Kim Lenox: Night Falls Darkly

Title:  NIGHT FALLS DARKLY
Author: Kim Lenox
Publisher: NAL/Signet Eclipse
Mass Market Paperback: 311 pp
ISBN: 978-0-451-22537-5

1. First off, congratulations on the big novel sale! Give us the elevator pitch. What’s your book about?

Thank you so much for the congratulations! NIGHT FALLS DARKLY is the first book in the Shadow Guard series I am writing for NAL/Signet Eclipse. The books are historical paranormal romances, with a bit of a steampunk edge to them.

The Shadow Guards are a mysterious order of immortals tasked with intervening, as necessary, in the lives and deaths of mortals. Archer, Lord Black, the hero of NIGHT FALLS DARKLY, is a Reclaimer, and is charged with hunting down and eliminating the most morally deteriorated, wicked souls of the earth’s population. At the behest of Queen Victoria he returns to England and immerses himself in the dark, hellish streets of London’s East End. Among the immortal Shadow Guard, he is the most prolific and cunning of the Reclaimers. He revels in the hunt of his current prey: an ill-mannered, reluctant soul reviled in the daily newspapers as Jack the Ripper. Archer has only one weakness … one distraction … the young woman he spared from death two years before.

2. Most new novelists have an interesting story to tell about their journey to publication. What’s yours? Did you use an agent? Make sure to tell us about the day you found out you’d sold a book.

I’m a member of Romance Writers of America, a fantastic writing organization. They have a lot of local subchapters all over the country where you can meet and network with other writers (not just romance writers), and learn more about the craft of writing. Most chapters sponsor a yearly writing contest, and finalist entries usually go to an acquiring editor or an agent for final placement. I was fortunate enough to win or at least final in a number of those contests, and received requests from a handful of NYC editors who wanted to review my full manuscript. Rather than send it to them myself, I listed out my contest wins and the requests in a letter, and queried my short list of agents. That’s how I got my agent Kim Lionetti. So yes, I used an agent.

I had a few days of excitement over selling NIGHT FALLS DARKLY. We had more than one interested party, and I have to say — receiving those “Kim, I have good news” calls was just the best feeling ever.

3. Do you have another book in the pipeline? What are you working on now?

I just turned in copy edits on the second book in the Shadow Guard series, SO STILL THE NIGHT. NIGHT FALLS DARKLY centered around the Jack the Ripper murders. SO STILL THE NIGHT takes place immediately afterward, and is my alternate explanation for the Thames Torso Murders.

4. What’s your process like? Morning writer, night writer, or something in between?

Hmmm. Process. Tangled and complicated. It usually takes me weeks … sometimes months, to finalize a plot, even when I’m writing on deadline. I write a fourteen to fifteen page outline, and work off that. Sometimes I stick to my original plan, and sometimes I change things up. I do my best writing early in the morning, but will also write late at night. I’m a slow writer, and sometimes I have to write scenes or even whole chapters wrong, before I can write it right. I do a lot of revision.

5. There seems to be an unusually high percentage of writers who own cats. Here at The First Book, we’re doing a study to find out if there’s a direct relationship between writing success and cat ownership. Do you own a cat? If so, tell us about him or her. If not, tell us what you have against cats.

I’ve got three cats (and a full size collie who thinks he’s a cat). I’m pretty sure they own me, and not the other way around. There’s Oscar, my enormous ginger Maine Coon. He’s best known for his operatic caterwauling around 4 a.m. every morning. Then there’s Sophie, my shorthaired tuxedo cat. She’s very fretful, and “talks” a lot. She’s also the guardian of my bedroom. Then there’s the new guy, Tango, who is a white and orange Siamese. He’s a ninja cat who runs, bounces and ricochets off walls, furniture and stairs. He’s also responsible for all the tiny claw-prick holes in my new leather sofa, which he likes to use as a springboard for amazing feats of aerial acrobatics. All three of my cats came from the animal shelter.

Oscar and I were featured in the July 2008 issue of CAT FANCY magazine in an article by Christie Craig, titled, “Novelists’ Feline Muses”.

Laura Benedict: Isabella Moon

Title:  Isabella Moon
Author:  Laura Benedict
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Hardcover: 368 pages
ISBN: 978-0345497673

1. First off, congratulations on the big novel sale! Give us the elevator pitch. What’s your book about?

The title, Isabella Moon, refers to a nine year-old girl who is missing and presumed dead at the opening of the novel. But IM has an ensemble cast and the most significant character is fictional Carystown Kentucky, the small town where the story takes place. When Kate Russell, a young woman who has been hiding out there for two years is approached by Isabella’s ghost, she’s torn between finding justice for the girl and keeping her own secrets. The secrets Carystown is hiding begin to destroy its genteel, southern facade to reveal its dark heart. Think sex, drugs, murder, betrayal and Steely Dan. Here are my two favorite review quotes: from Booklist–”Benedict creates an entertainingly lurid atmosphere as she peoples a small southern town with not one but two psychopaths, a ghostly apparition, and various neurotic young women with some pretty twisted views on romance” ; and from The Chicago Tribune–”An amalgam of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood and Peter Straub’s Ghost Story, this mystery/thriller will simultaneously tug at the heartstrings and scare the bejesus out of readers. 
In a word: unforgettable.”

2. Most new novelists have an interesting story to tell about their journey to publication. What’s yours? Did you use an agent? Make sure to tell us about the day you found out you’d sold a book.

My journey was looooooong! I wrote fiction for eighteen years before I sold Isabella Moon. I call it my “third first novel” because I have two in the drawer that will never again be seen by other eyes than spiders’. And if my descendants ever try to publish them I will come back and haunt them. (Note to self: burn before dying.) I imagined that I was writing some imaginary thing called “literary fiction” for all those years. But my agent couldn’t sell it–and, frankly, I wasn’t trained to write it anyway. I approach writing as more craft than art, and, with the help of some very good writer friends, a few teachers and many, many pages read, I eventually honed my craft to the point where someone thought it was good enough to put on a bookshelf. I started IM on a piece of scrap paper on an airplane–I was on my way home from NYC where my agent told me, essentially, to get off my butt and write something she could sell. So, I sat down to have some fun (how ironic that getting off my butt actually entailed sitting in a chair for months!) and IM was the result.

I learned about the sale while I happened to be in NYC celebrating my sister’s fortieth birthday. My agent had sent it out on a Thursday afternoon, and we had an offer from Ballantine at 8:30 Monday morning!

3. Do you have another book in the pipeline? What are you working on now?

My next novel, Calling Mr. Lonely Hearts, will be on sale in hardcover on December 30th, along with the paperback of Isabella Moon. So right now I’m working on number three. It’s very top-secret and is (I hope!) the start of a horror series. I’ll be touring for CMLH in January, so we’re planning that right now. I’m also reading stories for the next edition of Surreal South, the anthology series I edit with my husband Pinckney Benedict, and spend lots of time at my blog, Notes From the Handbasket. Oh, and I just turned in the copy for my new website, which will still be at the same address: www.laurabenedict.com. The new trailer for CMLH is super-scary!

4. What’s your process like? Morning writer, night writer, or something in between?

I get distracted very easily these days and have gotten into the habit of staying up to work long after the family has gone to bed. It’s tough to get up at 6:30 and see the kids off, though, so it’s going to have to change or we’ll all go mad and never have clean clothes to wear and end up looking like a poster family for that movie about the guy who ate McDonald’s for a month! (Actually, we eat at Moe’s and Panera–McDonald’s not so much–but the effect is the same, darn it.)

5. There seems to be an unusually high percentage of writers who own cats. Here at The First Book, we’re doing a study to find out if there’s a direct relationship between writing success and cat ownership. Do you own a cat? If so, tell us about him or her. If not, tell us what you have against cats.

We did have two cats when I signed the contract for Isabella Moon and Calling Mr. Lonely Hearts. They went to live on a farm (a real farm, not the “farm” where most families send unfortunate animals) when we moved from Virginia to Illinois. Hm. I don’t have any cats right now. And I don’t have a new contract yet. We have two dogs. I wonder if that’s coincidence, or….

Joshua Corin: Nuclear Winter Wonderland

Title:  Nuclear Winter Wonderland
Author: Joshua Corin
Publisher:  Kunati Books
Hardcover: 288 pages
ISBN: 978-1601641601

1. First off, congratulations on the big novel sale! Give us the elevator pitch. What’s your book about?

In my novel NUCLEAR WINTER WONDERLAND, Adam Weiss must rescue his kidnapped sister from a depressed terrorist intent on detonating the world on Christmas Eve.  Just your everyday roller coaster of thrills, chills, giggles, casinos, strip clubs, Mennonites, mobsters, planes, trains, boats, and female Spanish-speaking clowns. 

2. Most new novelists have an interesting story to tell about their journey to publication. What’s yours? Did you use an agent? Make sure to tell us about the day you found out you’d sold a book.

The journey my novel took to publication is almost as quirky as the novel itself.  A few years ago, a Hollywood producer found one of my scripts on a website which hosted award-winning screenplays, liked what she read, and asked me if I had anything else.  I’d just finished the first draft of NUCLEAR WINTER WONDERLAND and I sent her the first three chapters.  Twenty-four hours later, she begged me (!) for the rest of the novel.  Twenty-four hours after that (!!), she’d had the whole novel read.  She loved it, and optioned it on the spot.  This led to my acquiring my agent at ICM which led to my manuscript being sent out to publishers which led to Kunati Books making me an offer which led to where we are today. 

3. Do you have another book in the pipeline? What are you working on now?

Actually, I just finished my 2nd novel.  It’s tentatively entitled GALILEO and it’s about a serial killer sniper and the former FBI agent turned Long Island housewife who holds the key to tracking him down.  Fewer giggles this time, but more bullets.  Many more bullets. 

4. What’s your process like? Morning writer, night writer, or something in between?

I write every day, and by day I mean night.  When I was younger, the nighttime was the only time I could have reliable access to the typewriter/computer and I guess the habit stuck.  Plus, there’s something mysterious and magical about 3am, isn’t there?  As to outlining, etc., I don’t write until I have the overall structure of the plot, which especially includes the ending.  In a mystery/thriller, every step must build to the ending or it’s a waste of the reader’s time, which makes it a waste of the writer’s time. 

5. There seems to be an unusually high percentage of writers who own cats. Here at The First Book, we’re doing a study to find out if there’s a direct relationship between writing success and cat ownership. Do you own a cat? If so, tell us about him or her. If not, tell us what you have against cats.

I love cats.  I even love dogs, although I used to be afraid of them.  Some of my favorite bookstores, such as Shakespeare & Co. by NYU,  contain cats, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence.  The Egyptians worshipped cats, but then again they also inserted hooks into the nostrils of their dead kings to suck out their brains, so who knows?