Silke Juppenlatz's Blog, page 6

Christmas came early

On the 3rd December, to be precise.

It's the reason for slacking off with blogging and uh…a lot of other things.

In case you wonder what the reason was:

That's "Oscuro Del Gavilan".

He is a 9 year old, dapple gray (when no mud is available) Paso Fino gelding.

He has the prettiest head, and fur as soft as a cat's. So far everyone has fallen in love with him.

So yeah, it's his fault.

It'll also be his fault if I start writing horse books lol.

We'll be back to regular programming soon.

December is going to be a busy month

It's 44 Days until Christmas.

Shocking, isn't it? Are you ready?

I know I'm not, and I'm having a monster month ahead of me.

I will be doing a blog tour, several other guest blogs, a give-away (21st December @ TRS), and some Christmas shopping.

Right now, I'm looking at my calendar, and it's a frightening affair.

I will add a little event calendar in case anyone wants to visit with me, but I'm still working on the links and stuff.

Have you ever done this?

I'm very anal about backing up my writing. It's in several places in case a hard disk fails.

USB Drives, Online storage, two different hard drives.

Well, the other day I was working on a story, and on the read through I realized — it's not the right version.

Only…I didn't know where the right version lived, and I'd already made a bunch of changes to the one I was working on.

Ack.

I found the right version — saved in the wrong place — and thought about combining the two.

Easier said than done, when you have to find the comma you took out, or added somewhere in a 50k novel.

I went and dug around for an easy way to compare the two documents so I could combine them.

I use Word 2010. And those clever clogs at Microsoft were way ahead of me. Apparently I'm not the only person who screws up.

There is an option to compare two documents — even with different file names — and show the result in a third, with track changes enabled so you can accept/reject the changes as you go.

It's in the "Review" tab.

From there, you get an option to Compare.

Then you can choose your documents.

There are a lot of options in that screen, tick what you need. There is also an option to show the changes in a third document — I urge you to use that option. It makes life a lot easier.

So there, if you're ever in a pickle because you stuffed up an edit, that's a great way to see what's changed if you don't use track changes while you write. (I don't.)

Hope it helps!

The Devil Made Me Do It.

I was going to post this at the TRS Spookapalooza, but their server is down. So I'll blog it here, seeing as it's Halloween.

I have a slightly controversial topic for you: Who the devil is the devil?

Ah, easy! I hear you cry.

Not so.

When I ask people who the devil is, they tend to give me names. Satan. Lucifer. Beelzebub. Old Nick. And so forth. To name but a few.

Err… No.

The Devil is never actually named anywhere. It is implied that it is Satan, but no one ever calls him Satan, the devil.

Nor is his name Satan. That word is Hebrew for "The Adversary"  ("Devil" means the same thing, actually)– and that could be anyone and anything.

Lucifer is not the devil, nor is he the same entity as Satan. He's a fallen angel who was mistaken for the Prince of Darkness — but he's not the devil.

(He is, however, one of the four Crown Princes of Hell.)

Beelzebub is actually a Syrian God, also known as Lord of the Flies. He's not the same entity as Satan either. Nor is he Lucifer. Totally different animal.

So who is he, really?

I write about angels and demons. So I needed to know who the main players (and their bosses) are. Naturally that led to finding out what I could about the devil.

I thought I knew who he was, but it turned out I was wrong.

I thought Lucifer and Satan were one and the same. I was wrong.

I thought the devil was a major player in the bible. I was wrong.

In fact, everything I thought I knew was wrong.

The devil is actually a minor character in the bible. He hardly appears in there at all. The same goes for the Old Testament. There's a little more, but hardly enough to warrant more than a footnote.

The New Testament is where the trouble really starts. He's starting to take shape, but he's still not the all-consuming evil villain we know today. Far from it.

In the Book of Job, he's a kind of prosecuting angel — sent by God to try Job. Yes, he is tormenting Job, because God told him to. So…err…hello? What's going on here?

He fills the role of prosecutor more than once, and each time at the behest of God. It kind of makes you go "Huh?"

Then, suddenly, there is a gap in the scriptures.

Along comes Zoroastrianism, a Persian religion around 600 BC. It has distinct sources for good and evil and influenced a lot of the other religions around at the time — including Christianity. The Christians needed a reason for all this evil stuff happening — and the devil in it's more modern form as the adversary of God came into being. "The Devil made me do it" was a rather convenient excuse. An Alibi, if you must.

There were still no descriptions at that time. You had dragons and a leopard with the paws of a bear, and the head of a lion…but the goat legs, horned head and all the rest of it came later. Much, much later.

In fact, it took almost a thousand years before it became what we know as the Devil today.

And the church borrowed from everywhere. The horns? Yeah, the Horned One, the Green Man of pagan religions — that's where the devil's horns came from. The goat legs? Pan, from Greek Mythology. Everything about him is borrowed from other places. The more the congregation "sinned" the worse the image and deeds of the devil became.

Then the reformation happened, and the witch trials are about the height of the Devil's influence over belief.

When the witch trials didn't really work out…his "fame" waned along with the rabid prosecution of witches. He slipped into almost obscurity for a long while, resurrected here and there, but never again as potent as he was around the 16th/17th century.

So who is he? Did God create him? Which would mean God created Evil, and the church won't have that. But if God didn't create him, then who did? (Believe me, I've asked. I never did get a response — because they don't have one.)

What's more, if Satan was an angel and cast out because of pride — can he be redeemed?

It stands to reason that if we can be redeemed, sometimes despite the most heinous crimes, he should be able to redeem himself too.

But no. I asked that question and got "Absolutely not." When I said well, if we sin, we can earn redemption. I was told it's because "There is inherent Good in every human being."

But…if Satan was an angel, there had to be good in him too. So that argument doesn't wash.

I don't think we'll ever know. Personally, I think they simply needed a scapegoat and picked some poor sod to be it. Satan picked the mother of all short straws.

And of course…if you look into the devil's backstory, you'll inevitably run across the first ever "Girl Power" act in the history of mankind: Lilith.

She took one look at Adam and went "You want me to do what with that? You're kidding, right?" and walked away. That girl burned the bra before it was ever invented.

I'm sure the devil made her do it…

What do you think?

Halloween Short Story

I am terribly late with this, but there may still be time to enter.

I have a short story up at the Paranormal Romantics Blog-A-Thon, and the grand prize over there is a Kindle.

You can also win a copy of Howl.

Here is the link: Halloween Short Story

This has been written exclusively for the Blog-A-Thon, and has never been published.

Happy Halloween, everyone!!!

Don't Hire Losers (DHL)

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I'm going to have a little rant.

About DHL – or Yodel, as they are now known -, who are about the most useless courier company on the planet.

The company I work for has an account with them. It's a big company, and we put a lot of business their way.

First of all, what use is a 24 hour service, if the goods are not picked up the same day you book a collection?

DHL/Yodel don't pick up the same day anymore. Period.

Strike 1.

Then you are given a collection number — which apparently means nothing to anyone at DHL/Yodel.

I just spent 45 minutes on the phone with DHL/Yodel, trying to find out where a parcel is, after using every number available to me on both the DHL and the Yodel websites. None of them worked.

I know it was collected on the 25th (because I called our Edinburgh Branch), and they (DHL) confirmed it — but they can't track it.

Hello? You're the one handling the parcel, surely you know where it should be? Why don't you link it to the collection number you gave me when I booked the darn thing?

No, there is another number.

So I call Edinburgh (again) to get the number on the paperwork they got from DHL/Yodel when it was collected. I go to the DHL website and…the number doesn't work. Nor does it work on the Yodel website. Quelle surprise!

I call Edinburgh again, confirming the number. Yep, that's the tracking number they got on their paperwork.

Fine. I call DHL/Yodel again, to be passed from pillar to post (again), no one can find the parcel, or even a tracking number for it. Each department passes me to the other, I went from tracking to collection no less than four times, and I still don't have an answer.

The kicker? The tracking department can't find anything against the collection number I was given, although the collection department can. Left hand, do you have any idea what the right hand is doing? Try linking your numbers in a database? Do you even use computers? I assure you, everyone else is quite capable of finding things based on a single order number — but apparently not DHL. Update your databases, seriously. We're not in the stone age, after all.

Strike 2.

Everyone assures me the parcel was collected on the 25th. Well, it's the 27th today and there is no sign of the damned thing.

Bear in mind, I booked the collection on the 24th, at 11am, on a 24 hour delivery service.

That's a bloody LONG 24 hours! Even with their collecting it on the 25th (at 3pm!), I expect it here at the latest on the 26th.

Well the 26th was yesterday.

Why on earth they collect a parcel that has to go from Scotland to Surrey, on a 24hr delivery, at 3pm, is beyond me. But even so, 24 hours from the 25th at 3pm, still makes for delivery by 3pm on the 26th. Not the 27th.

Remember, you pay extra for a 24 hr service.

Strike 3.

If this were an isolated incident, okay. Shit happens.

But it isn't. It's been like this for ages, our manager rather waits 4 days for stuff to come down from the far north via our internal transport, than use DHL, because generally they lose the goods, if they pick them up at all.

Quite frankly, I'm going to see if we can use UPS.

Basically — don't use DHL if you actually want your parcel delivered. I know why they didn't get the contract for the Olympics.

The canoe people didn't want to be up shit creek without their paddles — because DHL can't get their act together.

(The Olympics use UPS)

And as a BTW — DHL is Yodel now. Don't be fooled.

Several Guest Blogs

I'm guest blogging again…and there are some nifty things coming up.

Today I'm at Rachel Brimble's blog.

Tomorrow (14th) I'm taking part in the

And on the 29th-31st you can find me at the 2nd TRS Spookalooza.

Also, you can look forward to an exclusive short story by me as part of the Paranormal Romantics Blog-a-thon sometime on Oct 29-3.

Not only that, you can win books and other goodies (not just from me) during this, so make sure you stop by!

I will post more details on this when I have direct links.

Genre Hopping — no thanks

Okay, I know YA / Teen stuff is a big seller.

I make no bones about not liking it.

It's not for me. It leaves me stone cold. Not interested, at all. I can't be bothered to deal with teenage angst.

So when I see my favorite authors go out and write YA, it turns me off them.

Seriously, it does.

I have nothing against the genre, but after picking up a book by one of my favorite authors, and then finding out it's a freaking YA book, I was miffed.

Actually, I was angry.

I'd just wasted money on something I'd never read — and won't read in future, either. Yes, I read the book and no, I didn't like it.

The next book I saw was…YA again. I didn't buy it.

Then I picked up the next adult one — and it was a watered down version of her writing prior to going YA. It sucked. It was tamer, not as dark, not as gritty and had overtones of teen issues in it.

And that was that.

No more instant buys if the author goes YA. I now hesitate big time before picking up a new book aimed at the adult market.

All because of genre hopping.

Sherrilyn Kenyon and Gena Showalter are two big names I can mention who went YA with some books — and who are no longer insta-buys because of it.

I own every single book they have written, and then some — and now I'm sitting here and I'm crossing them off my buy list.

There are a few others as well, but they weren't necessarily insta buys yet — and now they never will be.

I'll still give the next adult Showalter a shot, same with Kenyon — but if it doesn't deliver exactly what I expect from them, I'm not buying their books anymore. You've been warned.

It makes me wonder – for every new fan an author gets for their YA series — how many old ones do they lose?

It's hard to build a steady readership, and it's easier to get new readers than to hold on to the long term readers. If you piss those off…you lose them for good.

There has been discussion about pen names and the reasons for them.

Well, here is one: Distinguishing between target markets.

If you write adult and YA under the same name, then I have no way of distinguishing one title from another, without finding out more (and wasting my time). You lose the whole "Gotta have the new book by X" factor, because your readers no longer trust  you to deliver what they want to read.

By all means write YA, or even infant books, if you like. But frankly… if someone writes dark, dark romance, and then goes YA… I don't want to know anymore. Too often have I seen the dark and gritty "transmogrify" into "Acceptable for YA". I no longer trust an author to keep the genres separate.

It's like having your favorite horror novelist write inspirational romance all of a sudden. It puts me off.

I read a lot, but any author who turns YA from now on is off my buy list, because their adult books inevitably suffer because of it.

Readers are a fickle lot, we like what we like, and when you stop writing what we like — we no longer buy what you write.

Yes, I'm unforgiving on that, and once you're off my list — you usually stay off my list.

I wonder how many other readers feel the same way, and how much research the authors who go down that route, did with their current adult readership.

I won't quibble if you do it under a different name, and you're able to keep the two separate and keep writing the same gritty and dark books you usually write — fine.

If not… there are thousands of other authors out there who'll be only too happy if I buy their books instead. And let me tell you…I'm doing that already. The more they deliver, and my old favorites do not, the less likely I am to ever pick up another book by those old favorites again.

Smitten :)

I've just had a wonderful review for Smitten from Two Lips Reviews.

If you want to read it, you can find it here: Smitten Review

Thank you, Two Lips Reviews!

Decadent Submissions are open

 

Decadent Publishing is actively seeking stories that fit our new Honor Guard line.

The Honor Guard line is composed of contemporary multi-national romance stories with a heat level of 3-5 and word count between 10k-30k.

Setting: US embassies around the world. The hero can be any alpha male having to do with embassy operations: Marines, MP, CIA, Homeland Security, NSA, etc.

The heroine can be an American or foreign national. Her age should be 25+ (can be Late Escape–romance between couples age 50+–as well). If your setting is in India, Australia, Norway or wherever, we need "local flavor". Tap your travel experiences!

If you write about the military, make sure it's accurate. Give us fun, adventure, romance, interesting settings, strong characters and hot lovin' combined with cultural insights. HEA is mandatory.

Decadent is also taking submissions in our popular 1Night Stand line and is open for general sunmissions in the following catagories. Please keep word count between 5-50k at this time.

See SUBMISSIONS page on the website for details. http://www.decadentpublishing.com/index.php?osCsid=084930d6cc456d4ae1915b6958c5a3e5&content=submissions

Historical paranormal romance

Late Escape romance (couples who are 50 years of age or older)

May-December romance

Comedy (romance or mainstream fiction)

Time travel (romance or mainstream fiction)

Erotic Romance

GLBT (especially F/F)

Non-Fiction (Biography, historical, memoirs, autobiography)

So if you have anything that fits — head on over there.

 

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