Category: The Blog

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2008 Winds Down

The last Christmas presents have been opened.  We celebrated our last family dinner yesterday with Granny, my Beloved Sis, and my brother’s family.  The last Chiefs’ football game is on today.

2008 is almost over.

So this next week, I’ll be writing up formal goals for 2009.  I’ll look back to last year and see how I did on 2008’s goals.

Meanwhile, I’m reading.  Not from my reward stack, although this has been a very great reward.  I started with The Rose of Shanhasson, then The Road to Shanhasson, and finally, I’m reading the first draft of Return to Shanhasson that I just finished.  Oooooh, it’s so awesome to see the story all laid out and complete.  So much love.  So much blood.  So much Shadow.  The last book still needs work to bring it up where it needs to be, but the theme is definitely carried through to the end. 

Love, the greatest gift of all, and the greatest sacrifice.

2009 goals will be forthcoming.

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In Too Deep by Portia Da Costa

It’s back to the Evil Day Job for me today.  Christmas is over, and so is my vacation, and since the book is done, I settled down with my first pleasure read last night, In Too Deep by Portia Da Costa.

Now I’ve “known” Portia online for years, but I think this is the first full-length book I’ve read of hers.  A mistake I will correct immediately.  This book was sooooo good.  I read it in one sitting last night.  Now THIS is what an erotic romance should be like for me.  It was spicy, absolutely, but the characters were so real and deep.  I just loved Professor Hottie and his Queen of the Library.  The mystery about who Nemesis might be, the man who began leaving naughty letters for Gwendolyne in the suggestion box, was wonderful.  There were just enough clues to make me doubt myself and keep me eagerly reading.

Gwendolyne might be willing to experiment with dominance/submission play, but she’s no fainting weakling.  She pushes and challenges, never backing down, but she understands the game and what it means to him.  I don’t want to give away spoilers, but the last scene between them right before Daniel is forced to leave nearly moved me to tears.

…I recognize that, even though I’m on fire for him, this interlude is about Daniel, about him being in control, about him losing himself in the game and forgetting what lies ahead of him.  My intense frustration, the torment of temporary denial – these are sweet gifts I can give him to distract him.

I hope the rest of my reward stack of books proves to be so good!

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Merry Christmas!

A near Santa catastrophe was averted.  The stockings are hung.  Mom has keeled over on the couch with a glass of wine after a day of baking and Christmas Eve celebrations.  I made bon bons and truffles, along with Settlers’ Beans and Suzanne’s Ultimate Breakfast Casserole for tomorrow.  I really wanted to make peanut brittle, but there was nary a bag of raw peanuts to be found!

Whatever your family traditions, I hope you’re having a lovely holiday!  The monsters blow hugs and kisses to you all.  (Watch out for their chocolate faces.  They loooove bon bons.)

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NaNo Day 46

Oops, title fixed.  Don’t know where “16” came from.  That was like a hundred years ago!

The last big climax approaches.  *shudders*  It’s actually several bad events that happen BAM BAM BAM.  At least two big surprises (I hope, if I’ve done my homework).  I don’t feel like I’ve hit that downhill slide yet, although surely I’m close.

I finally dragged my fanny up Dark & Early this morning, although not so early (6:00 a.m. instead of 5:00 a.m.).  Sadly, that’s the earliest I’ve been able to get up for weeks.  This time of year just kills me.  Plus my cold worsens.  I actually lost my voice tonight and sound like I ate sandpaper for dinner.

I had to be a hardass with myself today.  Why?  Because I WANT THE BRIGHT SHINY.  So I told myself I had to write x words first on Return, and then I could work y minutes on the other.  It let me get a modest word count this morning, spend a little time over lunch on the new idea, and then tonight while cooking dinner, I continued working on Return.  The back and forth approach let me get quite a bit done on both.  The trick is managing my obsessive tendencies.

Today: 2,172

NaNo Total: 93,665

Snippet:  The beginning of big surprise #1 of this climax.  Mykal just realized he’s in even deeper shit than he thought.

“Dragons will occasionally bring kills to the female they’re attempting to woo,” Mykal said, his voice flat.  “One of the tals attempts to win the White Dragon’s favor.  This man refused your will, and now he’s dead.  He’s a gift.”

His bond felt tight and withdrawn, singing with alarm that only grew with intensity.  Lightly, she stroked his cheek and he flinched, his gaze jerking toward hers.  “What is it?  I know you had no part in this.”

“It’s a very deliberate message.”  He licked his lips, fighting to keep his gaze on hers.  “Someone knows who I used to be.”

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Drollerie Press Chat

To celebrate all the recent releases as well as the holidays, we’ll be having a chat at Drollerie Press Dec. 18th, 10 p.m. – 12 a.m. EST.  Details here.  I’ll be giving away a $20 gift certificate, winner’s choice to Fictionwise or the Drollerie Press bookshop.  Other prizes will include ARCs of yet to be released books and other goodies. 

Hope to see you there!

P.S. I hope I don’t get challenged to write something again.  Although I must confess that the zombie love story was a blast to write.  :mrgreen: :shock:

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Sundries

Re: book chat with Cindy — I noticed she hasn’t posted her portion yet.  When she does, I’ll provide the link.

The writing is slow going.  Couple of hundred words here and there.  Why, yes, I am in another nagging scene.  How did you know?  (Because they always slow me down.  I might have to skip this one and get my momentum going again.)

We drove down to Joplin today to visit My Beloved Sis and take her some frozen meat our dad, Papa from Mexico, had brought her on Thanksgiving, which she forgot.  Papa was supposed to come babysit the monsters while we celebrated our wedding anniversary early by eating at my favorite restaurant, Mythos, but Papa has pneumonia!  Not so bad that he needed to be hospitalized, but we definitely didn’t want him driving down here and exhausting himself trying to keep Middle Monster from setting something on fire.

So we changed things around a little and decided to drive down later and see the light display in Carthage.  Aunt BB and Uncle J happened to call while we were on the way, and they decided to follow us.  We visited with Molly awhile and then we all met up at Grand Fortuna, a delicious Chinese buffet.  We also drove around town, showed the monsters our first apartment That Man and I had together, as well as the Missouri Southern campus where I graduated.

A trip to Joplin would not be complete without a stop by Books A Million (we don’t have one here).  Remind me never to take the monsters in there again.  Every book they wanted was ridiculously pricy.  As much as it pained me, I had to deny them a book there, and promised their choice at a more reasonably priced store.  I was able to find book 2 and 3 of Brent Weeks’ fantasy assassin series.  I made the mistake of beginning book 1 the other day and it’s really good.  (I’m not supposed to read anything until I finish Return.)

Once Return is done, stand back, I’ll fall on that entire series like a starving pack of wolves.

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Elf Yourself

Do you know why I write like a maniac?  Because if I don’t keep these characters busy, this is what it’s like in my head.

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

This one is Rhaekhar (Kevin Sorbo), Gregar (not a very good picture of Adrian Paul), Hades (Jason Isaacs), Ruin (The Rock), and Conn (Clive Owen).

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

This one has a little better pictures of Gregar and Rhaekhar, with Christian Bale (yet to be written Given In Fire novella), Charon (Vin Diesel), and Conn (Clive Owen). This one about made me wet my pants I laughed so hard. 

Huge thanks to Dixie Bell for the link!

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Little Did She Know

…that my head would implode!!!

I saw something yesterday in an online book excerpt (that shall remain nameless) that set my teeth on edge and it’s still bugging me, so I decided to blog about it and share my irritation with you.  Maybe I’ll feel better once I get it off my chest.

<rant>

As a reader, I despise being tricked or lied to. 

Don’t spring a suprise in the final pages that the protagonist supposedly knew all along but kept secret from the reader.  POV characters cannot keep secrets!  Not if the author is writing in deep POV.  It’s impossible.  That particular book was made even worse because the POV was first person, and I was still supposed to believe that little “secret?”  Nope.  Sorry.  It doesn’t work, and I refuse to read that author to this date.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved Sixth Sense.  I loved going back to watch the whole movie and seeing all the little clues.  If you do that as an author and give me those little clues to track and decipher, then I’m one happy camper.  I love tracking the trail of bread crumbs.  (Don’t ask me how many Robert Jordan books I read trying to figure out which sister in the Tower was actually one of the Forsaken.  Don’t even get me started about Jon Snow in George R.R. Martin’s series, because if he’s only yanking my chain, I’m going to be really pissed.)

I don’t want you to tell me the heroine is sooooo smart, only to watch her stumble around in the snowy woods with no coat in the middle of the night without so much as a flashlight even though she knows a serial killer is stalking her, all because she heard a noise.  Surely we’ve learned that lesson from Scary Movie 1, 2, …10…haven’t we?  At least in those movies it was FUNNY and not irritating.

My latest peeve:  I despise being treated like I’m stupid.  The biggest slam to a reader’s intelligence is the “little did she know” trick.  Like I’m too stupid to figure out delicate foreshadowing, so I must be clubbed over the head with “little did she know, but the man she was kissing would kill her before dawn.”  Or “she had absolutely no idea that he was a serial killer.”

If she doesn’t know, how can the reader know if the author is handling POV appropriately?  This is author intrusion and I can. not. stand it.  It absolutely drives me bat-shit crazy, even worse than blatant head hopping.

Give me the unease souring her stomach, the chill clawing down her spine, the hair crawling on her nape, something, but don’t give me “little did she know that danger approached.”

</rant>

Nope, I’m still irritated.  Needless to say, I won’t be buying that book.  (At least it was only an excerpt–think how furious I’d be if I had actually PAID to be irritated!)

What’s one of your reader peeves?