Justine, by Arabella Proffer

For February’s Artist of the Month, I’d like to introduce indie music mogul-ette and gallery artist Arabella Proffer. Arabella is well known for her wild but regal portraits of imaginary aristocrats from an alternate history that combine both the ruffs and corsetry of Elizabethan England and the punk rock styles of 1980s LA. She has a new book out– The National Portrait Gallery of Kessa: The Artwork of Arabella Proffer– from Cooperative Press, and she’s here to talk about her artistic inspirations and the story behind the genesis of her imaginary kingdom, Kessa.

Hi Arabella! Where are you from? What led to you attend Art Center College of Design– and later, CalArts? Why did you leave California? Has your frequent traveling informed your artistic process?

I was raised in Ann Arbor MI, but moved to Laguna Beach CA when I was 16, and then Dana Point. I always found Orange County to be boring– aside from the punk shows– so I spent every second I could up in Silverlake and Hollywood. I always knew I was going to attend art school somewhere in California, since 7th grade really, so it was good timing!

I was accepted into a program at Art Center and did a few months there, but it was very geared toward design and I just wanted a looser environment. CalArts was better for me because I could take animation and film courses while being in the Art department; my plans were to work in the film industry because I knew I wasn’t going to get out of school selling $20,000 paintings! At the time, the program was really into installation art and uber conceptual stuff, they really didn’t like painting. I found myself taking more animation courses because it required so much damn drawing, whereas the art courses were a lot of lectures (mostly). It’s kind of funny to me that I went back to painting and dropped doing films, I totally thought I would be working at an animation studio or would have become a film editor.

After graduation I was in Boston for 5 seconds, and then I moved to Hollywood with my husband. I was managing an arts building downtown, doing a lot of group shows, DJing and stuff, then one day I snapped. I just didn’t want to be there anymore, I sort of had a ‘Michael Douglas in Falling Down’ moment when it came to living in Los Angeles. The grocery store strike, governor recall, and transit strike all happened and I just wanted out and wanted to be somewhere normal. I knew a lot of people in Cleveland, I visited and liked it, and I realized it was the kind of place where you can afford to be an artist. Now I have a huge studio, I live right on the lake, I travel when I need to, and there’s a good artistic community here. Someone once told me “Cleveland is a good place for an artist to hide” and it sure is. I’m still meeting artists here where I’m like, “oh, I had no idea you lived here?” It was good I was here, I got diagnosed with cancer in my leg, I had to have my thigh removed and go through a lot of radiation, so to be a 15 minute drive to Cleveland Clinic and have access to the best surgeon in the world (literally) for my type of situation was really good timing!

My moving a lot hasn’t informed my style, but my travels yes. I began going to Russia when I was in 4th grade, we went several times before Communism ended, and that always had a big impact on me. Anywhere my family traveled in Europe or in the US, we were always meeting with writers and other artistic types, so I was lucky that way. I think I attended my first New York gallery opening when I was 5, and that same artist bought a piece of mine at my first New York group show last year! But, the thing about going to Europe which struck me was all the portraiture — both at museums and in private homes — and the fact that these were a reminder of legacies. I always liked the idea of still having family portraits done, rather than photo albums, or digital files kept of computers that can be deleted in 1 second.

Your painting is smooth, rich and has an inviting, luminous quality to it. What led you to paint with oils? What’s your process like for a painting?

I started with acrylics a long time ago and got really good at those. To the point where my teachers all thought they were done in oils my entire time at CalArts. It was only the last semester did someone finally tell me I was using the wrong paint for what I was trying to achieve. I hated oils at first because I’m super impatient! People always remark that the finish on the paintings when viewed in person are really fine and smooth, which is nice, because I’m always going batty over cat hairs that got stuck in or a piece of fuzz. I know I have a lot to learn still. Oil painting is one of those things you can study for decades and still have breakthroughs here and there. I don’t have a set process, it changes all the time and I hate following rules. Unless it is a commission, I do a rough sketch directly on the surface, and go from there. The face and backgrounds change all the time. That’s the good thing about this medium, mistakes and changes can turn out to be happy accidents you wouldn’t have thought of otherwise.

Tell us about your indie label, Elephant Stone records. How did it come about?

My husband had been running his own magazine and did music writing for years for other places. When he came to be in L.A. he got a job at Dionysus Records in their publicity department, but he was also given the chance to sign bands and created a compilation for their imprint, Orange Sky Records. He and I have identical musical tastes, it was one of the reasons we got together! So us starting a label was sort of a natural thing. The focus is shoegaze and psych oriented bands and reissues. I loved The Stone Roses song, so I named it “Elephant Stone”. We stepped away from doing anything for a long time after some bad experiences and then when the singer of The Situation passed away very suddenly. Now it is strict reissue projects, a few bands from the UK, Australia, and my favorite was the Smashing Orange compilation “1991”. That was ten years ago now that we started, but I’m not sure if it will continue after the next release this year. Aside from music licensing, having an indie label these days is very hard, so it seems bands are better off doing it themselves. Much like artists who sell on their own, and don’t depend on galleries.

Do you listen to music while you paint? What are your favorite bands right now?

I used to listen to The Church “Priest = Aura” album, and a 70s glam compilation called “Velvet Tinmine” over and over and over again. Then I opted for silence for a few years. Now lately I have been on a Sisters of Mercy and/or Billy Nicholls kick. As far as current bands, my favorite is Singapore Sling. They are the only band I have to have everything by, even the limited edition vinyl stuff. And I hate vinyl!

You’re famous for your portraits which depict the nobility of a mythical European country called Kessa. Can you tell us a bit about the history of Kessa?

Kessa came about as a way for me to organize everything. I was doing all these portraits of periods that I like for both costume and art history; I started giving them fake biographies, and then I for some reason decided to have most of them be related to each other in some way. It got very confusing! So I started doing family trees and made up a bunch of fake counties or areas as a way to keep track of them all. Kessa was taking from the name of my old cat, Keesa. I decided to make it into a show and lay it out like a National Portrait Gallery would, with description plates and everything. I had that show in about 5 years ago, and it has evolved since then. There’s actually characters I have written down in the family trees I have yet to paint!

Do you have a map of the place you’d like to share?

Interior shot of Kessa map, from "The National Portrait Gallery of Kessa: The Art of Arabella Proffer""

Your portraiture depicts a fascinating aesthetic, which can best be described as a mash-up of baroque and punk. How did this look evolve? What gave you the idea for it?

I used to be a punk myself– big white liberty spikes and all– and have always loved the aesthetics and music of punk and goth subcultures. After a while I noticed it became more mainstream, to the point where kids in high school besides myself all had tattoos and stuff. In a way, looking punk has almost become watered down. It isn’t menacing anymore. But the thing I noticed was punks paying ridiculous amounts for tattoos, piercings, things like that. I realized that if we were living in Elizabethan times (which I think that period is super goth with the fashions more so than Victorian) to be able to afford things like hair dye and piercings, those would have been status symbols — they would have meant you were rich. So it came about as me imagining what it would have been like hundreds of years ago, if those fashions had come into play.

What are your favorite movies? What about books? Did any movies or books inspire the ‘Kessian’ aesthetic or your idea for this country?

Terry Gilliam and Peter Greenaway films I’ve always loved, but old classics remain my favorite, “All About Eve” and pre-code movies like “Skyscraper Souls”. I am an avid reader, but I hate fiction. I like reading about things that actually happened, and biographies because they just interest me more. I think reading so many biographies about socialites, fashion designers, crazy actresses, aristocrats, and moguls has informed a lot of the writing I do for the portraits. There a lot of common themes; everyone is rich, eccentric, and things almost never end well! This is probably why so many people assume my biographies are real, or based on actual events.

Who are your favorite artists? What are your thoughts on Frida Kahlo?

Let’s see: Albrecht Durer; David Miretsky; Nancy Baker; Lindsey Carr; Tamara de Lempicka; James Jean; Hieronimus Bosch; Lucas Cranach the Elder; Pavel Filonov; Lucien Freud; Julie Heffernan; Alex Gross; Jonathan Viner; Dino Valls; Eric White; Gerald Laing; Vermeer; Soudekin, oh it could go on.

I’ve recently been getting the Frida comparison with my newest series about old medical practices. I don’t really understand why, aside from the bright colors, but I guess people just associate depictions of women in pain with her. There seems to be an unspoken rule that women artists are supposed to bow to her altar; I never liked her all that much to be honest.

Do you ever imagine a story for your characters?

I never used to imagine stories because I liked having other people make up their own; I have had people email me their stories for paintings they have bought of mine if there was no bio already! It seems with this series, the stories are people’s favorite part, so I usually do the painting first, and then I make up the story. How the person in the portrait looks will determine the story a lot of the time. I normally will just write a few sentences about the character, and then somehow it will evolve, but I really have to sit down and make myself do it. It never takes very long, but I do find it tedious sometimes. I’ve never had writer’s block or anything like that, so it’s pretty easy for me to come up with something.

“The National Portrait Gallery of Kessa: The Artwork of Arabella Proffer” is now available from Cooperative Press. It is also available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Indiebound.

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For February’s Author of the Month, I’d like to introduce up-and-coming romance author Christine Pope, who wrote one of my all-time favorite romance novels, Sympathy with the Devil. I’ve been a fan of Ms. Pope’s for a long time, since she was posting fanfiction on fanfiction.net; since then, she’s written an astonishing variety of short stories and novels, ranging from steampunk to science fiction to dark fairy tales to urban fantasy. Published by Pink Petal Books, Astonishing Adventures, Luna Quarterly and Dark Valentine magazine, Ms. Pope is a born storyteller with polished, witty and suspenseful prose that recalls Phyllis Whitney, Dorothy Eden and Mary Stewart at the height of her powers. Today she will be discussing her new book, Heart of Gold– a gaslight/steampunk romantic adventure set in the opulent late Victorian era– as well as fanfic, Phantom of the Opera, E.L. James’ “50 Shades of Gray,” and the perils and rewards of self-publishing.

But that’s not all. Ms. Pope is also giving away “Heart of Gold” to one lucky person who will then have a choice between print or an ebook. All you have to do is leave a comment below, and you’ll have a chance to win!

Hi Christine! Where are you from? When did you first decide that you wanted to write? How did you come to this decision?

I’m a native of Southern California. I’ve moved all over within SoCal, but I’ve never lived anywhere else. I think I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was really young, probably as young as eight or nine. I was such a voracious reader that I wanted to tell stories like the writers I admired so much.

Who are some of your favorite authors? How did they influence your writing?

Of course this sort of thing is really hard to narrow down, but if I have to choose, it’s the writers I go to again and again, where I know I’m going to be entertained no matter which work of theirs I pick up. The top three are Jane Austen, Mary Stewart, and Stephen King. I’m not sure exactly how they influenced my writing, but a lot of people have commented on the sense of humor that comes across in my writing, and so I’m guessing some of that comes from reading Jane Austen and absorbing the way she would comment on human foibles. From Mary Stewart comes my love of the first person (which I know some people hate, unfortunately), and– I hope– some of her detail and couples you really want to root for. Stephen King… well, I’ve been told that people have found my books hard to put down, so maybe a little bit of that Stephen King page-turner quality rubbed off.

How did you get into writing fanfic? What are your favorite fandoms– and why do you love them?

I actually got into writing fanfic when the “Phantom of the Opera” movie (which I can’t stand, for numerous reasons) came out. But this was before the movie was even released, and I was poking around online trying to get more information about it and came across references to “fanfic,” which I’d never even heard of before then. I’d actually written some of it prior to that– in the Star Wars fandom, for a Star Wars club newsletter– but I didn’t know it was referred to as fanfic. I got the idea for a contemporary retelling of the Phantom story, which turned out to be my novel “No Return.” My favorite fandoms are Phantom of the Opera, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and Harry Potter, although I’ve written a few things in smaller fandoms, including Terminator.

How do you think fanfic helped you? Do you think fanfic is a valuable learning tool for young writers?

Well, it helped me because I was going through a serious writing slump for quite awhile — we’re talking years without writing much of anything– and discovering fanfic really helped get my creative juices flowing again. After a time I started writing original fiction again, but without fanfic I really don’t know if I would ever have gotten myself in gear. I think fanfic can help young writers who are just learning the basics of plotting, dialogue structure, character development, and so on. I think the instant feedback you get in the form of reviews is also really helpful. However, I don’t think it should be the be-all, end-all, unless a person really only wants to write for a hobby and has no interest in pursuing publication outside the fanfic sites and forums. Otherwise, it can start to be a crutch– and it also takes time away from writing original pieces.

What about the excesses of fandom? What do you think of such books like EL James’ “50 Shades of Grey” which started out as the Twilight fanfic “Master of the Universe”?

All you have to do is watch a pro football game to know that every type of fan behavior can have its own excesses. I don’t think fanfic and some of its more “dedicated” followers are any different. It can be worrisome when fans of a certain fic start to get almost threatening if it’s not updated quickly or enough, or the plot takes a direction they don’t care for. As for “50 Shades of Grey” and the fanfic it came from, I haven’t read either piece, so I can only speak in generalities. I’m not averse to authors taking a fanfic and turning it into an original work– heck, I did the same thing with “No Return”– but one difference (and a major one) is that The Phantom of the Opera (the original novel, anyway) is in the public domain, and “Twilight” certainly isn’t. Also, from what I’ve read, “50 Shades” has as its two main characters basically Edward and Bella analogues, and I find that more troubling. You could argue that I did the same thing with Erik and Christine in “No Return”… except that I never tried to pass it off as anything but a book inspired by the original Phantom of the Opera story. It’s a subtle difference, maybe, but I think it does exist.

Your debut novel “Fringe Benefits” was published by Pink Petal Books a few years ago, but you have since decided to go the way of self-publishing. How did you come to that decision?

It was a variety of factors. First, I want to state that Pink Petal Books is a great company, and I was always treated very well by the publisher. Yes, I did my own covers there, but that was my own choice, and I know if Mary, the publisher, hadn’t liked them, she would have hired a cover artist to do them. I had to do a lot of my own promotion, but that’s the case for almost any writer these days — unless you’re lucky enough to be in the very top tier of the traditional publishing industry. But I looked at the bottom line, and realized that I could bring home a lot more by doing everything myself. I come from a background in publishing myself– I’ve worked as both an editor and a graphic designer. So I knew I could handle the technical parts– the covers, the formatting, a good bit of the editing– without having to go out of pocket. Yes, I have a team of beta readers and an editor go over each book before I publish it, but in the end, my profits are much better for my self-pubbed titles. And my sales are better, too. That part I can’t explain as much, because I did just as much promotion for my books published through PPB as I have for my self-pubbed books. Publishing is always a crap shoot.

How do you think small e-presses and self-published authors are changing the face of the romance genre?

I think they’re giving people a lot more variety. It’s easier to take a risk when you’re not having to do a print run of 10,000 or 25,000 books. My overhead is really low. Yes, of course there’s a lot of time invested in writing a book, but in terms of true out of pocket, it doesn’t cost me that much. I can get into the black very quickly with each title. And when you don’t feel as if you have your whole future riding on one book or even a small stable of books, you can write the things you really want to write and not worry so much about what’s going to sell a gazillion copies (although selling a gazillion copies would be nice!).

Tell us a bit about your new novel, “Heart of Gold.” What inspired this story?

I’m honestly not sure on this one. It was my NaNoWriMo novel from two years ago, and I guess I wanted to write a Victorian romance, but one with a touch of fantasy. I call it steampunk because it has airships and inventors and all that, but I think its true inspiration is more H.G. Wells’ “The Invisible Man” or “The Time Machine,” where it’s a very recognizable Victorian age, except with these crazy genius inventors behind the scenes. And I also wanted to write a romance where the heroine was true to her era– I think sometimes writers get so caught up in the trappings of a period they don’t always make the characters realistic when it comes to the mores and values involved. For a young unmarried woman of the upper class, it really was a very restrictive period.

As can be seen in “Heart,” you have a deep love and knowledge of the Victorian era. Why is that? Could you tell us a bit about your research methods?

I love history as a whole– it was my major in college. And I grew up reading Victoria Holt’s gothics, sweeping historical novels set in the Victorian age, all that stuff. I think my obsession with bustle dresses comes from watching Gone With the Wind as a child and wanting the red dress with ostrich feathers Scarlett wears in that (I never was much for hoop skirts). As an adult I became active in various historical reenactment groups, including a local Sherlock Holmes club. Because I was involved in these groups, I did a lot of research into the clothing of the period. I’ve constructed quite a few bustle gowns of my own, and I also have a lot of practice wearing them. So I think that really practical experience went into the writing of the book, as did my experience in historical ballroom dance. My research methods really aren’t that codified — since I’m a “seat of the pants” sort of writer, if I start writing a scene and realize I need more information, I just pause, go hunt it down online, glean what I need, and keep going. I love writing in Scrivener because I can import web pages right into each project and reference them whenever I need to. I do the same thing with images of clothing, places, actors, and so on.

What are some of your upcoming projects? What are your plans for the future, and what can your fans look forward to?

I’ve got a lot on my plate for 2012. I’m working on a tie-in novella to “Heart of Gold” that I’m planning to release at the end of March, and then over the summer I’m going to release “Murders in the Rue Scribe,” which is another Phantom of the Opera novel, a mystery/romance. This one is a true sequel, though, and takes place a few years after the end of the original novel. I figured since I was already writing and researching other works set in the early 1880s, I’d keep in that vein. For fall I haven’t completely decided, as I have two books about one-third to one-quarter done, and I just have to figure out which one “feels” right to finish out the year, since one is SF romance (in the same universe as my novella “Breath of Life”) and one is fantasy romance. I do tend to genre-hop a lot… or maybe “sub-genre hop” is a better way to put it, since my books always involve romance of some kind. And the year after that– well, another two or three novels at least. I always have so many works-in-progress that I’m pretty much guaranteed at least three new projects every year.

Okay, now it’s contest time! Leave a comment below to win your very own copy of “Heart of Gold”!

The small print: Comment before midnight EST on Thursday, February 16th, 2012, to be entered to win one (1) print or ebook copy of “Heart of Gold.” Winner will be selected via random.org, with winners’ names posted on this blog by February 17th, 2012. Christine will also contact the winners by e-mail; the winners need to reply with their mailing addresses so Christine can send the prize to them. Only one entry per ISP address. International entries are welcome. No purchase necessary to enter. Odds of winning depend on number of entries received. Void where prohibited.

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Anyway, I first became acquainted with Christine Pope’s writing back in her fanfiction-writing days, when she wrote fun, very well-written stories set in the Star Wars and Lord of the Rings universes. After a brief spell where we worked together on the late, great Dark Valentine magazine, I became more of a fan, and I was happy to see her writing career start to take off. Unlike her previous novels, her latest work is a historical romance; but it doesn’t have a stereotypical Regency setting and plotline. “Heart of Gold” is quite a different beast– in fact, I can’t think of any other story quite like it on the market today. It’s a splendid, exciting gaslight romantic adventure, with just a hint of steampunk.

The story follows the adventures of Miss Lavinia Greene, a well brought up but inquisitive young lady who is called by her eccentric inventor uncle to visit him at his castle in Romania. But there are no vampires here, but a mysterious and handsome young assistant, a sparkling metal-clad airship, and danger lurking around every corner. After her uncle is murdered by a pair of nefarious Russians who are out to steal his latest invention, the assistant, Joshua Jones, helps spirit her to safety– but then he disappears off the face of the earth. Convinced of his demise, she finds solace in the arms of the roguish Earl of Langdon– but she soon discovers he is not who he seems. There’s gloomy castles, daring escapes, and more excitement than you’d find in a penny dreadful. I found it almost impossible to put down.

Ms. Pope has a habit of hopping between genres, and “Heart of Gold” is no exception. The best way I could describe it is that it is somewhere between the old-fashioned period gothic suspense of Mary Stewart and Dorothy Eden, and the romantic gaslight adventures of Leanna Renee Heiber (sans ghosts). The setting is exceptionally well done. This is a Victorian England only slightly different from our own, with airships, “zooming” binoculars, automated fairy lights and various other technological wonders. But the emphasis here is squarely on Lavinia, her desire for freedom warring with her proper upbringing, and her growing feelings for Joshua. She’s a memorable heroine with a great character arc, who faces off against a slick and formidable antagonist who at times is so hateful I could imagine a crowd in a Victorian theatre hissing at him.

“Heart” is also distinguished by its beautiful, polished prose, and a solid sense of place. The opulent society of the late Victorian period, but its balls, races and masquerades, is rendered convincingly and with with gorgeous detail, with even a guest appearance by the famous couturier Mr. Worth. The manners and costumes are described with care and verve, and the stifling etiquette makes a great contrast to the increasing danger Lavinia finds herself in. Here’s a short excerpt from a masque at Kew Gardens that Lavinia attends later on in the story:

Although they had missed the opening festivities by a full hour, there was still a crush of carriages and hansom cabs outside the Gardens. More than a quarter of an hour passed before they were able to alight, but the scene which greeted Lavinia was so breathtaking she knew she would have waited twice that time without complaint.

Fancy-dress balls were a part of the normal round of the Season, but Lavinia’s Grandmamma had never allowed her to attend one, saying the atmosphere at such events was too licentious for a young woman of proper breeding. Now, finally freed from her grandmother’s constraints, Lavinia found her gaze skipping from one costume to another, each more marvelous than the next. There was a harlequin, and next to him a medieval queen, and beyond that pair some kind of a wizard and a woman in flowing Grecian robes.

Above and beyond the costumes, however, were the marvelous lights in the trees, like fairy dust in the dark. More lights guided them down a tree-lined alley to an open space near a lake, where a series of enormous white tents had been set up. In the distance, the fantastic wrought-iron form of the Palm House seemed to glow from within. It was hard to believe this was the same Kew Gardens where she had dutifully trod the pathways and listened to lectures about the thousands of plant species cultivated there. The heat of the day lingered in the warm night air, which felt soft against her skin as a lover’s kiss. (Christine Pope, “Heart of Gold,” Kindle Edition, Loc. 2807.)

As for Joshua, the hero, I found him adorable; intelligent, shy and not particularly used to the attention of ladies, he’s a really endearing Paul Bettany-esque beta hero. My only wish is that he would have had a bit more screen time. I didn’t doubt for a second why Lavinia was in love with him, but I just wanted to see more of this character, so I could have gotten a better sense of the depth of their connection. “Heart” is definitely a romantic story, but the emphasis is more on the adventure than on the romance. As it is, there is more time spent with the villain than with the hero, which is a pity. Also, the ending felt a touch abrupt: the pacing during the rest of the book was so good, I actually wanted to see a ending stretched out a beat longer.

But, these are fairly minor quibbles. “Heart of Gold” is in fact– in my opinion– better than many novels published by mainstream publishing houses. This book, a fast-paced, delightful little confection of a story, a loving tribute to Victorian melodrama, is highly diverting and a pleasure to read. It’s also living proof that an independently published novel does not have to suck.

“Heart of Gold” is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and All Romance Ebooks. A review copy was sent to me by the author.

I’m happy to announce that Christine Pope will be interviewed here on Friday for February’s Author of the Month– and there will be a giveaway too. One lucky commenter will win his or her very own copy of “Heart of Gold.” Check back in on Friday for a chance to win!

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But after a while, I tired of the same kind of schlock, and I looked for other fantasy authors who were different, and who were not writing stuff set in the same old Ye Olde Western European D&D-esque setting. Well, I discovered Tanith Lee and later Neil Gaiman; but for the most part my fantasy reading dried up, since it seemed that decent fantasy authors with a unique voice where few and far between.

My stable of reliable fantasy authors is somewhat larger now– over the years I’ve become a fan of Jack Vance, Clark Ashton Smith, Ted Chiang, Guy Gavriel Kay, and GRR Martin. But so many fantasy books seemed inaccessibly dense and tedious, and were, God forbid, in the forms of trilogies or something even longer. It’s hard for me to keep up enthusiasm for a narrative when it continues for books and books. (I admit, I even have this problem with Martin.) Hence my love for Lee and Gaiman; they write lots of one-offs. But they don’t stint on their world-building either, their prose is well-crafted yet engaging, and their characters are always memorable, believable and with rich emotional lives.

Now, I think I’ve found another author who can write wonderful, distinctive non-cliched fantasy as well as any of my favorites; and that’s Vera Nazarian. She was giving away copies of her fantasy epic “Lords of Rainbow” on LibraryThing in exchange for a review, and I bit, because I’ve enjoyed her work in the past. It took me a while to get to it, but once I started reading, and I adjusted to her style, I devoured it in days.

“Lords of Rainbow” is really an amazing book. It’s very much in the vein of Jack Vance’s or Tanith Lee’s high fantasy, with a heaping helping of C.L. Moore’s Jirel of Joiry stories. It takes place in the decadent, complacent city of Tronaelend-Lis, run by pleasure-loving but ineffective Regents in a world almost completely bereft of color. It follows the adventures of the lady sellsword Ranhé, who is shortly hired by haughty and idealistic lord Elasand who is on his way to the city for a mysterious errand; once in his service she finds herself embroiled in politics of the highest order, as well as involved (or is she?) with an insolent blond assassin. She then embarks on a quest to save the city from evil invaders, and to possibly even bring the gods of color back in her gray world. There’s romance, war, quests, gods and demonic adversaries aplenty, but all written in a way that’s compelling and utterly unique. While it touches on a few tropes that can be found in “Lord of the Rings,” such as the Regent for Life, Rightful King Returns, and Evil Overlord tropes, the feeling of the novel is much closer to the the (highly literate) fantasy pulp writers of the 1930s and 1940s, which is a welcome change from the usual ISO standard fantasy setting– plus I’ve never seen another writer tackle the ambitious concept of a world without color. It sounds like it could be cheesy, like “Pleasantville” with magic, but it’s not; it’s actually rather seductive.

It’s hard to believe a gray world could be so colorful, but Nazarian succeeds with lavish description and a fine eye for detail. I loved the decadent city in which it was set, with its hedonistic palaces, mauve-lit brothels, and archaic and half-forgotten religions. It was very reminiscent of the cities in Clark Ashton Smith’s Zothique, in its arcane magic, obsession with pleasure and genial corruption; but the difference here was that Tronaelend-Lis, in the end, is rescued from itself. It was interesting to see that the whole story takes place in one town, but it doesn’t feel boring or stifled. Too many fantasy stories try to follow the “Lord of the Rings” template too closely, and often have their characters rather pointlessly wandering to and fro. Here, the setting is focused, and all the characters, as they live in the same city, are interconnected– and how minor characters can make a difference.

Speaking of characters, the characterization, which verges on a bit of ‘telling and not showing’ at first, becomes very strong. Fantasy is rife with ‘strong female characters’ who are pretty much just sword-wielding Mary Sues with urple eyes and glose hair; but Ranhé is a marvelous heroine, resilient, unpretty, highly competent and yet emotionally stunted. She’s never had sex, and she is miserable and insecure about her body. Here’s an excerpt about halfway through, when Ranhé, depressed over her boss’s lack of interest in her, is in the city’s red-light district, debating whether or not she should hire the services of an erotene (which is what high-class professional sex workers are called in this world). Little does she know that the erotene she finds is not exactly who he says he is:

Ranhé’s guts sank in a curdling terror of indecision, then again decision. She focused on extraneous detail, wildly, saw the metal trim of the street lantern across the street, watched the curve of the scarlet orb, the geometric shadow thrown by each of the columns, the swirl of silk and satin in the skirts of the woman passerby. She saw the small flying insects circle the glowing orbs, then land, and upon touching the surface of the orb, burn and go up in a faint milky smoke. The scent of their burning wafted on the night breeze, and then was again gone, to be replaced by the sweet perfume and tea and spice scents of the district.

The first one of them that is male, the first to pass those doors . . . Now. . . .

The ornate doors of the House of Erotene opened, simultaneous with her thought. Two forms came out, both wearing the Guild cloak. The first was petite, a woman.

The second was a man.

Ranhé felt the world go still all around her, and a pang of sickness pierced her innards.

The man, tall and striking, wore no hood. He turned to speak privately to the woman before him, and his long pale hair spilled forward, like the sun. He wore his cloak carelessly, and his hands were without gloves. A carriage rolled up to the curb, and the woman, turning to him for an instant—Ranhé could see her pale flash of face and a smile—proceeded to go down the stairs, and then the carriage.

The man did not go to assist her, only stood watching, and then nodded at her just before the carriage drove away. His arms were folded before him in a confident pose, and he swept the street with his bored gaze.

Ranhé stared at him, mesmerized. And for that reason, because she had been so incredibly focused, so still in the sea of moving people, his moving gaze stopped, and he saw her.

He saw her, a motionless island, across the street.

And he became still.

Ranhé felt herself moving. It was as if a sudden external force was controlling her puppet body from without, as she stepped away from the curb and crossed the street, and at one point was nearly run over by a moving carriage.

“Out of the way, blasted fool! Watch out!” the driver yelled out, taking her for a man.

Ranhé swayed almost drunkenly out of the way, and ignored the angry carriage driver. Like an automaton, she finally crossed to the other side, and stepped onto the walkway at the foot of the colonnade.

The stairs appeared so incredibly steep before her as she stopped for an instant, looking at the House—it was in that instant a monolithic temple of pale marble—at the burning orbs above her head, the symbol of the spiraling blossom.

And she looked up at the form of the tall man with the sun-hair, who stood like a cruel unattainable god of the House at the top of the stairs, observing her, his silhouette obscuring the light.

There was a madness in her temples. Blood pounded, and yet her forehead was like ice.

Ranhé, moving as though in a dream, felt her feet moving automatically, her knees bending, as she climbed each stair, the longest flight of stairs in her life. When she was at the top, just before him, she stopped, her head lowered.

And then, because she had always been brave fearless Ranhé, she forced herself, like one condemned. She gathered her last remnant of pride, and looked up at him, looked into his eyes.

For a moment, the world fell out from under her feet, and then resurged to meet her. She saw a face, a pair of lazy eyes, somewhat slitted, apparently bored—and yet somehow familiar. Where had she seen these eyes before? (Vera Nazarian, “Lords of Rainbow,” Kindle edition.)

A few caveats. The first half of the story was not quite as focused as I would have liked, since it takes pains to introduce various characters around Tronaelend-Lis. At first I was wondering where this was going, but take heart, dear reader– it all has a purpose (not dissimilar to “American Gods,” in how numerous minor gods are introduced throughout, even though they seemingly at first have no connection to Shadow, the hero). A little patience is needed at first, but there’s a great payoff at the end.

Also, this is not a story that one can just read on autopilot; the prose takes a little attention. The style is definitely on the Vancian side of things, in that it’s ornate, stylized, and at times somewhat arch; that– and the odd use of italics– takes a bit getting used to. But once I did, I found it to be a rich, immersive read that reminded me of a vibrant tapestry, filled with color, incident and pathos. The emotions in this story are all cranked up to 11 in this; I may have described other stories as ‘operatic’ before, but “Lords” is truly operatic– and epic.

This isn’t necessarily to everyone’s tastes. It’s a long, quirky– and occasionally weird– book that takes a lot of conceptual risks, but for me, I found it a breath of fresh air. If this sounds like your cup of tea, I’d highly recommend it.

“Lords of Rainbow” is available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Indiebound.

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This month’s Artist of the Month is Mark Satchwill, who is not only the artistic half of NoHo Noir, but he is a versatile and accomplished artist in his own right. He’s been exhibited by various galleries, including Adonis Art in London and the Flavel Centre in Dartmouth, and he’s worked for magazines like “Diplomat” and “Dark Valentine,” as well as for hundreds of international collectors. He works as easily with paints as he does with digital media. He’s most famous for his watercolors, but he’s also noted for his marker work: he’s even been profiled by Letraset. (As an example, this portrait here of the Doctor Who character Idris, as played by actress Suranne Jones, is one of his marker portraits). You can see more of his blog here, and his deviantArt page here.

Hi Mark! Where are you from? Where did you to go to school? How did you get into illustration?

Hi! I’m from Watford, a small town on the outskirts of Greater London. I grew up here, then went and lived in different places all over the UK, finally settling back here a few years ago. I knew I wanted to do something in the arts from quite a young age. After my ‘A’ levels I went on to a 1-year Foundation Course at Stevenage College, where you tried different disciplines before deciding what you wanted to pursue on a Degree course. Some of my tutors thought I should do a degree in Fashion but I chose a 3-year Graphic Design Degree, with Illustration as my main focus, at Leeds Polytechnic (now Leeds Metropolitan University).

To cut a long story short I had a fairly unhappy time on the course. After graduating in 1990 I spent a few months trying to find work but eventually got a regular job. I never gave up painting and drawing completely but it was only really about five years ago I decided to pursue and art career seriously again.

Who are some of your favorite artists?

Ooh, there are lots-– Botticelli, Waterhouse, Burne-Jones, Aubrey Beardsley, Klimt, Mucha, Arthur Rackham and Edmund Dulac. Holbein’s portraits and drawings were a big influence on me. Hockney, especially his figurative paintings and drawings.

Comic artists like Jaime Hernandez, Nazario and Liberatore. Pierre and Gilles and David LaChapelle. Recently I have enjoyed the work of Nick Harris and Nathan Fox.

You grew up in the ’70s and ’80s, and I see a lot of homages to New Wave acts and the original Star Wars trilogy in your work. How did the music and pop culture of the time influence you and your art?

Oh, I think pop music and horror films were the central influences on my younger artistic self (and still are). Drawing Tudor portraits and pop stars was how I learnt to do portraits and faces. Edward Bell’s artwork for Bowie’s “Scary Monsters” was hugely influential for me. If I was a fan of someone then I wanted to draw them (later I found that I wanted to draw my lovers in the same way-– I think it’s a way of feeling closer to them and capturing them). The late 70’s/early 80’s was such a great time to be a pop music fan, and there was such a wealth of brilliantly flamboyant singers with amazing images and styles. Siouxsie, Toyah, Grace Jones, the gender-benders like Boy George and Marilyn-– all great subjects. Pop music has always been my main passion. When I stopped panting I worked in music stores for several years. I have a huge music collection and still love discovering new music.

I was also really interested in cinema, especially horror and sci-fi, and would draw the movie posters, often because I was too young to actually see the film and the images held such promise. I had drawn the Jaws 2 image of the shark towering over the girl water-skiing in my sketchbook and my art teacher got me to do a large painting of it to hang in the art room (I was 12). I was a real info geek and used to read magazines voraciously, pop and fashion magazines like Smash Hits, The Face, I.D., and film magazines like Starburst.

You also do some tremendous Doctor Who fanart. Was it one of your favorite shows growing up? What do you think of the new Who, with Steven Moffat as showrunner?

Yes, from about 1972 – 1981 I never missed it. I even had Doctor Who and Leela dolls. I stopped watching soon after Tom Baker left. I never liked Peter Davison’s Doctor much and my interest had moved elsewhere, but now I collect the DVD’s and watch them. I was thrilled when it was revived. I still watch but I’m not happy with what Moffat has done with the series since he took over. I like Matt Smith but I didn’t enjoy the last series and the recent Christmas episode was poor. I find Moffat’s recent writing convoluted and superficial. He promises too much and delivers too little. And I loathe Amy Pond. So we will see what this year brings.

If you don’t mind my asking a really fluffy question: who, in your opinion, is the hottest Doctor?

I find Matt Smith quite attractive but I think the Doctor as a character is inherently asexual– thinking of him that way is a bit like imagining your parents having sex.

Illustration, in my experience, tends to be a fairly PG field– but you’re frank and open about painting very sexy men and women, which is refreshing. How did you get into this? Who are some of your favorite ‘beefcake’ artists?

I don’t know really, but it’s always been there in my work. I remember when I was about 8 one class art project was to draw mermaids and I caused a ruckus because I not only gave mine breasts but nipples too. Thankfully I had a lovely teacher (Mrs Boleyn!) who defended my work. Sexuality is something that has always interested me and found it’s way into my work, though not necessarily in an explicit or offensive way. I’ve been asked to do more explicit work for clients occasionally, which I have no objection to doing, though personally I think being suggestive is sexier. As I only ever wanted to do figurative art doing male art was a way to get seen and sell my work, which it did as I was offered an exhibition a couple of months after contacting a male art gallery. I get a bit bored of all the gay art, there are some skilled guys but it’s all so samey, so there aren’t many beefcake artists I like really, though Harry Bush did some beautiful work.

Speaking of the ’80s, what are some of your memories of the AIDS epidemic?

Not much really. I remember reading about it and later there was ad campaigns and TV discussion shows about it. It was something I was aware of and careful about but I was never much of a “scene” person and never had many gay friends so it didn’t affect me personally.

What do you think of the “It Gets Better” Project? Have you ever thought of making a video for it?

Anything that stops young people killing themselves and helps them understand they are worth just as much as everyone else is a good thing. I hadn’t thought about a video but I’m not averse to the idea.

What are some of your favorite movies? What about books? You work a lot with NoHo Noir’s author Katherine Tomlinson. Are there any other authors you’d love to work for?

I’m a big horror fan – if I had to pick favourites I’d go for Suspiria, The Thing, Carrie, Black Christmas, Martyrs and Audition. I love all the old Hammer and Amicus movies too, especially the anthology films with several stories like “Tales From The Crypt” and “From Beyond The Grave.” Then there is Hitchcock’s The Birds and Rear Window, All About Eve, The Wizard of Oz, Paper Moon…I could go on. As for books, I’ve always loved reading. I have some favourite authors like Clive Barker, Ramsey Campbell and Steven King, and I read a lot of crime/noir novels like Stuart MacBride, John Connolly and C.J. Box. I like history non-fiction too.

Yes, Katherine and I have become a bit of a team and we have a lot of fun working together. I’d work for anyone that would have me to be honest.

It seems like you’ve worked with everything! What are some of your favorite mediums? You’ve recently discovered digital art. What programs do you work with? Does this mean you’ll give up all traditional work?

Oh, watercolour is still my favourite. I tried most things when I was a student but watercolour seemed to sing to me in a way other media didn’t. It felt naturally right. I like pen and ink too. Last year I discovered markers which I really enjoy using. I guess what these media all have in common is you have to work fairly quickly and be decisive. I decided to try digital towards the end of last year and I’m really enjoying it, though it’s a lot to learn. I’m using Manga Studio for black and white illustrations as the pen and brush tools have a lovely, natural feel to them. I have also used Artrage for painting and Sketchbook Pro, and I also have Painter though I’ve not used that as much as it’s a little less intuitive than the other programs. I don’t see digital as a replacement for traditional, just another option, so I will still do traditional work for certain projects.

What are you working on right now? Could you tell us about some of your future projects?

I just finished my sketchbook for the Sketchbook Project 2012, so that will be touring the US from April onwards. I’ll be continuing to illustrate NoHo Noir with Katherine, and we also have a graphic novel project to work on. I’d like to get more illustration work. Aside from that the aim is just to continue too learn and improve!

Thanks so much for talking to me!

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Shadow had done three years in prison. He was big enough and looked don’t-fuck-with-me enough that his biggest problem was killing time. So he kept himself in shape, and taught himself coin tricks, and thought a lot about how much he loved his wife.

I first heard the opening lines of “American Gods” read by Neil Gaiman himself about twelve years ago, at a CBLDF (Comic Book Legal Defense Fund) fundraiser held at my old college. At the time, I attended Art Center College of Design in sunny Pasadena, and when I heard that Gaiman– who wrote “The Sandman,” one of my favorite comics ever– would be speaking, I was thrilled. I made a point of attending, and being the budding artiste, I sketched him in one of my old sketchbooks. While I drew, he read from his new book, and I was immediately hooked: it sounded like the coolest thing ever. I knew I would love this story– what was it called? Oh yeah… “American Gods.” Awesome!

Anyway, after the talk, I gave him the sketch, thanked him, and went off, pleased as punch. I figured I would get the book when it came out, so I would find out what happened to Shadow.

But things didn’t quite work out that way. I got distracted by school and later by work, and I never got around to reading “American Gods,” even though all of my friends assured me it was great and I would love it. But I wasn’t sure whether I should believe them. After all, I had been disappointed by Gaiman’s film “Mirrormask”– what if “American Gods” disappointed me too? It would be so depressing!

And as the years went by, and more people told me how great it was, I resisted reading it more and more. I thought I would read it eventually, but I never felt like it, and I always figured I could get around to it later.

Well, a few weeks ago, when I was at the library, I saw that “American Gods” was actually in for once. It was such an odd sensation– but I could almost feel the book calling out to me. Joanne, read me! You know you want to read me! READ ME, DAMNIT! I had just finished reading “The Hunger Games” (which I found pretty underwhelming), and I was keen to read something different. So I thought, “why not! what the hell,” and whisked it off the shelves.

I’m not sorry I did it. Because all my friends were right.

As you can imagine, it’s rare to find a book that is as good as everyone says it is– but “American Gods” actually delivers the goods. And then some. Its Hugo and Nebula are well deserved, as it is easily one of the best fantasy novels of the past decade. The last time I felt this strongly about a book was Dan Simmons’ “Hyperion”… but if I was going to rate the two, “American Gods” just edges out “Hyperion,” because it’s a great standalone, while “Hyperion” is saddled with a following series that declines slightly in quality with every subsequent entry.

As I discovered twelve years ago, the beginning of “American Gods” grabs you and doesn’t let go. The book tells the adventures of Shadow, a big, quiet, down-to-earth guy just released from prison who learns that his beloved wife is dead. Reeling from shock, he winds up in the employ of a mysterious old one-eyed man named Wednesday; and just he’s trying to sort out who his new boss is, he finds himself smack dab in the middle of a war. But it’s not just any war– it’s a war between the old gods and the new.

You see, in Gaiman’s America, the gods feed on belief, and each wave of immigrants– from the original natives crossing the landbridge, to voudoun-practicing West African slaves, to the new millennium’s Arabs and Indians walking out of airports– bring over their own gods and beliefs. It doesn’t matter whether it’s the Algonquin trickster Wisakedjak, Welsh Gwydion, Elegba of the crossroads, the ifrit of the Saudi desert or elephant-headed Ganesh; they’re all here, and all waxing or waning, prospering or declining, always dependent on the beliefs of America’s masses of humanity. This is not a new idea, but I’ve never seen it executed with such style, conviction or sincerity as it is here.

Once you’re on board, the plot surges forward like a car down a endless highway. Quite simply, this book is the road trips to end all road trips. With Mr. Wednesday as his guide, Shadow travels across the Midwest and beyond, from Chicago to San Francisco and back again, having lots of adventures and meeting tons of unforgettable characters along the way– like the wise-cracking and ribald Mister Nancy, the pedantic undertaker Ibis, as well as the voluptuous hippie chick Easter. But the new gods– technology, TV, money– mercilessly dog his heels, alternately threatening and attempting to seduce him over to their side. For a time, he stashes himself away in the North Woods, living in a crackerbox apartment in a tiny and lovable Wisconsin town; but then he discovers that this town, while cute as a button, has plenty of dark secrets, and old enemies have a way of keep popping up at the most inconvenient times.

With the help of his friends, Shadow flees again, hoping somehow, in some way, to help Mr. Wednesday’s cause. But all the while, as the war of the gods rushes to a head, the mystery of dead children haunts him… and he wonders how best he can rescue his dead wife, who somehow won’t stay dead…

Occasionally the pacing is not rushed. Sometimes I found myself wishing that there were fewer tangents (or what I thought were tangents) and the story would cut quicker to the action; but I realized, in the end, there is not one single wasted word. Like a well-woven tapestry, all the threads of the plot are tied together at the end in an inevitable and rewarding conclusion.

This book touches on a lot of familiar tropes like Luke I am Your Father and Town with a Dark Secret, but it manages to be fantastically inventive and original– in fact, I’ve never read a book quite like it. At times I was reminded of Stephen King or even Jack Kerouac, in its humorous, loving evocation of America’s endless rolling landscapes, peppered with plenty of savvy, on-the-nose pop culture references; but then you have the archetypal magical realism more reminiscent of Tanith Lee or even Ted Chiang. More than any other author I’ve read lately, Gaiman manages to evoke how the past and present interweave… how today and tens of thousands of years ago are only separated by the blink of an eye.

It’s rare when I can find a 500 page book that was such a joy to read– I was sad to see it end. The romantic that I am, I wish that Shadow could have ended up with Laura or even his buddy Samantha; but I don’t think this would have worked. It’s rich, satisfying, epic, but with written with a deft touch and flashes of wry humor (like the neo-pagan coffeehouse waitress in San Francisco who insists she only worships an unnamed ‘feminine principle’ and is offended when Mr. Wednesday rubs her nose in actual ancient religious practices).

I’m picky about my prose, but here– there’s nothing to criticize. The prose itself is flawless. It’s breathtaking, with prose that ranges from the profane to sacred, from the hilarious to the hauntingly beautiful. The novel has a comic, witty aspect, but it is also steeped in mysticism; although I was eager to find out what happened next, there were many parts where I forced myself to read slowly as to savor the sentences. In the story’s evocation of unthinkably ancient gods and lost ways of life, I would often feel a chill.

To show you, here’s an extended passage from one of the many exquisitely written dream sequences in the story:

Sleep took him then, without Shadow noticing.

He was walking…

He was walking through a room bigger than a city, and everywhere he looked there were statues and carvings and rough- hewn images. He was standing beside a statue of a womanlike thing: her naked breasts hung flat and pendulous on her chest, around her waist was a chain of severed hands, both of her own hands held sharp knives, and, instead of a head, rising from her neck there were twin serpents, their bodies arched, facing each other, ready to attack. There was something profoundly disturbing about the statue, a deep and violent wrongness. Shadow backed away from it.

He began to walk through the hall. The carved eyes of those statues that had eyes seemed to follow his every step.

In his dream, he realized that each statue had a name burning on the floor in front of it. The man with the white hair, with a necklace of teeth about his neck, holding a drum, was Leucotios; the broad-hipped woman with monsters dropping from the vast gash between her legs was Hubur; the ram-headed man holding the golden ball was Hershef.

A precise voice, fussy and exact, was speaking to him, in his dream, but he could see no one.

“These are gods who have been forgotten, and now might as well be dead. They can be found only in dry histories. They are gone, all gone, but their names and their images remain with us.”

Shadow turned a corner, and knew himself to be in another room, even vaster than the first. It went on farther than the eye could see. Close to him was the skull of a mammoth, polished and brown, and a hairy ocher cloak, being worn by a small woman with a deformed left hand. Next to that were three women, each carved from the same granite boulder, joined at the waist: their faces had an unfinished, hasty look to them, although their breasts and genitalia had been carved with elaborate care; and there was a flightless bird which Shadow did not recognize, twice his height, with a beak like a vulture’s, but with human arms: and on, and on.

The voice spoke once more, as if it were addressing a class, saying, “These are the gods who have passed out of memory. Even their names are lost. The people who worshiped them are as forgotten as their gods. Their totems are long since broken and cast down. Their last priests died without passing on their secrets.

“Gods die. And when they truly die they are unmourned and unremembered. Ideas are more difficult to kill than people, but they can be killed, in the end.” (pg. 46 in the 2001 hardcover edition)

American Gods has many delights, but as you can see from the above passage, it is also full of death. As I stated earlier, one of Shadow’s quests is to bring his dead wife back to life; but this doesn’t end quite as you think it might.

I was particularly impressed with the richness and depth of all of the characters. Gaiman’s writing is warm and generous; he even seems to love and understand the villains. There is a deep and abiding humanity here. Mr. Town, the beefy, bullying government spook who loathes our hero Shadow above all things, actually comes to an ignominious yet vulnerable end that actually made me quite sad. I didn’t expect that at all, and that was delightful. It was a wonderful antidote to the flat, rote, asexual writing in “The Hunger Games.” “American Gods” practically throbs with life– all at once it’s sensual, unexpected, provocative, even at times horrific, but all in all, fun. And yet it has a way of getting under your skin– and making you look differently at the world around you.

The gods are with us. The gods are all around us.

But the story’s right. America is a bad land for gods.

I checked this out from my local library, but it’s available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Indiebound.

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Katherine Tomlinson-- illustration by Mark Satchwill

Hi Kathy! Tell us a bit about yourself. Where are you from? How did you get into writing?

I’m an army brat. I was born in Washington DC but brought up all over the place. I knew I wanted to be a writer from the time I was pretty young—before high school for certain. I used to share a room with my little sister and I would tell her bedtime stories every night. In high school and college I wrote for the “literary” magazines but then I graduated and got a job as a reporter and stopped writing fiction for a long time. (The first professional byline I ever got was for writing a non-fiction piece for my grandmother’s hometown newspaper. It ran the day before I turned 17. I’m very proud of that.)

I began writing fiction seriously when John Donald Carlucci hired me to edit Astonishing Adventures Magazine in 2007. We hooked up through a Craig’s List ad. Through him I’ve met so many people who have mentored me and supported me—Cormac Brown, Sandra Seamans, Patti Abbott, Paul D. Brazill—the list is long.

You’ve spent many years working with the movers and shakers of Hollywood, scripting, consulting, even producing. How has this influenced your writing? Do you have any good stories you’d like to share with us?

The most obvious lesson I’ve learned is how different books and movies are. Screenwriting is all about paring down and getting to the essential core of a story, which is easy for some books but insanely hard for others. And when you’re talking about a book that’s got huge numbers of readers—like the Harry Potter books or George R. R. Martin’s books or Lord of the Rings—there will always be fans who miss some scene or some character or some moment. But you have to pick and choose. And there’s always going to be someone who isn’t happy with your choices.

For me, screenwriting and narrative fiction writing are so different that I might as well be using two different halves of my brain when I sit down to do one or the other. In both, characters are most important to me, followed by dialogue, but that’s about the only connection the two kinds of writing share.

The two quotes that sum Hollywood up for me are screenwriter William Goldman’s “Nobody knows anything,” and “They don’t call it ‘show art,” which is often attributed to Matrix producer Joel Silver.

You have an amazing talent for the pithy, the chilling and the grotesque. Who are some of your favorite authors? Who has really influenced you? Do you prefer some authors for their short stories and others for their novels?

Thanks for the compliment!

I used to say that my major influences were “The Twilight Zone” and the Muppet Show. Both Rod Serling and Jim Henson died much too young. And then there are Jane Austen and Stephen King, both of whom were/are great with characters.

I read a lot of science fiction when I was younger, both the classic “golden age” stuff and newer writers like David Brin. I also read a lot of fantasy, witers like Alan Garner and Tanith Lee and people you’ve never heard of but also Tolkien. I loved, loved, loved the Lord of the Rings trilogy but never really liked The Hobbit.

One of your longest running projects is NoHo Noir– formerly hosted by Patch.com, and now on its own website– and as always, illustrated by the redoubtable, versatile and thoroughly amazing Mark Satchwill. How did this project come about, and what do you plan for its future?

NoHo Noir was the result of me answering another Craig’s List ad. Editor Craig Clough of the micro-news site Patch.com for North Hollywood, wanted to host fiction on the site, interconnected stories along the lines of Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City. I was hired on a Monday morning, I asked Mark to come onboard, and our first story ran that Saturday.

Collaborating with Mark is a total delight. Not only is he incredibly talented and versatile, but he’s also really fast, which was essential for the stories, which went up twice a week. Also, his images often help me solidify a storyline because he’s always finished with his illustration before I’ve finished my story.

We hope to publish the first cycle of stories (Volume I) but America Online, which owns Patch.com, has to clear it through their lawyers. The new stories, which are on our own website, feature a whole new cast of characters. We plan to continue publishing them for the foreseeable future. We also have an urban fantasy/sci fi cycle of stories called AQ (after quake) that take place in LA, but that’s on hold while we work on other projects.

You also have a new story coming out in Paul Brazill’s latest “Drunk on the Moon” collection. Could you tell us a bit about it?

Paul’s original “Drunk on the Moon” story was an origin story for his werewolf PI character, Roman Dalton. It ran in the first issue of Dark Valentine Magazine. When Paul conceived the idea of a series of “chapters” set in his Drunk on the Moon world, Trestle Press snapped it up and he invited authors to contribute. Among the writers who have had their chapters published so far are Julia Madeleine, Richard Godwin, Allan Leverone, and the aforementioned John Donald Carlucci.

My chapter is tentatively called “Blood and Fire,” and involves a Persian fire demon. It’ll be out in March and I’m very excited. Each chapter has been published as an ebook and then the chapters will be bundled into a print collection. I was honored to be asked and it was tremendous fun to write.

What are your thoughts on the evolution of the urban fantasy/paranormal romance genres? Do you think it’s evolved or devolved, as it were?

It’s definitely evolved because when I first started reading it, it didn’t even have its own genre. (I think Laurell K. Hamilton’s first Anita Blake book “Guilty Pleasures” was the first book I ever saw tagged as UF). I think the genre, which spawned paranormal romance, has split into a couple of really distinct groups, all of which are flourishing. My favorite branch is the paranormal/supernatural/urban fantasy crossover with the mystery genre, like Jim Butcher’s stories about Harry Dresden, a wizard in Chicago who solves crimes.

Then there are the paranormal romances like Christine Pope’s “Sympathy for the Devil,” where mortals consort with creatures of various sorts. I’ve seen the usual vampires, elves, fairies, and werewolves, but also gargoyles and angels, demons and the like. I spent a year reviewing paranormal romances for bittenbybooks.com under my pseudonym Kat Parrish, and some of the books were very good.

I think that a lot of urban fantasy gets a bad name from bad covers. How many women in tight leather pants and tramp stamps can one bookshelf hold? But it’s a genre that still has a lot of room for new authors.

Are there any promising new urban fantasy talents you’d recommend?

He’s not new, after four books, but I am a huge fan of Anton Strout’s novels about a character named Simon Canderous, whose “power” is psychometry. I also like Mike Carey’s books. I have a Kindle and I’m always going on their lists of freebie books looking for new authors to try out. Also, if you like paranormal romance with a sense of humor, you have to check out Dakota Cassidy’s books.

Any thoughts on “Twilight”? What are your thoughts on sparkly vampires? Do you think the books and the resulting media hype has helped or hurt the urban fantasy genre?

I think the Twilight phenomenon, like the Harry Potter rage, was a boon to all writers working in fantasy and related genres. Charlaine Harris’ southern vampire novels (the Sookie Stackhouse books) also helped when True Blood hit HBO. It’s easy to mock “sparkly vampires,” but you know, I’m not the audience Stephanie Meyer was targeting. A friend of mine’s teenage daughter was wild for the series and it was perfect for her. I tend to like my vampire stories darker because my basic take on vampires is that they’re monsters.

What do you think of the resulting backlash against “Twi-hards” in SF/F fandom and the convention circuit? The books deal extensively with young adult female sexuality, and some of the most vocal critics are men who claim that the books glorify abusive relationships. Do you think that some of the ‘nerdrage’ against Twilight has a certain misogynistic component?

I think some people need to get a life. The whole point of conventions and fandom is to share your love of things that mainstream culture often disdains. So, to me, when one clique of fan-folk turns on another, it’s ugly and ultimately pointless. So, are you cooler if you prefer True Blood or The Vampire Diaries to Twilight? Seriously, who cares? As for misogyny? I’ll leave it to others to decide. Certainly I can point to a lot of other paranormal/normal relationships that are pretty iffy. (Buffy and Spike anyone?)

The crime fiction community seems to be more inclusive and supportive. I have no patience for haters.

Two of my favorite short stories by you are “The Sin Eater” and “Auld Lang Syne” (which can both be read for free in the great short story collection Just Another Day in Paradise). “Auld Lang Syne,” is, IMO, one of the most inventive vampire short stories I’ve read in recent years. How did these two stories come about?

Those are two of my favorite stories also. “The Sin Eater” is about a woman who can touch you and take away your guilt and pain but as a result she takes it on herself until it makes her crazy. The story was triggered by a memory I have of being out with my mother when I was very young. We were in a grocery store line and a total stranger blurted out the information that her son was gay. Things like that happened to her so often that she didn’t even think it was weird. And then it started happening to me—and still does. I’ll be in the bathroom at a movie theater and someone will turn to me and tell me a secret. It’s kind of creepy.

“Auld Lang Syne” was written for a Spinetingler Magazine challenge around the time I was getting a lot of email urging me to return to Virginia for my high school reunion. After reading it, I’m not sure my classmates really wanted me to come.

Could you tell us about your other future plans and projects?

In March, I’m publishing L.A. Nocturne II, which is a collection of UF stories set in the paranormal Los Angeles that’s the setting for my WIP novel “Misbegotten.” You illustrated Tired Blood, the story that became the first chapter in the book, a tale of a vampire that develops age-related dementia. I should have “Misbegotten” out by September.

I also have two other short story collections in the works– “The Poisoned Teat” and “Twelve More Nights of Christmas,” more stories inspired by the Christmas song “Twelve Days of Christmas.” Beyond that, I’m working with a translators to produce French, Spanish, Italian and Dutch versions of some of the Kindle Single short stories I have out there. I’ll keep you posted!

Thanks for talking to me.

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The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why and Where phases. For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question “How can we eat?” the second by the question “Why do we eat?” and the third by the question “Where shall we have lunch?”

–Douglas Adams, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”

Even though food and hunger are a big part of “The Hunger Games,” I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was written by someone who had never been without a meal in their entire lives. “Where shall we have lunch?” seems about right. It’s rural poverty, starvation, and survivalism as imagined by someone whose biggest food decision for the day is whether to eat lunch at Panera or Starbucks.

I have skimmed through this book in the past, but Megan at the PoseySessions blog convinced me to give it another chance. I have read it in its entirety; I have given it another chance. This book would be fine for twelve year olds– I might have liked it well enough when I was twelve– but I am surprised that so many adults find Collins’ work to be so amazing. It’s not.

It was a struggle to get through this book. The bones of the story is good, but the writing is inept and clunky, the characterization is flat, and the world-building is unbelievably bad. “Games” in fact features some of the worst dystopian worldbuilding I’ve ever seen… it’s like Caprica on Valium.

Apparently far into the future, after various political upheavals and environmental disasters, a new Rome– cleverly called Panem, after the Latin word word for bread (as in panem et circenses– get it? GET IT?)– has been established somewhere in the Rockies, in Colorado from the sounds of it. Twelve districts, which are all dedicated to one particular Thing, whether it be manufacturing, fishing, or paper, are to the east of Colorado, connected by bullet trains (which no one ever thinks of bombing), one of them being the home district of our heroine Katniss. This is District 12, a coal mining area in the Appalachians (uh, West Virginia, I guess?). I was never sure if District 12 was a town or a province– Katniss mentions that 8,000 people live there, and this place she lives has bakeries selling frosted birthday cakes and lots of other shops– but the town, if it is one, doesn’t have a name (that is, apart from District 12), and no one seems to go elsewhere.

Anyway, apparently many people in this town/district/whatever are starving to death, even though there’s a forest teeming with game next door. But oh noes! It’s illegal for some unexplained reason to even go into this forest! There’s also a fence around the town which is supposed to keep out bears, cougars and wild dogs.

In this forest (in addition to the bears, cougars and wild dogs) there’s also deer, wild turkeys, rabbits, squirrels, strawberries, blackberries, apples, and fish. But only our valiant teenage heroine and her BFF Gale (who is a guy) are brave enough to go into the forest to hunt, even though they know nothing about field dressing and think trading fish for a loaf of bread is a good deal. So, this book is already asking me to believe that, in the future, West Virginian moms and dads have become such pussies that they letting their children starve to death, even though there’s a goddamn forest of plenty next door. But no! As Judge Dredd would say… it’s against the LAAAAAAAW! You might get and caught and whipped!

Seriously, ugh. At this point I was ready to throw this book against the wall. How can I be expected to buy into this world if it’s already this stupid? I cannot over stress how important world-building is; it’s not just another character, it’s the foundation of the entire work. You can’t build a strong story on a faulty foundation. Hence the appeal of Tolkien or G.R.R. Martin; their world-building is so immersive and rich, you can lose yourself in it. You can’t lose yourself in Collins’ ‘Panemian’ world; if you dived in, you’d crack your head. The place is as deep as a puddle.

I had other problems with the depiction of this allegedly starving town. The heroine’s sister owns a cat, and there is never any thought to actually eating it (in occupied Paris, cats were called ‘roof rabbits’ and were a major source of meat). They also have a milk goat, but never think about breeding it and slaughtering the kids. There are no gardens mentioned, even though this is supposedly way out in the sticks. Folks in the Appalachians, have, for centuries, been fiercely independent, anti-government kinds of people; you don’t get any of that here. Apparently in Collins’ future, Appalachian rednecks have become a lot of scared, law-abiding pansies who daren’t go beyond the Big Bad Fence even to bag a deer. Getting whipped is worse than starving to death? What?

Anyway, back to the plot. Apparently Collins based this story on the legend of Theseus and the tributes to King Minos, who were then fed to the Minotaur, but unfortunately in “Games” there’s no labyrinth and no Minotaur; instead, once the kids are brought from their various Districts, they’re sent to a “Battle Royale” knockoff Teen Death Match. “Battle Royale,” is, for the uninitiated, a cult Japanese live action film (which you can watch here), based on a novel and manga (which you can read here), about a teen death match waged on an island in a dystopian alternate timeline. Even if you take Collins at her word and believe she had no knowledge of the movie, novel or manga, if you’re at all familiar with “Battle,” then “Games” is just a pale copy of it. There’s much less action and excitement, since most of it seems to be spent with Katniss wangsting; even the games are set up idiotically. At the beginning of Battle Royale, survival packs with different objects and gear are distributed to each contestant. This method ensures the playing field is kept level, and provides more thrills to see how each kid can use what they’re given. But in “Games,” there’s this big metal horn called a “Cornucopia” which has a lot of gear in it which the tributes then fight over. You might think that would be a problem, since that would kill off half the contestants right away; and you’d be right! Half the kids are killed on the first day. Smart move, Gamekeepers.

There’s a lot of other dumb things here, but I’ll just mention the way that ‘sponsor gifts’ (like magical burn creme) BLOOP into existence onto Katniss’s sleeping bag (even though she is in a tree, this thing has wafted its way there on a tiny silver parachute… yeah). Katniss seems to heal more easily than Mario and Luigi from the old Super Mario Brothers game. Has she been burned? Stung by evil mutant wasps? All she needs are leaves or magical healing potions. Drink up, Katniss, and restore your health points!

Another major problem with “The Hunger Games” is that it’s also a story about outdoor survivalism written by someone who has also clearly never been outside. There is no description of how the environment would be drastically different from the Rockies and the Appalachians; there’s nothing about the different kind of trees, soil, rocks or whatever. To give you an idea of how ridiculous it is– at one point Katniss is sitting in a willow tree, in a grove of willows, bemoaning how thirsty she is and wondering where she can find water. Here’s a hint, Katniss: willows always grow near water. And out west, in dry areas like the Rockies, willows almost always grow near rivers!

But she doesn’t know this, she wanders interminably looking for water, and ends up falling into a pond. This girl is supposed to be a tough, outdoorsy miner’s daughter, but she knows less about outdoor survival than I do. We are assured how smart and tough and awesome she is, but she continues to do stupid things, like destroying her enemies’ food supplies without the thought even crossing her mind that she should save some for herself. Oh, and there’s a tracker in her forearm, and even though she comes to hate the big bad government, the thought never crosses her mind of cutting it out with her knife and escaping. (This is why trackers are usually placed in a part of the body that’s harder to reach, like the back of the neck. In “Battle Royale,” there’s metal collars fastened around the necks which have bombs embedded in them; if the contestant tries to escape, the bomb is detonated.)

All this idiocy might have been salvageable if it wasn’t first person present tense. Either is hard enough to pull off. The presence of both cripples the book. The voice is somewhere between a woman reading aloud her grocery list and a badly written Commodore text-based RPG from the ’80s. I was assured that I would find the Games exciting, but it’s not. It’s pages and pages of Katniss looking at things and being all emo about her two boyfriends.

Even moments that could have been powerful, like her killing a guy who killed her friend Rue, is rendered flat by the prose. But then you have Rue dying a pretty Disney death, even though she’s been stabbed through the stomach with a spear. But there’s no screaming or writhing; nope, Katniss just sings bad poetry to her while Rue drifts peacefully off like a Victorian heroine dying of consumption. I was also assured that Hunger Games would be dark and gritty– but it’s not. Unlike “Battle Royale,” almost all of the deaths happen off camera.

The climax comes when the last three tributes– Katniss, her semi-boyfriend Peeta and this other guy Cato– are attacked by zombie necromantic werewolves (I’m not joking, the brains of the dead tributes have somehow been transferred via science-y necromancy into the bodies of mutated dog/wolves). Cato is mauled to death, and as he’s screaming in agony all night, begging for someone to kill him, Katniss thinks sadly: “I just want his suffering to end…”

At this point I screamed at the book: “Then why don’t you just kill him? You got arrows! Fuck you, Katniss, you useless emo cunt!”

After thinking about this all night, she finally does kill him, after Cato’s been turned into “a raw hunk of meat.” How awesome. I really love this character.

Katniss is that most dreaded of tropes– she is a Faux Action Girl. She doesn’t seem that heroic, anti-heroic or even particularly convincing. She doesn’t even personally kill most of her opponents; she causes various deaths by misadventure when she drops a hornets nest on one girl, leaves another guy to the zombie werewolves, and blows up the food supply of some other guys which leads indirectly to a few more deaths. But for the most part, she monologues to herself for pages before she actually does anything (in fact, this tendency to overthink caused her to lose the bow and arrows from the Cornucopia at the beginning of the Games). Mainly she’s passive rather than active; she’s blown along by events, without actually shaping them in any way. Her few acts of defiance are supposed to be covering Rue’s corpse with flowers, and an attempt to commit suicide with Peeta at the end of the Games. But that’s it.

But as I said earlier, the basic storyline is fine. I did actually kind of like the ending– but then I’m a sucker for bittersweet endings. If it were told in past tense, with more care taken with the world-building, some more research done on the outdoors, and a more believable heroine driving events, it could have been really engaging. But instead, it’s a mediocre, overhyped YA bestseller that is, in its own unique way, just as bad as “Twilight.” “Twilight” bored me– it didn’t piss me off as much as “The Hunger Games” did. I found “Twilight” to be a dumb little romance with retro sexual politics; whereas “Games” puts forward an insultingly ignorant idea of poverty and starvation, in addition to depicting an oppressive government in a way that is almost naive enough to be dangerous.

We are told over and over again how Scary and Evil the government is, and how dangerous the world is, but honestly the threat never seemed real to me. This ties into the utter failure of the world-building. Here we have a world changed by some kind of apocalyptic event– and it’s never made clear whether it’s nuclear war or global warming. They don’t even know which one it is on the Hunger Games wiki page! How can you not know the difference between the two?

Collins herself has said that this is “three digits” of years in the future. So, it’s 300, 400, maybe even 500 years in the future. This is a United States that has completely lost the memory of being the United States. But we have a culture which is essentially 20th century with trains, TVs and cars. And Colorado has reinvented itself as ancient Rome. Where are they getting the information? Hasn’t everything been wiped out in the apocalypse? How do these people know about ancient Rome– and why do they even care?  Yet while they have a 20th century material culture, they also can genetically engineer the brains of teenagers into wolves, which is something we can’t do now, but somehow this post-apocalyptic culture is a whiz at doing. I can accept a lot of crazy things in my fiction if the author makes a decent stab at explaining them. I just read an alternate timeline science fantasy with Nazis and aliens that I really liked. But “The Hunger Games” makes my head hurt.

I think the best way to explain it is when my friend KL said, “The trilogy feels like an old movie where everything was filmed on a half empty soundstage with cardboard props.” For the record, KL liked “Games” when she read it originally, but she says that it’s best enjoyed when the brain is turned off.

This review might have been different if I had read it pre-hype, before seemingly everyone was claiming how shocking, exciting and gripping it was. At this point the book would have to be really great for me to be impressed. I was mainly surprised at how dark and edgy it wasn’t. “The Hunger Games,” in the end, seems tame and safe– like “Battle Royale” as re-imagined by a former TV writer for Nickelodeon. I’m not always fond of ultra-violent books and movies, but I think this story needed to be less tame and more adult– I think it would have been better served by a grittier, franker, more Stephen King-esque approach.

I usually try not to bring the author into my review. However, I just read this interview with Suzanne Collins where she claimed her knowledge of “severe poverty, starvation, oppression, and the effects of war” came from having an Air Force officer father who spent a year in Vietnam and who later liked to talk about history. (She also says her knowledge of the surviving outdoors comes from her dad’s stories of growing up during the Depression.) Now, I am skeptical of this because I come from a very similar background– my dad was also a USAF officer who grew up during the Depression, also served in Vietnam and who also really liked history. But neither me or my siblings would ever claim this gave us any in-depth knowledge of severe poverty, starvation, etc. I’m not sure Ms. Collins intended to sound so bourgeois and misinformed, but she does, and it’s unfortunate.

Which brings me to my final point. I have noticed, in some circles– like Metafilter and io9– that Hunger Games is the Great White Hope for YA fiction, for its allegedly kickass heroine and the idea (to quote io9) that Games is somehow “actual science fiction.” I half wonder if “Games” has been embraced as the anti-Twilight mascot because of politics. There has been much discussion about how “Twilight,” written by a conservative Mormon housewife, contains a lot of conservative politics and anti-feminism. “The Hunger Games,” on the other hand, seems the opposite; at first glance, left wing politics and a dislike of heavy-handed government seems encoded into the book, with an “active” heroine who takes on a more traditionally masculine role. But the world is poorly thought out, and Katniss comes across less like a progressive rebel and more like a passive tool. I do like the concept of the book– a sci-fi take on Theseus is pretty brilliant when you think about it. I might have liked it as a kid (before I discovered Stephen King and Margaret Atwood). It’s just a shame the execution is not that great.

Anyway, there are better dystopian/post apocalyptic books out there. There’s always the old classics like Brave New World, 1984 and Fahrenheit 451; and there’s newer classics like The Stand, Lathe of Heaven, Escape from New York, and The Handmaid’s Tale (which I can’t recommend highly enough). As for YA dystopian fiction, Peter Dickinson’s Changes trilogy– starting with The Weathermonger– is worth a read, and John Christopher’s Tripods series is exciting and compulsively readable. I especially recommend William Sleator’s House of Stairs, about a Skinner behavioral experiment done with teenage guinea pigs, to be creepy, thought provoking and far darker than “The Hunger Games” could ever think of being.

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Song of the Nile illustration, by Alan Ayers

Sorry about the holiday delay, everyone! We have a special treat for you this New Years’ Eve– December’s Artist of the Month is the amazing and talented Alan Ayers, a high-profile cover artist who does some of the most gorgeous and vivid covers to be seen on the NY Times bestseller list. His style is cinematic, as well as being simultaneously painterly and photographic; he’s worked on some of my favorite covers, and I’m delighted to welcome here on my blog.

Hi Alan! Could you tell us where you’re from? What led you to get into art?

I was born in North Carolina, and was raised in Gainesville, Florida. I’ve always had an interest in drawing and painting. I was one of those kids in school who was always called upon to do the holiday murals, although it wasn’t until my mid-20s that I pursued art/illustration as a career.

Tell us a bit about your interests growing up. Did you draw a lot as a child? What about high school?

I was always drawing and painting as a child. It was an interest that continued right through high school. Other interests were gymnastics and skydiving. (Today I no longer skydive, but I do enjoy hang gliding.)

Where did you go to school?

I graduated from P.K. Yonge Laboratory School in Gainesville, Florida, and Temple University’s Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia.

What brought you to illustrate book covers? Have you ever done traditional painting, or has digital always been your first love?

After graduating from Tyler (in 1981), my wife and I moved to Connecticut where I was an advertising illustrator until contacting a representative in New York in 1987. It was then that I began illustrating book covers. I had always known that my style was well suited for book covers. Originally I illustrated with airbrush, acrylics, and oil, until switching to digital in 1995. I very much enjoy working digitally, and feel that I’m able to use much of my traditional training in my work. I am represented by Peter Lott at Lott Reps in New York.

What are your favorite artists– both past and present?

Of course, there are many artists (both contemporary and non-contemporary) whose work I admire, but here is a short list of my favorites:

Past artists:
John Singer Sargent
Edmund Blair Leighton
The Dutch masters

Present artists:
John Jude Palencar
Larry Rostant
Steve Stone

Your style– a combination of digital illustration and photography– is remarkable, and it’s always easy to spot an Ayers cover in the bookstore. Many authors have told me they feel incredibly lucky to get a cover by you. How did you come into your style?

My work has always been very “photographic”, even when working in traditional media. I always attempt to bring a feeling of realism to my covers, and use a number of techniques. In a single image, I will frequently use a combination of multiple photographic elements, and 3-D structures (usually architectural), all brought together with traditional painting skills. Of course, I’m not using actual paint and brushes, but am working with a tablet and stylus. I often forget I’m not “pushing paint around”.

There’s something gorgeously cinematic about your work. Did film influence you? What are your favorite movies? TV shows?

(Thanks for your kind words!) I feel like film has definitely influenced my work. When we’re doing photo shoots, the topic of film often comes up — we feel as though we’re doing a single frame, out of the best part of a movie. My taste in movies is varied. For instance, two of my all-time favorites are “Gladiator” and “Pride and Prejudice.” Although the visuals of a movie are important, the story and dialogue are definitely what makes a movie memorable. As for TV, I enjoy many of the HBO, Showtime, and AMC series.

One of my favorite illustrations of yours is for Stephanie Dray’s “Song of the Nile.” Could you take us step by step through the process of what it was like to create this cover? How do you find the costumes, the models, etc? How much did you change in Photoshop?

“Song of the Nile” was a very enjoyable cover to work on! The art director (Judy Murello) gave me direction of how she envisioned the cover. The talented Toni Busker was our model. We rely a great deal on the acting skills of the models. She was photographed at Shirley Green’s Photography in New York. The costume was provided by Sharon Spiak. (Occasionally the photographer or I provide the costuming.) Of course, when I go to finish, I usually enhance the costumes a great deal. This particular image was a combination of photomontage and 3-D rendering, finished using digital painting. The three programs I rely on the most are: Photoshop, Cinema 4D, and Painter.

How would you say your style has evolved over the past decade?

I have tried to simplify my compositions as much as possible, which I believe creates a stronger image. Any “style” changes have happened very gradually.

What are some things you’d like to try in the future? Are there any upcoming projects you’d like to share with us?

As mentioned above, my primary goal is to simplify my compositions as much as possible, and continue to learn the programs I work with.

I’m currently working on covers for (among others) Elizabeth Hoyt, Cara Elliot, and Maya Banks.

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This futuristic romantic suspense story grew from a dream, one of a woman frozen in a block of ice and found by fishermen from an undersea world. She’s taken to their home and with the help of advanced medical technology, fully recovers. In time she learns she must learn to fit into their social system, one different from what she’s known.

Women are scarce. She’s encouraged to marry and has several men vying for her attention, but marries a community leader who needs someone to care for his two small children. At first it’s a business arrangement, he still loves his deceased wife, but over time their relationships grows into one of love.

It wasn’t until four years later that I started writing the story. I had several other projects underway that needed finishing first. As I started work, the plot changed drastically. The heroine had a family, one she wouldn’t be able to easily forget. I think the change is for the better. I hope you agree.

Pulled from an icy grave…into a world of doubt and danger.

Frozen in ice for seventy-five years, Zana Forrester suffers the agony of rebirth to learn her son is dead, and her daughter’s whereabouts is unknown. The year is 2155. A man’s soothing voice and gray eyes haunt her drug induced dreams. When she recovers, she meets their owner and finds her heart in danger. But, a relationship isn’t a consideration; she must find her daughter.

Brock Callahan is drawn to the beautiful woman taken aboard his salvage ship. He’s determined she’ll be his wife and a mother to his young daughter, but he vows not to love her. All the women he’s loved died. While Zana searches for her daughter, Brock must protect Zana from the evil that threatens.

“Born in Ice” is now available at Champagne Books and Amazon.com.

Please leave a comment today to be entered into a drawing for an ecopy of “A Way Back,” my time travel set in the 1930s oil fields of Texas. Your name will also be entered in the GRAND PRIZE drawing for my blog tour— a KINDLE. A name will be draw at the end of my tour on December 16th.

I also have a release contest going. Sign up for my newsletter by emailing me at linda@lindalaroque.com with BORN IN ICE in the subject line. Your name will be added to the drawing for this rhinestone frog pin. For each of my releases I try to find a piece of jewelry significant to the story. After reading Born in Ice you’ll understand why I chose this frog.

Linda LaRoque is a Texas girl, but the first time she got on a horse, it tossed her in the road dislocating her right shoulder. Forty years passed before she got on another, but it was older, slower, and she was wiser. Plus, her students looked on and it was important to save face. A retired teacher who loves West Texas, its flora and fauna, and its people, Linda’s stories paint pictures of life, love, and learning set against the raw landscape of ranches and rural communities in Texas and the Midwest. She is a member of RWA, her local chapter of HOTRWA, NTRWA and Texas Mountain Trail Writers.

Thank you for reading and writing!

Linda’s Links:

Linda LaRoque
Writing Romance With a Twist in Time
www.lindalaroque.com
http://www.lindalaroqueauthor.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/?ref=tn_tinyman#!/linda.laroque
http://twitter.com/#!/LindaLaRoque

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