Maggie Secara's Blog, page 4

I'm on a panel at LASFS tomorrow evening, 28 August, talking about world building with fantasy authors S. P.Hendrick and Robert Seutter, and it's being recorded for internet Krypton Radio! Please drop in if you're a member, or listen in later. This should be exciting.
ScheduleSaturday Sep 27 9PM Pacific (which happens to be my birthday)
Sunday Sep 28 5AM Pacific
Sunday Sep 28 4PM Pacific
Thursday Oct 2 5AM Pacific
Thursday Oct 2 4PM Pacific
Saturday Oct 4 5AM Pacific

I almost forgot to say anything!
My new book comes out this Friday, May 23! Between trying to settle into a new job and get out of debt and oh yes, recover from the surprise Attack of the Ruptured Appendix, I've been a little distracted, so I've kind of neglected to tell everyone, or plan much. But it's Friday!

Filled with myth and mermaids, music and madness, Mermaid Stair is the third of the Harper Errant trilogy.

A scrap of parchment with a mysterious sigil... A message in a forgotten language... A mermaid paradise of waterfalls and dreams... And Ben Harper’s life is about to get complicated—again.
1593
Scarred by fires inside and out, barred by his heritage from any kind of grace, half-fae Silence Carew longs for the comfort of a human soul. His life is one of unending anger and despair, until the day the voices in his head offer a monstrous solution. If he can find the nerve, and the Mermaid Stair, the reward he seeks can be bought with the blood of his mother’s people, the nymphs and mermaids of England.

2013
When the ageless lord of the River Thames is jolted out of retirement by news of horrific death among his nymphs, he calls on the king of Faerie for aid. Already alerted by disturbing visions, Oberon’s principal gentlemen, Ben Harper and acerbic, shape-changing Raven, find themselves once again in service—this time on the trail of a monster. With only Ben’s gift of finding and faerie music as a guide, vague clues lead them on a terrible chase through London’s many-layered history to a mythic confrontation on the banks of a vanished river.
Only the gods know what will come of it all!

Trust the Water

We've had bad years before, but at least we had our health. Where have I been lately?

Six months unemployment ended when I started a new job in mid-March. Two days later, my appendix burst, with complications, and landed me in the hospital for two weeks. Our reserves were already gone, our credit that was once so good has tanked. I'm at my wits' end. I have started back to work, but so many bills are backed up, I don't know how we'll ever recover. Any contributions will make a huge difference to getting us back on our feet again. It will also help keep the lights on, which is kind of critical since the new job is all telecommuting!

And since stressing about bills and health and everything else tends to stop the creative flow, you'll also be contributing to the further adventures of Ben and Raven and their friends in a substantive way. If you prefer not to put your credit card number out there right now, please drop me a note and I'll email a mailing address.

More news soon about The Mermaid Stair, coming May 25, 2014 from Crooked Cat.

Many thanks in advance!

I've been invited by historical author Mark Patton to join the 'My Writing Process' blog tour and I'm a little late but here it is. 

First, a few things about myself.


What am I working on?

I have a number of irons in the fire. The main one, of course, is my new novel The Mermaid Stair, which will be released by Crooked Cat at the end of April. Right now I'm working with my editor to get the manuscript tidied up for publication. As I mentioned last time, this third adventure in the Harper Errant series features Ben Harper, sometime reality TV host now full-time folk musician and recording entrepreneur. Assisted by Raven, principal gentlemen to the king of Faerie, Ben searches through time to track down a madman who is tormenting and killing the river nymphs of England. find him, and stop him, at no small cost.

I've also been writing short stories again. The first one placed
immediately, and "Jack's Day Out" will appear in Forest of Dreams from Fantastic Fantasy Writers in the spring. You remember Jack, the one with the Beanstalk? I'll bet you never knew he had a little brother. Taking another tack, "A Rescue in Graphite" will appear in an in-house anthology from Crooked Cat Books around Easter.

How does my work differ from others of its genre?

The fantasy genre allows for a lot of variation, and even then I think I'm approaching it in some unique ways. You could say I'm writing urban fantasy except that the "urban" setting can be the London of Charles Dickens, or William Shakespeare, or of the 2nd century AD.
Or of last summer. Or you could say I'm writing time-travel stories that also engage with the realm of Faerie. In other words, the Harper Errant books take up the heroic ideal as practiced in the past, present, and beyond the fields we know. But I'm also experimenting with both the fairy tale and the classic ghost story. Each has its challenges and charms. 

Why do I write what I do?

I love history and I love faerie, and most of all I look for the mythical in the every day, to discover the places where the realms of Faerie intersect the mundane. As a historian, I'm basically a gossip who just can’t stand that someone might have done something 400 years ago without my knowing about it, including who else was there, what
they had for dinner, and what they were wearing at the time. A life spent with old movies, old stories, and the Renaissance Pleasure Faire (the real original original faire) has fed the passion and provided the tools to continue the search and present what I find for the good of all... which is the hero's goal, after all.

How does my writing process work?

Oh good lord, who knows? All right, well, sometimes it starts with a question: What if my friend Ari had to solve a mystery? What would be about? What would he need? What would he stand to lose if things go wrong? What will he gain? Who can he ask for help? (That's the question that brought the fae into the story.) And most of all, what is at stake? 

Sometimes it starts with the words--poems nearly always do. But usually, there's a character. Then an outline. Not the kind we learned in school, it's more like a story board that goes scene by scene. When I start writing, it goes pretty fast, although there are always lots of holes and events--even sentences--in the wrong order. The revision process is a bit like putting together a jizsaw puzzle with half the pieces missing--and having to manufacture the missing ones from scratch.

The short story process, well, I'm still figuring that out. Sometimes I just start with "Once upon a time..." and go from there.

That's enough about me. This tour also introduces a few new authors, and here they are. Each of these ladies will do the same next week (ideally on Monday, 24 February): 
Penelope Anne Bartotto  started writing as soon as she stopped eating her crayons and hasn't stopped since. Her first published work sits proudly in the elementary school library where she wrote about Paul Bunyan. Later she began to explore the art of writing...whether journalism, poetry, fictional works, or the next speech she would use to win a debate, her pen flew across the paper more often than not. Publication started in the world of journalism, both print and digital. Starting in 1996 she worked for America Online, joined Oxygen Media in 1998, and has continued to write articles on a variety of topics.

In 2013 she took a chance and entered a writing contest for an anthology and to her surprise her fictional short story was selected for PARANORMAL ANTHOLOGY WITH A TWIST. She is currently working on a number of novels, and hopes to have a few more titles published in 2014. You can find her always haunting The Library at the End of the Universe both Online  and on Facebook 

T.E. MacArthur  is a historian, writer and artist living in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her first love is history. “There is no such thing as boring history,” she says, “only those who haven’t learned to see the mysteries, stories, intrigues, humor and joy in antiquity. Her next love is writing fiction. Historical fiction. Romantic fiction. Thrilling fiction. Mysterious fiction. 
When asked “if money were no concern and success guaranteed, what would you be?” she answers “novelist, historian, painter, improv actor, teacher, geologist, anthropologist, shamanist.” However while aiming at all of that she works for a world news organization and has even been published as a sports reporter. She is also an amateur geologist and lava-junkie. And, as you can imagine, her first novel, The volcano Lady concerns a lady geologist in the 1880′s.

A costume and artist too, Thena lives with her cat, Mac, who puts up with the costume bits, paint brushes, and mangled edited hardcopy pages strewn across the floor. If not plugged in and typing furiously while sipping coffee at a coffee house, she can be found at the S.F. Bay Area Tarot Symposium, PantheaCon, the Dickens Christmas Fair, the Pacifica Pier, or a dusty old bookstore.


Sharon Cathcart Books by internationally published author Sharon E. Cathcart provide discerning readers of essays, fiction and non-fiction with a powerful, truthful literary experience. A former journalist and newspaper editor, Sharon has been writing for as long as she can remember and generally has at least one work in progress. Her primary focus is creating fiction featuring atypical characters. Sharon lives with her husband and an assortment of pets in the Silicon Valley, California.

It's about time I mentioned... Crooked Cat Publishing has accepted The Mermaid Stair for publication! The third book in the Harper Errant will be released sometime in late April, 2014. The exact date is still TBD. 
The novel, like the series, features Ben Harper, sometime reality TV host now full-time folk musician and recording entrepreneur. Assisted by Raven, principal gentlemen to the king of Faerie, Ben searches through time to track down the madman who is tormenting and killing the river nymphs of England--and stop him. 
While interviewing nymphs and goddesses, a bored British matron who longs to be a mermaid, and a fairly well-known playwright with a wry sense of humor, the boys also have to look for the lost goddess of the River Fleet. When the two tasks overlap, the chase becomes doubly deadly.
The course of their pursuit sends the boys from the rivers of Faerie, down the length of the Thames, from the markets and villas of ancient Roman Londinium to the taverns and palaces of Shakespeare's England. Music, adventure, and terror abound as The Mermaid Stair reaches its enchanted conclusion.
         

If you must make resolutions, may I recommend a few? Some time, or many times, or all the time in the coming year
Be kind to someone who may not deserve it.
Create something wonderful, or useful, or both.
Be thoughtful of yourself a little.
Discover something new, and share it.
Be joyful.
Stop doing a thing that gives you more pain than pleasure.
Be magic, now and then.
Breathe.

This is the first scene from "Prior's Rest" (working title), a story that will eventually be the first chapter of the new novel, Donovan's Twist. Join me now in London, in the summer of 1856.

Streaming inward over the summer windows, fine lace, fine shadows dance just out of reach tickling the ordinary brown hair out of its long braid. Susan Pickering in her maiden’s bed, plumped up on pillows, with a prince of Faery’s sketchbook on her knees. 
By promise and instinct, stealing light from the painted globes of the lamp in a prodigal expense of oil, her pencil skates across the paper almost on its own. Shading and correcting as she goes, Susan’s left hand follows the magic; the rebellious hand that no governess has been able to bind or slap or exorcise into submission.

Round spectacles slide to the tip of her straight English nose. In a pause for breath, a finger tip shoves them back into place, then finds the paper again.

As always. the pictures swarming over the paper seem only partly her own, drawn from memory, perhaps, or a dream—but whose? A cat curled on a cushion, a stone well head, caged bird, a parade of monks gliding through a pointed Gothic archway in a ruined priory. People she knew, delicately approached, talked of automatic writing and spirits. They could have no idea, knew no more than she.
When she stops, she has covered two pages with drawings she scarcely understands. Squinting, Susan scrutinizes each one, seeing her own work as if for the first time. They would make sense, of a kind, if she asked them too. That’s the magic. Can it wait, just a little?

A fresh page opens under her hand. The drawing this time grows more slowly, deliberatelyas she considers her subject. She could draw him in the dark—the bright eyes, the mocking mouth, the outrageous whiskers that frame a dear face under his ridiculous bowler hat.

Where is he tonight, she wonders, shading the planes of broad cheekbones, the star at the corner of his mouth. They would marry at Christmas, perhaps. A year after their first meeting, Or next year, or the year after that, or when she could no longer bear to keep her last secrets. If he is not tired of waiting. If she has not gotten old. But where was he now, her wandering lodger, her beloved? Anywhere, somewhere, chasing a story. Chasing, chased, chaste. A modest smile pleats the corners of her eyes, creases the small mouth lighting the plain face. Sensible Susan transformed. Ned Donovan, crack reporter, ridiculous, transforming, would laugh out loud.

 A few more strokes add a collar, the shoulders of his coat; sketch him into a scene she has only imagined. Finally, pencil thrust behind her ear, Susan Pickering sits back admiring her work and God’s. Vibrating to the magic waiting in this image as well as the others. Something is coming, that much she knows, and she will need him. She has to know more.

“Show me,” Susan whispers, and settles back into her pillows to watch.

Nothing happens, not at once. Then with aching slowness the pencil lines begin to shift, lines cross-hatching, overlapping in an illusion of movement like the flickering figures in a zoetrope machine. The expression falls, the mouth loses its humor, the face turns away from her to look over his shoulder at something she did not put there. A smudge, a smear of graphite a figure in flailing rags quite small but expanding and more solid as if racing towards him, but the distance is very great, reaching out for Ned. Or for Susan. 
 She gasps and shakes the book. “No, no. He can’t see it. He can’t see it. Donovan, turn around!” The magic has always been silent. Even if she raises her voice he cannot hear her. “Oh what good is it if I can’t… No!”
The smudge is a busy, roiling mass of scribbles and fluttering lines. No shape, no face. Wicked. Hungry. Mad. But all around her the sultry airs of an English summer have become a desert wind, a sirocco drawing all joy and hope from the room, from her life. It is coming for them both.

“Stop!”

A gum eraser flies into the plain, unremarkable fingers. She dashes it against the frozen figure, scrubbing it away. And someone screams.

My guest this week, and the last one for the year, is Therese Wooldridge, otherwise known as T.J. and she has a new novel out this week! Welcome to her world!
                                        Scotland is a very dangerous place when it comes to its various fey inhabitants--particularly those who live in the water. If you look up evil types of faerie from Scotland, more than half are associated with water. Besides kelpies, which I'd done plenty of research on for my novel, The Kelpie, there are several other water horses from the various regions of Scotland: Doonies are shape-shifting water fey who look like ponies, the each uisge is a water horse specific to the highland seas and lochs, the noggle or nuggle is the Shetland version of a water horse, and shoopilteesare small water horses also from the Shetland islands. A quick search on Google will reward the seeker with plenty more harrowing water-based faerie who thoroughly enjoy hunting, killing, and eating humans. Possibly with some healthy torture thrown in.
But why are there so many frightening water monsters?
Well, for one, it's not unlikely that an awful lot of people have died or do die regularly due to the natural water hazards in Scotland. Or at sea, since it is surrounded by the ocean.
For purelyresearch reasons, my husband and I vacationed in Scotland last summer. It happened to be the end of June, the proper time of year I was setting The Kelpie, and a large portion of our trip was spent exploring the region I would set the novel. Neither of us had been to Scotland before, so there was an awful lot to explore, even in the few small areas we covered.            Here are some of our adventures:Stranded in Islay due to heavy rains and flooding.Puddle of Indiscernible Depth was a square on our homemade Roadblock Bingo card (also in Islay)Trails at Traquair House under water due to flooding of the Tweed river, a normal occurrence.Waterfowl that thrashed in trees and SOUNDED LIKE DINOSAURS! Secretly submerged trails by Loch Mire near St. Abbs. (The plants made it look like solid grass).Ocean trails to so dangerous that natives very firmly suggest tourists avoid them...down to having trail maps that mislead travelers away from the dangerous part.*Sheer cliffs into the ocean on the "forbidden" trails that the stubborn tourists found thanks to smartphones + Googling the adventures of other stubborn tourists.**
Needles to say, it took a reasonable amount of effort to avoid injurious and lethal water hazards in modern day Scotland.
But evil water horses?

First, let me say that I volunteered with horse rescue for almost ten years and ended up adopting my own horse. In fact, a percentage of all my royalties from The Kelpie sales will be going to the Bay State Equine Rescue. I can tell you without having gone to Scotland that horses are freaking scary!
An angry horse is dangerous and can kill you. The entire opening scene of The Kelpie was inspired by having a horse rear up on me and throw a temper tantrum while I was exercising him (instead of bringing him to meet the new mares that moved in across the street). This was a small horse, but there was no measure to the terror in my heart to see his front hooves beating the air above me and his lips pulled back in a sneer, baring his teeth.
It wasn't a huge jump, in that moment, to think, "Holy crap--and what if this was a predator animal that wanted to eat me!"
Furthermore, horses are especially surefooted animals. They can navigate some of the most impossible trails and if their natural habitat is one full of water hazards, they learn to navigate those well, too. Historically, horses have been an important part of Scottish culture, from farming to travel to fighting. Even now, as we were driving around, there were still quite a few horse stables, trail rides, and paddocks. In times when horses were even more prevalent, it would be a statistical improbability that horses didn't escape and lead those trying to catch them to their death simply because they knew the land better.
I had an awful lot of fun exploring Scotland and its myths for The Kelpie, and I hope you enjoyed this little journey into those adventures...as well as the result of that research in the novel's pages.
* One may argue that this is pure conjecture on the author's part; that one may also feel free to wander aimlessly in fields of sheep crap for hours on end trying to follow the trail map.
** I spent over an hour trying to find the picture-by-picture blog my husband had found on his Blackberry to no avail. :( He is the Husband-of-Awesome for many reasons, including his ability to find anything online.  The Kelpie is available through all online and brick & mortar bookstores, big box or your favorite independent store. 
About the Book The Kelpie on Amazon The Kelpie at Barnes & Noble ISBN: 978-1-937053-78-9ISBN (ebook): 978-1-937053-79-6Appropriate for ages 11 and upPrice: $7.95
About the Author:T. J. Wooldridge is a professional writing geek who adores research into myth, folklore, legend, and the English language. Before delving full-time into wordsmithing, she has been a tutor, a teacher, an educational course designer, a video game proofreader, a financial customer service representative, a wine salesperson, a food reviewer, an editing consultant, a retail sales manager, and a nanny. While infrequent, there are times she does occasionally not research, write, or help others write. During those rare moments, she enjoys the following activities: spending time with her Husband-of-Awesome, a silly tabby cat, and two Giant Baby Bunnies in their Massachusetts home hidden in a pocket of woods in the middle of suburbia, reading, riding her horse in the nearby country stables and trails (not very well), reading Tarot (very well), drawing (also not very well), making jewelry (pretty well), making lists, and adding parenthetical commentary during random conversations. She also enjoys dressing up as fey creatures, zombies, or other such nonsense at science fiction, fantasy, and horror conventions.

The word cloud from a favorite chapter of The Dragon Ring.http://www.wordle.net/create

Another fabulous broad from Broad Universe, Rory ni Coileáin has survived both a creative writing degree and rejection by a Very Big Author. She has followed a writerly path, which may not be for everyone, but is certainly her own.    
                                          
It was forty years ago right about… oh, now… that I first picked up a copy of Frank Herbert’s Dune. It originally caught my eye because I was tired of books I could devour in a single sitting (which was most books, and certainly anything that was considered “age-appropriate” for eleven), and Dune was a Very Fat Book. But that happy chance hurled me headlong into the realm of speculative fiction, where I have tarried long with Duane and Yolen and LeGuin and Brin and Cherryh and McCaffrey and Gaiman, and I’ve never looked back.

I have, however, looked sideways in a few interesting directions. After spending thirty years not using my creative writing degree (after a seriously scathing rejection letter from Marion Zimmer Bradley, whom I worshiped at the time and figured that if anyone was qualified to tell me I was a talentless hack who shouldn’t even be considering putting pen to paper, it was her), I am finally a published author of one urban fantasy series, and about to roll out a second. Urban fantasy erotic romance. Gay urban fantasy erotic romance. I’m a card-carrying member of both Broad Universe and the Romance Writers of America, and darned proud of both.

Because while the adult content of my books determines where they’re shelved, I consider myself very much a fantasy author. My first series, the "SoulShares", involves a completely realized Fae world, the Realm, and what happens when you mix Fae and humans. Oh, and there’s a supernatural villain that gives me shivers, and I wrote him. Her. It. Them. Whatever. I draw quite a bit on Irish legend and language for my Fae, but the legend is my own take, and the language is mutated phonetically (I’ve studied just enough linguistics, and enough Irish, to be dangerous).

Why romance? Because I’ve discovered that the stories I like to tell are the ones where two people meet and gradually figure out they can’t live without one another. Why erotic romance? Because I have no brakes and no filter. Seriously, I don’t do anything halfway, and when sex is something that would naturally happen in the story, I see no reason to back away from it, and every reason to make it really good. But I’ll tell you one thing – none of the adult content in any of my books is gratuitous or titillating. If it’s there, there’s a darn good plot-driven reason for it.
I may branch out, eventually. I had an idea hit me upside the head the other day for a Fae steampunk novel set on the first Fae/human interstellar starship. That’s going to have to wait a while, though – I think I have to mess with my timeline a bit, first. But in the meantime, I’m thrilled to finally be writing, in part, in the genre I’ve loved since I was a bookish, reclusive little girl with an enormous imagination.


More about Rory ni CoileáinRory is an editor of legal opinions by day, a chronicler of very naughty Fae by night, and the mother of a high school senior all the time, except in public. In her spare time – ha! – she sings in her church and Cathedral choirs, teaches Irish dancing, and caters to the whims of a dog who is three-quarters golden retriever, one quarter husky, and all hair – if she ever learns to spin, she’ll be able to knit herself a puppy a week – and a cat who is extraordinarily good at taking up the middle half of a queen-sized bed. 
More from Rory ni CoileáinIf you would like to learn more about the worlds of the SoulShares (Ravenous Romance) or the 
Gille Dubh (upcoming from Ellora’s Cave beginning December 2013), check out her Facebook page, her Amazon author page, or her blog which she is very bad about updating but she really means well and promises to try to get to it more often, cross her heart.