These Are A Few of My Favorite Things...

This week at the SFF Seven, our topic is Favorite Things. I'm supposed to share three items that I love, and they can be anything. Funny, I started making a Favorite Things guide on Instagram to share with readers prior to the holidays, but I never finished it, so I'll post three things here--other than my family, my pups, and my laptop ;) Take a look! You might find something you like!

This West Elm blanket. This might seem like a weird Fave Thing, but I cannot live without it. It's so soft, cool in the summer, warm in the winter, organic cotton, and it washes so well. I would give loads of these blankets as gifts if I could. I'm obsessed and recommend it ALL THE TIME. I have one on every bed in my home, and I hope they never stop making them.

Storiarts Gloves. I love these so much! Storiarts carries a wide selection of fingerless gloves and other apparel and home goods with excerpts of classic novels (and some modern tales) printed on the fabric. They're a very soft cotton and wash well with no shrinking. No itchy wool. I'm always cold, so these fingerless gloves save me when I'm trying to write during Tennessee's icy winters.

Last but not least: All things Papier. If you're a writer and would like a nice note card that says FROM THE DESK OF {Insert Your Name}, this is where you need to shop. You can personalize the note cards any way you choose, and at a 5x7 size, they're large enough to write as much as you want. Papier also has planners, notebooks, stationary, invitations, and journals, all of which are excellent quality. There are so many lovely prints too, and most of their items can be personalized. I'm sharing this planner (which I don't have--yet), but I do have FROM THE DESK OF note cards that have a beautiful magical vibe with gold foil, and I love them.

That's it! Maybe you found something you like, or a good option for a gift. Christmas will be here in no time!

Happy Holidays,

Alexia's Favorite Perk to being an Author!

 Publishing is a strange, strange occupation…at least from my POV coming from the medical field. It’s time tables are opaque and responses from people lag for months until suddenly something is needed yesterday. 

It’s easy to pick out the dislikes in the book making biz, as it is with everything. But I like to focus on the good stuff—the highlights! 

My number one fave of being an author:

Being blessed to be included in some wonderful groups of authors!

This picture are my 2018 Golden Heart sisters, the Persisters. Having a group of writers that, no matter which publishing path they were taking, were starting out at about the same place was invaluable. Having these fabulous women, and the women I met through my Golden Heart experience, is definitely the best part of being an author and I hope that each and every one of you find a like-minded group to feel at home with. 

My next fave is being able to work from home and have this guy around all the time. 

Ullr the husky pup

Writing's a lonely gig! You're in your own head, you need no to minimal interruptions, quiet places rule, and all communication is done through email. It's easy to loose connections, which is maybe why authors are so fond of their pets. And I gotta say, I'm awfully fond of Ullr—even when he's a knucklehead and whining to go outside to chase squirrels. 

What are your best and worst aspects of being an author?

Derivative Fun in the WIP

My favorite thing about the current WIP is that I get to be a kid again.

Edie is a thinly veiled homage to my favorite MMORPG character ever. I can't say which game because frankly the game company believes they own my character and everything about her even if *I* did all the work creating and voicing her. So no screenshots of her, either. What is it about this situation that lets me be a kid?

I can pack Edie's speech, actions, and characterization full of Easter Eggs that harken back to the character and game of origin. I get that maybe three people on earth will recognize them when they read them. It amuses me while I write, so that's my excuse. There's a distinct chance that not a single one will survive editorial, anyway. Oh well. True, my game character had magic as the basis for her power and I frankly can't swing that in an SFR, but you know. Arthur C. Clarke, right? "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."  So Edie has the tech to do what the things her progenitor did with magic.

All of this came about because the game company made repeated disparaging remarks about the race of character I had chosen to play. It's as if they learned nothing from Robin William's devastating suicide. The gist of their statement about this particular race of characters was something like 'this fictional race is too ridiculous to be taken seriously.' Sure. It looks like the game designers built the race in question to provide comedic relief in the game. But I think they're wrong. Dead wrong. I think most of us have come to understand that the funniest exteriors mask the most tragic and conflicted interiors.

So yeah. No pressure or anything, but I'm doing my best to pack all that stuff into a character who only has 90k words and a romance to get off the ground. My other favorite thing about it is that I don't have a hard deadline. So when something isn't working, I can afford the time to backtrack and figure out where I deviated from The One True Path.

Now. My very favorite thing on earth will be FINALLY finishing this thing. So I'm off to do that.

Sneak A Peek: Favorite Thing in Current WiP

Hello, Sunday Readers!

Jeffe's off partying hard with the SFWA at their Nebulas Weekend. If that sounds like a mash of mystery words, well, come back on Tuesday for Jeffe's lowdown on hobnobbing with the likes of Peter Beagle and the Muppets.

That leaves me to kick off the week's topic of "What's Our Favorite Thing in Our Current Work in Progress (WiP)."

I'm working on Book 4 in my Immortal Spy series, THE HANGED SPY. So far, my favorite thing is deepening the relationship between my protagonist and her primary romantic interest. They have a long history she can't remember and he's cursed to not speak of. Like many long-term relationships, there have been good times and times they tried to kill each other. Third parties who knew one or both of them "back in the day" pop up throughout the series to nudge them back together or to prevent their HEA. My favorite parts are the private moments between them when there's nobody meddling in their lives. They have a lot of fun needling each other as they navigate their new normal.

Excerpt (that may or may not make into the final edit). For context, my protag is a kind of magical transporter who has a habit of relocating herself when she sleeps:

Bix jerked her attention back to him as her temper woke. “If I wanted you in my bed, Tobek, I wouldn’t stoop to tricking you with aphrodisiacs. Enthusiastic consent or nothing at all.”

His brows shot to his hairline. He took two steps to close the distance between them. “When it comes to you, I am an endlessly patient man. However, do not confuse my patience for being obtuse. You may not understand the complex emotions you feel when it comes to me or the interplay of what exists between us. I cannot help but be keenly aware of my feelings for you as well as your feelings for me…as quixotic as they are.”

Her surprise lasted a heartbeat until she remembered his Eternal Knot, etched beneath his layers of ink, was anchored to piece of her that existed within him. Samesies for the Enteral Knot hidden on her chest that anchored a piece of him within her. It was an emotional conduit meant to help the woman she'd once been understand empathy and cope with emotion. She hadn’t really spared a lot of thought for what Tobek got out of the deal.

“I too will accept nothing less than your very vocal and enthusiastic consent. Dithering isn’t going to be good enough. Neither will be mustering courage nor naïve curiosity. I too have standards.” He grinned. “Besides, sweetheart, you have no idea how many times you fetch me to your bed. You’re too sound asleep.”

Favorite Books

Joyous Yule, northern hemisphere! Happy Litha to the southern hemisphere!

We do this every year - we write about our favorite books of the year as if there were any hope that I had read a single book that had actually come out this year. That's because the TBR pile is deep and wide. And this year, I managed to read something that was actually published this decade, so that's progress, right? A good portion of my problem is that for ten years, I had a secret TBR stash - paper books - all hidden away from the mildewing influence of saltwater and damp. 

So my two favorite books are the first two books in a trilogy by Ilona Andrews. 

Burn For Me and White Hot

The trilogy is a paranormal mystery series. Tortured, brooding, scary hero. Plucky, resourceful heroine. Add some romance, lots of sexual tension, magic, bad guys not afraid to kill millions of people, and clues that seem to lead nowhere and you have yourself a really fun time. Super enjoyable books. Love the characters. These are stories I look at when I want to take a finely crafted, well paced story. The last book in the series is also good, but it got a little bogged down in recapping the first two books and the story lost some of its edge for me. I still bought it, mind, but if I had to stack rank the series, book 2 is the best, book 1 is a damned close second and the third book is definitely third.

The other books I read this year that I would call favorites were books I read under some really terrible circumstances. They were whatever I could get my hands on that would take my mind off what was happening. They were 1980s historical romance novels with plots I couldn't possibly recount now. Nor could I tell you the titles or the authors. It wasn't that the books were stellar. It was that by picking them up to distract myself, I discovered that I'd stopped reading over the past few years because I was having trouble seeing my Kindle. Put a paper book in my hand and magic happened. I read. And I read and I read. For two weeks straight I made it through a book a day. A little making up for lost time, I think. Just for the sheer, physical pleasure of scanning a line of text for the joy of it. And have it not be some dire health assessment for someone I love. Those books were the best books because I got to remember how much I love to read and how very much I'd missed it. 

When Your Favorite MInor Character is Evil

This releases next Tuesday. It's something a tad different from me. You can usually count on me to bring the grim and faintly creepy. Also, body count. Pretty much absent from this book.

It is possible that I attempted a bit of comedy. I'll leave that to you to decide whether or not I succeeded. This book has one of my favorite minor characters of all time - I wasn't supposed to like him. I didn't want to like him. But he is awfully charismatic in a way I hadn't expected. No. I am not talking about the heroine's cat. Of course I adore Archimedes.

In this case, my favorite minor character is Satan. Here's a bit of a scene he has with the heroine.





            Fire surrounded her. Everything, even the rocks, burned. Flames circled the jagged black surface on which she stood. Obsidian stairs rose to a dais and a throne fashioned from burning, still living, still screaming, people.

She looked away.

Hell.

“Welcome to my office.” Satan stood beside her, still in the human form he’d presented in the restaurant. “I see you’re indoctrinated well enough to expect the fire and brimstone motif. Trite but effective.”

Fiona quelled and her gaze ran away from him, too, only to find the damned souls being swarmed by serpents. The snakes buried fangs dripping with poison into the flesh of their victims. The wet, ripping sound reached her above the hiss and crackle of the flames.

“Ah, I see it in your face, the same look I see on the face of each soul who lands at the foot of my throne for the first time. Awareness that settles so rapidly into despair. Don’t make the mistake of thinking Hell is about despair,” the Devil said. His voice crashed down, crushing her beneath derision. “Despair is useless to me. Everyone adapts to it. I am about hope.”

He shifted, peeling back the illusion of civility. Of humanity. His skin reddened to crimson. His eyes turned black. No irises. No pupil. Just the endless depth of evil. He grew horns. A tail. A vicious, razor-toothed smile of triumph split his multi-planed face.

“I am the hope that sucks the marrow from your bones. The hope that shatters souls. I am every futile, dashed dream lying in broken-winged tatters at your feet,” he said, obscene relish in his tone.

Fiona snarled at the towering creature. “You’re the reason my mother couldn’t survive that heart attack?”

His laughter stoked the flames surrounding them higher. Screams shoved her to the ground, cowering with her hands over her ears while her skin charred and crisped. Her shriek mingled with the cries of the damned.

“Do you not pay attention?” he demanded. “No. Your pathetic mother’s death was never in my hands. But that tiny, flickering flame of hope that burned you to the ground before she died, that was me.

“No one resists hope. No one adapts to its lies. Futile hopes bring me more souls than any torment ever devised. Get up, you stupid mortal. You’re cooking alive. It’s against the rules you believe you know so much about.”

 

            A fetid wind, slimy and cold, oozed across her skin. Shuddering, she climbed to her feet. From the way she gulped for breath, from the shattering weariness dogging her, she might as well have climbed Mount Everest.


As you can see, Satan, in this book, has no issue with being bad. He actively enjoys it. He loves twisting everything he can get his hands on. And there's just something about that unabashed love of being evil that's appealing. Yet there's no danger that Satan would get his own book. He can't. Not the way the rules of the world work in this book. So he truly is a minor character who gets a few bits of stage time, and who cannot graduate to being the star of his own show. At least, not until he's ready to go to war with heaven again. And we all know how that ended last time.