Cool weather in Atlanta! Cue the pumpkins…

As a gift from the gods,  just as Michelle hit “send” on the final edits of “The Goblin’s Curse” (book six of the Faire Folk series), the temperature dropped to tolerable, even delightful, status.   Seventy degrees by day, in the fifties at night. Of course, we may get a return of the sweaty nineties, but it’ll just be summer’s last bit of bravado. Fall is definitely in the air.

I celebrated yesterday by buying a perma-punk. That’s the term for a faux pumpkin coined years ago by Atlanta Shakespearean actor and wit Doug Kaye. I’ll probably get real pumpkins, too, but the humidity and lingering heat turns them into little mold farms so I’ll wait ’till mid October for those. In the meantime, I’ve got my lovely orange pumpkin, which looks so real that the cashier at Joann’s almost hit herself in the face with it when she misjudged its weight. It looks like a twenty pound beast of a pumpkin, but it’s made of some sort of hard foam. Problem is, since it weighs almost nothing,  I don’t know how I’ll keep the wind from blowing it off the porch.

Pumpkin glue, anyone?

Berta

Fall contest, and for you blog readers, a little extra!

Thanks to everyone who participated in the Spring contest. We forgot to say when it was over, and folks kept sending entries – so voila!  A Fall Contest!  If you entered after the close of the last one (which no one knew about) you’re entered in this one, and we promise to announce a winner by October 31st.

And for blog readers only, here’s a second contest:  Is your cat awful? Hilarious? Awfully hilarious?

Post your best “horrible cat” story here at Magical Forest, and we’ll pick our favorite and make you (or someone you choose) a vendor at the High Mountain Renaissance Faire in the next book, The Goblin’s Curse!  You might even get scorched by a goblin!  Luckily, it’s just your name, so your real self will be scorch-free.

Berta and Michelle

Hard choices – rewrites and ditching your darlings

We’re hard at work on rewrites to the Goblin’s Taint, the sixth Faire Folk book, and we’ve had to make a couple of major changes in order to keep the story flowing.  This is the moment when we look sadly at the computer before hitting “delete” on pages of text that made us laugh or sent our characters in some direction or another that didn’t suit the plot. And because we’re professionals, we don’t hesitate to slash and burn through the manuscript in order to get a better story. That does not mean we don’t get heartburn over cutting off pages that took time and thought to create, so we keep some of them.

I keep a folder with “out takes” from the books, and for a while we thought we’d publish them here, in our friendly little blog, but they don’t make a lot of sense outside of the context of the book.  Still, they might be useful as the nuggets that form a new story, and since it’s unlikely that the folder will get dusty on my computer’s desktop, the bits of Keelie’s world that will never be published are stored away until we need them.

          Have you written something that you’ve had to cut down drastically?

Do you save some of your edited bits?

Kindling

Michelle and I were talking last night about what to do with our massive amounts of free time  (Excuse the explosive laughter coming from Hall County.). Okay, so we have zero free time, but we’re STILL talking about writing some Keelie stories to post on Amazon and other ebook sites. We can’t promise publication dates, but we’ll post here when we’re close to releasing a new story exploring Keelie’s world.

In the meantime, we’re starting edits on the next book The Goblin’s Taint, this weekend. Just a little tweaking, so that we can have the manuscript back in our editor’s hands by September. Virtual hands, that is, since we’ll email it — so much more 21st century than killing trees and licking stamps.

 

The short, hot, summer

I’m about ready to invest in a kiddie pool and do my writing sprawled in three inches of cool water, like a rescued dolphin. Today the Atlanta area is expecting 97 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s dragon weather.The back to school signs are going up in stores, which makes me sad (a  residual emotion, since I haven’t had to go back to school in a very long time!). Even oven-hot, summer just isn’t long enough.

Meanwhile, the dogs pant all night long, slurp up the contents of the water bowls in seconds,  and don’t want to go outside. I think they might be afraid that the grass will sizzle when they pee. The cats could care. They’re indoor kitties of privilege and spend their days snoozing in forbidden spots, like the sweater drawer in my closet. My stored sweaters now have a nice sheen of cat fur to make them extra snuggly.

I bought fudgsicles, hoping that they’d cool me down, but they’re actually stressful to eat, since they melt so fast in the outdoors that you have to do some serious lickage to keep them from dripping everywhere. The dogs watch through the glass door, interested, but not enough to join me. Maybe I should experiment with a pan of raw cookies, to see if they’ll bake on the deck. That should get the dogs excited about the outdoors, especially if they’re peanut butter.  And that kiddie pool had better be big enough for all the big dogs, too.

How do you cope with the heat?

ADOS – Attention Deficit – Ooh, Shiny!

That’s what the button read that I gave Michelle as TimeGate 2011 was winding down.  No, it’s not a riff on ADD. But when you’re at a science fiction and fantasy convention, it’s hard to stay focused. Both halves of Gillian Summers had a great deal of fun. We met fans, both old and new, chatted with other writers, and stared enviously at the great costumes that passed by our guest table in the hall.

We shared the table with the amazing Jana Oliver, author of the The Demontrapper’s Daughter (demon hunting teen in Atlanta’s Little Five Points – a fast-paced, action-packed read with a fun new heroine you’ll fall in love with) which meant that when we weren’t on panels or talking to fans, we got to chat with her!

As we jump into June, we’re going on a mini book tour, doing signings at different spots in our area. Why? Because The Quicksilver Faire will be in bookstores any minute! We’re seriously working on keeping our website updated, too, as well as this blog, so stay tuned for postings of where you can meet us!

In the meantime, we’re fiendishly plotting our next fiendishly plotted novel.  And it has cats. Sorry. The cat made me say that.

Meow for now,

Berta

 

Timegate 2011, Memorial Day weekend

I love a good science fiction convention. So many people who watch what I watch, love what I love!  Is this how golfers feel at a tournament?  Michelle and I will be at Timegate, and we’re hosting a party for the release of Quicksilver Faire. The book is officially out the first week of June, but we hope to have some copies there. Cross your fingers!  And if you’re in Atlanta and have time to come to the convention, do pre-register and save some bucks!  Our party will have lots of food, prizes and we’ll do a reading, so stop on by!

Berta

(one half of Gillian)

My new book, The Quicksilver Faire will be released in June. Woot!

Hey, World!

This book takes Keelie Heartwood to the realm of Fairy, where she’ll face new challenges, meet new friends, and face old and new foes.  During the writing of The Quicksilver Faire, I had a new reader offer her opinion on the manuscript.   She offered suggestions on Knot’s motivational goals in certain scenes.  Her insight was invaluable, especially trying to figure out a cat thinks. I’m still not too sure if I have a grasp of the mental workings of a feline’s brain, which is okay. It’s a confusing place to be.

I hope you’ll enjoy The Quicksilver Faire. And without  further ado, let me introduce Zabrina, a cat of many opinions.

We have a new blog!

Finally, graduated from a MySpace blog.