Enlightening…

Of interest to readers, writers, and those who are both:

My friend Carla Capshaw, an extraordinary writer and a connoisseur of hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurants, tells about her road to publication on The Manuscript Mavens blog. I read Carla’s wonderful “The Fox” many, many years ago, and was brokenhearted that it couldn’t find a home. I specifically remember one dinner with C.L. Wilson, Carla, and me, where we all sat around, drowning our rejection blues and talking about how much we loved one another’s books and how we couldn’t wait until the rest of the world got on the stick and figured it out, too.

Sigh. Now I’m all nostalgic for Florida, and my writer’s community there. To make a long story short, Carla’s journey is an incredible testament to her hard work and faith, and I can’t wait to read her gladiator story, THE HEART BECKONS. I’m so bummed I have to wait more than another year to read more than this excerpt. (How ’bout some sugar, CC?) As I may have mentioned, I’m a little bit in love with ancient Rome…

For quite some time, I’ve been hearing tidbits about Jessica Andersen’s Mayan prophecy series (we share agents and critique partners), and now, Night Keepers is finally on the shelves! Not only is Jess’s website divine (and that author photo!), but I was so struck by her recent essay on the Plotmonkeys blog regarding how she went about constructing her fictional world. Much of what she said really resonated with me, since I, too, was creating a world from scratch in terms of killer unicorns.

“Seems simple, right? Wrong! It took me nearly eighteen months of research, writing and rewriting before I could hammer out a workable proposal, partly because it was a big-a$$ed idea, and partly because it wasn’t a mythology that’s really been done in-depth before within the genre (to my knowledge, anyway), so there weren’t any shortcuts. I mean, you say ‘vampire’ or ‘werewolf’ and you’ve got a common starting point for reader expectation, right? Not so much in this case. I built this sucker from scratch.”

I kept going “yes!” “me too!” “exactly!” while reading. Check it out! (And, in passing, I dare you to read this excerpt and not start hankering for the whole book.)

Also, Leigh Court, who wrote the excellent novella, “The Disciplinarian” in Secrets, vol. 15 (yes, that’s me on the cover), is giving a workshop on novella writing at Romance Divas this week. Since I loved her novella, I’m so there!

And finally, long time readers of this blog may remember that there’s a certain trope in historical romance that drives me absolutely batty (even if I otherwise love the book!). Well, I’m reading one now (though it’s not actually classified as historical romance) where the heroine acts like she’s got a brain in her head, and I’m so happy about it I could cry. I’ll let you know all about it when I finish the book, and if it turns out well.