NEW PARANORMAL ROMANCE DEBUT NOVEL HUNTER’S BLOOD BY MARIANNE MOREA

Hunter’s Blood is a refreshing a unique story for fans of the paranormal romance genre. Anyone who loves wolf shape-shifting romances will enjoy this exciting tale of how one woman’s life rests in the hands of a were hunter.

Revenge…it’s a way of life for psychic Lily Saburi. Haunted since the brutal murder of her best friend and partner Lily’s out to find the killer…but finds more than she expected. After being bitten by a rouge animal she’s infect with a deadly virus, one of which there is no cure.

Sexy and powerful Sean Leighton, a were-hunter is charged with destroying anything infected with the deadly pathogen. He must protect his pack. Sean is faced with the decision to kill the woman he’s fallen in love with or save his pack from further infection. Will they both fall victims to Hunter’s Blood?

Hunter’s Blood will be available in Ebook and Kindle Formats Tuesday, August 24, 2010. Paperback version will be available November 24, 2010 in bookstores and online.

For more information visit publisher knightromancepublishing.

Source: io9

HOW EDGAR RICE BURROUGH’S BECAME ONE OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY’S BIGGEST SCI-FI AUTHORS

In 1911, a 36-year old loser, his latest business venture crumbling into insolvency, started to while away his idle hours at the office by writing a novel for the then-new “pulp” magazines. It was about a man going to Mars.

The story he wrote, a swashbuckling tale of action, adventure, and romance set on the dying Red Planet, was so outré he used the pen name “Norman Bean” lest the readers think the author a bit cracked.

Read more here…

Are you a fan of Marianne Morea? What did you think of today’s Book News?

Source: tor

THE ROOTS OF PARANORMAL ROMACE/URBAN FANTASY

To add additional perspectives to the paranormal romance/urban fantasy conversation, I approached a number of the editors who work in these categories to participate in an editorial roundtable of sorts. Of course, getting any group of editors together, even by email, isn’t as easy as you might think. Jury duty, vacations, overstuffed email inboxes, a tornado, and a power outage all took their toll.

Melissa: When we were first talking about Paranormal Romance/Urban Fantasy month in the Tor offices, it was fun to think back about the modern roots of these genres (modern, of course, being a relative term). Everyone seemed to have a favorite television series, book, or film that he or she considered a seminal influence on the paranormal romance and/or urban fantasy as we currently know them.

Read more here…

Source: sheknows

LINGER’S MAGGIE  STIEFVATER DISHES WEREWOLVES

We’ve got the scoop on Linger,  the highly-anticipated sequel toShiver, a book about werewolves from Maggie Stiefvater. How did this incredibly talented author become fascinated with werewolves and how did she make them so darn sexy?

What got you interested in writing about werewolves?

Maggie Stiefvater: Like all things that change your life permanently, it was an accident, really. I have always been incredibly, terribly, horribly in love with homicidal faries and British farie lore, so I just figured that I would end up writing about them for the rest of my life. It’s what my first two novels are about, after all. But while working on finding short story contests to publicize my debut novel, I found one on werewolves.

Read more here…

CASSANDRA CLARE TO EXTENDED MORTAL INSTRUMENTS SERIES

Margaret K. McElderry Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing, has announced it will publish City of Lost Souls and City of Heavenly Fire, the fifth and sixth installments in Cassandra Clare’s bestselling young adult fantasy series, The Mortal Instruments, which currently has more than 3 million books in print.

City of Lost Souls will publish in hardcover in May 2012, and City of Heavenly Fire will publish in hardcover in September 2013. The deal, which is for U.S. rights, was negotiated by Karen Wojtyla, Editorial Director of Margaret K. McElderry Books, and Barry Goldblatt of Barry Goldblatt Literary LLC.

News of the extension to the series precedes the much-anticipated publication of the fourth series installment, City of Fallen Angels, due to hit stores in April 2011.

Cassandra Clare took the world of YA literature by storm in 2007 with her debut novel, City of Bones, which immediately became a New York Times bestseller. The Mortal Instruments series books—which include City of Bones, City of Ashes, andCity of Glass— have gone on to become New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly bestsellers.

Beginning this August 31st, Cassandra will be touring in Princeton, NJ; Exton, PA; St. Louis, MO; Naperville, IL; and Decatur, GA, for Clockwork Angel, the debut title in The Mortal Instruments’  prequel series, The Infernal Devices.  She will also be participating in some of the stops for the “Smart Chicks Kick It” YA author group book tour in September.  Her complete schedule and wildly popular blog can be found at www.cassandraclare.com.

“Cassandra Clare is an incredibly talented writer and a master in the fantasy genre,” said Jon Anderson, Executive Vice President of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing.  ”Cassandra has a huge following of fans, not only of teens but adults as well, who I’m sure will be as thrilled as we are that she decided to add two additional titles to this bestselling series.”

Says Clare, “I initially envisioned City of Fallen Angels as an ending to the story begun in City of Bones, but I soon realized that in fact where my pen was taking me was into a new trilogy, one even more epic, dark and passionate than the first. In the first three Mortal Instruments books the fate of the Shadowhunters hung in the balance; now it’s the fate of the world. I can’t wait to share this journey with my readers as familiar characters are deepened, new faces introduced and relationships tested like never before.”

In Book 5: City of Lost Souls, the Shadowhunters struggle to piece together their shattered world after a betrayal by one of their own leaves them reeling. In Book 6: City of Heavenly Fire, Jace, Clary and their friends are drawn inexorably into a war that pits Heaven against Hell, angels against demons—a war that threatens to destroy our world entirely if the Shadowhunters can’t end it first.

The film rights to The Mortal Instruments series have been optioned by Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne’s Unique Features.

What do you think about today’s Book News?

Ten of the best dragons in literature

John Mullan at The Guardian

Argonautica, by Apollonius of Rhodes This Greek epic poem tells the tale of Jason’s quest for the Golden Fleece. The fleece is guarded by an unsleeping dragon; Jason enlists the help of the sorceress Medea, who gives him a magic potion with which to spray the dragon. It falls asleep on the spot. But then our hero has to repay her . . .

The Hobbit, by JRR Tolkien The ancient dragon Smaug lies amidst his wealth in his lair in the lonely mountain. He is not just fierce and fire-breathing, but cunning and witty too. Bilbo visits him with a company of brave but foolish dwarves and learns of the one weak spot on his jewel encrusted body. An archer does for the enraged dragon when he flies out to destroy a nearby town.

Read More here

Black Holes! Glamour! Ultra-Violent Reality TV! August Books Have It All

By Kelly Faircloth at io9

August brings some exciting new speculative fiction releases. We’ve got conclusions for the Hunger Games and Void trilogies, plus Regency magic and a sentient MMORPG. Here are the books you can’t miss out on this month.

The Evolutionary Void, Peter Hamilton (Del Rey) Sprawling, ambitious: Peter Hamilton’s Void Trilogy is an example par excellence of modern space opera. Hamilton posits the black hole at the center of our galaxy is home to a micro-universe. But it’s not just a abstraction—millions of believers avidly follow a Dreamer’s visions of life inside the void, and they’re convinced they’ve glimpsed paradise. The final volume in the series, The Evolutionary Void apparently picks up right where The Temporal Void left off.

Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins (Scholastic) For dystopian young-adult book fans, there’s only one August release that counts: Mockingjay, the conclusion to Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games trilogy. Scholastic has kept a tight lid on any plot details, but here’s what we know: Tough-as-nails Katniss is still standing after two rounds of the games, and the Capitol wants her dead. They don’t care who they have to kill to get to her, either. She’s a threat, and no one around her is safe — not her family, friends, or even District 12.

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Parallel Universe: Extraordinary Heroines by Marcella Burnard

via Galaxy Express

Let’s start right off with my contrarian take on extraordinary characters: Make them ordinary. Make them vulnerable. Make them real. Then give the character a twist that makes you giggle like a maniac. Start there and then you can do just about anything.

In my first book, ENEMY WITHIN, Ari is a fencing master, a starship captain, a bit of a scientist and an all around wise-ass. She does stuff I think we can all agree no one person could possibly do with the physical limits of the human body and the temporal limits of a single life span. None of it makes her extraordinary. It’s fun. It helps move the plot, but the thing that makes Ari interesting and memorable is the kernel of truth at her core. She suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. There’s a tiny scene where the hero walks into Ari’s cabin and she’s playing a sound file on her room speakers –the mating songs of amphibians from a world she’s visited. …Ari was interesting because she was an uber-capable woman whose emotional and mental lives had been utterly deconstructed and left in ruins.

Every one of us has strengths and weaknesses. Think through the heroes (male and female) of our world. Sometimes, we root for people based on that person’s strengths, but how much more intrigued are we by someone who has overcome weakness to achieve something? Remember the Olympic skater whose mother died the night before the woman was scheduled to skate? The skater wasn’t doing particularly well in the rankings, but that program she skated in her mother’s honor was a triumph that had the entire stadium on its feet for her. Why? Because every single human being watching could relate to the loss this woman had endured

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Vampires, Werewolves, Angels, and Monster Trucks: Natasha Rhodes’s Kayla Steele Saga Has It All…

by paulgoatallen at Barnes and Noble

Vampires, werewolves, avenging angels, a super sexy heroine, an apocalyptic storyline, nonstop action and adventure, monsters—and monster trucks!—Natasha Rhodes’s Kayla Steele saga (Dante’s Girl, The Last Angel, and the recently released Circus of Sins) has absolutely everything a paranormal fantasy reader might want… so why isn’t she a household name like Laurell K. Hamilton, Kim Harrison, or Charlaine Harris?

That is precisely the question I was asking myself when I finished Natasha’s latest Kayla Steele novel, Circus of Sins. I know there is no such thing as the perfect read but this novel certainly came close. Heroine Kayla Steele is a character any reader can relate to—although she is a fledgling Hunter in an underground organization whose mission is to protect humankind from supernatural cabals, she is at heart a loner, an outsider, a searcher, seeking not only some kind of meaningful existential connection but also a place where she can be accepted for who she truly is. I love Kayla—and it’s not just because she has an aversion to wearing underwear—she’s courageous, vulnerable, smart, and has a terrific sense of humor, which I’ll talk more about later.

Read More here

I think some of the “dragons” on the list shouldn’t count. There aren’t technically dragons so much as pictures of dragons that the plot relies on. And had they been replaced with some other violent animal, it would have worked just as well. I think the list was trying to play into the popularity of The Girl with the Dragon tattoo a little too much. So they missed a few great dragons. And there are too many good books coming out! I need to be able to pause time so I can read them all!

Which dragons do you think should have been on the list? What new release are you looking forward to the most? What do you think makes a heroine likable?

Free Audio Book of The Hunger Games

Source: readingteenagefiction.blogspot.com

Until 1 September, two free audio books will be available every week to download from Sync. This week’s selection is:

From 7/29 – 8/4,

THE HUNGER GAMES by Suzanne Collins (Read by Carolyn McCormick)
Download Courtesy of Scholastic Audiobooks

THE LOTTERY by Shirley Jackson (Read by Carol Jordan Stewart)
Download Courtesy of BBC Audiobooks America

READ MORE HERE

Must a Vampire Be Sexy?

Source: bordersblog.com

Somehow Jeaniene has conspired to leave me to kick off one of the hard questions that we discussed and I have not noticed it until now. Yes, she’s a sneaky one, so be wary. Of course, the idea was mine so I guess it is only fitting that I kick this one off. I guess I have no one to blame but myself, but I will try blaming Jeaniene anyway.

So, now that I’m done rambling, let’s get down to business. The question that I raised weeks ago when Jeaniene and I were talking was whether you would write a vampire story without a romance. And in truth I think that answer has become a double-edged sword. My first inclination is to say “Yes, you can.” You can very easily make a vampire the villain of the story, wiping away all hopes of the vampire becoming a romantic lead. In fact, you can very easily take the vampires back to their earliest roots of making them a monstrous creature that is a decaying undead that no one wants to date. It’s hard to make someone sexy when they are rotting all over you.

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PHILIP PULLMAN: MY SIX BEST BOOKS

Source: Philip Pullman @ express.co.uk

PHILIP Pullman, 65, is the author of the fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials. He has contributed artwork to Play The Shape Game (Walker, £5.99), a charity book by Children’s Laureate Anthony Browne. You can bid for his original illustration in an online auction (until Sunday) at www.childrenslaureate.org.uk to help raise money for The Rainbow Trust which provides support to families who have a child with a life-threatening or terminal illness.

Middlemarch by George Eliot
Penguin, £7.99

The novel to go to once you’re well and truly grown up, once you’ve been married, you’ve had children, your parents have grown old and your hopes are beginning to look a little faded. It’ll remind you that this is the common experience of everyone and that everyone’s experience is strange, wonderful and unique.

Bernard Shaw Collected Letters: 1898-1910 edited by Dan H Laurence
Out of print

Shaw was one of the kindest, wittiest and most perceptive of correspondents. These marvellous letters will give delight even to readers who think they don’t like his plays. I find them a never-failing source of sheer joyful energy and pleasure.

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
Penguin £5.99

The opening of this thrilling book never fails. Neither does the middle or the end. A perfect piece of clear, taut, vivid storytelling and one I re-read often to remind myself of what I’m trying to do.

READ MORE HERE

Parallel Universe: The Broad Canvas of Science Fiction Romance by KS Augustin

Source: thegalaxyexpress.com

Welcome to 2010′s Parallel Universe and many thanks to Heather for inviting me here. When she told the participants that this year’s theme is “diversity”, I didn’t know where to begin. Diversity is exactly the reason I write SFR, and I’m not just talking about the diversity of characters, their traits and their sexuality. I’m actually being a bit selfish and talking about my diversity. Let me explain.

I have a very low boredom threshold and ideas are always popping into my head. SFR gives me such a broad canvas that I can come up with a variety of ideas and work them out through the genre. What I love about SFR is how it never constrains me. It also allows me to posit certain truths without having to walk the minefield of cultural sensitivities. For example, the majority of my characters are coloured. And why not? We already outnumber the white-skinned humans on this planet. Why shouldn’t the future of a human-inhabited galaxy also be the same? Yet, the Republic (to take one of my universes as an example) is sufficiently divorced from current considerations that I can choose how I portray exploitation, discrimination and politics without somebody calling foul because I’m not citing history correctly. With SFR, I create my universe’s own history.

READ MORE HERE

Paranormal Romance Grab Bag You-Know-What-Friday-Means!

Source: tor.com

Look, we’ve been seeing each other for like a month now, and I think we have something really special going on. There’s so much I want to give you, you know? Love and trust and a good roll in the hay and OH YEAH BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS. It’s grab bag giveaway time! Enter to win an assortment of tasty paranormal romance and urban fantasy books.

READ MORE HERE

There’s quite a bit in the book news today – whaty caught your interest?

Join us in the forum to discuss!

“Lonely Werewolf Girl” is a bittersweet tale of friendship and werewolf fashion

By Chris Braak at io9

Internecine politics, clan rivalries, and werewolf-posturing serve as the backdrop for World Fantasy Award winner Martin Millar’s novel Lonely Werewolf Girl, a story about anxiety and the slow agony of making friends.

Lonely Werewolf Girl is the story of Kalix MacRInnalch, a laudanum-addicted, socially-anxious, anorexic, bipolar werewolf who, in a fit of rage, grievously injured her father, and was cast out from the family’s estates in the Scottish Highlands. She has made her way to London, living as a street urchin and surviving only by virtue of her supernatural nature. Werewolf politics, however, have made her important to the family once again, and she becomes the object of the attention of her two ruthless brothers, in addition to a wide variety of werewolf hunters and, by her own good luck, a pair of improbably kind university students.

Read More here

More Book Recs: Diverse Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy

via Rose Fox at Publisher’s Weekly

“Is there a chance that you could highlight multicultural UF or Paranormal Romance? A lot of the heroes and heroines I read are pretty white-bread, and I feel like there’s got to be more out there that I’m missing…”

There’s not as much of it as I’d like to see, but it’s out there! Alaya Johnson’s Moonshine and Terrance Taylor’s Bite Marks and Blood Pressure have a lot of fun with non-white supernatural entities in historical New York. I’ve heard great things about L.A. Banks’s Vampire Huntress books (and their emphatically non-whitewashed covers; kudos to St. Martin’s). S.J. Day’s urban fantasy Eve series has a Japanese-American protagonist. Jane Lindskold’s Thirteen Orphans et seq. are Chinese-influenced UF, and Eileen Rendahl’s Don’t Kill the Messenger is Chinese-influenced PR. Mario Acevedo’s Felix Gomez and Marta Acosta’s Milagro de Los Santos are Hispanic vampires, and Laura Anne Gilman’s Hard Magic et seq. feature Hispanic forensic magician Bonita Torres (who first appeared in the Retrievers series). Charles de Lint, the original urban fantasist, has a ton of Native American characters.

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Diversity Versus Intolerance In Science Fiction Romance by Nancy J. Cohen

via Heather Massey at Galaxy Express

Science Fiction, and by extension, Science Fiction Romance, often deals with relevant issues in the news, thinly disguised in an otherworldly setting. Remember the old Star Trek episode with the species whose face was half white and half black? Just looking at that guy brought to mind our own prejudices here on Earth. Star Trek was so popular because it showed that different races could live and work together in harmony.

The third book in my Light-Years Trilogy, Starlight Child, deals with racial relations and intolerance. In this case, it’s two different species that are involved, humans and Yanurans. My heroes have opposing attitudes toward the Yanurans, motivated by incidents from their pasts. A child has been kidnapped, and Deke and Mara are assigned the task of searching for her on Yanura.

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Video Games Do Matter: Questions for Tom Bissell

by Tom at Omnivoracious

Aside from a short trip down the rabbit hole with Sid Meier’s world-building sim Civilization III back in the late ’90s (see below), I’ve largely let the last two decades of video game culture pass me by. Not really out of distaste or even disinterest–I think in part I was (and still am) afraid of what would happen if I let myself get swallowed by the machine. Would I still be a functioning member of society? Would I ever read a book again? Nevertheless, I could tell from a distance that things were developing there in a way that went beyond the arcade games and fat-pixel consoles of my youth. So I immediately perked up when I noticed Tom Bissell’s new book, Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter on the horizon.

Amazon.com: When we say “value,” we’re not talking about the sort of increases-your-eye-hand-coordination argument that’s often made in favor of video games. This is really an aesthetic claim that you’re making.

Bissell: Yeah, I think there’s a number of games, maybe not many, certainly not as many as I would like, but there are a number of games that have really given me a first-class aesthetic experience.

Read More here

I have to agree that there are video games out there that have better stories and are more entertaining (even to  just watch) than some movies. They are just as valuable as movies, and have the potential to be better.

What draws you to Sci Fi/Paranormal Romance books? Do you think video games are important to society?

The Success of Paranormals: Why is the Genre Taking a Big Bite of Publishing Sales?

by Caridad Piñeiro at Tor

When you think about the current state of the economy, it’s no wonder that certain book sales are not only holding steady, but on the rise. Why is that? For starters, compare the ten dollar plus cost of a movie ticket which yields approximately two hours of entertainment to that of a mass market paperback. For anywhere from four to eight dollars, that book will provide hours of entertainment and unlike a movie, you can hand it off to a friend so they can share the experience.

When you take a look at those genres that are experiencing an upsurge in sales, there is one genre that jumps out at you, literally and figuratively—paranormals. In some chain stores, sales of paranormals have surged as much as 30% in comparison to sales from prior years.

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Writing and Publishing Science Fiction Novels in 5 Simple and Easy Steps

by Gen Wright at MoSo Technology Ltd.

After you’ve written your work, getting published is no doubt a elaborate task. Here are some constructive instructions that will help you write an award winning science fiction novel and publish it profitably.

Step 1: First Draft and Structure

A science fiction book should be structured in three portions: the opening, the middle, and the climax. Once you establish your story plot, you need to reinforce it with any required research. Afterward, you just have to outline your ideas on paper. High doses of imagination are the chief imperative for a triumphant science fiction novel.

Try to uplift your readers from the colorless blandness of ordinary routine life with your novel. Try to conserve suspense in each segment of the novel to make the story line consuming. Let the reader indulge in speculation over imponderable gripping situations. Sketch each segment of the story markedly.

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Novella Publisher Seeks Funding on Kickstarter

By Jason Boog at Media Bistro

After almost breaking even with a science fiction and fantasy novella collection, one publisher has turned to the crowdfunding site Kickstarter to raise money for a new kind of press.

Earlier this year, Dario Ciriello launched Panverse Publishing to focus on science fiction and fantasy novellas. His first collection, Panverse One, earned some rave reviews in the community. If he can raise $12,000, Ciriello will expand the press.

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Have you been reading more since the economy has tanked? What do you think of variety of ways books can be published now?