uhhhh

No post today. I am too busy having the stomach flu.

Hopefully I'll be better tomorrow for my League post, and will be back here Wednesday.

I'm a Winner!

Hee! My lovely CP Anna J Evans and I decided to enter the Smart Bitches' "Silver Anus Purple Prose Contest", because we're sick, twisted girls who get our kicks that way, baby. Our entry was #1, Taint Bottomwell, and we won!!

This is so awesome, because it has always been my secret, most fondly-held wish to be the possessor of a Smart Bitches Title. So I am very proud to announce you may all now refer to me as:



You may call me "Lady Manholleton" or simply "Your Grace". Either is correct. (Of course if you're a regular here I give you permission to refer to me as "December Manholleton".)


This tops of an awesome day. I had planned to rant today but I simply cannot dredge a rant from anywhere in my being.

Last night the hubs and I went to see the new Indiana Jones movie, win! We loved it. Not as good as Raiders, of course. And some of the CGI was kind of bleh. But it was fun, really, really fun. So go see it.

The hubs had yesterday and today off, and Monday because it's a long weekend here too. So we went shopping in Taunton. Stopped in at what used to be the Virgin Megastore and stocked up on budget CDs--Van Morrison's Moondance (I loves me some Van Morrison, especially Them), a Hank Williams Greatest Hits collection, the soundtrack to The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (£3!), and some Iron Maiden. Rock on!

Then we toddled over to Ann Summers and bought me some new lingerie, which is extra fun now that I'm slim again. Leopard print, with little red bows. Lovely. AND I found a fantastic book: Le Dossier: How to Survive the English, which is hilarious. Might not be fun for anyone who doesn't live in England, but awfully fun for me.

And now we're going to Bristol, to check out what's new at Forbidden Planet and visit the only decent Starbuck's in the West Country, which is the one at Borders Books.

So sorry, no ranty. I just honestly cannot remember the last time I had a day this nice.

Oh, and I managed to add almost 5k words to UG2 yesterday, and this weekend I'm hoping to bring myself fully into the climax (heh heh.)

Tomorrow's Post--Today

(A little note first: Personal Demons is now available in ebook format from Fictionwise! And it's on sale this week.)

Because I'm still a little freaked out, and wanted to blog about it, but didn't want to wait until tomorrow.

So the hubs was upstairs putting the girls to bed, and I was standing down here in the living room grumbling because our buddy three doors down decided to mow his lawn at 8:30 at night again. (BTW, if you haven't already seen my post at the League blog, go check it out. It's about neighbors from hell, with particular emphasis on noise, with extra particular emphasis on my neighbors and their new karaoke machine and their excrable musical tastes.)

So I'm grumbling, and I hear someone screaming outside on the street in front of the house. And I'm thinking, WTF is it now, because we always have people screaming on our street, or singing drunkenly, or gossiping outside our window, or whatevs.

But the screaming doesn't stop. So I head for the window and look out, and there's two big guys, carrying a kid across the street (away from my house) by the arms and legs. And a very tough-looking woman standing there yelling, holding a bat.

They dump the kid in the grass. He is seriously freaking out, screaming for help. And I think, okay, should I call the cops? Because it sounds like the woman is calling him by name, but at the same time the kid clearly says "Help" at least once.

He tried to get up and run. The two guys grabbed him. The hubs came downstairs and I told him what was going on.

The kid got up and started running. The men chased him down. One of them threw the kid over his shoulder.

Hubs is dialing the police. The man and boy disappear behind the community center across the street.

Okay, the cops did come very quickly. But not fast enough; the kid and men were gone by the time they arrived. They drove around, they looked behind the center, but saw nothing.

Now, I'm hoping my initial impression--that the kid knew the adults--was right. And honestly I'm pretty sure it was. It's pretty frigging ballsy to kidnap a screaming child on a busy street in the daylight with lots of people around. And really, while the kid ran away, he didn't run into the community center, where there were people who could have help him, or back across the street toward our house (which is where they dragged him from, not like my house is the obvious bastion of safety to any strange child), or to the restaurant and convenience store right next to the center. And he did seem old enough to be able to think of going those places, if he was really trying to escape and not just stir up shit with his parents.

But I still wish I'd called the cops sooner. Next time I won't hesitate. Next time I'll grab my cellphone and take some pictures too. Because until a few days have passed without me hearing about a boy going missing, I won't be sure. And that's terrifying.


Sorry it's a bit of a downer. I'm just still a little freaked. But there's fun to be had at the League blog, so come on by!

What's erotic?

Okay, first, a couple of newsy bits.

First, tomorrow the 20th is the Miss Snark Tribute over at Pat Wood's blog. Our Pat is the Orange Prize nominated author of Lottery, a great gal, and a loyal Snarkling, and I think this is an awesome idea. We haven't all stayed in touch since Miss S left us, so I'm really looking forward to seeing everyone there. (And, shit, what is wrong with me, because I'm tearing up again. What a wimp I am, sheesh! Embarrassing.)

Second, I got a great new review for Black Dragon from Enchanting Reviews. The review itself won't be up until next month, but I'm so pleased about it I wanted to share it right away:

"I wish sometimes I could give a book a higher rating, 5 is as high as we go, but this story was fabulous. Ms. Quinn beautifully wove romance, heartbreak, pain, happiness, and intrigue into a beautiful tapestry of a phenomenal story. I totally loved this story. I was glued from the beginning to the end, and I loved the epilogue! This is a must read, and I will read it again."


So. Somewhere else on this great wide internet, I have become embroiled in a discussion about putting distasteful or taboo elements in erotic romances. And by taboo I don't mean a little what-what or BDSM or whatever, I mean taboo. Underage sex. Incest. Rape. Etc.

As you know, two of those elements are in the EC novel Anna J and I wrote, Demon's Triad. So I offered my thoughts on it--especially since, as far as I know, I'm the only one there who's included such things in their work for a major erotic romance publisher. (EC is a small press, yes, but when it comes to erorom I feel confident I can refer to them as a big name.)

My take on it, from what we were told during editing, was you can put any elements you like in the story as long as it serves the story and is not gratuitous. DT has an incestuous rape. We originally had the victim (male) respond to the (female) rapist's overtures, in an oral kind of a way. EC said no no no, because of the incestuous relationship. It didn't matter that the victim was at that time unaware of that relationship; we were not allowed to portray incest as an erotic moment, to write it in such a way that readers would be aroused.

Which was fine with us, frankly. We knew we were pushing hard at some boundaries in the book--more on that later--and had no problem scaling back the scene. I don't think it lost any intensity. I don't think it suffered. I don't think the book in general suffered.

So the question arose, was that boundary-pushing part of what made the story erotic?

Well. Yes and no.

I don't think the incestuous rape made the story erotic. It made it very dark. It made it rather more twisted than we originally thought it would be. But it wasn't erotic.

Having said that, though, I think DT was the most erotic book I've written, and that is because some other boundaries are pushed. We have spells making people crazily, insatiably aroused, which made for some very hot moments and I think nudged at some boundaries re public sex and such.

But mostly, I think we did push it a bit by making two of the characters turned on by violence. They really liked hurting each other, before, during, and after. Not in a ritualized BDSM kind of way, but in a more random and shocking way. And I think in that case, stepping over that line really did make their scenes together much hotter (and the reviewers seemed to agree).

Having said that, though, I don't think the book wouldn't have been erotic without the violence. And I don't think the violence makes the book any less romantic.


(Interestingly, someone else commented that such elements as rape, murder, etc. should only be in books that are about the rape and murder, that these things are too "big" for the characters to get past. I strongly disagree with that, personally, but found it an interesting take.)

So I guess the point of this is, where do the erotic and the romantic cross over or not cross? Is there anything in a romance that makes it suddenly not a romance, assuming all other elements are present (HEA, etc.)?

And does calling a book an erotic romance mean that there are areas the book should not go? Does putting the work into that genre really mean that we aren't allowed to tell very dark stories?

Oh, grow UP

So something good has happened.

Lori Drew has been indicted.

For anyone here who doesn't know, Lori Drew is the sick, twisted excuse for a human being who drove a thirteen-year-old girl to suicide by posing as a teenaged boy of MySpace, befriending the girl, spreading her secrets, then cruelly making fun of her.

Apparently drew told police she "didn't feel as guilty" as she might have, once she found out the girl had attempted suicide once before. Which makes perfect sense, really, because all feeling people let themselves off the hook when they discover the child they were manipulating was fragile to begin with, rather than simply driven to fragility by their own acts.

What the fuck is the matter with this woman? What the fuck is the matter with parents like Roseana Scaduto, who not only drove her own daughter to a fistfight, but participated? When did parents start totally abdicating their responsibilities, and start behaving as though they themselves are the same age as their children?

I know, I know. It's actually been going on for years and years. Nobody wants to be a parent anymore. They want to be "cool", they want to be a "friend." They want to shove their children into the adult world before the kids are ready, then take a step back from that world themselves. Shit like this has always happened; these parents have always existed. But I think the capacity for true harm used to be smaller, and I think it used to happen less often. So why?

I'll tell you why I think it is, at least in part. (Oh yeah, I have a LOT of theories and opinions on this one, but I'm going to focus here.)

It's because being an adult isn't fun anymore.

Remember when you were a kid? Remember your parents having adult parties, with cocktails and cigarettes and fondue? And they'd get dressed up and play music, and you wated to be at the party but weren't allowed because this was something only grown-ups got to do? So being grown-up seemed like a really big deal? One day you'd be able to drink daquiris made with Kool-Aid in the blender, one day you'd wear high heels and perfume and eat whatever you wanted, one day you'd have a cool car, once day you'd get married and actually have sex, and it all seemed like such a huge privilege you just couldn't wait?

Except now nobody's allowed to smoke anywhere, and drinking is frowned upon, and it seems like once you hit the age of about 27 you're expected to eat nothing but fruit, vegetables and bran and drink nothing but water. You're expected to be in bed at a decent hour and spend your weekends having "quality time" with your kids at some theme park somewhere. Don't have even a glass of wine in front of the children, it sets a bad example. Don't watch anything more mature than Shrek (if there even is such a thing; it seems very few good films are being made these days that aren't "for the whole family".) Watch your language. No fatty foods. Exercise. Blah blahblahblah.

In short, once you become an adult you're expected to give up all the fun things adulthood should represent. It's teenagers today who seem to get to live the lives we all wanted as kids: drinking, smoking, fucking, driving, wearing expensive pretty clothes, staying out till all hours, doing whatever they want, while the adults piddle around with bowls of cereal and bottles of water.

Adulthood used to be something people looked forward to. Now it's dullsville, baby.

I say we take adulthood back. Make those damn kids keep their parts in their pants and go to bed by eleven, make them work for their spending money, while we stay up drinking bourbon and watching The 40-Year-Old Virgin. (One thing I love about Judd Apatow; he's actually making fun movies for adults only. Aside from all the other things I love about Judd Apatow, that is, which is everything.)

Let's have parties again. Let's drink and eat whatever crap we like. Let's do what we want to do. We're fucking adults now! WE get to say what happens. Isn't that what we all wanted when we were kids? So why did an entire generation give up their right to rule their children like fascist dictators and have some fun themselves?

It probably wouldn't do much for sick twisted shitheads like Lori Drew, a woman who must feel very proud of herself for having cleverly outwitted a vulnerable young girl. I know when I tell seventh-graders that the world would be a better place without them, I feel really clean and pure and good about myself, so why wouldn't she?

But for the rest of us? Yeah, I think it would be pretty cool. Maybe if we stopped making adulthood into some sort of prison, our adults wouldn't be so eager to behave like teenagers again.

Just a thought.

Some random stuff

I was going to say something very serious. I actually started a serious post. And then I deleted it. Suffice it to say, something has been bothering me for about a month now, and it's cost me some enthusiasm for blogging and the internet in general. Because I'm tired of how vicious people can be for no reason, over an imagined slight or simply because someone has the gall to see things differently than they do. I'm a very opinionated person and I always have been. But I have never to my knowledge attacked someone else for their opinion, or told them they didn't have a right to that opinion or that their thoughts and feelings on any given subject aren't valid.

Not everyone is the same way. For a long time I thought they were. Realizing they aren't has actually really affected me, to the point where a few times I've found myself ready to give up blogging because I feel like I can't say what I'd like to say, no matter how innocuous the topic may be, that it's not okay for me to do that. And yes, some of it is merely being polite. I've always tried to do that. But it gets to a point where I find myself wanting to blog about things that matter to me and my hands freeze over the keyboard because it's just not worth it to have one or two people somewhere take what I've said the wrong way, or see an offense there that wasn't intended, and the next thing I know my name is being slung all over the place and I'm being called names.

Is there such a thing as blogger's block?

So while I continue to attempt to recover from my brush with reality, here are a few other things.

First, I had the following conversation yesterday with the Faerie (she was wearing a plastic tiara and princess gown at the time):

Me: Faery, are you poopy?

Faery: No.

Me: Are you sure? Let me check your diaper.

Faery: No. Princesses do not get poopy.



Also...head on over to the BookEnds Literary blog and check out this post. The lovely BookEnds ladies are inviting anonymous venting on the subject of agents, and some interesting things are popping up.

In fact, I'm actually tempted to ask people to comment anonymously here about something one of these days, and see if I can get you lurker types to make your presences known.

So watch for that one. :-)

Oh, and don't forget to come to the League blog and play! Demon fun! Book club fun!

League Stuff!

That's right! It's Demon Week at the League! Remember all the fun we had with zombie week? This will be even more fun. So make sure you keep checking in!

Also! This week the League Book Club is discussing Personal Demons (eep!) This is your chance to say anonymously all the snotty things you've never had the guts to say here. And I just might give away some of those prize-type things, you never know. Mark's running the discussion, so you know it's going to be fun!

And speaking of contests...Mark will be announcing the winner of the "Which League Baby Picture is Missing" contest. And, as my way of announcing whether or not *I* was the missing one, may I present...My family, circa 1975/6 (I'm not sure quite which).




...and that's it. It's hot here. And of course there's no a/c so I'm sitting in the living room with all the curtains drawn to keep those basted rays of sun out. Remind me to never ever again live in a home where the sun shines directly into the living room and kitchen all afternoon and evening in the spring and summer. With no a/c. It's brutal.

I know, whine whine whine. I'm off to come up with some cool demon content for the league this week!

Chat with me today!

I'm over at Chris Eldin's blog today until 9 PM EDT! The whole shebang starts shortly, but I will only be there sporadically until about 11 am EDT, as I have the kids to pick up from school etc. etc.

I'm editing, editing, editing, working on Unholy Ghosts. Fun, but tiring. I love editing just a little more than I hate it--I love tinkering and making things stronger, but I hate the fear that I'm leaving some sort of weird plot hole, or that what I'm adding isn't as good as the other stuff, or whatever. It's kind of like getting dressed up to go out. You have beautiful earrings on, but is the necklace that goes with it too much or just right?

I was going to do a longer post today but as I will be devoting most of my day to chatting, I'm going to keep it brief. So head on over there if you like and say hi! I'm giving away a book and everything!

Those pesky words and punctuation

I'm always amazed when I see this argument:

If my story is good, nobody's going to care how it's written.


And really, I see it a lot more often than is to be believed.


Grammar and punctuation are important. They are the most basic tools a writer has. Through correct grammar and punctuation we make ourselves understood; what is so difficult to get about that? (And why am I suddenly finding dozens of typos? I think my keyboard is getting old and worn down, actually.)

Vocabulary is important, yes. Incredibly so. Especially since without decent vocabularies we make stupid homonym erros, like site for sight (which drives me batty) or bear for bare or peek for pique or peak (another batty one.) But you don't need a huge vocabulary; I find sometimes the most basic words work the best, conveying as they do not only their intended meaning but the very purity of their basicness.

Case in point (for me at least): I wrote a sentence the other night in which I mentioned a character's big chest. (A male character.) Now I could have said huge or gargantuan or broad or anything else, but I didn't. I used big, not only because I meant big, but because the character thinking this wasn't thinking just of the size of said chest but of the safety of it. "Big", the word we learn as children to use for anything larger than ourselves, put the thinking character, if not into a childlike place (which would be highly inappropriate considering it was a kissing scene), then at least into a place where her thought process has regressed to that point. In seeking to curl herself up into the chest of the man who made her feel safe, she brought back the need for safety a child would express.

And lots of other basic words are perfectly good. They have an impact; they delve straight into the reader's psyche. We should always use the most clear and direct word we can; sometimes that word is "big" or "red" or "hot" or whatever else.

But grammar and punctuation? So much easier to grasp, really, especially in fiction writing as opposed to, say, school reports where you have to follow silly rules like not ending sentences with prepositions (as Churchill said, "That is the sort of English up with which I will not put.") It's simple, and to be perfectly honest it should be instinctive. If you read a lot and pay attention, these rules should be absorbed effortlessly.

I know it's fashionable in some circles to wear bad grammar like some sort of shiny crown, to insist you yourself are a rebel with a new voice and style. But there's a difference between someone who obviously knows the rules and is playing with them, and someone who doesn't know the rules, and the reader can tell. I fnd it absolutely infuriating to hear people say things like "The readers won't know the difference" because yes they will. They will even if they're not big readers; they will even if they themselves write terribly. Because grammar written should be much like grammar spoken: when I talk to you, or you talk to me, we "hear" grammar almost as a separate language, gliding beneath what's actually being said. Readers aren't stupid. People who enjoy and choose to read are not stupid people, and they're your audience. Who do you think is buying your books? Last time I checked, people buying books were people who read books. I knew a woman (an absolutely horrible woman, btw) who didn't read; you can bet she didn't spend a lot of time buying books.

So here is a nice, handy little list, from me to you, of my personal grammar and punctuation bugbears.

1. Quotation marks used for emphasis. Seriously? Seeing this makes me want to find the person who did it and ram a copy of Strunk & White up their asses. "Car Wash" $1.00: is it a real car wash, or an alleged one? Are you going to charge me for a car wash but really just spit on my car and run away? When you put up a sign at the grocery store that says "Pears" $.25, are you implying those aren't actually pears? Are they made of plastic?

2. The aforementioned homonyms. "Morning" is the beginning of the day; "mourning" is what you do when people die. "Site" is a website or a place where a building is being constructed or a specific location; "sight" is what you have. Something "piques" your interest, it doesn't "peak" or "peek" it. You climb a peak, you peek with your eyes.

3. Elipses are three periods. They indicate a sentence has trailed off, or that someone has taken a longer pause in speech than they would if just a period were used. You do not use the number of periods in an ellipsis to indicate how long the pause lasts.....or to create drama........or simply because you don't feel like using an actual period....or because maybe your finger just got stuck on the period button.

4. Questions do NOT have to end with question marks every time. They just don't. The punctuation indicates how the sentence is spoken; it is and can be fluid. For example: when Character A gets home, and Character B says, "Where were you?" it indicates, without needing to use dialogue tags or unecessary description, a totally different tone of voice and demeanor than Character A arriving home to Character B's "Where were you." That's not the best example in the world but you do see my point, I hope (and likewise, characters who say almost everything as a question tell us something about themselves and their general demeanor too.) I have twice been dinged for this by line editors and it's the only line edit nitpick that pisses me off. The fun of punctuation is that it determines how a sentence is spoken; it tells the reader something. Think of Willy Wonka, telling the children, "No. Please. Stop." Instead of "No! Please! Stop!" See the difference.

5. It is perfectly acceptable in fiction to start sentences with "And", "But", or "Because."

6. I find the grammar nitpick that unless a word ends in "s" it cannot be hissed most irritating. "Hissing" implies a furious whisper much more eloquently and directly than "whispered furiously" or "said in a furious whisper". Much like the nitpicking about how eyes do not follow people, gazes or stares do. "Her eyes followed him" is colorful and, I think, clear to just about every reader; frankly, if something like that is throwing you out of a story, there are other problems with the writing to the point that you are, consciously or unconsciously, looking for them. (I know there's at least one other of these that bugs me but I can't remember what it is.)

So you tell me now. What are your grammar issues? What drives you nuts?


I have been thinking of doing another summer publishing series, perhaps about agents. Thoughts? And if you or anyone you know has any Bad Agent stories, please send them along.

The New League!

Yes, yes, yes. The Big News is up at the League now! We have new members! It's so exciting, although I'm sad that Ilona and Jill left us.

It's cool to have Jaye, Jackie and Caitlin now, though. We have Fresh Fish at the League. Anton, Mark and I are placing bets on which one will break first. Heh heh heh. We've got a couple of packs of smokes riding on it, so...

Also, Mark is doing a nifty contest over there, so go check it out if you haven't already. It involves the awesome new header Mark made. Am I on there? I don't know. You'll have to guess.

Let's see, what else is happening? The hubs is away for his step-grandma's funeral, so it's just me and my girlies for the next couple of days. What sucks is, Princess was home sick most of last week (ear infection) so I can't keep her home from school tomorrow, which I would be totally inclined to do otherwise so I could sleep in a bit (what? C'mon, like you've never ever kept your kids home from school for no reason.) (Oh, there's no school today because it's a bank holiday here.)

And that's it. The WIP is coming along nicely, we're almost at 60k so I can start wrapping things up soon, which will be good. Also, Saturday night I got to write The Scene, which was in my head since before I finished the last one. I love that, getting to do the scene you've anticipated for so long! And I'm pretty pleased with how it came out, too.

I was going to do a rant about spelling and punctuation but I'm too excited about the new League banner and stuff today, so maybe I'll do it Wednesday.

A Few Friday Things

First, a little announcement. WATCH THE LEAGUE OF RELUCTANT ADULTS NEXT WEEK! We have some Things! Happening! That you won't want to miss!

Second, some fun promo-type stuff:


Author's Week will be held on Chris Eldin's blog from May 3 through May 9: www.abenchpress.blogspot.com.

Festivities will kick off on Saturday May 3 with an Oldies but Goodies Contest. I will have funny questions about the following authors who have supported my promotions in the past (cool prizes also!!)

Elaine Alexander DEATH AT DEACON POND
Mary Cunningham CURSE OF THE BAYOU
Evil Editor NOVEL DEVIATIONS
Edna Cabcabin Moran THE SLEEPIG GIANT
John Elder Robison LOOK ME IN THE EYE
Patricia Wood LOTTERY


May 5 - May 9 will feature the following authors giving away books and making appearances on my blog. Come chat, make jokes, win prizes!!!


Monday, May 5: Charles Allen Gramlich “Swords of Talera”

Tuesday, May 6: Holly Kennedy "The Silver Compass"

Wednesday, May 7: Daniel Tomasulo "Confessions of a Former Child"

Thursday, May 8: Sandra Cormier "The Space Between"

Friday, May 9: Stacia Kane "Personal Demons"

Yep, that's me. I'll be there chatting and all that stuff for most of the day, until something like 9pm EDT, which is 2 am my time, so help make it worth my while!


Also, a new review, hot off the presses. This one made me giggle like a little kid. Not because it was a delightfully great review; it's not a bad review by any means but it's not glowingly wonderful either, although I loved this line:

...holy crap, Stacia Kane can write a scary scene. When she wants to, she can grab you by the throat with tension and fear. I just wish she'd done a bit more of it. I'd be interested to see what she could do with straight horror.

But because I love a well-written review. Good or bad, I don't really care (obviously I have a preference, sure, but you know what I mean.) And this is a well-written review--the reviewer, B.J., is clever and pithy, and clearly enjoys what she does. That enjoyment is infectous. So go check it out and see if it makes you laugh too. (Note: I'm sure some small part of my delight in the review is also owed to the line: In spite of his silly name, Dante still managed to yank my Bad Boy chain like a monkey swinging from a church bell. Because you know how obsessive I am about my heroes and how happy I get when other people love them too. And the response to this one has been overwhelmingly positive, with the exception of Mrs. Giggles, but she's Mrs. Giggles and so can basically do no wrong as far as I'm concerned because I freaking adore that woman. Anyway. That line made me go squee.)

What do you look for in reviews? What makes a good or bad one for you? Will you come hang out with me on the 9th so I won't be the loser sitting there all by myself? (That's write. I would be the lonesome loser. Beaten by the Queen of Hearts every time. And boy is that a blast from the past. Next thing you know I'll be quoting Juice Newton or Ann Murray or somebody. Ah, my seventies childhood.)

Playing Tag

Okay. Look.

It's not that I don't love you all, each and every one of you. My readers, my fellow writers, all of you. Because I do.

And it's not that I don't appreciate you thinking of me when these things come up. Really. Because the idea that someone out there finds me interesting enough to want to know what I had for breakfast (I never eat breakfast), or what my ten favorite songs are, or how many pairs of socks I own, or my deepest secrets, or whatever you want to think of, is immensely flattering. I swear it is.

It's not even that I don't sometimes appreciate the ideas for stuff to blog about, because I do run out of things sometimes. Especially times like now, when Big Things are happening in the WIP and I am totally creatively empty everywhere else. So it's nice to think, Oh, I'll just do x meme, and that won't take long.

Except that it usually does. Because honestly, if you've been reading here for more than a few months, you already know so much about me that to expose myself further would involve actual nudity. Which is never gonna happen, even if I have lost 24 pounds in the last seven months or so and am now feeling very svelte and attractive again.

So I sit and think, and think, and think, and before I know it I've spent an hour staring at the screen trying to think of ways to make myself actually sound interesting, as opposed to bullshitting my way through the list with stuff like "My favorite color for my fingernails is silver, but my toes are usually red" or "I hate the taste of lamb and never eat it" (That last one took me five minutes, I'm not joking.) Or maybe "I had a terrible nightmare the other night that gave me a great idea for a new book" or "Mt favorite scene from a sci-fi movie is the blood test scene in The Thing, because that shit is awesome."

Or maybe it's that page 123 of the book I'm currently reading says:

"They never really seem to feel anything. For example, Gossett disappears, apparently eaten by an alligator, and the most Norris can work up is a case of vexation. Anderson seems to be in the movie mostly so that Norris has someone to drag out of danger.
There are, of course, the obligatory karate fights, in which Norris flies through the air and aims his magic heels at the villains, killing or disabling dozens of them."

--From Roger Ebert's review of "Firewalker", in the book "I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie", by Roger Ebert.

Okay? So look, if you want to tag me that's fine. But really, all it does is make me feel guilty, because chances are I won't do it. And I won't tag anyone else. It's like getting a chain letter in my email.



(BTW, this constitutes the tagged posts I owe Sherrill, Carole, and whoever it was who tagged me for that Page 123 thingie.)

Two updates: One, please, if you've tagged me don't be hurt by this. It really does make me feel so bad when I don't do the resulting memes that I'd just rather not. But this is meant to be amusing.
Two, I have updated the Stacia Kane website to include several deleted scenes from Personal Demons, so head on over and check them out if you've a mind to.

Bored.

I am bored. Bored bored bored. I'm bored.

And I'm stuck on blog topics, because everything I think of seems boring too.

I do have some good news though. I managed to write 10k words this weekend, bringing the Unholy Ghosts sequel up to just over 46k. Yay me! It was actually just Friday and yesterday, really, as saturday we were doing family things. By which I mean sitting on the couch watching tv.

Watched The Devil Wears Prada. Disliked the book, disliked the movie. Blah.

I've been searching through my archives, because I know I did a post about terms of endearment at one point, in which I discovered how many women disliked heroes who calltheir heroines "baby". "Baby" as a keyword didn't bring it up; "endearment" didn't either, and neither did "term". So, I do't know where it is.

But once again I find myself stuck. I need an endearment.

See, for me these things are A Big Deal. What the hero calls the heroine matters. It tells us something about him, about their relationship. (At least in books; in real life the hubs and I call each other "baby" all the time and it never occurred to me to think of it as meaning anything specific.)

So here's what I need. I need a term of endearment. Something sweet and adoring but not cheesy. Something a Very Tough Guy would say, which rules out anything too smooth.

It won't really come into play for some time. But I'm bored and stuck and thought this might be fun.

So. Must be in English. Can be archaic. Must not be smooth or sophisticated. Must not be any variations of "sweetcheeks".

Have at it. See if you can think of anything. Be as outrageous as you want. Be funny. Be serious. I don't care.

Throw in some compliments if you like. Some silly pick-up lines. Whatever you like. This will either be amusing or no one will comment at all, so... I leave it up to you.

The world makes me hate me

I don't know why it seems I always get the ideas for my deep thinking posts on Fridays, which is my lowest traffic day (seems to be the case everywhere on the internet, actually.) But I have a few thoughts today. Let's see if I can make a coherent post out of them.

Oh, but first, the Romantic Times review of Personal Demons is out! FOUR STARS! Here's what they said (apparently, as RT is unavailable here, but Anna J. typed it in an email for me):

"Kane's clever story is packed with supernatural action and unique characters. The heroine has made some powerful enemies in the past, and they return with a vengeance. She also has a nice love interest going, and it zings with sexual tension. Surprises throughout keep tension and high and the pages turning as it all comes to a satisfying conclusion."


So here's what I'm thinking. This post at Karen Scott's almost inspired me to comment, but as my comment would have been so convoluted and long-winded I decided to do it over here instead.

In a nutshell, she's linked to a new story about the upcoming reissue of the Sweet Valley High books, and a column about how many girls were apparently driven to eating disorders by the Wakefield twins' "perfect size 6" figures, and how that might be even worse now that the scummy decision has been made to make them size 4s for the reissues.

Now, anorexia is A Bad Thing. And I'm not going to say or even imply that the superthin standards of today don't create problems for young girls (or young men. I knew a bulemic guy; it's not like this is a girl-only problem).

But for some reason, perhaps because I was such an avid SVH reader in my preteen/very early teen years (I'd moved on by the time I hit fourteen or so, if memory serves), this struck a bit of a chord with me.

The thing is, I guess the SVH books made me feel bad about myself, too. Not because they were so thin, but because they weren't. At the time I read those books, I was a size zero. I was a late bloomer, see, so I was reading about girls with curvy figures, with lots of friends and boyfriends, when I was wearing a training bra just because people would make fun of me (even more than they already did) if I didn't have a strap across my back. I didn't need it. I was something like 4 feet 8 inches tall; I looked like a seven-year-old. And it was painful. But there was nothing I could do about it.

And given that I think most girls reading those books were probably about the same age as me (who ever saw an actualy seventeen-year-old reading them?), I'm willing to bet the self-esteem issues they might cause would be more on that side of the fence.

It's one reason why I lost interest in the books. It's why I never liked the other series that came out around that time, about an extremely rich girl named Caitlin. Why would I want to read about her? A rich girl who was beautiful and got everything she wanted, and had a gorgeous rich boyfriend and horses and cars? When I sat around listening to records in my room every night while my parents argued in the living room, I wanted to read books about girls like me. But it seemed girls like me weren't interesting enough to write about, unless it was a really depressing book where family members died or something. I wasn't a heroine. I wasn't even a Loyal Best Friend in those books. I was invisible. And I got tired of reading about fun it seemed everyone was having except me, and about people whose lives were so perfect it might as well have been happening on a different planet.

So I gave up. And I found other things to read. And I've been interrupted so many times while writing this (Princess is home sick today) that I no longer remember what my point was supposed to be, sadly.

I guess I just wonder where those books are. I wonder why we're focusing so much on worrying normal girls might become anorexic that we stop worrying about those kids who have no reason to be. Or on those who try to get fat so at least they'll be normal on some level; it's easier to be fat than to be scrawny, I think, or at least I did when I fuitlessly tried to gain weight.

So I guess my overall point is that we're always going to feel bad about something. We're always going to feel not pretty enough, not thin enough, not curvy enough, not smart enough, not popular enough, whatever. And those feelings are human, and important. I don't think I would want to know someone who'd never for a minute felt bad about themselves; they would be insufferable.

And I guess what bothers me about the article Karen quotes is it assumes the books and their intended readers exist in a vacuum, that teenage girls won't bring their own thoughts and experiences to the books as much as I did, and have their own feelings about them. That it's impossible for a girl to read them and not want to be just like the Wakefield twins, instead of reaching a point, as I did, where they were just a couple of vapid princesses whose perfect lives no longer interested me. In order to believe you can be perfect simply by losing weight you have to first believe the rest of perfection is possible, and I never did. I bet a lot of people never did.

So the article strikes me as rather disrespectful to teenagers, in its bland assumption that they will be so cowed by the SVH zeitgeist that they will lose any perspective. That they will instantly see the characters as people they want to be just like in every way, instead of a rather irritating collection of snobs doing pointless things in their zippy cars.

I enjoyed some of the books, sure. There was a time when I waited breathlessly for the next one to come out. And sure, I wished my life could be more like theirs. But I was never moved to attempt to make it so.

Perhaps I was just lazy?

Happy Anniversary Evil Editor! (and mea culpa)

I had a post planned for today, but as it was something that can easily wait until Friday, I decided to just do a quickie today.

Okay, actually, I decided to do a quickie today so I can get back to the party. Which is happening right now, right here.

Several of EE's Minions got together to do a special blog dedicated to the man (who is my fiance, if you recall), and I was invited to help. Which I did, to the best of my scatterbrained ability, and contributed a signed copy of Personal Demons as a prize. So head on over, hang, enter the contest--there's LOTS of prizes, and have fun.

And speaking of prizes...Um. I am so sorry. I haven't sent out any of the March Demonstravaganza prizes yet. I will, I swear, and I am so, so sorry. April has been a much busier, colder, wetter, more miserable, and above all financially tight month than I'd expected. I promise they will go out soon--if not in the last two days of this week, then in the last two days of next week (it's much easier to navigate my way to the PO when the Faery is in school.) Seriously, you guys, I feel just awful about this, and I hope you'll forgive me for the delay. If it makes you feel any better, my family (Mom, Dad, brother, best friends) are still waiting for their copies too.

Where's the gossip?

We had a lovely day yesterday, the hubs and me. TCM was showing Gone With the Wind--we only caught the last half (from Scarlett's "As God is my witness" speech to the end) but it was nice to sit and watch it together. (He took me to see it when it had its 60th anniversary rerelease in the theatres, too, but we really haven't watched it since. That, btw, was the Day I Saw Dan Marino At The Movies.)

After the movie they had a documentary on the making of Gone With the Wind: The Musical, which looks truly excreble (we're temped to go see it--actually, I'm tempted to invite my MIL but I have a feeling she might actually enjoy it which would ruin the fun of laughing at it), and then, a biography on Bette Davis. Who I love.

They showed an interview with Bette in which she called one of her costars "a horrendous bitch". Or words to that effect. And it reminded us of her famous feud with Joan Crawford (I believe the quote, when she heard of Crawford's death, was something like: "You should only say good things about the dead, so... Joan Crawford is dead. Good." The awesome is choking me.)

But the hubs and I realized, when thoroughly enjoying this, that we can't think of any great modern screen feuds.

Oh sure, there's Shannon Doherty vs. the entire rest of the 90210 cast, but every other example we could come up with is much older. The closest we could come behind that was Penny Marshall vs. Cindy Williams on Laverne & Shirley (I remember as a child being stunned by this, because I imagined them being just bestest friends) or possible Suzanne Sommers vs. John Ritter (RIP) & Joyce Dewitt.

It seems kind of sad, doesn't it? This "We're all one big happy family look how we all love each other" thing? I seem to recall something in the last couple of years about Lindsay Lohan and some other girl fighting over Wilmer Valderama, but they weren't working together so it doesn't count. I mean the kinds of feuds that turn movie sets into little potholes of Hell, or make series costars duck and cover when two people finish a scene together.

Is it simply that people don't talk about this stuff anymore? Or that it isn't happening? I know occasionally we'll get a remark (who was it who said of Val Kilmer, "I wouldn't cast Val Kilmer again if I were making a movie about Val Kilmer"? Although apparently Val has mellowed a bit.)

Can you think of any? Isn't it sad that our celebrity gossip is limited to boring stuff these days, lame sex tapes and oooh-they're-adopting-more-babies and are-they-married-or-nots, instead of the great personality clashes we used to get?

Did the pictures get smaller :-)? Or is everyone just a lot more boring now? I couldn't care less about celebrities these days, probably because so few of them seem to have any personality at all--maybe partly because nobody fights anymore. There's no real scandal, it seems, and it's a bit depressing. For me anyway. What about you? Can you think of any other great feuds?

See, I can't stay away

But this is a very short one.

First, we've started doing the dialogue crits over at the League blog, so come on over and comment!

Second, Amazon US is now shipping Personal Demons, and apparently it's starting to find its way onto bookstore shelves too. So yay!

I'll be at the League the rest of the week...

Jaye Wells and I are doing dialogue critiques at the League blog for the rest of the week, so I will be there and not here.

To find out how to submit your dialogue for critique, go there. And keep going there, because we're going to have some fun!

See you back here on Monday, probably, unless I decide I have something to say before then.

Edits edits everywhere!

So, I had quite a little weekend! Mr. Agent Man is in town for the London Book Fair (okay, that's not MY town, but it's the same country, which is nice) so I hopped on a train yesterday and went up there to meet him for a drink. Which was pretty cool. We talked about edits for Unholy Ghosts--and, thanks to the bff, I have had a total brainstorm on those and I can't wait to get working--and career stuff, and book stuff, and lots of fun good things. It was very odd, though, to be sitting drinking bourbon with a man who kept talking about how much he loves working with creative people, and realizing he meant me.

Speaking of which, I got a really cool review for Day of the Dead. Or rather, it was a decent review--the reviewer had some minor (justified, I think, DOH!) story issues--but check this out:

"This was worth it for the author’s prose. She really does know her way around her words."

Seriously, that's the kind of review that makes silly little writers like me tear up. You can read the whole thing here.

Also, in reviews, Urban Fantasy Land has posted its review here:

"Personal Demons is fast-paced, well-written and downright scary in places. The action doesn’t let up, although it does slow down at times so you can catch your breath and the love scenes between Greyson and Megan are hot enough to steam up your glasses."

And there's an interview with me, and a contest you can enter all week, here.

I received word this morning from a UK reader that their copy of Personal Demons has shipped. I'm not sure about US Amazon or bookstores yet, though. And, in case anyone was wondering, I will be extending the release month contest to the end of May.

I'm also trying to think of something fun to do this weekend, while almost everyone I know is off at the Romantic Times convention. Who's going to be around? What should we do to amuse ourselves?

Links and thoughts...

First, I have a minor update on the Personal Demons release. We're still hoping the Amazon listing will be updated soon--presumably the books are in their warehouse, just not yet unpacked, which is leading to the delay. We're also expecting it in bookstores shortly. I will post more updates as I get them.

Second, I'm showing up all over the internets, baby. Shannon reviews the book at The Good, the Bad, and the Unread here.

Mark Henry licks my boots like the man-whore he is here.

Fantasy Debut talks the book up here

And I'll be doing some interviews in the next few weeks, so keep an eye out for them (I'll link them when they go up, of course)--at Fangs Fur & Fey, at Alchemuse on livejournal, at Jill Myles' blog. CORRECTION: There will be an interview with me tomorrow, along with a contest, at Urban Fantasy Land, not alchemuse's livejournal. Sorry!
I'm also doing a couple of promo-y things next month, which I'll have more news on as the time gets closer.

And, wow, I'm legitimate now, because I've been Klausnered. (Harriet Klausner is Amazon's top reviewer--she reviews a, um, suspiciously high number of books every day, and--well, Google her if you're interested. I'm just amused.)

Funny that my Amazon reviews went live at the same time as a huge controversy has sprung up over Amazon reviews elsewhere. You can read the whole story (and hundreds of comments) on Dear Author here and more here. Settle in for a few hours--it really is worth it for sheer "holy fuck I can't believe this shit"ness.

In a nutshell? A particular writer, of whom I've never heard before, who also functions as publisher for an epub I heard of once, looked at the site, and decided it was the sort of place from which to run, decided to go after a reader for daring to have her own opinion about a book. This is disgusting behavior. This is shocking, revolting behavior, and--you'll see what I mean, if you read it all--criminal behavior.

I honestly don't even know what to say in the face of all this. Of course, Ann Rice and Patricia Cornwell have both exhibited some of this sort of behavior in the past, but Ann Rice and Patricia Cornwell, for all their sins, are actually best-selling writers of whom people have heard. It doesn't excuse it, but it does make it feel less like that crazy woman you work with who's always talking about how everyone is out to get her has suddenly decided you're the one who left the invisible poop on her lawn.

Very scary indeed. Even scarier is that some authors who've spoken out in that thread have now found people messing with their Amazon reviews. It's like some tiny, invisible KGB made up of five or six people, who wander Amazon spreading darkness in their wake.

If I'm not here on Monday...you'll know they GOT me. *looks around nervously*