Changing Gears Now
Friday, March 31, 2006
Ok, I've spent a huge part of this week in a happy, happy place. I even mailed out my contracts this morning!! But now it's time to put on my Serious Writer face. Or Not So Serious Writer. Funny Writer. That's the face I want.
So off I go. To write.
Thank you!
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
Thank you all so much! I'm just overwhelmed with your well-wishes and support. I truly am. You know, if I'd sold only a few years ago, almost no one outside my immediate family and friends would know. Now, with the amazing people I've met online and in real life, 33 people just dropped by to congratulate me. And that doesn't count the lurkers.
That doesn't begin to take into account the fact that I probably wouldn't have made it this far without you all and your cyber-support. Oh. And that it's an e-publisher, a phenomenon which was unheard of until very recently.
I love the internet.
Anyway, I just wanted y'all to know that I wasn't ignoring you. I just think it's too bad that things like laundry still have to be done. I'm practically an
author now, dontchaknow!
News?
Monday, March 27, 2006
What news?
That I sold?
Oh. You mean
that news.
IIIIII SSSSSSOOOOOOOLLLLLLLDDDDDDDD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ahem. Not that I'm, y'know, totally thrilled about it or anything.
Samhain Publishing e-mailed me last night and offered to publish Dude, aka Not Quite Dead. It shook me so badly that I couldn't even talk for a while. And that
never happens.
I'm still a little foggy, to be honest. Suddenly, things have become complicated. Details, never my forte, are looming large. Still, I have confidence things will work out. I told a few Romance Diva friends and let it out on eHq over at Struggling Writers.
It's just so strange. I had such trouble writing anything until I wrote Dude. I finished the rough draft in four months, then sat on it for almost two years. I pulled it out after RWA last year, cleaned it up (obviously not quite enough!) and started submitting.
I'm just floored.
March Mania (not EVEN the same as that basketball thingy)
Sunday, March 26, 2006
In the spirit of beginning my neurotic panicking as early as possible, I'm working on a new tag line for my RWA business cards. Now, I can't even order these until I know where we're moving, but I like to get a head start on my psychosis.
Playful Passion
Flirty Fantasies
Love and Levity
Romantic RevelryI decided
Amusing Amour and
Hanky-Panky High Jinks were just a touch too out there.
Dude Revisited
I'm spending part of my weekend revisiting
Dude. I haven't read it in months. No kidding. Months. And I'm seeing things that make me blush. Stuff I thought I'd fixed. Random headhops. Sentences that have no business being where they are. A secondary character who is lame, lame, lame.
*shudder*
No wonder Kate Duffy rejected it. Yikes.
So I'm fixing it up in anticipation of shipping it out for another round of submissions.
Still working on The Regency That Wouldn't Die. I can't settle on a title I like. The current one is
A Dark and Stormy Knight. Except he's a baron. pfft. Details, schmetails.
Speaking of details, did I mention that
Dude is now called
Not Quite Dead? Yeah. It's still kind of blah, but a laugh-out-loud title isn't in my top 10 considerations right now. Getting rid of the crappy parts of it is.
The TBR pile
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
Contemporary RomanceCode of Honor by Catherine Mann
Better off Wed by Laura Durham
Key of Sea by Mary Stella
Undead and Unappreciated by Mary Janice Davidson
Wanting Something More by Kathy Love
Black Rose by Nora Roberts
Red Lily by Nora Roberts
In Your Wildest Dreams by Toni Blake
Cole Dempsey's Back in Town by Suzanne McMinn
Historical RomanceBad Boys Ahoy by Sylvia Day
The Quiet Gentleman by Georgette Heyer
Lord of Sin by Madeline Hunter
One Kiss From You by Christina Dodd
Some Enchanted Evening by Christina Dodd
The Bride Ship by Deborah Hale
Romantic Suspense/SuspenseMinos by Marcos M. Villatoro
Fractured Souls by T.A. Ridgell
Origin in Death by J.D. Robb
Descent into Danger by Shannon Greenland
SF/FThe Faded Sun Trilogy by C.J. Cherryh
The Mammoth Book of Fantasy from Carrol and Graf Publishers, an imprint of Avalon
Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
The Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks
The First King of Shannara by Terry Brooks
The Bitten by L.A. Banks
Literary Fiction/YA/NonfictionWicked by Gregory Maguire
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clark
Forest of the Pygmies by Isabel Allende
The Portable Dorothy Parker1776 by David McCullough
Some of them are in funky categories, but hey. Do I look like a bookstore?
I think that's all of them. I'm not sure. The pile is just over 3 ft tall at 33.5 inches. I've had some of them for nearly a year and I haven't read them. I don't know where to start.
So -- what's in your TBR pile? No re-reads, only books you've never read before.
Varied thoughts
Monday, March 20, 2006
Well, well, well. What goes around comes around. The times, they are a'changing. Insert cliche of choice in here. Does anyone remember a rant I did on
e-pubbing almost a year ago? It seems to still be in
circulation. I'm genuinely shocked. I didn't think anyone actually listened to me.
It was very strange to see those words brought out again. Which should serve as a timely reminder that anything you write WILL come back to haunt you sooner or later.
The thing is, I'm still very reluctant to pick up an e-book. Before I submitted to
Samhain, I perused their site carefully. It seems well put together, the cover art is not bad -- I've even seen a few I really liked. And best of all, the excerpts didn't scare me.
The real trouble is this whole Lent thing. Even though I'm Baptist, I still observe Lent in my own way. This year, I may not have made the best decision to stop buying books until Easter. Even though I stocked up on Mardi Gras, I keep seeing things I want to buy. And now I want to buy e-books. Just a couple. To dip my feet in the water. To support a few friends. Just for fun. But I've got a few weeks to go so I'll just have to be patient. I can do this. Even if I miss a category novel, I can still buy it online after it's off the shelves, right?
Which reminds me. I recently bought a Silhouette Desire. I used to love these books. They had great little series that I could totally get into and they were just a lot of fun. This one sucked boulders. Total wallbanger. I couldn't even finish it. And given how quickly I read, I can usually just deal for another hour or so and get to the end. But if I had finished this book, that would have been an hour I regretted for the rest of my life.
What is the point of boinking someone a)if you think they're out to kill you, b) who has the personality of moldy granite, c) who has a concussion, d) about whom you haven't had a single lustful thought. Not one. In addition, the heroine was this girl-next-door type. It was totally out of character for her to go jumping this guy's bone. Yes, bone. With no foreplay. I'm like, what are you, MADE out of KY? It was actually creepy.
I'm on page four of the wip.
And that's all I have to say about that.
I Knew This Already
Friday, March 17, 2006
Found this quiz by way of
Southern Fried Writers
GRITS
Congratulations! You scored 92! |
Darlin’, you are without a doubt a true southern bell or southern gentlemen. You move to a simpler way of life. With more people like u the south will rise again! |
|
My test tracked 1 variable How you compared to other people your age and gender:
|
You scored higher than 84% on southernpoints |
|
Recent Reads
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
I can't remember if I blogged about it or not, but a couple of weeks ago, I went to the South Carolina Book Festival. Took in a few lectures and panel discussions and shopped. Man, did I shop. I picked up a couple of romantic suspense titles from Echelon Press and I also stopped at a table for a new bookstore in town called Aliens and Alibis. They specialize in SF/F and sell both new and used books. Yeah, that was a plug.
Anyway, as I was browsing at their table, I picked up two real winners. The first is called
The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde. Y'all, I can't even begin to describe this book to you, so I'm copying and pasting one of the reviews from the Amazon site:
Penzler Pick, January 2002: When I first heard the premise of this unique mystery, I doubted that a first-time author could pull off a complicated caper involving so many assumptions, not the least of which is a complete suspension of disbelief. Jasper Fforde is not only up to the task, he exceeds all expectations.
Imagine this. Great Britain in 1985 is close to being a police state. The Crimean War has dragged on for more than 130 years and Wales is self-governing. The only recognizable thing about this England is her citizens' enduring love of literature. And the Third Most Wanted criminal, Acheron Hades, is stealing characters from England's cherished literary heritage and holding them for ransom.
Bibliophiles will be enchanted, but not surprised, to learn that stealing a character from a book only changes that one book, but Hades has escalated his thievery. He has begun attacking the original manuscripts, thus changing all copies in print and enraging the reading public. That's why Special Operations Network has a Literary Division, and it is why one of its operatives, Thursday Next, is on the case.
Thursday is utterly delightful. She is vulnerable, smart, and, above all, literate. She has been trying to trace Hades ever since he stole Mr. Quaverley from the original manuscript of Martin Chuzzlewit and killed him. You will only remember Mr. Quaverley if you read Martin Chuzzlewit prior to 1985. But now Hades has set his sights on one of the plums of literature, Jane Eyre, and he must be stopped.
How Thursday achieves this and manages to preserve one of the great books of the Western canon makes for delightfully hilarious reading. You do not have to be an English major to be pulled into this story. You'll be rooting for Thursday, Jane, Mr. Rochester--and a familiar ending. --Otto Penzler --
I mean, you know it's got to be good when you realize that the characters in this book do Richard III like The Rocky Horror Picture Show, complete with audience dressing in costume and yelling out the lines. A recommended read, but be warned that you really do need to have at least a basic knowledge of 19th c Brit Lit to fully get all the jokes.
Second was a book by Kage Baker (cool name, huh?) called
The Anvil of the World, a fantasy adventure. I'm in the midst of my second reading of it. It's subtle and humorous. A trifle preachy in places, but I'm willing to overlook that for the sake of the story. I understand this was her first foray into fantasy from sci-fi and I'm interested in finding more fantasy stories from her.
I also re-read Kenyon's
Dance With the Devil, which I hadn't read in a while. Yep. I still appreciate a man who embraces his insanity. Zarek is definitely one of my favorite heroes.
Je suis de retour
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
Again. I've been on a brief holiday -- Indianapolis for MIL's surprise birthday -- and just got back last night. I do have stuff to blog about, but I'm utterly wiped right now. I probably won't post again until tomorrow, but I've read some great books recently that I want to tell y'all about.
A demain!
Great link
Monday, March 06, 2006
This is to an
article on copyediting from Deanna Hoak's blog. She is a real live copy editor and the tips in this article may seem basic, but they are pure gold. I learned a few things about the why's and wherefore's of manuscript formatting here. And hey. The fewer things you screw up on your end, the fewer things there are to annoy editors, right?
Sidebar Update
Sunday, March 05, 2006
Go check and see if you're on my sidebar. If you're not, TELL ME! I know I forgot a couple of people, so please speak up. Also let me know if I misspelled your name or got the link wrong or if I screwed up in any way.
The "Blogroll" section is all the Romance Diva blogs. Everything else is fairly random.
Thanks for all the support regarding my submission. They state a 2-4 week reply time on their website, so I'll let you know as soon as I hear something.
In current writing, I'm still working on character sketches and having a blast with it.
What Have I Done?
Friday, March 03, 2006
I just hit SEND on an e-mail to Samhain publishing containing a query and synopsis, with DUDE (aka NOT QUITE DEAD) firmly attached.
I feel green.
Busy busy busy
Wednesday, March 01, 2006
Brainstorming.
Writing random scenes.
Asking myself questions that I don't have the answers for yet.
Why? Why? Why?
Why this and not that? Would she say that, think that, feel that?
How would she react?
I know my hero inside and out, but my heroine stumps me.
So I'm thinking.
Thinkthinkthink.
