The Mojito Literary Society

A New Kind of Paranormal

2012-01-19T15:13:00.005-05:00

Hugo Award winner Will McIntosh astounded the Mojito Literary Society with his debut novel, Soft Apocalypse, which sold out from Nightshade Books on its first print run.

Now McIntosh is back for a second round of Mojito cheeers for his new novel, Hitchers, a story about a comic strip writer who fights for control over his body when a catastrophic event unleashes the dead upon the living, and the ghost of his angry curmudgeon grandfather comes looking for him to reclaim creative control over the comic strip.

The novel contains elements of the paranormal and the apocalyptic, as well as lots of comedy and romance. The characters are well developed, at times infuriating, at times funny, at times deliciously lovable, and the story is written with that nicely cultivated fast pace that has earned McIntosh his many awards.

McIntosh has already signed over rights to his Hugo Winning "Bridesicle" for a film adaptation. So make sure to get your first edition print of Hitchers before all copies are sold out!

Hitchers gets a first rate Yes! from this Mojito Literary sister.

Mojito's Top Picks for 2011: Laura's Favorites

2011-12-29T11:40:00.010-05:00

As with all year-end recaps, The Mojito Literary Society will reflect upon some of the best of 2011.

Here are Laura Valeri's picks of the best novels this year (stay tuned for a post on story collections):

The Family Fang: by Kevin Wilson

A quirky tale of a family of performing artists, each of them having managed to blur the boundaries of what is appropriate and what is necessary in the name of art. The story will make you laugh, balk, ponder, meditate, and even maybe weep a little. If only for the fantastical performances that the Fang family manages to contrive, the book should get an award.

Faith: by Jennifer Haigh

The story of a woman who tries to trace back the choices and mistakes that led to her brother's suicide. On the surface, the novel appears to be about the abuses of the Catholic church and its coverups of sexual molestation cases, but as the story deepens, the reader is treated to a delicate, heartbreaking story about love, self-sacrifice, and most of all, faith. One of the most profound and uplifting books I've read all year!

Animal Sanctuary; by Sarah Falkner

Check out the extensive review I wrote for this one on Fiction Writers' Review. Sarah Falkner's debut is a journey into the aesthetic complexities of film and performance art. The novel is written as a braided narrative, combining article clippings, film synopses, audio transcripts and other less-conventional mediums. You'll feel like you've just gotten a crash education in art criticism when you're done reading.

Animal Sanctuary: The Hardships of Art in the Novel

2011-12-28T15:42:00.006-05:00

Sarah Falkner's debut novel Animal Sanctuary is the winner of the 7th Starcherone annual prize for innovative fiction. The novel is a complex rendering of the small injustices, abuses and incongruities that keep the art world going. It's a sad chronicle of the sacrifices artists will make to honor their art, and it's a study of the beauty and savage nature of art, and its ability to both maul and give new life to those who dedicate their lives to it.

It was tough to review the book because so much about it is different, and so much of it is also familiar. But Animal Sanctuary is definitely a step in the right direction in terms of the future of innovative fiction. Written in the form of a braided narrative, Falkner uses film synopses, audio transcripts, letters, emails and other narrative mediums that are seldom found in traditional fiction to piece together the adventures of Kitty and Rory Dawson, a film starlet and her son who, together, focus their art on the neglect and abuse of savage nature.

Check out my full review on Fiction Writers' Review, or else check out the book. Enjoy!

Tina's Review of VIPER by John Desjarlais

2011-08-26T08:20:00.001-04:00

I am such a sucker for a strong (if sometimes flawed) female protagonist -- and VIPER by John Desjarlais delivers. Selena de la Cruz is strong because she's vulnerable, both contemporary and traditional at the same time, which makes for an uneasy road.

A former cop now working as an insurance agent, she's brought back into the world of drugs smugglers and homicide when her name turns up in the Book of the Dead. She's still alive, but the people whose names proceed her have all been violently murdered. Suddenly a marked woman, Selena must face an old nemesis -- El Serpiente -- while solving a series of murders that may or may not be part of a plan of divine retribution, and may or may not be a prelude to her own demise.

Exciting stuff, this. The mystery hits several themes — faith vs belief, insider status vs outsider exclusion (and how those edges cut both ways), justice vs retribution. I especially appreciated Selena's struggle to be an assertive, intelligent female in a culture that has traditionally valued a certain home-and-hearth-based passivity even as it produces strong women who buck that trend.

Selena may seem like a contradiction herself – she has Jimmy Choos on her feet and axle grease under her nails. She’s an insurance agent who can work you a fine home coverage package . . . and also chase down bad guys (and bad gals too) while she’s at it. But her character is big enough to contain all these paradoxes (which also serves to ask the smart question of why these things seem like paradoxes in the first place. Why must a woman choose between her car and her shoes?)

This book isn't just smart; it's also fast and edgy and laced with murderous tension. Read VIPER, and then do like I'm doing and go get BLEEDER, the first mystery novel by Desjarlais and Selena’s introduction to the literary world. Or better yet, do it the other way around. But don't miss these books.

Suggested food and beverage pairing: Desjarlais' description of home-cooked tamales had me wanting to crawl into the pages and snatch them from Selena's plate. So tamales, yes, and a nice cerveza, por favor.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Visit John at http://www.johndesjarlais.com . He's also available on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/jdesjarlais1) and on Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/johndesjarlais). Visit his alter ego Johnny Dangerous at http://jjdesjarlais.blogspot.com.

VIPER is available at Amazon and through Sophia Institute Press.

Hot Iron Age Lovin'

2011-08-18T18:35:00.003-04:00

by Susanna Ives

You’ve read Regency, Roman, Victorian, Ottoman Empire, Western and Viking, but let me introduce you to a new romance setting: Iron Age Denmark. Because nothing says romance like sleeping in a thatched mud and wattle hut in sub zero degree weather, snuggled with Lars under your wild boars pelt, listening to the gentle oinks of the pigs in the other half of your hut and calls of the wild aurochs in the distance.

For starters, Iron Age Denmark isn’t as far away as you think. Just fast forward past those Sumerians, Egyptians, Greeks, and the beginnings of the Roman Empire to 1 A.D: that’s the Danish Iron Age.

Imagine your Iron Age Lars, sweat pouring down his rock hard muscles as he works over the clay furnace, smelting down some hot iron. He would build that furnace for two days and then fire it up for 5 hours using a cubic meter of wood. Then he packed down 70kg of charcoal and 50kg of the iron he dug up from the bog pit. He baked this for 24 hours to make sponge iron. Then he hammered the sponge iron into 1 kg of usable iron to make ten knives or an axe. Imagine his bulging biceps as he slung that hard hammer down. If that doesn’t turn you on…

When Lars wasn’t making you pretty axes, he was farming with the oxen so he could harvest barley, wheat, and spelt to for you to grind in your super modern grain grinder. Trust me, your man loves you when he gives you this grinder.

Your friends still have to use the old-fashioned hand and stone method.

And don’t forget the wool Lars sheared for you to weave your family’s fashionable clothes.

At night, when you’re sitting around the fire in your mud hut and your young children are playing with this wooden pig your husband carved, you tell them stories about how you and your hot iron smelting man met.You were still a virgin and it was the spring fertility festival. The elders placed you in the center of the dancing labyrinth. The village boys raced each other through the labyrinth and Lars reached you first.

You were a lucky virgin because they could have just chucked you in the peat bog as a sacrifice to the bog gods.

Also, your Lars fashions himself quite the artist. Look at the beautiful sculpture he made for you. You can see the beginnings of the phallic symbolism that would later characterize Viking art.

I think Danish Iron Age has great romantic potential. If, after reading this post, you have the burning desire to write some hot Iron Age loving please visit Sagnlandet or Danish National Museum

NOTE: The last Aurochs died in 1627. At Sagnlandet there are several Heck Oxen, a type of oxen created by the Germans under Hitler in an attempt to revive the Auroch. The Heck Oxen were very playful and chased each other around the grounds. Here is the only picture I took of them:

Mojito Literary Great News

2011-08-10T15:23:00.004-04:00

The Mojito Literary Society is proud to announce that writer Susana Daniel won the PEN Robert W. Bingham Prize in Fiction for her beautiful novel Stiltsville. Click here for the Mojito LIterary Society review of Susana's novel. Congratulations! The Mojito sisters toast to you!

Tina's Review of A SPARK OF DEATH by Bernadette Pajer

2011-07-19T08:58:00.001-04:00

Finding a captivating new mystery series is such a thrill — which is why I was so delighted to discover of A Spark of Death, the first novel in a new series by my fellow Poisoned Pen author Bernadette Pajer. Set in turn-of-the-twentieth-century Seattle, A Spark of Death features an appealing protagonist, Dr. Benjamin Bradshaw, an engineering professor accused of murdering his pompous colleague in a electrified metal contraption (think Dr. Frankenstein’s lab crossed with a birdcage).

Full disclosure: I'm married to an engineer. I find wire and metal contraptions that could kill people in my garage all the time. So I readily identified with this set-up, and with this protagonist. And I found both fascinating.

This book satisfied on many levels. The mystery was impeccably structured, the setting expertly rendered, and the story irresistibly involving (the science was cool too, especially the details of what was then the cutting edge potential of electric current). It’s the main character who had me hooked, however — I enjoyed every minute I spent with Professor Bradshaw. He's smart and funny and achingly likable, a man of reason tending a broken heart and a tragic past. I enjoyed watching him come into his sleuthiness, finding a spark of life from an unforeseen tragedy as he applied logic, science, and an empathetic decency in his search for a killer. The secondary characters made a fine suspect pool, but more importantly, they provided the context of Bradshaw's life, adding emotional texture to his existence. Scenes from his family life, from his professional life, and from his increasingly dangerous investigative life wove an intricate tapestry of emotional yearning and intellectual curiosity, with the Professor at the center.

I enjoyed every minute I spent in this book. It's an excellent beginning to what is sure to be a top-notch series, and I can't wait until Professor Bradshaw gets his next chance to practice electrical forensics.

Recommended beverage: a nice milk punch, or perhaps some sherry served in your grandmother's cut crystal cordial glasses. Something smooth and pleasant that will nonetheless leave you with a hearty glow. Sip it slow.

* * * * * *

Bernadette Pajer spent her childhood in Seattle, surrounded by the beautiful Cascade and Olympic mountains and Puget Sound. She holds a degree from the University of Washington, Bothell, where she studied CLA (Cultural, Literature, and the Arts) in the Interdisciplinary Arts and Science program. Research is her favorite activity, and she happily delves into Seattle’s past and the early days of electrical invention as she plots Professor Bradshaw’s investigations.

For more information, please visit Bernadette’s website at http://bernadettepajer.com/

Tina Discovers Cocktails on a Stick!

2011-06-23T15:21:00.000-04:00

It's been a hot one, as they say. Summer is having her way with us, that's for sure, which is why I am so deliriously excited to discover a recipe for Mojito Pops. That's just everything sweet and pure and right about summer all rolled into one.

For the recipe, visit Erin Cooks and look for the lime-mint goodness.

Sex and the Sequel by Tina

2011-05-16T17:48:00.001-04:00

Dana Stabenow, author of the extraordinary Kate Shugak mystery series, asked her readers an interesting question recently about their literary preferences (well, two questions, one subject, which you can find here).

How much sex is too little? How much sex is too much?

My own main character, Tai, is an adult woman of various robust appetites, several of them related to my other main character, Trey, who is a grown-up man with equally red-blooded ideas about the kinds of things two consenting adults can do for fun. Granted, they don’t do much about their mutual attraction in the first book. Oh, there’s a kiss, and they do make some very specific carnal plans, but they don’t end up in bed until maybe fifteen minutes after The End of the book.

But they do end up in bed, oh yes. Just in case you were wondering.

So here I am writing Book Two, which opens with the same characters, only now they’re officially a couple. There is some contention about what that particular designation means, some pondering and awkwardness, but one thing is for certain — they’re having sex. Lots of sex. There’s no more will-they-or-won’t-they for Trey and Tai. It’s all why-yes-I-absolutely-will from this point on.

Which works for me. Writing the sexual tension of a real couple in real relationship is a fascinating creative endeavor. It’s dynamic, it’s fertile, it’s revealing. My novels are traditional mysteries, but the emotional struggles of my characters run in parallel currents to the whodunit. Tai and Trey solve the crimes and save the day, yes, but they grow and change as they do it. And their sexual life together is an important part of this growth.

I’ll confess — I write every sex scene these two people share. For example, in The Dangerous Edge of Things, after Trey and Tai are interrupted in the middle of a long overdue kiss by Trey’s ringing phone, which turns out to be a summons he can’t ignore, he tells the caller, “Give me twenty . . . no, thirty minutes.” The line makes it into the book, even if what Trey does with that extra ten minutes does not.

But I know. Of course I know — authors are the ultimate voyeurs. We have an all-access pass to our characters‘ lives. And it’s important that I see these two in bed, that I make space for their sex life to exist in the universe of this series, even if those scenes don’t get a play-by-play in the book.

So here’s my pondering — while peeking into the bedroom is crucial for me as a writer, how important is it to you as a reader? Do you want to see characters getting it on, or do you prefer the slow fade to the fluttering curtains?

Share share, please. I am rabidly curious.

* Photo Credit to Rutty on Flickr through a Creative Commons License.

Tina's Review of Douglas Corleone's NIGHT ON FIRE

2011-04-25T12:21:00.000-04:00

The beach read — it’s a genre unto itself. For me, such a book must be exotic, intriguing, and smart, with real dilemmas and high stakes. I prefer mysteries, especially those with elements of romance and humor, not madcap, just funny like life is funny, in that you-either-gotta-laugh-or-cry way. And I like characters that I can care about, people who are frustrating and decent in equal measure, people who try and want and fail and try again.

Bonus points if the book has an actual beach in it.

I am delighted to report that Douglas Corleone’s NIGHT ON FIRE qualifies on all counts. It’s the second in this series featuring defense attorney Kevin Corvelli, a former New Yorker who does what a lot of us dream about — he moves his practice to Hawaii. Of course he does it to escape a lot of unwanted attention and personal tragedy. Of course all the trouble follows him right into paradise.

In NIGHT ON FIRE, this particular trouble comes in the form of a dangerously seductive woman who might or might not be a murdering arsonist. Kevin knows better than to get involved . . . but I’m giving nothing away to let you know that he gets involved anyway, and not just professionally either. Soon he’s over his head — woman troubles, kid troubles, co-worker troubles, client troubles, somebody-trying-to-kill-him troubles. It’s hot in Hawaii, and getting hotter.

The plot ricochets from crime to crime and criminal to criminal (including one of the creepiest firebugs I’ve ever met — I’m getting the heebie-jeebies thinking about him). Arson, murder, theft, adultery — every flavor of vice, and every one of the seven deadly sins. It’s a roller coaster ride with fireworks and the ever-present possibility of a loose rail, so be warned. The atmosphere is flavored with a tourist’s dream of Hawaii, but leavened with a resident’s knowledge of its mundane realities from the weather patterns to the traffic annoyances. The supporting cast is strong — three dimensional and free from the annoying quirkiness that often substitutes for characterization in some crime fiction. Corleone doesn’t just assemble a bag of personality eccentricities and call it a character. His people are fully realized, not just plot points. I especially enjoyed the scenes with Turi, Corvelli’s happy-go-lucky small-time drug dealer client. The scenes with him in it felt like eavesdropping.

But the main reason I enjoyed this book so much is the main character, Kevin Corvelli. He’s the kind of guy I want really bad to dislike — bigheaded, reckless, a money-where-his-mouth-is hotshot — but because of his immense charm and often painful awareness of his own flaws, I can’t resist him. In this book we get to see his decent and caring side too (even if it’s a reluctant and grumpy decency). I’ve read in interviews that Corleone has woven a lot of himself in his fictional protagonist, supersizing his own qualities for the story’s sake. If that’s the case, then I hope Corleone’s life continues to give him inspiration for Kevin’s adventures. They make an excellent team.

Grab some sunscreen, mix up some mai tais, and pick up NIGHT ON FIRE. Plan on diving in and staying a while. It’s fast-paced, sharply plotted, smart but not smarty-pants, and there’s real heart at the center. I’m looking forward to my next outing in Kevin Corvelli’s Hawaii.

* * * * * * *

DOUGLAS CORLEONE is the author of the Kevin Corvelli crime series published by St. Martin's Minotaur. His debut novel ONE MAN'S PARADISE won the 2009 Minotaur Books/Mystery Writers of America First Crime Novel Award. A former New York City criminal defense attorney, Douglas Corleone now resides in the Hawaiian Islands with his wife and son. NIGHT ON FIRE is his second novel.

You can find NIGHT ON FIRE at your local bookstore or through Amazon.com (find a buying link here). You can read more about Douglas Corleone and this award-winning crime series at http://www.douglascorleone.com.

Minutes from The Mojito Literary Society meeting

2011-04-18T21:39:00.004-04:00

These are the official minutes of the first official meeting of the official Mojito Literary Society, ascribed this day April 18, 2011. A Monday. Waning Moon in Virgo. Barometric pressure falling.

FRIDAY: Tina arrives at the official MLS Safe House -- The Casa de Sucre y Rum -- to perform the necessary ablutions and also some laundry. She also doublechecks to make sure that there is mint, sugar, sparkling water, and limes. Susanna arrives. There is much rejoicing and sharing of gifts, then much exclaiming over one another's exquisite taste and bounteous generosity. Tina doublechecks to make sure Susanna has rum.

Rum. Check.

Laura arrives. There is much exclaiming over her ethereal beauty and lovely dress. The traditional mutual admiration portion of the evening follows -- yes yes, we are all literary geniuses! Mwah! -- at which point Laura opens the white chocolate macadamia cookies. There is much rejoicing.

Nom nom nom.

The rights of copyright are established for a television reality series tentatively entitled "Stop Talking: You're Ill." You did not hear about this here. And then the principals retire for the evening to their respective abodes.

SATURDAY: Susanna and Tina prepare for Katrina's arrival. They sleep, then sleep some more. Then they drink champagne from the bottle whilst standing around in their nightwear and watching the neighbors' backyard wedding from the patio.

Correction: They did not drink champagne from the bottle. They made mimosas in pretty crystal stemware. Really they did. The former is an outrageous rumor perpetrated by a certain disgruntled wedding party. Except for the standing around in the nightwear part, which has documentary evidence. They cop to that part.

Katrina arrives. She brings tortilla chips with no soy, no wheat, no dairy,and no cucumbers. Also she brings poetry, and a petite watermelon. There is much rejoicing and name dropping and general acclaim as to her overall wonderfulness.

The MLS must divide and conquer at this juncture. Laura, Susanna, and Tina engage the services of a local spa facility. There is a steam room. No, we are not going to tell you what we talked about in the steam room. Katrina held down the fort at the Casa -- no fires, hurricanes, or tornadoes, nor did she feel the need to even leave the house. It was a judgment call on her part, but after careful discussion, the MLS quorum voted to approve her decision with full approbation.

Here, here.

The MLS regrouped at our marsh outpost -- Casa de Laura y Joel. Even though a kayak approach is often recommended, we chose to use the Truman and a stick-shift Saturn for this particular rendezvous. There was garlic cheese and other savory goodies, and of course, fine handmade watermelon mojitos crafted by Joel himself. Prosecco with raspberries and blackberries and strawberries to follow and fig-filled cookies. To which all the members went damn! And then fell upon the repast.

There was much more rejoicing. 'Cause, I mean. Damn.

Then there was much praising of Joel, whom all members agreed was extremely talented in all relevant areas and much gorgeous and smart to boot, and they immediately tendered an offer of MLS membership on the spot.

NOTED: Tina would like the record to reflect that the MLS members offered this praise freely, and would have done so even if Joel had not referred to us as "goddesses." But he did. Which Tina would also like duly noted.

Then there was the offering of the Monty Python dramatic tributes. Then we watched the moon come up. Big fat buttermilk moon. Following of course the smashing of the peppermint pink pig and reading of the proclamation of happiness, prosperity, and good fortune. Mazel tov!

SUNDAY: Sleeping, meditating, writing. And then more of the same. More name dropping ensued, some of which involved Twitter and Pablo Neruda and handsy celebrity poets of various stripes. And then plans were made for the next meeting, which will be in a villa in Cozumel. Or Mozatlan. You get the idea. Said meeting will be financed through means that we are not going to tell you about because you should have been paying attention, especially during the steampunk part (which a certified engineer proclaimed doable, really he did).

That is all.

We know. We wish you'd been there too.

Review-Nearly Departed in Deadwood

2011-03-28T14:58:00.002-04:00

You gotta’ love a book that starts out with the words, The first time I came to Deadwood I got shot in the ass. Yes,sirree, heroine and single mother, Violet Parker, has her work cut out for her selling real estate in Deadwood, South Dakota while worrying that, with little girls vanishing, something might happen to her own children, especially daughter, Addy. Never mind she also has to deal with a co-worker trying to get her fired and a secret admirer sending her daisies and creepy love poems. You’ll laugh out loud as this overwhelmed sleuth tries to discover who is abducting children while dealing with a daughter who keeps placing want ads for her mother’s next potential husband, drooling over two delectable men and having a weekly repast with a crotchety old man.

And just think, the sequel is out next week! Enjoy this fast read with a Mint Julep. It’s getting close to Derby time.

Bobbye's Recommended Reads

2011-03-24T00:03:00.003-04:00

Today I'm recommending science fiction reads in a number of different forms.

I don't know what I expected but I didn't expect this. Graham has written a unique and thought-provoking series of short stories. They're full of emotion, yet fun to read. I love the "programmer" touch but agree you don't have to be tech savvy to enjoy these. I am a biopunk/cyberpunk writer myself writing as Daryn Cross, so I'd recommend these to readers of the genre, but I believe they transcend all genres and can be enjoyed by a large number of people.

A war against the Darch has raged for years, and humanity is on the verge of extinction. Scientists have created biomechs to supplement as warriors, but it’s just a temporary fix on what appears an insurmountable problem. One desperate scientist injects JXS241, a biomech warrior, with what he hopes is the solution for mankind’s survival. But the biomech is captured by the enemy.
Raven Nirvanni survives on the fringes of a shattered culture. While on a self-imposed suicide mission to annihilate an enemy destroyer, she encounters the imprisoned biomech. Deciding the fate of humanity far outweighs the destruction of a single ship, she recues him and decides to ensure he reaches his destination.
With the enemy anticipating their every move, Raven is completely taken aback when she realizes she’s falling for JXS241. But can she really love a machine? And if so, can he reciprocate?

Captain Temesia Elysse has just steered her ship through almost certain death. With the help of her gifted crew, the Dark Nest has survived. Her newly evolved psychic people are targets of Homeworld genocide. Hundreds have been killed aboard the Light Nest. Back on Homeworld soil, her people are being hunted. Her lover may be dead, the gifted teacher Reyn Wolfe. It will take all Captain Elysse's restraint, with vast new psychic powers available to her and her people, not to let her infamous temper get ahead of her. But there must be a rescue mission for those still alive. And there must be justice. There will be a reckoning. And the Homeworld council has no idea their persecuted victims are alive, or just how powerful they’ve become.

Determination

2011-03-09T09:24:00.001-05:00

De-ter-mi-na-tion [dih-tur-muh-ney-shuhn]
1. the act of coming to a decision or of fixing or settling a purpose.
2. the quality of being resolute; firmness of purpose.
3. a fixed purpose or intention: It is my determination to suppress vice.
4. fixed direction or tendency toward some object or end.

"Okay, what is she up to today?" you ask. Just what it looks like. I finished writing a blog for Writers Fun Zone a couple of days ago and it really got me to thinking about my purpose and writing career. So here’s the question posed to you today. How much determination do you have?

Now, without giving anything away (feel free to read the blog at www.writersfunzone.com, posted Thursday, March 10, 2011), there are a lot of factors that go into being prolific and for being a success as well. Of course, quality of the writing is one important factor in whether or not a writer does become successful at selling books; but, how much does determination control direction and result?

I believe it has everything to do with it. You can be the best writer in the world, but if you lack the drive to sit in your chair to get a complete work on paper it doesn’t mean a thing. You may how to do something, but if you don’t do it, who cares? Calvin Coolidge said it better than I do: “Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan "press on" has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race”

I guess what I’m saying is, to me, determination is more than fixed direction or firmness of purpose. It is the drive that continues to the finish line. My mother used to say I was the most determined person she’d ever met. She said she didn’t know anyone who could look at herself in the mirror, and seeing brown hair and blue eyes, say, “My hair will be red and eyes will be green.” Okay, so that did happen, though I’m sure my hair was really auburn and just got lighter (without Mother Clairol at that time) and my eyes had some green and just got brighter. But the point is made. You have to be driven and focused and that all comes back to determination.

So buckle up! What are you going to achieve today?

My friend Tina has written the worst mystery ever

2011-03-07T09:00:00.024-05:00

Why THE DANGEROUS EDGE OF THINGS is the worst mystery I've ever read. A poignant and touching book review by Rosanna, Susanna's evil (and less intelligent) twin.

For starters, the main character, Tai, owns a gun shop and previously gave ghost tours in Savannah. Then when her brother is a suspect in a murder, she starts her own investigation (okay, as a twenty year resident of Atlanta, I understand why you might want to investigate things yourself…so she gets credit for that. But I’m telling you, this book sucks.) My point is: what kind of protagonist is this? I want humorless, hard-boiled types with commitment problems and all sorts of neurosis. And besides, a fictional southern chick who isn’t oversexed or emotionally fragile or hasn’t an unhealthy dependency on rich older men is just weird. Tai isn’t stereotypical, I just can’t handle that. This isn’t safe. Anything could happen in this mystery. Completely unpredictable.

But worst of all is Trey, the supposed badass security expert. Fine, I’ll concede the hot looks and a Ferrari have their appeal, but from the description, I was given to believe that Trey possessed supernatural powers allowing him to perceive when people were lying. I thought this was so cool, because I love hot heroes who couldn’t possibly exist in real world, like vampires or werewolves. But then Tina goes and explains the specific parts of Trey’s brain that have been damaged, giving him this odd ability to detect lies (and he is not 100% accurate with it either. What the hell? There’s that damn unpredictable element again) , but leaving him with a nasty identity crisis. This sounds a little too close to reality for my tastes.

To illustrate my points, I have chosen this terrible passage:

I smiled up at him. “You’re Mr. Seaver,” I said. “And you’re kind of relentless, anybody ever tell you that?”

He didn’t reply. His eyes were blue, startlingly so, and he directed them like x-rays. The bartender pretended to be engrossed in mashing up mint leaves, but his ears pricked our way. I lowered my voice.

“Look, I know you’re watching me, so just do me the courtesy of admitting it, all right?”

After the slightest hesitation, he nodded once, crisply.

I smiled wider. “See how easy that was? Now we can be friends.” I patted the stool beside me. “Would you like to sit down, maybe have a drink? I’m putting everything on somebody else’s tab tonight.”

He shook his head. “I don’t drink. Except for water. And hot tea.”

“Water like in ice water.”

“Water like in Pellegrino.”

What kind of badass drinks tea and Pellegrino? Suck some blood perhaps, but fizzy water? Quick, I must grab some Charlaine Harris. I’m feeling a bit dizzy.

And another thing: the plot! Good heavens, it’s filled with all sorts of twists and turns. I couldn’t keep up. All these characters keep showing up and they’re, you know, different. A bisexual African American best friend, a Hispanic stripper and a new age healer. Look, I live in Atlanta and just because I see these people every day, they have no place in a mystery. No place at all!

Another example from Tai’s friend Rico - -the bisexual African American one.

Rico’s voice was serious. “This is deep shit you’re talking. You called a lawyer, right? Doesn’t your brother work for some fancy people who know a fancy lawyer.”

I made a noise. “Don’t worry about Eric, he’s good at covering his ass.”

“We’re not talking about his ass, sweetie. That’s your ass up there on 11 Alive News at Ten.”

“I didn’t even know this girl!”

Rico snorted. “Like the APD care. They got prostitutes to push, drug cartels to run –“

“This is ridiculous.”

“So say all the suspects.”

“Rico!”

“I’m for real! And don’t think for a second they’re not looking at that assload of weapons you inherited.”

I probably shouldn’t have included that passage. It’s a bit suspenseful and might make you want to read this book. So, let me assure you the book’s ending is awful. I didn’t see it coming. I hate surprises. I don’t care that Tina showed how it all worked. Yeah, it made perfect sense in retrospect. And the worst thing, (and this is a tiny spoiler…although I don’t know why I’m bothering to tell you that, because you aren’t going to read this book anyway) the murderer is not a psycho killer!!! Look, aside from real statistical evidence, isn’t every murderer a psycho? Tina doesn’t even include one of those creepy first person monologues in the murder’s voice, you know, like in EVERY mystery book. I just don’t understand how she got those starred reviews in Kirkus Review and Publishers Weekly for this piece of claptrap. They say it’s well-written, but I’ll let you judge for yourself by including the following crappy passage:

I remembered Piedmont Park from the previous summer, when Rico and I had watched Casablanca one midsummer night, blanket to blanket with the soccer mom/buff gay guy demographic, drinking moscato straight from the bottle. At that time, barely a month had passed since Mom’s death, and I remembered feeling like I was in an overturned fishbowl, separate from the rest of the city. Every sensual detail had been as rich and distinct as an oil painting – the hazy islands of candlelight around us, the smell of crushed grass, the latent heat.

See what I mean. And they say Tina teaches writing classes.

So, in conclusion, if you want a mystery that supposedly makes logical sense and is solved by “real” people, you might like this book. My twin sister, Susanna, thinks the book is amazing. She keeps going on about great characters, witty dialogue, awesome pacing, and smart plotting. But she's an "intellectual." For me, I prefer psycho werewolf paranormal shape shifting fairy killers that I can spot from the first page and cozy secondary characters that are comfortably predictable in their quirkiness.

Editorial: Are You Addicted to the Computer?

2011-03-02T00:03:00.001-05:00

I’m just throwing this out there, because I wonder about it more all the time. Is the average adult addicted to the computer?

Answer these questions:

1. After waking up, possibly using the restroom and making coffee (if you have yet another addiction like me), do you go to your computer, PDA, tablet, etc., and check your e-mail?

2. Can you go all day without getting on a computer or other similar handheld device?

3. If something happens in your life, happy or sad, do you get not a dozen but hundreds of e-mails from unknown and never met people telling you they’re sorry/glad/elated/you rock?

4. Do you have multiple e-mail accounts with different names and passwords for different reason, switching back and forth between them on any given day?

5. If you go on vacation and forget to go no mail, do you come back to several thousand unanswered missives in your inbox?

6. If your computer goes on the fritz, do you panic, not knowing what to do and immediately call your computer company or the closest computer guru?

If you have answered yes to most or a majority of these, you, like I, are wondering about your mental stability. I have a way of rationalizing my disease in that for now I live alone and it’s company. Besides, I’m a writer, and all my contacts and valuable information is there. I do write most of the day, so it’s not interfering with my daily activities.

But when does too much computer and not enough life mean you have been taken captive by our mechanized age?

Here is the definition from Wikipedia, and yes, anything there needs to be questioned, but read it and consider. I’d love to hear your comments.

Computer addiction, a loosely used term with Internet Addiction, or Video game addiction, is the excessive or compulsive use of computers to the extent that it interferes with daily life. This disorder may affect the following: social interaction, mood, personality, work ethic, relationships, thought process. It may also cause social disorders or possibly sleep deprivation. It is important to note that as of now, psychologists are not sure how to label this disorder. Many refer to it as Internet Addiction Disorder; however, computer addiction originated long before internet use is as common as it is today. In addition, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders has yet to recognize this exact disorder, and are more likely to include a more specific term of addiction, such as Internet Addiction, or Video game addiction.

Romey's Order review

2011-02-28T11:45:00.004-05:00

Poetry, at its most basic, is about language. It’s about sound and picture and rhythm and feeling and transport. The sounds and rhythm of the language create pictures and feelings that transport readers to places and times good and bad, easy and difficult. Such feeling and transport is hard to find in much of the poetry being written and published today. Sometimes, readers are rewarded and it sneaks in from the most unexpected places. In Romey’s Order, Atsuro Riley uses ordinary words to take readers on a rollicking ride, full of twists and turns and darkness. His mastery of onomatopoeia, diction, and verb choice, though, make it one of the best rides around. Told from the point of view of a young, Southern, Asian-American boy just after Vietnam, Romey’s Order shows the reader the not-for-tourists lowcountry, full of hard lives and hard love.

Made-up words, strung together words, childhood words, these are the bits that make up the picture Riley creates. The childhood voice of the speaker leaps out in lines like: "There was a trestle that carried the train that trusted the trestle that bridged/ the river that cooled the fish that fed the boy that watched the trestle that/ slow-cankered and -rusted and fell" from “Polaroid.” The familiarity of the repetition is reminiscent of the children’s ditty about the hole in the bottom of the ocean, but that’s where the similarity stops. Romey’s Order thrusts the reader into a world filled with county fairs and cast iron skillets and muddy rivers, which may sound comforting and pastoral, but this world is as gritty as the Carolina mud, make no mistake about that.

These poems, with all their grit and hard consonants, want to be read out loud. They want to be shared across the room, across the car during a road trip. They call out to the reader to remember, rethink, rejoice in whatever life gives.

Reader Recommends

2011-02-25T06:55:00.000-05:00

It's the writer's curse -- you don't get to read. It's professionally irresponsible and just plan bad manners to not read, but after a steady diet of words, the last thing you want to put into your head is a bunch more words. Plus there is also the horrid time crunch thing.

So instead of writing the usual "reader" recommendations this week, I decided to ask a for a non-reader slant on all things literary . I interviewed Cloud, our Maltese who just turned 4 on Monday, to see what the canine set was finding irresistibly entertaining. His vote: DVDs of the TV series Life starring Damian Lewis as Det. Charlie Crewes and Sarah Shahi as Det. Dani Reese. Here's what Cloud had to say:

"This show sets a higher bar for police procedurals than any other show around at the time. Smart, funny, and emotionally satisfying, Life delivered the goods with complex characterizations and plots that hit one-two punches so fast that if you blinked, you'd be lost. It didn't play stupid, ever, perfectly balancing each episode's murder-to-solve with the ongoing unraveling of Charlie's own mystery -- who really killed that family whose slaughter he was convicted of? And who framed him for the crime? Visually stunning, its L.A. setting was so bright that it looked like you could squeeze juice out of it. Lewis' and Shahi's performances totally rocked -- in a relationship totally devoid of sexual chemistry, these two managed to make real sparks from the deep bond of partners, which was a refreshing change from most shows where the cops spend more time wallowing in romantic tension than solving crimes. Only two seasons exist, which is a shame, because Life gave this wistful doggie some of television drama's finest hours."

There you have it, straight from the horse . . . I mean, puppy's mouth. I agree with Cloud. Life totally rocked. Look for it on Netflix. You won't be disappointed.

Bobbye's Recommended Reads

2011-02-21T00:33:00.000-05:00

Time for some mystery Southern-style. It goes down much smoother with our mojitos. First we go to the small town of Last Chance, South Carolina:
Welcome to Last Chance will be released by Hatchette Books on March 1, 2011

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Ramsay's delicious contemporary debut introduces the town of Last Chance, S.C., and its warmhearted inhabitants. Down to her last five bucks, beautiful runaway Wanda Jane Coblentz heads to the town watering hole and picks up local fiddler Clay Rhodes, figuring that a night at the local no-tell motel beats sleeping on a park bench. When Clay catches her going through his wallet, he dumps her purse out and discovers ID for somebody named Mary Smith. Talk about getting off on the wrong foot! Jane, aka Mary, reveals that she's on the run from a shady, possibly dangerous past. Despite her sketchy behavior, Clay falls in love with her, and soon he and his mother are scheming in fine style to give Jane a last chance of her own. Ramsay strikes an excellent balance between tension and humor as she spins a fine yarn. (Mar.)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

From there, we travel South to Atlanta to highlight a fellow Mojito sister's book. No, Tina didn't put me up to this.

The Dangerous Edge of Things is available now.

From Booklist
The week after Teresa Ann (Tai) Randolph moves from Savannah to Atlanta—to run a gun shop she and her brother, Eric, just inherited—she finds the body of a young woman, Eliza Compton, shot in a car across the street from Eric’s house. The exclusive and secretive corporate security firm Phoenix, for which industrial psychologist Eric consults, attempts to take Tai in hand, offering the protective services of Trey Seaver, a crackerjack agent whose brain trauma suffered in a car accident left him emotionally insensitive but with an uncanny ability to detect lying. But Tai will not be restrained; with both herself and Eric of interest to police, she’s in full investigative mode looking for Eliza’s murderer. The convoluted plot involves money (of course), politics, and some of Atlanta’s movers and shakers. Whittle’s debut novel, clearly intended to be the first in a series, boasts a feisty if somewhat foolhardy protagonist whose relationship with the intriguing Trey bodes well for further installments. An overcomplicated story gets in the way a bit, but this has all the makings of a promising series. --Michele Leber

Finally but certainly not last, we wind back up to eastern North Carolina:

Sin Creek is available now.

A gruesome murder leads Agent Hunter into wicked waters.

Some call Gator Creek “Sin Creek”—where the Cape Fear River snakes through eastern North Carolina, past the stunning port city of Wilmington. A sliver of water where wickedness and decadence take precedence over decency.
When SBI Agent Logan Hunter discovers a dead UNC-Wilmington coed used porn to pay tuition, she tracks down and questions other coeds. Far too many of them have been coerced into the raunchy business and have the scars to prove it. Hunter battles dens of iniquity, zeroing in on a brazen but somehow elusive ferry to find a deranged killer and bring down the porn operations, while trying to keep her marriage to Agent Chase Railey from falling apart.

Even though she succeeds in finding the killer, the investigation changes her life in ways she never could have imagined.

Making History

2011-02-16T10:10:00.001-05:00

"Well-behaved women seldom make history." —Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

I have loved this quote since the first time I came across it, years ago, and I was interested to learn that Ulrich is a historian and was talking about the funerals of Puritan women when she first said it. It makes me wonder what people will say about us when we’re gone. We have all, at one time or another, thought about being famous or making history. It’s human nature, I think. But, what do we really mean by making history?

I would love for one of my poems, or many of them, to be in a widely used anthology, of course. I’d love to write a book of poetry that changes lives. Both of those things count, to some extent, as making history, but they aren’t likely to happen. So, what do I really want?

I want to be the woman whose descendants--and by that I mean the children of my nieces and nephews—and friends and friends’ children and children’s children tell stories about me long after I'm gone: How I caused trouble when it was the right thing to do, and sometimes because it was the most fun thing to do. How I stood up for what I believed and threw the best damn party around. How I refused to quit just because it was hard and was the most loyal friend ever. How I loved fiercely and threw fits that were talked about in three states. When I am gone, or when I am old, I want people to say, “I wish I had known her.”

That's the history I want to make.
What about y’all?

Tina's Review of The Best American Mystery Stories 2010, Edited by Lee Child

2011-02-14T12:52:00.000-05:00

Happy Valentine's Day! As I've been reminding everyone, nothing says love like a nice crime fiction novel -- or in this case, story collection. Because as everybody knows, Love and Death walk hand in hand through this world. The well-muscled human heart is capable of reddish deeds both glorious and horrific, that's for certain, and nowhere is that clearer than in these stories, edited this year by that master of the taut bone-edged tale, Lee Child.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Best American series of series (and there are several, including short fiction, crime fiction, nature writing, etc.) each year a series editor chooses the best fifty among that 365 days' worth of offerings, and then a guest editor (usually an honored writer in that field) chooses the best twenty. Cream of the crop indeed. Which means that even though there's not a Lee Child story in the bunch this year, his fingerprints are all over the choices. And they are choice choices indeed, most of them containing, right at the middle, the beat-beat-beat of love. Or something like it.

One of my favorite of these stories is "Ed Luby's Key Club" by none other than Kurt Vonnegut, a dearly departed whose genius still shines, and shines sweetly, in this tale of murder, set-ups, mafia assassinations, and vengeance (which is cold indeed, unlike the rest of the story). It begins and ends with love, though, true love. Which is the best we can say for our lives, don't you think?

Dennis Lehane has a story inside entitled "Animal Rescue" -- this one begins with a puppy, but not love, not at all. And I confess, I almost didn't read it because of that vulnerable lost puppy, destined for nothing good, and I wasn't sure I trusted Lehane enough with my either heart or a puppy, especially not all tangled up together. So I read it real fast, ready to slam it shut at any second. But I made it to the end. And then I went back and read it again for the writing, for words like this: "Somewhere, he was sure, two people made love. A man and a woman. Entwined. Behind one of those shades, oranged with light, that looked down on the street. Bob could feel them in there, naked and blessed. And he stood out here in the cold with a near-dead dog staring back at him. The icy sidewalk glinted like new marble, and the wind was dark and gray as slush." And I read it again because Lehane didn't let me down, but he didn't take the easy way out. A story I will remember forever as a masterpiece in a minor key.

High recommended. Each story demands its own libation, so I'd just keep the bar open. A stiff shot (or two) of something strong before tackling "Dredge," a warmed brandy and a cigar before meeting once again with a finely-rendered Sherlock Holmes in "The Case of Colonel Warburton's Madness," and a margarita (not too sweet) with "Charlie and the Pirates."

Being an Author Person

2011-02-09T10:25:00.002-05:00

So I just got back from the Snowpocalypse in Chicago. I was attending my first writer's conference as a genuine, book in hand, published novelist (see the evidence to the right there) . . . but really, the snow was more fascinating.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the conference very much. I met some talented new and new-to-me writers, and I had some genuinely fascinating conversations, mostly wine- or coffee-fueled, about books, and writing, and The State of The Industry (which has passed the critical stage and is now in some mutant zombie rebirth stage worthy of a Stephen King novel, complete with marauding pitchfork-wielding peasants and prophetic doomsayers).

That's a wordy way of saying, the times they are a'changing, folks.

Joe Konrath made $40,000 dollars last month selling his own e-books. You can read all about it here. He stopped doing everything he didn't like about writing and publishing. His list includes interviews, travel, and helping everybody who asks for help. Mine would include synopses.

But that's the business of the business. It can catch you off guard, like a mugger. So what's a writer to do?

I know what works for me, what keeps me sitting at the desk, pulling words from the air and putting them on the page. It's my friends, the ones who laugh and cry and share their chocolate. The people who maintain their integrity, their heart, and their sense of humor no matter what the industry flings at them, or tries to snatch from them, or offers as a shiny bribe.

Like my fellow Mojito Literary Society members. You are all awesome. And if you're reading these words, you're totally awesome too. A friend of mine was eulogized as a "keeper of the word." And yes, these are my people. Those who savor, those who share, those who keep watch and keep faith.

Thanks for everything, y'all. A virtual toast to each and every of you.

Bobbye's Review: Eden's Hell by Dawné Dominique

2011-02-03T09:48:00.006-05:00

Okay, I’m not a vampire kind of gal. Yeah, I know I write paranormal romance and fantasy, but always had a hard time understanding how a man who sucked your blood was sexy. Until now. I really sank my teeth into this one. Enter Addison, the hero of Eden’s Hell. He comes on as smooth, but not too smooth, compassionate, yet edgy, and oh, so sexy. By the way, he only feeds on criminals and derelicts. Now that's a nice way to get them off the streets.

What about Eve? She’s the beguiling heroine who follows a rotten boyfriend to the wrong place at the wrong time and ends up claimed as the pet of a female blood-sucker. But not just any female blood-sucker (I’ve known my share of those), but a vampiress. Thank *God* for Addison who has more power than his ex-wife and saves Eve when she escapes.

What sucked me into this book is the very beginning where it mentions Adam and his first wife, Lillith, in God’s newly created Eden (uh, did I mention Addison’s last name is Eden?). Well, I’ll stick my neck out and try something if it has mythology, religious texts and legend, so I was all in.

What transpires is two people thrust together against an evil neither wants to be associated with and a passion both clamor for.

You won’t be disappointed in this tale that twists and radically turns when you least expect it, leaving you waiting for book two—which thankfully is out now.

I give it four-and-a-half mojitos.

What you should be reading....

2011-01-28T10:07:00.005-05:00

If you're looking for some books to really sink your teeth into, try these recommended by my favorite ABD.

She will explain why:
I have no time for fun reading, but with the justification that they are "postcolionial" in nature, I reread Tayeb Salih's Season of Migration to the North and J. M. Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians. Both are gripping and chilling in their depictions of the type of deprivation that happens to certain oppressed groups of people and how many people adjust to their roles within these systems - becoming victims or bullies - while others find the strength to rebel, even if just in quiet ways.
Even better, I am rereading Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses. I understand (again) why he is so acclaimed: layers upon layers of allegory all wrapped up in an intense narrative with characters you care about, roller coaster twists, and a surprising sense of humor.

We’re not assholes

2011-01-26T10:47:00.008-05:00

I have to tell you a little secret: When I’ve had one or two (or three or four) mojitos, I love everyone. I achieve a temporary state of enlightenment. However, by the next morning, I find the “writing” world has come like some cat in the night and left a dead rat on my doorstep. (Cats are so proud of their dead rats.) My shiny enlightened moment goes bye-bye, and I’m sucked into the nasty ego world of criticism, jealousy, insecurity and all that cycle of suffering stuff.

However, the Mojito Literary Society strives to keep that happy buzz going. We love you and understand you. We think your art and writing is fabulous. We invite you to our parties and sit on the kitchen floor with the bowls of tortilla chips and guacamole dip that we stole from the hors d’oeuvres table and listen with rapt attention as you talk about your book, your art, your craft. You are fascinating. We think you are our coolest friend. We sing your praises all over Goodreads and Amazon and the blogsphere. We will set upon your enemies like killer bunnies (sorry, had to throw in some Monty Python).

In other words, we’re not assholes.

"That's the most foul, cruel, and bad-tempered rodent you ever set eyes on!... Look, that rabbit's got a vicious streak a mile wide! It's a killer!"

So sure, go off to other blogs which tell you what you need to be a better writer, artist, mother, father, friend, pet owner, etc. Blogs who criticize your work and other’s and spew their catty witticism like acid rain. We are not as smart as they. We are the Pooh Bears of the literary world. Here, at our thinking spot/blog with our jars of honey and glasses of mojitos, we love you and your work and want you to be happy.

The Rhetoric of Hate, a piece of angry editorializing from Tina

2011-01-24T10:49:00.001-05:00

"The misuse of language induces evil in the soul."

— Socrates

Mondays are usually devoted to Reader Recommendations. But this Monday, I have something else on my mind.

A friend of mine, Sonya Huber, wrote a fantastic book – Cover Me. It’s a memoir about her struggles and successes trying to provide health care for herself and her family. It’s really good too, which is why I wrote a review of it on Amazon saying as much.

This morning she saw another review, also posted as a response to my review. I will not quote from it because it is violent, twisted, misogynistic, and vile. If it had been sent directly to her, it would have been grounds for calling the police (this is not an exaggeration). But because it is in a public forum, all of us can only stare at it and report it as abuse and hope that someone at Amazon takes it down, and quickly,

I’m sick about this, and very very angry. Public discourse has taken a turn toward the violent and unhinged. We debate whether events like the recent bloodbath in Arizona are a product of this kind of language. I think it’s time we stopped debating and realized that yes, it’s connected. Very much so.

Say something loud enough and long enough, and the edges between the printed page and flesh-and-blood reality get blurred. Rhetoric influences our actions whether we like it or not. Here in America, we tilt too strongly toward the primacy of the individual. We like to think of ourselves as a nation of do-it-yourselfers, hard-working citizens who pulled ourselves into whatever niche we occupy by our own smarts and sweat.

But America is a collective, and we all stew in its cultural juices. Now imagine paranoid minds like Jared Loughner‘s or the hate-spewing reviewer’s on Amazon — what juices does America provide for brains like this to absorb? What actions might result from this unholy recipe?

Our right to free speech does not protect recklessness. It does not protect dangerous inflammatory rhetoric. It does not protect cries of fire in a crowded theatre, and it NEVER HAS. If your words provoke a stampede, then responsibility for that stampede’s all on you, fellow citizen.

UPDATE: After an outpouring of reports identifying the review as abusive and inappropriate, Amazon removed the offending post. Many thanks to everyone who took the time to step on this nastiness.

(A longer version of this post can be found in my Local Views column in the Statesboro version of The 11^th Hour, soon to be available online).

It's 5 o'clock Somewhere

2011-01-21T07:36:00.000-05:00

Ladies and gents,

I'm having a virtual cocktail party over at my blog! Come join! There are plenty of virtual drinks and yummy appetizers. Let's dish about your week! Read any good books? See any great movies? Win the lottery?! The sky is the limit and the drinks don't have any calories. What's not to like?

Come join! Click here.

Bobbye's Recommended Reads

2011-01-19T12:42:00.002-05:00

Broken Wings By Lora Leigh

Though Ms. Leigh is known for erotica, this one is not an erotica novel. My friend and occasional co-writer Linda Campbell recommends this one. She says it is a multi-layered fantasy/sci fi. According to Linda, although this novel stands on its own, her only regret was that Ms. Leigh made her name and career in another genre before she ever wrote book two of this series.

Here is the book blurb from Cerridwen Press, the publisher:
He is the king of a winged race steeped in honor and tradition. His blood runs fierce and pure with his Eagle Clan heritage. She is the general of a clan that should not exist. Her blood is diluted, tainted by that of the reviled Vulture breed. Now Dearn and Matte will come together, each fighting for the existence of their people and peace between them. But first, they must defeat not just the Vultures, but also the demented dreams of a human king and the merciless vengeance of Cinder, the demonic god he follows.

Snowfires By Caroline Clemmons

Take a stubborn woman and a determined man, each plagued with self-doubt and past issues but strongly attracted to each other, throw together on a trip to Dallas, stranded in a blizzard and mix well, in bed, until they turn into molten lava. These two keep the heat up when the heat doesn't work and make you keep turning the pages to see how they'll rectify their differences and save a corporation.

I enjoyed this book. This is Ms. Clemmons' forst foray into indie publishng. She really got down the cold windy conditions of the northern panhandle in winter. Her sex scenes aren't bad either!!
Available at Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/36055

Books By Terry Campbell

I would be remiss to not take the opportunity to let folks know my backlist is now up on Kindle. All short screwball romantic comedies, look for these three books under my pseudonym, Terry Campbell.

Between the Sheets--Katrina's review of the 2010 McDowell book

2011-01-17T18:33:00.003-05:00

Last summer, as I was perusing the new book section at my local public library, I came across a book in non-fiction whose spine declared it was Between the Sheets. I was intrigued enough to pull it from the shelf and read its entire title: Between the Sheets: The Literary Liaisons of Nine 20th-Century Women Writers by Lesley McDowell. Though I had no time to read it that week, or even that month, I added the title to my Must Read list. It’s my first read of 2011, and I couldn’t have chosen better.
Though the writing is sometimes choppy, McDowell’s argument is flawless. She brings a new perspective to the motivation and consequences of liaisons that have long been seen as only detrimental to the women involved in them. She dares to suggest that these nine women: Katherine Mansfield, H.D., Rebecca West, Jean Rhys, Anaïs Nin, Simone de Beauvoir, Martha Gellhorn, Elizabeth Stuart, and Sylvia Plath are not the victims scholars and biographers have painted them to be these many years. She even goes so far as to posit that they knowingly entered into these relationships, aware of the almost certain consequences in order to further their own writing in a time when women were still not being taken seriously as authors without an established male author to recommend them. Her research is thorough and extensive. She offers alternate explanations along the way, as well. She has no qualms about disagreeing with the standing interpretation of anything related to these women. If you are interested at all in 20th Century literature, you should read this book. If you are feminist, or care about feminism, you should read this book. If you enjoy a well-written, for the most part, engaging argument, read this book.

Revising our Lives

2011-01-12T10:00:00.000-05:00

In business, there is a principle known as 5s. Those S’s stand for sort, set to order, shine, standardize, and sustain. The longer I know about them, the more I am inclined to incorporate in them into all parts of my life. Not only are they about getting rid of things we don’t need in business, or in our closets, but they can also be about getting rid of things we don’t need in our lives or our writing.
More and more, I want to have only people in my life who are good for me and things that help with the positive forward motion I so need. I have begun to sort the good for me people from the not so good for me, and I am purging the latter. The older I get, the less willing I am to spend time, effort, or energy on people who do not have my best interest at heart. The good Southern girl in me wanted to balk at this idea, initially, but then I realized that what Southerners do the very best is authentic hospitality and friendliness. Yes, we will bless your heart all day long before we’ll say something outwardly rude, and we might even invite you to our parties out of a sense of obligation instead of true desire. But, both of those instances can be written off to manners, good raising, I think. They aren’t actually about friendliness. Sorting not worth it to me people out of my life leaves me much more time to enjoy the people I love and who love me. It helps me focus my energies on being a better friend and a better person, which helps set my soul to order, which makes me smile. We’d all rather I were smiling.
Since the 5s’s are really about revision, it occurred to me that I could apply them to my writing as well. Again, I can do without people who want to just criticize to tear me down. I can send them to the recycling bin as easily as that empty Ben and Jerry’s pint container from last night. Maybe someone else can remake them into something more useful. I can also separate my words from myself, realizing that a just because I’ve written a beautiful sentence, it doesn’t have to be the sentence for that paragraph or poem or paper. I can sort it away, too. I can standardize my writing practice, bring more discipline to it. Once I see it begin to shine, I know I will be able to sustain it. After all, I love shiny things.
So, readers dear, what do you need to revise? How can the 5s’s help you?

Tina's Review of The Science Tarot by Logan Austeja Daniel, Martin Azevedo, and Raven Hanna

2011-01-10T10:58:00.000-05:00

As the new year begins, I find myself hard at work promoting the book that's coming out (February 1st! OMG!) and writing the book that my editor wants to see a hundred pages for (another OMG). So my To-Be-Read pile of books is nearing skyscraper proportions, and it's not looking to be reduced anytime soon. Even when I'm too busy for reading, however, I always find time for working with my tarot cards.

This Christmas, I was excited to find a deck from my engineer hubby under the tree. Even better, it was a deck that managed to combine the awe and wonder of the material universe with the mystery and magic of the Tarot. I am having a great time reading about the creation of The Science Tarot, but an even better time working with the cards.

The key to making this combination of seemingly contradictory systems work is structure. Both science and tarot are highly organized, orderly collections of information. Both involve a progression that feels linear, but which is actually a series of cycles. The difference between the two is the main perspective lens -- science uses logic and rationality (left brain stuff) and tarot uses intuition and subconscious processing (right brain stuff). That's a bit reductive as an explanation, but as the Ace of Scalpels (Swords) points out, reductionism is a valid method for comprehension. It's part of the seeker's toolkit. It's just not the ONLY part.

Like traditional tarot, the Science Tarot is broken into the major arcana and the minor arcana. Likewise, the minor arcana are broken up into four thematic suits, which each contain numbered cards ace through ten, plus four court cards. The difference is in the nomenclature. For example, in traditional tarot, these suits are called Wands (Energy), Cups (Emotion), Swords (Intellect) and Pentacles (Physicality). The Science Tarot uses Bunsen Burners (Creation -- astronomy and cosmology), Beakers (Integration -- biology and ecology), Scalpels (Observation -- physics and math) and Magnifying Glass (Exchange -- geology and chemistry).
For example, the Nine of Pentacles (represent in this deck by the Magnifying Glass) is Aurora, the stream of energized particles accelerating along Earth's magnetic lines that cast off excited electrons in the upper atmosphere, creating the mythic glow of the Northern Lights.This card in both decks represents the release of outdated things and ideas, leaving only the refined and cultivated newness behind. This process often entails sacrifice, but it is worth it for the end result.

Instead of Pages, Knights, Queens, and Kings, the Science Tarot present Explorers, Innovators, Storytellers, and Visionaries. For example, Carl Sagan is the Queen of Wands, the Storyteller whose intelligence and empathy welcomed others into scientific discovery.

The Major Arcana tells famous stories from science, or as the deck describes it, "shared experiences and moments of transformation." In traditional decks, these are the cards of grand archetypal experiences, the "big stuff" we all discover as we grow and evolve as human beings. For example, the Empress in traditional decks is represented here as Mendel's Peas. But both cards represent nurturing attendance and natural processes, a time for growth, patience and gestation.

By honoring the connection that science and myth share -- the wonder and awe that occur as we try to explain this universe and who we are within it -- the Science Tarot creates a bridge for skeptics who might dismiss the power of this ancient divination tool. Plus, it's just gorgeous, with each five sections rendered by a different artist, providing continuity within each suit and creating a tapestry of lush imagery overall.

I highly recommend this deck for both tarot beginners and more experienced readers. And it's especially useful for introducing someone whose maybe a little weirded out by tarot's "woo-woo" reputation to the power of their own subconscious. I'd pair it with a shot of high-end vodka, straight up -- a very utilitarian way to get a warm fuzzy feeling,

To read more about the Science Tarot -- or to order it -- visit the website: http://www.sciencetarot.com/cards.html

New mystery contract

2011-01-09T15:43:00.003-05:00

I just signed with Turquoise Morning Press to publish the first of four mystery novellas and I'm feeling great! The first one, "Buried in Briny Bay" will be released in electronic format on March 14th. The novellas are all murder mysteries involving two sisters in the small town, Briny Bay, North Carolina. They're written in a cozy style with a liberal dose of humor. The book trailer is below.

Here's to mystery--because mystery happens,
Bobbye Terry

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com

I'll Show You Mine If You Show Me Yours

2011-01-08T09:07:00.000-05:00

One New Year's Resolution down, nine million more to go!

I had a little fun on my blog yesterday, showing off my new digs. Okay, there's no cool ocean view, but my home office works for me and it does have its own lava lamp! Bringing it into the 21st Century doesn't hurt either.

So, where do you write? Does the look, feel, location, even smell of the place matter?

Show me yours. Or tell me about it. Yeah, I'm that nosey.

And the new year brings....

2011-01-05T17:28:00.005-05:00

publication! My first. Though I do book reviews and editorials here, and in the daytime I am an academic advisor--no, you don't need Biology 4 for your Calculus degree. Yes, you are going to have to take College Algebra.--I am, at my core, a poet. I see the world in snippets and lines and images that I think can be lines of poetry. I carry around a red moleskin notebook to make my notes and jottings.
Still, the very idea that anyone would ever publish anything I write has always been a far fetched one. I mean, why would anybody care what some girl from Vidalia writes, right? Luckily, other people in my world don't believe that and have encouraged and prodded and insisted. Lucky me! Today, one of my poems, "My Muse's Bidding" was published by a new fabulous online literary journal based here in Charleston--Pluff Mud Mag.
Wade over here to have a look
Here's to an unimaginably amazing 2011 for us all!

Tarot for Fun and Profit

2011-01-05T12:07:00.000-05:00

In addition to my writing work, and my mothering work, and my work as an environmentally-integrated cleaning person, I am also a professional tarot reader. It's a part-time gig, which suits me just fine. It's very intense work, requiring the kind of sustained attention that I just couldn't exert for eight hours straight.

Potential clients are often surprised when they hear that I don't consider what I do "fortune-telling." It's not as if I'm some cosmic fisherperson, dangling my bait, waiting for your future to bite so that I can pull it up and deliver it to you for your supper.

I don't believe in shrink-wrapped destiny. This isn't my tarot philosophy. I believe in the power of choice and free will. I believe the tarot shows us our options, and by doing so, allows us to make informed decisions about what's happening right now. It's a simple formula -- the only way to change the future is to change the present. Consequence follows cause. And tarot does an excellent job of showing the forces in play at the time of a reading so that you can decide whether you want to go with the flow . . . or swim upstream.

Knowledge changes the flow of events. Understanding puts the rudder firmly in your hand.

Of course, some forces are larger than the individual. Hurricanes. Recessions. The breaking dawn. Tarot shows this aspect too. It's actually two decks within a deck: the Major Arcana and the Minor Arcana. The former refers to big universal energies, archetypal powers, huge forces (like Strength, at right, which references the times when soft but firm control is required). The latter are the personal energies, the day-to-day ways that we make our choices manifest in the world. It is the interactive tension between these two that makes our lives so interesting. Sometimes we can turn the tide, and sometimes we can only ride it out. Tarot shows us these forces at work in our lives, so that we can act in wisdom and truth and love.

Or not. My job is to help each client interpret what the cards mean to them, not tell them what to do about their situations. I work with each person in a very give-and-take manner, so that each person can access their own inner guidance. That way the control rests not with me, but with my client, so that each individual can keep what works and change what doesn't.

The cards don't reveal your future -- they reveal your present moment. And that is the more valuable gift.

Bobbye's Reviews

2011-01-03T00:01:00.002-05:00

Welcome to a new year and new finds for your reading pleasure, whether in print or electronic format. These are combination reviews and recommended reads, two for the price of one. This time I have three picks that vary between small and large press, fiction and non-fiction for you to consider.

First the non-fiction:

What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures
By Malcolm Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell is back! I received this book for Christmas, and it didn’t disappoint. I’d read The Tipping Point, also by Gladwell, a while back. I liked it, but this one surpasses that, as I believe it has a much easier conversational quality. So tip a glass of white zinfandel and have fun. The topics are hilarious.

This quote sums it up:
"This evidence of a Gladwell effect helps to predict something larger: that Mr. Gladwell's new book will be as successful as his first three...This book full of short conversation pieces is a collection that plays to the author's strengths. It underscores his way of finding suitably quirky subjects (the history of women's hair-dye advertisements; the secret of Heinz's unbeatable ketchup; even the effects of women's changing career patterns on the number of menstrual periods they experience in their lifetimes) and using each as gateway to some larger meaning." (New York Times Janet Maslin)

Even if you’re not a big non-fiction reader, I think you’ll like this one.

Rescue Me
By Jennifer Johnson

In the mood for a sweet contemporary romance with a lot of sexual tension and no actual sex? Did I mention it’s all Southern with a dash of down-home humor? Then, this is the book for you.

Here’s part of the blurb:

“Sitting in front of her parents’ house in a U-Haul truck at midnight, Amy Mann decides it’s time to break it to them that she’s divorced from her husband and moving back home with her seven-year-old son, Toby. As Amy settles into her hometown, she has a plan to get out of debt, get her college degree, and put her life together.

Enter Captain Riley Pennimon, local firefighter and superhero to Amy’s son. Riley is kind, brave, and civic-minded. The captain does not fit into Amy’s putting-her-life-together plan, and yet he is way too good looking without a shirt. Much to Amy’s chagrin, Toby decides that Riley is just what they need for a happily-ever-after.”

Published by Turquoise Morning Press, www.TurquoiseMorningPress.com, Rescue Me is one of those books to enjoy while sipping on a glass of hot Irish coffee. Well-crafted, Ms. Johnson’s book makes you feel for the complicated plight of each lover, thrust together by a father who wants to see his little girl happy and a son who thinks the sun rises and sets with the gorgeous hunky local firefighter. You’ll cheer and sigh as these two battle their inner demons to face a better future in love.

Beyond Guilty
By Richard Brawer

“Teenager Eileen Robinson lives in an ideal, middle class African-American family in Houston, Texas. Through a careless act she causes the deaths of her two younger sisters.

Tormented and alienated from her mother, she moves in with a drug dealer. At twenty-one she is a single mother of two falsely convicted of killing a state senator’s son and sentenced to death. At thirty-two she is executed. Or is she?”

This is the blurb for this legal/medical thriller published by L&L Dreamspell, www.lldreamspell.com. The heroine is a woman who has spiraled down a deep dark path to self-destruction. She ends up as a pharmaceutical company’s guinea pig in human trials on a remote island. These trials involve nanotechnology—something which exists presently (My husband even had one of those little robotic nano cameras travel through his body and take pictures of his digestive tract and intestines). At the core of this novel are two moral questions: how far will we go for cures to diseases and should the lives of human beings be risked, even if they are guilty of crimes?

Eileen goes on a fast-paced chase full of twists to prove her innocence and get her family back. What Southern drink should you have with this one?--One that’s not too potent. Otherwise, you won’t realize how much you’ve consumed as you’re zooming through the pages.

Make 'Em Laugh

2010-12-29T09:04:00.003-05:00

You can’t cry if you’re laughing. That fact alone is reason enough to read and write humor. However, I have dozens of folks ask how I can write something that is funny and how can they imitate it. I’m not sure I have a cut and dry answer for you. All I can tell you is what I do.

First, it helps that I’m from the southern U.S. Southerners can be naturally funny. Why? Because we have interesting drawls and sayings, a penchant for story-telling and a long colorful history from which one can draw material.

My mother grew up in the country in south central Virginia. Most of her family members were highly optimistic, very religious and family-oriented. These people didn’t know a stranger and welcomed anyone who wished to come to dinner or just to visit. Growing up around these people helped me. All I had to do was observe. If I had to give advice to writers who wish to write humor, I’d say that’s number one on the list. Observe and catalogue away vignettes you have seen.

Let me give you an example. Once in the eighties, a friend and I walked into my aunt’s kitchen. My friend was wearing a short skirt with hot pants under it, a fashion trend popular for the day. My aunt took one look at her, and in a chipper voice, she said. “What a cute little short skirt. What’s under it?” She lifted the skirt up without a word of permission and said, “Short shorts. Wouldn’t I have been embarrassed if there hadn’t been anything there?”

She’d made her point without one scolding word, and the episode made us both laugh.

How about sayings? I used many colorful ones in my book, Coming to Climax, releasing from Turquoise Morning Press in September as well as in my co-authored book, Slam Sisters of Serendipity, releasing in June from Eternal Press.

Here are some examples:

Butter my butt and call me a biscuit.

Cuter than a sack full of puppies

Well hit me up the side of the head with a two-by-four.

A newcomer to the area would be spotted faster than a streetwalker in the choir.

The other thing you need to do is listen to conversations, especially between men and women, and most especially married couples and lovers. Note that many married couples communicate in non-verbal cues, and some, who have been married long enough, can even ignore their partners, especially men of the species.

Here’s a short excerpt from a novella WIP, Buried in Briny Bay, where the married woman and her sister need to speak with her husband about something:

“Do we dare interrupt him on Monday afternoon?”

Trixie grinned. “Honey, it doesn’t matter if it’s his day off. You can’t talk to Floyd unless you interrupt him. His concentration on the TV screen is amazing. It comes close to deep hypnosis. I wish he’d concentrate on me that much when we were making love, not that I remember when the last time was. Honestly, why I listened to the other cheerleaders in high school, I have no idea. I should have guessed since his last name was Frye, but I swear they said he was a real stud, not spud. Now I have my own couch potato.”

“Guess when they said small Frye, you thought they were talking about children.” Roxie giggled.

Trixie sighed. “That part is not a laughing matter. Let’s go see what Floyd can do to help.”

They got up and rounded the corner to the hall. Minutes later, they entered the man cave. Wall-to-wall leather, low-lighting and a big screen TV. Just Floyd in a room with theatre seating, languishing on his “throne” with a remote glued to his right hand.

“Sugar plum, Roxie has a problem.”

“Mmm-hmm.” Floyd’s eyes stayed fixed to the screen.

“Does he hear us?” Roxie stared up at Trixie. “Besides the murmur, I didn’t see any recognition, not even a flinch.”

Trixie sighed again. “Honey, he heard us, just doesn't want to answer. I thought the fact someone besides me needed help would register. I should have known better. The man is currently absorbed into the screen. We have to try something more desperate to get his attention.” Trixie cleared her throat and raised her voice. “Sugar, I was thinking of making some popcorn. What do you think?”

His head turned. “Great sweetheart. Plenty of butter.”

“You have to be quick,” Trixie said to Roxie in a low voice. “Hit while his focus is off the action.” In a louder voice, she addressed her hubby. “Right, will do. Look, before you go back to the show, we need your help.”

“Make it quick.” Floyd turned in his chair. “Gold Fever.”

“It’s also a re-run. I’ve seen them pan that river before.”

“Best of the Best. Whatcha need?”

I hope you also noticed the play on words here. Hope I’ve given you food for thought and would love any questions.

Bobbye

Tina's Review of A Cold Day for Murder by Dana Stabenow

2010-12-28T12:13:00.001-05:00

The stack of books in my To Be Read pile is growing into skyscraper proportions. It’s a mix of mysteries and romance, memoir and scientific non-fiction, all of it fresh and new and waiting for review.

And yet the book I chose as my companion over the past week is not new to me at all. It’s not new to anyone. It’s A Cold Day for Murder by Dana Stabenow, the first of her Kate Shugak mysteries, which will be debuting Though Not Dead, the 18th novel in the series this February. I pulled this book from the stack because I wanted to read it from a writerly perspective, to watch a master at her craft, to study the arcs of her plot and the depth of her characters.

And yet this did not happen. I got too caught up in the story — this story that I read almost twenty years ago — to do anything but be swept along by the twists and turns and revelations as Kate struggles to solve the mystery.

Kate’s background is what makes each novel in the series so satisfying, for while each book’s mystery unfolds and unravels and comes back together in the conclusion, Kate’s emotional struggles — especially her romantic ones — span the series. Each time we meet Kate, she has changed in significant ways, yet she always remains true to her Aleut heritage and her own moral code.

In A Cold Day for Murder, Kate is reunited with her former lover Jack Morgan to search for a missing park ranger and the investigator who was sent to search for him. Another strong point of this series is its setting, the rugged Alaskan bush. The snow and cold and seasonal progressions of this land create and much tension and drama and complications as any of the secondary characters.

Re-reading this book prompted me to go back through the whole series (the librarians know what’s coming every time I bring in another request card). And even though the writer in me is awestruck by Stabenow’s talent and craft, it’s the reader in me that’s most excited to see another Kate Shugak adventure on the top of the TBR pile.

I highly recommend this series from start to finish. Make yourself some hot chocolate to go with — use Hershey’s cocoa and canned milk, no marshmallows — and season with a dollop of whiskey or whatever strong spirit keeps you warm.

To read more about Kate Shugak and to explore Stabenow's other works, go to Dana Stabenow's official website. Look for Though Not Dead, debuting on February 1st, at a bookstore near you.

My Traditional Scandinavian Christmas

2010-12-22T23:38:00.009-05:00

By Susanna Ives

The following was written with the help of my Scandinavian in-laws. I can’t vouch for the historical accuracy of the information, but it makes for a great story.

The Scandinavian Christmas celebration starts on the first Sunday of advent. Back in the old country, the nights are long and the days are dark this time of year. Children spent their evenings making Christmas tree decorations out of paper. We bought our decorations at IKEA, but here is a star my husband made back when he was a young sprout.

IKEA also supplied our traditional Julbock or Yule Goat. The straw Yule goat dates back to times when a goat was slaughtered during the pagan Yule festival. Here is our pagan Julbock.

My husband feels I should include this link about the giant Julbocken i Gävle in Sweden.

Without fail, every December 13th, my husband and I forget Santa Lucia day. Santa Lucia is a Sicilian saint. Above is a picture of a Santa Lucia's statue that my in-laws photographed during their trip to Sicily. The Scandinavians became acquainted with her when the Normans (men of the north) occupied Sicily. Santa Lucia is associated with light during the dark wintertime.

On the morning of the 13th, the eldest daughter of the house puts a wreath of candles on her head and serves coffee and Lucia buns to her family. Below is a Santa Lucia bun made by my Danish mother-in-law.

My mother-in-law tells me Santa Lucia is a Swedish and Norwegian tradition, and she only observes the day because her husband is Swedish. However, my mother-in-law bakes delicious Santa Lucia buns and brings them to our house every year to enjoy at Christmas. She also makes traditional Danish Christmas cookies: ginger snaps, vanilla rings and almond cookies. Very tasty.

The next big day in the Christmas celebration is Lillejuleaften which means the evening before Christmas Eve. On this day, the grownups would cut down the Christmas tree, bring it inside, and decorate the branches with candles, glass bulbs, and the children’s paper decorations. In olden times, the children weren’t supposed to see the tree until Christmas Eve, however, now decorating the tree includes the entire family.

Typically, we have the tree set up before Lillejuleaften so we can concentrate on the smorgasbord. We have to shop at farmer’s markets, IKEA, and specialty grocery stores to gather various herrings, Greenland shrimp, smoked salmon, cold cuts, hard rye bread, schnapps, and a variety of cheeses including Fontina, Havarti, Port Salute, blue cheese and others. The sandwiches are open faced so the breads have to be strong enough to support loads of herring, egg, caviar and other yummy things. My father-in-law tells me that the schnapps is drunk for affect, not taste. The strong spirits warms and cheers you, but must be chased with beer, else it will burn your throat. Back in the day, there was formal drinking or open drinking at smorgasbords. Formal drinking means you must drink when the host does. My father-in-law contends this is how the Danes drank the British under the table. He also says that the advantage to formal drinking was no Viking could cut your throat as you drank. There are two sizes of schnapps glasses: large Swedish and small Danish.

At the smorgasbord, the guests make a sandwich with fish and then wait for the host to Skål, a Scandinavian toast for good fortune andhealth. Skål means drinking vessel but my family claims the term actually means drinking out of the skull of your enemy. Then the host welcomes everyone and wishes them happy glaedelig jul.

A proper smorgasbord should take several hours. The last course is coffee. Then the family and friends take a walk in the snow or such and gather a few hours later for a supper of pork loin, potatoes and red cabbage.

In Denmark, you eat a light breakfast and lunch on Christmas Eve or Jule aften because the kitchen is taken up preparing a goose stuffed with prunes and apples soaked in Port. The bird is accompanied by more potatoes and red cabbage. For dessert, you have rice, almond and cream pudding topped with hot cherry syrup. (I have a recipe if anyone is interested.) You must be very careful when you eat this dessert, for it is really a treacherous family game. You see, hidden in the pudding is one whole almond. The lucky family member who gets the almond wins a marzipan pig. In our home, in lieu of such a pig, we give out a chocolate orange.

Meanwhile, across the Kattegat in Sweden, Lutefish is served (or was). This, ummm, delicacy, is cod that has been cut by a carpenter saw and soaked in water and lye for months. Lutefish is tasteless except for the pepper and onion cream sauce and can turn your silver black. My husband gave me a little chemistry lesson on preserving fish. According to him, you have three ways to preserve fish. 1.) pickle it and make sil. 2.) let the fish rot and make surstömming. 3.) freeze dry. To reconstitute the dehydrated fish, you have mix it with lye and water and then wash away the lye.

The Swedes also had veal jelly with vinegar, pickled anchovies including the heads, and potato sausage made with pork, potato, and veal. After the meal was done and the dishes washed, glasses of Cognac were passed around.

In Denmark, the grownups would open the door to the room housing the Christmas tree and let the children see the decorated tree with all the candles burning. Everyone danced around the tree and sang carols. (I have a CD of Danish Christmas music if you want to know the name). In our house, we light the tree candles, have a fire extinguisher handy, and keep the kids far away from the tree. We don’t keep the candles burning for very long.

If you were Swedish, on Christmas morning you went to church at 5:30 to greet the sun while the Danes slept in. After church, the Swedes opened their gifts, ate ham for dinner and then took a nap. The Danes had another smorgasbord on Christmas and then continued to party for second Christmas day or Anden Juledag.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Susanna Ives is the author of RAKES AND RADISHES. You can learn more about her book at www.susannaives.com

i was the jukebox Review by Katrina

2010-12-20T10:00:00.001-05:00

Sandra Beasley’s second book of poetry, i was the jukebox, catches your attention from the title, and doesn’t let it go ‘til the last line of the last poem. These 45 poems remind readers what good, timeless poetry is. If you think you don’t like poetry because you can’t understand it, read this book. Beasley will convert you. She has written real, honest poems that catch you off guard, insist that you pay attention, change the way you think. Love poems to college, oxidation, Los Angeles, and Wednesday in this collection, nestle among poems written from the voices of the Minotaur, piano, platypus, eggplant, orchis, sand, and the world war. Though there are three whose titles begin “Another Failed Poem About…” there are no failed poems here.
I was hooked as soon as I read the first lines of “The Sand Speaks,” the book’s initial work: “I’m fluid and omnivorous, the casual/ kiss. I’ll knock up your oysters.” “I’ll knock up your oysters” forces you to stop and evaluate what you just read, and it’s a line that readers will remember. The final line of the book’s last poem, “Proposal” is no less thought-provoking: “Promise you’re worth my weight in burning.”
Time and again, as I read and reread, I stopped to think and reorient myself to the way I fit in the world. It is a gifted poet who can do that several times in a series of poems. It is an amazing poet who can do it as many times as Beasley does in this work. Her Bernard Women Poets Prize is well-earned.

Best of 2010 BlogFest

2010-12-17T09:44:00.000-05:00

Hey ya'll,

Angelina Rain at Author in Training is hosting a blogfest over New Year's. Everyone is invited! Between singing Auld Lang Syne off-key and champagne toasts, come share your best or most bizarre 2010 accomplishments along with your goals for 2011. One of my 2011 goals will be to not consume an entire Belgian chocolate bar in one sitting. Seriously.

Go to Angelina's site for more details, the shiny graphic, and to sign-up on the linky link. Click here!

Happy Friday!

Thursday's Recommended Reading from K. Cat

2010-12-15T21:23:00.000-05:00

This week's Recommended Reading comes from K. Cat, our household's expert in all things literary and pre-adolescent girlie. She's reading The Unicorn Girl by M. L. LeGette yet again. This is probably her 11th time through the book, and she says it just gets better and better. "The setting is especially good," she says. "And I like that the heroine is a girl, and that she is strong and can make a difference. This book shows that a girl can save the day." K. then offers the first sentences of the book as proof of its wonderfulness:

"In a stone cottage, deep in a dark and entangled forest, sat a tall, thin woman in a high-backed chair. She drummed her bony fingers slowly on the chair's thick arms, her black eyes roaming the room. She had inky black hair with a few streaks of gray and her high cheekbones were heavily pronounced under her sickly pale skin. Her name was Mora . . . and she was waiting."

K's copy is scratched and stained on the cover, its spine bent, its pages somewhat less than crisp and pristine. It is obviously a well-loved book.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

You can read more about The Unicorn Girl or LeGette's second novel For The Kingdom at her website: http://www.mllegette.com/default.html.

When Little Plastic Animals Attack

2010-12-15T08:55:00.000-05:00

You can tell I'm in THAT stage of novel-making by the state of my house. My housekeeping skills have never been of the white-glove variety, but I do like to have things in their place. Now, however, there are dirty tennis shoes and dog toys under the Christmas tree, stray bones and eyeballs and pumpkins from Halloween on the kitchen counters, random half-created gizmos and art projects hiding here and there.

These are the products of sharing living space with a bored aerospace engineer and crafty pre-adolescent girlchild. I must confess, however, that one of these bits of weirdness is mine -- this one right here, the sheet of graph paper adorned with a Wild Kingdom of tiny plastic creatures. It sits right where the centerpiece used to be on my dining room table, and I am afraid that's where it will continue to sit for the next month or so.

It represents the opening scene of Book Two, the murder that must be solved by my intrepid protagonists. This scene is dense with characters both major and minor, both heroic and villainous, moving about a tight limited space, seeing only what they're supposed to see, so that the murder will be a Mystery and not an Omigod So-and-So Just killed So-And-So! (because that would make for a lousy mystery novel).

Pulling this off was providing ridiculously difficult. I couldn't remember who was where, much less keep track of what they'd seen. So I decided to stage the scene in 3D, with my setting drawn out (badly but efficiently) on some graph paper. Then I picked out little plastic critters from my daughter's toy chest to represent my characters.

That's Tai, my sleuth, played by a frisky red fox. And there's Trey, my hero, represented by a kinda pissed-off looking black bear. I chose a dung beetle to play my odious bad guy/victim, then threw in a lizard, a dolphin, and a deceptively innocent-looking chicken as suspects. The role of the red herring is played by an ornamental carp.

It felt silly to start with, but then I realized how many plot holes I was uncovering as I moved my characters around in real space and time. Who would run into whom in the hallway. Who could eavesdrop. Who I had in two places at once (oops). All of which saved me a ton of re-writing.

Wild Kingdom meets Clue is still set up on the dining room table. I'll have to move it before Christmas dinner. Or maybe I'll just throw some holly on top of it and call it decoration. Either way, I think I've found a new tool for my writer's toolbox (which is getting more eccentric by the day).

Review of THE NIGHT BEFORE, a holiday novella by David Fulmer

2010-12-13T08:18:00.008-05:00

THE NIGHT BEFORE by award-winning writer David Fulmer is a story about years of broken dreams and mistakes culminating on one Christmas Eve. From the beginning, the reader knows that this Christmas Eve is special. Fulmer writes, “The storm began late in the afternoon after the sky had darkened from crystal blue to cobalt, delivering snow on Christmas Eve for the first time in seven years.”

The main character is a novelist named Joe Kelly. He is a good man, an excellent parent and loving husband. Yet, his writing career has been on the skids for several years. He has had rely on his wife’s lucrative salary to support their family. As Christmas approaches, he gets a small bit of luck: his book is optioned by Hollywood. With money in the bank, he buys his wife Mariel an antique piece of jewelry that she remembered from her childhood: an Epiphany Star. Coming home with his present in his pocket, he finds Mariel having a tryst on the dining room table with their neighbor Don.

Crushed, Joe runs into the night and embarks on a series adventures involving strangers and old forgotten friends.

Fulmer excels at creating sensually tactile stories. The reader feels soaked in his settings. In this novella, he captures that eternal yearning for old-fashioned Christmases that probably only existed in Hollywood movies. Yet, this isn’t a saccharine holiday story; it is a gritty tale of broken people who cling to hope in the bleak midwinter. The characters are complex and sympathetic in their failings. The reader even feels empathy for the cheating wife.

Fulmer’s writing is lyrical. Reading his works evokes the emotional response of listening to music.His words are almost poetic without being over-the-top.

I highly recommend this book if the shallow, over-commercialized tales of Christmas leave you empty and desiring something “real.”

reviewed by Susanna Ives

Interview with Rebecca Johns, Author of The Countess

2010-12-10T16:15:00.015-05:00

Today on MLS we invite Rebecca Johns, author of Icebergs to discuss her recently released new novel, The Countess, a fictional memoir about the Hungarian noblewoman who was the archetype for many vampire stories. Johns speaks to us about the excitement of doing research for her work and writing about a much misunderstood character in history.

LV: What inspired you to write about Countess Bathory? What was the trigger that drew you in and kept you interested?

After writing Icebergs, a book about ordinary people and their lives, Bathory appealed to me because of the extraordinary nature of her life. She came from one of the most wealthy and powerful families in Eastern Europe; she was given an extraordinary education for her sex and for the times. And of course she was accused of the most awful crimes anyone could imagine.

Yet in many ways her life was entirely recognizable to me. As a woman who struggled with infertility for ten years the same way the countess did, I sympathized with her. And then when I read how she lost two of those longed-for children to the plague, including the heir who would have protected the family name and fortune, I wondered, how could any woman survive such a loss? What would it do to the psyche to lose, and lose, and lose again everything and everyone you loved?

She was a contradiction. And the more I read, the more I realized how little of that contradiction had been explored in literature. She's been Lady Dracula, cackling and wielding her whip, and she's been the poor victim, a powerless woman taken advantage of by the men in her life. But the more I read, the more I realized the truth was probably somewhere in the middle. That's where I wanted to go.

LV: Your version of Bathory is more compassionate and complex then the accounts of her sprinkled all over the Internet. Was it difficult to do research for this character? What were some of the most interesting challenges you ran into when trying to uncover the real story?

RJ: The biggest challenge in researching the story of Bathory is the sheer volume of misinformation about her that exists. People take as gospel the stories of her bathing in the blood of virgins, or the stories of her diary of 650 victims, and those two bits of fiction have proliferated and spread, so that even otherwise "serious" historical works have not, until very recently, challenged those old lies. The blood-bathing rumor, for example, came from a single line of text in the trial documents that said she got blood on her clothes and needed to change her blouse. (Blood-bathing is technically impossible at any rate; the liquid congeals and separates outside the body.) The rumor of 650 victims came from a single witness who had it secondhand from someone else. Yet those two stories are the ones repeated about her most often. They're interesting, of course, but not realistic, and I knew that if I was going to write another book about her, it was time to put those old stories to rest.

The other challenge is the language barrier. Hungarian is a notoriously difficult language--the pronouns, for example, are gender-neutral, which makes translating the trial testimony into English a nightmare. Modern translations that attempt to be a bit more neutral and recreate the language with more precision are more useful than the older ones (like Valentine Penrose's poetic but probably biased translation) that use a bit more creative license.

LV: What was the most interesting piece of research you found?

RJ: There were two bits of information that I thought were particularly fascinating from a writer's perspective. The first was that after Bathory's arrest, the palatine's wife Erzsebet Czobor came to Csejthe and stole Bathory's jewels. The Lord Chief Justice even had to intervene with the palatine on the family's behalf, and the Chief Justic was no fan of the Bathorys. That seems to suggest pretty strongly that there was more to the story than the official account.

The second was a translation of a letter from Bathory herself, in which she threatens a neighbor who, thinking he could get away with it, took over one of the family's unoccupied estates. It was interesting not only to realize how precarious her situation was, but the tone in it was so like the voice I'd already created for her, I knew I was on the right track.

LV: Your first novel, Icebergs, was also a historical novel, based on three generations, from War World II, through Vietnam, and finally to modern times. Would you say that history inspires you? Or what connects these two novels if anything at all?

RJ: Both novels are about family, about the effects of one generation on the next. They're both about war and its aftereffects. And they're both about the disappointments of love and how the human heart manages to continue despite those disappointments. The outside trappings might be very different--Wo

rld War II and Vietnam vs. the Ottoman wars, ordinary 20th-Century Canada vs. exotic 16th-Century Eastern Europe--but the themes are really incredibly similar.

LV: What’s coming up next for you? Can you give us a hint on your next novel?

RJ: My next novel is in the very early stages, but let's just say it's a turn for the contemporary, and that it's likely to include an element of the fabulous. More than that I wouldn't want to say.

Rebecca Johns's first novel, Icebergs, was a finalist for the 2007 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for first fiction and a recipient of the Michener-Copernicus Award. Her second, The Countess—a fictionalization of the life of Elizabeth Bathory, the “Blood Countess”—was published in October 2010 from Crown Books. Her work has appeared in Ploughshares, the Harvard Review, the Mississippi Review, the Chicago Tribune, Cosmopolitan, Mademoiselle, Ladies' Home Journal, Self, and Seventeen, among others. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and the Missouri School of Journalism, she teaches in the English Department at DePaul University in Chicago.

Jenny Schwartz talks about her awesome new eBook ANGEL THIEF

2010-12-09T01:00:00.001-05:00

Today the Mojito Literary Society welcomes the talented Jenny Schwartz to talk about her latest release from Carina Press ANGEL THIEF. After reading this post, be sure to stop by her awesome blog Acquiring Magic: http://www.acquiring-magic.blogspot.com/

--------------

Hi everyone! It's so lovely you're letting an Aussie post here. I promise to mind my language and keep the kangaroos under control.

"Angel Thief" gave me a chance to share the romance of the Australian Outback with international readers, but it also reminded me how lucky I've been in my own experience of Australia.

I grew up in a small community on the outskirts of the suburbs. Preparing this blog post I stopped to think of the pets my friends and I had. It's actually pretty impressive, although my family generally limited itself to a dog (the fish couldn't survive Mum's cleaning regime).

There were horses, dogs, cats, a grey kangaroo, an emu, a peacock, budgies, lovebirds, wieros, cockatoos, ferrets, guinea pigs, rocks (did that craze for pet rocks hit American shores?) and hermit crabs. I don't think silk worms count as pets, but they were around too. Fortunately, there was a huge mulberry tree across the road from the school, so they had plenty to eat.

I'm mid-thirties, which I wouldn't call old, but my generation certainly had the last of the freedom. We could leave home in the morning and go wandering through the bush or visiting friends and no adult would worry about us. We knew everyone in the neighbourhood and everyone knew us. The track in the photo above is the sort of trail we'd follow to our "secret" hideouts.

The community is gone now, wiped out to make way for a new industrial centre. The people who lived there have scattered, but when our paths do cross, there is an immediate sense of connection.

So that's my nostalgia moment. Tell me about yours. What do you remember from your childhood that makes you smile?

Angel Thief, from Carina Press

http://bit.ly/AngThief

She’s breaking the rules. Again.

An archivist in the heavenly library, Sara must follow protocol when it comes to curating the knowledge of the universe. But "liberating" an ancient text from the collection of a human—an Australian drug lord—could save a boy’s life. Sara has no way of knowing that one of the man’s other treasures is a sexy-as-sin djinni, bound by a wish to guard the estate.

He’s only following orders.

Filip is compelled to turn over intruders, even celestial ones, to his master. When he catches Sara in the library, he isn’t above indulging in some sensual kisses with her, or using her to trick the mobster into wasting a wish. It’s what he must do to preserve his facade of freedom and protect his heart.

But the kidnapping of the drug lord’s daughter forces Sara and Filip to work together—bringing out the hero that lurks within the soul of the djinni, and the passion within the angel.

***

You can find Jenny:

at her website http://www.authorjennyschwartz.com/

blogging http://www.acquiring-magic.blogspot.com/

or on Twitter @Jenny_Schwartz http://twitter.com/jenny_schwartz

Susan and Tina on Sloooow Writing

2010-12-08T09:37:00.001-05:00

TINA:

Ah, December 1st! That happy time when when millions of NaNoWritMo writers un-hunch themselves from their word processors and take their first post-50,000-word breaths. I missed the excitement this year. And last. Which always leaves me feeling a bit left out . . . until the next November rolls around and I find myself not signing up yet again.

As much as I like the idea and the philosophy behind it — just write, dammit! — and as much as I love a group challenge, I find myself wanting to take a stand for a different type of writing. I want a month celebrating the leisurely wordsmithing that proceeds at the pace of molasses, the kind where you savor each syllable, savor the process, savor the slow craft of word by word.

SUSAN:

I’m getting to that age when a woman’s got to know her limitations. I suppose I could write 50,000 words revising one scene. Does that count? I mean, the possible word combinations in just one sentence are staggering. Jane could walk, stride, stalk, stomp, amble, saunter, or glide to the tall wooden door. And what about that door, one should be more descriptive. Tall wooden door is akin to eating literary cardboard. Should it have iron hinges? Should the wood be ancient?

Jane rushed to the ancient door; its hinges creaked when she pulled the knob.

But now you see, I have a clumsy “it” right there. And semi-colons cause people such problems. That slight relation between two independent clauses.

Redo.

Jane hurried to the ancient door. The rusty iron hinges creaked as she pulled the knob.

I’m thinking “rusty” might be adjective overkill. And “creaked” could be cliché. I think that “as” should be a “when.”

Hmmmm….

Jane rushed to the door. When she pulled the knob, the ancient iron hinges let out a sigh.

Now that just sucks, and I’ve anthropomorphized (is that a word?) the hinges.

Word count so far: around 50.

TINA:

That Jane. She just can't make up her mind. Neither can the door.

When I write fast, Jane gets stuck without any variety in her thoughts or words or deed. At least you managed to make the hinges have some personality -- I couldn't manage that.

Because I can makes words, that's for sure. I can hit a vein and they flow sweet and right. Or, they can just flow, like spilled milk, into something I have to clean up later. 1500 words a day? That would take me about an hour. And it would be a totally wasted hour approximately 95% of the time.

Because as satisfying as that other 5% of the time is, it's much more enjoyable when I can sink into slow writing. It's work, yes, but work like slicing a ripe honeydew into slices and wrapping them in prosciutto, a glass of Muscat at your elbow, jazz playing in the next room. Soul work.

SUSAN:

Soul work. A recent NY Times article said people are happier when they engage in deeper conversations. When the words matter. Slow writing is about just that: words that matter. Communication is volley; you send a message to me and I will respond in kind. Some prose comes wrapped in fast food paper, some odd monster created in a factory far away with ingredients that have more do with return on investment than quality. I will eat those words without thinking and toss the leftovers sentences and such on the floor board of my car. Then several months later, I will be cleaning out my car, see those old words, stuff them into the trash bag and murmur to myself that I need to start reading better. These are expendable words of the over-salted or sugared-up variety. A fast carb hit that leaves you hungry not an hour later.

But then there is prose someone dreamed about, went to the farm and hand selected each word, kneaded with their hands, stood by with some literary spoon, tasting the balance of rosemary, thyme, or pepper. Artisanal writing. This is the writing that reminds me of the small family-run restaurant in the hotel my husband and I stayed at off the coast of Italy. The father, a chef, would go out to the boats and get the fresh catch. Then every course of the meal was created around that fish. The fish was the muse. When you ate, you tasted the chef’s joy and art.

TINA:

Yes, that is the word. Artisanal. Tasting of joy and art and deliberate attention.

When you read words like that, you don’t want them to end. Closing the back cover on such a book is like scraping the bottom of your soup bowl, satisfied yes, but sad to have reached the coda.

Reading organic prose is satisfying. The best writers make the glory look effortless. Real writers know it’s not, that those gorgeous words are most often born from hard work and desperate faith, like the proverbial blood from a turnip.

But today, just for one day, this can be my intention; to fully and joyously inhabit both process and product, with mindful presence, even the tough parts. Good words appear like grace, like the black rook in Sylvia Plath’s “Black Rook in Rainy Weather”:

Miracles occur.
If you care to call those spasmodic
Tricks of radiance
Miracles. The wait's begun again,
The long wait for the angel,

For that rare, random descent.

Let us not rush our miracles. Let them come, word by word. And let us appreciate them for the complex, luminous, lapidary gifts they are.

Fiction Writers Review Interview with Susanna Daniels

2010-12-04T13:31:00.002-05:00

A Texture the Facts Can’t Convey: An Interview with Susanna Daniel
BY LAURA VALERI

I recently had the pleasure of talking with author Susanna Daniel about her debut novel, Stiltsville (HarperCollins, 2010). A fictional memoir about the span of a long marriage, this book is set in the real neighborhood of Stiltsville, which is built of stilt houses over the ocean on the periphery of Miami. The novel was voted one of Amazon’s Best (August 2010), was chosen as a Barnes and Noble Discover Pick, and has received wide critical praise. Daniel’s short fiction has been anthologized in Best New American Voices and published in One Story, Epoch, the Madison Review, and SignificantObjects.com.

In the following conversation, Daniel shares her insights on the process of writing, the power of quiet stories—which she terms eminently readable—and the perseverance and faith that writers must nurture for their own work.

Go to Interview

Laurie Lovell's Lovely Non-Lin Art

2010-12-03T13:55:00.013-05:00

I consider myself lucky to know so many talented people. I'm proud to present my friend Laurie Lovell's art work. These lovely pieces were recently for display in a downtown Savannah shop/art gallery.

Hands off the basket (titled nest): that one has my name on it, but friends, I have two of Laurie's window chakra non-lin hangers and they are be-au-tiful (see Laurie's picture: those things hanging behind her are kind of like mine).

Below is Laurie's artist statement and some of her work. Just in time for Christmas shopping. You can contact her at lovelldesign@yahoo.com for a catalog and pricelist. Or just stop downtown at Cafe Gelatohhh and say hi to Laurie in person. She's a lovely person. You won't be sorry.

Artist's Statement:

This body of work is constructed of "Non-Lin" material process I developed to create a paper-like material from linen flax. Non-woven, non-spun long flax fiber worked with water and an adhesive to form a fabric that can be molded and presented both two-dimensionally and three-dimensionally. I have utilized additional textile techniques in these works to create a texture-depth and interest.

My goal is to create art objects that project a contemplative feeling with an underlying connection to the natural world. In my creative process, I transform what I observe into tactile imagery utilizing the language of visual communication: texture, line, light and shadow, color, form, space, and repetition.

Laurie Lovell can be contacted at lovelldesign@yahoo.com. She is the lovely lady in the picture above.

Kicking In The Window

2010-12-01T00:01:00.004-05:00

There's something to be said for starting out small. Sometimes it's the only way. Usually it's the only way, especially when it comes to getting published. And for those of you who know me well, you know my motto:  "When you can't enter through the front door, kick in a window."

I've certainly kicked in my fair share.

A few years ago, after wallpapering my office wall with rejection letters from agents and editors, I decided to submit a few short stories to magazines and online publications. I was so glad I did. That experience was like a shot in the arm for me personally and professionally.

It was nice to hear, "Wow! I loved your story. Got any more?"  Lest you think it was all wine and roses, I certainly heard plenty more of "Thanks, but no thanks" but it kept me going.

While magazines and online publications pay very little, if at all, it was still a good way to make new contacts, get new perspectives on my writing and, yes, even get published every once in a while. It was also a welcome addition to my agent query letter when I could close with "I've had short stories published in X and Y."  Now, of course that doesn't mean a hill of beans unless the query knocked the socks off an agent but perhaps it gave one or two of them pause to request a partial or a full of my manuscript.

What about you? What have you done to kick in a window? Anything unusual or not so unusual that you can recommend?

Interview with Amy Corwin, author of VAMPIRE PROTECTOR

2010-11-30T00:39:00.004-05:00

Please join the Mojito Literary Society in welcoming Amy Corwin, multi-published author of historical and contemporary novels, as she tells us about her latest work, VAMPIRE PROTECTOR, with occasion digressions into apex predators, writing disasters, and Mimus polyglottos.

1. Tell us a little about VAMPIRE PROTECTOR.

Vampire Protector is the first in what I hope will be a series of contemporary paranormal novels set around Virginia and Maryland, near where I grew up. Like many of my books, it deals with themes of redemption and self-realization. The heroine, Gwen, has been through two harrowing, life-changing experiences that have left her with fragmented, partial memories, and she soon finds that the holes in her memory may prove deadly.

Her neighbor, John Wright, is a vampire, and what Gwen doesn’t realize is that he has been protecting her family—and a deadly family secret—for centuries. Over the years, his own dreams, ambition, and desire to find love have been subsumed by his obligation to serve Gwen’s family. All he has left is duty, and after he meets Gwen, he finds his life even more hollow. Duty is a poor substitute for love. But as a vampire, he has nothing to offer her except endless, empty years which are not the kind of fulfilling life and family she craves.

Their personal tragedy only grow more intense when they face the challenges of deadly forces trying to discover Gwen’s secret and the physical danger of her old family home which may be haunted…

2 Your previous books include Regency romances and mysteries, both contemporary and historical — what made you decide to write a contemporary paranormal?

Vampire Protector is very special to me. It’s both my first contemporary novel and first paranormal, and it was one of those novels I felt driven to write. After going through the death of my parents, a new—and first--marriage, and other life changes, I found myself needing to write about the longings we all experience to recapture the past and find meaning in our lives.

Although Gwen, the heroine of Vampire Protector, faces unique circumstances that none of us has ever faced, she also faces issues with which we are all, sadly, familiar. She must come to terms with the loss of her family and move forward. It is definitely fiction, but the themes and issues are ones that all of us work through. Some of the scenes where Gwen remembers her family were very difficult to write because of the memories they evoked about my own childhood and the loss of my parents. I don’t believe you ever stop longing for those special, fleeting moments of shared love, even if those times were just mundane activities like baking a pie with your mother.

Fortunately, there’s more to Vampire Protector than my maudlin longing for the early sixties. Most of my readers know I also write historicals and my love of history shows up again in this book, in what I hope is an unexpected turn of events. I won’t spill the beans, but suffice to say, vampires are long-lived creatures and those in my novel have some interesting intersections with our own early American history.

3. You mention that you are a former biology student (which explains why you can offer such a useful timeline on both corpse decomposition and Regency rose-growing). How else does your former scholarly interest affect your writing?

Having a “scientific bent” has been both an advantage and a curse. The advantage is that I know how to do research and have personal interests which help ground the books I write in the reality of our physical world. Some odd kink forces me to know how every bird, animal, and plant would look, respond to stimuli, and interact. I’ve found that this has helped me enormously in building fictional worlds because one of the most important aspects of biology is the understanding of ecosystems and the interdependencies within communities of living organisms.

And while much of that sounds like mumbo-jumbo, what it does provide is a holistic foundation for developing paranormal worlds where history, the paranormal, and fictional elements work together as a logical system of interdependent elements.

For example, how would vampires, as a super predator, realistically interact with their prey, humans? I find that question fascinating.

Science can help me frame fictional answers such questions and create realistic behaviors for the characters.

The curse, of course, is the deep need I feel to explain everything. I often find myself having to stop and remove passages where I wax poetic with scientific explanations or boring—but factual—descriptions of minor things like birds. Does anyone really care about the life history, songs, and Latin name of the Northern Mockingbird, Mimus polyglottos?

On an amusing side-note: there is a debate, even among ornithologists, about whether common bird names ought to be capitalized or not. I stand firmly in the camp that states since these are proper names, they ought to be capitalized. I’ve almost come to fist-a-cuffs with editors who wanted the names in lower case.

But if you use lower case, then you don’t know if a green heron is the proper name of a specific bird, the Green Heron, Butorides virescens, or just a generalized description of a heron that happens to be green. Lower case is a description, not a name.

Sorry, I digress. But you can definitely see where a background in biology can be a downright curse at times. You never want to get into fights with your editor.

4. Your website includes a section on Bloopers, Out-takes, and Writing Disasters. What made you decide to share some of your — as you describe it — unforgivably bad writing?

Glad you asked because it gives me an opportunity to explain.

No one is perfect. Certainly, no manuscript is perfect. And even after publication, you can find errors in your book that dismay and disgust you. All of us, including our wonderful editors and copy editors, are human. Even computers, which are not human, make mistakes during grammar and spell checks.

So…I’ve always found it more useful to admit mistakes right up front. It’s the only way you learn and move forward. After having a few embarrassing errors show up in published books, I decided, well, I might as well just admit them as we discover them. I hoped to make a game out of it, since I love to hear from readers, even if it’s only an e-mail cataloging mistakes my editor, copy editor, and I missed. By listing a few on my website, we can keep track of mistakes already found, so sharp-eyed readers can send me e-mails about new, hitherto undiscovered mistakes. LOL

There is also the odd notion, expressed to me by several readers and authors-to-be, that you do a draft or two of a manuscript and it’s perfect. (And of course you can write a book in one month, just writing an hour or two during the evening while scarfing down bon-bons and drinking gallons of Scotch, right? ) By exposing a few sections of my own shameful early drafts, I hoped to show how much work goes into transforming a manuscript into something acceptable as a book.

Finally, I thought it might be fun to post pieces of novels that got cut out in the final form. Sort of the like the outtakes you sometimes see at the end of movies. I love them in movies. They are frequently hysterically funny. So I thought a few “outtakes” of my own might amuse readers and intrigue them enough to want to read the “real” story that hopefully isn’t quite so bad.

5. Your website also features articles from the broadsides, what you describe as the Regency’s version of tabloids. What do you find so fascinating about these sensationalistic accounts of horrid apparitions and murdering publicans?

I admit it, I’m a sucker for ghost stories and murder mysteries. The two often go hand-in-hand. In college, I actually wrote a paper on the rise of the Gothic novel with its elements of murder and the supernatural.

In addition, one of the major influences on both my writing and reading habits was Barbara Michaels. She wrote a brilliant combination of paranormal, mystery, and romance. In many of her stories, history plays a major role in the genesis and resolution of the mystery.

My love of history forced me to start writing in the historical genre, specifically historical romantic mysteries, but I always wanted to include that paranormal element. So I was on the lookout for murder mysteries, ghost stories and actual, historical accounts of paranormal events. I wanted facts to lend more realism to my stories.

Then I found actual accounts from the early 19^th century of experiences with the paranormal and murder. The accounts concerning the investigation of murders during that period helped me tremendously to ensure I got the sequencing of events correct when I had a mystery subplot in my historical romances.

Finally, because many of my stories have a very comedic tone, I wanted to make sure that I got the actual period details correct, particularly when it came to investigating murders. I didn’t want my stories to move from the humorous into the territory of the completely ridiculous. I needed to have some foundation in reality.

Of course, all of that can’t hide the fact that I just found the broadsheets incredibly fascinating. Sort of like the “Forensic Files” of the Regency period.

6. Do you have a current work-in-progress?

Yes! I have three!

I’ve got a contemporary paranormal about a minor character in Vampire Protector, a woman named Quicksilver. She’s literally gone through hell at the hands of vampires and wants nothing more than to kill them all. But she meets a man who is determined to save the souls of vampires and give them a second chance. The sparks fly as they try to meet on some small bit of common ground. The working name of this manuscript is Quicksilver, and I hope to finish editing it and start submitting it by January 2011 to my publisher, The Wild Rose Press.

Right now, I’m writing a contemporary cozy mystery called It’s a Crime about a woman who is an exhibition shooter and who gets dragged into a complex series of murders, set in the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

Finally, I’m editing a historical romantic mystery. The working name is Deadliest Rose. This book draws on my research into the history of roses to create a story where the murderer sends a rose to a detective agency, to indicate who the next victim will be. If they can identify the rose, they have a chance at saving the victim. The first draft is done, and I’m hoping to finish edits later this summer to prepare it for submission late in 2011.

7. Any other exciting news you'd like to share?

I’m awaiting word on a contemporary, cozy mystery set in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, tentatively called Whacked. I should hear by the end of November. Keep your fingers crossed.

In addition, I have one more historical romantic mystery, The Necklace, due out very, very soon. I hope by the end of November or December. For those following my other historicals, this book features the incorrigible Archer family. Oriana Archer manages to find an Archer family heirloom—an emerald necklace—only to lose it and have it reappear, clutched in a dead man’s hand.

I can’t wait to have it released!

That’s it for now, and I hope readers will find something of interest. Don’t forget to visit me at http://www.amycorwin.com for the latest news.

Thank you so much for having me on your blog!

Amy Corwin

http://www.amycorwin.com/VampireProtector.htm

********************

Amy Corwin is a charter member of the Romance Writers of America and has been writing for the last ten years in addition to managing a career as an enterprise systems administrator in the computer industry. She writes Regencies/historicals, mysteries, and contemporary paranormals. To be truthful, most of her books include a bit of murder and mayhem since she discovered that killing off at least one character is a highly effective way to make the remaining ones toe the plot line.

Amy's first paranormal, VAMPIRE PROTECTOR, debuted in November, 2010.Amy’s first Regency, SMUGGLED ROSE, received a 4-star review by “The Romantic Times” and her second Regency, I BID ONE AMERICAN, received a perfect score of 5 from Long and Short Reviews. Her third Regency, THE BRICKLAYER’S HELPER, is out now from The Wild Rose Press.

Website: http://www.amycorwin.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/amycorwin
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/AmyCorwinAuthor
Blog: http://amycorwin.blogspot.com

Tina's Review of SHADOWS OVER PARADISE by Anne K. Edwards

2010-11-29T09:02:00.001-05:00

The Beach Read — it’s a genre unto itself. The kind of book that lends itself well to a sandy spot next to a rolling ocean, a comfy chaise lounger, an umbrella. For me, the ultimate beach read is a certain type of mystery novel — character-driven but well-plotted, intelligent but not stiffly cerebral, preferably with an exotic setting and lush descriptions. No forensic analysis please. And no psychotically clever serial killers either. Just average people caught up in that most ordinary of extraordinary events — good old-fashioned murder.

Those are my requirements. If that sounds good to you, then pull up a towel next to me and I’ll share Shadows Over Paradise by Anne K. Edwards with you.

The plot starts off like any good vacation — promises of sun and sand and exotic splendor. There’s a wedding in the works, a gathering of intriguing characters (and the usual in-fighting that such gatherings provoke). Add a splash of deceitful sneakiness, throw in a vengeful female rival, shake well with a few chunks of cold-blooded ambition, and you’ve got yourself a treachery cocktail. And all this happens before the first body washes up on the beach for our intrepid heroine, Julia Graye, to find.

Edwards’ writing is fine — descriptive phrases like “the air around them prickled their skin” develop both setting and tone. And the history of the Mantuan Islands is woven within the narrative with finesse, so that the bits and pieces of this setting don't feel like a fictional travelogue.

So if you’re lucky enough to have a warm beach waiting for you, grab Shadows over Paradise and find yourself a nice spot by the water. I’d recommend you take an umbrella drink with you — something fruity and cool and laced with deceptive amounts of rum.

Talking Chocolate with Denise, Foodie and Chocolate Enthusiast

2010-11-26T15:06:00.012-05:00

I'm thrilled that my friend Denise Chiavetta agreed to visit the Mojito Literary Society and share her passion (addiction) to chocolate. Aside from being a die hard foodie and member of the artisan slow food movement, Denise is a professional futurist. She studies trends in technology and their potential impact on industry and culture. In other words, Denise is a badass. Her knowledge of the history and processing of chocolate is quite impressive.

* You have a Tshirt that reads "life begins after 70 percent." Can you explain what that means?

I've had people ask me all sorts of questions about it, such as "is that the passing grade for the bar?" I'm not sure according to what governing body, but chocolate with at least 70% cocoa solids is "dark" chocolate, the consumption of which is one of the very good reasons to be alive.

* Can you give a quick overview of the process of making chocolate?

Cacao pods are filled with a sweet pulp and bitter seeds (cacao beans).

After harvest, the sticky insides of pods are scooped out and allowed to ferment. Fermentation is what gives the beans their "chocolate"

characteristics, so it's an important step. Fermented pulp easily washes off the beans so they can be thoroughly dried and eventually roasted. Roasted beans are milled/ground into chocolate liquor. The next critical step is conching, which is basically more mixing, usually with other ingredients (sugar, milk, etc.). The longer you conch, the smoother the chocolate. To cut conching corners, some makers add an emulsifier like soy lecithin.

Finally, chocolate is tempered, which is basically controlled cooling to control crystallization. Tight tempering ensures a snappy but smooth, glossy chocolate.

*What makes a good chocolate?

The same things that make good wine......varietal, terroir, handling, storage, etc. The vast majority of chocolate produced in the world is the forastero varietal, a very hardy and productive plant that produces bitter and not very complex beans. Rarer is the fragile and less productive but sweeter and more complex criollo varietal. Trinitaro is a hybrid of the two.

There are so many points "farm to table" (or in this case, maybe farm to

finger) to "show some love" rather than "take the money and run" that significantly impacts quality. Chocolate love includes harvest of ripe pods, ample time for fermentation, even and careful roasting, patient conching and tempering, etc.

*If I wanted to be a chocolate connoisseur, what terms would I need to know?

I would say definitely conching and tempering. While a crisp snap emits from the chocolate you just broke in two, say "this glossy, snappy chocolate was perfectly tempered."

*Why is it important to know the source of cocoa beans in your chocolate?

For two reasons. Since the early steps of the farm to finger process (varietal planting, harvesting, fermenting) happen at the source, knowing who's hands were involved and what decisions they made makes for a quality experience. The second reason is that like all tropical commodities (coffee, sugar, chocolate) from the southern hemisphere, production is steeped in a tragic history of exploitation of people and land. Purchasing a chocolate with a fair trade certification ensures chocolate spreads love.

*Recently you've become interested in how the Aztecs made chocolate. Can you explain a little more?

Having heard for so many years (from the common wisdom fairies) that chocolate was "the food of the gods" for the Aztecs, I decided to research the topic. Actually, it has a much longer history, beginning with earlier mesoamericans, but they all fermented, roasted, and ground the beans as is still done today. Each culture ground in a preferred spice combination. Hot peppers are still popular today, but they also used musky and savory spices.

Chocolate was always mixed with hot or cold water to make a drink. A significant aspect of what defined chocolate and the consumption experience was the froth created by pouring the chocolate liquid from one container to another from a fair height, i.e. standing while pouring into a vessel at your feet. Specialized vessels were used to pour. The froth could even be removed for final seasoning of the liquid, and then put back on. I really would like to go back in time and see what the froth produced by a palace expert was like :-)

* Who are some chocolatiers you would recommend?

There are so many, it's fun to explore. The empty wrappers currently strewn in my office are Amedei (Italy) , Coppeneur (Germany), and Vosges (USA).

*Is there a question I should have asked but didn't?

When is the best time of day to enjoy chocolate? Anytime :-)

Bobbye's Holiday Book Recommendations

2010-11-25T00:01:00.002-05:00

I was hoping I would have book recommendations from the local Community Relations Manager at our Barnes & Noble store, but since I haven’t gotten them yet, I thought I’d suggest some of my own from the small press publishers with whom I’m familiar. Here are three I think readers would really enjoy for the holiday season:

Dying for a Date by Cindy Sample
June 2010, L&L Dreamspell

Note from Bobbye-A laugh-out-loud funny romantic mystery. This is a keeper. Read with a glass of good Merlot.

Not sure if she is looking for Mr. Right, or Mr. Every Other Saturday Night, recently divorced Laurel McKay reluctantly joins THE LOVE CLUB, a matchmaking agency advertised as the safe alternative to on-line dating.

After Bachelor one decides he wants her for dessert, Laurel dispatches him with her cell phone. The next day she discovers her drop dead gorgeous date has literally dropped dead. When Bachelor two disappears during dinner, Laurel’s only alibi is a friendly bottle of Dom Perignon. The investigating detective has to decide if the sassy soccer mom is a killer, or the next target.

Magick Charm by Jennifer Wells
September 2010, Crescent Moon Press

Note from Bobbye-Take a solid paranormal romance, throw in a generous dose of humor, liberal dashes of thriller and toss gently for an exciting read. Read this with a margarita.

Janie Adler likes her quiet, orderly life reviewing books for a small New Orleans newspaper exactly the way it is. So what if Duke Hot Pants, the hero of her favorite romance novel, is the only man in her life? She has a Pulitzer Prize to chase. That is until her quirky twin sister Rachel moves in, bringing boyfriend drama, a smelly ferret, and irrational belief in all things magickal along with her.

Persuaded by a local voodoo priestess-and maybe one margarita too many-the twins cast spells to improve their love lives. Loser-magnet Rachel focuses on avoiding the wrong men and Janie seeks her romance novel ideal. While plenty of eligible bachelors flood into their lives, Janie only has eyes for her coworker who lives in the apartment downstairs and works in the cube next to her. But the twins soon discover the incantations' many unintended-and dangerous-consequences. The increasing number of mishaps and misfortune putting the sisters in grave peril seems more like the work of a curse. Can Janie and Rachel's "twintuition" save them from the menace stalking them?

Believe, Christmas Anthology 2010
November 2010, Turquoise Morning Press

Note from Bobbye-Eight uplifting short stories to read by the fire with an Irish coffee.

Second Hand Horses by Amy LeBlanc
Mall Magic by Cat Shaffer
Another Quirky Christmas by Tonya Kappes
Concourse Christmas by Margaret Ethridge
Love in an Elevator by Krista Ames
Fixing Christmas by Elizabeth Chalkley
Angel on Board by Janet Eaves
The Twelve Seductive Days of Christmas by Marissa Dobson

Have a great Thanksgiving, and I suggest you feel free to take a nap afterwards.

Katrina's Stiltsville Book Review

2010-11-22T11:52:00.003-05:00

I was prepared to love Susanna Daniel’s debut novel, Stiltsville, based solely on the cover photograph, which called to me from the advertisement in Poets & Writers and lured me to the new book display in my local library, where I was powerless to resist. Despite the adage that we shouldn’t judge books by their covers, I often choose them just that way. The cover of Stiltsville promises simplicity and serenity, and the book delivers both, eventually.

In Stiltsville Susanna Daniel invites us to tag along with an average couple, Frances and Dennis. They meet, get married, and have a girl child, none of which is very exciting or memorable in and of itself. What is memorable is the way Daniel draws the reader in to the story and creates characters we care about, some from the beginning and others as we move through time. As we follow this Georgia girl, Frances, through her life, almost exclusively in Florida, we are reminded that we have choices to make. She shows us that while a few people are static, most of us are making decisions every day that make us different people than we were yesterday. Daniel shows us the reality of love—all sorts: romantic, familial, long lasting friendship—and marriage and all the phases of both. She chronicles the cycle of life of a particular fictional character and manages to show us everywoman’s journey—an honest journey and one readers can identify with on many levels.
My favorite writing professor used to say that all good writing makes the reader feel something. Using that gauge, Daniel is a great writer, and I cannot wait to read what comes after Stiltsville.

First Gift

2010-11-21T19:22:00.002-05:00

When I was very young, except by south Georgia standards, I met a delightful, quiet, kind man who I married as quickly as I could sort out how. He endeared himself to me a little more every week we had together with little notes and cards and calligraphy doodles of his affection, but the very first gift he ever gave me was a single rose delivered to me at work on a random Tuesday for no reason other than to send me a flower. He was very clever. Over the years I got many other more expensive and sometimes more coveted gifts from him, but that first one took me completely off guard.

First Gifts

2010-11-19T10:32:00.007-05:00

by Susanna Ives

I should preface that my husband is a Viking. The other day, I was watching a special on Vikings. It seems the first waves were the famed pillaging raider types, however many years later, the more peaceful merchant Vikings appeared and set up trade around the globe. My husband is of the merchant variety. Just last night he was recounting all the exotic places he had to visit in the coming months. He tells me a Viking is never happy unless he is somewhere else.

My husband and I were friends for many years before we admitted that we loved each other. We were still in the friends stage when he gave me the lovely silk painting in the center of the picture. I think it was on this trip that he flew over the international dateline and celebrated his birthday twice. Then he travelled again and came back with the gold box made in Kashmir. (Although he didn’t travel to Kashmir, so I’m puzzled as to where he picked it up.)

Later, we progressed into a romantic couple, and I received the large wooden box from Malaysia, then the shiny black box from Japan, followed by the tiny brown box from Indonesia. Then I told him that I didn’t need any more boxes and we switched to jewelry.

What was your first gift from a significant other? Link up your blog using the instructions below and hop on.

It's Magic debuts today

2010-11-18T10:14:00.003-05:00

Member Bobbye Terry w/a Daryn Cross, in conjunction with co-writer LJ DeLeon announce the debut of their romantic fantasy, It's Magic. Imagine Santa, on his offseason, matching two people per year who are disillusioned with finding love everlasting.

Here's a blurb and the Kindle buy link. Also available in print:

Can true love exist between a man who believes a woman is capable of sticking a shive in his heart while making love and a woman who is convinced men think with only one head? Maxwell Magic, an eccentric mysterious matchmaker swears it can and he’s the man to provide the stimulus to make it happen. Kasey Bell, feminist writer, and Guy McLane, radio’s famous chauvinistic psychiatrist, are his targets. Even with carefully executed plans, the road to true love is strewn with mishaps, mirth and money-hungry nighttime talk show hosts. Will Kasey and Guy risk their reputations by exposing secrets buried beneath layers of shame and self-doubt for a desperately needed big money pay-off? Or, will they claim what has evaded them their entire lives—a love that lasts forever?

http://www.amazon.com/Its-Magic-ebook/dp/B004CRSPXQ/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1290090245&sr=1-4

Fantasy Between the Covers

2010-11-17T00:01:00.000-05:00

No, no people—not those kind of fantasies! Snap out of it. I’m talking about reading. Here are my thoughts:

Could it be that every human being requires time lost in fantasy? Some of the greatest psychological minds in history say “yes.” Sigmund Freud stated that men and women “cannot subsist on the scanty satisfaction which they can extort from reality.” So let’s assume people must fantasize in order to fully enjoy life, for it is through fantasy that immediate gratification occurs, if only for a few fleeting moments or the duration of a good novel.

Following this train of thought, I believe I can hypothesize that the avid reader has discovered the ability to tap into the imaginary world of others by simply picking up a book and becoming lost in the persona of the hero or heroine and the world in which they live. In this way, he can supplement his own fantasies by attainment of lofty goals through the eyes of another. Is it any wonder, then, that reading is as popular as it is?

However, many say younger people are swayed into not reading as much because they now have the ability to escape into an alternate world via the Internet or through gaming, visual and less taxing methods for escapism with even more immediate gratification than reading a book. Perhaps, but these methods are visual and thus preconceived. There is “little left to the imagination.” And isn’t our ability to imagine what we really crave?

So, how does one make reading a book more enticing to the young than playing the newest video game? By creating a world populated with characters who can only be appreciated to their fullest through the imagination of the reader, as he interacts with them at his own rate and as he pleases in his mind while turning the pages of the book.

Through books, we’ve done wondrous things: traveled through time, gone around the world in eighty days, spent time on deserted islands, had numerous satisfying love affairs, traveled to other worlds and battled mighty demons, always emerging victorious. All worlds are possible between the covers.

Bobbye Terry aka Daryn Cross

Bobbye's Review of The First Love Cookie Club by Lori Wilde

2010-11-15T00:01:00.001-05:00

Lori Wilde had me with the acknowledgements. Okay, I have to admit, I’d read one of her Twilight, Texas series books. So, I knew what I was getting ready to read. But, as always, I had a surprise. This time it started on page vii before I even got to the actual story. Don’t skip it because it will really get you in the mood to read this book.

It doesn’t matter if you’ve read any books in her Twilight, Texas series, because with no introduction,The First Love Cookie Club will stand on its own. These days, I read mostly romantic fantasy and suspense, but there’s something that just beckons about a wonderful romance as Christmas approaches, especially when it takes place at Christmas. Besides, who can resist a town with a Horny Toad Tavern, a Sweetheart Park and a Merry Cherub store?

The story centers around a self-conscious young teenager who feels out of place, with parents who are married to their careers and no time for little Sarah Ann Collier. Thankfully, she has a Grandmother who lives in Twilight, Texas and tries to take up the slack during the holiday season. It is there in Twilight Sarah discovers the town’s legend about Kismet cookies, the home-baked goodies with magical powers that, if placed under your pillow on Christmas Eve, will make you dream about your soulmate. During all her teen years, Sarah has dreamed about the same guy, Travis Walker, the next-door neighbor’s son. But on the Christmas of her fifteenth year, she discovers Travis is getting married that day. She rushes to the church, dressed in a reindeer sweater with bells and wearing antlers, and declares she’s his soulmate to Travis, his bride and the entire congregation. He tried to let her down easily, but an unrequited first love never truly heals.

A little girl with a broken heart grows up into a woman, goes to college, strikes it big with her first book, The Magic Christmas Cookie, and discovers through a letter from a sick little girl that she has an opportunity to revisit Twilight, this time as the little girl’s favorite author. Perhaps she can regain the self-confidence she lost there. Upon discovering, the little girl, Jazzy, is the daughter of none other than Travis Walker, now divorced after his wife left him, Sarah can’t help but wonder if she has a chance to regain a soulmate as well.

This book starts as what appears to be a romantic romp, oh, so enjoyable but predictable. Don’t forget the author is Lori Wilde, and after all, every small town has sordid secrets. Just like in real life, the road to true love is never traveled without a hitch. Be prepared for surprises when you least expect it. But at the end, you get what you want, a warm and loving feeling,and a knowing that things can turn out happily ever after. So snuggle next to a fire with The First Love Cookie Club and enjoy it with a big cup of hot cocoa laced with a generous dose of Kahlua.

First Gifts Blog Hop: You're Invited!

2010-11-12T08:12:00.000-05:00

Do you remember the first gift you ever received from your boyfriend? Girlfriend? Spouse? Life partner? Did you get something sparkly? A mood ring that turned your finger purple? Sexy lingerie? An ugly puppy? A toaster? If you've got a story to tell--funny, sad, or in-between--I'd love it if you'd join me and the cool chicks at The Mojito Literary Society in our blog hop next weekend. Virtual mojitos and chocolate cupcakes will be served. Here are the deets:

Who's Invited: Everyone! Anyone can post a story or hop around or both!

When: November 19 - November 21

Why: Because laughter is the best medicine, or something cheesy like that. And we're basically nosey. Seriously, this blog hop should be a blast!

How: All you have to do is click on the linky link below and join! Then on November 19, post your story. And if you have a photo to share, even better! Your story does not have to be long. In fact, I'd recommend no more than 500 words. You can even post the linky link html code below to your blog if you're feeling techy. ;-)

Prizes: What are we, 12 years old?! There are no prizes and definitely no judging. Blech! Just the satisfaction of reading other people's stories, making new friends, following new blogs, and generally having a good time. What's not to like? "Tis the season, too. We all might as well get in the gifty mood.

Anything else?: Please include the cute little Blogger Button above in your November 19 post because, well, what's a blog hop without a cute lil' blogger button? Any help you could provide in spreading the word about this blog hop--your own blogs, Twitter, Facebook, skywriting, bull horns--would surely be appreciated!

A Final Note: I'll be sharing a photo and story of my first anniversary gift from my husband. Let's just say that the moment I opened his present, I seriously thought that Martians had landed and someone abducted my real husband, leaving me an impostor. Like those pod people. I could NOT believe what he wrapped up for me in shiny paper and bows. Good news, though. After 20 years, we're still married. Oh, but that first gift...Can't wait to share it with you on the 19th!

Be there!

Works by Jen Pezzotti

2010-11-11T20:11:00.025-05:00

Today Jen Pezzotti, a brilliant photographer and airline stewardess, is sharing some of the beautiful photographs she has taken in her travels. I was thrilled when she kindly agreed to display her stunning work on our site. Please leave a comment telling Jen how much you like her photos.

NOTE: Click on the photo to view entire image!

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I became passionate with taking pictures about 2 years ago when I realized that I was traveling to all these interesting places and wasn’t really going out. After a long flight I would just run to a local market and back to my hotel room. In March of 2008 I purchased my first digital point and shoot camera, a Canon G9 (which I still love), and really started to enjoy taking pictures. I started taking my camera with me on my trips and searching out good locations to take shots. This past summer I finally purchased my first DSLR, Canon 7D, and subsequently started taking photography classes. I think what I love about digital photography the most is the instant gratification as a creative outlet.

Light in Dublin

A portion of Brighton Pavilion

Carousel Brighton UK

Mermaid Inn Rye England

Ha'Penny Bridge Dublin

London Bridge

Train tracks in Aston, Pennsylvania

Boat House Row Philadelphia

Philadelphia Art Museum and the Water Works

Pusey Plantation Upland, Pennsylvania

I carry my camera everywhere and will stop anywhere now to get a picture - hence the tractor doing work while I was driving down the highway.

Rehoboth Beach

Stairs in San Francisco

Salem, Masschusetts

Thursday's Recommended Reading!

2010-11-11T09:12:00.001-05:00

This week's Recommended Reading comes from Mollie M., an inspiration in all things reader-related and good book-oriented. These are her top picks, painfully narrowed down from a list of about one zillion, she says.

My #1 recommendation right now is Blackout by Connie Willis. It came out earlier this year and the second part, All Clear, was released a couple of weeks ago. I haven't gotten my hands on All Clear yet, but I'm absolutely dying to read it. Anyway, Blackout is your typical meticulously researched doorstop science fiction novel about time-traveling Oxford students who go back to the London Blitz to do research for their history papers. Ms. Willis took eight years to write and research it, and the level of detail is just phenomenal. Here's what I wrote about it a few months ago:

"Blackout by Connie Willis. Honestly I don't know if there's a book out there that is more up my alley than this one. I adore Ms. Willis, as well as books about time travel and books about WWII that focus on Dunkirk and/or the London Blitz. Put all those together and I'm in heaven-- although seriously I would have liked some warning that it was just the first half since the cliffhanger nearly gave me a heart attack. Definitely the book I've enjoyed most this year."

I'd also like to plug Jane Smiley's newest, Private Life. Quietly heartbreaking, it traces one woman's life from her St. Louis childhood in the late 19th century to her WWII experiences in San Francisco. Along the way she marries a man who turns out to be a good old-fashioned scientific crank in the mold of Ignatius Donnelly and her unhappy marriage becomes the book's emotional center.

Story Supplies

2010-11-10T10:00:00.001-05:00

I have been blessed in my life to be surrounded by many amazing artists of one variety or other. One of those artists was Lew Alquist, a renowned late 20th century American sculptor and the husband of my friend Jane Pleak, a well-known artist herself in the ceramics world. Lew went to that big artist’s studio in the sky in early 2005, but as all good artists do, he left us not only art, but also wisdom.

On New Year’s Eve 2003, several of us sat around Jane’s kitchen table decorating cookies and talking about art. We made up pen names for my as yet unrealized romance novel career, and we talked about inspiration. Lew said, as he often did, that “everything is not art, but everything is art supplies.” When I helped sort out his Arizona studio in 2005, I found that he meant just that as we decided what to do with cases upon cases of things like stainless steel specula (yes, those are what you think they are), bolts of every size and most anything else he could find for a deal at a state surplus auction.

All right, you’re thinking, this is a fine story, but what does it have to do with writing? So, I’ll tell you. Everything is not a story, but everything is story supplies. We are asked time and again where we get inspiration, how we decide what to write about, how we know something is worth writing about. The answer to that, I find, is inspiration is everywhere in everything.

Often, the things I write about aren’t things I decide to write about consciously, but rather, images or ideas that refuse to go away until I write them down. Anything you can’t shake is worth writing about. An event that makes you feel something is worth writing about, at least in some form. Everything is not a story, but everything is a story supply—a detail that makes fiction seem truer and truth more real, a piece of overheard conversation that starts your mind racing into a whole other world, a picture you see every time you close your eyes.

Pay attention to the world around you; it’s all fair game.

So, y’all start gathering your supplies. It’s time to write.

Susanna Interviews Tia Nevitt

2010-11-09T06:00:00.004-05:00

Tia, thank you for visiting the Mojito Literary Society. For those of you just joining us, you may want to read my gushing review of Tia's book Sevenfold Spell.

If you have any questions for Tia, please leave a comment below.

Let's get started...

What about fairytales fascinates you? Why do you want to retell them?

I love all kinds of old legends. When I was a kid, I heard not only fairy tales, but also Irish legends told by my Ireland-born mother, and stories and legends of Catholic saints. When I was in the sixth grade, I learned about mythology for the first time (in Catholic school!), and it was like discovering a whole new treasure trove of fairy tales--except these were much darker and more dramatic.

I've been rediscovering the fairy tales for years as Disney has been re-releasing all the Princess movies and I've been sharing them with my daughter. The idea of a homely spinster came to me when I watched the scene where they burn all the spinning wheels, and I wondered what happened to all those women put out of work. And that naturally led to wondering just where that last spinning wheel came from--and how it survived the spinning wheel ban.

Talia is a wonderful character. She is a pragmatic survivor with a great sense of humor. I adored her. How did you develop that character?

Over time. I knew she was going to be ugly--Aurora's opposite--but I didn't know much else about her until she took me by surprise and asked Willard if he wanted to kiss her. The rest came out bit by bit, through rewriting and through Talia's interactions with the other characters. Talia's mother is every bit the survivor that Talia is, trying to earn her living first by weaving, and then by importing, and finally by the spinning of bootleg thread on an illegal spinning wheel. But she could not have done it without Talia, who was the one who put her plan into action. They have a relationship of mutual dependency.

One of the many things I loved about Sevenfold Spell is how you weaved Talia's story through the actual fairytale. Can you tell us a bit about how you plotted the novella?

I clung to the Sleeping Beauty story for dear life and let it carry me along. I also knew I had many plot holes to fill and I had a lot of fun coming up with reasons for the arbritrary rules in the original story. As I came across each turn in the Sleeping Beauty story--and there aren't many--I tried to think of how it might impact Talia. And when Talia's story needed a turn, I would turn to the Sleeping Beauty story as well, trying to bind up the two stories without impacing the story at the tale's heart.

I thought you made an interesting decision to keep Aurora in an emotionally childlike state which contrasted with Talia's experienced view of the world? Why did you choose to characterize Aurora that way?

That came from one of those plot holes. Why would Aurora go anywhere near a spinning wheel if she knew they posed such a deadly danger? In the stories, Aurora seemed almost simple. I tried to account for it by having Aurora being under a spell, but that didn't work for me. It was too convenient. I tend to really probe character motivation.

I also needed a reason for Talia to intervene, a reason for her to be so protective of Aurora. So I decided to give them a history. But they don't know they have a history until that critical moment.

I think Sleeping Beauty is a tale about innocence and chastity. On her seventeenth birthday, Aurora pricks her finger (starts menstruation) and sleeps until awoken by the kiss of the man she is going to marry. Yet, Talia is, well, the village slut. Both women get a happily-ever-after and true love. Was this a theme that you intended?

That's correct; I did want to contract Aurora's purity with Talia's sullied state, just as Aurora's beauty is contracted by Talia's ugliness. And I did want them both to have a happily ever after. But I didn't want to fall into that trap where I made the beauty into a monster or anything like that. Instead, I gave her a supernatural beauty that gives her unexpected problems.

I didn't really associate the prick of the finger with the start of menstruation. I thought of it as a statement about how pampered the royalty is compared to the common people. For example, in The Princess and the Pea, the princess is exposed by a mattress made uncomfortable by the presence of a pea. It is over-the-top ridiculous. Similarily, a princess is so delicate and pampered that a mere splinter can kill her where a peasant would simply pull it out.

You are also a book reviewer and run the fabulous review site Debuts and Reviews. When you write, how do you balance the writer and the critic?

Thank you! It's difficult and I often have to put my blog on hiatus. Over the years, I have recruited three other people to occasionally review books on my site--Katie reviews a lot of young adult novels and epic fantasy alongside me, Raven handles the darker stuff, such as horror and dark fantasy, and Deborah reviews the urban fantasies.

But I do have to give everything a priority. Commitments come before the writing, and writing comes ahead of the blog. I would read regardless of whether I ran a blog or not, so as I have time, I review the books I read. And I've always loved discovering new authors, so debuts are a natural focus for me.

I do have trouble saying no, and ever since Carina published The Sevenfold Spell, the requests for reviews has easily doubled. Right now, I'm turning almost everyone away unless they give me a lot of lead time, but secretly I am buying the books if they appeal to me. I consider review copies to be a commitment, and I'm taking on very few commitments of any kind right now.

However, if I buy a book on my own, I have the freedom to review it on my own schedule, without any pressure.

What's on the horizon for you?

I wish I knew! I'm actively writing two additional stories for the ACCIDENTAL ENCHANTMENTS series, one where I am almost finished and one that I have just begun. I am under submission with an unrelated novel and a short story, and I'd like to finish another short story that is based on a Cherokee legend. It could almost be another story for Accidental Enchantments, but it's not nearly long enough.

Is there a question I should have asked you, but didn't?

No, you did great--I loved these questions! Thanks for having me.

You can learn more about Sevenfold Spell by visiting Ms. Nevitt's website or read an excerpt at the Carina Press website.

Again, please leave a comment for Tia.

Susanna's Thoughts on Sevenfold Spell by Tia Nevitt

2010-11-08T07:21:00.002-05:00

Have you ever wondered what happens to the other people in the fairy tale?

Things look grim for Talia and her mother. By royal proclamation, the constables and those annoying "good" fairies have taken away their livelihood by confiscating their spinning wheel. Something to do with a curse on the princess, they said.

Not every young lady has a fairy godmother rushing to her rescue.

Without the promise of an income from spinning, Talia's prospects for marriage disappear, and she and her mother face destitution. Past caring about breaking an arbitrary and cruel law, rebellious Talia determines to build a new spinning wheel, the only one in the nation—which plays right into the evil fairy's diabolical plan. Talia discovers that finding a happy ending requires sacrifice. But is it a sacrifice she's willing to make?

The night I agreed to read Tia’s eBook Sevenfold Spell I was in what they call in the Princess Bride “the pit of despair” for various personal reasons. As I opened my Sony eReader, I was nervous. What if I hated the story and had to force myself to read it? What if I had to make up good comments? The first paragraph started with the main character Talia on her knees, looking at the hard boot of the man destroying her and her mother's livelihood. Then my favorite thing in all fiction reading happened: I was drawn into the story from the very first page. And the book didn’t let up. In my night of despair, Talia and I were hanging like old friends laughing and commiserating over the kitchen table. Gentle readers, at 1:30 that morning, I was fighting to keep my eyelids open to finish this story I wanted so badly to know what happened to Talia.

Here was this wart-ridden, homely girl stuck in the middle of a fairytale populated with fairies, beautiful princesses, handsome princes, and happy endings. Always scraping along, Talia gets hit with one disaster after another. Her lover leaves her, she is barren, she befriends young Aurora and treats her like her own daughter only to have her taken away, she tries to drown her sorrows in shallow sexual relationships, and later contracts a serious illness. As I write this list, Talia sounds awfully pathetic, but she isn’t. No matter what happens, she keeps moving forward, pragmatic as ever and with a wonderful ironic sense of humor. In a way, Talia is an odd, R-rated version of Pollyanna.

This story is the mature fairytale. It speaks to the grown woman who has known heartache, adversity, and loss. The woman who doesn’t feel sorry for herself, but strives to improve her circumstances using whatever means available. Doesn’t she deserve a happy ending? Shouldn't she get a prince? Hell yes.

I loved this story and how it engaged me on multiple levels. Emotionally, I followed the story of Talia all the way to her Happily-Ever-After (and not the Little Match Girl or Little Mermaid kind of Happy-IN-in-the-Ever-After.) Intellectually, I observed how Ms. Nevitt deconstructed the fairytale and then rewove it with Talia’s story running counterpoint. Brilliant.

Ms. Nevitt can deliver an emotional punch in a few perfect words. The first person narrative is engaging and witty. Talia’s voice and humanity shines through in her descriptions and interactions with others. The book is saturated with fun sex, although not graphic or erotic. So if you’re wallowing about in a pit of despair or just looking for something fabulous to read, might I recommend Sevenfold Spell? It goes well with a Baileys topped with a large dollop of cream sprinkled with brown sugar. Start the book early in the evening ‘cause you’re going to be up late.

We will post an awesome interview with Tia Nevitt tomorrow so check back. In the meantime, you can learn more about Sevenfold Spell by visiting Ms. Nevitt's website or read an excerpt at the Carina Press website.

Interview with Sunny Frazier

2010-11-04T13:13:00.004-04:00

Interviewing Sunny Frazier, mystery writer and editor of Oak Tree Press today on my solo blog, www.BobbyeTerry.Blogspot.com. Come by and say hi.

Bobbye

Book Recommendations

2010-11-04T11:17:00.006-04:00

Recommendations from H – the world’s best Borders manager:

Cordelia's Honor (Vorkosigan Saga Omnibus: Shards of Honor / Barrayar)
Philosophy mixed with interstellar adventure.

Kare Kano: His and Her Circumstances.
H likes this Manga series so much that if she saw a competitor had the latest book, she would forgo her employee discount!

Recommendations from E -- the wonder librarian and bookworm.

A FOOL AND HIS HONEY by Charlaine Harris.
Aurora Teagarden is back!

Escaped by Carolyn Jessup.
A shocking memoir detailing Carolyn Jessup’s years in the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints, her polygamous marriage, and how she and her eight children escaped.

Recommendations from Susanna

HOW I BECAME A FAMOUS NOVELIST by Steve Hely.
Hilarious satire. Even the New York Times agrees.

What are you recommending this week?

Storytelling and Telling Stories by Tina

2010-11-03T09:39:00.004-04:00

My grandmother always told me, “Now don’t you be telling no stories.”

But I always did. I couldn’t resist a story, even if it meant making one up for no reason but the making.

My grandmother said these were lies. My husband would agree. He’s an engineer, suspicious of the frayed edge that all stories have, the place where facts start unraveling. He says that fact and truth are the same thing. He says that if he started writing equations based on my ideas of truth, planes would fall from the sky.

It’s a point.

And yet my brain can’t make sense of all the facts around me; it’s an impossibility. Information overload. My brain has to leave out certain things for me to make sense of the rest. It edits my reality into something I can comprehend, leaving out this, focusing on that. It connects my present experience to the other experiences folded and tucked in my gray matter, and by doing so, creates a chronology, a sense of past and future, effect and consequence. The human brain is wired for stories, and it programs our consciousness accordingly.

Not facts. Stories.

Memory is useful not for what it records, but for what it erases. It takes out the extraneous -- however factual -- and leaves us with essence -- however slanted. And it is slanted; it must be. No true and perfectly accurate memory exists. Certain details, by necessity, weren’t captured in the first place, and every subsequent time your consciousness touches the memory, it further alters it, even as it carves it deeper into your brain. Jonah Lehrer explains it more eloquently than I can in his SEED magazine article "The Neuroscience of Proust":

Every time we remember, the neuronal structure of the memory, no matter how constant it may feel, is delicately transformed. If you prevent the memory from changing, it ceases to exist. So the purely objective memory . . . is the one memory lost to you forever.

Our memory is a fallacy. All we have are our stories. All we are are our stories.

Which is why I write fiction -- because it's the only way I know to find something real. And there isn't an equation in the world that can do that for me.

Thursday's Recommended Reading!

2010-10-28T11:19:00.009-04:00

This Thursday's In-The-Know Recommends come from Debbie Campbell, owner of Statesboro, Georgia's independent bookstore The Book and Cranny.

For the Sci-Fi/Fantasy Fan:
Echo by Jack McDevitt
Described as satisfying, masterful, and suspenseful, McDevitt's work challenges and haunts his readers -- Echo is no exception. Available in November.

For The YA Reader:
The Lost Hero by Rick Riordan
More from the adventures of Percy Jackson and Camp Half-Blood. Available now.

For the Mystery Fan:
The Confession by John Grisham
Its tagline: "Only a guilty man can save him." This book is John Grisham "back on his game," says Debbie. Available now.

Lady Rider

2010-10-27T10:04:00.018-04:00

by Catriona Iams, Lady of Harley, and writer of historical fiction and historical romance

As many of my friends know, I ‘ride bitch.’ As of September, I’m a ‘lady rider.’ I think I’ll still ride bitch from time-to-time, after all, it’s an intimate way to travel, and I’m new to this. If it’s dark and rainy, I drive my cage to meet my friends for dinner. And I’m laughed at: “Wimp!”

Oh … excuse my biker vernacular. ‘Ride bitch’ means to ride passenger on a motorcycle. Lady Rider is a woman who rides her own motorcycle. Cage is a car, and if you get out on the road on a motorcycle, you’ll know why a car is called a cage.

“Harley-Davidson, Life Begins When You Get One”

For me, this marketing slogan is partly true. My babies are grown, my first born 20, and my baby girl is 16. Need I say more? The only time I can get my daughter to go anywhere with me is if there’s something in it for her, like a pair of UGG boots. When my son went away to college I went into grieving mode. I knew I’d miss him, but I had no idea that the process would feel more like mourning than a tough adjustment. And yet feeling that way seemed so wrong. How could he be away having the time of his life while I was feeling like someone close to me had died? My mood did improve, and relatively quickly, the grieving process short, since no one had really died.

So, one Summer weekend My Mr. Darcy (MMD) and I were potting flowers for the yard, havign the usual seasonal discussions, such as how much more use can we get from our gas grille and current patio furniture, and how lucky we were to be able to afford heating oil through the winter (I might just be the only non-Southerner, here), and how often, if ever, we should check our ravaged 401k. Frankly, it occurred to me suddenly that I was sick-and-tired of sitting home waiting to grow old. Who am I kidding … getting old.

My brother-in-law has a Harley-Davidson, a big HOG, and on the weekends he wears a leather vest with patches and a doo-rag on his head. During the week he’s the guy in a pair of khakis and a polo shirt who heads-up a purchasing department for a large company. So me thinks: A Harley?

Nah.

I don’t know what possessed me, but I said to MMD: “Let’s go to the Harley-Davidson dealership and just look around.” Well, that’s like saying to the ultimate sports fan: “Do you think we should buy tickets for a few of the Phillies games?” That’s right, the baseball fan, with little encouragement, would buy season tickets. My husband had me at the Harley-Davidson dealership within the hour. We owned a big, fat HOG within three days. Here it is: 2003 Road King Classic, 100^th Anniversary Edition. All silver and shiny and clad in chrome.

Two helmets, two leather jackets, and two hard-core motorcycle boots later and we were set to ride. Well, I was anyway. My husband hadn’t ridden a motorcycle for many years, and then it was smaller, lighter, metric bikes. He had to get used to balancing the weight of a Harley-Davidson. And once he’d mastered that, he had to get used to balancing the bike with me on the back. I had to cool my boots for three weeks until he felt confident that he could ride with me as passenger.

This was just the “posing” picture. I hadn’t actually been on the back with the motor running yet.

For about a month we rode to various parks and friends’ houses and then wondered where we could go next. Lo and behold, an envelope arrived in the mail from National Harley Owners Group (H.O.G.). The dealership where we’d purchased the bike paid for a one year membership for us. I logged on and discovered road maps with pre-planned, downloadable routes; an online store; message boards; enthusiast journals; and most importantly, a link to a local H.O.G. chapter. There was one in our county that met monthly.

MMD and I went to the meeting held in a local firehouse’s banquet hall. About fifteen round tables (sans the linens that usually adorn them for baby showers and weddings, were spaced about the room) and for the most part, full. Leather clad men, and some women, sat around, drinking coffee and eating cake. Yes, eating cake. Bikers eat cake. They like ice cream, too.

MMD and I did not know where we fit-in, so we chose a table with two open seats. There, we met the Kauffman’s. And the Bittner’s. And the Nicely’s. Mrs. Kauffman is in my age group, pretty curly hair, silver from the day she was 20, and a graphic artist with her own business. She rides her own motorcycle. Mr. Kauffman is a talented guitarist and vocalist. Mr. Bittner works in IT at an ivy-league university, and Mrs. Bittner rides bitch with her Bichon Frise in a customized pet carrier on the back. Mr. Nicely is retired airforce and Mrs. Nicely is a witch. The good kind. She just got her mc license.

Since then, we’ve learned that local H.O.G. chapters are populated with judges, the ex-convicts they’d convicted, volunteer firemen, accountants, and romance writers, like myself. Though I’m the only one in my chapter, and does it make for fun conversation. We ride for charity, and we ride for fun. Our club motto: 'Live to Ride, Ride to Eat'.

On the back of MMD’s hog, with our group, we travelled to Washington, DC for “Rolling Thunder,” to support a chapter by the same name’s efforts to keep focus on POW/MIA. We spent the weekend touring museums, eating at fine dining establishments, sightseeing, and memorializing with other “bikers.” We’ve been to Gettysburg and toured the battlefield on our chrome pony, and riding those old horse trails, paved now, was just like seeing the roadsides and rolling hills and farmhouses the way those cavalrymen would have seen it in 1863, I’m convinced.

There’s nothing like seeing the country (indeed, our world) on the back of a motorcycle. We’ve met International H.O.G. members in Sweden and Finland, Scotland and Belfast, Ireland. Well, maybe being a rider, instead of passenger, might be better. I’m soon to find out. I just passed the state Motorcycle Safety Foundation course and then the road test and 'M' was added to my license, meaning I am a licensed motorcyclist. I bought a bike!

What’s it like? Riding passenger (or riding bitch in the motocycle enthusiast’s vernacular) is very nice on the back of a big Harley hog. They are smooth, and not as loud when you’re on one as when you’re beside them on the highway. You see everything in panorama. A storm off in the distance looks like a shimmering gray horizon, from which bolts of lightning charge up from the ground and meet bolts that are fired down from above. At least that’s the way it looks. The smell of ozone is crisp. Being caught in the rain is really quite a pleasure. The aerodynamics of the bike cause you to ride with a flow of wind over you, so you feel only a cool mist. On a hot summer day it’s delightful. When riding in a car, you are looking out a window, even if the window is open. It’s not a full view by any stretch. Inside the car you smell leather, pleather or carpet and plastic. On the back of a motorcycle you smell freshly cut grass, smoke from a chimney, honeysuckle, lilac and anything that’s about. Riding in a group over and through historic covered bridges is sensational, your senses seduced by the sound of wheels on thick wood planks, sharp edges of sunlight pouring in through the slats of the bridge, the smell of the dry cedar roof rafters, and the echo of the pipes as riders throttle up. These small thrills remind all riders of the simple and pleasantly overwhelming delights of childhood.

When you join a club, you could be riding with 20 bikers or more, and so you ride in formation. Have you ever ridden behind a motorcycle “gang” and seen them hold up their left hand and make the sign of the devil’s horns? I have, and thought it some diabolical symbol of unity among the demons on wheels. It means: resume staggered formation in two rows. One finger means single file, narrow road ahead. In this pack, many bikers have headsets, complicated systems that make it possible to listen to music on your iPhone or MP3 player, answer your cell phone, and communicate with the others riding in your formation on a designated channel. So the commaraderie is wonderful. We laugh at the heady scent of cow manure, share the oohs and ahhs as we see wild turkeys, deer in the field, llamas by a fence, vineyards we pass, and, living so close to the shoreline, the smell of the ocean and the fun to be had along the roadways to the seashore.

That’s what it’s like to ride passenger, and I’m sure it will be that way again for me as a Rider. A rider is one who is driving the motorcycle. Right now, it’s not quite the idyllic scenery of roaring loudly through the bucolic countryside. It’s so much more physical. I was sore after my first day of riding. I didn’t go very far, clocking about twelve miles. My arms, shoulders, forearms and calves were sore. The clutch is within reach of my left hand, the front brake within reach of my right hand. Rear brake, right foot. Shift lever, left foot. WeightWatchers credits you points for riding a motocycle. “What gear am I in?” (out of 5) is a constant refrain I repeat to myself. “Stop sign ahead, slow down. Use rear brake first. Can't go up hill in neutral.” It’s a series of isometric exercises, using motor skills, and some coordination I didn’t think I was capable of. But I’ve accomplished something major, at a time when I thought the most major thing I could do is sell a manuscript, or wait for one of my children to provide me grandchildren. Riding a motorcycle compares, I think.

The first time I picked my feet up and clutched, shifted gears, turned a corner and then sped-up to follow MMD through the winding roads of my neighborhood felt great. I hope to be comfortable enough with the process to ride to the Pennsylvania State Rally in Summer 2011 to Gettysburg, PA, with my fellow chapter members, both male and female, and meet with other members of the Ladies of Harley (L.O.H.), a sub-chapter of National H.O.G. So, yes, I am truly a Lady of Harley. Here's our Crest:

And here’s what a Lady of Harley looks like on a bike in Pennsylvania in Autumn:

Why all the leather and chains and skulls? It's positively medieval. And I love it! And I love old castles, too. Both motorcycles and castle ruins inspire my muse. Here's me straddling a motorcycle:

And here's me sitting like a lady on the causeway of Urquhart Castle's main gate, and the inspiration for my work-in-progess: HIGHLAND PRINCESS.

Susanna's Review of His Majesty, the Prince of Toads by Delle Jacobs

2010-10-26T20:44:00.001-04:00

Book description:

Sometimes it takes more than a kiss to change a toad into a handsome prince.

When Captain Lucas Deverall returns from the Peninsular War to succeed to his deceased brother's title, he grudgingly decides to take back his wife. But even before he learns the circumstances of his inheritance, he encounters her at a New Year's gala. Shock sets in as he realizes the most beautiful woman in England is the same gangly, calf-eyed chit who tricked him into marriage six years before.

That's not how Sophie remembers it. She wishes fervently she'd had the sense not to scream when the drunken scapegrace crawled into her bed at her Uncle Harry's house party. True, she'd had a secret tendre for the handsome wastrel, until his scathing denunciation of her after their forced wedding. Then he went off to war without even consummating their union, and for six years she heard nothing from him.

Now the toad offers her forgiveness in exchange for his presence in her bed? Revenge comes more to mind.

And so the battle of wits begins. And the harder they fight it, the more they fall in love.

The author would have you believe that Deverall is a toad of a man, but I never believed that for one second. As much as Delle may want you to think the worst of Lucas, you can’t, because he is so much fun! In my way of seeing things, an author gets extra credit for creating wily, interesting characters.

No other heroine but hard-headed (that’s right, hard-headed and stubborn, not head-strong and spirited) Sophie could match for this man.

I’ve been a big fan of Delle’s work for several years. However, this is the first time I’ve read His Majesty, the Prince of Toads. So, I’m quite aware that Delle likes to lead readers down the rosy path. You think her story is going to do something predictable, and then the situation explodes into something you never imagined. Or, Delle can shove her characters into the tightest corners and you truly wonder how they can possibly get out of this fix. Yet they do and with great flair.

When Lucas returns home from the war to discover his estate in disarray thanks to his brother, Lucas finds he needs his estranged wife for her inheritance, her body, and ultimately her love. He gives Sophie a few days of freedom before she has to move in with him and start living as his wife. He enlists the help of his friend and fellow rake, Carstairs, to help him win his own wife.

Sophie has no intention of obeying the toad. She and her friend Minvera engage Lucas and Carstairs in a hilarious battle of seduction that takes place in the ballrooms and streets of London

I have a soft spot in my heart for all Delle’s secondary characters. Minvera and Carstairs are no exception. Delle writes well–rounded minor characters who are motivated by very real emotions. No boring subplots here!

Of course, through their misadventures, Lucas and Sophie come closer. Does Lucas finally capture his wife? Or does Sophie capture him? I won’t tell…

For all the fun, the story has a very serious side. Lucas and Sophie are being haunted by the terrible atrocities they both suffered during the war. Sophie, the daughter of a German Count, lost her parents to the conflict. With the help of her uncle, she fled to the safety of England. It takes Lucas and Sophie working together to heal what they couldn’t on their own. These characters truly love and need each other. The ending is satisfying on multiple levels; a marriage is united, the pain of the past can begin to be healed, and the couple has the support of dear friends and family.

So often I finish books and I think the story is over for the hero and heroine. After the words “the end” the characters can move on to their happily-ever-after, boring married lives. Not Sophie and Lucas. Together with their friends, they are just gearing up for more adventures.

Delle writes precise prose that just sparkles. Her scenes have a beautiful arc and are packed with tension and great dialogue. (Most of this book takes place in London. However, if you read one of her books set in the countryside, you will see Delle has a fabulous eye for describing nature…it reads like a lovely painting.) If you want traditional romance with a little something added, this book is it!

I would read this book with a McManis Pinot Grigio. Crisp, dry, and a little fruity.

You can find out about Delle Jacobs and her work at her wonderful website: http://www.dellejacobs.com/

Susanna Interviews Delle Jacobs

2010-10-24T21:03:00.016-04:00

The Mojito Literary Society is delighted to have the acclaimed Romance writer Delle Jacobs as a guest. I've been a fan of Delle's writing for several years. She develops amazing characters and unique plots. I was giddy when she agreed to come on our blog. So without further ado...

In our conversations, you seem to possess a rather artistic view of story creation. Can you tell us about the writing process for His Majesty, The Prince of Toads?

Thanks so much for inviting me to join you, Susanna! I'm looking forward to this group.
I've never thought of bludgeoning one's Muse as artistic, but it does work. Really, I think creation is as more of a process than an inspiration. The more you do it, the more the insights flow.

Every time I start a new story, I set for myself a challenge, something to do I've never tried before. In HIS MAJESTY, THE PRINCE OF TOADS, I wanted to write the evolution of a Toad into a Handsome Prince, the man who believes in all sincerity that he is right and has the heroine's best interests at heart, but in fact has a lot of changing to do before he's worth her love. But writing such a fellow without making him such a book-hurling jerk is a huge challenge. Lucas is much like the ordinary privileged man of his time, but he has the advantage of being able to admit he's wrong. And that is his saving grace. Showing his potential encased in his flaws was really interesting work.

What I love about your books is how you take a cliché situation and alter it until it becomes something new and wonderful. What is your mental process when you create scenes and characters? How many drafts do you typically make of a scene? When do you know you have it right?

The Regency Period is so narrowly confined in time and place, even in class structure, that there's really nothing that hasn't already been covered. Finding the new twist, I think, is in the characters. I'll think of a new way of turning an old plot, but then I have to think who would be the people who got themselves into such a tangle. My Toad, Lucas, comes from a really crazy family with lots of family secrets, but he almost doesn't realize how abnormal it is. His solution as a very young man was escape into drunken escapades, and finally running away to war. For me, no other hero would have fit.

Sometimes it's just voices or actions when I start- just that sketchy. But setting influences how interactions come out. I use physical settings in symbolic ways, like the missing staircase in Lucas's family home. He had built his memories around those stairs, and when he found it torn out, it was like the heart was gone from the place. He had to work around what was missing, just as he'd done all his life. But I didn't know that when I wrote it. In fact, I just realized it. That might tell you just how organic I feel the setting elements are in my stories.

You were employed for years as a social worker. Do your experiences in that job transfer into situations and characters in your writing?

Social work and counseling taught me a lot about people. Nobody comes to a counselor if they don't have troubles, and the core for treatment for me was always very practical: Problem Solving Therapy. It has other more modern names but I always like the one that says what it does: it teaches people how to identify and solve problems.

People haven't really changed over the centuies, but they didn't know about psychiatry, or speak in psychiatric terms in the early Nineteenth Century. They didn't analyze each other, or blame their over-doting mothers for smothering them emotionally. But strong people are the same as strong characters, and those who have problems and can find the ability to seek out solutions are the ones I most admire. The people I served taught me more than I ever could have imagined about the human spirit.

You won the Golden Heart, the highest accolade for an unpublished romance writer, three times. Yet your books received an interesting reception in the NY publishing world. Can you tell us a little bit about what happened in those years?

Remember, most of those years were the ones when the historical romance was considered either dying or dead. In 2006, I won the very last Regency Category Golden Heart, and this after the last two surviving lines of the Traditional Regency had finally closed down. I had taken a historical and cut it down to Regency length to try to assure the category of having enough entries, certain it wouldn't win. It did, but then had to re-construct it once again. That is LADY WICKED, which is finally coming out next February.

It is a very good example of the story that just won't sell in tough times, when the publishers only want the ‟tried and true". No glitz and flash in that story- both hero and heroine are past that. They're both outcasts- she through no fault of her own, and he- well, he earned his way out the doors of the Ton. She has a hidden backstory of domestic violence that still threatens her. She makes some people uncomfortable because she's deeply wounded and withdrawn from a rejecting society. Only Lord Savoury sees the truth of a damaged but indomitable spirit, a woman who will beat the odds and make her way in a world determined not to give her a chance.

Davina's story is an important one for me to tell. It must be told. I could not dumb her down because I believe readers are intelligent. If you want a generic romance, sorry, this isn't it. But it's a beautiful redemption and triumph story anyway. (And the villain really gets his in the end in a way that still makes me gleeful.)

You were one of the first romance authors to embrace online publishing and receive acclaim. What was your rationale when you first started ePublishing?

Part of it was that very poor market for historicals. But I was intrigued by a very different path for publishing. I did know how few books I would sell, and I did guess it would be a good ten years before everything pulled together for ebooks to become an important force. I was shocked by some of the nastiness toward ebook authors over the last ten years and I really had no idea I would be so vilified as a writer. Unfortunately, I'm not good at backing down or running away. So I'm still here. Still loving writing.

Recently, you’ve had a very interesting career turn. Can you tell us about hitting the top of the Amazon charts? How has it affected your other publications?

It was a complete surprise to me. I knew about Kindle's Free Reads, but thought those books were chosen from major ebook publishers. I had recently re-issued my backlist myself, with very good results. Then suddenly my sales numbers zoomed. I was at a conference and was so shocked I had to find my roommates to tell me it was really true. The upshot: five days on Free Reads netted 20,000 downloads for those two and quadrupled an entire month's sales for the others. Since then, I've had books at the top of almost all of Amazon and Kindle's Best Seller lists, including a third, not free, book, HIS MAJESTY, THE PRINCE OF TOADS. List numbers do drop, of course, but sales are continuing at a fairly brisk pace. And it doesn't hurt my feelings that Kindle is actually going to pay me full royalties for nearly 24,000 books.

For ebooks, visibility is everything, and an opportunity like the Free Reads is promo no money can buy. But I'm immensely proud of my books, of the great reviews and numbers they've gained once the Free Read slot closed for them. Now to get the fifth book up, before people forget me!

You design amazing book covers. You seem to get inspiration from the visual. When you create a cover, does a story rise from the image? Or do you create the image from a story in your head?

It can go either way. Sometimes, I'm just playing with an idea, and suddenly it all comes together, complete with new title. The sequel to my SIREN historical sea fantasy came to me this way recently. I was just playing with a Jimmy Thomas portrait (every author/artist should play with Jimmy Thomas, really), with a beautiful fanlike graphic piece in golden colors, but it just wasn't working. Then when I shifted the gold colors to deep blues, it just hit. INDIGO OF THE OCEANS. What a weird title. A few more additions, and then the first sentence for the book hit me: ‟He was called Indigo for the color of his eyes- " And now I'm writing his story.

What is on the creative horizon for you?

I have two books in submission now. I'm also working on a four-part series, a time travel. And I have two Regency Historicals to finish. So many books, so little time...

Is there a question I should I have asked but didn’t?

I'm just glad you didn't ask the standard questions. You've really made me think. And thanks again for the invite.

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You can learn more about Delle Jacob's books and covers by visiting her lovely website: http://www.dellejacobs.com/.

Ask Delle a question or leave a comment below!

Regency Roses

2010-10-21T22:09:00.002-04:00

Some of us who love words the same way we love gardens -- the lush creative profusion, the careful nurturing, the riot of extravagance that is a blossom, any blossom. Glory glory glory.

So a special treat for those who love both. Writer Amy Corwin is guest blogging over at The Fascination Files on Regency roses -- she's included some lovely photographs, plus some interesting history about roses themselves.

If this piques your interest, check it out here.

The Mojito Literary Society

A New Kind of Paranormal

Mojito's Top Picks for 2011: Laura's Favorites

Animal Sanctuary: The Hardships of Art in the Novel

Tina's Review of VIPER by John Desjarlais

Hot Iron Age Lovin'

Mojito Literary Great News

Tina's Review of A SPARK OF DEATH by Bernadette Pajer

Tina Discovers Cocktails on a Stick!

Sex and the Sequel by Tina

Tina's Review of Douglas Corleone's NIGHT ON FIRE

Minutes from The Mojito Literary Society meeting

Review-Nearly Departed in Deadwood

Bobbye's Recommended Reads

Determination

My friend Tina has written the worst mystery ever

Editorial: Are You Addicted to the Computer?

Romey's Order review

Reader Recommends

Bobbye's Recommended Reads

Making History

Tina's Review of The Best American Mystery Stories 2010, Edited by Lee Child

Being an Author Person

Bobbye's Review: Eden's Hell by Dawné Dominique

What you should be reading....

We’re not assholes

The Rhetoric of Hate, a piece of angry editorializing from Tina

It's 5 o'clock Somewhere

Bobbye's Recommended Reads

Between the Sheets--Katrina's review of the 2010 McDowell book

Revising our Lives

Tina's Review of The Science Tarot by Logan Austeja Daniel, Martin Azevedo, and Raven Hanna

New mystery contract

I'll Show You Mine If You Show Me Yours

Recommended Reading

And the new year brings....

Tarot for Fun and Profit

Bobbye's Reviews

Recommended Reading--Year End Edition

Make 'Em Laugh

Tina's Review of A Cold Day for Murder by Dana Stabenow

My Traditional Scandinavian Christmas

i was the jukebox Review by Katrina

Best of 2010 BlogFest

Thursday's Recommended Reading from K. Cat

When Little Plastic Animals Attack

Review of THE NIGHT BEFORE, a holiday novella by David Fulmer

Interview with Rebecca Johns, Author of The Countess

Jenny Schwartz talks about her awesome new eBook ANGEL THIEF

Susan and Tina on Sloooow Writing

Fiction Writers Review Interview with Susanna Daniels

Laurie Lovell's Lovely Non-Lin Art

Kicking In The Window

Interview with Amy Corwin, author of VAMPIRE PROTECTOR

Tina's Review of SHADOWS OVER PARADISE by Anne K. Edwards

Talking Chocolate with Denise, Foodie and Chocolate Enthusiast

Bobbye's Holiday Book Recommendations

Katrina's Stiltsville Book Review

First Gift

First Gifts

It's Magic debuts today

Fantasy Between the Covers

Bobbye's Review of The First Love Cookie Club by Lori Wilde

First Gifts Blog Hop: You're Invited!

Works by Jen Pezzotti

Thursday's Recommended Reading!

Story Supplies

Susanna Interviews Tia Nevitt

Susanna's Thoughts on Sevenfold Spell by Tia Nevitt

Interview with Sunny Frazier

Book Recommendations

Storytelling and Telling Stories by Tina

Thursday's Recommended Reading!

Lady Rider

Susanna's Review of His Majesty, the Prince of Toads by Delle Jacobs

Susanna Interviews Delle Jacobs

Recommended Reading!

Regency Roses