Alison Kent's Blah Blog

I am SO wanting to buy this book just for the artwork! And the title, sigh. I saw mention of it on Tod Goldberg’s blog and checked it out, and now I want to frame this and hang it in my house!

The book description from Amazon:

As irresistible as gossip, as addictive as soap opera, TOMORROW THEY WILL KISS opens up to us the lives of three proud, resourceful women who are unduly buffeted by the winds of fate in their pursuit of happiness.

Like her native Cuba, Graciela Altamira is beautiful, defiant, passionate, and constantly threatened with some kind of trouble.

Day after day she works a conveyor belt in a New Jersey toy factory, assembling baby dolls and watching them roll away to be packaged and delivered into the loving arms of their new owners. And every night before she falls asleep Graciela prays for the same deliverance–to find the loving arms of a man who can help her forget the sins of her past and the haunting memory of her homeland.

But how can she forget when she lives among the ghosts of that little Cuban town? With Caridad and Imperio–two women Graciela has known since girlhood–by her side in the factory, it seems she’ll never be free of her past, never able to pursue the chance at true love that she finds quite unexpectedly in the cold, New Jersey winter.

Written with buoyant humor and a sharp sense of human desire, TOMORROW THEY WILL KISS is a story of love pursued at any cost, of how friendship and history unite us for better or worse, and of the hope for that redemptive kiss capable of reconciling estranged lovers and countries.

Something new on the Good Stuff page . . .

I am under a bit of stress at the moment as I wrap up a book. It’s always like this at the end since I’m always racing not to be any later than I already am. (Trust me. Working this way is not the least bit conducive to my creativity or my mental health, but after this week I will finally be ::cough, cough:: caught up.)

The problem with stress is that I am a stress eater. Yes, I’m doing the treadmill and working off 5 or 10 extra calories a day, but I still want to turn to food for comfort. Weirdly enough, I’m so busy writing that it will be five p.m. and I’ll realize I’ve had nothing all day but the morning’s coffee (the only time I drink it) and a protein drink or two. (Because I really am watching what goes into my mouth.) Still, stress brings to mind food . . .

The husband had shopped the other night and planned that we would have hamburgers for dinner. (Knowing my state of mind, he brought me home a bottle of “stress tea” – no caffeine, valerian, chamomile, ginseng, B vitamins etc.) However, he did forget buns, so I volunteered to make a run for them – not a good idea when I am stressed and the grocery is have a 10 for $10 sale on tons of items. When we will eat this stuff, I have no idea. I’m sure most of it will go home with the kids.

The thing I was really going to blog on though was the canned commercials in the grocery store that play during breaks in the Musak. You know: “On aisle five, you will find an enormous assortment of Chex Mix, M&M’s, and Lays Stax, for all your stress-eating needs.” That sort.

So I’m grabbing a half gallon of milk, and the next commercial comes on: “On aisle fifteen, don’t forget to check out our selection of Harlequin and Silhouette romance novels. Like sexy steamy reads? Look no further than Silhouette Desire. Enjoy suspenseful dramas? Try a Harlequin Intrigue.”

Okay, I just made up all that copy, and it really was much more detailed and went on for a good minute or two, but you get the idea. I just couldn’t believe it! A canned pitch for series romances! Whoo-hoo! Unbelievably cool! If I hadn’t been so stressed and had any working brain cells, I would’ve turned on my cell phone’s voice recorder to capture it. But I was too busy loading down the cart with junk . . .

And on a totally different topic, I checked the Amazon listing last night for my CIG and found not the cover yet, but some updates on the content:

The basic rules for turning basic instincts into blockbuster success.

Erotic romance reigns supreme as a big category of women’s fiction—a billion dollar business serviced by a new breed of uninhibited writer. This book is the necessary how-to for first timers and a terrific guide for seasoned professionals as well, who are putting their racy—and lucrative—fantasies to paper. Now, for the first time, a veteran erotic romance author shows exactly what to do—and how.

• The first book to guide writers to succeed in this multi-million dollar genre
• Explores how to set up a plot and write good, steamy sex scenes
• From a best-selling experienced author
• Includes resource section for research tools and further reading
• Interviews with top editors in the field (AK: No, the interviews are with authors.)
• Foreword by Kate Duffy, editorial director at Kensington Publishing and founding editor of the genre

About the Author
Alison Kent is the pseudonym known to the tens of thousands of readers who enjoy her erotic romances. Some of her titles include The Beach Alibi, Larger Than Life, and The Bane Affair.

As if I already don’t have enough to do working behind the scenes at Romancing the Blog and Access Romance, I also run Authors Blogs. (Yeah, yeah, I know. Get a life already. *g*) When authors submit their listings, I approve them manually by making sure the blog is actually about the submittee’s pursuit of writing.

Yesterday I approved Riding with the Top Down, a group blog I hadn’t seen before. And I’m so glad I saw it because now I get to rave about the book that got me started writing action adventure romances! Backing up a bit . . . I posted the following to a group I’m on earlier this week:

I started writing action adventure romance before I ever sold a book, so this is like 1992 or so. I had one manuscript in particular (a partial) that won contests everywhere I entered it, and that both Denise Little and Carrie Feron wanted to buy at one point – but couldn’t because action adventure romance didn’t sell. I’ll be writing that story for my next Brava, yay!

I already have the back copy for that one, and the title is THE PERFECT STRANGER and it’s scheduled for an 04/07 release. I’m not ready to post the copy yet; I have to give you all some reason to come back, but damn it makes *me* want to read the book! This will be the first time since writing the two books I did for Zebra Bouquet that I’ve gone back to an idea I started before ever selling a thing and bringing it into the present with my current style and voice. I think it’s going to be an interesting ride, and I can’t wait to get to it. It’s up on the writing calendar next.

Anyhow, about the blog and an entry by Theresa Weir (who wrote the fantabulous “Iguana Bay”, a SIM from May 1990) talking about her Theresa Weir work (oh . . . “Last Summer” and “Forever” and “Long Night Moon” and “One Fine Day” . . . love them all) and her path to becoming Anne Frasier. (I have all her AF books on my shelf, but so far have only read PLAY DEAD which was so good!) Her book AMAZON LILY is what set me on the path to writing action adventure (and was the reason I set the above mentioned manuscript in the jungle *g*) and I still have my copy with that cover that I just LOVE. (I’m copying it here from her post; Anne, I hope you don’t mind!) She says in her post:

After AMAZON LILY was released my agent advised me to forget single titles and write category romance in order to build an audience. This had worked for people like Sandra Brown and Jayne Ann Krentz, and a lot of agents were jumping on the concept.

Note to self: Chasing trends is huge in the publishing world.

And then comes the following which ties so serendipitously to a post I made recently about writing to the market.

I dug out an old proposal that had been turned down three or four years earlier. It had a vampire element, and vampires were suddenly a trend so I dusted off the plot and it was accepted. Once PALE IMMORTAL was done, my editor didn’t really care for it. I wanted everything to be very real; she was expecting a stereotypical vampire. Sigh. I’m working on a sequel, Book 6 for NAL, but not really feeling that excited about it given the editorial response to PALE IMMORTAL.

Strangely, we both had a manuscript that we put away but then pulled out when the market was right and made the sell. What I find most interesting, though, are Anne’s comments about the stereotypical vampire, especially in light of this great post from agent Kristin Nelson where she discusses the problems she’s seeing in paranormal submissions and says:

(…) the real culprit is a lack of world building. Writers aren’t choosing scenes that will build an original story and world—which is so necessary in the crowded Vampire market. How is your Vampire world different? Unique? What intriguing rules must they abide by? What are some mind-blowing scenes that could really tell an original story?

So, wow, huh? So many things to think about. Especially in the contest of this conversation about staying fresh vs embracing the tried and true. And as for Anne’s upcoming vampire release . . . I am SO there. Go here to see her trailer. Here’s the back copy:

Welcome to Tuonela, a sleepy Wisconsin town haunted by events of 100 years ago, when a man who may have been a vampire slaughtered the town’s citizens and drank their blood. Now, another murderer is killing the most vulnerable…and draining their bodies of blood.

Evan Stroud lives in darkness. The pale prisoner of a strange disease that prevents him from ever seeing the light of day, he lives in tragic solitude, taunted for being a “vampire.” When troubled teenager Graham Stroud appears on Evan’s doorstep, claiming to be his long-lost son, Evan’s uneasy solitude is shattered.

Having escaped Tuonela’s mysterious pull for several years, Rachel Burton is now back in town, filling in as coroner. Even as she seeks to identify the killer, and uncover the source of the evil that seems to pervade the town, she is drawn to Evan by a power she’s helpless to understand or resist….

As Graham is pulled deeper and deeper into Tuonela’s depraved, vampire-obsessed underworld, Rachel and Evan team up to save him. But the force they are fighting is both powerful and elusive…and willing to take them to the very mouth of hell.

The end isn’t near for Brazos Bookstore
14 Houstonians band together to buy venerable independent

“Many of us felt at the time that Houston just has to have a literary bookstore of the first rank, which we’ve been lucky enough to have for 30-plus years,” said Babette Hale, founder of Winedale Publishing (and wife of Chronicle columnist Leon Hale). “To lose that would have been a real blow to the civic health of the community.”

Guess they won’t be inviting me to do a reading or a signing! Heh!

For this entire year, I have been a sedentary lump. Seriously. Writing seven days a week. Getting exercise by pacing the backyard, doing deep knee bends to unload the dryer, toe touches when tying my shoes, burning calories by tossing and turning all night due to stress-induced insomnia and muscle spasms . . . you get the picture.

Not only is writing at the pace I have been not conducive to my creativity, writing in these conditions is not conducive to keeping my body anything resembling strong and healthy. You’d think as much as I ache that I truly had been running a marathon, but I ache from six months of little more than my butt in the chair and my hands on the keyboard.

To that end, I finally lowered the base of the treadmill this past week. I’ve been writing at the dining room table on my laptop and the treadmill has been sitting unused in the corner, so I thought it was time to hop on board and walking out my writer’s block instead of sitting and forcing out words that don’t make any sense.

(As an aside, I have decided Queensryche’s Operation Mindcrime is the perfect treadmill music. I don’t listen to words. Geoff Tate could be singing in Italian for all I would notice. Music to me is all about the nuance’s of a singer’s voice [one reason I lurve Andrea Bocelli], all of the instruments, AND *feeling* the stereo – which is why I can’t use earbuds with my MP3 player. I’ve tried them all, none of them work, all sound tinny and hollow. I probably have an ear canal defect or something [not hard to believe since I hear voices that aren't there all the time - not in my head, just in my ears], so these headphones are the only thing that give me what I need.)

Anyhow, on Friday night, I added the bike to the get-the-body-moving mix. A tandem that the husband and I bought a couple of years ago and rarely ride – er, that *I* rarely ride. He rides it every day with the dog. And, no, the dog doesn’t pedal. He runs alongside. I won’t ride with the dog; I’m paranoid about things getting tangled up and someone dying. (You’d think the dh would be paranoid since things DID get tangled up last year, and he went head over handlebars and broke his arm, but no.)

The husband is the captain, and I am his stoker, meaning, I get to goof off while he does the work, ha. Okay, not exactly true. I do have to pedal, but I can close my eyes if I want to. I never have to brake. I do have to lean into the turns the right way, and he does have to tell me when he’s stopping, turning, shifting gears, etc. That is what a good captain does. He communicates with his stoker. About EVERYTHING, ahem.

Now, I’m 5′4″ and the husband is 6′1″ and most of that is legs. So on Friday night after my inaugural ride, I dismount, and I’m standing there in the driveway catching my breath (because really, I am a lump), and then he dismounts (picture a cowboy getting off a horse), swinging his big ol’ size 12 around and WHAM! Right into my midsection. Oof! Breathe, breathe, stumble back, pain, agony. I’m going to die without ever getting tangled up with the dog.

After that, I made him take me to Marble Slab.

On Saturday instead of riding, I mowed half the front yard, yeah, yeah, only half. *g* On Sunday instead of riding, I helped cart over items we bought from the next door neighbors and hefted boxes around in the garage to make room (not a lot of work, but 93 degrees and a good sweat).

Maybe tonight I’ll trust him to take me on another ride . . .

WONDERFUL, wonderful post by Tamara Siler Jones on making everything in your story connect:

It all matters, every little thing, because if if doesn’t matter, if it’s not vital to the telling of the tale, to the domino pattern spread out in whorls across the floor, then it’ll muck it all up. Imagine if you will the dominoes all set up in a pretty twirly pattern. Up ramps. Interconnecting braided shapes. Curlicues. Herringbone patterns. Flip that one domino that starts it all and… it stops. A domino is in the wrong place, the wrong angle, falls over and has no connection with anything else. When that happens, the whole cascade stops or, more likely, a section – let’s say the curlicues – never fall. It’s the same way with stories. Really. Every little bit matters and it had better connect in with the rest of the book.

Don’t forget the drawing tonight at 6:00 for the [edited to finish my thought *snort*] J.A. Konrath books!

Blogging today at Access Romance! Go win!