Category: books

Shameless Advertising, or: A Roundup of Stories

I finally, at long last, finished a book again. (I know, right?) Just to clarify, no, it’s not a Septimus Series book, it’s a standalone. And by “finished” I mean that last week I buckled down and implemented the changes my editor, the intrepid and amazing E. L. Bates, had suggested. So now, I think, the story is finished and is the best that I can make it.

So now what? Actually, one thing I’m considering doing with this book is to send it to publishers, to see if one of them might put it out under their label. And one of those publishers I’m looking at requests in their manuscript submission form that I supply links to my web presence, but only of sites that I use to promote my work. Umm, okay. Then I guess I better do some promoting. The publisher wouldn’t want to just see posts about my cat and my stuffed bear, would they? No matter how handsome Louis and Steve are.

So, yes, in case you were wondering, my books and short stories are still out there to purchase and/or read! There are quite a number of them now. I tend to forget just how many.

There’s the Septimus stories: Seventh Son, Cat and Mouse, Checkmate, and Star Bright. In between Cat & Mouse and Checkmate, there’s the short story “Lavender’s Blue”. The books are all available in ebook (Kindle, epub, Kobo, Nook, iBooks, pdf, what-have-you), and in print (from Amazon); the short story is free to download here.

The Septimus series is what started it all. It began with a blue pottery bowl:

“Cat was ordinary—until the day a blue bowl whirled her off to a magical medieval world…
Catriona, ex-librarian, dumped by her boyfriend, is just trying to restart her life when she gets sucked into and carried off by a blue pottery bowl. Suddenly thrown into a world where she can’t move for mysteries, how is this modern town girl going to cope alone in the woods with a comatose man and a muddy baby? And there’s that hint of something sinister…”

I do have plans for more stories in that series!

The other books available in ebook and print right now are the Christmas novellas: The Twelve Days of Christmas and The Forty-Dollar Christmas.

The Twelve Days of Christmas is the story of a woman whose boyfriend mysteriously vanishes on Christmas Eve, just when some unearthly beautiful people show up in town. Can Mac get Tom back in time before the Twelve Days of Christmas are up?

The Forty-Dollar Christmas is what I call a “here-and-now” story, i.e. contemporary fiction: a tale of how Liz tries to show her neighbour and his little girl that for celebrating Christmas, it’s not the content of your wallet that counts.

Again, both those books are available on Amazon for Kindle and print, and at most other ebook vendors in other ebook formats.

As for short stories, there are quite a number of them out there right now, and most of them are available to read for free! Go over here and follow the links.

So there you have it, that is Life, the Universe, and A. M. Offenwanger Stories to Enjoy. Get reading!

#TheTwelveDaysOfChristmas: The Ebook Edition

Remember “The Twelve Days of Christmas“? The serialized Christmas story I posted last year, starting Christmas Day?

“It all started with a partridge in a pear tree…
Mac’s boyfried goes missing on Christmas Eve, right around the time some unearthly beautiful people turn up in town. Will she be able to find Tom in time before the Twelve Days of Christmas are up?“

Well, good news: it’s now available in book form! That’s right, you can get the ebook on Amazon (Kindle) or Smashwords (in whatever ebook format you like) for the princely sum of US$0.99 or equivalent, and pretty soon it’ll be available at other ebook vendors such as ibooks and Kobo. The print copy is available on Amazon, as well.

So what are you waiting for? Get your very own copy of The Twelve Days of Christmas: A Tale of Christmastide. With Elves. to read on your phone, ebook reader, tablet, computer, or good old paper, whenever you darn well please. If you get it and start reading today, one chapter per day, you’ll get done on Christmas Eve, and can start all over again on Christmas Day, in time for the actual events of the story!

Go ahead – you know you want to…

So This Just Happened…

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My very good friend E. L. Bates (aka Louise) advertised my books on Tumblr to someone who was looking for Domestic Fantasy (because she’s that kind of friend). And they went and bought them.

And then they MADE FAN ART ABOUT THEM.

I might have just burst into tears when I saw this… I love it so much.

So of course I had to join Tumblr in order to comment. I’m still kind of lost on that site, but I do think you can click on the image above to go straight to the artist’s page (I didn’t copy and paste, these are just the links to the Tumblr page).

Incidentally, one of the things I love about it is that they made Cat brown-skinned. I hadn’t thought of her that way, but she totally could be. In fact, I think she is.

This is a scene from the end of Cat and Mouse – if you haven’t read it, go check it out.

And here’s another one: Bibby.

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Yes, indeed, isn’t Bibby adorable? And aren’t those sketches wonderful?

That’s Life, the Universe, and My Very Own Fan Art. I just can’t get over it.

#ThrowbackThursday: It’s a Mystery

This is a post from eight years ago, July 8, 2012, from my old blog over on Blogger. Still valid. Hmm, I think I could start rereading those M. M. Kaye mysteries again; I’ve probably forgotten whodunnit by now.

It’s a Mystery

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I really like mystery novels. It’s a little odd, that, as I loathe and abhor violence, and you pretty much can’t get any more violent that murder. But for some reason, reading about cranky old rich men being offed for their money doesn’t disturb me, probably because it’s not a fate that’s likely to ever befall me – I’m not a man, will (alas) probably never be rich, and as for being cranky and old, I’m hoping to stave those off for a while yet.

Actually, there is a weird sense of safety in reading murder mysteries – the kind I like, anyway, which are the English cozies, preferably the genuine “Golden Age” article à la Agatha Christie & Co. They’re set in a proscribed circle of people, in a time and place far removed from my own reality, and the sleuth always finds out whodunnit, so justice is served and peace restored. And if the story includes a charming romance between a pretty young girl and a handsome young man (amateur detective, part of “the Force”, or simply mysterious stranger, I’m not picky on that), then my satisfaction is complete. Ah, escapism.

However, there’s one thing that strikes me as being a genuine mystery, in reading mysteries. It concerns those aforementioned charmingly beautiful young girls. In addition to being charming and beautiful, they are usually also quite intelligent – it’s part of what makes them so well suited for being a focal point of the story. They see the clues, they sense that something is wrong, they shiver in the cold draft emanating from the sinisterly-left-open window and jump when the soft-footed tabby cat silently brushes by them in the darkened room where they sit, thinking about the handsome young man who is so disturbing to their tender feelings but might still be the murderer. They even almost solve the mystery, usually. However, they seem to be afflicted by a peculiar disability.

See, it’s like this: whenever one such girl is told, usually by said handsome young man of chiselled brow and masterful demeanor, that she should not, under any circumstances, tell anyone of her suspicions (which she has just voiced to him in the darkness of the night, leaning on the balcony railing overlooking the rose garden) – or, alternatively, that she should not, whatever else she may do, leave the house without informing him of it (this is usually accompanied by a look of more than usual seriousness from the grey/brown/deep-blue eyes of said handsome gent) – somehow or other it seems to cause the girl’s brains to trickle out of her pink and shell-like ears. Or something like it.

Because as soon as a directive of this kind is issued, the girl is guaranteed to do the very thing she was told not to do. She hears the command, fully agrees to it, but somehow always figures that it must not apply to Mrs White (who is, after all, only the cook), or Colonel Mustard (who is surely too pukka sahib to have done anything so sordid as commit the murder), with the inevitable result that she spills the beans to and/or leaves the house in the company of the murderer him- or herself. Of course, as anybody could tell her, it directly leads to her undergoing several pages’ worth of hair-raising suspense, being menaced by said murderer in the kitchen/conservatory/ball room with the revolver/rope/lead pipe while he or she monologues about his or her reasons for committing the murder and gleefully prophecies that no one will ever find the girl’s body, foolish thing. All of which she could have avoided if she had only paid attention to what she was told.

So what do you think – auditory processing disorder? Something that affects only one very small part of what she’s hearing? Because it can’t be stupidity; the whole rest of the book establishes very clearly that the girl in question is not stupid.

Ah well. It doesn’t really matter all that much, because, fortunately, in the nick of time, just as the murderer is about to pull the trigger/tighten the rope/swing the lead pipe, he of the chiselled features comes bursting (or, alternatively, stealthily creeping) through the french doors, incapacitates the villain (having taken careful note of the monologued confession which clears up the remaining questions about the murderer’s guilt), then roughly pulls the girl into his arms while angrily exclaiming “Don’t ever do this again, darling!” and presses a hard kiss on her trembling lips, thereby removing the last vestiges of doubts that the girl had about her feelings for him, and/or making her realize for the first time why she always went weak at the knees whenever he glared at her (which she had previously taken for a sign of dislike). D’oh. The End.

Life, the Universe, and Mysteries. It’s a mystery, what?

Cat, a Bowl and Lots of Red-Heads, or: What’s This Septimus Thing, Anyway?

I was just re-arranging this website a little bit – posting the links to the recently published stories in one place, consolidating the books in the sidebar into one link – and it occurred to me that some of you folks who’ve come to reading my blog lately might not be all that familiar with this whole turquoise-coloured “Septimus Series” thing. For example, if you were to come from all those fairy tale stories I’ve posted recently to reading “Lavender’s Blue”, my Septimus short story, you might find yourself a little puzzled – it’s not a fairy tale; but what exactly is it?

So, for those of you new to the Septimus world, here’s a little intro. The nickel tour to Catriona’s life, as it were. For those of you who’ve followed Cat’s adventures all along, you might enjoy this little refresher.

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It all started a number of years ago, when Catriona McMurphy, an ordinary 21st-century librarian, was in a museum in her hometown of Greenward Falls. She looked into a turquoise-coloured pottery bowl, and all of a sudden everything went swirly and blue around her. Next thing she knew, she found herself in a forest, in a whole other world.

This is a world that has no electricity, flush toilets, internet or cell phones – but it does have magic. Subtle, gentle magic; nothing that involves waving wands or throwing around sparkly curses, but that permeates the very existence of the people of this place.

Cat soon found out that she herself has some of that magic – in her case, an ability that is called “The Knowing”, a strong intuition bordering on clairvoyance particularly about the people she loves. One of those people turned out to be a tall, red-headed potter by the name of Guy, who is a member of the Septimus family, the most prominent group of people with special gifts in the town of Ruph, descended from the seventh son of a seventh son.

When Cat first met Guy, literally lying at her feet, he had a small red-headed daughter named Bibby, possessed of a double dose of “The Knowing” and a charm that wormed itself irresistibly into Cat’s heart. A few years down the line, Catriona’s life is, let’s just say, not short on red-heads of various sizes and descriptions, and she has her hands and her heart full keeping them all in order, and getting in some time to read the odd book at the town library of Ruph, too.

And of course there is always something that throws a wrench in the works – ordinary life in Cat’s world is never all that ordinary. A speechless young boy and a plague of mice – a girl bullied by her sister, and a new kind of clay that seems to have special properties – a teenager that has dropped in from Cat’s old world and desperately wants to get home… There is usually some knotty problem that Cat needs to solve in between stoking the hearth fire and keeping Ruph’s library books in order.

If you’re wondering just what Cat’s new world is like, there are descriptions in the books, of course, but roughly speaking, in technology and climate it’s very similar to pre-industrial Europe. Of course with there being some magic, they have options that your 17th-century Englishman didn’t have – for example, closed stoves with attached water heaters, so Cat can still have a nice hot bath without having to lug a cauldron to the fireplace first. They also don’t have antibiotics, but there are wise women who know their way around a herb patch and the odd person with healing power in their hands, which is just as good.

If you want to get a taste for Cat’s world, give “Lavender’s Blue” a read (it’s FREE!). And if you enjoyed that, dip your toe a little deeper (because you taste with your toes, don’t you?) and get a copy of Seventh Son (also FREE!).

If, of course, you’re already a die-hard fan of Cat & All the Red-Heads, there’s only one thing left to tell you: STAR BRIGHT IS COMING SOON! Honestly, Book 4 in the series is written, and is being edited as we speak. No exact release date yet, but it’s coming! As soon as I know when, you’ll get to see the snazzy new cover so you can start drooling in anticipation.

Life, the Universe, Cat and the Red-Heads. Welcome, or Welcome Back, to the Septimus World.

 

On Character-Driven Stories, or: It’s About the People

“Don’t tell Angelika,” a friend of ours, an engineer, said to my husband, “but I tried to read her book, and didn’t make it past the first few pages. There are way too many feelings in it!” My husband did tell me, because he knew what my reaction would be: I laughed long and hard.

But also, quite contrary to our friend’s expectations, I took his statement as a compliment. For one, he only tried to read the book because it was mine, i.e. it was an expression of friendship, which I appreciate. But the other thing is that the average engineer is not exactly my target audience. So if I managed to turn one off by dint of having too many feelings in my book, I think I may have succeeded in writing for the other kind of person: the one who wants to hear about emotions, about the inner life of characters, about their relationships to one another.

The point was brought home to me again just the other day in my writers’ group. One of the critiques I got on a piece of mine, the beginning of another novel, was, “Do you really need three different points of view to tell the story?” I was a little taken aback (not to say  hurt, which is, alas, the price of getting all-too-necessary critiques). But once I’d mulled it over for a while, I came to a conclusion: the answer is Yes. Yes, I do need three points of view, because what my stories are about is the characters and their interactions.

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One of the Amazon reviews of Seventh Son says: “The character relationships are subtle and involved. In fact, all of the book’s true drama comes from how people relate to each other”. Precisely. I write character-driven stories.

And the reason I write character-driven stories is because that’s what I like to read. Now, I’m fully aware that I’m in somewhat of a minority with that preference. What’s popular, what sells best, are plot-driven stories, stories where things happen, where there is action and external drama. Battles! Kidnappings! Sword-fights! Car chases! Explosions! Murders! Wicked witches poisoning girls with apples and being chased by workaholic dwarves with pickaxes!

Personally, I find action scenes boring. Crash, bang, boom, bash – just tell me who wins already, and get on with the real story, about the people. (Plus, I don’t like the tension and extra adrenaline; I’ve got too much of it coursing through my system already – a side effect of being an HSP; but that’s a post for another day.)

To me, what is interesting in a story is not so much what happens, but what the people make of it, how it affects them. I want to get into their heads. It’s the character of the, well, characters that matters to me, that creates stories. Of course you always need a plot – a beginning, a middle, an end – but to me that plot can be as simple as “girl meets boy, girl has trouble getting together with boy, girl gets boy”.

In fact, the latter is the plot of all six Austen novels; the only thing that changes is the characters. And Austen is still in print after 200 years. It’s also the plot of every romance novel, which are, in fact, as a group the biggest sellers on the fiction market. Character-driven stories roll across the screen in every TV serial like Downton Abbey or Coronation Street which follows a group of people through the years, watching them live their lives and interact with one another; and they shocked movie critics when My Big Fat Greek Wedding and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel became sleeper hits.

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Come to think of it, given the popularity of the aforementioned tales, maybe I’m not in such a minority with my preference for character-driven stories, after all. There are a lot of us who prefer people stories, which can be easy to forget when you hear writing gurus go on about “what sells” or castigate the fledgling writer for “not writing tightly enough” or – gasp! – using adverbs, those touchy-feely markers of emotion.

There are a lot of us – but even if there weren’t, I’d still stick with my preference. I like Austen, and L. M. Montgomery, and Georgette Heyer, and even Miss Read. No swords, no car chases, no bad guys and nary a dead body. Just wonderful, fascinating stories about people.

Okay, I’ll grant you that writers of these stories don’t often populate the weekly bestseller lists. But I have a hunch that they are disproportionately represented on the long-sellers list. Which is all to the good, because it means their books are going to be around for a long time for the likes of me to enjoy.

Life, the Universe, and Character-Driven Stories. It’s all about the people.

 

Free Books, or: Bookworm’s Pleasures on the Internet

img_20161231_102332153I got a new Kobo for my birthday, as the one I’d bought myself six years ago is in the process of giving up its electronic ghost. You can read all about that one here – it’s one of those older (brand-new released at the time) non-touch-screen ones that don’t really do anything but display books. My new one doesn’t do much else either, it just does it faster and with a built-in sidelight. Actually, pardon me – one thing it does do that the old one didn’t is make it possible to borrow ebooks straight from the library, via its wifi connection.

You see, that’s one of the great things about an ebook reader: getting library books at any hour of the day or night you darn well please. Like right now, my local library is closed for the holidays, but I’m still merrily downloading books to my Kobo. (A big reason I chose a Kobo, i.e over a Kindle is that it allows you to get library books, which a Kindle won’t, at least not here.)

But you don’t have to have an ebook reader to do that mad midnight murder mystery acquisition. Any computer, tablet or smartphone has the possibility of downloading free ereader software – the Kindle App, the Kobo App (all of which designed to get you buying from their websites), and – my favourite – Overdrive (which is the program that allows you to borrow books from libraries – both “print” ebooks and audiobooks – but also read books from other sources). Plus, most phones/tablets/computers come with built-in ebook software – Google Play Books is the one I got on my phone, for example, and Apple devices come with iBooks.

Even quite aside from the wonders of library downloads, there are treasure troves of books out there on the internet – for free, and for keeps. I’m not even talking about all the great perma-free indie books you can get; Amazon and Kobo and the other ebook vendors abound with free books (like Seventh Son – you know, just sayin’). No, there are websites out there where you can get more free books than you can read in a lifetime. We’re talking the classics here, books that are in the public domain, and other wonders.

That’s right, free. Austen, Dickens, Brothers Grimm, Brontë, the Oz books, Trollope, Andrew Lang, L.M. Montgomery, Chesterton, Sherlock Holmes – to just mention a few that I loaded up my new Kobo with – all yours for the collecting, with just a few clicks. Pretty awesome, right?

So here, without further ado, are some of my favourites of those sites (click on the names for the links):

–Project Gutenberg: over 50,000 free books (!) in the public domain. Extremely easy download for epub, Kindle, plain text, html…

–Mobile Read: a community of people who’re into, well, e-reading. They have an ever-growing library of books (again, numbered in the tens of thousands) that members put in the collection for free download. A lot of them are the same as the Gutenberg.org ones, but nicer – better cover images, cleaner formatting, less front matter etc.; they also have languages other than English. In fact, Mobile Read is the first place I look when I want a classic for download to my Kobo. Quite incidentally, this is also the go-to site for any e-reading support. The good people in the discussion boards have been invaluable in helping me learn to drive my ereader.

–Librivox: this is audiobooks – crowd-sourced, as it were. Volunteers from all over the internet record themselves reading public domain books, and upload it to the site. Thanks to Librivox, I finally fulfilled my long-held good intention of getting through some of the Victorian writers like Dickens and Trollope. I like getting both the audiobook and ebook of the same title, and listening to it while I do boring housework, then flipping to the print when I have time to sit down. You’ll need to download the Librivox App to listen, but it’s quite painless and works well.

There are other places where you can get books, of course, but as I said, those are my favourites, with the most extensive selections, so I wanted to share it.

Life, the Universe, and Free Ebooks. What’s your favourite ebook site?