Alison Kent's Blah Blog

Pageflakes Romance Bloggers

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What is it? It’s a place for you to go to find what romance bloggers are talking about.

It’s a work in progress, which means I’ll be adding feeds as I go and also as I get feedback, so if you have comments, please send them to: romance (at) cuppacafe (dot) com

See how it works at this link!

I read Allison Brennan’s plug of Toni McGee Causey’s new book, BOBBIE FAYE’S VERY (very, very, very) BAD DAY (and really, if I’d known she was Cajun, I would have made her my BFF while writing Simon’s book, sigh), so I popped over to her site and had to share her video with you guys.

Now, I don’t do humor. Ask my husband. Ask Bekke. But I have a feeling I’ll be grabbing up this book as soon as it hits the shelves. Enjoy!

In this post, I explained that I would be coming to you guys for help with some specific names for things included in Simon’s book. My heroine, Michelina Ferrer, is the heiress to and spokesmodel for Ferrer Fragrances – and I need some suggestions for perfume / fragrance names.

Like Calvin Klein has Obsession and Eternity and ck One and ck BE (my fave) and Escape. Ferrer Fragrance ideas? For both men and women?

I’ll give away a copy of THE PERFECT STRANGER to a random commenter, and not necessarily to the commenters whose suggestions I steal use!

No, I’m not offering one here yet, but I am asking for help. In this post, I shared the faux blurb I wrote for Simon and Michelina’s untitled book. (BTW, Maureen, I named the bar “Red’s.”) What I need now is different. I need a reader or two to take a look at the book as I polish it up. It goes into my editor on Monday. I don’t need a full read by then, but I’d like feedback on what’s working and what’s unclear to have in mind as I do revisions. This is the first book I’ve written from beginning to end without polishing along the way (more on that in a future post). I think I’ve caught the discrepancies where I’ve changed events, names, descriptions, etc., but one never knows what one’s very tired brain is producing. (And, no. I haven’t made it downtown to the RT Convention yet, sigh. The book has to come first. But I have enjoyed Jason Pinter’s reports (fun reading a male perspective) and laughed my ass off at PBW’s Ten Reasons to Be Happy You’re Not at the RT Convention.)

If you’re interested, email me at simon@alisonkent.com (this is a must – the only addy I’ll check for offers). What I’m looking for is critical feedback. Not just comments on how much you love the book (because of course you will *g*). If something isn’t working or is too convoluted to understand, I want to know. So many times it’s crystal clear in my head, and nothing but muck on the page. I’ll also be asking for more “naming things” help later (so I can go through and replace all the #?#?# placeholders with things that make sense), so stay tuned!

Rob Gregory Browne talks about getting there over at Murderati:

Let’s talk about sex. Those of you who are uncomfortable with the subject, feel free to bail out now — I’m likely to get pretty raunchy.

Still with me? I thought so.

When we make love, most of us have a particular goal in mind: that moment when our entire body seems to stem from one central point, every nerve-ending tingling wildly as fireworks assault our brain.

That moment, of course, is orgasm, and anyone who has experienced one (or two or three) — especially with a willing and enthusiastic partner (or two or three) — knows that it can be an exquisitely pleasurable sensation.

But are all orgasms created equal?

Of course not. The quality of our orgasms is directly related to the quality of the fun and games that precede them, not to mention our emotional bond with our partner, and our willingness (or unwillingness) to surrender ourselves fully to the moment.

So what, you’re probably wondering, does any of this have to do with writing?

There’s a LONG story behind IPSTD, and this link will tell you more. This link will give you a lot of other links of free stuff you can read and even watch. I had hoped to have something to put up as a freebie giveaway, but with Simon and Michelina winding up and needing my every moment of attention, I’m going to offer you something partial instead. That’s a warning so that if you don’t want to read just a piece of a book, you won’t waste your time. But if you like to be teased by something that isn’t finished, this is for you!

I might have mentioned at some point that between selling PLAYING LOVE’S ODDS to Meteor Kismet and selling CALL ME to Harlequin Temptation, I had a very nice rejection from Marsha Zinberg at Harlequin Superromance on a story called RACING HEARTS. (Marsha almost bought PLO; long story of a big misunderstanding on that one. TIP [tm, Lori Wilde].) Anyhow, RH is my only unsold project with at least a hundred pages written on it. My other rejections have all been on a chapter or two, or even on a synopsis. (I got really lazy about writing material before knowing it was going to sell. *g*)

This is a lot more dramatic than what I write now. More . . . angsty and over the top? Interesting to see the changes to my style over the last dozen years! Enjoy! I’ll post the second chapter in another day or so!

Read the rest of this entry �

You know it’s time to do some serious brainstorming when you begin writing sentences in your manuscript like the following:

There were several square miles of BLAH BLAH SOMETHING GEOLOGICAL BLAH.

To that end, the geologist husband and I spend a good long working dinner at Panera Bread in my favorite booth there last night.

I’m at the point now where the plot can’t be wrapped up and the final edits made until I know more specific details about water cuts and condensate and oil and faultlines and pumpjacks and workovers and slant drilling, etc. I have a whole lot of places in the manuscript that I’ve got to go back to fix, places that say NAME OF BRIDGE or ?#?#?#? — placeholders for things that I can easily fill in later because they don’t affect the forward motion of the plot.

I decided the only way to explain the geology info I needed was to draw out my plot for him. He knew a little bit about it, had also known I was waiting until I hit the research wall before halting the forward motion. So I drew out my two plots of land, added the houses, drew a hurricane (upper right corner) to represent a character who’d experienced Hurricane Katrina first hand, added a pair of lips inside of an apple (lower right corner) to represent my fashionista heroine from NYC . . . you get the idea. *g* Then the hubby gets technical and starts mapping out the land with real geological references – dashes, dots, lines, etc., figuring out my acreage and giving me a timeline of when all the drilling related events would have to happen.

Then as I’m typing up handwritten chapters this morning, the pup refuses to be left out, so has been serving as a table for me to prop my notebook on. Could the writing life be any better???