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Lurking Musings

~ Musings of a newly published writer

Lurking Musings

Tag Archives: BBW Romance writers

On mentors and evil

23 Saturday May 2015

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Musings

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#amwriting, BBW Romance writers, Judy Bagshaw, Skyla Dawn Cameron, The Curse, The Evil League of Evil Writers, Writing mentors


On Thursday evening, I got a piece of bad news about an old friend. An old friend who I had never actually met who is now in a critical care ward in Canada, apparently in a bad way. This news came to me from another friend who I have never met. Said friend being a member of an organisation calling themselves the Evil League of Evil Writers who are dedicated to performing evil* for the good of humanity, she posted this blog post:

Evil for Judy

This post says more about Judy Bagshaw than I ever could, about the sort of person she is and why she deserves acclaim. Not surprising as it was written by someone I consider to be a great writer. I urge anyone reading this to go visit the blog linked above, read it and perform at least one of the tasks of ‘evil’ that are requested. When done, leave a comment so Skyla can read out your deed to Judy and let her know that there are people out there doing evil on her behalf.

Why am I involved in this? Well, I owe Judy a hell of a lot. She is the evil person who got me involved in this writing lark. Not only that she was an enabler who kept me writing when I wanted to quit. She is a true mentor, a great cheerleader and an inspiration. Without her Transitions would have never been written because I would not have bothered to try this insane experiment in romance writing. She was also instrumental in getting Transitions published and performed a lot of the really hard work involved in that.

She was one of the insane collaborators from the BBW Romance Writers group on our bizarre collaborative novella, The Curse which you can download for free from her site and has her own collection of romance novels out there for you to buy.  She beta read Transformations (now published in Lurking Miscellany) and finished her critique with a cheery ‘well done’ which remains my most awesome review yet. When Lurking Miscellany was published, she told me that she was not going to buy it from Amazon because she wanted to buy it direct from me at greater postage cost so I could sign it for her. I lied about the postage cost to Canada so she actually ended up paying less. It was the least I could do.

I beta read some of her stuff and had a lively online conversation with her that has lasted almost ten years so far. I really hope that conversation is going to continue. The last we spoke she was talking about getting Shades of Love, the novella anthology we collaborated on that includes Transitions, published as a collected print edition. That needs to happen and if she cannot do it, I intend to.

In her honour, I spoke to some of my students yesterday about reading and writing (among other things, it was a long conversation). That was my act of evil. I intend to do more of that when I get back to work. Please perform your own acts of evil and pass the details. The ELEW can’t do enough evil by itself, it really needs your help…

* I say evil. For the ELEW the term evil has a specific meaning. The following is copied from the above blog post and covers that definition very well..

“Standard Evil Explanations for Newbies:

Wait, what’s this about evil? I’m a member of the Evil League of Evil Writers. Everything we do is evil, including charitable acts.

Aren’t charitable endeavors inherently good? Judy has fostered evilty in many children, including me, who co-founded the ELEW. Also, by supporting this endeavour, that might make people cry happy tears. Making people cry is of course evil. See? It all comes back to evil, folks.

As a friend said, when the universe kicks one of us, we kick back twice as hard.

I’m kicking.” Skyla Dawn Cameron (2015)

D.A Lascelles is the author of Lurking Miscellany, Transitions (Mundania Press) and Gods of the Sea (Pulp Empires). He lives in Manchester UK. You can sometimes see him writing about Zombie porn on https://lurkingmusings.wordpress.com/ but he mostly blogs about books, vampires, science fiction and Terry Pratchett. He is inordinately proud of the fact that one of his Pratchett articles was referenced on the French version of the author’s Wikipedia page.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DaLascelles

Twitter: @areteus

Buy Lurking Miscellany (paperback)

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Writing Romance

08 Saturday Feb 2014

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Musings

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BBW Anthology project, bbw romance, BBW Romance writers, Conan the Barbarian, D.A Lascelles, Elric of Melnibone, fantasy novel, paranormal romance, Romance fiction, Transitions


There was a time when I would have said that I would never write Romance. I certainly never read it. That stuff was for girls, after all. When I were a lad my reading was all fantasy and SF, cool stuff with lasers and swords and demons and stuff. Romance was not in the picture. After all, I would hardly consider the sort of relationships that Conan had as ‘romance’, more reinforcing an unhelpful misogynistic male stereotype, and Elric of Melnibone was too obsessed with his own self destructive angst to worry about such things. Typical teenage boy stuff.

Even at school I hardly displayed the most romantic tendencies. Given the choice between studying a play about angsty teenage romance that ends in suicide and a particular Scottish play filled with witches, blood and dark omens (not to mention Banquo’s ‘gory locks’) you would probably not be too surprised at which one won out.

Needless to say I was not known for my romantic tendencies.

So, obviously, when I grew up, I wrote a Romance novella…

Wait… what? How the hell did that happen? I ask myself the same question a lot.

I put the answer down to my desire to challenge myself.

At least Conan got the smouldering hero look about right….

You see, when I was in school my ambitions were to write a fantasy novel. Or a SF novel. Something genre based anyway. I even wrote a very bad SF short about aliens invading the school (I am still waiting for the producers of The Faculty to get back to me on my royalties for that… 🙂 ) and a clichéd fantasy novel about a bunch of characters who join up in a quest to find a magic object. It even had a werewolf in it. Thankfully, those truly awful pieces of literature never survived long enough to sully the world with their awfulness and for a while I put aside writing to focus on other things. Then I came back to it and the first thing I thought was ‘I need a challenge’. I also came to a revelation that romance was an important part of life. More than important, it is fundamental to life. Without it being there to help ensure that certain essential biological processes occur, life pretty much stops. Ok, I guess at some point in human history we did without it, though it is hard to really say when romance first began. Courtly love is cited as a medieval invention but there was romance long before then as evidenced by the love poems of Cattullus (written between 84 and 54 BC). Even older than that is a Sumerian poem or song written 4000 years ago and bear in mind that this is the oldest recorded evidence. Just because there are no surviving written love poems before that does not mean the concept did not exist. Romance has been around a long time.

Though I am not sure why this would be surprising. After all, these ancient civilisations had deities (usually goddesses, there may be a hetero-normative argument to be had there) who were dedicated to romance and love. Safe to say that romance and love have been human concepts for a long time, almost certainly longer than the written records that hold these fragments of the literature of these ancient periods.

So what did this mean for me and my big decision? Well, I argued in my inner Transitions-AuthorCopymonologue, you see romance is everywhere and involved in everything. It is a major motivator for human behaviour. It appears in all forms of story, not just those that come with covers depicting smouldering leading men with a tendency to scowl too much and beautiful heroines trying desperately to keep their bosoms inside a corset. Main characters in war stories, superhero stories, comedies, tragedies and, well, any story really, are at risk of falling in love and doing something stupid because of that. Romance is a vital tool in the storyteller’s repertoire. And I wanted to get better at using it.

So I joined up with a fun group of writers known as the BBW Romance Writer’s group. That’s BBW as in ‘Big Beautiful Women’ because another thing I believe in is realistic bodyshapes for both genders. Our goal was to produce an anthology of Romance fiction novellas with realistic heroines, a project they had already achieved with two previous publications. I set out to try to write a Paranormal love story because I realised early on that I could not do a full romance tale, I had to have some fantasy, some supernatural stuff, to shake things up. Boy/Girl/Trans meets Boy/Girl/Trans [delete as appropriate] is all very well but it is also cool if there’s a ghost or something as well. In the end I actually merged two stories that were sat unfinished on my hard drive – one a contemporary boy meets girl, the other about an ancient Roman and his doomed marriage.

About half way through merging these two I realised that the romance was not where anyone would expect it to be – in the hands of the two contemporary characters. Their tale is a more modern love story, but it is not as deep and enduring as the tragic tale of Gaius Lucius – a romance that makes a desperate man do terrible things in order to keep hold of it. In a way I suppose I was making a point about perceptions of romance – that in some cases modern ideas of love are more superficial. That epiphany is what, for me, made sense of the whole concept of romance in fiction and the final result of that realisation led to the publication of Transitions.

So, I would say to any writer who works in any genre to not ignore the importance of romance. Explore it and use it and try to understand how it might motivate your characters. It is not just hearts and flowers and hallmark cards.

Busy times ahead…

01 Friday Feb 2013

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Publicity

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#amwriting, BBW Romance writers, books, Goodreads, guest posts, reviews, Transitions, Vampire Month, Vampires, writing


Since we are at the start of Feburary, I thought it was a good time for a bit of a recap and a look ahead as to what is to come. You may not have been aware of it, but January has been a busy month for me. I’ve been beavering away in the promotion cave (as Erica Hayes calls it) and getting some good results…thecurse_BBWauthors_03

First off, I have managed to get my first review on Goodreads thanks to the Making Connections giveaway offer. You can see the review here:

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16225234-transitions

I am still waiting for several other reviews from that giveaway but as we are still well within the 4-6 week deadline I am not expecting them yet. I am hoping that they will all be as good as the ones I have had so far but I realistically know that this is unlikely.

Secondly, my new facebook author page (https://www.facebook.com/DaLascelles?ref=stream) is doing well with a grand total of 52 likes, which I consider reasonable but am still hungry for more. I posted my ’50 likes’ picture a few days ago. If you want to know what it is, go like the page! And when I reach 100 likes I will post another…

I also have been answering interview questions for other peoples’ blogs and will post here when those go live. One of them says there is a 12 week backlog of interviews to post so it will be a while before that one appears but as soon as it does I will let you all know so you can read about my deepest, darkest secrets.

As for what is to come, well I have two guest posts lined up for this month already, both looking to promote newly released books. Look out for them on the 6th of Febuaray and the 21st of Feburary. I’ve also scheduled myself for a post on Amwriting.org on the 26th of Feburary but have absolutely no idea what I am going to write about yet. Finally, there is Vampire Month…

Earlier this week, I finalised the list of authors who will be taking part in Vampire month this year and they are an interesting bunch. We have:

Zoe Adams

Aaron Smith

Lynda Bester

Erica Hayes

I look forward to finding out more about them as they answer my questions and produce a guest post for March.

So, there you have it. Lots of things achieved and pending. It’s only the start of the year, I hope the rest of it is as good…

Review of the Year

30 Sunday Dec 2012

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Musings

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#amwriting, Absolute Write, BBW Romance writers, behaviour management, books, Judy Bagshaw, Ninfa Hayes, Photography, Photoshoot, Publication, Realm Fantasy Wargame, Rebeka Harrington, Skyla Dawn Cameron, spirit world, Vampires, writing


As Christmas ends and the New Year looms, everyone inevitably begins to think about things like resolutions and reviews of past deeds. My intention in this post is to look at this blog and consider what has been successful in the past year.

The Ten Most popular posts

[News From the Spirit World] Vampires More stats 488
[AW Blog Chain] Zompocalypse More stats 385
The Avengers UK: Crossover universes More stats 198
A day in the life of a Fantasy Photostudio More stats 155
About More stats 130
Teaching: Behaviour management on BBC Breakfast More stats 108
[AW blog chain] Otherworldly More stats 97
Photoshoot II: Attack of the texting Zombies (with Romans) More stats 91
[AW Blog chain] Rainy Days More stats 85
Weird Worlds [AW Blog chain for June] More stats 82

This table shows the most popular posts for the year. I have excluded the most popular post (at over 2,800 views) because that was ‘homepage/archive’ which basically means that someone viewed the first page. It is interesting that the most popular post this year was one I did as a link to News From the Spirit World for an article I wrote on Vampires. I am guessing that this is due to the overall popularity of Vampires in general. Many of the Absolute Write blog chain posts are also trending in this list which implies that the link from the other blogs in the chain is achieving something. Finally, the Avengers Crossover post and the various Photoshoot posts are perennial favourites that seem to pop up every now and again even months after being posted. Oh, and my ego feels quite pleased that people feel it necessary to view my about page…

Ten Most popular keywords

vampires 280
zombie 98
vampirler 29
avengers meme 17
writer 13
weird worlds 12
zombie lady 12
behaviour management 9
the chosen book review 9
vampire 9

There have been a number of weird and wonderful keywords used over the time this blog has been active. This table shows the most popular ones used. I am sure no one is at all surprised that Vampires come up top, especially given the result of ‘most popular post’. There are also a few variants on that – vampires and vampirler showing up a few times.  Zombie is also a search term which again shows up frequently with a couple of variants – zombie lady being the one shown here. Finally, it is probably no surprise given the popularity of that franchise that the Avengers shows up as the most popular after Vampires and Zombies in this table. The numbers here are obviously less than those for the most popular post because search terms are by their nature more variable.

This table does not show some of the weirdest search terms used to find this blog because most of those were one offs… ‘Cute Zombie Girl’ and ‘Hot Sexy Zombie’ both came up 3 times (with other variants in there as well), ‘Ninfa Goddess’ another 3 times (though I am not convinced it was not Ninfa herself doing this search out of ego…) and ‘discipline suit’ came up twice. No idea what a ‘discipline suit’ is but I am assuming that search led them to my tirade about behaviour management… There was also a weird one ‘benedict cumberbatch as lascelles’ which I assume must have been someone searching for information about the upcoming Strange and Norrell adaptation in which I think Mr Cumberbatch would indeed make a great Lascelles though I have no idea if he has been cast or not (or if anyone has been cast in this particular adaptation…).If anyone hears about any casting news for Strange and Norrell, please feel free to let me know.

Top Ten Countries Viewing the Blog

United Kingdom 1,971
United States FlagUnited States 1,968
Canada FlagCanada 308
Australia FlagAustralia 228
India FlagIndia 91
Philippines FlagPhilippines 73
Germany FlagGermany 68
Puerto Rico FlagPuerto Rico 52
France FlagFrance 51
Indonesia FlagIndonesia 49

Naturally, UK and US dominate this chart in the top two positions here with my fans in both countries vying for top spot and ending with a very close call (only three views in it in the end). This obviously comes from me being British and my books being largely published in the US. I also have a good mix of people from both countries on my facebook and twitter accounts (both of which get links to here posted) and a lot of US people come to me through the Absolute Write forums. Australia and Canada are on here for similar reasons – Australia due to the many fans of Rebekah Harrington and Canada due to Skyla Dawn Cameron and Judy Bagshaw’s occasional posts on this blog. It is also nice to see other countries on here to give the place a proper international feel with places such as the Philippines and Indonesia showing up there.

So, that is a brief overview of the state of this blog as the year comes to a close. I’ve found some interesting trends here and hope to find many more in 2013 when I repeat this process again. Of course, this year has been good for a few other things. In this year I managed to get involved in the creation of an entire world background for a fantasy wargame called Realm (today is your last chance to enter the competition to win some miniatures…) and also to finally release Transitions onto an unsuspecting public after many many years in ‘publication hell’. I’ve also managed to organise two successful photoshoots by bringing different people with different exceptional talents together then sitting back and watching them work magic.

In 2013 I have other plans afoot and hope to be able to announce other fun things very soon…

Location, Location, Location… Part Two: The University of Birmingham

27 Thursday Dec 2012

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Musings

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#amwriting, BBW Romance writers, Birmingham, Birmingham UK, books, Isengard, J.R.R Tolkien, mundania press, Ninfa Hayes, Orthanc, paranormal romance, Photography, Publication, Sarehole Mill, Selly Oak, The Bristol Pear, The Curse, Transitions, University of Birmingham, writing


A few days ago, I posted about Marsden Beach and Arbeia Roman fort. Now it is time for part two of my blog posts about locations I used in Transitions.

The university is where the contemporary action of the story happens. It also happens

The blue plaque at Sarehole Mill

to be one of the (several) universities I attended and worked at in my time as a scientist. I needed a university for my characters to be attending and it seemed a convenient one to use because I knew it so well. There were other advantages too.

One was the association with J.R.R Tolkien. As pointed out in the story, Tolkien did live for some time in the West Midlands (Kings Heath, now a suburb of Birmingham), spent a lot of time visiting places like Clent and Lickey Hills (both places we used to walk our dog) and attended school at King Edward’s school. Said school is right next to the university and does indeed have a good view of the iconic tower which was potentially the inspiration for the tower of Orthanc in Isengard (Sarehole mill being another inspiration, not to mention the dark smoke of the nearby black country). This provided a wonderful opportunity for two of the characters to be pedantic geeks.

The clock tower of the University of Birmingham

The tower itself was also a great location to use for the above scene because it looks so awesome – a huge, red brick clock tower in the middle of a courtyard made from similar red brick university buildings. Ever since I arrived in Birmingham this tower, which is visible from quite a distance away, always struck me as an ideal place for an epic battle between two powerful beings.

Of course… I use it in Transitions for a fight between two students, one drunk the other possessed. It’s hardly epic, more comedic as the drunken student is hardly competent in combat and the possessed one does not care and it ends with a piece of pedantry (like all the best arguments). However, one day I will use the tower again and this time it will be even more epic…

In the university I namecheck a number of lecturers. None of these are based on lecturers I know, though some have traits which some lecturers I have had may have shared. The names of the lecturers are, however, those of friends of mine. Professor Abigail Bath is named after two friends, one a costume maker (who also took my profile photo on this site) and the other a Doctor of History (who is also acknowledged in The Curse due to her expertise in Witchcraft). Professor Hayes is also named from a friend of mine. Not, as you may think, Ninfa Hayes (who is a friend but one I hadn’t met when I was writing Transitions) but the man she married. Finally, Dr. Gallop is named after my father in law. I do feel I have to apologise to at least two of the people namechecked here as both of the lecturers they name are not shown as the best of the breed.

The final scenes of the book centre on Selly Oak which is a place with a lot of student accomodation just outside the university. Specifically, a pub called the Bristol Pear

The Bristol Pear Pub, Selly Oak

which was for a while the home of the University Goth Society’s infamous ‘Friday Night Goth Shite’ nights (or FNGS for short). I tried to portray one of these nights as accurately as possible, including the description of one of the DJs. Unfortunately, FNGS (which was later joined by SNGS, no prizes for guessing what that means) is no longer based at the Pear but when I left Birmingham it was still going strong at a cocktail bar closer to the city centre. It may still be going somewhere. I like to think that someone in Birmingham can still wander into a small pub or cocktail bar somewhere and still find a goth night run by a student society.

So, there is a short tour of some of the Birmingham locations used in Transitions. Next up will be Aqua Sulis.

Note, unlike the previous article, none of the photographs here were taken by me. All credit for them belongs with the original artists who took them.

Location, Location, Location… Part One: Arbeia Roman Fort

18 Tuesday Dec 2012

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Musings, Photos, Publicity, Reaearch

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

BBW Romance writers, books, Locations, mundania press, Ninfa Hayes, Oblivion Storm, paranormal romance, Photography, Pirates and Swashbucklers, productivity, Publication, R.A Smith, Transitions, Virtual Tour, writing


A week ago I was at one of the somewhat irregular meetings of our relatively newlyformed writers’ group (which has yet to gain an official name but is sort of soldiering on under the name of ‘the Tea Society’). Among the many discussions and random witterings, including some interesting ideas regarding World Book Night which I will share with you later, we got onto a discussion about location photographs. Later that week, during the launch of Oblivion Storm, R.A Smith opened a thread which was a ‘virtual tour of London’ using Google Earth, Streetview and Panaramio to showcase locations from the book.

The reconstructed gatehouse of Arbeia Roman fort in South Shields

The reconstructed gatehouse of Arbeia Roman fort in South Shields

So this got me to thinking. When writing Transitions I used a few locations which were familiar to me and as part of the research for the book I took a number of photos to get a better feel for the locations. I was also, at the time, thinking about the cover of the book and what a cover artist may want with regards to inspiration if not actual images they could use to mock up a decent composition.

cave1

One of the many caves aong Marsden beach

I had largely considered that to be that. The photos I had taken were between me and my cover artist and have since been left on my Flickr account not doing much. However, during the aforementioned discussion of my writers’s group, Ninfa Hayes mentioned that readers often like to see such things. Thinking about it, I agreed with her so I decided to share some of these location shots with you. There are three main locations discussed in Transitions – Arbeia Roman Fort and the surrounding area, the Roman City of Aqua Sulis ( which became modern day Bath) and the University of Birmingham and surrounding area.

So, this first post is all about Arbeia. This was a fort built by the Romans in 120 AD to

A shot of Marden beach showing the lift that led down into the pub (which was closed at the time).

A shot of Marden beach showing the lift that led down into the pub (which was closed at the time).

act as a resupply depot for Hadrian’s wall. Since the fort was in my hometown it seemed an obvious place to base Gaius Lucius, my Roman character. Of course, there were a number of slight historical issues I had to contend with. Gaius Lucius, for example, is not Arabic like many of the soldiers at Arbeia would have been. Though to be fair, I don’t actually mention his origin so he could well be Arabic. However, throughout the writing of the story I did imagine him as being from Gaul. Another issue is the fact that the fort was founded in 120 AD and I had originally considered the story being set much earlier, perhaps 10 – 30 year after the death of Jesus. Instead, the timing of the fort meant I had to shift my timings to post 120 AD and opted for 123 AD as being not too long after this point. I also flanged over the fact that it is likely the fort in this period was not going to be as well established as is implied in the story. I hope you consider these to be minor issues and also points which you were likely not to have noticed until I pointed them out to you just now… 🙂

A close up of one of the deeper caves

A close up of one of the deeper caves

Of course, Gaius is never seen at the fort. Instead, he is first seen travelling along a beach to find a cave in which a mad old man lives. That beach, in case anyone is interested, was what is now known as Marsden beach. I am not aware of there ever having been mad old wisemen living in caves on Marsden beach but I accept there is a chance there could have been. There have always been rumours of smugglers there in the past , using the caves to hide goods and there is a pub, the Marsden Grotto, which popular rumour has was a place where these smugglers would hang out. I am currently drawing on this in another story which I am in the middle of writing – a sequel to Gods of the Sea. The pub is also said to be haunted (one of the ghosts being that of a notorious smuggler, as it happens) and has been the subject of one of those over the top ‘Britains most haunted’ style shows.  With all of these features, it struck me as a wonderful inspiration for a location where a Roman could meet a mad old Briton for a bit of supernatural advice.

So, there you have it. How Arbeia Roman Fort and Marsden beach inspired the first part of Gaius Lucius’s story in Transitions. In a later entry I will talk about the city of Bath and the University of Birmingham and how they are linked to the story.

Be gentle… it’s my first time…

03 Monday Dec 2012

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Publicity

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

#amwriting, Amazon, BBW Romance writers, books, Goodreads, mundania press, Pirates and Swashbucklers, productivity, Publication, Pulp Empires, reviews, writing


I was recently informed of a positive review of Transitions. Actually, I was informed of Transitions-AuthorCopythis review a few weeks ago, but am only just getting round to posting about it now. With an event to help organise (or at least provide moral support for), real world work to plan and my insane idea to do Nano this year (that’s a whole different post…) I was actually finding it hard to do much serious blogging last month. There was also the fact that the link I was sent to the review does not actually seem to go to a page that includes my review. I was not sure if this meant my review was yet to be published, was lost deep in an archive or was only visible during the third quarter of the full moon when the month has an F in it and is more than 28 days… So, I didn’t want to post anything about it until I got some form of confirmation.

But now November is over, the event was this weekend gone and Nano is also a thing of the past. I do still have real world work to do but my time is a little freer than it was. Ok, I still cannot find the actual review (if anyone can help, I’d appreciate it) but what the hell…

So, the lovely people over at Penumbra Press sometimes review books by other publishers and they decided to pick up mine (the full review is allegedly in their reviews section but I cannot find it). The fragment of the full review that was sent to me is fairly promising, however. It included:

“Throughout this story D. A. Lascelles artfully uses his skills with words to magically paint images in the reader’s head. Not only do places come into clear focus, but the seasons and atmosphere of the locations are also imbued with a descriptive clarity and realistic essence.

Written for paranormal romance fans of all ages, Transitions successfully marries modern day and roman Britain by interspersing the memories and history of roman officer Lucius Gaius with the ordinarily mundane lives of two university students…Transitions is a fair read that will keep you occupied, even if only for a day trip away.”

And the score was apparently ‘3 books’. I am assuming and hoping that this is out of 5 and not, for example, 500 🙂

This is, in fact, the first review I have ever had. For anything. By anyone who was not a friend or family member, anyway. So far both Transitions and Pirates and Swashbucklers have avoided reviews in places like Goodreads and Amazon though Pirates seems to have been marked as ‘to read’ by a lot of people. So, as a first go at the review wheel I am happy with this result. There will likely be bad ones out there too, not that I have found any yet, so it is good to start on a positive note. Plus, my ego is telling me that I should get that first paragraph printed on a T-shirt because I really like it. A lot.

Luckily, I rarely listen to my ego.

Fantasy Writing contest: The results

11 Thursday Oct 2012

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Publicity

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

BBW Romance writers, beneficial side effect, books, final sacrifice, gods of the sea, novel length, Pirates and Swashbucklers, productivity, Publication, short novel, writing


Well, the results are in for the contest I entered:

http://fantasywritingcontest.com/category/judges/

As you can see, I am not on the short list. Not an unexpected result as there were a lot of high quality writers entering this. So, not too disappointed about the result and, in actual fact, there is a beneficial side effect from failing to get a place in the contest. I have another use for the story I submitted – a story about an old woman with a magical dagger called The Final Sacrifice.

A few months ago, I was asked to follow up Gods of the Sea*. I agreed to do a novella and a series of shorts to make up a short novel length anthology. I’ve been working on that ever since, whenever I get the time to write. When I was considering what stories I had already written which had yet to be published could be included in this anthology, The Final Sacrifice stood out as one which could definitely fit the brief. I am therefore actually quite pleased that there are now 4000 words I do not have to fill with another story as yet unwritten…

So, my writing plans over the next few months involve plugging away at this new anthology. Currently about half way through…

In the meantime, while you are waiting for me to actually get round to finishing this anthology, you can still enjoy my paranormal romance Transitions… It has Romans in it. And Goths. But not the Barbarian tribe… You can also still get a free copy of The Curse. It has Witches in it. Well, mad prophetic dreams…

* And it seems it has reappeared in paperback on Amazon again….

[Guest Post] What it feels like to be published by Julie Schriver

18 Tuesday Sep 2012

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Guest posts

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

bbw romance, BBW Romance writers, guest blogging, guest posts, Julie Schriver, Love by Proxy, mundania press, paranormal romance, Publication, romance writers, Shades of Love, writing


Today we have a guest post from Julie Schriver who is another of the authors contributing to the Shades of Love anthology and a member of the BBW Romance Writers group. Her story, Love by Proxy, is out now and available from this link. 

Hello, my name is Julie Schriver, and this is my very first  blog post. Hopefully, it won’t turn out to be just a confusing jumble of thoughts.

First off, I want to say thank you to David for allowing me a small voice on here.  You’re very kind to invite me to make a guest post, and I’ll do my best to not make myself look like an idiot.

As has been posted about previously, I am a part of the group of writers who has, with much hard work, frustration, and ultimately elation, finally realized the end goal of our endeavors.  Our paranormal romance anthology is being published by Mundania Press.  One story is being released per month, and later on all of the stories will be put together in one anthology.

For me, this journey has been an incredibly educational one.  I could fill a book with the things I have learned from the talented people I’ve come into contact with while being a part of this project.  I will be forever grateful for having known and worked with them, and I hope we will continue to remain friends even after this collaboration is behind us.

This will be the first time I’ve had anything published, (Thank you, Mundania!), but I’ve been writing, mostly for my own pleasure, since high school.  It’s always been something I’ve truly enjoyed, although I never dreamed I would actually write anything that other people would want to read.  The stories that I write are a part of me, not in a biographical sense, per se, but they have been wrung from my imagination.  For this reason, I was always too timid to share my “brain children” with anyone.  Joining the BBWRomanceWriters group and jumping into this project was a big step for me in overcoming my fears and putting myself out there.  Truly, it’s been one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

My contribution to the anthology, Love By Proxy, is about a woman, Gwen, who’s always fought her ability to see and converse with spirits.  Everyone, even her own family, believed that she was mentally disturbed when she would try to talk to them about what she could see.  She was finally able to break away and build herself a new life far away from everything that she knew.  Armed with an art degree, she settled into a small town in Colorado and opened up a shop where she sells her own artwork.  She lives in an isolated, old farmhouse that she shares with a spirit named Rose, a saloon girl killed by a stray bullet over a hundred years ago.  It’s a unique friendship, but it works for both of them.

Gwen is finally happy, but that happiness is threatened when a developer, Evan, blows into town wanting to build a new residential subdivision right behind her home.  More people means more spirits will be attracted to the area, and she is terrified that she won’t be able to hide her abilities any longer.  Her fight to stop the development is a losing battle as the townspeople are very much in support of Evan’s ideas for the land.  It also doesn’t help that she’s beginning to have feelings for him.  She will eventually have to decide whether to stay and hope for the best or leave the place she’s come to love.

If you’ve read this far, thanks! I hope I haven’t bored you too much.  If you decide to take a gander at my story, I hope you enjoy it!

Free book!

16 Sunday Sep 2012

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Musings, Publicity

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Amazon, BBW Romance writers, Blog Anniversary, blue moons, books, Jen Thompson, Judy Bagshaw, Julie Schriver, M.S Fowle, paranormal romance, Paranormal Romance Anthology, Publication, Shades of Love, Skyla Dawn Cameron, The Curse, Transitions, virtual shelves


This coming week sees a very special occasion in literature, an occasion that occurs once in every 10 blue moons (often referred to as a decabluemoon) and an event that is celebrated the world over by people in all walks of life*…

Yes, that is right, it is the first anniversary of the start of this blog on the 18th of September.

Almost one year ago (on the 18th September, 2011), I finally bowed to overwhelming pressure from my own ego to make my innermost thoughts public. It is also almost a year ago that my first publication hit the virtual shelves. With my second publication now out there in the world, it seems a good time to do a freebie giveaway.

So, now you can claim your absolutely free copy of The Curse. Just click this link!

What is The Curse, I hear you ask? Well, that is a very good question. When the BBW Romance Writers were getting together to write the Paranormal Romance Anthology that became known as Shades of Love and which Transitions is a part, we also decided to do what is known as a Round Robin story. This is a story where a group of writers collaborate on it. We decided on a broad story idea (a woman cursed with the gift of prophesy) then each of us took turns to write a section each, leaving the next person with a situation to resolve. This was done until we reached the natural climax. Then Judy Bagshaw and myself did a final polish on the story to make it publishable and were forced to learn more than we really wanted to learn about Creative Commons licenses.

The whole was topped off with a rather wonderful cover*** (pictured) created by the excellent M.S Fowle who deserves a lot of kudos for her efforts at making our writing look like a ‘proper book’. If you ever have a book you need a cover for, I would definitely suggest you consider talking to her about it.

So, that was how it came to pass that we happened to have a free ebook available to give to you all. Go on, click that link and download the Zip file that contains versions of this book for many different ebook formats. Then try to guess which of the authors wrote which of the bits….

* Well, Ok, it occurs once a year and is probably celebrated by very few people and not the world over** but don’t tell my ego that, please, it does enjoy its little illusions and gets stroppy when it is thwarted.

** Though I do have a special shout out to those of you in Panama, Peurto Rico and the Ukraine who seem very interested in what I am saying here *waves*

*** Actually, she made us three covers, that is how dedicated she is. If I can get permission from her, I will post the other two covers for you to look at ‘what could have been’.

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