Megan Hart

It’s finally here. My first day back to “work.” Kids are off to school, Superman’s out saving lives. Minor kerfluffle this morning when the bus didn’t come and I had to drive the male spawn to school. Bah! But it was made up for by:

1. Watching Jericho with the girl spawn.
2. Exercising. No, I don’t like it, but I like that I did it.
3. Home made cinnamon bread for breakfast and homemade turkey soup with peanut butter bread baking now for dinner. I iz domesticated.
4.

Yes, my copies of Pleasure and Purpose have arrived! And boy howdy, are they ever PRETTY. Wow. I have a foil-embossed cover, ya’ll. I think this is one of those “moments.” Yes. The ones authors wait for. My first foil-embossed coverrrrrr!!!!

So for those of you who were notified you were one of the first 15 to repost my video, I’ll be contacting you to get your addresses so I can send your books. (International winners, I’ll do my best to get to the post office this week, too, so your books are there ASAP!)

If you weren’t one of the first 15 and you sent me a link to your blog or website where you posted my book video, don’t forget, you’re in the running to win a copy of P and P as well! And it’s not too late, if you want a chance to win a copy, please read the contest entries and follow the directions to be entered for your chance!

If you’re in the running for a copy of No Greater Pleasure, I haven’t received those yet, and probably won’t for another month as it’s an October release.

And today, now, I begin work on a book with the working title THREE MONTHS. It’s not a romance. It’s not erotic. It will be my first release for MIRA. I wrote it about 6 years ago. My stomach is sort of eating itself with anxiety about whether I can take the 6-year-old book and polish it up and expand it appropriately to become a viable, publishable novel that will satisfy myself, my editor…and my readers.

New readers, maybe.
But old ones, too.

I wrote this book so long ago I didn’t have a cell phone.
I didn’t have an iPod. So therefore, no playlists.
This might have been the first book I wrote on my first Mac.
To research this book, I threw my kids out a car window. (Don’t worry, Superman caught them.)
I wrote this book just after 9-11.
I wrote this book when I still had children in diapers.
I wrote this book when I thought I might never be published.
I wrote this book to save my sanity.

Now, let’s see if I can rewrite this book to make it good.

M

Wow, that was super fast! Thanks to everyone who entered! If you sent me the link to your blog entry featuring my video, and you did NOT receive a reply from me with a number, never fear — though were not one of the first 15 to respond, you are still entered for a chance to win a copy of the book. (Remember, the first 15 get books, anyone after that will be entered to win a copy of the book. And your chances are pretty good!)

So please, READ THE INSTRUCTIONS in the Be A Winner contest entry. Follow them. If you don’t send me an email or tweet appropriately, I WILL NOT GET YOUR ENTRY.

Here they are again in a nutshell:

EMBED the code for the video into your blog or website. Send me a link to your blog post or website page to READINBED at GMAIL.COM — please make sure I can SEE your blog or website, that you’re not set to private, that you’re not linking me to your private Facebook home page or login page or something funky. Tweet or retweet this entry (WITH @Megan_Hart in the tweet — if you don’t do this, I WILL NOT SEE YOUR TWEET.) If you post this information on your blog or website, you’ll also be entered to win a copy of No Greater Pleasure!

Deadline, Sept. 4th!

First 15 winners, you have been notified!
But again, you can still have a chance to win a copy of Pleasure and Purpose if you feature my video on your blog or website! I’ll draw winners after Sept. 4th)

Thanks to those swift 15!

M

PS– I can not stress this enough: please follow the instructions. If I don’t SEE YOUR POST OR SITE, or get a link, or see your tweet, you aren’t entered to win!

Thanks!

So I realized I have a new book coming out in just a few days (though I know there are people who have found it out there in the wild already) and I figured I should probably get the word out. So, here’s the deal…I’m going to give away 15 copies of the book! Pleasure and Purpose! How can you get one?

Be one of the first 15 to feature the book trailer for Pleasure and Purpose on your blog or website! That’s it. Easy.

Here’s what you do: embed the code for the trailer (find it at http://blip.tv/file/2473582) and send me the link to your entry at readinbed AT gmail.com with CONTEST in the subject– I’ll reply with what number you are. If you’re in the first 15, you get a copy of Pleasure and Purpose and I’ll send it to you when I get my copies. (I don’t know when it will be, probably sometime in September.)

If you’re not in the first 15, don’t fear. For everyone who features the video on their websites or blogs after the first 15, you’ll be entered into a drawing to also win a copy of Pleasure and Purpose.

Contest ends one week from today, September 4th, and I’ll let you know if you won a few days after that!

So remember: feature the above trailer on your blog or website. Send me the link before Sept.4th. First 15 get a copy of Pleasure and Purpose.

BONUS! also feature the information about this contest in your blog or website and you’ll be entered to win a copy of No Greater Pleasure, out in October!

BONUS BONUS: retweet (or tweet) this blog entry with @Megan_Hart in the tweet and you’ll be entered to win a copy of BOTH BOOKS! (you must include @Megan_Hart in the tweet or else I might not see that you did it.)

All entries must be submitted before September 4th at 3 pm EST.

Good luck, and thanks for spreading the word!

M

…but not a whole lot more, sadly. This is it for N/T.

Can I tell you how much I love this show? A lot.

It’s almost like you wish you didn’t love them so much, because it hurts a little, to love them.

I haven’t thought much about Supernatural over the summer. It was enough to know it was coming back. Thinking about it meant I’d be putting myself into anxiety waiting for it to return. I didn’t even watch the reruns or on DVD or anything! I just pretended it was on last week and would be on next week.

Well, now the season 5 promos are starting and I avoid spoilers and I mostly don’t look at this stuff because HELLO…the more I want it, the harder it is to wait for it.

But I couldn’t stop myself from watching the trailer above and all I have to say is…

O, Supernatural, would you spare me over another year?

And then, there’s this.

I can’t even pretend I’m embarrassed about my Dean Winchester love. (Which I guess translates a bit into Jensen love, too. But listen, what’s not to love?!)

M

First off, thanks very much for agreeing to be interviewed for my blog. I’m going to get my enormous fangirl SQUEEEEE out of the way right off the bat so we can get on to the interesting stuff.

OMG I TOTALLY LOVE YOUR BOOKS OMG THEY ARE MADE OF AWESOME!

*ahem*

An introduction: Chelsea Cain, author of New York Times Bestselling novels Heartsick
and Sweetheart
lives in Oregon. Before starting on her career writing thrillers, she worked as a journalist for The Oregonian as well as writing several non-fiction books.

On to the questions…

Heartsick was your first published novel, but not your first published book. How has the experience of launching what many call a “first” book with such success, including NYT Bestseller-dom, national acclaim and lots of media attention, been different from or the same as your experience with your first few books?

On the whole, it’s been pretty fucking awesome. I get to see my book in airport stores next to gum and neck pillows! And I have this great publisher full of great people whom I actually truly like, and they spend money to market me and to market the books, which is huge. I get to travel all over the world. I’ve been to Oslo. Oslo! (Can I just say how much I love the Norwegians?) Financially speaking, my life has changed completely. With my other books – mostly illustrated humor books – I wrote them for the process, and because they afforded me a little bit to live on. But I never actually considered the fact that I could make a good living writing – you know, be “successful” – because how many people actually get THERE? I’ve always just written to entertain myself. I wrote HEARTSICK because it was thick into a thriller faze and I had finished reading all the thrillers I loved, and it seemed easier to write one than to find one that somebody else had written. What’s the quote? “I’ve never understood why someone would write a book, when you can easily buy one for a few dollars?” I’m sort of the opposite.

On the other hand, there have been a lot more demands on my attention. I spend a lot of time doing marketing because people are interested, which is awesome. But it changes the ratio of writing time. It’s a constant challenge, because if I don’t write, I won’t have anything to promote, and if I don’t promote, people won’t find the book in great numbers, and then I won’t have the opportunity to write.

One of the reasons I picked up HEARTSICK (actually, I requested it as a birthday gift and got it, SCORRRRE!) was because I’m fascinated by the premise of a female serial killer. You’ve said “in real life, there aren’t that many violent female serial killers. We tend to kill quietly, suffocating our babies or poisoning our husbands, and we tend to get away with it. But I wanted to explore a woman who killed violently, like a man, because she liked it.” (via Chelsea interviews Chelsea for the Oregonian on your blog)

The idea seems to be that female serial killers most often don’t do it violently, or get a sexual charge from it, the way traditional male serial killers do – yet you created Gretchen Lowell, one of the most fascinating serial killers AND women I’ve ever read.

Did you worry at any point while writing the book you wouldn’t be able to pull it off? That you couldn’t make her…well…believable?

God, yes. I totally worried that she wouldn’t be believable. Because I did a lot of research. And the thing about psychopaths is that real textbook psychopaths are not very interesting. And there haven’t been a lot of violent female serial killers, so right there I was stretching people’s believability meters. But one of the things I did, in writing HEARTSICK – and a HUGE liberation to me as a budding thriller writer – was to say, the hell with it. I’m going to write the book I want. I’m not going to worry about avoiding stereotypes or clichés or being authentic all the time. I’ll just tell the story I want how I want to tell it, and I’ll hope that I can bring something to the narrative that elevates it enough that readers will come along for the ride. HEARTSICK, in many ways, is a kind of fan fiction. Because I took characters and situations I loved from books and TV shows and movies that I loved and I threw them all in a big stew and tried to tell my own story.

Did you think about how your novel and characters might be compared to another popular novel – Silence of the Lambs? Did it matter?

About halfway through HEARTSICK, when Susan and Archie go to visit Gretchen in prison, I was like, uh oh, this is SO Silence of the Lambs. I even put that line in where Gretchen calls Susan “Clarice,” so readers would know that I knew. But even so, I was surprised at how that comparison came up in every single review of the book. Because while there are similarities, they’re not huge. But I think that Silence of the Lambs is such a pop cultural touchstone that it’s hard to avoid. And it’s a great book, so I appreciated being compared to it in any way.

Hannibal Lector, the “villain” in Silence of the Lambs, is arguably as much the hero of that story as Gretchen is the heroine of Heartsick and Sweetheart. Why do you think readers love to love these characters who do the worst, most awful things – acts that nobody in their sane minds would find compelling, much less sexy – and yet we loooooove Gretchen on the page in a way I hope I wouldn’t if I met her in real life. Why???

That’s a complicated question. I think that we’re attracted to people with power who are good at their jobs. (Even if their jobs are serial murder.) We’ll also attracted to wit and charisma. I also think there’s something really compelling on our lizard brain level about people who are able to cross that social barrier that prevents the rest of us from committing murder. As for Gretchen, there aren’t a lot of strong female archetypes in fiction, especially thrillers, so think that readers enjoy seeing a woman who is so totally in charge.

I write romance and erotic romance and love to read thrillers and horror – imagine my twisted and somewhat shameful delight when I read Sweetheart and Archie and Gretchen’s relationship got the spotlight. You’ve said Heartsick is about the violence and Sweetheart was about the sex. Did you find writing the books different with those “slants” — is writing sex/emotion different or the same than writing violence/emotion for you?

I think of these books as their own sort of twisted romances. I realized early on that Archie and Gretchen’s relationship was all about the intimacy of violence. So it seemed natural to explore both sides of that. The “slant” is the same. Intimacy. It’s the power that shifts. Every scene between Archie and Gretchen is about these tiny and colossal shifts of power – who has it, and who doesn’t.

Which do you think Gretchen likes more? Killing or having sex?
I think the two are totally entwined to her.

You wrote Heartsick while pregnant and with a small child in the house, without a contract in hand. How was writing Sweetheart a different experience for you? How about Evil at Heart, a third Archie/Gretchen book coming out in September 2009 (OMG I CAN NOT WAIT! I CAN NOT WAIT! I CAN NOT WAAAAAITTTT!!)?

It was weird, because when I was writing HEARTSICK it was to not get a job. I kept thinking if I can just finish this book and sell it then I won’t have to get a job. That’s a real motivator, let me tell you. But when SWEETHEART came along, it was my job. I’d been given money. And a deadline. We were suddenly very comfortable. So I found myself not writing for myself anymore, but for all of the people counting on me – my editor and agent and publisher, the marketing staff, my husband and daughter, etc.

How do you resist the siren song of Twitter and Facebook long enough to get any writing done? Or actually…I’m not sure you do…

It’s hard! Social networking is such a distraction because it pulls me out of the zone. It may just be a moment – a quick update, an attempted witty rejoinder – but then I go back to the work and I’ve lost the momentum. On the other hand, it’s an important way to keep in touch with readers and stay on people’s radars. And just touch base with friends. I’m still negotiating it, obviously. I need to start making rules. One hour in the morning. One hour at night. Did I just write that? That will never happen. But it sounds like a good idea, right?

Something that just occurred to me: Archie and Gretchen both have a strong “ch” sound in their names. How did you choose their names? Do you have a special method for choosing character names, do they have to have a special meaning, or is it always just crazy random happenstance?

That’s very insightful of you! I liked the way that their names sounded together – that hard consonant sound in the middle – like even their names belonged together. Names are always fun. And curiously hard to come up with. I have this terrible habit of getting sounds stuck in my head, so that I’ll write a scene and realize that I’ve given everyone names that start with A, which is really confusing to the reader. Or I’ll name a character after someone famous without realizing it. These days I like to work my friends’ names in. Just their first names or last names, never both. There are lots of things like that in my books – in-jokes for me and one or two other people.

You’ve compared yourself to Susan Ward rather than Gretchen Lowell, and it’s obvious from your website you like coloring your hair, a trait Susan shares. Do you ever color your hair crazy colors, say…oh…blue or purple? And do people stare at you in the grocery store or say “what color were you trying for, hun?” And do people say stuff like “oh, right, you’re that ‘creative’ type” as though that were the name of a disease? Or…is that just me?

I’ve done many shades of red (from natural to magenta), pink stripes, platinum, blonde, brown and black. Black lasted five days. I looked like a Goth seventeen year old. Even worse: I looked like a thirty-something mom TRYING to look like a Goth seventeen year old. Color is funny. There are always some people who love it, and some people who don’t. I’m not good with hair compliments, though. When someone tells me they like my hair, I immediately change it. I don’t know why.

You write thrillers. What do you like to read?

I’m a very loyal series reader. I still read everything that Robert B. Parker puts out. Ditto Jonathan Kellerman. I love Val McDermid’s thrillers. But my taste is all over the map. Mostly I go for the funny and sublime. Give me a smart-ass with a lyrical prose voice, and I’m yours. The narrative vehicle is secondary. TV. Comics. Books. Poems.

What are you working on right now?

Book four of the “heart” series. Let me know if you have any titles with the word “heart” in them, that aren’t totally irritating.

**Editor’s note…Heart of Glass?

What’s the book you haven’t written yet but would love to write?

I’m planning on starting a new series soon, and I’ve got a story knocking around in my head that I’m anxious to get out on paper. Every time I get to steal away some time for it, it’s a treat.

What’s the book you will NEVER write?

I will never write a children’s book.

Rapid fire portion!

Chocolate or vanilla? Chocolate.
Back or front? Back.
East or West? West.
Up or Down? Down.
In or Out? Out.
Left or right? Left.
On or off? Off.
Sam or Dean? Dean.
Kirk or Picard? Picard.
Kirk or Spock? Spock.
Sex or violence? Sex.
Sects or violins? Sects.
Wars or Trek? I can’t decide this one.
Mac or PC? Mac.

You stand before three doors. What colors are they, what’s behind each, which do you choose and why?

Black – past
Red – present
Pink – future

I choose the red door, because I live too much in the past and future and not enough in the present. It’s something I need to work on. Plus, red is my favorite color.

Thanks so much for answering my questions, Chelsea, and good luck with your next release. (OMG I CAN NOT WAAAAIIIITTTTTT!!!!)

And one last question: when will Archie and Gretchen come out with an episode 2?

Three words: Labor Day episode.

Find out more about Chelsea Cain and her fabulous and delicious Heartsick, Sweetheart and Evil at Heart at her website. Find her on Twitter, too!

Thanks for the interview! (I ordered Evil at Heart and can’t wait to read it. Srsly.)

M

New book trailer!

And don’t forget to pick up a copy of Evil at Heart from your favorite bookstore. Comes out Sept. 1!

I will spontaneously combust.

Because you KNOW I love Leon.

M

Waldenbooks Lebanon Valley Mall
20% of the proceeds to benefit the Lebanon Library.
SATURDAY AUGUST 15TH MULTI AUTHOR BOOKSIGNING

10-11 a.m. discussion panel on how to become an author with a publishing contract with Megan Hart, Savannah Russe, Jeri Smith-Ready, Mindy Klasky and Maria V. Snyder

11 a.m.-4 p.m. Author Signings

Angela Ginnetto Romance
Vicky Burkholder Romance
Arthur Ford Fiction
Victoria Smith Romance
T.K. Marion Civil War
Natalie Damschroder Erotic Romance
Brian Keene Horror
Savannah Russe paranormal Romance
Byron N. Morrison Fantasy
Sandy Asher Children 11-2 only
Charlene Haines young adult
Kelly Ann Butterbaugh children’s history
Doris Washington poetry
Robert Vogel Fiction
Dr. Dewey Shaak Memoir
Richard Curtin Military fiction
Dr. Laszlo Geder Memoir
Mindy Klasky Fiction
Frank Bittinger Horror
J.F. Gonzalez Horror
Maria V. Snyder Fantasy
Misty Simon Romance
Joan Landis Self Help
Megan Hart Erotic Romance til 12 only
Lucy Finn Romance
Andy Pete Fantasy
David Boyle Horror
Jeri Smith-Ready Fantasy
Diane Troup Autobiography

List subject to change without notice

Raffles to be held throughout the day for items donated by various merchants in the mall.
Other items to be raffled are: Gift basket from Megan Hart
U.K. signed versions of Maria V. Snyder’s Study series

That’s why my kid said this morning at 1 am as we were leaving Walmart. Yeah, I needed to run to the store for something unexpected (and really in our house we shop at Costco, the chances of us ever running out of anything unexpectedly is pretty slim but hey — when the Zombpocalypse comes, we’ll be ready) and so at approximately 11:30 pm last night, I said “Hey! Who wants to go on an adventure with mama?”

Because you see, it’s the summer time and my dear sweet spawn are no longer children who go to bed at 8:30. No. Oh, no. In the summer they stay up, and up and up…the good thing is they have been watching reruns of THE NANNY and therefore not bothering me when I stay up late, writing….which I have to do in the summer because they are home…and now they’re up all night, too!

Yeah.

So anyways, we got in the car and went to Walmart.

Let me just tell you that there is a whole different breed of shopper at midnight. Also let me tell you that back in the days when I used to go to Walmart at midnight simply because it meant I could get out of the house by myself, (and now I take them with me, what madness is this?) I was always appalled at the people who had their kids with them. Children should be in IN BED at midnight, amiright? No wonder they’re screaming, FFS, you have them at Walmart. AT MIDNIGHT.

Well, my kids don’t scream in the store, so it was okay.

We bought our stuff, including sugary treats I shouldn’t have allowed, and as we came out of the store, the male spawn says “A TAXI CAB!” and then we looked across the parking lot at the crazy ass street cleaning crew riding in their street cleaner doing…I kid you not…doughnuts! And the boy spawn says, “wow, there’s so much more cool stuff that happens at night.”

Indeed, my son.

Indeed.

M