Vixenwriter

Lately I’ve been totally enchanted by Sigur Ros CD, Takk. The song below is called Saeglopur and I love the dreamy, sad and uplifting quality of it. They’re Icelandic but it doesn’t matter. What they’re saying doesn’t matter because you can feel it.

New stuff over at After Midnight Fantasies and Bring Me My Hookah!

Oh and I’m done with the second draft of Relentless and it’s out for crit! Yay!!!!

All sorts of flotsam today! Firstly I hit nearly 68K in Relentless last night! Wheeee! And I cried pretty much the whole time as I wrote. Big, emotional stuff, even the sex scene made me cry. I’m really pleased with this transition.

68,000 / 90,000 (75.6%)

Secondly, I know there are some problems with Making Chase and folks trying to order it - apparently there was a problem in the system and they corrected it. It *should* be showing up soon and I’m told by tomorrow, end of day it’ll be available. So thanks to everyone who’s e-mailed me to ask about it. If you get impatient, you can always pop over to My Bookstore and more and order it directly from there.

Thirdly, the fantastic Samantha Hunter is guest blogging at Maverick Authors today! There’s a contest too. Go over and say hey.

Taking a break from edits to pop in and say hello!

Several things:

1. I got my author copies of Making Chase! They’re so pretty!

2. If you say something contraversial on your blog, you should be ready to deal with the consequences or not say it at all. This applies to several things I’ve seen lately.

3. It’s nearly the weekend!

4. I’m going to have a tequila sunrise after I’m done working tonight. And another when I watch BSG with my dude.

5. I read Jordan Dane’s No One Can Hear You Scream on my way to the Lori Foster event and it was awesome and gruesome too! Wheee!

6. I’m now reading a Resident Evil book - I love zombies so much

7. Nearly done with my edits of Fated

It’s a totally gorgeous day. My husband is home installing our new computer (WHEEE!) and my kids are reasonably well behaved. Nice huh? Add to that a swanky new excerpt brochure Frauke designed for me and already some good words added to RELENTLESS and I’m a happy camper.

Pumpkin muffins are the devil. Why are they so good? Our local grocery store has a bakery inside and their pumpkin muffins are sin and I love them. They’re the size of a softball though and I’m quite sure they’re a zillion calories but I can’t make myself care (She says washing it all down with diet coke). I wouldn’t even go to that part of the store (also where the cupcakes live and we know my position on cupcakes) but to access the fruit and veg it’s the natural path unless I go to the front of the store and back around, which makes my loop all wrong. It’s a plan of course, to make my ass even bigger by the corporation that owns Top Foods. Hmpf. Damn them and their delicious baked treats.

Okay, back to writing. I hope everyone is enjoying their weekend so far!

Fated

Wheee! Posting my Sven progress on Fated made me think about story pacing and how the level of backstory and detail is dependent upon overall story length. For instance in a novella, you have less space for character development and detail so it’s important to use guidepost scenes to do the work. In category, you have more room but still not as much as when you’re looking at 90 - 100K.

It occured to me last night as I was writing that I’m at the stage where I keep note of this stuff mentally and I sort of have these little alarms in my head - okay by this point I need to have laid the groundwork for the dark moment, by this stage I need to have the main storyline well developed - that sort of thing. I know my ending will be X long so I keep that in mind as I hit the middle. I don’t keep notes really although I do outline for the books I sell on partial and proposal. But over the last years, I’ve developed a mix of plotting and pantsing. I write as loose a synopsis as I can - essentially hit the highlights of the bones of the story and then fill in the colors and lines as I go. This enables me to have the freedom I love when writing to let the story take over, but also keeps me to timelines and schedules and *most of the time* helps keep me from wandering off track.

Now I am a huge believer in the idea that there is NO one true way. Every author has what works for her and she might tinker with it over time and even across certain books. My way works for me. Another author might do it more efficiently and better, but each of us has our own process.

And now, off to do laundry and hope the sleet outside does not make its mind to go into full snow. Yes I said snow. Yes, it’s March 29. Gah!! And then I shall finish up this scene in Fated later on tonight.

First off - Sven!

Cascadia Wolves: Fated

I got a grand on this last night and I’m happy given how freaking dog tired I was by the time I was able to start work on it.

Favorite lines from yesterday:

Beth turned around in the seat. “Oh you’re awake now!” she said when she caught Megan with her eyes open.

Damn. The woman was diabolical.

I’m building my playlist and thanks to Megan, Five Finger Death Punch seems to be be the dominating force so far.

Fated is complicated. Yes, this is about fated mates but what if you’re not ready? What if one of you is and the other isn’t so much? What are you willing to give up? Because love isn’t always easy. it’s not always simple. And sometimes, if you don’t realize what’s important to you, you might lose it.

Angie has a great entry up at Romancing the Blog about epublishing so you should check it out. As always, she’s got a lot of smart things to say. I thought in particular the last two paragraphs were the best.

But authors should also expect more from themselves. This may be an unpopular thing to say, but first realizing that maybe not every book is meant to be published. Some books are a learning experience and will eventually be shoved under the metaphorical bed. That’s okay. It means you keep working to learn your craft, write the next book, and keep submitting. Choose your publishers carefully, read your contracts even more carefully. Authors should also expect professional behavior of themselves—online, in public and with their publisher and editor, treating epublishing obligations exactly the same as they would obligations to a NY publisher. Representing themselves and the industry they’re helping grow in a way that shows pride in themselves, their work and their company.

Amen. Writing is a business. If you do it as a hobby that’s one thing but if you do it and intend it to be a career, you have to run it like that. Which means sometimes you have to rein in your excitement and say no when you get an offer. Because as I said a while back, not all publishers are equal. And not every author is the right fit with every publisher either. It’s about what you want and what they can provide and then you work your way toward each other.

But when a publisher doesn’t answer their emails over and over for years at a time. When royalty payments are late regularly. When your book comes out without any edits or with a cover you’ve never seen. When you get punished for asking questions - these are all bad signs. Period. I know people keep saying they’re not, but you can’t convince me it’s actually normal business practice to pay people late on a regular basis. It isn’t. It’s a BAD business practice and a sign of poor leadership. And when an epublishing business can’t respond to email from its authors, that’s a bad sign. You can look the other way but eventually things are likely to go south. Because communication is a basic part of business.

In the end, what we have is our gut. (and not the muffin top type, LOL) But listening to our common sense and making it louder than the excitement we feel when we get an offer.

My husband is home! Yayayay! He’s been away for the last week on a business trip and between all the writing work I’ve needed to do, running three kids around and sleeping like ten kinds of awful when he’s not here - I was just TIRED yesterday afternoon. But he’s home and I missed him and we had pancakes and did the nice, Saturday morning family thing.

I did update my website with excerpts for Taking Care of Business and Undercover should anyone be interested in checking those out and also, I put up a page for my next Cascadia Wolves book, Fated. Yes, Unexpected is now Fated because as the very clever Angie pointed out, Unexpected sounds a lot like Undercover and we didn’t want readers to confuse the two. Anyway, there’s a loose blurb up now.

AND…I’m told the author copies of What Happens in Vegas are on their way! Which means I’m going to be doing some contests soon so keep an eye out. I didn’t want to start a contest until the books were actually here though, LOL. I can’t wait to see them. Anya has hers already and she said they were very pretty so I can’t wait.

That’s about it. I need to deal with laundry and get some writing work done. It’s sunny today so I’d like to get out and plant some of the seeds the kids and I picked up last week as well.

Enjoy your Saturday afternoon!

I am finally finished with revisions on Undercover. They were pretty light but I wanted to be sure they were as good as possible so I was extremely careful with them. Whew. Now I’m on to a last polish of Sensual Magic, which is due to Harlequin April 1, that shouldn’t take more than a day or so, and finally I can get back to Unexpected. Yay!

I have to say, I got pretty sweaty when I read back over the sex scenes in Undercover. It’s hard when you’re writing something and then editing the first time. You’re very close to the book so you can’t really gauge. But reading it over again, some months later I was like, “wow!” I think this is the hottest book I’ve ever written but also, I was pleased to see the emotional depth in places too. I feel better about it and I already liked it before. Sweet relief.

I ordered some goodies for RT for our Love Shack reader party on Friday (don’t miss it folks!) This party will have goodie bags filled with excellent swag that’ll be exclusive to the party including books from the participating authors. I also ordered postcards for Undercover and Vegas and they turned out so pretty.

I wanted to take a moment to say thank you to Frauke, the person behind the creation of this website (and also the hosting service for it, Janus Portal Hosting) and a great many other websites you you see around. As well as the person who designs my bookmarks, my RT ads and other various graphics like business cards etc. She is truly wonderful. I will give her a few elements and she always turns them into something wonderful. I’ve been a client of hers for several years now and I’m always just so awed by her talent. Plus she helps me with technical stuff when I just can’t figure it out. She always takes pity on me and with good humor. So thank you, Frauke - truly, you make my job so much easier and you do it with style.

Totally UNconnected to any of the above - did you know there was Fraggle Rock fic? I sat in a corner and rocked for a while once I found that out. And then I saw a guy in a furry suit with black leather assless chaps. Don’t ask where I found it. But, well just don’t ask. I think I may have bad dreams.

Now, I’m off to catch up on the stuff I let slide today to finish up with Undercover. Happy Hump Day!!!

In closing, to combat bad dreams - my dreamboat, let me show you him…

Marcus Patrick

This is why, swan hat or not, I found it so repugnant that a woman like Sherrilyn Kenyon would be attacked and mocked. Let those who are half as good to their fans and self aware of her fortune in life take a moment to think about their own darned selves and stop worrying about others.