Thirteen Reasons to Put UNHOLY VOWS on Your TBB List!

1. I’m hosting a contest in which I’ll give away two signed copies of Princes of Anfall, Mayan Nights, or Lords of Ch’i (non US/Can winners get an ebook). Go to http://samhainpublishing.com/coming/unholy-vows and then email ciar@ciarcullen.com the names of three characters in the book!
2. It has two very sexy heroes.
3. It has two very sexy heroines.
4. It has a rockin great cover from Anne Cain.
5. It’s a book that survived Triskelion.
6. I wrote it after a tremendous vacation at Long Beach Island NJ, so I incorporated that locale into the book.
7. An alpha hero throws a heroine over his shoulder, and I think I got away with it.
8. My alpha hero disguises himself as a holy man, and sex in a monastery garden with a forbidden guy is always fun. I guess.
9. It has a funny secondary character.
10. For once, there are no sentient pets in my book.
11. For once, there’s only one reference to antiquity.
12. I haven’t had a release in a while, and I’m excited.
13. Come on, you know you want to buy it!

Some People Don’t Have Maps

Poor Ms. Wherever, Teen USA candidate. Britney Spears lookalike. “Some people don’t have maps.” I don’t think it was that bad an answer. I don’t think many young women have maps. She’s right.

First, the very existence of a Ms. Teen pageant makes my stomach roll. Beauty contests, in 2007. WTF?

I keep hearing that the average American woman is a size 16 or something. Maybe that’s not so good, really. I’m not an elitist about weight, I promise you. I once tipped the scales at 190 lbs, 50 pounds more than I weigh now. We simply know that a good lean muscle/fat ratio is better for your health. Still, girls are starving themselves unnaturally, the media is full of women of every age who look like clowns (except I really love Joan Rivers, can’t help it). Women of my age obsess over their appearance long after they should be over it, our society is in love with youth and beauty, and I fear it’s getting worse rather than better.

I am so freaking glad I am not 14. Who would be my role models? Britney? Posh? Hip hop ‘hos’? Hilary? A woman who stayed with a cheating scumbag for political reasons (okay, that’s my interpretation, she didn’t dish the details to me personally)?

Have you ever considered being a Big Brother or Big Sister to someone who desperately needs an adult in their life? I know many of you are facing the challenges of raising your own children. But the rest of us–shouldn’t we try to do something, anything, to help turn a child’s face away from Myspace, Entertainment Tonight, and Ms. Teen whatever pageants? Give them a map, you know?

I’m going to spend a few hours one night a week with some young person who speaks Spanish and wants to improve in English. I hope to learn more Spanish. It’s about the best I can do right now. We are allowed to base our lessons on a variety of topics. I picked Geography. Maybe I’ll even learn to find her birth country on a map. Cause I sure need one too, in more ways than one.

REVIEW: Sanctified by Katrina Strauss

I’m not sure what drew me to buy this book. Perhaps the cover, which is great, the title, which I wish I would have thought of, and the price, $1.99. Also, I’d never read anything by the author, or bought a book from Red Rose Press. Here is the link to buy Sanctified.

I’ll start with the good stuff: this is a charming, moody, different read. The Irish Catholic in me identified with the Latino Catholic theme. Ms. Strauss is very talented, a whiz at description. I thought I was having another hot flash as she described the sweltering lower-class apartment. The characters: only two, as befits a work of this length (28 pages). Moira is likeable, a little quirky, and one might even imagine that this work is a trifle autobiographical. Diego is hot, and it’s not just the dog days of summer. He’s an Iraqi War vet, with the wounds (internal and external) commemorating his wartime experience. He is especially believable, and incredibly appealing. Hard to do in a book of this length.

So, five big fat rosary beads for creativity, finesse, description, characterization, and originality.

Subtract one half rosary bead for the following: Unfortunately, a few line edit marks were left in the final PDF. It just doesn’t look good, and while I understand how these things happen (boy, do I ever), it’s very distracting and doesn’t do the story justice. There are some other editorial glitches, too many dangling participles, etc., but if I weren’t writing myself, I’d probably not notice them. So nothing off for that. I wish Ms. Strauss could have woven the backstory of the Virgin of Guadalupe in a bit more fluidly (it felt pushed in there), but I was still intrigued by her use of this theme. Finally, I didn’t think the book needed a sex scene, although this was a good one. The story is hot and charming without it, with a little holy thread running through it. This turned it into a bit of a Madonna/whore thing LOL.

Okay, so the final recommendation: what else can you do for $1.99 that will take you into another place fully for an hour? Congrats, Ms. Strauss, I can’t wait to watch what you do next. You have a great imagination, an intriguing, real voice, and I’m jealous.

Drollerie Press Update! Print

Deena at Drollerie Press was kind enough to send along an update to an interview she did here a while back. Everytime I visit Drollerie’s site, I’m taken with the beauty of the covers, the layout, and the ease of ordering and seeing what’s coming up. I fervently hope this publisher does well and that the decision to go to print is a healthy one. Authors sure will love it! Good luck, Deena and your authors.

Here’s what Deena wrote: “We’ve recently done a bit of rearranging and rethinking and we’ve realized that, if we do really believe in the books we accept, we ought to be able to bring them out in print. I told you in our interview that I wasn’t sure I could do that, but, well, to put it plainly, I’ve changed my mind. I believe I’ve updated the website, I know I’ve updated our agreement, but I never told you. So, all our novels will see print. All the short stories, novelettes and novellas will see print if/when we match them up with enough high-quality works in a similar theme or with some defining thread to create a good anthology or collection.”

Prayers for Greece

I just learned that one town I lived in for a year is gone. It’s on the isle of Euboia (Evia) off the coast near Athens. It’s one of dozens that will just be gone. It’s so hard to comprehend. I clearly remember the house in which I lived, the road past the goat pens, the well… Gone. I just feel sad today. If Nauplion, the place I lived for 8 summers and a year goes, it will leave a hole in my soul. Nevermind me, of course. Those poor, poor people. Greece is an incredibly wonderful country with generous, kind, life-loving people.

Will 2007 be the year of worldwide natural disasters.

Who ARE These People in Your Cyber Neighborhood

Hey, I’m just getting used to the fact that Lacey Savage, who I used to chat with on loops once in a while (Hey, way to go, Lacey, great sale) is Toni Blake. I’m suspicious now. I’m afraid I’m going to embarrass myself by saying WTG to Nora or somebody like that in disguise. Okay, maybe not Nora. That would just be stupidity on her part.

I don’t know who I’m talking to anymore. I get some names mixed up (“no, I don’t write for them, I write for the other company”) a lot. Everyone has a yahoo name and a blog that has some other name and a myspace that might have some other clever name. There are paperback readers and paperback writers and evil editors galore.

The stuff that really gets me shouldn’t, though. The junk mail. Who ARE these people? More importantly, who actually responds to these emails? I’m getting the cumulative willies from them. “Find sexaholics in your neighborhood” came today. WHAT? Oh, sure, I’m hoping to track them down, give them my address.

No thanks, I don’t want to be bigger than Ron Jeremy, I don’t want to help any deposed Nigerian kings’ wives get their billions out of a bank, I don’t want a mortgage, and I don’t shop at Home Depot.

The oddest one today:

“so you look to Design
Good afternoon. How are you? Email me at uzkw@mailmessageonline.info only. I am young female. I would like to share some of my pics. stressed-out it would be useful three mornings the zeros element of
your”

And it trails off there. The zeros element of your… What? The zeros element. I was really pondering this for a while, wondering if a monkey could have managed to get this far (you know the old saying).

I can’t quite remember life before the internet. But I know that I was annoyed less, mostly.

When I Was a Reader

Before I wrote a book, there were many things I didn’t know about the romance publishing world. I’d go into the bookstore, pick up my Nora or Elizabeth Lowell, and happily curl up on the couch.
1. What point-of-view is.
2. What the RWA is.
3. That Nora Roberts was JD Robb (NOT kidding).
4. That L.K. Hamilton existed and was controversial.
5. That anyone liked vampires, werewolves, and demons in their romances.
6. That ebooks existed.
7. That anyone with a book in the bookstore might be unhappy somehow about being there, ie., contracts, agents, deals, advances, sell-through, returns…
8. That review sites existed. I never read a single review of any romance book. I bought what I liked, and if an author “turned” on me, I’d try another. It would never occur to me to contact a writer, join their loop, talk about them to anyone but maybe a coworker.
9. I never bought a romance magazine.
10. I never considered HQN as anything I might want to read.
11. I didn’t want to see “hot” covers. If there was a nice sex scene between a monogamous couple in my fat novel, that was fine.
12. That romance was looked down upon. It wouldn’t have mattered if it was. We live in a free market society.
13. I thought writers spent most of their time writing.

Let’s Put on a Show!

I was talking to a very old pal (a very swishy old pal I used to take tap-dancing lessons with, but didn’t realize he was gay until years later). We were reminiscing about our high school and college theater days. I had so much damn fun doing musicals and plays, and in fact, became a theater major in college before taking up archaeology. We were so geeky. Watched a bazillion old musicals, did summer stock. Retro (30s and 40s) stuff was all the rage when I was in high school.

I never got a leading role. I could sing just a bit, could dance up a storm. That singing thing really kicked my butt though. Oh well, I was in:
The King and I
Oklahoma
Carousel
Stop the World, I Want to Get Off
You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown
Cabaret
Ah, Wilderness
The Crucible
South Pacific
Guys and Dolls

What did you do in high school? Were you the popular cheerleader or the theater geek? Chess club or all-night clubbing?

1970 and Groovy Books

Check out the bestseller list (Bowker) from 1970. Cracked me up. Sex guides, fondue cookbooks, poetry, and Love Story. I highlighted the ones I’ve read, and read, and read )

1970: Fiction
1 Love Story Segal, Erich
2 The French Lieutenant’s Woman Fowles, John
3 Islands in the Stream Hemingway, Ernest
4 The Crystal Cave Stewart, Mary
5 Great Lion of God Caldwell, Taylor
6 QB VII Uris, Leon
7 The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight Breslin, Jimmy
8 The Secret Woman Holt, Victoria
9 Travels with My Aunt Greene, Graham
10 Rich Man, Poor Man Shaw, Irwin

1970: Non-Fiction
1 Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex but Were Afraid To Ask Reuben, David, M.D.
2 The New English Bible None
3 The Sensuous Woman “J”
4 Better Homes and Gardens Fondue and Tabletop Cooking None
5 Up the Organization Townsend, Robert
6 Ball Four Bouton, Jim
7 American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language Morris, William
8 Body Language Fast, Julius
9 In Someone’s Shadow McKuen, Rod
10 Caught in the Quiet McKuen, Rod

When the World Seems Nuts

I’ve noticed a thread on loops, blogs, personal emails. It mirrors the news on TV: miners killed trying to rescue trapped miners, bridges collapsing, horrific earthquake deaths, bizarre shootings, steampipes exploding in the street, fires…natural and manmade disasters at every turn.

Next time I walk down a Manhattan street and see one of the schizophrenics with a sign saying the “End is Near,” I may stop and ask him what he means. Cause baby, it’s feeling that way.

Anyone else? I think there’s a spiritual thread, “The Force,” whatever you want to call it that ties us all together and can spiral in a positive or negative direction. Maybe it’s the planets (despite Madam Phil, I don’t think I believe that). Maybe it’s the media focusing only on disasters.

Or maybe it’s that we’re at war. Sometimes I think we’d all be better off if we had a special news bulletin that said “we are at war. take it in. it’s not a special short-term initiative. it will affect you. look at the pictures of the dead soldiers. war.”

I can’t tell you the number of writers, editors, readers who have within the last month posted that they are cranky. Or that they’ve encountered some personal difficulty–financial, health, loss of a loved one.

I’m going through that too. And I have not been caring for myself as I should. I melted down yesterday. Cried for the better part of a day. Overwhelmed. I should be doing this, that, the other thing. Put my fears about my family aside. Forget about that work project. Focus on the positive and suck it up. Get to work–you have a writing deadline.

You know, I think too many of us are sucking it up. I think when things feel overwhelming, when the world feels nuts, you need to go back to basics. Get sleep. Eat properly. Take a walk. Reconnect with your significant other, figure out if there are problems there. Turn off the computer. Keep the TV on romantic comedies. Americans seem very, very good at burning the candle at both ends. Today, I’m taking a walk, doing a little yoga, writing a little, calling my mom, perhaps read a new book, cook a nice dinner, and kiss my husband. How about you?