Megan Chance's Blog, page 41

More vacation

Hanging out on the beach with Kristin Hannah, Jill Barnett, and Jill Marie Landis but Jill would not let me go into the water because it was too cloudy and she was afraid I'd get eaten by sharks. :)  In the meantime, here is a picture of the sunset I saw today:
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Sunday Thoughts

So ... a few pithy comments for your Sunday reading pleasure:

My daughter has received her driver's learning permit, which means that now I get to add driving instructor to my rapidly growing resume. I do not believe I am constitutionally inclined for such a thing, for these reasons:
1) I never get into a car (or actually, any moving vehicle) without wanting to be out of it, like RIGHT NOW.
2) I get horribly motion sick (I get sick on a swing, for God's sake), and rapid stops and sudden hammer blows to the gas pedal do not help this in any way.
3) Years of working as a television news photographer (where your job is to get to places as quickly as possible, so you can then wait around for hours for something to happen), mean that I have no patience at all for slow drivers, which is directly at odds with
4) I am constantly thinking she is driving much too fast, and on the verge of complete lack of control, which means I am also constantly lunging for the wheel, thus ensuring that we will be in a terrible accident, and which leads to conversations like this: "Mom, I saw you tense up." "How could you see me tense up? You're supposed to be watching the road."

I've been watching HBO's Mildred Pierce, which I've been enjoying, almost in spite of the fact that it may be the slowest storytelling I've ever experienced. I usually spend the hour in this combined riveted/bored out of my mind state, which is confusing, to say the least. I've now watched four of the five episodes, and will watch the last one, but I keep waiting for some huge ball to drop and destroy the world or something. And it's not helped by long minutes of contemplative staring into space done by beautiful people. Not that there's anything wrong with that, exactly ... anyone who has ever entered my office will attest that it is filled with photos of beautiful people staring vacantly into space (in my very soul, I'm still a 16 year old girl), but I'm rather under the impression that moving pictures means things are ... moving.

I've now read the fourth installment of Cassandra Clare's Mortal Instruments trilogy, City of Fallen Angels, which I liked very much, and the second in Holly Black's Curse Workers trilogy, Red Glove, which I also loved. Both are young adult series, and both move very quickly and are excellent both in character development and storytelling. I also went to see Cassandra Clare speak at a Kitsap Reads event. It's always nice to get out and hear what another author has to say about writing, and this was no exception.

Passover begins on Monday (my husband is Jewish), so I'll spend the next few days eating matzo and sponge cake before I switch gears for Easter (all leavened, all the time), which still feels to be a strange dichotomy and faintly blasphemous on both sides. However, matzo is very good when eaten with a little salt and a Cadbury mini egg.

Tonight Game of Thrones begins, which I'm hyped for. Then another episode of The Borgias, where I'm waiting for Lucretia to give in to the bloodthirsty little tyrant I know she harbors in her very soul.

And I am still coughing.

Just Stuff

Really I wish the mood could be updated to “still” sick, because we’re going on three weeks now with a nasty cough that is keeping me up at night. Though I have to confess, it’s not only the cough, but the fact that the newest ms is keeping my head spinning so it’s impossible to sleep. I suppose that’s a good thing. :) 

My television watching schedule has completely ramped up: I watched an HBO documentary on the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire in NYC (it’s the hundred year anniversary), which killed 149. It was devastating and remarkable. And then changed gears completely to watch the first episode of The Borgias last night, which I liked–it felt like a setup episode to me, but I’m completely ready to fling myself into the series. I’ve missed The Tudors and all that conspiracy, bloodletting, wickedness and illicit sex (and, I’ll admit, my weekly fix of Jonathan Rhys Meyers). I’m also excited about watching Game of Thrones, though I’ve never read the books. But give me a good medieval-set fantasy any day. I’d be all over Starz’s Camelot (I’ve an Arthurian obsession from way back), but as I don’t have Starz, I’m going to have to wait for the DVD. And ... The Vampire Diaries is back from hiatus. My poor heart isn’t going to know what to do with all the melodrama. 

I can't stop thinking about David Nicholls’ novel “One Day,” about two friends (ala Harry Met Sally) whose lives are revisited on the same day every year (which sounds like "Same Time Next Year" but isn't). It was funny and poignant and I really, really liked it. Cassandra Clare’s “City of Fallen Angels” comes out today, so it's next on my list--I love this YA series--and then I'm sinking into the second book of Holly Black's newest YA series,  “Red Glove.”

And I finally got a chance to listen to Florence and the Machine, which I think it going to be my new favorite for a while. 

So ... I think April’s going to be a pretty good month.

Signings

So we've got signings galore coming up for the June release of City of Ash. Only western Washington so far, unfortunately, but things are always evolving, so stay tuned. You can always check the "Upcoming Events" tag on my website: www.meganchance.com, where I'll keep the schedule.

For now, we've got:

June 7, 2011-- Third Place Books, Lake Forest Park, Washington, 7:00 p.m.
June 8, 2011--Liberty Bay Books, Poulsbo, Washington, 6:30 p.m. (it's probably going to be held in the back room of the Loft, which is the restaurant next door)
June 9, 2011--Village Books, Bellingham Washington, 7:00 p.m.
June 17, 2011--Seattle Mystery Bookshop, Seattle, Washington, 12 noon

Hope to see some of you there.

In the meantime, I've read the last book in the James Ellroy trilogy that began with "American Tabloid." "Blood's A Rover," is a little different from the other two--just as profane and with just as many truly repulsive and horrible events (one in particular I'm still thinking about), and I wasn't sure how much I was loving it until about 2/3s of the way through. Then it just clicked in and was completely fascinating. There are some real characters in this book, and the development of their relationships and connections was just very cool.

Also just downloaded "Florence and the Machine." Haven't had time to listen to it yet, but I've been riveted everytime I've seen them perform on television, so I'll let you know. Cleaning the bathroom tomorrow, which will give me plenty of time to groove on it. Thank God for ipods.

That's all for now ...

New Website Design

The new design for my website is up, including pages for my June 2011 release, City of Ash. There's an excerpt there as well. Enjoy!

www.meganchance.com

Back to Some much Needed Reading

January and February, what happened to my usual hours of blissful, uninterrupted reading?

Well, okay, those hours are rarely uninterrupted. Sometimes they're not the least bit blissful either, but as I look at my booklog for the last two months, I am appalled at what's listed there, because instead of the 6-8 books I should have read since the start of the year, I have listed ... two.

This seems impossible until I remember that I spent most of January re-reading and correcting the scans of  the historical romances that I've now made available as ebooks--see my previous posts, or go to Amazon.com or barnesandnoble.com to check them out. That took a little more than three weeks. After that, my front porch spilleth over with the second pass page proofs for June's City of Ash and a fellow author's manuscript which I had to critique (a labor of love, of course--and besides, I owe her, as she reads mine). And for the few days in between these things, I managed to fit in those two books, and several magazines, because the Oscars are coming up, and as I believe I've mentioned before, it takes a bit of research to get my ballot in order (not as much research this year. I'm trying to relax--this is not an easy thing for me to accomplish, and thus far I'm failing pretty miserably, but one does what one can).

So now things are looking up a bit. City of Ash is put to bed as far as my part is concerned, and now there's only the waiting for it to be published. Time is suddenly seeming a much more flexible construct. I've got a pile of books to read, and I'm attacking them starting tonight.

The world seems a much cheerier place of a sudden.

Another E-book

The last of the old historical romances published by Dell is up today--I'm still working on getting the rights resolved on the other four, which I hope to do soon. My plan is to have them all available in ebook format in the next six months.

A Heart Divided was a finalist for Romance Writers of America's Golden Heart award in 1991--this is their contest for unpublished manuscripts--and it sort of languished for awhile until it was published by Dell in 1996, so it actually predates the others. This one takes place on the windswept, snowy Colorado plains. Pinkerton agent Conor Roarke returns to the woman he betrayed intending to betray her again (because he's clearly an idiot) and finds that nothing is as easy as he'd thought it would be.

Here is the Kindle version, and the Nook version.

New E-Book release

Another of my old historical romances is available now on Kindle and Nook. After the Frost was my second published book (1994). It takes place in Lancaster, Ohio, (which is where many of my relatives live, so I'm intimately familiar with it) during the waning canalboat days, when Ohio was crisscrossed with working canals, before the transcontinental railroads managed to make them irrelevant. This one was inspired by a dream I had, where I returned home after many years away, and in the book, that's exactly what happens. Belle Sault returns after six years to face the scandal she fled and retrieve the daughter she left behind. But she doesn't reckon on the fact that the child's father (her stepbrother and childhood sweetheart) has no intention of releasing their daughter. Nor does Belle count on the desire that's still between them.

I'd forgotten a lot of this book--it had been years since I'd even looked at it--and I was pleasantly surprised to read it again. Lots of agonizing, of course, but some pretty strong sexual tension too. It was fun to revisit it.

Here's the Kindle link, and the Nook.  Enjoy!

Old romance, new ebook

Another of the old historical romances is now available as an ebook version--still only Kindle and Nook, but I hope to make them all available in other formats as well.

This time, we've got The Portrait. This book, along with A Candle in the Dark and Fall from Grace, was always one of my favorite of the romances, and it was a cult favorite as well when it was first released in 1995. It's about Jonas Whitaker, a bipolar, one-handed artist, in the mid-19th Century, and the woman who comes to love him. Given that there was no cure or treatment for bipolar illness at that time, the book is a bit bittersweet and very, very angsty, but Jonas was my favorite of my heroes before I came up with Michel in The Spiritualist, so that should tell you something.

Here's the Kindle link, and the Nook link.

I'll be bringing up After the Frost and A Heart Divided in the next few weeks, so keep your eye on this space!

Nook release of Candle in the Dark

Here, as promised, the link to the Nook version of A Candle in the Dark.

Up in the next week or so: The Portrait