Kindle loves Kelley

I’ll try to keep this short, but it’s hard for me. I love reading books, and I love talking about the books I’ve read. I see Annie beat me to the punch with Erica Hayes, who blew my mind several weeks ago. I can’t say enough good things about her books. They amazed me.

They’re darker than some tastes run, but so vibrant and lush and just—sort of perfect.
Okay, enough gushing about Erica (for now). I did that enough here, here, and here.

Next up on my new-to-me author list is Kelley Armstrong. I picked up her book, Bitten, and it floored me. It wasn’t a new take on werewolves or a “high concept” idea, but it was solid writing, a fresh perspective, unique plot twists, and believable wolf behavior. I loved it.

It’s one of the few books I’ve re-read just to hold onto that sense of awe I find so rarely when an author has impressed me. I read (by accident) a later book in the series, and I’ve decided Jeremy should be mine. Seriously, he is like no alpha you’ve ever read about, and he’s just hot.

Since I found Kelley in 2010, I plan to spend 2011 picking my way through her backlist.
So, I give you Bitten…a book with a permanent place on my Kindle.

Elena Michaels is the world’s only female werewolf. And she’s tired of it. Tired of a life spent hiding and protecting, a life where her most important job is hunting down rogue werewolves. Tired of a world that not only accepts the worst in her–her temper, her violence–but requires it. Worst of all, she realizes she’s growing content with that life, with being that person.

So she left the Pack and returned to Toronto where she’s trying to live as a human. When the Pack leader calls asking for her help fighting a sudden uprising, she only agrees because she owes him. Once this is over, she’ll be squared with the Pack and free to live life as a human. Which is what she wants. Really.

You can check out the author's website for more information.

Hmm. As far as what I would like to see on bookshelves...is there any chance that Jim Butcher and J.R. Ward could have a love child who writes PNR/UF?

I’d also like to add a general “Hi there” for the folks who don’t know me. This is my first post on this side of the Paranormal Romantics blog, and I’m excited to be here.

Burning up my Kindle

I just finished reading Everlong by Hailey Edwards. Its a wonderful book and unlike anything I've ever read. Buy it here

Here is a blurb:

The most damaged heart can fly with the right pair of wings.

Madelyn’s life is far from fairytale perfect. She is second in line for the throne of a corrupt, brutal monarchy. Or at least she was until her dark guardian sacrificed his life to hide her safely in a realm of infinite possibilities.

For years she’s lived among a colony of escaped slaves as her guardian’s widow. Even in this simple life, though, nothing is as it seems. Her hero kept a secret—a younger brother named Clayton Delaney. Warrior, winged demon…and the man who now wants to lay claim to her heart.

No longer cast in his brother’s shadow, Clayton meets all obstacles head on, including one named Maddie. His infatuation with her reaches the breaking point when she undergoes a royal rite of passage, going into heat and pushing them both over the edge.

Just as Maddie learns that some risks are worth taking, she discovers that her guardian may be alive. And she’s forced to make a choice between the man she’d thought she loved, and the demon willing to lend her his wings.

---

Product Warnings

This book contains virginal angst, a hero who’s too nice for his own good, wings, claws, and convenient use of glamour. It contains heartbreaking loss, conversation with a woodland creature, and sweet, sweet demon loving.

What's On My Nook

This week I'm reading a new to me author Erica Hayes. The book came as a recommendation and it's how I pick most of my new authors. My friends know what I like and how picky I am, so I usually take their suggestion seriously. I'm enjoying this story. First, because it's based in a location I've never been to, Melbourne, and the writer gives the city such flavor that I almost feel like I've been there. Second, it's a love story between a succubus and an incubus, enough said. Third, Erica really made an effort in her world building. Fourth, I haven't found a crack in her story or plot and those who had me CP for them know how much of stickler I am to detail. I'm Annie Nicholas and I recommend this read.

What I'd love to see in the book stores? Ever since Sandra Sookoo started her journey on writing some paranormal historicals, the wheels in my head have been turning. I haven't read many historicals (I've read one) but if they threw in a vampire or shifter I'd definitely be more into the story. Why not vampires in ancient Eygpt or Aztec? Shifters during the Black Plague? Mermaids in Atlantis? I'd love to write some of these stories BUT I hate research and I know historicals take a lot of knowledge.  

What's on my bookshelf...

This week’s topic here at Paranormal Romantics is, what are we reading and what story lines would we love to find on the shelf but won't write?

Right now, I’m reading Eternal Kiss of Darkness, by Jeaniene Frost. I am a huge fan of hers and have yet to read a story where I’m not glued to the page. I have read her Nighthuntress series a few times over, so when she began writing the spin-off novels, I was so excited I squealed.

What can I say? I love Bones. He’s my favourite hero. The sexy vampire has stolen my heart and never given it back. Not that I mind―he can have it forever! I’m only a couple pages into this new story and I’m already captivated. I have a feeling Mencheres might give Bones a run for his money.

As for stories I would love to see on the shelves...hmm, tough question! Just recently, Sara Brookes introduced me to sci-fi, which I never thought I’d read. And truthfully I really enjoyed it. So, I think for me, I’d love to see a heroine like we do in the Nighthuntress novels kick some serious alien ass! That might be a lot of fun. But I wouldn’t dare try and write it. Sci-fi just isn’t my thing and it’d end up having vampires in it.

Website - www.staceykennedy.com

Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/profile.php?id=100000956942180

Goodreads - http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3473046.Stacey_Kennedy

Twitter - http://twitter.com/Stacey_Kennedy

These are a few of my favorite scenes...

The theme for this week is scenes. What we like to write, and what doesn't flip our switches.

For me it's the action and world-building that flip my switch. The more creative I can be, the better I like it.

I love action, shoot-outs and explosions. I absolutely adore chase scenes and fist fights. In every one of my novels you will have one or more of these scenes. The wilder--the better.

In Slipping the Past, I have a fight scene on top of a skyscraper between two reapers, resulting in a free fall from 150 stories for two of the characters.

In Last Flight of the Ark, Kaleb is attacked by one of his passengers, bitten and mutated, bringing about the beginning of the end for an enemy bent on harvesting his crew for food.

In Blown Away, MacKay and Boomer face off with seawasps and a bomb in a G-class freighter's holding tank. In the second novella in the same book, Happy Trails, There's a HALO (high altitude, low observation) jump from the stratosphere that kicks off a chase scene on an alien world where the pair barely escape drowning in rapids.

Now, what do I like writing the least...

Sex. Yeah, I know, it kind of goes hand-in-hand with erotic romance, but it's hard to keep it fresh and not have the same old throbbing encounters. There are only so many words an author can use for Mr. Willy. Seriously...
Pecker.
Cock.
Dick.
Prick.
Penis.
Pecker.
Wood.
Erection.
Tackle.
Slong.

*Sighs*

I refuse to resort to purple prose. No purple-helmeted, love warriors here.

*Looks behind her to find nosey husband sneaking a peek.* Mention penis and men appear. I swear it's like one of those silent dog whistles. They just know you're writing sex and it lures them like a siren's song.
I digress. Where was I?
Yeah--love scenes.

*Sighs louder* You can go away now, man of mine. I'm not writing anything pornographic. I promise.

When I first started writing erotic romance, I used to want to run and hide under the bed when I handed it over to the Betas to read. I've since gotten over that, but it's still not easy. Erotic romance requires a certain amount of finesse in the love scenes and when they go wrong, they can go horribly wrong.


Thankfully I haven't had any of those horribly wrong moments yet.

Well, that about does it. What I like writing and what I don't like writing so much.

Thanks for coming by,

D L

Did you feel that?

This week we’re talking about scenes we like to write, dislike, and the hardest we've ever written, and why? I’m going to talk about Love.

I’ve been in love. Or have I? I thought I was--a few times. Is there a difference between thinking you’re in love, and being in love? Damn, maybe I’ve only been in love in my mind! What is the real indicator that you are in love? What defines it? A touch, a smell, a word, or a look? See where I’m going with this.

Writing about being in love is the most difficult part of writing for me!

I’ve written ménages, male/male, male/female...oh, one of those ménages started off as a female/female/male ménage. When I wrote that, no one wanted it--I still don’t know why. It was about love. Sometimes I wonder if I conveyed that well enough in the story.

When my men are together, do readers feel the love they have for their partner? Do they get the feeling I know what I’m talking about when I have my heroes or heroine fall in love? I’m not talking about physical love--that’s sex. *grin* (I like writing that!) I’m talking about the real feeling of, I-love-you-and-I-will-always-love-you-even-after-hell-freezes-over kind of I love you. I’m single, so it’s evident I haven’t felt this yet!

After all my years in this world, I can’t tell you what that kind of love is like, or what it feels like. I can tell you what I felt the first moment I thought I was in love, I can tell you what I thought at that moment. I can tell you the joy in my heart when I looked at that person. I can tell you how I glowed and got all mushy inside when that person touched me, looked at me, or complimented me.

But none of it matters, not if I can’t get that feeling, that thought, written, and written in a way everyone who reads it…

Feels like they’re in love.

…And you know I got pictures of couples who could be in love, well, it could be the other thing, you decide.

Growl and roar-it's okay to let the beast out.-© J. Hali Steele

The Ones That Make You Grrrrr

Scenes I dislike. Can't say that I dislike any scene in particular, but I do struggle a bit with emotional ones. I'm always afraid I'll go too over the top for readers and usually ending up falling a wee bit short.

Seems a little silly right? I mean, I can write kick-ass action sequences, car chases, destruction, murder, fights, scorching sex scenes involving all manner of light to heavy heat levels and the one tiny thing that brings me to my knees are those pesky emotions. A bit of a necessary thing in romance, tho. And I do love my romances.

Now don't get me wrong, my books have those emotional scenes. Now. They're rarely ever in my first drafts however because I'll skip them outright and add them in later during my re-writes/revisions/edits. I'd rather write a steamy, sweaty sex scene any day. LOL

The Scene I Love to Hate

This week’s theme is scenes in writing we really don’t like to tackle.

Annie’s was transitions. Rebecca’s was sex scenes. Both valid points. I don’t have issues with either of those, though. I love writing love scenes. They're different for each book depending on the characters and mood of the story. Transition scenes are more difficult but necessary and I do like them too :-) The type of scene I don’t like to write are the ownership scenes that come directly after a love scene.

Yeah, those. They're kinda sorta like a transition scene but with more at stake.

When I write a sex scene, it takes a lot of energy out of me. When it comes to writing that “afterglow” moment, I just want to gloss over it. I don’t care for them, because I hate to read the mushy, mushy scenes so many romance writers do. Sometimes, when two people have sex, the change in their relationship isn’t immediate and in no way do the players have a change of heart ASAP.

Yes, characters can have that “aha” moment when they know things will be different, but a writer needs to understand it’s a process and the characters need to progress naturally into the “I think I love you” stage.

That makes it tricky. A writer can make or break a book in these scenes.

Give me a fight scene, a sex scene, an action sequence any day, as long as I can avoid the “aftermath”. Sure, they’re a necessary part of the book, but they make me shiver. But, because writing is a job and a writer's responsibility is to learn every aspect of the craft, I buckle down and write them. Will I ever make peace with them? Probably. Will I love doing them? Probably not.

Have a great day.

The Hardest Part

Well, gosh darn it. Yesterday Annie Nicholas wrote a whole blog post about what I was going to write about--The Transition Scenes. The dreaded, difficult, hard to write transition scenes. But, well, okay. Since Annie did such a good job writing about how HARD they are to write (and I am trying to write one right one and it is HARD) I guess I will write about what used to be the hardest part for me--

LOVE SCENES.

Let me be clear--these days I do not have a problem writing love scenes. The love scene and I have come to terms with one another. I understand them and they understand me. But when I first started writing and I had the good luck to meet Annie Nicholas, J. Hali Steele, and Sandra Sookoo in a critique group, I had a really hard time writing love scenes.

Why you might ask, Rebecca, why on earth would you choose to write Romance Novels if you have a hard time writing love scenes? The answer: I just love Romance Novels. I love them. Love them. Love them.

So, I wrote a love scene. Maybe you've read it in Love Beyond Time. It was the first one I've ever done. And then I wrote another. And another. And another. And then eventually I wrote a true erotic book in Behind The Scenes and I realized I could write them because it had nothing to do with my own shyness or my own nerves about what members of my family would think when they read them and everything to do with my characters and their romantic moments together.

I think, today, that I can write a pretty decent love scene.

So I am hopeful that the same thing will happen with

the current hard part--the TRANSITION SCENES. But, fortunately, for me I have really good editors who help me with them.

And just because I have to mention this, I need to tell you that my book Alpha Wolf released yesterday. Has some pretty good love scenes.

So thank you Sandra Sookoo, Annie Nicholas, and J. Hali Steele for reading those early ones. I've got some transitions for you to check out.

Best

RR

I Hate the Stuff in Between

Learning to write is a journey. Even after being published the evolution continues but every writer has their likes and dislikes when it comes to creating stories.

One of my favorite kinds of scenes to write is THE BLACK MOMENT.  The main character has struggled through every conflict I’ve thrown at them. Battled for love and life to obtain their happily ever after, then it happens, they hit rock bottom where “The only way to go is up.” I never start a story without mapping the black moment. Delving into a deep point of view so I can do my best to draw the reader on this path.

Example:

My feet were running for the mansion before my brain registered what was going on. The door slammed open as I hurled myself against it then ran toward the stairs. Taking the steps two at a time, I raced to our bedroom. Tears burned behind my eyelids and a hard lump constricted my throat, which made it hard to breathe.

Please, please, please...

I turned the doorknob and entered. The empty, unmade bed greeted my arrival. No...please. No. A sob heaved my chest and the tears streamed down my cheeks. They took him too. My lover, my friend, my heart--and Tane’s biggest weakness. I crossed the room and moved the blankets as if he hid under them.

Just when I thought I hit rock bottom, someone handed me a shovel.

from Catch

But with the good comes the bad. I struggle so much with THE STUFF BETWEEN or the transitional scene as some call it. The easy going parts between intense moments where the reader gets to know the character and gets a breather.  It’s a struggle to write about them having lunch and passing the sugar as they talk about significant things yet there are no ninjas falling from the sky.

The hardest scene I’ve written was just as above, having dinner. My two female character needed to have a ‘chat’. One of those read-between-the-lines kind of conversations that women can do so well with veiled animosity. This chapter took me F.O.R.E.V.E.R. to get it right because I wanted you to love Gwen as well as Connie.

Small snippet:

“Master Tane is very generous.” Gwen eyed me from across the table. “You need to get use to addressing him by that title.”

I snorted then bit into my supper.

She set her half-eaten pastry on the plate. “I don’t understand. You are aware of the bond you share with him?”

“Vividly.” I sipped the coffee and closed my eyes to savor the flavor. “I don’t see a collar and tag around my neck, so I’m nobody’s bitch.”

“You don’t like him.”

“No shit.” I hated him. He wrecked everything. I opened my eyes and finished off my defenseless meal.

“Why did you agree to the bond?”

I choked on a mouthful of salad. My cheeks burned with embarrassment as little bits flew from my mouth and landed between us on the table. “I-I...” Grabbing the cup of coffee, I washed down the rest of my bite. “I never agreed to anything. He forced it on me.” The cup rattled as I slammed it down.

She sipped her drink and watched me. “I find that hard to believe. Some of Dragos’ cronies maybe, but not my Master. He allowed Rurik to keep you since he is so fond of him. It’s a mark of favor.”

My meal sunk like a lead anchor. Tane had that effect on me. He twisted the truth and made himself look a martyr. “I don’t see much of a difference between Dragos and Tane. One crazy Nosferatu took the place of another.”

from Catch as well

What types of scenes do like reading?

Some lucky follower will be winning a book from my backlist this week! So comment, comment, comment…