Normally, I don’t comment on pirates and piracy. Yeah, it’s wrong. Yeah, it’s a royal pain in the ass. Yeah, it’s probably siphoning off some of my royalties. On the other hand, people who regularly download books from piracy sites probably aren’t going to be buying my books anyway since they don’t pay for books […]
For the most part, I’m not a very superstitious person. I’m not particularly nervous about ladders, although I may avoid walking under them simply because you’re more likely to get something dropped on you if you do. I had a black cat for many years and it never bothered me, although he did cost me […]
I’m a romance writer, which means I write sex scenes. It goes with the territory. It’s also the hardest part of my job. Why? Despite the usual heavy-handed jokes (“Bet you do a lot of research, har, har, har”), trying to come up with an interesting way to describe sex between your hero and heroine […]
A few weeks ago, Amazon announced an interesting statistic: their e-book sales, which had earlier eclipsed their hardback sales, had now exceeded their paperback sales. E-books were officially Amazon’s best-selling format. The response from a certain segment of the romance-writing community was immediate, although not exactly what you might expect. Amazon, they said, was lying. […]
Headhopping is one of those terms that’s well known to most people in the romance-writing community and probably unknown to anyone who isn’t part of it. It refers to shifting point of view from one character to another within a scene, and it’s a no-no. Actually, no-no is too mild. It’s a Mark Of Cain, […]
A couple of months ago, the DH and I decided to look into long-term care insurance. A relative of his had had a medical crisis and ended up in an assisted living facility. The costs would have been ruinous had she not had the insurance to pay for it. The insurance agent came to our […]
This is the second year I’ve entered books in the RITA contest, sponsored by the Romance Writers of American. The RITA is probably the most prestigious award for romance novelists, given that we’re not considered for things like the National Book Award. The number of entries is capped at 1,200, and every year some people […]
A couple of years ago I wrote a blog post about the Big Misunderstanding as a plot device and why I disliked it. Since that time, I’ve actually used a Big Misunderstanding in a plot of my own (see Venus In Blue Jeans), so I’ve sort of moderated my opinions. Yet I found myself thinking […]
I have a friend who’s been trying to publish his novels for several years. He writes literary fiction, with an occasional foray into science fiction and fantasy. He’s come close to publication several times—I’d get a message that he’d gotten an agent or that one of his manuscripts was under review at such-and-such publisher. He […]
Everybody loves a strong heroine these days. Nobody wants to write about a wimp who needs to be rescued by the big, strong hero. In fact, in most books that are being written now, the heroine stands up and at least attempts to rescue herself when she gets into difficulties. Only if she’s tried to […]
