In my reboot of the website, I took down a feature called “What Kate’s Reading” because I didn’t feel like I updated it enough to make it worth the reader’s while. Which means, I haven’t told you what books I’ve been reading recently. Time for an update!
But first, a caveat. Like most everyone else who reads voraciously, I have a To Be Read pile. Mine is less a pile and more one small shelf and two-larger-boxes-that-live-under-my-bed. I also have a separate shelf entirely devoted to Georgette Heyer novels that my mother decided I needed but I have no idea when I’ll get around to reading them. (I’ve previously read 4-5 out of the 30 or so I received. Thanks Mom!) No matter how much I try to pare down and read what’s in my TBR pile, the thing just keeps growing.
The four most recent books I’ve read are (and I know this because, yes, I keep a list): Lush Life, by Richard Price, A Field Guide to Burying your Parents by Liza Palmer, Naughty by Nature, by Barbara Pierce, and Pure Princess, Bartered Bride by Caitlin Crews.
They are an urban crime drama, a family drama, a historical romance, and a Harlequin Presents. Of these four, one was purchased in the last week, one in the last month, one in the last two months and one gotten at a conference almost two years ago. So out of the four books, only one was *really* a resident of the TBR pile for any length of time.
No wonder I never make a dent.
All were very enjoyable, but I have to say I probably enjoyed Lush Life the most. Only because I don’t read a lot of urban crime drama, and this one took place in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. It’s an area of town I am very familiar with and therefore it was a very visceral experience reading this book. Also I find that if I take a breather from romances once in a while, when I come back to them, I love them even more.
What about you? What are your reading patterns?
Another week of writing stretches before me, and as such, happy reading everyone, and good luck shrinking that pile!
Previous to now, I have not had any print materials. I have gone to conferences and written my name and email on a napkin for someone that asked for my contact info. I am SO pleased to have finally gotten my act together and had these cards made. Trust me, I’m going to be handing them out to everyone – the barista at the coffee shop, the Barnes and Noble help desk guy, everyone.
I love that they are thematically in line with my website (scrolly-flower-bubble thingies!) and they are just in time, as we are just over two months out from the release of The Summer of You! (Yes, I’m going to mention that EVERY time I blog. Because it’s exciting. And scary. I should just cave and get a countdown clock installed on my website.)
And lookie what I got for that:
Bookmarks! They’re awfully pretty. And on the back you’ll see a pic of Compromised and Revealed – the latter of which is getting its RE-release in mass market on March 2nd, 2010! That’s ONE month away. Egads!
Other than that, it’s a writing week. So I’d better get to it!
Ok, so I’ve been living in Los Angeles for about six months now, and I think I figured out why A. so many other people live here and B. they shoot movies here:
Its freaking gorgeous.
Seriously. I mean I knew it was nice. Temperate. There’s a beach. But its been raining for a week, and this weekend, when the sun came out, it became paradise. The smog was cleared, the hills and ground were this verdant green that rivals emeralds, and you could see clear to the ocean.
Oh, just look:
This was taken from the trail that hikes up Mt. Hollywood. See?
That O and H are the back of the Hollywood sign. Try to climb it and the sheriff in his helicopter will come after you.
In other news, now that the release of The Summer of You is a little over two months off, I’ve been thinking a lot about promotion. I’m going to be setting up some guest blogs and hopefully some website reviews, but I can tell you that one personal appearance I will be making will be at Lady Jane’s Salon in New York the first weekend of April! It’s a great cause and it seems like so much fun: Can. Not. Wait.
And other than that, I’m typing. Typing typing typing. Sigh. Typing.
That’s all for now, so until next week – Happy Reading!
No one felt the need to be concisely witty before Twitter. Oh sure, we were short and sweet in our Facebook statuses (statusi?) but we tended to simply state our purposes, saying “going to the store, need tomato sauce for mom’s lasagna,” or “seeing a movie tonight, so excited!” But suddenly, with the birth of Twitter, we all feel the importance of our declarative statements. They need to be catchy, intelligent, cheeky, thought provoking, and hilarious all at once.
On the one hand, I now have faith that the next generation will be funny.
On the other, I have completely lost the ability to think in sections longer than a Facebook status update.
Let me give you my day, in status update form:
“Woke up ridiculously late. So the morning becomes the afternoon. Ah, me.”
“The West Wing soothes me as I eat my breakfast. Speechifying lends turkey bacon gravitas.”
“Typing.”
“Typing.”
“Holy cow, that’s my word count for the day! How shall I spend the rest this glorious evening? What’s that? The mall is still open, you say?”
“I lost five pounds and the only size I went down is my shoe size. How…?”
“More typing. Can’t let it go. But this time I have Conan to keep me company. Forget team Jacob, I’m firmly team Coco.”
So while I truly enjoy social networking and all of the access they afford us to our friends and fans… I think I should apologize in advance if, in my next book, my chapters are only 140 characters long.
And it feels so good. I’m shocked that I’ve showered and put on real clothes. I’ve logged several hours on Beatles Rockband. Several more have been devoted to the viewing of British television. And there has been the Operation interludes (remember Operation? My niece and nephew got the game for Christmas and they got rid of the charley horse and the wishbone! The wishbone was the easiest one! With whom do I lodge a complaint?) This is what Christmas should be: one day of gifts followed by several of doing nothing but playing with your new toys or new games, reading your new books (my sis got a couple PC Cast books I intend to steal), or just enjoying nothing. I return to the regularly scheduled programming of work and more work soon enough, but until then, I plan on playing “A Day in the Life” on Hard until I get at least a 95%.
Happy holidays, Happy nothing, and Happy reading, everyone!
Hi Everyone! Quick Blog today, because I am over at the Book Smugglers being initiated into that fabulous rite of passage, Smugglivius, their year-in-review. I compiled a list of all my favorite things from the year 2009, and there’s a new Summer of You excerpt, AND a giveaway! It is my Smugglivius gift to you all, so head over and check it out!
In other non-denominational holiday stuff I am pleased to announce… I AM DONE. Done with cards, done with shopping, wrapping, shipping, decorating, cookie making. I have completed Christmas and still have ten days to go! For once in my life, I came in on a deadline early. I’m so proud of me.
I hope everyone is having a merry go of it… and if you need any last minute gift suggestions… I’ve always found a good romance novel to fit easily into a stocking.
I have been holding on to this tidbit of information for a while, I didn’t want to say anything until the contracts were signed and filed, but now that they have been, I am pleased to tell you… drumroll please…
I’ve had my first foreign rights sale! Revealed will be published (sometime in the next 18 months) in Russian! I am incredibly excited, not only to have Revealed cross the pond, but because it’s a whole new alphabet. I can’t wait to see what the titles look like in Cyrillic.
In other news, next Monday, Dec. 14th, I will be guest blogging at the Book Smugglers, as part of their annual wrap up holiday, Smugglivus (for the smuggler in all of us). They have gone all out this year, including having awesome posters:
Remember, Dec. 14th. Make sure you stop by, I’ll be having a give away, and maybe, if you’ve been good this year, a special sneak peak.
Over Thanksgiving, I went up to my sister’s place in the pacific northwest, where we partook of the noblest of all family traditions: Christmas cookie making. We do spritzes, bourbon balls, gingerbread, etc. All the cookies we were raised making. But this year I decided we have to do something else too. Something different. You gotta try something new every once in a while, right? Something that looks appetizing in a magazine, like this:
(I apologize for all picture quality, they were taken on my phone)
It’s called a croquembouche, a tower of what (after 5 hours of cooking) turned out to be cream-filled donut holes held together by caramel. The dough was pretty tasty, puffed up nicely, the cream filling was DELISH, and my version is not magazine worthy, but it still looks pretty decent:
But here’s one thing that the magazine didn’t tell me: Caramel is CEMENT. Also, in that constructing these delicious little cream filled poufs, I’m constructing something purely decorative (why they had me pipe in cream then I do not know) because its impossible to pull apart. Case in point:
Yes, I’m holding this thing upside down. I’m gonna need a hairdryer and a chisel to get it off the plate.
Oh well, you gotta try something new every once in a while, right?
As I sit here on my sister’s couch, watching football with her, as her husband fetches and cooks, I come across that rare realization that all is right with the world. I’m where I want to be with the people I want to be with, doing what I want to do. And therefore, I would like to present to you my list of what I’m Thankful for this gluttonous holiday.
(Side note: I’m gonna skip over family and friends, because, yeah, they’re handy, and obviously I’m thankful for them. But this list is for what I’m TRULY thankful for.)
1. A solid internet connection. Too often I find myself in the land of No Wifi, and the withdrawal symptoms are ugly and painful. It hurts me. It hurts me to my core.
2. That the Muppets exist. Specifically, that they exist doing this:
3. Chris Johnson of the Tennessee Titans. I may have won only three games so far in my fantasy football league, ranking me second to last, but Chris Johnson is the reason I managed to win those three games.
4. That my 4-year-old niece knows all the words to “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” thanks to Beatles Rockband. I now have hope for future generations.
5. That my third book, The Summer of You, will be released in April 2010 (*cough* shameless plug*cough*)
And lastly…
6.That Thanksgiving calories don’t count.
7. … they don’t, right?
Happy thanksgiving, happy reading everyone, and be sure to be thankful for the important stuff!
I am the occasional practitioner of omniscient voice, or as I like to call it, the Tom Jones voice. This name is not in reference to the knighted swinging singer of “Its Not Unusual”, but instead a reference to the 1749 novel by Henry Fielding. You see, when Mr. Fielding needed to explain a small bit of backstory, he used omniscient voice, and simply… explained it, and generally with a very dry wit. No need to filter it through a character’s point of view or shoehorn the info into dialogue. I have used the Tom Jones voice in the same manner – whether it be to give the background of a fictional country or the heretofore unknown to the reader (but known to the characters) tidbit of information, such as the identity of a spy.
Omniscient voice is not that common in romance novels – and it’s easy to understand why. When a story is as internal and personal as falling in love, you (the reader and writer both) don’t really want to interrupt the flow of emotion just to step back and view the larger picture, which is what omniscient voice does. The downside is that the information has to come out somewhere, and sometimes it makes dialogue a little lumpy. So for me it’s a bit of a gamble. But, here’s the reason I prefer it:
Which sounds better to you…
While Mary and John were married, he was employed at the DoReMi Agency, which had any number shady dealings. Difficulty arose when he decided to blow the whistle on his bosses, resulting in his firing, subsequent destitution, loss of wife, and loss of dog to his best friend Joe — who, deciding he could not possibly own a Chi-Chi, renamed the pup Larry.
Or…
Cindy reached over and took Joe’s hand. “Do you mean to tell me,” she said, “that your friend Joe who used to work at the DoReMi Agency blew the whistle on his bosses’ criminal dealings and because of that lost his job, his money, and his wife? And you got his dog?”
“Yep,” said Joe. “And I renamed the dog Larry.”
What voice or person do you prefer to read and/or write in? First? Third from character POV? Third omniscent?
