Fantasy preview: Charity Parkerson's Sinners of Water & Fire

If there ever was a writer who knew how to cross genres, it has to be Charity Parkerson.

She has won awards for her paranormal fantasy Sinners series, especially The Danger with Sinners and hit the Amazon bestseller list with her military romances, sports romances and erotic stories.

Her latest book, Sinners of Water & Fire, launches May 2, and I'm happy to post an excerpt on Written Words.

What's it about?

Their love was legendary, cursed, and forbidden. 
The fates conspired to keep them apart, but destiny will bring them together again…
When one of their own becomes the target of a demon bent on revenge, the Society will do anything to keep her safe, including stealing a God from the Heavens.
Heru, son of Geb, once sold his soul to forget her, and now he’ll give anything to keep her safe. 
Gods and Demons collide in the final installment of Charity Parkerson’s award-winning “Sinners” series.

Excerpt:

“I dreamed about you last night.” Heat flooded her face at the confession. She knew it must be the shade of a strawberry, but she lifted her eyes to his, holding his stare steadily, as if daring him to mock her words. For a moment, she could have sworn a look of triumph passed over his face, but it was gone as quickly as it appeared.

“What was the dream about?”

Marissa had thought that it was impossible to be any more embarrassed than she already was, but at his question, she discovered a whole new level of humiliation.

“Um,” she stuttered before admitting, “I don’t want to tell you.”

“Oh,” he crowed. “It was that kind of dream, was it?” While his eyes were shining with mirth, her face was on fire, and she really wanted kick him.

“Shut up,” she hissed.

“Ever as you command,” he said, but she could still hear the laughter in his voice.

Fanning her face, Marissa practically danced in place in her discomfort.
“Are you having some sort of fit?” Adriana, Marissa’s mom, asked, slicing through her mortification.

Marissa had not heard her approach and she shot a nervous glimpse at the tree line to find Harold gone.

“I was attempting a spell.” Marissa answered Adriana’s question absently while searching for any sign that Harold was still hanging around. When her mom remained silent, Marissa glanced over to find her watching her closely, and she pasted a fake smile on her face in order to ease her mother’s obvious concern.

“Okay,” Adriana said, drawing out the word and sounding as if she didn’t believe her, which was a spot-on observation, since Marissa was lying.

Starting May 2, you can buy Sinners of Water & Fire on:

Amazon US
Amazon UK
Barnes & Noble
Kobo
Smashwords
All Romance Ebooks

About the Author:

Charity Parkerson was born in Tennessee, where she still lives with her husband and two sons.  She is the author of several books including thirteen Amazon bestsellers. 

You can like her at http://www.facebook.com/authorCharityParkerson. 

Be sure to visit her website and her blog.

Her “Sinners series” was voted one of the top ten best books by an Indie author in 2011 in Paranormal Romance Reads.

The Danger with Sinners was named “Best Book of 2012” by Paranormal Reads Reviews and is a finalist for Favorite Paranormal Romance in the 2012 Australian Romance Readers Association Awards.

She was named as one of the top three Indie authors of 2012 by EbookBuilders.
She is a member of The Paranormal Romance Guild, is a Goodreads moderator, a member of Coffee Time Romance, and co-host of The Melissa Craig and Charity Parkerson show.

She won author of the week in August of 2011, and is a four-time winner of The Mistress of the Darkpath.

You can follow her on Twitter @http://twitter.com/CharityParkerso

Additional links:

Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Smashwords
Punk & Sissy Publications

Cleaning off winter’s dust

Spring is coming to Ottawa — I can tell because the snow is getting dirty and the birds are starting to chirp (“Hey! We’re freezing out here!”)

Photo by D. Gordon E. Robertson, licensed under Wikipedia Creative Commons.

A change of season always inspires me to take on new projects, and to resolve to complete those half-done tasks like organizing the basement and cleaning the garage. Time to take the skis and skates, shovels and snowblower, and stack them away neatly until next November (if we’re lucky; January if we’re not); time to pull out garden hoses, rakes, gardening tools and rubber boots. Time to take out the bikes, re-inflate the tires, tighten the seat, oil the chain and adjust the brakes. Time to gather up all those little things that I just put down wherever was handy through the winter and put them in their proper places.

Whenever I do things like this, I find so many things that I had thought were lost or that I had forgotten completely. The same is true of my writing: whenever I straighten up the papers scattered around my study (“Not often enough,” my long-suffering, lovely wife adds from offstage.” I’m doing it now!) I find little notes, longer notes, outlines and partial drafts from months or years ago — ideas for stories or novels that I wrote down and forgot about since.

The messy office. Photo by allysa/Creative Commons.

Now that spring is here and my second novel is (mostly) wrapped — at least, the creative part —I feel energized again to move forward and finish my third novel, tentatively titled Walking from the Soviet Union. And the next one, where I’ll be completing Dark Clouds, the first book in an imagined series about the Witch Queen’s Son.

The advantage of finding notes after I’ve forgotten about them is that they lose their baggage in the process. My notes are short forms for my ideas, a few words or phrases to trigger the thoughts I had. But after a number of months, a lot of those ideas are forgotten, lost under the dark waves of what passes for my mind.

But that frees me. Unlike my bicycle or the kids’ basketball net, the passage of time does not leave a thick layer of dust and grime and god-knows-what-its-source-is goo on ideas. They’re more like driftwood, cleansed of clinging assumptions, associations, emotions, stripped down to the true essence of an idea.

I'm expanding Dark Clouds
from a short story to
a novel — eventually.

Like this one for Dark Clouds, the novel I seem to be writing in installments timed with special events. I had almost forgotten this little nuance to the back-story: “Matt is immune to magic; he can break or absorb the Witch Queen’s spells, but every time he does so, he must give her a piece of his life-string.”

See? I had thought of a deeper dimension to the story, the idea of a price that the hero has to pay for every favour; every victory he earns furthers his ultimate defeat.

Wow. That sounds great, and looks better on the page. Now, it’s time to buckle down and write!

Your turn: does springtime inspire you to start something new? Or to finish an incomplete project, artistic or otherwise? Tell us all in the comments block below.

Finding her unique voice: Best-selling Martha Bourke on the writer's style

What is writing style? How important is it to the reader, to the writer and to the writer’s success in reaching an audience?


This week, I asked Martha Bourke, author of the Jaguar Sun series of “young adult” novels and fellow member of BestSelling Reads about the importance and impact of her writing style.

How would you describe your own writing style?

A lot of my work is centered on dialogue, so the narrative really moves along. A lot of readers have described my writing as having a kind of breathless feel. It’s not done on purpose, but that description makes a lot of sense. Along with that, I add in quite a few cliffhangers throughout.

Are there any authors whose style you admire? Do you try to emulate them?

I’m obsessed with books, both Indie and traditional, so there are scads of authors I admire. I don’t try to emulate anyone. For one thing, their styles are very different from my own. Also, every writer brings something very special and unique to a story. Writing, like any other art form, is a kind of self-expression. I think that would be lost if everyone tried to write like everyone else. Having said that, most writers I know are avid readers, and I’m sure we’re being influenced along the way somewhere.

Are there authors whose writing style you dislike?

You know, Scott, sometimes it’s just a case of an author and me not hitting it off. But there are certain cases I can predict. For example, I love the story of The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien is fabulous, don’t get me wrong. And like me, he was a linguist. But those books are just so incredibly dense. I read them all as a kid, but I know for sure if I tried to get threw them now, I’d have a major case of pick it up, put it down syndrome.

How important is your writing style to you? Are you happy with your style, or are there aspects of it you try to change during rewriting or editing?

My writing style very closely matches the way I think when I’m writing and the way I see different parts of the plot in my head. So I feel comfortable with it. Being naturally dialogue-oriented means that as I do my rewrites, I am bound to find areas that lack enough description. There’s always a fine balance between giving the reader just enough and being unclear. I’m also always trying to tighten up my writing, making sure to show and not tell.

How can readers identify your writing style? Are there particular words or kinds of words that you tend to favour? Sentence structures? Or is it more in the story, the pacing or the characters?

I think that in my Young Adult series, the kinds of words or expressions I use lend a kind of credibility to the age group I’m writing. Voice is so important in YA (young adult). Trying to keep it sounding authentic is a challenge, and word choice and sentence structure are key. Right now I’m writing an adult spin-off series from my YA books. I definitely found that my structure changed. It’s still dialogue-based and fast-paced, but it’s written in shorter sentences that often are just one lines. I use conjunctions to add punch, which I suppose I could have done in my YA series, but just never did. So some of the hallmarks of my writing are the same for the two series and some are different.

Do you think writing with a female protagonist and POV, as opposed to a male POV, changes the style, in terms of word choice, sentence structure or other language elements?

I tend to think of my characters as individuals. They all have their own culture, background, race, gender, sexual orientation, and place within in the story. I think all of these things influence the way a writer creates a protagonist, as well as any other character. Gender is a part of the mix, but without the other pieces of the puzzle, the character is very one-dimensional. Having said that, the concerns of a male or female protagonist could be different based on gender. Men and women can think very differently within those other confines, so it depends a lot on the story I’m telling.

How important do you think writing style is to an author's commercial success?

I think it can be a very important part of the package. I say package because it seems to me that some readers are most drawn to a compelling story, while others find the manner in which that story is told to be key.
Cover art that represents the story well is definitely also on the list.
I don’t think that a great writing style guarantees a book will be successful, though. There are lots of books out there from some fabulous authors that just won’t sell. I do believe that while writing style doesn’t guarantee a reader will pick up a book, it’s probably a big factor as to whether or not the book gets put down finished or unfinished.

Thanks so much for having me, Scott!

Thank you, Martha!

Martha Bourke grew up in Burlington, Vermont, often considered a hub of “free thinking.” She was encouraged to write and be creative at a very young age. She spent fifteen years creating and teaching in foreign language programs for young children. She continued to write on the side, trying out a variety of fiction genres. Then she discovered the Young Adult genres — specifically, paranormal romance. She was hooked!

Martha and her husband of thirteen years have carved out their own little piece of Vermont in the Massachusetts countryside. When not writing, she loves spending time with her animals, listening to good music, and reading.
You can find her books, Jaguar Sun and Jaguar Moon, and her novella, Revelations (part of the Jaguar Sun series) on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, the Kobo e-bookstore and the iBookstore. You can find all her writing on her blog and website, www.marthabourke.com.

Book 3 of the series, Jaguar Hunter, and the spin-off New Breed novels, are coming this year!

David C. Cassidy's Velvet Rain: an independent novel review

What if you could go back in time and correct your mistakes? Would you?

What would the price be?

In Velvet Rain, David C. Cassidy answers that question imaginatively, realistically and fearlessly.

The answer, though, is difficult and terrifying.

As a skilled writer, Cassidy brings the answer out through the story. He begins with fictitious headlines that we know cannot be true, like Buddy Holly surviving that plane crash or Hitler being tried for war crimes. He then gets right into the story, answering a universal question with a particular story — the mark of the artist.


Kain Richards is a wanderer, a drifter with the strange ability to move back in time, which he uses to hustle pool.


Richards, though, is running from something or someone. He avoids even the most temporary relationships, because he must never be tied down.


Naturally, his heart breaks his rule, and he falls for Lynn Bishop, a single mom with two teenagers, Lee-Anne and Ryan. She’s estranged from her husband, the town drunk and iconic wife-beater, Ray. Her situation and family history cause a tangle of problems that are symbolic of far too many families in the world today. But Cassidy doesn’t preach: he remains focused on the story he’s telling.


Kain’s problems and pain become entangled with Lynn’s, but this never feels forced or artificial. If you can believe in Kain’s strange time-shifting abilities, then the rest of the story falls into place as naturally as rain. And the story reveals the pain and horror that are the price of Kain’s powers.


Cassidy’s story contains a great deal of pain, but the author also captures the simple, quiet joy and pleasure of a simple life, the humour and love of a county fair, an honest day’s work, of the connection between a man and a woman, between youth and maturity. The writing style is descriptive, but never heavy-handed, and it never drags.


And he delivers on the implied promise. What is the cost of the power to change the past? The new present you have created, because no matter what you do, everything has consequences.

5 stars.

You can find Velvet Rain as an e-book from Amazon, or in paper format through Amazon or through the author's own website.

What is style? An interview with Charity Parkerson

How important is writing style? And just what is it, anyway — what makes up an author’s style? Can an author truly be unique?

This week, Written Words has invited Charity Parkerson, author of paranormal romance and erotica, to tell us her thoughts on writer’s style. Read what she has to say, and then check out her work.

How would you describe your own writing style?

Erotic with a southern twist.

Are there any authors whose style you admire? Do you try to emulate them?

I really like Julie Garwood. She does a great job of mixing humor with suspense and since I’m hilarious (in my own mind) I try to add a bit of humor to my books, as well.

Are there authors whose writing style you dislike?

I love Jennifer Wilde and have read all of her books. However, I can’t stand her descriptive writing style. She can weave the most wonderful and engaging stories, but I find myself skipping over the three-page descriptions of someone’s dress.

How important is your writing style to you? Are you happy with your style, or are there aspects of it you try to change during rewriting or editing?

When I first started out, I had several people tell me that I would run into trouble with reviewers because my characters have southern accents. I refused to remove it, since my books are set in the South, and it made sense that their speech would reflect that. I have run into a couple of reviews that mention it, but for the most part readers have been fine with it, and I’m glad that I did not allow anyone to talk me out of writing my own voice out of my stories.

What are the important elements of your style? What are you trying to achieve?

In erotica, I think that one of the most important elements is the ability to create a scene that is relatable but is still hot. I want to paint a picture with words that the reader can see, hear, and taste as if they are there.

How can readers identify your writing style? Are there particular words or kinds of words that you tend to favour? Sentence structures? Or is it more in the story, the pacing or the characters?

My characters tend to be a little on the dark side. It’s rare that I write a perfect character. I want people to cheer for someone that they never thought they could.

Do you think your genre imposes certain restrictions on writing style?

I write in several genres, but I do think that erotica is the most restrictive. Most people would think that it is the least. However, several times I have sent a story to my editor believing that I’ve finished the world’s hottest erotic novel, only to learn it is classified as steamy romance. You’re expected to use words that shock people into letting down their natural prude filter.

Do you think your audience responds to your writing style, consciously or unconsciously?

I hope it’s an unconscious reaction to a great read. :-D

How important do you think writing style is to an author's commercial success?

It’s very important if you also factor in who you are pitching yourself to.

Thank you, Charity.

Charity Parkerson made the bestseller list with her book A Secure Heart. Her paranormal Sinners series was voted as one of the top ten "Best books by an Indie author in 2011." Her Sexy Witches series blends paranormal, romance and erotica. She is also one of the Four Whips, a collective of authors who have recently published the erotic short-story collection Turkey Slap 2012.

Charity's newest book is A Splash of Hope, available from Amazon.

She is a member of The Paranormal Romance Guild, Coffee Time Romance, and Long and Short Romance Reviews. She is also a Goodreads moderator and a Library Thing author.

Visit her site at www.charityparkerson.com, and read her blog at charity-thesinners.blogspot.com.

You can like her at Facebook.com/authorCharityParkerson. You can follow her on Twitter @CharityParkerso.

Three-way blog swap: How do we choose names?

This week's guest post is part of a three-way. Joe McCoubrey, former journalist and now novelist, with a book coming out very soon, writes here about naming fictional characters; my guest post is now on paranormal author Cathy Brockman's blog, and Cathy is writing for Joe. Be sure to check out these other blogs, as well as anyone else with the Master Koda badge, for some great reading. But first, read Joe's words.

 

 

How do authors come up with names for their fictional characters?

If you think about it, the average novel will introduce about 20 or 30 different characters — from the hero or heroine (and their closest friends/family) right through to all the people they need to encounter in the various twists and turns of a story.

So where does an author start the naming process?

We all do it differently, but put no less thought into coming up with names that roll off the tongue, stay memorable for the reader, and somehow capture the character we’re writing about.

Lee Child’s engrossingly enigmatic MP wouldn’t be the same if he wasn’t called Jack (just call me) Reacher, and how did Stephen Leather take an everyday kind of name like Dan Shepherd and make it resonant through a gripping series? In the latter case, Leather’s use of the nickname ‘Spider’ provided an easy alliteration that we, as readers, instantly buy into.

So where did the names come from? The secret might just be as basic as authors playing about with a list until they get one they like. By building a great character (and great stories) around the chosen names, they hope to succeed in getting the reader to identify with the overall concept in such a way that the name remains with us. Obviously, it helps if you’re a prolific author who constantly finds interesting stories for your character and therefore builds the brand through the series.

Many authors use the names of friends, either in full or by coming up with a subtle derivative. This helps not only to prepare a nice long list but also makes it easier to describe characteristics and traits if the actual person is always on the mind when writing about their fictitious alter ego. Not much good if your friends are plain John Smith (with apologies to all John Smiths)!

There are also some pitfalls to be avoided.

Let’s say an author picks a name for a character who is an eminent surgeon with a private practice in a particular city and you attribute some unsavoury or unprofessional actions to the character. Where would the author be if such a professional with that name actually existed? Unlikely? Pick a name at random, Google it and see what happens! You’ll be surprised.

By the way he or she doesn’t have to be a surgeon — the same applies to any profession, including police officers, who figure most in popular fiction.

Our literary forefathers could delve into the realms of the surreal to come up with tasty bites like Robinson Crusoe or Wilkins Micawber. And you really had to be there to understand the mind of PJ Wodehouse when he gave birth to Bertie Wooster, Watkyn Bassett, Gussie Fink-Nottle and Tuppy Glossop!!

The process, however, could be as simple as the choices faced by all parents when picking a name for their child, although in this case they have half the job done for them. There’s not much they can do about the surname but just think of the tizzy they get into trying to come up with a first name that “sings” to them when they bolt it on. The modern writer has to find both halves of the equation!

And perhaps the secret is as simple as that. Start with one half — either the first name or the surname — and then try to find a match. It would be interesting to know if Child decided first on Reacher and then added Jack, or was it the other way round?

When all’s said and done, the readers are the people who decide whether the choices we make are appropriate. So why not ask the readers? In these days of social media it would be an interesting experiment for authors to Facebook or tweet their friends/followers/fans and ask them to submit possible names for particular characters. I can just see a typical post: I’m writing about gangland criminals in London and have decided to include twins by the names of Ronnie and Reggie. Does anybody have a suggestion for a surname??



Bio

Joe McCoubrey is a former journalist turned author. His first novel, Someone Has to Pay, is being released shortly, with number two already in the bag and number three halfway there. In between, he has written a short story, "Death by Licence," which was published last month in an anthology called Action: Pulse Pounding Tales, edited by Matt Hilton. To find out more about Joe, check out the following links:



Blog: http://joemccoubrey.com/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/#!/joe.mccoubrey
Twitter: http://twitter.com/JoeMcCoubrey1


My contribution to the three-way is on Cathy Brockman's blog at http://cathybrockman.com/our-next-stop-on-the-tour-scott-bury/
And don't forget to visit Joe's blog to read Cathy's post!