There’s a fantastic giveaway happening over at I Am A Reader, Not a Writer! We are one of the sponsoring authors for the Kindle Fire Giveaway for March. Go quick and enter, you could be in to win that beautiful gadget above! 😀
Giveaway Details
1 winner will receive their choice of a Kindle Fire HD (US Only), $199 Amazon Gift Card or $199 in Paypal Cash (International).
Ends: 3/31/13
Open only to those who can legally enter, receive and use an Amazon.com Gift Code or Paypal Cash. Winning Entry will be verified prior to prize being awarded. No purchase necessary. You must be 18 or older to enter or have your parent enter for you. The winner will be chosen by rafflecopter and announced here as well as emailed and will have 48 hours to respond or a new winner will be chosen. This giveaway is in no way associated with Facebook, Twitter, Rafflecopter or any other entity unless otherwise specified. The number of eligible entries received determines the odds of winning. Giveaway was organized by Kathy from I Am A Reader, Not A Writer http://iamareader.com and sponsored by the authors. VOID WHERE PROHIBITED BY LAW
Latimer: I just saw the Game of Thrones Season 3 trailer this week. God, it looks good! Mostly it reminded me of the brilliance of Tyrion Lannister.
He must be the top reason for watching Game of Thrones. He’s my top reason at least. He’s witty, intelligent and calculating. He’s not good by any means, he’s in it for himself, but you have to respect him like you can’t respect many of the other characters, because Tyrion knows how to play the game.
His dwarfism makes him an unsuspecting player, it defines him a little at the start, but eventually he just becomes one of those characters almost Sherlock-like in his quickness. He’s got the best comebacks and in Peter Dinklage’s hands he is portrayed in such a cool way. Every moment he’s on screen, you find yourself screaming; “You rock!”
I’m starting to think about the quality of TV shows lately and how some books and comic book series make excellent TV shows.
I heard that Lauren Oliver’s Delirium series (which shamefully I have but haven’t read yet! Grr, bad Latimer!), is being made into a TV series instead of a movie.
Supposedly there is a lot in it that is more suited to TV than a movie. I think Game of Throne’s is the same, it makes an excellent TV show, but lots of the richness (and grim roughness) would have been lost in a movie.
And of course The Walking Dead is a comic book series that makes a fantastic TV show (that I have yet to fully watch, I’m so behind! :()
I wonder what Harry Potter the TV series would have been like? In a parallel world where it was a TV series, maybe produced by HBO with astronomical financing and effects (and I bet it was epic!).
The Vampire Diaries makes a good TV series, but it would have been a bad movie. And then I do think that Hunger Games and Twilight make better movies (the TV series’ would have been a bit too drawn out).
And then there’s The Sandman by Neil Gaiman. I’m reading it at the moment (and enjoying it, but that’s a later post!), and I keep thinking… ‘this would be a great TV series’. Apparently it’s one of those ‘it’s on, it’s off’ series. But… wow, seriously, watch out for it if it ever comes!
It seems to be a good time for TV! I can’t wait to hear of the next series to make it onto the little screen! Derek Landy’s Skulduggery, or Eoin Colfer’s Artemis Fowl maybe? They might be fun to have running through our weeks 🙂
We’re celebrating Saint Valentine’s Day by having our ebook, Legend Unleashed, free this weekend! Anyone who is interested can pop on over to Amazon and grab a copy. We truly hope you enjoy the read!
Spread the love this weekend and let everyone know 🙂
When an infamous criminal is unleashed from his prison, it has consequences for everyone in Carwick. Temperance Levinthal in particular…
Temperance is satisfied with her ordinary life. Dealing with her eccentric, childlike parents is all the excitement she needs. That changes when Alastair Byron returns home.
After a failed matchmaking attempt by her father, sparks fly between her and Alastair-just not the good kind.
They are forced together though, when they are implicated in a grisly murder. Their search for the truth leads them to a secret world beneath Carwick, filled with werewolves, wizards and other magical faey.
However, uncovering the truth is far more dangerous than they’d ever imagined.
There are secrets within secrets.
Even Alastair may be more than he seems…
Latimer and I have a happiness curve. Well, it should be a happiness slope really. It goes from the lofty level of the thrilled ‘Huzzah’ and plummets down to the blue depths of the ‘Bleugh’. We thought we were great, making up the name, ‘happiness curve’ but after a quick Google search, it turns out it’s already in existence…darn it. But! This is our version, and it’s a little different.
While both ends represent happiness in the usual curve, with ours, one end is total happiness and the other is…not. Both points are so extreme, only sounds can truly express them. There are, of course, little steps along the sloping road, the ‘that was epic!’ the ‘yay, yay!’, the ‘oh noo!’ and the ‘why me!’.
Throughout the process of our book being published, Latimer and I have swung from both extremes, pinged and ponged from one to the other. From when we finished writing it with premature ‘huzzahs’ to the double synchronised ‘bleughs’ as we forced ourselves to format, ‘one more time’.
Despite this though, skating up and down the slope has to be one of the most exhilarating and fun experiences that we’ve had in our short lives. We’ve had the ecstatic arrival of our book cover, where we spent over a week frequently wandering around staring at the image with dopey smiles while bumping into people, poles, bins and getting tangled in dog leads. To the following week where we nursed the resulting bruises, and started the brain-hurting job of teasing out the tangles within our manuscript.
But publishing is not the only place you’ll find happiness curves; there are those that occur within a really good book, well mini ones anyway. Actually, it is always more of a happiness squiggle. Once sucked into another world, you can roll along through moments of sqwee-ing, jealousy, danger, action and sadness. It can often be like a rollercoaster. This fantastic ride is something we’ve always strived to achieve in our own writing. So we hope you enjoy the skating along the happiness squiggle within our book, Legend Unleashed (which you could win in our new giveaway, see below!).
Huzzah!! Free things! 😀
Don’t forget to click and enter the LEGEND UNLEASHED GIVEAWAY, ah go on, you know you want to. Click it! Haha. 😀
Do you have a happiness curve, squiggle, line or circle? We love to hear about all your different shapes and where you are on them!
December 15 – James T Kelly – Interview (Thank you to James for letting us gate-crash his blog for an interview!)
December 17- Magical Manuscript Interview– Interview (Return to Magical Manuscripts for a belated interview – thank you to Sandy for having us again! Hope we didn’t wreck the place :))
Latimer and Ridley are off on a wintry adventure!! 🙂
Latimer and Ridley are wrapping up warm this December (got cool new winter fashion and everything!).We’re leaving our internet camp to go trekking across the webs to visit other blogs! HUZZAH!
We’ll have guest posts, promotions, interviews and reviews. It will to be interesting! We’ll make new friends, say hello to people and (terrifyingly) find out what people think of ‘The Book’.
If you won’t get a chance to wander with us, make sure to stay tuned here anyway, as we’ll have our own little give away! Yay, free things! 😀 They’ll be purdy things too, even we don’t own these yet, though we want to!
December 15 – James T Kelly – Interview (Thank you to James for letting us gate-crash his blog for an interview!)
December 17- Magical Manuscript Interview– Interview (Return to Magical Manuscripts for a belated interview – thank you to Sandy for having us again! Hope we didn’t wreck the place :))
What’s out you asked? Our book, Legend Unleashed! We’ve pushed the button!
It’s available now, as an e-book, see the links below if you’re interested!
The paperback will follow on soon enough, we’re just waiting on the proof copy to arrive in the post so we can look over it and make sure there are no issues.
It’s been such a steep learning curve, but really worth it! It was fantastic that we had full control over every part of the process. It’s also been hard work though, with long hours put in and full ‘bookwork’ weekends, so don’t let anyone fool you into thinking self-publishing is an easy task! We finished writing the book many many many months ago. In the time since we’d typed ‘the end’, we’ve spent the rest of our days editing, agonising, formatting, fist shaking, commissioning our cover design, smiling, book trailers, grinning and that was just the start!
In the past, we’ve been asked how the two of go about writing a book together (we’re also fascinated by how other writing duos work together, so we love these explanations. Skip down through this part if you don’t care though!!) We always start with a single idea, whether it’s a scene, a ‘what if’ scenario, or a character. We seem to have plenty of these knocking around! More often than not, it’s a character. After this comes the fun part, world building! We love this, picking character names, places and plotting the story.
We let our imaginations run free scribbling it all down on an A4 pad as we sip on endless cups of tea; what would happen if we…? If he did this….? If she went there…? Wouldn’t it be great if…? If you read this part, what would you want him to do…? It’s the ultimate freedom, we just run wild! After this, we tease out any issues, then we divide them into chapter summaries. Each summary has bullet points, information taken from the plot and any extras we think of as we’re going along, with exactly what we need to have happen. Then these summaries get divided out, we get two chapters each at a time and usually one of us starts the book and the other ends it. This gives us the chance to experience at least part of the book as readers, rather than just the authors. We give each other constant feedback after each chapter stint. In this way, we’ve written six books together, Legend Unleashed is our fifth book and the most polished. So we decided to bite the bullet and self-publish it.
So far it’s been a great decision! Has it been the same for others who have followed the same path? We’d love to hear their tales!
We’re staring into the dark void, not knowing what’s to come, but either way we look forward to what the future might bring!
Latimer and Ridley: The clock is ticking down to our publishing date! Soon!!
Following on from the prologue in our last post, which if you haven’t read you can find it here, this week we’re posting chapters one and two of our book, Legend Unleashed! We hope you like them! We’d love all and any feedback. Stay tuned, as more chapters will follow these in the next couple of weeks. We’ve also created another shorter teaser trailer, with new scenes in it, which will be released later in the week!
For those of you who prefer our rambling posts on random things than our current ones (we know not everyone is interested in all things bookie!), we will get back to those!!
The Bram Stoker festival is coming up soon, which we will both be attending and we’ll report back! We’re also going to a small gig by the band, Bastille, this week (our excellent friend Orbie says they’re on the up and up, one to watch! It’s great to be ‘in the know’ about these things!! Haha 😀 )
Latimer and Ridley have had a surprisingly busy weekend.
Latimer and Ridley: We got our book-proofs back on Saturday morning and have been working hard getting them ready to be sent back to our editor for ebook formatting!
It’s been a lot of work, but we’re getting there!
Slowly coming close to D-Day or MLR-Day!
We just want to share our prologue with everyone! A few chapters to follow soon 🙂
When an infamous criminal is unleashed from his prison, it has consequences for everyone in Carwick. Temperance Levinthal in particular…
Carwicky 