Trish Wooldridge & Christy Tohara

Wicked cool! :)

If you are going to Balticon, make sure you hit the BAD-ASS FAERIES 3: IN ALL THEIR GLORY release party. :) It's happening Sunday at 7PM.

Yaaayy!!!

It has been pretty crazy, but:

NEWS!!

First, Christy is having a baby! :) Congrats to Chris!!

Second, plans to get our enewsletter out are happening. Expect it this week!

Third, and the awesomesauce of the post,

DETAILS ON BAD-A$$ FAERIES 3: IN ALL THEIR GLORY!!

Title: Bad-Ass Faeries 3: In All Their Glory
Publisher: Mundania Press, www.mundania.com
ISBN (trade paper): 978-1-60659-208-3
ISBN (eBook): 978-1-60659-207-6
Scheduled Pub Date: 5/30/10

Balticon Launch Party: www.balticon.org
The Legendary Triple Launch (Bad-Ass Faeries 3, Dragon Lure, New Blood)
Sunday, May 30th, 7pm to 9pm, in the Garden Room
Food, Fun and Prizes. Come help the Editors, Publisher, and Contributors celebrate this third volume in the award-winning Bad-Ass Faeries anthology series. There will be readings, refreshments, and a raffle of related prizes. visit www.sidhenadaire.com/promoBAF3.htm for additional details.

Contributors Attending (Please let me know if I'm wrong in any of these, or if I've left your name off incorrectly): Danielle Ackley-McPhail, Jeffrey Lyman, L. Jagi Lamplighter, Lee C. Hillman, Dan Reitz Sr. (Publisher), D.C. Wilson, James Chambers, Hildy Silverman, Chris Pisano, Brian Koscienski, Robert E. Waters, Bernie Mojzes, Linda Saboe, Thomas Nackid, CJ Henderson, James Daniel Ross, Neal Levin, Kelly A. Harmon, Patrick Thomas, David Sherman, Elaine Corvidae, John L. French, Misty Massey, David B. Coe, Vonnie Winslow Crist, Paul Barnett (More to be added as the date approaches.)

Contents (in order):
War and Circuses by D.C. Wilson
Uddereek by Hildy Silverman
Brownies vs. Blondies by Chris Pisano & Brian Koscienski
Last Gate to Faerie by Trisha Wooldridge & Christy Tohara
Fae Fighters by Lee C. Hillman
At the Grasshopper’s Hill by Robert E. Waters
I Carry No Gun by Bernie Mojzes
Return of the Hero by C.J. Henderson
The Natural-Born Spy by James Daniel Ross
Snow and Iron by Darren W. Pearce & Neal Levin
A Brief Battle for the Throne by Jeffrey Lyman
A Not-so-Silent Night by L. Jagi Lamplighter
Selk-Skin Deep by Kelly A. Harmon
Theatre of Conflict by Jason Franks
The Size of the Fight in the Soldier by Patrick Thomas
Amazons and Predators by David Lee Summers
The Price of Friendship by David Sherman
Field of Honor by Elaine Corvidae
Faerie Ring Blues by James Chambers
So Many Deaths by John L. French
Seeing Red by Danielle Ackley-McPhail

Back Ad Copy:

Think all faeries spend their days picking flowers and dancing in circles? Think again!

We bring you tales of urban conflict, of lurking assassins, of defenders of the homefront. Eternal battles…between good and evil, right and wrong, Seelie and Unseelie…fought by timeless warriors whose battle cries echo throughout both history and legend.

Discover fae fighting the good fight with every turned page. A WAC pilot and her leprechaun guardian get a bit of their own back in L. Jagi Lamplighter’s A Not-So-Silent Night. Refugee recruits from Daemor defend the base camp from gators and mongers in Patrick Thomas’s The Size of the Fight in the Solider. Elaine Corvidae treats us to a new glimpse of the realm of the Shadow Fae as an assassin stalks Pook, the Unseelie king on the Seelie throne, in Field of Honor. And in David Sherman’s The Price of Friendship a simple Nix gives Viking warriors a lesson in unconventional warfare. Each story in this collection follows a fine warrior—and fae—tradition. Protect your own, avenge your fallen, and put the bullies in their place. So get ready to declare your allegiance, because…

By Land, Air, or Sea, the battle lines are drawn…Which side are you on?

(BAF3 update thanks to: Danielle Ackley-McPhail www.sidhenadaire.com)

I forgot to remind Christy that it's her turn to blog this week... ;)

Soooo... from my Inbox, because I forgot to post them before, here are some reviews of the newly re-released Bad-A$$ Faeries series from Mundania Press:

BAF
http://www.nightowlromance.com/nightowlromance/reviews/Review.aspx?daoid=5128

This book got a 4.25 so use the "My Book has been Reviewed by Night Owl Reviews" icon.

Review Blurb for use on your sites:

"I found it delightful...each story made me think more and more about the possibilities of faeries being real." 4 1/4 Stars Night Owl Reviews

BAF 2
http://www.nightowlromance.com/nightowlromance/reviews/Review.aspx?daoid=5129

This book got a 4.75 so use the "Night Owl Reviews Top Pick" icon.

Review Blurb for use on your sites:

"[Bad-Ass Faeries 2] was as much if not more as enjoyable a read as its predecessor, and I will enjoy reading any other books that come across from these authors." 4.75 Stars - Top Pick, Night Owl Reviews


In the Night Owl Review, Christy's & my story, "Party Crashers" actually highlighted:

Roy, Cameron and Monica and their crew are out to capture a sidhe faerie. He’s been stealing artifacts and committing crimes all over the place and they think they may have him right where they want him. Victor Caradoc is the sidhe they are after and he is getting rich people to give him money from all over the world. He doesn’t need the money; it’s just for the sport of it.

Wheeeeeee!!!

Now... back to work on some noveling - or at least fixing our chapter synopsis! :)

Happy 2010 from Trish & Chris's Blog!

We've got a resolution/business plan to update this more regularly… so I'm starting with a similar New Year's post to what I do for myself on my own blog.

Basically, Saturday night, Chris and I had our first… what I'd call… "official" business meeting. We've been friends for years, so we just have been going with the flow, but I thought we needed to really get down to the business side of our partnership and discuss how we wanted to grow - and set ourselves some deadlines.

We have two of our own projects in the works now, and we'll be embarking on a new novel with this year's NaNoWriMo - and we want to write another short piece together, and try out a joint poem. With that, I've got several of my own projects that I need to balance… and though we didn't talk about it, I know Chris has a lot of great story ideas on her own to work on. (Like that YA Fae romance, Chris??? J Want to see it!)

Writing wise, we want to get our 2009 NaNoWriMo (secret-ish) project ready for beta readers by the end of March. Then, we want to get Yesterday's Shadows re-edited and re-ready for another round of submissions perhaps (unless we're submitting our NaNoWriMo project… see, "Business" for more on that!) We also want to finish a short piece we were playing with earlier this year, and that deadline is set for the end of September - leaving us clear for NaNoWriMo 2010.

Business wise, well, updating this blog more frequently. J We have an every-other-week schedule planned so far, and I think we will take turns with marketing updates and info on the Bad-Ass Faeries anthologies, and any other NEWS we may get. (You know, like manuscript requests and all that.) In July we need to have a talk on our query plan. I'll have seen how my own novel has done in the scary submission waters - and we'll have to decide which (if we can't do both) of our projects we should be querying. Oh - preemptive to that, January is us researching more query protocol/manners. We also have a business meeting to discuss marketing/platform for our 2009 NaNoWriMo project this Tuesday.

I look forward to this being our most productive year together! Great things will happen.

Happy 2010 to you!

Check out the spiffy new cover over on Amazon and Mundania Press! Whoo-hoo!!

http://www.amazon.com/Bad-Ass-Faeries-Just-Plain-Bad/dp/1606592068/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1257338371&sr=8-3

Enjoy!!

I got another critique on my writing back from my live writers group. I wrote a flash piece that borders on erotica and has to do with Death and a borderline personality chick… I have had the widest range of feedback on this. A few people hate it, but none for the same reason, and quite a few people really like it or love it… none for the same reason.

I suppose I'm addicted to writing feedback. I've gotten to the point where I can sift through what is useful relatively well and take my punches… but I'm equally fascinated on how a story and its meaning changes based on the reader. I wrote in my own blog about considering demographics as a writer… but I want to add that writers should also listen to what different demographics think of a particular piece. One of the people who really hated "Manipulation," didn't get it at all… but she made some comments on sentence-level things that absolutely made sense.

The only truly useless critiques are those who say they love something and don't know why. Yeah, it's a great ego-boost… but its like a empty carbs. Sure you get a rush, but there's no nutritional gain.

When you write with another person, it also brings a different flavor - and a broader demographic on the composing in.

Chris and I were brought up with and follow different religions - so she noticed when I was overly Catholic-heavy in our novel planning. (On the other hand, I brought up a few things she didn't know as a non-Catholic.)

She also has family from a different ethnic background than I do, so she can draw on the Hawaiian/Japanese influences much better.

We also read different books and watch different movies, so our shared reading experience also makes for a richer background in storytelling.

Chris has kids; I work with horses. I grew up in New England, in a state where you can drive a few hours in any cardinal compass direction and be in another state (or the ocean); Chris lives in the west and grew up on the west coast… in huge states, with a different ocean, desert, and different mountains.

On the other hand, we're both Caucasian women of about the same age, in monogamous heterosexual relationships, working primarily in education, in approximately the same gross household income bracket, geeky sf/f/h/etc. lovers, cynics, with twisted senses of horror and beauty.

There are certain things we can be each other's critics for, and others we'll share the same blindness to… so, back to the critique/writing groups. J Our Shadow Guard/Fae Sithein world has had an overall strong response - and even fans! - but our writing has done an awful lot of growing - and continues to do so.
I'm curious at how far our shared experience and differences will get us in the overall quality of our latest endeavor. I look forward to it!

Our book had a face-lift :)

Our anthology was bought by a new publisher and is being prepped for resale. More info can be found at:
http://www.mundania.com/book.php?title=Bad-Ass+Faeries+2:+Just+Plain+Bad

Anthology #1 in the series was also bought by the same publisher and will be re-launched as well.

It HAS been a while since either of us posted here. My!

I've been off conventioning… Christy has had a lot of family needs - both good and not-so-good.

We have been writing though. Life has not entirely beaten us down!

Christy sent me a working synopsis of our new novel - outside of the Shadow Guard/Fae Sithein realm. She sent it… almost a week ago. Maybe more than a week ago.

I started reading it daily. I know the first page by heart, mostly. (It's really poetic, too! Especially for a working synopsis!) I finally finished reading it today - but did not get to add any edits or comments.

Please don't kill me, Christy? J

I get off my tutoring hours at 9PM tomorrow. Christy, if you are online, you have permission - nay - I order/beg you to get out that whip!

Yay co-author motivation!

P.S. You can post here, too, Chris ;)

(Vampyre, Vampir, Upiór, Upir', Upyr)

In the wake of Twilight and its ongoing mania topped with True Blood as well as the push to re-vamp (pun intended) Anne Rice's vampire chronicles and Johnny Depp cast as the popular vampire, Barnabas, in Dark Shadows, the blood-sucking franchise is moving forward full steam ahead. People seem to lurk in the shadows, like the famous fanged ones, waiting to take a bite out of whatever form of media produces the next vampire story. But the question remains- why do people flock to see these leeches in action? Maybe it's their animal chemistry or maybe they've glamoured us with their magic. But the fact remains- people would bare their necks to anything vampire.

Vampires have been in the media for centuries. The first documented use of the word vampire was in 1047 AD when a Russian church priest cited his name as "Upir' Likhyi " or "the wicked vampire". In European countries around 1718, official city documents recorded the local practice of digging up bodies and "killing the vampires." But looking even deeper into history, we find vampirism as far back as Greek and Roman times where they documented creatures that had a lot of vampiric qualities, oft times depicted on pottery. Yet they did not bare the name "vampire" back then. The only term they could identify with such a creature was demon or devil. In India, it was the vetala, an evil spirit that entered the bodies of corpses. In Egypt, it was the goddess Sekhmet who is notorious for drinking blood. In Hebrew lore, there is Lilitu, (or Lilith), known as the night demon (sometimes taking on the form of a scops-owl) portrayed as a seductress who feasted on the blood of people. Despite a history rich in vampire accounts, nothing was more sensationalized than the "18th-Century Vampire Controversy" in Europe where superstition capitalized over rational thought. Hysteria prompted vampire hunts, accusations, and terror. Though, this panic has seemingly changed over the years.

Presently, vampires still steal the spotlight (or moonlight) though are treated in a much different way. Unlike in centuries past where the vampire was to be exterminated and feared, they seem to captivate and titillate the human psyche of today. Why the change? Perhaps it is what the vampire has come to represent in today's media: forbidden temptations. And, as we learned from Eve, something that is forbidden is very alluring. The bad boy/girl image has always fascinated people. We are drawn to them because these "rebels without a cause" represent the high stakes (no pun intended) danger, chaos, and darkness that we yearn to acknowledge yet keep shackled deep inside us. In an ethical, upright society, displaying anything that goes against the structure's mores or represents vice is considered uncouth and immoral. Yet vampires live their lives free of human structure and unreservedly tap into their darker side. We all harbor this darkness, but do not dare touch it or encourage it. The vampire encompasses forbidden pleasure, unfettered living, control, immortality, desirability, and usually extensive wealth. These are all things that we yearn to possess. So when they are all embodied in one being, that one being is ultimately attractive.