The Kindred Charmers

If you’ve seen some of my tweets lately, then you’re most probably familiar with my addiction to Columbo, the TV show.

Today’s episode was titled, “A Stitch in Crime,” and the bad guy was a younger Leonard Nimoy (Mr. Spock in Star Trek.)
He reminded me of someone else, it took me over an hour of watching the show to get the name: David Duchovny or Fox Mulder in The X-Files.
Both have an *alien* connection to thank for their fame. One was an alien, the other looked for the truth behind alien’s existence.
Then there’s their sexual appeal—don’t judge unless you’ve seen at least 5 episodes of each show (X-Files and Star Trek.). Both men/characters are attractive in the strong silent kind, the type too unplayful for his own good at times.

Have you noticed their eyes, the way they engage the viewer with a devastatingly patient stare? Those eyes judge, catalog, and memorize everything about the person in front of them.
To me, that’s sexy, the inherent brooding man.
Then there are those lips. In both shows both sets of lips were used mainly for talking and very minor, if any, kissing. Not much smiling either took place in the lives of Mr. Spock and Mulder.
But man, oh man, let a smile break through, and BAM! Something shifts, forcing the viewer to join in that moment of ultimate brightness, hoping against hope it'll last.
I’ve spent a LOT of time watching their eyes and lips, but the rest is not so bad either *evil grin*
I know I sound as though I’m mixing between the actors and their characters, but in my mind there is no difference. Nimoy was as sexy in “A Stitch in Crime” as he was in Star Trek, he exuded his own charm.
Here's a video of Nimoy being himself...sorta!

Now tell me this; am I the only one who sees their kindred charm?

Guest Blog: Bizarre Love Triangle ~ Yolanda Sfetsos

Please welcome fellow "Damnation Books" author, Yolanda Sfetsos as she guest blogs here today. One thing about this astonishing lady; she has a unique way with words.
Over to you, Yolanda!

Bizarre Love Triangle

I love that song! And as I write this, I happen to be listening to it. :) But I'm not going to talk about New Order's cool song today. Instead I'm going to talk about the very strange and twisted love triangles that managed to make their way into the Alyce Kerr, Faith Healer Trilogy.

Since the third installment is now available from my awesome publisher, Damnation Books:

Boundless: Book 3 of the Alyce Kerr, Faith Healer Trilogy

Alyce remains estranged from her celebrity status as a Faith Healer and is holed up inside a motel room with the mysterious Sebastian. Her soul might no longer belong to Buer, but the fight is far from over. The price for her freedom was devastating.

Ross made a deal with a demonologist in order to save Alyce, and is now at the mercy of the crazy woman and the demon Buer. There is no escape from the basement in which the three are trapped in, and he has to bear the torture.

When Sebastian finds a way to save Ross, Alyce must engage in an ancient, carnal ritual that complicates her life further. But for Ross, she’s willing to put both her heart and soul on the line… even if it means losing him.

I have to admit that it wasn't intentional. I mean, Alyce's story is filled with complications, as she tries to find her way out of the very dark place she's managed to corner herself into. It also focuses on how she reconnects with her ex-fiance, Ross. After a horrible misunderstanding between them, several years ago, she walked away. Even got a restraining order against him because she was convinced he'd tried to kill her.

Fast forward to now, and she's lost total control of her life. The demon, Buer, gave her the power to become a celebrity Faith Healer, but the cost is now outweighing the benefits. So when Ross appears and tries to help her, she finds herself being swept up in old feelings. Of course, at the time that I was writing this, I didn't realise that Buer doesn't just enjoy sipping at Alyce's soul, he actually wants her in every sense of the word. I'm not sure I would call this a romantic notion, but he wants her, regardless.

That's when the first love triangle popped up. Throw a cunning demonologist into the mix, and suddenly it's quite obvious that she's got her eye on Ross. It doesn't matter that she wants him for her own selfish reasons. Once again, she wants him. Oh, and let's not forget the very mysterious and alluring Sebastian. He's one of those characters that intrigued me as soon as he made an appearance in the trilogy. I found myself wanting to know more and more about him, which happens in Boundless.

Unfortunately, teaming up with Alyce to help Ross out of the demonologist's trap, also puts him in the middle of... you guessed it, another love triangle. Emphasis on bizarre.

And you know what? As unintentional as they were, each added a new struggle for the characters to overcome, and also a degree of depth that challenges all of them. Strange, but true. Sometimes a few (odd) entanglements can do wonders for your characters. :)

Thanks for having me here today, Su! It's been fun to share a little more about the dark world that Alyce lives in.

Oh, and because I couldn't help myself... here's that song:

Alyce Kerr, Faith Healer Trilogy

Now available from Damnation Books.

Or visit my website for information about the print versions.

---

Yolanda Sfetsos
http://www.yolandasfetsos.com/

Yolanda Sfetsos lives in Sydney, Australia with her husband, daughter, and cat. She loves to spend most of her days writing stories. Her muse doesn't like genre restrictions and is always happy to toe the dark edge of storytelling. When she’s not writing she spends as much time as possible with her small family. She also enjoys watching movies, TV shows and reading.

Zuphreen Release Party and Contest

Zuphreen's release party and contest are LIVE now on Bitten By Books on this link:

http://bittenbybooks.com/?p=25343

The contest ends on 6/4/10 at 11:59 pm Central, and is open worldwide.

Prize: a $75.00 electronic gift certificate to Amazon.com

Follow the link above for more details and to participate.

Come on over and join the fun. There are some interesting questions and answers flying around.

Would you like to win?

This is the RSVP/ PROMO Link to Zuphreen's release party on Thursday June 3rd.


http://bittenbybooks.com/?p=25195

If you RSVP before the event you will get an additional 25 entries into my contest.

Note: This is not a link to the event itself; I’ll post that one when the event is live.

Spread the word.
Good luck and see you there!

My interview on "Otherworldly Tales" blog

Just a small reminder, Yolanda Sfetsos is interviewing me today over at her “Otherworldly Tales” blog.

Find out what started Zuphreen, and how it all came to be.

Yolanda, thank you in advance.

Zuphreen is HERE

*Wishes left unfulfilled are sad. Wishes fulfilled by Zuphreen are fatal.*

And with that dark thought, I would like to announce the release of my horror novel, Zuphreen ~ Bestower of Damnation from Damnation Books.

The novel covers the story of three unlikely friends who unwittingly unleash the horrors of hell in a vain attempt to boost their plummeting grades. Duped by their scheming professor, the friends summon Zuphreen and command the evil demon to enhance their lives with his gifts. But the gifts soon become curses and the friends watch in horror as they slowly turn into monsters. In a desperate race against time, the students must undo the curses and defeat the demon before the “gifts” destroy them forever. How far would they go to lift these curses? How deep would they sink to save themselves?

To whet your appetite, here’s a one-liner:
“She leaned forward and parted her bangs away from that gray abomination that lived in the middle of her forehead.”

Book Details:
• eBook ISBN: 9781615721290
• Print ISBN: 9781615721306
• Genre: Horror (Urban Fantasy)
• Word count: 78,057
• Excerpt and Buy link: Damnation Books

To celebrate the release, I have the following appearances scheduled for the month of June:

• June 1st: Will be available on Damnation Book's Yahoo Fan Loop to discuss the release and answer questions from Damnation Books’ fans. You will need to subscribe to the group to join the discussions.
• June 2nd: An interview over at Yolanda Sfetsos’s blog.
• June 3rd: Release party at Bitten By Books with an exciting prize. Visit my blog on that day for the link to participate.
• June 13th: Blogging on Naomi Clark’s LiveJournal
• June 20th: Interview on Fang-tastic Books  

Check the book, comment if you wish. I don’t bite.

Much!

Hot Damn! I won!

His to Possess’ book trailer won First Place for the month of May on You Gotta Read Videos. Yes, you read it right, first place.

That wouldn’t have happened without the support of friends, fans, and family. I thank you all for the time you took to vote for me.

It all started with an annoying habit of mine (it annoys me) of HAVING TO create a book trailer as soon as the manuscript is done. Not only that, I would upload the file to my website and refer to it in my submissions to publishers so they get a general idea of the book’s possibilities. This habit consumes time, but I enjoy every moment of it. I love the creation process; putting the right words with the right images and synchronizing the whole lot with suitable music.

It paid off more than once. Here are few incidents:

•  The trailer helped me out whenever I got stuck in a scene, or lost the motivation to write.
• Once, a publisher I approached regarding one book saw a trailer of another and asked me to submit that one as well. Alas, it was already with another publisher. However, being wanted felt good.
• It helps tremendously when marketing a book. If people are into watching and not reading, the trailer could be the ticket in. Just use the right tags and upload it to online video channels, like Youtube.

And now, I have it on record that sometimes, some people, do judge a book by its trailer.

Here’s His to Possess.

The Countdown

It’s not a real countdown, but I like to give my self a mental boost two weeks before the actual event.

Zuphreen will be released on June 1st, I can’t wait.

I have a couple of interviews planned, and a huge release party as well. Stay tuned, I'll post the details as soon as I figure them out :-D.

Su

Nightmare, imagination, and my son

No, this is not a review of the newly remade "Nightmare on Elm Street." It's something else altogether.


A couple of nights ago, my son woke up from a nightmare that left him shaking with fear, demanding that all lights should be left on. He wouldn't tell me the details of the nightmare, but he blamed it on his imagination.


That statement made me pause; I had to be careful how I would tackle this issue. My 7 years old son was about to hate being imaginative? And then what, he'd grow up to be a stiff uninspired person? God forbid!!!


I had a small talk with him and pointed out that Iron Man, Spider Man, Star Wars, all his PSP games, were products of someone's imagination. The same was applicable to any number of horror movies and books I wouldn't allow him, yet, to watch or read. Yes, this time his imagination had triggered something bad in his mind, but other times it gave him pleasant dreams of winning or acquiring something he craved.


Over the following days, I called his attention to anything he liked as the product of imagination. Ice cream, belt, TV…etc, were all things that someone dreamt of or saw an opportunity to create something wonderful, and seized it.


This morning, I was writing one of my paranormal romance stories, and he walked in on me with my head in my hands, sighing. This is how the conversation went.


Son: What's wrong, Mama?
Me: Ah, I'm stuck.
After a pause, Son: You mean your imagination is gone?
I smiled and shook my head.
Son: Do you need to create a scary monster?
I didn't, not for that book, but I nodded. I wasn't sure I wouldn't crack up smiling broadly in his face if I opened my mouth.
Son: I'll give you one. He can be as big as a building. Mama, write it down, or you'll forget.
I grabbed my notebook and started taking notes.
After a roll of the eyes, Son: He has one thousand legs. No. Make that one thousand six hundred infinity legs. Yeah, and no eyes."
I pursed my lips, wondering…
Me: Is this from one of your nightmares?
Son: No, this is fresh for you from my imagination.
Me (smiling again): Okay, what does he do usually?
Son, frowning: What do you mean?
Me: The monster. He has to do something bad to be called a monster.
Son: He is the worst, Mama. He is too ugly to look at.


I heart my son.

Home Sweet "New" Home

Ahem…excuse me while I settle down in this new house of mine. Please help yourself to a cookie, they are freshly made.

This is my first post in Blogger after a (somewhat) smooth move from Wordpress. So far, options are easier to handle on Blogger, and I do like the template I'm using :-)
Loyalty runs deep in my blood, but after months of trying to overcome bugs and upgrade problems in Wordpress, I sold my loyalty for 2cents and signed up here. I would've stayed with Wordpress, except I discovered I had to juggle between visiting wordpress.com and wordpress.org to solve the problems I had. Here's the thing: .org is for accounts through a hosting company, like mine, while .com is on the web directly and had more options. Signing up for one didn't mean that you had an account in the other. Yep!
There's more storage space on Wordpress, but I don't think I will need all that much. Besides, Blogger might decide to be generous and increase storage space.
Now, I must go and do some ironing and such, have a look around and view some of the older posts.

J. K. Rowling

I'm impressed.

I truly am. J. K. Rowling had created a world of magic, spells, monsters, and maintained the theme of the book till the end. You can tell I just finished reading Deathly Hallows, the 7^th installment of Harry Potter. The book is not aimed at my age (Oops), however, she really drew me in. I burned dinner twice the other night, so engrossed I was in the book to finish it. I laughed, I cheered, and at one very critical moment in the book, I cried. It wasn't the first time, she had done it to me when a very special character died in Order of the Phoenix (if you know your Potter.)

Love is the undertone of each book, and Joanna Rowling had kept it going, and explained it all at the end in the most convincing manner.

I'm not writing this as a reader admiring an author only, but as someone who had created worlds of her own (smaller, I admit.) I can understand the hard work that went into those seven books, the necessity of weaving all those magical webs together, and the sleepless nights, the too narrow corners she must have driven herself into and had to find her way back in a believable way. And she did it.

There are rumors on the net that J. K. Rowling might've been a one time genius, that she doesn't have it in her to create another masterpiece. I'm not going to agree or disagree with that statement—only J. K. Rowling knows the answer to that one. But I believe that even if it were true, a one time genius is better than never a genius.

Joanne Rowling, I take my hat off to you.

Blackout movie and my sister

Today is my sister's birthday, and as a treat I took her out to watch Blackout (We're both horror buffs, so it's not so weird.) What I haven't considered is her inherent fear of elevators, to be specific, what happens when or if an elevator stopped working while she's in it.

After a quick lunch at Chili's and a short shopping trip to the mall, we went home. I was smiling all the way from the cinema until we reached my house. You see, my apartment is on the 24^th floor. Just as we stepped out of the car, she turned to me, her face all grim and full of foreboding, "You do know that from now on, every time I visit, you'll have to come downstairs to accompany me into the elevator and all the way to your apartment?"

She was serious.

Muwahaha!!!

His to Possess

After watching the trailer for His to Possess, several people asked me where I got the book’s idea from.

The simple and honest to God answer is, I have no clue.

However, I have to say, writing H2P felt right and left me exuberated in a good way.

Stories are sometimes written to express a thought, or a believe, to entertain and, let’s face it, to sell. But with H2P, it was a matter of rightness for me. I only figured it will be short, but beside that, knew nothing else about it. The idea just washed all over me and left me with the desire to do nothing but to breath life into the characters, their emotions, and surrounding.

This might surprise people a bit, since this is a sweet romance and I’m known for my addiction to horror (just check out the other post about Zuphreen and you’ll know what I mean), however, as a rule, I do not say NO to a story. When I get the idea I write it in my folder for “Ideas” and file it aside. His to Possess refused to remain in that folder, it actually never reached it. I started by sitting to write the idea and in no time the story was finished.

I have to face the fact that I can’t claim that I write horror only. Untamed Temptation is a shapeshifter paranormal romance, His to Possess is a ghostly encounter paranormal romance, Zuphreen is pure horror through and through, and Intricate Entanglement is a twisted mix of horror and thriller.

Devine Destines took a chance on my baby (His to Possess) by making the wise decision :-) to publish it and introduce it to the whole world. For that I’m forever grateful.

Martine Jardin developed a marvelous cover that fits the story’s mood to the T. Let me tell you, that cover made making the trailer even easier.

Here is a short introduction to the story.

Stacy is a sweet young woman who is faced with one major crisis without any possible solution. She’s left with the only option of living her life quietly. Jeremy on the other hand didn’t have one—you’ll have to find out whether I’m talking about a life or a quiet one *_*

But when they meet, a spark flares to life in their hearts. Now they have to face the challenge of staying together.

Will they be able to accomplish the impossible? You might think you know the answer, but I’m sure I will be able to surprise you somewhere down the line in the story.

Delivery—sorry I mean, release date is scheduled for May 1^st, 2010, and I can’t wait for you to have a look at it.

That’s my baby.

Dealing with Stubbornness

Check out my blog over here where I blogged about stubbornness, myself, and the story of a ghost.

His to Possess available now from Devine Destinies

Your Wish

Inhale deeply.

Relax.

Exhale slowly.

Picture an opportunity to get your deepest, most desperate, wish come true.

Just imagine that wish taking form in real life.

Now, answer this question: What can go wrong with a wish stated with deliberate carefulness?

You might say nothing.

There are movies and books about wishes that went awry and terribly wrong. Many people—and you might be one of them—would think, “I know I could’ve stated it better.”

Well, think again, keeping in mind that the wish granter may be bent on twisting the meaning of every word you utter.

There are creatures that exist solely to bring sorrow and pain into our lives, if we still have one when they’re done with us. Some of those creatures are human.

Some are not.

Meet one of the not so human variety: Zuphreen. There is a reason why he is called the “Bestower of Damnation.”

You don’t believe me, do you?

Well, I’ll leave you with the book trailer to decide for yourself. If interested, the book will be released on June 1, 2010.

I won’t ask what your wish is. I’m keeping mine to myself.