October 2008 Issue...look inside

In this issue...

• Advertising on a Tight Budget
• Book Reviews. We love them. We hate them. But do they really matter?
• Don't Shoot the Reviewer
• The Ruby Awards
• All's Fair in Love and Writing
• Liquid Silver Books Shines Anew
• Lessons from a Newbie
• My biggest surprises to writing fiction
• Interview with Susan Crandall
• What did you do BEFORE you started writing?
• Book Reviews
• Short Story
• Classifieds
• Calendar Events
• much much more

Everywhere you look in the bookstore these days, it seems there's a vampire, a shapeshifter, a mummy, a witch...or even a gargoyle! Paranormal romance is hot, hot, hot, and the trend doesn't seem to be headed for a cool down any time soon. Readers love the fact that in paranormal fiction, anything can happen.

That's the biggest appeal of paranormal fiction--literally, anything is possible. Which leads some people to suggest that paranormal fiction is easier to write than realistic fiction. Nothing could be further from the truth! When an author sits down to write a story in a realistic contemporary or historical setting, there's a blank page waiting. Paranormal authors don't have that luxury. Before they even start to write, they have to create that blank page.

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I am so excited to be able to chat with award winning Susan Crandall about her latest book Pitch Black. So sit back, relax, and listen to my wonderful conversation with a talented author, Susan Crandall. Thank you Susan for stopping by to answer my numerous questions (grin)  This was your first foray into writing romantic suspense, was it easier or harder than writing women's fiction?

I’ve never been the one to choose the less difficult path.  If there’s a smooth road or an uphill, crater-filled path, I’ll nearly always take the one that will threaten the most twisted ankles.  But I can’t say that writing romantic suspense was more difficult than women’s fiction; it was just different.  I wanted to write romantic suspense my way.   I still focused on creating strong characters (the biggest challenge in women’s fiction) and combined it with one of the biggest challenges in romantic suspense, pacing.  So I suppose you could say I combined the most difficult aspects of the genres.  That said, it didn’t feel more difficult, just more challenging.  I had a blast writing this book.

Susan, when you began writing Pitch Black did you have any idea it would turn into a suspense?

Yes.  My intention from the moment of conception was to write it as a romantic suspense.  I think it would have been a real challenge to adjust the first half of the book if I’d begun it as a women’s fiction – the pacing is entirely different.

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Spectre Dreams and Visitations By Pamela K. Kinney

The perfume of old books rose up in the air from the volumes on a table at the yard sale. Sherry felt welcomed by the presence of dear old friends as she breathed the odor in. After a bad week at work, this comforted her more than gorging on chocolate ever would.

“What can I do for you?”
Sherry turned to see a plump old woman. Thin wisps of pearl-white hair wiggled wildly on top of the woman’s balding pate as she shook her head. Her face, an overabundance of wrinkles, didn’t hide the twin points of cobalt that were her eyes as they sparkled at the younger woman. A combination of peppermint and pepperoni combined with the odor of cigarettes drifted over to her as the old woman drew closer.

Sherry took a couple steps back. “I’m looking for something scary, like ghost stories. Nothing modern. I don’t feel a need for descriptions of blood and gore. Something more from the eighteen hundreds, or at least, no later than nineteen-twenty.” She stared at the books again. “Back then ghost tales gave the reader a taste of the shivers. You wondered what hovered in the shadowy corner, just out of the corner of the eye, unlike the gore-ridden slasher trash that lines the pages of horror stories today.”

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