Alison Kent's Blog, page 15

Cute Superhero Overload

Meet Brenna and Dillon

I'm a visual writer. I have to see my people. I have to see my places. I often dress characters from the Nordstrom site or the Fossil catalog. I use modeling agency shots for character images. But I never EVER use actors. Until now. I know lots of authors do, but I need to have faces that I see only as my people and not as the other characters they've played. Or as the actors themselves. For some reason, however, the minute I started writing Brenna and Dillon's story, this is how I saw them! So when you read my novella from Carina Press (12/5/2011) this is what you should imagine!

A new WotWS Books compilation from Portia Da Costa!

Portia Da Costa presents a medley of five of her short, sexy works previously published separately – offering over 40,500 steamy words at a value price that's half what you would pay to buy the items separately!

Here's a daring erotic potpourri of BDSM, exhibitionism, m/m, m/f/m, an office lust/hate relationship… and zombies! Although not all in one story, obviously – that's a project for another day, perhaps.

Check it out on Walk on the Wild Side Books!

GRAVEMINDER – a review

May 17, 2011

Graveminder by Melissa Marr

William Morrow

ISBN: 978-0061826870

reviewed by Katherine Hazen

I wouldn't necessarily recommend this book to just anyone. Don't get me wrong. I really enjoyed it, and would love to see more in this world. It was perfectly eerie, and a must for anyone the slightest bit interested in Southern Gothic.

However, one of the main protagonists, Rebekkah, is a little hard to connect with. I imagine she might rub some people the wrong way. So this may only be one for those who don't mind a protagonist who's a little rough around the edges. She has real flaws and real issues, and if you want your main character to be a bit more Mary-Sue'ish, this book isn't for you.

Unfortunately, it is hard to tell you much about the premise of this book without giving away spoilers. So I won't say much more about the premise, I think the summary that was originally posted tells you everything you need to know before reading the book:

Three sips to mind the dead . . .

Rebekkah Barrow never forgot the attention her grandmother Maylene bestowed upon the dead of Claysville, the small town where Bek spent her adolescence. There wasn't a funeral that Maylene didn't attend, and at each one Rebekkah watched as Maylene performed the same unusual ritual: She took three sips from a silver flask and spoke the words "Sleep well, and stay where I put you."

Now Maylene is dead, and Bek must go back to the place she left a decade earlier. She soon discovers that Claysville is not just the sleepy town she remembers, and that Maylene had good reason for her odd traditions. It turns out that in Claysville the worlds of the living and the dead are dangerously connected; beneath the town lies a shadowy, lawless land ruled by the enigmatic Charles, aka Mr. D. If the dead are not properly cared for, they will come back to satiate themselves with food, drink, and stories from the land of the living. Only the Graveminder, by tradition a Barrow woman, and her Undertaker—in this case Byron Montgomery, with whom Bek shares a complicated past—can set things right once the dead begin to walk.

Although she is still grieving for Maylene, Rebekkah will soon find that she has more than a funeral to attend to in Claysville, and that what awaits her may be far worse: dark secrets, a centuries-old bargain, a romance that still haunts her, and a frightening new responsibility—to stop a monster and put the dead to rest where they belong.

I gave myself a few days to let this simmer in the back of my head before writing my review, and I think the big conclusion I came to is this story is more about Byron than Rebekkah. Rebekkah may change the most, but I felt it was less about change and more about letting go of her baggage and accepting herself for who she is. Byron, on the other hand, is the one you find yourself silently routing for from the very beginning.

The things the delighted me most about this book were the world-building and the supporting cast. Marr excels in the creating and twisting mythologies department, and this book is no different. I think Alicia, Charles, and Amity were by far my favorite characters in this book. I would flock to the nearest bookstore to buy a sequel, if it were available, in order to get more of their stories. Overall, definitely a good read if you don't mind Rebekkah's issues.

Some Walk on the Wild Side Books Updates

Both AT HIS MERCY and LOVE ME TENDER are now available for download at All Romance Ebooks. I still hope to get my next WotWS short story finished this month, but right now that writing has to come after the cowboy writing. And between dentist visits and dealing with kid car issues and buying our own new car (the first in twelve years, yay), it's been crazy busy here, and I've only had time for my Dalton Gang.

But speaking of Walk on the Wild Side Books, Saskia Walker has a yummy new short story available! Pop over to the side for an excerpt and ordering info!

Emmanuelle Forsythe is the daughter of a lord, but she's embarking on a secret, forbidden affair with her father's estate manager, Jacob Finch. Jacob is as much a slave to their mutual desire as she is, even though he has been warned off.

On the night of her twenty-first birthday party, while the banker who her parents want her to marry is ensconced with her father, Emmanuelle defies her family's expectations by escaping to make love with Jacob in the gardens. Her behavior is decadent and passionate, a brief taste of something magical that she believes she can never truly own. But Jacob wants more than one night and asks her to keep seeing him, whatever the consequences.

My SEAL OF MY DREAMS story … what???

Ever since the idea took hold, I've been pondering what I want to write for my story in the SEAL OF MY DREAMS anthology. I'm very excited to be in the lineup with super action adventure novelists like Cindy Gerard, along with amazing contemporary romance novelists like Christie Ridgway. The list of authors means a great variety will be had in the compilation, and since I've written both action adventure with Brava and contemporary romance with Temptation and Blaze, etc., I'm torn about which direction to take. So I thought I'd come to you guys who actually read me and see what you'd like. I've got a couple of ideas for both sub-genres but am having trouble settling on what I want to do (which is hardly anything new with me). What do you think?

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

The CIG to Writing Erotic Romance winner is …

Moira Reid! Send your address to ak@alisonkent.com and I'll get that out to you!

The one where I host @LawrenceBlock, that's right!

While going through my writing books last week for my Left Behind and NOT Loving It Giveaway, I ran across this one as well as a few others that will stay on my shelves. Most any writer who's been at this game for awhile will know of Lawrence Block.

Somewhere around here I have one of his most popular writing how-tos, Telling Lies for Fun & Profit, but you'll just have to trust me on that since NO clue. Mr. Block is also an acclaimed crime writer, and in September, Hard Case Crime will release GETTING OFF which Publisher's Weekly has "complained" is extremely violent and erotic.

Now Lawrence Block interviews Jill Emerson, his occasional alter ego. Enjoy.

***

Lawrence Block: Well, where to begin? Let me say I understand you have a book coming out in September, and—

Jill Emerson: We.

LB: I beg your pardon?

JE: We have a book coming out in September. Getting Off, published by Hard Case Crime. By Lawrence Block writing as Jill Emerson. That's what it says, right there on the cover.

LB: Yes, of course.

JE: Your name's bigger.

LB: Uh. . .

JE: Lot's bigger. My name's in small type, the same size as the subtitle. You remember the subtitle?

LB: I believe it's "A Novel of Sex & Violence."

JE: There you go. Lawrence Block, big as a house, and then Jill Emerson and Sex and Violence, all in teensy weensy letters.

LB: You seem the slightest bit resentful.

JE: Oh, does it show?

LB: It was the publisher's idea. In fact I had to fight to get your name on the cover at all.

JE: What's the problem? Your publisher doesn't like girls?

LB: Look, it's a purely commercial consideration. I wasn't going to bring this up, but you haven't been very active lately.

JE: I've published seven novels. I started in 1965 with Warm & Willing and Enough of Sorrow, two sensitive fictional treatments of the lesbian experience. Then came Thirty and Threesome and A Madwoman's Diary, three works of literary experimentation in the field of innovative erotica. Next I wrote The Trouble With Eden—

LB: A road-company Peyton Place set in Bucks County.

JE: It had its moments. And I followed it with A Week as Andrea Benstock, a literary mainstream novel that got serialized in Redbook. Not bad, huh?

LB: That was in 1975. What have you done since then?

JE: Okay, I've kept a low profile. But whose fault is that? "Lawrence Block writing as Jill Emerson." But after 1975, you never put my name on anything. I mean, this interview is cute and all, but when you come right down to it, what am I?

LB: You tell me.

JE: An aspect of self, wouldn't you say?

LB: You think?

JE: What else?

LB: (musing) An aspect of myself. My inner lesbian.

JE: Bi.

LB: Bye? What's that about? Where are you going? Was it something I said?

JE: Bi, you idiot. As in sexual.

LB: What, suddenly you're into guys?

JE: Sometimes. (beat) Well, one guy. And no, I'm not telling.

LB: I bet I can guess.

JE: Can't you just pulleeze leave it alone?

LB: John Warren Wells.

JE: You think you're smart, don't you? So fucking smart.

LB: If you wanted to keep it a secret why did you dedicate a book to him? A Madwoman's Diary. "To John Warren Wells, a Jack of all trades and master of me."

JE: Why do you have to be so cruel?

LB: It's a guy thing, you wouldn't understand.

JE: He'd dedicated books to me, you know. He wrote a book about bisexuality.

LB: Women Who Swing Both Ways. Real classy title.

JE: He wanted to call it Versatile Ladies.

LB: Actually, that's not so bad.

JE: "This is for Jill Emerson, unquestionably versatile and every inch a lady."

LB: Sweet. And that wasn't the only book he dedicated to you, either. So I guess you owed him one.

JE: This one in particular. You know the kind of books he wrote. Psychosexual case histories groups of cases on one theme or another.

LB: He made them up.

JE: I suppose you can believe that if you want to. But in one book there was a chapter about this woman, and she's involved in this therapy group, and she has a pretty active sex life and a really interesting inner life, and I thought, hell, she could be the subject of a novel. So I more or less stole her story, and what I wrote turned out to be A Madwoman's Diary. Some halfwit at Berkley changed the title to Sensuous, but screw that. It's A Madwoman's Diary again.

LB: Thanks to the Open Road eBook. But you just swiped the story and turned it into a novel?

JE: You think I should have been afraid of a libel suit?

LB: I guess not, if it was one of Wells's case histories. He made it up out of the whole cloth, and then you fictionalized it, if you want to call it that.

JE: Novelized it. Better?

LB: A little. Let me get this straight, Jill. You're an aspect of self. My inner lesbian or inner bi woman or—

JE: Your inner hot number, Larry. Is it okay to call you Larry?

LB: If you feel you must. And John Warren Wells is—

JE: Another aspect of self. What else could he be?

LB: And you two aspects of me are—

JE: Enjoying each other's company, and what's so bad about that? It's not as if Sybil went and sat on the Three Faces of Eve. But we are so totally off point here. You said I haven't done anything since 1975, and that's crap. I've been writing. I've just had to do it anonymously.

LB: Oh?

JE: You're a great one at grabbing the credit, you know. Ronald Rabbit is a Dirty Old Man was supposed to be my book. You were writing it for Berkley, and all your friends liked it so much you yanked it away from me and published it in hardcover with Bernie Geis.

LB: Well, it was written from a male viewpoint, and—

JE: So fucking what? You can be a girl and I can't be a guy? You just wanted the glory. Anyway, I wrote other things, even if you stuck your name on them.

LB: Like?

JE: Like your big New York novel, Small Town. Oh, not all the post-9/11 urban terrorist stuff, you get the credit for that part, but where do you think Susan Pomerance came from? With her pierced nipples and her Brazilian landscaping? When she ducked under the table in the fancy restaurant and had her lawyer for dessert—

LB: All right, point taken.

JE: That was pure Jill Emerson. And when she got the two Wall Street suits to do each other—

LB: Drop it, will you?

JE: What choice do I have? You get to decide what I do or don't say. Are you going to let Jack Wells back into print? He wrote 21 books. Don't you figure the eWorld's ready for him?

LB: I've been thinking about it.

JE: You know what your problem is, Larry? You've got this yearning to be respectable. I say give it up and get real. Lawrence Block writing as John Warren Wells.

LB: Maybe. We'll see. But about Getting Off. You like the book, don't you?

JE: What's not to like?

LB: And the cover? Except for the fact that your name's not as big as mine.

JE: Now you're making me sound like a size queen. I fucking LOVE the cover, okay? I love the cover model, too. I'd like to do her until the knife blade melts.

LB: God, you're naughty.

JE: I can't help it. Can we write some more books like this? Not right away I know you've got other things to do, but, well, fairly soon?

LB: I hope so.

JE: Me too. And let our readers have a chance to check out JWW. Some of those books are dedicated to me, Larry Boy. People ought to be able to read them. It's only fair.

Five Favorite Tidbits from #RWA11

This from Dear Author's post-RWA wrap-up:

Family oriented sweet contemporaries, mostly set in some small town (make up your own if you don't want to use a real one), are hugely popular. Every editor I talked to seemed interested in those. I have no idea why urbanites aren't interesting. Also, the love of the cowboy hero was palpable.

This from Carolyn Jewel's tweetstream while attending Grand Central Publishing's spotlight:

Grand central is seeing increased interest in contemporary cowboy stories

This from Monica Kaye's tweetstream while attending a workshop where editors mentioned what they were looking for:

Alicia Condon- Hot contemporary western romance

This from a friend's email during conference:

Bookseller panel: Cowboys are uber hot right now. :)

This from agent Kristin Nelson's newsletter:

Contemporary cowboys seems to be on a lot of lists.

And why would these be my favorite tidbits? Well, because of this, of course.

Alison Kent's UNDENIABLE, in which three hellraising cowboys return home to Texas to revisit the past, stir pots long settled, and cause the sexiest kind of trouble for the women in town, to Wendy McCurdy at Berkley Heat, in a nice deal, in a two-book deal, by Laura Bradford at Bradford Literary Agency.

And the Writing Book Giveaway winners are …

Using Random.org, I have pulled the winners for the fifteen books I'm giving away.

If you're unsure whether you're the winner, click on the link that goes to the comment.

The Right to Write – comment #7 – Carol Burnside

Getting Into Character – comment #23 – Leslie

Immediate Fiction – comment #17 – Amanda

The Comic Toolbox – comment #1 – Sabrina

Writing the Thriller – comment #6 – Mary Briscoe

The Career Novelist – comment #14 – Patricia W

The First Five Pages – comment #23 – Laurie Logan

Seven Steps on the Writer's Path – comment #10 – Jax Bubis

The Key – comment #31 – Lulu

The Art of Fiction – comment #42 – Temar

Stein on Writing – comment #29 – Eva Tuxbury

Writing the Breakout Novel – comment#18 – Jennifer

The Art of Dramatic Writing – comment #3 – Audrey B

Wabi Sabi for Writers – comment #4 – Tricia Fields

Writing the Modern Mystery – comment #3 – Kwana

Remember, as was explained in every giveaway post, you need to contact me at ak@alisonkent.com with your mailing address by next Sunday, July 10, or else I'll be choosing another winner! Congratulations to all! I've got more books to give away, and I'll try to do that later this month! Also, I'll have a great guest blog up on Tuesday!