Archive for November, 2009

12 Days of Great Reads!

Ready for great holiday ebooks?  Join Echelon Shorts between December 1-December 12 as we celebrate 12 Days of Great Reads! 

During this celebration, Echelon Shorts will be brining you the best new holiday releases and posts each day from the authors.  Find mystery and romance, mainstream and fantasy, thrillers and young adult stories.  The release schedule includes short stories from Carl Brookins, Austin Camacho, Mary Cunningham, Lois Carroll, Christine Verstraete, Michelle D. Sonnier, Lance Zarimba, Karen Syed, Yvonne Walus, Jeffrey Martin, Vonnie Winslow Crist, and Regan Black. 

Stop by http://echelonshorts.com during the next twelve days to find these posts and stories and for your chance to win free ebooks!

2009
11/30
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The High School Reunion

Tom Schreck

The reunion is tonight.

Yep, tonight.

Bishop Maginn

The Class of 1979.

Every year on the day before Thanksgiving I have lunch with five guys I went to high school with. On Wednesday they all said they weren’t going.

I’ve been ambivalent about going and obviously I wasn’t the only one. Reunion’s are weird stuff.

There’s the people who’s names you won’t remember.

There’s the ones you’ll wind up talking to who bored you in school and still do.

There will be that thing that happens when you see old friends of the same age. A quick look up and down followed by the evaluation of whether they’ve aged better than you or not. Another quick glance of wardrobe and jewelry to measure financial status.

Then, the conversations in which people decide just what they’re going to talk about. All the great times that happened between the ages of 14 and 18…the boring shit you’ve been doing since…where you live…what your kids do…how we’re different than today’s kids.

There will also be the discussions about those in the class who have had less than boring lives since graduation. Supposedly somebody’s on death row. Our principal committed suicide not long after we graduated. Somebody works in Hollywood.

The school we graduated from isn’t doing well. It’s run down and enrollment is less than half of when we were there. It’s a Catholic school brought together at the time by merging two schools. There isn’t another school in the city to merge with now.

Did I mention it was Catholic? Yeah, two priests from one of the merged schools are out of the priesthood  because of scandal. One had a lot of victims and was all over the news.

I’m not expecting the Big Chill tonight. My expectations aren’t real high. I hope they play music from the era and I hope they don’t do any embarrassing stuff. I hope to have a few drinks, a few laughs and get home early.

William Hurt’s character has a great line in The Big Chill. It’s toward the end and the group is arguing. He says: “A long time ago you knew me for a very short period of time.”

I think I know what he meant.

2009
11/28
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Pardon Our Progress!

In an effort to serve our readers better, we are doing a few administrative things.  Please forgive this strange blog post as we complete a required task.  :)

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2009
11/25
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The Holidays are Upon Us!

When Thursday arrives, the holidays will have successfully arrived. Turkeys will be carved, cranberries doled out, rolls buttered, potatoes thoroughly mashed, pumpkins made into pies, and people will be stuffed to the brim with stuffing.

It will be a time of thanks. A time that brings family together. When siblings playfully argue, and the yams might cook too long, and people always eat too much. Yet, what matters the most is how that holiday is spent. Yeah, those yams might have been a little overcooked. Yeah, you might feel like you ate too much. Yeah, you might have gotten lost trying to find the house. But the family was together.

Then comes the day after Thanksgiving. And the radios begin playing Christmas music 24/7. And people begin shopping for presents. And no matter where you go, you can just feel the holiday spirit.

Yet, just like Thanksgiving, the holidays, no matter what you celebrate, bring people together. Friends, family, or both. Your relatives that you never see come down to visit, and you have giant parties and gatherings with your family and friends just because. Because the holidays truly are a time for family or those people that you truly care about. Why else would you go shopping for hours, without knowing what you’re looking for, to buy your dad or mom, brother or sister, aunt or uncle, niece or nephew, cousin or best friend, a gift? You do it because you care about them, and you want to show them that you care.

While the holidays might bring people stress, it also brings people together. It’s the time when you say, “Yeah, you might bug me at times. But that’s what family does. But that’s what a best friend does. And I still love you.” And that’s what is important. Bringing people together. Showing those that you love that you do love them and that you do care about them.

So when you’ve been standing in line for half an hour to buy your niece a new set of books, or you’re stressed because you’ve just burnt the batch of dinner rolls, or the dog has just ripped the entire tablecloth (food and all) off the kitchen table, or you’re worried because you feel like you simply don’t have enough hours in the day to have everything ready for Thanksgiving or the holidays, remember it’s not always about what you buy, but it’s about the coming together of family and friends and showing them how much you love them.

Happy Holidays Everyone!!

~~Alyssa Montgomery

2009
11/23
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Fiction, Family & No Place Like Home

As the chilliness of late autumn settles over Maryland and Thanksgiving draws closer, I think about the things I’m most grateful for. The blessings in my life are many, and family and dear friends are near the top of that list. What, you may ask, does that have to do with my writing? More than you may realize!

One of the reoccurring themes in my fiction is family. Sometimes, it’s a traditional family filled with aunts, uncles, and cousins like the one in a holiday story I’m currently writing. Sometimes, it’s a family of both blood relations and friends like the Chaloupek Brothers’ Amazing Oddities performers in “Sideshow by the Sea.” And sometimes, it’s a family the protagonist builds through the course of a story like the one Flynn pulls together in “Assassins.”

Whether in fantasy fiction, adventure fiction, or real life, people need security, a sense of belonging, and love. In “Sideshow,” Dusana feels protected, is part of the carnival family, and is loved by her adopted mom – but she doesn’t feel she truly belongs and is ready for a different kind of love. In “Assassins,” Flynn has abandoned the security of his mother and the family business. When he finally finds someone he wants to love and protect, he struggles to return home.

Home and all that word represents – that is the key. Whether it’s Dorothy building a family of a scarecrow, tin man, lion, and wizard who still longs for Auntie Em and the farm, or Frodo building a Fellowship who still longs for The Shire – the characters of a story can teach us about family and friendship, and that there’s no place like home.

And so, this Thanksgiving I wish you a day filled with family, whether traditional, non-traditional, or a combination of the two. May you feel secure and loved, and may you take a few minutes away from the football games and dinner table to read a good story or two.

2009
11/21
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The Young Alchemists: Mister Corinth’s Laboratory

I have no idea why it’s taken me so long to write these shorts. Sure I can blame a million things, my first novel, Thomas Riley just came out, I’ve been marketing like a mad man trying to do the job of PR guy, writer, fan club manager, travel agent, etc… But the truth is I had a really difficult time originally wrapping my brain around writing for YA.

 My job was to write YA steampunk short stories. Sounds easy enough right? So I sat down with an idea in my head and… nothing. I literally couldn’t wrap my head around writing for young adults. While some may say Thomas Riley is a YA novel, I would disagree to a point. It was never intended to be a YA story; it just doesn’t have any sex, or cursing in it. There’s plenty of violence, but young adults probably see far worse while fighting Nazi zombies in the secret level of Call of Duty. So I wrote and re-wrote the beginning of a short story called “The Young Alchemists” but nothing seemed to click. I kept asking myself, that’s too violent, or not violent enough, or what would a fourteen year old Victorian girl say? I toiled for months.

 I asked my friends with kids, what do their children read? Most of which aren’t really young adults yet so the information I got was spotty at best. So I just kept plugging away, writing four pages or so and scrapping them a week later for a new more YA friendly story. After writing so much a story actually began to develop that I was happy with. Many people said, “Don’t think about it, just write it like you want. Don’t write for young adults, they can probably take what you write.”

 So I did and the ideas exploded. I completed the story the day before I left for the Thomas Riley release and I hand wrote much of the next story late nights in Myrtle Beach. Now I have the whole series planned out, not in outline form, but in ideas. The main characters, Knox Wallingford and Lizzy Strauss have a lot of adventures ahead of them.

 The first installment of The Young Alchemists: Mister Corinth’s Laboratory is not quite for sale yet, but it will be very soon. Here’s a little blurb to wet your appetite.

The land of West Canvia is thick with the tension of war. Spies and hit and run insurgents roam the streets. Knox Wallingford dreams of being a scientist and inventor like his idol Thomas Riley. While his parents are away fighting in a war, Knox’s not so perfect mechanical inclination runs him into a new friend, Lizzy Strauss, another unlikely student of science and technology. When they witness a would-be kidnapping, they rush to the rescue, using their wits and budding scientific prowess to thwart the attack. But this is just the beginning. Knox and Lizzy are given a mysterious key to a laboratory with untold devises and scientific knowledge. Pursued by a strange man, they have to keep the laboratory’s secrets safe before they fall into the wrong hands.

 You can buy it very soon here: http://echelonpress.com

 If you want to know more about Thomas Riley, I highly suggest you check out his website, www.sirthomasriley.com as well.

 

2009
11/18
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Conferences, Conventions and Tribal Gatherings

I was reminded again the other day how much of the complicated business routines of authorship some of us now take for granted. An individual who had just signed her first contract with a publisher wanted to know how I got national distribution for my novels.

I blinked, looked at her and asked, did you read your contract? Of course she had, but it didn’t say anything about distribution. It dawned on me she was like a lot of people. Readers go to bookstores large and small and find books they want to purchase and read. Readers also go to libraries. And I’ll bet not one in ten have any idea how those books get to those shelves. It’s like a lot of things in life. Do you have any real understanding of how the produce on your local grocer’s shelves got there?

We take so much for granted in this life. I’m not proposing, gentle reader, that you should or need to understand the journey that a short story follows to go from the mind of the author to its offering on the pages of a publisher, Echelon Press, for example. Indeed, you may not care and all the myriad steps are not all that important to you. What you care about is the final product. Will it do what is advertised? Will it be a satisfying read? Diverting? Thoughtful, interesting enough, perhaps, to be read again at a future time?

Well, I don’t propose to tell you here, maybe at another time. But I do have a suggestion. If you, as a reader of crime or other fiction, have an interest in such things, and even in the authors who create the literature of our world, why not attend a party?

All over the country, nearly every month, in almost every conceivable genre, there are tribal gatherings. No matter what kind of fiction you read, there is a fan convention right for you. Large, like the International Mystery Convention held recently in Indianapolis, or the annual Romance Writers of America convention, these gatherings of professionals in their field have at least one thing in common: the welcome fans. Or smaller, like Magna Cum Murder in Muncie Indiana, or Sleuthfest in Florida, or Mayhem in the Midlands in Omaha.

You want to meet favorite authors? Get some behind the scenes gossip? Learn which publishers are doing what kind of books. It’s all there and more. Some of them are sponsored by your local college or chapter of a larger organization like Sisters In Crime or Mystery Writers of America. Some of them like the recent convention at the Loft in Minneapolis attract only a hundred souls. The folks who organize these conventions are interested in providing information to fans, to readers to possible writers. They can be a lot of fun and will enhance your reading experience. So, start with your local immediate area and find out about readers’ conventions. Attending the occasional fan convention can be a lot of fun. And always, read more mysteries!

2009
11/16
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