Silk & Shadows

Currently working on: Sorting through my TBR mountain
Mood: Earthquaky

With all the traveling I did this summer, I didn’t get as much reading done as I wanted to. Of course, I NEVER get as much reading done as I want to. My once-upon-a-time-reasonable To Be Read stack has become a pile, and then two piles, and then a mountain, and now it’s a mountain on the verge of sliding down on my head. But I did manage to pluck a few new reads from the threatening collapse.

SHADOW TOUCH by Erin Kellison

I’d had Erin Kellison’s SHADOW BOUND in my TBR pile for ages, but never even had the chance to start it. After I roomed with her at Authors After Dark in Philadelphia, I felt soooo guilty. (Note to self: You should never sleep with an author whose books you haven’t read.) So when I got home, I dug through the mountain… and kicked myself for not having read it earlier! There is the dark and tortured hero, who of course I love, and there’s the heroine who is much more than she is willing to admit, and there’s a world one step from the edge of darkness.

After I finished SHADOW BOUND, I immediately went out and snagged SHADOW TOUCH. This ebook novella is a great introduction to the world of the Segue Institute, where desperate people are working round the clock to save the world from the dark forces of the wraiths. (And when last I checked, SHADOW TOUCH is FREE at Amazon!)

SEDUCE ME IN DREAMS by Jacquelyn Frank

Sometimes I find an author whose list of books is long enough that adding them to my TBR mountain could send the whole thing into a deadly slide. But if you haven’t read Jacquelyn Frank’s Nightwalker books and need a jump in where you aren’t so far behind, you can start with the excellent new Three Worlds books. SEDUCE ME IN DREAMS is the first of these hot, futuristic, military heroes.

I fell in love with futuristic romances decades ago with Ann Maxwell’s FIRE DANCER series, but futuristics with a strong love story can be hard to find. This series has love — and sex! — in spades. Happy sigh!

WILD AND STEAMY by Meljean Brook, Jill Myles & Carolyn Crane

These are more novellas and in ebook only format too, but they were so fun I had to include them here. I downloaded the ebook for one of the many plane rides I had to take this year and it made the interminable airport wait actually pleasant. Such is the power of a good book.

Meljean Brook’s has a story from her Iron Duke world, Jill Myles has a sexy shapeshifter menage, and Carolyn Crane checks in with a wonderful, twisty noir story from her Disillusionists series. The stories felt very different from each other, which was interesting in an anthology and perfect for the chaotic vibe of an airport. If you sit down to read it in more comfortable surroundings that don’t include overhead speakers announcing your flight has been delayed — again — then you will find something in this book for several different moods.

What was on your summer reading list? Report in on any Silk And Shadows post this week. I’ll be giving away a copy (not MY copy, of course) of Erin Kellison’s SHADOW BOUND that I stole from her at AAD. (Note to self: Room with more authors whose books you haven’t read so you have an excuse to buy more books.)

Currently working on: Obsessively refreshing my sales ranking to see if somebody somewhere bought one of my books
Mood: As mentioned, obsessive

This is release week for VOWED IN SHADOWS. Book 3 of the Marked Souls officially hits shelves tomorrow, and I am:

A. Frantic
B. Terrified
C. Horrified
D. Utterly sleep deprived
E. Thrilled
F. All of the above

Yeah. It’s F.

I suppose I could have stopped at D because in the past two weeks, I’ve had multiple dreams about falling off cliffs, getting rolled under by tidal waves (although those could be because of Japan, not release week), being important places without my shoes, hiking up an endless mountain (once, right before I fell off a cliff), and cookies.

The cookie one is obvious; no subtext needed there.

Release week is when the pages hit the pavement. The work is in the wind. Where it goes…Who knows? Hence, A through D above. It’s unnerving to know the spine — the book’s and, in a way, mine — will be cracking in someone else’s hands.

But that’s the point — for me, anyway — of writing. Hence E above.

When I started writing, I always intended to get to this point. I just didn’t have a good sense of what “this point” would look like.

Strangely enough, it looks a lot like walking up an endless mountain without your shoes and staring off the cliff to the raging seas below. The cookie (hopefully hermetically sealed against salt water) is somewhere down there. If I dare throw myself over.

Scary, but maybe more rewarding than walking down the mountain barefoot.

I guess, honestly, I thought there’d be more flying; maybe there is more flying for some writers. I have flying dreams occasionally, and I really like them. But in the release week version of the dream, it’s mostly slogging and plummeting. And the cookie fuels the next hike back up the mountain.

Not sure what it’ll take to earn my wings. Maybe New York Times bestseller? That’d be awesome. Maybe just more cookies. Then I’d HAVE to hike, to burn off the calories.

For tonight, I’ll just hope to dream about something that doesn’t wake me up with my heart pounding. I’m saving the pounding heart for my trip to the bookstore tomorrow to see Jonah on the shelves

Since it’s release week I HAVE to give away a signed copy here along with a set of Marked Soul romance trading cards. Leave a comment anytime this week for a chance to win! And thank you, as always, for reading.

Two lost souls
One last battle
None will walk away
Untouched

Amazon ~ Barnes & Noble ~ Borders
BooksAMillion ~ Powells Books ~ Indigo ~ Indiebound

The war between good and evil has raged for millennia,
with the Marked Souls caught in the middle.
Now two lost souls will tip the precarious balance…

Possession by a demon cost Jonah Walker his faith, his humanity, and his wife. Once a righteous missionary man, he endures immortality with nothing but a body for battle and a bent for retribution. But his last devastating fight left him wounded beyond healing and his only chance to redeem his soul lies with a fallen woman.

Thrust into a wicked underworld of shadows and sin, Nim Hamlin can’t believe her wanton ways as “the Naughty Nymphette” enthralled a demon…and a damned saint. The world she knows doesn’t deserve deliverance. But the touch of this good man’s hand holds an unholy allure–and she’s never been any good at resisting temptation.

As darkness gathers in the sweltering Chicago summer, Jonah and Nim must conquer the demons of their past to face even fiercer monsters in one last assault.  But first they must put aside their doubts and disbeliefs and let their passion for each other burn through the shadows to ignite their furious power…

Read Chapter 1 here

Currently working on: Evil fairies
Mood: Anti-Tinkerbell!

First things first…

In case fellow Silk And Shadows author Sharon Ashwood forgets to mention it, she is a finalist in the Romance Writers of America RITA awards for UNCHAINED! The RITAs are for romances what the Oscars are for Hollywood. Yes, it is that cool! The awards even kinda look the same:

Exhibit A: Oscar

Exhibit B: RITA

Actually, looking at them together, they could be characters in their own romance! “He was upright. She was demure. Together, they were… Solid Gold!”

The winners will be announced at the RWA national conference in NEW YORK CITY in July. Good luck, Sharon!!! Meanwhile, we can print a convenient shopping list of the finalists at the RWA website.

Now onward to my regularly scheduled post…

I read a lot of books on the craft of writing because I fantasize that one day I will find a magical technique that makes writing easy. Sadly, this has not happened yet. I am told it is unlikely to happen (by the same people who probably think unicorns don’t exist) and still I persist.

While I wait for this magical tome, I have found a lot of other good stuff over the years. Most recently, I finished “STORY ENGINEERING: Mastering the Six Core Competencies of Successful Writing” by Larry Brooks.

If I can’t have “easy,” I guess I’ll settle for “mastery,” “success,” and “six.”

What I liked about this book:

It’s left-brained focused. Hence the “engineering” in the title. I already lean strongly toward left-brain thinking so the information is presented in a way that’s comfortable and appealing to me. While the information probably isn’t totally new to anyone who’s been around the craft book block, this presentation is very parsed and analytical, which makes it seem… I don’t want to say easy (still waiting for easy) but manageable.

Some of the previously murky techniques I’ve wrestled with in the past that Brooks’ interpretation made clearer:

• Idea vs. concept vs. theme
• The maximum-effect interplay between a character’s inner and outer conflicts
• The difference between hook and inciting incident

What didn’t work as well for me:

• There are a few too many digs at seat-of-the-pants/organic writers for my taste. If you are a pantser, you’ll have to ignore those parts.
• Despite this being an “engineering” book, there weren’t many charts or graphs or step-by-steps. I can extrapolate from the material, but they aren’t laid out for me. And I do love charts.
• If you read in order, there are a lot of references to material you haven’t covered yet. This is inevitable since every story is an interwoven tapestry of threads, so pulling on one pulls on them all. But if you are brand-new to the basic theories of story structure, I think it might get confusing.

Favorite snippet from the book:

“…you’ll be wallpapering your padded cell with rejection slips.”

He says that like it’s optional!

Final thoughts:

Some of the material from this book is available in posts at StoryFix and a one-page printout of some of the key concepts is at Writers Digest. But the bulk of the info is best assembled in the book itself. It has a lot of passages worth re-reading so although I borrowed a copy from my beloved local library to preview, I’ll be buying a hard copy for my keeper craft shelf.

If you have favorite craft books — writing, cooking, knitting, whatever — please share in comments. I’m always looking for ways to make life easier!

Lastly…

Last week I mentioned that I was designing Romance Trading Cards to take with me to various romance reader conventions this summer. Now I have them in my hot little hands! If you’d like a set in all their shiny glory, email me (jessa at jessaslade dot com) with your physical address (sorry, US addresses only) and I’ll send you a set of the three Marked Souls cards.

Currently working on: Revising
Mood: Hack and slash and burn and pillage

So it’s the week before Valentine’s Day and all the stores are filled with cheap chocolate and expensive flowers, neither of which will last until February 14 if purchased today.

Okay, maybe I’m sounding a little bitter about sweet, sweet love, but that’s because I’m in the midst of revisions. The characters I loved so much in the brainstorming phase, who I struggled and grew with through the hot draft, now inspire my scalding vitriol as I shriek my frustrations at the innocent computer.

In this way, writing is very much like love is very much like butter cookies.

Stay with me here.

Step 1.
Butter cookies come from a cookie press, a glorious device I just discovered (thanks to XY for the wonderful Christmas gift). The disc that exudes butter cookie dough is deceptively pure and simple. It looks like this:

That barely even looks like a heart, does it? See how the first stage of butter cookies is very much like the first stage of love and stories? Pure, simple, easily scrubbed, and nothing at all like you’ll have at the end.

Step 2.

Yeah, Step 2 and it’s starting to get a little messy, in butter cookies, love and the story. You learn stuff you didn’t necessarily want to know: that the loved one snores, the characters snore too, oh, and you forgot to put an egg in the cookie dough mix (which, by the way, in case you were wondering, doesn’t substantially alter the butter cookie recipe; mostly makes it a shortbread cookie; yes, this is personal experience talking).

You can live with Step 2, you think. But no process has just two steps…

Step 3.
The raw dough of your love — and your story and your butter cookies — has to undergo (dum-da-DUUUMMMM!!!) The Trial By Fire.

Warning: Don’t actually put your butter cookies in a wood-fired oven. You will not be happy with the results; no, this is not personal experience talking (for once), it’s common sense. Which admittedly doesn’t make as good a story but makes better butter cookies.

Your love and your story WILL go through an actual Trial By Fire at some point. No, strike that, not at some point; it will happen when you are at your weakest point, when you can’t possibly stand it, when it’s impossible.

And just as butter cookies stay raw dough without the time and heat of the oven, love and the story will stay soft and unformed and strangely tasteless.

Step 4.
Because despite all the heartache and waiting and the occasional scorched fingers, it’s worth it.

When I’m in Step 3, it’s nice to have a reminder of Step 4. Which is why I’m making the butter cookie press — super fast and convenient! unlike love and writing — my reminder. Because Step 4 — the glass of cold milk, The End, the kiss as the curtains drop — does get here eventually.

And now I can share a bit of Step 4 love with you, in this week before Valentine’s Day. No, not butter cookies. They don’t ship well. (And, yes, I ate them all.) But I do have a festively Valentine’s pink galley (a large-size Advanced Reading Copy without final copy edits or the real cover) to give away.

So if you’d like a chance to win a copy of VOWED IN SHADOWS, Book 3 of the Marked Souls, coming out in April, leave a comment about love or writing or butter cookies. On Valentine’s Day, random.org will help me pick a winner from comments left on any post this week.

Good luck in love, in writing, and in butter cookies!

Currently working on: Sticking with even ONE of my New Years Resolutions
Mood: Fail!

The nights are finally getting shorter but we’re still facing many, long, dark, cold, wet hours here in the Pacific Northwest. What to do with all that time? There can be only one answer:

Yup. Snuggle up. Monster Girl absconded with the purple pillow pet unicorn I won at the Christmas white elephant party, but they make such a cute couple I haven’t interfered with their intra-species love parade. This time of year, everybody deserves extra cuddle power.

For me, that means fuzzy socks and a fuzzy blanket, a cup of hot cocoa, and a stack of books.

Here’s my one cup of cocoa:

2 tablespoons nonfat dry milk
1 tablespoon sugar
1-1/2 teaspoons cocoa plus a little bit extra
1-1/2 teaspoons non-dairy creamer
Tiny pinch of salt

Whipped cream and mini choco chips on top are optional but highly recommended I’m still working on tweaking out the recipe. Is powdered sugar better than granulated? Half and half maybe? Which brand of cocoa makes the best beverage? Surprisingly, the top of the line stuff doesn’t always make the best drinking, although of course the darker varietals taste richer. I feel very noble sacrificing myself on this endeavor.

Last Friday, I burned through the last of my Powells Books gift card to get:

This is a fun triple header because now I have Delilah Marvelle’s PRELUDE TO A SCANDAL which is historical, our own Annette McCleave’s SURRENDER TO DARKNESS, a contemporary paranormal, and Marcella Burnard’s ENEMY WITHIN, a futuristic romance. So I have all time periods and a nice cross section of subgenres covered.

I’m looking forward to a few good dark nights. Oh, I should’ve gotten a medieval romance so I could say knights. Guess I’m making another run to the bookstore. Poor me

It seems to me most romance readers read across many subgenres, but do you have a favorite you default to in time of needful snuggling? I guess it’s no surprise that I always go back to paranormals. Something about the extra darkness of most paranormals — like extra dark chocolate — seems perfect for winter nights. What makes your winter nights perfect?

Currently working on: Wrestling Book 4 to the ground
Mood: Mouth full of dirt

On my morning alley walks with Monster Girl, the grass has gone to seed and the air smells like cider from all the fallen apples. The shadows are getting so long.  But the heat isn’t over yet because here at Silk And Shadows we’re sneaking in a week of hot love scenes.

And speaking of hot, y’all are now seeing the first posting of VOWED IN SHADOWS, Book 3 of the Marked Souls.  Here’s Jonah, the hero, in all his blond bad boy glory, with the sweltering city behind him (it’s August in Chicago, after all) and a demon storm on the horizon:

Maybe it’s just the humidity making me swoon.

We’ve met Jonah briefly in SEDUCED BY SHADOWS and FORGED OF SHADOWS. This righteous missionary man lost his wife when he was possessed, and he can’t imagine ever loving again.  So when the repentant demon within him sets him on the path of rampant unbound etheric energies that leads him straight to the Naughty Nymphette — dancing tonight at the Shimmy Shack! — he knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that he will never, ever, in an eternity fall in love as Archer and Liam did before him.

But he is a man of strong convictions, and he’ll do whatever it takes to make sure the Chicago league of immortal demon-possessed warriors bring this newest fighter to their side. And by “do whatever it takes,” I include doing her…

*                                  *                                  *

From VOWED IN SHADOWS:

Jonah sat and crossed his arms. He needed her demon ascendant before he made his move. She wouldn’t believe his story otherwise. “Dance for me, Nymphette.”

Physical stress triggered the demon’s rise. Dangerous, but necessary since the newly possessed needed to find a way to balance the demon within them. Males traditionally drank and fought their way through the other-realm emanations coursing through their bodies. He’d been told it worked differently with the females. Just as well, since his balance was shot.

“Call me Nim.” Her voice turned husky, not with the demon, just a generic come-on. She swayed closer. “Nymphette is such a mouthful. And maybe you want me to save my mouth for… other things, right, Cap’n?”

“Don’t call me captain.”

Read the rest of this entry �

My TBR pile is less of a pile and more of an ocean. It occupies one corner of my bedroom and is roughly four books wide, three books long and sixteen books tall. I know many of you have bigger TBRs, but mine makes me sad. There are so many good books that I haven’t read. And many of them are written by friends.

Sigh.

And it just keeps getting bigger. My problem is that I don’t read while I’m writing. This is because I am weak. If I allow myself to sit in a chair and bury myself in a book, I won’t have the willpower to put that book down and work on my own manuscript. I’m a slow writer, so reading when I’m on deadline inevitably leads to disaster.

Thus, I tend to read in binges between deadlines, which is what I’m doing this summer. I’m reading. A lot. But I’ve got miles to go before I’m caught up.

Who am I kidding? I’ve accepted that I’ll never be caught up—I make a trip to the bookstore at least once a month and always come home with at least one new addition, often three or four. My brother also gives me books that he’s enjoyed. And I order more books online.

I wonder if my TBR would be bigger or smaller if I had an e-reader. On one hand, a purse-sized device loaded with multiple books would allow me to read whenever I had a chance–while waiting in lines, for example. On the other, downloading new books would be addictively easy.

Anyone out there have any experience with an e-reader? Did it help you make a dent in your TBR, or only lead to a longer list of books you haven’t read?

Currently working on: Finishing my #RomCon free read
Mood: Scattered

First of all, congrats to fellow Silk And Shadows author Sharon Ashwood on the release of her third Dark Forgotten book, UNCHAINED!  To celebrate, this week we’re discussing what we’d like to be unchained from.

If I could sever one chain that holds me back I think I’d follow the advice of the George Clinton song:

Free your mind, and your ass will follow.

My mind is a freakishly squirrelly place.  Lots of running around.  Lots of chirping.  Lots of nuts.  (Lots of roadkill too.)  It’d be lovely to be free of it.  Not all the time, you understand, just every once and awhile.

Sometimes right before bed or right when I get up, there’s so much going through my mind that I can feel my pulse speed up, trying to keep up.  I’m going to stroke out one of these days from the excitement that’s only in my head.  I do a simple meditative exercise where I think of a candle… Flickering… flickering… And then burning down everything so all that’s left is a clean, simple, clear flow of nada.  Ahhh… 

Of course, that only works for a few minutes (sometimes long enough to fall asleep) and then the squirrel is back on the hunt — digging, leaping from tree to tree, chattering and scolding, running out into traffic…

All the racing and chirping looks like activity, but that isn’t the same thing as getting work done.  I would like to harness the power of my mind for good.  But have you ever seen a squirrel in a harness?  No.  So if I can’t harness the squirrel, at least I’d like to not be slave to the squirrel.  (That sounds like a paranormal erotica: Slave to the Were-Squirrel.) 

How about you?  Are you every carried away by your own mind?  (Hmm, I suppose a manly were-squirrel would be good for spiriting you away to his tree house.)  How do you rein in your out-of-control squirreliness?

Note from Jessa: When Elisabeth Naughton told my writing group about her first adventure romance trilogy, she called it “Indiana Jones meets Romancing the Stone,” which is like saying chocolate ganache meets dark chocolate.  And now she has a new series paranormal romance starting, which is like saying chocolate ganache meets dark chocolate with chocolate sprinkles.  And she’s giving away a copy today, so read up and leave your comment.

Thanks so much to the gang at Silk & Shadows for inviting me to be with you all today! 

If you’ve read any of my previous books you know that I’m a romantic suspense author who has recently shifted to the dark side and is now writing paranormals as well. The first book in my Eternal Guardians series – MARKED – released this month. Someone recently asked me, “Why the change?” and I thought about the question for a minute, but couldn’t answer. It’s a simple question, I know, but the only answer I could come up with was not one I knew the questioner wanted to hear. I mean, authors are supposed to know why they do everything they do, so to have an author say, “I dunno. I just write the books that come to me,” I knew my answer just wasn’t gonna cut it. 

That, of course, is a cop out answer (even if it’s true). And since readers seem to want to know why things change (as my editor says… “Okay, why is this happening again?”), I’ve decided it would be in my best interest to have a list of answers ready and waiting for just such a question. 

So here it is, my top ten list for shifting to the dark side. 

10. Look at that cover. Do I need to have another reason for wanting to write paranormals?!

9. Special powers come in really handy in the climax of a paranormal book. As an author who ALWAYS gets stuck here trying to make everything work out, I can tell you it’s much easier to throw in an electrical storm or zap someone with lightning fingers to get out of a bind than it is to save the day with plane ol’ Tom, Dick & Harry. 

8. Superhuman sex. (I do write romantic paranormals, after all.)

7. I get to write about snarky gods. They seem to be able to get away with anything they want. Who knew? 

6.   Looking for a little danger? You don’t need a serial killer on the run to amp up the tension. That’s sooo over done. Throw in a seething daemon instead. Seven feet tall, horns like a goat, face like a cat, ears off a dog and lots of claws? Oh man. So much more fun! 

5. Sure, romances are great, but when the two main characters are fated to be together and hate each other at the same time? That just adds an extra level of tension that makes the whole romance that much more interesting. 

4. The fact I can throw in a Fury (or two or three) whenever I feel like it (Yes, I am Fury obsessed). And this time they’re real winged creatures with snakes in their hair, razor sharp teeth and a rabid need for blood, not simply stone carvings of the creatures. 

3. I can write really twisted scenes and blame the genre. (“What? You think that’s too sick? Yeah, but it’s a paranormal. My readers will expect it.”) 

2.  Superhuman sex (did I say that before?) 

And the number one reason I decided to write paranormals: 

1. They’re just plain freakin’ fun! 

I never expected I’d have so much fun writing this series, but every day I’m excited I get to take my world one step further. While I love romantic suspense and don’t plan to give up writing in that genre (as soon as I turn in TEMPTED, book 3 in my Eternal Guardians series, I’m jumping back into a romantic suspense novella for Kensington), I’m thrilled I get to write about heroes and gods and prophecies and soul mates. The possibilities in a paranormal are endless, the danger is epic and the romance seems a thousand times more intense when other-worldy dangers are lurking around every corner.  

So why did I shift to the dark side? The answer is clear: Why the heck wouldn’t I?   

What do you love most about paranormal novels? What draws you to them again and again? I’ve got a copy of MARKED to give away to one lucky commenter today! 

***

A previous junior-high science teacher, Elisabeth Naughton now writes sexy romantic adventure and paranormal novels full time from her home in western Oregon where she lives with her husband and three children. Her debut release, Stolen Fury, heralded by Publisher’s Weekly as “A rock-solid debut,” was recently nominated for two prestigious RITA® awards by Romance Writers of America in the Best First Book category and the Best Romantic Suspense category. When not writing, Elisabeth can be found running, hanging out at the ball park or dreaming up new and exciting adventures. Learn more about Elisabeth and her books at www.Elisabethnaughton.com.

Sorry to be posting so late. I’m deep in the final days of finishing off a manuscript and when I’m writing I lose all track of time.

The other day, I went to the bookstore and parted with forty-one dollars to buy a handful of mass market paperbacks. As I handed the cashier my money, I felt a momentary twinge of guilt. This reading habit of mine keeps getting more and more expensive. Forty bucks is a fair chunk of change. But then I thought about the last time I went to see a movie at the theater. Thirteen dollars for the ticket, another ten for the drink and popcorn (I CANNOT go to the movies without buying popcorn, even if I’ve just had dinner). That’s twenty-six dollars for two hours of entertainment.

The books I bought will keep me contented for at least six times that amount of time. And I get the added value of using my brain.

If I go to a hockey game (Go Sens!), it costs me $42 to sit in the nosebleed section up near the roof. And that’s without food. If I go to a concert, I can double that price at a minimum.

Hardcover books aside, aren’t books a great value? What do you think? If you mostly pick up your books at the library, what motivates to actually lay down the cash for a book?