Heading to RWA Nationals

I am leaving on Tuesday afternoon for one of the largest writing conferences in the world, the RWA (Romance Writers of America) National conference, being held this year in Orlando, Florida. The location changes, although every four years or so it heads to NYC, since that is publishing central. I usually go to that one because I can get there by bus (5 1/2 hours!) but Orlando is close enough to manage, and it is the only place I get to meet up with my agent Elaine Spencer in person, so I decided to go this year even if it meant flying.

I'm going to be sharing a room with the lovely Maria V. Snyder, who is not only an incredible author whose work I adore and admire, but a very cool person to boot. So yay for that! I'm also going to get a chance to meet up with a bunch of author friends who I never get to see otherwise, do some networking, and take a few workshops that might help with some of the new directions my writing is heading in.

Thankfully, I have an amazing cat sitter coming to take care of Mystic, Magic, and Angus--she used to work at a vet's office, so I know that Mystic (who is doing quite well) will be in good hands. It makes it a lot easier to go than it would be otherwise. Thanks, Alicia!

On Saturday, there will be a Literacy Signing from 3-5PM. It is open to the public and the proceeds all go to benefit literacy (and there will be hundreds of great authors there, some of them WAY more famous than I am). I hope if you are local, you'll stop in and say hello.

Here are a few pictures from past conferences--I'll post an update with new ones when I get home. Are any of you going to be there?

Me and Maria in 2015

The lovely Patience Bloom--I can't wait to see her this year!

At the book signing in 2015

With favorite author Jennifer Crusie

Let me know if you're going to be there!

Monday Musings, Guest Posts, What's Next

Well, THAT was a short weekend. In fact, it was a short summer. I can't believe it is September. (You know, except for the copious ragweed...that's kind of hard to ignore.) Kids are back to school, here in Oneonta, the students have returned to our two colleges and the tourists are gone, which completely changes the feel of the town.

And, of course, WICKEDLY DANGEROUS is finally out in the world. I've done insane amounts of promo and guest blogs and contests, but that's winding down. You can check out my last two (coff) special appearances today, at
HARLEQUIN JUNKIE where there is a fun interview with me, and she is giving away TWO books
and
THE QWILLERY where I am asked some interesting questions, and have been included as part of their 2014 Debut Author Challenge where participants have to read at least 12 debut books, and get a chance at winning a $100 gift card--doesn't that sound like fun!

This Thursday night, you'll be able to hear the dulcet tones of my voice (coff coff) on AFTER HOURS AM radio podcast (available via computer if you follow this link). I'll be on from 9:30-11pm EST, chatting with host Joe Sturgis about the new novel, the nonfiction books, and witchcraft in general. The show includes a call-in, so you can even call and say hi, and ask me a question if you want. [studio phone number is 612 326 6874]

People have been asking if the book is doing well. To be honest, I don't know. The only clue the author gets is Amazon's ranking numbers, and they change every couple of minute, and nobody really knows what they mean. For a while, my Circle, Coven, & Grove eBook rerelease was in the top of the Kindle witchcraft books (it even made it to #1 for a few weeks!). But that's a much smaller pool, and it was easier to be a big fish in it. [I kind of miss being a big fish in a small pond...apparently you guys need to go back to buying this book. I'm just saying.]

So I just don't know. Most of the reviews have been pretty good, and I am REALLY REALLY REALLY grateful to those who have read the book (or the prequel novella WICKEDLY MAGICAL ) and taken the trouble to post reviews at Amazon, Goodreads, and/or B&N. It is a huge help to an author--to me--when you do that.

As for sales, it is just to early to say if the book is "successful" or not. I'm just keeping my fingers crossed, and getting back to work on Everything Else. Things have kind of piled up in the last few weeks, believe it or not :-)

I'm hoping that I'll be able to announce the exciting Sekrit Project soon, but other than that, things are going back to whatever "normal" (coff coff coff) means around here. Expect the regular meanderings about witchcraft, gardens, cats, writing, and all that jazz for a while. Yes, it is okay to breathe a big sigh of relief.

Thank you all SO much for all of the support and encouragement you've given me during pre-book release and book release time. I have the best friends, followers, fans, and readers in the whole damn world. And if you don't believe me, I've got a dragon-dog who is eager to change your mind.

Why Authors Do So Much Promotion: An Apology & an Explanation (And a Giveaway)

Note: We're only a week away from book release day! Oy! This is a long explanation about all the book promo, and worth reading (I hope)...but feel free to skip it and just enter the contest at the bottom!
 

You’ve probably noticed that I’ve spent a lot of time over the past months talking about my books, rather than my garden, the writing process, the practice of witchcraft, or the antics of my adorable felines. I hope you’re not getting bored! I do try to keep it fun and amusing, and periodically reward people for sticking around by giving out goodies…but I thought it might be time to explain why I—and lots of other authors—do so much promotion when they have a new book coming out.

You’re still free to skip all the promotional stuff, of course, and wait for me to get back to putting up cute cat pictures and the occasional spell, but I figured that I might give y’all some insight into the realities of the modern publishing world, and why there is So Damn Much Book Promo.

Reason One: Publishers Don’t Do Much Promotion Anymore

In the good old days, an author could sit at home and write in his skivvies, and his publisher would take care of most of the promotion. If the author went on a book tour, the publisher paid for it. Not anymore. These days, if your book is coming out from one of the major publishers (like Berkley), they will do some promotional things—find you a few guest blog spots, maybe, put your book up on their website and include it in their newsletter for those who have signed up for it, even make you some bookmarks (yay! Giveaway!). But not much. For those authors who are self-publishing, like my friend Mindy Klasky is these days, it is all on the author. So if you want people to find out about, and hopefully buy, your book, it is up to you to spread the word.

Reason Two: Fewer Bookstores

Back in said ancient days of yore (you know, ten or fifteen years ago), most people found new books and new authors in one of three ways—at a bookstore, at the library, or through a friend’s recommendation. Sadly, there are fewer brick and mortar bookstores these days (I miss you, Borders!), and many people are buying their books online, where instead of competing against thousands of books to be noticed, you are literally competing against millions. Mind you, many of those millions are crap, but that doesn’t mean they’re not completion. Thankfully, there are still libraries, and Indy bookstores are making a comeback, and now your friends can recommend your books on Facebook and Goodreads. But still, it is tough to ensure that people even know a book exists. Hence the promo. (Even the big name authors have to do it to alert their fans that the long-awaited sequel to Kinky Sex with Steampunk Zombies is finally out.)

Reason Three: It is Harder than Ever for an Author to Make a Living

I know, I know—everyone thinks that authors get rich once they have a book published. If I had a nickel for every time someone asked me, “So, do you make a lot of money as a writer?” well, I’d have a lot more money than I got from my last royalty check. Just sayin’. There certainly are authors out there that are doing quite well for themselves (Stephen King, I’m looking at you, dude), but for most of us, the income is simply a supplement to the day job we have to keep to put food on the (cat’s) table. Not that I’m complaining—nobody makes me do this wacky job—but don’t be fooled; most authors need to sell a lot of books to make anything resembling a living wage.

Most people think that if a book sells for, say, $16, that the author makes that much every time one is sold. Oh, har. Yes, you heard me. I said HAR. First of all, even the publisher only makes about half of that (because after all, the book seller has to make money too, although if you buy directly from Llewellyn, they make more than if you buy one of their books from a bookstore or Amazon, for instance). So on that $16 book, the publisher might make $8. That’s not so bad, right? But the author only gets the percentage they agreed to in their contract—usually 6% to 8%. Maybe 10%, if they’re very lucky. And that’s out of the money the publisher makes, not the cover price of the book. So for my Llewellyn books, I might average .60 cents or .70 cents on each book that’s sold. No, don’t ask me to multiply that by anything in my head. I’m a word person, not a math person. Ah, NOW you’re beginning to see why promoting books is so important to an author, yes?

Reason Four: In Matters How Many Books Sell and When They Sell

It isn’t just about the money. (Okay, it is, but not how you think.) When you buy a book can make a big difference. The reason most authors pile on the promo right before a book comes out (and encourage people to preorder), and also as the book is actually released, is because some important decisions are made based almost entirely on the sales of a book in its first WEEK. (Preorders count towards those.) All those best seller lists you see? Based on early sales or preorder numbers.

A publisher may also determine whether or not to contract for another book from an author based on early sales, and will certainly do so based on sales numbers in general. For instance, Berkley will probably make a decision on whether or not to give me a contract to write Baba Yaga 3 at some point in late September or early October—based entirely on the early sales numbers for Wickedly Dangerous and the preorders at that point for Wickedly Wonderful. Don’t get me wrong—I’m not saying this is a bad way to do things. After all, it they’re going to invest money in a third book in a series, they’re going to want to see that the first two are succeeding…but there isn’t much time allowed for that success to happen. So I need to do anything I can to make those numbers as impressive as possible, because darn it, I want to write that third story!

So, hopefully you can see now why so many authors can be found all around the Interwebs casually dropping the title of their upcoming book into conversations about just about anything.

“You had pizza for lunch? That’s great! Did I mention that my protagonist in the upcoming Mary Does Lunch eats pizza almost every day?”

All of which is a very long-winded apology for spending so much time lately promoting MY UPCOMING BOOK, OUT SEPTEMBER 2^nd. And if it is any consolation, I would much rather be writing the next one. Or reading Kinky Sex with Steampunk Zombies, which I hear was really good. On the bright side, soon the book will be out, and I’ll go back to posting cute pictures of my cats. You know, until book two comes out in December.

Here, have another giveaway. You guys are the best.

 a Rafflecopter giveaway

The Writing Life: Starting a New Project

It’s that time again. All the current projects are done (or at a phase where I don’t need to do my bit again until later) and that means…duh duh duh…time to start a new project.

Oh boy.

This stage of a book is both exciting and scary. For me at least. Some authors just feel one or the other, I suppose. I love diving into a new project; feeling the energy stirring as the ideas come together, finding the bits and pieces that will eventually come together like one giant picture puzzle. But it is also a little overwhelming to look ahead at all the work yet to be done and wonder if my Brilliant Idea will actually work out the way I want it to.

Of course, the process is different depending on whether I am working on a nonfiction book for Llewellyn or a novel. At the beginning stage anyway, the nonfiction is a lot easier. I figure out what the book is about, write up an outline/table of contents, and then start plugging away at it. (Assuming that my editor Elysia is at least potentially interested. If she’s not, I come up with another idea.)

Novels are a lot trickier. A LOT trickier. I have to come up with a basic plot and the primary characters, and then figure out what I’m doing with them. Luckily, the novel I’m about to start working on is one my agent Elaine and I discussed months ago, right before I got the contract with Berkley for the Baba Yaga books. I’d given her three options for what I might work on next and thankfully we both liked the same idea best. But just as I got ready to work on it, I signed with Berkley and ended up spending the next few months working on revisions for Wickedly Dangerous (Baba #1), and writing Wickedly Wonderful (Baba #2) and Wickedly Magical (the prequel novella), as well as two books for Llewellyn.

Now all that is done and I can finally dive into work on One Born Every Minute. This new book is quite the departure for me. It’s not a paranormal romance or an urban fantasy. There aren’t any witches in it whatsoever. (That’s right—NO witches. Take a deep breath. It’s going to be okay.) In fact, it is a humorous contemporary romance. It is going to be quirky and snarky and fun to write, but still a major change from my usual, so that’s a little intimidating too. Still, I expect to have a ball writing it, as soon as I get to that stage of the game.

Before I do, however, I have to take my current basic three page summary and expand it into a longer general outline (not everyone outlines, and I don’t outline on every book, but I do find that writing goes a lot faster if I have one). I’ll be creating character studies for my two major protagonists as well as a whole slew of secondary characters, figuring out where they live and what motivates them and all sorts of background information that may or may not ever show up in the book, but which I need to know before I can start writing about them.

I’ve already found “pictures” of the two main characters (something my critique partner Lisa got me into doing in the last couple of years) and started a Pinterest board for the book where I can store them and any other pictures I come up with related to the manuscript. [Thanks, Mindy Klasky!]

Here’s P.T. “Petey” Parker (short for Pearl Topaz, of all things, but if you were named Pearl Topaz, I’m pretty sure you’d go by a nickname too) and Nathan Chandler.

The next week or two will be spent in the “Discovery” phase of the book—finding out what the book is about and who these characters are, doing some research on places and some basic facts, and mulling…letting the story start to stew in the back of my brain until I am ready to sit down and start writing in earnest.

Mind you, this isn’t the way everyone starts a new project. It isn’t even how I start every single novel, although I use this approach more often than not. I’ll also be reading (and in some cases rereading) books in the same general genre with the same basic feel. Not every author does this either. Some of my writer friends won’t go near anything that is even vaguely similar to their work in progress until it is done; if they’re writing a paranormal, they may read romance, for instance.

The theory here is that they don’t want anyone else’s writing to influence theirs, usually. I don’t worry about that much and I like to immerse myself into the kinds of worlds I’m going to be writing about to get in the zone, so to speak. So I’m rereading Jennifer Cruise (who is probably closest to what I’m attempting with this book, and whose writing I adore) and Susan Elizabeth Phillips, and Tawna Fenske, and reading a few authors who are new to me that friends have recommended.

And mulling, musing, and dreaming until I am ready to sit down and let this book be born.

What about you? Have you started any interesting new projects lately? If so, do you start by plotting and planning, or do you just jump in and go?

 BTW--stay tuned, because I should have a cover reveal for Wickedly Wonderful coming up soon!

The Tail of a Book Cover

My fabulous editor at Llewellyn, Elysia Gallo, posted a great blog about how the cover for The Witch's Broom was created.

Magic the Cat even has a cameo.

Take a look:
http://www.llewellyn.com/blog/2014/04/the-tail-of-a-book-cover/

Pinterest Pleasures with Guest Blogger Mindy Klasky

I confess--I'm still trying to figure out what the heck to do with Pinterest. I know a bunch of my author friends are starting to use it as a writing tool, but I wasn't really sure where to start. Luckily, my clever writer pal Mindy Klasky has been using it for her VERY cool new series, and volunteered to come tell me (and therefore you) all about it. (Hint: if you go to my Pinterest, you'll get to see a little something for the new novel I mentioned yesterday.)

First, to make sure I have your attention, I'm going to show you the cover for the first book in her new series (PERFECT PITCH):

Yep--I thought that would do it. Here's the cover blurb:

Reigning beauty queen Samantha Winger is launching her pet project, a music program for kids. All she has to do is follow the pageant's rules—no smoking, drinking, or "cavorting" in public.

That's fine, until D.J. Thomas—God's gift to baseball—throws her a wild pitch. He slams her in an interview, and the video goes viral. Sam's no shrinking violet. She parlays D.J.'s apology into a national T.V. appearance—and a very unexpected, very public kiss.

Soon, paparazzi catch the couple in a steamy make-out session, and Sam's music program is on the block. The blazing hot relationship is threatened even more when D.J.'s son begs to trade in Little League for music class.

Can Sam and D.J. sizzle past the sour notes and find their perfect pitch?

Sounds like fun, doesn't it? Here's Mindy to tell us how she used Pinterest to  help her writing.

You know how new social media platforms launch.  One online friend starts to rave about the Next Big Thing, and then a few others chat publicly about how much they're loving The New Thing, and then someone has Super Secret Access Codes but you're always too late emailing them to get one, and then everyone in the entire world is using the service and you're sort of wondering how you got left behind.

Or, ahem, maybe that's only me.

Four years ago, a new platform launched:  Pinterest.  A lot of my online friends were immediately taken with it.  They snapped up those Super Secret Access Codes, and they talked to each other about their favorite pins, and they collaborated on strategies, and they loved, loved, loved Pinterest.  I started seeing that script P on all sorts of websites, on blog posts, in the wild.

And I just didn't get it.  Oh, Pinterest made sense if I was renovating a kitchen – I could see using an online bulletin board to pin ideas for appliances and counters and paint colors.  And it made sense for displaying similar artwork – all the book covers created by a particular artist, or all the books published by a specific publisher.

But for me?  An author who can't draw stick figures and who has no money in her home renovation account? 

I shrugged and forgot about Pinterest.

Until I started working on the Diamond Brides Series.  My plans for Diamond Brides were audacious – I was going to write and publish nine short, hot contemporary romances in a single year.  I'd take the first three months to get some of the writing done, but then I'd be living in a sort of joyful chaos – publishing one book while editing a second while writing a third while plotting a fourth.  And just to make things interesting, I decided to publish the first three books in four weeks.

I needed to get organized.  I needed new tools for keeping track of all my writing details.  My usual go-to system, Scrivener, was up to the task of tracking all those words, but I wasn't sure I could use it effectively to handle all the images. 

Images?  You know.  An inspirational picture of the hero.  Another, of the heroine.  A picture of the setting, especially rooms in a house.  Clothes, food, all the assorted props in a 150-page novel.  With nine books coming down the production line, I couldn't afford to forget who had green eyes, who had hazel, who wore the backless red ankle-length gown, who wore the navy T-shirt.

And so I dipped my toes into Pinterest. 

I created a "Board" for each book in the series.  For Perfect Pitch, I prowled around the Internet, searching for images that resembled my hero and heroine.  I searched through hundreds of "shelter" sights (intended for people doing home decorating), to figure out what my hero's home would look like.  I tracked down images of county fairs and beauty pageants and music classes for kids.

I found pictures for every setting in my book, and I pinned them to my board.  At first, I used Pinterest as an experiment.  I figured I'd probably get tired of it in short order; there was no reason I couldn't run my searches over again to find characters and places.

But after writing the first chapter, I realized just how easy it was to click over, to check on a character's hair color or eye color, to see whether the refrigerator was against the left wall or the right one.  I started to use Pinterest as a writing tool.

Now, building my Pinterest board is the very first thing I do when I start a new book – before I outline, before I write a single word.  Sure, I change some things as I go.  I find better images of my characters.  I realize that someone's a vegetarian, so she really won't be eating that steak dinner.  I discover a better dress or better shoes or…

You get the idea.

My boards aren't very extensive – 15 pins or so for each book.  But Pinterest is letting me stay on schedule.  Perfect Pitch released on time on March 31.  Catching Hell will be out on April 13.  Reaching First will be published on May 4. And all the other books look like they're falling into place.

You can see my Pinterest board for Perfect Pitch here -- http://www.pinterest.com/mindyklasky/perfect-pitch-diamond-brides-1/  Do the characters look intriguing?  What about the settings?  Do you use Pinterest or other visualization tools when you write?

Mindy Klasky learned to read when her parents shoved a book in her hands and told her she could travel anywhere through stories. As a writer, Mindy has traveled through various genres, including hot contemporary romance. In her spare time, Mindy knits, quilts, and tries to tame her to-be-read shelf.

FIND MINDY'S BOOKS HERE

A note from Deborah: I just got my copy! Right now it is on sale at AMAZON for only .99 cents for the Kindle version! What do you have to lose? I love Mindy's writing, and I think you will too. Now, go ahead and say hi, and show her how friendly we are around here. Thanks for visiting, Mindy!

The Writing Life: January

I thought I'd do something new this year, which hopefully some of you will find interesting. I love hearing about the writing process with all it entails (I follow the blogs of a number of other authors), so I decided to add monthly updates so y'all could get an idea of what I'm up to, writing biz wise.

Here's what's happening in January. Let's call it "Juggling January"...that should give you an idea of what I'm dealing with!

The thing about being an actively working writer with multiple contracts and deadlines (as opposed to my earlier years where I was doing a book a year for Llewellyn and writing the fiction obsessively, but on my own schedule) is that you are never just working on one book at a time. In my case, I'm not even working with just one publisher.

I spent from December 29th to January 13th (that is to say, LATE last Monday night) madly writing the prequel novella for Berkley. In some ways it was easier than working on a book--it was shorter, for one thing (it came in at just over 19,000 words--the novels tend to be about 110,000) and because it is an intro to the Baba Yaga series, I had already done the world building and character creating. [The novella will take place right before the events in the first book, and should come out about a month before the September release, as an eBook.] But it was also tougher, because I'd never written a novella before, and wasn't quite sure about the pacing, or the amount of story needed for that word count. Also, I was coming off of the holiday rush at the shop, and it was tough to switch gears back to writing.

In the end, I really liked the way Wickedly Magical turned out, and it went off to Leis Pederson, my Berkley editor an hour ago, right on schedule for my January 15th deadline. Whew.

So now I get a break, right? *insert hysterical laughter here* I did take yesterday to work on the bathroom repainting project (more on that in a future blog post).

Today, I got the proofs for my 7th Llewellyn book, The Witch's Broom.

Proofs are the final copy of the manuscript before it goes off to the printer. It is the last chance an author has to catch any mistakes that her editor and the copy editor both missed (and there always are some...the more eyes on a manuscript the better). Usually there is another "final edits" step before this, but my production editor at Llewellyn, the fabulous Becky Zins, said that there were so few issues, she just added them as notes in the proofs.

Because of the way things tend to back up on the desks of overworked and overloaded editors (i.e.--most of them), Becky needs the proofs, with any changes or notes from me, back by January 23rd. Yes, today IS the 15th. Welcome to the wonderful world of publishing. So everything else I was planning to work on now gets pushed back a few days until I can work my way through the manuscript. Hopefully I'll get it done by the end of the day Monday the 20th.

After that, I will be working on the Midsummer book for Llewellyn--this is one in a series of eight books on the sabbats that will all be written by different authors and put out under the Llewellyn name, not ours. It is a small book (35,000 words), but has to contain specific things so they all match. This is what they call a "Work for Hire" project. I get paid a flat fee for doing it, rather than receiving an advance and then royalties like I would with one of my own books. But it should be fun to work on, and I am looking forward to reading the entire series. The appendix is due by the end of the month (since the books will be coming out at different times, Elysia, who is supervising editor on the project, needs to make sure that all the books will coordinate), then the rest of the book will take up February, and probably part of March.

Miscellaneous other writing stuff:

• I was sent an advance look at the cover for Wickedly Dangerous, the first Baba Yaga novel--it is too early to share it, since they will be tweaking a few things, but I can tell you that it ROCKS.
• I also had to send Leis some notes on my ideas for the cover of Wickedly Wonderful, the second book, including a description of the protagonist and some other things. (Because the books are coming out back-to-back, September and December, things are going to come fast and furious for both close together.) And an author picture of myself.
• At Llewellyn, they held the Launch meeting for my current book, which had originally been titled "Wisdom from the Pagan Path," but which Elysia has been calling that Paganwitchykitty book for months, since we knew we were going to have to change it. (Another author came out with a book with a title that was too close.) During the Launch meeting, where they discuss things like final titles, cover ideas, release dates, and such things, the lovely Becky Zins came up with the PERFECT title and subtitle. So this book (which I will be working on revisions for after I finish the Midsummer book) will be called....Everyday Witchcraft: Making Time for Spirit in a Too-Busy World. I love it! What do you think? (This is the one that is a follow-up of sorts to The Goddess is in the Details)
• Any minute now, the revision notes for the 2nd Baba Yaga book are going to land on my desk too. I'm just hoping they hold off until I can catch up on a few of these other things!

So--that's January in a nutshell.  What's on your "must get done" list? And what do you think of the new title?

How a Book is Made: The Idea

One of the questions authors are asked on a regular basis is this: where do you get your ideas?

After all, that's where a book starts, in that germ of a notion, a fleeting thought, the aha moment that sparks the birth of what will eventually become a finished novel or work of nonfiction. But as any author will tell you, that can be a hard question to answer. The process is usually different for every writer, and sometimes for every book; my ideas have come from dreams, or other books I've read, or something I saw in my daily life, or just one of those lightning flashes out of nowhere.

In the case of the Baba Yaga books, however, I know exactly how the idea came about, and since a number of people have asked me "How did you come to use the Baba Yaga as a character?" I thought I'd explain how--in this particular instance--the book process began.

For the professional author, it isn't always enough to wait for inspiration to strike. Those who write book after book often have to sit down and purposely work at coming up with an idea. In this case, my agent Elaine Spencer and I had sent out a couple of my previous novels to make the rounds of the publishing houses, and gotten back great, very positive responses, but no offers. [This isn't unusual, by the way. For every author you hear about who sells their first book within a week of submission, there are dozens more who submit manuscript after manuscript for years before finally breaking in.]

One of the advantages of having an agent is that she/he has a much better idea of what is happening in the market: which trends are hot, which have peaked, and which are so overdone that no one in publishing wants to look at anything in that genre. A good agent will also be able to pinpoint your strengths as an author, and make helpful suggestions for what to write and what not to write.

Don't get me wrong--the author has to write something she is passionate about, and writing to the trends never works (in part because publishing moves so slowly, the trend that is big today may be over by the time your book is written, and then comes out a couple of years later). But a smart writer will often confer with her agent about what will and won't work.

So Elaine and I had a great phone chat to discuss "what next." She said that she loved my witch characters, and would like to see me do another one that was completely different from any of the ones I'd done before. And we came up with a list of basic concepts that we both liked, including modern renditions of old fairy tales.

After the call, I mulled over the idea of fairy tales. The problem with the common ones was that they've all been written about numerous times. (Often by writers I love, like Robin McKinley and Jim C. Hines.) Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Snow White, Beauty and the Beast...they'd all been done. I needed something different.

Since Elaine and I had talked about witch characters, Baba Yaga popped into my head right away--she's a Russian/Slavic witch who hasn't been used at all, really. (I went online and checked, something I always suggest if you come up with a brilliant idea. You'd be amazed how many times you'll find that dozens of people have come up with the same thing!) And since I come from a Russian Jewish background, I've always had something of a soft spot for her. But she is usually pictured as the "wicked old crone" type of witch, so I wasn't sure if there was a way to modernize her into a kick-ass protagonist.

Then I looked through some of my favorite reference books (which I use both for research and ideas), including a great book by John and Caitlin Matthews called The Element Encyclopedia of Magical Creatures. The Matthews had some interesting things to say about Baba Yaga, including these tidbits: she started out as a elemental goddess, she can sometimes appear as a kindly woman who will help those who can prove they deserve it, she guards the gateway between the everyday world and the mythic Otherworld, and is associated with a dragon named Koshei who takes human shape, and a dragon named Chudo-Yudo who guards the Water of Life and Death.

BOOM! Suddenly the story was exploding in my head. I did lots of research, and took many elements of the original mythology and used them. For instance, Baba Yaga was known for living in a hut that moved around the forest on three huge chicken legs, and she flew through the air in a giant mortar which she steered with a pestle. She was sometimes said to have sisters, also called Babas. So I wrote about three women--all Baba Yagas, and all tasked with keeping the balance of nature, guarding the doorways into the Otherworld, and each traveling in her own fashion with her own Chudo-Yudo as a companion. Throw in some romance, and a few wicked enemies, and suddenly, I had a book series!

Barbara Yager, the Baba Yaga in WICKEDLY DANGEROUS (the first book, coming in September 2014), rides around in an enchanted silver Airstream trailer and rides a classic BMW motorcycle. Her Chudo-Yudo is disguised as a gigantic white pit bull. And she is definitely wickedly dangerous.

You can see that from that one conversation with my agent (who LOVED the idea when I ran it past her, by the way), and some brainstorming and research, I took an old, almost forgotten character and turned her into my Baba Yaga. I look forward to having you all meet her when the book comes out!

Any questions?