Screwing Up Babylon, release date

Assuming my proofreader makes it through the confluence of storms without being flooded out, Screwing Up Babylon should be available by next Tuesday! (Probably sooner.)

As soon as the book is live on Amazon, I'll post it here.

It's getting exciting. I've bought a bottle of champagne, smoked salmon, gourmet crackers, and Wensleydale cheese with cranberries. (And, of course, chocolate--dark chocolate with blackberries and Cabernet.) So we'll be celebrating soon. I'll post photos.

In the meantime, here's a photo of my office wall.

Monkey Madness Blog Hop and Excerpt

With the release of Screwing Up Babylon coming quickly, I’ve been trying think of ways to promote the book that support other writers too.

One idea that caught my attention is doing a themed blog hop. (I’ve seen this done once before, and fellow blogger Katie from Creepy Query Girl mentioned it in one of her posts.) In Screwing Up Babylon, Mark meets a monkey who becomes his friend and nemesis. (And in a hint to future things, Mark has a bizarre experience with a peacock in the Screwing Up Time short story, "Screwing Up Mongolia," which will be coming out in December.) So I thought it might be fun to share strange animal experiences--funny, scary, or odd. In the hop, everyone who participates would write a post about an unusual animal experience. 

If you’re interested in participating, contact me at connie (dot)m(dot) keller (at)gmail.com (or just leave me a comment). If there’s enough interest, I’ll set everything up and get the details to you.

Here's an excerpt from Mark's experience with Charlie the Chimp:

The monkey grabbed a lime off a platter and threw it. It grazed my temple. If I hadn’t ducked, it would’ve hit me smack in the face. If the Yankees needed a new starting pitcher, Charlie the Crazed Chimp would fit the bill.

He grabbed another lime.

I’d had enough of this. The Crazed Chimp was going down. I would—

Hailey put an arm in front of me.

“What?”

She pulled a strip of candied orange peel from a pocket in her tunic. Charlie lowered his arm. Slowly, Hailey waggled the candy back and forth. The lime rolled from Charlie’s hand. He stepped toward us. 

“Come on, Charlie,” I encouraged. “You know you want the candy.”

He scurried toward us. His nostrils twitched, and his hand reached for the orange peel. The note fell to the floor.

I snatched it, trying not to gloat. After all, he was only a monkey, and Hailey was the one who outsmarted him, not me. Still, I couldn’t resist saying, “Man over monkey any day.”

Screwing Up Babylon, Chapter One

For everyone who's been waiting, here's Screwing Up Babylon, Chapter One. Click here: Read Chapter One.

My amazing web guru has placed the excerpt on a separate page under "My Books" so that the excerpt is easy to find for anyone who visits the page whether it's today or next year. The link above will take you directly there. If you ever want to read it again, just look under "My Books" (it's one of the tabs in the blog header).

I have three chapters to proofread and then it will be time to format the book. I don't have a final publishing date, but it will be out this month baring any last minutes disasters like computer malfunctions. Next Tuesday, I hope to be able to give you a release date.

Cover Art Reveal for Screwing Up Babylon

My wonderful graphic designer Tara Rimondi finished the cover art for Screwing Up Babylon. It always amazes me that she can take my book blurb/description and come up with a design that completely captures the tone and feel of the novel.

Here's the blurb: Babylon, one of the most powerful and notorious empires ever, is the last place Mark wants to go. But when he discovers his girlfriend Miranda has been kidnapped and given to the king as a concubine, he travels through the colors of time to rescue her. It won’t be easy, not when the Hanging Gardens are a trap, his life is the prize in a game, and time is a prison. It will take all Mark’s cunning, the help of his friends, and a crazed chimp to free Miranda. When he does, time itself begins to unravel, and a life must be sacrificed or no one will survive.

And here's the cover.

The art on the bottom of the cover is an illustration of the Hanging Gardens done by Maerten van Heemskerck (1498-1574).

Next week Tuesday, I'll be posting the first chapter of the novel. 

Screwing Up Babylon blurb

For all of my wonderful readers, here's the blurb you've been waiting for!

Babylon, one of the most powerful and notorious empires ever, is the last place Mark wants to go. But when he discovers his girlfriend Miranda has been kidnapped and given to the king as a concubine, he travels through the colors of time to rescue her. It won’t be easy, not when the Hanging Gardens are a trap, his life is the prize in a game, and time is a prison. It will take all Mark’s cunning, the help of his friends, and a crazed chimp to free Miranda. When he does, time itself begins to unravel, and a life must be sacrificed or no one will survive.

One more bit of exciting news, my graphic artist Tara Rimondi is working on the cover art. She did such an amazing job on Screwing Up Time, I can't wait to see how she envisions Screwing Up Babylon.

If all goes well, Screwing Up Babylon should be published sometime near the end of the month. (Though I'm not making any promises because the past 14 months have been crazy--8 surgeries between me, my kids, and my parents.)

The Next Big Thing--Week 15

The Next Big Thing is a chance for authors around the world to tell you what they're working on--their next novel. The author answers several questions about their next novel and tagged other authors. So I was very excited when Melissa Pearl, author of The Time Spirit Trilogy and Betwixt (released Nov. 5), tagged me. 

What is the working title of your book?

Screwing Up Babylon.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

When I begin a novel, the inciting incident is usually a mental image with tremendous energy. With this novel, I saw a young woman in a red dress standing on a castle turret. Then, she faded away. At first I thought she was a ghost. But when I started writing the novel, I realized she was a time traveler.

What genre does your book fall under?

Screwing Up Babylon is the second in a series of time travel YA novels. It’s a combination of action/adventure, comedy, and a little romance.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

I’m actually faceblind, so I don’t think of my characters as particular actors. And I don’t cut out photos from magazines like many authors do. So to answer this question, I viewed lots of web photos of actors and actresses, and I realized that my characters weren’t as gorgeous as actors and actresses usually are. But if I had to pick actors, I’d say that Henry/Mark looks most like Tyler Posey while Miranda looks like AnnaSophia Robb. Kate looks like Jennifer Connelly. And Granddad looks like an older Alan Rickman. Finally, Peter is a taller, white-haired version of John Malkovich.

                                    

 Jennifer Connelly as Kate                            Tyler Posey as Mark                      AnnaSophia Robb

                                                                                                                            as Miranda

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book? 

When Mark discovers that his girlfriend Miranda has been kidnapped and given as a concubine to the king of Babylon, Mark does whatever it takes to rescue her.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

It will be self-published and released in October.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

The first book took a year. The second book took about 8 months.

Who or What inspired you to write this book? 

The mental image of Miranda wearing a red gown and standing on castle turret at night.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

The first book in the series, Screwing Up Time, was a quarterfinalist in the 2012 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award.

Here are some wonderful writers whose work I want to share with you. They are contributors to the Winter Wonders anthology that will be published in early December 2012. (I'll have a Screwing Up Time short story in that anthology.)

Here are links to other authors who will be participating next week. These writers also will have short stories in the upcoming anthology Winter Wonders. Check out their blogs and their books!

Heather McCorkle, author of To Ride a Puca, The Secret of Spruce Knoll, Channeler's Choice, and more.

Christine Fonseca, author of Lacrimosa, Dies Irae, Transend, and more.

Tina Moss, author of A Touch of Blackness and Code Black.

And if you want to know more about Winter Wonders, click here.

Writing Historical Fiction, Setting

A while back I wrote a post about historical fiction and using details from your research to craft your plot. But what do you do when you need historical information and you can’t find it?

I faced this question many times for Screwing Up Babylon. For example, I needed information about the palace in Babylon. But I haven’t been able to find much information on the palace except that it was enormous (600 rooms) and extremely impressive. There are some photos on the web of the palace, except those are photos of Saddam Hussein’s rebuilding of the palace. And his attention to historical accuracy is doubtful. After all, he built his own palace in the shape of a ziggurat over Babylonian ruins. And, honestly, though Saddam’s rebuild is big, it’s kind of ugly and plain—just clay bricks that are already crumbling due to poor manufacture. My readers won’t be impressed. And the real Babylonian kings…well, let’s just say you don’t give the rulers of the known world shoddy workmanship.

So I had a few options. I could go with ugly. But I didn’t think that was fair. Particularly since the Ishtar Gate is amazing (no, the gate didn’t make it into the book), and I’ve no doubt that the Babylonian kings would have made their palace more impressive than a city gate.

Another option was to consider real possibilities and let my imagination run within those parameters. For example, Babylonians often used panels for decoration. So the palace I created has those panels. And I decorated them with aurochs and other creatures from Babylonian mythology.

The Babylonians traded all over the known world. So if an item existed within the Babylonians trading sphere at the time the story is set, then I assumed the item was fair game. For example, Tyre, Sidon, and the Egyptians all made beautiful colored glass, which means the Babylonians would have had access to it. So colored glass makes an appearance in the decoration of the palace.

Armed with historical information and imagination, I created a palace that I think my readers will like. And a palace that the king of Babylon would recognize—or at least one, that might make the king say, “We need to hire her to redecorate the palace.”