Author Spotlight: Lucy Snyder

Today’s guest author is a local friend and fantastic author Lucy Snyder! Lucy A. Snyder is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of the novels Spellbent and Shotgun Sorceress and the collections Sparks and Shadows, Chimeric Machines, and Installing Linux on a Dead Badger. Her writing has appeared in Strange Horizons, Weird Tales, Hellbound Hearts, Masques V, Doctor Who Short Trips: Destination Prague, Chiaroscuro, GUD, and Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. She was born in South Carolina but grew up in San Angelo, Texas. She currently lives in Worthington, Ohio with her husband and occasional co-author Gary A. Braunbeck.

We are excited to have her interview on Wicked Jungle and know all you urban fantasy readers out there are going to love her! Keep reading for your chance to win a signed copy of Spellbent!!

Author Spotlight

Name: Lucy Snyder

Porn Star Name: King Thursday Charlotte.

Which sounds like a combination butch lesbian porn star and indie rocker! I feel compelled to explain this one: my first pet (I was 2 or 3) was a king snake I named King Thursday. Thursday, for reasons that are obscure to me now, was apparently my favorite day of the week when I was little.

Website Address: www.lucysnyder.com

Writing Age:

I’d say that content-wise my Spellbent series is for adults, which essentially means well-read middle teens and up. One romance blog gave Spellbent an “R” rating, whereas I’d put it at a PG-13 … I know of several 14-year-olds who’ve read it and they don’t appear to be corrupted/traumatized by it.

My humor collection Installing Linux on a Dead Badger is probably 15 and up, not due to sex or cussing, but because of geeky references that people who aren’t familiar with computers won’t get.  A friend of mine has a computer-loving teenaged son with Asperger’s, and my friend had a hard time getting the boy to read much fiction, but he said his son loved ILDB and it’s sort of been a “gateway” book to other fiction, and that made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

First Published Work:

My first novel is Spellbent, which was released by Del Rey in late December 2009.  My first book was Sparks and Shadows, a story collection that HW Press published in 2007.  And my first paid story sale was “Thirteen’s Revolution”, which came out waaaay back in a little magazine called Midnight Zoo … the managing editor, Bob Fleck, moved up in the publishing world and we encountered each other again last year when he became my literary agent.

Current Release:

My second novel, Shotgun Sorceress, will be released in October.  It’s a direct sequel to Spellbent and chronicles the adventures of Jessie, Cooper, the Warlock, and Pal as they get trapped in an isolated West Texas town that is being decimated by a soul harvester named Miko. As they battle Miko and her zombie minions, Jessie discovers a darkness within herself that she must overcome to save the town, her friends, and her own soul.

INSPIRATION AND MUSE

If you could live in any fictional universe/world what would it be?

Wow. This is a tough one, because there are so many intriguing choices! How do you choose between post-Jadis Narnia and the 23rd Century as portrayed in Star Trek? I can safely say, though, that I do not want to live in Gary Braunbeck’s Cedar Hill, Ohio.  Do. Not. Want.

If you could have lunch with any author dead or alive whom would it be and why?

I want to have lunch with author Nalo Hopkinson. She’s a super-cool person, but we haven’t seen each other in ages. And she’s been blogging her lunches lately, and every time she does, I think, “Damn, that sounds really good.”

If you were locked in a room for 48 hours and forced to watch one TV show the entire time, which television series would you choose?

Doctor Who, no question.  48 hours might let me catch up on the new series and put a slight dent in what I haven’t seen of the classic series.

What is the most outrageous or bizarre thing you have done in the name of “research”?

I was a goth for three years. No really, it was research, I’m telling you! I got stories out of it and everything.

What is your latest release?

My latest release is a short story called “Miz Ruthie Pays Her Respects” that appears in Dark Faith, an anthology from Apex Books that came out in May.

What inspired you to write said story/book?

I … can’t talk about that in public. If anyone reads it, and is curious to know the story behind the story, buy me a drink at a convention and I’ll tell you. I will tell you that I was absolutely furious when I wrote it, which you would probably never guess from reading the finished piece.

Fab Five

• Coffee or Tea? I CAN HAZ CAFFEINE YES?
• Chocolate or Vanilla? Chocolate.
• Vampire or Werewolf? Neither: devils rule!
• Meatie or Veggie? Mostly veggie.
• Salty or Sweet? Both!

Last but not Least–three words that describe you: sly, inscrutable, amused

Win a signed copy of Spellbent!

Once again, a big thanks to Lucy Snyder for joining us at Wicked Jungle. Ask Lucy a question and you are  automatically entered into drawing for a free signed copy of her latest novel Spellbent! And yes, international contestants are eligible.

To get you started, here is a free excerpt of Shotgun Sorceress

The Warlock pulled off the highway onto a dirt road running between two cornfields.

“This should be it,” he said, glancing down at the magic compass he’d brought along. “Karen, you got Riviera’s token?”

“Right here,” she replied, patting the small white beaded purse in her lap. She was wearing a long-sleeved sea-green silk gown and long strings of pearls; the outfit must have dated back to the 1930s, and it looked good on her.

We got out of the Land Rover. The ground was soft and damp, so I was glad I wasn’t in high heels. The weird calliope music of my familiar Pal’s flying spell was loud overhead. I slung my backpack over my shoulder and began to follow Mother Karen and The Warlock down a corn row.

Cooper nudged my backpack. “You could leave that in the car, you know.”

“If something happens, it’s not going to do me a lot of good if it’s locked in the car a mile away.”

“The Seelies are probably just going to make you check it at the door.”

I shrugged. “Checked at the door is still closer than locked in the car.”

We came to a clearing where a battered old scarecrow hung crucified on a couple of rake handles. A cloud of dust rose as Pal touched down, and Cooper spoke an ancient word to turn off his invisibility.

A tin cup had been tied to the straw fingers of the scarecrow’s left hand.  When we got within ten feet of the scarecrow, my stone ocularis started to itch in my skull. I blinked through to the gemview that had shown me the invisible door in Karen’s back yard. I saw an odd double-image of the scarecrow and a set of bronze-reinforced oak doors big enough to admit an elephant.

Read More Here

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You can get an additional entries by doing the following (note these are in addition to posting a comment. You must comment first to be qualified).

• Option A: Tweet about the contest on Twitter (you must include @wickedjungle for your tweet to qualify each tweet will get you an additional entry).
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Contest Ends Friday July 23 at  Midnight (Eastern) !!!

Shotgun Sorceress by Lucy Snyder

The Warlock pulled off the highway onto a dirt road running between two cornfields.

“This should be it,” he said, glancing down at the magic compass he’d brought along.

“Karen, you got Riviera’s token?”

“Right here,” she replied, patting the small white beaded purse in her lap. She was wearing a long-sleeved sea-green silk gown and long strings of pearls; the outfit must have dated back to the 1930s, and it looked good on her.

We got out of the Land Rover. The ground was soft and damp, so I was glad I wasn’t in high heels. The weird calliope music of my familiar Pal’s flying spell was loud overhead. I slung my backpack over my shoulder and began to follow Mother Karen and The Warlock down a corn row.

Cooper nudged my backpack. “You could leave that in the car, you know.”

“If something happens, it’s not going to do me a lot of good if it’s locked in the car a mile away.”

“The Seelies are probably just going to make you check it at the door.”

I shrugged. “Checked at the door is still closer than locked in the car.”

We came to a clearing where a battered old scarecrow hung crucified on a couple of rake handles. A cloud of dust rose as Pal touched down, and Cooper spoke an ancient word to turn off his invisibility.

A tin cup had been tied to the straw fingers of the scarecrow’s left hand.  When we got within ten feet of the scarecrow, my stone ocularis started to itch in my skull. I blinked through to the gemview that had shown me the invisible door in Karen’s back yard. I saw an odd double-image of the scarecrow and a set of bronze-reinforced oak doors big enough to admit an elephant.

Mother Karen dug the token — a small golden coin — out of her purse and stepped up to the scarecrow.  She dropped it in the tin cup. The scarecrow shuddered, the tattered old black suit expanding as it filled with ogrish bone and muscle. The creature broke the rake handles like straws and leapt to the ground, glowering at us with coal-black eyes.  It dumped the token out into a mottled, callused gray palm.

“Who seeks entry to our realm?” Its voice rolled like thunder.

Mother Karen stepped forward. “Karen Mercedes Sebastián, daughter of Magus Carlos Sebastián and Mistress Beatrice Brumecroft. And associates. We come at the invitation of Maga Riviera Jordan to dine with her at the tavern.”

He turned his baleful face toward me and pointed a long black claw at my ocularis. “We don’t like spies.”

“What? I’m not a spy.” My voice shook.

“Don’t try to be clever with that sight-stone, or someone will pluck it right out of your pretty head.”

I quickly blinked back to the gemview that showed the world simply as my flesh eye did. “Is this better?”

“It is acceptable.”

Still scowling, the scarecrow reached into the air where I had seen the bronze handles on the great oak doors. He pulled, and suddenly the doors were visible to the naked eye, swinging wide to reveal a twilight-dimmed forest lit by a huge harvest moon. A road of ancient silver coins sunk in the damp earth glittered before us. The evergreen trees swayed gently in a brush of night wind, and tiny glowing creatures flitted through the branches.

The air from the forest smelled of midnight’s denizens, deep dark earth and night-blooms headier than any liquor.

“Follow the silver path to the tavern,” the ogrish guardian ordered. “Stray from it at your own peril.”

“We better hold hands,” Cooper said. “Things can get pretty weird in Faery.”

We followed Mother Karen and the Warlock inside; Pal followed along behind us. The scarecrow shut the door after my familiar stepped onto the path, and almost instantly, the darkness seemed to solidify around us like a crush of unseen bodies just beyond arm’s reach, the breeze like soft cold fingers brushing across my shoulders and the nape of my neck. Cooper’s hand tightened around mine; I could tell he felt it, too.

“Girl …” a voice whispered.

I turned toward the sound, the will to simply not look somehow beyond me. A golden-haired young man stood in the trees, slender and pale, dressed only in a kilt of sheer material that left just enough to my imagination. I felt a dizzying, primal lust for him; he was everything I found physically sexy about Cooper amplified and intensified a dozen times over.

“Come here,” Golden-Hair said with a smile that made my legs turn to water. He knelt and plucked a dandelion and blew the feathery seeds at me. “I’ve got something to show you.”

Cooper’s hand was growing slick with sweat. I glanced at his face; he was turning red as he stared at Golden-Hair, looking equally embarrassed and angry. “Don’t listen to her,” he whispered, pulling me along.

“Don’t,” echoed Golden-Hair, suddenly appearing from behind a tree in front of us, his voice like windchimes. “Don’t just walk away … don’t you want to see what your man sees? Don’t you want to see what delightful things we could be doing, the three of us? All you have to do is take a little peek.”

“Don’t listen to it,” Pal warned inside my head. “It’s a trick. Stick to the path, no matter what.”

What are you seeing when you look at it? I asked Pal.

“I’d rather not say,” he replied.

Golden-Hair popped up in the wildflowers a few feet away from me, sitting cross-legged. “Boots? You wore nasty ol’ boots!” he cackled. “Who dressed you this morning, your father? He should have tied a bell around your neck, because you lumber like a dimwitted cow. I’ll bet your mother was some plow-pulling beast of burden your father turned into the shape of a woman after he couldn’t stop himself from rutting on her in the barn. I bet the Virtus Regnum cut her into steaks and ate her after they killed her.”

It paused, staring intently at the trails of smoke curling from my opera glove. My pulse was pounding in my head despite my attempt to breathe slowly and stay calm.

“Ooh, everyone hide, the cowgirl’s angry now! Stop chewing your cud and come over here! Show me who’s boss, Bossie. Come over and try to shut me up.”

For a long second, I thought about taking him up on his offer. My ocularis was itching like mad, but the scarecrow’s warning stopped me from blinking for a better look, stopped me from leaving the path. We weren’t here for me to get into a fight and endanger everyone else.

Golden-Hair kept after me, whispering seductions one moment and mockeries the next. I kept my gaze focused on the lost treasures imbedded in the path: ancient drachms of Hermaeus and Menander, shining argentus nummus, Ottoman akçe and Indian rupees, mottled Liberty dollars, plus dozens of exotic coins stamped with the pale faces of dead kings I’d never seen in any book.

Finally, the path ended at what at first looked like a vine-covered walls, but then I realized that the vines were the walls. The front door was a tall, thick oval mat of purple-flowered Clematis lianas hinged on living tendrils; it swung open with a swish of leaves and a creak of green wood, and we filed into the tavern, everyone looking relieved to be free of Golden-Hair.

I quickly realized that the entire tavern was built from still-living plants enchanted or artfully cultivated to form a functional architecture, although certainly not one that had much use for straight lines and 90-degree angles.  The interior walls and floor were formed by smooth, densely woven strangler figs. Ivory-barked trees rose like support columns for the leafy ceiling high above us, and luminous bracket fungi growing on the trunks cast a soft golden light throughout the rooms and passageways. Redwood-sized tree stumps served as tables, and the woody figs rose from the floor to form trestle benches and stools.

The patrons seated at the nearby tables were dressed in antique finery from various eras; they scarcely gave us a second glance. Looking at them straight on, they appeared perfectly human; glimpsed from the corner of my flesh eye, some became large insects, creatures of twisted bone, or strange fungal conglomerations. It was just a little unnerving.

A tall, beautiful woman in a diaphanous Aegean-blue chiton stepped toward us. Maybe she floated; I couldn’t really see her feet. She was like a nymph straight out of Greek mythology: her glossy black hair was piled in ringlets atop her head, and her skin was sun-bronzed. Her eyes were the color of storm clouds rolling over the ocean. She glanced briefly at my backpack, but didn’t seem the least bit concerned about it.

“Please follow me,” she said, her voice a rush of sea breeze through a mountain olive grove. “Your party awaits.”

She led us through a winding passage to a room with an enormous tree-table. Riviera Jordan, dressed in a silver gown and shawl, sat on the opposite side of the table, flanked by six Governing Circle agents in crisp black tuxedos.

“Y’all have a seat,” Riviera said, rising from her strangler fig bench. “We have a lot to talk about.”

We took our places at the table. At each setting was a single white, highly-polished plate; there were no glasses, no cutlery, no napkins. I at first assumed the plate in front of me was porcelain before I saw the fine, concentric grain beneath the shine.

“Wood?” I asked Cooper.

“Probably,” he replied. “Or maybe some kind of gourd or tuber.”

Riviera was busy looking over some papers in her lap, so as quickly and surreptitiously as I could, I lifted my plate and licked the edge.

Instantly, I was standing on a wind-blown hill, rearing back to shake off the horrible jabbering prairie apes clinging to my shaggy fur, trumpeting my anger and frustration to the sky as one of them scurried between my front legs and jabbed a sharpened stick up between my ribs –

– I managed to stifle a gasp as I came out of the death memory.

“It’s wooly mammoth tusk,” I told Cooper. “Very old.”

“Oh. Wow.” He gazed down at his plate, looking impressed. “I’ll be careful with it.”

And then I nearly dropped my plate when it spoke to me: “Now really, it doesn’t really seem very useful to lick me before the food’s been served, does it?”

An amused elfin face was staring at me from the surface of the plate.  I quickly set it back down on the table.

“I’m sorry,” I stammered. “I was just trying to see what you were made of –”

“Rather nosy of you, don’t you think?”

“I’m very sorry. I wasn’t expecting sentient tableware.”

Plateface sighed dramatically and rolled its ivory eyes. “Apology accepted, I suppose. Beverage?”

“What?”

“A drink? You know, something liquid that helps the food go down and prevents unsightly choking?”

“Oh. Uh. Water will be fine.”

Another eyeroll. “Boring, yet vague. Do you want it hot? Iced? Room temperature? Sparkling? Paris bottled? Detroit municipal? Dipped from a Mongolian horse trough and filtered through a wool sock?”

I frowned. “I’ll take Evian natural spring water, no ice, forty degrees Fahrenheit.”

There came a faint cracking noise from the table. A straight green tendril sprouted from the polished surface. It quickly formed a large bud that elongated and split open to unfurl a spiral of waxy lavender leaves that fused and rose up into a vaselike hollow flower. The remains of the bud shell thickened into a sturdy green calyx base supporting the flower, which quickly filled with a clear liquid.

“Your water, mademoiselle,” said Plateface. “And for your meal you’d like …?”

I blurted out the first thing that popped into my head; I suppose I was partly jonesing for more of what I’d had for breakfast and partly channeling my wish to escape: “A Monte Cristo.”

Plateface sighed. “Still very, very vague. Do you want the whole sandwich dipped in batter and fried, or just the bread? And what kind of cheese?”

“Just the bread … and Swiss. No, wait, gruyere.”

“Since you seem indecisive, I’ll give you both. And the usual assortment of condiments.”

Plateface vanished, leaving me staring at the shiny blank ivory.

The table cracked again as a woody sprout erupted beside the plate.  In the space of a few seconds, it grew into a small bush that produced one large red bud and three smaller purplish buds.  The buds flowered into pretty blossoms that quickly shriveled, overtaken by swelling fruits covered in thick, veined skins. The big red fruit expanded like a balloon, steam rising from its green veins, until it ruptured with a pop! and a hot, sugar-dusted Monte Cristo sandwich toppled out onto my plate.  The other, smaller fruits dropped off the bush beside the sandwich and split open, revealing what looked like strawberry jam, honey mustard, and clotted cream.  A small branch I hadn’t noticed fell off the bush and dropped beside the plate; it had a single long, serrated bladelike leaf at its tip, and I realized it was meant to serve as a dinner knife. A large, velvety leaf sprouted on the plant and fell beside the twig knife: a napkin.

I’d been so focused on Plateface and my lunch plants that I hadn’t been paying any attention to how the others were faring. Beside me, Cooper was pulling the purple skin off a huge berry of shrimp carbonara; he had red wine in his drinking flower. The Warlock had a T-bone and a baked potato, and Mother Karen’s plant was dropping perfect little cucumber and smoked salmon tea sandwiches onto her plate. Pal was already gnawing on a large joint of some roast beast. Across the table, Riviera Jordan’s plant was growing and shedding a variety of leaves and vegetables to fill her plate with salad; her bodyguards had gotten burgers and other sandwiches.

I nudged Cooper and pointed at the crispy bits of bacon scattered amongst the shrimp on his fettuccini noodles. “Aren’t you worried about getting a death vision off those?”

“No more than you are, I guess.”

“What?”

He nodded at my sandwich. “That’s a Monte Cristo?”

“Yes?”

“Ham. Turkey.”

I stared at it. “Oh, crap, I forgot. I only remembered it had cheese on it.”

He laughed. “It’s faery food … I wouldn’t worry about it.”

I cut my sandwich in half with the twig knife and blew on it to cool it a little.  The bread was fluffy and moist under the crispy egg batter, and the inside was stuffed with cheese and turkey and shaved ham.  I bit off a corner, expecting a kick of pain, but felt absolutely nothing. It certainly looked and tasted like meat, but I might as well have been eating a napkin for all the spiritual residue it contained.

We finished our meals in relative silence. When most of us were finished, a handsome young man in a kilt of ivy leaves shuffled into the room. Each of his eyes was covered with a bright red poppy blossom, and his face was frozen in a smile. He began to uproot the spent dinner plants onto the dirty plates and clear the table. His hands moved fluidly one moment, jerkily the next.

Mother Karen stifled a gasp when the young man took her plate; I gave her a quizzical look.

“It’s Rick Wisecroft,” she mouthed at me.

Her prodigal foster son? No wonder he’d left her house so abruptly. Clearly he’d crossed the wrong people. I watched him more closely as he gathered up my plate; he moved like a marionette, and I saw thin silver chains on his wrists.

Mother Karen was staring at Rick, her face flushed, tears welling in her eyes; clearly she wanted to do something to rescue him from his slavery, but she couldn’t do anything without risking her own freedom and probably ours as well. I felt myself getting angry again. Given our warm reception in the woods, I doubted that getting Rick as our busboy was any accident. The Seelies really seemed intent on provoking us. Part of me wondered how they’d cope with a little incendiary ectoplasm, but the rest of me considered Rick’s predicament and realized that was a bad, bad idea.

© Lucy Snyder 2010

Writer’s Bio

Lucy A. Snyder is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of the novels Spellbent and Shotgun Sorceress and the collections Sparks and Shadows, Chimeric Machines, and Installing Linux on a Dead Badger. Her writing has appeared in Strange Horizons, Weird Tales, Hellbound Hearts, Masques V, Doctor Who Short Trips: Destination Prague, Chiaroscuro, GUD, and Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. She was born in South Carolina but grew up in San Angelo, Texas. She currently lives in Worthington, Ohio with her husband and occasional co-author Gary A. Braunbeck.

Want more? Check out our feature interview with Lucy Snyder on the Wicked Jungle Blog!

DAY 4!!! Super Duper Contests!!!

Day 4 Starts Now!!!

Here’s your fourth chance to win some cool Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy goodies. Remember rules of the game change daily, so be sure to check back often to see how to enter and whether or not you won!

Day 4 Rules: My Dirty Little Secrets

You may be a little confused by the name of this contest. My inspiration was the song, by All American Rejects, and one of my favorite shows, the Vampire Diaries.  Both Elena and Stefan keep journals filled with their own dirty little secrets, so it seemed appropriate. If you’ve been living under a rock, or generally just dismissed the Vampire Diaries as another teen angst drama, here is a basic video clip that covers the basic premise.  I do have to say the episodes got a lot better the second half of the season.

The rules are simple, I mean, it’s Saturday morning, you’re probably hung over from reading all night long! I don’t want to make this too complicated.

1. Post a comment below about the Vampire Diaries. What did you think of Season One? Were you happy with the finale? Do you like the books or the show better?

2. You get one entry for your commenting.

3. You get an additional entry every time you promote the contest and link back to this post.

5. The contest is open from now and will close at 12PM Eastern on SUNDAY May 16!

The PRIZE:

Each daily winner will have the option of choosing an autographed copy of the following books:

• C.T. Adams & Cathy Clamp–Touch of Darkness
• L.A. Banks –The Forbidden
• Mary Janice Davidson–Undead and Unwed
• Mary Janice Davidson–Undead and Uneasy
• S.J Day–Eve of Darkness
• Devon Monk–Magic to the Bone
• Devon Monk–Magic in the Blood
• Kat Richardson–Greywalker

or an un-autorgraphed copy of one of the following books:

• Rachel Caine–Kiss of Death
• Jocelynn Drake–Nightwalker
• Angie Fox–The Dangerous Book of Demon Slayers
• Richelle Mead–Succubus Blues
• Linda Wisdom–Hex in High Heels

Each book is also paired up with a swag bag, which contains buttons, postcards, bookmarks, and posters (some signed, some not).  Each bag varies and winners will not have the option of pre-selecting the swag-bags.

Winners of the daily contest will automatically be entered into the grand prize drawings (winners to be announced May 31st).  This includes the RT 2010 Tote Bag, Strange Brew Anthology (signed by Jim Butcher), signed posters, books, swag and your choice of a $25 gift e-gift cart to borders.com, bn.com or amazon.com. (Second place winner will receive similar package with signed poster, tote bag, and $10 gift card).

Behind-the-Scenes with Carolyn Crane

Today our featured guest is Carolyn Crane, author of the new urban fantasy Mind Games. Carolyn has taken a few moments out of her very busy writing schedule to share six writerly behind-the-scenes anecdotes about her recent novel. We hope you enjoy this special behind-the-scenes peak.  As  a special treat, we are also giving away a signed copy of Mind Games to one lucky Wicked Jungle reader.  Details on how to enter the contest can be found below. Good luck and a big welcome to Carolyn!

Guest Blogger: Carolyn Crane

Hey, thanks so much, Melissa, for inviting me here! So, because this is a community of writers as well as readers, Melissa suggested I talk a little about behind the scenes stuff around Mind Games. So, a few things:

How I got the idea.

This is actually something I may regret going around telling, but I got the idea after reading Straw Dogs, a hugely depressing book by this philosopher, John Gray, who takes a super dismal view of humanity. It made me feel really awful, and I thought, if I had an enemy, I would give them this book as a gift, so that they could feel as disillusioned as I did. In fact, I actually recommended it to somebody I was mad at. Then I thought, what if there were people who disillusioned other people for money? Hey, that would make a great plot!

Non fiction books: secret sauce.

There’s this one scene from Mind Games where this creepy villain follows my heroine out of a grocery store, and she knows she can’t get away from him, so she asks him to carry her groceries as a way to tie up his hands and free hers. Totally inspired by a tiny detail from a book on predators and intuition called The Gift of Fear, which I had read years ago—the detail popped out of nowhere.

I think non-fiction books are such a goldmine for writers because you build a store of details like that. I’ve gotten super valuable ideas, details and analogies out of books on animals, art, you name it. To me, reading nonfiction is like making an investment in myself as a fiction writer.

How one of the central concepts of Mind Games got totally degraded!

So, this is sort of funny. A bit of background: the psychological hit squad in Mind Games is called the disillusionists, and it’s run by this tortured mutant mastermind who has these extreme powers of psychological insight, and he recruits people who are really messed up to be on his hit squad. Anyway, in early drafts, they’d disillusion criminals in a kind of philosophical way. As you can imagine, this made for a pretty thinky book. Philosophy is not really action packed! Who knew?

Little by little I revised it; in the final drafts, the characters are basically just weaponizing their internal darkness, turning it outward on their targets to overwhelm and “reboot” them, and the targets bounce back with a fresh attitude. However, the ‘disillusionists’ name stayed. I’m always wondering when somebody is going to notice that nobody is being technically disillusioned. It’s sort of like that Irony song by Alanis Morissette where none of the stuff she sings about is all that ironic.

Rejection.

I wrote three totally finished, polished, slaved-over novels before selling Mind Games—we’re talking like 8 years of failed novel projects. It was hard because when I’m working on a novel, it’s my world, and I put all this energy into it, and have all these hopes, and then at some point, enough agents or editors say no that I realize that it’s going nowhere. It’s a little like having your heart broken. The secret for me is to start over on a new project, and find things to love about it. If you’re a writer who is in a learning and growing mode, you’ll usually end up liking the new novel better than the old one anyway. I know everybody says this, but it really does work to just keep going forward.
Querying and a trick.

Contrary to popular belief, most writers sell without connections, and I’m one of them – a slush pile baby. (To see actual statistics on how first novels get sold, there’s a fantastic study done by Jim Hines [http://www.jimchines.com/2010/03/survey-results/])

Anyway, the most important thing in a query letter is the “hook,” the sexy line that sells your book. My trick for writing a hook is to write the best hook I can. Then put it aside and write another completely different, but excellent hook. Then another. Do it ten times. And I mean, write ten good hooks. The trick works because people get fixated on their first ideas, and your first idea is rarely your best one.
Characters & being popular at parties.

Writing can mirror life in such weird ways. For example, whenever I deliberately try to create a character that is attractive or fascinating, that character usually ends up boring. But when I’m not trying to do that, like I’m making a secondary character, and just working on creating a realistic, true, quirky or even offensive person, a lot of times people LOVE that person. It reminds me of being at parties—when you’re trying to be popular, it doesn’t work out, but when you’re just being yourself and you don’t care, people are more interested in you.

That happened with this character Simon–he’s a disillusionist whose specialty is recklessness, and he doesn’t like my heroine, Justine, who is the new girl, with a specialty of hypochondria. So I made him menacing and weird and mean, and he wears clothes like a space age pimp. I meant him to be this dark force, but readers love him. And he actually is fun to write. So much so, that I’m letting him have an expanded storyline in books 2 & 3.

Contest: Win a signed copy of Mind Games!

Once again, a big thanks to Carolyn for joining us today on Wicked Jungle. We want to keep the conversation going so this contest is going to be all about comments!  To enter post a comment below about the Carolyn’s post, her novel, or your experience as a writer. Can you relate to any of the things Carolyn referenced?

Each person who posts a comment will get one entry in the contest.

You can get an additional entries by doing the following (note these are in addition to posting a comment. You must comment first to be qualified).

Option A: Tweet about the contest on Twitter (you must include @wickedjungle for your tweet to qualify each tweet will get you an additional entry).

Option B: Become a follower of our blog (only new followers joining between the time of the contest will be counted).

Contest Ends Friday at 12PM Eastern!!!

Mind Games by Carolyn Crane

Mind Games heroine Justine Jones isn’t your typical kick-ass type – she’s a hopeless hypochondriac whose life is run by fear.

She’s lured into a restaurant, Mongolian Delites, by tortured mastermind Sterling Packard, who promises he can teach her to channel her fears. In exchange, she must join his team of disillusionists – vigilantes hired by crime victims to zing their anxieties into criminals, resulting in collapse and transformation.

Justine isn’t interested in Packard’s troupe until she gets a taste of the peace he can promise. Soon she enters the thrilling world of neurotic crime fighters who battle Midcity’s depraved and paranormal criminals.

Eventually, though, she starts wondering why Packard hasn’t set foot outside the Mongolian Delites restaurant for eight years. And about the true nature of the disillusionists. Read more

Guest Blogger: Laura Bickle (Contest & Excerpt!)

Today’s guest blogger is Laura Bickle. Her debut novel, Embers, is first in an exciting new urban fantasy series that continues with her forthcoming second novel, Sparks. Laura also writes as Alayna Williams. Alayna’s “debut” will be Dark Oracle, Pocket Juno’s June 2010 release.

Magical Places: Serpent Mound

Some places are magical.

There are some places that lodge in your memory like a splinter. Places that have their own pull, that bit of extra gravity that makes me want to include them in a book. For me, one of those places has always been Serpent Mound, and I included it as a setting for EMBERS.

Serpent Mound is the largest serpent effigy mound in the U.S. It’s located in rural Ohio, in a green meadow near forest – overall, a very peaceful place. I remember that my late grandfather took me there as a child. It’s about 1330 feet of coiling serpent, swallowing an egg. It was build around 800 BC by the Adena. Smaller burial mounds dotting the area were built by the Fort Ancient people. The head of the serpent faces the summer solstice sunset. Grass has grown up over the undulating curves of the mound. When I was a small child, I remember stroking the grass over the surface of the mound, wondering what lay beneath. Scientists have found melting in the rock beneath the mound – what they call a “cryptoexplosion structure” in the rock. It’s the result of intense heat.

And that question worked its way into EMBERS, bubbling up years later. In EMBERS, my heroine, Anya, travels to Serpent Mound to find clues about a magical creature, a large dragon called a Sirrush. She finds that the ghost of an Adena woman, walking along the edge of the mound, patrolling. Beneath the mound, a dragon sleeps. The Adena woman patrols the area to make certain the dragon does not awaken. Anya realizes that her destiny is the same as the Adena woman’s – she must find a way to make certain that the Sirrush hibernating in the salt mine beneath Detroit does not arise, even if it means the sacrifice of her life.

As an adult, I went back to Serpent Mound to do research for EMBERS. It was smaller than I remembered. I didn’t need to reach up to touch the grass at the top of the mound. But it was, in many ways the same: eerily silent, peaceful. It was a magical place worth revisiting both in person and in the book.

Contest:

In celebration of the Embers book release, Laura has generously donated one signed autographed copy of the book to one lucky reader. To enter the contest you must do one of the following actions. Contest closes on APRIL 2nd @ 12 PM EASTERN!!

1. Post about the contest on your blog. (Must include link in comments below for verification)

2. Tweet about the contest on twitter. (Must include @wickedjungle in the tweet to be counted!)

3. Add Wicked Jungle to your blogroll. (Must include link in comments below for verification)

4. As an added bonus, we will award two entries to anyone who uploads the Wicked Jungle badge (see below) to their sidebar.

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Excerpt:

Chapter One

Truth burned.

It always burned, even in the dark, cold hours of the morning when nearly everything slept.

Anya stood on the doorstep of the haunted house, hands jammed into her pockets, stifling a yawn. She’d taken a cab, not wanting her license plates to be seen and recorded in the vicinity. The cab had peeled away, red lights receding down the gray street. The two-story brown brick house before her looked like every other house on the block, windows and doors ribboned in iron bars. Cables from the beat-up panel van parked curbside snaked under the front door, but no light shined inside. Empty plastic bags drifted over the cracked sidewalk until trapped by a low iron fence.

She poked the doorbell. Inside, she heard the echo of the chime, the responding scrape of movement. Anya wiped her feet on the doormat duct-taped to the painted stoop, waiting.

A lamp clicked on inside the house, and the door opened a crack. “Thanks for coming,” the masculine voice behind the door said.

“It’s not like I could say no.”

That was the truth; it was not as if she could turn down what they asked, even if she wanted to. She held back a larger truth that scalded her throat: And I wish you would stop calling. I wish you would stop asking me to do this.

Anya stepped over the cords into the circle of yellow light cast by a lamp with a barrel-shaped shade in the living room. The shade’s wire skeleton cast dark spokes on the ceiling, illuminating a water stain that had been carefully painted over. But the water had still seeped through, yellowing the popcorn ceiling. A wooden console television sat dark and silent as a giant bug in the corner, rabbit-ear antennae turned north and east, listening for a dead signal. A shabby plaid couch dominated the room, covered with out-of-place pieces of tech equipment: electromagnetic field readers, digital voice recorders, compact video cameras. Laptop computers were propped up on TV-tray tables, casting rectangles of blue light on the walls.

Anya’s gaze drifted to the video cameras, then shied away. “I don’t want to be recorded.”

“We know.”

Jules, the leader of the Detroit Area Ghost Researchers, leaned against the wall, nursing a cup of coffee. No one would ever suspect Jules to be so deeply interested in the paranormal that he would lead a group of ghost hunters. He was the epitome of an ordinary guy: early forties, slight paunch covered by a blue polo shirt, well-worn jeans. A tattoo of a cross peeked out underneath his sleeve. Exhaustion creased the mahogany face underneath the Detroit Tigers baseball cap. Judging by the amount of equipment and the rolled-up sleeping bags in the corners, DAGR had spent a number of nights here.

Anya perched on the edge of the couch, rubbed her amber-colored eyes. “What’s the story?”

Jules took a swig of his coffee, creamer clinging to his dark moustache. “We first took the case two weeks ago… the little old lady that lives in the house was convinced that her dead husband was coming back to haunt her. She described lights turning off of their own accord, dark shapes in the mirrors.”

“Did she come to you or did you find her?”

“I found her.” Jules worked as gas meter reader in his day job. He had a knack for easy conversation, and people instinctively trusted him. Anya suspected he might have some latent psychic talent in getting a feel for places and people. He had an affinity for most people, anyway. Jules seemed wary of Anya. She didn’t think he liked her much or thought very highly of her methods. But she got the job done when Jules couldn’t.

“She’s got a basement meter and was afraid to go down there all by herself. Neighbor lady who used to do her laundry won’t do it anymore…said a lightbulb exploded while she was loading the washer.” Jules took a sip of his coffee.

“What evidence have you found?” Anya asked.

Brian, DAGR’s tech specialist, peered over one of his computer screens and took off a pair of headphones. “Come see.”

Anya sat beside him on the sagging couch that smelled like lavender. Brian scrolled through some digital video; she assumed it to hade come from a fixed-camera shot of the basement stairs. A flashlight beam washed down the steps, green in the contrasting false color tones of night-vision footage. The glow from the screen highlighted the planes and angles of Brian’s face. Anya noted the circles under his blue eyes and his mussed brown hair. She thought she smelled the mint of the caffeinated shower soap he favored still clinging to him.

Anya never asked where Brian got all his techno-toys. She knew that most of DAGR’s clients had little money and donations were few and far between. DAGR was more likely to be paid with an apple pie than cash. She suspected that Brian borrowed much of it from his day job at the university. Apparently, the eggheads in the IT department never seemed to notice that things kept disappearing into Brian’s van.

The footage paused, fell dark green once more. In the well of jade darkness under the stairs, something moved. The shape of a hand clawed up over one of the upper steps, then receded.

“Weird,” Anya breathed, resting her heart-shaped face in her hand. “What else have you got?”

“This.” Brian handed her his headphones, still warm from his ears. Anya fitted them over her head, listened to a static hum of low-level white noise that barely vibrated an on-screen noise meter.

“I don’t–”

“Wait for it.”

There. A hiss shivered the line on the meter. A voice–reedy and snarling–ripped the volume line to the top of the meter: “Mine.”

Anya frowned. “Can I hear it again?”

Brian backed the tape up. Static hummed, something hissed, and the voice repeated: “Mine.”

Anya pulled the headphones off, disentangling them from her sleep-tousled chestnut hair. Her hair caught on the copper salamander torque she wore around her neck and she gently unsnarled it. The salamander gripped its tail in its front paws, the tail sinuously curling down to disappear between Anya’s breasts. The metal, as always, felt warm to the touch. “Did you guys provoke it?”

“Of course. We told it that it was ugly and that its transvestite mama dresses it funny.” The youngest member of the group, Max, grinned at her, megawatt smile splitting his brown face. He’d been exiled to the floor, hands wound in his warm-up jacket, his sneakers and long legs tucked under one of Brian’s TV tables.

Jules smacked him on the back of the head. “Max got too mouthy with it. Started in on the ‘your mama’ jokes while I was reading the scriptures to it.”

Max ducked. He was still on probation and was very close to getting booted from the group. Anya hoped the kid would stay, that he would eventually fill the spot on DAGR’s roster from which she was trying to extricate herself. Though no one could do exactly what she could do, it would be good for them to have someone new to focus on.

“So…what is it, exactly?” Anya asked, redirecting the conversation from Max’s punishment to the matter at hand.

“We don’t think it’s the old lady’s husband.” Katie’s hushed voice came from the darkened kitchen as she pushed Ciro’s wheelchair across the wrinkled olive-colored carpet. Katie was DAGR’s witch. She was dressed in jeans and a patchwork blouse, her blond hair curled over her back, tied with black velvet ribbons. A silver pentacle hung just below her throat, gleaming in the dim light. “It feels like an impostor, something toying with her.”

Ciro folded his gnarled ebony hands over the blanket in his lap. The light from Brian’s computers washed over his small-framed glasses, and he smiled at Anya. “Hello, Anya.”

“Hi, Ciro.” Anya crossed to the old man and gave him a hug. He felt more fragile than the last time she’d seen him. It had to be a serious event for Ciro to be here… he was the group’s on-call demonologist. And he was the one who had brought them all together, over Jules’s objections. Ciro understood, more than anyone else, what it cost Anya to be here with them.

Anya put her hand on Ciro’s thin shoulder. “Is it a demon, then?”

Ciro shook his head. “I don’t think so. I think it’s one pissed-off malevolent spirit that’s moved in. The woman’s grief opened the door… but it’s a tough bastard.”

“You tried to drive it out already?”

Katie nodded. “Salt, bells… we even brought in a priest. It’s rooted here and we can’t dig it out.” From the corner of her eye, Anya watched Jules frown at Katie. He didn’t think much of Katie’s methods, either. Jules preferred to put the fear of God–or at least his version of it–into ghosts to scare them out the windows, but that seemed to be working less and less. Anya observed the carbon stains worked into Katie’s fingernails. The witch had been trying hard, but all her spells and incantations had also failed to drive it away. This had been happening more and more often in recent months: recalcitrant, restless spirits that just wouldn’t let go. Once a spirit had chosen to hang on, after all efforts to convince it otherwise, there was no choice but to remove it by force.

“The old lady wants it gone?” Anya asked, just to be certain. There was always the possibility that the old woman’s attachment prevented it from leaving. Perhaps, in her loneliness, she’d taken in a spiritual boarder. Anya understood how isolation could cause a person to unwittingly do things contrary to one’s best interests. An empty, silent house left a lot of room for ruminations, for regrets. And, sometimes, sinister things could move into those spaces.

“She wants it out. She wants to sell the house and move to Florida.” Ciro smiled. “I’m jealous.”

“Will you do it?” Jules’s expression was pinched. “Will you get rid of it?”

Get rid of it … that sounded so tidy. So clean. Like taking out the garbage. Ciro glanced sidelong at her, the only one with an inkling of what this cost her, over and over again.

“Okay.” Anya shrugged off her coat. “Take me to it.”

* * *

Bio

Laura Bickle has worked in the unholy trinity of politics, criminology, and technology for several years. She and her chief muse live in the Midwest, owned by four mostly-reformed feral cats. Her short fiction has appeared here and there. Embers, her debut novel, is first in an exciting new urban fantasy series that continues with her forthcoming second novel, Sparks.

Laura also writes as Alayna Williams. Alayna’s “debut” will be Dark Oracle, Pocket Juno’s June 2010 release.

To read more of this excerpt click here:

Author websites:

www.salamanderstales.com

www.alaynawilliams.com

Author Blogs:

www.salamanderstales.blogspot.com

www.delphisdaughters.blogspot.com

Embers by Laura Bickle

Truth burns.

Unemployment, despair, anger–visible and invisible unrest feed the undercurrent of Detroit’s unease. A city increasingly invaded by phantoms now faces a malevolent force that further stokes fear and chaos throughout the city.

Anya Kalinczyk spends her days as an arson investigator with the Detroit Fire Department, and her nights pursuing malicious spirits with a team of eccentric ghost hunters. Anya–who is the rarest type of psychic medium, a Lantern–suspects a supernatural arsonist is setting blazes to summon a fiery ancient entity that will leave the city in cinders. By Devil’s Night, the spell will be complete, unless Anya–with the help of her salamander familiar and the paranormal investigating team –can stop it.

Anya’s accustomed to danger and believes herself inured to loneliness and loss. But this time she’s risking everything: her city, her soul, and a man who sees and accepts her for everything she is. Keeping all three safe will be the biggest challenge she’s ever faced. Read more