This month on my Book Addict post, I interviewed Paranormal Romance author Jo Lynne Valerie about her new book Phoenix Rising.
Here is a taste:
Phoenix Rising is a love story, at it’s core. It’s also a story about how the unseen paranormal world can touch our lives in unexpected and beautiful ways.
My heroine Holly is a successful artist in her forties, resigned to her life as the forever single, eccentric auntie. She’s given up on love, a decision made long ago after suffering a horrific trauma involving a child. As a result, Holly experiences recurring nightmares about that trauma. And that’s how readers meet Holly at the open of the story, on the cuff of one of her bad dreams.
However, Holly’s life is about to take a drastic turn, one that puts her on a crash course with destiny. A one Mary Sinclair, best-selling celebrity novelist, hires Holly to paint illustrations for a forthcoming book. It’s an incredible boon for Holly; the job offers high exposure and a fabulous compensation package! Talented as she is, Holly proceeds to paint all the character portraits requested, but hits a snag when it comes to painting the hero. After taking a break to alleviate artists’ block, Holly’s muse returns and she paints all day and night, producing a stunning vision of a handsome man.
Holly has completed her job for Mary Sinclair, and she assumes it’s over. In reality, things are just beginning! Two days later, Holly attends an art gallery show where she is introduced to her niece’s boyfriend and his father. Imagine Holly’s incredible shock when she discovers the boy’s father is the spitting image of the hero/man she painted!
His name is David… he is a single father and wolf biologist. What’s more, David connects to Holly immediately… and passionately. They find themselves having dinner the very next night, and that’s just the beginning of a whirlwind romance that takes them on vacation to experience the Winter Solstice in New Mexico, land of ancient shamanic spirituality. Behind the scenes, supernatural energies are converging to put Holly in the right place, with the right people, so she can solve the mystery of her recurring nightmare, along with the question of exactly why she painted David before ever meeting him.
Readers have written in reviews and in feedback to me personally, that the ending is something they never saw coming. That makes me happy – a surprise ending is a good thing!
Avalon Revisited is based in the increasingly popular Steampunk genre. Can you explain what that means and what kind of research did you do for your book?
Steampunk is a sub-genre of Science Fiction that is set in Victorian times or a very Victorian-like world (if, for example, it doesn’t take place on Earth). The technology therein is based mostly in steam power or clockwork. It’s taking the future and the past and whipping it up into a scrumptious, bizarre tea party.
Writing Steampunk is a blast. The aesthetic, of course, is truly beautiful, so it’s a lot of fun to dress and play the part. I find it both challenging and fun to take actual history and mix it up a little. Throughout my book, you’ll find actual historical events from the time, some left to their own truth and others altered for my great pleasure.
What do you do to help promote your book? With over 800 books published every day in the US, it can be difficult to be seen.
I’m learning that! Thanks to you, Christine, I’ve learned quite a lot with your help. I tweet daily and have a Facebook Fan Page. One truly must find and work their niche. As you said, there are so many books released every day and so very, very many readers! It’s impossible to get to everyone, especially with an independent publisher. Only a muilti-million dollar promotional campaign can flood the market, as we’ve all recently seen with Twilight and Avatar.
For most of us, it’s a lot of long hours and hard work. It’s hoping your book gets in to the “right” hands. Those hands can belong to anyone from a movie producer to a reader who just tells a friend about it. Word of mouth is your best friend. So far, Avalon Revisited has spread quite far. We sold out of our first shipment even before the official release! I hope that momentum continues to grow.
I hope to visit some select Steampunk Conventions, if finances allow. I have my fingers crossed for Steamcon II this November in Seattle. Wish me luck!
Well, there is steampunk and there is STEAMPUNK! Nick Valentino’s Thomas Riley is certainly the latter. From creepily creative mechanical spiders that catch rats to magical, mystical alchemy; from steam-powered technology to the required airship dirigibles, Thomas Riley is an action-packed, thrilling ride through an imaginative, steam-powered world at war.
Thomas Riley, a scientist/inventor, is cornered into performing a dangerous alchemical experiment that goes horribly awry. Now he and his lovely apprentice, Cynthia, find themselves in the midst of enemy territory (amongst terrible weapons they created) to try and set things to rights.
From the first page, it took me into a wondrous new world and kept me in rapt attention through it’s exciting twists and turns. I thoroughly enjoyed reading Thomas Riley and highly recommend it to any fantasy or science fiction fan.
Now on to the interview!
For those out there who haven’t heard about your book Thomas Riley can you give a brief introduction?
Sure, Thomas Riley is about two weapons designers that are forced to do some risky alchemy. When that process goes wrong Thomas and his assistant Cynthia Basset must sneak into enemy territory and kidnap their arch rival and master alchemist in order to undo the bad alchemy. Their journey takes them from the front lines of a twenty-year war to the decks of cut throat sky pirate airships.
How did you come up with the idea for the book?
Originally I was intrigued with the steampunk culture and costumes that I saw at conferences. These people of all ages dressed up in Victorian era clothing, but they added elements to their costumes that were simply amazing. In addition to the period costumes, people wore goggles, timepieces, mechanical light-up backpacks that bellowed real steam, clockwork gauntlets, and an endless array of homemade mechanical accessories. I just got sucked in by the culture and decided to write a story about an inventor…
D. B. Grady is gifted with a unique wit, as his abundant Twitter following is well aware, and a flare for beautifully crafted imagery. His impressive debut novel Red Planet Noir allows readers to enjoy his sense of humor and writing talent in the setting of an interplanetary mystery tale. In the interview, the author talks about his book, inspirations, and dreams for the future.
Red Planet Noir is the story about a second-rate, middle-aged private investigator, Mike Sheppard, who has seen better days, but not many. He often drinks himself into oblivion and still moons over his ex-wife, as in this particularly beautiful passage:
“She left me. A blade of dawn slipped through rolling clouds, and she left me. A gust of wind swept through the open balcony door, and she left me. The disharmony of morning gridlock rose from the streets below, and she left me. I saw her only at night, now, in sleep. Sometimes I saw her in my bed. Sometimes I saw her at the bus stop where I proposed. Sometimes I saw her on the gazebo where we danced. Sometimes at places we always talked about, but never went. I didn’t see her anymore. Not while awake. Not for two years and seven months.”
Grady’s delightfully sardonic wit permeates the matter-of-fact gumshoe voice from the first page to the last. I found myself smiling often and even laughing out loud! His imaginative use of metaphor and simile creates distinctive imagery throughout. This is where I turned a very deep shade of green. I don’t do similes. Certainly not well, but I may have learned a thing or two from Mr. Grady.
To read some of my favorite examples, please go over to BOOK ADDICT.
Get your copy of Red Planet Noir at Amazon or B&N.com today!
Today over at Book Addict, my monthly post has an interview with romance author Donna Grant.
Here is an excerpt:
Dangerous Highlander takes place in ancient Scotland, what kind of research did you do for your book?
I’ve been setting my books in Medieval Scotland since my first book, so once you do the major leg of research, I just have to go back every now and again to refresh myself or see if I can find some new facts that I might want to include.
Lucan MacLeod, judging from the cover, is one HOT Scotsman! Tell us more about this delicious creature!
Lucan *is* hot! lol. I thoroughly enjoyed writing Lucan. He’s strong and courageous, but he’s also hurting and lonely. It makes for a great combination when you have his brothers he needs to keep together and an attractive woman he can’t stay away from. Lucan will do anything for the people he loves, including sacrificing himself in necessary.
Today on my monthly Book Addict post, I have an interview with Leanna Renee Hieber, author of The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker.
Here’s an excerpt:
I met the characters first and then the story fell into place, piece by piece, through a sequence of years, set against an eerily beautiful, haunted, moonlit Victorian London I yearned to visit. Miss Percy Parker–all deathly-pale, timid and sweet–appeared in my consciousness like a gentle, yet powerful prophecy. She glided quietly into Professor Alexi Rychman’s grand office and the moment I caught sight of her, how she stared longingly at that brooding, enigmatic professor across the room from her, I was hooked like a drug on the two of them and the world that would either throw them together or tear them apart. I had to know what made each of them tick, why Miss Percy looked like a ghost but wasn’t one (the answer, I found with delight, resonated most in Mythological stories that I take great liberty with). I had to know what might happen in an aching power dynamic between two intensely secretive people who are powerful, magical and flawed in very different ways. I knew when Percy and Alexi entered my heart, that my life would never be the same for having met them. Then in creating The Guard, I had a beloved family of characters. I’ve never been so compelled by a setting and by characters as I have been with those in the Strangely Beautiful series.
Today on my monthly Book Addict blog, I posted an interview with actress/director/author Amber Benson.
Here is an excerpt:
1. For those out there who haven’t heard about Death’s Daughter, can you give a brief introduction?
Death’s Daughter is the first book in a trilogy that I am writing for Ace/Penguin books. It’s about a girl named Calliope Reaper-Jones whose father just happens to be the Grim Reaper. In the book, Death is run like a corporation and her dad is the CEO/President, but when he gets kidnapped Callie has to come back (from her normal, non-magical existence) and run the company in his stead. Oh, and she also has to figure out who kidnapped him or else she’ll end up running Death for all of eternity.
Avalon Revisited is based in the increasingly popular Steampunk genre. Can you explain what that means and what kind of research did you do for your book?
Well, there is steampunk and there is STEAMPUNK! Nick Valentino’s Thomas Riley is certainly the latter. From creepily creative mechanical spiders that catch rats to magical, mystical alchemy; from steam-powered technology to the required airship dirigibles, Thomas Riley is an action-packed, thrilling ride through an imaginative, steam-powered world at war.
D. B. Grady is gifted with a unique wit, as his abundant Twitter following is well aware, and a flare for beautifully crafted imagery. His impressive debut novel Red Planet Noir allows readers to enjoy his sense of humor and writing talent in the setting of an interplanetary mystery tale. In the interview, the author talks about his book, inspirations, and dreams for the future.
Today on my monthly Book Addict post, I have an interview with Leanna Renee Hieber, author of The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker.
Today on my 
