The Church of Real Truth

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.

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.

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.

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.

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]

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.

Tonight we got a few tidbits from Stacia about Downside 4 on twitter:

“[…]  At 123,000 words final first draft. I have edits now and think I’ll end up cutting another 1-2k, maybe.” Source

“Also, my editor likes my suggested title, so next week (fingers crossed) I very well might have a Book 4 title for you!” Source

Are you as excited as I am about the title? We won’t have t refer to it as “Downside 4” anymore. On the other hand, I’ve almost grown fond of it being called that.

Stacia also mentioned that she’s been thinking of “doing some character trivia/book trivia type stuff” on her website, along with posting the deleted scenes. I think that would be incredibly fun! I know there’s a lot of information I’ve picked up here and there, and that I hope to be able to compile on the website. I always love it when you get the feeling that an author has the complete backstory for their characters and world, even if they don’t write all of it down in the books. 😀