Sunday, July 20, 2014

Inferno teaser

I am just going to post a lovely UNEDITED teaser for Inferno then I am off to write, quick like a bunny. 


Olivia walked out of a smoldering building glowing bright. Wisps of smoke trailed behind her, a train of destruction.
“Clear,” she said in a voice that was hardly recognizable. Her eyes flickered in my direction where I held a low level demon, waiting to for her to question him. “Did he tell you anything?”
“I got another location.”
“Kill him,” she said, walking past us without slowing.
I nodded and slid the blade of an angelic knife across its throat. Blood gurgled through the cut and arterial spray went up like a geyser before black smoke poured from every opening in the body. The demon was dead and so was the human it inhabited. Wiping the blade on a dark rag, I slipped the knife back into its holder beneath my shirt and fell into step with her. She moved fast her eyes always focused ahead of her, always focused on our next move. The angel was a warrior through and through. She never stopped, she never rested, and she never relaxed. We were at war.
She stepped over a homeless person—not seeing him or not caring, hard to say. The man didn’t see her at all. No humans did. She hadn’t retracted her natural light since Marge died, not once. Olivia wore the angel like a blanket, reveling in its power and hiding any softer feelings deep beneath the angel’s strength and experience.
Be careful what you wish for was the phrase that most often went through my head. On one hand, I didn’t have to worry about Olivia anymore. The angel would take care of her, if her human soul had survived at all. We no longer had to run from Hell or demons. These days we took the fight to them, leaving nothing but smoke and ashes in our wake—no survivors human or otherwise. The angel had produced a small, plain dagger and gave it to me with the instructions to only use it on Heavenly creatures or abominations—aka demons and jinn. Where she kept these weapons, or how many she had, was anyone’s guess, but their existence certainly had changed our position from a flea on a dog’s back to the dog catcher. Hell was on the run, but I couldn’t help thinking it was temporary. Eventually they would find something she couldn’t defeat. She had no such concerns.
On the other hand, though, I barely caught glimpses of the woman I loved and even those felt more like 
figments of my imagination grasping at the smallest threads of hope that she was still in there. The love and warmth for everyone she exuded before had vanished. Our connection had been silent. It was definitely still there, but where she used to glow in my mind it was darkness now, a gaping hole completely shut off to me, but silently monitoring every thought I had. If I stepped out of line, would she kill me? 

-Liz

Thursday, July 17, 2014

Piracy: It Happens

Today I am going to piss a lot of authors off. So in advance, before you are angry with me, sorry that we don’t agree, but I am not sorry for what I think.

Okay, now that the apology is out of the way, let’s get down to the topic at hand. Piracy. Every day I see authors of all shapes and sizes, new and established, successful and looking for their niche, go on rampages about one or all of their books being pirated. Let’s be honest, it’s annoying—both the piracy and the complaining.

So today I am going to try to give some perspective to the issue.

  •             Every single entertainment art form is pirated. Movies, TV, Music, and Books. Movies with power house studios behind them and millions upon millions of dollars still end up on pirating sites. Bands like Metallica fought Napster for what seemed like years over their music being on the site.
  •             Every minute you spend fighting, petitioning, complaining, is a minute away from what you should be doing: WRITING YOUR NEXT BOOK. Yep. You see if you are a writer then there is a catch. You actually have to write. You don’t have time to scour the internet and send threatening letters that you actually don’t intend to follow up on (let’s face it, how many of us are really going to hire an attorney? On that note, how many of us really think that whatever number you believe in your mind you are losing in sales could even pay for one hour of an attorney's time?) to every single pirating site.
  •            Complaining about the site on social networks does one of two things. First, it alerts everyone to the fact they can get your book for free somewhere else. You might be thinking “No. These are my friends they would never do that,” then you are naive. Do you think any of these sites would have gotten so large if people didn’t use them? Second, it makes you negative. Your job as an author is to entertain. You want people to want to visit your page. If they go to your page and only see whining then why would they come back?
  •             Look at the bright side of things. You are like, “But Liz, there is no bright side to having my work stolen. I spend year writing this and pouring my heart into it and it is being stolen. Thieves! Stop, thieves!”. Oh ye of little faith, there is a bright side. You are gaining exposure. Your book, even though it is free without your consent, is in front of *gasp* readers. Isn’t that what we want? Isn’t that why we PAY for advertising so potential readers might pick up our book. Who’s to say someone might not pirate one book, read it, then buy all of your other books? I remember a while back I was reading Matt Nathanson’s blog (a singer I like). He wrote a post about how he was reading fan mail and he opened one letter and a $20 bill fell out of it. With it there was a note that said “I pirated a copy of your album, but it was so good and I listen to it so much I feel like I should pay for it.” Bam! You never know what can happen so quit worrying about things you can’t control.


Now, I have said what I wanted to say. I will end with this.

*note to readers* please don’t pirate books. Visit the library instead. They give books to you for free and at most libraries you can request any book you want to read and they will order it. So be cool, sodapop.
 

Liz
 
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