The Krampus VS Dimitri: A MWW Christmas Story

Twas the eve before Christmas, or so the tale goes,

but this is not the same story that everyone knows.

So gather your eggnog, and stock up on rum,

then wrap up your tootsies, and drop on your bum.

.

Gather round the fire and give a listen to me,

and I’ll tell you the story of a holiday killing spree

caused by the Krampus and a wyrm named Dimitri.

(Some sensitive readers may become queasy.)

My simple Christmas cheer…

During the holidays, I read a lot about how some folks get really stressed out. There are a lot of attempts made at false cheer just for the sake of having  “the holiday spirit,” and there’s of course also a lot of depression caused by the gross over-marketing of the festivities.

I got out of that kind of celebration, and this year, I expect to have the most low-key holiday ever. Luche’s family will be coming to visit us, and we’re going out to dinner at the Platz. I’ve got a gift for my sister-in-law. But this was a pair of ear muffs that she’d been wanting after she saw mine, and I finally lucked out and found the vendor downtown again this weekend. I didn’t ask for anything, but I’m sure there’s a shirt or two for me. Luche’s mom uses every visit as an excuse to bring small gifts, so this will be par for the course.

We’ll share some food and celebrate each other’s company, and all of the rest of the holiday trappings are going to be missing. We don’t have a tree up, or decorative lights, and we don’t need them. For us, all we need are good food, good conversation, and maybe a little bit of yuletide cuddling. (Well, between me and hubby anyway. Mili might object to enthusiastic cuddling.)

If the holiday season starts to drive you nuts, and your family is getting on your nerves, just give yourself some space and think: you could be alone, cold, and without friends or family. You could be in much worse places than listening to your crazy uncle, or to your cranky in-laws.

And if that doesn’t help you to smile, have you tried imagining putting them all in a giant blender on puree? That works for me every time.

Saddle up and get ready to ride!

Yes, now you can order Karen Koehler’s AWESOME weird western Black Jack Derringer, Book 1: The Ace of Spades! If you missed my glowing review, this is a Skullvines Press title that I gave five stars to for being a great introduction to a trilogy of weird western novellas.

Karen has also written the Slayer books as well as many other horror or dark fiction titles, and this story makes for a radical shift to a lighter style and a lighter narration. It’s funny and vividly descriptive without being purple, and from the first page, you will get sucked into the world.

If you didn’t pre-order the book, then you really should order a copy. This trilogy is going to be a fast and very bumpy ride filled with mutant horses, pirates, and plenty of intrigue! You don’t want to miss this adventure, believe me!

Order BJD: Ace of Spades from Skullvines Press

Karen is also taking pre-orders on a personal venture, a YA story called Raiju. You can get more information and make a pre-order at http://tokusatsupress.com/

Harlequin went to the dark side…

Writers everywhere are expressing dismay over Harlequin’s decision to open a vanity publishing imprint. Already, RWA, MWA, and SFWA have stated that they would  stop recognizing the publisher based on this move.

There are some self -published writers who may see this change as a good thing, another sign that traditional publishing is changing  away from “the old ways.” The problem is, what Harlequin is offering now goes beyond the basics of self-publishing and moves into the territory of a vanity publisher.

There’s debates about what makes a vanity versus what makes a self-publishing service, but let us be clear on my interpretation: a self-publishing service will allow you to make a book with little or no setup costs and charge you per book to make money. They may charge about two to three times what the actual printing cost is, and so in this way, they are not the most economic solution, but they are still not quite ripping off the writer. After all, the writer goes into the deal knowing that they have to pay for the most of books they want to sell.

On the other hand, a vanity service charges insanely high amounts of money for things that people can do for free themselves. A vanity service promises that there is a potential for great sales opportunities for paying for extra services, and most of these services are again things that a self-published writer could accomplish with little or no expense, and with very little time invested either. The publisher does very little work, and the rest of the writer’s money is all pure profit.

But one can set the bar TOO high sometimes…

I wrote a little bit about this last night on Twitter, and I want to put my thoughts in a blog post for those of you who don’t follow micro-blogging.

As you know, I took down copies of my e-books from Amazon over their new pricing policy for international Kindle customers. If you missed that, Amazon is giving AT&T a 2$ cut of every e-book sold for “roaming charges.” Sure, it screws the international customers, raises the prices of the books by roughly 20% and cuts out the local cell phone providers from providing a better, cheaper and faster service than AT&T. But the Kindle goes to market faster this way, and that’s all anyone seems to be talking about.

My plan was to shift my e-book sales over to Smashwords, which made sense in light of their plans to start putting books on the Nook. But three points have come up that cause me to doubt my decision to boycott Amazon.

Narration experimentation or authorial intrusion?

Yes, after a long ordeal to get a new internet connection, I’m finally back online! I’d like to start off talking about narrators. Before the internet connection went kaput, I’d been talking about how the narrators for the Mystical World Wars often sounded similar, but were in fact several different demigods. Up until the next round of books, the demigods were silent characters, not being part of the story.

However, that will change now that the story has finally made advances to the right point. In many future stories, the demigods will be acting as bit characters in the tales they narrate. So, suppose a demigod is telling their story, and they enter the story to preform in a scene. At that point, should they begin narrating from a first person perspective?

I don’t have to use the same technique for every narrator. Perhaps Morrigan and Apollo might both choose to break fourth wall and use first person narration while they’re in the scenes, while Shiva and Ares will remain detached from themselves and remain in third person omniscient. Perhaps someone will use first person past tense, and another might try first person present tense.