Monthly Archives: April 2007

More on Mondays

  By shilohwalker | 30 April, 2007 - 11:49 am |
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This is by no means an attempt to start a big huge new meme.

However, I keep telling myself I need to get a more organized ‘blog plan’ so to speak.  So on Mondays, if I can remember, I’m going to start doing a More on Mondays type post.

More what?

Well, if you blog, feel free to do your own More on Mondays.  Five things you’d like more of.  Can be philosophical, can be material, can be pretty much anything you’d like more.  Just give me five.

My five today…

  1. Time.  Seems there is never enough of it.  Never enough time for my kids.  They are growing so fast. Never enough time for the DH. Never enough time for writing (granted, I waste a lot of it).  I’d just like more time.
  2. Yesterday.  It was so frickin fan-tabulous.  Blue sky, puffy clouds, warm weather.  Started out kind of sucking cuz I had a backache and ended up not going to church.  Motrin and a hot bath helped and I spent the day reading outside while my kids played.
  3. Space.  Three bedroom house, my own office and I still don’t have enough space here
  4. More Stardoc books, more In Death books, and more LKH books like NightSeer.   They are books.  They are some of my faves.  Need I say more?  ;o)
  5. White chocolate Easter bunny suckers from Schimpffs.  I already ate all of mine.

So there’s my five.  If you want to play, feel free to do so here or on your own blog. If you do your five on your own blog, feel free to leave a link!

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weird blogger

  By shilohwalker | 28 April, 2007 - 2:03 am |
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You know… I keep getting hits from the search phrase… weird blogger.

Okay, so I’ve never claimed to be normal.  But is my claim to fame going to be as a weird blogger….????  Since I had absolutely had to know, I did the intelligent thing.   I found an are you weird quiz.


You Are 50% Weird


Normal enough to know that you’re weird…But too damn weird to do anything about it!

How Weird Are You?

Apparently I’m not totally weird.  I know! Sybil is weird. Go check out Sybil’s blog if you’re looking for weird bloggers!

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Thirteen Reasons I'm Glad I'm Not at RT

  By shilohwalker | 26 April, 2007 - 12:20 am |
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Time for the Thursday Thirteen!

For the non-romance reader/writer, RT is the yearly Romantic Times Convention….you can read about it here.

  1. It’s expensive.
  2. It’s in Houston TX.  Nothing against Texas, and I definitely want to go there, but that’s a pretty long car trip.  If I went, I’d have to fly.  See Reason 3 why this is a problem.
  3. It’s in Houston TX.  Again, nothing against Texas, but that’s too far away for a day or two trip and I don’t go away for more than a day or two without taking the family with me. I’d miss them too much.  But flying all of us to Texas?  Expensive!
  4. RT involves lots of parties, lots of panels, lots of late nights.  Basically it sounds to me like party central.  I’m too antisocial for parties.  Much less weeklong parties.
  5. If I was rushing around getting ready for RT, that would have been one more thing on my mind when I was trying to get Through the Veil finished.  That’s the last thing I need.
  6. I’m doing the Lori Foster get together in June and Lora Leigh’s RAW in September.  That’s enough writing functions for me.
  7. Hotel beds are bad on the back.  If it’s going to tear my back up, I want it to be over something more fun than sleeping on a hotel bed.
  8. Hotel food.  See above.  Insert stomach for back.
  9. Too tired.  Way too tired.  Being mommy, wife and writer is exhausting enough without something like RT.
  10. Now I don’t have to spend a fortune on costumes and promo stuff.
  11. I have an agent and several editors.
  12. I think in theory the workshops could be interesting, I rarely listen to advice so no reason to pay for it to go to workshops, right?
  13. And last but not least….I could either choose between going to RT….

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or going here for vacation this summer… guess which place won?

Links to other Thursday Thirteens!

Don’t forget to leave your link with Mr. Linky!

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!

The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!

Image found here

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Sex Vs. Story

  By shilohwalker | 25 April, 2007 - 3:18 pm |
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Erotic romance is hot right now.  It sells.  Lots of people are trying their hand at it and some of them are doing pretty well, some have decided it’s not for them and others?  Well, the jury is still out.

 A few weeks ago, JERR emailed me and asked if I’d do an article to go along with the interview they were doing.  I said sure… if I can think of something.  Well, I thought of something.  I can’t remember if I was reading a book or if I saw a blog post somewhere.  But something I saw somewhere got the idea for the article a-brewing.

 When LoveSex Isn’t Enough.

Sex isn’t enough.  Not for any book.  Not even for erotica, I wouldn’t think.  I don’t read erotica, but if erotica is about a personal’s sexual exploration or a personal sexual growth, there’s got to be something else besides the sex.  A person doesn’t grow through sex alone.

Likewise…two people can’t fall in love through sex alone.  But lately I’m seeing so many stories where the plot acts as little more than to give the H&H a reason to jump into bed every five pages. 

If we don’t have sex, the world will end.

If we don’t have sex, the villian will kill my mother.

If we don’t have sex, my boss will fire me…

If we don’t have sex, the pack will think we are weak and they will kill us…

Whatever.  I don’t much care for any kind of plot twist that hinges on whether or not the hero and the heroine have sex.  The sex should be a time to further the relationship between the hero and the heroine.  They are falling in love.  Ideally, I do like to have the hero and the heroine already in love, or close to it, before they tumble into bed, up against a wall, on the trunk of a car…that’s my personal preference and not everybody may share it.

However, we are talking about romance here.  There has to be love somewhere in the equation.  Preferably the strong, undying kind of love that makes you almost wish the story wouldn’t end.

Erotic romance or not, it’s still a romance.  Take time with the sex.  Make them love scenes.  Not sex scenes.  Look back at the book.  If you lift out all of the scenes with sex in them, do you have a cohesive story?  Or is it just nonstop shagging?

If it’s nonstop shagging, or you have a 150 page story and more than half of those 150 pages are engaged in some sort of sex act…chances are you need to develop the plot and the characters a little more.  Develop the characters.  What are their reasons for what they are doing?  Who are they?  What’s going on in their lives that makes you want to tell their story?

The romance part is as big a part of erotic romance as the erotic part.  It’s a romance.  Not a sex how-to guide.  Erotic romance is a trend.  Right now, it’s a popular trend and I don’t know if it will die down any time soon since more and more readers are just now discovering it.  Unfortunately, even with all the new readers, we’re losing some of the tried and true readers.  Some of them are getting a little soured with the books they see lately.  I hear it all the time, at signings, in emails, on blog posts.  The reaction to the article I sent to JERR was just more proof. 

It seems that erotic romance is losing sight of the romance. If you want to establish yourself and keep writing past the trend, you’ve got to make sure you’re telling a romance, first and foremost. 

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  By shilohwalker | 24 April, 2007 - 2:24 am | ,
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evermore.jpgNow isn’t that one of the prettiest covers ever?

PBW posted it on her blog last week.  This is the cover for her newest Darkyn book.  Which sadly… sob… isn’t out for a while yet.  Night Lost comes out in May and (oh, wonderful news…) she’s signed on for two more Stardoc novels.

I love the Stardoc novels.  Back when the very first one came out, I was reading a Catherine Coulter book and there was an excerpt at the end of the book.  An excerpt.  For a sci fi book.  In the back of a Catherine Coulter romance.

Even if I wasn’t into sci fi, that would have caught my interest.  The excerpt was excellent and I hunted the book down, read it in one sitting and was blown away.  So blown away I even emailed the author.  This was before I was published with EC, even before I had decided to focus a little more seriously on my own writing. 

The book had just amazed the hell out of me.  Not just because of the fantastic storyline.  But the characters were so real.  There was a lot of medical jargon in them and the medical jargon actually made sense.  I’m a nurse and you wouldn’t believe th books out there that have medical stuff written into them that is just so… wrong.  Not believeable.  Not conceivable.  Not doable.

The Stardoc books nailed it on every level.  The books were believable.  The medical issues were believeable.  The characters were believable even when they were so totally outside of normal.  So yes, I emailed the author.  Glowing compliments don’t flow easily from me, but they did this time. I was so flabberghasted when she emailed me back. 

I’ve been hooked since that first book and I grab every book of hers that I can find.  Well, the ones she tells us about.  She also ghostwrites, so sadly there are books out there that are hers and I won’t ever know. 

;o)  Gee…can you tell I love PBW/Lynn Viehl/SL Viehl?

I finally worked up the courage to ask her if she’d done one of the Vamps and Scamps interviews and it’s being posted tomorrow at the VS loop.

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Heroine Rules

  By shilohwalker | 23 April, 2007 - 6:04 pm |
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This was one of the search engine terms that landed people on my blog.  It’s nice to see people are landing here outside of the normal “big nipples”  or “swooping breasts”, or even the very funny, “tall, dark and mute husbands”.

 Heroine rules.  Are we talking like… GIRLS RULE!  Or more like an aspiring writer looking for any deal-breaker, hard and fast rules…. We’re going to assume the second one.  Every reader has their own personal rules…or characteristics, actually, that we want to see in our characters, just like every writer has their own set of rules that they follow.

As a reader, when I read, there are some lines you can’t cross if you want me to love your book.

  • no sleeping around.  I actually prefer this for both the hero and the heroine, but I’m a little more likely to forgive with the guy than with her.  I don’t like it.  I don’t want to read about the heroine’s five lovers she’s got going on the side right up until she meets Mr. Right.  I have, and will do so in the future, dropped a book right back where I found it if this character trait shows up.
  • immoral.  I didn’t like the movie, Mr. & Mrs. Smith.  At all.  The actions scenes were pretty cool, yes, but two people that loved each other wouldn’t agree to take a contract out on their mate.  Just didn’t like it.  Reformed bad guys, reformable bad guys (or girls, whatever!) are one thing, but if you are going to write an assassin as the main character, be it the hero or the heroine, she better have good reasons for being an assassin…something other than money.
  • Relatable.  Not necessarily likeable, right off the bat.  But she has to grow on me.  I have to understand her motivations when she does something that pushes buttons.  Like if she is an assassin…. why?  Was her sister killed by drug dealers so she makes a living going around getting that kind of scum off the streets?  If so…I may not approve her lifestyle, but I can relate.  It’s understandable.
  • NO WIMPS ALLOWED.  I hate wimpy, whiny heroines. 
  • Don’t change for me. I hate heroines who expect their hero to change for them & vice versa.  Yes, love can change a person, and in some ways, it should  Love makes better.  It’s supposed to.  But I don’t want to read about a woman who goes into a relationship with oh… say a cop.  She loves this cop.  She adores this cop.  But two days into the relationship, she expects him to stop being a cop.  It’s a dangerous job, honey.  You knew it when you signed on, deal with it.
  • Waffling.  If you fall into bed with the guy before you should have, deal with it.  If it was a mistake, accept it, try not to repeat it, but please please please don’t moan about it for the next 100 pages.  You’ve got a story to tell, get on with it!

 So those are the rules that really do it for me.  I try to stick with them when I write and these character traits are the ones I need to see when I read romances.  A good writer might be able to bend or break one or two, but it’s only going to happen if that story just sucks me right in.

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Demon Moon

  By shilohwalker | 21 April, 2007 - 3:47 pm |
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I’m not subtle.  I never have been.  On the rare occassion that it suits me, I can be subtle.dm250.jpg  But it’s generally not something I mess with.

So when I finished Demon Angel, I didn’t bother with subtly.  I just yelled at Meljean Brook and told her I needed the next one.  Fortuntately, she seems to understand I suffer from a serious patience issue.  As in I have none.  And now I have Demon Moon.

If you haven’t read Demon Angel and you like paranormal romance, you ought to try this out.  I haven’t read anything quite like it before.

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