writing

THE 5 BEST OPENING LINES IN FANTASY…

I love opening lines. The great ones hook, grip, and surprise you. They also evoke the mood of the book and the voice of the narrator…and if you’re really lucky, the emotion of the story. All in a line.

I’ve always worn my ‘geek hat’ when it comes to first lines. With my third novel in the USA Today bestselling REBEL ANGELS series releasing next week (VAMPIRE DEVIL), I’ll be posting the beginnings of each novel to give you a taste. Here are Two of My Favourite First Lines from my own series.

From BLOOD RENEGADES in the REBEL VAMPIRES series:

Betrayal. Death. Hope. Isn’t that how all truly great stories start?

From VAMPIRE PRINCESS in the REBEL ANGELS series:

Vampires? Angels? I hunt the bastards because they hunt me.

Here’s my pick of the 5 Best Opening Lines in Fantasy:

5. Jim Butcher Blood Rites

The building was on fire, and it wasn’t my fault.

4. Lev Grossman The Magicians:

Quentin did a magic trick. No one noticed.

3. Jacqueline Carey Kushiel’s Dart:

Lest anyone should suppose that I am a cuckoo’s child, got on the wrong side of a blanket by lusty peasant stock and sold into indenture in a shortfallen season, I may say that I am House-born and reared in the Night Court proper, for all the good it did me.

2. Mark Lawrence Prince of Fools

I’m a liar and a cheat and a coward, but I will never, ever, let a friend down. Unless of course not letting them down requires honesty, fair play, or bravery.

Stephen King The Gunslinger

The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.

As we’re talking first lines, here’s a sneak peek at the first line of VAMPIRE DEVIL (out now on pre-order):

I reign over a valley of feathers and bones: death, the End, destroyer. Half vampire, half angel, I’m a monster amongst monsters.

What first lines would you’ve chosen?

October 17, 2018 0

HARDCOVER PATRICIA BRIGGS GIVEAWAY

HARDCOVER GIVEAWAY!
HARDCOVER giveaway for PATRICIA BRIGGS’ new USA Today Bestselling BURN BRIGHT (ALPHA AND OMEGA)!

Click here to enter

I love Patricia Briggs the fantasy writer. But it’s her werewolf and shifter Mercy Thompson and Alpha and Omega urban fantasy series that have me addicted.

Set in a world of magic and danger, including vampires and fae alongside the shifters, these are gripping books in a complex world.

Plus, I’m a worshipper of the iconic book cover! Here are 3 of Patricia Briggs’ best:

The hardcover for BURN BRIGHT, however, is my favourite so far!

ENTER CONTEST HERE.

Ends 2nd April.

GOOD LUCK!

March 29, 2018 0

FANTASY GIVEAWAY – 5 Reasons Game of Thrones Is Addictive

I love Game of Thrones, both the books and the TV show. As a fantasy writer myself, I was keen to sponsor this EPIC Game of Thrones Giveaway with 16 prizes.

Prizes include a Game of Thrones board game, sculpture, bookmark, and the leather bound boxed set.

You can enter here for the chance to win.

So, why is Game of Thrones such an awesome show?

Here are 5 Reasons Game of Thrones Is Addictive:

The world’s immersive. Brilliantly constructed and visually stunning.
The compelling characters. But more than this – there’s no one main character. At the start, you think it’s Ned. Then Danerys, Jon or Tyrion. But there’s no single lead.
Main characters die. A lot. I won’t do spoilers, but it’s shocking. The plot itself is epic, with enough twists to keep you guessing.
No one’s truly good…or bad. I write anti-heroes, so this is why I love Game of Thrones. The morality is grey, which means you never know how someone will act or what secret will be uncovered.
It’s an engrossing story of extremes. Honour and betrayal, revenge and loyalty, cruelty and compassion… As well as the contrast between human politics, love affairs, and murders and fantastical white walkers, dark magic and dragons.

The result? An epic show with a core of humanity.

Why do you find Game of Thrones addictive?

When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground

~ Cersei Lannister

Enter the Giveaway here.

Good Luck!

Rosemary A Johns is the International Bestselling and Award-winning Author of REBEL VAMPIRES. Dive into her addictive fantasy series here today.

Rebel Vampires fantasy book series - Rosemary A Johns

December 3, 2017 0

5 OF THE BEST VAMPIRE BOOKS FOR HALLOWEEN

As Halloween is nearly here – this year I’ll be appearing at the All Hallows Eve Book Party at 5 – 6 p.m. EDT, whilst dressed as a sexy vampire for my own house party – I’m recommending the best dark vampire books.

Vampire fiction is the perfect Halloween reading: just the right dash of fear and thrills.

Here are Five of the Best Vampire Books for Halloween:

5. Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist. Isolation and childhood friendship in this dark fantasy fairy tale. A human boy and a girl vampire battle against their cruel lives together.

4. Guilty Pleasures by Laurell K Hamilton. Anita Blake is a vampire hunter and a necromancer, in a fantasy world where vampires and werewolves are there to be assassinated or loved.

3. Blood Shackles by Rosemary A Johns. A dark fantasy in which a vampire is hunted by humans, and bought by his enemy’s daughter. In this world, the vampires are the slaves and the humans are the masters.

2. Anno Dracula by Kim Newman. A fantasy alternative universe, in which the vampires conquered England and now hold the power. Uses real historical characters, mixed in with the fictional.

1.Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris. Narrated by a telepathic waitress in Louisiana in a time when vampires are – supposedly – living peacefully with humans after the invention of the synthetic ‘Tru Blood’.

What’s your favourite vampire book?

Happy Halloween reading!

Escape into Blood Life in the spellbinding REBEL VAMPIRES series…

October 23, 2017 1

BLOOD SHACKLES RECEIVES HONORABLE MENTION – Readers’ Favorite Book Awards, 2017

BLOOD SHACKLES - REBEL VAMPIRES Today I discovered that the second book in the REBEL VAMPIRES series, BLOOD SHACKLES, has received HONORABLE MENTION in the 2017 Readers’ Favorite International Book Awards.

This is especially important to me because it’s a book about FREEDOM, which took the idea of slavery and twisted expectations. Here the vampires are the slaves, the humans the masters. The woman is the mistress, rather than the man.

Slavery isn’t an easy topic to discuss, and taking our perspectives of vampires and turning it into a metaphor. The First Lifers think they’re superior and treat the Blood Lifers like they’re objects. – Readers’ Favorite 5*

Hunted by humans, Light’s bought by his enemy’s daughter.

Light’s caught between breaking under the cruel training, or battling to hold onto the rebel inside. If he can remember the vampire he once was, he can fight to uncover the conspiracy behind the slave ring and free his family.

But to do this, he must face his worst terrors…

Blood Shackles is tragic, triumphant, addictive, and somehow hopeful. I was so engrossed in Light’s story that I didn’t notice my Kindle was dying.

The Gold Award winner was Eric. J. Gates’ OUTSOURCED. A thriller that’s a mix of quantum mechanics and the supernatural.

BLOOD SHACKLES is Light’s Slave Journal. It’s also his journey of discovery. When a man’s broken from predator to prey, how do you find yourself again? How can save your family and the world, if you can’t save yourself?

Johns succeeded in creating a world, characters, and a story that pulled me in until I had to finish reading it. I had to know what was going to happen to Light, Hartford, Donovan, and Grayse. This is a novel everyone should read, along with Blood Dragons.

Learn more here.

September 11, 2017 0

FANTASY SHORT STORY – First Edition New Magazine

Look what just arrived in my hot little hands…the first ever edition of SCAFFOLDING MAGAZINE!

How to Scalp a Doll - Rosemary A Johns My short story – HOW TO SCALP A DOLL – was commissioned for this special first edition.

Danny, a lonely long distance driver, is trapped in a world of human trafficking. He saw the slaves as no more than dolls. Until one day, he broke his boss’ rule, opened the back of the truck and looked inside…

The sea was a smudge of blue against the horizon; the salt was sharp on the dead air. Danny stiffened. For a moment, when he stared out across the beach, he saw rows of scalps, no longer miniature but life-size – brunette, blond, and bald. Danny blinked. And then they were gone.

The magazine also includes an interview with me.

Rosemary A Johns - fantasy author

I discuss the short story…

The girls are invisible because they’re viewed as less than human.

…why I write fantasy…

…it allows me to give a voice to the forgotten. Or the deliberately hidden.

…and freedom.

The free have choices. But that’s often hard to face. Ourselves.

The Editor reviews BLOOD DRAGONS:

‘The kind of book you’re likely to pick up a second time, finding new dimensions…an empowering book…about true love. It is a book with formidable literary ambition. Rebel to the core, Rosemary trailblazers through stigma… Highly recommended. 5*

Click here to read more.

Scaffolding Magazine

August 17, 2017 1

AN INTERVIEW WITH LIGHT – Rebel Here, Yeah?

This week Light – the Rocker rebel main character in my Rebel Vampires series – was interviewed on the Mary R Woldering Blog.

Here are the 5 of the highlights!

1.Tell us where and when were you born.

Tricky one that because I was both born and reborn. My first birth was in Victorian London as a First Lifer. My second was into the glorious darkness of Blood Life when my red-haired gorgeous nightmare of an Author – Ruby – elected me.

2. How would you describe yourself?

I’ll never be human again – always on the outside, looking in. I’m a caged predator, battling the dark, as bit by bit it consumes me. Of course, I’m also a bad boy Rocker rebel with a cracking leather coat. What more do you want – blood?

3. Tell us about where you grew up.

Just outside the bustle of London – always craving for something more because the world never seemed big enough. But it was Ruby who shook the boyhood from me. Then it was my Moon Girl in the 1960s who opened my eyes to the truth: there’s no divide between our species. That was the moment I grew up.

4. Past/ present relationships? How did they affect you?

I thought Blood Life meant freedom: from society’s rules, family and control. I was wrong. For over a century Ruby and I carved out a path of crimson carnage aflame with our love alone. But I was a daft berk to ever believe that. It took a human to show me love could be free. Yet I’d reckoned myself the predator and humans the prey? I was wrong about that too. I may battle for redemption but the battle for my species’ freedom – for the right to love, family and home – that one I’m still fighting.

5. How do your beliefs make life better for yourself and the people you care about?

My family need me to be the leader. Christ in heaven is that hard. I was always trying to save the world, even in my First Life – even though the cost is usually too high. Because there’s always a price. Yet someone has to take a stand when the system becomes so corrupt. Someone has to light the match to the rebellion…sodding frightening that it’s me… Welcome to the Rebel Age!

Read Light’s full interview here.

Start your escape into Blood Life today. Click here.

June 28, 2017 0

5 OF THE BEST FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION REBELS

Rebel Vampires fantasy series

Rebel here, yeah?

Rebel Vampires fantasy series Rosemary A Johns That’s the rallying cry – or the misfit call to individuality at the heart of my series Rebel Vampires. In fact, it’s the core of every book I write: there’s a reason they’re called ‘Fantasy for Rebels‘.

Yet rebellion – against corrupt societies, conformity, kings or patriarchs has been one side of both fantasy and science fiction’s coin.

On the other?

A style of fantasy that conforms to safe patterns: yearns back to a time when men were men, women were women and peasants knew their place…even if they were all elves.

So to celebrate the rebel in fantasy, here are Five of the Best Fantasy and Science Fiction Rebels:

5. V for Vandetta: Alan Moore. V is an anarchist: violent and vengeful. His porcelain Guy Fawkes mask is also the influence for Anonymous and activist groups in the real world. How’s that for subversive fiction?

4. The Handmaid’s Tale: Margaret Atwood. All right, so who’s not watching this right now? Interesting thing about the book? EVERY main character in it is a rebel, even though this is a nightmare world. Each one disobeys Gilead’s Laws, either with active resistance or rebellion within their family. No rule can be absolute.

3. The Dispossessed: Ursula K. Le. Guin. The unlikely rebel here is a physicist. How he rebels? By questioning: neither the anarchy of one world not the pacifism of the other is perfect. There’s no such place as Utopia? Yeah, got it.

2. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress: Robert A. Heinlein. This is a true novel of rebellion: a moon colony – an underground penal colony that’s like the Old West – rebels against Earth. The term ‘Rational Anarchist‘ is invented.

1. A Song of Ice and Fire: George R. R. Martin. Where to start? The whole series is a sequence of political machinations, military campaigns, and rebellions. The obvious is Robert’s Rebellion but the one that sums up the spirit..? It’s the Mother of Dragons’ attempts to give the control back to the slaves, so they’ll free themselves in Slavers Bay. Daenerys is the ultimate rebel: against her place in life, her gender, her role and for freedom. What’s not to love?

Like Daenerys, in Rebel Vampires Light rebels against his role and for freedom. He finds himself in both a human and Blood Lifer world, which is corrupt and controlling.

Sometimes rebellion is less dangerous than hiding in the shadows…

So who’s your favourite rebel in fantasy?

June 26, 2017 0

EMPOWERING FANTASY – How Books Can Break Down Walls

Blood Dragons was featured in the first edition of the literary magazine Scaffolding:

5* “The kind of book you are likely to pick up for a second time…an empowering book” – Scaffolding Magazine

From my days as a teenager spellbound by the world of Buffy the Vampire Slayer every week (dangerous thrills wrapped in snarky comedy…learn from the best), I’ve loved the idea that fantasy can be empowering…and fun.

I only write what I’m passionate about – a writer’s voice should be in their works.

As a playwright I loved to challenge audiences: make them laugh one minute, cry the next. Always? Question one little lie society teaches us, as Light would say, ‘cradle to the grave’: money makes you happy, disabled people can’t succeed, old people are boring or democracy can’t fail.

Trick of it is to create a world, characters and plot so exciting that readers are pulled into these questions.

“A book that stands behind causes, that advocates inclusion, that denounces walls and barriers.”

Light is a Blood Lifer and Kathy is a human. Their love is forbidden. In the wild 1960s Light realises that not as much divides the species as he’s always been taught. That maybe Blood Life isn’t about freedom but control.

That love can be free…

“Trailblazes through the stigma of mental health and disability in some of the most authentic ways we’ve ever read.”

My son is an autistic savant: everything he sees he remembers. My main character’s chief talent is his photographic memory: living as a vampire and witnessing all the glories and horrors, this becomes both a blessing and a curse.

His first true friend is an autistic vampire. Both elected because of their exceptional talents.

“A book with a formidable literary ambition… Highly recommended.”

In Rebel Vampires Light battles for love, family or home. Always he fights for freedom. Those walls and barriers? Light won’t rest until they’re tumbled down, smashed at his feet. Welcome to the Rebel Age!

Start your rebel adventure into Blood Dragons here!