Like 'Aliens' with More Romance and Less Gore

The title of my post says it all for me. This is what I tell people when they ask me what I write.

I have two tropes or overriding recurring themes and have ever since I started writing at the age of 7.

1. True love with a Happy Ever After ending.
2. Science fiction. A strong man and a strong woman battling the usually life or death odds and surviving together. See Rule #1.

My first ever story featured a strong willed princess (with flying cats and flying horses) and a riverboat captain. Alas I can't recall what they were battling, although I strongly suspect something like the Id Monster from "Forbidden Planet" because that movie was imprinted on my brain at an early age. (On late night TV, folks.)

"Ever After" is my favorite version of the Cinderella fairy tale.

Every single one of my books revolves around a strong hero and heroine in  a tight situation, who grow to respect each other and then fall in love and have an HEA after the last alien is vanquished (or in the case of my ancient Egyptian novels, the last demon falls.)

Including my newest scifi romance, TWO AGAINST THE STARS.

It's what I want to read. it's what I want to watch on TV or at the movies...I had basically that situation in my real life for many years, until my husband was killed in an accident...well, not the aliens or the demons, but true love from high school onward, and us getting through all the life challenges together.  A team.

So, there you have it.

The Little Matchsitck Girl Theme

Remember the story of the little matchstick girl? The cheery tail of a child peering into the windows of the houses she's sold matches to - all of them golden, warm and inviting - and then (SPOILER!) she freezes to death. If you were like me, you grew up wondering why the hell an adult would read that damned story to you.

Then you started middle school or junior high. Awkward preteen that you were, aching to find where you belonged - and possibly secretly hoping you could make yourself into one of the cool, popular kids - did you came to comprehend the story? Did you stand on the outside looking in they way most of us did? Maybe everyone does that at some point in their lives.

Was it that sports team you desperately wanted to make but didn't? Or the prom you so badly wanted to attend but no one asked or those you asked said no, so you pretended you didn't really want to go anyway? It could have been being skipped over for promotion, a longing to end up on a best seller list, or maybe (mission accomplished for Jeffe!) a golden statuette of your very own.

Why am I reminding you of the ache that accompanies wanting but not yet having? Because that pain point is where my stories happen. Every single one is, on some level, about wanting, not having, and either coming to terms with that, or becoming the person who is worthy of winning the wanted thing. Whatever it may be. Of course, I'm perverse enough that getting what you wanted is never, ever the end of the story. It usually comes just prior to the black moment, because I'm a terrible human being that way.

In any case, my characters start a story suffer various types and stages of alienation. They're all of them searching for a place to belong. A few require a bit of redemption before they're fit to belong anywhere. But without fail, they all start out as that little matchstick girl, nose pressed against the frosty glass while killing cold and isolation gnaw at their hearts.

Did your family read The Little Match Girl when you were a kid? Do you remember how you reacted? Is it healthy for a kid's story to haunt someone into adulthood? Asking for a friend.

Recurrent Theme/Trope: The Chosen One

All the stories I

love love love 

are tales of good-versus-evil. 

I know, 

from a certain point of view, 

perhaps every story 

is good-versus-evil, 

so to put a finer point 

on my thought, 

I'll say that whether 

it's the everyday Joe 

opposing evil, 

or some mystical savior 

sent from on high, 

those Chosen Ones 

appeal to me.

  

But too often 

those Chosen One's 

have been male.

It's a big part of

WHY 

I write. 

In the last 20 years 

we've had a few women 

in that role filmwise 

either directly 

{Leeloo in 5th Element, c.1997} 

or arguably 

{Alice in Resident Evil franchise, 

Katniss of Hunger Games, 

Selene of the Underworld franchise}. 

Most recently, 

Diana of Themyscira 

has rooted herself 

as a badass, 

legit, female 

Chosen One 

to be Reckoned With.

I've been writing female 

Chosen Ones since 2009 

when Persephone Alcemdi 

-- "the Witches Messiah" -- 

first hit the shelves with 

VICIOUS CIRCLE. 

I've continued that trend with 

Jovienne 

released earlier this year.

It manifests in writing a

strong female character

who has a big destiny,

and showing her

facing her fears,

stepping up and

confronting evil

in addition

to the day-to-day 

struggles of her life.

Weed Themes in Writing: Not That Kind of Weed

No, not the kind you roll, the kind growing through your driveway. The kind you face down with a cannister of Round-Up, yet stay your trigger-finger lest you nuke the toads in the process. The kind when you rip the leaves from the stems still has a wide and deep root system waiting to grow another sprout or twelve. The kind that starts in the meadow and eventually pops up by the porch.

Try as you might, those weeds are survivors.

They're integrated into the soil of your imagination. Germinating while you're plotting. They don't need water or fertilizer; minding or tending. All they need is you focused on making the garden bloom, clicking out the word-count, sentences flowing, scenes growing, climaxes building, chapters swelling, denouements wrapping.

When you're done, and surveying the fields of your creation, you might not see them. You might not be aware that in midst of the herbs and flowers you meant to cultivate, are the weeds of themes that are intrinsically part of the way you look at life.

It might take a reviewer to point them out. 

Once you spot those weeds, raise a glass to them. Now you see the enduring power of nature.

Your nature.

What's it all about?

The topic for this week is what's your recurring Thieme and what's it all about.

Defiance, I suppose. At the end of the day I think every story should be about growth and the best forms of growth often come from adversity. In the SSEVEN FORGES series the Sa'Ba Taalor and the people of Fellein end up in a war that changes things substantially in the world of Fellein.

There are fights, skirmishes and finally a war that alters the paradigm drastically. On both sides, there are fighters who want change and those who want things to stay the same, but none of them can possibly be all right. There fore, defiance.

In THE LAST SACRIFICE, the first book in the TIDES OF WAR series it is one man fighting against impossible odds, against the gods themselves.

The themes have changed over the years. Most of what I write these days is more fantasy oriented and testosterone fueled than it used to be, but at the end of the day, exploration of characters through extreme situations has always been the framework of my writings.

What's Your Core Story?

So, this happened.

At the RWA National Convention in Orlando, I actually won a RITA® for Paranormal Romance. Our subgenre is a broad category ranging from J.R. Ward’s urban fantasies to Ann Aguirre’s and Susan Grant’s science fiction—along with Harlequin Nocturnes and Molly Harper’s Paranormal Romances. Winning was an amazing experience. Hearing my book’s title called out—THE PAGES OF THE MIND—gave me a rush of pure joy like no other.

Here’s a video clip of my win and speech, recorded by the fabulous Tawna Fenske, also a RITA finalist.

It had been heavy on my mind, that story I told, of being in Orlando at this same convention in 2010, and how low I’d felt. A long way for me to come.

I made time this year, as I try to do every year, to  attend Susan Elizabeth Phillips’ and Jayne Ann Krentz’s discussion of their careers and friendship over the many years. One thing they discuss is that every writer has a core story, which comes from the conflicts and beliefs that drive us. The core story is independent of the fictional landscape—meaning that it’s not confined to genre. It can take place in any genre and subgenre.

So it’s apropos that this week’s topic is “What is your recurring theme and how does it manifest?”

Mine is always about power and transformation. In THE PAGESOF THE MIND, my librarian bookworm heroine survived the rampages of a tyrant. She discovers her own power through fortitude, through surviving and arming herself with knowledge. To serve her high queen, she goes on a quest to discover hidden knowledge. She is kickass at understanding words and language—but to find true happiness and balance in herself, she has to learn to trust in the wordless, in the language of the body and passion.

This story comes out in my contemporary and erotic romances, too, and even in my nonfiction essays. For me, finding the personal power in ourselves to become more than who we’ve been is the great journey of our lives.

And that’s a journey I’ve undertaken these last seven years—from crying in the bar because someone said my work fell in the cracks between genres, to standing up on that stage with a RITA® in my hand.

Felt pretty damn wonderful, too. 

New #SciFi Release TWO AGAINST THE STARS Exclusive Excerpt

Cover Art by Fiona Jayde

First though, congratulations to Jeffe on her RITA Award this week - yay!!!

**************

I just released a new science fiction romance this week, Two Against the Stars, so instead of flash fiction, I'll share an excerpt.

The story:

Empathic priestess Carialle has escaped the evil Amarotu Combine, but she’s hardly out of danger. Not when she risks everything to rescue a drugged man from a crooked veterans’ clinic. By lulling the clinic staff to sleep, she reveals her powers. And once again, criminals are after her and her rescuer.

Marcus Valerian, a wounded Special Forces veteran, never expected to have his life threatened by the clinic that’s supposed to help ex-soldiers like him. But when he wakes from a drugged state to find a lovely woman urging him to run–he does. In his family’s remote fishing cabin, he suffers the agony of withdrawal, soothed only by her powers.

In their idyllic hideaway, the two also discover a nova-hot attraction flaring. But can they stay alive long enough for it to become more? Not if the Combine has anything to say–they are not giving up until Marcus is dead and Carialle is their weapon.

The Excerpt – The Heroine catches her first glimpse of the hero and learns of her employer’s deadly schemes:

…she heard a commotion outside. Hastily she gathered up her tools and supplies and directed her robo cart into the corridor. Coming toward her was Mrs. Trang, talking to an officious man dressed all in white, while behind them was an anti grav litter escorted by four husky orderlies. Peters and Matikian trailed behind. The patient on the litter was shouting incoherently, fighting the restraints, cursing. He seemed to be in the grip of a delusion about being captured by Mawreg, the deadliest enemy of the Sectors civilization, against whom war was constantly being waged.

Appalled both by the man’s violent behavior and the cruel way he was restrained, Carialle flattened herself against the wall and watched as the litter was floated into the room, rocking precariously from the vehement struggles of the ill man. It took all four of the attendants to transfer him to the bed and shackle him tightly to the rails, as Peters slid the medical unit over the lower half of the patient’s body. Matikan jabbed an inject into the man’s neck with a force that made Carialle wince. He enjoyed that.

The patient convulsed and collapsed, going limp against his bonds.

“I’d keep him well under control,” the man in charge said. “Fully sedated. For his own good,” he added with a wink.

“Yes, doctor, of course.” Mrs. Trang was all smiles as she agreed with the suggested course of treatment.

Carialle was shocked to find the owner’s aura full of the bright green of greed, banded with the rusty red of evil and the corroded gold of improperly used power. She lingered to watch the patient as the others left the room, inhaling sharply as her still active senses ‘read’ him.

At his core was the blue fire of a true warrior of Thuun. His aura blazed with it.

Small patches of the dull gray intruded around the edges of the flames, probably from the inject he’d been given. The flames were distorted in a disturbing fashion she’d never seen before, blurry. Odd pools of oily black drifted in the center of his aura, three of them, walled off from each other by twisted knots of  bright white so glaring she had to shut down her observation, which had never happened to her before.

“Hey, you ok?”

She jumped as Peters tapped her shoulder. “Sorry, I—I was surprised at how agitated the man was when he was brought him in.”

“Yeah, the patients are usually a lot farther gone by the time we get them. He’s a big prize.”

“What do you mean?” Disturbed by her vision of the blue flames, as well as those mysterious black pools confined by the white lights, Carialle kept walking toward the next area she was due to clean. Mustn’t appear to be slacking off, especially with the owner on the premises.

“Sweetie, what do you think Mrs. Trang is running here?” Peters kept pace with her.

Puzzled, she said, “A rehab clinic.”

He shook his head. “Yeah sure, in the other part of the building. Over here, she keeps them alive so she can scrape their veterans’ benefits. And she takes the payments for all the fancy therapy, nutritious foods, supplemental meds and special care they’re supposed to be receiving. Nice little racket. Her and the doc are in it together. He directs suitable patients her way and she gives him a kickback.”  Peters leaned closer, as if the way to her reluctant heart was to share his employer’s secrets with her. “This new guy ain’t even supposed to be here. He was Special Forces, badly injured in action, then got himself tortured by the Mawreg before he was rescued. The military ran him through rejuve regeneration to fix his body but his mind is fucked up.  He was supposed to go to a fancy, high end rehab clinic on the eastern continent but Trang and the doc diverted him here.  Forged the records. No one will ever know he existed. Much less find him.”

“Why?” Horrified, she exerted pressure to keep him talking for once. This new patient wasn’t her problem, not at all, but the glimpse of the blue flames rattled her to the core. Assisting a warrior of Thuun was the highest duty of a priestess. But I’m not a priestess and he can’t be a warrior of my god—he’s human. I don’t know him, I owe him nothing. But despite her frantic denials, she was under a compulsion to understand the situation more fully.

“Special Forces are awarded a more generous pension than these other poor bastards who were regular military, maybe five times as much. What she really wants from our new resident though is his veterans’ acres. He’s entitled to prime real estate, courtesy of the grateful Sectors.”

“How will she acquire land meant to be his?”

“The drug she gives them, toranquidol? It destroys the mind over time but there’s a point in the process where free will is gone but the victim retains certain functions. She can make them do anything she wants. She’s gotten rich off of having these poor bastards change their wills, sign over property, you name it. Even married one or two of them along the way for the death benefit and life insurance payouts. He’ll sign the forms to give her the veterans acres.” Peters chuckled, sounding as if he admired Mrs. Trang’s ingenuity at scamming. “I guess what the Sectors authorities don’t know won’t hurt them. I mean, who cares, right?”

“But don’t the patients’ families—”

Peters shook his head. “She and the doc pick their targets carefully. No family, no one to ask awkward questions. Or interfere.”

So what’s Carialle – a fugitive herself -  going to do about this?

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A Midsummer's Barbeque - of an Incubus

HUGE CONGRATULATIONS TO JEFFE KENNEDY!!! RITA WINNER! :D

My regularly scheduled post:

Behold my inability to offer you flash fiction whilst in the midst of migraine. The drugs are onboard and I should be okay eventually. But deadlines wait for no head-splitter. So an excerpt of a fiery scene it is.  This is from Damned If He Does. Our hero has attempted to seduce the heroine to no effect. Since he's an incubus, this is not expected. So he reports to his boss for advice. Only that doesn't go exactly as planned.

“Incubus,” Ole Scratch said when the elevator door opened. He didn’t bother to look up from whatever he was working on. “You’re here off schedule.”

Darsorin approached the desk. “Yes. I’m a little confounded.”

Satan glanced up at that, though he continued writing, his pencil shrieking against the paper.

It set Dar’s teeth on edge.

“You’re empty-handed. Even after the power I fed you.”

Nearly burst him with, Dar corrected. Not that he’d ever admit that aloud. “She’s asexual.”

“An ace?” Satan’s gaze returned to his work. “Fine. You’ve wasted enough time on that one. Leave her.”

“No.”

The pencil stopped. Ole Scratch lifted his bottomless, soot-black gaze to Darsorin’s. Scorching heat licked his skin. Gritting his teeth, he forced himself to go on meeting the twin pits of endless evil.

“What did you say to me, unwise little demon?”

“I’ve upheld my part of the bargain several times a night all over the world for the past . . .”

“And you will go on doing so for all of eternity, Hugh McClellan,” the Devil noted in a flat, soft voice.

Dread shivered up his spine at hearing his true name on the Devil’s tongue.

“Or do you grow weary of your enviable task? You seduce countless women, something you embraced with relish in life.”

No match for that jab, he closed his eyes. “And sacrificed that life to it.”

Ole Scratch chuckled. Screams of tortured souls echoed behind the sound. “You were judged and damned. It wouldn’t be punishment if it didn’t pinch, now would it? You understand your options.”

“I haven’t been Hugh McClellan since the day I died. You made certain of it.”

“And yet it is your true name and still holds your soul in thrall. So hear me. Leave her or seduce her and bring me the curative power of her sexual energy. Your soul hangs in the balance. If you’ve lost your taste for a job in the afterlife that takes advantage of the proclivities you displayed in life, I am certain I can find some other situation for you. Perhaps you’d prefer to spend eternity the way murderers do.”

He tried to suppress a shudder. Failed. Heaven provided special dispensation to Satan for the punishment of murderers. Souls damned for killing someone – anyone – stood in for innocent murder victims time after time. The innocent souls still died, something neither Heaven nor Hell could prevent because of the freewill clause in the human/Divine contract, but the innocent could be spared pain and horror by trading in a damned soul to take the brunt. The punishment was reserved for the most violent, and insanely painful circumstances. Devilish, effective comeuppance. Dar had never had the courage to ask what Ole Scratch got out of that bargain. That Satan did was certain.

Dar swallowed hard and opened his eyes. “Understood.”

His boss’s eyes narrowed as he studied Darsorin. “What is it about this one? You’ve imagined yourself infatuated many times before now. How is this one different?”

“She has no expectation,” he said. “I’m not a means to an end.”

Ole Scratch snorted and sat back in his chair. “You imagine she values you for you? When she has no idea who and what you are? Son. You’re thinking with the wrong head.”

“It’s not like I have a heart to break,” he snapped.

“Or to give. Remember that. Don’t imagine you’re falling for her. You weren’t capable of it in life and you are not capable of it now. Make your choices going forward very, very carefully.”

Demotion hung unspoken in the air between them. Darsorin blew out a sharp breath. “I’ll let it go for a few days. Give her time to cool off. She ordered me to leave her alone.”

“Why would she do that, Incubus?”

“She caught me out. Recognized me in waking life.”

“You were staking her out?”

“Looking for a way to break her open,” Darsorin said, nodding. “She confronted me.”

Satan shrugged. “Not the first time it’s happened. It won’t be the last.”

“Though usually, it leads to a waking sexual encounter,” Dar said. “This did not.”

“What did it lead to?”

“Breakfast.”

“Breakfast.”

Darsorin shrugged. “I made her a deal. I’d leave her alone if she’d have breakfast with me and tell me why nothing I did worked on her.”

Ole Scratch sat bolt upright, his eyes wide. “You did WHAT?”

The floor trembled.

Darsorin froze.

“You. Made. A. Deal.” Satan bit out the words as he rose, his fists planted on his desk. “YOU MADE A DEAL? Show me. NOW.”

He did.

“You struck a bargain with her.” The Devil snarled. Darkness swallowed the sunshine outside. Thunder rumbled. “You swore an oath to leave her alone. To vanish from her life.”

“With no intention . . .”

“Any bargain you strike with an innocent is made in MY name! Think you that I’ll be forsworn by the likes of you? Over her? When I again do battle with the Divine, it will be on my terms and in my time. You gave your word, demon. You will keep it.”

Satan flung a gesture at him.

Fire erupted around him, slamming him to the melting carpet, consuming him. His skin bubbled and crisped, cracking. The scream ripped from his blistering lips came out a hoarse, parched croak. He became pain and smoke.

A distant shrill rattled his charring skull.

Smoke detectors.

The flames winked out of existence.

Darsorin, trapped in a body that Satan couldn’t kill, lay shuddering on the carpet that he’d become a part of. The fibers had melted into his charred skin.

The Devil uttered a guttural, ugly word not meant for human ears. It resonated through the tortured flesh and bones of Darsorin, all the way to the damned soul of Hugh McClellan, which Satan held in thrall.

Reality opened beneath him and he fell.

He moaned a protest before he plunged straight into the soul crushing gray stones of his penitent's cell and into a sadist’s lash.