July 14, 2008

Hello, everyone! I’m baaaaccck! And, as you can see, especially chipper today. My fifth historical for Avon is done and in the mail! Yipee!! I’m always thrilled to deliver a book, but I must say that there is something special about THIS book, sorry, still untitled. I’m always riddled with doubts when I deliver a manuscript and that’s just typical for my neurotic writer-self, but I feel pretty comfortable with what I’m handing in and think Sophie Jordan fans are going to be in for a real treat with the final product when it releases next Spring. Once I have a title, I’ll divulge more and give you all the info. Meanwhile, the other reason I’m so excited is that …

Only two weeks until SURRENDER TO ME hits shelves! Whoop!

SURRENDER TO ME stars Astrid of TOO WICKED TO TAME. You may recall she was that book’s villainess — well, kinda, I never really thought she was all that bad, and I guess my choosing her to be the heroine is my way of redeeming her. Hey, everyone has their own version of events. In SURRENDER TO ME, you get to see why she did everything she did in TOO WICKED TO TAME. Of course, it is a stand alone book, so if you haven’t read TOO WICKED TO TAME, you can still read SURRENDER TO ME and be fine. I just think the reading experience will be enhanced by getting to meet Astrid first in TWTT. Here’s the blurb, in case you haven’t read it yet:

She had lost nearly everything . . .
When tragedy left her penniless and alone, Lady Astrid Derring did whatever it took to survive. She dismissed half her staff, borrowed gowns, and subsisted on cucumber sandwiches from the galas she attended. She endured the wagging tongues of the ton and the indecent proposals from noblemen who deemed her ripe for the plucking. Finally, she has found a way to escape this shame and restore her good name. But it will require a perilous journey to Scotland, where she will come face-to-face with danger … and a sinfully handsome rogue who may be the greatest threat of all.

Any gentleman would lend his hand to a lady in distress, but handsome, rough-hewn Griffin Shaw is no gentleman, and Astrid is far from safe in his company. Accompanying her through the Highlands is a small price to pay for luring her into his bed. Entranced by her boldness, enchanted with her beauty, he is determined to thaw her cold heart. However, he soon finds himself wanting more than a brief affair with the proper lady. Nothing less than the total surrender of her heart will satisfy him.

I have updated my website (surprise, surprise!) where you can learn more about SURRENDER TO ME (oh, and there’s a brand new spanking contest posted there, too, so be sure to enter), but I’ll share my character inspiration pictures for my heroine and hero here:

The actress in this picture is Poppy Montgomery and she’s perfect for Astrid – blond with sultry dark eyes. Like Astrid, I feel she has a certain aloof duchess-ness. The hero … need I say more? He’s actor Thomas Jane. Very sexy and rugged and a Scotsman! Like my hero. A nice mug to greet you all with on this Monday morning, wouldn’t you say? Post back and tell me what you think!

Happy Monday, everyone! And Jaunties, thanks for having me here again.

Sophie

July 12, 2008

Although I’m not a gourmet (by any stretch of the imagination) I know what kinds of foods I like …and which ones I don’t

I read an article recently that listed the top twenty most hated foods. Some I expected, while others, well, frankly I was surprised. I’m going to count them down. See if you agree with the survey results.

1. Liver (I know, it’s gross, but I still like it…with onions–see #17)
2. Lima Beans (I like these, too. In fact they’re one of my favs)
3. Mayonnaise (what’s to dislike?)
4. Mushrooms (I like them, but I know tons of people who refuse to eat ‘em)
5. Eggs (No egg salad sandwiches or deviled eggs??)
6. Okra (Never eat)
7. Beets (these I like hot or cold)
8. Brussels sprouts (okay, not my fav but I can eat them in a pinch)
9. Tuna (I like tuna sandwiches and tuna salad casserole and…)
10. Gelatin (seems almost un-American to not like Jello)
11. Sour Cream (a baked potato wouldn’t be the same without SC)
12. Pea Soup (I like this too. Hmm, I’m sensing a pattern heres…)
13. Oysters (Okay, I draw the line at these. YUCK says it all)
14. Peas (Like ‘em, not love ‘em)
15. Raisins (Especially good on oatmeal or in cookies)
16. Cooked Carrots (I like these, too. And I even like creamed cooked carrots!)
17. Onions (I like onions. I think they add a tang to foods)
18. Cilantro (No strong feelings one way or the other on this one)
19. Maple Syrup (If you hate Maple Syrup, what do you put on your pancakes?)
20. Blueberries (I like these…and aren’t they supposed to be good for you?)

I can’t believe one of my most hated foods, anchovies, didn’t make the top twenty.

Were you surprised by what made the list? Or more surprised by what didn’t?

July 11, 2008

My mom was in the Red Cross during WWII, and was stationed in Europe. She had tours in Italy and England, and did a stint in Germany right at the end of the war. (I have a youtube video for you to listen to while you read the rest. Just turn up the sound and enjoy the vintage recording …)

My mom’s name was Justine McCarthy, and she was a very upbeat young lady. She loved adventure - which was why she joined the Red Cross right after college in the first place. I’m sure she had a patriotic streak, too - and wanted to do something for the troops stationed at the front, although you will never meet a more anti-war, peace-loving person than my mom.

She died nearly three years ago, but it was only last week that my siblings and I were able to face having to bury her ashes beside my dad’s. There’s a small country church in the middle of nowhere that has one of those old cemeteries you drive by and think “oh, how quaint.” It was a cemetery just like this one where my brothers, my sister and I met on the 4th of July. We stood together in the bright, sunny afternoon with mom’s ashes in a box inside a small tote bag, and a small, deep hole dug right behind hers and my dad’s headstone. My sister asked if any of us wanted to say anything, but we all declined. Then, this is what my sister said:

“When Mom was stationed overseas, and she and all her service friends would go into a club, the band would usually ask her for a request. Mom always asked them to play Deep Purple.”

My sister stopped for a moment, and started to play this song on her CD player while my brothers lowered Mom’s ashes into the tiny grave.

My sister continued: “It got to the point that when Mom arrived in any club, the band would just start playing Deep Purple the minute they saw her.”

My brothers started shoveling, and the music went on, a tune from a bygone era, in a cemetery more than 100 years old. This was how we said our final good-bye to Mom.

July 10, 2008

Every summer in Austin, the city hosts something called Blues on the Green. Basically, it’s free live blues music in a public place. When the Geek and I were PK (Pre-kids) we went occasionally, but that was years ago. Over the years, the location has moved around, from one park to another, finally settling in Zilker Park, the largest park in Austin. Last week, we heard that Los Lonely Boys were playing this week. We hadn’t heard them in years, so we decided to load up the car and head over.

It was the perfect evening for it, not too hot (a miracle here in Texas). And let’s face it, there’s just not much on tv these days anyway. We braved the traffic (horrific) and the parking (even worse) and started the mile long trek from the open field in which we’d wedged our car, carrying folding chairs, blanket and kids. We arrived at the concert twenty minutes after the music was supposed to start and thirty minutes before it actually did. As we settled in next to the volley ball pits, where our three-year old played in the sand with complete strangers, a nice breeze kicked up and I found myself regretting that we’d missed so many other such concerts. In a city known for it’s live music, the chances to go out and hear it abound, even for families with kids who can make it to the torturous midnight sets that are the mainstays of most of the clubs. So why don’t we make it out more often?

It’s hard to say really, other than we all fall into a routine and it takes something big to shake us out of it. Whatever the reason, I’m glad we got out and did something unusual, even if we had to hike to do it. Thinking back to my child, I vividly remember the few out door concerts my parents took me to. It’s definitely something worth doing. 

Are there any outdoor concerts in your area? Do the rest of you make it out more often than we do? 

July 9, 2008

Your Hair Should Be Pink

Hyper, insane, and a boatload of fun. You’re a traveling party that everyone loves to follow.

July 8, 2008

I’m doing something different with the new book I’m writing. Usually I’m a nose to the grindstone kind of writer. I start writing and do my 10 pages a day without coming up for air. This time I made a conscious decision to come up for air.

And not just to breathe but also to evaluate.

I don’t really like to think about something when I’m in the middle of it. I just want to get it done. I want to try my idea out and see if it works. I guess this is why I’m a pantser. I don’t think about how this plot element will work or if the conflict is strong enough. I write it it. I’ll make it work when I have something to work with.

That’s my process. I know it’s not the way everyone works. It’s not the way everyone should work.

But I decided to make a change to my process this time around. I’m about 150 pages into my new book, and I decided now was as good a time as any to evaluate where I am. I printed everything out and started reading and revising. The thing I’m finding so helpful in doing this is that by about page 75 or 80, I’ve forgotten a lot of the groundwork I laid in the first 20-30 pages. The plot starts to take over, and the characterization and internal conflict gets put aside.

But as I re-read the first few chapters of the book, I saw that I gave myself a lot to work with character and internal plot-wise. One example is that I have my heroine wearing spectacles. Later in the book she has to take them off to disguise herself. I never came back and made any issue about those spectacles. Can she see without them? Is this a problem for her? What an opportunity for a conflict or a funny scene, and I wasn’t making use of it because I’d forgotten she wore spectacles at the beginning of the book!

I’ve got to pay more attention to those interesting characterization tidbits my unconscious gives me. A good writer works all of that in seamlessly.

So back to the revising—for one more day at least. I can’t let that grindstone get too much rest.

July 7, 2008

Last week several of us at church were discussing the needs of another member and how we can help her. She’s living with her parents, awaiting the birth of her first child, while her husband is stationed overseas and won’t be granted leave to come home until after the baby is born. They’re both young, barely a couple years out of high school.

One of the on-going challenges they’ll face, I pointed out, is that they’re both youngest children. That led to a discussion of how birth order affects personality. It was the first time I think I’ve ever discussed this topic with non-writers. Pretty cool.

All writers study psychology to some extent to help us create believable characters and bring them to life on the page. I had a huge “a-ha!” moment when I first read about birth order. It made so much sense!

Here’s the condensed version (and of course there are exceptions – this is a broad generalization): Oldest kids help take care of their younger siblings and may step up if something happens to Mom or Dad, so they learn responsibility from a young age. They tend to be mature for their age. A lot of CEOs and US presidents are oldest kids.

Youngest kids are the baby of the family, the darling. They’re often cute and charming and use this to their advantage. Sometimes they don’t mature as much as one would like because they don’t have to – someone else is always there to help them out of a jam.

Only kids — singletons — take on the traits of either youngest or oldest depending on a variety of factors, including their innate personality and how they’re treated. Vast amounts of research have been done on oldest, youngest, and onlies.

But hey, what about middle kids? Because they’re not the bossy one or the baby needing lots of attention, middle kids are often overlooked, even when it comes to research. The tiny amount of research on middle kids (oops, did I just reveal where I fall in my family’s birth order?) has shown that we tend to be easygoing, the peacemakers in the family. We had the privilege of being the baby for a while, become the oldest as elder siblings leave the nest, and never had the rude shock of some baby coming along and taking our place as the sole focus of Mom and Dad’s affections.

Paired in marriage, two oldest may butt heads and two youngest may flounder. Match an oldest with a youngest, though, and the odds seem more in their favor of having a long, happy marriage. And of course being the peacemaker, a middle matches well with any of the others, including other middles.

As a writer it’s important for me to know my characters’ birth order because it has so much bearing on why they do the things they do, and how they interact. In What An Earl Wants, Quincy is the eldest. As her father became ill and died, she took on more responsibility for her family and matured quickly. In the story she butts heads with Sinclair, her hero, who is the eldest in his family.

In Kiss From A Rogue, Tony is the baby of the family. The spare to his big brother the heir, Tony has to figure out where he fits into the world. At the start of the story he’s off for a carefree jaunt across the countryside, and by the end takes responsibility for the livelihood of an entire village.

So what do you think of birth order? Spot on or hogwash?

July 5, 2008

This week when I was picking out a 4th of July card to send my daughter…I found one that had a quote from Erma Bombeck. Well, I LOVE Erma Bombeck’s wisdom so I thought I’d share a few of my favorite quotes with you. I realize it’s a holiday weekend but I’d really like to know which is your favorite. Or if you have a quote by someone else to share I’d love to hear it. (I collect quotes and keep them by my computer)

“You have to love a nation that celebrates its independence every July 4, not with a parade of guns, tanks, and soldiers who file by the White House in a show of strength and muscle, but with family picnics where kids throw Frisbees, the potato salad gets iffy, and the flies die from happiness. You may think you have overeaten, but it is patriotism.”

“I haven’t trusted polls since I read that 62% of women had affairs during their lunch hour. I’ve never met a woman in my life who would give up lunch for sex.”

“It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else.”

“People shop for a bathing suit with more care than they do a husband or wife. The rules are the same. Look for something you’ll feel comfortable wearing. Allow for room to grow.”

“There are people who put their dreams in a little box and say, “Yes, I’ve got dreams, of course I’ve got dreams.” Then they put the box away and bring it out once in awhile to look in it, and yep, they’re still there.”

“When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, “I used everything you gave me”.

July 4, 2008

The Fourth of July always makes me think about family, pool parties, and baseball. Today USF and I are going to a birthday party for his second cousin, who’s turning 2. I suppose a birthday party is as fun a way as any to spend the holiday—as long as we can be inside.

I remember as a kid sitting out at night in a field in Michigan, watching the fireworks. It was so much fun, and I loved the warm weather. In Houston the weather is just plain hot and sticky. The city probably has 4 fireworks’ shows, and I don’t want to be outside for any of them. Too hot!

We’re not allowed to have fireworks in the city limits, so doing our own show is out as well.

But I guess the point of the 4th is not fireworks, but to celebrate our independence. We Americans sure do love independence. We don’t want to be dependent on anyone or anything.

As a writer, I have a healthy appreciation for independence. I like the freedom of working independently, coming up with my own ideas, own words, setting my own schedule (most of the time).

Freedom is another thing to celebrate on Independence Day.

So what are you doing this holiday? Anything fun? Going to see fireworks?

July 3, 2008

The art of making fireworks dates back to the 12th century, when the Chinese found a fun use for the gunpowder they’d invented. Fireworks have been used for special events and festivals pretty much ever since. Handel wrote Music for the Royal Fireworks in 1749 to celebrate a peace treaty, performed at Vauxhall Gardens. Many a Regency character has taken in the fireworks display at Vauxhall, even though its historical web site says fireworks “did not become a mainstay” there.

Tomorrow, I bet many of you will be venturing out into the heat and crowds to enjoy some festival or other followed by a fabulous fireworks display. Here in Portland it’s the Waterfront Blues Festival, held downtown on the banks of the Willamette River. Its fireworks are set off from barges in the middle of the river. Very cool because this way you get just as great a view if you’re on the grassy west bank near the stages and vendors, or on the industrial east side where you didn’t pay admission to the festival and are right beside the I-5 freeway.

If you don’t mind being among 65,000 or so people, there’s the display just on the other side of the Columbia River at Fort Vancouver, the first historical site west of the Mississippi. Some say it’s the largest fireworks display west of the Mississippi. We’ve never been to this one –the 11 o’clock news always reports on traffic conditions after the show and it looks worse than trying to drive out of town the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving. Often one of the local stations will broadcast the display with an appropriate sound track — gotta have the 1812 Overture at the finale. But watching it on TV is not the same as being so close you feel the rockets explode. Although this way your ears don’t ring for hours or days afterward…

Once in a while we go watch a display somewhere, but most years my husband is in bed before dark and it’s just me watching Keith Lockhart conduct the Boston Pops on TV.

The biggest display I’ve seen so far was in 1976 at the Yakima Rodeo. We weren’t really into rodeo but we’d just moved back to the states after four years in England, where we only saw fireworks on Guy Fawkes Day. The display started out as expected — one rocket followed by another after a slight pause for an appropriate ooh or aah. Then they suddenly went up in bunches and clusters, faster and louder until we were holding our hands over our ears, unwilling to blink for fear we’d miss the spectacular explosions, though it was over soon. Wow, we thought, must be a special display in honor of the Bicentennial. The next day we learned there had been an accident (no one was seriously hurt) and the whole thing had gone up at once.

This Fourth of July, my son is almost a year old so he’ll be asleep in his crib before the fireworks start. When he gets older I think it will be fun to make a big deal about watching fireworks in person as sort of a warm-up for his birthday, since the two dates are less than a week apart. And I’ll finally have someone to watch fireworks with me instead of snoring at the end of the hall. There’s something to be said for the shared experience — even if afterward it takes an hour to go the distance you usually travel in 15 minutes — that watching it on TV with only the cats for company just can’t compare.

So, are you more like me: let’s go to the fireworks show, the bigger the better and crowds and traffic are just part of the adventure; or more like my husband: seeking out a quiet place amidst the chaos?