Patti O'Shea - Author of Paranormal Action / Adventure Romance

Pinned!

2012-02-09T10:00:00.002-06:00

I'm on Pinterest now! For those of you unfamiliar with it, Pinterest is like a cyber bulletin board where you can pin pictures you find online and share them with others.

I'd heard about Pinterest shortly after they started, but I didn't sign up then. I suspected that I might find it addicting, and as it turns out, I was right. Sharing pictures is fun, but it's also so much fun to see what other people are sharing. It's allowed me to discover things I might not have stumbled across on my own.

One of the reasons why I decided I wanted to join Pinterest was so that I could share the pictures I use while I write my stories. I started out just finding pictures for the hero and heroine, but as time went on (and after I got high speed internet) I started using more and more pictures. I've always wanted to post them somewhere so that readers who were interested could see what I was envisioning as I wrote, but I didn't think I could do it without violating copyright. Pinterest finally allows me to share and it links back to the original site.

The first thing I did was put up a board with all my characters.Then I started adding other things I liked. Right now I'm doing a board for each book so (if you're interested) you can see not just the characters, but their furniture and homes and other settings or clothes or whatever. This is a work in progress and I'm only about halfway.

If you're on Pinterest, feel free to friend me over there, and everyone is welcome to come on over and check out my boards.

The Unknown Issue

2012-02-07T10:00:00.001-06:00

Characters can be such a kick. Just when I think I have one of them down and that I'm unlikely to have a huge curve ball thrown my way, he/she throws me a knuckle ball. (For those of you unfamiliar with baseball, a knuckle ball is even more unpredictable/harder to hit than a curve ball.) It happened again just recently.

I've had Wyatt's team (Eternal Nights) in my head off and on since I wrote his story. So I've had six years to get to know these guys. At first, it was mostly Flare talking, but over the years, I've learned more and more about Gravedigger and Z Man.The last piece I needed as Z's heroine and she showed up a while ago, but I didn't know her name or what she looked like. Both pieces of information arrived mid January.

And Z threw me a knuckle ball.

You see, Z is part Asian/Hawaiian, which I knew. His heroine as it turns out is a green-eyed blonde. That's when he tossed the bomb my direction: his plan is to fall for a woman who's at least part Asian herself. He never, not even once, mentioned this to me. Not in six years!

To say I was stunned understates things. I don't know why he feels this way, but you know there has to be some sort of issue in there. Z was my normal guy, the one who has his head screwed on straight. Or so I believed. Now I'm going to have to spend some time probing, trying to discover the whys and whats. You'd think just once that I could have a character completely honest with me upfront. Too bad it's never happened and probably never will.

Hang Ten

2012-02-05T10:00:00.005-06:00

The first thing that caught my eye here was the waves. This is an incredible view of Mother Nature's sheer power. After I stopped going, wow, the next thing I noticed was the cinematography. It's another wow when I think about how you get yourself in position to film something like this. The third thing that caught my eye was the actual surfing. Yeah, I know, but I think this is more a video about the waves than about the surfing.

Another little factoid that made this video interesting to me, it was shot at Teahupoo. That's Tahiti. I have this heroine who's half Tahitian and her father and mother were headed to French Polynesia. Her father's main interest in going was catching the surfing competition at...you guessed it...Teahupoo.

The Trip To Nowhere

2012-02-02T10:00:00.001-06:00

Since coming to Atlanta, I've relied on my car's GPS system a lot. However, it hasn't been 100% accurate. To my frustration, it often will refuse to let me input the address I want because it's not in a range that it believes belongs on that street. The GPS has been wrong.

The worst experience, though, was the one I call the Trip to Nowhere.

My parents and I were determined to buy a recliner for the house. I found a store in Newnan, GA and wrote down the address. GPS didn't like the number of the building for the street. However, there was a street name, south and GPS did like that, so that's what I set as our destination.

Things started out okay, but then it began to rain. They drive like Maniacs here, I don't know where I'm going, and it's raining??? Gah!

Despite all the weather, we kept going, confident we'd make it to the furniture place. Things started to get iffy when GPS directed us off the highway. It got worse. We ended up in the middle of a residential neighborhood, nothing even remotely retail in the area.

GPS Fail.

Or maybe it was me. After all, I did select Street South instead of street. I punched in the street name, lied on the number of the building so GPS would accept it, and we started out again. This time we ended up near a hotel that appeared vacant. It wasn't, but it sure wasn't doing a booming business either. It was raining harder now and it wouldn't be too much longer before it started to get dark. We decided to go back home.

I selected home on GPS, turned out of the parking lot in the direction from which we'd come, and was led on a roundabout route that ended up turning just in front of the rundown hotel we'd started from. Um, what? Why the hell didn't GPS tell me to turn right when I went past the road the first time?

GPS Fail. Again.

We did make it home after a drive through several Georgia towns, including one I'd never heard of before. I don't know if this was the most efficient route ever concocted, but we did arrive back at the condo.

First Days - Atlanta

2012-01-31T10:00:00.001-06:00

I have a couple of first day stories from Atlanta.

First day in the condo. It was chaos. Pandemonium. Comcast came out to install my cable. This was the day my new mattress was being delivered. And the guy who was going to replace the window called and wanted to come out, too.

We had one lawn chair at this point. No other furniture of any sort. I was up and down off the floor multiple times, including lying on my stomach next to the Comcast tech as we tried to get my internet hookup to work. Late that night, after sitting on the floor chatting with friends and watching MLB Network, I tried to get up and felt my knee pop. The pain was excruciating for days afterward.

Not a great beginning in my new city.

First day at work. It was chaos. Luckily, I'd made a trial run to the office the day before and knew GPS was correctly guiding me in. What I didn't know was that I'd arrive amid a mechanic shift change which meant hundreds and hundreds of people coming in to the Tech Ops area. I sat in line, waiting to turn in to the building.

I'm just grateful that I was down in December for a meeting and learned where my department was located. I even managed to find it again without getting lost. None of my boxes had made it from Minneapolis even though I'd had them ready to go ten days early. It's tough to work without your stuff.

But people in my department came by to say hello and I even got a couple of welcome hugs. My boss came by to make sure I had everything I needed and my boss's boss stopped by to thank me for relocating. Later that week, we were treated to a welcome to Atlanta lunch.

This was a great beginning to my new job location.

Mean Disney Girls

2012-01-29T10:00:00.000-06:00

This came through on Twitter a few weeks ago and I thought it was pretty good, so I'm sharing.

Must Write

2012-01-26T10:00:00.000-06:00

Every character I write is one I feel drawn to and compelled to write. But there are some characters that go beyond that, some I have to write even if it means bringing them into an alternate universe. No lie.

One set of characters started out life in a contemporary world and I pulled them into a paranormal one. It involved a name change for the hero. He informed me that his first name was different in this alternate dimension and it also involved name changes for all his brothers and sisters. Okay. The heroine kept her name, but her entire life changed and her personality along with it.

Some might argue that this makes them different characters. I know better. These are the same people, but the circumstances of their world changed and that impacted who they are.

It's actually kind of interesting. I've maintained from the beginning that if I rewrote Ravyn's Flight and put different characters in the lead roles, that the story would be completely different. Oh, it might begin the same, but my characters' choices drive the plot, my plot never drives my characters. Even if I wanted to write that way, I couldn't. If I try to force my characters to do something they don't want to do, they go on strike and I spin my wheels until I fix what they dislike.

I have another set of characters that will not go away. I've been turning things around in my mind, trying to find a way to get them into some kind of story since their original idea is going nowhere. I need to write them. I have a burning desire to write them. And I will. Eventually. One way or another.

I Miss My Cargo Space

2012-01-24T10:00:00.001-06:00

In December, mere weeks before I had to move to Atlanta, my beloved Explorer decided it needed a lot of expensive repair work done. Since it was a 1998, I opted to buy a new car instead and went with the Edge. I call it my James Bond car. With all the high tech electronics on it (especially for someone who was driving a 1998), it can only be a spymobile. I swear the only thing missing is the hidden missile launcher.

I do like my Edge. A lot. Really. But there are definitely things I miss about the Explorer. And when I was packing up to leave Minnesota, the cargo space was a huge factor. Things I was planning to pack to take along, things like a vacuum cleaner, suddenly didn't fit and I needed to buy new down here.

For those of you unfamiliar with the story, my day job was relocated from Minneapolis to Atlanta. I chose to relocate with my job, but because of how difficult it is to sell a house in MN in the winter, most of my stuff is still up north and will stay there until I do sell my house and I officially move. Right now, I'm officially a commuter between the two cities.

I did make sure there was room for the important things like my computers. There was no way I was leaving those behind. But my couch? Still in MN.

Some of the lighter things, like my storage containers will get shipped down via UPS or the USPS. Other things that are too bulky or two heavy or not cost effective to ship will have to wait. I even had to leave my blankets and duvet behind because there just wasn't room in the Edge. As it stood, we were smashed into the vehicle. If only the Explorer could have hung on another few months.

Ten Reasons Not To Travel To Australia

2012-01-22T10:00:00.001-06:00

I'll admit right up front that out of everywhere I've traveled, Australia is my favorite place in the world. I'd go back in a heartbeat even with the incredibly long flight. I still thought this was funny, though, so I'm sharing.

I Hate You. I Love You.

2012-01-19T10:00:00.001-06:00

Last week, I was reading a book that pulled the "I hate you. No, wait, I love you" thing and it made me crazy. IMO, it can't be pulled off successfully. I've never, ever read a book or an author who's made it work.

In the book that inspired this post, the hero and heroine hate each other. They don't have one charitable thought about the other. Then about halfway through the story, without warning or cause, the hero and heroine are in lurvvvv. More than in love, they're soul mates. Kissy, kissy, huggy, huggy. Sexing it up.

Um, no. I didn't buy it, especially the way their feelings for each other turned on a dime and without any real, earthshaking events occurring.

The only way something like this could possibly work (and I still have my doubts) is a gradual thawing of relations between the characters. Maybe seeing the other in a new light and grudgingly reconsidering their preconceptions of one another.

The other idea that comes to mind that might make it workable as a plot device is having them say one thing and think another. Maybe there's a reason why they want the other one to believe they don't like them, but in their head, there's admiration and positive thoughts. Maybe, but I still have my doubts.

I hated this device when I was mainly a reader, and TBH, I hate it even more now that I write. I think some writers believe this kind of petty arguing/sniping is conflict and it's not. Conflict is more than this and true, honest-to-goodness character impacting conflict can't turn off on a whim. If it can, it's not a real conflict, it's an author convenience.

I've read books in the past where the h/h have "hated" each other right up until the last few pages of the story. Really? And the author expects me to believe the Happily Ever After? I don't think so.

The Big Move

2012-01-17T10:00:00.000-06:00

I made it to Atlanta, Georgia. I've been here two weeks now--one getting setup and one where I actually went to work at my day job.

Things still feel pretty unreal, you know? Like I'm on some kind of extended vacation. My parents are still down here and that adds to the vacation feel. I'm not sure how long it's going to take before it sinks in that this is more than an extended stay in the south. Maybe once my parents have returned to Minnesota and I'm here alone for a while.

I can say I definitely like the weather here better than Minneapolis, although it's been kind of bipolar. One day the high will be in the 60s, the next it's in the 40s. I did wear short sleeves to work four out of five days last week. Short sleeves. In JANUARY! Wild!

The one thing I dislike--okay more than dislike, hate--is the driving. OMG, it's like commuting through the middle of the Indianapolis 500! People, I have out of state plates, I'm driving in the right hand lane (a lane I rarely, if ever, used in Minneapolis), give me a break and stop tailgating me. I don't know where I'm going even with GPS. To add to my fun, the commute is about double what I had in Minneapolis. Totally not cool.

On the plus side, most of the people I've talked to have been very nice. We'll disregard the two mechanics I talked to in the elevator at work who pretended I didn't exist. They're probably not from around here anyway, right?

In other words, like anywhere you live, there are pluses and minuses in Atlanta. I'll probably have more to say later, but so far, so good.

The Secret Life of books

2012-01-15T10:00:00.000-06:00

I can't help but wonder if this is the secret to how my To Be Read pile keeps multiplying.

Doppleganger?

2012-01-12T10:00:00.002-06:00

A couple of weeks ago there was an interesting discussion on one of my writer loops about doing a Google search before finalizing a pen name. The topic came up because a self-published author is using the name of a multi-published with New York author and another small press author was using a name that was nearly identical to another author's romance pseudonym.

The subject than turned to Googling character names. Sometimes I do this, sometimes I don't.

I pretty much have zero leeway on the first names, especially of my hero and heroine. It doesn't matter to them if I don't like the name or not, they tell me who they are and that's that. I've learned to deal with this, and in all honesty, I like it. The one time I was left to choose a name was torturous. Sometimes I still complain about not being the driver's seat, but as soon as I remember how miserable I was when I did have control, I shut up and say never mind.

Surnames, though, I do have some say in. Not always and sometimes not much, but the characters are rarely intractable on this score. And when the last names come too easily, I tend to Google. Sometimes it turns out there is a real person with that name. There was one time my hero's name was identical to someone who was arrested for a high profile crime. I can't help but think that I'd heard that man's name on the news at some point, and when my hero gave me his first name, my subconscious dredged out the felon's name. Needless to say, the hero had his surname changed.

Sometimes the name is completely set and I can't change it no matter what Google turns up. Like Mika Noguchi from Through a Crimson Veil. In the book, Mika makes a joke when Conor searches her name and discovers that Mika Noguchi is an Asian woman's wrestling champ. Why does she do this? Because there really is a Mika Noguchi who's a woman wrestler. This actually led to a running joke through the story.

Checking out a character's name isn't a bad thing, but I doubt there's any name out there that no one in the world has unless it's something totally made-up and bizarre, and even then, who knows? Where does the line get drawn? No, I wouldn't let a character named Brad Pitt loose in a book, but Mika Noguchi? I thought that was okay since there can't be that many of my readers who follow Asian woman's wrestling. In the end, I think it has to come down to a writer's best judgment.

Missed It

2012-01-10T10:00:00.001-06:00

Because of my move from Minneapolis to Atlanta, I haven't been able to write for the last couple of months. There's just been too much to do and I didn't get it all done before I had to leave. At first, it was nice to have the time off from writing since I rarely take a break, but now I'm straining at the tether. I want to write. I want to take time to think about my stories and work out details. Want, but can't.

The week before I left Minnesota, I opened a file and made an attempt to work, but my thoughts were too scattered and I couldn't focus enough to get words down. This isn't unexpected because I dealt with it the same thing the other few times I've tried to write while I have been deep in relocation mode. It was disappointing, though.

Now the question is how long will it take to get settled enough in Atlanta to have time again? Not just time to write, but time to deal with all the email and other details that I've let slide because I had other, more critical issues on the To Do List. Those decks need to be cleared, too.

What's really making me crazy is that my characters aren't talking to me. None of them. I'm used to running scenes to fall asleep. I'm used to running scenes when I get bored. This quiet is weird.

I know it's stress. My mind is whirling with details and even if I try to concentrate, it doesn't take long before my thoughts return to what I need to do or what I should be doing. I'm looking forward to calmness, to being able to hear the voices again. I want to spend time with my characters, no matter how frustrating they can be. I wonder how long it will take for my mind to settle in? Today will be my second day reporting to my job in my new home city. It can't be too much longer now. I hope.

My new work home

2012-01-10T09:57:00.001-06:00

- Posted using Mobypicture.com

Bridesmaids

2012-01-08T10:00:00.002-06:00

Bridesmaids stars Kristen Wiig as Annie Walker. The story is about a woman who is maid of honor for her best friend's wedding and ends up in a competition with another bridesmaid.

Annie is one messed up woman. She's working as a clerk in a jewelry store, a job she's bad at and has no interest in. She's sharing an apartment with a British brother and sister. She lets some guy regularly use her for sex and feels crummy about it afterward. (He calls her his number 3 f**k buddy.) She drives a crummy car and her taillights are out.

But things really start to go downhill for her when her best friend gets engaged and asks her to be her maid of honor. The friend also asks a group of other women to be bridesmaids, including a rich woman whose relationship with the bride makes Annie feel threatened. What follows next is a series of events where the two women try to outdo each other.

The movie was supposed to be a comedy and I'd heard good things about it, but I didn't think most of it was funny at all. I found Annie to be Too Stupid To Live for most of the movie and feel she brought most of her problems on herself. She acts like a complete idiot throughout the entire movie, and when she flips out at the shower--screaming at others, breaking a giant cookie and having it fall on top of her, taking her to the ground, getting messy in the chocolate fountain--the bride kicks her out of the wedding. I don't blame her.

Annie also meets this really great guy during the course of the movie and after sleeping with him, acts like a complete idiot, hurts him, and alienates him as well.

Annie wasn't the only idiot, though; all the bridesmaids acted bizarrely. More than one time while I watched the movie, I'd mutter who acts like this?

There were a few moments that kept me watching, but in all honesty they were few and far between. At the end, when Annie finally smartened up, things improved greatly, but the movie was already pretty much a loss for me by then.

Not recommended.

Dangerous Books

2012-01-05T10:00:00.000-06:00

A video about those dangerous romance novels.

Atlanta Or Bust

2012-01-03T10:00:00.001-06:00

If everything went as planned, I should be in Atlanta, Georgia as you're reading this. I'm writing this post 6 days ahead of my move and I'm torn between panic and excitement. Mostly panic.

I'm trying to look on the bright side about moving. The weather should be much, much better in Atlanta than it is in Minneapolis. I'm tired of the cold and snow. I'm tired of wearing hats and scarves and mittens and heavy winter jackets and boots. Although, wow, I saw the cutest pair of winter boots online last night and nearly ordered them--until I remembered that I won't need them in my new home.

The other plus is that Atlanta is headquarters for my airline, so the odds of having to move again are incredibly low. Also, being our major hub, it will be more convenient for traveling. More non-stop destinations there.

Right now, though, I'm frantic about how much I have left to do and how little time I have to do it in. I'm worried about finding my way around a new city when I still get lost in the city in which I grew up. And I'm especially worried about leaving my parents alone in Minnesota. If they need me, it will take hours to fly home.

Future blog posts will no doubt talk about my adventures in Atlanta. I'm sure I'll be doing lots of things y'all can laugh about.

Happy New Year

2012-01-01T10:00:00.000-06:00

Wishing everyone an awesome 2012!

Large Hadron Collider Rap

2011-12-29T10:00:00.000-06:00

Y'all know I'm a major geek--I make no secret of that. For a while now, I've been riveted by physics, particularly M Theory. To test some of their hypotheses, tests have been done at the Large Hadron Collider in Europe. Want to learn a little more about it? There's a rap song for that.

Did You Get an E-Reader For Christmas?

2011-12-27T10:00:00.002-06:00

If you received an e-reader for Christmas and are looking for titles to fill it up, why don't you check out my stories?

Kindle:

Through a Crimson Veil (Crimson City 3)
Dark Awakening (A novella originally published in Shards of Crimson)
The Troll Bridge (A short story set on Jarved Nine)
Blood Feud (A short story)

Nook:

Through a Crimson Veil (Crimson City 3)
Dark Awakening (A novella originally published in Shards of Crimson)
The Troll Bridge (A short story set on Jarved Nine)
Blood Feud (A short story)

Other E-Readers:

Through a Crimson Veil (Crimson City 3)
Dark Awakening (A novella originally published in Shards of Crimson)
The Troll Bridge (A short story set on Jarved Nine)
Blood Feud (A short story)

To check out my other books in electronic format, please visit my website.

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-25T10:00:00.000-06:00

Merry Christmas and thank you to all my readers!

The James Bond Car and Publishing

2011-12-22T10:00:00.002-06:00

One final James Bond car post and then I'll find something else to talk about. I promise.

When I wrote In the Midnight Hour, I gave Ryne (my heroine) keyless entry. In my mind (and in the scene), she opened the doors to her vehicle by pressing the button on her key fob. As I proofread a test print of the book, everything was fine. Then, months later, I got my author copies. My keyless entry had been changed to keys entry.

This bugged me. A lot. It still bugs me.

My guess, and this is only a guess, is that whoever did the proofread of the galleys for the publisher lives in New York City and doesn't own a car. I can't see how else that would have been changed. The thing that's so frustrating is that at the time I didn't have that feature on my SUV and I had to research to find out that keyless entry was called keyless entry.

Fast forward to my James Bond car. Can you imagine if I wrote a character with a car like this? One that responds to voice commands, automatically hooks my cell phone into the system as soon as I get in the car, and has a remote start? I can't help but wonder what these features would be changed to. :-)

Let me close by saying I love copy editors and I've been lucky to have really good ones on all my books. I'm grateful for all the mistakes they find and fix.

Adventures In Rental Cars

2011-12-20T10:00:00.004-06:00

I've taken to calling my new Edge the James Bond Car because about the only feature missing is the covert missile launcher. The options are cool except there's one small problem--I'm still having trouble figuring it all out. I am a computer/gadget geek, so I found this rather embarrassing. Until the business trip to Atlanta.

Our entire department needed to attend a meeting in Atlanta last week, and because it was only an overnight trip, three guys rented cars and the rest of us rode along with them. The one I rode with most of the time had a Dodge Durango with the same kind of dashboard screen that I have. He couldn't figure out most of it either. We both were poking at buttons, trying to figure things out and still couldn't get what we wanted to happen.

But the best part was on Wednesday night. The driver of the Durango had come in the day before so this was day (and night) 2 for him with the SUV. The entire group drove about 45 minutes from our hotel for dinner. There were three of us in the Durango as we left to return to the hotel.

The driver makes a comment, "There's a police car behind us."

We drive a little farther and he says, "We're being pulled over."

We're all confused since he wasn't speeding or weaving or anything else that would warrant being pulled over. The officer comes up to the car and says, "Sir, would you turn on your headlights."

Huh? Aren't they on? Um, no, they weren't. The driver thought the lights were on auto, but they'd been turned off, and because of how bright the screens on the dashboard were, no one realized the headlights were off. We didn't get a ticket, but the driver swore us to secrecy--and then he ran around the office the next day telling everyone the story.

Technology is generally awesome, but sometimes it makes life more complicated.

Source Code

2011-12-18T10:00:00.002-06:00

Source Code stars Jake Gyllenhaal as Captain Colter Stevens. The movie opens with him waking up on a train. He doesn't know how he got there because the last thing he remembers is flying a helicopter in Afghanistan. The woman across from him is talking to him as if she knows him, and when he goes to the bathroom and looks in the mirror, the face he sees isn't his. Then the train blows up and he's back in a capsule and another military officer is talking to him over a video link.

It turns out that he's part of a mission to identify the man who blew up the train. The team can transport him back 8 minutes into the life of another man who was actually on that train. And they do it over and over again because Stevens can't get enough information. Each time he goes back, the captain tries a new tactic. Each time he goes back, he's more assured in his role, but there are things he doesn't know.

I'm keeping the description of the movie vague because I don't want to reveal any spoilers and ruin the movie for anyone.

I hadn't heard of Source Code and I'm surprised I missed picking up something about it because it's exactly the kind of movie I enjoy most—action, adventure, and suspense with the slightest touch of romance. I would have liked a bit more on the romance front, but given the setup for the plot, I don't think it was possible and it was good the way it was.

Anyway, because I hadn't heard anything more about the movie than the brief description on the On Demand screen, I got to be surprised by the turns the storyline took. Nothing was a gasp-out-loud shock, but I definitely didn't see everything coming and I love that.

Gyllenhaal did a great job making his character sympathetic and likable from the start. I felt his confusion and I was embarrassed for him as he acted strangely, drawing attention to himself in a what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-him way. I was on the journey of discovery with him throughout the movie and there are two storylines twined together. There's Stevens trying to discover who bombed the train and there's Stevens trying to figure out how he got pulled into this mission for Project Source Code. Both stories carried plenty of suspense and kept me intrigued throughout.

The only negative comment I can sort of make is that I guessed the identity of the bomber early. However, the film did a great job of throwing me off the track and I decided I was wrong and started looking for other suspects. So while the guilty party wasn't a shock, it was sort of a surprise because I'd already dismissed my suspicions. I hope this was vague enough.

Since I don't have a bunch of minuses to list here, you've probably guessed I'm giving the movie a recommendation. You're right.

Very enjoyable. Recommended.

The Unexpected New Car

2011-12-15T10:00:00.002-06:00

If you follow me on Twitter, you know I bought a new (to me) car last week. I didn't want a new car-- Okay, let me rephrase. I didn't want to have the car payments that go with a new vehicle. If someone was handing out free cars, that would be a different story.

Anyway, I didn't plan on buying a new car this year, especially when I move to Atlanta just after the first of the year, but my beloved Explorer was having issues. It was a 1998 and it needed transmission work and a new muffler/tailpipe assembly. There was no way I could justify putting that kind of money into a 14-year-old car. I'd known this day was coming and I'd already made my decision on what the replacement would be, but it was still a "no, not now" moment.

I loved my Explorer to bits, but I decided to go with the Edge as a replacement instead. It's a crossover vehicle--part SUV, part car--and I liked the look. The price tag? Not so enamored, but sadly the prices on all cars have gone ridiculously high since I last bought one.

I'd checked out used Edges online, found one I really liked, and took it for a test drive last Thursday. I didn't plan to take it home that night, but since the Explorer I was trading in could die at any moment thanks to the transmission issue, I wasn't left with much choice.

Beautiful, isn't it? (Please ignore the mess in the garage.) I'm trying to get used to it. My 1998 did not have any of the fancy stuff in it that this car does. It's like going from a World War I biplane to flying the space shuttle. I actually had to read the instruction book and my motto has always been: If all else fails, read the directions. Sadly, I bet I'll only use a fraction of the car's features because I'll forget they're there or forget how to turn them on.

Some of what I'm learning. No keys needed. I just have a remote clicky things. I need it with me, but I just keep it in my jacket pocket and press the dashboard button to start.

My cell phone is hooked into the car via blue tooth and I can verbally tell my car to call someone without having to touch anything. I'm not much of a phone person and I hate people who yap on their cells while driving, but this could come in handy at times.

However, I won't need to call anyone for directions on how to get somewhere. Not anymore. The car has GPS built in! This is the feature I really wanted because I don't know the city of Atlanta or it's suburbs at all and I'll need all the help I can get to find my way around.

It's all cool, but TBH, I miss my old Explorer. I recognized the sounds it made, I knew where to look and how to handle it. I do like the Edge, though, and while the car was used, it was still a 2011 and has a ton of bells and whistles on it. More than I needed, but I took what was on the vehicle.

A Pinch Of This and a Dash Of That

2011-12-13T10:00:00.000-06:00

I have a guest blogger today and she'll be giving away a download of her book to one lucky commenter!

Trish McCallan and I have known each other for around ten years now and she was one of the people who read the draft of my first book. Back then I was pretty much only a seat of the pants writer and T was a plotter. Over the years, I've learned more about plotting (although I certainly wouldn't call myself a plotter) and then T had this dream that was a story. I happily welcomed my plotter friend to the world of pantsing. Her dream became Forged In Fire.

FIF is an awesome story! Action, adventure, romance, and a touch of paranormal. The airplane stuff? I was technical advisor. If I didn't know something, I talked to one of the engineers and these guys did have the answers. (For those of you who are unfamiliar with my bio, I work for a major US airline in Technical Operations.) But it's the characters in a story that grab me. Beth and Zane sizzle together as they try to overcome a plot involving the planned hijacking of an airplane. These characters are human and real and I cared about them.

About Forged In Fire:

Beth Brown doesn’t believe in premonitions until she dreams a sexy stranger is gunned down during the brutal hijacking of a commercial airliner. When events in her dream start coming true, she heads to the flight’s departure gate. To her shock, she recognizes the man she’d watched die the night before.

Lieutenant Commander Zane Winters comes from a bloodline of elite warriors with psychic abilities. When Zane and two of his platoon buddies arrive at Sea-Tac Airport, he has a vision of his teammates’ corpses. Then she arrives—a leggy blonde who sets off a different kind of alarm.

As Beth teams up with Zane, they discover the hijacking is the first step in a secret cartel’s deadly global agenda and that key personnel within the FBI are compromised. To survive the forces mobilizing against them, Beth will need to open herself to a psychic connection with the sexy SEAL who claims to be her soul mate.

And now, here's Trish!

A Pinch of This and a Dash of That

I love alpha heroes.

Those yummy, yummy, sexy, steamy-hot alpha heroes. Love them.

When I read, I read for the heroes. I read to sneak a peek into their minds. To wallow in their maleness. To watch their reactions as they fall in love and lose that calm rationality they show to the rest of the world. To me the alpha hero is the sexiest beast alive. It doesn’t matter whether he is a vampire, a werewolf, a demon, a Gineal troubleshooter, or a warrior from SEAL Team 7. If he’s an alpha hero, he rocks my boat

So when I read, I read for the hero. The heroine, well she is replaceable. (With me! Ha!) I’ve read hundreds of romances and the heroine rarely leaves an impression. In fact, I remember very few heroines’ names. But the hero, yeah- if he is a sexy alpha—I will remember him forever.

Take for example the first alpha hero I fell in love with. His name was Wolf Mackenzie from Mackenzie’s Mountain. Oh la la. A half Indian, hot-blooded, sex-up, bad-tempered alpha hero. I took one peek into his mind and fell into ~~lust~~ love. Okay- I fell into lust. I challenge anyone not to fall into lust with Wolf Mackenzie. Or Wolf and what-her-name’s sons Joe and Zane.

Even after all these years, Wolf still makes me salivate.

Then along came Suz Brockmann with her alpha SEALs. And Fiona Brand with her New Zealand hotties. And Linda Howard. Linda Howard. Linda Howard.

So sue me, I’m obsessed with Linda Howard’s heroes. Just a little. Okay, a lot.

For years nobody and I mean nobody, did sexy alpha heroes like LH. And her single title heroes were even more appealing than her category ones…okay…maybe not more appealing, but just as appealing.

Take Marc Chastain. No wait! Give him back! I’ll take Marc Chastain and Dane Hollister and Alex Trammel. (Who, btw-should have gotten his own story! Just saying.)

For a long time I didn’t think anyone could write an alpha hero that matched Linda Howard’s. And then I stumbled across the Black Dagger Brotherhood and found a whole slew of hot-blooded, sexed-up, bad-tempered alpha heroes. Yeah, they were vampires- but heck, everyone has a character flaw, right? When it comes right down to it, I can handle a blood obsessed hero as long as he’s sexy.

And those BDB heroes are the very definition of sexy.

Of course my preference as a reader trickles into my writing and apparently I “borrow” my favorite traits from my favorite heroes. Like Wolf Mackenzie’s sexed-up hot bloodedness, Joe Mackenzie’s outer calm, Dane Hollister and Wrath’s bad temper, or Marc Chastain’s New Orleans’ charm.

I’ve been revising a book I wrote several years ago, and as I read I recognize bits and pieces of my favorite heroes—a pinch of this hero and a dash of that one. Nobody but me would be able to match the borrowed traits to the hero I borrowed them from. But I can tell, because I get an instant flashback to when I first read that hero’s book.

It’s bittersweet in a way, that vivid flash back to books I read years ago, way before I started writing, and the heroes in my past that inspired the ones in my present and future.

So how about the rest of you? Who are your favorite literary heroes? Leave a comment for a chance to win an electronic copy of my paranormal romantic suspense, Forged in Fire, which features (you’ve probably already guessed it!) a whole slew of sexy alpha heroes!

Trish McCallan has been writing for as long as she can remember.

In grade school she wrote children’s stories, illustrating them with crayons and binding the sheets together with pencil-punched holes and red yarn. She used to sell these masterpieces at her lemonade stand for a nickel a book. Surprisingly, people actually bought them. Like, all of them. Every night she would have to write a new batch for her basket.

As she got older her interest changed to boys and horses. The focus of her literary masterpieces followed this shift. Her first full length novel was written in seventh grade and featured a girl, a horse and a boy. At the end of the book the teenage heroine rode off into the sunset . . . with the horse.

These days she sticks to romantic suspense with hot alpha heroes and roller-coaster plots. Since she is a fan of all things bizarre, paranormal elements always seem to find a way into her fiction. Her current release, Forged in Fire, was the result of a Black Dagger Brotherhood reading binge, a cold, a bottle of NyQuil and a vivid dream.

You can find Trish at www.trishmccallan.com

Forged In Fire can be found at: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Smashwords

How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming

2011-12-11T10:00:00.000-06:00

My latest audio book was How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming by Mike Brown. This is non-fiction by an astronomer who played an instrumental role in Pluto being demoted from planet-hood.

The book's focus is largely on the discovery of Eris, the "dwarf planet" that's slightly bigger than Pluto, although it also spends time on earlier discoveries that Brown and his team made of other objects orbiting in the Kuiper Belt. The story culminates with how Pluto was voted out at a meeting of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) in Prague.

As I've mentioned before, I have an interest in astronomy and one of the grade school dreams was to be an astronomer one day. I even took an intro to astronomy class in college. I'll confess that I didn't like Pluto being demoted. Maybe Saturn and Neptune are my favorite planets, but hey, Pluto is pretty cool, right? How could they vote it out after all these years? But as I listened to the arguments against Pluto, well, they made sense. I wish they hadn't, but there you go.

I found the book overall to be interesting. I enjoyed hearing about the discoveries of large objects in the Kuiper Belt and the stories behind them. I liked hearing about the steps the team went through to verify and study these objects before announcing them and the intrigue that surrounded the object nicknamed Santa added drama and a sense of indignation that another astronomer nefariously tried to steal the discovery from this team at Cal Tech.

But as fascinating as I found all the astronomy stuff to be, I can't recommend the book wholeheartedly. Brown wasted a ton of space talking about his first child. Some sections of Lila talk went on so long, my eyes were rolling back into my head. If I wanted to hear baby/children stories, I would have bought a book about that topic. I wanted to hear astronomy. His editor should have done a hard pruning and encouraged him to write more about Eris or anything else associated with astronomy and much less "indulgent parent gushing over child" stuff. A little bit of personal information is fine, it makes the author more human, but the extended stretches of stories about how long Lila slept at night, how many times she ate, etc were not even remotely interesting. The biggest disadvantages to audio books is how hard it is to skip the tedious parts.

So if you're interested in how Pluto was demoted, I'd recommend buying the paper version of this book for easy skipping of all the baby/child talk. Without that, there is a very interesting core that focused on astronomy and provided a compelling argument for tossing our ninth planet out of the classification.

A qualified thumbs up.

The Atlanta Trip

2011-12-08T10:00:00.001-06:00

I was down in Atlanta last week to look for somewhere to live. Despite working for an airline, we drove down because Thanksgiving had the flights packed. Over the course of the week, there were lots of events that I thought would make entertaining blog posts. Unfortunately, I forgot most of them by the time I got home.

There are some things, though, that are stuck in my mind:

It gets dark early now. We were in Illinois and there were no lights on the sides of the freeway. It was drizzling. I was going 70, which was the speed limit. I got passed. Constantly. By cars doing 80-85 mph. There was one guy driving so fast, he had to doing 90. In the dark. So FYI, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri and Michigan drivers go far too fast. I wasn't even a little surprised when we came across an accident in the center median involving 4 vehicles.

And in the dark, somewhere in Illinois, I had to slam on the brakes. I was lucky no one was tailgating me at that time. As I zipped down the freeway, my headlights picked up an animal in the middle of the two lanes. I don't know if it was a dog or a coyote, but I nearly hit it. That was major scary.

My impressions of Atlanta. I liked it. They drive like maniacs there, too. Seriously. I didn't think it was possible to get a more stressful commute than I have in Minneapolis. I was wrong. I might have to check into a van pool to get to and from work. Although if I had a clue where I was going, it might not have been so bad.

The weather was great! Okay, so the people in Atlanta were complaining about how cold it was, but I'd been wearing my winter jacket and hat in Minneapolis. In ATL, I was wearing my spring jacket and I was comfortable. I actually hated the idea of going home because I didn't want to go back to the cold (and it snowed the day after I got home). The weather in MN got even worse since then. On Tuesday, it was 15 degrees in MN at 5am. It was 62 in ATL. I'm thinking Mother Nature is trying to make me eager to move.

The trip home also had a few moments. Like the rest area we stopped at in northern Georgia where I almost got a cat. The two workers who clean up around the place found an abandoned house cat who was as friendly and sweet as could be. First thing in the door, they asked me if I wanted a cat. I thought about it while I washed my hands and thought, well, why not? Then I found out the cat was pregnant and I was like I can't deal with that on top of all else I have.

After dark, again in Illinois, I caught movement in the corner of my headlights. A deer was on the edge of right-hand lane. All I could do was think: Please, don't let her run out in front of me. Luckily, she didn't, but that was enough to encourage me to stop for the night. In the hotel room, the radar showed freezing rain ahead of us so stopping was definitely the right choice.

The next day, in Wisconsin, we stop for gas. My dad notices my tailpipe is broken. We stop at a Ford dealership at the next exit and they took it off. The mechanics were awesome! They didn't even charge us for doing that, but the rest of the trip home was a little on the loud side. ;-)

And of course, we hit Minneapolis in rush hour. But it was good to be home. When I saw the snow coming down on Saturday, I reconsidered that statement.

Right-Sizing a Character's Issues

2011-12-06T10:00:00.003-06:00

I was reading a book recently and the author did something that really bothered me. She gave the heroine a huge, enormous issue in her backstory, but then largely neglected it except for lip service now and then. I guess you'd call it a wallpaper character issue.

If, as a writer, you choose to give a character a life-altering event in their past, one that is supposed to have affected them for a long period of time. One you tell me that they still haven't healed from. Then it requires that the issue be dealt with over the course of the book. Don't tell me they feel a certain way and then have the character immediately act as if the issue never happened. Not unless your character is also dealing with denial, but that wasn't the case in this story.

So here's my take on things. First of all, while a writer needs to know a ton of stuff about her characters, the reader doesn't necessarily need the information if it has no bearing on the story. Secondly, if you give your heroine (or hero) a big issue, it has to be dealt with during the story and it can't only be mentioned on rare occasion. Third, the character's change is called a growth arc because it happens slowly. People do not get over traumatic events as easily as flipping a switch.

When I wrote Through a Crimson Veil, Conor had one of these enormous issues. He was conceived when his mother was raped by a demon. Because of this, he hates demons...and he hates the part of himself that's demon. His heroine is also half demon and her presence--and how he reacts to her--cause him to have to confront his issue. Believe me, normal people (and our characters are largely normal even if they're demons or mercenaries or whatever) don't want to deal with their issues. They have to be forced.

So over the book, Conor learns to deal with being demon. But this issue is more than that. He's carried this hate his entire life. It is totally going to affect his interaction with the world. It will impact the way he thinks. It will impact what his choice of action will be. In other words, even when the issue is not directly being raised, it is still coloring every scene in the book. That's what major character issues do.

If, as a writer, you don't want to deal with that kind of thread, then I'd recommend giving the character a smaller issue. Small issues can cause tension and conflict, but are unlikely to color every scene or a character's every action.

An example of a small issue is In the Darkest Night where Farran had a scar. The scar was something that she only had for 5 months before Kel healed it and made it disappear. She didn't think of it all the time or touch her face constantly. But from time to time, she did remember it and it did affect her. The book itself, centered more on Kel's issue which was another enormous one--Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). That did color every scene he was in during the book, but Farran's scar didn't.

For me, it's all about staying true to character and raising a big issue and then only using it when an author feels like (or remembers it) doesn't play. Real people, real life just doesn't work that way.

Super Freakonomics

2011-12-04T10:00:00.001-06:00

Super Freakonomics is the follow-up to Freakonomics. I'll confess that I've never read the first book, but I did listen to the second book and loved it!

As a journalism major in college, I was required to take both macro and micro economics. I'd also had economics in high school, but none of the classes I've had was even half as entertaining as this book was. The book's focus is on microeconomics and behavioral economics and looks at things like prostitution, how often doctors wash their hands, car seats, terrorism, and global warming.

Yes, definitely quite a wide variety of topics!

Everything was presented in such an interesting, entertaining manner that even topics I thought wouldn't be particularly riveting, held my attention. One of the co-authors reads the book, and while this is not something I'm normally a fan of, it works here because he's got a great voice and does just read the words. He performs them the way a good voice actor should.

One of the more interesting topics focused on crime and that incident in New York from the 1960s? 1970s? The one where the woman was stabbed to death in front of 15 or so witnesses and no one stepped in to help. Apparently, the account wasn't entirely accurate and there are quotes and stuff from the people who lived there and people who investigated it after the fact.

The best part, though, of the entire book is the epilogue. They talk about a researcher who was working with monkeys and teaching them to use money. I was laughing quietly in my cube as I listened to this section and the ending of the book was great!

Highly recommended.

Cover for Dark Awakening

2011-12-01T10:00:00.001-06:00

Dark Awakening never had its own cover because it was part of an anthology called Shards of Crimson, which had four Crimson City stories. Now that Team Crimson City is working to publish our stories in electronic format, Kimi and Nic finally get a cover. As I blogged earlier, finding stock photos with multicultural characters was very difficult. Nic doesn't look very much like the Nic I saw when I wrote the story, but I think the cover turned out awesome anyway.

I'd written the cover copy for this story back in 2006 because I wanted a description of my story for my website even if the back cover copy on the actual anthology was more specific to Crimson City as a whole.

Kimi Noguchi is working as an intern for an advertising agency in Crimson City and she's discovered that she's a kijo or witch. She thinks having talent is cool, but her magic attracts the attention of a power-hungry Bak-Faru demon and she's forced to call on another demon, Nicodemus, for help.

Nic made a promise to stay away from Kimi for her own good, but now that she's summoned him, all bets are off. She's his vishtau mate, a bond held in reverence by all demons, and he's not about to let this opportunity pass him by. Nic plans to protect, woo and win his woman.

This was the first time I'd ever written anything short. I tend to go over the word count numbers in my contracts by a pretty good amount. What can I say? Bonus story for readers, right? Sometimes it just takes a while for a story to unfold, and despite my attempts to prod them along, I can't get my characters to move faster than they do.

The first ever cover for Dark Awakening...drum roll, please:

Stay tuned for more on when Team Crimson City will have the series available in ebook.

New Cover for Through a Crimson Veil!

2011-11-29T10:00:00.002-06:00

When I blogged a couple of weeks ago about having so much trouble finding stock photos to use on covers, it was because I was in the middle of having covers made for Through a Crimson Veil and Dark Awakening. For those of you who are going Dark Awakening, huh? This is my Crimson City novella that was in the Shards of Crimson anthology.

Well, Through a Crimson Veil is finally available electronically! I'm still waiting on Amazon, but if you have a Nook, it's up at BN.com. The story is also up in EPUB and Mobipocket PRC format at ARebooks and in a variety of formats at Smashwords.

Here's the new cover copy I wrote for the book:

When a sexy half demon asks Conor McCabe for protection, he can't say no and he doesn't understand why. He hates demons. He doesn't want to help her. He doesn't want to want her, but every minute he spends with her strengthens his need to keep her safe—and intensifies the desire burning between them.

Mika Noguchi sought out Conor to steal the key that can free all demons imprisoned in Orcus. She quickly regrets her mission—Conor is her destined mate and he'll view her theft as betrayal—but she gave her word to the council and the penalty for breaking it is severe.

Other demons are loose in Crimson City, however, and they have their own plans. They're not about to let anyone stand in the way. Not Conor. Not Mika. They'll do anything it takes to advance their agendas—even kill.

Writing cover copy is sooo hard. This totally made me appreciate my editors and anyone else at my publishers who wrote it for my books. I still have to come up with a short, one sentence blurb for Crimson Veil, but I'll get there.

And here's the cover:

BTW, Team Crimson City is working to get our books up in electronic format. More info to come.

Pirates of the Caribbean 4: On Stranger Tides

2011-11-27T10:00:00.009-06:00

I'm going to do my best not to give away any spoilers since this hasn't been available on disk for long. I was lucky enough to get some coupons to watch On Demand movies, so I took advantage of one of them to watch Pirates of the Caribbean - On Stranger Tides, the fourth in the franchise. Basically, Jack is off to find the Fountain of Youth, but there are two other groups involved in addition to the one he's working with. That's the gist of the plot, but of course, there is plenty of other stuff going on throughout the 2+ hours.

I loved the first POC movie. I thought it did a fabulous job with the characters and the story was enough to make them shine. I was bitterly disappointed with the second movie, and while I thought the third was a bit better, I didn't like it. I had a number of issues with it, including the fact that the core of the characters were sacrificed for plot expediency. And there was more special effects than the important stuff that made the first movie so special.

With this in mind, I went into On Stranger Tides with some trepidation. Overall, I liked it well enough. It wasn't as awesome as the original, but it was much better than the last two.

Johnny Depp is gorgeous and I love him as Captain Jack Sparrow. Will and Elizabeth from the first three movies aren't in this one, and I didn't miss them. I liked them, but I felt as if their story had been played out in the first three movies. It made a lot of sense to drop their characters and move forward with the pirates. I'm actually surprised Hollywood did it since it's just the slightest bit risky. I actually think, if they continue to make POC movies, that it would be smart to do arcs and drop those characters out as each arc finished, with the core players moving forward. Like Johnny Depp. :-)

Um, but I digressed. This is the kind of thing I do when I watch movies--analyze them like this.
Anyway, this time around, the movie is about more than special effects and that's part of what made it better than 2 and 3. But there still was less emphasis on character and character interaction in Stranger Tides than in the Black Pearl. I'm all about the characters. But there were some good moments. Jack Sparrow's wild escape scenes are pure fun and the first one in this movie had some particularly good moments. Actually, all the escape scenes were fun and played to the other movies and how Jack was portrayed.

Keith Richards was awesome as Jack's father. He only had a few lines and it wasn't as if they were earth shaking, but knowing that Depp based Jack Sparrow--in part--on Richards and then seeing Richards playing the character's father? It's too big a kick not to enjoy. A little like an Easter egg.

There were a few interesting things they did--like making the mermaids be vampires. Okay, I'm not sure the mermaids were supposed to really be vampires, but when they bared their fangs, that's what they looked like to me and so that's where my mind went. And I also found what they did with the ships and the bottles to be intriguing as well.

While there were a few funny moments, I found this one lacked the humor of the original and I missed that. Plenty of action and adventure, though, and lots of Johnny Depp, who is really the best thing ever about POC and the reason why I was willing to take a chance on POC4 after the debacles that were 2 and 3. And there's a character listed in IMDB as the Spaniard who was pretty good looking in the movie. The actor is Oscar Jaenada.

Overall, I give it a qualified recommendation. It wasn't great, but it was enjoyable enough.

Thanksgiving Day Showdown

2011-11-24T20:59:00.000-06:00

There was a showdown today before Thanksgiving Day dinner. I documented it for the world to see.

The squirrel is beneath the bird feeder and the crow is bitching him out.

The squirrel is not impressed.

The squirrel heads back to his place beneath the bird feeder.

The Crow is persistent, though, and he returns to complaining.

When he makes no progress with the squirrel, the crow brings in reinforcements.

Rambo Squirrel is not impressed.

The crow's buddy gets tired of it and leaves. The squirrel returns to his food.

Rambo Squirrel gets tired of things and goes after the crow.

And goes after him again.

And goes after him yet again.

Rambo Squirrel goes back to his food, but the crow isn't about to give up.

Stare down.

Rambo Squirrel emerges victorious!

Thanksgiving Thoughts

2011-11-24T08:00:00.001-06:00

Sometimes I look around at the world and I despair at how people behave. But just when I think there's no redeeming humankind, something happens to hearten me.

Last week, my department at work held a fundraiser for a former employee who'd been diagnosed with liver and pancreatic cancer. He's on his fourth round of chemotherapy, and needless to say, can't work. We festooned the offices and hangars with flyers announcing a chili dog lunch and a 50/50 raffle, where the winner gets half the money and the other half goes to the person for whom we're raising money.

The turnout was incredible. Minneapolis is being closed down, the jobs moving to Atlanta in January, so it's pretty sparse around here, but we still managed to sell nearly $2000 worth of chili dogs.

It gets better. When the winner of the 50/50 raffle was drawn, we discovered whoever had bought the ticket had written the name of the man who has cancer. Instead of getting just half the money we raised selling tickets, he and his family will get the entire thing.

Maybe there's hope for humanity yet.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Into the Future

2011-11-22T10:00:00.001-06:00

I read an article in Wired Monday about time travel. The author of the piece said that scientists are reporting that theoretically we can only travel forward, never backward, and that the idea of going into future was frightening. I skim read it at 5am, so I might have missed a few things, but what I took away was that the future was filled with horrible things like a hot planet and what goes along with that.

Call me an optimist, but that's not my view of the future. I don't see the world being a horrible place to live. Different? Yes. And different does scare a lot of people as does change. Believe me, I know. We're going through massive change at my day job and even five months later, people are fighting it.

My view of the future is one where genetic treatments have eradicated a lot of the diseases that plague us today. Genes can be turned on and off to bring about the desire result, so why not flip to give people better health? Cloning human organs so that people who need transplants can have a genetically matched liver, which will eliminate rejection issues and the drugs that current transplant recipients have to take. And flipping a few genes to get rid of the negative effects of aging? Cool! I see a world where people live longer and in better health to enjoy those years.

I can see a future where we've learned to respect the Earth. A future where we're no longer burning fossil fuels, but have found a clean, safe energy alternative. This might be farther out because we live in a petroleum-based economy and the big oil dudes are going to fight tooth and nail to hold onto their cash cow, but eventually this will change. It has to as we deplete these resources.

The future I see has more global cooperation, less nation against nation and more we are the world. Yeah, I know, call me sappy, but we're all humans and why should artificially drawn boundaries lead us into conflict? The internet has allowed us to get to know people across the globe and to realize we're more similar than different. There's a line from a song. I can't remember if it's Sting or the Police, but I hear Sting sing: if the Russians love their children, too. And that's where I think we're going--to a world where we realize people who are different still have the same basic desires. I know there will still be extremists out there who don't think this way, but I think there will be fewer of them and they'll have fewer supporters.

And the technology in the future! OMG, I can't wait! I'm a total gadget geek and when I think of the possibilities for where computers will be in even 50 years, I get giddy. :-) Then there's nanotechnology and what's coming on that front. The possibilities are exciting to me.

Of course, there are plenty of pitfalls along the way. Opportunities for us to blow our potential and end up in a worse place rather than better. This is where my optimism comes in. I believe that we'll avoid most of the problems, and the ones we do blunder into will be quickly identified and the path corrected. To quote Timbuk Three, the future's so bright, I gotta wear shades."

Kindle Fire: My Thoughts

2011-11-20T10:00:00.000-06:00

My Kindle Fire arrived on Wednesday. This was later than a lot of people, but I'd waffled for a few days before deciding to order, so I wasn't at the front of the queue.

The first thing I thought as I lifted the Fire from the box was this is heavy. I have a Kindle 2, and even with the external keyboard, it's lighter than the Fire. This weight really registered later in the evening when I was using it while I sat on the couch. My case came a day later, so this was all the device. I'm putting this in the minus column.

Unlike my regular Kindle, the Fire has a glossy touch screen. I didn't have an issue with glare, although I read online that others have, but I did have some trouble with the touch part. First, when held in the normal vertical position, the onscreen keyboard is very narrow and I frequently touched the wrong keys. Secondly, sometimes I had to touch repeatedly before the Fire registered it. I don't know if it's me since this is my first touch screen or the Kindle. This touching issue became more challenging considering how tiny some website links appeared on the device. The third issue was all the fingerprints I left behind. They were really obvious when the screen was black and I hate fingerprints on computer screens. I'm giving this another minus.

Setup was easy, and as I bought it on my account and not as a gift, I didn't have to do anything with that. It automatically registered itself. Setting up one-click buying was also a snap. The interface with the Kindle store is smooth, seamless, and so awesome, it's going to be easy to spend money on eBooks. Too easy, but I'll call this a plus anyway. :-)

I authorized apps from third parties and was able to download the Barnes & Noble Nook app onto my Amazon Kindle Fire. :-) This elated me because having everything in one place is the ultimate goal, right? The only problem I have is that only a fraction of my Nook books would download onto my Fire. I haven't had time to investigate this yet. And while this is semi-annoying, I never expected I'd be able to get any Nook books on my Fire, so this is a plus.

Amazon loads the icons for a few apps on the device when it's delivered, but if you want them, you still need to download them. The ones I checked out like Pandora and IMDB were free. I also checked out the app store and found some cool stuff. Bejeweled 2 was the free app of the day last Wednesday, so I got that. I also picked up Tune-In Radio which lets me listen to radio stations from around the world. I listened to the BBC for a while and also a station in Australia. Then there was the police scanner app--I forget what it's called--I was able to listen in on the LAPD for a bit. I also downloaded the Seesmic app for Android because the Twitter site stayed completely blank in the browser. All these apps were free. I'm putting this in the plus column as well.

I streamed a movie to the Fire on Friday and this worked very well. No stuttering of the movie--it played smoothly--and the images were crisp. The movie I test ran was a free offering through the Amazon Prime membership and selecting it was easy. A couple of taps and I had launch. I think individual internet connections will affect this, but my cable company was up to the task. Plus.

But y'all want to know what it was like to read on. I liked it. The screen is backlit, unlike the regular Kindles and their e-ink, but that was actually one of the reasons I decided to buy it. I don't have enough light in my bedroom to read the regular Kindle without using a book light and I never manage to position that thing right for me. Reading on the backlit screen of the Fire was perfect. The only issue I had--again--was with the touch screen. Sometimes it wouldn't change pages, sometimes I brought up the controls on the bottom of the screen by accident. I'm guessing this is me and learning how it works. Overall, plus.

There is no HDMI port, actually no ports at all beyond a place to plug-in headphones and the power cord. I need to find out if I can use the power port with a USB cord to hook into my laptop and side load books. This is another thing I haven't had time to explore.

Turning the Fire turns the screen orientation as well. I know Apple has done this on their portable devices, but I don't have any of those things and it surprised me the first time I moved the device and had the screen adjust itself. Once I got used to it, it was cool. Plus.

Overall, I like the Kindle Fire. Despite what you've read online and in the media, it's not a competitor for Apple's iPad, at least that's my opinion. It's an ereader that has some bonus functions like streaming music and internet access if you're somewhere with WiFi. The iPad is a machine that can work as well as play, the Fire seems to mostly be an entertainment portal. If you're looking for an iPad, you'll be disappointed. If you're looking for a color ereader with a backlit screen and some additional features, the Fire is a good choice.

Qualified thumbs up.

Ooh, Baby, Baby, Baby, Baby

2011-11-17T10:00:00.002-06:00

My original thought about a blog topic was something along the lines of how much I hate it when the hero calls the heroine baby, but then I reconsidered that. It would just be my luck to riff on that for an entire post and wake up tomorrow with a hero who uses it. It was bad enough that Deke called Ryne babe during In the Midnight Hour At least that started as a way to rile her, but still I decided I'm in no position to blog about endearments.

As I thought about it some more, I realized that the two books I picked up recently that had baby used as the endearment of choice had a bigger problem. The authors of both stories had the heroes calling their heroines that in every single paragraph of dialogue--or darn close to it.

As a reader, nothing irritates me more than characters who use each other's names (or nicknames/endearments/etc) every time they open their mouths. Real people do not talk that way. Not ever. I challenge any writer who's tempted to use the character's name in dialogue to listen to others. Even in groups of five or six, it's rare to hear someone's name and it's pretty much nonexistent when only two people are talking to each other. Like the hero and heroine for example.

It's not just novice writers either. I've seen authors who've been writing for twenty years do it, too. Because I'm so aware of this, not only do I rarely use names in dialogue, I also do a search for both the hero's and heroine's names (and endearments) in my manuscript, and if I see it between a couple of quotation marks, I think about whether I really need it. Nine times out of ten, I delete it.

I pretty much never say anyone has to do anything as a writer because I was nearly driven from writing all together by plotters who insisted I had to use 3 x 5 cards and formulate everything out ahead of time. But this isn't really messing with anyone's process (I don't think) to recommend taking out the majority of name use within dialogue.

Seriously, this is not how people talk:

"Baby, I want you; you're so beautiful."

"But Biff, it's too soon."

"Don't tell me that, baby, I need you."

"I don't know, Biff, we just met ten minutes ago."

"Come on, baby, help me out here."

"Oh, Biff."

You get the drift right? And sadly this example is not an exaggeration. I picked up two books in the last week that did this exact thing.

Have you ever heard anyone in real life talk this way? Now do a search in your Work In Progress. How many times have you used your characters names in dialogue? Delete most of them. Your readers will thank you.

Stock Photos and Cover Art

2011-11-15T10:00:00.011-06:00

For the past couple of months, the Crimson City authors have been working on getting the series up in ebook. It's been an interesting process. I'd formatted a couple of short stories for ebook, but this was a full-length book and a novella. It was more work, but I also learned a few tricks to speed the whole thing up. And just to prove I'm a geek beyond all hope, I enjoyed the formatting. Mostly. :-)

Finding stock photos for the cover artist was much more difficult.

There are so many issues with stock photos. First, pictures of men and women grinning happily are not going to work for cover art. Especially if they're wearing business suits. I haven't written a character yet who dresses up like that, although I think I have one in the wings. Maybe. We'll see if that lasts once I get into writing his story. And I write stories with suspense. Grinning people on the cover don't work. Neither do people wearing phone headsets, holding money, using a laptop or the myriad of other poses rife on the stock photo sites.

Then there's problem two--both people need to be attractive. It happened over and over again--I'd find one attractive person, but they'd be paired up with someone not so attractive. Why do so many photographers use one model that would turn heads and put him/her with a model who is plainer? Or if both the man and woman are good looking, the guy is scrawny. Muscles and looks are important for book covers.

I had an extra issue at work on the Crimson City covers. Both my heroines are of Japanese heritage. Both their heroes are of European heritage. Yeah. There was one photo that was perfect. Sexy clinch. Asian woman. European man. And I'd already used it for the Power of Two cover. (Which will be coming in ebook eventually.)

The cover artist cut off the heads of one couple so you can't see the woman isn't Japanese. This is what we're going with for Through a Crimson Veil. And I spent hours and hours (time I definitely don't have) combing the stock photo site for something, anything we could use for Dark Awakening. I did find one picture with an Asian woman, only she was paired with an Asian man. My cover artist performed a miracle, but he was replaced.

Is it seriously too much to ask for stock photographers to put a good looking, muscular man with a good looking woman together in a pose that's sexy without being Erotica sexy? A pose that doesn't involve grins or any piece of business equipment? Is it too much to ask that some of the couples come from two different ethnic backgrounds?

I love writing multicultural characters, but getting covers made for those books is excruciating. I never found any picture that could even remotely work for Troll in my story, The Troll Bridge. Troll is multi, multi, multicultural. His heritage is part European, part Filipino, and part African-Caribbean. Yeah. You'll notice that cover only has a woman on it. She at least looks something like his heroine.

As I contemplate future stories that I have in mind, I'm already dreading what their covers will look like. It's not only authors publishing on their own or republishing their backlist who comb the stock photo sites. New York publishers are using stock photos now, too. What kind of cover will I end up with for my hero who's Eurasian? What about my Polynesian/European hero and heroine? I have a couple of Latina heroines and one hero (all in different stories). Changing their backgrounds won't work. My characters are who they are, but cover images...::shudder::

2011-11-14T05:17:00.001-06:00

- Posted using Mobypicture.com

Baby, I'm Yours

2011-11-13T10:00:00.002-06:00

The first Susan Andersen book I ever read was Baby, I'm Yours and it made her a Must-Buy author for me.

Catherine is a twin--the responsible, sensible twin. The hero, Sam, is a bounty hunter who thinks Catherine is her sister and he's taking her in. Via Greyhound because he's short on cash. The heroine does everything she can to mess Sam up and slow him down. At least until feelings start to develop between them. Over the course of the story, Catherine learns to let loose a little and not try so hard to be nothing like her twin.

There's also a secondary romance with the twin sister, Kaylee, who learns to be more responsible along the growth arc of her story. In all honesty, I skip the Kaylee stuff when I reread this book. The main romance between Catherine and Sam is just too awesome.

To say I loved this book would be understating things. I really loved it. Catherine is smart and she's no one's pushover. Throughout the book she goes toe-to-toe with Sam and frequently out-maneuvers him.

Sam is sexy and alpha and Catherine keeps him hopping. And frustrates him to no end, not just sexually either.

The book is light romantic suspense and has a lot of humor. I can't think of anyone who does humor with suspense as well as Andersen does. This book is probably lighter on the suspense than some of her other books, but it doesn't change how fantastic this story was. It's a character-driven story and the hero and heroine are completely awesome.

Highly recommended.

Where No One Can See

2011-11-10T10:00:00.000-06:00

In preparation for my move to Atlanta, I began pulling bulbs this last weekend. I should have begun sooner, but between deadlines and life, I wasn't able to do it until now. We started with the tree lilies since there were only 8 of those. At least there were 8 when I planted them. It's been three years and I've had multiple stalks come up, so I assumed there'd been some replication going on. Little did I know what's been going on underground, away from my sight.

First, let me show you a couple shots of what the tree lilies looked like in 2010. This year wasn't the best year they'd ever had thanks to the deer coming over for a midnight snack. I used to like deer, but that changed when I planted flowers.

Tree Lilies at a distance

Closer view of the tree lilies

Because I knew I was going to have to dig the bulbs up, I hadn't bothered to cut down the stems yet so we were able to go right to the tree lilies instead of digging around the general area. Even knowing how lilies can spread, I was still surprised by what I found. There were roots going everywhere! At first, we thought the little roots were from weeds or the grass or something. It wasn't until we pulled the bulbs out that we realized those flowers had thicker roots below and many, many, many thinner roots above the bulb. That was a huge shock. But then I pulled them out of the ground and found monster bulbs.

A few of the bulbs that were pulled

Those are five of the bulbs. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say five bunches of bulbs. Look at the monster among monsters on the left. It left me stunned. Out of the eight original bulbs planted, I ended up with about 25 bulbs after three years in the ground. There would have been more except I didn't keep the really tiny ones and there were two clusters of 2 bulbs that I was afraid to separate since they were so merged together. Like conjoined bulb twins.

Close up of the bulbs

Chat Tonight!

2011-11-08T10:00:00.001-06:00

Join me, Sharon Ashwood, Lori Devoti and Michele Hauf for a chat tonight! We'll be talking about our stories in Crave the Night over at Literal Addiction. If you've never chatted there before, it appears as if you'll need to setup an account.

We'll be there from 8pm to 10pm Eastern Time/5pm to 7pm Pacific Time.

The Better Angels of Our Nature

2011-11-06T10:00:00.019-06:00

Last week, I finished listening to a book by Steven Pinker The Better Angels of Our Nature. The subtitle for this book is Why Violence Has Declined.

I picked up the book on Audible and listened to it, which is a different experience than reading as I'm sure y'all know. My review is based on the audio book, not the paper version. I very much liked the narrator for the book, a big plus since it's an extremely long book. The paper version is listed at 800 pages and the audio version had 5 parts. Most Audible books come in 2 parts.

The premise intrigued me when I saw it. Violence is declining? In many ways, the world seems more uncivilized now than it's ever been. Right? But the author begins the book by explaining what everyday life was like in the past and what our ancestors considered normal.

Blood sports in ancient Rome--gladiators fighting to the death, starving animals set loose with Christians, two animals fighting to the death. Blood and circuses to use the term I've heard in my history classes. Torture was everyday practice in the medieval period and people turned out to watch. People cut off the noses of others and apparently this was quite common, as was stabbing people to death during a dinner. Burning accused witches. The Inquisition. Well, the list can go on and on and it did in the book. The author talks about the increased violence that began in the 1960s and continued into the early 1990s before reaching today.

The length of the book makes it impossible to summarize coherently and I didn't make notes, but Pinker doesn't offer predictions about the future. While he said things have been improving, events could send us back into higher level of violence.

Overall, I found the information and the way it was presented to be extremely accessible and interesting. There is one section that gets heavily into an explanation of statistics before presenting the actual data that got a little long, but it was brief. I also found the last few chapters to be dry as well and would have preferred it ended a bit earlier. The last chapter in particular where it's primarily a summary of all the rest of the book was particularly hard for me to sit through.

Another caveat is that the author gets quite graphic about what routine torture was like in the medieval period, and with my squeamishness, I was forced to remove my ear buds a couple of times. Pinker explains that he goes into this level of detail because of the way the past frequently gets glossed over or sanitized.

And squeamish or not, I think he was right about that. We've all heard of the iron maiden and the rack and breaking people on the wheel, but I didn't really give any real thought to these things being used on real, living people. I knew they had been, of course, but somehow in my brain, I disconnected the suffering/pain/death that these things caused from the devices themselves.

Pinker did a tremendous job using facts and figures to support his argument about the decline of violence. I didn't agree with everything I heard and some of it bothered me or made me uncomfortable, but I was able to disagree with some things without it toppling the premise.

But you know what? This book really made me think and it made me look at events--both historical and more modern--from a different angle so I'm calling the time well spent. I like having my world view knocked askew and I liked the fact it made me mull over things I thought I knew. Maybe the best part, though, is that I was left feeling hopeful about the future of humans. Maybe things aren't as bad as the media would have us believe after all.

Recommended, but be prepared to make a big time commitment.

End of the World

2011-11-03T10:00:00.001-05:00

Yesterday while I was at work, my iPod shuffled to REM's The End of the World As We Know It and suddenly a story I thought was off the To Write list zoomed back on the radar. I'm pretty sure I mentioned the post-apocalypse romance I was researching a while back. Yeah, that one returned.

It was pretty unexpected although I had been picking up interesting bits and pieces that would help with the story over the last week or so, but it was a more distant thing. Certainly nothing like having the heroine show up and start talking. Again.

I have another story I'm supposed to be working on during my lunch at work, but this one is whispering oh, so temptingly in the recesses of my brain.

Among the interesting things about this return is that the heroine is telling the story in first person. I've had this happen before and the story has morphed into third person, but I'm getting the sense with this one that it might not make the shift. We'll see. I'm not a fan of reading first person and the idea of writing it, spending months on end trying to reduce the number of times the word I is used is overwhelming.

The other thing that was interesting was that my heroine looks completely different than I thought she did. Although, in all honesty, I did have a sense I'd picked out the wrong picture the last time around. I just didn't realize how wrong I was, though.

And just so y'all know, I did work on the story I'm supposed to be writing at lunch on Wednesday and I'll keep working on it when I can. But wow, I wish I could write more than one thing at a time.

Going With the Flow

2011-11-01T10:00:00.033-05:00

One of the best pieces of advice I received on writing was that the process will change, and instead of fighting to do it the same way every time, I should go with how the story wants to be written.

This has turned out to be so true. Right after I sold, the process changed dramatically from book to book. Now, the changes aren't as drastic, but they still happen. Whenever I'd start to get all stressed because this isn't the way I do it, I'd remember the advice and stop fighting.

It continues today. Right now, I'm working on a trilogy idea set in the Blood Feud World and the information is coming in oddly. Maybe it's because the first two couples have been around for more than a year, but my thoughts are caught up on the third couple. Particularly, the hero, although I am getting stuff on the heroine now, too. I wasn't getting anything on her even a few days ago, so this is welcome.

The most recent information has been stuff that happens after the third book ends. At first I was wondering why. It wasn't after the book couple stuff, which I've gotten before even it usually came when the entire book was written and finished. This was stuff with the hero and his family. Including hours spent listening in on a conversation between the hero and his father.

I finally got the why of it over the weekend. The relationship stuff that I'm seeing after the book is all unresolved during the story. That means that all these issues I'm seeing him deal with after he's had his Happy Ending are going to be in play as his book unfolds.

Maybe I could have gotten this information in other ways, and maybe with another book, I would. But this is the process I'm dealing with for this book, and when I'm writing it, I'll have to consider how these family things will impact the hero's actions in his story. It would be so much easier to see it first hand, but no one ever said writing was easy.

Happy Halloween!

2011-10-31T10:00:00.001-05:00

see more Lolcats and funny pictures, and check out our Socially Awkward Penguin lolz!

Guilty Pleasure: Decoded

2011-10-30T10:00:00.000-05:00

There's a show on History Channel that I really enjoy watching. It's called Decoded and features author Brad Meltzer. He mostly does some commenting through the show, but the main figures doing the investigating are an attorney, an engineer, and a journalist/historian. Every week they investigate some new historical rumor. Some of them are pretty out there, too, which is why I consider this show a guilty pleasure.

Some of the topics the show has covered that I found especially interesting were the Culper spy ring from the Revolutionary War. I'd never heard of them before, but apparently they had quite an impact on our victory in the war. Well, at least according to the show. I didn't do any research on my own.

They also looked at Meriwether Lewis (of Lewis and Clark) really committed suicide or if his death was a murder. Again, after watching the show, it sure would be nice if the US Government would grant the Lewis family's request to exhume the body and let a forensic anthropologist do some work. It sure sounded like he was murdered and the evidence for suicide was flimsy at best, fabricated at worst.

The show has also covered other topics like whether or not there's still gold in Fort Knox, what happened to the corner stone of the White House, DB Cooper (the hijacker who parachuted from the 727 over the Pacific Northwest), and investigated if John Wilkes Booth really was shot after he assassinated Lincoln, or if it was another man who was killed instead.

I'll admit to being skeptical about a lot of what they choose to cover in the show and some of the theories are out there. I still find it entertaining and even if some of it is ridiculous, it's entertaining.

To Epilogue Or Not To Epilogue

2011-10-27T10:00:00.001-05:00

When I first wrote Ravyn's Flight there was no epilogue. My editor asked me to write one and what finally was published is the second version of it. Originally, I had the epilogue taking place on Earth and my editor wanted it on J9. She was right. In hindsight, the story did need to end on the planet where the story took place and I like this version best of the two.

Since then, I have almost always added an epilogue to my books. I'm pretty sure all my full-length books have epilogues, but I don't think two of the short stories do. Anyway, the reason I've chosen to add an epilogue is because I write action/adventure romance, sometimes there's so much going on in the story that I think the reader needs time with the couple when there aren't shoot-outs going on to see that yes, it is true love and to have that ahh moment. But this isn't something I've given a great deal of thought to in years. Until this week.

I've been reading on my lunch at work and the book had quite a bit of action going on. And then it ended and there wasn't an epilogue. As a reader, I wanted that epilogue. I needed the epilogue. I wanted to see the hero and heroine together without assassins lurking, without bullets flying.

I'm pretty sure the author thought she'd wrapped the story up just fine and didn't need an epilogue. I thought the same thing with Ravyn's Flight, but I was wrong and this author was, too. I'm still irked a couple of days after finishing the story that I didn't get to see the h/h six months in the future or a year or ten years. Anything would have made me happy.

The fact that I feel so cheated is interesting to me as a writer and it has me looking at this, analyzing it. I'm fairly confident that it does have to do with the amount of action in the story, that it nearly begs for a quiet, serene epilogue, but I'm mulling a little more, trying to figure out if there's something else going on. Writers really do read differently than normal people.

Before I really dedicated myself to the writing, I wouldn't have taken the time to think about this. I just would have complained about it and felt cheated for a while, until some other book pushed the memory of this one from my mind. Now, though, when something does or doesn't work for me as a reader, I find myself turning it around, studying it, trying to come up with whys.

Fall colors

2011-10-26T15:15:00.001-05:00

- Posted using Mobypicture.com

Random

2011-10-25T10:00:00.001-05:00

I couldn't come up with a topic to blog about and so I thought, hey, I'll do a random website generator and blog about whatever turns up. The first site I ended up on sold sex toys. I decided to try again. The second attempt was a bit more conducive to blogging.

Site two was Dubtown Urban Exploring. The site is in German, and while I did take that language in high school and college, I've lost a lot of my skills, so I had to rely on Google translator. Not the most accurate thing ever, but enough so that I could understand what I was looking at. This site has some hugely interesting photos of abandoned buildings. One of them is a sanatorium that was built in 1899 and its in great disrepair. It's also hugely fascinating to me.

A lot of my stories take place in derelict buildings and warehouses. The images are wonderful for getting the imagination firing. I've also spent the past couple of days thinking about a story that I'd planned to work on months ago, but got sidetracked by other things. This site will definitely be perfect for inspiration on that front, too.

The other thing that struck me is that it would be pretty cool to take a camera and go out exploring like this person did. It just shows that anything can be art. I've bookmarked the site to return to in the future.

Into the Woods

2011-10-23T10:00:00.001-05:00

Of all the plays and musicals I've seen, Into the Woods remains one of my all-time favorites. It's a threading together of a few different fairy tales—Cinderella, Rapunzel, Jack and the Beanstalk and Little Red Riding Hood primarily although a few others get mixed in.

Since everyone knows the fairy tales, I won't go into too much detail about the play. All the different fairy tale people run into each other in the woods. The cow Jack needs to sell? He trades it to the baker for magic beans. The baker's wife ends up with Cinderella's slipper. And Rapunzel's prince and Cinderella's prince try to out-do each other with how difficult it is to woo their woman.

While the first half is all lighthearted and humorous, the second act is considerably darker. This gets into what happens after happily ever after. I have mixed emotions about the last half of the play. On the one hand, I can appreciate skewering the fairy tales, but on the other hand, I like happy endings. I did love the first act, though, without reserve.

The music and lyrics are outstanding. I love Agony, both versions of it with the two princes trying to top each other on how tough they have it. I also love the The Last Midnight when the witch talks about finding someone to blame being more important to the humans than dealing with the giantess. And I Know Things Now sung by Red Riding Hood who isn't quite as naive as she was before meeting the wolf. "Isn't it nice to know a lot...and a little bit not."

Into the Woods was recorded with the Broadway cast and is available on DVD, which means if you're interested, you can rent it/buy it and not need to wait for the play to be staged in your city. I like the DVD version, but there's always energy to watching a live performance that isn't captured on disk.

Highly recommended

Why You Won't See "What I'm Working On"

2011-10-20T10:00:00.002-05:00

Tuesday on Twitter, people retweeted a link to what authors must have on their websites. The items I remember off the top of my head are: A printable book list. I have this. A list of all books. I have this. A coming next page and a works in progress page. I have the coming next page, but don't have the work in progress page and I'm not sure it's something I want to do.

For one thing, not every proposal for a book sells. If I talk about an idea and never write more than three chapters of it, will readers be disappointed? After all, if I talked about it, people should expect me to write it. If it doesn't sell, I'll be onto the next project.

The second thing is that I don't necessarily sell my projects in the order I work on them. In 2004, I wrote the proposal for In the Midnight Hour and In Twilight's Shadow. Then I wrote the proposal for Eternal Nights and finally the proposal for Through a Crimson Veil. I sold them in the reverse order. In fact, it took 18 months to sell Midnight Hour and by then I'd finished my Crimson story and was working on EN. It was another six months after that before I actually wrote Midnight.

In this set of circumstances, I can't see where it's beneficial to officially talk about my stories in progress. The coming next page, though, is a different case. Anything I post there is contracted work and will be released.

It was nice to know that I'm doing stuff mostly right. I do have all my books listed on one page, but with links that breaks them into either subgenre (in case someone wants paranormal romance, but not science fiction romance or vice versa) and also into series (so if you read one Light Warriors book and want more, they're all available). I also saw in the comments that publication dates with the books is a good thing. I've done that as well, at least the year, if not the month and year.

Reading the comments to the blog post highlighted something interesting to me--there are still authors without websites or authors who don't bother to update their websites for years. I knew a bunch of older authors didn't have sites because I've tried to find them after I talked about their books, but I didn't think authors publishing now didn't have sites. Wow.

Crave the Night is Available!

2011-10-18T10:00:00.002-05:00

Crave the Night is now available! This is a paranormal romance anthology I was part of with Michele Hauf, Sharon Ashwood, and Lori Devoti.

My story is titled Enemy Embrace and it's the latest story in the Blood Feud World. Here's the description for my story:

Nicole Ruiz is an elite vampire hunter who can shadow her quarry anywhere. Daktan is an executioner assigned by the demon king to eliminate a rogue vampire who's killing humans. When Nicole discovers the rogue is stronger than she expected, she offers Dak an alliance. She'd make a deal with the devil himself if that's what it took to avenge her family.

The anthology was reviewed by Red Hot Books and here's what was said about Dak and Nicole and Enemy Embrace:

This story was HOT. I was on the edge of my seat, waiting for these two to come together. Patti O'Shea... where have you been all my life?

The thing that's so fun about writing in this world is that the hero and heroine can come from any group—vampire, demon, human, hunter, slayer, rogue vampire. And this is the story where the wizards are first mentioned. No one, not vampire or demon, likes them very much, but I'm working on a proposal now where the hero and heroine are both wizards. Heh! But I digressed. Again.

If you'd like to read an excerpt, I have the first chapter up on my website.

Buy for Kindle

Buy for Nook

Buy in Another Format

Buy In Paper

Evolutionary Biology and Such

2011-10-16T10:00:00.001-05:00

Instead of doing a review about something specific, I thought I'd give my impressions in general about the evolutionary biology/cultural evolution books I've been listening to. I'm not quite sure how I bought so many, although the descriptions do make them sound very interesting. Some have been, some haven't, but that's the same as any book.

So what I have learned in general? That there's vast disagreement among the experts in these fields.

I'll listen to one book that throws out a theory, offers supporting data, and data that refutes the other popular theories. The next book will have a proponent of one of the refuted theories as an author and I'll get the same thing, only for that scientist's pet thesis. It's left me with my head spinning and not sure who the heck is right.

What I learned about myself is that no matter how interesting the theory might be, I want evidence to back it up and I have no patience for anecdotal or indirectly inferred conclusions. There was a book I stopped listening to because it never offered proof, just anecdotes that were supposed to be irrefutable evidence. No. I want facts. Also, none of the other books I've listened to in this field have remotely supported the book with theories and no real data. I feel safe in saying the authors were more interested in selling books than in advancing science as their controversial (and unsupported theory) was focused on sex.

There's another book I downloaded from Audible in this field that I'd love to get through, but the narrator is really boring to listen to. This author takes the opposite opinion from the selfishness theory of evolution that many other experts in the field seem to assume is true.

When these other authors talk about generosity, it's always something that animals (and people) do because they expect to be repaid later. That the person performing the act, let's say sharing food when another family has none, expects the action to reciprocated later. We've all seen and heard stories of people risking themselves to save others. People donating generously to strangers. Good Samaritans who stop to help others. I don't believe this is all done with the expectation of reciprocity at some later time. And because I feel this way, I'd love to make it through the book that sounds as if it deals with this facet of evolutionary biology and genetics. Narrators really can make or break the book.

My final thought is that I'm tired of this topic. :-) I need to use my Audible credits on a different non-fiction topic.

We Have a Winner

2011-10-13T10:00:00.002-05:00

I'm almost afraid to write this post, but I think my hero finally has a name. I don't like it that much either, but like I said on Tuesday, I'll take anything and smile at this point. The final choice? Mason.

My poor Twitter followers have been trying to help me for at least a week, probably longer, by tweeting me links to naming sites. I swear I have them all bookmarked. Actually, I must have 50 naming sites bookmarked by now, but so many of them have the same names. I also have a pretty extensive collection of reference books on names. Nothing helped.

The frustrating thing is that the name isn't uncommon. I ran across it pretty early on and kept running across it, but my darn hero remained mute. Since I don't like the name and he didn't speak up to claim it, I continued to look. And look. And look.

I need names before I can get story/plot because what they're called affects their actions. A Mason is going to behave differently from a hero named Jack or one named Scott, so it was critically important to me to get the correct name before I moved forward. It did get frustrating because he's the third hero in a trilogy and I don't need more than a couple of paragraphs on his story, but the third book wraps up the series arc and that could impact the earlier books, too.

Now that I have this vital piece of information, I can move forward with the next problems. I need pictures of my characters--it also helps me connect to their personalities--and I need to work out the three book arc. After that is in place, then I can think about the individual stories.

I do have some information already, but it's the barest of frameworks, a patchwork of pieces that need to be sewn together to form the whole fabric of the trilogy. All I can do is hope this goes more smoothly than the name game.

It's Become an Endurance Test

2011-10-11T10:00:00.001-05:00

The name game continues with my hero. I talked about this last week and it's ongoing. Every time I think I have the right name, I get pulled up short. The problem is the overnight test. Basically this means the name has to stick overnight. This includes some test scenes with the name as I'm lying in bed. This hero nixed one of the names I thought was his at this stage.

The second name made it through this run, but when I woke up the next day and tested it again, it failed. I knew it hadn't worked when his father wouldn't call him by that name. Not that his father provided the correct name, but I rarely get helpful characters who provide information willingly.

Stubbornly, I continued to use the second name a few more days, but I finally was forced to admit that it wasn't going to work.

It was back to the drawing board. I spent hours searching over the weekend and I have a third contender. I haven't had time yet to run too many scenes through my head with this latest name--I've been falling asleep too fast--so I'm not calling it a done deal yet, but it has made it a few days with it in place. Personally, I'm not in love with it and it's a name that strikes me as being old fashioned. Old fashioned enough to be unusual.

If it's the right one, though, I'm not going to argue with him. I'll take anything at this point so I can move forward with figuring out stories and arcs for the trilogy. I can't do anything without the right names for my characters--it actually can and does influence action/plot.

And in the few hours since I wrote this post, my hero has rejected the latest name. The search continues.

Kindle 4

2011-10-09T10:00:00.002-05:00

No one tell my mom about this blog post! It's a secret, okay?

I bought my mom a Kindle 4 as a combination birthday/Christmas present. Yes, I know I'm early, but she's so hard to buy for and this way I have time to download all kinds of books for her. I've already gotten all of my books on there for her and it's charged, wifi setup, etc.

I wanted to pass along my thoughts about the latest Kindle. First of all, this is not the touch version. I'd happily have bought her one of those if I thought she'd take advantage of it, but she's very techno-phobic and the simpler the device the better. Because this isn't the touch screen model, it means the keyboard that pulls up on the screen can only be used by using the 4-way button on the bottom. Kind of a pain, but it was usable and my mom will never type on the K4, so no worries.

The first and most noticeable thing was how much lighter and smaller the K4 is compared to my K2. That's an awesome improvement and one that's good for my mom. She won't have to work as hard to hold the device. I rested the K4 atop my K2 and there was probably an inch on the top and an inch on the left showing of my Kindle. That's how much smaller the K4 is, but with no keyboard, it can shrink.

The back of the device has a little texture to it to improve grip and prevent it from sliding when it's put down on a table or counter. I plan to buy my mom a case as part of her gift because it will be extra protection if she falls asleep while reading.

The page forward and previous page buttons are on the sides of the device more than on the top of it. There is also one of each on both sides so it's easier to go backward no matter which hand you like to use to hold your device. On the K2, the previous page button is only on the left side, the home button only on the right. The K4 has the home button on the front. There are a few other button differences, like the on/off switch is on the bottom and not that top, but this isn't a big deal.

Aside from the smaller, lighter K4 and the lack of keyboard, the reading experience was identical to the K2. This is good because I've loaned my K2 to my mom and she liked that. I need her to feel comfortable with the Kindle or she won't use it.

Next up, downloading a lot of books to my mom's Christmas K4. I need enough to keep her busy reading for a long while.

Here They Go Again

2011-10-06T10:00:00.001-05:00

Since I wrote my posts about the characters in my Works In Progress (WIP), one of my heroes informed me that his name isn't his name. I hate when they do that. Last names aren't a very big deal because when I think of them, I rarely use their surnames, but changing the given name does throw me.

The thing that's so frustrating is that this is a character that's been around for a long time and his name has always been Michael. Until now. Now he tells me it isn't. That his name changed when he moved from a contemporary story to an alternate universe, and that in this alternate universe, he's different from who he was before and he has a different first name.

His logic made sense to me, but the problem? He's not telling me what his name is supposed to be. Oh, he's happy to tell me what it isn't. And apparently it isn't any name I've come across online or in a naming book. At least so far.

I can't even get him to give me a hint. A simple It starts with a B or whatever would help tremendously. But nope. No help from him whatsoever.

So in the meantime, I'm still thinking of him as Michael. If he doesn't like it, maybe he'll reconsider his level of cooperation.

It's All In How You Look At It

2011-10-04T10:00:00.001-05:00

Two of the fields on my rarely used character sketch worksheets are: How does the character perceive him/herself? How do others perceive the character?

To give an example, I'm required to go through assorted training classes for my day job. One was a two day training class in Human Factors. On the second day of class, the instructor made some comment about my being an extrovert. It stopped me in my tracks and I was like, whoa! Not only am I not an extrovert, I'm also shy and tend to be nervous in situations with people I don't know well. I also tend to be quiet in those types of situations. So who's right?

Let me explain what the instructor saw. I'd been through enough other training in the recent past that I'd learned a few things. 1. when the instructor asked a question of the group, no one would answer. 2. the lack of response dragged the classes out even longer than they were already. 3. If someone gave the right answer, things moved much, much faster.

So whenever a question was thrown out to the group and no one else immediately spoke up, I would give the answer to get the class moving. I hate sitting there with crickets chirping. "Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?"

The instructor perceived my willingness to speak up when he asked a question as outgoingness. But I'm far from outgoing; I was answering questions as self-preservation. It made the class move faster. I also had some hope of getting through the course material ahead of schedule on day 2 so we could be dismissed early.

Despite my speaking up in class, it actually shocked me that he thought I was an extrovert. I had to take a mental step back to assimilate that and figure out why he could possibly believe something so false.

To bring this back to writing and characters, how your character behaves in certain situations will shape how other characters see him/her. Maybe your character answers all the questions in a training program, so one set of people see her as outgoing, but she stands in the corner at a house party. Those people will perceive her differently. Other characters act on how they perceive the hero/heroine. Maybe the instructor asks the heroine to lead the discussion on day 2 of training. He asks because he sees her as outgoing, not realizing that she's dying over the thought of being in front of the class. (This did not happen in my class. :-)

So it's not enough to just know that your character is perceived differently by his mom than by his sister. You have to have these characters behave in a way that fits their expectations of who the hero is.

I've been dealing with some of this in one of the Works In Progress (WIP). My hero has long hair, stubble, and is hanging out with secondary characters of questionable morality when he meets the heroine. My heroine isn't going to treat him the same way she'd treat a clean-cut man who worked for a charitable organization to feed starving children. There's going to be a big dose of wariness on her part. There has to be because of her perception of who and what the hero is.

Perception always colors reality. IMO, of course.

Scrivener

2011-10-02T10:00:00.001-05:00

I bought Scrivener shortly after getting my iMac computer. For those who've never heard of Scrivener, it's software for writers. Along with the word processing, it has features to help organize the work and research. It used to only be available for Mac, but now there's a Windows version being made. It was in beta testing the last time I checked, but it's expected to be released soon. The program isn't only for fiction novelists. It also has templates for short stories, nonfiction, screenplays, research papers and so on.

Anyway, I'd heard a lot of awesome things about Scrivener, but I didn't find the program to be intuitive. At least not the way my brain works. Every now and then I'd open it, look at, mess around a little, and close it again. When the beta Windows version came out, I gave it another try. I could see the potential, but I just couldn't figure it out on my own and I'm not big on reading instructions. I did watch the video tutorials, but it wasn't enough.

Then I heard about a Scrivener class, and despite my killer schedule, I signed up for it. It was awesome! If you want to use Scrivener and are having trouble figuring out how to wrap your arms around it like me, I highly recommend checking it out. To find out when it will be taught again, visit Gwen Hernandez's website. She's the instructor. Course material was posted every weekday and it was broken down into small enough pieces that nothing felt overwhelming. It was also presented clearly and concisely with screenshots to aid comprehension. I highly recommend the class.

There were some features that really sold me on Scrivener as a writing tool. There's counters available. More than one. It has one that allows you to set word count, due date, days of the week when you'll be writing, and then it keeps a running tally of how many words you need to write each day to make the deadline. How cool is that? So I can tell Scrivener I want to write 100,000 words by June 1 and I won't write on Mondays and it gives me goals.

The second counter is just as awesome and I think it's really going to help me on my daily word/page count goals. You set how many pages/words you want to write, and as you go along, it lets you know your progress. When I was working on a fight scene for Enemy Embrace I set it for 2,500 words. The visual line at the bottom starts red, goes to orange, lighter orange, yellow, pale green and then darker green as you progress. It worked as motivation for me to keep going because that red/orange color is kind of, well, mocking. :-)

Another Scrivener feature that I'm excited about is the ability to import a web page. This is great for me on the research front. The page is static so if it updates, I won't see that, but for 99% of my research that isn't a problem. One of my biggest frustrations is when I'm writing at work during lunch, need to reference information and can't because I do not have access to the net. This way if I need to reference something, all I'll need to do is jump down to the Research folder and everything will be there.

It has a corkboard feature with index cards on it, allowing those writers who like those cards to have that. I still have horrible flashbacks to when I was in junior high, but maybe I'll get over that. Some day. But on those index cards is color coding. I set mine up like we did in class with Point of View (POV) characters because that's helpful. Too much heroine POV? I can tell in a glance because it can be setup to actually color code the scenes names in the file tree.

For my Blood Feud world, I setup the color coding to keep track of what the hero and heroine are--Demon? Vampire? Vampire hunter? It's a quick, visual way for me to keep track of a world that's quickly becoming filled with stories.

And previous versions? Instead of doing a "save as" before making major revisions, Scrivener allows me to take a snapshot. One click instead of the cumbersome process I use in my word processing software. I can go back to a previous version, too, if I decide the original was better.

There are many, many other features. Some of them I might not use, but that's okay--I don't have to use everything, just the parts that work for me.

I've moved my active, to be written projects over, but not everything I want to be there is there. There are just a few too many extra files that I don't really need, it would be nice to have them there going forward. Once the transition is complete and I'm starting new projects in Scrivener rather than importing them over, I think that's when I'll really know just how awesome this program is. It's already pretty dang cool.

Story Three

2011-09-29T10:00:00.002-05:00

Couple three in my Blood Feud trilogy are the sketchiest of the couples. Which doesn't surprise me since they're the final pair.

Michael Lassiter is a wizard. You're thinking, what? There are no wizards in the Blood Feud world. Ah, but there are. They've kind of been skulking in the background, but none of the stories released so far have had them involved in anyway. That changes with Enemy Embrace which comes out in October in Crave the Night.

This world is interesting to me because there are so many groups with so many different agendas. A hero and/or heroine can come from any group at any time. A villain can come from any group at any time.

So Michael is a wizard and a powerful one. He's not thrilled to be in this position because he doesn't want the obligations to his people that come with this power, but he doesn't have a choice about it. I'm honestly not sure at this point how the wizards get involved in the trilogy. More pieces of the puzzle that I don't have yet. Maybe (and this is only a guess on my part) he gets dragged in because of his heroine? Definitely unsure about this.

His heroine's name is Honor. She's a human with power, too. I'm not sure what--exactly--she is yet, though. I also don't know even the vaguest basics about the storyline. All I know is that this is the book where the story wraps up and the bad guy defeated. Beyond that? It's all nebulous.

If you read my post about puzzle pieces from last week, then you know how frustrated I am with how little I've been given. I just have to trust that it will all work out when I do get those pieces.

Story Two

2011-09-27T10:00:00.001-05:00

Last week I promised I'd continue talking the couples in my Blood Feud World trilogy idea and mention couple number two.

This hero is another of Malachi's friends whom he mentioned in Shadow's Caress. His name is Jet and yes, that is short for something which I won't mention here because it might (or might not) end up being something I use in his story. Jet is an enforcer for all the vampire clan lords, not only one.

If you read Blood Feud, you know Isobel was an enforcer for her clan lord. That puts her in an elite category, but Jet goes beyond that working for all of them. That means he's the elite of the elite, like special forces of the vampire world. He's been assigned by the clan lords to tail his heroine.

Rachel (I'm reasonably sure this is her name) is a rogue vampire. In the Blood Feud world, rogue means unaffiliated with any clan lord. There used to be no rogues until a clan lord died in the demon wars. Since then, many vampires re-affiliated themselves by sharing blood with members of other clans, but there is a large group that didn't do this. This dead clan lord was not a kind and benevolent vampire and none of his now-free constituents want to risk being tied to another clan lord like that. The bad guy in the trilogy is the leader of the rogues, but Rachel has no interest in following him either.

Jet is the one who came in a while ago and was kind of skulking in the shadows. Really. I just had this sense that he was stalking someone. It turns out, he was stalking Rachel. On orders.

This is about all I have about this story. I'm still waiting for more puzzle pieces to show up here.

Tune in Thursday for couple three.

Bad Astronomy

2011-09-25T10:00:00.002-05:00

My latest audio book was Bad Astronomy by Philip Plait. I'd seen retweets from a Twitter account called Bad Astronomer, but I'd figured it was a parody account like Bronx Zoo Cobra or Fake AP Stylebook, but whenever I clicked on the links, the articles were to legitimate astronomy sites/articles. When I spotted this book on Audible, the pieces fell into place.

The book is written by an astronomer and he debunks common misconceptions about his profession, the stars, planets, meteors, etc. He covers a fairly wide range of topics including Hollywood and what moviemakers get wrong. Like small meteorites (they only go from meteor to meteorite if they hit the ground) almost never start fires when they hit Earth. They're too cold. Big ones, however, are another story and he cites an impact that happened in Russia in the 1800s. I'd seen pictures of that in the past and knew exactly what he was talking about.

We also learn that there is no dark side of the moon. There's the far side of the moon. We don't see it because of orbits and rotation, but all sides of the moon are exposed to sunlight, we just never see it when it happens on the far side.

There's an entire chapter on the Hubble telescope which gave me a lot of new information. Like the telescope doesn't have a lens, it has mirrors. The telescope has a restricted zone where it won't be utilized because sunlight is too bright for a lot of the instruments on board. Every year, astronomers put in proposals for time on the telescope. Six times more applications are received than slots available.

Many of the common misconceptions he covered were things I hadn't heard of before. For example, apparently many people believe you can see stars in the middle of the day if you stand in the bottom of a well. It's not really true, although the answer is a bit more complicated than that. This was the first time I'd heard of it, though.

Sometimes I knew the right answer already. Like Earth has seasons because of it's tilt and how that changes as we orbit. Apparently many people think it's related to our distance from the sun, but that doesn't account for the southern hemisphere whose seasons are opposite of the northern hemisphere.

I learned a lot from the book and this is despite having an astronomy class in college and an interest in the topic. The author gives the information in an interesting manner and the voice actor read well. He did a kind of Superman voiceover kind of thing for the Hollywood chapter that was kind of amusing.

If you have even the slightest interest in astronomy or curiosity about what you think you know that's wrong on this topic, I recommend this book. I found it entertaining and worthwhile.

Story One

2011-09-22T10:00:00.006-05:00

To continue the conversation about the Blood Feud trilogy I mentioned on Tuesday, I wanted to talk about the characters a little. The first two heroes were mentioned in Shadow's Caress and they're Malachi's friends, the two men he trusted to help him protect Cass.

The first has been with me the longest--Laurent de Brinay. Laurent was French aristocracy before becoming a vampire. He's very much into the finer things in life, but he's starting to feel dissatisfied. Laurent, you see, has a career. He's a businessman, but he's not finding the pleasure in it that he did in the past. It's been eating at him for a while before his story starts and you know I won't let him ignore it once I get my hands on him. Torture them early, torture them often because they always torment me.

His heroine is a demon named Kerris. She's going to be interesting for me to write, I think. At least from what I'm getting of her personality so far. She's a little spoiled, a bit of a manipulator, and she's used to men doing what she wants. She has a problem and Laurent is the one who can help her. Kerris (somehow) knows Isobel, the heroine from Blood Feud and Iso is the one who told Kerris about Laurent.

I'm trying to figure out why Laurent decides to help her. That I don't know yet, but I think it has more to do with his past than with Kerris or even Isobel. I think (and I don't know if this is true or not), but I think he had a romantic interest in Isobel. That could definitely add another layer of difficulty. Not only does he not like demons because of the war vampires fought with them centuries earlier, but he's also not fond of demons because Iso choose a demon prince (Seere) over him. Kind of. Because Laurent didn't really make his interest known to Iso because he realized she was carrying a torch for Seere. But notice how many times I used the words I think. I don't have enough pieces yet to be sure of this.

Anyway, I can see part of the opening scene clearly. Laurent comes out of his office building in the middle of the night and finds Kerris at his car. He's not happy to see her and he's not happy with her attempt to manipulate him.

And since this went longer than I planned, I'll mention couple two on Tuesday.

Jigsaw Puzzle

2011-09-20T10:00:00.002-05:00

Last week, I talked about all these ideas that appear between stories and trying to decide which one to work on next. Part of having new ideas is that in the beginning it's like a giant jigsaw puzzle and the pieces are kind of strewn everywhere, not just on top of the table where I want to work and I don't have the box cover to work from.

The hunt it down stage, when I try to find the critical pieces--let's call them the edge pieces--is both frustrating and exciting. The frustrating part is not knowing what the puzzle is supposed to look like. So I have these few pieces in my possession and I'm kind of looking at them and going, hmm. I turn them this way and that, trying to decide where they go, but not really figuring that out.

The exciting part, though, is when I find one of those edge pieces. It gets my brain whirring faster and suddenly some of those pieces I had earlier fit! I love that. It erases the frustration as if it never existed.

And the more edge pieces I get, the less frustration I experience because answers come more quickly as more and more of the framework is there to work with.

Right now, I'm mostly in the frustration part of the equation. I'm starting to get an edge piece or two, but not really enough to know what I'm working with yet. I know it's a trilogy. I know it's in the Blood Feud world. I know who my three couples are, although I'm not sure what the third heroine is yet. I know who the bad guy is and what his goal is, but I'm not sure how this unfolds over the three books. That's the part making me the most nuts.

But I'm starting to get a small glimmer. Not enough to leave the frustration behind--not yet--but I have no doubt that it won't be much longer before things start falling into place. I can't wait!

Nonzero

2011-09-18T10:00:00.000-05:00

Nonzero by Robert Wright is a nonfiction book that looks at how human society has evolved from small hunter/gatherer bands to large nations and beyond to alliances among nations. The title comes from gaming. In a non-zero sum game, people work together because they're in the same boat. A zero sum game is when someone has to lose for someone else to win.

The theory that the book proposes is that because of human nature and the advantages to non-zero sum behavior that our societies and cultures were destined to head from small bands to multi-state nations. He further proposes that cultural evolution and physical evolution drive each other forward until a certain point and that we've passed this time. That now cultural evolution is the driving force and that we are controlling the evolution of other creatures by tinkering with their genes. For example, crops are being genetically engineered.

We are geared toward complexity. That while our massive and complicated nations weren't inevitable, they were so probable that it's incredible. He also speculates on what further cultural evolution portends for our future.

I listened to this book on my iPod, which is a different experience than actually reading. At first, I had some trouble getting used to the narrator, but once we got going, he was fine. Sometimes, though, the way he chose to emphasize a word or sentence conveyed a kind of attitude. It's difficult for me to guess whether the author meant some of this to be taken the way the narrator spoke the information.

I can tell you from personal experience that the reader for my Through a Crimson Veil story didn't check with me about anything. Consequently, my heroine's name is pronounced incorrectly through the entire audio. Yes, the narrator is saying it the way it's normally pronounced. Mika doesn't pronounce it that way. You would have guessed I'd at least be asked how to pronounce the various branches of demons since those were made up. I wasn't. Given this, I always assume the reader is doing his or her own thing and try not to ascribe attitude to the author.

That said, I found Nonzero to be largely fascinating. I will confess there was a section that was less than riveting, but it picked up again after a couple of chapters. It was particularly interesting to hear his arguments about history and how/why things played out the way they did. We cover everything from Polynesian "big men" to Medieval lords. Seeing history from this angle was interesting and I found the arguments to be compelling.

The predictions of the future were also interesting. Some of it didn't exactly leave me feeling all warm and fuzzy, but unfortunately all too believable. One of his predictions was for more terrorism because of more "unhappy campers" at least in the short term as we transition from where we are now to what he sees as the next level.

Overall, I found the book to be well worth the time it took to listen to it. Not all of it held my attention, but that could easily be because of my personal interests. I'd recommend it to anyone interested in cultural anthropology or who finds the author's premise interesting enough to learn more.

Ooh, Look! Shiny!

2011-09-15T10:00:00.000-05:00

The time after I finish a project is always interesting. I'm generally too mentally exhausted to write, but my brain hops between the just finished story to other stories that are in various stages of existence. Like on Tuesday, I mentioned Zach and working out his last name, but that's not the only character or story making an appearance.

My writing buddies might possibly think I'm insane. One day I'll send them an email about one project (usually a pretty lengthy, epic, in-depth email), and the next, they'll get another email on a completely different book. They're lucky they're not in my head. I can switch ideas in the middle of a thought.

I can also get new ideas in the middle of a thought about another project.

It's actually a kind of fun time. Maybe because I'm used to it, the fragmentation of thought doesn't bother me. I can't bounce between ideas when I'm actually writing, so this is my opportunity to indulge my Oh, shiny! writer's brain.

The drawback is that I know I have to choose one of these stories to focus on and let the others continue to percolate in the background. I wish I could project hop like some authors do and work on multiple stories at the same time, but I can't. I've tried and I end up getting nowhere with any of them.

This time, I know which project I'll be working on next. It's the one I put aside to start Enemy Embrace. It also happens to be a story I'm wild about, so it's going to be fun once I can get my head back inside it and the characters.

Serendipity

2011-09-13T10:00:00.001-05:00

I love how things fall into place sometimes.

The latest example happened last week. I've had these heroes kind of hanging around since I wrote Eternal Nights. They're the other members of Wyatt's team. They come and go because their stories aren't active projects, but since I wrote Troll's story, they've hung around more than they did before that.

One of these guys is Zach. If you read Troll's story, you might remember him mentioning Z-Man. That's Zach.

For the longest time, he didn't gel for me. That normally means I don't know something important about the character yet. If I wrote more J9 books, he'd be the third, so I haven't worried much about it. And I've had characters that I was vague about before and it's all worked out fine, so why stress? Then the pieces began to fall into position. The first came with Zach's ethnicity. He's part Japanese. I think he's part Hawaiian, too. Learning this was key.

More information followed, but I remained stymied on his last name. Then I started hearing in my head: Zach Nishikawa.

I dismissed it at first, but it didn't go away, so I Googled Japanese surnames. No Nishikawa listed on any of the sites I visited and I probably checked out half a dozen. Ergo, not a real name. My next assumption was that I was getting part of it wrong and wrote down a list of all the surnames that ended in -kawa. None felt right. And I still kept hearing Zach Nishikawa.

Sometimes I'm a little slow. I finally decided to Google Nishikawa instead of Japanese surnames and see if I got any hits that proved it was a real name. And guess what? It is. There are lots of Nishikawa hits--more than 3 billion.

It is a real name!

See what I mean about things falling into place? A skeptic will tell me that I probably heard the name sometime in the past and my subconscious dredged it up now. It's possible. But I like to believe that Zach was talking to me and that serendipity was involved.

Ten Years Ago

2011-09-11T10:00:00.001-05:00

Not blogging today is my way of offering moment of silence to honor the victims of 9/11 and the other victims of terrorism around the world.

Writing Is Writing?

2011-09-08T10:00:00.002-05:00

Writing is writing, right?

Actually, no.

Different types of writing demand different skills. I can't write a short business letter to save my life--make that I can't write any type of business letter. It's excruciatingly painful for me and I usually come across as terse or stilted. Among the challenges for me (and there are many) is length. One sentence doesn't look too good. There should be more. I end up with a few sentences, but that still looks sad on a 8.5 x 11 piece of paper. I put in more spaces between the addresses. I add spaces at the end.

It doesn't help.

I can spend four hours writing a business note and end up with two sentences after I cut everything I think is too stupid or sounds too rigid.

I'm running into this trying to write a 50 word blurb about Enemy Embrace. Once upon a time, when I was an advertising major in college, I could bang out something like this in no time. It really is a kind of advertising copy. The thing is that I haven't used that type of writing much since I got out of college. My publishers provide the back cover copy for the books and I'm happy to let them.

After thinking about the copy for days, spending hours trying to write something, I have the grand total of 0 words.

This is where you expect me to say I have new appreciation for the art of writing back cover copy, but I'm not going to. I've always appreciated the skill it takes. I'm merely reminded of how much blood, sweat and tears it involves.

Back to the drawing board.

Email Oops

2011-09-06T10:00:00.001-05:00

While I was on deadline for Enemy Embrace, I did something I've never done before, not on any other project. I turned off my email.

Gasp!

I didn't have time to deal with it and it was coming fast and furious in amounts that were mind boggling. It was purely self-defense. I checked it after I finished my project, answered a couple of emails, but I was too tired to deal with the rest. My plan was to get caught up this weekend.

Only that didn't happen. It seems that I got so used to not looking at email that I forgot to check it all weekend. Gak! I even sort of forgot that I had notes to answer. Not completely. There was this nagging sense of something hanging over my head. But by and large, it was out of sight, out of mind.

Then I remembered late Monday evening when I needed to send an email to someone. The sight was not pretty. I might have whimpered.

So I have notes from the weekend, notes from the week I was writing, and notes I didn't answer prior to the week I was off work to write because I didn't have time to take care of it. If you're thinking I have an avalanche of email, you'd be right. I will get caught up. Eventually.

The Wallflower by Jan Freed

2011-09-04T10:00:00.001-05:00

The Wallflower by Jan Freed is another of my favorite books. The heroine is a twentysomething professional woman and witnesses a murder. She's put under protection until she can testify, but someone betrays her. Not knowing who to trust, she decides to hide on her own--by pretending to be a high school senior. The hero is her English teacher.

This is one of the few old books that I loved that's actually available for the Kindle! I'm not getting rid of my paper copy, but it's appealing to me to have the books I really loved in multiple formats so I can read it wherever and whenever and however I want. (Since it's a July 2011 reissue from Harlequin, I'm assuming that it's available for all the different ereaders. No links for them, sorry. I have a Kindle, so I was on that page.)

The book is just plain good and a lot of fun. One of the things that appealed to me was the idea of going back to high school and being cool. The heroine, Sarah, gets to do this and she helps the other geeks live up to their potentials.

Okay, well, I just stopped to reread the book. Some of the references are a bit dated since the book was published in 1998, but I still enjoyed it. The heroine's growth arc was something I'd forgotten. She starts the book as an ambitious career woman just looking for feathers in her cap, but not really thrilled with her job, to someone who uses her professional skills to do something that matters to her.

The relationship she had with the kids was one of my favorite parts of the story. This is a book rich with secondary characters. The heroine's best friend and their relationship was strong. The relationship among the secondary characters. It wasn't as if they all revolved around the hero or heroine; they felt as if they had lives of their own. If that makes sense. Some books make the secondary characters feel as if they don't exist out of context of the h/h, but Jan Freed does an tremendous job making everyone feel 3D and real.

The book isn't a true romantic suspense. (It was originally published in the SuperRomance line.) The suspense aspect is really just there to set the story in motion. There's a bit of wrap up of that at the end, but by and large, it's a contemporary (circa 1998 contemporary) romance. It's also a relationship book. Not only the relationship between the h/h, but their relationships with other people as well.

Highly recommended.

Done

2011-09-01T08:00:00.000-05:00

Yes, dancing Hobbes means the project is done! Enemy Embrace is part of the Crave the Night anthology and is slated to be released in October 2011.I'd tell you more about the story, except I'm brain dead right now. More later.

Here's The Power of Two

2011-08-30T10:00:00.000-05:00

I've had my covers for a while now, but wanted to wait to show them off. I'm impatient, though, and I couldn't wait any longer to share. I'm showcasing them one at a time. The appearances on my blog are the grand premiere. :-)

Without any further chatter from me, I present The Power of Two!

Isn't it awesome? I love the background especially. It has a really nice future feel to it. I did the searching for the couple on the cover. It was amazingly hard to find a picture that fit and I finally had to go for the best that I could find. The woman in the picture was listed as being Chinese and my heroine, Cai, is 1/4 Vietnamese. Also, both models look older than my hero and heroine are in the story. Cai is 21 and Jake is in his mid-20s. Like I said, though, there were very few pictures to choose from and I picked the best one available. But while the couple isn't exactly right, the cover is still awesome!

This concludes the new cover premieres. I hope you enjoyed looking at them as much as I enjoyed showing them off!

Flashback

2011-08-28T10:00:00.000-05:00

Flashback by Terri Herrington is a time travel romance originally released by Silhouette Shadows. I really loved the Shadows line, and except for a few titles that I still need to hunt down, I have (nearly) the complete line. To my great disappointment, Silhouette ended it after a few years.

In Flashback the heroine is a photographer who has some old man come up to her at a shoot and say some weird stuff. It freaks her out and then he rushes off, gets hit by a car, and dies. This shakes her up and she feels responsible.

She picks up an old camera and she decides to do some shooting with it in her home. It ends up transporting her to the 1950s, but it takes a toll on her health. In the 50s, the hero lives in the house that's now hers. He's a doctor, but he's not practicing thanks to some traumatic stuff from the Korean War. They fall in love, but the heroine's sister keeps calling her back to the present. Every time the heroine travels either to the 50s or back to the present, her health is impacted more. Finally the hero tells her she can't come anymore, that he couldn't live with her dying.

The old man that said something weird to the heroine? That, of course, was the hero. :-)

I loved that this was a time travel to an unusual era. Normally, with time travel romance to the past, it's almost always somewhere in the 1800s. I've enjoyed many of those books, too, but it was nice to see something different. The 50s are definitely different.

There's angst in this story. The hero is beating himself up over Korea and the heroine is torn between the hero and her love for her twin sister. Since her sister can call her back to the present at any time, the heroine can't have any contact with her if she wants to stay with the hero. She'll be forced to choose--if she can find a way to stay in the past at all.

Now I feel like rereading this story, but I've wanted to do that with almost every book I've reviewed here.

Here's Ravyn's Flight

2011-08-25T10:00:00.000-05:00

I really love this cover! The guy has shorter hair, and since my hero is in the army, this was important to me. I also really like that the woman is wearing his camo shirt. There's actually a scene in the book where Ravyn is wearing Damon's shirt, so it's as if this picture was meant for my book!

Here's Eternal Nights

2011-08-23T10:00:00.001-05:00

Fog over river

2011-08-22T06:33:00.001-05:00

- Posted using Mobypicture.com

Dreamer's Heart

2011-08-21T10:00:00.001-05:00

One of the books on my keeper/reread shelf is Dreamer's Heart by Lynn Turner. This came out in the mid-90s and has a story I really enjoyed.

The heroine dreams about a bomber blowing up things. The dreams come true, and when she has another, she knows she has no choice except go to the police. She knows they won't believe her, but her conscience won't let her ignore it.

The hero is a police detective, and because he's the most patient one on the task force, he gets assigned the job of taking statements from the public about the bombings. Rhys calls these people who come in the screwball brigade. The heroine picks up this phrase (she's psychic), and fires it back at the hero as she leaves.

Then the bombing happens, exactly the way she told him it would, and Rhys turns up on her doorstep the next morning. When the feds show up and take over, the heroine is the only way for him to catch the bomber.

I really loved this story! The h/h have great banter back and forth throughout the book and Rhys was hot. :-) The heroine is no one's pushover.

A reviewer on Amazon compared this book to Linda Howard's Dream Man. There are some similarities, but I didn't think the books were that close. Yes, both heroines are psychic, see crimes, and help the police, but those are macro things. At the micro level they're different stories.

The fun for me was the interaction between the h/h more than the suspense. They're just so good together and I was pulling for them to become a couple early in the book. Rhys is alpha, but he's not a jerk and he doesn't use the heroine or betray her. They're a team all the way through and I love it when a story is setup that way. Not that there isn't some friction between the characters--they're attracted and don't want to be--but they both have the goal of catching the bomber and they both need each other to reach this end.

Join Me at JoJo's Book Corner

2011-08-19T10:00:00.003-05:00

I'm guest blogging today at JoJo's Book Corner for her blogoversary! See the model who looks like Dak, the demon hero from Enemy Embrace (Oct 2011 in Crave the Night). I also talk about one of my favorite books from the mid 90s and am giving away a copy of Through a Crimson Veil. Please join me!

What It's Like To Work For an Airline

2011-08-18T10:00:00.001-05:00

This is another blog topic by request post. Feel free to put in your request in comments, via Twitter or in email.

What's it like working for an airline? If you've read Dilbert, you pretty much know what it's like. Unfortunately, I'm not joking.

I work in Technical Operations in the office, so I don't deal with passengers, I can't tell you anything about fares or sales, and I can't help you find your luggage. :-) Sorry, I'm useless. I do input information into the database where we organize what work needs to be done to keep the planes flying safely and at what intervals. You're welcome. :-)

The specific questions that were requested involved stress levels, job security, and if this job is different from any other corporate job.

Since Dilbert is almost universally funny to people, I think I'm safe in saying that no, my job doesn't differ much from any other corporate job. Before I moved cubes--twice--my wall was covered with Dilbert cartoon strips that struck a particular chord. Many other people here have Dilbert cartoons up, too. Enuf said?

Job security and stress level go hand in hand. There's never been job security. From the time I started with the airline, we've hopped from crisis to crisis. It seems like there's a continual threat of layoffs and if I had to do it over again, I would have gone into another field, something with more stability. I put off buying a house for years, wanting to wait until there was some smooth waters. Finally, I thought, hey, if I want a house, I'm just going to have to bite the bullet and do it.

I did. I love my house. I picked out the flooring, the wall colors, the fixtures, even the handles on the cabinets. I've been in it for five years--and my job was relocated to Atlanta. I have to report there in January.

I was here when 9/11 happened. I was here a couple of weeks later when half the people on the floor I worked on were laid off. I was here when oil went over $100 a barrel and there were layoffs. I was here when our pilots went on strike and I was laid off after a couple of weeks, then recalled when they settled. This year, oil prices are going up again. There's early outs being offered. Stress is high again. Will I still have a job after I move to Atlanta? And if so, for how long? I have no idea.

I'm kind of focused on the negative here, and there really is a lot of that, but there are definite benefits. The travel for one. It's not as easy to get anywhere now flying standby, but once upon a time, I used to travel a lot.

My favorite trip was when I took four weeks off and went to Australia with my parents. I had some perfect attendance passes, and back then, the company paid the taxes on them, so the flight was completely free. Australia is without question the most awesome place I've ever been. I saw Sydney and Townsville, Cairns and Fraser Island. We went up to Papua New Guinea and over to Ayers Rock and Alice Springs. I wanted this trip badly enough that I would have gone at some point, but working for the airline allowed me to go sooner and stay longer.

And by and large, I work with some awesome people. There's always a clunker or two, of course, but mostly airline people form a bond. After all, we've been through a lot of downs together. :-)

My job has also allowed me to visit most of the United States. It helped get me to the nation of Kiribati, and let's face it, who goes to Kiribati? :-)

How I Started Writing

2011-08-16T10:00:00.001-05:00

Another topic request blog post--How I started writing. (Remember, if you have anything you'd like to hear me talk about, feel free to leave it in a comment or send a Twitter comment or email me.)

I've always had stories in my head. I distinctly remember as a very small child, maybe 6 or 7, playing Barbies with my friends. They'd be done and ready to do something else, but I had an elaborate scenario to take Barbie and Ken through first. And FYI, even at this tender age, my "characters" were having romances. Maybe not sophisticated romances, but I was in grade school.

The stories stayed even when the dolls were put away. Dragged by my parents to something boring? I'd find a corner, sit down, and play stories through my head until we could go home.

Writing these stories down never occurred to me until 8th grade. One of my best friends at the time started writing a story using the entire class as characters. She paired "me" up with my teen actor heartthrob and passed her notebook around with each new installment. Well, you knew it was bound to happen sooner or later, right? She wrote "me" doing something I didn't like. I asked her to change it and she refused because it was her story. So I was like, hey, I can write stories, too!

And I did. Only I didn't use people in my class as characters. That might have been my original intention--I can't remember--but I had characters show up. Real characters.

Thus began my own scribbling in notebooks as I wrote angsty YA romance. My friend gave up writing that school year, but I didn't. In 9th grade, I joined the school newspaper. In 10th grade, it was the yearbook staff and I was editor my senior year. I took every writing class I could get myself into, including taking 2 English classes my senior year even though I wasn't supposed to be able to do that. They made an exception for me because I was such a good student. heh!

I knew by the time I was in high school that I wanted to be a novelist when I grew up. I also knew even back then that fiction writing didn't pay much for most writers. Being a Capricorn and hugely attracted to financial security, I decided to major in Journalism. I could write and get paid for it. Well, I did get the degree from the School of Journalism, but I went to work for the airline instead. Speaking of tenuous financial security. :-/

The writing bug never died, though. I continued to take writing classes wherever I could find them. And I wrote off and on for years. I finished my first book at 24, but for a long stretch, I'd start books and never get farther than chapter 3. My perfectionism drove me to revise and revise and revise until I was so bored, I'd move on to something different.

Then I reached a point where I realized I had to finish books if I wanted to, you know, sell them. I finished two others. And then I didn't write for almost 2.5 years. I like to think of that time as working on me, becoming a better, more grounded person.

And then I was driving home from work one day in 1999 (I think) and I saw a woman huddled on the floor with her arms wrapped around her knees. I knew something bad had happened, but I didn't know what. I started writing again and 18 months later, Ravyn's Flight was finished. Y'all know the rest.

Ransom - Julie Garwood

2011-08-14T10:00:00.001-05:00

I am a huge Julie Garwood fan. Not only is she an awesome writer, she's a really nice woman and very gracious as I gushed all over her at an RWA conference. Or two. I always say I don't read historicals, but she's the exception. I love Garwood's historical romances. They're awesome! One of my all-time favorites is Ransom.

The heroine rescues a small boy who's been kidnapped by the villain and she returns him to Scotland to reunite him with his family. She meets the hero when she claims to be his betrothed and orders him (through an intermediary) to come to her. The hero is the little boy's uncle/close friend of the family. The hero shows up with his men, and when he sees the boy, he escorts them both to the boy's home.

Um, lots of stuff ensues along the way, of course, and the heroine is determined to return home. She has a mission. I'm never sure how much to say, but it's a romance, so you know the h/h fall in love.

One of my favorite things about Julie Garwood's stories is her humor. OMG, I laugh when I read her books. Her characters are awesome, too, and I care about them and am rooting for them throughout the story.

I found her kind of by accident. I was looking for new authors to read and I decided that if someone had a lot of books at the bookstore, that must mean they're really good. Julie Garwood had a lot of books. I grabbed one of them, The Gift and loved it enough to go back for more. As much as I loved my first Garwood, though, Ransom remains my absolute favorite.

Highly recommended.

Troll's World

2011-08-11T10:00:00.002-05:00

When I was asked to write a time travel romance story for a Mammoth Books' collection, I knew two things. One, I wanted my heroine to travel to the future and my Jarved Nine world. And two, I didn't want to use the "magic necklace" method of time travel. Back when I read a lot of time travel romance, the heroine always traveled to the past via some object, hence the reference to the "magic necklace."

I'd done some research in the past into M Theory in physics and had picked up some really cool information and some of it came back to me. Particle accelerators theoretically can create small black holes and small wormholes, although these outcomes are unlikely, or if they do occur, not dangerous. At least according to what I read.

The idea of using real physics for the time travel element appealed to me. Maybe other writers have used wormholes--I don't read much time travel any longer--but I take great pride on using the particle accelerator and a real issue that physicists have discussed to get my heroine to another time and place. :-)

As I wrote The Troll Bridge, I realized I had a full-length book. I had to cut out all the other stuff that was going on to fit it to the short word count requirement and condense the h/h's relationship down to the bare essence. My writing buddies can tell you how many times I emailed them saying, "I wish I could write the whole book." In the version I wanted to write, there really are coalitions spies on J9. They learn Lia came from the past and want to use her in some plot (details are fuzzy now) and Troll has to protect her. There was so much cool stuff happening.

The story also unfolded over several weeks rather than a day or two, allowing time for the romance and the feelings to deepen enough for a complete happy ending rather than the optimistic ending I had to go with on the shorter length story. As much as I wanted to do a forever after wrap up, I didn't think it was believable that two people who'd spent one day together would commit heart and soul to each other.

Plus, Lia is cautious by nature, she's not going to fling herself into everything all at once. And Troll wouldn't have survived in the army if he was a leap without looking kind of guy. There was just no way they'd let me wrap up the ending in a neat bow even if I could have managed it.

Some day, in my spare time, I'd like to rewrite this story and lengthen it to the way I saw it originally. I'd like to add all the coalition stuff and the teammates with their wives. Of course, I'd like to write the other team members, too, whose stories come before Troll and Lia. I need a lot more spare time than I have.

Adventures In Vehicle Ownership

2011-08-09T10:00:00.002-05:00

The other morning, I stepped into the garage to leave for work and discovered my left, rear tire was flat. Completely flat. This is the one tire on my car that manages to find any nail in a five-block radius. It doesn't matter where it is on the car, this is the one that picks up the debris. It's been plugged many times and had developed a leak around the bead seal. I thought that had been fixed, but as I looked, I thought: Guess not.

I took a vacation day, realized it was far too early for any car service center to be open, and resigned myself to a frustrating day once they did open. I called my dad later in the morning and told him the problem. He suggested I buy a new car. Um, yeah, dad, sure.

Now, to be fair to him, my car is a 1998, but there's been nothing mechanically wrong with the car. Everything I've dealt with has been routine maintenance and things like replacing the battery. I wasn't ready to get rid of her and take on a car payment again.

So after calling around and making a decision on where to bring the car, I called AAA and someone came out to inflate the tire. Only problem? This wasn't a slow leak around the bead seal as I'd assumed. I could hear that tire hissing air out fast and furious. Adrenaline kicked in. I leapt behind the wheel, started the car, and drove like a maniac, praying all the way that I'd make it to the car place before the tire got too low for me to drive on it.

I think I hit every light. No lie. Panic rose with each delay.

Finally, finally!, I made it. The service guy found a hole in the tire, on the corner where it can't be plugged. But that tire already had so many plugs in it, that the last time it was patched, I was told it probably couldn't be done again. I also knew that I needed new tires this fall anyway.

Bottom line was four new tires and getting all the corrosion polished off my rims. Sometimes owning a car isn't the awesome experience I imagined it would be when I was in high school.

The Morning Side of Dawn

2011-08-07T10:00:00.000-05:00

One of my all-time favorite books is The Morning Side of Dawn by Justine Davis. This was a Silhouette Intimate Moments from 1995.

The heroine, Cassandra, is a super model who's taking time away to reassess her life. She's also being stalked, so it's a good time to get away. The hero, Dar, designs and builds wheelchairs for racing. He's a double amputee who competes in these races. He also has a huge attitude problem. But when the stalker follows Cassandra out west and she needs help, it's Dar that steps in to provide it Reluctantly.

This is a book that I've read and reread over and over. One of the themes I liked about the book is how people judge others based on appearance and often don't bother to look deeper. This book shows two different sides of the same coin. Cassandra is only seen for her beauty, but no one seems to see beneath the facade to the person she is below the surface. On the other hand, people look at Dar and see a man in a wheelchair. They don't see him as a person or notice how gorgeous he is. They're too caught up on his physical challenge. It's the fact that they are the flip side of the same coin that allows Dar to finally see that he's judging Cassandra the same way others have judged him.

Justine Davis is one of my favorite authors. I loved a lot of her books for Silhouette (especially the Intimate Moments line) and her futuristic romance, The Skypirate, is still my favorite in this subgenre. She has a way of really making me care about her characters and she excels at torturing them. You know how I feel about that. ;-)

The Morning Side of Dawn is no exception on the torture front. The h/h are immediately attracted to each other, but Dar doesn't want to get close. His attitude problem, BTW, came before the accident that took his legs. Most people don't look beyond that either and make assumptions, but Cassandra doesn't and that's part of what gets under Dar's skin, that the heroine really does care enough to get to know who he is at his heart.

I'm not doing justice to this book at all, but trust me, it's awesome and I highly recommend it.

Blend

2011-08-04T10:00:00.001-05:00

(This topic is via request on Twitter. If you have something you'd like me to blog about, feel free to ask.)

I never set out to blend genres. The stories I'm attracted to as a reader are romantic suspense, science fiction romance, and paranormal romance. The books that are straight romance with no action tend to sit in my TBR pile for a very long time. It's the same with movies. Sleepless in Seattle bored the hell out of me and my favorite romance movie of all time is Speed with Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock.

I've never gotten many story ideas that didn't involve action, adventure, and suspense along with the romance. The few that I did have are gathering dust in a drawer somewhere. I try to write most of my ideas down because I never know when a piece of it (if not the whole thing) might be something I can use later. I actually had the idea for Deke's curse more than ten years before I wrote In the Midnight Hour. (And I even had his name and the name of his TV series, I just didn't have a heroine for him until Ryne showed up.)

So I've never set out consciously to blend genres, I just wrote what I like to read or watch. I'm also a seat of the pants writer which means I don't spend a lot of time analyzing how I do things, I just do them. I think it helps, though, in genre blending to know what part interests you as the writer most.

For me, the focus is always on the relationship between the characters and the character growth arc. Because this is what intrigues me most, and because this is what the romance genre is all about, my books fit best here. Not that they fit perfectly. I've had some romance readers say what I write isn't romance. It's an adventure story. And to someone who reads straight romance without the outside action going on, I maybe do. But my hero and heroine usually are together, they work as a team, they deal with falling in love, so yeah, they're definitely romance.

Sometimes the reaction to genre blending is so mixed, it frustrated me. Some romance readers say I don't write romance. Some romance writers said I write great romance, but I did "science fiction lite." At the same time, I'm getting emails from SF readers saying, hey, you write great light action/adventure science fiction, but couldn't you leave out the romance stuff? My head was spinning like the girl in The Exorcist. :-)

My books usually end up being the heroines' stories, which would make me a more natural Urban Fantasy writer since that genre seems largely heroine centered. The problem is that what interests me about the world is how it affects the characters; I don't have a great deal of fascination with the world by itself. In Fantasy, the focus is on the world more than the characters.

This isn't to say I have no interest in the world or world building. I do and I spend a lot of time making notes, but what usually happens is this: I get, The Gineal shun those who turn to dark magic. It's a weakness. Then my brain goes, ooh! That's why Ryne is a loner. They think she's gone over to the dark. If I was a fantasy writer, I'd probably go, ooh! What happened in this world to make the dark side so reviled? That question is one I could answer vaguely, but not with the kind of thought someone more interested in every facet of the world could provide.

What I know is that dark magic and the suspicion of dark magic use has affected my heroine from the time she was twelve and it shaped Ryne into the woman she is today. I know how it impacts her growth arc, how she has to learn to accept that she's not destined to fall into the dark arts and to trust herself.

I'm not sure I stayed 100% on topic, but I love action, adventure, and suspense with my romance, and if this makes me a genre blender, so be it.

Change Happens

2011-08-02T10:00:00.002-05:00

Change is inevitable. I've talked about my views on characters and how they deal with this. It's my position that few people embrace change, and that in fact, many resist it as long as possible. I have my characters do this as well, and generally try to put them in situations where they have no choice about it.

Recently, I had a refresher course on just how real people react to big change, and I can safely say that I'm dead-on in my characters' reactions. Dead on.

About six weeks ago, we were told our jobs are being relocated to Atlanta. Many of you know that I work for an airline. It used to be Northwest, but Delta bought us out and they're headquartered in Georgia. The decision was made to close the building I work in and get rid of it. Everyone here--about 400 people--was suddenly faced with enormous change. Either move to Atlanta or find a new job. We were given until July 31st to make our decision.

This wasn't a fork in the path where one side continued on in sort of the status quo and the other had change. This was a T in the road. There is no path remotely similar to the current one.

One of the interesting side effects of being a writer is being able to observe. Although I was reeling myself from this unexpected announcement (or maybe because of it), I was able to step back and watch others. It's actually pretty incredible to see how strenuously people have resisted. Now, six weeks after the bombshell, most of my coworkers have adjusted, but there are some who are still resisting.

So yes, in my stories when I have characters who cling to the status quo past the point where they should move on, it's realistic. In fact, even the most stubborn of my heroes and heroines have adjusted more quickly than many of my coworkers.

And how did I react to this change? I was too numb to go into resistance--my choice was denial. At first. Then I began researching Atlanta--housing, crime rates, traffic patterns. I reached out to friends who live in the south (although not Atlanta) and found people online who could answer questions for me.

I waffled a lot at first, but within a week, I was leaning one direction. A couple of days later, I read something that made me 90% certain which choice I was going to make. I stayed at that 90% level for a really long time. Last week, the week I had to make my decision, I was 99% sure what I was going to do, but I didn't make my official decision because I wanted to be 100% certain when I did. It's August, the decision day has come and gone, I did give my notification on my decision, but I'm still not at 100%.

If your curious about what I decided to do--I'm moving to Atlanta. My report date to my new office is January 9th.

Archaeological Myths and Mysteries

2011-07-31T10:00:00.000-05:00

I've been listening to an audio lecture series called Myths and Mysteries In Archaeology. It's given by a professor of archaeology at George Washington University and promised to look at things like Stonehenge, Atlantis, and whether or not aliens King Arthur really existed as well as other topics. The lecture series was a total of 8 hours. Most lectures were about half an hour long, so there were good breaking points in the audio.

The opening lectures covered archaeology in a general sense, giving basic information about the field. I found this part fascinating and picked up a lot of things I didn't know. For a year while I was in elementary school, I wanted to be an archaeologist, but I never bothered to learn much about it and moved on to other dreams.

I think the general information was the first three lectures and then each subsequent lecture covered a different myth or mystery of archaeology. This was also interesting...to a degree.

To say the professor was a skeptic was putting it mildly. She shot down pretty much everything, although she did concede that King Arthur probably was a real person, but maybe just a military leader who became a folk hero or something.

TBH, I didn't expect her to believe much in any of these myths. Traditional archaeology strikes me as very conservative and staid. The professor also did make an effort to include information used by the supporters of these more exciting theories. Unfortunately, though, even as she offered the details, her skepticism came through clearly and it made her attempt to offer both sides seem pointless.

I'll admit that I enjoy some of these outlandish ideas. Hey, I write fiction! And I find them exciting even if they're not true. The professor clearly did not share my sense of wonder as she debunked myth after myth. Her arguments were largely compelling, but it disappointed me anyway.

The professor clearly knew her stuff and laid things out concisely, so that even people who were unfamiliar with archaeology could follow easily. I did listen to the entire 8 hours and it held my interest, although by the last couple of lectures, I was almost able to cite the phrase she used right before she shot holes in any theory that didn't adhere to the status quo in the field. Overall, though, I liked the lecture series and I'd definitely check into more along these lines.

It's All a Matter of Perspective

2011-07-28T10:00:00.002-05:00

I'm working on a story set in the Blood Feud universe right now and one of things I really enjoy about the world is that there is no single bad guy. The vampire hunters are evil to vampires, but I've done a couple of vampire hunter heroines. The demons are evil to the demon slayers, but I've paired up a slayer with a demon. The vampires and demons fought a war with each other, yet now they're trying to forge an alliance. Someone from any group could be the hero or heroine and someone from any group can be the villain.

I really love this!

It's given me a chance to play with perspective. Isobel and Seere from Blood Feud don't understand the animosity lingering between their peoples (She's a vampire, he's a demon) because they weren't alive during the wars and they fell in love with each other.

On the other hand, Andras from Demon Kissed makes some throwaway comment about vampires being bastards. He's too young to have fought in the wars, too, but the prejudice against vamps has made into his world view.

I'm working on the fourth story set in this universe now. Enemy Embrace introduces one of the rogue vampires as a villain, but in another story I have planned, a rogue vampire is the heroine. :-) This story also introduces the fact that there are wizards. Dak, the hero of Enemy Embrace, hates wizards. He finds them self-serving and untrustworthy. Do I need to mention I have a story planned with a wizard hero?

There are all kinds of different groups with different agendas, groups with different factions, and groups filled with people who hold different viewpoints. In some ways, it might be easier to just make one group always be evil and the rest always be good, but that's not nearly as fun and it's not realistic.

I have three more stories that I know of right now and my plan is to deepen the alliance between the vampires and demons. Things are afoot that they aren't aware of quite yet, but they're going to need to work together--whether they like it or not.

On the Inside

2011-07-26T10:00:00.003-05:00

I used to slip inside jokes into my books all the time. Some of them were specific to one person, some of them were specific to a group of people. To use some examples, in Through a Crimson Veil The Crimson Jim bar was named for a guy I worked with. He's also the one that asked me to use Evil Twin Brewery in the story. That's the brand of beer Conor was drinking the night he found out the truth about Mika.

The inside joke in Eternal Nights was out there for any baseball fan. All the one-off secondary characters, the ones that were basically walk-ons, but who needed a name for clarity's sake, got the name of baseball players. Wyatt's friend in the prologue is Jim "Catfish" Hunter who is like a totally famous pitcher from a few decades ago. All the bad guys got names of players on teams I was rooting against in the playoffs that year. (I was writing the book during the playoffs.) Only one person ever let me know they got the joke and this kind of made me sad. I was hoping a lot of people would get it and laugh with me.

But EN was the last book that I did anything sort of under the radar. Kind of. If you read Shadow's Caress, you'll remember it opened with a couple of 80s songs and it also closed with the title of an 80s song. But stuck in the middle is a little tip of the cap to another 80s song. I originally was actually going to name the song, but it didn't work out with the flow of the story.

I did make a reference to it, though. When Malachi has Cass pull over and tells her they're going to walk the rest of the way to Laurent's home, Cass is like: What? Walk? In LA?

Maybe no one else gets it because Missing Persons was never a huge name group, but they have a song titled Walking In L.A. and the whole thing is about how nobody walks in the city. Since Cass works in an 80s boutique, I thought it was kind of fun to slip in something like that. I just wish I could have managed a few more songs.

Battle Los Angeles

2011-07-24T10:00:00.002-05:00

When Battle Los Angeles first came out, I was tempted by the television ads to watch it in the theater. I'm just not much for going out to movies. Not only is it expensive, but I'm so picky about storyline, that I have a hard time with a lot of films. Recently, however, the movie came out on DVD/Pay Per View and I was seeing all those ads again that made me think I really want to see this. There were some mediocre reviews and I hesitated, but I finally decided to stream it on Friday night.

The storyline is pretty simple. Aliens invade Earth and are technologically superior to us. (Of course they are. They traveled light years through space to get here and we've gone to our moon.) They're here to wipe out all sentient life on our planet in order to take our resources. An expert on one of the inserted news clips in the movie says it's a standard ploy to eradicate life on the planet you want to strip. I'm not too sure about that, but it doesn't matter. Later, in another pseudo news clip, we hear that they've come for our water and that our planet is the only one in our solar system that has it on the surface.

Okay, alien invasion with multiple mother ships filled with flying drones and armored alien warriors inserting near large population centers around the world. Our hero is Staff Sergeant Nantz of the US Marines. He's served in the Middle East and is the only survivor of his squad. He feels responsible for the deaths of the other men and is dealing with some issues. He's assigned to a new unit under a brand new lieutenant. He's informed by other men in his unit not to trust Nantz.

It turns out the military is in over their heads against the superior forces and technology of the aliens. Our group of US Marines immediately takes losses. As they try to reach a central point to regroup, they pick up some civilians hiding in the police station and soldiers from other branches of the service, including a US Air Force sergeant who ends up playing a significant role as the story goes on.

I love action/adventure movies where there's a lot of suspense and tension. This one certainly fit that category. The tension starts early and it just intensifies throughout the entire film. There was pretty much no downtime from the suspense. Even when the group found somewhere that seemed secure to treat their wounded, we knew it wouldn't last long. Those aliens could find them wherever they were. TBH, the unrelenting tension almost became too much. I would have liked a breather now and then and I just didn't get one.

There was no romance of any sort in this movie, which you maybe guessed since I said there was no downtime from the suspense. I thought there might be one brewing between Nantz and one of the civilians, but if the writers planned to use that, it was dropped. I'm not sure they could have squeezed it in with everything else that was going on, but I did miss it.

There were a couple of things I thought were plot holes. For example, the aliens are here for our water, yet their ships and other modes of transportation run on water. My thought was that if a resource was scarce, wouldn't they create ships that ran on some other fuel? Now that we've dealt with the high-cost of oil on Earth, I keep reading about biofuels. We're looking for alternative sources, so it seemed to me the aliens would have done this as well. It's much more cost effective to create a new source of power than to travel light years and invade another planet.

But this was a minor quibble--all the plot issues I had were minor--and didn't subtract from my enjoyment of the film. This isn't meant to be taken a serious movie, IMO; it's meant to be pure entertainment/fun. And I was happy to go right along with this and not nitpick as I watched.

Some of the movie left me thinking of Independence Day--how the alien invasion was staged, how we were overwhelmed and beaten, how a small group of men make a difference, the general look of the aliens and their ships--to name a few. It's hard to compare the two movies, though, despite this because Battle Los Angeles wasn't trying for any of the humor that filled Independence Day. This movie also didn't focus on more than one storyline. Everything revolves around this single group of marines.

Battle Los Angeles also gave me a few moments where I teared up and I'm not a crybaby when it comes to entertainment--not movies or books. While ID tried for a few emotional moments, I never got felt them while I watched that movie. I think maybe this could be attributable to the focus put on the hero, SSgt Nantz and some of the others on the team. I really grew to like Nantz and Lieutenant Martinez and the USAF sergeant--the only military woman in the film.

A quick comment about our lone military woman, Sgt. Elena Santos. (Yes, I had to pop over to IMDB and look that name up.) I really liked her role in this movie. She might have been shot down and lost the rest of her team, but she's nobody's pushover. She fights beside the marines with as much fervor as they do and she is instrumental throughout Battle LA. I don't want to give any spoilers away, but nothing good happens without her. I hope that's vague enough. Also, the other female character, the one I thought might have a relationship brewing with Nantz, was also strong. She's a veterinarian and she's the one who helps them learn how to kill the aliens. She also doesn't act like a victim and given how Hollywood tends to portray women in general, I was happy that this film avoided making the women weak.

I also liked the ending of the movie. A lot. I won't say more because of spoilers, but it left me feeling good.

If you're looking for a couple of hours of mindless, fun-filled suspense, I can recommend Battle Los Angeles. It's not going to be nominated for an Oscar, that's a given, but it was an enjoyable way to spend the evening and I give it a thumbs up.

Still A Thrill

2011-07-21T10:00:00.001-05:00

Someone said to me the other day that seeing the covers for my books must be old hat and pretty mundane for me. That's not true. My first book came out in 2002 and even now, I anticipate each cover. And if I love it, I become hugely excited.

There are a lot of parts of being an author that are still exciting. OMG, seeing your book on the shelves at the bookstore? Or an airport bookstore? Sheer elation. Author copies being delivered to the doorstep. Opening that box and seeing the story you slaved over for months and months printed and bound and looking so pretty? Completely awesome. And every time someone sends me an email telling me they loved my book? Rapture. Seriously. My favorite part is when readers love my book.

None of this excitement has ever faded for me, no matter how many times I've experienced it. And I think this is a good thing. If a writer loses the wonder (not just with the writing/editing/revision part, but with the little joys like holding your book for the first time), they've lost something intangible that I think affects their work.

Actually, my life philosophy overall is that we have to enjoy moments--big or small. It doesn't matter if it's the first time or the tenth time, we have to savor and embrace the good stuff.

The Tech Savvy Catch-22

2011-07-19T10:00:00.001-05:00

I'm pretty tech savvy. Not at the "hire myself out to fix computers" level, but good enough that I can normally handle just about anything the crops up at home. I think it helps that computers don't intimidate me and I enjoy the problem-solving that sometimes goes along with owning one. Not all the time, mind you. Sometimes I get really frustrated when I can't get an issue figured out, but a lot of the time...yeah, I enjoy it.

The fact that I am tech savvy, though, leads to quandaries. For example, I'd love to set up an author page on FB, but I want more than the standard, minimal page that I could put together now. You see, I know there are ways to put together a very professional, polished, functional page. This is what I want.

My quandary? I hate to pay someone else to put this together for me because I know I can do it myself. If I had the time to read up on how to do it and even more time to play around with it. And because I don't have any extra time, I don't read or tinker and no page goes up. For time efficiencies, I should find someone who can do it and just hire it out. But. But I know I can do it. I know I can. And I hate to pay for something that I can do.

Same thing with the formatting my backlist stories for ebook readers. I can do it myself. In fact, I did do it myself on my short stories. But finding the time is hard.

Then there's the control freak in me. I like things perfect. I know if I do my own FB page that I'll get everything exactly the way I want it. When I pay someone else to do it, there comes a point where I have to settle for good enough because of the costs associated. I hate settling. I want perfection. I can't help it.

Born In Fire

2011-07-17T10:00:00.000-05:00

Last Sunday I talked about my first Nora Roberts' book, today, I'm going to talk about my favorite. Born In Fire.

Born In Fire is the la Nora book I reread the most. I just love this story. The heroine is a glass artist who has a tempestuous relationship with her mother. The hero is a delicious Irish art dealer who wants the heroine's work for his gallery. After he meets her, he wants her, period.

This book isn't fraught with action. It's much more about relationships and the characters, but I didn't miss the adventure. Maggie is a great heroine and definitely full of fire. Rogan is sexy and I can see him as a precursor to Roarke who is the hero in the JD Robb books. There are similarities, but Rogan is his own person.

One of the things I really enjoyed about this book was the characters and how real they were. I honestly felt that if I hopped on a plane, flew to Ireland, and went to the town that I would actually find Maggie, Rogan, and the rest of the cast. This is three-dimensional characterization at its best. But even better? I wished these people were real because I would have loved to hang out with them. I have to settle for rereading the book over and over.

Still raining yea for plan b

2011-07-15T13:22:00.001-05:00

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Fog on the river

2011-07-15T12:21:00.001-05:00

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Eagle in flight

2011-07-15T12:06:00.001-05:00

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