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Monthly Archives: March 2011

I’m thrilled today to welcome Colleen Gleason to the Riskies. Colleen is known for her Gardella vampire series, about a Regency vampire hunter and she also leads a double life as Joss Ware, author of the Envy Chronicles, post-apocalyptic urban romances (try saying that with a mouthful of popcorn). But now she’s back to the Regency with a whole new world of vampires who mingle with the haute ton in 19th century London. Called the Draculia, these vampires are strong and sexy, and a match for any mortal…except for the women who love them.

The first in the series is The Vampire Voss and Colleen is giving away a signed copy to one lucky winner who comments or asks her a question today! (And happy St. Pat’s. Note the green questions.)

Welcome Colleen! How are these vampires different from the vamps in your Gardella books?

Because I wanted to write vampire romance novels this time around, meaning I wanted there to be a romance with the vampires, the mythology had to be different. In the Gardellas, there are no good vampires. None of them are dukes or viscounts or even heroic at all—so I had to think about the mythology and come up with a way to make it different from the Gardellas, yet not to completely destroy the world I created with them as well.

In this series, the vampires are part of a secret society that is beholden to Lucifer. Each member of the Draculia has sold his or her soul to the devil at some point, and now they are living an immortal life with everything they could ever want: pleasure, money, power, and all without the fear of death.

Each book is about one vampire in particular who falls in love, and, in this context, realizes that his/her soul belongs to Lucifer and is no longer their own.

But–as I’m sure the Regency fans out there will appreciate–along with the vampire aspect, readers can expect everything else we love about the Regency-era: balls and masquerades, the haute ton, titled bad boys and brooding earls.

What was your original inspiration?

My publisher was interested in me trying my hand at sexy vampires in a Regency setting. So, that was the kernel of my inspiration.

And then I had to think about how I could have both good and bad vampires…and then I had to think about the overall issue of an immortal falling in love with a mortal and the ways in which that might be resolved.

Why do you think the Regency works as a supernatural setting?

Oooh….I think for me it has to do with the coaches and carriages, the balls and masques…and of course, foggy, mysterious London. All of those aspects can give the era a sense of the mysterious and of intrigue. Plus the fact that Society at that time really lived late in the day and well into the night—a perfect setting for an immortal who can’t go out into the sunlight!

Of the three Draculia books, which is your favorite hero? Why?

I think Dimitri (April, 2011) is my favorite hero, only because I love, love, love the brooding, grumpy, closed-off hero who meets his match.

But I adore Voss too, for he is just so fun…until he realizes that things aren’t just fun and games. He has a rude awakening.

You must have been writing your Joss Ware books at the same time as these. How did you switch mentally between the two very different series?

I love being able to switch between two series, two time frames. It helps keep me from being bored, and it also forces me to think about things in each series from the perspective of the other. I might be writing in one series, but something will spur me to think about the other series. It helps me to become more well-rounded in the series.

Do you like to listen to music while you write? What did you listen to for these books?

I love to listen to instrumental music when I write, or things that are chantlike. That way I can get into the feel of the music, but there aren’t any words to distract me.

I listen to soundtracks a lot when I work—particularly Harry Potter and also some meditative music.

Here’s book #3 The Vampire Narcise (May, 2011). Don’t you love that she’s on top?! What do you think of vampires in the Regency? Here’s your chance to pick Colleen’s brain about (zombies, sorry), vamps, vampire-hunters and the evil–or otherwise–that lurks in the depths of foggy London.

This is an update of a post that appeared in April 2010 but since the IRS has updated the form and instructions I thought it was worth revisiting.

Schedule OMG.HEA.2010 is specifically for romance writers.

Turn to the Subgenre Definition pages beginning on page 17 and pick your subgenre. You may pick only one. If you write in a variety of subgenres, choose 21, Indecisive wallower, 22, Overachiever, 23, I’m just a girl who can’t say no, or 57, Desperately trying to save career by changing subgenres because last book tanked. Enter in Box A.

Take your zip code, divide it by the number of pages completed in your WIP and enter the number in Box B.

Add the number of times your book has been pirated. Multiply by -15. If you were not paying attention in math class because you were writing torrid romances starring you and David Bowie and do not remember how to multiply with a minus number, you’re in trouble.

On the following lines enter the following numbers from the first fifty pages of the book:

  1. Times your h/h have sex. If you are writing an inspirational, you should enter 10.
  2. Times your h/h have sex with another person(s) or being(s) (including, but not limited to, shapeshifters) and multiply by five. If you are writing an inspirational, you should enter 50.
  3. Heroic hair-raking within the first fifty pages.
  4. Heroic striding indoors, enter either the distance traveled, calculated in feet or the number 300, whichever is smaller.
  5. Heroic striding outdoors, enter either the distance traveled, calculated in feet or the number 300, whichever is larger.
  6. Mentions of heroine’s eye/hair color. Note: if colors for 2 or 3 change, please refer to Publication CE.AA.2010.

Enter your total for Box B.

Transfer the number in Box B to Box K for no apparent reason.

Note: If your score is less than 2, please make sure you are writing within the correct genre. Refer to Publication WTF.2011 for more guidance and complete the appropriate Genre Form.

Now turn to your most recently published work. Enter its ISBN, page count, and predominant font family used on the cover in Box C.

Please check the appropriate box if your cover contains the following:

  1. Historically inaccurate shirt.
  2. Mullet.
  3. Green or blue eyeshadow (hero or heroine).
  4. Chandelier with lightbulbs instead of candles.
  5. Physically impossible stance.

Write the total number of checked boxes on the next line. On the following lines:

  1. Instances of egregious photoshop art, add 10 for each.
  2. *Extra nipples, limbs or digits (hero or heroine), multiply each by 10 and enter.
  3. Glaring typo on your back cover blurb, enter 20.
  4. Mantitty, enter 50.

* Unless you are writing paranormal romance and this is purely representative.

Enter your total for Box C.

If your cover art contains none of the above, please refer to Publication WTF.2010 as you may be writing a different genre.

The totals for Boxes B and C, plus the ages of your children and/or pets and your agent’s and editors’ heights in centimeters when sitting down.
Multiply by 3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375
Multiply by 10 to make a nice big fat number and round off to the nearest thousand. This is your owed tax for 2010.

Take the sheet that contains Box K, put it aside in a file, and worry about it for a few months.

Please feel free to share your tax expertise with the rest of us. Only sixteen days to go!

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The Announcement

My Regency Historical title from 2004, The Spare, is now available on Kindle, Kindle UK and Nook. It’s a little bit of a Gothic tale in that it has a castle and a ghost (or does it?) There’s also amnesia (not total amnesia) and a hot Navy captain and a little (grown up!) red-headed girl. Here’s the cover, which a friend of mine called an erotic watercolor and Disney Does Dirty. I’m going to do some cover research with this title by switching out the cover in a bit and seeing what happens to sales.

What do you think? Different, yes, which is good. But too different?

Regardless, my long Out of Print title is now available! Yay!!!

The Confession Portion of The Blog

My TBR.  OMG. And this is just the pile I can reach from my chair, in absolutely no order. There are more, but I’m not getting up to look.

  • Devil’s Own, Veronica Wolff
  • What I Did For  Duke, Julie Anne Long
  • Visions of Magic, Regan Hastings
  • Silver Borne, Patricia Briggs
  • The Lady Most Likely, Quinn et al
  • Lion’s Heat, Lora Leigh
  • How to Marry a Duke, Vicky Dreilling
  • Miss Madcap, Joan Smith
  • Ravished by a Highlander, Paula Quinn
  • Wise Man’s Fear, Patrick Rothfuss (loaned out hard copy, have eBook on iPad)
  • No Control, Shannon K. Butcher
  • Tall Tales and Wedding Veils, Janes Graves
  • No Regrets, Shannon K. Butcher
  • Hostage Zero, John Gilstrap
  • Dreamfever, Karen Marie Moning
  • Living Nightmare, Shannon K. Butcher
  • Luck of the Wolf, Susan K. Krinard
  • Wolfsbane, Patricia Briggs
  • Unveiled, Courtney Milan
  • The Mockingbirds, Daisy Whitney
  • Dreams of a Dark Warrior, Kresley Cole

And that doesn’t include eBooks, except for Rothfuss.

The pile is only going to get bigger and deeper as my deadline approaches because I can’t stop buying books.

What’s in your TBR (print or eBook)?

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“There was music from my neighbor’s house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars” –The Great Gatsby

Happy Tuesday, everyone! I am on my way back from the Vampire Diaries convention as we speak, exhausted but happy–watch for posts in the very near future about all my adventures in Mystic Falls. But today I’m talking about my April release from Harlequin Historical Undone, a 1920s short story called The Girl in the Beaded Mask, which I am sooooo excited about!

Ever since I read my first F. Scott Fitzgerald story in school (A Diamond As Big As The Ritz) I’ve been in love with this era. I love the gorgeous clothes, the music, the fancy cars, the cocktails, the sense of wild new freedom. But the 1920s were also so much more than that, a period of extreme and swift change after the horrors of World War I (which wiped out almost a whole generation of young men, and changed the way society worked in Europe forever). There is so much scope for drama and beauty in a story, not to mention beaded gowns and t-strap high heels. So I was practically jumping up and down when Harlequin gave me the go-ahead to write Lulu and David’s story.

Another thing I love is a good friends-to-lovers story, which Girl sort of is. Lady Louisa “Lulu” Hatton has been in love with David Carlisle for as long as she can remember. He was friends with her older brother and often visited the Hatton home, and he always loaned her books, took her swimming–and then danced all night with other girls. Until the war. Her brother was killed and David horribly injured. He’s turned into a recluse, never leaving his country manor, but she’s heard he will attend the infamous Granley masquerade ball, a wild, debauched spectacle beloved by all the “Bright Young Things.” So of course Lulu devises a way to sneak off to the party and find him, make him see how much she loves him, how much he has to live for–from behind her beaded mask.

Since I switch up time periods in my writing, I always try to immerse myself in whatever the setting of the next WIP will be, even for a short story like this one. Reading books of the era (non-fiction, primary stuff like diaries, even novels), watching movies set in the era and digging around on-line for images gets me in the right mood for Elizabethan, Regency, Georgian, whatever, and I had so much fun with the 1920s. (Did you know there was a version of Gatsby with Toby Stephens aka Mr. Rochester as Gatsby?? And Baz Luhrman is making a new version with Leonardo DeCaprio and Carey Mulligan…). Here are a few of the books I found really useful, if you’d like to look into the era more closely yourself:

Ronald L. Davis, ed: The Social and Cultural Life of the 1920s
Stuart A. Kallen, ed: The Roaring Twenties
Nathan Miller: New World Coming: The 1920s and the Making of Modern America
DJ Taylor: Bright Young People
Humphrey Carpenter: The Brideshead Generation
Mary S. Lovell: The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family (a bit later than the 1920s, but very useful for seeing how a certain segment of English society lived in the period; also lots of fun!)

And I will be giving away a free download to one commenter on today’s post! What do you like best about the 1920s? What would you wear to a “Gatsby” party???

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It snowed in Virginia Saturday night, just a dusting, but enough to make me yearn for Spring. By the afternoon, though, it was like my wish had been granted. The snow melted, the air smelled fresh, the sky turned blue and the sun shone brightly.

So here in celebration of Spring, is a poem by William Blake:
To Spring:

O thou with dewy locks, who lookest down
Thro’ the clear windows of the morning, turn
Thine angel eyes upon our western isle,
Which in full choir hails thy approach, O Spring!

The hills tell each other, and the listening
Valleys hear; all our longing eyes are turned
Up to thy bright pavilions: issue forth,
And let thy holy feet visit our clime.

Come o’er the eastern hills, and let our winds
Kiss thy perfumed garments; let us taste
Thy morn and evening breath; scatter thy pearls
Upon our love-sick land that mourns for thee.

O deck her forth with thy fair fingers; pour
Thy soft kisses on her bosom; and put
Thy golden crown upon her languished head,
Whose modest tresses were bound up for thee.

More celebration is in order for Risky Amanda McCabe/Laurel McKee. Countess of Scandal by Laurel McKee is a finalist for RWA’s Best Historical Romance. Hooray!!!

We’re celebrating for all the RITA and Golden Heart finalists!! (But especially for Amanda/Laurel!)
I’m in the throes of copy edits and finishing Leo’s Story, my Diamonds of Welbourne Manor book. I’ll really be celebrating when those are done. Tune in to Diane’s Blog on Thursday to see how I’m progressing.
What are you celebrating today?
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