Marguerite Labbe's Blog, page 4

Writing on the Road NYC and Goals for the Rest of the Month

Wow, I can't believe August is half over. Now that I've recovered from my dueling deadlines for two stories that couldn't be more different from each other, it's time to dive back into work. I'd like to hit the 40% mark for the fantasy. I think that's easily doable. I'd also like to take a look at the mystery I started, part of a trilogy set in New Orleans. (My favorite city.) And get back to work on that.

Also, I have a couple cover reveals coming up. The sci-fi one is for the boxed set I'm in should be up August 31st. It's pretty sexy, y'all. I can't wait to share it. That should be out in October. The second is for "Other Side of the Line," an interracial, sweet romance that started as a fast friendship when the boys were kids. That will be up as soon as everything is finalized and will be out sometime in September.


Amtrak train Michelangelo sitting roomI thought it would be fun to post some pictures of places where I wrote recently. It was a three hour train ride so I brought along my laptop and worked on the final edit/read through of "Other Side of the Line." I almost managed to finish it on the train, but not quite. I had the best intentions to finish before bedtime, but by the time I made it to the hotel, found a place to eat and had a beer, I was ready to crash. (I've actually found two beers I like now.) And that hotel room was made for crashing. Now I know I work for a pretty swanky place. My husband calls it the Ivory Tower, but I don't often get to dip my little fingers on this side of the life. Normally, I'm putting together the expense reports on the other side and making the travel reservations. This hotel suite had two separate bathrooms. (Including a bidet.) One with a humongous tub. Now I love a huge tub. I love to read there when I get a chance. So no more working for me that night.

But since I'm used to waking up at 5:30 am and I didn't have to be in training until 9:30. I slept in a bit and had more than enough time to grab a coffee and finish up my edits in the super nice sitting room. I wish my husband and son could've come along. I think they would've loved it. So NYC wasn't the weirdest place I ever wrote, but it was definitely the swankiest!

Six Sentence Sunday - Fantasy with Iulian and Dmitri - Titleless

Over the years I’ve worked on and off on a number of fantasy books. I’ve decided that this year I’m going to finally finish one. This particular story involves a prince on the run turned courtesan and an exiled man-at-arms turned mercenary. It’s still titleless after all this time poking at it. *sighs and pokes again*
A slender man had been standing at the embrasure looking out with his hands clasped behind his back. As the door opened he turned and knelt in one smooth movement. “My lord,” he greeted in a low baritone. “How may I serve?”
Dmitri froze in the doorway for a moment taken aback by how much the man brought to his mind Prince Alexas. The prince had been slaughtered, along with the rest of his family years ago and with his death Dmitri had lost any chance of discovering why the prince had betrayed him.

New York City

Last week, my day job sent me to NYC to participate in a pilot training program. It’s been many years since I’ve been to New York. The last time was 2010 I think when I when up for the Rainbow Book Fair. I have many memories of the city. The first time was when I was seven and my dad was transferred from Ohio to base not far from Manhattan. I’ll never forget the acute shock of going from wide open prairies to those immense skyscrapers that clawed at the sky. We only lived in New York for a year, but I remember my time fondly, except for the Catholic school uniforms. Oh I hated those uniforms. We visited often after we settled down in Maryland. It’s not a far drive and it’s a nice train ride. My girlfriend and I used to come up a couple times a year to see a WWE show one night and a Broadway play the next.
After 9/11, it was always such a shock to come around the corner and have that part of the sky empty. Now after that long hiatus, when I was sitting on the train, I experienced the same kind of shock to see the new One World Trade Center building. It’s beautiful, it’s not the same. I think it’ll always ache to see it, but it’s good to see something there again. I get the same feeling when I go by the Pentagon. It’s fixed, but I’ll never forget the sights and sounds of that day.But it was pretty damn cool to walk out of Madison Square Garden to look up at those giant buildings and get the same feeling I did as a kid. New York City was still New York City. Even being a Red Sox girl, I love it.

New Release - "Pari Tenu!" (French Translation of "All Bets are Off")

"Pari Tenu!"Une nuit avec Ash Gallagher, c’est tout ce qu’il faut à Eli Hollister pour se convaincre qu’il a enfin rencontré la bonne personne au bon moment. Heureusement qu’il n’avait rien parié là-dessus parce qu’il s’avère qu’Ash est étudiant dans la classe d’Eli à l’Université locale. Eli ne peut nier qu’il est attiré, mais la situation est complexe. Il a déjà assez de problèmes avec son directeur de département. Celui-ci ne souhaite qu’une chose : refuser à Eli sa titularisation et le renvoyer. 

Ash attend avec impatience de pouvoir passer à la prochaine étape. Après un tour sur le terrain dans les Marines et une période en tant que réserviste, il est prêt à mettre fin à sa carrière militaire. La dernière chose qu’il imaginait expérimenter ce semestre était de tomber sous le charme de son professeur de littérature. Mais plus Eli résiste, plus Ash est déterminé à l’avoir. Puis Ash découvre qu’Eli est sérieux, et Ash ne veut qu’une aventure… Ou peut-être pas ? Entre ces deux-là, quand il s’agit d’aimer, tous les paris sont permis !

I'm so excited about this translation. I wish my Grandmaman were still alive. I think she would've been pretty tickled over it. She helped teach herself English after moving to the United States by reading newspaper. French was my mom's first language too though she was born in the U.S. I can't wait to show her either. I took the name Labbe from their last name. :D 


Je suis très excité!

Six Sentence Sunday - Pandora

Well, this year I’ve been busting my butt working on two stories as opposite from each other as they can be. One of them is my erotic sci-fi/horror that’s coming out in a boxed set sometime in October. I finally turned it in yesterday and my brain is fried, but here’s the blurb and a quick Six Sentences around the man they rescued.
"Repairs in Asteroid Field" Artist Sebastian ZakrzewskiHaunted by the screams of the men he executed, ex-Marine medic Riff Korra is sentenced to life onboard a prison ship. Seeking more punishment for his crime, he strikes a deal with the corrupt Captain Vidal, his payment an exchange of pleasure and pain, and forges a new life leading the team that surveys space wreckage for salvage.For ship engineer Zed Jakobsen, his psychometric abilities make prison a sentence worse than death, and the barrage of emotional stimuli are an unending torment. His only regret is that he didn’t kill the monster who sent him to prison. His only reason to live is to find a chance to escape a sentence he didn’t deserve.When they board a derelict ship, and discover a lone survivor, the hell of prison life plunges into horror. An epidemic of violence and insanity consumes their ship, driving the crew to murder and destruction. Mutual need and attraction draw Riff and Zed together, and their bond gives them strength to fight the hallucinations. But Vidal possesses the only means of escape from the nightmare, and he’s not letting anyone leave alive.

“I’m as lost in the dark as the rest of you.” Noyes spread his hands in a helpless gesture that seemed incongruent with his steady gaze. “I have no claim to expertise in human anatomy as you. There was madness. There was death. And I was alone.”

Brakes and Bronchitis

Back in September I discovered a wonderful thing. My girlfriend Jamie can replace brakes on cars. Which was good because my front brakes were in dire need of replacing and I had zero money to do so. She also knows a contact for anything we could ever need. So I scrapped the money together, bought new brake pads and rotors and trucked myself over to her place deep in the rural bowels of my county. It was so much easier than I thought it would be and there’s something very sexy about a girl who can jack up a Highlander and take care of business.
So when my rear brakes started going around Christmas I waffled between trying to do them in the cold or coming up with the extra cash to go someplace warm and have it done. My girlfriend said she was game, as long as it wasn’t under 40 degrees. So I toughed it out a few weeks waiting for a break in the cold. Then it snowed and I knew I couldn’t wait any longer. So we made plans for MLK weekend to get my baby fixed.
Michael DashowIt was cold. Hovering near 40 if I remember, so I doubled up on my socks, put a shirt on under my sweater and stopped by the auto store for another round of goods. It was supposed to be an easy day. It was 10 a.m., we’d get Duncan (my Highlander, yes I was a fan) good to go, I’d hit up the grocery store on the way home, then I’d have plenty of energy and time to go home and get in my word count for the day.  

But when we got Duncan jacked up and managed to remove the tire that seized the caliper fell off. Jamie can curse when she wants to. So we had to call around town for someone who had the part in my year. At first it looked like it would have to be ordered, which would leave me stranded, but we managed to track one down. Did I say Jamie lives in the middle of nowhere? Going to town to get parts means a trek and we also needed to find long threaded bolts because I did what I always do and put the emergency brake on when I stopped. So we needed to find bolts to get the dang rotor off.
So three car part stores and two hardware stores later we have the caliper, the threaded bolts, (which were impossible to find in the right length. I bought her a kit as an ‘I’m so sorry I love you to death’ present) and lunch we head back to her place. But we have to make a stopover at the farm to change the blankets on the horses. By the time we get done with all of that it’s almost 3:00. (Did I mention she lives in the boonies?) We get the brake pads, caliper and rotor replaced on the one side. The shoe looked worn, but she said to have a mechanic to take a look at that because it was getting later, freezing and she didn’t have as much experience with it. No problem. We changed the other side and yay I was ready to go with time to spare for the grocery. I had plans for a nice hot soup, because I couldn’t feel my feet anymore.
But when I take off, it sounds like there is gravel rattling below. Doesn’t sound right. I call my girlfriend who’s in the middle of calling me and she says come back now. So we jack up my baby again and study the rotor. There’s a little pin and spring jutting out from the shoe and as the rotor turns it hits it just right. So my girlfriend starts cursing, takes off the rotor to see if she can fix the spring on that side of the shoe, but it’s borked and warped and there’s no fixing it.
So I text my husband, tell him to order Thai, the hotter the better and we’re off, heading back to town for a new shoe. I pick up some toe warmers too. Amazing things. Only part of my body that was warm. The sun is long down by the time we get back, but we turn on the floodlights and get to work. The rotors, pads and caliper was easy. The shoe isn’t. There are springs and pins and bolts and little odd shaped bars that don’t want to fit back the way they were. It was a pain in the ASS. And since I didn’t know squat my sole contribution was fetching tools, listening to Jamie curse, and telling her how much I loved her.
It got done. We test drove it with no noise. The brakes worked perfectly and even passed the cat running in front of the car brake slam test. But I didn’t get home until after 10 and though the Thai food was amazing and warmed me up I still ended up finally coming down with the bronchitis that had been stalking me since Christmas.
I’m not sure what the moral of this story was. But I still think it’s pretty bad ass that my girlfriend knows all this stuff. I told her next time she does something mechanical give me a call. Just make sure it’s warmer
And for giggles, a random comment heard in writechat today:

“My neighbor makes me so mad I want to piss “bitch” onto her snow covered car. Too bad I don't have a dick to do it with. Oh, for want of a cock.”
More to come re: "Other Side of the Line" submission and the awesome sci-fi/horror I'm working on now. :D

Happy 2015!

Happy New Year’s everybody. I just wanted to give an update about what I’ve been doing. I’m finishing up the second draft of “Other Side of the Line.” I have my beta notes back and I’m really excited about how the edits are going. I hope to submit it very soon. I’ll keep you updated. After that I’m working on an erotic, sci-fi horror novella for a boxed set that’s due in August. I don’t have a title yet, but I’ve started roughing out the story. One of the new things I’m thinking of implementing this year is having a wip page that I’ll update once a month with words counts so you can see all the crazy things I have going on in my head. It’s been a busy, crazy year. I’m going back to the physical therapists next week as a follow up from my surgery. I feel like I’m doing really well. I still don’t have feeling completely back in my right leg, but I can stand on it for most of the day without it getting tired or hurting. On the days I stand more, I have no back pain at all. Last week I start going back to the gym every other day and it’s going well. My day job has been kicking my butt. Lots of overtime is good for the paycheck, but not so good for writing time. I’m hoping I can start tamping that back.


My husband has some exciting things going on for 2015 as well. He’s working on Nick Davis’ brainchild The Teddy Bear Tales. http://theteddybeartales.alt-world.com/They did a Kickstarter earlier in the year to do two mini-comics. Keir’s the artist for the second book that Scott Markley wrote featuring Forrest and Scout. I’m excited for them. This is a comic my son would’ve loved when he was younger.
Which brings me to another New Years and another birthday for my boy. He’s twelve now. I can’t believe how fast these years have flown by. He put on a crazy growth spurt this year too. He’s going to be taller than me by the end of the year, just you see. He’s such an amazing kid. I loved him as a baby and I’m looking forward to the man he’s going to become, but damn, I’d like to slow the clock down a little bit.

I hope everyone has a wonderful 2015.

Other Side of the Line

So I'm one month away from submitting my interracial romance set in the 60s and 70s. It's been quite a ride with Caleb and Hal. I truly love these two. It feels like I have a ton left to do, so each day I'll post a snippet, or a picture, or both, maybe some progress to keep everybody in the loop. I didn't get much done today. I'm working on a Christmas scene, but work has been quite insane. I've clocked in a lot of overtime since I came back from vacation. But I expect that it'll die off by the end of the week. In the meantime, here's a snippet from the opening scene where Caleb and Hal are eight.

Caleb Hudson sat in the back of the class trying to remain as quiet and unnoticeable as he could, which was a little difficult when he stood out like a dark hollyhock in a field of Easter lilies. He stared at the history book in front of him, remembering the words his dad said to him earlier that week, the same words he said to him every Monday morning before he headed to his Uncle Vern’s house in Charleston and then to his new school.Be good. Each morning Caleb took the words in a different way. Some days, he figured that if he just behaved then the other students and his teacher would come to accept him. Other days, he was sure it meant that if he wanted to keep his skin intact he’d better be good or else. His dad said quite a bit with only a few words in his sing-song Gullah and Caleb had learned to figure out all the meanings he intended. Today he’d decided that it meant he was an example and he had to have the strength to fulfill that example. But Lordy it was hard. He was only ten after all.
The words, the scent of fish on his dad’s clothes, and the feel of his hand heavy on Caleb’s shoulder filled him with a renewed determination each Monday to make the walk from his home to his uncle’s house. He knew that his Uncle Vern had stuck his neck out to give him this chance to go to a good school and he knew that if wanted to get his dream to be like his hero Henry Flipper he’d have to stick it out. However, by midweek his determination usually started to waver underneath the silent condemnation of his classmates and teachers, and the not so silent harassment from James Littleton.

I'm Sorry For the Long Silence

Wow, I haven’t blogged in eight months. It’s crazy how fast time goes by. I’m sorry I’ve been so quiet. It has been a crazy, crazy year so far. On my way to GRL last October my husband and I stopped by his hometown in Alabama to visit his Grandmother. We were very grateful that we did because she passed a few months later. She was a wonderful gentle spirit and she is greatly missed by all who knew her.
My middle sister gave birth to her first child this March. After a little scare and a little time in the neonatal center Atticus came home. He’s absolutely beautiful and definitely knows his own mind, what he wants and when he wants it. I had the chance to go visit him back in May and there were many songs sung and lots of snuggling from his auntie.
I’ve travelled a lot in the last eight months as well: Birmingham, Alabama twice. Atlanta, Georgia. Hilton Head, South Carolina. Louisville, Kentucky. As well as all the smaller traveling with my husband promoting his comic books at cons, throughout Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania. My computer died just before Thanksgiving. It was fading anyway, but dropping it twice out of the car definitely didn’t help, especially since both times it landed on the one unpadded side of the computer bag. There was no way I’d get the money before Christmas. I had presents to get first and a large family :D. They came first, but my awesome parents bought me a new laptop for Christmas. It was a lifesaver.
This has been a time with illnesses too. I came down with a really bad case of a sinus infection and bronchitis that knocked me on my ass for a month. I had been working a lot of overtime at my day job to prepare for a renovation and to set aside some extra money for my son so he could attend a scholar’s program this summer. I think it all caught up with me.
I’ve also been battling back pain for a long time. It all came to a head at the beginning of May. At the start of an eleven hour drive home I began to have severe nerve pain in my right leg. I’m still not sure how the hell I made it home. It’s a trip I never want to have to make again. After I got home I began losing sensation in my leg, by the morning I had no feeling from my hip to my toes. The MRI revealed that I had three herniated, bulging disks and I was sent to the ER then transferred to a neurosurgeon specialist in Washington, DC. The operation was successful. They removed one of the discs as well as some disc fragments that had calcified and were pressing against my sciatic nerve.
It’s been a long recovery. I have physical therapy three times a week. My strength, balance and endurance are coming back. I still don’t have feeling completely back in my leg, but that can take several months. I hadn’t realized how long I’d been carrying around that back pain until it wasn’t there anymore. It used to feel like someone had a hold of the base of my spine and was jiggling it. I had terrible back spasms at times that left me unable to walk. There were times when I walked that my leg would just get tired and I didn’t realize at the time that it was a sign of the nerve compression. I thought it had to do with the scoliosis.

So that’s been the highs and lows of the last eight months. I’m still writing even if it’s taken a couple knocks, but more on that later. 
Love,
Margie

Rainbow Awards and Reviews

Hello everybody, I'm so excited it's not even funny. I can't believe that both Ghosts in the Wind and Make Me Whole are finalists in the 2013 Rainbow Awards!

There are so many other wonderful books that are listed and I am so honored to be among them.

Now if only I could find the patience to wait till December. It's not my strongest suit, but GRL is around the corner and I'm so excited. This year I get to introduce my husband to some of the madness. Since we're going to be near his family, he's coming with me.

On other notes, I've received some fabulous reviews for Make Me Whole. I'm so happy, I fell in love with Galen and Nick, but I wondered if them working through their relationship issues would get to be tiresome, because they do work and then talk about it often. But I like to write about relationships that feel real to me and sometimes that means hashing it out.

So if you're of a mind to check it out and hear a little more about the boys, check them out.

Life Your Life, Buy the Book
Jessewave
Joyfully Jay