Rather than a specific blog topic, I have a couple of things I’d like to share with you on this lovely April day.

First, I’ll announce the winner of my “Name That Bookstore” contest. Then I want to share a piece of fantastic news I received this week.
Continue Reading »

Boy, I’m going overboard. I must be going through a mid-life thing or something. Bought a Mustang. I cut back hours at the EDJ and now I’ve colored my hair for the first time in celebration. And not just any color, mind you. My hair is now vivid violet with some burgundy highlights. It’s so purty!! It’s a little darker than I picture Hell’s braid being. I considered lavender–since she actually streaked some blonde in there before doing the violet–but I stuck to purple. It can look black. Well, until I walk into the light. In the sun it looks fantastic!

Next… Do I finally get the tattoo? Maybe I’ll finally get serious about losing weight and drop 50 pounds.

Hmmmm…

Slow going this week. We had a storm last Thursday that knocked out my power for a day. Ah, Texas in the springtime, gotta love it.

Then Sunday Ty fell off the swing set and had to go to the ER for stitches. Continue Reading »

Both are making me pull my hair out. The kids are off school for a week on spring break. The weather has been so-so, of course, so they’re inside looking for things to do. That means making me crazy while I try to write and when that becomes life-threatening for them, they go make the cats nuts. That wouldn’t be so bad except the cats then come running to me to hide from the kids.

It’s darn hard to type with a 12 pound cat on your keyboard or sitting on your mouse–with your hand still on it. Then of course when the kids come into sight, there is all that flying fur and scattered desk top items like phones and pens and coffee cups when the cat jumps to get away.

I didn’t like school anymore than my kids do now, but I DO understand why my mother liked it so much! Aurrrgh!

Kimber’s post yesterday, and Zot’s comment, really got me thinking, so this is a follow-up to that. Here’s a question for y’all: what makes a character believable to you? What makes him (or her, no need to limit ourselves *g*) come alive for you?
Contrariwise, what makes a character not believable? What makes you say “come on, no freakin’ way would Our Hero do that/say that/have hot monkey sex with that guy”?

Okay, so that’s more than one question. I’m sure everyone will manage to deal just fine *g*

For me, what turns a fictional character into a real person is kind of hard to define. I think it’s the little things. The details. The speech patterns, the nervous ticks, things like that. Things that add depth and texture to a character.
It makes me kind of sad that I have less trouble figuring out what makes a character unbelievable. What does that for me is when a character is TSTL or does things that are completely out of character for who they are. Like when the “strong, kick-ass heroine” turns into a complete simpering jellyfish just because Mr. Alpha growled at her. Blech. That particular pet peeve seems to be much less prevelent in gay fiction. Or maybe I’ve just been incredibly lucky picking out books and haven’t run into those very often, I dunno.

So. Your turn. Share your thoughts!

Or: How the hell would *you* know?

Picking up on a thread from Jet’s post yesterday …

A while back, after the TTB antho came out, someone asked me where I learned about gay sex in order to be able to write it. In other words, hey straight lady, where’s your gay cred? Continue Reading »

“You’re published? That’s great! What do you write?”

“Romance.”

“Really? Like modern day or the history ones?”

“Mostly paranormal and fantasy.”

“Wow, that’s awesome. Where can I buy your books?”

“Well, there’s Amazon and ebook.”

“Cool! Give me the link.”

“Uh, two warnings.”

“Warnings?”

“Yeah. First, I write erotic romance. Lots and lots of sex.”

Blink. “Oh.”

“Second, half of what I write is gay romance…” Continue Reading »

Well I didn’t get any writing done today or yesterday due to the strong storms we had blow through Wednesday at 3 am. Thursday was shot for lack of power, I was without electricity well over 12 hours. Luckily my husband is a genius and had bought a generator a few years ago when this happened and my uncle was without power for 4 days, so we had our fridge hooked up and didn’t have to toss all the food in there. So I spent yesterday putting fence panels back up and then later at my parent’s house cutting a tree that fell on the power lines and ripped them out of the house. There is one across the pool too, be we didn’t mess with that one. The wind gusts were unofficially reported at 87 mph the other night, so there are trees down every where and houses messed up. Roofs gone. It was a mess, but we were lucky, no major damage. There were 5 tornados reported in the surrounding areas so the whole area is a wreck. But our area most of the damage was done by trees snapping in half and being totally uprooted.

TEA….It’s going great, I’m nearing chapter 10 and have gotten to a really fun part in the story. Well a fun part for me to write anyhow ;-) Characters are still being good boys and playing nice with me. They keep giving me stuff to write, yea! I talked to Sasha and she said the upper limit is 120k, so I should be good on word count. I have hit 45k for those keeping track. I haven’t shown very much up it to my cp’s but what they’ve seen they’ve liked. I wanted to try and get the first draft done then send it to them chapter by chapter, but they keep asking to see, soooo that is a great sign and it’s wonderful for my ego.

Until next time…

Well, not me actually, I paid a hairdresser to do it, but still, you know what I mean. A few inches gone! Well, maybe a more than a few. It barely hits my chin now. Okay, I really lost about 12 inches of dark hair. It’s never been this short in decades. But I HAD to.

So why, is such a mundane thing worthy of a blog? Well, mostly because it has to do with my writing. My hair was interrupting me, making me lose the flow, distracting my fingers from doing what they should be doing–writing stories –like my current work in progress with Josh Lanyon, MEXICAN HEAT.

I would be writing away and then I’d have to stop to shove my hair back out of my eyes, then I needed to twist it off my neck, when I should be typing, I’d have to pause to run my hands through it and pull it back from my face, tuck it behind my ears, throw a headband on it or more than once, twirl it into a bun and shove a pencil though it. Look at all the writing time I’m losing out on! Just to tame my hair. And I have a dozen project and items I need to be doing. I can’t waste time, even a little of it on this hair… thing!

So I did it. Just got up and left the house and did it. To the sound of pretty much unanimous reactions at home. My youngest son, smooth talker that he is, frowned and immediately said, “Why did you to that to yourself?” Nice.

Then the teenage son barreled into the house talking 90 miles an hour about something massively important like some grudge band, only to stop mid-sentence and shout, “WHAT DID YOU DO?” I don’t think it was because he was overcome with excitement and joy. Again, another charmer. Says something about my parenting skills I’d rather not examine closely.

My husband, after 26 years of marriage has learned to nod and say, “Looks nice, dear,” whether he means it or not. He’s pretty good at it by now and I almost believed him. Almost.

And the worst part? I left them all in a huff and went off to get back to my writing. It flowed! Right up until I started running my hands through what little was left, tucking it behind my ears and shoving it off my face. Even when it couldn’t possibly be in my face because ‘it’ barely exists anymore.

So now I still have a dozen plus projects to get ‘flowing’ and no hair. This morning when I brushed my hair, I actually scratched my back with the hairbrush trying to comb out the extra foot of hair that wasn’t there anymore.

I’d pout if I had the time.

In the course of a rather strange discussion today with the girl-child (don’t ask… it got seriously bizarre), I got hit with two new (and pretty wild) plot bunnies. See if y’all think either of them sounds like the basis of something you might want to read. We’ll leave the question of whether they are serious action/adventure or snarky comedy until later *g*

Bunny numero uno:
Genetically engineered roaches that, when you squish them, grow new roaches from each of the individual smooshed bits. They might even have mandibles made of some Terminator 2 style freaky-ass metal liquid stuff. And itty bitty spy cameras for eyes! if spy cameras could be made from organic, growing materials, that is.

Bunny numbero dos:
In the future, giant tarantulas roam the earth (don’t ask me WHY, I don’t know WHY!), and humans keep them at bay with tamed giant spitting spiders (apparently there is a type of spitting spider which actually EATS tarantulas O_O).

**thinks**
Okay, so #2 bunny really does sound like an MST3K movie. LOL. But what about bunny #1? Y’all think I could ever turn that kernal of weirdness into a way-cool action/adventure type book? It would sure be fun to try :D