The Church of Real Truth

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Today we found out which phrase is one of Stacia’s favorites. ;D (Although, if you follow her on her blog and twitter, you may have guessed this one already.)

Stacia wrote this on twitter:

Seriously? “Real-time Facebook updates” in the fucking CAR? Who the hell is so sad and addicted to fucking Facebook that they WANTthat? #FFS

To which I too have to say: “Seriously?”. This tweet prompted a question from one of her followers as to what FFS stands for. If you don’t know, it stands for For Fuck’s Sake, which Stacia replied.

She also mentioned that it is, in fact, one of her favorite “sayings/acronyms/whatevers”. That’s a mark of true literature, right there. 😉

I’m slowly, but continuously, updating different parts of the site. Recently I’ve added a page for A Glimpse of Darkness, a book that was a collaboration between five authors. Each author wrote their own chapter, and the direction each chapter should take was voted upon by the readers when the chapters were released online last fall.

The chapters are no longer available online. However, you can buy the book in e-format.

Buy A Glimpse of Darkness here.

To read more about the book, and see excerpts from the chapters, visit our page for the book, located in the menu, in our The Books section

The final clip that I’ve added to the Media pages, is a video of Stacia getting her Seshat tattoo. Seshat is a goddess of writing.

The clip was filmed for L.A. Ink. It never aired, but was released as extra material.

From the Suvudu Paranormal Blog:

In the upcoming season of Discovery Channel’s LA Ink, you can see Stacia get tattooed with a Seshat hieroglyph, the Egyptian goddess of writing and writers. “I basically promised myself that if the book sold I could really call myself a writer,” says Stacia

I can’t get the embedding to work, but you can visit the L.A. Ink website for season three. There is a list of clips, and Stacia’s is called “God of writing“. Fitting? 😉

The second video I’m posting isn’t a video with Stacia. However, you get to hear Stacia in it. It’s Episode 14 of Book Chatter, where we see Stacey Cochran talk to several writers, although we only hear the writers.

Stacey Cochran, the moderator of the chat, gives a description of the video:

Book Chatter Episode 14 with Stacia Kane, Jackie Kessler, Paul Clayton, Elisa Lorello, Simon Wood, Holly Christine, and RJ Keller.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsqliYRx5is]

We hear Stacia at the beginning of the video, where she introduces herself:

Hi! I started out, actually, in erotic romance, e-publishing with Ellora’s Cave, under a different pen name.  And now I write a kind of semi-lighthearted, romantic Urban Fantasy series. The Megan Chase books for Juno Pocket. There are two books out in that series so far, Personal Demons and Demon Inside, and the third book, Demon Possessed, comes out February 23rd. And then I have a new series that I’m really excited about. Very dark Urban Fantasy. It’s about ghosts and drug addicts and ghettos and punk rock. I really love it. And that comes out from Del Rey, the first book, Unholy Ghosts May 25th. The second book June 22th. And the third July 27th.

Then follows a discussion about the Harlequin controversy. (For details, listen to the chat.)

Around 0:42 Stacia tells us how she acquired her agent for her Urban Fantasy series.

Around 1:04 Stacia talks about e-publishing, and her books as e-books, audiobooks and foreign language rights. She also talks about How to be a sex-writing strumpet and that she’d been thinking about publishing it as an e-book.

Around 1:10 Stacia talks about marketing strategies, and if she’s noticed anything in particular that influenced number of books sold, with things like web presence and word of mouth.

The last 20 minutes of the video is hilarious. That’s when Stacey steps away from the computer, get something to drink, and puts on some music for the people still watching the live feed. lol

I’ve been adding videos to the Media archive, and I thought I might as well post a few blogs about them, even if they aren’t really new.

This first one is a video of Stacia when she attended Dragon*Con in 2009.

Stacia writes:

From my reading of UNHOLY GHOSTS (Del Rey, May 25 2010 US; HarperVoyager 27 May 2010 UK/Aus) at Dragon*Con 2009; this is a short snippet where I discuss how I came up with “Downspeech,” the slang/patois spoken by some of the novel’s characters. I had no idea I was flinging my hands around so much; it’s like a hand ballet in mid-air.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHg1o4345AA]

Last night Stacia tweeted this:

I have scanned, signed, and sent various contracts, & prepared more for mailing tomorrow. #Imverybusinesslike#finallygotoffmyass

She didn’t say whether the contracts were directly book related, but either way it’s always good to have gotten some paperwork out of the way, right?

Michele Lee (leatherzebra) posted a great photo on twitter a couple of days ago, and wrote this about it:

What happens when the boss puts me in charge of the Fantasy display @seananmcguire @staciakane @lucyasnyderhttp://yfrog.com/h5ppxrwtbj

Seeing the Downside books prominently displayed is always a wonderful thing.