Posts Tagged ‘books’

« Older Entries

End of April Great Book Give-away

Thursday, April 29th, 2010

The last two weeks of April’s books for my year-long Great Book Give-away are listed below.

If you want to be in the drawing for a book, please use the contact link at the bottom of this page or on the contest page to send me your name and address (snail and email) so if Mitch and Micah pick your name, I can send out a note to let you know to expect a book and can send the book without having to pester you for an address.

As I’m off to Montana today, the dogs will pick the winners when I get back and can provide treat incentives (they are bribe-able, it seems).

The 3rd week books are:

  • Anne McAllister:  Nathan’s Child
  • Candice Hern: Just One of Those Flings
  • Michelle Styles:  Sold and Seduced
  • Sherry Thomas: Private Arrangements
  • Julia Harper:  For the Love of Pete
  • Sarah Arthur:  Dating Mr Darcy
  • Alexandra Potter: Mr and Mr Darcy

And for the last week:

  • Anne McAllister:  The Santorini Bride
  • Stephanie Laurens:  The Lady Chosen & The Gentleman’s Honour (2 for 1)
  • Candice Hern: The Thrill of the Night
  • Eloisa James:  Duchess in Love
  • Nora Roberts:  Key of Valor
  • Lucy Gordon:  Beauty and the Boss
  • Cathie Linz:  Mad, Bad and Blonde

Have fun while I’m gone.  I’ll post the first two weeks of May’s books when I get back.  Will mail all of April’s books (and Rach’s March book!) then, too.  Think of this as delayed gratification.  It’s like waiting for royalty checks.  Honest.

Tags: ,
Posted in Contest | No Comments »

Using the Real World

Wednesday, May 6th, 2009

The real world is very handy.

Margaret Mayo reminded me of that today when I saw her comment on my granddaughter Ellie’s fall in my previous blog piece.

Margaret wished Ellie a speedy recovery (good news — she’s basically recovered. Just has to get the staples out next week). And then Margaret went on to say she hoped I — and Ellie — didn’t mind if she used a similar incident in her book, that she needed something to up the stakes, heighten the tension.

No, we don’t mind.

In fact, in a few years, when she’s old enough, Ellie will probably think it’s super to have been an inspiration (though no doubt her mother will be happy if she’s not inspiring anyone again any time soon).

And I totally identified with Margaret’s comment because ‘real life’ events are, let’s face it, the hangers on which we hang our books.

Yes, of course there is imagination. But writers use their imagination the way potters use their hands.

It’s hard to make a bowl or a pot or a pitcher out of a potter’s wheel and a pair of hands and nothing else. Likewise, it’s hard to write a book without something concrete to work with, to let our imaginations play with, to mold and shape and make an integral part of our story.

Heaven knows, I’ve taken bits of real life to use in my books right from the very start.

My first book, Dare to Trust, took a man with malaria and a teacher with a fiance she was having second thoughts about, and threw them together for the summer in the house right behind my own.

Oh, I moved the house to another state not far away. And the man with malaria in my book was Colin Davies, an archaelogist, but he reacted to his malaria pretty much the same way a professor friend did when he suffered the same disease. The teacher with second thoughts — well, she was a reflection of a roommate I had once who had similar second thoughts.

In all these cases, the ‘real life’ part was a starting point — bits of reality on which to hang the story I wanted to tell.

Over the next 60 odd books, bits and pieces of real life have been starting points. Or high points. Or low points. Or turning points.

Miles Cavanaugh, in Body and Soul, broke his foot sticking it in a door. I knew how his foot felt. I’d broken my own (not sticking it in a door).

Did his crisis about leaving the seminary come from real life? You bet it did. Not the particular events in this case, but the conflict of emotions behind it.

And then there was the stick Jill accidentally clobbered Luke Tanner with in Cowboys Don’t Quit. Yep, another real life event. As was Jake Brosnan’s jelly fish sting in Lightning Storm.

Lest you think all the real life events are disastrous, they weren’t. Real life was the inciting moment that began one of my books. I’d asked for a particular Penney’s dress shirt model to be my hero on the cover of Dream Chasers. He really looked exactly the way I pictured Owain O’Neill.

Amazingly enough, the artist got him. He did a lovely cover. And later, when I was interviewing him about cover art for a workshop, the artist said to me, “You know your hero? He said no one had ever asked for him specifically before. He’d like to meet you.”

I ask you, how can any writer pass up an idea like that?

Thus was Jack Neillands born — and turned up on the doorstep of writer Frances Moon, completely disconcerting her and pretty much turning her world upside down.

That book was called Imagine because, basically, that’s exactly what I did — and so did Frances. (This was in the days when titles were not nineteen words long and stuffed with hot button words).

In any case, I’m all for using the real world. That’s what I went to Cannes for, after all.

So, by all means, Margaret, use Ellie’s ‘event.’ If you need blood and gore details, send me an email!

Hope it works for your story. Be sure to let us know when to watch out for the book!

Tags: , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off

Revenge of the Book Nerds

Wednesday, April 8th, 2009

A couple of writers and readers whose blogs I frequent have been answering a book meme (something to displace what they should be doing, obviously. Ask me how I know this.)

So I thought, you know, I can displace as well as anyone. So here goes:

1. What author do you own the most books by?
Besides myself because my publisher sends them to me? Mmm, probably Tony Hillerman. Or Jane Donnelly. I have collected sets of both. I think, actually Jane D wrote more books. But they’re both definite faves.

2. What book do you own the most copies of?
I have too many books to own mulitple copies of any except by accident. Ye gods, the mind boggles. I do have, by accident, two copies of The Structure of Cornwall if anyone is interested in the other one. Just let me know.

3. What fictional character are you secretly in love with?

Luke whose last name I can’t remember from Lisa Gregory’s The Rainbow Season.

4. What book have you read more than any other?
Persuasion, I think.

5. What was your favorite book when you were ten years old?
The 13th is Magic by Joan Howard which I wrote a blog piece about a couple of years back. It’s still a wonderful book.

6. What is the worst book you’ve read in the past year?
The worst book I read is one I am sure I didn’t finish, so I’m not even talking about it.

7. What is the best book you’ve read in the past year?
Any of the C S Harris books about Sebastian St Cyr. They were all dynamite reads. Also the Temeraire books by Naomi Novik. And Joanna Bourne’s Spymaster books.

8. If you could tell everyone you tagged to read one book, what would it be?
The Day the Cowboys Quit by Elmer Kelton. It’s readable, has a compelling albeit reluctant hero, and it captures a sense of American history and self-identity in a short space.

9. What is the most difficult book you’ve ever read?
Maria by Jorge Isaacs, because most of it was about the jungle (or if it wasn’t, God help me) and I didn’t have the vocabulary because it was in Spanish, and I hate reading description and skip it in English, but there was no way to skip this. So I plodded through. But I didn’t enjoy it.

10. Do you prefer the French or the Russians?
Neither.

11. Shakespeare, Milton or Chaucer?
Not Milton. Shakespeare probably, though what I’ve read of Chaucer I’ve liked. I was a Spanish major. Ask me about Cervantes or Pio Baroja.

12. Austen or Eliot?
Is there a choice? Austen, hands down.

13. What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading?
All of Stephen King, Jane Eyre and Silas Marner and The Mill on the Floss. And if you consider it an embarrassment — which I’m not sure I do — the Russians and the French.

14. What is your favorite novel?
Oh, there are too many. Persuasion, probably. But I think Jane Donnelly’s Behind a Closed Door ranks right up there.

15. Play?
Mary, Mary by Jean Kerr.

16. Poem?
The one about James James Morrison Morrison by A A Milne.

17. Essay?
Any of the ones in Jean Kerr’s Please Don’t Eat the Daisies. Or most anything by Corey Ford.

18. Short Story?
I don’t read a lot of them, but I used to find good ones in the women’s magazines my mother subscribed to. I can’t remember the authors, though. And Corey Ford wrote some good fishing and hunting ones in my dad’s old Field and Stream mags.

19. Non Fiction
The World We Have Lost, by Peter Laslett

20. Graphic Novel?
Dunno.

21. Science Fiction?
The Temeraire books by Naomi Novik, and Dragonsong and Dragonsinger by Anne McCaffrey.

22. Who is your favorite writer?
Hard to limit it. How about Jane Austen, Tony Hillerman, Elmer Kelton, C S Harris, K M Peyton?

23. Who is the most over rated writer alive today?
That’s a matter of opinion.

24. What are you reading right now?
Rumour Has It, by Jill Mansell.

25. Best Memoir?
Seldom Disappointed, by Tony Hillerman.

26. Best History?
The World We Have Lost, by Peter Laslett.

27. Best mystery or Noir?
When Serpents Sleep by C S Harris.

Now I need to get back to working on Demetrios. He needs help and if I’m not there to give it to him, no one is. Seb will be here Friday to blog.

And I will be blogging on the I Heart Presents blog tomorrow (Thursday). Please stop by and say hi or ask questions.

If you want to do the Book Nerd meme, I hereby tag you. That means you, especially Kate Walker, who has finished her book, but probably doesn’t have many brain cells left to do anything really creative.

Just cut and paste and fill in the blanks. And link back so I can go read your answers. Maybe I can find more books I want to read. More displacement. Poor Demetrios.

Tags: ,
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off

« Older Entries