Chat Debacles and Book Release Day!

Nothing like a book release day to get your spirits up...

Which I sorely needed after the debacle of last night. I was all set to do an author's chat at Absolute Write (every Thursday, the chat room there is devoted to SFF). I'd even made notes. My chat was going to be about world building, new mythology and fantasy archetypes. So I'm cruising about Absolute Write about half an hour beforehand, being my usual smarmy self, and the bleeping power went out!

We had some pretty high winds yesterday and the substation down the street blew. So here I am, frantically emailing people on my cell phone, trying to get word to the AW chatmasters that I was having a little problem. I felt like a colossal heel (and a warm one since I didn't get my power back until about six am this morning) because now that's two scheduled events I've missed in the last two weeks--and neither one of them was my fault.

*sigh*

Hopefully we can get it rescheduled. I'll let you know. However, as I'm not one to miss obligations and am one of those annoying people who always turns up early, it really bothered me to not be there. Hopefully, I can rectify that tomorrow: Rob and I are chatting from 12 noon EST to 9 pm at Coffee Time Romance and More e-readers loop. Join us and find out about the world of the Vampire Covenants, the release of Breaking the Covenants, excerpts, fun, jokes, recipes, contests and whatever else nonsensical we come up with to entertain for nine hours straight. Ever see me in a chat marathon before? *rolls eyes* It's nothing if not silly.

So! Breaking The Covenants is now available from Aspen Mountain Press. As always, it will soon be available at Amazon, Fictionwise, ARE E-Books, Kindle, Mobipocket and all sorts of online retailers--I'll keep you posted. So shoot over to AMP and pick up your copy today--it's definitely a departure from Elf-killing.

*grin*

Now I'm killing mortals and immortals alike. What bliss!

It's Almost Time For Vampires--And Some Winners!

Yay! Breaking the Covenants is coming out this Friday--after an unforeseen and regrettable delay last week. Rob and I are very excited. We've worked hard on this project (still are--there are more books in it, after all) and are anxious to see what our readers think. For those of you who read the Asphodel series, a moment of warning--this is MUCH different from my fantasy work.

Vampires are fun though. Not as much fun as killing Elves, but what could be?

Tomorrow night I'm doing a chat for writers in the Absolute Write chat room at 9 pm EST. Just click the chat room link at the top of the page. I'll be discussing world building, fantasy archetypes and new mythology--and might very well give a book or two away in the process. Bring your questions and be ready to have a good time!

As for winners---yes I promised you some of those:

Winner of a copy of The Reckoning of Asphodel--Marianne Stephens!

Winner of a copy of Metamorphosis--Babyblue22!

Winner of a copy of The Vampire Covenants 1: Breaking the Covenants--tinkandalissa!

Winner of a copy of ALL my books--Tami!

Congratulations and email me with contact info and the format you want your books in!

Contest!

Because a family emergency is preventing me from attending a scheduled chat, I'm running a biiiiiiiiig contest today. You can find details on Love Romances ECafe.

Just shout out in the comments of this post, and you can win too!

So sorry--I hate to post and run, but I have to get on the road.

Have You Noticed...

...the proliferation and, in fact, glorification of truly ugly people these days? I'm not talking about physical beauty. Some of the ugliest people I know are physically the most beautiful. I'm talking about ugliness of the soul.

I have the television on today for background noise and, because there is absolutely nothing else on, I've had it on the Oxygen channel. After surviving the hell that is an America's Next Top Model marathon, following it up with the show Pretty Wicked has been horrific. Here are all of these lovely young women with absolutely the ugliest souls, personalities and intellects I have ever encountered in my life. I don't even know these people and I am ashamed for them.

Ashamed.

Granted, our society is geared toward the physically attractive. We are pummeled with commercials for weight loss products, cosmetics, clothes and hair care crap from morning to night. Save for the Dove real beauty campaign (which convinced me to spend my money on their products alone) all of the standards our young girls are exposed to for beauty are cookie cutter lookalikes. Women worked way too hard and suffered for way too long to gain equality for the newer generations of women to squander that away on the incessant quest for physical beauty.

I spearheaded a conversation several years ago at a restaurant I worked at. There were probably ten young women there of various ages and I tried to make them all see that a woman doesn't need to be a size two to be gorgeous--or a blonde, or have designer clothes yada yada yada. Even now, it amazes me how little impact my words had. The very next day, they were all dieting again, all caught up in how they looked as opposed to how they felt, what they thought about or how well they worked. In my opinion, it's the fault of "reality" television in a way because that type of programming has taken that type of superficiality and glamorized it to such a degree that that's all our young women think about.

It's very sad.

Beauty is reflected most honestly within a person's soul. Now excuse me while I go touch up my mascara.

Celina, The Wedding Coordinator

I am singularly blessed with my daughters.

Both of them have grown up to be lovey young women. They're smart and working to better themselves. They're independent and likely to remain that way. This weekend, my oldest girl is marrying her fiance' and her sister, who got married last month, is her matron of honor.

Here's where it gets funny.

I hate weddings. I was a caterer for far too long to enjoy weddings. I've set up weddings with over five hundred guests--where indulgent parents spend the equivalent of a house to give their daughters a proper sendoff into the traditional earmark of adult life. I never had a problem charging these people a hundred grand for their sit down dinners with passed hor d'ouerves and a pianist playing until the dance started and everything degenerated into the chicken dance. I always thought that my younger daughter would be the one who'd want a big wedding, but surprisingly and thankfully they just went to the courthouse and got married. My older girl was the one I thought would run away and elope.

I never counted on my future son-in-law wanting a military wedding.

So here I am, two states away, trying to organize a wedding where the bride has very little interest in anything other than showing up to get married. It's actually pretty hysterical; I thought my days of making wedding favors were over. Thank goodness I have all of that experience to fall back on, otherwise this could be just a parody of a wedding. As it is, though, I think I'm going to manange to marry her off with a minimum of expense. Her wedding is labor-intensive as opposed to cost-intensive, which for a poor struggling writer and her family is a good thing.

But man, do I hate tulle.

And then, the dreaded "g" word twice before the end of the year. I am WAY too young to fit into the grandma role but then again being a grandmother at 42 is actually kind of cool. That means I'll be around for my grandchildren's children, God willing. At least I'll be young enough to actually still play with the grandbabies. Meredith (the youngest) is having a girl in June. Audrey (the eldest) doesn't know what her baby, due in October, is going to be yet.

But first, the wedding. Audrey gets married on Sunday, her sister at her side, wearing a dress from a dream and marrying a young man who will be in the Middle East with his unit come the new year. And unlike most parents, who watch their daughers take the marriage vows, I can't sit back and congratulate myelf on a job well done. My daughters being who they are has very little to do with me.

I will be able to sit back, however, and enjoy seeing the happiness of my daughters as they take the final steps from the chrysalis of their adolescence into the big, broad world of 'you're grown up now.' I will know that unlike most of their peers, they are singularly well-requipped to take that step knowing more of the happiness and horrors that await them. And that, I think, is the only thing a parent can't give them.

Bon voyage, girls of mine.

Breaking The Covenants--More News

Hurray! The website for our Vampire Covenants world is up and running! Go check out http://thevampirecovenants.bravehost.com/index.html so that you can find out about our world and how we make our vampires work.

I'm getting really excited by this. Yes, I know there's a lot of people writing about vampires these days but this isn't an urban fantasy. Our vampires are moving through the world of the eighteenth century, when the vampire paranoia was so great that the latter half of the century is called the 'great vampire controversy.' We send them to London, Paris, St. Petersburg, Venice--some of the greatest cities of the era. We take the conventional vampire mythology back to the reader--no sparkling for our vampires, not that sparkling is bad.

A love that blossoms in life can only flower in death.

And this is one hell of a love story. Go check it out and drop back by and tell me what you think!

When the Muse Calls...

...I suppose I have to answer.

I hadn't intended to start writing again until after the first Covenants book was released. Between the wedding and edits and book releases, my plate is fairly full. But today, the muse got angry.

She screamed.

She threw things.

She drank all the beer in the fridge.

Then she informed me, in no uncertain terms, that I was going to by God start writing on a companion piece to Deception Enters Stage Left and that the topic was not open for discussion. Yeah, I know. I'm stupid but I can't help myself. Last night, during the daily struggle to go to sleep at a respectable time, I got this image in my head. I was about half-asleep and I mumbled to the husband to just remind me at some point today about one word.

Harlequin.

It was almost the first thing he said to me today and my muse has been having a fit ever since. While I was doing wedding stuff, I was thinking about harlequins. Promo work? Harlequins. Business stuff? Harlequins. Everywhere I've turned today, there's something that reminds me of Harlequins.

(No, not the romance book publisher, dangit! A real, honest-to-goodness Commedia dell'Arte harlequin with red, blue and green triangular patterns on his clothes and a black mask carrying a slapstick. THAT harlequin.)

So finally, I just gave up. I've been writing non-stop since I finished my to-do list and it's all been about--you guessed it!--the harlequin.

Bet you can't guess what the working title is.

At any rate, either I've written my muse into quiescence or she passed out from her Rolling Rock and Killian's binge because now she's curled up in a ball on the couch with a whole mess of slumbering felines. So while she's asleep, I thought I'd share my new obsession with you.

Dream of harlequins. Sleep tight.

Covenants Cover Art!

Yay! We have cover art for Breaking the Covenants which will be released on April 24th by Aspen Mountain Press!

Hopefully, I'll survive my daughter's wedding this week and can get back into blogging regularly. Here's hoping. But, until then, take a gander at this cover (artwork, as always, by the lovely and effervescent Renee George). Rob and I are both pleased and I'm starting to get excited for the release. You may notice in the hour or so after this post that a new countdown clock has been started.

It would be the Covenants countdown.

*grin*

I love writing.

Metamorphosis is Released!

Today's the big day--my short story collection Metamorphosis is being released by Aspen Mountain Press. It's my ode to my classical idol Ovid and his great work Metamorphoses.

Metamorphosis is a journey through the short stories of critically acclaimed author Celina Summers. Every story deals with a transformation--from a world where the Church places the blame for original sin upon men to a New Orleans garden that brings a play to life. The collection culminates with a previously unpublished prequel to Summers' best selling epic fantasy series The Asphodel Cycle. Sometimes funny, sometimes horrifying, Metamorphosis is a romp through the realms of speculative fiction--where anything can happen and nothing is quite as it seems.

You can find Metamorphosis at http://www.aspenmountainpress.com/new-releases/metamorphosis/prod_226.html -- where you can read an excerpt from one of my stories, Funeral Meats. It will also be available soon on Fictionwise, Amazon, Mobipocket, Kindle and other online retailers. And at only $2.50--what a bargain!

I hope that you all enjoy the stories of Metamorphosis, because I certainly enjoyed writing them.

I also wanted to prove that I could write something shorted than 150,000 words. *wink* They don't call my fantasy 'epic' for nothing. The fabulous cover art was done by Renee George and the collection was edited by my good friend Lori Basiewicz.

Have fun and thanks! I'll be spending the day wedding dress shopping in Kentucky with my daughter. In yet another instance of life imitating art, she, too is going through her own metamorphosis. Timing is everything.

Do You Believe in Miracles?

I've been thinking a lot lately about how close the extraordinary truly is to the mundane. What does it take to make a normal happenstance evolve into something amazing? What sort of chrysalis does the everyday world take shelter in so that it can emerge into a new universe and take flight?

Some might say it's God. I refuse to discuss religion in this blog, unless it's one I made up or one that died out thousands of years ago, so I'll leave that distinction up to you.

Others might think that extraordinary circumstances create extraordinary people--that when destiny demands it, there are some few incredible mortals who can rise above themselves and transcend into something more, something we can only hope to achieve or dream to attain. Still others, when thrust into the same circumstances, are unable to do the same. Why is that? How is it that some succumb meekly to their perceived fate while others fight against it in search of something greater?

If you can answer this question, you have discovered the secret to what makes up a hero.

Heroes are on my mind a lot lately. They are hard to find in our everyday world, especially one that seems to be collapsing around us even as I type this. And yet, you can still find a man willing to land an airplane full of people on the Hudson River or a young man or woman willing to volunteer to serve their country in a time of war. On the other hand, you can also find people who are willing to bankrupt the retired and use taxpayers' money to take expensive retreats.

It truly takes all kinds, doesn't it?

A speculative fiction writer, such as myself, is always searching for that miracle of personality that makes a hero--or an anti-hero, or even the villain. Although my worlds are peopled with hundreds of named characters and thousands more the reader never meets, there's a very tiny subset of individuals that have that glitter of persona that lifts them above their peers and makes them into the implements that drive a story. That glitter can be almost indiscernible until a moment of decision pushes that character in one direction or the other--to heroism or villainy--and sometimes only a few keystrokes makes that determination for me.

It's an amazing thing, searching for miracles among the mundane. It is, I think, ultimately what every writer does when developing a character. And in the real world, it's character--the trait--that defines a person with what we, as writers, try to create.

So ask yourself: do you believe in miracles?

Holy Crap! A Golden Rose Nomination???

I nearly fainted when I found out that Temptation of Asphodel had been nominated for a Golden Rose Award for Best Sci Fi/Fantasy Novel of 2007 by Love Romances and More--especially when I saw my idol Christine Feehan's name on the nomination list too. I mean, think about it. Here I am, in the middle of the night (darned insomnia) and I find something like this out?

Wow. Someone hand me the vodka. I need a drink.

But then I started to think about it and I realized what a huge thing that is. For a new writer such as myself, who writes for a small, independent press to even be considered alongside a forerunner in genre romance--a giant, if you will--is a testament to how e-publishing has changed the face of the writing world. The perception that writers who publish with smaller presses are somehow inferior or untalented is fading. There's a heck of a lot of good fiction out there in the small presses and e-publishing houses these days. Now, I'm not saying that I consider myself to be the equal of a Christine Feehan. I'm a journeyman writer; she's a master.

So what else can I say but just WOW?

I love the fact that my Asphodel books are loved by my readers. I write to entertain, to share fantastic worlds and to hopefully transport people from their everyday lives to something magical and heroic and emotionally honest. To see my name alongside the other fantastic writers nominated gives me hope that perhaps I may have succeeded in some way in doing just that.

It is a glorious feeling. Thank you.

Life's Little Ironies

This has been a week of ironic suspense in my world. All I want to do is write, but first I have to get all that editing done. All I want to do is go out, but I'm laid up flat on my back for another couple of days at least. All I want to think about is this new idea I dreamed up this week, but I don't have the time to start on it.

I've discovered it is possible to function on a pseudo-intellectual level on less than two hours of sleep. For eight days. Straight.

I feel the cusp of a writing binge coming on. This one's going to be big, I know. I have one novel out on agent queries, another out on a small house submission, one contracted to be written, one ready for the second draft, two ready for pre-publication edits and one coming out in a week. Yeah, I've been just a little busy. Don't even think about mentioning the promotional nightmare the next few months are going to be, especially with the last Asphodel novel coming out in May.

Then on the personal front, the irony becomes overwhelming. I take a look around at my situation, at the situations of my daughters and all I can do is laugh. Tomorrow is my wedding anniversary. My younger daughter (probably vastly unaware of this) got married today. Her sister (who is completely aware of this) is getting married in three weeks. Now what are the chances of that--all three wedding anniversaries those close to each other?

It's a good thing I have a sense of humor.

But irony makes life spicy, doesn't it? After all, if everything always worked out the way you planned for it to, what surprises would there be? I love surprises--especially when I'm not told about them and find out anyway like a kid digging through her mom's closet near Christmas time. But see, the kid who looks for her presents and finds them loses something on Christmas morning--she loses that element of surprise, the excitement of holding up a box and wondering what's in it. While everyone else is enjoying themselves, she has to act excited and pleased about something that she already knows and all of a sudden it's not that much fun any more, is it?

Ironic.

Let Me Tell You a Story About Vampires

I've had several people ask me the same question over the last few weeks that I think bears answering.

"Celina, why are you writing a vampire novel? The vampire craze is dead."

They blame it all on Twilight. I haven't read Twilight so I can't really comment on that. But here's the story of how the Vampire Covenants Trilogy came about.

I was talking to Sandra Hicks one afternoon (she's the publisher of Aspen Mountain Press) and mentioned that I thought it would be a good idea if some of the AMP writers got together and co-wrote novels. My first thought was that if writing a romance, we should pair a female writer and a male writer--the woman would write the heroine's point of view and the man the hero's. She thought that was a great idea and followed it up with, "So, who are you going to write with?"

I didn't even have to think about it. Rob Graham is a friend of mine, we'd talked online and done chats together and I liked his unique writing style. So I said, "Rob Graham." Her reply was, "So, set it up."

I contacted Rob and he was not only willing, he was enthusiastic. As I was a fan of his vampire novel "In the Dark," I suggested a vampire romance novel--but a historical one. I wanted to go back to the era where vampire lore was running rampant throughout Europe and base our story there. So that put us in eighteenth century Europe--just in time for the French Revolution. He knew he didn't want to write a stereotypical vampire for his hero; he wanted a German, a warrior from Saxony--not a high noble like a Count, but a member of the lower nobility. Rob named his hero Gunther von Wittershiem, a vampire some two centuries old. In order to balance that out, I created Marguerite Giffard--a twenty year old English widow reemerging into Court society in Georgian England. She was of higher rank than Gunther and, as a widow and an orphan, had learned to administer both the estates of her family and her late husband who'd died a few months after she married him at the age of sixteen. I based her in a lot of ways personality wise on Emma Harte, the mistress of Lord Hamilton, particularly when I saw this portrait of her:

That mischievous beauty so enchanted the painter George Romney that Emma became his Muse. Marguerite was born out of Emma's character traits and it helped that Rob absolutely became enamoured of Emma's portrait.

So we had our characters. Now we needed a conflict. Rob created our villain, the French Comte de Condé sur Víre, Alphonse de Brunel. With a rivalry between the two vampires that had lasted for centuries, de Brunel was naturally drawn to Marguerite when it became apparent that Gunther, despite the laws that governed the vampires, was falling in love with her. As Gunther and Alphonse continue their private war, Marguerite, unaware that the man courting her was an immortal, is put into great danger.

Considering the turbulent politics of Europe at the time, including the incipient madness of King George, there were all sorts of opportunities for fun in numerous cities across the continent. Our hero and heroine would romp through London, Paris and St. Petersburg as the story unfolded--three cities with dangerous political problems. So we enhanced that, creating the Conclave of vampires that enforce the Covenants--a group of laws all vampires must answer to. If a vampire is found to have broken one of the Covenants--just one--the punishment is destruction. The politics within the Conclave are just as turbulent as the mortal ones. Paris is led by the vampiric Benedictine monk Augustin Calmet (who is a historical character, the author of a treatise on vampires in the early eighteenth century) and assisted by the devious Marcellin Dautin. Calmet's rival in the Conclave is a Moorish warrior in Madrid, Fausto Oleastro. These two immortals have been at odds for hundreds of years and the Conclave is divided between their supporters.

So now, our stage was set. Before we'd even written a word, we had a rich tapestry of elements to work with. As a fantasy writer by nature, world building is important to me--and one of my favorite things to do. Writing the beginning of Breaking the Covenants was exciting. It was fun. While our character flirted and went through their forbidden courtship, we played in the great houses of London and had a ball.

So here's the answer to that question, and the point of this story. The vampire novel is NOT dead. It's a sub genre of literature that has thrived since Bram Stoker wrote Dracula and stemmed from a hysteria so great that the Empress Maria Theresa of Austria (Marie Antoinette's mother) issued an edict forbidding the disinterment of bodies checking for signs of vampirism. The vampire novel is a classic archetypal story, one of seduction and sex, violence and evil, danger and sometimes even redemption. No matter how you dress your vampires up, whether in the panniers of the last few doomed years of Marie Antoinette's court, as a rock star based in New Orleans, or as sparkly teenagers in a high school--the vampire is still there. He is iconic and classic, the personification of physical urges discouraged by the staid rules of society (at least until the fifties or so), the silent watcher in the shadows who gauges his prey, the tortured soul who needs the blood of life to maintain the immortality of his death. The vampire is beautiful, desirable, charismatic and ultimately, unattainable. There is a gothic loveliness to his isolation and just as the vampire turns his victims into creatures of the night, there is always one potential victim who turns him in some way--turns him into a protector, turns him into a monster, turns him into a man willing to sacrifice himself for her. There is always the hope that she can somehow redeem him...from God, from society, from himself. As these are motivations that all of us can relate to, the vampire and his literature lives, will always live.

Much like the vampire himself is immortal, so is his story. And that, my children, is why I decided to write a vampire story. It seduced me, like the vampire does his victim, and now I am helpless in its grasp. I'm even keeping vampire hours these days.

Congratulate us, by the way. The second book of the trilogy, Warding the Covenants, will be completed this weekend. The first book, Breaking the Covenants will be released in a little over a month. And then the vampire--our vampires--will have their way with you all.

Sleep, for now.