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! 😀

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? 😉