11
Sep/11

Stacia Kane Contributes Foreword To Entangled

by under Anthologies, Stacia Kane

A couple of weeks ago, I heard about Entangled, an anthology that was soon to be released, and to which Stacia Kane has provided the foreword. The anthology is a collection of Halloween themed stories, and it’s released in support of charity. 100% of the proceeds go to Breast Cancer Research Foundation.

Entangled releases September 12, 2011, and will be available as an ebook at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords and other online retailers.and this is the beautiful cover, that’s also been donated to the project.

Back Cover Blurb
Ghosts, vampires, demons, and more! Entangled includes ten suspense-filled paranormal short stories from authors Cynthia Eden, Jennifer Estep, Edie Ramer, Lori Brighton, Michelle Diener, Misty Evans, Nancy Haddock, Liz Kreger, Dale Mayer, and Michelle Miles, plus a Seven Deadly Sins novella by Allison Brennan.
Stacia Kane contributed the foreword. Formatting and cover art were also donated to the project by Lori Devoti and Laura Morrigan.
One of the people who initiated this project, Misty Evans, answered a few questions about it over on Laurie’s Thoughts & Reviews. This is what she says about the price:
Q: How much will the ebook cost?
A: Entangled will be discounted to $2.99 during September and October in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness month. After that the price will go up to $3.99. For stories of this caliber, it’s a fantastic deal at either price.

To find out more about  how the book came about, and the stories you’ll find in the anthology, you can visit Laurie’s Thoughts & Reviews or Misty Evans’ website, where you can also read a sneak peek of her contribution to the anthology, Sweet Demon.Entangled is actually already available to purchase, and Stacia blogged about her involvement on her website. You can read Misty’s Q&A there as well.

I’ve been waiting for it to appear on Smashwords, since Amazon adds a fee if you buy books from them, and Barnes & Noble’s e-books aren’t available for international customers; and I’m happy to report that it’s already up on Smashwords as well! 😀

Here are links to where you can purchase Entangled:

Amazon (Kindle)

Barnes & Noble (Nook)

Smashwords (several formats)

So, basically, you can get a whole book of stories from awesome authors, it only costs $2.99, and it’s all for charity – so what are you waiting for? :-)
If you’re still not convinced, you can read this very positive review over at Coffee Table Reviews, where Aimee mentions that Stacia’s foreword was the thing that touched her most about the book.
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11
Sep/11

Release Date For Sacrificial Magic + Snippet

by under Downside Series, Sacrificial Magic, Snippets Quotes and Sneak Peeks, Stacia's Site

Since I last blogged, a lot has been going on in Stacia Kane land, so I’m going to do a few catch-up posts. I won’t bore you with reasons as to why blogging has been scarce. I’ll just say that, after the kind of winter we’ve had here, the sun is a coveted thing when it finally emerges after all the dark months. 😉 And, of course, summer is also a time of vacations and family get-togethers.

In any case, lots of awesome news!! There are quite a few little tidbits, but I’ll start with the major news. :-)

First, on June 1, Stacia made an announcement on her blog, and we finally got a release date for Sacrificial Magic – March 27!

I know we all hoped it would be sooner, but in Sweden we have a saying, that if you’re waiting for something good, the wait is never too long. :-) And I think we all know it’ll be worth the wait when we finally get to read the book.

We also got a short snippet from Sacrificial Magic to make the wait a bit easier:

His room hadn’t changed. The house hadn’t changed. Only the looks given her by the various guards or enforcers or whoever they were had; from bland acceptance to subtle suspicion.

And she’d changed, it seemed. At least a bit. In the car chatting all had been well, but when the door closed behind her it occurred to her how long it had been since she’d been there. And what had happened last time she’d been there. Happened several times and again in the morning, if memory served, which it did.

Another awkward moment when she started walking toward the bed, remembered, and turned back to the couch against the wall. Lex already sat there, lighting a cigarette, flipping a switch behind him so The Jam started playing in the background. King of his little room-castle, just like how one day he’d be king of this side of town.

“So what’s up?” The question sounded lame even to her, but she couldn’t think of anything else to say. The bed with its plain blue blanket and sheets loomed larger and larger in her vision.

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11
Aug/11

Happy Birthday Stacia!

by under Stacia Kane, Stacia's Site

There are so many posts I want to write; so many wonderful news right now. But as I’m short for time, I’ll cut to what’s most important: Wishing Writing Goddess Stacia Kane a Happy Birthday!!!

Yep, today is Stacia’s birthday, and that means she’s doing her annual “delurk and ask questions” blog post over at her blog. 😉 So, we should all pop over there and wish her a happy birthday and inundate her with questions.

To celebrate, I decided to go looking for appropriate cakes and party decorations for the author of Downside. Of course there should be ghosts!

These first “cupcake ghosts” are so cute, and also a bit apropos as Stacia actually mentioned cupcakes in a comment today. 😀

This is a beautiful cake; I love the letters!

Finally, we have a more Halloween themed cake, which reminded me of Haunted Week!

Pic sources: Here, here and here. There are a lot of fun ideas for ghost cakes and other things.

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19
Mar/11

Terrible: Secondary Character Making Downside More Compelling?

by under Downside Series, The Characters

Larissa Benoliel has written a really interesting article over at the Heroes and Heartbreakers blog, Wingmance: Number Twos Who Finish First. It’s about the importance of interesting secondary characters in making a book series a more compelling read. One of Larissa’s examples, is Terrible:

There are some series where the secondary Character simply steals the protagonist’s thunder, as well as the readers’ hearts. Like in the Downside Ghost Series byStacia Kane, where you might like Chess, the heroine, but you can’t help but fall head-over-heels for her friend and (spoiler?) potential love interest, Terrible. He might be an enforcer for a crime boss, but Terrible has such a low opinion of himself that he has a hard time believing a woman might really like him for him and not because she needs him for something. He can be a jerk—it’s the nature of his business, after all!—but he is so sweet to the people he cares about or who really need him.

I don’t know if I agree that Terrible steals Chess’s thunder. However, I think we all agree that he is an amazing character that really turned out to have a will of his own, given the fact that Stacia originally introduced him to kill him off!

Make sure you read the entire article over at Heroes and Heartbreakers. Larissa also talks about secondary characters in the Black Dagger Brotherhood series and Jeaniene Frost’s Night Huntress novels. (And visit her at her own book blog, Larissa’s Bookish Life.)

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19
Mar/11

New Quote From Downside 5 + A Peek At Geisterflut

by under Downside 5, Downside Series, Foreign Editions, Snippets Quotes and Sneak Peeks

From time to time Stacia treats us with a little quote from what she’s working on at the moment (because she’s awesome like that). We’ve not gotten very far in putting quotes together, but we will!

In Stacia’s last blog post, where she shows the German edition of Unholy Ghosts, Geisterflut, that she just received in the mail (and also does some experiments with the German translation of the sex scenes), she also included a new quote from Downside 5:

The stitches gave way under the knife with one quick stroke; the lips of the wound gaped open. Evil flew out of it and into the air like a mushroom cloud, stinking of decay and something else, something she couldn’t quite identify.

Chess and Bump both leaned over to look inside. It was bigger than she’d expected, sort of empty, and then—oh, gross.

“Ain’t seen me no innards in a some fuckin years, dig, but ain’t recall no fuckin black shit in there,” Bump said.

“What? Where’s that?”

He pointed.

Ugh. Time for the gloves.

What do you think? Sounds like just another day in Downside. 😉

A bit of trivia, provided by Stacia: Lex calls Chess “Tulpi” in the German translation. :-)

The cover of Geisterflut is a really cool one. Stacia demonstrated what the awesome fold-over-flap looks like:

To see the rest of her pics of Geisterflut (and read how Google translates the sex scene…), visit Stacia’s blog.

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18
Mar/11

Get Your Manuscript Critiqued By Stacia – Help Japan

by under Charity, Stacia Kane

I think we’ve all followed the awful events that have taken place in Japan the past week. And I think most of us have thought of what we could do to help. The wonderful UF/PNR/YA writing community decided to contribute their special talents to raise money for different charities, with the goal of helping the Japanese people.

There are so many things Japan needs urgent help with right now; food and water, infrastructure and clean-up. And it isn’t even over yet, since we still dont know what will happen with the damaged nuclear reactors. It’s a scary time for the people in Japan, and everyone doing their part to help is wonderful.

Stacia is part of one of the charity events that have been set up on eBay, where people can bid on what various authors have listed. The auctions that Stacia is part of, and that have been set up by Carolyn Crane, are particulary interesting if you’re an aspiring author, since it consists of a critique by selected authors from the League of Reluctant Adults.

You can go to Stacia’s blog if you want to read more about the auctions. Or you can go directly to the auctions by clicking here. The authors have divided into two “teams”, so you can choose who you’d want to critique your work. At this moment, the teams are pretty much neck and neck!

If you want to know more about The League of Reluctant Adults, you can visit their blog.

There are several other authors raising money for Japan in different ways. Richelle Mead has set up several auctions, where you can bid on both her and other YA authors’ books. You can find them here.

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5
Mar/11

Fanart: Chess Drawing Made By Tess

by under Downside Series, Fanart, Fandom, The Characters

Today I have the great fortune of posting our first ever Downside fanart! It’s a drawing, made by Tess. She is using it as an avi for her Twitter account, which is where I found it.

Tess has included important aspects of Chess. Did you notice the tulip? That’s my favorite part. I love that! 😀

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19
Feb/11

Giveaway And Interview With Stacia At Larissa’s Bookish Life

by under Contests, Downside Series, Downspeech, Interview

If you didn’t win the signed set of Downside books last week, you have another chance in the giveaway that Larissa, from Larissa’s Bookish Life, is hosting.

Larissa also did a great interview with Stacia, where she asked Stacia about writing Downside, and her other projects, but also about her favorite authors and how she’s loved fantasy from a young age.

Here are a few excerpts from the interview.

These are Stacia’s words to describe the Downside series, which I think are a good explanation to why most of us love the books:

Black magic, human sacrifice, sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll, and people just trying to survive.

Larissa asked Stacia about her plans for upcoming Downside books:

I’ve four chapters into the fifth one right now, and after that I have the sixth to write as well. I’d like to do at least nine; I have plots and a story arc for that many minimum, but I’d be happy to go to twelve, too, of course. Beyond that, though…part of me thinks it’d be great to write these characters forever, and part of me is very afraid of the series losing its way, if you know what I mean, and just slogging along. I don’t like to think about it ending, though. That’s a really scary thought.

I don’t think we like to ponder the ending either, but hopefully it will be a long time until then, and we’ll get a lot of other books from Stacia as well.

I love how they conclude the interview. :-)

CityofGhosts

Anything you would like to say to your fans out there?

I can’t thank them enough; they are the coolest people in the world, really. The reaction I’ve gotten, especially for the Downside books (although the Demons books also got a really lovely, warm reception, which was great) has been totally unexpected and totally overwhelming; seeing how passionate people are about the books, and how they’ve touched people, is just incredible. I never even dared to hope I’d have that kind of response. So I really, really do appreciate it; I can’t say that enough.

Be sure to read the entire interview over at Larissa’s blog! And don’t forget to enter the giveaway. :-)

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12
Feb/11

Have You Joined The Downside Army?

by under Fandom, Sacrificial Magic, Stacia's Site, The Downside Army

With the title for Downside 4 just revealed (Sacrificial Magic), first to all the Downside members, and then on Twitter, I thought it might be a good time to talk about the Downside Army. If you haven’t heard of it, this is how it’s described on Stacia’s site:

It’s a Street Team. It’s a newsletter group. It’s a chance for you to have access to special Army-Only excerpts, shorts, and contests.

Proud Member of the Downside Army

To read more, and to learn how to join, click the image or here. 😀

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12
Feb/11

Downside 4 Title Revealed!

by under Downside 4, Downside Series, Sacrificial Magic, The Books

We have been eagerly awaiting news on the title for Downside 4. Stacia has been talking a lot about needing to find a title that both she and her editor liked, and finally it seems we have a winner! Tonight an e-mail went aout to all members of the Downside Army with the title of Downside 4, which is hereby known as: *drumroll*

SACRIFICIAL MAGIC

What do you think? I love it! My first impulse was to try and figure out what it might mean, and according to Stacia “[i]t fits the book *very* well.”. It sounds ominous, but then again, it’s the Downside series, so that’s what we would expect.

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