Dance on Fire...3?

Happy mid-September, Fire Enthusiasts. It's very cool to see you here. You should know by now how much I appreciate you dropping by. There are millions of other sites you could be visiting. It humbles me that you chose this one, whether you leave a comment or not.


I'm pleased that fall is fast approaching and summer is losing its dominance as the season of the power. Of course you know I'm not concerned over winter's arrival since Central California winters are mild. Thick fog is the only worry here. If I had to shovel snow every morning I might be mourning summer a whole lot more than I am.


Thank you to all who visited last week. If you missed it, I'm all about the music, so I celebrated classic albums that just had to be played from beginning to end without skipping a song or two. Lots of people agreed with me, but many shared albums that they would have listed. I love that! I'm still trolling iTunes, hunting for many of those to add to the 7000+ songs on my iPod. See, I told you I was all about the music! It's not too late to join the discussion. You'll find the post just below this one.


As for the day job, I'm still working way too many hours. There's a possibility that they may be shortened a bit, but if it does happen it won't be for a couple months. *crosses fingers*


I have been faithful to my trusty treadmill. In the summer I found myself at 187 pounds. *laughs* "Found," he says. Okay, what happened was I spent every free moment during the spring and summer with book promotion and wasn't paying much attention to the garbage going in the tank, or the amount of hours I was spending sitting on my [CENSORED]. It took about a month to reverse that situation. I have been consistently below 180 now. Sunday I hit my low of 177 pounds. I eat and drink what I want, but know that I have to work it off. It's all about portion control and watching/reducing the amount of garbage that goes in. I was power-walking/running 3-7 miles as often as I could, much of that time in the late afternoon after work when it was 100+ degrees. The treadmill sits in the garage, so it wasn't fun. That's another reason why I can't wait for cooler temps.


I'm working on the outline for my next WIP. It's still early. So much of that is me doing nothing but spending my days allowing the ideas to percolate. This will be book 3 in my Dance on Fire, crossover vampire series. I know where the characters are, how many years later it will be, and some of what is begging to tale place. I just need the plot to clear in my mind and for that said-plot to excite me. When it excites me, that's when I will begin. It's getting there. If you are unfamiliar with this series allow me to explain...

Nathaniel is a vampire, wanting nothing more than to have a place to rest his head. He has often wished for death, wondering why God ever allowed this punishment: to walk the earth undead and unable to be redeemed. Does God remember the little boy from Romania who watched his parents die, was raised by the murdering vampire, only to become one himself? What does God think of Nathaniel and could there yet be redemption for one outside of heaven?

As you can see, my series is a crossover, marrying the best features of classic horror with the Christian themes of good conquering evil and redemption. I try not to hit my readers over the head with the church stuff. I just figured that if I was going to be adding to the vampire mythos, I needed something a little off the beaten path. It's getting good reviews. If curiosity gets the better of you, the e-book can be had on Amazon for 99 cents.

We'll talk soon.

Updates n' Things

Greeting: Hello, Fire Enthusiasts. How’s it going? I had planned on simply posting excerpts from either my debut vampire novel or perhaps tease you a bit further with my current WIP, but in the end decided just to offer an update on several things. I realize no one likes to read a lot of something unless they bought it. I get that. Besides there’ll be plenty of time for that in the coming months while I finish the work on my paranormal ghost story.

Latest: I just finished the last edit before beta. I’ll be printing the novel and handing it off this week. The reader is a co-worker who has read my work before and seems really excited to be involved. I will then make any necessary changes and send it off to my editor. I have changed the title because the previous one has been used a few times and very recently. Once I finalize it I will share it with you, along with the cover. Speaking of covers, I have been working with the wonderful Author Maria Zannini on that front. Right out of the gate she came up with some great stuff. It’ll probably be a while yet on revealing that, but I’m very excited about where we’re heading.

Promotion: I’m pretty much dead in the water here. I just don’t have the time. That’s why you’ll see some more teasers this year. I have some fairly good vampire stories out there that few know about. Perhaps it’s the subject matter. I’m not convinced there’s an issue with them since the reviews have been very good. I’m really hoping the paranormal market will embrace me and then find my other novels. We’ll see.

Physical: Many will recall my whining about gaining a bunch of weight during the holidays. I’m usually at about 183 or so. I ballooned to 188 and the clothes weren’t fitting all that well. J I have been watching the portions, laying off the garbage and hitting the treadmill especially hard – and am pleased to report that Saturday evening the scale displayed 176.8. Now…where’s the chocolate? *grins*

Music: I haven’t offered much in the way of what I’ve been listening to in a long time. I go back and forth. Treadmills are boring so one has to spice it up in order to keep climbing back up on them, especially when sessions last anywhere from 40 to 90 minutes. In the past week I’ve been listening to Green Day, The Rolling Stones, 30 Seconds to Mars, Iron Maiden and Jamie Cullum… What? Cullum? Who’s that? C’mon, you know. If you saw Eastwood’s film Gran Torino than you must know that song. My 18 year old got me hooked and I have been playing the heck out of him for the past 6 months or so. Check him out. He’s not just a jazz guy. This weekend while catching up on yard work, I listened to Cullum and Melody Gardot. How’s that for a wide range of music tastes? Now, back to my Zeppelin.

Books: I continue to read slowly due to lack of time. I actually do the first part of my treadmill routine – time permitting – by power walking with my Kindle. I’m currently reading Kate O’Reilley’s book,It’s Nothing Personal. It is a work of fiction based on actual events that happened to her. I recently finished Dark Corners by Liz Schulte and Coincidences by Maria Savva. I enjoyed them and I think many of you might as well. In fact, many of you already have – that’s how behind I am in my reading. I will have reviews for them very soon on Goodreads, if not here as well.

Dreaded day job: Thanks to many of you who have wished me well of late. We didn’t work this weekend and my partner should be in line to work the next one. I know I shouldn’t complain since many of you have to work Saturdays and I rarely have over the years. It just isn’t fun to work 11 fairly tough hours and then not have an entire weekend to decompress from it. Oh, well. It is what it is, as the saying goes. You don’t want to hear about it and I certainly don’t want to think about it until my alarm goes off at 3 am and I start the next work day.

Final word: That’s enough for now, I think. Have a great week. Now that I’ve come toward the end of the writing part of my WIP, you should begin to see me a bit more around the blogosphere. We’ll see how that goes.

We’ll talk soon.

Good Reads

Hello, Fire Enthusiasts. I hope you and yours are well. I thank you so much for stopping by when you can. I realize how precious time is, especially for so many of us who are juggling family, day jobs and writing – whether we’re published authors already or merely working on it. It’s really way too much than anyone should have to juggle. But it’s art, isn’t it? And when you’ve been given a gift like that one, you don’t lock it away. Instead, you do what you can to use it. I’m speaking about all of us now.

For me, I’ve been trying to make time for the social networks, but have had little success. With my limited time I have been doing a lot of writing and reading only. With that in mind, I have a couple of my recent reads to tell you about. Both should be familiar faces for many of you as they are doing incredible work and being pretty successful at doing it. I’m talking about authors Greg Sisco and Stant Litore.

Greg Sisco and The Wages of Sin:

 

This is the second novel in Sisco's incredible Blood Brothers vampire series and I continue to be blown away by him. You may recall my having told you about book one, Thicker Than Water. Overall, this is the third of his novels that I have read, and I had this one finished by day two. It's that good.

In this second installment of the story, we find the brothers still living in Las Vegas where one miss-step after another leads them further and further into very dangerous territory. Loki begins to step out into a spotlight which makes it very uncomfortable for his brothers. At the same time, Tyr's relationship and feelings for Eva continue to drive a wedge between him and the others. Soon, new characters emerge that complicate matters further, including the brothers being pursued by not one, but two entities. And it's not altogether certain what will happen when they finally locate them.

Much like book one, book two takes us half a world and a thousand years back with some very wonderful stories that color the plot well and provide great depth to the characters. Using his gift for wit, biting sarcasm and masterful pacing, Sisco will have you turning those pages no matter what better things you think you should be doing with your time.

Previously, Sisco proclaimed that he wanted to return vampires to where they rightfully belonged, rescuing them from the "soft" genres. I can assure you that he continues to do this and does not disappoint. He hasn't erased the original mythology, giving his vampires new abilities or powers, but has simply brought them into the new century as we would fully expect them to act. There's nothing wrong with enjoying your vampires on the lighter side of the genre, if that's what you prefer; however, if you're looking for the serious stuff: the bloodletting and the horror - you can stop looking right now. Sisco's got the goods. Here's the link.

Stant Litore and What Our Eyes Have Witnessed:

 

Father Polycarp has a Gift. He can bring peace and rest to the restless dead.

I just completed my second helping of Litore's incredible series "The Zombie Bible." I didn't immediately fall in love with this one as I did with Death Has Come Up into Our Windows...at least not at first. I'm just not a fan of second century Rome. But let me tell you something: whether you like Rome or not, Litore's masterful hand will drop you directly in the middle of the Eternal City and guide you about - taking you from the heights where the rich and the politicians dwell, down to the squalor at the bottom where the very poor suffer and the early Christians shield their presence from the soldiers and the hungry dead.

You might think there could be no beauty to be found in a zombie tale, but you'd be wrong. This is both an epic story of survival and a well-crafted study on the human condition, as we see the thoughts and feel the emotions of the rich and the poor, the weak and the strong, the good and the evil. We see their motivation, their heartache and their last moments as the dead desperately reach for them with their insatiable hunger.

As a writer of Christian themes myself, I cheered the ending of this piece as all of the beautiful symbolism came together, along with all of the splendid plot lines, to become a shiny red bow to decorate a truly inspired entry to "The Zombie Bible." Here's the link.

Believe me when I tell you that both of those guys are doing work that warrants further investigation. As for me, I’ve got to get back to my WIP. If you weren’t here last week, I discussed the paranormal ghost story I’ve been working on. It has a healthy splash of romance, that is pleasing me immensely, and I think it will please readers of the paranormal genre as well. I’m currently looking for beta readers for it, so if you think you might be interested, skip down to the previous post and have a look. I’d love to hear from you about it.

We’ll talk soon.