New Zombie Romance novel: "Love in the Time of Zombies" is now for sale!

Cassandra Gannon's newest novel, "Love in the Time of Zombies" is now for sale on Amazon!

Love in the Time of Zombies

Sneak peek at the cover to "The Snow Queen," a new fairy tale romance

A sneak peek at the cover to Elizabeth Gannon's next book, The Snow Queen.  It should be out this week.

Sneak peek at the cover to "Love in the Time of Zombies," a new zombie paranormal romance novel

Here's a look at the cover to Cassandra Gannon's new book "Love in the Time of Zombies," which should be out later this week.

Stacy's thoughts on the Supernatural finale

In honor of the season finale of Supernatural which aired tonight, I thought I’d hand the blog over to Stacy from the Consortium of Chaos series, and let her give her thoughts on it. As readers may recall, it is her favorite series on TV:

Thoughts on the Supernatural season finale by Stacy Bell

Okay, so as I’m SURE everyone out there knows, the season finale of Supernatural just aired a couple hours ago. So, I thought I’d write down a few of my thoughts on the show in general.

I’ve watched the show since season 2, and it’s the best thing on television. …Possibly in the history of the world, although antibiotics and stuff are important too, I guess. In any event, I feel like the show has lost its way over the past couple seasons. STILL the best show on TV (EVER!) but even the best of us need some help from time to time, and show, here are my suggestions to your writers. If they are reading this, they can feel free to use any of them (…now I’m thinking about how TOTALLY awesome it would be to appear in the Supernatural credits…).

1. Dean is the best hunter. PERIOD. I don’t care how many guest stars we throw in there, or how many times we show some monster tossing him around. It’s been shown time and time again that Dean is the only hunter with the mind, body (WOW), and MOST importantly HEART to protect the world from evil. I AM a superhero, and I know what they look like, and Dean is one. Look at the man! All he needs is the Cape! The show periodically seems to lose this point though, and as it’s been the heart of the show since its inception, that means that the show feels different now than it ever has before.

2. Why is Dean sidelined this season? It seems like every other character on the show has had some real storyline, and grand drama to showcase them. Even CHARLIE for God’s sake, and who even cares about her? Answer: NO ONE. Dean is a deeply nuanced character, ably played by a fantastic actor. He’s like a sexy onion, and each layer you peel off of him just reveals more and more awesome. But instead of watching those layers get peeled off (and while I’m dreaming, hopefully clothes as well) we are forced to watch him bringing soup to the other characters like something out of Downton Abby. It’s like having Rambo in the car, and going in to face the bad guys alone, or benching your best player in the last inning of the big game.

3. Why is the show standing in the way of Cas and Dean being together? They have a profound bond. PERIOD. Dean + Cas = EPIC! Imagine how pretty their babies would be!

4. Why does the show try to make Sam into Dean? Sam is Sam and he has an important place on the show, but it’s NOT in front of Dead. The show is supposed to be about the brothers as they travel the back roads of America and fight evil. It is NOT supposed to be about the brothers staying in the same place, while SAM tries to fight the forces of evil, and Dean makes him soup. It is also not about watching Sam sit around all summer and tinker with broken air conditioners while Dean suffers alone. (Thankfully, Cas was there and was able to help him. At least SOMEONE cares about him.) Sam made less of an effort to help Dean than I’ve made to conquer interstellar flight. Now, I don’t blame Sam for this. I know a lot of people (rightly) do, but I place the blame on the writers’ doorstep. The Sam I know from previous seasons would have moved Heaven, Hell AND Purgatory to get Dean back, no matter how many cheap motel trollops try to distract him. That is the WRITER’S fault, and they had better fix it. Sam deserves better. And Dean DEFINITELY deserves better, both from the writers and his brother.

Now some thoughts on the finale (SPOILERS!)

5. So, let me see if I understand this, show: Dean has to apologize for not trusting Sam, despite the fact that the series has showed us time and time again that his distrust was entirely rational, justified and not NEARLY extreme enough! Maybe Dean would have trusted Sam is Sam had… I don’t know… DONE SOMETHING!

6. Did we learn nothing about leaving uber-powerful demon people tied up, and then leaving them completely unattended? Didn’t our prisoner escape the last time we did that? Last week? Am I the only one who remembers that? I mean, are Dean and Sam giving super-villain clichés a shot, and just leaving the prisoner alone instead of watching them?

7. So, all that time we spent following Amelia and her war hero husband around was, what? Just filler? Was she like the director’s daughter who wanted to be on daddy’s show? Why did the show think we needed to see all that?

8. Why are we suddenly afraid of Sam dying? The Winchesters die like twice a season, why would this one be any different? I’m a super-hero too, so I understand the idea that death is a temporary inconvenience, and nothing more.

So, in the end, Supernatural has an exciting opportunity to fix the many MANY problems which uncaring writing have created, but amazingly talented actors and a loving fanbase can solve. Now, I’m not saying I have all the answers here… No, wait. That’s EXACTLY what I’m saying, isn’t it?

Yeah.

FIX IT WRITERS! I just want to watch Dean continue his livelong career of awesome, and never have to watch him waiting on someone again! 

-Stacy Bell

New Superhero novel: "Electrical Hazard" is now available!

The next chapter in the Consortium of Chaos superhero novel romance series, Electrical Hazard is now for sale on Amazon!
http://www.amazon.com/Electrical-Hazard-Consortium-Chaos-ebook/dp/B00CR7FYFU#_


  

The Consortium of Chaos: The super-villain organization semi-unwillingly thrust into the field of heroics. They’re not nice people, but now they do nice things. …Occasionally. If it’s during office hours and there’s nothing good on TV, anyway.

The Consortium of Chaos goes back to school!

Stacy: Stacy’s awesome. Just ask her. Her powers let her control electricity, she’s collected every Pokemon card, and she’s almost sure she isn’t going to flunk of college this semester. Being Stacy has never been so amazing! Honestly, she’s positive could be running the entire C of C, whipping the villains-turned-heroes into shape, except she’s got bigger ideas percolating in her cheerfully evil brain. Stacy’s determined to fulfill the next step of her master plan to claim her man. She’s been in love with Hazard since she was a little girl. Now that she’s all grown-up, it’s the time to teach the eight foot giant on who he really belongs to. What better place to begin his education than at Garden State University?

Hazard: Hazard’s alone and he likes it that way. For two hundred years, he lived in unrelenting pain and darkness. Then, he met a certain chipper blonde with criminal ideas and a shiny smile who gave him a reason to live. For some reason he can’t fathom, Stacy has followed him around for years, chattering about TV shows and book clubs. Stacy means everything to Hazard. And he’s not about to risk losing her by revealing that he’s hopelessly, desperately in love with the little weirdo. No matter how… adult she suddenly seems. Which is why he can’t explain how he let himself get dragged off GSU to help her graduate.

In fact, half the Consortium is on campus to support Stacy. The “reformed” super-villains are going out for the football team, redesigning the curriculum and taking over a fraternity house for themselves. It’s going to be the best semester ever… So long as Stacy can keep Hazard from falling into the clutches of the most nefarious, gold medal winning, swimsuit model, super heroine to ever crawl out of mean girl hell… Bekki.

Oh, and there are also some monsters.

Sneak peek at the cover to "Electrical Hazard", a new superhero romance / supernatural romance novel

Electrical Hazard is book four of Elizabeth Gannon's Consortium of Chaos series, and should be out sometime next week.

Things that bug me in Romance novels: advice for self-published authors on Kindle

As a teen, I was a kind of geeky, straight A student, with an active imagination.  (As opposed to today, where I’m… yeah… exactly the same.)  Bookworm-y tendencies manifested themselves in a variety of ways for a high school girl.  There’s watching Dirty Dancing six million times.  There’s passionately debating episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer online.  And there’s reading every romance novel in the local library.  Truthfully, none of these addictions have left me, but romance novels are definitely the deepest. 

Over the years, I’ve developed a list of small and mostly nitpicky things that I like and don’t like in my romance novels.  They aren’t against the rules of the genre or necessary for me to enjoy a book.  They’re just little personal stuff that bug me or that I look for in my favorite stories.

1)      I don’t like it when the hero/heroine sleeps with someone else during the course of the story.  It just feels wrong to me.  I’ve seen this is lots of different books, from Material Girl by Julia London to Dance on the Wind by Mary Jo Putney.  (And I liked those examples overall.  I still have both books on my shelf.)  But why did the hero and/or heroine need to have sex with someone besides their love interest?  What did it add to the story?

 

2)      I don’t like it when the heroine has no role in the finale.  That’s not to say she has to be judo-chopping the villain or kidnapped in some hostage-deal, but she’s got to have a part to play.  For example, I’m very fond of Linda Howard’s books.  (My favorite being After the Night.  Or White Lies.  Or Heart of Fire.  Yeah, probably Heart of Fire.  I enjoyed Ben Lewis immensely.)  But the heroine in Open Season spends the climax of the book hiding at a hotel.  Granted, it probably made sense from a “realistic” POV, but where’s the fun realistic? 

3)      I don’t like first person narration.  I feel like I’m only getting half the story if I can’t get into other character’s heads.  I thought the Mockingjay, the third book of the Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins, was severely limited by the fact that Katniss was away from the action for long stretches or time.  (SPOILER !!!!!!!! Mostly, though, the book upset me because Finnick died.  WTF was that about?  Seriously, he was my favorite character, damn it.  END SPOILER!!!!!!!!!!!!)  Anyway, not many romances have first person narration, but, when I come across one, I tend to put that book back on the shelf.

On the other hands, there are oodles of small things that amp up my liking of a book.  I’m pretty eager to enjoy a book, especially when I’ve paid good money for it.  But, sometimes there will be some little thing that makes a story even more delightful for me.

1)       I like big casts.  I’m not saying that I want to take notes in order to keep everyone straight, but I like it when there are a lot of people interacting.  I think it creates more complex stories and relationships.  The way the characters in JR Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood books all live together and have to deal with each other’s quirks makes the series interesting to me.  Another example would be Nora Roberts’ Montana Sky, where she writes three sisters, their love interest, and various other characters on the ranch.  Everything just comes to life. 

2)       I like it when the characters do what I would do in their place.  Sometimes, this means jumping off the paddle boat when you’re kidnapped, such as in Once a Princess by Johanna Lindsey.  Sometimes, it’s just the character saying obvious thing.   I remember reading Tempest in Time by Eugenia Riley, where the heroine is sent back in time to the pre-Civil War South and insists on challenging everything she sees.  A small example was when the annoying plantation men started complaining about malaria, she’s like, “Idiots, malaria comes from mosquitos.  How can you not know that?”  I started laughing, because if it was me, I’d probably have said the same thing.

3)      I like it when the heroes aren’t perfect.  Sure being rich, handsome, and well-adjusted is great for the happily-ever-after part of the story.  But, it’s a heck of a lot more enjoyable for me to watch the hero’s process of getting there.  I don’t want him to always be right or popular.  I like it when the guy’s kind of a mess.  Zarek is Sherrilyn Kenyon’s Dance with the Devil is a good example.  He’s a sweet guy underneath the bitterness and snark and everybody-wanting-him-dead parts.  It just takes three hundred pages for the heroine to help him figure it out.  If he’s already doin’ fine, what’s the point of the story?

Personal taste plays into so much and this is some of the things that I notice when I’m reading a romance novel.  None of this stuff will make-or-break an entire book for me.  They’re just the details that can turn the experience into something extra special or detract from the overall story.

- Cassandra Gannon