Bats, Ribbons and Reviews!

Woohoo! I got a couple of new reviews on DEVIL WITHOUT A CAUSE this week, and wanted to share: Four out of five bats (ha!) from All Things Urban Fantasy, and four and a half blue ribbons from Romance Junkies. The reviews themselves contain spoilers, so I'm just hitting the highlights here:

Rating from All Things Urban Fantasy:



"Excellent - Loved it! Buy it now put this author on your watch list."

"DEVIL WITHOUT A CAUSE takes things into the realm of myth and magic without treading on too many dogmatic toes. This paranormal romance surprised me quite a few times, most particularly in the way that the main character/supporting character dynamic was reversed. While it’s unusual for me to be interested in world building over romance, I enjoyed the glimpses of this particular devil’s world so much he quite stole the show."

From Romance Junkies:

Full of imagination and creativity, DEVIL WITHOUT A CAUSE, the first book in talented author Terri Garey’s new DEVIL’S BARGAIN series, is an edge-of-your-seat thriller that will have you rapidly turning pages to see what happens next. An emotion-packed tale, DEVIL WITHOUT A CAUSE is filled with complex and compelling characters, a heart touching plot, deceit, plot twists, manipulations, romance, suspense and paranormal mystery, making it a delight for readers of various genres. This is a story you do not want to miss!

Not Crazy, Just In Rewrites

This kind of says it all...

Browse Inside "DEVIL WITHOUT A CAUSE"

You say you're tired of waiting until May 31st to discover what kind of diabolical trouble Sammy Divine has cooked up? I have the solution!

Browse Inside this book Get this for your site

A simple click will allow you to read the first 60 pages! (Yep, I said 60, as in Six Oh.) It's a really cool feature that's almost as good as holding the real thing!

Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction: Of Rock Stars and Romance

My newest novel, DEVIL WITHOUT A CAUSE, hits the stores in just over two weeks, and today I thought I'd give you a little background on just how this story came to be. (Let me warn you, you're going to think I made it up, because the truth is definitely stranger than fiction!)



Back in 2007, the first book in my Nicki Styx series, DEAD GIRLS ARE EASY was released. The basic premise of that story was this: a so-called "goth girl" has a near-death experience, and comes back from the other side with the ability to see and hear the dead. (It was a bit of a take on the "be careful what you wish for" idea, in that someone who was drawn to the dark side ended up with lot more darkness in her life than she ever expected.)

Fast forward two years and two books later, when I was helping my husband set up a website for his business (I used to be a computer techie before I was a writer). I was coordinating things with the web designer, and just happened to include my official "author signature" in one of my emails, which showed my own website address. He clicked on it, visited my website and said, "Hey, I didn't know you liked that dark stuff, but since you do, here's a link to a cool band I think you'll really like." Hence, I was introduced to the goth n' roll artistry of gold-record selling Finnish band, The 69 Eyes, also known as the Helsinki Vampires. Do yourself a favor, and check out their video for a song called "Perfect Skin" for a taste of their particular brand of dark deliciousness:



Anyway, I was hooked, and casually ended up "friending" the band on MySpace.

To my surprise, I got a personal response to that friend request, from none other than lead singer, Jyrki Linnankivi, also known as Jyrki69. He told me that the band was working on a new album, and that one of the songs had been inspired by one of my books! I'll be quite honest with you - my initial response was a bit skeptical, both that a hot lead singer of a rock n' roll band would email me personally, or that he'd ever even heard of my books. :) But, in true "stranger than fiction" fashion, Jyrki kept in touch, although he kept secret which book he was referring to (Helsinki vampires are nothing if not mysterious). Then, in the summer of 2009, their new album was released, featuring a lead single entitled "Dead Girls Are Easy", the video of which debuted on, of all things, Playboy.com . I'll warn you, it's a bit racier than the book , but you can watch the video and hear the song here:

Later that year, a dream came true when I got to meet the band in person when they toured in the US. Here's a pic of Jyrki and me, after each member of the band signed a copy of my book (do I look happy or what? ) Story and more pics here.

Anyway, I decided to return the artistic favor. The band's medium is music, but mine is writing. I'd been toying with the idea for a new series featuring a diabolically handsome character of Sammy Divine, who'd was a recurring character from appeared in my first (Nicki Styx) series. Sammy's the Devil, you see, and there's a long-time legend about extremely talented musicians who GOT that talent by making a deal with the Devil. Enter the character of Finn Payne, the rock n' roll bad boy who sold his soul for rock n' roll, and now wants it back. Throw in a young single mother with a very sick child who makes her own deal with the Devil, and you've got DEVIL WITHOUT A CAUSE, which releases May 31st, 2011.

Art inspires art, hot guys inspire more hot guys, and so on, and so on. :) C'mon now... who could make up a story like that??

Just In Case You Forgot... Devil Without a Cause is out in three more weeks!!

Revisions: When The Creative Process Gets Messy!

Anybody who tells you that writing is easy has never actually been through the revision process.

This is a partial shot of the floor beside my desk right now, littered with pages that no longer fit the manuscript I'm working on.  Pages I worked on for days and weeks, now scrapped due to a change in story direction.  Luckily, I don't drink alcohol while I work or it would've been an empty bottle of wine laying there instead of a Snapple bottle.  :)

Write some pages, read 'em, scrap 'em.  Write some pages, read 'em, scrap 'em.  Write some pages, read 'em, keep 'em.  Wash, rinse, repeat.  :)

Anyway, that's where I've been and that's what I'm doing, and what I will be doing for the next three weeks.

At the end, I may need a bulldozer, as my office may look like a landfill by the time I'm finished!