Welcome, Blog Buddies, to Linnea Sinclair's THIRD Cyber-Launch Party. Her first one, for GAMES OF COMMAND, didn't survive the transferal from the old SCD blog. You can find the second, for DOWN HOME ZOMBIE BLUES, by clicking on her name in the Directory. This one, of course, is for SHADES OF DARK, which is in stores right now. SHADES is book two after GABRIEL'S GHOST, which won the Rita for Best Paranormal Romace a couple years back. The third installment, HOPE'S FOLLY, comes out next year.
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Before I get to Linnea's interview, I should probably tell you the party is held in the comments for this post. You might want to take this opportunity to put on your protective clothing. Steel-toed boots are recommended. Besides the Jukors from SHADES, the Klingons are already there sharpening their teeth. You have had all your shots, right? Rabies? Tarkalian Flu?
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I sent Linnea some questions and she graciously answered them, even though she was busy getting ready to attend the Romance Writers of America national convention. I still haven't forgiven the RWA for not awarding GAMES OF COMMAND the Rita, by the way. Anyway, here's the interview-
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Kimber An: Can you share the journey you took in creating SHADES OF DARK? Did you write GABRIEL’S GHOST knowing it would be the first in a trilogy? If so, did SHADES OF DARK follow directly in your head or come later? If not, what made you decide on a trilogy?
Linnea Sinclair: SHADES, as a lot of my readers know, was originally titled CHASIDAH’S CHOICE and was plotted out (roughly) shortly after I sold GABRIEL’S GHOST to LTDBooks of Canada back in 2001 (or so—I don’t remember exact dates). GABRIEL’S was always, to me, part of a larger story and not just the story of Chaz and Sully. I very much enjoyed working with LTDBooks but never got the chance to write CHASIDAH’S CHOICE due to my being acquired by Bantam just around the time LTDBooks closed. BANTAM bought GABRIEL’S GHOST, along with FINDERS KEEPERS and AN ACCIDENTAL GODDESS but there was no talk, during that first three-book contract, of any follow-up to any of the books. GABRIEL’S winning the RITA award, however, spurred me to talk with my agent and editor about the second book.
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Bantam has not, to date, looked to me to produce series for them. Maybe they don’t feel I’m a series-kind of writer. Maybe they already have sufficient series. Whatever the reason, though I know (because they’ve told me so) that they would gladly look at any book ideas I have, the have—if not outrightly so, at least with gentle but firm nudging—let me know that sequels are what they’re interested in more than series. Maybe spin-offs is better word. I’m looking directly at my notes from a conversation I had with my agent on the matter: “Not series but linked characters.” Like the TV show Frazier was to Cheers.
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That’s why HOPE’S FOLLY really doesn’t make it a trilogy. FOLLY contains many of the characters found in SHADES and GABRIEL’S but it’s not a continuation of Chaz’s and Sully’s story. There’s also one more book contracted in that universe, which, sitting here at this moment, I have a few vague ideas for but nothing plotted. I have to finish FOLLY first.
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SHADES is a continuation of Chaz’s and Sully’s story. It starts just about three months after GABRIEL’S ends so it’s as if readers can take a short breather, hit the loo, grab another beer and jump back into the action. For that reason also, I highly recommend reading GABRIEL’S first. Otherwise much of what happens in SHADES will lack impact.
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SHADES is a very intense story and, as a number of bloggers and reviewers have noted, darker in tone than most of my other books, like FINDERS KEEPERS or THE DOWN HOME ZOMBIE BLUES. Sully has also been a darker, more complex character to me. SHADES and GABRIEL’S are also my only first person books to date. That’s also why the tone may seem different.
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Kimber: It seems to me books in trilogies are published one right after another, but SHADES OF DARK was published nearly three years after GABRIEL’S GHOST. What’s with that? Are you concerned it will hurt reviews or sales?
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Linnea: I guess one of the answers to your question is that it’s not a trilogy. The other is that FINDERS, GABRIEL’S and GODDESS were a three-book contract, so Bantam had to print and release all three before we could talk about whether they were even interested in more books from me. There’s no guarantee that just because a publisher buys one book from you that they’ll buy another. They released the first three, watched reviews, watched sales, watched the buzz. If that hadn’t pleased them, then there wouldn’t have been any more contract offers. SHADES was part of the second three-book contract I had with them and was slated for the last release in that trio because it was only plotted, not written. GAMES OF COMMAND had about 55,000 words already done (but not finished). THE DOWN HOME ZOMBIE BLUES had about 35,000 words written (but not finished). SHADES has a two page plot outline. So when the deal was done, I went to work finishing those books that were the quickest to finish.
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You need to understand that NY publishing houses have a list of books already in the queue months if not years ahead of time. Two years between contract and release is about par. There’s a ton of work required in producing a book. I go through—easily—three edits plus galleys. Then there’s cover art, back cover blurb and so on. So when a book is contracted, the powers that be then look at the next available opening they have in their queue and see if that time slot would work for the book. For example, if there’s a holiday themed book under contract, they’re going to release it around that holiday. So that may take up a “next available time slot” for another non-holiday book which then gets bumped to the next-next available time slot, and so on. They also look, I’m told, at what else is being released that month. Is there another book similar or with a similar title? They won’t release two books in the same month that could be confused for each other. So you then get next-next-next bumped.
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THE DOWN HOME ZOMBIE BLUES, which was released in November of 2007, was originally scheduled for August or September. But as I was working on meeting the deadline for that, I was injured in a car accident and two months later, my father passed away. Bantam quite generously understood there was no way I was going to make deadline so my editor and I agreed to bump back ZOMBIE which bumped back SHADES. Domino effect. As it was, if memory serves me, the only reason ZOMBIE got the November slot was the author slated for that slot couldn’t make HER deadline. Otherwise both ZOMBIE and SHADES would have been out several months earlier.
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Yes, I’m concerned about sales and about confusion in reviews. Since Bantam doesn’t put “book two” on the cover, there’s no way for readers to know SHADES is book two, other than word of mouth, word of blog or by reading my acknowledgments pages which says…” To my readers, thank you for waiting for the rest of Chaz’s and Sully’s story, which started with Gabriel’s Ghost.” That little sentence was the brilliant idea of brilliant author Susan Grant, who’s had to do such things before when publishers wouldn’t put a book’s sequence on the cover. One more example of how I’d be lost without the help of such terrific sister-authors.
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The upside, though, is that Bantam is releasing my backlist with all new cover art and switching me from the SF shelves to the romance shelves, which means hundreds of readers who’ve never read me will now find me, and have no clue there’s almost three years between GABRIEL’S and SHADES in release date. Honestly, you kids are so used to me that you don’t realize I’m still largely “Linnea who?” SFR—as I know you do know—is a small sub-genre. I’m still clawing my way into the light of recognition. I get fan mail every month from readers who just now found FINDERS KEEPERS or just now found GAMES OF COMMAND and have never read me before. Part of that is also distribution: I’m not in Target, Wal-Mart or the grocery stores, where drive-by readers can stumble upon you. I am in all major bookstores but for the romance reader who never ventures into the SF section, I’m an unknown.
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So as far as a lot of romance readers go, I’m JUST showing up, 2006 RITA® -award win notwithstanding.
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Kimber: SHADES OF DARK is a romance involving an established (though new) couple. Being a long-married person, I find this refreshing, but it seems rare in the Romance genre. Was there any resistance from your agent, editor, publisher, beta readers, or cats?
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Linnea: None whatsoever. My editor loves the characters of Sully and Chaz and was totally pleased with the story. In fact, SHADES was the first manuscript that my copy editor ever wrote notes in the margins to tell me how I’d brought her to tears at certain places. I guess if you get kudos from a CE, who certainly sees tons of manuscripts, you’re doing okay.
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Kimber: Oooh, that's so sweet!
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Linnea: I really enjoyed writing Chaz and Sully as a “given” and not having to go through the whole “does /she like me?” stage in a book. I liked playing with the “have I lost my partner’s respect?” more than “does he find me hot yet?” At least to me, that’s more what most of us are going through at this stage in our lives. Keeping love alive is a lot harder than falling in love. It’s one of the reasons I enjoy JD Robb’s Roarke and Dallas. They have their ups and downs, they have their jockeying-for-position as will happen when two strong people get into a relationship. They have to deal with the balance of needs. I find that just as if not more so intriguing than “does he find me hot yet?”
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Not that established lovers don’t have their share of heat. One of my favorite scenes in SHADES involves not only heat but the easy, teasing camaraderie that is one of the perks of an established relationship:
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*Excerpt*
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Sully sighed. “Chasidah, your emotions run very deep. When you get in that angry-but-protective mode, it’s such a mixture of the masculine and the feminine properties. An invincibility. A belief in what’s right. You have that like no one else I’ve met. And it’s...don’t laugh at me, but it’s exciting. Arousing. Your entire aura just shimmers. I call it your ‘captain in charge’ mode.”
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“You get hot when I play captain?”
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Hooded eyes met mine. “I get very hot when you play captain.” He moved closer, draping his leg over my thighs, showing me just how hot he did get.
“Well, in that case, I may have to ask for a raise.” I lifted the sheet. “Oh, look. I already got one.”
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I made it onto the bridge with barely three minutes to spare before the start of my duty shift.
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Kimber (fanning face): What sets SHADES OF DARK apart from GABRIEL’S GHOST? What will you say to readers who wonder if it’s ‘more of the same?’
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Linnea: What sets SHADES OF DARK apart? About three months. In many ways, yes, it’s more of the same: more intense action, more edge-of-your-seat situations, more hard choices. It’s Chaz and Sully three months farther along in discovering each other (a lifelong process in a relationship) while outside forces pummel them relentlessly. It’s betrayal of family, of trust. It’s adversaries who surprise you with their friendship. It’s friends who attack because they know your weaknesses. In the midst of all that, it’s a story of the resilience of love.
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Kimber: Cool.
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Linnea: Just like Gabriel’s Ghost.
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Kimber: Is there anything else we should know about SHADES OF DARK?
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Linnea: Only that the author has a Yahoo fan group and loves to answer questions about her books there:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LinneaSinclair.
Kimber: When’s the third book HOPE’S FOLLY coming out? Can you tell us a little about it?
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Linnea: HOPE’S FOLLY is due out end of February 2009, which may seem distant to some of you, but to me, on deadline and not finished writing it yet, it’s coming up much too quickly. I have only a few more weeks before I need to turn in the manuscript. An intravenous caffeine drip is looking pretty good right about now.
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FOLLY came about because in the middle of writing SHADES, Admiral Philip Guthrie—Chaz’s ex-husband and Sully’s often nemesis—showed up in my office and perched on the arm of the overstuffed chair. He was trying hard, I know, to appear non-threatening. He wanted his story told, badly. He had a point. He’d had a rough role to play in GABRIEL’S. He was even shot. Then in SHADES, he found himself in a lot more trouble. A LOT. He really is a decent kind of guy and in a matter of two books, I’d taken away everything he’d ever worked for, everything he’d ever believed in. I was definitely not easy on him.
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So he showed up in my office asking, very nicely, if his story couldn’t be told. On a little better note, if it wasn’t all that much trouble. He thought he had a lot to offer as a hero (he does). He just wanted a nice little space opera with a few deep-space shoot ‘em ups where he could come out the victor.
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I agreed. I found him a ship. I gave him a mission. But I also threw in something—someone—else. Surprise. He also gets Rya. Here’s the official back cover blurb just finalized last week:
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From RITA Award-winning author Linnea Sinclair comes a high-stakes interstellar adventure infused with thrilling romance.
Admiral Philip Guthrie is in an unprecedented position: on the wrong end of the law, leading a rag-tag band of rebels against the oppressive Imperial forces. Or would be, if he can get his command ship—the derelict cruiser called Hope’s Folly—functioning. Not much can rattle Philip’s legendary cool—but the woman who helps him foil an assassination attempt on Kirro Station will. She’s the daughter of his best friend and first commander—a man who died while under Philip’s command, and whose death is on Philip’s conscience.
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Rya Bennton has been in love with Philip Guthrie since she was a girl. But can her childhood fantasies survive an encounter with the hardened man, and newly-minted rebel leader, once she learns the truth about her father’s death? Or will her passion for revenge put not only their hearts but their lives at risk? It’s an impossible mission: A man who feels he can’t love. A woman who believes she’s unlovable. And an enemy who will stop at nothing to crush them both.
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Oh, one more thing. He also gets a cat.
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Kimber: Gotta love a man who loves a cat. He does love the cat, right? So…what are Brandon and Sass up to these days? Do I hear the pitter-patter of little cybernetic feet on the command bridge?
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Linnea: Paws, perhaps. Or most definitely paws. As for the rest, Kimber, you know me well. I write or try to write what I can write convincingly and with passion. Children or family-type situations are best left to other authors. Besides, given the danger inherent in most of my stories, I fear my readers would have Child Protection Services after me if I put young ones in those scenes. Dealing with assassination attempts and warships loaded with ion torpedoes doesn’t make for a reasonable or responsible Bring Your Daughter To Work Day.
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I do realize children are born in the midst of war zones all the time on our planet. But I don’t want to feature that in my books, validating it as something readers should aspire to. To me, that’s sending a wrong message about the responsibilities of parenthood, especially as the technology in my books is such that children are a choice and not an oops. Given that state of Sass’s and Brandon’s “world,” I feel it would be very irresponsible of them to put a child at risk in a war zone on a war ship. The safety of that child would also put an additional burden on the crew. I know some people might find such a situation romantic. I find it horrifying. But then, maybe I spent a few too many years as a private investigator seeing some of the less-than-savory aspects of life.
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The only other option—given the structure of my world building—would be the one Chaz rejected: bear a child, place it with a ‘droid nanny and pick it up seventeen years later. That was the childhood in many ways that Brandon had, and I don’t think he has fond memories of it.
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So my HEAs don’t include diapers.
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Kimber: Actually, I was hinting at a sequel for GAMES OF COMMAND, but that's all interesting stuff too!
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The rest of yas, if you want to enter Linnea's drawing, you need to comment in the comment section with a working email. Here are the really cool prizes-
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Also, pop over to Linnea's website to learn more about her other books-
http://linneasinclair.com/.
There you have it, folks. And now on with the Cyber-Launch Party for Linnea...
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"Susan Grant!"
Angelica, calm down.
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"Gwyneth Bolton!"
Junior, I'm going to tell your parents on you. (Kimber sighs) Listen, both of you, Linnea doesn't mind sharing the limelight. You can tell everybody about MOONSTRUCK...
...and PROTECT AND SERVE, if you want to.
And now, I shall wave my fairy wand and...
...no, wait, that's for Lisa Shearin's parties.
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Okay, quick change here.
Good morning, Blog Buds! We don't have a review scheduled for today, so I thought I'd post about this. I've never actually read this book, so I can't review it. Reading the reviews of others made me angry so much that I knew I would have nightmares if I read the real thing. To clue you in, this is the true life account of a woman who escaped the FLDS cult with her eight children. The FLDS cult is the same one Texas has uprooted on charges of bigamy and, most importantly, sexual misconduct with a minor (child rape). Charges were added to their jailed leader, Warren Jeffs, list of crimes as well. You can follow the story by popping over to the websites of any of the major Texas newspapers.
Then, I'll get whiplash. Geez, how'd Susan Grant's next novel, WARLORD'S DAUGHTER, get in here? (Kimber rubs sore neck.) Okay, I admit there's an element of fantasy! For the record, I can personally attest that ALL of Susan Grant's heroes know how to change diapers. That's how she single-handedly drew me back into the Romance genre after two decades of boycotting it.
