Katriena Knights

The Rhythm Of The Words

2012-01-24T09:00:00.000-07:00

For me, there is a certain rhythm to writing a book. It’snot something I can just sit down and do, word after word, sentence aftersentence, progressing through a logical sequence until the story has spunitself out on my page. There are, instead, phases to the process. Some of thesephases look like active artistry. Others look like pre-work or preparation.Still others look like failure.

It’s taken me a long time to learn to trust this process,and in many ways I still don’t. I look at it askance, wondering if the piecesthat feel like failure really are, if this is the time that the sequence willfall apart, like a zipper that has suddenly lost a vital tooth.

Because it feels that way sometimes—no, every time—when thatspot comes in the writing when all the pieces are there, but they’re scattered,some here, some there, some ends tied off neatly, others frayed and broken.They couldn’t possibly all come together to form that final, tight weave thatfashions story.

But they do. Eventually, they do.

I can’t make them do this. Sometimes sitting down to write,putting pen to paper, is enough to coax the flow and bring the various bitsinto alignment. But other times putting pen to paper is an exercise infutility. Nothing comes, or if it does come, it’s forced and twisted, broken,or it’s like trying to weave a stick into fine linen. It just doesn’t fit.

It’s then that I have to wait. It takes such patience, suchtrust, to just wait. I want to dive into the story again, to find all thoseloose bits and make them no longer loose, but on the days that require waiting,they simply won’t fold into each other. They’re ragged and sharp and stubborn.They don’t want to be.

Waiting, though. Waiting with the words, with the pieces.Hiding from them. Letting them hide from you. Lifting them into the light andexamining them, like jewels under a loupe, looking for the flaws and theperfections. Ignoring them, then examining them far too closely.

It’s this constant handling, dropping, picking up andexamining that finally lets me find the pieces where a story line has goneastray, or the place where I planted a clue I didn’t even know I’d written.When I find the flaws and the ways to smooth them out, or the underlying themesI didn’t know were there. Only then, after this careful and constant, trustingsearch, can I finally pull all those pieces together into a unified whole.

Only with the constant, steady practice can you learn totrust those silences. Only when you’ve let the process happen time after time,watching it, exploring it, can you truly believe that the story will find itsway, with you or without you.

Constancy. Practice. Diligence. Trust. When these all cometogether, the result is the miracle that is a completed work of written art.

Links for Your Perusal

2012-01-20T09:00:00.000-07:00

Livia Blackburne--How to Incorporate Backstory that Hooks the Reader.

A Newbie's Guide to Publishing--Konrath's Resolutions for Writers 2012. A little late, but hey, it's still January.

Jodi Hedlund--How to Drive Yourself Crazy as a Writer. Ways to make your life a LIVING HELL!! Read the article. Avoid the practices.

Write it Forward (Bob Mayer)--12 Daring Predictions from the Indie Author Trenches. Thought-provoking stuff.

Jane Friedman--Guest post by Brad King--The Design of Authorship. What does it really mean to be an author? How is technology changing that definition?

The 99 Percent--Setting the Scene for a Productive Day. Using your environment to trigger more productive work sessions.

Study Hacks--Flow is the Opiate of the Mediocre: Advice on Getting Better from an Accomplished Piano Player. Yeah, it's about piano playing, but easily adaptable to any artistic endeavor.

Justine Musk--How to Flunk Social Media.

Dean Wesley Smith--New World of Publishing: Failure is an Option. Quitting is Not. Excellent advice on goalsetting.

Writer Unboxed (Jane Friedman)--The Secret to Finding the Time to Write, Market, Promote and Still Have a Life.

Why Being Edited Is Like Getting Your Eyebrows Waxed

2012-01-17T09:00:00.000-07:00


I only wish my eyebrows looked this good. sxc.hu/heidijean

I have bushy, annoying eyebrows. They have a good generalshape, but they develop extra growth all around the edges and sometimes decidethey want to try to make a unibrow. It’s pretty annoying. I hate to pluckbecause it hurts, and I’m a huge wimp. I’ve tried threading, and got greatresults, but wow—I nearly passed out. My tattoo hurt less than that.

So my eyebrow grooming approach of choice is waxing. Theylet you lie down on a massage table, or sit in a comfy chair, and they putnice, warm wax on your eyebrows. Then they rip it off in one fell swoop. Yeah,it hurts, but it’s over quickly, unlike plucking and threading, where they justkeep ripping stuff out in one horrifying stab of pain after another.

Oh, but then the waxers aren’t done. Because after they wax,then they pluck. They have to clean upall along the edges, get the shape just right, and get your eyebrows lookinglike they both belong on the same face. It’s a tricky business. And sometimesthey take out too much, and you have to go to the grocery store and buy eyebrowpencils. Or they don’t take out enough, and you wonder why the heck you gavethem your hard-earned $15, plus tip, just to wave the wax in the vicinity ofyour still-hirsute brow.

How is this like editing? If you haven’t figured it out bynow, I’m guessing you’ve never been diligently edited.

You start with rewrites. Not always, but often. You get amanuscript back that you thought was in pretty good shape, but it’s all annotatedwith bits about how you have holes in your plot, or your characterizationsaren’t consistent. Scattered throughout are probably bits of detritus likespelling errors, grammar mistakes, typos, formatting issues, etc. So you grityour teeth and do the work, figuring hey, as much markup as there is here,there can’t be much more left to do after this, right?

Wrong.

The story comes back again. Move this word here or overthere. Is this the right word? This sentence doesn’t quite make sense. I thinka comma here would make things clearer. And maybe this happens two or threemore times, until your eyes are watering from the pain and all you really wantis for somebody to spread that nice lavender oil over your eyebrows so the painwill go away and everything won’t look all red and swollen.

But the tweaking is an important part of the process. It’sthe fine-tuning that gives you just the right quirks so you can have entireconversations with the lift of a brow. You’re striving for—well, notnecessarily perfection, but something clean and sleek that fits your style.It’s worth the pain in the end.

Beware, however, of the editor who plucks too long (and theauthor shouldn’t do this either). Too much tweaking, and you’re scrambling forthe eyebrow pencil to get some semblance of your personality back. But perhapsworse than that is the editor who doesn’t do enough, and leaves your manuscriptonly partially shaped, its unibrow glaringly obvious for all to see.

Friday Links

2012-01-13T09:30:00.000-07:00

Patricia C. Wrede--When They Don't Wanna. What to do when your characters get all recalcitrant n stuff.

Passive Income Author--5 Clever Tactics to Get More E-Book Sales per Reader. Non-hokey ways to keep your readers coming back for more.

Anne R. Allen's Blog--Guest post by Roni Loren--Why One Author Chose Traditional Publishing--and How to Decide if It's Right for You. Thoughts on the pros and cons of traditional vs. indie.

Mystery Writing is Murder--Inexpensive Ways to Improve Your Writing or Get Published in 2012. Need help with your professional development goals for 2012? Find some ideas here.

Publishing Perspectives--Guest post by Jane Friedman--Experimenting with Serials for Fun and Profit. Some ideas about publishing series and serial fiction as well as pros and cons of this approach.

Publetariat--5 Proofreading Techniques Every Talented Writer Should Know. Ways to break down your proofreading tasks for efficiency and effectiveness.

Kidlit.com--Big Revision. Big revisions vs. "tinkering" with the manuscript.

Jody Hedlund--Write Tight--3 Pieces of Advice I Wish I'd Known Earlier. Advice on streamlining your writing.

Indies Unlimited--Writing Exercises Return With a Twist! Fun for those who like regular writing prompts.

Why Editing is Like Sculpting a Masterpiece

2012-01-10T09:00:00.000-07:00

Editing: Finding beauty in chaos. sxc.hu/andyvu

Editing is an art every bit as much as writing is. It takes a careful hand to shape a book to be its best self while maintaining the author's voice and staying true to her original vision.

When I edit, which I do almost as much as I write--some days more--I try to address the story on several levels.

The story level. Does everything make sense? Is the structure compelling, leading the reader from one scene to the next without confusion? Does it meet the requirements for the genre? Are the characters consistent?
Story detail level. Here's where I look at things like description consistency--eye color, clothes, hair color, spelling of names--things authors sometimes change by accident as they're writing.
Grammar and clarity. This can be tricky, as this part of the process drills down to the author's choices word-by-word. Sometimes markup here is easy--if a sentence is grammatically incorrect, or the author uses the wrong word, changes need to be made. If a sentence throws me off as a reader, so that I don't understand what the author is trying to say, then that too should be addressed. However, if a sentence structure, word choice, or grammatical construction is integral to the author's voice, then changes should be carefully considered. Sometimes there's a find line between a stylistic choice and an easily understandable sentence, though, and it's important to keep the author on the right side of that line, for the sake of the reader.

In many ways, this process is like carving a sculpture. Anything that gets in the way of the story itself is removed or modified. Large issues come first, then lower level issues are carefully chipped and carved away.

Unfortunately, this can't always be accomplished in one editing pass. Sometimes it takes one pass for the larger issues and other passes for the fine-tuning. Then the editing really becomes like sculpting--taking away the larger bits first, then working down to the details. When this takes severla passes, it can be frustrating for the author, but the best editors always ahve the best interests of hte story at heart, even when it feels like they're being overly picky or obsessing over every detail. In the end, if you and your editor work well together, your story will be the better for the hard work.

Next time: Why Being Edited is Like Getting Your Eyebrows Waxed.

New Year's Linky Links!

2012-01-06T15:57:00.000-07:00

Talk to YoUniverse: Tightening Your Plot by Layering. A great checklist for one element of rewrites.

Palm Beach Pulse: Palm Beacher James Patterson's 10 Tips to Improve Your Writing. Good advice, regardless of your personal opinions on Patterson's writing.

Etexts from University of Virginia Library: Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses, by Mark Twain. I started to read The Last of the Mohicans, and I have to say my opinion of the writing was much like Twain's. I recommend watching the movie instead. It has a better plot and 100% more Daniel Day Lewis in buckskins.

Marketing Tips for Authors: 15 Commandments for Getting FREE Publicity by Carolyn Howard-Johnson. Some ideas to expand your list of promo ideas.

Writer's Digest: How to Use an Outline to Write a First Draft.

Writer's Digest: 50 Simple Ways to Build Your Platform in Five Minutes a Day. A long list with a lot of ideas.

Jody Hudlund: How Much Time Should Writers Devote to Social Media? Useful guidelines based on where you are in your writing career.

SFWA: Fantasy Worldbuilding Questions. A comprehensive guide to worldbuilding for fantasy authors. Probably good for other sorts of authors as well.

Ebpublishing a Book: Promotion Stages. There are several parts to this series. It's worth a click-through.

Idea Growth--Ring of Darkness

2012-01-03T09:00:00.000-07:00

Ring of Darkness was another book that took a very long timeto arrive in its current form. I think I had the basic idea, of an arrangedmarriage and a magical threat, cooked up some time in Jr. High (yeah, they callit middle school now—whatever). In fact, I have another partial manuscriptlying around somewhere with a similar plot seed.

The story itself, though, didn’t come to fruition untilabout 1993. I remember writing big chunks of it while I was at home onmaternity leave with my now 18-year-old son. I would type with one hand whilehe was nursing in the bend of the other arm. I had set a goal at that time ofwriting at least one page in my steno notebook (about 220 words) every day, buteven a paragraph or two felt like a major accomplishment. (I was obsessed withsteno notebooks back then. I wrote everything in them, because they fit in mypurse and I could carry them anywhere. I gravitate to Moleskines now for thesame reason.)

The very first version of this book I shared with an onlinegroup I belonged to at the time (still belong to, actually). The read itchapter by chapter and provided feedback. When I finished and had done myediting pass, I sent it out to a few publishers, with no luck. It went into thedrawer for a while after that.

I know I fiddled with the book off and on for a while, butthe revision I really remember occurred in the winter of 2001. Ring of Darknesswas the first book I dove back into after 9/11, and served as part of myemotional recovery. I don’t recall what changes I made, but I remember beingprofoundly relieved that I could write at all. It had been hard to put wordstogether for a while.

I submitted the book a few other places overthe years, but it finally found a home at Noble Romance last year.

Idea Growth: Hunters of the Moon

2011-12-27T09:30:00.000-07:00

The growth of Hunters of the Moon was about as different from that of Darkness as it's possible to get. I had been collecting info on a variety of anthology submission calls. One asked for werewolves in an urban fantasy setting. I pulled it out and mulled the idea for a couple of days.

The seed of plot I started with involved Sara, the Hunters, and the tattoos used in the story to control the shift from human to werewolf. I also scribbled the last line of the story in one of my notebooks. That line remains almost intact--I think I changed a word or two. There wasn't much else to it when I sat down to write.

When I wrote this story, I just took a pen and a notebook to Starbucks and scribbled the entire first draft in a couple of hours. The other plot elements fell into place as I was writing, and by the time I was halfway through, I knew exactly how the plot was going to wrap up.

Until I got there. I reached a spot in the story where we discover something important about the werewolf Sara has been pursuing. I started to write the sentence that would reveal the secret--and then I stopped.

I stopped because my brain was screaming a completely different sentence at me, one I'd never considered. I sat there for a minute just staring at the paper. Inside my head, things went something like this:

"Wait, what?"
"Yes! JUST WRITE IT!"
"Seriously? But I thought it was--"
"IT ISN'T! LISTEN TO ME FERPETESAKE!"
"Seriously?"

In the end, my brain got its way. I figured I'd go ahead and write the ending that way and then change it later if it didn't work. But it did work. So I didn't change it.

I submitted the story to the anthology, and it was rejected. Instead, it's found a home at Etopia.

Have you ever had a story that surprised you like that? If so, please share. I'd hate to think I'm the only one who sits at Starbucks while weird conversations go on in my head.

Friday Linkage

2011-12-23T09:44:00.000-07:00

Social Media Examiner: 5 Tips for Creating Sharable Blog Content.

Jane Friedman: Platform and Social Media Must Not Be Your Center.

eReads.com: Publishing Confidential. Interesting information on confidentiality clauses in publication contracts.

WritingSpirit.com (Julie Isaac): 3 Powerful Book Writing Tools: Acknowledge, Allow and Appreciate.

How to Plan, Write and Develop a Book (Mary Carroll Moore): Embracing the Scary Project--Why Bravery on Demand Can Help Your Writing.

The Writer's Technology Companion: How to Set SMART Writing Goals.

The World According to Maggie (Maggie Stiefvater): Dissecting Pages for Mood.

Write it Forward (Bob Mayer): Theme and Intent--Do You Know Yours?

Time.com: The Making of a Romance Novel Cover. A very entertaining short video.

Idea Growth: Darkness

2011-12-20T09:30:00.000-07:00

My short story, Darkness, arrived from Etopia Press on December 16th. This story has a long history, and for me an odd one.

I can't remember when the idea for Darkness first came to me. It's been a long time ago. When I found the story on my hard drive a few months ago, it looked like it might have originated with a writing prompt back when I was an active participant in the writing community on CompuServe. (Yes, I used CompuServe. I'm old. Get over it.)

However, there were two different versions of the story. One is the version that's coming out from Etopia. The other has much the same backstory and the characters have the same names, but the story has a much lighter tone and a very different plot.

At one point in its development, though, Darkness was a screenplay. I can't even remember now if the screenplay came before the short stories or vice versa. There are a couple of version of the that approach floating around, as well.

The thought that hit me the hardest when I started sorting through these old files was how much I'd allowed myself to play with these ideas. Now I tend to focus on a story and push it through to the end, rather than putting it into different molds to see how it fits. In away, this could be seen as a sign of growth in my writing. In another way, though, it seems sad that I spend so little time now indulging in that sense of play. Maybe I should try that approach again and see what falls out.

Darkness is available on Kindle
and Nook

Bits and Bobs for Christmas

2011-12-14T13:58:00.000-07:00

I've put a few items online for the Christmas season. They're at Yahoo! Voices. The reason I decided to post them there was that it was a quick and easy way to make the stories/poems available for free to you. I'll still make a bit of money if you read them at Yahoo, so please click over and take a gander.

This is an experiment, really, both in distribution and in content. I don't usually write poetry, for example, and I don't write to prompts all that often. But I've been doing both with this little venture, and I've been enjoying it. So I hope you'll take a look, and let me know if you like what you see!

Thanks!

Short story: Santa Gets a Job. I wrote this a long time ago, and I don't remember now why, except that I was thinking about kids' stories at the time. It's a goofy little tale about how Santa can't afford to feed himself or his reindeer. After he's done with his Christmas Eve business, he sets out to find a job. Santa, it appears, is a bit of a failboat.

Poem: Christmas Lights

Poem: Snow: A Winter Haiku It's a haiku. About winter...

Short story: Up on the Housetop. A short romance. Four days before Christmas, a man falls off Ash's roof. Could this be the start of a beautiful friendship?

Short story: Christmas at Farhallen. I published this story here last year for Christmas. It's a tie-in to the Starchild and Earthchild universe, but stands on its own pretty well, I think.

How Ideas Grow

2011-12-13T09:00:00.000-07:00

"Hail in the Flower Garden" by pcaputo

Hail has always fascinated me. Instead of falling straight from the clouds like rain, snow, or sleet, hail goes through a growth process. It's carried back up into the atmosphere multiple times, where it collects extra layers of ice. Each time it ascends, it comes back down with another layer. Eventually, it becomes heavy enough that it falls to the ground. If you slice open a hailstone, you can see all the layers of ice, like rings in a tree trunk, chronicling the stone's journey.

The journey of a story idea, for me, is similar. Ideas come to me in a fairly simplistic form--a character or a basic plot, for example. Then they go away for a while to knock around my subconscious. When they come back, they've collected a few more layers--more characters, or relationships, or subplots. A scene. A few lines of dialogue. At some point, these are enough layers that the idea accumulates the weight it needs to become a full-fledged story.

The amount of time it takes for this process to complete varies from project to project. But there's always a point where I just know the story is ready to go.

For the next couple of weeks, I'm going to discuss the origins and growth of some new releases I either have out or that are coming up. The stories I'd like to discuss had different incubation periods, and grew in very different ways.

What process do your stories usually go through before you commit them to paper? Please share in the comments.

And for Today's Linkage....

2011-12-09T09:30:00.000-07:00

Study Hacks: The Steve Martin Method: A Master Comedian's Advice for Becoming Famous. Not directly from Steve Martin, but still an interesting look into his career.

Seth Godin: Drip, Drip, Drip Goes the Twit. Marketing advice. Sort of a slow and steady wins the race kind of thing.

Copyblogger: How to Blog Like Bond. James Bond.
and a companion piece, Dr. Evil's 7 Tips for Achieving Worldwide Marketing Domination.

Wired: Need to Create? Get a Constraint.

Wired: 9 Equations True Geeks Should (at least pretend to) Know. Something makes me want to use these as writing prompts.

Nova Ren Suma: On Inspiration. Guest post by Alexander Chee.

Write it Forward (Bob Mayer): Kernel Idea Examples. Followup to last week's link on kernel ideas.

Editorrent: Paragraph Power...At the End. Interesting, quick post about rearranging a paragraph of dialogue for best impact.

Jody Hedlund: How to Keep Writing When the Honeymoon is Over.

What I’m Reading—The Help

2011-12-06T11:12:00.000-07:00

photo from bn.com. Affiliate link.

Like 40 bajillion other people in the world, I recently readKathryn Stockett’s The Help. It wasn’t until I was about halfway through thatI took a look at some of the reviews and realize what a polarizing work thebook actually is. With the arrival of the motion picture adaptation which, likemost motion picture adaptations, emphasizes certain elements of the story overothers, the backlash has become even more noticeable.

I liked the book. However, I didn’t read it. I listened toit. The audio book version of The Help is one of the best examples of the artof audio booking I’ve ever come across. And I think the awesomeness of theperformances might have made it harder for me to see what was really being saidthrough the course of the narrative. Hearing the voices of these charactersmade them seem like more than just words on a page. If the book had come intomy brain it through my eyeballs instead of my ears, I think my experience of itwould have been very different.

I liked the book. I recognize some of the more manipulativeelements in the story, and yes, Skeeter Phelan’s role as catalyst made meuncomfortable. But hearing those voices performed as they were made me feellike the book was more about women helping women that about a white womanfiltering the experiences of black women.

I don’t feel guilty about enjoying my experience of thebook. Thanks to the narrators, I felt as if I were in the company of threewonderful, strong women for the days I was listening to the story. I also thinkthat the engaging nature of the story, while in many ways undercutting thereality of the time, has made these issues and questions accessible to peoplewho might otherwise never have thought about it. Now people are talking—aboutwhat life was really like them, about what life is like for domestics now.About what the book misses, avoids, or misrepresents in its efforts to tellthat story.

So, yes, the book is flawed. Perhaps deeply so. But theconversation coming out of it is one that needs to happen and which might, inthe long run, help lead to necessary awareness and changes in the world aroundus.

Friday Links

2011-12-02T09:00:00.000-07:00

Novel Publicity & Co: Cease & Desist--10 Bad Twitter Practices to be Stopped Immediately! I agree with all except the bad language thing... *whistles innocently*

C. Hope Clark: A Writer is Multi-talented, Multi-directional. Don't limit yourself, peoples!

The Passive Voice: Constructing the Narrative Arc.

Mediactive: Author's To-Don't List. I would add--don't make a big honkin' using the wrong word error in a Author's To-Don't List, but that's because I haven't had my coffee or my Zoloft yet this morning. Still, good advice. (Extra points if you spot the error and post it in the comments.)

Carina Press Blog: Angela James: Don't Turn Your Passion Into an Obsession. Advice on avoiding burnout.

Livia Blackburne: Showcase the Sexy, but Don't False Advertise (and other lessons I learned writing my book pitch). Self-explanatory.

The 99 Percent: Op-Ed: In the Particular Lies the Universal. About finding the power of your own gifts and voice.

OpenForum: 11 Radical Slogans that will Change Your Business.

Copyblogger: The 5 Keys to Content Marketing Mastery. Applies to any sort of writing. Or other ventures, for that matter.

Write it Forward (Bob Mayer): The Kernel Idea: The Alpha and Omega of Your Book. Aimed at NaNoWriMo-ers, but solid advice for any writing venture.

Thoughts on writing—where do ideas come from?

2011-11-29T11:07:00.000-07:00

photo from sxc.hu by christgr

One of the first questions people tend to ask when yourevealed the terrible secret that you’re a writer is, Where do you get yourideas. (After, What do you write, at which point you have to decide whether tosay you’re working on the great American novel or books about vampires.) it’san interesting question, and one I’m never sure how to answer.

I get ideas everywhere. I carry little notebooks in my purseso I can jot ideas down when they drop by. I have notebooks, folders, filingcabinets, binders full of ideas. I wake up in the middle of the night withideas. My best friend feeds me ideas, usually as part of a nefarious plan toget me hooked on hockey.

I think most writers suffer not from a lack of ideas, butfrom idea overload. When I’m starting a new project, sometimes I look at the pileof ideas and have no idea where to start. Which one is the most marketable?Which one can I sell right away? Which one is most likely to land me an agent?It’s enough to paralyze the creative mind.

Capturing ideas can be tricky, too. Thus the notebooks. Buthow do you jot down an idea that comes as an image, or a feeling? Sometimes youcan’t. Then you have to let the idea move where it will, in and out ofconsciousness, until it appears in a form you can easily add to your idea pool.

Or what about that idea that just gets away from you? Theone that came to you at 2 a.m and you couldn’t wake up enough to write it down?If you’d written it down, it definitely would have been a bestseller, right?

Maybe, maybe not. My theory is that if it really was a goodidea, and one I was meant to have, then it’ll come back. It’s like that oldsaying: If you love something, set it free. Some people aren’t comfortable with thatidea. It used to bug me, too. Now I’m on medication.

Ideas come from everywhere, but the best ones can beelusive, or hard-won. These are the ideas that come back again and again,demanding to be written, each time with a few more layers, a bit more guidanceabout how the story should take shape. These are the ideas that are worth gold.When you find those, you’ll know. Capture them and let them grow.

Friday Links

2011-11-25T10:30:00.000-07:00

Gigaom: Kindle Lending: Book Publishers Still Not Getting It. And a lot of writers, too, it seems, based on my Twitter feed and other sources.

Jane Friedman: 10 Phrases to Purge from Your Speech and Writing. I mildly disagree to a couple of these, but others are high on my list of pet peeves. And seriously, how could anybody not care about ice hockey? I mean really.

Write2Publish: What's Wrong With Traditional Publishing and How to Save It. Discussion of changing business models and the disadvantages of venture capital approaches.

Glimmer Train: Territory. Discussion of thinking about the "territory" of your work--common themes you keep coming back to. I tend to keep writing about bitter divorcees. What is that about?

Findability: Twitter Automation Tools. Honestly, I debated including this link because it looks to me like THIS is the person who doesn't "get" Twitter. I mean, why the heck can't I tweet about what I had for dinner? (Last night it was Sonic. Again.) And OMG, don't use automatic DMs when people follow you. That's just annoying. But there are some tidbits here that I think I'm going to poke around with and see what falls out, so I'm passing the link along. Your mileage may vary.

Puck Daddy: Cool First-Person Hockey Practice, Now With Stick-Cam! This is just cool. You're welcome.

Jeff Goins: Why You Should Tell the Ugly Parts of Your Story.

Novel Publicity & Co: Look at Your Writing Through Somebody Else's Eyes. Thoughts on distancing yourself from the work during the editing process. And part II of this post is also a good read.

TN Tobias: 10 Ways to Create a Plot Twist. Has some spoilers for some films, so avoid if you're spoiler-phobic.

What I'm Reading--The Audio Book Experience

2011-11-22T11:00:00.000-07:00

photo from www.sxc.hu, by royalshot

I like audio books. I started listening to them a few yearsago more as an experiment than anything else, and discovered it was a great wayto spend my commute. Now that my commute involves rolling out of bed—andsometimes not even that—I listen to them at the gym or when I head out to thelibrary to work or down the hill to run errands.

The experience of listening to a book is unquestionablydifferent than that of reading it. Some books just don’t work well for me inaudio. I don’t like to listen to nonfiction, for example. And a poor readercould make a book very difficult to follow. A good reader, though—and there area lot of them—can turn the book into a performance that transcends the writtenversion.

I don’t think I’ve ever listened to a mediocre book that wasmade awesome by a good reader. I have found some good books that were made lessgood by a flat, boring or, in my opinion, clueless reader. Some readers managedto mispronounce things, or put emphasis on the wrong words in such a way thatit changes the meaning of the sentence.

With a really good reader, though, you can feel like you’resitting across the table from a friend who’s just telling you an awesome story.That’s when audio books really take off for me, and become an experience Iwouldn’t want to miss.

Some of my favorite audio books and readers:

The Outlander series, read by Davina Porter
Neil Gaiman—self-read and Anansi Boys
Sookie Stackhouse series
The Help
Davina Porter—Hamish Macbeth series

Friday Linky McLinkerson

2011-11-18T11:11:00.000-07:00

photo from sxc.hu by hugoslv

The Guardian: Don't Fear the Reader: How Technology can Benefit Children's Books. Needs more cowbell

Baekdal: Busted: The 99 Cents Book Failed Miserably. The title is misleading, imo. Read the whole article for the important part down at the end.

Lindsey Donner: 4 Clear Facts About the Future of Digital Content. Aimed more at businesses, but still an interesting read.

iamnoveling: NaNoWriMo: Breaking Through Writer's Block.

CIA Tracks Revolt by Tweet, Facebook. Fascinating read. Makes me wonder if you could write an entire international espionage novel that was nothing but Tweets and Facebook posts...

Writer Unboxed: On Rejection. Guest post about one writer's struggle after her first publication.

Drunk Writer Talk: Building a Platform. Should you? Shouldn't you? When should you? Why should you? Why am I not drunk right now?

Bubblecow: Editing Your Own Book: Top Ten Tips.

Steven Pressfield: The 10,000 Hour Rule. What it really means.

The Fall of Print: Why Future Self-Publishers May Tend to Earn More by Writing Less. Interesting breakdown of the evolving self-publishing model.

Good Grief Not Another Sports Metaphor

2011-11-15T11:30:00.000-07:00

ABOVE: Duncan Keith, hot hockey dude who works out a lot.

Athletes train. Well, duh, you say. Of course athletes train. Everybody knows that.

I knew that, too. But until my Evil Best Friend dragged me into the dubious clutches of hockey fandom, I didn't realize how extensive, pervasive and consuming that training was.

I don't know what I thought, really. Maybe that they worked out an hour or so per day on off-season, maybe a little harder during the regular season, made sure they didn't gain too much weight, etc., etc. Honestly, I hadn't thought about it that much.

Then, between the end of last season and the beginning of Blackhawks training camp, I watched some video that was released into the wild documenting the regimens of several hockey players during the off-season. Heavy, carefully targeted workouts to help recover from injuries or surgeries. Skating while attached to bungee cords. Balance exercises. Yoga. Pilates. Shoving an entire weight rack across a parking lot (with the weights still on it, I might add). Eating 7 to 8,000 calories a day, mostly chicken and protein shakes, to deliberately build 20 pounds of muscle. Weightlifting—while wearing skates in the gym.

Seriously. These dudes are hard-core. Duncan Keith spent the summer working out with a trainer, and when he showed up for medical testing before training camp, he broke the bike. (That part isn't a metaphor. There was a bike. He broke it.)

The workout and training portion is every bit as important as the part where they go out on the ice and fight over the puck. Maybe more so. Because without that extra muscle, without the heavy conditioning and the balance and coordination and stick-handling drills, they can't perform when the puck is dropped.

My question, then, is why don't writers pursue the same kind of practice? Musicians do—they spend hours and hours at the practice space working through every detail of a song before they take it on stage. Painters spend years learning basic shapes and forms and emulating the work of established classical artists. But all too often, writers just scribble a story down and send it out, without considering the elements that make it work, or the basic skills they give a story strength and staying power.

I think many of us should reconsider this. Where are your weaknesses in your writing? Where could you focus to refine your abilities?

There are a lot of ways you could develop this training program. Take a workshop, online or in person. Read a book about craft. Read someone else's book and analyze their techniques. Figure out what works for you in other people's writing and incorporate it into your own. Pick a successful author and emulate his or her style for a short piece to see how it “feels.”

I think too often we get wrapped up in producing work to sell, and don't think about writing as a practice. Try it for a while—intersperse some craft building activities into your regular writing schedule and see what happens. Do it in the gym, on skates. Break that damn bike. And if you figure out how to work in that eating 7000 calories a day thing, let me know

Friday Linky Lingage

2011-11-11T11:15:00.000-07:00

A cool mix of links this week, imo. Enjoy!

Patricia C. Wrede: To Sell Out... Thoughts on writers who think they have to "sell out" to land a best-seller or a contract. (To the commenter--no, that shouldn't be a comma. If it were, it'd be a comma splice, and comma splices are the work of Satan.)

Blue Rose Girls: How I Edit. An interesting breakdown of a professional editor's process. Mine's a little different, often because my deadlines are tighter than a bass player's leather pants.

Gigaom: On the Death of Book Publishers and Other Middlemen. Interesting discussion of self-publishing as well as the new models represented by Amazon and Kobo's direct contracts with authors.

Justine Musk: One Reason you Should Give Yourself Permission to Work on Your Badass Creative Project. Sing it, sister. Starting to realize I really, really like this blog.

paidContent.org: Kindle Free Book Lending Holy Sh*t! I'm seeing a lot of mixed feelings about this development. Me? I think it's awesome. Still some kinks to work out, of course, but yeah. Awesome.

Write for Your Life: Open Your Writing Mind with the Morning Papers. A discussion of the benefits of writing morning pages, a la Julia Cameron and The Artist's Way. I've tried these before with mixed results. Any insight from those who've had success with this practice?

Justine Musk: Are Fiction Writers Screwed, Part 2. This is about building platform, except it's not. Excellent post.

Jane Friedman: Self-Published Authors Have Great Power, But Are They Taking Responsibility? Didja really think we were going to make it through the week without a Jane Friedman link? If you did, you were sadly mistaken.

Have a great weekend!

Information Overload Part II

2011-11-08T10:00:00.000-07:00

Last week, I talked about organizing all the articles and blog posts I read throughout the week and turning them into mini-courses in Professional Development in order to develop myself professionally. However, there’s also a ton of material on these topics that’s only available in video or audio form. So how do you handle that?

Basically the same way.

Here’s what I do:

Follow the link. Watch maybe a minute of the video to see if it appeals (unless it’s really short—then watch the whole thing and see if it’s something you want to keep)
Download it to a folder. Organize these folders by topic and/or presenter
Collect numerous themed videos
Watch later, like a lecture series
…
Profit

Do podcasts the same way.

The only tricky part of this is the downloading bit. Some places really don’t want you downloading their video. I figure if they don’t want me downloading their video, then they’re not that committed to getting me to watch it. So I download it myself. (Please note—FOR MY OWN PERSONAL USE.)

There are several tools available to download video from YouTube and other places. Many of these work for almost any embedded video. If you’re on Firefox I recommend Download Helper or DownThemAll. If you’re not on Firefox, I apologize but you’ll have to Google your own tools. I never did find anything for Chrome that I was happy with, and if you’re on Explorer you have more problems than I can deal with here.

Anyway. There are also conversion tools you can use to convert video so you can play it on your iPod. (Some video is immediately playable on the iPod without conversion, and most podcasts are.) Going to the gym? Load up the iPod with video or podcasts on blogging success or how to turn your freakish obsession with vampires into profit and fame and plug it into the TV on the elliptical and have at it. We call that multitasking. It’s supposed to be bad for you, so I do it as often as possible. Or listen to podcasts in the car while you’re driving to the store for your vital medication (I don’t recommend watching video in the car unless someone else is driving).

I hope this helps you utilize some of the information you’re undoubtedly collecting, to make it easier to access and more relevant. Hopefully it’ll help us all get to step 6 more efficiently.

Friday Links

2011-11-04T09:31:00.001-06:00

A potpourri of links for this Friday:

ProBlogger: 65 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Blog. Some of these look useful. Some just look silly... lol. Your mileage may vary.

Convince and Convert: Don't Ignore Social Media's Research Value. Interesting stuff.

Poynter: What Movies, Comic Books and Songs Teach Us About Writing Powerful Scenes.

Rachelle Gardner: Novelists, Stop Trying to Brand Yourselves. Thoughts on how to present yourself as a fiction writer.

Jane Friedman: Back to Basics: Writing a Synopsis.

Kirkus MacGowan: My Path--Why I Chose Self-Publishing.

Justine Musk: Why You Have to Give it Away to be a Successful Creative.

Emery Road: Learning to Call it "Good Enough" So You Can Grow as a Writer. Good advice. Annoying pop-up.

Have a great weekend!

Information Overload, Part I

2011-11-01T10:00:00.000-06:00

Too much information~ Runnin’ through my brain~ Too much information~ Drivin’ me insane~
--The Police, Too Much Information

The best thing about the Information Age is that there is SO MUCH STUFF!! If you’re like me and you love STUFF, it’s a veritable gold mine.

The worst thing about the Information Age? SO MUCH STUFF!!

As evidenced by my Friday link posts, I spend a lot of time following links from Twitter, Facebook, blogs, etc., looking for nuggets of Useful Information. Some of the stuff I find is great—it jumpstarts ideas, clarifies problems, helps me get my procrastinating rear end on a better path. But a lot of it is just crap.

For a while, I was sifting through blog posts and printing out everything that looked marginally interesting, then putting it in a pile. I’d read it later, I figured, and find all the wonderful nuggets of wonderfulness contained therein.

Well. That produced a really big pile of paper. So I tried a different approach.

ORGANIZATION

I like Staples. I got there a lot, and I come out with notebooks, pens, folders, binders, sticky notes…it’s a sickness. But I was looking at my pile of papers, then at the bag full of folders I’d just come home with from Staples, and I had a thought.

I sorted the papers into piles according to subject: Blogging, Social Media, Writing Tips, etc. Then I punched holes in them and put them into folders. (These are the 3-hole punch folders with the metal tabs in the middle, so when you’re done you have a sort of compilation rather than a bunch of loose papers in a folder.) Sometimes I download free .pdfs of material that seems useful. The larger of these I put into separate folders.

So. That produced a large pile of folders. Next step?

IMPLEMENTATION

Implementation is a good word here, because it sounds really important. I mean, if you’re implementing, you’re really Getting Shit Done, right?

Let’s hope. Anyway, I looked through each folder and decided what looked extra useful and what didn’t. I tossed stuff that didn’t hold up. Then I picked up one folder and started working through all the articles and blog posts there and taking notes. Everything that sparked my brain is now in a notebook, where it can foment and percolate and grow Important Intellectual Bacteria, or whatever it is that ideas do to turn themselves into Action Items. In this case, I ended up with a list of information and ideas on brand definition and development and how that ties in with platform.

I also followed a lot of links that brought me to more interesting material, which I then organized into its own folders, both on my computer and in hard copy. I’m kind of looking at each folder as a mini-course in the relevant subject. I take a “course” every few days by sorting through these themed collections.

So here’s the process, in a nutshell:

• Collect anything that looks interesting
• Cull anything that proves not interesting
• Sort by topic
• Compile notes
• Form action items and plans to implement what you’ve learned

Next time: Information Overload Part II—applying this process to video and podcasts.

Friday Linkage

2011-10-28T10:00:00.000-06:00

More interesting linky-links for a Friday morning:

Rachelle Gardner: Master the Craft of Writing. Please. Before you send me your manuscripts. (Editor hat off.)

PsyBlog: Why You Should Keep Your Goals Secret. Not sure I agree with all of this, but I definitely have noticed similar things happening to me personally.

Derek Haines: When Your Writing is Crap.

Jeff Goins: Don't Avoid Painful Writing. I've also read a lot of advice that says not to write out of your own pain because it's too self-indulgent to ever be any good. As usual, I think both thoughts have merit, and both thoughts are wrong. Was that helpful?

The High Calling: LL Barkat on Writing. I haven't read her book, and I disagree with her statement that some things just "shouldn't be published," but there's some good, meaty thoughts here on writing and finding the depth and guts of a story.

Social Media Examiner: 5 Ways to Optimize Your Facebook Page.

Jane Friedman: My Secret for Battling Procrastination. Yes, I know none of you ever procrastinate.

Social Media Explorer: Education is the New Marketing.

Jenny Hanson, guest post by Jody Hedlund: Four Steps for Organizing Plot Ideas into a Novel.

SF Gate: Mark Morford: Hurry Up, Get More Done, and Die. Should probably be required reading for, like, everyone.

How KK’s Weird Breakfast Choices Can Help Your Writing

2011-10-25T09:55:00.000-06:00

What is this, you ask? Has KK lost her mind? Has she decided she should run a food blog even though she can’t follow recipes to save her life?

Also—wtf is that picture?

Well, I’ll tell you. That picture is French toast with real, organic butter, organic maple syrup, a banana, and some shredded cheese.

If you’re like most people, you were hanging along okay until I got to the cheese. At the cheese, you probably went… Okay…why cheese?

Trust me. It’s really good.

When I was a kid, I lived near Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. There was a restaurant in Champaign that served French toast with bananas and cheese. (They also topped it with whipped cream, but I always thought that was overkill.) They called it a Cinderella, and it was fabulous.

Here’s another food story. We used to drive down to Olney a lot to visit my cousins. When we spent the night, they would make pancakes and put peanut butter on them. (And syrup. The “overkill” ingredient is vital for this one.) I thought it was weird at first, but when I tried it, I got hooked. Pancakes with peanut butter is awesome.

What’s the point? I think it’s something like this: if you’re writing a story or a book or a poem, you often find yourself moving down tried and true paths. You’re okay with the French toast with butter and syrup. Banana? That’s fine—fruit’s a traditional accompaniment for French toast. But cheese? With the banana and the syrup (and whipped cream if you’re a purist)? That’s just weird!

And then you taste it. And it’s fabulous.

So what’s the cheese you can toss onto your French toast book? Or the peanut butter for your traditional novel pancake? Is it a super quirky character you don’t think would ever work? A romance hero who doesn’t like to be touched? A powerful warrior with claustrophobia? Play with ideas. Eventually you’ll hit on something that sounds like it would never work but which, in practice, works perfectly.

Friday Linkage

2011-10-19T10:00:00.000-06:00

Not quite so many links this week. Some good stuff here, though.

Writer's Digest: The Geyser 5-Step Approach to Revision.

Jane Friedman: Are You Worried Your Ideas or Work Will Be Stolen? Good, common-sense advice, as usual from Jane.

Tribal Writer: Why You Need to Write Like a Bad Girl, Part One.

Write to Publish: Good Reads 101: Part Two.

Happy Place: How to Keep the Grammatically Challenged off the Internet. This made me laugh.

The Business Rusch: New Paths

Jane Friedman: The Story Bible--What it Is and Why You Need One.

Book Review: Writing the Fire

2011-10-18T12:58:00.001-06:00

Photo from bn.com. Affiliate link.

I just finished reading this book this morning, and I'd like to recommend it to anyone who writes and is also familiar with yoga. Written by a yoga practitioner, Writing the Fire offers a variety of exercises rooted in the yogic tradition to help unleash creativity, still the mind, and improve the quality of your writing practice.

If you're not into yoga, or feel that a spiritual practice just isn't your thing, much of this book won't make much sense, and will probably make you roll your eyes a lot. But if you benefit from the integration of spirituality into your regular routine, this book will give you several new ways of looking at how your creativity works, how it ebbs and flows, and ways to harness a steadier, more reliable flow of ideas and production.

Beau Coup Friday Links

2011-10-13T10:39:00.000-06:00

Many, many links today...

The Passive Voice--What You Don't Know About Find and Replace in Microsoft Word. This information is both awesome and frightening. Use with care.

Fiction Groupie--The Post In Which I Rant About Blogging, Platforms, and the Pressure on Writers. This is an excellent post with much food for thought.

Erastes--Believe in what you write—even if it is “only for money”. Some words of wisdom.

Jane Friedman--The Evolving Model of the Entrepreneurial Novelist. Fascinating take on self publishing from Sean Platt.

Aliventures--7 Habits of Serious Writers. Amazingly enough, I do all these things. Go me!

Dystel & Godrick Literary Management--Writers with Imprints. Interesting development. I want my own imprint! Somebody give me one!

The Story Prize--Patricia Henley on the Rational Part of the Writing Process. There's a rational part to the writing process? Who knew?

Julie Isaac--How to Write Daily More Easily. Some great tips on increasing the consistency of your productivity.

The Guardian--Romantic Fiction's Passion for E-Books.

Patricia C. Wrede--The Hat Lecture. Great advice here for serious writers, and I love the presentation.

Livia Blackburne--The Psychology of Attraction: Uncertainty.

The Fall of Print--How a new survey of ebook discovery habits lends hope to self-publishers and tips for better marketing. Some interesting stats here.

Adam Westbrook--What Monty Python can teach the next generation of publishers. Good article, although not about all of Monty Python. Focuses on Terry Gilliam's creative process.

World Policy.org--Innovation Starvation. Neal Stephenson talks about the obligations of a science fiction writer. A meaty and thought-provoking read.

Last but not least: A friend of mine recently lost her job, and is working on building a Pampered Chef business. If you like Pampered Chef products (I think they're fantastic), consider dropping by her personal Pampered Chef page to place an order.

Have a great weekend!

Thoughts On Writing—Longhand Girl in a Techno World

2011-10-11T09:59:00.000-06:00

I’m sitting at Wendy’s writing this blog post in a notebook and my son just said to me, “Why would you write a blog post in a notebook? That’s sacrilegious.”

Whatever the opposite of a Luddite is, that’s my son. If he needs to do homework and there’s no computer available, it doesn’t even occur to him to work on the essay longhand.

I often hear writers bemoaning the fact that their electricity is out so they can’t get any work done. I look at my pen and notebook and can’t figure out how electricity outage is keeping them from working. During the daytime, at least. At night, candles don’t quite cut it, and they can set your notebooks on fire.

The truth is, I’ve always composed longhand. Of course, back in the day, I didn’t have much choice. It was either longhand or a manual typewriter that made my wrists ache. Later my parents bought me an electric typewriter, which was easier on my wrists, but I still wrote my first drafts by hand.

I like specific pens. I like certain kinds of paper. In high school I liked rolling ball ink pens and looseleaf paper. In my twenties I preferred Bic sticks and steno pads. In the last few years I’ve switched to Moleskine notebooks, composition tablets, and Sharpie pens—the kind that don’t soak through the paper—and Sharpie liquid graphite erasable pencils that turn permanent after day or two, because they’re the coolest things ever.

I like the flexibility of writing by hand. I can stick a notebook in my purse and write anywhere. I also like the way it feels. There’s just something about the feel of a pen sliding over paper that makes writing feel more real to me.

There are disadvantages, of course. I have a tendency to misplace notebooks. A lost notebook can undermine my productivity for days at a time. (Or months. I’m great at losing things.) And then there’s transcription.

When I mention to my editors or other writers that I’ve got a story finished except for transcription, I’m often met with a O.o (an O.o? Who knows…). And looking at a full notebook that needs to be transcribed is kind of like looking at a sink full of dirty dishes. It takes time. And until recently, it was uncomfortable.

I recently made the leap to dictating software, though, which has made it a lot easier. My decision came largely because of carpal tunnel syndrome. I was waking up in the middle of the night unable to feel my hands. I’d try to pet the dog and end up pummeling her with big, numb clubs. She didn't appreciate it very much.

With dictation software—I use Dragon Dictate for Mac—I can just read the story into my computer. It’s actually faster than typing—and I type 100+ words per minute—and the dictation mistakes can be really entertaining.

I’ve written books on the computer, but I don’t think I’ve ever written an entire story on the computer. At some point I always end up with pen and paper, especially if I’m having trouble getting the words to flow. When I was spending more time drafting on the computer, before my wrists got worse, many, many stories started with several scenes written by hand before I started lining everything up in Scrivener (or Word, back in the Bad Old PC days). So when it comes to my current most efficient method of writing, longhand it is, no matter how many O.o’s I get.

If you’re a longhand girl (or boy) too, stick to your guns. Some days it seems there aren’t many of us left.

Join Me at Savvy Authors, October 17th

2011-10-10T17:36:00.000-06:00

Starting October 17th--a week from today--I'll be leading a workshop at Savvy Authors called Writing Memorable and Meaningful Sex Scenes. I'll be recruiting the expertise of my erotica-writing evil twin, Elizabeth Jewell, as well as drawing on my own experience writing sensual romance.

There’s no question about it: sex sells, and the current romance market is thriving on more explicit content than ever before in the history of the genre. However, readers are discerning, and even the most daring content will fall flat if it isn’t integrated into the story on an emotional level and on a story level.

This course will show you how to write sex scenes that not only scorch the pages, but carry the story forward and reveal important plot elements or provide in-depth characterization. No more cookie cutter scenes—each sex scene will be integral to the story and specific to the characters involved, drawing the reader into your story and leaving them thoroughly fulfilled—in more ways than one.

Register for the course at Savvy Authors. I hope to see you there!

OMG SO MANY LINKS!!!

2011-10-06T16:52:00.000-06:00

It's Friday, Friday, postin' links on Friday... OMG my children are evil for earworming me with that damn song every week...and so I pass their evil on to you.

Anyway... on to the meaty linky bits.

Breaking In Before Breaking Down: Promotional Tips for Self-Published Authors
Will Boast: Cutting Out the Bad Bits. Via Jane Friedman, "Write More Raw Material Than You Need"
Rachelle Gardner: 10 Tips About Author Platform
Fuel Your Writing: Crowdsource Your Book With Pubslush. I'm fascinated by this new publishing model.

An Internet High Five. 'Cause we all need one.

Digital Book World: Social Media--The Art of the Nudge
Tribal Writer: 6 So-Called Rules for the Badass Creative Woman
Livia Blackburne: Revision Adventures: Building Strong Characters and Emotional Depth. Some great tidbits here that I plan to use.
AdAge MediaWorks: As Devices and Distribution Compete, Content Enjoys Renaissance I wonder if we need a new royalty/artist compensation structure to keep from driving the content distributors/aggregators out of business.
Jane Friedman (Guest Blogger Biba Pearce): 3 Tips for Professional Ebook Covers
Publish Your Own Ebooks: The Importance of Building an Author Platform. Yes, I'm a little obsessed with this topic right now...

The League of Reluctant Adults: Responding to Negative Reviews. This is FANTASTIC. Especially the art work. :-D

Wow, Barnes and Noble? REALLY? Maybe I'm not so excited about trying to keep you in business after all.

Have a great weekend!! And I think everybody should go to B&N and demand copies of Watchmen and Sandman. Just to see what happens.

Familiarity Breeds Contentment

2011-10-04T09:18:00.000-06:00

A splash of gold
On pine-swathed breast;
The mountains lay
The fall to rest.

If you live in the mountains in Colorado, there are certain things you can be sure of. During the summer, to avoid traffic, go down the mountain on Friday and up the mountain on Sunday to avoid campers going the opposite direction. This applies doubly to Labor Day and Memorial Day weekends, except shift the Sunday to Monday.

Oh, and it’ll happen again on one weekend in mid to late September or early October.

That last was tricky. It’s never the same weekend, so you have to pay attention to the news or other media outlets to find out when it’s going to happen.

It happened this past Saturday. I was driving the kids downtown to celebrate my first anniversary of self-employment and my son’s eighteenth birthday, which will happen on Wednesday. Traffic was backed up in front of the road where I turn onto the highway. In fact, it was backed up nearly ten miles, in some stretches slowed to stop-and-go.

“What the heck?” I said to the kids. I saw no sign of an accident, and Saturday afternoon isn’t prime camping traffic.

Then it struck me.

The traffic was backed up for ten miles because everybody was heading into the mountains to look at the trees.

Growing up in the Midwest, I always had lots of trees to look at in the fall. Oak, maple, poplar—they smeared every fall landscape with reds, oranges and yellows.

In Colorado, it’s the aspens. Just the aspens, in masses and patches of brilliant gold set against the deep green of pines. It’s really quite stunning to see them high color. Aspens share root systems, so they grow in groves, all of which change color at roughly the same time.

This weekend was the prime weekend. That’s the thing about the aspens. If you went this past weekend, you will have seen the glorious display of hundreds of golden leaves shimmering in the breeze. Next weekend? It’ll all be brown, dead and gone. It’s a fragile thing. The beauty of the color depends on vagaries of weather, including temperature and rainfall, that I’ve never been able to figure out. People in the news media here do calculus while standing on their heads to determine the exact day that the color will be at its peak.

The color is vibrant this year, a darker, richer gold than I’ve seen in a long time, probably because we had a crazy-wet summer. But we didn’t go up the hills to Kenosha Pass or Guanella Pass or Mt. Evans. Not this year.

Instead we went around about our regular business. At the library, I looked up to see two huge patches of aspens in the peaks beyond, stunningly brilliant against the surrounding deep green. More golden splendor lurked between peaks I see every day, now transformed so that I couldn’t help but look and marvel a little as we drove down to lunch. At Meyer Ranch Open Space Park, I saw patches of red among the gold. And following the bends in the highway, I saw streaks of aspen groves like molten gold poured down the sides of the mountains.

It’s nice to go somewhere special to see the aspens. At Kenosha Pass, there are huge groves, so everywhere you look, there’s nothing but gold. At Mt. Evans, the swathes of gold highlight the towering, rugged flanks of 14,000-foot peaks.

But seeing that same gold scattered over my familiar landscape struck me more deeply this year than past treks to Kenosha have. This year the aspens were a special gift, one I didn’t have to seek out, but that instead was scattered all around me, in familiar places that were made special, gilded by the dying leaves.

I think I liked it better this year.

Posting on Tuesdays

2011-10-03T09:41:00.001-06:00

When I made my initial blogging schedule for the rest of the year, I decided I was going to post on Mondays. However, it looks like everybody and his brother posts on Mondays, plus I have a #micropoetry thing going on on Twitter on Mondays (check that out if you like poetry), so I think I'll move my regular blog to Tuesdays.

So, coming up tomorrow, I blog about why the traffic was horrible in my neck of the woods this past weekend. There will be pretty pictures...

Friday's Links

2011-09-30T10:00:00.000-06:00

Some links for today, while I prowl downtown Denver with my daughter on a field trip. Wish me luck--it's scary down there!

Linky linky McLinkerson...

Nathan Bransford talks about contradictory characters and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.
Bob Mayer--The Perfect Storm Is Coming in Publishing.
Writing Integrated Sex Scenes--Romance University.org
Writer Unboxed--Why You Should Only Query 6-8 Agents at a Time
Learning to Love Book Reviews--some good resource links here on how to write reviews, although the article itself is fairly sparse.
Publishing Perspectives--How Self-Published Authors Get Their Covers Right
Judging Books by Their Covers--I think this is the first time I've seen a hedgehog on a book cover. Follow this one with More on Covers, at the same blog.
Blogging Tips--Keep Social Media in Mind When Writing Your Opening Paragraph
Writing Physical Descriptions--Hair Colors. Some interesting tidbits here.
Write more ebooks to prepare for the Kindle Fire--The Fire is Coming!! (ok that wasn't even funny)
What is a Writer's Minimum Viable Product?--Interesting idea, but my automatic reaction is don't downgrade your content.

Guest Posting today at Romance with SASS

2011-09-29T14:34:00.000-06:00

I'm guest posting today over at Romance with SASS, talking about the Writing Life. Drop by and say hi!

Persistence of Memory

2011-09-26T10:50:00.000-06:00

My earliest memories are buried deep. They bubble up from time to time, but not as often as they used to. Some of them are strange. I’m not sure all of them are real.

I remember being in a cave. It is dark and close, and I feel like I’m alone. There are vague lights here and there. The darkness isn’t threatening. It just is

I remember lying on a mattress watching TV. On the screen is a rocketship in a scaffolding, ready to launch. There is a black cat. The room I’m in is small, and I have to look up to see the TV, which is sitting on a dresser.

I’m not sure where the memory of the cave comes from. I know my family visited Carlsbad caverns when I was very young, but whether this cave is related, I’ve never managed to find out. Maybe it was a dream. Maybe I’m remembering the womb. Maybe it’s nothing significant at all.

The TV sequence was a real event. The show was Star Trek, and the episode I was watching was from the third season, not long before the original series was canceled.

Is there a point to this? I don’t know. Maybe that reality is so subjective we can’t even be sure our memories feed it back to us accurately. Do we really remember what we think we remember? If we’re made of our memories, does this inaccuracy have a fundamental effect on our psyche?

In the end, does it really matter?

Ceremonial Closing of the Tabs

2011-09-23T09:36:00.001-06:00

I seriously have like fifty tabs open in Firefox today. Going to trim them down to stuff that you all might actually find interesting.

Using an Agent to Get on Kindle--John Carpenter's publishing journey. An interested snapshot of a changing marketplace. Also I think I'll get this book for my son. Jane Friedman's blog.

Life Stages of a Writer--interesting take on how to look at your work. (Terrible background color--I used readability.com to keep from getting eyestrain.)

Tips on Successful Blogging--Creative Penn. These are both podcasts, but if you scroll down there are links to .pdf and online transcripts if you'd rather read. Blogging Basics and Advanced Blogging Tips for Authors.

Certainty Anchors. This is an excerpt from the book Uncertainty, by Jonathan Fields, about how ritual helps anchor creativity. Jane Friedman.

Product vs. Author Brand. Part 3 of the series on branding I linked to last week. From Write to Publish.

But What About the Quiet Ones? Writer Unboxed. About the challenges faced in promoting the "quiet" novel.

5 Stephen King Quotes Every Writer Should Heed. Because Stephen King is awesome, even though I don't like all of his books.

Marketing is Dead. Traditional marketing vs. "Tribe Building."

5 Timeless Insights on Fear and the Creative Process. More on how ritual enhances creativity, this time with five recommended books on the topic.

Downtown Trains... Oh, never mind. That's all about hockey. Moving right along...

15 Prompts to Help Kick-Start Your Story. Some useful tidbits here if you're looking to start a story or deepen one you've already written.

And that's all for today. Unfortunately it looks like I might have opened as many tabs as I closed on this round. Sigh...

Rachel Brimble: Synopsis Writing – Ahhhh!!!!

2011-09-21T09:39:00.000-06:00

Today I'm turning the blog over to Rachel Brimble. She offers some hints and tips on writing the Dreaded Synopsis, as well as information about her newest release, Paying the Piper.

I visited a blog recently and talked about my mantra of allowing yourself to write a ‘crappy’ first draft and how much this changed my writing output overnight. I really think writers put more pressure on themselves than any editor, agent, reviewer or reader ever could so when I discovered how much more I get written when I stop obsessively editing, it was SO liberating!

But are we ever happy with our writing? Do we ever fully believe we haven’t written the best story we possibly can? Do we fully embrace the potential to receive five star reviews for all those thousands of little words that we spent weaving into a novella or full-blown novel?

Nooo, of course not!! That would make sense. It’s far better just to beat ourselves up and constantly rant and rave that we can’t write, we’re not good enough or how would anyone want to spend a weekend of their time, sitting on a couch with a cold glass of wine and one our books.

Yes, this is said with my tongue in my cheek…but it isn’t entirely untrue. Well, not for me anyway.

But I digress…the topic of my blog today is synopsis writing and how I write mine. As a result of that author visit I mentioned at the start of this post, apparently the stage in the writing process when I write mine is rare, as opposed to my method so I thought I’d share both.

When do I write a synopsis?

BEFORE the first word of the story is written, of course. Don’t you? No? Okay, well, I never claimed to be normal or I wouldn’t write in the first place, right? ;)

How do I write a synopsis?

The general rule of thumb is as follows:

First paragraph – I start with my blurb, this is my HOOK. If you can get this job done now, it will help you massively once you’ve typed ‘The end”. Try to summarise you book in a single paragraph, keeping the mood and tone of the story as your focus.

Introduce your hero and heroine – and most importantly their ‘problem’ or goal. In other words, here is where you establish, Goal, Motivation & Conflict (never easy!)

Next, you establish the high points of your story – the pivotal moments. The best tip I was ever given when writing this stage is every high point should include an ACTION, REACTION and a DECISION.

Finally, the resolution – how is everything tied up into a nice neat package leaving the reader happy and satisfied.

Easy, right? Well, I never said that did I? ;) But why writing this BEFORE I start the book works for me is because I have a ‘skeleton story’ established that I can refer back to if I get lost, but also gives me the freedom to change and go with the flow as much as I want. If I change things along the way, or the characters take the story off in a different direction, that’s okay.

I just remember to update the synopsis as I work so when my story is finished, so is my synopsis (more or less!). Good, huh?

Rachel’s latest release is Paying The Piper, available from Lyrical Press on September 19^th.

Blurb:

Nightclub manager Grace Butler is on a mission to buy the pub where her mother's ashes are scattered but the owner wants to sell to anyone but her. And that owner happens to be her father...who has a secret she will do anything to discover.

Social worker and all around good guy Jimmy Betts needs funds to buy a house for three special kids before their care home closes. Time is running out and he's desperate for cash. He agrees to to a one-time 'job' for bad-man Karl Butler. But in a sudden turn of events, Jimmy finds himself employed by Karl's beautiful, funny and incredibly sexy daughter, Grace. Their lives couldn't be more different, yet one thread binds them: they're both trying to escape the bonds of their fathers. Maybe the only way they'll be free is by being together, instead of alone.

Rachel lives with her husband and two young daughters in a small town near Bath in the UK. Having always believed there’s someone for everyone, Rachel started writing her own tales of love once her children were at school. Since then, she’s had several books published with The Wild Rose Press, Eternal Press and Lyrical Press. She has recently acquired a US agent with her second Victorian historical. A member of the Romantic Novelists Association and Romance Writers of America, Rachel cannot imagine her life without romance or writing!

When she isn’t writing, you’ll find Rachel with her head in a book or walking the beautiful English countryside with her family.And in the evening? Well, a well-deserved glass of wine is never, ever refused…

Check out Rachel's work, and if you'd like to guest post here, drop me a line.

New Short Story Collection

2011-09-19T09:38:00.001-06:00

I've just published a new collection of short stories at Amazon, B&N, Smashwords, All Romance eBooks and 1PlaceforRomance. Six from the Heart features six romances, including The Gift, which was previously published as a one-shot. The other five stories will be available as one-shots over the next week or two, but the anthology gives you a great price break.

Six From the Heart

Zoe's Voice--He's not sure who she is, but if she'll keep talking to him in that voice, he'll give her everything.

Second Chances--He had something important to say. She misunderstood--bigtime. He wants to try again--this time without his foot in his mouth.

The Test--The test is positive. What now?

Hope, and Glory--Glory moved away a long time ago. Now she's back, and things are looking up.

Dinner for Two--Lauren won dinner with the third-grade teacher. Her daughter thinks she should go, but Lauren's not so sure.

The Gift--Affrick has loved Gilly since they were children. How will she catch his attention now that he's decided to wed again? (Scottish historical.)

Amazon (Kindle edition)
Barnes & Noble (Nook edition)
Smashwords (Multiple formats)
1PlaceforRomance (Multiple formats)
All Romance eBooks (Multiple formats)

Closing Many Tabs Day

2011-09-17T12:54:00.000-06:00

I had intended to do this on Friday, but I got distracted. These things happen...

Anyway. I have tons of tabs open in my browser, so as I close them down I'm going to share. (I kinda sorta stole this idea from Neil Gaiman, but he has lots of ideas so I'm sure he won't miss it terribly.) It's a wide variety of STUFF, so I hope there's something in here you'll enjoy.

A really embarrassing typo happens to an author. Susan Andersen's hero becomes altogether filthier after memorable editing error.

My friend Jennifer's Deviant Art page, with pictures for Halloween.

A breakdown of the first ten pages of the script for Inception.

Fear is the Downfall of Publishing. Blog post by Bob Mayer.

Epic Black Car--Social Media is a Tool, Not a Magic Bullet.

Epic Black Car--Romance Novelists are a Secret, Epic Army. (I found this one really entertaining.)

Livia Blackburne--How to Self-Promote Without Selling Your Soul.

Write to Publish--Branding: Where to Begin

Write to Publish--Branding: Part 2--The Basics

Write it Forward--The Real Gatekeepers in Publishing Now? Authors. More from Bob Mayer.

Husbands: The Series. A new web series from former Buffy the Vampire Slayer scribe Jane Espenson, et al.

Guest Bloggers

2011-09-14T10:00:00.000-06:00

Starting next Wednesday, 9-21, I'll be hosting guest bloggers. My first guest will be Rachel Brimble, spotlighting her latest novel.

If you're an author and you're interested in guest blogging, drop me a line at krcknights@gmail.com to arrange a date.

What I’m Reading—Earth’s Children—Plains of Passage

2011-09-12T16:54:00.000-06:00

Photo from bn.com. Affiliate link.

In the course of researching for Ring of Darkness and the rest of the books I plan to write in the Ring Saga (I’m working on Ring of Light right now), I’ve spent time thinking about how religious systems are structured and the differences between patriarchal and matriarchal cultures. Though there are still a very few societies in the world that function under matriarchal ideologies, the major religions on our planet have all bent to the demands of patriarchy.

Some believe that, long ago in our prehistory, this was not the case. Before human beings could record their beliefs in written language, there might have been a belief system based on a Mother Goddess. These speculations—and unfortunately they are just speculations—are based on art from this prehistoric period. Before we had written language, we had art, and much of this art is interpreted to support the idea of a matriarchal society and a companion Goddess-based religion.

Lately I’ve been re-reading the Earth’s Children series by Jean Auel. I first read the first three volumes many years ago, and now that there is another book to be had, I decided to pick them up again.

In these books, Auel recognizes the school of thought that believes our earliest belief systems focused on a goddess. But her presentation, to me, doesn’t stay true to this vision.

In Clan of the Cave Bear, we meet the Clan, a group of Neanderthals who take in Ayla, the too-good-to-be-true heroine of the series who is presented as a modern human. The Clan worships an Earth Mother, but their society is structured in such a way that males and females hold tightly proscribed roles. Men hunt and do manly things. Women are mothers, healers, and preparers of food. And ne’er the twain shall meet, as Ayla discovered when her more flexible brain realizes she is perfectly capable of hunting.

More disturbingly, the females are expected to make themselves sexually available at a signal from any male in the tribe. Auel attributes all these characteristics of the Clan culture to a racial memory. All the Clan hold these memories, which go all the way back to the primeval goo. A neat idea, but also far too easy an explanation for a culture that supposedly believes in a Mother Goddess, yet subjugates all its women.

The belief systems of the more modern humans, represented by Ayla’s eventual lover Jondalar, seems very different at first. Women are free to perform any duties they find appropriate to their skills, from hunting to cooking to sacred prostitution. The role of certain women in initiating men sexually aligns with many of the ideas of how a Goddess-based society might have worked. Women are also initiated by chosen men, “opened” so that male spirits can enter their wombs and impregnate them. (The idea that, at this point in history no one but Ayla was able to figure out the relationship between sex and pregnancy is another major quibble.)

Ayla finds herself in a position to express herself more freely as a woman and an individual as she travels with Jondalar, and learns more about his people and their relationship to Doni, their mother goddess.

However.

A sub plot in Plains of Passage, to me, undermines this idea of an idyllic Goddess-based belief system. A young woman in a tribe Ayla and Jondalar visit has been gang-raped by a group of thugs who have been similarly harassing the Clan females in the area. (Another aside—the Clan response to the rape of their women is generally, “But they didn’t give us the signal. If they’d just given the proper signal, we would have been happy to succumb to their demands. It’s what a good Clan woman does.” Also cringe-worthy.)

This young woman, who has suffered this horrible violation, is not treated with love and respect. Instead, her family is devastated that their virgin daughter was taken sexually before she could be properly “opened” by an approved male in the relevant ceremony. And in order to be acceptable to the eligible males in the tribe, she must be cleansed in a special ceremony—performed by a man.

This strikes me as severely ridiculous. The idea of a woman being “ruined” by rape—or, for that matter, by consensual sex—is part and parcel of a patriarchal mindset. Why in the world would a Mother Goddess place these kinds of proscriptions on women? Rules that allow a man’s actions to define a woman’s status?

To me, Auel’s portrayal of the belief systems of these people is deeply rooted in the misogynistic prejudices of current religion, particularly Western ideologies. In addition to this bit of nonsense, her tone toward the Clan is consistently positive, as if the limited roles allowed women in this culture, not to mention the virtual sexual slavery enforced upon them, is actually better than the more liberal ideas presented by Jondalar’s people. And Jondalar’s people, while making obeisance to a goddess figure, and holding the Mother above all others, still hold the idea that a woman’s worth is judged by the condition of her genitals.

This seems to be to be a far cry from the ideology proposed by many who have conjectured and theorized about the makeup of the Goddess culture. If this kind of belief system actually existed, I hope it was far more accepting of women—who are, after all, the embodiment of the theoretical Goddess—than Auel’s version.

In my own books, as I continue to work on research in the course of building stories set in the Five Lands, I’m also struggling with the way men and woman would relate to each other in societies that are extremely matriarchal, extremely patriarchal, or some combination of the two. I’m not sure I’m happy with what I’ve done so far with these ideas in Ring of Darkness. But as the stories grow and evolve, I hope to incorporate elements of a matriarchal society and how it could function in ways that don’t carry with them ingrained prejudices of our own largely patriarchal world.

New story from KC Myers coming Tomorrow!

2011-08-18T11:36:00.000-06:00

Coming tomorrow, a short story about urban werewolves.

What happens when the call of the forest overcomes the call to be human?

In the modern world, werewolves must find the balance between their human and animal natures. When this balance is broken, the consequences can be devastating.

Sarah is a wolf who has chosen to join the hunters of her own kind. These hunters ensure that rogue wolves aren’t allowed to kill the humans among whom they live. But Sarah’s current hunt is the most difficult of all.

From Etopia Press.

Alternative Blog Hop

2011-07-21T08:52:00.000-06:00

I haven't done this before, so hopefully I'll do something right at some point during this post...

The question for the day at the Alternative Blog Hop is: If you had to write yourself as a character what would you be like?

I'd like to say I'd be the awesome chick everybody follows around looking for the latest trends in geek fashion wear, but that would be a lie. You know the obnoxious character in every TV show who's always spitting out useless trivia about every situation, correcting people's grammar, and ranting about things nobody else really cares that much about? Yeah, that would be me. I am a font of useless knowledge and opinions. Fortunately I spend most of my time at home in front of my laptop, so the only people I inflict this on on a regular basis are my children. Poor kids.

Ring of Darkness--Excerpt

2011-07-11T12:00:00.000-06:00

Ring of Darkness is now available from Noble Romance. Check out an excerpt below.

Chapter One

It was no use. Brienda couldn’t remember the Prayer of the Sparrow. Never mind she’d said it fifty times every morning since she’d arrived here five years ago; never mind she’d said it twenty times already this morning. Her fingers rubbed the twenty-first wooden bead on her string of fifty, and her mind drew a complete blank.

"Like the sparrow . . . on the wings of the sparrow, I fly to the light of the sun—to the light of the moon?—wherein lies the spirit of the Great Mother . . . ."

Was that right? It didn’t sound right. What was wrong with her, that she suddenly couldn’t remember a prayer she’d said a thousand times? Something was wrong . . . . No, surely not. The Temple of the Mother was the safest place in all Grammale, made so by long-ago arrangements with the Lord of the Land. Arrangements that let the Mother rule here unchallenged, while men ruled the country itself. Nothing could be wrong here. Perhaps her forgetfulness was due only to excitement—anticipation of the ceremonies starting in two days, during which she would take her vows and be promoted from an Initiate to a Sparrow Mother.

"Not if you can’t remember your prayers," she muttered. She clenched the small wooden bead and squeezed her eyes shut.

"On the wings of the sparrow—"

Then it struck her.

The silence.

She should have been hearing birdsong, insects chirping, perhaps a sound from the fox’s den she knew lay hidden in the outcroppings to her right. But there was nothing.

Then, suddenly, an explosion of sound. Shouting, men’s voices, sacrilege. Brienda never saw them, even as they pushed her hard to the ground from behind. Mouth full of loam, she choked out, "On the wings of the sparrow, I fly to the light of the sun wherein lies the spirit of the Great Mother; in the breast of the wren—"

"Silence!"

Brienda hadn’t heard a man’s voice in five years, much less the voice of a soldier. Even without seeing them, she knew that was what these men were. But why were they here, and why would they dare lay hands on her in this holy place? Unless they were raiders from Callista—

This flash of thought overwhelmed her with fear; she jerked once in her captor’s arms, and he lifted her half off the ground, twisting one arm behind her.

"Be still!" His voice was loud and hot against her ear. "Don’t struggle, and perhaps it won’t be so hard for you."

"Mother protect me—" she started. Then one of the men stepped in front of her. Not a large man, but compact and built for combat. He wore a chain shirt, and the gold band around his head was nearly lost in the gold of his hair. His beard and his scarred face looked strange to her, alien after spending so much time among only women. But she knew him.

His hand rested on the pommel of his sword, and his gaze rose from Brienda’s face as he addressed the man who held her. "Hurt her, and I’ll kill you where you stand."

The hands on Brienda’s arms loosened. The man behind her spoke, his voice shaking a little. "Milord."

Brienda swallowed, staring at the all-too-familiar figure in front of her. "What are you doing here?"

The golden man regarded her coolly. "You used to have more respect for your betters."

"That was when I thought you were my better." The words leapt out before she could swallow them. But the man only smiled.

"I was afraid the Bird Mothers might turn you into a shrew. I see I was right. No matter—you’ll have to do." He jerked a thumb toward the darker woods beyond the border of the sacred grounds. "Take her. We’re wasting time."

"And you’ll waste more of it."

Brienda’s heart leapt at this voice—a woman’s voice and a familiar one. The Owl Mother stepped out from the trees. Smaller than the golden man, infinitely older, wearing homespun robes, and a crown of her own hair braided and wound about her head, she seemed nevertheless his equal.

"You’ll not take her," the Owl Mother said, matter-of-factly.

"I will," said the golden man. Brienda stared at him, her mind still unwilling to admit he was truly here.

The Owl Mother smiled. "I would think you would have learned, Baradan. It’s your choice, of course, but, if you take your daughter from this holy place, you and your men will die before you reach the borders."

Baradan swallowed, regarding the Owl Mother. Finally, he raised one hand.

"Let her go," he said. "Go with the priestess."

The hands, which had tightened at the Owl Mother’s arrival, now released her. Rubbing the bruises they left behind, Brienda went to the Owl Mother’s side.

"Make them leave," she whispered.

The Owl Mother shook her head. Her amber eyes regarded Brienda briefly. "They will speak to me," she said. "We will see."

The simple words sent a wash of fear down Brienda’s spine. She clutched her beads. For whatever good it would do her, she could remember the prayers now.

Summer Sale at Smashwords

2011-07-08T11:58:00.001-06:00

Smashwords is having a summer sale. From now until the end of July, any of my books that are available at Smashwords are 25% off. Just use the code SSW25 when you check out. Dragon at the Top of the World is actually FREE under this promotion, so get while the gettin' is good!

Ring of Darkness--Now Available

2011-07-04T19:24:00.000-06:00

Ring of Darkness is now available from Noble Romance. Stop by and check it out!

Brienda's life is about to be turned upside down. After five years at the temple of the God-Mother, she is to be married to Tamalor of Callista on her father's orders in order to end aggression between their two countries.

Brienda is upset at this turn of events, but she comes to believe it is part of a larger plan and the God-Mother has put her in this place to bring not only peace but a restoration of balance to the ancient powers of her world. She is right, and, in the end, the larger plan will demand more from her than she ever thought she could give--including Tamalor.

New Short Story from KC Myers

2011-06-15T09:10:00.000-06:00

KC Myers, my non-romantic pseudonym (don't tell her I called her that--she'll take it wrong), has just published a fantasy short story called The Dragon at the Top of the World. It's available at Amazon, B&N, and Smashwords.

Here's a sneak peek:

The wind whipped down the side of the mountain like death, knifing through five layers of fur and wool to lash Fox’s skin. He lifted his hand and moved numb fingers inside his icy mitten to reset the slipped warming spell, clinging to the bow of the dogsled with one hand. The sled went on, bumping over the uneven surface, the runners shifting beneath Fox’s feet.

He had to try three times before the spell set. Stunted pine trees to the left and right told him why. He was nearing timberline. Once the trees were gone, Fox could depend on nothing.

The feel of the sled runners under his feet changed as the snowpack became icier. The vibrations shot up Fox’s legs to his knees. Ahead of him, the dark line of seventeen dogs dug in and kept going. Strands of the russet hair that had gained him his mage name escaped Fox’s hood and whipped into his face.

Fox smiled a little, adjusting his stance on the sled runners. At least the dogs were still game to run. He himself was running short on stamina, and even shorter on optimism.

Maybe it was time to turn back. He’d hoped—foolishly, perhaps—that he would find the dragon before he reached the magically debilitating timberline. He should have known better. If it were that easy, someone would have found it before him—Hopping Mouse, or the Great Gray Turtle who had lived two hundred years. Why would he succeed where these far greater wizards had failed? He was, after all, barely thirty, and only a small red Fox.

But he was a fox with a question. He wanted to know why he had been forced to trade his soul for his magic. He wanted to know what had happened to it after he’d given it up. And, most of all, he wanted to know if he could have it back.

New Short Story from Etopia Press

2011-06-08T13:18:00.000-06:00

Some additional new news--I have a new short story coming out in the near future that is not a romance. It's an urban fantasy werewolf story with a much darker tone than most of what I write. For this story, and others that aren't romances, I'm launching a new pseudonym. These stories will be published under KC Myers. I've added a page to this blog, and will be adding a page to my website as well where you can keep up on news regarding these stories. I hope you'll check them out.

Ring of Darkness--Coming Soon

2011-06-04T12:56:00.000-06:00

I'm working on edits now for Ring of Darkness, my fantasy romance that will be coming out from Noble Romance in the very near future. Here's a sneak peek at the cover, and keep an eye out for more news.

Excerpt: Mostly Sunny ...

2011-04-14T14:08:00.000-06:00

Chapter 1

Interstate 70, heading from Bergen Park into Denver, was roiling with late-morning mist. Alexa Walker watched it with some curiosity as she drove. It whirled and spun and drifted away in the mild breeze, as if some gigantic fog machine had been set loose on the highway.

“That mist you’re seeing on the highway isn’t fog, folks.” The voice on her radio was deep and textured—one of the loveliest male voices she’d ever heard. It made her wonder what that voice looked like naked. That voice was probably tall and dark, with sculpted pectorals that made a T-shirt look pornographic, a tight ass and a six-pack that wouldn’t quit. It just wouldn’t be fair, otherwise.

Who was she kidding? There was a reason why the guy was on the radio, after all. Because the voice was fantastic. He probably had, as they say, a great face for radio.

She’d find out soon enough. Her assignment for today was to interview the owner of that voice, media darling Carter Allen, host of the most popular weather-related talk show in Denver history. Maybe in history, period.

“So what is it if it isn’t fog?” Lex said aloud. She reached forward and turned the radio up a little. This would have been a good time for headphones, but they really weren’t safe on the road. Especially not with that voice. It would just thread through your head, make all your voluntary muscles seize up, and next thing you know you’d be wrapped around a Ponderosa pine.

“No,” the voice said, velvet and pine smoke and—no that wasn’t even adequate. It was just indescribable. “No, that is not fog. That’s what’s called sublimation. The solid snow on the ground is turning directly into water vapor. Those of you who’ve recently moved in from out of state—go back home! No, I’m kidding. We love you all. Those of you from out of state may not have seen this phenomenon before. That’s because it generally only happens in extremely dry climates. Like—you guessed it—Colorado. Anyway, it’s my guess that our late April blizzard will be nothing more than a memory by the end of the day.”

God, what a voice. He was probably four feet nine and a hundred eighty pounds. He probably looked like Elmer Fudd.

She really, really hoped he didn’t.

* * *

Forty minutes later, Lex walked into the offices of radio station KPLX. Carter’s voice still echoed in her head. He’d closed off his show just as she’d gotten out of the car. She’d learned more about sublimation and that there was a thing called groupel that she’d never heard of before, which Carter was going to explain on his next show. She’d also developed a theory that it was possible to have an orgasm just from listening to Carter Allen talk. No wonder his show did so well in the female, eighteen to thirty-five demographic.

The receptionist referred her to an intern, who led her to the elevator. “Mr. Allen’s office is on the third floor. He usually goes there right after he’s done with his show.”

She pushed the button on the elevator and as the doors closed Lex said, “Is he as good-looking as he sounds?”

The intern closed her eyes a moment. “Oh, my God.” She looked at Lex again. “You are really going to enjoy this interview.”

So. Not Elmer Fudd, then. Lex shifted a little on her feet, uncomfortable. She’d interviewed good-looking men before, though. She’d interviewed Broncos and Avalanche players and hottie-pants newscasters from Channel Nine. She could handle it.

The intern led her down the hallway to Carter’s office, where she knocked.

“Come in.”

The voice. God, the voice. Lex swallowed. This was insane. She was really starting to hope this guy was ugly.

The intern pushed open the door. “Carter, this is Alexa Walker from the Denver Post.”

Lex stared. She couldn’t help it. Definitely not Elmer Fudd. Unless they’d changed Elmer Fudd and made him about six three with skin the color of good Belgian milk chocolate.

“Hi,” said Lex, somewhat amazed she was able to form words. “You can call me Lex.” Behind her, she heard the office door close as the intern departed.

Carter stood and rounded the desk. She’d judged accurately from his sitting height—easily six three. A little lanky, broad-shouldered, fashionably bald. He held out a fairly immense hand, and Lex took it. His handshake was firm and warm. “Nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you, too.” Lex hoped she wasn’t gaping. She was pretty sure she wasn’t. She might have been drooling a little, though. “I really enjoyed your show this morning. Spent half the ride down the mountain in that sublimation stuff.”

He grinned, a wide, open smile that made him that much prettier. “Cool stuff we get in Colorado. You know what groupel is?”

“No, I don’t.”

“I do.”

“And you’re not going to tell me?”

“Of course not. It’ll come up in casual conversation at some point. Either that, or you can wait until tomorrow’s show.” He went back to his seat behind his desk. “Have a seat, Ms… What was it again?”

“Alexa Walker. Call me Lex.”

She took a seat in a chair across from the desk and opened her briefcase to retrieve a notebook.
“Lex,” Carter repeated. “Like Lex Luthor?”

“Yes,” said Lex. “Exactly like Lex Luthor. I’m a supervillain. You couldn’t tell by looking?”

He laughed. “Yeah, you have a supervillainy air.”

“It’s the shoes.” She settled back into the chair. “Now, according to your biography, you were born and raised in Denver?”

For another, longer excerpt and additional exclusive content, join my newsletter via the link on the right.

New Book Available

2011-03-22T12:13:00.000-06:00

This month's release, Mostly Sunny with Chance of Belgian Chocolate, is another re-issue I stole from my evil twin. It was originally released as part of an anthology at Ellora's Cave. I have to say it's still pretty steamy--more so than even The Regan Factor, I'd say. So if you're not into that heat level, you might want to skip on by... I won't mind. (Mom, that means you...)

It's a novella, too, which means all that sex makes it seem even more sexed up...

Now that I've either intrigued or repulsed you, drop by one of the available outlets and check it out!

Carter Allen is the host of the most popular weather show in Denver, probably because he has a voice to die for. Alexa Walker, sent to interview him for the local paper, is sure he can’t possibly be as gorgeous as his voice.

He is, though, and more. But their instant chemistry sets them on a collision course with forces beyond their control—namely Carter’s mother.

Amazon Kindle

1PlaceforRomance PDF and mobi--use the code marching2011 for 10% off

Barnes & Noble NOOK

Interesting Links. Also? Crazycakes!

2011-02-04T10:08:00.000-07:00

Where There's a Will continues to be the wee book that could. I got a mention in Publisher's Marketplace this morning as an example of books that are doing well on the Amazon bestseller list but are not being included on the new New York Times ebook Bestseller List because of deeply discounted pricing. They listed the book as #25 on the Amazon list. As of this morning it's at #22. A check on the page shows not a single review under four stars.

Another mention popped up on iReaderReview. This blog post discusses the logistics of making a living selling books at low price points. The author has done a nice job of breaking down the numbers. I do feel the article misses a couple of points: 1. Most people writing books for epubs are used to writing well over 3 books a year. 2. It doesn't really take into account the effects of a low price-point on backlist books or future releases. Still, it's really interesting to see ebooks finally making their place in the publishing world, and so many people posting in-depth, thoughtful analysis of what this means for publishers, authors and readers.

I am still flabbergasted at the attention this book has gotten, and deeply grateful to everyone who has bought a copy, read it, or taken time to write a review.

Newsletter Spotlight at One Place for Romance

2011-01-18T11:27:00.000-07:00

I'm the featured author this week at One Place for Romance. Check out my interview to find out how I chose my pseudonym, what I'm listening to on my iPod (possibly obsessively), and a little about my latest release, The Regan Factor.

Guest Blogging

2011-01-17T14:58:00.001-07:00

Drop by and take a gander at a guest blog I did over at Delilah Devlin's about positive thinking and achieving your writing dreams. Thanks to Delilah for letting me rant on her blog!

News! New Novel on the Way

2011-01-06T17:46:00.000-07:00

I've just signed a contract with Noble Romance to publish a fantasy romance novel called Ring of Darkness. This story has a long history, but it's finally found a home, which makes me happy. With luck, I'll be able to write the four-book series I had intended to write when I first envisioned this book.

Ring of Darkness will be arriving in early March.

Dude! What's Going On Here?!

2011-01-03T09:37:00.001-07:00

Things have been going crazy the last few weeks for Where There's a Will. Amazon marked the kindle edition down to $.95 (that's right NINETY-FIVE CENTS--that's less than a DOLLAR), and it has since soared into the top 100 best selling kindle romance books. And it's been hanging out there for a while. I have no idea how long this great deal will be in effect, so go grab it while you can!

In addition, I've seen reviews mentioning that WTaW was the first book the reviewer read on their new kindle, and another review saying it was the reviewer's first book of 2011. The latter review appeared at Paranormal Book Reviews:

"I liked this book. It was a contemporary romance without the paranormal slant that I usually go for (and everyone knows that I have a hard time with the contemporary romances!) but I enjoyed it. Malcolm was kinda yummy. Sometimes I wonder why more men don't wear kilts."

Thanks, Kelly! And I wonder why more men don't wear kilts, too. It should be a law...

Here's a link to the bargain-priced kindle version of WTaW, for those looking for something to load onto that new Christmas kindle. It's so darn cheap I'm tempted to buy a few copies for myself...

The Regan Factor--Now Available

2010-11-03T17:40:00.000-06:00

The Regan Factor is now available at 1placeforromance.com (previously 1romanceebooks.com) in .pdf, .mobi and .lit formats, and should be popping up on amazon (for kindle) and Barnes & Noble (for Nook) within 24 hours or so. The paperback will be available hopefully by next week.

Hope you'll check it out!

So, Here's the New Book

2010-10-26T10:42:00.000-06:00

Coming next week--The Regan Factor. Originally published by Ellora's Cave under my pseudonym, Elizabeth Jewell. This version has been significantly revised from that version, but is still rather steamier than my other romance offerings, so be warned.

It also has a boy's naked bottom on the cover, so enjoy.

This book will be released in paperback through amazon.com (hopefully, if I can figure out what I'm doing wrong with the cover graphic), as well as through amazon as a Kindle edition, at B&N for Nook, at Smashwords for a variety of other formats, and at 1PlaceforRomance (formerly 1RomanceEbooks).

BLURB: Where Regan O’Rourke goes, trouble follows. So when she tries to stop a case of industrial espionage, it’s no surprise when she finds herself in over her head almost before she gets started.

It’s also no surprise when Burke Camden shows up to “rescue” her. After all, he’s been saving her from herself since her parents died years and years ago, sticking his nose in where it doesn’t belong and generally making her life a living hell.

Only this time he seems more like heaven, with his broad shoulders and take-charge attitude. Regan’s not a little girl anymore, and suddenly Burke seems less like an annoying authority figure and more like somebody she just might be able to fall in love with.

Coming Next Week--A New Book and a Story to Go With It

2010-10-26T10:32:00.001-06:00

I am releasing another book next week--probably Monday, November 1. This is another book that has been previously published, and rights have reverted to me.

Well, sort of.

See, once upon a time I was just KK. All my books said KK on them. Then this strange thing came along called erotic romance. And it seemed to be doing pretty well. So I started writing books for Ellora's Cave. In order to keep the new extra naughty books from upsetting people who had read KK's books, I made up a new name. I became Elizabeth Jewell.

Now EJ is an interesting soul. She has become not so much a pseudonym as an alternate personality at times. And after a while she got tired of writing plain old erotic romance and decided she wanted to write m/m erotic romance. And she's been doing pretty well doing that. But in the meantime, she had some m/f erotic books that had sold fairly well. But after writing m/m for a while, those didn't sell so well anymore because it was no longer what people expected from EJ.

This brings us to the present day. Or, like, two months ago. Or something like that. I decided I would put a book out once a month, either via one of my established publishers or via self publishing. I've been doing that since May. (Don't try to do the math--there's another pseud out there I haven't outed yet...she's kind of shy.) Among the books I wanted to release were books that had gone out of print, and several of those were EJ's m/f erotic romance books.

Well, EJ isn't so much a m/f erotic romance writer anymore. Neither is KK--KK does sensual romance, but not erotic romance. So to work out the conundrum with the pseuds, the genres, the subgenres and the readers, I decided to do something weird.

I rewrote some of EJ's books. Not a lot--just enough to tone them down from very explicit erotic romance to fairly explicit sensual romance. This book I'm about to announce is steamier than previous KK entries, but not as steamy as EJ's work. In fact, I pulled some full scenes out of this book because, upon re-reading it, I didn't like them. They were out of character and felt like I'd just shoved them in there to up the erotic quotient.

So now the book is somewhere in between how I originally wrote it, as KK, and how it was finally published at Ellora's Cave, as EJ. I have a couple more books that will be undergoing a similar treatment, because, as m/f stories, they fit better under my KK name than under EJ's name.

More in the next post...

My Cyber Valentine--Now in Audio!

2010-10-12T08:05:00.000-06:00

Today marks the release of my very first audiobook! My Cyber Valentine arrives today at Audiolark. Today only, it'll be just $2.49--and regular price is $12.99, so hurry to get this great deal!

As much as I love audiobooks, I have to admit it was a little weird hearing my own book when I went through the audio galleys. But after a few minutes it got less weird, and by the time I was done I was very pleased with the work the folks at Audiolark did. So drop by and grab a copy to listen to during your morning commute or while you're out walking in the beautiful fall weather.

***

Chandler Carlisle has never met Val Kinsey, but she hates her none the less. The meddling pencil-pusher from her firm’s St. Louis office has interfered with her work for the last time.

So when Val comes to visit headquarters, Chandler’s shocked to find that she is a he….and a very hot, very exciting man at that.

The attraction is mutual and their emails sizzle, but can Chandler and Val sustain an inter-office romance that spans a thousand miles? And when they meet again, can their real life passion match their cyber-sparks?

New Book-Sweetest Songs--Now Available

2010-08-13T19:53:00.000-06:00

Wow, I haven't posted in a long time. How rude of me...

In any case, I have a new book to announce. Sweetest Songs is a contemporary romance novella, and is available at 1romanceebooks and hopefully soon at amazon.com.

Ty Richie is a wannabe musician, but he can't quite seem to get his big break. Brin O'Meara has had a soft spot for Ty for years, but he only has eyes for her stunning stepsister Liz. When Ty gets the chance to make Liz jealous by weaseling his way into a camping trip with Brin, Liz and her boyfriend Gavin, he jumps on the opportunity. But a freak snowstorm in the mountains changes everything, and suddenly Ty finds himself looking at Liz, Brin, and even himself, in an entirely new light.

Take a look!

Another Neat Google Alert Item

2010-01-15T07:40:00.000-07:00

Google Alerts likes to send me neat links about me. It's cool that way.

Here's a link to my books (Time and Time Again, Vampire Apocalypse and The Haunting of Rory Campbell) at an online bookstore. In India. Very cool! I don't even know what the prices mean...

Where There's a Will in Osh Kosh

2010-01-01T08:14:00.000-07:00

A neat link I found through Google Alerts: Where There's a Will at the Osh Kosh Public Library (scroll down). So if you're in Osh Kosh, check it out! Literally!

Free Holiday Read: Christmas at Farhallen

2009-12-17T19:13:00.000-07:00

Set in the Starchild universe, several decades before the first book.

Although the long-haul colony freighter had hung within it for approximately seventy-two hours, hyperspace remained a theoretical construct, explainable only through strings of numbers, symbols, and the occasional Greek letter. It would get the ship where it needed to go, but no one on board knew how.

The idea didn’t bother Captain Blake Farhallen. All he needed to know was which button to push and when to push it. After he pushed it, they would theoretically emerge from the wormhole, hyperspace tunnel, or whatever the mathematicians had decided to call the theoretical construct, and end up where they’d intended to go. He hadn’t actually tried it yet, but he had no option other than to assume it would work. Assuming anything else would just be asking for a nervous breakdown.

His carefully calculated attitude of intellectual indifference didn’t stop the rest of the crew from engaging in speculation about the functionality of the phenomenon of hyperspace. The current argument revolved around what the actual, factual calendar date was at the moment. Most importantly, whether or not it was Christmas yet.

Farhallen sprawled in the captain’s chair—not that comfortable a chair for sprawling, to be honest, but he was s sprawler by nature. Lieutenant Pru Holloway had her head bent over a computational pad, poking it rhythmically with a stylus. Bret Diego, the engineer, watched her intently. He’d already done his own calculations, but Pru wanted to run them herself.

“Are you sure that’s right?” Bret asked.

Pru gave him a withering glare. Her distinctly Japanese features and jet-black hair belied her name. “Of course I am. You used the wrong entry formula. It changes the rotational structure of the hyperspace corridor.”

“Huh,” said Bret, thoughtfully scratching a spot on his temple. Pru presented the pad to him with a look of almost menacing glee. “Huh,” said Bret again, and slumped back into his own chair to mumble his way through the numbers.

Pru threw her triumphant look at the captain. He grinned. She was cocky, overconfident, and annoying as all hell, and he had a strange feeling he might marry her after this was all over and they were back on Earth.

“Is it Christmas?” he asked her.

Her glee changed instantly to peeved annoyance. “How the hell should I know?”
Farhallen chuckled and shook his head. “I thought that was the point of the exercise.”

“The point of the exercise,” Bret put in, “was to hand me my ass on a plate.”

“Which I did,” Pru shot back.

“Which you did. However—” He passed the computational pad back to her. From where he sat, Farhallen could see the long, red line of a correction across its flat, black surface. “I screwed it up, you’re right, but you set the median warp factor too high.”

Pru wrinkled her nose so firmly it nearly disappeared into her face. “Dammit. You’re right.”

“I am.” Bret’s voice was bland. “And it’s December twenty-fourth. More or less.”

“Christmas Eve, then.” Farhallen unsprawled a little; the position was starting to strain his back.

“Christmas Eve,” Bret confirmed.

“I never celebrate Christmas,” Pru announced. She was a member of one of the modern Buddhist schools that had never made much sense to Farhallen. Then again, none of the classic Buddhist schools had ever made much sense to him, either.

“No candy canes for you, then,” said Bret. He was imperturbable, or at least Farhallen had never seen him perturbed.

“We should do something.” This was First Officer Melanie Walsh, whom Farhallen had thought was ignoring the shenanigans. “Just a little something. It doesn’t have to be religious.”

“It’s fine with me,” the captain said. “But you’d better hurry. It won’t be Christmas anymore in thirty-six hours.”

“Who said thirty-six hours?” Pru protested.

“I did.” Farhallen pushed up from the captain’s chair and stretched. “I’m the captain. So you officially have a day and a half to make it Christmas.”

#

The biggest problem with hyperspace, besides its being purely mathematical, was that it was boring.

Farhallen didn’t do well with boring. He was high energy—it was one of the things that had led him to the military in the first place. Having something to do would at least help, even if it was celebrating a holiday that might or might not be relevant.

It also gave him the chance to stroll the halls and act as if he were in charge of something. He hadn’t done anything remotely command-like since they’d entered hyperspace.

They didn’t have much, if anything, that could be pressed into service as Christmas decorations. Not for the first time, he wondered if the mathematical construct of hyperspace might involve some color—maybe even handy shades of red and green. But most experts in how hyperspace might or might not work seemed to agree that looking at it was a bad idea.

But when he got back to the common room—more like a common closet, since there was barely room for any meaningful congregating—the crew was already busily decorating.

They’d cut red and green paper into garlands and Chinese lamps, draped from corner to corner of the tiny space. Pru was standing on a chair pointing at Bret and the others, barking out orders in her high-pitched, Chihuahua-like voice.

Farhallen grinned. She really was his favorite.

“Mistletoe,” she said. “Mistletoe and oak leaves. That’s traditional and Pagan at the same time.”

Bret nodded and scurried off, presumably to stick a hand out the window and pluck a supply of mistletoe and oak leaves out of the hyperspace navigation wormhole tunnel or whatever it was that surrounded them. Farhallen shook his head. Bret hadn’t even questioned the order.

“How many religions do we need to represent?” Farhallen queried. Eyes turned in his direction; they’d been so involved in watching Pru that they hadn’t even noticed he’d come in. So much for his compelling aura of command.

“All of them,” Pru chirped. It was a sharp-edged, somewhat irritated chirp, like a sparrow being waterboarded.

Farhallen gave her a look meant to be searching, but he was sure it was more besotted than anything else. “There’s only thirty people on the ship, Pru. Maybe six religions represented, tops.”

“We’re an exploratory vessel with long-term goals of colonization,” she countered. “Thus we represent the whole planet Earth and all its varying belief systems.”

He found himself agreeing before he even gave himself a chance to think about it. “You’re absolutely right. Good point.” To his surprise, she gave him a little smile. His heart turned inside-out. God, he was an idiot.

Bret returned, carrying an armful of what looked very much like mistletoe and oak leaves. Farhallen blinked.

“Synthetics,” Bret said by way of useless explanation. “You’d be amazed what you can scare up if you ask nice.”

Farhallen rolled his eyes. This place was a nuthouse. At least at the moment, it wasn’t boring.

And it got suddenly less boring. Abruptly, the ship lurched to the side. It sat at an almost forty-five degree angle for a few seconds, then slowly rotated back into place. Pru fell off her command perch. Farhallen caught her, not sure how he’d managed to get to her before she face-planted into the deck. The pole in the middle of the room, which he now saw was festooned with Stars of David, Wiccan pentangles, and the strange, Ouroboros-like symbol of the nascent Church of Far-Seeing, tipped sideways, as well.

Bret pushed the pole back to a right angle and looked at the captain. “What the hell was that?”

“How the hell should I know?” Farhallen countered. “I’m just the captain.”

Then a high, screeling sound filled the small room, and the baffle plates began to open. A morass of emotion poured through Farhallen, along with an intense flood of adrenaline.

The baffle plates were supposed to stay securely closed, a tenuous but effective barrier between the crew and the poorly defined dangers of hyperspace. They could open automatically, though, if the ship’s hyperspace arc took it close enough to a planet. The ship would then drop out of hyperspace to allow the crew to take readings and make appropriate reports.

All this rushed through his mind as the adrenaline brought him to a high state of alert, then his military training kicked in to bring him back into a slow-moving ocean of calm.

“Turn around.” His voice was dead calm. “Turn around. Don’t look out the window.”

Everyone in the room obeyed immediately. Pru passed him a worried look, biting her lip. Slowly, Farhallen followed his own order. He stood stone-still, fists clenching and unclenching, the sound of the baffle plates opening a harsh, metallic wail behind him.

It took exactly one hundred and seventeen seconds for the baffle plates to fully retract and settle into the locked, open position. It felt like three hours. Farhallen closed his eyes to ride out the wait. Knowing he couldn’t turn around and look made him want to turn around and look. What the hell could be so bad about looking at hyperspace, anyway? It was just math.

He jumped when the baffle plates slammed into the locked position. Pru glanced at him sidelong, and he could see fear in her eyes. He’d never seen fear in Pru’s eyes before.

He swallowed. Heavy silence fell over the room, so thick he could breathe it.

Finally, carefully, he said, “Nobody move. Don’t turn.”

He knew what he was about to do, knew he had to do it, because the captain did these things. The captain took the hits he needed to take, to keep the rest of the crew safe.

“No.” Pru’s protest was so soft it barely stirred the tension-thick air.

Farhallen turned around.

Had he turned a few seconds earlier, the results might have been different. As it was, he saw the strange, waving undulations out of the corners of his eyes as they disappeared off the sides of the wide viewscreen. They were green and red but also pastels and grays, like nacre, but overlaid with blood, fire, and thick, heady rain.

There was no describing it, not really. It moved off the edges of his vision, leaving him with the feeling that someone had thrust an eggbeater into his ear and turned it on high.

Everything seemed to dip and sink under him. He thought he staggered, but he didn’t, his feet still anchored firmly to the floor.

Then the colors disappeared, leaving the viewscreen speckled with stars, and the looming, pregnant curve of a blue-green planet.

He stood stock-still, staring at it, his breath suspended.

“Captain…” Pru’s voice, quiet.

He blinked and realized he needed to draw air, and soon. “Turn,” he said, the word barely audible even to himself. “Turn. Look. My God, look.”

He heard them turn behind him, the faint rustle. Pru stood at the corner of his vision, and her shift was a circular movement just to his left. Then the sound of moving bodies was eclipsed by the sound of indrawn breath, as if everyone in the room had gasped simultaneously. Perhaps they had.

It was beautiful. A perfect orb, its curve filling the wide viewscreen. Blue and green, oceans and continents brushed with wisps of white cloud.

They’d all seen Earth from space, and more than once. Looking down on this planet, though, they saw different outlines, a continent with a curve of coastline like a lion’s head, proud and commanding. An ocean so deep green-blue that Farhallen thought it must be deeper than any ocean Earth had ever hosted.

The collective gasp had eased into a reverent silence. They were closer to the planet than he’d ever imagined would be safe for a jump out of hyperspace, but the vagaries of viable jump points weren’t to be questioned, especially if they worked.

He felt as if he could reach out and touch it.

“We’re the first,” said Pru, her voice baby-soft, like a prayer. “The first ever.”

Farhallen smiled. “We are.” Reluctant, he turned away from the beauty of the blue-green orb and faced his small crew. “Merry Christmas.”

A Special Book for Dog Lovers

2009-12-11T09:32:00.000-07:00

I didn't write anything in this heartwarming anthology, but I did copy edits and would like to recommend it to anyone who has a soft spot for pups. Happy Tails Books publishes stories about rescue dogs and adoptions, and donates proceeds to rescue organizations to help homeless pups.

The pit bull anthology has a variety of stories, anecdotes, and even poems about pit bulls who have been rescued sometimes from horrible situations and given loving homes. Happy Tails has books focused on other breeds, as well, and are looking for more stories for future anthologies about different breeds. Take a look at their website, read some previews, and maybe even do some holiday shopping for your favorite pet lover.

Thursday Thirteens

2009-09-03T09:06:00.001-06:00

I'm featured in the Thursday Thirteens today at Nina Pierce's blog. Drop by and say hi!

Warning--lots of very pretty but possibly NSFW nekkid dudes. :-)

New Video and Some More New Stuff!

2009-08-04T09:00:00.000-06:00

First things first:

Here's a new book video for Where There's a Will, which officially arrives in paperback tomorrow, August 5.

To celebrate the book release, I'll be hanging out at the Samhain Cafe. I'll be talking about Where There's a Will, and I'll give away a copy of the book. I'll also be giving away one of these:

This T-shirt features a depiction of Inveraray Castle, which Chloe and Malcolm visit during the book. It's made from a picture I took of the castle when I was visiting Scotland umpteen years ago.

If you don't want to wait for the drawing, or if you'd like to look at the other designs available, check out my new Cafe Press page. I've got a couple of other designs there, also based on some of my personal photos of Scotland.

Hope you enjoy, and I hope to see you at the Samhain Cafe tomorrow!

It's a Party! 8-5-09 at the Samhain Cafe

2009-07-31T12:32:00.000-06:00

Apparently I have no ability to keep track of my own release dates. Where There's a Will officially releases on August 5th, not August 25th (it's already selling at amazon.com, but that's another story). In my defense, I have an email filed away that says 8-25 on it...

In any case, regardless of my authorial confusion (and there's nothing new there, let me tell you), I'll be at the Samhain Cafe group on August 5th talking about my new paperback release. I'll give away some prizes, and I'll be debuting some new things I'm sure you'll all enjoy. So be sure to stop by and say hi on August 5th--next Wednesday--at the Samhain Cafe Yahoo group.

Shiny Paperbacks!

2009-07-21T09:50:00.000-06:00

My author's copies of Where There's a Will arrived today, and they are very, very pretty! The book's available for preorder at your online bookstore of choice.

Stay tuned for news about special offers and other fun stuff that will become available as we get closer to the release date. Where There's a Will arrives on August 5.

Cure Writer's Block

2009-07-14T12:53:00.000-06:00

Or, you know, find a place to dork around when you should be writing... We all need that, right?

Widgets, writing prompts, and other fun stuff to poke your recalcitrant muse with a stick.

http://www.languageisavirus.com/

A Nice-Looking Ebook Reader

2009-07-11T10:45:00.000-06:00

With all the brouha about the Kindle, you'd think it was the only e-reader on the market. Fortunately, it's not.

Here's an article about a neat new reader, the Cool-er, produced in the UK. Not only is it slim and handy, it comes in awesome colors! Even purple! If they'd bring the price down just a snudge I'd be sorely tempted...

The Beginning of the End for an Institution?

2009-07-09T10:44:00.000-06:00

The Adams County, Colorado library system is apparently phasing out the Dewey Decimal System. I don't know whether to be sad or relieved. I never could figure that darn thing out...

Read more here.

More Neat Art

2009-07-06T10:33:00.000-06:00

Paper sculpture this time. Really lovely.

http://www.jenstark.com/sculpture_01.html

Art from Unexpected Places

2009-06-30T10:30:00.000-06:00

This artist creates lovely mini-sculptures from Crayons. No, seriously. Check it out.

http://www.petegoldlust.com/carvedcrayons.html

IWOFA Summer Breeze Contest

2009-06-23T09:22:00.001-06:00

Check out the new IWOFA Summer Breeze Contest. Over 100 authors and tons of great prizes, including a paperback copy of Earthchild. Check it out here.

My Cyber Valentine--First Time in Paperback

2009-06-18T18:40:00.000-06:00

My Cyber Valentine is now available in paperback through Lulu.com. Take a look!

The book has been very slightly revised from the Loose Id electronic version, but not very much, so if you've already read the original version, there's nothing really new here except a shiny paperback...

Earthchild Now in Paperback!

2009-05-01T09:51:00.000-06:00

Earthchild is now available in paperback. Drop by and pick up a copy.
My Bookstore and More
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Borders
Powells

Earthchild Paperback Available for Pre-order

2009-03-27T09:00:00.000-06:00

The paperback release of Earthchild is now available for pre-order at Amazon.

Could he give up the stars.for her? Taken in as an infant and raised by the primitive, non-human natives of the colony planet Denahault, Noisy Girl has always known she was different. Human settlers initiating peaceful contact confirm it-her true home is a planet called Earth, millions of miles away among the stars. Her search for her heritage leads her to the home of Harrison Fairfax and Trieka Cavendish, and their guest Jeff Anderson, Trieka's former second-in-command. For Jeff, Trieka's offer to captain the legendary ship Starchild is a lifelong dream fulfilled. Then he meets Noisy Girl, an entrancing young woman who speaks only in sign language. She captures his imagination like no other woman ever has, and his efforts to teach her English deepens a relationship he never thought was possible for him. But the claustrophobic, technology-laden atmosphere of Earth traumatizes the gentle Noisy Girl, and suddenly Jeff's choices aren't quite so clear. If he accepts permanent command of Starchild, all hope of happiness with this beguiling woman will be destroyed. Unless a compromise can be found.

Earthchild arrives in paperback on April 28.

Another Nice Review for Where There's a Will

2009-01-27T09:55:00.000-07:00

Another lovely review for Where There's a Will, this time from Joyfully Reviewed.

"Where There’s a Will took me on an enchanting journey to the Highlands of Scotland where humor, history, and romance were deftly spun together to create a story that is simply wonderful. Katriena Knights has created an entire cast of characters that I would love to know in real life and a town that completely endeared itself to me. . .From beginning to end, Where There’s a Will is truly a pleasure to read."—Shayna at Joyfully Reviewed

For the full review, click here.

New Review for Where There's a Will

2009-01-23T13:42:00.001-07:00

A new review for Where There's a Will from Romance Reviews Today.

"If you're in the mood for a light-hearted love story sure to bring a smile to your face, WHERE THERE'S A WILL certainly fits the bill."—Courtney Michelle

Thanks, Courtney, for the great review!

Fantasm Awards Nominee--Earthchild

2009-01-15T10:00:00.000-07:00

Earthchild has been nominated for a Fantasm Award--not for the book, but for the fantastic cover art.

Congratulations to Dawn Seewer for the nomination. I've loved this cover since I first saw it, and I'm honored to work with Dawn and the other wonderful artists at Samhain.

New Review for Where There's a Will

2009-01-13T10:00:00.000-07:00

"Where There’s a Will by Katriena Knights is an enjoyable contemporary romance set in the Highlands of Scotland and the author does an outstanding job of describing both the land and people of the area, including the enchanting Scottish accent. ... Ms. Knights created a story with intriguing characters and a unique plot concept revolving around the will stipulations that were so bizarre, I could almost see them happening in real life."--Mystical Nymph at Literary Nymphs

Read the full review here.

Thanks for the great review!

Scavenger Hunt!

2008-12-15T08:07:00.000-07:00

Sponsored by Infinite Worlds of Fantasy Authors.

Tons of authors and tons of prizes, including three Grand Prizes of $100 gift certificates to your bookseller of choice.

My individual contest features a paperback copy of Starchild. Remember, it's SHINY!!

Run, don't walk... enter now!

Have fun, and happy holidays!

New Review for Where There's a Will

2008-12-09T15:30:00.000-07:00

"Pick up this book and enjoy the highlands of Scotland and fall in love yourself with two of the best characters that I’ve met in a while."--Missy, Fallen Angel Reviews

Read the full review here.

It's Here!

2008-11-26T14:30:00.000-07:00

Starchild is now available in paperback! I got my author's copies last week, and they are shiny.

A no-nonsense starship captain and a billionaire financier, Fairfax and Cavendish are the ultimate odd couple. Until an insidious government conspiracy leaves them with nothingexcept each other. When financier Harrison Fairfax boards the EarthFed starship Starchild, Captain Trieka Cavendish knows he'll bring trouble. Earthlubbers always do. But she has no idea "trouble" will come in the form of a vast government conspiracy that will turn her whole world upside down. Harrison Fairfax has spent the past seven years trying to find out what happened to his wife, an investigative journalist. But his wife's disappearance is only the tip of the iceberg. What lies beneath is biggerand much, much worse. It's a conspiracy reaching to the highest echelons of EarthFed. Government strongmen, who are on to Fairfax's meddling, drive him and Cavendish into the wilds of the colony planet Denahault, where they discover even more secretsand a passion that may be the only thing that can save them.

a Note from All Romance eBooks

2008-11-13T10:02:00.000-07:00

Support for a worthy cause. Check it out!

*****

The idea that nature should be preserved is important to us here at All Romance eBooks. It's a core value and one of the reasons that we adore eBooks. We care about our carbon footprint, the world we live in, and the world that we're leaving to future generations. When we decided to create a gift calendar to entice some charitable giving this holiday season, it seemed a natural choice (no pun intended) to feature celebrating the beauty of men to preserve the beauty of nature.

Basically here's how it works: People donate $5.00 towards our charity fund and they get to select a free gift. Either a set of 2009 wallpapers or a 2009 wall calendar. If they choose the print calendar, they pay S&H. We donate the $5.00 to Conservation International. That's it!

New Earthchild Review

2008-11-11T09:56:00.000-07:00

Vi Janaway, at Romance Reviews Today, just posted a lovely review for Earthchild.

"EARTHCHILD, the sequel to STARCHILD, is sweet and hot, a lovely tale of wonder, discovery, and re-discovery of what is truly important.... I liked this adventure story. Katriena Knights has written a well-blended delight of love and passion between two strong characters. I recommend it."

Read the full review here.

RIP to a fine author

2008-10-30T07:23:00.000-06:00

I'm saddened this week by the passing of Tony Hillerman, author of the Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn series of mysteries. I was introduced to Hillerman by my mother, and quickly fell under the spell of his plain but poetic prose and layered representation of the Navajo nation.

If you haven't read any of his books, give them a try. He was really a masterful writer.

New Review for Where There's a Will

2008-10-28T09:09:00.000-06:00

I just received a lovely review from LauraJ at The Good, The Bad and the Unread.

"I really enjoyed reading this. Ms. Knights brought Scotland vividly to life through her description of the country and the people who live there. In some books, authors try too hard to capture the Scottish accent that it becomes overwhelming and confusing for readers and sometimes distracting. I never once felt this way in this story. Malcolm will probably end up on my top heroes of 2008....

"I’m really hoping that Ms. Knights will write more contemporary romantic comedies (especially set in Scotland). This was a really fun book and enjoyable book that kept me turning the pages well past my bedtime. Now to convince my husband to take me to Scotland."

Read the full review here.

Thanks, Laura, for such a great review!

Ghosts!!

2008-10-23T11:17:00.000-06:00

I wrote a short article for Samhain Publishing's newsletter, the Samhellion, discussing ghosts in Scotland and my new book Where There's a Will. Check it out here, at the Samhellion archive.

KK on the RADIO!

2008-10-16T07:23:00.000-06:00

Is that anything like TV on the Radio? Right, probably not...

Anyway...

If you missed my appearance on BlogTalkRadio on Monday night, it's now archived here. It was a fun interview. It's about a half hour long, and I talk about current books, old books, and possible upcoming books, as well as a bit about the inspiration for and writing of Where There's a Will. Drop by and have a listen!

KK on the Radio! Reminder

2008-10-13T10:00:00.000-06:00

Don't forget—tonight I'll be appearing on All Romance eBooks' "What's Hot in Romance" Blog Talk Radio Show this Monday night at 9:30 EST. I'll be answering potentially embarrassing questions and possibly reading an excerpt from Where There's a Will. I hope you'll join us!

KK on the Radio! And a Chat

2008-10-09T16:06:00.000-06:00

I'll be appearing on All Romance eBooks' "What's Hot in Romance" Blog Talk Radio Show this Monday night at 9:30 EST. I'll be answering potentially embarrassing questions and possibly reading an excerpt from Where There's a Will.

Also, tonight at 9 EST I'll be chatting at Coffee Time Romance, with other Samhain Authors.

I hope you'll join us.

Where There's A Will--Now Available!

2008-10-07T09:22:00.001-06:00

Where There's a Will is now available from Samhain!

The terms of the will seem crazy…until she meets the man to fulfill them.

When Chloe Sullivan’s great uncle dies, leaving her his house and a not-quite castle in the Highlands of Scotland, Chloe’s more than willing to take a vacation across the pond to check it all out. When she gets there, she finds out there’s a catch—if she wants to keep her inheritance, she has to marry a Scot.

And her great uncle even left her a suggestion as to who.

Malcolm MacTavish is taken with the lovely, straightforward Chloe the moment he sees her at the airport. But they can’t enjoy more than a brief fling, since she’s planning to go back to the States. The more he gets to know her, though, the more he wants to try to change her mind.

Until he finds out about the will…

Warning: This title contains a Highland fling (a.k.a explicit sex), Scottish accents and gratuitous jokes about the Loch Ness Monster.

Starchild Paperback Available for Pre-order

2008-10-02T10:00:00.000-06:00

While I was poking around amazon.com looking for links, I discovered that the paperback version of Starchild, from Samhain, is available for pre-order. It releases on 11-25—pre-order it here, cause you know like a gazillion people are going to try to buy it on release day... :-D

For Those Who Kindle...

2008-09-30T10:00:00.000-06:00

If you've succumbed to the shiny, shiny lure of the Kindle e-reader and are looking for reading material, Samhain books are available in Kindle editions. Including mine! Check them out at the following amazon.com links:

Starchild

Earthchild

Katriena Knights

The Rhythm Of The Words

Links for Your Perusal

Why Being Edited Is Like Getting Your Eyebrows Waxed

Friday Links

Why Editing is Like Sculpting a Masterpiece

New Year's Linky Links!

Idea Growth--Ring of Darkness

More Links for your Linky Perusal

Idea Growth: Hunters of the Moon

Friday Linkage

Idea Growth: Darkness

More Friday Linkification: Craft and Practice

Bits and Bobs for Christmas

How Ideas Grow

And for Today's Linkage....

What I’m Reading—The Help

Friday Links

Thoughts on writing—where do ideas come from?

Friday Links

What I'm Reading--The Audio Book Experience

Friday Linky McLinkerson

Good Grief Not Another Sports Metaphor

Friday Linky Lingage

Information Overload Part II

Friday Links

Information Overload, Part I

Friday Linkage

How KK’s Weird Breakfast Choices Can Help Your Writing

Friday Linkage

Book Review: Writing the Fire

Beau Coup Friday Links

Thoughts On Writing—Longhand Girl in a Techno World

Join Me at Savvy Authors, October 17th

OMG SO MANY LINKS!!!

Familiarity Breeds Contentment

Posting on Tuesdays

Friday's Links

Guest Posting today at Romance with SASS

Persistence of Memory

Ceremonial Closing of the Tabs

Rachel Brimble: Synopsis Writing – Ahhhh!!!!

New Short Story Collection

Closing Many Tabs Day

Guest Bloggers

What I’m Reading—Earth’s Children—Plains of Passage

New story from KC Myers coming Tomorrow!

Alternative Blog Hop

Ring of Darkness--Excerpt

Summer Sale at Smashwords

Ring of Darkness--Now Available

New Short Story from KC Myers

New Short Story from Etopia Press

Ring of Darkness--Coming Soon

Excerpt: Mostly Sunny ...

New Book Available

Interesting Links. Also? Crazycakes!

Newsletter Spotlight at One Place for Romance

Guest Blogging

News! New Novel on the Way

Dude! What's Going On Here?!

The Regan Factor--Now Available

So, Here's the New Book

Coming Next Week--A New Book and a Story to Go With It

My Cyber Valentine--Now in Audio!

New Book-Sweetest Songs--Now Available

Another Neat Google Alert Item

Where There's a Will in Osh Kosh

Free Holiday Read: Christmas at Farhallen

A Special Book for Dog Lovers

Thursday Thirteens

New Video and Some More New Stuff!

It's a Party! 8-5-09 at the Samhain Cafe

Shiny Paperbacks!

Cure Writer's Block

A Nice-Looking Ebook Reader

The Beginning of the End for an Institution?

More Neat Art

Art from Unexpected Places

IWOFA Summer Breeze Contest