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Saturday, July 5, 2014

Formula for a time travel novel


Naked in the Winter Wind is a time travel story. A lusty, action-packed time travel tale.

Yeah, right. Whoop-de-doo. Those are all over the place. If my stories are to make a splash, they have to have something different.

So, how about a 'real' person falling into another story about time travel? That could work. I know I wouldn't mind falling into my favorite novel. But if I did, I wouldn't want to be in this chunky old lady body! Shoot, I'd want the one I had when I was in my late teens. Firm and frisky--yeah, that's what I'd want to be if I were running around the woods, interacting with hunky 18th century men.

Okay. One bottle of Fountain of Youth water, coming up.

But the guilt! How could I leave my family behind? There are friends and pets and creditors... Okay, forget the creditors. But my daughter would miss me, I'm sure.

Okay. One case of amnesia, coming up. Bring out the twist of pollen stem for the sweet, but clumsy, little old lady, administered by a master time traveler/guide-type person.

Oh, and don't forget smart women, strong men (some good, some troubled), villains, an innocent child or four, and critters. They are absolutely necessary for a good tale. They're included, too.

What else is needed? The tried and true formula says that a series is required. Readers always want more. Let's call it The Fairies Saga. Fairies can be what time travelers are called. Sounds more fantasy-like to me.

Finally, and to make mine even more different from the rest, I've thrown in a solar-powered smartphone. An inadvertent video can make a difference in convincing others that going back (and forth) 230 years is possible. But remember: keep the (painless) how-to time travel a closely guarded family secret!

Enjoy Naked in the Winter Wind, the first in The Fairies Saga series. Buy the e-book version here http://amzn.to/1j3QtxY or order a hard copy from Amazon, personally autographed from www.danihaviland.com, or from your favorite bookseller.

And tell your friends that you, too, believe in fairies and time travel.

Wednesday, June 4, 2014

How an 18th century girl sees time travelers


Summer, 1781, near Gibsonville, North Carolina

Young Jenny knows her new mother and grandmother are from a different place--a place where people travel in carriages that fly through the air and where books have pictures that move and talk--but where, or when, they are from doesn't matter.

They love her and she loves them.

Enjoy the novella HA'PENNY JENNY for free on June 5th and 6th,  2014.

If you don't already know, you'll find out what a ha'penny is.

And why her nickname is so wrong...and mean.

Read more about the chatty and optimistic youngster, how she came to be with the family where time and people's ages seem upside down, in NAKED IN THE WINTER WIND, the first book in THE FAIRIES SAGA.

(excerpt)

Why did they lie to me?

(a mother-daughter talk begins) 
 
“So smart people lie, too?”

“Jenny, too many people lie. There have been times I’ve not told people things that I thought they didn’t need to know, but I promise you, I have always tried to tell the truth.” Uncertainty suddenly kicked in. “You haven’t been lying, have you?”

“No. My brothers lied to me. I didn’t even know what lying was for a long time. Sometimes they’d tell me one thing, like the sun always came up in the east because that’s where the sun birds stayed in the mornings and it was their job to carry the sun across the sky. Other times, they said it was because the sun was a great big candle and it floated from one side of the mountains to the other and then big giants blew it out for the night. They never told me how it got back again, though, or what sun birds looked like, or where the giants slept.”

Jenny’s frown was back. “But when they lied to me, they made me feel like there was something wrong with me because I was a girl. They said I was born a boy, but that part got chopped off because I wasn’t smart enough. That’s why I had girl stuff, because my boy stuff got chopped off. Well, they called what you pee with stuff, but still, it’s okay not to have a penis, isn’t it?”
....
(read HA'PENNY JENNY to find out Evie's answer) 

Monday, April 14, 2014

Waiting for spring

I have to consider myself an optimist. Or realist. Or, as my husband calls me, a Pippy Longstockings.

Alaskan winters seem to go on and on forever. I try to break up the six-month plus season with a trip 'Outside' for color, warmth, and sunshine. As you can see from the photo above, April is still a time of white and grays for us. That wee bit of green on the conifer is just a funky shade of gray to me. Sure, we now have over 14 hours of daylight, and the sun is creeping northward. The sun rises and sets in the east and west now instead of in the southeast and southwest, visible from the same south-facing window three months out of the year. The snow piles are shrinking,  the snow cover on the ground evaporating. The soil below is dark brown, soggy, yet promising.

I envy, sort of, my friends' pictures posted on social media, showing off bushes loaded with rose blooms, while my recently released from cold storage potted plants are only beginning to green up, a few buds striving to photosynthesize sustenance from the fluorescent tubes above and limited sunlight, peeking through the north and east facing windows.

June, July, and August will get here eventually. They always do. As I said, I'm a realist. And the Pippy Longstockings attitude knows that while others are suffering from high heat and humidity, cockroaches and hornworms, water restrictions and drought, I'll rely on the evening rains and occasional breezes to take care of my plants and the air conditioning. And I'll snap as many pictures as I can, to look over through the long winter.

Summer always gets here.
And when it does, it's fabulous.

Friday, April 4, 2014

What a difference a visual makes.


Okay, so the model (Harvey is his real name) on the new e-book cover of Dances Naked doesn't have enough gray hair. Would you have wanted him to? To be more true to the story, yes, but to be more appealing, nope!

DANCES NAKED is the story of a 60-ish British Lord, Marty Melbourne, who has traveled back in time from 2012 to 1782 via The Trees, portals through time. All turns out well, at first, and then he gets lost, is robbed, is rescued by a Cherokee hunting party who accept him into their small tribe, and then...well, the chief knows where the crazy white man he calls Dances Naked wants to go, but he doesn't want to return to those bad medicine trees that swallowed his brother years ago. He makes him wait, and then a couple of pretty white women join the tribe for their own reasons...

Lots of other events occur, too, but how much can you, or should you, show on the cover?

And then there's the discretionary issue. If you're getting a print version of a book, and you already know its a good story, wouldn't the tame version on the right be a little more appropriate to have lying about if the in-laws or pastor showed up unannounced?

The truth is, the e-book cover needs to pull in readers with a glance. Tame doesn't work for that. As soon as I changed covers for THE GREAT BIG FAIRY, sales shot up. True, it was for e-books, but print versions are less in demand.

Instant gratification with inexpensive downloads is what is selling right now. So, I'll share the eye candy for the e-books, but will also offer 'tamer' print versions...just in case you want to give your mother-in-law a great book to read, that won't make her blush if the pastor catches her reading it.

(Cover art on left by TheKillionGroupInc.com. Illustration on the right by Tony Woodward)

Thursday, March 27, 2014

Free Fairy Day: March 28, 2014


Get THE GREAT BIG FAIRY for free on Friday, March 28...and a few others, too! http://www.freeebookpartay.com/

***Authors supporting authors with readers getting the (free) results! Sign up for Free ParTay weekly emails (not every day like some others) and you're entered into a free Kindle contest, too.

Free ParTay Super Free Friday! For One Day Only, March 28, The Great Big Fairy will be

FREE! If you like The Great Big Fairy you might also like these other FREE books:

Living with The Hubster, He's the banjo-playing captain of her life's ship. By Judy S. Watts.

The Paris Caper, A rogue detective will do anything to catch the sexy international thief he's fixated upon. By Nina Bruhns.

The Huntress, When they first met, he shot her. Catch The Huntress. By Dorothy McFalls.

The Bedeviled Heart, A Scottish Earl finds love in the medieval highlands. By Carmen Caine.

To enter to win a Kindle and $25 worth of Amazon gift cards, simply visit FreePartay.com and
sign up for our newsletter!

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Time travel for less than $2000

That's right, folks. I time traveled for under $2000. See where this Alaskan author wound up? That's an 18th century tall ship, sitting in Port Jackson, in the area we now know as Darling Harbour.

Maybe I'd better clarify. The money was for my plane ticket from Phoenix to Sydney, Australia. I truly and honestly time traveled, but I went forward a day (I never experienced January 8, 2014). My intent was to go back 235 years, sort of. I flew to the land where the First Fleet arrived in 1788 in order to experience the terrain and climate those convicts, marines, and sailors encountered when they landed in the 'unknown to white man' region.

If you don't know about the First Fleet, I'm sure you will after reading my book, Fairies Down Under. It's still in process, but I will tell you that it's about a 21st century time traveler, wrongly convicted of a trivial crime, who winds up being transported from England to Australia rather than hang from the gallows.

And that ship in the picture above: that's the James Craig, the only full time tall ship sailing the world today. It's huge, takes quite the crew to sail it, and bounces over the waves like a carnival ride. Both make me sick, but I'd go back to Sydney in a heartbeat (and the 24 hour flight). I think I'll wait a year or so, though. I want to have my book completed for my next journey. Everyone Down Under knows about the First Fleet, but they don't know yet that a time traveler helped them survive that first year...

The Great Big Fairy is the story that precedes Fairies Down Under. If you haven't read it, here's a link. I really think you'll enjoy the story of another time traveler, the 21st century 6'7" red head who goes 'home' to Revolutionary War era North Carolina, to the time traveling family he left behind.

NOTE: I already know of at least one way to time travel. If you know of others, please share. I promise not to tell anyone else...