And I have the photographic evidence to prove it. Heh. 
Mon 5 Nov 2012
Mon 22 Oct 2012
My Time at New York Comic Con
Posted by Corrina under About the Writer
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The other thing that kept me busy while the contest was running was a trip to New York Comic Con where I was part of a panel on Geek Parenting.
We talked about the upcoming Geek Mom: Projects, Tips & Adventures for Moms and Their 21st Century Families. It’s due out on October 30th and I’m so proud of the book and my co-authors!
Coming October 30th!!!
I also decided to multi-task, which made things a little bit hectic. Took the three younger kids–17, 13, and 13–with me and I also tried to do some press events, like one for Person of Interest. Fun to talk with Amy Acker & Michael Emerson.
So, Minion stories:
The whole time was loads of fun but exhausting. I think the favorite part for the kids was artist alley and they came away with some great commissions, as you can see from the articles.
Mon 22 Oct 2012
Contest Winners!
Posted by Corrina under Phoenix Rising
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Sorry for the delay in the announcement! The contest winners have been notified and prizes are on their way. Thanks to everyone who commented!
The delay was caused by a cat. Who decided to throw up all over my MacBook Pro keyboard. Yeah. The MacBook still works after a day in a bag with rice BUT the keyboard is fried. Apple gave me a couple of approved repair guys locally so I’ll see what they say. But this sucks.
It’s a three-year-old Macbook and not under Apple Care any longer and, sadly, they wouldn’t cover cats gakking on keyboards anyway. I’m worried because the tech at the Apple store told me the liquid can slowly kill the logic board underneath the keyboard. Dammit. I love the cat but, jeez, Smokey. Couldn’t you gak on the carpet like every other cat?
Tue 9 Oct 2012
Snippets From Phoenix Rising
Posted by Corrina under Phoenix Rising
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The contest runs until midnight Oct. 9th! Tonight! Go enter!
And to give a glimpse of what’s in the book, as well as a look at the hero of Phoenix Legacy, here are some snippets from Phoenix Rising featuring Philip Drake.
**************
Philip sank into her armchair and closed his eyes, hiding from the light of her corner lamp, covered by shadows. “Death has a way of spilling over onto anyone in its path. Alec’s life is one of violence. I don’t want you in the way. This was a mistake, a serious mistake.”
***************
Her whole body felt battered, as if Alec had slammed her into that rock. It would feel worse after she told Alec. Whatever his reaction, she’d have to face it. Alec had taught her one thing. Don’t run, don’t hide. She’d wanted to change Alec’s life. Instead, he’d altered hers beyond recognition.
Her stomach rumbled. She ignored it and put her head in her hands and immediately felt dizzy. Her throat felt dry. Hunger, she could ignore. Thirst was harder. If she was dehydrated, that would explain part of the headache. She walked to the kitchen and pulled out the pitcher of water.
“Beth, we have to get the hell out of here. Now.”
She closed her eyes and sighed, her hands tightening around the pitcher. “Hello, Philip.”
**************
She stepped between them, her arms wide. “Alec, this is Philip Drake. My father.”
Her father!? “The black ops CIA agent who had you set me up?”
“If I’d set you up, you’d be dead,” Drake said.
***************
Drake brushed past them, holding a big-ass machine gun with a curved ammunition clip. A Kalashnikov, probably. How’d he get that?
“ I think he was hiding it in the kitchen pantry.”
“ I ’d hate to see what he keeps in his closet.”
**********************
“Where’s Philip?”
“Off doing whatever he does. Does he vanish like that often?”
“Routinely. When he reappears, he usually has presents for me.”
There was no sense worrying about her father. She’d hear from him when he was ready.
“So Drake’s kinda like Santa Claus.”
“If Santa carried daggers and packed heat.”
One more time, the official blurb:
Philip Drake is immortal by virtue of a psychic power that heals all but the worst injuries. He’s needed every bit of it as a black ops agent, a life so violent that the line between pain and pleasure is tangled up in his head.
When he walks away from the CIA, the last thing he expects is to discover someone stole his DNA to create a race of super-healers. And that the expectant mother is a woman from his past who’d consider it her pleasure to spit on his grave.
One moment, Delilah Sefton is listening to a seriously hot, seriously deranged man giving her some half-baked explanation as to why she’s pregnant with no memory of how she got that way. The next, armed men swarm into her bar, and she and Mr. Sexy-Crazy are on the run.
Safety at the Phoenix Institute is only temporary, but it’s long enough to put the pieces together. A madman plans to steal her son in a plot to take over the world. And to stop him, she must learn to trust the baby’s father—a man she blames for her greatest loss.
Tue 2 Oct 2012
Contest Celebration! Phoenix Rising Now in Print!
Posted by Corrina under About the Writer, Phoenix Rising, Writing
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Today is the day! Phoenix Rising is out in paperback!
I received my author copies a few weeks ago and took time to sit down and fondle them a bit. New book smell! Nothing else like it!
So, contest!!
Comment below about what you’re currently reading! That way we can talk about books and recommend them to each other too.
THREE PRIZES, THREE WINNERS, chosen by random number from the comments.
1. A print copy of Phoenix Rising.
2. Ecopies of Phoenix Legacy, the sequel coming on Nov. 11th. , Phoenix Rising, and Luminous, the short story set in the same univers.
3. A $10 Amazon certificate.
I will close entries in one week, at midnight on October 9th. Make sure that there is a way I can reach you if you want a prize, preferably via email. I’ve found Facebook messages tend to get lost.
As I held my book in my hands, I started to think of all the different influences on the series, especially the first book. The first, obvious, one is my love of Marvel’s X-Men, as the heroes in my books are born with their powers, as are the mutant X-Men, and the eventual goal of those running the Phoenix Institute is to provide a safe haven for mutants and teach them how to use their abilities safely.
But that was the general concept. As it took shape, it became more my own idea. For one, I restricted all the abilities to ones that could be explained by psychic powers. That means telekinesis and telepathy.
Alec Farley, the hero of Phoenix Rising, is a telekinetic but also a firestarter, as starting fires is just another level of moving things around with the brain, albeit at a molecular level. There are many variations I can use. The hero of the upcoming Phoenix Legacy has TK but it’s limited to the ability to heal himself. He can literally order his body to repair damage I’m currently working on the third full book in the series and the heroine can walk through walls, which is due to her psychic ability to control the molecules of her body.
Telepathy, on the other hand, could also take many forms. There are: simple communication/ the ability to mentally order people around; to cast illusions by making someone see what isn’t real; and to make what is real invisible. (See Luminous.)
It would be boring to write such powerful people without giving them weaknesses, so each strength has an appropriate drawback. Alec’s fire can escape his control. My self-healer can’t solve blood loss. My telepath can only control so many people for a short period of time. My ghost walker can only carry something with if it’s smaller than her own body weight.
Something else I borrowed was part of the setting. I feel in love with one of Nora Roberts’ Harlequin stories involving one of her big families. I loved the story about a young artist who lived in a lighthouse in Maine, especially the setting. I had just visited Maine and it resonated. So I took that idea, “borrowed” a real house set up on a hill over looking the harbor in Maine, and put that in the book.
And Beth…the first stirrings of the character that became Beth, the heroine of Phoenix Rising, took place back in 2004 when I was talking to Karen Harbaugh at RWA National in Dallas. She talked about how few leads of Asian descent there were in romance stories. I said maybe people write what they know. And she said that was no excuse. If people could research Regencies and historicals, they could research a character’s background too.
I sat down to write Phoenix Rising and Beth took shape as a Japanese-American. It’s not that I said “I’ll write a minority lead,” it was more “I’m writing a very unique character and this background adds to it.” I saw her as just Beth, whose background I had to get right as I had to get Alec’s background just right. But I received a few comments about people happy to see a non-white lead in a book, so that was nice.
And, last but not least, I owe a debt to the great writers of books I devoured in my childhood. Alec Farley is my own tribute to the wonderful Walter Farley, who wrote the Black Stallion series. I keep and treasure those books to this day. Alec Ramsey is the hero of the series, so I just swapped his last name for the author’s last name.
I only hope, in some small way, that I can touch reachers a tenth as well as Walter Farley’s stories touched me.
Fri 10 Aug 2012
Phoenix Legacy, Coming in November!
Posted by Corrina under Phoenix Rising
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A man too dangerous to live. A woman whose survival depends on forgiving him.
The Phoenix Institute, Book 2
Philip Drake is immortal by virtue of a psychic power that heals all but the worst injuries. He’s needed every bit of it as a black ops agent, a life so violent that the line between pain and pleasure is tangled up in his head.
When he walks away from the CIA, the last thing he expects is to discover someone stole his DNA to create a race of super-healers. And that the expectant mother is a woman from his past who’d consider it her pleasure to spit on his grave.
One moment, Delilah Sefton is listening to a seriously hot, seriously deranged man giving her some half-baked explanation as to why she’s pregnant with no memory of how she got that way. The next, armed men swarm into her bar, and she and Mr. Sexy-Crazy are on the run.
Safety at the Phoenix Institute is only temporary, but it’s long enough to put the pieces together. A madman plans to steal her son in a plot to take over the world. And to stop him, she must learn to trust the baby’s father—a man she blames for her greatest loss.
Warning: This novel contains fast cars (that are driven), numerous guns (that are shot), a hero who prefers pain over love, and a heroine determined to fight for those she loves.
Mon 6 Aug 2012
Agent, Friends, Dancing! My Trip to The Romance Writers of America Conference
Posted by Corrina under Phoenix Rising, Writing
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Never underestimate the power of a determined friend, in this case, one Jill Purinton.
Not to mention the power of a geeky encounter.
First, I have to announce, I have a new agent, Eric Ruben. I wasn’t looking for new representation but through a chain of events one after the other, which included a geeky conversation, I have one. I’m very pleased, especially as we’ve already bonded over our love of New York Comic Con.
And to make this more fun, this happened during the annual meeting of Romance Writers of America in Anaheim last month. Which meant I got to celebrate with my fabulous roommates and talented writers: Christine Merrill, and Katy Cooper, and the aforementioned determined friend, Jill, pictured above.
Another friend, the lovely Kim Ivora, took us on outings to Anaheim, especially to this great place that served breakfast and gelato! What could be better? And my friend Chandra Years played walking talking Disney app for me and Chris at DisneyLand.
Back to Jill’s being the most determined friend ever…
Thu 19 Jul 2012
Detective #1,000–Gotham’s Last Laugh
Posted by Corrina under 1, Writing
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I’ve been playing this game based on the Apprentice television show over at the Brian M. Bendis forum on Jinxworld. (For non-comic readers, Bendis is likely Marvel’s more prolific writer. Avengers and all that.)
I’ve never watched the show but the game I’m playing basically consists of writing prompts. Coming up with story arcs, coming up with alternate takes on heroes, plotting out an entire Marvel line reboot and even plotting an entire year of an animated series.
It’s been great for generating ideas and characters, especially with all the plot bunnies. But it also is giving me a taste of what it would be like to write these characters, which is absolutely a blast.
Our last big assignment as a team was to come up with a #1,000 anniversary issue. Either Spider-Man or Action Comics (Superman) or Detective Comics (Batman.)
Naturally, I insisted on Batman. And then I got stuck for what I thought might be a big game changer. After all, sidekicks have all been killed before, Batman’s been defeated before, he’s even been considered dead fairly recently. Can’t really marry him off, he’s Batman and it wouldn’t stick. So then I looked at the villains and thought, well, the #1,000 issue demands the most iconic Bat villain.
The Joker.
So here’s our take on Detective #1,000, which might occur ten years down the line, if DC goes back to the regular number system. (They swapped all numbers back to #1 with the reboot.) This is not solely my own creation, I had the help of Kedd & Gary Sloan from the Bendis board.
I’ll give you a hint. Something very bad happens to the Joker. Second hint: Batman doesn’t do it to him.
Third hint? Look to the image.
Also, a certain redhead who’s been missing from the Gothamverse for a while makes a re-appearance.
Detective #1,000
Batman started fighting crime in a corrupt system back during the Great Depression, a problem that remains today in places like Detroit, New Orleans, and Camden, New Jersey. Batman still stands for the common person who gets back up off the ground and not only survives but vows to make certain that others never again suffer the same kind of pain. He is the guardian of the night whose quest is endless as no one person can eliminate the horrors of life.
Still, Batman will always try.
Over the years, Batman has trained a number of exceptional young men who have suffered similar losses, gained an ally in a thief whose life taught her that the ‘law’ is often a tool for the unjust, and made perhaps his truest friend in a man who, many times, provides his strongest link to the law.
As Batman: Year One was the parallel story of two men searching to serve justice, one outside the law, one inside the law, Detective #1,000 is meant to be a bookend to Year One, the story of the parallel tracks the actions of Batman and JIm Gordon and where those tracks have taken them.
This issue contains the story that allows the Batman mythos to move into the future with a somewhat altered status quo both for the Batman characters and for the city at large. Along with that, the back-up stories will showcase the best of the characters in Gotham and the work of the creators who’ve had such an impact on them.
Gotham’s Last Laugh
The story opens as Commissioner Jim Gordon and Batman meet on the rooftops of the GCPC in the darkness, as the Bat signal is off. Gordon passes on the information that a number of teenage boys are missing from the foster care system. He knows that Batman and his allies are the only ones who can cut through the bureaucratic system fast enough to prevent another disappearance.
Batman contacts his allies. (more…)
Fri 22 Jun 2012
The Library Journal Reviews Luminous!
Posted by Corrina under Phoenix Rising
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I got the first review in yesterday for Luminous. It’s a coup to get reviewed by The Library Journal at all, nevermind receive a positive one, so I’m very pleased.
Quoting my favorite part:
“Verdict Quick reading with a superhero vibe, Luminous is a good start on the beachy book season.”
Link to the full review. The Library Journal. You have to scroll down a bit, since they are capsule reviews.
Tue 29 May 2012
Book Release Day: Luminous is Out!
Posted by Corrina under Phoenix Rising, Writing
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And with the release of the novella, Luminous, I’m now officially a superhero series writer.
So far, that makes three books in the Seneca series and two in the Phoenix Institute series. Phoenix is catching up, as I have a third book coming in November.
But today is all about Luminous.
Self-promotion instincts force me to point out that the novella is only $2.49 at Samhain Publishing and $3.01 on Amazon for the Kindle. Go, look, buy.
Okay, BSP over.
The creation of this story is unique because it was basically the result of a thread on Gail Simone’s forums at the Jinxworld website. I started, “Want to Write a Superhero Story?”, to encourage all the talented people on the forum to put their creative energy to work with the goal in mind to submit a story to Samhain Publishing’s call-out for superhero romance novellas.
I admit, when it came time to submit, I cheated.
I found a way to tie it into the Phoenix series and so I sent it to my regular Samhain editor instead of to the superhero romance anthology. Thankfully, Jennifer Miller liked it enough to buy it and, with the help of her editing, the story turned out great.
Yet the help of those on Gail’s forum was invaluable and I wanted to recognize them. So here’s the dedication:
Dedication
To the posters of the Want to Write a Superhero Story? thread on the Gail Simone forums at Jinxworld. Thanks for your support and help and for keeping me going. You were an inspiration.
What’s the story about?
Well, there’s an official blurb and excerpt on my books page here (along with links to buy) and more at Samhain but I can tell you the desire to write this mainly came from my desire to write a Batman-type story. I’m pretty sure DC Comics is about to hand me a chance to do that.(If you’re read my criticism of how DC has handle outreach to the female audience, you probably know why. And there’s the fact I still have a lot to learn about comic scripting.
But I can write.
And just as it felt great to start my steampunk story and do a riff on Sherlock Holmes, it felt awesome to be creating my own urban landscape peopled with my own heroes. Noir seemed a perfect name for my heroine, a mysterious figure who is literally invisible and so decided to make dramatic use of black in her wardrobe. I picture her very much in the mold of the Shadow.
Lieutenant Aloysius James was inspired, naturally, by Gotham’s truest cop, Jim Gordon.
You wouldn't want to mess with this guy, would you? Art from http://doubleleaf.deviantart.com/gallery/
Al isn’t the same guy, however, though they both share a need to do the right thing, no matter what. For one, Al’s a lot less eloquent and more alone in the world.
Until Noir shows up and he’s not sure whether she needs to be arrested, helped or protected. He also finds the way she fills out the black leather more than a bit distracting.
Luckily, Al isn’t easily phased by Noir’s invisibility because he’s generally unflappable. It makes their eventual lovemaking a bit challenging but as Al says “who says all men need a visual?”
So I hope you’ll give Luminous a try. I’m very tempted, when I finish the full-length novels in the Phoenix Institute series, to return to their home in Charlton City and set the pair after corrupt cops, mutant bad guys and the occasional ordinary villains who can make life so difficult.
I’m not sure what to call that series yet. Noir doesn’t seem quite right. Crime and Shadows, perhaps.
Note: for those looking for the cast of Phoenix Rising, they’re mentioned at the end of Luminous. And they’ll return in full force in Phoenix Legacy in November.
