My New Favorite Song

Random Wednesday Rant

Be warned, last night when I went to the grocery store to raid the Ben & Jerry's aisle, it wasn't because I was in a good mood. Got it?!?

So to begin: shame shame shame on Harlequin for Be Mine. It's a book with 3 novellas and cruising hard on Jennifer Crusie's name. Now Ms. Crusie had said that the story they're using, Sizzle, was an early one and she is not proud of it. There's a reason for that. Because it's shit.

It's hard for me not to love the Crusie-meister but really, that story is shit on ice. The hero is one of the most obnoxious heroes ever and the heroine didn't really fall in love with him, she was possessed by Donna Reed and after a nice exorcism she'll be fine.

I actually have never before read a romance where I knew there'd be no HEA. And even though Sizzle ends with a pretend HEA, that couple would never make it to the altar. And if they did, divorce court within a year.

Honestly, I needed the B&J Phish Food after that one.

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Anya Bast announced on Facebook that she has breast cancer and is scheduled for a mastectomy next week.

Give me the B&J Peanut Butter Cup please.

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My boss stood in front of me yesterday, pissed beyond belief about an action I took to see that they stop dicking around with my paycheck (I created a form to be signed by me and them for any exceptions to my pay-- horrible, right?) and she told me how horrible I am at my job.

I'm not horrible at my job, by the way.

But she gave a list of complaints about my lack of professionalism, my sense of humor and all the things that make me, well, me. Things that the patients are always telling me they love about me.

What killed me was that she was standing telling me I wasn't professional enough at the front desk while my co-worker was sitting next to me on Facebook while she was talking and she didn't even care.

B&J's Boston Cream Pie on that one.

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I owe more taxes.

**sigh**

Just empty the ice cream aisle into my cart now.

I'm also getting pissed as hell with the continuing anti-Obama crap I hear everywhere. And to the people who think that further gun control wouldn't stop more senseless tragedies: you gotta be kidding me.

How can people fight over the right to own an automatic weapon and yet claim abortion is murder?

And to the man who stood in front of my desk and told me that the military is now being asked if they'd be willing to fire on American civilians, what the fuck are you smoking dude?

This world is batshit. I'm going to hide under my bed for awhile.

Meet Jessi Gage and Her Well-Hung Highlander

We're excited to introduce a wonderful new author who dared to go where we love wonderful, new authors to go and that's under the kilt.

So meet Jessi Gage, the new gal in town with a great sense of humor, an awesome hero and someone we old farts are excited to chat with.



Wishing for a Highlander, out with Lyrical Press, is about a single and pregnant museum worker who gets sent back in time 500 years by an artifact in her Scottish Immigrants exhibit and finds herself face to face with a real-life romance hero. Here’s the blurb:

While examining Andrew Carnegie’s lucky rosewood box, single-and-pregnant museum worker Melanie makes a tongue in cheek wish on the artifact--for a Highland warrior to help her forget about her cheating ex. Suddenly transported to the middle of a clan skirmish in sixteenth-century Scotland, she realizes she should have been a tad more specific.

Darcy, laird in waiting, should be the most eligible bachelor in Ackergill, but a cruel prank played on him in his teenage years has led him to believe he is too large under his kilt to ever join with a woman. He has committed himself to a life of bachelorhood, running his deceased father's windmills and keeping up the family manor house...alone.

Darcy's uncle, Laird Steafan welcomes the strangely dressed woman into his clan, immediately marrying her to Darcy in hopes of an heir. But when Steafan learns of her magic box and brands her a witch, Darcy must do what any good husband would--protect his wife, even if it means forsaking his clan.

WARNING: A pregnant museum worker, a sixteenth-century Scot, and a meddlesome wishing box.

 

 

Buy Links:

Amazon Barnes & Noble

All Romance eBooks

Carolyn and I have talked about doing a time travel book but we can't agree on when in time to travel to (I want dinosaur shifters but she refuses). What made the idea of time travel attractive to you?

Thank you, Lori and Carolyn, for having me on Old Farts. I’m so excited to be here! Let me hitch up my pants, fluff my iron-gray curls and jump right in.

One of my favorite authors is Karen Marie Moning. Her Fever series is impeccable and powerful, but it was her Highland romances that drew me in first. She started out with time travel, sending her modern-day heroines back in time to charm the kilts off of unsuspecting lairds and warriors. Reading KMM gave me so many exciting ideas, I just had to write them down. One thing led to another and BAM! I had a time-travel romance.

How does a modern woman cope with the 16th century? (Carolyn, I believe was born back then and has adapted well). What about your heroine?

LOL! Glad to know Carolyn has adapted. No easy task with all these new fangled conveniences like refrigerators and water heaters and interwebs.

Melanie is such a champ when she finds herself 500 years in the past. It helps that she’s a museum worker with a passion for history, especially Scottish history. It also helps that she’s got a 6’7” hero to protect her and her unborn baby while they run for their lives all over the beautiful Highlands. Besides, she’s so intent on seducing him, she hardly notices the lack of modern conveniences.

I love me an alpha male and Darcy sounds like a perfect alpha. Was he inspired by anyone or anything specific?

Darcy is definitely alpha in some respects, like whenever he has a Highland broadsword in his hand. But a prank played on him in his formative years left him insecure about his manhood to the point where he refuses to attempt intimacy with a woman. This gives him a vulnerable beta quality that made him so endearing to write, and I hope endearing to readers. Inspiration? I’ve never read anyone quite like Darcy. I think he just came from a place inside me that craved a hero with incredible strength mixed with tender vulnerabilities.

Um, so Darcy has a rather monumental baseball bat of love. Who inspired that? (Tell all, we love us some smutty talk.)

LOL! I love the metaphor! Well, every hero in romance seems to have inches to spare. Heroines everywhere go wide eyed with mingled lust and trepidation and wonder how it’s going to fit. Heroes everywhere throw their shoulders back and preen and always know just what to do with their “baseball bats of love.” I wanted to turn that concept on its head and write a hero who had a complex about the size of his bat and truly had no idea what to do with it. I wanted my heroine to be the one in the know and have to draw my hero out of his shell. And let me tell you, it was fun to put the seductive power completely in Melanie’s hands. Talk about knowing what to do with it! That gurl was not afraid of Darcy’s big bat *winks*.

And because I'm always interested in other writer's journies: When did you write your first book? What was your road to publication?

I have a typical 200+ rejections story, but I prefer to think of it as a single-shining-moment story. Wishing for a Highlander is my first publication, but it’s my fifth full-length novel. I found an audience for it when a blog by the name of Word Wranglers hosted Lyrical Press editor Piper Denna in a three-line pitch contest. At first, Piper thought my plot sounded a lot like Outlander (heroine time-travels and is forced to marry a rough and tough Highland warrior). But she gave me a shot and requested my synopsis. That turned into a request for the full manuscript, and the rest is history! I’ve loved every step of working with Lyrical and am so proud to be publishing with a small press.

Do you do anything special to prepare to write? )(I can't write unless I've cleaned the house and Carolyn can't write unless she's wearing her bunny slippers.)

LOL! If clean house was a requirement, I’d get nothing written. Ever. I’ve got two little ones that I stay home with, so there’s really no such thing as preparing to write. I always have the laptop on, and I give it 10 minutes here, 10 minutes there in between bouts of chaos. Nap times and after bedtimes are the BEST for writing! As far as rituals, I have to have Tweetdeck up and I have to check it constantly. Whenever I’m stuck in writing, I get my tweet on and then I get back to writing and the words seem to flow better. Whatever works, right?

Any other titles for sale?

My contemporary romance Road Rage will be out with Lyrical in June! In the mean time, I’m working hard on a sequel to Wishing for a Highlander. It’ll be called The Wolf and the Highlander, and it will tell the story of Wishing’s villainess, Anya.

For more information about Wishing for a Highlander, I’d love folks to stop by my website. Here are the buy links for anyone inclined to check out Darcy’s “monumental baseball bat of love”. LOL!

Thanks again for hosting me today on Old Farts! I had a blast!

My Experience Is Not Your Experience

Carolyn and I share a lot of books and we've discovered that certain books we both adore and many of our DNF's are the other's pleasure.

In other words, we have different tastes.

Because we're different people.

And even if we shared the exact same lives and experiences, we'd still be different people with a different perspective on things. Which is good.

Experience and how we process it, taints everything we do and how we live it.

I cannot read child abuse because I lived it and it left such a deep scar that my experience doesn't allow any open doors regarding it. If a child is hurt in a book, usually I'll stop readng. I almost couldn't read Lisa Kleypas' Christmas in Friday Harbor because it begins with a young girl losing her mother and her pain takes her voice away. That hurt me deeply and almost ended the book for me.

Right now I'm reading a book that I'm enjoying a lot and the heroine reacted to a situation in a way that I thought was ridiculous. But a part of me recognized that I wouldn't react that way to something but it didn't mean that someone else wouldn't.

I also realize that when someone experiences something I also did but has a different reaction to it, it doesn't negate mine nor does mine negate hers.

Anyway, this is all in response to some of the tiresome criticism I've read recently where books are dismissed because the author wrote an experence or life event that didn't match the reviewers. I mean, seriously?

A TSTL heroine is just that. But a woman who loses a child might wallow in sorrow for the rest of her life. Or she might get up the next day and just get on with it. She might become an advocate against guns or disease or whatever took her child away. She might have another child immediately.

People are different. Isn't that one of the reasons we read? To experience life through someone else's eyes?

Witty Wonderland

Over on SMart Bitches is a wonderful review of Be Mine, a Harlequin book with 3 novellas, by Jennifer Crusie, Victoria Dahl and Shannon Stacey. The review is really positive and mentions the wit and wordplay that is ever present in the best of Crusie and Dahl (I don't know Stacey at all).

But it got me thinking about what I lovelovelove about books and my favorite thing is wit. I adore witty dialogue and banter. Love it in books, love it in life.

One of the reasons Carolyn is my best friend is because of our word play (okay, she's also generous, funny, loving and shares her boob obsessed hubby).... but whether on the phone or instant messaging, we like to play with conversation and try to outwit each other.

Which also leads me to one of the coolest things I've experienced lately which was my co-worker met a boy and they were flirting via text the next day. It was light and funny and laced with romance and I was a very happy observer. It was a great pleasure.

So that's what I love. I try to live it as much as I can and write it to the best of my ability. But when Jennifer Crusie lets go (or Loretta Chase or any good chick litty type) my happiness goes into overdrive and I'm in reader's bliss.

Why Self Publishing Makes Sense

All my life I wanted to be a published author. I wanted that even when I didn't write books. I wanted that when I started learning to write books. I want that now.

Years ago I sold my first novel to Lyrical Press and it was a brilliant experience. I sold other books to them and to other small presses. I never made money, not really. A stray $30 check here or $10 check there. One press paid me $50 and now I earn $0.98 royalty checks from them on an almost monthly basis.

So tax time is here and I'm getting my 1099s from publishers and all and it's a killer. Last year I made $43.00 with Lyrical. And I had 2 releases with them.

I made $65.00 with Barnes and Noble. From self pubbing.

I still have to get my Amazon stuff together but that's probably going to be about $300.00. I know it isn't a lot, not in comparison to a lot of other writers but compare that to Lyrical.

I'm not a great writer and I'm not a popular writer but my books get decent reviews and are enjoyed by readers. My publisher provides decent editing and covers but what else? They send the books to review sites which are small and generate no sales.

I put my own books up on Amazon, B&N, Smashwords (which includes Apple), Kobo and All Romance. My full length novels I can POD publish on CreateSpace. I have programs that make formatting easy peasy, I have my lovely Lea who makes rocking covers and I can put my own books on review sites to be ignored.

And I make a shiz load more money.

This year I intend to release a few books that are all part of a series (that started with Yesterday's Headline). I'll play with prices and promotion. My goal is to bring the sales numbers up and get a little recognition.

Nobody else can do this for me, I now realize. So I'll do it for myself. And now let someone else collect 60% of my earnings as I do it.

Happy Birthday Carolyn!