It's a Beautiful Day for a Story
days
hours minutes seconds
until
“Hungry is the Night” Cover Reveal
The countdown begins! On May 30th I’ll be revealing the cover of my highly anticipated paranormal romance “Hungry is the Night”, Book One of The Night series. In Seattle, the past doesn’t stay buried — it comes back to bite you.
Happy Werewolf Wednesday, everyone! This week I’d like to talk about a delightful comic collection called Fangs by Sarah Andersen.
Sarah Andersen is perhaps best known for her comic work online, namely the webcomic Sarah’s Scribbles, in which she details the sometimes horrible but always hilarious truths of being an adult millennial in the modern day. Fangs is something of a departure from his, in both artistic style and in content. Fangs is the story of Elsie (a vampire) and Jimmy (a werewolf) who are determined to give a romantic relationship a try, given all they have in common and in spite of the vast differences between them.
There’s a lot to love here for werewolf fans and vampire aficionados alike, and it’s frankly refreshing to see a story in which these two types of ‘monsters’ aren’t immediately at odds with each other. It makes sense to me that in a world of “normal” humans, monsters would need to stick together. And that’s what Elsie and Jimmy do, even though it’s not always easy to adjust to someone else’s lifestyle or eccentricities. Fancy dinners can be tricky when you have to avoid garlic, and romantic gestures can be harder when you can’t exchange chocolates.
As a romance, Andersen does a stellar job of keeping this otherworldly tale delightfully grounded in the special mundanities that every relationship has to go through and the unique problems that dating a vampire or werewolf would throw up. The art was also just plain gorgeous to look at and I love that you can tell so much from just a single panel on a page. While I feel it’s unlikely, I’d really love another volume of these two crazy creatures figuring out how to have a life together. The continuing adventures of Elsie and Jimmy, yes please!
Let’s take a peek at the cogs inside the machine and talk about why I write and how I write on Behind the Scenes Sunday! Today I’d like to talk about the relationship between patience and writing, and why it’s so important to cultivate an ability to wait with grace when pursuing writing as a career.
Art doesn’t happen in a vacuum. While the lonely artist is a popular romantic figure, the reality is, as it often is, very different. In order to create, refine, and disseminate your art, you need other people’s help. Writing is no different. I always tell people who chat with me at events that it takes a village to make a book. My books go through many different hands before they emerge in their final form: editors, beta readers, cover artists, agents, publishers, all these folks and more combine to make my books the special creations that they are.
But what does this all mean? It means time. Making and distributing art takes time. And some of that time is going to be spent waiting for others to do their part. And if you don’t want to torment yourself or have a breakdown, you need to accept that and be willing to wait patiently. Trust in other people to do their best in the time they’ve said they’re going to do it. If that sounds easy, it absolutely is not. It is the hardest thing in the world.
At least it is for me.
Patience is hard for me. Especially when it comes to my work. But in trying to cultivate patience around my art, I’ve discovered something – a deeper appreciation for what it is that everyone does. A gratitude for the work. I’ve started to stop and smell the flowers, if you will, and appreciate every step and, most importantly, give myself and others more credit for the enormous work we do every day.
I started the first draft of my next book, Hungry is the Night, on July 4th, 2019. It will be hitting shelves August 22nd of this year, the first of a series. That’s four plus years from idea to book. That’s dedication. And that’s incredible. And I couldn’t have done it without the help of a lot of people, for whom I am infinitely grateful.
Saturday is the perfect time to wander through the stacks (that’s librarian-speak for “bookshelves”) and talk about books and the people who write them. Pull up a comfy chair and settle in, because today I want to chat about a masterpiece of classic crime fiction and the ultimate bad romance: James M. Cain’s Double Indemnity.
Double Indemnity (both the novel and the film) tells the story of Walter Huff, an insurance salesman with a nose for clients that are looking to game the system. Alarm bells go off when he meets Phyllis Nirdlinger, who wants to buy her husband accident insurance…but doesn’t want her husband to know about the accident insurance. What follows is the story of a murder, love turned to hate, and the descent of a good man into the depths of depravity – all for the love of a no-good woman and fifty thousand dollars.
I’m a big fan of the 1944 film by the same name, so I was anticipating that I would enjoy the book, but WOW. This was an absolutely incredible read. Taut, suspenseful, heart rending, and with an ending that Hollywood couldn’t even come close to and clearly didn’t even dare to try. I think it’s amazing how Cain manages to keep Huff a semi-sympathetic character throughout the entire story, even when you know what he’s going to do, what he’s done, and what he’s planning next. The way he describes things, the way he lets you in Huff’s head – it really does feel like the entire tragic tale was somehow inevitable, even though you know he did it to himself.
If you’re looking for a deadly duo that can’t be beat, Phyllis and Walter have got to be it. Their relationship is like a trainwreck – you really can’t help but watch and it feels almost wrong to look away. Anyone wanting to write a romance that’s doomed from the start, that’s rotten at its core, needs to read this book and take copious notes. I promise, it will not disappoint.
Happy Werewolf Wednesday, everyone! This week I’d like to delve a little bit into the realm of the fairy tale, of the collective unconscious, and talk about the mythic figure of the Big Bad Wolf.
Little Red Riding Hood, The Three Little Pigs, The Boy Who Cried Wolf – wolves appear again and again in folk and fairy tales, and they are often anthropomorphized. Are they technically werewolves? Well, I think an argument could certainly be made! They are part wolves, part human, and they certainly seem to lack any kind of control over their baser instincts.
The Big Bad Wolf is a destructor, a devious tempter of young, innocent things. He will lead you from the path before devouring you whole. He will huff and puff and blow your house down. And when you finally do see him, no one will believe you until it is far too late. Why do wolves hold such a sway over our collective consciousness? What is the fascination? They are wild things, uninhibited, and they often represent the things about us that we seek to control or curb – hunger, desire, rage, or greed.
The Big Bad Wolf meets ignominious and violent ends in most fairy tales. He is either eaten, or skinned, or his belly filled with stones. In “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”, the wolf is victorious, eating all the sheep and, depending on the version of the story, the boy himself. The message here is clear: these things we seek to control must be dealt with harshly or they will consume us. It is eat or be eaten, some of the time literally in these stories!
But what I love most about modern werewolf fiction is the way it has flipped these messages and questions on their heads. What would happen if we sought to understand instead of quashing these instincts and impulses? What if we embraced desire and hunger? What if we accepted them as part of the human condition? Could we make friends with the wolf at the door? That is certainly something I seek to explore in my series The Night, the first book of which hits shelves August 22nd!
Robin Jeffrey