This is the first post of my new blog! Starting Fall by turning over a new leaf and starting to blog once again. Hoping to share again with you about writing, reading, life and everything good that comes along. I hope you’ll join me on this new journey and I look forward to spending more […]
Every author knows the experience: a character who’s supposed to be a supporting player suddenly starts moving toward center stage. Sometimes you nudge her back to the edges. But sometimes you think, hmmm, maybe there’s something there. That’s the case with several of the characters in the two Konigsburg novellas that make up So Happy […]
I learned about Jane Haddam’s death in the way I’d guess she’d want her readers to learn about it: while reading her last book, One Of Our Own. Her sons added an afterward to let her fans know what had happened. I was sad for the rest of the day. Haddam, aka Orania Papazoglu, was […]
It’s been a year now since the pandemic descended upon us. As a retired person, I was in the enviable position of being able to go into lockdown without too much trouble. I live in a state where most people are decent about observing public safety rules and, although I suffer from cabin fever as […]
Most romances are written in third person. It’s not a requirement, mind you. There are first person romances, some of them classics (Jane Eyre springs to mind). But using third person allows you to use multiple points of view, switching back and forth between hero and heroine, for example, with the villain thrown in sometimes […]
A few years ago, Entertainment Weekly hit a new level on the hubris meter: they listed the 100 best in a variety of entertainment categories, movies, television, plays, music, and books (and therein lies another blog post). Predictably, I disagree with a lot of their choices, but I’m sure I’m not the only one. Everybody […]
The woman in line ahead of me at the grocery store was talking to the clerk. “It’s not a real holiday,” she said. “It’s all about marketing.” “Oh, I know,” the clerk said. “My husband and I never give each other anything.” “And the cards,” the customer said. “They’re ridiculous. And so expensive.” “I agree,” […]
Billionaires are in. If you go to Amazon and search for “billionaire” and “romance,” you’ll find a hundred pages of titles. Fifty Shades of Grey is probably the most prominent of these books, but there are lots of others, and the trend has been around for years. I remember reading Christina Dodd’s Just the Way […]
You see this meme repeatedly on Facebook—a Venn diagram showing the small intersection between what the author meant and what the English teacher thinks the author meant. Usually it’s posted by an author who’s convinced that English teachers are evil witches distorting an author’s true meaning. English teachers, say the authors, should just stick to […]
I’m on record as not liking some kinds of alpha heroes: heroes whose main qualifications are big muscles, membership in some elite military group and thinly disguised misogyny just don’t do it for me. But I think a lot depends on how alphas are defined. And I recently had a chance to take a look […]
All of my Konigsburg books include animals. I’m not sure how this happened, it just did. Starting with a diabolic cat and a sweet-natured Chihuahua in Venus In Blue Jeans, I had a greyhound in Wedding Bell Blues, a mostly coon hound puppy in Be My Baby, and a largely Maine coon cat in Long […]
If I were given a choice between writing a synopsis and writing a blurb (and believe me, that’s a horrible choice), I’d go with the synopsis. Synopses are basically summaries, and most of us have some experience with summarizing. You’ve got three or four pages for the whole thing, and your main job is to […]
1. It’ll make you hungry for some interesting things. For some reason, several of my books include a lot about food and drink (maybe because I like both), and Saison for Love is no different. My heroine, Ruth Colbert, owns a deli/lunch counter that serves the goat cheese she makes. Ruth’s a whiz with sandwiches […]
At the end of Finder, Emma Bull’s author bio has a neat thing: the soundtrack for the book. She lists the songs she listened to while she was writing, and it’s pretty extensive (also, from my point of view, sort of obscure). Bull is obviously one of those writers who likes to listen to music […]
Unseen and Found, books 2 and 3 in my Folk Trilogy, both take place at least in part in a Colorado mountain town, Animas. In Unseen, the town is having its annual Fall Festival. When my critique partner read the first chapter, she asked me where on earth I’d gotten the idea for the characters […]
Writing Wild Love, the third of my Brewing Love books, involved research—pleasurable research, but research nonetheless. When I first moved to Colorado a few years ago, I didn’t know much about beer. I mostly drank the big commercial brands like everybody else, and I didn’t drink much of those. But Colorado is craft beer central—we […]
Found, Book 3 in my Folk series, has been nominated for a Prism award by the Fantasy, Futuristic and Paranormal chapter of Romance Writers of America. To celebrate, let me tell you a little about the series itself. I’ve written lots of series in my day, both contemporary (Konigsburg, Texas; The Salt Box Trilogy; Brewing […]
So I’m sitting at my table at the big Shameless Book Con sale with copies of my Brewing Love series spread out in front of me. A browsing shopper pauses. “What are these about?” she asks. “They’re about a craft brewery in a Colorado mountain town,” I explain. “The brewmaster is the heroine of the […]
I started writing the Folk series (Book 1, Away, is available for preorder now) a while ago, knowing nothing about fairies beyond the usual. And by “the usual” I mean pretty much Midsummer Night’s Dream and a very obscure Kipling children’s book called Puck of Pook’s Hill. I knew I needed to do some research […]
I write contemporary romance, for the most part. Of my eighteen published novels, fifteen are contemporary. The other three, however, are paranormal—the Ramos Family Trilogy that I wrote for Berkley InterMix about a family of mediums in San Antonio. That trilogy was so much fun to write that I’ve always had a secret wish to […]
The billionaire plot has been a familiar romance trope for a lot of years. In the usual plot line, the ruthless billionaire falls in love with a decidedly less rich heroine who teaches him that money isn’t everything. In its bare outlines, it’s close to a fairy tale: a poor woman (it’s almost always the […]
I suppose it was inevitable that editing apps would become available eventually. After all, pattern recognition is something computers do very well, and a lot of copyediting comes under the heading of recognizing and, in some cases, changing authorial patterns of language. For example, most of us have words we habitually overuse. Some authors keep […]
In my last post I talked about the trials and pleasures of writing sex scenes in historical romances, and in my introduction I said that all romance novels have sex scenes. Of course, that isn’t actually the case. So consider this post a sort of footnote to the last one. Some romance novels don’t include […]
Now that I’ve got your attention, as they used to say… Romance novels have sex scenes. That’s not a big revelation to those who read and write romance. But some writers have an easier time of it than others. Assuming your hero and heroine are consenting adults, in contemporary romance you can usually work a […]
A couple of years ago, I stopped blogging. At the time, blogging seemed like a lost cause—all the social media gurus were telling us it wasn’t worth the bother. Plus it seemed to take a lot of time. Plus, frankly, I wasn’t sure I had anything to say that anyone wanted to hear. Surely there […]
Hi Readers, I’ve got a winter treat for you. I’m one of the sponsors of the Night Owl Reviews Winter Wonderland Scavenger Hunt. During this event I’m going to help you find some great new books. Make sure to check my featured title out along the way. The grand prize is a $100 Amazon […]
My first paranormal novel, Medium Well, is still one of my favorite writing experiences. The three novels in the Ramos Family trilogy are ghost stories because, well, I’ve always been sort of intrigued by ghosts. Haven’t you? When I was a kid, I devoured every ghost story I could lay my hands on at the […]
Getting a cover is one of the most exciting and nerve-racking parts of the indie publishing process. You have to find an artist, then you have to explain what you want (assuming you know), then you and the artist have to work through a series of rough drafts before you finally arrive at the cover […]
There are two main expenses for self-publishing—covers (about which, more later) and editing. Of the two, beginning writers are more likely to spend on the former than the latter. They’re making a big mistake. I come to this conclusion from a somewhat unique perspective—I was a freelance copy editor myself for several years. At one […]
There are several steps in self-publishing, but there’s a first one that’s absolutely fundamental. Write the book. It’s easy to be overwhelmed by all the other things that are involved in publishing, but without a book you’ve got nowhere to go. Fortunately, in this case I had a completed MS. In fact that MS had […]
Last year at this time I was a happy camper. The first book in the Salt Box Trilogy, Finding Mr. Right Now, had just been published. The second, Love In the Morning, had a publication date, and the third, Running On Empty, had been contracted. My first books set in Colorado had become a reality. […]
Today is the release date for Going Up In Flames, my contribution to the Sapphire Falls Kindle World collection of novellas. Sapphire Falls is Erin Nicholas’s long-running series about a small town in central Nebraska. Several months ago, Erin asked me to be part of a Kindle World series centering around the Sapphire Falls summer […]
So I have a new book coming out on May 17, Going Up In Flames. It’s a novella, part of the Kindle World series for Erin Nicholas’s Sapphire Falls books. This book has been a lot of fun to work with and a kind of lifesaver in the midst of the chaos and uncertainty of […]
The willing suspension of disbelief was Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s description of the interaction between readers and writing. In general, readers have to suspend their knowledge that they’re reading fiction. They have to enter into a kind of agreement with the writer to withhold any innate skepticism and allow the author to make her case. It’s […]
So I just finished reading a book about a serial killer. Sigh. There are a lot of books about serial killers out there. In fact, there may be more books about serial killers than there are actual serial killers. The attraction of these villains is obvious—they give an author license to come up with particularly […]
Female anger is a powerful thing. Think of all the social strictures that argue against it. Think of all the Facebook memes about it. Consider that there are actually expletives in English to describe an angry woman—shrew and bitch come immediately to mind. Given the wildly conflicting emotions female anger inspires, it’s an emotion that […]
National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) takes place each November. The idea is for participants to write a fifty-thousand-word novel by the end of the month, posting their totals every day and perhaps taking part in events such as online writing “sprints” in which they write nonstop for short periods. I’d never taken part in NaNoWriMo […]
When you’re writing a series, book 2 is often easier than book 1. In book 1, you’re getting used to the place and its people. The process is full of interesting discoveries, but it’s also time consuming. You’re constantly asking yourself if you want to go there or if you want to go there. People […]
I’m illustrating this post with one of my favorite Facebook memes—the caption, in case you can’t see it, reads “I don’t know how to act my age. I’ve never been this old before.” To me, that sums up an ongoing struggle for a lot of us. Once upon a time, particular ages came with instructions. When […]
You see this meme repeatedly on Facebook—a Venn diagram showing the small intersection between what the author meant and what the English teacher thinks the author meant. Usually it’s posted by an author who’s convinced that English teachers are evil witches distorting an author’s true meaning. English teachers, say the authors, should just stick to […]
Peter Elbow was one of the leaders in revising the way we teach writing during the seventies and eighties. His books Writing Without Teachers and Writing With Power were beloved by teachers and students alike for their multitude of ideas about getting the whole writing process going. Back in the days when I taught Freshman […]
Most romances are written in third person. It’s not a requirement, mind you. There are first person romances, some of them classics (Jane Eyre springs to mind). But using third person allows you to use multiple points of view, switching back and forth between hero and heroine, for example, with the villain thrown in sometimes […]
So recently Kristan Higgins blogged about a conference she attended representing a diverse group of writers: romance writers, poets, memoirists, other novelists. At one session, novelist Andre Dubus III made some slighting comments about typical romance readers. When one of the romance novelists took him to task during the Q&A (he’d never read a romance […]
So I discovered this new-to-me author last week: Judith Merkle Riley. Her historical novel, Serpent Garden, is set in Tudor England and France, and it’s an absolute delight. Riley juggles multiple points of view, a complex mixture of historical fact and conjecture, ingenious details of her period setting, and a whiff of the supernatural. All […]
So the romance world has another outrage to deal with, but this time it’s been perpetrated on us rather than by us. A writer named John Havel decided to “expose” Amazon’s bestseller list practices by plagiarizing a novel and then manipulating it onto the list. Havel justified himself by saying that all the profits he […]
So Finding Mr. Right Now is out of my hands now. It’s been on the shelves since June 3, which marks the beginning of the final phase of the book’s life with the author: sales and reviews. I don’t have much influence over sales (and for a lot of reasons, I won’t really know much […]
As a writer, I find waiting for release day tough. I want to talk about my book, shout about my book, gloat about my book. But until release day, I won’t know if other people enjoy my book as much as I enjoyed writing it. But now the wait is over, at least as far […]
It’s not much of a secret that Konigsburg, Texas, the setting for my Konigsburg series for Samhain Publishing, is loosely based on Fredericksburg, Texas, a premier vacation site in the Texas Hill Country. I find it a lot easier to write about places I know, mostly Texas and Colorado since those are the places where […]
If you write, sooner or later someone will ask you where you get your ideas. It’s a logical question, particularly for people who’d like to write but who aren’t sure how to go about getting started. Unfortunately, for me it’s a tough question to answer. Sometimes I remember how I got an idea, but most […]
I’ve weighed in on the alpha hero debate in the past. I’m not a big fan of traditional alphas—the tormented tough guys who don’t much like women but are willing to make an exception in the heroine’s case. My problem with them stems from the only slightly latent misogyny in the concept and the fact […]
If I were given a choice between writing a synopsis and writing a blurb (and believe me, that’s a horrible choice), I’d go with the synopsis. Synopses are basically summaries, and most of us have some experience with summarizing. You’ve got three or four pages, and your main job is to pick out the major […]
A while ago I took a workshop in which the presenter recommended writing a sentence summing up the purpose of each paragraph in a chapter just to make sure all the paragraphs were necessary. At the time, that struck me as torture—and, to be honest, it still does. But the idea behind the exercise was […]
Well, I have a lovely new cover (at left), but the MS is still being edited. Editing with fiction means several things since there are several rounds of edit for most novels. The first edits come from your editor at the publishing house, and those are usually the most grueling. The editor isn’t particularly concerned […]
Billionaires are in. If you go to Amazon and search for “billionaire” and “romance,” you’ll find a hundred pages of titles. Fifty Shades of Grey is probably the most prominent of these books, but there are lots of others, and the trend has been around for years. I remember reading Christina Dodd’s Just the Way […]
One of my many New Year’s resolutions is to blog more often (or at least more regularly). I’d also like to keep my readers more up-to-date on what’s going on with my books. So I’ve decided to follow the publication journey of my latest book, Finding Mr. Right Now, through all the steps until it […]
A famous author (whose name I can’t remember, darn it, but it may have been Larry McMurtry) once said that it’s easy to make readers cry. You write about a beautiful child and give it a beautiful dog, and then you kill the dog. Instant tears. But he went on to point out that, in […]
So I live in Colorado. I’ll now pause for the obligatory pot joke. It’ll probably be some variation on “Rocky Mountain High.” At this point, trust me, Coloradoans have heard every possible variation on the “Rocky Mountain High” joke. If we laugh, it’s because we’re basically polite people. Two years ago, in 2012, Colorado voted […]
I enjoy showbiz biographies, the good, the bad, and even the ugly. If you’re an old-time movie fan like me, it’s fun to read anecdotes from people who were involved in making pictures you enjoy—or even pictures you didn’t like much. My most recent read was Robert Wagner’s autobiography Pieces Of My Heart, and I […]
So William Giraldi wrote this article in the New Republic a couple of months ago about Fifty Shades of Grey. You’ll notice I’m not providing a link to said article—feel free to look it up if you want, but I’m not giving Giraldi any more clicks than he’s already gotten. The article is another in […]
So I’m sitting in this workshop listening to this Very Famous Writer (VFW) talk about how to write. She’s obviously a major catch for the workshop organizers because she’s willing to spend over an hour telling aspiring writers how to do it. Now I’m well past the aspiring point (for better or worse), but I’m […]
The wonderful Jenny Bernard, author of the Bachelor Firemen of San Gabriel series for Avon, has tagged me for the Writing Process Blog Hop. This is one of those “answer some questions” deals, with these four questions: What am I working on right now?, How does my work differ from others in the genre?, Why […]
Last year, a writer on Salon posted an article called “14 Amazing Country Songs For People Who Hate Country.” I read it, of course, although I was pretty certain I wouldn’t agree with it. And I didn’t. The problem was that the author hadn’t stopped to ask why people might “hate country.” He simply went […]
Robert Hilburn’s Johnny Cash: A Life isn’t likely to make many fans among those who adored Walk the Line when it came out a few years ago. Among the many less savory facts Hilburn passes along, you learn that Cash was never able to entirely kick his addictions, going on and off pills until the […]
When you’re thinking about a romantic dinner, or maybe just the romance of food in general, barbecue probably isn’t your first choice. Barbecue was originally blue collar food, or sometimes even no collar food. You don’t put filet mignon into your smoker, needless to say. You put cuts of meat that are so tough they […]
Hungry Heart, my eighth book set in Konigsburg, Texas, will be released by Samhain Publishing on March 25. There are some familiar characters along with some new faces, and a whole lot of information about barbecue. Here’s the blurb: Hungry Heart Peace, love, and barbecue—with a big order of sexy on the side. Konigsburg, Texas, […]
“You know it is a good book when you do not want it to end and that is what it was for me.” — Gigi Staub “Happy Medium was a terrific conclusion to the Medium Trilogy, although I’m very sorry that it’s the conclusion.” — Book Pushers “A sexy builder, a smart, sensitive researcher and a naughty […]
So this is the tenth anniversary of Love, Actually, the British ensemble film that’s become a Christmas staple for a lot of us. I’ll go on record here as being a fan—I find the film funny and touching and ultimately charming. I’d much rather watch it than a lot of Christmas movies (::cough:: Miracle On […]
Fearless Love, my seventh Konigsburg book, is now available in print from the usual outlets. All of my Konigsburg books include animals. I’m not sure how this happened, it just did. Starting with a diabolic cat and a sweet-natured Chihuahua in Venus In Blue Jeans, I had a greyhound in Wedding Bell Blues, a mostly […]
If you’ve sung “The Thanksgiving Hymn” (aka “We Gather Together”), you may recognize my title. The actual line, of course, is “The wicked oppressing, pray cease from distressing”, but when I was a kid, I heard it the other way. I really liked dressing, you see, and keeping the wicked away from it struck me […]
I live at altitude—around 5600 feet, to be exact. Altitude has a lot of effects, including thinner air, brighter sunshine, and (apparently) a greater tendency toward suicide. However, one area of life where altitude has a very pronounced effect is cooking. Atmospheric pressure decreases as altitude increases, and that fact turns out to screw with […]
Eloisa James recently quoted the final lines of Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree on Facebook. She described it as “a book that needs no introduction.” She’s probably right—I’m sure the majority of people who saw those lines recognized them immediately. I’ve heard The Giving Tree quoted in sermons. I’ve seen adults tear up as they […]
So I picked up this book at my local library last week. I admit I was attracted by the cover to begin with, but the blurb sounded interesting. Plus I’d heard of the author—she’s fairly well known in her genre. I hoped I might discover an author I hadn’t read before with a sizeable backlist, […]
I’m the author of three ghost romances (Medium Well, Medium Rare, and Happy Medium, thanks for asking), so I know something about scariness. But this post isn’t about my books—I’ve already posted quite a bit about them, like this, this, and this. This post is about Tess Gerritsen’s books, which are some of the scariest […]
I’m not much for reunions. I’ve never made it to my college reunions because they always seem to take place on my wedding anniversary (hubs and I tied the knot right after graduation) and rural Iowa is not exactly the ideal place to celebrate your wedding. I made it to one of my high school […]
So I’m currently involved in a multi-week blog hop for Medium Rare, Book 2 in the Ramos Family/Medium Trilogy. The first week (and several weeks thereafter) I’m with Orangeberry, a British book publicity group. The second week I’m with Goddess Fish. So I’m including a schedule here with a large, honking caveat: Orangeberry is posting […]
Congrats to Heidi Duckworth Hard who won the third copy of Medium Well last week. Medium Rare, book 2 in the Ramos Family/Medium Trilogy is now available from Berkley InterMix. Some readers have asked me how difficult it was to switch from writing contemporary romance to writing paranormal romance. I guess the answer to that […]
Congrats to Kim Linger Brooks, winner of last week’s drawing for a copy of Medium Well, the first book in the Ramos Family trilogy. Once again, leave a comment on the blog and you’ll be entered for next week’s drawing. As I’ve said before, my heroine in Medium Rare, Rose Ramos, is a medium. Which […]
Congrats to Sheryl Asbury who won last week’s drawing for a copy of Medium Well. To be entered in this week’s drawing for Medium Well, just leave a comment below. I’ll give away two more copies, leading up to the release of Medium Rare on August 20. One of the things I enjoyed about doing […]
On August 20, three weeks from today, Medium Rare. the second book in my Ramos Family Trilogy is released from Berkley InterMix. To celebrate, I’m giving away three copies of Medium Well, the first book in the trilogy, to a randomly chosen commenter, one per week. To be entered, leave a comment (and your email […]
I just got back from the 2013 Romance Writers of America conference in Atlanta. It’s still too soon for me to make any kind of coherent statement, but I can describe a few memories while they’re fresh. 1. Atlanta may be lovely—I don’t really know. I spent most of my time in the Marriott trying […]
A couple of weeks ago, Entertainment Weekly hit a new level on the hubris meter: they listed the 100 best in a variety of entertainment categories, movies, television, plays, music, and books (and therein lies another blog post). Predictably, I disagree with a lot of their choices, but I’m sure I’m not the only one. […]
Dana Stabenow’s newest Kate Shugak mystery, Bad Blood, has been getting some mixed reader reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. Some readers comment that there’s not enough Kate in the book, that much of the story is told from others’ points of view. As a matter of fact, the crime in the book isn’t really connected […]
I just finished the latest Amanda Quick novel, The Mystery Woman (and before I go any farther, yes, I know Amanda Quick is actually Jayne Anne Krentz, but let me go on referring to her as Amanda Quick for simplicity’s sake). Like most Amanda Quicks of the last few years, it follows a formula: woman […]
It’s always interesting to see your favorite books turned into television series, but it can also be troubling. The troubling part is what I’m thinking about at the moment, particularly as it applies to the television versions of two favorite book series: Bones and Rizzoli and Isles. Both shows are based on long-running book series, […]
Here’s a little-known truth of writing: you’re always in love with next year’s book. Next year’s book is the new guy at work, the strap-hanger on the bus who looks a lot like Ryan Gosling, the new barrista with the cute smile. Next year’s book makes your heart race a bit, and the more you […]
**SPOILER ALERT** This post discusses Charlaine Harris’s Dead Ever After and makes some reference to the conclusion. If you haven’t yet read the book and want to be surprised, don’t read this post! **SPOILER ALERT** Poor Charlaine Harris. She announced that she was ending the Sookie Stackhouse series (which has been going since 2001). In […]
I work at home, which means I no longer need a career wardrobe. In fact, when I’m writing, I usually stick to yoga pants or exercise shorts with T-shirts or tanks, depending on the season. Now here’s the thing—this is not what you’d call my “public” wardrobe. I wear it around the house and for […]
“Show, don’t tell” is standard advice that every author has heard at least once. And it’s good to hear—letting readers see that your character is angry through his actions is always more convincing than telling them “Harry was livid.” But sometimes it clashes with another prime directive in romance writing: let your readers know what […]
I remember a couple of years ago when a new series of Robert Altman DVD’s were issued one of the critics in Entertainment Weekly claimed that Nashville was overrated. To this I respectfully reply “Balderdash.” Nashville is one of those rare movies that were not only masterpieces when they first came out, but that have […]
If you’re coming to the Romantic Times Booklovers Convention in Kansas City next week, I’d love to talk to you. Here’s a schedule of where I’ll definitely be found and when. Please stop by and say hello–I’d love to chat! Wednesday, May 1 COVER MODEL KARAOKE Come sing along to your favorite hits, with hunky […]
A few days ago, Kim Linger Brooks wrote a blog post at Nine Naughty Novelists about her first RT. Now Kim is a friend of Erin’s who became a friend of all of us at that convention, and she ended up hanging out with the five of the nine who were there, but she was […]
The Promise Harbor Wedding features four books (Jilted, Bolted, Busted, and Hitched) by four different authors (Kelly Jamieson, me, Sydney Somers and Erin Nicholas) that all start with the same wedding. It’s a wedding that goes rather disastrously awry, but it’s also a wedding that’s seen by seven different characters, using seven different points of […]
All novels have three major elements—plot, character, and setting—but how novelists deal with them differs from novelist to novelist. We’re all individuals and we all tend to feel our way of proceeding is the best there is. That makes collaborating with other writers on a series an interesting experience. My normal process for creating characters […]
A few years ago, when I wrote Wedding Bell Blues, I gave my heroine the most beautiful bridesmaid dress ever, so beautiful it made the hero propose. Some of my readers, however, cried foul. Bridesmaid’s dresses, they said, were uniformly ghastly. The idea that one could be lovely was more unbelievable than any HEA ever […]
So I’m watching Vegas, and all of a sudden there’s this guy in glasses—a character called Jonesy. Only the thing is, I know him. From somewhere, some show, some other show, that is. I’m now no longer paying attention—much—to the story. I’m trying to remember where exactly I saw that actor before. Why he looks […]
I stumbled across Advanced Style by Ari Seth Cohen sort of by accident at my local library—it was an attractive coffee table book, and I wanted something to leaf through. Once I opened the book, though, I was hooked. It’s based on Cohen’s Advanced Style Web site, which he devotes to pictures of stylish women […]
My hubs has a thing for hardware stores. I used to refer to it as the “Oooooh needle-nose pliers” reaction. He can happily wander the aisles of both neighborhood hardware places and big chain stores for hours on end, ogling LED light bulbs and snow blowers and charcoal grills. I, on the other hand, could […]
My new ghost story trilogy (the first, Medium Well is now available from Berkley InterMix at Amazon and Barnes and Noble) takes place in a very spooky place: the King William District of San Antonio. San Antonio itself is full of places that are supposed to be haunted—I mean, the Alamo is in the center […]
Reviewers and book bloggers: Medium Well is now available for review on Net Galley! As someone who just wrote three ghost stories (the first, Medium Well, will be released by Berkley InterMix on February 19), I’ve spent a lot of time recently thinking about being scared—how to do it and why. I’ve always had a […]
My first novel for Samhain Publishing, Venus in Blue Jeans, was released four years ago, January 27, 2009. It’s been quite a ride, but Venus started it all. The whole Venus saga is kind of an illustration of the way romance publishing works. I started writing Venus because, frankly, a contest judge had pissed me […]
I love the Eat This, Not That books, although there’s a lot of overlap between them. Once you’ve identified the worst food in American, it keeps showing up from one book to another. Still, it’s always sort of stunning to discover just how much fat can be packed into something that should be innocuous, like […]
January is a bitch. Trust me on this. November and December have holidays to cushion them. You’ve got the excitement and/or exasperation of seeing your family and friends, planning menus, finding and opening gifts. It’s all likely to carry you through both months without a great deal of reflection about your lot. I’ll think about […]
I know several romance writers who are compulsive about keeping their pen names secret. They work in sensitive jobs or they go to conservative churches or they have snobby friends or they have uptight relatives. Whatever the reason, they figure it’s best if nobody knows exactly what they write. I can sympathize with this feeling—back […]
When Nora Ephron died a few months ago, I knew I had to write something about her. I just wasn’t ready to do it right then. It took me a little while to understand just what I wanted to say about her and why. I’m not sure I know the what and why yet, but I’m […]
I’m nobody! Who are you? Are you nobody, too? Then there’s a pair of us—don’t tell! They’d banish us, you know. I’ll confess—this is actually a version of a blog post I published a while ago, but this week was Emily Dickinson’s birthday: She was born on December 10, 1830. I think about Dickinson now […]
So you all know this phrase, “jumping the shark,” right? If by some chance you don’t, it refers to a particularly egregious episode of Happy Days in which Fonzie enters a competition that involves jumping his motorcycle over a shark tank. The phrase itself, however, has come to refer to an episode of a TV […]
This isn’t a post about Nora Ephron. I’m going to write one, honest, as soon as I can process all my feelings about her but I haven’t done that yet. However, Ephron was the author of one of the great revenge books of our time—Heartburn. In case you’re not familiar with the book, it’s a […]
Tomorrow is the first time I’ll be fixing Thanksgiving dinner in Colorado. For the past several years, we’ve celebrated in Fredericksburg, Texas—a Hill Country town not unlike my very own mythical Konigsburg (except for no Toleffsons). A few years ago we started having Thanksgiving at a Fredericksburg bed and breakfast (there are a lot of […]
My sixth Konigsburg book, Don’t Forget Me, was just released in print last week at Samhain, which is really cool. But what I really want to talk about now is why the book is named Don’t Forget Me, aside from the fact that that phrase conveys every author’s most fervent hope. Don’t Forget Me is […]
The first six of my Konigsburg, Texas, books began at the Dew Drop Inn in downtown Konigsburg. I started doing this in Venus In Blue Jeans because I’d come up with a scene where the hero and heroine really wanted to meet eat other (they were powerfully attracted across a crowded room), but just couldn’t […]
I’m a plotter, which means I usually work out the plots for my books in advance. I even have an Excel spreadsheet I got years ago from Delilah Devlin’s plotting bootcamp that makes you lay out your story chapter by chapter. I have to admit—the plot usually changes once I start writing (and I’ve been […]
Today six sentences from Fearless Love, my next Konigsburg book, released this Tuesday by Samhain! It’s from the first meeting of my hero and heroine. She’s being pursued by an angry rooster, and he’s being a nice guy. The man standing on the other side of the fence was massive, or maybe he only seemed […]
You’ve all probably see the commercial that inspired this particular rant—it’s the one for Direct TV’s moving package. As the scene opens we see a man, let’s call him Mover Guy, loading a U-Haul truck, obviously in the process of moving himself. Another man, let’s call him Neighbor Guy, arrives and (after declining to help […]
So today we have a six from Fearless Love, my newest Konigsburg book, coming out from Samhain on October 9. My hero, Joe, has just cooked dinner for my heroine, MG, but he obviously has something else in mind for dessert! “Good, after all of that, I’m starving.” She started toward the cupboard to get […]
I love Colorado: I want to be clear on that. The scenery, the climate, the people—all of it. It is indeed a wonderful place to live. But there’s one thing it definitely lacks: HEB. Maybe it was when I realized that I couldn’t buy a package of hamburger at my local supermarket that hadn’t had […]
It’s no surprise that I hated Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy when I finally got around to seeing the movie. I’m a huge fan of the TV version made back in the seventies with Alec Guinness as George Smiley. Where the movie tries to cram all the multitude of betrayals and deceptions found in John Le […]
You may have seen the stories last week. RJ Ellory, British mystery writer, was caught writing highly laudatory reviews of his own books under an assumed name. Among other things, he cautioned readers, “Ignore all dissentors and naysayers, this book is not trying to be anything other than a great story, brilliantly told. Just buy […]
So how long should it take for the hero and heroine to get it on? Once upon a time, the buildup to the big event took most of the book, but lately the trend seems to be to shorten that period by quite a bit so we get to the good parts early on. I’ve […]
Here’s a six from Brand New Me, my fifth Konigsburg book (which won the Holt Medallion last year). My heroine, Deirdre, has just undergone a makeover that’s transformed her from a shy business wonk into a honky tonk honey. My hero, Tom, is seeing the new Deirdre for the first time. “I’m here,” Deirdre panted […]
My mom was terrific. I feel that I have to start out by saying that since I’m going to be talking about something she didn’t do well. My father died when I was eleven and she raised my brother and me by herself in a time and place when that wasn’t exactly easy. And she […]
This excerpt is from my fourth Konigsburg book, Long Time Gone. My hero and heroine, Erik and Morgan, have stopped for a quick kiss while walking back from the restaurant where they’ve just had dinner. A quick kiss that almost turns into a lot more than that! She pressed her body tighter against his, rubbing slightly. […]
I recently read a novel I’d define as chick lit—first person, hapless heroine who eats and drinks too much and then berates herself, comical plot in which heroine at first seems headed for personal and professional disaster but where she ultimately triumphs, and perfect boyfriend. That last one may come as something of a shock, […]
I’ve lived in two prime tourist destinations for the last twenty-five years or so—San Antonio and Denver. I’ve also been a tourist myself several times during those twenty-five years. All of which is to say I have a sort of wide-ranging POV on tourists and their problems since I’ve seen them from both sides. People […]
So I’m reading an excerpt from Mavis Gallant’s diary that was written while she was living in Spain working on her first novel. She comments that her characters are more real to her than the people she sees on the street, and that she’s disappointed that she can’t see them and talk to them. Now […]
So here’s the rest of the conversation I quoted last time. I’m afraid I left Lars sounding sort of glib, when in reality he’s a sweetie. “I expect to get laid at least.” He smiled at her, dark eyes laughing again. Her chest tightened—sometime soon she was going to have to figure out what to […]
So I’m just back from the four-day Romance Writers of America (RWA) conference, and I’m still stoked from the experience. Great workshops, interesting publisher spotlights, and free books by the cartload. But a lot of the people there had a very odd reaction when I mentioned the Romantic Times convention (RT to most of us)—they […]
Today’s post is from Be My Baby, which won the EPIC award in 2011. Lars and Jess, my hero and heroine, go through a pretty harrowing experience–Jess’s baby son is almost kidnapped by her villainous in-laws, but Lars and his brothers save the day. In this scene, Lars has just come up with a way […]
As I’ve said before, I used to be a college teacher, which meant I used to go to lots of conferences since I had to give presentations as part of my job. Believe it or not, there’s a dress code for these conferences—nothing written out, of course, but a code nonetheless. We wore suits, for […]
This is a continuation of last week’s six: Pete and Janie have just seen Janie’s ex having very public sex with another woman. Pete is finally taking Janie to bed himself. Janie wants to make sure it’s not just because he feels sorry for her. Pete took a deep breath, closing his eyes. If only […]
There have been several plagiarism scandals in the online writing community lately—from lifting somebody’s free story and offering it under your own name to (I’m not kidding) lifting Dracula from the Bartleby Project and offering it as a new book under an assumed name. Now all of this pretty straightforward. You steal somebody’s words and […]
This Sunday it’s Wedding Bell Blues, the story of a wedding disaster. In this scene Pete and Janie, who’ve been circling each other for several days, are finally going to get it on. Of course, they’ve had a little push from Janie’s ex-boyfriend. And this, in turn, makes Janie a little nervous. “Tell me the […]
Venus In Blue Jeans, my first Konigsburg book, is pretty lighthearted. Cal and Docia’s love affair is mutual and enthusiastic. But every romance has its bumps and they have a big one. In fact, there’s a point where it’s not clear they’ll make it. Here’s a little bit of that bump. But don’t worry–this is […]
I still remember watching one Summer Olympics many, many years ago with a group of men. It was a date, sort of, after a softball game, and we were sitting at the home of one of the team members having a post-game beer. The players were all science majors and athletes, which should have made […]
This week I’m giving you six from Venus In Blue Jeans, the first Konigsburg novel. Cal, my hero, is getting ready to dance with Docia, my heroine, and realizing once again how much he loves the Texas Hill Country–and Docia too, of course. Cal was drunk. His head swam, his words slurred, the lights blended […]
Hilton Als hates Nathan Lane. And right now you’re probably saying “Who?” To clarify, Hilton Als is one of the theatre critics for The New Yorker. Nathan Lane is the actor, probably best known for playing Max in The Producers and Albert in the movie version of The Birdcage. Lane has also appeared in lots […]
Here’s another bit from my latest Samhain book, Don’t Forget Me. My hero and heroine, Kit and Nando, are former lovers who’ve moved back to the same town together. In this bit, Kit sees Nando for the first time since returning to Konigsburg. She’s a little freaked. Even at a distance she recognized that tall, muscled […]
I just returned from ten days in Texas, seeing family and old friends, bopping around the Hill Country, and drinking a whole lot of Texas wine. Now I love Colorado right down to its pebbles, but this trip made me remember just what it was I liked about living in Texas. I admit there are […]
You can always spot a heroine who’s a spoiled darling. If it’s a regency, she stamps her foot a lot. If it’s a contemporary, she pouts. In both time periods she tosses her head quite a bit. Her family indulges the hell out of her, of course, because she’s a spoiled darling. She’s always gotten […]
Here’s another six from my next Konigsburg book, Fearless Love. My hero, Joe LeBlanc, has just dropped in on my heroine, MG Carmody, with an impromptu invitation to dinner. MG suggests that they go out in back to watch the sunset (and her chickens). But it looks like they’re not going out after all. “I […]
I’m a fairly eclectic romance reader. Although there are a few genres I don’t read much, I’m open to most of them and I’ve sampled lots. There’s one big exception, though: I’m just not a fan of time travel. I think my problem with time travel is that it strikes me as a somewhat limited […]
Fearless Love is my newest Konigsburg book, due out sometime this year from Samhain Publishing. I just signed the contract last week, so this is in the nature of a quick preview. The MS is far from final, but I’m guessing the following sentences will be in it. My hero is Joe LeBlanc, the sexy chef […]
Okay, it’s official, y’all. My next Konigsburg book, Fearless Love, has been contracted, and I couldn’t be happier! I don’t have much of anything to show you–no cover, no blurb, no release date. But it’s finished, and it’s coming. For those of you who read Don’t Forget Me, Fearless Love is Joe LeBlanc’s story. Joe, you’ll remember, […]
Here’s a bit more from my first Konigsburg book, Venus In Blue Jeans. Docia and Cal (my h/h) are headed off to a dance where the citizens of Konigsburg are dressing up like the town’s earlier residents. This is Cal’s first sight of Docia in her costume. The black satin top covered Docia’s upper body […]
A couple of weeks ago the hubs and I had dinner in a time capsule. It was a steak house on the high plains in Nebraska, but it was like wandering into fifties Vegas—zebra upholstered banquettes, thick carpeting, Sinatra on the soundtrack. A whole lotta Sinatra on the soundtrack. In fact, by the time we’d […]
Venus In Blue Jeans was my first book for Samhain. It features a hero and heroine, Cal Toleffson and Docia Kent, who are both more than six feet tall (in Cal’s case, way more). In this scene they’re sizing each other up, so to speak. “The national ideal is five-foot-three-inch blond women who fit into […]
I’ve written before about my love of well-drawn villains, by which I mean villains with understandable motivation and rational characteristics. I’m not partial to “motiveless malignancy”, which is why I’m not interested in psychopathic serial killers. But give me somebody who has a reason for doing what he or she does, even if that reason […]
Six sentences from my latest Konigsburg book, Don’t Forget Me. The hero and heroine, Nando and Kit, are former lovers who broke up. Kit left Konigsburg for San Antonio, but now she’s back. And this is Nando’s first sight of her on Main Street. Hell, he didn’t even want her to see him just yet, not […]
So I’m reading the reviews at Rotten Tomatoes one fine Monday afternoon, just because it’s an entertaining quick snapshot of how a particular movie did over the weekend, and I stumble across the reviews of The Lucky One. For those of you who have already forgotten, this was the latest Nicholas Sparks movie, starring Zac […]
Here’s another bit from Brand New Me. It follows on from the six sentences from a couple of weeks ago–Deirdre’s dance with Tom. And this is what she feels like when the dance is over. He brought her upright again slowly in the midst of the noise and applause. She felt her face growing warm. […]
I was going to organize this post around a central idea originally—signings, maybe, or going to RT in a group—but I’m still a little too woozy from the whole Romantic Times Convention experience and all I’ve got are bits and pieces. So bits and pieces it is, as in several random things I learned at […]
Okay, here’s a bit from Brand New Me, Konigsburg, Book 5. My hero, Tom, has just pulled my heroine, Deirdre, out on the dance floor. Deirdre’s been trying to ignore the heat between them. Up until now, that is. Tom maneuvered her expertly around a swaying couple, his hand moving down slightly to the side […]
Next week is the annual Romantic Times convention, this time at the O’Hare Hyatt Regency in Rosemont, Illinois (outside Chicago). Everything starts on Wednesday, April 11, and runs through Sunday, April 15. I’m involved in several different events—both ebook and print book fairs, a workshop panel on group blogging with four of the other Nine […]
Schadenfreude, for those of you not forced to sit through classes in either philosophy or theology, is joy or pleasure experienced at the misfortune of others. If somebody has been nasty to you at work and they don’t actually get that promotion they were expecting, the emotion you experience can probably be categorized as schadenfreude, […]
Here’s more from my fourth Konigsburg book, Long Time Gone. This follows right after last week’s excerpt, which, you may recall, was the first kiss between my hero, Erik, and my heroine, Morgan. Both are still a little taken aback by the whole thing. But not so taken aback that they’re not ready to do it […]
The Kay Manning plagiarism scandal from a few weeks ago (Dear Author describes the debacle here) has revived memories of perhaps the most notorious plagiarism scandal in the romance writing world: the Janet Dailey/Nora Roberts face-off in 1997. For those who need a recap, Roberts sued Dailey for plagiarism after a reader pointed out that […]
Here’s a bit from Long Time Gone, which won an RT Reviewer’s Choice Award last year. My hero, Erik, Konigsburg chief of police, is in the process of kissing the heroine, Morgan, for the first time. And it’s sort of a surprise for both of them. Somewhere his brain went on red alert: Danger, danger, […]
Recently Nick Mamatas wrote a nice blog post about advice experienced writers should stop giving inexperienced writers, and the first thing on the list was “Never Give Up.” Mamatas pointed out that some people definitely should give up, and before telling them to waste more time on a fruitless enterprise, writers should perhaps consider the […]
Here’s another bit from Be My Baby. It’s part of the heroine’s speech to her nasty, potentially kidnapping former mother-in-law. Go, Jess! Jess stood slowly, wiping her palms on her thighs. She met Lydia’s basilisk gaze one more time. “Listen to me, old woman. You will never get my son, never. Even if you manage […]
Welcome to Debra Parmley, who’s saving me a lot of time and imagination by interviewing herself. Thanks a lot, Debra! How does it feel when you write? It feels different each time I come to the blank page. In this way, it reminds me of yoga, or dance, for our bodies and spirits can be […]
Be My Baby is the closest I’ve come so far to romantic suspense. My hero and heroine, Lars and Jess, are both single parents fighting off a very determined kidnapper. In this excerpt, they’ve both just gone through a shock and are, well, recovering together. Jess’s fingers moved to his chest again, rippling through his […]
So here’s a little more from the first love scene in Wedding Bell Blues. Janie is teaching Pete to dance. Or anyway, that’s what she thinks. Of course, things begin to move beyond dancing pretty quickly. Janie rose against him, her legs opening against the warm heat of his arousal, trying to find the right […]
So I’m reading this urban fantasy, and the heroine’s a real mess. Total badass. Given to leather pants and attitude. She gives the hero nothing but grief even though he’s clearly nuts about her. But she’s even harder on herself because she had this really awful childhood. Her mother neglected her. The kids made fun […]
Romance is written in third person. That’s not an absolute rule, but it’s close enough. Occasionally, an author will be successful with a first person romance—Kristan Higgins has a few, for example—and chick lit is notoriously first person. But what we might call “traditional” romance never ventures far from third personhood. Of course, romance isn’t […]
Okay, this excerpt comes from my first Konigsburg book, Venus In Blue Jeans. The hero (Cal) and the heroine (Docia) are getting ready to make love for the first time–so it’s their first view of each other naked. Here we go! Cool fingers wrapped around his shaft, measuring him, sliding lightly down the length of […]
Janie could feel the smooth plane of his body pressing against her breasts; an ache had started low in her body that had nothing to do with exhaustion and everything to do with Pete Toleffson. She closed her eyes and let her cheek rest against his chest for a moment, feeling warm skin and smelling […]
Like a lot of Web users, I wasn’t all that thrilled by the two solutions to Internet piracy proposed by Congress: SOPA and PIPA. Both would have led to unwarranted shutdowns of innocent sites and both assumed a degree of oversight among site owners (including me) that just doesn’t exist on the Web. But did […]
Cal Toleffson saw the love of his life for the first time at 5:47 p.m. in the Dew Drop Inn, downtown Konigsburg, Texas. He wasn’t exactly dressed for the event. He’d spent the forty-five minutes preceding Happy Hour tending to a sick goat. “Tending to” was the polite way of describing it. The goat was […]
Okay, I just read my first review of One For the Money, the first movie version of one of Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum novels. Granted this particular review is more concerned with dragging Katherine Heigl over the coals than actually talking about the movie, but here’s the thing: The reviewer has obviously not read the […]
A while ago I wrote a blog post defending Paula Deen against attacks made by Anthony Bourdain on her cooking and her attitude toward food. It seemed to me then and now that these attacks had more than a slight whiff of sexism and elitism since Bourdain had a real problem with female Food Network […]
So I’m reading a recently reissued Jayne Anne Krentz from 1985, The Waiting Game. It has a typical Krentz hero—a solitary alpha, brooding, craggy, withdrawn, who immediately falls hard for the heroine. He recognizes right away that they’re Meant For Each Other and knows he needs to do something to claim her as his. Granted […]
A couple of weeks ago, I did some ruminating on the Secret Baby plot and why it sort of freaks me out. I think one of the reasons that this particular plot is so popular with some romance readers is that it works on the “You’ll be sorry” principle. And the “You’ll be sorry” principle […]
Congrats to Emily Tardy for winning the copy of Don’t Forget Me. Happy holidays, everybody! […]
The Book So it’s finally here: the release date for my sixth Konigsburg book, Don’t Forget Me. The story of Nando Avrogado and Kit Maldonado. The first four Konigsburg books were pretty straightforward: I had four brothers, so I needed four books. After that, I wasn’t sure whether I’d stay in Konigsburg or go somewhere […]
When we Nine Naughty Novelists wrote our first serial parody, The Zillionaire Vampire Cowboy’s Secret Werewolf Babies, we knew we wanted to include the classic “secret baby” plot twist. In fact, we wanted to up the ante by making those secret babies twins (the mother was a werewolf, so multiple births weren’t exactly unheard of). […]
As I’ve mentioned before, I love to cook. I also love to read about cooking, and with Thanksgiving coming up food is definitely on my mind. So here are thirteen books that are fun to read—some of them include recipes, but not all. Most, however, include a lot of enthusiasm about food. 1. Ruth Reichl, […]
So the hero in my current WIP is from Louisiana. I can hear his voice in my head when I write his dialogue, which is always handy (the voice is sort of based on some Louisianans I’ve known, although the character isn’t). But when it comes to writing that dialogue out, I have some problems. […]
So Anthony Bourdain is at it again. The author of Kitchen Confidential and the host of No Reservations has a bone to pick with the Food Network. Mainly, he hates a lot of their chefs, or rather he hates a lot of their cooks. In the professional food world, chef and cook have particular meanings. […]
The hubs and I started watching Luther for a couple of reasons. First, our younger son had recommended it, and second, it starred Idris Elba whom I’d come to respect for his work in The Wire, one of my all-time favorite shows. We’ve now watched the entire first season of Luther, and while it’s well […]
I recently read a romantic suspense novel from an author I really like—I think I’ve actually read everything she’s ever written. The plot in this one is up to her standard—intricate, complex, and growing out of a confluence of motives that are tough to anticipate. And the hero and heroine have zero chemistry. I thought […]
A couple of weeks ago, the redoubtable PG Forte and I had an extended debate on Twitter (as we’re wont to do) about the merits of True Grit. PG preferred the Henry Hathaway/John Wayne version. I’m a fan of the Coen Brother/Jeff Bridges one. I don’t want to rehash the entire discussion here, but the […]
My editor hates the phrase “stand up.” She’s also not crazy about “sit down.” In both cases she cuts “up” and “down,” I guess because she considers them unnecessary. Since I know she’s going to cut them, I’ve tried not to use them when I write, having my characters stand and sit without supplying the […]
I was watching a rerun of CSI with the hubs the other night. Well, I started watching it, but I got too annoyed to go on with the episode about halfway through. It was the climax of last season’s serial killer plot, with Bill Irwin being a maniacal genius. In the end, the whole thing […]
So I see from the Sports page that Colt McCoy, former quarterback for the UT Longhorns, has a brother named Case who is the current quarterback for the Longhorns. I mention this only because the McCoys are the only men I’ve ever run into who actually have names that sound like romance heroes. Think about […]
Recently Kim Wright wrote a blog post about the movement of literary fiction writers into genre: http://www.themillions.com/2011/09/why-are-so-many-literary-writers-shifting-into-genre.html. It seems that the valiant lit fic types can no longer make a living writing about despair among the suburbs, thanks to the current publishing climate, and so they’re heading over to the genre slums to supplement their […]
The Romance Writers of America, unique among writers organizations, allows unpublished writers the same membership privileges that it gives to published authors (other organizations, like the Mystery Writers of America, have a tiered membership system). The idea behind this policy, apparently, is to encourage aspiring writers to join a professional organization in order to have […]
Texas, being the rather large place that it is, has elements of both the South and the West. South Texas, where I lived for twenty years before moving to Colorado, is actually more Western, but I did manage to pick up a few southernisms during my time there. One of them is the phrase “bless […]
Mae West’s birthday is August 17, and those of us in the romance business need to wish her a happy one. She was born 118 years ago. So you might ask, why should we appreciate Mae? Because she was one of those women who paved the way—she wrote plays about sex and about gay men […]
Okay, it’s time to admit the truth. Once, long, long ago in the dim, dusky past, I was a copyeditor. Not only that, I actually taught copyediting. Now you’d think this would help me write, but in fact all it really does is help me punctuate. Any copyeditor can tell you that editing your own […]
I’m nobody! Who are you? Are you nobody, too? Then there’s a pair of us—don’t tell! They’d banish us, you know. I’ve been thinking a lot about Emily Dickinson lately. I wish I could tie this post to some significant Dickinson date, but I really can’t. She was born on December 10 and died on […]
Nora Roberts’ Brides Quartet was a high point for a lot of us last year. It was a return to straight romance—no serial killers, escaped criminals, or power-mad master criminals to be found. And, of course, all four books were lovely, which helps quite a bit. Those of us who write contemporary romance have been […]
I’m a big believer in critique groups. I feel like I have to begin this post by reiterating that because what I’m going to write may sound like I’m not. Good critique partners can help you find your voice and see your way clear to whatever you need to do next. Bad critique partners, on […]
I just finished rereading one of my favorite books of all time, Slightly Dangerous by Mary Balogh. There are a lot of reasons I love this book—it’s the culmination of a series, this one about the Bedwyn family, and it concerns the romance of the bull goose Bedwyn, Wulfric, Duke of Bewcastle. Wulf falls in […]
Readers sometimes think they know writers based on what they write. Erotic romance writers are always running into readers who are certain they must be practicing the same exotic routines they describe in their books, while suspense writers sometimes have to explain that, no, they haven’t really used an AK-47 lately. This kind of knowledge […]
Last week the DH and I watched Knight and Day. Or rather, the DH watched it. I made it about a third of the way through, at which point I found Cameron Diaz’s character so annoying that I walked out of the room. She seemed to have possibilities at first—she restored classic cars and was […]
Once again, the Romance Writers of America finds itself in controversy. This is nothing new, of course. Given RWA’s widespread membership (and past hostilities), it’s inevitable that the organization hits rough spots. But this time they’re hitting a rough spot that most of the other writers’ organizations will also be hitting soon: What constitutes a […]
I’m on record as not liking the traditional alpha male much. To me, these are the guys in eighties romances who hate all women except for the heroine, and she has to prove herself worthy. But now we’re hearing about beta males, and you’d think I’d really like them. But no. I must confess, they […]
As some may remember, I’ve already posted about judging for this year’s RWA RITA contest. It was an interesting experience—some of the books were first rate (I’ve discovered a couple of authors I really enjoyed whose other books I’m now reading), others were less so. I plan on volunteering again next year. But one response […]
All regency heroines are virgins. It’s a standard trope. The only exceptions to this are widows and the very occasional courtesan. But mostly the regency heroine is untouched as the driven snow, no matter what her age happens to be. And thus the scene in which the hero discovers that he’s making love to a […]
I’ve developed a new taste for other-worldly paranormals lately. You know the ones I’m talking about—where the author has come up with an alternate universe peopled with unlikely heroes and heroines. The Egyptian underworld actually exists! There’s a parallel demon society! Fairies live in a mound outside St. Louis! Done well, these paranormals are a […]
I’m on record as believing user reviews are basically a good thing. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve used these reviews for purchasing decisions on things like slow cookers. Reader reviews can come under the same heading, but not always. Some reader reviews are thoughtful and make a lot of sense. Some reader […]
You know how it is. You start reading a new novel and slowly you begin to see the outlines of the plot emerging. And after fifty pages or so, the pieces start falling into place. Okay, it’s another poor-bluestocking-goes-to-London plot—which variation will this be? Will she become a companion for her beautiful cousin? Will she […]
I must confess something—I really love HTML. Also CSS. Those are the languages of the Web and once upon a time they were really easy to learn. Web creator Tim Berners-Lee is one of my heroes. I started writing my own Web code several years ago and, although I’m pretty much out of the business […]
Okay, every other author has now blogged about the 2011 Romantic Times Booklovers Convention except me. This isn’t because I have nothing to say about RT, it’s because I needed time to sort out all the things I wanted to say. Some of them are totally irrelevant (e.g., I completely hated the glass elevators at […]
I’ve been judging contests for a few years now. I started doing it because I figured since I benefitted from contests as an unpublished writer, I should pay my dues by serving as a judge too. Judging contests for unpublished writers is pretty straightforward. As a rule, you only see the first couple of chapters […]
I recently finished reading Karen Abbott’s American Rose: A Nation Laid Bare: The Life and Times of Gypsy Rose Lee. It’s one of those historical biographies that includes a healthy dash of something approaching fiction (e.g., Abbott recreates Gypsy’s last thoughts as she’s rushed to the hospital in an ambulance). I enjoyed it—sort of. It’s […]
Okay, I came late to the train wreck that is the Jacqueline Howett/ Books and Pals fight, but a comment on one of my discussion lists stuck with me. One author said she’d stopped editing self-pubbed authors because, like Howett, they were just too hard to work with. This was her polite way of saying […]
So here we are in this regency historical. The heroine is one of those “spirited” types who’s going to assert herself come hell or high water. She has a ring belonging to her dead sister that identifies the sister’s lover, the man responsible for her death. Our heroine is determined to unmask said cad by […]
Normally, I don’t comment on pirates and piracy. Yeah, it’s wrong. Yeah, it’s a royal pain in the ass. Yeah, it’s probably siphoning off some of my royalties. On the other hand, people who regularly download books from piracy sites probably aren’t going to be buying my books anyway since they don’t pay for books […]
For the most part, I’m not a very superstitious person. I’m not particularly nervous about ladders, although I may avoid walking under them simply because you’re more likely to get something dropped on you if you do. I had a black cat for many years and it never bothered me, although he did cost me […]
I’m a romance writer, which means I write sex scenes. It goes with the territory. It’s also the hardest part of my job. Why? Despite the usual heavy-handed jokes (“Bet you do a lot of research, har, har, har”), trying to come up with an interesting way to describe sex between your hero and heroine […]
A few weeks ago, Amazon announced an interesting statistic: their e-book sales, which had earlier eclipsed their hardback sales, had now exceeded their paperback sales. E-books were officially Amazon’s best-selling format. The response from a certain segment of the romance-writing community was immediate, although not exactly what you might expect. Amazon, they said, was lying. […]
Headhopping is one of those terms that’s well known to most people in the romance-writing community and probably unknown to anyone who isn’t part of it. It refers to shifting point of view from one character to another within a scene, and it’s a no-no. Actually, no-no is too mild. It’s a Mark Of Cain, […]
A couple of months ago, the DH and I decided to look into long-term care insurance. A relative of his had had a medical crisis and ended up in an assisted living facility. The costs would have been ruinous had she not had the insurance to pay for it. The insurance agent came to our […]
This is the second year I’ve entered books in the RITA contest, sponsored by the Romance Writers of American. The RITA is probably the most prestigious award for romance novelists, given that we’re not considered for things like the National Book Award. The number of entries is capped at 1,200, and every year some people […]
A couple of years ago I wrote a blog post about the Big Misunderstanding as a plot device and why I disliked it. Since that time, I’ve actually used a Big Misunderstanding in a plot of my own (see Venus In Blue Jeans), so I’ve sort of moderated my opinions. Yet I found myself thinking […]
I have a friend who’s been trying to publish his novels for several years. He writes literary fiction, with an occasional foray into science fiction and fantasy. He’s come close to publication several times—I’d get a message that he’d gotten an agent or that one of his manuscripts was under review at such-and-such publisher. He […]
Everybody loves a strong heroine these days. Nobody wants to write about a wimp who needs to be rescued by the big, strong hero. In fact, in most books that are being written now, the heroine stands up and at least attempts to rescue herself when she gets into difficulties. Only if she’s tried to […]
The winners of the free copies of Brand New Me were Yadira, Fedora, and Loretta. Thanks to everybody who commented. I loved hearing from you! […]
All this week and next, I’ll be touring around the web, celebrating the December 7 release of Brand New Me, my fifth Konigsburg novel. And since it’s Christmas time, I’m also giving away three copies of Brand New Me to people who comment on my blog tour. Just stop by and say howdy, and you’ll […]
I’ve talked a lot here and elsewhere about the critics of romance, who are, of course, legion. Their objections to romance novels fall into several categories—romances are poorly written, romances are unrealistic, romances create naïve expectations about male-female relationships, romances reflect the structure of patriarchy by holding up marriage as the be-all and end-all of […]
I just finished a historical by a well-known author. I finished it rather quickly, in fact, since I ended up skimming the last third. The hero and heroine were in love, you see, and he’d asked her to marry him, and she wouldn’t. Why? Well, that part wasn’t entirely clear, or rather her reasons kept […]
I just finished reading a 370-page novel in which the nasty banker was revealed as a double murderer in the end. The thing is, I knew the banker was the baddie after the first fifty pages. Why? Because nobody else in the book had been set up as a possibility. So unless the writer wanted […]
It’s campaign season and it’s killing me. In “real life” I’m a very opinionated person—just ask my friends and family. I can fulminate with the best of them and I have very definite political beliefs. All of which I have to leave at the door when I become Romance Writer. When I taught at Enormous […]
The Web has greatly increased the number of book reviewers available these days, both for ebooks and print books. And that’s all to the good. Given the number of books being published, it’s always helpful to have lots of people posting their own reactions to the latest books available, particularly if those books may appeal […]
There’s been a running discussion about Facebook on one of the author’s lists where I’m a member. First of all, the new Facebook place app had everyone (including me) annoyed and getting instructions for turning it off. Then the discussion took a sharp turn, as these things are wont to do. One author had received […]
My critique group just went through a very painful episode in which one member was banned from submitting anything for a while. The situation was this: the writer had been submitting chapters of something she’d written several years ago. This in itself is risky (as I’ve pointed out elsewhere ), but not really a problem. […]
I just finished Nancy Taylor Rosenburg’s thriller The Cheater. It’s part of a series, although I didn’t realize that when I picked it up. The heroine is a former DA who’s now a judge in Ventura, CA. She’s also a mess. Mind you, she has every right to be. In previous novels she was raped […]
When you write a series, you have one major problem that has to be dealt with—filling in the blanks for people who may not have read the earlier books. Authors who have long-running series are usually pretty straight-forward about this. Ed McBain always used to begin his 87th Precinct books with a quick run-down of […]
Recently, I sent a chapter to my critique group from a new MS I’m working on, an urban fantasy. I knew it was rough, and I needed some outside opinions. I got a lot of good advice from a couple of critique partners, but I found myself automatically rejecting the advice I received from the […]
My fourth Konigsburg book, Long Time Gone, releases next Tuesday (contests and prizes will be forthcoming). It’s Erik Toleffson’s story, but it’s also Morgan Barrett’s story. Morgan is manager of a winery outside Konigsburg. As I’ve explained elsewhere, Texas is a big wine-producing state, and the Hill Country is one of the major wine regions. […]
In a recent film review, one critic pointed out that a particular movie had all the standard rom com elements, including the fact that the hero and heroine spent the first third of the movie bickering. That sort of startled me, because it’s absolutely true. Think about it—just about every romantic comedy of the last […]
Romance authors have it easy, at least in one sense. Even if we do a series, we rarely have the same hero or heroine more than once. The characters who hook up in book one may drop in to advise the characters in book two (as Cal and Docia do in Wedding Bell Blues), but […]
Recently, I’ve been reading a series written by a Prominent Romance Writer in her salad days. It concerns a family of sisters and the men who love them, and it’s pretty enjoyable, except for one thing. All the sisters seem to loathe the men they end up with, at least initially. And they show this […]
As I’ve said time and again, I love critique groups. They provide a writer with that most valuable of commodities, feedback. Not all of the feedback is good, mind you, but even lousy feedback can tell you something. I can still remember when I started critiquing, though, and I remember the biggest problem I had—what […]
If you’ve ever entered a writing contest, you’ve probably seen remnants of the great font controversy. Some contests nowadays allow writers the choice of Times or Courier, but I’d guess the majority still go with Courier. And writers who choose to use Times run the risk of encountering judges like the ones I ran into […]
When I was just starting out in fiction writing, I took a short story workshop at a venerable San Antonio writers cooperative. I wrote a story I thought was okay and brought it to class for critiquing. Most of my classmates liked it, and some liked it a lot. One man, though, sat through the […]
You all remember Basil Exposition in Austin Powers—the stuffy intelligence chief played by Michael York whose sole purpose was to provide background information for the plot, i.e., exposition. I thought about ol’ Basil today as I was reading one of my favorite suspense writers because it seemed that he’d wandered into the book while I […]
I’m a big believer in critique groups, as I’ve said many times and in many posts. Most of us have trouble looking at our writing objectively. Critique partners can give you an outsider’s take on what you’re doing (or not doing). So nothing I say here should be taken as an attack on critiquing in […]
Lately, I’ve been working my way through the Illustrated Encyclopedia of Fairies for some research. It’s been sort of interesting but also sort of monotonous because so many fairies in so many cultures are basically alike (water fairies, house fairies, forest fairies, etc., etc., etc.). However, there’s one thing I’ve learned (which I actually already […]
Note: This post was supposed to have been published in The Samhellion yesterday. For reasons that aren’t clear to me, it never made it up there. So here it is today where I can make sure it gets posted! From time to time, I like to examine the criticisms that are aimed at romance by […]
I first read Gone With the Wind when I was in middle school. One of the girls in my English class recommended it, and I got a copy from the library. Like a lot of readers, I was totally engrossed—I remember not wanting to put the book down for about a week as I read […]
I just stopped reading a novel by an author I like a lot because the heroine got a disastrous dye job. Now that may not mean much in itself, but let me give you some context. She’d also discovered her boyfriend had cheated on her, her sister had moved in with her and made a […]
Jane Haddam, the author of the Gregor Demarkian series, has a really interesting blog post about the problems of incorporating social issues into books. Her books are mysteries, and they frequently address social problems like homelessness and (in her latest) teaching intelligent design. I don’t think romances run into this quite as much as mysteries […]
For some reason, I’ve been reading a lot of serial killer novels lately, even though I’m not a huge serial killer fan. As I’ve said elsewhere, I find them less interesting than other types of villains. But the thrillers I’ve been reading over the past couple of months all feature serial killers with various levels […]
So here I am, writing the millionth blog entry about What Judges Want In Contests. Mine probably won’t be much more helpful than the other 999,999, but after reading a few recent contest entries, I feel the need to get something off my chest. So herewith I provide some items for all contest entrants to […]
I used to be a writing teacher in my other life. I never taught creative writing but I did teach freshman composition, technical writing, and writing for the Web. One of the most useful things I picked up in my years on the front lines was an introduction to the writing process. A little background […]
You can always tell when a critique partner or a contest judge has just come from a good writing workshop. Whatever they learned there will show up in their comments on your work. Take the workshop on using all your senses when you write. If your critique partner has been to one of these, you’ll […]
I’m a big fan of regency romances, although I’ll probably never try to write one (the research involved is mind-boggling). I’m obviously not alone in this, given the sales of people like Julia Quinn, Mary Balogh, and Eloisa James (to mention some of my favorites). Incidentally, let me be clear on this: when I say […]
Okay, everybody, thanks so much for being part of my first contest. Congrats to Stephanie, who won the drawing for the free copy of Wedding Bell Blues. […]
A couple of weeks ago I wrote a blog post for Nikki Duncan about how I can’t listen to music while I write, and about how I really wish I could. To make up for the fact that I can’t, I try to put some songs into my books, usually sung by artists I like […]
Okay, I don’t usually do too much personal stuff on this blog (other than my personal reading tastes ☺), but a couple of months ago I made a huge change in my personal life: My husband and I moved from Texas to Colorado. I’ve been here long enough now that I can begin to process […]
I’m a real critique groupie and have been ever since I joined my first RWA chapter. In fact, the critique group was the biggest attraction of the chapter, at least initially—I desperately wanted somebody to read my stuff and tell me if I was headed in the right direction. For those of you who haven’t […]
Today I’m delighted to welcome my first guest blogger–Christine Duncan. Christine is an Arvada, Colorado mystery writer. She got her start in writing for the Christian market, writing for Sunday School magazines. Her credits include Accent Books and Regular Baptist Press. Although the Kaye Berreano mystery series is set in a battered […]
By now, most people who read writing blogs and attend writing workshops have heard about the split between planners and pantsers. Planners are, obviously, writers who like to plan out their work before they write. Pantsers are writers who like to work by the seat of their pants, making things up as they go along. […]
Okay, I admit it—I hate the term “chick flick.” I don’t necessarily hate the movies themselves (although sometimes I do—Kate Hudson seems to have made a lot of stinkers lately), but I hate the idea that they’re somehow a lesser species than the “real thing.” What inspired this particular rant is the news that the […]
So do I endorse switching to e-books? Absolutely. Do I endorse getting rid of hard copy altogether? Well, no. Let me tell you about my latest trip. […]
Once when we were caught in the constant traffic jam that is Austin, Texas, my family began tossing around possibilities for family mottoes. You know, like the Windsors’ “God and my right,” although that one’s kind of snotty. Finally, my younger son suggested “Peace, Love, and Sarcasm.” That struck all of us as a great […]
My big news for the week is that Samhain will publish Wedding Bell Blues, the sequel to Venus in Blue Jeans, sometime this summer (tentatively in July). In a lot of ways Wedding Bell Blues picks up where Venus leaves off. Cal and Docia are getting married, Reba is running the show, Wonder is sitting […]
My first novel for Samhain Publishing, Venus in Blue Jeans, releases today, January 27, 2009. I’m still sort of stunned about that. I started working on Venus three years ago and now it’s actually going to be published. Whoopee! The whole Venus saga is kind of an illustration of the way romance publishing works, which […]
The cover for Venus in Blue Jeans is up, and I’m so excited I can hardly type! It’s one thing to think about what your cover might look like. It’s something else to actually know. Having seen the process for the cover creation (and having done some research to let the artist know what […]
I once made the mistake of taking a Mary Balogh novel with me on a long flight. Don’t get me wrong—reading Mary Balogh’s novels definitely isn’t a mistake. And I usually get so engrossed in her books that I can overlook minor inconveniences like my fear of flying. But the thing about Mary Balogh and […]
I love old movies, and by that I mean really old movies—movies from the thirties and forties. One mainstay of thirties comedies is the “madcap” heroine. The kook. The flake. The one who keeps doing nutty things that nobody expects. The hero (like Cary Grant in Bringing Up Baby or Henry Fonda in The Lady […]
I just finished a draft of a novel where the heroine has a nine-month-old son, and I feel a little like W.C. Fields–“Never work with children or animals.” Actually, I have lots of animals in my books and they’ve never caused me any trouble. If they’re not needed in a scene you can send them […]
I actually enjoy doing revisions more than doing the first draft—it’s less work! I’m a planner, which means I try to work out as much of the plot in advance as I can rather than waiting for inspiration to strike (sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t—I find my muse takes vacations at the least appropriate […]
I not only write romances, I read lots of them. And like most romance readers, I’m very particular about what I like and don’t like. One of my major peeves is the Big Misunderstanding. You know–the plot where the hero thinks the heroine has been unfaithful because he saw her kissing that guy at the […]
Normally, I’m a very disciplined writer. Honest. But over the past month, it’s gotten harder and harder to keep myself on the page. Life keeps getting in the way. I mean to get my quota of pages done, but then I think, I’ll just check the blogosphere, see what’s going on with the election, maybe […]
It may seem insane to be working on sequels to a book that hasn’t been published yet, but that’s where I am right now. When I was writing Venus, I didn’t think of sequels–I was too caught up in the story. But when I got to the end, I felt bereft! I couldn’t spend any […]
Right now my first novel, Venus in Blue Jeans, is working its way through the publishing process at Samhain Publishing. I’ve got a tentative blurb, that looks like this: Coming off a broken engagement to a lying charmer, all bookstore-owner Docia Kent wants is a fling, not a long-term romance. And for her fabulously wealthy […]
Well sort of! https://www.megbenjamin.com/ is supposed to be up. All the files are there and I can see it through the console at my ISP, but the site itself isn’t yet coming up in my browser. I’m hopeful it will be there soon, though. And then I’ll talk about it. Until then, Hello, World! […]
