Cover Reveal: LOUDER THAN WORDS by Iris St. Clair

I'm thrilled to present the cover for LOUDER THAN WORDS, a touching YA romance by Iris St. Clair, releasing September 16, 2014 from Swoon Romance. I consider myself privileged to have read an early draft of this, and I loved every word - I can't recommend it enough!

From Goodreads:
Disappointment has been on speed dial in Ellen Grayson's life lately. Her dad's dead, her mom is numbing the grief with drugs and alcohol, and her so-called friends are slowly abandoning her. Trusting a popular teacher with her troubles should have been safe, shouldn't have led to an unwelcome seduction attempt, shouldn't have sent her running to the girls' bathroom for the final moments of her Junior year. Lesson learned. Best to keep all the sordid details of her life to herself.

Enter Rex Jacobi, a cocky teen recently transplanted from New York and fellow summer camp employee. Though his quick wit and confidence draws her in, she's not letting him get too close, not til she's sure she can trust him. By the time Rex's charming persistence wears down her resistance, it's too late. He's put Ellen on the perma-pal shelf and shifted his romantic attentions to her arch-rival. Even worse, the teacher who tried to seduce her is still misbehaving with impunity.

With her ability to trust as shaky as a chastity vow on prom night, Ellen must decide if she has enough remaining courage to speak up about her teacher and risk retribution, to tell Rex how she feels and risk heartbreak, or hold all her secrets inside, the only safe place she knows.

About the Author
Iris St. Clair is the pen name for a long-suffering cubicle worker by day, a Walter Mitty-like dreamer by night. (Her alter ego Tatiana Ivanadance also choreographs gravity-defying routines in those fantasies, but that's another bio.)

No matter what genre she writes, she prefers witty, insecure heroines and kind, persistent heroes able to break through to the gooey heart inside. In high school she was voted most likely to win at Monopoly and Clue, but least likely to throw aball anywhere near a target. Thank goodness writing requires less hand-eye coordination, punctuation errors notwithstanding.

Iris believes in the two-year "fish or cut bait" dating rule and has a 20+ year marriage and two teenaged sons as proof of concept. She lives, writes, dreams and dances in the rainy Portland, OR area.

Learn more about Iris: Website ~ Goodreads ~ Twitter ~ Facebook ~ Pinterest

Cover Reveal Organized by YA Bound Book Tours

Guest Blog and Giveaway

I have a guest blog up over at the Femmes Fatales blog today, "Writing the Unexpected" - please come on over and say hello! Huge thanks to my wonderful host Kris Neri, author of Magical Alienation and High Crimes on the Magical Plane.


Guest blog at Femmes Fatales

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And the giveaway for a LAST NIGHT IN GHOSTTOWN cover art postcard is officially over. Congratulations to winner Lisa M. Cronkhite!

Link Soup: Writing Tidbits

Lately I've been lucky enough to come across exactly the article I needed, at exactly the right moment. (I love it when that happens!) These have helped me kick start my creativity (and my motivation) again - I hope they're helpful to you, too.

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And a reminder, my giveaway for LAST NIGHT IN GHOSTTOWN cover art is running for another week! Find out how to enter here.

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The Crushing Weight of Expectations ~ Writer Unboxed
Essential reading for every writer! It's easy to get overwhelmed by the plethora of Writing Do's and Don't's - and that's not to mention the added factors of Market Yourself and Social Media Presence! The end result, for me, is not writing at all. Which is of course not terribly productive. So this article was a much-needed reminder that creativity for creativity's sake is never a bad thing.

Writer's Block? Use a Random Generator ~ Jami Gold
This article is so chock-full of shiny links that there's literally something for everyone. Pantsers, outliners, broad-stroke types and detail-oriented nitpickers (guilty!) - no one should be left out. Sometimes it just takes one little idea spark to kick the flames back to life.

I Have an Idea. Kinda ~ Janice Hardy
This article could have been written solely for me. I always start with a premise or vague idea snippet, and my personal challenge is creating a plot. This must-read from Janice Hardy gives many different ways to flesh out the beginning of an idea.

Setting the Scene: Weather ~ Fantasy Faction
I confess, I'm a weather nerd. I find it strangely fascinating. Perhaps because I live in Arizona, where it's common to have several conflicting weather phenomena happening simultaneously. It's also a strong, effective tool in the writing toolbox. It can ground a scene, set the locale, and convey mood and atmosphere like nothing else. This excellent article touches on all of the above and more.

10 Traits of a Strong Antagonist ~ Janice Hardy
Who doesn't love a good villain? Sometimes they can be more compelling than the heroes - just look at the amount of Loki fan art on places like DeviantArt. Sorry, Thor. Anyway, Janice Hardy has a fabulous breakdown of what makes those love-to-hate characters so rootable.

Giveaway: LAST NIGHT IN GHOSTTOWN Cover Art!

Like free stuff? Who doesn't!

Like the gorgeous cover art for my sci-fi novella LAST NIGHT IN GHOSTTOWN? How could you not!

If you've ever wanted a copy of the super-shiny cover art by Diogo Lando for your very own, now's your chance!

You know you want it!

From Wednesday, July 9th through Thursday, July 24th, I'm holding a giveaway for autographed LAST NIGHT IN GHOSTTOWN postcards and bookstubs. You can enter by any of the following:

- Commenting to this blog entry
- Emailing me at kathryn_mckade at yahoo dot com (subject line "Postcard Giveaway")
- Tweeting #PostcardGiveaway to @KathrynMcKade

For every 5 entrants I'll give away one postcard and one bookstub. Winners will be chosen randomly, and announced here on my blog on July 25th. The goodies will be sent via USPS shortly thereafter. No purchase necessary, one entry per person, stay in school, eat your vegetables, etc etc.

And on Friday July 25th, be sure to check out my guest appearance at the Femme Fatales blog. My wonderful host Kris Neri will be giving away an ARC of one of her fabulous mysteries.

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LAST NIGHT IN GHOSTTOWN is now available from  Eggplant Productions, Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Kobo

In the Maharajah’s Consortium every aspect of citizens’ lives is monitored by the GRID. Throughout the galaxy, on every planet: money, property, even lives are tracked by General Resource Interactive Display. Everywhere, that is, except for Ghosttown. Ghosttown: slum, theme park, holy city, the city that time forgot.

Enter Dev. In five days he leaves for Misra 7, a planet entrenched in a war so deadly it’s known as The House of Death. So it’s one last hurrah before he ships out.
Despite being on a strict time table, Dev allows a would-be thief, Rishi, talk him into handing out expensive med-gems to the sick and needy. What Rishi gets out of this, Dev doesn’t know. What he does know is that he keeps putting off his departure date, and he can’t deny that Rishi is the reason.

Does Dev stick around for Holi, help the people trapped in Ghosttown, and risk getting branded a deserter? Or should he clear out before he gives up his heart to Rishi?

Answer Me These Questions Three

I'll admit it, I've been known to get so caught up reading articles about writing that I don't get around to actually writing anything. Though this doesn't put words on the page, I've learned some amazing tips and techniques this way.

Recently I read a great article for pantsers by the great Nathan Bransford, How to Plan a Novel Without Actually Outlining. He proposes three simple questions that will get your brain going without being crushed under the weight of outlines and beat sheets.

And, because every writer is different, I started thinking on which three questions I *need* to know before I feel ready to write a story.

Who are my characters?

Best to figure this out first, because you're going to be spending a lot of time in their company. And I'm a character-person anyway - my stories always start with characters, long before a plot or even a story makes an appearance.

Beyond the basics of male or female, young or old, worldly or naive, I need to delve deep into my characters' inner workings - their greatest fears, hopes, vulnerabilities. In short, what are their biggest issues? How can I ensure they face said issues as much as possible? For instance, Dev in LAST NIGHT IN GHOSTTOWN fights a combination of anger, denial, and regret. Naturally he gets mixed up with Rishi, who challenges every single one of these demons, forcing Dev to face what he's spent years ignoring or bottling up.

What kind of world do they live in?

This question undoubtedly carries more weight for SFF writers than most. What makes this world different from the "normal" world? Even urban fantasies and modern-day settings have something that sets them apart from the world we ourselves inhabit.

For more far-flung settings (second world fantasy, distant futures, so on and so forth) what are the key features of this world? Because I dislike writing (and reading) what has been done a million times before, I always look for a different take on things. LAST NIGHT is set in a distant future where Earth is a footnote in the history books. Nothing new there. So I went for an Indian-inspired setting, and tried to build the worldview, history, and technology from there.

And most importantly, how does this world affect the characters? I'm always drawn to stories where the world is so real that it's practically its own character, which allows for more dramatic interaction with the main characters than a flat, passive backdrop of a setting.

What kind of story do I want to tell?

Perhaps even more than the others, this question is the kicker. Because no matter how real your characters or believable your world, a story that you're not interested in telling is a story that won't be written.

I knew from the beginning that LAST NIGHT would be a love story. Other ideas, however, aren't so easy. One of the ideas currently bouncing around in my brain is about an empath. He has a tragic past, and his present isn't too great either. He meets people - people from his past, mysterious people, people with Special Abilities like him - and struggles to learn who he can trust as he makes his way in the world. His world is modern-day, or relatively close, and set in the US southwest.

And I have no idea what kind of story it is.

Does it want to be a mystery, as he discovers his place in the world and figures out who he can trust? A thriller, as he struggles against a shadowy force which would harm People Like Him? A romance, as he learns to control his ability and decide which emotions are he feels are real, and which are just reflected back?

Honestly, this idea could become any one of these things, or perhaps all of them. I'm not sure yet. But until I know, this will keep simmering on the back burner.

Because a story can't come together if it's having an identity crisis.

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What questions do you need to ask yourself before you're ready to write? Do they change from story to story or are there certain answers you need every time?

Link Soup: Trees, Plots, and Being Normal

 

Trees in Fantasy (part 1) ~ Fantasy Faction
I've always been fascinated by trees, and in the best fantasy stories there is usually no shortage of them. My fourth grade teacher read several of the Chronicles of Narnia aloud in class, ending with The Magician's Nephew. The idea of the Woods Between the Worlds enthralls me to this day. This article is the first of a series, and examines tree mythology from around the world - as varied as many creation myths are, it's notable how many of them include trees in some way.

Are YOU the Writer's Block? ~ Donna Cummings
Essential reading for any writer. My answer (and I doubt I'm alone in this) is a resounding YES! Though I find my type of writer's block tends to be of the "I'm not good enough and everything I write is crap anyway so why bother doing it because my time would clearly be better spent alphabetizing my sock drawer" variety. Which is even less helpful than it sounds.

Too Much of a Good Thing: Over Plotting Your Novel ~ Janice Hardy
I generally struggle to come up with the main plot for any given story, so over plotting has never been a big concern. But this excellent article from Janice Hardy is still very interesting. I found her over plotting symptoms extremely helpful in a reverse engineering kind of way. And her final checklist of what a novel needs is essential for any kind of writer.

But I Just Want to Be Normal! ~ Fantasy Faction
I admit it, when I saw the title, I immediately thought of Charmed. If you saw any of the later seasons, you know exactly what I mean (this was practically the show's motto). Confessions aside, this post is a must-read for anyone writing urban fantasy or any modern-day SFF.

Novel Diagnostics ~ Kristen Lamb
More wisdom from the always-helpful Kristen Lamb. This breaks down the most common (and easy-to-miss on your own) problems that show up in the first ten pages, and gives excellent ideas on how to remedy them.

"Dryad's Dance" and "Dryad's Dance II" courtesy my alter ego

Letting Your Story Simmer

I recently came across a wonderful post by Sangu Mandanna on Janice Hardy's blog, Give it Time, about the importance of letting a manuscript rest so you can come back to it with fresh eyes. It really resonated with me because it's exactly how LAST NIGHT IN GHOSTTOWN was written.

Not through planning or foresight, mind you, but simply through sheer dumb luck. Or more accurately, writer's block and a short attention span.

Requisite writing analogy: A story is like soup. If we don't give it time to simmer, it ends up bland and tasteless.

Writing LAST NIGHT spanned about three and half years, during which there were several gaps when I didn't write at all. Chaos in real life, a troublesome scene or section, or a new painting would distract me, and the manuscript would languish, sometimes for months at a time.

The longest gap was the last half of 2012. I'd been writing pretty steadily before that, but got stumped when the ending I'd planned for years fell flat on its face. Time for a break, I decided, with an art project that I expected to take about three months.

It took seven.

When I finally, finally looked at the manuscript again in early 2013 I discovered, much to my surprise, that it wasn't as bad as I thought. In fact, I actually liked it. Enjoyed rereading it, even.

This was far more than I'd ever expected.

And after a prolonged break, my mind was finally fresh enough to tackle that ending dispassionately. To see what the story needed, not what I thought it needed, and find a way to deliver.

So if there's anyone that's ever wondered if that "let it rest" advice is really all that important, I can vouch for it. Yes, it is important. Vital, even.

Do your story a favor, and let it simmer on its own for awhile. You'll be glad you did.

Just don't let it boil dry.