Today I’m blogging over at The Romaniacs about writing from female or male point of view, in particular those *hot* scenes.
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Do we really know what a man thinks?
More to the point, do we really want to know or are we happy to imagine?
Monthly Archives: August 2013
Guest Post by Author – Vera Nazarian, The Cobweb Bride
The Cobweb Bride
At the Heart of a Fairytale
by Vera Nazarian
I must warn you, Cobweb Bride is a fantasy that’s a little bit different from so many books being written now.
For one thing, it is written in a more traditional “vintage” style. There’s a breath of the nineteenth century nostalgia, and a bit of creepy darkness found in the fairytales of the Brothers Grimm, and reminiscent of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen. There is also a sense of many layers, ornate imagery, and a richness of history that can be found in fantasy that fully partakes of the world storytelling tradition.
For another thing, Cobweb Bride is not fast paced. Instead, as any profound mystery, it starts out slow and immersive, and compels you onward into its trap of enchantment. First, it firmly anchors you with wonder, as it illuminates the universe in a glittering mother-of-pearl palette of ethereal colors, using “paint” that is slightly touched by faerie magic, so that snowflakes sparkle like stars, and stars cascade down like snowflakes, until you forget what it is that’s falling, in this alternate Renaissance world blanketed in deadly Winter. And then, the action speeds up, drawing you deeper into the funnel, closer and closer to the scary-beautiful thing at the heart of the fairytale….
This is also a modern-day fable. And at its center is the ancient myth of Persephone and Hades in the Underworld. But don’t be fooled. You will not encounter the myth in its ordinary easy trappings. Instead, you will have to dig deep and search underneath things, and peek inside dark corners, to find it. Because… you are looking for shadows. And here, in this fairytale, shadows are not what they seem.
This is a story of Death—Death, the gentleman, taking on grim, elegant, human form. Death, the irresistible lover, searching for his lost bride. Death, the capricious stranger with control over all of us mortals. Death’s choice—to stop all dying until his Cobweb Bride is found and brought to him—sets in motion a series of world-altering events, like dominos falling.
This is the story of Love—Love of a young peasant girl, love of a granddaughter for her dying grandmother, love of grieving parents for their undead daughter, love of a fair maiden for a brave knight, love of a son for his broken father, love of a princess for a villain, loves of peasants and aristocrats, emperors and witches. In fact, if you draw closer, you will find that there are so many forms of love exemplified in this story that it too is at the heart of the fairytale….
In the absence of Death,
In the presence of Death,
Only one thing remains,
It is Love.
Finally, this is an epic. An ensemble cast of characters, with intertwining lives and pseudo-history, in the tradition of George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones, and with just as much “death,” but death that is treated in an entirely different humane manner—because there is no true dying in this fairytale and all the dead remain as active characters throughout—and with sympathetic main characters that serve as permanent anchors throughout the story.
So what then is really at the heart of a fairytale such as Cobweb Bride?
It is you.
Come, take that first step upon glittering virgin snow, and sink inward!
About the Author
Vera Nazarian is a two-time Nebula Award® Finalist and a member of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. She immigrated to the USA from the former USSR as a kid, sold her first story at 17, and has been published in numerous anthologies and magazines, honorably mentioned in Year’s Best volumes, and translated into eight languages.
Vera made her novelist debut with the critically acclaimed Dreams of the Compass Rose, followed by Lords of Rainbow. Her novella The Clock King and the Queen of the Hourglass with an introduction by Charles de Lint made the 2005 Locus Recommended Reading List. Her debut collection Salt of the Air with an introduction by Gene Wolfe contains the 2007 Nebula Award-nominated “The Story of Love.”
Other work includes the 2008 Nebula Finalist novella The Duke in His Castle, science fiction collection After the Sundial (2010), The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration (2010), and four Jane Austen parodies, Mansfield Park and Mummies (2009), Northanger Abbey and Angels and Dragons (2010), Pride and Platypus: Mr. Darcy’s Dreadful Secret (2012), and Pagan Persuasion: All Olympus Descends on Regency (forthcoming), all part of her Supernatural Jane Austen Series.
After many years in Los Angeles, Vera now lives in a small town in Vermont. She uses her Armenian sense of humor and her Russian sense of suffering to bake conflicted pirozhki and make art. In addition to being a writer, philosopher, and award-winning artist, she is also the publisher of Norilana Books.
Vera’s links:
Official website:
http://www.veranazarian.com/
Norilana Books:
http://www.norilana.com/
Cobweb Bride Mailing List:
http://eepurl.com/vodcT
Twitter:
http://twitter.com/Norilana
Facebook (author page):
http://www.facebook.com/VeraNazarian
Facebook (personal)
http://www.facebook.com/Nazarian
Pinterest
http://pinterest.com/veranazarian/
Blogs:
http://www.inspiredus.com/
http://urbangirlvermont.blogspot.com/
http://norilana.livejournal.com/
Goodreads:
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/186145.Vera_Nazarian
LibraryThing:
http://www.librarything.com/author/nazarianvera
Shelfari:
http://www.shelfari.com/authors/a1628414/Vera-Nazarian/
Red Room:
http://www.redroom.com/author/vera-nazarian
SFF Net Newsgroup:
http://webnews.sff.net/read?cmd=xover&group=sff.people.vera-nazarian
Austen Authors:
http://austenauthors.net/
Vera Nazarian’s Amazon Author Central page
http://www.amazon.com/author/nazarian
The Official Book Website:
http://www.norilana.com/cobweb.htm
Kickstarter page:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2027984632/cobweb-bride?ref=live
COBWEB BRIDE
(Cobweb Bride Trilogy, Book One)
by Vera Nazarian
Release Date: July 15, 2013
Publisher: Norilana Books
Imprint: Leda
Trade Hardcover
(First Edition)
ISBN-13: 978-1-60762-112-6
ISBN-10: 1-60762-112-6
$24.95 US / 18.00 UK
Trade Paperback
ISBN-13: 978-1-60762-113-3
ISBN-10: 1-60762-113-4
$14.95 US / 12.00 UK
Ebook (multi-format)
ISBN-13: 978-1-60762-114-0
ISBN-10: 1-60762-114-2
$5.99
THIS GUEST POST WAS ORGANISED BY
Book Review of HAVE NO SHAME by Melissa Foster
REVIEW
Have No Shame, takes the reader into the deep south of America in the 60’s where racial prejudice is not just rife, but a way of life.
Alison, on the cusp of womanhood, has led a sheltered life, the wider world and its views kept from her by her over-protective father. However, the return of her sister from New York, together with the meeting of a young black man are the catalysts for a journey of realisation, self-discovery and new understanding of those closest to her in this coming of age novel.
I found Melissa Foster’s writing to have a great depth of emotion and I could really empathise with the conflicts experienced by the characters. Although a subject matter that has been covered many-a-time, Have No Shame tells the story of racial segregation and prejudices in a fresh way with one or two outcomes I hadn’t expected.
BOOK DESCRIPTION
The racially-charged prejudice of the deep South forces eighteen-year-old Alison Tillman to confront societal norms—and her own beliefs—when she discovers the body of a hate crime victim, and the specter of forbidden love turns her safe, comfortable world upside down.
Alison has called Forrest Town, Arkansas home for the past eighteen years. Her mother’s Blue Bonnet meetings, her father toiling night and day on the family farm, and the division of life between the whites and the blacks are all Alison knows. The winter of 1967, just a few months before marrying her high school sweetheart, Alison finds the body of a black man floating in the river, and she begins to view her existence with new perspective. The oppression and hate of the south, the ugliness she once was able to avert her eyes from, now demands her attention.
When a secretive friendship with a young black man takes an unexpected romantic turn, Alison is forced to choose between her predetermined future, and the dangerous path that her heart yearns for.
HAVE NO SHAME is an emotionally compelling coming of age novel featuring a young woman who cannot reconcile the life she wants with the one she’s been brought up to live. Have No Shame will resonate with anyone who has ever fallen in love, and those who have been forced to choose between what they know in their hearts to be true, and what others would like them to believe.
Paperback, 304 pages
Expected publication: May 6th 2013 by World Literary Press
ISBN
098905084X (ISBN13: 9780989050845)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Melissa Foster is the award-winning author of four International bestselling novels. Her books have been recommended by USA Today’s book blog, Hagerstown Magazine, The Patriot, and several other print venues. She is the founder of the Women’s Nest, a social and support community for women, the World Literary Café. When she’s not writing, Melissa helps authors navigate the publishing industry through her author training programs on Fostering Success. Melissa has been published in Calgary’s Child Magazine, the Huffington Post, and Women Business Owners magazine.
Melissa hosts an annual Aspiring Authors contest for children and has painted and donated several murals to The Hospital for Sick Children in Washington, DC. Melissa lives in Maryland with her family.
Visit Melissa on The Women’s Nest, Fostering Success, or World Lit Cafe.
Authors Links:
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