Are novelists closet sadists?

I've heard it said that novelists need to be sadists--to do the cruelest things they can think of to their characters. Well, I've been too bloody nice up until now. So, here goes. In The Knight of Cups, my heroine, Grace Fisher, a high-school English teacher, has finally decided to start living her life by joining a bus tour of the sites featured in her favorite author's novels. A few hours into the tour, a terrible storm kicks up and the bus goes over a cliff. Here's a wee taste of what happens to poor Grace:

Grace opened her eyes, blinking to clear her blurred vision and fuzzy mind. She could see that it was night and could smell the rain-soaked earth beneath her, which felt cold, damp, and squishy. She also could smell something burning—something acrid and foul with undertones of roasting flesh. Trees towered over her. Tall, skinny pines looking unsteady as they swayed on the biting wind. This couldn’t be hell. Or Los Angeles (not that the two were mutually exclusive). Try as she might, the knowledge of where she was and what had happened refused to come forth. It was as if her memory had torn along with her clothes—and whole strips had blown away.

            All she knew was that she was still alive. But for how much longer? Not much, judging by how messed up she felt. Grimacing against the pain, she cast a glance down her body. Her clothes were muddy and tattered, blood seeped from her chest, and her left arm looked distressing similar to the pipe under the bathroom sink in her apartment back home. Lowering her gaze, she saw something that made her gasp: her hips lay at an impossible angle—like a Twist-n-Turn Barbie tossed aside. She searched her memory for any clue to what had happened to her, but her mind kept tuning in and out like a weak-signaled radio station.

Swag!

That was it--the word I was looking for in yesterday's post about giveaways. The books I got at RWA as swag. Never heard it before RWA but just saw it again at a site called I Love Vampire Novels. I'm definitely going to have to check it out further--and add it to my blogroll. My knights, you see, are a form of vampire--not the kind pictured here--but rather, unseelie dark faery vampires. In Scottish folklore, lots of faeries drank human blood. Mine are lamian drones--the "breeders" for an amazonian race ruled by a predatory queen.

I'm out surfing for someone to inspire my hero, Leith MacQuill. Long black hair, chiseled face, green cat-like eyes. His alter ego is a cat sith. More on that later.

Any suggestions?

Back to the Knight of Cups . . .

Social media is both mesmerizing and daunting. Taking a breath between books, I spent the weekend befriending fellow writers on FB, trying to figure out Triberr, and other audience and brand-building experiments. Today, I started back in on book two of THE KNIGHTS OF AVALON series, THE KNIGHT OF CUPS. The rewrite on QUEEN OF SWORDS derailed me a bit, but now that's done until I hear back from my beta readers (and thanks again to my kind volunteers!). Here's a wee taste from the rough first draft. Still got a lot to work out. Sigh.

Leith MacQuill stilled his fingers on the keyboard and squeezed shut his eyes, which burned with the strain of too many fruitless hours spent staring at the screen. Sighing, he reviewed the few lines—a pathetically paltry output. Smoldering with self-disgust, he plucked his cigarette from the ashtray, rose from the desk, and strode to the library’s diamond-leaded window.

            Taking a long pull on his cigarette, he surveyed the expansive grounds of the castle he called home. The formal gardens looked scruffy, the conservatory cried for paint, and the corner turrets were in dire need of repointing. But upkeep took money, which he had in short supply. And, try as he might, he could think of no new way to acquire more. He’d already sold off most of his horses and opened some of the rooms for tour groups and special events. The former was a painful sacrifice, the latter an insufferable intrusion. But what else could he do? Let the castle he’d spent a fortune restoring fall into ruin?