Announcing a new novella set in the world of LADY LAZARUS – coming soon!

WHAT: “The Magic of Fabulous” — A new novella, set in the world of the LADY LAZARUS series

WHEN: Releasing December 2011

WHO: Featuring the outrageous and irrepressible Eva Farkas, a Hungarian girl with no magic who must survive in a Budapest filled with local Nazis, werewolves, and vampires.

WHY: Let me tell you why…

Let me tell you my worst nightmare.

I’m in my daily world, just doing the shopping and taking care of my kids and hustling to pay the bills.  And suddenly, events outside of my control overtake that homey, boring little world and rip it apart. You know, there’s a war.  Or a revolution.  Or a financial catastrophe hits my city.

Can’t pay the bills any more — no job.  Running errands goes from a never ending merry-go-round, to a life-or-death race to survival — the streets now crawl with killers and desperate people.  And those little, defenseless kids…they need me to somehow make sense of all this and keep us together.

Imagine becoming an enemy of the state, just for existing.  What do you do with that?

This is real-life nightmare stuff.  This is the stuff that wakes me up at 2 a.m. (when I am writing this).  The thought of losing my home, becoming a target…it makes my heart pound, my hands shake.

My grandparents went through this exact scenario in Europe in World War II.  These primal fears are the root of the LADY LAZARUS series, and Magda Lazarus — the untrained witch who refuses to stay dead, who uses her magic as a secret weapon in the fight against evil — is the answer to those nightmares in a magical world.

In the series, Magda has a friend — a funny, cute, even silly friend — a best friend, who reminds Magda she not only is loved, but liked.  Everybody needs a friend like Eva Farkas, somebody who can make you laugh when all you want to do is cry and assume the fetal position.

But Eva’s situation is even worse than Magda’s.  Because, unlike Magda, Eva doesn’t have magic in her.  Not a drop.  And in a world where werewolves are Nazis, and the local nobility is fanged, a girl with no magic isn’t worth a half-smoked cigarette.

What I love about Eva Farkas is that, even though her situation is hopeless as a factual matter, she still refuses to give up.  She never, never, ever gives up.  So she doesn’t have any regular magic…she just makes up her own special kind. The fabulous kind.

Some people do curl up and die when the world explodes — the newly-broke Wall Street stockbrokers jumping out the windows during the Great Depression come to mind.

Others keep their head down, make their world smaller, and get by as best they can.

Still others, like Magda, find their magic comes to the surface when life gets too dangerous to survive any other way.

And then there are people like Eva Farkas, who survive based on sheer determination, wit, and moxie. Who don’t just survive but spread their wings, and like butterflies, ride the wind…

Here’s an excerpt of the forthcoming “The Magic of Fabulous,” where Eva explains her science of survival to her students of the future:

I have three rules for surviving on the streets of Budapest, dear reader. Rule the first, make sure your stocking seams are straight, especially if you have to draw them on.  A lady is known for her deportment, the state of her shoes, and for her attention to those all-important little details.

Rule the second, know your friends and enemies, and keep them all amused, especially the enemies.

And Rule the third:  when cavorting with vampires, make sure your perfume has a poppy seed base.

I would go for garlic instead if I could, of course, but smelling like garlic is a quick way to achieving social and personal ruin.  No, garlic is not possible, alas, but opium messes with vampires, long enough for a girl to get away, and poppy seeds are in the opium family, yes?  So I lace all my perfume with poppy seed oil, darlings, and no vampire has sunk his dirty fangs into my neck.  At least, not yet.

You better believe I wore my poppy seed Chanel the night I ventured into the cafe of the vampires, Café Istanbul, on a sullen, overheated night this past July.  I had no choice but to go there.  Magda was gone. Her little sister Gisele, prone to fainting fits and strange prophecies about the end of the world, was none too helpful about keeping body and soul together, not hers and not mine, either.

So yours truly, Eva Farkas, madame guttersnipe and girl with not a drop of magic in her whatsoever, not even to the extent of the poppy seed oil hidden in a tiny bottle of Chanel — I had to find some money, you see, or I was finished.  At the time, I worked for an old lady who ran a decrepit flower shop across town on Ferencz Korut, and she was so poor herself she paid me in posies, not even in roses.  My hysterical little prophet, Gisele, sewed ladies’ brassieres and shirts, but she didn’t make near enough to cover the rent.

So now Magda was gone, and if I was going to eat, I had to figure something out, something more filling than posies.  I tried appealing to the old lady with the flower shop, but she was too old to lie to me or to threaten me either, she knew as well as I that death was breathing down all of our necks with bad breath, in this awful summer of 1939.

Nothing for it.  Magda was gone; the vampire Bathory needed a new girl.  I have no magic, none, nada.  And in a wicked city like Budapest, having no magic is like missing an arm or a nose, or like trying to navigate the Ring Road alone and blind.  And drunk.  It’s lucky for me I’m a lively girl, with lots of energy and a neck with no bite marks on it.  At least, not yet.

If all you have is chutzpah, you have to use it or you are a goner.  Dear reader, I’m telling you this story so that if I leave this wicked Budapest for good, if the bastards find me out and I die, I will at least leave behind me, if not a child or a nice sweet husband, at least a guide to the magically challenged.

You can survive war and mayhem!  Even if I don’t make it – just because my luck ran out, doesn’t mean I never had any luck to begin with.  I visited the vampire because my human luck was out of gas.  If you get this desperate, I recommend you look good, trust nobody, and remember about the opium.

I don’t have Magda’s spell-casting or summoning magic either…so I’m a disciple of Eva’s school of magic, the kind the rest of us all have.  “The Magic of Fabulous” — coming soon!

If you can’t wait any longer to dive into this world, and you haven’t yet read about the adventures of Eva, Magda, and Gisele in LADY LAZARUS: read the first book in the series today!

Here are some buy links:

Order — IndieBound

Order — Amazon

Order — Barnes & Noble

Order — Books-a-Million

And I have another, FREE book, that gives the reader a window into the magical and historical background of the series — the gilded, dangerous cafe culture of Budapest in the 1930s:

Free at Smashwords

Free at Amazon

Let me tell you what — if you have read this far, thank you.  I would like to send you both a reminder of when Fabulous is live, and also share with you a free, SECRET story set in the world of Lady Lazarus. I am writing this secret story as a thank you to all my readers.

So please fill out the box below and I will send you the reminder and the story when it is ready.  Thanks again

I will be signing books and swag and otherwise promoting the LADY LAZARUS series (including book #2, DARK VICTORY) at the Tor booth this Sunday, October 16th at 3 p.m.

This year, the Tor booth is # 945 — if you’re at the Javits this Sunday, please stop by!

I’m emerging from the hidden recesses of my writing cave (in major deadline overdrive for Book #3 of LADY LAZARUS) to visit with the SF Association of Bergen County on Saturday, October 15th at 7:30 p.m. at the Saddle River Valley Cultural Center.

You don’t have to be a member of the SFABC to attend so please stop by if you are local — I’ll be making some exciting announcements and will have some goodies for everybody who attends

I hope that everybody reading this is doing well.  I’ve been silent as the grave for awhile now, but have a lot planned for the end of the year.  Coming soon!

So psyched to be heading up to Hartford this weekend!  Here’s my tentative schedule as a ConnectiCon Guest of Honor:

Friday, 1 p.m.: How We Got Into It

reading/signing 5:30 – 6:30 p.m.

Friday 6 p.m.: Researching Historical Fantasy

Friday 7:15 p.m.: Copyright and Creation

Saturday 10:45 a.m.: So You Want to Publish

Saturday 7 p.m.: What If

Sunday 10:30 a.m.: Story Mapping

In addition, on Saturday night I’ll be participating in a charity story-a-thon called the Outrageous Tales of Baron von Lahey, at 7:30 p.m. in Panel Two.  Come on down, encourage me in my outlandish tale-telling, and donate to charity.

I spent a lot of time in Connecticut, and I’m really looking forward to coming back for this con. Connecticut peeps, hope you can come out to celebrate with me!

Dean Wesley Smith’s website is a treasure trove for writers — he’s got two or three books about the publishing industry going up there, he constantly puts up free fiction, and has his fingers on the pulse of both indy and trad publishing.

If you head over there, though, make sure you read the comments.  The veins of pure gold are down in comments – Dean’s offhand comments are often mini-writing workshops, full of hard-earned wisdom about the writing process.

For example, check out this nugget of wisdom about so called writer’s block:

Michele, writer’s block is a myth, but project block sure exists. It’s often when you write yourself down a path and somehow your conscious brain gets a handhold and veers you in a direction. Then your writing brain, your subconscious says, “Nope.” And you just grind to a halt. Or, sometimes your subconscious just hasn’t figured out the next line yet. Which is why I often sleep in the middle of a story. When I wake up I can type again. (grin)

One big aspect of project block is not trusting your subconscious. This comes from the conscious/critical mind’s driving need to know where the story is going. As long as you just trust that the story is going somewhere and type, this aspect stays silent. But when you find yourself NEEDING to know where the story is going and not knowing, like a junky needing a fix, more than likely the project will stop cold.

Switch projects and go again. No such thing as writer’s block. But project block for many reasons is real.

YES.  This, a thousand times.

I first learned this from my writing buddy Charlene Teglia — we were chatting about working on multiple projects, and she emerged with a similar gem, that you can have different projects at different stages, and when you are stuck on one, move to another.

And the mighty Kevin J. Anderson says something very similar as well:

Each writing project has many phases: research, plotting, writing the first draft, doing the rough edit, polishing the final edit, copyediting, proofreading, and the marketing and business.  Since some of these tasks are more onerous than others, I keep several different projects on the creative burner at all times at different stages.  Personally, I love the creative explosion of plotting the story from scratch and writing the first draft, but the first major edit or the last proofread both seem like a lot of drudgery to me.

However, if I have several novels or stories at different stages of completion, I can switch from one process to another, while charging along at full-steam.  The variety also makes the tedious parts more palatable. 

 I can research a new novel for an hour, then write a draft chapter of a different story, then proofread galleys of another novel, answer questions in an interview for yet another novel, then maybe go back to tweak an outline, or do some more research.

So there you have it…a writing secret it took me years to understand and start to implement.  The best part about this job is that you never ever stop learning.

The long-awaited sequel to MS. PENDRAGON is now available on Kindle, Smashwords, and Nook…

Be careful what you wish for…

Vivianne, High Priestess of New York City, once dreamed of a world ruled by magic. But when King Arthur returns, bringing enchantment with him, the Big Apple goes straight to hell.

Now Viv must battle demonic forces intent on destroying time itself — even Merlin, great Mage of Britain, can’t stop an ancient prophecy from unfolding in the present day. Viv may have the power to save New York, but she can’t resist the dark seductions of Arthur’s bastard son – Mordred.

“We’re not in Kansas anymore Toto! Brace yourself for a wild ride through past and present in this amazing sequel to Ms. Pendragon. All the great characters are back to fight off a returning evil including, Gwen, Viv, Merlin & Arthur.” -Dark Angel Reviews

Buy — Kindle/Amazon

Buy — Nook/Barnes & Noble

Buy — Smashwords

Recently, the folks at AISFP podcast released my interview with Brent Bowen, recorded at last year’s World Fantasy con.  They are doing a big giveaway at their site, including a signed copy of LADY LAZARUS. Go forth, listen, and win

In case you didn’t know, one of my many obsessions is World War II, especially the Eastern European theatre, and especially the years leading up to Hitler’s invasion of Poland in 1939.  It’s a period in which the shadows of totalitarianism slowly but inexorably covered the face of the continent,  a time in which seemingly minor decisions ended up having catastrophic consequences.

It’s also a time of style and grit, sophistication and a weary strength among the good people of Europe.  You have to remember that the world was still recovering from the disaster of World War I, the Great War, and that colored the world view, the dreams, and the fears of the interwar generation.

In short, Europe at that time was totally Noir.  Dark, bitter chocolate, coffee at 2 a.m., a cigarette for breakfast.  I’m obsessed with the period, because I often wonder how I would have survived it myself.  And I wonder about the Europe that could have been, had world events played out in a different way…

One of my other obsessions is reading awesome books   And until recently I didn’t realize there was a sub-genre, Nazi Noir, that categorizes so many books that I love.

The grand-daddy of Nazi Noir is the awesome Alan Furst.  His dangerous, edgy pre-war spy novels are the next best thing to time-travel to the Paris, Warsaw, and Balkans of the 1930s.  Jaded characters who see too clearly where things are going in Europe, and who pay the price for trying to do something about it.  He calls his novels “historical espionage,” but the mood is noir, baby, total noir.

His stories unravel and float away like cigarette smoke in a nightclub, more atmospheric and literary than plot-oriented.  I love these books, though usually I go for books with a stronger, more linear plot.  These books haunt me, in the best, most wonderful way.

Rebecca Cantrell is the author of the marvelous Trace of Smoke, the first book in the Hannah Vogel series.  If you like these kinds of stories, do yourself a favor and read these — they feature a strong, dynamic heroine in the Berlin of the early 1930s.  Again, these books are so atmospheric you’ll hear the click of Hanna’s heels on the pavement as she tries to bring her brother’s killer to justice in 1931 Berlin.  Fantastic writing…elegant storytelling.

My writing teacher  Kris Rusch recently released  Hitler’s Angel, an edgy murder mystery set in both 1970s and 1930s Berlin.  It tells the story of the real-life murder of Hitler’s niece, Geli Raubal, in Berlin in 1931 (truly a pivotal time in German history).  This story has a kicker of a twist at the end, one that puts the story before into a philosophical light.  A taut, intense read. Kris also writes paranormal Nazi Noir, and that, I tell you, has all my reader cookies right there.  Nom, nom, nom.  Read this novella for free online at Subterranean Press Magazine — I just loved it:  it’s called “Show Trial,” and though it’s set in the immediate aftermath of the war, it’s plenty noir.  Intense, morally ambiguous, and really cool.  Check it out!

You realize I could just go on and on, right?

I’ll stop now, and probably do this again soon.  There was an excellent article in Booklist recently that listed more books in the genre, and that’s a great place to start if, like me, you are drawn to the period, and you want more recommendations.

Whee — she’s out in mass market now! Here are some buy links for you:

Amazon (and check it – they lowered the price for the Kindle edition — same low price as the mass market.  Yey, Tor!)

Barnes & Noble (and it’s the same low price in electronic format for Nook! Yey!)

Macmillan (parent publisher of Tor)

I’m having a launch party over on Facebook today — a new free ebook is uploaded there (published on all formats at Smashwords) for your entertainment.  I’ll be posting cool tidbits, interviews, videos, etc, over there…and there may be more prezzies in store for folks who stop by (I’m in a celebratory mood!)

Here’s the link to the free ebook if you don’t have time to swing by the party:

available in all formats at Smashwords

Thanks so much to everybody for the support.  This book was a long time coming, and it is so great to see it in the wild, finding its way into readers’ hands.  Let me know how the nonfic ebook works for you!

Had the most incredible trip to Israel, where I saw many incredible sights and learned so much about a complex and beautiful country.  I will post pictures and a travelogue soon, promise!