What I like to read when I'm writing urban fantasy.

Inspired by the Author's Chat post on the weekend, as well as questions I've been getting from a couple of recent interviewers, I've decided to write a blog post based on the things I read when I'm writing my Shadows of Melbourne series.

In preparation for starting to look at a second draft of the third book Smoke and Mirrors and make my first steps on a draft for Harsh Light of Day, I currently have a copy of Patricia Briggs' Bone Crossed on my waiting-to-be-read pile.


Patricia's paranormal fantasy novels are like a breath of fresh air. The market is currently flooded with vampire novels and these novels stand out. If I could be seen to write like anyone out there in paranormal fiction right now, it would be Patricia Briggs.

The characters, the plots... I definitely have the feeling that I am standing right within the world she's created when I'm reading. I love the friends that her main character Mercy Thompson has, the way those friends complicate and enrich her life. I love that each single book plot wraps up, while still leaving the reader wanting to know what will happen next on the greater, overarching plot of the series.

Most of all, I like that someone else is writing these books, and I'm not the one who has to figure out what to write next.

From Booklist: In a world where witches, vampires, werewolves, and shape-shifters live beside ordinary people, it takes a very unusual woman to call it home...

I'm so looking forward to start reading it!!

I'm also pretentious (and academic) enough to have picked up another couple of books to flick through as I develop the vampire and werewolf plot lines in upcoming Shadows of Melbourne novels. The most instrumental texts I have on my shelf to that end are Our Vampires, Ourselves by Nina Auerbach and Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes.

Auerbach's book is an amazing look at the history of the literary vampire, starting from Byron's vampire story begun on the same night as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The format of the old Gothic tales are looked at closely. Those tales aren't things I necessarily think about when I am writing, but reading through Our Vampires, Ourselves has given me some great ideas to do with a character who has only appeared peripherally so far in Gothic.

Women Who Run With the Wolves is a book I have picked up, put down, picked up again, put down, and never owned myself until running across it recently in a university book sale. I snatched it up immediately, determined to pick it up this time for more than a passing read. This book had been in my mind as potential insight into the deeper relationship between Dahlia and her adopted werewolf kin. The book is, of course, interesting for many other archetypal and societal reasons.

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I've also received the link to a guest post I did a little while ago over at the Ramblings from this Chick blogspot. Feel free to go over there and have a look:
http://ramblingsfromthischick.blogspot.com.au/2013/01/guest-post-with-author-nicole-d.html

Obligatory New Year post

Happy New Year! So far, I seem only to be missing a resolution.

But we're in the third day. As of yet, I have no complaints, and the year is certainly looking more kindly upon me than last year.

New Year's Eve was spent with dozens of friends that filled the walls of my small-ish town house almost to bursting, but everybody seemed to have fun. We put the kiddly-winks up to bed at about 8.30pm, but I think we all knew they were still up closer to ten.

The night flew by with cheese and dips and more sugar than we could actually consume, and then somebody was suddenly running around yelling that it was only ten minutes till midnight.

Which was around the time we realised someone local had fireworks and was letting them off behind our back fence. While we oohed and ahhed about that, the time grew ever closer to midnight, and then there was the countdown, and then there was a lot of kissing. I was incredibly lucky this year. I got to spend New Year's Night with all but three of my very favourite people in the whole world.

New Year may not have brought around much in the way of resolutions for me (yet, but I reserve the right to make them, even as late as February!) but it has prompted a bit of a spring clean and adding of material to this humble little site. I now have three new tabs across the top bar, posting a little about me, the various places to get hold of me around the net and one of my up-coming projects.

I've also been reading and thoroughly consumed by the Puzzle Quest game (which is actually eating into quite a bit of my reading time...). The books I'm reading are The Secret Life of William Shakespeare, a historical fiction by a writer I'd never heard until I happened across the book in my local library. Jude Morgan also writes historical fictions based on the friendship between Byron, Mary Shelley and Percy Shelley, and also about the Bronte sisters that are now on my to-be-read list, and, of course, my other novel is an old favourite: Kushiel's Mercy from the series by Jacqueline Carey that I don't think I'll ever get sick of.

Lastly, I have a couple of chats coming up this month, on the 19th and 26th of January with Coffee Time Romance, where I'll get to talk about my novel Gothic and maybe a little bit about my upcoming novel Revelry, too. More information about those soon.

New Realease - "Gothic"

I come to you today, fresh from my first day at a new job, thinking that I will have a couple of weeks away from my writing to recharge and re-energise after the last week of restructuring one novel, editing another and beginning two new ones.

Here I am, ready to take the world by storm. 

(in a couple of weeks)

Then today, I get an email from my friendly, neighbourhood publisher.

"Erm, ehm, promotion, promotion, promotion!"

Imagine me headdesking at this moment as I scratch my head and utter, 'I knew I forgot something...'

So!

Leap of Faith LLC have been kind enough to take a ... leap of faith :D ... with my new novel Gothic, which is in final stages of editing and awaiting cover art.

Gothic is the first in a new paranormal romance series sketched together in the middle of my Honours year last year (much less stressful than the writing I was actually researching and getting marked on, I tell you! (Anyone who has ever done an Honours year can tell you this is true.)) Of course, then I talked to my partner about this book I had just written and he said, 'So what happens if you did this next...?' and so a series was born.

But Gothic... I have had so much fun writing this story. 

It's a story of a human girl, Dahlia, who's mother died when she was eight. After her father ran away with grief, she was taken in by her vampire godmother and the rest of the werewolf pack of which her father had been a part. When the story starts, Dahlia has just moved out of home and wants to live the 'normal' life, i.e. a life without quite so much vampire and werewolf influence. In the first few weeks of class, she finds out that her godmother has contacted one of her vampire friends to watch over her. He, Elliott, ends up being one of her confidants. Another student, and human girl, Renee ends up being another close friend.

Hijinx ensue! Time for some more visual assist:

Elliot is another supernatural featuring in Dahlia's full supernatural dance card. He is of the mild snark and general hilarity, and claims at times to have brushed elbows with such popular figures as Lord Byron and Bram Stoker.


Renee meets our girl Dahlia through her normal university boyfriend. She's super cute and acts about half her age because she wants to get the university experience "just right".

One of the best parts of this story is that I have clear images for both of these characters. The lovely actors who are acting as muses in my head right now are none other than the lovely Ms Ksenia Solo from Lost Girl and Mr Ian Somerhalder (nicknamed 'Smoulderhalder' with good reason by fellow cast mate AND GIRLFRIEND Nina Dobrev) from The Vampire Diaries. Say what you will about these shows, but these two people are gorgous. Anyone who knows me will know I shamelessly fangirl this TV series that is based on the L. J. Smith series of books from my childhood.

So that's me and mine for in the last little while. More news and excerpts to come next time I get a chance to be on the computer.