Love. Sex. Death.

Posted on by April 21, 2011

Love. Sex. Death.

That’s why you visited my blog today, right?

Well, okay. Maybe it is for the Blog Tour de Force free book, and the prize AND Kindle drawings.

I don’t blame you. Great! We’ll get to that in a moment.

First, let’s talk about love, sex, and death. They’re what you look for in every novel you read. Doesn’t matter which genre.

“…the need to belong, the hungers of the body, and the search for individual worth; Community, Carnality, Identity. Ultimately, that triad is what all stories are about.” ~ Orson Scott Card

Hungry4You It’s what you’ll find in A. M. Harte’s book, Hungry for You. Through short stories about zombies, you’ll follow characters in search of community, carnality, and identity. Some are living. Some are undead. But set your preconceived notions aside. I promise you, these aren’t your father’s zombies.

 
AdairPaperWomanCoverEbook96dpi Now, I know that zombie fiction isn’t everyone’s cuppa tea, so there’s love, sex, and death aplenty in my historical suspense series starting with Paper Woman, winner of the Patrick D. Smith Literature award. Spies and assassins, ships of sail and storms at sea, swashbucklers and bandits, and a brilliant, brutal, sociopath challenge my main character. I promise you, this isn’t your father’s Revolutionary War.

Okay, you want a free book, a prize, and a Kindle, right?

1.  Win an ebook copy of Paper Woman! (No eReader required.) First, read “The Making of a Fictional Villain, Part 1.” Then return to this post and use the comment form to tell me the following:

  • One characteristic of a good villain
  • Who’s your favorite fictional villain, and why (Love. Sex. Death.)

Make sure you give me an accurate email address. I’ll email you instructions for your Paper Woman download.

2.  Win the Historic Haversack goodie bag! (U.S. deliveries only.) My sponsors’ reviews prove that Paper Woman has the Right Stuff:

So pick your favorite sponsor review, and comment there with the phrase, “Love, sex, and death. Paper Woman has it all!” Then, come back here and comment what review you selected. I’ll enter you in the drawing for the Historic Haversack. Watch my blog for an announcement of the winner.

(Need more convincing? The Pen & Muse posted a review of Paper Woman and an interview of me, plus Red Adept Reviews posted a non-sponsor review for Paper Woman.)

3.  Win the Kindle! Every relevant comment counts as an entry toward the Kindle drawing. The more you and I talk on my blog, the more entries you have. Love. Sex. Death. Let’s talk!

4.  Want more chances to win the Kindle? Of course you do! So let’s stay in touch. Each of the following secures you an additional entry toward the Kindle grand prize drawing. Make sure you comment where you followed and Liked.

I need comments from you folks today. The busier the conversation buzz on my blog today, the greater my chances at winning Blog Tour de Force’s author prize: creation of a video book trailer for my series.

Thanks for stopping by. You’re a winner!

Update: The Paper Woman giveaway has ended. The drawing for the Historic Haversack and the drawing for the Kindle from my blog are closed.

Suzanne Adair

*****

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Comments

Love. Sex. Death. — 247 Comments

  1. Good Luck today Suzanne! I know I already have your book but I wanted to show my support!
    I also like you on facebook, follow on twitter, a fan on goodreads and GFC follower :)

  3. Making a good villain: he/she have to have charm, a storyline that one can understand possibly relate to.
    Honestly, growing up I was outside a lot . . so I do not remember really watching a whole of anything. The one thing I do remember from childhood was my LOVE for The Phantom of the Opera. So with that, the Phantom was my favorite villain. These days, it seems to be Swipper the Fox.
    Stephanie
    ladybug07999 at yahoo dot com

  5. hi Suzanne!
    a good villain is someone you just can’t stop loving to hate and hating to love like Professor Dolores Jane Umbridge, Harry Potter’s fifth year Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher.
    she’s lovely and sexy in a twisted way and definitely deadly!
    good luck to you and A.M. c”,)
    aobibliophile(at)gmail(dot)com

  6. Intelligence makes a great villain. Afterall, unless it is a comedy, why would you be interested in an stupid bad guy? My most recent villain that really rocked me was Christian in Deb Caletti’s “Stay”. He was so believable as an abusive obsessive boyfriend – he really shook me up. I also am a big fan of Dr. Frankenstein in Mary Shelley’s classic “Frankenstein”. I love how obsessed he becomes to create his masterpiece, completely overlooking that it is, in fact, a monster that will ultimately destroy him.
    Great posts, great topic…. Thanks for the opportunity to read your book as well!
    Sarah
    Sarah Reads Too Much
    sarahesullivan at gmail dot com

  8. Sarah, in good fiction, the villain and the hero should be very close to equal. Stupid bad guys have the effect of bringing the hero down to their level. Paradoxically, the hero looks just as 2-dimensional as the stupid villain.
    Love Dr. Frankenstein! We’ve all know someone who was so obsessed that they destroyed themselves.
    Thanks for your comment!

  9. My villain was an entire RACE of villains: the Cylons from the original Battlestar Galactica. I was five and they were scary! Their blind dedication to the extermination of the human race was soooo scary and proved the perfect counterpoint to my favorite hero: Apollo. :-)
    Maybe it’s simple of me, but I like villains that are obviously villains. Cold hearted and completely focused on extermination of the human race. Or whatever. :-)

  10. I chose Bab’s World of Book Reviews. I liked it because it was succinct and to the point and really grabbed my attention and made me want to read the book.

  11. Shéa, yeah, the Cylons were baddies. Really scary when it isn’t just one person but an entire race that’s bent on your destruction. That’s David vs. Goliath writ large. Thanks for stopping by.

  13. My favorite villain is Dracula. Talk about Love, Sex, and Death, the guy has it all. And staying power – all vampire tales have their roots in Stoker’s tale of the evil count. He is a villain that can be used for almost any purpose – metaphor for societal problems; a good person doomed to a life of evil due to circumstances beyond his control; a power mad sociopath looking for eternal life.

  15. Oh, Bill, how can anyone not enjoy Dracula as the ultimate villain? The definitive vampire, too. Yes, he fully encompasses the themes of love, sex, and death. Score!

  20. One characteristic of a good villain is how easily the character could be a magnificent hero/heroine. I believe it was Confucius who noted how much a bandit leader was like a king. When I was a kid the evil queen in Snow White scared me so much I almost threw up. She was already Queen and beautiful she did not need to go after Snow White

  22. Dunstan Fairfax is the only fictional villain where my first response was “kill it NOW.”
    Other fine fictional villains have their moments of humanity, glimpses of the human behind the beast. With Fairfax, the humanity is the mask, and the beast is the real face.

  23. Warren, spot-on. When I’m teaching my workshop on Archetypes, I tell students that the shadow/villain must have heroic qualities. Those characteristics make him/her worthy of the great battle with the villain.
    Hey, how about that Walt Disney guy, eh? Teaching generations of kids about worthy villains. :-)
    Thanks for stopping by.

  24. I’m back after enjoying the review on the Writer’s Life. I feel like I’m in a scavenger hunt. I like reviews that are careful not to give “spoilers.”

  25. Aww, Larry, that’s low. Fairfax would do really well on Match.com. He’d likely even elude all the new algorithms they’re frantically putting in place.
    Thanks for stopping by.

  27. Suzanne, I want to thank you for mentioning me on Goodbooks. I am still learning about social networks. I had a good time writing for your blog and your blog on writers who kill blog spot had many readers. We should do this more often.

  28. One characteristic of good villains is that they are multifaceted. This makes them less predictable, thus more interesting to read about, because you don’t know what they’ll do next.
    One favorite book villain is Sheriff Marcus Tapp from Margaret Lawrence’s Hannah Trevor book series. He is memorable to me months after reading the books, largely because he was a highly conflicted character. He is described as a man who “neither loves nor hates”, which later turns out not to be quite true.
    A favorite TV villain was Gul Dukat from Deep Space Nine. He was arrogantly confident, yet oddly vulnerable, and was an excellent opposite number for Ben Sisko — at least until the Dominion storyline kicked in.
    lord1912@yahoo.com

  29. Hey Warren, can we ever know everything there is to know about social networks? LOL I’m just a Grasshopper at it, learning something new every day. And I very much enjoy wonderful interactions with other authors, like the Relevant History feature on my blog, and the opportunity to guest on blogs like yours.

  31. Tracy, thanks for weighing in. Wow, I agree with you on both Sheriff Tapp and Gul Dukat. (You’ll see more about Gul Dukat when I post the second part of this topic about the making of a fictional villain.) A multifaceted villain is so much more enjoyable to readers and viewers. Where’s the fun if we know everything that a stick-figure bad guy is going to do?

  33. A good villain has charisma, intelligence and ruthlessness. Howzabout a villain who hits all three points of the trifecta (love, sex, death): Atia of the Julii of the HBO series ROME.
    Atia, the niece of Julius Caesar and a lover of Mark Antony, stopped at nothing to promote her family’s social standing in Roman society. Manipulation, deceit, sexuality, animal sacrifice, vendettas. Her rivals included Cleopatra herself.
    Check out this video in which Atia’s young son is a prisoner of war, so Atia participates in a pagan ceremony to beg the gods for his safe return. (WARNING: Mature audiences advisory. Gore. Foreign language version, too, but you’ll be able to figure out what’s happening.)
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeiAgAOgVJg
    Love, sex, death.

  34. A villain should be manipulating and cleaver. No one likes a stupid villain! I always liked the Riddler in Batman because of all those crazy riddles that Batman(or Robin) had to figure out.
    Your book looks great!!

  37. Interestingly, you were growing up in S. Fla at the same time I was growing up in N. Fla (Jacksonville). I don’t remember Cleo but I sure remember Donna in ’60 and Dora in ’64!
    And I have a photo of myself with Jonathan Frid sans fangs – my dad worked for ABC when we left Fla and when he was working on Dark Shadows, he took me into NYC with him to meet the cast. Talk about a dream come true!
    I have to say I’m not a villain fan. I like Isaac Asimov’s villain-less fiction, for instance. But if you’ve got to have a villain, he/she should not be superhuman (well, unless he/she IS superhuman, like Angelique). IOW, the villain shouldn’t be perpetuallly 1+ steps ahead of the hero/ine, who blindly stumbles along constantly reacting. Make the villain suffer problems and setbacks as well, so the hero/ine has a fair shot at winning.
    As you might expect, I favor unexpected villains. “Murder on the Orient Express,” in which the victim turned out to be the villain and the killer not a villain, is a great example. Another is “Angel of Death” by James Anderson. I just finished “Bone of Contention” by Roberta Gellis and I did NOT like that villain, he was simply greedy but still stayed ahead of the good guys.
    mama dot sylvia at gmail dot com

  38. Rhonda, nice to see you here. Ya know, I don’t see much difference between villains from antiquity and certain people with power now. Throat-slitting can be metaphoric, at the financial level for example, and just as obliterating to the victim. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

  39. My favorite villain is Dunstan Fairfax. He’s a sort of dark angel, and truly engenders fear and loathing (at least in me). Like any good villain, Fairfax has moments of compassion and humanity. These serve to highlight how inhuman he truly is. He’s the only villain that has left me pleading with the author to finish him off as quickly as possible.

  41. I found the My Reading Room review most compelling. I think the reviewer made the reader want to pick up “Paper Woman” immediately without giving up too much of the story. And, as we all know, love sex, and death, Paper Woman has it all.

  43. Characteristic of a villain: intelligence (I have no respect for a stupid bad buy ;))
    My favorite villain: Ooo…hard one! There are many who do such a good job of messing with your head. When you’re sorry the conflict is over, you know you’ve found a good one. Gollum, in Lord of the Rings was such a complex character that I have to choose him. The range of emotion that character was able to pull from the reader/viewer was amazing.

  44. Can’t you just imagine Fairfax’s eHarmony profile? 😉
    “Enjoys a snifter of fine brandy, the rarest of steaks and the smell of fresh blood and black powder in the morning.”
    I’ve heard that eHarmony is more upscale than Match.com. He’d totally be seeking exceptional ladies to “charm.”

  45. A good villain should be very intelligent, a step ahead of the hero until the very end. My first thought on reading the post on villains was “Dracula”. Whether in films or print, he always gives me the shivers. So seductive, yet so evil.

  47. Sylvia, Hurricane Donna was awful, a much more powerful storm than Cleo. There used to be a lighthouse in Islamorada (I think) that displayed the high-water mark on the inside, and several people had actually climbed up inside and hung on for dear life to avoid being drowned during Donna.
    A photo of you and Frid? Yeah, I’m sure you’re envied by many. The guy still has quite a fan club.
    Re: superhuman villains, they don’t interest me as much as the ones with flaws, the ones who are vulnerable. That’s a point I’ll make when I post Part 2 of this topic on the Making of Fictional Villain.
    “Villain-less” fiction can still be lots of fun. Remember the episode of original Star Trek called “The Doomsday Machine?” One of my favorites. That machine didn’t have any A.I. It was on auto-pilot. I’d hardly call it a villain, but it sure provided plenty of conflict.
    It takes little to turn many people into “unexpected villains.” :-)

  48. Larry, Fairfax would give you a big ole hug if he could.
    I think the clever sociopaths learn how to imitate compassion and humanity for their own welfare — so they don’t get set afloat on a chunk of ice off the Alaskan coast.

  49. One characteristic of a good villain is intelligence. I think my favorite fictional villain is Dr. Hannibal Lector from Silence of the Lambs: smart, scary, calculating.