Honesty about writing

Laura Kinsale on Smart Bitches, Trashy Books.

Everyone's thinkin' it, she's just sayin' it. Or maybe they're not. But I definitely agree with her. Voices in the head and all that.

Hell, if I'd wanted a proper job with money, respect, own flat etc, I'd have gone to university. Instead I have a damn vocation, and much kudos it brings me too! See my many millions of pounds, my fabulous house, gorgeous husband? Nah, didn't think so.

Tinkerbell

Tinkerbell, my wingéd friend, I think we got it wrong. The fairytale, the happy end, just prehistoric songs...

Well, yesterday's vet trip wasn't just so Tinker could get a haircut. It was a checkup--he's been on thyroid medication for years--and they did a blood test. Results back today. His previously overactive thyroid is now very underactive, so he should be piling on weight. But he isn't--he's a skeleton--because he has tumours in his stomach.

I've memorised this tune. Her word was 'indefinite', but I've heard that before. Ten days before his sister died, in fact.

Sucks.

Why my mail is so slow

Apparently the Royal Mail is in the pink again. Which explains why my local post office is still closed, my mail never comes before midday and it takes two weeks to send anything 'airmail' to America.

Royal Mail's operating profits were £355m, with all of its businesses improving their financial performance.

Note that 'financial performance'. Not actual, you know, letter-delivering performance. Apparently they're also getting £1.7 billion from the gov't--that's the government who can't afford to pay nurses properly--to help them out. No, I don't understand it, either.

Old man poodle

So, posting about books gets no response, but bitchery about men does? Quelle surprise.

Took the old man to the vet today (he's a cat, I don't take my grandfather there. Besides, my grandfathers are dead). He had all the matted fur on his back legs clipped off, and now he looks like a poodle. A really skinny one! The vet didn't judge us for allowing him to get into that state: she said old cats often just stop grooming. Must find some kind of brush I can use to get the tangles out without hurting him: he's just skin over bone.

Either that, or a chihuahua coat.

(Yes, I know that's a Corgi. Couldn't be bothered to look for a rat-dog picture.)

10 Things I Hate About You...You Bad Book

A meme I nicked from Glenda Larke's blog.

Stuff I hate to see in books.

1. Endless beginnings, especially those prologues that have nothing at all to do with the rest of the first half of the book and whose purpose doesn't become clear until chapter eleventy-hundred, by which point you've forgotten clear how it all started.

2. Billions of characters all turning up in the first couple of chapters, all of whom I'm supposed to give a damn about. But how am I supposed to remember which one is the alcoholic jockey with the schoolteacher girlfriend, who's teaching the kids of the ex-Olympic horse woman and sleeping with her husband, whose stepdaughter fancies the guy from the stables whose sister has just moved in and fancies... oh Christ, I don't care any more. Jilly Cooper can do it. The author whose book I just outlined above (any guesses? I only got a quarter through before I gave up) can't.

3. Those bloody Scottish characters who start every sentence with 'Och' and say 'nae' instead of--what is it supposed to be instead of? Billie Piper did it better when she met Queen Victoria in Dr Who. Seriously. What are you, the Nac Mac Feegle?

4. Fantasy books that include more than a dozen new words in the first paragraph. Vaellina looked out of the window at the Mergl citadel of Kinsk and wished the Plotzbum hadn't curtailed her powers of Skimseeing. If only the Flimsbotty would return to put things right! But since the battle with the Kugglebinders nineteen Moonspars ago, the only Drovian beings in the whole of Plongy were the Narskinians.

5. Character violations. You know, like when your restrained, shy, nurturing, hopelessly romantic heroine suddenly takes all her clothes off in the back of the limo to taunt the hero. Where was the chapter where she grew a spine?

6. The endless, endless cliche of the heroine who sees her guy have a conversation with another woman, and then storms off with no word of explanation for three years. Yeah, like you're going to engender enough trust to spend your lives together.

7. See above, only with the hero becoming suspicious this time. Then he cruelly condemns the heroine, half-rapes her (sometimes more than half) and abandons her. She never says a freaking word to set him right, even if he tells her what's wrong, which he usually doesn't, and turns up barefoot and pregnant but still madly in love with him. In fact, the whole secret baby thing. Done to death. Twenty-first century, man.

8. Jokes set up so far in advance that you can see them with binoculars.

9. Getting to a tense crisis, heroine dangling over a cliff, held up by her ponytail which is snagged on a twig, while above her the evil villain has the hero tied down with unbreakable bonds and is aiming a gun at his head...the chapter ends and you turn, feverishly, to the next page...and it's three months later, they're happily married and expecting an ickle fluffy baby, and laughing about how they vanquished the evil overlord last spring. Bah. Bah, I say!

10. Historicals where the forward-thinking heroine doesn't wear a corset. She'd have been trussed in one since she grew breasts and her clothes wouldn't fit without it. I don't care why, it's like a modern woman wearing no knickers. Or bra. Or shoes.

And please, those things take freaking hours to get off. There'll be no more casually exposed boobies, ta.

Oh, and finally (because I do words, not numbers, right?):

11. Those 'Oh but you must read it!' books. I must breathe, I must eat, and I must sleep. I won't die if I haven't read the Da Vinci Code. Besides, I already know what happens.

I'm going to become a lesbian

Because, seriously. There are what, something like 30 million men in this over-populated country, right? One of them must be sane, mentally normal, and not a hard drugs user. Wherever he is, he's nowhere near me.

Interview with Aura, sex faery

To celebrate the release of Baby Sham Faery Love, I'm conducting an imaginary interview with Aura, the book's heroine. We've all seen the blurb and the cover and the excerpt (and we've all entered the contest, right?), but here's something a little different...


Where did you live between the ages of 7 and 12?

The mortal realms. I always desperately wanted to go to the Courts, but my parents told me it was too dangerous. So I lived amongst humans. I kinda like them.

Tell me about your best earthly friend.

That'd be Tadgh. He's a psychiatrist here in New York, and he's pretty successful: he has an office overlooking Central Park. I still haven't worked out if that's because he's really good, or because he's a raging hottie. He's a sweetheart too: the most kind, patient man you could ever meet. Well, he'd have to be, with a diva like Ell for a boyfriend. Oh, and he's part centaur. Did I mention that?

If you had a time machine that would work only once, what point in the future or in history would you visit?

Oooh, so many choices! Well, I'd probably try to go back and stop my parents being killed in those ridiculous inter-Court skirmishes. But Fate has a nasty way of biting you on the ass and they'd probably die another way the next week.

Which of the following restrictions could you best tolerate: leaving the country permanently, or never leaving the region in which you now live?

Leaving the country permanently would be easier for me. I mean, I love New York, but i don't want to sya here forever when there are so many fabulous places to see!

If you could take a pill that would enable you to live until you reach 1000 years, would you take it? Why?

No, of course not. I'd be cutting my own life short.

If you could change two things about the way you were raised, what would they be?

Easy. I would have been raised in Faery, and I'd have had both of my parents around for a good while longer.

What was the best thing that happened to you this past week?

I found the most divine Anya Hindmarch and it perfectly--absolutely perfectly--matched my new Choos. Ell was so jealous.

Oh: and I found out that my raging hottie of a best friend isn't actually as gay as I'd thought, and had rampant sex with him all afternoon. But I'm still pretty chuffed about that handbag.

What is your favourite time of day?

Twilight. When Seelie and Unseelie merge: it brings out both my faery sides. Dawn is good too, but I like sleeping in.

If you could choose your career over again, would you do it differently?

Probably not. What's not to love about being a sex faery?

How do you relax?

Oh, darling. See above.

What is your most embarrassing experience?

Probably the time I was summoned by the Unseelie Queen while I was having sex. There I was, all naked and sweaty with my legs wide open, and suddenly I was in someone else's bedroom, in the presence of the Queen. It's a damn good job I can apparate clothes, I tell you.

Coming soon: an interview with Reaver, hero of Never Leave me, the first in the new Sundown International series.

Mr Kitty Fantastico

Spike: "I'm drowning in footwear!"

(Who gets that? Come on, put your geeky hands up and share the love.)

New cover!

Well, Baby Sham Faery Love is out on Friday, so I suppose I ought to share the cover with y'all. Isn't it cute? Snaps to Bryan for making it just like I wanted. Can you tell what look I'm going for, here?

Here's the blurb:

Banished from the Fae courts by bickering royalty, I've spent most of my life trying to find a way back in. I live my days as a sex faery, helping those who need a little spice in their love lives.

When my best friend Tadgh asks for my help I'm more than willing to give it. Tadgh's lover, the Fae prince Elline, needs to provide an heir to secure the succession of the Seelie throne. If I bear his child, I'll easily be accepted into the Seelie court.

There's only one problem: Ell is as gay as gay can be.

Fortunately, Tadgh is not.

Baby Sham Faery Love

Queens and faeries and heirs... oh my.



Oh yes, and I have a contest running: win a free download of the book and a cute l'il fairy charm. Aren't I the generous one?

In defence of the Beta Male

Or: thoughts prompted by What Wizards Want's first reviews.

Phew, was getting kinda concerned no one wanted to review WWW. But five angels from FAR and 4/5 stars from JERR have cheered me up no end!


"The reader’s first encounter when Lily and Con get busy is explosive and it doesn’t lose intensity as the story progresses. So not the alpha male and not ashamed of it, Con savors and finds joy in his petite pirate. I just love Con’s inner dialogue that runs throughout the story. His perverse outlook on life and his biting sense of humor makes What Wizards Want a delight. Lily’s reactions to life in a different time is a “roll with it” attitude, much like I imagine she was when she served as captain of her own ship. She definitely is a ballsy woman who enjoys being with her man. This is the third book in the Sundown Inc. series but it can be read alone. Ms. Marsters is a talented author and I can’t wait to read more adventures of the other “employees” of Sundown, Inc."
(JERR)



It's nice that she liked Con's non-Alpha-ness. I know I drone on and on about it, but they really don't need to all be gun totin' mega-men. Con's about as far from the standard Alpha as he could get--he's the Unseelie butt-monkey, and everyone knows it--and he's also completely non-Omega, in the scary, bad-boy sense of it. He's just a Beta male, a nice guy, smart, cute, not bad at what he does but not brilliant either. Most importantly, he's made mistakes and he's living with the consequences.

Having said that, Never Leave Me has a big gun-totin' Alpha male running around being sexy. Well, who ever heard of a Beta-male demon hunter? (note to self, write one of those).

I like Con. I think he's adorable (but then, I suppose I would). Hussah for the Beta male!

Kitten update: they've discovered the stairs. God help us.

And yet more kitten pics

I can't help it. They're so wretchedly adorable! I didn't think cuteness like this existed outside of nauseating greetings cards and those toilet paper ads that inexplicable feature cute ickle fluffy animals (why? To distract us from what the product is actually for?).

Some of Sugar this time. She's gone all shy on me. She's the one with the smudge on her forehead--no, it's not dirt, it's really there!

(Don't you love the pic of Spike yawning?
Or is he yelling, "No more paparazzi!"?)

Yes, I am besotted. Deal with it.

More kitten pics

Since they're consuming my life right now. Well, have you seen how cute they are? These are mostly Spike--if you look closely you can see he's odd-eyed (the right one is still blue while the left is changing, probably to amber like his mother). He's also the bolder of the two now. Gorgeous, white-haired, playful, and irritating the established male. Well-named!

Furbabies, part II

The only things I have to say right now are along the lines of aaaawwwwwwww and coooooo so I'm just going to show you the pictures and you can awwww too. The one on the left is Sugar, and she's also the one venturing out to meet Tinker. Spike's been hiding at the back, although he was looking interested in the food just outside the safety of the box.



All together now: Awwww!