Category Archives: Awesome authors

With November rushing on

November 11, 2010Awesome authors, links and stuff, Publications, Wexworldsconventions, Publications, Songs of the Wolf, The Wolf's Mate, The Wolf's Sister, wexworldsRFLong

mainly powered by a hurricane and winter storms no less…

Here are a few bits of excitingness to keep us all going before December:-

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WEXWORLDS // Sci Fi and Fantasy Fiction Festival 2010 // November 26th – 28th, 2010 // Wexford Town, Ireland

the Schedule is now available to download in .pdf format.

I’m hoping to get down on Saturday, but will definitely be there on Sunday as I have a couple of panels to be on.

12.00-12.50 Whites Hotel FREE

Current Sci-Fi TV Join Andrew Donkin with John Vaughan, Michael Carroll, Ruth Long, Peadar O’Gullinand C.E. Murphy as they discuss Dr. Who, Fringe, New V, Torchwood, Walking Dead and other popular programmes.

and

14.00-14.50 Whites Hotel FREE

Myth and Folklore in modern fiction – Join Herbie Brennan, C.E. Murphy, Oisín McGann, Maura McHugh and Ruth Long. Eminent authors discuss the uses and popularity of themes in Fantasy.

I’m also really looking forward to this:-

15.00 Alien 8 FREE

Grand opening of Alien 8 by Eoin Colfer – Join a vast selection of authors, who will happily sign your books among the many activities planned to celebrate the opening of this new Science Fiction Shop located in Selskar Square, Wexford.

Bookshops good! Free events wonderful!

There are also workshops (Lego! Rockets! Magic Swords!!!) which look amazing and all they’re asking for them is a fiver! What are you waiting for? 🙂

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And speaking of December… only 26 days to go until …

SONGS OF THE WOLF comes out on 7th December 2010 and is available for preorder on BookDepository, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com and others. SONGS contains the two Holtlands novellas THE WOLF’S SISTER and THE WOLF’S MATE, previously only available in ebook format.

Reviews:

4.5 Stars — “I haven’t read such a beautifully written tale in a very long time!” — Natalie, The Library
5 Angels & a Recommended Read – “The fascination that I first felt when I had the chance to read the blurb for this book was well justified…I love to read books that make me feel the emotions that the players experience, be it fear, pain, anger, happiness, sorrow and frustration. The battles that these two go through make you ask yourself what next and when will it end, but the ending is very rewarding. Overall, I could read this book repeatedly and find something new in it. Thanks to R. F. Long for a very wonderful read.” – Darksnite, Fallen Angel Reviews
“It’s well written, fast paced and filled with interesting and unique characters….The best part of the story is Jeren herself. I liked her in The Wolf’s Sister but in this release, she really grows and shines, as she turns into a confident and determined woman, willing to fight for her man. I’m very curious to see what happens to these two mates with the next and last release.” – 4 Nymphs, Mystical Nymph, Literary Nymphs Reviews Only

A love transcending race and culture…a love worth a fight to the death.

The Wolf’s Sister

Elite Fey’na warrior Shan is driven by hatred for the Lord of River Holt, the human who killed his sister. Vengeance is his only goal. Then he meets a woman on the run.

Jeren is desperate to escape her brother before his misuse of magic consumes his sanity. She finds safety and protection with Shan…but only so long as she hides her kinship with the Lord of River Holt…

The Wolf’s Mate

Jeren doesn’t expect Shan’s people to readily accept her, but she’s determined to prove herself worthy. Then the eyes of the beautiful sect mother fall on Shan, turning Jeren’s new world upside down.

Shan wants nothing more than to be with Jeren, but the sect mother has cleverly bound him to her service—full time. Yet he vows the suicide mission he’s been assigned won’t stop him from returning to claim Jeren.

Left alone to make a place for herself, Jeren’s own people seek her out—and force her into a terrible choice. She can set them free …but only if she forsakes Shan.

Warning: Contains violence, scary monsters, desperate acts, burning jealousy and timeless love. Readers may find their imaginations hopelessly ensnared in a beautiful and terrible world of magic.

Octocon 2010 reportish kinda thing

October 22, 2010Awesome authors, Life Happens, news, Octocon, Out and About, Photo MomentsAuthors on the Loose, Awesome authors, OcotoconRFLong

Octocon – 16^th – 17^th October, Camden Court Hotel, Dublin

Ok, this was all very action packed so these are highlights otherwise it will go on forever!

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Octocon this weekend

October 14, 2010Awesome authors, news, Out and About, Writing LifeAwesome authors, octoconRFLong

I’m going to be at Octocon this weekend, Ireland’s Science Fiction Convention, where we’ll be up to all kinds of shenanigans. And I’ll be on a couple of panels

Saturday 12pm Urban Fantasy vs. Paranormal Romance

Sunday 1pm Where’s My Money Honey?! ( New Funding Models) – Err… Yes, me and money. Anyway…

And I’ll be helping out (and hopefully eating some of the sweets) at Claire Hennessy’s Writing YA workshop on Sunday afternoon along with Sarah Rees Brennan. (If they haven’t polished them all off before I get in there.)

Oh and I almost forgot E_W_H himself will be on a panel on Sunday at 2pm – Managing The Writers in Your Life. Yeessss…

All this and George R. R. Martin as guest of honour, C.E. Murphy, Maura McHugh, Derek Gunn, Fabulous Lorraine, Michael Carroll, Peadar Ó Guilín and many more.(So many in fact I can’t link to them all! I have to make biscuits for a cake sale. No really. :S )

If you’re around Dublin this weekend, come and play! We don’t bite. Much.

Links ‘n’ thinks

October 11, 2010Awesome authors, links and stuff, Out and About, RNARFLong

I’ve been working on Graffiti Angel rewrites and plantsing along on my YA Space Opera this (last) week. Plus the odd bit on my May Queen sequel. Hey, at least it has a draft synopsis now. That’s something. Octocon is coming up this weekend so my delightful pre-con stress dreams have started – you know the type: locked in a loo, went out for a coffee and can’t get back etc. This means of course that I’m even more unfocused than usual! Really looking forward to the convention though.

So this post is a mixture of things that have caught my fancy on the internet over the last while:

Spacy stuff for himself

1)Sergey Korolov was the chief rocket scientist for the Soviet Union during the 1960s space race with the US. His identity was so secret he was referred to only as The Chief Designer. It is probably due to his early death in 1966 that the US were the first to land on the moon. His Soyuz spacecraft is still in use today, and has now taken on a new significance (video from BBC – sorry about the ad). I guess, as my space-mad husband pointed out, you could say he won in the end. 😉

Books I love, writers I admire

2) Alan Garner’s books have been really important to me for as long as I can remember. Here he is talking about The Weirdstone of Brisingamen (video from The Guardian) and the influence of Alderley Edge on his books. He describes perfectly the way I feel about Dalkey and Killiney, and how landscape works its way into writing. To (probably mis-) quote: “Here I learned the rockness of rock, the treeness of tree and the skyness of sky” – “…a sense of otherness about the place that goes back as far as there have been people to react to it”.

History

3)Pictures of people re-enacting the Battle of Hastings amuse me!

Funny

4) Hogwarts online amuses me too!

and finally

5) RNA is Fabulous at Fifty. Get all the goss! 😀

So that’s it for now. I will be at Octocon over the weekend, talking books, sci-fi, fantasy and chasing my children all around the place. If you’re there say hi!

Guestblog: With Shovel and Pail by Sarah A. Hoyt

January 27, 2010Awesome authors, Guestblogging, Writing CraftAwesome authors, guestblog, Sarah A. Hoyt, worldbuildingRFLong

Thanks to the recent Steampunk Workshop on Romance Divas (which was brilliant btw) I managed to blackmail persuade the fantastic Sarah A. Hoyt to write a guestblog for me. We also discovered that we share a brain have a lot of similar interests – Robin Hood, Musketeers, Swashing and Buckling, Brave New Worlds – preferably those we create ourselves.

With Shovel and Pail

Sarah A. Hoyt

I’ve been building worlds as long as I can remember. I started with legos, paper and glue, and – at the beach – shovel and pail. I built houses and cities inhabited by tiny, plastic dog figurines, I built huge sand castle complexes and filled them with imaginary princesses and knights.

It is not that the real world wasn’t good enough, but that it often wasn’t INTERESTING enough. I wanted people doing heroic or silly stuff and, from a very early age, I found the need for a world that my characters should inhabit.

The details of these worlds, particularly as I moved from stories in my head to stories on paper, were harder to establish.

For instance, while I was making stories for myself and enacting them with various materials, no one much cared if I were building elaborate cities to be inhabited by dogs who, lacking opposable thumbs, couldn’t possibly have built them. Turns out readers care more about this than my young self did – who knew?

So I started the long and stumbling road of world building. I never had such bad judgment as to assume that my world didn’t need to be internally consistent, or that I could wave a magic wand and change everything halfway through and no one would mind. No, I always knew the first commandment of world building:

Continue reading Guestblog: With Shovel and Pail by Sarah A. Hoyt →