Broom with a View is currently Free Free Free

Yes, you read that correctly. Broom with a View, which sprouted from the brain of my evil twin, Gayla Twist and the talented Mr. Ted Naifeh is currently FREE on Amazon.

(I know! I can hardly believe it myself.)

All you need to do is go here and download:

Broom with a View

It's that simple!

Broom with a View - Sample

Broom with a View has launched. It's a magical story written by my alter ego and evil twin Gayla Twist. Plus, the charming and debonair Ted Naifeh. Here's a sample:

Prologue: When an Assassination Forces a Holiday

“I don’t understand why someone who is two hundred years old should know all that much more than someone who is sixteen,” said Violet Popplewell to her mother. “There’s only a limited amount of things to know in this world.”

Mrs. Popplewell gave a resigned sigh while her busy hands shuffled papers at her desk in her small office. “There’s no point arguing, Violet. Your great-aunt Vera is going with you, and that is that. I know she can be a little trying at times, but a girl your age cannot simply travel to an unknown city by herself. You must admit that. Especially with things being so unsettled. ”

Violet considered brooding for a moment but fought the impulse. She was a practical girl, after all, and what can’t be mended must be borne. She returned to her room to make another attempt at packing.

“Unsettled.” That was her mother’s word for impending war. The Archmage of Canterbury was dead. His body, entirely drained of blood, had been found with those of his wife and child in their private chambers. There was little doubt the assassin was a Vampire. Within twenty-four hours, rumors of a looming war had spread across England like a winter storm. It didn’t matter that there was no proof that Vampires were behind the murders or even condoned the act. Nor did it matter to Mrs. Popplewell that the dastardly deed had happened in London, which might as well have been a million miles from Gallows Road in the little corner of Surrey that was the Popplewells’ home. The British Isle was no longer deemed a safe place for young Witches to dwell.

For Violet, who had rarely travelled even to London, visiting X, the mysterious city-state renowned for its magic, ought to have seemed a wondrous romantic journey. But most young ladies taking their first trip abroad had months to plan down to the smallest detail of the lace pattern on a handkerchief. New wardrobes were commissioned. Farewell parties were held. And Violet would enjoy none of those niceties. She was simply being shipped off, like a parcel, to be kept out of harm’s way.

Violet surveyed the state of her bedroom, sighed, and set about attempting to create order from the general disarray. Her steamer trunks were bare, while clothes, shoes, books, and toiletries were strewn across every surface of the room. Earlier that morning, she had, in her haste, attempted to enchant her clothes to arrange themselves. But instead of compliantly settling into her trunks, the gowns had chased each other about the room in a colorful display of hide-and-go-seek. The stack of books she intended as her additional travelling companions had toppled across the floor, their pages flapping as if caught in a strong breeze. Her brush and comb had attacked her, snatching and dragging at her hair; she’d had to leave the room for three-quarters of an hour to give the spell a chance to wear off.

It was no use; try though she might, magic never obeyed Miss Popplewell’s wishes the way she intended. Most children born to the Craft assumed that the world was their dollhouse, to be rearranged at their whim. But harnessing the unseen forces of the world was a tricky business full of hidden complications and unseen traps. And though almost an adult, Violet still struggled to bend the magical world to her will. She frequently found that the harder she tried, the more difficult it became to cast even the simplest spell. Her mother was constantly reminding the frustrated girl that most of their kind only truly mastered the Craft in their later years, when the tempestuous fires of youth had largely sputtered out. Yet Violet’s powers always seemed just inches from her grasp. Every once in a while, she would unexpectedly conjure extraordinary wonders. Unfortunately, these anomalies came without warning, and afterward, she could never remember what she had done differently. Perhaps it was the way she held her mouth.

Standing in her disorderly room, Violet hesitantly reached into her pocket and felt the familiar handle of the old magic wand that had belonged to her grandmother. Many modern Crafters no longer relied on a wand to produce magic, but for the girl, wand work always seemed to yield the best results. She gripped it for a moment, deliberated, and then decided she couldn’t face another failure. Instead, she began the dull task of packing by hand.

An hour later, all the necessities of life were neatly encapsulated in two large trunks at the foot of Violet’s bed. But her satisfaction was interrupted by a sound emanating from the next room—like two pelicans simultaneously trying to swallow the same fish. Ostensibly called the guest room, the chamber next to Violet’s was almost permanently occupied by her great-aunt, Vera Tartlette. The sound was one of indescribable vexation, which Aunt Vera invariably made when faced with a world-shattering crisis. Violet heard it at least twice a week. With a small sigh, she went to check on the situation.

“Do not fret, my dear,” Aunt Vera began, her voice quavering. Violet entered the room with some trepidation. “I only need a few more moments to sort myself out, and then I’ll be in to help you directly.”

The guest room was in far worse shape than Violet’s had been an hour earlier. Clothes, books, toiletries, and shoes all swirled haphazardly through the air. With a sweeping gesture, Vera would transfer a pile of undergarments to the bottom of her empty steamer trunk. Then, finding dissatisfaction with their placement, she’d whisk her hands to one side to remove them again. After that, the gowns would go in, only to be removed a moment later in the same fashion. All the while, Aunt Vera chattered continuously, either to Violet or to herself, weighing the advantages of taking each item versus the hazards of leaving it behind.

Knowing as she spoke that she would only make things worse, Violet ventured, “Vera, the train does have a schedule to keep.” At this point, the elderly Witch was turning in circles in the center of the little room as though, by making eye contact with each item, she could fathom its every possible use into her head. But once she lost sight of the beaded gloves or motion sickness pastilles or whatever she was looking at, the item and its usefulness were crowded out by new ones.

“Don’t bedevil me with schedules,” her aunt wailed impatiently as an airborne shoe nearly collided with a lit candle. “I said I would help you and I shall, but you really must leave me to my own packing first.”

“For goodness sake.” Violet felt on the edge of exasperation with her great-aunt already, and they hadn’t even set out for the station. Drawing the old wand from her pocket, almost without thinking, she made three decisive strikes through the air. In a hailstorm of clothes, shoes, books, and papers, Vera’s possessions all found their proper place, and trunk lids slammed firmly shut.

The room went still. Vera gazed in silence at the neatly arranged steamer trunks for several moments, as if trying to remember where she had left her knitting. Then she blinked and, turning her eyes to her young ward, said, “There now. Shall we see about your trunks?”

Want to keep reading? You can pick up a copy here:

Broom with a View

xo - Adrianne

New Franchise Title - and new book launch

Hey There!

Yes, I am painfully remiss in posting to my blog. But here's some fun news:

I'm writing a spin-off novel to the hit cartoon show Adventure Time. It's a fun gig and completely bizarre. The wonderful and fabulous Leigh Dragoon is writing a sister novel and they should launch at the same time. (Neat!) All under the editorial-ship of the awesome Rob Valois, who really needs more accolades for being a masked crusader for books.

In the meantime, my alter-ego, Gayla Twist, is about to launch a new title with co-creator, Ted Naifeh. Here's the details:

Broom with a View

The threat of war between Witches and Vampires means England may no longer be safe for a young Witch. Hence, Miss Violet Popplewell is sent abroad under the watchful eye of her great-aunt Vera. Without so much as a bon voyage party, Violet finds herself a visitor to the city-state of X, a mysterious place where magic is used openly and Witches and Vampires live together in harmony. Or at least, they try to get along. Violet’s aunt is shocked to discover that there are Vampires staying at their pensione and alarmed to note that one of the undead is a rather handsome young man.

An outburst of hostilities in X thrusts Violet into the young Vampire’s arms. And, much to her dismay, she realizes she may have accidentally bewitched him with a love charm. Are the emotions that the Vampire feels true passion or just a slip of the wand?

Gird your bits for Broom with a View to launch December 1st

xo - AA

Hot New Cover for The Urchin - Plus #SALE

Check out this load of num, num num... I have to confess that I loved the old cover for The Urchin: Plague of Vampires, but I think this might be a bit more eye catching.

Thoughts?

To celebrate the new cover, The Urchin is currently only 99 cents on Amazon Kindle. Grab a copy here:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Urchin-Vampires-Adrianne-Ambrose-ebook/dp/B00CMYI2G6/ref=sr_1_4?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1382110382&sr=1-4&keywords=adrianne+ambrose

Cleveland is #1... Well... #2 is also good

Turns out, Cleveland is the second safest city is the US to live in if you have a phobia about natural disasters. Good to know:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/top-10-safest-u-s--cities-from-natural-disasters-183608693.html?page=9http://finance.yahoo.com/news/top-10-safest-u-s--cities-from-natural-disasters-183608693.html?page=9

And yet, I've moved to San Francisco, which has to rate pretty high as far as getting your ass whipped by a natural disaster. A quake or a typhoon or... locust or something.

Anyway, I'm glad to read that the CLE is getting some good press. I may live on the West Coast, but my heart still belongs to Cleveland.

Heart of the Vampire - Launched!

Has it really been almost three months since my last post? Wow! I have definitely been absent. But my bad twin and alter ego has been out there writing up a storm. Want proof?

See Gayla Twist's Call of the Vampire here:

http://www.amazon.com/Vampire-Vanderlind-Castle-Series-ebook/dp/B00BWE0XGE/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1370970712&sr=8-3&keywords=the+call+of+the+vampire

And book two of her trilogy, Heart of the Vampire here:

http://www.amazon.com/Vampire-Vanderlind-Castle-Series-ebook/dp/B00DTAGBSS/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1373330813&sr=1-1&keywords=the+heart+of+the+vampire

It just launched and has been doing pretty well so far. I am eager to see some reviews.

And check out this intriguing cover:

Fangs for Nothing ~ FREE!

Fangs for Nothing: Vampire Hunting and Other Foolish Endeavors is currently FREE on Kindle. Grab your copy here:

Fangs for Nothing

Now, a few of you who are already Fangs fans might be wondering, "Hey, where did that subtitle come from and why?" Well, research shows (and by research I mean me farfling around on the internet) that readers prefer to see the word "vampire" in the title for whatever reason. I gave a lot of thought to changing the book to The Vampire Vampires of Vampire, which I still might do, but thought I'd start with the subtitle and see how things went from there.

Confessions of a Virgin Sacrifice Review

Oh Goodie! A Confessions of a Virgin Sacrifice review. I am so very please:

CVS review by Sadie S. Forsythe

Thanks Sadie!

Grab a copy of Confessions of a Virgin Sacrifice here!

Solace Winter's review of The Urchin

Solace Winter has one of the best nom de plumes out there and she writes a hell of a review. (Plus, a remarkable eye for copy editing, but that's another story.) Here is her review of The Urchin, which I never thought of as a horror story until I saw it through her eyes:

Urchin Review


Thanks Solace!

The Urchin is for sale on all ereaders. Here is the Amazon link:

The Urchin

The link

Posting a link to the free copy of the book is also a good idea:

Confessions of a Virgin Sacrifice

Confessions of a Virgin Sacrifice FREE this weekend on Amazon

Hey - Confessions of a Virgin Sacrifice is currently free on Amazon Kindle. This will last through Sunday the 24rth. Grab one while they're FREE!

Daisy Cooper and the Sisters of the Black Night

I had the pleasure of corresponding with Robert Dee, the author of Daisy Cooper and the Sisters of the Black Night. I love how girl-positive the story is, so I told him I'd share a few links. Robert was also kind enough to do a quick interview. See below:

 

On amazon:

 

Daisy Cooper and the Sisters of the Black Night (Daisy Cooper: International Schoolgirl): Robert Dee: Amazon.com: Kindle Store

Amazon.com: Daisy Cooper and the Sisters of the Black Night (Volume 1) (9781480255524): Robert Dee: Books

The website:

Daisy Cooper: International Schoolgirl - NEWS

A little video promo:

Daisy Cooper and the Sisters of the Black Night - YouTube

And don't forget the interview:

 

AA - Where are you from?

RD - I’m a writer based in Brighton which is on the south coast of England. Previously I lived in Amsterdam for a couple of years and before that in London. Brighton is a very artistic city sandwiched between the sea and enormous rolling hills we call The Downs. It is a good place to be for a writer.

AA - When and why did you begin writing?

RD - I’ve always written stories for as long as I can remember and it’s second nature to me now. It amuses me a bit when people go “oh! you’ve written a book!” because I don’t talk about it much (or I didn’t, now I’ll promote it to anyone). I learnt after years of telling stories in bars and cafes that you have to keep quiet until you’ve actually done it or you can talk it out. I really believe that. I don’t worry about running dry, though. If anything, I'm worried I won't get to write all the ideas I have backed up! I keep journals and I always have a notebook with me so I don't tend to lose any. Ideas come from odd places and often I’ll have a little seed - something that excites me for some reason - and I start dreaming, following the story and seeing where it goes. I know a story is ready for me to start writing when it’s incubated in my head long enough for me to forget where it came from. It becomes it’s own thing.

AA - When did you first consider yourself a writer?

RD - I can place this exactly. I was nine years old and I’d written a story about a werewolf buried in my back garden. My classmates all gathered round me listening. No one made a sound. It was the first thing I remembered doing that got that much attention and I thought “so this is what I do.”

AA - What inspired you to write your first book?

RD - I wrote a bizarre novel when I was eighteen about a man who turned into a UFO, kind of. That took me about eight years to finish. I was finding my way. My dad joked that I wouldn’t exactly be prolific. It was a good apprenticeship. I have looked back at it and some of it’s good, some of it overly earnest or wordy. I was influenced by Burroughs, Vonnegut and that generation of writers who I admired. I’ll probably return to it at some point to see if I can do anything with it but I view it as practice, really. That whole 10,000 hours thing where you have to keep doing something and doing it until you get good. I remember before that trying to write a Sci-Fi novel when I was fifteen. I kept writing the first few pages over and over in long hand and was frustrated that I couldn’t say what I wanted to. I remember thinking at the time “If I keep doing this, one day I will be good.” I wouldn't say I'm good now, but I'm definitely better.

 

 

AA - Do you have a specific writing style?

RD - Writers I like stay out of the way of the story and the characters and I hope I’m like that. It bugs me when I read a book and notice the author’s voice too much. I’ve worked as a video editor so I understand that it’s the invisible stuff - the thing the viewer or reader doesn’t notice - that makes it gel together. Aside from that I think the story dictates the style. Getting the right tone is half of it and I think I managed that with Daisy Cooper. I worry about losing it but then I worry about a lot of things when I’m not actually physically writing it.

AA - How did you come up with the title?

RD - I don’t remember how I came up with the idea for Daisy Cooper but I do remember that it was fully formed. That’s quite unusual for me. I know this because I was telling a housemate I was living with about it hours afterwards. She loved the idea. It was also very different from the twisted twilight zone style stuff I’d done before. I think my brain rebelled against the dark weird ideas and just wanted to tell a straightfoward and hopefully good story. I’m so glad it did as I’ve loved writing every word of it. I was worried that the title sounded Harry Potter-like and then I realised it’s just a common children’s book title style. I liked the idea of taking something classical and putting a spin on it in. If I had any influences it was more the Enid Blyton books, Roald Dahl and Tove Jhansson who I loved as a kid. I also had Nancy Drew at the back of my mind but that was more through the TV show.

AA - What is the book about?

RD - The book is about a twelve year old girl about to leave junior school who dreams of being a reporter. She dreads going to the local senior school where she will be bullied for her intelligence. Through a chance encounter on her last school trip, she meets an older girl from a school called Darlington that symbolises everything she could hope for. As well as being a brilliant school, it also runs a magazine called International Schoolgirl. International Schoolgirl sends junior reporters around the globe to find stories for the magazine. It’s also read by lots of women worldwide - you’d imagine Hilary Clinton having a copy, for instance.

Daisy fights for a place at the school where she meets the 88ers, her dormmates, and uncovers a dark secret at the heart of the school after getting lost in the school maze at night. It has underground tunnels, pirates, motorcycle chases, lions, sharks and sword fighting.

The book, as the first in the series, is also about how Daisy makes the journey to become an International Schoolgirl (or does she?). She learns to weigh up the difference between ambition and what is morally right. That’s kind of the theme of the first book. It’s what makes her who she is. Darlington has eight virtues in it’s code and one of them is Honour, which is what the first book is about. The second book - which I’m writing at the moment - is about Grace, i.e. how to behave in the world with honour. I’m not lecturing people, though, hopefully. I just find the virtues work as good thematic glue for the stories.

Each planned book (set in one or more other countries) has a primary story, a secondary story about a girl or woman in history and is part of an overarching narrative for the whole series of hopefully 8 books. I write in a right-brain kind of way but I have a definite idea of where it’s going and I know where each of the next seven books are set. I don’t think it’s complicated for young readers but it’s hopefully enough to keep them guessing. I’m already building up a list of people who can’t wait for book 2!

AA - Why write a children’s book - a series even - with a twelve year old girl as the main protagonist?

RD - Most people who know me would not have assumed I would write a children’s book but I’m a strong believer in the idea that people don’t have stories, stories have them and that’s the case with Daisy Cooper. I’ve no idea where it came from but pnce I had it I knew I had to do it. I was very excited and apprehensive about whether I actually could. I used Joseph Campbell and his Hero’s Journey approach to help me. He’s a massive hero of mine. As for writing with a girl protagonist I’m not sure how to explain it. I think part of it is being an older brother to a sister I was protective of growing up. I’m kind of protective of Daisy that way. You have to care about your characters but you also have to put them through the wringer. I don’t have any kids yet so there’s probably also an element of wanting to be a father there too. It would be wonderful to have kids to read the books to.

As the book went on I was surprised by how much of a feminist stance it took. If nothing else it opened my eyes up to how different things are for women - as a man I’ll never really know. Even working out how a woman could make her fortune a couple of hundred years ago to set up a school. It was impossible. I didn’t want it to be through patronage. I wanted to show the characters earning it because it was important for the character arc that Daisy is on. I think realising this really motivated me to get that across and once I started writing the secondary story set a couple of hundred years ago, the whole book opened up and it all fell into place.

AA - What’s next?

RD - Daisy Cooper and the Devil’s Masquerade which starts of in Amsterdam and moves to Venice. It includes family feuds, kidnappers and a mechanical doll. I have a couple of other ideas for childrens books including one about a boy who goes into the underworld to rescue his brother and another about a girl who builds a hybrid robot war machine out of her horse. The second one's a bit strange!

Plus - Check out this awesome cover!

 

How many times has the world ended?

Here's an interesting graphic that gives you a quick timeline on how many times the world is supposed to have ended throughout history. I particulary like the one involving a chicken:

The End is Near

The Urchin - Jeff Stokely's take

Here's what Jeff Stokely did for The Urchin where Vance meets Johnny on the roof. Love Jeff's style. We both did some work on Fraggle Rock for Archaia Entertainment and the Henson Co., so we've done some convention signings together. Check out the portfolio on his website. Really good stuff.

You can download an ecopy of The Urchin on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, plus wherever fine ebooks are sold.

Glitter Kiss!!!!!

Glitter Kiss has Launched!

Yes, the fabulous project I've been working on with the talented illustrator, Monica Gallagher, is finally in stores! And online, of course. It turned out super-cute, if I do say so myself.

It's very sparkly and romantic, but with a few good life lessons tucked in there. (The gods know I can't help myself when it comes to that kind of thing.) Couldn't be happier with the book.

Jill Beaton was our mighty editor over there at Oni Press and she also did an amazing job.

Here it is on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Glitter-Kiss-Adrianne-Ambrose/dp/1620100827/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_7

Too thrilled.