Deborah Court: My Next Big Thing

Last wednesday, I was tagged by my friend and talented author Lynette Sofras to answer 10 questions about my next release - "Bound by Magic", the second book in my Elven Warrior Trilogy and sequel to "Bound to the Prince".  To read about Lynette's own Next Big Thing, her upcoming romance "In Loving Hate", you can visit her blog - which is very entertaining and worth reading, anyway!

Now here's some info about my own "Next Big Thing" I'd like to share with you:

What is the working title of your book?

Bound by Magic. It's not a working title anymore. When I first thought about writing a story about elven sorcerer Calatin, a character from my debut novel "Bound to the Prince", there was just this one line in my mind. I like it short and simple when it comes to book titles.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

It was very unexpected. During writing my first story about an elf who fell in love with a human woman, I invented Calatin and fell in love with him right from the start. Originally I just wanted some kind of funny sidekick as a friend for my hero, Elathan, who is more the dark and brooding type.

Calatin is my idea of a typical elf. He loves to play dice with trolls, gets drunk and - since he is known for his male beauty in all of the elven realms - he loves to seduce any compelling female who happens to stumble into his arms. But he's also a loyal friend, brave and selfless when it comes to protecting his people. And he hides a hurt, vulnerable sould behind his handsome, smiling face.

What genre does your book fall under?

Although I like to call it H.E.R. (Hot Elven Romance), it's actually a Fantasy/Paranormal Romance.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

Ok - I'm thinking big so let's choose actors for all my three elven heroes:

Alexander Skarsgard - he has the height, the Nordic features and most of all, the brooding quality I'd need for my elven prince, Elathan. Anyone who has seen him as Eric in True Blood knows what I mean.

Benedict Cumberbatch - he is an amazing actor (just watch him in Sherlock), and I can think of nobody who has more elven-looking features than him. He'd be my perfect Calatin.

  

Tom Hiddleston - this is just a teaser because I can't reveal anything about my third book in the Elven Trilogy yet but let's say that for my leading man, I need a type that's a bit more sinister and villaineous. Loved him as Loki in "Thor" and "The Avengers".

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

Elven sorcerer is cursed by furious ex-mistress and thrown into the human world, bereft of all his magic - right into the back yard of a human female who needs protection from lethal enemies since she knows too many secrets.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency? 

Self-published.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?  

Hard to say. I'm constantly writing and re-writing, adding new scenes. Maybe five or six months. It's still a work in progress.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre? 

Since it's part of a trilogy, obviously to "Bound to the Prince". But this story will be very different from the first book.

Who or What inspired you to write this book?

Writing "Bound to the Prince" helped me through a very painful time in my life; it was pure escapism when I couldn't sleep at night. This is probably why the story has a certain darkness to it. Bound by Magic was inspired by my character, Calatin. He simply commanded me to write it.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

In all of my elven books, I include elements of Celtic Irish and Scottish mythology, and the language I chose for my elves is real Gaelic. I believe that our whole culture is influenced by those ancient legends, more than we realize. We automatically respond to them, in an instinctive, emotional way.

A damsel in distress on a lonely island inmidst a lake, a brave, tragic knight coming to her on a silver elven vessel trough the wavering mist. Every woman secretly yearns for her very own warrior to save her. And yes, I'm talking about self-confident, modern women who successfully manage their careers and families. Deep inside, we are holding out for a hero. And I don't think that this contradicts feminism in any way. It doesn't hurt at all to be soft and a little bit weak at times. Life is hard enough, don't you think?

Next Wednesday (October 17th), my fellow authors Blak Rayne and Leigh Savage will tell you about their "Next Big Thing" - make sure to check those awesome blogs out!

A Word or Two about Fanfiction

Dear Readers,

Fanfiction, or more commonly, "fanfic" has recently risen from the internet underground and is on everyone's lips, especially since the success of former Twilight fanfic Fifty Shades of Grey and its two sequels, which dominate the book charts in many countries as I write this.

For you people out there who don't know what fanfic is, or have never read any: According to Wikipedia, it's "a broadly-defined term for fan labor regarding stories about characters or settings written by fans of the original work, rather than by the original creator." In other words, fans use the characters, worlds and settings of their favorite TV show, movie or book to write their own fiction. If you take a look around popular sites like fanfiction.net or archiveofourown.org, you'll find fics for nearly everything, ranging from Harry Potter via Supernatural, Twilight and Sherlock to True Blood (the latter two are my favorites, I'll admit).

Since these sites are almost completely uncensored and unlimited, there are stories from countless writers, many of them even underage. For people who love to read I can only recommend giving fanfic a chance. Some of them are surprisingly well-written, while others are painfully awful. Explicit erotic sex scenes (the gay-themed ones are called "slash") are quite common, but occasionally there are hidden gems among them, much better than some published erotica. Sometimes you can't help but wonder how a 16-year-old would know about some practices they describe so vividly. But in the end, it's a wonderful thing that such talented young people spend their spare time creating stories. Maybe some of them will become famous and successful writers later on, you never know.

Naturally, not every creator of an "alternate universe" is very happy about people who use copyrighted characters and worlds without asking, especially when erotic content is added (often between protagonists that were never meant to couple by the original writer, for instance Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy). J.K. Rowling publicly stated that she was ok with fanfiction as long as there was no pornography or racism. I absolutely agree with her opinion on racism, of course. But when it comes to sexuality, there is no limit to teenage fantasies. 

No matter what you do, they'll continue writing and reading it anyway. But maybe that's just their way of dealing with the chaos their hormones cause in their bodies, and this is not the worst way of coming to terms with it, don't you agree? Creativity can never be wrong, as long as you don't hurt anybody with it. Personally, I'd be very pleased if readers felt strongly enough about my books to write fanfiction. It's a great compliment for an author, and a sure sign that readers love to get completely immersed in one's fictional world. It means that you succeeded in the most important goal a writer can achieve.

Although I wrote other stuff before and have been working in the romance publishing industry for some years, fanfiction was what originally brought me the first spark of writing "Bound to the Prince". Originally, I wrote the first few chapters as a fanfic for Prince Nuada, the compelling tragic villain from the movie Hellboy - The Golden Army. But soon I felt that the character I imagined was so much more, and very different from the movie figure, and I felt like creating a fantasy universe of my own. So I kept writing, but didn't use any other characters or locations from Hellboy. At some point I renamed my prince Elathan (an old name from Celtic mythology, meaning "The Golden Warrior", which I found befitting for my hero. By the way, you don't pronounce the "t", the correct pronunciation is "Ela-han", just for those of you who read my book. ;-)).

A beautiful thing about writing fanfiction is the close relationship you have with your readers. They are people who share your passion about what you're writing, and they give you wonderful, invaluable feedback, helping you to improve constantly. I learned so much during that time. At the beginning, I felt a bit self-conscious about my own writing, but I kept posting more and more since those awesome friends asked me to - and I've kept all their precious comments until today. I encourage every aspiring writer to try fanfiction first, if you are afraid of beginning your own first novel yet. I promise it will be the best lesson in writing you'll ever have.

Yours truly,

Deborah

*****

Besides her published novels, Deborah Court wrote two True Blood fanfic novellas exclusively for EricandSookielovers.com. You can also find them here:

Piece of Glass (A vampire love story, set in the present and the Viking era)

The Dark Queen (Sequel to Piece of Glass, a vampire New Orleans murder mystery)

A Writer's Thoughts on "Deadlocked" by Charlaine Harris

When my friend Erika from EricandSookieLovers asked me to give her my opinion - from a writer's point of view - where Charlaine Harris might take Sookie's story after "Deadlocked", I believed that this wouldn't be too hard a task.

But that was before I actually read the book.

(Spoiler Warning! If you haven't read "Deadlocked" already and intend to do so, please stop reading right now, if you don't want to spoil your own fun.)

I carefully avoided seeing any spoilers or reviews of Charlaine Harris's newest addition to the Southern Vampire Mysteries to be able to enjoy this story uninfluenced. Now that I've finished it and spent some time thinking about it, I must say that this book was one of the best (while my favorite is still "Dead to the World"), but also darkest of the series, angst-ridden and sometimes even despairing. I am well aware that Ms Harris's stories are most of all mysteries, featuring a very unusual girl whose view of life is turned completely upside down, and her way of growing into a stunningly strong, badass woman who learns to adapt to all the hardships, all the madness she encounters.

Sookie's love encounters are only meant to be the icing on the cake, but fortunately for us readers, the author managed to create a vampire character so intense, charming, clever, cunning and mindblowingly sexy that he just couldn't stay in the background. We all fell in love with him - hard and gracious plenty, I might say. ;-) And of course, we've always yearned for Sookie to have her happy end with him - turned into a vampire or not, as his wife or human lover, well in any way Ms Harris could make this possible.

William Erasmus Compton. Vampire Bill.

Hey gals, just kidding! Please don't hit me. I just wanted to cheer you up with a lil' joke after that sinister finale of "Deadlocked". Of course I'm talking about Eric. I want nothing more but for Sookie and him to end up together, believe me. If you don't know me yet and would like to know how I feel about him and Sookie, please read my first ("Piece of Glass", a time travel story set in the Viking era) and second ("The Dark Queen", a New Orleans voodoo mystery) fanfic on EricandSookieLovers. You'll also find both stories on fanfiction.net. When it comes to Eric and Sookie, all we really want to see (both in the books and on the show) is THIS:

(All material belongs to HBO)

But well, I'm not Charlaine Harris, and this is her story, not mine. And what I've learned about her writing so far, is that she isn't an author who can be easily categorized. Her books can't be reduced just to the romance; both the plots and characters are multi-layered and cleverly planned. She once said in an interview that the world of Sookie Stackhouse is her own universe, and she can do whatever she wants with it. And she does, shocking and surprising us over and over again. If I could say one thing about her, I'd guess that she just isn't predictable. And as much as I'd love to predict how the story might end, I just can't because I don't know what she will do. I'd believe her capable of anything, even of letting Sookie end up with Sam as happy owners of Merlotte's and parents of a mind-reading, shapeshifting bunch of children, or having Niall open the portal to Faery once again and giving her a "happily forever after" living with her fairy relatives.

Having said that, I won't give you an in-depth review of Deadlocked, since others already did an amazing job of that. All I can do is try to view this story as a writer, not a reader, and speculate a bit what an author who planned to bring a long, much-beloved series to an end might do to plan the grande finale.

Gosh, Deadlocked was depressing when it came to Eric and Sookie's love story (if you could call it that anymore), wasn't it? Their first encounter was when she caught him greedily drinking from another woman who definitely seemed to be enjoying herself. The end was … Eric's absence after he left, probably shocked and angry that Sookie didn't use the cluviel dor to get them both out of an extremely difficult situation. The in between was pretty frustrating too, apart from the vague mention of sex, and Eric's hilarious comments about Bill and Pam when they came to visit on Sookie's birthday.

Oh, how much I missed the sexy, delightful Eric/Sookie scenes of the first books of the series, and I bet you did, too. But it all seemed to be quite hopeless, didn't it? There still isn't any doubt that Eric and Sookie love each other (although she starts to doubt that his love is strong enough to fight for them being together). However, at the end of "Deadlocked", I was so disappointed  I felt like throwing my book against the wall. While I wholewheartedly agree  with Sookie's choice to save Sam's life, using the cluviel dor's magic, for our favorite couple there seems to be no way out but to break up and live separate (vampire-)lives, with Eric marrying Freyda and Sookie probably ending up in Bon Temps, with whatever supe love interest at her side. Would we even care? Who could ever compare to Eric, anyway?

Ok - to put it simply, my point is that everything points to Sookie ending up with Eric, just because Ms Harris took great efforts in throwing huge, insurmountable obstacles in love's way, using two whole books to slowly build up to this final climax (no pun intended!). I also had the impression that she tried to gather up all loose ends when it came to Sookie's fairy relatives and Alcide and his were pack, so my guess is that she'll concentrate on the vampires in "Dead Ever After".

There will be murder and mayhem in Bon Temps, as always, blood, intrigues and vampire politics, and I can't wait what the final chapter will bring. But when it comes down to the core of the story, the story arch that lead us through the whole series like a red thread (or should I say "stream of blood"?) is the question if Sookie will have her happy ending, and with whom. We all know that Sookie loves only one man vampire. Do you think that Charlaine Harris will allow her heroine to find true happiness? And if so, will it be in the way we all imagine, we all hope it will happen?

As much as I'd love to, I can't tell you either. But whatever "Dead Ever After" holds in store for us, damn - this series was a helluva ride so far! Dear fellow romantics, let's hope that it will lead into a blood-red sunset, with our favorite heroine in the arms of her immortal Viking. Go grab him, Sookie, and kick this Freyda b**** back to the hole she crawled from! This is all I'm sayin'. ;-)

 With Felipe de Castro, the Vampire King of Louisiana (and Arkansas and Nevada), in town, it’s the worst possible time for a body to show up in Eric Northman’s front yard—especially the body of a woman whose blood he just drank.

Now, it’s up to Sookie and Bill, the official Area Five investigator, to solve the murder. Sookie thinks that, at least this time, the dead girl’s fate has nothing to do with her. But she is wrong. She has an enemy, one far more devious than she would ever suspect, who’s out to make Sookie’s world come crashing down.

(Book Blurb from Goodreads, All rights belong to Simon&Schuster and Charlaine Harris)

Writer's Block and how to overcome it

Today, I'd like to speak about a phenomenon that every writer knows and fears: The all-famous "Writer's Block". All authors know this frightening state of mind. You sit in front of your computer for hours without writing a single word, just staring at the screen. You just can't. Your head is a complete vacuum. Instantly, you find yourself doing all kinds of stuff that keeps you away from that horrible blank screen:

- You read gossip and entertainment blogs.
- You check your Amazon page every hour, checking the ranking of your book and having a bad conscience because you know that you haven't published anything in a while.
- You remember that you need to re-watch all episodes of Lost, Moonlight and True Blood. Oh, and Star Trek - The Next Generation, too. Still in love with Data.
- You scan recipe books you haven't touched in years for new ideas about what to cook (even if you absolutely hate cooking, in my case).
- You start cleaning (now this isn't the worst thing to do while having writer's block - at least you have a clean house afterwards).
- You start plundering your chocolate drawer (not so good).
- You listen to Benedict Cumberbatch reading Keats one more time (get the mp3 here).
- You paint your toenails blue.
- You make yourself a sandwich with every ingredient you can find in the fridge.
- You brush your cat five times a day. (And I really don't mean this in a dirty way. I actually have a cat!)

Having done all that, you still haven't brought a single word to paper. Isn't there any hope for your next book ever to be written? After all, you need to feel what you write.

So is it possible to overcome writer's block? Is there any cure?

Oh yes. For me, music is the key. In the past, I've tried out all kinds of music to see what inspires me most when I'm writing. As a very welcome side effect, this caused triggers. In the meantime, hearing certain songs almost instantly brings me in the right mood to write a scene connected with the feeling that particular music awakes in me.

Surprisingly I don't feel like writing romance when I hear typical "romantic" music. For instance, I've written nearly all the erotic scenes of "Bound to the Prince" while listening to "Mr Brightside" by The Killers. I don't know why myself, it's an uptempo song, not a ballad. Maybe it's simply the line "Now she's touching his chest, now he takes off her dress. I just can't watch, it's killing me," subtle but very effective, and it totally works to get me into "the mood."

For action/fighting scenes, I use Skillet's "Rebirthing", and for dramatic, romantic scenes "Always" by Bon Jovi, or "Dear Jessie" (Skillet). Mythic, mysterious scenes can only be properly written with Loreena McKennit's "Mummer's Dance" (I wrote the whole last chapter of BttP listening to it). Movie soundtracks are an awesome way to create feelings, too - especially when you've seen the film many times and know the music to scenes you felt passionate about.

Whatever triggers your emotions, use it! So kick your own ass, sit down and write. It doesn't have to be Pulitzer Prize material, you know. It's just for you. If you really write from the heart, your readers will be sure to love it because they'll feel that your words are true. You could say it's a telepathic connection, but it's so much more.

It's magic.

Love,
Deborah
xxx