Marsha Canham's Blog, page 17

Welcome home girly-woman

*sigh*

So.

The brother in law (hereafter refered to as either BIL or Hork…long story on the nickname…or his new name, Dorf)  flew down to Tampa last week to get in some golf games with his buddy before assisting me to drive my lil Mazda home again.  I was all geared up (direct quote from the Hork:  My middle name is F for Flexible) to leave on Tuesday so we could take our time and be home relatively relaxed by Thursday-ish.  First thing Mr. Flexible announces when I pick him up is that he has to be home by noon on Tuesday, which caused instant panic and depression and whining because that meant we had to push up our departure to Monday at the very latest.  Sunday was already reserved for dinner with the Florida gang, my "clean out everything edible from the fridge and freezer" meal, so that couldn't be changed.  But at least Hork was there to help with the packing up, locking up, cleaning up, turning off, screwing down stuff that goes with leaving the place over the summer. Spoke to the neighbor, to let him know I was leaving.  He already had a beady eye on the Hork and a finger poised on the 911 button until I said he looked that way normally, no need to worry. *snort*

Coming down, Hork and I had a blast, yakking all the way, catching up on a few years worth of reminiscing.  I didn't see much of him for the three days he was there;  he was off to a golf course most mornings chasing little balls around with a stick…er, club.  Yeah.  I like golfing about as much as I like curling, but that's fodder for another day.

This time, Hork was all golfed out having spent four days in Tampa with his buddy chasing little balls around with a stick…er, club.  So he was there to relax, enjoy the pool, soak up the sun.  The ladies taught him our local card game…Hoof and Mouth…which he caught pretty fast and got instantly included into three card nights.  Winning money, apparently, makes his toes tingle.  Losing makes him stutter a bit.  He mostly stuttered *evil grin*

So there we were, Monday morning, running around doing all the stuff that had to be done prior to departure at 8:10, only slightly behind HIS 7:00 schedule.  I was manic, whining.  He was…well…Hork.  He helped roll up, pick up, put away, seal up, nail down, turn the key in the lock and drive away.  Knowing I was reluctant to leave, he took the first shift driving. Probably suspected I would just go in a big circle and come back *snort*

On the road, lets see…he almost sideswiped another car five minutes onto the interstate.  He claimed there was a blind spot.  LOL  If you'd seen the way that car was packed, it would be hard to argue.  All I can say in my defense is:  thank goodness for suck-em-up bags, those vacuum sealed storage bags that you fill with 50 Tshirts, seal them up, suck the air out with a vacuum and reduce it to the size of a pancake.  My shopping ventures included about ten trips to Bealls…my absolute FAVORITE store in all of Florida (did considerable damage there, but everything was on sale!!!!  You HAVE to love a store that takes 15% off sale items already reduced by 79%, then takes another $10 coupon on top of that, then another 10$ Bealls Bucks on top of that!!!!…to the Aeropostal outlet for my grandkids (major damage there)…to Downtown Disney (nodding, yes, more major damage) to Bath and Body, Target, Wallymart…etc etc etc.  Long story short, the queen size bed was covered to a thickness of three feet with various articles of clothing…which, after ten minutes with a vacuum and some suck-em-up bags was reduced to a stackable pile of four bags, each 3ft by 2ft by about 4 inches thick.  Even I was impressed and I've used the bags a dozen times before.

The kicker was, of course, the golf clubs, which arrived with the Hork.  Really.  If I can find a way to reduce an 8′ by 8′ by 3′ pile of stuff down to 2′ by 3′ by 4″…surely someone can think of a way to shrink a honkin goof…er, golf bag.

So yeah, there might have been a few blind spots, but in truth, I was amazed at Hork's packing abilities.  There was even space for Suzie's crate, should she choose to snooze in it rather than ride on our laps…which of course never happened on the way back.  Going down, she curled up in it and slept most of the way, but then I had room on the trip down.  Coming back, nada.

So there we were, like the Griswalds packed to the hilt…me grumbling, Hork still insisting the other car had come out of nowhere.  Within another ten minutes, he nearly drives over a great huge hunk of rubber from an exploded tire.  What's with that anyway?  The interstate is littered with blown tires…great huge chunks and strips of rubber left by exploding tires.  This trip in particular, I don't think I've ever seen so much evidence of exploding wheels, and most seemed to be of the transport truck variety, so each time we passed one, I envisioned the tire exploding beside us and blowing my little car off the road.

However, this is when Dorf emerges.  I get hourly updates as to whether we're on schedule or not.  How many miles to the gallon we get/should get/are getting. Estimated time of hitting certain cities, if we'll pass in rush hour, if we'll get traffic, etc etc. It gets worse the further north we go, and thank God we got past Charlotte without hitting much traffic or I'm sure it would have been analyzed to death and back.  We made a pit stop for lunch and I must say I haven't eaten at a Waffle House for 20 years but he was orgasmic over the hash browns and chili.  He deliberately avoided the sausages so as not to cause an international incident.  The poor elderly man who shared the restroom with him on the trip down probably still does not have full sensory abilities restored.

We stopped around 10pm for dinner somewhere north of Beckley, West Va, and decided, since we only had about 8 hrs left to keep going through the night.  Dorf was in full timetable mode by then, but that was when his sinuses started to kick in and he started snuffling and snorfing and making odd Felix Unger noises trying to clear them.  Oh, and I forgot to mention…his ears.  On his two day relaxation mode of swimming and sunning, he had plunged underwater several times and apparently (so I was told in elaborate detail) his ears needed blowing out cuz the wax was trapping pool water somewhere in the canals.  It also rendered him half deaf on one side.  Halfway home he discovered if he tugged down on his ear lobe he could hear better.  I discovered it was sort of like talking to myself since I could mutter things and not be heard.  His resemblance to Tim Conway's Dorf character grew in leaps and bounds.

We crossed the border into the frozen north around 5am…the sole car amidst four bazillion transport trucks.  We hit Mississauga around 6:30am, where I waved at my sister in the driveway whilst Hork removed his goof bag and various possessions, clearing an admirable space for rear view viewing.  Oddly enough, it had remained warm and sunny all the way up to the Blue Ridge Mts, but once across them, the leaves vanished from the trees, the temp started dropping, the clouds spun over, and by the time we were over the border, it was downright COLD.  So I wanted to get home.  I waved, backed out, and flicked on the radio…in time to hear of a massive accident on the main highway, which I would have driven straight into had I not chosen to flick on the Dorf-replacement-noise.

So, by alternate routes, I avoided the main route and managed to get home by 7:50.

Ahhh, home.  I expected it to be cool inside with the heat turned way down in my absence, but I hadn't expected it to be frigid.  First thing, flick on the furnace.  Nothing.  Flick flick.  Nothing nothing.  Check the breakers, check the furnace switch.  Nothing.  Some humming, a bit of rattling, but nothing else.

Shivering now, flick on the fireplace.  Nothing.  Peer…peer again..the pilot flame is out. Suzie is looking at me as only a dog can, saying: we came home for THIS?

Still in shorts and a T shirt…I trudge down to the neighbour's house (can't find my phone book either) and luckily he's in the driveway, so he comes back with me and at least gets the fireplace going.  He also takes a look at the furnace and after fiddling with some things, announces it's the blower fan that's not working.  So…call the furnace guys.  Someone shows up just before noon and announces, yup, its the blower fan and motor, and some other gadget not getting any power. Estimated cost after calls back and forth…1400.  Do I have another choice?  As he's writing up the order he mumbles…you know, a brand new furnace with a 10 yr warranty on parts and labour is only a thousand more.

I give that a thought.  I've already had major headaches with this furnace…igniter switches that don't ignite, rumbling and rattling, and a thermostat with a mind of it's own at times.

I ask: how soon can a new furnace be installed.  He says:  within three hours.

Keep in mind, I've been up since before 6am the previous morning and driven the length of the U.S with Dorf the Hork n' Snorf.

I say fine, order the new furnace.  I need heat and I need something I can rely on for the next few years.  Good selling feature too, I rationalize…new furnace, way quieter, way more efficient than the old clunker. I can stay upright for another three hours.

Upright, but with no food in the house, not even a drip of milk for a cup of tea. So out I zoom to the local grocery store, which, in my absence, has decided to make one door the entrance only and one door the exit only.  I always park at the exit side, so I get my cart and stand in front of the auto doors like…well…a Dorf…waiting for the doors to automatically open.  Nothing.  I stomp on the concrete, thinking the little gnome who works the door is asleep.  Nothing.  I peer through the glass doors and see people inside…one of whom eventually sees my hand gestures and comes to open the door, politely pointing out that this is now the exit door and I have to walk around to the other side of the building to the entrance. Putting on her best Mother Theresa face, she smiles and says she will let me through the sacred exit door THIS time, but please keep in mind this is exit only.

Ten minutes later, I'm out, using the sacred exit door (which is so stupid I can't even begin to expound on the level of ridiculousness for a small town store to start pissing off their regular customers) and home again…counting out the three hours until heat arrives.  Three pass, then four.  I've dragged out a portable heater by this time and heaped afghans on myself and my poor shivering beastie.  SIX hours later, Furnace Guys show up.  Another hour of banging, drilling, sawing, hauling out the old, hauling in the new…and I have heat. I've caught up on all my recorded hours of Project Runway and have started on Top Chef when I am finally able go upstairs and climb into bed. It's 10:35 pm.  I turn off all the lights downstairs, make the weary climb…flick on the bedroom lights and….Nothing.  No power to the lights, nothing in the bathroom.  The only outlet that works is…tada…the TV.  Curled up with Suzie, flicked on the first episode of Top Chef…didn't even make it through the opening muzak.

Welcome home girly-woman.

Guest blog, pithy thoughts from Bob Mayer

Bob wrote this post over at Kindleboards and with his permission, I'm posting it here.

I Don't Know; I'm Guessing;  I Know–the future of publishing for authors.

This past weekend I gave the keynote at the Whidbey Island Writers Conference.  Like most authors, I have several basic keynotes that I can choose from and then adjust.  But I realized after attending the conference for a day, having dinner with the faculty, and listening to everyone, that things have changed so dramatically, that I had to do something different.

Also, I got an email from the Emerald City Writers Conference saying they'd like me to do a workshop this October on "Selling Your Novel."  Based on my Novel Writers Toolkit, I have a Powerpoint presentation for that, but I, again, suddenly realized, it was out of date.  Because there are two paths to selling your novel now:  selling it to a publisher and selling it directly to a reader and I'm doing both.

So I started making notes the morning of the keynote.  I started with the basic premise that no one really knows what's happening in publishing.  Anyone who says they do is deluded.  So I wrote:  I DON'T KNOW.  On the left side of the page.  Then I wrote:  I'M GUESSING next.  Then: I KNOW.

I DON'T KNOW:

What the future of publishing is.  But 95% of the pundits have been wrong and they will continue to be wrong.  Most will protect their turf rather than try to be accurate.  Even while they switch deck chairs on the Titanic.

Why there is such a rift between Indies and Trads.  Both are writers.  They're just choosing different modes of getting the book out there based on their own circumstances.  Heck, there's a discussion on Nathan Bransford's blog today about the term indie and people are getting upset.

What the exact percentage of ebooks vs print books will be by the end of the year; and by the end of the year we still won't know because people with vested interests will continue to juke the stats.

I'M GUESSING:

In real terms, by the end of the year, 50% of sales will be ebooks.  The rep from Amazon sitting at the front table shrugged when I said that.  There are a lot of variables.  But for fiction writers, in real terms, I believe this will be their number.  Non-fiction, texts, etc. will skew the overall numbers.  We've found at Who Dares Wins Publishing that we sell 95% ebooks for fiction and 50% print for non-fiction.  But we also price ebooks realistically unlike Trads.  $2.99 for most of our fiction, with lead books in series at .99.

The role of agents will change dramatically.  This was perhaps the first thing I picked up from the agents at the conference, some of whom I've known for years.  Remember the days of agents swaggering down the hallway, in charge of all they purveyed?  It's over.  They're scared and confused now.  Most have little clue what their role will be.  A few, Jeff Kleinman was one, have a good plan for the future in re-examining what role his agency would play.  Bottom line is that the midlist is going to die.  And agents who subsisted on a bunch of midlist authors are in deep doo-doo.

Agents becoming publishers.  It's happening.  Two key issues:  what can they offer the author that the author can't subcontract out for a flat fee?  And what about conflict of interest?  The best answer was that agents could now publish those manuscripts they loved but couldn't sell to NY for whatever reason.  I think that's valid.  If they can hold the line there.

I KNOW:

Niche is the future.  Find a specific area and become known as the writer who does that type of book.  The Internet has made things more specific rather than broad.  Duty, Honor, Country a Novel of West Point & the Civil War comes out on Tuesday, the 12th, the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War. The title immediately tells you my niche, although I think a vast number of people have more than a passing interest in the Civil War.

The Trad midlist will die.  The need for an 80% sell through means less copies ordered. Combined with less brick and mortar consignment outlets and the writing isn't just on the wall, it's flashing in neon.  Yes, ebook sales will pick up, but check your Kindle top 100 lists.  Lots of Indies there.

I control the writing.  Above all, writers have to focus on writing the best possible book.  Self-publishing is not a short-cut to success.  Regardless of mode, readers will walk away from sludge.  And 99% of it is that.  Just as 99% of what's in an agent's in-box is.  I'm not being mean, but realistic.

The same traits the mean success in Trad publishing are the same traits that will spell success in Indie publishing:  great writing; persistence; consistency, persistence; business acumen; persistence; great writing; willingness to adapt and change quickly to the changing publishing world.

Here's the bottom line:  in only a few months things have changed so dramatically it was palpable at this conference from the last one I attended.  Things are changing exponentially, not linearly, so a writer need to really focus on where things could possibly be in a year, not where they are now.

And in a year, I can guarantee they will be very, very different.

 

The full blog is at Write It Forward:

http://writeitforward.wordpress.com/

Traditional publishing vs Ebook self publishing

For those of you who may not have seen the recent blog by Connie Brockway over at All About Romance, it's here http://www.likesbooks.com/blog/?p=6169 In it Connie announces that she is excited to be joining the ebook Rogues, many of us who have been not only able to reissue our backlist books, which have not seen the light of day for decades in some cases, but who are exploring the opportunity to write the kind of books the publishers keep telling us "they" (meaning you the readers) just don't want anymore.  They (meaning the publishers) have this big crystal ball, you see, and they know that you, the readers, only want Regencies with drawing room stories and hot sex, or vampire books with hot sex, or paranormals with hot sex, or….wait.  That's all they (meaning the readers) want.

I went on hiatus six years ago because my proposal for the sequel to The Iron Rose was turned down flat.  I was told pirate stories were not popular anymore, this despite the wild popularity of the Johnny Depp movies, Pirates of the Caribbean, and despite the fact The Iron Rose was one of my bestselling books and readers sent scads of emails asking when I was going to write a story for the brothers, Gabriel and Jonas.

Well guess what?  Connie has had scads of mail over the years asking when she was going to write sequels to her bestselling books, All Through the Night and As You Desire.  And she has wanted to write them.  But why would she…or I…spend a year writing a book that the publisher's won't buy?  As Connie says in the blog:

No one was or is going to buy a book from me that is set in Egypt. Or Italy. Or take a chance on my riff on the Tarzan story. And while my Facebook page poll on where readers want their books set told me loud and clear that the publishers are right, most readers do want their historical romance set in England, there's that hallowed  word "most" to consider. My core readers have never been "most" –otherwise I would have long ago sprung to the top of the bestseller list. I like to believe that my readers are picking up my books because they like my slightly different settings or characters or time periods.

Ditto ditto ditto.  I was told years ago if I wanted to break out of the midlist crowd of authors, I had to sit myself down and write what the publisher wanted me to write…namely:  Regencies.  Books without so much action and adventure.  Books that didn't concentrate so much on the swashbuckling angle.  Books that were shorter, less intense.  Books that were character driven rather than plot driven.  Books that readers could read in an evening…375 pages max, preferably large print.  And don't use too many big words.  And fill it with hot sex.

First of all, it takes me a hundred pages just to set up the characters and hurl them into the first of many plot twists.  Secondly, I don't set out to write a porno book, so deliberately filling it with hot sex doesn't cut it.  If the characters happen to find themselves in a scene that lends itself to hot, steamy sex, then I'm all for it…I'm right there in the hero's arms in fact, enjoying the hell out of myself…but if it isn't believable and there isn't a reason for writing a sex scene other than to fulfill a quota, then I don't write it.  Thirdly, I happen to like finding some obscure event in history and giving my characters a large part to play in exploring it.  For the medieval trilogy, I hadn't planned on writing my take on Robin Hood, but it developed over three books because of my curiosity over the lost princess of Brittany.  Exploring Eleanor's story allowed me to bring in all the Robin Hood elements…which, honestly, did not occur to me until I was near the end of Through A Dark Mist.  That was when Under a Bright Lightbulb occurred and I thought:  woo hoo…what would happen if I changed a few names, dropped a few hints, moved the story to Lincolnshire and brought in the sheriff of Nottingham.  My toes actually curled in delight, and not just because of the hot sex with the Black Wolf in that steamy grotto.

Er…where was I?  Oh yes. Ebooks.

Connie and I, along with six other scintillatingly brilliant authors:  Virginia Henley, Jacquie D'Alessandro, Julia London, Sherri Browning, Jill Gregory, and Julie Ortolon, have been email pals for over 15 years, fondly calling ourselves the Loopies.  We were all together at Dell and have stuck together over the years.  Kathleen Givens was a Loopie until she was unfairly taken away from us last year, and we all miss her deadpan humor and pithy emails, not to mention her wonderful books.

But we have all been closely watching and tracking this ebook revolution.  Julie Ortolon was the first one to charge headfirst into the fray, dragging me–admittedly with some hesitation and doubt–onto the battlefield with her.  We both self pubbed our backlist then stood back to watch what would happen, if we had stepped into quicksand or landed on solid ground.  Sales were slow at first, but as I have said in previous blogs…I haven't been on the writing scene for six years, which is like two lifetimes in the publishing world.  I wasn't even sure I would be remembered, much less my books.  But a funny thing happened over the Christmas season.  A million iPads were sold, a million Kindles were given as gifts, and a couple million readers suddenly found that backlist books, hard to find books, and out of print books were readily available at Amazon and Smashwords and Barnes and Noble.  Not just available, but cheap!

I must indulge in a slight ramble off the path here to say that I have never understood–more so now than ever–why publishers price ebooks almost the same as print books and in some cases, totally incomprehensibly, even charge more.  I can understand new releases being priced the same, at least for the first six months or so, but after that first flush of sales…come on folks.  It costs the publisher nothing (because it costs us self-pubbing authors nothing) to upload an ebook to Amazon.  No overhead, no delivery charges, no transport charges, no costs for shelf space in a bookstore.  Most manuscripts these days are delivered electronically to the editors, so a half hour formatting job, a jpg of the cover (the expense for which was already incorporated in the print version) and blam. It's on Amazon.

Self publishing a book requires a bit more fuss.  We need to make new covers, do the formatting ourselves, do the promoting and advertising ourselves, but basically it's the same process:  blam, and it's on Amazon.  Where we differ is in the price point.  Publishers match the print copy price in most cases.  We could certainly be greedy and match the print price too…and since some of the comments on the All About Romance blog accuse Connie, myself, and all ebook authors in general of being greedy and not thinking of the poor reader on limited bugets , here's some figures for you, using my own books for an example.

Through A Dark Mist is currently listed on Amazon at $7.50 for the print version and $6.00 for the Kindle version.  I don't know what taxes are in your neck of the woods, but in mine, they're 15%, so the price of a print book, for the discerning print reader, is roughly $8.60, and unless you buy three or more at the same time and spend over $25, there is a delivery charge on top of that which I can't calculate having had only one coffee so far this morning.  Ditto for figuring out over the counter sales at a bookstore, without delivery charges.  For the sake of my brain, we'll round it out to $9.00 for a print book.

If the royalty on the print version is 8%, I earn .60 per sale, so a thousand sales=$600.00.  The royalty rate on ebooks through the publisher is an average of 25%, so @$1.50/ book X 1000=$1500.00

Already ebooks are looking better, and this has nothing to do with "the greed of authors changing to ebooks"  because we have no say in the price of either the print or ebook version.

Turn an eyeball now to self publishing.  The average price point on a self published ebook is $2.99 and again I'll use my own book as an example.  The Wind and The Sea is currently on Amazon for $2.99.  They list a used copy of the print version starting at $8.58 but otherwise it is unavailable anywhere, new, in print.  Of that $2.99, at a royalty rate of 70%, (35% for "foreign" sales, which includes Canada…can you hear me grinding my Canuck teeth?)  I earn an *average* of $2.00/book X 1000=$2000.00

To sum it up then…

Earnings on 1000 print books=$600.00 (cost to the reader @ $8.60)

Earnings on 1000 ebooks through the publisher=$1500.00 (Cost the reader @$6.00)

Earnings on 1000 self pubbed ebooks=$2000.00 (Cost to the reader @$2.99)

Seems to me, at a glance…the reader is getting a bargain and the author is almost able to make a minimum wage/year…assuming we can sell 12,000 books/year, which is iffy.  Keep in mind not all authors can do their own covers, so that adds a cost.  We still need to have the books professionally edited, and we need to do our own advertising and promotion (so far that has cost me more than I earned the first month 2 of my books were on sale)

What inspired this rambling blog was a comment left by *Cheryl* on the All About Romance post, aimed at Connie (and I guess all of us Rogues by association):

So sad! I understand the need not to be limited to writing the books the publishers want, but what about all the readers on very small incomes who are big fans? Well…fan no more! We helped make your income lucrative, and now we are being dumped. Forgot what is is to struggle? Connie, I'm getting rid of all your books on my shelves.

Seems to me we are trying to cater to the readers on smaller incomes.  You can buy two and a half ebooks for the price of what one print book would cost.  And because there are a plethora of .99 promotions and even freebies given away (and our earnings drop drastically to match)…I would think readers would be excited by this new revolution.

Keep in mind that a bestselling midlist author, on average, sells about 20,000 books/year.  Most new authors are thrilled to sell 10,000, but their average is about 5,000. And if an agent is involved, that skims another 15% off the top.  Lucrative income? Not really *s*

As one wise observer noted:  If they have the capability to comment on the blog, they have the capability to read an ebook.

As promised, a teaser scene from The Following Sea

Keep in mind, dear readers, how my mind works…this may or may not appear in the final copy, but it certainly is in the working copy *s*

Excerpt:

"You will tell me what I want to know, little puta."

The words vibrated against Emma's ear and sent cold shivers scratching down her spine. There was a frightening edge of pleasure in the huskiness of his voice, as if he was hoping she would remain stubbornly quiet. She suspected that he derived pleasure from the fear he instilled in others and she knew he would use it against her if she faltered by so much as a quivered breath. Determined to deny him, her teeth were set in a hard clench. Her fingers were curled around the cords of the ropes that were twisted around her wrists and draped over a low-hanging beam. The ropes had been pulled taut, forcing her arms apart and her body up onto the tips of her toes.

It had taken three of them to subdue her, another two to drag her across the packed earth floor while she kicked and hissed and bit at any exposed flesh. Someone had punched her brutally across the jaw, rendering her dazed enough for the ropes to be secured to her wrists and ankles. There were others in the room. Unseen faces, shapes without substance that watched and whispered from the shadows. Light from the open door streamed through to illuminate the circle where she hung, blinding her to all but faint flashes of metal from pistol-barrels and swords.

She was the focus of their attention.  And their amusement. A dozen or more had filed into the cavernous chamber after she had been dragged in. Some sat cross-legged on the floor as if anticipating an enjoyable entertainment to come. Others leaned indolently against the rough stone wall, taking a break from their whoring and gaming.

"You show courage, puta. Far more than is wise or necessary."

The words were burdened under a heavy Spanish accent. The threat behind them was stark and needed no interpretation as Estevan Quintano Muertraigo touched the cold steel blade of a dagger against the side of her neck.

Small dark eyes roved over her face, staring at the blood that trickled from her split lip. They moved on, glittering with interest when they touched upon the tiny tear at the top of her shirt.

"Tell me again, puta," he leaned close enough she could taste his breath. "Where did you get this?"

Her eyes flickered to the roughly minted silver escudo he held up in his hands.

"I told you," she whispered. "It was given to me."

"As payment?" A grin brought the point of the knife dragging downward to the rent in the garment. "Your services are worth so much?"

A deft twist of his wrist sent the steel sliding into the frayed seam to slice it open all the way down her back. As the cloth parted, the whispers and murmurings from the spectators ended abruptly, leaving only the soft hssssssssssssss of the blade to fill the silence as he expertly and methodically cut away the rest of her shirt.

Emma drew a slow breath to calm the pounding in her breast. The blood was flowing hot and fast through her veins, flushing her skin a feverish, mottled pink even though the air was chilled where it touched her exposed flesh.

"Who offered such largesse? Who was it who paid so dearly for these…services? Who—" his lips scraped across her ear again—"paid you with a coin that went down in the hold of a ship lost at sea twenty years ago?"

She steeled herself to keep from flinching. "I have no idea where the coin came from. I know nothing about any ship lost at sea."

He smiled faintly and raised his voice for the benefit of the audience. "The Nuestra Santissimo Vittorio. Also known as la nave que nunca estaba. The ship that never was. She disappeared nearly twenty years ago with a cargo reputed to be worth more than the treasure chests of England and Spain combined. She set sail from Havana with the spring plate fleet and was never seen again. None of her cargo of bullion and silver ever surfaced—" he held the coin up, turning it before her eyes—"until now. Until this was seen hanging around the neck of the golden-haired puta."

"I told you,"  she said evenly.  "I know nothing about it.  I thought it was a pretty trinket, nothing more."

A growl lowered his voice to a threatening whisper. "Now you lie outright, puta, and that makes me angry. Very angry."

There was a hint of appreciation for the defiance he saw in the clear blue of her eyes, but it was not enough to keep the tip of the knife from sliding down to the waist of her breeches. It slivered through the cloth with a quick flick of his wrist then sliced downward, following the slender curve of her hip to her thigh, then down to her ankle, leaving the doeskin split wide open.

She would have liked to kick out at her tormentor; to twist her hands free of the ropes and claw his face to ribbons, but the bindings around her wrists were tight enough to turn her hands blue, and those around her ankles had been secured to ringbolts driven into the hard-packed floor. Splayed and vulnerable, she could do little more than writhe and thrash her head, scattering her tangled blonde hair wildly over her shoulders.

Muertraigo smiled and with another downward slicing of the knife, cut the fabric of her other trouser leg until it too hung open and fell away from her pried-apart legs. A simple twist of the wrist and the shredded garment fell to the floor, prompting a lusty murmur from the surrounding onlookers.

Her legs were long and smooth, taut with muscle, pale as candlewax.  The tuft of yellow curls at the juncture of her thighs earned a soft combing with the tip of the blade.

"So. You know nothing about the coin?"

She made a sound in her throat then spat the words free. "I told you, I know nothing. Nothing!"

Muertraigo's lips pressed into a thin line that passed for a smile. "We all know something, my dear. And I can say with some certainty that you will be singing out everything you know before the sands fall through the hour glass."

"Then do your worst, capitain," she spat. "For I have no knowledge beyond what I have told you already."

The Spaniard chuckled low in his throat. "One should indeed be careful what one wishes for."

He walked a full, slow circle around her, his dark eyes lingering here and there, gauging, and speculating. The cold inspection caused an involuntary reaction in her flesh, making her skin feel as if it was crawling with spiders.

The knife came up again and was used like a hand to caress her. The flat of the blade skimmed down the side of her neck and onto her chest following the stretched curve of her breast to push aside the waves of her hair. An appreciative grunt brought the point to rest against the raised peak of one puckered nipple and, with a slight tilt of his head, he pressed the steel inward, dimpling the flesh until there was no more give.

Despite her resolve, a faint sound escaped her lips as the tip of the knife pressed again and the skin gave with a small pop. Almost instantly a small bead of blood welled and parted in twin rivulets to trickle down either side of the knife point.

"Are you certain you can recall nothing else?"

Muertraigo's voice was smooth as silk, almost paternal in its concern, while hers came out a dry, shaky rasp. "I know nothing more than what I have told you. No matter how many times you ask. I can't tell you what I don't know."

He smiled and leaned close, breathing vapors laden with garlic and olive oil against her ear. "How I wish I believed you, puta, for it will be a shame to damage such beauty."

He started to drag the blade down toward her belly, when something intruded on his concentration.  A shadow cut across the beam of light as the silhouette of a man filled the doorway.  Muertraigo frowned and his eyes sought the source of the intrusion.  His lips curled with the beginnings of a snarl, but then he straightened suddenly, and the pressure on the knife eased.

"Madre de dios," he muttered.  "Look what the wind has blown in from the sea."

The newcomer stepped into the room and as he walked forward, the silence became so absolute, Emma could hear the tiny grains of sand cracking beneath the heels of his boots. She blinked several times trying to see through the flare of light that kept the stranger's features in darkness, but all she could see was broad shoulders and waves of long dark hair.

"Estevan Muertraigo, as I live and breathe," he said, circling slowly around behind Emma.  She twisted as much as she could, trying to keep the intruder in sight, but he moved directly behind her so that he became just a voice and a presence.

"I had heard you were further south, in Tobago," the Spaniard said.

"I had heard a boucan-eater had sent your ship to hell, cheating me of the pleasure."

Muertraigo tipped his head back and laughed.  "You have an uncanny knack, my friend, of appearing at the most opportune moments.  You must tell me, one day, how you do it."

The newcomer moved again, enough that the light from the torches gilded his profile.  His face was cleanly shaven but for a fashionably trimmed vee of dark hair on his chin.  A faint white scar traced a line down his right cheek from temple to jaw, barely visible through the sun-bronzed tan.  His hair was dark and thick, falling in careless waves to just below his shoulders.  He wore a broad-brimmed cavalier's hat which kept his eyes in shadow, but his doublet was black velvet and the sword he wore strapped to his hip was of the finest Toledo steel with an ornately swirled guard.  A brace of long-snouted pistols was tucked into a wide leather bandolier…a brazen display of boldness in a tavern filled with Spanish pirates.

Emma shivered, causing the shadowed eyes to flick casually over her exposed body.

"Am I interrupting something?"

Muertraigo's lips curved.  "An amusement, nothing more."

The stranger lifted a hand and touched a long, blunt-tipped finger to the thin stripe of blood running from her nipple.  She tried to flinch back but was drawn up short by the ropes, which brought eyes the color of a moonlit sea flickering back to her face.  The faintest hint of a smile touched his lips as he offered a thoughtful suggestion.

"I would advise you to tell the capitain what he wants to know, girl.  His…amusements…can go on for hours, which is why you see such a crowd of eager onlookers gathered here.  Ever the generous man, he takes what he wants first, then shares."

Emma bit her lip but said nothing.

"Stay and enjoy if you wish," Muertraigo offered.  "You might find it interesting."

The newcomer chuckled and started to walk back toward the door.  "I have an impatient, hot-mouthed wench waiting for me in the tavern; I happily leave you to your business."

Muertraigo seemed to hold a quick debate within himself, then released a hiss of air and tossed the silver escudo through the air, high enough that it flipped several times over before the stranger's hand flashed out and deftly caught it.

"Tell me what you see, Dante."

Gabriel Dante rolled the coin in his fingers a moment before angling it into the light.  He turned the escudo this way and that, studying the markings and stamps on both surfaces.  His face betrayed nothing, but a sudden tightness in his lips had him looking sharply over at the Spanish captain.

"Where did you get this?"

"Your learned opinion first."

"The silver is pure, the markings look genuine enough, though it is difficult to be one hundred percent certain without a few more coins for comparison."

Muertraigo's eyes glittered.  "Are you saying it is real?"

Dante shrugged and turned the coin over in his hand once more before flipping it back to the Spaniard.  "I would say it was one of about ten thousand such coins minted and packed aboard the Nuestra Santissimo Vittorio for King Phillip's royal pleasure.  How the bloody hell did it end up in your hands?"

Muertraigo's chest swelled with a deep breath.  "The real mystery my friend, is how it came to be in the hands of a yellow-haired Englishwoman who claims to have earned it for her skills on her back."

Dante whistled softly and looked at the girl again.  "She must be quite talented indeed. Perhaps I will stay a while and watch although, as I overheard you say, it would be a shame to damage such beauty.  Surely she would be worth more alive and unmarked?"

"Her only value to me at the moment is what she has up here."  Muertraigo tapped his temple with a forefinger.  "And I will do what is necessary to get it out."

Dante shook his head. "That is the trouble with you Spaniards;  always in such a hurry to use a knife or whip or stretch someone on a rack.  I warrant your Inquisitors come from a special breed of brutes and whoremongers who would not know an honest answer if it was being screamed at them."

"And you would get answers how: By offering wine and sweetmeats?"

Dante chuckled and tipped his head toward the girl.  "May I?"

Muertraigo frowned, crossed his arms over his chest, then nodded.  "Be my guest."

Dante moved closer to Emma, who had been watching the two men through the straggly, damp fringe of hair that had fallen over her face.  She balked as the privateer reached up to brush the tumbled strands back behind her ear, then braced herself tersely as he leaned in, shading her face under the wide brim of his hat, and began whispering words that only she could hear.  His breath was warm, his voice low and soft, and the more he whispered, the wider and rounder her eyes grew.

When he finished, he straightened and glanced at Muertraigo.  "Now then, Estevan, what is it you wish to know?"

Muertraigo's eyes narrowed. "Where did she get the coin?"

Dante's gaze returned to the girl and he crooked an eyebrow.

She moistened her lips before murmuring, "It was given to me by an Englishman.  I agreed to carry it home, to England, and deliver it to his partner with a message."

"You are a long way from England, puta."

Her teeth grated at the repeated inference that she was a whore.  "I was on board the Cormorant when it was attacked and sunk. I have been trying to find another passage home ever since."

Muertraigo studied her intently. The Cormorant had been a merchant vessel laden with rubber and coffee.  News of its capture and subsequent demise had been credited to a French privateer who rarely troubled himself to keep hostages. Those he did not drown right away, he tossed overboard when he came within sight of land, leaving it to the Fates if they sank or swam ashore.

"What was the message you were to deliver?"

Dante cleared his throat and indicated, with a discreet tipping of his head, the circle of spectators.  "Are you certain you wish all of these rogues to know the answer?"

Muertraigo scowled and snapped his fingers at a big, burly guard.  Within minutes the room was cleared of grumbling men and the heavy oak door was firmly shut behind them.

"The message,"  he said to Emma again.  "What was it?"

She was shivering in the chilled air as she looked from Dante to the Spaniard, back to Dante. Her hands were numb and her shoulders were aching from being stretched apart. A tear trickled slowly down her cheek, defying her efforts not to show any weakness.

"The message," she stammered, "was simply, that he had found it.  He had found it and he needed a ship and men to help recover it."

"It?  What was it?  Did he say what 'it' was?"

"That was the entire message.  He said his partner would know what he meant."

"And the name of this Englishman?  The one who trusted you with this…trinket?"

She bit her lip and shot a glance at Dante again.  "Chandler.  William Chandler."

Muertraigo did not seem surprised hearing the name.  If anything, he accepted it almost as a confirmation as he turned and paced to the wall, murmuring to himself.  "There have been rumors carried on the wind that the mad Englishman might not be as mad as everyone imagined.  Bueno."  He half-turned and looked back at her.  "Where did you last see him?  Where did he–?"

The question went unfinished as Dante's fist struck the side of his head, knocking him hard against the wall.  The blow was driven by all the strength in Dante's powerful shoulders and was more than sufficient to knock the Spaniard senseless.  Muertraigo's head snapped to the side and his eyes rolled back until only the whites showed. His body fell back, dealing another hard blow to his head as it bounced off the stone wall.

"I think she has answered enough of your questions," Dante murmured.  He dragged the Spaniard into the darkest corner of the room then unsheathed a dagger and went over to where Emma was hanging, spread-eagled and naked.  Four swift slashes across the ropes freed her.

The whimper that escaped her lips was smothered as he drew her into the circle of his arm and kissed her hard and full on the mouth.

He released her just as quickly and took her chin in his hand, his eyes glittering with genuine annoyance. "The next time, Miss Chandler, when I tell you to stay put, it means:  Stay bloody well put.  I had the devil of a time finding you."

She blinked a moment in the uncertain light, her lips still parted, moist with the taste of him.

"I…I am glad you did," she managed to say, shuddering and glancing toward the dark corner.  "That filthy bastard had his hands all over me.  Had you been five minutes later–"

"Had I been five minutes later I might not have been able to deter him from what he truly wanted, aside from information about the coin.  Although I must say, seeing you hanging there all naked and exposed put some decidedly similar thoughts into my head."

He released her chin and returned to the unconscious Spaniard. While Emma flexed and massaged her hands to gain some feeling back, he stripped the captain of his tunic, shirt, and breeches and tossed them over.

"Put these on, quickly."

"As for not staying put,"  she said sullenly, "I was hungry. I only thought to buy a loaf of bread and a glass of ale."

"With the escudo?"

"No, of course not.  Someone must have seen it hanging around my neck."

"Well it was surely the wrong someone, and now that Muertraigo has caught the scent, he will be like a bloodhound sniffing after raw meat."

"Can you not just…I don't know…slit his throat or something?"

"Slit his throat?" Dante chuckled as he tugged at the captain's boots. "Rather cold-blooded of you."

She stomped her feet into the supple leather boots and growled.  "A credit to the company I have been keeping."

He grinned and tucked the reclaimed escudo into his doublet.  "In that case, I shall have to redouble my efforts and teach you the proper way to kiss a man who has just rescued you from certain pain and possible death."

"May we do it somewhere away from here?"

He chuckled again and handed her one of the pistols from his bandolier.  "Take this. Stay close and keep your head down.  I have men outside waiting, but we still have to make it through the tavern and out the door."

She nodded and checked to see the pan was primed, and a shot was down the barrel.  When she was ready, Dante took the hat off his head and plopped it down over hers, tucking her hair out of sight and pulling the brim down low.

"Only a blind man in the dead of night would mistake you for a man, but it will have to do.  Ready now?"

She nodded.  "Ready."

He went to the door and opened it a crack.  The tavern was full of pirates, traders, and merchants. The air was thick with pipe smoke and redolent with the smell of unwashed bodies, cheap wine, and lusty, boisterous women who moved through the crowd selling their services. The ape-like Spaniard who had been set to watch the door by Muertraigo turned and saw Dante, who crooked a finger to beckon him inside.  A hard thunk on the back of the head with a pistol butt sent the man into the same dreamless sprawl his captain was enjoying.

Dante stepped out into the noisy tavern, followed closely by Emma Chandler.  She did as ordered and kept her head turned down so that all she could see from under the brim of the hat was Dante's bootheels in front of her.  He led her in a zig zag path through the raucous crowd and they were almost at the door when she happened to glance up to get her bearings.  Directly ahead was a whore with her skirt shoved above her thighs.  She was straddling the lap of one of the patrons, moving up and down with enough vigor that the poor man was nearly being bludgeoned by her bouncing breasts.

Emma was so startled by the sight that she stopped and stared, and by the time she regained her wits, Dante was no longer in front of her.  He had moved ahead and the space between them had quickly filled with drunkards waving tankards.  One of the men bumped into another and spilled his ale. A push led to a shove, which brought forth a fist swung in annoyance, and before she knew it Emma was caught in the midst of a roiling brawl.

 

So sorry to hear there was more snow at home.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA   No I'm not.  I've been enjoying 80 degree weather with blue skies and great friends.  Heading to the pool everyday is a harship I think I could get to like instead of shovelling snow, shivering under blankets to watch TV, chipping ice off the back deck to let the dogs out.  Yup, I could get to like this version of winter.  So while I'm FULL of sympathy for those hearty Ontarians….HAHAHAHAHAHA.

Painting is all done and the homestead looks all spiffy and clean.  There are pics on my facebook page if anyone is interested.  Thank goodness it was done before the really hot weather arrived or it might still be in striped sections.  The shoulder has almost recovered, though the knees are still a little shakey.  Pool therapy is helping some, as is retail therapy.  Amazing how quickly one can walk when there is a sale *snort*

I'm also wroking on other projects.  I have a blog blitz coming up on the 27th, and had to write 15 blogs for 15 terrific bloggers who were willing to feature Swept Away for a day.  15 blog posts, 15 excerpts for the Book Lovin' Bitches Ebook Tour.  I'll post a list of the blogs on Sunday and you can follow them around the tour *s* I've been utterly amazed at the success Swept Away has enjoyed this month.  Offering it free for Read An Ebook Week resulted in nearly a thousand downloads, from my website and from Smashwords. Amazon offered it free for a weekend as well, and I hope everyone who could take advantage of the deal, did.  And to those who did, I hope you enjoyed it enough to try my other backlist books…China Rose, Bound by the Heart, and The Wind and the Sea.

And yeah, yeah, I'm working to get the teaser for the new book up.  It's just soooo nice by the pool  *snicker,duck, run*

 

 

I should be painting

But any excuse to delay is a good excuse *snort*.  I've done half the abode, some of it (the screen room to be precise) with two coats, and yes there will be some before and after pics when it's done.  If you're not familiar with my little project, check out my Facebook page, the albums with the Before and After, and Home Away from Home.  I came south this year determined to eradicate the orange and yellow and I'm about halfway.  Amazing how many people walking by stop and say "well isn't that just a whole lot better"  Bet your bippy it is.  Between the painting and trying to get some decent gardens in, my back, shoulders, and knees are just about done in, however….I shall persevere.  Who says women can't manage on their own?  My one concession so far has been to let Brother Bob (inside joke) install the new outside light fixtures.  Didn't think I wanted my hair straightened and my eyeballs fried.

It is amazing, however, what we can do, us helpless lil females, when something has to be done.  I've learned how to build cupboards and furniture.  Even fixed a tap.  I've discovered the joys of duct tape, and how to tape up a paint brush to a long broom handle to reach those pesky places under the eaves.  I'm as familiar with the aisles in Lowes and Home Depot now as any guy in overalls.  And power washers?  Woo hoo!  Give me one of those over a nail gun any day.

This isn't to say I'm entirely independent yet.  I still have a few phobias…like pumping my own gas.  It's a genuine phobia, dating back to when I was 16 or so and my aunt invited me out to lunch.  She drove a snazzy big car, wore spike high heels shoes, was always dressed to the nines, full makeup, hair, nails…the whole nine yards.  So she came to pick me up looking like there should be paparazzi following her…mink coat, the spike heels…and we headed off for lunch at a ritzy restaraunt.  She said "just have to make a quick stop"  and pulled into one of the newfangled (back then, they were) self serve gas stations.  Out of her classy big car she got, with her spike heels and her mink coat…popped the gas cap, shlepped the nozzle over to the tank, and started fillin' 'er up.

Wrong.  Just wrong.  That image has stayed with me…made me shudder…for 45 years.  Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with pumping your own gas, it's just not something I can bring myself to do.  My girlfriends are gently tolerant…they can laugh, I don't mind…but they do the deed for me if we're out shopping.  The number of full serve stations are dwindling, to be sure, but I know exactly where all of them are in Southern Ontario.  Down here on the Dark Side, there are NONE.  Absolutely NONE, so it was a matter of some sphincter tightening to figure out how to get me and my car down here without having to beg and plead with complete strangers to fill my gas tank.  Thank goodness my brother in law was only too happy to drive down with me and get in some golf.  We actually had a great trip down, never stopped yakking all the way.  Never had to twiddle radio stations to find something other than country twang on the drive through the Southern States (again, no offense to country music fans, and yes I know it's been veering more into pop over the past few years, but there is always one die hard station that has songs about losing my truck and my dog and my hat and feelin so blue I damn near kicked the cat, cuz she left me, she left me, she left me.  Yeah, well, three guesses why she left you if the truck came first on the list *snort*)

Anyway.  Must go and do more painting. Blah.  But the sooner I eradicate the rest of the orange…yes, orange paint on the exterior…the happier I will be.

 

 

Answering Juliet

Wow Juliet asked some Great questions.  I'll try to answer them one by one. *s*

Why did you decide to become a writer?

Actually, it happened purely by accident.  I had no burning desire to lock myself away in a garret watching spiders spin cobwebs while my brain flashed through and around scenes of angst and romance.  It was all my neighbor's fault.  Years ago *coughs to hide the number 30* when a certain publishing house used to put free books inside boxes of laundry detergent, my neighbor got hooked on reading them…which was the point, I suppose, of giving them away free.  I had never read one and asked her what the appeal was, so she gave me one to read.  It had a storyline that blew up a few thousand brain cells, that of a young perky feisty woman driving along a lonely highway in Texas and having to stop in the middle of nowhere to rescue a baby calf that was in the middle of the road.  With no mama cow in sight, she put the cute little thing in her car and kept driving until she came to a motel in the middle of that same nowhere, where she started arguing with the studly handsome motel owner over keeping the calf…her pet, now…in her room.

I have no idea how it ended, but I can guess.  I told my neighbor point blank that her brain would turn to mush if she kept reading stuff like that so she said to me:  If you can write something better, then do it.

And that's how I started writing *s*.

How long did it take you to get published?

Well, my first attempt was almost as laughable as the cow story.  The writing was bad, bad bad. In fact, I have taken chapters to writing workshops and handed out copies, not telling the students who wrote them, and spent the next two hours pulling them apart and pointing out all the dumbass structure errors, lack of character in the characters, lack of energy in the writing.  I wait until it's been truly shredded and laughed over before I reveal it as my first effort…which never fails to win blinks of disbelief as well as a lot of smiles when the realization strikes that there truly is a learning cycle in writing.  I used to laugh at the wench on Knots Landing who got dressed in her velour jumpsuit, had hair and makeup perfectly in place, sat at her cute little desk and put a clean sheet of paper into the typewiter then just started typing her bestseller.

Doesn't work that way.  I wrote four (not even counting the first attempt, it was that bad) books that had multiple rejections before I wrote one, China Rose, that was accepted on the first pass.  Those four unpubbed manuscripts were a reminder to me that it takes hard work and persistence (and more than a little stubbornness) before you find your *voice* and feel comfortable in your writer's skin.  Looking back through each of them, I can see where I discovered the knack of describing a scene properly, where I discovered the importance of dialogue as a plot tool, where I learned to edit, edit, edit and edit again.

So, to answer the question, it took me about five years and about 6 dozen rejections to finally get published.

What inspires you?

Inspiration comes from all kinds of sources.  The inspiration for The Wind and the Sea, for instance, came from reading a sentence in a magazine that contained the words …and the wind and the sea….  Boom.  The words conjured up sea battles and tall ships and Errol Flynn swinging through the rigging.  Through A Dark Mist came out of a recurring dream I'd had since I was a teenager.  If you read the prologue…that was my dream, beginning and ending exactly how I wrote it down.  My editor and I were having lunch and I was telling her about the dream and she told me I should write it down…which I did…and that started the Medieval Trilogy and exploring the whole Robin Hood legend.  Oddly enough, after I wrote it down, I never had the dream again *softly plays Twilight Zone muzak*

Each book has had some sort of trigger like that and when it happens, it's an awesome, tingly feeling *s*

What kind of books/writers do you like to read? Who is your favorite writer?

It may seem odd to hear this, but I rarely read romance novels.  I decided years ago that I didn't want to be influenced by any other plotlines or storylines or writers. My favorite kinds of books are action/adventure/crime/mystery.  I read Wilbur Smith and Clive Cussler, Michael Connelly is an absolute fav.  Finder, Deaver, some Pattersons…the Ken Follett cathedral books.  I loved DaVinci Code, but kind of cooled off with his other books.  However, reading Da Vinci inspired me to read about a dozen other books on Templars and the Holy Grail.  It's kind of like surfing on the net.  Read one thing and it leads to reading another *s*

Was there ever a scene or story that was hard to write?

Oh hell yes…two of them stand out.  In The Blood of Roses, when Catherine and Deirdre find Aluinn on the battlefield…I was sobbing like a baby while I wrote that.  I changed my mind a hundred times but in the end knew that the tragedy would mean more and have more impact if I wrote it the way it ended up.  The second hardest scene was Sparrow in The Last Arrow.  I loved that little guy and again, was sobbing like a fool as I wrote his final scene.

What do you do when you are blocked or write yourself into a corner?

I get up and walk away.  Leave it for a few days, even a week or more.  Forcing something never works, and the brain will click in when it's ready.  I've spent, literally days working on a single paragraph to get it to say exactly what I want it to say, then I get fed up and put it aside for a few days.  When I come back and rewrite it again, the words just click into place and I end up snorting at myself for wasting so much time trying to force it.

What advice do you have for anyone trying to break into romance writing?

Before you actually put pen to paper, read, read, read.  My mistake, after reading the cow book, was not to pick up half a dozen more and read them whether I wanted to or not, if only to get an idea of what the publishers were looking for.  The editor actually called me after I submitted it and said she couldn't remember a Harlequin ever having a murder in it (this was back in the day when the kiss came on the last page and everything else was left to the imagination) or drug dealers or car chases.

Know your genre.  Then write the words that will make the reader *see* it clearly in their mind's eye.  I always try to envision a big screen with a movie scrolling by.

Edit, edit, edit and when you think you've pared it down as much as you can, edit it again.  Read the dialogue out loud.  If it sounds goofy, it usually is.  Read the whole book out loud to yourself and if you find yourself gasping for breath, then the sentences are too long or you need some commas in there somewhere.  Find someone who will be honest and give an honest opinion and tell you it sucks if it actually does suck.  You don't need to hear someone being kind and saying, oh, it's wonderful I'm so proud of you.   Nyet.  You need someone to tell you if a scene makes no sense or the characters are boring or the story is predictable.  I was lucky enough to find someone who did exactly that for me when I was starting out…she was responsible, in fact, for me tossing out the first version of The Pride of Lions a month before I was set to send it off to the editor.  She read the final version and handed it back with a little shrug saying, "it's good, but…predictable and sort of ….boring"

AUGH.  Kiss of death.   I scrapped the whole damned thing and started over, and thanks to her, ended up with the two books, POL and Blood of Roses, that I am most proud of.

When is that next book going to be available?

Ahhh…the great mystery *s*.  On the one hand, it's great to be writing without an ironclad deadline (none of which I ever met on time, by the way)  On the other, a deadline would give me a kick in the ass and I probably wouldn't get so distracted by the Florida sunshine.  *s*  But it's coming along.  I should have a teaser chapter ready soon.

How did you manage not to kill your ex? Do you still believe in love?

It was touch and go, believe me.  The thought as well as the urge came over me more than once, especially as time went by and more and more of the ugliness of his betrayal and deceit came out.  I think I was in shock most of the time, and needed to stay angry enough to come out ahead in the long run.  Which I think I have done.  The papers for the divorce blindsided him… victory for me.  His skank dumped him faster than a hot rock when she found out he got hoofed out with nothing but the clothes on his back… victory for me.  DNA tests came back proving she lied to him about who fathered her kid…nother small victory for me.  Turns out he wasn't the only one she was shtupping on the side…I laughed out loud at the blow to his pride that must have been cuz he *luvvvvvved* her so much.   *snort*

All the little victories added up and helped me get through it without resorting to homicide.

As for believing in love, allow me to quote my icon here…

"I believe that everything happens for a reason.  People change so that you can learn to let go.  Things go wrong so that you can appreciate them when they're right.  You believe less so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself.  And sometimes good things fall apart so that better things can fall together."          Marilyn Monroe

Questions Through the Fence

Whilst leaving a pithy comment on my Facebook page for Melissa…who tends to vanish for months on end then pop back up without warning *s*…it occurred to me that while my poor brain is slowed down by paint fumes (who said women can't paint the exterior of a mobile home? *snort*  I will, after this *double snort) and my lil fingers are chafed from scrubbing awnings, and my feets/knees are sore from going up and down and up and down and up and down a ladder…that maybe I should just toss the query out…  Do you have any questions you'd like to ask?  Any subjects you'd like irreverently discussed? Could be about writing, could be about recipes, could be about dealing with pesky neighbors who have a farking yappy little poodle thing that I'd like to ship off on the next slow train to Oxnard.  Could be about the state of ebooks, the perils of divorcing at age 60, the struggles of a grandmother to grasp the fact that her grandchildren are not those cute little munchkins anymore, they're almost teenagers…augh…

Anything at all.

Coming to you from sunny Florida

Well, okay so it's raining today, but Florida needs the rain, or so the weather guys say.  Last week was all sunshine and 80′s, a magnificent change from shoveling three feet of white stuff every day.  The alternative to shoveling has been painting, but I'd rather paint in the early morning temps of 70 than shovel anytime *snort*.  Plus, I don't have to look at orange walls anymore when I sit outside in the screen room… BONUS!

At the moment I have a good friend visiting for a week.  She came down with some trepidation, warning me that she didn't sleep well at night these days so I might hear her rummaging around in the early morning hours.  Plus she normally works a shift that requires her to get up at 3am to be at work for 4.

Yesterday she slept till 8am.  Even she couldn't believe it LOL.  I said it was the heat and the quiet and the fresh air…not to mention quantities of good white plonk.

Other than the need to rid the universe of tacky orange paint, I've planted new gardens and set up an office-away-from-home.  Being one of those dinosaur type writers, I find it nearly impossible to edit off a computer screen, so I found an amazing bargain on a laser printer (49 bucks!!!!!!! regularly 129) and an equally amazing deal on an ergonomic keyboard which means I don't have to backspace every other word to hit the right keys.

Have I ever mentioned how much I hate laptop keyboards???  I feel all squished in, elbows hugging the ribs, fingers scrunched, eyes squinting and puter-rage building every time I have to hunch over a laptop. Blah.  So now I have my split keyboard, my printer…and words are pouring forth. Hopefully by the end of next week I'll have a teaser chapter ready to post for  The Following Sea.  A lot of readers have dropped hints about wanting a sequel to The Iron Rose, and frankly, that was the book that broke the camel's back as far as me going on hiatus.  The editors rejected the original proposal saying "pirate books weren't commercial enough"  and that I should really think about getting into the vampire/paranormal market.  Double Blah.

With the whole new world of self publishing opening up, it's giving dinosaurs like me the option of writing whateverthehell I want to write, and if only a handful of people read it…well…then I've made myself and a handful of people happy *s*.

These few brief words have been put up to 'splain that I haven't dropped off the face of the earth, I've just been eradicating orange paint and planting azaleas.  My sympathies to those of you still enduring snow. bwahahahahahaha.  Not.

Ostriches or Butterflies?

I get inspired by other people's blogs.  Stephanie Laurens wrote a blog on Dinosaurs and Daffodils, basically asking if this new world of self-publishing was scary or exciting.  I wrote a comment to add to her blog, but the blog gods ate it and of course I didn't think to make a copy, so instead of challenging the gods again I figured I would just put my thoughts here, changing the analogy slightly from Dinosaurs (which I am, having been in the writing business for nearly 30 years) and daffodils (those brave new souls venturing into the world of self-publishing, for which I also qualify, having self-pubbed my four early, Out Of Print books)…to ostriches and butterflies.  Writers do that, you know.  We love analogies.

The ostriches in this case, are the Big Six publishing houses, the bookstores, and the authors who are standing back shaking their heads saying nope, not me.  Not going to sell my priceless words as ebooks, not going to list them at $2.99, not when I've been a Bestseller, when I've made it onto Lists, when I've been published in hardcover and been on book tours etc etc etc….

Hmm.  I've been a Bestseller.  I've made it onto Lists.  I turned down a hardcover deal years ago, and I've been on book tours etc etc.  And I will admit I turned my nose up at ebooks when they first came out about 10 years ago, maybe more, because the readers were big and clunky, reading material was limited, and face it, I was a big reader myself and had (have) shelves full of lovely books that I could take into my hands, turn the pages, and lose myself for a few hours with some great stories.

I also went on a long hiatus, having grown over-stressed with all the bulls**t involved with deadlines, editors, being told my books weren't commercial enough…yada yada, I've blogged about all that before so I won't repeat it here.  Bottom line, I stopped having fun so I set pen and paper aside and watched my grandchildren growing up…something that only happens once.

More recently, a divorce after 37 years of marriage set me back on my hiney, right about the time I was considering picking up pen and paper again.  It's hard to write a romance novel when your life is falling down around your ears, so that made the pen and paper get pushed aside again.  I didn't think readers would appreciate me stabbing the hero every other page or every time he said:  I will love you forever.

Then last year I had an interesting email from Julie Ortolon, and again I have blogged about this before, but it bears repeating for the butterfly analogy.  She said she had been discussing self publishing her backlist books with several other authors who were interested in doing the same thing.  She wondered what, if anything, was happening to my early OOP books, to which of course I answered:  nothing.  She and a few others started an email group and a website to see who else was roving around wondering what to do in this brave new world of ebooks, and BacklistEbooks was formed.  It started with about 20 members, and we're now over a hundred with three loops.  A lot of the names I recognize.  Some are dinosaurs like me, (pausing to wave and chuckle at Shirl Henke) having been in the business, in print for the past three decades.

We're all slowly emerging from the cocoon and becoming butterflies…testing this ebook revolution by first reissuing our backlist books.  Some are having remarkable success and everyone is starting to question the logic of publishers who are making very little attempt to keep their authors from breaking out of more and more cocoons.   Self pubbed authors have complete control over their covers, something only a lucky few of us had many many years ago.  They also have complete freedom to write whatever stories they want to write whether some 20 year old editor fresh out of college thinks its commercial or not.  It's called diversity, all you publishers out there.  Not everyone wants to read vampire books, or chick lit, or zombies just because that happens to be the trend at the moment.  Regencies have been run into the ground with overkill, as have books about Scotland and Highlanders.  Everyone in the 70′s wrote books based on the Civil War until it turned to dust and killed off more reader interest than the armies of the North and South combined.

Can you SEE me writing a book about vampires?  That's what was suggested to me in place of the sequel to The Iron Rose because, I was told, pirate books were no longer commercial.

The other big ostrich in this blog is Borders.  Hello? Ebooks anyone?  Amazon has come out with the Kindle, Barnes and Noble has the Nook.  There is the Sony reader and, giving ebooks a huge push, the iPad.  Even Costco has it's own reader now, the PanDigital, a quarter of the price of the iPad with almost as many features.  A big book chain like Borders should have seen the writing on the wall. An average e-reader holds a thousand books and slips into a purse or pocket.  Ever tried shlepping a thousand books around in your purse? Or even your car?  Students, prime example.  No more slogging 50lbs of textbooks in a backpack, just take out the e-reader.  Lawyers…need to find a case quickly? Check your e-reader right there in court and voila….

And if all that isn't convincing enough to bring some heads out of the sand…try the basic bottom line.  A midlist author who sells 50,000 books is considered a bestseller.  The royalty rate on each book sold is 8% usually, but we'll round it up to 10% because my math sucks.  At 10%, the author earns .89 on a book that sells for $8.99.  For 50,000 books then, she earns $44,500.    Authors moan and whine over the low price point of ebooks, saying their books are worth way much more.  Okay. Do the math.  The average price point for an e-book is $2.99, which, at the 70% royalty rate offered by Amazon and Smashwords, works out to $2.03.  So, for those same 50,000 books the author would earn $101,500.  Of course, there are no cushy large advances, which are nice to get. On the other hand, there is no waiting for that advance to earn out, no stalling on the part of the publisher who still uses archaic excuses like reserves against returns to hold back payments.  I've often wondered, if you told the president of a publishing house that he was only going to be paid twice a year, that the amount would be unknown and at the discretion of some clever accountants…how many would take the job?

Amazon sends a cheque at the end of every month, Smashwords pays quarterly.  No reserves against returns, just wysiwyg (what you sell is what you get).  In this day and age of computers, bookstores and publishers know to the SECOND how many copies of a book is sold…hell, ten years ago an editor's assistant mistakenly sent me the URL of one of their distribution centers and even then, they knew exactly how many books  had been shipped, how many were in the warehouse, and exactly how many had been sold and in which stores.  The joy of computers.  I was asked, by that same panicked assistant to just forget I ever saw that website, but of course…hard to forget when you get a royalty statement where the numbers were so skewed it looked like I owed them money.

There are already resources for cover graphics if the author feels he or she cannot do the artwork themselves.  There are editing services cropping up every other day because yes, a good book still needs to be edited.  There are people who format for ebooks, people who scan and convert print books to ebooks, and more sites cropping up every day to promote and review ebooks.  There are a lot of butterflies out there.  The ostriches better get their heads out of the sand or they'll just be stuck there with their…erm…feathers in the air.

I'd love to get some feedback on this.  Hopefully the blog gods won't eat any more posts.