Vixenwriter

It’s dark and rainy this morning but the sound of the rain last night, not torrential, not with wind so hard it threatened to blow my house down - just rain, was lovely and made for a nice night’s rest. I’m still tired though, LOL. I’ve been operating on 4 or so hours’ sleep a night for the last 10 days or so with finishing up several projects and when I go to to bed finally my mind races about whatever work I just finished and the other things on my to do list. Last night I got nearly 7 hours, which is a lot better than 4.

I finished For A Few Demons More and I have to say this first - OH NO YOU DID NOT, KIM HARRISON! Oh how I gasped, and man was I pissed off but I loved this book.

After I finished it, I couldn’t go right to sleep so I turned on my laptop and opened up Wolf Unbound and remembered how much I love Tegan and Ben so I’ll be getting back to it soon.

I got my cover for Sword and Crown and I want to post it but I haven’t heard back on my email about whether or not it’s official so I can. It’s seriously gorgeous, vivid, very sort of 1920’s film poster - I love where they seem to be going with the Torrid Tarot series so I can’t wait to put it up.

Honestly, I get the creepiest spam comments here! Suffice it to say that there are things in the world I’m quite pleased not to know about, nor do I want pictures or live camera shots of it. People should try volunteering at the local foodbank if they’ve got enough spare time they can actually film this bizarre stuff and then spam my blog with offers designed to tempt people into watching after they gobble down illegal mail order drugs they don’t have prescriptions for.

Blah, I’m babbling but I’m sleepy and my poor husband has to work today for most of the day and the kids are going to go stir crazy because of the weather but whatevah, I want to get over this “gah, I just finished a book and revisions and I feel like i need to sleep for a week” slightly nauseated exhaustion thing.

I’m off to get a cup of chai and to stop a fight over bionicles (sigh). Y’all enjoy your Saturday and stay dry if you’re here in the Northwest!

This last week I read Nalini Singh’s Slave to Sensation and I absolutely loved it.

She’s created a paranormal universe that is fresh and interesting, her characters are three dimensional. I love the chemistry between the hero and heroine. The sex was extraordinarly well written and integral, the storyline was clever - Slave to Sensation was definitely worth the hype. Absolutely fabulous book (and so of course I had to grab Visions of Heat from amazon and I hope it gets here today)

I also finished Lucy Monroe’s Ready

I’d been told by several people that I should check her Bravas out so I grabbed Ready, Willing and Able.

Ready was an entertaining contemporary thriller. The suspense plot wasn’t overly heavy but it was interesting and I liked how Monroe used the elements in Lise’s past to create the stalker.

The mercenary stuff - well here’s the thing, big tough men are sexy. They are! So take the thug out, give em an air of mystery, some money, and make them good guys but shadowy instead of criminals and it’s a winning formula. That’s what Monroe does and it works.

It did make me think a lot about use of language in sex scenes and how my own perceptions have changed over the last few years. I may write about that later…

I’m about 3/4 through Jackie Frank’s Jacob and I’m finding it hard not to want to put away the laptop so I can sneak off to read it. I’ll write more about this one next week after I finish but it’s another really unique take on paranormal romance.

Last month I won an ARC of this book, which I’d been looking forward to for some time because I’m a fan of the SG-5 series. I gotta say I wasn’t disappointed.

What I like about Alison Kent’s writing is that you’re never sure just what she’s going to throw your way. She takes romance into some bold territory, thank god.

This is a book that keeps moving from page one until the end. Not a whole lot of romantic suspense novels are set in a third world country ruled by an evil dictator but this one is and it works.

Perhaps it’s the nature of a series that focuses on men instead of women, but I did find myself identifying with Jack more for most of the book. There were places - generally toward the last 20% of the book, where I did begin to see Jillian’s character more clearly and found myself liking her more.

I absolutely loved how much she dug sex. Can I say how sick I am of heroines who hate sex? Jillian’s not a slut or a skank but she likes pleasure and she has no shame taking or giving it. It makes the sex scenes in this book very raw and sharp. Oh and hot.

The ending made sense, it wasn’t one where I felt the author turned herself into a pretzel to achieve, the characters act the way they’re supposed to. The suspense is suspenseful and the romance isn’t safe or fast or even easy. The Perfect Stranger takes some risks but in the end, they work.

I also read High Stakes by Erin McCarthy and I enjoyed it. McCarthy is one of those authors I discovered via novella and I’ve loved her ever since. I think she does snappy, funny dialog well and her sex is usually hot too. There were moments where I thought it tested credulity but overall, I was entertained. Bit the Jackpot - not so much.

I’ve got a very big TBR pile so next week’s entry should be long! Have a great weekend and don’t forget to enter the contest to win an advance copy of The Perfect Stranger. I’m drawing a winner tomorrow!

So last night as I did the exercise bike I finished up a book by an author I love. I’m not going to say her name because I do love her and I still plan to snap up every book she writes but if I hadn’t been stuck on the bike for 40 minutes (and is it just me or does space/time actually slow when you’re exercising?) I wouldn’t have finished.

The thing is, any book has to have a universe with rules. A contemporary is easy enough that you’ve got rules already there and you as an author need to decide what to include or not include (for instance, I always have my characters use condoms, if they’re parents I write them actually parenting, that sort of thing, we all have our own little issues we put out there).

Paranormals are fun because you get to make up rules. This is why I love writing paranormals so much. I can write around STDs and cancer, hell, I can write around the need to sleep or even gravity if I choose. But whatever I choose, I have to be aware of that universe and those rules and stick with the rules or it’s a glaring issue. Usually editors catch you out on stuff you miss and if you’re lucky, they write you funny little notes on track changes about it. If not, they frown at you and point it out.

Rules also include basic character behaivor and progression. I was saying yesterday to a friend that a book shouldn’t be wall to wall plot devices instead of wall to wall plot. Don’t gimmick me to death - write a story. Biggest rule in my reader handbook, “Thou Shalt Only Use One Big Cliche Per Story”

So this book I read violated that one in a big way as well as having the H/H violate my other rules.

Anyway, every author on the planet has used a cliche. After all, cliches are powerful. But more than one of them in a book begins to feel like wallpaper instead of actual story. Secret baby - okay. But Secret baby, amnesia, secretary, billionaire, saucy heroine, drug abuse, childhood abuse, bad first marriage, etc - it’s too much and the story gets lost with all those markers.

Give me characters I want to read about and tell me their story.

I’ve written about this before but it struck me today as I read reviews for a book I flat out loved and some of them were of the “oh my god this is the worst book evar” variety. I loved this book so much it changed how I came to think about erotic writing and BDSM in erotic writing - this was before I’d really given serious thought to beginning to write myself.

I wonder then, if books with sex and sexuality at their core aren’t the most difficult to access because they’re not universal. Yes, we all have sexuality in some sense whether it’s none to nympho but at the same time, sexuality is incredibly individual and what made me stop, read the paragraph, stop, read it again and once more while my heart pounded and my brain screamed, “That’s amazing!” - someone else read it and thought “holy crap, this is awful”

And really? That fascinates me. There are authors I’ve read who’ve made me cringe, made me think, “this is terribly executed tripe, unsexy, uninteresting and the heroine is the biggest idiot I’ve ever read” and saw online a discussion about how hot that same scene was.

An example? The Beauty books by Anne Rice’s alter ego. Honestly? I thought they were awful. Not sexy at all. Clumsy and silly and the BDSM play in them made me snicker. By marked contrast, in her Vampire Chronicles, especially the first three books, you have impotent vampires who ooze sexuality. She writes so deftly and with such sensuality that I think all the craft she uses there is totally absent in her Beauty books.

By contrast I’ll bring up Emma Holly’s Velvet Glove and Molly Weatherfield’s Carrie’s Story - these books occupy opposite ends of the spectrum. Velvet Glove is softer and more of an erotic romance while Carrie’s Story is straight erotica. Both books though explore the subject of BDSM from the perspective of the sub who is exploring the issue with an honesty and openness that is intense and very sexy.

To think people look at either book and find the Beauty books superior or more sexy surprises me. It doesn’t offend me, I can’t argue with it because it’s all perception and filters.

This isn’t earth shattering, it’s not something I hadn’t realized before but it still amazes me how the deepest and most common of human behaviors can also be those we cannot see through the same eyes.

Lacy Danes’ What She Craves is now out! For some reason, Amazon is dinking around and hasn’t sent me a copy but as luck would have it (and I need to say this in the interests of disclosure anyway), I know Lacy and she sent me a copy via pdf some months ago so I’ve read it, neener neener (and get moving Amazon, I want my copy!)

WSC is a collection of three novellas - all historical erotica, each has a slightly otherworldly feel but the last one, Night of the Taking, is the only one that’s a paranormal.

Lacy’s writing has a lovely, erotic tone with a modern edge. My favorite story of the three, Checkmate, takes a character from Lust’s Vow (story one) and makes him the hero. The game of sexual chess with human pieces is echoed in the subtle back and forth between Cora and Rupert.

There’s no denying WSC is a sensual collection that’ll leave you hoping Lacy’s next contribution comes out from Aphrodisia very soon (as it happens, she’s got a story in Sexy Beast III with Kate Douglas and Morgan Hawke that releases in September!)

You can check out an excerpt and other info at her website!

And I finished Mistral’s Kiss last night while finishing up my time on the exercise bike. Straight away, I liked it. I thought the sex was necessary as we’ve known since book one Merry possesses fertility/sex magic. I look at all the kerfuffle over LKH and shrug, folks, if you don’t like the books or the sex, why do you keep buying them?

Anyway - the one chief complaint I’ve got is that these books are too short. The last two or three books should have been one book. It’s not just that it’s a lot to pay for a hardback, it’s that the story arc should be all part of the same book or it’s too jerky and doesn’t flow well.

I was entertained. I’ll continue with the series. I felt bad for Mistral at the end but I was overjoyed to see the emotional connection between Merry, Doyle and at the end, Frost. I’m a huge Doyle for king girl and while I was disappointed to see not a single Doyle/Merry sex scene, I was very happy to see Merry admitting her feelings for him.

Was it as breathtakingly unique and original as Blood Lines? Well, no. But not much can be.

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

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.

This has been a really good book week for me! In fact I’m saving some to write about next week too because I wont’ be reading as much because I just got edits for Chased. I don’t generally do plot recaps in my reviews - you can read the links to the book pages for that, FYI.

First up - Eileen Wilks’ Blood Lines:

I loved Blood Lines from beginning to end. I think Eileen Wilks is one of the freshest and most interesting voices out there writing paranormals and reading her books is a pleasure.

I won’t waste time with a plot recap, you can read the blurb above for that. But I will say I think Rule Turner ranks up with Roarke on the best hero ever list.

Lily is strong but not so strong she doesn’t have room in her life for help but she needs to be strong to keep Rule from taking over her life. I like the balance they’ve achieved and I love the emotional tension as they recover from what they endured as they were separated in the last book.

The action is all well written and fun and I can’t say I found the book confusing as a standalone at all. Frankly, I quite liked the multiple storylines at once and the two sets of hero/heroine - it kept me interested and as I love Rule and Lily, I was quite happy that they featured strongly in the book.

In a sea of books that sometimes bleed into each other plotwise, Wilks rises above the pack (no pun intended) and gives readers something to really sink their teeth into (okay so that one was, LOL) I highly recommend Blood Lines and I can’t wait for the next installment.

And - Hells Belles by Jackie Kessler

Again, another refreshing take on a paranormal. Told in first person and with a really unusual heroine, a demon succubus. She’s not virtuous and I loved that about her. It’s tough as a writer to take a character like Jessie (Jezebel) and make readers like her despite the fact she’s a soul sucking demon who steals credit cards and considers prostitution to pay the rent.

But there’s a level of honesty with Jessie that makes you like her despite her faults.

The use of the mytho-religious structure of hell, archangels and demons was quite clever and fresh.

Hells Belles is sexy and really funny and I totally enjoyed it.

And lastly for today, Colleen Gleason’s The Rest Falls Away.

It took me a bit to get started on this one. I’d just read several paranormal contemporaries in a row and it was hard to get into the historical set language. But, IMO, that’s a good thing because Gleason did it right.

Anyway, after my initial stumble in the first fifty or so pages, I fell into the story. This is a historical, yes, but it’s got a decidedly modern feel - and it’s done well. Gleason treads the line between historical accuracy and modern vampire hunter novel with skill. I liked Victoria a great deal even though I often have a hard time identifying with characters in regency romances who are so very young. But Victoria, while wanting a normal life, didn’t storm off and cry about her fate, although she did challenge it and yes, with some tragic results.

The meta story of the Venators was really well done and interesting and I want to know more. I loved the backstory about Victoria’s great aunt and I hope to hear more in the next book. The vampires are baddies, which was delicious and most of the characters were not so much virtuous or evil but flawed, as humans can be. The secondary characters were memorable and not so many you lost count.

I loved this book. I loved the spin Gleason gave the vampire genre, keeping it alive and interesting. I will definitely be back for more!

One thing - the spine says it’s a paranormal romance and if you’ve read this blog for any length of time you’ll know I’m one of the least sticky people about genre boxes. I do however, want to say that as a standalone, this book isn’t what I’d term a romance. There is a wonderful romantic subplot and a lot of great emotional tension, but the end is not an HEA. It’s a series, so I’m expecting it to lead more along the lines of a romance as we go and like I said, the book is really good and I’m willing to wait. I just wanted to point that issue out.

The totally fabulous Maura Anderson tagged me

Contemporary, Historical or Paranormal?
I like them all but i’m picky about authors in all three. I love paranormals the most probably, but as it’s what I write most often, I need a break sometimes. I usually move to contemps or sci-fi and then historicals. I do love historicals but it takes me a bit to get back into the language differences.

Hardback, Trade Paperback or Mass Market Paperback?
Generally, MM. But most of my friends write in trade, so I buy their books that way. Very occasionally I buy in hardback (hey, it’s expensive for a girl addicted to books!) usually just for JD Robb books and the new Sookie books.

Heyer or Austin?
Austin absolutely hands down

Amazon or Brick & Mortar?
I have three children who are holy terrors (read my There are DAYS entry from earlier this week) so Amazon is way easier for me. Plus I signed up for the free plus and I never bothered to unsubscribe so now I get free two day shipping, which rocks I must admit. Still, I do love to shop in brick and mortar bookstores, there’s nothing more satisfying than rows and rows of books all waiting to be fondled.

First romance novel you ever remember reading?
Forever by Judy Blume.

Alphabetize by author, alphabetize by title or random?
Um, no. On the shelf if I’m lucky, more often in four foot high piles because the shelves are all full.

Keep, throw away or sell?
I keep about 1/3 (used to be more but I don’t have the room!) the rest I give away or donate.

Read with dustjacket or remove it?
Remove it, it’s too floppy and it bugs me when I’m trying to read.

Sookie Stackhouse or Anita Blake?
I like Sookie. Sookie is more tangible to me and I like her personality more. Still, I like the AB books.

Stop reading when tired or at chapter breaks?
I try to make it to chapter breaks but sometimes I just can’t I’m too dead tired.

“It was a dark and stormy night” or “Once upon a time”?
Neither.

Crusie or SEP?
Okay, this question is totally unfair. Because I adore both and really for the same reason - they take unexpected characters and make them work. Crusie’s humor is more snarky like mine but SEP has this unbelievable talent in making a character you should not like at all, a real heroine. I love them both and I read everything they write. I will say it was Crusie’s Welcome to Temptation that really made me think writing romance was something I wanted to try - she used these quirky characters who weren’t perfect by any stretch and she made it work. Oh and I’ll never, ever forget the dock scene…

Buy or borrow?
I do both.

Buying choice: Book Reviews, recommendations or browse?
Hmm, well recommendations by people whose tastes are similar to mine first. Then I browse and I do use reviews if they’re from a source I trust. Personal tastes being what they are, I’ve read great reviews of books I hated, still getting why they got that review - now that’s a good review (or vice versa in many cases too) I have my review go to places and my go to reviewers as well.

Tidy ending or cliff-hanger?
Depends on what’s right for the story.

Morning reading, afternoon reading, or evening reading?
Most of the time it’s evening, I don’t have the time during the day.

Series or stand alone?
I just like good books. Sometimes they’re series books, sometimes they’re standalone

Favorite book of which no one else has heard?
No one? Nah, I hang out with a lot of very booky peeps, they’re all quite book savvy. How about favorite book I wish more people knew about? That would be Richard Morgan’s Altered Carbon - it’s cyber noir and it contains some of the most beautiful writing (in a dark and edgy way) I’ve read in a long time.

I’m supposed to tag people but many of us have been tagged so let me try Anya, Megan, TJ and Shelley.