Jim C. Hines Stories of Magic and Vice Versa

My author pal Jim C. Hines and I were tickled to find out that we both had books out on the same day, February 2nd. So we decided to swap guest blog posts. I can tell you that I love everything of Jim's that I have read (which is all but a couple of the first series he did, which I own but haven't caught up on yet), and can genuinely recommend both the writing and the man. (If you're not following his blog, you should be. Just sayin'.)

Stories of Magic, and Vice Versa

Jim C. Hines

Deb and I are new book twins this week. For her, it’s Wickedly Powerful, which I’m guessing you might have heard of? In my case, it’s a book called Revisionary. I’m going to talk mostly about the latter, but if you haven’t checked out Deb’s Baba Yaga stuff yet, you totally should. What I’ve read of it so far has been lots of fun.

Revisionary is my twelfth published fantasy novel. It’s also the fourth and final book in the Magic ex Libris series. Without getting too spoilery, this is a series about:

• A magic-using librarian from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula who can pull things out of books.
• A motorcycle-riding hamadryad with shapeshifting wooden swords.
• A spider who sets things on fire when he’s scared or angry.
• A secret magical organization run by Johannes Gutenberg, who’s in an on-again, off-again relationship with Juan Ponce de Leon.

 Note from Deborah: YES, this is as cool as it sounds!!!

The basic idea behind libriomancy is that people like my librarian Isaac Vainio can open a book and tap into the belief of the readers, using their passion and imagination to help create things from the pages. There are limits, of course. Whatever the libriomancer creates has to fit through the pages. No making an X-Wing and flying off to a galaxy far, far away. Pulling intelligent creatures from books tends to end badly (as exemplified in the bloody massacre known as “The Smurf Incident”). And Gutenberg has locked some books whose potential power is simply too dangerous for the world.

Part of the fun in writing these books was getting to indulge my inner fanboy and play with toys from other worlds. Isaac is a shamelessly enthusiastic geek, and he loves this stuff—books and magic and possibilities. Even when he’s running away from enchanted clockwork insects that really, really want to kill him, a part of his mind is marveling at the artistry and wonder of those murderous little automatons.

Most of us understand that books are magical. But the series title “Magic ex Libris” isn’t quite right. It means “magic from books,” which works…Isaac is constantly pulling everything from healing potions to light sabers to pixie dust from various books about his person. But books are simply the medium. At its heart, the series is about the magic of story. It’s about imagination and asking “what if?”

I’m a big believer in the power of story. Story can change the world, for good or for ill. Look at the number of sharks hunted and slaughtered in the wake of Jaws. Or consider Abraham Lincoln’s alleged comment to Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin: “So you're the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war.” Think of stories that have opened your mind or changed the way you think about things.

I remember receiving an email from a reader early in my career. She’d read my goblin books while in the hospital for a nasty procedure, and said the humor and fun of the story helped her get through the days. Understand, my goblin books aren’t exactly Deep, Life-Changing Literature, but they provided comfort and escape during a very difficult time. I’ve seen people sneer at “escapist” literature, but if that kind of escape isn’t magic, I don’t know what is.

One of my favorite examples of the power of story comes from Nichelle Nichols, who played Uhura in the original Star Trek. Nichols originally intended to quit the show after the first season. Then she met a man who introduced himself as her biggest fan—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In Nichols’ words:

“[H]is face got very, very serious. And he said, what are you talking about? And I said, well, I told Gene just yesterday that I'm going to leave the show after the first year because I've been offered - and he stopped me and said: You cannot do that. And I was stunned. He said, don't you understand what this man has achieved? For the first time, we are being seen the world over as we should be seen. He says, do you understand that this is the only show that my wife Coretta and I will allow our little children to stay up and watch. I was speechless.”

Stories can show us the world, and they can show us ourselves. They can create love and hate and despair and hope. They can change lives. They’re powerful. They’re magical.

I wanted to write a series that celebrated that magic.

Sure, I also wanted to write about a librarian who pulls out a lightsaber to fight a vampire in the steam tunnels of Michigan State University. And undermining various urban fantasy tropes was a lot of fun too. But ultimately, Revisionary and the rest of the series is all about the power of imagination and passion and story.

Thanks for reading, and thanks to Deb for lending me the blog. You can check out excerpts from the books over at my website if you’d like. Or leave a comment here, and I’ll pick one person at random to win an autographed copy of Libriomancer, the first book in the series. (If you’ve already read Libriomancer, I’m happy to send you a later book in its place.)

 

Purchase links: Amazon | B&N | Indiebound

Website: http://www.jimchines.com

Thanks for dropping by, Jim!

Jim C. Hines is best known as a fantasy novelist and the guy who did those gender-flipped SF/F cover poses. His first novel was Goblin Quest, the tale of a nearsighted goblin runt and his pet fire-spider. Actor and author Wil Wheaton described the book as “too f***ing cool for words,” which is pretty much the Best Blurb Ever. After completing the goblin trilogy, Jim went on to write the princess series, four books often described as a blend of Grimm’s Fairy Tales with Charlie’s Angels. He’s currently working on the Magic ex Libris books, which follow the adventures of a magic-wielding librarian from northern Michigan.

Goddities Website and Lucienne Diver!

I have a cool new website to share with y'all! It is called GODDITIES and it is done by my author/agent friend Lucienne Diver, based on her Latter-Day Olympians books (which are a hoot, by the way). It is a kind of tongue-in-cheek faux blog by one of the quirky characters in the books. There are pictures and descriptions of lots of Greek gods and goddesses...and some of these folks are seriously hot! I'm just saying.

Not only is it cool and fun, but since Lucienne got a bunch of her friends to dress up and pose for the pictures, you might just find someone you know featured on the website. If you're curious, check out HECATE. She might just look familiar...

The Kindle version of the first book in the series, BAD BLOOD is on sale right now for .99 cents, in case you want to catch up. Even better, the most recent BLOOD HUNT comes out tomorrow! (I'm just finishing up the one before that, and it rocks!) I'm so getting it.

Here's a blurb about the first book, to give you an idea of what the series is about:

The gods play…and mortals pay.
Latter-Day Olympians, Book 1
Tori Karacis’s family line may trace back to a drunken liaison between the god Pan and one of the immortal gorgons. Or…maybe it’s just coincidence that her glance can, literally, stop men in their tracks. While her fear of heights kept her out of the family aerobatic troupe, her extreme nosiness fits right in with her uncle’s P.I. business.
Except he’s disappeared on an Odyssean journey to find himself. Muddling through on her own, she’s reduced to hunting (not stalking, because that would just be weird) brass-bra’d Hollywood agent Circe Holland to deliver a message…only to witness her murder by what looks like the Creature from the Black Lagoon.
Suddenly, all of her family’s tall tales seem believable, especially when Apollo—the Apollo, who’s now hiding out among humans as an adult film star—appears in her office, looking to hire her. She knows the drill: canoodling with gods never works out well for humans, but she’s irresistibly drawn to him. Maybe it’s her genes. Maybe not.
Given her conflicted feelings for one hot and hardened cop, it’s a toss-up which will kill her quickest. The danger at her door…or her love life.
Warning: Contains pot-boiling passion between a heroine who may—or may not—be a descendant of Medusa, and a hot god and a hunky cop with the…equipment…to handle her, even on her worst bad-hair day. Beware of killer kisses, trickster gods and bearded grandmothers Who Know Everything.

And just to tempt you to go visit the new website, here's Apollo!






You're welcome, ladies.

And for the guys, here's Lucienne herself, in her guise as Artemis. I've always loved the Greek gods and goddesses, so this website is so much fun. I hope you think so too!



Lucienne, I mean Artemis!

Do you have a favorite Greek god or goddess? Go check out the blog and tell me which one is your favorite. There might be a prize in it for someone who comments!

An Interview with Lucienne Diver & Book Giveaway

CONTEST REMINDERS: My contest here is still open until Friday at midnight Deborah's Contest 
and you can still enter at Bitten by Books for the $50 Amazon gift card until Friday as well. And I can't believe NO ONE said anything about my very first Vlog :-(

And now to my special guest...

The beautiful Lucienne Diver

I first met Lucienne Diver in her agent persona, when I started stalking following her online back in the days when I was still working at getting my fiction published. She was always smart and kind, and generous with her advice and encouragement, and we eventually became pals, bonding over our shared love of Ren Faires, jewelry making, and general silliness. In fact, she was instrumental in my signing with Elaine Spencer, her fellow agent at The Knight Agency, and so we became Agency Buddies. Then Lucienne had her Vamped novels published at Flux, an imprint of Llewellyn Publishing (where my nonfiction books on witchcraft come from), and we became Publishing Company Buddies. (Fun fact: our birthdays are also just one day apart. You know, and a few years.)

My prized collection of Lucienne's books, including the first 2 in the Latter-Day Olympians series

We finally met in person at the RWA National Convention in 2009, and we had a great time together. Now we both have books coming out on the same day, September 2^nd, so we are Book Release Buddies too. In honor of our mutual release date, I’ve invited Lucienne to come by my blog and talk about herself and her new book, and I’ll be visiting her blog to do the same. I hope you’ll visit me there and say hi! (She interviewed me, too.) http://luciennediver.wordpress.com/2014/09/03/deborah-blakes-wickedly-dangerous/

Melissa Jeglinski from the Knight Agency, Lucienne, and me

Let’s give Lucienne a nice warm welcome! And be sure to answer her question at the end, since she’ll be giving away a signed copy of her book so a random commenter.

 DB: Hi Lucienne, welcome to the blog. For people who aren’t familiar with your Latter-Day Olympians series (which I LOVE, by the way), could you give us a brief overview of the series and then tell us a little something about the new book, Battle for the Blood?

 LD: Absolutely, thank you!  To understand the Latter-Day Olympians, I have to start with some background. 

My heroine’s family line may or may not trace back to when the god Pan beer-goggled one of the gorgons.  Certainly that’s the way the stories go. Tori Karacis never believed such nonsense, despite the evidence of some of her family’s more colorful attributes—her grandmother the bearded lady of the Rialto Bros. Circus, her parents and brother able to fly through the air with the greatest of ease, her own strange power to stop men in their tracks, even if she can’t actually turn them to stone.  That is, she doesn’t believe until she witnesses a murder by something that looks like the Creature from the Black Lagoon…with the victim Circe Holland, brass-bra’d Hollywood agent rumored to be that Circe, the enchantress of myth and legend.  Well, that’s just the start of things (BAD BLOOD).  The series continues into CRAZY IN THE BLOOD, RISE OF THE BLOOD and, on September 16^th, BATTLE FOR THE BLOOD. 

By the end of each book, nothing is quite the same…or ever will be again.  There’s crazy fall-out from the proceeding books, along with all new threats.  The tensions escalate, the stakes are higher…  In BATTLE FOR THE BLOOD, Tori isn’t just dealing with the loop I threw her at the end of RISE OF THE BLOOD, she’s dealing with the rise of an ancient Babylonian plague demon who’s stirring up nosoi, djinn, demons, and other forces dark and deadly enough to bring about an apocalypse. Various factions vie to control the daddy of all demons and the end of the world, hoping that they will be the ones to rise triumphant from the ashes.

I love these covers, don't you?

 DB: This series is very different from your first series, the Vamped books, which are very funny and snarky. Where did the idea come from for these books?

LD: The series sprang from two sources, really—my crazy family and the five years I spent on Latin in junior high and high school.  I thought at the time that I might want to be a doctor (before I realized how ridiculously squeamish I am), and teachers, etc. had told me how helpful it would be in understanding medical terms to know the Latin roots.  Well, that turned out to be a bust, but my favorite part of my Latin class was when we went over religion and culture.  It turned out that I wasn’t so much cut out to be a linguist as an anthropologist.  Specifically, and I think my medical interest played into this, I was fascinated by forensic anthropology.  I even applied to grad schools for it at the same time I applied for jobs in publishing.  Publishing got back to me first, which turned out to be a good thing, because as much as I like mysteries and skeletal remains, they don’t always come fully skeletonized.  Examining remains in situ means bugs, fluids, any tissue still attached and, well, we’ll leave it at that.

As far as my crazy family—I wouldn’t have them any other way, but, well, to give you an idea that we may be an acquired taste…you know Stephanie Plum’s family in Janet Evanovich’s bestselling series?  Well, sometimes I wonder where she’s hidden the video cameras around our familial homes.  (For me telling tales on my family, check out the post I did for Faith Hunter’s blog here: http://www.faithhunter.net/wp/2011/06/07/lucienne-diver-and-bad-blood/.)

DB: You are both an agent and an author, which gives you a unique view from both sides of the table. Can you give us a little idea of how you balance them both, and what a typical day might be like?

LD: I’m trying to find my new normal, now that my son is off to high school, shifting our whole schedule an hour earlier.  Traditionally, I wake up, have coffee, walk the dogs, kiss my husband and son good-bye on their way out the door and sit down to write for an hour before my agent brain kicks in, the phone starts ringing off the hook and my overflowing inbox calls me away.  I have about an hour a day to write during the week, which is not nearly enough, so I work weekends as well, sometimes carving out as much as two whole hours to myself before I have to put my work aside to read and critique manuscripts or actually spend time with my family!

DB: Do you have any more books coming out in this series? What are you working on now?

LD: Samhain has contracted me for a fifth novel in the Latter-Day Olympians series, which I’m really excited about. I’ve established in the series that the Greek gods didn’t necessarily start there, but have been various things in various cultures, changing with the times and the worship.  I’m planning, finally, to bring in Athena, but as her Egyptian counter-part…or anyway one of them.  The fun thing with mythology is that different sources point in different directions, so I can pick the one I like best!  All I’ll say is underworld goddess and escape from hell.

[Note from Deborah—OH, boy! I can’t wait!]

Outside of that, I’m working on a YA thriller that I’m equal parts nervous and excited about.

DB: Why don’t you ask my blog readers a question—and we can give away a signed copy of the new book to a random commenter!

LD: Sounds great! I’ll go easy on you all so you don’t have to have read the series already.  Maybe I can get you hooked now! What god or goddess or other mythological beastie most intrigues you? Who would you like to be or meet (or definitely NOT meet) in a dark alley?  I’ll give away a signed print copy of RISE OF THE BLOOD, which just came hot off the presses yesterday, to one lucky commenter. (Or an electronic copy of BATTLE FOR THE BLOOD, if you’d prefer.)

Thanks so much for being my guest, Lucienne. I can’t wait to read this new book myself.

Thanks so much, Deborah, I can’t wait to read YOURS! I’m off to go queue it up on my Kindle!

Feline Friday: Cats & Books

Cats and books are two of my favorite things. (Chocolate and wine are fairly high on the list too...)

So in honor of Feline Friday, here are some pictures of some of the kitties with a few books by my favorite authors that came out recently. As usual, I HIGHLY recommend these folks (the authors, not the cats...although they are pretty cool too) and suggest you check out the books.

 Magic and Minerva can't decide who gets to read Morgan Keyes' Darkbeast Rebellion first, so they are sleeping on it. Morgan Keyes is the pen name of my pal Mindy Klasky, and this is the 2nd in her middle grade fantasy series. Don't be fooled by the "middle grade" designation--these are a great read for adults as well.

 I have read every book that Tamora Pierce has ever written--many of them multiple times. She writes stunning YA fantasy books set in amazing worlds (again, don't let the YA keep you from reading, although I also recommend these for anyone who wants to give a teen a book with strong female protagonists). Battle Magic continues the story of the young Winding Circle mages...I LOVE these books! Clearly, so does Magic the Cat. I'm pretty sure she thinks her name is on the cover...

Robin McKinley is just plain brilliant. She is another fantasy writer, and this stand-alone novel looks amazing. Shadows is set in a world where science and magic are at odds. Minerva isn't sure what she thinks about that. But I think it is going to be great!

My only problem now is deciding which one to read first! What do you think? And which one are you the most attracted to?

I haven't forgotten about trying to name the new car, by the way--I'm still trying to figure out the perfect name. If you have one you didn't mention in the previous blog, throw it into the ring!

Single Witch's Survival Guide

No, that isn't the name of my autobiography :-)

 

In fact, it is a new book by one of my favorite authors, Mindy Klasky. You probably won't be surprised to discover that some of my best-loved novels feature fictional witches--Mindy's Jane Madison books are at the top of that list. A number of years ago, I read the first three in the series about a librarian who accidentally stumbles upon a secret cache of magic books and inherits them, along with her quirky part man-part cat familiar Neko and the sexiest Warder ever (too bad he is grumpy, elusive, and determined to stop her from using magic).

I followed Jane's adventures in Girl's Guide to Witchcraft, Sorcery and the Single Girl, and Magic and the Modern Girl,which came out about five years ago. Then, much to my dismay, Mindy decided that Jane's story was finished, and moved on to other things (all of which were wonderful, but still, I LOVED this story!).

Thankfully, Mindy listened to me and the thousands of other readers who demanded more Jane Madison, and has started a whole new series featuring the next set of adventures in my favorite witch's life. (Hint: she tries to start a school for witches...it doesn't go well.) The great thing about these books is that you don't have to have read the first bunch to read these--although I guarantee that after you read this one, you will want to go get the others.

If you like witches in fiction, and a touch of humor in your reading, you are going to love Single Witch's Survival Guide. Just tell Mindy I sent you :-)

Read the First Chapter Here

Buy the Book in Print or Eversion Here

See What Mindy has to Say about Writing the Book

Girl's Guide to Witchcraft on Amazon

Have you read any of Mindy's books? Did you love them as much as I did?