November and December - More fun stuff than you can shake a leprechaun at

It goes against my chronic laziness to take on more projects than I can comfortably accomplish. This holiday season I'm making an exception. Here is what I have coming down the pipe:


November 26: Interview with Jeremy C. Shipp, Bram Stoker Award nominee and author of "Fungus of the Heart," "Vacation," "Sheep and Wolves," and "Cursed." His writing is so bizarre that it makes Bizarro Superman look like ...well ... regular Superman.

December 1 (tentative): Interview with S.D. Anderson, author of dark fiction/urban fantasy tale The Devil's Angel. See what she really thinks about the new zombie romance genre I just created from spare bits of irony and sarcasm I had lying around.

I am hoping to schedule a few more interviews as well. Here's hoping my intended targets don't read this blog or my tweets. They'd be scared off by such a high level of awesomeness. Or maybe the sideburns.

I have read, am reading, or will read several good books in the coming weeks and post reviews.

Reviews:
Lonely Werewolf Girl by Martin Millar (Finished - review to come)
Fungus of the Heart by Jeremy C. Shipp (getting there - like a brain massage with chopsticks)
The Devil's Angel by S.D. Anderson (Finished - review to come)
Becoming an Indie Author by Zoe Winters (About halfway - great guide)
Choose Your Doom: Zombie Apocalypse by DeAnna Knippling and Dante Savelli (about 2/3 through this choose your own adventure-style book and loving it)
Must Love Dragons by Monica Marier (looking forward to reading. MC's name is Linus Weedwhacker. She had me at the name)
Matilda Raleigh: Invictus by Chris Kelly (starting soon. Who can resist a 70 year old heroine with demonic pistols? not me)

Writing:
I am finishing up a short story for an anthology to be released in February with a few other authors. The story will focus on my main characters from Lucifera's Pet. I'll send more details as I have them.
My All Hallows novella is progressing nicely. It is about 50% done. Still on pace for a late Spring release.
The follow-up novel to Lucifera's Pet is about 25% done. I am holding off on finishing that until All Hallows is completed. Stay tuned.

It's almost Thanksgiving here and you know what that means. It's time for me to buy my annual bottle of Jameson Irish Whiskey to enjoy after the Turkey Day festivities. I am significantly less hard than such a manly bottle of booze would indicate. In reality, it will last me until next Thanksgiving, if not a little longer.

Have a happy holiday season, all.

Remember, leprechauns make excellent Christmas gifts, particularly in jerky form.

Author Interview: Chris Kelly Pt 2 - the blog tour ending edition

Chris Kelly of Scathach Publishing seemed to be getting bored as his blog tour was winding down, so I hit him up for another interview. Why? Because I am an asshole like that.   

Anyone who has ever been involved in the mass chaos of a blog tour will realize that there is more than a little sarcasm in there, except for the asshole bit. Big thanks to Chris for being such a great sport.

MM: Welcome back, Chris. You are rolling into the end of your tour. What have you learned and would you do anything differently?

CK: This is the first time I've ever done anything like this; I've never even wrote to deadlines before so it was... interesting. Actually, it was Hell - it was tiring, confusing and seemingly never-ending but I really enjoyed it. I was constantly busy throughout October, always had too much to do and no time to do it, but on the whole it still went really well.

I don't know if I would do another book tour; in October I worked my ass off and sold six books so it wasn't worthwhile in that respect. In other respects it has worked well - I have a lot more people following my blog now than there were in previous months.

My two biggest problems this month were viruses - me and the laptop both had one. I've lost nearly a stone (about 14lbs? Is that right?) in just under a week because I have not been eating anything except Maltesers.

And my laptop packed on. It got fixed today, and they fixed it so well I can't get on the internet because the new firewall is super good.

MM: Ouch. That's dieting the hard way. What do you have coming up for the rest of the tour?

CK: This is the final day of my tour, but I have two guest posts coming to my blog in November - S L Armstrong is blogging about collaborating on projects, which is something I've always wanted to try. And Zoe Winters is doing her post on how to write characters in love. It's the counterpart to a post by Selena Kitt currently on my blog, which is how to write about sex.
( http://dun-scaith.blogspot.com/2010/10/guest-post-writing-real-sex-selena-kitt.html )

MM: You have written some excellent articles and hosted a number of outstanding posts (mine included - Damn, it was good. I'm going to read it again as soon as I finish this interview) on your blog. Are you looking forward to a quiet November or will you keep up the torrid blogging pace?

CK: In November I will be doing Nano. My nano novel is called Ugly Mean-spirited Nasty Stinking Goblinses (okay, it's not actually called that, but I keep forgetting the bloody title!)
The cover art is done, and the novel is mostly planned. It's a YA story about a homeless girl in Glasgow. Her name is Holly, and she can see what's really there - things like fairies and so on.

She teams up with a goblin who might be ugly and stinky and nasty and all the other things in the title, but who has a good heart, and a sex-mad (and now very frustrated) foul-mouthed princess trapped in the body of a 3ft high Princess Doll, and together they try to stop the evil villain... Santa Claus. He's stealing innocence from the world and abducting naughty children and forcing them to work in his toy factories.

The whole thing will be posted on a dedicated blog as it is written, and will also (hopefully) be released for sale before xmas. I also have a novel 90% done (well, 100% done but currently only existing in print) that I'd like to bring out before Christmas.

http://chriskellygoblins.blogspot.com/

So I won't be having a quiet November, but I won't be blogging a lot either.

Unless I get told to: I recently started a social networking challenge. I'm being deliberately sketchy on details at this stage, but I recently started a challenge and I've pretty much to do what I'm told from now til Christmas.

MM: Interesting. I knew a guy in college who had a sexually frustrated doll. His name was Fred and her name was Francine. Their story was far less interesting than your upcoming novel sounds like it will be.

Now that Matilda Raleigh: Invictus is published and finding its way to the eyeballs of readers everywhere, what's next?

CK: I've been working on an enhanced Ebook for Invictus, but it won't be ready til nearer Christmas at the soonest. It will have around 35000 words of new material including the first story of Matilda going up against the crystal skulls, and an add-on to the ending. It will also have lots of other interesting things in there, too. I'd hoped to bring it out sooner, but that was not to be.

I also have my secret non-fiction Matilda Raleigh project. I'm giving away very little about this at this stage except that it probably won't be ready before March at the very earliest. Could be looking at next August as a reasonable date. I'm seriously considering not bringing out another Matilda Raleigh book until this is ready.

Oh, and it will probably be free.

MM: You heard it here first, folks. The enhanced edition of Matilda Raleigh Invictus is coming! Good luck with NaNo, Chris. And thanks again for the interview.

Visit Chris's blog and keep up with his upcoming projects here.
Chris's debut novel, Matilda Raleigh Invictus is now available on Amazon in the UK and US.

Guest Blog: On the Nature of Evil by Chris Kelly

Having decided to blog about evil, I had a few options. I could look at what I believe evil is, or I could look at how/why people become evil. Finally, I could look at evil as an externalised being; ie, Satan as one example.

Being indecisive, I decided to do all three.

What is evil?

Evil is a very solid word. You can almost feel the weight behind it when you say it aloud. Evil. Like the closing of a door, it’s a word that cuts things off, that rings with finality. Evil. There’s no going back, once you are evil.

But despite the fact that it is a solid word, it is far from a solid concept. In fact, it is nearly impossible to define evil except in the most abstract of terms. Murder is evil. But if you murder someone who was just about to murder an innocent, does the fact that you were preventing evil stop your act from being evil?

Stealing is evil. But if your family is starving, and its steal or die, where does the good come from with dying?

Paedophilia is evil. In some parts of America I would be considered a paedophile, because I had sex with someone under the age of 21. In my country the age of consent is 16, and she was over the age. Surely you can’t be evil based on geographical location?

It is a difficult concept to judge. There are so many “what if...” scenarios that can crop up. For example, let us say that killing an innocent is evil. I doubt anyone would argue with that point, because of the word innocent. A convicted murderer is executed. Afterwards, it is discovered he was an innocent man. The executioner killed an innocent, but he was just carrying out his orders. It was the jury who decided the innocent man was guilty. The jury murdered an innocent man, and thus are evil.

Why people become evil

The only way to define evil that seems to hold up to these scenarios is the consideration of intent. To decide, after looking carefully at the evidence, to end the life of a man who has apparently killed does not have an evil intent. To murder an innocent because you want to steal his phone would therefore be evil.

A thug who goes around beating people up because it makes him feel good about himself is evil. A thug who goes around beating other people up because it makes strangers feel safe on the streets (ie Batman) is not evil.

With both the jury, and Batman, the intent was to protect society. With the thug and the murderer, the intent was some kind of personal gain. So it would seem from this that selfishness leads to evil whilst altruism is bound in with good.

Looked at this way, it is clear that two people could do the same thing, for different reasons, and only one would be considered to be being evil. Which suggests that when a person becomes evil, it is a personal choice.

Of course, no one chooses to be evil, and from here it becomes clear that evil is a path. When one decision is made, it becomes easier to make a second decision. When you are mugging someone, and it doesn’t go as planned, it is a lot easier to stretch to killing than it would be if you weren’t already so far down the path towards evil.

Evil as an externalised Force

If evil rises from intent, and is a path then it is, ultimately, an internal thing. Evil, in my view, is simply the consequences of choices that every body makes. If this is the case, then it becomes obvious that externalised evil cannot exist.

Evil in Matilda Raleigh: Invictus

Evil is a huge part of Invictus. Matilda constantly questions herself, wondering if she is evil. As a youth, she made a deal with a demon, but she did it to save her father’s life. By intent, this was not an evil act. However, it led to her being possessed by another demon, which led to the young Matilda committing several acts of evil. Cured of possession, she has spent her life trying to redeem herself. And at the end of her life, she faces a choice, with either option being considered evil. How do you decide, when no matter what decision you make will lead to an act of evil?

Dr Tick Tock, the mad steampunk and clockpunk inventor, has spent his life being evil, but wants to redeem himself before he dies.

And then there’s the non-human characters; vampires and demons. Self-centred and arrogant, they can be evil or good depending on the decisions they make.

That is my view of the nature of evil. I’d love to discuss yours...

Chris Kelly is the author of Matilda Raleigh: Invictus, a story about evil and redemption, betrayal and duty, steampunk and sword and sorcery. Find him on Twitter, Facebook, and his blog.