You know you’ve a formidable marinade in there somewhere, but what on earth’s your genre?

Wallace Collection – Daydream

ABOUT THE BOOK:

A war has been fought and lost by the Jovians. Now the answer to their freedom lies within the Great Red Spot and it’s up to Ian and Callie to uncover its secret.
It is the year 1892 and Ian and Callie Castillo have had to suffer the hardships of a single parent family since their father went missing five years ago. Since then Ian has refused to use the last gift that his father left the wounded boy; a telescope that sits collecting dust in the attic. When Callie decides to peer through its murky lens it activates the device and sends the Castillo’s to the steam-powered floating cities of Jupiter to rescue their father and free the Jovians before the Martians launch their final attack. What follows is the beginning of an era that will forever be known by its strange name…Steampunk. The Jupiter Chronicles series takes flight with the first book in the series… The Secret of the Great Red Spot.

Spring Hill, TN – July 9, 2012

HERE’S WHAT SOME ARE SAYING:

Mr. Ramirez demonstrates he has truly found his talent and voice with this incredibly well-crafted book. This is the kind of book that gets the imagination moving at any age, making it perfect for children. ~Catrina Taylor, Xarrok Recommends
Captivating story which keeps you going with intense action all the way throughout the book while lending itself to frank and open conversations about absent fathers.~ Anne Rucker, Educator
“It’s Steampunk Star Wars for adventure-loving kids!” ~Ann Wilkes, Science Fiction and Other ODDyseys

The Jupiter Chronicles: The Secret of the Great Red Spot

Release Date: September 15, 2012
ISBN-13:978-0615633336
ISBN-10: 0615633331
Library of Congress Control Number: 2012909740
Available in Paperback September 15, 2012
Available for eBook (Amazon Kindle, Apple iBookstore, Sony, Kobo, B&N, Stanza, Palm Doc)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Leonardo Ramirez is a writer whose joy first comes from being a husband and a dad and enjoying life with his family. Every Saturday morning is Dad’s turn to make breakfast with bacon, blueberry pancakes and cheese eggs on the menu. There’s nothing better in this world than spending time with family. Then it’s off to karate where he trains and teaches as a 2nd Degree Black Belt along with his family at the American Karate Academy.
Lenny has been writing for 20 years with his first published work released as a graphic novel titled, Haven. With books in hand Lenny made it a point to reach out to as many events as possible with appearances at GMX where he hosted numerous panels including one with James O’Barr (creator of The Crow), Nashville Comic Con, Outer Limits Comics, Fairy Tales Bookstore, Southern Festival of Books and Author’s Circle at the Williamson County Library. He also enjoys meeting with local high schoolers about their passion for creativity and reading for elementary aged kids. His work made one of the top ten best new releases for 2010 by Gelati’s Scoop and has been featured on Comics About Girls…by a Girl Podcast as well as The Columbia Herald, Playstation Comics, Megacomics Weekly, and many others.

Visit this link to get the book:  https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/212885
This includes Apple iPad/iBooks, Nook, Sony Reader, Kobo, and most e-reading apps including Stanza, Aldiko, Adobe Digital Editions, others.

So… Jack Knife and The Book of Mass Destruction

My new book, another in the Sisters Noire series, is currently entitled “Jack Knife and The Book of Mass Destruction”. It centres around a fraudster called Selena, who is rescued from a life of drugs and crime by the enigmatic anarchist Onkel in Neo-Victorian London’s underbelly. As payment she is given a list of politicians from whom she must covertly collect intel, but every time she gets close one is murdered and she is implicated. Instead of running, Selena decides to take the killer – a deranged figure dressed as a Plague Doktor, head on. In a race against time, Selena joins  forces with mysterious amnesiac Jack Knife. They set about discovering Jack’s past and solving the murders, which seem to revolve around a book that could spell the fall of mankind.

WARNING, VIDEO CONTAINS EXPLICIT DESCRIPTIONS/SITUATIONS!

In which I jabber on about a story I haven’t written yet and do a shoddy read-through of the opening.  All without smiling. Contains swearing and sex and stuff.

NOTES

I could obviously do with working on my diction and presentation, but here’s my first stab at reading something, which should give you an a little idea of the kinda stuff I write (admittedly this is one of the bleaker sections!). This is a first step so please be kind! Constructive criticism very welcome.

My name’s Ed and this is my first VBlog.

What’s this all about?

I’ve been planning this for about a month but I needed a haircut and I was trying to think of something to actually say. The haircut didn’t take a month but it’s less messy than it was.

I haven’t got any of the pyrotechnics or the cool intro or anything like that which I really wanted, so if anyone wants to help with that, that would be awesome. Maybe do me a tune or something? A funky little number.

Basically Sisters Noire is a place for me to network with other authors – that could be you, or any friends of yours who write – I’d like to talk to them.

It is also going to be a place where I talk about my book series, the first book is called Romanse Macabre.

About me

I’m a web designer/frontend developer based in the South West of England. I have written for several years now. I joined a writers group a couple of years back, though we meet up less regularly now which is why I hope to network more online. I hope to conduct more author interviews but I think I need to do them in a more interesting way for everyone’s benefit, perhaps over Youtube. I’m also going to review more books. I recently reviewed a title by a guy called Adam Sifre – I’ve Been Deader, which is a very cool alternate comedy-horror zombie book.

More about Romanse Macabre

Think Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London, V For Vendetta and the present day episodes of Doctor Who. Romanse Macabre is kind of in the same vein as those.

I plan on reading little excerpts from my book in future videos, putting them on my website and maybe getting some of your feedback on those. I’ll also be posting about characters from my book, locations and I’ll be trying to get a bit of artwork up. I’m not the world’s greatest artist yet, but if you are then I could use your help!

Networking

I have found networking so far kind of difficult – I think you need to put a lot of time into it and I need to balance that out with a lot of writing. This is always a problem because I’ve got a nine-to-five job as well, which I know most people have. Obviously writing’s what I want to do but when I get home I get tired. I really need to do this and I need to write more just to keep my brain going and to achieve what I want to achieve which is to get published. I kinda want to do it the old fashioned way if I can, through an agent and a publishing house but if not I’m going to explore other avenues.

I’ve been looking to drive more traffic to my site and Facebook (http://www.sistersnoire.com/facebook) too, so if you could “LIKE” my Facebook page that’d be great – especially if you’re into steampunk, dieselpunk, urban fantasy / contemporary fantasy which is what I write then that’d be great.

So my wesbite Sisters Noire has writing tips from me and stuff I’ve kind of pinched from books and people and reworded so I don’t get shot (I don’t do that with my novels by the way!). I have also posted author reviews – authors who are published and authors who are published to Kindle or by some other means.

I’m very up for linking to your website if you’re a writer of urban fantasy, steampunk, dieselpunk or somehow related to what I do and a link back would be great as well.

I’d be very happy to review people’s books. I’ve also been reviewing stuff on telly I like, I’m going to try and make things more urban fantasy specific quite soon.

What are you and what do you like?

I’m kinda a massive geek, I have quite a few computer games, I’m quite into my movies, I like my tv series, one of my favourite’s recently was Luther – horrible, awesome. I love Spaced, Resident Evil, Tomb Raider, Tolkien’s good – I’m looking forward to the Hobbit. Cuba. I have lots of Lego. Stephen King is cool. Steampunk. Cuban cigars. The Tardis. The Turtles. I’m an 80′s kid – The Racoons. Amanda Palmer. Italy. I have a couple of comic books, they’re good. Music, music festivals – I’ve been to Glasto and Reading quite a few times. Neil Gaiman. Sausage rolls. I really like The Manic Street Preachers. The smell of coffee. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo was quite good. 24 – Jack Bauer. Glam rock nights in Brighton. Jurassic Park. Pepperamis. Elbow, I really like Elbow. The Beatles. I have a fur coat. Amanda Palmer’s awesome. And she married Neil Gaiman who’s also awesome, so that’s just amazing. Air, the French band. I’ve got five of their albums, they’re great to clean to, I spend like seven hours (more like 3), just listening to Air over and over. My housemate loved me.

Series name

I kind of wanted an overall series name like The Lord of The Rings or His Dark Materials, so I’ve picked a character who will be present in one form or another throughout the series called Lord Horatio Redden. The series name is Lord Horatio Redden and the Sisters Noire. Then you’ve got the book title,
so the first one is Romanse Macabre.

Until later…

So if you want to send me anything – if you have a feature for Sisters Noire or if you want an interview conducted please contact info@sistersnoire.com.

Please check out my Youtube channel and subscribe.

Originally posted on the Sisters Noire Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/sistersnoire).

6) He touched the cool roughness of the Little Anglitan brickwork as he glided
across the cobbles through the place of his death. – Ithaca Faulkner

Ithaca feeling a little light-headed.

7) The disease wasn’t in his head anymore, it was all around him.

When the madness spreads around the British seaside city called Little Anglitan.

8 ) Archery, horse-riding, fencing and much time spent under weeping-willows watching insects crawl dumbly across the powerful stanzas of poems. She ached for those days when life had been good. – Amelia Railey

Amelia Railey remembers better times when she was young, when her and her parents were happy. Before the pain.

9) “I’m losing faith, forgetting whatever it was I believed in.”

Binley reflects on a time when he may or may not have had a belief system and certainly when his body wasn’t decomposing.

10) “People love f*ck-ups in fiction, why can’t they tolerate us in real life?” – Laurence Cade

Laurence Cade gets shirty with the general populous, scribbling madly in his journal.

Originally posted on the Sisters Noire Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/sistersnoire).

1) “Oh God, you’re here to arrest me, aren’t you?”
- Laurence Cade

Drunk, heart-broken, with a head full of dead bodies, we see our tragic hero, Laurence Cade, at his lowest ebb.

2) “I just wanted something simple and ugly with someone complicated and beautiful. Was that too much to ask for?” – Laurence Cade

Laurence Cade, explaining to James what exactly he looks for in a woman.

3) “Maybe I’ve done some bad things in my past.’ She paused. “I have done some bad things in my past. But killing something when you have no idea what it is? How much blood before there’s blood on my hands?” – Amelia Railey

Amelia Railey ponders her morality, especially when it comes to killing Blue Eyes – crazed fast-zombie-esque human beings emerging around the city.

4) “My father – Mr Railey, in the kitchen, with a candlestick.” – Amelia Railey

Amelia Railey, recollecting.

5) Civilian life could not prepare a man for war, just as war could not prepare a man to return to civilian life with its mundane rules & mitigated chaos. A life in mute, running at half speed. – Ithaca Faulker

Ex-soldier Ithaca Faulkner recollects his life adjustments.

—

SN: Could you give us a little bit of background on you?

KK: By day, I’m a mild-mannered legal secretary.  By night, I wrangle words (and sometimes kids).  I’ve been spinning yarns of every kind for years – I don’t remember a time when I didn’t write.  The kids I wrangle?  There are four of them.  They keep my husband and me on our toes…and occasionally out of our minds.

KK: I’ve got a novel on submission called The Lokana Chronicles.  It’s a fantasy novel, but I’ve written in other genres, too.  I’ve dabbled in horror and post-apocalypse, both of which are not things I normally write, although I do enjoy reading horror (R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps and Fear Street series were childhood favorites).  I’ve also taken a stab at writing chick lit, though that was mostly confined to my hormone-fueled teenage years (why, yes, it is completely normal for world-famous boy bands to be wandering around some little-bitty piss-ant country town in the middle of the night and not be swarmed by screaming teenage girls).  Thankfully, I’ve learned a lot since then, although buried deep within those early novels – you know, underneath all the many and varied layers of crap – exist a nugget of coal worth polishing someday when my kids are all grown and I might realistically expect to have an hour or two to myself in which to polish said coal into diamonds.  Or at least polish them into something more than turds, anyway.

I’ve dabbled in poetry for as long as I can remember, favoring free verse and haiku over other forms, although I love sonnets and am determined to someday master the form.  I’ve written a few pieces of (awful) music for the flute, which I used to play passably well, and I did a stint as a journalist, among other things, for my local newspaper the summer after college.  I enjoyed that, but the hours were long, the pay was miserable, and the summer was hot.  The writing and the other two employees I worked with on a daily basis were great fun, though, especially as one was one of my best friends.

KK: I started writing short stories in order to work on getting to the point.  Brevity and I are not friends, you see.  I wanted to make my writing stronger by eliminating some of the unnecessary words in it, so I started by trying to write short stories.  I joined Twitter as an extension of this exercise, actually, but that’s another story.

Anyway, most of my short stories have been of the chick lit variety as romance was something I was sorely missing when I began this particular experiment.  They all pretty much follow the old boy meets girl, boy screws up, boy wins girl over in the end formula, only with the boy and girl roles reversed most of the time.

Then I joined Authonomy, a writing website run by HarperCollins.  I stumbled upon a forum thread called The Alliance of Worldbuilders, which I happily joined (we’re on our third thread now because we kept crashing the servers – the first thread was over 2000 pages long by quite a bit), and one of the regulars pointed me to a weekly flash fiction competition.  Last October they did a theme for the month, which was a departure from their normal anything-goes-so-long-as-it’s-under-1,000-words policy, and that’s when I started in with the horror writing.  I think I definitely improved my horror writing skills over the course of the month, but I’m still not sure that they’re all that great.  I think I’ll stick to reading horror and leave the writing of it to Stephen King.  He seems to know what he’s doing.

KK: I’m not writing much at the moment, except for blog posts and the odd poem.  Right now I’m working on a major revision of The Lokana Chronicles, as I’ve had a request from someone who wants to see the full manuscript, but they want me to make some serious revisions to it first.  The revisions they want will make the story stronger, so I’m happy to make them, but it’s a lot of work and with limited writing time, it means that caffeine – in any form I can get my hands on it – is my new best friend.  I’m eager to be done with the revisions so that I can move on to a new project, although I’m not sure what that will be just yet.  I’ve been toying with the idea of doing another project within Lokana, but I’ve also been toying with the idea of reworking one of those older manuscripts I mentioned earlier, even if it does mean a major, major rewrite.

KK: I really don’t know.  I remember when I was in second or third grade (I’d have been about eight) that there was this really neat diary (journal) in the school book order and I begged my mom to let me get it.  She ordered it for me and when it came, I was so excited that I went straight to my room and started writing in it.  I think I wrote all of three entries in it before it got left in the window seat with a balloon that promptly melted all over it, ruining the cover.  I never did fill all the pages, but I’ve been writing ever since.

A year or so later, we were assigned to write a story in school.  We had to illustrate them and everything in these blank hardcover books – I still have mine at home.  The teacher had them available in the school library for other students to check out; it was kind of a big deal.  She evidently thought mine was pretty good for an nine-year-old because she entered it into the University of Northern Iowa Young Writer’s Workshop that year.  A year later, my mom passed away and I used writing to cope.  I found that story in a box of old things and when I read it to my kids, I was surprised by how good it was.  I mean, it wasn’t a literary masterpiece or anything – it was called The Paperpunch Monster – but it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be.

KK: The following is an excerpt from Chapter 4 of The Lokana Chronicles.  Vegin, the Crown Prince of Lokana, has just returned from an outlying village, where he secured the hand of the woman he loves.  His parents, however, have arranged his marriage to the daughter of a wealthy nobleman and he returns from the home of his beloved’s parents to find out what lies in store for him:

“I had a wonderful evening, Vegin,” Amarah replied as they entered the library.

Tol and Enya exchanged elated smiles at Amarah’s remark.  Her mother, Danalla, was beside herself with excitement and her father’s face shone with relief.  “You two were certainly gone a long time,” Tol said.  “Did you get to know each other?”

“We did, Father.  And I still refuse to marry her.”

“You what?” the king roared after a moment of stunned silence.

“And I won’t marry him, either,” Amarah declared.

“What?” Arkin sputtered, his voice three octaves higher than normal.

“You just said you had a wonderful evening!” Danalla exclaimed.

“And I did.  Toqarnna Vegin is very nice, but I’m in love with Tornna.”

“Oh, not this again,” Arkin sighed.  “Amarah, we’ve been over this a thousand times.  That boy isn’t suitable for you!”

“Why not?  Because he’s not a prince?”  Amarah blushed as Vegin threw her a wry grin.  “Tornna is a good man, Father, and I’ll marry none other.”

“Your Highnesses, I apologize most sincerely for my daughter’s impudent behavior,” Arkin said, attempting damage control as he tried to hold himself together.  “I hope it won’t interfere with our agreement.”  He shot Amarah an icy glare.  “If you’ll excuse us, I need to have a word with my daughter.”  Though he led Amarah out of the room, much of their conversation was heard inside the library.

Danalla, having been left behind by her husband, looked as uncomfortable as everyone else felt.  “Do excuse me,” she nearly whispered as she quickly fled the room.

Once she had gone, Vegin seized the opportunity to discuss his feelings.  “Clearly she doesn’t want to marry me,” he began.

“She’s young and foolish.  She doesn’t know what she wants,” Tol said, irritated.  This wasn’t going at all the way he had planned.

“Don’t be so sure of that,” Enya said, a far-off look in her eye as she recalled her own youth.  “When we married, I wanted nothing to do with you, remember?  I had the same conversation with my parents that Amarah is having with hers.  I was wrong, of course, and so is she.  After all, parents do want what is best for their children and I know she will love you in the end, dear.  How could she not?”

“You really think it’s best for me to marry a complete stranger who has sworn to love another?  What possible good could come of that?”

“But she will love you one day, darling, I know it.  After all, I learned to love your father.”

Tol and Vegin both gaped in surprise at the queen, who was not normally so outspoken.  Tol was the first to speak as annoyance quickly replaced his shock.  “We haven’t the time for this right now, woman!  Vegin, the future of the monarchy is at stake here and I’ll not have you toying with me.”

“I am not toying with you, Father.  I will not marry Amarah.  She is in love with someone else and so am I.”

“Yes, yes, Leto, isn’t that her name?  Who is she?  Where is she from?” Tol demanded, leaving unasked the question he was most interested in having answered.

“Her name is Lipei.  She is from the House of Tolhana near Tobali.  She is the most wonderful being Kiala ever put on this earth and she is the only woman I will ever marry.”

“An Outlier?” Tol and Enya exclaimed in unison.  “You can’t be serious!” Enya added, horrified.  “Why, they’re barely civilized!”

“No son of mine is marrying a filthy peasant,” Tol declared.  “They’re at the heart of all the trouble in the kingdom.  I forbid you to see that girl again!”

“The Outliers aren’t the ones responsible for all the trouble, Father, you are!  They’re starving to death out there and you won’t lift a finger to help them.  What do you expect them to do?  You’ve left them no other choice but to revolt and if I were in their position, I would rebel, too.  I will marry Lipei, Outlier or not, and nothing you can say or do will stop me!” Vegin declared and stormed out of the library.

Tol threw his hands up in fury and glared at his wife.  “He’s your son!”

“Funny, I was about to say the same to you,” she retorted as her husband turned on his heel and followed their son from the room.

KK: Brevity.  Packing as big a punch with as few words as possible has never been a strong suit of mine, but I’m working on it.  Editing is also hard, but it’s worth it in the end.  I’m good at editing, but most of the time when I’m working on revising a project, I feel like I’m beating my head against a wall trying to get things to work.  I’m stubborn, so I don’t like to quit until I’m sure that it’s right (I strive for perfection, but I realize that it’s an unattainable goal, so I settle for right).

To combat these difficulties, I practice.  I’ve tried to hone my “Get to the point, already!” skills by joining Twitter, where if you can’t say what you want to say in 140 characters or less, well, you’d better figure out another way to say it, son, and by writing short stories.  Writing short stories led to writing flash fiction and, after writing flash fiction, I now have trouble writing short stories with 5,000-word limits without making the story feel ridiculously drawn out.  I think my experiment in honing my brevity skills has thus far been successful.

My husband has been immensely helpful in assisting my editing process.  My aforementioned attempt at writing post-apocalypse resulted in much hair-pulling (mine, not his), but the story was ultimately better for it and it’s due to be published sometime this year by Portmanteau Press in an anthology of short fiction.  It was supposed to be out this spring, but due to unforeseen circumstances, the publication date has been pushed back.  I can’t wait to hold that shiny, pretty book in my hands and squee like a teenage girl at a Bieber concert.

SN: Thank you Kay.

You can find Kay Kauffman on -

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