Laura K. Curtis's Blog, page 10

Are You Keeping Yourself and Your Work Safe Online?

PERSONAL SAFETY:

Artists, authors, musicians, crafters…if you’re in a creative business you need to get the word out about yourself and your work. People need to associate you with your product. As a marketing and “branding” professional, I spend a lot of time giving people advice on how to get “out there.”

But today I want to take a step back and talk about how to keep yourself safe while you do that.

1) Do you have a newsletter? Newsletters are excellent for getting word out about what you’re doing and where you’re going to be. Got a new book? Showing your work in a gallery? How will those who are interested find out? You need a newsletter. There are a number of good services: MailChimp and Aweber are the two I hear about most often. But the CAN-SPAM Act requires that at the bottom of your newsletter you have your FULL PHYSICAL MAILING ADDRESS.

That’s right. You need to have a physical address. It’s the law. But anyone can sign up for your newsletter and you have no idea what kind of crazy you might inspire with a totally innocent email update, so don’t put your home address there. Most everyone I know uses a post office box. You can get them at the actual post office (the problem with this is that you get a lot of junk mail) or at a local Fed Ex or UPS store. You can register those addresses under your pseudonym with no problem. If you’re mailing out contest prizes, etc, you should also use that address. Nothing “professional” should go through your home.

2) Do you have a website? Did you know that if you do, and you don’t have “domain privacy” enabled, anyone can backtrace your information to get your home address and phone number? All they have to do is go to whois.net and enter your website’s URL. This is not something you want. AT ALL. Most hosts charge about $10/year for domain privacy. If you cannot figure out how to enable it on your domain, just call your host and have them do it for you.

Here’s what my “Whois.org” looks like because I have privacy enabled.

Registrant Name: DOMAIN PRIVACY SERVICE FBO REGISTRANT
Registrant Organization:
Registrant Street: 1958 SOUTH 950 EAST
Registrant City: PROVO
Registrant State/Province: UTAH
Registrant Postal Code: 84606
Registrant Country: UNITED STATES
Registrant Phone: +1.8017659400

The privacy service my host uses is in Provo, so that’s what shows up. Not my information at all. There are privacy services all over the world, so the place your registrar will show could be anywhere.

3) Do you share personal things? The way to make connections to your audience is through personal, authentic connections. But you want to be careful what those things are. Don’t take pictures of your kids in your backyard with your phone or other cell-enabled (or, for that matter, gps-enabled) device. Want to know why not? Did you realize that the metadata of the picture contains geographical data? Yes, you can strip it before posting, but not if you post directly from your phone to the web, etc. Creepers may not know how to extract it, but if they’re TRUE creepers, they will. (If you have a Mac, open the photo in iPhoto and do COMMAND-I — over on the right side you’ll see the metadata, including a map showing where you took the picture.)

True creepers cannot be avoided. These people are stalkers and need to be avoided at all costs. But taking the three precautions above are a good start to keeping the casual asshole from getting hold of information you don’t want him to have.

 

PROJECT / WORK SECURITY:

This is completely different, but I want to take a moment to remind you about it because so many artists and authors I know have had really bad (REALLY BAD) problems with data loss.

Your data should be in several places, at least one of which is off-site. If your house burns down, you don’t want to run in and try to save your laptop; you want to GTFO and know that you’ll be able to get everything back from your offsite backup.

You shouldn’t depend on a system that forces you to back up your work when you finish a session. An author friend once told me that she always backed up post-session so she didn’t worry…until she lost 4000 words when her hard drive failed mid-session. If you’re just mailing your work to yourself, you’re not doing enough. Plus, you’re  not saving files like your personal dictionary, your profiles, etc.

“But if I save it on the cloud, someone might steal it.”

Yeah, they might. I SERIOUSLY doubt it. I’ve never heard of plagiarism occurring that way, mostly because it’s too damned hard. There are so many easier ways to get your book. Plus, what good would half a book do them? They’d have to write the rest!

So, go for a several-level protection strategy.

Mine, and I admit I go a bit overboard, is:

1) I set both Word and Scrivener, which I use for writing, to 5-minute backups. I also take “snapshots” in Scrivener so I can go back to earlier versions. (If you didn’t know it, you can sneak back into previous versions of Scrivener files even without snapshots…look it up, you won’t be sorry!)

2) I keep all important documents, all works in progress, etc, in the DropBox folder on my harddrive. That means that any time I am connected to the Internet, the DropBox files sync. I don’t have to be working on the file, I just have to be connected to the ‘Net.

3) In-house backup every half hour. I use Time Machine, which backs up over my home network. I LOVE Time Machine because it’s super easy for me to go back to a half hour ago, or an hour ago or three hours ago and pull a necessary file I’ve somehow screwed up or thrown out. But it’s not the most reliable program in the world, so you do have to look at it every once in a while to be sure it’s maintaining its backups.

4) COMPREHENSIVE, full-machine, off-site backup using CrashPlan. I have also heard good things about Carbonite, but I cannot speak for that. I can speak for CrashPlan, which backs up every…I don’t recall exactly…15 minutes or something to an off-site location. That’s my whole computer (so is Time Machine, but like I said, it’s not entirely reliable). Anything that gets lost can be brought back. That ridiculously complicated Dragon Dictate profile that allows it to spell all the character names in your series? It’s in there.

Each level of these is more complicated to access, obviously. If I just want to grab the last version of something in Scrivener, that’s easy. Dropbox keeps old copies, too, so I can grab one of those. Time Machine requires some fiddling, but I can get it. And CrashPlan makes it a little harder. But I have never, ever, lost more than a few minutes worth of work. And when my computer completely croaks and I have to take it in and leave it at the shop so they can replace the hard drive, and they ask me whether I need data recovery, I just smile and say “no thanks.”

 

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Fall Calls For a (Skull) Shawl

It’s no secret that I love crochet. I’ll try my hand at almost anything, but my two favorite things are amigurumi and shawls. Recently, I made a skull shawl for a friend and decided I wanted one myself. But once I’d made it, I realized the colors I’d selected didn’t work for my skin tone, so now I am offering it up as a giveaway!

This is the perfect “back to school” item for the kid (or adult) that likes to be a little bit on the offbeat side. The colors are perfect for fall.

The colors in this image are true to life.

The shawl is a medium size, as you can see from the picture below.

Bad picture, but shows the size

To enter to win, simply comment on this post and be sure to leave me some way to contact you in case you win! I will draw a winner the morning of September 12, 2104.

Good luck!

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What’s Wrong With Insta-Love? (Another TICA Post)

This topic arose today on Twitter, particularly in the cases of “fated/cursed” lovers. In my first TICA—tropes I cannot abide—post I talked about alpha-holes. My dislike of insta-love isn’t as strong, but it’s still there.

I’m going to deal with the reason I dislike the “fated lovers” trope first because it’s simpler: when something is fated, there’s no escaping it. You can make it more interesting by saying they’re fated to love each other and cursed not be together, but since it’s a romance, I won’t believe the curse part. I know they’ll overcome it. And, most likely since the very concept of fate is paranormal, there will be some kind of magical “intervention” that serves as a deus ex machina, solving the curse. This is a big part of my issue with paranormal romance in general—love is hard in real life, and I prefer romance to be realistic enough to reflect that. (I know, you’re tired of me saying that, too.)

That being said, there’s plenty of insta-love in romance that isn’t fated/cursed. Boy meets girl. They fall in love right away. Events conspire to keep them apart, and the story focus is entirely on how they get back to each other. This can make for an exciting adventure story, but it doesn’t hold up as a romance for me.

Why? Because the point of a romance novel, as opposed to a novel with romantic elements, is the romance arc. If you take care of that in the first ten percent of the book, it’s not a romance. People may say “but don’t you believe in love at first sight?” Well…I believe in potential at first sight. I believe in lust at first sight. I believe in attraction at first sight. But before you know you’re in love with someone, you have to try things out. You have to find the ways in which you are, and are not, compatible. You have to spend time together…or at least have an epistolary or telephonic relationship.

I remember that after the very first time I met my husband I knew I wanted to date him. You might, given the fact that we’re now married, call it “love at first sight.” But I would call it “potential for love” at first sight. I knew we had a chance. The actual love part took longer.

When I read a romance, I want to see that potential becoming a reality. That’s the ride I sign up for when I open a romance novel. If you just say “they’re in love” and go from there, you’re cheating me out of the experience I paid for.

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Bookish Meme – What Are *Your* Reading Habits?

I stole this meme from my friend Ros Clarke, because I liked it and I knew she wouldn’t mind

Some of these I can’t answer because I honestly have no clue about things like the longest book I’ve read.

A. Author You’ve Read The Most Books From: John D. MacDonald

B. Best Sequel Ever: Hmmm… Nightmare in Pink or Dark Hollow

C. Currently Reading: Secrets on the Sand by Roxanne St. Claire

D. Drink of Choice While Reading: Infused water (lemon or watermelon) or iced tea

E. E-Reader or Physical Books: eReader. It used to be kindle, but I’ve been trending toward iPad of late.

F. Fictional Character You Would Have Dated In High School: The only “boy” I ever had a crush on in books in high school were the Greasers of S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders.

G. Glad You Gave This Book A Chance: The Inn at Lake Devine by Elinor Lipman

H. Hidden Gem Book: I don’t know any adult books I’d call hidden gems, but there are children’s books, like Mary Stewart’s The Little Broomstick or George MacDonald’s The Princess and the Goblin that no one reads any longer that are really worth another look.

I. Important Moments of Your Reading Life: I was a huge fan of Arthurian legend as a child. After I read Mary Stewart’s Arthurian books, I searched out her other work, which was how I discovered the Gothic genre, which is still one of my absolute favorites.

J. Just Finished: Molly O’Keefe’s Between the Sheets.

K. Kinds of Books You Won’t Read: Noir. I read it when I was younger, but now it just depresses the hell out of me.

L. Longest Book You’ve Read: I have no idea. Moby Dick, The Grapes of Wrath, and My Antonia all seemed interminable to me, but they’re not physically that long.

M. Major Book Hangover Because Of: Guy Gavriel Kay’s Tigana. This gave me a reading AND writing hangover. For a long time, I thought I should just give up writing (I was writing epic fantasy at the time) and not bother reading anything else since I’d reached the epitome.

N. Number of Bookcases You Own: Most of mine are half-height, but I have a lot of those, so I will go with about 6 full or 12 half.

O. One Book That You Have Read Multiple Times: John Connolly’s Every Dead Thing

P. Preferred Place to Read: I usually have more than one book going. The bed/bath book and the purse book which travels with me.

Q. Quote From A Book That Inspires You: I actually have a whole Pinterest board of these!

R. Reading Regret: Moby Dick.

S. Series You Started and Need to Finish: I have the most recent Blackbird Sisters mystery by Nancy Martin but haven’t gotten around to reading it.

T. Three Of Your All-Time Favourite Books: I am going with authors, not books. Jane Austen, John Connolly, Oscar Wilde.

U. Unapologetic Fangirl For: Roxanne St. Claire, Molly O’Keefe, John Connolly

W. Worst Bookish Habit: Inability to turn the light off until I’ve finished the book. (Stole this straight from Ros, but it’s so true.)

V. Very Excited For This Release More Than Any Other: Whatever the next John Connolly book is after the one I am reading. Right now, having just finished the ARC of The Wolf in Winter, I have a long time to wait and no idea of the title.

X. Marks The Spot (Start On Your Bookshelf And Count to the 27th Book): Caxton’s Malory (Le Morte DArthur)

Y. Your Latest Book Purchase: I tend to buy loads of books at once, so that’s a tough one. Eliminating ARCs, freebies, etc, probably Carolyn Crane’s Into the Shadows.

Z. ZZZ-Snatcher (last book that kept you up WAY late): Molly O’Keefe’s Between the Sheets. (Though, to be fair, whatever the last book I read is is likely to be the last book that kept me up since I can’t sleep until I finish a good book!)

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Back from Iceland With Oodles of Pictures!

I could tell you about it, but that would require far too many words. So have some pictures, instead. Click to enlarge.

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Why Yes, Since You Ask, I Am Out of Town!

I know they say you should never tell people when you go out of town, but we have a friend of my husband’s from the fire department who’s also former Army who stays at the house when we’re gone, so … you’d probably be better off breaking in when we’re there is what I guess I am saying.

My husband and my parents and I are in Iceland this week. It’s fabulous! I brought my “real” camera, which means I have little to show in the way of pictures until I get home and can upload them, but I will leave you with this, which gives you an idea of one of the things we’ve been doing a good deal of… eating! In fact, my return to the US may be delayed as they probably won’t let me through customs since by that time I will likely have turned into a large lump of gravlax.

What you see here is from our first night. The food here isn’t just delicious, it’s always beautifully presented as well. This is a heavy bread, filled with raisins and nuts, with sweet cream butter and “lava salt.” The waiter at the restaurant told us they smoke the salt to make this kind, but there are about a thousand different kinds of salt here, many locally harvested and mixed with locally harvested herbs, etc. I think I shall probably be bringing some of those home, too.

Tomorrow I visit the Penis Museum. You know I HAVE to go, right? It’s pretty much a requirement as a romance author.

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LOST: Deleted Scene

At conferences and panels, one of the questions that frequently arises is “how do you start writing?” Now, my answer to this is a little different from most: I just write. And I do it because I know I will eventually delete the first scene…or two, or three, or four. I have yet to write a book that did not require a complete rewrite of the beginning. I knew before I finished writing Twisted that I would follow it with Tara Jean’s story, but I had no idea what that story would be. At the same time, I was in a workshop in which I was required to write something I would read at a bar one night. I had something written, but I wasn’t happy with it, so at the last minute I ditched it and wrote this scene, which never made it into LOST, but did show me what the basic plot of the book would be.

Tara Jean Dobbs was not cut out to be a cult member. She didn’t know whether the plants in the field were herbs or weeds, so she couldn’t be trusted to maintain the crops. She had lousy communications skills, so she couldn’t be sent out to recruit new members. Her kindergarten teacher had remarked that she didn’t play well with others, and her first grade teacher had said she wasn’t good at sharing, neither of which had changed much in the twenty-odd years since.

And she flat out hated to follow orders.

The Leader had re-named Tara “Serena,” which she thought was pretty much the biggest crock of shit she’d ever heard. She laughed about it behind his back. Unfortunately, no one else shared her sense of humor, and she couldn’t talk to anyone outside the group, which left her to laugh alone. Not so different from her pre-cult life, really.

Theoretically, she could have had friends outside the pretty picket fence at the front of the compound, because she wasn’t locked inside. Not exactly. But if she hoped to achieve a high rank among the acolytes, to become one of the Leader’s personal attendants with the freedom to wander the great house and surrounding buildings unsupervised, she had to pretend to have no desire for outside conversation. Or cheeseburgers, diet coke, true crime novels or hot baths, dammit. And she had to put her mind to learning skills like sucking up, keeping her opinions to herself, and keeping her head down.

Tara had noticed some women seemed to be singled out for personal attention based on their looks, but that wasn’t a route she could take. God knew her parents had made that clear enough. “Your hair is a disaster, Tara Jean.” “Do you really need to eat that, Tara Jean?” “Where are we ever going to find gloves to suit those stubby fingers, Tara Jean?” The one thing she appreciated about the name Serena was that it wasn’t Tara Jean.

But although her figure was a little on the square side, and her hair curled in every direction, Tara had one thing going for her that most people in the group did not, at least as far as she could see. She had a brain. Logic and analysis were her fortes. Of course, those talents weren’t prized within the compound, but that didn’t bother her because they also weren’t recognized. The dumber she appeared, the faster she’d get what she was after. And with blonde hair and blue eyes, Tara could make herself appear pretty damned dumb. It was another lesson from her mother, who’d assured her that smart women never found husbands.

Maybe Marianne Smithfield Dobbs had been right on that score. Because sure as God made little green apples, no man had ever come knocking on Tara’s door with a ring in his pocket. When she was being particularly honest with herself, Tara could admit that precious few had come knocking at all.

But that was okay, too, because most men weren’t worth the saliva it would take to spit on them. Take the almighty Leader, for example, the benevolent father who walked among them three times a day: six in the morning, noon, and six in the evening. Occasionally, he’d turn a shovel of earth, stir the soup in the kitchen, or heal an ailing member of the congregation, but the majority of his life was spent in the ranch house with his attendants.

In public, the Leader prayed repeatedly to the Powers on how best to help his flock leave behind their worldly concerns and receive enlightenment. As far as Tara could tell, the Powers generally espoused getting rid of worldly goods, first, then worrying about worldly concerns. And since members no longer needed their iPods, cell phones, watches or jewelry, they didn’t need the cash to buy them, so the Powers recommended giving money to the Leader to help him in his crusade.

How anybody fell for this shit was beyond her.

Not that Tara was particularly materialistic. If she were, she’d still be living in Dobbs Hollow, where her family had been royalty for generations. Well, before their fall from grace, anyway. But she’d left that life behind even before she left the Hollow, and her most recent job had been as a short-order cook in a diner in the podunk town of Fayetteville, Texas. She’d actually made friends in Fayetteville. Three of them, in fact; a veritable cornucopia. And it was one of those friends, Andrea MacDonald, who’d prompted her interest in the cult. Or commune. Or whatever.

Because somewhere along the line, Andrea had become entangled with the group, and then she’d disappeared. And while Tara would never be a good cult member, she was very, very good at her true vocation.

Tara Jean Dobbs was a cop.

So there you have it. As you can see, it wouldn’t have made a good beginning to the book. Too much backstory, too much in-the-head, too much telling and not enough showing. But that’s inevitably the way I begin. Now, aren’t you glad I don’t leave it that way?

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Need to Add to Your TBR Pile? New Books Out Today!

Obviously, I haven’t read any of these yet since they just came out today, but I am going to ahead and say they’re probably pretty darn good!

 

Molly O’Keefe, Between the Sheets.

Any of you who read this blog know O’Keefe is a personal favorite. This is the final book in her “Bad Boys of Bishop” trilogy.

 

 

 

 

 

Lisa Jackson, Deserves to Die.

This is the latest in the Alvarez and Pescoli series. I absolutely love this series and the two strong female detectives who star in it.

 

 

 

 

Victoria Dahl, Looking for Trouble.

Dahl is back and bringing the heat, this time between a bad boy biker and a naughty librarian!

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Post-Conference Thoughts, and My To-Write List

RWA is over and it’s left me with some thoughts. Not deep ones, you understand—I rarely have those, and never after a conference. But it did occur to me that the two types of conferences I go to leave me in very different states. In both the mystery and romance worlds, there are “fan” cons and “professional” cons. When I come home from “fan” cons like Bouchercon or RT, I am tired. They’re fun, and the social aspect is great, and I love meeting readers and seeing my author friends, but I come home completely exhausted. My brain is fried. I can’t write for a week.

Professional cons, however, like RWA or Sleuthfest, leave me exhausted but ready to work. The panels and the agents and editors and authors are all so career-focused and full of excitement about the genre that it’s catching. I talked to some great people at RWA, and handed out a lot of cards for Toying with His Affections. I hope some people enjoy reading it, but I can’t worry too much since I have deadlines to meet. So it’s a really good thing I get some energy from the conference!

These are the books I have on tap:

1) Next romantic suspense, set partially on the beautiful island of Saint Martin/Sint Maarten. Dead bodies are piling up both stateside and in the Caribbean islands.

2) Next contemporary romance, featuring another Goody’s Goodies saleswoman, this one with a decidedly harder edge than Evie, the heroine of Toying with his Affections.

3) Fourth romantic suspense, the first one with a hero actively a part of Harp Security.

I have a lot of writing to do!!

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Small Town Contemporary Romance – How *Does* Everyone Know Your Business?

Westerly, RI — typical small New England beach town.

I love romance of all types, but I must admit a certain fondness for the small town contemporary. However, I occasionally find myself wondering whether the authors of these romances have ever lived in a small town, or whether their definitions of “small town” are just that different from mine.

I grew up in a truly tiny town. We had no addresses. We had no mail delivery. That was primarily a fishing and farming town, at least until they built a big highway to take people there at which point it acquired a vibrant tourist economy. It stayed tiny for 9 months a year, but suddenly became jam-packed every summer.

Now I live in what I would call a medium-sized suburb. The official population of our town is about 11,000, but we have a fair number of undocumented folk living here, so it’s probably a bit higher. We also have a religious community that I am not at all sure how is counted. The town just south of us has 17k people, but far fewer businesses. Likewise the town just north of us, which has 18k people. Despite being the least populated and physically (mileage-wise) smallest, we have the biggest “downtown.” We also have the only area hospital. We have no veterinarian, however–you have to go to the next town north or the next town south for that. But you can do that because, like many small towns, we are surrounded by other small towns that have what we don’t.

The other thing about most small towns in America is that their fire departments are volunteer. Like ours. And that’s where the gossip gets passed. You grow up in town, you join the fire department. Not always, it’s true, but an awful lot of folks do. And if they work for the town, the railroad, or the utility companies, or any kind of blue-collar work that keeps them local, it’s almost inevitable that they belong to the fire department.

People who have lived in my current town all their lives all know each other. They’ve dated each other, married each other, divorced each other. They’ve been in school together and worked in each others’ businesses. They belong to the fire department, and their wives and sisters belong to the women’s auxiliary. But a large part of this population moved here later on in life, and most of them know nothing about the inner workings of the town. A few of them join the FD, but not many. Although my husband and I are relatively recent additions to the town (we moved here 10 years ago), my husband is in the fire department and I am in the auxiliary, so we tend to know what’s up.

The other recently-arrived belong, for the most part, to the “bedroom community” part of the town and have issues getting home improvements approved (unless they hire entirely locally). They have no idea what businesses are going in or going out or why. Which companies haven’t paid their taxes. Which ones are being investigated. I don’t mean this as a slight—it’s simply the reality of life in my 11k-person-town: the newcomers know the parents of the kids in their kids’ class at school and the parents of the dogs at the dog park. Their focus isn’t here in town, it’s down in “the city”—NYC, that is—where most of them work.

When I wrote Toying With His Affections, my first contemporary romance, I knew that it would read like a lot of other small town contemporaries. I don’t mind that. I enjoy these books or I wouldn’t have written one. But there are aspects I wanted to differently, and one of those was the “everyone’s in your business” aspect. So I gave my protagonist an aunt who’s part of the town’s Ladies’ Auxiliary. I hope you enjoy reading my iteration of that particular type of group!

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