Halloween Week Grand Prize Winner & Upcoming Chat with Shannon K. Butcher!
The winner of our Halloween Week Scavenger Hunt is Missy Brooks!! Her grand prize win is a $50.00 Visa gift card. Thanks to all of our participants!
We've got some great contests, chats and other events planned for the end of the year -- so keep checking the blog and newsletter for updates! In fact, the next event where you'll be able to win some fab books is a chat with Shannon K. Butcher, author of the THE SENTINEL WARS series on Thursday, November 19th @ 9pm ET. Bookmark our chat room!
Halloween Week Guest Blog & Giveaway Day 5: P.N. Elrod
UPDATE: The winner of a book of their choce by P.N. Elrod is Pam P! Congrats! Please send your physical addy to contests(AT)knightagency.net, along with your book request.
A note from TKA: Today is the final day for our special Halloween week guest blogs and contests. We hope you've enjoyed interacting with these amazing authors! At the bottom of this post you'll find the last question for the scavenger hunt and instructions on how to send in you entry for the $50 Visa gift card! Also, don't forget to leave a comment in this post for a chance to win one of P.N. Elrod's fabulous books!
Once again through the magic of time travel, writer P.N. Elrod finds herself back in 1938 Chicago. She’s charged into Lady Crymsyn, the nightclub belonging to undead P.I. Jack Fleming of The Vampire Files.
Elrod rushes upstairs to energetically pound on his office door.
P.N. Elrod: Yo, Fleming! Jack Fleming: (From inside) You again? Take a vacation why don’t you? Elrod: Wake up! Fleming: I don’t sleep, remember? Elrod: Yeah, I remember, I made that up just for you. You’re dead during the day, but it’s night, so get your ass out here! Fleming: You’re a real peach, y’know that? Elrod: Move it! Fleming: (Unlocking and opening the door a crack, looking rumpled) WHAT is your problem? Elrod: It’s the night before Halloween. Fleming: You know how a calendar works. I’m happy for you, now go away. Elrod: Any more lip and I’ll sic Whitey Kroun on you. Fleming: (Pinching the bridge of his nose) Jeeze, I need a drink. Elrod: You don’t have time to go to the Stockyards. It’s Halloween tomorrow. Fleming: You’ve covered that point and your timing’s off. It may be Halloween tomorrow for you, but not for me. Elrod: Huh? Fleming: In 1938 Halloween falls on a Monday. I bet in 2009 it falls on a Saturday. Elrod: Details, details, you drive me crazy. Fleming: That makes us even, now why don’t you go back to the future? Elrod: I love that movie. Fleming: What movie? Elrod: You’ll find out. Maybe. Fleming: See you there, then. Maybe. (Tries to shut the door. Elrod won’t let him.) Elrod: Don’t you get it? It’s gonna be Halloween! You’re a vampire—you need to do something! I’ve been down to the main room of your nightclub and you’ve not even decorated. Fleming: It’s Halloween, not Christmas, and I will once again point out that this is 1938. We celebrate one holiday at a time, no planning six months in advance for the mercantile element. Elrod: I GET that, but you’ve not got anythin— Fleming: I’ve ordered plenty of candy and someone’s coming in tomorrow to put jack-o-lanterns on the tables. Satisfi—no, don’t answer that, I should know better than to ask. Elrod: That’s it? No black and orange streamers or tablecloths? No cut-outs of black cats and— Fleming: The club’s name is “Lady Crymsyn,” there’s a lot of red here. My girlfriend told me the colors would clash or something. Anyway, we’re having a costume party. So long as there’s booze flowing no one’s going to care— Elrod: (Barging past him and into the office.) Terrific! Where’s your costume? Fleming: I’m wearing a monkey suit. Elrod: (Halting in shock) You’re going as a gorilla? Fleming: It’s my tuxedo. Jeeze, look it up in your slang dictionary. Elrod: Hey, a tux is great! Outstanding! Where’s the cape? Or is it a cloak? Fleming: If you’re talking about an opera cape, the answer is a flat NO. I wouldn’t be caught undead in one of those things and you know it. We established that in the first book. Elrod: Yeah, yeah, but you dressed up like Dracula? It’s a natural—I mean, a supernatural! Fleming: (groans) Lady, are you out of your mind? I am NOT going as Dracula. I’m trying to keep a low profile. There’s enough people who know I’m a vampire, I don’t need to be flaunting it! Elrod: In my time it’s called “plausible deniability” and it’s great. A vampire would never dress up like another vampire, but you being a vampire dressing like a vampire, means no one would ever suspect that you’re really a vampire. Right? Fleming: Uh…
(Fleming’s partner, private agent Charles Escott, walks in.)
Charles Escott: Why, Ms. Elrod, I thought I heard your voice. What an utter delight to see you again! (Bows to kiss the back of her hand.) Elrod: Ohhh, Mr. Escott! Likewise, I’m sure. Escott: Now-now, I insist you call me Charles. Elrod: Sure! My goodness—you look outstanding! Escott: You’re most kind. It’s my new tuxedo. I wore it over from the tailor shop. Elrod: You look better than outstanding! And that opera cape…is that real red silk lining? Escott: You’ve an excellent eye. Indeed it is. Elrod: Not that it isn’t totally awesome, but are you dressed up to be Dracula? Escott: I thought I would spare Jack the discomfiture. The truth be told, he’s still a bit awkward about the whole vampire business. Self-conscious, you know. Fleming: I am not! Elrod: Y’know, you are exactly right. He’s had a heck of a long breaking-in period. Escott: Exceptionally long. What is it, twenty years now? Elrod: In writing time. In book time it’s only been about two years, but you’ve nailed it. He should have the hang of things by now. I can’t think what his problem is. Escott: Perhaps— Fleming: HEY!! I’m right here! Elrod: Okay-okay, not so loud, fang-boy! So, if you’re not going as Dracula, then who are you going to be on Halloween? Fleming: I got a half-mask at the dime store. I’m going as Raffles, the master thief. Elrod: (Deadpan flat) Raffles. You’re going as…Raffles. Fleming: You got a problem with that? Elrod: Raffles is English and you can’t do an English accent to save your un-life. Charles should go as Raffles and you should go as Dracula. Escott: I’d not thought of that! She has a point, Jack. Fleming: This dame’s got more points than Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and she’s about as welcome. Elrod: And after all I’ve done for you. Fleming: You mean all you’ve done to me! (Digging in his pants pocket) Charles, here’s twenty bucks—take her over to Gordy’s night club and show her around. Let her play the slots. Introduce her to Frank Nitti. Escott: To Frank Nitti!? Are you mad? I’ll do no such thing! Elrod: (Grabbing Escott’s arm) Oh, hell-yes, you will! Time’s a-wastin’, big boy, come on. We’re gonna have a blast! Escott: Er—that sounds rather violent, don’t you think? Elrod: The way I do it doesn’t hurt a bit!
(They rush downstairs and out, leaving the club. Jack’s girlfriend, Bobbi Smythe, crawls out from under the desk.)
Fleming: You okay, honey? Bobbi: I’m fine. I hope Pat doesn’t put Charles in traction. Fleming: If she does, it’ll be his own fault. He encourages her. Bobbi: Can you blame him? Without her we’re all out of a job. You should be nicer. Fleming: After all the crap she puts me through? You haven’t seen the half of it. You didn’t have to hide. She’d have left. Bobbi: I didn’t want to embarrass her. I’m not exactly dressed for company. Fleming: You’re not exactly dressed, period. Bobbi: Like the lady said, ‘time’s a-wastin’, big boy.’ Fleming: So what d’you want, sweetheart, trick. . .or treat? Bobbi: Treat, always treat!
HALLOWEEN WEEK CONTESTS: Each day this week (Oct. 26 thru Oct. 30th) a guest blogger has given away a signed book to one person randomly chosen from the comment section. Today's prize is a book of YOUR CHOICE from P.N. Elrod (P.N. has a wide array of titles available, so you'll most likely get your pick. However, please note your final choice will be based on what she has in stock.). Check back in this post Monday morning to find out if you are the winner!
SCAVENGER HUNT QUESTION (5 of 5 - FINAL QUESTION): What is the name of the actor P.N. considers her ideal pick to play character Jack Fleming in a movie?
So, it's the final day for our scavenger hunt! Have you been collecting the answers from our guest blogger's official author websites? If not, make haste! There's a $50 Visa gift card at stake! Compile the questions from the posts this week, and send all 5 answers in an email to contests(AT)knightagency.net. Entries must be sent in before the clock strikes midnight on Sunday, November 1st. So get to it! A winner will be randomly drawn on Monday and announced here on the blog. If you have any questions, please email contests(AT)knightagency.net.
Halloween Week Guest Blog & Giveaway Day 4: Robin Owens
UPDATE: The winner of a book of their choice from Robin D. Owens's backlist is Tannun! Congrats! Please email your physical addy to contests(AT)knightagency.net.
My "Heart" series of fantasy romances are set on Celta, a planet colonized by people with psi powers that have essentially developed into magic. Animals have developed some sentience, enough intelligence that they have become Familiar Companions. I've written of cats with attitude (redundant), puppies and noble hound and the occasional fox. These make appearances as friends, mentors and tricksters.
The holidays of Celta are based on general and popular opinion of ancient Celtic and Druidic culture. Since it's my world, what I want that society to be like, and how I've made the planet turn...
A Glimpse @ Samhain (November 1), as celebrated on Celta:
The twinmoons are high and golden in the sky this chill midnight when Halloween tips over into Samhain. Soon the ritual to honor those lost in the past year and to bless the new year will begin. This is the last harvest festival, summer's end the acceptance that winter is coming. An altar has food for the living...and a platter for the dead on this night when the walls between the worlds are thin.
At first the people in the grove are quiet as the circle is made, then the bonfire is lit and stories of those who passed away are recounted. Toasts are drunk and written regrets from the past are tossed into the fire. The new year is embraced. Stars – galaxies – seem to whirl through the sky, spinning white and bright as people circle the fire, hand clasped to hand, dancing.
Laughter and fellowship are celebrated, friends and family eat and drink of the harvest bounty. Cider – soft and hard – lays tangy on the tongue, ready to be followed by savory meat pies, then sugar-dusted pastries.
After sharing food comes meditation, and some may stare into the bonfire and try to see the future in the flames. Again people stand linked and let their magic and their hopes and dreams for themselves and their loved ones flow around the ritual circle. Then the circle is opened and folk will slip from the night and the silver and shadow grove into the warm and welcoming house.
Or they will teleport to their own special places and other, more intimate celebrations may commence...
May you enjoy whatever holidays you celebrate, and always make them your own with your own traditions.
HALLOWEEN WEEK CONTESTS: Remember, there are TWO ways to win! Each day this week (Oct. 26 thru Oct. 30th) a guest blogger will give away a signed book to one person randomly chosen from the comment section. Today's prize is a book of YOUR CHOICE from Robin Owens's backlist. Check back in this post tomorrow to find out if you are the winner!
Also, at the bottom of each post there is a scavenger hunt question. The answer can be located somewhere on the author's website. Send in all 5 correct answers* to the scavenger hunt questions, and you will be entered in a drawing to win a $50 Visa gift card!!!
SCAVENGER HUNT QUESTION (4 of 5): What is the title of Robin's book with the following cover blurb: Twins, both with a healing gift, are Summoned to another world to fight a disease sent by the Dark to weaken Lladrana. They must use all their resources to save lives. And one twin will risk her own on an experiment that might doom them both....
*Please note, that the correct answers to the scavenger hunt questions must be sent in at one time. You must collect all 5 answers and send them in one email. Entries for the scavenger hunt will be accepted from Friday, October 30th thru Sunday, November 1st at midnight. The winner will be announed on this blog Monday, November 2nd, 2009. If you have any questions about this contest, please contact contests(AT)knightagency.net.
Halloween Week Guest Blog & Giveaway Day 2: Chloe Neill
UPDATE: The winner of FRIDAY NIGHT BITES is Ella (staging professionals Toronto). Please email your physical addy to contests(AT)knightagency.net! Congrats!
Nevermore! Poe, Grimm & Other Spooktacular Reads
Sure, I'll spend Halloween putting creepy webbing and skeleton bits throughout the yard. Sure, I'll also spread the cream cheese frosting over my favorite pumpkin cake in preparation for a visit from friends, and we'll bring out the fog machine to add a little something extra for the kids who come to the door, ready to be burdened with the weight of lots and lots of popcorn balls and candy.
It's Halloween, after all, and I'm a writer of paranormal fiction.
But at some point during the busy day, I'm going to try and grab some time for myself, curl into a chair, and sink into a deliciously gothic book. Here are some ideas for your own spooktacular reading!
The Raven You can't get more Gothic than Edgar Allen Poe. You can start with the Tell-Tale Heart and move directly to The Raven, and imagine your own heart full of fantastic terrors and doubt, wondering at the mutterings of the "grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore."
The Crucible The play might have been about blacklisting in the 1950s, but The Crucible tells a haunting story of the fears of the masses, set against the backdrop of the Salem Witch Trials. As it turns out, we are the only thing we have to fear...
JANE EYRE & WUTHERING HEIGHTS Ready for a bit of Gothic romance? Curl up with the sisters Bronte: Charlotte's JANE EYREand Emily's WUTHERING HEIGHTS. Consider the trials of unrequited love and haunting secrets against the backdrops of wind-blown moors and mysterious mansions.
NORTHANGER ABBEY Try out Jane Austen's gothic side by reading NORTHANGER ABBEY.
Tales of the Brothers Grimm Centuries before Cinderella and her other princess friends were making merry in the Disney empire, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm collected creepy fairy tales. Try out their version of Cinderella, where the evil stepsisters definitely get their due.
Remember, there are TWO ways to win! Each day this week (Oct. 26 thru Oct. 30th) a guest blogger will give away a signed book to one person randomly chosen from the comment section. Today's prize is FRIDAY NIGHT BITES, Book 2 in the Chicagoland Vampires series by Chloe Neill. Check back in this post tomorrow to find out if you are the winner!
Also, at the bottom of each post there is a scavenger hunt question. The answer can be located somewhere on the author's website. Send in all 5 correct answers* to the scavenger hunt questions, and you will be entered in a drawing to win a $50 Visa gift card!!!
SCAVENGER HUNT QUESTION (2 of 5): Name six of the 12 "official" North American Vampire Houses in the U.S.
*Please note, that the correct answers to the scavenger hunt questions must be sent in at one time. You must collect all 5 answers and send them in one email. Entries for the scavenger hunt will be accepted from Friday, October 30th thru Sunday, November 1st at midnight. The winner will be announed on this blog Monday, November 2nd, 2009. If you have any questions about this contest, please contact contests(AT)knightagency.net.
UPDATE: The winner of THE SORCERERS' PLAGUE by David B. Coe is Kate Pearce!
This week we're celebrating Halloween with an awesome line-up of guest bloggers, including David B. Coe, Chloe Neill, Marilyn Brant, Robin Owens and P.N. Elrod. As part of the celebration the authors are giving away signed copies of their books and TKA is hosting a special scavenger hunt! Who says you have to be a 9 year old dressed up as a G.I. Joe or "Balloon Boy" to have a good time?
There are TWO ways to win. Each day this week (Oct. 26 thru Oct. 30th) a guest blogger will give away a signed book to one person randomly chosen from the comment section. Also, at the bottom of the post there will be a scavenger hunt question. The answer can be located somewhere on the author's website. Send in all 5 correct answers* to the scavenger hunt questions, and you will be entered in a drawing to win a $50 Visa gift card!!! We're sure that will come in handy as the holidays approach.Without further ado, welcome our first guest blogger, author David B. Coe! _________________________________________________
Halloween. We think of ghouls, of jack-o-lanterns, of ghost stories. But there’s another side to dressing up and taking on a different persona for a few hours.
I remember how, as a kid, I used to get so excited about my costume (and, yes, about the prospect of gobs and gobs of candy). I’d spend a couple of weeks trying to come up with a costume idea; I’d consider different possibilities, and talk to my friends about what they were going to be. I’m a Dad now, and I’ve seen my daughters do the same thing. I usually wound up with costumes like “baseball player” or “astronaut” or “fireman”, just as my kids have been “dancers” and “soccer players”. And watching my girls this time of year, I’ve come to realize that these can be more than just identities taken on for a night -- sometimes they represent dreams of possible futures. Certainly they did for me.
The thing is, though, I never dressed up as “a professional writer.” Few kids do. First of all, I’m not sure what that costume would look like. Sweats and a t-shirt? Pajamas and slippers? Jeans and a flannel shirt (my personal favorite)? But more to the point, writing isn’t a career about which most kids dream. Adults, on the other hand, are another story. I know lots of people who would give all that they own to be published authors. I recall feeling the same way when I was starting out. And I remember some advice from my father-in-law that has stayed with me for the past fifteen years. He’s a farmer, and has been pretty successful at it over the years. But when he first decided to buy a farm, after a long career as a Navy pilot, he wasn’t sure he could make a living working the land. His friends told him he was nuts even to try. “So I bought a cow,” he told me. “I bought a cow because that’s what farmers did. And then I started to think of myself as a farmer. Once I did that, it didn’t matter what other people thought or said. I was a farmer.”
After speaking with him, I tried to do the same thing, and it worked for me, too. No, I didn’t buy a cow. I got myself some reference books, set up my office the way I thought a writer should, and I put my butt in the chair every day and began to write short stories about the characters I intended to use in my first novel. Because that’s what writers do: They write. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t sold my first book yet. It didn’t matter that many in my family and some of my friends thought I was crazy to give up my academic career to write fantasy. What did matter was that I had started to think of myself as a writer; I had started to believe that I could fulfill my dream of being published.
Okay, at this point maybe you’re thinking that it’s a long way from a baseball player costume to a cow to a writing career. But really, it’s not as far as you think. Just as my father-in-law’s cow got him to start farming, thinking of myself as a writer made me sit down at my computer each morning and write; the short stories I produced that first summer gave me the confidence to begin my novel; two years later that novel was published by Tor Books. And ten books later, I’ve got the career of which I dreamed and I’m still sitting down to write every morning.
It’s often said that dreams are powerful things. In my experience, belief is even stronger. So if you want to write, stop dreaming and start believing. Put on your writing costume, whatever that might be, get whatever props will make you feel more like an author, and write. I can’t guarantee that it will get you published, but it’s worth a try, right?
Oh, and one more thing about costumes. Several years back, when my younger daughter was in kindergarten, her school had a dress-up day: Come as your favorite book character or author. She put on jeans and a flannel shirt, used burnt cork to give herself a beard, borrowed an old pair of glasses (with the lenses removed, of course). And she went as me. To this day, it might well be the proudest moment of my career.
Coming in February 2010:
THE DARK-EYES' WAR, Book III of Blood of the Southlands (Tor Books) THE HORSEMAN'S GAMBIT, Book II of Blood of the Southlands (Tor Books -- mass market reissue)
SCAVENGER HUNT QUESTION (1 of 5): What is the opening line of THE SORCERERS' PLAGUE by David B. Coe?
Also remember that you can win twice! Collect the scavenger hunt answers, and also leave a comment to enter a random drawing for a signed copy of THE SORCERERS' PLAGUE, Book One in the BLOOD OF THE SOUTHLANDS series! The winner of David's book will be announced in this post tomorrow morning. *Please note, that the correct answers to the scavenger hunt questions must be sent in at one time. You must collect all 5 answers and send them in one email. Entries for the scavenger hunt will be accepted from Friday, October 30th thru Sunday, November 1st at midnight. The winner will be announed on this blog Monday, November 2nd, 2009. If you have any questions about this contest, please contact contests(AT)knightagency.net.
