My Entry in the Superheroes of Science Blogfest

Happy Thursday! I’m posting off schedule today to participate in a blogfest.

Fellow fantasist Claudie A., now all set up at her spiffy new location at The Novel Experiment, has been hosting a blogoversary Superheroes of Science Blogfest all this week. The blogfest asks these questions of us:

Who is the most memorable scientist character to you? What’s so special about him? What scientists – dead, alive or fictional – made a difference in your life? Is there a scientist you admire? What has he discovered or what is he working on?

I’m going to go with a very particular interpretation of a very particular fictional scientist, Dr. Frankenstein from the 1994 Kenneth Branagh movie.

What is it about this character that so speaks to me? It’s the twisting of his sense of judgment by the torment and desperation he feels over the loss of loved ones.

It’s watching him go from the joy of discovery apparent here:



To the horrific tragedy that unfolds here:



Branagh’s Frankenstein is so incredibly human, in turns defiant and despairing in the face of mortality and lack of control. I find this compelling in any character. I find it more so in a speculative fiction story, where these conflicts come out in dramatic and literal interpretations.

Urban Midgard and Unsafe Haven, A Glimpse into the Future

Happy Friday. I’m here again with news and updates and a few words about what you should be seeing around here in the future.

First off, I am gravely disappointed that I will not be releasing “City of Dis” this weekend. I took a little too long getting it to my editor. She’s super-fast, but there are only so many hours in the day, and too many other people have discovered how fabulous she is. So it looks like this coming Thursday (Sept. 29) or Friday (Sept. 30) for Release Day. Stay tuned to this bat channel…er norn channel.

In the meantime, have a look into the future…at the cover.


When I saw the comp of the cover, I almost asked the designer to take the tattoo off of the character’s arm (because she doesn’t have a tattoo). In the end, however, I decided I like it, for a couple of reasons. First, the mark is the unofficial logo/design identifier for the short story series, so I like that it kind of marks each of the characters. Second, I like the idea that everyone who gets involved with Colbie ends up changed—marked—by the experience (frequently not for the better). This is a symbolic representation of that, though the designer doesn’t know enough about the story to know how dead-on her instincts are.

So, yeah, don’t look for a mention of a tattoo on the character (Juni) in the story.

I have also decided which anthology opportunities I’m going to pursue and which ones I’m going to have to pass up. Having promised myself I would start writing The Norn Convergence on October 3, I have eleven days to write a fantasy story for an editor I know. No guarantee she’ll like it and include it in her anthology, but if she does, it will be out near the end of the year. I thought that might be a good way to keep people from forgetting about me [bats her lashes] and to reach a wider range of readers.

Also, everyone who is following me at this point knows (I think) that I blog about the craft of writing at Urban Psychopomp and that I’m discontinuing those posts at the end of the month. After that, I’m going to look at changing things up a little bit around here.

What have I got planned for the future of Unsafe Haven? Sometime around December 2011 or January 2012, I will probably get my own domain for a real website and do this thing up proper. I have to pick writer/blogger/techno goddess Sommer Leigh’s brain on that before I get started. I’m thinking a real welcome page where people can easily learn where to buy my series stories and novels and double-check on story and publication chronology (though I do intend for all of my work to ‘stand alone’). Someplace to sign up for a newsletter, maybe. A page for the occasional flash fiction podcast. I’m really not sure how much of a blog atmosphere or presence I will maintain. For that, people might have to rely on Wicked & Tricksy posts. We’ll see.

In the meantime, I will be participating in some cool blogfests, one from Claudie A.:


Who is the most memorable scientist character to you? What's so special about him? What scientists - dead, alive or fictional - made a difference in your life? Is there a scientist you admire? What has he discovered or what is he working on?

And one from Sommer Leigh:


During the month of October, my League of Monstrologists will take on the task of compiling an informal Field Guide of the Weird on their favorite monsters.

We all have at least one fictional other that haunts our closets and underbed spaces. The reason we avoid basements, attics, and graveyards. Everybody’s got their favorite – zombies, vampires, werewolves, mermaids, Bigfoot, Nessie, Cthulhu, demons, Martians, ghosts, goblins, gremlins, the clown from IT…

The monster world is full of the interesting, the weird, and the really scary. And it’s finally time to celebrate all that they bring to the dark corners of our imaginations.

I will close with a little mood music, a fanvid for a song that really fits the atmosphere of the Urban Midgard world I’m working on bringing to readers. It’s long (and beautiful), but don’t miss the crescendo at about the 4:30 mark.

Almost...There

Forgive me for the quickie Friday post, but I need to get back to actually writing! I wanted to post today that I had finished drafting "City of Dis", but I still have two or three thousand words to do (looks like it will be a little longer than "Dis"), and I really want to get those done today. I wanted to share the cover for "City of Dis", but it's not done yet (though the comp looks waaay cool). The clock is ticking if I want to get the story on the virtual shelves by Sunday, Sept.25. Think good thoughts for me!

Happy Friday!

Projects Flying at My Head at High Speed

Another Friday arrives. There’s so much going on right now that whole weeks fly by. Work mounts up to the point where little actually gets done.

Updates: I’ve signed the contract for the professional cover illustration for The Norn Convergence. Hopefully I don’t die of squee, which feels like a distinct possibility. If I wasn’t hiding away the identity of the artist and the incredible quality of his work, this might be more understandable to observers. When people see the illustration, they will understand the terrible burden of carrying on with normal life while waiting to see this cover take form. :)

I’m trying to squeeze in writing time for several anthologies. Opportunities have been flying at my head like I’ve got a pitching machine aimed at me, and I’m reluctant not to at least try to catch them, no matter how they complicate my life.

I’m trying to commit myself to giving up the next two years of my life to really get into this self-publishing effort. By ‘give up’ I mean evenings and weekends and holidays and vacations, in the name of establishing myself under two names and in three genres. I know it sounds almost needlessly ambitious, but a number of the opportunities coming at me are from people who know me from my writing days in genres other than urban fantasy, genres that I always intended to go back to (though not this soon).

To avoid ending this post on a note of severe authorial distress and resignation, I thought I’d talk a little about the heroine of my current series. Those who have read “Dis" know her, Colbie Moss. I thought I’d give you all Seven Quick Facts About Colbie Moss.

#1. Colbie is used to handling the challenges of life all by herself, to the point that she is a bit of a control freak, a bit domineering, a bit distrustful that she can count on other people to help. This trait came into play in “Dis” and will play a significant role in both “City of Dis” and The Norn Convergence.

#2. Colbie is an assistant curator at a community art museum, where she specializes in exhibitions on the architectural and cultural history of the Ashborne area. She quite pointedly avoids working with local artists and modern art as it reminds her that she is herself a frustrated painter.

#3. Colbie’s father is affectionately known as the Saint of Camden Park (a lower middle class neighborhood in Ashborne where she grew up). Colbie would be the first to tell a person it’s not easy being the daughter of a saint.

#4. Colbie is the pretty daughter of a stunningly beautiful mother, a fact that has left its mark on her. She gets her love of designer clothing from her mother and feeds her addiction with regular trips to southern California for the sample sales and premium outlet malls.

#5. The tattoo on Colbie’s chest, visible in the cover of “Dis”, is covering up something else. Some of the details come out in “City of Dis”, but The Norn Convergence explains everything about how such a non-tattoo kind of girl ends up inked so dramatically.

#6. Colbie knows high-performance cars, drives too fast, watches boxing on television with her father, spars at the gym, and spends a lot of time distance running. She does the last of these to induce the frequent endorphin rushes necessary to manage the physical pain associated with her botched reanimation.

#7. Colbie is totally incapable of defending herself with a firearm (or any weapon involving the aiming of a projectile). She couldn’t ‘hit a bullet with the side of a barn’.

Hope that tides people over while I’m getting “City of Dis” and The Norn Convergence ready. And Happy Friday.

(photo courtesy of Paul Morse, Wikimedia Commons)

Colbie Update and A Certain Light Elf

Happy Friday, everyone. I have a couple of Colbie updates for you, and I thought I'd share a little bit about another character who is going to become a major player in her series (though he won't be in the first book).

I've got a three-day weekend looming up and have every intention of finishing "City of Dis" before it's over. Then the story goes off to my test readers. Hopefully, by next weekend (assuming I don't catch my test readers at an exceedingly bad time) I'll be done with revisions and ready to show it to my editor, who is generous enough to fit me in between other projects. I also have the images for the cover picked out. My designer, unless she's swamped, should be able to get it done within a week. All in, I think I do have a reasonable chance of getting it out in the next 2-3 weeks.

At that point, I'll be racing to finish my outline for The Norn Convergence with the intention of starting to draft the novel. I've promised myself I'll start drafting during the first week of October even if the whole outline isn't quite ready. That would put me on target to finish the first draft in December. The down side to that is the holiday season. I'm expecting Christmas and New Years to slow down my readers and my editor and to add as much as a month extra to the process. That means I'm probably looking at a February 2012 release.

Remember me in the meantime, okay?

I'll wrap up with a little character teaser. I mentioned in a previous post on Norse elves that I was going to introduce a light elf in the series. That would be Lucian, aka Luke Delling, an unwilling captain in an ancient order of elven warriors serving the Vanir fertility god Frey, who goes by the alias Morgan. This storyline will be the place I get to use all those interesting questions about why elves, nature deities in their own right, would be serving a Vanir god (and whether they're all happy about it). The habit Norse gods have of using cunning and tricks to wheedle their way out of bargains will come into play when I get Morgan and Luke in the same room, with Colbie caught between them.

Luke is the brooding sort. I have such a weakness for them. Just can't seem to outgrow it. He's got a terrible history with women, giving him that nice crisp emo edge. How should I quantify this? Aha. Music. Luke's bad mood music, in no particular order, would include...

(A language warning on this next one, fyi...)

One of them might apply to his tangle with Colbie, but I'm not saying which one.

And I wouldn't leave you without a visual. I'm thinking a moody James Marsden...