Victoria Janssen's Blog, page 65
March 28, 2011
Saddle Shoes
If you missed it Friday evening, I posted on "Undressing the Hero: Judith Ivory's Untie My Heart" for Heroes and Heartbreakers.
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For my birthday this year, I decided to get myself a pair of shoes. My first choice was well out of my price range, but then I remembered a pair of saddle shoes I'd owned and loved back when I was in high school.
Oxfords seem to be "in" right now, and it was pretty easy for me to find a moderately-priced pair from Bass. I'd worn that brand years ago, so knew...
March 27, 2011
Siegfried Sassoon, "The Death-Bed"
The Death-Bed
He drowsed and was aware of silence heaped
Round him, unshaken as the steadfast walls;
Aqueous like floating rays of amber light,
Soaring and quivering in the wings of sleep.
Silence and safety; and his mortal shore
Lipped by the inward, moonless waves of death.
Someone was holding water to his mouth.
He swallowed, unresisting; moaned and dropped
Through crimson gloom to darkness; and forgot
The opiate throb and ache that was his wound.
Water–calm, sliding green above the...
March 26, 2011
Robert Service, "My Bay'nit"
My Bay'nit
When first I left Blighty they gave me a bay'nit
And told me it 'ad to be smothered wiv gore;
But blimey! I 'aven't been able to stain it,
So far as I've gone wiv the vintage of war.
For ain't it a fraud! when a Boche and yours truly
Gits into a mix in the grit and the grime,
'E jerks up 'is 'ands wiv a yell and 'e's duly
Part of me outfit every time.
Left, right, Hans and Fritz!
Goose step, keep up yer mits!
Oh my, Ain't it a shyme!
Part of me outfit every time.
At toasting a...
March 25, 2011
Academic Heroines
I wrote a post, "Undressing the Hero: Judith Ivory's Untie My Heart" for Heroes and Heartbreakers that will go live sometime today. I'll add in the direct link once I have it.
Now on to today's topic. I don't intend to make "unusual heroines" a weekly thing, but I do want to know…where are the romance heroines who are academics?
Career academic who solves murders, yes: Quieter than Sleep
by Joanne Dobson, which I mentioned yesterday. Grad student swept into fantasy realm where she has ...
March 24, 2011
New Finds and New DNFs – Mystery
I've been on a mystery kick lately, and I tried some new-to-me authors this time around.
Winners for me were Chelsea Cain (Heartsick) and Joanne Dobson (Quieter than Sleep and its sequels) and Barbara Hamilton, who is actually Barbara Hambly, one of my favorite writers (The Ninth Daughter). Alas, there are only two of the Abigail Adams mysteries – the second one is on its way to me now.
Losers were varied. Mystery series often have a theme of some kind. I tried one with a detective...
March 23, 2011
Accepting Compliments
I have to work on accepting compliments about my writing.
It's weird to think of that as a skill that one must acquire, but the more I talk to people about my writing, the more I realize how difficult it is to walk the fine line between sounding like you're bragging, and unrealistic self-deprecation. The problem is worse, I think, for women; part of our socialization, in most places in the world, includes being modest about our abilities and our hard work. There's a reason why women in ...
March 22, 2011
Tagging on Amazon
I've been wondering – how often have you found a book on Amazon through their category search?
Apparently, those categories are somewhat fueled by tags applied to items by users. Many items with the same tag, for instance "erotic romance," can be found through clicking on a tag. Amazon's tagging FAQ.
I confess, I have not used this functionality very much, but I have been thinking about it more lately. I made sure to tag each of my own books with relevant tags, for instance "world...
March 21, 2011
Welcome to my website!
This is the official website of writer Victoria Janssen.
You can email her at victoriajanssen [at] yahoo [dot] com.
You'll find website navigation at the top of this page. Scroll down this page for blog posts, or if you're looking for a particular post, use the search functions to the left.
I hope you enjoy your visit!
Back to Basics
I'm fairly busy this month with my other main creative outlet, choir, as well as a number of social obligations. Perhaps as a consequence, I'm not only writing very little on the new project, I'm not thinking about writing very much–beyond thinking, "I'm not writing!" several times a day with varying degrees of chagrin.
I have to keep reminding myself that this is part of my process. It's happened before, and it will happen again: I reach a point where I want to begin something...
March 20, 2011
Maurice Baring, "August 1918 (In a French Village)"
August 1918 (In a French Village)
I hear the tinkling of a cattle bell,
In the broad stillness of the afternoon;
High in the cloudless haze the harvest moon
Is pallid as the phantom of a shell.
A girl is drawing water from a well,
I hear the clatter of her wooden shoon;
Two mothers to their sleeping babies croon,
And the hot village feels the drowsy spell.
Sleep, child, the Angel of Death his wings has spread;
His engines scour the land, the sea, the sky;
And all the weapons of Hell's...
