Reader Reviews: Carved in Darkness

Don't let me fool you--I really do care what people think. Probably a lot more than I should.

 I believe it goes hand-in-hand with my near paralyzing fear or failure, this worry that I might disappoint someone I care about, or someone I just met... or even a total stranger that I happen to make eye-contact with at the grocery store. Disappointment means failure and I'd rather eat glass than fail at anything, which makes my life as a writer challenging, to say the least.

When I see or hear someone post or say good things about my writing, I get giddy with success. I do my happy dance and grin like a simpleton. I twirl on mountaintops. I burst into song... of course all of this happens in my head. On the outside, I might shrug and say, "that's pretty cool." Which prompts people to think I'm either a) an emotionless cyborg, b) insane, or c) jaded beyond salvation.

None of which is true (I mean, option B is always up for debate...). I think, along with my failure phobia, I've developed this belief that if I celebrate my own success, I:

1) will jinx myself.

2) will look like a pretentious asshat. (because in my mind, this is what a pretentious asshat looks like)

3) will have farther to fall when I am inevitably shoved off the Cliffs of Success by my arch nemesis, Failure. That's Failure, on the right.


The sad thing is that I've had some pretty cool reviews. Great reviews. Reviews that if I were not me, would make me want to read the book I actually wrote. I should be sharing them, right? That's not douchy or pretentious, is it? I'm allowed to celebrate, aren't I? I can toot my own horn without fear of invoking the wrath of Failure and to prove it, I'm gonna start tooting...

This is a great review I received today from Blood Rose Books:

http://j9books.blogspot.com/2013/03/maegan-beaumont-carved-in-darkness.html?spref=fb

This is another from Mallory Heart Review:

http://archiestandwoodsreviewsandwritings.blogspot.com/2013/02/carved-in-darkness-by-maegan.html

This is another by Julie Beckett's Wicked Little Imp Review bog:

http://mildlysane1.blogspot.com/2013/02/carved-in-darkness-by-maegan-beaumont.html?showComment=1364323220682#c1412246246590121895

UPDATE: 

Last, but certainly not least, I received this review today by Cath on her wonderful blog, My Book Chatter Blog:
http://mybookchatterchat.blogspot.com/2013/04/book-review-carved-in-darkness-by.html

I am BLOWN AWAY by the level of support CARVED has garnered and am so giddy I might actually do my happy dance for reals! :)

I might have missed one or two but I want to thank these fantastic bloggers who took the time to read and blog about my novel, for nothing else but their own love of good books. I don't know who you guys (or gals) are but I owe you big! If you head over to their site to read their reviews of CARVED IN DARKNESS, stay awhile. Read what they have to say about other books as well. You won't be sorry.

my buy link:

http://www.amazon.com/Carved-Darkness-Maegan-Beaumont/dp/0738736899/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1364323833&sr=8-1&keywords=carved+in+darkness

official release: May 8th, 2013.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go hide under my desk until then...

What Hangs in the Balance

Like most things in writing, villains are a delicate balance. Not enough evil and you get this:

Too much evil and you get this:

The most effective villains are like this:

See what I mean? Delicate balance.

The weird thing is, though... true villains aren't balanced. They've leaned too far over the edge and lost their footing... or maybe they just swan-dived into the abyss. Either way, they're free-falling down a deep, dark hole. 

And they like it. 

They presents well. They look normal. They smile and talk. Give their seats up to little old ladies on the bus and rescue cats out of trees. They have children and drive minivans. And all the while, they harbor darkness.

Not that we don’t all harbor darkness—we do. We all have thoughts and desires we would never act on because not only do we know the difference between right and wrong, we respect it. 

We're balanced.

In order to write an effective villain, we have to knock ourselves off balance. We have to be willing to go there. You know, there. We have to be willing to search out the dark spots we keep hidden and poke at them until they bleed. To get the page a bit dirty, to scare ourselves silly. To dangle our toes over the abyss.

There have been times--many times--when I've written something and afterward wondered if there was something fundamentally wrong with me. My husband blames (for lack of a better word) my childhood. He's probably right.

Whatever the reason, I'm thankful for my keen sense of balance because no matter how many times I dangle my toes, I'm able to right myself without falling. 

And now, just for fun, some of my all-time favorite villains:

and last, but not least...

who's your favorite all time villain?

Maegan Beaumont is the author of  Carved in Darkness, available through Midnight Ink, May 8th, 2013

Review: The Rapist

Truman Pinter is a sociopath.

Like all sociopaths, he sees himself as better—elevated in every way. Removed and above those of us he sees as less. Less cultured. Less intelligent. Less aware. Less significant. Less… human.

We are but bothersome insects to Truman. Base, vulgar creatures who roam and rut our way through life without thought or care for things that truly matter.

Truman Pinter is a Rapist.

This is a fact he never disputes… in fact he admits it almost proudly. To police. To himself. To us. He infects us with his perverse perceptions and false logic. He makes us question the very things we base our own humanity on. He peels back the curtain and whispers, “there… see, you feel it too. You are no better than I.”

Truman Pinter is going to pay for his perceived crimes against humanity.

Or is he?

It’s hard to pin down, Les Edgerton’s latest novel, The Rapist. Is it considered a classic noir tale of a damaged man’s twisted path of self-destruction? Maybe it’s a gritty crime novel that chronicles an evil sociopath’s final hours… perhaps it’s a highbrowed work of literary fiction fraught with existential yearning.

The answer is yes. The Rapist is all of those things… and much, much more.

The Rapist is a dirty window used to peer into the blackest of hearts and the most vile of souls. A window that can never be wiped clean enough to make us want to press our faces against it… but we do so anyway, all the while feeling as if the black of Truman Pinter’s heart has tainted us forever.

It is a murky kaleidoscope of appalling shapes and unspeakable colors. Just when you think you’ve figured it out, just when you think you finally understand the vision Edgerton has set in front of us, it tumbles away, giving us another look from an entirely different perspective. A perspective we are not wholly comfortable with. One we reject, even as we unwillingly understand it.

The final result is Les Edgerton’s tour de force. A masterfully raw, brilliantly unabashed study into the heart and mind of the most cold-blooded sociopath you’ll ever encounter, on the page or off.

check it out!:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Rapist-ebook/dp/B00BOXQVF0/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1362685567&sr=8-6&keywords=the+rapist

Kid in a Candy Store

When a writer lands on a story idea, it usually happens one of two ways. It's either like being hit by lightening or like watching a seed germinate. Either way, once the story takes root, your head starts to swim in The Sea of Possibilities...

This is good--possibilities always are, but if you're not careful, you start to look like this:

or like this:

and then, eventually like this:

Having a fiction writer's imagination can be both a blessing and a curse. We spin straw into gold but sometimes, we get carried away. Every idea we have is a good one, every plot twist we come up with is absolutely paramount to the outcome of the story (or so we fool ourselves into believing), so we pile it on. We're gluttonous. Greedy. We have what I call Kid-in-a-candy-store-itis.

Before we know it we're working plot points for a paranormal, dystopian, sci-fi western about a half-vampire, half-werewolf who falls in love with a time-traveling mermaid... which, by the way, has absolutely nothing to do with our initial story idea.

Just remember to keep it simple. With roughly 1,100 years between us and the first printed page, an original plot is damn near impossible. Originality comes from our voice. Don't let it become cluttered and bogged down by an over active imagination or you'll end up like this guy:

  And remember: friends don't let friends write paranormal, dystopian, sci-fi,westerns about a half-vampire, half-werewolf who falls in love with a time-traveling mermaid.

Book review: Off Season

My introduction to Jack Ketchum’s Off Season (via Facebook message) went a little something like this:

So, blah, blah read this book and it made him nauseous, poop his pant, loose his shit . . . etc - no one will read the book - we thought you might be interested. LOL He says it's short but potent. Ruthless in fact. love ya

Made him poop his pants… how could I not be interested in a book that actually induced bouts of spontaneous defecation?

Needless to say, I was intrigued.

I scurried over to Amazon and paid the price of admission. Within minutes I was immersed in Ketchum’s world… a woman running through the woods, being chased—no, herded—by feral cannibalistic children. Whipped and toyed with to the point that she flings herself off a cliff and into the sea rather than face the fate they had planned for her.

We cut to Carla, a young single woman who rents a remote cabin in Maine for a month—a quiet place to work (she’s an editor) but we also get the impression it’s a bit of an escape. Carla’s personal life is complicated—a depressive, younger sister, a boyfriend she doesn’t love… an ex-boyfriend she does. She invites them all up from New York for the weekend; a quick getaway before she dives into work.

We meet an in-bred family—men and women and children—living in a cave set into the sea cliffs above the Maine shoreline. This is a family of hunters. They hunt people and they eat them.

Carla sees one of these men while waiting for her company to arrive. He’s walking along a river that runs near the cabin and she waves to him. We know almost instantly what fate awaits Carla and company and even though it takes a while to get there, once the ball starts rolling, it doesn’t stop. It keeps rolling, destroying everything and everyone in its path.

I won’t post spoilers because that’s not my style but I will say this…

This book is brutal. Viciously graphic. Unflinchingly grotesque. Unapologetically ruthless…and worth every penny.  In between recipes for man jerky (I swear it's in there) and how-tos for  human barbecue, Ketchum gives us some wonderful prose and a story about a woman who finds herself thrust into an unspeakably heinous situation and how she finds a strength she never knew she possessed.

p.s. DO NOT read this book if you are at all squeamish or sensitive to violence. I’m not kidding. Don’t even think about it.

Best / Worst week ever...

This was me last week. 

I was knee deep in final edits for CARVED IN DARKNESS. Knowing that it was the last time I would be able to fix or change anything else in the novel was a bit harder for me to take than I thought it would be...  I've always been a bit possessive of my work--I'm sure that as a writer, the sentiment is not a new one--but knowing that once I hit that send button it would no longer be "mine" made it even harder to wrap my head around.

This is how I feel about my work.


Once I turn it over to my editor, it will literally be set in stone. What I send back to her will be the version people will see and buy... hopefully. I became my own worst critic, nit-picking every little word. I literally had 30 pages of changes I wanted to make. It was insane. 

This is me going insane.

But somehow I managed to rein myself in (it might have had something to do with the fact that my editor told me that I could only make changes that were absolutely necessary). I focused on changes that were really important to the story--and then danced around my computer for a few minutes before I finally forced myself to hit send.

This is me trying to convince myself that it was all going to be okay.


So... I finally hit send. It's done. It's finished... final edits for CARVED IN DARKNESS are complete and currently being laughed at by my editor (I'm kidding. She's not really laughing... God, please don't let her be laughing...).

This is my book. You should buy it. Here's the link: http://www.amazon.com/Carved-Darkness-Maegan-Beaumont/dp/0738736899/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1360078173&sr=1-1&keywords=carved+in+darkness

I'd really like to thank my editors, Terri and Nicole, and my agent, Chip, for putting up with my ridiculous questions and my even more ridiculous quest for perfection. You guys are awesome!

Fade to Black...

A few months ago, I flew to Chicago for the annual client conference held by my agent. It was my first time attending, having only been picked up officially that August, so I was a bit out of my depth. I was in a strange city full of complete strangers. I had absolutely no idea where I was going or who I was going with. If you know me at all then, you know that these are things that usually send me into a tailspin… but I maintained. 

I was very proud.

As we were waiting for the train to take us into the city for dinner, I listened to people talk—“Hi, I’m blah, blah. Blah, blah has been my agent for 2 years.”

“Oh, I know you. My name is blah, blah. I’m with blah, blah.”

(not trying to be disrespectful—just don’t want to use names… or maybe I just don't remember them.)

“So, what's your name and who are you with?”

It took me a few seconds before I realized someone was talking to me.

“Ah… My name is Maegan Beaumont and I’ve been with Chip for a few months.”

I sounded like I was introducing myself at an AA meeting, but I managed to get the words out without any nervous stuttering. Suddenly, the young woman standing in front of me whirled around and after a few seconds of scrutiny, said, “You’re Maegan Beaumont?”

Oh. God. What did I do? The juvenile delinquent in me was screaming—No. No you are not. Deny, deny, DENY!!

“Yes…?”

She smiled. “I joined the agency the same week Chip received your manuscript. It was the first thing he gave me to read. I couldn’t get past the first five pages. I still think about it,” she said. “I’m pretty sure it scarred me for life.”

I didn’t know what to say. What did that mean? Was it really that bad? Before I could say anything, she saved me from imploding.

“Oh, no. It was really, really good… but it was too intense for me,” she said. “Most writers have this fade to black moment where they choose to leave the rest of a graphic scene to the reader’s imagination. I kept reading your work, waiting for the fade to black… but it kept going. I kept reading, waiting for it. Fade to black… I kept thinking, when is it going to fade to black? Fade to black. Dear God—FADE TO BLACK!!” She mimed flipping through pages, her eyes as wide dinner plates.

She stopped and smiled at me. “I took it back to Chip and said, “It’s really, really good and really, really disturbing. Here you go—you should read it. And now you’re here.”

I had no idea what to say—again. I felt like an apology was in order but I swore to myself a long time ago that I’d never apologize for anything that I’d written. Maybe I should offer to pay for her therapy…

She turned out to be the one person I really connected with in Chicago. We split a pizza and she admitted that I was nothing like what she expected. I took it as a compliment. We really didn’t talk about my work again (although, she did ask me if my husband was afraid to go to sleep around me...) but her reaction has stuck with me. Four months later and I’m still thinking about it.

Fade to Black.

I’ve tried writing that way but it felt… almost like a lie. What I’d put on paper was not what I really wanted to say—the problem was, what I really wanted to say was pretty freakin’ disturbing. I was worried what my family would think. I was worried how, if it was ever read by the general public, I’d be regarded (remember, nice girls don’t write about torture…). Would the parents of my children’s friends think I’m a depraved lunatic and keep their kids away from mine?

I was afraid of offending someone. I was afraid of disappointing everyone. I was afraid of what people would think.

I was afraid.

But you can’t write with fear—not if you want write with honesty and passion and all the things that make a book worth reading. Good writing isn’t always pretty or pleasant. It isn’t about what people want to hear. It’s about what you have to say. As soon as I realized that, I was able to let go of all that worry and doubt and just write. Instead of fading to black, I kept the lights on. I threw open the doors and windows and wrote.

And what I wrote scared me. Not the actual content… but it scared me that the words came from me so easily.  That I was able to go there without any real effort at all. I felt the strong desire to delete it off the page before anyone else saw it. I didn’t. I considered cutting it from the book. I didn’t do that either. I’ve come to recognize that feeling this way is a sign that I’ve written something that will affect people. And if we’re not affecting people with our words, then what’s the point?

Truth is, there’ll always be people who will be offended. There will be some who are disappointed or disturbed by the things I write. Who will see me differently. Who will build pre-conceived notions about what I’m really like. And as much as I wish it weren’t so, I can’t let any of that dictate what I write. I’ll go crazy if I do…

So write what you want. Say what you need to say, in the most honest way possible. Don't let fear or doubt decide what you put on paper. You deserve better than that, and so does your reader.

Fade to black. Or not...

It's totally up to you.

Release date: May 8, 2013