Milestone: Today the WIP reached 50,000 words. Whew! And yes, the story has a shape now. It's now more than just some scenes that are vaguely related.

Confession: Today, in between writing, for some stupid reason I checked the Amazon reviews for My Wicked Enemy and found the usual for me: some hate :: some love. Not too much in between. Probably because those readers couldn't be bothered. One review mentioned another paranormal book as being much better than my horribly boring one.

So I went off and read some reviews on the book that is soooo much better than mine. And guess what? There was some hate :: some love for that one, too.

Hey! Isn't that interesting? It's not that I suck and Author A does not. (I have her book in my TBR and continue to look forward to reading it.) It's that people have different tastes. And just because my writing didn't work for Reader X doesn't meant it won't work for Reader Y.

Because you know, blue is not everyone's favorite color. It's not mine¹ and yet I don't go around telling all the blue-lovers that they are plainly fools, though they may well be for any number of reasons. Or not.

I felt better after that. A bit petty for the schadenfreude over at Author A's book reviews, but oh well. I'm over it now.

So, please go buy My Wicked Enemy read it and then say what you think over at Amazon or B&N or wherever because it's awesome that readers get to share what they think. As an opinionated person myself I am aware that I loathe Madame Bovary and yet also know a lot of fine people disagree with my opinion. And I'm okay with that.

And you know what, major thank you's to all the people who have written to me either at my website or MySpace and even Twitter to tell me how much they enjoyed the book. It's wonderful when someone takes the time to let an author know. Trust me, we get all excited and warm inside. Keep those letters coming! It makes me very happy.

1. Here's another confession for you. Although I like green my favorite color is gray. I think that means there's something wrong with me.

Geek note: The hex code for gray is

#666666

which can be shortened to #666. Kind of scary, huh?

Labels: Book Reviews, My Wicked Enemy, reading, The Next Historical, writing

Today, August 31, is the last day to enter my Wicked Cool contest.

I've added more prizes, like a book about monsters, some cool magnets, a graphic novel and other wicked cool stuff. All you have to do is sign up for my newsletter and you're in the running.

I'll be choosing a winner tomorrow...

Labels: contest, My Wicked Enemy

Author Meljean Brook sent me an ARC (Advanced Reading Copy) of Demon Bound book 6 of the Guardian Series, on the understanding that I would post a review. Hence, this review.

Before I get into the review allow me to set some background for my experience partly because I'm a geek but mostly because it's relevant to the review, as you will see. Brook sent me an electronic ARC which means my choices for reading were that I could print it out and read on paper, read it on my computer or see if I could get the ARC onto my iPhone. I chose the latter, and did successfully and quite easily load the book into Stanza, an iPhone application that also has a desktop component for loading one's own content. E A S Y. Seriously, ludicrously easy.

The reading experience on the iPhone was damn amazing. Oh my gosh. I can't stand reading without enough light and even with eyes of a certain age, I never had any eye strain or other difficulties.

Demon Bound

From the back copy:

The seductive and dangerous world of the Guardians now yields a secret that threatens the soul of a woman and the fate of the universe, both DEMON BOUND.

Among the Guardians, Alice Grey is known as the Black Widow -- a woman trapped in a web spun by the demon Teqon. To save her soul, she agreed to deliver to Teqon the heart of the oldest and most powerful Guardian of all, or else be damned for eternity. After more than a hundred years, Teqon is calling in his debt.

Jake Hawkins is a novice Guardian whose gift of teleportation could be invaluable to Alice in determining her next move. But in aligning himself with her he never expected to fall in love. Now, their passionate flight to escape Alice's damnable bargain is threatening both their souls. For they're about to discover a hellish secret about the Guardians -- something that will change their universe forever.

Jake Hawkins is a serious hottie who we see mature during the course of the story. Alice is my favorite kind of heroine; highly intelligent, capable but damaged. She's a grown up, though, who understands she has issues and is coping as best she can. (Thank you!)

Brook does a marvelous job setting up the relationship between the hero and heroine. They start out as the two people least likely to end up together, but as they're thrown together, they discover they have common passions as well as prejudices that don't hold up to scrutiny. What can a person do but work to adjust one's view of the world? The relationship arc holds up throughout without that oh so tired I'm going to leave you for you for your own good without telling you why that makes me roll my eyes in so many other stories. By the end, these two had grown and taken risks and dealt with each other like adults. They deserved their happy ever after.

The plot in which the relationship between Alice and Jake unfolds is complex and rich and Brook has a deft manner of providing the information necessary to open up the world of the Guardians without stopping her story. What I particularly like about Brook's writing is the way she shows a world that is large, contradictory and full of ambiguity. Just like real life. Good and evil change depending on the lens through which we look. Demon Bound shows us a slice of her universe while conveying the sense that there is much much more to learn.

There were a few times when I felt like I had to work harder than I should in order to decode some of the subtext behind the character's reactions. I did have to do some careful re-reading of some passages to figure out why a person was reacting in such a way. It didn't happen often, but it's a function, I believe, of the complexity of the world and length limitations. The resolution of Alice's bargain wasn't hard to see coming, but the manner in which it happened was more than sufficiently interesting and (naturally, for Brook) rich in detail, that I wasn't at all bothered by knowing, broadly speaking, how the resolution would be achieved. These are really minor issues, by the way. The story is rock solid, exciting and wonderfully rich.

Now, how much did I like this book? Hmm. You know, the iPhone fits in your hand. And it is possible, for example, to have it sitting on your desk at work while you are waiting for boring file transfers to complete or just dying to find out what the heck is going to happen next. Not me, of course, but I'm saying that's something someone could do with a book on an iPhone. Stanza opens up the book being read at the exact spot where you closed the app, so I never had to fumble to find where to start. I was able to read this book in my car (not while I was driving!) during my son's soccer practice and while lying on my bed when I should have been working on my own darn book.

Also, please let Michael's story be next. He so needs the right woman. Possibly me. I think I would be perfect for Michael. Just saying.

Here's a picture of Tiger the kitten my son adopted in between soccer games last weekend. She's very pretty.



I'm blogging early because I'm pretty much exhausted. What with the soccer tournament last weekend I didn't get to catch up on my sleep which means I've been running at a deficit all week. Missed the gym more days than not because I wanted that extra hour of sleep.


Looks like His Wicked Witch will be titled My Forbidden Desire which title I like quite a lot.

The Next Historical is going reasonably well. I'm finding out some very interesting stuff about Syria and what Napoleon was up to. Right now I'm researching Harems. Worked in the car at lunchtime.

Lastly, my apologies for the boring post. I will try to do better next time. Hopefully after I'd caught up on my sleep.

Remind me to tell you-all about the marshmallow pyramid.

Labels: His Wicked Witch, kittens, My Forbidden Desire, writing

read this interview

My son had a soccer tournament in a city about an hour's drive away. I don't even play the games and I come away exhausted. Why is that? I did a bit of notebooking in between games or beforehand and got some (but not a lot) done when I got home Saturday.

Between games Saturday I went with another of the parents and our kids to find lunch, which we did. We also found a bookstore so I went in and they had My Wicked Enemy so I checked in with them and signed their stock and left some bookmarks. They said they sell a lot of Romance and were quite excited to hear about the SF chapter of RWA. They're a lovely independent in Benicia. I bought some of the coolest magnets ever for the Wicked Cool contest.

Today, they had an 8:00am game which means we had to leave home at 6:00am. On a Sunday. Sigh. They won their game which meant they were in the finals at 1:30. So we went off to have brunch and then do some shopping errands. I discovered that the Pleasanton Target had a lot of books, but only high profile authors (No My Wicked Enemy) which I was surprised to discover made for an extremely boring book section. I shouldn't have been surprised. They were all facing out (makes sense) but considering they had multiple titles by the same author, the selection was quite limited and, as mentioned, very uninspired. I'd just never seen that in person.

But down the mall was a very large Barnes and Noble and they had My Wicked Enemy so I signed their stock and left bookmarks. They were really nice and they moved my books to the front of the store! I hadn't brought any signed by author stickers since I wasn't expecting to go to any bookstores, and both stores were kind enough to use their stickers.

And, last thing, I think. On Saturday while we were in the bookstore the kids went down two stores to the Pet Food Express where they were having a pet adoption. My son has been looking for a kitten for quite a while, but he never saw one that he wanted. Saturday he found a kitten. He came back to find me and tell me he'd found the one so now we have Tiger who is a female kitten, already spayed, has her first shot and is negative for Feline luekemia. She's from a feral litter but has been with a foster family that's been handling her. Tiger is a pale tan cat. I'll try to get a pic when she's settled in a bit. She's very pretty.

Now off to do some writing before I crash for the night.

Labels: bookstores, My Wicked Enemy, signing

I redid what I lost last night. Packing in the research and learning some neat stuff. My 1958 guidebook on Aleppo arrived. Lot's of neat information some of which changed the plot but mostly it's changing itself as I write and discover my pretend plot was silly. Still a marriage under dire circumstances, but the circumstances are evolving. I killed off my first character yesterday, which I was too depressed to blog about after the big oops of August 20. A day of infamy, I tell you. Anyhow, this poor fellow had a stroke and well, he died,leaving the heroine all alone with another person who does not have her best interests at heart.

Neither does my hero, but he doesn't know yet just how low he's going to go. I don't have the heart to tell him. Besides, he'll find out eventually.

I have 41.5K words. Need more.

Off to bed. Will try to do better soon, I promise.

Labels: oops, plotting, research, writing

Last night I did a monumentally boneheaded thing. And I'm going to admit it right here in this space. It was late you understand, and I was tired. So I wrote/edited a chapter I needed to split in two. Did the required file renames. Copied the stuff going into the new chapter, brought up the chapter to be cloned pasted in my text and forgot to rename. Result? Edited chapter gone. I won't bore you with the geeky details but the night's work was to gone.

sigh

I'm working at lunch to redo it.

Labels: oops

big test here. We shall see if the connection is up to blogger. This AM at the gym I had my first big plot refinement. Yay! I have abt 40k words now. Afternoon all!

Labels: iPhone, The Next Historical

I've been working on The Next Historical which has now so fundamentally changed from the days when I decided the working title should be The List, that every time I see that title I think What book is that?

So, from this day until I say different, The List is now officially The Next Historical (TNH)

The story now opens in Aleppo, Syria. I was toying with the notion of handling the story the way I did with the flashback chapters in Scandal but when I decided to write one to see if it worked, but mostly because I really really wanted to write the scene I had in mind, it turned out to be the real opening. We'll see how this holds up.

In other news, I'm up too late. OK, so that's not really news. But it's still true.

Thank you to everyone who's taken the time to email me about My Wicked Enemy. Lots of kind words make a writer feel good! Also, bookmarks are going out tomorrow. I have to buy more envelopes even after I found the missing box on the floor with a few envelopes left. I'll send the rest after I remember to buy more.

Oh, and don't forget! Time's running out to join my newsletter and be automatically entered in my Wicked Cool Contest. Go sign up!

What you get with the newsletter: automatic entry in contests, advance notice of releases, and a warm and fuzzy feeling for being so cool as to like my writing enough to be on my mailing list.

Off to bed.

Labels: bookmarks, Syria, The List, The Next Historical

Why, you ask? I shall tell you.

If you read yesterday's post, you know I finished the Revision Read Through That Would Not End yesterday. Yay! And today, I was going to buckle down and get going again on the next historical.

But first I had this little problem of a plot that might not be possible: I want my hero and heroine to be in Turkey in the early 1800's and I want them to get married under dire and dramatic circumstances. My train of thought has been going something like this:

There were lots of Christians in Turkey then so there are surely Christian churches there (yeah some pretty famous ones, I know!) But probably not the Church of England so the usual rules in Regency marriages aren't going to apply. They can't go back to England to hit up the Archbishop for a Special License and then go back to Turkey...

That train of thought died shortly thereafter.

So, where can these guys get married pretty much in the dead of night that would be legal enough to cause a problem when they're back in England later? Is there an Archbishop equivalent in Turkey? But if there is, I still can't have the hero trotting off to line up the paperwork and then going back -- Ok, bad guys, you can start again, I'm back and ready to thwart you! Thanks ever so for waiting.

Yeah, some questions to resolve, eh? Tonight, after I cleared away some stuff that had to get done first, I invoked the awesome powers of Google.
Dun dun da dun!!!!

Here are my Google search phrases:

• Christianity in Turkey in 1800


• British Marriages in Turkey in 1800

Da motherlode folks! Because one of the search results was an article about a marriage that took place at the British Consulate in Turkey in 1894. Ohmygod! Of course! They get married at the British Consulate.

So now my train of thought is like this:

Where the hell was the British Consulate in Turkey in the early 19th century? I can move this back to Constantinople if I have to but that would be seriously lame. Was there even a Consulate for sure and do I have to find out who the Consul was?

More awesome powers of Google.
twinkle twinkle twinkle

Here is my Google search phrase:

• British Consulate in Turkey in 1800

And this lead pretty much directly to a 1911 Encyclopedia about Aleppo, where the British Consulate was reopened in 1800. And get this! There was some fighting going on there. Is that perfect or what? Now, Aleppo is in Syria but who cares, this doesn't have to happen in Turkey plus it's described in the 1911 source as Asiatic Turkey. Wikipedia has this to say about Aleppo: The city remained Ottoman until the empire's collapse, but was occasionally riven with internal feuds as well as attacks of the plague and later cholera from 1823.


Seriously everyone. This could not be more perfect for my story. Internal feuds. Plus plauge AND cholera. Wow.

I am thrilled to bits.

And now going to bed.

Labels: Google Love, research, The List

I am finally done revising His Wicked Witch. It took FOREVER to read through for errors. Found some. Fixed a lot of stuff.

I have emailed it to NYC.

Now, to get going on the November book.

Nite.

Labels: His Wicked Witch, Reivsions

I revised at lunchtime in the car (because the day job has no lunch room and no conference rooms) then I came home, did stuff that needed to get done, whisked the son off to soccer practice and sat in the car and revised some more. Then I did more stuff that had to get done and now I'm back to revisions as soon as I post this. Well, just checking that I didn't create any new messes and cleaning up anything else I find.

Sigh

I'm exhausted because of Acheron and I have to get up at 6:30 or so because my son has a soccer tournament this weekend. Two games Saturday one Sunday, and then, depending on the outcome, possibly a championship game.

Off to revise.

Labels: His Wicked Witch, Revisions

Acheron.

That's why.

I really really enjoyed Acheron. Enough that I went two nights in a row staying up far too late for a 4:25 am wake up. I'm dragging now. Could I quibble about this book? Yes, but not about very much and not about anything that matters. And to be honest, after reading a few Big Books that were a disappointment, I was thrilled to read one that wasn't in any way.

Sherrilyn Kenyon totally delivers. I expect I'll be re-reading it, too.

I have a final read through of revisions for His Wicked Witch and then it's off to NY. Then I have to write like heck for the book due Nov 15.

Off to it.

Labels: Acheron, Authors, Book Reviews, His Wicked Witch, historical project, reading

Labels: books, carolyn is a fan girl

The HQ party was a blast. Some young gentlemen attended unexpectedly and I believe they very much enjoyed dancing with 500 women. A tree fell down and had to be ported out of the room in pieces, but I only saw video of that. By then, I was back at the hotel hanging in the bar with historical authors Megan Frampton, Kalen Hughes, Sabrina Jeffries, Madeline Hunter, Monica McCarty and sexy contemporary author Bella Andre.

A fun time was had and many stories were told involving microwaved lobsters (oh my gosh) human anatomy (!) and the texted phrase go fish urself because I was unable to text something different which I will leave to your imagination other than saying it was known by all to be a joke as I was texting on someone's behalf and she said something that didn't involve fish. Also, I confessed my music preferences to Megan who knows everything about music. She says she still likes me.

Then we talked a bunch of smack about -- I'm not saying. You shoulda been there.

Also, today I got my tat.

Labels: partying, RWA Nationals, talking smack

Beverly Jenkins and Sabrina Jeffries at RWA Literacy Signing July 30, 200

Larissa Ione at GCP Signing, RWA

Andrea Pickens At GCP Signing

Jade Lee and Friend Carol snapping pics

Me at GCP Signing

Labels: Pictures, RWA Nationals