The Church of Real Truth

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.)

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.

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.

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! 😀