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
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.
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:
- A Writer's Life
- Babs World of Book Reviews
- Juniper Grove
- Let Them Read Books
- Motherlode
- My Reading Room
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.
- Like my Facebook page
- Follow me on Twitter
- Follow my blog with the Google Friends Connect badge in the sidebar
- Follow me on Goodreads
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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Rhonda, costume dramas flaunt it. Especially anything with swords and sandals and a bloated budget.
Larry, there’s definitely an art to reviewing without revealing too much. Thanks for commenting there.
Suzanne,
I hope to kindle your interest in my winning ways by uploading your blog on research to my author page on Goodreads.
Enjoy reading Paper Woman, Warren!
Susan, Gollum is one of my all-time favorite book/movie characters. He isn’t black-and-white. He’s gray. IMHO that makes him more interesting than just about anyone else in Lord of the Rings because you feel he’s always capable of redemption. The character of Boromir is similar to Gollum in that respect.
Rhonda, your version of Fairfax’s e-Harmony profile is so sick it’s funny. I can even hear the Wiltshire accent.
What’s really scary is that he’s already out there on those dating sites in many forms. Some women go looking for men just like him.
Hi Pat, that’s two votes for Dracula so far today. I think he hits the spot with lots of people.
And I so wish that movie producers would pay attention to everyone’s comments on this blog today. No more stupid villains, please. We want the smart, complex ones.
Tracy, thanks for your comment on My Reading Room, and I emailed you instructions about accessing Paper Woman. Enjoy.
jecbib, Hannibal Lecter sorta defines sociopathic villain for many, doesn’t he? Yet in “Silence of the Lambs” he was also a hero of sorts. He helped Clarice out, and he only snuffed the characters who “needed killin’.”
I need an email address from you if you want me to enter you in either of the drawings or send you a copy of Paper Woman.
Pat, thanks for your comments on my reviewer sponsors’ sites!
Warren, thanks for spreading the love to Goodreads. Make sure you’ve sent me a GR friend request.
I think that a good villain not only needs to be incredibly intelligent but also a bit tortured…well at least for me to enjoy the story…pure evil is well…kind of boring…it’s the gray that’s interesting. As to my favorite villain..that’s a hard one..I’m going to steal from the person who said Gollum because I agree with that…he was so tortured!
PS I commented on Juniper Grove.
No doubt … Bad Boys are catnip to women. Even women with supposedly better sense feel a brief distraction, a momentary sway from sensibility.
Give that Bad Boy culture, good cheekbones, money and an English accent? Weapon of Mass Destruction.
Melissa, that’s 2 votes for Gollum, and 2 votes for Dracula. Wonderful villains, both of them.
Thanks for your comment on Juniper Grove.
Rhonda, if there isn’t already a web site out there called “Weapons of Mass Destruction” that features villains, someone’s made a huge oversight.
so enjoying this tour! and meeting you, Suzanne!
•One characteristic of a good villain? salesmanship
•Who’s your favorite fictional villain, and why?(Love. Sex. Death.)
Lady Sedgwick “At Bertram’s Hotel” Agatha Christie – beautiful, smooooth,cunning, unsuspected {good salesmanship :)} well played Suzanne !
i totally enjoyed Carolyn’s review at “A Writer’s Life”! excellent!
i’m your 10th GFC follower!
Faith, salesmanship is a biggie for good villains. I teach a workshop on archetypal characters. Because it’s so hard for students to identify heroic qualities in villains, and because good villains absolutely need heroic qualities, I have my students identify the heroic qualities in Satan. Don’t you know, salesmanship is a quality they always mention for him. Thanks for your comments!
Ok, update time!
I already have you on “like” on Facebook.
I joined Goodreads and am now following you. I’d been meaning to join this for a long time, anyway.
I joined Google Friend Connect and am now following you. It has me listed as “T” instead of Tracy for some reason.
Love sex death, all good things!!
*One characteristic of a good villain: Charm
*Who’s your favorite fictional villain, and why (Love. Sex. Death.): Hanibal. he is charmy yet gross all at the same time.. you can’t help but like him and get snarled in his trance like talks.. he is very clever!!
Good luck!
JaylieG
jgrissum AT msn DOT com
Faith, thanks for your comments on Carolyn’s blog, and for the GFC follow!
I posted at A writer’s Life. The review makes me want to read the book even more!
Liked your FB, following you twitter and GoodReads!
JaylieG
Tracy, that “T” on GFC stumped me. Thanks for clarifying. How weird that they assigned you an initial. Be thankful it wasn’t a random initial, like “W.” LOL
Hi, Suzanne! Just stopping by to wish you the best for Blog Tour de Force.
A good villain must be intelligent. A great example of an intelligent villain is Hannibal from Silence of the Lambs ~ one of my favorite! I would love a chance to read your book!
carolewooten at sbcglobal dot net
Jaylie, thanks for your comments! Charm is sooo important for a good villain. The drooly, stinky ones are too easy to dismiss.
So you cast a vote for Hannibal the Cannibal, eh? That’s 2 Hannibal, 2 Gollum, 2 Dracula. Could be a theme emerging here.
I looked for you on Goodreads and Facebook. What did you sign in as?
A good villain should be able to command a large group and sex appeal is never bad.
My favorite villains were some of yours. We’re close in age. Erica Cain on All My Children was a baddy I found in High school. Loved to hate her.
I have to agree with you and Faith about salesmanship being a good villain quality.
I try never to take a villain at face value, but love to look beneath the surface to find some redeeming or mitigating circumstances; to see what makes him (or her) tick.
Thanks for the good wishes, Kelli.
Carole, another vote for Hannibal! And for intelligence. No one commenting today has liked stupid villains — go figure! Thanks for stopping by.
Sandy, Erica oozed sex appeal, a Femme Fatale Plus. Still, I think we were all happy for Susan Lucci when she finally got her award for that role.
Tracy, you’re so patient with villains!
I too loved Dark Shadows and would rush home after school to watch it. I think a good villain is one you love to hate. My favorite of childhood was Dr. Smith on Lost in Space.
Brenda, thanks for stopping by. Lots of people found Dr. Smith a worthy villain. What made him worthy for you?
My orthodontist’s name was Dr. Smith. Ugh.
Back to “love/sex/death” and my fave villain … I tried to find a scene on YouTube from HBO’s ROME in which Atia is stumped as to why why her older, classier rival has returned a gift – a well-endowed young man who Romans used as sort of a walking greeting card. Atia, played by Polly Walker, deadpans, “I don’t understand. Large Penis is always welcome.”
Well, I’m not a big fan of zombies, so you get my vote today!
I totally have to agree with you about Kahn being my favorite Star Trek villain. He was so perfect … and I think the best characteristic a good villain can have is his or her ability to lead massive groups of people. I don’t know how they do it, but good villains always have this captive audience that they can bend to carry out these amazing evil deeds.
P.S. I’m melissa918[at]gmail[dot]com
Hi Suzanne,
I’m going to go with FOCUS as a characteristic of a good villain just because I didn’t see it mentioned in the comments as yet (though intelligence and all the other facets mentioned are definitely part of the make-up a ‘successful’ super villain should have down pat).
While it’s difficult to say who is a favourite villain, I am going to go with Hannibal (The Cannibal) Lector who really draws you in (whether on the movie screen or between the pages of a book). What I like about him as a villain is that there are elements to his character that appeal and that lull you into a secret little fantasy friendship, until you fall into his darkness and realise you’ve only yourself to blame…
Good luck with the Cage Match!
To me, a good villain possesses extreme intelligence. They seem to think beyond what a “normal” person would venture. They also seem to be addictive to something – drugs, sex, compulsion.
While my favorite villain isn’t from a book (not yet), I think Gregory House from the tv series “House” is a great villain and being cute doesn’t hurt.
I’m patient with villains because I find most of them much more interesting that most protagonists.
But, then again, I’m one of those women with a bad boy fixation. I’m like a moth to the flame with a favorite villain.
I think a villain with a very controlled persona is scarier than one that seems wild or out of control. The scariest villain I was ever allowed to watch as a child was the Wicked Witch and her flying monkeys so I’ll choose someone from my adult years. The German officer in the movie Inglourious Basterds(that’s how the movie title’s spelled)scared the daylights out of me. He was very cool and calculating.
Rhonda, if you’d seen the “artifacts” in Pompeii, you’d know this to be true. And as I said earlier, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
The more things change … “When you care enough to send the very best.”
One characteristic of a good villian is persistence. She never gives up. No matter how many schemes fail, no matter how many times the heroes defeat her-she just goes back to the drawing board and comes up with something even more dastardly.
My favourite villian is Janine Malloy from British soap opera Eastenders:
Love-because she wanted to stop her husband Ryan from running off with love rival and murderer Stacey, Janine stabbed herself in the stomach and tried to frame Stacey for it, partially leading to Stacey fleeing the country.
Sex-Janine used to be a prositute. Local small-time tyrant/business guru Ian was a regular customer. She started blackmailing him by saying that she’d tell his wife Laura what he was up to. Ian ended up giving her so much money that he tried to sell his TV in the street to keep the funds going.
Death-Janine left Barry, her first husband, to die as she didn’t love him-she just married him for money because she thought he was terminally ill. When it turned out he wasn’t, she was horrified. They later got into an arguement on top of a Scottish mountain, she pushed him away, he tripped and fell down the mountain, she rushed to the bottom to where he lay-and sat there watching him die.
Melissa, I’m not a big fan of zombies, either, especially since my teenage sons spend so much time blowing them to smithereens on X-Box. And I’ll gladly accept your vote today, thanks. But A.M. Harte’s book is actually quite good, and she deals competently with all of Card’s themes: love, sex, and death.
Not many people have it in them to be a leader, and many heroes are worse leaders than villains!
One of my favorite fictional villains are the Daleks on Doctor Who. They seek to destroy all living creatures that don’t meet their standards of perfection.
Given that the Daleks are, essentially, nothing but soulless machines, this means they seek to wipe out every living creature that exists. Now that’s a baddie of a villain.
Quinn, thanks for your observations on the characteristic of focus in defining a good villain. It’s great fun watching folks trot out these heroic qualities and ascribe them to villains. And Hannibal, who now has 2X as many votes as Dracula and Gollum, is definitely a focused fellow.
I think a good villain is intelligent and charming, which is what helps them achieve their evil schemes.
I must say my favorite villain is actually Khan Noonien Singh from Star Trek. Something I hadn’t thought about in years until I read your “Making of Villain, part 1”. He was sooo very good at being bad.
Good luck on your cage match!
I posted a comment on My Reading Room because that reviewer made it very clear that a romance was an integral part of Sophie’s story. I’m a romance reader and always like to escape with a HEA.
Bev, thanks for the marvelous observation about compulsion — and House as a villain. Or maybe he’s an anti-hero? Difficult to say. Many intelligent sociopaths gravitate to the field of medicine, where they can control people and be worshiped.