Cheers,

E.D. Walker (aka Beth Matthews)

Anyway, here’s a pic of Zee Dark Blue eyes:

Feisty Frederica Fitzgerald is one day shy of her sweet sixteen when she’s nearly run over by a mysterious stranger. Dressed in Roman armor. Riding a horse. Freddy can deal with the running over part—no harm done. The real problem is the rider, Mr. Tall, Dark and Mysterious. Also known as Deg. Freddy’s hooked on the mysterious Deg right from the start (although dude, togas went out of style several thousand years ago), but he’s got secrets he isn’t sharing, and trouble follows him closer than his own shadow.

In this scene Freddy spends some quality time with a potential suitor with…interesting results.

Clymenus motioned for Freddy to sit beside him on the bench. She did, careful to leave enough room for two people to sit between them, in case Clymenus decided to go all Mr. Grabby Hands on her.

“Frederica.” Clymenus sighed. “This is my mother.”

He was pointing at the plant.

Check out http://sixsunday.com/ to read all the other great excerpts!

Click here and here to read my six sentences from previous weeks for Heir to the Underworld.

Feisty Frederica Fitzgerald is one day shy of her sweet sixteen when she’s nearly run over by a mysterious stranger. Dressed in Greek armor. Riding a horse. Freddy can deal with the running over part—no harm done. The real problem is the rider, Mr. Tall, Dark and Mysterious. Also known as Deg. Freddy’s hooked on the mysterious Deg right from the start (although dude, togas went out of style several thousand years ago), but he’s got secrets he isn’t sharing, and trouble follows him closer than his own shadow…in this scene realizing just how much Freddy has come to mean to him…

Polydegmon squeezed his eyes closed, his hand trailed over her arm and rested atop her hand on his cheek, holding her fingers there, never wanting to let go, to leave this moment. He rattled a breath into his constricting chest. “Ubi tu Gaia, ego Gaius.” He whispered the words, reverent, moved, as sincere as the day he had sworn by the river Styx to protect her. “Where thou art Gaia, I shall be Gaius.” Even with his eyes closed, he swore he knew how far she stood from him, how many bare finger lengths separated his lips from hers.

Check out http://sixsunday.com/ to read all the other great excerpts!

Click here , here , here and here to read my six sentences from previous weeks.

(Feisty Frederica Fitzgerald is one day shy of her sweet sixteen when she’s nearly run over by a mysterious stranger. Dressed in Greek armor. Riding a horse. Freddy can deal with the running over part—no harm done. The real problem is the rider, Mr. Tall, Dark and Mysterious. Also known as Deg. Freddy’s hooked on the mysterious Deg right from the start (although dude, togas went out of style several thousand years ago), but he’s got secrets he isn’t sharing, and trouble follows him closer than his own shadow…case in point, in this scene Deg is about two seconds away from being eaten by hellhounds. New boyfriends can be SO high maintenance.)

The house. Get to her house.

He forced the simple thoughts to stay on an endless loop, holding himself by sheer will to his destination. If he didn’t find sanctuary, and soon, the Hunt’s pack of rapacious mutts would tear him limb from limb. Literally.

Not quite the dignified end one would hope for.

Check out http://sixsunday.com/ to read all the other great excerpts!

Click here and here and here to read my six sentences from previous weeks.

So, I feel a little silly with that update post, but I honestly thought the formatting would take me longer. But then it didn’t and I got it all uploaded and so Heir to the Underworld is back on the market again. YAY!

I think it’s selling OK so far. It’s like 25000 in the Kindle store which is actually probably higher than any of my books have been…I think.

I got it up for Kindle yesterday morning and I got it onto All Romance ebooks in various formats this afternoon. And then I took a nap. Barnes and Noble asks for a bit more information from their “publishers” so I’ll have that link live in a few more days. I feel like this project pretty much ate my 4-day weekend but it was worth it. Can’t wait to see what kind of royalties I’m gettin’. Not because I think they’ll be a lot, more out of curiosity for what 25000 in the Kindle store means in terms of monies on .99 cent book.

Now, I need to get my head off Heir to the Underworld and onto my next book…just as soon as I check my Amazon rank one more time… ;P

Cheers,

E.D. Walker

So, right now all my new projects have been switched to the backburner while I try to get Freddy (That’s Heir to the Underworld) ready to go up as a self-pub. This entails a lot of work. I’m going back through and cutting out large swathes of cool but unnecessary stuff. Then comes the formatting. Then (if I don’t royally bork the formatting) comes the uploading to all the sites. And then, hopefully, comes the money, the accolades, the awards, the fame, the infamy…

Eh, probably not. But hopefully a little bit of money. And the book is currently a contender for Best Young Adult  novel in the EPIC eBook Awards competition. So maybe at least one award.

The cover is done, though:

I really love it. I probably drove the cover artist, the lovely and talented Fiona Jayde, NUTS with all my various tweaks and such. But she was a trooper and I can’t wait to work with her again. (She also did the gorgeous cover for my first book, The Beauty’s Beast).

So, one thing on my list of a hundred Things I Need to Do to Get the Book Released checked off. Whew. 99 to go.

Back to editing the book now to make sure it is fit for human consumption. Or, at least, reading. ;P

Ta,

E.D. Walker

Unfortunately, Doctor not included. Maybe next year. ;P

(Lady Kathryn’s father sent her to court to find a husband, but instead she finds herself assigned to care for the king’s prized pet, an uncanny black wolf. What the king doesn’t realize is his remarkable beast was once Gabriel, a knight, cursed into wolf form by an unfaithful wife…in this scene Kathryn and Gabriel, aka ‘Garwaf’ have just finished examining the wares in a tanner’s booth at a fair.)

Kathryn swept from the tanner’s stall with the wolf on her heels. She looked down at Garwaf. […]

The beast blinked for a moment with affection in his eyes. He broke into a wolfish grin and playfully nipped her fingers.

“Behave yourself, or when I get my boots tomorrow I really will trade you to the tanner. I could use a new belt.”

Check out http://sixsunday.com/ to read all the other great excerpts!

Click here and here to read my six sentences from previous weeks.

(The picture is a painting I commissioned of my two characters from artist Nicole Chartrand. Check her out! She does great stuff.)

(They don’t make em like this anymore…)

But, anyway, I realized something about romance as I was watching it this time. The romance with Kathy gets a nice amount of screen time BUT a lot of it is done in song. Which made me realize musicals kind of get a leg up on other art forms when it comes to developing the romance. After all, what better way is there to communicate the pure euphoria of true love than having your character actually sing they are so happy? In the rain!

How’s a poor writer supposed to compete with the absolute delight evident in every frame of this musical number?*

Music and movement hit us on a visceral level that mere words have a hard time duplicating. It’s the ultimate Show vs. Tell deathmatch.

*It would take me pages and pages of dialgoue and interactions and internal thought to get the reader to believe my character was as in love as this. Gene Kelly makes me believe it in a little over 4 minutes.

Maybe this is why I write so much of my stuff to music and use certain songs to capture the mood of my scenes. It’s my own way of trying to steal some of that sensory passion that musicals do so very well.

So, what do you think? Do musical romances have a special magic that hits you right in the heart? Or are people randomly bursting into song just too corny to deal with?

~E.D. Walker