So apparently I was the last to know because I am off in my own little Mercedes La-La Land, but Demons has been nominated for a Stoker.  Woo hoo!  I’m so delighted to be part of that collection, and a Stoker nom is just too cool.

I came across the most delightful, charming thing.  Mary Robinette Kowal has has chosen to think of February as “The Month of Letters”.  During this month, you mail a letter to someone every day.

How do you feel about this?  Eager?  Unnerved?  Daunted?

I grew up making my own stationary and cards.  I mailed letters constantly.  A friend and I even wrote what we called “The Longest Letter In The World” and tried to outdo each other’s letter length in high school.  (What can I say? I seem to be surrounded by competitive people I MUST BEAT.)  But now I find that I send letters less and less. I didn’t even do Christmas cards this year, although the intention was always there.

A few of you have received handwritten letters by me, but they are few and far between.  I’m delighted by Mary’s challenge and plan to do it. It’s funny because I ordered stamps online two days before I even heard about this challenge.  The stars are telling me that I am meant to write.

Won’t you join me?  Perhaps we could send letters to each other.

I just finished Joseph Mead’s debut novel Aleera: Tainted Blood.  Aleera, the daughter of a demonic warlord and a succubus, is being tormented by a serial killer who leaves behind charred bodies.  While trying to track down the killer, she is constantly battling her own dark urges.  Will she be able to control the demon inside her when her life is at stake?

The book reads more like a mostly complete novel rather than a completely finished one.  I was easily distracted at first by the numerous typos and what I felt was rather contrived scenarios.  Aleera manages to get a knife pulled on her not once, but twice in the first 13 pages.  That seemed extreme to me and hey, I live in Las Vegas.

“Oh boy,” I thought.  “This is going to be a long read.”

Only it wasn’t.  I quickly grew to appreciate the interesting and diverse cast of characters.  There’s someone for everybody here.  The group includes a sexy half-succubus, a shy best friend, an older mentor and his feline familar, among others.  I also enjoyed the physical manifestations that took hold when Aleera slipped into her bloodthirsty demonic mode.  Sharp claws protrude from her hands, wings sprout from her back, and her eyes glow red.  The action scenes are fast, vicious, and engaging.  It was also fun to see how she navigates changing relationships with her friends.  After all, otherworldly or not, she’s still a teenager.

Aleera: Tainted Blood isn’t to be confused with the earlier version of this story, which is simply known as Tainted Blood. Don’t be confused if you’re shopping on Amazon. While I would suggest that Mr. Mead goes through and give this book another round of polishing, I found it entertaining.  I also enjoyed the easily sustainable world that he created.  If he were to write a sequel to Aleera,  I would most likely pick it up and follow the characters on their other misadventures.  Dark, sexy, and bloody, this book delivered on what it promised.

We sent letters to Santa before Christmas.  Imagine my delight when he not only responded to our letters, but to mine personally.  Nothing can stop me now, right?  There’s magic dust and elf elbow grease on my side!

“P.S. -Mercedes, I am working on your book deal. I hope this will be the year!”

“Your First Hate Mail: How Life Can Change After Working For a Magazine” has gone live at The Fictorian Era.  Go! Read it! Support them! But first, let me tell you about our little literary meet-cute.

So I was at World Fantasy Con in October.  Besides geeking out over some of my favorite authors, I was also scouring the joint for Sean Markey.  Now I have never met Sean, but we’ve tweeted back and forth and I was hoping to track him and his wife down for some conversation.  Mercedes was on the hunt.  On the prowl.  Beware.

Apparently I’m a super sucky prowler.  I never did find Sean (I’ll get you next time, Gadget!) but I did run into Matthew Jones.  I actually turned around, eyed him, compared him with the tiny little Twitter avatar in my mind and said, “Your name doesn’t happen to be Sean, does it?”

Slow blink.  “No.  Hi.”

Matt is charming, adorable, and fierce. But he also has a heart of gold and, thankfully, a wallet, which is what I needed because I was ONE DOLLAR SHORT of buying a signed copy of Peter S. Beagle’s The Last Unicorn graphic novel, which was sold out not only at WFC, but at every comic book store in the county.  I know this, because my Illiterati sister billie the girl called all of the comic stores for me.  (This is yet another reason why my writing group rocks.)

So Matt gave me a dollar.  I gave him a hug or promised him my soul or some such thing, and Bill and Peggy Wu from William Wu Books gave me their copy of The Last Unicorn.  I was feeling the love.  And that is the story of how I began stalking Peter S. Beagle, Matt, Bill and Peggy, but no longer Sean Markey.

Er, I mean, that’s the story of how this guest post came to be.

Happy 2012, everyone!

Well, this story isn’t really like that.  It’s even better.

I met my agent via Twitter.

Twitter took me a while to get used to, I’ll tell you that.  It’s like having a conversation with 700 of your closest ADD friends.  At the same time.  But once I got the hang of it, I was hooked.  I use Twitter as a reward (“Yay! I finished my project and now I can play! What’s up, Twitter?”), a resource (“Does anybody here live in New Haven, CT? What’s your weather like RIGHT NOW?”), and as a place to meet new writers.  I follow those in the publishing industry. I follow agents. I follow established writers and those who are in the same boat I’m in.  It’s a blast.

One day, after my work was done, (and that’s the key, right there.  Don’t let Twitter distract you from your priorities) I was having a Twitter conversation.  Meanwhile, snippets of other conversations were popping up, and somebody tweeted a link to a Query Tracker contest.  And I?  I pounced.

Query Tracker was announcing that agent Jason Yarn from Paradigm was going to judge a query contest.   But not just any contest!  You had to sell your entire novel in a one line pitch and your first paragraph.  A one line pitch? Are you kidding me?!  Condensing an entire novel into a query letter was hard enough, but this? This was a challenge!

Oh, and I like challenges.  Very much.

The contest was limited to 100 people, so time was definitely a factor.  It filled up very quickly.  If I hadn’t seen the link right then and jumped on it immediately, then I would have lost my opportunity.  Although I didn’t win the contest, Jason was intrigued enough that he asked me to send my query and first ten pages.  Then my full.  Then The Call, which turned out not to be The Call, but A Call.  Then The Real Call.  And the rest is history.  Or at least, it will be.

I’d like to think that, barring this opportunity, I would have eventually sent Jason my query and he would have shouted, “Hallelujah, this is the query of my dreams!”  It could happen.  But I’m also realistic enough to know that timing really is essential.  By the time I finally carefully researched him (hello, Jason Yarn is way back in the “Y” section) and sent my query in, would he still be looking for this type of manuscript?  Would he enjoy the whimsy, or would I perhaps catch him on a bad day and get a rejection?  Luckily it’s a scenario that I don’t have to think about.  I had an eye on Twitter and it helped me land a fantastic agent.  There really isn’t a stronger argument for social media than this.

It’s dark.  I write darkness.  There’s bravery and honor in it. I write bravery and honor.  But it’s branching out into subject matter that I generally choose not to discuss, especially concerning an old job that I had.  Half of you know what I’m talking about. Yes. Child abuse and molestation.

It’s touchy. It’s very sensitive.  It’s something that I have always steered away from, except for a brief mention here or there when I really felt that a mention was needed. Usually that wasn’t the case, however.  It isn’t something that I choose to dwell on, and it isn’t something that I choose to exploit.  But it’s a key element in this story.  Take out that element, and everything unravels.  So how do you deal with something that you don’t really want to touch?

Fearlessly.  Honestly and with sensitivity. This will look different for everyone. I personally have a few writing rules that I have never broken.  One of those rules is that I will never write a graphic rape scene of any kind.  While some people tell you that you should purposefully break all of your rules in order to free your creativity, that’s a line that I choose never to cross.  Maybe in ten or twenty years I’ll feel differently.  I don’t think so.  A young child tending to her bruises is all that I feel I need to say in order to get the point across.  The horror is still there.

Stories are a strange thing.  I wanted it to go into a different direction, with the girl’s trials barely mentioned.  But it wasn’t enough.  It needed to be brought delicately to the forefront, and since that’s what needed to be done, I did it.  So many people think that since we, as authors, write the stories, we’re not affected by them.  This isn’t the case.

This was my struggle.  Is there a scene that you ever had trouble writing?  How do you handle something that needs to be said, but is of a delicate nature?

I just typed in the best CAPTCHA phrase that I have ever seen:  Whoomort.  It’s obviously Voldemort’s free-spirited brother.

My very dear Internet,

This is so difficult for me to say. We have spent every day together for years.  You’re here when I wake up.  You promise me songs and beautiful pictures of wildflowers and live video of Loch Ness just in case the monster decides to show up.  We’ve shared cups of hot cocoa together as you tell me about stargazing and different diseases of the body and how best to deal with grief.  I sneak to you after everybody else is in bed because I want to watch Sleepthief’s ”Eurydice” video or because I need to know what’s going on in the Twitterverse.  You make sure that I’m never alone, even when I’m feeling my most lonely.  For this, I thank you.

But you’re starting to intrude, darling Internet.  No longer content to take refuge in the corners of my mind, you’re trying to force your way into parts of my day where you simply don’t belong.  Dinners are not for you.  Family time is for unplugging, not for the little one to be watching Dinosaur Train incessantly.  I don’t want to hear your dings, chirps, bongs, or diddly doos when guests are over, or when I’m talking to my mother on the phone, or especially when my husband and I start dividing up the chore list.  Seriously?  I love the Bed Intruder song as much (or more) than the next person, but I don’t need it to suddenly start playing when my daughter is saying her prayers.

I realized that things had gone too far when my husband screamed “Leeeerrroooooooy Jeeeeeeeeenkins!” as he raced the car across the road.  My life has become a meme.  I see Prancing Cera everywhere.  I think Sad Keanu lives in the public park down the street.  He really does look that sad.

I didn’t mind it, not really.  That is, until I realized that you, sweet Internet, had started to disrupt my writing.  I was working on a story and then stopped in the middle to check my email!  Update my status! Write a blog post!  Write THIS blog post.  You’ve gone too far.  You’ve started to seep into the most priceless of things.  My family time and my writing time are off-limits to you.

You broke my trust, treasured one.  You stole my time from me, and time is one of the most precious commodities that I have. It isn’t reasonable to quit you completely, and I don’t think that either of us want that.  But there are new boundaries, and I require you to respect them. From 9:00 to 11:00 at night, every night, you will be turned off. I shall write during this time, while the rest of the house slumbers, and even if I dream of you and pine for you, we must keep our distance.

You are good for me.  I am good for you.  But only within reason.  When you take away my writing, you take away my heart.  I know you don’t want this to come between us, O Internet, and I love you dearly for it.  Thank you for understanding.  Play with your other friends during this most sacred of times, but please, I beg of you to let me be.

With all of the love that I have in my heart,

Mercedes

PS If you could find me an amazing lavender cookie recipe, I’d be most grateful.

This special holiday issue of Shock Totem features an eclectic mix of holiday-inspired dark fiction from K. Allen Wood, Mercedes M. Yardley, New York Times bestseller Kevin J. Anderson, Robert J. Duperre and more. Also anecdotal holiday recollections from Jack Ketchum, Jennifer Pelland, Mark Allen Gunnells, Nick Cato, and a host of others.
Celebrate the holidays with Shock Totem!

Also, Shock Totem has closed its doors for the holidays.  We will reopen on February 1st.  Check the guidelines and send us something then, won’t you?  Until then, may your holidays be filled with happiness and horror.