Madeline Ashby wrote her Master’s thesis at York University on anime, fan culture, and cyborg theory. That alone makes me want to read her debut novel, vN, which hits stands today. I caught up with her for a brief Q&A about her experiences with getting her first novel published…

What led you to start writing vN?

I started writing it after I realized that the short story I’d started (which now exists as the novel’s prologue) had a lot of potential and wasn’t quite finished, yet. I really liked the idea of playing in a world where the humanoid robots were already naturalized within society, and there wasn’t any drama about them humans telling them apart. I also really wanted to tell a story about serial replication and reproduction, and the identity issues that could bring up.

How close did the final story match how you originally envisioned it? Why did these changes come about?

It’s a pretty close match. There were some drafts that wandered around a bit and didn’t go where I ultimately needed them to, but before publication I ended up doing a major edit and trimming a lot of the fat from the narrative. The result is leaner and stronger, and able to do the things I always wanted it to do.

Tell us about the writing process you followed with vN.

I’m not sure there was a process, really. I just sat down and wrote it when I felt the urge and had the time. It’s my debut book, so it’s not like I was on a schedule. I did go through a specific process of workshopping certain parts and editing the book, though, based on the input others had given me. I re-wrote the ending probably five times, and the beginning also.

What was your experience like with the submission/agent-acquisition process?

It wasn’t that difficult. David Nickle, a writer in my workshop, referred me to his agent, Monica Pacheco of the McDermid agency. I showed Monica a partial of the book, and she was interested. We met up and discussed it, and she signed me pretty quickly. This was long before David and I started living together, but it’s very convenient now, as we share an agent.

After you found a publisher, what was the editing process like for you?

My editor, Marc Gasgoigne, gave me a pretty free hand in my first edit. I told him shortly after the manuscript was purchased that the book simply wasn’t good enough for me, and that I wanted to cut it down quite a bit. He had already asked for a little slack to be taken up, but this was a major edit that required significant re-writes. He was patient with me, though, and I think the book is a lot better than it used to be. That draft was then sent to a line editor who did a very thorough job of picking out continuity errors and so on. I had the chance to accept and work with her suggestions, or reject them as I saw fit. That was a hard thing to do, mostly because it happened on a very short timeline and I was busy working on other projects, too. It’s hard to focus on those kinds of details when you have a million other things going on.

What was the biggest challenge you faced in getting your book published?

Hmm. That’s a hard question to answer, because I wasn’t in the room with all the people who rejected it before it was picked up. I can never know what pressures they were facing or what they really wanted. I know that Angry Robot expressed interest in the book very early, but they wanted to fit it into the right spot in their schedule. Novels are just like any other product—they have to be packaged and released appropriately in order to make the most impact. I think there are a lot of writers out there who don’t understand that it’s a business like any other, and that a rejection sometimes has nothing to do with quality, but everything to do with customer segment, market profile, branding, production schedules, and so on.

What was the biggest surprise you encountered during the process of getting published?

Well, the fact that it was picked up was a surprise. I sincerely doubted it would happen. I mean, I wrote the book, so I knew all its problems. I could see all the seams and I figured other people could, too. Plus there are plenty of writers whose first manuscripts (or second, or third, or fourth) aren’t picked up. It’s part of the prototyping process, really. You practice until you get better. But after the book was picked up I wasn’t really surprised about anything about publishing (aside from how slowly the schedule moves). I know a lot of other folks who are novelists, and from conversations with them I knew about what to expect. It’s not like entering some dark, seedy underbelly of society, or anything. Maybe there are gatherings of publishers where eveybody’s doing cocaine in the bathroom or something, but my guys tweet about how much they love hanging out with their kids and opening a bottle of red wine at the end of the day. It’s lovely.

What’s next for you?

I’m working on the next installment of the Machine Dynasty series, iD. It’s told from the perspective of a supporting character in vN, Javier. He’s also a robot, but a very different one from Amy, the protagonist of vN. He’s far more world-weary and experienced, but he also knows how to get what he wants. I featured him in a short story of mine, The Education of Junior Number 12. He’s fun. I think I’ll keep him.

Lou Morgan sees her debut novel, Blood and Feathers, hit stands and ereaders this week. Luckily I was able to catch up with her before the big day…

What led you to start writing Blood and Feathers?

The story, put simply. I wanted to tell a story about a young woman called Alice, who had never got over the death of her mother, and I wanted to tell a story about a disgraced angel called Mallory who had got himself into a mess and didn’t know whether he could ever get out again. Fortunately, it happened to be the same story—although it took me a while to work that out.

How close did the final story match how you originally envisioned it? Why did these changes come about?

It’s pretty close, as it happens. I think the only real change involved a minor alteration to a character’s death. Even though the change was fairly small in itself, it altered a lot of the relationships between the other characters (not that it helped the poor unfortunate whose number was up…) It was something that I hadn’t been happy with when I first wrote it, but couldn’t quite work out how to fix—and it was only by talking it through with my editor that I got it to a point where it felt right.

Tell us about the writing process you followed with Blood and Feathers.

It was fairly straightforward, I think: once I’d realised it was actually one long story—and not the three short ones I’d originally thought it to be—I spent an afternoon working out a rough beat-sheet which picked up important plot and character developments and then I followed that as I wrote. It meant I always knew more or less where I was headed and where the characters should be at any given point, but I also had a reasonable amount of freedom.

Another thing I did was keep a notebook where I wrote backstory and character sketches for the majority of the characters (I think there’s 11 in there for Blood and Feathers, and I’ve started adding more for Rebellion, the second book) and that’s where I wrote down all my research and worked out the rules for the world. Anything I needed to look up, it was in the notebook. It’s bright pink—which is unusual for me!—so it’s pretty easy to keep track of…

Has your writing process changed since you sold your novel?

I’m fairly boring, I’m afraid: I seem to be following much the same pattern now. The beat-sheet and notebook approach feels like it works quite well for me, although I had to do a much more detailed plan for my publisher ahead of Rebellion. I’m certainly a lot more critical of my own work now, though—it slows everything down a bit as I’m forever rereading what I’ve written.

What was your biggest challenge in writing Blood and Feathers?

On the one hand, finishing it. I had a huge amount of upheaval in my personal life while I was working on the last third, and it was very difficult to find the time and energy to write. On another hand, I enjoyed the world-building, and I quite often had something rattling around in the back of my mind even when I wasn’t actually writing. I suspect I was quite trying company for a while.

What was your experience like with the submission/agent-acquisition process?

Mine was possibly a little unusual in that I wasn’t agented when I submitted my book. I’d met Jonathan Oliver, the editor-in-chief of Solaris, a few years before, and he had shown an interest in my writing and asked me to pitch for an Abaddon shared-world novel, which I did. They turned me down (and rightly so, in that case) but we kept in touch and would bump into each other at conventions, and we were actually at World Horror 2011 in Texas when he asked what I was working on. I told him about it, he sounded interested and asked me to send it to him. I did… and a couple of months later, I got a mail saying Solaris wanted to publish it. I think I might actually have burst into tears. In a good way.

After you found a publisher, what was the editing process like for you?

It’s a strange thing, editing. Possibly the hardest part of it was realizing that there is someone out there who has read your book and paid very, very close attention to it. It feels a bit like you’re sitting an exam, in a way, when each round of edits come back. Jon’s very reassuring: the margins had some extremely polite, but quite firm, comments when things needed tweaking, and of course he was right. It’s not until you’ve actually finished the whole process, though, that you can see how much stronger the book becomes during that process: it’s kind of magical.

What was the biggest challenge you faced in getting your book published?

Me. I was very much in the right place at the right time when it came to submitting—there’s a huge amount of luck involved in publishing—so I can’t complain, but I found it very hard to put the manuscript out there, in the world, and let go of it.

It’s hugely exciting knowing that other people can now read it (and I hope they do!) and it’s a tremendous privilege, too, but getting your head round that idea’s a bit tricky to start with. It’s just such an incomprehensible, wonderful, terrifying thought.

In more practical terms, signing a contract (an actual contract. With my name on it, and big words and things) was a touch intimidating.

What was the biggest surprise you encountered during the process of getting published?

How involved I was, at every level. I wasn’t expecting to have as much say (or to put it another way, to be allowed to stick my nose in as much!) as I did. Solaris are a great team and a lot of fun to work with: I’ve learned a huge amount about publishing as a result of them being so open and inclusive. I was allowed a lot of input, and they didn’t even throw things at me. Well. Not often, anyway…

What’s next for you?

We’re about to launch Blood and Feathers (at Forbidden Planet in London, no less), so a lot of my time at the moment is spent sitting in a darkened room, gibbering in terror ahead of that. When I’m not gibbering, however, I’m working on the follow-up, Rebellion, which will be out next summer. I’ve also got a couple of short stories I’m very proud of coming out in anthologies over the next few months: one in the Solaris Magic anthology, and one a fairly dark circus story in an anthology put together by Marie O’Regan and Paul Kane for PS Publishing. And in between all that, I can usually find time to harass my lovely (and patient) agent Juliet Mushens at PFD about a whole range of needy-writer issues…

Brief Synopsis

Reaver, a superhero with incredible strength and punching skills, has four weeks to put his affairs in order before his demise at the hands of Octagon, the world’s smartest super villain.

Review Summary

Prepare to Die! by Paul Tobin is about as good as superhero novels get. There’s plenty of action to go around, but you expect that from a superhero book. There’s also ample humor and sex. Lots of sex. Surprisingly, though, it’s the romance that proves to be the driving force behind the entire thing, which makes Reaver’s story fun and endearing.

Full Prepare to Die! Review

I’m a big fan of comic books. Been reading them since I was a kid. Despite the fact that most of the original ideas are coming from outside of the superhero genre, I’ll always have a soft spot in my heart for the heroes in tights. When it comes to superhero novels, however, I haven’t found a writer who can quite capture and translate that feeling I get when I read comics, that combination of adolescent angst and the desire for heroism.

Not until I read Paul Tobin that is. With Reaver, the nearly indestructible hero of Prepare to Die!, Tobin has created the quintessential superhero for the every man. A hero who saves the world, destroys the bad guy, and gets the girl. And who has lots of sex because he’s a hero. He’s exactly the hero a 14-year-old boy imagines he would be were he to get his own origin story. But Reaver also has regrets and makes mistakes, making him exactly who I’d be if I could immediately heal injuries and punch someone hard enough that he loses a year off of his life.

Early in Prepare to Die!, Reaver goes up against members of Eleventh Hour, a team of super villains. Things don’t go so well for him. Before his death, Octagon, the world’s smartest and deadliest bad guy, tells Reaver to prepare for death. Typical comic dialog. But what’s not so typical, is that Reaver says it’ll take a while to actually prepare for this death, and the two come to an agreement: Reaver has one month to put his affairs in order. After that, the villain will kill the hero.

This scene is an example of why this book works so well. Tobin takes a moment straight from the world of comics and puts his own spin on it, making it both expected and unexpected. The origin story, the fights, the man behind the mask, it all feels like an old friend, something you’ve come to appreciate and love. Just like the comics I read as a kid. At the same time, however, it’s always refreshing and new because it’s all done with a perfect balance of humor and emotion.

Emotion? In a superhero book? Surprising, perhaps, but this is the story of the common man thrust into the role of superhero, and there’s bound to be a few problems for him along the way.

In Tobin’s world of superheroes, civilians die in the crossfire, but so do the heroes and villains. But it’s not to make superheroes grow up and be serious. Instead, it feels real, in a make-believe kind of way. There’s pain here. And because Reaver is just like you and me, there’s guilt and confusion, anger and violence. And at the heart of it all is love. It’s all the more real and fun because Reaver’s an ol’ softie who just wants to see his high school girlfriend one last time before he dies.

The action, the sex, the cool gadgets the villains get to play with? All just a cover for what this book really is: a romance. Boy meets girl, falls in love, and thanks to a freak accident involving a tanker truck filled with chemicals, things don’t work out for them the way they should. So he goes on a mission to see if he can right that wrong.

That’s what sets Prepare to Die! apart. There’s action and sex (a crazy amount of action and sex), but it’s still a love story. A damn good love story. Highly Recommended.

Jeff Salyards‘ debut novel, Scourge of the Betrayer, is an epic fantasy published in May 2012 by Night Shade Books. It’s the first installment in a series called Bloodsounder’s Arc. It’s getting solid customer ratings over at Amazon and at Goodreads. I also recommended the book in my review. I recently caught up to him after the frenzy of his book release began to die down…

What led you to start writing Scourge of the Betrayer?

When I was in college, I started work on an English Honors project with grand ambitions. We’re talking massive, ridiculous ambitions here. I’d always loved history, and I intended to write about a period I found particularly fascinating—the Middle and Far East in the 13th century. The story I came up with centered on the son of a Mongol shaman and the daughter of a Mameluke emir, and how they met as their two cultures clashed (though not in a star-crossed lover kind of way, but more in a “Holy hell, our people are at war but we might not be all that different, and maybe if our dumb dads can’t do something to stop it, we can!” kind of way, though that was going to end no less tragically).

But I decided it wasn’t going to be challenging enough to simply write about a time and place so distant as to almost be alien to me, I needed to really up the stakes. So not only did I plan to write a novel, but also a three-act play that covered roughly the same story but gave much bigger parts to the minor characters (yes, I loved Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead). But wait, that’s not all! I also wanted to illustrate the chapter openers in the novel in pen and ink. There might have been some haikus or limericks in the plan somewhere too, I don’t recall.

Why no one dissuaded me from this course of action, I’ll never know, as it was clearly doomed to failure. After spending two trimesters obsessively researching, it slowly became clear to me as I worked the math that the final trimester simply wasn’t going to be enough time to write everything I planned (“OK, so I only need to write 15 pages a day, every single day—no problem.” Two weeks later—“OK, so it’s. . . 23 pages a day, every day, and twice on Sundays, and I’m still golden. . .”)

So I reluctantly scaled it back to a novella and a one-act play and scrapped the illustration idea. Which still might have been doable. Had I been writing about drinking games and dodgeball or something familiar. But due to the fact that this was historical fiction and I had to constantly check my voluminous stack of notecards just to figure out simple things like what kind of fur would likely trim an emir’s cap of office, the writing was still going far too slowly. The math got fuzzier and more desperate until I finally realized I’d bitten off far too much. The Honors project ended with a dishonorable discharge, and luckily the school granted me credit for the time spent researching or I might still be an uber-duper-super senior.

But I held onto those notecards, figuring I would use them in some capacity someday. And many moons later, the research I’d done on the Mameluke Sultanate in Egypt inspired some ideas about a similar military caste in a fantasy setting. Things have changed a lot since then, but that was the original inception for Scourge of the Betrayer.

How close did the final story match how you originally envisioned it? What changed?

There was actually a tremendous amount of change. Part of this was due to the fact that I was a terrible procrastinator and didn’t truly commit myself to finishing the book until I started to have kids and felt my mortal coil tightening. From inception to conclusion, the book was in the works for a lot of years with a lot of fits and starts (mostly fits), so it’s not surprising that the story changed significantly.

In the original iteration, a military commander named Captain Braylar Killcoin, a soldier from the foreign Syldoon Empire, hired a scribe to accompany him and record at his behest. So, at the core, roughly the same concept, but the execution was decidedly different. The narrative shifted back and forth between Braylar relaying his own personal history as the pair traveled together—how he and his sister were taken from a barbarian tribe on the hinterlands on the Empire to eventually become a Syldoon and Memoridon, respectively—to the events that transpired in the present as they journeyed, which were largely episodic and had a strong picaresque vibe.

The scribe, Arkamondos, was a blank slate for the most part, particularly when recording the immediate events, as those sections were written in the present tense with little editorializing in an attempt to capture what it would be like for someone scribbling away furiously to record what transpired as fast as possible. Even during the exchanges between Braylar and Arki, the reader had to puzzle out what Arki’s questions and observations must have been, because only Braylar’s responses were recorded on the page—Arki’s were conspicuously invisible.

While I gradually moved away from the episodic idea as a plot began to materialize, the bulk of the transformation occurred very late in the game (see Questions #6 and #8).

Tell us about the writing process you followed while writing Scourge of the Betrayer.

“Process” implies some kind of coherent system or approach, of which there was none. Some days and weeks, I cranked away on the manuscript like a monkey on crack, other days and weeks (fine, and months), I only tinkered with it, or left it to molder in my imagination. Totally haphazard and piecemeal. Which produced, as you might guess, really uneven prose.

It wasn’t until my kids were born and I suddenly realized my free time was no longer free that I really pushed myself hard to write consistently and frequently. But that was a late blooming development.

Has your writing process changed since you sold your novel?

I primarily work at night when the kids go down, as often as I can muster the energy, which sometime ain’t easy. While I’m sure ditch diggers, grave diggers, and canal diggers are more tired at the end of the day (plus a thousand other demanding/exhaustive professions), being an editor for the day job and a dad to three young kids in the evening and weekends can still drain the old battery, so some days it’s a challenge to find the willpower to write, blog, do interviews, social media, etc. when the house finally quiets down at night.

But every time I start to slip into slackass mode again, I remind myself that I have a contract and a real bona fide deadline for turning in the manuscript for book 2—I haven’t asked directly, but I’m pretty sure Night Shade Books would not be amenable to giving me a ten-year extension.

So that is the major change—I have something resembling a process, and now there is more consistency and productivity (and sleep deprivation).

What was your biggest challenge in writing Scourge of the Betrayer?

Besides getting out of my own damn way and overcoming my natural propensity for sloth and hedonism? Not much, really.

What was your experience like with the submission/agent-acquisition process?

Before starting the acquisitions part, I did a bunch of research to educate myself. There are tons of resources out there for writers trying to go the traditional publishing route—sites like agentquery.com and querytracker.net to help aspiring writers target the right agents for their work, learn their preferences, read about other writers’ experiences with them; countless books and blogs to advise writers on tips for writing query letters, managing expectations, figuring out the best approach to the whole business. So I read a lot, took copious notes, organized my dream agent list, and crafted a battle plan.

But then I started the actual querying. And that’s when things got less fun. I’m not a patient person, so the waiting part of the agent-acquisition process (which is roughly 99%) was particularly painful. As was the overall uncertainty (not just not knowing if it would all pan out, but not knowing if some agents had even read the query letter or sample, as a fair number of agents have adopted the policy that no response=no).

Several agents went with form letter rejections (or the dreaded non-answer answer), but a decent number also gave me some substantial feedback along the way. Which is how I started to piece together that I might need to revisit my manuscript if I was serious about getting it published. While plenty of agents requested the partial and full manuscript, and a good many of those had positive things to say, the rejections with feedback began to generally echo each other. . .The pace of the novel, alternating as it did between past and present, was too leisurely; the sections where it was only Braylar responding sans Arki’s questions/observations, while interesting, were ultimately too clever by half, frustrating, and didn’t serve the overall story; the book was kind of long for a debut, clocking in at about 200,000 words (who did I think I was, Rothfuss?!).

While all of that was difficult to absorb, I really appreciated the agents who provided commentary and invited me to revise and resubmit. And that ultimately encouraged me to make some changes (see Question #8).

How much time passed between the time you first started writing the novel to the time you secured an agent?

A decade. Wait, 10 years. Does that sound better? No? They both sound bad? Crap.

What was the biggest challenge you faced in getting your book published?

After about the tenth rejection on a full manuscript that sounded eerily similar to the nine that preceded it, I took a break to reevaluate. I had roughly a quarter of my agent list left, maybe less. Coming from exceptionally stubborn stock, I almost said screw it and continued querying with the manuscript as it was. Who knows, maybe we’d still be doing this interview. But I kind of doubt it.

So, part of the challenge was accepting the wisdom being doled out (always tough for me), and the other part was making the necessary revisions before continuing to solicit, since they involved cutting a whole bunch of the novel, restructuring things, eliminating the cryptic post-modern exchanges, and fleshing Arki out as a legitimate character of his own, not simply a reader surrogate or device.

At first, I tried trimming both the back story and immediate journey, but both halves suffered, so I had to back out a second time and start revising again. While it was difficult, I ultimately concluded the back story had to go. Which is the abridged and sanitized version of the profanity-laced tirades I had during the revision process. It was pretty brutal, really. Murdering darlings on that scale is genocide, plain and simple. Plus this necessitated some serious clean up, as the back story had been tightly intertwined with the immediate narrative arc, so it couldn’t just be stripped out without messing up the pacing and balance of what remained.

Then I had to fill in all the blanks, altering the dialogue to give Arki real voice in the narrative.

But as grueling as that all was, at the end of the day the novel was stronger for it. And more salable as it turns out. After I spent months revising and began querying again, I had two offers on the table pretty quickly.

What was the biggest surprise you encountered during the process of getting published?

That it took so flippin’ long. I expected the first agent to jump for joy at discovering such a gem of a novel and sign me on the spot!

Yes, in addition to being stubborn, bull-headed, a chronic procrastinator, and impatient, I’m slightly delusional. I really am a peach.

What’s next for you?

I’m working on the second book in the Bloodsounder’s Arc series, which will end up being at least three books, possibly more. I’m really excited, because while the sophomore slump is always a fear, I’m confident the second book will be better than the first. Plus, I have no plans for an accompanying play, illustrations, interpretive dance, or mime show, so that helps.

Apparently, Tobin has been getting questions about whether he’s leaving comics to write novels. In response, he’s written and drawn a short comic strip that explains why he wrote the book. If you read comics and have read the book, you understand exactly what he means. Personally, I hope he continues to write novels, too. With his debut, he’s proven that he can handle prose just as well as he can a comic script.

To read the rest of the strip, head over to Tobin’s blog. And if you want to read more about how Prepare to Die! came to be, check out the Paul Tobin on Writing interview. And if you’re a fan of superheros, do yourself a favor and read the book.

With comic fans flocking to San Diego for the 2012 Comic-Con, what better time than now to release a superhero novel? Tom King’s A Once Crowded Sky looks damn fun, too. Not only is it a prose novel, but it includes some stellar art by Tom Fowler.

I couldn’t make it out to San Diego this year, so this one moved right to the top of my reading list.

A Once Crowded Sky Synopsis

A tour de force debut novel from a former CIA counter-terrorism officer, A Once Crowded Sky fuses the sensibility of bombastic, comic-book-style storytelling with modern literary fiction to bring to life a universe of super men stripped of their powers, newly mortal men forced to confront danger in a world without heroes.

The superheroes of Arcadia City fight a wonderful war and play a wonderful game, forever saving yet another day. However, after sacrificing both their powers and Ultimate, the greatest hero of them all, to defeat the latest apocalypse, these comic book characters are transformed from the marvelous into the mundane.

After too many battles won and too many friends lost, The Soldier of Freedom was fine letting all that glory go. But when a new threat blasts through his city, Soldier, as ever, accepts his duty and reenlists in this next war. Without his once amazing abilities, he’s forced to seek the help of the one man who walked away, the sole hero who refused to make the sacrifice—PenUltimate, the sidekick of Ultimate, who through his own rejection of the game has become the most powerful man in the world, the only one left who might still, once again, save the day.

About the Author, Tom King

Tom King worked for the counterterrorism unit at the Central Intelligence Agency, following the events of 9/11. Before the CIA, he worked for DC Comics and Marvel. He lives in Washington, D.C.

Brief Synopsis

After her mom leaves, Ricki rides shotgun with her father as he hunts parole evaders. When he captures a young car thief, the road trip spins out of control.

Pros

The theme surrounding family bonds is rather effective; Ricki’s attraction to Ian is realistic and never gratuitous; the feeling of abandonment works well with the theme of captivity

Cons

Some of Ricki’s actions push the limits of credibility

Chasing the Skip Review

After her mom abandons her, 15-year-old Ricki rides along with her father as he hunts and captures parole evaders, also known as skips. Her father left before she was even born, so being forced to tag along with a man she barely knows isn’t as fun and exciting as she makes it sound on her blog.

On the surface, Janci Patterson’s debut novel, Chasing the Skip, is about the adventures the father/daughter team of bounty hunters get into on the road. And it’s quite effective in that regard, with the right amount of action and danger to keep the story moving forward and keeping it lively.

Yet what sets this novel apart is that there’s so much more to it than just the budding Bonnie and Clyde story. The importance of family bonds, or lack there of, is portrayed throughout the novel. Ricki’s mother abandons her, and her father, who has never been there before, is suddenly there to care for her. Meanwhile, mothers of criminals turn them in to the law, cousins protect cousins, and siblings turn on one another. Ricki sees all of this from the cab of father’s truck, with various skips chained to the floor in captivity.

As young Ricki sees the various versions of family dysfunctions, she wonders if her father would hunt for her if she ran off or went missing. That’s a pretty intense question to be worried about. But she’s stuck with a man she’s barely heard from in years, and she’s feeling isolated. Alone. Unwanted. It’s the juxtaposition between her longing to be needed and the skips’ desire to be left alone that gives Chasing the Skip real weight. It’s still a novel for teens and is never weighed down, but there’s more to it than the surface action.

That doesn’t mean this is solely a family drama that will turn off teen readers. If anything, I think that how relatable it is to many teens will draw them in closer to the story, and make the action all the more exciting. When Ricki’s father catches up to Ian, a young car thief, Ricki finds herself attracted to him. Not only is he cute, but he’s also being chased by her father, something she longs for herself, even if she’s not willing to admit it. And as the story progresses, Ricki tests her father, and herself, by becoming more and more involved with Ian.

Patterson does a great job with the romance here, too. She focuses on Ricki’s struggles, and lets the heat simmer underneath the surface. There’s enough here to make a few young girls’ heart race, but it’s never gratuitous. And although some of her actions push credibility, I can understand why Ricki would go to such lengths when she’s struggling with feelings of abandonment. The turmoil would be enough to make anyone make a few mistakes.

Final Recommendation

Chasing the Skip is a quick, exciting read with deeper themes playing under the surface, including abandonment, remorse, and second chances. It’s a very accessible novel, one that should work for teens and their parents. I think teen girls should be able to understand Ricki and empathize with her problems, but I also think that adult readers can find something here to enjoy. Highly Recommended

Brief Synopsis

In three separate short novels that recall the styles of crime novelists Georges Simenon, Raymond Chandler, and Jim Thompson, The Twenty-Year Death tells the tragic story of Shem Rosencrantz and his young bride Clothilde.

Pros

The three novels stand on their own as extremely effective mysteries; the separate voices will thrill any fans of detective fiction; the combined effect is even greater than the sum of the delicious parts

Cons

In retrospect, you’ll want to have learned more about Shem and Clothilde, wishing their story was more at the forefront; their tragedy often takes place in the background

The Twenty-Year Death Review

Well, here’s a hell of thing.

Ariel S. Winter and Hard Case Crime have really cranked out something special in Winter’s The Twenty-Year Death, a spectacular endeavor that combines three separate novels—and three distinct voices—to tell a story that spans three decades. There’s more. Each of the novels is told in the style of a famous novelist whose novels are identified with each of those decades of 20th century crime fiction. The first, Malniveau Prison (set in 1931), is told in the style of early pulp novelist Georges Simenon, who created the famous police detective Commissaire Maigret. The second, The Falling Star (set in 1941), is told in the hardboiled style of Raymond Chandler and in a very similar voice to that of Philip Marlowe. The third, Police at the Funeral (set in 1951), is told in the gruff, sociopathic style of Jim Thompson. The greatest compliment I can pay this incredible work is that it does indeed feel as if we’ve discovered lost novels from each writer—except that it goes even further than that in its ambitions.

The Twenty-Year Death tells the story of American author Shem Rosencrantz and his French wife Clothilde, and as we move from novel to novel, their story becomes an increasing focus. In Malniveau Prison, for example, the couple are rarely more than secondary characters in the story of Chief Inspector Pelleter, who finds himself in the middle of a crime spree when he visits the French burg of Verargent. An escaped Malniveau prisoner is found dead in the gutter in front of a baker, and in the face of an unhelpful Assistant Warden Elogieux and the evil machinations of incarcerated child murderer Mahossier, Pelleter must use his expert deductive reasoning to solve the case. Here’s where we meet Rosencrantz and his beautiful young wife—Clothilde just happens to be the dead prisoner’s daughter. What could these two possibly have to do with the murder? Or are they in more danger than anyone realizes?

In Falling Star, Rosencrantz and Clothilde—now Chloe Rose, having moved to Hollywood to become a rising starlet—are pushed further into the spotlight. Private dick Dennis Foster is charged with keeping an eye on Chloe, who feels as if she’s being followed by a malicious stalker. But Foster gets the gut feeling that there’s more to this case, and he’s soon drawn into a paranoid underworld of drugs and murder. Meanwhile, Rosencrantz—who will become the central protagonist of The Twenty-Year Death—is falling from grace, succumbing to drink and dames. We learn of the twisted Hollywood and “San Angelo” web of liars and bastards that are behind the gradual destruction of both characters. But it’s Rosencrantz who’s destroying Chloe, the love of his life, in ways that will reverberate for years, and forward into the final novel of the three.

It’s in Police at the Funeral that Rosencrantz comes into full focus, as The Twenty-Year Death shifts into first-person perspective from Shem’s point of view. He narrates his own tale of woe and heartbreak and desperation. Rosencrantz needs money to pay for Chloe’s care at a high-priced sanitarium back in San Angelo, and he’s back on his home turf of Calvert City, Maryland, in the hopes that his recently deceased first wife, Quinn, might have included something for him in her will. No such luck. So with the help of his conniving whore of a girlfriend, Vee, he will try to find a way to squeeze some dough out of his estranged son. Soon, violence escalates into a horrible accident, and evidence points squarely in Rosencrantz’s direction. He gets deeper and deeper into potential trouble with all manner of lowlifes—all in the interest of saving his one true love, Clothilde, institutionalized and emotionally scarred, three thousand miles away.

The Twenty-Year Death is a stunning work, and its effect intensifies even after you’re finished. You look back on what you’ve read with a growing sense that, even as it has provided three excellent short mystery novels, it has also been far more than the sum of its parts. You might even be convinced to read the whole thing again, immediately, to see how the doomed, romantic saga of Rosencrantz and Clothilde began and progressed. Because there’s a power to their story that is more potent in retrospect than in the experience of reading The Twenty-Year Death. It’s most evident when you consider the work as a whole than from chapter to chapter.

I’ve mentioned this, but it bears repeating: Ariel S. Winter has hewed very close to the narrative style of three very distinct crime writers, giving the impression that you’re actually reading lost novels. The reading of them feels like an act of literary archaeology. Simenon’s longer, studied chapters and prose give way to the shorter, clipped gumshoe narration of Chandler, which gives way to the drunken stream-of-consciousness sociopathy of Jim Thompson. And yet all the while, you’re reading Ariel S. Winter. I don’t believe I’ve ever used the term tour de force in a fiction review, but there’s a first for everything. This effort reaches those heights.

And if you’re thinking that The Twenty-Year Death merely sounds like a gimmick, it’s far from that. The reason I’m left feeling a sort of envious awe is that Winter accomplishes his literary feat while managing to tell three separate and riveting original crime novels. Three complex crime plots with splendid resolutions, expertly weaved while being pitch-perfect nostalgic. Three narratives with strong characters and voices, firmly embedded in their time and place. One masterwork that brings everything together into a magnum opus that’s certainly one of the strongest debut works I’ve ever seen but is also one of the greatest crime novels in my collection.

I offer a deep, heartfelt tip of the hat to this tip-of-the-hat literary piece of magic from Hard Case Crime, and you can bet I’ll be watching Ariel S. Winter’s career very carefully. Bravo!

Final Recommendation

If I had one (minor) nitpick about The Twenty-Year Death, it would be that—in retrospect—I wanted to have learned more about Rosencrantz and Clothilde. It’s not until the final book that Shem’s story really comes into sharp focus. But I can’t help but feel that such a direction would have come at the expense of the other two novels’ existing narrators and their exquisite tales. This book is a delicate balancing act, but Winter manages to keep everything perfectly steady and dizzyingly confident. I give this literary feat my highest possible recommendation.

To read more from author Jason Bovberg, check out his website.

Brief Synopsis

Werewolf pack enforcer Andrew Dare looks hunts a killer after he finds Silver, a young female werewolf who was injected with silver nitrate and can’t shift into her wild self.

Pros

The mystery is compelling; good pacing; the werewolf pack dynamics are intriguing; the last act moves rapidly

Cons

Not enough character development; lack of dramatic immediacy; only surface-level emotion

Silver Review

They say that a good ending will make up for any weaknesses the beginning or middle portion of a story might have. That’s certainly the case with Silver, the debut urban fantasy by Rhiannon Held. For the bulk of the novel, I felt there was something missing; the plot was there, but the story lacked any real impact. I’m not sure when it started to happen, but I was drawn in toward the end, and found myself enjoying the book despite it’s flaws.

Andrew Dare, the enforcer for a pack of Roanoke werewolves, has a dark past. When he catches the scent of a lone werewolf in their territory, he tracks her down. He finds Silver, a skittish girl who’s been injected with silver nitrate. With silver in her bloodstream, she can’t turn into her wild self, a terrible circumstance for a werewolf. Andrew takes it on himself to not only protect her, but to also track down the man who did this to her.

It’s an enticing premise. She’s a broken girl who’s seen unspeakable horrors, and he’s a man who’s performed equally unspeakable horrors. There’s a good mystery here, not just with the silver torture, but also with the characters’ past. And there’s the possibility of some strong chemistry, too. Unfortunately, Silver doesn’t capitalize on the possibilities, and instead lets the plot carry the story, which makes everything feel only surface level, and keeps the book from hitting on any strong level of emotion or high tension the material needs.

It’s not clear early on why Andrew is taking such an active role in the pursuit of justice here. Sure, it makes logical sense that he would want to protect his pack, as well as other packs who might be in danger of demented individual who goes around torturing werewolves, but it takes too long to truly understand Andrew. Until then, he feels like a cardboard cutout of the typical action hero, teenage heart-throb (despite the fact he’s been married and has a daughter, the book still has the tone of young love).

Andrew tracks Silver’s pack to the west coast, and we’re introduced to a couple of other packs. I enjoyed seeing how different packs go about their daily lives, but the introduction of new characters outside of Andrew’s original sphere of influence weakens the dramatic immediacy. There’s a killer out there, one who uses silver to torture werewolves. Instead of protecting his own, or protecting someone he (or I, as the reader) is concerned about, all of the characters remain at a distance because there are no real emotional ties to Andrew or Silver, either.

The distance from his original pack also brings about another interesting development: the use of cell phones. Too often Andrew has a phone conversation with a pack alpha that could’ve been loaded with tension. Instead, these moments are weakened because they’re done on the phone with hundreds of miles between the two. Again, this weakens any emotional impact or tension the scenes might’ve carried.

Still, the story is there. There’s an intriguing mystery surrounding Andrew’s past and Silver’s torture. And Silver’s ability to talk to Death, who talks using the voice of the people he’s taken, adds a sense of wonder to the story. Is she crazy, or is Death really her companion? I learned to like this girl, who has real heart and strength.

And slowly, as the novel progressed, I stopped paying attention to what wasn’t working, and I got sucked into the story. It’s a simple enough plot, and the growing relationship between Andrew and Silver is handled well. If anything, it’s their budding relationship, not just romantically but also as two strong people who can learn from one another, is what kept the story moving. And when the answers do come in that final act, they come fast and furious, leading to a climax that left me feeling good about the adventure.

Final Recommendation

Despite its flaws, I liked Silver. The story is just compelling enough for me to look past some of the cardboard characters, and simply enjoy the action and mystery. While I wouldn’t recommend this for readers who are looking for a book filled with emotions or high tension, I think that fans of werewolf stories will find something to enjoy here. Recommended

When I went online to spread the word about her novel, I noticed how much of a web presence Alexander has. She’s got a website, a Facebook page, a Goodreads account, and a fairly active Twitter feed. She seemed so open and I liked the book so much, that I had to get her to answer a few questions…

Edie Spence, the heroine of Nightshifted, is a nurse who works in a hospital’s paranormal wing. Anyone who’s read your debut wouldn’t be surprised to learn that you’re a nurse, too, because those moments in the hospital are very vivid and real. Tell us a little about how Edie came to be. I picture you on your late-night rounds on a particularly calm night, imagining the dangers you might run into if the man in room 4 was a vampire…

Ha! In actuality, I called a doctor one night to get some additional orders and he didn’t believe me…and that’s when I realized no one believes nightshift. I was so mad at him, I decided I had to put him in a book—and that situation is pretty much the first chapter of Nightshifted. (Only in real life, no one died! Honest!)

What makes Edie such a special character for you?

Last week I got a report from a nursing student, someone who hadn’t even graduated yet. It was clear she was terrified of everything. Our floor, our patients, our staff. Her eyes were wide, and she could barely sputter out her report. I actually told her I wouldn’t bite her. It didn’t help.

I’ve been a nurse now for a while but when I wrote Nightshifted, I was just starting out. I might not have been as frightened about everything as that poor nursing student was, but I was pretty frightened. I tried not to let on at work (except for a few times, with a few people I trusted)—I largely channeled it into Edie. My favorite books growing up had characters whose strength I felt like I could borrow, they were the people I wanted to imitate, who I felt like I could be. I wrote Edie to be like that for me. I wanted to see someone who was going to try to do her best under dire circumstances, even when she knows her best might not be good enough.

Writers often pull from their own experiences when creating their characters and the world they live in, so even though they’re fictional, there are ties to the author’s real world. How close are Edie and her coworkers to nurses you’ve encountered? What about the hospital itself?

My coworkers are only similar in that they’re all awesome. We all work like a team like Edie and Gina, Charles, and Meaty do. Everyone on nightshift is very close, you have to be because you have to count on each other under pressure without much other staff.

My hospital itself is so creepy. It’s huge, and old, and sometimes they find homeless people living in our basements. And yes, that’s basements, plural. There’s certain hallways you don’t want to go down at night—they’re so long they feel like that one scene in Poltergeist, you know? It’s not a complete Y4 analog, but there are some similarities there for sure.

What drew you to the paranormal?

I’m a big urban fantasy fan, and I also read Dracula at a formative age…I always wanted the chance to try to play in that sandbox. Nightshifted was my big chance.

In Nightshifted, Edie takes it upon herself to help Anna, a child-turned-vampire who has been subjected to all sorts of physical abuse at the hands of other vampires for many, many years. That’s a pretty dark subject, especially when you consider that, for the most part, Nightshifted is a fun, exciting and romantic story. Tell us a little about how Anna’s history came to be and how you balanced her “darker” story with Edie’s otherwise “fun” adventures in Y4.

My favorite urban fantasy series in the world is the Night Watch series, written by Sergei Lukyanenko. It was a huge influence on me, and in retrospect, probably why I made Anna who she was. Not that her situation mimics Night Watch, but her history and her past, a teensy bit match.

The thing with Anna is that despite what’s happened to her, she’s still very much in control of herself and her destiny. She’s not weak. She’ll never be weak. But you do have to have a strong arc for a strong character—you have to give your characters difficulties to rise above, and no one’s life in my series has been harder than hers. But she’ll overcome it all. I know where she’s going. When she reaches the top of her arc, it’ll feel well earned. It’ll be glorious.

From what I understand, nurses have some pretty difficult hours to work with, pulling double shifts or working through the night or working every day without a break. How did you manage to fit in writing?

I’m very lucky that I work part-time. No way I could work full-time and write, I’d be too burnt out. My husband is also amazing and supportive and gets why I do what I do. I couldn’t ask for a more understanding spouse. So between those two facts, and my maniacal possessiveness of free time, plus having 2-3 nights a week where I stay up until 5 a.m. and there’s no one else up late to talk to, not even online, I get the words in. It’s hard though. I would much rather get to write in coffee shops during day time hours like I imagine normal people do.

I was impressed with the sex scenes in Nightshifted. There was a real passion to them, and it felt real. Not just the physical aspect, but also the emotions and the reasons behind the sex. I was surprised, however, that in several instances, the language was more graphic than I was expecting, which intensified the moment. I went back to re-read one of those scenes to see how you did it, and I was even more surprised to discover that it was more tame than I originally imagined. The feelings were all there, but the graphic nature wasn’t. Apparently, I had read more into the scene then what was actually on the page.

Thanks! (This is my first sex scene related question, woohoo!)

I’ll admit to having written some erotica back-in-the-day (thanks VC Andrews and ill-spent time on the high school bus!) which definitely helped. And I owe a huge debt to the later Anita Blake books for letting me know exactly what urban fantasy authors could get away with graphically.

What I tried to do was just really slow down and consider each scene very intensely. Not so much to plan out the physicality of things, but to chart the emotional course of it. Sometimes everything came out right the first time, other times I had to do so much rewriting to keep it reasonable and real. (Keep in mind that I’ve turned in all three books now, so that’s a lot of sex scenes!)

I do get bogged down sometimes now and again writing new ones, because OMG my parents are going to read them, or people in Germany, and it feels like your dirty laundry is on display. Then again though…they’re sort of addictive to write. It’s easy to write too many of them and feel like your word count is increasing, but then realize that they’re not holding their own weight in the plot. So I try to only put them in when they make emotional sense and when they work for the plot. I try not to do just sex for sex’s sake, even though it’s tempting.

I have a friend who writes romance novels, and from what she’s told me, there are certain guidelines, if not actual rules, a writer must follow when writing a romance. Nightshifted is certainly more of an urban fantasy than it is a paranormal romance, but sometimes those lines are blurred. Did you have any guidelines you had to follow when it came to the characters, plot, or sex in the story?

Oh, Nightshifted is most definitely an urban fantasy. While I do love me some paranormal romance, I know that’s not what I wrote.

I’ve heard about the whole guideline thing for certain romance lines before. I’m not sure if I’m jealous of those ladies or not. I know it sounds easy to be given a set of rules to write to, but I know that writing a particular line’s romance experience is an art form, cultivated after years of studious practice. I’m not sure I’m cut out for that.

So, for better or worse, Nightshifted wound up being fairly freeform. I wrote what I wanted to write. I’d actually been pretty emotionally burned by my prior book not finding an agent or selling, so I tip-toed into writing it. I convinced myself it was a short story, and then a second very-closely-related-short-story, and then a third, and then finally I copped to the fact that it wanted to be a novel and wrote it that way.

I had read a ton of urban fantasy novels prior to writing it though, so I knew what was and wasn’t expected of me in the genre. You really have to read a lot of anything you want to write—it’s that whole knowing the rules before you break them thing.

Once I was done and agented, my agent made some easy suggestions, as did my editor, which I followed to a T. The changes I made were mostly evening out pacing or action, or warming up characters so they didn’t seem too unsympathetic.

What were the biggest challenges you encountered during the writing or publication process?

Finding an agent. My agent was lucky number 46…and I’d queried out to 56. For a year there, it was pretty grim.

Anything surprisingly easy?

Selling the book. My agent sent it out, and we had the first offer a week after that.

Three weeks ago, you didn’t have any books in print. Now, you’ve got your debut on the shelf and two more due over the next year. That’s got to feel good, and maybe a little scary?

Yes to both! It’s amazing and frightening all at once. Writing’s so solitary that, even as you know you’re writing for other people to eventually read, it’s very strange to finally share it with the world. But I’m excited at the same time, that other people get to go on Edie’s journey with her, and to get to read reviews (like yours!) where people super enjoyed their time on Y4. It’s pretty effing magical.

So what’s next for you?

Hopefully writing the next books in this series and some one-off novellas, and anything else that comes to mind. I really like this job, I want to keep on doing it.