Did you know that Emma Newman’s Any Other Name is out?

IT IS.

And it’s a lovely book by a lovely author.

In fact, I was recently on said lovely author’s podcast — TEA AND JEOPARDY — where I discussed tea and books and the Devil and barely escaped her sinister volcanic lair.

No, really.

Anywho!

She has prepared a series of “secret objects” you are tasked with finding within the pages of her book, and here at terribleminds you will find this link to the twelfth object.

Any Other Name is the second novel in the Split Worlds series, following on directly after the events in Between Two Thorns. Cathy is secretly seeking a way out of Nether Society by helping Max and the gargoyle to investigate the murders in the Bath Chapter. When she learns more about the mysterious Agency which oils the wheels of life in the Nether it becomes clear that the privileged few are enjoying their existence at a price far higher than they realized. It’s time to change Nether society, but with assassins, Fae lords and revengeful fallen Rosas to deal with, can Cathy survive long enough to make a difference?

Signed copies will be available from Toppings Books, Bath and Forbidden Planet.

UK Print & Ebook

Amazon.co.uk | Book Depository | Waterstones |

US Print & Ebook

Amazon.com | BarnesandNoble.com | IndieBound.org

DRM-Free Epub Ebook

On-sale from the Robot Trading Company

Kindle US and Kindle UK

Nook

The audio version (narrated by me) is available from The Book Depository†|†BarnesandNoble.com |†Audible.com

AND WE HAVE OUR WINNER. IT IS KRISTEN SULLIVAN — AKA, “THE RUSSIAN.” SHE WINS ALL. BIG BASKET OF BOOKS COMING HER WAY. HUZZAH AND HOORAY CAPSLOCK WHEE.

YOU MAY ALL GO HOME NOW.

Wait! Wait, shit, no, don’t go — hold on. Hold on.

We’ve got 25 other entries.

You should click here to see the whole set.

Because, by golly, I want to give away more books. That set has so many rad options it was genuinely hard to pick. I mean, it has stab wounds. It has my doppelganger. It has children on toilets. It has cosplay. THESE PICTURES HAVE EVERYTHING.

I want you to look through that set and then go to the comments below and vote for your favorite. Just list the photo # (with or without the title added is fine).

Vote for just one.

The top two photos in terms of votes will get:

A signed copy of Unclean Spirits.

And a signed copy of the Polish version of Blackbirds.

Voting is open until noon EST tomorrow — June 7th, Friday.

Go. Gaze. Vote!

Again, the link to the set:

The Blue Blazes Contest Photos.

And congrats to Kristin, who boldly and violently embodies both Nora “Persephone” Pearl and also any number of the Get-Em-Girls roller derby gang from the book.

Thanks to everyone else for participating!

EDIT:

VOTING IS CLOSED.

*does a quick tally*

Holy crap, far and away the favorite was THE BLUE BLAZES :FOR KIDS —

And then second up, we’ve got my DOPPELGANGER!

So, Melanie and Cameron Meadors — you two should hit me up for The Doppelganger photo, and Derrick Eaves, you and your children have truly won the day, so winners should hit me up at terribleminds at gmail dot com. You people are awesome. Well done.

Joelle is an agent-mate and a friend, and I gotta tell you, she’s written a helluva young adult book here — the marketing pitch is ‘Hunger Games meets the SATs,’ which is a pretty killer hook. But as hooks go, it only just scrapes the surface. Here’s Joelle to talk about the book:

Tell us about yourself:  Who the hell are you?

I’m a very tall redhead who keeps making career choices that involve rejection.  Lots and lots of rejection.  So, I suppose that also makes me a masochist or someone who isn’t very bright.  Huh…  I started out as a musical theater and opera performer (totally secure field), did some modeling (an even more secure field that involves copious amounts of exercise and small quantities of food), before teaching voice lessons while performing dinner theater.  After being rejected from a show that everyone else in my dressing room was cast in (true story), I was struck with the opening line of a book.  A book NO ONE should read, but it lead me to keep writing.  So, now I teach voice lessons and write books…which allows me to work with kids (which I love) and get rejected in totally new ways (which I’ve gotten really good at!).

Give us the 140-Character Story Pitch:

The SAT from Hell in which our heroine works to pass The Testing and become one of the next leaders of her country.

Where does this story come from?

Over the years, I’ve worked with lots of students as they go through the college acceptance process.  Each year the bar is set higher.  The pressure to be the best gets more extreme.  Some of my students handle the pressure better than others.  The parent and teacher can’t help worrying about the future and whether this process will become even more difficult.  The writer couldn’t resist the challenge of seeing how difficult it could become.

How is this a story only you could’ve written?

My fingers.  My computer.  And no one else was willing to do the work.  So…I guess unless a ghost took possession, the only way the pages were going to get filled was if I filled them.  Here’s hoping I did a good job!

What is the hardest thing about writing The Testing?

Aside from dealing with my computer crashing?  I would say The Testing pushed me to examine some less than happy ideas about the lasting changes modern warfare could cause and our society’s need to test students.  Thinking about how easy it would be for our world to be corrupted by weapons is frightening.  Examining how our education system has truly shifted its paradigm so that almost all lessons are geared toward better test scores was depressing.  Up until writing The Testing, my published novels have all been lighthearted mysteries containing camels that wear hats.  The Testing pushed me to confront some darker issues and the fears that I have about education, war and the way we chose our leaders — which is interesting, but never comfortable.

What did you learn writing The Testing?

That I never have a clue how a story is going to end.  Not even when I REALLY think I do.

What do you love about The Testing?

I love the characters. Especially my heroine, Malencia Vale.  Cia is smart, and comes from a wonderfully loving family.  That gives her a solid moral foundation, which is one of her strengths.  However, depending on the circumstances, that strength can also be one of her greatest weaknesses.

What would you do differently next time?

I’d love to say that I would have outlined the book, but I’ve learned that I can’t outline to save my soul.  Um…I guess I probably wouldn’t have let one of my students read some of the early pages because then she wanted to see the rest.  Which, of course, had yet to be written.  The enthusiasm was great, but she ended up asking me about the book during every lesson…which made me feel like I was writing at a glacial pace.  I wasn’t, but boy I felt like the tortoise from that fable.  The good news is that I finished the race!

Give us your favorite paragraph from the story.

Oh…well, my favorite is one that technically contains a spoiler.  So, I’m not going to give you that.  However, here is one that I have a great fondness for.

“My heart races with excitement even as it is torn in two.  I can see the same conflicting emotions on the faces of the other Five Lakes candidates.  Our graduation ceremony changed our status from adolescent to adult, but this journey makes it official.  We are on our own.”

What’s next for you as a storyteller?

Revisions!  I am currently in the middle of reworking Graduation Day, which is book 3 of The Testing Trilogy.  Once that is done…um….well, I do have a new idea I want to ply with that I’m not sure I can pull off.  But I really want to try!

Joelle Charbonneau: Website / @jcharbonneau

The Testing: Amazon / B&N / Indiebound

It is my crazy pleasure to have Lauren Beukes here to talk about what is genuinely my favorite book so far this year. Here’s what you’re going to do: you’re going to read this interview, and you’re going to nod and laugh at all the right parts, and then you’re going to go and visit your favorite meatspace or online book retailer and you’re going to get a copy of this book because it is that goddamn good. Now, hey! Here’s Lauren to talk about it.

TELL US ABOUT YOURSELF: WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?

Jeez, that cues all kinds of metaphysical philosophical quandaries. Can I be a mismatch of atoms and carbon and mind thoughts in the restless dreaming of a post-dimensional crocodile god?

Okay, seriously, I’m a South African writer who is incredibly lucky to get paid to make up stories all day. It wasn’t always like this. Over the last 15 years, I’ve been a journalist, a TV scriptwriter, a documentary maker and a mom to a small and amazing daughter – and had to find time to write novels in between.

I guess I’m best known for winning the Arthur C Clarke Award and the Red Tentacle in 2011 for Zoo City, a black magic detective story set in Johannesburg about refugees, redemption, criminals with magical animals and the evils of autotune.

GIVE US THE 140-CHARACTER STORY PITCH

Harper, a time-travelling serial killer is untraceable, unstoppable until one of his victims, Kirby, survives and turns the hunt around.

WHERE DOES THIS STORY COME FROM?

This is a little embarrassing. I was messing around on Twitter instead of writing (as you do) and threw out the idea in the middle of a random conversation. I immediately deleted the tweet because I was like, YES! That must be my next book! Quickly! Before someone else thinks of it!

But I think that’s often the way of interesting ideas – they come around when you’re least expecting them, in those moments when you’ve let your subconscious off the leash to romp in the grass.

HOW IS THIS A STORY ONLY YOU COULD HAVE WRITTEN?

There are a lot of social issues that leak through my novels. It comes from having grown up under a terrible repressive racist regime (aka apartheid) and ten years as a journalist, getting backstage in the world.

I could have done a Bill And Ted’s Excellent Killing Spree from the dinosaurs to the middle ages to killing Hitler, or a Jack The Ripper Doctor Who, but I wanted to mess with the conventions of both genres.

I wanted to use time travel as a way of exploring how much has changed (or, depressingly stayed the same) over the course of the 20^th Century, especially for women, and subvert the serial killer genre by keeping the focus much more on the victims and examining what real violence is and what it does to us. The killer has a type, but it’s not a physical thing – he goes for women with fire in their guts, who kick back against the conventions of their time.

WHAT WAS THE HARDEST THING ABOUT WRITING THE SHINING GIRLS?

Keeping precise track of the multiple timelines was tricksy, but really the hardest thing was the killing. I wrote deep portraits of interesting women, from an African American World War Two single mom welder to a troublesome broad architect accused of pinko sympathies in the 50s to a gentle abortionist and a burlesque dancer with a terrible secret… and then I had to kill them.

The attacks usually happen from their perspective, so you’re not riding along with the killer, complicit in the murder, getting off on it. You’re with the women, feeling their fear and their outrage and grief and trauma and that was pretty hard to write, to make it more than a gratuitous murder, to get at the shock and emotion of it, because violence should be shocking. It should punch us in the face, that this is what it means when a murder is reported on the news or a woman turns up dead in a story. It was about creating characters rather than pretty corpses.

WHAT DID YOU LEARN WRITING THE SHINING GIRLS?

That history is amazing! Okay, I knew that already. But the resonances of stuff that happened then with stuff that is happening now was a little scary.

There are a lot of echoes, some of them obvious, like the Great Depression and our current recession, or the Red Scare’s tactics coming up again in the War on Terror, sneakily eroding our privacy and stirring up fear for political control, or the fact that women’s rights to control their bodies is apparently still up for debate, somehow? Which just makes me sad and mad.

But there were others that creeped me out, like the Motion Picture Association of America’s role in McCarthyism and politics which explains so much about their political clout now in trying to get people cut off from the Internet for illegally downloading a movie. Seriously. Losing access to the Internet, which the UN has determined is a basic human right and is pretty fundamental to the way we live now, because an entertainment company is pissy that you pirated The Hangover 3? Not okay. (Which is not to say I’m endorsing piracy – pay creators, kids, but that’s a lot of political power for a movie organization).

And a lot of amazing detail I just couldn’t fit in, except in passing, from the first labor case, by the women who painted undark dials on watches during World War One with radium paint and died horribly of radiation poisoning or how abortion got legalized in New York or the first nuclear fission in a lab under the University of Chicago’s football field. So. Much. Good. Stuff.

WHAT DO YOU LOVE ABOUT THE SHINING GIRLS?

The women. All of them, how they’re sharp and bright and curious and ready to set the world alight in some small way, and if they’re scared, they find a way to push through that. Especially Kirby. And I love her relationship with Dan. The love unfolding, if only she’d let it, if only she hadn’t let her whole life be derailed by her obsessive quest to find the man who did this to her.

WHAT WOULD YOU DO DIFFERENTLY NEXT TIME?

I really want to write Nella’s story. She’s the daughter of the African American welder who is killed in 1943 and starts trying to put the puzzle together before Kirby does, because Harper left an impossible clue on her mother’s body – a 1993 Jackie Robinson baseball card, but real life gets in her way and there are too many missing pieces, literally, as she develops Alzheimers and can’t keep track of the threads any more. I may still do it as a short story.

GIVE US YOUR FAVOURITE PARAGRAPH FROM THE STORY.

Okay, it’s a long one. But it’s my favourite moment between Dan and Kirby. Shit’s getting real. Kirby, the determined-as-hell survivor and Dan, an ex-homicide reporter turned sports journalist are heading towards a terrible confrontation.

She is tense in the car. She keeps playing with the lighter. Flick. Flick-flick-flick. He doesn’t blame her. The pressure is unbearable. Flick. Catapulting towards something that can be averted. A car crash in slow motion. Not just an ordinary fender-bender either. This is like your ten-car pile-up halfway across the freeway with helicopters and firetrucks and people weeping in shock on the side of the road. Flick. Flick. Flick.

‘Can you stop that? Or at least stick a cigarette in the hot end? I could use one.’ He tries not to feel guilty about Rachel. About driving her daughter into danger.

‘Do you have one?’ she says eagerly.

‘Check the glove compartment.’

She pops the latch and the cubby dumps a bunch of crap in her lap. Assorted pens, condiments from Al’s Beef, a squashed soda cup. She crumples the empty packet of Marlboro Lights.

‘Nope. Sorry.’

‘Shit.’

‘You know there’s still as much cancer-causing stuff in the light versions?’

‘Never figured cancer would be the thing to kill me.’

‘Where’s your gun?’

‘Under the seat.’

‘How do you know you’re not going to hit a bump and blow your ankle off?’

‘I don’t normally carry it around.’

‘I guess these are special circumstances.’

‘You freaked out?’

‘Out of my mind. I’m so scared, Dan. But this is it. My whole life. There’s no choice.’

‘We getting into free will now?’

‘I have to go back is all there is to it. If the police won’t.’

‘I think you’ll find that’s ‘we’, pal-face. You’re dragging me with you.’

‘Dragging is a strong word.’

‘So is “vigilantism”.’

‘You gonna be my Robin? You’d look good in yellow tights.’

‘Hold on there. I am definitely Batman. Which makes you Robin.’

‘I always liked the Joker more.’

‘It’s because you relate. You both have bad hair.’

‘Dan?’ she says, looking out the window at dusk creeping in over the empty lots and boarded-up houses and the rat-traps falling apart. Her face is reflected in the car window with the flame as she clicks the lighter again.

‘Yeah, kiddo?’ he says tenderly.

‘You’re Robin.’

WHAT’S NEXT FOR YOU AS A STORYTELLER

A novel set in Detroit, working title, Broken Monsters, about weird monstrous bodies turning up and a police detective’s relationship with her daughter and I can’t say more, because I’m still in the middle of it and talking too much steals the story’s soul.

Lauren Beukes: Website / @laurenbeukes

The Shining Girls: Amazon / B&N / Indiebound

Kirkus Reviews Heartland, Book #1!

A chilling post-apocalyptic adventure set on an Earth devastated by poor agricultural practices.

For teenager Cael, a good day might be killing a shuck rat for dinner and sailing a land-boat above ultra-engineered cornfields to scavenge parts from a wrecked motorvator. A bad day is watching the girl you love become Obligated to your archrival. Welcome to the Empyrean world, where the haves hover above ruined Earth in luxurious flotillas and the have-nots toil below in the Heartland, told whom to marry and what to grow—those “endless…everything” fields of corn that threaten to swallow towns and must be beaten back with “Queeny’s Quietdown,” an ominous herbicide. It’s all just “[l]ife in the Heartland,” resigned citizens say of violent “piss-blizzard” pollen storms, stillborn babies and the tumors that grow like strange fruit on their bodies. When Cael and his friends discover a trail of precious, prohibited vegetables growing deep in the corn, they stumble on a secret that may save them—or get them killed. Wendig offers vivid glimpses of authentic teen emotion and snappy, profanity-laced dialogue set in a grim-yet-plausible wrecked world. With last pages that offer more late-breaking revelation than resolution, this story’s dangling threads will no doubt entice readers to reach for the next book in the Heartland Trilogy.

A thoroughly imagined environmental nightmare with taut pacing and compelling characters that will leave readers eager for more.

Kirkus Reviews June 2013

UNDER THE EMPYREAN SKY

Preorder: Amazon / B&N / Indiebound

We’re all full of weird little penmonkey tricks. Hell, I got a whole cabinet of ’em.

So, here’s ten.

Peruse.

Add your own should you see fit.

The Tiniest Outline Of Them All: The last 50-100 words you write at the end of your day should be a note to yourself detailing just what the fuck you should write tomorrow. (“HORACE MURDERS LORD THORNJIZZ AND THE LITHUANIAN DETECTIVE CIRCUS IS ASSIGNED TO THE CASE”). In other news, now I want to write a book about a “Lithuanian detective circus,” whatever that is. I call dibs. You can’t have it. I’ll get stabby.

Little Jail Cells: Use a spreadsheet to track your deadlines and daily word count. Individual cells can detail word target and word actual for the day. Color code those motherfuckers: a red cell means you missed the target, whereas a green cell means you met or exceeded the target. Subtract current story’s word tally from total word tally desired to see just how much more blood you have yet to squeeze from this particular stone.

Chekhov’s Continuity: You’ve got lots of little things to track from start to finish when writing a long-form story (novel, screenplay, comic script), and it only gets harder when you sit down to write the sequels. Take notes on continuity as you go. Write them in a little notebook. Or use the function of your individual word processor (Scrivener is great with this, but using Word’s comments or notebook view could work, too). You have lots of things to track: where’s that gun and how many bullets are left? Who’s got the key to the Apiary Gate? Who knows the secret about Lord Thornjizz and his clockwork marmoset? Who put the bop in the bop-she-bop?

The WTF Code: Sometimes you’re writing and you hit a part in the story where you’re just like, “Nope, no fucking idea what happens here. Maybe they fight? Maybe they make love? I’m envisioning an orangutan for some reason.” Or maybe you reach a portion where you need more information (“Note to self: research the sewer tunnel layout of Schenectady”). That’s okay. Leave it blank and drop a code you’ll remember right into the section, a code that will specifically not be duplicated anywhere else in the text (WTF2013, for instance). Then when you complete the first pass of the manuscript, just do a FIND for all instances of YOUR SEKRIT CODE and hop through your many narrative gaps and chasms. FILL AND SPACKLE.

Save Or Die: Wanna know when to save your manuscript? Uh, pretty much always, always, always. Ah, but here’s a good specific tip: anytime you stop for any reason at all — to think! to take a shot of vodka! to tweet! — SAVE THAT MOTHERFUCKING MANUSCRIPT. Save frequently. Save obsessively! Future You will thank Present Proactive You the moment your asshole computer shits the bed and you lose barely any text at all.

The Dictionary Of Superfluity: As you write, begin to collect what you believe are instances of so-called “junk language” that you seem likely to use again and again. This might be any word that seems to bog down the flow of a sentence — actually, very, really, effectively, just. Slap that shit in a list. When it comes time to edit, do a FIND and look for instances of all these nasty little word-goblins. Then stick them in a bag and burn them. (You can also do this with words that may not be junky but that you find yourself overusing — “For some reason I really seem to like the words ‘turgid,’ ‘clamshell,’ and ‘widdershins.'”)

The Shape Of The Prose: Print out pages of the work. No no no — don’t read it. Not yet. Just let your eyes gloss over it — behold the shape of the prose upon the page. You should see diversity there in shape — a few big sections, some short sections, some one-line dialogue. Uniformity is not ideal. Big giant shit-bricks of text will bog down the story; but too many short little sentences crammed together may also unnerve the eye. (Tip to an old writing professor, Doctor Kobre, for turning me onto this one. I still do this.)

The One-Sentence Description Exercise: Practice honing your mad description skillz by looking at someone and describing them with a single sentence. (And not a sentence with a half-dozen hyphens, colons and semi-colons, you little cheater.) Maybe it’s a celebrity — Tom Cruise! Maybe it’s that poor homeless down by the train station who looks like a bunch of half-full garbage bags lashed together under a pile of dirty rags. Alternate version: make it a tweet-length description, 140-characters only. Similar! But different.

Outline Other People’s Books: Pick up a book. Read it. And outline it. Study that outline. Study the narrative pivots. Study the shifts in pacing and tone. Take as many notes as you care to or are able to. Do this with multiple books. Compare them. GO MAD AS YOU INGEST THE SPIRITS OF THOSE AUTHORS WHO HAVE COME BEFORE YOU. Okay, maybe not so much with that last part — but this is a good way to grasp how other authors handle plot, story, and character. Don’t limit yourself to novels, either: study films, games, short stories, comic books.

Lords Of Google, Allow Me To Be Your Avatar In This World: Can’t visit a place? Use Google Maps Street View. It isn’t perfect (there’s no smell-o-vision, nor can you drive the Google Car into a bar and get a drink and talk to the local drunks), but it’ll give you a feel for what a place is like — enough to describe it in your Fancy Fictions. Plus you might catch some guy whizzing on a telephone pole or a couple of geriatrics having sex in a Chevy Malibu.