A New Day

This week I had really wanted to continue with my sizzle workshop but time crept up on me and suddenly it was Wednesday. Most of the time I am aware of the days but this week I am still recovering from being ill and my mind is like a sieve in all areas but one.

I have one bit of exciting news to impart on everyone. A science fiction erotic romance series, which I had mislabeled as an urban fantasy for Nocturne Bites, has found a home with Loose Id. I signed the five book contract this week and sent all the paperwork back to them. One of the items I had promised was lots of promotion so I might as well start here.

This series called the Protectors of the Earth is about a group of people who were brought to this planet specifically to protect us from coming events. These people are elementals but the reason they are elemental is new and different. When I pitched the idea I said it was like X-men meets Stargate Atlantis. Actually, I said Underworld meets Stargate Atlantis but that’s when I thought it was Urban Fantasy. In reality, I think it is more like Battlestar Galactica meets X-men meets Stargate Atlantis as there are similar elements throughout. This series is dark and edgy with lots of action and elements that are out of this world.

Regardless of what I think it is, at the time when I was trying to define its nature, C.R. and I started a search on Urban Fantasy versus Science Fiction and everything in between. My characters are elemental, which is Urban Fantasy or even paranormal, but not because they have any special powers but because they were engineered that way to protect Earth. Just how they were engineered is revealed in the first part of book 1, Of Earth and Fire. And as we all know, anything engineered is strictly sci-fi, hence no Urban Fantasy. Sigh. I really thought I had something there. LOL!

Originally this was a series of seven books which were repackaged into just five. The first two books, Avenging Aingeal and Playing With Fyre, were combined into one book called Of Earth and Fire as were six out of the seven. I’m still working on the transitions because my original idea was to have a parallel story which takes place in the universe from where they come as the transition story. A much wiser person than me told me no as it needed to be in the final book as that one would be filled with stories about how they actually got here and why.

If you think this sounds confusing to you, imagine how it was to first put together. This, like all my big series, had a lot of time and effort put into it just for the planning. So far, I’ve spent 2 months planning and another 5 months writing off and on the stories in order. This is another first for me. I usually do what the characters dictate but this time, the plot is dictating a lot of what I’m doing. Everything has to be smooth and keep you as the reader on the edge of your seat. Which means I have to write them in order as they come no matter what.

I hope you all will be interested in reading these stores. Sci-fi and fantasy are my first loves and most of my writer friends will say this is where I excel. The moment I have the contracts in my hands, I will be start to follow my progress on the blog, http://www.lc-protectorsoftheearth.blogspot.com/ and you should all go to check it out now. It has some cool graphics on it by Vexiphne who I found accidentally on Renderosity. Grab the button if you want and put it where others can see. The blog design is by Vanessa from Paperback Designs and she incorporated everything I needed and wanted.

For now, I hope that you will read the character sketches and interviews as well as excerpts from the coming series.

Until next week…

Lynn

Hello Lynn Crain!

This week we take a look at Lynn Crain. I asked her some quirky questions and got plenty of interesting answers!
Welcome Lynn!
Lynn Crain writes for the following publisher(s): eXtasy Books, Loose Id, Whiskey Creek Press, Red Rose Press
Lynn’s favorite colors are fushia and turquoise. Her favorite ice cream flavor is cookie dough. When asked if she’s a cat, dog or both kind of person and if she’d ever own(ed) a snake or some other exotic pet her answers were ~ “Both. And as for owning an exotic pet, absolutely, I have three snakes now. Their names are Sandune, Psycho and Ghost.” Concerning her preference for warm weather or cold she states, “It would depend on where I’m at. I love the Carribean but I love places like Alaska as well. My favorite place is Scotland and I’ll take whatever weather it’s having at the time.” As for where she’d live if she could live anywhere in the universe, “Scotland. I love it there because it appeals to my old soul. I know I’d been there before I ever stepped foot in the place. Go figure.” In regard to what time of day she prefers, Lynn says she’s a night owl. Her favorite day of the week is Friday and her favorite number is 13. When asked if athletic shoes are sneakers or tennies and if a soft drink is called soda or pop, she responded: tennis & soda
Here’s a scenario posed to the author: “You’re at a conference and an agent comes up to you and says, “I’ve seen your name on the web. I’m interested in taking you on as a client. You have a couple of minutes to wow me to convince me that I should.” You can only plug one book in this short amount of time. What book would you plug to land this contract and why?”
Lynn’s response: Wow…what an interesting dilemma. There would be only one of two books I would plug. I’ll give both of them and you all tell me what you think.
Thank you, Miss M. First, tell me a little bit about yourself. That’s interesting. Based upon what you’ve told me I think you would be interested in my current work in progress, Where’s My Underwear, Anyway? which is set in romantic Scotland. It’s about estranged lovers who are about to find each other again. They both have secrets and the story is about their journey to find out those secrets and well as their way back to each other. The hero is incredible as is the heroine. I think you’ll like it. It’s a story that is very near and dear to my heart as I just love Scotland. Would you like me to send you a proposal package?
Thank you, Miss. M. First, tell me a little bit about yourself. That’s interesting. Based upon what you’ve told me I think you would like my Protectors of the Earth series. It’s already published at XYZ but it shows my skill at developing a very different world of science fiction and fantasy. It has gates to other worlds, alien invaders, futuristic nanites and it interweaves paranormal fantasy essentials by the way of people who are known as elementals. There are a total of seven books in the series and are very interrelated. You see the characters from book 1 in book 7 as they are all needed to defeat the evil who is trying to take over the earth. The heroes and heroines are just that because I would certainly want them on my team if I were defending the whole human race. The reviews on it were fantastic! Plus, I just love combining aspects of the two genres and even have another idea on the back burner. Would you be interested in seeing those novels and the proposal to my new idea?
Thank you for the information Lynn!

~ Feel free to share if you have something in common with her ~

Week For Change

Sigh. You know it’s bad when I start a paragraph with a sigh. This week has been incredibly stressful for me. But along with the stress, there are rays of light and hope.

First let me apologize for being so late today. My diabetic 17 yo has been ill since last week. And those of you who know me, know I don’t ever say much. Life is what it is and we ALL must deal with the cards we are dealt. Life is just that way. Most of the time, he is not ill and is very well managed diabetically. BUT every once in a while, he’ll get something that just hangs on and longer since he was diagnosed last year.

BUT for me the diabetes isn’t the problem. It’s the kid who wants his mommy to be the ‘call and fetch girl’ which his mommy blithely replies, ‘I ain’t no one’s call and fetch girl including Daddy’s!” More prevalent than that is the undying faith that Mom can fix everything. Sigh. Now you know why I’m sighing. Oh, if it were only true!

Now, yesterday was a day of incredible change. And one I think that we need as a country and a people. Sometimes, it takes a total shakeup to get where we need to be. Me and mine are very, very lucky. We all have decent jobs and are okay as far finances. But the change President Barack Obama, our first African-American one, promises has been a long time coming. And this is good as so many of my writing friends are losing jobs and have a very unstable situation right now. We all need to remember this and think only good thoughts for them.

But the best new I’ve gotten was two-fold. First, early last week, I had turned a project into one of my publishers, Loose Id, which was near and dear to my heart. It’s called the Protectors of the Earth series and had been recently rejected by eHarlequin because it had some major sci-fi elements involved and Nocturne Bites doesn’t have any of those elements. I, however, was hopefully. While I did get rejected, I was invited to submit again which made me very, very happy.

Now to the submission. Well, it took a few days BUT my editor was delighted enough to push it on up the line. Which is great. I had had a few ideas which weren’t well received and didn’t go anywhere. This was a very good sign!

The last one is something that made me very happy and I was very surprised. I had decided late last year that I was going to make a very concentrated effort to lose weight. And I started in November with a bang. I decided to go to a Naturopath because I wanted to do everything naturally. I don’t know about you but the holidays are usually a time when I don’t lose. I am lucky if I don’t gain.

And this year, I didn’t gain an ounce. I lost…not a lot…but I lost. Yippee, yippee, YIPPEE! I just couldn’t believe it because I thought the holiday had been more horrible than I imagined. Seems now I have so much more to be thankful for than ever. If you want to track me and my weight lose journey, you can find me at my other blog, http://journeyfromfat2fit.blogspot.com/ where I try to post all the things that are happening to me in that area. Right now, it’s sparse because I’m trying to catch up from November. But I’ve had so many people ask me, including my doctor, that I figured this would be the easiest for all to see.

So for me, this year is starting with a bang I can live with. How’s your year going so far?

Hope it’s a great one! See you next week!

Lynn