Here it is. I effing love the movie Robin Hood. What people call the ‘cheesy ass’ version with Kevin Costner from 1991. Maybe it was because I was in middle school when it came out, and it was my first ‘historical’ experience, but I was hooked. I think it began my fascination with England and that time period. And I’ve gotta say, I’m a little skeptical of this NEW Robin Hood coming out this summer with Russell Crowe. Seriously, can’t people make a new movie instead of redoing ones that have already been done? And they’re redoing Romancing the Stone–another classic. Anyway, that’s a whole different rant/topic!

So not only that, but I also loved the cheesy ass song that went along with 1991 Robin Hood: Everything I do, I do it for you by Bryan Adams.

And if you’d like to relive this song (and the terribly fabulous 90’s clothes the band is wearing) and see scenes from the movie, click here. I would’ve pasted the video in, but embedding has been disabled

All right. Now you spill! What’s your guilty pleasure movie/band/song/book/etc.

Today I’m talking about critique partners in honor of my critique partner (and friend) Nara Malone - whose first release The Tigers’s Tale comes out tomorrow with Ellora’s Cave.

Nara and I have been working as critique partners for over two years now. We got hooked up through the RWA On-line Chapter (shout out to Kate Pearce for matching us up!). I’d previously worked with a couple of other partners and things didn’t work out for a variety of reasons - our stories were way too different, one partner had a baby and didn’t have time. I also belonged to a critique group for a while which had some positives and some negatives. So I was very happy when Nara and I exchanged critiques and things went well.

What makes a good critique partnership work? When I started writing I was full of self doubt (oh who I am kidding, I still am!) so I needed encouragement. On the other hand, I had a lot to learn. A LOT. Nara’s gentle feedback was just right for me. And I hope I have also encouraged Nara.  

It also helped that we have different strengths and weaknesses. Nara’s writing is very poetic, almost literary in quality (and yes, she does write amazing poetry, which I so envy her for!). The first thing she taught me was to add more conflict. She caught me on not enough sensory details and adding action to my descriptions. Then she caught me on not being deep enough into my character’s point of view. She told me to go deeper. I went deeper. And she told me to go deeper still.

I’ve had critiquers who wanted to change my style and rewrite everything, who criticized what I thought were petty things, critiquers who wanted to show off how much they knew. Bad critiques can be damaging and discouraging if you don’t have confidence in your writing. So it’s important to have confidence in your writing and to stay true to your own style and voice, but it’s also important to be able to recognize when you have things to learn and to be open to making changes.

Nara and I have both had times of great insecurity and doubts, feelings of wanting to give up, times of personal struggle when writing seemed less important, and times of success. The hard times are easier to bear and the good times so much more fun when you have someone to share it with.

Our partnership has progressed from critiques to brainstorming story ideas, promotion and marketing ideas, giving each other business advice, and even rescuing lost Word documents (thank you Nara!). We have things in common (similar age, we have both lost parents, both of us are mothers who think the most important thing you can do in life is raise children who are good people and will themselves be good parents, and we both like to run - although I’m pretty sure Nara would take me in a race!). We are also very different - I so admire Nara’s computer and technical abilities, at which I am hopeless.

When my first book was published, of course it was exciting. But it’s just as much a thrill to see Nara’s story being published - a story I’ve read (many times!), a story I’ve had some small part in contributing to - knowing how important and exciting this is for her.

Congratulations Nara on your first release! 

Pamela Clare's latest romantic suspense novel.

Hi everyone! Sorry we’re late posting this morning. Today I’m happy to introduce a guest blogger, Pamela Clare. Pamela is the extremely talented author of a kick butt romantic suspense series as well as mouth-watering historical romance. She creates multi-dimensional characters, wonderful plots, and edge-of-the-seat thrills in her romantic suspense and her historicals. Today Pamela is giving away a paperback of one of her books, so be sure to comment. She’ll be back later today to pick a winner. .:) Without further hesitation, I introduce one of my favorite authors, Pamela Clare.

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For two years, I’ve gotten daily e-mails from readers anxious to know when my next I-Team book would be out. That day came last Tuesday. After two long years, my I-Team series continues with Naked Edge. A contemporary romantic suspense novel set in the Colorado Rockies, Naked Edge tells the story of Navajo journalist Kat James and Gabe Rossiter, the park ranger who saves her life when she’s injured in the mountains.

The story is was inspired by my own near-fatal climbing accident in 1994 and the years I spent reporting on events in Indian Country — two completely unrelated things that I drew together to tell Kat and Gabe’s story.

Write what you know, they say, and I know what it’s like to fall 40 feet and almost die in the mountains. I know what it feels like to slip and know that you might well have taken your last breath. I know what sounds like when your own bones break. And I know how desperate a person can feel when they realize that they are almost completely helpless.

I was backpacking with my father, a lifelong climber, when it happened. We came to a cornice of snow and ice that we hadn’t anticipated. Lacking the right gear for climbing ice, we decided to give it a go anyway. It was no problem for my father, who simply kicked footholds in the ice and climbed 20 feet down to the steep slope of talus and boulders below. But it didn’t go so well for me.

I slipped from the top, and the game was over. I remember hearing my father shout for me and thinking I might die. I remember hitting rock over and over again and knowing that I was being hurt, but not feeling a thing.

In the hours that followed, I went from being barely coherent and in shock to realizing I had no choice but to keep climbing, even though I couldn’t stand. Readers will recognize Kat’s attempt to crawl to a trail where help could find her with my own effort to crawl, dragging a broken leg through the snow, to a safe place where I could rest while my father went for help. Fortunately, both Kat and I were rescued by a ranger on his day off who just happened to be nearby.

In my case, the ranger was named Rick. I haven’t seen him since. In Kat’s case, the ranger is Gabe, and meeting him changes both of their lives.

Kat’s Navajo heritage is drawn from more than a decade of reporting on news from Indian Country. The Navajo reservation is a 12-hour drive from my house, and it’s a drive I’ve made countless times over the years, hoping to bring awareness about Native concerns to a mainstream audience.

I was hesitant to write a Native heroine because I feel there’s a great responsibility that comes with depicting someone from another culture. I didn’t want to resort to stereotypes, nor did I wish to portray Navajo culture inaccurately. And let’s face it — no amount of time on the rez can make up for the fact that I am was not born and raised Navajo.

Still, the character of Kat came to me, and I was committed. I drew on my own memories of events and ceremonies, using as the outline for the story actual events that I reported on, including the desecration of a sweat lodge ceremony in which Native people from several Indian nations were participating together.

You’d think that, with all of this real-life experience in my mind, I’d have written Naked Edge quickly. Wrong! Somehow the fact that it felt so real to me made the writing an even slower process than usual. I felt so strongly that the details needed to be correct and that the characters, especially Kat and Gabe, had to embody the world I’d seen.

I doubt any of this will really matter for readers. What matters to them is being able to pick up the book and lose themselves in a love story. And Naked Edge is a love story. It’s a story about two people who meet under strained conditions and go on to mean more to one another than they could possibly imagine. With the Rockies as the backdrop it tells the story of one man’s courage as he puts his life on the line to protect an innocent woman from killers — and one woman’s selfless fight against the past to save the soul of the man she loves.

Written with real sweat and blood, I hope it’s a story that will stay with readers for a long time.

Here’s the cover blurb:

What do you do when desire drives you to the very brink?

The day Navajo journalist Katherine James met Gabriel Rossiter, the earth literally moved beneath her feet. Nearly killed in a rockslide while hiking, she found her life in the tall park ranger’s hands. Although she can’t forget him she thinks she’ll never see him again. She is crushed when she recognizes her rescuer among the law enforcement officers raiding a sweat lodge ceremony one night, throwing her and her friends off Mesa Butte, land they consider sacred.

Gabe long ago swore he would never again lose himself to a woman — not even one with long dark hair and big eyes that seem to see right through him. But from the moment he first sees Kat, the attraction he feels is undeniable. Appalled by what he has been ordered to do, he’s determined to get to the bottom of recent events at Mesa Butte and to keep Kat safe.

But asking questions can be dangerous — almost as dangerous as risking one’s heart. And soon Kat and Gabe’s passion for the truth — and each other — makes them targets for those who would do anything, even kill, to keep Native Americans off their sacred land.

For excerpts, go to www.pamelaclare.com and blogspot.pamelaclare.com.

I’ll be giving away a signed copy of Naked Edge today to one lucky person who posts. And although I’ll be at work, I’ll do my best to answer any questions anyone might have.

And thanks to Denise and the Bradford Bunch for letting me blog with you today!

Pamela Clare

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Thank you Pamela! It’s a pleasure having you with us today.

1) in 25 days I will officially be published. (in print, I’m not knocking my Samhain release in February but a NY release is, well, freaking awesome!) His Darkest Hunger releases March 30 and I still can’t believe it.
Check my blog next week as I’ll have a fab contest to celebrate!

2) I can proudly say that I’ve accepted a 2nd contract and get to write 2 more books in The Jaguar Warrior series….Woot!

3) I’m freaking out cause I have to get books 3 & 4 done by well, September

4) so I’ve invested in a coffee company and hired a maid (I kid you not)

And my friends, my journey continues. doesn’t seem that long ago I was the newbie here, but since then, Laura Bradford has added several others….and they’ve started down the same path, the one that leads to dreams baby! I am excited, releived, scared and thankful that I’m here. I’d like to take a moment to thank all the lovely ladies who contribute to this blog because they’ve helped me in so many ways, I can’t even tell you.

I am living proof that the dream can happen if you work for it and the pay off is all the more sweet if you surround yourself with an amazing group of friends who are eager to share your success!

Huge thanks to Laura and Esi, The Bradford bunch ladies, my Sirens, mom and dad, my husband and two kiddies and Shelby the dog. As well as the mudslides, especialy Terre and Cyrstal….you guys all rock and have made this journey even more special!

So, just wondering…..anyone want to share their dreams? Aspirations? or share a story about someone who inspired and or helped you?

I have to admit I haven’t mastered it, but I did want to free associate a bit about writing this art form. And there’s no doubt of it, writing a satisfying novella is a challenging art to master. In a novel you can really stretch out and explore characterization, motivations and nuances. But in a novella, you’ve only got so much room to use. Everything has to be tight; no frilly extras here, no venturing off into the unexplored territory on the horizon.

It has some similarities to writing a screenplay from a novel, although the analogy isn’t entirely spot on. One of the things I find similar is that I think it takes more work on the viewer’s/reader’s part to make leaps and connections. What was eight pages of plot or foreshadowing in a book becomes a line of dialogue or a dark, significant glance in a movie. I know it’s traditional for book lovers to disparage that a movie never matches up to the book–and yes, I’m guilty of this big time–but I have a feeling if I ever attempted to write a screenplay or direct a movie that was originally a book, I might be a bit more compassionate in my judgment.

It strikes me that all the rules that are true for a novel are exponentially true for a novella. Plunge the reader into the action or conflict immediately, for instance. If it’s true for a novel, it’d be best to do the hook in the first paragraph, line or word of the novella. Write tight for a novel becomes, write like you own the last pen on earth and about an ounce of remaining ink for the short.

A good novella is clean and lean.

And then…there’s the BIG issue with characterization. How to show genuine character depth and avoid clichés and stereotypes when one is writing a short? I’m sure there are plenty of authors who, like me, have groaned in misery when they heard the criticism that the characterization was insufficient in their short. There are no limits to the complexities and nuances of human character; but yes, there are limits on my word count. The same sort of struggle occurs in a novella when it comes to building genuine emotional connection between characters.

I think Jaci Burton is quite talented in penning a novella. I’m envious of my friend Lacey Savage’s ability to write a compelling short.

What are some of your favorite novella authors? Any writers have tips on writing a lean, mean short?

Hot soup on a cold winter’s day. I simply love winter. It’s my favorite season. I know I’m in the minority on this one, but I prefer cold weather to hot. When autumn arrives with that fresh chill in the air, I rejoice the way others do on the first warm day of spring.

The way my cat Wiggle snuggles into my arms between me and my laptop. He’s got a great purr and he always knows right when I need to hear it. He also drools, but that’s a subject for a different post.

Getting up in the morning, drinking a hot cup of coffee and watching the news. It’s a simple pleasure I enjoy.

A little space. I always have been and continue to be someone who needs time alone.

The first two long drinks of a cold coke on a hot day.

New makeup. I’m not a big shopper. I think I’m missing a girl gene because shoes and purses and clothes shopping doesn’t do much for me. I do love a new shade of lipstick or eye shadow that looks good on me, even though as a harried writer and mom I don’t wear makeup all that often.

Talking and laughing with my daughter. I think my little girl is the smartest, most interesting person I know. I adore her and five minutes in her presence makes everything that’s bad good again.

A nice cheese spread on bread warm from the oven. Yum.

Warm water. I’m a cancer. Give me warm water and room to splash and soak.

The color green. That color is a reminder to me that although everything must die, it always returns in a changed form. It’s such a fresh, lovely color. Looking at anything green makes me feel happy.

Dark chocolate and red wine, preferably together.

Market spice tea, found at Pike Place Market in Seattle, WA.

What are a few of your favorite things?

Good With His Hands by Michelle M. Pillow

For sale from Ellora’s Cave!

Photographer Teresa Kelley is on assignment to shoot old ghost towns and desert scenery. What she doesn’t anticipate is that scenery including the delicious Max Draper. The sizzling desert sun isn’t the only thing heating up the abandoned mining town when the hot, muscled and oh-so-sexy mechanic offers to give her a hand. Dusty floorboards and ghost tales aside, Teresa finds herself on the other end of the lens when she and Max are caught in flagrante delicto by an unexpected… assistant.

Since this book has to do with photographing spirits, I thought I’d share info on one of my latest research projects for Paranormal Underground Magazine.

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Memento Mori: Photographing the Dead

These days when you talk about photographing the dead most people think about capturing apparitions or orbs, but in the early stages of photography the concept had an entirely different meaning. With the affordability of new photographic techniques came the practice of memento mori, “remember death”, or post-mortem photography, in which people hired photographers to photograph the corpses of their loved ones before burial. This sometimes included the remains of deceased pets. Though now seen as a macabre practice and used as otherworldly movie props in such films as The Others to build supernatural suspense, in the mid-1800’s photographing the deceased became a culturally accepted practice to help memorialize the dead and to help with the grieving process.

In 1839 portraiture became commonplace, as inventions like the daguerreotype, an early kind of photograph, made it possible for the masses to afford to have their pictures taken. The shorter exposure times made sitting for a portrait not only feasible but more practical than it had been in previous years. Hitting the height of its popularity in the mid-19th century and dwindling toward the late 1800’s, post-mortem photography persisted well into the 20th century in some Eastern European cultures. What, by today’s standards, may seem morbid was in fact a reflection of the average 19th century person’s ability to understand and deal with death. These pictures were often included on mantle places, mingled with pictures of the living, or sent to distant relatives who could not make the trip to pay their respects.

High mortality rates meant many people didn’t always have the opportunity to get their picture taken when they were alive. Every household was touched by death. According to Ancestry.com, “in the United States in 1850, the average life expectancy at birth was 38.9 years” and the “infant mortality rate in 1850 was 217.4 per 1,000 births”. It is this high mortality rate in children that accounts for the numerous post-mortem images of Victorian children. With so much death, the Victorians were more adept at dealing with the grieving process than we are today and these photographs were an important step in their process.

Earlier photographs were often close-ups of the adult’s face or full body shots of a child. Loved ones were rarely posed in a coffin. Before the advent of the funeral home, bodies were laid out in at home in a parlor, kept cool by a block of ice. It’s not so unusual then that people would want to remember their loved one in a natural setting. Often, they were laid out on a bed or couch to look as if they slept, or arranged in poses meant to mimic the living. Props, such as toys, religious items, or flowers, were added to the scene. In some cases eyes were left open or the photographs were later doctored to paint pupils over the closed eye lids and to add a rosy flush to the cheeks.

Sometimes even the living relatives were included in the photograph, posing with or, in the case of a young child, holding the deceased. Children normally were posed on a couch or crib. When they were held by a living parent, they were posed with their eyes closed. Adults were more commonly pictured sitting up in chairs, braced into place by special frames. It wasn’t until embalming practices improved after the Civil War that people could be preserved long enough to be photographed inside their coffins, which were made to order and not readily available the day of death. By the time corpses were photographed in coffins, less effort was made to make them appear more lifelike.

Other variations of the post-mortem included mourners holding a photo of the deceased, family members photographed by a shrine dedicated to the passed loved one including a photo from the deceased’s life, or the funeral goers surrounding the open coffin. Today, the post-mortem photograph is more of a strange curiosity to be wondered at and collected. One of the largest collections in the United States is kept by the Burns Archive at www.burnsarchive.com. Other web sources include Paul Frecker at www.paulfrecker.com and at The Thanatos http://thanatos.net. All three of these sites show a tasteful representation of the subject and are not gory.

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I just found out that my first audio book is to release next month! Last Man on Earth, 3/29/2010!

I normally consider myself a very patient person.  I don’t mind waiting for a lot of things.  I don’t mind waiting in line, I don’t mind waiting at a red light, and I don’t even mind waiting on hold all that much.

However, waiting to hear back from someone who is reading your work is agonizing.  I can’t figure out why.

We wait so often in this game called publishing.  At first we wait with our hearts in our throats for the reaction of that special person we trust to read our early writing efforts.  You can’t seem to breathe right, your palms sweat.  What if they don’t like it?  Am I kidding myself that I can do this?  What if it’s nothing but junk?  Minutes can feel like eons waiting for that first response.

That is a terrible wait.  Oh, but the joy doesn’t end there.  Eventually we branch out.  Then we wait for comments on fan fiction forums validating our ability to tell a story.  We hit refresh like it’s the trigger on a slot machine and hunger for a new response.

Then we wait for critique partners, beta readers and mentors.  We wait for feedback that will help hone our stories, illuminate the concepts we just can’t seem to get a firm grasp on.  We wait for contests, first we wait for the feedback, then we wait for victory and that chance we’ve been waiting for all along, a read from an agent or editor.

Oh, and let’s go ahead and ponder the agony of that wait.  That’s when dreams really do seem to hang in the balance, and during the whole time you wait, you wonder, “Is this it?  Will this be my break?”

Then you get the call, but the waiting doesn’t end there.  You wait for revision letters, hoping you didn’t let your editor down. You wait for cover art, hoping your cover will make you sing from the mountaintops, not wallow in a tub of chocolate frozen custard.  You wait for reviews, hoping against all hope that you won’t be cut down at the knees when you’re struggling so hard to keep climbing.

You wait for new contracts, new chances.

But most of all you wait for readers, wait for the day someone lets you know the liked what you wrote, and hope you write more.

That makes all the waiting worth it.

I’d like to thank the readers of Paranormal Romance for making Beyond the Rain a Pearl finalist.  I am so honored I’m speechless.  I’m in awe of the other finalists, Susan Grant, Linnea Sinclair, and Catherine Asaro, women I have admired for years.  The wait to see who wins isn’t going to be hard, because I already feel I’ve been blessed.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Jess Granger

To prove my good will, I’m pimping his hero, Simon Canderous (being partly named after the best KotOR character, he had to be awesome. And he is!) Without futher ado, here are his sexy books.

Don’t you want them? Yes, you do! But first, enjoy this quickie interview with Anton himself.

1) If you had only bacon, bread and peanut butter in the house, what would you make for dinner?

My love of bacon is well evidenced by my fantasy writer physique. For my recipe, I would roll the bread to form a ball around a core of peanut butter. I would then wrap a slice of bacon around it and fry the whole thing. The fat of the bacon would help crisp up the bread and it would be delicious. In theory, anyway. I might also just eat bacon out of a weaved bowl of bacon that I make.

2) If Simon Canderous were a pair of shoes, what would they be, and why?

Doc Marten’s, the mid height ones. Dependable, utilitarian, and great for kicking ass. Also, resistant to lycanthrope fur and brains wipe off them without discoloring the leather.

3) Do you ever dream about zombies? Why or why not?

As a long time fan of the Resident Evil games (hence using the last name Wesker in my series), I’ve been plagued by them. Lately I’ve been having more of them, but that’s due to sitting down with my friends for some co-op in Left 4 Dead, which mixes up slow and fast zombies, which adds a whole new level of terror. For the record, I am a bigger fan of slow zombies. They seem comical at first, all slow and shambling, but they never tire and eventually they WILL get you. Zombies represent the slow march of the inevitability towards death. Fun right? Remind me why I play these games. Whee!

4) How did you get to be so awesome? Was it a gradual development or did you come into your awesomeness all at once?

I’m like one of the X-Men when it comes to my mutant awesome powers. Like many of the students at Xavier’s, my powers awakened once I hit puberty, and after a quick but awkward phase, I blossomed into the awesomeness that is Anton. Anyone who knew me from my childhood and disputes this, is full of lies! Lies, I tell you! Please note that it is no coincidence that you too are awesome. There may be a correlation that involves the fact that both our names start with ‘An”…. [Interviewer's note: I think he's onto something here.]

5) What do you want readers to glean from your books, if anything?

There are hidden messages in the book that I desperately want people to tune into. Unfortunately, they are subliminal messages, instructing readers to run out to the stores with an insatiable desire to buy all three books, a set a week, over and over.

Actually, the real message is to have fun. I want people to be entertained. If there is a message, though, it probably is that it’s much harder to be good than evil. I find writing about characters who struggle to do good fascinating. Plus, it’s delicious fun torturing those goodie-two-shoes.

So now you know Anton a little better. Actually, probably not, since my interview questions are dumb, but I never claimed to be Barbara Walters. Hopefully you laughed a little, and even if you didn’t, you’ll never get those two minutes back. I’m so sorry.

Moving on! I know you’re really about the loot, so I’ll be giving away TWO FULL SETS of the Simon Canderous books. That’s two lucky winners who can glom Anton in one long, sweaty orgy of weekend reading. (You did process the last part of that sentence, right? I am in no shape or form promising Anton’s services in any capacity.)

To enter, you post a comment answering this question:

If someone with the gift of psychometry read your most cherished belonging through psychometry (that’s getting information by touching an object), what would they learn about you? And game on!

Contest ends Friday. Void where prohibited. Open to people who live in any country Book Depository ships to. Yes, I like you and think you’re pretty. Do not taunt happy fun ball.

ETA: WINNERS! Jackie U & Theresa! Email ann.aguirre at gmail.com with your full names & addresses to collect your prizes.

Whew. I feel this huge sense of relief, but also a weird feeling of loss, too. That book has been living in my head for just short of a year, and while I’m glad it’s finished (at least until edits come in), I also kind of miss it.

Writing, I think, is all about choices. Which story to tell with these characters? You can use many of the same elements and come out with a completely different book. Sometimes that is what I struggle with the most–what story am I telling?

I think about all of that while I’m driving, doing laundry, walking the dogs, waiting in line, etc.

And for this book, those choices are done, which is a strange sensation.

I need to start something new and soon! Fortunately for me, there’s a third book still ahead.

In the meantime, though, I’m turning my focus to promoting The Ghost and the Goth, which will be coming out in July. So…in light of that, what kind of contests do you like? I’m looking for ideas. And I will have a couple of ARCs to giveaway when the time gets closer! Not to mention some prizes and other promo items.  :)