Nora Snowdon's Blog, page 7

The French Resolution is now available!!!

Yeah! I'm so excited!  There's a bit of a lag between when you first write a book, and when it actually becomes available to readers.  There are the months of revisions putting the book chapter by chapter through my critique partner, Jacqui Nelson's careful scrutiny.  Then the book as a whole goes out to several more friends who act as "beta readers."  They read the entire book in one fell swoop and focus on where it might need tightening up, what needs more explanations, character motivations, and where I can cut  excess verbiage. After all changes have been made, then the manuscript goes out to find a publisher. I was thrilled when Rebel Ink Press agreed to publish "The French Resolution." 

Editor E., and her team are great about suggesting improvements while still being respectful of the writer's voice. And I absolutely love the cover art for my book. Thanks, Carl Franklin!  I could easily fall for the handsome man overlooking the Paris skyline. (and if he has a French accent, too--ooh-la-la!)

So now that my book is out (hard to believe it's my fifth!) my job is done. Well, no. I would love it if we could just write the books, put them out there and then go on to writing the next. Unfortunately there is a ton of promotional crap I should be doing. Sending out arcs for reviews. Writing blogs on many sites to let people know my books exist.  Asking friends and relatives to help push my prose. Twitter, Facebook and Linked in should be blanketed with pithy comments hoping to lure more readers. (Although I can't see how much those sites help as they're already littered with so much "buy my book!" clamouring, who's going to notice a bunch more from me? And I've unfollowed/unfriended  several writer acquaintances for spamming too much.)

So how to promote successfully? I have no clue. But if you're enjoying my writing, please buy, The French Resolution and post a review on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or whichever e-tailer you frequent, and I will be eternally grateful.

Meanwhile, I shall go back to my slave-wage job promoting massive consumption as the key to happiness. And would you like fries with that???

Happy Holidays, everyone!!

Getting back on track. I hope...

 Three months ago I managed to land a slave-wage job. 
Thank god. It turns out that after fifty, even employers needing to fill no-pay, no-benefits positions don’t want to see your resume.  So I
threw myself into the mind-numbing, backbreaking work with enthusiasm, trying to match the unnerving perkiness of my much younger bosses and co-workers.  It seems to have worked and I’m still employed. Phew.
   Then last month I made the mistake of asking to be cross-trained
into the coffee shop as a barista.  Since I already knew how to make
cappuccinos and lattes, how hard could that be?  Well, apparently harder than I anticipated.  I never realized how
many variations of drinks could be requested.  I grew up in an age where you took your coffee with milk, cream or black (and sugar if you had to.)  None of this soy/half decaf/double shot/half pump sugar-free raspberry syrup/hold the foam/and could-you-blend-that-with-a- banana, please? nonsense. My aged brain is rebelling against the myriad of orders and bizarre words spewing forth from the
mouths of babes.  And to make  matters worse, those eleven year old customers are telling me exactly how to make their highfaluting 3,000 calorie dessert in a cup.  This is not beneficial to my already battered
ego.
    I have never backed down from a job.  I consider myself reasonably intelligent and able to learn new things. Hell, I went from zero computer knowledge to being able to track shipments,
calculate amortizations, and print nifty graphs in excel sheets in a few weeks when I was in the financial market.  But this new position has me stumped, bringing back my anxiety attacks to the point where I can’t sleep and am petrified to go into work.  (it’s probably not beneficial that I’m only on coffee-duty once a week as it gives me plenty of time to forget whatever I learned between shifts.  Then
again, I’m so relieved to be on the sales floor dealing with simple requests and giving directions that I don’t dare ask for more barista
practice)
   So is it true that after fifty the brain just slows down this
much? And is there a way to speed it up again?  I know there are computer programs designed to kick-start memory functions, but the concept of throwing more new detritus into my already crammed brain seems like a bad idea.  I don’t even have the energy or will to read or write novels these days. 
   Maybe, just maybe, one day this will all gel in my brain and I’ll wonder what it was that sent me into such a dither—God, I hope! But meanwhile, spare a smile and a little patience for the old broad in the apron desperately trying to decipher what, to you, seems a perfectly logical drink order.  At this stage, it’s still all Greek to me… 

Childhood Inculcation

Pre-note: I am not fishing for compliments. I have a vast ego and am, if anything, over-confident. These thoughts are more on the subconscious level along with my misguided belief that  one day my prince will come. 
 
I don’t know who I am. And it turns out I’ve been confused for
most of my life. So many impressions and beliefs are formed in childhood before we have the ability to mentally challenge them. And we grow up citing these beliefs as unassailable truths because they’ve always just lurked in the back of our brains without proper evaluation. Women are particularly prone to this when it comes to appearance. My mother didn’t intend to foster a complex when she
informed me that “short girls shouldn’t wear long skirts because they make them look rather squat.” She was merely offering fashion advice. Now I feel compelled to pass along this wisdom to equally height-challenged friends because it’s become ingrained in my psyche. Along with the idea that I am short. At 5’4” I am
actually average in female height, with many people on either side of my vertical achievement. In some circumstances I am even considered tall.
    But so what? There is nothing wrong (or right) with being any particular height. Diminutive people are often frustrated by high shelves or seeing over crowds, but tall people face different
obstacles for their elongation. There’s room for all of us. (Maybe
because us shorties don’t take up as much space?)
    It’s not just judgements about appearances that I’ve unwittingly
bought into. And I’m affected by more than constructive criticism from my mom. I’ve also been influenced by a sense of where I rank in my family. As the bottom child of five siblings, many defining qualities had been snapped up before I even appeared on the scene. One brother is the “intelligent” one in the family. My other brother in “the artist.” One sister is the “prettiest and most fun.”  The other sister is the “nicest.” 
    So what definitions remained for me?
    I left home to become an actor and used that as my identity for
many years. Now I’ve shifted into being the writer. My problem with using careers as self-identification however, is that everyone in my family keeps shifting. My “artistic” brother wrote a children’s book and has attracted the attention of a major book publisher in New York. My “pretty” sister is gearing up for an art opening at the end of the month. “Intelligent” brother is a performer and considering publishing his poems thus encroaching on both my careers. My other sister is still the nicest, but occasionally challenged for her sainthood status by my brother. And me? Hell if I know.
    Sometimes I think of myself as most adaptable, having switched
careers from retail, to environmental protection, to management in the financial market, and then back to retail. (sigh. But I really prefer not to think at work, which is the big bonus in low-paying grunt labour) Still “adaptable” is not a defining label I’d like to wear. It’s good to be flexible, but not my best feature, I hope.
    No. After many years of subconscious comparisons and jockeying
for position, this year I am claiming to be The intelligent, pretty, artistic, nice (and whatever else I may later choose to add on) one in the family. And I’m happy for others to also own these titles. Because like being tall or short, there is no deciding line that determines where you fit in to life. It’s all just a matter of where you want to be and celebrating your positive attributes. Again, there’s room for more than one intelligent person in a family and we’re all beautiful in
our own way. (well, maybe not wicked Uncle Charlie, but that’s a whole other ball o’wax) 

Oh and by the way, did I mention I have a new book coming out? The French Resolution should be available in e-books on Dec 17, 2013!  Snippets may be shared here if i can find some non sex scenes to post...

debriefing Word...

Word Vancouver 2013 was a lot of fun. And I have a t-shirt to prove it! Nothing says fun more than a free t-shirt. (well unless they give you chocolates to go with...)
Word is a massive literary festival held in and around the main Vancouver Library. This year due to severe rain warnings, all the exhibitors' tables were moved inside into the hallways. It was dry, but very crowded. Our Romance Writers' table was originally shared with the Crime Writers of America, but when I got back from lunch, it appeared my co-romantics had killed the CWAs and the table was much more spacious. (you'd think crime writers would be more suspicious but I think we lulled them into a false sense of security with all the hearts and romantic frippery)
At four o'clock I joined fellow writers, Eileen Cook, Susan Lyons/Fox and Roxanne Snopek on a panel "Dishing on Romance." (pictures may or may not follow)  The questions varied from queries about traditional publishers to digital first, whether or not to set books in Canada (we were pretty evenly split on that) and on to our varying writing styles and discipline. (no, not bdsm, but how often do we write. apparently I am not nearly diligent enough. those other writers are way more productive than I)
I was hoping for questions on research as that has become such a major part of my writing. I'm constantly googling horse racing schedules, places in San Antonio and performance drugs for my current work in progress. And more personal research helps inform the romantic details of my novels. But they didn't seem to want to know about that. Oh well, probably some writers' tricks are better left to the imagination.
All in all, it was a fun and informative day. If you missed it this year, mark down the third Sunday in September for the next year's Word and I hope I'll see you there!

I've Been Remiss

I have not posted a blog for a few weeks, but I do have an excuse. I recently started a new job and, dang it, I'm just swacked! Although my new employment is supposed to be "thought-free slave-labour" I find just standing on my feet and being perky for 7.5 hours a day incredibly draining.
     On the plus side, once I get accustomed, I'm pretty sure there will be a great book set in the cult-like atmosphere of American retail stores. (morning cheer sessions, fun games, high-fives and hugging employees *yikes!* abound. I kid you not.)
     Meanwhile, on Sunday, Sept 29th I will be appearing at "Word Vancouver" on an author panel. That will be at the downtown library in the Alice VanDusen room from 4:00 to 5:00.
Please join us for what will be a raucous and fun event.
4:00 pm Dishing on Romance
Presented by Greater Vancouver Chapter of Romance Writers of America. Panelists Eileen Cook, Susan Lyons, Nora Snowdon, and Roxanne Snopek.

And I'll try not to ask you, "Do you want fries with that?" too often...

Rape. What is it good for? Absolutely nothing!

A few years ago, I don’t believe I’d even heard the term “rape
culture.” Now it seems to come up daily in my newspaper, social media and general conversations. And it’s not just coming up in reference to foreign lands known for lacking respect for women. It’s everywhere. 
    India has had a few high profile gang rape cases that have
shocked the world with their brutality this year. A Swedish (I
think) woman was being sent to trial in a Muslim country after reporting that she’d been raped by a co-worker. She was charged with having sexual relations with the man to whom she wasn’t married. Gang rapes and drugged rapes are common news items in Canada and the States. What has happened to bring on
all this sexual violence? 
    Some claim that we just hear more about these things due to
internet and more reporting, but I don’t believe that’s the whole picture. Because along with the steady stream of rape news, there also seems to be an increase in rape glorification in the media. Songs have come out recently extolling the joys of rape and sexual abuse. Recently more than one university group has had large participation in chanting about raping underage girls during frosh week. (and to make matters worse, in the two Canadian instances, young women were chanting and singing along with the guys! How sick is that?) 
    Do the male youths listening and participating in this group
hatred of women not understand just how vile their behavior is? Do the young women feel, oh well it’s not me they’re wanting to abuse? (or do they hope that by aligning with the jerks wanting to traumatize young females, that somehow they won’t be on the victim side of the equation?) I don’t get it. 
    Perhaps this is the youth’s form of rebellion since tattoos,
piercings, rock bands and what not are now mainstream. But the glorification and then normalization of rape has far worse consequences. This rape culture seems to say, well rape isn’t that bad. Maybe she likes it. And often after a rape has occurred many people jump into slut-shaming mode. (another term I was blissfully ignorant of until recently. Slut-shaming is where a woman
is harassed or bullied for not behaving or dressing the way someone else deems appropriate. Often along the lines of, she deserved to be raped because of the clothes she was wearing, or she’d flirted, or she’d previously had sex with someone inappropriate.)
   What these slut-shamers and rapist protectors seem to believe is
that if a woman is not a “good” girl, then she somehow deserves to be raped. (or, God forbid, even wants to be raped) Or that guys are so weak that when they see a “slut” they cannot help but attack
her. And then the poor male “victims” are being charged for a rape that was really not their fault.
   Is this desire to sexually violate women caused by exposure to
the rape for entertainment seen regularly on television and in movies? Is it a by-product of an escalating violent world populated by the disenfranchised and disillusioned?  And most importantly, is there some way we can counteract this “rape culture” and instill the obviously lacking empathy in many people? Something needs to be done and fast because a world where rape is normal and everyone will have to increasingly arm themselves just to survive is not a world that most of us would choose to live in.
    It’s not enough for men to say, “I don’t rape.” They also need to say that they will stop rape and discourage it in any form. And women need to learn to take responsibility for their participation and enabling of this rape culture, too. Don't buy, watch, listen to people selling rape as entertainment. And, by al means, stop with the slut-shaming and support each other. If you are not part of the solution…

Three Wishes Blog Hop

So welcome to the Three Wishes Blog Blitz, hosted by author Juliet Madison! From 2nd to 6th September you’ll have the chance to win some awesome prizes at all the blogs  participating in the blitz, including mine. All you have to do is follow my instructions below for winning the prize I have on offer, and then you can click over to Juliet’s blog to enter her prize draw, and see the list of all other blogs taking part and enter their giveaways as well. How cool is that? Why is it called the Three Wishes Blog Blitz? Juliet’s new  romantic comedy release, I Dream of Johnny, is about three wishes, a high-tech genie in a lamp, and one very unfortunate typo that proves magic isn’t all it cracked up to be…

Wishes? Hmm, I've got a few...

I spend much of life thinking, ‘what if…?’ and I blame this
horrendous waste of time and energy on one thing. Television. And not just any television shows, but specifically the wish fulfillment fantasy shows from my childhood. (Yes, I’m glaring at you, Barbara Eden. I’d glare at Elizabeth Montgomery too, but she died, therefore putting her out of my glare reach without a well-placed blink or nose twitch.)  
    Growing up, I loved watching I Dream of Jeannie and Bewitched. I
didn’t particularly care for the men in the shows—Darrin was so whiny and pushy, Samantha would’ve been better off with a guy who appreciated her fabulous abilities. And the balance of power between Anthony and Jeannie was only marginally better. 
    But I adored the concept of just twitching, blinking or whatever and being able to conjure up your heart’s desire.  (although wouldn’t
it be a bitch if it was something simple like wiggling your ears and you just couldn’t do it?) Oops, I digress… 
    Now that I’m older and wiser, I have stopped checking various
body parts for hidden magical powers and instead waste my money and time buying lottery tickets. My chances of winning are probably about the same. But when I had my ticket on the 400 million dollar Powerball, man I had amazing plans for much of that loot. (not all self-serving. I’ve been trained from childhood so that even in my fantasies, I allot a certain amount to various charities. I think somehow my little pea-brain imagines that I have a better
chance of winning if I plan to be more altruistic with my windfall.)
    Surprisingly enough, I did not win the Powerball. (I know. Go
figure!) My highfaluting expenditures are on hold as there are currently no lottery tickets ripening on my fridge door. But if I did go back to the old dreams of you can have any three wishes granted, what I’d ask for now are a lot different from my wishes long ago. So here goes—but these wishes are subject to change if I do actually meet up with a willing genie…
1)  Big bucks so I could take family and friends on many fabulous vacations. (and I could give up on non-writing work ;)
2)  All people who want to fight, kill, or suppress the rights of others (rights as decided by me, of course) would be transported to a parallel universe and unable to return to earth. (this would also really help with our over-population problems which would decrease stress on the environment.)
 3)  And all wages for all jobs will be levelled out so that no one particular profession could earn more than three times what the lowest paid worker was making per hour. 

Sorry that I’m not curing diseases, but a person can’t do
everything. Plus if people stopped dying of anything, then we’d need to wish up a whole lot more parallel universes to hold everyone… 
 
So what would you wish for? Or perhaps you’d like to discuss the
TV shows that shaped your twisted world view. I’ll be drawing one name of all commenters who respond (and leave their e-mail addresses) and giving away an arc of my werewolf romantic comedy, Love at First Sniff. 
blurb:
  When Rosie meets Lucas in a crowded nightclub, it is love at
first sniff. But after a fabulous night together she overhears that his
ex-girlfriend is pregnant with his child and he is being pushed into a shotgun wedding. Rosie figures why not just give up and buy that trailer in hurricane country? She obviously already has the lifestyle down pat.
  Lucas has finally met the woman of his dreams, sexy, funny,
bright. The only trouble is- she’s human. His werewolf clan won’t allow him to marry her. Meanwhile they’re trying to push him to marry a suitable mate within the pack. The fact that his only brother was neutered by the SPCA a few years ago only increases the pressure for him to produce offspring. 
  If he can just downplay the negative aspects of being a werewolf
– fleas, the desire to chase motorcycles, and Uncle Harold – maybe he can convince Rosie that it’s not such a bad lifestyle choice.

 Once you’ve entered my giveaway, visit Juliet’s blog & enter her
giveaway too, and visit any or all of the other participating blogs to enter more prize draws. You could potentially win a whole heap of prizes! Good luck!
Visit the official Blog Blitz post here  to continue on the blog hop. Contests end Sept 6!
And best wishes to all!


 

Tragedy or just sad?

 warning: a this may be a repost.  it was stuck in my drafts and i just lost track.  but don't worry, there will be a new post for sept 2 for the "three wishes blog hop" which will involve fun, frivolity and
fabulous prizes. or at least the usual blog hop ones from a bunch of
different authors. hope you'll come back to check it out. and now back to possibly duplicated blog post...

Birthdays, a time of celebration and way too much booze. Well, in
my family anyway... But during a recent wine-soaked debauchery, my brother-in-law received a birthday e-mail playing “You Say It’s Your Birthday” by the Beatles. (The song may or may not be titled
thusly, but I’m too lazy too Google it.)   
   As we listened to the tinny refrain, my sister commented on how tragic it was that John Lennon was killed way back when. And this got me thinking. Yes, that was sad. But was it more sad because he was killed by a crazy guy as opposed to George Harrison who was felled by throat cancer in 2001? 
  Both men could’ve lived longer in a parallel universe—and maybe
they do?—but they also could’ve been one of the many reckless youths, mostly males, who have untimely deaths in their teen years. That would’ve been sad for friends and relatives, but the rest of the world would’ve been blissfully unaware of the music that didn’t happen. (and would we still have had the crazy mop-top hairstyles and Indian musical influence?)  
   There seems to be a three-tiered system of mourning: people we know and love personally; famous people we feel like we know because we’ve heard so much about them; and then the billions of others we can mostly ignore. Although famous people dying feels more poignant, it’s really not. Perhaps we use these
public figures so that we can experience a sense of collective mourning. 
  As a final point, if famous people did not die, untimely or otherwise,
then there would be waaaay too many of them. (it’s hard enough keeping track of the various celebrities out there) I think
somewhere we’ve developed this odd delusion that people are meant to live forever. It’s reflected in the fact that even when a person is 105 years old, we still feel obliged to state what the person died from. Maybe it was just time?
   Every person will die at some point and whether it is self induced, a crazy guy, or just the luck of the gene pool, it will be sad. But tragic? For that I think you have to have to go in a group.


By the way, Happy Birthday!

The New Pornography

 As always I’m trying to find more ways to make money from my
writing. Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled to be a published novelist, but I’ve found that regardless of the amount of dough I rake in, there always seems to be more money going out. 
    Well recently I’ve found a niche market. Puppet Porn. Turns out
there is an audience for the depraved antics of little cloth creatures with people’s hands stuck up their butts. Who knew? (well
maybe the hands up their butts might’ve been my first clue, but I missed it.)
    Let me start at the beginning. I went to see a fun musical called Avenue Q at the Arts Club Theatre on Granville Island. (held over until Sept 14th, but no idea if tickets are still available)  This show is an adult version of Sesame Street complete with learning moments—Everybody is a Little Bit Racist, The Internet is for Porn—and more importantly, puppets having sex. And holy cow, they were going at it! 
     You might think, given their limited parts, the aforementioned
hands, and perhaps even their previous lack of propensity for sex, that puppet sex would be tame, if not non-existent. (although that would beg the question as to where new puppets come from…) Apparently these puppets—a monster puppet and a recent university graduate puppet—can go at it for quite a while in a variety of positions without straining themselves or even needing protection. What a bonus for a smut writer! 
     (hey, wait a second— interspecies breeding? Does that mean I can shift my puppet smut into the werewolf and shifter genre lit as well? Can you have vampire puppets given that they don’t have blood? Now I’m getting confused.) 
     Anyway, the point is, the audience watching the fuzzy sexual
antics (to the song, You Can Make As Much Noise As You Want To, When You’re Making Love) really seemed to enjoy the voyeuristic spectacle. As did the puppets—so don’t go sending me no 
Against Puppet Exploitation Petitions to sign. And I realized that there is really not a lot of other puppet lewdity out there for general
consumption.
    Now all I need to do is figure out a great plot to throw all this
puppet fornication into, and I’ll be laughing all the way to the bank. So keep your eyes peeled here for new updates as to when my new writing endeavours will be available. And if you see me with my hand up… well, you’ll know why.


 

Summer Lovin' Blog Hop

 Wow nothing like a summer romance. Not that I’ve had one for a while. (sigh)  But I do remember the heady excitement of meeting a guy while on vacation. Somehow everything was so much more vibrant and intense in the summer. Whether it was because we weren’t working and
had more time and less distractions in our single-minded lust, or if the heat just made us horny, I don’t know. Or it could be simply that sex is so much easier when you don’t have to go through six layers of rain gear and soggy wool before you can access any skin. (Erica Jong didn’t know how much more help we needed up north than merely a “zipless fuck”) 
     Summer affairs always felt like true love. You’d spend a few
weeks, day in, day out, getting to know everything about your new lover. Oh, the long walks along the beach, staying up late talking in coffee shops and playing at sports that, with half a brain, you’d have steered clear of… (really, rock climbing? I can’t walk along a
curb without falling off.) 
     Then as soon as you had to go back to school or work, real life
 would come barrelling back in because that’s when you’d find out what he was really like. (of course, I never changed…) People are not as fun or carefree when they have to get up at 6:30 in the morning to go to work. And the complaints about the job and co-workers
start. Then to top it off, suddenly going out for dinner is too much of a hassle and “Maybe you could just whip up a meal and we’ll stay in and watch sports on TV.” (blech!) 
     Friends and relatives start demanding more of your precious free
time of and the new boyfriend just doesn’t understand. Come to think of it, seeing the guy in regular clothes, he doesn’t even look as good as he did last week. In fact, what did I see in that jerk? Must’ve had too many Pina Coladas with the sun glaring in my eyes. I sure as hell won’t make that mistake again.
    Well, at least not until next summer…

 
Thanks for dropping by and feel free to check out the rest of my
website. Then click on this link to get back to blog hopping to the other Rebel Ink Authors’ blogs. 

Oh yeah, and Happy Birthday Rebel Ink Press! (and many
more…)