Vixenwriter

Smart Bitches ask about the lack of mothers or positive mother/daughter relationships in romance novels. Anya Bast does at her loop as well.

Yeah, I do see a lack of positive mother/daughter relationships in many books. One thing though, people complain when you put them in too. In a review of Touch of Fae, the reviewer took issue with the fact that there wasn’t enough family drama (although, to be honest, HELLO, the book is about a woman trying to assert her indivduality in a family of strong women, she just did it without a lot of drama). Anyway, the Charvez women have a great relationship with each other and their mothers and grandmothers.

And in Giving Chase, Maggie has a strained relationship with her mother and sister but Polly Chase, Kyle’s mother, is wonderful and supportive and becomes a surrogate mother figure in her life.

It’s hard to write family relationships that don’t sound overly dramatic, pollyannaish or just boring. And mother daughter relationships are so complicated!

From Booksquare, a link to an NYT article about literary friendships. I’m fortunate in this way. It’s incredibly special to have friends who go through what you do and who can support you and understand you enough to also kick your ass when you’re being pissy. I love to hang out with other writers, it’s a wonderful thing. And my friendship with the other Mavericks has turned into something really unique and wonderful. It’s not fragile at all, btw, but none of us is. Anyway, the article linked (about a book about author friendships) is interesting. I may come back to this later this week but i have a doctor’s appointment and lunch to make so I’ll be off for now.

Behave yourselves while I’m gone, please. Sheesh.

I got to sleep in this morning and yesterday (8:30 today and 8 yesterday which seems so early but to me, these days, is a luxury). It’s gorgeous outside and I wander downstairs to find chocolates, pretty undies (I lurve me some pretty panties, I’m a lingerie whore), hand made cards from each kiddo and Burt’s Bees lip gloss (and uh, I’m a lip gloss whore too. Simple pleasures, that’s me). Last night I got an ice cream cake. A Ben and Jerry’s ice cream cake with Phish Food on one layer and vanilla on the other in a bed of crushed chocolate cookies, with chocolate ganache on top. I’m a lucky woman.

Happy Mother’s Day to all of you out there reading!

I went to dinner last night with some friends and had an absolutely lovely time. We talked about writing and moving and crazy people. I also came to the conclusion that we need to have a Seattle area writerly gathering like once a month. Just meet for dinner and talk about writing. I’m going to think about it a bit and try and plan something so keep your eye out for my announcement.

I’m still editing. Revising really. But I’m liking my heroine even more this round. Fleshing her out a bit. Making her stronger and more three dimensional. Then I need to finish Sword and Crown. And then hopefully my edits for Vengeance Due will be here and I can get them finished and get a release date. And then? I don’t know just yet. I have several projects I need to finish so I’ll choose when I get on the other side of all this stuff that needs to be done ASAP.

I’m off, I think I want to take the kiddos on a nice walk in the gorgeous sunshine. Have a great day!

Lil at Love Romances gives Sleight of Hand four hearts and says in part: This was a tightly written tale and was especially impressive in leaving no loose threads for such a short offering. Readers will be thrilled with this spunky heroine and her particular brand of sarcasm. Opportunities in arguments to turn the tables on the hero are not wasted. It was particularly refreshing to see a heroine that did not allow for fundamental issues of the relationship to be glossed over with sex. On the contrary, the hero was taken to account regarding differences in viewpoint. Xander for his part is fun to watch as he moves from arrogance to something closer to accommodation. Difficulties in facing the dichotomy of his memories of the gentle mother of his childhood and the vindictive woman scorned are handled credibly. Not being a fool, he understands exactly how well matched his love and he are…it just takes him a bit of time to convince Lissette of this. The sex scenes sizzle. This is a very satisfying read and definitely recommended.

Thank you so much, Lil!

Good Friday Morning, everyone! Thanks to all of your for your kind words of congratulations, they mean so much to me.

So Tracy gave me a head’s up and my cover for Sudden Desire is on the Coming Soon Page at EC. I think I need to send an email to the Art Department so I can get one sent to me to update my website and blog, etc.

I’m editing. I’d say editing hell but it’s really not. A lot of work, yes, but dare I say it? I think I’m used to this now and it’s just another layer of writing a book. I like Angie, my editor at Samhain, a lot. I’m pretty lucky with Ann, my EC editor and Angie - having an editor you like and respect and who respects you is priceless.

I’m having dinner tomorrow night with Samantha! How fun! And then I think we’ll do something family oriented on Sunday during the day.

My husband brought me home flowers last night as a “happy one year publishing anniversary” present. Again, I must say it, he’s a keeper.

Okay, so I haven’t followed American Idol that closely this season, I caught it here and there but that’s during my writing time and so I usually work instead. But I saw the last moments on Wednesday when they announced Chris was cut. And hello? Aside from being totally shocked that the guy with the most regularly demonstrated talent and charisma got kicked off instead of the chick who is moderately okay, was it just me or was Ryan Seacrest sort of nasty when he told Chris he’d been cut? It just seemed totally mean, the way he made it sound like he was going to say, “go sit down you’re safe” but instead said, “you’re going home.” And I know people are exited about the offer to sing lead for Fuel, but um, well, where has Fuel been the last what, ten years? Anyway, he’s a talented guy and he’s gotten a lot of exposure and I hope he can work it into something big for himself. But it felt like back in season one when Tamayra got cut and that doofus Nikki got to stay - it makes no sense.

I read Definitely Dead this last week and I liked it. I know some folks have not liked it at all but I’ll do a review next week about it and say why I did like it. Now I have to pretend Broken isn’t in my TBR pile so I can finish my edits.

Anyone doing anything exciting this weekend?

Triad released. My first novel and it’s still my sentimental favorite.

I want to thank those of you who’ve taken the time to send me notes about my books, who’ve reviewed them, who’ve commented here or at the loops - your feedback is so important to me and that you’d share your thoughts is really special to me.

One year - ten contracted books and five books published. It’s been a really good year for me, and a really bad one too. It’s been tough in many parts but you’ve all stuck with me and my true friends and my family have been a great support and I just appreciate it all so very much.

This crazy dream of mine to be a writer has actually come true. And that is amazing to me. Thank you for helping me make that happen.

Well hey now, I’m a New Voice. Not so new, but I suppose in the big scheme of things I am relatively speaking new to writing. Tomorrow it’ll be one year since the publication of Triad. Sniffle.

Blogger is being very snotty this morning. I suspect it needs chocolate.

I wish I knew why David Blaine being in a tank of water warranted all that time on the news. Not like there’s anything important to report on or anything. I could see if we were at war or had an energy crisis or some weird bird flu was looming. But as none of those things are happening, I suppose it’s great that we spend all that time on just how pruny David Blaine’s hands were when they pulled him out of the tank.

Oh see, apparently blogger isn’t the only snotty one today. And I always need chocolate.

Oh! And another thing- tazo is no longer making decaf chai tea! What is up with that? People, I drink like six cups a day. Six cups of caffeinated tea does not make for a pleasant Lauren experience. Cause, well, you may have noticed but I’m already sort of hyper as it is. All that caffeine would prompt my husband to start hiding the tea, or start doping me up secretly.

So my husband came home yesterday with four boxes of it. He’s been looking in every Starbucks he comes across and they’ve all been out. But yesterday he hit the jackpot. He’s a keeper.

I watched this documentary last night with Jamie Oliver (used to do the Naked Chef show on Food TV) and he’s going around Britain trying to make the food served to children in schools more healthy. He’s a good guy on top of being so cute I want to adopt him. It’s shocking that the schools are supposed to feed children on 37 p a day (65 cents) and we’re not much better. I will say that while I pack lunch for my oldest most days, this year his school has really revamped their menu to include more whole grains and fresh fruit and veggies. It’s hard to get your kids to eat better, some days the struggle exhausts me and I give in (I told you, mother of the year, people).

This is a whole lot of stuff about nothing. And now I need to sign off for a while.

This weekend I wrote ten thousand words. I’m pretty excited by that, it’s the most I’ve written in two weeks. The stress freeze of the whole agent pitch is like background noise now. But I started work on the follow up book to the romantic suspense one that’s coming out next month from Samhain. I realized as I looked at it how far I’d come since I wrote it in late 2004/early last year. And I also thought, “fuck, if I try to edit around this it’ll take me even longer than if I just pick up the threads and write it from scratch.” That and I didn’t so much like the heroine as I’d written her. I wanted her to be stronger.

Anyway, I got my first round of edits on Giving Chase back today. And I wrote that right around the time I wrote Triad. I’ll get back to that in a moment.

Technically, my writing has really improved. And I owe that in large part to my first edits with Ellora’s Cave. Now I usually do one round and a bit of follow up with word choice or small stuff. It’s like 20% of what I went through with Triad. Because I can put sentences and dialog together better. My chief crime, the comma splice is almost totally gone. I think about how I’m going to give information to the reader so I don’t vomit up backstory and drown the reader.

With Wolf, I tore it apart and spent so much time revising it I felt bloody at the end. It’s really a different book than it was six months ago. It’s better because I put so much fucking time into it. And I cut things I loved with a ruthless hand because they were unnecessary. But I’d rather write cleaner the first time out. The second book that comes after Wolf is a better book because I wrote it four months after I wrote Wolf. Just that time made the difference.

These are things I have learned through editing and writing a lot. I could not have learned this stuff from a book or a workshop. That’s not how I learn. I have to do it instead of see it. Although I will say having really excellent crit helps immensely (an editor who doesn’t try to change your voice but pushed you hard and an agent who was an editor in her past life). And it becomes just one more reason why I’m glad I got my start in epublishing because I had an editor who went through nine rounds of edits with me (no shit) and now we do two. She believed in me and damn if that didn’t force me to be a better writer. Now I was able to send a book to NY that was worthy because I was better prepared and let’s face it, a better writer than I was a year ago.

So back to Giving Chase, which is why I had this mini ephiphany - I have SO much work to do on the damned thing because I wrote it before I learned most of this stuff.

I doubt I’ll be trying to resurrect old books. Instead I’ll just use the first draft as an outline and write from scratch. It’s really a better use of my time I think.

You know what I love? When I google myself (that sounds so dirty) and find things like great reviews that I had no idea even existed.

Like this one for Enforcer at Erotic Escapades where Marie gives it Five Tattoos! She says in part: it’s both characters’ emotional growth and the intriguing elements of Ms. Dane’s Cascadia Wolves: Enforcer that kept me reading and it’s the promise of what’s to come in the Cascadia Wolves series that will keep me coming back for more. So if you like werewolves and are a fan of Lauren Dane, then you’ll want to be sure to pick up a copy of Enforcer

Today I spent an hour at the Samhain Cafe (well longer than that actually) hanging out with Charlene Teglia and several other Samhellions as well as some really fun readers.

One thing i’ve never gotten over is the amazement I feel when I get to talk one on one to people whose books I read. I mean, I’m doing a booksiging with Chari next Sunday and dude if you haven’t read her books, you definitely should! She and I were noobs at the same time and I just think she’s a great writer and a really nice person too. And NJ Walters, okay, I remember back when I hadn’t even subbed Triad, I read her at the EC chat board and thought, there is no way she’s really that nice. But you know what? She totally is. NJ Walters is a genuinely nice person who also happens to be really talented.

And there are still times when say, Jaci Burton congratulated me on somethng recently (I can’t remember what) that I get all, “OMG! JACI BURTON!! OMG!” LOL, of course I try to be all cool about it but it’s freaking JACI BURTON!

Anyway, one of the coolest things about this writing gig is just how wonderful most of my fellow authors are. Like Daisy Dexter Dobbs - people, she got a less than wonderful review and her response was so classy and creative and fun that she took lemons and made pie and lemonade and a bunch of new fans. She’s hilarious and her books are fab too.

I was telling Sasha White how when I saw her first comment here I was like, “SASHA WHITE COMMENTED HERE!” because I’d read her erotica and loved it. And I’m glad to be surrounded by such wonderfully talented people.

And look how Rene Lyons came over to my Myspace page and commented about my time today at the Samhain Cafe - how lovely that was! That kind of support is priceless and I appreciate it so much.

There are more authors like Anya Bast and Megan Hart who yeah, are my really good friends but damn people, you should read them both because they are GOOD.

Oh, but none of what we do would be possible without the readers. Sure, I can hang out and talk about books for an hour on a Saturday morning, I mean, aside from it being fun, I’m talking about my book. But that readers spend their valuable time to bother hanging out with us? To send notes and make comments about our books? It’s so special and it still doesn’t feel quite real when I hear from someone who’s read one of my books (and who isn’t my mom). How special are my readers who give of their time and presence just to hang out and be sure I’m not talking to an empty room?

Dude, I’m a lucky, lucky woman.