Thursday, April 28, 2011

AuthorGuy, Marc Vun Kannon Rocks the Paranormal Fantasy!

Please welcome Marc Vun Kannon to my blog. He's an awesome guy who helped me at my very first conference. He is a champion of the independent published author and all around exceptional person. Let everyone know about him and his wonderful books:

(Coming May 15th)

Piece o’ cake

Some stories are easier to write than others. I admit I was a little spoiled by the first two, which took years to write but were at least talking to me the whole time. My latest novel, St. Martin’s Moon, was not so forthcoming. The first bump in the road was that this was my first story that wasn’t a pretty straightforward fantasy novel. I’m always trying to stretch myself, do new things, and the inspiration for the book was another book that turned out to be a murder mystery set on a lunar colony. The werewolf was my idea.

(Buy Now)

The lunar colony I could do, with a few minutes of The Dreaded Research to back me up. A werewolf was a bit out of my scope, the sort of stretch I was looking for. The mystery was impossible. I’m a complete pantser. I discover the story as I go along. There was just no way I could plot it out, the way a mystery paradigm required.

The werewolf was much the same. Horror is a matter of setting and ambiance, also not strengths of mine. I prefer my descriptions to come from the perceptions of the characters, and werewolves are not characters, they’re monsters. The people who became the werewolves were another matter. The shift from horror to a paranormal was easy enough to make, in spite of the fact that I am not on board with the current trend in paranormals of turning classic monsters into leading men. The good thing about werewolves is that they are only part-time monsters. Poor old Larry Talbot and those like him spent most of their months looking forward to the last day. Unless…

And what about my werewolf hunter, last vestige of the mystery that wasn’t? He was the linchpin of the whole story, the catalyst of a reaction to which he (everyone, actually) was completely oblivious as he went about his ordinary duties. In chapter one I discovered that he had a whole lot of backstory as to why he didn’t want to go back to the Moon. What other secrets might he be hiding? As it turned out, it was a bit of a doozy. The ghost was not my idea. Or the romance.

Now if only I’d had a story.

(Buy Now)

My original idea was admittedly rather nebulous, but even so it was better than the nothing I had left after both genres up and walked out on me. As it was I wrote what was mostly a scifi story with the occasional elements of Dark Shadows mixed in. It was the characters’ fault really, I was just following them around. While they were all set off by the presence of my werewolf hunter on their lunar colony, each of them went and did their own thing. None were enough, but all were necessary. What had started out as a single linear story of uncertain genre broke up into five different plots, on two different planes of reality, which intersected in the person of my hero.

Nothing to it.

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St. Martin’s Moon will be released on May 15th, 2011.

Like many writers, I started when a story came along and decided that I should write it. Don't ask me why. Others followed, until now I'm afraid to go out of the house with a recorder or notebook in my hand. But I show them, I refuse to write the same story twice!

Visit Marc's blog: Author Guy




3 comments:

Author Guy said...

My, such a warm welcome that is! Thank you. Is the Printers Row Lit Fest a conference? We were standing next to each other in a booksellers tent in the middle of the street. Your novel My Biker Bodyguard had just come out, and you were inviting people to come take a look at it.
I was so tired that weekend. I could barely move.

J.R. Turner said...

I guess it was more of an event than a conference, now that you mention it ;) I won't ever forget that day! What a time I had struggling to greet people. You had awesome pointers on how to polish my pitch :)

It's my pleasure to have you here, Marc! :)

Hugs,
Jenny:)

Unknown said...

Great introduction to lovely books, thankyou!