Cold Outside - Flash Fiction for the Frozen

     Fire painted the stone walls of the throne room red. Corva Frostmache stood before her mother's throne, surrounded armed men. Dortel, the self-styled lord of the clan, sat forward, studying her, a hint of triumph in his too wide smile.
     "The charge is sedition, Corva," he said. "How do you plead?"
     "You sit upon the throne of the clans, my mother's rightful place, and you ask that question? The Gods strike you down for the murder of the queen and for usurping her throne," she replied.
     "Enough." Dortel waved a plump sausage of a hand and sat back. "Put her out."
     Elmat, a wizened skeleton of an advisor, hesitated, looking between Corva and his lord. "Sir. The vote."
     "Am I not lord here? There will be no vote. Put her out."
     "It's the frost moon!" the older man protested. "The cold . . ."
     Dortel's self-satisfied smile turned Corva's stomach. "Mayhap the cold will cool Corva's temper and her attempts to stir up treason."
     Her fists clenched. "We are the Frostmache. Justice is our call."
     "You were the Frostmache," he corrected. "A new age has come. No more will our mothers rule our clans. The might of our arms will bring riches and new glory to our age. . . Damn your plucking at my sleeve, old man! What do you want?"
     "You sought my wisdom, sir," Elmat said.
     "Speak it, then!"
     "You are young, yet. Much has been forgotten. Legend says the Forstmache draw their power from winter itself. If you mean to stamp out the line, you would do well to cut this one down where she stands."
     "This is your advice? Fairy tales and the means to make a martyr of her?" Dortal demanded. "You're older than I thought. You would give a rallying cry to those mired in a past swept away."
     "By your brutality," Corva said.
     "I will not sully the edge of my blade with her blood," he spat. "Get out and die, witch. We'll seek your corpse for burial come the thaw."
     The huge, iron-banded oak doors boomed. Snow and razor sharp crystals of ice snarled in on the wail of the wind.
     Corva lifted her chin lifted and strode for the door the usurper's soldiers held.
     Elmat met her at the door, a frown upon his lips that deepened the furrows already plowed across his brow. He held out a hand.
     A single coal from the hall fire. That much tradition they'd observe?
     Corva sneered. "Keep your pity, old fool."
     His frown deepened and he thrust the warm clay holder into her hand. "It's cold outside."
     She nodded. "Your wisdom is wasted when you speak it to one who will not hear. Cold you say? I'm counting on it."

Cold? It mentions ice...

Many things are happening right now, so I don't have a proper blog post for today.  It's supposed to be Flash Fiction (not my forte) on "It's Cold Outside", but I live in Texas and it was 84º today.

Instead, here's a little tease from my secondary Work-in-Progress.  (In other words, not A Parliament of Bodies, or anything to do with Maradaine.)  This is from the Space Opera WIP tentatively called Banshee...

---

“Tell us who she is!  Tell us how to defeat her!”

Hagchlek made a noise that was oddly like laughter.  “You won’t.  You still do not understand what you are dealing with.  She is a human from Mars.  Do you understand what that means?”

Two of the shock troops came hustling around corner.  Kengle switched her rifle to sonic mode, and fired a boom down the hall.  They dropped clutching at their heads.

“She’s coming,” Hagchlek’s interrogator said.  Hagchlek kept going.

“Do you know what Mars is?  It was a desolate, icy rock in the humans’ home system, and humans came and said ‘We’ll make this into a place we can live’ and by fire they did.  They did that on dead moons and toxic planets throughout their system. And then humans piled into ships that crawled slower than light and lived and died in those boxes so their great-grandchildren might find a new home on another world, and when the worlds they found were also desolate rocks, they bent them to their will.  If you think some challenge is impossible, I tell you, you haven’t met humans.”

“What is this mad species?”

“They are what you have brought on your head.  We fought them for generations and no setback, no failure could deter them.  When they collectively decide to defeat a problem, they will not be stopped.”

“But she’s just one human!”

“And one is a plague upon you.  And know this: even if you kill Samantha Kengle, all you’ll succeed in is bringing all of humanity on your head.”

February 2017 Flash Fiction

Its Cold Outside


The days had darkened and the frozen flakes had fallen. The rain came, creating a mist as it threatened to wash away the layer of snow but Winter fought back. The temperature dropped and now the white world wore a glistening topcoat of ice.

In the darkened forest, the bare branches were bowed from the weight, but reflecting the moonlight, the trees glimmered like ghosts. Zaiera viewed it from her open window, raising the fur-lined hood to cover her head. She did not want to mar the unbroken beauty of this crystal-covered ground, but leaving footprints was unavoidable.

She lowered her pack, then moved to sit on the sill.

She was going. The best they could do was follow. But they could not stop her.

Flash Fiction: Baby, It's Not Cold Outside

Seven inches. There should have been a minimum of seven inches of fresh snow on the ground. Those seven inches should have been layered atop ten more, minus two for melt and refreeze. The weather frogs had promised. It was February, after all.

Instead, flowers had not only germinated, they'd begun to bloom.

The only seven inches he'd loll in this year was in his orthopedic bed. The canvas cover had worn to a softness that cradled his aching hips and shoulders. He winced as the degenerative disks in his lower back sent spasms down his left leg.

Next year then. Maybe next year he'd mush across fields blanketed in thick snow. The frigid winds ripping through his coat. The snowflakes clinging to his face, giving the world a lovely haze. The pure silence of a breathless wonderland waiting to echo his call. ...

Next year. Maybe. If the drugs kept the pain at bay. If the next stroke didn't take mobility from both legs. Maybe next year.

With a grunt and a grumble, the old husky shook in his harness and boots and went back inside.

I Am The Interviewer

Jake the Cat does not do interviews BTW.

Our topic this week is remedies for stale interviews.

Well, I'm the Interviewer an awful lot of the time because I interview authors for the USA Today Happy Ever After blog, so perhaps my perspective on this will be a bit different. My day job nowadays is fulltime author but I also love contributing to the HEA blog, and especially discussing scifi and fantasy romance. Occasionally I interview an author like JoAnn Ross or Barbara Delinsky, someone who has always been one of my favorites as a reader, but whose writing lies primarily outside the scifi romance genre, and that's fun too.

I typically ask about five questions in one of my interviews. I always read the book first - and wow, it is fun to get one of Nalini Singh's, Ilona Andrews's or Jeffe's books in the Advance Review Copy format, months before the book is released. I've stayed up a few nights reading straight through when one of those treasures hits my kindle! If the author is someone who's been interviewed many times before, I go out and research their interviews because I don't want to ask all the same stuff if I can help it. I take it as a personal challenge, especially if they have a list of Q&A on their blog or website that covers all the standard questions. If I have a book related question that I find someone else has asked before me, I pass and try to dig deeper. I usually end up with about ten questions I'd love to ask but some of them are too nitty gritty, or purely from the author standpoint - something about how the book is written, versus things that might interest a non-author reader. So I may want to know the answer, but it's not general enough to put on HEA.

A couple of my interviews that I did by phone have turned into me-as-an-author asking another author all kinds of craft questions and sharing experiences a little. I did that with John Scalzi and also with Michelle Lovretta, the creator, Executive Producer and writer for the TV show "Killjoys." (Both of them were kind enough to indulge me, within a set time limit, and those interviews were truly hilites of life for me.) All I can do then is laugh at myself and extract the answers from my copious notes that I hope will interest readers most.

So I narrow down my piles of questions, mostly by asking myself what other readers might really like to know about the behind the scenes of a book they love. I have to be respectful of the time the authors can devote to this, even for USA Today, because they have a LOT of promo to do, and other writing commitments.

I do ask some typical questions, like what the author's office looks like, or if they have a pet, because our readers find that of interest.

There's a time and place for those quick and dirty questions - you know the ones I mean: "tea or coffee," "Star Trek or Star Wars", "cats or dogs"? If someone is interviewing me and that's what they feel their readers want to know, then I'll answer.

But my trick I learned a long time ago, is that you do NOT have to answer the question you're asked. You can always turn the answer in a direction you want it to go. "Well, actually, Blog Host Person, "Aliens" is my favorite movie franchise and here's why." Or "what an excellent question but you know the thing to me is..." and off I go to talk about whatever I actually want to talk about. You can watch celebrities do this all the time on TV, very adroitly. (Not that I'm a celebrity but they do have the technique down pat.)

And in other news, pivoting adroitly here, my science fiction romance novels Star Cruise: Outbreak and Hostage to the Stars received SFR Galaxy Awards this past week! (CRUISE got two actually...). The Pets In Space anthology also received two. I as really honored and excited! Here's the website if you'd like to check out the entire list: http://sfrgalaxyawards.blogspot.com/ 

Interview Tips and Tricks

Have you ever been in a play? One that had an actual run - you know - you had to show up and perform every day for a week or more and twice on Sunday? Did you learn how to approach the show and your character as something new each time for the sake of each new audience? Maybe your director or stage manager gave the cast The Pep Talk: "You've done this show a hundred times now between rehearsals and performance, but for this audience, it's the first time. Invest."

Interviews are the same thing. No matter how many you do, no matter how many times you answer the same question over and over again, it may be old hat for you, but it is new to the people reading about you. It helps to approach interviews as a privilege - something you get to do rather than something you have to do. Well. It helps me. Because I still haven't gotten over being tickled to death about someone else actually wanting to talk to the socially awkward geek girl. So yeah. I do have a list of suggestions for anyone undertaking interviews:

1. It's about the honesty of your story telling.
2. Be willing to tell your truth.
3. Be willing to be vulnerable and even a little bit afraid.
4. Your life and your process are only uninteresting to you because they're yours.
5. When all else fails, channel your characters and answer from their voices.

By now, everyone who reads this blog knows the story about my first ever writing project - the princess who was an expert swordswoman and horsewoman who could take down an entire ship full of pirates. Oh. And who had a black panther named Scott for a pet. (Yeah, I dunno. I was twelve.) Let's be honest, that's a pretty embarrassing story, but it's a rich story because most of us have these kinds of stories from when we were kids. Even if the particulars of my story are totally laughable (some of them are and I'm fine with that) everyone can relate.

Relating to people is the whole reason for interviews. It really is a question of being willing to open a vein and invite readers to come swim in the blood of your story (and possibly your life). If you're thinking about it from that perspective, I doubt you'll ever be bored. Terrified, maybe, but bored? Probably not.

PS. If you haven't read James' amazing post about his mother and what she taught him, you should. Because James went on such an eloquent and well considered political bender, I kick my soap box back under the table and sit back nodding in agreement with him. Fight for what you want, people. Not against what you don't. Where your focus goes, so too does your energy. And there are some bastages who do not deserve the tiniest mote of your energy.

Perils of the Writer: Interviews

I'll cop to it, I love interviews.  I haven't done enough that I feel like it's "stale" yet at all.  I'm sure I'll get there, but today is not that day.  Which is good, because with The Holver Alley Crew just a month away, I've got a few coming up.

Over at File770 a few months ago, I had a good interview from Carl Slaughter with solid, on point questions that wanted to probe deeper into my work, specifically An Import of Intrigue.  I really liked answering those, as he showed a strong awareness about the work and what I was doing. 

CARL SLAUGHTER: The main character in Import of Intrigue is an uncircled mage. What exactly is an uncircled mage?

MARSHALL RYAN MARESCA: For mages to practice their craft in Maradaine, they need to be part of a Circle, which is a legal organization that provides training and accountability, but also that protects the mage from egregious arrest or prosecution. An Uncircled Mage is someone who has the knack for performing magic, but lacks the formal training, and thus is not part of any circle. This can happen a few different ways, but in Minox’s case, his magical abilities didn’t manifest until he was much older, when he was already in the constabulary.

CS: What sort of unique circumstances does a police detective who is an uncircled mage find himself in?

MRM: Since the Circles exist to give mages legal protection from constabulary harassment, they do not cooperate with the Constabulary at all. Which means that Minox—a man with deep familial ties to the Constabulary, who always wanted to be an Inspector—had to make the choice to not learn how to use his powers, and be shunned by other mages. But it also means that many in the Constabulary, who distrust and fear mages, don’t want to work with him. He’s on the outside in both worlds.

You can read the whole thing here.

Tricks to Remedy Stale Interview Questions

As an author, I've been the interviewee enough times to know that on a book blog-tour the same questions get asked a LOT. They start to feel stale pretty fast. With a new release coming soon and hoping to make some rounds on the blogs, this topic has been on my mind a bit.

The answers to standard get-to-know-the-author questions are what they are and they aren't going to change much. {Name, kids/pets, other interests, etc., etc.} There's got to be some mathmatical equation to note how much 'relatability' needs to be mixed with 'unique and fun personality' to create an ideal 'sell yourself' moment where you shine, because no one wants to fade into the background utterly forgettable.

I do not know this equation, I cannot tell you the secret. But I can tell you how to read more into a mediocre question. Good interviewers will ask questions that open the door to interesting answers, Example: When did you know you wanted to be writer?
Answer: Don't say 'since I was {insert age here} and leave it at that. (See below.) Insert a story. Maybe there was a big storm. The one where the electric had been knocked out and you were so scared, but your little sister was cuddling the dog and you didn't have anything to cuddle with for security so you hid under the covers with a flashlight and a notebook and distracted yourself by writing...and the next day, you re read it and just knew.

The tough stuff is identifying how to build up those questions that are answerable with one word. Example: How long have you been writing?
Answer: 25 years.  
       Short, sweet, and true. But it could be more. Can you, the storyteller, find a story answer? Maybe You know, when I overcame my phonics-troubles in second grade, I started putting together little books for my friends. About their dogs and cats being friends and going on adventures.

Something to remember, if you're doing a blog interview, most of the folks reading it will be followers of that blog who may be brand new to you as an author. Sure, some of your fans will go see what you said, but in all likelihood they already know you're a Trekkie with a big rottweiler-like dog. These fans are looking for the other information, about the new book. This is why I love KAK's suggestion from yesterday to leave an Easter Egg trail. You could even have a quiz on your website at the end of the blog tour and those who answer all the questions right are entered into a drawing...if you want to give readers a quiz to take that is.  Jeffe's post from Monday suggests keeping notes when drafting/revising your book, and that could help you build the trail.

For blog interviews done remotely, you often get the questions in advance. I'm guilty of having standard' answers prepared by cutting and pasting from a former interview. I've also considered putting some of those on a FAQ page on my website, so I can eliminate the less engaging questions by directing folks to the website, but why would I want to waste the space on non-necessary or non-engaging stuff?

For blog interviews done in person, I ask for the questions in advance so I can give consideration to what I want to say. I hate dead air time as much as anyone listening, and I don't want to sit there in silence hoping a lucid thought springs into my noggin. If I have had a chance to consider the question and the overall interview, I know where to insert my humorous story and where to be witty.

In the convention guest of honor one-on-one interview panel form, the lively author who can turn every question into a fun story is entertaining. Some folks are naturals at working the crowd. I do not count myself among them, but then I've never been a GOH or givven a live interview at a con.

That's all I've got right now, but I've enjoyed my cohort's posts so far and look forward to what the rest of them say as the week goes on.  Enjoy!!!