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Category: Risky Book Talk

Posts in which we talk about our own books

One Starlit Night: Midnight Scandals

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Midnight Scandals officially released yesterday (Tuesday)!

You’d like to know more? Well, all right!

Carolyn Jewel, Courtney Milan, and Sherry Thomas
Midnight Scandals
NLA Digital Liaison Platform/ August 28, 2012 / $3.99 digital

90,000 words of historical romance, and it’s yours for $3.99!

Courtney, Sherry and I talked among ourselves about what price to set and we agreed that we should price it so that someone who is only a fan of one of us will have the warm and fuzzies about reading the other two.

Welcome to Doyle’s Grange, a charming house near the hills of Exmoor, where the garden is beautiful in every season, and the residents are respectable year-round.

 Except when the clock strikes midnight…

One Starlit Night – Carolyn Jewel
Ten years away from Doyle’s Grange isn’t quite long enough for Viscount Northword to forget Portia Temple, or their passionate adolescent affair. Portia, however, is about to marry another man. Northword tells himself it is wrong to interfere in her life at this late hour, but interfere he cannot help, with his words, his body, and the truths of his heart.

What Happened at Midnight – Courtney Milan
Fleeing the consequences of her father’s embezzlement, Mary Chartley takes a position as a lady’s companion, only to find herself a virtual prisoner at Doyle’s Grange, her employer’s house. And then the nightmare truly begins: the man she loves, who also happens to be the man from whom her father stole, shows up at her door seeking recompense. And not merely in pound sterling…

A Dance in Moonlight – Sherry Thomas
After losing her childhood sweetheart to another woman, Isabelle Englewood is heartsick. But then something remarkable happens: Upon arriving at Doyle’s Grange, her new home, she meets Ralston Fitzwilliam, who looks almost exactly like the man she cannot have. Come late at night, she tells him, so I can make love to you pretending that you are the one I love.

Review!

These are three wonderfully complete novellas by three excellent authors. Don’t miss Midnight Scandals.
Myretta Robens, Heroes and Heartbreakers

Secret Stuff!

If your eReader does color, then I think you’ll be impressed because, again, we talked among ourselves and decided some use of color would be a good idea. Why not? Color is free on the internet and in your eReader. It’s a very limited use of color, but I swooned when we were proofreading the files on various devices. Gorgeous and elegant use of color with the title pages and chapter and scene break signifiers. It’s really, really pretty in color, but of course it looks nice in eInk, too!

Places to Buy

All Romance eBooks

Amazon

Apple

Barnes & Noble

Google Books

If you read the anthology, I hope you enjoy it!

Posted in Former Riskies, Risky Book Talk | Tagged , , | 4 Replies

Passion’s Song: To The Tune of Shameless Self-Promotion

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My Very First Novel – Passion’s Song

At last, my reversion for the first novel I wrote, Passion’s Song, came through. And now you can read it. (I’m working on the POD version). Cover art by the wonderful Patricia Schmitt.

Passion’s Song was originally published in 1987. Yes. That’s right. 19 and 87. Before the internet was anything but a really neat tool for academics and DARPA. Before the World Wide Web. “Portable” computers were the size of 3 breadboxes end to end.

I was shaking after I heard the message on my answering machine tape offering to buy my book. Shaking. I had to go walk around the block just to calm down enough to think straight.

I wrote it on an Apple IIc using a nifty program called Word Juggler. I once wrote to the developer of Word Juggler about a problem I felt was a bug and he wrote me a very long personal reply explaining how hard he worked on his program. Then he called me an idiot.

It took 9 hours to print out the manuscript. NINE hours. I had to wait for a weekend to print it out. Editorial comments were actually in red pencil and queries were on special pink tearaway flags pasted to the MS page. I had to MAIL the MS and there was no overnight delivery option.

It reflects the writer I was then. I look at it now, and well. There is is. The book I wrote in 1987. Bought two weeks after my one query made it to NY. Edited to DEATH and then given back to me with instructions to “put it back the way it was.” So, yeah.

The Neo-Blurb

American orphan Isobel Rowland learns she is the illegitimate daughter of an English aristocrat only when her father at last locates her and brings her to England. Her father intends to find her a husband, and if she can catch the interest of Alexander, Marquess of Hartforde, all the better. She hopes to continue her musical studies but finds it impossible unless she masquerades as a young gentleman. Alexander’s interest in remarriage is close to nil, though he finds Miss Rowland intriguing. He is more than happy to act as patron to a promising American musician, Ian Rowland. When Alexander discovers that Ian and Isobel are the same person, their lives collide and before long, they have no choice but to marry and attempt to make a life together.

I couldn’t really read it because then I’d want to completely re-write it. Because I am not the same writer. I’ve learned a lot about writing and the business and, of course, changed as a person and a writer.

Passion’s Song is my words in 1987, and I totally own them. It’s a fun story, with an evil step-brother, a (late) wife who wasn’t very nice, a perky younger sister, and a jaded aristocrat hero with blond hair and a queue. There’s puppies, too.

All I’ve done is had it proofread and corrected some typos that were in the original. Like, somehow the copyeditor (and me!) missed that Brooks’s is s’s. I had to scan it from paper, so there were a lot of OCR errors to correct. My proofreader did an amazing, amazing job of catching OCR errors and original typos. Of course, I did my own proofing for errors with the digital display. I’ve already re-uploaded to correct a few more errors I made.

It’s $3.99, no DRM, available worldwide.

Where you can get it now:

Hopefully SW will get the book on sale at places like Sony, Diesel Books and other wonderful sellers of eBooks.

Posted in Former Riskies, Risky Book Talk, Writing | Tagged , , | 2 Replies

Cover Reveal! Other Stuff, too

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On the ides of March, 2013, the three stories in the Midnight Scandals anthology with Yours Truly and authors Courtney Milan and Sherry Thomas will be available for individual sales.
Here is a the cover for One Starlit Night:

Cover of one Starlit Night

One Starlight Night

The amazing and talented Courtney Milan did the cover. The covers for the other two stories are similarly lovely (and work extremely well in the digital space.)

In other news, I am pulling together the information and resources for doing some audio books, starting with Lord Ruin.

For those of you who listen to audio books, any likes, dislikes, and/or secret wishes in re the same?

Posted in Former Riskies, Reading, Risky Book Talk | Tagged , , | 6 Replies

Multipart Thingee

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Craziness reigns at Jewel Central.

I’m working on The Next Historical and I’m in that “This is so painfully bad, why did I EVER think I could write anything?” phase, plus it’s just really hard, this writing business.

My hero and heroine are currently alone in a bedroom and ALL THEY DO IS TALK!!! I keep muttering “shut up, would you?” at the monitor and they keep talking. This happened in Not Proper Enough, and I thought I was going to end up with the World’s Talkiest Romance. I imagined reviewers saying ALL they do is TALK! but actually, by the time it was out there in the world there were a few complaints about too much sex. So, I must have gotten through the talking part. Cross your fingers that Lucy and Thrale will end up smoking hot.

Art

Today I ended up chatting with a really gifted artist, and though illustration and writing are very different, it turns out there are things in common about being a creative sort. Here’s a link to his website: Ricky Watts. The link goes to his illustrations. I bought two prints. Any guesses about which ones? One hint – Poultry is big in my town. BWAHAHAHAHAHA! You’re on your own as to the other.

Challenges in common: procrastination. I did not tell him it is my belief I can out-procrastinate anyone and besides, he had walls full of art that said his procrastination problem is not as severe as mine.

Getting in the zone. Very familiar (but not as familiar as it ought to be, you talkie hero and heroine!). When you come out the end, it can feel like someone else did all that work. I know a lot of writers feel that way. I’m surprised, for some reason, that it happens to artists too.

I do enjoy meeting creative sorts.

Nachos, Spinich Salad, Sweet Potato Fries

Does that sound like dinner? It was! For me, our own Janet Mullaney, and Pam Rosenthal. Janet was all the way in my part of California this weekend. I was supposed to see them in Berkeley on Saturday, but the Evil Day Job was particularly evil and by Friday I’d had too many nights of <5 hours sleep. I slept until 11:00 AM Saturday, long past our meeting. Goodness. Janet and Pam drove to my town Sunday instead and we shared the meal noted and talked about writing and publishing and writing and it was really lovely to see them both.

To Be Read, and Wished-I-Hadn’t-Read

My digital TBR is getting out of control. But that doesn’t stop me from buying more books. I have Meljean Brook’s Guardian Demon in my Kindle and part of me doesn’t want to read it because then it will be over and I won’t have it to look forward to with such delicious anticipation. I love that series. I love her writing. I do know I have to save the book for when I have a block of time, hopefully this coming weekend.

I did read a book that someone in an RWA workshop (I have the conference on audio and am listening to workshops) said was edgy and risky so I bought it immediately and by about 1/3 of the way through I knew exactly what would happen next and I was in fact right every time. That, my friends, is not edgy or risky. It can’t be if I know what will happen, why it happens, and don’t even care. This book had nearly 900 Amazon reviews and most of them are raving. The author was consistently mistaken about the difference between your and you’re. I was skimming by the middle in case I was wrong about what would happen but I wasn’t so I dnf’d.

What’s in your TBR and any books in your Wished You Hadn’t Read pile?

Well. I think this is a blog bost! I need to get back to Lucy and Thrale and see if I can get them to stop talking.

Posted in Former Riskies, Reading, Risky Book Talk | Tagged , , , | 2 Replies

More Wine And Walnuts and Pie

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Mr. Ephraim Hardcastle, Dry Salter and leading Old Fogey of the Regency has endeared himself to me. Assuming this isn’t really some impoverished, scandal-ridden fellow writing under an assumed identity, ala William Ireland, I have a fondness for the fellow. I worry about that because he says he’s 80 but his buddies many years older. Maybe he meant relatively many years.

I haven’t figured out yet why this book is titled Wine and Walnuts, but he’s also giving writing advice.  Except let me back off a bit and say I find his remarks about First Person interesting. I suppose there’s a conceit there, the 3rd person thing.

Now, having said this much, I will endeavour to show how this marvellous faculty had birth —call me Egotist, if it be your pleasure, for I am of the old school, and save a world of circumlocution, (being too old now to alter) by persisting to pen my sage observations in the first person— I myself I, hating congenially with my ancient friends *, Baron M ***** s, and Mr. C * * * e, among the other ten thousand innovations, those of Him and We, as though in this mincing age every man must mince the matter of propria persona, and worry his brains to stand before the world after all, another Tom Fool, his own amanuensis, by writing as though mister some-one-else sat at his elbow and prompted every line. Well, gentle reader, I will endeavour to show thee how this faculty arose in my mind, how far it* has been indulged (if it have bounds), what have been its concomitants, and what an unceasing source of happiness it has been from early infancy to the present moment — and what a solace midst a multitude of cares; for its interest has “grown with my growth, strengthened with my strength,” and I may add, has lengthened, through God’s goodness, with my thread of life.*

Among these is that innovation, which has banished pies from table. The sterling Mr. *** who has outlived all his family, resides with a worthy matron who keeps a boarding-house; she is a little romantic, and he a little fastidious— “Will you take a bit of tart?” asks the good lady every day.—“No, Madam,” invariably answers the guest. “but I will take a bit of pie.” This is all in good part, and the recurrence, I verily believe, contributes to lengthen his days. I know not two worthier souls than he and the Baron; and both, my seniors by many years, read without spectacles.

Translation:

I’m too old to change. I’m giving you my advice in the first person. In fact, my buddies Baron M and Mr. C, also hate third person, among about 10 bazillion other things. [Insert eye roll here] Those youngsters today make everything more complicated and they couldn’t find themselves if they were alone in a closet. They can’t write “I did this!” Oh, no. They have to get all fancy, and say, “He did that.” As if we’re going to believe there’s someone sitting beside him telling him what to write. So, look, I’m just going to tell it to you straight.

*Nobody eats pies anymore. What’s the hell is up with that? Who needs those fancy tarts? I’m telling you, in my day, we had pie for dinner, and we were better for it. All my friends ate pie, just like I did, and none of need to wear glasses today! And we’re old!

You go Ephraim, with your pie and first person and not needing glasses. I agree with you. More pie!

Posted in Former Riskies, Regency, Risky Book Talk | Tagged , | 2 Replies