On publishing …
Jennifer Conner over at Seattle Writing Careers Examiner was nice enough to ask me to guest blog on the site. The post is up today, and I give some general tips for aspiring writers. You can check it out here. Happy reading!
On Writing
-
-
A touch of frost …
In addition to finishing the revisions on Elemental Assassin #4, I’ve also written a young adult book. I’m calling it A Touch of Frost, and it focuses on Gwen Frost, a Gypsy girl with the gift of psychometry — or the ability to know an object’s history just by touching it.
After her mom’s death, Gwen gets shipped off to Mythos Academy, a school for the descendants of ancient warriors, like Spartans, Amazons, Valkyries, and more. When a student is murdered, Gwen decides to use her Gypsy gift to find out who killed the other girl and why. I’m pitching the book as Veronica Mars meets the movie 300 (but without Gerard Butler’s man-abs, unfortunately.)
I’m not sure what, if anything, will happen with this book. There’s always a chance that my agent could hate the book, or that she could submit it to editors and no one will buy it. That’s a very real threat these days, since editors/publishers are cutting back, just like everyone else is. It’s always a little scary being an author, since it’s not a secure job at all and so many things are out of your control. But it’s even more so now, given the crappy economy.
It seems to me like the young adult market is still heavily focused on vampires and werewolves these days, so I’m not sure where a mythology book like mine would fit in. I know that the Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan has been wildly successful, so that gives me some hope.
Regardless, if nothing else, finishing A Touch of Frost has proved to me that I can write a young adult book. It’s not as easy as it looks. Especially after writing five Gin Blanco books. Let’s just say that I had to tone the sex, violence, and language way down from the Elemental Assassin series. But in some ways, Gwen Frost is just as kick-butt as Gin is. And hey, there’s a magic sword named Vic in the book. Because you can’t write a mythology book without having some kind of sword or magical weapon in there. 😉
Anyway, we shall see what happens …
-
Revised … for now …
So I’ve finally finished the revisions on Elemental Assassin #4 and shipped those off to my editor. If she likes them, the book will move on to the copy editor. I’m just glad that it’s off my desk — for now anyway!
Still, no title or firm release date for book 4 (or for book 5 either), but those should be coming soon. I’ll post those here on the blog as soon as I get them.
-
More free Elemental Assassin short stories …
The release date on Web of Lies is drawing ever closer — May 25. To whet readers’ appetites, I’ve written a couple of free Elemental Assassin short stories — Web of Death and Web of Deceit.
Web of Death takes place in between the events of Spider’s Bite and Web of Lies and focuses on what happens when Gin gets some unexpected visitors one night.
Web of Deceit is another prequel story about Gin’s first solo job as the Spider when she was a teenager and is told from Fletcher Lane’s point of view.
There are no major spoilers in either one of the stories, and both of them can be found on the Excerpts page, along with Spider’s Bargain, the first free short story that I wrote. I just thought writing the stories would be something fun and cool that I could do for readers, since I’ve gotten such great response to Spider’s Bite. I hope everyone enjoys the free stories and can check out Web of Lies when it comes out as well.
Happy reading! 😉
-
Elemental Assassin #4 update …
In between snacking on chocolate bunnies over the Easter weekend, I also started working on the revisions for Elemental Assassin #4. My editor really enjoyed what I did with the book, so the revisions were fairly light.
There’s no title yet and no firm release date for book 4, although from what I’ve been told so far, it looks like the book will come out in spring 2011 — perhaps May — with book 5 to come out later in the fall — perhaps October. We shall see …
In the meantime, my editor asked me to write a brief description of the book to help the folks at Pocket come up with the back cover copy. Here’s what I sent her, so consider this a little teaser about the storyline. Note: This contains a few minor spoilers, so consider yourself warned.
An assassin has come to Ashland to murder me. The irony is that I’m a killer myself – Gin Blanco, the renowned assassin known as the Spider. I’ve had a target on my back ever since I declared war on Mab Monroe, the ruthless head of the Ashland underworld. Mab wants me dead in the worst kind of way, which is why she’d hired Elektra LaFleur to come to town and exterminate me – and the other assassin just might be able to do it. LaFleur is just as ruthless as I am and has electrical elemental magic that’s the equal of my own Ice and Stone power.Â
Complicating matters is the fact that Mab’s kidnapped an innocent young girl who’s a friend of a friend. Finding her is priority number one. Surviving is a close second, though. Good thing I’ve got sexy businessman Owen Grayson on my side, along with Detective Bria Coolidge. The only problem is that Bria doesn’t realize that I’m her long-lost big sister, Genevieve Snow. And what my baby sister doesn’t know just may get us both killed …
Sounds pretty good, huh? 😉