July 2009

Volume II  Issue VII

Samhellion Editors

Anne Cain

Anya Delvay

Beth Williamson

Bianca D'Arc

Carolan Ivey

Denise Belinda McDonald

Isabo Kelly

J.L. Langley

Nancy Lindquist

Marie Harte

Mary Eason

Misty Evans

MK Mancos

Saje Williams

TJ Michaels

Senior Editors

Bethany Morgan

Lindsey McGurk

J.C. Wilder, Managing Editor

From Our Editors

   Next month you can look forward to some fun announcements and our issue on Research. Writers love combining research and vacations because then everything becomes a write off. :)

Happy Reading ~ J.C. Wilder, Managing Editor

   It feels like forever! Actually, I’ve been published since 2006, but I was a “hobbyist” writer for many years prior. I was working on climbing the corporate ladder but always, at the end of a long day, I’d write for an hour or two—just for my own enjoyment. It was like therapy and it taught me a lot about writing, preparing me for the career I have now.

What is your writing process?  Are you a pantser or a plotter?

   A little of both, actually. I start with a scene, usually, that could be from anywhere in the book. Something that hits me strongly, that I see like a movie clip in my mind. I usually write that, then build the outline—a very rough creature—both forward and backward from that initial scene. The outline shifts and changes as the book comes to life and I’m never bound to it completely. If something happens while I’m writing, I go with it and adjust the outline later to fit the twists and turns. I gobble up the outline as I write, replacing the outline with the scenes it described. It’s a sometimes messy process, but it works for me.

How do you balance writing with “real life”?  What is a typical day like for you?  

   The sad truth is that I really need to work on that “balance” thing. ;-) I travel a lot, so when I’m home (which is rare), the typical day goes like this: get up, answer email, futz around online, grab brunch, maybe weed the garden, otherwise write all afternoon. Around four or five o’clock, I quit writing/futzing some more online and start foraging for dinner. If I’m on a roll, I usually write a little bit more before bed, but only if I’m in the mood. Exciting, isn’t it? But this actually describes my “lazy” days when I’m not traveling. When I’m on the road, all bets are off and it’s a scramble to try to get anything done at all.

You recently signed with a larger publisher. What will you be writing for them? And do you plan to continue to write for the smaller publishers you’re currently with?  

   I don’t plan on “leaving” small press anytime soon. I’ve got ongoing series with Samhain in particular, that I fully intend to keep writing. I couldn’t just leave my dragons in the lurch! They’d toast my tootsies until I started writing them again. (They sometimes like to curl up under my desk while I’m working.)

   I did sign a three-novel, two-novella deal with Kensington recently and I’ll be writing sexy paranormals for them. The first novella is already finished and will be published in January 2010 in a two-author anthology called Half Past Dead. My heroes are going to be military guys – mostly special operators. The paranormal aspect is the villains they’re fighting. Zombies. (I heard those shrieks! LOL)

   Yes, the bad guys in these paranormal romances are zombies. The heroes are military Alpha males and the heroines are different sorts of women. In the first novella, the heroine is a Navy doctor. In the first novel, which I’m writing now, the heroine is a local cop. If all goes as planned, the first novel, tentatively titled Once Bitten, Twice Dead will be out in March 2010.

What do you think of promotion, and how much do you do?

   I do a lot of it. Why? Honestly, it’s because I’m a shop-a-holic. I love buying stuff and I love designing pretty things like bookmarks and other graphic arts stuff. I’ve always dabbled in art, so playing with graphics is a lot of fun for me. It seems only natural to combine the designing aspect with the shopping part and end up with a room full of SWAG to give away! It’s a sickness. Luckily, there are readers who seem to like the stuff, so I feel justified in designing and buying more. I like direct promotion best – where I give stuff to people who want it. I’m not quite as active with passive things like buying ads. For me, the fun is in the personal aspects of going to conferences or book signings and talking to people.

Would it be fair to say that paranormal is your favorite genre? If so, why?

   Yes! A resounding yes! I’ve always loved almost anything in the paranormal, sci fi or fantasy romance genres. Why? Because I’m a geek! And I have the lab coat to prove it. I got my undergraduate degree in chemistry and ran a laboratory for a number of years while in grad school for something else. The science bug has never left me. It’s the part of me that wonders “what if?” The same part that gazes at the stars knowing, as Carl Sagan did, that it would be silly to think ours is the only inhabitable planet in the whole universe with living beings on it.

What is your favorite Bianca D’Arc book (one that you’ve written)?

   It’s always the one I just finished writing. LOL. But overall, I’d have to say The Ice Dragon. Why? Because of cute little Tor, the baby Ice Dragon. He shows up in a lot of my subsequent dragon books because I just love him to pieces!

What are you currently working on?

   I just finished the next Dragon Knights book. It’s called Dragon Storm and it’s my first time/dimension travel tale. It involves two of the dragon princes who get caught in a storm and end up in our world – where, of course, they find their mate.

I’m also working on my first novel for Kensington and will probably be writing in that military paranormal series for the rest of the summer. I do intend to stick a few smaller projects in there, as time allows, including edits for my August releases: Grady’s Awakening and Tag Team (my first with Total E-Bound Publishing).

What are you reading?

   Lots and lots of space opera. Right now, I’d have to say it’s my favorite sub-genre of romance. Of course, with deadlines looming, I don’t have a lot of time to read.

What is the best piece of advice concerning writing that you’ve ever received? 

   “Write what you know.” In my case, I know science stuff, military men and all kinds of fantastical tidbits that make my worlds work. I think that comes across in my books because I don’t usually have to do a lot of research to get the facts right. Research is always good to check your assertions, but if you have no clue about a particular field that is crucial to your plot, chances are it will show through in your writing. So I think it’s better to stick with something you “know” or can easily figure out – at least at first.

   To learn more about Bianca, go to www.BiancaDarc.com

-- Marie Harte has written over thirty books to date.  Her latest Samhain release, In Plain Sight, is a red hot paranormal romance about shapeshifters.  To read more about Marie, visit www.marieharte.com.

Well behaved women rarely make history. - Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

I Love Villains

Meg Benjamin

   I really do. Not all villains, of course. I’m not crazy about serial killers, for example. And monsters don’t really do much for me. But a certain kind of villain, a plausible villain, yeah, I really love those guys.

   What makes a villain plausible? Well, mainly she has to believe in herself, by which I mean, the villain shouldn’t believe she’s a villain. Actually, I think few real-life villains see themselves as the bad guys—they’re far more likely to blame somebody else. And that’s what good fictional villains do as well. They frequently see themselves as the injured parties and others, particularly the hero and heroine, as the ones who are behaving badly.

   Consider the villain in Lisa Kleypas’s Blue-Eyed Devil (although he’s a sort of extreme example). From his point of view, everything is his wife’s fault: if she’d only tried a little harder, he wouldn’t have ended up abusing her. Or consider the villains in Jane Haddam’s Somebody Else’s Music—a group of horrendous high school bullies grown into adults who still can’t see themselves as being at fault. They blame the object of their bullying for being, well, the kind of person they needed to bully.

   All of these villains have worked out logical reasons for being the wretches they are. That’s what makes them so intriguing, and that’s what serial killers and other psychotics lack. While a serial killer’s choices may have a certain internal logic (only choosing victims with rose tattoos, for example), it’s not a logic most of us can get into. Serial killers are so twisted that all you can do is look at them and shiver.

   With the other type of villain, the extremely logical villain, you can have moments of uncomfortable recognition. While few of us would go to the lengths that the bullies go to in Somebody Else’s Music, we’ve probably all had moments when we were less than kind to people who were maybe a little slow on the uptake. And you might have felt a little annoyed afterward because this person put you in a position where you didn’t exactly behave like Gandhi. We all have the potential to be less than sterling, although few of us have the potential to be psychos (thank heaven!).

   Most of my villains fall into this category, not surprisingly. They’re much more fun to write about. Margaret Hastings in Venus in Blue Jeans and Otto and Sherice in Wedding Bell Blues all see themselves as having a perfect right to do the awful things they do because other people have done nasty things to them, or anyway things that the villains consider to be nasty (the other people might not be so certain about that). By their lights, they’re just fighting back, even if the other people in their lives don’t really understand what the fight is all about.

   In Blue-Eyed Devil, Kleypas actually provides a clinical diagnosis for this particular type of character (narcissistic personality disorder) and gives web sites for further information. That’s a nice touch, and I appreciate it. But by the same token, I’d almost rather not know about it. If the villain has a personality disorder, I can feel superior to her. After all, she’s crazy and I’m not. But if the villain is somebody in whom I can see my worst traits magnified, she becomes much more unsettling. And that’s the kind of villain I really enjoy reading about.

--Meg Benjamin writes about South Texas, although she recently moved to Colorado. Her comic romances, Venus in Blue Jeans and Wedding Bell Blues, are set in the Texas Hill Country in the mythical town of Konigsburg. When she isn’t writing, Meg spends her time listening to Texas music, drinking Texas wine, and keeping track of her far-flung family. She recently retired from twenty years of teaching writing, Web design and desktop publishing. She loves to hear from readers—contact her at meg@megbenjamin.com. 

At the heart of good history is a naughty little secret: good storytelling.  - Stephen Schiff

Why Writers Need a Holiday

N.J. Walters

   One of the tough things about being a writer is that you’re always working. From the moment you roll out of bed in the morning until you fall back into it and close your eyes at night, a writer is always thinking and plotting. And even sleep doesn’t bring respite for some authors. There are a few who even manage to dream up characters and plots in their sleep. How cool is that?

   The problem with always working is that there is no time to recharge the creative batteries. With deadlines and day jobs and family pulling at most writers, the tendency is to work, work, work. Then they wonder why they get writer’s block.

   The truth is everyone needs a holiday—a time to unwind, to forget about the day-to-day concerns that plague all of us. A trip to the seashore, to a five-star resort or perched in a tent in the middle of the woods. It doesn’t matter where it is so long as you do it.

   It also doesn’t have to cost a lot of money. Take day trips to the beach. Go on a picnic. Spend the day at the museum, an afternoon at the bookstore, a few hours at a coffee shop you’ve never been to before. Be a tourist in your own city or town. It’s amazing how much of our own hometown goes unexplored. The idea is to shake yourself out of your routine.

   If the idea of a taking time away from your writing has you screaming, then think of it another way… It’s research. That’s right; anything is research to a writer. Maybe you’ll see someone interesting and you’ll file them away in the character file in your brain. Perhaps a snippet of conversation or a new location will have you scrambling for your notebook to jot down ideas.

   The idea for one of my books came from an article I read in a woman’s magazine. It wasn’t a magazine I normally read, but I picked it up to read while I was on holiday. The ideas started flowing through my fertile brain and before I knew it I had characters and scenes running through my mind.

   New locations always bring a flood of ideas. Back in the mid-nineties, I spent a year in a new town. That lovely town was the template for Jamesville, which has been the setting for seven of my books. I still have a great fondness for that town.

   Even doing nothing is good for you. The idea for one of my favorite stories came to me while I was at the mall waiting for hubby to get us some coffee. One sentence popped into my head and I scrambled to find a pen and jot the line down on a napkin. You never know when inspiration is going to hit, but it tends to be at its best when the mind is not thinking quite so hard.

   Personally, I haven’t been very good at following my own advice. I tend to want to work and berate myself when I’m not. But, as hubby points out to me, a writer is always working. We’re not daydreaming, we’re plotting. We’re not taking vacations, but research trips. And if we manage to rest and relax for a few hours here and there—all the better.

   Have a great summer!

-- N.J. Walters is an award-winning, multi-published author with more than thirty-five books available in E-book form, and eighteen books in print.

History isn't really about the past—settling old scores. It's about defining the present and who we are.  - Ken Burns

How to Stay Cool When You Find Yourself in a Heat Wave, Not an Ocean Wave

Debra Parmley

   Summer has arrived here in the southern United States with a blast of heat. It’s as if we skipped June and went straight on into August. Heat combined with high humidity can really take its toll on the body. My favorite thing to do when it is hot is to go to the ocean or a friend’s swimming pool and play in the water. Haven’t had much chance to do that this summer. Last weekend I went primitive camping to an event where we reenacted the Middle Ages and the heat index was one hundred and eleven. That’s one way of experiencing the past to be able to write about it. I now have a real healthy respect for the men and women of long ago who weathered the weather without the luxuries we have today, such as air conditioning and ice. One thing that hasn’t changed through the ages is how our bodies react to extreme heat.

   Here are some tips for keeping safe and cool in the summer heat, short of finding an ocean or a swimming pool to cool off in:

   First, slow down. If you must do heavy or strenuous work, do it in the coolest part of the morning or evening before the heat of the day.

   Stay indoors as much as possible. If there is no air conditioning, stay on the lowest floor or go to a public building that has a/c. Electric fans won’t cool the air, but they help your sweat to evaporate which is what cools your body.

   Wear lightweight, light-colored clothing, which reflects the sun. A good test of whether a fabric you are wearing will breathe is to place it over your mouth with your hand on the other side and breathe through it. Natural fabrics like cotton or silk usually allow for more airflow.

   Drink plenty of water even if you do not feel thirsty. By the time you are thirsty, the heat may have already begun to dehydrate you. Avoid drinks with alcohol and caffeine in them. They make the heat effect on your body worse even though they make you feel good briefly.

   Eat small meals and eat more often. Food that is high in protein increases metabolic heat.

   Avoid salt tablets unless your doctor directs you to take them.

   Warning signs of heat stroke include extremely high body temperature, red, hot, dry skin; rapid, strong pulse; throbbing headache; dizziness, nausea, confusion and/or unconsciousness. Heat stroke can be life threatening. If you know someone who is suffering from heat symptoms, bring them into the shade, cool their body down with water externally and internally and monitor their body temperature. This is a serious condition, which may require medical attention.

   When you are out in the heat, listen to your body. Even the most fit person who works outside everyday can be overcome by heat. Our bodies are very good at telling us what we need to know.

   Now I’m off to rest with a big glass of water and a new paperback novel as it is 2:30 and the heat is rising. I’ll imagine I’m poolside or beachside and there’s a cool Caribbean breeze. Ahh….there’s nothing like curling up with a book or taking a nap or siesta to recharge and be ready for the second half of the day.

--Debra Parmley is the author of A Desperate Journey, now available through Samhain publishing. Visit her website at www.debraparmley.com