Alison Kent

And, so, my vacation roars in with Tropical Storm Grace. Could life be any better?

Actually, I’ve bragged endlessly to friends who scoffed at my move to the far west side of Houston (traffic nightmares beyond belief, you see!) that I live in a different climate than much of the area knows. And it’s true! In six years of living here, we have not lost power once due to a storm. Where I lived previously, we suffered power outages on a regular basis due to the severity of the winds and rains.

So, when much of the city was suffering with 8 or so inches of rain (and the DJ returned with soaked shoes and bare feet after his overnight jaunt), Petey’s pond deepened only by centimeters. And, in fact, we just had a peak of sun!

I’m not a meterologist, but my husband is a geologist, and he’s explained this phenomenon to me in terms of the Balcones fault and other stuff that has to do with the lay of the land and air masses above!

Yes, a scientist and an artist married and living happily ever after!

So, I am off for a week to the wilds of West Texas. Okay, Central Texas, but west goes so much better with wild. I had to post one last set of pictures taken with the new birthday camera, as I forgot to include Petey and The Beta Who Will Not Die in yesterday’s montage!

Oh, so far? All I’ve packed are the books I want to read!

We’ve had so much rain this week; the grass is thick and green and though the heat isn’t as intense as August can bring, the smell is nothing if not verdant, so rich and earthy and ouch! Mosquitoes! Ack, evil blue jays! Sneeze, pollen, dust, mold . . . Alas, Petey and I must suffer through to enjoy the gorgeous summer day. (And, okay, I wrote this last weekend and am just now putting it up!)

So, I am facing a quandary as I analyze my writing style and the subjects about which I write. (Of course a fellow author has told me more than once that I analyze too much! Such is the pitfall of having an active left as well as right brain!) I seriously believe that such analysis is the best control I have over my career, the recognizing of my strengths and weaknesses in context with reader reaction.

Earlier this month, I was made aware of a reader’s post to a message board concerning the language I used in Striptease. The frank slang with which I write my love scenes apparently concerned her. Yet in the same thread she talked about the books she’d read and loved by other Blaze authors. And this caused me to wonder what I am doing that is so different.

Knowing that these authors agree with me that pushing the envelope is one of the best parts of writing for Blaze, I was surprised with the comparison of Striptease to their work. I had assumed we all exercised the same freedoms we’re given in the line, that our envelope-pushing and boundary-testing were similar. I had no idea that I was writing on a different plane. Not better, just . . . different.

My love scenes are graphic, yes, in the full disclosure with which I describe sexual acts as well as with the language I utilize in the depiction. I don’t write sparks and fireworks and swirls of succulent, incandescent, red-hot sensuality. I write about tongues and about fingers, about body parts that harden and swell, about fluids that are slick and the words that are bluntly spoken during sex.

What I am truly finding interesting is that I have many ardent fans who don’t read any other category romance, while my reaction from regular category readers seems to hit the high and the low of the love/hate spectrum with very few falling in between. This causes me to wonder if I’ve ever been a good fit with series romance at all! The minute I stretched my creativity and made the move to Blaze, I had long-time readers running for the hills. They wanted the swirling red-hot incandescence, not graphic, hubba-hubba heat!

According to the Katalog knih Harlequin, I had three releases this year in Czechoslovakia. I wonder what they were?

Zobrazuji údaje o autorce Alison Kentová - Kent, Alison

2003/5 Desire Extra Ostrov splnìných snù
2003/3 Desire Extra S vylouèením sexu
2003/1 Desire Extra Hry pro dospìlé

WHY in the world do authors NOT put excerpts of their books on their websites? As in brand-new, just-now-available-for-the-first-time books? Not reissues. Not past releases. Especially first time authors! Do they not know how many sales they might possibly lose because a potential reader/buyer doesn’t want to buy a new product without a taste? Argh!

Update: 08/20/03 - TWO author sites yesterday. TWO did not have excerpts! Double the argh! Double the lost sales!

My daughter, the lizard lover (see photo below), graduated from high school a year ago. She graduated with honors after cramming four years into three. She hated school. Loathed school. Once she graduated, she had absolutely no desire to go back. She’s spent this last year working and living on her own at age 18. She’s cooked, packed and delivered pizzas. She’s worked in the shipping department of a machine shop where she also assembled parts for major oilfield suppliers. She’s done data entry for a well-known mortgage and title company. And next Monday she starts her first year of college classes. It took her but fifteen months to figure out that she was sick of dead-end jobs and was going to need that education after all. I never pushed her. I let her figure that out on her own.

In the department where I work, there are two other mothers sending their daughters off to college amidst copious tears. These last couple of weeks have been nothing but chatter over packing up the home front, the move into the dorm and sobbing on the return drive to the now empty nest. This behavior has left me frowning and confused and pondering the fact that the minute my daughter (daughters plural, actually) was out the door, I was rearranging furniture to take over her space. Am I a heartless selfish mother? Nah. They tell me regularly that I rock! In public, they actually want to be seen with me, to hold hands, to introduce me to their friends to whom they’ve bragged about their cool mother. And, yeah. That’s a lot of fun to hear. It makes me realize that with all the parenting things I’ve done wrong, I’ve done a lot of things right.

I’ve raised independent-thinkers. Kids with attitudes and opinions. I’ve listened to them, so they listen to me. I’ve let them make their own mistakes, and they’ve come away with coping skills that I don’t see in a lot of others their age. Sure I’m there to bail them out and have done so repeatedly. Yet I know how to tell them no, and I think that’s one of the biggest factors. My children are not my whole life. I love them unconditionally, perhaps to all of our detriment! But they know that I have my own life, my own interests, that my time with my husband (their step-father) is vital to me, that my writing career demands a lot of my time, that I’m not always available for trips to the mall.

Yet that I can appreciate the simple fun of putting a lizard on one’s head.

… and this is how she thanks me!

Other Three-Patterned References VII

Of course you’ll have to figure it out since it’s under my long ago name!