Victoria Janssen's Blog, page 73

Happy New Year!

My goals for the year:

Read. Write. Sing. Enjoy life. Be myself.

How about you?

The Year in Sales – 2010

Aside from The Duke and The Pirate Queen being out this month, I sold some short stories this year.



In January, "The Token" appeared in the print edition of Alleys & Doorways: Stories of Queer Urban Fantasy, edited by Meredith Schwartz.

In July, my flash fiction "The Princess"–only one hundred words long!–was in Alison Tyler's anthology for Spice, Alison's Wonderland.

In October, a reprint of "The Magnificent Threesome," a fun Western story, appeared in Linda Alvarez' anthology The Mammoth...

Best 3 Books I Read in 2011

Ask me tomorrow and I might change my mind, but at the moment, these are my three favorite books that I read in 2011. I chose each one for a different reason.

1. A Madness of Angels: Or The Resurrection of Matthew Swift by Kate Griffin. This is a fantasy novel, and urban fantasy in the truest sense because the magic is drawn from the city. It reminds me of the comic Hellblazer in some ways, but it's more wondrous, deeper and richer, and in the end much more hopeful. Griffin, who writes...

Satisfying Endings

This post was originally written for Shelley Munro's blog.



Though I read a lot, I was never good at articulating what made a satisfying ending for a novel. Over years of writing, I got better at endings, mostly thanks to fellow-workshoppers Ann Tonsor Zeddies and Holly Black and the trenchant comments they made on my first novel.

The main thing I learned from them was that if certain things don't happen at the end of a novel, the reader won't be happy (both have a gift for identifying...

The Lotus Eaters

This post was originally written for Stephanie Draven's blog.



One section of The Duke and the Pirate Queen would not exist if not for revisions.

When writing the synopsis for the novel I knew I had to visit an island, and if possible my protagonists needed to be taken captive by islanders. Since this was an erotic novel, the islanders would force them to compete in a sort of sexual display contest. It wasn't until I'd had a little break from the manuscript, though, that I realized I'd...

Philcon 2010 reports

Jared Axelrod really enjoyed the steampunk panel in which we both participated at Philcon 2010.

Brian Siano blogs about his experience at the steampunk event Dorian's Parlor, the following week.

Barbara Barnett on the pros and cons of her experience at Philcon 2010.

Among the Skiffoids, panel reports by Michael Flynn.

Lawrence Schoen on Day One.

Alyce Wilson's Reports and Photos.

Boxing Day, World War One

What? Boxing Day means something different?

A World War One Christmas Card

Researching Asian Pirates

This post was originally written for Jeannie Lin's blog.



This is the story of how I did NOT use a great deal of my research.

When I began writing The Duke and the Pirate Queen I knew that the heroine, Captain Imena Leung, was of mixed race; her mother from a fictional empire analogous to China, and her father from somewhere else. I never did decide exactly where he came from, as he has only a small role in the novel; I suspect he's from somewhere in this world's equivalent to the Southern P...

Why Pirates?

This post was originally written for Inez Kelley's blog.



I have never been a particular fan of pirates. They're really just thieves on boats, right? (*ducks missiles*)

Perhaps that's why the heroine of The Duke and the Pirate Queen was actually a privateer, sanctioned by her government to hunt pirates. She's on the side of Law. Mostly. She fought and fights against enemies who have fewer scruples than she does, and that makes them more dangerous.

However, even though I'm not fond of...