Debut Showcase: Dark Time

Dark Time: Mortal Path Book 1 (Amazon USA - UK - Canada)
by Dakota Banks (blog)
HarperCollins/Eos
MM Paperback - $7.99
Chapter One

Publisher's Blurb:

Dark Time is a new, sassy twist on supernatural thrillers—Lara Croft meets Elektra—an edge-of-your-seat, action-packed debut that fans of Vicki Pettersson and James Rollins won’t want to miss. In fact, Rollins himself raves, “THE MORTAL PATH is a novel to be savored for both its edge of suspense and the pure joy of its storytelling.”

Burned at the stake as a witch, Susannah Layton made a deal with a devil in return for revenge and immortality. Nearly 300 years later, she has killed more people for her demonic master than she can count, and only wants to be free.

But infernal contracts don’t have an easy “out” clause, and the only way Susannah—now Maliha—can retire without ending up in the deepest levels of hell is by saving one life for every one that she has taken. Her quest will take the former assassin from the fast-paced urban jungles of New York and Chicago to the wilds of Peru and Mongolia, from corporate espionage to raiding artifacts from secret places at great risk to her life.

This is the author's debut into fantasy, but she wrote six suspense novels under a different name. According to her website, she based this novel on ancient Sumarian myths. I find the premise interesting, and I like the idea of her having to save one life for each life she has taken. However, soul-selling as a plot device is a hard sell for me, for reasons of faith. (As a Christian I see a much easier "out" than this.) However, even if I could set that aside, I still think this might be too dark for me.

Writer Wednesday - The Dreaded Opening

Openings! As readers, we love 'em. They suck us right into the story. As writers, we hate 'em because they're so hard to write! Well, we don't actually hate them, we love them too. Because, after all, we're readers as well.

If only we can get our own openings right!

Joining us as Featured Writer this week is Kristy Baxter, the recently-agented author of a YA/Contemporary Fantasy called Grim Light. Her agent is Marlene Stringer. I'm going to turn it over to Kristy as she gives us her take on openings. I am lucky enough to have Kristy as my critique partner, and I read an early draft of this novel. I only mention this because she refers to me quite a bit.

~*~

Openings
by Kristy Baxter

I love starting a new novel.

I hate starting a new novel.

On the one hand, you have this joyous new creation to begin, and you don't know what it'll look like when you're done...but you know the ride's going to be awesome and terrifying and awesome all over again.

But on the other hand...argh. Openings! That first sentence is so incredibly important that you could spend weeks trying to make it perfect. And then all you're doing is waiting in line as you imagine what fun that roller coaster will be.

For my most recently completed novel, Grim Light, I decided to dive right into the action. My heroine foresaw a sad event coming, and then a moment later she saw a boy who would be very important to her, although she didn't know it yet.

The problem, as Tia pointed out: the reader didn't have enough time to get to know my protagonist, even a little bit, before these things happened. I needed to develop a little bit of sympathy, give the reader at least a little bit more about my protagonist, before I enmeshed her in all this emotional turmoil.

I stared at my opening paragraph. I loved that paragraph! It had been there since the beginning, the one that started it all. Every time I got other ideas or tried to start other novels, I read that opening and was sucked back in. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized Tia was right. Who cares what happens to this girl if they don't know who she is?

And as much as writing a novel, a short story, or anything at all is a roller-coaster ride, it's also a tightrope walk. I wanted to give the reader interesting action, but I also wanted to give her a smidgen of character development. So I pulled on my sequined leotard and grabbed that long stick-thing for balancing, and I hopped on the tightrope.

In order to compromise, I made the first sentence foreshadow what was to come. Then I made my heroine happy, because if we see her happy then we know how hard that fall will be. And I made sure that fall came within the first page or so, in an effort not to bore the reader.

I won't deny that it was tough. I'd never imagined Grim Light opening any other way. But when I saw the end result, I was very satisfied. I felt like I knew my protagonist better, even after spending months in her head already.

How about you? How do you manage to walk the tightrope? Have your openings all been picture perfect? Did you start too soon, as many do, or start too late, as I did? And how does your opening shape your view of your protagonist or narrator?

~*~

It's Tia again. I'm blushing. Thanks, Kristy.

Personally, I start too soon, but I'm always prepared to delete with impunity. I'm also prepared to offer up one of my own openings for your critiquing pleasure. This is from a lighthearted spy fantasy, which I call a mashup of Jane Austen and James Bond.

I hurried up to the embassy as if I belonged there. A bakery coach had pulled up near the side entrance where the kitchen chimneys were, so I headed that way. I searched around for someone who looked like a butler. He soon emerged to direct the unloading. I went up to him and curtsied. I was careful to make it a quick bob, rather than the genteel swoop I had learned during my youth. It was difficult to unlearn what had once been drilled into me.

Kristy's take:
I like the pacing of your opening a lot. Most of your sentences are short and choppy, which conveys the urgency of the situation while staying true to how Tory [the protagonist] would think in that situation. The first sentence grabs you right off, because you wonder, "Why doesn't she belong there?" and that tension pulls you along. It also gives you a great idea of Tory's more analytical thought process.

The only thing I would change: sentences three through five are all roughly the same length, and while choppiness is great for that opening, you want to avoid establishing a lulling sort of rhythm. I would insert a longer sentence in there, or possibly combine parts of two sentences, just to avoid that. Read it aloud and you'll probably catch my meaning.

I guess I'll do that. What did you think? Feel brave enough to post your own opening for general feedback? Got any questions? Comment away!

Sampling Novels

Here's just a few novels I've sampled lately:

Slaves of the Shinar. After an email conversation with the author, Justin Allen, he sent me a copy of his novel. I didn't get a chance to read it back when it came out in the summer of 2007. I have not read much so far--just the prologue. After I read it, I turned to my husband and said, "This guy breaks all the rules of novel openings, but I'm finding it riveting." A promising start!

The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry. The author's British publisher sent me this novel, and of all the novels I've started, I'm furthest along in this one. It's more a creepy ghost story than a fantasy, although I haven't seen any actual ghosts yet, but plenty what could be either magic or delirium. The website is rather fun; you get to hunt for links in the lace.

Drawn into Darkness by Annette McCleave. Oh my stars and garters, I'm reading a paranormal romance! It's been a while. The future cover--I have an ARC--features a man with abs. (Personally, I'm not an ab girl. I like arms.) The story inside SO does not reflect the cover; I was very surprised when I saw the cover. It's all about angels and demons and something called a Soul Gatherer, and I am pleased to see that it treated Christian elements with respect. So far.

And tempting me from my debut stack is books 4 through 10 of Victoria Thompson's Gaslight Mysteries! Must be good . . . must be good.

Which one do you think I ought to read next?

Debut Graduate - The King's Daughters by Nathalie Mallet

Sometimes, when I read a book, it exceeds all my expectations. Nathalie Mallet achieved this with The King's Daughters. I enjoyed the ending so much that most of my nitpicky complaints that I had about it before that point have faded from my consciousness.

Which is just the way it's supposed to be.

I must admit that I didn't expect much from this book. This isn't to say that I did not enjoy reading The Princes of the Golden Cage. I did--immensely. And here's my review to prove it. But all too often, second novels in open-ended series like this become annoying. This novel had a couple of strikes against it. One is that the romance--which I didn't feel all that fired up about to begin with--seemed resolved. When a romance is resolved, the next book in the series often feels tacked on and unnecessary. That's why you end up with The Ever-Romance, a plot device that plagues the Mystery genre.

The other strike against it was that there were only two familiar characters from the first book--Amir and Eva. Now I understand that this was an asset to the book, not a flaw. By starting with a bunch of new characters, Ms. Mallet made it unnecessary to have read the first book to enjoy the second. Plus, she introduces some wonderful new characters.

But first, I suppose I ought to present you with the blurb.

Far to the north of the hot desert land of Telfar lies the frozen kingdom of Sorvinka . Prince Amir has traveled there, leaving his sultanate in the hands of his half-brother Erik as he seeks to ask the king, the father of the beautiful Princess Eva, for her hand in marriage.

But Sorvinka has grown dangerous during Princess Eva's absence, as she and Amir discover to their terror, when their force of guards and eunuchs is cut down by ruthless brigands. And upon their arrival, their welcome to Eva's family stronghold is as bitterly cold as the land itself.

Accustomed to the golden cage of his upbringing, Prince Amir must navigate his way through the strange and cold-blooded customs of the Sorvinkans, and somehow find the truth behind the kidnapping of the king's youngest daughter, the Princess Aurora, by the Sorvinkan’s traditional enemies, the neighboring Farrellians. But what can a stranger in a foreign land do?

With many apologies to Night Shade Books, I think the question at the end of this blurb weakens the blurb.

Oh, and I may as well get the one nitpick that I recall out of the way, and that is punctuation. This was also a problem in Princes. Ms. Mallet is Canadian and for the most part, the fact that English is her second language only enhances the novel. It is written in an exotic voice that works perfectly, filled with word choices that a native speaker might not make. But improperly punctuated questions continue to be a problem. We all make grammar mistakes, and usually that is the job of a copyeditor to catch them. I know that sometimes authors refuse to accept the input of a copyeditor. However, I have a hard time believe that such a new author would be so arrogant. In any case, I hope the next novel--which I'm greatly looking foward to--undergoes a more rigorous copyediting phase.

Back to the story. Amir and Eva's welcome at the Sorvinkan court is indeed, quite cold. Amir makes a terrible first imprssion, and seems to have absolutely no help from Eva, who is his fiance, and who lets him make some cringeworthy breeches of protocol. Eva, who had seemed so capable in Princes, because very princess-ly in this novel, which is OK because we didn't get to know enough about her in Princes for this to seem like a character inconsistency.

Eva became very annoying in this book. She did inexplicable things and left Amir hanging out to dry. I was going to count this as a flaw in the book . . . but it turns out that Ms. Mallet knew exactly what she was doing. And how she resolved it is one of the reasons I found the ending so satisfying.

One of the eunichs, Milo, becomes Amir's personal servant--indeed, Amir must make him his personal servant in order to keep him alive. Because the "cold welcome" to the court was actually achieved at the point of a sword. Milo has all the makings of a great sidekick. Another character, Diego, makes a great counterpart to Amir and Milo. Diego is a court dandy. One phrase from the novel sums up Diego perfectly: "He cringed so forcefully that one could've believe he had just sucked on a lemon."

As Ms. Mallet did with her first novel, she brings all the various plot threads together brilliantly. I can't think of anything left unexplained, except some new tidbits that she came up with toward the end for subsequent books. I recall in Princes that she did this almost to a fault. Here, it was just about perfect. She also brings in some Russian mythology and folklore into the story--some really strange stuff--weaves it brilliantly into the story.

She aimed the series squarely at an Eastern setting for the third book, and perhaps a Spanish for the fourth. I must admit that I can hardly wait.

In my opinion, you're not going to find such good entertainment for $7.99 anywhere else. If you like blends of mystery and fantasy, non-white protagonists, clashes of culture and open ended series, then this novel should be great fun. And the next book, Death in the Traveling City, intrigues by its very name!

~*~

Links!

Nathalie Mallet's Website and Blog

Amazon USA - UK (appears to be sold out) - Canada 

Night Shade's Book Page and Interview with Nathalie 

Additional Reviews at Grasping for the Wind and Graeme's Fantasy Review

Of Unanswered Emails and Twisted Ankles

Yes, I twisted my ankle this afternoon, just sauntering casually across the kitchen. One minute I was fine, the next minute I was grabbing the counter. What the heck? This ankle is getting downright undependable--the same thing happened on the stairs about two weeks ago. I might have to get an X-ray or something.

And yes, I've been terrible about answering emails for the past week or so. I have a bunch of Gmail stars next to a bunch of emails, and because I promised to do some beta reading this weekend, it will be a few days before I get back to you. Sorry!

Tomorrow morning, I have another Debut Graduate for you and then I PROMISE I'll be getting back to debuts. I've been sampling books in my stack, including The Lace Reader, Dreamdark: Blackbringer, The Birthing House, and more. I'm looking for something a bit different, and I think all three qualifies.

I meant to have a Discovery Showcase on Saturday, but the author I had intended to showcase never answered my email asking for "official" permission. So I'm assuming I don't have permission, and I'm off to the next person in the list.

I was thinking of the next subject for Writer Wednesday, and I think "Openings" is something we all can identify with, because they're just so hard. So let's plan on that topic. I'll announce my next Featured Writer as soon as I know I can make it official.

Check back in tomorrow morning for my review of Nathalie Mallet's The King's Daughters!

The Stars Blue Yonder by Sandra McDonald

When I write a review, I'm sometimes a bit in a quandary about how much I should give away. When does a tidbit stop being a tidbit and start being a spoiler? Fortunately, the blurb for The Stars Blue Yonder includes all the elements I want to write about, so I don't think I'll blunder into any spoilers. Here it is, straight from Tor:

Chief Terry Myell died and became a god. Now he’s back to life, careening around space and time at the behest of a voice that told him to save all of mankind. Helping and hindering this quest are his elderly wife, his young wife, grandchildren who haven’t been born yet, romantic rivals he hasn’t even met, a descendant from two thousand years in the future, and an alien nemesis who calls itself the Flying Doctor. Life in the military has never been so complicated.


Commander Jodenny Scott would agree. She’s seven months pregnant and trying to come to peace with her husband’s death. When Myell reappears with tales of time travel, she’s not sure what to believe.


But with an invading army bearing down on Earth’s last fleet of spaceships, there’s not much time for debate. When the dust clears Jodenny is stranded in an Australia she never imagined, and Myell’s more desperate than ever to rescue her—from aliens, from treachery, and from history itself.

Yay! I can write about the time travel! Because ultimately, that's what makes this book so deliciously fun.

I love time travel fiction. When Back to the Future came out, my husband and I must have seen it in the theater at least ten times. And many times after that on various forms of video. Now we have the boxed set.

Where to start? My friend and blog buddy Kimber An is going to think this is the answer to her book prayers. I'm not sure if she'll like the first book, but if she can get through the first and second, she'll flip out over the third. It features a pregnant heroine who is part of a happily married--if often separated--couple. And midway through the book--while she is unexpectedly centuries in the past--she finds herself acting as a midwife! Courtesy of her Digital Doula--yes, you read that right--she's an expert on childbirth. And darn it if those nineteenth century women have all kinds of crazy notions about pregnancy and giving birth.

Do you get the notion that this book is different yet? And, if I might use the same words as many reviewers before me, it is fresh, original and probably like nothing you've read in science fiction before.

Ok, I'd better get serious about this review.

It picks up right where The Stars Down Under left off. If you haven't read that novel before, I'm afraid the blurb above is a bit of a giveaway. But it really would not have been possible to write the blurb without giving away the fact that Terry is back. And he's not a god anymore. As it turns out, that was a Terry from a different timeline.

Kind of.

All those time travel rules you read about in other stories? Forget about them. Ms. McDonald has figured out a neat way around the problems of time travel in a totally plausable way. Well, plausable in a world that includes time travel.

Anyway, Terry is stuck in a time loop and is trying to find his way out. You feel for the guy. It's maddening, kind of like that loop in the movie Groundhog Day, except this look jumps him to different points in time. Always near Jodenny. Who sometimes doesn't even know who he is, or doesn't believe its him, depending on when he goes to.

And just when you reach the point where it is starting to get too maddening, he gets a bit of a break. Ms. McDonald really has great timing in this case.

Before I get carried away by too much gushing (or is it too late?), let me get some critiques out of the way. One of them is that a character keeps urging Terry on, but is unable to help him out with any specific instructions. He basically appears to Terry long enough to complain that he should have figured it all out by now. This is a plot device I've seen before--some sort of Seer who has knowledge that he cannot reveal to the reader because it would make the story end too quickly. Now in this case, I didn't want the story to end too quickly. But it was still a small annoyance.

Well, I guess it was only one critique. I can't remember the others, if I had any.

I'm already way over wordcount and I haven't even mentioned Sam Osherman. I'd better stop here.

This is a science fantasy novel with a great mythology, a fun plot and likable heroes and heroines. The pages just flew by. The end of the novel brings this storyline to a close, but leaves other questions unanswered, which might be answered in future books.

And when Kimber finds out what Terry and Jodenny names the baby, I do believe she will scream out loud.

Linkfest!

Sandra McDonald's Website and Blog

The novel at Tor  

Heather's Author Supernova on Sandra McDonald at Galaxy Express (still in-process, so the link is to the site)

My reviews of The Outback Stars and The Stars Down Under

Amazon USA - UK - Canada

Giveaway - The Stars Blue Yonder

Tor is giving away a copy of The Stars Blue Yonder by Sandra McDonald! To enter, please fill out this form. Please only enter once time.

Update: Contest closed!

Writer Wednesday - With Featured Writer Jennifer Estep!

Welcome to our first Writer Wednesday, a comment chat that will last as long as we all care to stick around. Joining us today and tomorrow is the fabulous Jennifer Estep, author of Karma Girl (multi-part review), Hot Mama and Jinx. Each title links to my review of each novel, with all the usual links. Be warned, Jennifer is the victim of a cyber-attack, so don't visit her site at the moment.

Anyway, Jennifer's upcoming novel, Spider's Bite, is an urban fantasy featuring Gin, an assassin. Such a character fits right in with our first featured topic:

Unsavory Protagonists and Assorted Bad Guys

We'll let Jennifer begin with a short excerpt from Spider's Bite.

“You’re coming with me,” he said.

With his free hand, Caine reached inside his jacket pocket and drew out a pair of silver-stone handcuffs. He tossed them on the balcony between us. The metal clinked to a stop at my booted feet. “Put those on.”

“Handcuffs. Kinky. But I prefer to have a bit more freedom during sex. Don’t you?”

Caine jerked as though I’d yanked the gun out of his hands and shot him. His eyes flicked down my body, going to my breasts and thighs, before coming back to my face. Yeah, he was thinking about it. All the distraction I needed.

“There’s no need to bother with those because you aren’t taking me in, detective.”

“Where are you going to go?” Caine asked. “You’re trapped.”

I smiled. “Me? Trapped? Never.”

I turned, leapt up onto the balcony wall, and launched myself over the side into the darkness below.

Here are a few ground rules. Please limit any excerpts to 300 words. Yes, I know that isn't a lot, but that's 300 words, plus any introductory material you may write. So the result can be a very long comment. Even Jennifer's excerpt is way below that. We need to keep each excerpt short to keep the comments page from getting miles long (wishful thinking here, I know). Just include enough to give everyone an idea of just why the character is so bad. Tantalize us with your best stuff. Don't overwhelm us. I'll try to lead by example with the first comment.

UPDATE! Also, please offer a bit of commentary on one of the excerpts that is posted before yours. Make your commentary and your own excerpts separate posts. This will help when the comment thread starts getting long.

Keep any critiques constructive. I probably didn't have to say this because this is such a nice crowd, but it can't hurt.

And that's it! Jump right in with your excerpts and commentary. This should be fun!

Jennifer Estep - Featured Writer for Writer Wednesday!

This is cool--Jennifer Estep has agreed to be our featured writer for Writer Wednesday. She wrote an upcoming novel that has the perfect character for our discussion on Unsavory Protagonists and Assorted Bad Guys--an assassin. She is also the author of three Bigtime novels, all which I've reviewed here. I'll give you the full info on Wednesday but if you can't wait, here's her website.

If you're a writer, please help me spread the word, and be sure to stop by on Wednesday!

Author Caleb Fox - How ZADAYI RED Came to be Born

Presenting Caleb Fox, the author of Zadayi Red. Here, he discusses the publication of Zadayi Red, and has an unexpected conversation with one of his characters. Enjoy!

How ZADAYI RED Came to be Born

by caleb fox

Okay, you caught me—I’m not really a fantasy writer. I might have been, but you see, I lost track of the difference between fantasy and reality.

Here’s how it happened. My ancestors were Arkansas rednecks whose ancestors were redskins. Somehow I went to a good university and ended up as the movie critic of a big Los Angeles newspaper.

Now pay attention: At a party in posh Beverly Hills I was trading stories about mountain men and Indians with my buddy, who was a super-famous screenwriter (and here we are in true fantasyland). A publisher overheard us and said to me, “Are there enough of these stories for a book?”

“Sure.”

Since he handed me that contract, I’ve done nothing but write—stories, movies, TV, everything. I’m married to the best woman in the world, Sarita, and live in the other-worldly Canyonlands, populated entirely by Navajos and Mormons. From landscape to inhabitants, this is all the way into fantasy. Reality is a good place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.

Last week I was out walking and celebrating publication day of Zadayi Red, which the publisher Tor calls a fantasy. A buzzard landed on my shoulder (there’s a stomach churner). When he spoke my name, I knew he was no ordinary vulture.

“Why did you treat me that way?”

No question what he meant—why did I turn him into a spirit animal in the novel? One day he was soaring happily around the Land Beyond the Sky Arch and the next he was bound to an Indian woman of centuries ago.

“She needed a guide.”

“Cut the baloney. Why me?”

“Why not?”

He pecked my ear—ouch! Then he said, “You know what I mean. I’m an Immortal. I hate death. And you…”

So now we were down to it. I’d re-created him on Earth as a buzzard, and buzzards eat carrion. Talk about having death shoved down your throat.

I debated telling the truth. Though I lie for a living, I decided to risk it. “I though it would interesting—“

He made a threatening a-a-awk.

“—to see what would happen if an Immortal really, truly had an experience of mortality. Actually lived with mortals and went through their struggles along with them. Started rooting for them. Maybe even—“

I dared not say it.

His tone was indescribable. “Started liking a mortal? Sure, why not? Loving a mortal? Well, maybe a very special mortal, just a little bit.” He shrugged those glossy brown-black shoulders and cocked his red head. The interrogation wasn’t over.

I decided to go for it. “I meant, to find something beautiful in mortality. To fall in love with the whole process that governs it all, life on Earth.”

“Disgusting,” he said, and flew off.

This time he was the liar.

Characters like Buzzard are the fun. I’m writing book three of the series. Yes, fantasy. I don’t know where reality is anyway.