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Showing posts from July, 2011

I was just about to get shirty with tiny letters

I make and send my newsletters with tiny letters -- and thought the service was the bee's knees until I got sixteen copies of my last newsletter in my own inbox. Sixteen of the same promo-y newsletter filling up my inbox page, and, what's worse, maybe also filling up your inboxes. Grrr. That's not going to win me friends and influence readers. But I just got an apologetic note from Mr. Tinyletter Man himself. Apparently he had issues with multiple copies of one of his emails going out into the world over and over and over . .  . I can't stay shirty when he is so clearly mortified. I'm done with him at the moment -- as in I no longer feel the need to express my opinion. But let me just say to anyone who's seen one or both of my newsletters over and over and over and over and over and oo jeez. . .Sorry. As Mr Tinyletter Man himself said, Sorry about that and I'm almost positive it won't happen again. If it does, and we all end up with way too
Every now and then when I think about my kids, I realize how very cool they are and how much I like them. I love them, too, but liking your kids isn't a given. Mine are funny, interesting, and even if nice doesn't always show itself (scuse me? boys? teenagers?) there's nice under there -- scathes of it. Oceans of nice. Ditto integrity. They get that from their dad. Anyway, the next time one of them annoys the shit out of me, I'll have to reread this.

Resigned to my popular fiction fate SBD

Okay, that didn't last long. I looked through my oldest's books. He's an honest-to-god intellectual, an English major and has bookshelves crammed with volumes of essays and books like The Cambridge Companion to Narrative. He reads this stuff even when he doesn't have to--this is his entertainment. I picked up a book by a Brazilian author.  Oh, man, I have to read and reread the first page -- and the author's voice is annoying, or maybe it's the translator. Could you be any more pompous? So how about a bit of James Joyce instead ? Yup, he's simple, elegant compared to that lumbering elephant prose.   The Dubliners . I loved those stories right? I think? A story or two in, I remembered the misery. I wandered out to the family room to find something else to read. Maybe the Essays of George Orwell. That'll expand the mind. Hey! Right next to Orwell was that missing copy of Cry Mercy by Toni Andrews that I'd started and lost a couple of months

I can't help feeling connected to this Borders issue

Lifted from this NOW ON SALE, EXTREMELY INEXPENSIVE** book:  Dedication To the people in the Farmington, Connecticut, Borders (aka my workspace). I wrote about five books sitting in that store---including a few that sold way better than the one where you'll find that dedication****. Maybe I should have dedicated a more popular book to 'em. That might have helped, right? Alas.....Bye Stephen, Justin, Andy, Ashley Have fun with your next job. Enjoy Berlin, Stephen. Take care of yourselves. I'm going to miss you guys and that place. _______________________________________________ ** 74 cents? Holy Moly! The cover alone is worth that.  YOU CAN OWN THE BUTT GENIE COVER FOR ONLY 74 CENTS.  **** you couldn't find one that sold much worse. I had a lot of fun writing it though. Some books that don't sell so well, I resent them. That one, not as much. 

not very interesting

I think it's time to get back to reading Literature again. I've had a streak of YA and easy reads but a varied diet keeps one regular. Don't want to clog up the system with too much of one genre. I've noticed that when I read books by people who are much smarter than I am, there's a nimbus effect. Their little glow rubs off on my brain. ew. Anyway, the emotional chunk of my mind is always in gear. Other bits need some charging up. It's a temporary effect, but I'm sure it delays the decay of the little grey cells ... by a few hours at least. Except I'm trying to find things to do with a bored 14-year-old. I hate driving; he hates staying home; the summer programs are over. There aren't friends around so I can't foist him off on other people. We'll have to do something so I don't look back on these days with regret. I want to push fast-forward on various parts of my life until they're past and then I want rewind. It's a good thi

Somebody To Love and Somebody Wonderful

Here's the good part. Kensington apparently has pretty good distribution for their ebooks. I've found my books at Amazon, All Romance ebook, kobobooks, and Barnes and Noble.  Let me know if you see Somebody to Love or Somebody Wonderful in ebook form elsewhere and I'll send you a free ebook -- either one of those two or some other book.  I got lotsa books, so I'm telling you it's a good deal . I put the links I know of into my newsletter. Want future editions? Sign up at the link on the right. I only send them out when I have a new release. Here's my latest newsletter, featuring links and ginger ale: Apparently I have two new releases--though this are actually re-releases. My two Kensington historical romance titles that have been out of print are now available as ebooks. Both stories are set in 1880s New York City. Somebody Wonderful features Mick the New York City cop and Timona, the heroine based on Pauline from the Perils of Pauline. Thi

hey lookit! my two Kensington titles are on Kindle!

Somebody Wonderful and Somebody to Love** are now both available for ebooks. A few weeks ago someone at twitter asked me about them--she wanted one for her ebook collection--and I said it'll be years before they ended up as ebooks. (I figured I'd get the rights back in a few years, buy a cover from Kimberly Killion and do it on my own.) But hey! I don't mind who does it. I'm just glad to have them out there....unless it's some pirate. In which case, I'm not exactly pleased. If I find out this is legit (as in I get royalties again) I might even hold a celebratory contest of some sort. ** this book.

WHEN THE TEEN GIRLZ RULE THE WORLDZ!

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1. The book must be written in first person and must feature a girl, usually one who doesn't consider herself pretty. She may not be popular at start of the book. 2. If she isn't physically fit at the start of the novel by mid-point she'll be kicking ass right and left. Also she'll be outsmarting people who are years older than she. 3. Boys will like her. Sexy mysterious boys, sneering unpleasant boys, milquetoast beta boys. Many will like her. 4. She won't be running with the in-crowd, but chances are she will be perfectly happy at the start of the book, or at least content. 5. The society will be obviously evil to anyone from our world, duh, but it will take her some time to figure it out because it's all she's ever known 6. The society will look like it has no cracks, but it'll fall in a few weeks/months depending on the girl's schedule because 7. By the middle or end she of first book, she will be ready to lead an entire revolution a

portraits of boys

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summarizing my kids in this short conversation. I ask a question. They answer, each according to his style. . . . do we go to watch the shinolas tonight across the river? sure :D i want your sex pootie i want your sex pootie i want your sex pootie lave me lone also added to the conversation later: http://i.imgur.com/lzj4k.gif

sliced bread

If you've ever scythed a lawn before, you know how happy you are when you finally get to use a real lawn-mower. Hey! You can just push a machine instead of that whack-swoosh-whack-swoosh-whack-swoosh**. It's the elation you feel when you load a dishwasher after years of washing by hand. It's like reaching for sliced bread vs whole loaf and crappy knife. Yes, really. As good as sliced bread. That "THIS IS SO EASY!"is my attitude (at the moment) about this new way to do my newsletter. Holy moly, after years of messing with email programs and trying to hide the recipients' addresses and dumping emails that don't work and . . . . other stuff. . . . there's this program that will take care of everything but the content**** for me. As soon as I get banned because someone who forgot they signed up for my newsletter complains to the management--that's when I'll feel less sunny about the whole thing. But until then, the people at tiny letter are my hero

It's a Summer Devon day at The Romance Reviews

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Here's part of their review of Powder of Love: Are aphrodisiacs real? If they are, what happens when they affect various members of a Victorian era household? POWDER OF LOVE is a funny, spicy and at times, downright graphic story of a woman who inherits a box full of aphrodisiac.. . . . The growing relationship between the dour Gideon Reed and the outgoing and strong willed Rosalie is delightful to read. Rosalie's interactions with the various secondary characters are well written. The presence of this aphrodisiac provides for some pretty hilarious comedy as various people fall under its influence. It is also the cause of some of the steamy action that occurs. At just under 200 pages, this book is a wonderfully complete read. It's a story that stays with you long after you finish reading! This book isn't for the faint of heart! The sex is graphic; it involves group sex, public sex and M/M sex. -- the rest is here. And here's the Mad Baron review--i

ta da!

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getting this felt good this felt even better! Bonnie and I won Historical first place for The Rogue and the Gentleman.

Seeing a drawback to those craft workshops

I'm sitting, waiting for a bell cart**, reading one of the approximately 1000 books from the conference (Linda and Lori collected many, many books) and I keep seeing examples of What Not To Do. This is an author whose stuff I love. And now I'm doing the dissection thing again. I forgot about that part of thinking Craft all the damn time. I want to go back to being a reader and only apply this nit-picking to my own work. After years of being a way too critical reader, I'd reached that happy balance. In other news, the lobby still smells like spray paint. Last night the artists lined up on Times Square just outside the hotel with the easels or tables and started drawing the passersby for $5 a pop. Maybe thirty people, mostly Asian, drawing astonishingly fast, good portraits. Then there were other guys who used krylon spray paint cans (sounds outer space) and paint scrapers as blockers as they painted outer space scenes. The spray paint wafts around the place like nobody's

My RWA

Here's what I loved this year: Craft workshops . When I took a craft workshop, even the ones that are full of familiar stuff, I got sparks again. CWs used to bore me because I'd overloaded on them, they are basically restating the same True Facts, after all. I'd grown tired of getting preached at and I didn't want to learn jargon for stuff that doesn't need freaking jargon. Yeah, some of that's still true. But the good workshops, man, I'd forgotten how cool they can be. Michael Hauge, Toni Andrews, Jenny Crusie (of course) -- those were a few of the ones that gave new words to something that I needed to hear again. As I listened, I'd relate them to my life or books and feel my writerly brain expanding, if only for a moment. Instead of doodling or jotting down jargon, I wrote notes for books. I won't be able to read the notes I wrote about the books or the jargon, but it was good stuff. And the craft workshops gave me that message over and over, yo,