A warm welcome to Angel Martinez & Bellora Quinn Visting Love Bytes on their Totally Bound Promotion tour for Quinn’s Gambit
They share a talk between the both of them about voices , share and excerpt and there is a giveaway to enter from Totally Bound
Welcome Angel & Bellora 🙂
The Voices In Our Heads
Angel: I’ve seen a lot of advice and templates and so on over the years on how to create characters. There’s a lot of helpful stuff out there, but for me it really boils down to one thing. How can I get the reader to meet my imaginary friends?
Bellora: Most of the time I have an idea for a character whose story I want to tell, rather than a story idea that I need to develop characters for. So for me it’s hard to describe how I create a character. I’ll see a face, or a picture, or hear a song and all of a sudden this person is in my head telling me all about themselves.
Angel: I can’t say the character always comes first for me – sometimes I’ll have a story that needs characters. But I think more often the character has to be a person first before the story can be told. It stalls if I don’t understand who I’m writing for. But it’s not a process that happens all at once, either. It’s more organic, like getting to know a real person.
Bellora: And like a real person they tend to grow and change sometimes. I always try to weave those changes into the story. If I have a character that starts out a jerk and I need him to do something really noble or self sacrificing later on I make sure I’ve told the story of how they got from point A to point B.
Angel: Very true – changes in behavior brought about by events or trauma or self doubt or whatever it is, can be powerful. Changes just because the writer needs to get through a plot point are…annoying. Even though we agree on a lot of things about character, I do think Bellora and I approach it in different ways. I have this tendency to create eccentric characters, sometimes over the top bizarre stuff, characters with a sense of drama and often, er, drama queens.
Bellora: I think that’s partly why I like to create characters that are ‘Marilyn Munster’. The normal one. The one everyone can relate to, and also happens to make a good foil for some of Angel’s crazier characters. Not that they don’t have personality of their own.
Angel: I’m so telling Quinn you called him Marilyn Munster. But, yes, these “normal” characters have depth and backstory, quirks and tics. They’re real people with all the emotional baggage that comes with that. I think of them as the glue rather than foils – these are the characters the more eccentric ones revolve around.
Bellora: So that’s it really. Have imaginary friends or look around and invent some. Figure out what their personality is and then what made them that way, or vise versa. Give them some other imaginary friends to play with. Throw in quirks and weirdness, or make them utterly normal, and *boom* you’ve got yourself a character.
Angel: And then abandon all hope that you have control of the story. Imaginary friends often have their own ideas.
Blurb for Quinn’s Gambit:
After a terrible magical accident at Berkeley created unpredictable holes between realities—all manner of non-human creatures started popping into our world. These displacements, called RARE—Random Anomalous Reality Events—have taken magic out of fiction and relocated it firmly in reality, resulting in a great deal of chaos and confusion. Displaced elf Valerian works with AURA—the Agency of Unnatural Resettlement and Assimilation—to intercept these beings as they appear in the human world, helping the peaceful ones and subduing the violent, malevolent ones. It’s good, satisfying work, and Val would be happy if he wasn’t so lonely.
Quinten is a young mage just trying to get by, but New York isn’t the easiest city to make a living. If his methods are sometimes morally dubious, his heart is still in the right place. Of course for Quinn, the right place means firmly locked away, protected at all costs. Living by his wits and sometimes magically-induced luck, he works as a ‘free-lance magic user’, or unregistered mage and small time con—according to the authorities. The last thing Quinn wants is to draw the cops’ attention, but when an Event happens right on top of him, he’s forced to turn to AURA for help. Valerian isn’t at all what he’d expected in an AURA cop, and he certainly wasn’t expecting to join forces with the sexy elf, a snarky drow and a bitter incubus when certain individuals in power try to stop the RARE by any means necessary.
Things are not all what they seem at AURA headquarters, and a greater evil lurks at the top than anyone could have imagined.
Like the sound of Quinn’s Gambit? Buy it here at totally bound
Excerpt from Quinn’s Gambit:
“No, you don’t understand,” Quinn said, starting to lose his temper. “This chick just fell out of the sky and knocked me on my ass. She’s probably losing what’s left of her marbles after the jog down from Central Park. Can’t you just help her?”
The receptionist gave him a coolly patronizing smile. “Sir, calm down. This isn’t an adoption agency or the city dog pound. You can’t just drop people off here. Now, if you will just take the clipboard, have a seat and fill out the form, I’ll see what we can do.”
Quinn stood with the clipboard in one hand, glaring back at her incredulously. “This is ridiculous! I have stuff to do, you know?” He looked down at the form. “’What is the nature of the problem you are experiencing’?” he read. “Oh my God, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you! Look, can’t you just pick up the phone and ask someone in a uniform to put their donuts down and come to the lobby?”
“Yes, I will do just that. As soon as you—”
“Fill out the form,” Quinn interrupted her with a heavy sigh. “Fuck sake,” he grumbled, snatching up the pen. He refused to sit down. If he had to fill out the damn form, he was going to stand right here and remind her how stupid this was until she relented.
* * * *
“Event is local! Central Park area!” Marius cried out in triumph, his dowsing over the map pinpointing it almost at AURA’s doorstep.
Matt clapped Val on the shoulder. “No ‘porting today. Doesn’t make me sad.”
“All right, boys and girls,” Captain Lyons’ voice cut through the chatter. “We’ll quarter the park. We haven’t got a good reading on this, so weapons of choice handy at all times. Valerian, you and Kensington take the north side. McAndrews, you and Nestor on the south. Nyssa, can you fly today?”
The sphinx rose from her place by the door and shook out her wings. “Yes, ma’am. Winds are good. Pollution’s down.”
“Good. Aerial over the park. Keep in radio contact, folks. Let’s move out!”
Val grabbed his sword from his locker in the weapons room, settling the strap across his chest and feeling more himself with the familiar weight of Anvar on his back. A magical sword didn’t do much against gunfire, but it was more than helpful in subduing the most dangerous monsters. Matt carried the guns, three of them.
They dashed down toward the lobby, headed for the street, with Val in the lead. He nearly caused a pile up of human and non-human officers when he stopped short just inside the lobby.
A dryad stood there, her leaves trembling, eyes huge and glassy. That would have been arresting enough, but at the receptionist’s desk, yelling at the girl on duty, was one of the most lovely human boys Val had ever seen—lithe and lean, with cornflower blue eyes and a mop of honey-gold hair. He found himself mesmerized.
“Well, I think we found it,” Matt said with a snort.
“Yes,” Val said, his mouth gone dry. “Perhaps we have.”
Read Vicki’s review HERE !
Bellora Quinn
Originally hailing from Detroit Michigan, Bellora now resides on the sunny Gulf Coast of Florida where a herd of Dachshunds keeps her entertained. She got her start in writing at the dawn of the internet when she discovered PbEMs (Play by email) and found a passion for collaborative writing and steamy hot erotica. Soap Opera like blogs soon followed and eventually full novels.
The majority of her stories are in the M/M genre with urban fantasy or paranormal settings and many with a strong BDSM flavor. Bellora’s first published novel, co-authored with Angel, is scheduled for release at Totally Bound in March 2015.
For more info on Bellora’s work and current projects:
Angel Martinez
Published since 2006, Angel’s cynical heart cloaks a desperate romantic. You’ll find drama and humor given equal weight in her writing and don’t expect sad endings. Life is sad enough.
She currently lives in Delaware in a drinking town with a college problem and writes Science Fiction and Fantasy centered around gay heroes.
For all the info on published work, WIP’s, and updates:
Enter Totally Bound’s March blog tour competition for the chance to win an eBook of your choice, not including boxsets or anthologies!
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I have almost no time to read lately, but I bought it and put it on my iPad anyway so when I do, It’ll be there. 🙂 Congrats and best of luck with this release.
-AQG