Tag Archives: Skyla Dawn Cameron

Judy Bagshaw

12 Saturday Nov 2016

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 Sometimes Facebook can be a right bitch and hit you so hard in the feels with something so innocent as a birthday reminder. Judy009cropped

This morning it decided to tell me that it was Judy Bagshaw’s birthday. The feels came because Judy died in 2015, leaving behind a writing legacy that includes me and a hell of a lot of other people who are trying to follow her. She wrote romance stories that included female protagonists that were not ‘standard size’, positive stories in which their size was not part of the plot nor the subject of comic relief. From her I learned a number of things – how to stay positive in the face of adversity from your own self esteem, how to edit effectively and how to approach publishers. It is thanks in part to her (with Skyla Dawn Cameron taking credit too) that I got published in the first place.

OppositeAttraction_AuthorCopy_revised I never met her in person, though I always wanted to, but she was my mentor, a cheerleader and a self confessed fan of my work. She owned one of the ten ‘limited editions’ of Lurking Miscellany that came out of the first print run with the error on the cover. I would have sent her it for free (she helped edit parts of it) but she not only insisted on paying for it, she insisted on me signing it and sending it to her despite the fact she could have got it cheaper by Amazon. She even told me to add the international postage cost to the invoice (which I didn’t… I owed her at least that much).

That Facebook reminder this morning woke all these feelings in me again so I just had to share. I urge you to do her the honour of looking up one of her books and buying it. I feel it is the best way to celebrate her birthday.

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On mentors and evil

23 Saturday May 2015

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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)

Buy Lurking Miscellany (Kindle)

[Vampire Month] Review of Cranberry Blood by Elizabeth Morgan

15 Sunday Mar 2015

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As we have just had a week of Elizabeth Morgan, it seemed appropriate to post my review of Cranberry Blood. A review that has also gone to Goodreads and Amazon.

Cranberry Blood by Elizabeth Morgan

Available from www.e-morgan.com

Heather Ryan is a Slayer, the latest in a long line of family members dedicated to the lifelong quest of killing a particular very old vampire – Marko Pavel. If that is not complicated enough, she was also born infected with Vampire blood, a condition she manages with the help of a concoction of Cranberry juice and animal blood (hence the title).Pageflex Persona [document: PRS0000038_00064]

One day her life is saved by a werewolf called Brendan who claims to have been sent by her recently dead grandmother.  It seems grannie had seen the need for them to be together in one of her visions, which are usually scarily accurate. Though Heather always respected her grandmother’s abilities as a seer, she finds it hard to come to terms with why she now has to put up with the irritating Brendan – what danger is he supposed to protect her from?

Morgan quickly establishes a dynamic between her two main characters, one of sniping and arguments. The over protective alpha male with the snarky alpha female rebelling against his attempts to ‘save her’ is a common trope in urban fantasy but one which is presented very well here and will appeal to fans of this genre. This relationship is threaded throughout the plot, which revolves around Heather’s attempts to track down her ancient nemesis and his attempts to use her for his own ends, and adds an appropriate level of zip to an already fast paced story. In my reading of this, there was no thoughts of ‘will they/won’t they’ because it is clear from the first page Brendan appears that they will. The question is more when and how many buildings will be destroyed in the aftermath.

Cranberry Blood is a very British Urban Fantasy novel. Heather is an Irish girl living in London, Brendan is described as having a northern accent and it turns out his pack live in Scotland. The action moves from inner city London to the wilds of Scotland giving this more a Being Human/Dog Soldiers vibe than most US based UF. This is a refreshing change and reminds readers that the Vampire and Werewolf myths that most UF take from originate in Europe. This is played upon in the characterisation of some of the characters – the Vampires are very Eurotrash in their attitude, for example. It certainly makes for a more familiar setting to those who live in the UK than the often unreal skyscapes of New York or Chicago. This may alienate US audiences but then again it may not as there are many Anglophiles on the other side of the pond who may also be looking for something that is different to standard UF.

If I have one issue with Cranberry Blood it is the concept of a Slayer. Now, I am happy with the idea of a family dedicated through many generations to killing a specific Vampire menace. It makes sense – you have to play the long game when dealing with immortal bloodsuckers and I really like the thought that has gone into this. However, I am not sure I would have gone so far as to have made that into a proper noun. Not only is there an issue of Joss Whedon potentially considering it a challenge to his IP (though not a huge one as the similarities basically end with the name and the fact this particular one is female) but I am not convinced that it really deserves that capital letter. That implies there is some official title involved when really it is a private, internal family thing. Had there been a secret underground organisation that trained multiple people to fight vampires (such as the Church order detailed in Skyla Dawn Cameron’s novel Hunter) and that organisation granted graduates of their training programme some form of official title then I’d be happy that they could be called Slayers. Using it in a family seems wrong to me. However, this is only a very minor gripe in what is basically a very well written and fascinating novel.

Overall, Cranberry Blood is a novel worth taking a look at. A very fun romp through a very British urban fantasy landscape. I’d like to see more UF set in this country.

Cover reveal: Lurking Miscellany

25 Sunday May 2014

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For the last month or so, I have been working on putting together a collection of short stories for publication. This collection is called Lurking Miscellany and brings together several shorts that have basically been sat on my hard drive for a while not doing anything. It includes a couple of stories based on the Waypoint universe, my own attempt at Urban Fantasy and the sequel to my BBW Paranormal Romance novella, Transitions.

As things stand, the stories are in the hands of a crack team of specialist ninja Beta readers being given a final polish before publication. I have an ISBN registered and a gorgeous cover produced by the ever wonderful Skyla Dawn Cameron who is also known by the name of Indigo Chick designs.

LurkingMiscellany-lg

The goal is to have print copies of the collection available for their first, exclusive launch sales at the Leeds Waterfront festival as part of the Leeds Steampunk market on the 28th June. After that, copies will be available from other sources, including Amazon, in print and ebook formats.

Hope to see many of you as can make it in Leeds on that day.

Vampire Month – Seeking fresh blood

22 Tuesday Jan 2013

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It has been an age old tradition of this blog, dating back all the way to March 2012 (yes, all those many months ago), for the month of March to be assigned ‘Vampire Month’ and to be taken up with guest posts and interviews by writers who work in genres involving nightstalking bloodsuckers. Last March we had some wonderful posts by Diana Hardy, Skyla Dawn Cameron, Ninfa Hayes and Jason Petty covering subjects ranging from muses to book buying and now it is almost time to get things organised for this March…Vampire

So, with this in mind, I am putting out a call. I need fresh blood to fill the pages of Vampire month this year.

If you are a writer of something which could be construed in some way to be ‘vampire fiction’ or you know a writer who is and can contact them without stalking them I would be very interested in speaking with you. Contact me via this blog, Twitter, Facebook or my email address (dalascelles-writing@yahoo.co.uk) and tell me all about yourself or the author you think you can contact for me.

Of course, while I’d love to be able to get Ann Rice, Rachel Caine, Stephenie Meyer and similar on board for this (or even Jos Whedon or Toby Whitehouse) I am equally happy to accept less famous writers so long as you can do an interesting blog post and answer some interview questions. I would not, of course, say no to any of the above. However, if you contact me claiming to have exclusive access to Bram Stoker, I’d tell you to put him back where you found him and that Grave Robbery is so 1800s, darling…

Review of the Year

30 Sunday Dec 2012

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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…

Free book!

16 Sunday Sep 2012

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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’.

Announcement: Transitions

16 Monday Jul 2012

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I have over the past few weeks made barely veiled references to ‘some news’ which will be made public over the next month or two. There has also been a vague request for a cover designer which may have given some people clues as to what is occuring.

Well, I am now going to reveal the news that I have been wanting to reveal for many many years now… more years than this blog has existed, in fact, news that has awaited announcing since the dark times BB*.

I have a release date for Transitions, my Paranormal romance novella. It is currently a ‘tentative’ release date but it is an actual date written down in an official schedule in actual pixels and everything and the chances are it will be firmed up sometime soon as it is basically only tentative because the final edits were still underway. Those edits have been completed and submitted and accepted so there is nothing for me to do now but sit and wait for things to happen…

The current release date (for the ebook version) stands at the 21st of August, 2012.

I am currently awaiting a mail with a cover design attached to it. I know that is underway because I have had an e-mail telling me that the artist wanted me to change permissions on my Flickr account so she could see some photos I took for reference of one of the locations I use. As soon as I have that cover, I will post it for you all to see.

In the meantime, sometime over the next few weeks (the 24th of July according to the most recent estimates) the first novella in that collection will get its release. Judy Bagshaw’s Opposite Attraction will be out for you to buy and read and we will have Judy herself on this blog taking a guest spot.

Then, after my release in August, we have three other novellas from the same anthology, one a month. I will release details of these when I know the order but I do know that Skyla Dawn Cameron is going to be the final author in this list and everything she writes is awesome**.

Finally, if all goes to plan, there will be a print publication of all of the novellas

Oh, and in case you might be confused… the cover designer I asked for recently is not doing the cover for Transitions or any of the above novellas. That is amply covered by the contract with the publisher. They are doing the cover design for a freebie story called The Curse we produced as a group when putting together the anthology. It was originally intended to be included in the print anthology but it would have made the book too big to be economically viable. So, we decided to self publish it and use it for giveaways.  I will be posting details of how you might get a hold of a copy of that later too…

More news will be posted here as and when I get it.

*BB = Before Blog. A time when I only had Live Journal, Facebook, Twitter, the telephone, letter writing, semaphore and actually talking to people face to face as methods for communication. How we managed to talk to each other in those primitive times of Pre-2010 I will never know…

** Seriously, I Beta read her entry for this anthology and it was awesome when I read it as a first draft. It was the first thing I have ever beta read where I literally had no changes to suggest. I had to nit pick to the nth level just to have something to say beyond ‘this is perfect’ so she knew I had actually bothered to read it. The version you are getting has been edited even more so I am sure it will be even more awesome. She designs covers too.

Cover designer wanted…

05 Tuesday Jun 2012

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I am looking for a cover designer to do a cover for a freebie give away story linked to an upcoming anthology release I am involved in. There are details about what is being looked for on here:

http://areteus.livejournal.com/238703.html

Before you click this, however, a few caveats:

 – Yes, this is unpaid. It is an ebook we are giving away for free. This is the authors of the anthology not the publisher doing this (we are basically self pubbing this). Though I am personally offering a very, very small fee of ‘the price of a drink’, either in person or sent via paypal.

 – There is, however, a chance that you will get your work noticed which may potentially lead to more, better paid work. Full credit is given and there are a few people at least (the authors for a start) who will sing your praises to the high heavens.

 

[Vampire Month] Finale

05 Thursday Apr 2012

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So, that was Vampire month. A month and a bit of Vampires and the people who write about them.

I would like to thank all the writers who have contributed to this month – Rebekah Harrington, Ninfa Hayes, Jason Petty, Dianna Hardy and Skyla Dawn Cameron. All of them have been fantastic and produced some excellent interview answers and blog posts. I have been impressed by everything produced by these wonderful writers. I have also been intrigued by the very different takes on Vampire lore that have been showcased here. It is clear that the term ‘Vampire’ is a catch all term covering a multitude of sins, all with a loose connection and it would take a lot more time than we have had here to properly overview the subject.

With that in mind, I definitely intend to repeat this process again and do another Vampire month next March. Hopefully it will be as successful as this one has been. If you are interested in taking part, please contact me for more details.

On a related topic, I’ve also decided that the format of interview and blog post over a week is a good one and intend to use it more often. If you are a writer of any topic and want to be showcased, feel free to get in touch and I will subject you to an interview and ask you to write a blog post on the subject of your choice.

With that, I close Vampire month and pack all the coffins and stakes away for next year…