Shiny Monday

by | Jan 13, 2008 | Uncategorized

So much shiny goodness around the web! Starting with 17 free downloadable graphic novels, including Neil Gaiman’s Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes! I have it my precioussss, and you can, too.

Teach Me Tonight does a wonderful job of presenting the differences between using source material in fiction vs. nonfiction, for those confused by the recent plagiarism brouhaha. Recommended reading.

I’m guest reviewing one of my favorite books at Dear Author, Memory by Lois McMaster Bujold.

And since it is Poetry Monday, I point you at Byron’s poem which Gabe quotes to Willow in Wild Wild West.

ARCs, I will mail them

by | Jan 13, 2008 | Uncategorized

So, ARCs for Satisfaction Guaranteed arrived while I was doing edits on Wicked Hot and writing the proposal for the next book and there were the holidays and everybody got sick and the two year old started getting molars. Needless to say I have not yet shlepped myself down to the post office, but I’m getting them ready to mail out on Monday.* Sorry for the delay, those of you waiting for an ARC! They are coming.

*I did at least get all website updates done, complete with new cover art! There’s even an updated printable booklist PDF with ISBNs, courtesy of the husband.

Time and tide

by | Jan 12, 2008 | Uncategorized

Jan. 14-17th will have good hiking tides at La Push! Ah, but will the timing work out with work and kid schedules, and will the weather cooperate for a beach hike? I’ve been wanting to get a beach hike in since before Christmas and it hasn’t worked out yet. But hope springs eternal. The tide pools at Hole in the Wall are well worth the trek, and it’s a beautiful, peaceful stretch of beach to walk. Well, peaceful as long as there aren’t gale or hurricane force winds, high surf, or an incoming tide while rounding a headland. This is why beach hiking requires lots of planning and flexibility. Anyway, there are enough “green” days in January that I’m hopeful at least one of them will work out.

In other news, the book is brewing in my brain. Images and scenes and bits are floating around and things keep washing up like beach debris. A seashell here, a stone there, seaweed in an interesting pattern, beach glass, driftwood. Colors and textures and shapes. Claire is a lot more real to me than when I started. I knew her from other points of view, and now I’m seeing who she is from her point of view.

It’s hard not to be impatient with the first act while it’s coming together, but rushing ahead is as bad an idea as beach hiking without a tide table and a weather check. I know this from experience, but I still chafe when I start and stop and cut and rewrite and think, “how can it possibly take this long to produce this many final pages?” Well, how can it be so exhausting to walk a short distance in wet sand while wearing a heavy backpack? You sink and your footing shifts and it’s much harder work than walking on a path without extra weight. When I’m further along, I’ll have a path and I won’t be carrying the weight of the whole story, either.

Shadow Music

by | Jan 10, 2008 | Uncategorized

I said I’d review Shadow Music here after I’d finished it, so here goes. Shadow Music is Julie Garwood’s much anticipated return to historical romance, and I was pleasantly surprised by the matching tone to her earlier historicals. Shadow Music has the same sweetness and humor and charm, and it was kind of like sliding my feet into an old pair of fuzzy slippers. I loved Colm, and if I have one complaint about this book, it would be: not enough Colm.

This book won’t replace Honor’s Splendor, Saving Grace or The Lion’s Lady as my “most likely to grab and re-read”, but it definitely has a place on the Garwood shelf. If you want to slide your feet into some comfy, fuzzy slippers, grab yourself a copy of Shadow Music. (Of course, the dead bodies may not be everybody’s idea of warm and fuzzy comfort reading, but to each his/her own taste. I personally loved the line, “but he really needed killing.”)