PBW Holiday Giveaway #6 -- Cool Characters

The winner of PBW Holiday Giveaway #4 -- Playing Favorites is:

Amethyst Willow

Amethyst, when you have a chance please send your full name and ship-to info to LynnViehl@aol.com, and I'll get your package out to you. Thanks to everyone for recommending so many wonderful books for us to discover.

I put a lot of things in my novels that are personal metaphors, inside jokes or other private amusements -- and I don't explain them. A couple of years ago some readers started referring to these hidden and enigmatic elements as Easter Eggs (ala LOST) and a few of you Nosy Parkers began hunting for them and finding them.

Here are a half-dozen you don't have to figure out:

Six Darkyn Easter Eggs

Each of the Kyn have a psychic or physical talent that is unique to them. I use or coin verbs as mental shorthand for their talents, such as Memerase (Michael) Dreamwalk (Thierry) Shatter (Lucan) and Painsay (Richard). I rarely use my shorthand terms in the novels but I sometimes illustrate them with a visual metaphor when the romantic protagonists meet for the first time. All of the talents have two qualities: they are basically predatory in nature, and they all have something to do with what the Kyn's last thoughts were while they were still human.

With the exception of Jema, all of the female protagonists have female names but male nicknames, and yes, that was a deliberate choice. I have issues with how women are usually portrayed in dark fantasy and paranormal romance novels. I left out Jema because in the series, she is always the exception to the rule.

Alex's story about being inspired to go into reconstructive surgery by the family gardener was based on the real story of my own uncle, who was disfigured for most of his life after losing his nose to skin cancer. He was a wonderful man and I absolutely adored him. However, his disfigurement frightened and disgusted people so he had few friends and rarely went out in public.

Michael's physical appearance was inspired by two sources: a photo of the back of a rather famous celebrity who at the time was barefoot, wearing an old pair of jeans and painting, and an ordinary man I saw at an art festival with the most astonishing white streaks in his long, coal-black hair. I found a reason to give Michael that hair and described the photo in a scene in the first book.

In Private Demon I mentioned Rev. Rick Warren's very famous book, The Purpose-Driven Life, as a personal joke after three different people all gave it to me as a birthday gift. Fellow faithful friends love to give me this book for some reason; at one point I had ten gift copies of it. P.S., I still have not read it.

Jayr and I share the same birthmark, although mine is in a different location. My sixteen-year-old also has the same birthmark in a mirror position to my own, which gave me the idea to use them as I did in the series.

For the sixth PBW Holiday Giveaway, I have:



Seven Copies of Stay the Night and Master of Shadows

To have a chance to win this giveaway, in comments name one of your favorite characters from a story or novel (or, if you can't pick just one, toss your name in the hat) by midnight EST on Wednesday, December 17, 2008. I'll draw seven names at random from everyone who participates and send the winners each a signed final edition copy of my January '09 release, Stay the Night (this will be as soon as my author copies arrive, which should be some time between now and January 6, 2009.) I will also immediately send each winner an extra stocking stuffer to keep them busy while they wait for STN -- a signed, printed* copy of my December Darkyn novella e-book release, Master of Shadows. This giveaway is open to everyone on the planet, even if you've won something from PBW in the past.

*Printed by me on bond paper and placed in a three-ring binder.