The Canvas Thief

This being, my largely abandoned blog, I forgot to mention that my latest novel, The Canvas Thief, published by Carina Press, is now available!
*********************

Ten years ago, with two perfect drawings, Maya Stephenson accidentally did the impossible. She brought her graphic novel’s characters–Benjamin Black, a thief, and Adam Sayres, a cop–into our world.

Benjamin is tired of the real world and determined to go home to EverVerse, the land of imaginary characters. He breaks into Maya’s house, planning to force her to destroy his drawings, which will Fade him to EverVerse. The last thing he wants is a relationship, especially with the person who dragged him into this world. But when he meets Maya, his heart starts insisting he’s already home.

Maya has always suspected she’s different. But until Benjamin and Adam appear in her life, she’s been the epitome of normal. And normal girls date guys with respectable day jobs. So why are her thoughts and hormones getting sidetracked by Benjamin, the enigmatic thief? Especially when Adam, “the good guy,” is available and interested.

Except real world Adam is a crime lord masquerading as an ATF agent. From Maya, he wants an army of immortals. From Benjamin, he wants immortality independent of his drawings, which can only be achieved if Benjamin Fades to EverVerse, taking one of Adam’s drawings with him.

Benjamin and Maya fight their attraction, all the while coming up with reasons to see each other. But falling is love is the least of their troubles. Not when Adam is willing to do anything, including hurting Maya’s friends and family, to get what he wants.

******************
Buy it from Carina Press and Amazon and Audible (audio book).

The Music of Chaos, Free Book Contest

Free urban fantasy book! Free art! That right, free.

Win a free copy of my quirky urban fantasy, The Music of Chaos. It's easy. Just click this link to go my contest page over on Romance Junkies. There, you'll see the following question:

"What is the name of ...'the brave soul who had dared the displeasure of my company'?"

The answer can easily be found in Chapter One of The Music of Chaos. (Seriously, you can just skim through the text. He is the only other person in the scene.)

The contest runs through August 31, 2011, so you have time to enter multiple times. While you're there, check out some of the other authors/books that are participating in this contest.

***The Music of Chaos***
***Back Cover Summary***

"My century long career as a Wolfe did bear a stronger resemblance to a blooper reel than a profession..."

Regan O’Connell has a PhD and a good job as a project manager with a consulting company. Unbeknownst to her human co-workers, she’s 130 years old, and has a magical pedigree that includes vampires and elven royalty.

Immature by the standards of immortals, she has little control over the magic that simmers in her blood. For more than a century, she has worked as a secret operative for the vampire syndicate the Grey Brethren. For just as long, she has hidden her magical disability, struggling with one paranormal misadventure after another. Tired of her shenanigans, the Grey Brethren station her in Albuquerque, far out-of-the-way by paranormal standards.

The arrival of a mysterious user of chaotic magic—a world destroying power—spells the end of Regan’s trouble-free existence. Soon after, her vampire employers issue an ultimatum: find and neutralize the chaotic magic user or find a new job. To make matters worse, she has inadvertently started a war and developed a surprising attraction to a human. Sorting the mess out will require a little help from her friends, some growing up, and acceptance that she will never be a practitioner of conventional magic.

*****

Available from Decadent Publishing and Amazon.

Also available in ebook format.

The Music of Chaos, Now in Print

Looking for a fun summer read? The Music of Chaos, my light urban fantasy about a not-entirely competent paranormal secret agent, is now available in print.

The pitch:

"Blind dates are always a train wreck."
By day, Regan O'Connell is a highly respected project manager. By night, she's a Wolfe, a paranormal agent working for a vampire syndicate.

Her two worlds collide when a co-worker sets her up with tall, dark and sexy Jason Lake. Jason is a Holder, a member of an ancient, all-human organization dedicated to policing the activities of things that go bump in the night. Things like half-vampire Regan.

Falling for the wrong guy is the least of Regan's problems. There's a murderer on the loose, and his favorite weapon is chaotic magic, an erratic force with the power to rip holes in the fabric of the universe. And the best way to catch the killer is to get close to Jason, the man who is not only her enemy, but her prime suspect.

Set in New Mexico, The Music of Chaos features a vampire who'd rather drink beer than blood; a pacifist dark elf; and a half-vampire heroine who is better at math than magic. You can read a chapter--Free--here.

Buy it now (please) at Decadent Publishing or Amazon.

For those who want instant gratification, you can download the ebook version: Decadent Publishing, Amazon/Kindle, and B&N/Nook.

Buy a book or I'll kick this cute little greyhound.
(Kidding.)

Another Sally Field Moment

In which I say, "You like me, you really like me."

The Music of Chaos, my quirky urban fantasy novel, scored another nice review.

Regan O'Connell is a Wolfe, part of a supernatural police force. She spends her evenings killing rogue lesser vampires and her days with computers at a mundane day job. She is half vampire and the daughter of one of the most powerful vampires on earth. She struggles daily not to be a disappointment to him. Her current assignment is in Albuquerque, New Mexico, hardly a hotbed of vampire activity, which is until lately. Someone is producing lesser vampires at an alarming rate and to complicate matters, two Holders, the Wolves human counterparts have been assigned to the city as well. An old flame, Breas, an ancient and incredibly powerful vampire, suddenly comes to town as well; making her wonder what exactly is going down in her previously quiet city.

Ms. Kirby has created a vivid and exciting world that I hope to visit again soon. The characters are colorful, bizarre, and real at the same time. I had no problem picturing each and every one of them. She let us in on just enough of the back story of each of the characters; enough to picture and know them, but leaving a bit more to learn about each of them. Regan is an interesting character; a dyslexic demi-vampire who uses music and math to do her magic. Her best friend Talis helped her through school, but the cheating is starting to catch up with her on this mission. The plot of this story is exciting and has many layers, the detail is extraordinary, and I was unable to put this book down until I got to the last page, and I didn't want to put it down even then. Hopefully there will be another Regan O'Connell story soon; I can never get too much of my new favorite anti-hero Breas.

Silly "Squeee!" from me.

The Music of Chaos is available as an ebook from Decadent Publishing, Amazon, Smashwords and at other online retailers.

Judging an eBook Publisher by the Covers

And by their web page.

Note: If you are reading this post anywhere but on Ramblings from the Desert or at But It's a Dry Heat (both authored by P. Kirby), the content is stolen.

These days, new epublishers are popping up like daisies on the lawn. Over at Absolute Write, someone starts a thread inquiring about a press’s bona fides almost daily.

Before you sign a contract, or for that matter, submit a manuscript to a publisher, you should always do some research. But before you bother to Google, post a question in a newsgroup, etc., there’s one simple way to gauge whether a pub is worth the mouse clicks.

Look at their web page, especially their home page.

A publisher’s page should do one thing and do it well. Sell books.

It’s easier to show than tell, so here are publishers who get it right. Samhain* and Ellora’s Cave. Even newer pubs like Dreamspinner, then their genre can be easily explained in a tag line. Sell me books, not the publisher.

So what do you see? I see books for sale, front and center. With just a click or two, I can read a blurb and a sample of the writing. (I don’t buy books without reading a sample. Do you?) The covers are attractive and professionally designed. A listing of books by genre is available and easy to use. And buying is easy.

What don’t I want to see on a publisher’s web page? First and foremost, no begging for authors.

At Happy Shiny Books, it is our goal to nurture writers. We know how hard it is to get published with the big publishers and we know great books often get overlooked. Our writers are family….

Blah, blah, blahbitty, blah. Look. I’ve got a family. They’re all I can handle. I don’t need to be nurtured (that’s my mom’s job). A publisher’s job is to acquire the best books possible, and edit and sell those books to the reading public.

Publishers who sell books don’t need to sell themselves to authors. If they do their job, authors will swarm like flies. Remember that scene from the first Harry Potter movie/book? The one where hundreds of Harry’s Hogwarts acceptance letters flooded the Dursley’s house; they spewed from the mail slot, under the door, from the fireplace.

All a good publisher has to do is squirrel a little “Submission” link somewhere on their page, and voila, a deluge of biblical proportions.

There shouldn’t be any big blocks of text on the page, including those that explain the pub’s mission.

At Shiny Happy Books we strive to provide the best books to the reading public at the best prices. Literature is our passion. Shiny Happy Books was established in 2008 by Mary Smith, a multi-published author who….

Blah, blah, blahbitty, blah. Show me da books. If it’s a niche market, like Dreamspinner, then their genre can be easily explained in a tag line. Sell me books, not the publisher.

It goes without saying that the web page should load easily, and look professional and up-to-date. No pages that look like they were designed by the owner’s twelve-year-old kid using a 2000 version of MS Frontpage. No using a free web pages service. If you can’t afford to buy a your own URL and your own little chunk of the Internet, you shouldn’t be in the business of publishing books. (I can afford it and I’m the quintessential starving artist.)


In summary, what should you demand of a publisher’s web page? Sells books. Professionally-designed, easily navigated site. Attractive, professionally-designed covers.

Otherwise, move on, there’s nothing to see there.

*I linked to Samhain’s bookstore, because they recently revamped their site to feature a blog first. Not my idea of a great plan, because blogs really don’t sell [many] books. But Samhain has the clout to do whatever they want. And their bookstore sells books and sells them well.

This post, at my other blog, But It's a Dry Heat, was plagiarized by a scrapper called Write-Your-Own-e-book. (http://write-your-own-e-book.info/blog/judging-an-ebook-publisher-by-the-covers/) The site posted my writing without my permission and without properly crediting me--Patricia Kirby--as the author. Hence, my cross posting here.

The End of Innocence

Otherwise known as my first review.

The Music of Chaos got its first review.

Music of Chaos is a fast moving, well written story of sorta Good vs. really evil Evil, man vs. woman, vampire vs. anyone else. You get it. The characters are just shippy enough and just funny enough to keep this one rolling all the way to the end.

So now I have proof that someone other than my mother has read my book.

The Music of Chaos

Urban fantasy set in the desert southwest.

*************
Regan O’Connell seems to have it all. She has a PhD and a good paying job as a project manager with a consulting company. Unbeknownst to her co-workers, she’s a one hundred and thirty-year-old demi-human, with a magical pedigree that includes vampires and elven royalty.

Harnessing her magical ability has never been easy. Immature by the standards of immortals, she has little-to-no control over the magic that simmers in her blood. For more than a century, she has worked as a secret operative for the vampire syndicate the Grey Brethren. For just as long, she has hidden her magical disability, struggling with one paranormal misadventure after another. Tired of her shenanigans, the Grey Brethren station her in Albuquerque, far out-of-the-way by paranormal standards.


The arrival of a mysterious user of chaotic magic—a world destroying power—spells the end of Regan’s trouble-free existence. Soon after, her vampire employers issue an ultimatum: find and neutralize the chaotic magic user or find a new job. To make matters worse, she has inadvertently started a war and developed a surprising attraction to a human. Sorting the mess out will require a little help from her friends, some growing up, and acceptance that she will never be a practitioner of conventional magic.

***************
It is available from Decadent Publishing and in Kindle format over at Amazon. You can also get it at Smashwords. (Hint: It's about a buck cheaper if you buy it directly from the publisher.)