Showing posts with label Way Past Midnight. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Way Past Midnight. Show all posts

Saturday, September 15, 2012

Guest blog on A Dragon's Love


Guest Post - Samantha Combs


Write it Down

My stepmother is writing her memoirs. In fact, she is not just writing her memoirs, she is actually reliving some of the best moments of her life and loving every minute of it. Mind you, this may never be a publishable product, but it doesn’t matter. She will always love it, her daughter will always love it and she will have it forever. And the stories from her life will have a voice.

I’ve never written a memoir and I have a deep, abiding respect for anyone who does. There are some amazing moments in my life, sure. My wedding, my children’s births, etc. But there are those times in my life I would NEVER want to relive. Being dumped, having a car accident, the death of a friend by suicide. Yeah, not sure I want to write about THAT stuff just now. But it doesn’t mean I never will. Just as my experiences are important for my kids, the knowledge and experiences of my parents has become so much more valuable to me.

For instance, I have lost all four of my grandparents. I never knew my maternal grandfather, he having died shortly after my parent’s wedding. But, by all accounts, he was a multi-layered and fascinating man. From my mother I have learned he was a pugilist in her native England. From my father I learned that he ran the equivalent of a numbers racket in their London hometown. I knew my maternal grandmother, Nanny, since forever. She was funny and opinionated and my favorite story, she carried about two ridonkulously large purses. Because she needed to lug around so much crap, one bag couldn’t hack it. And she smoked cigarettes and constantly let the ash elongate with the threat of dropping on the carpet. From an early age, we learned to say, “Nanny - Ash!” before it tumbled to the ground. She would make a face and when the ash dropped anyway, we would cackle like maniacs. I miss her.

On my father’s side, I knew both grandparents. Grampa, as I remember, was curmudgeonly. He drank seven and sevens and smoked prolifically. My fondest memory is of him sitting in the worn-out armchair (think, Archie Bunker) with one hand around the ubiquitous highball glass, and the other just dipping into his breast pocket for his pack of smokes. When I got older, he didn’t move much from that seat, or any seat he chose, but it didn’t matter. Any family gathering sort of orbited around him. Like, he was the center of our universe and we were inexplicably drawn to him. And if you are thinking he was our rock, you’d be dead wrong. Grandma was.

Grandma was nothing short of amazing. She bore nine children on a farm in North Dakota. She raised them all with good humor and Catholic values. My father was the oldest. She watched all five of her boys join a branch of the armed service, and all four of her girls marry military men. In the late fifties, early sixties, those were the ways you got off the farm. She sent three of her boys to Vietnam, welcomed all of them home, and started collecting grandchildren early. She never forgot a birthday, she loved all nineteen of us grandchildren equally, and her favorite thing to do, back when we were all older and BIG drinkers, after hearing us all stumble in at an ungodly hour, giggling furiously, was to get up out of bed, storm into the kitchen, and throw the most enormous breakfast together we had ever seen. Those drunken, loud, unruly breakfasts are my most favorite memory of her. Oh, that and her ants on a log. (giggle if you know what I’m talking about).

But I digress. I want to make a case for the memoir. Right, so I’ve never written one, but I know the value of one. Since all my grandparents are gone now, their stories went with them. I don’t want that to happen again, so last Christmas I gave both my mother and my father blank life journals. I am encouraging them to write their life stories down. I want to know them, and share them with my children. Every family is different. Most think that their family is the most dysfunctional. Prove it is! Prove it isn’t! Just write it all down. I think, it’s possible, your kids may thank you for it. I know I will thank my folks. If I ever get them back. Um, excuse me now, I have a couple phone calls to make.

Samantha Combs, Author
Check out all 6 of my books!

Coming in September from Musa Publishing: WATERDANCER, a new YA paranormal

CONNECT WITH ME!
WRITE, PUBLISH, AND BE INFORMED!
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Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Musina Hogs the Spotlight!

This was such a great interview, I am double-dipping it and posting it here from my author friend Joanna Fay's blog.  Is it me, or does Musina sound like a spoiled teenager?


Meet Samantha Combs…and her Muse (up close and personal)

Samantha Combs, fellow author at Musa Publishing and awesome creator of Paranormal YA novels, stretched the boundaries of author interviews recently by posting an interview with me…by my budgie. Now it’s Samantha’s turn! And her feisty Muse-with-an-Attitude, Musina, has kindly (I think) stepped in to give us an amazing window into her pet author’s creative journey.
Welcome, Samantha and Musina. The floor is yours:
Hi, Musina. When did you first meet Samantha, and did she recognize you straight away?
I first came into Sam’s life when she was ready for me.  She had been writing since she was a small girl, but I never sensed the right time.  If you get it wrong, you can totally harsh the gig.  Like the human has creative overload and goes all postal on you.  So I waited.  One night, when she was having one of those conversations you can only have with a four-year-old, I introduced myself.  She didn’t know who I was until long after that, but she knew something had changed.  The writing became more than a hobby.  It became a passion.  She felt me compel her and we wrote her first published novel in 2 months of only writing at night and on weekends during nap time.
What is your favourite way to ‘appear’?
I like the “compelling” thing.  I start as an urge, almost like the human need to go pee…insistent, increasing in strength and just not going away!  She used to hate it, but she gets it now.  Now, she likes it when I compel her to open the laptop, and then we settle in together.  We have reached an easy alliance, her and I.  She knows I am there, and she knows I will run with seed, if only I allow her to plant it.  Most of the time, I try not to interrupt her regular life.  Well, some of the time.  What?  I have a job to do.  Whatever.
Which is your favourite book of Samantha’s? 
I have a special place in my heart for two of them.  The first is Ghostly.  I think more than anyone I resemble the sidekick friend Sixx from that book.  Without her knowing or really understanding, she wrote that character as me.  Smart-assed with an awesome fashion sense.  Yeah!  I also love the one about to release, Waterdancer.  I have always dropped bits of Sam’s life in our writing, but this time, she let a whole lot more in.  When we re-read the final draft, we cried.  We understood so much of Bailey, the main character, of her life.  A lot of it is in that novel.
Can you tell us the sequence of Samantha’s novels and why you chose that order to inspire her with? 
I must admit, I mess with her a bit on that score.  She wrote Spellbound, then I interjected the idea of another two stories before we broached the idea of the sequel.  Plus, those damn characters wouldn’t shut up!  Waking Sam in the middle of the night and making her poke ideas into her smartphone is MY job, damn it.  I couldn’t compete with their insistence, so I finally compelled her to write the damn sequel.  And now the greedy twits want another one!  *sigh*  A muse’s job is NEVER done!
What do you do when Samantha is saying ‘I don’t wanna’? Do you have more than one approach? 
She had a bad patch when she lost that silly job she had.  It was harder to get in.  One day I planted a seed more like the size of a watermelon and sort of smacked her stupid with it.  I came to her as her Mum’s voice.  Never fails now.  Also, like in real estate, it’s all location, location, location.  So I have a favorite.  In the shower.  Now, that’s my best  place to jam ideas in…she’s alone there and rarely anywhere else.  Or in her car while she’s driving.  At least there she can take notes.  Thank you, iphone and Siri! (A cousin of mine….distantly related.  She’s okay, just a bit of a know-it-all.  It’s annoying.  Whatever.)
What do you like to do best in your spare time (if you get spare time)?
Untangle traffic jams, find lost wedding rings, but nothing directly related to another individual.  For better or for worse, Sam and I are together for life.  See, once you discover a Muse, she will forever after be your inspiration, and yours alone.  It takes a while for you to find each other.  I’ve had failures, sure.  Vanilla Ice, the movie Ishtar, and Crocs.  But, then, there was Sam.  She’s a keeper.  But, you know, I was like, assigned to her.  I have to stay.  It’s not like I love her or anything.  She just….she gets me.  It’s cool.  Whatever.
Do you have any special advice to other Muses? 
Keep trying to find your person.  It’s really kicky when your seed becomes something that makes others laugh or cheer or cry. That’s when I know she is at her full creative potential.  And I am fulfilling mine.  What’s not to like?  Winner, winner, chicken dinner, everybody gets a prize!  It’s a rockin’ cool partnership, like….like peanut butter and bread.  Most people say peanut butter and jelly, but without the bread, where do you spread it?  Right?  She’s my bread.  Whatever.
Samantha, you’ve got your work cut out for you…and I somehow think Musina’s still got plenty of novels up her sleeve for you. Keep having fun, you two!
Take a look at Samantha’s novels :
And coming in September from Musa Publishing: WATERDANCER, a new YA paranormal.
CONNECT WITH SAMANTHA!
WRITE, PUBLISH, AND BE INFORMED!
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Friday, July 6, 2012

The Story of a Story - My Next Release: WATERDANCER -

One of the most important things I ever read on the Internet was about the toughness and loneliness of the writer's life.  How you are rejected, time and again, and how to beat the discouragement you may feel.  I have even blogged about the ways I shrug off the disappointment and soldier on.  And the single piece of advice that rang true for me was this:  Write a book, try to get published, and while you are waiting for that to happen, write another one.  And another one.

Happily, even though doing that is completely harder than it sounds, I've been able to do just that very thing. I keep at it, knowing that while I may never get rich at this, I am getting good at it and I am getting happy at it.  I now have six published books (six!) and besides my kids, nothing gives me greater joy than looking at them all lined up in a row, like pretty flowers in a garden of my own making.  And as the Head Gardener, (or Landscaper for the PC crowd), I decide what gets planted next, which seeds can be watered with the flow of words, and which lovelies are ready to be dressed up and showcased for all the world to see.  And so, I have a new flower for the yard.

WATERDANCER, published with Musa Publishing house, will be released on September 7, 2012, two months from now.  It occurred to me some aspiring writers might want to know what my whole process for the publishing is, laid out step-by-step.  So, here it is:

I submitted the completed, edited, properly formatted manuscript to the publisher on September 30, 2011.  I had one book already placed with the publisher, so predictably, I felt I had an edge.  But, make no mistake, the manuscript I submitted still had to be ready, in every sense of the word.  I felt it was, and still do feel quite proud of the story.  But, when I submitted it, I was nervous and doubtful, like I always am, of my own talent and ability to entice on a query.

On October 13th, the head editor requested the full manuscript.  A week later she offered me a contract.  I signed and was given my release date of 9-7-12.  It seemed a long way away, but I was over the moon with the acceptance.  I had four others planned for release anyway, to keep me busy.

I released my two self-published adult horror collections, TEETH and TALONS, and WAY PAST MIDNIGHT, and Astraea Press released EVERSPELL, the sequel to SPELLBOUND.  Musa also released my MG horror, THE DETENTION DEMON.  So, I was busy!

My edits for WATERDANCER began in May.  I completed two rounds of content edits and the manuscript has now gone to the last edit round, Line Edits.  Next step will be the cover design.  I'll keep you updated as to how this goes.  I have submitted my own ideas and some free images that embody my ideas.

I have experienced a couple different ways of being published, and I am happy to answer any questions you may have.  Funny thing about being an author, after the joy of typing The End, its pretty much perfunctory following that.  The steps are always the same: Proof, edit, proof, edit, tighten, organize, format, then proof and edit a couple dozen more times.  Have people read it, people NOT related to you (trust me here, Mom will love everything you write...not a good foundation for truth there) and then proof and edit it again.  Also, spell-check is NOT your friend.

I will next update after the Line Edits and cover designing.  And look for WATERDANCER coming 9-7-12, and any of my others that might interest you.  And tell me about yours, too....I read as well!
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Monday, May 28, 2012

Update on Works in Progress

I feel compelled to update this blog on the progress I have had on my current projects.  I do this not to brag, I swear.  It's more designed as a kick-in-the-ass.  See, my idea is that if I put it in writing here, then it's out in the universe and more than being compelled to document it, I might actually be motivated to finish it.

I'm talking mostly about the project I am calling The Deadlies.  This is the one about seven girls in an antebellum school who have been possessed by the seven deadly sins.  I am only about 5-10k words away from the conclusion.  The problem?  I cant get there.  I have them in the last scene before the big confrontation I am planning and everything I am writing sounds lame-ass.  It was a three-day weekend and I don't think more than two hours have gone by without my thinking about the end of this story.  Including a Dodger game Friday night with 60k other people around me.  The story arc always creeps in.  But, luckily for me, so does Musina.  She and I are sorting out different ideas and we'll hit on one soon that works perfectly, I have no doubt.

I'm also beginning to jot down notes about the final book to Spellbound.  I am playing with titles, arcs, and a couple fun new characters I want to introduce.  There are a lot of loose ends to tie up and many of my notes do just that.  I'm looking forward to starting soon.  I'm not sure why I haven't yet, but I never force myself to write.  It will come when it's supposed to come.  But, I feel like it will be soon.  I tend to write really well in the summertime.  Something about the beautiful blue skies either makes me want to paint a glorious happily-ever-after, as with my YA's, or smash it all to hell, like with my adult horror.  Won't it be fun to see which way I swing?  *giggles evilly*

It's not all bad news, however.  I have completed the adult horror collection I have been working on for the past two months.  Way Past Midnight, an assemblage of five horror stories, is through the editing and I have commissioned the coolest, creepiest cover from my go-to gal, Paragraphic Designs.  What do you think?  Spooky, right?

I have always been able to rely on Paragraphic Designs for my homegrown stuff.  She also did the cover for my YA paranormal Ghostly, released through Astraea Press.  Check her stuff out here: http://paragraphicdesigns.blogspot.com/

I have another project I am working on as well.  This one is another YA paranormal, but edgier, like Waterdancer.  Actually, even more so than that one.  This one is scientific and biologic.  Called Wingspan, I am about 1/3 of the way through this one.  I'm looking for Summer and Musina to light a fire under me for this one too.

So, let me know what you think of this new cover.  I am not certain if I want to go through my publisher or try out the kindle program again. I'll keep you posted.

And thanks.  Every so often I need a good kick in the patootie.  You just let me administer one to myself.  :-).  I'm done moving, the new house is great, and the new job is awesome.  I'm out of excuses.  So pardon me now, if you will.  An impatient Muse is waiting for me.

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Sunday, May 13, 2012

Why Moving is Like Writing....Part Two

I'm sitting in my living room as I write this, where I always sit and write.  The difference is the living room currently looks like a bad day in Beirut.  I mean, literally, there is crap EVERYWHERE!  I'm moving, remember?  Except you wouldn't know about that just by looking around.  What you would think is that perhaps we were robbed?  By organized and tidy thieves? Or this is what the aftermath of an earthquake or a 9 year old's birthday party likely resembles?

As I gaze around, at the tumble of boxes and jumbled piles of God-only-knows-what, my mind goes back to where it always does.....my current project.  And I start to consider that my writing is just like this room in disarray.  Things that make me happy, but scattered all over the place, with no rhyme nor reason for being.  And as the Head Packer and Decider of All Things Moving, I alone have the ability to organize it all into something cohesive.  The same goes for my writing.  There, I am the Head Decider of All Things Scary.  Currently anyway, as I am into horror right now.

I pack boxes with canned goods, pantry items and linens and I am really only half there mentally.  This largely mindless task allows my head to wander all over the place.  As usual, my writing comes first. It's funny, because I read tons of blog posts and articles about how to make time for your writing and I laugh until my sides hurt.  Because they are doing it wrong if they find they have to make time.  I find I have to make time for the rest of my life, because my writing, my projects, are always foremost in my brain.  Even knee-deep in packing material, my projects occupy the most valuable real estate upstairs.

I survey my scattered surroundings, and I imagine that each box is one of the short horror stories I have recently written.  I am assembling them in order to be delivered to their new home, the same as I am assembling the stories in one combined grouping, which will be the collection I envision.  Just as I can see a week into the future when this hell of moving is over and everything is in its rightful place in the new house, so too, can I see the stories in proper order in the new collection, just as organized and tidy as the new house.

So confident am I, that I am ready to reveal the new title: Way Past Midnight.  I have the hopes that the title evokes the uneasy feeling any time beyond the top of the hour can bring, when the dark envelops you and the quiet is not your friend.  And my artist is rocking the new cover hard.  Big reveal for that soon.

I'm nowhere near done packing.  Likewise, I feel as though the collection is incomplete as well.  I have five terror-tastic tales and just as I decided five was the magic number, Musina popped up.  Nope, she said.  Five doesn't work for me....what say we go for six?  And this seriously scary and bitchin' idea formulated as a whole piece.  I have the beginning, the middle, I even know the ending line.  The move may have taken me away from my computer physically, but mentally I am all about the stories. And isn't THAT what makes us all writers?  The actual, physical inability to let the words go?  Yeah.  I knew you'd agree.

It's like that Jackson Browne song I have always loved: The Load-Out song.  The musician implores the roadies "Just make sure you've got it all packed to go, before you come for my piano."  I promise you, this laptop will be the last thing that leaves this empty house.
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