Recent Reviews

The hardest part of writing so many different things is juggling it all--keeping those fictional balls in the air at the same time. (hehe, I said balls!) But the best part is when the reviews start rolling in on everything at the same time. It has been a flurry of a week for great reviews, that is for sure! I got four amazing reviews for four different works.

The first was from Tash Williams on the review blog andyerupts.com for my Badass Zombie Road Trip. Tash apparently took on the work because she was excited about it being written by a chick, and of course because of the uber awesome blurb. Who could blame her?

Here's a snippet of her thoughts:
"Badass Zombie Road Trip is a fantastic book, the storyline is extremely well thought out and the action starts almost immediately. It is also extremely funny and has one of the best instances of truly expressive swearing I have ever read in a book.
I am being honest in saying that this book is one of the best stories I have read in a long while. While there is a lot of humour there are also a lot of dark moments and Brown just seems to have captured the perfect balance which will keep comedy and horror fans happy."

You can read the whole generous review here!



The next one came from Nicholas Strange from strangeamusements.com. Mr. Strange was kind enough to take on my self published work Skin Trade, and then gave it so much love I thought my head would explode from the joy of it.

Here's just a taste of what he said:
"Tonia Brown's Skin Trade is one of this latter breed, a zombie novel with a great setting, strong central character, and a really fresh take on the subgenre, making it easily one of the best zombie novels I have ever read."


You can read all of his amazing kindness here!








The third came to me from Good Reads, from Dana Fredsti, author of Plague Town and several other awesome novels. She had a read of The Cold Beneath and just loved it. I am humbled by her kind words. I really am.

Here are some of them:
"I loved this book. Tonia Brown captures the feel and tone of Jules Verne and other writers of that era with an elegance and modern accessibility of prose that just amazed me."


You can read her full review here!









The fourth came from Amazon from a James E. Trost. Usually I let Amazon reviews alone, don't wanna toot my horn too much, but this one was too cute not to point out. It was for the fourth novella in the Railroad! series, The Size of Things.

Here is the cute snippet:
"After reading volumes 1 through 4, I am disappointed. Disappointed that Volume 5 is not available."

I almost did a double take at the first sentence, after all it was a five star review! Then I read the rest and giggled. Thanks, Mr. Trost! I appreciate your love. Five is on the way soon. 

If you get a hankering, here's the whole thing.

Very Viral Video

(Again, let us hope the title becomes reality.)



A few months back the really great folks at The Red Penny Papers took on a story from me that I worried would never sell. It's weird, which can be good, but it is also very sad, which folks tend to avoid. The story, "Pins and Needles, Silk and Sawdust," is a strange little ditty centered around life and death, the afterlife and undeath.

The tale takes place in a mortuary, late at night, focusing on Mark, a medical examiner pulling an all-nighter thanks to a heavy workload. On the slab we have Mr. Hammond, the local school principal and well known hardass, dead from a rotten heart. Already sewn up and done for the night we have Richard, free soul traveling musician and overdosed drug addict. Still wearing the dress she died in and covered in her own blood, we have Karen, the little girl with big dreams--or rather dreams of a big story. As Mark speaks with the dead, we begin to wonder who is the lion and who is the scarecrow, and if we might all have a little tin man in us. Before the end we are assured there is no place like home.

Yes, I am unashamed to say the story takes a page from the Wizard of Oz. Everything from glaring references to vague slips that only those intimate with the tales will sense or appreciate. The shaggy headed traveler, the patchwork girl, the heartless leader, they are all there for the reading. Even the title is from the original text. Allow me to share.

This is where the wizard gives the scarecrow brains:
So the Wizard unfastened his head and emptied out the straw. Then he entered the back room and took up a measure of bran, which he mixed with a great many pins and needles. Having shaken them together thoroughly, he filled the top of the Scarecrow's head with the mixture and stuffed the rest of the space with straw, to hold it in place.


And here he gives the tin man a heart:
So Oz brought a pair of tinsmith's shears and cut a small, square hole in the left side of the Tin Woodman's breast. Then, going to a chest of drawers, he took out a pretty heart, made entirely of silk and stuffed with sawdust.


Much to my delight the story ran in the Spring 2012 issue of The Red Penny Papers. I was so tickled they liked the story, combined with the fact I just really love this one, that I was moved to record it. As you may know by now, I have been working with a fine fellow to produce an audio version of my novel, The Cold Beneath. Chris Barnes has been just a blessing, he really has. In this case, he took my reading and mixed it with magic! He added music and effects and made it into something very special. Upon this product of passion and talent, I decided it needed more than just an audio link. I took it and ran it together with some images and a few hand drawn title pieces. (I'm not much of an artist, but I can manage "drawn by a six year old" without much trouble.)

Without further ado, here is the end result. I hope you guys like it. Be sure to visit the youtube page and like it if you can. And leave us a comment! Thanks!
 

Later taters,
Tonia


Viral Video

(I sure am hoping the title of this blog becomes a reality! *fingers crossed*)

Hey cats and kittens!

Just a quick post today to share a new thing with you I whipped up to help promote my steampunk horror novel, The Cold Beneath. Using Philip R. Rogers amazing illustrations and Chris Barnes incredible reading of the first chapter, I give you this video.

Watch it
Enjoy it.
Share it.
Love it!
 






Later taters!
Tonia

Perfect Persistence




Today I’d like to welcome author Joseph Devon to my blog! Joseph is currently touring around the web to promote book two in the Matthew and Epp Stories, Persistent Illusions! As part of his tour here on The Backseat Writer, he asked a character to write you all a letter. Please allow me to post the letter for you to read:

Hi. My name’s Madeline. The author guy? Mr Devon? He asked me to write this to you. I don’t know why he picked me. I don’t have any fu--he also told me not to swear a lot. Which shouldn’t be hard because I don’t know what the fuck I’m supposed to say to you anyway. I’m sure Epp would have been a better choice but he’s probably off giving grand speeches somewhere. Or Matthew. He’s new to all of this and loves playing tour guide.
Ummm...I don’t know. God I hate this. The last thing I want to be doing is writing a letter to someone I don’t know. I don’t even write letters to people I do know. I mean, well I can’t write letters to anyone I know because they all died a few hundred years ago and all. Right. You probably want that explained.
See I’m what’s known as a tester? I’m not alive. I died and when I did I was given a choice to stick around on this stupid rock, or move on to whatever comes next. I chose to stick around, mainly because Epp made it sound pretty good. Epp is kind of a mentor for a lot of us. He’s like two-thousand years old so he knows where the bathrooms are and shit. So when I died he was there to explain my choices to me.
So I became a tester. I’m supposed to enter your lives and make sure you’re living up to your potential. I guess it’s not too bad. But it’s hard work a lot of the time. See if I don’t periodically interfere in the life of one of you humans in order to try and make you better than you are, I rot away. That’s why we’re called testers. Because we test you.
I guess that was obvious.
Whatever. Anyway it’s haaaaard. Testing a human, if you like push them too much, or they have too much potential when you engage, it can fucking kill you. And even if you are successful and you get fed your energy and everything, you also get crazy fucking tired and you go to sleep for decades. Up on a mountain.
That’s another thing. I don’t know why I’m writing you a letter. I’ve been asleep for decades up on Mount Everest. I was asleep all through the first book Mr. Devon wrote and apparently I wake up about a third of the way through this one. Which sucked, by the way.
After my last push, that Einstein guy? I slept for seventy years, and I wake up and all this shit is different. There’s been an uprising and a lot of testers who haven’t been doing their fucking job and have rotted away, have actually been brought back from near death. They stay a little rotted on some part of their body, but otherwise they come back faster and stronger than us and, oh yeah, they eat us. It’s like, “Good morning. Did you sleep well? Good job with Einstein. By the way everything you knew about the world of testers is different. There’s a civil war going on. You might get pounced on and eaten at any given moment. And not in the fun way.”
Great. Point me to the nearest opium pipe.
I mean, yeah. So it’s maybe not that bad. There was a pretty big fight when the uprising first started but the rotted ones were driven back. So that’s good. And it turns out that just because you’re a back-from-the-dead rotted thing who can eat our kind, that doesn’t mean you’re evil. A lot of them chose to figure out a peaceful way to coexist. Yay for free will! So we have some of them on our side, which is good because they can guard us.
Plus, well, we’re pretty fucking bad-ass. I mean, I know I’m only a teenager, but I interact with the universe on a subatomic level just like the rest of my crew. Some are better at manipulating one way, some are better at another, some learn faster, so it’s not like everyone can do everything, but, you know, when you can mess with the universe on a subatomic level you can rip shit up. Mary, the stuffy looking hot chick, can fry you with lightning. Bartleby? He’s a walking inferno waiting to happen. Even I can...actually I can’t do anything. I’m supposed to be this whiz with gravity but, um, no thank you? Because I’m not going to mess around with gravity.
This isn’t even my fight.
I was asleep, right?
And I have to wake up to this?
Fuck that.


Joseph Devon was born in New Jersey and currently lives in New York. He’s been a student, a nanny, worked at the Ground Zero recovery project after 9/11, and of all the things he’s created he is probably most proud of the character Kyo. He writes a blog, enjoys photography and he’s also at flickr, and tumblr, and twitter — sometimes he thinks that he might have one too many social networking outlets. Joseph’s Annual Fan Art Contest has a lot of great prizes to choose from for simply submitting art based on his books — check it out at: http://josephdevon.com/contest/the-third-annual-joseph-devon-art-contest/.




In book one of Joseph Devon’s urban fantasy series, Probability Angels, we were introduced to the world of Matthew and Epp. Back then, Matthew thought he had his hands full just learning how to be an undead tester of humanity, but then Hector staged an uprising and everything Matthew thought he could take for granted fell apart.
Yet, over the past few months, a strained peace has settled over his world and Matthew is starting to feel like he can finally get back to training at his usual New York haunts.
However, things are more fragile than they appear. Nobody can see the stress lines already clawing away at the new peace. Nobody has guessed the toll that was taken on those at the forefront of their war. And, when a new tester wakes up with the power to possibly unravel the universe…well that’s when things really start to get interesting.
Come see how a zombie can protect and serve, a photographic memory can earn you a permanent place on Mount Everest, and a teenage drug addict can hold everyone’s fate in her nail-bitten fingers.

You can find the complete tour schedule on the Nurture Virtual Book Tour Blog.

Find & Follow Joseph Devon:
Author Website
Twitter
Goodreads
Facebook

Buy the Book:
Amazon.com
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.ca
Barnes & Noble

Joseph is offering one lucky reader the chance to win an eBook copy of Persistent Illusions! To enter, use the nifty Rafflecopter widget below:


a Rafflecopter giveaway

Later Taters!
Tonia

Beautiful Betareaders

(Okay kids, this is gonna be a long one, so buckle up and keep your hands in the ride at all times!)

This past weekend was my brother in law's birthday, and as a result I got a little tipsy in his honor Saturday night. When Tony drove me home at 2am, he went straight to bed, poor sober little boy that he was. I was wound tighter than a drum, so I stayed up awhile annoying folks on yea olde Facebooky. (If you were one of those folks, I formally apologize...) I also started this blogpost, but I wasn't tipsy enough to finish it. In other words, I realized I was treading on dangerous territory, so I pulled out and decided to try again in the morning when I waznt tiping leek a drunken monkee.

So here we are, sober, if not a little more tired, ready to tackle this topic. And what is it, you ask? Simple, trusting and employing reader feedback. Allow me to rewind a little to explain where I am coming from with this.

Recently I had the pleasure of attending a super duper cool and awesomely fun convention. While I was there I was on a panel or two, which suited the attention whore in me, even if I was uber nervous considering my company on a few of these panels. But names, folks. Big people. One of the panels was about reworking a story to improve it's sell ability. Nothing new about that, but we did breech  subject that made more than one writer cringe and hiss and almost boo.

What was it? Taking in reader feedback and using it to improve and even change the direction of your work.

One author said that it was his story and there was no way anyone else was going to tell him how to write it. I couldn't agree more.

Another said that she couldn't understand how I 'let' readers control me like that. How could I let them change the voice of the story? Simple enough, I don't. Because that wasn't what I meant.

Personally, I love reader feedback. I want my beta readers to laud me, yes, don't we all? But more importantly I want them to tell me what is wrong with the work. Not the simple editing stuff, gods' know I need an editor to text a message to the spouse. I want to know about plot development, characterization, and dialogue. That is what good beta readers do. Now, I don't incorporate every suggestion, sometimes none of them at all. But I find that if more than one reader, or in the worst case every single reader, has the same issue or problem with a story, then perhaps I have failed as an author in getting that particular point across. And maybe I should change it.

I let the idea go with the end of the con, thinking that I am a small potato anyways. Of course I need all of the help I can get. I'm new at this! (Well, sort of new..)

Until a few days ago, when I came across someone else complaining about readership influence on the tone and direction of a series.

In this case, an author listened to reader feedback and changed the ending of her series based on what the readers wanted to see happen. The woman’s blog (who reported on this horrible thing) said she was appalled at the idea of it. How dare this other so called author let the readers tell her how to write! Then she went on to quote the names of famous books and authors and asked us how different those stories would've been if the readers had the nerve to control them. Scads of folks backed her up with kudos and comments, agreeing that the author voice is too precious to allow such defiling.

And again I am on the other side looking in, because I can see the value of both.

For example, Railroad! is a webserial, which means I post a chapter or at least 2k words at a time. But it is written in novel form way ahead of time. That way I get to edit and get artwork done in time for you fine folks to enjoy its posting properly. Another reason I write it ahead of time, is because I let a group of beta readers have at it, and ask them to tell me if it makes any freaking sense! Writing it chunk by chunk, in between other projects, flavors the work with other worlds and atmospheres. So, by letting folks who read it in a clean chain, I get the benefit of not only someone spotting continuity errors, time changes and the likes, they also let me know how the characters are coming across. One reader said, of Volume four, "Why was Dodger so downhearted in this one? He just seemed, so hopeless."

Oh, that's right, because I just wrote Skin Trade, a weird west world in which every thing pretty much sucked. So Dodger comes off as a wee bit melancholy. Sorry. Tweak that a bit. Sound better? Thanks!

And I don’t limit it to betareaders either. I love for folks to ask me questions about the characters. Questions maybe I haven’t thought about before and I can answer in the series. Folks ask for more of Ched, they get more Ched. What about that cook? Hang on because he will feature heavily soon. Having that connection to the reader, that the story is as much theirs as it is mine, makes it all that much more fun for me.

But apparently I am committing some kind of high sin by taking reader feedback into my work. Readers are there to appreciate, not create. The author has a voice that shall not be persuaded. Yet…

Serializing novels began as early as the 17th century, but the Victorians really brought the fad home. It allowed them to produce lengthily material that the common man could purchase in installments instead of never affording the finished bound book. Some submitted entire novels to be broken apart, but some … ah, some wrote month-by-month, waiting on reader feedback to see how certain characters were received and where to take the story. They allowed reader interaction to shape the story, not control it, but help focus it.

They loved to hear what the readers wanted, because the readers paid the bills.

Apparently L. Frank Baum was especially sensitive to the children who wrote him. He would include comments in the forwards of his books about how so many folks wanted to see this character more or learn more about this one, and thus he wrote it.

And then there is Lovecraft, my main mad man. He encouraged other writers to write in his worlds! Not only did he interact with these readers, he gave his blessings to use his ideas to write their own stuff. Wow. Just wow.  (Okay, maybe that isn’t quite the same thing, but Lovecraft is always worth mentioning.)

All of this aside, I must add that I have written work that I let no one read until it was ready for edits, and then I asked only for general opinions, and nothing more, because I knew the story was exactly the way I wanted. And I have written stuff that I’ve sent round the circle asking for deep sifting, to work out the loose rocks and bring out the gems. I think both works. Each story will tell you what it needs, one or the other. Don’t discount the help of reader feedback as more than just yay or nay.

I guess my point of all of this is simple; yes an author has a voice, but we also have ears. And unless we are just writing or ourselves, we should really learn to employ both.


For more info on serialized fiction, check out the wiki page.


A big thanks to all of my betareaders. I wouldn't be half the writer without you.

And a second big thanks to all of my readers. I would be nothing without you.

Later taters,
Tonia




Groovy Guns


A few days back, a nice gentleman and Railroad! reader, Dan Hale emailed me with some kind words about the story. It always pleases me when I get reader feedback, especially when they are just as excited about the series as I am. He also sent me a few photos he found online that bear a striking resemblance to a certain pair of haunted pistols. I thought I would share them with you fine folks!


I swear I hadn't seen these before I started writing! And yet, there they are. It's just weird how you can make something up out of thin air, and it somehow manifests in another part of the world. The husband is always talking about how he needs a tinfoil hat, so the satellites will stop taking his ideas.

Okay ...

That made him sound a little bit weird. Which, truthfully, I suppose he is. But he has a point. Don't it seem like when you get a great idea, it just appears on TV the next week? That's why you gotta jump when the notions says jump!


Speaking of ideas and Railroad!, my brother in law pointed out this photograph to me. I am fairly sure it's a Photoshop, but either way it sure is cool!


Things have been pretty quiet at Chez Brown. We are still recouping from the Great Van Caper. (That might need a blog post all its own.) The church is going to have a divination fundraiser next weekend, at which I will be reading Tarot. The husband will be reading his Mystic Teetotem, a divination system he designed using the Kabala. I'll try to put up a thing about the fundraiser with more details later on. I'm still head over heals for Chris Barnes, the fellow doing the audio book for The Cold Beneath. I can't help it, that voice just sticks with ya! He seems eager to record more of my stuff, and I look forward to a long and prosperous relationship with him. 

I suppose that's all for now.

Later taters!

Tonia

Amazing Audio

A few weeks ago I released my long awaited steampunk Gothic horror, The Cold Beneath. The premise is simple: an expedition to find True North is derailed by an explosion, after which the victims return from the dead to seek the warmth of the remaining survivors. It has zombies and inventions and a little romance. Folks are really enjoying it, as evident by the occasional email or review folks leave me. The art is awesome thanks to Philip R. Roger and both the ebook and print versions are just lovely. I couldn't be more pleased with how it turned out.

Actually, I thought I couldn't be more pleased, until a young man by the name of Chris Barnes sent me a little gift.


Chris first wrote me to let me know he really enjoyed Skin Trade, and that he read it in a single day. I love, love, love reader feedback, so this quick and kind word just made my week. He further made my week by writing me a day later to say that he consumed The Cold Beneath in a single day as well. Nice! Then he began to hint around that he would have something for me in a few days, as a way of thanking me for such an awesome story. I couldn't imagine what it was, after all the best way to thank an author is a great review.

Or so I thought.

About a week later a message showed up in my FB box. Attached to the message was a link for an audio file. Normally I am leery about unannounced links, but I figured this must be the surprise Chris spoke of, so I clicked. It turned out to be a recording of him reading the first chapter of The Cold Beneath.

And. It. Is. AWESOME! (click here to listen)

I lavished my undying affection upon the poor young man, thanking him for all eternity for such an amazing piece of work. Chris was modest about his recording, but I couldn't just let it go at that. I wanted to hear him read the whole thing. After some negotiating, I am pleased to say that Chris has agreed to record the entire novel, which will then be available for download so others can enjoy it.

You can find out more about Chris at his blog, The Dynamic Ram. I have no idea when it will be ready, but at the rate his is going with it, the book should be done pretty soon. I can hardly wait to share it with the world! Chris's reading is just amazing, and his variety of voices is impressive. Again, you can click here to listen to the first chapter. Once the book is finished, I'll post links all over the place.

Until then, later taters!
Tonia


Winner! Winner!

I recently went to a wonderful convention, ConTemporal, in Chapel Hill. I had a grand old time, which I will try and post about later. But right now, I am pleased to announce a winner.

At the convention I ran a give away of a wood burned and hand painted desk clock. Loads of folks filled out forms, but there was only one winner. And that winner was .... drum roll please ...


Patricia Matson!

Patricia is a freelance writer and editor, and super cool too boot.

You can find more about her here at this link.

Congrats Patricia, and thanks to everyone who entered. I hope she enjoys the clock.