Holy mainstream publication, Batman!
Published June 25, 2008 | 
My newest publisher, Red Sage, has a two-page spread in the latest Publishers Weekly - the one with the article that makes it seem like erotica/erotic romance is a brand-spanking-new industry trend?
Looky! The cover of THERE CAME A KILLING FROST in motherhumpin’ PUBLISHERS WEEKLY!
(bottom, center of right hand page)
In explaining the difference between Romantic Times and Publishers Weekly to my husband, the part-time rock star, I used this analogy: RT is to PW as Spin is to Rolling Stone. (I knew that 720 verbal on the SATs would come in handy someday.)
Rainy days and Mondays…
Published June 23, 2008 | …make me wanna curl up on the couch with a bag of sour cream and onion potato chips, a liter of Wild Cherry Pepsi, and all the daytime TV I can ingest in six hours.
Since I can’t do that today — got a deadline looming like a looming thing — I’ll post this instead:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBxzvSbGJ2w&feature=related]
The first time I heard George Carlin’s riff on the Seven Words You Can’t Say On TV, I was eleven years old and hanging out at my best friend’s house. Her mother wasn’t home, and we gorged ourselves on freshly baked chocolate cake, hauled her older brother’s Penthouse collection from under his bed, and threw George on the turn-table for a little grown-up entertainment. It was the first time I’d heard at least two of those seven words.
I made sure to be gone before her mother returned.
The last time I heard George was a year ago next month. I was in the third row of the balcony at the State Theatre, and he was trying out his new act. I remember he complained of not feeling well, and warned us that we might not get what we paid for. Then he proceeded to bring down the house, to the tune of three standing ovations in thirty minutes.
Check out Paperback Writer’s moving tribute here.
RIP, Mr. Carlin.
Some tuneage…
Published June 20, 2008 | ...to ease the way into the weekend.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OhTTSMR7Pw&feature=related]
Been a whole lot easier since the bitch left town
Been a whole lot happier without her face around
Nobody upstairs gonna stomp and shout,
Nobody at the back door gonna throw my laundry out
She hold the shotgun while you do-si-do
She want one man made of Hercules and Cyrano
Been a whole lot easier since the bitch is gone
Little miss, little miss can’t be wrong
Little miss, little miss, little miss can’t be wrong
Ain’t nobody gonna bow no more when you sound your gong
Little miss, little miss, little miss can’t be wrong
Whatcha gonna do to get into another one of these here rock n roll
Songs?
Other people’s thoughts, they ain’t your hand-me-downs
Would it be so bad to simply turn around?
You cook so well, all nice and French
You do your brain surgery too, with your monkey wrench
Little miss, little miss, little miss can’t be wrong
Ain’t nobody gonna bow no more when you sound your gong
Little miss, little miss, little miss can’t be wrong
Whatcha gonna do to get into another one of these here rock n roll
Songs?
I hope them cigarettes are gonna make you cough
Hope you heard this song and it pissed you off
I take that back, I hope you’re doing fine
And if I had a dollar I might give you ninety-nine
Little miss, little miss, little miss can’t be wrong
Ain’t nobody gonna bow no more when you sound your gong
Little miss, little miss, little miss can’t be wrong
Whatcha gonna do to get into another one of these here rock n roll
Songs?
***
ETA: Kerry Allen posted on RTB today. Go. Read. Laugh.
Happy weekend!
Ob.ser.va.tion.al
Published June 18, 2008 | I don’t know if this is true for the entire country/world/universe, but around here it’s the scrawniest little pencil-necked, chip-as-big-as-a-mofo-house-on-his-shoulder, sweet-baby-Jesus-could-you-try-to- compensate-MORE-for-your-lack-of-stature dudes who drive the largest, shiniest pick-up trucks. Here’s a clue for all the guys under 5’6″ driving a GMC with enough acreage for its own zip-code: If you’re getting laid at all? It’s IN SPITE of the truck, I promise you. Because you look like a spider monkey swinging down out of the cab of that thing, and while spider monkeys are damned precious, they ain’t sex-ass no matter how you cut it.
Also? When you straddle two parking spots in a crowded lot in order to protect your “baby” from dings and scrapes? That makes people — like me, for instance — think about digging their keys into the side of your pretty little souped-up four-wheel-drive. (I would never DO it. I just THINK about it. Because I’m a nice person like that.)
Looky!
A photo of fabulous author and my new BFF Dakota Cassidy and her handsome paramour — the only man I know who can get away with wearing a sparkly lavender cowboy hat and still retain his considerable masculinity — on top of a picture of my yellow bag, otherwise known as, “OH MY GOD, they skinned Big Bird!”
I can hear Dakota retching all the way from Texas. It makes me smile.
In closing, the Barefoot Contessa is neither barefoot, nor a contessa. Discuss.
ETA: Check my brilliant and ever-stylish crit partner’s blog, which I did NOT read prior to posting the above, hand to God, as it were. She’s asked for the return of her half the shared brain. I’m negotiating as we speak.
Searching out the scary.
Published June 16, 2008 | Has anybody else been watching the NBC summer series FEAR ITSELF? (And could that website be any more user unfriendly? I think not.)
My current WIP (working title: WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT) is an erotic ghost story — yeah, it’s a stretch — for the upcoming Amber Allure “Haunted” collection that’s coming out at Halloween. In an attempt to work myself into a properly creeptastic frame of mind, I’m watching and reading a fair amount of horror, including the above-mentioned series.
Of the two episodes aired so far, I much prefer the first, titled “The Sacrifice.” While the story itself isn’t terribly original (being basically a rip-off of the 1996 Robert Rodriguez directed, George Clooney/Quentin Tarantino/Harvey Keitel/Juliette Lewis/Salma Hayek/Cheech Marin stone-killers-meet-badass- bloodsuckers-in-the-Mexican desert romp, FROM DUSK TILL DAWN*, with a tip of the hat to the ending of the 2004 remake of DAWN OF THE DEAD) the production values were strong, the acting was engaging, and the script didn’t suck.
The second episode, titled “Spooked,” didn’t move me. Maybe it’s my instinctive dislike of both leads, actors Eric Roberts and Cynthia Watros. (Roberts has always screamed “slimy loser” to me, no matter what role he plays, and I’ve disliked Watros’s overly-mannered acting style since she was breaking hearts and wrecking homes on my mother’s favorite soap opera some fifteen years ago.) Plus the script lacked a little sumpin’-sumpin’ in the logical sense-making department.
I’ll be interested to see if this week’s ep rises above the rather easy and obvious comparison to the 1997 Travolta/Cage flick, FACE/OFF.
Over the weekend, I saw M. Night Shyalaman’s THE HAPPENING.
Meh. A few tense moments, but nothing major, as I knew Shyalaman wouldn’t go so far as to kill off a child, R rating notwithstanding. Betty Buckley rocked the house, as usual — the only truly scary element of the entire enterprise. Sadly, she’s onscreen barely ten minutes total.
I’ve read my way through Shirley Jackson, Richard Matheson and the best of Uncle Stevie, and am now working on a few authors who are new to me. I’m finding it tough to maintain the creepy mindset in the face of all this unrelenting summertime, however. It’s like trying to write a Christmas story at Halloween.
And…there goes the storm siren again. Never in the history of EVER have I seen so many severe storm warnings and tornado watches so early in the season. Weird. And a little scary. Maybe that’s where I should find my inspiration?
Non-sequitur alert: I’ve got an interview and a recipe up on the June Red Sage Newsletter. (Molasses cookies…mmm. Consider checking it out for the sugar rush alone? Or not.)
*I own four copies of this movie: one VHS and three DVD, including the director’s cut and a “making of” documentary called FULL TILT BOOGIE. And although I’m sure my brilliant and ever-stylish crit partner will call me out as a liar, it’s not just for the salty Clooney goodness. It’s one hell of a funny flick. I never understood why it didn’t do well with the critics until I realized they saw Tarantino and Keitel and assumed “artsy, uber-violent thriller” and got the blackest comedy with the most cheesy special effects you’ve ever seen instead.
Oh well. Their loss.
Time to consider moving to the basement. Again.
ETA: Holy hairballs, Batman! The cat has a blog!
Woke last night to the sound of thunder…
Published June 9, 2008 | I don’t care what the calendar says. Nor do I give a rip that our official, public-school-sanctioned vacation doesn’t begin (at least in my state) for another seventeen days.
It’s ninety-four degrees on my shady back deck at eleven in the morning, and that means it’s summer. Dammit.
And THAT means that along with the shorts and tank tops and sundresses, I can break out what I call my “summer tunes” collection. The one that features every song that’s ever meant “summer” to me. (And makes my kids groan, without fail, “That old stuff AGAIN??”)
The collection is made up of a lot of late-sixties/early-seventies pop (“Son of a Preacher Man, “Seasons in the Sun,” and anything by Peter Frampton) stuff that was top-forty back when 4th of July fireworks were the most thrilling thing I could imagine, the ice-cream man was my best friend, and I didn’t care if my babyfat hung over the waistband of my pink-and-green plaid Garanimals shorts.
There’s also a heavy dose of late-seventies/early-eighties pop (“Thunder Island,” “Baker Street,” “Native New Yorker,” the entire Andy Gibb backlist) from those first pubescent summers. These tunes put me in the mood to search the web for Love’s Baby Soft and Dr. Pepper-flavored Bonne Belle Lipsmackers.
But the one artist who really does it for me every single time is, oddly enough, Bob Seger. Nothing poppy, light or mindless about his raspy roots-rock, but it was the preferred soundtrack to my high school years — particularly those hours spent scrubbing toilets and making beds as a chambermaid during summer vacations. (I’d wait till I was sure I was alone on the third floor of the hotel, slip on those headphones and play air sax to “Turn the Page.” I’m sure I looked like an idiot in my little polyester uniform with the Windex bottle worn in a holster at my side. I’m just as sure I didn’t care.)
My very favorite Bob Seger tune is “Night Moves.” The lyrics evoke a nostalgia in me that takes my breath away every single time, mostly because it feels like the story of my own high school summers — the misfit kid with the junker car and his wild-child girlfriend, slipping away to get busy whenever they could find the time.
Was a little too tall
Could’ve used a few pounds
Tight pants, points, hardly renown
She was a black-haired beauty with big dark eyes
And points all her own sittin’ way up high
Way up firm and high
Out past the cornfields where the woods got heavy
Out in the back seat of my ’60 Chevy
Workin’ on mysteries without any clues
Workin’ on our night moves
Tryin’ to make some front page drive-in news
Workin’ on our night moves
In the summertime
In the sweet summertime
We weren’t in love, oh no, far from it
We weren’t searchin’ for some pie in the sky summit
We were just young and restless and bored
Livin’ by the sword
And we’d steal away every chance we could
To the backroom, to the alley or the trusty woods
I used her, she used me
But neither one cared
We were gettin’ our share
Workin’ on our night moves
Tryin’ to lose the awkward teenage blues
Workin’ on our night moves
And it was summertime
Mmm sweet, summertime summertime
And oh the wonder
We felt the lightning
And we waited on the thunder
Waited on the thunder
Back then, I focused on this part…the part that was about ME, and my life just as it was unfolding before me, and ignored the sort of sad, wistful coda that Seger adds at the end. Now when I listen to the lyrics, I hear the metaphor Seger creates about the summer of life and how quickly it fades, but how sweet it is to recall those years.
Woke last night to the sound of thunder
How far off I sat and wondered
Started humming a song from 1962
Ain’t it funny how the night moves
When you just don’t seem to have as much to lose
Strange how the night moves
With autumn closing in
I recently celebrated my 42nd birthday, and while I don’t expect to feel autumn “closing in” anytime soon, the beauty in that simple analogy never fails to move me. For me, “Night Moves” makes the perfect summer tune — light enough to lift my spirits, heavy enough to mean something, and hot enough to include on the soundtrack of whatever dirty story I might be writing at the moment.
So what’s your favorite summer tune, and why?
(BY THE WAY ~ check out the Romance Junkies Blog where I’ve posted on the topic of ugly babies, Sesame Street, and honest reviews, and get the chance to win one last free ARC (PDF format) of “There Came A Killing Frost.”)
Yesterday, I Cried
Published June 4, 2008 | Last evening, I took my two younger spawn to their first funeral home calling hours for a 40-year-old wife and mother taken by breast cancer only a few months after diagnosis. I tried (“tried” being the operative word) to use it as an opportunity to teach my kids how to behave in public around grieving people, how to offer support and compassion in socially appropriate ways, and how not to freak out at the sight of a casket, open or closed.
What I didn’t count on was how deeply affected I’d be by the profound sorrow of the family, and their generosity in greeting and offering comfort to literally hundreds of mourners. The look in the deceased’s husband’s eyes as he smiled and shook my hand and thanked me for coming…the tenderness with which her sister gave my daughter a hug, knowing this was her first experience with death…the way her brother-in-law shook my son’s hand and treated him like the young man he is…
Get your boobies squished, girls. Early and often. Do it for the folks who’ll have to pick out what you’ll wear into eternity. Do it for the ones who’ll have to stand in a receiving line for three solid hours and smile, smile, smile when all they want to do is hide under the covers and sob. But mostly, do it for yourself.
And now for something completely different…
Check out the Red Sage Revealed blog. Somebody at Red Sage knows how to write some compelling promotional copy, yeah? And it ain’t me, believe me. (When I read that blurb, I hear the voice of the guy who narrates the movie trailers. KEWL.)
Okay then. Onward. Today, I will laugh.
It was the third of June…
Published June 3, 2008 | …another sleepy, dusty delta daa-aaa-y…
I was out choppin’ cotton and my brother was bailin’ hay…
Quick! Name that tune!
Yesterday, I hiked four miles over rough terrain — a quarter of it almost straight uphill — on what amounted to a whim.
Today? I am stiff and sore, but feeling oddly virtuous, even though several times during the hike I almost gave in to the urge to sit my ass down and make myself at home right there among the mosquitoes and sprouting fiddler ferns. Only the promise of an ice cream cone kept me moving. That and shame. I’m too young to be this old.
In other news, PBW has posted on the topic of author promo. Among other things, she says, “I understand the need for security via uniformity and conformity — that’s why we call the herd the herd — but blending in does not sell books.”
Hey, good news for me, because like Joe Pesci, I don’t BLEND.
In a similar vein, both Kerry Allen and my brilliant and ever-stylish crit partner, Barb/Caridad Ferrer, agree with me about SJP/SEX IN THE CITY. (We know we’re in the minority. I, for one, am at perfect peace with this.)
And Cindy Cruciger is running a week-long recap of her Hurricane Chronicles. Twisted, as only Cindy can deliver when she’s on a roll.
I’m about to contact the winners of the free “There Came A Killing Frost” ARC. Aren’t you sorry you didn’t enter?
No?
Well. All right then. No cookie for YOU.
Release day!
Published June 1, 2008 | The journey from initial concept to publication for “There Came A Killing Frost” was a relatively long one, at least for me–four full years. I had the idea for a story about a time-traveling assassin and his Latina lover way back in the summer of 2004. Back then, the story was set in the distant future, on a forgotten island in the Caribbean where the inhabitants had gone back to the “old ways,” circa 1850…except for the spaceport the government maintained to facilitate trading, which brought all manner of interesting visitors.
I may still write that story someday, but I’m pretty fond of how “Killing Frost” transformed itself from its first form into a tale of redemption for a reluctant time-traveler and a defiant whore. I hope you like it as well.
Time-traveler. Cowboy. Assassin. Kit Frost has been all three, and more, but he’s never stooped to slave running, and he doesn’t intend to start now. So he announces when he arrives in a brothel to collect his cargo, only to be handed the drugged body of beautiful Lourdes Carterro.
But Lourdes isn’t a slave. She’s a trained sexual submissive in thrall to a wealthy and powerful man. Her escape attempt may have failed, but she isn’t so submissive that she’s ready to give up. She’ll use her skills to lull Kit, to make him think she’s weak and easily controlled, and then she’ll find her way to freedom.
Before long, Kit’s worn leather belt has strapped Lourdes to the bed, and she’s begging for his rough touch. But Kit finds new ways to torture her with pleasure, and soon she wonders…can she run away if running away means leaving Kit behind?
~ ~ ~
Don’t forget to check out the contest I’m running to win a free ARC of “There Came A Killing Frost.”
Also, today begins the scavenger hunt hosted by Rainbow Reviews. Enter to win free books and goodie bags!