Vixenwriter

I managed to get two books read this week and both I liked quite a bit.

The first one was Eileen Wilks’ Night Season. I think Wilks’ Lupi books are some of the most interesting and well written paranormals out right now so I’d been eagerly awaiting book four in the series and the telling of Cynna and Cullen’s story.

As with the other books, I woudln’t say so much that the books are paranormal romances but paranormals with strong romantic elements. In this book, Cynna and Cullen are sucked into another universe, The Edge where Cynna is told her father is.

So you get lots of great action, magic, interesting worldbuilding and the deepening of the connection between two very well defended characters, both outcasts, both saved in a very real sense by Rule Turner - Cynna and Cullen. It’s a very emotional story and I liked it a great deal.

I must admit several things - first, I love Lily and Rule and I want more. I’d be quite content if Wilks kept the series about them and other people were side characters. But I’m greedy that way and it’s a testament to what wonderful characters she’s written. I wanted more of Cullen. I am fascinated by his character, much more so than Cynna. Although I did come to really like her in this book which was not the case in the last one where I thought she was a bitter, nasty cow - again I think a huge testament to Wilks’ talent as an author.

And then Sherrilyn Kenyon’s Dark Side of the Moon

Now see, I’d read this review and the reviewer was spitting mad over Acheron’s behavior with Artemis and Nick’s character changes. But you know what? She’s been setting that up for some time. Do people really think Nick has turned evil forever?

No Kenyon has given readers some really complicated characters and some fabulously ambiguous villains - in fact I love how the daimons aren’t evil for evil’s sake but are victims. Sure, they’re killers and yes, they need to be destroyed but I think over the last several books Kenyon has taken assumptions about all sorts of characters and turned them upside down.

Stryker is a bad guy with major daddy issues but cripes, he’s got a reason! And I think Ash is just bone tired of having to continually use his one big card with Artemis to give his Dark Hunters the one thing he needs so badly. I think it’s an excellent build to whatever will happen between Nick and Ash in Ash’s book later this year.

I wouldn’t say I was a fangirl, but I do enjoy the series and I think Kenyon’s skill at creating really interesting and layered characters is totally underrated. These are not cardboard villains in any sense. There are times when I read when I really feel for the daimons, even the Spathi.

The main coupling wasn’t my favorite of the series although I liked both Susan and Ravyn separately. I just wasn’t that drawn into them together as much as I was into them as individuals. However, in truth, that was the smallest part of the book for me as I’m continually drawn in and interested by this cast of characters and meta story arc Kenyon creates with her DH world.

I was chatting with Megan about theme songs for books earlier yesterday and she was telling me she’d found the one for her newest WIP and I was telling her that Dave Matthews Band - Crash was the theme song for Dirty/Bad/Wrong - my half of our jointly written novel - Taking Care of Business.

For those who’ve never heard the song, the video is a few blog entries below this one. The line “I’m bareboned and crazy is like a touchpoint of how Dix feels for her.

See, we started off pitching it as a dual author anthology with two side by side category novels taking place at the same event. Our heroines are best friends and there’d be some interweaving of storylines, dialog, etc. But a few editors mentioned wanting to make it one novel with alternating chapters and hey, well okay then.

So anyway, my part of the book was originally entitled Dirty/Bad/Wrong and it’s about Katherine Edwards, a contracts attorney who’s having a secret scorching hot affair with the in house counsel for a corporation she’s doing work for. The two are both at a conference and sure yes, hot sexin ensues but she’s now living in the same state he is and he wants more from her than just hanging out and having sex whenever it suits them. They get to each other in different ways but he’s surer of it, of himself. She lives a very bifurcated life - her private life is not something she lives during the day but he challenges that.

So as I began to plot the book I thought about who my hero was.

Oh Dr. Troy. He’s got some of Christian Troy from Nip/Tuck in him. But he’s not as selfish, not as wounded. But he’s still just naughty. I love that about him.

As for Kate, she lives in my head. I don’t see her face as clearly as I see Dix’s face. But I know her heart, I know her mind and I understand her. She doesn’t hate sex or men, she’s just careful. She makes the RIGHT CHOICES. And the right choices are very important to her. The right choices keep her safe. But Dix is sooo the wrong choice, but you know what? Sometimes you have to make the wrong choice just to know you’re alive. And sometimes making the wrong choice is actually the right one. But it’s going to take her a while to figure it out.

Anyway - that’s a little bit about my process, about my part in Taking Care of Business - it’s been really fun to work with Megan on this project. It’s a hoot to write about friends with your friend and the jointly written scenes with their back and forth dialog always makes me laugh. I hope people like it when it comes out late this year.

Paul Tolme, the author whose words were taken verbatim by a certain romance author and used in her book has written an article for Newsweek in which he describes romance in the most pitiable and snotty of ways. The man isn’t much of a scholar if he reads one romance novel and describes an entire genre as schlock and says we have low standards.

The prose is standard romance-novel shlock. He proclaims (after reading a single romance novel). He then later says, “Wow, that is some bad dialogue. It stands out as clunky and awkward even by the standards of romance novels.” Because boys and girls, he knows what those standards are. Now in actuality, he’s right to call out that passage because what makes it so glaring is that it’s scholarly language in the midst of prose, but he can’t be satisfied with that because why pass up a chance to be all intellectual and take a swipe at the low brow, horny housewives who read and write romance? That’s like extra ego points and some people apparently need them. The ones he refers to in this passage, “I can imagine frustrated and horny readers cursing the ferrets and skipping ahead in search of the next nipple.” (By the way, these quotes can all be found in Tolme’s article which I link in the first paragraph)

Making oneself look better by sneering down your nose at another group you find beneath you is pitable, Mr. Tolme. It’s often an indicator of a person who feels lacking in some area of their life.

No one should have their work stolen from them, what happened to Tolme and the others who were plagerized was morally and literally dishonest. Sadly, I suppose you can still be a tool when you’ve been wronged. I hope your ego feels better at my and my readers expense. I’ve long since given up trying to have an intelligent conversation about romance with people like Tolme who’d prefer to characterize and sterotype us instead of oh, I don’t know, accord us some respect, the same respect he’d give anyone else. In fact, the same respect he’s been given by great percentages of our community who’ve defended him and his words.

So that minx (and ubertalented author) Jaci tagged me…

Seven Random Facts About Me:

1. I’m a control freak (hey it said random, not surprising). Being an author is a total challenge to this part of me because well, there are a lot of important things outside your control.

2. I love Donna Summer - I’m currently listening to On The Radio right now

3. I’m totally goofy and too old to care what anyone else thinks about it. For instance, I always say goofy stuff - just now one of my favorite things to say is “flossy flossy”

4. I love pin up art and vintage styled clothing.

5. My favorite poem is Mary Oliver’s Wild Geese. It makes me cry every time I read it:

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild gees, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

“Wild Geese,” by Mary Oliver from New & Selected Poems (Harcourt Brace)

6. I’m obsessed with music and it’s tied very closely into my writing process. There’s not a big moment in my life that I don’t have a song associated with for one reason or another. Labor and delivery of my first child - Tub Thumping by Chumbawumba because it was on the radio relentlessly! My trip to Budapest with my husband - and also the first time my husband said I love you - Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd. The former because we heard a group play it on the walls of the castle in Pest and the latter because the record was on when he told me.

7. I’m actually sort of shy.

Okay now I’m supposed to tag 7 people: Megan, Red, Rhian, Ann, Anya, Lori, and Jenn.

You should pop over to the Sven Blog to check in!

Despite the holidays happening in the midst of the challenge, Sven was really successful for me on multiple levels. First and most important - It helped me to keep writing as my main focus. It made me accountable to myself because I had to think about it every day. And while I tend to do that anyway, it helped me keep on task when I’d have preferred to play scrabulous or check my email or whatever. And because of that, I was ahead on my task list and word count which played nicely into my sale to Berkley when I could turn in a finished manuscript early (yay!).

Wordcount wise - it was huge for me as well. I stopped counting after I hit 120K but I finished multiple books, wrote a few proposals and did a lot of revising and editing. I even finished one book from start to finish (instead of from chapter four to the end if I sold on a partial). I just got caught up in the challenge and it worked out nicely. Some days I did next to no new words because of all the editing I did, but other days, I just sailed through and made up for the low count days.

I’m going to keep the Sven Challenge going for myself because I think it’s been a big help to me. I hope it was for you all too.

We don’t all write at the same speed. We get blocked. We have outside demands on our lives so some days, some weeks, etc, are more productive than others wordcount wise. The important thing is - did you put writing where it needed to be in your life?

I’m old school about this writing gig. People approach it differently but I believe in doing what works for you. When you were tired did you try to get at least a page done or did you fall in front of your television? That’s a choice you make. It’s a choice I make. But it’s a choice nonetheless. You can talk about being a writer, or you can be a writer - again, that’s a choice. You don’t have to write every day if you simply can’t fit it into your schedule. But if you don’t write regularly, into all the time you can, *you’re* making the choice not to.

It isn’t easy. When a story is kicking my ass and my kids are having trouble in school and I have a four foot high pile of laundry to deal with and I haven’t had a moment to myself in weeks and I’m TIRED - I don’t want to do anything. I want to watch television and veg. And sometimes I do, but 9 times out of 10 I make myself get back in that chair and 9 times out of 10 I’m glad I did.

So I’m writing the tail end of Dirty/Bad/wrong - my part of Taking Care of Business and Dix and Kate are on the precipiece here - he wants her for more than just a woman to have sex with. She’s unsure for a host of reasons but she’s got a major thing for him because he gets to her in a way no one does - in a way she’s never allowed anyone to.

So as it happens, I have this very sex laden soundtrack for this book but one song that I keep returning to is The Dave Matthews Band’s Crash…

He says to her: “Bullshit, Kate. You know what to want. You want what you want.” He shrugged. “That’s not the complicated part. Wanting is easy.”

wanting is easy, needing is hard, loving is hard - love isn’t enough and she knows it.

There’s something about the song that gets at the rawness of desire tinged with love, with adoration. Because it means something more to desire someone you love.

I’m a sheep, I know but I’ve seen this one all over the web and it looks fun so I hope it comes off as fun and not douchey…

1. Smart Mouthed Women - Um, yeah, they say you write what you know. Most of my heroines tend to have quick, smart mouths. Some hide it under a smoother, nicer veneer (like Grace in Standoff) but when you push them too far, you’ll know it.

2. The couple usually gets together early and the threat is external - I tend to write stories where you know the couple will be together but the stressor is outside - werewolf mafia, class distinctions, big world threatening events.

3. Pop culture references. It’s just how I am. Many of my characters will use slang or make references to music or pop culture figures.

4. Cursing. Yes, start that letter to the RWR right now because my characters say bad words. A lot. There are exceptions but a lot of my characters are hard, or warriors and my warriors say bad words when a baddie pulls a weapon on them. Or when they catch their partner with another person in bed.

5. Big families - I love big families. Be they werewolves or small town humans - you’ll find them in almost all my books.

6. Lots of secondary characters - not as series fodder but because, well, I like secondary characters. I think they add an interesting layer to the main story and characters.

7. Sexin. Oh yeah. Even in my non erotic titles you’ll find it. Because I like to write it and I think sex is rich with opportunity to explore character motivaton.

8. Lots of talking - I like dialog, my characters like dialog. I can’t help it. It’s because I’m so shy in real life (okay I laughed when I wrote that)

9. Dominant heroes and heroines who push right back when the hero gets all bossy

10. Romance. Even in my urban fantasy and post apocalyptic books there’s romance. What can I say? I like it.

Okay so here’s the deal, a very real issue is being muddied in the middle of this war of personality. But the very real issue is what I’m most interested in as an author. I’d like to have a discussion about how to handle source material here. To try and learn from each other what we do and how we do it. Not just from a legal standpoint but from an ethical one because this isn’t an easy issue at the margins.

Participation is welcomed and encouraged! I think this is such a great place for a teaching moment about the business of writing and I’d really love to explore that on behalf of the 95% of us who try to do the right thing. But please let’s stay on topic. I’m not interested in re-hashing what’s happening between personalities - I want to talk about the *issue*

I use outside material when I write. By that I mean, I use research material and reference books. For instance I have a thing about Celtic mythology. I love it. But I love mythology in general so I’ve also used Indic mytho religious structure as well as Greek and Roman myth. I’ve used the Scotts version of Fae mythology and the Irish version as well as some Germanic mythos. It’s all fabulously interesting.

I also use city and state webpages, encyclopedias, treatises, and the gazillion law books taking up space on my shelves and taunting me with my student loan bills.

Generally, so far anyway, I haven’t cited the material because I tend to read books about mythology all the time and I use characters from mythology (like Aoife for instance) and give them a spin - also like Angra from Indic mythos from my early WK books. Certainly, the way I see it, if I used one source a lot, or actually took something word for word, I’d cite. That’s basic for me and I got that back in college.

Still though, the lines aren’t so clear to me out here at the margins. Should we then, as authors, put a list of books we read during the writing of our novels in an index? Not as cited material, which is different as I note above, but out of basic graciousness and appreciation to our bretheren who spend all that time writing these research books we use?

Where is that line? That’s what I’m interested in. I know where the line is in the middle and I know how to cite source material if I use it or quote it. But if we read a variety of creation myths to do background on a story but the story isn’t about creation myth so much and we’re using something that’s been passed down over and over and is in a multitude of places - do we acknowledge it anyway? I have like five books on baby names for instance, from back in the day when I was reproducing - I use them all the time to think up names. Do they need to be referenced in some sense?

What do you all think? Authors, where is your line? Will your line change now that this whole thing has surfaced? I must admit I’ve been thinking on it very strongly. Not because I’ve taken whole paragraphs’ worth of anyone else’s work but because I do a lot of outside reading for some of my stories and I want to do the right thing.

So this week I put the final touches on Undercover and today it was mailed off to my editor. All 460 pages. Yikes. I hope she likes it. Now on to obsessing about the next book.

In the last week I read: Iron Kissed by Patricia Briggs - Iron Kissed by Patricia Briggs was the first book I read in 2008 and it wasn’t a disappointment!

In Iron Kissed, we get back to mechanic and Walker, Mercy Thompson’s story. This time, she’s asked by her friend and Fae, Zee, to help them solve a spree of killings on the local Fae reservation. From this point on, the stakes rise higher and higher for her.

Iron Kissed isn’t a romance so I went into it with different expectations but I was quite pleased with how Briggs handled the romantic resolution of the love triangle in the first books. The resolution made sense and while it made me sad, a decision had to be made and I think it was handled perfectly.

The action was riveting including a very intense scene toward the end that had me in tears. Excellent, taut storytelling here and I hope Briggs gives us more about the Fae in later books.

And then Carrie Vaughn’s Kitty and The Silver Bullet

I’ve been a huge fan of this series since the first book. what I’ve liked most is how Kitty’s character starts off as scared and flaky and has grown with each new book. Grown into a character who continues to become more likeable.

In Silver Bullet, Cormac is in prison for murdering a monster in order to save Kitty’s life. She’s got big guilt about it. She’s also with Ben, yes *with* Ben who is now a werewolf too.

They need to go back to Denver because Kitty’s mom is ill and needs her but unfortunately they step into a war between the current vampire master and the guy who wants the job. And don’t forget Kitty’s old, abusive jerk of an Alpha, Carl.

So you get all kinds of political machinations here. Interesting background on vampires, nice romantic asides between Ben and Kitty too. there were, I admit, a few moments when I got very frustrated with Kitty as a character and was like, “GET OVER IT ALREADY!” but I think Vaughn handles this so well because well, sure Kitty is a werewolf but she’s also human.

The action was well done, the writing and dialog, as in past books, was quick and clever. Kitty and the Silver Bullet was another great installment in the series and I am so on board for the next book!

I usually read more weekly but I’ve been totally slammed with work and home stuff. I’m about 3/4 finished with Night Season and loving it, so I’ll talk about that one next week.

I talk about music a lot, probably as much as I talk about books. I love music. But sometimes a certain artist or song really hits me and stays with me. A month ago I heard Foundations by Kate Nash and followed up, finding several other songs like Birds and Mouthwash and I just grabbed the whole CD because it’s so good. This song, Nicest Thing, makes me cry when I hear it because which one of us hasn’t felt this way? Hasn’t wished we were unforgettable?

I really can’t say enough about how much I love Kate Nash’s music. I love her lyrical style, conversational, sharp, clever, and this one is very, so achingly beautiful. Made of Bricks is her new CD and it’s now available here in the US. It’s so good, I promise.

All I know is that you’re so nice,
You’re the nicest thing I’ve seen.
I wish that we could give it a go,
See if we could be something.

I wish I was your favourite girl,
I wish you thought I was the reason you are in the world.
I wish I was your favourite smile,
I wish the way that I dressed was your favourite kind of style.

I wish you couldn’t figure me out,
But you always wanna know what I was about.
I wish you’d hold my hand when I was upset,
I wish you’d never forget the look on my face when we first met.

I wish you had a favourite beauty spot that you loved secretly,
‘Cos it was on a hidden bit that nobody else could see.
Basically, I wish that you loved me,
I wish that you needed me,
I wish that you knew when I said two sugars, actually I meant three.

I wish that without me your heart would break,
I wish that without me you’d be spending the rest of your nights awake.
I wish that without me you couldn’t eat,
I wish I was the last thing on your mind before you went to sleep.

All i know is that you’re the nicest thing I’ve ever seen
I wish that we could see if we could be something