Here is another update for the Books to Watch list.  WOW!  So many interesting titles coming out in 2010 and 2011. Starcrossed sounds amazing and like a sure hit.  I’m sure Sylvia Day’s new series will be tops.  You can view my previous Books to Watch posts here.

Synopsis (Publishers Marketplace):

1. In a major pre-Bologna acquisition, Laura Arnold at Harper Teen pre-empted North American rights to a debut YA trilogy by Josephine Angelini. Mollie Glick at Foundry sold the series–the first book is called Starcrossed–and said she pitched it as “a Percy Jackson for teenage girls.” Foundry’s Stephanie Abou and Hannah Brown Gordon will be handling foreign rights at the Bologna Book Fair, and film rights are being handled by Angelini’s manager, Rachel Miller at Tom Sawyer Entertainment.

In Starcrossed, which brings Greek tragedy to high school, a shy Nantucket teenager named Helen Hamilton attempts to kill the most attractive boy on the island, Lucas Delos, in front of her entire class. The incident proves more than a bit inconvenient for Helen, who’s already concerned that she’s going insane–whenever she’s sees Lucas (or any of his family members) the image of three crying women appear to her.

The murder attempt does have an upside though, as it ultimately leads to Helen’s revelation that she and the local heartthrob are, in fact, playing out some version of a weighty ancient love affair. (Said female apparitions are, in fact, the Three Fates.) So Helen, like her namesake, Helen of Troy isn’t going crazy, she’s destined to start a Trojan War-like battle by being with Lucas. This then begs the unfortunate question: should she be with the boy she loves even if it means endangering the rest of the world?

The second book in the trilogy, Persephone’s Garden, follows Helen’s journey to the Underworld, and the third book, Ilium, chronicles the final battle between mortals and the gods. Harper Teen is planning to publish Starcrossed in summer 2011.

2. NYT bestselling author L.A. Banks’s untitled fallen angels series, in a two-book deal.

3. Author of EVE OF DARKNESS Sylvia Day’s ANGEL ENCHAINED, book one in a dark and sexy paranormal trilogy, in which angels, vampires, and lycans are all vying for power, at auction, in a three-book deal.

4. VAMPIRE SUNRISE author Carole Nelson Douglas’s SILVER ZOMBIE, her fourth Delilah Street novel, in which the 24-year-old Las Vegas paranormal investigator returns to Kansas to battle silver screen zombies, weather witches, and demon drug lords, and to investigate her own troubled history, in a two-book deal, for publication in November 2010.

5. Maggie Stiefvater’s FOREVER, the final book in the bestselling SHIVER trilogy, plus three new stand-alone fantasy titles, in a major deal, for publication summer 2011.

6. Lauren Oliver’s debut middle-grade novel THE STORY OF LIESL & PO, pitched as in the tradition of Kate DiCamillo, the tale of a girl, a ghost, two boxes, some ashes, some magic dust, and a magician’s apprentice, and how these seemingly random elements come together over the course of one week to restore feeling to a world gone gray and heartless, in a major deal, in a three-book deal.

7. Chris Bradford’s VIRTUAL KOMBAT, in which a young boy is selected as a games tester by the creator of ‘Virtual Kombat’ – the most realistic martial-arts video game ever invented – with devastating consequences, for publication in 2010.

I am very pleased to welcome Sean Cummings here to DarkFaerieTales.com to talk about Shade Fright, which is the first book in his new Valerie Stevens urban fantasy series.  The book was just released on March 1, 2010 and you can read Chapter 1 here.

You can visit Sean around the web here: Website | Twitter | Facebook

Sean is giving one lucky commenter a chance to win an autographed copy of Shade Fright.  Details are listed at the end of the post.

Welcome Sean!

DFT: Could you start things off by telling us a little about the book?

Sure thing.  Shade Fright is about a civil servant named Valerie Stevens who likes to think of herself as an alchemist, but she’s actually an apprentice mage.  She works for Government Services and Infrastructure Canada because in Canada EVERYONE wants to work for the civil service – it’s part of our culture here, don’t ask me why.  So when I started writing I thought, “if this was real, would my heroine be a private eye like John Taylor or Harry Dresden?”  Being Canadian, I thought it would be far more interesting if she worked for the government, particularly when the Canadian government in my book is up to its ears in the supernatural.

Valerie isn’t glamorous, she isn’t butch, she doesn’t wise crack, she likes to get the job done, primarily by brokering a resolution to a problem.  Unfortunately she’s learning there’s some seriously bad people out there who are part of a shadowy organization called The Conclave.  These guys use magic for everything from terrorism to global insurrection and with the help of Fifty-Dollar Bill, the ghost of former Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King, and her best friend Caroline who happens to be a zombie, she’s about to learn of a plot to wipe out everyone in Calgary.

DFT: What motivated you to write Shade Fright?

It sort of fell out of my head and onto my keyboard.  I wrote the first draft during the 2007 Labour Day weekend.  I participated in the 3 Day Novel Contest where you have the long weekend to pump out a book, mostly to see if I could do it, really.  Things just started flowing together nicely as I pumped away at the keyboard while sucking back about five gallons of coffee and after seventy-two hours of non-stop writing, I had a complete draft, so I rewrote it again and really liked the characters and the plot.  I also wanted to write a uniquely Canadian urban fantasy – there’s not a lot out there in the way of urban fantasy where Canada is front and center, so that was a central motivation for sure.

DFT: If you could describe your main characters with only 3 words, what would they be?

Valerie Stevens: frustrated, powerful, curious

Caroline the Zombie: Wise cracking, vulnerable, tortured

D.T.: Wise, Patient, Methodical

Fifty-Dollar Bill: Annoying, eccentric, honest

Dave Webber: Befuddled, loyal, smitten

DFT: Tell us something about your research process and the choices you make when creating the story.

Research meant spending a lot of time in the Canadian encyclopaedia to make sure I had my facts straight about Mackenzie King.  He was the longest serving Prime Minister in the British Commonwealth and is known as Canada’s greatest Prime Minister, but here in Canada, we don’t really spend a lot of time celebrating our achievers which means Canadian history, believe it or not, isn’t really taught with any relish in the school system.  It was a tough choice to use Mackenzie King’s ghost and I’m sure there are purists out there who might read the book in horror when they see how I’ve turned one of Canada’s greatest national leaders into a sidekick to a sorceress.

I also had to do some research into our political system for the overall back story.  I spent a lot of time pouring through various books on the occult and magic so that I could create a believable way of explaining Valerie’s abilities and the way in which magic actually works.

DFT: Do you have a long-term plan or goal for this story universe? What happens after the sequel, Funeral Pallor?

I do indeed have a story arc for about six books right now, whether or not I actually write the next four will depend entirely on whether or not the first two are successful – I hope they are.  Funeral Pallor deals with zombies, the one after that will focus on Vampires and political assassination – there is Valerie’s dark equal who is pulling the strings in The Conclave so she will make an appearance in book three.  The series will ultimately wind up with a showdown between the two and some of the characters in the first two books won’t be around to see what happens, sadly.  I will offer this much, The Conclave’s ultimate goal has to do with the end of days.

DFT: What influences and inspirations (both literary and non-literary) did you draw from while writing Shade Fright?

My first inspiration and influence goes wayyyyy back to the 1970’s when I was a boy living in northern Ontario.  I was (and still am) a comic book nut and while I loved superheroes, I chanced comic book put out by Marvel called “Werewolf by Night”.  For me, that was the starting point for urban fantasy because here you had a guy who could change into a werewolf living in a major city and battling supernatural bad guys.  I was hooked and I wish they would bring the series back, it was that good.  I love reading Simon R. Green and Jim Butcher, so both authors influence what I write, but ultimately, my biggest influence is Canada itself.  I really wanted to put out a series that is rich with Canadian factoids and my hometown of Calgary is featured prominently.

DFT: Who is your favourite character in this book, and why?

Easily my favourite character to write about is Fifty-Dollar Bill.  He’s annoying as hell, manipulative and bothersome, but he’s crucial to the entire series because as readers will find out, it’s his fault that Canada is up to its ears in the supernatural.  He is, quite frankly, the key to the entire back story for the series and he lays it all out in Shade Fright.

DFT: Which character was the most difficult to write?

Valerie Stevens. Period.

I’m a guy whose main character is a woman.  I wanted to get her right and frankly, I’m still learning precisely how to do that because of my gender disadvantage.  She’s a complex character who is thrown into a series of events she has no control over.  She’s immensely powerful and hasn’t even scratched the surface of what she’s capable of doing.  She’s feminine to a point, but she’s also not at all butch.  She’s actually an amalgam of a number of women I served with when I was in the Canadian Forces.

DFT: Do you have a favourite scene or line from Shade Fright?

My favourite scene is probably when Valerie kills an ogre with nothing more than grain dust and a small bag of white phosphorus.  My favourite line is when Dave is driving Valerie to the climactic battle at Nose Hill Park and he says: “Well of course there’s a zombie, there has to be a zombie.”

DFT: What other projects are you working on that you would like to tell us about?

I’ve completed a novel about a teen witch and her geeky boyfriend called Poltergeeks.  It’s a fun little romp and it’s being looked at by quite a few agents, actually.  Snowbooks has it as well as Lobster Press here in Canada, so I think it might wind up published in the not too distant future.  I’m working on the outline for a spin-off book from Funeral Pallor involving a newly introduced character named Tim Reaper.  He’s a grim reaper who got kicked out of his order for causing the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 because he was bored and he’s a bounty hunter/assassin/investigator. He’s completely amoral and will work for anyone, but in Funeral Pallor he learns that he has to choose sides.

DFT: What is your favourite fairy tale, and why?

That’s an interesting question.  I think my favourite fairy tale isn’t a fairy tale at all, actually.  From a very young age I was struck by the overall theme of redemption in Oscar Wilde’s The Selfish Giant.  It is, for me at least, one of the most beautifully written pieces with a powerful message of hope and love.

DFT: What question are you never asked in interviews but wish you were?

Hmmm … how about: What do you think is going to happen in the last book of The Dresden Files? (How can you tell I don’t get interviewed very often.)

DFT: What books/genres do you read when you have the chance? Any must read authors or series?

Must reads – Every Harry Dresden book.  The Nightside series.  Everything Robert J. Sawyer and Tanya Huff have ever written.  Anita Blake until Obsidian Butterfly.  Boy’s Life by Robert R. McCammon.  The Stand by Stephen King.  John Saul up to The God Project.  War Day by Whitley Strieber and James Kunteka.  Fellow Snowbooks author Thomas Emson’s Maneater is a fantastic new take on werewolves – I highly recommend it.  I loved Nancy Holzner’s Deadtown and I might start a petition for Tina to get her own book series.  I can’t wait to read Erin Kellison’s Shadow Bound when it comes out this summer.

DFT: What is your definition of a “bad writing day”? How do you deal with bad writing days?

Bad writing days for me are generally days when I’m distracted by too much noise, believe it or not.  I get up at 3 AM to write because it’s silent at home and on the street outside.  Distraction usually leads to me cursing at my keyboard for thirty minutes, so I just get up and walk away because I just know I won’t produce anything substantive if I have a knot in my face.

DFT: Do you have a particular writing process or any writing rituals?

Coffee.  Read the news.  More coffee.  Rinse and repeat.

DFT: If you weren’t writing, what would you want to be doing for a living?

That question should be “if you didn’t have a day job, would you like to write for a living?” The answer would be yes and that’s my goal. J

DFT: Describe your typical day.

3:00 AM get up and shower, get dressed, coffee.  Write until 6AM.  Go to work. Come home.  Watch a bit of TV and read the blogs.  Go to bed at 8PM.  Read for 30 minutes and back at it the next day.

DFT: Describe yourself in 5 words.

Comical.  Brooding.  Snarky.  Genuine.  Hopeful.

DFT: Which urban fantasy world would you like to live in, and why? i.e. The Hollows, etc.

I think I’d get a kick out of living in Sookie Stackhouse’s world and I would like to go on a bender with Jason because he reminds me of me at that age. (I’ve grown up since then, fear not!!!)

DFT: If you could be any paranormal creature, which one would you be and why?

Oh definitely a vampire because I could glamour beautiful women and wear a tux to bed.  It would rock! (I’d be a friendly neighbourhood vampire, though.  I would only feed on really really bad people.)

DFT: Thanks Sean for taking the time to stop by.

GIVEAWAY GUIDELINES:

One lucky commenter will have a chance to win an autographed copy of Shade Fright .

To enter, leave a comment below answering the following question:

What is the name of the main character in Thomas Emson’s fantastic werewolf novels “Maneater” and “Prey”?

1. +1 entry for answering the question (required).

2. +2 entries for becoming a follower of this blog and Dark Faerie Tales on Twitter.

3. +3 entries for tweeting about this contest, blogging about it, linking via your sidebar etc…(please tell me where!).

4. Giveaway is open to U.S. and Canadian residents ONLY.

5. Please include your email address in your comment.

6. Giveaway ends Tuesday, March 23rd at 11:59 PM EST.

7. The winner will be picked with the help of Random.org.

Title: Beautiful Dead ~ Jonas

Author: Eden Maguire

Genre: YA Paranormal

Publication Date: March 1, 2010

Format: Paperback, 288 Pages

ISBN-10: 0340988614 Sourcebooks (Fire)

ISBN-13: 978-0340988619 Sourcebooks (Fire)

Synopsis (Product Description):

Something strange is happening in Ellerton High.  Phoenix is the fourth teenager to die within a year.  His street fight stabbing follows the deaths of Jonas, Summer and Arizona in equally strange and sudden circumstances.

Rumours of ghosts and strange happenings rip through the small community as it comes to terms with shock and loss. Darina,Phoenix’s grief-stricken girlfriend, is on the verge.  She can’t escape her intense heartache, or the impossible apparitions of those that are meant to be dead.  And all the while the sound of beating wings echo inside her head!  And then one day Phoenix appears to Darina.

Ecstatic to be reunited, he tells her about the Beautiful Dead.  Souls in limbo, they have been chosen to return to the world to set right a wrong linked to their deaths and bring about justice. Beautiful, superhuman and powerful, they are marked by a ‘death mark’ – a small tattoo of angel’s wings. Phoenix tells her that the sound of invisible wings beating are the millions of souls in limbo, desperate to return to earth.  Darina’s mission is clear: she must help Jonas, Summer, Arizona, and impossibly, her beloved Phoenix, right the wrong linked to their deaths to set them free from limbo so that they can finally rest in peace.  Will love conquer death?  And if it does, can Darina set it free?

Quick & Dirty: A good first entry to what promises to be an interesting paranormal series.

Opening Sentence: The first thing I heard was a door banging in the wind.

Excerpt: Chapter 1

The Review:

First Jonas, then Summer, followed by Arizona, and now Phoenix is the fourth student from Ellerton High to die within a year.  Darina, Phoenix’s girlfriend is caught in the grip of grief’s talons and having a hard time dealing with his death.  Then Phoenix appears with the sound of beating wings and tells her about the Beautiful Dead.  They are unable to complete their transition into the afterlife because of the circumstances surrounding their deaths.  They will be held in limbo until justice has been exacted.  Darina will help each of them find the answers they seek and bring closure to their restless existence.

Ms. Maguire gives readers the story of Jonas – the first student to die.  Beautiful Dead starts out a bit slow, but settles into an enjoyable and engaging read.  While Darina is a likable character, I felt that she was a bit formulaic, making certain aspects of the story predictable.  I like the premise of the Beautiful Dead and Ms. Maguire has a unique spin on “zombies”.  I can’t give too many details because it would be a major spoiler.  Darina and Phoenix’s relationship is portrayed as all encompassing, but I think the reader misses many elements of what their relationship was like before he died.  Establishing a stronger setup to explain the connection between the two would have been wonderful.  In addition, some secondary characters were lacking a bit in character development and depth.

Nonetheless, I enjoyed the book.  Twists and turns will keep the reader guessing and invested in the outcome of this story.  Ms. Maguire’s descriptions are vivid, and the mystery surrounding the Beautiful Dead is intriguing.  This mixture of the paranormal and the romantic delivers a tale of dark secrets, loss, and redemption.  So go ahead and walk alongside Darina on her quest to put the Beautiful Dead to rest.

Notable Scene:

Now my heart was beating fast and loud, the wind from the wings tearing at me.  I was breathless, filled with dread, almost defeated.  Why are you doing this to me? I asked, crouching in the shelter of a tall rock.

I sensed movement overhead and looked up into one of those skull-faces with black holes where eyes should be, domed head and death-grin, swooping down, coming right at me, one and then another and another until my hands rose in panic and I was screaming just like the time before.

You can visit the Sourcebook Teen Fire site here for for details: Beautiful Dead

FTC Advisory: Sourcebooks provided me with a copy of Beautiful Dead ~ Jonas.  No goody bags, sponsorships, “material connections,” or bribes were exchanged for my review.  In addition, I don’t receive affiliate fees for anything purchased via links from my site.

Birthmarked is now being sent out by Book It Forward Tours, a division of Dark Faerie Tales.  If you are interested in reading and reviewing this book, please leave a comment with your email, blog URL, and your State.  Go here for more details and the requirements.

Synopsis (Product Description):

After climate change, on the north shore of Unlake Superior, a dystopian world is divided between those who live inside the wall, and those, like sixteen-year-old midwife Gaia Stone, who live outside. It’s Gaia’s job to “advance” a quota of infants from poverty into the walled Enclave, until the night one agonized mother objects, and Gaia’s parents are arrested.

Badly scarred since childhood, Gaia is a strong, resourceful loner who begins to question her society. As Gaia’s efforts to save her parents take her within the wall, she herself is arrested and imprisoned.

Fraught with difficult moral choices and rich with intricate layers of codes, BIRTHMARKED explores a colorful, cruel, eerily familiar world where one girl can make all the difference, and a real hero makes her own moral code.

The Prince of Mist is now being sent out by Book It Forward Tours, a division of Dark Faerie Tales.  If you are interested in reading and reviewing this book, please leave a comment with your email, blog URL, and your State.  Go here for more details and the requirements.

Synopsis (Product Description):

Max Carver’s father – a watchmaker and inventor – decides to move his family to a small town on the coast, to an old house that once belonged to a prestigious surgeon, Dr Richard Fleischmann. But the house holds many secrets and stories of its own. Behind it is an overgrown garden full of statues surrounded by a metal fence topped with a six-pointed star. When he goes to investigate, Max finds that the statues seem to consist of a kind of circus troop with the large statue of a clown at its centre. Max has the curious sensation that the statue is beckoning to him. As the family settles in they grow increasingly uneasy: they discover a box of old films belonging to the Fleischmanns; his sister has disturbing dreams and his other sister hears voices whispering to her from an old wardrobe. They also discover the wreck of a boat that sank many years ago in a terrible storm. Everyone on board perished except for one man – an engineer who built the lighthouse at the end of the beach. During the dive, Max sees something that leaves him cold – on the old mast floats a tattered flag with the symbol of the six-pointed star. As they learn more about the wreck, the chilling story of the Prince of the Mists begins to emerge.

For Keeps is now being sent out by Book It Forward Tours, a division of Dark Faerie Tales.  If you are interested in reading and reviewing this book, please leave a comment with your email, blog URL, and your State.  Go here for more details and the requirements.

Synopsis (Product Description):

Josie’s never met her dad, and that’s fine with her. To Josie, Paul Tucci is just a guy who got her mom pregnant and then moved away. It all happened sixteen years ago, when Josie’s mom was still a teenager herself. But now Paul Tucci is back in town, and Josie has to deal with not one but two men in her life—her father and her first boyfriend, who Josie fears will hurt her just like Paul hurt her mother.

WEREling is now being sent out by Book It Forward Tours, a division of Dark Faerie Tales.  If you are interested in reading and reviewing this book, please leave a comment with your email, blog URL, and your State.  Go here for more details and the requirements.

Synopsis (Product Description):

Fourteen-year-old Trey Laporte is not a kid anymore. Not after the day he wakes up in agony—retina-splitting, vomit-inducing agony. His clothes are torn. His room is trashed.

Enter Lucien Charron, the mysterious, long-lost “uncle” with freakish fire-flecked eyes and skin that blisters in the sun. Suddenly, Trey finds himself living in a luxury penthouse at the heart of a strange and sinister empire built on the powers of the Netherworld—vampires, demons, sorcerers, and djinn.
And there is a girl—Alexa Charron—who is half vampire, half human, and insanely pretty, with powers all of her own. Trey is falling for her.

Trey is training night and day to control the newly discovered power lurking inside him. Now, demons are closing in on every side, and the most psychopathic bloodsucker to rock the Netherworld wants to destroy him. Above all,  he  must face one terrifying question: Is he a boy . . . or is he a beast?

Invisible Girl is now being sent out by Book It Forward Tours, a division of Dark Faerie Tales.  If you are interested in reading and reviewing this book, please leave a comment with your email, blog URL, and your State.  Go here for more details and the requirements.

Synopsis (Product Description):

When poor Boston girl Stephanie is abandoned by her abusive mother and taken in by Annie’s Beverly Hills family, she feels anything but home. Her dark complexion and accent stick out like a sore thumb in the golden-hued world of blondes and extravagance. These are girls who seem to live life in fastforward, while Stephanie is stuck on pause. Yet when a new rival moves to town, threatening Annie’s queen-bee status, Stephanie finds herself taking sides in a battle she never even knew existed, and that feeling invisible is a wound that can only be healed by standing up for who she is.

Brilliant newcomer Mary Hanlon Stone delivers a compulsively readable insider’s view of growing up in a world where money and privilege don’t always glitter.

I received this really cool award from Amanda over at Not-Really-Southern Vamp Chick.

Seven things about myself:

1. I’m afraid of large bodies of water.  I’m not a strong swimmer and I have a fear of drowning.

2. I also have a fear of heights.

3. My favorite video game franchise is Resident Evil.

4. My favorite 80’s rock band is Def Leppard.

5. Out of all the boy bands that I’ve met and hung out with (98 Degrees, LFO, New Kids On The Block, N’Sync), Backstreet Boys are tops.  They are just really fun and cool.  Nick is unbeliveably HOT in person.

6. I met Jensen Ackles, Jared Padalecki, and other cast members at the Supernatural Convention last year and it was a really amazing weekend.  I had such a great experience and Jared is beyond sexy. Jensen was surprisingly shy and reserved.

7. I’m trying to learn French through Rosetta Stone so that I can speak it with my boyfriend who speaks it fluently.

I’m going to pass this award on to 7 bloggers that simply rock:

1. Escape Between The Pages

2. Smexy Books

3. Teflon Panties

4. That’s QUEEN Bitch To You

5. Pearl’s World of Romance

6. Darkly Reading

7. Peace Love & Pat

Here is another update for the Books to Watch list.  I’m looking forward to reading Graveyard Queen and Supervolcano.  I also like the premise of Jennifer Lynn Barnes’ Every Other Day.  You can view my previous Books to Watch posts here.

Synopsis (Publishers Marketplace):

1. Amanda Stevens’s GRAVEYARD QUEEN, about a young woman who restores decaying cemeteries and who also has the ability to see ghosts, and her relationship with a mysterious detective who is haunted by ghosts of his own, in a three-book deal.

2. Karen Miller’s THE TARNISHED CROWN series, in a five-book deal, for publication in 2012.

3. Harry Turtledove’s SUPERVOLCANO, an epic disaster trilogy based on the terrifying scientific fact that an enormous volcano, bigger than any in recorded history, exists underneath Yellowstone National Park and could blow at any time, taking most of American civilization with it, for publication in 2012, 2013, and 2014.

4. Liz Carlyle’s three books in new atmospheric, sexy Victorian romance series.

5. Erin Downing’s ECLIPSED, about a girl who has always happily existed in the outer orbit of high school cliques, but is suddenly thrust to the center of the social universe after a mysterious occurrence during a Lunar Eclipse changes everything and flips life-as-she-knew-it onto a bizarre new axis, in a two-book deal, for publication in spring 2012.

6. Jennifer Lynn Barnes’s TRIAL BY FIRE, the companion to RAISED BY WOLVES, and EVERY OTHER DAY, about a girl who is only human every other day, and who spends her non-human days hunting down preternatural predators.

7. Caldecott Honor winner Tony DiTerlizzi’s THE SEARCH FOR WONDLA, when an intruder destroys the underground sanctuary that a girl was raised in by her robot, Muthr, the twelve-year-year-old is forced to flee aboveground: somewhere she’s never been before, for publication in September 2010.

8. Cronus Chronicles author Anne Ursu’s THE SNOW QUEEN, a contemporary reimagining of Hans Christian Andersen’s classic fairytale, in a two-book deal, for publication in Fall 2011.

9. Geoffrey Hayes’s A POOR EXCUSE FOR A DRAGON, for publication in Spring 2012.