by Charlene Teglia | Dec 12, 2011 | Uncategorized
Only 12 days until Christmas? I thought I was on top of things until I looked at the calendar. But if you need a little holiday light in the middle of the madness, here are two things only a click away: Norad Santa offers all sorts of fun for all ages (the light-the-Christmas-tree puzzle is surprisingly challenging) and if you missed the limited edition from Subterranean Press like I did, the ever-fabulous Connie Willis’ All Seated on the Ground is now an ebook. Aliens vs Christmas carols! Will our protagonists bridge an interstellar communication gap in time to save Christmas and the world? I laughed until I hurt and then I read it all over again from the beginning.
Yesterday my kid asked me to slice up a pear for her. Then she added, “Make it beautiful.” Ooookay, I thought, and then arranged the slices in a lotus blossom. She loved it, and I would never have thought of it without that request. In any endeavor, there’s always room for beauty. Add some to whatever you’re doing today. I’m going to work on beautiful prose.
by Charlene Teglia | Dec 5, 2011 | Uncategorized
It’s that time of year again, and for the compulsive reader on your shopping list, you can never, never, never go wrong with a book store gift card. No, really. It doesn’t matter that we have a stack of books on the bedside table, kitchen table, office and living room. We always need more.
Want to get more specific? If you or somebody you love loves romantic suspense, Shiloh Walker is putting out fantastic books right and left. The Ash trilogy offers a thrill a month, starting with If You Hear Her, and then in January she gives us spooky thrills with
The Departed, which Santa brought me an early copy of. Perfect way to spend your holiday gift card!
The ever-luminous Marjorie Liu just released yet another astounding novel in the
Dirk & Steele series. Perfect for the paranormal adventure lover who wants a happy ending along with dragons and pryokinetics.
Ilona Andrews, who just keeps getting better, has a new book out this month, too, in time for holiday gifting; Fate’s Edge is so fantastic the recipient will want the whole set and then everything else they can get their hands on.
Advance planning? I hear tell
PBW has a new Darkyn novel coming soon to delight her readers. Nightborn doesn’t release until March, but since she’s also recently sold a steampunk novel and is enormously prolific, you’ll want to save room in 2012’s book budget. Also in March, watch for the latest from
Patricia Briggs‘ Alpha & Omega series.
Tired of holiday frenzy already and want some quick e-reading? Check out Fire & Ice by Portia Dacosta, now from Walk on the Wild Side Books, or the can’t-miss holiday anthology Holiday Kisses from Shannon Stacey, Jaci Burton, HelenKay Dimon and Alison Kent.
The best holiday present you can give me is to keep my favorite authors writing and publishing, so buy a book for yourself or somebody you love.
by Charlene Teglia | Dec 1, 2011 | Uncategorized
Coming Soon: I sent in the contract so now it’s official. ROPED aka Christmas Cowboy, will be out in 2012! Watch for Cowboy Lust from Cleis Press. So hello December, nice to meet you with something on the schedule for the new year, officially. Unofficially, I do have a lot in the hopper but with no dates yet. That will change quickly now that the baby is obligingly taking naps, something she just didn’t do for the first few months of life. (I read her the baby sleep guide and explained she was supposed to sleep around 15 hours instead of 8 per 24, but she ignored that.)
Nano officially ended, so now’s a good time to look at what worked and what didn’t going forward. For me, what didn’t work was the baby’s schedule (see above, not sleeping) and I also realized very quickly that the story needed more development; research, outlining, all that boring stuff. NaNo was kind of experimental for me this year in that I wanted to see if I could just wing it, and what I learned was that even though I have to figure out a certain amount of the story as I go, I do need at least a rudimentary grasp on it. I will never be a detailed outliner, but I need at least a flexible framework in place. Sometimes it’s worth experimenting just to learn these things. So that story has gone into the “needs development” stage and I’m back to working on the books that are not only well developed but a good chunk done.
I also started dayjobbing last month, and have had a chance to see how that will work with writing and a baby. Fairly well, as it turns out. The dayjob work is part time and flexible (Drupal) but allows me to handle things like financial planning without the giant guesswork involved in writing income. Also, if I put in 20 hours a week for the company, we qualify for better insurance. Practical considerations like this actually free you up to be more creative, so as the year ends, now is a really good time to think through how writing and life are working and how they can work better. Because the real value of NaNo is figuring out how to put what you’ve learned into practice for the other 11 months of the year.
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