Character Interview: Tony from Color Me Baby Blue

As you know, the All Things Dark and Dastardly anthology is going to be released this Friday, Oct. 21, 2011. We've had great feedback from our fans, and the excitement is enough to give us all heart palpitations.

Or maybe that's just really bad gas.

Anyway, the link to purchase the book will be up on Friday! Also, on Friday, we will be announcing the winner of our All Things Dark and Dastardly writing contest. We had great submissions, and it was hard to narrow it down to just one winner. The winning story will be posted on our site Oct. 31--just in time for Halloween! They'll also receive a copy of our All Things Dark and Dastardly anthology.

Now on to the topic of the day: A character interview with naughty Tony from Kaye George's fun tale, Color Me Baby Blue. You can find this story in our upcoming book, but here's a sneak peek in to the mind of a fashion savvy killer!

(This interview was taken in a hospital where Tony currently resides.)


MA: Can I call you Tony? Or do you prefer Anton?

**Are you kidding? For a babe like you? Definitely Tony.


Aren't you sweet? That is just a charming hospital gown you have on! I know you are in here partly due to your eye for fashion.  What color would you call that exactly? Did you pick it out yourself?

**I call it baby puke green. What do you think? I have better taste
than this! Hey, isn't this new software handy, though? I can finally
communicate with people through my eye blinks. I've been trapped here
so long. Isolated.


That must be hard.  Just let me know if you get tired of blinking so much. Tell us about yourself and your relationship with your Uncle Leo.

**He was a necessary evil. My stepping stone to financial
independence. He never liked, me, by the way.



I heard Uncle Leo was murdered. What do you think his final thoughts
were regarding the popular Dusky Brown line of clothes?**Ha. He knew he was so wrong. I could see it in his eyes.

It's too bad he realized it too late!  So which show do you prefer: Queer Eye for the Straight Guy or Project Runway?
** You do know that those shows are so fake, right? I'm sure I could
design circles around those people. And you know that a lot of
straight guys, like me for instance, are just as good as gay guys.
Bunch of horse...hooey...if you ask me.

Calm down. You'll blink your eyelashes off!  Let's try a different question. If you could choose one color to be buried in, what would it be?**Periwinkle. For personal reasons.

Interesting choice. Are you currently in a relationship with anyone? Is that even possible in your condition?**There is one nurse that has a great behind. Her front isn't bad
either. I'm trying to make a move on her. It's hard when you can't
move, though.

I can imagine. You give "batting your eyes" at someone a whole new meaning. If there was one thing you could do differently, what would it be?**I think I could have done a better job with Miss Manning, Mandy her
name is. I came on a little too fast.

You think? I'm not sure killing someones lover would be called coming on too fast. Some people might call that homicidal tendancies, but whatever. Is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers?**Maybe I should tell them that you don't have to talk really loud to
people who are in the hospital, or wherever the hell I am. Just
because someone can't talk to you, doesn't mean he's not human. He's
still a man.

Thank you for sharing that with us. I'm sure many people will be interested to know about the events leading up to your current...condition.

To learn more about Tony and his murderous fashion choices, check out the story Color Me Baby Blue by Kaye George and located in All Things Dark and Dastardly!

What IS Halloween anyway?

Besides a good time to read scary stories, that is. (Stories like the ones found in All Things Dark and Dastardly, coming October 21st!)

I have a book called "Witches of the World" by Diane Canwell and Jonathan Sutherland that says Samhain, the precursor to Halloween and celebrated on October 31st, celebrated the end of summer. Samhain was a Celtic festival and the end of the year for them.

Many of our Halloween symbols and rituals derive from Samhain. Hollowed-out pumpkins, as well as other vegetables, were placed in the windows and on porches (the Celts evidently had porches) to welcome their dead ancestors and keep evil spirits away. One of these spirits, a very bad one, was called Jack-O-Lantern. This guy wasn't able to get into Heaven or Hell. That's a little inconsistent, since the Celts were pagans back then.

Irish and Scottish immigrants, this book says, brought us the custom of carving pumpkins. I'm glad. It's fun!

The Druids (which I think were Celtic priests, but I'm not sure) lit bonfires to guard against witches and spirits wandering around at harvest time. This book says that this was also the time when Druids imprisoned their victims in wicker cages, then sacrificed them on huge bonfires. Really? The poor little victims couldn't get out of a wicker cage? I wonder what sort of people were Druid victims.

Wiki says that Samhain in Ireland was the end of fighting and trading season, and was a time for tribes to get together. I'll buy that. Halloween today is the beginning of The Holidays. Time for stores to start putting out Christmas and holiday decorations and time for people to start deciding what they're going to do for Thanksgiving.

Cross Genre and Cross Promotion

It helps to network, writers! When our anthology debuts, it will hit more places than we imagined. Here's how this went.

Background: Awhile ago Untreed Reads accepted one of my short stories and it's for sale at their site. (Not a Halloween story, but a darn good one!) They sell e-stories and e-books and have a tremendous distribution system. My story is for sale everywhere I can think of, and lots that I can't.

Present Day Happening: The three of us at this blog are putting out a short story anthology. (You may have heard about this. It's called ALL THINGS DARK AND DASTARDLY and will surely be a hit.)

Another Happening: Jay Hartman at Untreed Reads asked all his authors if they had anything to promote for Halloween. I answered that our anthology could be considered Halloween fare since it consists of dark and sometimes scary stories.

 Astounding Happening: Jay asked if he'd like us to promote the anthology. Yes, yes, yes. We get to take advantage of a large part of his wide distribution system. Our anthology will be seen by people we wouldn't otherwise have access to. Win Win.

So, look for the book at Untreed Reads soon after October 21st, our publication date! You can also look for it in the other usual places, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc. We'll get links put up here and at ALLTHINGS DARK AND DASTARDLY as soon as they're live.

 Hope you're getting yourself ready for Halloween. Get ready by reading some scary stuff. Prepare to be frightened!

 Casper is in the public domain.

Release Date For All Things Dark and Dastardly: Oct. 21, 2011!

Hear ye! Hear ye! The official release date of All Things Dark and Dastardly is fast approaching! October 21, 2011 is when you can purchase your very own copy of this anthology.

What's it about?

It is a compilation of horror, mystery, and urban fantasy short stories by Austin authors with a distinctly dark side...

For more information, come check out our site for it: All Things Dark and Dastardly.

By the way, thanks to all who entered our October Dark contest. We had great entries and the winner will be selected soon.

Promotion: Chance Encounters

Another writer recently asked me what I felt were the three most effective things I'd done for promotion. I thought for awhile about that. It's not an easy question to answer! I came up with three. I'm not sure they're the most effective (who knows what works and what doesn't?), but they're things that I think have helped me in my writing career.

I'd put networking first. I've done a lot of it over the years, online and at conferences. The conference I've attended the most often is Malice Domestic. That's where I've met so many fellow Sisters in Crime members, and especially fellow members of the Guppies chapter that has been so much help to me. Having met a few of the published writers in person made me brave enough to ask some of them for blurbs when it was time for my novel to come out. All but one gave me wonderful blurbs, for which I am so thankful. Attending Malice for years might have also helped get me my Agatha nomination last year.

Number two, would be commenting on other people's blogs and making myself known to bloggers who host writers. Aside from learning a lot from the bloggers I follow (when I have time), I feel I know the blog hosts a little better. When I've requested guest blogs, I had no trouble getting them. Some bloggers have even asked me to blog for them before I ask.

Third, I would put hanging out in bars. Not just any bars, though. A group I sat with at the bar a few years ago at the Agents and Editors con in Austin invited me to their writing group and this month we're putting out a short story anthology together. That's this group, All Things Writing!

Another chance meeting, also at the bar, was at Malice. I sat next to a fellow Austinite whom I didn't know in person. We had emailed and were both going to look for each other to try to meet up, but Malice is huge and that might never have happened. Janice Hamrick  was a first-time attendee at Malice and also the winner of the 2010 Mystery Writers of America/Minotaur Books First Crime Novel competition. So her first novel was in the dealers' room, as was mine (though from a much smaller publisher!). I just happened to sit in the chair next to hers the first night I arrived, a happy coincidence. She wanted some guidance on how to get the most from the conference and I tried to help her out. I shepherded her a bit and we ate together a few times. She became a friend and eventually suggested my name to a radio host who had interviewed her (I assume Minotaur got her that interview, but I'm not sure). Now we're doing a panel, together with another local mystery writer, Robin Allen, (whom I also don't know yet!), arranged by that radio host, Hopeton Hay, at a local library.

Hopeton has also agreed to do an interview of me, Steve, and Mary Ann for our ALL THINGS DARK AND DASTARDLY release. (Coming October 21st!)

Maybe all of these just amount to networking. But I'm not going to admit that, because then I'd have to come up with two more.

Illustration: Social networking, public domain