The "Next Big Thing" Blog Hop
Dec. 4th, 2012 08:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
catherineldfI’m happy to be participating in the Next Big Thing Blog Hop, after being tagged by the amazing and talented Rachel Gold, Hannah Kate and Baxter Claire Trautman. You can view their Next Big Thing posts here:
Rachel Gold
Hannah Kate
Baxter Clare Trautman
and you should definitely check out Gold’s Being Emily, Kate’s anthology Wolf Girls and her poetry collection, Variant Spelling, and Baxter Trautman’s River Within and her Detective Franco mystery series.
Without further ado, hopping...
What is the working title of your next book?
It depends on which one gets finished first – I’m working on two books at more or less the same time. The two in question are Medusa’s Touch and Blood Moon (Silver Moon’s sequel)
Where did the idea come from for the book?
Medusa’s Touch is based on a short story that I wrote a number of years ago. I did a lot of world building in the original story so I decided that it would be fun to work on expanding the concept into a novel. I got the notion for a novel about a spaceship captain who uses implants ("medusas") to operate her ship from reading a lot of cyberpunk, among other things. And the original tale is one of my wife’s favorite stories, so that also has to be taken into consideration. :)
Blood Moon is the sequel to my novel Silver Moon (Lethe Press, 2012). Silver Moon is about menopausal werewolves. Specifically, it’s about a woman named Becca Thornton whose life is turned upside down when she turns into a werewolf right after her fiftieth birthday. She joins up with the local werewolf pack, which is comprised of women of a “certain age,” and wacky hijinx ensue. I was inspired to write about about middle-aged female werewolves by the absence of middle-aged female protagonists in sf/f/h as much as by a fascination with werewolf legends and stories. Then, there's the similarity of the physical changes that accompany both menopause and lycanthropy: unexpected hair growth, sudden shifts in mood, the sense that something alien has taken over your body. Given that as a beginning, Blood Moon continues where Silver Moon leaves off, bringing back Becca, Erin and the pack members from the first book.
What genre does your book fall under?
Medusa’s Touch is science fiction erotica and Blood Moon is fantasy with a touch of romance and mystery.
What is the synopsis or blurb for this book?
And this, my peeps, is where the rubber hits the road on the difference between pantsers and plotters. The above are books in progress so I’m not ready to compress them down and zip them up in little bite-sized morsels yet. They are not yet at that magical place in my head. I can say that Medusa’s Touch (or whatever it ends up being called) will be a lively space adventure with cyberpunk elements and lots of hot sex. Blood Moon is shaping up to be more of a romantic mystery, with werewolves, in contrast to Silver Moon, which is more of a coming of age novel. Other than that, we’ll have to see how it goes.
What actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
For Medusa’s Touch, Archie Panjabi and Michelle Rodriguez (at last, a film her actual fan base might like to see her in!).
For Blood Moon, Kathy Bates as Becca, Jane Lynch as Erin, Tantoo Cardinal as Shelly and Carmen Moore as Lizzie Blackhawk. I'll have to think about it for the rest of the cast.
Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
TBD. Medusa’s Touch has been requested by an acquisitions editor at a press. We’ll see how it goes from there.
How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
Still in progress on both. I suspect it will take another 5 months or so to finish Medusa’s Touch, not sure about Blood Moon. It took me two years to write Silver Moon, then another year on revisions and rewrites. I think that the sequel will come together much faster than that, but again, we’ll have to see, what with the new day job and the rest of my life.
Who or what inspired you to write this book?
I think I covered that in my answer above but feel free to ask if there’s something you’d like to hear more about.
What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
I like to write (and read) about strong female characters doing unusual things. The “medusas” in my science fiction novel refer to the hairlike implants that the pilots use to navigate their starships. They also have...other uses. Lots of them. And a mind of their own. <g>
As for Blood Moon, imagine that you’re a werewolf in your human form. Something happens, you’re not sure what, but now there’s a mangled body in the trunk of your car. Whodunnit?
Thanks for reading my contribution to the Blog Hop! I'm passing the torch on to some terrific writers that I know and hopefully, they'll be sharing what they're up to next.