Caroline Hanson's Blog

Just an update on what's happening with this blog...not a lot! A lot of posts were moved to my website and once that happened I sort of just stopped posting. But I'm starting to get a lot of questions on Rebecca's 4th book and you should know it's moving along and I'm hoping it will be out before 2018.

it shouldn't be a spoiler to say that Rebecca will regret her decision to go back to the island almost as soon as she lands. where will she stay? What will Cassandra do? What will lee do when he realizes just how good alistair has been taking care of Rebecca? It's all moving along and I'll keep you posted when I know more. Thanks for stopping by!

Bigger, badder and uncut!


Funny how if you take that out of a movie context it has all sorts of inappropriate connotations, isn't it?

But this year is in fact going to be all of those things! In terms of bigger, you may have noticed the website and all of its shiny glossiness. I hope you think it's as pretty as I do. There should also be some more posting and general online presence this year which I am super excited about. We recently moved, twice, and that sort of threw things into disarray for awhile. But not anymore!

In terms of badderness or baddieness, I recently went to a writing retreat led by the lovely Mary Buckham (who also happens to be an UF author with a great series) where I reached the conclusion that all I really want to write are villains who become heroes despite themselves. Maybe this isn't too shocking considering Lucas, but I strayed a bit with Zack and Edward. They were restrained, cold perhaps, but good guys. Screw that.

Which means I'm writing vampires again. And it feels soooo good! The plan is to finish this thing I'm now working on, a trilogy, and then release them close together. I don't like leaving people in suspense (despite how it appears with the vicious cliffhangers.) and writing under pressure just makes me grumpy. So there is something happening, you WILL be happy about it and once I've got a bit more written I'll be telling you all about it.

Finally, I'm not sure how uncut this is but audiobooks are about to arrive! If you've been asking me for audiobooks (you know who you are!) then you'll be thrilled to know it's finally happened. Valerie in audio. And the gal reading it, Emily Woo Zeller, came highly recommended and is tres awesome. Bye for now and if you're not on the newsletter, sign up! I'm going to have some pretty spectacular giveaways pretty soon, especially for any vampire diaries fans out there. That's everyone, right?

Anyone who knows me is aware that I take my TV VERY seriously. Like, I love my tv people more than most people I know. And so every now and again, something so egregious happens that I have to vent. So here we go. If you’re not up to speed on Walking Dead, don’t read on. Beth is dead. Let’s talk jumping the shark. This is a tv term that is used to signal a major error in story telling. A plot gone wrong that fans go back to years later and say ‘that was the beginning of the end.’ The gimmick was Beth killing Dawn. The writer’s asked us to believe that Beth would kill Dawn. Would she? Is that her character? Looking back over the episodes I don’t think she would. Described by Daryl as the light, as the last hope and bright moral compass of the show, I don’t believe she would have tried to stab Dawn in the neck. It wasn’t her personality. Because killing Dawn elevated the situation. It was tense, sure, but she crossed a line, (I suppose the same line that Carol crossed and got her kicked out of the group) she decided to take a life, for the benefit of her comrades, and put everybody else in jeopardy, escalating the situation. She wouldn’t have done it. My other grievance is the way it was done. Frankly, we’ve been waiting for Daryl and co. to find Beth for months. FOR MONTHS. And this is how the writer’s pay everyone back? Not well done. Frankly, I think that the fans clamoring for a Beth/Daryl relationship frightened the writers. Far easier to kill her then have to show Daryl be vulnerable and manly at the same time. And by not giving fans the closure they wanted, but killing her so abruptly, they didn’t provide a pleasant viewing experience. I didn’t think this was the evolution of my favorites shows characters, I felt ripped off. This wasn’t a natural progression. Part of the appeal of the Walking Dead is seeing the characters struggle. It’s the walls of darkness closing in, stealing the lightness and wondering where they will find the fortitude to continue on. But although we like to see the characters struggle, I don’t believe a show should do that to the viewer as well. What hope does the audience have now that Beth is gone? Who’s left to be the bright light? The weak pastor? Puh-lease. As soon as Beth died I was aware of where I was. My living room, just watching a show and something ridiculous had happened. I wasn’t with the gang in a crumbling, rotting world. I’d been thrown out by a brutal and ill-thought out act. How many different show-runners has Walking Dead had? Maybe it’s time for another. Because, honestly, that was some pretty disgusting and pathetic story-telling. For shame, Gimple and Kirkman. For shame.
The only hope is that the fans are so outraged that we get a Dallas moment and they rewrite it. Spend the money and man up AMC, write the character’s arcs as they should have been written. Because as of now, the shark has entered the building.  

Yes, it looks like it's happening. BTW is getting a sequel. A novella that has been a lot of fun to write. Without spoilering too much, here is an excerpt (pre final edit so it could change!) of megan's next case! Whoo!

A half-eaten pack of Tums was sitting on my boss’ desk when I walked in. Papers were everywhere. The man is a genius with delegation, papers usually come in and go back out as if they have wings. The fact that his desk was covered in sheets of cheap white paper and post-it notes sent alarm bells ringing through me.“You,” he gave me the finger point. “Who would’ve thought the day would come when I would be happy to see you?” he said, in total seriousness. “Right back at you. I like the haircut. What’s up?” The man was bald and had been for twenty years, I only said it to piss him off. His eyes flicked to the chair across from him wanting me to sit. I didn’t. He sighed unhappily. “There have been three abductions this week. The vampire queen didn’t get up from her coffin, they went to check on her and she wasn’t there. Just gone. No note, no ash, no nothing.” “Huh,” I said. Cause that was unusual. Vampires didn’t travel without their coffins. From what I understood, it had more to do with comfort than necessity. Like a stuffed animal or a pillow except a coffin. How weird was that? It was one of the many reasons that it was a personal policy of mine to avoid vampires.“The shifters have reported a missing were-hamster—”Yeah, that’s right, were-hamster. “Did they check her wheel?” I asked, and thought I saw a curl of smoke rise from my boss’s forehead. “And most importantly, the New York Guardian is gone.”“You mean the librarian?” “Of course I mean the librarian.” His teeth were clenched when he said it.  The New York Guardian guarded all the spell books and histories for all the local Supes. Anything supernatural that someone might’ve wanted written down (or didn’t want written down but was interesting) was kept in her shop down on 45th Street. One could go in and get a coffee, a potion and a copy of what the Fey were up to during the 1800’s if one wanted. Although I don’t know why anybody would want Fey History, they were damned boring. Spent a lot of time tidying parks and making flower chains. He pointed a sausage-like finger in my direction. I hated that frickin finger. “Start at the Guardian’s shop, do a recreation spell, see if you can get an image of what happened. This has to be solved fast. The vamps are blaming the weres, the weres are spoiling for a fight as always, and if we’re not careful the humans will get involved.”
And no one wanted that. Talk about up a creek without a paddle. The human police were next to useless. 

Want to know how it starts? I love this beginning. Poor Edward. He's such a great tortured hero. Here is the beginning of LMD....

Came across this video of Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love) discussing writing, success and failure. It's fascinating and inspirational for anyone, author or no author. Enjoy!

http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gi...

For anyone who has noticed a rather substantial gap between postings....I'm alive. You didn't notice, you say? Well, of course not, I'm prolific on blogging, facebooking and social media. Ahem.

As for what I've got going on...

RT in May. It's in New Orleans. Vampire central. I will be going to the Garden District and looking for Lestat. Everything vampire is set in New Orleans. Witches too. Off the top of my head...Kresley Cole's series is set there, Sookie visits, The Originals is there, Coven is there. The list goes on, I just ran out of head space.

I've also been working on a lot of different things and hope to have some of it out soon. A Lady Most Dangerous should be out by April 15. Hurray! There will be lots of giveaways, so if you have not signed up for the newsletter, let me direct your attention to the right of your screen :)

I've been reading a lot too. A Poison Study, Games of Command, Kate Pearce, Amy Lane...I'm all over the place and loving it!

Game of Thrones is coming back-- yeah and Walking Dead is almost over-- boo. Can't wait til friday-- Veronica Mars comes out and I will be there to see it! The show is available on netflix and is AWESOME. It's up there with Buffy. Yes, I said it. I met Jason Dohring at Comic-Con and he is so, so nice. I told him I was bummed things didn't take off for him. It looked promising with Moonlight. He seemed really happy about that and wrote that he loved me on my VM poster. Love you too, Jason. Love you too.

Did you know that there are some people who think that writing is glamorous? So let me tell you about my glamorous day. Today was the first day back for my kids and boy was everybody excited. First there was a PTA meeting and then it turned out my daughter forgot her lunch. So my writing opportunity came at 1030, hours later that I had expected (grrr). 

When I got home I agonized over whether I should do laundry or cleanup the kitchen but decided to leave it so that I could try to get some words down. I could get some words down but nothing particularly exciting and I suspect it wasn't very good. 

Then I brought the kids home and discovered we had a WASP in the house. My husband was incommunicado and of course the wasp spray was nowhere where it should've been. I googled how to kill a WASP (hairspray or wd 40 but hadn't quite worked up the nerve to do it yet) and I called all my neighbors. 

Five minutes later my doorbell rang and I panicked, sure it was a neighbor who would want to help me but my kitchen was so messy that I couldn't let them in! Turned out it was grandpa who promptly picked up a flyswatter and killed the wasp Scream-style. By which I mean bumbling and with several misses but somehow managing to get the kill-shot. Isn't it glamorous?

Okay, I'm going to answer a question that I've been hearing a lot of which is-- How could I have used the infamous name Edward in Lady Out of Time. You may not know this, like if you've been living on Mars or something, but there is a very successful franchise that has a dude named Edward.

So here is the deal, when I started writing this book I called him Edward. And after I felt like I knew him, and I fell in love with him, I was sitting at my computer and I suddenly thought 'Oh crap, his name is Edward.' And even my critique partner said I should change it. And I kind of meant to, but didn't. Cause he's Edward to me.

As an author, I write with the reader in mind and I do make changes because I love having fans of my books and don't want to piss anyone off too much (although if you're a Jack fan you're probably yelling 'that's BS!' at your computer.)

So I guess I kind of knew I should've changed his name because we already have an Edward...but Victorian Edward is quite the stickler and he'd have been horrified and raised an eyebrow in condescension if I'd taken away his name simply because of some sparkly dude who was born after him. I think it's after. Wasn't Sparkly Edward a hundred-year-old virgin?