Midnight Oil by Marva Dasef

My special guest today is Marva Dasef. Marva's first book in the Witches of Galdorheim series Bad Spelling came second in the children's fiction section of the recent P&E reader polls. It also appeared in the Top Ten of the YA section.


Marva is offering a free e-book to a lucky blog reader here today. All you have to do to be in with a chance of winning is read this post and leave a comment.


                            Love the tagline for the book--irresistible.

About Midnight Oil

MIDNIGHT OIL is Book 2 of the Witches of
Galdorheim

Shipwrecked on a legendary island, how can a
witch rescue her boyfriend if she can’t even
phone home?

MuseItUp Buy Page: http://tinyurl.com/6wswbsf
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006UTL54A



Kat discovers that an evil forest spirit has
kidnapped her brand-new boyfriend. She sets out
with her brother, Rune, from her Arctic island
home on a mission to rescue the boy. 

Things go wrong from the start. Kat is thrown overboard
during a violent storm, while her brother and
his girlfriend are captured by a mutant island
tribe. The mutants hold the girlfriend hostage,
demanding that the teens recover the only thing
that can make the mutants human again–the
magical Midnight Oil.

Mustering every bit of her Wiccan magic, Kat
rises to the challenge. She invokes her magical
skills, learns to fly an ultralight, meets a
legendary sea serpent, rescues her boyfriend,
and helps a friendly air spirit win the battle
against her spiteful sibling. On top of it all,
she’s able to recover the Midnight Oil and help
the hapless mutants in the nick of time.
 
The Buddy Story: Rune and Ivansi

Butch and Sundance, Crosby and Hope, Han Solo
and Chewbacca. All buddy movies, despite being
in completely different genres. There’s
something primal about two guys getting
together and going on an adventure.
 
While Midnight Oil focuses mainly on Kat’s
journey, the relationship between Rune (Kat’s
half brother) and Ivansi (Kat’s grandfather) is
a close second. The two hardly know each other
at the beginning of the story, but learn about
each others’ strengths and weaknesses as they
are thrown together to find the elusive and
magical Midnight Oil.

 
The young warlock and the old warrior have a
difficult task to handle. They’re the pair who
have to talk to the Nenets gods to locate the
oil, then have a long and difficult journey to
get to it. Most of the trip is by sea, but when
the two hit land, they’re on foot. They’d
really like to find another mode of
transportation.

Excerpt from Midnight Oil:

Midnight Oil

 The men continued to talk, and Rune listened,
picking up a word here and there. He wondered
if he could sneak a translation spell in with
nobody noticing. Rune decided against it since
it required speaking Old Runic and using a
summoning gesture. Big red letters would form
over his head, spelling out W-A-R-L-O-C-K. Best
to leave well enough alone and just let Ivansi
handle this.
 
Ivansi and the headman stood. Rune jumped up,
too. The two men walked away from the group
toward a small lean-to shed next to the house.
The man opened the swinging door, and Rune’s
eyes lit up. He quickly suppressed the glow and
grinned. The scooter! It had a logo on its
front end written in chrome italic lettering—
Vespa.

 
The scooter had a two-person seat. The front-
end consisted of a curved shield designed to
protect the rider’s legs, topped by a
headlight. On the inside of the knee shield, he
saw a couple of dials: speedometer and RPM. A
short windshield stuck up from the handlebars.
It wasn’t much different from the snowmobiles
Rune had a chance to ride with the trolls.
Wheels instead of skids, and it had a much
smaller engine than the snowmobiles. Rear view
mirrors stood up on both ends of the
handlebars. Rune could hardly wait to fire it
up.
 
The two men bantered a couple of minutes. Rune
could recognize a bartering session in any
language. Ivansi took out his hunting knife
from its sheath and handed it to the man, who
inspected it closely. It was a beautiful knife,
with an etched blade and an elaborately carved
handle made from walrus tusk. The tusk was
yellowed with age, but the blade flashed in the
sunlight, clean and sharp.
 
The man nodded. Ivansi unbuckled his belt, slid
the sheath from it, and held it out to the man,
who grinned broadly as he inspected it. Then,
he set the knife on a shelf and dug into a
pouch tied on his belt. He handed a key to
Ivansi who passed it to Rune. “Can drive?”
 
“Oh, yeah! No problem.” Rune slid the key into
the ignition, grasped the handlebars, toed up
the kickstand, and walked it out of the shed.
The man followed, pointing to this or that
control. Rune didn’t know what he was saying
but got the idea. He looked it over, pulled on
the hand brakes to see if they moved smoothly.

The scooter proved to be in excellent
condition. And red! Rune thought it an omen
that the scooter came in ‘his’ color.
Ivansi gave thanks to the Vespa’s owner. Man
and boy mounted their wheeled steed. Rune
turned the key, and the little engine buzzed
like a mad wasp. He let out the hand clutch,
the scooter hopped a couple of times, and they
took off down the road. The purple haze ran
ahead of them, showing them the way to Finland.
                                          * * * *

Learn more about Marva and her work:

Links:
Websites: http://marvadasef.com/ 
http://mgddasef.blogspot.comhttp://mgddasef.blogspot.com
 
Book Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=tdfNTVeMS1s

Social Sites:
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/MarvaDasef
Google+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/?https://plus.google.com/u/0/?tab=wX#107073845875601488093/posts
Twitter Handle: @Gurina

Other Books by Marva Dasef from MuseItUp:

Bad Spelling: Book 1 of the Witches of Galdorheim 
A klutzy witch, a shaman's curse, a quest to save her 
family. Can Kat find her magic in time?

Missing, Assumed Dead
 
Prejudice, murder, insanity, suicide: Every
small town has its secrets.

Thanks and Questions





Thanks for being with us today, Marva. I love buddy stories. If you have any questions for Marva, please post them below. And remember please to leave a comment or question below for a chance to win a free e-book from Marva.

Writing Incentives

 Writing Competitions

 Competitions often make great writing incentives, especially when the entry fee is low and the prize money is relatively high. Add the bonus of publication and you have an ideal scenario.

Eclat Fiction is seeking short story submissions of under 1500 words  for its second edition.to be published on March 1. Three top prizewinners plus five runner up entries will be published. The prizes are a generous £100 for first, £50 for second and £20 for third.

The entry fee is a donation via Paypal and it is left to the author to decide what to donate. Be careful to read the guidelines carefully.  The deadline is midnight on February 6 but if you are in USA or Canada, remember to check the difference in time zones. To be safe, send your email with story attached as a word.doc by December 5 at the latest.


You can find the first edition of Eclat Fiction on the site. It's free to read so you can get a fair idea of the standard and what the editor is looking for. There is no set theme but children's fiction and non-fiction are not accepted.


An extensive list of short story competitions including those for flash fiction and children's stories can be found on the Writers Reign website. Note that the closing date for the Twisted Americana competition is now March 12.  But be warned. They are looking for dark, very dark, crime fiction.The clue lies in the title.


Overcome fear of submissions

The only sure way of being published is to submit your work. Seems obvious--but for many of us the submissions process can be too high a hurdle.

For this reason I heartily recommend  Pub Sub 3rd Friday
the brainwave of author and illustrator Joan Y Edwards.

Her point is simple. The more you submit, the more likely are your chances of being published.

It's certainly worth a try.

 Slow writers


And just to cheer up those of us with the everlasting Work In Progress:


Novelist William H. Gass took nearly thirty years to complete his acclaimed novel The Tunnel.

And Californian novelist Thomas Sanchez  has taken nearly a decade to write several of his books.


One of my favourite books is The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society  another wonderful novel which took years to write. Sadly the author, Mary Ann Shaffer died before it was finally published and the novel, a best seller, was in the end completed by her niece Annie Barrows, herself an author.