Archive for the 'Pimpage!' Category

When My Ears Burn, It HAS To Be Good . . .

For this Monday I thought I’d fire off a couple of recommendations. One is a film and one is a novel, but what both have in common is some of the most creative, hilarious use of vulgar language I’ve heard in quite some time.

As you’ve probably already figured out, I have a bit of a potty mouth. And by “a bit” I mean a rat infested sewer of a mouth. As a wee little girl from Niddrie (a council estate near Edinburgh) told my friend, in a lovely Scottish accent, no less: “I love swearing. It’s fucking great.”

I come from a family of swearers, I am a swearer, and many of my friends are swearers . . . so when I find something that shocks me–that reminds me of the power of a truly inspired bit of obscenity–it’s gotta be pretty extreme.

Therefore, if you don’t like swearing, never, ever go near the following film, although this theatrical trailer is (relatively) clean:

The film is In the Loop and it’s up for an Oscar. All I know is it’s one of the best films I’ve seen in years. On a superficial level, it is utterly, absolutely entertaining. I laughed through the entire film, as did all of my friends. I want to see it again because not only were the lines so rapidly delivered, but everyone in the theater was laughing so hard, at times, that it was hard to hear. It felt like I sat down, started laughing, and then suddenly it was all over, leaving me wanting more.

That said, the film is also brilliant, with one of the bleakest, most frightening portrayals of modern politics I’ve ever seen. It’s easy to miss, simply because you’re too busy watching the characters tear around insulting everyone. But underneath all that humor, In the Loops suggests that modern politics are still as much about ego, competitiveness, and personal aggrandizement as Shakespeare depicted them in King Lear. Only the weapons have changed, making the stakes so very much higher and deadlier.

With fantastic performances all around, and a storyline that works on a number of levels, I can’t recommend In The Loop enough.

And speaking of King Lear, my second recommendation is Christopher Moore’s The Fool:

Bawdy and irresistible, this is another story that works on two levels. I was pinging from one image to another (little man in a canoe!) and reveling in the language of this work, but meanwhile the literary academic in me was squealing over the layers of allusions to various Shakespeare productions. I adored this book, as did all of the ladies in my book club. And it wasn’t just the Chatham Artillery Punch, talking, either!

So if you’re bored this weekend, try to get your hands on either of these fantastic works. Due to the Oscar nod, In the Loop is back in theaters (especially independents) the Fool is coming out in paperback any second. Both will floor you with their use of language, but also with their wit and intelligence. Filthy AND smart . . . it’s a combination I find absolutely irresistible. ;-)

And just because I’m in the mood for a little heinous fuckery,* here’s a picture of my trifle:

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The song was, indeed, originally, “my trifle brings all the boys to the yard,” till that bitch changed it.

Fuckstockings!*

*For true heinous fuckery in action, you have to read The Fool

*Ditto

Published on March 1, 2010 in Movies, Pimpage!, Reviews and Urban Fantasy. 14 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

CONTEST CONTEST CONTEST!

And what a contest! If you hear something slouching towards Bethlehem, fear not! It’s just that there’s a near-seismic launching of FOUR LEAGUE BOOKS TOMORROW!

And because this is such a big event, and because I’m running ANOTHER BIG EVENT over at the League of Reluctant Adults, YA Week!, I thought I’d run a contest THIS week, here.

First of all, let me show you what’s up for grabs . . .

The lucky winner of this contest receives NOT ONE . . .NOT TWO . . . NOT THREE! . . . BUT FOUR BOOKS!

Yes, FOUR BOOKS!

In no particular order, here is the prize…

First off, we have Mark Henry’s new release, Battle of the Network Zombies!

Next, we have my AMAZING critique partner, Diana Rowland’s, Blood of the Demon! I’ve read this one, it’s HAWT!

Third up is Stacia Kane’s Demon Possessed!

And, finally, last but not least, Anton Strout’s Dead Matter!

All of these novels launch tomorrow, February 23rd. And I’ll send all four books directly to the winner of this contest.

To enter yourself into the running, just answer the following question in comments: “Which would you rather be, a hot, fashionable, zombie socialite; a demon summoner who gets hawt sex with her side of Demon Lord; the actual head of a demon family, who gets to fraternize with other heads of demon families (Greyson! Greyson!); or a super secret, super agent for the Department of Extraordinary Affairs?”

In other words, I think I’m asking would you rather BE the supernatural? Or the human who gets to fraternize with supernaturals?

Answer that question in comments in as much depth as you would like, and that’ll put you in the running to win these four books. I’ll choose a winner FRIDAY February 26th at noon, randomly, and announce the winner here.

In the meantime, you can see me get up to all sorts of shenanigans over at the League. Because it’s YA week! And I have some REALLY GOOD ideas on how I, Nicole Peeler, can enter into the YA world with a bang. Literally.

You know you want to see this in action . . .

Published on February 22, 2010 in Contests, Over at the League . . . and Pimpage!. 83 Comments

More League Pimpage!

Now that I have strengthened my wrists by giving my professional pimp smack to Dakota Cassidy’s oeuvre, I am going to turn my palm of pimpage over to . . . Mark Henry!

For today, Mark’s first book, Happy Hour of the Damned, comes out in mass market paperback, to stores everywhere:

And I highly, highly recommend that you buy it, people. Here’s why:

A) I love Mark! He’s not only one of the wittiest, snarkiest, smartest men I know, he’s also one of the kindest. Believe it or not, snark and sensitivity can go together. So Mark’s a stand up guy, who does a LOT of the work for the League site AND lets me follow him around conventions when I’m feeling like I really can’t socialize with people in Spock ears anymore.

B) I love Mark’s books! More important, really, than Mark being a great guy is the fact that Mark writes great books. Mark could be a complete douche and I would still read his novels, because they’re AWESOME. I am now going to further bullet point this post so that I can outline Why Mark’s Books Are Awesome:

  • They’re hilarious! Yes, they’re so funny you’ll wee a little. And then he’ll have a footnote making fun of you for doing so.
  • They’re also really disturbing, and not just in a horror way. Mark writes about zombies who are super lovable, actually, on a lot of levels. Except that they eat people, and usually homeless people. As the reader, I’m like, “OMG, they’re people! She can’t eat people! That’s terrible!” But Amanda keeps insisting to us that we’re being overly sensitive, considering how we treat our homeless. And I’m all, “Excuses, excuses, Amanda!” Then I went to San Francisco for my yearly pilgrimage. And literally STEPPED OVER homeless people sleeping on the street. Because that’s what we do–we neglect our own, telling ourselves they are the Other due to their mental illnesses, or their inability to cope with reality, or their lack of get up and go. But what we’re really doing is allowing other humans to suffer, often under terrible mental and physical burdens, and when we close our doors at night we shut ourselves off and tell ourselves it’s okay to do so. By having Amanda eat the kinds of people we ignore, Mark embarks upon a project not unlike Jonathan Swift’s “Modest Proposal.” We laugh, but we think . . . and thinking is that critical first step towards action.
  • Basically, then, Mark writes my perfect books. They’re hilarious! Entertaining! They do what mass market fiction should do . . . but they’re also really smart, really provocative, and you’re not just filling your head with cotton candy.

I’ll stop bullet pointing now. The whole point of this post is that if you’re looking for a new series that is as smart as it is fun, Mark Henry’s for you. And now he’s released in mass market, which means not only a cheap price but an easier book to hold. You can read it one handed! What you do with that other hand is entirely up to you. But I wouldn’t recommend you take any tips from Amanda and experiment with Icy Hot . . . Really, Mark, Icy Hot? I’m still cringing.

Curious? Then go forth and buy people . . . Amanda Feral needs you!

Published on February 2, 2010 in Pimpage! and Uncategorized. 13 Comments Tags: , , .

“Jumping Jack Flash” Might Be Jane’s Missing Mother and League Pimpage

First of all, I am flexing my wrist in preparation of EXERCISING MY PIMP  HAND.

For the ever lovely and fabulous Dakota Cassidy’s new book, Accidentally Demonic, is out tomorrow!

I haven’t read this one, yet, but I’ve read all the other books in this series and they’re SO FUN. Dakota’s marvelous sense of humor shines, her characters are adorable, and these books are always fab reads.

So go forth and purchase if you already know and love Dakota. Or, if you’re looking for a new para rom series to embark upon, try the first in the series, The Accidental Werewolf:

As for me, I have been having a fabulous start of the semester. I much prefer teaching my ENG 115 class to the other freshman comp course, my night class is my favorite ENG 215 (so very little pressure for a lot of enjoyment), and Modern Poetry is turning out to be very manageable and enriching, for me, as a writer. In other words, my primary career is going very well, and the writing is fab, as well! I’m figuring out my plan of attack for editing Jane True book 3, Tempest’s Legacy, and I’ll start writing my edits soon.

In the meantime, however, I’ve been watching a lot of movies and series on my Netflix, and one of the movies that I was randomly inspired to order was the 80’s classic, Jumping Jack Flash:


I was OBSESSED with this film when I was a kid. I adored it. I can’t really describe how much I adored it, because it would be like me trying to explain how much I love my family . . . it became a part of me and I would give it my kidney if it asked politely.

This film came out in 1986, eight years after my birth. And watching it as an adult I can absolutely see where it had a HUGE influence on me and my writing.

First of all: the swearing. I swear like a pirate, this is true. My family is a family of swearers, in general, but I seem to have taken up the swearing mantle and run right the fuck off with it. Then I watched this film, again, and Whoopi has a mouth so potty it’s like a psych ward.

Second of all: my love of a non-traditional heroine. Where do I start with my admiration for this film, in terms of its heroine? First of all, Whoopi is BLACK. How many films can you name that star (entirely) an African-American, let alone an African-American woman? And that are mainstream? Even nowadays? Second of all, while I think Whoopi is an extremely attractive individual in this film, she is by no means your traditional blonde bombshell. She’s Whoopi, and she’s gonna wear some MC Hammer OVERALLS (cause the only think that makes Hammer pants better is some straps!), and dreads, and YELLOW REEBOKS and she’s not gonna give a fuck! For dress up, she caps off that outfit with a turban!

As a kid, I was blonde and blue eyed, but I was also way too smart, way too mature (in some ways), and already short and chubby. So I knew I was never going to be the leggy, doe eyed thing expecting some hero to come along and rescue her because even though she’s a bit of a bint, DAMN SHE IS PHOINE.

In other words, I was looking for films that expressed my solidarity with the outsider, the underdog, the eccentric, for those who “sang his didn’ts” and “danced his dids.” For the most part, however, I was getting Melanie Griffith. And, while I love me some Working Girl, I knew that while my brain was going to be all about sin, my bod would, at best, most likely suggest white-collar misdemeanors or parking violations.

So Jumping Jack Flash was a revelation. I wanted to be Whoopi: a woman who was strong because she was smart, passionate, and brave, not because she’s beautiful and manipulative or, like Red Sonja, beautiful and ‘roided right the fuck out.

On watching the film as an adult, as well, I clap at how it handles “the issues.” Whoopi is constantly being told she’s not welcome because of her gender, her skin color, and her class. But she enters anyway, on her own terms, and uses her enemy’s cultural expectations against them. If they expect an African-American woman to be a singer, by golly she’ll dress up like a Supreme. She’ll give them what they expect, in an unexpected way, to get what she wants from them. If they expect a woman to be weak, delicate, and easily victimized, she will BITE HER WOULD-BE EXECUTIONER IN THE NADS. Cuz that’s what she does! Bites him! In the nads! I think this is partly why the film, despite being over twenty years old, hasn’t aged. Okay, the computers look a bit silly, but the real story is based on Whoopi’s character. And she is both ageless and paradoxically original, for Hollywood, it seems to me, has actually gone backwards in terms of its depiction of real women of any race.

My final plea: If you haven’t seen this film, please do. I think you’ll see some of Jane True in it, and you’ll definitely have a good time. Watch out for the giant toothbrush!

Published on February 1, 2010 in Movies, Pimpage!, Reviews and Tempest Rising. 7 Comments Tags: , , , .

Charlaine Harris on Tempest Rising

As some of you know, the book that inspired me to write Tempest Rising was Ms. Harris’s fifth book in the Southern Vampire Mystery series, Dead as a Doornail:

This was not the first urban fantasy I’d ever read, although when I was reading the genre that name did not exist. When I was a child, it was simply a weird sort of fantasy being published by Charles de Lint and Mercedes Lackey. Back then, to find Anne Rice, one needed to wander out of Fantasy and over to Horror, where she was shelved with Stephen King. Now Rice and King are both housed in Fiction, and other writers have come along claiming to have single-handedly spawned urban fantasy, ignoring de Lint and Lackey.

Despite my very early reading in the genre, however, I hadn’t read any popular fiction in a very long time. For I’d been doing my Ph.D., and reading  mostly “serious literature.” So after I’d sat my defense, it was almost with a sense of shock that I realized, while wandering around a bookstore with my brother and his children, that I could buy whatever book I wanted. I didn’t have to slog through Philip Roth’s latest ode to his aging penis, or another postmodern experiment by Martin Amis. I could read anything in that store, unapologetically and without feeling guilty for “wasting” time I could be researching.

So I wandered over to Fantasy. Once there, I didn’t even know where to begin. Where once Lackey had a handful of novels, now she had about three shelves. I didn’t even remember which ones I’d read. I also, if I am completely honest, felt a little embarrassed looking at the neon, buxomy elven warriorresses draped over most of the covers.

Then my niece joined me and I did what any self-respecting doctor of English literature does when choosing a book: I asked a five-year-old for help. She pointed to a book at just about her eye level that had an adorable cover. “Buy that,” she said, and I had to acquiesce. The cover looked like folk art, and the young woman being carried by the vaguely Count Chocula-looking vampire was wearing a sparkling green dress.

“So cute,” I said, putting it in my basket. Then we picked out some more “cute” books, till I had enough to get me through my flight back to Edinburgh, where I was living at the time.

Sitting on that flight, reading Dead as a Doornail, I experienced a sensation I’d never felt before. It was one of connection: not just with the character, or the plot, or the genre, but with the tone of the book. For it was the tone of Harris’s novel that made me think, “Wow, I could do this. Not this book, obviously, but a book that feels like this.”

For what I felt while reading Sookie’s story was that it was real. This was a woman like women I knew, reacting in a “normal,” human way to absolutely abnormal circumstances. She wasn’t automatically reaching for a sword, or a glock; she was sweating, and scared, and doing her best not to faint, panic, or (god forbid) get herself killed.

In other words, she wasn’t a hero long familiar with the hero business. And even better, she took herself with a grain of salt.

Jane came to me then, almost fully formed, and dying to tell her story. I was just as surprised as everyone when I wrote her book, and I still can’t believe that book became a real book, sitting in the same section of stores as Misty and de Lint.

It was just over a year and a half ago that I read Dead as a Doornail, and things have moved so fast since then. I’ve had so many amazing experiences related to publishing Tempest Rising, but one of the biggest treats was finally meeting Ms. Harris, at a dinner party in Alpharetta, Georgia, and discovering she’s just as lovely and charming as her books. And yes, I did geek out on her. Realistically, Jane would have come out some way or another, but reading Sookie’s story definitely acted as a catalyst. I owe Ms.  Harris so very much, and that’s what I tried to tell her, awkwardly, over warm-artichoke dip while Mark Henry looked at me like, “If you go all stalker-fan, I’m pretending I don’t know  you.” Charlaine was, however, very gracious about everything, and I got to see her again at a signing in Shreveport, where I slipped her cupcakes. And a copy of my book.

The cupcakes paid off, and it is with an enormous amount of pleasure that I read Ms. Harris’s review of Tempest Rising, on New Year’s Eve, just before midnight.

Happy New Year to me . . . :-)

Published on January 2, 2010 in Cover Love, Pimpage! and Tempest Rising. 19 Comments

League News!

First of all, I’d like to congratulate my fellow Leaguer, Molly Harper’s, release of her third book in the Jane Jameson series, Nice Girls Don’t Live Forever:

Looks adorable, Molly! Can’t wait to read it!

And secondly, over at the League I’ve gone ahead and done a naughty review of Avatar, as promised. My brain functions on so many planes . . . okay, just two:  psuedo-serious and snarky. You get BOTH brain planes for Avatar! Aren’t you lucky, people?? ;-)

Published on December 29, 2009 in Over at the League . . . and Pimpage!. 0 Comments

WORSHIP ME! I am the SUPER DUPER MEGA BLOG!

Okay, fine. It’s just wordpress got fancy. BUT WHATEVER. I HAVE A PRETTY NEW BLOG AND I LOVE IT.

Look at Jane! She’s so HAWT! I love her sassy little seal self. I think she just winked at me! Minx.

To celebrate my awesome new blog, I’m going to run a CONTEST! To win one of THESE! Yes, my friends, that is an ARC of TEMPEST RISING!

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To win? All you need to do is comment below! I’ll randomly choose a winner using my highly scientific CONTEST CAN!

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If the comment box, or anything else, doesn’t work, totally don’t blame me. It’s someone else’s fault. Just tell me and I’ll swear at my iMac till it accedes to my demands. (Actually, I’ll send a panicked email to Orbit, then watch as my roommate fixes the problem, then send another email to Orbit apologizing for the original email.)

And while you’re here, I’m going to EXERCISE MY PIMP HAND! For there are two NEW LEAGUE RELEASES for your reading pleasure!

First out of the gates, is Cherie Priest’s BONESHAKER.

In the early days of the Civil War, rumors of gold in the frozen Klondike brought hordes of newcomers to the Pacific Northwest. Anxious to compete, Russian prospectors commissioned inventor Leviticus Blue to create a great machine that could mine through Alaska’s ice. Thus was Dr. Blue’s Incredible Bone-Shaking Drill Engine born.But on its first test run the Boneshaker went terribly awry, destroying several blocks of downtown Seattle and unearthing a subterranean vein of blight gas that turned anyone who breathed it into the living dead.Now it is sixteen years later, and a wall has been built to enclose the devastated and toxic city. Just beyond it lives Blue’s widow, Briar Wilkes. Life is hard with a ruined reputation and a teenaged boy to support, but she and Ezekiel are managing. Until Ezekiel undertakes a secret crusade to rewrite history.
His quest will take him under the wall and into a city teeming with ravenous undead, air pirates, criminal overlords, and heavily armed refugees. And only Briar can bring him out alive.

Next up is Michelle Rowen’s new YA Para-Rom, DEMON PRINCESS: REIGN OR SHINE

As if trying to fit in at a new school and navigating the social scene isn’t enough stress for her, sixteen-year-old Nikki Donovan just found out that her long-lost father is, in fact, the demon king of the Shadowlands — the world that separates and protects ours from the Underworld. When she is brought there by the mysterious (and surprisingly cute) messenger Michael, she learns that her father is dying, and that he wants her to assume the throne. To complicate matters, a war is brewing between the Shadowlands and the Underworld, her half-demon qualities are manfesting, and her growing feelings for Michael are forbidden. Ruling a kingdom, navigating a secret crush, and still making it home by curfew — what’s a teenage demon princess to do?

How good do those look? SO GOOD. My pimp hand is so excited about both of those books and their covers that it’s not even stinging after that pimpage.

So yeah! Awesome! We have a HOT NEW SITE and some LEAGUE PIMPAGE here at the home of Jane True. And keep your eyes peeled. . . my release date is coming soon and there will definitely be some EXCITING contests for books/prizes/small mammals (okay, those don’t ship so good).

We should also be releasing the cover of Tracking the Tempest very shortly, as well as unveiling an excerpt from Tempest Rising! YAY!

So comment below to win an ARC! And a gerbil! Just kidding about the gerbil!

Published on September 29, 2009 in Contests, Pimpage! and Tempest Rising. 110 Comments