THINGS TO DO IN VEGAS WHEN YOU'RE UNDEAD

Sorry it's been a while since I posted on this blog. Been busily promoting the release of Bloodtrail, the enthralling sequel to Bloodflow. Sales are steady and we're pleased. I'd like a few more reviews on Amazon.com and Goodreads.com but I am pleased with the ones I have. It strikes me as I read these reviews though, that many readers are reluctant to reveal certain details about the book for fear of giving spoilers. Well, as the author of the book there are certain details I don't mind you knowing, as I think they help readers see what a fun and exciting adventure the book is!

So below is a list of some of the details I don't mind you knowing about Bloodtrail before you buy:

• In the first book, Bloodflow, Kate only had enough time to learn a few things about what it means to be a vampire when it became necessary to betray Darkthorne and help Litchner's militia destroy him. Even then, she was in a haze of denial. Now, in Bloodtrail, a year later, she still hasn't fully come to grips with what it means to be one of the undead. She has made the necessary concessions to her new nature - she only works at night, she feeds as her animal counterparts, the Falcon and the panther, and no longer eats regular food. But she is still striving to live her life as normally as possible. She avoids the use of her new capabilities where possible, has refused to explore what other powers she may have that Darkthorne didn't have time to teach her, and has otherwise entirely ignored the fact that she is no longer human. But this sort of denial of her true nature is a time bomb, and on her new assignment to find a poor misguided runaway teenaged girl, Kate will find herself confronted with the realities of her new form of existence in brutal ways that will no longer allow her to deny it - she is a vampire!
• Kate runs afoul of a cabal of creatures that look entirely human but who are able to draw off of the most foul, greedy, prurient, unsavory emotions of human kind as if it were a narcotic. They are addicted and have resorted to hosting a series of gruesome and bloody gladiatorial games to elicit these emotions from their guest in order to get their fix. The creatures are able to recognize Kate for what she is, and she them, but as they lack any real power Kate dismisses them as no real threat. But struggle as Kate might with the moral and ethical implications of what it means to be a vampire, the leader of these creatures, a Mr. Konig, entices her, tempts her, and seduces her to drop all pretense to the hero's ethic and fully and freely indulge her power, take her place as superior to the humans around her, and rule them.
• In all his eight centuries of roaming the Earth, Darkthorne claimed to never have met another vampire like himself, except those he, himself, fathered and later destroyed out of self preservation. Kate herself learns what this means first hand as she inadvertently encounters a newly-minted vampire and must fight him to the death in all their animal forms - she the panther and the falcon, he a hyena and a giant bat.
• As in the first book, Kate finds herself pitting her supernatural powers against man's technology in a climactic scene, trapped in the belly of an unmanned fighter jet that is targeting two innocent young people fleeing for their lives.
• Early in the book Kate saves the life of a very unlikely ally who, in the end, defends, protects and nurses her as she strives to recover from a catastrophic, near-fatal conflagration.

These are just some of the thrilling adventures waiting for you in Bloodtrail, sequel to the equally as exciting Bloodflow!

THINGS I HATE ABOUT WRITING

    I love writing. It's much more than a pass-time or hobby for me. Yes, you could call it a drive, or obsession. But even more than that, it is sustenance, nourishment to me. When I haven't written in a day or two, the urge to do so is much like starving.

    On the other hand there are some things I downright hate about writing! Things that drive me bat-shit crazy and make me want to throw my typewriter across the room (if I wrote on a typewriter instead of a laptop.) Here are some things I hate about writing.

    I hate it when the final sentence of a chapter ends up, through coincidence, alone at the top of an otherwise blank page, all by itself! Since much of what I write involves adventure and action, most if not all of my chapters end in some sort of cliff-hanger. That means generally the single most important sentence in a chapter is the very last one. I can't just cut it! But leaving a single sentence alone on a page is a formatting nightmare - it doesn't just waste space, it looks stupid! And you would think, given the literally tens of thousands of words I write in a book that this would have to be rare, but you'd be surprised how often it happens! Argh!

    I hate cutting! Removing parts of my blood from the page, whether for space or just because it doesn't contribute to the overall narrative. I have no trouble adding more story, but I hate cutting. The words I write are like my children. What if someone told you one of your kids didn't fit in with the rest of the family and you had to get rid of her?

    I hate the swamp! You know it. It's that stretch of the book somewhere just past the middle where you suddenly find yourself stuck for story. You've worked hard and done an admirable job of writing the beginning of the story, setting up great conflict and plot, characters and events, and even carried them forward toward a phenomenal climax and denouement. You know in your head how you want things to come together at the end. But you're not there yet. If you ended things here the book would be too short. You need to carry the story forward more, ratchet up the tension, bring the readers along toward the climax. But you're stuck. You can't think of what to add to prolong the conflict and enrich the plot. The swamp. Grrr!

    Sex scenes. I know I'm not alone in this. The search for metaphors and similes and imagery and subtext for sex is exhausting and frankly not very sexy. Just about everything has already been used as a metaphor for sex in literature: from automobile racing to cooking; from rock-climbing to cliff-diving; from horseback riding to, of all things, golf! The movie Ghost found a way to make pottery-throwing sexy. Go figure. Trying to find new and fresh ways to say "they fucked" without being so crude and abrupt about it is work, not fun!

    Meta-choreography. Choreography, in writing, is placing each character on stage where he needs to be for the scene to work, and being sure the reader can envision that. What I call meta-choreography is bringing all of the characters into place for the final conflict and resolution. Sometimes it's hard: he's just boarded a plane in Baltimore but you need him to be in Los Angeles sooner in order to be in place on time; she needs to be at the arena before the bus explodes, but it is essential she take a shower first so she doesn't show up smelling like teargas; the hero must be knocked unconcious in order to have the final vision that explains everything, but he can't still be unconscious when the aliens arrive or he'll miss the final battle, in which he plays a pivotal role; etc. Sometimes meta-choreography can be a bitch.

    So what are some things about writing you find frustrating?

WHAT OTHERS DON'T GET ABOUT WRITERS

    My friends don't understand how I can write so much. For that matter, my family doesn't get me, either. Only other writers, with the same devotion, the same passion, the same drive as I have, get me. Which is why attending critique groups and writers conferences can be such an important part of being a writer - just a couple of hours' exposure to other writer can energize the creative batteries more than almost any other writing-related activity.

    So what is it that others don't get about writers?

    Well, for one thing, they think it is a lonely, solitary profession. What they don't understand that when I'm sitting alone at my computer writing, I'm not as alone as it may seem. That room is crowded elbow-to-elbow with characters, all clamoring to be heard. Granted, not all of them are very likeable people, and some are down-right despicable human beings. But it's anything but lonely, and the furthest thing from boring that I can imagine.

    Another thing they don't understand is how I can have so much to say. "How do you come up with all those stories?" they ask. As fellow writers, you know that our minds are never idle. Any snippet of conversation, song lyric, grocery store mishap, traffic altercation, overheard argument, etc. can spark the flame of inspiration in us. We are constantly thinking in terms of storyline and plot, meaning and subtext. I once drove by a restaurant with a fountain out front. There was a single young girl sitting alone on the low retaining wall of the reflecting pool, dressed impeccably and even a little provocatively, in a tasteful way, looking into the water, lost in thought. I began to spin a yarn centered around that single image out loud to my companion in the car and by the time we got to our destination I'd woven a complex plot involving inchoate love, loss, epic war and a solitary gold Roman coin that had inspired men for centuries, both to the good and the evil. My passenger was gob smacked at what I'd done. But to me in was all in a day's occupation.

    Something I hear often from my non-writer friends is that they often thought about writing a book or short story, but hadn't, yet. What they don't get about writers is that when the urge to write hits us it isn't a vague impulse, but an obsessive drive that gnaws at the base of our skull, much like a migraine, until we finally feed the beast and sit down to write. If you're like me, and you haven't written anything in a few days, you start to get irritable, snippy with other, and sometimes downright cranky. A writer needs the outlet of writing like a full bladder needs pissing. And you can quote me on that!

    Others don't get us, but our fellow writers do. That's why every o9nce in a while we need to be around other writers. To be reminded that there are others out there just as haunted by phantom characters, inspired by seemingly mundane events around them, and just generally grumpy little crazy people...like us!

    For just such a fix, look into attending this year's Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers Colorado Gold Writers Conference this year.