My New Voices entry is finally up!
What a different experience it has been this year. Last year, I sat alone at my computer and hit enter, sending my story off into the world with little idea of what would happen. I didn't know anyone in the romance community, in real life, or online. It was one of the scariest things I'd ever done.
I was so hesitant to enter last year, intimidated and a bit scared that I didn't measure up against such accomplished women (and men). Afraid that I wouldn't fit in. It all seemed an impossibly hard to achieve dream. I'm so grateful that I tried anyway.
Now a year later, I've learned so much. I've read and studied, written and practiced and read some more. And just as importantly, I've met other romance writers. People who have made me laugh with cheesy or sometimes smutty jokes. People who have inspired me with their dedication and perseverance. People who have touched me with their honesty and generosity. The friendship and support I've received from other writers is amazing. It's truly changed my writing and my life.
If you're sitting on the fence, watching the last few hours tick away until the deadline, don't miss out. Submit. You won't be sorry. Even if you're not entering, there are loads of great first chapters waiting for you. Join the party!
Monday, October 10, 2011
Sunday, October 2, 2011
An Unforeseen Pleasure
Last night my husband and I ditched the kids and went out on a date night, something we haven't done in ages. We headed over to EPCOT's Food and Wine Festival, thinking we'd walk around World Showcase, have a glass of wine and maybe stay for fireworks. Apparently everyone else thought that too. The line of cars waiting to be parked was past the entrance, something rarely seen, even in the morning. We gave up on that as soon as we could turn around. I was pretty annoyed that our plans had fallen through, but Mr. B was undaunted. We ended up parking at the Magic Kingdom and walking around the Seven Seas Lagoon.
It was cool and breezy and just a lovely night. Making our way back to the car, we stopped and grabbed a lounge chair and watched the Electric Light Parade. It was so nice just sitting there together with no long list of chores nagging at us,that we hung around until they did the fireworks show at the Magic Kingdom. Yesterday was the 40th anniversary of the Magic Kingdom, so they did an extra huge show with perimeter fireworks. It's been a very long time since I've seen the Magic Kingdom fireworks from a distance like that. In some ways, it's almost more awe inspiring from far away.
Here's hoping you are as happily surprised by your weekend.
It was cool and breezy and just a lovely night. Making our way back to the car, we stopped and grabbed a lounge chair and watched the Electric Light Parade. It was so nice just sitting there together with no long list of chores nagging at us,that we hung around until they did the fireworks show at the Magic Kingdom. Yesterday was the 40th anniversary of the Magic Kingdom, so they did an extra huge show with perimeter fireworks. It's been a very long time since I've seen the Magic Kingdom fireworks from a distance like that. In some ways, it's almost more awe inspiring from far away.
Here's hoping you are as happily surprised by your weekend.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
But Everyone Loved It
There is a fascinating discussion over at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books about the books everyone loves. The books that are praised and feted and recommended. No matter how beloved a book is, someone out there hates it. A lot.
With a fiery burning passion.
As I write this, the post has well over two hundred comments. That's a lot of passion. What struck me as I started to read the comments is the inconstancy of popular opinion. All of the most popular books and authors have their detractors. What some people love about a book is the exact same thing other commenters hate.
The heroine is weak. The heroine is heartless. The world building is complex. The world building is overwhelming. The pace is too slow. The plot moves so quickly there isn't time to get to know the characters.
It might sound like you can't make anyone happy. But that isn't true at all. You can't make everyone happy. Not everyone will love what I write. Even if it's good.
Instead of discouraging, I find it really quite liberating. I am freed from the shackles of trying to appease everyone. If I simply write a great book some readers will like it.
And some won't.
With a fiery burning passion.
As I write this, the post has well over two hundred comments. That's a lot of passion. What struck me as I started to read the comments is the inconstancy of popular opinion. All of the most popular books and authors have their detractors. What some people love about a book is the exact same thing other commenters hate.
The heroine is weak. The heroine is heartless. The world building is complex. The world building is overwhelming. The pace is too slow. The plot moves so quickly there isn't time to get to know the characters.
It might sound like you can't make anyone happy. But that isn't true at all. You can't make everyone happy. Not everyone will love what I write. Even if it's good.
Instead of discouraging, I find it really quite liberating. I am freed from the shackles of trying to appease everyone. If I simply write a great book some readers will like it.
And some won't.
Friday, July 15, 2011
The End
I took my daughter, Prudence, to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part Two last night. We went to a midnight show at our favorite theater. It was a carnival like atmosphere with costumes and performances. The theater was packed there were moviegoers in capes and carrying wands. There were house colors and faux British accents.We saw a dozen people who we knew. I waited in line for thirty minutes to buy a five dollar soda.
Despite the air of frivolity, my daughter cried throughout much of the movie. This series isn't just a story to my daughter. A friend's older brother was obsessed with these books way back in 1999. He counted down the days to the next books release and talked to me of plans for the movie. So one weekend in the spring of 2000, I started reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone to her. I read the whole book in one weekend. We did nothing else that weekend and at the end of the book I has nearly lost my voice and she fell in love with Harry and his friends. She was six years old.
She taught herself to read just so she could read the Harry Potter books to herself. There have been several midnight release parties at the bookstore and movie theater alike. Since then she has reread the books and watched the movies many times. The characters of JK Rowling are like old friends. She has shared much with them through the years. She has celebrated and mourned with them each time she has reread those books. Each book was bought and promptly devoured. Often she stayed up very, very late reading. Reading Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince was one of those nights. Near the end of the book, she came out of her room. It was after midnight and I started to scold her until I saw her face. She sobbed inconsolably in my arms while I held on tight. She cried even harder through the last book.
Although there were no more Harry books, a whole new world of magic and imagination opened up to her. Not all of the other books she has loved have had a paranormal element to them, but they have all been a portal to another world.
She cried through much of the last movie last night. Yes, it was a story of much loss, but I think she was really saddened by something else. She is seventeen now, nearly eighteen. The release of the last movie is the end of her childhood. Like Harry, Ron and Hermione, she has to face the adult world and it's sometimes ambiguous questions. She has to face loss and betrayal. She has to find love and friendship and navigate their sometimes winding path. No more can a kiss from her mother soothe all ills. She is eager to go out into the world and I find it so hard to uncurl my fingers and let her go and follow her heart, which doesn't lead her where I might wish her to go.
In the end, in that theater packed full of people it was just she and I. This time when she cried she didn't even hold my hand.
Despite the air of frivolity, my daughter cried throughout much of the movie. This series isn't just a story to my daughter. A friend's older brother was obsessed with these books way back in 1999. He counted down the days to the next books release and talked to me of plans for the movie. So one weekend in the spring of 2000, I started reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone to her. I read the whole book in one weekend. We did nothing else that weekend and at the end of the book I has nearly lost my voice and she fell in love with Harry and his friends. She was six years old.
She taught herself to read just so she could read the Harry Potter books to herself. There have been several midnight release parties at the bookstore and movie theater alike. Since then she has reread the books and watched the movies many times. The characters of JK Rowling are like old friends. She has shared much with them through the years. She has celebrated and mourned with them each time she has reread those books. Each book was bought and promptly devoured. Often she stayed up very, very late reading. Reading Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince was one of those nights. Near the end of the book, she came out of her room. It was after midnight and I started to scold her until I saw her face. She sobbed inconsolably in my arms while I held on tight. She cried even harder through the last book.
Although there were no more Harry books, a whole new world of magic and imagination opened up to her. Not all of the other books she has loved have had a paranormal element to them, but they have all been a portal to another world.
She cried through much of the last movie last night. Yes, it was a story of much loss, but I think she was really saddened by something else. She is seventeen now, nearly eighteen. The release of the last movie is the end of her childhood. Like Harry, Ron and Hermione, she has to face the adult world and it's sometimes ambiguous questions. She has to face loss and betrayal. She has to find love and friendship and navigate their sometimes winding path. No more can a kiss from her mother soothe all ills. She is eager to go out into the world and I find it so hard to uncurl my fingers and let her go and follow her heart, which doesn't lead her where I might wish her to go.
In the end, in that theater packed full of people it was just she and I. This time when she cried she didn't even hold my hand.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Reader's Romance
Since I've started the blog, I have thought of writing on this topic several times. I have heard a great number of romance readers share how they discovered romance, or how they rediscovered it. Every time I hear the stories, I reflect on my own reading past. The most recent one I've read is by Megan Mulry. Megan writes at length about the intellectual shame attached to reading genre literature and romances in particular. If you haven't read her post yet, go and read. I'll wait. It's that good.
I don't know why romance novels are so particularly despised. Perhaps because they primarily are connected to women's concerns. Perhaps because happiness is so suspect among the intelligentsia. Perhaps because of a puritanical disdain for all things sexual.
I was very young when I first started reading romance novels. I wasn't a very early reader, but once I could read on my own, I read incessantly. By fifth grade I had read everything in our local library's children's section. Then I discovered Barbara Cartland. I loved everything about those novels. They were short enough that I could read a couple on a summer's afternoon, but filled with people in a past so distant and foreign to me. From there, I moved on to other category romances and then the bodice rippers of that era. I devoured them all. Straight on into Judith Krantz.
It drove my father crazy. That wasn't why I chose to read romances, but I think in the end it was at least some of the reason why I stopped reading them. He didn't disapprove of romance in particular. He didn't really read any popular literature, except for a few notable exceptions (John Lecarre being the one he loved most). He was the son of immigrants, the first in his family to graduate from college. Our house was filled with books when I was growing up. I once counted them when we were taking them all off the shelves of the book cases that lined the walls. I stopped after two thousand. People who don't love books always think that it must have been awful growing up in such a stuffy house. It didn't feel that way at all. Books surrounded our family and were a place to escape. They were loved and discussed, but revered. My father was still miffed about a copy of a Cheever novel that I crayoned as a toddler.
When my friends and I were caught reading an especially filthy Harold Robbins book, in disgust my father gave me a copy of Pride and Prejudice. Of course I loved it. I then went on to read all of Austen. There were others after her. It wasn't a hard end to it. I slid into the world of 'adult' books. I read some science fiction for a bit longer, but even then there was Lewis and Wells to entice me away. Perhaps it was because of my father's books, but I didn't usually dislike the books we were required to read. With very few exceptions, I loved them all. The Red Badge of Courage. The Raisin in the Sun. Whitman. Shakespeare. Orwell. I left the books of my youth behind to embrace a more formidable intellectual life. There are so many books that I opened thinking I would have to endure them only to fall in love with them. Most of them were sitting there on the shelves I walked past every day. Then in college there were still more books, some I'd never even heard of before, waiting for me to fall in love with them.
I don't love those books any less today than I did then. I still have many of them on my shelves. But they are sitting there next to some much more modern writers. Those other books have covers that are bright and cheery. And inside those covers is a sweet and open embrace of happiness and love.
And, yes, sex, too.
I don't know why romance novels are so particularly despised. Perhaps because they primarily are connected to women's concerns. Perhaps because happiness is so suspect among the intelligentsia. Perhaps because of a puritanical disdain for all things sexual.
I was very young when I first started reading romance novels. I wasn't a very early reader, but once I could read on my own, I read incessantly. By fifth grade I had read everything in our local library's children's section. Then I discovered Barbara Cartland. I loved everything about those novels. They were short enough that I could read a couple on a summer's afternoon, but filled with people in a past so distant and foreign to me. From there, I moved on to other category romances and then the bodice rippers of that era. I devoured them all. Straight on into Judith Krantz.
It drove my father crazy. That wasn't why I chose to read romances, but I think in the end it was at least some of the reason why I stopped reading them. He didn't disapprove of romance in particular. He didn't really read any popular literature, except for a few notable exceptions (John Lecarre being the one he loved most). He was the son of immigrants, the first in his family to graduate from college. Our house was filled with books when I was growing up. I once counted them when we were taking them all off the shelves of the book cases that lined the walls. I stopped after two thousand. People who don't love books always think that it must have been awful growing up in such a stuffy house. It didn't feel that way at all. Books surrounded our family and were a place to escape. They were loved and discussed, but revered. My father was still miffed about a copy of a Cheever novel that I crayoned as a toddler.
When my friends and I were caught reading an especially filthy Harold Robbins book, in disgust my father gave me a copy of Pride and Prejudice. Of course I loved it. I then went on to read all of Austen. There were others after her. It wasn't a hard end to it. I slid into the world of 'adult' books. I read some science fiction for a bit longer, but even then there was Lewis and Wells to entice me away. Perhaps it was because of my father's books, but I didn't usually dislike the books we were required to read. With very few exceptions, I loved them all. The Red Badge of Courage. The Raisin in the Sun. Whitman. Shakespeare. Orwell. I left the books of my youth behind to embrace a more formidable intellectual life. There are so many books that I opened thinking I would have to endure them only to fall in love with them. Most of them were sitting there on the shelves I walked past every day. Then in college there were still more books, some I'd never even heard of before, waiting for me to fall in love with them.
I don't love those books any less today than I did then. I still have many of them on my shelves. But they are sitting there next to some much more modern writers. Those other books have covers that are bright and cheery. And inside those covers is a sweet and open embrace of happiness and love.
And, yes, sex, too.
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
June TBR Challenge 2011: Lead Me On
June is the month of contemporaries. I have quite a few contemporaries in my TBR pile. I wasn't really sure when I started the TBR Challenge which one I would pick there are so many I've been hoarding, even more on my list of books to buy. As the months went by my choice became a lot easier.
I hang out on twitter. A whole lot. I follow some of the smartest and funniest people in the romance community. Some of them are actually twitter friends; others are just people whose twitter conversation is full of useful information or timely links. Or in the case of Victoria Dahl, fun. Dirty, smutty fun. If you haven't seen her around twitter you really should check her out. She's hilarious.
So when June rolled around I picked up her 2010 release, Lead Me On. It's the final book in a trilogy. I didn't realize it when I bought it and it undoubtedly is part of the reason I was so slow to get around to reading it. I tend to be pretty uptight about reading a series in order. Based on how fun it is to read her tweets, I wanted to give Victoria's book a try. I'm so glad I did. I'll even go back and read the earlier books.
Here's the lowdown: Jane Morgan is trying her damnedest to repress her past, her family, even a part of herself and live her perfect life. She isn't perfectly happy, but it isn't for lack of trying. Then her younger brother gets arrested and her carefully constructed lies begin to unravel.
Adding to her family problems, is the hot, hard, tattooed Chase. In a great twist, it's Chase who falls for Jane, despite her desperate attempts to remain uninvolved. They have amazing, raw and passionate sex and Jane does her best to make sure it stays nothing but sex. Chase is the one pursuing a more real emotional attachment.
This is a book that deals with some very serious issues. Family issues are hard to escape. Hard to make peace with even years later. Jane is a mess. Watching her futilely flee her past should be painful. Jane certainly faces some harsh problems. But layered over that, the book is sensual and playful. When Jane is near tears, Chase always manages to make her laugh. In the end that is the my favorite part of the book. Even when things seemed grim, I never doubted that Jane and Chase would somehow find a way to be together.
I hang out on twitter. A whole lot. I follow some of the smartest and funniest people in the romance community. Some of them are actually twitter friends; others are just people whose twitter conversation is full of useful information or timely links. Or in the case of Victoria Dahl, fun. Dirty, smutty fun. If you haven't seen her around twitter you really should check her out. She's hilarious.
So when June rolled around I picked up her 2010 release, Lead Me On. It's the final book in a trilogy. I didn't realize it when I bought it and it undoubtedly is part of the reason I was so slow to get around to reading it. I tend to be pretty uptight about reading a series in order. Based on how fun it is to read her tweets, I wanted to give Victoria's book a try. I'm so glad I did. I'll even go back and read the earlier books.
Here's the lowdown: Jane Morgan is trying her damnedest to repress her past, her family, even a part of herself and live her perfect life. She isn't perfectly happy, but it isn't for lack of trying. Then her younger brother gets arrested and her carefully constructed lies begin to unravel.
Adding to her family problems, is the hot, hard, tattooed Chase. In a great twist, it's Chase who falls for Jane, despite her desperate attempts to remain uninvolved. They have amazing, raw and passionate sex and Jane does her best to make sure it stays nothing but sex. Chase is the one pursuing a more real emotional attachment.
This is a book that deals with some very serious issues. Family issues are hard to escape. Hard to make peace with even years later. Jane is a mess. Watching her futilely flee her past should be painful. Jane certainly faces some harsh problems. But layered over that, the book is sensual and playful. When Jane is near tears, Chase always manages to make her laugh. In the end that is the my favorite part of the book. Even when things seemed grim, I never doubted that Jane and Chase would somehow find a way to be together.
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Books for Precocious Readers
This began as a reply to Morton Gray's comment. But then there were too many links to include in a comment. And once I get started talking about kids' books, I do get a bit long winded. I had the same troubles for many years. Patience was a precocious reader, but at eight years old found even Nancy Drew books too intense. In her defense, we had a Nancy Drew computer game. Prudence was bad at it and I was worse. Poor Nancy routinely died from our bad choices. Patience had good reason to worry over Nancy.
I found some of the most satisfying books for the kids at that age were some of the older titles. They have a complexity of language and story that is satisfying, while skirting some of the darker bits. Swallows and Amazons never caught with my kids, but is often recommended. The Eager books however were much loved at our house. There are Mr Pooper's Penguins which is a new movie and other award winning books. Andrew Clements books are amusing and fun but still hold a place in my kids' bookshelves.
As he gets a bit older, there are some more modern books as well that appeal because of the interesting content, even after the reading level is a bit unchallenging, but still have that reassuring feeling that nothing bad would happen.
Anyone have anything else to recommend to a young reader who doesn't want to read anything too dark?
I found some of the most satisfying books for the kids at that age were some of the older titles. They have a complexity of language and story that is satisfying, while skirting some of the darker bits. Swallows and Amazons never caught with my kids, but is often recommended. The Eager books however were much loved at our house. There are Mr Pooper's Penguins which is a new movie and other award winning books. Andrew Clements books are amusing and fun but still hold a place in my kids' bookshelves.
As he gets a bit older, there are some more modern books as well that appeal because of the interesting content, even after the reading level is a bit unchallenging, but still have that reassuring feeling that nothing bad would happen.
Anyone have anything else to recommend to a young reader who doesn't want to read anything too dark?
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