OK, a slightly greater joy...

I'm not dissing the wonderfulness of cheap notebooks, mind you, but there is something just a little bit better and that is closing in on the end of a WIP.

I had a nice chunk of free time this morning [at work - gotta love that!] and I was able to get past the big denoument in my WIP. [Which happens to be the sequel to Skin, btw.] Now I have just one more major scene to write and I'm DONE!!

I'm so thrilled because, barring a Torchwood fan fic, this will be the first story I've actually finished this year. After going through a major period of disillusionment I began to wonder if I'd ever get my groove back, but this story seems to have done it.

Now, I really have no idea what I'll work on after this one is finished, but at least I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Off to get tapping on the keys and put this puppy to bed.

BTW...there's one more thing that needs to be said. I've been holding off saying it because some people haven't seen Season 3 of Torchwood, but it's killing me not to mention it, so I will. If you want to read it, highlight the paragraph below:

I absolutely, positively and without reservation, forgive Jack for everything he had to do in order to stop the 456. He saved the world. Period. I know a lot of people are disillisioned about what he had to do, but he's probably the only one who could have gotten the job done. On the other hand, I don't forgive Russell T. Davies for the stuff he did. I'm really pissed at him for a whole bunch of reasons and the only way I'll forgive him is if he redeems himself spectacularly in Season 4. [And there just better damn well BE a seaon 4. Just sayin'.]

No greater joy...

...than cheap notebooks. It's that time of year again at Shop Rite - 10 single subject notebooks for $1.00.

Can't beat that with a stick.

Yes, I know. I have a computer. A laptop. And a NEO. And I still go all dreamy-eyed over that humungous pile of one subject notebooks stacked at the end of aisle 9.

It's like Christmas.

There's just something about a blank sheet of notebook paper that's a lot more inspiring to me than a blank computer screen. I think it's the blinking cursor that gets to me. It's so...expectant. You can just see it tapping its little foot, waiting for you to start writing. But the paper is patient. It's doesn't blink, it just sits, quietly, peacefully, waiting to absorb some ink. It asks for nothing, consumes nothing...it's passive and uncomplicated. I like that. I need that.

And at 10 cents a book, it's almost a sin NOT to buy them.

So, what's your preference? Cyber paper or real paper?

A new obsession

Rather than continue to torture certain people with my Captain Jack fetish [and let me just say, with two more episodes of series 3 to go - I totally forgive him! So far] I thought I would talk about another obsession I'm developing.


No, it's not Primeval - though I'm totally a Connor/Abby shipper. More on them another time.


No, it's not Warehouse 13. Think Fringe with less bite, X-Files with more fun.


It's these:



Sweet potatoes.

It all started a few weeks ago when we had dinner at Bob's Burger Palace where they serve the most excellent sweet potato fries. I fell in love. Literally, fell into the cup of fries, would have stayed there forever. Knowing that 'fried' has some inherent badness to it, I decided to buy my own sweet potatoes and bake them. I figured the people [I live with] would enjoy some nutritious yumminess. All three of them hated the baked sweet potatoes because there's just something wrong with them. I, however, fell in love all over again and now, I have decided to buy sweet potatoes every week and have them in place of white potatoes in all their forms.

The people are not happy, but I don't care. According to my research, sweet potatoes are 'wunderfood' and should be eaten by everyone all the time. That suits me fine.

Tell me about the last time you feel in love with food. [Chocolate doesn't count. That goes without saying.]

It's Torchwood Week

I'll be running around Cardiff with Jack, Gwen and Ianto.

I will try not to post any spoilers, though I'm dying to.

We.

We. Are.

We. Are. Coming.

We. Are. Coming.

Back.

Staycation is over

After having four straight days off, I'm actually sort of looking forward to going back to work.

Yeah. I know. That's just about as wrong as neon blue soda.

Friday: Went to see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. The movie was...good. Now, don't throw rotten cherry tomatoes at me. I enjoyed it. As I told someone who asked me, it was like visiting with old friends. It's great to see Hermione and Ron and Harry again, it's great to spend an afternoon at Hogwarts, but in this installment, there just wasn't that breakneck sense of adventure the other movies have had. I'm still looking forward to the next two movies that will make up the final installment of the series, but unlike with Star Trek, I didn't have the immediate desire to run back into the theater and see this again.

Saturday: Day trip to Seaside for a wedding. Thanks to traffic, we missed the ceremony, but interestingly, I've noticed that any proximity to the ocean mellows me out completely. The moment I see sand, it's like someone put a valium in my Kool-Aid. And the weather was stunning, so I really can't complain.

Sunday: The demolition of the disaster area that was DD's bedroom. We pulled everything out, painted the walls and put everything back, sans about three bags full of accumulated garbage. The color? See the blog header? That color purple.

Today: Food shopping, house cleaning...not sure where the 'cation' part comes in. I guess that begins tonight when I settle down in front of the tube to watch Torchwood: Children of Earth, Day One.

Have you taken a 'staycation' this year? How did you spend it? Was it more 'stay' than 'cation?'

So wrong

Neon drinks. There's just something so wrong about drinking something that's this color.

DH got sucked into the marketing ploy of Mountain Dew this week and picked up some 12-packs of World of Warcraft Mountain Dew [Gamer Fuel]. He claimed it was market reserach for his gaming conventions when this stuff will go over better than sliced bread.

He doesn't play WoW, but that doesn't matter. Just the idea of a drink marketed as Gamer Fuel had him intrigued. I tasted the stuff and it's sort of like cough medicine without the kick. [The blue flavor, I haven't tried the red.]

Years ago there was this supposedly scientific claim that 'blue' food was unappetizing. That's why there was so little of it. The only blue thing you used to be able to eat was the occasinal ice pop or one third of a sno cone. Now, blue seems to be the new rage and guess what, after staring down into a cup of something that looked like windshield wiper fluid, I have to agree. Blue food/drink just doesn't cut it.

What do you think? Have you tried Gamer Fuel? Would you if they paid you? Does the color of food affect your enjoyment of it? Is neon tasty?

Fresh from the vine

I've noticed that, like celebrity deaths, rejections seem to come in clusters. Like vine fruit, you can get a handful at a time.
In the wake of a small cluster of rejections, [one was acutally a very nice one, worth printing out and saving] I immediately picked up a pen and paper and started making a list of things I needed to do next. Mostly my list consisted of stories I want to finish and where I want to submit them, so today, my next list will consist of new places to submit the rejected stories.
I resisted the urge to mope, though sometimes moping can be fun and necessary. There's not time to spend on feeling bad when there are so many stories still to be completed, revised, edited, blurbed and e-mailed or plopped into the nice manilla envelopes I just bought at ShopRite for those snail-mail only submissions.
So what do you do when you get a rejection? Do you sit back and reassess, or start making lists? Do you mope, cope, rant, rave? [I can make good arguments for doing all of the above, mind you, so don't feel bad if you're a ranter.]
When life hands me cherry tomatoes, I make salsa.
*Note: I was yelled at by Photobucket for looking up the term 'cherry tomatoes.' Apparently, it's sexually explicit and I should be ashamed of myself for even thinking it.

Summer Sale

If you're looking for some summer reading [and you've already finished The Matchmakers] check out the sales at Ellora's Cave!

Ellora's Cave is discounting loads of paperbacks more than 20% while supplies last! Customers also receive one free paperback on each print order and two free books on print orders over $35 (free books are selected at random.)

What's on your summer reading list?

Brr...

It's July 9th - and I'm sitting at my computer next to the open window...and I'M COLD!

Bwahahahahahaa!!!

I know, I know. All this means is that in the battle between global warming and the impending ice age, the ice age is up one point. I shouldn't be secretly gleeful.

But I am.

A chuckle @ Mrs. Giggles

Today was a banner day! It started with my oversleeping by 45 minutes, so there went my morning walk. I figured then that the rest of the day would follow that path – and thankfully, I was wrong.

Rather than going down hill, things got better! I found a wonderful review for The Matchmakers in my in-box!

Amanda Haffery of Paranormal Romance.org had this to say:
"Fast-paced, characters you can believe in, romance and faerie folk....what more could you ask for?... an enticing web of passion, romance, paranormal and suspense..."
Read the full review HERE

These days, reviews tend to trickle in very slowly, so to get one only a week after release is like winning the lottery! And, to really defy the odds, this wasn’t the only one!

I found out later on today that I’d been Giggled! Now, Mrs. Giggles has a rep for being harsh on books, so I always approach her reviews with my fingers over my eyes. Lo and behold, she gave The Matchmakers a 79!

Now, I could pull out the flattering quotes from her review, like where she says: “There are plenty of humorous moments that have me chuckling out loud as Callie tries to get Nick to cooperate with her. Nick's reaction to Callie's presence is amusing too. These two are fun to read...” or where she calls the book “a fun bouncy read,” but honestly, I think I enjoyed some of her more disparaging remarks even more.

I must confess I giggled a bit myself when I read her assessment of my hero Nick as: “[a] dim-witted asshole with the handprints of a million skanky women all over his much-used body.” ROFL. Come on, that’s funny. If Calliope weren't such a sweetheart, she'd probably have called him that herself.

Even better, she suggests: “Shouldn't we, I don't know, make him spend a week or so in a decontamination chamber before we allow him to have sex with another woman?” Snarf! I’ve often thought that about many a romance hero to be honest. I suppose my Nick is no exception.

I don’t know if the review will garner me sales or turn some potential readers away, but either way, I did actually enjoy it. Thanks for the giggle, Mrs. Giggles!

OH – and one more thing – I happened by Fictionwise today, where The Matchmakers is already available, and I noticed that it is listed as Erotica. Please note – The Matchmakers is NOT erotic romance. It’s sexy, sensual romance, yes, but it’s not erotica!

The Desert Island Dilemma

Back before the school year ended, DD told me about an assignment she had for English class. Her teacher tasked a group of 14-year-olds with answering this question:
If you were to be stranded on an island forever, and could bring only three things with you, what would they be? [No boats or modes of transportation allowed.]
DD chose her two best friends and a canister of oxygen – she explained that the three of them would be laughing so hard one of them would need to be resuscitated.

At dinner we posed the question to DS, who, after some deliberation decided on a ray gun [a death ray of course], a pen disguised as a tape recorder [not to be confused with a tape recorder disguised as a pen mind you] and an endless supply of edible goop [this is a child who doesn’t even like Jell-o, so I don’t know how eating goop for the rest of his life would work out for him.]

DH was a bit more pragmatic. He said he would take a Swiss Army Knife, the Boy Scout Hand Book and an endless roll of duct tape so he could MacGuyver the hell out of that island. I guess the idea of just taking MacGuyver didn’t occur to him. Maybe if MacGuyver was female...
Anyway...I thought about it for a while and after the obvious choices: John Barrowman [so what if he’s gay?], Keanu Reeves and David Boreanaz - I decided if I really, really had to choose, I’d take: a carpenter [who looked like David Boreanaz] a chef [who looked like Keanu Reeves] and the Professor from Gilligan’s Island [who had a makeover and now looked like John Barrowman].

What [or who] would you choose for spending the rest of your days living the LOST life?

Happy Fourth!

Have a great day! We'll be working on FINALLY opening the pool today. Thanks to some amazingly wet, cool weather, we haven't had a hot day around here since...like...April.
What are your holiday plans?

Long-awaited release day!

This one's special...and it's available today from Samhain Publishing!

Two wrongs don’t make a right, but they just might make a perfect match…

Nick Garret is flypaper for females, and he likes it that way. Women stick for a while, and when it’s over they fly away. So does he. Then one rain-slick night a young woman steps in front of his pickup truck, and his jaded, cynical life takes a sharp swerve toward trouble.

Calliope did the only thing she could think to get Nick to steer his truck—and his life—in a new direction. Banished from the Fae realm for granting a wish gone bad, her punishment is an impossible task; redeem the unredeemable Nick Garret. If she fails to help him pair three couples in everlasting bliss, he’s doomed to never experience real love. And she will share his fate—as a mortal.

Nick can’t decide if this charming, exasperating woman is a dream come true, or a saucy, sexy nightmare sent to drive him insane. Yet something about her makes him want to rise to her challenge. He’ll do anything to make her stick around a while.

Besides, how much trouble can one half-naked, seemingly wingless faerie be?

Warning: This title contains sensual love scenes, mischievous Fae, removable wings and hot men in tool belts.

For more information on The Matchmakers, visit Samhain today - special price available at MBaM!

Read an excerpt here!

Ranger vs Morelli

This one is for all you Plum fans out there.

I just finished reading Finger Lickin' Fifteen, the latest in Janet Evanovich's series about disaster prone Trenton bounty hunter, Stephanie Plum. [I have no idea why this hasn't been made into a TV series, I think it would rock!]

I won't reveal any spoilers about this installment of the ongoing saga. I'll just say, I envy Ms. Evanovich's ability to keep a series going for fifteen books and to keep fans wondering will she or won't she with regards to her heroine's two equally yummy love interests.

For those of you not in the know, Ms. Plum has two gorgeous men in her life - hunky Joe Morelli, one of Trenton's finest and mysterious Carlos Manoso, aka Ranger, fellow bounty hunter and security company honcho.

One offers stability, the prospect of a home and family, a solid future - and the other offers endless adventure and sex so hot she can't even bring herself to repeat their one night stand. I know the debate runs hot on which one Stephanie should ultimately choose - but I've got to say, I'm a hands down Ranger fan. Maybe I feel that way because Stephanie is a fictional character, and therefore her life can go any way Ms. Evanovich wants it to go, so why shouldn't she have all the fun and adventure she can get? If Ms. Plum were a real person, I might be in the Morelli camp...then again...

Well, for all you fans out there, weigh in. If you could choose Ranger or Morelli, which would it be?

The end of an era x 3

This week has been a bit of a stunner on the pop-culture front. First , Tonight Show icon Ed McMahon passed away a few days ago after a long illness.

Earlier today, '70s pin-up and quintessential Charlie's Angel, Farah Fawcett, died after a two-year bout with cancer.

And just this evening, the King of Pop himself, Micheal Jackson, died suddenly from a heart attack at age 50.

I'm always struck by a mix of emotions when celebrities die. On a shallow level, it's news, it's gossip, it's that OMG moment because even though there are greater tragedies occurring all over the world at the same time, you know this will be headline news above war, injustice, crime, etc.

On a deeper level, there's the feeling that though these people were somehow removed from every day life and led almost fictionally dramatic or often charmed lives, they were still people with families who loved them and they will be mourned just as members of any family would be.

Then there's sort of a global level - it amazes me how the passing of an entertainer, an actress, a singer, even a princess, can make the whole world sort of stop for a moment. Whatever my personal opinion of a celebrity might be, I must always give them credit to have had the ability to touch so many people. To have been known and loved by millions around the world is an accomplishment in itself.

Too much knowledge is a bad thing

I’ve ruined another reader.

I didn’t plan on it. It really wasn’t intentional. I plead not guilty, even though I am. I turned my own mother into an EDITOR.

{hangs head in shame} I apologize to all you authors out there whose books my mother would have happily read without complaint. Now she’s nitpicking punctuation and it’s all my fault.

After a spirited discussion not long ago over dinner, in which Ursula took over my body and began ranting about the misuse of punctuation – the abundance of ellipses, the use of semi-colons in place of commas, the unmitigated rain of exclamation points – my mother started to analyze the books she reads.

Now she finds the misuse of punctuation as irritating as Ursula does. And she yelled at me about it.

My mother is an avid reader. [That’s where I got it from.] She buys TONS of books, most by mail order, so her postal carrier tends to glare at her house when he walks by. She reads and reads and reads. And she enjoys the vast majority of these books. She reads for the story, so up until now, the words have faded into the background for her. Then Ursula got a hold of her and bent her year about bad grammar and now she notices things wrong with the books she reads, and I get blamed for it. I would yell at Ursula, but she’s busy editing right now and she might hurt me, so I’ll just have to keep quiet about it for now.

Does your inner editor make it hard for you to enjoy reading? And is it Ursula’s fault?

Summer Menu

No, this has nothing to do with food, though DH and I have been talking a lot about changing our diet, the menu I’m talking about is my TBR pile. I recently joined ANOTHER book club. Yes, I signed up for the Mystery Guild because I couldn’t pass up their deal – five books for 99 cents. What avid reader couldn’t?

I got my order the other day and I can’t wait to dig in to the first course, but I’m also waiting on delivery of the next Stephanie Plum novel and I want to read that one first.

So here, in no particular order, are the books I have on my list for the next few months.

Finger Lickin’ Fifteen by Janet Evanovich
Devil Bones by Kathy Reichs [my first Temperance Brennan book!]
Fire and Ice by Julie Garwood
Lethal Legacy by Linda Fairstein
Still Life by Joy Fielding
Running Hot by Jayne Ann Krentz
Bones of Betrayal by Jefferson Bass

I’m also dying to get my hands on the Castaways by Elin Hildebrand, but it’s not out yet, and of course I’m waiting with bated breath for the next installment of Karen Marie Moning’s Fae series, which incidentally trumps everything on the list.

So tell me...do you join book clubs? I can’t help myself. Anytime I’m offered books at a bargain, I’m hooked. How about you?

The next installment

I hadn't planned on having on ongoing blog about the politics of romance - but the debate [and now it is a debate] rages on at the ESPAN blog with the rebuttal from RWA President Diane Pershing.

My take on the blog post is that the RWA isn’t going to change anything, because change would mean going against the RWA policies and the RWA can’t go against it’s own policies and changing the policies won’t serve the remaining membership. I say remaining, because I believe that ultimately the only people left in RWA will be the people who agree with the party line – in essence, the people who wrote the policies.

In response to this, a movement has sprung up by RWA members who are determined to effect change from within. I applaud their efforts to mold the organization, into which they've invested so much time, effort and money, into the organization that they want it to be. Why am I not involved in this romance revolution? Well, as one fellow writer put it in an e-mail to another loop, [and I paraphrase] I didn't join RWA to change it. I joined RWA to benefit from what already existed. What already existed was of no benefit to me, so I'm moving on.

Again, I have nothing but respect for those who are digging in, setting up camp and plunging into the battle to make RWA a truly inclusive organization that will embrace the modern writer [who will increasingly be an epublished writer since so many traditional publishers are foraying into the world of electronic publishing.] Now with the Kindle and the Sony eReader available, authors who never dreamed of seeing their work in digital format will become epublished - whether they like it or not. While RWA maintains that epublished authors are in the minority and therefore beneath its notice, the reality is that within a short time the author who is strictly print published, whose books are not available anywhere in electronic format of any kind, will be the minority. These days, once you sell, there's a better than average chance that somewhere along the line your work will be available electronically. To not deal with that change is to fall to extinction.

I look forward to seeing continuing posts on the ESPAN blog from Angela James of Samhain Publishing and Raelene Gorlinski of Ellora's Cave. And I look forward to seeing the transformation of the RWA. Good luck to those who have charged into battle.

Back to the brouhaha

The discussion over at the ESPAN blog rages on about the view the RWA administration has taken regarding e-pub and small press authors.

Disclaimer: I have not read the letter from the RWA president. Due in part to this very issue, I have not renewed my membership to RWA, so I speak only based on the gist of the presidents words, which I’ve gathered from reading the posts of others.

In essence, so I hear, Diane Pershing has thrown down the gauntlet so to speak. Her letter has hundreds of authors incensed over what seems to be a sweeping denunciation of e-published and indie-press published authors being little more than hobbyists who are not ‘career minded’.

The discussion [I can’t call it a debate, because most of the authors who have weighed in on the subject and on super-agent Deidre Knight’s subsequent post, all seem to be in agreement. There really is no actual argument, just a long line of ‘career minded’ authors who are defending the path they’ve chosen to publication] centers around the stance of the Romance Writers of America which seems to place those who pursue the route of e-publishing in a lesser standing than those who have gone the traditional print [translation: NY] route.

In the past, the issue had revolved around content – such as what constitutes a romance, can a non-male/female couple really star in a romance novel? Are MM, FF, Menage and other alternative lifestyles to be considered ‘romance’. Does erotic romance deserve a place in the annals [that’s two N’s for you gutter-minded people] of romance or should ‘smut’ and ‘pron’ remain as the redheaded stepchildren of romance, just as romance itself has long been considered the redheaded stepchild of literature and ‘serious’ writing?

My take is similar to that of just about everyone else who has spoken up in response to Ms. Knight’s post. Electronic and small press published authors are NO LESS CAREER MINDED than those authors who are published with traditional print [NY] houses. In many cases they earn as much or more, they work as many hours, probably spend more time promoting their books and interacting with fans, and they strive, just as traditionally published authors do, to write the best book they can and connect with readers on a deep, emotional level. They are not LESS because they did not earn an advance. They are not LESS because perhaps their books are not available in book stores. They are not LESS because their route to publication may have been faster than for those who sometimes wait two years from the date of their contract to see their book become available and often six months to a year after that before receiving their first royalty checks.

Even though I am no longer a member of RWA, I would still like to see the organization make the changes its membership demands because there are so many authors who have gained great benefits from association with their local chapters. I would like to see the huge number of small press authors with which I’m familiar get the recognition they deserve as hard working PROFESSIONALS.

I understand Ms. Pershing will be responding to Ms. Knight’s post on Friday, June 19th. I’ll be looking forward to hearing what she has to say.

Eenie meenie meinie mo...

It never fails...most days I have trouble coming up with something to blog about, but today I planned to talk about the great writing weekend I had while my peeps were away at Anime Next, and the t-shirt they bought for me. I took pictures and everything.

Then I heard about Deidre Knight's recent post over at the ESPAN blog regarding the RWA attitudes about e-publishing, so I planned to blog about that.

BUT...I got a message on my voice mail last night that trumps everything, so I decided to push those other blogs off for a bit and crow about my good news:

SKIN has won 1st Place in the erotic category of the More Than Magic Contest sponsored by Romance Writers Ink!

I'm thrilled! Now the book goes on to the final round judging and the grand prize winner will be announced July 11th. Let me say, as much as I would love to win the grand prize, it's an honor just to be nominated, as the saying goes. I know SKIN was up against some awesome books by fabulous authors, so to take 1st place is a bit humbling.

Here's a link to the winner's list: http://rwimagiccontests.wordpress.com/2009-more-than-magic-placements/. Congratulations to everyone and best of luck!

Stay tuned for more on the bumped topics...