Driving With Minnie
March 16, 2009 by A Slice of Orange in category The Romance Journey by Linda Mclaughlin tagged as e-maginings, GPS
The modern world is increasingly wired, or wireless. A new gadget came into my life recently, a Garmin GPS unit I’ve affectionately dubbed Minnie. My DH bought her for me a couple of weeks ago after Janet Corenlow Quinn and I decided to drive to Las Vegas for the recent EPICon2009 Conference. The DH seemed convinced I’d manage to get lost without him, so he bought the GPS unit. He’d been talking about getting one for some time now, and this made for a good excuse. Minnie is the ultimate back seat driver, and she can be very helpful or very annoying. Her directions helped us navigate through Henderson to our hotel, the Montelago Village Resort, a lovely property situated in a faux Tuscan village at Lake Las Vegas. Click here for a slideshow of my Vegas pictures at my blog.
The perverse part of my nature delights in foiling Minnie by not following directions. I love to hear her grumble, “Recalculating, recalculating” in her computer-generated voice. Sunday morning I turned her on to go to Wal-Mart in San Clemente because I knew there was a back way through the hills. Minnie, of course, expected me to take the freeway and Avenida Pico. She had to do a lot of recalculating. I also discovered that while Minnie is fluent in English and French (this model works only in the US and Canada), her Spanish pronunciation is atrocious. And of course the streets in the area were all Spanish. I had to wait until I got to an intersection to figure out which street she wanted me to turn on. Every Calle became a Call. Every avenida became an a-VEN-i-da. My favorite was Call Delay Pazz (Calle de la Paz). By the time I pulled into the Wal-Mart lot she was quite flustered and kept saying, “go to A-VEN-ida Pico” even though we’d arrived at the programmed destination. Obviously, the technology isn’t perfect. I’m happy to have Minnie, but sometimes I just want to turn her off.
What’s your favorite new gadget?
Linda McLaughlin / Lyndi Lamont
http://flightsafancy.blogspot.com
So Many Choices
March 6, 2009 by Linda O. Johnston in category Pets, Romance & Lots of Suspense by Linda O. Johnston tagged as Berkley Prime Crime, Linda O. Johnston, Silhouette Nocturneby Linda O. Johnston
There are a lot of conferences for writers every year. I always try to attend at
least a couple. My recent favorites have been RWA National and Malice Domestic. But this year, with the economy as it is, I had to think about what to do and where to go.
My son and daughter-in-law made one decision easy. They live in Chicago but will be visiting LA the same weekend as Malice. As a result, I’m staying home!
Instead, I’ll attend the brand new California Crime Writers Conference in June. It is a joint conference by the Mystery Writers of America SoCal chapter and the Sisters in Crime Los Angeles chapter, and it’s local to LA.
And I will attend RWA National in Washington, DC, this year. Looking forward to it!
How about you? How do you decide which conferences to attend?
Linda O. Johnston is the author of 15 romance novels and several novellas, including a current Nocturne Bites, with 2 more Nocturnes upcoming. She also writes the Kendra Ballantyne, Pet-Sitter mystery series from Berkley Prime Crime.
Visit Linda at http://www.lindaojohnston.com/ or http://www.killerhobbies.blogspot.com/
0 0 Read moreA Fantasy Life
February 28, 2009 by A Slice of Orange in category A Fantasy Life by Janet Cornelow, Archives tagged as Janet Cornelow, Janet Quinn
By Janet Quinn Cornelow
Meet Kisho and Kaisha. Loki, my son’s girlfriend, drew them. They are teenage, twin snow leopards. Their mother, the ruler of their land, has sent them to
Kaisha has magical powers. Kisho has some, but not as strong as his sister. With them are some servants, of other animals species, who have some type of magical ability. The twins are alone in
Loki came to me a month or so ago and wanted to know if I want to write a graphic novel with her. She’ll do the graphic part and I’ll do the writing part. She has part of the world developed, but really not sure of what the story should be.
Writing a graphic novel has to be sort of like writing a screen play. As a writer, I do not have to do all that description, which I tend to leave out if I can get away with it anyway. Who cares if the characters change clothes during the book. Also, I do not have to explain the action. That is shown in the drawings. I mostly have to write the dialogue and then explain what they should be doing, but I can do that in notes or talking to her.
Of course, every good story needs a love interest. Kisho has one with a fox. Kaisha doesn’t as of yet.
Manga seems to be very popular with the younger generation, so it seems like a worthwhile project. We still have to come up with names for the countries and a reason why the land where Kisho and Kaisha come from doesn’t have the technology that
If you are interested in seeing a Manga romance, ask Maureen Child. She had one of her romances come out as a Manga. It was interesting. I really liked the sex scenes. They are just up my alley.
In the meantime, I have to finish Sam’s story while we build a new world. He’s out of bed, but now he is in the yard arguing with Jubilee. I don’t think he’ll be happy staying there for long.
Art work by Loki – http://loki-rei.deviantart.com
Releasing the Lyon
February 23, 2009 by A Slice of Orange in category Lyon's Lair tagged as Lyon's Lair
Building a name in publishing is tricky under any circumstances.
Changing your name after you’re published is just crazy.
So of course, I changed my name.
When I began my career with the Samantha Shaw Series, there was talk about Apodaca being too difficult to pronounce. I said, “Uh, hello, Evanovich?”
Okay, I didn’t say it, but I thought it! As it turned out, my publisher grew comfortable with the name and we went forward.
Several years later, my agent began submitting a paranormal proposal I wrote that was bought by Random House/Ballantine.
Insert HUGE excitement here. It would take six blogs to tell you how surprised I was, how scared, how sure I was that they’d realize their mistake. All the usual insecure crap. But enough of that!
Everything was going along swimmingly until I got a call from my agent, “We have a problem.”
No one wants to hear that from their agent! I sincerely thought my editor hated the completed book. I saw a blue vest at Wal Mart in my future. Then my agent said, “The sales people can’t pronounce your name.”
Holy Cow—way to scare me to death!
Long story short, Jennifer Lyon was born. Now we had to introduce her around and we had to do it fast. One thing I have learned over the years is that the promotion that works best is the promotion we enjoy.
So even though my Wing Slayer Hunter series is dark and sexy, I decided to go with a light and fun plan to promote Jen Lyon. First I set out to differentiate the two names:
Apodaca writes mysteries and romance. She is the boring serious one. She never gets into trouble.
But she has an alter ego: Jen Lyon, who insists of writing paranormal. Lyon is a lush who thinks she’s a witch, and if there’s no trouble around, she goes out, finds it and drags it home. She does the things Apodaca would never dare do.
Then I created a blog-site for Lyon where I gave her this whole personality. She loves witches and appletinis and men. This has turned into an ongoing joke on the blog. People who visit the blog bring cyber-appletinis. Sometimes they conspire to steal things (and by things, I mean the hunky men I’ve posted on the blog in a category called Wing Slayer Worthy) and they give Jen Lyon appletinis so she won’t notice their theft.
It’s taken on a life of its own. It’s hilarious and fun.
Will it sell books? I have no idea. All I know is that we’ve released the Lyon and I don’t know if we’ll ever cage her again!
BLOOD MAGIC is officially released tomorrow!
Jennifer Lyon always wanted to be a witch. When her witch-powers didn’t materialize, she turned to creating magic in her books. BLOOD MAGIC is the first book in an enchanting, passionate and supernatural series. Visit Jennifer Lyon at www.jenniferlyon.com
Advice to Myself as a Newbie Author
February 22, 2009 by A Slice of Orange in category Advice to Myself as a Newbie Author by Shauna Roberts tagged as Advice to Myself as a Newbie Author, Ellie Marvel, Jody Wallaceby Shauna Roberts
http://ShaunaRoberts.blogspot.com
Today’s Guest: Jody Wallace
Jody Wallace is published in romance fiction under the names Jody Wallace and Ellie Marvel. She has always lived with cats, and they have always been mean. Her most recent release, written as Ellie Marvel, is the e-novella Megan’s Choice (Red Sage). Survival of the Fairest (Samhain), written as Jody Wallace, will be released in paperback in July 2009.
Jody, if you could travel back in time to before you were first published, what advice would you give yourself?
I used to be single and have lots of free time. I wore cool clothes, socialized on a regular basis, drove a two-seat convertible (it got 42 MPG—don’t sneer!), read new releases by my favorite authors before their next book came out, sampled all the trendy restaurants, enjoyed museums and festivals, slept in on weekends, and made a major dent in my student loans because I only had my expenses to worry about. I wanted to be a published poet and had some minor success with literary journals, which is where most poets get their start. Poetry was intense, challenging, fascinating, and, best of all, succinct.
I definitely produced more than one poem per annum.
Fast forward a number of years we will not dwell on, and so much has changed. I’ve switched from single to married with kids, cool clothes to yoga pants and monkey slippers, convertible to minivan, adult fiction to Dr. Seuss, sleeping in to rising with babies. I’ve also switched from poetry to fiction. What was I thinking, right? Now that I have negative free time, why did I convert to a type of writing that takes me two hundred times as long as most of my poems?
Because I have an inherent narrative impulse (a.k.a. can’t-shut-up-itis) that wasn’t translating well to verse. And because I’m nuts. But I’m in great company!
Either way, if I could go back in time to when I was contemplating a fiction-writing career, here are some of the things I’d warn me about (besides getting hooked on cheese and pasta). You will notice a theme that may or may not apply to your situation, but hopefully some of it will translate.
1. Don’t beat yourself up if your productivity declines while you have wee ones. And whatever you do, don’t compare yourself with other writers who seem to be achieving so much more, both in their lives and their careers. They’re just better at faking it. I promise!
2. Resist overdoing the social networking. Once you start, you can . . . not . . . stop. Unless, of course, you’re guest blogging somewhere like the OCC-RWA blog.
3. That agent or publisher you have mixed feelings about? Yeah. Back away slowly and professionally. You won’t be burning a bridge if you’re wrong, but it will be worth it if you’re right and you get to tell yourself, “I told me so!”
4. The TV program you’re dying to watch will be just as good on TiVo, maybe better, the way lasagna and beef stew are better the second day. Right now, use your TV time to write. Or do other stuff, such as parenting, which will open up a separate block of writing time. Save TV for when you absolutely cannot write due to death of brain cells or presence of husband. Or both.
5. That thing you did (or will do) in 2006? You knew in your gut it was a bad move. Trust your gut. Post-babies, there’s so much more of it to trust, after all.
6. If you hate conferences, don’t go to them. Your stress levels and budget will thank you, and your husband won’t take the kids to McDonald’s to eat every . . . single . . . freakin’ . . . day, the big dummy. Of course they’re going to start puking right about the time you get home.
7. Do not hang your dry erase to-do list where cats or small children can reach it. They will smudge the very important item on the bottom and you will miss a deadline that results in a chain of events involving ice cream but also tears and self-recrimination.
8. With that in mind (and because you will lose your mind), always post multiple reminders. (Of everything.)
9. You don’t have to go to every kiddie school party, and you sure as heck don’t have to be room mommy. Just say no to volunteering! For now, at least. You have so much guilt in your life, you won’t notice the extra helping.
10. Last but not least, it all comes out in the wash. It really does. And then you’ll need a new washing machine, because DUDE, who put that in the laundry??
✥✥✥✥✥
To learn more about Jody, please visit her Website at http://www.jodywallace.com or the cat’s Website at http://www.meankitty.com. They share a blog at http://blog.jodywallace.com. Her new e-novella, Megan’s Choice, written as Ellie Marvel, can be downloaded from Red Sage now. Survival of the Fairest is already available as an e-book from MyBookstoreAndMore and will be released in paperback in July 2009.
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