I've Been Interviewed!

Harry Markov of Temple Library Reviews wrote some very insightful interview questions, which must have taken him a while to research. He also did one of his blog critiques, where he said some very nice things about me and Fantasy Debut. Times like these make blogging very rewarding. He calls this feature Reviewer Time.

Check it out!

Debut Showcase: The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker

The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker (Amazon USA - UK - Canada)
by Leanna Renee Hieber
Dorchester Publishing/Leisure Books
Date of Publication 8/25/09 (UK: 1 Sep)
Excerpt

Blurb
What fortune awaited sweet, timid Percy Parker at Athens Academy? Considering how few of Queen Victoria’s Londoners knew of it, the great Romanesque fortress was dreadfully imposing, and little could Percy guess what lay inside. She had never met the powerful and mysterious Professor Alexi Rychman, knew nothing of the growing shadow, the Ripper and other supernatural terrors against which his coterie stood guard. She knew simply that she was different, haunted, with her snow-white hair, pearlescent skin and uncanny gifts. But this arched stone doorway offered a portal to a new life, an education far from the convent—and an invitation to an intimate yet dangerous dance at the threshold of life and death…

This reminds me of Marissa Doyle's Bewitching Season, even down to the name of the heroine. No twin here, though. This looks pretty good. The blurb is almost perfectly enticing, because right away, I am dissatisfied with it, and want to learn more. If the book were in front of me, I'd be reading pages. So I guess it's an effective blurb! Her website has lots of extras, all conveniently located on a page called Extras.


You can let me know of an upcoming debut here.

Eye Strain

I owe a few of you email responses, but due to eye strain (which is due to my new glasses), I avoided the computer last night and spent the evening in semidarkness. I'm going back to the eye doctor on Friday to see what can be done about these dratted glasses. In the meantime, please be patient. If I haven't answered your email, I will in the next day or so, or over the weekend at the latest.

Writer Wednesday - Researching for Fun and Profit

For this week's Writer Wednesday, I thought I'd explore a topic that didn't require the posting of excerpts in order to draw out those of you who prefer not to post excerpts. Since I'm in the midst of writing a historical novel, I also thought I'd blatently use this blog in an attempt to discover all of your favorite research methods. Here are a few of mine.

I am a master of Google Search. If it's on the Internet, I can find it with my Googlebar. I'm really good at figuring out the perfect search term to get the info I need. Maybe it's because I just love research and the Googlebar was something I just adored from day one. Privacy concerns? Bah. It's worth the loss of privacy. :)

Wikipedia is also a wonderful resource, especially when the article you are looking at has lots of citations that you can explore as well. I found some great Rosie the Riveter sites through Wikipedia. One thing I love is plugging in a date and seeing all the information that appears. Want to know the major news stories in 1924? Just plug "1924" in your Googlebar, and Wikipedia will be the first entry that pops up. Click on it, and you will see a comprehensive listing of everything that happened in 1924, along with a bunch of internal links to stuff like film, literature, sports, television--you name it. It may not be a definitive source, but it is a comprehensive one.

But the problem with Google and Wikipedia is you have to know what you're looking for. You can get lucky and have one page lead to another and eventually to a gem, but it takes a lot of surfing to find those.

But what about when you don't know what you are looking for?

What I really want to do one day soon is spend an afternoon at a library looking through microfiche. Those of you who are younger may not have any clue how fun microfiche is. It's so cool, even if it's low-tech. Imagine a bunch of newspaper pages placed side by side, zipping by you in the viewer. Unless they've changed these viewers considerably, you actually use a dial to control how fast the pages fly by. It's so 1970! If they duplicated this with computers, it would take forever to load!

What am I looking for? Nothing in particular. I'll know it when I see it. I want to look at the microfiche for the local papers in the early 20s, and zip through them. I'm looking for culture, for atmosphere. I'm looking for things like ads (and prices!), for portraits, for fashion, for cars, for sports, for buildings, for anything that catches my eye. Newspapers are a slice of life from that particular day in time, and I just want to browse through them.

To this end, I love Shorpy Photo Archive. I look at Shorpy's photos every day. If you are a history lover, you will love it as well. At least a few time a week, they post a street scene from the 20s. These are invaluable to me. You can zoom in on the photos and examine them in detail. When they post scenes from the interior of drugstores, I can get the prices on common goods. A milkshake? Fifteen cents. They had soda subscriptions. Buy a card for a dollar and you can redeem it for ten sodas. That sort of stuff didn't make the history books.

Your turn! What are your favorite research sites and methods?

Debut Showcase: Night's Cold Kiss

Night's Cold Kiss (Amazon USA - UK - Canada)
by Tracey O'Hara (website - blog)
HarperCollins - 7.99
Release date: August 25, 2009
Excerpt


For centuries war raged between the humans and Aeternus vampires—until courageous efforts on both sides forged a fragile peace.

But the rogue Necrodreniacs will never be controlled—addicted as they are to the death-high . . . and bloody chaos.

Since witnessing the murder of her mother, Antoinette Petrescu has burned with fiery hatred for the vampire race—even for Christian Laroque, the noble, dangerously handsome Aeternus who rescued her. Now an elite Venator, Antoinette must reluctantly accept Christian's help to achieve her vengeance—even as he plots to use the beautiful, unsuspecting warrior as bait to draw out the bloodthirsty dreniacs.

This isn't my usual forte, but maybe Raven will want to read it. The cover art looks familiar, and I wonder if I recognize the artist. I'm thinking Chris McGrath, but I didn't see this cover in his portfolio. The author was a finalist in the Golden Hearts along with Kelly Gay and Annette McCleave.


If you know of an upcoming debut, please let me know about it using this form.

On Urban Fantasy

I'm just not a fan of urban fantasy. I admit it.

Unless Charles deLint wrote it. I loved his urban fantasies of the 80s. But the definition has changed and it has left me sadly behind.

When I do debut showcases for urban fantasies, it's kind of like . . . work. I don't enjoy doing the research because I have no interest in reading most of these novels. There are rare exceptions, like Would-Be Witch. But like I said, they are rare.

What's more, I don't think a lot of my readers read urban fantasies. Such readers would not normally gravitate to this blog, because I review so few of such works. They'd find happier homes with SciFiGuy. Raven reviews some urban fantasy, but I don't think she's a true fan of the genre, either. (Raven, feel free to correct me, but you seem to be tired of snarky, kick-butt heroines.) She does like darker and gritter stuff than I do, which is why we complement each other so well here.

Therefore, if you read urban fantasies, please let me know you are out there. I may be interested in bringing another person on the Fantasy Debut team. And right away, I'd have a stack of urban fantasies to mail you. But there would be a price: I'd also be recruiting you to write my debut showcases for urban fantasies. Please let me know if you are interested by emailing me at tia dot nevitt at gmail dot com.

As for the rest of you, what do you think of urban fantasies? Love them? Hate them? Was a fan once, but no longer? Please share in the comments.

Sampling Books

Lest you think I'm doing nothing whatsoever with this blog, I thought I'd put up a post about the two books I'm sampling.

Servant of a Dark God by John Brown. This novel opens with a squabble between siblings that quickly grows dangerous when young Talen flees up a tree, pursued by his massivly muscled brother Ke. Talen falls, Ke catches him, they both get in trouble, and Talen gets sent off to the neighboring town on a routine farm errand.

There, he runs into real trouble when villagers think he is under a form of possession. It seems that another family in town--who are of the same outcast race as Talen--have been accused of this form of possession and naturally, everyone of the same race is under suspicion.

It's an engaging start. I know some people are tired of farm boys as the main protagonist, but I have no problem with it. Until the industrial revolution, most people were farmers or in the employ of farmers. But what I'm really in the mood for is an epic fantasy with a female POV. Or a grown man. I'm tired of reading about boys.

Night of Knives by Ian C. Esslemont. This begins with a prologue in the point-of-view of some indeterminate human-like creature. The creature trudges through the desert, and stops to talk to another creature that is imprisoned at the base of an obelisk. When the imprisoned creature tries to escape, a bolt of magic descends the obelisk and knocks it senseless. They have a conversation about some change that is coming. I confess that I haven't gotten much further than the prologue. However, I have determined that the point-of-view character isn't a boy (or either of these creatures), but a grizzled, battle-weary veteran named Temper. A significant plus in its favor.

Okay, make that three books. I'm also sampling Robin Hobb's Assassin's Apprentice. It's also quite engaging, as those of you who have read it would doubtless agree.

But it's also about a boy. I think I'm going to scream.

Speculative Fiction Reviewer's Database

John has renewed the Speculative Fiction Reviewer's Database (which started life as the Link-Up Meme).

I don't want to just post it, because if I put it somewhere other than a post, it will constantly be refreshed in the search engines. In a post, it will get stale after six months. If I put it on my sidebar, it takes up the whole sidebar, and I don't want that. So I've put it in a widget at the bottom of the page. I put a link to it in the righthand sidebar, or you can jump to it here.

Thoughtful Thursday at FanLit

Check out this week's Thoughtful Thursday at FanLit. This week's topic: things an author does that makes you stop reading. You'll need to log into Google FriendConnect to leave a comment. Just look for the link at the bottom of the page.

Genre Break - Gaslight Mysteries, Volumes Three through Six

Every once in a while, the lure of the wonderful Gaslight Mysteries tempt me away from fantasy to the world of New York City during the waning years of the 19th century. The Gaslight Mysteries are written by Victoria Thompson. I reviewed volumes one through three a few months ago.

I wish Ms. Thompson would give the year that her novels take place. The only historical marker I have is Theodore Roosevelt's tenure as a Police Commissioner in New York City. According to his Wikipedia entry, those years were 1895 to 1897, so these novels take place during those years.

Murder on Washington Square is my favorite of the series so far. There's lots of character development for both Frank and Sarah, and their interest in each other becomes more evident. The romance still proceeds at a glacial pace, because, after all, once you have a Happily Ever After, it would be difficult to continue the story.

In Murder on Washington Square, Sarah's neighbor Nelson Ellsworth finds himself the suspect in the murder of a young woman whom he had been ready to marry. In previous volumes, Mrs. Ellsworth's favorite activity was sweeping her porch so she could keep track of the goings-on of her neighbors. But with reporters crowding her doorstep, looking for the scoop of Mr. Ellsworth, she's in hiding.

Sarah continues her tactic of detection-by-nosiness, although it's not as evident in this book. This dress features a cross-dresser, women who prefer their men married rather than single, and Sarah getting high on opium. Oh, and a kiss.

Murder on Mulberry Bend, by contrast, is my least favorite of the series so far. In this novel, a young woman from the Prodigal Son Mission is murdered in a park wearing Sarah's clothes. By coincidence, a man who helped her previous investigation lost his wife to a fever while she was volunteering at the same mission.

The story of a young woman murdered while wearing Sarah's clothes seemed to have so much potential, especially since Frank is finally beginning to get somewhere with his investigation of Sarah's husband's death. However, the author evidently didn't think of what I hoped for.

The mystery in this novel was very frustrating, and Frank is ordered to terminate the investigation, leaving Sarah much on her own. There are a host of suspects--all kinds of shady characters. It was darker in tone that most of Ms. Thompson's novels, and the progression of the romance between Frank and Sarah comes to a frustrating halt.

Still, it was an enjoyable tale with new characters who return in subsequent books.

In Murder on Marble Row, Ms Thompson is back in her groove with scintillating dialog and humorous situations. It also offers a return to high-society New York--or rather, it's steamy underbelly.

Mr. Gregory Van Dyke has been blown up in his office. Frank is given the job of solving the murder by Commissioner Roosevelt, himself. Mr. Van Dyke's heir, Creighton Van Dyke, is a prime suspect because of his association with "anarchists".

Sarah's mother--of all people--helps Sarah solve this murder. The situations they find themselves in are hilarious, especially when the two of them venture to New York's rough Lower East Side to visit the anarchists. Their stop in the First Street Saloon was especially fun, but it wasn't as fun as Frank Malloy taking the two of them to a chop suey joint for lunch.

Great fun. However, this novel was way too plot heavy with almost no character development.

Which is my only flaw in the series, itself. I read books like this for the characters, not the plots. Alexander McCall Smith is a master of writing character development stories under the guise of mysteries with his No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series. Sure, the mysteries are fun and the whodunits are a blast to guess, but the characters are the true reason I keep coming back.

I have the rest of the books in the series except the last one, but I probably won't read them for another three months or so. I'd love to read them back-to-back, but all the fantasies on my self are calling my name, and I'd better not neglect them for long.

If you like historical mysteries, these are wonderful. If you don't, you might want to try them anyway and like me, discover a new addiction!