Tuesday, February 09, 2010 04:54

Guaranteed, Baby!

February 8th, 2010

Shadow Bound and Shadow Fall covers

Shadow Bound and Shadow Fall are being released under Dorchester Publishing’s new Publisher’s Pledge program.  Here’s an excerpt from the press release:

“Dorchester Publishing is proud to introduce its Publisher’s Pledge program, a bold, new marketing initiative created to launch the careers of the next generation of genre superstars.  …

Launching in April 2010, the Publisher’s Pledge program will be supported by online and national print advertising; bookstore mailings; press release and ARC campaigns to media, reviewers, bloggers, retailers, libraries and consumers; lead features in bookseller, library and consumer e-newsletters; consumer contests and buzz campaigns through social networking sites; and a money-back guarantee for readers.

The first Publisher’s Pledge title will be Barbara Monajem’s Sunrise in a Garden of Love & Evil (April 2010), an erotically charged urban fantasy in the same vein as Charlaine Harris.  Additional titles include Elisabeth Naughton’s Marked (May 2010), a darkly sensual paranormal romance inspired by Greek mythology that will appeal to fans of Sherrilyn Kenyon; Christie Craig’s Shut Up and Kiss Me (June 2010), a delightfully quirky romantic mystery that will appeal to fans of Janet Evanovich; and Erin Kellison’s back-to-back debuts Shadow Bound (July 2010) and Shadow Fall (August 2010), the first two releases in a riveting post-apocalyptic series that fuses dark fantasy, science fiction, horror and romantic suspense.

Additional information about the books selected for Dorchester’s Publisher’s Pledge program will be available on www.dorchesterpub.com in March 2010. “

Psst … wanna win a copy of Shade Fright?

February 7th, 2010

With just twenty-one days until Shade Fright hits book stores in the UK, I thought it would probably be a good idea to mention when and where I’ll be doing giveaways, so here we go:

BLOG TOUR DATES AND EVENTS

February 22nd there’s an interview and giveaway at All Things Urban Fantasy

February 23rd there’s an interview and giveaway at Smexy Books.

February 24th The Book Smugglers will be doing a giveaway.

February 28th, I’ll be doing a giveaway on my page at Goodreads – this is a big one because the winner’s gets to name an über cool ASS KICKING  character I’m introducing  in Funeral Pallor, book two of the Valerie Stevens series. (HINT: there’s a tough question that will test your knowledge of Canadian history in this contest, so study up!!! HINT: it has to do with Canadian Prime Ministers.)

March 1st the guy who is in the know about pretty much EVERYTHING in the sci-fi/fantasy world will be doing an interview and giveaway, so check out SciFiGuy.

March 2nd threre’s a giveaway courtesy of Donna at Fantasy Dreamer’s Ramblings

March 9th I’ll be doing an interview and giveaway with Angela over at Dark Faerie Tales.

If you’re in Calgary from March 26-28th, I’ll also be appearing at Cal-Con 2010, the Calgary Games Convention at the Radisson Hotel Calgary Airport. Will I be doing a giveaway with some cool-ass swag and signing copies of Shade Fright? Does a bear poop in the woods?

If you’re a blogger and you’re interested in hosting a giveaway, send me an email: info AT sean DASH cummings DOT ca.

I don’t yet have a North American release date, so if you live on this side of the Atlantic , you’re going to have to hit up Amazon to get your hands on a copy. As soon as I have a date for a North American release, I’ll be posting it here.

Not to be Missed!

January 28th, 2010

Heads up, peeps. This Monday, February 1 at 8:00 p.m. ET, I’ll be joined by fellow GoodGirl, Nancy Holzner, and the BadJuju himself, Sean Cummings, for a live chat at Chatting in the Dark. Oh, and did I mention giveaways? There’ll be some great ones. Two lucky participants will receive:

a free signed copy of Nancy’s kickass urban fantasy novel, Deadtown


and a free print copy of my latest dark fantasy release, Born of Darkness, signed by yours truly.

Please join us for an evening of entertainment and a bit of mayhem.

Here’s the link to the live chat:

Chatting in the Dark

No sign-in required. Just show up and join the live chat.  Hope to see you there!

Another author joins our blog!

January 28th, 2010

A great big welcome to Melissa Francis!

She’s the author of BITE ME and the forthcoming LOVE SUCKS, and she’ll be popping by from time to time to talk about writing YA fantasy and how the world of YA fiction seems to be growing in leaps and bounds!

Sneak Peak at Funeral Pallor

January 27th, 2010

Because the first chapter is a nice little addition to Shade Fright, here’s an  excerpt from Funeral Pallor – Book Two in the Valerie Stevens series:

“There it is again,” I whispered, as I crouched behind the garbage bin. I was knee-deep in torn-open trash bags, and I could have sworn I felt a something scurry across the back of my legs.

Rat-free Alberta, my ass.

The evening started out alright. I’d been downtown watching a new cellist’s debut at the Jack Singer Concert Hall, alone I might add, because my ever-lovin’ boyfriend Dave was up in Fort McMurray working on a new oil sands development. (Yeah, the evil global-warming oil sands that environmental groups and half the staff of the CBC complain are the greatest threats to human life as we know it. I deal in more immediate human destroying threats like demons, dark magic and plain old bad juju.)

We’d been arguing for two weeks since he announced he was going, and though I’m not the kind of person to tell someone how to run his life, Dave’s reasons for working up in the back forty for six weeks simply didn’t make sense. There was plenty of work at the Demarco construction company, and, sure, I know there’s a quick buck to be made up in Fort Mac, but Dave doesn’t need the money. He owns his house free and clear; his only debt in the world is for a home renovation loan for about $30 thousand dollars, and even that was about eighty percent paid off.

Still, he was insistent about it to the point of walking out on an argument and not calling me for a day and a half.

Was I mad at him for going? Well, yeah – but what really bugged me was that he just arbitrarily laid down the law, and that was a side of him I’d never seen before. It was a side to a lot of men I’d dated in the past, and that’s one of the reasons I’d dumped them. But Dave is supposed different. He’s the only guy I’ve ever been with who isn’t afraid of me, and that jettisons him to the top of the list in the quality male department, because there’s a lot about my life to be afraid of.

I’m Valerie Stevens, and I’m an alchemist, or apprentice mage, or something in between the two – I’m still trying to figure out which one it is. I work for the federal government in a benign-sounding ministry called Government Services and Infrastructure Canada, and I deal with the things that go bump in the night and eat your face.

I’d just hopped in my car in a parking garage about a block and a half away from the abandoned warehouse when my ghostly accomplice informed me about the creature, so I grabbed my staff and the rifle bag from the trunk and shrouded myself behind a magical veil, since I was pretty sure the Calgary City Police might take issue with someone creeping around the crummy section of town with a loaded weapon.

Fifty-Dollar Bill’s spectral eyes squinted behind a pair of vaporous, wire-rimmed glasses. “Are you quite certain, Valerie? It could well be a homeless person, you know. There have always been homeless people in Victoria Park, even back in my day.”

I gripped my staff tightly in my right hand and adjusted the shoulder strap of my rifle. I’m not big on guns, but it was a gift from the past President of the Bow Valley Sharp Shooter’s Association, and she’d been giving me lessons near my sanctuary at the Orlowski farm. Her name is Caroline, by the way, and not only can she can fire a bullet into the neck of a beer bottle from five hundred meters away, she also packs her own ammunition.

Oh, and she’s a zombie — sort of like the guy Fifty-Dollar Bill and I were watching as the pile of trash I was standing in seemed to come alive with rodents scurrying across the toes of my Danner boots.

“You’re a ghost, Bill,” I grunted. “And frankly, I think your homeless person is as dead as you are.”

“Because he’s staggering around like a drunkard?”

I pointed with my staff. “No… because there’s a dismembered human leg on the ground beside him, and from the look of it, I’d say that about sixty percent of the flesh has been chewed off.”

Newsflash!

January 23rd, 2010

Well this is very good news….

Bookmarks! Bookmarks! Bookmarks!

January 20th, 2010

I’m thinking of getting these printed up and giving them away to readers of this here blog. I’m also thinking I might upload them to my website so you can download ‘em and print ‘em off….

Want a bookmark? Send an e-mail to info AT sean-cummings DOT ca and I’ll see if I can fix ya up!

That last read before your book heads to the printer

January 19th, 2010

It’s not exactly a bad thing, doing a last once-over of your now book formatted manuscript just before it heads to the printer – but it’s not exactly confidence inspiring either.

Snowbooks sent Shade Fright back to me late last week, and while it was cool as all heck to see the quasi-final product, the only thing going through my mind as I read the book for what seemed like the jillionth time was: holy crap, this is very real now. (Because signing a contract with an award winning publisher and seeing that cover art for the first time wasn’t real enough.) As I scoured the digital ink pages for an out of place comma or a missing word (and there were a handful, by the way) I kept thinking “Crap – I should have changed that” or “Geez, does this fit well in this chapter – maybe I should have rewritten it.”

I suppose a large part of this is the author equivalent of opening night jitters. I didn’t go through this when my eBook Unseen World was published – maybe because eBooks represent only 5% of the book market and like it or not, there’s still a stigma associated with them in mainstream publishing that has less to do, I think, with the quality of the books and more to do with a general view of eBook publishers or the price of eBook readers or even the fact that people like paper over pixels. Perhaps, though, it had more to do with the fact that I wouldn’t be able to walk into my local bookstore and actually see my book were it ever to sell enough copies to warrant a print version. But with Shade Fright, well, this is a lot different. I see their titles on the shelves of McNally Robinson books here in Saskatoon alongside books by bestselling authors like Jim Butcher or Lillith Saintcrow – YIKES!

Don’t get me wrong – I aspire to have my books published by a huge publisher like Penguin, ( an agent would be nice, too) but I am very happy with Snowbooks whose entire focus has been on getting what they believe is a very good book into bookstores by March 1st. (They’re small but they sure as heck know how to market their product, let me tell you…) Early reviews for Shade Fright, I am told, are very good.  Fellow blogger and kick ass author Nancy Holzner not to mention über-blogger Sci-Fi Guy have read Shade Fright and offered fantastic reviews, yet a big part of me has this feeling of impending doom mixed with a small dose of personal satisfaction and a smattering of disbelief. Yeah, you read that right, disbelief.

After writing pure unadulterated crap that should be launched into orbit and never looked on with a pair of human or even extra-terrestrial eyes (serious, I started writing with the goal of getting published when my son was in diapers – he’s going to be 20 this June)  I’m still shocked and amazed that I’ve actually done it, you know?

Well I’m rambling here. I completed my last check for errors and fired some changes back to Snowbooks – we’re down to the wire now. Forty days and Shade Fright will be available for your reading pleasure (hopefully on the pleasure part). You should know that Chapter One of Funeral Pallor, the second book in the series will be included and it’s all about zombies because as you know, zombies rock. You know, except for when they’re eating you.

Oh – and I’ve been invited to participate in Con-Version 26 this October in Calgary – I am in geek heaven and what a great place to do a North American launch for a series of urban fantasy novels that takes place in Calgary, eh?

Have a good one.

RSVP for My Bitten by Books Contest

January 15th, 2010

Come and visit me at Bitten by Books on Monday, 1/18.  There’ll be an interview PLUS a contest. On the theory that you may not have received everything you wanted for the holidays, I’m giving away two Amazon.com gift certificates. First prize is worth $80 and second prize is worth $20. Entries are open worldwide, to anyone who can accept and use a gift card from the U.S. Amazon.com site.

If you RSVP, you’ll get extra chances to win. Just go here and leave a comment that says you’re RSVP-ing. Then come back on Monday and leave another comment or ask a question, and you’re entered. See you there!

It’s not fantasy, but it’s damned good.

January 12th, 2010

If you haven’t read this book, you should. Like.. now. Go get it. Seriously….go on now, scoot! Come back and tell me when you’ve bought it.

I am utterly convinced this will be a movie starring that chick from Chuck (except she’ll have a dye job) – it’s that freaking good.

Fellow Canadian author Catherine McKenzie’s debut is a remarkable work… and I’m a dude…

Here’s the skinny:

Katie Sandford has just gotten an interview at her favourite music magazine, The Line. It’s the chance of a lifetime. So what does she do? Goes out to celebrate — and shows up still drunk at the interview. No surprise, she doesn’t get the job, but the folks at The Line think she might be perfect for another assignment for their sister gossip rag. All Katie has to do is follow It Girl Amber Sheppard into rehab. If she can get the inside scoop (and complete the 30-day program without getting kicked out), they’ll reconsider her for the job at The Line.

Katie takes the job. But things get complicated when real friendships develop, a cute celebrity handler named Henry gets involved, and Katie begins to realize she may be in rehab for a reason. Katie has to make a decision — is publishing the article worth everything she has to lose?