Archive for February, 2009

Hurry Up & Wait

Feb 27th, 09 / 4 Comments

What a wild month this has been for me. Sorry to have become a sporadic poster, but it’s been crazy. It seems that every time I turn around, a new job needing to be done lands in my real mailbox or my virtual one. Lots of good things happening – and some routine ones – but I don’t have anything to show you, yet.

I didn’t even finish my KAL socks! (I’m turning the heel on the second one.)

I do have the cover art for GUARDIAN (Delacroix angels #2 – October 2009), for example, but can’t show it to you until April 1. And I just saw the cover art for WINTER KISS (Cooke Dragonfire #5 – coming November 2009), but don’t have a date that I’m allowed to share it just yet. The sales team is in charge of this process, and we want them to be happy. I’ll show both to you as soon as possible – but rest assured, they are fantastic covers. (Wow!) The excerpts are ready to be uploaded to my sites whenever the covers are cleared for public viewing – which means I’ve been doing a lot of web stuff, but none of it is there for you yet.

I’m also finishing a vampire romance short story for an anthology – called THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF VAMPIRE ROMANCE II, or LOVE BITES in the UK. My contribution still needs an ending and a title, but March 1 isn’t quite here yet, is it? Evidently these books move very quickly into print – i.e. they don’t take a year in production like my other books do – so I should have some information for you soon. The first of these vampire anthos came out last summer in trade and has 24 short stories in it. THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF VAMPIRE ROMANCE is quite the sampler pack of vampire romance authors, and I was excited to be invited to participate in the second one. I’ve never written a vampire romance, but I had an idea as soon as the editor contacted me, so it must be kismet.

At any rate, February has disappeared, with lots of work happening behind the scenes. March will probably look busy, as all of those bits of work become visible to you. I’ll keep you updated as I get clearance for showing covers, and publication info becomes available on the anthology.

Angels, Dragonfire, Promoting, Publishing, Writing

Treasure Hunts

Feb 25th, 09 / 2 Comments

Super-blogger Kimber Chin has put together another post, this one on romances with treasure hunts for Romancing the Blog. You’ve probably guessed that she hit me up for a contribution, and that I gave her one. (Otherwise, why tell you about it here?! LOL).

It’ll be HERE.

Dragonfire, Promoting

Reality Check

Feb 23rd, 09 / 1 Comment

This weekend, I frogged a knitting project.

You might remember me complaining about my having too many projects on the go. This lack of focus (and discipline) with my knitting is an expression of enthusiasm – I get all fired up about a project I’ve seen and want to make one myself – but it ends up being a distraction. When there are too many projects on the needles, there are too many options to choose from, and everything takes too long to finish. I end up not knitting at all. So, at the beginning of January, I emptied my knitting basket and laid all the projects out in rows across the floor of my office. Wow. There were a lot of them. And I resolved to start nothing new until the number of projects was reduced to some reasonable and normal number, four or maybe five.

I started to knit.

I also started to sort and to frog. The thing is that there are always projects that start off well but go badly, projects that are not destined to ever be finished for one reason or another – or if they are finished, they won’t be worn or enjoyed then either. They might not fit. The design might not be flattering. The colour might look better on the skein than it does knitted. (Handpaints are bad for this.) The fabric might be too loose or too tight. The design or pattern might not be fun to knit. There are lots of reasons for knitting projects to not get done.

And it’s okay to not finish what you started, if the process of creating it is not giving you joy.

This particular project was attractive enough – and I had bought yarn specifically for it UGH! – but the construction method was counter-intuitive and annoying. I’d started it six times and although it looked better than the first time, I still wasn’t happy with it. I’d hit a stall, where I was going to need to do a pattern design intervention, and just wasn’t getting to it. I simply didn’t want to knit it anymore, so on the weekend, I faced reality, frogged the project, and returned the wool to my stash. It’s not lying there, silently nagging me anymore.

It is good for my focus and my discipline to periodically sort through things, and review what’s working and what’s not. It’s an exercise that makes me more effective, and I’ve learned that if something sits more than a certain period of time, I’m never going to get to it. A project left on the needles for 3 months? I’ll never finish it. A garment I haven’t worn in two years? Might as well send it to Goodwill because I’ll never wear it again. Dishes I haven’t used in three years? Send them off to find a new home. I follow the same sorting process with all the various inventories of my life – clothes, books, knitting, and (you guessed it) writing.

Yes, with writing. There are writing projects I have started that will never be completed. They might not be good ideas. They might not be marketable ideas. They might be projects that sounded better in synopsis than they work out in the book itself. They might be projects featuring problematic characters or characters who refuse to cooperate. This is different from books I’m still figuring out how to write, or stories I’m not sure how to tell. There are ideas that just don’t work, and I think that we can learn to recognize which ones they are.

And we can learn to give ourselves some slack, by letting those ideas go. We hear a lot about the value of persistence in publishing, and there’s truth in that idea – there’s also truth in the notion that we need to be particular about what projects we’re persistent about. Where do we invest our time? Do we make it count?

The most dangerous thing that new authors do IMO is to cling to their first project or first book idea and persist in revising and submitting that work, over and over and over again, long after it’s lost its spark and they’ve lost their interest in it. This is often also after the market has moved on and the idea is no longer fresh or pertinent.

Not every idea will become a completed manuscript, and not every completed manuscript will become a published book. That’s a hard lesson to learn – and it’s harder yet to decide what to chuck, to decide what is no longer worth your interest.

But the exercise sharpens your focus and restores your passion. So, have a hard look at your own projects in work. Are there ideas that just aren’t going to become the books you want them to be? Are there projects you’ve been working on for too long? Shake them off – or at least put them aside and review them again in three months – and give yourself some room to breathe.

A reality check at regular intervals can restore your spark and sharpen your focus, give you a little boost to get more done. Try it and see. The first one you abandon is the hardest and then it gets easier.

Trust me.

Knitting, Writing

Yarny Temptation

Feb 20th, 09 / 2 Comments

Those of you who are very trendy knitters will find this very old news, but I’ve recently come across this yarn on Ravelry and am pretty much fascinated by it.

It’s called Kauni Effektgarn and it’s from Denmark – you can look at the colours of the yarn HERE – and it’s a wool that has a very slow gradation. (There is another similar yarn from Estonia called Evilla – I like that their website calls the roving “preyarn”!) This slow gradation creates some really interesting effects in fair isle – you can see the patterns offered by the yarn company HERE. (These pdf’s are only pictures, not the actual patterns, but they may give you some ideas. I find the last one the most interesting.)

Then there are other designers having fun with this stuff. The first and foremost is Ruth Sorenson, whose website is HERE. She designed the Rainbow Cardigan that so many people have knit in Kauni, but I think I prefer her Autumn Cardigan.

And there is the elusive Damask cardigan, made from an out of print Dale of Norway pattern. You can see a finished sweater on this blog and see the chart on this one – which isn’t in English, but charts don’t need translation. People have used the shaping from the Rainbow cardigan but knitted with the damask chart for some truly stunning results. Wow.

I went looking for this yarn out of curiosity and found it at a reasonably local yarn store. The colours are beautifully vivid, but the yarn isn’t that soft. It’s similar to a Briggs & Little yarn, sturdy wool, and reminds me of their Durasport. This yarn, though, doesn’t just remember the barn – you get a bit of barn with your purchase. People say that it softens a lot when washed and blocked, and that the first wash runs pretty dirty – the softening is consistent with B&L but not the dirt. It’s not hugely expensive, and I’ll bet it wears like iron.

What do you think? Have you used it before? Or are you just enjoying the eye candy?

Knitting

Those Aussies

Feb 19th, 09 / 1 Comment

As all of you know, Australia has been enduring some terrible fires. There’s a great deal of devastation, a lot of lost lives and destroyed homes. It’s incredibly sad to think that some of these fires may have been started by arsonists. Australians are some of the kindest and most generous people I’ve ever known and they’re a lot of fun, too – we will not review how many nights I’ve spent laughing and drinking with Australians in all corners of the world! – which brings me to the point of this post.

It’s hard to do much that feels useful, especially from a distance. I’ve pinged Lucy at Ever After (the romance bookstore), who has been very sweet and supportive of Dragonfire. She’s far from the damage and okay. I expect all of you have phoned or emailed your buddies down under, just to check, and I hope that they are all well, too. Lucy told me about the Australian Romance Readers Convention which is this weekend, and I sent some books which will hopefully arrive in time for their silent auction and fundraiser. One of the women from my RWA chapter is attending the conf and putting together a donation from the chapter, too.

But books aren’t all that people need in a situation like this. There are people who need homes and shelter and food, and there are many many more who need a hug, a cup of tea, maybe someone to listen to their story. From closer quarters, we can give blood, or donate items of use to those affected, or volunteer.

Even from the other side of the world, though, we can make a difference.
The Australian Red Cross is taking donations – and they’re the ones right there right now, helping Australians through a challenging time. They accept donations of as little as $5 AU. The internet makes it possible for us to reach out and help, even from halfway around the world.

The site warns that they’re experiencing heavy traffic right now, and that you may see delays. It’s worth waiting to do something so important, don’t you think?

Miscellaneous Musing