The Black Dragon Award
The Black Dragon award
My lovely friend Rami over at Rami Ungar the Writer has nominated me for the first ever Black Dragon award!
These are the rules as listed on his post:
1. You must have written something scary or featuring something scary in the past year. (This can range from being a simple murder mystery to a full-on zombie novel with a wizard and serial killers mixed in for variety). Note that whatever work you’ve created will be the subject of several of the questions below.
2. You must thank the person who nominated you and then link back to their blog.
3. You must answer the 10 questions below on your own blog post.
4. Finally, you must nominate at least 5 other authors for the award and then notify them of it
FIRST and most important, here are my five nominees for The Black Dragon Award:
Scary Structures Waiting in the Kingdom James McKenna The Author’s Blog The Real Sherlock
And now, in answer to the questions (and I encourage you to go read Rami’s answers to his questions here)
1. What is the premise of the novel you’ve written? Portia Adams is a young woman who has suddenly and mysteriously inherited 221 Baker Street. Her first year in London encompasses the first three cases in the book, and involve her discovering the linkages to the famous offices, and the development of her skills as a detective.
2. How long did it take you to write it? My books are divided into casebooks rather than chapters, so the first casebook called ‘Jewel of the Thames’ I wrote in about a month.
3. Which character(s) are you most like? My sister says I am most like Portia Adams, but honestly I think ALL my characters have facets of my personality – I’m analytical and social inept like Portia, I’m loyal and stoic like Brian, I’m a journalist like Annie, I’m sometimes sneaky and anti-establishment like Adler, and I can be rude and abrasive like Sergeant Michaels.
4. What’s the scariest thing you’ve read/seen lately? The news sadly. I can’t think of anything scarier than all the stories about these poor girls being raped and their attacks being taped and posted on social media.
5. What’s something you’re reluctant to write about? I guess gore? I’m not great at writing gore, and not great at reading it.
6. If you could take characters from other works and insert them into an original story of your own design, who would you take and what would you have them do? OOh, interesting one. Since I already have a couple of characters from Conan Doyle’s stories… I would love to somehow pull in villains from other stories I have loved. If I could figure out how, I would love for Portia to go up against one of the more intellectual Sith from the Star Wars books (not the movies where Sith are all physical) or a Lex Luthor type from the Superman stories.
7. Do you envision a sequel to your novel? Like I said, since my books are compilations of casebooks, there already is a series. I’ve written 8 casebooks listed here.
8. What first got you into writing? And what got you writing scary subject matter? I’m a writer, first published at 14, it’s what I do. In terms of writing scary stuff, unlike my nominator Rami, it’s not my primary genre, but part of writing mysteries is the subject matter, which has of course meandered into the murder/death/violent side over the course of cases. I enjoy reading scary stuff though, and have since I was a kid.
9. What scares you personally? Spiders, snakes, rats, wolves, the usual of course. Falling off high buildings. Losing my loved ones.
10. What are your future plans? Good gosh, who knows? Trying to get an agent and get published is the current plan, though as time goes by, I am more attracted to the idea of self-publishing as well.
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