Blog — Page 10

Countdown to Lover Unleashed…

20 Mar 2011

: J.R. Ward’s latest in the Black Dagger Brotherhood Series

Okay, I am dying for this book and gratefully only have a week left to wait for it. If JR can improve on LOVER MINE (and I don’t see how she can) then I’m going to be AWOL for a couple days while I read this. If you’ve never read JR Ward, then you are missing out BIG TIME. Every person I’ve ever turned on to her has become a fan of her stories. She also writes contemporary romance under the name Jessica Bird. Every story leaves me dying for more. The characters in every one of her books are so unique and finely crafted that they’ve become real people in my head, not to mention the amazing world they live in. JR Ward is on my shortlist of “bookshelf” authors. I read most everything on my Kindle. I order hardbacks of those special books that will have a place on my bookshelf until time immemorial. LOVER UNLEASHED gets that honor even before I’ve read it. Now that’s sayin something.

Raine

Irish Bob

17 Mar 2011

Sorry, I couldn’t resist. I’m a fan, what can I say? Bob is a blissfully clueless fellow. I sure do envy that part of his personality too! Oh, to be so oblivious. Happy St. Paddy’s Day~ Raine

RT, here I come…

14 Mar 2011

Click for all the details on RT in LA!

This is my first ever convention and I’m really excited! I’ll get to meet some of my favorite authors like Megan Hart, Elizabeth Hoyt, Jennifer Ashley and Cherise Sinclair…and get books signed…and take some workshops…and there’s even a beauty contest–male beauty that is–called Mr. Romance. The cover models compete for the title. I don’t think I can pass on that one. ;0 The really surreal part is that my name is listed in the AUTHORS ATTENDING page. God!!!!

Savvy Authors – Query pitch with Deb Werksman of Sourcebooks Results

4 Mar 2011

Savvy Authors – Query pitch with Deb Werksman of Sourcebooks Results.

This was a pleasant thrill to end the week. I entered this contest last minute–literally–as it ended at midnight EST and that made it 9:00 pm on my side of the U.S. I was actually at a BSA dinner with my family and zipped home for 30 minutes to get my pitch posted before the contest closed, as usual, wearing several hats all at once!

John William Waterhouse...Lamia on her knees... 1905

Ms. Werksman has been on my short list for quite a while now, and low and behold, asked to see the full manuscript for a novel I’ve just completed! Libertine Lover is about a man who lives a self-indulgent life and enjoys rough sex with anonymous courtesans until–you guessed it–he falls hard for a girl he wants to have a future with. But she cannot be with him or any other man. She’s terrified of intimacy after a brutal attack leaves her emotionally fragile. What’s a libertine rake to do? Hmmmmm…finding his inner “gallant knight” and rescuing the lady in distress may be the only path he can follow.

Raine

Contracts, Covers, and Blurbs…

26 Feb 2011

How I see Marianne

My contract for, His Perfect Passion came and with it, some Homework assignments. First, I had to describe my characters in specific detail, height, weight, physical characteristics, etc. along with other elements key to the storyfor a cover questionnaire. I was invited to provide a link to a photograph of a person I could “see” as my character. This part was fun. I have found inspiration in paintings several times for my writing and it was a John William Waterhouse painting of Boreas that inspired my vision of the heroine, Marianne. The hero of my book, Darius Rourke, was just as fun to imagine. Darius is half English, half Italian, and a cultured but domineering gentleman. I found the perfect man one day in a cologne ad from a magazine. From the moment I spotted the photo I could not picture anyone else as my Darius. He is him, in my vision at least. Actually, ‘he’ is a Spanish model named, Oriol Elacho. I love his hands in the picture. You can feel the ‘cultured elegance’ just by looking at his hands. Delicioso…

Oriol Elacho as Darius Rourke

The less fun part was writing three separate book blurbs. The first: 25 words or less for use on ads. The second: 50 word blurb for use on the website. The third: 150 words or less for the back of the book. Now, this was rather hard to do in my opinion, and the hardest blurb, by far, was the 25-word one. I did it, but it took me several hours to get it right. Condensing a novel down to just two sentences and conveying the essence of your story is a challenge. As a writer you have to make your book sound interesting enough that people will want to read it. That’s the tricky part…but also the beauty of writing–the part that keeps me typing away.

Raine

Vintage Valentines…sharing the love

14 Feb 2011

Heavy cardboard, movable eyes, circa 1930. From my grandmother's box.

I hate the Valentines for sale these days. Let’s see, there’s Scooby Doo, Barbie, Transformers, Bratz, and anything that’s trending now like…Justin Bieber. Ick! In my opinion it’s just plain wrong! Valentines used to be cute, with kids or animal images on them and some sort of poem or greeting. They came in shapes already cut and possibly adorned with moving or embossed parts, glitter and/or flocked highlights. You gave the best, “coolest” Valentine to the boy you liked, and the less cool ones to the boys you couldn’t stand. The box always had a special teacher card that you reverently addressed in your best writing. For some really beautiful examples check out Vintage Valentine Museum and be amazed: http://www.vintagevalentinemuseum.com/

My grandmother was a teacher in Orange County, California from the late 1920’s until 1955, and I was lucky to find a box of cards she had saved from students over the years. Many of them were Valentines and a collection I hold very dear to this day. As I read the messages and admired the art, I realized how far removed the Valentines of today are from those of eighty years ago. It got me started on collecting more vintage Valentines and then that wasn’t enough. I found I needed to share this lost art with others who might never know what Valentines used to look like.

I began printing out color copies of vintage examples and bringing them in to my class of 1st graders. I passed them out and we read the poems and solgans together. I let the kids cut the copies out and decorate their Valentine holders with the vintage images. I had parents start asking about them and other teachers asking for copies to share with their students. Now it’s a tradition to bring them out every year and teach the kids about how Valentines used to be. The kids love learning about this lost art and I feel a little better about sharing the love of these special sentiments from times past.

Witty...clever...funny

Even the Titantic is pretty cute!

Raine

Love the play on words in this one!

The luck of the rabbit…

3 Feb 2011

Today marked the beginning of ‘The Year of the Rabbit.’ My mother tells me, (she has unlimited knowledge in these areas) that the animal of your birth year in the Chinese calendar will prove lucky for you throughout your life whenever the year comes into your animal.

Well, it was RABBIT the year I was born, so I guess I’m due a sh$%load of luck now that it’s come around again!

Mom said informatively, “You’re getting a book published, so it’s already working for you.”

I have to say, I’m generally a pessimistic person, but considering how exciting the last few days have been, I’m thinking Mom’s luck theory has some merit to it.

Yeah, RABBIT luck works for me. I’m not complaining. “Here little bunny…”

Raine

Getting the call…

31 Jan 2011

Well, surprise, surprise. Today was the day! January 31, 2011, the day I went from unpublished writer to soon-to-be writer under contract. Yahoooooo! Publisher (I’ll name as SBS) want to publish my novella, with a release date of June 2011.

Actually, a very nice acquisitions editor, named April, wrote a 2nd email to say, “Hi, we sent you an offer to publish your manuscript on Jan. 20th but have not heard from you. Check your spam folder.”

Uh, say again?

Sooooooo, thinking there couldn’t possibly be anything good in my spam folder, I checked it.

WRONG!

There it sat: RE: Offer to Publish, His Perfect Passion. I just about fell out of my chair. The damn thing had come 11 days before! God!!!!!

This all happened in the morning before school started. Before my 1st graders came bouncing into my classroom, ready to start their Monday. I had to actually teach after that!

Lesson #1 for writers: CHECK YOUR SPAM FOLDERS REGULARLY

Next comes the contract. I’ll let you know how that works.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times / January 29, 2011)

On another note…

The bald eagle story caught my eye. Now that’s gotta be true love there. A wild male bald-eagle keeps coming to the Orange County zoo enclosure where a female bald-eagle resides in captivity. The animal handlers have never seen anything like it before. There’s a story in there just waiting to fly.

Raine

Waterhouse inspired…

30 Jan 2011

Ophelia 1889 John William Waterhouse

Have you ever looked at a painting and seen a story in it? What story could be told about her? Why is she there? Is she alone? Waiting for someone?

For me, she is Marianne, a character in a story I wrote called, His Perfect Passion. For the Romantic painter, William Waterhouse, she was Ophelia from Hamlet. Just as Shakespeare inspired Waterhouse to paint, Waterhouse inspires me to write.

A painting got me started on my writing. I saw Ophelia there in the field, looking so lovely and mysterious, and had an epiphany, became obsessed to the point that I couldn’t let it go until I wrote about her. She became Marianne in my story, but I always return to the painting for reference when I need to see her.

Waterhouse’s work is irresistible to me because he painted knights and goddesses and beautiful creatures like mermaids and fairies–stuff that’s right up my alley. Thanks to Mr. Waterhouse, I have plenty of inspiration. Now if I can just block out the sound of my sons playing Black Ops in the other room, I might get some writing done today! ;0

« Previous Page