Alison Kent's Blah Blog

Don’t forget! If you’d like a copy of any book from my backlist (subject to availability; does not include The Icing on the Cake as that’s not BACKlist), this post explains how you can go about getting one! Here’s a picture sent in from Lillie of the True Vows dump in a Barnes & Noble near Valley Forge, PA!

Excerpts can be customized and embedded using Kindle on the Web. Here’s an example using ONE GOOD MAN. Obviously for my blog I had to reduce the width so as not to break the design, and on a web page it would be wider. What do you think?

Is this a good way to sample books at an author’s site? Is it easier to read in this format than the regular excerpts I have on my books’ pages? Pros or cons?

Don’t forget! If you’d like a copy of any book from my backlist (subject to availability; does not include The Icing on the Cake as that’s not BACKlist), this post explains how you can go about getting one! And here is a picture from my friend, author Trinity Faegen, who spotted The Icing on the Cake in a Dallas area CVS Pharmacy!! Not only that, she witnessed an anonymous reader buying the book!!

If you’ve been looking for me and wondering where I’ve been, I’ve been around just not online so much because I’ve been ::gasp:: working! I’ve been revising one proposal for submission, finishing another to head out into the wild, and building the world for a story I’ve just started on. I’m all about the shiny, so it’s very easy for me to get distracted by fun conversations on Twitter and blogs and Facebook and Yahoo loops. I’ve found I get a lot more done when I just unplug. One thing I haven’t been doing is reading, though I’ve downloaded about eight gazillion Kindle samples of books that look really good. Kindle samples are better than a wish list because I’ve got the covers to browse and the pages to try before buying. My very own bookstore on my iPod Touch! I’ve also watched some of the new fall TV season, but a whole lot less than I thought I would. Not impressed by much, sorry to say. I’m curious enough about The Event to stick with it for now, and really liked Chase a lot, Hawaii Five-O also. Ready for the return of The Good Wife, and think Fringe is going to be awesome this year. I LOVE story arcs way more than standalone episodes. The eps can have their own story, of course, as The Good Wife does, but for me, shows are SO much richer (as are books) when there is much character drama behind the scenes.

So what’s going on with all of you? What shows are you loving / hating? What books have you been reading? Any good movies? I haven’t been to the theater since Inception, but want to go see The Town and Easy A. Oh, and I’m FINALLY watching True Blood. I’ve only just started the first season, renting it through Netflix, so am having a watch-a-thon to catch up! I’ve also been watching Law & Order: SVU from the beginning. Netflix is streaming the series, and I’m up to mid-season three!

Don’t forget! If you’d like a copy of any book from my backlist (subject to availability; does not include The Icing on the Cake as that’s not BACKlist), this post explains how you can do so! And here is a picture from reader Pat Lie!

John Scalzi wrote a post last week called Writing: Find the Time or Don’t that brought to mind something I’ve heard from many friends who’ve made the transition from part time to full time writing: The more you have to do, the more you get done. This has certainly been true in my case. When I was working full time, I got things done a lot faster than I do now. With a full time job, writing had to go into the available holes in my schedule. Without that full time job, writing can be done anytime of the day or night, and that makes it easy to say I’ll get to it later, after I buy groceries or clean the stove or mow the yard or watch L&O SVU (I’m currently streaming the series from the beginning on Netflix.).

At one point in Scalzi’s post, he says:

Cory Doctorow says that no matter what, he tries for 250 words a day (that’s a third of what I’ve written in this entry to this point), and if you write just 250 words a day — the equivalent to a single, double-spaced page of text — then in a year you have 90,000 words. That’s the length of a novel. Off of 250 words a day. Which you could do. On the … bus. If you really wanted.

Let me tell you about my writing schedule when I worked a full time job. Though I hired on at the oil company where I worked FOREVER in 1989, I didn’t start writing seriously until 1991, didn’t sell until 1993, then didn’t sell again until 1995. Our office moved downtown in 1996, then I moved and married the husband in 1997, and so I very clearly remember the writing routine from then on because I did so much of it ON THE BUS. I stuck headphones in my ears, listened to Kelly Howell’s Brain Sync, or Aimee Mann’s Whatever, or the Smashing Pumpkins’ Adore, and wrote with pen and paper. Sometimes I wrote with my Alphasmart, but a very crowded forty-five minute commute made pen and paper easier to manage. Oh, and for a couple of years when our company offered us health club benefits, I would go at lunch and dictate my story while walking the track.

I also wrote on my lunch hour, on the bus ride home. I didn’t write after work because I was whipped, and until all the kids were grown and gone, they were teens and had to be marshaled into shape. ;) But I did get up for weeks on end between 3:00 and 4:00 to write before I needed to start getting ready for work around 5:30. I spent some very exhausted years there, and missed my husband a lot because I went to bed SO early! And, yeah, I’m over that now. These days when I have a project to do, such as The Icing on the Cake, I work regular office hours, stay off the Internet, and treat it as a job so I can have my evenings free for the husband and dinner and TV, and my mornings free for sleeping. ;)

At Murderati today, MJ Rose tells Toni McGee Causey:

A few too many years of having to write on the run – in cars, planes and hospital rooms – forced me to learn to write wherever I was. My workspace became my laptop and the journal that belonged to my main character.

I have boxes and file cabinet drawers full of notebooks from my handwriting days. I never tossed a one of them. Lots also have grocery and to do lists jotted in margins. Or ideas for blogs, or rants against whatever was bugging me at the time (which is why I will never show them to anyone). They also have a lot of story ideas and that’s why I’ve saved them. I tell myself that one day I’ll page through them all and cull the brilliance that’s since escaped me. ;)

Link to Love at First Sight and Their Love of Cupcakes at MyFoxDC

Today is RELEASE DAY, meaning you get to see the biggest cover I can fit on my blog without breaking it! It’s hard to believe that just about this time last year, I was asked if I’d be interested in participating in this new venture, and now the books are on the shelves! I plan to head out tomorrow and see them for myself. On the book’s page, you can see some pictures, and I’ve added links to online stories about the book, Todd, Michelle, and Frosting. They are having a book launch party at the bakery tomorrow night, and if I were in D.C., I’d be there, but only to hide in the corner and scarf down the cupcakes! Man do those things look good. And the Authors and Appetizers link has a recipe to Michelle’s S’mores cupcakes, which she actually bakes in a scene in the book!

I can’t say how excited I am to be involved in this project. And one of the reasons I really loved the Bracken’s story is that @CuppaCafe and I met on AOL back in the day. I picked him up from his profile. There was a box that asked for details on the computer you used. Who knows why this was important, but 14 years ago it seemed to be. Anyhow, in his usually snarking manner he answered: Yes, but I respected it in the morning. Seriously, how could I resist? (If I had any idea where any pics were from our wedding, I’d post one, but no clue. We got married at the courthouse, with his son, my No. 1 Daughter, his parents, and my best friend and her husband there. My other two kids had the flu and fevers of 103. We went on an in town weekend honeymoon anyway. *g* They were 18 and 13, capable of sleeping on their own!)

I have been absolutely THRILLED to hear Todd and Michelle say over and over how right I got them. I worked with them through email, and learned so much about them, that they came together just as fictional characters would, their personalities molded by the information I had. I love to know they can recognize themselves on the page. That’s a HUGE compliment. It’s hard enough getting fictional people right!

HCI has gone all out to get these new releases in front of readers, and since I haven’t had a book out since last December, I’m dying to see THE ICING ON THE CAKE in stores. As in . . . your stores. On shelves. On endcaps. In dumps. So here’s the deal.

Go to your store. Take a picture of the book. If you use Photobucket or Flickr, upload it and post the link in the comments. I’ll come back and code the link to show the image. Or, you can simply email the photo to me at ak@alisonkent.com, but if you do that, you also MUST post a comment saying you’ve sent it so I can add the photo for you.

Everyone who does so from now until October 31, 2010, 11:59 p.m. CDT (I learned after making this post that some stores won’t get their stock / dump displays until mid October so am adjusting to give everyone a chance.) the end of September (that would be September 30, 2010, 11:59 p.m. CDT) will receive their choice of a book from my backlist subject to availability. And then one commenter will receive a $25 gift certificate to Amazon. Make sense? Either post the link to your picture of THE ICING ON THE CAKE in a store near you, or send the picture to me and I’ll post it, and you’ll get a free book.

Piece o’ cake easy! Without icing. ;)

I sold my first manuscript as a direct result of a Romance Writers of America chapter contest. (I believe the North Texas chapter’s Great Expectations.) The final judge of my category was Catherine Carpenter of Meteor Publishing. She bought the book six days after I sent the full at her request. (She was ill during the editing process, and I worked on that book, PLAYING LOVE’S ODDS with Kate Duffy instead.)

The West Houston chapter’s Emily Contest is now open for entries. The deadline for entry is October 7. Because the contest is being handled electronically, there is no need to rush to print and mail manuscript pages. You can edit and polish and revise until the final day and still have time to upload. Tons of work has been done by webmaster Sarah Schroeder, coding the forms to make this happen. And this same code will only assign judges to categories – even time periods, sensuality level, paranormal elements – they want to read. They like demons but hate vamps? No vamps in their judging packet.

Here’s what knocked my socks off. Look at the final found judges. Each category will be judged by an agent, an editor, AND a bookseller. Makes me want to WEEP with the joy. Also makes me want to enter, but alas. I was a contest junkie in the day. I owe so much of what I learned to contest judges. Funny, because I never enter any of the published contests except for the RITA, but as an unpublished author, I was all over the chance to get my work in front of editors. (And look! My agent is judging, woot!)

Contemporary Single Title:
* Agent – Jessica Faust, Bookends, LLC
* Editor – Frances Jalet-Miller, Grand Central Publishing
* Bookseller – Stacy Morris, Katy Budget Books

Contemporary Series:
* Agent – Scott Eagan, Greyhaus Literary Agency
* Editor – Patience Smith, Silhouette Romantic Suspense
* Bookseller – Diana Perini, Barnes & Noble

New! Erotic Romance:
* Agent – Laura Bradford, Bradford Literary Agency
* Editor – Martin Biro, Kensington Publishing
* Bookseller – Arshi Naqvi, Katy Budget Books

Fantasy, Futuristic, and Paranormal:
* Agent – Emmanuelle Morgen, Judith Ehrlich Literary Management
* Editor – Amanda Bergeron, Avon Books
* Bookseller – Gary Robson, Red Lodge Books

Historical:
* Agent – Jenny Bent, The Bent Agency
* Editor – Caitlin Alexander, Random House, Inc.
* Bookseller – Kathy Robson, Red Lodge Books

New! Novel with Elements of Romance (including Women’s Fiction):
* Agent – Stephany Evans, FinePrint Literary Management
* Editor – Esi Sogah, Avon Books
* Bookseller – Teresa Kennedy, The Book Cellar

New! Romantic Suspense:
* Agent – Elizabeth Pomada, Michael Larsen – Elizabeth Pomada Literary Agents
* Editor – Susan Litman, Silhouette Special Editions,
* Bookseller – John Kwiatkowski – Murder By The Book

New! Young Adult:
* Agent – Holly Root, Waxman Literary Agency
* Editor – Sarah Shumway, Katherine Tegen Books
* Bookseller – Cathy Berner – Blue Willow Bookshop

Best of the Best receives critique of the first 50 pages by the fabulous Leis
Pederson, Berkley Books, Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

Best of the Best Judges:
* Booksellers – Jan Crow and Karla Hoode, Katy Budget Books
* Bookseller – Kay Meriam, Barnes & Noble

Click over to the contest page and check it out. Getting your work in front of an editor or an agent through a contest is invaluable. Having sold as a direct result of a contest, and made other contacts that I’ve been able to approach through the years, means I am a huge proponent of good contests. The Emily isn’t just good. It’s the best. Go forth and enter. I would if I could! Instead, I’ll be going about selling the hard way. ;)

In the fall of 2001, along with authors Virginia Henley, Sue Krinard, Alina Adams, Sandy Hingston, and others, I participated in writing a round robin fundraising novella to benefit the American Red Cross. The story is now available for free at this link. You must click on each chapter header to bring up the pages to read.