Jennifer Crusie's Blog, page 28

Argh Author: Deb Blake’s Wickedly Wonderful

Our own Deb Blake has a reissue out now.

Known as the wicked witch of Russian fairy tales, Baba Yaga is not one woman, but rather a title carried by a chosen few. They keep the balance of nature and guard the borders of our world, but don’t make the mistake of crossing one of them…

Though she looks like a typical California surfer girl, Beka Yancy is in fact a powerful yet inexperienced witch who’s struggling with her duties as a Baba Yaga. Luckily she has her faithful dragon-turned-dog for moral support, especially when faced with her biggest job yet…

A mysterious toxin is driving the Selkie and Mer from their homes deep in the trenches of Monterey Bay. To investigate, Beka buys her way onto the boat of Marcus Dermott, a battle-scarred former U.S. Marine, and his ailing fisherman father.

While diving for clues, Beka drives Marcus crazy with her flaky New Age ideas and dazzling blue eyes. She thinks he’s rigid and cranky (and way too attractive). Meanwhile, a charming Selkie prince has plans that include Beka. Only by trusting her powers can Beka save the underwater races, pick the right man, and choose the path she’ll follow for the rest of her life….

Buy Links
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Apple | Kobo
Author Links:
Etsy: https://deborahblake.etsy.com
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/deborahblake
Website: http://deborahblakeauthor.com/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...

Bio
Deborah Blake is the author of the Baba Yaga Series from Berkley (Wickedly Dangerous, Wickedly Wonderful, Wickedly Powerful), as well as the Broken Rider Series, the Veiled Magic series and the cozy mystery Catskills Pet Rescue series. She has written over a dozen books on modern witchcraft with Llewellyn Worldwide, along with a tarot and an oracle deck. When not writing, Deborah also works as a tarot reader, and energy healer. She lives in a 130-year-old farmhouse in rural upstate New York with various cats who supervise all her activities, both magical and mundane.

Crusie Guide to Art 11

“The Fortune-Teller” by Georges de la Tour, c.1632 – c.1635, possibly a forgery.

Happiness is Real Books

Okay, I know you can’t buy happiness, but you can buy beautiful hardcovers and that are very happy making, not just because they’re beautiful, but because inside are some of the best times you’ve ever had reading. I just wrote a scene in which a guy who is leaving My Girl buys her a box full of hardcovers of her favorite books because he knows she has all them all in digital form, but he also knows that to make a home, you need books, beautiful books on shelves and not-so-beautiful books–some of them are very old out of print novels–but the books you love, like old friends around you, worlds you love you can escape to. And then since I’d given those books to My Girl in her story, I bought some for me in real life–Pratchets and a gorgeous reprint of the first Rivers of London–because I want those in my house. I want to be able to walk by a bookshelf and just pick one off. That makes me so happy.

What made you happy this week?

This is a Good Book Thursday

I was reading a really interesting romance and then the heroine started rejecting the hero for no reason and there was a big misunderstanding, and I just couldn’t go on. So I reread a Loretta Chase and felt better. Rereading: it’s a good thing.

What did you read or reread this week?

Working Wednesday, June 5, 2024

So here’s the thing about work: half the battle is figuring out HOW to do something. For us, it’s this new collaboration.

We already knew that Bob is a linear writer and I write in patterns. That is, he starts at the beginning and goes on to the end, with much revision, and I skip around the story, writing the scenes as the appear to me. On one book, that’s not too bad, Bob keeps going in a straight line and I fit my stuff in where it logically appears in his story line and then we rewrite a thousand times and we have a book.

But now we’re writing trilogies, and I have just realized that Bob is starting at the beginning of one book and getting to the end and assuming (after much rewriting) that we’re done, and I’m looking at the series as a whole, leaping back forth among the books, and I won’t be done with Rocky Start until we’re well underway on The Honey Pot Plot. And I had a meltdown that Rocky Start was coming out in three weeks and I wasn’t finished rewriting it yet. Bob, who really does have the patience of a saint, put it back for me even though he was sure we were finished. So let’s have a round of applause for a good work partner who sighs a lot but always come through.

How did your work week go?

Another Admin Note: New Release Date

I was having fits about getting Rocky Start out at the end of June, and Bob, my long suffering collaborator, pushed it back until the end of July. Thank you, Bob.

Admin: Quick Reminder on Argh Author, Etc.

Three things:

1. While we value lurkers, if you’re not part of the conversation, nobody knows you. That’s fine, but it means nobody will recognize you which means you’re not part of what makes the community. Become part of the community for a couple of months and ask again. Or don’t–it’s a time sink, I understand, nothing wrong with lurk, I do it myself other places–but then understand that I can’t give you a post to serve a community that’s never met you. Which means if Susan does Macbeth again, we want to know, but if Brad Pitt asks for an Argh Actor post, he’s not gonna get one, no matter how much he begs.

2. If you do post here–YAY!–please don’t send me the title of your book or art or anything else without that accompanying information I asked for (see below). The idea is that you tell me exactly what you want the post to say and I cut and paste it, not that we go back and forth while I try to pull information from you. I don’t have the time for that and neither do you.

3. Please make sure this is your work. Don’t send me things that somebody else has done or information about a shop you run that sells work by other people, no matter how lovely it is. If you have an Etsy shop where you sell things that you make, have at it with a picture of one thing that you have made and a link, but this is not an advertising opportunity or primarily a way to sell to this community (although if people volunteer to buy, have at it), it’s an opportunity to share your work with a community that wants to know what you’re doing because you’re a part of it.

Here’s that information I need to know to put up a post;

• Your user name here on Argh.
• The name on your book or whatever if it’s different from your username.
• Any title or name for your work.
• The blurb from your book, which I may cut if it’s longer than the book itself.
• The website (probably yours) that has the book info on it.
• Buy links, or the links where the thing you’re sharing can be found.
• Anything else you want included.
• Send to jennycrusie@gmail.com. (Please do not write that on any bathroom walls.)
• Be aware that I will reject anything harmful to this community including personal attacks and anything that promotes homophobia, sexism, racism, religious intolerance, or Trump. I can do that. It’s my blog. Those have always been the rules, and in the eighteen years I’ve had this blog, I think I’ve removed three comments, one of them mine. I like that about us and I’m gonna keep it that way.

Crusie Guide to Art 10

This is “The Lady of Shallot” by Arthur Hughes, which I was surprised to find out because I thought it was Ophelia. Lot of strange women lying in ponds in British lit, as a famous British person once put it. Along with watery tarts and moistened bints.

Happiness is Being Close to the Finish Line

I’ve spent the weekend working on the truck draft of Very Nice Funerals. Bob had written as far as he could and I needed to do my stuff, but I couldn’t get a grip on the book. It had all this good stuff in it, but it wasn’t making sense to me, so I spent weeks doing diagrams and tables and writing scenes as they came to mind, not knowing if they’d even fit. And then this week, I got it. I knew what I needed to write and what I needed to rewrite, I knew where everything went and all I had to do was do it. So I’m doing it. We’ll have this done pretty soon. That makes me SO happy, not just because it’ll be done but because I know what the book is about now.

Happiness is getting close to the end of something you’re doing that you love.

What made you happy this week?

One more thing: Before I started the rewrite, I sent a synopsis to Bob and asked if he was okay with it.

Admin Note: About Argh Author

I just realized that it’s been awhile (years?) since I explained what the Argh Author posts are about.

They’re about about this community. They’re about the people who post in here on Working Wednesday and Good Book Thursday, who engage in conversations, who are a visible and active part of the community. Those people. And the Argh Author goes up whenever one of Those People has finished something that’s ready for the rest of the community to look at and read. Which means that I don’t care if it’s traditionally published or self-published or fan fiction or a deck of tarot cards, I care that it’s something the community is interested in because they know the author.

You may have noticed from my books–those of you who read my books, that’s not a requirement to hang out here–that I’m a bug about community. So I am not interested in letting authors who are not part of here just drop in to push a book. But if you’re active here and you’ve got something to share, don’t hesitate to e-mail me and say, “I just finished this and here’s where the Argh people can find it.” You don’t have to apologize for asking, and you don’t need to qualify it by saying, “It’s not a book, it’s a tarot deck” or “It’s not a whole novel, it’s just a short story,” or even “It’s my master’s thesis and I’m damn proud of it.” As you should be. I look at it as the same as sharing pet pictures. It’s something we want to see. We may not read it or even buy it, but we want to know what you’re doing. Because it’s us. And you’re part of us.

So here’s what I need in an e-mail if you want an Argh Author post:
Your user name here on Argh.
The name on your book or whatever if it’s different from your username.
The blurb from your book, which I may cut if it’s longer than the book itself.
The website (probably yours) that has the book info on it.
Buy links, or the links where the thing you’re sharing can be found.
Anything else you want included.
Sent to jennycrusie@gmail.com. (Please do not write that on any bathroom walls.)

And then I just cut and paste right from the doc you send me into the blog.

And now that we’re talking about this, I’ve been thinking we should consider doing a variation on this called Argh Artist. We have at least one master quilter on here, and at least one really good painter, and I’m not sure how many other artists are on here because we’ve never shared that. So maybe we should do the same thing for visual art. It’ll be like Argh Author, not a weekly thing, just whenever somebody has something they want to share with the community.

I’ve been thinking about this because I’ve been dealing with PR now that we’re self-publishing (although from what I hear even trad published writers are having to do that) which has made me think what this blog is about. My nod to that is Facebook, and I should probably be doing more than that, but not in here. Although I do mention my books here when they come out, since I previously did one a year and then nothing for ten years, it’s obvious that PR is not what this blog is for. For whatever reason we started it back 2006, it’s a community now and it’s going to stay a community where we talk about what we’re reading and what we’re writing and what else we’re working on and our animals and our good times and bad. And I kind of what to do Argh Animal posts because I like animals and I love seeing the pictures, but I don’t want to overload this place.

The big thing for me is that since I just cut and paste, these community posts aren’t a lot of work–you do the work and send it to me–and I think they might be good. But if you’re already getting too many Argh posts in your mailbox, and you want to keep the focus on reading and writing, then new Artist and Animal posts would be too much. Don’t mess with a good thing, Jenny.

This is your space. I just hang out here to see what you all are doing. So tell me what you want in the comments, please. And while you’re at it, let me know any other way things could be improved here.

And I thank you for your support.