Christine DeMaio-Rice's Blog

Hello world!

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

Vote For Me (please)

Imagine my surprise when I found out Dead Is the New Black was nominated for a Preditors and Editors Award and somehow I totally missed it.

Or don’t. Because then you’d have a heart attack or stroke out or something.

But if you read the book and liked it, I have four days to convince you to go vote for it for best mystery of 2012.

So please, really. It would mean a lot to me because life is so short and painful and this would be a bright spot I can remember on my deathbed.

Dire enough for you?

Here’s the link.

http://www.critters.org/predpoll/novelmys.shtml

Please vote only once – though I know it’s tempting to vote seventeen times.

 

If you click on this picture it will take you right to the site.

 

How To Design a Book

It’s hard to explain.

You have a cover, and an interior, and you can’t do jack diddly with the interior because you can’t play with fonts or font sizes at all.

But I was reading Jillian Dodd’s That Boy which is terribly popular with the YA crowd and I was amazed at the attention she paid to every detail of the book. Not one page went by this woman ill-considered, and nothing was left to chance. Even the chapter names allow her readers the freedom to revisit their favorite scenes.

I’m just going to post some screenshots here so you can get the full flavor of one girl’s life, as drawn by an author who loves her characters:

Click on the table of contents screen cap to see what she’s done. Sorry about the resolution.

These screen caps are from That Boy.

Her follow up series is The Keatyn Chronicles. Since it’s release on the 26th of November, it has 157 five star reviews.

Here’s the blurb:

I’ve always written scripts for my perfect life.

But no way could I have ever scripted this.

My life is so far from perfect, it’s not even funny.

All because of a stalker.

I’m at a boarding school, where I have to lie about who I am.

I can’t see my family.

I’m tutoring a hottie god that tortures me with his smile.

The most popular girl already hates me.

But there’s this boy.

This hot, sweet, sexy boy.

So I’m going to stop trying to script my life and just live it.

Because who knows how long I have left. 

The stories might be categorised under young adult. But I can highly recommend them for anyone who loves to be entertained by a truly memorable character and adores a rip roaring rock and roll read. –CC MacKenzie, romance author.

Links: Stalk Me http://www.amazon.com/Stalk-me-Keatyn-Chronicles-ebook/dp/B0090SXRXK/ref=pd_sim_kstore_1

Links: Kiss Me  http://www.amazon.com/Kiss-The-Keatyn-Chronicles-ebook/dp/B00AEEFKZ2/ref=pd_sim_kstore_1

Links: Jillian Dodd website http://jilliandodd.net/

Links: Jillian Dodd facebook http://www.facebook.com/jillian.dodd.3

Links: Jilliand Dodd goodreads http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4833990.Jillian_Dodd?auto_login_attempted=true

Cover Reveal – A Dress To Die For

Good Morning!

I just finished the cover for book 3.

 

Just as Laura Carnegie is safely ensconced in Jeremy’s company and his bed, she gets distracted by a stolen dress worn by a murdered princess, and her father’s disappearance twenty years before. Can her career and her relationship survive her rabid curiosity?

Here’s the fun thing about finishing a cover…

It’s done!

Here’s the not fun thing….

It’s done.

I think my biggest question when making a cover is, “Can I stand to look at this thing for the next ten years?” Because I’m not going to change it. Not ever. And when I was doing this one I thought, can I stand to look at this woman for the next millennia? I mean, she’s staring right at me. But okay, I decided to just bite the bullet and decide that this woman is the heart and soul of Princess Philomena, who I created out of my head and who I love and adore.

So I’ll live with it.

99 Authors for 99c only on Amazon.com

These prices are available on Amazon only.
For a listing of books offered and to enter to win, click here!!

 

Holiday Blog Hop

What fun!

IF YOU HAVE DONE THIS BEFORE READ HERE

Three lucky winners will receive an e-copy of Dead Is the New Black and Death of a Supermodel.

One will get signed books of the same.

Winners chosen via rafflecopter.

Sign up for the email list to enter. The box to sign up is at the top right. If you do not receive a confirmation from Mailchimp in 24 hours, you can email me at sartorial.sandwich (at) gmail (dot)  com, and I’ll add your email manually.

IF YOU ARE A BLOG HOP VIRGIN READ HERE

Welcome!

A blog hop is a bunch of blogs getting together and offering prizes. Contestants go from blog to blog, entering the sweepstakes, chatting with authors and otherwise engaging in a generally festive atmosphere. You do this by hitting the blog hop graphic to the right, and you’ll go to kind of the hub of the operation. There you choose which blogs to vistit. Go to all of them, it’s FUN. A lot of these books are outstanding and the authors are incredibly friendly.

So, what am I up to here?

Three lucky winners will receive an e-copy of Dead Is the New Black and Death of a Supermodel.

One will get signed print books of the same.

Winners chosen via rafflecopter.

Sign up for the email list to enter. The box to sign up is at the top right. If you do not receive a confirmation from Mailchimp in 24 hours, you can email me at sartorial.sandwich (at) gmail (dot)  com, and I’ll add your email manually.

 And for those of you that care, I am totally sitting on book 3, waiting for an edit date. Early March, latest, it’ll be out…….

Now go hop!

Click here for the home page

How To Not Look Like an Idiot

Oh look, a blog post. Must be slow at work.

This line from Dead Is the New Black gets a lot of play:

When Stu slid in next to her, she asked, “When you buy a suit jacket and you can’t get your hands into the pockets, do you assume you just bought a jacket with non-functional pockets, or do you rip the stay stitch out like you’re supposed to?”

Laura’s aggravation stems from seeing people walk around with hanger loops coming out from under their arms and (shudder) labels at the left cuff.

Garment manufacturers take a number of steps to ensure clothes got from factory to store to closet in one piece. So, here are the things you should know about your clothes before wearing them:

THE TACKED JACKET POCKET

 

What It’s For

Pockets have a way of sagging during shipping, especially if they’re hung. The tacking ensures you’re getting a flat pocket when you buy it.

For years my stepdad couldn’t figure out why he’d buy nice jackets only to discover they had fake pockets. Except they didn’t have fake pockets, they had aggressively tacked functional pockets. Carefully rip the stitch open.

The better the jacket, the more likely it’s hand tacked, but if it’s not, try not to judge.

The fit on the above jacket is lovely except for the flipping open at the front/bottom caused by an ill-shaped facing. This is very very odd for Burberry, but it leads me to believe they shot an early sample.

THE TACKED VENT

 

What It’s For

When jackets are piled one on top of the other, and your finishing staff is rushing because they have to pack another four thousand of a different style the next day, and they have to finish the job and move on, vents have a way of flipping open. Then when a flipped open vent is shipped a billion miles over a stormy sea, and twenty pounds worth of jackets are on top of it, you can bet on a crease that will make the jacket unsaleable.

Do not leave the house without removing the “X” at the bottom of the vent.

 

HANGER TAPE

 

What It’s For

You all know the evil you do. You go through racks, looking for your size and you are simply not neat about it. Stuff falls of the hanger. Whether or not you leave it is simply a matter of upbringing, but the store would rather it stay on the hanger as much as possible. Thus, they put in hanger tape.

 

 

 

Now, because hanger tape has gotten branded and attractive in recent years, and because we’ve moved to a “one strand across the neck” formation, I’ve seen this left on a bazillion backs. Even some people in the industry leave it in. You’re not supposed to. Cut it out. You look like an idiot.

THE CUFF LABEL

 

Why It’s There

You’re looking at a rack of jackets. They all face right sleeve toward the wall, left sleeve toward the aisle. Always. The cuff label means if you want an Armani or Nautica suit, you don’t have to look at each neck label and push the jackets around, making a mess. The fact that things are now arranged by brand is notwithstanding. They used to be arranged by size and if we love anything in the garment industry, it’s tradition.

You need to take this off.

You really, really need to take this off.

 

 

If I see you with it I’m attacking it with a seam ripper, removing it, and checking your vents and pockets. Got it?

If you’d like to know more about the garmento side of fashion, but you like mystery and romance, you might take a look at my books. My mom thinks they’re awesome. Also, they’ve won awards that my mom wasn’t judging at all. So maybe you’ll like them too. I promise they’re better punctuated than this post.

Get Book 1, Dead is the New Black on Amazon.

Get Book 2, Death of a Supermodel on Amazon.

Or check out this little ebook called The Case of the Missing Blahnik.

All those badasses are available on Kindle if that’s how you roll.

Quote Boxes for Dead Is the New Black

One Step Forward….

I finally added a mailing list. If you want to be informed of new releases, please put your info to the right.

I will never, ever sell your information, even as a joke. I will never spam you. I’ll only use the list to let you know when I’m publishing a new release or doing an event or whatever. All other announcements will be done on this page. And of course, I’ll have what to say on my facebook page, which is here – http://www.facebook.com/christine.dem...

I’m cranking out book 3 and book 4′s already written. So I’ve been productive You can expect them to magically appear on Amazon in March and April, respectively.

In other news, I put a new cover on The Case of the Missing Blahnik. The old one just didn’t go with the other two and it was really starting to bug me.

In fashion news, nothing important has changed. We still work too hard for too little. We still place importance on the wrong things and do not embrace our inner awesome. Go give your inner awesome a hug. I’m going to get Laura and the gang into worlds of trouble.

 

 

Quote Boxes For Dead Is the New Black