Happy Anniversary!

A year ago this week, I published DESTINED. It’s hard to believe it’s been a year already!

Technically, August 24 was the official Amazon publish date, but I didn’t “go public” with the book until a few days later. I wanted my mother to be the first to see it, as a birthday gift, so August 29th was when I finally came out to the world as a self-published author. Admittedly, I planned to have more books published by now, but the process takes some time, and my next book needs a lot of editing and polishing before it’s ready to go out in the world. And while I’d love to say that day is near, it will probably be at least a few months (possibly more) before I publish again. My goal is to have the next book available in time for the holiday season. Here’s hoping I make it.

My excuse for being so behind is pretty much this: I’m slow. I’m a perfectionist, which slows me down even in the best of situations, but I’m also a procrastinator and easily distracted. These last few months, there have been outside distractions keeping me from finishing my edits, and the book has more or less been collecting dust while I tended to them. I’ve gotten things settled so that there’s really only one major distraction left, and one that should only keep me occupied on the weekends. But it’s a big one.

We’re renovating our kitchen. It’s a lot of fun, and long overdue, but it’s time-consuming and a lot of work. I’d say we’re nearly halfway done at this point. We’ve taken down some upper cabinets that were blocking the view and closing off the space, scraped the awful 1980s popcorn off the ceiling and repainted the walls. The new countertop is ordered (they’re coming to measure for it later today) and we’ve got a basic plan in place for sprucing up the dated cabinet doors. We have too many cabinets to replace them completely given our small budget, be we’re going to do a little refacing to make them more modern, then paint them and add hardware.

Here is the “before” shot. Pardon the mess. (Click to see a bigger version)

As you can see, we have a very 80s/early 90s kitchen design right now. At the time, it was a great thing: our house was built as a model home, with all the fancy upgrades. These European-style cabinets were all the rage then, as well as the mauve carpet that we’ve slowly replaced with wood floors (or newer, not-mauve carpet). The entire house was done in mauve and gray, something I loved at the time because I was a teenage girl and pink was pretty. As we revamp room by room, it’s slowly changing to a more neutral (okay, brown) color scheme. For all we know, in 10 years people will look at at it and go “wow, this house is so 2010s.” But for now, we like it.

This is a before/after of our formal living room, which we redecorated a few years back. Click for bigger, or go here for another view of the finished design.

I also redid my bathroom, bedroom and walk-in closet, but photos of that don’t’ show the results as well. I love interior design. There was a time I thought about trying to do it professionally, but I eventually realized that I only truly enjoy it when I’m designing something to my own taste. I’m not sure I’d be able to design other people’s spaces; not unless they liked the exact same things I like. As it is, I have a hard enough time convincing the rest of my family to do what I want. ;)

Anyway, that’s my explanation for being so absent lately, and for not having the next book out as soon as I’d promised. And now that this blog post is done, I’m going to go do some of that editing I’ve been talking about!

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Update on various things

So far, this year has been a lot busier than I’d anticipated. Good, I suppose, except that I would have liked more of that busyness to be writing-related. Maybe that will be the second half of my year. *fingers crossed* Instead, I’ve been busy with day job stuff, family stuff and more fun (but still not writing-related) trip-to-Paris-planning stuff.

If I find inspiration for a new book while in Paris, can I claim the trip as a business expense? ;)

I admit I’m using blogging today as a tool to procrastinate. I’m in the middle of re-designing our website at the day job, and after spending all week slowly re-coding the old pages to the new layout, I needed a break. Tomorrow, I’m going to see the Hunger Games movie (woo!), so I feel a little guilty that I’m using my one free weekend day to slack off, but that’s what weekends are made for, right?

I do have a feel things of note to mention, but before I get to the actual updating, I felt this post needed a pretty picture. A few weeks back, I took a photography tour at one of my most favorite places, Big Cat Rescuse. It was a Christmas present (thanks, Mom & Dad!), and while the cats weren’t as active as I had hoped, I managed to get some nice shots. Everything, in my opinion, is made better with cats. Especially gorgeous ones like this cougar.

Now for the updates. The next few months are going to be busy for me. Not only will I be editing my next book and preparing for my Paris trip in May, but April is the 100th anniversary of the Titanic disaster. Because of this, I’m aiming to do some extra promotion for DESTINED, in the hopes that whatever interest the anniversary raises will trickle down to me in the form of new readers.

First bit of promotion: I’m donating a copy of DESTINED to Ruby’s Reads Birthday Giveaway Hop, which will be happening from April 12-24. When I have more details, I’ll be sure to post them here.

Second, I’m going to be doing my very own (and very first) blog tour. It’s a short one, due to the late notice (I only got the idea last week. Whoops!) and because it coincides with the Titanic anniversary, which is less than a week. The blog tour will run for 5 days, from April 10 – April 14. The wonderful Parajunkee is organizing it for me, and is currently finalizing the list of bloggers that will be involved. If this tour goes well, I’ll probably do a longer one for the release of my next book. (If I ever find enough time to get the damn thing edited!) Again, I’ll update here once I know more.

Third, I’m hoping to do a series of posts here that same week about the Titanic, as a kind of tribute to the ship’s maiden—and final—voyage. It will depend on if I have the time to write that many posts in advance, but my aim is to do something each day about that corresponding day of the voyage, along with a short spoiler-free snippet from DESTINED that goes along with the day featured.

In blog-related news, thanks to a post I stumbled across today over at Fiction VIxen’s blog, I discovered my own blog settings weren’t really optimal. I’ve remedied that, and now anyone can comment to my posts without having to log in or register somewhere first, and no one should have to use Captcha anymore. Hopefully these new settings won’t get me spammed to high heaven. I really want this blog to be user-friendly, and since I personally hate dealing with Captcha and don’t comment if I have to register first, it was pretty hypocritical to expect my own readers to deal with both roadblocks. I promise, it was never intentional. It must have been the default Blogger settings, and I never caught them before. So thank you to Fiction Vixen for inspiring me check it out!

Now that the updates are out of the way, I think I’m going to use the what’s left of my afternoon editing the still-untitled (I suck at titles) next book.

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Favorites of 2011

I’m not a book blogger, and only do occasional reviews over on GoodReads, but I am a reader. An avid one, at that. My goal this year was to read 125 books, and while I didn’t quite make it (I’ll be at 114 when I finish the one I’m currently reading, and doubt I will read another 11 books in the next 4 days), I came close. I might have made it if I hadn’t published Destined this year: editing and formatting that took me a couple of months, in which I didn’t read much else. Still, I read a lot, and will probably get at least one, if not two, more books finished before the year is out. I’ve been eagerly waiting to read Succubus Revealed by Richelle Mead for months now, but always had library books to get through first. I’m finished my last library book tonight, so I can FINALLY read it. I predict some lost sleep, as I tend to read books I’m really excited about in one late-night marathon reading session.

But enough about that. I wanted to do a quick listing of my favorite books this year. They may not necessarily have been released in 2011, but most probably were.

My top favorite:

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

I don’t know what it was about this book that I loved so much. Maybe it’s my inner Child of the 80s? All the nostalgia was fantastic, but the story itself was really original and engrossing. If you like dystopian books and the 80s, you’ll probably love this one.

Divergent by Veronica Roth

Speaking of dystopian novels, I have to include this one. It didn’t win GoodReads Favorite Book of the Year for nothing. Plus, I’m originally from Chicago, so the setting only added to my initial interest. I loved this, and can’t wait for the next one to come out.

Shadowfever by Karen Marie Moning

Holy crap, do I love this series. Each book only got better than the last, and I really didn’t want it to end. You can’t even imagine how thrilled I was to hear Karen was going to return to the Fever world and write more! (Okay, maybe you can, since I imagine many of you loved this series as much as I did!) Iced is already at the top of my “can’t wait” list for 2012.

 

Unwind by Neal Shusterman

I read this one at the start of the year and almost forgot about it (I have a bad memory for what I’ve read, no matter how good the book). But going back through my GoodReads lists, I saw that I gave it 5 stars, and I now remember why. This YA dystopian was disturbing. But it was also very good, and I only wish the second would come out sooner than September.

I know there’s a lot of dystopian YA on this list, and if you saw my full read-in-2011 list, there’d be even more of it. It’s been one of my favorite genres the last few years, and for the time being, I don’t see that changing much. Granted, some of the dystopians that have come out lately aren’t as good. That happens when a genre explodes like that (it happened with vampire romances, too), but for the most part, I’ve been pretty happy with the ones I’ve read. And while I didn’t read it this year, I have to give a quick nod to the book that got me back into dystopians in the first place (besides 1984, which I read many, many years ago).

LIfe As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer

You know how sometimes, when you go tot the movies, when you come out of the theater you feel sort of weird and disconnected, like you’re not quite ready for reality to come back? It’s not often a book does that to me, but reading this one did. I had to read most of it in one sitting because I couldn’t put it down until I knew how it ended, and once it did, I wasn’t ready to let it go. It was a disorienting feeling to go back to “real life” once I closed the cover, and the story stuck with me for a long time afterward. I also cried, which is something I don’t do very often with a book. Movies and TV, no problem: I bawl like a baby pretty easily with them. But not with a book. This one was a rare exception, and I have devoured dystopians ever since. There are 2 more in the series, both also fantastic, but nothing quite compares to the first. I highly recommend it.

So what were your favorites this year? What are you looking forward to in 2012?

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Most-read authors & other randomness

Hello out there! I apologize for the lack of blogging lately, and the missed Titanic Tuesdays this week. It’s been a crazy week at the day job, so I haven’t had as much free time as I’d like lately. I also spent the whole weekend working on my next book, which meant I didn’t get a TT post ready as I usually do. Hopefully I’ll be back next week with it.

Anyone a member of GoodReads? Well, they have a new feature (or at least, new to me, as I didn’t notice it until I saw it mentioned on another blog today) that shows you who your most-read authors are. It’s kind of neat. I was going to link to it, but the link is personalized to your account, so the best way to get to it is to go to any of your shelves, and in the left-hand column, there’s a section called “tools.” The link is in that group.

My most-read is interesting. I have 833 book on my “read” shelf, so that’s a lot of authors to organize. (I’m going by my personal account, which I’ve had much longer than my writer account, and therefore has more books recorded.) According to GoodReads, my #1 most-read author is Nora Roberts and #2 is J.D. Robb . Since Nora and J.D are the same person, that means I’ve read 91 of her books. Damn! That woman is impressively prolific, because that’s not nearly all the books she’s written. Here’s the rest of my top ten, just for giggles.

1. Nora Roberts (49 read)
2. J.D. Robb (42 books—man, has the In Death series really got that many???)
3. Janet Evanovich (31 read)
4. Stephen King (29 read, though that will be 30 soon, as I’m getting ready to start 11/22/63 this weekend!)
5. A tie between Charlaine Harris (25 read) and V.C. Andrews, who I haven’t read in ages, but used to love when I was younger.
6. Laurell K. Hamilton (22 read) She was once my favorite author – her Anita Blake series was pretty much my main inspiration to write vampire fiction, but lately the books have gotten away from what I loved most about them. Still, I’m loyal, so I continue to read, hoping one day they’ll get back to the good stuff.
7. Sherrilyn Kenyon (21 read)
8. Anne Rice (17 read) My original favorite vampire series, until it, too, got too weird. I haven’t read her more recent stuff, but I did like her Mayfair witches series.
9. Lynn Kurland (15 read) I love her time travel romances.
10. Another tie at 14 books each. This time between Victoria Laurie (she has two great series: Abby Cooper, Psychic Eye and her Ghost Hunter series) and Lynsay Sands, who writes the fantastic Argeneau Vampires series. It’s an original twist on the vampire myth that I love, and is lighter than most vamp romances.

Okay, so technically that went into #11 on the GoodReads list due to the ties, and was really 12 authors. Close enough.

Since it’s Veteran’s Day and therefore the banks and post office are closed, I was able to duck out of work early. This is good, because maybe today I will actually get that final revision started on my next book. Once I’ve done that, I can send it off to be read by someone that isn’t as close to it, who can hopefully help me work out the kinks and maybe slim it down a little more. (While I’ve done a good job hacking it down for it’s original 200,000+ word count to only 134,000, I’d still like to shave another 20k off if possible.) But before I do that, I need to rework the opening, tweak one of the characters some and remove an element from the ending I don’t like. If I can get that all done this weekend, I will be very happy.

While I’m doing this last read-through, I also need to keep my eyes out for possible titles, as it looks like I’m going to have to re-name it. *sigh* I’ve always been terrible at titles, but this was the ONE book that practically named itself. I was so happy that I wouldn’t have to struggle with naming it … until a few weeks ago when I discovered two other Urban Fantasy novels that came out recently with the same title (Bloodstone). Grr. So either I need to find a way to add to the title to make it more unique, or come up with a new one altogether. I have a similar issue right now with my current book, as Destined is not only the latest in P.C. Cast’s fabulous House of Night series, but another paranormal romance book is being released this month with that title. It doesn’t help that Destined is a common word, and therefore not easy to search without adding my name. So I want my next book to have a more unique title.

Since it’s also the first in a series, I want something I can use as a naming convention for later books. With Bloodstone, each subsequent novel was going to have a gemstone in the title. Maybe I can come up with something that refers to the setting (Miami) instead. I need something different: too many other UF series with vampires use “blood” or “death” in the titles, so I’m making an effort to avoid that. Another reason to toss out Bloodstone, I suppose. One option could be to change the bloodstone in the book to a different stone and use that, but I haven’t found one that would work yet. It doesn’t have to be a bloodstone, just a stone that isn’t commonly used in jewelry (so not a birthstone). I liked that the name was a wink to the vampire element in the book, and that it was kind of ugly, making it stand out. (It’s part of a murder case, so it needs to be recognizable.) I’m sure there’s another stone out there I could substitute if I can’t come up with another title idea. Either way, I’ll keep thinking. Eventually something is bound to come to me!

See what I mean? It’s not exactly pretty (some are more green than black), and it’s very distinguishable. If anyone has any suggestions for a good alternate, I’m open to them!

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October Top Spot

 

What was your favorite read this month? What was your Top Spot?

Top Spot is a new monthly blog meme hosted by the Skype Sisters. Every month we will get together to share our favorite read from that month and we would love for you join us! This meme will take place over the last weekend of every month, giving us all a chance to gush over the great reads we've encountered and bring an awesome ending to the current month. The Top Spot book can be anything you've read, whether it's old or new, an ARC or a finished copy. All October reads counts!

I know I’m not a book blogger/reviewer, but I am an avid reader, and go through about ten books a month, give or take, so I thought this would be a fun meme to participate in. It's hard to pick just one favorite, but the book I most recently finished has to take my Top Spot. I’ll probably get through one more this month, but it would have to be pretty outstanding to make me reconsider my winner.

Die For Me by Amy Plum

In the City of Lights, two star-crossed lovers battle a fate that is destined to tear them apart again and again for eternity.

When Kate Mercier's parents die in a tragic car accident, she leaves her life--and memories--behind to live with her grandparents in Paris. For Kate, the only way to survive her pain is escaping into the world of books and Parisian art. Until she meets Vincent.

Mysterious, charming, and devastatingly handsome, Vincent threatens to melt the ice around Kate's guarded heart with just his smile. As she begins to fall in love with Vincent, Kate discovers that he's a revenant--an undead being whose fate forces him to sacrifice himself over and over again to save the lives of others. Vincent and those like him are bound in a centuries-old war against a group of evil revenants who exist only to murder and betray. Kate soon realizes that if she follows her heart, she may never be safe again.

I have to be honest: this book had me at Paris. It’s my absolute favorite city, so as soon as I saw that it was the setting for a new paranormal romance series, I was sold. It didn’t disappoint, either. The setting was well-written and evocative, and had me yearning to return at every new description. And while I love vampires, it was refreshing to read a paranormal series with a different “monster,”  one I don’t think I’ve seen done anywhere quite like this. Revenants are essentially zombies, but they’re not the brain-eating Walking Dead kind most would imagine. These are men and women (well, it’s YA, so boys and girls) who died sacrificing their lives for someone else, and have been rewarded with immortality and the compulsion to continue to save innocent lives.

Our hero, Vincent, is one of these revenants. He’s gorgeous and charming and pretty much the perfect hero. Some might say a little too perfect, but I don’t really mind that in romance fiction. The heroine, Kate, is a human girl who just lost her parents and is dealing with the grief while living with her older sister and grandparents in Paris. I’ve seen some criticism of Kate, saying she’s too much like Bella from Twilight, but while she could be moody, I didn’t fault her for it: she just lost her parents! I was never once annoyed by her, and that’s something I can’t say about Bella. I liked her, found her spunky and funny, and truly enjoyed the romance that blossomed between her and Vincent. Some of the plot was a little predictable (mainly the bad guy, who was obvious from the beginning, and whose endgame I figured out before the characters did), but all in all I enjoyed the book immensely and am eagerly awaiting the next in the series.

As a side note: I’m insanely jealous of the author after reading her bio. Lived in Paris? Now lives in the Loire Valley? Handsome French Husband? Where do I sign up?!

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Top Ten Tuesday… on Wednesday

I know, it’s not Tuesday anymore. But I didn’t see this until today, and I want to make an effort to do more fun bloggy things here. When I saw this week’s top ten list, it looked like something I’d get a kick out of. As much as I read (over 100 books a year), you’d think I’ve read everything, but there are still a lot of popular books out that I’ve never gotten to.  So here we go. :)

To Ten Tuesday, hosted by The Broke and the Bookish

Top Ten Books I Feel As Though 

Everyone Has Read But Me

 

1. The Night Huntress series by Jeaniene Frost. This is more of a genre thing, so not everyone has read it, but it seems that every paranormal romance fan out there has. It’s been on my to-read list for years now, but because my library doesn’t carry her books, I haven’t gotten around to checking them out. I did finally buy the first book this week (the ebook was on sale for $1.99), so someday when I don’t have a stack of library books to read, I’ll finally give it a shot and see what all the fuss is about!

2. The Mortal Instruments series by Cassandra Clare. I hear rave reviews about this series all the time. I even checked the first book out from the library once, then returned it when the due date came and I hadn’t had a chance to start it yet. The main reason I haven’t made more of an effort to read these books might seem a little silly to some, but here it is: years ago, when she was writing fanfiction, she was the center of a pretty big plagiarism scandal. I never read her fanfiction, but just the thought that she once plagiarized has left me less than eager to give her a try.

3. Anything by Jane Austen (for good measure, let’s throw in all three Bronte sisters as well). There is a lot of classic literature I never read, because my high school was obsessed with Shakespeare and rarely seemed to  venture away from his works. I read Romeo & Juliet, Hamlet and Julius Caesar multiple times, but none of the Austen or Bronte books.

4. To Kill a Mockingbird Another oversight of my high school’s crappy English department. Seriously, I read a better selection of literature in middle school (I was still living in Illinois then, so maybe the Florida school system just wasn’t as advanced?)

5. The Great Gatsby And again with the high school fail. (I was even in AP/Honors English!)

6. Moby Dick Seriously, all we ever read was Shakespeare, some Charles Dickens, and ancient literature like Beowulf, Oedipus Rex and The Odyssey

7.  The Chronicles of Narnia I’ve seen a couple of the movies, even bought the omnibus, but never got very far into it. I don’t know why.

8. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo This has been on my to-read list forever. I even have a copy of it in my TBR pile. But library books always seem to take precedence, so I have yet to get to it. One day…

9. The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis This is one of those that every time travel fiction fan has read, and as much as I love time travel, I haven’t yet read it. It’s on my list, though.

10. The Bible My only excuse for this is that I’m not religious. My family didn’t go to church, so I never had a reason to read it. I had a Children’s Bible when I was younger, and read some of that, but not the whole thing. It didn’t hold my interest, I guess. (So basically, I just said the Bible was a DNF for me. I‘m going to Hell now, aren’t I?)

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I'm a library addict

I spent most of the day yesterday tweaking my blog a bit to add handy little buttons in the sidebar for ordering Destined and visiting the various websites I use. It looks better than a long list of text links, and takes less space, but man, was it time-consuming! How am I going to get my second book revised and edited when I spend all my free time dealing with promotion for the first one, or messing with my blog and website? *sigh* There aren't enough hours in the day. It's a good thing my job isn't really full-time, because I'd never get anything done if I had to work 9-5 every day. A 9-5 paycheck would be nice, though.

I’m going to deviate from my usual blog subject a little bit and talk about something near and dear to me: the library.

I love the library. I think I may even be slightly addicted to the library, but with good reason: when you read over 100 books a year and work less than 30 hours a week, feeding the need to read can get impossibly expensive. I had hoped when I bought my Kindle years ago that it would help curb the book cost, but then agency pricing happened and out went the “bestsellers always priced at $9.99” promise of Amazon’s that initially sold me on the device. I don’t blame Amazon: I know the publishers are responsible, and Amazon had no control. But it still sucks, and I refuse to pay more than $10 for an ebook, no matter how badly I want to read it. This, thankfully, is where libraries come in.

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