… not run by me.

Miss Kate Rothwell is running this month’s contest on the account of me being a lazy cow with no money. The deadline is November 24, 2007.

You enter 400 words or less. If you put in 500 words I’ll know and I’ll leave you up but you probably won’t be a finalist. We’re not all about the rules, but there might as well be some way to eliminate the thousands of entries we’ll get.

Heh. Once I ran a Best Reviews contest no one entered and I kept opening up the thing. First it was romance reviews. Then anyone could enter. Then it was fine, go lift something from Amazon. I don’t give a f***.

Bam hated WIP things (um, oops. I didn’t notice that rule once) I say if it stands alone without a sense of wtf?, and if it works, okay.

Here’s November’s topic: Revealing The Big Secret. You get points for never actually saying outright what it is. Show don’t tell, baby. Speaking of which, there was some thought to making it a Secret Baby, but heck, you do your secret. Maybe you get points for making it a Secret Baby just because anyone who can write that well deserves points.

You win a twenty dollar gift certificate to Amazon or Samhain (I’m cheaper than Bam). AND you win a book. I have a beautiful pile of them and you get to pick one. And you win the glorious button that I’m going to make eventually to proclaim to the world that You Are A Professional Award Winning Writer. Hey, you won the contest and you’ll paid for your writing, right?

and here are the prizes:

You’d win:
* a pair of Bosnian Sox
* a book with a Big Secret in it (I have one all picked out) or one of mine.
* $20 to spend on more books with or without big secrets.
* A gorgeous e-button declaring you are a champion pro writer.

So go. Now. Then come back here on December 1st for MY writing contest.

Grade: B+

The horror of reading Bedded, or Wedded? last week sent me running back to the safety of my keeper shelf and the first thing I reached for was an old beloved comfort read, Obsession, by my favourite ever Mills and Boon author, Charlotte Lamb. I fucking love this book. *Sighs happily*.

The Cover

The UK cover is one of the classic ‘black rose’ covers of the late 70s/early 80s. Love these black rose covers - so kitsch with their garish colours and the piss-poor paintings on the covers. Every time I look at one, I feel nostalgic fondness.

In 1980, when Obsession was first published, I was seven. My mum was a big Mills & Boon fan and she kept her stash hidden away in my wardrobe. Me and my friends used to get piles of them out and lay them out on my bedroom floor, trying to decide who was the prettiest heroine or the handsomest hero (and because I was seven, I always picked out a Violet Winspear one with a h/h that looked like Ken and Barbie).

The cover of Obsession has a perfect 1980 aesthetic. With that haircut and outfit and the very perky boobies, the heroine is totally channelling Jane Fonda in Nine to Five, which is kind of appropriate seeing as this is one of those boss/secretary romances. And can I just say that I love the title? I hate the long tabloidy headlines Mills & Boon use now. This is just one word, and it’s relevant to the story. Nice.

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As promised, here is the 3rd installment of Ember. If you don’t know what the hell Ember is, you’ve been living under a rock. What’s wrong witchu? Check out Parts 1 and 2 here and here.

But first, a blurb:

Everyone loves Prince Charming. They have to—he’s cursed. Every man must respect him. Every woman must desire him. One look, and all is lost.

Charm is a curse. Love is a fire. This story is no fairytale.

And now, the continuation of Ember…

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And the winner of Jane Heller’s contests are: Bettie Sharpe and Allison! Sistas, please email me your info, which I will relay to Jane and she will hook y’all up with a copy of Some Nerve. Lucky duckies! I’d also like to take this opportunity to thank Jane again for coming by to hang out with us. A big kiss and a thank you, Miz Jane! Come back again soon!

How Doing Research for Some Nerve Changed My Life. Seriously.

Hi, Everyone.
A reader sent me an email the other day that said, “It must be easy to write romantic comedies, because you don’t have to do research.”

Huh?

It’s true that all my books are set in the present, so I don’t have to dig up historical info. It’s also true that they’re light, breezy stories that are meant to make people laugh. But research is such an important part of the writing process that I can’t imagine not doing it.

For example, my novel Princess Charming is about three divorcees who take a seven-day Caribbean cruise together. Before I wrote a word, I took a seven-day Caribbean cruise myself. I know, I know. It wasn’t exactly a hardship, but I really did need to experience what my heroine did.

My novel Name Dropping is about a pre-school teacher at a private school in New York whose identity is mistaken for another woman with the same name. To research it, I spent days sitting on a tiny chair in a pre-school classroom at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan, finger painting, building blocks and singing the “Itsy Bitsy Spider” with a bunch of four-year-olds.

You can’t write credibly about something you know nothing about. Well, I guess you can try, but it just won’t ring true.

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Grade: D

Jane at Dear Author did a post recently ‘coming out’ as a lover of category romance. It was one of those posts that hit a nerve, generating a lot of comments. Readers were falling over themselves (myself included) to ‘fess up and wax lyrical over their favourite authors.

I’ve got about 20 Harlequins on my Keeper Shelf. Most of these are great books but a few are the equivalent emotional porn. Cheap thrills with no troublesome character development to hold up the action. Give me immediate angst, an alpha hero acting like a cockhead and a huge grovelling apology at the end and I’m in heaven.

An author who does this well is Julia James. In the past, I’ve liked her books, but her latest offering, Bedded, or Wedded? is disappointing to say the least.

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