So there I was! Table dressed, poster positioned, Square device details in my head, books, cards, bookmarks and newsletter signup forms at the ready. This was going to be a great weekend. I’d get to talk to loads of people about my writing and, hopefully, sell books and get a couple of speaking gigs. Oh, and I had been asked to be a panelist talking about self publishing.
What could go wrong?
The workshop was well attended with lots of people anxious to hear what my co-panelist and I had to say about self-publishing. Good questions abounded and Carolyn Arnold and I got into a great rhythm, each drawing on our own self publishing experiences. I even sold four books that first day even though crowds were minimal.
Actually there were no crowds. A better phrase would be dribbles of people. And when Sunday morning we opened to basically no one there it was time to take action. Here is a list of what I did to use the time wisely.
5 Ways to Maximize Your Time at a (Failed) Book Fair
When no one is at your table or any of the others near you, check your email, tweet about the event, or text friends to come visit you.
Take pictures of the other authors at the event. This is a great time to make connections and new friends.
Talk to the other authors. You can learn a lot. I found the name of a company to question about cards with a free gift link to my eBooks. And you can meet some really great people. Authors are almost always ready to share.
If time is really dragging pull out your iPad and write your blog post or newsletter for the coming week. Make lists of marketing things to do. I got my newsletter for Tuesday roughed out so that Monday night I just had to transfer it to MailChimp, do a few fixes and such, and my newsletter for my very special list people was all ready. It was so ready that inadvertently I sent it Monday night! Anxious or what?
Figure out a way to make lemonade. What could I do to find the positive in Sunday’s abysmal showing? (I sold nothing. Neither did many others.) Well, I decided to write this blog post with a positive slant on my weekend event. I also got two writing pieces out of the weekend so my time was far from wasted.
This is often the life of an author. We plan as best we can but sometimes venues are just not what we planned and we must be ready to make the best of the situation. I hope that this event next year is better attended, for sure, but my weekend was useful and fun just the same.
Click on the Loyalist trilogy books below for great historical stories:
Sometimes I just have to walk away from all the email, the Tweets, the Friend Requests, and the hundreds of other time-stealers that threaten to take me away from my writing. I did this short video to share some of my strategies for keeping my time my own. Feel free to borrow from my ideas and to suggest your own in the comments. Here’s the link to my Facebook Page where you’ll find the short video that I posted yesterday.
Click on the books below for great historical stories:
On my website you will see a few quotes from various readers about my Loyalist trilogy and I’d like to talk about one of those today. A friend of mine knows a lot about history in general and much more about the Rebellion history of Norwich; she and I spent time bicycling around that area many years ago with our young mothers’ group. No matter where we went this friend would point out places and tell the history. It was all fascinating.
With The Loyalist Legacy, I brought the Garners into my part of Ontario. I was very careful about my facts. When my friend wrote me the comment below I was so pleased I just had to put it up on my website:
“I was delighted with the way you handled the Norwich Rebellion in the last Loyalist book, Elaine, and have heard many positive comments about it.” Marie A.
I feel historical fiction can have lots of fiction in it but the details of actual history just have to be correct. Marie checked my facts as I’d written them and I checked over and over with reference books as well.
The fiction comes with adding fictional characters, places, details, and events. I remembered my daughter talking about a house where she cleaned for an old lady. One day the lady moved the kitchen table and pulled back a rug to reveal a door in the floor. She pulled it up and asked my daughter to go down and retrieve something for her. Beth took one look at the deep, dark hole with a rickety ladder leading down into the abyss and visions of that door slamming down over her flashed through her mind. My normally very compliant daughter just was not going down there. That scene was still in my mind when I wrote the story of two black former slaves at the time of the Rebellion of 1837. You’ll find that story near the end of The Loyalist Legacy.
The Garner family in the Loyalist trilogy are fictional even though they are based on and often named for my ancestors. I’ve had to decide what they might have looked like but draw on things I know about my father’s family to flesh them out. Someone has a widow’s peak and someone else has a prominent chin dimple. These family traits helped me give character to the fictional family. I’m not sure anyone in my family has ever said anything about the resemblance to my dad but it’s been fun for me.
I know my father told a story of a native woman coming to visit one of my ancestors, leaving her papoose on the porch while the two talked inside, and the child being carried off by a wild animal–bear or lynx, I’m not sure, as my cousin told me two different versions of the story. I decided to use the lynx because of the sly nature of cats and, believe it or not, the appeal of a lynx’s strange pointed tufts on its ear tips.
In the second book of the trilogy, The Loyalist’s Luck, I brought in the historical fact of the burning of Newark (present-day Niagara-on-the-Lake) but I also added a wonderfully sad story I discovered in my research. The residents had been given one hour to retrieve what they could from their homes before the Americans burned the town. This was in December, 1813, a very cold and snowy time of year in the Niagara peninsula. I found a story of an old lady, sick and unable to leave her bed, who was carried out into the street to watch as the Canadian Volunteers (siding with the Americans) burned her house to the ground. Through that old lady I was able to make my readers feel the absolute pain of war.
Another decision that just seemed to push itself into my mind was having Robert Garner, fictional brother of William, decide to sever off small sections of his land right where the present-day village of Thorndale is located, north of London, Ontario. Interestingly a relative of mine named Robert Garner did donate that land in the second part of the nineteenth century for municipal purposes and today there are playing fields and community buildings there. My niece’s house is actually located on the land donated by our relative. This has little to do with the plot of the book or even with the characters but it helped me add a layer of feeling that otherwise might not have been there as Robert suffered through his wife’s illness. I hope it helps my readers empathize with these characters who could very well have been real.
We never really know what facts or nuances from our own past will pop up in our writing. For me they are most pleasing. They make the story really my own. No one else could have written what I’ve written. There is an extra layer of richness that I feel each and every time I read from my work for audiences near and far. And there’s a connection to my family and my memories. If only history in school could have been taught from the point of view of the people involved instead of the memorize-the-six-reasons-for-whatever method.
Click on the books below for great historical stories:
Today is the first Wednesday of the month and I’m delighted to bring you another wonderful guest author. Jane Ann McLachlan has written several books in various genres although she says this latest one, The Sorrow Stone, is her first historical. A seasoned writer and wordsmith, Jane Ann’s biography is below for readers to peruse. A riveting segment from her book is also waiting for you. I have to go buy The Sorrow Stone after reading that and I’m sure you will, too.
1. Jane Ann, when were you first able to call yourself a writer or author?
I’ve been writing all my life, and have had my poetry and short stories published since university, but the significant point for me was getting my first novel published in 2012.
2. Describe your current project.
I’m delighted to be launching my first historical fiction novel, The Sorrow Stone. Apparently, in the middle ages peasants believed a mother mourning her child’s death could “sell her sorrow” by selling a nail from her child’s coffin to a traveling peddler. I first heard this bit of folk lore at a talk given by a midwife about medieval childbirth practices. I began wondering, What if you could pay someone to bear your sorrow? In my story, Lady Celeste is a young mother overwhelmed with grief when her son dies. Desperate to find relief, she begs a passing peddler to buy her sorrow. Jean, the cynical peddler she meets, insists she include her ruby ring along with the nail in return for his coin. They both find themselves changed greatly by their secret transaction. When Celeste learns that without her wedding ring her husband may set her aside, she determines to retrieve it without reclaiming her sorrow. But how will she find the peddler and convince him to give up the precious ruby ring?
3. What other books have you written? Are they in the same genre as this latest one?
I’ve also written a science fiction novel, Walls of Wind, in which males and females are two separate species, and two young adult fiction novels, The Occasional Diamond Thief and The Salarian Desert Game, both of which have won awards and been recommended by the Canadian and the US library Associations.
4. Are you planning to continue writing more historical fiction?
Yes, I’m currently writing another historical fiction, an amazing story also set in the 12th Century. This time the characters and events are real. It’s the story of two people, one a former slave the other a fisherman’s daughter, who rose to hold the highest positions at court. Honestly, it’s such an amazing story no one would find it credible if it wasn’t actually true.
5. Has The Sorrow Stonebeen the title of this book from the very beginning?
Yes.
6. What type of research did you do in the writing of this book?
To get the time period and setting for The Sorrow Stone right I did a lot of online and library research, then I went to the south of France, where my story takes place, and traveled the route Jean the peddler takes from Cluny, to Lyon, down to the Mediterranean and across to Marseilles. I talked to guides and historical interpreters all along the route to learn what vegetation was native to the area, what the weather was like, which towns and cities, cathedrals, castles and monasteries had existed there in the 12th Century, which trades were practiced in the region then. I wanted to be able to describe these places, to take my readers with me on Jean’s and Lady Celeste’s journeys in an authentic way.
7. That must have been a unique and amazing journey! Back to the questions, what is the most compelling thing in your current book to attract readers?
The idea of selling your sorrow, I think, and the realism of the setting, as well as the gradual revealing of the dark secrets buried in Celeste’s and Jean’s pasts, juxtaposed against the dramatic things that happen to them on their respective journeys. Readers have said it is haunting, gripping and they couldn’t put it down.
J. A. McLachlan was born in Toronto, Canada. She is the author of a short story collection, Connections, published by Pandora Press and two College textbooks on Professional Ethics, published by Pearson-Prentice Hall. Walls of Wind was her first published Science Fiction novel. Her YA SF novels, The Occasional Diamond Thief (2015) and The Salarian Desert Game (2016), are both published by EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing. Her first historical fiction novel, The Sorrow Stone, is available now. She is represented by Carrie Pestritto at Prospect Agency, who currently has on offer Jane Ann’s next historical fiction novel.
Excerpt from The Sorrow Stone: This passage occurs when Jean the Peddler is an unwilling witness to the stoning of an adultress.
The thud of stones meeting flesh filled his ears. He felt, in his own body, the hot, burning pain as each one hit, tearing the thin fabric of her shift, digging into her bruised and bleeding flesh. It should be him there, not her. He could not move, speak, breathe…
Something shoved up against his leg. His breath emerged in a gasp.
Mama!
A girl of five or six squeezed past him. She pushed her way through the crowd till she reached the front, crying all the while, Mama! Mama!
The woman’s face was hidden, covered by her hair. The air was thick with stones. Again and again they struck her, but still she did not cry out.
Mama! the child screamed again.
The woman looked up.
Mama! She sprinted across the open ground. A stone whizzed past her ear. A second hit her back, flinging her to the ground.
The woman cried out then, a wild, animal shriek. It echoed, hideous and compelling, across the square.
She would be killed! The horror of it swept over Jean as he stared at the fallen child. No! He could not bear that! He shoved his way through the crowd, unable to look away from the woman, unable to escape the terror in her eyes as she strained against her bonds, struggling to reach the child sprawled on the ground. She shrieked again, a high, keening noise. Jean gritted his teeth to keep from screaming with her.
At the edge of the crowd he stopped. What was he doing? What in the name of Heaven had come over him?
Then the child moaned and the woman screamed again and Jean ran forward, unable to stop himself. The little girl tried to roll over as Jean reached her. He was no longer looking at the woman, but he felt her strain toward him as he bent down and scooped up the child. A stone struck the side of his head as he straightened. He staggered, almost dropping the child. He regained his footing and turned to race back to the safety of the crowd.
The adulterer! a man cried.
Other voices took up the cry. He stepped forward, but the gap in the crowd where he had pushed through to get to the child had closed against him. A second stone hit his arm. There could be no mistaking that this one was meant for him. He saw the metal smith among the crowd, his arm drawn back, aiming. As Jean watched, he flung his stone. It hit Jeans shoulder with a stinging blow that took his breath away. He crouched over the child, holding her tightly to him, more aware of the woman’s anguished cries behind him and the child’s terror than his own pain. Two more stones came flying at him; one missed its mark but the other hit the child’s leg. She screamed and twisted, trying to burrow into him. A third stone hit her cheek, drawing blood. He wrapped both arms around her, leaving his own head exposed as he searched for an opening in the crowd.
Does this ever happen to you? Your blog post is calling you, CALLING YOU, CALLING YOU and all you want to do is anything but write that post. Here’s a list of suggestions that work well for me at those times:
Clip your toenails…..and then clip them again
Tidy your desk
Upload your audio interview to your computer and send it to be transformed into Word
Get the mail
Pay bills
Go for a walk
Answer all twenty emails in your InBox
Get a glass of water
Throw out the garbage if your husband/wife forgot
Prepare supper early in the day. That’s really good planning!
Have a nap
Do some more research for your work-in-progress even though that phase is done
Call your sister and talk even though you get a busy signal
Organize the sticky notes on your To/In Progress/Done white board. Put them all in the Done column
Check your Facebook Author page. Maybe someone has “liked” it
Get a glass of Diet Coke even though you know it’s terrible for you
Sign up for Tumblr or some other social media site you’re not on yet
Check your InBox again. Maybe there’s something new and exciting there
Have another nap
Try to change the date of one of your speaking engagements
Enter a contest
Writing contest, that is
Check the oven
Get out your tweezers. Nuff said
Turn off your computer and realize that you need a break.
And now back to Historical Fiction and my Loyalists. You see? Lots of days I get loads done!
Author Jim Sellers’ soon-to-be-released latest book, A Death of Cold, is the first of his YA books I’ve read and I’m glad I did. The book takes us to a plane crash in the mountains of British Columbia and shows the heart wrenching details of a Youth bag-pipe band hoping for rescue. Sellers manages to get inside the heads of these adolescents in a meaningful way. Remember they are teenagers, not fully adult, so that this situation is doubly difficult but Sellers never denigrates them as they try to survive.
I was most intrigued by the difficult story of Jacky and his parents. In the interests of not spoiling it for readers I’ll not go into detail except to say Jacky’s growing up has not been easy. He ends up on the crashed plane with no Internet, trying to figure out how to get his secret application off to an educational institution and thereby escape living with his father any more.
The role of one of the accompanying teachers for this group seems real to me, having been in that type of position in my former life. Mr. Stewart has the horrendous job of trying to help all of his charges with their aches and pains but especially with their fears of never getting off the mountain. He does it well.
A subplot that I loved was the absolute musical talent of these kids, especially Jacky. Through the bagpipes Jacky finds his way, not only forging a bond with his dad but ultimately–well, you’ll have to read the book.
While you wait for A Death of Cold you might try Jacky the Brave. Here is the cover and Amazon link.
A Death of Cold will be available this Saturday, September 2, 2017 on Amazon and Kobo. Its cover is certainly true to its title!
And now back to Historical Fiction and my Loyalists:
Behind all those books on store shelves, library databases, home libraries, audio devices, and e-book formats are a zillion authors churning out words in wonderful medleys for your reading and listening pleasure. And we love it. Most of us never reach the big time but we love the writing itself.
Writing is a satisfying reward for me, too. Getting inside the head of one of my characters, feeling what they feel and struggling for just the right words so my readers feel it, too, is most satisfying. On the days when I write a sad scene, I know it’s working when my tears stream as quickly as my fingers type.
I am that rare author bird, though, who loves many of the other author duties that come with having a trilogy out and a new biography on the way. Perhaps my readers will be surprised to know that often I could work 5-6 hours a day on my writing business and never once do any creative fiction or non-fiction writing. That is why I am most diligent at setting aside my two hours writing time in the morning before I let the rest of the job take over. I unplug my landline, turn off my cell, shut down my Outlook and close my office door as a sign for my husband who often works at home, too.
Once the actual writing is done for the day a whole lot of other things flow into the suddenly vacant space like water when we pull a finger out of the glass. Here is a list of some of the main time suckers that haunt me.
Ten Things Authors Must Do To Survive
Write summaries of various lengths to submit with book proposals or to contests, etc. Every avenue of advancement has differing requirements, all of which take up time and if we don’t follow the rules, our submissions will be ignored.
Read books related to the subject you might be writing about or researching. For a writer of historical fiction, this is huge. Luckily, I love it!
Write queries for agents and/or publishers. Even though I have my own publishing company I’ve done my share of this tedious job and expect to do more of it with my new project. Again each must be personalized for its intended recipient.
Interview other writers and be interviewed yourself. People love to hear what makes a writer tick. I really like doing both sides of this and take time to compose intriguing and thoughtful questions and answers.
Write newsletters to and for those treasured readers who have signed up for your list. I love these people and will go to great lengths to give them interesting stories twice a month. They are the best. Oh, and my weekly blog followers are on that list of fabulous people, too.
Support fellow authors by interviewing them, reading their work, following them on social media, and writing reviews for them, not to mention actually attending their book launches as they attend mine. We are a kind community.
Sign up with Google Alert and check the daily emails. I put certain topics that relate to my books there in order to see what’s related in the news and online. Putting each of my book titles on there brought me a few surprises, not all of them pleasant.
Send threatening letters to thieves of my work. Yup. You read that right. Through Google Alert I found my book titles offered for free in PDF formats. It’s taken me 10 years to produce the Loyalist trilogy so I was not pleased to learn of this insidious practice by unscrupulous people offering my books for free. Another writer yesterday told me most of these people are looking to get email addresses so that they can use them for nefarious practices.
Google Alert also gives me places where I might offer my services as a speaker or to a reporter in connection with a topic they are covering. There are also other places to do that and I must start working to build a list of them.
Prepare speeches and workshop materials for speaking engagements. I like to tailor my talks to a particular group’s interests and that works well. It also takes time.
You will note I said 10 things but there are thousands of other things. I just don’t have time to write them all down.
Oh, one more I must mention. This Canadian author has spent hours trying to get the proper IRS documentation which will make my life a lot easier and my pockets a little fuller. My accountant husband has carried the torch for this but we’re still not out of the red tape.
So all you readers, know we love you all the more because you make our hard work so worth it. Thanks to each and every one of you!
A few years ago I was lucky enough to attend a conference for writers in Vancouver, British Columbia. The event took place at a perfect time for me in my writing journey and spurred me on to step up my Internet activities specifically around my writing life.
Already I’d spent a few years writing a blog on blogger.com which was called Beader Girl Jewels and celebrated my life both creative and personal. After attending the Vancouver conference I mentioned above, though, I stepped up my social media footprint to start a new writing blog (On Becoming a Wordsmith), get active on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, and build my list. I even joined Pinterest when it became a thing. The promise was that all of this activity would help me get known for my writing.
Today I’d like to spend some time telling just what I’ve learned about the value and uses of the various social media platforms I’ve used.
Twitter: In the beginning this was really useful. I went on the Twitter Feed and narrowed my search for sites to follow according to my writing and marketing needs. I was interested in seeing sites which taught me about these topics and I learned a lot. At this stage I would run down the Twitter feed and see what people were publishing. Then I’d follow the sites that interested me and I found some fabulous people and information this way. As the years went on and I built my list and my needs changed so did the time I spent reading the Twitter feed. Now my Twitter time is spent liking and retweeting friends’ stuff as well as checking out new people whose work I want to follow. I rarely take any time to just run down the Twitter feed.
Pinterest: I do a little here but have certainly not used it to its potential. I’ve enjoyed seeing amazing libraries and books pictures but, truthfully, most of the emails Pinterest sends me do not catch my attention. My current goal is to create my own Pinterest poster about my Loyalist books and see if I can get some traction in book sales that way. Always looking for new and interesting ways to market.
LinkedIn: In the beginning I used LinkedIn’s groups to connect to a lot of writing/book related groups. I joined quite a few of them and used them to gain a wider market for my regular blog posts. It was fun and instructive to connect with other writers. One problem began to occur, though. Many of the groups did not want me to post links to my latest blog posts even though those posts had loads of pertinent information for other writers. One even told me I could not use any links in my posts. Gradually I realized I didn’t have time to tailor my group submissions and I opted out of several. The thing that I learned is that a writer’s needs change along the way, going from specific writing questions, to publishing, to marketing, and a LinkedIn member needs to keep abreast of help groups for whatever is the particular need at a specific time. I realized I had to use my social media time as it best helped me. Now I am a member of two marketing type groups and that’s all.
Facebook: My most useful SM time has been spent on Facebook. I have a personal page which helps me keep up to date with family and friends as well as a number of writing friends. Then I have my writer’s page at ElaineCouglerAuthor which is more tuned to the writing world which is so important to me. If you haven’t liked my page, come visit me. Here I post my weekly blog post and any other interesting writing-related things I find along the way. I am most appreciative of those who share and like my articles on this page. I have also done some Facebook advertising which worked pretty well although it takes a few months to actually see the results in sales. You can hone your marketing reach for these ads in several ways which all makes knowing exactly who your audience is absolutely crucial. The FB stats on this are good and the procedure itself is well-documented and easy to follow. Also my audience for my books coincides with the main audience for FaceBook which works out well for me.
I do find sometimes that the world works in mysterious ways. Today as I was writing this blog post, I received a newsletter in my InBox from The Writer Magazine with an article by fellow Canadian Brent van Staalduinen entitled “Stepping away from social media (and back into what matters.)” Interesting because I felt it was kind of serendipitous. How did The Writer Magazine pick that moment to send me that article? Anyhow, I hope you’ll click on the link and read what Brent says.
Over the years I’ve really learned to limit my time on social media. The writing and the marketing are what matter the most to me. Every person on social media must decide where to spend time to get the most value. I think that we must also consider which platforms are the most pleasurable for us. I am much more likely to prepare articles to post in places that are fun. Aren’t you?
A final note to consider when deciding how much social media to do is its effect on getting your message out. I often get comments about my high level of visibility as I market my work. A lot of that is because of my social media time. One final thing I really try to do is make a FB event out of most of my speaking and workshop events. Even if people can’t get to these events they see the notice and are reminded about my writing life. Many people do come because of those ads as well. Life is good for me as long as I don’t let social media take over!
Today we’re looking at history in a very different way. Author Rosemary A Johns has joined me here to give her take on the links between history and–can you believe it?–vampires. Yes, you read that right. Vampires. Ever since Anne Rice’s Vampire Lestat, readers have loved to take a journey into the nether worlds created by authors walking a bit on the dark side. Don’t you just love how the imagination grabs an idea and wonderful books are born?
Make sure you read through to the end as there I’ve linked to her book trailer for the series. You’ll love it. Thanks so much, Rosemary, for joining us here today.
I’m passionate about history – I always have been. My Postgrad is in history from Oxford University. I’m also a fantasy writer who loves to challenge the world around me by seeing it through the eyes of the paranormal. Luckily for me (?) history and fantasy weave together beautifully, just like Beauty and the Beast.
Since I was a kid, I’ve been fascinated by vampires. The myths. The history behind the myths. Living for centuries and witnessing the best and worst of all humanity but only as the outsiders looking in. Once human but never being able to be human again.
A bit like historians, if I’m honest.
Rebel Vampires my new fantasy series is set in the supernatural world of Blood Life, in a hidden London of vampires, rebels and romance. The world is divided between Blood Lifers (vampires) and First Lifers (humans). And vampires are both predator and prey.
I wanted to write a vampire book for adults. A whole new urban fantasy twist on the myth – or as Light would say: ‘You know those vampire myths? Holy water, entry by invitation only and sodding crucifixes? Bollocks to them.’
Blood Dragons was sparked by the idea of a British Rocker vampire with a photographic memory called Light. Light’s extraordinary memory is based on my son’s. My son is an autistic savant – meaning he has a photographic memory. I wondered whether being a vampire with such a gift would be a blessing or a curse.
Light is caught between his century old love for a savage Elizabethan Blood Lifer and his forbidden human lover in 1960s London.
You have two of my favourite British time periods right there: Elizabethan (a powerful, fascinating, inventive but secretive period overflowing with plots…and my personal top monarch of them all – Elizabeth I), and the 1960s.
The 1960s London music scene? If I could go back to one time period only, that would be it.
Light is elected into Blood life in Victorian England. This gave me 150 years to paint – the glories and the horrors. Because Light remembers it all with the clarity of a photograph.
Research for a writer is essential. But the key? To make it invisible. The reader should feel like they’re in that Victorian warehouse, trapped in a stinking hole during World War One or lounged in the fug of a 1960s bar with a pint and a ciggie. It should be vivid and real. Research worn with a light touch.
Once Blood Lifers are elected they choose to hold onto what they love best about the times they pass through. The clothes, hair or mannerisms of speech.
Ruby – Light’s Author and lover – (‘Ruby. My red-haired devil, Author, muse, liberator, guide: my gorgeous nightmare’), is an Elizabethan.
‘A copper tuppeny bit landed on the grass at Ruby’s feet. There were sniggers.
I remained in the shadows, waiting for my cue.
‘Faith, you are foolish slaves. Nothing but base beasts. By this hand, you will cry mercy before this night is over.’
Whereas Hartford? He’s a powerful American Long-lived. But the jazz age? Those were the years of his greatest joy and freedom. They spoke to his Soul – and his beautiful voice. It’s Hartford’s voice, which sets the other slaves free with its hope, when they’re abducted by the secret human Blood Club in Blood Shackles. Like Taken but with vampires.
‘ ‘Groupies,’ Donovan sighed dreamily.
Hartford shook his nut. ‘Jazz babies: now there was a treat! All those blotto dolls in loose dresses, with looser morals, wanting to have a good time. I was in Chicago when it was the hard-boiled gangsters running the cabarets and the dance clubs; now they knew how to throw a party. Later the place to be was New York, where I’d hunt The Cotton Club to the throb of Duke Ellington. Have a smoke. Some skirt up for some nookie and then… Pulse of the blood and the jazz in synchronicity…’ Hartford’s peepers shuddered closed, as we all licked our lips in sympathetic memory. ‘I’d sneak into the Rosewood Ballroom to hear Louis Armstrong play, even when I wasn’t on the hunt.’ ’ Blood Shackles (Rebel Vampires Volume 2)
Blood Renegades, the third book in the trilogy, which has just come out, is at heart a book about evolution: how our two species have evolved side by side through history…and what happens if the Blood Lifers finally step into the light?
Mostly the books are about London: its dark and its glory. Researching historical London? No chore at all.
‘I studied the bloke’s earnest bespectacled mush, as he weaved his small hands animatedly. A single brunette curl fell over his right peeper; he brushed at it with a quick smile. Not quite up at Oxford yet, Edmond was only just younger than me.
Yet it felt like centuries separated us.
We strolled in the early autumn evening along London Bridge, which arched elegantly across the Thames; the moon was masked by mist. The air was sharp; my nostrils stung.
Even in the dark the roadway was alive with bustle and roar: broughams, growlers, whinnying nags and drivers hollering.
My London: thriving and thrusting.
Birds hurried with bundles of umbrella frames and cages of hats, mingling with dirty coster girls and oily sackmakers. Waifs. Strays. Roughs. Working men and women ebbing and flowing across the great river, whilst the rich rode in their carriages.
Then there was us: one First Lifer and one Blood, in the black freeze of the evening.’ Blood Renegades (Rebel Vampires Volume 3) http://viewbook.at/BloodRenegades
History and vampires: Beauty and the Beast. Now that’s something I’m passionate about…
WINNER OF SILVER AWARD in the National Wishing Shelf Book Awards.
ROSEMARY A JOHNS is a music fanatic and a paranormal anti-hero addict who creates spellbinding worlds, thrilling action, gripping suspense and passionate romances, all uniquely told. She wrote her first fantasy novel at the age of ten, when she discovered the weird worlds inside her head were more exciting than double swimming. Since then she’s studied history at Oxford University, run a theatre company (her critically acclaimed plays have been described as “uncomfortable, unsettling and uneasily true to life”), and worked with disability charities.
When Rosemary’s not falling in love with the rebels fighting their way onto the page, she heads the Oxford writing group Dreaming Spires.
The wonderful Pauline Barclay has announced that The Loyalist’s Luckhas been awarded a Readers’ Award by her Chill With a Book site. I’m very happy about this because this site really takes the time and effort to make sure the books it praises deserve that praise. Thanks so much, Chill With a Book!
Here’s the whole gamut of awards given out by Chill With a Book. And now that I’ve told you about my newest award, I’m going to go chill with a 17th century book I’m reading at the moment.