Dread

by Pari

By the time most of you read this blog today, I will have survived (I hope) my oral surgery. I won’t go into the gory details, but I had to have something removed from my tongue. Yes, you read that right. Sitting on this end of the surgery -- the night before -- I have to admit I’m dreading this procedure. At best, the surgeon will just remove the whole darn thing that’s the source of worry. At worst, he’ll decide to only biopsy which means it might have to come off at a later date.

Blech.

Of course, since I’ve been living with this frightening prospect for a few weeks, and because I’m a writer, I’ve been thinking a lot about fear. Compound this with the fact that I just wrote an article about anxiety disorders for work, and the subjects of worry, fear, obsession, anxiety etc. are very much on my mind.

One of the things I’ve never quite understood is readers’ and movie goers’ attraction to horror. I kind of understand the adrenaline rush of it and the anticipation. But that’s never been a huge draw for me. I guess it’s obvious that at the state fair I rarely went on rollercoasters but adored Ferris wheels and merry-go-rounds  . . . and the farm animals.

I think I understand the anticipation implicit in horror as well. There’s a tingliness that is very cool . . . fun, like foreplay. I’d be happy in that place for a long time before the resolution. Of course the resolution must come, the bump in the night must be revealed. I’d just rather it be a raccoon than an ax murderer.

Since I don’t really understand the idea of horror in the context of creativity, I did a little research. http://www.horror.org/horror-is.htm

This is a fantastic perspective. I have read and respect the astounding storytelling craft of Stephen King, Dean Koontz . . . our fabulous Alexandra Sokoloff.  And I want to understand the attraction of this genre  -- and if you don’t think it’s a genre, I want to understand that too -- so I hope everyone will chime in and educate me.  

Unlike most Mondays, I WILL be able answer your comments since I expect to be home. The prospect of being at work when the Novocain wears off is just too daunting.

A new writer's journey...

One of the things that we love to do here at Murderati is showcase fellow writers whose work we admire, who are Good People. I have had the best fortune in meeting so many Good People over the last few years, people who reached a hand out to help me, who graciously gave me some of their time or space on their blog, and did so with a "Pay It Forward" attitude, and so it is with great joy that I get to introduce the Murderati group to a debut author who just impresses the hell out of me: Leanna Renee Hieber.

It's fantastic when you meet a new author and you think, "Wow, this is such a fun person to hang out with," and then you read her work and think, "Geez, and she's so delightfully twisted, and talented!" This incredibly beautiful woman writes about everyone's favorite serial killer, Jack the Ripper, in The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker. With a ghostly twist:

What fortune awaited sweet, timid Percy Parker at Athens Academy? Hidden in the dark heart of Victorian London, the Romanesque school was dreadfully imposing, a veritable fortress, and little could Percy guess what lay inside. She had never met its powerful and mysterious Professor Alexi Rychman, knew nothing of the growing shadows, of the Ripper and other supernatural terrors against which his coterie stood guard. She saw simply that she was different, haunted, with her snow white hair, pearlescent skin and uncanny gift. This arched stone doorway was a portal to a new life, to an education far from what could be had at a convent—and it was an invitation to an intimate yet dangerous dance at the threshold of life and death…

I met Leanna about a year-and-a-half ago at RT, when she was helping director Morgan Doremus create video interviews of various authors in attendance. They had me laughing within minutes, completely forgetting my phobia of being in front of the camera (I am used to being behind it), and they made the experience enormously fun. (If you were to see the videos, I look like I'm constantly about to laugh. I am so freaking thankful Morgan didn't do a series of outtakes of all the faces I made at them, or the time we all doubled over in laughter and one of us who shall remain nameless fell off the stool.) (Also, I did not realize my bangs had completely consumed my face. That was pre-Lasik and I was, apparently, legally blind. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.)

I recently interviewed Leanna because I love her work, think she's a fantastic new writer and thought her journey would inspire.

INTERVIEW:

So let's just get an overview of your tastes as a writer... if you were to go to that Great Coffee Shop in the Sky, who do you want to meet most?

C.S. Lewis, Tolkein and the entire 19^th century canon of Gothic writers. I can’t pick one, I’ve folded my adoration for each and every one of them into my muse. The whole Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood too—and their coterie – this means you, Christina Georgina Rosetti…

Writers always like peeking in on other writer's writing rituals... we're nosy creatures, after all. What's yours? 

I don’t always have this luxury but this is my best-case writing scenario as I’m working on the Strangely Beautiful series: While showering I’ll shift my thoughts into longer sentences with British accents. Then I’ll put on music (piano music, Phillip Glass soundtracks or 19^th century classical composers) and light at least one of my two stained-glass lamps. Preferably a candle is lit. Must prepare and sip a cup of clove tea: the precise scent of my Professor hero. Wow, I guess I’m like I’m the method actor of writing books…

Along the way from first words onto the page through to publication, writers face rejection. Tell us a little bit about your journey and what your favorite rejection story would be. 

I started my first novel somewhere around the age of 12. Ray Bradbury once said “Write 1,000 pages, bury it in the ground and you can become a writer.” I chose a fireplace instead. There are a few things about me that will make it obvious as to why Strangely Beautiful is my break out series. I can hardly remember not writing, not loving ghost stories, or not being weirdly obsessed with Europe in the 19^th century.

Come September it will be about nine years from the moment young Miss Percy Parker waltzed through a wall much like a ghost, into my mind, and I couldn’t sleep or stop thinking about her. She couldn’t have had worse timing, I was working often 14 hour days with the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company. We’d be on the road touring Julius Caesar or Midsummer Night’s Dream to some sleepy high-school class and I’d be in the company van scribbling away like a madman. I was surrounded by wonderful ideas, artists, and so much great theatre that I couldn’t help but channel that energy into the first draft of the book, giving it some legs that none of my previous works had. It also gives it a bit of a dramatic flair and sparkle that those who know me quite recognize as a personal touch. But from those first scribbled notes, it was a long road ahead…

Percy, Alexi and The Guard were there all the while, waiting in my wings as I hopped around the professional theatre circuit, my favourite friends to come home to. I moved to New York with the hope that I’d figure out which passion should come first, theatre or books. I was at a Broadway callback and all I could think about was Percy. That was that. Thanks to dear writer friend Isabo Kelly I’d already joined the very-helpful RWA NYC chapter and threw myself into networking, got an Agent, met other helping hands like Marianne Mancusi and eventually one of the best in the business, editor Chris Keeslar, and Dorchester became the perfect house for a cross-genre work like mine.  

Favourite rejection? After considering Strangely Beautiful, set in 1888, one editor rejected saying “It’s a little too Victorian.” That still makes me smile fondly.

I love that. Your book is very cross-genre. (I know the feeling.) What does that mean to you?

Allison Brennan wrote a great post on this topic here a little while ago. Branding is very important to an author, and to a reader. We want to make sure the right books go into the right hands. It can be very limiting to an author, however, when only one word is applied to a work of fiction. I hope that fantasy, historical, Gothic and romance fans (as well as those who enjoy blends of light horror, suspense and mystery) will find my book because I feel all will find a part of their respective favourite genre represented in the ways appropriate to the narrative. It’s hard to appeal to a whole fan base and yet I wouldn’t do without the genre label. The spine of my book says Historical Fantasy and I think that’s about right. The wonderful thing about the word “Fantasy” is that it is an open and over-arching word, and often Fantasy incorporates a romantic through line at the center of its questing adventures. A descriptive title and a cover that exactly fits the story really helps.

It took a long time for a marketing department to take a chance on this book. As I’d said, it was a 9 year journey from idea to bookshelf, and several of those years were spent with marketing departments and editors saying “this is really good, but it’s too much of this- or not enough this…”

Well, thank goodness someone took a chance, because this is a unique world which deals with crime fiction and fantasy and horror in a way I found wholly fascinating and original! Tell me, what sort of promotional things are you doing as a debut author? 

1. August 22^nd I kick off my Haunted London Blog Tour at the Bradford Bunch. The tour hops various blogs until September. Each day I’ll tell a different ghost story. Many spirits “Ghost-star” in my book, each of them a documented London haunt. They don’t get their full due in the book, as they’re quite familiar to my Guard of spectral police, but their tales are too fun not to tell-- like telling spooky stories around a roving campfire. Each day I’ll give away a signed book. Schedule can be found here: http://www.leannareneehieber.com/haunted-london-blog-tour-book-giveaway/

2. The morning of Release Day, August 25^th I’ll kick off a Virtual release party at www.RomanceNovel.tv, my video interview will go live and we’ll do a bit of a chat/book giveaway.

3. NYC Reading/Signing on Release Day! At the Lincoln Center Barnes & Noble on August 25^th at 7:30pm I’m thrilled to be doing a reading and signing with the inimitable Edgar winner Charles Ardai of Hard Case Crime, Stoker winner Jack Ketchum and thriller author Anna DeStefano

4. Running a contest on my website, a 3 question quiz about the Shakespeare references in my book, starting Release Day, 8/25 and running for the next three weeks. Winner has a choice of either a replica of the Phoenix pendant Percy wears in the book, or a gift certificate. The second name drawn receives the second item. Details: http://www.leannareneehieber.com/contest/

Thanks, Leanna, for letting me bug ya with questions. And now in the spirt of all writers who have had rejections, I'll refer back to that previous question and share one of mine. Someone who read the first book in the Bobbie Faye series sent me an email that he thought it was funny as hell, extremely well written, and he absolutely "hated that woman" and "didn't want to spend another minute with her. Ever." That just completely cracked me up, and I loved it, because it was an honest response and a personal one. I respected that he just did not like tough female characters, but the books ended up selling the next week, which took the sting out of the rejection. I'm sure I've had worse, but I still think about that one and smile. No one is ever going to love everything (nor should they) and everyone isn't going to love one single thing, all of us at the same time (nor should we), and as new writers, we need to remember that. And write with our passion.

So how about you, 'Rati? What's the best rejection you've ever gotten (and it can be something you realized in hindsight, something that ended up being a Good Thing.) Doesn't have to be about writing... let's hear it.

And as a bonus, all commenters are eligible for a free copy of Leanna's book, THE STRANGELY BEAUTIFUL TALE OF MISS PERCY PARKER as well as a signed copy of my first in the Bobbie Faye series, CHARMED AND DANGEROUS. (Contest runs 'til midnight, Pacific Time, tonight -- Sunday. Winner announced here on the blog after that.)

When There Is No More Room In Hell...

by J.D. Rhoades

Spring again. The time when the warm southern wind blows away the chill of winter (and blows in enough pollen to turn a newly washed car yellow in two minutes). A time when I shake off the gloom of the winter months. A time when I decide to put aside the serious post I meant to do about the Amazonfail flap, try to forget about tax day,  and talk about something fun.

Like zombies.

Are zombies the new vampires?

We do seem to be experiencing a sort of Zombie Renaissance these days. First, there was the sudden smash success of Max Brooks' World War Z.

Subtitled "An Oral History of the Zombie War", WWZ is smartly written, slyly satirical, and scary as hell all at the same time. I'd love to see it as a miniseries.

More recently, there's Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, a "re-imagining" of the Jane Austen classic that opens with the deathless (heh) line:"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains." As my friend Tasha says, that is just so wrong.

While I'm at it, I have to mention my current fave: Jonathan Maberry's excellent Patient Zero, which puts a whole new spin on the zombie legend by casting them as a terrorist bioweapon. Facing the legions of the undead (and they are many)  is Maberry's kick-ass action hero, Joe Ledger, a guy who could give Jack Reacher a run for his money.  I'll nominate PZ's opening lines ("When you have to kill the same terrorist twice in one week there's either something wrong with your skills or something wrong with your world. And there's nothing wrong with my skills.") as one of the best openings of 2009. 

As you can see, I love a good zombie story as much as the next guy. I've probably seen Night of the Living Dead a couple of dozen times, and I can quote you whole scenes of Shaun of the Dead verbatim. But even I have trouble explaining this.

I mean, I can almost see the the vampire thing. There's a certain sexiness about vampires, or so they tell me. They're beautiful, their hunger equates with great passion, they bite your neck...hey, it's not my kink, but whatever floats your boat.

But it's hard to envision a bestselling YA series about a forbidden romance between a beautiful but awkward teenage girl and a mindless, shambling flesh-eating ghoul. And, even as I bow down to the sheer audacious awesomeness of Marvel Zombies, 

I have trouble explaining exactly why I love it so. 

So what's the deal, 'Rati? Do you love zombies like I love zombies, and if so, why? What's the attraction? And what's your favorite tale of the walking dead?  And what book do you think could only be made better if you just threw in some zombies?