I’d like to thank Bam for asking me to appear as a guest blogger. First off, I guess I’d better introduce myself. I’m Rae Morgan and I am an author for Atlantic Bridge/Liquid Silver Books and the Senior Editor for an urban fantasy world called the Terran Realm, also at Liquid Silver Books.

Bam asked me how the idea of the Terran Realm originated? [Ed. note: It’s true. I did.]

As with most of my book ideas, it started with a string of unrelated thoughts roiling around in my fertile brain. The Gaia concept. Evolution. Underlying connections between myths and cultures that lie continents apart. Archeological findings that demonstrated that the New World had been visited by the Old World long before Columbus. And a bunch of other interesting and seemingly unrelated things that really aren’t … unrelated, that is. Or, at least in my head they weren’t.

As authors often do, I started with the question “what if” these ideas all could be related and came up with the Terrans, a species as long-lived as humans that had split off somewhere on the evolutionary tree and along the way developed the abilities to control the elements of air, earth, water, fire and spirit.

The Terrans being more advanced than their human brethren had traveled the world, leaving behind evidence of their advanced (for the times) civilizations. They were the Mayan, the Mississippians, the residents of the lost continent of Atlanta Atlantis, the Anazasi, and the like. As humans gained in population, the Terrans either assimilated or went underground. Humans tend to kill what they fear - - and the unusual abilities of the Terrans were a magnet for the superstitious and the intolerant.

From that basic beginning, I then added a tinge of the Gaia theory, the Earth is a living organism that needs to be kept in balance in order to support the species living on it, and made the Terrans the keepers and protectors of that balance. For conflict, I added in the concepts of good and evil, for just as humans, the Terrans have both a light and a dark side. In the past, they were worshiped (and feared) by humans as gods and goddesses, and as we all can recall from reading mythology, not all gods and goddesses were good and cared about the elements under their control. In modern times, the bad Terrans are named Destroyers, a power and money hungry bunch who love chaos. It the job of the Keepers of the elements and the Terrans who protect those Keepers to keep the Destroyers in line and minimize the damage they do.

My original concept called for a series of books on the special Keepers of the elements, the Talisman. But after talking with my publisher Raven Moore, we decided to expand the world and invite other authors to write books about any aspect of the Terran Realm that interested them. At this point, it gets complicated since the shared universe would have to be outlined and added to as authors wrote books. It’s my job to oversee the world and make sure that the books stay true to the Terran protocols. I’ve been very lucky to have three authors from Liquid Silver Books who bought into my vision and wrote four fabulous books.

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Whoo-hoo… QB found him! His name is Manuel Casella and he is Italian (and yes, those eyes are real. SHUT UP, DISSENTERS). I think. I went to his blog and could not understand a word he was saying (but the only language he needs to speak is luuuurve), but I recognized some of the words as Italian. Anyway, that was fun, girls. What’s the next mission?

As I told my buddy Ann (who found this pic on QB’s blog), this guy can’t be real. He’s just too pretty to be… true. Like… an alien race took it upon themselves to create a human, but all they’ve got to go on for architecture and design are Versace ads on Italian Vogue or something. Dude is so beautiful, it’s almost creepy. WHO IS THIS GUY? Does he have other pictures, preferably where he’s not wearing any clothes?

P.S. If you don’t know who this guy is, post his picture on your blog, then come back here and post the link in the comments. Maybe one of our readers out there will know who this mystery man is. Thanks for the idea, QB!

Last week, Skyla and I asked you to help us get the word on Nothing But Red, a community of writerly folks coming together to create an anthology whose sales will be donated to Equality Now. We asked that you blog about NBR and post the link on the comment. The randomly picked winner is:

Zeek!

You get a e-copy of River in your choice of supported format and a $15 Gift Cert to Amazon. Friend, please email me your info and we’ll get you all squared out. Thanks again for getting the word out on NBR!

Hello, Friends! April Martinez is someone whose work I’ve always admired. Sure, I may have snarked her in the past once or twice, but she was always a good sport about it. Girl can take her licks and keep on goin’. She currently designs covers for Loose-id and Liquid Silver Books.

The Rejects

People aren’t always pleased with my covers. I have a Cover Rejects folder with nine stillborn concepts. These were not rejected in part, but in their entirety. No small tweaks were required—just an entirely new concept, which meant I had to go right back to the drawing board, start all over again, and trash these nine files. Piss!

This is all part of the business.

But I wanted to share some of these rejects because it’s what any morbid mother would do. “Meet my baby, the one my doctor wanted to shove back in and forget.”

Reject #1: Persuading Jo.

The author’s first of two concepts:

One scene in particular has the heroine reclining on a vintage lounger (possibly wicker?) as she watches the two men be intimate. Some sort of image with a female reclining on a lounger with two men looking on is what I had been envisaging.

First draft:

Publisher’s feedback:

While this is lovely, it’s just not sexy enough to sell the book for Loose Id. It’s too ‘cute’. Sorry!

She was right, of course. It wasn’t sexy enough to make it obvious this is a menage story. So I tried the second concept:

The other I had thought of was a closed shower door showing the shadows of the three characters from the first ménage scene.

This can more easily be made sexy, and bingo! Final draft:

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Hello, Friends! I’ve finished the revisions for my upcoming novella, Skin to Skin, which is proudly a part of Samhain’s deliciously summer-themed anthology, A Midsummer Night’s Steam, and I am beyond thrilled to tell you that it’s going to be faaaaaabyooolous! It is the hotness, yo, and you’ll love it, I promise. Read the super-hot, kickass excerpt here if you don’t believe me. It will be out more than a month and a half from now (August 17, mark your calendars!), but I figured I should give you guys something to look forward to. *grin*

Stay tuned ’cause I’ll be throwing a couple of contests with kickass prizes and you wouldn’t want to miss out, trust me.

[Now tell me… does my cover guy look like Justin Timberlake or Wentworth Miller?]

P.S. Many thanks to my lovely editor, Sasha, who’s probably my most favorite person right now, second only to Sam Winchester.

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