Romance is Where You Find It

LADY WICKED

2010-07-10T09:15:00.000-07:00

Coming Feb. 25, 2011 from The Wild Rose Press!
http://thewildrosepress.com

This is one of my all-time favorite books, so I'm so happy to see it published! It won so many contests and awards as an unpublished work that I lost count. But it's different. No ballrooms in this book- they're all in the past for these two.

Davina is a very strong character, but very hurt by a harsh life with a man who appreciated nothing but his own upward climb in society. And Savoury, a lost soul with a hunger for his lost heritage so buried even he didn't know it, has the softest, gentlest heart beneath all his rakishness. He is truly Davina's knight in tarnished armor, although never in her life would she have admitted to being the damsel in distress. Here's the back cover blurb we wrote for the book:

When the Ton's most infamous rake, Thomas Steynes, Viscount Savoury, is forced to retreat to his ancient, abandoned, family manor to redeem his wasted life, he comes upon a woman being tormented by village boys. Rushing to the rescue, he discovers his damsel in distress is instead the very viper-tongued harpy who hates him more than anyone else on earth.

Cast aside by her violent husband, the last thing Davina, Lady Wyckham, needs is an irkingly handsome knight in tarnished armor hell bent to rescue her. After her brutal marriage, all she wants is to be left alone, to support herself raising herbs to sell to apothecaries. And if she weren't ruined enough already, Savoury's attention can only bring more disaster.

Despite their intentions, true friendship and trust grow between them, and the attraction they had long denied begins to deepen. But behind their backs lurks a dark mystery that threatens them both. Only by uncovering and thwarting the sinister plot can they have a chance for survival and love.

Delle's Published Books

2010-06-28T11:22:00.000-07:00

W.I.P.s? That's author slang for Works In Progress. We all have lots of them, usually in many states of completion. I'm only telling you about the ones actually in progress.

You might be a little puzzled about why I'd set up an entirely different layout for my Books and Travel pages. Well... because I can? Because I like variety? Because I love experimenting and trying new ideas? All of the above?

Three things left to complete on this book blog:

(1) I want to make this Books Home Page the place where I will showcase my latest release or upcoming release. I hope by tomorrow to have it featuring LADY WICKED... soon as I get the blurb written...
(2) I need to finish connecting all the links and install Buy buttons for Amazon and Smashwords
(3) I want to put up excerpts, reviews and fan comments for each of the books.

Yet More Snow!

2008-03-28T17:27:00.000-07:00

Here I thought yesterday was some kind of record. Now one day later in spring, we had an even heavier snowfall this morning. And actually that makes snow three days in a row, considering we had snow before midnight on March 26th. I don't remember any time in my life in Southwest Washington I've seen snow falling on three consecutive days. Just to give you some more beautiful pictures, I've taken some closer shots of the pink camellia and flowering plum.

Jinx did stick herself out again beneath the eaves, for maybe a minute. She's seen far too much of the awful stuff this year to satisfy her.

Brings back memories of the strange winter of 2004-5, when we virtually had no winter, and no precipitation of any kind from mid December through the end of March. Jinx was only three years old then, and it had been more than a year since she had seen snow. Then the rain hit in downpours. But no more snow until the following January, three years since her last experience with it. No wonder she hates the stuff. Yet her curiosity forces her to check it out. Poor kitty. How her environment betrays her!

Whether Weather or Not...

2008-03-27T09:48:00.000-07:00

IT'S SNOWING! Unbelievable! Check the date: March 27th. It's more than officially spring here in Western Washington, the Land of Perpetual Spring. My pink camellia is in full bloom and so is the flowering plum, two beautiful shades of pink that are the signs winter is gone and summer on its way.

AND IT'S SNOWING! Giant flakes bigger than quarters, falling rapidly, covering the ground and rooftops! (Actually we had snow late last night but I wasn't quick with the camera, and didn't get any good pictures. It's much too warm to stick anyway.)

Yes, we do have snow here. In fact this year we had snow really early, in November, and on Christmas Day, another rarity. I've never seen snow on the ground on Christmas Day in the 30 years I've lived in Washington. And yes, I've seen snow in early March. But we've been assured of spring since late February this year, and had some lovely warm days.

Now, barely an hour later, there's no sign of the white stuff. It looks like it just rained, with drops of water still clinging to the drooping tips of the white pine needles. But I have photos to prove it happened!

Delle

An Unofficial Golden Heart & RITA list

2008-03-25T20:04:00.000-07:00

Watch the new Golden Heart and RITA finalists on Judi Fennel's list here:

http://judifennell.wordpress.com/2008/03/25/the-golden-heart-calls-go-out-today/

Hurry, finalists, get your names in! this is a real kick for those of us who are so eagerly watching and waiting for our favorites to pop up! Yes, we know the official list comes out tomorrow, but it's so much fun to know ahead of time.

Delle

Setting up and printing a galley for an ARC

2008-03-07T20:19:00.000-08:00

A "fun" topic, Amy! Your word processing program should actually do this for you automatically. But it can be extremely confusing anyway.

I use Word Perfect, so if you use Word, you might have to tweak my instructions to get what you want. They don't use the same terms.

The first thing I do is strip out unnecessary codes, which is why I use WP. But you can do the same thing by saving your document as an ASCII file. You might have to go back and re-indent paragraphs, though, so save your original version in case you end up with mess.

Set your manuscript in a nice font. Times New Roman is okay, but I usually want one less dense. I like Book Antigua or Bookman Old Style. Single space. Then in Page Set-Up, I set it as Landscape, two columns (which will become your two pages)with .5 inch margins all around. I like a header, which I often center on the page. Some programs allow you to put the title on one page and the author name on the opposite page. That's under Format.

For page numbering, I set it at Outside, Alternating.

The next changes come in setting it up to print. I happen to have two-sided printing but don't like to use it because it is very slow, and uses my ink hog printer instead of my lovely laser printer. So under Print>Layout, I set Manual, Step 1, Print odd pages. And then there's a little box below that says Print as booklet. DON'T miss this step or it will come out totally wrong!

You're going to print all of one side of the book, then turn the pages over and do Step 2, Print Even Pages.

Then when it is all done, you will cut your stack of pages down the exact middle and fold the two stacks in on themselves. Just like a book!

But in all honesty, don't do this. Get Kinko's to do the print set up. You should not worry about getting it to paginate right if you have it on a disk for them. Just stop at numbering the pages. They will see that they print in the correct order. Page 1 will still be page 1, page 239 will still be page 239. But they will be printed in a different order.

But if you do insist on printing it yourself, be sure to do a trial of about 12 pages as if it were the complete book. When you turn the stack of pages over to print the back side. it's altogether possible you could flip it wrong, and the back side will be upside down and out of order, too. Think of the paper waste if you don't do a trial to make sure you've got it right first!

In my book, Lady Wicked, there are 328 pages. The first page that prints would probably have page 328 on the left and page 1 on the right. When the back side is printed, page 327 would be on the left and 2 on the right. (it works out in multiples of 4). The second printed page would print page 326 on the left and 3 on the right, and so on.

Does that make sense? Feel free to ask more questions! I've been doing this for years, and I know enough to say the frustration is sufficient for me to have Kinko's do the actual printing.

Delle

Printing an Advance Reading Copy for Reviewers

2008-03-06T11:14:00.000-08:00

Amy Addison asked me to tell more about how Kinko's printed my ARCs. I didn't notice the comment till now, so I thought I'd explain how it goes today. My, how the old brain does start to scatter when a book comes out!

First, let me say this isn't something everybody in town can do just yet. I called around to office supply places I know that do good jobs for a reasonable place. Yes, they could do it, but some only in black and white, and some could only do a specific size, 8 1/2 x 11 inches. I didn't want that. I wanted something that looked like a real trade-size paperback book. I could do what they could do at home. I wanted something that reeked of professionality. So I called Kinko's expecting if they could do it, the cost would be totally out of sight. I was wrong. They only have one shop in town that could do it, and that meant going about 15 miles instead of just down the street, but that was no big problem.

I had already set my book up in galley format ( landscape orientation, two columns, double sided pages, page numbers on each "page") ) and had the cover art sized just right before going to Kinko's. But there's a mathematical formula for figuring out the width of the spine and I didn't have it. It's dependent on the weight of the paper the printer uses, as well as how many printed pages there will be. At best, I could have guessed, until I saw an actual printed copy. So I decided not to do a spine and back cover. Not for an ARC!

Then the text. That dimension is critical. I even know of a case where a publisher asked an author to add a considerable number of words to her finished book because the cover artist had made a mistake on the spine and it had been printed that way. Cheaper to get the author to do more work, you know.

Our local Kinko's has a POD printer, which means they can print any size book. I chose a perfectly useful, efficient size, which comes out the size of a half sheet of paper, less trimming.

The cover was printed separately, and when we were satisfied (we decided to use a different printer because it did the color more accurately) we printed one sample.

The machine is incredible. Once the document is uploaded- the set-up takes far more time than anything else, one prototype copy- the proof- is run.

The pages are printed, then the machine slaps a glue binding on it. The glue seems to dry instantly.

Remember all that stuff I told you about the mathematical formula for the spine? Well, that's how I would have done it. Kinko's has discovered the marvel of trial and error.

The printer eyeballed the cover, then headed off to a cutter to trim it. Then he took it back to the POD printer, where it was fed in and glued onto the book.

Guess what? It was wrong. about a quarter inch of the bare white spine lapped over onto the front. So he gave me that copy (which I gave to a friend). He measured how much off it was, then printed up a second book with second cover. That one came out perfect. We were satisfied. In less than two hours, they had my book all ready to go.

I could have stayed around to watch them crank out my four copies, but they couldn't guarantee they'd be able to do it right away. So we went off on other business instead of watching the Incredible POD Machine. Two hours later I got a call that my order was complete. And when I went back, there were FIVE copies, not four. They threw in the proof copy for no extra cost.

Kinko's charges a set-up fee of $25, and the cost per copy reduces with larger print runs. With the extra copies, I ended up paying around $14 per copy. That's perfectly economical for ARCs, although it would be a little high if I meant to sell them. But I don't plan to go in business in competition with my publisher, who will be sending printed ARCs to the reviewers they use regularly anyway. I just needed a rush job for one major reviewing magazine, and I ordered extras to have for emergency use.

Now that I have an actual copy in my hand, I could design a spine and back cover if I wanted, but why bother? This is a beautiful book that I'm not embarrassed to hand to a reviewer. And it totally amazes me what they can do now. This could not have been done locally five years ago, at any price. These POD machines are a huge investment, and the quality of their product is vastly improved. How the world is changing!

Contest! APHRODITE'S BREW Hits the Cyber Waves!

2008-03-03T18:55:00.000-08:00

Look for Aphrodite's Brew tomorrow at www.samhainpublishing.com

You can see my new video for the book here: http://www.youtube.com/user/dellejacobs

And look for a big contest with neat prizes, and discounts for everyone. Beginning tomorrow and running through June when the super Grand Prize will be given away: there will be lovely little silver tins filled with M&Ms that say Aphrodite's Brew on them (it takes two of them to spell it out), free downloads of my book, and a dollar discount for everyone who emails me and asks for it.

Of course you don't have to have a gift certificate to buy the book, but why not? A dollar's a dollar, and it'll buy you a third of a cup of coffee.

But there's more: Everyone who comments on a blog (I'm blogging everywhere these days) gets one chance toward the Grand Prize. Everyone who buys the book gets an extra ten chances (but you have to let me know) and everyone who buys both APHRODITE'S BREW and my June release, SINS OF THE HEART, gets twenty more chances!

What's the prize? You get to choose. I have a collectors' pair of Barbie and Ken representing Jude Deveraux's THE RAIDER, still in original box and even the original mailing box. Barbie's nice in her lovely electric blue gown, but Ken is really at his best, with long sleek brown hair and billowy sleeved shirt anachronistically open down to his navel, not to mention the swashbuckly boots. Here's a picture:

http://www.barbiecollector.com/showcase/product.aspx?id=1002815&t=modern

Or if you've always wanted your laptop or cell phone or other electronic device to show a bit more personality, what you need is a SkinIt designed just for you. Perhaps you're an author wanting one or several of your book covers on your laptop's top. Or maybe a picture of your sweetie on your cell phone? Pets? Scenery? Whatever you want as long as it's decent for public viewing. You can see SkinIts here:

http://www.skinit.com/

I design these along with book covers, and I'll do one for you. They're durable and gorgeous, and very easy to apply, or remove without causing damage. If you get it a little cockeyed, no problem. Just carefully pull it off and start again, any number of times. They're thick enough that they don't do a Saran Wrap dance on you. But you won't need to because they line up so perfectly.

I'm setting June 30 as the day I pick the winner. So don't forget to let me know when you buy the book! I'm easy to find through MySpace or my website, www.dellejacobs.com

Not Just Another Bookmark

2008-02-24T12:11:00.000-08:00

You've got your bookmarks done, right? Of course you do. All authors make up bookmarks and hand them out like paper poppies on Veteran's Day. Or is that Memorial Day? Never mind- I haven't seen a paper poppy in years, so that's a lousy simile. But you've got bookmarks, right?
And business cards, and maybe even post cards you send out to your 2,000 name mailing list,

You hunt up sites where you can guest blog. That's good. You advertise with banner ads, your book cover, even a home-made video book trailer. You regularly contact the press with every book that's release, no matter that the continue to completely ignore you, and you grab every possible opportunity for book signings.

So do I. And yes, it helps. I have my own little quirks and sparks of genius, just like you do. For years I've been making up Tiny Teasers, a quarter-page size little book that has my book blurb and the first chapter in it. When I didn't do this with my last book, people complained. So I'll probably keep on doing them even though I'm not sure how effective it is. With all the graphics work I do for my books and in making cover designs for profit, I guess it's come to be something people expect (read demand) of me.

I'll tell you how to make your printed items more cost effective in a minute.

Authors can get really wild about the freebies they distribute freely, but some of them are, frankly, not something I want to take home. In other words, please don't try to give me toenail clippers with your book title engraved on them. But others are so creative, they seem to have Promo Queen written all over them. Here are just a few I've discovered recently that have possibilities, and are not just another bookmark.

Did you know you can have anything reasonable (that is not objectionable, and and for which you hold rights to reprint) on postage stamps? Check out this link.

http://www.pictureitpostage.com/

This is genuine USPS postage. I used it for HIS MAJESTY, THE PRINCE OF TOADS and got lots of comments on them. A little expensive, yes- Buying in quantities of at least 25 sheets of 10 stamps, they cost you a out $1.10 per 41 cent stamp value. So I'm always careful about which letters get them. But 69 cents an item for publicity isn't bad. You get your book cover right on the face of the envelope, and how many people see it before it gets to its destination? Does it intrigue just one of those people into checking out your book? If that person already knows about you, seeing the stamp could very well cause her to visit your website or find another way to get your book. I sometimes put them on SASE's too, just because I know the letter will pass through a lot of hands. But don't do like I did and get them printed just before a postal increase is announced. Now when I use them, my cover has to share the limelight with a 2 cent squash blossom stamp. Will I do it again? Maybe. But not for my current cover, which is a little bit too risque to go through the US Mal.

Or how about little bags of M&M's with your custom colors and your book title on them? Look for them here:

http://www.mymms.com/

Again, this doesn't come cheap. You can buy your choice of colors with your message in a 5 pound bulk bag for $49.99 and package them any way you choose. Or your can buy them pre-packaged for all the way up to an elegant desktop candy jar filled with your design for a whopping $189.99. Fortunately there are a number of smaller, cheaper packages, like a pretty lace design drawstring bag at about $4.25 per bag. But it could be the perfect thing for some sort of special promo occasion. I'm planning on ordering some for a Readers' Luncheon in April, one for each reader sitting at my table. I only need eight. But I also like the idea of buying bulk and making my own special packets.

When I made a Google link to my new book title, APHRODITE'S BREW, I found a surprising number of links that have nothing to do with my book. It seems there's a specialty tea with the same name. Again not a cheap item at $8 for a 7 ounce bag. But it could go in baskets for booksignings or charity items. I could attach my own business card on a ribbon tied to it, leaving the original card still attached.

And while I'm going there, since my story is about a love potion that falls into the wrong hands and gets out of control, why not make up a gift basket full of items related to love potions or aphrodisiacs? How about giving it away as a raffle item or a prize for a contest?

And what about jewelry? haven't tried much of that, but I know other authors make up bead danglies for their bookmarks and things like that. I experimented with some fun earrings using Shrinky Dink plastic, but so far I haven't got them the way I like. I didn't have my cover yet, so I had to use one of my own designs, and now that I do have a cover, those are obsolete. I knew that at the time, so it was really just an experiment. I'd also like to make copies of my cover with Shrinky Dink and mix them with beads to dangle from my bookmarks. But again, the design for these is a tricky thing, and I'm not sure it's cost- or time-effective. One thing I'd like to say to you if you want to try this: Punch your holes before you bake the things. You will not be please at how hard it is to drill holes through baked Shrinky Dink items.

I said I'd talk later about using printed items and how to use them effectively and inexpensively. So here's my hint on that:

www.vistaprint.com

What's so special about VistaPrint? All the freebies. In the last month, I've gotten 25 brochures free, 250 premium business cards free, 25 business card size magnets free, 50 oversize postcards free, 10 large magnet calendars, and 10 note cards with envelopes free. Not large quantities, sure, and there is shipping to pay. But I just keep ordering whenever what I want is free or close to it. These are my own designs, using my book covers and other such things, not some stock design (although you can have some really nice stock designs free anytime). By re-ordering the smaller free quantities, I've stocked up and have plenty of stuff for the next several months, yet I paid very little more than basic shipping costs. If I had to have all this stuff printed up locally I would have been out several hundred dollars.

Why is this such a good deal? Can't you just print your own stuff and save money? Probably not. Your color printer may do a fantastic job, but the cost of its ink cartridges is horrible, no matter which one you own. I had to print up some copies of my brochure for my cover art business, WyldeWynde Designs. I didn't have time to wait around for a sale. Unfortunately the brochure is edge-to-edge color, no white space, both sides. I'd just get a few done when I'd run out of an ink tank. Print more, run out of another color. More, run of of more. When I was done, I estimated all the extra ink I used must have cost me around $1 a page per side. I can't afford $2 brochures. But having them printed and shipped from VistaPrint costs me under 22 cents a brochure. From now on I'll save my color printer for desperation jobs only.

The important thing is to get on their emailing list and wait till what you want is advertised to you as free. Shipping is minimal- $5.45 and up for 21 day delivery, but it never takes that long anyway. Unless I have a really strong need for something right away, I go for the slow delivery because I know they'll ship my order within a few days, and once in the mail it arrives withing a few more days. Also it helps to order two or more things because the shipping costs are combined.

There are days when they charge for uploading a new design, but other times it's included in the free deal. Sometimes the premium business cards are free, but you have to pay extra for the glossy coat. The sales change all the time, so I watch what comes up. I almost never order anything that isn't free, and don't usually take advantage of the extra offers they send me because they aren't as good a deal as what I'd get if I waited. I could still use a few more orders of brochures and think more calendar magnets, but I think the calendars are only something they offer as a reward for buying business cards.

VistaPrint is not the only online printer to make such great offers, but I've never heard anything bad about them, and I have about some of their competitors. So I think I'll stick with them. And free is a very difficult price to beat.

Do you have any quirky or creative promo stuff that works for you?

The Publishing Revolution Has Begun

2008-02-19T10:44:00.000-08:00

This post is not about English Gardens, but I couldn't resist using some of my favorite paintings since I've mentioned the book containing them. These are all by E. Adveno Brooke, from his Gardens of England. I saw a copy about thirty years ago, when they could still be found.

A few weeks ago I was in need of some ARCs for reviewers. Fast. I had an opportunity and my final copy had just arrived. I formatted it in galley format and put the galley and the cover on a memory card and headed for Kinko's, who had offered me a good deal. I spent two hours there with the specialist who adjusted for color, and checked other things with me. When we decided we had it just right, he printed off a proof copy. In less than ten minutes he came back-- and he had been within my sight the entire time-- with the proof. Printed, glued and trimmed. He had to readjust because he had guessed wrong on the cover, and I had no spine or back copy since it was just an ARC and I didn't know what the width should be. I would have figured out the spine with mathematically, but he just shrugged and said it took less time to run a proof copy and see how far off it was.

I had to go back to pick them up the next day, although the call telling me they were ready came only about two hours after I got home. Not just the four I had ordered, but an extra proof copy too.

I was just amazed, yet this is what I've been expecting for a long time. Right there in our own neighborhoods is the ability to print up our books, one or a hundred at a time. The cost was about what I would have to pay for the book retail, but for quick copies, wow! And they are good, and very professional.

I happened to see a website last night that fascinated me. http://www.blurb.com/home/3

Years ago I wished for what Blurb can do now. Instead of a clunky photo album of our trip to Germany, I wished I could make it into a beautiful coffee table book that anyone would want to thumb through. But it wasn't possible then.

Unlike lulu.com and the like, which are also exciting for what they can do, Blurb specializes in one-shot books, or the kind you'd just like to distribute to family, or give as a special gift. Want to print-- full color-- 40 pages of photos from your trip to Europe, or your wedding? Turn it into a beautiful coffee table book all your friends will want to thumb through? Want to give it as a special gift to the bride? A memorial of a parent's life? Photos of the family tree? No problem. Choose from four formats, use their professional templates or your own, add text or not. Choose hard or soft cover. Use their professional design services to design the cover, or do it yourself. A final copy can cost from $12.95 up, depending on page count and book dimensions. What I would want wuld cost $20-30 at the most! Used to be you'd have to pay a big set-up fee. It appears that's now factored into the investment and they are counting on huge volume to make their profit. Looking at their set-up, I think they'll get it.

If Kinko's and online printers can do this, (and Kinko's are the only ones in our area to do exactly this at this time), I see no reason Borders can't. They will be able to do any available book in any size, any shape. Any cover, complete with spine and back copy, if it's laid out correctly. No doubt Borders won't become a chain of little kiosks that crank out just one book at a time. People don't like standing in line, even for a cup of coffee. So there will still be browsing shelves of the faster movers, and dumps in the aisles of the really fast movers, because people love browsing. But it won't be long before you can walk in and say, "Can you print me up a copy of E. Adveno Brooke's 'Gardens of England'?" (Okay, not that one. You'll never find it even as a POD, and if you do, call me NOW.) And you'll have your book in an hour, unless they're backed up with orders.

It seemed so far in the future in 2000 when my first ebook came out. It isn't now. The big guys have discovered our project and they're seeing its advantages. They're getting in to epublishing and POD too. The publishing world has found its future, the very one they've denied and scorned for years.

And guess what? We started it. We're the ones who hung in there when the going was so rough and carved out the new way of doing things. We've changed the way the world reads.

Delle

The Promo Carousel

2008-02-01T09:35:00.000-08:00

I feel like I'm going round and round. But at least I'm on the horse.

I think the hardest part of promotion is figuring out an angle, a theme, that will carry through all your promotional materials, and even more, to carry through all your books. They call it branding and a lot of other stuff, and I'm afraid I won't do that very well. The reason is I'm always thinking of something new that makes the older stuff obsolete.

My publisher, Samhain Publishing, helps us with this stuff. Right now we're getting a course in how to do brochures- flyers- to be sent to bookstores. Naturally I couldn't be content with just making a brochure. I had to make it fancier. Make all the components fit together. We were working in Word, not my favorite program anyway, and I decided it was too limiting.

I discovered VistaPrint's templates, and switched the basic concept to Photoshop, and worked there.

What I wanted, that I couldn't get in Word, was the background. I'd tried a few things like a luscious chocolate brown with peach-colored font, and it was striking. But it just didn't seem right for the story, which is much lighter weight. I needed to express the humor, and the chocolate just didn't get to it. And dark colors have several drawbacks, including using prohibitive amounts of ink to print. They even tend to "feel" heavy. So it wouldn't work for the inside.

The other limitation is obviously the cover, with its warm peachy tones. I love the romantic feel the color gives it. But I didn't want the cover to disappear into the background. And yet it had to be interesting enough for the inside where the blurb and excerpt are.

Answer? Photoshop color gradients. I had to do a little color shifting from rose to peachy shades, and change the green from bright and cheery to more woodsy, but I love the effect.

One thing led to another. I wanted to take advantage of VistaPrint's free offer on brochures. (If you've never used them, you've GOT to check them out!)

Now I had my color scheme, and in designing I'd also come up with a new catchy blurb that expressed the Laughing God series, of which this book is the first:

Deep in the Cotswolds, there's a puzzling old saying: "Never mock a Laughing God."

Next thing I knew, I had business cards designed and ordered. I just cut that part out of the brochure for the front, then designed the back with contact information. I actually had to pay a little money for the cards. VERY little money. But I was on a roll. What next?

Oversize postcards, of course! They have the look of cover flats, although they're not quite the right size. Easy to fix. Just a little work with the cloning stamp, and the bottom was extended to fit. They'll print edge to edge, just like a cover flat! And on the backside, I put the blurb, and then added onto the above one for the series:

If you know what it means, please keep it to yourself. Because the fun is about to begin.

Color theme, and then text theme!

And then, my promotional scheme came to me. More on that later when it's all worked out.

Heeheehee, I am unstoppable! Bookmarks, magnetic cards,
--Round and round and round--

Want to know how to do this? Or anything else? Just ask. This Bluestocking will tell you all about it.

Delle

The New Facts of Life

2008-01-27T13:18:00.000-08:00

It's really dawning on me, now. Sure I've been planning, working on promotion, frantic with edits and working hard on all the other things I have to do at the same time. But my first Samhain book comes out in 37 days. All the things I was going to get done tomorrow now have to be done yesterday. THAT'S NOT ENOUGH TIME!

Now that I have a cover- done by a different artist, not me (Samhain doesn't allow their authors to do their own covers, and I am in perfect agreement with that policy). Now I have to get all those things that are cover-dependent done. I have to have ARCs (Advance Reading Copies) made up to send to reviewers who don't want to read anything but paper copies. Ads that require the cover. Press release. Bookmarks and cards, changes to websites, blog, etc, and a book trailer. I actually wanted to do the trailer ages ago but the cover. has to be the pivotal point of everything that's visual.

To be truthful, although I do really love this cover, I was expecting something more humorous. Yes, Aphrodite is a pretty hot love story. But it's also a humorous story. So that is going to impact the way I design the book trailer. How to get both hot and funny across? And a book trailer like I want to do will take enormous amounts of time. Oops, there goes the heart pounding out of control again.

But I asked for it, didn't I? I'm not exactly a newbie in the publishing industry. I've seen hundreds of my friends go through this. So I was going to be better organized. Better organized than what? Than they were? Don't think so. Better organized than I usually am? If that ever happens in my life, I will be truly shocked. No, here I am, down to the last minute, and I'm procrastinating by writing a blog.

I deserve what I got. No sleep for the next two months. I'll keep you posted- if I survive -in which case I'll have to just turn around and do it all over again for the book coming out in June.

That's publishing. A whole different view on the Facts of Life.

This Grandma Writes Sex Schlock

2008-01-20T16:04:00.001-08:00

Yep, you read it right. This grandma writes Sex Schlock. (But please don't say it out loud. To do so could cause serious injury to your tongue.)

How do I know I write Sex Schlock? Because yet another male author has stepped up and proclaimed romances (which is all I write) to be "standard romance-novel schlock".

I honestly can't blame the man for being incensed enoough to insult the entire genre because one romance author has been snipping bits and pieces of his non-fiction book and pasting them into her story as if she had written them herself. I'm with him 100% in his outrage at her action.

Nor can I blame him if in buying her book for the purpose of ridiculing it, he read his first romance and decided all romance is as badly written. Really quite amazing comprehension, don't you think, to actually be able to judge the quality of thousands of books printed over several decades in such a short read of one book?

Is it men who are like that? Not the ones I know. But of course I would never judge all men by the behavior of one, any more than I would judge any complete genre of fiction or non-fiction after reading one example. I wonder if that could be just the incompetent woman in me, that I don't have those amazing powers of judgment?

A darn shame this man had to go and read that particular book as his introduction to romance. But I can sympathize. I have to admit, the first romance I read was probably that bad. Fortunately for me, my daughter set me straight, pointing me to Laura Kinsale's Flowers from the Storm. Once I found that book, I realized I had found the kind of fiction I wanted to write, and it had very lttle to do with the book I'd nearly thrown into the fireplace.

But it's probably true to most men, that if I write romance, I write schlock. And they don't even have to read my books to know that. They don't even have to have read a single romance! Isn't that amazing? They can tell just from the cover it's a "bodice ripper", a "trashy romance", a piece of "standard romance schlock".

Well, if sex is schlock, then I'd say they're right about half the time (the other half of my books have no sex), because if sex belongs in the story, I'm writing it.

It does seem strange, though, doesn't it? I always heard men like sex. Maybe they just don't want women to like sex??? I remember this guy I used to be married to (long, long before the One True Hero came into the picture) and he believed no woman could write anything she hadn't actually experienced, and therefore any woman who wrote about sex had to be-- well, he had lots of words for it, and I dislike them all. But surely most men aren't that dumb. Are they?

I think, though, romance novels are very hard for a lot of men to read and comprehend. Unfortunately that seems to give them the right to tag them with words like "trash", "silly", "schlock", which probably effectively cover up their lack of comprehension.

There seems to be something very threatening about romance for some of these men, so threatening, they feel compelled to attack and rdicule it. It might have something to do with female sexuality, but I don't think so. Certainly it's not the graphic nature of sex in some romance novels, which I doubt will ever be topped by the gory, brutal, and just plain ugly sex in some of the literary and mystery novels I've read. And we all know men don't mind seeing sex in a movie. Naked women, men too, are good there. But what? What's the threat? Most romance novelists know only a small percentage of their words are devoted to actual sex scenes, yet their novels are considered torrid, cover to cover. Why?

Because of one other thing we romance authors also know: it's not the sex that makes our novels so hot. It's the emotional relationship. ALONG WITH the growth of the emotional attachment between hero and heroine, sexual need grows and seethes until it reaches the point of bursting. It's this emotional growth, characterized by rising conflict, both inner and external, that makes our sex scenes so hot. We call it sexual tension, but it's broader than that.

I could write four hundred pages of straight sex and it could never be that hot. Without the relationship, sex is just sex. In fact, it gets boring very quickly. But in a romance, the relationship is the point of the whole book. There's nothing hotter, more emotionally gripping, than a permanent commitment that has fought its way into being. And it scares the H-E-double-toothpicks out of a lot of men.

Okay, let's be fair. It scares a whole lot of women too. But for the most part it reflects what women believe and what they want affirmed again in their reading.

Trial post

2008-01-20T13:47:00.001-08:00

Ignore this. I'm just checking things out.

Delle