Lucienne Diver's Drivel

This is a super-mega-huge release week, so even though I’m away (don’t hate me because I’m off on a cruise in the Bahamas) I didn’t want to miss wishing Alli Sinclair, Shannon Curtis, Beth Cornelison, Genevieve Cogman or Keith R.A. DeCandido big happy book birthdays!  Happy reading, all!

 UNDER THE SPANISH STARS by Alli Sinclair (US release from Kensington’s Lyrical Press, AUS/NZ edition from MIRA Australia already out)

Amid the vivid beauty of Granada, a woman entrusted with unraveling a family secret will discover the truth about her heritage–and the alluring promise of love…

When her beloved grandmother falls ill, Charlotte Kavanagh will do whatever she asks of her–even if it means traveling to a country that broke her abuela’s heart. Can an unsigned painting of a flamenco dancer unlock the secrets of her grandmother’s youth in Spain? To find the answers she needs, Charlotte must convince the charismatic and gifted musician, Mateo Vives to introduce her to a secluded gypsy clan.

The enigmatic Mateo speaks the true language of flamenco, a culture Charlotte must learn to appreciate if she wants to understand her grandmother’s past–and the flamenco legend that has moved souls to beauty, and bodies to the heights of passion. As Mateo leads her into the captivating world of the music and the dance, Charlotte embraces her own long-denied creative gift and the possibility of a future rich with joy…”

WARRIOR UNTAMED by Shannon Curtis (Harlequin Nocturne)

A witch’s spell…a warrior’s curse 

If not for her protective wards, witch Melissa Carter would be dead at the hands of her enemy, shadow breed Hunter Galen. Now he’s her prisoner. Though she tortures the powerful warrior with spells, he torments her with dark fantasies, inciting a forbidden lust too strong to deny.

Hunter must escape to complete his mission—destroy his father, who vowed revenge on him and his beautiful captor. But a warrior mates for life and now Hunter must protect Melissa—his mortal enemy and unlikely love. Doing so means descending into the underground world of the Darkken, a place so evil they might not come out alive…

 COLTON CHRISTMAS PROTECTOR by Beth Cornelison (Harlequin Romantic Suspense)

The Coltons of Texas saga reaches its thrilling climax with a tale of Christmas justice!

Ex-cop Reid Colton is working double-time to help beautiful widow Penelope Barrington Clark. While investigating her dad, his family lawyer, the two are also trying to uncover who murdered Pen’s husband…all while keeping their relationship professional! But when a bullet and their forbidden attraction change everything, it’s Reid to the rescue, determined to guard Pen and her son with his life.

The last thing Penelope wants is to fall for a sexy Colton who’s not looking for forever. Yet as Christmas approaches and their investigation heats up, the three start to feel like a family. And the best present of all? Solving the Colton clan’s biggest mystery!

 THE BURNING PAGE by Genevieve Cogman (UK release from Macmillan UK, US release by Roc will be January 10th)

The third title in Genevieve Cogman’s clever and exciting The Invisible Library series, The Burning Page is an action-packed literary adventure!

When it’s your job to save the day – where do you start?

Librarian spy Irene has standards to maintain, especially while on probation. And absconding from a mission via a besieged building doesn’t look good. But when her escape route home goes up in flames, what’s a spy to do? However, it seems Gates back to the Library are malfunctioning across dozens of worlds. Worse still, her nemesis Alberich is responsible -and he plans to annihilate the Library itself.

Irene and assistant Kai are posted to St Petersburg, to help combat this threat. Here Alberich emerges, as Irene tries to save her friend Vale and foil assassination attempts. Then one incredibly dangerous opportunity to save the Library emerges. Saving herself would be a bonus . . .

Irene’s adventures feature stolen books, secret agents and forbidden societies – think Doctor Who but with librarian spies!

 SUPER CITY COPS: AVENGING AMETHYST by Keith R.A. DeCandido (Bastei Entertainment)

The great metropolis of Super City is the home of dozens of costumed heroes — the Terrific Trio, the Bruiser, the Superior Six, the Cowboy, and many more — who do battle against the super-villains who terrorize the citizenry.

These aren’t their stories …

When the heroes are done punching out the villains, it’s left to the stalwart men and women of the Super City Police Department to restrain them, arrest them, and hope that this time there’s enough evidence to actually convict them.

Just another day on the job for the Super City Cops.

BOOK 1

Amethyst, one of the most renowned and mysterious costumed heroes of Super City, is found dead on a rooftop. Detectives Kristin Milewski and Jorge Alvarado of the Super City Police Department are assigned to the case-but every answer they turn up with regards to who Amethyst is and how and why he died just gives them more questions.

Complicating the investigation are the rest of the superheroic community, who are looking for revenge for their fallen comrade-plus there are reports of a new Amethyst! Same powers, same costume, but a much nastier attitude …

Years ago, horrified by the stories of teens bullied to death and hoping to make a difference, two young adult authors, Megan Kelley Hall and Carrie Jones invited other authors to contribute to a volume which came to be called DEAR BULLY: Seventy Authors Tell Their Stories. It’s one of the most amazing things I’ve ever been a part of.

My new novel FAULTLINES came out a week ago. It’s quite a departure for me. Those who’ve followed my Vamped and Latter-Day Olympians series might know me for more for snark than serious fiction. But FAULTLINES is about as real as it gets. I’ve been asked several times whether the story was inspired by real life events, and the brief answer is yes. Several of the characters…well, I’ve felt their pain, and I’ve wanted to address it for quite some time, maybe ever since I wrote my essay “Abuse” for the DEAR BULLY anthology, reproduced below. Please, if you think there’s anyone who needs to hear it, I hope that you’ll share.

“Abuse”

I write humor because I’m not comfortable with emotion. When this anthology was proposed, I was sure I wouldn’t have anything to contribute. But as my stomach proceeded to eat itself alive and my heart to break for those kids who were bullied to the point where they felt the only way out was death, I realized I was wrong. I did have a story to tell. Sadly, there’s nothing at all funny about it.

I was molested as a child. Wait for it, I promise there’s relevance or there’s no way I would put this out there to the world. The man was a neighbor and someone who worked with my father. I was about seven. I was/still am asthmatic. The first time it happened, I was out for a bike ride through the woods with friends and had to stop because my asthma had kicked up, and they left me behind. Prey.

I don’t like to talk about what happened then. I don’t know if that neighbor had just happened to be out for a ride when we were or if he’d been watching us, waiting for a straggler, but he took advantage of the privacy of the setting and the fact that we were alone to take advantage of me. It happened a few times after that, when my parents allowed him to take me “fishing” because I hadn’t told them what had happened. I hadn’t told anyone and wouldn’t for years.

Molesters are master manipulators. They try to make their victims complicit with their silence, telling them their parents will be angry or won’t believe them. Or they give their victims terrible options of “I could do this or this” and make it seem like a choice. For years, I felt terrible guilt. For years, I prayed to God every night to forgive me, because I was sure it was all my fault in some way. He never answered.

It wasn’t until I was around twelve that my mother had “the talk” with my sister and me, about dangers, how we could tell her anything…. I was so upset that I excused myself, went off to my room and wrote her a note (I’ve always escaped through writing). I’d transferred my anger. I still hadn’t forgiven myself, but now I was angry at her, at my father, at everyone for not telling me sooner how to protect myself and that I COULD HAVE TOLD, which is something I want EVERYONE to know. So, I’m saying it in case your parents don’t.

To say that she was upset would be an understatement. How she handled it…I can’t say that I blame her or that she did anything wrong, but it made things very difficult for me. My mother called all the mothers on the block and told them so that they could watch out for the man. Unfortunately, she also told them what had happened to me, and they told their kids. I don’t blame them either, they were trying to protect their children, but the result was that everyone in the neighborhood knew. They knew what had happened, they knew the button to push to get a rise out of me.

In case you’re wondering, my father, with whom I’d always had a tumultuous relationship, called the man and threatened that if he ever came near me again, my father would make sure that he lost everything. It was the day I started loving my father.

Now, I’d always been a geek, a brain, asthmatic, rail-thin, always snuffling from allergies and out of school for my health issues as much as I was in. In short, there was no dearth of material to tease me about, but I’d always escaped into books, sometimes three a day. I wasn’t terribly concerned about playing outside anymore (wonder why) or what people thought of me there. But now the kids had a surefire taunt, something I couldn’t ignore, couldn’t not react to.

Kids can be cruel and, for some reason, the cruelest often fall below people’s radar, either because they’re very good at being two-faced or because their parents don’t pay enough attention to note and correct the bad behaviors. Some even enable the bullies through denial or what they perceive as standing up for their kids, not realizing that it only allows the child to keep behaving horribly without fear of repercussions. We had more than one such kid in our neighborhood, but the bully who inspired this piece, who later evolved into our local drug dealer, happened to taunt me while I held an aluminum bat in my hand. All the neighborhood kids were gathered for a game of softball at the end of our cul-de-sac. I don’t even remember what started our debate now, but given the bat, I assume it was whether the ball I’d just hit had been in or out of bounds. Whatever started the fight, the boy thought he had a perfect way to finish it. So easy to shut someone up when you knock all the wind out of them by bringing their deepest, soul-shriveling moments into the light.

My vision flared red. The bat was already in hand, and suddenly it was in motion. His head was the ball and I was prepared to hit a home run. If my vision hadn’t cleared and I hadn’t seen his face at that very last second, stricken with absolute terror, there’s no telling what would have happened. I could have done irreparable harm to another human being. I could have killed. I managed to pull the blow at the last second, and he lived to tell about the experience…and get me into all the trouble I deserved. But I was a hairs-breath away from murder.

I’m not pulling the punch now, here. Sometimes, it’s better to tell.

I wish it went without saying that bullying is horrible and dangerous, for the victim as well as the perpetrator. The target can just as easily turn his or her rage outward as inward. If bullies won’t stop for the sheer humanity of it, I hope they’ll stop for the simple drive for self-preservation. To this day, I’m horrified by what I almost did. If I hadn’t pulled my swing, I’d have had to live with what I did forever. The bully would have had to live…or die…with the consequences.

I didn’t grow up in a family comfortable with emotion. I’ll never forget getting into trouble when I cried or having my father send me to my room once with a book called, I believe, “The Erroneous Zones” that postulated that emotions were societal constructs and that the reason we felt sorrow, for example, when our grandmothers died was that it was expected of us. I think that day with the bat, I started to accept, not that emotions didn’t exist, but that they were dangerous things. That was the day I started to shut down.

It hampered my relationships and my writing for many years. Maybe still. It’s hard to emotionally invest your reader when you refuse to open yourself to emotion to begin with. But maybe, just maybe I’m getting better. Maybe opening the floodgates with this will even help me on the road to recovery. I love my humor, but I hope that with the healing, I’ll be comfortable adding in a little more heart.

____________________________

Where you can go to find help:

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline 1-800-273-TALK (8255), Deaf and Hard of Hearing: 1-800-799-4889 Español:  1-888-628-9454

Crisis Text Line TEXT “SEMI” to 741-741

National Child Abuse Hotline 1-800-4.A.CHILD (422-4453)

National Domestic Violence Hotline 1-800-799-SAFE (7233)

Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network (RAINN) 1-800-656-HOPE (4673)

Alliance of Hope – for suicide loss survivors

The Trevor Project – crisis intervention and suicide prevention for LGBTQ Youth – 1-866-488-7386

 Next month, LoreSeekers Press is putting out two anthologies set in Faith Hunter’s amazing Rogue Mage series. I’m so pleased to reveal the cover for the first volume, TRIALS. The cover for the second, TRIBULATIONS (which will contain my story “Rolling Stone”) will be coming soon!  More info:

The Rogue Mage world began long ago, when the epic battle between the High Host and the Darkness was won and lost. Now, nine writers—including Faith Hunter herself—take fans of Thorn St. Croix into the past, before the opening pages of BLOODRING. These stories, set in Faith Hunter’s Rogue Mage world, are adventures with new characters and old, facing dangers unimaginable. And they must save the world all over again.

If you ever wondered what happened between seraphs, kylen, second-unforeseen, mages, seraph-touched, spawn, humans, dragons, and their creatures before the series, now is your chance to delve deeper and wider. The e-book TRIALS presents twenty-one vignettes and short stories. TRIALS will be followed soon by TRIBULATIONS, and then by the trade paperback omnibus TRIUMPHANT. Enjoy!

TRIALS Authors: Faith Hunter, Misty Massey, Lou J Berger, Ken Schrader, Spike Y Jones, Diana Pharaoh Frances, Christina Stiles, Tamsin Silver, Melissa McArthur.

Pre-order links: Amazon, Barnes & Noble

TRIBULATIONS Authors: Faith Hunter, Jean Rabe, Spike Y Jones, Christina Stiles, and Lucienne Diver.