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Monthly Archives: July 2013

The First Third

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I’m working away at The Next Historical and I’m making progress. The story is starting to gel which, you know; :::Sigh of Relief::: This writing gig is hard work. Yesterday when I was reading through my current chapter one, I thought to myself, hey! This is pretty good! :::runs around cheering::::

I’ve hit the first third of the story when typically things are slightly less sucky and slightly more focused. It’s a good feeling.

I think I might have mentioned already that at first the book was set in London. I was reading a lot of my Epicure’s Almanack that the dog chewed on and I was all ready to start using some of that great research. But then I ended up moving the story to the country and so far no one is showing any sign of wanting—

omg, I just had a great idea! ROAD TRIP!!!!! They will travel somewhere…. and do something…. and exciting stuff will happen!!! And there will be hotel rooms and possibly shenanigans.

—to leave the country.

That does not mean my research was wasted because, as it turns out, this whole section I read on a totally wild, extravagant party that Ryder made up (it NEEDS to be TRUE!!!) has turned into this backstory-ish thing based on that and it’s working out well.

Next Week

Next week is RWA and some of the Riskies will be there, including yours truly. I will do my best to post.

What are your plans for next week?

Posted in Former Riskies, Research, Writing | Tagged , , | 4 Replies

An Oldie But a Goodie – Loving Julia by Karen Robards

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One of my favorite Romances is Loving Julia, by Karen Robards, which came out in 1986. I probably read that book a bazillion times. The hero, Sebastian, was :::gasp::: blond! Here’s the cover:

Cover of Loving Julia by Karen Robards

Cover of Loving Julia

Yes, it’s a little beat up, but I read this book a lot. On page 36, Sebastian is described like this:

This man was blond, lean, and blindingly beautiful with the flawlessly molded face of one of the Lord’s archangels.

On that cover, people, the hero is BLOND.

Blond heroines abound in Romance, but sometime in the mid-1990’s I think, the blond hero became anathema on the cover and almost as rare between the pages. Word was, blond heroes don’t sell. I checked on Amazon, by the way, and the available paperbacks of this book have a yellow cover with flowers, not a shirtless blond dude about to ravish a brunette beauty. Readers complain about covers that don’t match the story, but this one comes pretty darn close.

Why I loved this book

I loved the icy, remote, Sebastian, and I loved how he learned to unbend. It’s a Pygmalion story and I had the same issues with the trope here as I do with My Fair Lady; the quickness with which women are trained up to be worthy of a man. But Sebastian is no asshat ‘Enry Higgins, thank goodness. I think it’s the blond hair. Like Eliza Dolittle, Jewel, the heroine, is not stupid. She really, really, wants to take advantage of this chance to change her life.

Sebastian gets drunk and has intercourse with her, and for Jewel it’s emotionally transformative and for him–so he says later, it’s a blank.

Robards writes a good grovel and you know it’s coming.

And that’s why I LOVE this book.

Observation

As I thumbed through my copy of this book, I could not help noticing that the pages are yellow, getting brittle, and though the pages are still glued in, if I read it again, I’d have to be careful.

Which makes me wonder about people who talk about the permanence of paper books.

Not really, right? They only mean certain books. Not all books.

Alas, alas, alas, Loving Julia is NOT available as an eBook, and that makes me sad.

What’s one of your favorite romances?

Posted in Former Riskies, Reading | Tagged , , | 7 Replies

Do you Listen to Audio Books?

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First, allow me to apologize for missing two Wednesdays in a row. Crazy times at RWA, but I warned you-all and expected I might not be able to post that week. But last week? I didn’t go back to work until that Wednesday, and I just totally forget. Tuesday felt like Monday, you see…

So, about Audio Books. I’ll have to get you there the long way because I’m going to tell you my story.

There are a few things you need to know first:

1. In the olden days, I was given several audio books on DVD, and I listened to them in the car and I enjoyed that. But I always lose the DVD and … too many steps. Too many things to lose so I didn’t pick up the habit. Besides I don’t take very many long car drives. I’m also really the only person in the house who could listen to the DVDs because everyone else is deaf or hearing-impaired, except my son, and part of my strategy for not having STUFF is the ability to give stuff to someone else.

2. I live where there is sucky internet so by and large, in the medium olden days, it wasn’t possible to download an Audio book unless I wait to start the download very late at night, so again, never got into the habit.

Time passes and authors everywhere are doing well with audio books because of Amazon making it easy for customers to get them. Also: 4G for the iPhone and iPad which is a LOT faster than the internet in the house. On the iPad, I can watch YouTube videos like the one below (which blew my mind for reasons I will shortly disclose) without waiting for buffering every 30 seconds.

The video below, which is the funny, smart, and talented Kevin Gisi telling us How to Be An Insomniac blew my mind because apparently, as I learned from this, you can listen to audio books and set a timer to turn it off. I had no idea.

Normally, if I can’t sleep, I plot in my head so I often find insomnia useful until I have to go to work on way not enough sleep. From time to time, though, I experience plotting-proof insomnia. No fun. But the audio book thing. MY GOD!!!  I realize this is blindingly obvious, but it just wasn’t in my world.

Right. So I’m working on getting an audio book for Lord Ruin. This is a wonderful thing at the moment because mostly it involves no work on my part. A good friend of mine’s daughter is an actress, mostly Shakespeare, and she’s narrating the book for me. And while I was at RWA, she and her producer sent me the first chapter to listen to. And it was awesome. They sent chapter two a few days ago and that was awesome, too. There I was lying in bed listening via the iPad and now I want complete audio books to listen to.

A few months ago, the company that did the original audio book for A Darker Crimson contacted the series authors about re-upping– he wanted all the authors’ books so we had to make a group decision. After some dithering around we said sure and my agent took care of all the contract stuff and a couple of months ago, the company sent me a copy of the audio book. On 11 CDs. My reaction then was oh god. more STUFF but now I’m thinking, WOOT! I can rip the CD’s and get it to the iPad!

The Poll

[poll id=”11″]

Now I’m curious. What do you think of audio books? If you don’t listen to them, why not? If you do, what got you listening?

Posted in Former Riskies, Writing | Tagged , | 13 Replies

Wanted: A Strapline!

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This must be our time for asking for help from our readers. Megan asked for help for finding examples of heroines for her HSCD (handsome, snarky, charming duke). Susanna asked for what risks readers thought Riskies should take. And I need your help coming up with a strapline.

1815 019 no 2 A strapline is a header that will run across the top of my author page at eHarlequin and Millsandboon.co.uk

Examples of straplines were things like:
“Fun, fresh, and flirty romance!”
“Sizzling stories that will keep you turning the pages…”
“Romance author fuelled by coffee and craziness”
“Cowgirl chick and western romance writer”

I would want mine to include that I write Regency Historicals and I want it to reflect my particular spin on the Regency.

Here’s what I came up with so far:
“Mayfair, Almack’s, and the Regency Underworld! Award-winning Regency Romance”
“Mayfair, Almack’s and the Regency Underworld! Emotion packed Regency Romance”

What sort of strapline would attract you? Should I include the words “award-winning?”

The strapline cannot be more than 10 words.

So here’s the challenge. Help me come up with a strapline. Write me a new one or give your opinion of the two I came up with. Or give me guidelines to write a good one. Take a look at my website for ideas. There’s a $5.00 Amazon gift card for the winning strapline. Or, if I don’t pick the best one, I’ll choose one winner at random, winner to be announced next Monday.

And, in case winning a $5 gift card isn’t enough, enter our newsletter contest! Just sign up for our newsletter and you’ll be entered. For the prize we’ll pay off at least $40 of your Amazon Wish List! Janet will announce the winner on August 1.

Posted in Writing | 8 Replies