by Christine | Publishing, Writing
So, I’ve been packing since I got up this morning, around 6am. I’ve had 3 cups of coffee, wrapped a tote bag FULL of Los Angeles Romance Authors Books & Goodies, made a run to the store for apples and dinner rolls (to go with the salami and cheese previously purchased – there’s a fridge in the room), bought an apple fritter from the best donut shop for the hubby as a bribe and solace for taking me down to Anaheim, remembered ALL my hair thingies (curling iron, brush, comb, spray, etc), remembered the camera and the battery charger.
I think I’m ready.
Still flying high from yesterday’s news which, yeah, haven’t shared here. But you know what I CAN tell you? Networking is important. Keeping a pleasant and positive public face online is important. Sometimes not doing something is just as important as doing something, and not doing it may get you to your bigger goal.
I know, cryptic, huh. Just know that good things are humming along, and at the perfect time for me. Talk about symmetry!
So I’ll try to blog this week, but I truly don’t know when I’ll get the time. I’ve managed to go digest on all my mail lists, and told my boss that he can call me all he wants, I’m not answering his calls or his emails, lol.
I’m off soon to live in a world of two thousand other romance writers for almost a week. Yes, you envy me!
by Christine | Publishing, Writing
This will be my first Romance Writers of America conference in four years, so I’m excited. There’s something about taking over a being in a hotel with 2,000 other romance writers that gets my blood flowing.
The energy is amazing, the nerves palpable. Every year there are a lot of people who are attending conference for the first time. They are usually fairly easy to spot – they keep to themselves and have a glazed look of panic in their eyes. By the end of the conference, the panic has ebbed but the glaze is looking rather permanent. It’s information overload.
I’m pitching at this conference, as I have at every conference I’ve ever gone to. I have always been confident at pitching – don’t know why. Lucky, I guess! I’m still trolling searching for the right agent, and I’m also taking a stab at Harlequin again. (I’ve been reading their books since I was 13; I really, really want to write for them.) I’m also pitching one of my older books that I’m inordinately fond of to Entangled Publishing. They’re holding pitches off-site, at their hotel across the street so yay!
But between now and checking in on Tuesday, I’ve got a lot to do. Like, um, formalize all my pitches, to start. I need to make sure my phone is internet-enabled, and not just when the wireless is engaged. I need to pick up my jackets at the dry cleaners tomorrow, and finish all my work tasks. A big thing is to remember all the small things; tooth brush, toothpaste, makeup, curling iron, hairbrush – I always forget something, then have to buy something that doesn’t quite work. Can’t afford to do that this time, so I’ve got to get it right.
Then there’s the clothing issue. What with not being in my usual shape, due to the rocks in my belly, I’ll be doing a lot of camouflage dressing – jackets and jeans and boots, mostly. Dressy-casual, but not too dressy. Business-like, but not a suit&heels. When you’re spending your day rushing between workshops and lunch and appointments, the last thing you need to wear is a pair of high heels. (No new shoes for me this trip. I learned my lesson about that long ago.) So, laundry just got jacked up high on the list.
I’m lucky enough to room with three incredible women, all whom I’ve known and loved for a few years. We will totally rock our room with hilarity and wine and love and I just can’t wait. (Reminder – buy wine.)
My very first conference experience was rooming with the lovely and talented contemporary romance author Lynne Marshall, way back in 2002 – Denver. Every night after we collapsed in our rooms, we’d stay up, chattering about what we learned, and sharing our notes. It was like having a mini-conference within the conference, and remains one of the highlights of all of my conference-going experiences.
This is a decade later, and I find I’m still excited about learning, still excited about seeing old friends and meeting cyber-friends, and more than anything determined to reach out to people I haven’t yet met but want to meet. I plan to be ready with my business cards to hand out, and my logline (as to what I write) memorized. Bob Mayer says you should go to conferences with a plan – know what you’re going to do, who you’re going to talk with, and have concrete goals. Below are my goals, in no particular order:
1. Be upbeat, but not obnoxious.
2. Ask for business cards from people I connect with. Pass out business cards lavishly to the same.
3. Don’t fawn over Angela James. ESPECIALLY refrain from calling her “cute”. (Yeah. Don’t ask!) As a matter of fact, try to avoid Angela James entirely in any possible one on one situation. (It’s not her, trust me. It’s totally me.)
4. Rock my interviews. All three of them. Get requests for full submissions.
5. Spend some time at the bar, sticking to soda water with lime.
6. Soak up information like a sponge. Really consider taking as many of the self-publishing workshops as I can.
7. Find all of my friends and cyber friends at the book signing and say hi to each one.
8. Scrutinize all the agents that speak at the agent panel; see if maybe there’s one that meets my criteria, and do some research on him/her.
9. Don’t spend any time in my room unless I’m a) sleeping b)partying with the girls after everything is over or 3) taking a shower/doing my hair.
10. Be as much of a positive, welcoming influence as I possibly can to everyone I meet.
So there you go, my goals for RWA 2012. Not outside of my scope of reach, I think.
How about you? Are you going to RWA 2012? What are your goals? Oh, and by the way – I’m not signing at the Literacy Signing on Wednesday night, as I wasn’t sure if my second book would be out in time. But I’ll be hawking tickets and calling out the baskets at the signing – so if you see a crazy woman with electric red hair and a jacket and jeans, flinging business cards willy nilly, it’s probably me. Come on over and say hi!
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Thanks for visiting. I love hearing from you, so feel free to leave a comment!
by Christine | Writing
There has been some kerfluffles between book bloggers and writers recently. I don’t know all the details (and I really don’t want to, either), but from what I could discover, errors happened on both sides. But I’m here to champion book bloggers.
For me, I totally heart book bloggers. These people review books for readers, but they also do writers an incalculable service (whether or not that is their intent). Most of the book bloggers will put their reviews up on Amazon (I think – I could be wrong about that!), which gives a boost to the writer (no matter the rating). When you consider that the “magic number” of reviews on Amazon tends to be 50, those bloggers often make up the bulk of a writer’s reviews.
Whether it is a person who only reviews, or a blogger who tosses out an occasional review, it doesn’t matter to me. I have learned a very important lesson from a reviewer that I took to heart. See, she loved the first book in my Caine Brothers series, but she was pretty unhappy that the hero and heroine didn’t take down the villains together.
When I read that, I immediately understood her reasoning, and sympathized. But at the time, the ending kind of had to happen the way it did – the heroine had to win and win big, and then the hero also had to win and win big. They both had a lot to prove to themselves, so for that reason they couldn’t fight together.
But when I was writing book 2 in the series, I remembered this review and I knew, without a doubt, that my hero and heroine would have to take down the bad guy together. They were both strong people; their journey, though, meant they had to learn to let someone else in to help them. In fact, the only way this bad guy could be taken apart was by the two of them letting down their protective walls and working together.
Would I have come to that conclusion without that reviewer’s lament? Maybe. But I can tell you that bringing that up in the review made it impossible for me to forget; which ensured the outcome of book 2.
Reviewers are golden. Writers should, in my opinion, always thank the reviewer whenever practical (though I understand that some reviewers feel kind of creeped out when a writer thanks them for a bad review). Writers should also take bad reviews in stride, and not ever take them personally. In this market, to an extent, every review has value.
And then we get the other side of things: here’s an entertaining blog about the 5 meanest book reviews from the Huffington post. Now, I’m not encouraging book bloggers to write mean reviews, and neither is the HuffPost; as they say, sometimes any publicity is NOT good publicity.
But for the most part, book bloggers go into this game with a wide open heart and an insatiable love of reading. And because of that, I heart you all.
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Do you have a favorite Book Blogger? Enquiring Minds want to know!
DEMON SOUL, BLOOD DREAMS, and DEMON HUNT all available now!
by Christine | Writing
It’s finally here – DEMON HUNT release day! The second full length novel in the Caine Brothers Series! I am incredibly proud of this book, as this is the one that I took from a 15K short story to a full length novel. I probably wrote this book – or at least the first five chapters of it – about six times. I couldn’t figure out how to expand the story into a full length novel!
Then I just let go of what I had written, and wrote a new book with the same thread that had been in the short story. And it just took off.
I hope you enjoy the book. I’m working on Justin and Maggie’s story now, called DEMON’S RAGE – and there’s a teaser chapter for that at the back of HUNT!
Here’s the back-of-the-book blurb for Demon Hunt:
Tribred Gregor Caine decided long ago to deny his blood legacy, so he isn’t thrilled when paired with a full-blooded Fae to hunt the demons threatening to decimate Los Angeles. As they fight side by side, he finds she calls to both his Fae and his demon blood; a call he can’t resist.
Warrior Fae Serra Willows crossed into the Human Plane to help destroy the demons released from the Chaos Plane. Finding and shutting down the portal between worlds is more challenging than she expected…and Gregor and his world more seductive than she had ever imagined.
As the killings escalate, Gregor and Serra realize one of the most deadly demons from the Chaos Plane has marked Serra as his own. To save her, Gregor has to face his greatest fear—losing his humanity to the darkness in his blood. But in a race against time, that darkness could become his greatest strength. And he will kill to claim Serra’s love.
And here’s what Maggie Shayne said about DEMON HUNT:
“Demon Hunt sucked me in from the very first page. A potent, exciting, Fae adventure that keeps you turning pages while you try to catch your breath. Ashworth’s talent shines in this unique and original novel. Do not miss it.”
~NY Times Bestselling Author Maggie Shayne
As a side note: The eBook isn’t up on Amazon yet, but the paperback is. Go figure!
UPDATE: My bad…I wasn’t looking in the Kindle Store for the book. It’s there! Squee!
by Christine | Cooking, Writing
Food & Wine Magazine did it again. They totally seduced me. I mean, I love to make fun of how out of touch they are with the “little folk” who don’t have $80 to plunk down on a wine. And the recipes? Don’t get me started. Half of them require ingredients that you need to crawl up a Himalayan mountain and see the guy in the second yurt on the left in order to find them. Or hit up six specialty stores, depending on your neighborhood.
But every now and then, they’ll showcase a recipe that looks easy. Panade? Well, maybe not. BUT – call it a Tomato, Chard and Gruyere Casserole, and you’ve hooked me. How easy can that be?
Six hours after I started shopping for ingredients, the darn thing is in the oven. (Okay, so I went along the untrodden pathways to find the freshest tomatoes at little roadside stands. So it took awhile. Cutting up the chard? That took forever!) Unfortunately, the first roadside stand is where I bought my tomatoes. It was also the biggest roadside stand, the most commercial stand, and the most expensive stand. It is not a place I will go to again.
But the ingredients, by themselves, weren’t expensive, except for the gruyere cheese. $21 a pound! I bought just under half a pound, since I knew I had some in the fridge – but still, $8.50 for a tiny sliver of CHEESE? I’m thinking, the next time I’ll make it with swiss cheese, and whatever else I may happen to have in the fridge.
So you butter a casserole, layer in the day old peasant bread (which I cut the minute we got home and let just sit out), then layer in thickly-cut fresh tomatoes, then the cooked chard/onion mix (oh, go ahead and look it up – you KNOW you want to!), plus the aforementioned gruyere. Repeat, and end with the last of the bread. Then you do some magic to it (get the recipe!) and put it in the oven. For an hour. And a bit.
See? It’s a sandwich. Sigh.
When I showed the photo of the casserole to my oldest son, he said to me, “Oh. A sandwich.”
I felt like such an idiot. Because duh, this is exactly that. A sandwich. True, a hot sandwich with no meat in it and a nifty sense of France, but still…a sandwich. With expensive and yummy cheese in it.
Seduced again by Food & Wine. (Recipe, page 100 of the August 2012 Food & Wine Magazine)
What are you cooking this week?
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Hey, all month I’m over at The Romance Reviews for their Sizzling Summer Event! http://www.theromancereviews.com/event.php
Lots of contests and freebies and Author Chats – I’m there Saturday, July 14th. Drop on by and say “hey” !
by Christine | Observations, Writing
This week has been an up and down week. Sure, I’ve gotten 6k in over three days, an excellent total for me lately; but the book is turning on me. It’s not keeping the tone I had set at the beginning; rewriting already is a PITA. I can’t say who the target publisher is, so I won’t. Ahem.
Of course, I’m working on something out of my comfort zone. Well, I’m working on TWO projects – whoops, make that THREE – out of my comfort zone; one is going swimmingly, being half done, and I’m itching to get back to it. The other – that’s got the 6k in it. One-tenth done. SIGH. But I’m finding that if I just keep my head down and do the work, some words – even words with the wrong feel to them – are better than no words. (The third project? That’s a new play. No, seriously. STOP LAUGHING!!! Okay, it’s a comedy, but really…must you bust a gut?!!)
I’m also thinking that maybe I started this story in the wrong place. As much as I REALLY like the opening scene, maybe that should just be the heroine’s intro? Maybe, in order to make the hero much more sympathetic, I need to open with him and his travails? See, he’s a grounded-for-life pilot who now runs his family’s private charter plane company…his brother died over in Iraq and his parents (who don’t like him in the first place) can’t forgive him for not enlisting, too. So…well, he does something his parents REALLY want him to do because he just doesn’t care anymore. And then he meets this girl. In a bar. Who will never get a tattoo because she’s boring as hell, as she puts it. And meeting her changes everything he thought he knew about himself and the world around him.
Hm…I’m just thinking this might be the way to go. Sometimes I need to talk out a book over coffee or wine…and when I’m at work, I can’t really “talk out” a book aloud, so I’m using the blog for my “talk out”. Hope you all don’t mind!
Well? Am I on the right track? Is this a book you’d want to read, or should I toss the idea? Let me know!
One lucky, randomly-selected commenter will win an ARC of DEMON HUNT if I get more than just me talking to myself here…so let your friends know, too, and make sure you leave your email address in your comment!
