This is so great! My husband found this YouTube video, and as someone whose life is defined by books, working on the computer, and an endless love affair with all things Medieval, I found it hilarious! For a good chuckle -- and lord knows, we all could use one nowadays -- click the link! It's subtitled, but in my opinion, that just makes it cuter.

Medieval Tech Support

This week's topic over at Silk and Shadows is deadlines and how we deal with them. Of course, it isn't just the deadline itself that we have to deal with. There are the baggy, dark circles under our eyes that frighten people, and require extra makeup; the piles of dirty laundry that simply are not going to get washed anytime soon; the gaunt looks of my hungry family as they wonder if I'll ever cook another meal; and then there are the rumors flying around the neighborhood that maybe I died or ran off somewhere.... All of that requires some clever damage control, but first, the book must be finished. My greatest motivator? In a word, FEAR!

More on that Thursday, at Silk and Shadows!

Today's my day to blog over at Silk and Shadows. We've been talking about dark heroes this week, and of course being a historical writer I couldn't help taking a look at heroes through time. Do you like your men in beeches, boots and flowing linen shirts? Then stop by and let's talk about what makes them sooooo appealing!

Talk about burning, wild passion. Alas, not always heroic in his actions, but that was because in losing Cathy, he became immersed in darkness

or

OK, Mr. Darcy might not be truly dark in the literal sense, but he is definitely handsome and brooding and in his quiet, elegant way, passionate and very heroic

Check out my new group blog called Silk and Shadows -- for when dark times call for dark heroes! I'll be blogging weekly along with NAL paranormal authors Jessa Slade, Kim Lenox, Annette McCleave and Sharon Ashwood. This week we'll each be chatting about, well, you probably guessed it, dark heroes in all their varied splendor! So if you like romance with a touch of danger, come join the conversation, and share your favorite hero!

You can also find us on MySpace: Silk and Shadows! We'd love to have you as a friend!

Yay! I love Halloween and I love this time of year. It's always been my favorite, especially when I lived in Connecticut. New England is the perfect place for Halloween with its Puritan history, old saltbox colonial houses and the rambling patchwook of stone walls that used to mark the farms. When I was a kid our house was surrounded by an oak and birch forest, and it was so easy to imagine ghosts flitting through the trees and witches flying on their broomsticks against the darkening sky. There was even a questionable arrangement of boulders in the woods a little ways behind our house, obviously there a long time and positioned as if on purpose to form a kind of altar.  Hmm...the place always gave me goosebumps! And hey, we even had a big black cat to complete the picture.

Well, I'm in Florida now and there has been enough of a chill in the air this week to suggest fall and pumpkins and harvest time, and what Floridians often lack in authentic holiday atmosphere, they make up for in enthusiastic celebrating. My neighbors are having a party and we'll probably drop by for awhile. Can't decide if I want to put together a quick lady pirate costume or throw on my Regency day gown and lace-up boots, grab a quill and my leatherbound copy of Pride and Prejudice and go as Jane Austen. I'm just not sure my neighbors will get that one.  Once I went as Anne Boleyn -- after the beheading, complete with the executioner's sword gash across my throat.

Then tomorrow it's north to Altamonte Springs, which is just outside of Orlando, to sign books with more than a dozen other authors, including friends Nancy Cohen, Traci Hall, Bonnie Vanek and Aleka Nakis, to name a few. Here's a link for more on that: Romancing the Holidays Booksigning!

And in addtion to a new president, Tuesday, Election Day, brings the release of DARK TEMPTATION -- for those of you who'll really crave a break from politics by next week, or who might like to extend that Halloween feeling with a good, romantic ghost story set on the wild coast of Cornwall! Check it out on my website.

Have a great Halloween and stay safe! Watch out for low flying witches and don't take any candy from strangers!

In the usual sense, it's a good thing, a term used when writing is tight and clear; when an author can convey in a single brilliantly chosen word what others stumble through entire sentences to say. Stephen King is a master at this. It's something I strive for, although I'll admit to having a love of words and phrases, so it's a good thing that being a historical writer does give me some leeway there.

But what I'm really taking about here is the effect our broken economy is having on our lives and our leisure activities, and I can't help but wonder about the toll it might take on the publishing world. It's happened before, especially in the romance industry. The golden age of romance publishing occurred during the 80s and very early 90s, until a dragging economy and rising costs of paper (yes, paper. When was the last time you found a romance novel over 400 pages?) forced publishers to tighten their belts. In a lot of cases they "cleaned house," meaning authors were let go. And that meant fewer choices for readers. Things improved over time but never returned to the way things had been. But isn't that usually how it works?

You might think that at about $6.99 for an average paperback, books are still a pretty good value. It sure beats the cost of a movie. But then take into account the fact that most romance readers breeze through at least a book or more per week. That adds up quickly, and the understandable reaction to a shrinking wallet (which we're pretty much all experiencing nowadays) will be to either read less (not an option for some!) or turn to used books. Which in turn will mean a dip in sales. Will the publishers be forced to clean house again? If things don't improve soon, then yeah, most likely. And once again readers will have fewer choices, and talented new writers will have fewer opportunities to make their first sale.

Am I being overly gloomy? Jeeze, I really hope so. I hope that in a sagging ecomony, reading replaces the movies and video games people can no longer shell out bucks for. I hope that if traveling isn't an option in the near future, people take the opportunity to be transported to other places and times through the written word. And when so much bad news starts making people crazy (I'm practically there), I hope they turn off the TV and just read something that leaves them with a sense that there's hope for the world. Like a romance novel.

Going into deep revision mode today. Just for today, and that's because I've changed my writing process to be radically different from the way I've written books in the past. I have always written as if my first draft were my final draft -- which of course it never was. I always revised extensively later, but that first draft would be readable and seem pretty much complete. I could bring those first draft chapters to critique, and my CPs wouldn't look at me like I was insane (or a really bad writer). The result, though, was that it took me a really long time to get that first draft written from start to finish, and then I would have to cram to complete the revisions before handing the book in.

With the book I'm working on now I just don't have time to work that way. I began to panic at the thought of my deadline. So at the suggestion of a writer friend of mine, I got out the Alpha Smart I've never really used much and dusted off the keys. I'd always saved that little contraption for when I became stuck or blocked or whatever you'd call it, and it would help me to get the thoughts out to a point that I could then shape them into a coherent scene. But I never thought I could actually write a book on it.

Guess what? I was wrong! Lately I'm doing double the amount of pages I would normally do, and granted they are really REALLY rough, but the scenes are drafted, the story is progressing, and it's much easier to fix and polish something that already exists on the page than to write it good from the outset. Then right before a critique meeting, I revise enough pages to give everyone enough to read, and so they won't kick me out of the group based on my horrendous writing.

And as my page count grows, my sense of panic recedes....