Warm and fuzzy, one more time...

Well, it is a week of awesome with a side of awesome sauce, because Shannon C. at The Good, the Bad, the Unread just reviewed Healer's Touch, and though she didn't love it like she loved Crossing Swords, she gave it a B+.

Here's some of what she had to say:

As Ms. Saell said in an e-mail to me, this book is essentially one long seduction. I'm not sure I would have believed anyone could actually wring that much of a story out of a prolonged seduction, Ms. Saell does so wonderfully. I loved watching Aru gradually begin to succumb to the many and varied ways Viera used to seduce him. This was one of those books where none of the sex felt gratuitous. And since Viera and Aru were already friends at the start of the story, I believed in their romance.

In addition to Aru and Viera, we get a great secondary romance between one of Aru's patients and an apothecary. Karal, said apothecary, absolutely stole the show in whatever scenes he was in, and I hope that Ms. Saell does more with him.

I do have Bound by Steel, which is the third book in this series, on my TBR, and I will definitely be revisiting this world again soon. Fans of fantasy romance should pick up this series. The characters are great, the world-building is subtle but well-done, and the plots are interesting!

I am totally jazzed. Especially since the book is probably almost half sex, and she didn't think any of it was gratuitous. Wahoo!

I feel all warm and fuzzy...

You know what's awesome? When a fellow writer, when asked for examples of good, intense fight scenes, cites your book as one of their three favorites.

That is all.

With Apologies to the Tragically Hip...

Thirty-eight years old, never kissed a girl.

Yes, as of last Friday, I am thirty-eight. And yes, regardless of how I may feel about myself and how I fit into the dynamics of sexual and interpersonal relationships, I have never had the pleasure of kissing a girl. (And no, this post is not about confessing our most deep, dark secrets.)

But there's some talk going on at Dear Author in regard to Writing What You Know, and whether an author has to be it or have experienced it to be able to write it with any claim to authenticity. While being a forensic anthropoligist undoubtedly helped Kathy Reichs pen her Temperance (Bones) Brennan novels, was her professional expertise truly necessary to the process? Could a part-time hairdresser with a high-speed modem and access to a good university library have brought that level of authenticity to those books, or would her efforts have been an epic fail? Should authors really limit themselves to Writing What They Know?

When it comes to writers like Thomas Harris and Jeff Lindsay, the question is ridiculous. Lindsay, you hack, pack up your lame Dexter books and come back when you've chopped up a few people--then you can talk to me about homicidal sociopaths. What, Mr. Harris? Never eaten a person? Or a fava bean? Take a hike!

My own typical reaction when folks waggle their eyebrows and ask me if I "do all the things you write about, hur hur" is an enthusastic, "Well, of course! You can't write convincingly about chopping a man's fingers off or how it feels to pull a sword out of someone's belly unless you've actually--what? Oh, you mean the sex? Nah, I don't do any of that." But as the Dear Author debate unfolds (venturing predictably into that well-worn area of female writers who pen male/male sex), I have kind of begun to ask myself:

How can I convincingly write girl-on-girl sex having never even locked lips with a woman? (And no, Sue, that birthday kiss didn't count!)

How can I convincingly write guy-on-guy sex, never having been the proud owner of a penis? (Except by proxy, that is.)

Well, I'm sure there are things that will give my practical inexperience away--at least in the guy-on-guy department. Woman writers of male/male erotica are often accused of focusing on characteristics women find attractive in men, and largely ignoring those that tend to appeal to gay guys--the over-abundance of sandalwood in lieu of the kinds of "ripe, sweaty, gamey" smells (bluh) gay male writers evidently celebrate being just one. (The reverse of this is even more appallingly obvious in male-produced "lesbian" porn. I shudder every time I see some bimbalicious babe with full-on, red-painted talons plucking and prodding at her bottle-blonde, boob-enhanced screen-partner's squoogey bits. Now that's an invitation to an injury if ever there was one.)

But reasonable research measures aside, if you have to know "it", do "it" or be "it", to write authoritatively about "it", I'm in big trouble, as is every writer of fantasy, science fiction, historical fiction, and pretty much all books where people get killed. Because no matter how well you research a subject, it's fiction. It never happened. And in real life, a hundred people will experience the same event in a hundred different ways.

And even when you do get it right, there's gonna be someone somewhere who goes "Come on! That's totally implausible." Just like I'm sure that somewhere out there, there's the odd gay guy who loves the smell of sandalwood, the rare lesbian with three-inch-long fingernails and a girlfriend who doesn't live in fear, and a homicidal cannibal freak who doesn't grimace at the mere mention of fava beans.

A Diva Workshop

For anyone who loves historical romance, writes it or would like to, or would just like an insight into the nuts and bolts of the genre, head over to Romance Divas on the 12th of November.




Business, writing, fun, and some of your favorite authors--it'll be like a party, only no hangovers and no crap to clean up the next day. :D

Another review...

No, not for one of my books, but a review I wrote for this blammo book:

It's up at Loving Venus- Loving Mars, go check it out!

Pimpage!!!

After discovering one of my fave writers of the dirty books--the awesome Portia da Costa--has finally, after 20 years, become a Harlequin author, I knew I had to pimp her out to all y'all:

A Spice Briefs erotic novella, published 1st November 2008.

The videotape shocked and thrilled her...and really turned her on. She’d found it in a small, out-of-the-way sitting room of Blaystock Manor, where she was working. Now everyone was away and she finally had an opportunity to watch at her leisure. There on the screen was the Marquis, her much fantasized-about boss, administering a very sexy spanking to some girl. The intense erotic sizzle she felt compelled her to begin touching herself. And as she lost herself in pleasure, she suddenly realized he’d entered the room and had been watching her.

But embarrassment turned to excitement when he urged her to continue, then began to touch her intimately. It was only the smallest hint of what she’d witnessed on the tape, but she knew she had to have more...much more!

Hot excerpts here and here. Chance of a Lifetime is available from eHarlequin, Fictionwise, Books on Board and Amazon Kindle. To purchase Chance of a Lifetime for 89 cents, visit eHarlequin Afternoon Delights between noon and 3pm on Monday 3rd November 2008

Spanking, huh? I am so there...