Because Kerri is an artist (albeit a fictional one) whose own work has graced book covers and because artists never get the public recognition that they deserve, I wanted to copy this from Irene Gallo’s blog.

Congratulations to all the winners and may you keep brightening our world with great art!

Hardcover: Stephan Martiniere for Elantris by Brandon Sanderson

Paperback: Tom Kidd for The Enchanter Completed edited by Harry Turtledove

Magazine: Donato Giancola for Prometheus on Asimov’s

Interior: Brom for The Plucker by Brom

3D: James Christensen for Sleeper Lost in Dreams

Unpublished Color: Charles Vess for Companions to the Moon

Unpublished Monochromatic: Paul Bielaczyc for Nightmare

Product: Justin Sweet production design for The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

Gaming Related: Gabor Szikszai & Zoltan Boros for Blazing Archon, Magic The Gathering card for Ravnica: City of Guilds

Art Director: Irene Gallo

Contribution to ASFA: Julie Faith Rigby

Artistic Achievement: John Picacio

For a full list of the final nominees and links to their art, see Chesley Awards Final Ballot.

Tired of voting against Lukas on Rock Star: Supernova? Try The Quill Awards instead. Vote for your favorite books ’cause Dilana’s gonna win anyway.

Since the last time the band was doing something interesting, they were about to host a pool party catered by Big Buck’s Best Barbecue and since Karen! asked for it, and since I think it’d be fun, here’s what she asked and what I answered.

Karen! said: Pop quiz!
Backyard BBQ, what does everyone (Trev, Mitchell, Kerri, etc) want most to eat?

Answer…

Mitchell: Kerri
Kerri: Mitchell smothered in chocolate sauce
Trevor: Kerri, Heather, Diane, or any other willing woman
Daniel: steak, preferrably a filet, butterflied yet still perfectly medium rare
Eric: chicken breasts dripping in Bodacious (TM) Sauce, carefully scraped of the sauce before eating to prevent drips

Careful what you ask for…

In the under two months it took me to revise Trevor’s Song, I managed to completely lose track of all the different threads holding Behold Me together.

I’m not the type who can not be working on something original. While redoing Trevor, I had plenty of chances of that (it was a pretty extensive change I made. And so, so much better) original part. But now that I’m doing a quick once-over to make sure it’s where I want it, I need to be writing again. NEED.

This is when I’m thankful I don’t have a deadline or book on spec or anything like that. I’m considering this a luxury; having the time to muck around and figure out what wants to be written next.

I like the first page of what I’ve come up with so far…

Stay tuned. More fictional fun to follow.

A bit more about the JA Konrath/MJ Rose book buzz bonanza…

Huffington Post

C’mon, folks! Help a lady out! Only 53 links as of August 3???

If so, you’ll buy and wear these proudly:

Author buttons

If you send me a picture of you wearing them, I’ll send you a present. To make it a bit easier on you, the buttons can say my name, Trevor’s Song, ShapeShifter, or Trevor Wolff Rocks. Ideas of your own might win you a better present. *wink*

(extra special thanks to Nimrodiel for the goods!)

First I thought that these would be found in Mitchell‘s home. But then I realized that no, they would be in Rick‘s.

Moonlight Sonata on 200-count

I’m debating a set for myself.

Wha–? Huh?

This has very little to do with my fiction. Directly, anyway, so please pardon the slight burp in our regularly scheduled outtakes and other fictional fun.

But I got to hang out with the notorious and fun JA Konrath AND the way cool and lovely Rebecca Drake last night, as Konrath was in town, intending to visit as many bookstores in and around Pittsburgh as he could.

Good beer, better cheesecake, and amazing conversation that swirled among an amazing and at times impossible variety of topics. I learned much. I intend to learn even more.

It’s back to work on the rewrite of Trevor’s Song for me today, but an evening spent among published and soon-to-be-published folk was amazingly good for my soul.

We’ll return to Riverview shortly — wait until you see the fun I’ve got planned — but in the meantime, thanks to Joe and Rebecca. Hope we can do it again soon.

And if you’re still curious about the Jack Daniels reference, you clearly need to pick up Joe’s books. Feel free to follow the link in my sidebar to Joe’s blog, where he’s been keeping a record of the stores he’s visited and left autographed copies behind for your buying and collecting pleasure.

Happy reading!

I’ve been watching more and more new folk stop by and check me and my fictional friends out lately, so I thought this would be a good time to remind all of you, faithful groupies that you either are or are about to become, that most everything you read here is fiction. Mitchell, Kerri, Trevor, and company exist solely in my head. For better, worse, or a much-needed diagnosis.

Search the archives or the recent links. You’ll find small character sketches, outtakes from novels-in-progress (or even the one I’m shopping to literary agents, Trevor’s Song), and my own musings on what shapes the characters into the people that they are.

My hope is that you’ll come to see them as living, breathing people (as I often do, much to the chagrin of my friends and family). That you’ll use this site to whet your appetite for Trevor’s Song, and that by becoming my groupie, you’ll let these fictional folk touch your lives as they’ve touched mine.

Stay awhile. Enjoy.

I noticed that Lap Steel Guitar guy has been visiting here, and when I went to see who he was and what he was about, I was sucked in. Utterly fascinated.

I think Mitchell and Eric need to explore this idea some. See if they can incorporate a lap steel guitar into heavy metal.

Trevor ordinarily would scorn bandwagon jumping. He’d start yelling about sheep, lemmings, being blind, and how we’re losing the ability to think for ourselves. He’d brag about how proud he was of being an individual.

And that’s all fine and good, but when there are people out there whose only aim in life is to take advantage of someone’s good intentions, well, you need to stand up and raise your voice. After all, Mitchell is one of those who’s probably naive enough to be taken advantage of, and taking advantage of Mitchell Voss is a definite no-no in Trevor’s book — err, well, his thinking, anyway.  So… without further ado… Writer’s Beware list of the 20 Worst Literary Agents. I nabbed it from Miss Snark’s blog of course, but it’s the Writer’s Beware list, all right.

Please, none of you folks on this list call me about representing Trevor’s Song. I’m not interested in what you claim to have to offer.

* The Abacus Group Literary Agency

* Allred and Allred Literary Agents (refers clients to “book doctor” Victor West of Pacific Literary Services)

* Capital Literary Agency (formerly American Literary Agents of Washington, Inc.)

* Barbara Bauer Literary Agency

* Benedict Associates (also d/b/a B.A. Literary Agency)

* Sherwood Broome, Inc.

* Desert Rose Literary Agency

* Arthur Fleming Associates

* Finesse Literary Agency (Karen Carr)

* Brock Gannon Literary Agency

* Harris Literary Agency

* The Literary Agency Group, which includes the following:

Children’s Literary Agency
Christian Literary Agency

New York Literary Agency

Poets Literary Agency

The Screenplay Agency

Stylus Literary Agency (formerly ST Literary Agency)

Writers Literary Publishing Services Company (the editing arm of the above-mentioned agencies)

* Martin-McLean Literary Associates

* Mocknick Productions Literary Agency, Inc.

* B.K. Nelson, Inc.

* The Robins Agency (Cris Robins)

* Michele Rooney Literary Agency (also d/b/a Creative Literary Agency and Simply Nonfiction)

* Southeast Literary Agency

* Mark Sullivan Associates

* West Coast Literary Associates (also d/b/a California Literary Services)

Okay, I’ll admit it: I’d love to have a song written about me, preferably a love song, not a “You broke my heart, die you evil bitch scum” song.

But people don’t want to be turned into a fictional character; it doesn’t hold the same charm, somehow. Yet they sure are fast to pick up on a negative characteristic and assume that a character is them.

I’m here to tell you, folks, that no matter how well I know you, you aren’t my characters. I am. Or they are me; something like that.

Even if I had been a good enough writer to fictionalize a living person, I learned my lesson in grad school when one of my classmates saw a number of her wedding invitations declined because her family members thought they saw themselves on the pages of her first short story collection.

Now, I’ll freely admit to stealing events that happen from you. Like the time I was on the phone with a friend and one of her kids sneezed right on the head of the other one. I mean, come ON. If that’s not something Mitchell and Amy would do to each other, I don’t know what is.

But back to how my characters are me. Today, I did what can only be called “pulling a Trevor.”

I walked into the locker room at the gym this morning and found a woman (not one of the regulars, obviously) taking up the bench space near the locker I was using even though her own locker was at the other end of the row. She was on her cell phone, despite a prominently posted no cell phone policy.

I opened my locker and started rummaging through my stuff. Did she move? No. Did she react when my Gatorade fell out of my locker and damn near landed on my cheekbone? No.

Did she keep chatting?

You betcha.

Was she still there after my shower? Had she moved?

Do I really need to answer those questions?

I went over to my locker and turned to her, my dirty gym clothes balled up in my hand, and started to hand them to her. I then pretended to realize she was there, and tossed them on the floor instead.

She beat a pretty hasty retreat after that.

The part of me that’s Trevor was pretty darn proud of myself.

I have another outtake for you guys soon. This one’s for us girls.

An online friend of mine is getting married this weekend and as I was wishing her luck, I said, “Remember, it’s just a formality.”

That’s stuck with me since Mitchell said it. (yes, he did say it. I just channeled him ’cause Lord knows I’d never thought of it in those terms) The wedding is nothing but a formality because you made the commitment to each other long ago. You know… when you decided to go on ahead and give her the ring. Even though when he gave Kerri her ring, they both tried to pretend it didn’t even mean an engagement to wed but a promise to be faithful while he spent six weeks in Phoenix, recording the Freaks of Evolution album.

But think about it and you’ll see he’s right. The wedding is just making public what you and your love have already agreed to. Because if you didn’t agree, why are you putting yourself through that much stress?

Didja get the new a Godsmack today????

In book news, check out Nancy Atherton’s Aunt Dimity series. I’ve heard through the grapevine that she could use some more sales and attention. While they are more wholesome than you’re getting here, they are good reads.

Website and mail are back up, thanks to the Tour Manager and He Who Taught Him All (that’d be his dad, for those of you keeping track).

Who wants to celebrate with an outtake????

My friend Marcinyc posted a picture from her recent trip to Seattle. It’s of a sign, a very old sign, outside a hotel. It is red neon and it says, “Hotel” and something about rooms being 75c.

My first thought was that it was the sort of place that Trevor would love.

But then my second thought was that he’d pretend to love it. He’d go in once to look around, nothing more — although he’d take a girl in with him, of course — and then he’d have a convenient excuse to beg off from returns in the future, no matter how cheap the rooms and how broke he was.

Because, after all, one broke chick didn’t mean they all were and it was only a matter of finding the right one — one willing to pay for a nicer place, if she didn’t have one already waiting.

Want me to write the scene for you? Leave me enough comments and I will!

Welcome to my little place for musings. Here’s how it came about.

The Tour Manager and I were talking at dinner the other night about whether or not Mitchell had a sweet tooth. We agreed that no, he doesn’t, but our reasons differed.

My reason — and the right reason, since I’m the one who created Mitchell Voss in the first place — was that Mitchell likes fresh food and fresh-tasting food. Sweets can be cloying. So while he likes some, he doesn’t have a sweet tooth. You’ll never fight him at the dessert table at a wedding. Not that he goes to many weddings, but that’s another story altogether.

The Tour Manager’s reason was that since Mitchell likes to grill, he’s a carnivore. Umm… good thinking, honey, but no. I mean, this is the man who met his wife as he deliberated about a tomato!

(Yes, I promise to get the Tomato outtake up.)

This led me to realize that I really have nowhere to share these fun moments and musings about Mitchell, Kerri, Trevor, and the rest of ShapeShifter and the crew of Riverview, USA. So… here we are. A place for musings.

Stay tuned; there will be more. And if you haven’t been to the home page here yet, what are you waiting for?