The law breaking continues in Spirit and Dust:

I was really not dressed for breaking into a graveyard.

I shivered in my borrowed coat and gazed up at the fence that Carson expected me to climb–brick and iron and about nine feet tall. The moon was still bright enough to see the points on top of the bars. Were people in Minnesota that desperate to call on their dearly departed outside of visiting hours?

Remember–four more days to find Spirit and Dust in the wild (in your house, in a bookstore, on a plane, train or automobile) and TWEET it for a chance to win a signed copy of TEXAS GOTHIC, the first Goodnight book. Remember to use #spiritanddust in your tweets!

In which we meet Mr. Carson (Spirit and Dust excerpt)

I’m in England until Tuesday!  Tomorrow… Today? … FRIDAY I will be the BONUS ACT at Rachel Caine’s booksigning at Waterstones bookstore in Nottingham. That’s Nottingham, ENGLAND.  (Follow on Tumblr and Twitter for updates on the trip, which has no hashtag yet. I’m calling it the castle and pub tour.

TODAY’S S&D excerpt!

I turned to Mr. Carson… but paused when I got my first good look at him.

My first impression didn’t lie. Young. Twenty-one-ish. Younger than Agent Taylor, and almost as tasty. And tall. I’m five foot ten, and I had to tilt my head to look at him. HIs hair was brown, still wet, and standing up all over. His eyes were a dusky green–no, hazel–and I’d last seen them in the Minnesota cold, just before everything went dark.

“You!” I exclaimed, with all the melodrama his offenses deserved. “You’re the one who whammied me behind the police station.”

 

SPIRIT AND DUST DAY

Spirit and Dust has been released from captivity in the US. Already there have been sightings.

For the next week (until May 23) if you TWEET a picture of Spirit and Dust in the wild (in a store, in your house, in your shopping bag, on a bus/train/plane) then you will go into a drawing to win a signed copy of the first Goodnight adventure, Texas Gothic.  Here’s the deal, though. You MUST used the hashtag #SpiritandDust to be entered. (Because otherwise I won’t see your post.)

Not on Twitter? There will be other chances to win stuff coming soon.

I was rounding third on a Grand Slam

I was rounding third on a Grand Slam breakfast and sliding home into a second helping of pancakes I’d requested instead of bacon. Carson eyed the rapidly disappearing stack with what I decided to interpret as awestruck wonder. 

“You’re obviously feeling better.”

“My amazing powers require a lot of sustenance,” I said being bites. “I figure I’d better top off the tank for whatever comes next. Which, by the way, we should probably discuss. You can start with why you turned off your phone instead of calling for a pickup, or getaway car, or agent extraction, or whatever term you people prefer.” 

“‘You people’?”

“Don’t make me say ‘mobsters’ in the middle of a Denny’s.” 

SPIRIT AND DUST comes out TOMORROW!  Yay!!!!

In other news, I will be leaving for England on Wednesday. If you want to follow the pictures and updates from my trip, you should follow my Tumblr, because that’s where I post the more random of my ramblings. And you’re already following on Twitter, right? 

The Spirit and Dust Excerpt Countdown continues: The moment

The Spirit and Dust Excerpt Countdown continues: 

The moment we touched, I felt the weight of the remnants that clung to him. Shreds of lives he’d ruined or taken. Frayed tatters of crimson rage and purple grief and black mourning. They hung from him like the chains on Marley’s Ghost, except Maguire didn’t seem to regret his, or even acknowledge their existence. I felt them, though, like a stone on my chest. 

 

S&D comes out on Tuesday in the US and in June in the UK.  

Speaking of the UK, that’s where I’m going next week (leaving on Wednesday). Blog hijinx will continue, don’t worry. (In fact, expect lots of pictures.) I’m really REALLY looking forward to the trip. 

I’m not doing any official appearances or signings. This is fun and research and also fun. But I will be attending the fabulous Rachel Caine’s talk and signing at the Waterstones in Nottingham on Friday, May 17th. Unless I get lost in a cave or something. 

Today’s Spirit and Dust Excerpt

          Calling open the Veil wasn’t difficult. A whisper from me and it shivered into my view, ready to put things in their proper place. Our world was for the living. The dead belonged…somewhere else. 

         The threshold between here and eternity was only a waver in the air, like a curtain of liquid mercury. But [the ghost] shrank away from it. “What is that?”

          “Whatever’s next,” I told him. That was as much as I knew. I could see the Veil, but not what was beyond it….

          “I don’t want to go.” He swung around, pulling his gun from its holster and pointing it at me. “You can’t make me go.” 

          Probably not, but whatever lay beyond was happy to reach out and pull him in. I could see that, either, but Bruiser could, and his screams raked my bones.

 

SPIRIT AND DUST comes out on Tuesday, May 14th!  Check back tomorrow for more.

Spirit and Dust Countdown

The local cops kept staring at me. I couldn’t decide if it was the plaid miniskirt in subarctic temperatures, or the fact that they’d never seen anyone talk to the dead before.

Here’s something weird about me. I almost always start writing with the first line of the book. 

I know, I know. It doesn’t sound that weird. Where else would you start other than the beginning?

Only it’s not that simple. You have to know where the story ACTUALLY starts. Backstory and characterization are good things for the author to know, but we don’t need to put it in up front. We want to start as close to The Thing That Sets Stuff In Motion as possible.  (Imagine if you had to sit through ten minutes of Luke Skywalker fixing moisture vaporators and whining to his aunt and uncle before the droids showed up. No. Just, no. Instead we start his part of the story with the droids arriving, shorthand in a few lines of characterization, and then, boom, we’ve got a Princess in Peril and off we go.)

I’m not talking about that part. I’m saying that I LITERALLY write the first line of my book first. In my head. Sometimes before I even know what the plot of the book is going to be. Prom Dates From Hell was like that.  And so was Spirit and Dust.  I knew from the moment I finished writing Texas Gothic (where Daisy is a minor character) what would be the opening line of her book. I didn’t know if or when I would get to write it, but I knew how it would start.

(By the way, you do NOT have to read Texas Gothic or Spirit and Dust in any order. The only thing that connects them is the characters come from the same family. Their stories are independent and don’t have spoilers for each other.)

Anyway. That’s the first line of Spirit and Dust. More teasers to come.

 

Things that make me happy

It’s been a rough couple of weeks at Casa Del Clement-Moore.  So to remind myself that Life is Good, today I am posting about Things That Make Me Happy.

1) My family and friends. I know this is cliche, but it’s true. Read the dedication of Spirit and Dust (you HAVE pre-ordered your copy, right?) and you’ll know how I feel. Family is a thread that runs through my books for a reason. I have a good one, and that includes the family I’ve chosen for myself in my friends.

2) Young readers.  Okay, yeah, I wouldn’t have a job without them. But the enthusiasm of young readers is unrivaled. Look at this bunch from TLA last week:

Brimstone has these readers absolutely captivated!

3) Knitting.  I got bit by the knitting bug big time. How lucky am I that it’s trendy right now?  I’m going to do this Spring Knit-Along if anyone wants to join me. On top of all the other projects I’ve got going. (And, you know, writing and stuff.)

4) Travel. I’m going to England in three weeks. I haven’t been talking about it, because it’s like I’ve won the  lottery. (I’ve definitely won the friend lottery.) More on that to come. First…

5) I get to do what I love, and what I’m best at, and I get to do it as my job.  Talk about winning the lottery!

I just got a big box of Spirit and Dust! Tell me in the comments what makes YOU happy, and on Friday I will draw one commenter to win a copy! 

Better Than Chocolate and Hot FBI Agents

This morning I retweeted something from one of my favorite paranormal romance authors* (and awesome person) Alyssa Day:

RT @Alyssa_DayDear Readers: You know that part where you tell us you like our books? We love that part like chocolate.

First off, I would amend that to say we love that part better than the chocolate-covered marshmallow Easter eggs that I have stashed in a secret place in my office where my mother can’t find them.**

The thing is, it’s not just that we (as authors) are looking for the ego stroke. At least, I’m not.  Or mostly not.  But hearing from readers who have enjoyed my books is honestly my favorite part about being a published writer, and here’s why:

A book is a collaborative process in more than just the writer/editor/cover-designer/publisher/marketer way.  It’s a collaboration between the author and the reader. See, when I write a scene, or I describe a character or setting, I have a picture in my mind. Literally, for me, because I tend to see my scenes as multi-sensory movies in my head.  That picture is drawn based on my own experiences: places I’ve been, people I’ve met, plus a whole lot of my own dreams, emotions and neurosis.

When you read a book—MY book, for the sake of this blog post, though it’s possible you’ve wandered to this site by accident, or because you Googled Alyssa Day or chocolate-covered marshmallow Easter eggs—then my words, if I’ve done my job right, make a picture in your mind, and that picture is drawn by YOUR experiences.

So if I write this***:

“Hey, Agent Tasty,” I’d said, when I saw Agent Taylor waiting beside the car. I liked Taylor, and not just because he was young and really hot for a buttoned-up guy with a G-man haircut and a newly minted FBI badge. I sort of like liked him, but we worked together and I was still three months shy of legal age, so it stayed with they boundaries of “sort of.” None of which kept me from noticing that he did not skimp on the FBI physical training program.

I might be picturing this (I’m not, btw):

You could be picturing this:

Someone else might be picturing this:

Or going old school: 

Or REALLY old school:

None of these, by the way, are models for Agent Taylor, who is fresh out of the academy as well as my imagination.

I do draw on real people and places for inspiration sometimes, but rarely just one. It’s this model’s hair, but this dancer’s height, and this actress’s cheeky grin, etc.  I rarely, if ever, tell anyone what/who I have in mind because I want you to form your own picture.

Even my editor and I have different ideas. She said, “I picture Daisy looking sort of like a red-haired Taylor Swift, only with a lot more eyeliner and black nail polish.”  (Which got me thinking, would Taylor Swift even BE Taylor Swift with red hair and a lot more eyeliner and black nail polish?)  However, Swift is quite tall (or she looks that way) with really long legs, and so body-type-wise, that’s exactly what I’d described in both Texas Gothic and the new book, so I considered this a success.****

ANYWAY. This brings me to reader tweets/comments/email.  The fun thing for me is to find out what stuck with you from the story. I have my favorite parts, so I love hearing yours. I know what *I* think Ben McCullough looks like, but I love to hear what reader’s imagine. I think that the shared universe of a book is something kind of magical. When I see fans of a wildly popular book/series sharing ideas, fan art, world-building theories, character analysis, that book becomes almost like a virtual reality.

That’s why I love reading, and that’s why I love writing. PLUS, I got to spend my morning looking up pictures of hot FBI agents. It really is better than chocolate.

—

* No, really. Day really gets it RIGHT. You can tell that she loves the Fantasy part as much as the Romance part, and it’s not just an excuse to have the couple to have Magical Soulmate Sex. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I suspect Alyssa might be a bit of a SFF fangirl at heart.

** This is not an exaggeration. I bought a ridiculous number of packages when they went on sale, and if I don’t want Mom to eat them ALL AT ONCE, I have to hide them. When did I become my parent’s parent?

*** Why, yes, that IS pulled from SPIRIT AND DUST! So glad you asked.

**** Dear Ms. Swift. If you’re looking for a starring vehicle, the option on Spirit and Dust is available. Ha ha.*****

**** No, really. Call me. We’ll do lunch.

Puppies and Books and Babies, Oh My!

What I’ve been doing when I’m not writing (and rewriting and throwing out and writing again)…

Penny got a haircut.  She’s hard to snap a photo of because she’s never still.  But she was looking like a yeti, so it was time.

More pomeranian, less yeti.

And speaking of babies…

Me and my new cousineice. (That’s a word, right?)

And no, I haven’t had a baby, but if I could mail order one like B. I totally would.  Or at least I’d think very seriously about it. She’s the sweetest thing. Okay, it might be a contest with her older sister, but it would be a close one.

Here’s an assorted list of reminders and stuff that’s coming up and what not:

This Thursday from 7:30 to 8:45, I’m speaking at the Arlington (Texas) Central Branch Library. It’s the Teen Creative Writing Club, and you don’t have to register. I’m talking about writing and stuff and I’ll probably read something from SPIRIT AND DUST. Here’s the website for more details.

And speaking of SPIRIT AND DUST, remember you can preorder it from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other online retailers. You can probably even pre-order it from your brick and mortar, too. (It seriously took me four tries to spell ‘mortar’ right. Five if you count “Mordor.”  Nerd, yes. Spelling champion, no.)

If you like to read grown up romance novels, you might want to grab DATE BY MISTAKE, available in e-book from all the e-book places (including Kindle, Nook, Kobo and iBooks).  It’s four novellas, including one  from yours truly.  It’s not a book for teens, unless you, like I was when I was 16, are already reading Harlequins and stuff.

Places I’m going to be this spring:

The Texas Librarian Conference in Fort Worth, April 24-27.

The RT Booklover’s Convention in Kansas City, May 1st-5th, but in particular the Teen Day on that Saturday.

More (Mordor?) to come soon.