Happy Yuletide and holiday variations thereupon! Whatever we celebrate, we can be glad we have the people we love around us, something to read, and a little bit of time to read it. Unless you’re one of the lucky, lucky people who live in Iceland and celebrate Jólabókaflóðið, and then you have roughly twice the amount of time to read as anyone else, plus tradition telling you to do it. Please let me come live with you, I will stay…
The awesome co-hosts for the December 1 posting of the IWSG are PJ Colando, Diane Burton, Louise – Fundy Blue, Natalie Aguirre (hi Natalie!), and Jacqui Murray! Stop by their pages to wish them a happy IWSG Day and some happier holidays. And the optional question for the December 1st posting is: In your writing, what stresses you the most? What delights you? I have already semi-seriously answered the question of what stresses me out the most in a giflist, with many silly gifs (my favorite)…
Let’s talk books outside your usual genre We all know I’m a romance reader. It’s definitely not a secret that I’m all about lots and lots of smushy fluff. When I need a break from that I generally turn to my *other* source of bodily fluids, which is horror. Yes. I know that seems strange. In the midst of this chaos of conflicting reads, certain genres are neglected. Like nonfiction. I don’t often pick up that genre and it has…
Hello and welcome to my tangent! I’ve previously covered this topic in Top Ten Tuesday, Villain Edition and had a lot of fun with it. So today I’m going rogue again and picking my favorite clever villains. I want the best plotters, the most urbane, cultured, and ridiculously devious little psychopaths for the list today. I want the type who have plans A-D ready to go, are already one move ahead in the chess game of hero vs. villain, and could pick…
Our theme today: Favorite Books from Childhood Full on nostalgia hit this week. I blame my fourth cup of pumpkin spiced coffee. Anyway, allow me to throw this entire list at you and then fight off the urge to go re-read all of these immediately. And also let me know your own childhood favorites! I’ve got two school-age mini bookworms growing up and I’m sure we’d all love to read them, too. The Beatrix Potter stories For some reason we…
What I thought it would be like: Writing retreats full of discourse, stimulating discussions, plotting, and lots of other authors. What it’s actually like: #You’reTooPoor #SillyAuthor #RetreatsAreForBestSellers What I thought it would be like: Ideas lining up, falling neatly into their places, everything is flowing and glorious and ticking along like pure, perfect, writing clockwork. What it’s actually like: EVER HEARD OF SLEEPING, Ideas? GIVE ME A BREAK. What I thought it would be like: Editing, DONE. Polishing? This baby…
This is one of the best parts of reading romance, in my humble opinion. Oh, those declarations of love! If you tell me you never rewound and and sighed a little bit and re-played that one part of a movie adaptation I will say I believe you . . . but secretly I will think you sit on a throne made of lies. Come on. It’s the best part! My Favorite Bookish Confessions of Love Leading off with the best.…
Inquiring authors want to know: What’s harder for you to come up with, book titles or character names? (It’s me. I’m inquiring authors.) My answer: Titles. Titles are the hardest thing ever. Titles are horrible, nasty, no good, very bad, brain-killing beasts. Compared to titles, naming my characters is a breeze. And not like, a fourteen-kilometer-per-hour windstorm breeze, one of those gentle zephyr kind. So many options, all of them easy breezy. I can use names I like the sound…