Blog Philosophy and that kinda thing

I'm bringing this up from the comment trail, because it's a sizable piece of writing and, after all, why not?


This is about the use of a blog, for a writer:

I hate to say this, but I don't think you attract readers by posting a blog. 

Once you HAVE readers you can remind them about your new books.  You can make the reading more fun. You can lay down content that doesn't fit into the books but you're still in love with. 

You can do the whole self-expression thing about how you feel, which is liberating and useful to other writers who are going through the same trials and a great relief to your family who don't have to listen to you whinge and I suspect everybody reading the blog skips this part anyhow.

But I don't see a blog as a way to garner new readers. 
I may be alone in this.
And I am not what you might call a promotion maven.
So you should not necessarily listen to me.

All that said,
I love blogging.

What it is . . .
We depend upon the immense generosity of the internet.  Our research on-line depends on information posted by thousands of people who work without any expectation of return.
When we blog, it's payback.

If you're going to blog anyway, my advice would be to pick a theme you're passionate about and make your blog a creature of your love.

It's nice if you're interested in some topic vaguely related to the kind of books you write.  You could get synchronicity.  It might be that folks who come to read your postings on pirates or the labor movement in 1930 will pick up your 1760 pirate book or your labor-leader love story.

If your bliss is knitting or raising koi, I think you gotta blog about that for its own sake.



Life is too short to spend your time promoting.
Write about something important.
If you make your blog an advertisement for your books, nobody's going to come anyway.

The Wine Glass Over the Water

The Wine Glass over the Water

God bless the King
I mean our faith’s defender.
God bless — no harm in blessing — the Pretender.
But who Pretender is, and who is King —
God bless us all — That’s quite another thing.
          John Byrom

Joanna, here, talking about an interesting sort of drinking glass our hero and heroine might have encountered in their travels through Georgian or Regency England.
The Jacobite Drinking Glass.
These are wine glasses that form a body of distinctive Eighteenth Century artwork.

We have these through a confluence of lucky chances.

First off, by 1700, English glassmaking was particularly advanced. 
A century before, the champion glassmakers were Venetian. The best glass in England was made by imported Italian glass artists, working by Italian methods.

This changed when the English developed flint glass.  'Flint glass' contains a high proportion of lead oxide, an ingredient that makes for tough, workable, clear-as-water product.  Excellent stuff, in short.  And it was an English specialty.


Continues here, at Word Wenches

You know you're on deadline

Wednesday afternoon, at three o'clock, I turned in the editorial revisions of Black Hawk.   Now I await the copyedits.  We are just moving along at a rapid clip.  And Black Hawk is scheduled to hit the shelves on November 1.




You know you're on deadline when:

-- The refrigerator is full of boxes of Chinese carryout.

-- The milk is sour.

-- There are no clean clothes.  There are no clean dishes.

-- You find yourself mentally moving the commas around when your daughter speaks.

-- There is no dog food.  There has not been any dog food for some time.  No one is saying what the dog's been eating.

-- Your three koi have mysteriously transformed into four goldfish. 

-- Every surface of every room in the house is covered with stuff.

-- The rug is the color of cat hair.  It didn't used to be.

-- A cold, stiff, mummified piece of pizza lurks in the toaster oven and nobody remembers putting it in there.

-- You have 1687 messages in your inbox.

-- There's a pile of newspapers at the bottom of the drive.

-- Outside, in the planter, the mint has died.

-- Your head is stuffed with something.  Styrofoam?

-- You do not merely fall asleep sitting up.  You fall asleep standing.

-- Someone asks, "Is this the book about Adrian Hawker?" and you can't remember.

-- You hurt.  Everywhere.  The words carpal tunnel syndrome are mentioned.

-- Your desk is two feet deep in advertising flyers and bills.

-- The nice people from the electric company are calling to discuss nonpayment of some of those bills.

-- When somebody speaks to you, there's a half second lag before you reply

-- Your feet stick to the kitchen floor.

-- You plan to hire somebody in a HazMat suit to clean the refrigerator.

-- The Dust Bunnies have declared your house to be a Dust Bunny Republic.  They are printing up postage stamps.

The Oldest Memorials

Talking about the battle memorials our Regency Folks would have known.

The oldest ones . . .

We don't know what sort of memorials were raised to fallen soldiers in Britain in the very earliest days.  I like to think Silbury Hill might be one of them.  Silbury Hill is a huge mound of earth -- chalk and clay -- built on the Salisbury plain near Stonehenge four thousand years ago.  I've always wondered if it was homage and memory of some prehistoric leader.


Monuments we can date with some certainty go back to the 800s.
Here to the right is the back of a Pictish Stone at Aberlemno Churchyard in Angus, Scotland.  We see men wearing helmets, carrying spears, shields and swords battle on foot and on horseback.  

Another stone, on the left here, is the Suenos Stone, in Forres, Scotland.  It was one of a pair of obelisks described on maps as late as 1789 as "two curiously carved pillars". This to the left is a drawing made in 1861 of the surviving stone.  Below is a close view of the side.  We see the sinuous vine patterns similar to those found in the Book of Kells.

Panels on the back, so much worn the detail is all but gone,  show battle scenes of horsemen and foot soldiers and, possibly, men playing long straight musical pipes.
What battles do the stone tell of?  Who fought?  Viking, Pict, Gael, or  Northumbrians?  We can't be sure. But the Suenos Stone and the Aberlemno stones were carved with all the art of their time and raised in the honor of those long ago warriors.


Read the rest at Word Wenches  here

Brenda Novak's auction

Every year, Brenda Novak runs an auction to raise money for diabetes research.   It's a good cause.  This year I contributed a gift basket.

Go to here.  for the Brenda Novak Auction.



The  Joanna Bourne basket (My Basket!!  See.  My basket!!!)
is item 2116660.  

So many lovely things to bid on. 

Jewels!!

 See 2154315 2174878   2156649 
2125526  2078380  2152053
2157817
That's a vintage silver necklace.  1920.
2095303  -- I like this because it is a set of three earrings.  So few sets for those of us who have three ears. 


Or consider the random joy of a crocheted tissue box 2152030. 
A box of a bazzilion boxes  2157798
Funky keyboard stickers  2195979 
Or an e-reader  2160553 and  216055





  We got manuscript critiques.  There are wonderful author crits out there -- Julia Quinn, Madeline Hunter ..  just search 'critique'

But every one of these below is less than $100 (right now.)

Christine Wells, Anna Campbell, Courtney Milan, Candace Hern.


 2069562, 2170745 , 2059148 , 2069564



What are you waiting for???

Technical Topic: Finding an Agent for Romance

Someone writes:
"I've finished my Romance manuscript.  Now I'm looking for an agent.  How do I find one? 




Congratulations on finishing the manuscript.  You are now part of the 'finished your manuscript' fraternity.  Only one person in a hundred who says, "I'm going to write a book" makes it this far.  I am so glad you picked Romance.  The world needs more great Romance stories.

As to finding an agent . . . 

There are a couple of books that list agents.  Writer's Market and Jeff Herman's Guide are the two standard.  Most libraries carry them, but it's probably worthwhile owning one or the other. 

I used my own copy of one of those books to make marginal notes of information I found in many sources.  It was my 'central file", as it were. 

I could cross through agents who flat-out didn't handle Romance.  When I tracked down the agents of my favorite writers, I could add this information right in the Guide.  When I googled agents and read interviews they'd given, I wrote my impression of their outlook and personality in the guide. 

It kept everything nicely in one spot.

Another source of agent information is Agent Query here , which will give you a quick, partial list of Romance agents.  Between the two books and the online source, you'll find more agent names than you can shake a stick at.

The trick is finding the right one for you.  You and your agent are going to be together for many years.  You don't just want 'an agent'.  You want an agent who is both good and right for you.

Preditors and Editors here is a good spot to 'vet' your candidates, as is the Absolute Write Bewares and Background Checks Forum here.   This will help you eliminate the outright frauds and the incompetents.  Remember, being listed in the Guides or Agent Query and having a website is not a guarantee of quality or honesty.

Absolute Write also has sections for asking questions about agents and query letters and is just a generally excellent spot for a writer to hang out. 

moving right along . . .
It's worth subscribing to Publishers Marketplace here for a few months.  PM lists many of the sales agents make to publishing houses.  It will tell you which agents have sold and the sort of books they're selling.  It is by no means exhaustive -- many excellent agents don't supply information there -- but it's another source of information.

Another useful line of approach in your agent search is to look at folks who represent writers whose work has something of the flavor of your own.  This is good to do with long established midlist writers, of course, but you might look especially at debut writers whose work you admire.  They'll have agents who are taking on new clients. 
To get the name of an author's agent, check the acks page of their books, or google "author name + agent + literary".

I'd suggest a Romance writer with a completed manuscript join Romance Writers of America for a year.  Join your local chapter.  Join some of the online, special-interest groups.  You will meet other authors, which is reassuring in the sense that we are all in the same boat.  You will meet published authors who can give you advice.  And, with luck, you will make friends.  

For information on query letters, see Miss Snark's Blog here and Evil Editor here.   

Finally, if you plan to submit to some publishing houses -- Harlequin, for instance, and all of the e-pubs, you do not necessarily need an agent right now.  You can submit directly to HQN, e-pubs, Avon and Tor.

I wish you the very best of luck.

The Dutch Cover

Excellent Reader Danielle, tells me the Dutch version of Forbidden Rose is out.   That's a bright and pretty cover, isn't it?

Find it all in Dutch, here.  I think it can't be delivered yet, but that may lie in the future.  I am so delighted to be in Dutch, not least because Holland is such a wonderful place.

Babelfish is surprising little help in translating the blurb at the site.  I do not think I have ever been so confused.

The title means, 'Treason Me Not' which I rather like.

ETA:  Wonderful Dutch reader, Saskia, writes to tell me the title should be translated 'Don't Betray Me'.  Isn't that cool?

Historical Trivia

Just as butchers doubtless have interesting bits left over from cutting up the good meat and bakers have the odd candied fruit or eggwhites they can't use in the day's batch of pastries, Historical Romance writers pick up lovely bits of trivia they can never use in the books.

Today at Word Wenches --

The Bizarre Byways of Research
 

A goodly while ago, Pat Punt asked the Wenches to 
 
. . . share some of the strangest trivia they have come across in their research.  Having done my share of surfing the 'net, I have encountered many a fact stranger than fiction.   Their experience must be even more bizarre.

Bizarre does seem an appropriate description for what we come across.

  From Pat Rice:

The only trivia I remember is from my childhood. I play a mean game of 60's Trivial Pursuit.

But I just recently wrote about the poisonous green paint that might have killed Napoleon (Kill Your Hero with Regency Wallpaper)  and given a whole lot of other people pneumonia, asthma, and the winter blues.

But the one bit of history that sticks clearly in my mind—probably because it affected the area where I lived for twenty years—is the Mississippi flowing backward during the 1811 New Madrid earthquake. Can you imagine how powerful an earthquake would have to be to send the mighty Mississippi backward? And weirder yet, Shawnee tribe leader Tecumseh and his brother predicted the earthquake before it arrived. For some other weird stories about the period: see here.


From Mary Jo Putney:

Lord Uxbridge’s Leg

For the rest . . . head here

Cover Cafe Contest

The 2010 Cover Contest is on!  Here.

This is always fun.

Every year I go there and sigh over all the beautiful and excellent covers. 
Alternate Reality is always breathtaking.  I get envious.  The paranormal folks get the best covers.  Why?  Why?  Why?

Then I head straight for the Worst Covers of the Year.  Because there is great snark involved.
I sympathize with the authors, but I can't help myself.

Anyhow.  Forbidden Rose is in the 'Two Cover' category which delights me because I think that is a beautiful cover.


The information given about artist is limited to --  Artist: Cover Art by Lott Reps; (They are here.)  Cover photo by Shutterstock; Cover design by Springe Design Concepts LLC (Penguin Group, USA)  

I love that stepback cover on TSL.

Stepback by Judy York

mass market cover by Judy York

 I do not know exactly which artist at Lott Reps did the Forbidden Rose cover.


Alan Ayers, here,  did the trade Spymaster's Lady cover.  Judy York, here, did the mass market Spymaster's Lady.

The Alan Ayers trade cover

My cat

Having spent all yesterday looking into Regency cats, I will now post pictures of me and my cat. 

My inspiration is a link the Most Excellent Annie contributed.

http://writersandkitties.tumblr.com/

The Regency Cat

Talking about the cats of Regency England.  

What kind of cats can our characters expect to encounter as they go about their adventures?
Lots of cats, for one thing.
While Englishmen may love their dogs, the English householder hated his mice and depended on cats to get rid of them.  Defoe talks of forty thousand cats in London in the mid-1600s.  "Few Houses being without a Cat, and some having several, and sometimes five or six in a House."

 These London cats were working cats --
rangy, businesslike mousers and ratters.  I see them dozing the day away in the kitchen, then rising in the night, roaming the house to do battle with vermin, meeting the enemy behind the plush curtains of the drawing room and down behind the sofas in the parlor.  All the while, the gentlefolk snored in their beds. 

But there were pampered, plump cats as well.  We find them in paintings, batting at a soap bubble, peering into a fishbowl. 

For the rest of the article -- including the breeds of cats you'd see in Regency London, see here

Technical Topic -- I've just written a Romance.

Somebody wrote:

I'm a writer trying to break into publishing.  I was wondering if you have any advice on who to query?



I am so glad to hear you're writing Romance.  The genre needs all the good writers it can get.

As to finding an agent . . . 

There are a couple of books that list most of the agents in the industry.  Writer's Market and Jeff Herman's Guide are the two standard.  Most libraries carry them, but it's probably worthwhile owning one or the other. 

I used my own copy to make marginal notes of information I found in many sources.  It was my 'central file", as it were. 

I could cross through agents who flat-out didn't handle Romance.  When I tracked down the agents of my favorite writers, I could add this information right in the Guide.  And when I googled agents and read interviews they'd given, I wrote my impression of their outlook and personality in the guide. 

It put everything nicely in one spot.

Another source is Agent Query here , which will give you a quick, partial list of Romance agents.  Between the two books and the online source, you'll find more than you could ever query.

The trick is finding the right one for you.

 Preditors and Editors here is a good spot to 'vet' your candidates, as is the Absolute Write Bewares and Background Checks Forum here.   This will help you eliminate the outright frauds and the incompetents.

(Absolute Write also has sections for asking questions about agents and query letters and is just a generally excellent spot for a writer to hang out.) 

It's worth subscribing to Publishers Marketplace here for a few months.  PM lists many of the sales agents make to publishing houses.  It will tell you which agents have sold and the sort of books they're selling.  It is by no means exhaustive -- my own agent doesn't supply information there -- but it's another source of information.

Now, one approach in your agent search is to look at folks who represent writers with work similar to your own.  You might look especially at debut writers.  They'll have agents who are taking on new clients. 
To get the name of an author's agent, check the acks page of their books, or google "author name + agent".

I'd suggest a Romance writer with a completed manuscript join Romance Writers of America for one year.  Join your local chapter.  Join some of the online, special-interest groups.

For information on query letters, see Miss Snark's Blog here and Evil Editor here.   

Finally, if you plan to submit to Harlequin, you probably do not need an agent for the early part of your career.  You can submit directly to HQN, (also to Avon and Tor.)

I wish you the very best of luck.

Le Maître de mon cœur

My French copy of My Lord and Spymaster is out  from J'ai Lu.   Lovely cover.  Just lovely.

This translates as 'The Master of My Heart -- which makes a bit more sense than 'My Lord and Spymaster'.   Just IMO.

Adrian looks like . . .

I'm gearing up to make the Romance Trading Cards for Adrian.  I have a few possible faces and I  . . .

I just don't know.

These are stock photos.  I have not bought all of them, so I'm only going to leave them up till Saturday.

So, tell me which Adrian you like best.  I'll send Romance trading cards to some lucky poster . . .  *g*

ETA:  There's watermarks on some of the photos.  These will go away.

Photo A

Photo B

Photo C

Photo D

Photo E

ETA:  I went and bought the stock photos so I could leave them up on the bog.

An Oil Lamp of my Very Own

This is an ancient sorta lamp right here. atrb ranil

I wrote a blog over on Word Wenches about lighting sources in 1800, me talking about the technology that allowed you to find your way about in a gloomy world.  My take on The Enlightenment, as it were.

In the process of this, I came up with some information on how oil lamps work.  I had not given they mysteries of oil lamps a great deal of thought in all the long and busy years of my life, but from time to time I had wondered why the wick doesn't burn up.  All that fire, y'know.


Turns out the wick is merely an agent to 'wick' liquid to the fire.  The flammable liquid gets drawn up near the fire and vaporizes from the heat thereof and the vapor burns.  The flame is located actually a bit above the wick when everything is going well.   The wick gets charred from the proximity of the flame, but it doesn't provide the fuel of the flame, just a convenient perch for it.
Oil lamps were discovered independently all over the world, from Eskimo igloos to the deserts of Arabia, from Mayan hill villages to the plains of central China --
(unless you are of the school of thought that figures our ancestors were too stupid to figure out astronomy and agriculture all on their own and it was handed down by aliens, in which case I would very much like some of them to drop by and do my taxes for me, thank you,) --
all of which is very clever of people since I would not have thought this oil lamp stuff up myself.  

Step Two: Adding yer olive oil

An oil lamp consists of oil, something to hold the oil, which may or may not be covered to help deal with the spillage issue, and a length of some burnable cloth thingum that is the wick.

Being of an inquiring mind, I set out to create an oil lamp.  That's what all those pictures along the side are: me reverse-engineering primitive lamp.

Step One:  I took one of my spoon rests -- this one is from a Polish pottery.  It has traditional decorations, but I kinda doubt the spoonrest part is traditional.  And it had a promising shape.

Step Three:  The shoelace

Cutting that to length

Step Two:  I sacrificed some of my salad oil.  For you home gamers, this was extra virgin salad oil.  (In my house, even the condiments are virtuous.)

Step Three:   Lamp wicks, by 1800, were braided.  Dunnoh why 'zackly but this evidently helps them do their wicking thing.  So I figgered a shoelace would work.  Use cotton, is my advice.  I don't say that something polyesterish won't work, but I can almost guarantee it is not authentic to 1800.

Step Four: Soak the lace for a bit

Pull the wick up

Step Four:  Let your wick soak up some oil,











and then light it.

 The moment of truth

Step Five:  Voila.  You have your ancient oil lamp, not all that dissimilar to the ones that burnt over the desk of Homer or Voltaire, Murasaki Shikibu or Da Vinci.

I was, frankly, amazed that this worked.

And it burns the wick some

It flares up at first

Once it gets going, it burns with a nice steady flame and just about no smoke.  No odor at all.  Very clean and useful.

Then it settles down to a nice steady light

RITA

Purrrrrr

I am so pleased.  I've been nominated as a Finalist for the RITA in the Historical Romance category.

For those of you who don't follow Romance genre, the RITA is the Humongous Mother-Of-All-Contests Contest put on every year by the Romance Writers of America. 

I'm in.  I'm a finalist.  I am so happy.
My agent sent me flowers.

When we're dealing at this level, getting the nomination is the win.