Book Chick City’s Where Stories Are Made feature is where an author takes us on a tour of their writing place, be it an office, coffee shop or park and tells us about their writing day and rituals, along with a few photos. We all like to be a bit nosey sometimes, don’t we? Writing a Novel in Five Easy Time-consuming, Gut-wrenching Steps With a massive late-season snowstorm brewing outside, where I usually prefer to draft in better weather, and all of three rooms inside the small condo where I…

Hi everyone! I want to give a big thank you to Book Chick City for having me over today! THE GEEK GIRL AND THE SCANDALOUS EARL is officially one day old, and I couldn’t be prouder! I hope that you guys love Jamie, Micah, and everyone else as much as I do. With that being said, I thought you guys might enjoy finding out a little bit more about the hero and heroine of GGSE. So here they are! First up is Jamie Marten. Jamie’s the kind of girl that…

Hello everyone, welcome to our Meet the Boys of the Black Dagger Brotherhood event, where this March we celebrate J.R. Ward’s seriously hot and deadly, vampire warriors. I first entered into the world of the Black Dagger Brotherhood on my holidays last June. After many, many, many, many (you get the idea!) enthusiastic recommendations from fellow reviewers Vickie and Gemma, I downloaded the first three onto my Kindle. I’m personally always a bit nervous about reading books people have recommended because they really, really love them, and you may get…

I first “discovered” the Fangborn when Charlaine Harris and Toni L.P. Kelner invited to write a short story for Wolfsbane and Mistletoe. A major problem confronted me, as it does every writer of urban fantasy and horror: How do I put my stamp on creatures like werewolves and vampires? I let the process of writing the story guide me. In “The Night Things Changed,” when my private detective character said, “I liked being a cop for the same reason I like being a werewolf,” I learned a lot about him…

GIVEAWAY! I have been having a little sort out of my received for review bookcases and thought I’d do a giveaway. All of the 20 books/ARCs I’ve selected I received as duplicates, are new and unread. This box is full to the brim of Urban Fantasy, Paranormal Romance and Young Adult in a selection of genres. HERE’S WHAT YOU COULD WIN (Kitty Not Included): Stray – Rachel Vincent (Paperback) The Edlritch Conspiracy – Cat Adams (Paperback) Eve of Darkness – Sylvia Day (Paperback) Kiss of Midnight – Lara Adrian (Paperback) Serpent’s Kiss…

Please welcome Evie Manieri to the blog today. Blood’s Pride is her debut novel. So, please give a warm welcome to Evie. I daydream, and am prone to react to stressful situations by pretending to be someone else. For instance when I have trouble sleeping, I comfort myself by thinking about the fictional problems of fictional characters, instead of the bogeys that creep out from under my bed. These are the top ten characters who are likely to take up residence in my head when reality gets to be just…

Grab your hammers, we are world building here. Thanks for hosting us today for the Vampires Gone Wild book tour, our Supernatural Underground anthology with Avon Impulse. Kerrelyn Sparks, Pamela Palmer, Amanda Arista, and Kim Falconer here to hopefully illuminate the thoughts and processes that go into creating the worlds that our characters inhabit. What inspired the setting for your short story? Have you written the world before or is this brand new? Kerrelyn Sparks: My characters. Mikhail is Russian, and he’s helping a friend, Zoltan, who’s Hungarian. So some…

“Writer, where do ideas come from?” “The stork (muse) brings them.”  “They’re from out in the cabbage patch.” Seriously, I get asked this question quite a bit, as do other authors.  The answer is a little tricky.  I can’t speak to anyone else’s experience.  But for me? They come from everywhere, and nowhere, and somewhere in between. For me, characters have a life of their own.  They are people.  As such, they have their own unique foiables, strengths, idiosyncrasies.  I do NOT, EVER base a character directly on a living…

Sometimes you have to fiddle around with a book before it starts working, before you find the right approach to the story, the right voice for the narrator. In this instance, it took all of about three sentences. I knew, when I started writing A Natural History of Dragons, that it was going to be a Victorian-style memoir. When I started writing, I immediately discovered the delights of that approach. My protagonist is, especially in this first book, a headstrong and slightly naive young woman — but the woman who…

THE BACKSTORY From the time we announced the final Red Rock ebook in 2009, people have been asking us when we’d go back to the Sanctuary world and write more about werewolves and their witch rivals. In the beginning we didn’t want to return–we had our four books and our two prequel novellas, and those were the stories we had to tell. But people kept asking, and we kept saying, “Well, what if…okay, no, but maybe if…” A watched pot never boils, and I’m starting to think a watched plot…

GIVEAWAY! Tor Books is giving away THREE (3) copies of IMMORTAL SURRENDER by Claire Ashgrove For entry into the giveaway please fill out the form below. This giveaway is US/CANADA only and ends 23rd January 2013 PLEASE NOTE: As from Jan 2013, we will not be contacting giveaway winners by email. Winners will be announced on the blog via a post containing a link to claim their prize. So as to not miss these announcement posts, as well as future giveaways, subscribe via RSS or EMAIL.

Bittersweet Seraphim has been released from Hell. The sequel to Crushed Seraphim (book #1 is on sale for .99 cents HERE on Kindle and HERE on Nook and is a Kindle #1 Best Seller in Comic Fiction!), is ready for you. Satan Jack invites you to come…and indulge yourself in his journey to save the angel he loves. After running Hell for over a thousand years one foul-mouthed Seraph has changed his end game. Even if it means destroying the universe, Jack refuses to give up on Emma. He didn’t…

Clark Hays grew up in Montana in the shadow of the Tobacco Root Mountains, moving to cowboy country from Scotland. In addition to his fiction work, he is an ex-cowboy, a published poet and occasional food critic. Recently, he was nominated for the Pushcart Prize for short fiction and not so recently for a Rhysling award for poetry. Clark brings a deep knowledge about the modern west, weaponry, country music and existentialism to his writing. Kathleen McFall grew up in the heart of Washington, D.C. She worked as a petroleum…

Immortality Scares the Bejeezus Out of Me I have never understood the allure of eternal life. The concept leaves me entirely cold. I distinctly remember the day this came to be—I must have been about ten years old. I was in my room, paging through my Bible (Precious Moments-themed —adorable, right?), looking for the gory stories, when I got sucked into a few verses talking about heaven and the afterlife. For the first time, my childish brain grasped the concept of eternity. How it truly meant forever. Unending. Never ceasing….

Wondering What to Do With Your Life? (If you still have one) It has been brought to my attention that a large portion of my readers are at a very special time in their lives. Are you currently making important decisions about which career to follow? It’s a big decision. This being the case, I really feel I should do the stereotypically dull, ‘adult’ thing of giving you advice you never asked for. Except in this case, it’s not so dull. It could save your life. And mine. As I…