When I read a book I love learning about new places. It’s important to me as a reader that an author paints a vivid picture of where their characters live, work, and play. I don’t need a lot—not pages and pages of description, but I do need a little flavoring added.

Reading about New Orleans has always been a fave of mine. Anything Southern gets to me really. We Southerners are pretty colorful people in general, and it just stands to reason that where we live is just as colorful. I was driving down a main highway a few weeks back and spotted two white toilets sitting on either side of a driveway to mark the entry. Yep, toilets. Lol I’m serious.

I’ve also seen tires painted all kinds of colors then buried into the ground half way to form a wall for a driveway. Last week I saw this gorgeous wrought iron gate with a beautiful scenic drive stretching out from it lined with Bradford pear trees and on the brick pillars framing the gate? Concrete gargoyles. Passed a manufacturing plant for brick the other day and there were two concrete pig sculptures out front on the lawn. Yep, pigs. I swear, I just could not make the leap from pigs to bricks.

I know you’re thinking, “She’s visiting Redneckville quite a bit, isn’t she?” Well, yeah, Redneckville is all around you in the South. But that’s part of its charm. You can visit a fancy spa that charges you obscene amounts of money to pamper you two blocks north of where you can drive down a country road and let your main squeeze check you for ticks.

I love my sweet South. Wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. From the palm trees of Florida to the pine trees of Carolina, it’s all good. There’s nowhere else like it in the world. Big, bustling cities. Small, just-a-stop-in-the road towns. Roads that lead to absolutely nowhere, turn you around, and take you back to where you started. Exquisite cuisine ranging from the spicy flavors of New Orleans to the famous seafood of the Atlantic Coast’s town of Calabash. Grits are a plenty. Salt-cured ham and barbecue that will melt in your mouth. Succulent fruits and vegetables you can fry, boil, broil, grill, saute, or just plain eat raw.

Then there is the way of life. If you like it busy—go for it. But if you like it slow—sit back and enjoy. I remember sitting on my granny’s front porch with a little fan made of white lace, listening to the whippoorwills–still do that sometimes too. I remember an electric fan she had that oscillated and had a very distinctive hum. I remember the corner drug store that had the soda fountain with dark wood floors and ceiling fans that stirred the air just enough to make you think you’d landed in heaven on a hot summer day. And you can still find some of those corner drug stores here today.

But the South is progressive too. Home to major corporations like Coca-Cola down in HOTlanta. We have beaches from the Gulf of Mexico all around and up the Atlantic Coast. Mountains that go on forever. Hot springs, caves, gem mines. The South has everything. It’s worth exploring. Whatever you’re looking for, you’ll find it in the South. It’s a vacation heaven and a wonderful place to live. Exotic and yet so simple.

Where is your heaven on Earth?

I caught an article the other day that said Amazon believes within the next year, ebook sales will overtake sales of print books. Interesting news but then, I don’t think it’s all that shocking to those of us who write and read ebooks and tend to keep up with this topic. It was only last year that everyone discussed which kind of ereader was the best value for the money. The Amazon Kindle was around $500 and wireless. Other readers were entering the marketplace at the speed of light. Barnes and Noble introduced their Nook right before Christmas and sold out quicker than you could grap your credit card to purchase. Obviously these handy dandy readers were popular.

A flash in the pan? Many said so but I never believed it. In this age of instant gratification, being able to download a book and then carry your entire library in your purse has a definite appeal. Just a few months ago, I graduated from an old ebookwise reader to the Nook. At the time of my Nook purchase, I spent around $300 by the time I bought that pretty eggplant-colored cover I’d had my eye on. While reading the newspaper yesterday, I noticed the Nook is now selling for $150. The price of the Sony reader and the Kindle have also gone down making these readers highly affordable. Maybe this is all due to the release of Apple’s Ipad (no doubt a hot commodity)? Most likely.

My children are college aged and I remember not many years ago, discussing with them how cool it would be to be able to load their textbooks on a reader. They scoffed. Yes, they did. They never imagined this would be something of interest to them. My oh my how the worm has turned. Now they discuss Ipads and textbooks and are busily checking online to see if their books are available in e-format. If you have attended college or had a child who does, I don’t have to tell you how expensive these books are, nor do I have to tell you how HEAVY they are! A few days ago, I checked out a post by a college professor who did a study on the price differences between hardback textbooks and e-textbooks. Amazing. A $100 textbook could be purchased for half and sometime less-than-half the price. Some books can be ‘borrowed’ for a small price and disappear from a reader after 18 months.  Let’s face it, most kids resell their books for maybe 15 bucks and have no interest in keeping the book once the class is over. No, not all textbooks are available as ebooks yet but as the school year approaches, I believe we’ll see our kids buying more ebooks by next fall.

In the end, it’s all about options. Plenty of readers love their paper books. Love the smell of them. Love the feel of them in their hands. Others aren’t so enamoured. They want their fix, want it now and demand it cheaper. The way I see it, it’s the best of all possible worlds.

Trouble in a Stetson (book two of the Sequins, Saddles, and Spurs series) is available now at Ellora’s Cave.

Buy it HERE!

Lola Lamont leaves Vegas with two pals, never imagining they’d break down in small-town Texas. So what’s a former showgirl to do when she runs smack dab into the hottest sheriff south of the Mason Dixon line? Why, jump his bones, of course!

Sam Campbell takes one look at the Vegas Bombshell and knows damn good and well she belongs in his bed. She probably has the words gold digger tattooed to her ass but he’s ready to take what the sexy blonde has to offer. Vowing to protect his heart, Sam rocks her world. Too bad she’s rocking his right back. Sam is more than ready to handle some sass, spunk and sex, but is he willing to gamble on love?

Imagine you’re sitting at a meeting/eating at a crowded restaurant/giving a   speech…anywhere, doing anything…and you have the sudden urge to climax. This “hush-hush” syndrome sounds like ecstasy, but can be a living hell.

Just how often do women who have this have orgasms? Everyday? Ten times a day?

Would you believe there’s a woman who claims to have up to 200 orgasms a day?

The idea of being in a constant state of sexual arousal and having to experience the joy of climaxing…while in the most inappropriate places at the most inconvenient times…certainly detracts from the whole concept of relishing that lovemaking thrill.

Possible causes of PSAS:
1. Neurological hypersensitivity (some women claim the syndrome started after taking anti-depressants) or trauma to the pelvic nerves.
2. Pelvic vein congestion.
3. Over-sensitivity to Progesterone.
4. No/delayed release of hormone Prolactin.
5. Deficiency of Oxytocin from the pituitary gland, needed for calming down after sex.

Information is scarce…and treatment on a trial basis…but a good source is:
http://www.medindia.net/patients/patientinfo/persistent-sexual-arousal-syndrome.htm

Can a romance heroine experience this syndrome? And, how would the hero react? An interesting thought to ponder!

Photo: Flickr: Bitchbuzz’s photostream.

http://mariannestephens.net

http://aprilash.net

http://romancebooksrus.blogspot.com

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/romancebooksrus

http://sevensexyscribes.blogspot.com

So here’s the deal…after writing away on my current manuscript of M/M shifter love for the next Tales book, after plotting a M/M novella for MLR Press, after reading and reviewing Josh Lanyon’s Fair Game, and after posting Jaime Samm’s review of Ethan Day’s Self Preservation, I found myself longing for the hero who likes girls. (I coulda said the C or the P word denoting their sexual organs, but I restrained myself. Especially since I say those words plenty of times when I’m writing het.) I’m not quite sure how all those het women can read only gay romances. When I’ve been immersed in the manlove for a length of time, I find myself with a horrible het itch. I yearn for the simple vanilla of a man and a woman getting all hot and bothered and putting Tab A into Slot B.

In general, I’m a simple woman. I like simple things.

You. Me. Food. Yum.

That describes last night’s dinner of Quartermaster subs from Buccaneer Pizza. Rott’s had everything on it. Mine was minus the tomato (I’m allergic) and the mustard. (So not a mustard fan unless it’s on hot dogs or corn dogs or pastrami.) Simple food devoured quickly so Rott can return to the NASA channel and I can continue to delete email.

Since I like simple things, you’d think I’d write simple stories, but nooooo. I have to write complicated scenarios with simple answers. And the answer is…

Love Conquers All.

Yep. That is the Deal in my author world. No matter who you are, what you do, how bad you act, if you are the hero or the heroine (or hero #2) you will discover that Love Conquers All and you will be given a Happily Ever After. You could be dead (as is Ashworth Stone in Fire Storm, the 7th Tales book.) You could be living your life in the Netherworld instead of your own world (as does Alfred Stone’s mate in Rain of Tears, the 9th Tales book.) You could be an asshole (like Vahid Delrey in Ride the Lightning, the 4th Tales book.) You could be straight with a same sex mate (like Holden Antaeus in Fire Season, the 3rd Tales book.) You could be the black sheep of the family (like Eden Antaeus in Hot Water, the 2nd Tales book.) Or maybe just be a damned stick in the mud (like Marius Granville in Common Ground, the 5th Tales book.) You could lose your entire family including your mate because you’re a mean SOB (like Ruan McCallan in Thunder and Myth, the 8th Tales book.) You could also give up too soon (like Declan Antaeus in Shifting Winds, the 1st Tales book.) Or you could be a loving brother and mate, an arrogant bastard, a brilliant strategist, a nosy Machiavelli, and a force to be reckoned with (like Sean Antaeus in Force Majeure, the 10th and final Tales book) and STILL end up on a knife edge of uncertainty, a hair’s breadth from losing your mate of many years and unborn child on the operating table after a harrowing car accident…only to have Love save the day.

Love IS the Deal. It’s what spins every plot, brings every character to life, and gives the world one romance book after another. In the end, it doesn’t matter if the stories are het or gay. It’s the Love that makes the book worthwhile.  And the tears you shed at the happy ending.

I write across the genres because that is what keeps me motivated. A surfeit of het romances are just as likely to happen to me as a surfeit of gay romance. I like to mix things up and enjoy everything there is to offer. (Yes, I’m one of those people who tastes a little of almost everything on a buffet. *eyeroll*)

Keeping myself entertained by writing and reading across genres is important to me. One of the things this helps with is staying fresh. If I bounce around the genres I won’t get bored and my work won’t suffer for it. God forbid I give you a boring story! I’m not easily pleased with romance books and I imagine the millions of readers out there aren’t all easily pleased either. I try to give them credit for not being dumb and easily lead when I think out a plot. I also try not to write one genre back to back to back. Which leads me back to my first paragraph.

Sure, I don’t understand those het women who read nothing but gay romance. I can’t do it. I need my M/F action too. However, just because I don’t understand how you can want to have sex only with men, yet not be interested in M/F love stories, doesn’t mean I think those people don’t get the Deal. I am quite, quite sure that they do.

I just happen to love the Deal in many of its forms. (I’m not much of a menage reader because I find those scenarios to often be too contrived and not very plausible.  Very few authors can write a menage love story and make me believe it. It’s a tough genre to do right IMO, which is why I rarely write it myself.) I know there are others like me who just want a good love story whether the main characters are M/M or F/F or M/F or even those menage equations I have trouble with.

The Deal for me is sealed with strong characters, a strong plot, good writing, and good editing.  Nothing kills the Deal for me more than bad writing and a weak, trite plot.  The Deal only works if I buy into it and believe it. Your job (and mine) as an author is to make the reader believe. At the end of the day, even if I’m tired of writing and reading gay romance for the moment, if the book is spectacularly well done (like anything by Josh Lanyon see above link) the writing will take me away and serve me the Deal on a silver platter and make me forget that I was getting tired of that genre for the moment.

So now that I’ve had a surfeit of Teh Gay for the moment, but still haven’t finished writing my gay romance for fall release, I find myself opening het romances on my Nook when I go to bed.  Oh, yeah. Tab A, Slot B…shivers of lust. And the Deal. I have to have the Deal. There is nothing like reading a book with a well-written Deal to make me want to write like the wind.

All you authors out there, you give me the Deal in spades and I will return the favor…in any flavor of genre you want. Just so long as Love Conquers All.

When I was a wee bairn, I read a book of elephant jokes. Things like:

Question: Why are elephants grey and wrinkled?

Answer: Have you ever tried to iron an elephant?

Or the ever-popular:

Question: How do you eat an elephant?

Answer: One bite at a time!

That latter joke, however, has some serious implications for writers (or would-be writers), and I’d like to address it. It has to do with the logistics of writing novels. (Another old saw: When it comes to war, amateurs think about strategy; professionals think about logistics.)

So, you want to write a novel. But a novel is, as a rule, somewhere between 70,000 and 120,000 words. Anything much shorter or longer is going to be much more difficult to place. There are exceptions–online epublishers being one of them–but let’s take 90,000 words as the average for a novel. So you want to write a 90,000 word novel.

How will you ever find the time?

Assuming you haven’t bought into the myth that writing must be slow and painful to be of value*, it’s easier than you think. A manuscript page, double-spaced with one-inch borders, in a legible font (12 point Courier is my preference) will generally consist of 250-300 words. Let’s take 250 words as the average. If you can write–not type, but write–fairly quickly, you can probably produce 250 words in fifteen minutes. Maybe as much as an hour.

Let’s say it takes you fifteen minutes to write 250 words. If you devote fiteen minutes a day, every day, to writing, that’s 91,250 words in a year. That’s a novel for fifteen minutes work every day. Does that sound doable? (No, that number doesn’t include revisions**, but if you’re only spending 15 minutes per day on writing, I think you can find the time to revise as well.) If it takes you an hour to write 250 words, you’ll have to put more time in, but that’s still an entire novel in a year.

Let’s step it up, though. Say you can write 1,000 words in an hour (250 words every fifteen minutes), and you can afford an hour a day to write. One thousand words per day X 365 days in a year is 365,000 words. Or four 90,000 word novels. For an hour a day. Oh, pity the weary writer, who labors for sixty whole minutes a day. If you can spend two hours a day writing, well, that’s (2,000 words x 365 days = 730,000 words). If you can produce 3,000 words a day, you reach 1,095,000 words–enough for twelve 90,000 word novels. If, as John D. MacDonald is reputed to have said, you have to produce a million words of crap before you can write anything good…3,000 words a day for a year will clear all that crap out of your system in one year.

“But, Gail,” you say, “I can’t write every day! And I need a vacation after working a whole hour a day five days a week!”

Okay. Let’s run those numbers.

There are 52 weeks in a year. Take two weeks off for vacations. That leaves 50 weeks. A five-day work week means 250 working days. Let’s assume you’ll lose 50 days to holidays,  illnesses, family emergencies, and the unjustifiable desire to play hooky sometimes. That leaves 200 days a year.

200 days x 1,000 words = 200,000 words, or two 90,000 word novels a year (2.2 to be exact).

200 days x 3,000 words = 600,000 words, or between six and seven 90,000 word novels in a year.

And that’s assuming only 3,000 words per workday. If you’re producing 250 words an hour, that’s 12 hours of work. A long day’s work.

But. If you’re writing 1,000 words per hour, that’s three hours work. If you treat writing as your day job, work at it all day, and can produce any sort of word count, well…now do you see how Nora Roberts can produce so many novels every year?

I mention all this because when someone pointed this out to me, it really opened my eyes. I’d been writing for my own amusement for years, but had always been rather daunted by the idea of writing a novel. How could I ever produce a story 90,000 words long? It seemed impossible. Seeing these numbers in black and white convinced me I could do it. Over the last year or so, I’ve written–and published–seven stories of 7-10,000 words, and written (and am now circulating) two novels. I plan to write two more novels by December 31st of this year.

The numbers don’t lie. There are a thousand excuses would-be writers can use to justify not making the effort to achieve their dream of publication. But that you don’t have the time isn’t one of them. Not anymore. Now you know better.

You’re welcome.

*Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, and Joyce Carol Oates would all beg to differ. Shakespeare and Dickens produced a great deal of great literature writing quickly, and Joyce Carol Oates has been known to write 9,000 words a day. That’s a 90,000 word novel in ten days!

**But don’t assume that major revisions are necessary. They may be, but plenty of successful writers do minimal revisions. The notion that a story can’t possibly be any good until you’ve sweated blood over it is a myth. It may be true for some writers, but don’t assume it’s the case.

So I happened to be at a gathering a couple weeks ago and someone I don’t know well (like at all) struck up a conversation with me.  He was talking to someone else and heard that I had published a book or two about “something to do with vampires.”  Uh, yeah.

This (cough) gentleman assumes, of course, that every vampire book is in the vein (heh, heh, pun intended) of Twilight.  Uh, no.

So we moved on (can we please move on, like to opposite sides of the room?)  Where was I?  Oh, yeah, so he then observes that for something like that I pretty much just type whatever I want, right?  I mean it’s not like it’s real or anything.   Uh, no.  That’s why they call it fiction.

So, he concludes, that must be pretty easy.

It’s moments like these for which the phrase, “if looks could kill” was invented.  (We writers know stuff like that.)

That’s right, I wanted to tell him.  The words just trip off my fingers onto the computer screen, fully formed and perfect in every way.  No research involved, no planning, no plotting, no character development.  And then no revising, no editing, no sending my darlings off to be rejected by vicious agents and editors!

No, you ass, it isn’t easy, I thought about saying, as I eyed his pristine white shirt and imagined what it would look like with my Cosmo all over it.  And, no, just because it’s vampires for grown-ups, the entire book is NOT just one big sex scene, like some sort of bad porn flick with cheesy music playing while the characters switch partners for the next round of body fluid swaps.

Some of the best writing I’ve ever read is in genre writing.  Some of the best writers I’ve ever read write fantasy and romance and science fiction.  And good sex scenes are damn difficult to write.  I’d like to see THAT guy try writing one.

Unfortunately, courtesy (not to him, but to our hostess) prevented me from telling him what a jerk he is.  So, I just smiled and moved on, dreaming of red, sticky stains all over his white shirt, and . . . you know, I just might have the character profile for the annoying-guy-who-dies-early-and-bloodily for my next book!

DBR

In the coming days of August, I have a new release due out from Passion in Print called The Darkness of Sable. My editor asked me to take a picture of myself holding the print version when I receive it and turn it in for the blog page and her scrapbook too.

Heaven have mercy, how I hate having my picture taken!

I guess this means I need to get more of my office arranged and cleaned up. Well, at least the desk area, lol.

Every time someone points a camera at me I dive for cover, which is odd since I used to do some modeling when I was fresh out of high school. But if I’m honest I hated posing even then.

I suppose every author who has his or her picture taken thinks, “Oh, my gosh, I’m going to look like a dork!” or “I hope like heck I don’t look like a beach whale.” Or even things like “Is there something between my teeth?”

Why is it that kids and teens will jump in front of a camera and act goofy or even pose in the most bizarre garb, but once we reach a certain age or moment in our life, we suddenly become camera shy? Heck, my hubby’s nephew went to the prom in a plaid orange and green tux and was proud as a peacock about the prom picture. When I saw the pic my first thought was, “His grandmother probably tried to kill him when she saw this.”

My oldest, JadeyKiss, always says, “Mom, you look fine, so stop worrying!” However, now she insists on having makeup on and her hair done if anyone wants to take a picture of her and the baby.

When does our outlook change about having our picture taken? Is it after that first child? Is it when we have our first high school reunion? Or does it become ingrained in us once the fashion industry has bombarded us enough with what they “think” is beautiful?

Whatever the answer, I’ll pose with my print book and smile. Well, I can’t promise I’ll smile, but I’ll keep my promise to my editor for a picture.

I wonder if she’ll accept a pic of my hand holding the book? LOL!

A few months back, after a conversation with some friends online, I came up with an idea for a novel. A shifter novel, which I’d never written before. A novel with the weird premise of a vegan who became a werewolf, but even in wolf form refuses to eat meat.

An M/M romance novel, which I’d never even dared to try before because I didn’t think I could do it.

For several weeks, I wrote. I’d already written the scene immediately after Kyle’s first shift during the aforementioned conversation with my friends, and on a challenge from someone on another writing loop I wrote the beginnings of a sex scene (involving a bit of fun with whipped cream. Excuse me, whipped nondairy topping, since Kyle is after all a vegan.) I asked questions, fought with the characters about a few things, and mostly just worked and hoped.

Yesterday, I finished it! The first draft, at least. I know the story needs some revisions. Grammatically and mechanics-wise, I write pretty clean, but in my first drafts I’m just trying to get the thoughts out of my head and so I often wind up with sentences that don’t quite make sense, reptitions, minor plot holes, and so forth. That’s what revisions are for.

The story’s finished, though, and on first look I’m pretty happy with it. Pretty proud of myself, too, for pushing the comfort zone and actually writing it.

I sat down the other night to watch the movie Australia. Even though I knew nothing about the plot–other than it was a historical story set in Australia, the lure of Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman was just to hard to resist.

To be honest, it was a good thing at the time there was nothing else on TV or I’d have switched channels after the first twenty minutes. True, it may have been because the heroes took a while to meet, but I think what bugged me was the comical way some events were portrayed. Sure, maybe they wanted to make fun of some stereotypes we have about the continent, but still they could’ve gotten their point across in a different way.

Still, I stayed with the movie and was rewarded as we got more into the story. The cartoonish elements disappeared (another thing that I find weird, because I think that when you establish a certain tone, you should stick to it, or at least resurrect it from time to time), and the little boy certainly stole the show as the narrator.

When the movie ended two and a half hours later, I was puzzled. Even though I enjoyed watching it and, at times, I was really anxious to see what happened, the story wasn’t all that great. It wasn’t all that different from other movies I’ve seen. So why did I catch myself holding my breath at times? It wasn’t the actors, because between you and me, it wasn’t Jackman’s finest moment. He hardly ever took off his shirt.
It was how the story was told.
The director sucked you in with the little boy’s unique voice as he narrated the events that were taking place. I was literally at the edge of my seat when the authorities took him away from Kidman and okay…sad as it may be, it has happen before. Yet it got to me without special effects, profound words and deeper meanings.
And I realized that this is the main reason I became a writer. Most plots have been covered before, archetypes have been employed to death, and sometimes it just seems the only thing that changes is the time and the place. Still, I want to tell the stories in my head in my own unique–I hope–way. A tale, fictitious or not, can be told in a hundred different ways.
That’s the magic of story-telling; why it will never die and people will never stop reading books, watch movies, listen to songs. From Homer to Shakespeare to Stephen King, from Alfred Hitchcock to Woody Allen, from Bach to The Beatlee to Rihanna, there will always be someone needing to narrate and someone needing to listen.
Because in the end, it’s not really about the story. It’s about one soul reaching out to another.