BRAVE THE REALM OF ... THE HUNTRESS!

I'd be afraid to go myself, 

but I have Samuel McCord with me!

 Come with me Tuesday to the blog of the Huntress, C.D. Coffelt, SPIRIT CALLED:
http://spiritcalled.blogspot.com/

Yes, I do NOT learn.  

Despite the numerous death threats, 

warnings of strapping me to a chair and making me endure non-stop Trump speeches, 

and rumblings of making me listen continuously to Kanye West's rants, I am still on my

"Don't You Hate Book Tours?" Book Tour!

Don't let Carol's visitor numbers slump! Please visit her blog.

Until then, visit my book's Amazon Page and take advantage of the LOOK INSIDE feature:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1530302722/

Be sure and use the SURPRISE ME feature as well which will take you to even more pages to read!

"You take people, you put them on a journey, you give them peril, and then find out who they really are.”
 - Joss Whedon

There are many black hearts aboard the Xanadu in The Not-So-Innocents Abroad, 

each believing themselves justified for their dark past.  Their theme:

LOVE AMONG THE CLOUDS

"Romance is dead.  It was acquired in a hostile take-over by bare chest covers, muted greys, and lust strangling love -- trivialized into a caricature, its soul sold off piece by piece."
- ghost of Raymond Chandler

(The closest a human can come to portraying the alien Empress 
Meilori Shinseen)

This Monday the lovely Heather M Gardner:
http://hmgardner.blogspot.com/

is allowing another Not-Book-Tour post from me to shanghai her blog.  

Miss romance?  Many do.  

The classic movies of the 40's didn't need R or X rated scenes to lure the audience or to touch the heart.

Come over to Heather's on Monday, and we'll talk.

Until then ...  the LOOK INSIDE of THE NOT-SO-INNOCENTS ABROAD just went live.  

Come to its Amazon page and try out the first few pages:

 http://www.amazon.com/dp/1530302722/

THEY DID WHAT?

Famous authors are notorious for their daily routines ...

   ... sometimes outrageous, usually obsessive, invariably peculiar.


Did you know that  Wallace Stevens composed his poetry on slips of paper while walking --

 an act like Stephen King, he saw as a creative stimulant — then handed them to his secretary to type up.

"Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake."
 - Wallace Stevens

Edgar Allan Poe wrote his final drafts on separate pieces of paper 

attached into a running scroll with sealing wax.

 "I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity."
- Edgar Allan Poe


   
Jack Kerouac was especially partial to scrolling: In 1951, planning the book for years and amassing ample notes in his Journal, 

he wrote ON THE ROAD in one feverish burst, 

letting it pour onto pages taped together into one enormously long strip of paper — 

a format he thought lent itself particularly well to his project, 

since it allowed him to maintain his rapid pace without pausing to reload the typewriter at the end of each page. 

When he was done, he marched into his editor Robert Giroux’s office and proudly spun out the scroll across the floor. 

He promptly stormed back out when he was told that the pages would have to be cut to be edited.

Take Virginia Woolf - 

In her twenties, she spent two and a half hours every morning writing, on a three-and-half-foot tall desk 

with an angled top that allowed her to look at her work both up-close and from afar. 

But it truly was a by-product of sibling rivalry with her sister, Vanessa Bell.   

Vanessa painted standing, and Virginia didn’t want to be outdone by her sister. 

 Woolf remained incredibly resourceful — an inventor of sorts, even. 

 After she switched from standing to sitting, she created a contraption of which she was very proud: 

She used a piece of thin plywood as a writing board, to which she attached a tray for pens and ink 

so she wouldn’t have to get up and disrupt her flow of inspiration should she run out of materials. 

 "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."
- Virginia Woolf

 
John Steinbeck was driven by a similar fear of depletion of materials.  

He liked to write his drafts in pencil, always kept exactly twelve perfectly sharpened pencils on his desk.

 He used them so heavily that his editor had to send him round pencils 

to alleviate the calluses Steinbeck had developed on his hands from the traditional hexagonal ones.

"A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it."
 - John Steinbeck




 Truman Capote wouldn’t begin or end a piece of work on a Friday, 

would change hotel rooms if the room phone number involved the number 13, 

and never left more than three cigarette butts in his ashtray, tucking the extra ones into his coat pocket.

 "Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act."  
- Truman Capote

Jack London wrote 1,000 words a day every single day of his career and  

William Golding once declared at a party that he wrote 3,000 words daily,

 a number Norman Mailer and Arthur Conan Doyle shared.

 Raymond Chandler, a man of strong opinions about writing wrote in spurts, sometimes reaching 5,000 words in a day!

Dorothy Parker, an obsessive reviser, skewed to the negative, once lamented,

 “I can’t write five words but that I change seven.”

"From 30 feet away she looked like a lot of class. From 10 feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from 30 feet away.”
 - Raymond Chandler

And don't forget passage on the Xanadu is 

NOW available.  

Reserve your seat today!

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1530302722/

XANADU ASCENDING!

The Xanadu has cast off!

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1530302722/

“Roland Yeomans is funny, charismatic and fun to read...

I really like that.

 I still have yet to read a steampunk novel

 because most times they don't fit in with the paranormal genre that I read most these days

But...a steampunk with vampires? Did I read that right? Great idea

– Mary Kirkland 

It is 1867 in an America a layer of existence from this one.

General Sherman was denied his march through Georgia by forces beyond his ken

Abraham Lincoln was never assassinated though he wishes he had been killed instead of his beloved Mary.

 

The battered Indian tribes of America have a strange refuge courtesy of the cursed Texas Ranger, Captain Samuel McCord.

 A global war of vampire kingdoms is going on beneath the noses of the living world --

and it is interfering with the honeymoon of the alien empress, Meilori Shinseen.

She ruled the Aztecs when a political execution took place on Golgotha. 

 Meilori commissioned the Sphinx to take her mind off repairing her star-craft.

  The warring vampire rulers have mistaken her boredom with ruling the nations of Man as weakness.

They have made a grave error, emphasis on the word "grave."

  What is a not-quite-mortal groom to do? 

 Survive as best he can.

 Vampires, Vengeful Spirits of the Earth, Aliens Among Us,

and a Man with the Blood of Death in his Veins trying to keep it from being spilled before his honeymoon is over.

   Come join the maiden voyage of the first Air/Steamship, the Xanadu,

where murder, intrigue, and betrayal reign supreme ... and that is just in the newlywed’s bedroom.

 Joining the newlyweds are Mark Twain, 11 year old Nikola Tesla, his faithful black cat, Macak,

Horace Greely, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ada Byron, daughter of Lord Byron,

and the mysterious Greek physician, Lucanus.

 Lurking in the shadows, hoping to kill them is the insane Abraham Lincoln, the crippled General Sherman,

the vampires, Abigail Adams and Benjamin Franklin,

Empress Theodora, ruler of the Unholy Roman Empire, and the vengeful Captain Nemo, following in his Nautilus.

 Steampunk intrigue and adventure was never so much fun..

I think of this as the theme 

for when Xanadu descends from the clouds 

to do battle with the Nautilus, 

all weapons blazing.

 Don't forget to visit D.G. Hudson's blog who is hosting me on my"Don't You Hate Book Tours?" Book Tour!

http://dghudson-rainwriting.blogspot.com/

THE PUNK IN STEAMPUNK?

The punk in Steampunk?  

Oh, very funny, guys.  

Well, you are right, smartees.  The Punk in this case is me!

 http://dghudson-rainwriting.blogspot.com/

Follow me to D.G. Hudson's blog 

where I bring Bad Girls, Air-Steamships, villainous former presidents/Civil War Generals, 

vampires, and Mark Twain mentoring 11 year old Nikola Tesla! 

Yes, it is another legendary stop along my 

"Don't You Hate Book Tours?" Book Tour! 


Go to D.G.'s with the theme of the Air-Steamship, Xanadu, in your head: 

Don't Forget I'm also on Samantha Geary Jones' Blog!

 http://writerlysam.com/sams-blog/

Talk About Insecure Writer! IWSG post

The ghost of Mark Twain is deserting me for Samantha Redstreake Geary!

He took one look at beautiful Samantha in front of her writerly office at Biltmore Estate and said, 

"Son, I do believe that lovely lady needs my fatherly wisdom and guidance."

"Samuel, that is not a fatherly gleam in your eyes!"  I protested.

But he was already gone.  Sigh.  

You might as well join him since another post of my "Don't You Hate Blog Book Tours?" Book Tour is also at her blog.

http://writerlysam.com/sams-blog/

Let me know if you see Mark Twain there, will you?  Also tell me what you thought of my new post. 

*** The ghost of Mark Twain is depressed. Samantha is nowhere to be seen ... nor is my guest post.

I apologize to him and to all of you.  Sometimes life happens.  :-( 

SAMANTHA is NOW there at her blog, along with ME! 

The blood of the Turquoise Woman (Gaia) flows in Samuel McCord's veins.

He sometimes hears her Voice:

RED ALERT! RED ALERT! INCOMING!

Today Jeremy Hawkins is brave enough to invite me over to wreck ruin on his poor blog.

 http://www.beingretro.com/

 See? He already has blood in his eyes from my stay!

Don't let him suffer in vain!

Come and visit him so

he won't feel so alone.

Don't forget:

I am still at Alex Cavanaugh's

 http://www.alexjcavanaugh.com/

What I think of as Samuel McCord's 

Love Theme

for Meilori: