So if you would like to enter to win you can do so here.
And if you already have a copy (THANK YOU!) then you can still enter to win and give it to someone else as a gift.
And here’s a behind the scenes look at my favorite Doctor doing my favorite scene from Hamlet. If this video could shoot out candy bars my life would be perfect.
First off that blob up there is me being a goofball and creating a word cloud out of Palimpsest, the sci fi book I’m in the final death throes of revising.
Word clouds are cool.
Other things that are cool are poems published by Stephen over at Dead Snakes. It took a long time for Summer Lake, Late Nineties to find a home so I’m glad it happened. You can read all three here.
And in other cool news, I got my first book of poems, entitled The Wanting Bone by Six Gallery Press reviewed. I’m completely flattered by all the nice words that Poetry Hound had to say.
And in the best news of all, my buddy Oscar Varona got a story published. He and his girlfriend Aida are my two favorite artists/ people/humans that don’t live in the US (damn them!). You should read it especially if you like weirdness and Samuel Beckett and funny. And who doesn’t like that?
So it’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything on here because I’ve been mired in revisions on my current WIP but I wanted to come out of my dank dark cave to share a few things.
There have been some new reviews of Lizzy popping up online. I posted them here but here’s a link to the newest from Pen and Muse.
P&M is a really great resource for writers and I was so excited when they agreed to take my piece on rejection which as I said when I gave it to them, was the most honest thing I’ve ever written about the submission experience for me. As for Lizzy they said some really great things like this:
Another thing I really liked about this novel is that Lizzy is a strong female protagonist. There’s nothing worse than opening a novel and starting to read it, only to find that the main female character is dependent on a male for happiness, or afraid to take action, etc. But this isn’t the case with Lizzy!
While I’m very excited about Peter, I’m still sad about Matt but have vowed to NOT repeat the theatrics from the David to Matt transition.
I vow to keep the tissue usage to a rational amount. 20 sheets max.
But before we move on, we’ve got a little time left with Matt – the sure-to-be-amazing 50th anniversary show and a Christmas special – and I just wanted to share this brilliant moment from his run, the moment in which I looked at Matt and didn’t say, I miss David.
Came across this today on twitter via xkcd while reading about everyone freaking out about a poem that Amanda Palmer wrote that might maybe sort of involve seeing people as complex and not just “bad guys” vs “good guys” (though mostly everyone screamed that she was anti-american and should go shave her pits) and I thought it was pure awesome so I’m sharing it here:
As for what Amanda wrote – while I don’t think it’s a great poem – I think that attacking someone (and mostly attacking the fact that she is a woman) for saying something thought provoking or heaven forbid out of the norm has unfortunately become de rigueur in this country and that is a dangerous, dangerous thing. We used to believe in civil discourse. Now we just slam down anyone who expresses anything different from what we want to hear, accuse them of being part of the problem and then suggest that they go blow themselves up.
I wrote a poem about it too but no one attacked me cause I’m not a celebrity.
Also I killed a plant and feel horrible about it and said so on facebook. I got the following comment from a friend:
“Empathy, even for plants, is a strength not a weakness. The world could use more of it. Be proud.”
And while that was about a plant specifically – I’m pretty sure it’s going to become my new mantra. So thanks, Greg.
In other news today is Shakespeare’s birthday. Yay!
I wanted to celebrate it by offering Lizzy Speare and the Cursed Tomb for free as an ebook and discounted as a paperback on amazon but life seems to have gotten in the way so I’ll be doing that in May instead. A wee bit belated, but still happening. As for the reason that life got in the way, I leave very soon for Austria where I imagine I will eat more sacher torte than is probably recommended by most physicians.
In the meantime, maybe we can all just take a deep breath and try to be a little more reasonable.
Paper Heart which was published by Jersey Devil Press, was a story I was very proud of mainly because I had adopted a completely different writing style for that one and that was no easy feat. It was rejected numerous times before it found a home – most people were hung up on the notion that a person would be born with Ectopia cordis(a heart on the outside of the body) and that it would be made of paper. Also, the boy with no tear ducts seemed to baffle people. That’s why I’m thankful for places like Jersey Devil Press. They let me send them all my really weird stuff. And they were kind enough to nominate me for a Pushcart – which while I realize TONS of people get nominated for and it doesn’t really mean anything – but it meant something to me that the editors at Jersey Devil picked my story out of all the other fantastic stories they had published.
Many thanks to Susan at Dab of Darkness for the interview. And how do we say thanks? With candy!
Also completely unrelated I fell for the Doctor Who Fan facebook page April Fool’s Day joke where they said Matt was leaving (Me: oh sadness) and that David Tennant was coming back (Me: ohmygodohmygodohmygod) and I gotta say, shame on you Doctor Who Fan page. It’s not nice to toy with a woman like that.
I love the concept of Lizzy and Dmitri being descendants of William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe. Did this concept require a lot of research on your part?
It did actually. When I first decided that I wanted to write about the descendant of Shakespeare I went out and picked up a couple bios on him. I mean, I had read Shakespeare before – he’s one of my favorites – but I knew I was going to need a lot more information. Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare by Stephen Greenblatt was the most useful. It was a fantastic look at a man for whom there is not a ton of biographical information on. When I decided that my bad guy would be descended from Marlowe I read the World of Christopher Marlowe by David Riggs which was also a fantastic bio. I wanted to avoid the “conspiracy theorists” who like to say that they were the same person – which in my opinion is pure nonsense.
Okay so seriously, these people really exist. There are Oxfordians who believe that Shakespeare was the Earl of Oxford. Seen the movie Anonymous anyone? I hear that is the bunk it’s pedaling. I’m far too much of a Stratfordian to watch it.
And then even worse are the Marlovians. They are the people who believe that Kit Marlowe faked his own death and then re-imagined himself as Shakespeare.
They claim his pseudonym comes from the following lines in Tamburlaine: “Thy words are swords. Shaking their swords, their spear.”
Get it? Shake? Speare?
Yeah…..and just for the record the Earl of Oxford died in 1604. The Tempest, Shakespeare’s last play included a famous shipwreck which took place in 1609 and in 1610 pamphlets were written outlining what happened which he probably used for source material. So I guess the Earl was writing from beyond the grave.
Cause you know that makes way more sense than Shakespeare having just EXISTED.
All the same, thanks to the lovely Shar at My Paranormal Book Reviews for taking the time to talk with me. She gets some Starburst.
It’s a “funny” story – if by funny you mean heartbreaking and disappointing and wanting to punch out some old English chaps.
It was suggested by my better half that it would be worth the English criminal record to get closer to the final resting place of Shakespeare. As I was once kicked out of the country of Monaco (long story) why not add trespassing in Stratford to my list of European offenses?
I can’t help but wonder if I should have.
Anyway, many many many many thanks to Pam. And as you know when people do nice things we say thank you. With CANDY!
