S.L. Viehl's Blog, page 177

My Hero

I couldn't help trying out this interesting quiz to determine which Regency hero I should marry, via author Carolyn Jewel:

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Which Regency Hero Should You Marry? The Knight His great, great, great, great (a few more) was a Knight, and this hero is chivalry personified. The truth is, you little strumpet, you'll have to make the first, second and third move. He'll make the fourth. He is very very talented in bed, as all Knights are.

Facebook quizzes , quiz apps & blog quizzes by
Figures I'd get stuck with a guy on a horse. I bet he'll want me to polish all that blasted armor, too . . .

Wonder who wants your hand in marriage? Take the quiz here.

Booster Ten

Ten Things to Make the Holidays Brighter

Decorate with Nature: Bring some of the natural beauty inside by making a real evergreen wreath, putting together a fruit centerpiece or fashioning ornaments for the tree out of pine cones, cinnamon sticks or winter berries.

Enter to Win: an entire set of brand-new cookbooks written by Food Network stars here, $15K in prizes from Cooking Light here, or $250K from Woman's Day here.

Experimental Treat: try making a cake, cookie or muffin recipe you've never attempted for dessert one night (for ideas, look in your cookbooks, holiday magazines or visit Cooking Light's 100 Healthy Cookie recipes page.) Ask the kids or friends to help with the cooking, decorating and tasting.

Give a Kid a Book: Any kid + any book you think they'd enjoy. For the older kids, get a copy for yourself and let the kid know you'd like to discuss it with them when they've read their copy. For younger kids, sit down and read the book to them. One of my favorite kids' books: Put Me in the Zoo by Robert Lopshire; great for boys or girls.

Help Out: Offer to spend an afternoon at the home of an elderly family member or friend and help them with chores or fix-ups around the house, run errands or do some baking with them. If everything at home is okay, take them out for lunch, shopping, or see a movie together (if you're looking for a great holiday movie to rent, check out this list of 25 classics from Moviefone.

Homemade Gift: Take a free afternoon or evening and spend it using your creative talents making a gift for someone you love. If you've never handmade anything, buy a simple kit from your local craft store to use for the project and teach yourself a new craft skill (decorating a flower pot is a fun project.)

Practical Party: Invite friends to bring over their unwrapped gifts and wrapping supplies, and have a gift-wrapping party (Moms, great to do while the kids are in school.) Make up goodie bags with scotch tape, adhesive gift tags and rolls of ribbon. Ask everyone to bring two jumbo rolls of gift paper; one to use and one to pass around. Serve coffee, tea, and a non-sticky treat like cookies or muffins. For creative gift-wrapping ideas, check out Martha Stewart's ideas here.

See the Lights: If weather permits, take a drive after dark and tour the homes in your area that are decorated for the holidays. Bring take-along cups of hot chocolate to keep you warm (for grownups, my favorite hot chocolate recipe here is delicious and not too sweet.)

Turn Off the Television. A recent survey of 45,000 showed that the happiest people watched TV 20% less than the unhappiest people. Put on a holiday music CD, break out the Scrabble or Monopoly board, or play a card game using cookies or chocolate coins as chips (for BestToyGuide.com's ten best board games for 2011, go here.)

Write a Letter: Pick two of the people to whom you send holiday cards, sit down, and hand-write a one or two page letter to put in the card. Here's a great blog post on the art of letter writing. If you can't think of what to write, tell them how they've made a positive difference in your life and thank them for it (our minister had us do this over Thanksgiving, and it was fun and very uplifting.)

Exotic

I'm not really here, but let's pretend I am anyway so I can show you this neat plant:



This is a cyclamen, a cousin of the primrose, which is sold as a decorative plant during the winter holidays. This is also when it blooms.



From what I've read (and don't quote me on any of this; I'm by no means an expert) cyclamen are grown from a tuber (I'm assuming in the same way you grow paperwhites from a bulb or sweet potato vines from a sweet potato) and flower from December through April. They shrivel and go dormant from April until August, at which point you can replant the corm (the dried-up tuber) and grow another cyclamen for the holidays.



I spotted this one at my local grocery store and fell in love with it instantly (hence the pics.) The red and green colors are even more intense than a pointsettia and the flowers remind me a lot of orchids. Even the buds made me think of tiny swans.

Because I didn't recognize the plant, I went home to read up on the species first; I do like to know what I'm buying. Then I went back to purchase it -- only to find someone else had already snatched it up. So now I'll have to look for another one.

If you give plants as gifts during the holidays, this would probably make a gardener friend very happy.

On the Road

I am bailing on you guys today to hit the road and see some family. So that your visit here was not entirely wasted, here's a video of what a talented (and extremely patient) artist can do with 3.2 million dots of ink:

Hero from Miguel Endara on Vimeo.

The Holiday TBR

Mom and I made a pilgrimage to the nearest brick-and-mortar Barnes & Noble on Wednesday, where I filled not one but two tote bags with a lovely assortment of books. Since I've already griped about what I buy and won't buy, I thought it would be interesting to look through my bags and see how I did with my actual purchases.

Paperbacks:

Four Harlequin Presents. All were holiday-themed, and all are written by authors who are new to me. I haven't been reading HPs since they've acquired so many new authors, and I'd like to see what they're writing.

Larissa Ione's Immortal Rider. I buy everything she writes except her grocery list, so grabbed four copies, which was all the store had left. Larissa sells out quick.

Within the Flames by Marjorie M. Liu. I also buy everything Marjorie writes, and weirdly there were also only four copies left of this one, which are now all mine. When I get more from an incoming order I placed with BAM I might be nice and share them.

Highlander for the Holidays by Janet Chapman. There's an adorable dog on the cover, he doesn't seem to be warning me off and besides, I hate being predictable. Cross your fingers for me.

Fern Michaels' Christmas at Timberwoods. It's a holiday-themed romance set in a mall. I've never read a mall romance. How does one write a mall romance, anyway? Don't know, so I had to buy it.

Shiloh Walker's If You Hear Her. I think this is a story Shiloh and I discussed a while back when it was in its earliest incarnation, and I'm very interested to see what she ended up doing with the premise and the protagonist.

Holiday in Stone Creek by Linda Lael Miller. Semi-random pick. I've heard she's a decent writer. I haven't read a cowboy romance in a while.

Trade Paperbacks:

Seal of my Dreams Anthology. I don't know why I assumed this would be available only in e-book format, but I did. It was a nice surprise to see it in print. This was the only anthology I bought, but my blogpals Alison Kent, Jo Leigh and Stephanie Tyler have stories in it, and so does Barbara Samuel, so that means at least four of the stories will be well-written and interesting. Looks like the cover model is wearing a yarmulke, so maybe it's a holiday read, too. Ha.

Anne Perry's Christmas Vigil. I used to read her quite a bit before I got burned out on historicals. Don't see many duologies by one author these days. I'd call this a semi-semi-random holiday pick. I liked the cover art, too. Very Christmasy.

Hardcovers:

The Nine Lives of Christmas by Sheila Roberts. I never see authors named Sheila, and from the jacket copy it sounds like a cat is the protag. Until Sofie Kelly gets off her lazy butt and writes me another magical cat book, I'll just have to console myself with this.

Victoria Alexander's His Mistress by Christmas. Random holiday pick.

Saint's Gate by Carla Neggers. Classy author + elegant writing = worth the investment for hardcover. And a story about international art heists, suicidal nuns and the Feds in Maine? This is so a book for me. Unique cover art, too.

What I love most about going to the brick-and-mortars and browsing the shelves are the surprises, like finding Seal of My Dreams in print, and Carla's latest (I simply can't keep up with all the new releases; sometimes I don't know about them unless I see them at the bookstore.)

I'm also excited to try out the random picks because I have very good luck with that method; I started reading Linda Howard, Patricia Briggs and Rob Thurman just by picking up their books at random. Taking that chance doesn't always pay off, but sometimes you discover these great hidden jewel-type authors.

So there you have it. I also bought two tote bags, one to replace one of my favorites that I gave away, and this large, sturdy blue and white snowflake tote which I'll probably be giving away or using for a holiday gift. I know I kind of stacked the TBR in my favor, but I feel I also bought enough random picks that the mix will be interesting (Poor Janet Chapman, she's really the one in the hot seat. If this a lousy story I swear I'm done forever with dog-on-the-cover romances.)

Winners

Thanks to everyone who joined in the Nightborn Preview giveaway. There is no greater power in the Publishing world than supportive readers, and whenever you talk about any author's books to other people you become the most effective advertising there is, and that's something no author or publisher can ever buy.

I wish I had forty ARCs to send you all instead of just four, but this will not be the only ARC giveaway, so if you don't win this time stay tuned to the blog during the holidays for another chance.

We got the magic hat to do its thing, and the winners are:

Charlene Teglia

mofo8727

Keita Haruka

John C

Winners, when you have a chance please send your full name and ship-to address to LynnViehl@aol.com so I can get these ARCs out to you. Again, thanks to everyone for offering to help out.

Books for the Holidays

I will be heading out soon to buy some novels with holiday themes, which I will put in stockings, mail along with greeting cards and leave around the house for visiting friends who have no desire to watch The Christmas Story again. I know, it's a cute film, but after seeing that kid get his tongue stuck to the flagpole for the nine thousandth time it's starting to lose some of its charm.

As I was making my shopping list, and checking it twice, I realized over the years I've become pretty picky about holiday-themed reads, and gave some thought to what I will buy, what I won't, and why:

Anthologies: If one of my favorite authors is a headliner, or if I know at least two of the authors are decent writers, I'll take a chance and buy it. If I don't read or recognize any of the authors, I'll pass. I don't like anthologies because usually there is at least one and often two or more badly-written stories in it, so I'm only going to finish 25-50% of the book. If the majority of the stories are really bad and/or tick me off, I will cut out the one or two good stories, make a new cover for them and throw the rest of the book away.

Dogs on the Cover Art: I love dogs in stories, and will happily buy a holiday-themed book that includes a furry face. Except if the book is a romance of any kind, in which case the dog seems to be warning me not to buy it because the story is going to suck. Seriously, I don't know if it's just dumb luck or what, but I have the worst track record with holiday romances featuring dogs on the cover. Every single one I've read has been deplorable.

Family Gathering Stories: Even when they're not about the holidays these tend to make my blood sugar spike, but I can read them if the family stuff is light and kept in the background. Mary Balogh regularly writes holiday stories that feature some type of family gathering, and as an element she always keeps it beautifully under control. It's the authors who idealize and inflate family gatherings into these never ending Norman Rockwell lovefests that I can't deal with. They definitely don't speak to my personal experience, and in a strange way they strike me as kind of sad and depressing.

Holiday Horror: I love a great horror story, and I can handle one that takes place during the holidays. Unless the holidays are an integral part of the horror elements, at which point I turn and run away from the shelf as fast as I can. I have a hard enough time getting through Christmas without adding nightmares about Rudolph the razor-toothed man-eating reindeer chasing me over the river and through the woods to Santa's slaughterhouse, thank you very much.

Meaningful/Spiritual: This is a tricky one, probably because I've written a holiday-themed inspirational novel for Guideposts, and it was no walk in the park. I don't particularly care for an inspirational holiday read that uses the holidays like a club to beat the real meaning of them into my head. I know the real meaning. Would like to see that told in a story in an interesting and original way versus the same-old same-old sermonizing, but these are few and far between.

Pun Titles: I try to ignore them, really I do, and most of the time I can slap a book cover on them as soon as I get home. That said, I cannot force myself to buy any book that uses "Santa" as part of the pun title. This goes double for erotica. Hey, I love Santa, honest I do, but I don't want to ever envision him naked and doing naughty things to an elf, okay? Okay.

Holiday-themed books rarely surprise me, too, and that's probably my biggest gripe. I wish authors of all holiday books would be more creative, try some new approaches and genres, and stretch their wings. I'd love to read holiday-themed steampunk, science fiction, non-romance historicals or urban fantasy.

I'm also interested in other-than-Christian holiday themes in novels, but try to find them at the book stores? You practically have to call search and rescue. One of my favorite series when I was growing up was the All-of-a-Kind Family novels by Sydney Taylor, who wrote about a Jewish family in turn of the century New York City. I adored those books (and still have all the original copies from my childhood in my book collection), they were wonderfully written and explained Jewish traditions and holidays from the family's point of view, which was like being invited into their home and taking part in their celebrations. I was the only girl in my third-grade Catholic Sunday school class who knew what Yom Kippur was, why Jewish people had a different New Year's Day, and what the foods served for Passover dinner symbolized.

So there you have it. When I hit the book store, I'm going to do my best to find the right holiday reads for me. Maybe this year I'll get lucky and find something surprising. Hope so.

How about you? Do you like holiday-themed books? Got any recent reads you'd recommend? Let us know in comments.

Nightborn Preview

My editor kindly sent some ARCs of Nightborn, the first novel in my new Lords of the Darkyn trilogy. Usually I give away all my ARCs without asking for anything in return, but as this novel is the first book in a new venture, it's important to get the word out about it. Thus I'd like to send these ARCs to people who are willing to help me do just that.

If you're interested, in comments to this post write a pledge for what you'd be willing to do to help me promote the novel* by midnight EST on Wednesday, December 7, 2011 (and if you'd like some ideas, you might write and post a review** of it on the internet, feature the book in a blog post, talk about the new trilogy on a discussion board, or something along those lines. Be as creative as you like, too.) I will draw four names at random from everyone who participates and send the winners a signed ARC of Nightborn. This giveaway is open to everyone on the planet, even if you've won something here at PBW in the past.

*Please note that this is not a contest for who promises to do the most. That said, I do expect the winners to keep their pledges, so please be realistic about what you actually can do.

**In regard to writing reviews, there are no expectations here or any strings attached. If you don't care for the book after reading, you are not expected to lie and/or throw up fake gushing reviews; nor will I hate you forever if you rate it with three stars or less. I don't care about stars. Just be honest and we're good.

Prezzie Ten

Ten Things That Make Great Writer Gifts

Book Store Gift Card. I know, you're tired of me saying this every year, but it's the truth: we adore them (and so do your reader friends.) Most online booksellers offer versions that you can send via e-mail, making them also uber convenient to give to faraway friends.

Books. We not only write them, we also read them. Obsessively. Some ideas: buy a collector's edition of your writer pal's favorite novel, a boxed set of their most loved series, or hunt for something they might not expect (I can now happily second Cloth Dragon's rec of Bridge of Birds; this is a fabulous story, very funny and a complete delight to read.) If you're still not sure, ask your pal to make up a wishlist.

Get-Together. If you live close enough to your writer to hang with them, schedule a day when you can drag them out of their writing cave and take them to lunch, a movie, a museum, a coffee shop or any place that keeps out of the writing cave for a couple of hours. The more creative and inspiring the surroundings, the better chance you have of recharging their batteries, which is the whole point of the gift.

Guest Post: If you and your writer pal both have blogs, offer to write a guest post for them, conduct an interview, or provide some other material they can showcase at their place during the holidays. This will give them the corresponding time off to do something else, and add some interesting and unexpected content to their blog.

Paper. One year a friend of mine who likes to read my stories in manuscript form left on my doorstep a carton of high-quality printer paper with this note attached: Write Faster. It was a gag gift, but at the time I was down to my last ream, so it turned out to be a very useful one. Other welcome gifts of paper can be card stock, photo paper, postcard or business card form paper, or any specialty type paper they use on a regular basis (check around their printer or in their supply cabinet to see what they're using.)

Proofing: If you happen to be an excellent proof reader, offer to be your writer's second pair of eyes and proof a manuscript for them. Often we're reluctant to ask others to help with this, as it can be a big job. Professional proof-readers can be costly to hire, so this is also quite a valuable gift.

Story Storage: Writers constantly need to stores notes, research materials and other story ephemera in an organized fashion; give you writer something to use for this that is attractive, different, and/or has lots of dividers and pockets. If you're creative or crafty, design or upcycle a set of notebooks or binders with your writer's favorite colors, textures, imagery, or anything that might help inspire them. If you'd rather they do the shopping, a gift card to their local office supply store is also most welcome.

Time. None of us have enough of it these days, so a gift of time is practically priceless. You can get creative with this, too; offer to babysit, run errands, do housework or any other task you can take off your writer's hands to give them that time in exchange. Tell them to use the time off to do anything they want: write, read, relax, whatever. Since my mom has been here she's been taking care of the laundry, and that has given me at least an extra hour per day to do with as I please. Trust me, if you can manage it, this is a stupendous gift.

Tools. Writers simply love anything that can be used for the purposes of writing. Lately Writer's Bloc has been my one-stop online shop for stylish writing supplies; their sales are pretty decent and they ship fast (I love their line of Clairefontaine note stuff; they're gorgeous.) Or go to your local office supply store and fill up a bag with stuff you know your writer uses or covets.

Write or Create for Them: Among my most cherished possessions are some stories, letters, and poems that other writers have written for me. I consider all of them gifts. That goes for anything you make with a creative talent other than writing. I know the emphasis every holiday is on what you can buy, but there are things that cannot be purchased, like friendship. Whatever you give of yourself and your talent will be treasured for years to come.

Editing Ever Afters

Thanks to NaNoWriMo, writers around the planet wrote 3,073,723,493 new words during the month of November 2011. If you divide that by 50K, that's more than sixty-one thousand novels. That just blows my mind.

Most of these new novels will probably need to be edited and corrected, and will have significant portions that require rewriting and revising. Which is why we should probably designate the months of December, January and February as The International Fix the Book Festival (in reality there is a NaNoEdMo, which takes place in March, details for which you can read about here.)

As soon as I'm finished writing a novel, I do take some time off to recharge before I do my book-length edit. These days I try to give myself at least two weeks downtime, but if that's not possible I shoot for a minimum of 48 hours. During my downtime I devote myself to making my writer side part ways with the book. Which means I don't look it, I don't check anything, and I definitely try very hard not to think about it.

The break between writing and editing is important to my process, not just to refill the well but to put a little distance between me and a story I've been living with and working on daily for weeks and months and even years. It also allows me to shift from storyteller to self-editor, also imperative if I'm going to edit as objectively as I can.

I usually have no problem separating from a book once I've wrapped up the writing end of it. Crossing the finish line is a good feeling most of the time -- there's a lot of satisfaction to be had simply by getting the job done -- but occasionally that feeling doesn't happen, at which point it's more important than ever that I give myself some time away from the novel.

99% of the time I think these negative feelings are caused by doubt or worry over another factor, like concern over the quality of the writing, the actual chances of selling it, and/or what everyone will think about it (that one regularly strikes first-time novelists.) For pros it can be caused by something like a new editor, or a change of publishers, or the first book in a new series.

When it happens to me, I start to question myself, and of course I blame the writing because that's right in front of me and feels like the source of the negativity. I start having these radical urges that tell me to gut the manuscript, or start over, or cancel the contract, or give up Publishing altogether and go into the quilt business.

This is another reason why I think that break between writing and editing is so necessary. Post-novel, writers can at times be like little kids suffering from separation anxiety. Some of us get scared and don't want to let go.

Once I feel like my emotions aren't going to drag me and my manuscript under the bed and keep us there until next Christmas, I set up an editing schedule. Because I do a complete pass of the full manuscript, I divide the work into chapters starting at the beginning. Unless I'm under a severe time crunch, I generally don't edit more than three or four chapters a day, nor do I edit less than two. Editing too much of the book in one session can cause me to rush the reading and miss things I should have caught; editing too little of the book makes me more prone to linger and overthink and second-guess.

A few years back I wrote a blog post that detailed in general how I edit, and that really hasn't changed. I think these days I'm a better proof-reader, simply because I've spent so many years proofing manuscripts. I'll still use spell-check once I've finished typing in all my corrections, but my days of multiple spell-checks of any manuscript are over (and this is primarily due to Microsoft making it too wonky to be useful.)

All of this is not to say that you have to edit your novel as I do mine. Just as writing is a process unique to the writer, so is editing. I'd try any advice that you think might work well for you, but don't be afraid to evolve your own approach, either. You may find yourself editing happily ever after each book you write, and that's the sort of HEA we all want.

Related links: Carrie Kei Heim Binas's blog post on using Wordle as an editing tool ~ Do You Copy? Tips on Copy Editing Your Own Work by Janice Hardy ~ Proofreading and Editing Tips: a compilation of advice from experienced proofreaders and editors