Vixenwriter

So today is the first day of the 70 Days of Sweat Challenge! I’ve got a lot on my plate from now until March or so, so I’m really looking forward to doing round two and I’m hoping it’ll be as productive for me as the first round was.

Be sure to check in at the Sven Blog for daily entries but most especially on Wednesdays and Sundays for progress reports. I really found the check in part to be helpful last year because it really gave me some focus and accountability. I do write every day, but with this challenge, it helped me keep myself hyper-focused on my goals and I go so much done it surprised me.

There aren’t any shortcuts to being a writer. No ghostwriters to take on the burden for you. No magic beans. If you don’t put in the work, you won’t finish the book. If you don’t finish the book, you won’t be able to publish it. And in the end, it’ll all be talk and might have beens. It’s scary to take that step and risk yourself by making the committment to write. There will always be rejection. Always be better writers, better deasl, hell, worse writers getting better deals! But I’ll tell you something, for me, there’s nothing like seeing my book on the shelf, nothing like finishing a book, nothing like being an author and I’d never trade it, even when I get rejected or blocked or discouraged.

In the end, the formula is the same - put your ass in the chair and your hands on the keyboard (or on a pen) and work. You can achieve the final product in a host of ways - carefully plotted or seat of pants and everything in between. But if you don’t make that committment to the work, to the project, you can’t ever get there.

Jiggity Jigg…. Got home late Friday night after many days of driving. Or well, after many days of my husband driving and I sat, handed food and drinks to the kids, made them stop arguing and even did some reading here and there. The constant chaos of three kids is insane but I’m so used to it at this point, it’s crazier when there’s silence. The husband driving is one of those marital things - he always wants to drive, I couldn’t care less so I give in on it. I save the battles for stuff I care about. Anyway, I’m so glad to be home and not in a car.

This is us at the California Adventure park - we rode the Roaring Rapids ride twice and were totally soaked. Still, it was so hot it worked out nicely and we dried quickly. I can’t believe everyone is marginally looking toward the camera at once, no one is crying, hurting anyone else or doing anything non cameraworthy.

I am sick to death of eating in restaurants and living out of suitcases. How can three little people make such a huge pile of laundry? Good lord, I did laundry all day yesterday and then I got started on edits for To Do List, which were quite breezy and Angie made me laugh several times with her comments. I should finish those up today and get them gone so I can get back to finishing up dirty/bad/wrong for pitch later this month.

Monday, 70 Days of Sweat begins again, more on that in a moment…

Don’t forget to check the contest page of my website, I’ve got some good stuff going on right now!

We here at Sven Says Sweat invite you participate in round two of our Seventy Days of Sweat Writing Challenge. The challenge begins on Monday, October 15 and runs through Tuesday, January 15.

Yes, that’s 93 days. We’re giving you 23 days off to use as your personal holiday and religious circumstances require

For those participating in Nano who don’t want to start before 11/1, you can use the first 15 days to plan out your story, and then have 45 days to polish once November is over.

The goal is to have a completed manuscript at the challenge’s end.

The rules are simple. You agree to write from 750 to 1500 words a day (depending on your project needs) between the dates listed above. If you need to take off a day, you make up the pages another. Remember: You only have to do the writing for 70 days.

You don’t have to have a blog to participate, but we do want you to sign up below so everyone involved can get to know one another. And if you do have a blog, you can post the information there. Going public with your commitment is about owning it.

As far as reporting your progress, you’ll come back here each Wednesday and Sunday and post your total word count. Those of us sponsoring the challenge will be dropping by your blog (if you have one) and egging you on! And this year we have several co-sponsors who will also be checking up on you! (More on that later.)

The challenge is open to anyone writing in any genre, published and aspiring authors both. On the sidebar, you’ll find our logo if you’d like to put one on your blog. For now, let’s see a show of hands.

Who’s not afraid to sweat? Go here and sign up! I’m one of the author sponsors this round so I promise to poke at you and cheer on your successes too!

I’m currently slightly sunburned, my feet hurt, my eyes are sore and I’m hoarse from saying, “stop that!” Yes, I’m on a family road trip to Disneyland and we’ve finally managed to hustle the kids to sleep (although my daughter is still rustling). It’s hot, it always is when we come down here, no matter when we do it, it’s like we bring the heat or something. It should get cooler tomorrow. We did the beach on Monday. My husband and I grew up here so we went to Newport Beach for the day and totally scored with a parking spot like a block from the water. My kids loved it, I loved it, fun was had by all. Today we started off at The Haunted Mansion and the kid who was fearless last time is now not so much and the one who was scared rode all the rollercoasters with abandon. Who knew?

I’ll have more to blog about when I’m not ready to pass out. I hope everyone is having a good week! I’ll be home by the weekend.

So yesterday we drove through a town to get gas and I looked at my husband and said, “This town is like one of those towns in the beginning of a horror movie.” No canibals got us, or werewolves.

I’ve been writing and revising a lot so my reading has fallen behind but I have read some verra good stuff in the last weeks!

Maya Banks’ For Her Pleasure - this is Maya’s first offering from Berkley and aside from a gorgeous cover, it’s a really good book too. It’s three interconnected stories - or really two stories that are more like chapters and then another story. The first couple, or rather triad is made up of childhood friends, Kit, Ryder and Mac. Mac has been in love with Kit a long time and he and Ryder have protected her but Kit suffered through a violent assault and they’re all attempting to deal with it. Banks brings the threesome together in a lovely way. Banks weaves in some emotional issues for each one of the group and they carry over into the second chapter of their story as well. Nicely drawn tension and she deals with the workings of a contemporary menage quite well. The sex is varied and totally tingleworthy.

In Mia’s story, we get a full treatment of the woman we get a glimpse of in What She Needs. Jack finally gave in to his desire for Mia but then had to leave suddenly and disappear on an assignment. But Mia doesn’t know why he’s left and she’s now in a big jam and being used and threatened. Jack comes back into her life and has to deal with Mia’s heartbreak, her distrust and whatever she’s running from and won’t share with him. Again, skillfully drawn emotional tension and smoking hot chemistry and sexin.

Grab it. You won’t be sorry.

A Touch of Minx by Suzanne Enoch - Oh how I loved this book. I devoured it in one night! In this next chapter in the Sam and Rick story, Rick is dancing around wanting to marry Sam. In typical Sam and Rick fashion there is Rick pulling her closer, Sam liking it but knowing she’s letting her old life go so she’s freaked and pushes him back. Hot sex ensues followed by a deepening of intimacy between them and one less defense against Rick. It’s all written with clever dialog and touching scenes.

Tom Donner is really beginning to work my nerves though. He’s an ass and at this point, I’m just sick of his character and I wonder why Rick is his best friend when he spends so much time trash talking Sam.

We get some worry about Stoney and some fun, caperish goodness too. I totally recommend it.

Cindy Gerard - To The Edge - I hang my head in shame to tell you I hadn’t read any of her books! I know. But now I have a stack of the rest of her EDEN books because I really do love her voice.

To The Edge features a very well done push/pull romance story with an excellent suspense storyline as well. We’ve got Nolan, a former Army Ranger dealing, or rather not dealing, with a lot of guilt and feelings of failure for the men he couldn’t save. And Jillian, a socialite who at first glace seems shallow and silly but as we see, she’s much more than where she came from.

The scenes between them are tense and heartbreaking in parts and I think really, despite having such a strong male hero, it’s Jillian who shines here and who is, quite truthfully, a far stronger person than Nolan is.

Anway, I really enjoyed the book and my first Cindy Gerard won’t be my last.

Suzanne Enoch - Twice the Temptation this one does a dual novella treatment - half historical, half contemporary giving a tiny appetizer of Rick and Sam and Rick’s ancestor and his lady love.

I like Enoch’s historicals as well as her contemporaries and I really liked the book. I think Evangeline’s character really made the first novella shine. She’s a great character, funny and capable of self reflection. Nicely drawn chemistry and it worked for who these people were. And heck, how can you not like a Rick and Sam story?

“Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.” –Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, “The One Un-American Act.” Nieman Reports, vol. 7, no. 1 (Jan. 1953): p. 20.

THIRTEEN BOOKS THAT CHALLENGED MY PERCEPTIONS

1. I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou.

2. A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines

3. My Son’s Story by Nadine Gordimer (or really, every Gordimer novel I’ve read)

4. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (I love Atwood’s writing. I find everything she writes has a deep, personal intensity so it always gets to me with an intimacy few other authors can achieve)

5. Grass by Sheri Tepper

6. Gate To Women’s Country by Sheri Tepper

7. Surfacing by Margaret Atwood. This is a short novel, not political, but intimate and filled with metaphor and a lot of truly raw moments. It’s one of those books you have to work for, because the book isn’t on the surface, it’s layered beneath.

8. Mists of Avalon by Marian Zimmer Bradley - I was in college when I read this and I remember staying up all night, fascinated by the pagan version of Arturian mythos. I love the idea of stories being told from an unfamiliar perspective. It shook me up and opened another world for me.

9. Oranges Aren’t The Only Fruit by Jeannette Winterson

10. The Red Tent by Anita Diamant

11. Living In Truth by Vaclav Havel

12. Letter From The Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King, Jr.

13. The Dark Is Rising by Susan Cooper - this book, of all of the things I read as a kid, sticks with me because I think it was the first one that opened the world of epic fantasy to me. It’s still one of the best books I’ve ever read.

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CONGRESS SHALL MAKE NO LAW RESPECTING AN ESTABLISHMENT OF RELIGION, OR PROHIBITING THE FREE EXERCISE THEREOF; OR ABRIDGING THE FREEDOM OF SPEECH, OR OF THE PRESS; OR THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE PEACEABLY TO ASSEMBLE, AND TO PETITION THE GOVERNMENT FOR A REDRESS OF GRIEVANCES.

The Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution was ratified on December 15, 1791

So this morning I’ve been looking around the internet at articles on book burning and I’m slightly nauseated by the horrible similarity between pictures from book burnings in Nazi Germany and parking lots here in the US just two years ago so I’m going to do some quotes today…

“You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.”
John Morley

“You see these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police. Yet in their hearts there is unspoken - unspeakable! - fear. They are afraid of words and thoughts! Words spoken abroad, thoughts stirring at home, all the more powerful because they are forbidden. These terrify them. A little mouse - a little tiny mouse! - of thought appears in the room, and even the mightiest potentates are thrown into panic.”

Winston Churchill

“Without free speech no search for truth is possible… no discovery of truth is useful… Better a thousandfold abuse of free speech than denial of free speech. The abuse dies in a day, but the denial slays the life of the people, and entombs the hope of the race.”
– Charles Bradlaugh

“Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but unlike charity, it should end there.”
– Clare Booth Luce

“Children deprived of words become school dropouts; dropouts deprived of hope behave delinquently. Amateur censors blame delinquency on reading immoral books and magazines, when in fact, the inability to read anything is the basic trouble.”
– Peter S. Jennison

“What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.”
– Salman Rushdie

“Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads.”
– George Bernard Shaw, Irish playwright and critic (1856-1950)

“All these people talk so eloquently about getting back to good old-fashioned values. Well, as an old poop I can remember back to when we had those old-fashioned values, and I say let’s get back to the good old-fashioned First Amendment of the good old-fashioned Constitution of the United States — and to hell with the censors! Give me knowledge or give me death!”
– Kurt Vonnegut, author

  Celtic language expert Haley O’Brian is thrilled when she gets the chance to translate a scroll written in Ogham, an ancient Celtic text used in magic and divination. While translating the text, she unwittingly frees Conall macCormac’s Fae soul from a millennia-old curse that kept him imprisoned in a human body, lifetime after lifetime.

The end of the curse is just the beginning of the magic for Haley and the ridiculously sexy Conall. He takes her into the world of his people, the Daoine Sidhe, where she begins to learn of her own Fae heritage, carve out a new path for herself, and embrace her new-found power.

But their happiness is marred by Ninane, the jealous Fae who cursed Conall a thousand years ago. She will stop at nothing to have him for her own, including the murder of Haley’s family.

Determined to bring Ninane to justice, Haley must ask Conall to undergo the ultimate test of love-to stand aside and let her fight her own battles.
 

I’m the author of the week at Candice Gilmer’s blog! Pop over and say hello!