Dani Collins's Blog, page 70

Apologies

Not sure why my excerpt crushed into itself, but will work on that for next week.

Please click over to my blog if you want to read it in a more readable format :)

Feb 13, 2013

Dani will speak on her First Sale at a Valentine’s Brunch hosted by the Greater Vancouver Chapter of Romance Writers of America.

The post Feb 13, 2013 appeared first on Dani Collins.

Sample Sunday

Apparently it's as simple as posting an excerpt and tweeting the #samplesunday hashtag.  My regulars get a sneak peek of this Saturday night, but stay tuned everyone because I'm taking delivery of my new website this week so by next Sunday it'll be a whole new look.

In the meanwhile, check out this excerpt from Hustled To The Altar and come back often.  You may wind up reading the whole book online. ;o)


He loosened his hold on her as they passed through the door of the jewelry store.The décor was supposed to resemble the gold rush era, with uneven floor planks and a rusty scale dripping glitter. The image was spoiled by several security cameras and the smell of ammonia from the spray an employee was using to polish the display cases.Renny cooed over chunky stones in fussy settings but would have settled for a modest string of pearls. Con overrode her and pointed to several flashy pieces, ending up with a necklace, brooch, bracelet and ring that didn’t match and would have paid Gran back several times.Renny turned her back to the display case and gave Con a “What are you doing?” face.Con handed his platinum card to the clerk, enjoying both the flush he caused in Renny’s cheeks and the fluster he caused behind the counter as the employee handed the card to his boss before searching for boxes beneath the display case.“Is that enough sparklies?” Con goaded.“You’re a lunatic,” she said in an undertone. Her lips quivered, almost caught by laughter.He raised his brows, waiting for her to break.She showed him her cheek, clinging to the spoiled mistress role. Just.Well, shoot, he almost had her. He’d give her another nudge. Tipping her into his arms, he kissed her, half expecting a knee to the groin.What he got was a start of surprise and a soft shudder that melted her tension. Her hands slid up his chest and linked behind his neck as she curled into the embrace and pressed his head down, sealing their mouths.Deprived of her for months, he deepened the kiss, found her bottom lip and gently sucked. Her tongue touched his, causing a thump of sensation in his chest. Warmth pooled through his belly and into his groin while their mouths broke apart only to meet again with parted lips, like starvation victims slaking their hunger with bite after bite of sumptuous fare.He had kissed her on impulse, for their audience, to catch her off guard and see what would happen, to see if she could hold onto her role. He had kissed her for a hundred reasons, not expecting that his control would slip, his mind would fog and his thoughts would narrow to a single goal: hold onto her and never let her go.Before he lost it enough to make lewd use of the nearest flat surface, he pulled away, wondering only then if her response had been real or for show.Renny drew back. Her eyes fluttered open and her gaze fixed on her hands where they rested against his chest.Con touched his thumb to the corner of her mouth, erasing a smudge of coral pink. He allowed his fingertips to linger on her cheek, appreciating the softness of her skin, coaxing her to lift her chin and look at him.Slowly she backed away, but her gaze stayed on her left hand. On Jacob’s ring.He caught her wrist, gently worked the ring off and dropped it into his shirt pocket.She parted her lips to protest and he leaned forward to kiss her again, lightly, then touched her mouth with his fingertip, keeping her silent while he reached for the new ring on the counter.When he would have slipped it on to replace Jacob’s, she drew her left hand away and offered her right.If he wanted to make a serious effort to get her back, now was the moment to drop to his knee and do it properly. The ring was a staircase of emerald baguettes curved around a highly set opal. Not what anyone would regard as a typical engagement ring. Nevertheless, the symbolism would be there, if he placed it on her left hand now.Panic stung his veins.Purchasing this ridiculous pile of jewelry had been less about playing the rich man for Felix and more about making her laugh, but neither of them was laughing. His palms began to sweat and his chest felt constricted. He slid the ring down the third finger of her right hand.Her lips quivered and went flat. Disappointment? Maybe. A poorly played hand on his part? No question. But he had scored a point with that kiss.She reached for the necklace on the counter and it slithered through her fingers, taking the bracelet and brooch with it onto the floor.Sagging into a crouch, she reached for them.Con squatted in front of her, held out the brooch. It was a gold domino, the dots blue sapphires.“You should buy some decent shoes,” she said quietly.He had changed into clothing from the luggage in his trunk: a short-sleeved shirt, patterned like a blue and green checkerboard, and tailored dark green pants. He had shaved while he’d waited for Renny at Walmart, but hadn’t bothered replacing his disreputable sneakers.“I want you.” He was willing to make the admission because he was so close to getting her on his terms.“You had me. Now you don’t.”“I almost did, a minute ago.”She stayed crouched beside him, the necklace coiled in her lap while she fastened the bracelet. “We don’t have time for a post-mortem, Con. I’m going to find a phone and call Jacob. You should buy some shoes.”She was brushing aside their kiss, their history, the desire still between them. Everything. He used humor to deflect his hurt.“You’re sexy when you get bossy.”“Stop it.”“Now you’re just being a tease.”She opened her mouth but a bell pinged as someone entered the store, making them both turn their heads.Jacob walked in.

Free on Kindle

Just a quick post to say  Hustled To The Altar  is free on Kindle Friday Nov 9th.


Enjoy!  (And tell your friends)

OH YEAH THATS ME!

You can buy it here: HUSTLED TO THE ALTAR (Kindle Only). Only on Kindle for now.  Paper coming soon, then all the other devices next year.

The post OH YEAH THATS ME! appeared first on Dani Collins.

ONLY IN CANADA YOU SAY?

I’ll come out and admit that I’m a bad Canadian in one particular respect. I don’t care for Maple Syrup.

The post ONLY IN CANADA YOU SAY? appeared first on Dani Collins.

Keeping a Promise

Or
I was going to do the work myself, but I have an opportunity to skate on someone else's back, so I will take it ;o)

A writer friend kindly sent me her personal list of sites that she sends Advance Reader Copies to for Review.  I promised to compile it with others and post it here.

I have since found this site:

http://junesfreebiesandreviews.blogspot.ca/p/indie-authors.html

Which is so much more comprehensive than I would ever get around to producing.

Thanks June!  And thanks Susan.  Hopefully you'll find something on June's list that adds to yours.

Now I'm going to TRY to schedule this for Tuesday and see what happens...

Quick Update

Or
Since when do I do anything slowly?

I just realized the post I'd scheduled to come out last Sunday didn't make it. Very annoying. Mercury is moving into retrograde on Tuesday and obviously already causing problems. Scroll below for another jewel of snarkiness about something that seemed important to me a week ago.

My new website is coming along nicely and will likely be up in the next couple of weeks. Once it goes live, I'll be migrating my blog from Blogger to Wordpress. I don't know what that means, I'm just following orders and hoping that when I schedule something to post, it will.  Of course, maybe this recent mishap was operator error. Time will tell.

I also just noticed that after pulling Hustled to the Altar, I got it back up and then didn't tell anyone. My sister kindly posted to Facebook, but I'm also now telling you it is definitely available, but exclusively on Kindle until the middle of January. (It's a marketing thing.)

If you have a Kindle or the Kindle App, you can purchase this here: Dani's Book! Added bonus: I just signed up for KindleGraph so through the magic of modern technology, I can personally autograph it for you. What a kick, eh?

Other news...  I have my cover for the Mills & Boon release which will also be digital only (but all devices) in the new year. Here's a sneak peek:


Note the Book Of The Month seal. I'm pretty full of myself over that.

That's it for the moment. I'm off to meet readers over at Goodreads if you want to find me there ;o)

It’s Personal Taste

Or
There’s definitely nothing wrong with that.

I touched on this when I wrote my Fifty Shades post here: Fifty Shades of Fifty Shades.  Now I’ve just read this: It’s Genre Fiction here.

First off, I want to thank Arthur Krystal for helping me finally understand what literary fiction is. Literature with a capital ‘L’, as it were.  Because I’ve always kind of shaken my head thinking it was a story that wandered like a lost bee full of pedantic words with a lousy, or at best, dumbfounded ending.  (Pedantic: adj. Characterized by a narrow, often ostentatious concern for book learning and formal rules. That’s also what I thought literary fiction was about.  Looking up words.)

He talks about how we’re returning to the days of good old fashioned storytelling which was disdained by the modernists and this was helpful for me to understand why literary readers and writers cling to this genre–because literary novels are a genre unto themselves, ask Jennifer Crusie.

The mention of modernists was a vital piece of information I’d been missing. You see, I learned something about modernists from my daughter’s first boyfriend. He asked me to critique his essay on Salvador Dali. I was especially happy to pass this same sliver of knowledge along to my father, because he’d never seen the point in Picasso and abstract and bent clocks either.

Modern art was birthed out of necessity for survival. When photography became widely available, artists who could paint a good likeness lost to the perfect likeness of Kodak. They had to bend clocks and use other gimmicks to get noticed. No, I mean they were trying to get people to think. Except, they were also trying to stay relevant and get noticed and sell a painting or two.

Now I’m all for making people stop and think. Here I am, throwing words onto a page right now, hoping you’ll take away something more than that I’m a name-dropper who never understood what Modernism was about.

I think the snob-factor of literature is a leftover of this ‘have to say something’ attitude. Why write a book that is a clear snapshot of life, perhaps even a posed one, when you could be taking minds to a place they’ve never been? It’s a lofty aspiration and perhaps we should commend those who try and those who follow the author’s path to their brand of enlightenment.

This path, according to Arthur, has the potential to ‘break the sea frozen inside us’, whereas commercial fiction never will.  ”One reads Conrad and James and Joyce not simply for their way with words but for the amount of felt life in their books.”

Hmmph. Okay, here’s the thing. What I said in my Fifty Shades post was that sometimes people want to be challenged by their reading and sometimes they don’t. I stand by that. Real Life breaks the sea inside of me and leaves me stinging and hurt and railing at tragedy. I escape from that mess by reading something that uplifts me. 

And again we get a comparison that commercial fiction is light and fluffy–he likens it to Santa Claus, while literary fiction is Wotan.

I would like to shift the metaphor to food. It sounds to me like literary fiction is about experimenting and opening your mind to what previously seemed impossible. Eating bugs for instance. I might eat one by accident in my broccoli, but for the most part I’d like to eat just the broccoli, thanks. I know what I’m getting and it makes me feel good to eat it.

All this to say, again, isn’t this just about personal taste? I suppose we can praise the bug-eater for going forth and trying new things, but the reliable gardner is equally necessary in this world. Plus, how does the bug-eater even stand out if everyone is eating bugs?

Now I’m going to go look up who the heck Wotan is.

The post It’s Personal Taste appeared first on Dani Collins.

It's Personal Taste

Or
There's definitely nothing wrong with that.

I touched on this when I wrote my Fifty Shades post here: Fifty Shades of Fifty Shades.  Now I've just read this: It's Genre Fiction here.

First off, I want to thank Arthur Krystal for helping me finally understand what literary fiction is. Literature with a capital 'L', as it were.  Because I've always kind of shaken my head thinking it was a story that wandered like a lost bee full of pedantic words with a lousy, or at best, dumbfounded ending.  (Pedantic: adj. Characterized by a narrow, often ostentatious concern for book learning and formal rules. That's also what I thought literary fiction was about.  Looking up words.)

He talks about how we're returning to the days of good old fashioned storytelling which was disdained by the modernists and this was helpful for me to understand why literary readers and writers cling to this genre--because literary novels are a genre unto themselves, ask Jennifer Crusie.

The mention of modernists was a vital piece of information I'd been missing. You see, I learned something about modernists from my daughter's first boyfriend. He asked me to critique his essay on Salvador Dali. I was especially happy to pass this same sliver of knowledge along to my father, because he'd never seen the point in Picasso and abstract and bent clocks either.

Modern art was birthed out of necessity for survival. When photography became widely available, artists who could paint a good likeness lost to the perfect likeness of Kodak. They had to bend clocks and use other gimmicks to get noticed. No, I mean they were trying to get people to think. Except, they were also trying to stay relevant and get noticed and sell a painting or two.

Now I'm all for making people stop and think. Here I am, throwing words onto a page right now, hoping you'll take away something more than that I'm a name-dropper who never understood what Modernism was about.

I think the snob-factor of literature is a leftover of this 'have to say something' attitude. Why write a book that is a clear snapshot of life, perhaps even a posed one, when you could be taking minds to a place they've never been? It's a lofty aspiration and perhaps we should commend those who try and those who follow the author's path to their brand of enlightenment.

This path, according to Arthur, has the potential to 'break the sea frozen inside us', whereas commercial fiction never will.  "One reads Conrad and James and Joyce not simply for their way with words but for the amount of felt life in their books."

Hmmph. Okay, here's the thing. What I said in my Fifty Shades post was that sometimes people want to be challenged by their reading and sometimes they don't. I stand by that. Real Life breaks the sea inside of me and leaves me stinging and hurt and railing at tragedy. I escape from that mess by reading something that uplifts me. 

And again we get a comparison that commercial fiction is light and fluffy--he likens it to Santa Claus, while literary fiction is Wotan.

I would like to shift the metaphor to food. It sounds to me like literary fiction is about experimenting and opening your mind to what previously seemed impossible. Eating bugs for instance. I might eat one by accident in my broccoli, but for the most part I'd like to eat just the broccoli, thanks. I know what I'm getting and it makes me feel good to eat it.

All this to say, again, isn't this just about personal taste? I suppose we can praise the bug-eater for going forth and trying new things, but the reliable gardner is equally necessary in this world. Plus, how does the bug-eater even stand out if everyone is eating bugs?

Now I'm going to go look up who the heck Wotan is.