German Cover

Check out the German cover for The Iron King, now titled "Suddenly Fey--Summernight."























What do you think? I do love the cover; its very eye-catching (no pun intended). I wonder what they're going to do with the second book. Suddenly Fey--Winterday? Hmmm....

Sunday Musings: A Zombie Question

So, here is this idea I had.

On Sunday, I ask a question, about anything really--books, characters, movies, ect. And we can discuss it in the comments section.

Sounds fun, right?

So, here is my musing for this week: Zombies. Fast zombies vs. slow zombies. Which do you prefer to read about/watch? Which would be more frightening, and which version would be easier to survive? (28 Days Later freaked me out the first time I saw it. FAST ZOMBIES?!? Aaaaaagh, what the heck!)





















On a different angle, do zombies make good heroes or protagonists? Or are they best as a terrifying, unstoppable enemy that the hero must fight against to survive?

Let me know your thoughts!

Black Friday and the Iron Queen Arc winner! (And zombies)

Welcome to Black Friday!












(AAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!)


Pardon me while I cringe and crawl under the covers, lol! I'm SO not an early riser, nor am I particularly fond of shopping (unless its for books or video games), so Black Friday will see me at home.

Alllllllllll day.

But, I do have a nice surprise for one person. The winner of the Iron Queen ARC giveaway. I couldn't believe how many entries it had; 567! Insane, truly insane. And, Random.org has picked the lucky winner, which is:

Rebecca! (rebecca-camilleri@hotmail.com)

Congratulations, Rebecca! Check you email so I can send you your book post haste. :) And thank you for everyone who entered. This won't be the last chance to win an Iron Queen, so keep your eyes peeled for another future giveaway.


Thanks again, and happy Black Friday!
















(The similarities are uncanny. o_O)

For Aspiring Authors

Happy day before Turkey Day!

And just a quick note: this is for all aspiring authors. My wonderful, creative, awesomely talented agent recently uncovered her brainchild, the San Francisco Writer's University, an ONLINE university where you can learn everything you wanted to know about writing. Plus, you can learn about the business side of writing, the agent secrets and the publication process and how to write a book proposal.









So, at the risk of sounding like a commercial, what are you waiting for? Its free to sign up, the premium classes are reasonably priced, and there are a ton of free classes as well. (The classes are downloadable as mp3 files.) You can post comments, join discussions, and reach out to other writers in the community. (I'm a member, so feel free to friend me, if you like.) I know Laurie McLean, and I know she's very big on helping aspiring authors get published, so this site is really tailored to that. And, since it's just getting started, it's all set to explode into something fantastic.

Hope to see you there!

The San Fransisco Writer's University

Julie

Have some wallpaper?

Well, this is just awesome.

NEW from Harlequin Teen, Iron Fey wallpaper.














See the pretty? It's so pretty! Go to Harlequin Teen's Facebook page to snag one for yourself.

Teaser Tuesday

Announcement:

Since The Iron Queen has arrived on Netgalley and reviews are starting to trickle in, this will be the very last TIQ teaser on the blog. I know, I'm sorry, but February will be here before you know it, and I was actually running out of non-spoilery quotes that I could post. ;-) So, anyway, here it is; the last Iron Queen teaser of the year. It's very short, but I hope you enjoy.



***


"You are my heart, my life, my entire existence."


***


Nope, I'm not going to tell you who said that, but feel free to speculate. :) And if you're a blogger or reviewer, you can still go to Netgalley to request an eARC.

Thanks so much, everyone! Onwards to the new year.

Julie

Some early reviews

Hi all!

Halfway done with NaNo, and finally over the Week 2 Hump, where it seems your plot is floundering, your characters are completely lame, and you have so much better things to do then type another 1700 words--like laundry or dishes or scheduling a root canal.

But now Week 3 beckons, so onward we go!


Also,since The Iron Queen hit Netgalley earlier this week, I wanted to share some early reviews. Some of these may contain minor spoilers, so if you don't want to know anything about Iron Queen, I would refrain from reading. And a huge, huge THANK YOU to everyone who took the time to read and post. Seriously, you're the best. :)

Fire and Ice

Fangs, Wands, and Fairydust

25 Hour Books


P.S: If you're a blogger or a reviewer and want a copy of The Iron Queen, check out Netgalley to request an egalley.

The Iron Fey trailer

Good things keep happening from Harlequin Teen.

Check out the new Iron Fey trailer. I do believe they have outdone themselves yet again. =)






Very epic, right? You can go to their Iron Fey Facebook page and let them know what you think.

The Iron Queen ARC giveaway

Who wants an ARC of The Iron Queen?





















I have three shiny new ARCs of The Iron Queen sitting on my desktop right now, so I will be giving one away shortly. Spread the love, right?

If you would like an ARC of The Iron Queen, just leave your name and email in the comments, and answer this question once and for all:

Team Ash or Team Puck?


That's it! And I'll let random.org pick a winner on the 24th.


ETA: I always forget to say if its international or U.S only. So...it's international, woo!


Thanks everyone!

Teaser Tuesday

It's 1 am here; technically its Tuesday, right?

Also, did someone order a carton of angst?

Puck: most think of him as the goofy, funny, loyal-to-a-fault best friend. But Puck is a legend, and he's not all mischief and charm and pranks. He has a dark side, and sometimes, when pushed just far enough, it can come out.

So, today's Teaser Tuesday features Puck in a somewhat different light.

***


Puck’s eyes gleamed, feral and menacing. “Oh, I don’t know, princess. Maybe it was because I was stupid enough to care about you. Maybe I actually thought I had a chance. Silly me, thinking that one little kiss meant anything to you.”


***


As always, tell me what you think. :)

Oh, and I wanted to thank everyone who tweeted and posted and commented about THE IRON KNIGHT. I'm so thrilled that everyone is just as excited about it as me! Thank you again for such incredible support.

Julie

The big SEKRIT PROJECT reveal

By now its all over Twitter, so this a bit late, but anyway...

I've been keeping this a secret for months, and I finally get to announce it.

So, here it is, the big SEKRIT PROJECT:



Iron Fey #4

THE IRON KNIGHT:

Ash's story.


Coming soon from Harlequin TEEN.






And that's all I'm going to say for now.

:)

Sims3: Snake charming and other skills

Disclaimer: Sims3 posts are in no way relevant to the actual events in the Iron Fey series.


When we last left the gang, Ash had just proposed to Meghan...

















And Puck was vacationing in Egypt.

















Turns out, Puck discovered more than tombs and sphinxes while on vacation.
















Could this be the start of something? Or will miles of separation kill anything before it even starts?






















Puck returned home soon after, but he brought a souvenir back with him.









Of course, he has never been one for safe, conventional hobbies.

















Um, I'm not sure that's going to make the snake appear any quicker, Puck.

















Right.

















Aha, there it is.


















Well, now he has an interesting party trick. Let's hope he doesn't use it for evil.


















Soon after, Puck met a familiar face in the park. It has been a long time since they had their fight; has enough time passed for them to try to mend things?



















They're not best friends anymore, but its a start.
















And just in time, too, for Ash has a big day tomorrow.

















To be continued...

Game Review: Fable 3

Oh look, another rant.

Warning: SPOILERS below! Do not read if you haven't played Fable 3 yet and don't want to hear the ending.



As you all know, I'm a gamer. And the game I was most looking forward to this month was Fable 3. I really enjoyed the first two, and I thought that THIS Fable was going to surpass them all.





















Boy was I wrong.

For those who have not played the game, Fable gives you the "moral choice" option of being a good, honorable hero, or an evil, selfish, power-hungry jerk. Your appearance will change depending on the choices you make, and I usually go for the "good" option the first time around. And for the first third of the game, everything was fine--barring a few annoying Fable idiosyncrasies (broken combat system, obnoxious identical NPCs, frustrating travel system). You were the younger brother of the king, who was a real tyrant, and eventually you had to flee the palace with your butler (voiced by John Cleese) and your mentor. You then traveled around Albion, gaining support, amassing followers, promising to clean up the land when you became king, and basically start a revolution.













Oh, and along the way, you discover an ancient evil is approaching Albion, and that the kingdom is in danger of being swallowed by darkness.

Well, then the big day comes. You storm the castle with your loyal followers, dethrone your brother, and become the king, as was your destiny. Turns out, your brother was being a jerkface tyrant because that was the only way to "get ready" for the army of evil that was approaching from across the sea. So, once you become king, you have one year to raise enough gold to combat the darkness, otherwise your people will all die.


















And from there, everything went to crap.

After you become king, the game gives you 5 days or "sessions" before the darkness arrives, forcing you to start each day in court, deciding the status of the country. You have to choose whether to keep your promises (i.e rebuilding the orphanage) or be a tyrannical jerk (i.e force all the children into child labor). Remember, up until this point, I was playing the good, just character. But all those good choices resulted in a massive loss of gold, sending your treasury into the negative and bumping the "projected civilian casualties" even higher. The game wouldn't give you a break, and the "choices" you had to make were all so black-and-white. Build a school or open a brothel. Construct a sanitation factory or dump all the waste into an eco community. Protect the lake and surrounding woodlands or destroy it for mining.

Each time, I would go with the "moral" choice. At the end of the "year," I was nearly 2 million gold in the hole, and you needed 6.5 million to protect your people from the darkness. Then the evil army came, and though you beat the final boss and drove it back yourself, your kingdom was empty of people because everyone was dead.

So, moral of Fable 3? Its better to be evil than good and just. Its better to break promises and send children into slave labor and be a selfish tyrant, because only by being evil can you save your kingdom. Yeah, that's nice. Great moral lesson there, Peter Molynuex. Try again.

My Pro-NaNoWriMo rant

All righty, so I am aware that there are those who do not like NaNo. And, to a certain extent, I can agree with them. NaNo is not for everyone. We all have our writing habits, and for some people, NaNo is far too crazy/frantic/sloppy/ect. I'm not here to argue with them.

I WILL say what I like about NaNo, and why it works for me.

1.NaNo makes you write crap. Some have said NaNo encourages sloppy writing, that it focuses more on word count then making your words pretty. And my response to that is: it absolutely does. Who here writes perfect prose their first time around? I know I certainly don't. That's what the rough draft is FOR, just getting the words down. As Stephen King and Ernest Hemmingway and Anne Lammott have all said: the first draft of anything is crap.

For me, my inner editor is constantly trying to make me write perfectly the first go-around. And when I listen to it, my writing slows to a crawl. NaNo frees me from the inner critic and lets me just write whatever comes to mind. And you know what? If the writing is crappy (as it almost always is) that's OKAY. I don't want to focus on pretty prose the first time around; I just want to get the skeleton down so I have something to work on later. First draft=crap. So, write joyfully, and don't worry that your words aren't perfect. You can always fix a bad page, but you can't fix a blank one.


2. NaNo gives you a deadline. I know everyone can finish a novel if they really, really want to. That doesn't mean its not hard. Having clear goals certainly helps me stay on top of things. I know that I have to write 1,667 words everyday to meet my goal of 50,000 words in a month. It keeps the pressure on to keep going. Before I was published, I wrote when I felt like it, when the mood struck, when I got "inspiration." And you know how long it took me to complete my first book? 5 years. Then, I signed up for NaNo, and suddenly discovered I could write an entire book in 2 months! THAT was a revelation. Now, when my contract says I have this many months to write, polish, and send a book to my publisher, I say: no problem.


3. NaNo encourages you to try something impossible. A novel in 30 days? Crazy talk! Before NaNo, even published, well-established authors would mock such a ridiculous concept. Even now, people will sneer at NaNo authors, stating that a book written in 30 days is certainly crap. That its just a bunch of words thrown together, with no plot, no style, and it CERTAINLY would never get published. To that, I say: you know this YA book called The Iron King? That was a NaNo project. So it can happen. That's not to say it will, and I HIGHLY discourage sending off your unpolished NaNo project to weary editors at the start of December. They will be receiving a flood of NaNo books already, still in the "crap" stage. You want your manuscript to stand out from the river of unpolished sludge. 50,000 words on paper does not a novel make.

Instead, NaNo encourages you to write, for the sheer joy of it. Don't worry about getting it perfect or published or penning a literary masterpiece. Just write. At the end of the month, you'll have written a novel. In 30 days. Who can say that, really? Let the Naysayers nay. You've finished a book. You've done what others only talked about. Be proud. You are now a writer.


Again, I'm not saying NaNo is for everyone, or everyone has to love it. But for those of us who DO love it (including yours truly), don't let anyone discourage you. Write joyfully, write everyday, and I will still see you at the finish line.

Julie

NaNoWrimo word count (day 2): 3,558

Teaser Tuesday, NaNo, and giveaway winners

Welcome to November 2nd.

How's your NaNo count going?

So far, so good. We shall see what it looks like after today. In other news, I also have a winner for the ghostly Grimalkin rock. I had so much fun reading through all the costume suggestions. Some of them had me rolling on the floor. But it looks like the general consensus is: Ash is too serious to dress up and Puck would go as Ash so he could annoy him, LOL!

Anyway, I decided to let random.org decide the winner, because I couldn't pick just one favorite. And the winner is:

Marciewood(at)aol(dot)com

Congrats, Marcie! I'll be emailing you soon to send you your prizes. :)


Anyway, onto today's teaser. It seems a couple ARCs of Iron Queen are already in the wild, which means that the teasers will be drawing to a close soon. With that in mind, please enjoy today's teaser, and a certain someone's possessive streak.


***

“Hey, princess.”

“Hey,” I whispered, as Ash slipped his arms around my waist from behind, drawing me close. I could feel his glare aimed at Puck over my head, a silent, protective gesture that spoke louder than any words. Mine. Back off.


***


Now, I'm off to NaNo! Good luck, fellow NaNoers; another 1667 words await. :)