Vixenwriter

Let’s see – I hit 25K on Making Chase last night. This is an emotional book so I’m having to work to rein Tate in. She’s wounded but really strong at the same time and Matt is the kind of guy who’s never really had to struggle and he realizes this and it’s sort of difficult for him to face. The sex has been fun to write and I love Tate’s family a lot. I’m hitting the meat of the story right now (no, not that meat, sheesh)

My husband bought a special scale that has body fat measurements, etc on it. I wasn’t that excited about using it but I have to say I was pleased with the results. I expected my body fat to be a lot higher but I’m at the good end of the healthy scale, so yay! A few years ago it was really high so having it be healthy is a nice thing. I still don’t like scales though.

I’m just finishing up Alison Kent’s The Perfect Stranger. I’m going to be running a fun contest to win an ARC soon so keep an eye out.

I’ve been listening to TV on the Radio as I exercise, I am in love. I also found Sleater Kinney’s One Beat – I’d thought I lost the CD (along with Liz Phair’s Exile in Guyville which is still missing). I miss Sleater Kinney already. Why can’t sucky bands break up, why always the bands I love?

Not watching much television. I rarely do, especially when I’m working a lot. I was not impressed with last week’s Battlestar Galactica, I frown in your direction, writers! Dresden, now I know they’re deviating from the canon and that agitates people, but I’m liking it. I love the books too, but oh, okay, it’s Paul Blackthorne. I can’t help it, I’m weak, he’s soooo Harry! Well, better looking I think, but still that rumpled loser with the heart of gold thing – it works. It also makes me happy that Jim Butcher has given the series a thumbs up.

Um, well yeah, that’s about it, nothing very exciting. It snowed here this morning for a while but it’s turned to rain, my daugher is watching Barbie Rapunzel for the millionth time (Thanks auntie Megan, LOL). Oh, RT is less than two months off now, yay!

Have a good hump day!

And I’m not talking about a new dance…

I’m talking about the process that comes after you finish writing a manuscript. The process of sending out and waiting. The process of trying to figure out ways to check in without being a pest or seeming impatient when you’re totally impatient and dying to know.

I hate the slog.

When I’m writing, I don’t think about the slog. I just write. But the minute I’m done with edits and revisions it’s all I can think of. The wait. Oh god, the wait is horrible. I hate it.

The wait is that place deep inside you where you first think your book is fabulous and will be snapped up immediately. But the longer the wait, the more the insidious whispers start about how much you suck. About how weak your story is and how you’ll never sell again. Those sales before were all abberations and it’s all downhill from here. When people don’t reply to your emails right away you begin to worry that they’re mad at you or they have something bad to tell you and don’t know how to say it.

The slog, in a nutshell, takes the very confident person and turns her inside out. Sometimes when it’s late and I’m tired and trying to pretend that the slog doesn’t bother me, I like to imagine people like Nora Roberts dealing with the slog. You know just to make myself feel better. I know she did her time but it makes me happy to think about one author who doesn’t have to worry about that next contract. I like to imagine that Nora sends her pages in and everyone grins and says, “It’s good Nora sent this. We love Nora” and she cackles with glee, her power running through her veins and letting the rest of us live vicariously through her. But I digress and that sounds sort of scary. I think I’ve been eating too many Lean Cuisines and bugging my agent too much and it’s making me all loopy. Or rather, loopier.

Essentially, I’m babbling because I am currently slogging over FIVE manuscripts. FIVE. It’s enough to make me eat one of those extreme meals they were talking about in the New York Times today (with two days’ worth of calories in one serving). But as I’m currently nervously nauseated, I’ll probably heat up a lean cuisine and curl my lip at it, accusing it of ruining my life and posting here instead of emailing my agent, yet again today.

So I’ve been meaning to write about my experience with the Bare Escentuals face powder – I love it! It goes on quickly and easily, it gives great coverage but it still sheer enough that it doesn’t look like pancake and it’s very light. I don’t feel like I’m wearing makeup at all. I also picked up some of their eyeshadow and powdered eyeliner and give that a thumbs up too.

Let’s see, other stuff…oh I finished my synopsis and partial of After the Fire (contemporary menage erotic romance) and sent it to my agent. We’ll see where that goes.

Now I’m back to Making Chase again, which is nice since I’m in a contemporary state of mind. I’m hoping at my current pace to be finished by mid-march.

Watched Dresden and BSG. Love me some Dresden but I have to say I was disgusted by the sudden turn in Roslyn’s character in the last five minutes of the show. Not so much by what she did, which should have happened in the first part of the show, but by the fact that the change in her behavior wasn’t supported by the writing at all.

In fact, the whole episode annoyed me greatly. I’m not a Roslyn fan, I thought she was all woo woo the first season, and then she was weak the next which led to the whole New Caprica debacle and now I don’t know what she is but I do know she’s still annoying. She’s all over the place character wise and the writing makes no sense. Last night, well, really the last two seasons, I’ve wanted to shove her out an airlock. The last two episodes drove me crazy. I know there’s a meta story arc happening and it’s all very big picture, but the Dr. Phil nature of things and the lack of substantive character motivation is making me crazy.

Hey folks, I’m guest blogging today at the Samhain Blog about Redeeming Bad Hero Behavior. Stop on over and lend me your opinion!

A bit about one of the books I talk about in the entry – Innocent in Death arrived yesterday afternoon. Happy sigh (how I love Amazon prime!). I finished it last night by 10 because i had to know. I had to force myself not to look at the end to be sure Eve and Roarke were all right.

I really loved Innocent in Death. JD Robb books are some of the few I don’t blink twice at in hardback. I love Eve and Roarke, and in fact, I’ll go out on a limb and say Roarke is the best romance hero ever. I simply love him.

But oh I did not love him last night as I read Innocent in Death. Grr. Oh Nora, you have to make him suffer next book, okay? Because he did not suffer even a tenth of what Eve went through, scared, insecure, feeling like no one believed her most of all this man who is her everything.

Not to scare you – there’s not a single moment in this book where Roarke is even thinking of cheating. I want to say that up front because I was worried. But I don’t think he’s nearly quick enough off the mark with this evil woman who comes to town set on getting him back. He lets her push too far and worst of all, he does not back Eve’s feelings up. That’s what I hated the most.

Innocent in Death was fabulous with emotional tension and drama. When Eve wept I did too and man did I want to kick the crap out of Roarke in at least four different places. I suppose in a way, it was necessary to humanize Roarke a bit, but there’d better be more scraping than pizza for dinner to make up for his actions in this book in the next one that I will so be rushing out to grab, because, as always I’m left wanting more more more.

Natural Born Charmer by Susan Elizabeth Phillips – I ordered this from Amazon on Tuesday, it got here Wednesday and I read it in one sitting that night.

I’m a ginormous SEP fangirl. I’ve loved all her books but one. I think she’s got an amazing gift with creating flawed characters that just appeal to me on so many levels.

So I’m not surprised to say I thought NCB was a fabulous book. I absolutely loved Blue. I thought as a heroine she was wonderfully messed up but filled with heart and fight and strength. I wasn’t baffled by her behavior at all, I really connected with her.

I loved the secondary characters – April, Dean’s mother, Jack, his father and Riley, his sister. As usual, SEP takes characters you would find unredeemable in the hands of other authors and makes you root for them.

And I liked Dean a lot. In fact, I loved him for 98% of the book. However, here’s the quibble that took it from 5 stars to 4 1/2 for me – he was a total dick at the end of the book. I won’t say what he did and give spoilers but I didn’t think he suffered enough for it and I don’t think he redeemed himself enough.

Otherwise, I was cheering for them to end up together, I loved their chemistry. This was a very sexy book and it had loads of great tension and eroticicism in it.

Lots of funny moments and bright, vivid characters, including the town and Dean’s house. This is one I’ll definitely read again.

Books in my TBR pile added this week:

Innocent in Death by JD Robb – this is on the way from Amazon and I’m all angsty about reading it. I keep seeing all this stuff about trouble between Eve and Roarke and it makes me nervous.

Unforgettable by Shelley Munro

Carinian’s Seeker by TJ Michaels

Taliff’s Cure by Bonnie Rose Leigh

Thirteen Quotes I Love

1. Work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. – Vaclav Havel

2. The dissident does not operate in the realm of genuine power at all. He is not seeking power. He has no desire for office and does not gather votes. He does not attempt to charm the public, he offers nothing and promises nothing. He can offer, if anything, only his own skin — and he offers it solely because he has no other way of affirming the truth he stands for. His actions simply articulate his dignity as a citizen, regardless of the – Vaclav Havel

3. We don’t see things as they are. We see them as we are. – Anais Nin

4. He who controls the past commands the future. He who commands the future conquers the past. – George Orwell – 1984

5. I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. -Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird

6. In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. – Martin Luther King, Jr.

7. Love is the difficult realization that something other than oneself is real. – Iris Murdoch

8. Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything. – George Lois

9. Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean. – Maya Angelou

10. I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear. – Nelson Mandela

11. A word after a word after a word is power. – Margaret Atwood

12. I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. – Elie Wiesel

13. Your silence will not protect you. – Audre Lorde

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Hey everyone, come and join me, Megan Hart and Anya Bast tonight at 6
pm pacific/9 eastern for our monthly Maverick Author chat in our chatroom!

Taking Chase is out in print today. This makes me very happy. I loved writing it and I love Cassie and Shane as a couple. I love writing romance. All kinds of romance from sensual to downright scorching and I love to read romance from all spectrums. Sometimes, I wish spines weren’t imprinted with genre labels because inevitably people will see that and build expectations and be disappointed.

I was thinking about romance and the things I’ve read lately about romance – from Maureen Dowd’s dismissively insulting op ed piece in the New York Times to some of the things around the web about what a romance is and isn’t and what makes an erotic romance erotic, etc.

It gets back to something I said recently at RTB about perception. We all read a book from our own perceptions. It’s a matter of what we like and don’t like, what our experiences are and what our biases and filters are. Some people look at the Sookie Stackhouse books for instance and think they’re romances while I look at them and see them as paranormals with romantic sub-plots. Doesn’t stop me from reading them, I like them very much, but my perception colors my opinion and expectations.

One person’s best romance ever is another person’s DNF. And IMO, that is what makes the world so interesting. That two people can view the exact same thing in such a different way. I think that’s worth celebrating.

I should so not write about this, I should be politic and pretend I don’t see it but really, I can’t. I can’t because there’s something I hate more than Anne Coulter and that’s when people gang up and make other people afraid to speak out. That’s petty bullshit bullyism and it’s not okay.

What I’m seeing is so reminescent of 10th grade it gives me the hives. It’s Mean Girls with blogs and aside from being tedious, it’s a vicious cycle.

Here’s the thing – is there a double standard about what authors can say and how they respond to anything said about them? Yep. And I accept that. It comes with the territory and if you don’t get used to it, you’re going to get an ulcer and be upset all the time.

But are there people out there in blogland right now who take everything positive and spin it to a negative because they seem to feed on that? Yes. Yes and those same people are the first ones to whine if anyone turns that around on them.

However, these folks are not indicative of the reader/author blog group and I want to re-emphasize that. 99% of romance lovers (readers/authors/reviewers) are not this way. They’re places you can have a great, spirited discussion, even disagreements, without negativity or anger.

I remember not too long ago, consistent assertions that there was some sort of divide or feud between authors and readers and I called bullshit then and I call it now.

I’m not buying it because it’s not rational to apply the behavior of a few to generalize outward. And I don’t buy that speaking out in opposition or giving another opinion makes anyone thin skinned or an author misbehaving or whatever. I’m never going to buy that the presence of an opinion counter to one I hold, or one you hold, is in and of itself a bad thing.

What I choose to do then, is to reject the rampant bitterness out there in certain places. I’m going to say out loud that when anyone has to be afraid to be honest or speak up that’s not right.

So I’m saying no. Not going there, not commenting. I’m not playing because I have enough negativity in my life as it is. But no petty dictator wannabe is gonna tell me I can’t speak my mind.

Lori tagged me so here I go…

1. The sound of iceburg lettuce being turn or cut makes me gag. I’m not kidding.

2. I know the entire soundtrack for Hair the musical

3. My cousin Trena and I made up a cheerleading routine to Loverboy’s Working for the Weekend the summer I was 12. I still remember the opening parts.

4. Any time the movie Valley Girl comes on I watch it. At one time I knew the whole script, I still know about 50% of it.

5. I was in the Andy Gibb fanclub.

6. I love to dip french fries in chocolate milkshake

7. I collect books with disobedient secretaries and wives in the title. I don’t read them, I just like to see them on my shelves.

8. I love funky socks. Luckily my husband indulges this habit and brings me home a great new pair every once in a while. If you’re going to be at RT, you’ll probably see some of them.

9. I say “dude” too much

10. I love navy beans. With catsup.

Yes, I am odd and that’s just the surface, LOL!! I’m supposed to tag people but I’m pretty sure everyone’s been tagged. How about TJ, Shelley, Megan and Anya?