Archive for the 'Better than chocolate' Category
Yesterday’s book signing at Turn the Page Books was awesome! Many thanks to everyone who showed up, my fellow authors – Nora Roberts, Mary Blayney, Loretta Chase, Jocelyn Drake, Donna Kauffman, Austin Gisriel, and Katrina Shelley – and the wonderful TTP folks who always make signings there such a pleasure.
The day started with pouring rain. I wasn’t looking forward to the drive through the mountains and I didn’t know how many other people would survive it either. But no worries: when I arrived, lots of eager, happy folk were scanning Boonsboro’s sunny streets, looking for someplace to while away the time until the doors opened.
There’s the most incredible community feeling at a TTP booksigning. Readers bring family, friends, babies, growing children. Nora Roberts coos over children as they grow up, somehow remembering them all. The chocolate chip lady shows up with another fabulous tray of temptations. Fans sell other readers on a new author.
Little girls waltz by and ask their mothers, “When can I read one of those books?” The distant date is accepted with good grace and they collect autographed tote bags, instead.
And as the hours wear on, and the temperature grows warmer and warmer, somehow everybody stays happy and cheerful.
I’ll always remember Nora Roberts’ son chatting cheerfully about his tricks for remembering his wedding anniversary. (How many men have I heard that one from?)
One young lady had driven her mother to the signing and didn’t expect to find any interesting books there for herself. But when she reached me, she was still chattering about Katrina Shelley’s fabulous book that she’d just stumbled upon.
Austin Gisriel brightened up more than one slow moment in line by cheerfully chatting about minor league baseball. Yes, I love baseball and I know it’s a very small world. But I had no idea Western Maryland was stuffed with people whose families had played it, at one level or another! Wow.
As ever, the world is full of people who adore Donna Kauffman’s romantic comedies, especially the ones about Scots. It was a treat, watching her fingers dance across books to describe the different series, while Scots popped up in various wonderful corners of the world (including Scotland!).
Loretta Chase and Mary Blayney charmed reader after reader, whether or not they were die hard historical fans.
More than one reader happily bought the prequel to Jocelyn Drake’s vampire series, convinced a taste of urban fantasy would perfectly complete her day. Many thanks to those who came to see me!
As ever, Turn the Page Books makes a book signing look effortless. It’s a joy for an author to be there, no matter how many people show up. (How do they know when one needs more water? And it’s always cold! Plus, the food is bite-sized and non-messy (cookies, cheese, chips, and more), so one can jump back to the signing at a moment’s notice. Bliss, sheer bliss.)
My best wishes to the folks at Turn the Page Books. I hope they enjoyed yesterday’s booksigning half as much as I did. May they enjoy a long and happy life, at home and in bookselling!
9:34 pm |
Hey there! Kensington, publishers of my beloved Devil books is holding a contest for unpublished authors in hopes of finding someone who’ll land a contract with Brava!
Ten lucky aspiring writers will each get to work one-on-one with a Brava author (including yours truly) through five rounds of competition to make sure their entries are the strongest possible.
To enter you must have a completed, 80,000 word manuscript whose sensuality matches the Brava line. Entries will be accepted from July 1st through 15th, 2010.
For complete details, please visit the Brava Authors website.
Good luck! Previous versions of this contest launched fabulous careers.
3:09 am |
Six months after moving into my new house, my library is finally unpacked – all sixty-plus boxes of it. (I stopped counting at sixty.) I’d given myself a year to finish the job, planning it around research for books. Unfortunately, I hadn’t realized I’d be writing this particular manuscript right now, a tale which depends on one and only one reference book. And guess what? Yup, you’ve got it right: my aspiring anal-retentive self may have labeled all those boxes – but I hadn’t marked which one contained the unique reference book upon which this tale depended. So I needed to open box after box after box until I found it.
Well, I needed to find and enjoy my library again, right? My bookaholic self certainly thought so. My back disagreed but it was overruled.
Now I’m enjoying having all my treasures out in the open where I can see and touch them. All those dictionaries next to my desk, and my volumes of poetry just a few steps farther. My enormous Civil War atlas finally rejoices in a tall enough shelf, while Mount TBR has a bookcase to itself. Okay, it’s deliberately only a small bookcase but it is a dedicated one!
Some odd juxtapositions popped up along the way, too. Cats and baseball coexist on the same shelf. Okay, maybe that’s because the number of books on each subject worked out that way – or maybe cats and baseball players both scamper after balls? Perhaps. And Chaco Canyon, home of fascinating Native American ruins, lives right next to Washington’s spies, who in turn snuggles up to the Battle Cry of Freedom. My family took one look at that grouping and very firmly told me that I really needed to start writing more about pre-Civil War America! Harrumph!
As for fiction – well, at one point, Emma Holly was cozily sandwiched between Robert E. Howard’s Conan and E.M. Hull’s The Sheik. (Personally, I suspect she might have enjoyed their company.) If I find another auto-buy author starting with a ‘D’, I’m in serious trouble; that bookcase is already groaning. I’m barely coping with Kathleen Dante‘s career, since I grab everything she puts out.
Of course, there was the horrific moment when I realized a single one-foot-wide bookcase was expected to cope with four auto-buy authors: Emma Holly, Linda Howard, Angela Knight, and Mercedes Lackey. Ack! Peace was restored when Angela Knight and Mercedes Lackey moved to another bookcase. Hopefully, they can coexist with Elizabeth Lowell, since I buy everything she publishes on the first day it’s out. But if not, I’ve got a few spare shelves hidden away for expansion purposes… Life is good.
And if you’re wondering where that unique reference book was, which started the mad rush to unpack my entire library? Right where Murphy would have predicted it: the last stack, the bottom row, and the last box.
12:14 am |
So many riverboat stories talk about life from the passengers’ point of view, where the river looks safe – or at least relatively placid. Well, rivers aren’t tame, as this spring’s floods reminded us. I visited the Missouri River after the great 1995 floods swept through. Those scenes haunted me while I wrote THE RIVER DEVIL
When the time came to think about a book trailer, I wanted one which would convey the danger facing the riverboats’ crews. Men who could only travel the Missouri River by daylight because every shadow could conceal a deadly enemy. Men who balanced on drowned trees to cut them apart with axes so boats could pass, carrying desperately needed food. Boats whose round-trip voyage from St. Louis to Montana occurred only once a year and but whose lifespan was probably only 2 or 3 years before its bottom was ripped out by a drowned tree or its boiler blew up. And a river that runs so fast Lewis & Clark clocked it at a whirlpool’s pace and it’s now 500 miles shorter from the Rockies to the ocean than it was in their day…
I hope you enjoy the book trailer created by Circle of Seven Productions! I sure did.
Diane
11:14 pm |
Come enjoy the wonderfully, shivery trailer for BOND OF DARKNESS with me!
Diane, who admits to updating her website gradually
10:25 pm |
How about listening to a scene from BOND OF DARKNESS?
One hot summer night along San Antonio’s Riverwalk, Steve practices going undercover with Ethan and his men as backup. But matters don’t proceed quite the way she expected…
Many thanks to COS Productions!
Diane, who adores the music
11:04 pm |
Whoohooo! Circle of Seven Productions is creating a new way to enjoy a bit of BOND OF DARKNESS, called a sound scene. It’s a single scene, complete with narration, sound effects (!), and music.
We chose a scene where Steve goes undercover with Ethan to catch the serial killer, with lots of Texas flavor. Boy, did we have fun tossing around ideas to ratchet up the tension!
Even better, COS can write special music for a sound scene. So I asked for something reminiscent of a Sergio Leone western, like THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY’s theme. There’s just something about that guitar which sings to me of danger approaching from Texas’s loneliest countryside.
Tonight COS is adding the narration and I’m pacing the floor, waiting to hear the final result. I really need to go to bed because I have to go to work tomorrow. But there’s a guitar singing to me and it won’t let me sleep…
11:53 pm |
