Aquinnah's Christopher & Stella and Celebrate the Small Things

Hello and Happy Friday to all!

 

I missed last week's Celebrate the Small Things hop, hosted by Vikki at Scribblings of an Aspiring Author, so I'm celebrating the past two weeks now.

First up, I'm celebrating that I was one of the Blog Blitz recipients last week and that was such a fun surprise! Thanks to everyone who came by here and visited me. And I want to say a special thanks to D.L. Hammons for organizing these fun little blog blitz parties.

Also, I won a copy of the Triangulation Morning After anthology from Stephen Ramey during last month's 'Tis More Blessed giveaway. I got the book in the mail this week and it was a treat to open my mailbox and see the package in there. Nothing like getting free books!

I'm also celebrating that I finally got some writing done on my WIP. It's a prequel to Polar Night and also ties in to the sequel I am planning, so I'm excited to finally be making some progress on both of them. I haven't written steadily in what feels like forever so I'm glad to finally feel like I may have beaten back my writer's block. I think this picture is what inspired me to sit my butt down and stop whining about being blocked. :D

Source: Jim C. Hines

Finally, Heather Holden drew comics of Polar Night's Danny and Aleksei for me last year and I loved them so much that I asked her if she would do another portrait for me, this time of Christopher and Stella from The Ghosts of Aquinnah. I got the finished product from her this week and I love it. Christopher and Stella are the main characters in the 1884 portion of the story. Aren't they cute? :)

If you don't already know Heather, check out her webcomic The Echo Effect. She is amazingly talented and a super-nice person to boot.

I've fallen way behind on my blog reading and commenting lately and I apologize for that, this month has just been a bit of a mess for me and my focus is all over the place. I'm looking forward to getting caught up with everyone this weekend.

Hope you've all had lots of small and big things to celebrate this week and have a great weekend ahead.

Danny and Aleksei, Comic Style

I've been a fan of Heather Holden's work ever since I discovered Echo Effect, her webcomic based on Greek mythology. So when I was catching up on the comic a few weeks ago I got the idea to commission Heather to create pictures of my Polar Night characters Danny and Aleksei.

It was a lot of fun to work with Heather and see my guys brought to life in her style. So let me introduce you to the main character and protagonist of Polar Night, Detective Danny Fitzpatrick.

He's a mess, isn't he?  Danny is overwhelmed by grief and depression when we meet him and he's run as far away from his old life as he could get by moving to Fairbanks, Alaska. He's working a dead-end job in cold cases and his primary coping mechanism for getting through the day is alcohol.

Danny doesn't seem like a good candidate to challenge Aleksei Nechayev, the book's antagonist. Arrogant, cold, and ruthless, Aleksei views people as little more than playthings for his own amusement.

 

Aleksei sees Danny as a minor nuisance and doesn't think the drunken detective is a real threat to his plans. He may be surprised.

Thanks again to Heather for working on this fun project with me! If you don't already follow the Echo Effect, check it out here. 

Small Celebrations

The end of another week means its time to Celebrate the Small Things with Vikki at Scribblings of an Aspiring Author. If you'd like to learn more about this hop and participate, visit Vikki's page and join us here.

I have to admit that this wasn't a good week for me. It started with the first anniversary of the death of my father, and I found that day to be even more difficult than I expected it to be. Between that and some ongoing personal issues, I found myself in a funk and spent most of the week feeling like a bit of a zombie.

But thanks to Vikki's hop I realized today was the perfect day to turn that around and focus on the good parts of the week.

1. I was interviewed by Graeme Ing and my dog Clancy was interviewed by Shelly Arkon and we both had fun doing the interviews. :) We're looking forward to being featured on Graeme's and Shelly's sites sometime soon.

2. I finally made a dent in my TBR list and read great books by two of my wonderful author friends. Lisa Regan's Abberation and Graeme Ing's Ocean of Dust are both fantastic reads!

3. I commissioned the awesome Heather Holden to create pictures of my Polar Night main characters Danny and Aleksei. This was a new experience for me and it was fun to see what Heather created based on the descriptions I gave her. Her pictures are excellent and I'm looking forward to using them to help with my ongoing marketing efforts.

4. I completed my first Rafflecopter giveaway and was amazed at how easy it was to do. I had been kind of intimidated by Rafflecopter and thought sure I would find a way to mess it up if I used it, but I managed to create the giveaway and choose the winner without adding to the abundance of grey hair I already have on my head. Nancy LaRonda Johnson of Writer's Mark won an ebook copy of Polar Night, and I'm grateful to Nancy and everyone else who entered the giveaway and helped make it a success.

I'm glad to put this week behind me but I'm also glad to celebrate the fact that there were quite a few roses among the week's thorns.

I hope everyone has a great weekend!