Reading log

It occurs to me that it's been quite awhile since I posted on any of the reading challenges I've set for myself, not because I haven't been reading, but because I've been too busy and/or too laid up with carpal tunnel issues to blog about it. So, to catch up a bit...

For my research reading challenge in March, I read The Scottish Highlanders and Their Regiments, by Michael Brander, which sounds like it should be a dull list of facts and statistics, but in fact is anything but. It's a set of anecdotes about Highland soldiers in the British army of the 18th and 19th centuries, full of the details of daily life that help a novelist enliven a story.

Also on the research front, I read The Yellow on the Broom, by Betsy Whyte, a memoir of the childhood of a Highland Traveller. One of the characters in my historical fantasy WIP grew up with a band of Travellers. Thus far I haven't been able to find much documentation about 18th and 19th century Travellers (as opposed to the Roma, who are better-documented) beyond the fact that they existed, so I plan to read everything 20th century I can get my hands on and do my best to extrapolate backwards from there. It won't be perfect, but at least I'll have tried.

On the leisure reading side, I finished my April book for my 2011 buy-and-read challenge (wherein I buy and read at least one book a month, to keep things from gathering dust in my to-be-read pile forever), Julia Spencer-Fleming's One Was a Soldier. It's the seventh in a series, so you don't want to start here, but if you'd like a good character-driven mystery series with a strong sense of place, go get In the Bleak Midwinter and start reading. I rarely read contemporary fiction--I live here/now, why do I need to read about it?--but Spencer-Fleming's characters are so vivid and appealing, and their upstate New York community is a character in its own right, one different enough from my own everyday world to give me that "going on a journey" feeling I crave from my literary escapism.

I'm also revisiting some of the Sunfire YA historicals that introduced me to the romance genre back in the 80's. I was charmed by Amanda, the inaugural Sunfire, and I expected to feel the same way about Sabrina. It's by the same author, Candice Ransom, and I remember finding it swooningly romantic when I read it at 15.

Unfortunately, it didn't work as well for the adult me as Amanda did. It's a shorter book--around halfway through Sunfire's run, the page count got slashed by about a third--and the hero and heroine's relationship development suffers as a consequence. I didn't feel like they knew each other well enough to commit to a life together by the end. Oh, and the heroine looks exactly like I wished I looked when I was 15, and like the heroines I wrote into my unfinished teen manuscripts, complete with rarely-found-in-nature coloring--black hair that shone almost purple in the sun! aquamarine eyes!

I'll keep reading Sunfires, though. It's always fun to revisit one's youth.

Release Day!

Today is release day for my SECOND novel (which I think means I get to call myself multi-published now, woohoo!), A Marriage of Inconvenience.

I got a lovely review at Heroes and Heartbreakers. Also, Carina Press is offering my first book, The Sergeant's Lady at half price through April 29.

Six Sentence Sunday - Release Day Eve

Since A Marriage of Inconvenience releases tomorrow (and can be purchased from Carina, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or All Romance, just to name a few), it seemed only fitting to post six more sentences from it before moving on to my current works-in-progress.

This week, something from James and Lucy's wedding night. Lucy's nerves are at war with her desires:

Freeing her hair was not the work of an instant, and Lucy was captured in the circle of his arms as James gently, carefully unwound the braid. His breath was warm against her neck, and after a tense moment she sighed and rested her cheek against his. Her nerves seemed heightened somehow; she was exquisitely aware of the contrast between the skin along his cheekbones, almost as soft as her own, and the faint rasp of beard stubble too short to see.

Still unbraiding her hair, James rested his face more closely against hers, then drew back to nuzzle her, nose to nose, and kiss her again. It was a gentle yet probing kiss, their tongues in a sort of leisurely, playful duel, and it did not end until he leaned back to fan her long hair around her, running his fingers through it.

“I’ve been wanting to do this since the day I met you,” he said.

As always, comments are welcome, and stop by the Six Sunday mothership for links to other authors' posts. Also, my blog tour for this book just started, and I'm giving away two copies this weekend. Stop by Romancing the Past to read a longer excerpt or by Risky Regencies, where I talk about my inspiration for the story and what makes A Marriage of Inconvenience a risky book. Leave a comment at either or both for a chance to win.

A Marriage of Inconvenience Blog Tour

A Marriage of Inconvenience releases Monday, and over the next couple of weeks I'll be visiting some of my favorite blogs to talk about the book, my writing, and my inspirations. At most of my tour stops, I'll be giving away a copy of the book to one lucky commenter. Here's the schedule as it stands now:

Saturday, April 9
Excerpt at Romancing the Past

Sunday, April 10
Q&A at Risky Regencies

Monday, April 11
Publication, the Second Time Around (With Bonus Cabana Boys!) at Romance Writer's Revenge

Tuesday, April 12
Horse Shopping With My Characters at History Hoydens

Wednesday, April 13
My First Time (um, that's my first time FINISHING A MANUSCRIPT, get your minds out of the gutter) at the Carina blog

Thursday, April 14
First Person vs. Third Person at Debuts & Reviews

Excerpt at The Season for Romance

Friday, April 15
Houses in Historicals at Historical Hussies

Saturday, April 16
Control Freaks in Love at Fresh Fiction

Sunday, April 17
TBD at Elaine Golden's blog

Tuesday, April 19
TBD at Rose Lerner's blog

Wednesday, April 20
TBD at Petit Fours and Hot Tamales

An Overnight Success (or Not) at Happy Writer

April Madness Update

So far I'm actually managing to write every day, just as I vowed for April. On two occasions it's been less than a page, with me just sitting down at the keyboard to pound out a few paragraphs or a snatch of dialogue before bed so I don't break my streak.

Thing is, I feel like that's more worthwhile than it sounds on the surface. It keeps the manuscript at the front of my mind, keeps my focus on what needs to happen in the NEXT few paragraphs or pages. And it reinforces my commitment to myself to be a writer producing new work even without the immediate pressure of a contract and deadlines.

I'm still playing with the Dragon software. This weekend I really need to sit down with the manual and figure out how to train my Dragon, though. I'm getting sick of its persistence in typing "Lassie" and "Klansmen" when the lassie in question is a girl, not a collie, and the clansmen are a good 60-70 years too early and on the wrong side of the ocean to be committing racist atrocities while garbed in white sheets. Oh, and when I worked on a to-do list, it kept typing "right" when I wanted "write" no matter how many times I said "show recognition window" and chose the latter from the options presented.

And don't even get me started on the Dragon's problems with capitalizing dialogue tags when the speech being tagged ends with a question mark or exclamation point.

Six Sentence Sunday revisits A Marriage of Inconvenience

This week we're back in my April 11 release, A Marriage of Inconvenience. Last week we saw the hero, James, through his sister's eyes, and this week James gives us his perspective on Lucy, the heroine. (This is from a bit earlier in the story, before James and Lucy are engaged.)

“So, brother,” she said with unconvincing casualness, “what’s the trouble between you and Miss Jones?”

“Nothing,” he said. “She’s a very sweet girl.” Now, that was damning with faint praise. The more he knew Lucy Jones, the less he would describe her as anything so insipid as “sweet.” No, her flavor was sharp and complex, with the faint bitterness of fine wine.

Comments and feedback are always welcome, and do stop by the main blog and check out other writers' excerpts.

A happy anniversary - no foolin'!

Unpublished writers dream of The Call (always with capital letters). That's the happy day when an editor tells you she wants to buy your book, and you are magically transformed from writer to Author (I always capitalized that one in my mind, too). I dreamed of The Call for years. I'd even rehearsed exactly what I was going to say to Mr. Fraser when I called him to tell him the news.

A year ago today, as I was walking back to my office after lunch, I remember thinking about my current submissions, and how some of them were approaching the editor or agent's usual response time. I decided I was OK with not getting The Call that day, because it felt a little weird to have such a major, life-changing event on April Fool's Day. Also, I was recovering from laryngitis and could still barely talk, so I would just as soon not have to deal with any calls, mundane or momentous.

Less than an hour later, I noticed I had a new message in my Gmail folder, so I got to a stopping place in my work and checked to see what it was, expecting a note from my husband or something from one of my writing email loops. To my absolute amazement, it was from Angela James at Carina offering to publish The Sergeant's Lady. She even apologized for sending The Email instead of giving me The Call--she was home with a sick kid whose coughing made phone conversations difficult.

I was thrilled and amazed. I'd been submitting manuscripts for years and was beginning to believe for the rest of my life I'd follow the same ritual of sending out queries and getting rejected. Now someone wanted to buy my manuscript?! That really happens?!

But I didn't act out that script I'd spent years envisioning. I couldn't scream for joy, because laryngitis, and also because I'd recently started working in a cube farm. I couldn't CALL my husband--again, the laryngitis--so I opened chat windows with him and one of my critique partners to squee and boggle. I just looked up the chat transcripts (I love how Gmail makes it easy to save EVERYTHING), and I have to share the opening of the conversation with my CP:

2:07 PM
me: hey!

2:08 PM
OMG OMG OMG!

S: ??????

me: Carina Press wants to buy TSL!

S: OMG OMG

YAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

me: bounce bounce bounce bounce


Good thing I'm more articulate in my books, huh?

A year later, I'm happy to be where I am. Like other big life events in my experience, getting published changes everything and yet changes nothing--it doesn't (usually) solve your old problems, and you still have all your old blessings, but there's a new layer of joys and challenges. And nothing, but nothing, beats people other than your critique partners and family reading and loving your work, whether it's that first editor who wants to buy it or a reader who sends you fan mail once it's out.