Archive for the ‘guest blogging’ Category

Interview with Alma Alexander!

I think Alma Alexander will not remember this, but I met her once. It was at one of the Writers’ Weekends in Seattle, probably before I got published, or possibly the very summer I got published, in 2004 or 2005. I idled by her table during a signing, picked up her books THE HIDDEN QUEEN and CHANGER OF DAYS, and said “Oh, I’ve been wanting to read these! I’m waiting for the third one to come out!”

“THERE ARE ONLY TWO OF THEM,” Alma said somewhat stridently, which made me suspect that she had faced that particular phrase one too many times. Possibly one too many times that very day, in fact.

I said “Oh aglghlgh!” or words to that effect, bought them both immediately and had her sign them for me. :)

This encounter taught me something important, which was to never assume a fantasy story is a trilogy just because there’s more than one volume. Having now (or at least as soon as WAYFINDER is out) committed two duologies myself, I am quite sympathetic to the sudden outburst of THERE ARE ONLY TWO OF THEM!

So I was pretty pleased, more recently, to discover Alma on LJ, and I’ve been following her blog for a while now (she writes some truly beautiful essays), and today I am entirely delighted to present to you an interview with Alma in advance of the release of her new novel, MIDNIGHT IN SPANISH GARDENS.

With no further ado–Alma Alexander!

CEM: You’re the product of/have lived in many cultures: Yugoslavia, Africa, New Zealand, America–and those are just the ones I’m certain of. I know this is like asking a fish what it thinks of water, but do you think your international experiences helped guide you into writing fantasy in particular?

Alma: Inasmuch as I am a chalice that accepts being filled with new sights sounds and experiences as something that is both inevitable and something that I have grown to crave over the years after being exposed to so much of it when I was a child, yes, in a sense it did – because when you’re creating a world, as a writer, it is important that you create one which is self-contained, self-sufficient, and cohesive, no matter how fantastical or bizarre it might seem from the outside.

Worlds have rules, always, and it’s important to know what those are, even if you plan to break them later. But in order to break them convincingly or with any kind of necessary weight, you first have to know WHAT THEY ARE and WHY THEY ARE IMPORTANT. I learned early that the new worlds I might find myself in may look and feel and sound and taste awfully odd and weird to me – but that to those from within those worlds, they were the everyday, the quotidian. It taught me to accept the fact that magic may be and all too often is an indivisible part of our daily existence, if only one knows where to look for it, and how to accept it with both curiosity and grace when it is discovered.

Every one of us may have a certain place on this planet which is “home”, familiar and recognizable and instantly explainable to strangers because it is so firmly and deeply and instinctively a part of us and who we are and how we perceive ourselves. But what my world travels have given to me is an ability to put down roots in all sorts of strange places – perhaps not the deep tap roots that grow solid and strong and all the way down in the places where I first opened my eyes and learned to see, but even those shallow surface roots that I grew elsewhere have always allowed me to suck up the sustenance and moisture (in the shape of knowledge and understanding) which I needed in order to survive in the new place. Shallow roots do not mean weak plants – the great redwoods of California are reputed to have fairly shallow roots which spread very wide – and that’s enough to support a sequoia. I’ll take that.

(Lots more behind the cut!)
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EASY PICKINGS: Teaser #3!

Welcome to the third and final teaser from EASY PICKINGS, the Jane Yellowrock-Joanne Walker crossover story! Part one is here and part two is here!

Please note, for those of you already trying to figure out where it fits into the continuity: it doesn’t. This is a world that wasn’t; essentially fan fiction by the authors themselves. Faith’s world and mine have a lot of similarities, but not enough to pretend even for a moment that they’re actually the same world. So while I hope the story will provide a great introduction to both characters, it doesn’t actually belong in either of our universes.

Don’t forget to come back tomorrow to find out who’s won the magnificent prizes being given away (details at the bottom of this post)! And now, enjoy!

We got a good six feet or so before I noticed the crowd was parting before us. Not that I blamed them. I would part before us too, because my newfound buddy looked like a badass, which gave automatic street cred to anybody hanging with her. Skinwalker. I hadn’t encountered that one before. I hadn’t encountered much with the kind of confidence she exuded, either. I’d fallen in beside her like we’d been practicing our whole lives. I wasn’t often enthusiastic about going to see what was causing obvious magical awfulness, but Ms. Tall Dark and Yellowrock looked so obviously prepared for anything, the whole idea sort of sounded like fun.

We got about six more feet before I saw the name of the bar we were passing by and let out an amused snort. “Vamp Mojo, huh? I kind of thought New Orleans would shy away from embracing the whole Anne Rice motif.”

Jane slid a look at me. Yellow-eyed look that sent creepies crawling down my spine. No wonder the guys back at my garage in Seattle had stopped talking to me once I went all magic and woo-woo. The golden gaze was just plain unnatural. I was relieved when she answered, because it gave me an excuse to stop meeting her eyes.

Well, it did for half a second anyway, because she said, “In my world it used to be dance club owned by a vampire. Now it’s a vampire bar.” She sniffed indelicately. “A blood bordello.”

I laughed. She didn’t. All the rich delicious smells in the air suddenly turned my stomach, and I swallowed bile. “There’s no such thing as vampires.”

This time Jane did laugh, but it wasn’t a particularly delightful sound. “I think I’d like to come from wherever you did. Vamps are at the top of the food chain, here. Literally.”

My feet lost their enthusiasm for heading toward the magical block party. Jane surged on a few steps ahead of me, only turning back when the crowd started closing in again. They didn’t matter; we could still see each other easily, what with the height advantage over two-thirds of the population. I swallowed. “There are really vampires here?”

Jane came back, planted herself in front of me, and nodded. The whole action was an emphatic statement. I, much less emphatic, pinched the bridge of my nose. “Okay. Look, before we go rushing in where angels fear to tread, maybe we should try to get some tiny idea of what we could possibly be facing. I don’t have vampires,” I said. “Werewolves?”

“And werecats. Of the African variety. Lions in prides, Leopards in small groups, though they tend to be solitary hunters. Wolves. All predators. No were-gazelles or were-bovines. Witches. Shamans. You?”

My eyes bugged. I felt them. Another quarter inch and they’d pop right out of my head. “You’re joking. Werecats? Isn’t that, I don’t know, very teenage girl wish fulfillment?”

Jane grunted. The sound was weirdly cat-like, and I got the nervous feeling I probably should have shut up about fifteen words earlier. Instead, I rushed on, answering her question. “Witches, yeah. Shamans, obviously. Sorcerers. The occasional demon. Gods of various sizes.”

“Gods?”

I wet my lips. “I take it you don’t truck with them. That’s probably just as well. Probably that means whatever’s down there,” I said with a nod toward the frothing light of doom, “is coming from something that meets us in the middle. Witches. Shamans.” Except I didn’t have vampires, which probably meant we were already in over my head. I didn’t see the need to mention that just yet.

Jane jerked her head in a way that might have meant “Probably” or it might have meant “Stop wasting time, let’s get a move on.” The latter interpretation was buoyed by her turning on her heel and leading the way forward again. “Come on, Dorothy. Let’s see what Big Bad Uglies this world has to offer us.”

I let her take point again. This was her city more than mine, assuming it was anybody’s city at all, tonight. She did the head-jerk thing again, pointing left. “That used to be a jewelry store. Yesterday. And that was an art gallery, not a restaurant. Not my world, not anymore.”

Her words sent more creepies down my spine. Around us, partygoers, some in feathered masks, danced, screamed, showed their breasts in return for a twenty-five-cent strand of beads, drank, vomited on the sidewalks, and swayed into and out of danger of collision like zombies. I took a moment to make sure they weren’t zombies, and came away satisfied they were just stoned. The smell of marijuana was ripe on the air, and mixed with the other scents it was both heady and rank.

Not as rank, though, as a rotted-meat stench that didn’t so much waft as thunder down the street. I automatically held my breath, and somehow the smell got worse, burning my eyes with its power. I coughed, wiped my eyes, and glanced over peoples’ heads in search of the smell’s source.

Sadly, it wasn’t all that hard to find. Something taller than we were was coming up on our right, and I say something, not someone, because it had horns. I knew at least one guy with horns, and he was a someone, but this fellow also had gills. And scales. And a spreading hood, like velociraptors had. A demon velociraptor. Great. I’d gotten yanked into another world where vampires were real and demon velociraptors stalked the streets. Not just demon velociraptors, but demon velociraptors who hadn’t had a fashion update since the 1980s, because the thing’s flared hood was streaked in vibrant neon shades of red, green, blue, and yellow.

It saw us at the same time we saw it.

Don’t forget there’s a contest running all week! Comment either here on CEMurphy.Net or over on FaithHunter.Net and be eligible to win one of the following prizes:

- a complete set of the Walker Papers (Urban Shaman, Winter Moon, Thunderbird Falls, Coyote Dreams, Walking Dead, Demon Hunts, and Spirit Dances).

- a complete set of the Jane Yellowrock books (Skinwalker, BloodCross, and Mercy Blade {Raven Cursed will be out in January 2012, but it’s not part of the prize package!}).

- an electronic edition of the (tentatively entitled) EASY PICKINGS, a Jane Yellowrock/Joanne Walker crossover story, out sometime this summer!

EASY PICKINGS: Teaser #1

Some of you will have seen this before–it’s the start of a crossover story I wrote in the flush of delight after reading the first two of Faith Hunter‘s Jane Yellowrock novels. But here’s the cool thing: Faith and I have decided to go ahead and write the whole story! Over the next couple days we’ll be posting more of it until there’s quite a substantial teaser for you, and sometime this summer we’ll release what I’m tentatively titling EASY PICKINGS: A Jane Yellowrock-Joanne Walker Crossover Story.

Please note, for those of you already trying to figure out where it fits into the continuity: it doesn’t. This is a world that wasn’t; essentially fan fiction by the authors themselves. Faith’s world and mine have a lot of similarities, but not enough to pretend even for a moment that they’re actually the same world. So while I hope the story will provide a great introduction to both characters, it doesn’t actually belong in either of our universes.

That said, please enjoy this excerpt from EASY PICKINGS!

There was something weird about crossing the city lines into New Orleans. Not just that the Big Easy was by anybody’s standards–in fiction, anyway–the center of all things supernatural in the States. It was bigger than that, a nasty jolt that wrenched everything a couple steps to the left. Even the city’s aura looked different from inside than it had from a few miles out, and I had absolutely no clue why.

The exciting thing about my life was that I’d probably find out.

For all my traveling around as a kid, I’d never gone through New Orleans. N’awlins, the way the natives said it. I loved that sound, like it was a word to be rolled around in and licked off the skin. So I did what any tourist would do upon arriving in the heartland of American Weird.

I hit the French Quarter.

Three days before Mardi Gras, the Quarter was hopping. It was probably the worst time of year to visit if I actually wanted to see New Orleans, but it was the best time if I wanted to throw myself eyeball-deep into beads, streamers, costumes, half-naked girls–Gary was going to deeply regret not having come along–parades, parties, obscene amounts of incredibly good food, and bourbon. I’d never actually tried bourbon and was kind of looking forward to it. Unfortunately, I couldn’t indulge right away, because the fish-hook sensation in my belly, the one that had been hauling me around ever since my shamanic powers had awakened, was getting tighter and more uncomfortable the deeper I got into the Quarter. I didn’t think my magic would give me an even break–let me heal up from a hangover, in other words–if I ignored it in favor of tying one on.

The city was a veritable teeming mass of humanity. Scent bombarded me from every direction: booze, perfume, pot, food, oh, God, the food, and the pervasive stink of sweat that no amount of deodorant or cologne was going to drown. Voices rose and fell in shrieks of laughter, joy, dismay; shouting was the only way to be heard, even if you were talking to the guy standing next to you. Everyone was beautiful in that flush-of-life way, though here in the heart of the city, so close to Mardi Gras, there were an unnatural number of genuinely beautiful people. They ran the color spectrum from rich blue-black all the way through to translucent white, with me thrown in on the whiter end, though when one of those really white girls stumbled into my arms, the skin tone comparison made me look rich and gold beside her. It was only back in Qualla Boundary, surrounded by others of Cherokee descent, that I felt stand-out pale. I pushed the girl to her feet and watched her trotter drunkenly away.

Maybe it was thinking about North Carolina and the life I’d left behind there that made me notice her. There were too many people to explain it otherwise, though the fish-hooks in my gut pulled so hard and sharp that they might’ve been an explanation on their own. It didn’t matter: she was half a block away and visible for about five seconds through a break in the crowd. She wore black leather damned near head to toe, all of it so snug against her body it had to be custom-made. Silver sparkled all over it, zippers and guns and blades and silver stakes in her hair like an Oriental fan of death. She looked hot, both literally and figuratively, and I thought the reason I’d glimpsed her at all was everybody else thought so too, and was backing up to get a better look at her.

She had to be at least my height, just a hair under six feet tall, even without the shit-stomping motorcycle boots she wore. And speaking of hair, if you took my crop cut and her four foot braid and divvied them out, we would both end up with what society considered a normal amount of hair for a woman. She was even built a lot like I was, rangy long limbs, though I thought I carried more muscle across the chest and shoulder from years of working on my car. Her skin tones were darker than mine, more pure Indian, but if somebody’d told me we were sisters, I’d have been inclined to believe them.

Particularly when she glanced my way and a flash of light caught the color of her amber eyes.

In my world, yellow eyes meant magic user. I should know: my own eyes were probably gold as sunrise just then, as the Sight kicked in to study one of the most complex, gorgeous auras I’d ever seen. Earthy colors tangled with something absolutely inhuman: dark, sleek, sentient and dangerous. A hunter, sharing body and soul with a human, and just ever so slightly bubbling with resentment over it.

I sure as hell knew what had brought me to New Orleans, now.

Don’t forget there’s a contest running all week! Comment either here on CEMurphy.Net or over on FaithHunter.Net and be eligible to win one of the following prizes:

- a complete set of the Walker Papers (Urban Shaman, Winter Moon, Thunderbird Falls, Coyote Dreams, Walking Dead, Demon Hunts, and Spirit Dances).

- a complete set of the Jane Yellowrock books (Skinwalker, BloodCross, and Mercy Blade {Raven Cursed will be out in January 2012, but it’s not part of the prize package!}).

- an electronic edition of the (tentatively entitled) EASY PICKINGS, a Jane Yellowrock/Joanne Walker crossover story, out sometime this summer!

How to Write Magical Words

Editor and writer Edmund Schubert has put together a writing how-to book gleaned from the posts my fellow bloggers and I have done at Magical Words. It’s called HOW TO WRITE MAGICAL WORDS, and it is frankly awesome.

Seriously, that sounds all tooting our own horn (and it is), but the only thing I had to do with it at all was page proofs for my essays, so I hardly have a horse in this race. I did, though, end up skimming through everybody’s essays and information, and holy moly, we have some really, really good advice in there. I mean, really truly good stuff. Things that I wished I’d known when I was getting started. Things that are still insanely useful to learn now. I mean, like, I have a copy of this book and I want a copy of this book. That’s how awesome it is.

HOW TO WRITE MAGICAL WORDS is now available for pre-order through the publishers, and *believe* me, the writer in your life wants a copy. Plus, if you order it now, the publisher will ship it to you for a nickel, so the total cost of the book, including shipping, is $18.00 even.

They believe orders placed now *should* get to you by Christmas, and if not by Christmas by New Year’s at the latest, and what better gift for a writer than some brilliant and inspiring advice to usher in the new year and all those resolutions with? :)

Cover Art & Controversy

I’ve blogged over at Bitten By Books today, about cover art and the controversies of having non-white characters accurately represented on them. Come on over and comment, if you like. I’m giving away copies of the Negotiator trilogy to three random commenters, so here’s your chance to win a set and give the ones you own to someone who doesn’t yet know they love CE Murphy books! :)

Reading Meme: Day Three

Day 03 – Your favorite recent book

*looks despairing* This would be easier if I’d read more than seven books this year, all of which I quite liked. I may have to go with Jack Campbell’s THE LOST FLEET: VICTORIOUS, which is the final book in the Lost Fleet series, which are military SF that do exactly what they say on the box. I have enjoyed them probably beyond their actual literary value because of that, but since there’s not much more you can ask for in books, yeah, I think that might be my favorite recent book.

Close runner-up, though, is Jackie Kessler and Caitlin Kittredge’s SHADES OF GRAY (sequel to BLACK AND WHITE), which is a superhero novel and also does exactly what it says on the tin to a very satisfactory level. That, it seems, is what I’m looking for in books right now. :)

Also, one more guest blog from me over at Drey’s Library, this one about the future of the Old Races universe!

New Interview!

September is the month of interviews, it seems. New interview posted at Bookmark Your Thoughts! Enjoy!

Live at Bitten By Books!

I’m up and running over at Bitten By Books for the next day or so–there’s a new interview posted, and I’ll be popping by regularly to answer questions. There are a couple of prizes for people who participate–a copy of TRUTHSEEKER, and an Irish Care Package which will also include a copy of TRUTHSEEKER, so come on over and chat!

guest blogging!

I’m guest blogging over at Drey’s Library today (and off and on all month!). Pop on over for a chance to win a copy of TRUTHSEEKER!

Welcome to 2010!

Happy New Year!

I’m guest blogging over at Temple Library Reviews about some of the differences between writing comics and novels. Thanks very much to Harry for inviting me to come play at his review site!

As reminded by several persons, THE PRETENDER’S CROWN has been nominated for the 2009 David Gemmell LEGEND Award for Fantasy. It’s on the long list, which is incredibly flattering, and it would be even more flattering to make it to the short list. My understanding is that voting between now and March will winnow the list down, so if you’ve any inclination, here’s the voting page.

And here’s this year’s publication schedule:

February: THE PHANTOM QUEEN AWAKES (anthology with a story of the Morrigan)


May: DRAGON LURE (anthology with a post-Negotiator-trilogy Janx story)


May 29: RUNNING WITH THE PACK (anthology with a Regency werewolf story)


June 1: DEMON HUNTS (book 5 of the Walker Papers. Birthday release date!)


August 31: TRUTHSEEKER (book 1 of the Worldwalker Duology)

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