Books

This Is My Brain On Summer

annabowling 2 Comments

I had plans for this afternoon. I was going to head to my favorite coffee house, with the legal pad on which I’d written stuff for two scenes of Her Last First Kiss, and transcribe in air conditioned comfort, directly under a ceiling fan. Good in theory failure in execution. The hitch? I left the legal pad at home. Since I live less than a full block away, there was the temptation to ask the barista to hang onto my iced tea while I raced back home, but I am not racing anywhere in this heat. I’m already sun and heat sensitive, and not going outside any more than I absolutely have to until this heat dome lifts.

So, today went to plan B. I had some Beach Ball work to do, and switched gears to take care of that. First up, check on the comments Melva gave on the chapter I sent her. Which cut off a full two pages early than the actual scene. Okay. Find backup copy, pray it has the missing pages (it did) and send off the correct version, as well as the compiled document with all of our scenes in it. These are more or less in order, and, seeing them together, criminy crikes, this is a book. Still in the gestational stage, but definitely a book. Guy and Girl (to differentiate from Hero and Heroine) have got to their first threshold of contact. Plot arc and romance arc progressing, historical adjacent stuff inserted at the proper (we think) time, and seeds for future things planted. This is all a good thing. Not what I had planned for the day, but I am calling it good. I can pick up on what I wanted to work on today, tomorrow, and the world will not  end. Doing things in a different order is still doing them, so forward we go.

Possibly into the babbling portion of this blog entry, because this is the last thing on my list for the day. It was going to be one of the first things, but see mention of doing things out of order. There are times, when the unrelenting heat stays unrelenting, that the only thing to do is plunk one’s feet in cold water and crack open a book somebody else wrote. When putting story out isn’t working, take story in; refill the well. A reading break, if nothing else, gets my mind into story mode, in general, which is a good thing .

When the heat gets too high, and invites its BFF, humidity, along for the ride, it can be difficult to slog through the brainmelt and actually get stuff done. Interesting timing there, with this brainmelt arriving the same time I’m getting my stride back, writing wise, but that’s how things work, I suppose. Resistance builds strength and all that. Left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot. Story, story, story, story, story, story, story. That’s my happy place, any time of year, and slipping into storyworld makes consecutive days of 90plus temperatures somewhat more bearable.

As my mother used to tell me, the more I do, the more I’ll want to do, and she’s right. Every morning, I drag myself to the morning pages, even when I have no idea what I want to put on those pages. It’s the discipline that’s building the practice. This is telling my brain that this is what we’re going to be doing for the majority of the day. The pretty pages mean my eyes want to stay on those pages, and good thing, because I have two more notebooks by the same makers, to take up when I finish this one. Okay, one and a half, really, as I’d tried using one of them for one thing, and that Did Not Work Out. That, though, was before I discovered rollerballs and fountain pens, so that notebook is only resting for a little while.

Exercising any muscle makes it stronger, which is why I set myself the discipline of three blogs per week. Okay, two, but getting a cat to write the third one for me is pretty darned creative all on its own, so credit there, surely.

Allrightyroo, that is the magic 700 words, so this blog entry is d-o-n-e, done. Tomorrow, Hero and Heroine, tomorrow, I am coming for you. For now, air conditioning and reading break. Toodles.

 

 

 

Playing Hooky (Well, Sort Of)

annabowling 4 Comments

Today, I played hooky. Well, sort of played hooky. I’m writing this entry, after all, and after I’m done, I kind of sort of want to drop in on Hero and Heroine for a little bit. You know, to see how they’re doing, and all. Make sure they don’t feel too neglected after the weekend, that sort of thing. Touch base. Set up for tomorrow.

I didn’t start out intending to shirk responsibility. I got up early, had breakfast with Housemate, and tackled some email before lugging a load of laundry to the Laundromat, which is where the whole hooky thing started. There’s reading I should be doing (aha, there’s that sneaky should) for pending posts on other blogs, and there’s writing I owe, and good gravy, is there work to be done on both Her Last First Kiss and the Beach Ball, but I’m also feeling rather crispy crittered, as Real Life Romance Hero would put it. The bits of conference workshops on recovering the joy of reading and writing pounded at the inside of my skull, and so, with a reckless abandon, I called up one of the books on my phone. Not the eARC I should be reading, but Jezebel’s Blues, by Barbara Samuel, a classic contemporary romance I’ve been wanting to read for years, because A) it’s set in her Gideon, Texas world that I first discovered in The Sleeping Night, a twentieth-century historical romance/women’s fiction with a contemporary frame, and B) I am twirling-around-in-circles-in-fields-of-daisies in love with both her use of language and skill in finding the intimate emotion of the story. In short, I needed it. Needed to get out of my head and into my heart, because, you know, romance writing and all.

So, I started reading . The voice and the story washed over me like the river whose flood brings Eric and Celia together in Jezebel’s Blues. Oh, yes. This is why I love romance. This is why I write. This is what feels like the most natural thing in the world. This is what I want and need to be doing when I sit down to work. The dryer cycle ended before I even knew, and I closed the reading app with great reluctance. Still, the story simmered.

This was Real Life Romance Hero’s day off, and, crispy crittered as he was himself (both Mother’s Day weekend and graduation weekend are tough on the restaurant business) he asked if I’d like to have lunch at a local pub we’ve been meaning to get back to for long enough that, when we were seated, they had a whole new menu. We had this:

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I had a Diet Coke, he had a Guinness, we spent some time focusing on each other. Talked about how we wanted to address the whole desktop situation, since the original plan fell through, and the laptop is feeling the strain. Plus, I miss my Sims, and we’d both like to take a shot at Fallout 4 and Skyrim. I throw out the idea that maybe we could just hang together after lunch, watch a little TV at home, and then I can come back fresh at this whole writing thing tomorrow. We debated taking a walk through the park, for baby waterfowl watching, but nixed that, due to the strong wind chill. It’s May, and we refuse to be cold in May. So, home, Kitchen Nightmares, and…here I am.

With permission to kick off and do nothing, I reached for the laptop to fill some pages, not because I had it on the schedule, not because I should, but because that’s what I  want to do. No pressure, just the fun of putting my imaginary friends through the wringer, because I know it’s going to be worth it in the end. For them, and for me. I didn’t feel deprived. I didn’t feel distracted. I didn’t feel dry, or as though I had to drag individual words out of nowhere. I felt…relaxed. Natural. In touch with my story brain. This day of giving myself some space and taking in what I want to put out may not have been that wasteful after all. Maybe I need to do this more often.

 

Typing With Wet Claws: Reading Room Edition

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Hello, all. Skye here, for another Feline Friday.

As purr (just kidding there; I do not actually purr. That does not mean I am not happy, it only means I do not purr. I chirp when I am happy. I chirp a lot.) our agreement, I must start this entry with a link to Anty’s most recent Saturday Discussion post at Buried Under Romance. This one asks what’s in  your To Be Read pile. Here is a hint: Anty’s is BIG. She does not have a pile, she has shelves. Also her e-reading devices. That post is here and it looks like this:

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It also ties in very nicely with what I want to talk about this week, and that is reading. I know what you are thinking; kitties are probably not big readers, but we do like to be near humans who are reading, so Anty’s reading experience does directly affect me. Now that Anty has had new glasses for almost an entire week, she sees a lot of things differently. It is easier to see the computer keyboard and screen, as well as write in notebooks. She can also see paper books and her e-reading devices more clearly, which brings another matter into focus. Pun intended.

Now that Anty can read without jumping through hoops (not literally, but she probably could if she wanted to; she’s pretty determined) she can also see how many books she has yet to read (there are a lot of them) and, thanks to her love of planners and calendars, what does not look like a lot of time to read them. This may require some creativity. I am willing to do my share, which means sitting very very very close to her, and being very very very quiet. I can also remind her when it is the right time to take breaks to feed and/or pet me. The people vet did not tell Anty anything about taking breaks from reading paper books, but they did say that she should look away from the screen at ten minute intervals. I think she should look at me. That will be very restful.

One of the workshops Anty attended at the conference told her that it is important to feed her creative well, and reading is a part of that. It (or maybe a different workshop; the do not have a kitty track at these things, so I did not go, and cannot be sure) also said that treating writing like a respite from the chaos of daily life (and domestic torandoes, though I do not think the instructor used that term, because it is Anty’s term, and they had not met before.) I think the same thing applies to reading. This means that Anty has some retraining of her brain to do, to treat reading as a pleasure again, instead of a task.

Sometimes, reading is work, if she is reading a book to write about it. That does not mean that it is not still fun to read, but that the reading needs to be done within a certain time, and she is also thinking about what she is going to write while she is reading. That is a different thing than flopping in her chair, bed, or tub, to read a story merely because she wants to read it. She needs to make time to do that, and to make that time a priority. That is one of the reasons why she wants to get the good office chair out of the storage unit and bring it home.

She will also need to bring a small desk home, from that same unit, for the new desktop, and the chair is partly for that. The other part, though, is so that she can use the office space for reading. That would be different, rather than trying to squeeze in a few minutes here and a few minutes there. The instructor at the workshop talked about being in the story world while writing and reading (at least that is what I gather; this is all secondpaw, since I was not physically present) and how that refreshes the brain, away from everyday life. Anty does not use the word “escape,” because that would imply that she would be away from the non-story stuff permanently, so she says “respite” instead. A time away to refresh herself and then she can take on everything else.

Right now, she is still looking for the best way to fit reading into her day, and that may take a few tries, but that is okay. Looking for things is often the way we find them. What Anty and I both know for sure is that talking about what she is reading will be an impetus to read more, so that may mean more blogging. I will be here to help her out as much as I can, because that is one of the many duties of a mews. More time reading (unless it is out of the house) means more time with me, so I am very much in favor of that.

Anty says it is her turn with the computer for now, so that is about it for this week. Until next time, I remain very truly yours,

 

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Until next week…

Skye O’Malley Hart-Bowling
(the kitty, not the book)

 

 

Typing With Wet Claws: Ten Pound Cat in a Five Pound Bag Edition

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Hello, all. Skye here, for another Feline Friday. In case any of you are worried, the ten pound cat in this week’s title does not refer to me. I do not weigh ten pounds, nor have I ever been stuffed in a bag of any sort. (There is the carrier, though, but we are not talking about that here. This time.) “Stuffing a ten pound cat in a five pound bag” is a metaphor Anty uses, and I will talk about that in a minute. First, though, here is a link to last week’s Buried Under Romance discussion post. You can read it here, and it looks like this:

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Anty  is pretty sure that some people may be only seeing this now, since she is a little bit behind on things this week. By a little, she means…uh, I am getting a look that tells me I may have gone far enough on that one. Anyway, she wrote that particular post ahead of time, which was convenient, because she was at the conference all weekend, but it was also inconvenient, because she did not get a chance to share the link once the post did go live, because she was at the conference. She feels bad about that, and is rather impressed that there are comments anyway, and a little (she wishes I would stop using that word as a speech pause, because it is one of her big language peeves, so I will try my best) embarrassed that she is only noticing it now. Never fear, she will answer anyway. It has been a big week. Here is what Anty looked like when she got back from the conference:

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About five minutes in the door after coming home.

 

That is a very tired human, even though it was all for a good cause, and, while I am sure that she will get back to normal at some point, that is more or less what it’s been like for the past week. She has been grouchy, too, which is a part of being tired. This is where the stuffing a ten pound cat into a five pound bag thing comes into play. That is a term Anty came up with when she was taking care of three humans at the same time, a few years ago, and it means to have more things to do than time in which to do the. I do not know why she used cat stuffing as a comparison, but maybe it is because cats do not usually go easily into such containers. I think that is probably it.

Anyway, that has encompassed a lot of Anty’s week. One of the workshops she attended had to do with managing time so that a writer can write more, and she was eager to try that. She still is, only, because this is Friday, tomorrow is both her CRRWA meeting and the Tulip Festival (she has a date with Uncle for that one) and Sunday is Mother’s Day (it is not Anty’s favorite holiday) she will have to try them next week, because this one is basically toast. She suspects better planning could have found a way around that, but until she masters time travel, she can only move forward.

Well, mostly. There is the matter of a few assorted photographs from the conference, that Anty sent herself, which took a while to actually show up in her email. She is not sure how that works, but now they are here, so I can share the with you. Anty did not end up wearing the red shoes in this picture, like she had planned, because she forgot to break them in enough beforehand, but she showed them to Anty Melva, who agrees they do look like  a pair of shoes in the story they are working on together:

 

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Non-fictional version of fictional shoes.

Anty promises herself that, next year, she will plan what pictures she wants to take, intead of trying to remember and ending up with an odd assortment. Here are some pictures from Saturday’s breakfast. The bread table and Brenda K. Stone’s Froot Loops. Miss Brenda asked Anty to take the Froot Loops picture, so Anty did. Maybe I should ask Anty to take a picture of my food. Because she would have to feed me first, before she could do that.

 

Speaking of stuffing big things into small bags, here are all the books Anty brought  home from the conference. She was very good (walletwise) and did not buy any more books that weekend, though she did see many books for sale, that tempted her, very much. This is why Anty always brings an extra, empty bag to these events. It always gets filled.

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Eight more for the TBR shelves….

That is eight more books for Anty to read, and she already has her TBR shelves, plus her Kindle, and books to read so that she can write about them, all on top of writing books for others to read. I can see where that might make a human feel ever so slightly overwhelmed, but that is okay. As Anty says, the feelings have a job to do, so the best tactic is to let the feelings do their job and keep moving forward. That is best done by deciding what task is the most important, and doing that first. To keep with the cat and bag analogy, get the head in first, and the rest will follow.

Uh oh. I do not want to give Anty any ideas about getting me in the carrier (we do not have any trips planned, but we kitties can be suspicious about this sort of thing) so that had better be about it for this week. Until next time, I remain very truly yours,

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Until next week…

Skye O’Malley Hart-Bowling
(the kitty, not the book)

Signs of (Writing) Life

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Right now, I am in my comfy chair, next to a soon to be opened window, cup of tea at the ready, headphones in, blog window open. I had a post typed out, but accidentally trashed it when I got up to take pictures to go with said entry, so I’m going to babble here, stick the pictures up anyway, and see where that takes me.

Today, our temperatures here in upstate NY should top 70. The waterfowl are back in the lake at the park. On my walk home from my meeting with N yesterday, one of the male Canada geese (should I be calling him a Canada gander?) rather pointedly strutted his stuff for the benefit of the Canada goose ladies. Waterfowl romance season, it would seem, has begun. It feels early for that, but if goose love is in the air, it must be spring.

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In less than two weeks’ time, I will have filled my morning pages book. I started this one on October 26th. I’m looking forward to writing the last word on the last page and starting a new notebook (I have a few candidates in my stash already) but I’ll miss the gorgeous pages inside this one. Pretty pages make me want to write more, and knowing there is a set place where I must stop helps me focus on what I want to say in that space.

 

 

Hacking my plain cardboard binder for Her Last First Kiss clicked like wildfire. I love when colors and textures suggest themselves, and it’s easy to see where one choice flows into the next. This is my story bible, with all pertinent information gathered in one place, easily accessible. Times and distances between locations (and noting when our historical people would need to change horses matters, people) and who went to school where, owns what, and employs whom. My best way into this sort of thing is to let myself blunder blindly ahead and, after I smack into a few (dozen) walls, I’ll find what works, and then get to it. Housemate has threatened me with bodily harm if I attempt to use a regular binder again, though there is still some hacking to do.

I need to Mod Podge the cover that slipped oh so easily into the plastic pocket of the old binder (but then I never wanted to use the old binder because the plain white bothered me, so tradeoff there) and there are no pockets to hold loose papers. I can buy those at the office supply store, though, stick some coordinating paper on them, and glue the kraft envelope on the inside of the back cover, to hold smaller ephemera. I blame Moleskine for giving me a need for back cover pockets on pretty much all notebooks, including binders.

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I’m working, I promise

 

These babies are all set to be my constant companions for this week, as I’m prepping for a post at Heroes and Heartbreakers. I did want to increase my reading for this year, and to write more book related posts for H&H, so I’d say I’m doing all right on that front. Who needs sleep when one has books? Seriously, if that could be worked out, I would be a very happy camper. In the meantime, blocking out reading time as though I were studying for a college class is the best way for me to make sure the work gets done. Family has been informed that, when my nose is in these books, I am working.

 

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Reading that is not related to any posts (as far as I know) also needs to happen, because that also fits under the umbrella of “study.” I’m very curious about Kerrigan Byrne’s The Highwayman, and have heard wonderful things about it, so can’t wait to start that. Elizabeth Hoyt’s latest Maiden Lane novel is an auto-read, so that’s going to happen, especially since it fits with my immersion in all things Georgian. I’m still determined to get back on the Bertrice Small horse (and the fact that the book I picked, The Border Lord’s Bride, is number two in its series means I will have to go back and read book one, A Dangerous Love, because that’s how I roll) and I’m still devouring  realistic YA like a starving hyena. Seeing notice of an upcoming David Levithan release in the current issue of Romantic Times Book Reviews magazine made me literally squeal (Skye is used to this kind of thing) when I read it in the upcoming releases section.

Okay, there’s the magic 700 word threshold to call this blog entry good enough and traipse off to century 18 with Hero and Heroine. See you later, Liebchens.

Midweek Rambles

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Rainy Wednesday here, and the fact that I’m only now getting to the first blog entry of the week should be an indicator of how things have been going. The new addition to my workspace is Hedwig, (thanks, Kara!) who has shot up to mascot status in short order. Lift his head off, and he’s a flash drive. He will soon be filled with novel stuffs.

No idea what I want to write about here, so I’m going to wing it. One of the most vivid rainy day memories I have carried for a long time reaches all the way back to fifth grade. We’d recently moved from Bedford Village to Pound Ridge, and I had a playdate with Elizabeth A, to keep us both occupied and our mothers sane for the rain-soaked afternoon. I remember I had a corduroy pantsuit (it was the seventies; don’t judge me, and yes, my mom picked out my outfit) that day, red with a flower print all over it. The legs were too long, so the hems of the trousers (I preferred skirts even back then, but mom said, sooo…)were damp the rest of the day.

We spent the afternoon in Elizabeth’s room. I remember Barbies and some imaginative play, some discussion of the new TV show we both liked, Wonder Woman, probably my first fandom, though I didn’t know what fandom was at the time. Elizabeth had a Chow dog, who had particular tastes in what interactions he would allow with what humans, but he always liked me. I don’t remember his name, or the name of Elizabeth’s older brother. I don’t remember many particulars of that day, but I remember the day itself, and the memory is a good one. Elizabeth A, wherever you are, I hope you do, too.

On this rainy day, years later, there’s imaginative play still. Now, I call it writing, and it’s work as much as it is play, which suits me fine. No red corduroy pantsuit, thankfully, and I’m writing this from my favorite coffee house instead of a friend’s bedroom, but the day has some of the same feel to it. Not that I know exactly what the connection is, but some things become a part of us, and come to the fore when they will.

Today is also the first anniversary of the passing of Bertrice Small, still a favorite author and my entrée into the world of historical romance. I’d wanted, as many Small fans, to dive into some rereading when we got the sad news, and, at the moment, I’d tried, but I couldn’t make the connection. Not a good feeling, but, at times, the best thing we can do is let the feelings do their jobs. I don’t know when I got it in my head that I would intentionally step back from reading an author whose work had been that important to me, or when the idea arose that I would resume on the first anniversary of her passing. Maybe it’s a form of literary mourning? I’m not going to question that one.

Once I knew I wanted to resume on a certain date, everything fit. I would pick up one of her books on that date, and I would read it, but which one? With forty-nine titles from which to choose (well, less than that, as the Lara books are in storage, and I don’t own the Channel titles) the options were too many. N’s advice, “make a decision,” came to me then, and I did. I decided I wouldn’t decide. I turned to my Lionesses at my Facebook group, The Lion and Thistle, and placed my choice in their capable hands.

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this is the one

Some of the suggestions, I’d expected. Skye O’Malley (the book, not the kitty) is my favorite, and The Kadin was the first historical romance I ever read.  I know those books, can quote them in places, so re-reading them would be as much remembering as experiencing the story. The other choices offered, Deceived, and The Border Lord’s Bride, I haven’t read as much. Since my copy of Deceived seems to have gone walkabout (will be reaching out to the library system and/or used bookstores soon) my choice became clear. I hadn’t remembered, until I plucked my copy from my special Small bookcase, that this was the second story in the Border Chronicles, not the first, but since it’s an extremely loose connection, I’m letting that go. I can read the prior title, A Dangerous Love, later, if I want. I did put my choice in others’ hands, after all.

 

As with that long-ago rainy afternoon, I remember the book more in general than in specific, and it’s a different experience. The last time I read this book, it was 2007.  A few things have happened since then. My critical mind is along for the ride, and has some issues with tell-y passages and instances of passive voice, but the voice itself, that’s as familiar as I remember, a welcome back to the things that drew me to historical romance in the first place. It’s also made me schedule reading time in my day, something I’d wanted to do, but put off actually doing, but if I want to make time to read all that I want and need to read, there has to be time where that’s all that I’m doing. This is different from pleasure-only reading; it’s also research.

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library haul; must organize

 

 

In a way, that’s my equivalent of the art student camped out in front of the master’s painting, sketchbook in hand or canvas on easel. What did the master do? How did they do it? That thing that was never recorded, what was it? Can I do it, too? What does it look like when I do their thing, my way? Reading time, writing time, headphones in, laptop on, paper and pen at the ready. Let’s do this.

Typing With Wet Claws: This Was Uncle’s Idea Edition

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Hello, all. Skye here, for a slightly later than usual Feline Friday. Anty has had an unusual day, partly because Uncle had the day off. She had laundry to do, and then they went out to lunch together. They did not take me, because I am an indoor kitty, but I got fish jelly and treat, so I do not mind. Also, it is cold and windy out. Despite the fact that I have a super fluffy coat (actually, two of them, because I am a Maine Coon mix) I have no desire to be outside in cold, windy weather. Anty tried to set up at her usual coffee house, but the locals must have figured out that it is her favorite place to work, because all the seats were filled by the time she got there. It is okay, though, because it is only a short walk to her other favorite away-from-home place to write, and that place has refills on tea. Anty likes refills on her tea. She drinks a lot of it.

Anty has three articles she is working on this week, possibly four, depending on how things go on tonight’s Sleepy Hollow. For one of the other articles, she has to…uh, she means gets to…read a bunch of historical romance novels, so she can talk about how they all work together. Anty will talk about that later. She is also working on Her Last First Kiss, which she says seems to be finding its stride.

My blog this week is going to be a little different from the usual fare. This week, Uncle has an idea he wants me to talk about. Earlier this week, Anty looked at her sales figures from one of her publishers. Uncle thinks that was a mistake, because looking at those figures made Anty very grumpy. Then a conversation like this happened:

Uncle: Have you ever used your blog to tell people where they can buy your books?

Anty: Uh…..

Uncle: Like put up a link or something?

Anty: (something about websites and internets and monies and bookshelves and human stuff; nothing about feeding kitties, so I stopped listening.)

Uncle: Right, but none of that means you can’t put a link in a blog entry.

Anty: Uh… (Anty did not really have a good answer for that.)

Uncle is very smart, and I would do anything for Uncle. So, I will put in the links. In case you like Anty’s (or my) blogs, or her articles, then maybe you would like to read the books she has out already.

Here is where you can find the books she has from Awe-Struck E-Books. There are two of them.

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Her first, My Outcast Heart, is set in colonial New York. For this book, Uncle asked Anty what sensuality level the book would get for its rating.  Anty said that, because she does not go into great detail about how humans mate, the book would be classified as “sweet.” Uncle asked if this was the same book where the hero puts his hand in the fire on purpose, to cover the brand that marked him as a thief, and where the heroine sticks her grandfather’s body in the barn for the whole winter, because the ground is too hard to dig a grave. Anty said that it was. Uncle’s response was, “And they’re calling that “sweet?” Boy, are they going to be surprised.” Also, there are kitties in it. The dogs get more attention, but barn cats always make a book better. Just saying.

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Anty’s second book from Awe-Struck is Orphans in the Storm. That book could have used more kitties, but it probably would not have changed what happened to the bad guy, because kitties are good judges of character. The heroine in this book finds out that she is not who she thought she was, and travels from the Isle of Man (note: that does not mean it is an island with only men on it. It is, however, where Manx cats come from. I am not Manx. I have a big, floofy tail.) to Holland, where those loyal to the English king fled during the English Civil War. Her hero works for the crown, and the heroine holds the key to releasing monies that will help the cause, only somebody does not want that to happen. The love story is most important, though, as with all of Anty’s books. The cover is by Kathleen Underwood, who captured one of Anty’s favorite scenes.

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Anty also has two novellas with Uncial Press. Her first one there, Never Too Late, is set in Edwardian England and Italy (aka Downton Abbey times, and she wrote it long before the TV show was on the air. My Anty is a trailblazer.) Her heroine in this book is a fifty-year-old widow, who decides she is finally big enough to go after what she wants, which, in this case, means the love of her life, whom she once let get away. I will give you a hint: this time, she does not let him get away again.

QotO

Her other title there is Queen of the Ocean. I will share a bit of trivia with you; the story was originally called Frances, Queen of the Ocean, but that would not fit on the book cover. This is a reunited lovers story, with smugglers and pirates and a shipwreck (well, technically more than one) and a cave full of treasure. I do not have to tell all of you  how much Anty loves pirates. She had a lot of fun writing this one.

None of Anty’s books are related to each other, so they can be read in any order, or by themselves. Anty did not figure it out until I told her, but Never Too Late and Queen of the Ocean kind of fit together, because they are both reunited lovers stories. Maybe Anty could write more like that and then they could all go together. Anty likes reunited lovers. Purr-sonally (see what I did there? Just kidding. I do not purr. That does not mean I am not a happy kitty, because I am. I show it in other ways.) I recommend them all.

Ravenwood does not have a home yet, but it is a medieval love story, where a heartbroken knight errant must escort a headstrong maiden from a plague-ravaged city, to a haven that may or may not exist. Anty will probably change the title, because it does not say much about the story. Maybe Her Errant Heart would be better? Huh. Maybe she could write other stories with “heart” in the title and put them in a loose grouping.

That is about it for this week, because Anty needs to research her articles and work on Her Last First Kiss. Until next time, I remain very truly yours,

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Until next week…

Skye OMalley Hart-Bowling
(the kitty, not the book)

 

 

 

 

 

Talking With Wet Nails

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New title for video blog posts today . These will now be under the heading, “Talking With Wet Nails,” because it’s catchy, and that’s my best attempt for a title today. Still need to come up with an appropriate graphic, but that’s a problem for Future Anna.

Note that I am not actually doing my nails in this post, because that would be awkward, messy and probably boring. I did, however, stumble into the captions function, so we’ll see how that goes.

I’m hoping to make this a more frequent feature here, as part of my effort to stop being as quiet as I have been lately. This also means I only have to write-write one blog per week, as Skye still has Fridays. Innovative and labor saving. I like that.

 

 

TLDW (too long, didn’t watch) :

Backing Up and Moving Ahead

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“You do what you can for as long as you can, and when you finally can’t, you do the next best thing. You back up but you don’t give up.”
–Chuck Yeager

 

Another Monday, another blog entry. Not feeling it today, but discipline and practice are both important, and I find that putting order to chaos satisfies me, so here I am. Morning spent doing housework with help of Housemate. This often consists of her sitting there and letting me chatter at her, as it was today, with me sitting cross-legged on the floor, the box fan in front of me, as I took apart the covers both front and back and cleaned that sucker with grapefruit-scented all purpose cleaner and paper towels. Odds are we aren’t going to be needing that fan for a while, as furnace keeps us toasty warm, and it is January, after all. So, into the newly reorganized closet for our biggest fan. I promise I only do this to mechanical fans, not readers. No reverse Misery-ing here, and, besides, readers are good to have around during all seasons.

The great Christmas ornament harvest of 2016 went well this morning. Good crop, and we hope for an even better return next year. As much as I love the whole process of decorating for Christmas, and will inspect the placement of garland and ornaments (the fact that we use a pre-lit tree is probably best for all involved, lest I get nitpicky about light placement as well; I have in the past.) taking things down is a much quicker and more ruthless process. Down come the lights, coiled, tied, boxed. I pluck ornaments from the tree like ripened fruit, in a matter of seconds. It’s all over in a handful of minutes. This year’s crop is planted in the storage boxes, labeled, and can now germinate for next year. Maybe next year will be the year I finally go for a second tree, which would have black and white ornaments only. Supplemental tree, not replacing the traditional one; I have to have my tradition.

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When I’m at a loss for what to blog about, my guiding phrases of “clean sweep” and “more layers” push me in the right direction. Taking down the Christmas décor and making better use of the closet space fits both of those criteria, as does yesterday’s library trip. Yesterday was a tough day, tired, emotionally drained and frazzled at the same time, and I strode through the library doors with one specific purpose in mind. I was going to grab an armful of romance novels.

I’ve written, recently, about how it’s been difficult for me to read a lot of more newly produced work (part of this, I am certain, is due to my reluctance to jump into the middle of a series of linked books; have to start at the beginning, for me, and there are a lot of series.) This time, I knew what I needed; romance. Historical romance. That’s my reading and my writing home. No matter what happens between Once Upon a Time and Happily Ever After, I know I am going to get that Happily Ever After, so pretty much anything is fair game in between those points. I did end up plucking a current release from the shelves, Cold-Hearted Rake, by Lisa Kleypas, which I started reading as soon as I got home.

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That’s the whole haul, for those who were curious. I’d gone with a vague hope I might find one of the Russian-related historicals on my list (and did, with Forever in Your Embrace) and fingers crossed for a Georgian (but not Regency) setting (When You Wish Upon a Duke delivers on that front) but, apart from that, nothing more specific than wanting a good grounding in my favorite genre. Carla Kelly always delivers on the emotional impact, so that was enough to put the book in my hand, and it had been a while since I’d read a good time travel, so The Last Cavalier fit that bill. If I could hit the snooze button on the calendar so I could snuggle beneath my fuzzy duck blankey and read them all, with endless cups of tea at hand, I think, at this point, I would.

Life, unfortunately, doesn’t work that way, but I can make sure I get some pages read every day, the same way I make time for my morning pages and have to at least touch one of the current fiction projects every day. As K.A. Mitchell, whose wonderful workshop on character relations this past Saturday gave me even more layers to slather on Her Last First Kiss, has said, open the file and change your seat. I have to open the file, or open the notebook. When I do, well, it’s right there. I have a pen in my hand, or the keyboard is right there, too (usually both, in most cases; that’s how my brain works best) and who would it hurt if I took a poke or two at things, hm?

Thanks to a talk with a new writing friend, who listened to me whinge about how hard it’s been to find where I should (note that should, there) including roundabout analogies and a diagram drawn on a napkin with rollerball ink, I am getting the chance to do both the clean sweep and more layers things at one with Her Last First Kiss. What, she asked, was the moment that changed my heroine’s life forever? What permanently took her off the path she always thought she was going to walk in life? Huh. Well. Had to think about that one, and then the answer came out all on its own. When her father left.

Sure, she was seven then, and I didn’t want to start that far back, but darned if the whole scene didn’t play itself out on my walk back home from that meeting. I sat down at my secretary desk, with notebook and fountain pen, and out flowed the whole thing. I didn’t have to yank any teeth. Didn’t have to force anything. Huh. I…remember how to do that. Don’t write a book. Tell the story. Remember back when I didn’t know all the rules, but blithely wrote down the movie in my head? Yeah, that.

Clean sweep. More layers. Easy enough when I don’t think about it.

 

A Handful of Dreams and a Blogful of Opinions

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I’ve been reading a lot of older historical romances lately, mainly those first published in the 1990s. Many of these are standalone stories, in the truest sense of the word, not parts of any series, so anything can happen, to anybody, apart from the HEA we are guaranteed by the end of the book. The  hero’s charismatic best friend isn’t exempt from villain status, because no, we aren’t going to need him to be the hero of book two or there, because there is none. One hero, one heroine, one HEA, off into the sunset, done and done. That’s how my story brain naturally works, anyway, and I’d been craving the big, thick doorstoppers I used to devour (and still can, because keeper shelves and UBSs and e-books, yay publishing revolution) so I dove into this subgenre once more, with overwhelmingly positive results.

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One of my best (but not surprising) re-finds was Barbara Hazard. I’d re-devoured her Georgian historical, Call Back the Dream, and wanted to dive into the sequel (I know, I know, I was talking about standalones only a minute ago, but bear with me; this is going somewhere) immediately afterward. I thought I’d packed that in the same box with the original, but then it would have been in the same bookcase. It wasn’t. Instead, there was A Handful of Dreams, also excellent, and completely unrelated.

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I didn’t remember too much about A Handful of Dreams, though I’d first read it when it was fairly new. I remembered the scene where child Sally catches a coin tossed to her by a British soldier on horseback, but didn’t remember if that soldier would turn out to be the hero or not. As I read on, I still wasn’t sure. I did remember, very clearly, the fictional Sally’s abusive first marriage, her return to her family of origin, and her placement as the companion of the daughter of a different soldier.

Let’s say that Sally and her employer’s daughter had different expectations of the relationship and leave it at that. I’m not sure if that might have been explored differently,  had the book been written today, and that’s something I will likely think about for some time. Sally’s employer decides it’s time for Sally to move on, and her situation, as it were, becomes a commodity.

A friend of the family, Harry, Lord Darlington, purchases the care of Sally, and his treatment of her didn’t -on either read- strike me as particularly heroic. He’s a cold father to his children from other relationships, including two marriages, even when Sally expresses her desire for the children to be part of the family. As a work of historical fiction, this works fine, and that’s how I read it this time around. There’s a friend of Harry’s, who also takes a liking to Sally, and there was a good portion of the book where I was thinking maybe I’d misremembered and he was the true hero.

Not going to give away spoilers, because there are two sorts of readers involved here; the ones that are going to track this book down o they can read it themselves, and those who will not, because old book, who cares, or they don’t read romance anyway. Either way, I finished this reread a couple of days ago, and, as much as I’d like to read another romance, my brain is stuck here. Lots of thinking.

Were I to publish this book today, I would class it as historical fiction rather than romance. Sally does find love, and that love is reciprocated. There’s even an acceptable heroic grovel on the part of the gentleman who fills that role, but, in the end, this is really her story and not theirs. I am okay with that. Romantic elements, yes, but this book is about Sally’s life, her struggle to find her place in the world, and the effect the cards she was dealt do have on what she can do.

Sally starts out Irish and poor, in the early nineteenth century. She’s also beautiful, exceptionally so, and that gets her noticed, not always for the right reasons. This is one of my favorite types of characters, where that beauty has its perils as well as its perks. There are those who don’t look below the surface, those who assume a certain set of facial features means a certain personality or mindset, when that couldn’t be farther from the case. Sally’s options are limited. She’s not educated, she doesn’t have a lot of power, but she is smart and she is strong, and she is a woman of her time. That’s important.

Some aspects felt  a little too neat to me, others a bit rushed, and. for a historical romance, there isn’t a lot of emphasis on the relationship that should be the center of the story. I’m not sure I would have chosen the same hero, were this my story to write, but it wasn’t. I’d love to talk to the author, but without contact information, that’s not likely, so some of these things are going to muddle around in my own mind for a while. Maybe some elements will transfer and transform in my own work, but for now, I’m still thinking