Cupcake of the week: A Very Happy Birthday, Angel!

Here are Cupcakes and Karma we want to wish a very Happy Birthday to our co-blogger, Angel. A talented writer, gifted singer, brilliant writing buddy, former roommate and best friend, we'd literally be nothing without her. Thank you for being our cupcake and good karma! 

xoxo Team Cupcakes & Karma

Cupcake -- ON MY BIRTHDAY!!

Because I can't imagine anything more happy on a birthday, I'm sharing this barrel full of love with you.

Enjoy. :)

What I'm Reading: The Sookie Stackhouse Series

I love my job. I've said it before, but I might as well say it again. I love my job. Mostly because I get to write posts like this one, for a living. And because I'm re-reading the entire Sookie Stackhouse series for work, well, I don't have too much else to report. If you want to know what I'm reading from now through the 10th May, visit the Gollancz Dark Fantasy Tumblr.

Five Things Never to Ask a Writer

I usually don’t talk that much about my novels. Definitely not in casual situations or making small talk--because people tend to ask the following questions, which make me cringe. If you're in a conversation with someone and they mention they write novels (or someone else tells you about it), here's what not to ask next:

1.     Wow, really? What books of yours have I read?

Okay, so first of all, I have no idea what books you’ve read. So I really can’t answer that question anyway.

But second, if you’re talking to an unpublished writer, you’re just rubbing it in their face that they’re not published yet. The only truthful answer to this question is something along the lines of “Nothing, because I’m not published yet.” At which point, the questioner often either subtly insinuates or comes right out and says that the writer “isn’t a real writer yet.” Uh huh. Thanks for pointing that out.

2.     Wow, really? Tell me all about the plot!

I try to avoid divulging any details about the plots of my books to anyone I’m not already 100% sure is a sympathetic audience—a good friend and a fan of the genre. Not because I think you'll steal my idea or anything like that. It's because new plots are fragile. And it can take only a small amount of ridicule to destroy your confidence in one. You may be the most sympathetic audience ever--but romance and fantasy aren't everyone's cup of tea. And if I don't know you well, I won't want to risk it.

As a lifetime writer, I’ve learned to be careful who I share my ideas with. Very careful. It took me about three years to share a plot of mine with my boyfriend. Nobody in my family knows much about  my plots. Only a very small circle of friends do—mostly people who also write.

3.     Wow, really? Can I read it?

I almost always say no to this. And people sometimes get a little offended. There is no offense meant. But I'm careful about who I share my writing and ideas with, especially when I'm in the early stages of things.

It’s not that I’m overprotective of my ideas. When it’s time, I will share my novel with a wider audience of readers. But even then, I’ll need to choose those people carefully. 

NOTE: Obviously, two and three above don't apply if you are a literary agent. If that's the case, just go ahead and ask me those questions.

4.     Wow, really? I’m writing a book too. Want to read that?

I get how important it is to get someone else to read over your manuscript before you send it out. If I didn’t have my beta-readers, my books would all be complete disasters. But reading and critiquing someone else’s novel is a lot of work. I do it regularly for my two writing partners, and I am very, very careful about who else I do it for. I just don’t have time to do this for everyone who wants it done.

5.     Wow, really? I have a great idea for a book, but I’m not a writer. Maybe you can write it for me!

You’d be surprised how often people say this. But the thing is, whatever idea you’re about to tell me will always be your idea—not mine. I usually suggest that people with ideas like this pick up a pen or open up a Word doc and give it a shot at life themselves. You never know—you may be more of a writer than you’ve imagined.

Fairy Tale Friday: East of the Sun, West of the Moon (Beware talking bears!)

This week it's my turn to share a Fairy Tale Friday post.

One of my favourite stories of all time is East of the Sun, West of the Moon. When I was a kid, I had this massive book of fairy tales and this was one of them that I kept re-reading, over and over again. East of the Sun, West of the Moon (and also the myth of Cupid and Psyche) features in my new writing project. Because when I love something it stays with me. And this is a story I love and have wanted to find a way to retell for a long time. I think *think* I have finally found a way.

Anyway, East of the Sun, West of the Moon is the story of a poor girl who is whisked away by a giant white talking bear to live in his castle. Actual castle. Not cave. Or 'bear castle'. Let's just recap that, a poor (but pretty-- they are always pretty, but I digress) girl is taken away from everything she loves by a wealthy white bear. Said talking bear has a fabulous castle, treats the girl like a princess and by night comes to her bed in the shape of a man. Of course she is not allowed to turn on the lights (or light a candle) so she never sees the bear become a human, but one could assume she would be able to feel the difference between a boy and a bear, right? Apparently not.

After wonderful Bear allows our heroine a chance to meet with her parents (and get offered some terrible advice from her mother-- bad mom!) she returns to her bear and in a moment of curiosity (spurned on by her mother's terrible advice) she lights a candle to see what her bear looks like (hint, he's a handsome prince-- said wax is spilled on his arm-- was she checking out his guns? One can only assume). Sadly our Bear-prince flees, telling our heroine that if she had just waited a year she could have been with the handsome prince forever.

*sigh*

That is the part in the story where I always get upset. Why did she have to be curious. Bear was good to her. Why break the rules? Why does the heroine have to be curious? Surely she should know by now that the worst thing (in fairy tale and mythological history) that a female can be is curious! (That is a topic for another blog post which I will get to!) If the story ended here I would hate it so much. But it doesn't. What follows is a hero-journey featuring a female hero. Our heroine undergoes a fantastic adventure to win back her bear, save him from a marriage to a horrible troll queen and in the myth version (Cupid and Psyche) become a goddess. Now, if that isn't a story worth telling and retelling I don't know what is.

So, pick up a copy of either Cupid and Psyche or East of the Sun, West of the Moon. You won't be disappointed.

And remember the moral: if a giant, talking white bear comes along and wants to make you his bride . . . maybe think twice. Unless you're up for an epic adventure.

Happy Friday! xoxo

LEAST WEASELS!!!!

Did you know about least weasels? It's not just a great band name. Least weasels are actual animals. They are the ittiest and also verifiably the cutest of the weasel family. So. Freaking. Cute.

But don't take my word for it. Observe:

Ooh ooh! And also:

Sigh. I could do this all day.

The Spellman Files

I know... I know... but
the Goodreads version was too small
to see the details on the cover....

So, just after the holidays, I was looking for a good book. While I did have other things I'd been reading, a good friend recommended a book she'd loved. We had talked before about the... range of narrative I like to read and she thought this hit most of the criteria:

The Spellman Files was a great book. The voice is fantastic and the family certainly puts the "fun" in dysfunctional.

Lisa Lutz's book follows one Isabel Spellman, Private Investigator, employee of Spellman Investigations -- which is run by her mother and father and includes her 14-year old investigat-a-holic sister and just-about-everything-a-holic uncle and tells the story of Isabel's life within the framework of an on-going investigation. She has a brother, too, "the good one" who got out, became a lawyer and made good -- most of the time. 

I'm a bit of a nut for things like this (there really aren't a lot of things I'm not a nut for, but I digress). I loved Harriet the Spy, Nancy Drew, and the Hardy Boys; I grew up on Sam Spade and Miss Marple. These days I end up reading a lot of Cathy Reichs, Tony Hillerman, and Patricia Cornwall. And if you throw a little Clue!-like comedy into the mix, I'm over the moon. I love puzzles and I love to see where the threads lead.

And this book has a lot of leads and a lot of threads. 

I like Izzy. She has, as I said, a fantastic voice. She's tough and funny and rough around the edges and she knows it. She still manages to find humor even as her world starts falling apart. 

And it does fall apart, leaving Izzy to follow clues -and some very bad leads- to try and pick up all the pieces.

I know I'm not saying much, but this is a book you really have to read to understand and I don't want to -- even inadvertently -- give away the game. 

Go. Read. Laugh. Not laughing is suspicious. You don't want to be investigated by the Spellmans, do you?

Fairy Tale Friday: The Snow Queen, Or Don't Piss a B**** Off. Part 2

Riiiight. So, where did we leave off last time? Ahh, yes. Our hero forgot rule number 3 for strangers: Don't get into the car.

Lila, on the otherhand, was set on getting him back, even though the rest of the village had, within the hour, written him off as a lost cause. "No one who goes with her ever comes back," her mother had tried to reason, but for naught.

Once the rest of her family had fallen asleep that night, she threw a few things into a bag, cracked a window, and threw a leg over the casement.

She was gone before the family dog knew to start barking.

The only clue Lila had to go on was that the woman went "north." She had no plates to go on, no idea of where the woman lived, except that it was beyond the ten mile radius she and Mark had ever explored. But, there weren't that many roads heading out that way and not much traffic. So for a while, with the moon high and full, Lila was able to hike along the road.

But, the night grew colder and the trees began to close in and even though she'd grabbed a warm jacket, hat, and boots, she began to shiver in them. And it only got worse once the snow started. What had started as a clear night, by midnight, became a blizzard and Lila was lost in it.

A cold and lonely road (1)

She remembered the old stories about how the woman in the car, the snow queen, had powers over the ice and snow and wondered as her fingers began to numb and her feet turned to blocks in her boots if this was the Snow Queen's doing or if Lila herself had just been stupid about heading off into the night on foot. Still, she trudged on, hoping to find somewhere to wait out the rest of the night, hopes sinking lower with each step that she'd find it before she froze.

***

 

 Meanwhile, many miles from where Lila kept slogging through the cold, Mark himself was far from being cold and uncomfortable. The car, after passing iron gates and slithering along a stretch of driveway that could rightly be called a road in and of itself, pulled up to a grand mansion. "This is our stop," she told the gawping village boy. She didn't wait for him to collect himself.

She swanned out of the car and up the stairs, heels click-click-clicking along each step. The doors opened before her. She paused in the doorway and raised a single eyebrow in his direction. "Are you coming?"

Mindlessly, he lept from the car to follow, eyes fixed on her long, long legs and very, very short skirt.

He scrambled to catch up.

There was no one at the door when he crossed the threshold and still the doors closed on their own. But, he barely noticed. Instead, he struck shocked and amazed by the outright opulance of her foyer. The likes of which he'd never seen. He didn't know marble from alabaster, but everything looked rich and ... richer. And everything -- stone to crystal to paintings to rugs -- were done in shades of blue and white.

Think less black and more ice sculpture.... (2)

"You live here?" He called out through the very empty foyer.

"Yes. And it's bad form to stand in the entryway gawking. Please, come this way."

Her voice lead him deeper into the house. He found her in the kitchen, ladling out some soup boiling away on the stove. "I'm afraid the staff is on holiday. Here. Have something to eat and we'll get you settled. I'll set you to work tomorrow."

He did as he was bade, sitting, eating silently, trying to keep from staring so hard that his eyes fell out of his head. His mother told him that it would happen once. He never forgot it. But, this was one of the times when the risk felt real. There was too much to take in and while a small part of his brain tried to remind him that there was something very wrong here, the rest was just overwhelmed. He forgot about his mother's warnings, he forgot about his friend and his home. Instead, he just stared.

And while he stared at the grandure around him (and occasionally at the woman who sat at the table with him), he didn't notice her returned gaze. She hadn't taken a bite of the soup before her. Instead, she sat watching her newest acquisition, as if he were another rug or lamp or sculpture.

When he finished all he could eat, she led him to another part of the mansion and got him settled into a room. "Consider it yours for your stay. Good night." She gave him a smile as she closed the door as thin as the fang moon of winter.

He barely saw it for the fur and the fireplace and the satin woods of the "guest" room she'd placed him in. He barely saw it or felt the creeping cold that had begun to fill his veins from the contents of his stomach. No, he didn't see the trap for what it was even as he slipped into unconsciousness and his body hit the fur rug square on....



(1) Many thanks to Brianna Asaro Photography for allowing me to use this image. Please check out her website. Her work is gorgeous. http://briannaasaro.com/

(2) via theenchantedhome.blogspot.com

Cupcake of the Week: Dean Winchester's Braveheart Moment

Oh, Dean Winchester. You are swoon worthy. You are gruff. You are hilarious. You are able to laugh at yourself. And best of all here you are giving a Braveheart style speech to LARP-ers (a terms I've only learned since watching Supernatural).

Sigh . . .

If I didn't already have a Valentine I'd ask you to be mine.

(Who cares that Dean's fictional, right?)

What I'm Reading: Days of Blood and Starlight.

Every so often, a book comes along that is so imaginative, so beautiful, so absolutely brilliant that it absolutely breaks my heart that I didn’t write it.

This past year, Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke and Bone was that book for me. And with this one, not only did I wish I’d written this book, I genuinely wanted to be the main character.

Karou goes to art school in Prague. She can learn a new language just by wishing it. She knows martial arts and has a sarcastic-hilarious best friend named Zuzana and has blue hair. She carries a knife in her boot. And she collects teeth.

Simply put, this girl is weird and fascinating and uniquely herself--the kind of person I would write myself into being if I could. And I just wanted to walk through the pages of the story and be her. Naturally, I devoured Daughter of Smoke and Bone in a few days—I have zero self-control when it comes to books I love; kind of like mint-chocolate-chip ice cream in the fridge—and when the sequel came out, I just about SQUEEEE’d with delight.

In Days of Blood and Starlight, Karou is, of course, more than herself. She’s also remembered a past life—and her loyalties and duties from that life come forward to imprison her, in a sense, in the present. I’ve read reviews that say Karou is darker, more depressed, and has less of a spark in this book, and that’s a downfall—but I say it has to be this way.

Laini Taylor’s lyrical, lovely writing style is completely present in this book—every word was deliciously haunting. As for what I’m drinking when I read this: cider. Not Applejack or Strongbow or anything else mass-produced, but cider from a local press somewhere in Normandy, where they take their cider as seriously as they take their wine. It’s light, it’s effervescent, but sometimes it has hidden depths. And it always surprises you.

Scales are Undecided.....

I spent most of the weekend trying to figure out where to go with this Monday's post. I really did. Because in the last month it's been some interesting times. I had my own brush with something good lately, but I've been half ashamed to talk about it, mostly because I really feel like I compromised something when It happened.

It was actually something I talked about on Tumblr.



If you can't get on the tumblrs, here's the later part of it.

Allow me to explain, though, why I'm still uncomfortable.

While my arguments were valid to an extent: the DMZ (DC Metro Zone, or so I'm told) has gotten a lot more progressive in the last year. We voted on and approved of the right for LBGT folks to marry in Maryland -- which paves the way for their spouses to be able to be part of each other's benefits, it opens up avenues for them in terms of inheritance laws, and so many other things. By changing the way the laws see their relationships, it allows them the right to stand up in court and say this person is the person I am spending the rest of my life with, the person I am sharing everything I am and everything I have with, and we don't have to worry about draconian crap -- at least in this state -- any more. Religion and "traditionalist" folks aside, this is a huge cultural and legal coup.

Which is why, even though it was one of my absolute favorite places in the world to go to eat (and one of two bastions of fast food I had left I could eat from), after the president-and-CEO of Chick-Fil-A started talking smack last year expressed is political and social beliefs last year, I told myself that I needed to show solidarity to my friends and loved ones who are LBGT. With a heavy heart, I expressed my own rights by boycotting the franchise.

Now, I know that my dime-and-dollar are but a drop in the bucket for that place. So, I know I don't have a snowball's chance in hell in making an effect on my own, but frankly, it seems to me that since I can't really have a debate with the guy and lay out all the reasons why marrage equality is important to me - a non-LBGT person, I figured I'd at least keep my money in my pocket. Besides, I really don't need to be eating scrumptious-fried-deliciousness, right? It's not good for you (or me) and *sigh* fast food.... Oh well.

Well, last week I caved. There are a lot of cravings I've been able to avoid, but I'd really been wanting a fried chicken sandwich and my other go-to fast food place... well, they're not in the local area. So, when I was home and my SO says he can run somewhere and we can have lunch together, my first thought is chicken. And I couldn't think of anything else. So, I gave him a halfhearted speech about having won the war, but honestly, I couldn't come up with anything better. I didn't actually expect him to come home with Chick-Fil-A.

But, not only did he, but he came home with the story about what happened when he went to pay and while part of me was gleeful about it and another part of me said "we WILL be paying this forward and soon" but there's the larger part of me that feels uncomfortable about having caved.

Because denying legal rights to one group means it can happen to any group -- it has happened before and it certainly can again and that terrifies me.

And because, really, the only time the war is truly won is when the hearts and minds are won as well.

So, what do you think? Am I wrong for beating myself up?

Fairy Tale Friday

I'm in love with fairy tales. The Disney-ized versions, of course, have their charm. But my favorite versions are the creepy kind. The old, primordial stories born of a colder, crueler time--the versions we don't tell our kids today.

So I'm using my turn at Fairy Tale Friday to dredge all these ancient stories up from our collective subconscious. I recently laid hands on a copy of The Brothers' Grimm annotated fairy tales, complete with gory illustrations--and I'll be bringing you the best bits of the stories that Disney left out.

Today's fairy tale? The original Cinderella. In which the two wicked stepsisters, rather than just trying on the glass slipper and admitting that it didn't fit, each cut off a bit of their feet to get them into the slipper:

"Then her mother gave her a knife and said, 'Cut the toe off; when thou art Queen thou wilt have no more need to go on foot.' The maiden cut the toe off, forced the foot into the shoe, swallowed the pain, and went out to the King's son."

Both times, the Prince doesn't notice the transparent glass slipper was filling up with blood (or see the ragged stumps in the shoe) until two helpful pigeons point it out:

"Turn and peep, turn and peep, 
There's blood within the shoe, 
The shoe is too small for her
The true bride waits for you."

But that's not the best part. At the end of the tale, when Cinderella's stepsisters come to her wedding, here's what happens to them:

"When the wedding with the King's son had to be celebrated, the two false sisters came and wanted to get into favour with Cinderella and share her good fortune. When the betrothed couple went to church, the elder was at the right side and the younger at the left, and the pigeons pecked out one eye of each of them. Afterwards as they came back, the elder was at the left, and the younger at the right, and then the pigeons pecked out the other eye of each. And thus, for their wickedness and falsehood, they were punished with blindness as long as they lived."

The moral of the story? The pigeons know what you did. And they are vengeful birds.

Cupcake: Zombie Love Song

So THIS came out this weekend:

It's had me super excited and rather than giving you another (!!) LBD post in the matter of two weeks (because, OMG the DRAMA!!), I figured I would do something ... else instead.

Alright. I know it's old, but in honor of Warm Bodies, I want to give a shout out to an oldie, but a goodie. One I was thinking about nearly the whole time I was watching Warm Bodies -- well, that and "a plague on both your houses...." Because THIS:

Go. Shamble. See the movie. We'll catch up later. ;)

Fairy Tale Friday: The Falconer

So this is a bit of a cheat but my Fairy Tale Friday this week is the cover reveal for The Falconer. It's not out yet (September 2013), and I'm not allowed to say anything more, but it's fierce and will fit into this theme. Wink wink. Trust me, this one is going to be epic!

Enjoy!

xoxo