Vixenwriter

So in 2002 my husband came home from work and he told me about this book he’d heard about on NPR, Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan. When it came out, we grabbed it and when he finished it, he handed it to me and said, “Read the first chapter.” And I did. And the second and third and so on until I’d devoured the whole thing. And then I read the first chapter again twice more.

I’ve loved everything else he’s written both with Takeshi Kovacs (the protaganist from Altered Carbon), Market Forces (also one of the most amazing opening chapters I’ve ever read) and now, Thirteen. Thirteen arrived three days ago and is taunts me from my husband’s side of the bed all thick and hardback - promising a fabuolous read and a new world. I send him hints about it and he pretends to ignore me, hogging it to himself and reminding me I ordered it for him.

You know when you read a book and it changes *everything*? You read it and you’re blown away by everything about it? That’s how I felt when I read the opening of the book. It’s beautiful and terrifying and blunt and there’s not a word wasted. I’ve read it more than once and it hits me the same way William Gibson does because like Gibson, there’s an intense beauty in the stark backdrop revealed. It’s lush in its economy, if that makes sense.

I have these go to books, either for a scene or for the feel or just the entire package. These books that challenge me as a writer and a reader, books that bring me something each time I read. Altered Carbon and Market Forces most definitely from Morgan (and you can ask most everyone who knows me, I recommend Morgan all the time). William Gibson’s Neuromancer and Pattern Recognition. Neil Gaiman’s American Gods and Neverwhere. The opening chapter of Anil’s Ghost. Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game. Frank Herbert’s Dune. Asmimov’s The Naked Sun and Foundation. Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye and The Handmaid’s Tale. Mary Doria Russel’s The Sparrow. Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Jeanette Wintersons Oranges Aren’t the Only Fruit - these are just a few.

Do you have any books that changed you in some important way?

I was reading something earlier today and it went into my “sigh, so not sexy” file. Filled with a zillion fucking scenes but not a one made me even the slightest bit tingly. It was all random body parts thrusting and rearing, twitching and *this is Lauren, scowling* lots of random buttsecks. And whatever, okay, buttsecks can be totally hot in the right circumstances, it’s taboo, it has cultural baggage - it’s forbidden and when the right author harnesses those things it’s whew, hot, guh! But it’s like any other scene in the wrong hands and I’m left sneering and rolling my eyes and sort of scared of rearing penises.

While I’m a very visual person, sexy to me is more often than not about the stroking of my brain. It’s why porn is okay for like five minutes but after that I find myself bored, amused or horrified. It’s why I like authors who realize it’s not in the quantity of sex scenes in an erotic romance but in how the scenes are utilized.

Don’t get me wrong - a scene with a super dominant dirty talking man is hotter than the sun if it’s done right and in context. Really, really hot (eyeballs roll to the back of my head hot). But a man who takes his time to lick the back of a knee or who leans in to breathe in the scent at her neck? HAWT!

Last night I was giving my husband a massage - yes a real massage, not a euphamism - and I just became entranced by the way his back felt under my hands. The flex and play of his muscles as I worked, the way his ass felt against me as I straddled him, the scent of his warm skin as I pressed my fingertips into it. The act of ministering to him, of caring for him and easing his stress became a huge aphrodesiac to me. Also, the fact that he was there, relenting to my control but still like a great big tiger who could pounce at any moment - shiver.

He told me about his day, just little bits and pieces and his voice echoed through his ribs. His hair, once deep black and now salted with gray, was soft against my fingers as I massaged his scalp.

What was the most sexy was the intimacy of the moment. He told me about his day, I told him about my new story idea, we laughed about the kids and normal stuff and it was good between us.

The outcome is something I’ll save for a book, heh, but there is sexy in every day things that aren’t overtly sexual in nature. There is sexy in connection

Thirteen Very Fine Reasons A Single Woman Would Vacation In India

Here’s to combating negative stereotypes with eye candy. Guh!

1. His name is Dinesh Kumar and he’s from Delhi - *fans self*

2. This one with the smoldering eyes is Tarun Arora - I’m thinking he’s enough to make you take a second trip, no?

3. Another Tarun, Tarun Raghavan - but check the dimple. *swoon*

4. Bollywood actor John Abraham has been a face I’ve really loved for some time

5. Speaking of Bollywood - How about Bollywood’s “Bad Boy” Salman Khan?

6. Oh and how about Emraan Hashmi? They call him “Emraan KissMe” and I can totally see why…

7. More Bollywood anyone? *yes please!* This is Hrithik Roshan (you can all thank me later)

8. Abhishek Bachan - mmmmm - I wanted to show a picture of him in a movie, all dashing and stuff - *sigh*

9. And um, whew, Arjun Rampal is all wet and um, yeah…

10. More you say? Well, let me introduce you to Bikram Saluja

11. Lest I leave out the lovely female reasons to visit India - Aishwarya Rai is one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen…

12. Oh, sweet, sweet Zayed Khan…

13. And shall we close with Dino Morea?

I’ve noted some of the websites where I found these fabulous pictures below here. This was one of the most fun TT’s I’ve done ever. I think I’m really inspired now…whew!

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!

View More Thursday Thirteen Participants

(www.seasonsindia.com, www.indbazaar.com, www.mobilemastee.com/wallpapers/)

So last night after I’d finished writing, I started Linda Winstead Jones’ Raintree: Haunted. I’m really liking it so far but this is one of those books where I find myself totally identifying with the hero instead of the heroine. It doesn’t always happen that way for me, usually only about 20% of the time.

And it’s not that the heroine is dislikeable or stupid, if that were the case, I’d stop reading. But in some books, I identify strongly with one character or the other, usually the heroine in a romance written after 1995 or so. In Welcome to Temptation, I fell in love with Sophie! I loved Phin but Sophie was the character I identified with and rooted for. In Inferno, the first Raintree book, it was definitely Lorna.

I’m not sure why it happens or what it is because it’s not always uniform for me. Sometimes it might be because one of them is more likeable, other times because one of them is more like me or I can connect with something about them, a quirk or a wound in their past or what have you. I think for me when I read, if I can end up really falling in love with one of the main characters, it’s like I’ve made a friend and it’s a mark of a great author to render their readers able to feel like that with a character.

Do other folks do this? Fall in love with one character and if so, what do you think makes it happen for you?

Cynthia Eden wrote a wonderful blog entry at the Bradford Bunch last week about novellas. I love to read novellas, it’s often how I discover new author voices. But when I read a novella, I read a novella. By that I mean, I don’t expect to get the same experience I’d get in full length novel. I’m going to remember that in a novella, I won’t get the same level of detail and characterization I’d get in 100K words. A novella has to be a great balance of characters and enough world to give the reader a backdrop. Cynthia’s novellas in Secrets 15 and 18 are great examples of how to balance detail and character and wordcount. MaryJanice Davidson is also excellent with novella length, Angela Knight, Megan Hart, EC Sheedy, Erin McCarthy are also favorites of mine.

In a quickie - a short of about 10K words, I’m going to keep that in mind even more. I’m going to look for a story that gives me a sharp punch of sensation. A quickie isn’t going to be about worldbuilding, it’s going to be about the characters. EC’s “quickie” series are great ways to find new authors or even to get a tiny bit of an author you already enjoy. Cheyenne McCray’s quickies are wonderful, as are Charlene Teglia’s, NJ Walters’, TJ Michaels’ and Shelley Munro’s.

In a category length novel, you’re talking 60-70K - that’s enough room for worldbuilding and good characterization but it has to be tight or you’re left hungry at the end. There are some harlequin authors who should write the book on how to write great category because they do it all the time and they kick category’s limitiations in the ass. Alison Kent and Jo Leigh are two who immediately come to mind. I’ll add William Gibson because while he doesn’t write romance category, he does write 70K at times but gives the reader an immense world with three dimensional characters (Neuromancer is in my top 10 favorite novels of all time list)

And in a single title, the author has more words to work with, but she doesn’t need to throw in everything including the kitchen sink. Just because you’ve got 100K, we don’t need to know about every single detail. The single title author has to create a big, rich world with interesting characters without unloading *too much* detail and information. Megan Hart is fabulous, Lara Adrian, Liz Maverick, Guy Gavriel Kay - just to toss out a few

Different authors can master these different lengths and some authors can do them all really well. I don’t have much more of a point, I was just having a discussion with a friend of mine over the weekend about novellas and expectations of different types of stories.

I forgot to say I’d be chatting tonight at Writerspace with several other EC authors! 5 pm pacific/8 eastern.

Come out and say hello! www.writerspace.com

Okay so today’s is F/F and it’s going behind a cut. 18 and over only, please and if you are offended by girl touching, you shouldn’t click…
Read the rest of this entry ?

The winner of the Sexy Summer Fun contest is:

Crystal B!

Crystal, email me your snail mail address and I’ll send your copy out when I receive mine (hopefully very soon!) Congratulations.

Keep an eye out for more contests coming up soon. I’ve got a release coming out from EC on July 25, Threat of Darkness, so I’ve got plans for some fun stuff!

I haven’t done ebooks for a while and they don’t get enough love so I thought I’d talk about some I’ve read over the last few weeks.

First off, Your Alibi by Annie Dean.

Blurby Bit: Addie Alger is stuck with her ex-husband’s credit card debts and a failing bed and breakfast in the middle of nowhere. Her brother-in-law, who refuses to wear pants, won’t move out of room 107, even though her sister died four years ago, and her father is constantly `inventing’ stuff that will, this time for sure, make him the next Ron Popeil.

Deciding all men are jerks, she conceives a brilliant solution to her money woes: youralibi.com. For an outlandish fee, she will confirm (although not in a court of law) that a client was, in fact, staying at her bed and breakfast instead of shtupping someone in Atlantic City. Keeping her identity secret becomes increasingly difficult, however, and she learns more than she really wanted to about her friends and neighbors.

Just as she’s ready to swear there are no honest men left in the world, enter Sean Duncan, enraged husband and small-time reporter, whose (soon-to-be-ex) wife utilized Addie’s service more than once. Things are about to get complicated.

Me again: I have to say it’s been a very long time since I’ve read something that broke as many romance rules and took so many risks and worked so thoroughly. Your Alibi is just really fucking good. (What I fine grasp of language I have!). At once it manages to be heartbreaking and heartwarming. It’s funny and tight and Dean’s characters work perfectly with the dialog.

A little aside - she and I share the same agent and at RT, Laura was talking to me about taking risks and breaking rules as a writer and how she liked to rep people who took chances (as a way to cheer me on to keep writing what I write) and she told me about Ann as another example of an author who took risks and if she just got an editor to take a chance, would be the next big thing. And frankly, I think Laura is right. I love to talk up books I think are worth the time to read, Your Alibi is one of them. It comes out Monday from Liquid Silver. Grab it.

NJ Walters’ Three Swords, One Heart released from EC a few weeks back. Here’s a blurby bit: Malik and Kalis are cursed to forever wander the world, searching for the one woman who can break the curse that has plagued their family for seven generations. In each generation of their family, the firstborn are always twin boys who bear the mark of the curse.

The woman destined to break the curse is a warrior woman, adept at hunting and battle — a woman who will give herself and her love freely to both men. Upon the death of her father, Zarina is cast out of her desert tribe. Raised more as a male than female, she is more at home wielding a blade than tending a home.

When their paths collide, both men know they have found the right woman, but Zarina is mistrustful. Do they want her simply because they believe she can break the curse or does their attraction go deeper than that? But fate will not be denied and the three wounded souls must face their destiny together.

Me again: I love NJ Walters’ writing. I do. It doesn’t matter if it’s fantasy, paranormal or contemporary - I love her voice. This book is part of the Torrid Tarot series and I’ve been fortunate to have been amongst some really wonderful authors. NJ’s fantasy themed story is a fabulous mix of action and romance (oh and hot sex too). The backstory of the curse is unique and Zarina is a really wonderful heroine who is a warrior in her own right. Three Swords, One Heart is another winner from NJ and as always, I can’t wait for her next one.

I have Mac’s Take Me and Amelia June’s Triple X to talk about but I also have a looming deadline so my reading time has been much reduced. I’ll be talking about both books next week.

So today I’m over at the Bradford Bunch blog, talking about hero archetypes. Come say hello, weigh in and enter my contest. And while you’re at it, enter the others from Cynthia, Anya, Jodi up as well! Ann chose her winner already but don’t forget to keep checking in for new contests and blog entries.