Archive for the ‘News’ Category

I decided to do a little old-fashioned (because time in the Twitterverse moves so quickly) blog hopping. Remember blog hopping? When you’d scroll through your sidebar and click on friends names to see what they were up to? These days, I can never remember how to update my sidebar, so there’s hardly anyone there. And the friends I used to have on there have probably forgotten who I am because it’s been so long since I visited their blogs.

But today I visited, even if I didn’t comment:

Raine Weaver. She’s got gorgeous pictures of a doe who’s been visiting.

Southern Fried Chicas. Top post is  hie-larious.

Vanessa Jaye. I’ve been seeing the Franzenfreude link for some time, but I finally clicked on it.

Anna Louise Lucia. Looks like she’s part of a new group blog. I may head over there and check it out.

Julie Cohen. Now that I’ve found her and Anna on Twitter, I read the blog for Fecklet updates.

And that’s it for today. Wouldn’t want to overload, you know.

Edit: I had to check out The Heroine Addicts, the group blog Anna and Julie are in. Great posts!

Maybe just for today, but it’s definitely autumnal out there. In the mid-50s when I woke up and my maple tree has a dozen red leaves all of a sudden.

I love fall and hope it’s a long season this year. Of course, just watch. We’ll get another heat wave out of nowhere now.

Seriously. I feel wicked smart today. Blogging at Beyond the Veil about the Great Flood.

I have A.D.O.S.

Attention Deficit…Ooh Shiny!

(Couldn’t paste the picture, sorry.)

As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve been struggling to get back in writing form after the summer holidays. I’ve been using timed challenges to help, but they’re 20 minutes long. I can’t stay on task for 20 minutes. Yes, I realize that’s pretty bad.

So yesterday, partly in self-flagellation, partly out of sheer desperation, I tried 5 minute challenges.

It totally worked. I wrote nearly 1K in about 40 minutes of short challenges. Woohoo for something that works!!

In other news, I finally figured out why I’m not getting any tomatoes off either of my cherry tomato plants. They have lots of green tomatoes, but I never seem to pick any ripe ones. Know why?

THE DAMNDOG IS EATING THEM RIGHT OFF THE PLANT!!! I kid you not. I happened to look outside the other day while he was outside and he just reached up and very gently bit the tomato right off the stem. I’d have been mad, but I was too busy cracking up. I’m going to have to catch that on film one day, but he’s sneaky.

What will I do with all this new-found time?

Write, you say?

Yeah. Maybe.

We’ll see.

In the meantime, what’s up with y’all? Have I missed any fun kerfuffles in Romancelandia while I was mired in my own insanity? I haven’t actually been involved in one of those in a while. We must be due for one soon.

I’ve been in downtown St Louis, wearing holes in my shoes. Ok, so that wasn’t my primary reason for haunting the city. I was at the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association national conference. I was on a panel discussion on the Romance track, presented by the International Association for the Study of Popular Romance. Crystal Jordan, who is both an author of erotic romance as well as a university librarian, invited me, Jeannie Lin and Amanda Berry to sit in with her on a panel called “Romance Publishing: Canadian Romance, ePublishing, and Erotica, Oh My!”

The highlights of the conference:

Seeing Crystal again. Squeeeee!!! We even hugged!

I see Jeannie and Amanda every month at my MORWA meetings, but I like hanging out with them.

Finally meeting James Buchanan, who I’ve bumped into here and there online, but we finally shook hands.

And honestly, meeting Sarah Frantz who is this powerhouse of intellect and drive and genre love. She also has the coolest accent. What can I say? I love accents! She is part of the brains behind the awesomeness that is the Teach Me Tonight blog.

I wasn’t able to get to the conference until Thursday night when the folks on the Romance track met up for dinner. And it was soooo cool! I *never* hear people discuss romance novels like this! We’re always too afraid of hurting someone’s feelings because, at the very least, we understand the sheer wretchedness of the process of writing, submitting, getting rejected, getting the contract, finding the agent, going through revisions and edits and marketing and…This business is not for the faint-hearted. Even the worst writer who has ever been published (not self or vanity published) has gone through the wringer like everyone else.

Although, let me back up a minute. The first thing I attended was not the dinner. It was the business meeting of IASPR before dinner. As a non-academic, it had nothing to do with my professional interests, but Amanda Berry and I looked at each other part-way through this discussion of finding PhD programs and writing papers and said, “Dang. And we thought romance publishing was hard.” Being an academic is brutal.

So, dinner was awesome and we were there for over 3 hours, just talking and yelling across tables and generally getting to know each other.

Friday was the day of the panel I was on and I got there for the panel before, then stayed well after, as well.

My world is very insular. I keep my head down, hang out on one forum primarily, write my blog and hope people read, and try to get some words on the page.

To go to this conference and realize that people are seriously discussing romance in critical terms was mind-blowing. They’re talking about food in romance (I missed that panel and I’m bummed), creating a community through film and internet presence, discussing the actual internet presence of romance readers and reviewers like SBTB and DA (Jane Litte was there. It’s not fair that she’s so gorgeous AND smart.), Canadian romance, erotic romance, gay interpretations of Dracula, TSTL heroines and uber-assholes in Christine Feehan’s Carpathian series…and that was pretty much just Friday!

Saturday started off with sexism, racism, heterosexism, fetishism in romance, interracial romance in film – but also an interesting point about how AA fiction has always focused on the struggles of being AA as opposed to just being part of a relationship – in essence, romance creates a space for AA women not to have lit-angst, discussing dress and gender roles, the idea of a true anti-heroine in romance (that one engendered a lot of discussion at lunch as we tried to figure out if we’d ever seen one. The answer, probably not, according to the terms defined in the paper.), and tons of Twilight stuff (oy). The final papers were all about HEAs: what constitutes them, satisfying and unsatisfying endings, ambiguous endings, happy-for-now endings, genre expectations…It was awesome and Sabrina Darby, a fellow Romance Diva and author, was one of the presenters.

One of my favorites was a paper called “She quoted Shakespeare! The inclusion of highbrow literature in popular romance novels” presented by Tamara Whyte from University of Alabama. Basically, I loved it for its discussion of all that cultural connectivity that I talk about.

But over and above all the lit-nerd stuff that I love so much, I enjoyed getting to know people with whom I would otherwise never connect. After everything was over on Saturday, 7 of us piled into my car and we headed over to the Arch. We couldn’t go up as it was closed for the day, but we just wandered around and enjoyed the gorgeous weather. We were in that happy-tired state, half-wired/half-wiped.

The PCA IASPR conference takes place in the days right before RWA 2011 in NYC. (Edited per Sarah’s clarification) I think I’m going to start saving my pennies because I would LOVE to see these folks again.

Something magic this way comes…

Wicked ³, Book 1

Callie has always known the Abbotts were different. Witches, though they call themselves “Magians”. They are her second family. Harrison Abbott has been her best friend since they were children. Tucker Abbott, her life-long crush. And their brother, Tyghe? A magical pain in her backside.

When the Abbotts need her human perspective to solve a mystery, she doesn’t hesitate. Especially since it means getting everything she ever wanted. A chance to be one of them, to have magic, even if it’s only temporary.

Someone is attacking young women at Triune, a ritual that helps Magians find their perfect threesome—the match that will complete their magic and their hearts. Callie expected to be dazzled by her first glimpse into the Magian world, but the bone-melting desire between her and the Abbott brothers isn’t part of the plan.

Nor is the decades-old secret that makes her the target of a killer…

Warning: Explicit sex, magical dresses, mind-reading rooms and mind-boggling threesomes.

BUY HERE!

Like everyone else, seeing the photos of the devastation in Haiti has moved me to tears, but more than that, it’s moved me to help. I found a venue for aid that I’d never heard of before through Linnea Sinclair’s Yahoo group.

Bonnie Vanak’s real job is as an aide worker with Food For The Poor in Haiti and other third world countries in our hemisphere.

You can see some of Bonnie’s aide work here: My Travels.

From Bonnie via the group:

We can donate to her organization at http://www.foodforthepoor.org

This is the donation page for donations on the web.

Tell them to just put “Haiti earthquake” in the comments page and the donation will be earmarked for that purpose.

ALSO:

Musician Wyclef Jean set up a site to support Haiti back in 2005. They are collecting $$, and every cent goes to the relief. You can text “yele” to 501501 to donate $5 to the Yéle Haiti Earthquake Fund (it charges on your cell phone bill).

For more info and to donate more $$, you can visit here: http://www.yele.org

BRUSH STROKES by Jax Cassidy
Release date: January 10, 2010
Publisher: Amber Heat
ISBN-13: 978-1-60272-627-7 (Electronic)
*Heat warning: erotic, explicit sex scenes, language

For Sage, attending the Parisian sex club, Plaisirs Sombres, was the ultimate fantasy. So when the conservative gallery assistant is cloaked behind the velvet mask, she never expected to be the object of the club owner’s desire. Spurred on by D.S. Gregoire’s erotic and sensual brush strokes of the exclusive club, she gives into a brief liaison that leaves her breathless and wanting.

For Damien, known to the art world as D.S. Gregoire, his art has always been an adrenaline rush. But when an exotic and mysteriously uninhibited ’sex club virgin’ enters his establishment, he is willing to break his club rules for another taste of the dark pleasures she brings him.

Author Bio:
Jax Cassidy followed her dreams to Paris, then Hollywood to pursue a film career but managed to fall in love with penning sexy romances and happy endings—finding Mr. Right was just an added bonus. She writes contemporary, paranormal, and multi-ethnic romances and is Co-Founder of Romance Divas, and award winning writer’s website and discussion forum. Jax is also known as one-half of the retired writing team of Cassidy Kent.

For more information on Jax, please visit her online at www.jaxcassidy.com or www.jaxadora.blogspot.com

Featuring:

Zoe Archer
Meljean Brook
Gail Carriger
Sarah A. Hoyt
Katie MacAlister
Dru Pagliassotti

This workshop will take place at the Romance Diva Forum. All are welcome. To get access to the forum you will need to register.