heroines in a fantasy to today’s stronger heroine who is more in a partnership with the hero. Many newer covers feature a woman alone or dominating a man. Paranormal romances are a significant part of the market at present and showcase heroines for every imagination. Vampire hunters, military women and what a recent article referred to as “butt-kicking babes” have emerged.

Covers today are likely to feature a headless couple with knockout bodies allowing the reader’s imagination to determine exactly what they look like. Others feature only the hero, allowing the reader to insert themselves as heroine or they feature only the heroine so that the reader can appreciate that she is the strong, dominate character.

More and more books are purchased online or as ebooks and the way covers are produced has changed as well. Most appear to be produced straight from photographs, skipping the artist with a brush. Ebook purchasers may be looking at only a stamp sized cover so it must have punch.

The gorgeous covers for the e-versions of my books Dark Splendor and Whispers at Midnight were designed by Frauke Spanuth at Croco Designs. Any reservations I had about digital art covers was quickly put to rest when I saw her work. The covers are terrific and capture the historical elements of the Gothic storyline in an edgier, high impact way that is right for today’s market and the eBook trade. I have always appreciated cover art and now I am a fan of Croco Designs. I am eagerly awaiting Croco’s cover concept for my next release, Delilah’s Flame, a Western Historical Romance.

I mean it when I say I appreciate cover art. In my house is a four by eight foot poster of my Western Historical Romance Devil Moon given to me by my publisher after a conference in Nashville. It’s by Pino. It hangs in my office. I’ve seen it every day for years and still love the colors and the romantic pose (and, of course, that it is my book).

Covers will continue to evolve as technology continues to change the way we connect with books. Clench covers will hang on even if there are fewer of them. I’m hanging on to my library of paperback romance novels. Those original covers may become desirable collectibles one day and the stories are still great.

Covers change. Romance lives on.

postscript: Fabio, the epitome of cover hunks graciously posed with me at a writers conference in California. It was a fun moment.

The Muse Went Missing

Posted on April 28, 2011 | by Andrea

For quite a long time, fairy tale length, in fact, my muse slumbered.

Pages and pages of thanks to Dan McGirt at Trove Books for pushing, prodding and patiently persuading me to get with it and get my backlist of books out in digital format. A few months later my first two novels, Dark Splendor and Whispers at Midnight, Sexy Gothics, first published in the late eighties are available as ebooks with brand new beautiful covers. They debuted at Smashwords.com and in a few weeks will be widely available at Amazon and other ebook retailers.

The bonus is that I now have characters, plots and storylines kicking around in my head and I am now as excited about writing as I was when I started my first novel. My muse is wide awake again. She nodded off because she did not want to deal with me. We have a new bargain. I write. She keeps the ideas coming.

Pages of thanks, also, to J.A. Konrath, a man I have never e-met or otherwise but whose blog I read. Thanks to Mr. Konrath for throwing wide the doors on epublishing and showing so vividly the procedures and possibilities. His frankness and openness made it all so clear. I got it! He’s done a lasting service to aspiring, successful and even floundering writers everywhere.

A special note: Dan McGirt is my son, favorite author, and now publisher. Trove Books takes care of so many details and leaves me the fun part of creating and writing. Dan’s Jason Cosmo fantasy series is available in both the original (Jason Cosmo, Royal Chaos and Dirty Work) and revised versions, (starting over with Hero Wanted). Visit TroveBooks.com or JasonCosmo.com to see all of Dan’s works.