Victoria Janssen's Blog, page 120

Nifty Stuff That Ought To Be In Romance Novels

Nifty Stuff That Ought To Be In Romance NovelsBored with billionaire heroes and heroines who own their own antique shops? Be bored no more! Include these elements in your romance, and watch it catch fire! (Keep extinguisher handy, and always make sure your smoke detector has batteries that work.)1. A Trebuchet.The Atomic Bomb of the Middle Ages.You don't even have to use it in a medieval

Raymond Chandler, on time to write

Today I'm a guest at fellow Spice author Amanda McIntyre's House of Muse Blog, for "Coffee Talk." Please stop by and chat if you have a chance!For a LiveJournal charity auction, I am offering your name as a character in The Duke and the Pirate Queen. You do not need a LiveJournal account to bid. How To Bid. Information about the auction itself and its purpose. Bidding closes October 10, 2009

Everyone should read the Temeraire books.

"Patrick O'Brian meets Jane Austen meets Dragons."Just in case you haven't read Naomi Novik's Temeraire series yet, I'm going to tell you why you should. And the chief reason to do so is not "because you don't have enough books already."Temeraire is a dragon. With his captain, William Laurence, and a vast number of other dragons, he serves the king of England in fighting Napoleon. The prose

Finish It. That's All.

Sometimes I think there's only one piece of writing advice. "Finish it." Finish the novel, finish the short story, finish something and then edit it or move on to the next thing and learn something new.I don't care if it's bad. You can't do anything with a story that's in scattered fragments. And if "finishing" means discarding a piece that's beyond repair, and starting on something new which

Maili McVane's Keeper Categories - Exploring Category Romance

Please welcome my guest, sometimes known as Maili and sometimes known as McVane.#I have a love-and-hate relationship with category romances. I love it because it has great diversity and I hate it because it lacks diversity. Either way, category romance novels are the spine of the Romance industry. It's so part of the industry that it doesn't get the respect it truly deserves. It's cheap. Readily

"She's So Unusual" - Exploring Category Romance

Category romances, contrary to many peoples' beliefs, are not at all the same. Sometimes, they push boundaries.I have not yet read Mallory Rush's Kiss of the Beast, a Harlequin Temptation that features an alien hero (the only alien hero I've heard of in a category), but it looks very interesting, and was recommended to me twice.In Judith Arnold's Barefoot in the Grass (1996), the heroine is a

Victoria Janssen's Keeper Categories - Exploring Category Romance

I had a difficult time narrowing down this list--I tend to keep a lot of books--but finally decided to choose books I am most likely to re-read more than once. (Also, I did not include any of Carla Kelly's Regency categories because that would be the whole post. Take it as read that I recommend her. I'll probably do a post focused on her alone one of these days. Or several posts.) A good

SuperWendy's Keepers - Exploring Category Romance

Please welcome my guest, the incredible SuperWendy!#When Victoria asked me if I'd be interested in doing a guest blog post for her, I immediately said yes, for no other reason than we both adore category romance. Yep, we're both unabashed, slobbering fangirls for all things Harlequin, and aren't afraid to declare our love pretty much all over the Internet. So when it came to figuring out a

Exploring Category Romance - SuperWendy's Keepers

Please welcome my guest, the incredible SuperWendy!#When Victoria asked me if I'd be interested in doing a guest blog post for her, I immediately said yes, for no other reason than we both adore category romance. Yep, we're both unabashed, slobbering fangirls for all things Harlequin, and aren't afraid to declare our love pretty much all over the Internet. So when it came to figuring out a

Lori Devoti - Exploring Category Romance

Please welcome my guest, author Lori Devoti.#About NocturneAs soon as I heard about Harlequin's new dark paranormal line, I knew I wanted to write for it. At the time I was writing (though not published in) paranormal, but it was all light. Writing a Nocturne was quite a departure for me, but almost all of my reading at the time was dark, so I thought "Why not give it a try?" That try was my June