Rock n' Roll is Undead - Rose Pressey

Rose Pressey (author of How to Date a Werewolf and No Shoes, No Shirt, No Spells) has a new book out, Rock n’ Roll is Undead, and it’s so super cute that I wanted to ask her a few questions about the title.

AA - What is the premise of Rock n’Roll is Undead and what was the inspiration for the book?

RP - Rock 'n' Roll is Undead is about a rockabilly singer living in a fun paranormal world. She's a witch with less-than-stellar magic skills. I'm a big rockabilly music fan, so I wanted to introduce readers to that fun world.

AA - Do you play an instrument or have you ever played an instrument? If yes, tell us about it. If no, what would you like to play and why?

RP - I don't play an instrument, but I love to sing.

AA - You have a contest running for the next Mystic Café series. What is it and how can people enter?

RP - The contest is to have a character in the next Mystic Cafe series named after the winner. I'm really excited about it. I can't wait to find out the winner. The contest ends July 31. All people have to do is leave a comment on my blog post to enter.

AA - Who/What are some of your favorite bands, singers, songs, musical genres? In other words, what do you listen to, why and when?

RP - I love all music. I can listen to just about anything. My favorite is oldies like Elvis, Buddy Holly, Pasty Cline, etc. I really like Imelda May. I'm also a fan of bluegrass music. I think I lived in the fifties in my previous life. Ha-ha. I usually don't listen to music while I'm writing because I sing along too much and it's distracting.

AA - The covers of your books are really cute. What can you tell us about them? Is there an artist to credit or do you make them yourself?

RP - I do the covers myself with stock images. I enjoy making them more than I thought I would. It's a lot of fun.

AA - What can you tell us about your next book? Besides the fabulous contest.

RP - The next book I have coming out is Ghouls Night Out. It's the follow-up to Me and My Ghoulfriends. After that is How to Date a Vampire. I do have a new series I'll be working on when I get the time. I'm very excited about it, but I can't say much about it just yet.

AA - Thank you Rose Pressy

RP - Thanks for having me on your blog, Adrianne!

Spewlazor!

Confessions of a Virgin Sacrifice is not available on all ereaders. Here's a random sample to get you started:

Pitching Woo.

True to his word, Thor overtook us at dusk. The three of us were setting up camp for the night by a small lake that Lestor referred to as The Lake of Complete Blackness. I decided not to ask him how the lake acquired that romantic title.

Thor had no news, nor supplies to show for his absence. I remember thinking, what in the worlds had he been doing all day? I assumed he was galloping around the countryside, enjoying himself. I realize Thor was just some Barbarian we had picked up along the trail and he owed us no debt. But at the time, his non-performance really ticked me off.

“Have a good day, did you?” I fixed him with an icy stare.

He gave me a curt nod, which vexed me even more.

“Do anything interesting? Ransack a village? Dismember a ferocious animal with your bare hands? Anything?”

The Barbarian turned and cocked his head towards me. The strong and silent routine was really grating my nerves. And, to tell the truth, I was used to more attentive men.

Thor had at least accomplished one task. He dragged a fresh swinehog carcass into camp. Lestor, Diz and I skewered it with a stick and began to roast it over the fire. The outer meat was beginning to crisp. Thor’s sword was leaning against a stump, so I grabbed it to shave down the roast. Thor immediately strode across the camp and wrenched the sword from my grasp.

“Whah?” I was caught off-guard by his abruptness.

“No one but a true Barbarian may touch Sphere.”

“You named your sword Sphere?” I said with a giggle.

“I did not name the sword. It is The Last of the Sphere of Swords to the Lost Barbarian Kingdom of Spewlazor.”

“Oh, I didn’t know that. But why do you call it Sphere? If it’s from Spewlazor it seems you would call it Spew.”

“Look.” Thor briskly raised the sword, causing it to make a little zinging noise as it sliced through the air. Imbedded in the handle was a small orb of crystal. Pinpoint flashes of orange light continuously danced in the ball like lava spurting from a volcano. “This orb symbolizes the Sphere of Swords.”

“Yeah, but that orange stuff keeps getting tossed around in there. It is constantly being spewed in the crystal. I think the real name of your sword is Spew.”

“If you value your life, you will never touch the sword again!” Thor shouted in my face.

“That's it. I absolutely don't need men who name their swords yelling at me. I'm out of here,” I said abruptly. “Diz, do what you want. Have sex with one of these oafs, stay celibate, throw yourself in the volcano; it's up to you. All I know is, I've got to go.” With that, I marched out of camp and headed in the general direction from which we came. The others gawked at me in stunned disbelief.

Things I Luuuuuurve - Fangs Interview!

The lovely and talented CLE Shopaholic did an interview with me about my new vampire comedy Fangs for Nothing.

To check out the interview go here

Find out the answers to burning questions like, Why vampires? Why Cleveland? Why not?

But there's more! Things I Luuuuuuurve is having a contest where you can win a free copy of Fangs for Nothing. It's super easy to enter. Enter here.

Thank you, fabulous CLE Shopaholic. Great website. Now I know where to shop on my next visit to the city of lights, city of magic.

Upcoming Rose Pressy Interview - R n' R is Undead

Rose Pressey's latest ebook, Rock n' Roll is Undead, is hilarious. The author was kind enough to share a few thoughts about the story in an upcoming interview. Stay tuned.

Confessions of a Virgin Sacrifice

Confessions of a Virgin Sacrifice is soon to be available on all eBooks.

Here's the blurb:

Sound the alarm! Saddle the horses! Wake up the village elders! The Sacrificial Virgin has escaped!

Jezebelle's voluptuous cousin Dizeray is slated for a sacrificial swan dive into the local volcano. Not if Jez can help it! She plots to rescue her cousin and find an eager candidate to 'disqualify' Diz from being this year's Virgin Sacrifice. But things to horribly wrong and now the gals are on the run with the furious Village Elders in hot pursuit!

Jez sweeps her cousin on a whirlwind adventure through the jungle and beyond with nothing but her sardonic wit and bronze brassiere at her disposal. Along the way the two Glamazons attract a motley cast of characters including a brooding barbarian with a decidedly un-heroic phobia, an ill-tempered troll looking for love, and a deadly blue wolf with a soft spot for Jezebelle.

This unlikely troupe stumbles head first into one wacky adventure after another, encountering love, magic, monsters and mayhem. Throughout their travels, Jez untangles clues to her True Destiny. She discovers a Forbidden Secret that threatens to unravel the very fabric of her word—or at least ruin her day.

This saucy off-beat romp will keep you laughing as you follow Jez and her friends on their first adventure.

Megan Abbott Interview

Award winning author Megan Abbott has wowed fans of noir and lovers of good ficiton alike with her hardboiled books including Die a Little, Queenpin, The Song is You, and Bury Me Deep. One of the things I love about Megan's writing is that, even though her stories are usually centered around female characters, she doesn't pull her punches. If you want an intriguing read that's hard to put down, do yourself a favor and check out one of her books.

AA - What is your history with noir? What first drew you to writing in the genre?

MA - Everything I write I can trace back to the movies I watched as a child. My primary fantasy life stemmed from watching old movies on TV on Saturday and Sunday mornings. Somehow, those movies, especially film noir, became the dark foundation for me—they formed the world I wanted to enter, and writing was my way of entering that world. I became fixated on both the worlds of those movies and everything they might be just barely concealing. So when I discovered James Ellroy’s novels in my teens, it brought everything together—the official cultural history and alternative, subterranean truths. I fell head over heels. I wanted « in. » When I write, I tend to even cast my favorite actors. Gloria Grahame appears in almost all my books. As does Ralph Meeker. Steve Cochran. There’s a slightly seedy glamour to all of them, and I think that’s the feel I’m most drawn to, as a writer, reader, spectator, voyeur.

AA - You have a new book coming out. What can you tell us about it?

MA - It’s called The End of Everything. Set in the suburbs during the 1980s, it’s the story of Lizzie, a 13-year-old girl, whose best friend, Evie Verver, has disappeared. The two girls have been intensely close in that way young girls can be right before adolescence really crashes in. With Evie gone, and Evie’s glamorous family (a beautiful, popular sister and a handsome, charismatic dad) struggling, Lizzie begins to insert herself into the investigation, unable to stop herself. It’s a big departure for me in terms of time and place, but in most ways, I’m exploring the same dark corners. All my books seem to be about the treacherous journey from innocence to experience. They’re all Little Red Riding Hood.

AA - If you can't say Chandler or Hammett, who is your favorite noir / hardboiled writer. What do you admire about his / her style?
MA - James M. Cain. The Postman Always Rings Twice. Confessional narrative that’s like a whisper in the ear and you can’t stop listening. It’s completely persuasive, utterly cunning and finally heartbreaking.

AA - Why do you think so many noir classics are set in California?

MA - I think because California is, by geographic fate, the dropping-off of the American frontier. Manifest Destiny at its endpoint. You reach your dream here or you’ve lost it forever. The Land of Milk and Honey but also the place of last chances. So many noir characters are there because it’s the last place to go. They can’t run any more.

AA - If you couldn't write noir, what genre do you think you'd write?

MA - I guess I don’t think in terms of genre, as a reader or writer. I never set out to write a noir novel, or a mystery or anything else. I think we all respond to story, voice and character and that’s the main thing I think of when I write. That said, my love of the books and movies dubbed noir is because they are so filled with the big feelings and drives of life—desire, greed, rage, sorrow—and in its purest form. What could be better? That’s terrain I never want to leave and I think you can find that across all the genres. Even writing a book set in the suburbs in the 80s, it felt like I was writing about the same heightened feelings.

AA - Besides the ones you have created in your own books, who is your favorite femme fatale and why?

MA - Oh, there’s too many good ones for me to have to resort to picking one of my own! I’m going with Gene Tierney in Leave Her to Heaven: cold, remorseless, perverse. And so gorgeous you find yourself believing her any way. And that movie disproves the old axiom that noir must be in black and white. In that movie, color—the look of a host flush on the skin, the glaciality of Tierney’s’ eyes—make for pitch-black noir.

AA - Have any words of hardboiled slang crept into your daily usage? If yes, which ones?

MA - I don’t think I use it much in speech, though I hear the slang in my head all the time. To me, they’re part of my unconscious, the life of my brain. Though occasionally I do want to describe someone as a blonde who could make a bishop kick a hole through a stained-glass window. And sometimes I want to walk into a room and ask, “What’s the rumpus?” I also use “stooge,” “patsy,” “hoosgow,” “high-hat” and “gunsel” sometimes. Gosh, I guess they have crept in!

AA - What is one of your favorite lines from your book that's about to launch?

MA - “I know everything.” The 13-year-old narrator says it so many times and every time she’s wrong.

AA - Thank you Megan Abbott!

Upcoming Megan Abbott Interview

Film noir writer Megan Abbott has a new book out, The End of Everything. She kindly agreed to do an interview with my blog, which should be available within the next week. Stay tuned to read Megan's thoughts on writing, noir and the future of publishing.