Wednesday, January 30, 2019

The Unclean Playlist

As many of you know, whenever I write a book, I put together a playlist whose songs reflect various aspects or themes of the work. My playlist for Unclean (which drops February 19th!) is just about finished. You can follow it on Spotify and both enjoy the songs and keep up to date on any future additions to the list. In this post, I'll discuss the meaning behind my choices for a few of my fave songs on the list. In case you don't have Spotify, I'll also list all the songs at the end of this post, and you can find them on the streaming service of your choice.

I recently discovered The Secret Sisters, and I adore this song, "He's Fine." It's about pining for a lost/stolen love, and it makes me think of my character Daved Jennin, who loves Shiloh passionately but lost her to Silas when Silas arranged his marriage to Shiloh.



When I was young, Death Cab for Cutie (once known as The Postal Service) was all the rage. "You've Haunted Me All My Life" makes me think of the connection between Silas and Shiloh that began when Silas killed her mother on the occasion of Shiloh's birth, when Silas, himself, was barely more than a child.



Now, not all of the song fits, but take a look at these lyrics:

You've haunted me all my life
Through endless days and countless nights
There was a storm when I was just a kid
Stripped the last code of innocence . . .
And there's a flaw in my heart's design
For I keep trying to make you mine

Sound like a certain Lord Northgate we know and love?

Unclean finds the somewhat formal and strained relationship between Shiloh and Silas begin to develop a more romantic character. That prompted me to include another Secret Sisters song, "Rattle My Bones."



Lastly for today, a Laura Marling cover of "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall" represent's Shiloh's avenging angel determination through much of the story in Unclean.



Here's a full list for your listening pleasure, and don't forget to order your copy of Unclean!

"Fast and Slow" by Sons of the East
"Ain't No Rest for the Wicked" by Cage the Elephant
"Hard Time" by Seinabo Say
"Electric Bones" by Findlay
"I Will Follow You Into The Dark" by Death Cab for Cutie
"Kid Fears" by the Indigo Girls
"Laughing With" by Regina Spektor
"Blue Lips" by Regina Spektor
"You've Haunted Me All My Life" by Death Cab for Cutie
"Far Away My Love" by Old Bear Mountain
"A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall" by Laura Marling
"The River Song" by Old Bear Mountain
"Medicine" by Old Bear Mountain
"Pilgrim (You Can't Go Home)" by Dave Rawlings Machine
"Long Time Traveller" by The Wailin' Jennys
"Ain't No Grave" by Crooked Still
"The Littlest Birds" by The Be Good Tanyas
"He's Fine" by The Secret Sisters
"Tomorrow Will Be Kinder" by The Secret Sisters
"If I Don't" by The Secret Sisters
"Motherless Child" by The Wailin' Jennys
"Away But Never Gone" by The Wailin' Jennys
"The Times They Are A-Changin'" by Bob Dylan





Hexborn Wins 2018 Breakthrough Novel Award for Fantasy

I'm so excited to let you know that Hexborn was chosen as the winner in the Fantasy category in the Breakthrough Novel Award contest. I'm so pleased the judges thought my work the best in its category. I'm really proud of Hexborn, and its nice to see it get some recognition. Be sure to check out the other award winners as they are posted, and continue reading below for an excerpt from my now award-winning work. And remember, right now, you can read Hexborn for only 99 cents, and the sequel, Unclean, comes out in February! You can pre-order your copy here.

***


In the deepest basement of Greenhill Palace, far beneath the Great Hall, sat the armory. Racks of weapons greeted their arrival: swords, shields, lances, bows, arrows, axes. Row after row marched alongside them as they walked, until, at last, Shiloh and the headmaster came to the wand shop. They there discovered that Silas Hatch had preceded them. Of course. Shiloh stifled a sigh.

“Shall we?” Hatch asked, bowing and gesturing toward the door.

“Now, remember,” Markas cautioned, “You may not wear nor carry a wand in the presence of the king and queen. Only their personal guard and members of the Order of St. Stex may do so.”

Shiloh nodded. Whatever the Order of St. Stex is . . .

A short, round man stood and greeted them with apparent irritation, his bald head shining in the lamplight.

“Damn it, Silas, I told you I’m working on that project as fast as I can, but these things take time!”

“That’s not why we’re here, Frank. We have a new student to equip, Shiloh Teethborn. Shiloh, this is Brother Frank Fingersborn, Royal Armorer.”

The priest finally noticed Shiloh and fairly leapt in shock. “Elder above, is she—”

“Hexborn, yes,” Silas interrupted, his patience obviously in short supply.

“My, my. Well, has she ever been tested?” Frank demanded, smoothing out his brown robes.

“My brother Edmun did, I’m sure, but he refused to divulge the results to me,” Markas reported, a tinge of hurt in his voice. “Nor to Silas, I understand.”

“Edmun? Edmun taught her?” Frank asked, looking upon Shiloh with a touch more respect. “Well, I assume he told you, at least,” he said to her. “Out with it, now, my child.”

Shiloh took a deep breath. “All four,” she confessed. “I tested equally positive for all four elements.”

“I knew it!” Markas crowed, throwing up his hands. “Edmun always had the best secrets.”

Frank burst out laughing. “Don’t be ridiculous! He must have had a defective set. They do need to be recalibrated regularly. Many people don’t appreciate how delicate—”

“I’m fairly certain that Edmun Courtborn, the greatest wizard in three generations, understood how to calibrate a sodding sorceroscale,” Silas stated flatly. “Test her again, if you insist, but get the hell on with it. And mark my words: you’re going to need to break out the steel.”

“Fine, fine, fine,” Frank acquiesced, hands raised in surrender. He lifted the hinged counter and beckoned them to come back into the workshop proper.

The walls were lined with locked cabinets that reached the high ceilings. There was a section for wands from each element: earth, air, fire, and water. The earthen wands were made of polished stones and minerals in all colors, textures, and strengths. The air wands were hollow tubes made of various materials of every description. The fire wands were made of particularly flammable materials. For this reason, they required frequent replacement as they were consumed, so Frank kept a large stock. The water wands were composed of hygroscopic substances that attracted and held water, either drawing it from the atmosphere or from a good soak. Green wood and sea sponge were popular choices for those who preferred natural materials, while the less particular or more modern enjoyed various hydrated salt crystals and artificial substances concocted by clever potions experts over the centuries.

The testing took but a moment. As before in her early childhood, all the globes responded to Shiloh’s call. Now, of course, she was older and more powerful, and she had much more control. She couldn’t resist showing off a little bit, and the spheres danced gracefully before she guided them back and nestled them gently into their velvet case. It was all she could do to resist the temptation to buzz Master Hatch and muss up his mop of black hair.

“I stand corrected,” Frank admitted into the echoing silence.

“The steel wands, Frank,” Silas prodded.

In the back of the shop, beneath an old rug and an inch of dust, sat a battered black trunk. Frank reverently brushed it off, and he called Silas to help him lift it onto the work table. A shining inlay upon the lid depicted five birds of prey. The armorer removed a ring of keys and found the one he needed.

“How many do you have?” Markas asked.

“Just the one,” Frank replied. “The rest have been parceled out over the years. The only one I have left is an antique. Brother Elton of the Southlands only made five steel wands, or so the story goes. He used one himself. Three went to King Davos the Greater, and their remains lie buried with him these hundred years or more. This is the last. There is a steel-wielding wandmaker down in Dessica who has quite a large stock of them, I hear. We could send for one of theirs if this wand is too powerful for her.”

“Somehow, I don’t think that is going to be a problem,” Silas replied. “You’ve never tried to make one, Frank?”

“I’ve experimented, with the help of a blacksmith. Didn’t go well. How do you think I lost all my hair?”

“What happened to the smith?” Shiloh asked.

“You don’t want to know,” Frank replied with a shudder. “You really have to be a steel caster yourself to make a proper go of it, I think.”

Shiloh bit her lip as Frank fussed with the lock. The suspense was killing her. Silas twitched beside her, seemingly equally impatient.

“Ah!” Frank cried in triumph, and he pulled open the creaking lid.

Nestled in wood shavings sat a single gleaming wand of steel. The handle was intricately cast in the shape of an owl, the wand’s shaft grasped in its talons and ending in a point slightly duller than an ice pick. Shiloh had never seen anything nearly so elaborate among Edmun’s extensive wand collection.

“It’s beautiful,” she whispered.

“Elton was the greatest wandmaker that ever lived,” Frank replied. “We’ll not see his like again.”

“Go on, then,” Silas urged, and Shiloh obeyed.

“Oh!” she gasped as she lifted the weapon. The connection was palpable. The metal felt like an extension of herself, warm and alive and powerful. She nearly thought she could feel the ore in the earth, the fire in the forge, the air in the bellows, the water in the quenching barrel. The steel felt right in a way she had never experienced with Edmun’s wands. It was almost enough to make a hexborn girl feel . . . whole.

“I think it likes her,” Silas remarked, deadpan, his unblinking eyes focused upon her glowing face.

Markas laughed with delight. “Amazing! To see a steel-wielding wizard in our own time. And a hexborn bastard at that. Remarkable!”

Silas rolled his eyes. “Let’s not go overboard, Markas. It’s not as though she’s the only one in the world. Vreeland has three of them on the payroll, for heaven’s sake.”

“Only because their court is more inbred than a litter of racing dogs,” Markas retorted. “All of them have the bleeding sickness.”

“The Patriarch’s son tested positive for all four,” Frank pointed out. “He used to brag about it constantly.”

“Yes, but Fenroh wasn’t ever able to control a steel wand, no matter how many of them his holiness ordered from abroad,” Markas countered. “Old Master Bentin refused to let him touch this one. They kept exploding in Fenroh’s hand. He was strong in all the elements, but the poor boy’s fire was out of balance with the others.”

“That’s not the only thing about him that’s unbalanced,” Silas muttered.

Shiloh looked down at her prize, wishing she could show it to Edmun. Hesitantly, she asked, “How much does this cost?” She was possessed of a sudden fear of losing the treasure for lack of ability to pay.

Hatch shook his head. “It’s a gift. From the king. The first one always is. It is yours as long as you are in his service.”

Shiloh nodded, much relieved.

“I ordered her a belt and sheath some weeks ago. Has it arrived?” Silas asked Frank, who quickly fetched a case from a nearby shelf. Fine green leather soon circled Shiloh’s waist, and the sheath fit the wand as though it had been made to order. Shiloh supposed it may well have been. Not much seemed to surprise Silas Hatch.

“Thank you, Master Hatch,” Shiloh said softly, then resumed staring in wonder at her new wand.

“Let’s see if she can do anything with it,” Silas proposed. “To the firing range.”

***

Intrigued? Order your copy of Hexborn today, and happy reading!

Monday, January 21, 2019

A Shiloh Flashback Excerpt from Unclean

Today, I'm bringing you a Shiloh excerpt from the forthcoming Unclean, the sequel to Hexborn. In this excerpt, you get to see how Shiloh met her bird, Honey, who plays a crucial role in the plot of Unclean. Happy reading, and don't forget to pre-order your copy today!

***

Shiloh sat down in the shade to rest. Her basket was nearly full of berries, and it had grown heavy on her arm. She leaned against the tree trunk and closed her eyes for a moment.

“What’s the matter, freak? Too weak to carry your basket home?” Meegan taunted.

Shiloh’s eyes snapped open, and she leapt to her feet. Meegan had already snatched up her basket and begun to eat.

“Give that back and leave me alone!” Shiloh cried.

“Make me,” Meegan taunted, mouth full of berries. The girl bent, picked up a rock, and pulled back her arm, preparing to throw it at Shiloh.

A screech sounded overhead, and both girls looked up to see a young falcon dive out of the trees, straight toward Meegan. The child shrieked and dropped both basket and rock in her desperate effort to protect her face.

The raptor kept attacking her until she ran from the clearing, screaming, then it flew to Shiloh’s side and landed lightly on a tree stump. Shiloh’s mouth twitched, and soon a raucous laugh escaped her lips, continuing until tears poured down her face.

“Thank you, my lord birdie,” Shiloh finally told him, her hysteria exhausted, and she offered a curtsey. She bent to pick up a handful of spilled berries. “You want some?”

Carefully, the bird took one berry at a time from her juice-stained hand. Then he watched as Shiloh gathered up the rest of the fruit and refilled her basket for the walk home.

“I’m Shiloh,” the little girl said. “What should I call you?”

The bird shrugged.

“How about Honey?”

Tuesday, January 15, 2019

Essential Vellum Tips

So, you've finally done it. You've bought Vellum. Maybe you even had to buy your first Mac to do it.  You've probably figured out how to make style choices or add elements from the tutorial, but what about those little details? How do you make the most of your new software and make your books the prettiest they've ever been with a minimum of headaches?
After recently reformatting several of my books with my brand new copy of Vellum, I have some tips to share.



Find

The Find function works as in other apps on Mac. Just hit Command-F to bring up the search window. You can also find and replace to correct multiple identical errors at once, just like in Word.

Invisible Characters
In the View menu at the top of your screen, toggle on "Invisible Characters" to help you with niggling format problems like extra spaces and split ellipses.  Speaking of split ellipses . . .

Split Ellipses

A lot of people prefer to write an ellipsis as ". . . " rather than " ... ". It's just more attractive and easier on the eyes. But then you run into the problem of line-splitting and page-splitting disrupting your ellipses. To fix ellipses that are running over the end of the line, you want to make sure that spaces between the periods are non-breaking spaces. You should also having a non-breaking space between the last word and the start of the ellipsis. To make a nonbreaking space on a Mac, including in Vellum, hit "option-space" instead of "space." Turn on Invisible Characters, do one ellipsis correctly, then use Find to fix all the wrong ones in one go. Problem solved.

Table of Contents

Vellum will automatically generate your table of contents. However, the default setting seems to be to only generate it in e-book formats. To have it auto-generate the ToC in the print edition, make sure that you have clicked "Include in > All editions" under the Settings wheel of your Contents section.

Print vs. E-book Versions

Once you have dealt with all of your corrections in your Vellum file, you might find it convenient to save separate copy of the file for the print version if you think there are elements that might differ significantly between formats. I, for example, have a map at the front of some of my fantasy novels. In the mobi file, I simply have it as a photograph on a page by itself. That way, it is clickable for the reader to enlarge it on their e-reader. In the print version, on the other hand, I have it as two separate images, each with one half of the map, inserted as two "full page images" on facing pages.

Blank pages

Speaking of the print edition, if you find yourself needing to insert a blank page into your front matter for some reason (like getting your map to show up on facing pages), try clicking "Insert element > Dedication." Then delete anything written in the section you've just inserted and move it to where it is needed.

Social media links

In your "About the Author" section, Vellum prompts you to include Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram links. You can also click on the plus sign to add other platforms, such as Pinterest and Bookbub. If you want to include the links in the print version, be sure to toggle that choice in the menu.

Adding other links

To add links in the text, highlight the relevant text, two-finger click, and select "Add Text Feature." You can then choose "Store link" or "Web link." Paste in the link, and you are good to go.

I hope these tips will help you save time and avoid confusion when you use Vellum. Please share any tips of your own in the comments. Take care, and keep writing!


Friday, January 11, 2019

A New Excerpt from Unclean



Today I'm going to share with you one of the flashbacks from my forthcoming novel Unclean, the sequel to Hexborn. As in Hexborn, I start every chapter except the first one with a flashback from either Shiloh's or Silas's past. It will give you your first peek at the books' primary villain, Brother Fenroh. Fenroh is the illegitimate son of the Patriarch, who is the series's equivalent of the Pope. And he is bad news, indeed. Enjoy, and don't forget to pre-order your copy of Unclean.


***


Young Silas stood in the foyer of the Patriarch’s mansion in the Claw, trying not to twitch as he awaited a response to Alissa’s letter. At least it’s warm in here, he thought. He’d spent twenty hours straight in the saddle, and the weather had been none too pleasant. His stomach growled.

A boy a few years his senior pushed open heavy doors and strode toward him. His gray robes hung pristine from his lanky frame, and Silas was acutely conscious of the mud on his own boots.

“His Holiness requires more time to compose a reply,” the boy said importantly. “You may take a meal in the kitchen and bunk with the guards.”

“May I, honored brother?” Silas replied drily.

The boy glared at him. “You ought to be grateful for the Patriarch’s kindness.”

“Oh, I am, I assure you,” Silas told him. It was a challenge to hide his disdain. “If you would direct me toward the kitchen, honored brother?”

“I’ll show you. I don’t intend to have you traipsing all over this holy residence unescorted,” the boy replied.

They passed another priest in the corridor. The older man half-bowed to the boy, greeting him with, “Brother Fenroh.”

Silas raised his eyebrows. “You’re someone important’s son, I take it, honored brother?” he asked Fenroh.

The boy grinned savagely. “Only if you consider a God to be important.”

Silas followed Fenroh out toward the barracks, cursing Edmun silently for sending him on this mission. The Patriarch’s compound made his skin crawl, and his creepy son was probably planning to stare at Silas the whole time he ate, as though his every bite was suspect.

As they entered the courtyard, his host stopped short. A group of guards stood in a circle, laughing and tormenting a woman. They shot hexes at her bare feet, forcing her to dance to avoid their sting. At the sight of Fenroh, the guards came to attention.

“What is this about?” Fenroh asked, his voice somehow both silky and sharp.

“She stole from the collection plate at the temple out by Wilsar Creek, honored brother,” one of them explained with a bow.

“Is this true?” Fenroh asked the unfortunate creature.

“No, I would never!” she protested. Tears had carved lines through the dirt on her face. If she stole, it was because she was starving, Silas thought, taking in her bony shoulders and ragged clothes.

Fenroh looked at the guards, eyebrows raised. “Brother Tytoh caught her red-handed,” one of them offered.

That seemed to be enough for Fenroh. Silas stepped back as the boy drew his wand. A curse crackled, and Silas heard the crunch of bone an instant before the screaming came. Fenroh holstered his weapon and continued across the courtyard as though nothing had happened, the woman’s broken body lying on the uneven stones.

She continued to scream, all her limbs bent unnaturally. Blood gurgled in her throat. The guards did nothing, neither to help her nor to put her out of her misery. Sighing, Silas drew his own wand and flicked it at the doomed woman, who stilled at once under the fatal curse.

Fenroh looked back at him, head cocked sideways.

“I have a headache,” Silas claimed. “And she was loud.” But his casual words did not hide the disgust in his eyes.

Saturday, January 5, 2019

Eight Reasons to Still Love Harry Potter

Sure, it isn't perfect. And when you read something again and again, the flaws just become more apparent. (House-elves wanting to be slaves, anyone? And Cursed Child was just so, so terrible.) But I still love Harry Potter. Here are a few reasons why.

Flawed characters

I enjoy the fact that the heroes in Harry Potter have flaws. They hold grudges. They dislike people.
They can be unkind or irritating. They get angry. They make bad calls and have to live with the consequences. They learn from their mistakes.

Extraordinary courage by ordinary people

Along the same lines, characters in Harry Potter find the courage to fight evil against overwhelming odds. Most of them aren't particularly powerful. Many of them are still children. Yet they fight nevertheless.

Intelligent women

The Harry Potter series gave us a number of brilliant female characters. Many bookish girls identify with Hermione, of course. But there are also Professor McGonagall, Tonks, Lily, and Luna, to name a few.

Portrayals of loyalty

I enjoy the portrayals of loyalty in Harry Potter, especially between friends. Harry's friends stand by him, a few bobbles by Ron notwithstanding. Snape remains loyal to Lily to the bitter end.

Mixed stakes

The stories contain a satisfying mix of stakes, some mundane and others earth-shattering. In Harry Potter, a quidditch match can cause as much nail-biting as a duel with the greatest dark wizard of the age. and isn't that what being a teenager feels like, when an oral report at school seems as terrifying as jumping off of a cliff.

Vivid world-building

There aren't too many books with vivid enough world-building to spawn theme parks. We have all enjoyed imagining such places as Hogwarts, Hogsmeade, and Diagon Alley. To provide that wealth of detail without getting bogged down is quite a feat.

Effective escapism

Let's be honest. We read fantasy because we need a break from reality. Harry Potter spins a web strong enough to block out the world, if only for a time.

Satisfying journey

The victories and defeats, the triumphs and tragedies, all combine to make a satisfying journey (save the epilogue and The Cursed Child). Mistakes had consequences. Good triumphed over evil. War is rightly portrayed as a terrible thing, and I think Rowling struck the right balance in terms of the deaths in the final battle, sad as they made me. Overall, the walk with Harry is a satisfying adventure.

The Right Stuff for Crafting the Perfect Villain

Everyone loves a good bad guy. So what makes a perfect villain we love to hate and secretly want to win? I propose that a perfect villain has to have at least three of the following qualities.

The Right Charm

The villain must have charisma or charm. If the villain doesn’t draw you in, why would you want to watch him or read about her? What would keep your attention? Why would their henchmen follow them?  The great weakness of Voldemort as a villain in Harry Potter is that there is nothing positive about him that makes you believe that people would be devoted to him long-term.  He rules only by fear, whereas someone like Grindelwald in the Fantastic Beasts movies has the charm and understanding of human feeling required to manipulate people’s affections.

The Right Face

We like our villains handsome but in a weird way. They can't be too ugly or too pretty. The face has to have something a little scary about it: too sharp a nose, overly prominent cheekbones, a cruel mouth, a scar. There has to be something about the face that gives one pause. Ian McKellen’s ability to portray great villains like Magneto and Richard III owes a good deal to his face.

The Right Voice

If the villain has a voice you'd listen to reading a grocery list, you're halfway there. Who wouldn’t follow Alan Rickman or Benedict Cumberbatch anywhere, villain or not? And you can't have a villain monologue if the bad guy isn't articulate.

The Right Style

There's something about a bad guy who knows how to dress. Villain fashion doesn't necessarily have to follow convention, but it's nice when a villain has a look that is neat, attractive, and all his own. Who doesn’t remember Hans Gruber’s line about his suit? And Lucius Malfoy just wouldn't be the same without his hair and his cane.

The Right Attitude

I love a happy villain. Give me a villain who is fulfilled in his career any day over some moping, reluctant figure. I love a villain who enjoys breaking the rules, who takes pleasure in upending the world order. Boyd Crowder’s smile, Moriarty's glee, the Joker's unrepentant nihilism--the right attitude creates the kinds of villains you almost have to root for.

The Right Motives

A villain is the hero of his own story, after all. A sad back story helps motivate his actions and gain audience sympathy even when they are planning atrocities. Magneto lost his family in the Holocaust. Loki has his family woes and adoption trauma. Dr. Evil has his mother with webbed feet. Okay, maybe that last one is less effective, but you get the idea.  If the motive is pure cruelty for cruelty's sake, it rather ruins the fun for me.

In my own books, my villains are the most fun for me to write.  They can say and do things the hero could never get away with.  They are filled with a confidence that decent people can rarely achieve.  And as my vampire villain Luka says, enemies are more reliable than friends.

What are some other characteristics of your favorite villains of page or screen?