All Good Things

 All good things must come to an end. For us, this is the end of the road for this blog. The decision wasn't easy. The fact is that blogging isn't super interactive. Getting to engage with readers draws us to other social media platforms with better opportunities for chatting. We value every single reader. We've had the great honor of getting to blog with and meet so many awesome authors. We've gained friendships on this blog. We've lost one along the way, too, to a relentless and mercilessly unfair disease. Our greatest hope is that somewhere along the way you found value in something we wrote. Or were touched by something any of us wrote. While this will be the final post from any of us, we are all still around and would love to hear from you going forward.

My socials:

Twitter (X) : @marcellaburnard
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/marcellaburnardauthor/
Instagram: marcellaburnardauthor
Tik Tok: Marcella Burnard (@marcellaburnardauthor) | TikTok

Don't get excited about the Tik Tok. I have exactly zero videos out there. So far. Can't promise it will change, but feel free to friend me out there and send me cat videos. You know that's why I'm out there.

Hey. It's been great having you here. Don't be a stranger. Last one out, switch off the light.

The End

 

I don't think of the SFF Seven blog without thinking of alumnus James A. Moore. He had wise words to share along with his personal writing journey. And that was the purpose of the Word Whores, now known as the SFF Seven blog, to reach a hand back to those coming behind you. 

Writing is a hard and lonely business and there's no training. You have to go out and find it yourself. We're hanging up the blogging hat, but there's still lots of writing info to be had (you can find us on other socials). Times have changed. AI is coming. And we'll all still be here in the vague sense of 'here online'. But what it really boils down to is: 

• You should be writing.
• Get your butt in the chair.

It's been an honor to blog with everyone who has been part of SFF Seven. My TBR grew.  I learned a lot. And I hope I gave back even more. Happy Writing!

It's Time for THE END

Back in 2011, seven authors--published and aspiring to be--set up a blog to share our experiences as we navigated the industry, honed our craft, and traipsed the line between sanity and fantasy. Back then, we were known as The Word Whores (click here to read our archives). Lo, after being caught in a few too many NSFW filters and occasionally relegated to the adults-only search results, we changed our name to The SFF Seven Authors (here we are). 

For thirteen years, we've had the privilege of sharing the blog with amazing peers who brought perspectives from the horror, sci-fi, thriller, fantasy, romance, and women's fiction genres. We've shared our adventures during the ebook boom, audiobook advent, and the ever-sluggish traditions of print publishing. We've introduced our pets and our pet peeves. Confessed our manuscripts that will never see the light as well as those we aspire to write. We've given tips to break through writer's block, along with guidance on penning scenes involving a big c*ck. {cough}

We've enjoyed sharing our experiences with you, our dear readers. Thank you for taking the journey with us. 

Alas, alas, it's time for us to write The End. 

You can find me at the following:

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/authorkakrantz/ 
• X (née Twitter): https://x.com/KAKrantz
• Website: KAKrantz.com 

Please, don't be strangers. I look forward to keeping in touch on the socials.

--KAK

Goodbye and See Me Around!

Well, folks... We here at the SFF Seven have kept this blog rolling for a considerable amount of time, but it's time to let this full moon set. It's been lovely and I will miss everyone here. But the world turns and times change. I'm still on social media, just not this one.

Places to find me:

https://www.jeffekennedy.com/home

https://blog.jeffekennedy.com/ 

https://www.bookbub.com/authors/jeffe-kennedy

https://www.instagram.com/jeffekennedy2016/

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4kcYGJQdS_4Hn_oO11uVEg

https://www.patreon.com/JeffesCloset

 

I Wish I May, I Wish I Might

I Wish to Scare You Tonight

I'm looking for the chill that walks your spine. I wish to write the things that make you look over your shoulder or even lose just a little bit of sleep at night. Not gory. Not gross. Haunting. I'm looking for the edge of horror - no chainsaws allowed. I wish to make my writing walk the tightrope of stirring the hair at the back of your neck without falling off into the blood spatter and the wet, gristly shine of moonlight on exposed bone. 

I also don't want to fall off the tightrope into purple prose, and I'm afraid that's where I seem to find myself most often. I try to make something scary and it just ends up sounding silly. Or it's incomprehensible. Maybe the scariest thing is that I KEEP TRYING. 

 

Wanna Be Creepy

This Week's Topic: What Genre Have I Secretly Wished I Could Write?

Dun-nuh Dun-nuh Dun-nuh dun-na-na-na-nah!!! 🦈
Thrillers

waits for earworm to pass

That suspense.
That masterful control of anticipation.
That fear without gore.

chef's kiss

A good thriller keeps me flipping pages until dawn. I have to know what comes next. I admire thriller writers and envy the good ones who instill terror with words and make me jump when the dog stretches.

I wanna write like that. Those skills...(wistful sigh). Yes, please. I aspire to that level, to creep into that genre, and to leave chills down readers' spines (even after they've put down the book). 

muahahaha

Borrowing a Spark

I honestly say I haven't built out a character based on a celebrity. Entirely. That's because I'm using characters they've played, instead. Or I pick a look from over here and aspects of a personality from over there and munging them together to generate my characters. I might isolate an attribute and assign it to someone in one of my books, but to pick up a person wholesale, change a name and a hair color and call it good? No. Can't. I think it's mostly because I don't actually know these people - the celebrities, I mean. I only know what I get to see and that's the characters they play. I'm aware that those characters come from the actors, themselves, but - eh. Welcome to me overthinking. Maybe it's the acting degree. But. If you want a list of the people I've taken as inspiration - that's a loooong list. A long list. It's a list populated by a sordid history of aesthetic crushes. 

Lupita Nyong'o, Tom Hiddleston, Brendan Frasier, Taika Waititi, Vico Ortiz, I mean. I could go on forever with this. There is nothing I've seen, music I've heard, or places I've been that hasn't shown up in a story.

My favorite tea shop turned into a tattoo parlor for Nightmare Ink.

Anyone who works out how to force blogger to let me insert a two -column table into the page and put photos in it gets a cookie. I doubt it'll even let me do that with html at this point. ARG. Anyway. 

If you read any of my stories and you think you recognize a personality quirk in a character, you may well be right. But I'll deny it like mad and tell you it's entirely a product of my own imagination. Yet the truth is that when I admire someone's body of work or a specific look they cultivated for a role or a shoot, it's impossible for me to subsequently create something of my own that doesn't pay homage to whatever struck me in the first place. I guess I'm borrowing a spark from someone else's fire to see if I can't kindle a fire of my own.  

No Time for Tea

Last week’s topic was our fantasy dinner parties and who we’d invite. Yeah, I missed it. So my image for the week is my favorite tea cup to make up for it! 

This week we’re talking about real people we’ve based characters on. I think to some extent every character we write is a conglomeration of people we know or have met. How else would we write relatable characters? 

The only character I’ve truly based on someone is actually another character: John Hammond. From his cane to his white hat and clothes as he stepped onto the Jurassic Park screen, John Hammond. He fit the side character I wrote in The Mars Strain, Dr. Dresden. 

One of my author highlights was when a friend of mine was gushing about my audiobook and asked me if I’d pictured John Hammond from Jurassic Park when I wrote Dresden. I was so excited that she’d pictured him how I’d written him! Especially because I didn’t say who he looked like, I wrote Dresden’s looks into the story. And she picked up on it perfectly! 

As for basing a character on someone I know in real life…I can’t say I won’t ever do it, because that’s basically ensuring I will at some point, but it’s not an intentional goal of mine. I prefer my fictional creations to be bits and pieces of those I know and of myself. My goal is to write characters you can picture sitting next to at a restaurant or hanging out with around a campfire. And yes, using a real person template would do that, but when we read we want larger than life. So why not glue parts of multiple together to create a character that’s bigger than all of them? 

How about you? Have you based a character on someone you know? And the more important question, did they read it and recognize themselves?

Models Who Inspired Characters

 This Week's Topic: IRL Person on Whom I've Based a Character

Beyond models whose images helped me focus on the physical aspects, I don't think I consciously developed a character's personality based on someone I know or a celebrity. {chin scratch} Maybe a quirk here or a tic there, but no one individual comes to mind.

What's that? You want to see the models' reference photos? Oh, well, pfft, yeah! I have to thank whoever chose this topic because it's been a few years since I reviewed these photos and I've fallen in love with the characters they inspired all over again. 

From my Immortal Spy urban fantasy series:

Character = Bix; IRL Inspo = I wish I knew her name

Character = Tobek; IRL Inspo  = Lasse L. Matberg: 

Character = Phobos; IRL Inspo = David Gandy: 

A Secret Celeb I Based a Male Lead on

 This week at the SFF Seven, we're talking about real life people (or celebrities) we've based characters on. 

That phrasing makes me laugh a little because I'm pretty sure celebrities are still real life people. It puts me in mind of some of my ongoing themes of reminding readers that their favorite authors are still people who get sick and have life drama. But I digress.

I don't know if I've talked about this openly, but in UNDER HIS TOUCH, the second Falling Under book (and this series is contemporary erotic romance, not SFF, fair warning), I totally based the male protagonist on a celebrity. I wanted a Brit man, one who was brooding and not conventionally handsome, full of smoldering sexiness. Guess who I based him on?

Neil Gaiman.

Yeah, yeah - I know. Only a book nerd like me would pick someone like that. I don't think it's at all obvious in the text to the reader, but he was the guy I envisioned when I wrote it. I even threw in a little Amanda Palmer easter egg, just for fun. 

SFF Dinner Date

Just so we're clear, the only reason I'm having a dinner party for writers past and present is so I can fangirl. Also, I'm going to need a massive table because this is just scratching the surface of the invitations I'd ship out (in no particular order). 

Martha Wells, N. K. Jemisin, Alice (Andre) Norton, Ursula K. Le Guin, Anne McCaffery, Robin McKinley, Rebecca Roanhorse, and Nnedi Okorafor. 

Yeah, I know it's all female-presenting. Listen. I love me some SFF writers who are guys. I do. But I tell you what. I'm having a really great time right now reading stories that aren't written from within the confines of the white straight male experience (or just the white cishet experience in general). For that reason, if I started bringing the male-presenting folks to the dinner table, Dr. Chuck Tingle would be on the list. John Scalzi would be, as would Neil Gaiman, and boy howdy, wouldn't it be a hoot to have Sir Terry Prachett for the event? If I could suddenly learn adequate Mandarin, Liu Cixin would be there. 

Phew. At this point, I think I just opened my own restaurant and I'm not going to get to talk to any of these people, much less drink tea with them. Still. I'm so interested in the wealth of experiences and perspectives and the fun that could be had at these dinners. 

Living the Dream

I used this photo (Thanks to Craig Chrissinger for taking it!) a couple of weeks ago, but it's too appropriate for this week's topic to pass up using it again. Our topic at the SFF Seven is our fantasy dinner party. We're asking which SFF authors and characters you’d invite to a soiree. 

The thing is, one of the best perks of being an author is getting to make other authors be your friends. So my fantasy dinner parties have mostly happened! Case in point: above I'm having dinner with Martha Wells, Darynda Jones, and Kelly Robson. Yes, it was a great conversation. I feel so blessed and fortunate that I pretty much get to have my fantasy dinner parties on a regular basis now. 

Last week I got to have dinner with Amanda Bouchet, Maria V. Snyder, Jennifer Estep, H.R. Moore, and Maria Vale. On another evening, I sat between Juliette Cross and Chloe C. Peñaranda, later joined by Carissa Broadbent. 

The one person I have yet to meet in person - and hopefully have dinner with! - is Neil Gaiman. But I do have his cell phone number and have chatted with him on the phone, which gives me all kinds of happiness right there. Since it's a fantasy, Anne McCaffrey, Tanith Lee, and Vonda McIntyre could all come back from the dead and join us. 

My younger self would be thrilled. 

 

Self-Promo Allergy Cure

Oh lort. It's self-promo week. If anyone needs me, I'll be in my pillow fort with Perceval. Why, oh why does self-promo give me such a rash? I mean, yes, I'm mortified that I don't have a new book to promo. I hate that, and then, I think, there's a dose of self-loathing that dribbles into the mix, too, no matter how hard you try to tell yourself it's okay. You're making slow, steady progress. 

Spoiler alert: It never, ever feels okay.

So, I'll stare that icky feeling right in the face and say, hey! Can I interest you in a weird little tale that you'll either love or you'll hate? Damned If He Does is a light read about an incubus who gets tangled up with an asexual and her cat. Or is that the other way around?