Happily Ever After?

So my hubby has this great new job, and we're thrilled about it. Me especially, since the compnay throws a big fancy Xmas party every year at a beachfront hotel for employees and their "partners". They've reserved us a room for the night, and I get to buy a new dress, and it's all very exciting (It would be even more exciting if I wasn't dieting like a fiend now to try and look good in said dress. I've got 15-20 pounds to lose. I won't get there, but if I can get close I'd be happy. Anyway.)

So of course, hub's new boss asked if his "partner" would be going. And I think hubby just said yes, instead of what he would have liked to say which is, "No, but my wife will be."

See, I find this immensely irritating, this British habit of calling everyone "partners". The reasoning being, they don't want to assume people dd something so declasse as get married, so rather than insult the unmarried, we'll just say "partner". Won't everyone be happy then?

No. Everyone will not be happy then. We didn't spend $10,000 on a wedding so we could be treated like an unmarried couple, thank you very much. He is not my "partner". We didn't sit down one day and decide to form a corporation. We got married and started a family, and I really resent the implication that I don't deserve any respect for that but instead should be demoted from my legal and social status as a wife to some loose, we-can-get-out-anytime relationship.

It occured to me last night, though, as I was stewing over this, that very few romances have a "Happily Ever After" where the H/h decide to just move in together. They get married. (Unless they are married, in which case they're very happy to be married.) Or at least they get engaged. Or, even, sometimes in paranormals someone has a psychic vision of them later in life, married with kiddies.

I find this a really interesting dichotomy. If romance novels can be said to be the true, secret fantasies of women, and the overwhelming majority of Happily Ever After endings include, marriage...then how many women out there really, truly don't ever want to get married? In other words, while "partner" is all well and good, it seems to me I'm not the only woman who would rather be called "wife".

This may be a bit of a stretch, saying romance novels are fantasies. But really, honestly, how would you feel is you read a romance and the ending was, "Baby, we don't need a piece of paper, let's just live together, okay?" Bit of an anticlimax, wouldn't it be? (Besides, if it's "just a piece of paper", what's the big deal about getting it? I never understood that.)

Marriage is commitment, and we want our H/hs to commit. We don't want them to live together for a while and hope it works, we want them to commit. We want to know they've looked at each other and said, "You're really the one, and I want everyone to know it", not "Hey, I really like you but I'm not entirely certain this if forever so let's try it and see" or "I love you but I need my space" or even "I love you, but I love my alimony too".

So if we won't accept less in romance novels, why are so many women accepting less in real life? Has something really changed, and women no longer want to get married, or are they being told their fantasies and desires are silly or foolish, and they should grow up and accept that just living together is as good as marriage? After all, aren't romance novels foolish and silly? Isn't it a good thing to make fun of them and their readers, as women stupid enough to believe that there really is someone for everyone, and that they can get that happy ending? That they deserve that happy ending, with someone who'll do whatever he has to do to make that happy ending happen for her? (Now I'm repeating "happy ending" so many times it sounds like I work at a cheap massage parlor.)

Maybe this is on my mind a lot too because for the first time, my WIP does not have a HEA. It has a "we'll see", because it's planned as the first in a series. So it's a little wierd to think of wrapping up a book and not having that final kiss and fadeout.

But I really believe women today are being encouraged, are being forced, to settle for less than they want. And I think that's horrible. And that's why, although my current book may not end with a wedding, you can bet if the series pickes up there will be one at some point--even if it isn't with this book's hero. (I know what will happen, of course, but I'm so not telling.)

What do you think? Are romance HEAs weddings because it's what women want, or is it to cater to more conservative elements of the readership? Can it be a truly satisfying and believable HEA without marriage? And how do you feel about "partner"s?

Yuck!

So the other night, little Miss Faery decided at about 2 am that she'd had enough sleep and she wanted to get up and play. So I ended up on the couch with her until about 5:30.

There's not much on TV in the middle of the night, but I did find something--a fascinating show about food and germs. I don't remember what it was called, but man! I was stunned.

Not by the amount of bacteria etc. you may find in your food--believe me, I'm so paranoid about that I used to wash out my Thanksgiving turkeys with a very, very weak bleach solution before cooking (followed by gallons of clean water). I'm so paranoid, apparently, that when I told hubs about the show, he said, "I know you don't do that--you treat raw chicken in the kitchen like toxic waste, and every time someone comes in the room you shout, 'Don't touch that! It hasn't been washed!'"

Which is true. I do obsess about it. I practically wear a Haz-Mat suit. It's true that I make careful note of what I've touched with raw chicken hands, and even wash the sink taps as I wash my hands. It's true that it's not unusual for me to do so five or six times before I put the chicken in the oven, because I can't touch the refrigerator handle or the cupboard handles until my hands are clean. There's a reason I keep a super-intense moisturizer by the kitchen sink.

But the people on this show...first we have the raw chicken woman. She didn't even rinse her hands after touching the chicken, but went straight to the ham to slice it. She touched her kids and handed them cookies. She touched loaves of bread. She touched her husband's suit. She touched plates and dish towels and cabinets and pens and...*shudder*. It was horrifying. Especially when they used a blue light to show all the places she'd touched glowing with salmonella.

Far worse, though, was the woman who didn't wash her hands after using the bathroom, then started setting out cookies for her friends.

But the ultimate, and by this I mean the ultimate in "Are you insane?", was the guy who ordered take-out, ate half of it, then fell asleep on the couch--and in the moning finished the take-out. Which had been sitting on his coffee table all night. Who does that? Who among us, having reached the age where we have our own homes, really thinks it's okay to eat food that's been sitting out all night? Did that even look appetizing, or taste good? The curry sauce had a grimy skin on it! Who eats that?

Who is dumb enough to take home the wedding buffet food that's been sitting out for ten hours? I'm not talking about tortilla chips or anything, which would be stale but edible if you were really hungry. I'm talking about pork pies, or chicken breasts.

What's the yuckiest food thing you ever heard?

(BTW--Blogger's refusal to allow me to post yesterday means I missedmy chance to dance around and celebrate the Cards' World Series win. But YAY! I grew up in St. Louis, I remember their '82 win soooo well, and it was very exciting to see them finally win again!)

(BTW again--tomorrow evening I will list the answers to any unsolved quotes in the movie quote game below, so get your guesses in!)

Because Everybody Else is Doing It

Okay, it's this quiz thingie going around, where you pick your sixteen favorite movies, and choose a quote from each one, and now you guys have to guess the movie from the quote and I'll write your name next to it when you guess it. When I see that you've guessed it, anyway, and if Blogger cooperates, which it hasn't been. (And still isn't--I'm having to make three or four publish attempts every edit.)

Most of these I've tried to pick slightly-more-obscure lines from minor characters. But a few, like the first, would have been virtually unguessable had I done so, so I've gone with the one you'll know.

1. "To crush your enemies, to see them fall before you, and to hear the lamentations of the women." Conan the Barbarian--Jenn

2. "I could be home right now, drinking this monster eggnog my brother makes with lighter fluid!" Better Off Dead--Cherie

3. "I wrote my phone number on it, in case you feel like dockin' at my moonbase some night!" Free Enterprise

4. "And I'm Gary Cooper. But not the Gary Cooper that's dead!" The Sure Thing

5. "Is being an idiot like being high all the time?" The Machmaker--Cherie

6. "They took the little ones..." Lord of the Rings (this is from Fellowship but I love all three films equally)--Robyn

7. "I'm gonna need two dragons." Starsky & Hutch

8. "She's not keen on him! She's only keen on me!" About A Boy--Isabella

9. "You don't whack guys! Look in your heaaart!" Miller's Crossing--Evil Editor

10. "I'm talkin about working for a living! I'm talkin' about sharkin'!" Jaws--Robyn

11. "We neither of us perform well for strangers." Pride & Prejudice--the good Colin Firth version, not that Keira Knightley travesty

12. "I apologize. I always thought you were a cold, calculating sort of officer. But you're really...quite emotional, aren't you?" The Dirty Dozen. It was even #12 to give you a hint!

13. "It's Christmas. It's the time of miracles." Die Hard

14. "I've known loan sharks more forgiving than you." The Ref--Cherie

15. "Well, that's the big trick, isn't it?" Star Wars. You should all be ashamed of yourselves for not getting this one.

16. "Are you sure? Because it looks like he's...leaning." While You Were Sleeping--Robyn

So there you go. Guess away.

We're going to Cardiff tomorrow, so hopefully I will have a couple of pictures to post on the blog. If we remember the camera. And if we don't get up in the morning and decide we don't feel like it after all.

WIP currently at 58k. October has been the most wasted of wasted months as far as work has gone. Between the laptop/juice thing, and the hubby's job interviews, and my friends expecting me to, like, actually talk to them and stuff...ugh. :-)

And I so have my fingers crossed that my hometown team wins the World Series...but I'm not talking about it because I don't want to jinx anything...please don't let them choke *again*.

Hysterical

The video for Wierd Al's "White and Nerdy".

Okay, guys? This is freaking funny. It's his best since "Amish Paradise", which was his best since "Eat It". In fact, I think it may actually be his best EVER.

My husband is a big Wierd Al fan. I'm not so much, but the above is genius. Pure genius, especially if you relate to any of it. Which I do. And I'll bet most of you guys do too. Just a guess. :-)

Also, that's Seth Green slapping his cute little ass in front of the action figures, and Donny Osmond dancing like a loon. I really like Donny Osmond. I'm not what you'd call a fan of Donny Osmond--I think my list of favorite bands tells you he's not my thing, musically--but the guy is always willing to make a fool of himself, laugh at himself and his image, which is rare, and always seems like a genuinely nice person too. So I like the Donster. Plus, of course, he's part of my childhood. Didn't we all watch Donny and Marie? And weren't most of us so young we totally missed the "brother and sister" thing and thought they were married?

Apparently the video's at number one on the VH1 request show thing. I wouldn't know, because we don't get cool VH1 over here. We missed "I Love the 80s Strikes Back" last year and haven't seen any of those specials since--they don't air them here. I miss them so!

I believe final edits for TBD are complete...I sexed up the sex scenes, I think pretty strongly. They're still not super-explicit, because it isn't erotic romance so the language must be tempered, which is really a shame because the loss of high-impact words takes a bite, it really does. I used "erection" a couple of times but that's as far as it went. However, I think they pack a pretty heavy emotional punch.

Can't wait to hear your opinions!

Oh, also...

Ihave thee (count 'em, three) releases to promote in December and January. I'm doing a contest in both months, but I'm not sure what to give as prizes, so any suggestions are welcome. Help a lady out, eh?

Oh My

So I Googled myself today, like you do, and on the first page...

this popped up.

I don't actually see a reference to myself on the page...but I was too chicken to click on the links.

It made me wonder, though. I write a lot of sex, and yet I'm not eager to look at online porn. Or, to be honest, any porn. The closest I come are those horrible movies they show late nights on the Sci-Fi Channel..."Femalien" and the like.

I think part of the problem is porn itself. Porn is not romantic. I've seen Debbie Does Dallas, I've seen Deep Throat--before I knew Linda Lovelace's story, and I will never watch it again. I've seen a few other porno movies whose titles I can't recall, even one that tried--and succeeded--to be amusing.

But I haven't seen any porno movies, true porn, that's romantic. None. I suppose it's possible that I simply haven't watched the right ones, but I make no apology for the fact that I refuse to start actively shopping for porn on a regular basis unil I find romantic porn.

It's always been my contention, though, that if someone made a truly romantic porno film--based, let's just say, on one of my books, maybe?--women would be much more likely to wach it. Imagine. Your husband (or boyfriend, or whatever) wants to watch porn wth you. You say no. He then pulls out a romantic film, a love story, but with graphic sex scenes instead of soft-focus fade-outs. Perhaps it's a medieval romance or one set in ancient Rome. Would you watch? I would!

Because heres how this relates to writing, and especially writing erotic romance. I think the reader needs to be emotionally invested in the characters, even a little, in order to enjoy the sex scenes fully. Otherwise, it's just clinical description. This is one reason why erotic romance presents such a different set of challenges to writing "regular" romance. One isn't easier or harder than the other, they're just different.

How do you think most authors do at providing both sexual heat and emotional intensity?

In doing edits for The Black Dragon, I was stunned to see how frankly lame the original sex scene I'd written was. Well, "lame" is rather harsh. It wasn't lame, it just wasn't very explicit by any stretch. Compared to what I do now, the physical detail was lacking. There was lots of emotional stuff, lots of thoughts and feelings, but very little turn-you-on detail. I added some, but I'm thinking in the second round of edits I'm going to add more. I want those sex scenes to leap off the page, espeically since there are only three of them. In some of my erotic works I've done the "short" scene--where they fall together and lose themselves, or whatever, and that's all that's said, simply because the scene follows another, graphic scene, or because a long scene would break the story's momentum. In TBD, though, where there are only three sex scenes in the whole book, I want to show off. :-) Plus, because that first scene occurs about halfway through the book, the reader is (I hope) quite emotionally invested. They deserve their big payoff.

What do you think? Do you think the longer you have to wait, the better it is, no matter what?

A Conversation at Madonna's Place

Scene: Madonna and Guy Ritchie are having breakfast and watching E! Entertainment Television on the Skye Satellite. Madonna is leaning forward, her brow furrowed. Guy is blowing bubbles. The children are, of course, nowhere to be seen.

MADONNA (turning off TV): Guy, we need to get one of those babies.

GUY: They're out with the nanny, I think.

MADONNA: No, not one of the children we already have, you idiot. They're too old to be any use anymore. I need a new baby. An adopted one.

GUY: Adopted?

MADONNA: Yes. Look how well it's working for that Jolie person. She's got two of them.

GUY: Wow...two adopted babies. Can I name them? Can they sleep in my bed with me?

MADONNA: Don't be stupid, you talentless fop. They'll sleep in the East Wing with those other kids we have.

GUY: Okay, who do we call?

MADONNA: Anyone who'll take our check.

GUY: I might know somebody, you know. I'm street.

MADONNA: If you're street, I'm a talented writer. Your stepfather was a lord. I keep trying to tell you that. Besides, I don't want some cheap-ass English baby. Anyone can have one of those.

GUY: Chinese?

MADONNA: What is the matter with you? Asian babies are so three years ago. I want to buy a black one.

GUY: But why not just get an English one, I mean, kids in England need homes and families, too.

MADONNA: This is why nobody lets you direct movies anymore, dipshit. I don't care about the kid. Somebody else is going to do that part. I just want to adopt one, so people will know what a great person I am and how much I care. I can't let Angelina Jolie eclipse me, for fuck's sake. My albums aren't doing well, I need all the exposure I can get. As long as there's lots of Vaseline on the lens, anyway.

GUY: We could get one of those English babies with special needs, like an autistic one or something, who really needs the help we could give. That would impress people.

MADONNA: That's not photogenic. God, no wonder your career's in the toilet. I need an attractive black baby, must look good and be healthy and normal, pronto. Make the calls. (She gets up.) I'm going to go screw the gardener, then I'm going shopping, and there better be a black baby waiting for me when I get back.

GUY: Okay. You're such a sweet person, such a good Mommie.

MADONNA (smiles): That's right. They can all call me...Mommie Dearest.

End scene

BTW...

There are new excerpts of The Black Dragon up at my site. So go check those out. (Don't forget to click on "Read More"!)

But still respond to the offical post below. This is just a note.

I Hurt My Back

I hurt myself!

I was picking up the Faery to put her in her high chair, and somehow I twisted my back or something but it hurts. I don't think the time I've been spendng at the computer in the cheap typists' chair we bought a couple of months ago has been helping it either.

But I'm pleased to say my WIP is currently at just over 53k words! I'm over halfway done, yay! And quite pleased with the progress so far. The other day I printed it out. Since I ended up taking just over a week off from it, through no fault of my own, I'd lost the flow of it a little and had started to feel like I was just writing a list of events. Does anyone else ever get that?

Anyway. I typed it out so I could read through it, make some notes, and get a sense of it as a whole, was it cohesive, etc. And guess what? I really think it's pretty good!

Of course, my CP has bee telling me this all along.

And oh, gee, speaking of her...her first EC novel was released a couple of days ago. You should all rush over to the EC site and buy Enchanted by Anna J Evans. Do it now. I'll still be here when you're done.

Aside from that there isn't much to report. The Princess was ill and it's getting cold. Our heater isn't working, either. We have radiators, and I guess it all works from the water heater. But our water heater fo som reason isn't as full as it should be. It wasn't a big deal when it was just the radiators, because although the temperature is dropping it's generally warm enough inside (plus we have a gas fire in the living room, which I hate. I mean, I love fires. I just don't like fake fires. So many homes here have them, and I don't get it. Although far worse are the old houses, with big huge fireplaces, and in the middle of them is a little metal box for a real fire. WHY? There's like a dozen square feet of empty space and this little one-by-one tray to build your fire on, and it's connected to the chmney so you couldn't build a bigger fire if you wanted to. I don't get it at all. I understand not necessarily wanting to fill the enitre fireplace with wood and having a bonfire in your living room [although I love fire so part of me thinks that would be really cool] but if you're going to build a separate thing for the logs, why not make it at least a little bigger? Say, three-by-three, big enough for more than one log at a time? It's one of the many things about homes in Englad that I just don't understand, right up there with why there are no electric outlets in bathrooms or why there aren't screens on the windows. Or air conditioning. But I digress.)

Anyway, today our water heater started refusing to heat water either. We switched on the backup one upstairs in the airing cupboard, so there seems to be hot water again, but I'm afraid to take a shower because I think the water will go all cold on me while I still have conditioner in my hair. And especially with a sore back, that would not be good.

So now you know. I'm filthy, my back hurts, and it's cold. What a fantastic post I've done today!

You know what's a lot more interesting than reading about my sad, hot-water-free existence, though?

Anna J Evans' book 'Enchanted'!

New Black Dragon Trailer!

Final version...I really miss the music, but this music is, I think, excellent too...it's actually from the soundtrack to a Star Trek fanfic movie called "Dark Armada", by a company called Edgen Animation. They had quite a few songs up on a free sharing site, listed as royalty free, and all of the songs were awesome.




This new verison is about 8 seconds shorter, too. I think shorter is better, though, personally. I just hope it tells enough about the book.


And speaking of books, I got word last night that my story "The Ice House from my book Torrid Teasers Volume One was one of the ten stories picked to be in the "Best of Torrid Teasers" anthology that Whiskey Creek Press-Torrid will be releasing in January!

So I now have two books releasing in January from WCP-Torrid! And to make it even more exciting, my beloved and talented pals Anna J Evans, Sherrill Quinn, and Kate Lang will be in the antho too!

I promise I will get back on track with the posts shortly, I know they've been alittle...dull?...lately. But I have more ranting to do, more heroes to sigh over, more books to talk about, a world of fun just waiting for you!

Okay...

Let's see what you guys think...






I will very likely change the music, but that song is so evocative of the book to me (it's what I listened to when writing, because it "is" Gruffydd) I wanted to at least share it this way first.

Be honest...is it terrible?

Tagged-and an extra validation of my coolness

Annie Dean tagged me to do th book quiz that's going around, and as I am always one to follow up on tags, and as we were just discussing books anyway...here it is.

#1 - One book that changed your life: Hmmm. This is really hard to answer, because I think every book I've ever read--or at least the vast majority of them--have changed me, even in some tiny way. They broaden our experience and viewpoint. But I think I have to say--and Annie will hate this--the book that changed my life was Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. (I had the British version from the beginning, as my hubs's stepsister gave it to me on our honeymoon). Not so much because of the book itself, but because of what it has represented to me ever since--someone who just wanted to write a book, who worked really hard, and who is now arguably the most popular and famous writer on the planet. Whenever I'm feeling down I think of that, and I'm inspired to keep working.


#2 - One book that you've read more than once: Um...all of them? I can't think of more than a handful of my books that I've only read once, but I'll go ahead and list an important one--I've read Gone With the Wind too many times to count.

#3 - One book you'd want on a desert island: I'm going to agree with Annie and go with the SAS Survival Guide: How to Survive Anywhere, on Land or at Sea by John Wiseman. It would be torture not to have anything to read, but I'd rather not die just so I can have The Caine Mutiny.

#4 - One book that made you laugh: Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady by Florence King. She's another of my absolute favorites.

#5 - One book that made you cry: The Reckoning by Sharon Kay Penman. I was depressed for weeks afterward. It's an excellent book-the third in a trilogy that starts with Here Be Dragons--but man...history is the saddest thing there is.

#6 - One book that you wish you had written: Oh, man. Almost all of them? I don't really know. I just want to write my own books and have people wishing they'd written them.


#7 - One book that you wish had never been written: Mein Kampf

#8 - One book you're currently reading: Potter again, I'm re-reading the series and am about to finish GOF. But I'm about to start The Devil Wears Prada, because it was on sale for half-price at Ottakar's. I'm also reading a book of love poetry because I have a romantic love interest in my WIP who has informed me he likes to seduce women by quoting love poetry. My heroine has indicated she finds that pretty hot, and as I only know a few snippets of love poetry, I'm researching.


#9 - One book you've been meaning to read: Hmmm again. I have a few history books I'm waiting on until I'm done writing this particular book. I've always wanted to read Jane Eyre. I've also always wanted to read The Once and Future King, and I have the first book in the His Dark Materials trilogy to start as well.


#10 - Tag Five People: Uhhh...SW, Robyn, Anna J., Cyn, and Isabella. Meme this.




AND...my author bio is up on the Ellora's Cave website!
Check it out. I'm all legitimate and cool and stuff now! Wheee!

Books, books, and books

Books #1: Remember how I said I didn't really lose anything in the Computer/Juice incident? Yeah. Somehow I managed to forget my erotic vampire romance, the one I finished back in March. The first three = last chapter are out on sub. The rest...disappeared into the peach juice. WELL, sort of. I have a hard copy. I can retype it if I have to. Please let those data recovery people be able to recover some data!!

Books #2: I have, in the last week, done ZERO on my WIP. Well, no. I've done about 1500 words but it's basically all crap and I know it will be edited out. And now I'm freaking out that by the time I've finished the thing urban fantasy will be glutted and nobody will care. It's been an insecure few days, to be honest, what with stress about the laptop and hubby probably going back to work soon thus leaving me all alone and...well, I guess that's it. I'm having an ebb in my biorhthym, dude. (And I'm aware I probably misspelled rhythm. Oh, wait, that's right, isn't it. Anyway, it's one of those words I can never spell. Another one lately seems to be occasion. Because hubs used to work by a florist's, and on their sign they said, "Great for all ocassions". Which used to drive me nuts every time I drove past it, until I drove past it so many times I could no longer figure out if it was really wrong or not. Now I always have to double-check it in my head.

What's your mental-block spelling word?

Books #3: Aimless internet wanderings led me to this site: Loganberry Books. They do a "Stump the Bookseller" thing and there's an enormous archive of solved and unsolved questions. Basically, you give them a plot or characters from a book you remember (children's/YA books) and they try to name the book. Other people can guess the book, too. I seriously spent like an hour there and can't wait to have enough time to go back and look some more.

Which reminds me as well. One of my favorite books as a youngster, The Diamond in the Window, has been reprinted. YAY! Last time I checked, which I guess was around '99, there were no copies to be had. I had no idea this was part of a series, I just remember not only loving the book, but loving to color in the illustrations, because everybody had red hair. Or maybe I just colored them al with red hair. I had a thing about redheads as a child. And coloring the illustrations in my books. Usually with markers that then bled through to the other side of the page. Anyway. You should order this book. It's exciting, it's spooky...I can't wait to reread it.

Now you recommend one to me. Today is YA--and please, if you can, recommend one from your childhood, not a modern one--but we'll do lots of different genres, at least I hope you guys want to.

Kids are Great!

So my MIL is in town, she arrived Saturday morning. I was in the kitchen when she got off the bus, making beakfast for the Faery who was in her highcair. Hubs was, apparently, on the laptop in the living room.

Hubs runs out with his umbrella to greet MIL (it was raining). I brought Faery's breakfast to her, and was greeted (of course) with "No! NONONO!" So I made a fce and took the plate back in the kitchen to eat myself, because I like buttered scones.

Hubby and MIL come in the house, and straight into the kitchen. We drink coffee. We chat. Faery wanders in and out. Princess wanders in and out.

Hubs and MIL are going to take the kids into town so I can work, because I haven't gotten much done in the last week or so and I'm just about to hit the pre-climax buildup scenes in what I think is the best, tightest work I've ever done. So I go upstairs to get clothes for the kiddies and the following words float up after me:

HUBS: What? Why is this...wet?...Oh my god...oh no...

MIL: What's wrong?

HUBS: I think Faery poured her...oh no, it won't turn on...her juice all over the laptop...



She sure did!

She poured half a cup of juice--sticky, sugary juice--into our nine-month old laptop. Fried it. It's gone. They couldn't restore the hard drive.


GONE.


We have the superspiffy protection/maintenence plan, so tomorrow it's going to the superspiffy repair place, where if they can't fix it they will replace it. Meanwhile we've bought a desktop.

Thanks to every holy being, last week I sent my best friend in FL everything I had one my one major WIP, and Friday morning my beloved CP agreed to look at all 40k words of my BIG project (the aforementioned best-ever-writing). So I'd sent that off. So both my major things were backed up.

But what I lost...story ideas synopses deleted scenes 3-5k beginnings of new projects. New edits and additons to some things I backed up ages ago and never re-backed.

All of our digital camera photos of the girls in England--or most of them, anyway, some we'd emailed to people.

All my icons and cookies.

All of our iTunes songs.

Half of my ebooks.


It was not a good weekend.

Hero Fridays!

So I thought this might be fun. Checking the stats from my website it seems I have the highest number of hits on Fridays. (I should have done this earlier today but I got distracted--it's been a very busy, running-around kind of day.)

Anyway, I decided that to coincide with that, I should do some sort of special thing on Fridays--like a Friday Five but...well...not. (Not that I don't enjoy Friday Fives, I just thought something else would be fun too.)

So here's what I'm going to do. On Fridays I will blog about heroes. Book heroes, movie heroes, TV heroes...the heroes I love.

I'm starting this off with what I think is a rather odd choice, but I'm going to try to mix in some odd choices.

So the first ever Friday Hero is...Kid Sheleen, as played by Lee Marvin in the 60's film Cat Ballou.





For those of you who haven't seen this gem of a film, Cat Ballou stars Jane Fonda (who I don't like, but she really is great in this and it's one of the only two films with her in it my parents would allow my brother and I to watch) as a young schoolteacher who goes to visit her father in Wolf City Wyoming, only to find that her father's life is in danger--the Wolf City Mining Corp. (I think) wants his water rights and they're willing to kill him to get them.

So Cat does what any girl would do--she hires a gunslinger. Enter "Steel-Eye" Kid Sheleen...falling, drunk, off the bag of a wagon.

He's a mess. He can't pick up his guns, he has the shakes, he's not very smart. He attempts to shoot a target on the broad side of a barn and of course misses the barn.

But the thing about Kid Sheleen is, it doesn't matter, He's still awesome. Watching him give a long, very intense speech (while drinking himself back to sobriety) about the life of a gunslinger ("because nobody don't make no fun of a friend of Kid Sheleen") is hysterical. He's honorable. He's tough. He fallas in love with Cat and when he realizes she doesn't love him back he threatens to kill the guy she does love if said guy doesn't go propose right that minute. And when it comes down to it, he sobers up, gets back in shape, and kills his own brother to keep Cat safe.

Plus he helps her rob a train.

And oh yeah, he's Lee fucking Marvin, too. So I don't even have to mention "sexy". In the hands of a less talented actor Kid might have been pathetic, cheap comic relief--a caricature. Lee Marvin, though, makes him fully realized. He's a rogue, he's a tough guy, he's vulnerable, he's noble and crude, all at the same time. He may not be a typical hero...but he's one of the first movie men I ever fell in love with as a little girl, and I think you all should go see the movie if you haven't seen it already.

(I'm also going to try to talk about favorite books on Mondays. So start thinking.)

How Far is Too Far?

So as you all know, lately I've been thinking a lot about promotion. Where to place ads, get interviews, do chats. What gives the most bang for the buck? What gives the best impression?

I worry a lot about what kind of impression I'm giving. I worry about readers seeing my name somewhere and thinking, "Oh God, not HER again, why won't she shut up?"

There's a feeling, I think, especially in the ebook and romance communities, that anything we do to promo ourselves is a good thing. And to some extent I buy into that, although I have over the last few years seen some techniques that obviously backfire--spam, either through emails or IMs or whatever. The recent brouhaha over spamming an editor's blog made me wonder if some enterprising writer out there hasn't had the idea already of going to random lj/Blogger/WordPress/Typepad/Vox/whatever accounts and posting comments about their books.

Of course, we've also had the "sockpuppet" discussions over at Miss Snark, coupled with some of the latest controversy about how responsible authors are for what happens in their online forums (my answer: pretty responsible, but I don't know the whole story, only one side of it, so can't say whether the author in question should be censured as she is being for it. At least some of the story is up over at Smart Bitches.)

But after my chat at FAR on Saturday (which was a lot of fun) I started wandering around cyberspace. I had a terrible cold--I'm still not feeling great--and couldn't sleep, so I was downstairs on the computer for hours, just looking at websites (authors and readers) and blogs, etc.

Something left...a bad taste in my mouth. I'm not sure if this is really something that would bother anyone else, or what, so I'm very interested to know what you think.

Author does a guest blog on a medium-popularity group blog (of which there are hundreds, and no I won't tell you who or which blog). Author's blog entry is in essence a little short story--very short, like 500 words or so. Author lets it be known far and wide that she has blogged.

Now let's be honest here for a second before I egt to the meat of it. We all blog as part of promotion. Yes, I have made some wonderful friends here, and that makes me happy. I would keep blogging even if I didn't have work to promote. But I do have stuff to promote, and my website and blog are part of that. So I do know that authors blog to garner readers. We blog to get attention (mainly because it's a way to get attenton without having to actually put some decent clothes on and meet people).


So I found the entry hours after it was posted, and there was an outstanding number of replies to said blog entry. I mean, really a stupid amount. How on earth did she get so many replies to such a short little entry? (I should mention here I'm not a fan of the story blog entry anyway. I read blogs to find out about what my favorite authors and friends think and do. I feel cheated when all I get is little fiction clips--which isn't to say I don't enjoy them once in a while, I'm talking about blogs devoted to stories.) Anyway.

I start reading the comments. And my interest quickly turns to...something else.

In essence, it looks to me like the friends of the blogging author showed up and started posting interview questions in the comments. The first ten comments were solidly other writers asking things like, "Wow, how did it feel to get such a great review at X site?" or "When is your next book coming out?"

A few readers (as far as I could tell) posted. One asked a question. Shortly after, more friends turned up to ask even more. The comments thread turned into one long interview conducted solely by buddies of the original author--making it look like there were hundreds of rabid fans out there. The blog post itself is not discussed at all.

Am I wrong in being bothered by this? In feeling this is somehow...I don't know..against the rules? A little tacky? Or am I being an idiot, and this is the way things are done these days?

I suppose in a way it's no different from me asking any of you guys to come over to FAR for my chat (thanks Jenn!) or to go read the latest installment of my short story at Indulge. I guess in a way it's no different from any other kinds of promo.

But I can't help feeling that something is different about it, and I just can't figure out what it is.

Any suggestions? What do you think of this type of promo? Have you ever come across something you found questionable, but weren't sure if it really was or not?

By the Way...UPDATE 9/23

I'm chatting over at Fallen Angel Reviews TODAY, from about noon Eastern Time until either everyone gets sick of me or I have to go to bed.

I'll have some excerpts to put up, too, and it will be a lot of fun!

So go sign up at FAR Chatters and come on by today!

The bombshell

So Silhouette/HQ has cut its Bombshell line.

There’s been some very interesting discussion about this over at Smart Bitches, basically relating to whether the demise of Bombshell—a line devoted to that favourite character archetype of mine, the kick ass heroine—means the readers are not interested in those heroines.

My answer? A resounding YES!

Who wants to read books with heroines who can solve every problem, defeat the bad guys one-handed, end world hunger and throw her Hero down on the bed for some female-superior lovin’ all without breaking a nail? Fie!

I know what you’re saying. Oh come on, December. Kick ass heroines aren’t like that! They’re just tough and capable and strong.

No…they’re not. Or, I should say, sure if done well, they are, but they’re rarely done well. Look at Anita Blake. The first couple of books were good. Anita was tough but with vulnerabilities. Now…Anita’s TEH MOST POWERFUL and runs around breaking balls for fun. She’s the alphiest Alpha who ever lived. Think maybe that’s why fan reaction has gone from hot to warm to lukewarm to outraged?

I admit it. In my (pretty rich) fantasy life, I’m Buffy. Aren’t we all? But Buffy, for all her kick-assiness, wasn’t so tough. She got all weepy over Angel. She let that Parker character use her at college, then got involved with poor Riley and was afraid to admit her feelings (although, she was more like the “kick-ass” heroine in that relationship than in any other, with the result that we all thought she was being a big old bitch.) She lost her Mommy. She alienated some friends. She got involved in a dangerous relationship with Spike (who could blame her for that one, though. C’mon, who wouldn’t have given Spike a tumble? Or two, or fifty?) In other words, Buffy had some major vulnerabilities. She needed the Scoobies to help her and support her.

Notice those vulnerabilities were introduced right away in the show. They needed to be. We wouldn’t have watched otherwise. And let’s be honest, didn’t most of us have a favourite Buffy character who wasn’t Buffy? Buffy was the show, but Buffy wasn’t half as interesting without the others.

The problem is, most of us don’t relate to the “kick-ass” heroine. Sure, we like strong heroines. We don’t want them TSTL or wimpy or whatever. But there’s a difference between being strong and smart and running around beating people up, or commanding empires. As we learned in my earlier post on this topic, that’s SFF territory. Not romance.

We romance readers want our heroes to be kick ass. We want our heroines to be a match for them mentally and emotionally.

Beth had an excellent post on this topic. I can only echo her point. With some of these heroines, we wonder why the hero is even there. She doesn’t need him. He doesn’t do anything. And I’m sorry, but a man whose woman is so much tougher and stronger than he is…just doesn’t interest me. I don’t fall in love with him, I don’t even really care about him at all. Do you guys care about any of those long-haired sycophants who follow Anita Blake around, or do you wish (as I do) that they would all fall into the chasm that used to be Sunnydale so we can get some interesting characters into those books? Even Jean-Claude, once the only reason to keep reading the books despite his terrible dress sense, is slowly turning into an idiot whose only purpose is to prove how great Anita is.

Who wants to read that? Do you identify with that? Do you read those books and think, “Wow, if I met (JulianTempleGreysonDaemonwhomever), he’d fall in love with me, too, because I have all the qualities Heroine X has”? No, of course you don’t, because obviously JulianTempleGreysonDaemon is only interested in women who can beat up bad guys and save the universe. So what’s the point?

We should be able to see ourselves in our heroines. Sure, she should be her own person, but she should also be Everywoman.

Everywoman is not generally capable of taking out a room full of bad guys in one go.

I don’t mean that every tough heroine in books is bad, or even in romance. But the Hero has to be stronger, which means we need to reign it in. Or women won’t read it. Why read a book that makes you feel inferior?

Next time, I’ll talk about the subspecies of annoying Kick-Ass heroines—the Horrible Historical KAH.

I'm Quitting

...smoking.


Ugh! I can't believe I even just typed that! How can I quit smoking? How can I say goodbye to my lovely cigarette friends?

I just have to. They're expensive. They're not good for me. Not in the casual, "I'm a little out of breath" kind of way I viewed it in my early 20s, but in an ever-more-serious "I have kids and want to be around when they grow up" kind of a way.

It's getting cold outside. Since we don't smoke in the house or around the kids at all, I'm facing another winter of huddling outside in the wind and cold to smoke a cigarette I'm not even enjoying because it's so damn freezing. When you force yourself to keep smoking because damn it, you lit the thing and you're not going to waste it, but you just want to go inside...it's time to just let it go.

I've quit before, of course. Six months here and there, ten months with my first pregnancy, almost a year with the second. But I always picked them up again. I missed them. I love smoking. I always have.

But I'm starting to not love it now, and I need to stop it.

I'm not quitting cold turkey, and I'm not wasting money on the patches or anything. (I'll tell a secret: I used the patch to quite twice. Each time I stopped putting the patches on after the first couple of days. My issue is the oral thing, not the nicotine.) Instead I'm cutting way down. I had four cigarettes yesterday. I'm about to go have my second today. I'll have three a day for the next couple of days. By the end of the week I'll be done.


GAAAH!

OMG--Queen Bam knows who I am (sort of)!

Ladies and gentlemen...


I've been snarked.


ROFL!!!! AWESOME!

Missing Miss

Okay, so before I get going, I have to make a confession. I am strangely obsessed with America's Next Top Model (which come to think of it, I might have mentioned before.) The hubs and I have also recently found Hell's Kitchen and are fascinated by it. We'll spend a really silly amount of time after the show analyzing who was eliminated and why, and how Gordon Ramsey is so damn funny or whatever.

So I'm watching an ANTM recap show. Season 2. They have the obligatory-in-the-first-couple-of-seasons "girl who cries and refuses to pose nude, and is sent home" episode. The Girl Being Sent Home in this episode is married and a mother, and "can't imagine anyone but [her] husband seeing that." She also used the word "cootchie" which, you know, is just tacky, especially in anyone over the age of about 22. Anyway. So she won't do the nudie rudie and is sent home, like all prudish cowards.

I turned to the hubby, planning to give him a little speech about how if I had been in that situation, I would hope he would have been okay with the nakedness because this is My Dream (modeling isn't, but you get the analogy, I hope) and I Will Not Be Denied! "I would have done it," I say, warming up for the speech.

Hubby looked at me. "That's because you're a whore," he said.

That's why I love him. He's so darn funny. It was a joke, of course. No, really, it was.

Yes it was!

Hey, some of us did what we had to do to survive, okay?

(NB-That's a joke too.)


So now someone's apparently calling Miss Snark some kind of anti-feminist or something for wanting to be called Miss, and Isabella blogged about this a while ago anyway, so I'll go ahead and mention it quickly. I don't really care if there are ladies out there who want to be called Ms. There's nothing wrong with Ms., and it is nicely all-purpose and always correct (unless you know the lady in question has a different preference, of course.)

But I am so tired of Ms./Miss/Mrs. being frigging "feminist issues". I'm so tired of women who claim to be all for other women being catty and shitty about the terms of address they prefer.

Me, I prefer "Mrs." Neither of the others bother me. Usually reviewers call me Ms. Quinn and that's just fine. Socially I prefer Mrs. I'm a married woman. I didn't go through a wedding and putting up with a man to be called the same thing I could be called anyway. (And by the way, my husband is my husband. He's not my "partner" or "significant other". That's probably a rant for another time, but oooh that makes me mad, especially since "partner" is all the rage here in the UK. If I wanted a partner I would have gone out and found somebody with more money.)

Anyway, this is the kind of thing that bugs me. It's nitpicking, nitpicking by bitter, angry women with nothing better to do than to ridicule the choices and preferences of other women. As a stay-home Mom I've been dealing with this kind of crap for a few years now. It's all well and good for women to have choices, as long as they make the choices NOW wants them to make, or whatever.

I'm not anti-feminist. I'm just very tired of the hypocrisy.

Perhaps part of this rant comes from having just read the exrable I Don't Know How She Does It by Allison Pearson. Anybody remember the big stir this book made a couple of years ago? And there's all these reviews on Amazon from women saying how much they identify with the protagonist, Kate, and how much like her they are. Gods, I really hope not. Kate is an awful person. She whines about not being treated equally at work while simultaneously complaining that the men she works with are not sensitive to her needs, carrying on an internet affair with one of her firm's biggest clients, spending hours every day emailing her friends, skipping work to get her hair done, and wearing see-through tops. She spends the whole book moaning about missing her kids and being a bad mother. Fair enough, since she clearly cannot stand being in the same room with them and honestly, the reader can't figure out why on earth this woman actually had children at all. Every character aside from Kate is a cardboard cut-out person, and Kate is so loathesome and self-obsessed we wish we knew less about her.

Is this the woman all women are supposed to identify with? Is this horrible, selfish, whiny creature supposed to repesent modern woman?

I hope not. Kate's the kind of woman who would get in another woman's face about preferring to be called "Miss".

All of my heroines are called "Miss" by the way. You know why? Because all of my heroes, roguish as they may be, are gentlemen.

Bits & Bobs

I know my last few posts seem to have been just a collection of links and whines, but I swear after this one I'll be back on track. I haven't been replying to many people's posts, either. Sorry. My time has been disappearing in chunks that are not justified by the meager amounts of work I've managed to get done. My WIP only just crossed 30k and it's been like three and a half weeks since I started it. At least. Sad.

The third installment of my free Indulge story, Private Secretary, is up on the blog. It's here. This is a SEX-FREE excerpt, no need to worry about reading at work! I hope you enjoy it, and thanks to everyone who's commented on it so far.

I'm trying to write a good bio for EC. I have no idea what to say. I hate bios. I always feel like I'm being either too self-inportant or too flippant. Plus I've already used my best lines in bios elsewhere, so I'm fresh out of quirk for this.

Suggestions?

Excerpt-y Goodness

I've added two small excerpts from The Black Dragon to the website. You can find them here. The first was posted some time ago on Elektra's Crapometer, the second--which you need to click "Read More" to get--hasn't been posted anywhere before (it's from Chapter Three). I may go in and change them next month--they're each only one scene long, so I have plenty from the first three chapters to whet your appetites.

I've also made a little addendum to the cover post, so please check it out.


I'm setting up promo stuff for the book. I really, really loathe the process. I mean, don't get me wrong. I quite enjoy doing the promo itself. I have two interviews set up (one at Fallen Angel Reviews for November, plus two chats there--23 September and 2 December, and the other interview, also in November, at the Historical Romance Club) and I'm very excited about doing them all. I'm booking ads at Smart Bitches, Historical Romance, FAR, and The Romance Studio and most of those sites should be doing reviews as well. So I'm way excited about the months of November and December. I'm excited about January when the Prince of Death ads and stuff come out, too (the FAR interview, chats, and ads will cover both books, and the Romance Studio stuff will deal with both as well. Historical Romance is obviously just for The Black Dragon. I'm also placing an ad (along with other Triskelion authors) for The Black Dragon in the Romantic Times magazine, which I'm really excited about--if they give it a good review (please dogs) that's a real feather in my little peaked cap.

But I hate booking all the stuff. I never know what to say. "Hi, here I am. Please like me!" It's harder too because I use a pseudonym (you guys didn't think my real name was this cool, did you?) So I send all of this through my decemberquinn email, but some of the sites want my real name, so I never know how to sign my emails when I respond. Plus I have to send all Paypal stuff through my husba'ds Paypal account (because they won't let you hook up more than one email addy to a bank account) so I'm forever having to send extra emails to explain why they think they don't have my payment.

I always feel sort of silly and vaguely ashamed, begging to be allowed to feature my work. Maybe I still don't believe this whole writing thing is actually working. Maybe I think people are going to think, "Oh, man, why does she keep pushing that terrible book on us?" I have no idea. I have confidence in my work but not in myself, I guess? I think as my work gets more and more notice and I make more sales (not that I'm burning up those bestseller lists by any stretch, mind, but I know I have at least one or two actual fans out there, which is a huge deal for me) I'm aware that there's more to lose. Kind of pitiful, if you think about it, but true just the same. Nobody wants to be a one-hit or -book wonder.

Or I'm just unfamiliar with the process, which is entirely possible. I have a tendency to get snappish and wierd when I don't know what I'm doing. Luckily this is all done by email so I can get snappish and wierd in private. :-)

What promo works for you? What doesn't work? Do you read reviews or pay attention to ads you see? What about an ad or interview makes you think, "I want to read that book?"

And the hubs and I have just had a five-minute conversation about how weak the English Blue's Clues host is compared to the mighty Steve. How sad is that? A real, genuine, engrossing conversation about it.

So I think I'm done for the moment.

Cover

This is the cover Triskelion designed for The Black Dragon. I really like the medieval font they used for the title.

By the way, a comment elsewhere made me realize I need to stress something. Despite the nakedness on the cover, this is NOT an erotic romance. Yes, there are several fully consummated love scenes, and they are explicit (although not as linguistically graphic), but this is not erotic in the way some of my other work is-i.e. sex in every chapter. I hope that doesn't stop you from reading it, though! *grin*

The Big News--SOLD!

The erotic menage romance my critique/writing partner, Anna J Evans, ad I wrote together just SOLD to Ellora's Cave for their "Tarot" series!

Oh blah blah blah

So it's the whatever anniversary of Princess Diana's death, and we're all supposed to be weeping and gnashing our teeth in misery because the world lost such a wonderful, sweet, kind, person.

Fie! I'm not glad she's dead, but I thought she was a dumb bitch. A woman who went on national television to talk shit about the father of her children. A mentally unstable woman who tried to manipulate and change a thousand years of tradition to suit her own ends. A woman who used people, made bad judgements, expected everyone else to feel sorry for her, and generally created her own hell.

It's a shame. I do feel bad for anyone who makes their life such a misery. But a saint? Come on! The best thing that woman ever did for herself was die before people could realize what a vacuous fame-whore she really was. The cult that's built up around her (and c'mon, she wasn't that pretty or stylish. Catherine Zeta-Jones has more flair and flatters herself better in clothing. The only reason people think Diana was so stylish is that British women in general look like overly fussy schlubs all the time. Even Diana's famous wedding dress was frumpy and unflattering, I thought) makes me ill. Dodi Fayed was a dumb ass rich kid playboy bent on star-fucking his way into the National Enquirer, and Diana wasn't much better. Am I the only one who looks at that famous interview done back in '80,'81, the one where Prince Charles said something like "Yes, I love her, whatever love means"? And everyone says what a horrible thing that was for him to say...but if you look at Diana standing next to him, she looks smug. Like she's about to go phone all those kids who were mean to her in school and shout "Nyah nyah nyah!" It's not the face of a woman in love, that's all I'm saying. If you can find the video (and with all the Diana-madness we have to endure every year at this time I'm sure you can) have a look at it again with that in mind. You'll see what I mean. (Update--I found the interview online here. It's a bit grainy, so I don't know if you'll get the full effect.)

People who knew her as a child say how she always insisted she was going to marry a Duke at least. People who knew her when she was dating Charles say she totally changed her personality in order to nab him, making him think she was a different person, one who actually liked him and shared his interests. After they married, she went out of her way to upstage him and make him look stupid whenever possible. And we're supposed to think she's a wonderful person?

Does a good mother expose her children to the kind of scrutiny and negative public attention she subjected hers to, in her media war with their father? Does a good mother fire their beloved nanny because she feels threatened by their affection for her? And then publicly accuse said nanny of aborting a pregnancy caused by the children's father? Not last time I checked. I always thought that was the type of action only a selfish, manipulative egomaniac would perform. Oh guess what, I was right.

Don't even get me started on that fucking Elton John song. I remember when she died, and for the next couple of weeks at work, the soft-rock station we were forced to listen to played that goddamn thing like twice an hour. Every hour. All day. And we had to hear celebrity-worshipping morons call in to the station too, sobbing about what a "special person" she was. Just like they thought if they ever met her, she wouldn't look right through them because they couldn't throw her expensive parties or write songs about her.

Sure, she did some good. She touched AIDS patients when nobody would. She deserves credit for that, although I've never heard of any other member of the Royal Family who refused to do the same. But her later causes were a bit facile, weren't they? As Hilary Mantel said in her novel Beyond Black (and this is from memory because I'm too lazy to go upstairs and get the book) "Campaigning against land mines isn't exactly controversial, is it? Everybody is against land mines. It's not like she took a big stand and came out against dolphins or something." Prince Charles created the Prince's Trust as a young man, an incredible charity that helps teach young people valuable skills, get starts in business (including financial aid), earn school qualifications, all kinds of things--practical things--that Diana never went near because it wasn't high profile enough. He also championed organic goods and farming methods long before they were fashionable (Diana laughed at his environmental interests). His Duchy Originals line of organic foods donates all profits to charities (including rural housing projects and international Red Cross appeals) and champions organic, earth-sustaining methods both of growing produce and raising livestock.

It won't surprise you, I'm sure, to know I'm a fan of his, and of Camilla, who I adore. C'mon, the woman introduced herself to him in the 70s with the line, "My great-grandmother was the mistress of your great-grandfather. So how about it, then?" That takes balls, my friend, a streak of banditry we would all do well to emulate. That's a woman with real style, no matter how cruel people might claim she's "not pretty enough". (I've heard she's very pretty in person, and as someone who generally looks like a moonfaced ogre in pictures but am actually okay in person, I believe it.) I'm also a monarchist and so dislike her attempts to "liven it up" or whatever. I also really like the Queen. I even have a soft spot for poor Prince Phillip, a man destined to shove his foot right into his mouth any time he gets the chance to speak.

But Diana...bleh. I didn't want her to die, but I didn't like her one little bit, either.


*I should hopefully be getting some good news very soon, and I'll post it when I do!*


princess diana

Where's the Sex?

You know why my life is so amusing? Because last night at midnight someone called our house, propositioned my husband, then when he handed the phone to me, asked if we would like to have a threesome.

I politely declined.

Is this what people are doing now? After I hung up we thought we should have said yes and told them to meet us at the convenience store across the street, then watched to see if anyone showed up.

My goodness.


It's especially ironic because I've been having a very strange form of writer's block the last week or so. I'm tired of writing sex scenes.

I know, I know. You gasp. You're shocked. How could I--sexy writer extraordinaire--ever get tired of writing steamy stuff?

I don't know how it happened, but it did. Somewhere in between the fifth and sixth sex scene of one of my WIPs I realized I was getting a little bored. Then when I was on the second scene of a different project I just couldn't get it going. My prose kept leaping into purple. I felt like it needed to heat up but I just couldn't seem to get it there.

Re-reading it, it was fine. But I didn't care. I could not bring myself to be excited about these two people and their outdoor lovin'. It was even worse because the hero is a kick-ass dark medieval man, my favorite kind, all tortured and misunderstood.

Maybe it's my fault. Maybe I'm just not feeling the short story format these days. Maybe I'm just experiencing a lull. I dunno. But I'm really getting tired of writing more and more and more sex scenes.

So I'm working on something else, something I'm really excited about--I mentioned it a few weeks ago when I first got the idea, remember? I wrote a query for it. I'll be sending that and the beginning to the Crapometer. It's about 7k words right now, but I'm setting aside several hours a day from now on to get going...because I love it, because I feel good about it, and, honestly, because the sex won't happen until the last half of the book (as I have it planned, anyway) and I'm kind of looking forward to that.

Anyone else ever have writer's block in a specific area like that?

Thanks for the stories of clumsiness. ("And now...Stories of Clumsiness...brought to you by Band-Aid.") They made me and my poor bruised finger feel much better.

Also, does anyone know any therapists (not physcial therapists, but head therapists) who would be willing to give me some info on their working routines? Their education and qualifications? General background stuff?

The Mysterious Disappearing Week

I had two more blog entries planned for the week, but since I'm a pantser not a planner, you're getting this whinging little rant about the days I lost this week.

I was up all night Monday. See, I was trying to place an order on Amazon US. My brother gave me a gift certificate for it for my birthday, and I had no idea what to get but since shipping takes so long from the US I thought I'd better get to ordering. So I browse around, la la la, and have a genius idea. I can't get my face soap here, but they have it on Amazon. I find it. I put it in my cart. The prices are so good I throw in another bar of soap and a lip gloss. Yay! Add a couple of books and I'm done.

Go to checkout. My item total is like $47. They want an extra $50 for shipping. Huh?

Turns out, the Burt's Bees soaps don't come strictly from Amazon, they're in conjunction with Drugstore.com or something and they obviously don't want to ship internationally. So I tried to change the shipping addresses to have them sent to my mother. Then she could ship them to me. (Trust me, this was exactly as exciting to actually do as it is to read about.) I changed the address on the wrong items. I couldn't fix it. I finally did. Shipping costs down. All well.

Until it hit me that the whole point of ordering the stuff from Amazon was so my Mom wouldn't have to go ship them to me.

So I cancelled it all. Meh. I'll fix the order later. It was 4 am.

And the Faery woke up, and didn't want to go back to sleep. So I put in Season Three of Nip/Tuck and ended up watching five episodes--I'm only two away from the ending of the season and finally, finally finding out who The Carver is! I have my suspicions, oh yes. And when did Julia become such an idiot? Your ex husband says your son's girlfriend is a racist, and the girlfriend stands in front of you and says he's a jerk for giving nose jobs to "Jews", and you tell your ex he's out of line? Huh? If one of my girls ever has a boyfriend who says something like that to me I'd kick the little bastard out of my house and tell him never to come near my child again. Anyway.

So basically, I was on my third or fourth wind, and finally went to sleep at like 1 in the afternoon, napped till 5 or so there you go. Tuesday's, as they say, gone with the wind.

Yesterday I almost broke my finger. I was trying to kill a fly. Since there are no screens on the windows, we occasionally get these little flying bastards in the house. I was getting ready to start dinner and nobody likes to cook when there's a fly around, right? Just like nobody doesn't like Sarah Lee. The fly landed on the ceramic-tiled kitchen floor. I grabbed what was handy, which turned out to be a semi-empty cigarette pack. I snuck over to within slamming distance of the fly. I slammed. The cigarette pack fly from my hand and I slammed my middle finger hard on the tile. The fly, of course, buzzed away, laughing, while I screamed and tried not to pass out. He got his, though. The hubs came in and got him with a rolled-up magazine. Ha! Ha!

Meanwhile I can barely move my finger. We had dinner. It still hurt, and I realized I couldn't really bend it well. So I went to the hospital. Digging up change to pay for parking was fun, as I could barely use my right hand (yes, you have to pay to park at the hospital here, which must be great in a real emergency.) The nurse in her frumpy blue dress prodded my finger, asked me to bend it, then told me I probably just overextended the ligaments and so should take ibuprofin and flex it a lot. So that's what I've been doing. Flexing, taking Advil, and watching an amazing bruise blossom under the middle joint of my middle finger.

Ow.

Please make me feel better, and tell me about something clumsy and stupid you've done?

A Heroine Needs a Hero Like A Fish Needs A Bicycle

A few years ago--2003, if I'm remembering correctly, which my husband says I am--he, our friend George, our Princess, and I went to DragonCon in Atlanta. Yes, that's right. Where once I'd made the 12-hour drive from Ft. Lauderdale to Hotlanta in order to see the mighty Supersuckers play live (and they fucking rocked, baby), now I was doing it to see a bunch of grown men dressed like Mr. Spock (and a lot of grown women dressed as Drusilla, complete with creepy baby doll, too.)

Anyway, having just completed the shiny new manuscript for my very first novel, a piece of shit whose details I will not shame myself into admitting but which I still have a secret fondness for, especially since I still believe it contained three very good scenes. Unfortunately, as it ended up tipping the wordy scales at about 114k, those three scenes did not do much to redeem the book itself.

I actually agreed to go to DragonCon not just because my hubby and George like to go to comic book conventions, not just because I was dying to buy myself some cheap Buffy-inspired jewelry. Not even because in the almost ten years the hubs and I have been together, I've developed a fondness for comics and the attendant geekiness that go with them. No, I was going to DragonCon because Luke Perry was going to be there.

Oh yessss. I was gonna meet Dylan McKay if I had to beat someone over the head with my then-20-month-old's very heavy diaper bag to do it.

(Okay, I am one of the hugest 90210 fans ever, really. And I have this creepy ability to recognize a 90210 alum, no matter how bit the part, at 20 paces. "Look!" I'll say, as a face flashes across the screen while some bad Sci-Fi channel film is playing. "It's Steve's crazy girfriend, the one who tried to kill herself because Brenda got the part in the play and she didn't!" Or maybe, "Look! It's the guy Kelly had a crush on who turned out to be gay so they were just good friends instead!" Or even, "Look OUT-it's Donna's stalker, Garret Slan!" Unfortunately, I have never seen Brandon's Bigoted Girlfriend ever again, which is a shame, because she was really funny.)

Anyway, so I agreed to go to DragonCon to bask in the glow of Mr. Perry. And, let's face it, probably to attempt to touch him inappropriately. And as part of the information they give when you you arrive at DragonCon and get your roadie-esque plastic badge, you get a booklet that lists all of the panels and groups and plastic toy-making workshops and Special Effects on Your Home Computer for Guys Who Will Never, Ever Get Laid if They Don't Manage to Build A Computer Woman A La Wierd Science workshops.

In the booklet is a fiction panel discussion. Women in Fiction. Hey, I didn't have much else to do but wait for Mr. McKay--I mean, Mr. Perry--to show up to discuss his Showtime show Jeremiah (Or so he thought, ha ha ha. I planned to spend the entire hour finding out if Shannon Doherty was really as bitchy and evil as Brenda Walsh), so why not?

So upon my hour, I trotted to the Marriot Annex basement room B or whatever, some dingy cell in the warren of similar cells, far away form the action, to sit in on this panel discussion. I'd already seen Richard Kiehl and Lou Ferrigno, so there wasn't much point in standing around.

Among the panelists were Betty Ballantine and Sherrilyn Kenyon. Now, Sherrilyn Kenyon meant nothing to me, but I realized as soon as they introduced the panelists to the whole twenty of us girls in the room that Sherrilyn Kenyon was also Kinley MacGregor, whose book Born in Sin I had just finished the day before we left for Atlanta. Yay! (Okay, stick with me. There really is a point. I promise.)

Ms. Kenyon's appearance at the con had not been publicized at all. There were only a few other people in the room, I think, who knew who she was.

Most of the women on the panel were sci-fi/fantasy writers. This was DragonCon, after all. I wish I could remember their names but honestly I can't. I only remember Betty and Sherrilyn/Kinley, who was perhaps not quite as young as in her photos but was still a very sweet, pretty lady.

One of the audience members asked a question, about what had drawn the panelists to fantasy in particular. Why did they write SF/F? What did they like best about it?

One by one, the panelists answered. "The heroines". "The strong heroines." "The tough heroines." And so on. They each explained how much it meant to them to read those books, because they hadn't realized women could be strong and capable or whatever and apparently each and every one of them had been raised in some cuddly pink gyno-world where no one ever let them see any movies or TV more strident or interesting than The Sound of Music, or read any books aside from Barbie Buys New Clothes. Seriously. I mean no disrespect but I have a hard time buying that "Nobody told me women could be interesting or smart or strong in real life" stuff from any woman born after about 1950, and even that's stretching it. You guys had Katherine Hepburn movies, FFS.

Until it got to Kinilyn (which is what I will call her because I am tired of typing out Sherrilyn/Kinley). She looked a little embarassed, a little shocked, as she explained that she frankly couldn't disagree with them all more, that she liked the tough manly heroes who got to fight with swords and beat people up, and that the female characters were basically uninteresting to her as long as there was an alpha male in the story.

The other women were horrified. How could Kinilyn say the girls weren't important? Werent's SF/F books all about--should be all about--

The Kick Ass Heroines?

They rather visibly shunned Kinilyn for the rest of the discussion. They weren't overtly rude, but you could see them dismiss her. She writes romance. She's not smart and brave like us. I doubt any of them consciously thought it, or deliberately tried to shut her out. They were just less interested in her after that.

When the panel was over, I had the chance to go talk to Kinilyn, and proceeded to act like a complete and total idiot. Eagerly, I explained that I'd just finished her book and how I loved it. So far so good. Now, in my defense, there was a very rude, very large woman in a wheelchair trying to cut into the conversation the whole time, even though I was there first and there were only three people in line. I stood aside and let them go, but by that point the room was essentially empty and I felt stupid. So when I had a chance, and I am still horrified by this, I explained to Kinilyn that I was a writer too, I'd just finished my first book, and wouldn't it be neat if I ended up with her publisher, too! Like we could be Publisher Pals or something.

I would have eased into it if I hadn't felt so pressured, but I did. I said it really fast and shy, with my face flaming.

I still cringe. I still bless Kinilyn, who must have thought I was a total and utter moron, and who I swear hid her pity well.

I don't remember exactly what she said, because by then my sanity had returned and I wanted to beat myself over the head with the hardcover copy of Born in Sin propped on the table, so I scuttled away as fast as I could.

The point of this? The point is, kick-ass heroines have their time and their place, and it ain't in frigging romance novels!

Expect Part 2, babies. I'm only getting warmed up.



Oh, and would you believe, Luke Perry cancelled at the last minute?

I Wrote a little Article

For the Erotic Romance blog, about a certain very graphic word that starts with c and ends with t. I use the word several times in the article (I lost count, but it's a lot) and hopefully managed to use it in a tongue-in-cheek kind of way (although I decided not to mention tongue-in-cheek in the article itself, all things considered.)

If you have any interest in reading it, I'd love it if you'd comment here or there or both and let me know what you think.

It's here.

I've been work, work, working and my fingers are sore. Not much happening in romance blog-land that I want to touch. We still have some whiny asses bitching about "unproductive" and "personal" bad reviews--apparently mentioning the name of the author in conjunction with the badly-reviewed work, as if-gasp-holding the author responsible for the work, makes it a personal attack now--and there's some rumblings about race and black romance writers that even I am not brave enough to go within several blogs' distance of. Or rather, I am that brave, I'm just not that stupid. (Okay, now I have to say something or you'll all think I'm hiding an evil, racist secret. But all I will say is that I don't care if you're black, blue, or green, if you write good books you deserve to have it acknowledged, and if you don't you deserve to be panned or ignored, but readers have a right to not read books with plots that don't interest them--I wouldn't read a "secret baby" book unless my life depended on it, personally. Pleasedon'tkillmeIhavetwochildren.)

Sorry this is so short, but I really have been playing in Blogland a little too much over the last hour or two-that c-word article took some time-so I should get some actual work done. It occured to me recently that if I want to be a writer I do need to actually do some of that pesky writing, so I shall go do that now.

Scot Wha Hae, or Glencoe Part 2

As one of my birthday gifties, I had £15 worth of book tokens for Waterstones. Which is seriously like the best kind of gift you can give me (not that you should all be giving me gifts. Several de-lurked and introduced themselves, which was lovely lovely, and again, if you're now linking to me & want a link back let me know. Anyway.)

I decided, as I do every time I go to the bookstore, of course, to see what kinds of romances are on the shelves. This particular Waterstone's (Exeter) even had a section titles "American Romance". Cool. So I had a look. Let's see...contemporary paranormal, Regency, Regency, Regency, Victorian (ooh! But I won't get it today), Georgian, contemporary paranormal...ah! A book with "Knight" in the title! Just the kind of thing I like...oh.

It's set in Scotland.

So I put it back and look for another. Oh, there's a guy on the cover with a sword! Oh...and a kilt. The shelves are full of kilts these days, just like how all over America there is the smell of burning dinners.

You know, rumor has it historicals are coming back, and nobody could be more pleased than me. I love historicals, love love love them, because I love history and this way I have my two favorite subjects all in one.

But enough with Scotland! Please! How many of you people saw Braveheart and decided to write a frigging book?

Of course I'm sure most of these books are not written by Braveheart fans who consider the movie research, although I have noticed a lack of research in a large portion of Scottish romances I've read (sometimes, you just want a historical and do't care that buying the book means you're going to be stuck with 380 pages of phonetically spelled accents-hae, havena, noo, etc.) And a large portion of them conform to Gabriele's Rules of Scottish Romances, which isn't always a bad thing--some of those Rules are Rules because no matter how many times we read them we still enjoy reading them.

But come on, people! Why Scotland? Why does it seem to be the only setting medievals are still published in? (I should have written, "in which historicals are still published", I know. But you know what? I've just been doing edits in which all of my imperfect grammar has been ruthlessly excised, so fuck you. I'm ending with a preposition. As Churchill said, "That is the sort of English up with which I will not put.") Why not give us some loveable strong alphas fighting for Richard I in France, or John in France, or go back a little further and involve our H/h in twisted doings during Stephen's reign? There's plenty of intrigue and delight in early medieval England--my beloved Planatgenets aired their family greivances across several continents--and still later. The Hundred Year's War! Medieval pirates (yes, they had them!) The frigging Spanish Armada! (Notice I'm not mentioning the Wars of the Roses. That is because I hereby claim them. I will be writing about them for at least my next two historicals. I also claim medieval Wales. You guys can have the rest. Except Jenn, because I know she's already got something medieval and Welsh cooking in her bookpot.)

I love Scotland. Hubs and I spent our honeymoon in Edinburgh and it is hands-down my favorite city I've ever visited. Scotland is truly beautiful. It's a fabulous place, and I think you should all go there because you will love it, too. I'm all for Scottish Independence and think it's wonderful that they have their own Parliament. We've even talked about moving there at some point. But it's not like it's the only place to set a historical romance (outside of London and the ton, of whom I am sick to death of reading.) There were wars and people being fiery all over England and Wales, too, and Ireland! (And I am really interested in reading about medieval Ireland, btw, and thinking of it for a book. My next medieval hero is Irish.)

But medieval Scotland was not this perfect land of milk and honey, either. And they DID NOT WEAR FRIGGING CLAN TARTANS, people! Not in the 13th & 14th centuries! Scottish history is rich and beautiful enough! Quit futzing about with it, quit stealing it and changing it and exploiting it. If you want to write kilts, write about 18th century Scotland, a rich and fertile time and place that nobody seems to want to touch for reasons unfathomable to me.(For that matter, the time of Mary Queen of Scots had enough intrigue and excitement and strife to fill Loch Ness twice over, with murdered bishops and exploding Prince consorts and all. Write about that!)


But Scotland is not the end-all be-all of medieval history. It's not the only place where men were men (again, more on that very soon. I'm formulating that rant, which will probably be a two-part rant but I can't promise anything) and ladies were ladies, or weren't ladies as the case may be. And honestly, I'm a little tired of seeing the poor Normans and English get the short end of the stick. They had their good points too. They weren't all murderous rapist baby-killing thieves. I swear.

So let's write some other times and settings, okay? Please?

Give me a Birthday Present

Okay, I wasn't going to say anything, but today is my birthday. And so you know what you should do?

Delurk.

If you've been reading here and not commenting, or if you've commented once or twice but not often, or whatever, comment now. Tell me something about yourself. How you found me. Things you like or don't like. Your favorite food. Whatever you want to say.

(This doesn't excuse anyone from commenting about my post below, btw. It's an additional duty you must perform because today is my birthday, and as we get older those days get considerably less special, don't they?)

More About Heroes

I was going to discuss those irritating "kick ass" heroines today, and I do plan to very soon. But I was thinking about a question someone else asked somewhere else (if I can be any vaguer than that, please tell me and I will try) and decided to discuss that instead. Mainly because I'm not feeling very ranty. I'm tired and a little pensive and my MIL arrives tomorrow for the weekend so I'm apprehensive about that.

So here's what I was wondering. When you write a hero (or, if you are a man, when you write a heroine) do you fall in love with them?

I do, at least to some extent. I have to. I can't write a hero effectively if he doesn't have at least some qualities that I admire or am attracted to or, you know, obsessed with or whatever.

A while ago I had a story in mind. I had an opening scene. It was a pretty good scene. It was a pretty good story. But the hero...I just couldn't get into him. He was too much of a crusader. He cared too much about the poor and unfortunate. I just don't find that sexy.

Which makes me sound kind of shitty, I guess, but I can't help it. It's not that my heroes don't care about stuff, but the way this guy kept coming off was like some sort of Francis of Assisi or something. The kind of guy who would follow those silly permission guidelines that some college (I keep wanting to say Oberlin; am I right?) instituted in the early 90's. You remember, the one where anytime anyone wanted to touch anything or remove any clothing they had to ask first?

This isn't yet another discussion of manly heroes, though. It's more about what kinds of characters we write and why. I think there can tend to be an idea that if you're writing romantic heroes that you're in love with, you're basically writing a Mary Sue heroines to go with them, a thin stand-in for yourself so you can have this fantasy relationship with your perfect hero. That a real writer doesn't fall in love with their hero because they're writing someone who is perfect for their heroine, not for themselves. (And this is just the way my thoughts ran, it certainly wasn't suggested or implied by anyone at this other place.)

I don't think that's true, though, at all. Perhaps I'm just not talented enough, but to write a character really effectively I think I need to either love them or hate them. I need to feel strongly about them in order to convey them strongly on the page, if you know what I mean.

I fall in love with the heroines a little bit, too, though. Not in the same way, of course. But isn't making a new friend a little like falling in love? First you're interested in the other person, then you want to get to know them better, and you get together, and then maybe start talking on the phone, and at some point you do go through that same "falling in love" thing where they're basically the only person you want to talk to because it's so much fun to talk to them, as you learn all about them and they learn everything about you.

That's how it is with the heroines. Some of the things they do might irritate me but generally I admire and like them. I want to hang out with them. And--and this is something I'll go into another time--I get a little irritated when people say writers inject too much of themselves into a character. I'm a pretty complex kind of a lady. I have a lot of interests and a lot of opinions, and when you get right down to it, how many character traits are there out there that we don't all possess in ourselves?

So in a very roundabout way I guess that's the crux of the thing. When you write, how much of yourself are you investing? Do you have to love or hate your characters-does it make it more fun when you do?


And I almost forgot: a big huge Congratulations! to my great friend SW Vaughn, who sold a romantic suspense novel to Wild Child Publishing! No release date yet, but I'm very excited for her!

Happy Birthday

Today was my older daughter's fifth birthday. I know I was supposed to do a real post but it will have to wait until tomorrow. The day totally got away from me.

Quickie

1. The second chapter of my short story is up at Indulge. (Note: I neglected to mention there is a sex scene in this chapter. It's relatively mild compared to some of my work, but still explicit. You may want to be sure your boss or child or whomever is not around when you read this one. Sorry for not saying it earlier.)


2. Looks like The Black Dragon, my medieval romance, will be released in December as an ebook. No word yet on wther or not it will also be released in print, or when. Fingers crossed!

3. I have a Library Thing now! Look under my links on the right!

I'll do a real post later today or early tomorrow.

It's Real Literature! (Part 2 of "Old School")

I had a little epiphany the other day. Someone posted a comment about romances on another blog and I said something like, "Oh, you're judging all romances by one" or whatever. And I was actually a little irked. Not a lot irked, but a little irked.

Then I saw that article I linked to (which is turning up everywhere, btw.) And I started thinking about it. Cue epiphany.

Who cares?

Why do I care if someone thinks romances are crap? Why do I care of someone thinks they're easy to write, or dull, or stupid, or Not Real Books?

In other words, why do the opinions of the rude and pretentious matter to me?

A lot of people I know were pleased with that article. They thought this might be a step towards getting romances somehow recognized as art or something. And you know, that's fine. If it's important to them, that's fine. But for me it's a little like being good in bed. As long as the person who shares that activity with me (that would be my husband) is pleased, I don't care what people I've never slept with think about my performance.

And ultimately, I do believe all this "We're serious artists" stuff is bad for romance. Why? Because, as I said the other day, romances should be fun.

I think there are a lot of people who are trying so hard to prove that romances are smart and well-written and Worthy of Serious Consideration, that they've forgotten to write fun stuff. I've read some dull-as-dishwater romances, believe me. And I really think this is the reason why.

Romances have gotten so politically correct. So safe. So bland! You rarely see, for example, heroines who throw china and heroes who punch holes in walls and people who scream at each other and then start kissing and have angry, tearful sex on jets flying to their private island, where they'll connive to take over the corporation of some hapless fool who is the heroine's real father but she doesn't know it. Or whatever.

Part of this may be because such characters became a little cliche by about the early nineties (although one thing that does piss me off is when current writers pick on those 70's romances. Those writers had it a lot harder than we do, writing on typewriters all day and not having communities or blogs or email. They were published authors in an age where a woman having a career that she cared about was still an anomaly. So quit talking about how much better you are than those hacks, okay? Or how dumb and cliche their books were. They paved the way for you, and you should have some respect.) Part of it may be simply that such stories aren't fashionable at the moment-market trends do change. But I firmly believe there are a lot of women out there who are bored by the romances coming out now, who would jump all over something like that were it published now. Something big and blowsy and fun. Like The Crimson Petal and the White was touted as being before we all read it and realized it wasn't that sexy at all, not was it especially fun, and the ending sucked.

I think this is why paranormals have become so big. Because vampires are allowed to be sort of smooth and sexist (mmmm). Werewolves are allowed to be rude alpha males (in fact, it's pretty much a requirement, isn't it?) Erotic romance is part of this, too. Lots of action, lots of sex, lots of excitement. Not page after page of the heroine's crusade to help the poor, or whining about the man who left her when she got pregnant, or whatever.

The point is, I'm tired of hearing about and reading about and seeing articles about how romance writers should be taken seriously and look how good these books are and what modern topics they cover. I realize it's necessary in some places to keep new readers coming into the fold. But the people who we seem to be trying so hard to impress are never going to care. They just won't. A romance could win a Pulitzer and they'll still say romance is crap. So why bother? Why not just say, "Yeah, and lots of people love reading my crap, so there."

Let's all try it, shall we? Let's be proud to write fun stuff, to write books people enjoy reading.

It's like that guy Miss Snark overheard talking about his Life of the Mind. Screw you, you pretentious weed. It's probably easy to live a life of the mind when nobody wants to talk to you because your head is so far up your own ass you're practically a gordian knot.

People like that aren't worth my time, and they shouldn't be worth yours.

So bring on Lady Sheba St. John and her mortal enemy, the handsome Lord Devlin, and their forbidden passion!

Famine to Feast--for the moment--and a little end note

If the length of the title doesn't clue you in, I have words, words, words all over the place. ("Because I was afraid of worms, Roxanne! Worms!")

Ever have one of those days where it seems like you get a million story ideas, each one better than the last, so good you're tempted to abandon your current WIP and the work you planned to start next and start on the new idea?

I've had two days like this now. Last night I couldn't get to sleep I was so excited. Now I am literally bussing like a cokehead over a different idea. (Also maybe caffeine is involved.) Seriously. I was reading something and a random sentence jumped out at me and a whole book fell into my head.

It's great. It's also really, really bad and dangerous. You know why?

Reread that second paragraph. See the part where it says, "you're tempted to abandon your current WIP and the work you planned to start next..."? Get it now?

I would be more excited about this burst of creativity, but part of me is convinced it's that nasty little sneak, the Subconscious Fear of Failure, working in combination with Old Lazy. If I never finish another book, I'll never sell another book, but I can keep writing newer and better ideas! The next one will surely be the one I finish, right? Of course! Why wouldn't I finish a book with such fantastic potential, the book sure to rocket me to the top of the NYT bestseller list?

I'll tell you why. Because halfway through that-once I'm through my clever opening and the story is really getting going, I'll get a little bored because that first burst of excitement will fade, and I'll decide it all sucks, and instead of working through it so I can get to the point where I know it doesn't suck again, I'll start something else! Something better! Something...shiny.

Plus...there's The Shield on DVD to watch. I'm a much better writer after I've watched Vic Mackey kick some ass for a couple of hours, right? Or after a little snack. Or maybe a movie. Then a cigarette. Then they might show a good rerun of Frasier or something. And next thing you know...thassright. I've writte 200 words and wasted my whole evening.

So while part of me is way, way excited about this new story, I'm not going to hurry up and start writing it (except for as much of the plot I can get, written in longhand--which is how I always do my synopses before starting work) until it's had some time to sit in my head and I can be sure it isn't just my Sneaky Sub trying to distract me, magpie-like, with Shiny New Story Ideas.

Some Random Notes:

So excited! I almost hit 30 comments on my last post (and I haven't forgotten about Part 2, or the Kick Ass Heroines, or any of the other stuff. It's all written down where I won't lose it, I promise, and besides, that shit's in my head all the damn time anyway.) I know it's actually more like 27 because I had that lame-ass spammer show up, but still. It's more than I've ever had. Simple minds, simple pleasures, you know. That was a very cool simple pleasure for me.

And on that note, sometime in the next few days I plan to update my links (adding, not removing). SO if you want to link to me and would like me to link to you, let me know. It might be good to keep in mind that I do read the blogs I link to every day, and that generally they are the only blogs I read. I go through them one by one (although, as I say on the sidebar, in no particular order). If you're not there, I probably won't check yours, just because I either have to dig through comments every time or I have to bookmark you and I always forget to bookmark. So either comment or shoot me an email.