…and I got no privacy…ooo uuu ooo

I used to think that song was a touch on the creepy side, but these days, you don’t know just who is watching you.  (more…)

The shaman “Lizard” is one of the two-souled-ones, a Berdache. Lizard must convince his proud and stubborn childhood friend, Red Wolf, one of the finest warriors of his village, that he too is a Berdache and must take the shaman training, before he loses his mind.

A call for aid comes, so the Berdache, his friend Red Wolf, and the beautiful Chickasaw slave, Born In Moonlight, take the journey to hopefully avoid a war. Will these three give in to the closeness they feel or will they be forever separated by the dangers they face from both the Spirit World, and the world that surrounds them.

Excerpt:

With the swiftness of a badger, Red Wolf’s hands clamped down on Lizard’s arms. The dream-crazed warrior yanked the Berdache to his chest with total disregard for dignity. All Lizard managed was a gasp of surprise before Red Wolf’s lips clamped down on his.

Lizard’s mouth was open from his gasp, and Red Wolf forced it open further with his tongue. The violent kiss, full of an unspoken need, aroused in Lizard a burning heat. Tongues tangled and fought, each vying for supremacy. Some force in Lizard demanded he not submit, until he was sure it was truly a choice on Red Wolf’s part, and not the dream that made him act thus.

With a moan, Red Wolf broke the kiss. “You with your maiden’s hair and shaman’s skills. You call to me like no other. I don’t understand you or the battles you fight, but I know now that you make war with an unseen enemy. It is enough.” (more…)

Before I get distracted (again) by emails, promo, and my latest book, I thought I’d tell you about my new office away from home.
 
Ever since my DH lost his job, I lost my peace and quiet, not to mention time in my home office. He follows me everywhere out of boredom when he’s not actively looking for work. Needless to say, my writing has slowed to a crawl despite my ever-increasing “talks” with him about leaving me alone for a few hours.
 
Desperation began to seep into my brain. Crazy schemes like drugging him into somnolence, killing him and burying him under the vegetable garden, and booting him out of the house were hatched and discarded.
 
More viable plans like getting up early (my best bio-rhythm is for morning hours and working late at night is hopeless, trust me) failed. He’d awaken, feel the empty place next to him, and come find me!
 
I don’t know about anyone else, but my income has been affected by the sluggish economy. I have to work to pay some of the bills. I can’t just take time off. I have deadlines to make, but can’t afford a leased office space, not even a shared one. (more…)

Today we lost two people who were influential to the last of the baby boomers.  Farrah Fawcett succumbed to anal cancer today at the age of 62.  Michael Jackson presumably has passed from cardiac arrest just shy of his 51st birthday (Aug. 29th).

Farrah’s stint on Charlie’s Angels brought about the popularity of the layered, blow-dryer look, her locks fabulous.  She also brought attention to Spousal Abuse with her portrayal of a battered wife in “The Burning Bed.”

Michael’s influence on music is as important as that of Elvis.  He made music lyrical again, imbued it with energy and creativity.  His physical ability to do amazing things with dance is still emulated.

Both Farrah and Michael endured a lot of pain, physical, mental, and emotional.  Perhaps now they are enjoying the peace that only a spirit freed of its earthly trappings can have.

May they both rest in that newfound freedom.

If any of you are on Twitter, Twitter Search #RWAFAIL and/or #RWACHANGE. If you missed it, you should read RWA President Pershing’s comments about what a bunch of hacks e-published authors are:

http://espan-rwa.com/rwa-president-pershing-responds/

I’m usually one of the last to abandon ship, but I did so this year. This shows I made the right decision.

Although all of us here know what a fiasco Trisk was, it wasn’t because it was an electronic publisher. It was a publisher that made bad decisions and had a few other issues. E publishers do come and go, and guess what, so do NY Print publishers. I guess Ms. Pershing hasn’t been reading Publisher’s Weekly recently. Pubs out of business, pubs restructuring, pubs laying off, pubs “down-sizing” their editoral and promotional staffs.

I’ve never been ashamed or sad that I choose to e publish. A) it was my choice B) My conscious feels better about being kinder to our planet C) My writing buddies made here and at other e houses have been as supportive if not more so, than any of the “published” RWA recognized authors I’ve associated with.

E Publishers come in all sizes; EC being the biggest, companies like my Aspen being among the smaller. I’m pretty sure that it is also true of print publishers (ok, so I’m being sarcastic)…and if you were to compare similar tiers in big houses to indie houses you’d probably see the same slide in royalties.

The insistance of making e companies do business the print way is ludicrous. It is barely working for the print companies right now. I don’t know about anyone else, but I was taught to emulate SUCCESSFUL models not failures. Pershing wants epublishers to throw money at authors and thus use that standard as proof that a publishing company is really a publishing company and that an author is really an author.  Another business model that doesn’t apply to e-books and one that has outlived its usefulness (rather like returns).  This is truly a case of comparing apples to oranges. Okay, so both are fruits, and other than the seeds it is pretty much where the similarity ends. Why does RWA insist on comparing ebooks to print books?

They are not the same and it is about time RWA tried trying to make this square peg fit in their round hole.

Lucynda Storey
www.LucyndaStorey.com

A lot of fiction writers are rejected for simple things.  I’ll be posting here little tidbits to help you improve your chances of receiving an acceptance letter.

If you want to improve your writing you really, really need to nail this skill:

Keep a scene to one point of view, view the action through one set of eyes. (more…)

Just this week, Publisher’s Daily announced the purchase by Amazon of the Stanza format for e-Books.  Stanza format is used to enable IPhone e-Book reading.   You can read the article at Publishers Daily by clicking on the link.

How good is e-Book reading on the IPhone?  Pretty darn.  There is a fair amount of scrolling, but the font size can be changed and so worries concerning the type being too small are addressed.  You can also read black on white, or white on black and the IPhone will display color images.

Several of our authors have made booktrailer videos for their stories at Aspen Mountain Press and we are excited to share that we are embedding these videos to give our readers more about what the stories are about.

Who is Offing the Collectors

Cougar Club: Barely Legal

The Reckoning of Asphodel

Breaking the Covenant

The Long Way Home

Del Fantasma: Virgin Special

Scarred

Stop by and take a look at the trailers and pick up an earth friendly e-Book!

Character emotions remain some of the trickiest writing there is.  All too often authors fall prey to cliche phrases and dilute their writing by telling us what emotion we are supposed to be experiencing, rather than showing us what the character is going through.

In Creating Character Emotions by Ann Hood, authors are provided with a new way of expressing character emotions.  How?  Ms. Hood gives practical exercises drawing upon the author’s memories of experiencing the emotion being discussed.

The book is organized by emotions and then three poor examples are given with an explanation of why they are poor.  The author then follows up with three good examples and explanation.  Finally, she provides the reader with three exercises to write so the reader can create fresh writing for the emotion. (more…)

From time to time things happen that irk us in regards to our jobs/careers/professions.  We’ve all been there, probably more times that any of us would like to count.

Sometimes we really need to blow off steam, vent our frustrations, and just get our irritation off our chests.  There are right ways and wrong ways to go about getting this release. (more…)