IMMORTALS MONTH GUEST: Amy Ruttan!

I want to thank J.K. for having me here today. She said that this month’s theme was Immortals. Okay, I seriously love her Immortal series, because I love Immortals.

 

What is so intriguing about Immortals?

 

I think for me the idea of an Immortal hero or heroine is the fact they’ve seen it all, if they’re old enough. Only the real old immortals appeal to me.

 

Unless they’re “newborn” or however you want to put it, then they’re usually ancient.

 

My favorite Anne Rice book was not the vampire series or even her witch series, but The Mummy.

 

This book is nothing like those movies with Brendan Fraser which were good. This book was about Pharaoh Ramses II. Ramses discovered the secret of immortality from a Hittite priestess. He drank the elixir and became immortal. Living through ages of time, knowing there was no way to die even if you wanted to.

 

I have reread this book countless times. I love it.

 

I love reading how the world would’ve have been a long time ago through the eyes of a character.

 

I’ve never really written a true Immortal, in the fact that the couple of books I wrote which featured fallible heroes, the heroes always had a way out. They aren’t truly immortal like Ramses II in Anne Rice’s book. Sure, my heroes can withstand lots of thing, but there’s a way out, a way to die and find peace. Kind of like The Highlander movies.

 

In my book Warrior Unbound my hero isn’t the first of Stone Warriors, but he stays immortal, trapped forever until he’s ritually killed (giving him peace) or another takes his place. Only then does he becomes mortal.

 

Even my bear shifters have a bit of something special. They heal quickly; they don’t get the same diseases and illnesses that we mere “humans” get. They can live a long time, but you can kill them.

 

I don’t know if I could write a true Immortal, because I feel sad for them. I see their pain of living alone for so long. Never sated, never finding peace and I’m too sympathetic to my characters sometimes. I torture them, but I’ve never bestowed such a fate on them. Yet.

 

Even vampires which are supposed to be Immortal can be killed. Anne Rice’s vampires are killed from fire, sun and beheading I believe. It’s been a long time since I’ve read them.

 

The Highlander it’s beheading.

 

Other than the Ramses II from The Mummy and the Greek Gods or other deities are there any other true infallible Immortals?

 

I mean, Zeus saved all his siblings after they were consumed by Cronus, that’s pretty damn infallible to me. Of course, Zeus did dispatch his father after he burped up (some say it was through a pretty nasty C-section) Zeus’ siblings.

 

So are there any more true Immortals in fiction? One who could survive beheading, burning, lynching and apparently burping up children? If there is, I want to read it.

 

I love reading about Immortals. How about you?

You can find more about Amy here:

Website: http://www.amyruttan.com

Blog: http://amyruttan.blogspot.com
Twitter: @ruttanamy
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/amy.ruttan.3

 

 

GUEST AUTHOR: Cynthia Sax

Being married to an Italian, I can totally relate to the idea of food being the thing that brings and holds families together, and with that, I welcome my good friend Cynthia Sax!

JK Coi 

______________________________________

He Watches Me… Eat

It doesn’t matter what the occasion is. Whenever my family gets together, there’s food. When writers or other coworkers socialize, it is usually over food or drinks (many, MANY drinks). When friends come over to my house to visit, I always ensure there’s food on the table.

How, what, where someone eats can tell us a lot about their character. Anna, the not-so-innocent-yet-virginal heroine of He Watches Me, is in survival mode. She’s a new graduate. She put herself through school, taking on student loans, and her job at a charity pays minimum wage. She can barely cover her expenses.

Anna lives off free samples and day-old bread. While she’s at work, she eats quickly, seated alone at her desk. She doesn’t have food to share with others. When coworkers offer her a taste of their lunch, she says no, rebuffing their offers of friendship, because she doesn’t have any food to give them in return.

Anna also doesn’t have the money to go out for drinks after hours with her co-workers. They ask her to join them. She must say no, again turning down their offers of friendship. At these social functions, her co-workers bond even tighter, and Anna is left out, becoming more and more isolated from the others, invisible and alone.

Until she meets Blaine.

When Blaine, the billionaire hero of He Watches Me, sits down at the dinner table, he shares food for everyone else before he serves himself. Strangers think this is unusual. He’s an important man. Shouldn’t he serve himself first? But friends and established business partners know Blaine puts others first. He protects and feeds the people he cares about.

Blaine also prefers to order take-out from the same Chinese restaurant he has frequented since he first founded his company. Blaine’s loyal. He hasn’t forgotten the people who helped him long before he was a billionaire and he prefers to build long-term relationships. This hints that his relationship with Anna might be long-term also.

Will their relationship be long-term? Blaine is driven to feed and protect the people he cares about. Anna is hungry yet proud and she has no food to offer Blaine in return. This food conflict is symbolic of the other conflicts in their relationship.

What do your eating habits say about you?

***

He Watches Me

She desires to be seen. He wants to watch.

Anna Sampson has a naughty secret. Every night, she slips into her neighbor’s yard and swims naked in his pool. She fantasizes that the dynamic young billionaire watches her nightly nude aquatics, his brilliant green eyes gleaming with lust.

She discovers this isn’t pure fantasy. Gabriel Blaine has been watching her via his security cameras, and now that he has returned to L.A., he doesn’t plan to stop. That’s all he wants—to watch. Anna knows she shouldn’t allow him and she certainly shouldn’t want more, but she craves Blaine’s attention, needing his gaze fixed on her body.

Part One of The Seen Trilogy

Buy Link: http://www.amazon.com/He-Watches-Me-Trilogy-ebook/dp/B00CD36FS8

Author Website: http://cynthiasax.com/

Blog: http://tasteofcyn.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cynthia.sax

Twitter: @CynthiaSax

GUEST AUTHOR: Cynthia Sax

Cynthia has one of the biggest hearts I know. Combine that with a super savvy business sense and calming personality, and you've got the best partner in crime...ever!

I'm excited for her new book, Warlord Unarmed, and you can find it here!

I’m thrilled to be visiting J.K.’s online home today. Not only is J.K. a wonderful writer (I LOVE the Immortal series) but I also consider her to be a very good friend. She’s the type of awesome friend I wish for everyone, including my characters, to have.

Many of my characters have friends or, if they don’t have friends, they have concrete reasons why they’re solo. Maybe they move around a lot or they’re scared of being hurt or they have a dangerous secret a best friend would be certain to uncover.

Gale, the heroine of Warlord Unarmed, has a best friend – Zeta. She’ll do anything for her fellow bounty hunter, including fly across several universes when Zeta fails to check in.

One of my best friends, Gilly, did something similar (notice how the first names start with the same letter - grins). No, she didn’t fly across several universes… though that would have been super cool. Gilly’s friend in another city couldn’t find a babysitter for a special anniversary. Gilly drove almost six hours, babysat her friend’s kids for the night, and then drove almost six hours back (she had to work the next day). Yeah, she gets friend of the year for that!

Gilly’s friend truly appreciated and benefited from her efforts. Although Zeta was emotionally touched by Gale’s rescue attempt, she didn’t require the trek across the universes. She hadn’t the opportunity to contact Gale to tell her she was okay. Yeah, we all have friends like that also, don’t we? We love them but they do drive us a wee bit bonkers sometimes.

No one is perfect, not even our friends. I’m certainly not perfect. I was born with a memory glitch. I don’t remember names, dates, birthdays. I often don’t even remember my own birthday. My friends send me email reminders not only for their birthdays but for my birthday also. On the upside, if we get into an argument, I’m always the first person to apologize because I can’t remember why I’m supposed to be upset.

What is the craziest or nicest thing a friend has ever done for you?

***

Warlord Unarmed

Cynthia Sax

WARLORD UNARMED:

When Murad, a powerful and deadly Warlord, arrives to repair Gale’s beloved ship, she doesn’t like it one bit. She sees the danger lurking behind his wide, sexy smile and the temptation in his coarse touch. He stands too close. He smells too good. He muddles her mind with erotic thoughts no bounty hunter should ever entertain.

Murad is known for being lighthearted…until he meets Gale. He’s deadly serious about seducing his curvaceous bounty hunter. With one blast of her stun gun, she captures his attention, and starts his lust burning. To claim Gale for his mate, Murad will brave his cautious female’s itchy trigger finger, his overbearing older brother and Gale’s sense of duty.

Buy Links:

Ellora's Cave

Amazon

Cynthia Sax Website:  http://cynthiasax.com


JK Coi again...if you're interested, Cynthia was kind enough to interview me for her blog today! I'm visiting her here. 

GUEST AUTHOR: Aubrie Dionne

Why I Chose the Flute

Like Melody in Playing the Maestro, I used to pretend to play flute on my toothbrush as a kid. I’d hold it sideways, just like a flute, and blow on top of the brush. I believe the very first time I heard flute was the introduction to the movie The Last Unicorn.

You can see it on You Tube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIwtXkdWQ0o

I thought it was beautiful and mysterious. It was the perfect solo to set the mood for what was my favorite movie as a kid. (Although, I still don’t understand why she chose to change back to a unicorn in the end! I would have chosen love.) Anyways, I had a little cassette tape recorder, and I taped the solo, so I could play it again and again.

When the local band director came to my elementary school to demonstrate the instruments, my best friend decided she wanted to play flute, and for me that sealed the deal.  While she quit not long after, I kept with it, and it became my dream to be a professional flutist.

Flutes usually get to play the melody, and they’re not that heavy to hold- which is a big deal when you’re 5’2’’ with short arms and small fingers.  Also, I’ve always preferred silver to gold, so the look of the flute really caught my eye. Flute also get to play very fast because our technique is so light and our fingers so close together. Bassoon or tuba, on the other hand get stuck with whole notes more times than not!

How about you? Did you pick an instrument? Which instrument did you pick and why. If not, what instrument would you pick today?

 

Melody Mires has sworn off dating musicians, but when the sexy European conductor Wolf Braun takes over her struggling symphony, her hesitation almost flies out the window with the notes of her flute—until he opens his mouth. Wolf is arrogant, haughty, and seems to have a personal vendetta against Melody. Oh, and he’s her boss. If she wants to keep her job as principal flutist, she’ll have to impress Wolf while simultaneously keeping her undeniable attraction to herself.

Wolf came to America to get as far away from his past as possible, and to recover some of the swagger he had as one of the world’s best maestros. He never imagined being forced to reassess the entire orchestra’s talent—and potentially fire anyone who doesn’t make his cut. Dating the attractive flutist is out of the question, but as their feelings reach a fever pitch, can they risk both their careers for a chance at love?

About the Author: 

Aubrie grew up watching the original Star Wars movies over and over again until she could recite and reenact every single scene in her backyard. She also loved The Goonies, Star Trek the Next Generation-favorite character was Data by far-, and Indiana Jones. But, her all time favorite movie was The Last Unicorn. She still wonders why the unicorn decided to change back to a unicorn in the end.

Aubrie wrote in her junior high yearbook that she wanted to be "A concert flutist" when she grew up. When she made that happen, she decided one career was not enough and embarked as a fantasy, sci fi author. Two careers seems to keep her busy. For now.

Aubrie's writings have appeared in Mindflights, Niteblade, Silver Blade, Emerald Tales, Hazard Cat, Moon Drenched Fables, A Fly in Amber, and Aurora Wolf. Her books are published by Entangled Publishing, Lyrical Press, and Gypsy Shadow Publishing. She recently signed her YA sci fi novel with Inkspell Publishing titled: Colonization: Paradise Reclaimed, which will release in October 2012. When she's not writing, Aubrie teaches flute and plays in orchestras. She's a big Star Trek TNG fan, as well as Star Wars and Serenity.

 Enter Aubrie's contest! 

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THE WILD WONDERS OF WORLD-BUILDING

I love my antho sister, Stacy Gail, and I was soooo happy to hear that she was going to be a part of another fantastic Carina Press Anthology this year! I have to tell you, I think she took it as a dare that my story Far From Broken made her cry last year, so she was determined that I would be the one who cried after reading HOW THE GLITCH SAVED CHRISTMAS....which I DID! SO FREAKIN' HARD.   

I'm happy to welcome her today, with her new antho-sisters, Anna Hackett and Sasha Summers! 

~JK Coi 

 

First off, thanks so much to JK Coi for hosting us. We—Anna Hackett, Sasha Summers and Stacy Gail—are so glad to be here!

In Carina Press’s sci-fi anthology, A GALACTIC HOLIDAY, some serious out-of-this-world imagination had to be engaged in order to create the distant world of Perma, the ice moon of Galileo and a futuristic Chicago cityscape.  From foods and traditions to sights, sounds and smells, these three worlds had to be alien and different enough to bring the reader along on a far-flung journey of wonder, and consistent enough that these imagined worlds could gain a foothold in the reader’s reality.

But how do you make an imagined world become real in a reader’s mind?

The three authors from A GALACTIC HOLIDAY put a vast amount of thought into how they built their sci-fi worlds, and each one went about it a little differently.  Come to find out, there’s no wrong way to build a world.

Anna:  When I started thinking about combining sci-fi with the holidays, I wanted to explore the winter holiday of Yule – so an ice planet came to mind. With science-fiction, you are always trying to balance the sci-fi elements with elements that are familiar to the reader. In WINTER FUSION, my heroine, Brinn is from the ice world of Perma. It has some technology but not too much as they are a developing world. There are plenty of familiar elements – people still cook their food, they sing, they go to work. But they also happen to have interstellar ships, cars with autopilot and nanocoatings that stop ice melting. But an important aspect we can all relate to is the Perman need to look after the environment of their planet.

My hero, Savan, on the other hand, is from a planet covered in a megacity. Rendar is an energy-dependent world -- everything is powered and people live for personal gratification and success. While this world is different from our own, I think their issues are ones we all worry about today – our reliance on energy, the increase in the “gadgets” in our lives, the fast pace of life.

What I love most about writing science-fiction romance is that even on amazing distant worlds with incredible high-tech gadgets, things that are important to us today—environment, energy, family and love—are still vital.

Sasha:  I just kind of dove in. I started in space, in Riley’s (the heroines) ship in GALILEO'S HOLIDAY. Space (‘the black’) is cold and sterile, metal and minimalist, and her ‘happy place’.  And since Riley was going to have to face all sorts of things outside of her comfort zone that meant Galileo’s Station had to be the exact opposite – low-tech and crowded. Once I had that figured out, I could focus on the gadgets – the tools, the shields that protect the Station from cryptids and raiders, the food (or lack of real food), the chutes, – even the plumbing. Basically, I let my imagination run wild – and had oodles of fun with it!

Stacy:  Whenever I write a futuristic romance, the first thing I do is make a list of ordinary events that everyone on the planet normally does…and then I try my best to re-imagine what those ordinary events might be like a century or two from now.  For instance: The brushing of teeth?  That would be replaced by a single swish of plaque-killing, tooth-brightening Denti-Wash. Five seconds and you’re done.

What about the daily hassle of popping contacts into poor blind peepers?  Forget it.  In my world the gene for bad eyesight is modified, so now virtually everyone has perfect vision.  And for those who want more-than-perfect vision (like me!), there would be expensive/black market optic prosthetics that would look just like the real deal.  (It’s not just pervy adolescent boys who want X-ray vision, you know. ;) )

But the most important—and potentially dangerous—facet of the future that I can truly see happening is the creation of human-like androids to do humankind’s menial tasks.  These robotic creations—these fake people—are the very elements that live in the heart of HOW THE GLITCH SAVED CHRISTMAS.  It’s a fine line humanity treads when they make machines look like humans, and all too soon the question of what truly defines “life” arises.

These worlds are full of adventure, wonder and the enduring power of love.  The authors of A GALACTIC HOLIDAY hope that you’ll enjoy reading about them as much as they enjoyed creating them.

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A GALACTIC HOLIDAY – Carina Press | Amazon | B&N | All Romance

Anna Hackett – Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads

Stacy Gail – Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads

Sasha Summers – Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads