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Thursday, May 16, 2013
Once a year, romance authors from around Arizona come together for the successful and exciting Arizona Dreamin’ – A Romance Reader Event! It doesn’t matter what type of romance you’re addicted to, readers are able to meet with their favorite authors, meet new ones, and satisfy their cravings for all things SWOON!
This year, creators of the raved-about event are upping the ante, releasing a box set full of all those things that leave readers breathless – hot kisses, incredible story lines, sexual tension, and characters we can’t help but fall in love with.
Presenting …
The Wrong Guy
Released: May 14th, 2013
Price: 99c!
The Wrong Guy – 6 Full-Length Novels from 6 Best-Selling Authors
468,387 words
1503 pages
BROKEN PROMISES – Belinda Boring
What would you do if the man you loved became one of your greatest enemies? Would your love be enough to save him? All Bri wanted to do was spend her Friday night with the man she loved and adored. Little did she know leaving her home would result in her relationship with Quinn being tested beyond its limits.
KIERA’S MOON – Lizzy Ford
Starving artist Kiera always knew there was someone out there for her somewhere. But an exiled alien prince? Really? Together, they have the potential to heal an entire planet, if they can find a way to bridge the differences between them first.
ACCIDENTAL SEAL – Sharon Hamilton
What starts out as a meeting by accident becomes a hot affair neither one is ready
for. Navy SEAL Kyle Lansdowne is conflicted about getting Realtor Christy Nelson involved in his mission, but his hand is forced when he learns the same San Diego gang responsible for his teammate’s abduction has kidnapped her.
LUCKY 13 – Morgan Kearns
A painful past with one very prominent reminder molded Shayne Xavier into the woman she is. She isn’t bitter or jaded, though. She’s a realist. Men can’t be depended upon and only lead to shattered hearts. Rockets Outfielder, Enrique Santiago wants nothing more than to prove Shayne wrong, but sometimes Happily-Ever-After is too good to be true.
BOOK WAITRESS – Deena Remiel
Camille Dutton learned early in life Satan was not to be trifled with. Escaping his evil clutches as a child, she’s worried he’s come back with a vengeance for her now. The portal between Hell and Earth is torn asunder, and it’ll take everything she has, and then some, to close it. Satan won’t go down easy, but nothing worth everything comes without a price.
A WOMAN OF CHOICE – Kris Tualla
1819, The Missouri Territory
A woman is viciously betrayed and abandoned by her unfaithful husband. She is rescued by a widower uninterested in love. In desperation, she becomes engaged to his best friend. One woman, three very different men. Life is about choices.
You can get your own copy for just 99c!!
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
As
a writer, I often find myself struggling with character names. When you think about it, a name is important—
it’s how a reader talks about a character, how they relate to a character. Sometimes the name pops into my head along
with the character— a rare gift. More
often, I’m scrambling through odd sources trying to come up with something that
fits.
The
protagonist of my short story “The Beast Within” (Gears and Levers 2) owes his first name to an my favorite actor and
his last name to one of the dances in the Irish dance class I came home from
just before starting the story. (For the
curious, the dance is called “The Humors of Bandon”.) For my novel, I borrowed James Dupree’s first
name from a minor character in a completely unrelated movie and the last name
from a Grateful Dead song that has even less to do with the character, the
world, and the plot than the movie did.
But when I put them together, they just sounded right. Having a character with an Anglo-Saxon-origin
first name and a French-sounding last name, the remainder of my human
characters fell in line with a fairly British-sounding mix of English and
French-derived names.
Even
in an original world, the names need to feel like they belong together. They need to make sense, at least on a
subconscious level. I tend to avoid
completely made-up names. They are hard
to ‘pronounce’ in the reader’s head and so tend to be jarring. (This is a general guideline, of course. Rules are made to be broken.)
I
honestly can’t remember where I came up with the name Loren for the other
principle character in The Stolen Luck. But once I was there, I knew I wanted to have
the other elves to have names with a similar feel. I looked up Loren in The Writer’s Digest Character Naming Sourcebook (a great resource
for name-challenged writers) and discovered it meant Laurel. I decided to go with a botanical theme to
emphasize the elves’ connection with nature.
One of his cousins became Sil (of the forest) and two others became Ashe
and Thorne (The latter two popped in my head from a line in a song about oak,
ash and thorn. You may be noticing a
trend here.) Loren’s father became Varen, and admittedly made-up name but one
that echoes Vernon (flourishing) and Verne (youthful, for the elves’ eternal
youth.) And yes, that violates my
self-imposed guideline against made-up names, but it sounded more pleasant to
the ear than either of the source-names, was still easy to pronounce and had a
‘family sound’ when compared to Loren.
Sometimes
I chose a name by meaning. The father of
the protagonist in my urban fantasy is Bredon Ravenscroft, ‘Bredon’ meaning
‘sword’. Though we only meet the man as
backstory, he is every bit as dark and dangerous as the name implies.
Other
times I go by sound. From the same urban
fantasy, the character Zack is as bold and brassy as his name sounds.
Sometimes
the name is integral to the character.
In my current work in progress, a werewolf/steampunk/Victorian detective
novel, Royston Jones’s name refelcts the backstory of his birth, his
upbringing, and the challenges he faces in his life (hint: Jones is his mother’s surname and his first
name had been his father’s family name.)
In my contemporary fantasy short story
The Sword and the Kestrel (a
Writers of the Future Honorable Mention winner available on Amazon as a
stand-alone) the protagonist’s name represents his story conflict— Guy
Gisbourne, named for a distant ancestor (yes, that Guy Gisbourne)confronts a curse brought down on him by the
actions of his namesake. Even the
pseudonym he uses in his work at a Renn Faire (Rob Hunter) has a significance hinted
at but not fully realized until the end of the tale.
So
what’s in a name? Nothing and everything.
Sometimes the rose by another name might not smell so sweet, at least
not in the reader’s imagination.
The Stolen Luck:
How far will a good man go to save his home and loved ones?
Lord James Dupree must recover his family's stolen Luck, the elven talisman that has protected the Dupree lands for generations. Without the talisman, the Dupree vineyards are failing and creditors are closing in. The Luck is his only hope of saving his home and his family from poverty and ruin.
Despite his abhorrence of slavery, James wins an elven slave in a game of cards. The slave, Loren, provides the only chance to enter the Lands Between and recover the stolen Luck. Despite James's assurances and best intentions, Loren does not trust his new master and James finds it all too easy to slip into the role of slave master when Loren defies him.
As the two work together through hardship and danger, James finds himself falling in love with Loren. And when a hidden enemy moves against them, he must choose between his responsibility to his family and his own soul.
Buy it on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/The-Stolen-Luck-ebook/dp/B00BED276C/ref=la_B00957U8KG_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1367096054&sr=1-1
Or directly from the publisher:
Keep in touch with the author:
Twitter: @ShawnaReppert
On Facebook: www.facebook.com/shawna.reppert
On Tumbler: http://www.tumblr.com/blog/shawnareppert
Monday, May 13, 2013
I know Mother’s Day was yesterday but hey, Moms are
moms 365 days of the year, right? So I’m doing my post today on a subject
relating to motherhood - magic and childbirth in Ancient Egypt.
"Repay your mother
for all her care. Give her as much bread as she needs, and carry her as she
carried you, for you were a heavy burden to her. “ So says the Papyrus of a scribe named Ani,
from 1250 BCE.
I’m actually in the middle of writing a new paranormal romance set in Ancient Egypt in 1535 BCE and there’s a childbirth scene (can’t say who is the mother without giving spoilers LOL). Children were very important to the Egyptians and of course there were many beliefs and legends surrounding the act of giving birth. Fragmented, surviving papyri give remedies for pregnancy tests, infertility cures, contraception and obtaining answers to the always popular question “how do I know the sex of my unborn child?” Physicians of the day were almost never involved in labor and delivery – it was all left to the women of the household or the village, and the ever present gods and goddesses.
I’m actually in the middle of writing a new paranormal romance set in Ancient Egypt in 1535 BCE and there’s a childbirth scene (can’t say who is the mother without giving spoilers LOL). Children were very important to the Egyptians and of course there were many beliefs and legends surrounding the act of giving birth. Fragmented, surviving papyri give remedies for pregnancy tests, infertility cures, contraception and obtaining answers to the always popular question “how do I know the sex of my unborn child?” Physicians of the day were almost never involved in labor and delivery – it was all left to the women of the household or the village, and the ever present gods and goddesses.
Egyptian myths have a great many variations, which
works well for me as a novelist, because I can pick and choose to fit my story.
I have the goddesses Hathor and Tawaret attending the birth of the baby in my
Work In Progress, but there is historical support for my selection, including a
famous carving at the Temple of Hathor in Dendera which shows these two
goddesses assisting a woman as she gives birth. Hathor was the beautiful Great
One often shown with the head of a cow, or as a woman with cow’s horns, and she
was regarded as the goddess of domestic bliss. Tawaret was the Hippo Goddess,
although she had the feet of a lioness and the back of a crocodile. She was
also regarded as a goddess of fertility and childbirth in part because female
hippos were so protective of their young.
A woman often gave birth in a specially constructed
pavilion or bower, or even on the roof of her home, shaded to be cooler. Many
of the depictions of birth show the use of “birthing bricks”, which were
specially made for the pregnant woman to squat or stand on while pushing during
delivery. The women assisting her (or the goddesses if she was very lucky)
stood on either side, providing support and something to push against. The
birth bricks were considered so important they even had their own goddess,
Meskhenet. This important figure was sometimes depicted as a woman and at other
times as a brick with a woman's head, adorned with a cow's uterus. She also breathed the child’s ka (one part of the individual’s soul) into them at birth.
One popular folk tale
from thousands of years ago had the poor mother deliver triplets and after each
son was born, Meskhenet appeared to say he
would become king of Egypt! Which in fact, each of these boys did achieve, succeeding
each other as Pharoah, according to the legends. Rather an amusing mental
picture – sort of like some modern TV commercials where the nurses keep
bringing the poor Dad another baby…
Childbirth could go
wrong in so many ways in that era, and newborn babies were regarded as being fragile
as the young sun (which was reborn every day). It’s no wonder that a rich
tradition of special prayers, remedies and attentive goddesses developed to
comfort the mothers in labor.
Friday, May 10, 2013
WOOT! Isn't it gorgeous?
This is the cover for PRIVATE RELEASE which is the sequel to MOUNTED RELEASE. My second bear book!
This took me forever to write because of two things. One, it refused to stay novella length and turned itself into a short novel and TWO because every time last year I'd pick it up my editor from Harlequin would contact me about revisions.
Once every thing on the Harlequin front was a go I worked my butt off to get Private Release done before my next deadline.
My Ellora's Cave editor's response was so cute, it made me LOL when I sent it to her. All she said was "YAY!"
LOL
Usually she says things like "Thanks got it." I adored her YAY because that's how I felt the moment I hit send on this book. HUGE RELIEF.
It's coming out June 7, 2013.
Here's the blurb:
Jared Stevens hasn’t been the same since he was shot. His duty is to marry a
Mukswa woman and be a strong leader. He lets the elders of his clan choose his bride,
because the woman he wants is only in his fantasies, the only woman who brings him to
exquisite release.
Adele Banks loved being a Mountie, but one shot ended her career and altered
her world forever. Adele is determined to make a life for herself. She’s hired to recover
Beare Enterprises embezzled funds, but what she didn’t count on is being extremely
attracted to her client when meeting him for the first time as he’s naked in his shower.
Adele is Jared’s mystery woman, but she’s taboo. He bonds to her, but has to keep
his society secret, as much as he wants to mark her as his own.
As Jared fights his own inner beast, remnants of the prior chief’s wrath is affecting
the clan and Adele. To save Adele’s life, Jared may just have to betray his clan’s secret
and risk his heart.
A Romantica® paranormal erotic romance from Ellora’s Cave
Thursday, May 9, 2013
It was the most terrifying--and longest sixty seconds of my life. The second quake happened a few months later and I took shelter in a doorway--no where near as much broken stuff, but I remember the stomach sinking sensation and the pounding of my heart. We moved away from the area the year I turned seven and I never looked back again until I was in my twenties.
Oddly enough, my second greatest terror occurred later the same year when I was out riding a bike in my neighborhood and a couple of the local bullies thought it would be funny to throw a rubber snake at me. I had lived in the area long enough to have learned that some of the snakes were poisonous--but more than that, they creeped me out. I will never forget the image of that snake flying at my face. I had no idea it was rubber, I came off the bike backwards, skinned both elbows, my leg and cut my head (no I wasn't wearing a helmet, we didn't even have bike helmets).
Fear is a Powerful Motivator
The bullies laughed and laughed and laughed at my predicament and my bike was broken at the same time. Infuriated, I beat one of them up. Yeah, I know, we're not supposed to admit that, but I was a mean little kid when I got scared. It was only my second fight ever (the first happened when I was six and one of the mean boys who lived on the other side of the alley from my house was throwing a kitten up in the air and trying to catch it--he kept dropping it and the cat cried piteously--I blacked his eye and bloodied his nose and took the cat home. Tiddles was my buddy for the next ten years) but that's neither here nor there.
The snake incident stuck with me forever, I could never not react to seeing a snake again. I'd break out in a cold sweat, my heart would hammer and I'd flee. Yep, a full fledged phobia. I've only ever managed to handle being anywhere near a snake again when my kid was around--but even then I'm ready to run like hell if it makes one false move. Let's just say that if I'd been Dudley in the first Harry Potter book, I'd never have bothered Harry again--I'd have died of fear on the spot.
Flash forward a few years and I lived in California again for a few months in my early twenties and my third quake happened while I bunked at a friend's apartment in a high rise.
The effing building swayed.
Swayed.
And I had the exact same reaction to the land shaking that I had to snakes--utter terror.
Confronting Fears
I don't believe in letting fear control me, no matter how motivating, so I put both in the book Plan Witch From Out of Town. There is a scene in the book where a snake slithers onto Chance that creeped me out while I wrote it and every gut churning, heart pounding, mind numbing earthquake that happened--I reacted to those viscerally. My heart would race, I'd start to sweat and I could feel the bile rising in my throat.
This book remains one of my favorites because I love Chance so much and because writing it presented an opportunity to confront some of my own fears. Has it helped me to put them out of my mind? Not at all--I still screamed like a girl when a snake slithered over my foot a few months ago and when the earth shakes...yeah, not my favorite things.
And for the record...yes, Virginia has earthquakes. I felt the earth tremble when I lived there and you'd be amazed by the number of seismic activities recorded there over the years. Sure it's not California, but the thing about an earthquake is where do you go to get away from one?
Yes, I am sweating just thinking about it!
Plan Witch from Out of Town is available now. It is book 2 of the Chance Monroe series.
All Romance eBooks | Amazon
Blurb
Life should be getting back to normal…
Chance survived a serial killer returning from the grave and said yes to a date with her ex-lover Jack. But survivor’s guilt eats away at her and her world turns upside down when earthquakes begin to rattle the landscape and devastate the region she calls home.
Madness becomes her…
Terrified that she is the source of earthquakes devastating the land, she tries to shut down her connection to the Earth. But when enemies aware of how to shatter her bond to the earth kidnap her, Chance faces her most desperate hour,
When the earth shakes, the witch bleeds…
Staring into the face of madness, she must learn to trust her allies or risk losing everything—and everyone she loves.
Read an Excerpt
Wednesday, May 8, 2013
Every now and then, we sit down to sift through submissions
calls. It’s not often that we actually submit to a particular call—we’re
notoriously bad at producing stories on a timeline—but sometimes we’re
inspired.
Like we were last month, when we saw a call for “new boss” stories. The obvious path would have been to look at contemporary story concepts, businessmen or blue collar heroes. And that's where we started too. But soon we got to talking about werewolves and pack leaders and regime change...
...and now we’re writing The Mercy Moon.
We don’t expect to finish it in time for the submission call that inspired it (like we said above, we’re not so great at finishing things to a deadline) but when we do finish it, we plan to send it to the publisher who posted that call. We’re making an educated guess that they’ll still be interested in stories with that theme, even outside the call timeline.
About Us
Anah Crow and Dianne Fox write sci-fi, paranormal, and contemporary queer romance for Carina Press, Samhain Publishing, and Amber Allure. They’ve been writing together for more than 10 years. You can find them on the web at anahcrowdiannefox.com and on Twitter at @anahcrow and @diannefox.
Like we were last month, when we saw a call for “new boss” stories. The obvious path would have been to look at contemporary story concepts, businessmen or blue collar heroes. And that's where we started too. But soon we got to talking about werewolves and pack leaders and regime change...
...and now we’re writing The Mercy Moon.
We don’t expect to finish it in time for the submission call that inspired it (like we said above, we’re not so great at finishing things to a deadline) but when we do finish it, we plan to send it to the publisher who posted that call. We’re making an educated guess that they’ll still be interested in stories with that theme, even outside the call timeline.
About Us
Anah Crow and Dianne Fox write sci-fi, paranormal, and contemporary queer romance for Carina Press, Samhain Publishing, and Amber Allure. They’ve been writing together for more than 10 years. You can find them on the web at anahcrowdiannefox.com and on Twitter at @anahcrow and @diannefox.
Tuesday, May 7, 2013
So I’ve noticed this trend in paranormal romance and urban fantasy where a woman’s magical power is tied to sexual arousal. I’m not sure if Laurell K. Hamilton was the first to do it, but she certainly does it on a grand scale. Jacqueline Carey also does it with Phedre in the Kushiel books, though the reason behind it for Phedre’s character is much more organic, with the circumstances in which she uses it dictated by the world in which she lives—and she uses it cleverly and to great advantage. As a pagan and sex-positive feminist, I’ve always believed the act of sex to be a very powerful and empowering thing, so the premise in these stories didn’t bother me.
Recently, however, I read yet another such story that started to make me uncomfortable, and it began to dawn on me that the magical power in many of these fictional worlds is coming not simply from the ecstatic energy the woman conjures during sexual arousal or the power of the act of sex itself—of joining with another person—but from the woman’s inability to resist an alpha male’s sexual advances. Being overpowered by one’s reaction to someone else’s sexuality doesn’t strike me as powerful. It can be hot; there’s no doubt about it. Who doesn’t have the fantasy of giving oneself over to sexual abandon on occasion? If you’ve read my books, you know I’m a fan of consensual power exchange and BDSM.
But I’d really like to see a heroine having power that doesn’t come from what a man can give her, and sexual power that doesn’t feel like surrendering to someone else’s control over her body. We have enough men trying to control our bodies, quite frankly. Every day, it seems, I read another story in the news about women’s bodies being used as political football, and about men who think they have the right to a woman’s body based on the sexual signals they perceive her giving out with her dress or her drinking or where she chooses to go alone.
How about the next trend for paranormal romance and urban fantasy being heroines whose power comes neither from helpless sexual arousal nor from the phallic substitute of a Really Big Gun, but from resisting the forces in the world around her that seek to control and define what a woman is?
A woman with real power can still have hot, mind-numbing sex with an insanely gorgeous shifter. Or however many she wants. ;)
Monday, May 6, 2013
Please forgive the short post today or lack of picture. Blogger is being difficult this morning.
So....
My computer is not doing well, and getting online is next to
impossible. Using simple programs like Word is not easy.
Technology. It’s great. There is so much we rely on it for.
All our financial institutions run on it. Grocery stores registers use it. Our
power, our vehicles and societies run on it. We harvest crops, get paid, and
use it to preserve food and cook it.
In fact, it would be hard to survive without it these days.
What if your life depended on technology? What if life or death hung in the
balance? What if this planet went back to the dark ages?
This is the plot of a futuristic novel I’m working on, where
the population of Earth can no longer sustain itself. Food becomes scarce and
starvation is normal.
Would you survive the technological crash? How much of your
life depends on technology?
Thanks for stopping by.
D L
Sunday, May 5, 2013
Really large, big, huge mistake!!
But first, it’s May 5th and Happy Cinco de Mayo, not a day I’d
expect to say good luck and be careful to all those shoveling snow or driving
in it! What is up with the weather--down to the 30s at night, up to 60s during
the day? Uhh, it is May! Sure keeps the utility/electric companies happy.
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|
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Okay, my big deal for the weekend was to see Iron Man 3 and I did in 3D
Friday morning. Won’t give away anything but will say I absolutely
loved it and Robert Downey. This man has grown so much as a person and a star--he is Iron Man! And just look into those eyes. Grew a
bit nervous when a couple entered carrying a tiny child (3yrs at the most) who
spent a good deal of time crying. After a few heads turned, Mom quickly exited
with the little one. Kudos to her for understanding.
Anyway, I had one of those small theater popcorns which is truly tiny and extremely pricey and an overly large SMALL soda. If they give me a SMALL soda that is so very large I guess it’s okay to charge me a huge sum, a small fortune actually. I’m not really complaining because there is something about the popcorn at a theater and the way it smells that, in my opinion, just makes the movie better and you can’t have it without a drink. *smile* The SMALL soda…I blame it entirely as the cause for me leaving halfway through the closing credits where I know, I’m positive I missed some secret little thing they always throw in at the very last moment, some tiny message or come-on for what’s going to happen in the next movie…something that makes you think you just can’t wait…something that...
I did miss something didn’t I?
Damn that huge, gigantic SMALL high dollar drink, damn it to hell!
Growl and roar-it’s okay to let the beast out.-J. Hali Steele
Saturday, May 4, 2013
As a fan of Star Wars, I was excited to see this article over on i09: http://io9.com/princess-leia-stands-alone-in-this-new-star-wars-novel-481329813
I've actually read some of the Star Wars books that are threaded through the first three movies (yes, I know they're technically Episodes 4, 5 & 6, but I grew up in a time where those other movies didn't exist, so there) and even out past where Return of the Jedi ended. One of my favorites is Children of the Jedi by Barbara Hambly, which actually part of a three part mini-series with Darksaber (by Kevin J Anderson) & Planet of the Twilight (Barbara Hambly). The books play heavily toward Luke falling in love with Callista, a Jedi warrior who died years ago to help thwart the Empire's plan to destroy a sanctuary for Jedi Knight's wives and children.
I haven't yet decided if I'll pick up this new mini-series with Luke, Han and Leia, but it is certainly tempting.
I've actually read some of the Star Wars books that are threaded through the first three movies (yes, I know they're technically Episodes 4, 5 & 6, but I grew up in a time where those other movies didn't exist, so there) and even out past where Return of the Jedi ended. One of my favorites is Children of the Jedi by Barbara Hambly, which actually part of a three part mini-series with Darksaber (by Kevin J Anderson) & Planet of the Twilight (Barbara Hambly). The books play heavily toward Luke falling in love with Callista, a Jedi warrior who died years ago to help thwart the Empire's plan to destroy a sanctuary for Jedi Knight's wives and children.
I haven't yet decided if I'll pick up this new mini-series with Luke, Han and Leia, but it is certainly tempting.
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