PICTURE OF THE DAY

A Little Help from the Band
Authors Michele Lang (Dark Victory, Tor) and Kenneth Wishnia (The Fifth Servant, William Morrow) celebrated their books at Book Revue bookstore in Huntington, NY on Sunday, January 22. The standing-room only crowd enjoyed the sounds of the 13th Floor Klezmer Band.

Photo Credit: Michele Lang

The band!  The band!

This was the photo and blurb that ran in PW Daily today, and it does a great  job of summing up the event at Book Revue on January 22nd.  Despite both the snow and the Giants playoffs, a standing-room-only crowd of intrepid readers joined us, for tea service with English scones, a roving band of klezmer musicians, and insider tales of the writing life.  People came as far away as Florida (hi Audrey!) and NYC (hi Alexandra!) but many others traveled from all over the Island.

Thank you to everyone who braved the slushy weather and the ire of Giants fans to join us! I had an amazing, amazing time, and you all were the best part.  Special thanks to the 13th Floor Klezmer band and to the fab Ken Wishnia, my co-host.

To celebrate, I’m having a little virtual Launch Party right here, right now. Introduce yourself in the comments below, or shoot me an email offline — michele at michelelang put a dot here and then com, and I will put your name in the hat.  One lucky winner will get a signed copy of DARK VICTORY; another will get a signed copy of THE FIFTH SERVANT by Kenneth Wishnia.  And I’ll include additional goodies from the party, including packets of Harney & Sons tea from the tea service — tea as intoxicating as any served up in the Cafe Istanbul in Budapest

So say hello! And check out the additional pictures from the event below.  I’ll pick the winners on February 1st — and everybody on the planet is eligible to play.  Thanks again to everyone for your good wishes -they mean more to me than I can ever express.

I wish I'd gotten a shot from the front of the house — there were many intrepid fans. Here's a shot from the back

More Intrepid Fans

me with Aaron Crocco, podcaster (The Geekcast) and author

me and the amazing Alexandra Honigsberg, musician, impresario, and visionary

me and the marvelous Beth of Flying off the Shelves

So many friends from LIRW came out to the party, but I didn't get enough shots with you all! This is a picture with Marilyn Levinson, a fellow member of LIRW and also of Sisters in Crime. She brought a friend, also from Sisters in Crime

Tomorrow’s the big day. Historical mystery and thriller author Ken Wishnia and I will be signing our books and talking about writing at the marvelous indie book store Book  Revue on New York Avenue in Huntington, NY from 4-6 p.m. Our special musical guest is the 13th Floor Klezmer Band – it is going to rock so hard! (well, klezmer bands don’t rock, exactly, but you know what I mean)

To celebrate the event, I’m including here an interview I did with Ken when his latest book, THE FIFTH SERVANT, first released.  Ken is great people.

Hope to see you tomorrow! And if you can’t make it (as one writer buddy put it, her warp drive is in the shop) I will do something festive online to celebrate once I’ve got some incriminating photos to share

Without further ado, here is the interview with Ken:

I had the great pleasure of meeting author Kenneth Wishnia at a Jewish Book Council’s Meet the Author event.  We had a great time discussing Hasidic mystics, the places in history where much of traditional epic fantasy comes from, and (best of all!) golems.  I love me my golems, and thought I would bring you some highlights of our discussion.  Here Ken talks about his new release THE FIFTH SERVANT (which I have just started reading and is *fantastic*).

The Fifth Servant by Kenneth Wishnia

Life in central Europe during the 16th century was daunting, especially for the Jews of Prague. Forced by papal decree to live within a walled ghetto, Jews were relatively safe from Christian persecution—but not for long. On the eve of Passover in 1592, a young Christian girl is found murdered in a Jewish shop, causing panic for Christians and Jews alike. The Jews are accused of stealing the girl’s blood, a crime that threatens to remove what little security and freedom they have. Recently arrived from Poland, the rabbi’s new sexton, Benyamin Ben-Akiva, is given three days by the Jewish authorities to find the real killer, or the entire Jewish population could face annihilation. Verdict: This fast-paced historical from Edgar nominee Wishnia (23 Shades of Black) combines scholarly historical details that bring the 16th century alive with believable characters and a compelling mystery. Highly recommended for mystery lovers and fans of historical fiction.”        — LIBRARY JOURNAL  (Starred Review)

An extraordinary novel.  – Sara Paretsky

Please tell us more about The Fifth Servant, including the historical background that inspired it.

Like a lot of lunatics–I mean, writers–I went through a period of fascination with the magical medieval worlds of Tolkien, LeGuin, the Book of Kells, etc.  Then I discovered Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism by Gershom Sholem, which opened up a whole new world of uniquely Jewish approaches to the metaphysical and supernatural for me.  This led to many more books and articles on the topic.

My original plan was to set The Fifth Servant earlier in the Middle Ages, like the 14th century, when the battle lines would have been much more clearly drawn: Jews vs. Christians, us vs. them, good vs. evil, etc.  But as I did more research, the Renaissance began to present many more ambiguities and complexities.  A lot of the hatred toward Jews shifts from pure racism (“They’re the spawn of Satan who have to wear hats to cover their horns”) to economics (“Gee, I don’t feel like paying back the 500 gold pieces I borrowed from Mordecai last week, so let’s burn down his shop”).
I chose the year 1592 because the great Rabbi Judah Loew (of the Golem legends) was active in Prague at the time, and because the people were on the cusp of modernity, but they weren’t there yet.  There are always a lot of interesting dramatic possibilities in a time of great upheaval

What kind of research did you do to make the world of your book come alive?

Tons.  Since my characters would have had the Torah memorized by age 6, the Mishnah at 10 and the Talmud at 15, I had to study a lot of traditional Jewish knowledge.

I also read general European history (e.g., the Catholic Counter-Reformation), Czech history (I had to read 3 books about Emperor Rudolph II just to get his character right for a single 10-page scene), and dozens of articles about such topics as witchcraft, herbal healing, 16th-century clocks, the development of wheel-lock pistol technology, etc.  Once you’re onto a topic, almost everything you read gives you some ideas, even if you end up not using a lot of them.

We’re starting to see golems appear again in fiction these days.  Did the golem legends originate in Prague?  Can you describe them to us?

The earliest references to mystical rabbis creating life are in the Babylonian Talmud (cir. 5th century C.E.).  Rava the Sage creates a man out of clay and sends him to Rabbi Zera, who tries to speak with him.  When the clay man does not answer, Rabbi Zera says, “You are a creation of magic; return to your dust” (Sanhedrin, 65b).

The same source tells us that Rav Hanina and Rav Oshaya got together every Sabbath eve to study the Sefer Yetzira (the “Book of Creation,” compiled between the 3-6th centuries C.E.) and created a three-year-old calf, which they then ate.  [Insert Homer Simpson voice: “Mmm.  Golem calf.  (Drool...)”]

Moses Cordovero (1522-70) wrote that man can only give “vitality” to the Golem, but not life (nefesh), spirit (ru’akh), or soul (neshamah), and specific legends about the Golem (and his destructive powers) first appear in connection with Rabbi Elijah of Chelm (d. 1583).  The social upheaval of the 16th century seems partly responsible for the re-emergence of this idea.

The legends associating Rabbi Loew (c. 1525-1609) with the creation of a Golem to defend the Jews against ritual murder accusations began to emerge at least 150 years after his death.

What do you think is the appeal of golems?  How do golems, or the legends of golems, play out in The Fifth Servant?

In terms of the Golem being a protector of the Jews, it’s clearly related to every wimpy kid’s fantasy of having a big, strong friend to defend him from schoolyard bullies.

But the more frightening aspect of an unstoppable, soulless creature that begins with the Golem has come down to us via such figures as the stone statue of the Commander who comes for his murderer, Don Juan; Victor Frankenstein’s famous, misunderstood creation; and most recently, the Terminator in all its forms.

The current resurgence of interest in the paranormal resembles the Romantic rejection of industrialization.  The 19th and 20th century Golem figures are man-made and mechanical, products of misdirected science.  The clay Golem is supernatural, created by manipulating the letters of God’s name and the letters in the Torah that God used to create the universe.  He is brought to life not by an electrical storm, but by calling upon God’s power and writing “emes” (“truth” in Hebrew) on his forehead.  It’s a return to the primordial sense of the magical power of words and writing.

Of course, my characters are primarily interested in manipulating Christian fears of Jewish magic, and they use the Golem legend to great effect.

Why did you decide to write this book?

I’ve wanted to do something like this since I was about 15 years old (see Tolkien, above).  It just took a few decades to get good enough to do it justice.

Thank you so much Ken!  Now I have visions of golems dancing in my head…

Here’s where you can get your own copy of THE FIFTH SERVANT:

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Kenneth Wishnia was born in Hanover, N.H. to a roving band of traveling academics. He has lived and worked (and been chased by riot police) on three continents, including several years in Scotland, France and Ecuador. The urgent need for a day job forced him to earn a B.A. from Brown University (1982) and a Ph.D. in comparative literature from SUNY Stony Brook (1996). He teaches writing, literature and other deviant forms of thought at Suffolk Community College in Brentwood, Long Island, where he is an Associate Professor of English, and would like you to know that, despite all the crap ya gotta put up with, being a writer is a dream come true.

His first novel, 23 Shades of Black, was nominated for the Edgar and the Anthony Awards and made Booklist’s Best First Mystery list, and was followed by four other novels, including Soft Money, which Library Journal listed as one of the Best Mysteries of the Year, and Red House, which was a Washington Post Book World “Rave” Book of the Year in 2002. His short stories have appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Murder in Vegas, Queens Noir, and elsewhere.
He has held many odd jobs over the years (simultaneous translator, carpenter, furniture builder and mover, rehearsal pianist, opera chorus singer, extra in film and TV, etc. You get the idea). He studied mime in Paris, taught English to the Ecuadorian Army, and worked in New York theatre for many years. He is married to a wonderful Catholic woman from Ecuador, and they have two children who are completely insane.  Visit Kenneth on the web at  www.kennethwishnia.com.

COMING SOON…a tale of kids fighting bad guys on a frontier planet!

This is a story that I wrote for a good cause.  And I had a blast writing every single word.

Last year, my kids’ school had a fundraiser, like they do every year.  I wanted to do what I could to support the school, and though I can’t bake edible cookies, and my special event skills pretty much don’t exist, I can and do write.

So I offered my services on auction, and two families commissioned this story. I have also pledged to donate all net Kindle proceeds received in 2012. And the book is almost here — it is in final production now and will be published within a day or two!

THE UPSTANDERS is about a group of fifth grader kids from the farming planet of Iridescent, and their valiant battle to save their world from blight and space pirates.  My middle son (who I call “The Moviemaker Kid”) told me a good story must have “adventure, mystery and humor” to work. Great advice for somebody writing a book for middle grades.

I did my best to heed The Moviemaker Kid’s words of wisdom — in THE UPSTANDERS: SILVER, you’ll find epic food fights, wicked jetpack flying, a world of wonder, and a mysterious attack on a frontier planet.  And you’ll also get to know kids — Cal, Fire, and Earther — who band together to stand up and do the right thing.  Even if it gets them kicked off the planet…

I’ll let you know when THE UPSTANDERS: SILVER is live. So stoked about this story!

DARK VICTORY is out today!

”Michele Lang’s DARK VICTORY is the best entry yet in a
groundbreaking, rich, enthralling series that combines the darkest days of World War II with magic, very human characters, and stakes that couldn’t be higher. A tour de force!”

–        New York Times bestselling author Rachel Caine

You can find Dark Victory on Amazon here in e-book, paperback and hardcover:

http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Victory-ebook/dp/B005FWORS4

Lady Lazarus is on sale for only $2.99:

http://www.amazon.com/Lady-Lazarus-ebook/dp/B003P9XJSI/ref=pd_sim_sbs_kstore_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2
AND  “The Magic of Fabulous” will be free for two days only, January 17th and 18th:

http://www.amazon.com/Magic-Fabulous-Lady-Lazarus-ebook/dp/B00695LMM0/ref=pd_sim_kstore_4?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2

We’re going to celebrate all of this at a launch party on Sunday, January 22 at Book Revue in Huntington at 4 p.m.

My co-host is the brilliant historical mystery and thriller writer Ken Wishnia who is celebrating his release of THE FIFTH SERVANT, a murder mystery set in medieval Prague.  And our special musical guest is the 13th Floor Klezmer Band!

This is an open event, so please feel free to stop by if you are in the area.  It’s going to be a blast.

Thanks to all for your kind words and support!

LADY LAZARUS is on sale for this week only — 2.99 on Kindle and Nook.  She’s hit the historical fantasy and alternate history best seller lists already…

Here are the buy links again in case you’d like to snag an e-copy for the holidays (makes a great gift too! ) Check it out soon – this promotion is ending 12/23:

Buy Kindle

Buy Nook

In honor of holiday goodness, “The Magic of Fabulous” is also on sale, for 99 little cents!

Buy Kindle

Buy Nook

Enjoy — hope your holidays are bright…

The latest short story is up for sale…a near-future tale of love and techno-disaster in NYC.  Hope you enjoy it!

It should be live at Nook soon — already available in all formats at Smashwords, and at Kindle too.

Buy Smashwords

Buy Kindle

Eva’s here!  Now available as an ebook on Kindle, Nook and through Smashwords.  Here’s a short description:

Budapest, 1939 — Eva Farkas, an ordinary young woman, lives in a world where werewolves, vampires, and Fascists fight for dominance. All of Europe balances on the edge of the Nazi abyss.

Eva knows she has no chance in hell of surviving the impending war. But she intends to beat the odds, and cast her own spell of moxie and allure, a dark magic of fabulous – and not just survive, but fly.

This novella is a “meanwhile, back at the ranch” kind of story — for those of you who have read Lady Lazarus, the events here take place after Magda leaves town to hunt the Book of Raziel in Amsterdam.  It tells the story of how Eva and Gisele manage to fend for themselves in Magda’s absence.  That said, you don’t need to read Lady Lazarus before reading Fabulous — Eva can definitely hold her own!

Buy Amazon/Kindle

Buy Barnes & Noble/Nook

Buy Smashwords

Had an amazing time with the members of the Long Island Romance Writers (LIRW) yesterday, where best-selling author Pat Ryan and I talked about the e-publishing revolution.  Here are some online resources for you to check out — I’ll get these onto my sidebar eventually:

Publishing Platforms

http://www.smashwords.com/

http://pubit.barnesandnoble.com/pubit_app/bn?t=pi_reg_home

https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/signin

General – Indie Publishing

http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/

http://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/

http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/

http://kriswrites.com/

http://write2publish.blogspot.com/

http://www.bobmayer.org/

Formatting Services/Guides

http://guidohenkel.com/

http://www.hockseditingservices.com/

http://design.lkcampbell.com/

http://luckybatbooks.com/

Legal Issues/Directories of Literary Lawyers

http://www.thepassivevoice.com/

http://www.lauraresnick.com/

Eva Farkas has almost arrived…

Anne Cain has done it again.  Thank you so much, Anne, for this hauntingly beautiful cover for the novella THE MAGIC OF FABULOUS, coming out soon.

This image captures not just Eva’s physical attributes, but her essence.  That knowing smile, fragility and toughness together, and surrounded by the golden light of Budapest.

And as Gisele Lazarus is fond of noting, Eva looks wonderful in red!

Announcing a new novella set in the world of LADY LAZARUS – coming soon!

WHAT: “The Magic of Fabulous” — A new novella, set in the world of the LADY LAZARUS series

WHEN: Releasing December 2011

WHO: Featuring the outrageous and irrepressible Eva Farkas, a Hungarian girl with no magic who must survive in a Budapest filled with local Nazis, werewolves, and vampires.

WHY: Let me tell you why…

Let me tell you my worst nightmare.

I’m in my daily world, just doing the shopping and taking care of my kids and hustling to pay the bills.  And suddenly, events outside of my control overtake that homey, boring little world and rip it apart. You know, there’s a war.  Or a revolution.  Or a financial catastrophe hits my city.

Can’t pay the bills any more — no job.  Running errands goes from a never ending merry-go-round, to a life-or-death race to survival — the streets now crawl with killers and desperate people.  And those little, defenseless kids…they need me to somehow make sense of all this and keep us together.

Imagine becoming an enemy of the state, just for existing.  What do you do with that?

This is real-life nightmare stuff.  This is the stuff that wakes me up at 2 a.m. (when I am writing this).  The thought of losing my home, becoming a target…it makes my heart pound, my hands shake.

My grandparents went through this exact scenario in Europe in World War II.  These primal fears are the root of the LADY LAZARUS series, and Magda Lazarus — the untrained witch who refuses to stay dead, who uses her magic as a secret weapon in the fight against evil — is the answer to those nightmares in a magical world.

In the series, Magda has a friend — a funny, cute, even silly friend — a best friend, who reminds Magda she not only is loved, but liked.  Everybody needs a friend like Eva Farkas, somebody who can make you laugh when all you want to do is cry and assume the fetal position.

But Eva’s situation is even worse than Magda’s.  Because, unlike Magda, Eva doesn’t have magic in her.  Not a drop.  And in a world where werewolves are Nazis, and the local nobility is fanged, a girl with no magic isn’t worth a half-smoked cigarette.

What I love about Eva Farkas is that, even though her situation is hopeless as a factual matter, she still refuses to give up.  She never, never, ever gives up.  So she doesn’t have any regular magic…she just makes up her own special kind. The fabulous kind.

Some people do curl up and die when the world explodes — the newly-broke Wall Street stockbrokers jumping out the windows during the Great Depression come to mind.

Others keep their head down, make their world smaller, and get by as best they can.

Still others, like Magda, find their magic comes to the surface when life gets too dangerous to survive any other way.

And then there are people like Eva Farkas, who survive based on sheer determination, wit, and moxie. Who don’t just survive but spread their wings, and like butterflies, ride the wind…

Here’s an excerpt of the forthcoming “The Magic of Fabulous,” where Eva explains her science of survival to her students of the future:

I have three rules for surviving on the streets of Budapest, dear reader. Rule the first, make sure your stocking seams are straight, especially if you have to draw them on.  A lady is known for her deportment, the state of her shoes, and for her attention to those all-important little details.

Rule the second, know your friends and enemies, and keep them all amused, especially the enemies.

And Rule the third:  when cavorting with vampires, make sure your perfume has a poppy seed base.

I would go for garlic instead if I could, of course, but smelling like garlic is a quick way to achieving social and personal ruin.  No, garlic is not possible, alas, but opium messes with vampires, long enough for a girl to get away, and poppy seeds are in the opium family, yes?  So I lace all my perfume with poppy seed oil, darlings, and no vampire has sunk his dirty fangs into my neck.  At least, not yet.

You better believe I wore my poppy seed Chanel the night I ventured into the cafe of the vampires, Café Istanbul, on a sullen, overheated night this past July.  I had no choice but to go there.  Magda was gone. Her little sister Gisele, prone to fainting fits and strange prophecies about the end of the world, was none too helpful about keeping body and soul together, not hers and not mine, either.

So yours truly, Eva Farkas, madame guttersnipe and girl with not a drop of magic in her whatsoever, not even to the extent of the poppy seed oil hidden in a tiny bottle of Chanel — I had to find some money, you see, or I was finished.  At the time, I worked for an old lady who ran a decrepit flower shop across town on Ferencz Korut, and she was so poor herself she paid me in posies, not even in roses.  My hysterical little prophet, Gisele, sewed ladies’ brassieres and shirts, but she didn’t make near enough to cover the rent.

So now Magda was gone, and if I was going to eat, I had to figure something out, something more filling than posies.  I tried appealing to the old lady with the flower shop, but she was too old to lie to me or to threaten me either, she knew as well as I that death was breathing down all of our necks with bad breath, in this awful summer of 1939.

Nothing for it.  Magda was gone; the vampire Bathory needed a new girl.  I have no magic, none, nada.  And in a wicked city like Budapest, having no magic is like missing an arm or a nose, or like trying to navigate the Ring Road alone and blind.  And drunk.  It’s lucky for me I’m a lively girl, with lots of energy and a neck with no bite marks on it.  At least, not yet.

If all you have is chutzpah, you have to use it or you are a goner.  Dear reader, I’m telling you this story so that if I leave this wicked Budapest for good, if the bastards find me out and I die, I will at least leave behind me, if not a child or a nice sweet husband, at least a guide to the magically challenged.

You can survive war and mayhem!  Even if I don’t make it – just because my luck ran out, doesn’t mean I never had any luck to begin with.  I visited the vampire because my human luck was out of gas.  If you get this desperate, I recommend you look good, trust nobody, and remember about the opium.

I don’t have Magda’s spell-casting or summoning magic either…so I’m a disciple of Eva’s school of magic, the kind the rest of us all have.  “The Magic of Fabulous” — coming soon!

If you can’t wait any longer to dive into this world, and you haven’t yet read about the adventures of Eva, Magda, and Gisele in LADY LAZARUS: read the first book in the series today!

Here are some buy links:

Order — IndieBound

Order — Amazon

Order — Barnes & Noble

Order — Books-a-Million

And I have another, FREE book, that gives the reader a window into the magical and historical background of the series — the gilded, dangerous cafe culture of Budapest in the 1930s:

Free at Smashwords

Free at Amazon

Let me tell you what — if you have read this far, thank you.  I would like to send you both a reminder of when Fabulous is live, and also share with you a free, SECRET story set in the world of Lady Lazarus. I am writing this secret story as a thank you to all my readers.

So please fill out the box below and I will send you the reminder and the story when it is ready.  Thanks again