Foreplay First: June 1

June already? Time to share your upcoming reads and June releases. Readers, don’t forget to check comments for other great releases!

I didn’t make it through May’s TBR pile, but I did read ON THE PROWL, BOUND TO PLEASE, and VAMPED, along with Lacey Danes’ ANIMAL LUST and an unexpected early bonus of Jennifer Haymore’s A HINT OF WICKED.

Elise is out of town at the time of this posting and I’m getting ready to move. I’m only including one pick by her because I…er, haven’t paid attention to what else she’s looking forward to. Bad me!

I’m not sure I’ll get much reading done at all in June but I’ll be wishing I were reading these and other books instead of packing, hauling furniture, and unpacking, all while convenience food piles inches onto my hips:

Now…your turn! Leave a comment and tell us what you’re reading and what you’re releasing.

Want A HINT OF WICKED?

I have in my possession an AUTOGRAPHED copy of Jennifer Haymore’s Regency romance A HINT OF WICKED – and I’m giving it away this week. Keep reading to find out how you can be the new owner.

“What happens when a lady desires not one man, but two?” asks the back cover copy.

I suppose the answer depends upon the lady.

Sophie, Duchess of Calton, never dreamed she would find herself in the midst of such a dilemma. Her beloved husband Garrett, lost years ago in battle, has finally been declared dead by the courts and his holdings have been transferred to his heir. The world has moved on, and while Sophie has not buried her love for her deceased husband, she has allowed herself to grow a new love and for his heir and her lifelong friend Tristan.

Life, however, is not meant to be easy for Sophie. Not long after she and Tristan marry, a dead man appears in the middle of the night to wrench Sophie’s new husband from her arms. Within moments, her painstakingly-rebuilt household is overrun by chaos – Tristan is banished to a guest room, Sophie is forbidden from leaving the house, and Garrett…well, Garrett is hardly Garrett at all.

Utilizing an interesting mix of Gothic themes and Regency sensibilities, Jennifer Haymore thrusts her characters into a complex, impossible situation. Sophie loves both men with equal intensity, but different hearts; Tristan aches for the woman he has long loved and the friend who will never give her up; and Garrett needs his wife, the only face he remembers and the only voice keeping him from a madness he does not understand.

As they struggle to keep themselves strong, all three characters face sacrifices and make mistakes. Sophie, Garrett and Tristan engage in a series of actions that parallel the underlying threads of warfare woven through the story. Casualties from Waterloo rise to play important roles and new victims fall, and much like the outcome of battles and wars, victories are bittersweet and winning is hardly winning at all.

So…what does happen when a lady desires not one man, but two?

Maybe not what would have happened were I in the lady’s shoes, or were Sophie a different woman than the woman she is. I have mulled over what I would write about this book. For lack of gentler words, I didn’t…like it. I found the story more tense than I was comfortable with (I was so anxious at one point that I peeked at the end). Sophie as a character is so vastly different from me that I had trouble following her–she made choices I would not have made, displayed decorum I would not have displayed, accepted and understood insults I would not have tolerated.

Before I chase you away from the book (which is not my intent at all), I want to confess to flaws of my own: I have a hellish temper, I shout when I’m upset, I’m pushy and unladylike and aggressive to a fault when I’m backed into an emotional corner. Sophie is none of the things I am. Like I’m a product of my 21st century feminist hillbilly upbringing, Sophie is a product of Regency mannerisms and the expectations of English royalty. I start shrieking like a harridan? The upstairs neighbors stomp on the floor and yell at me to shut up. Sophie starts shrieking like a harridan? All of society shuns her family. I understand that–but as emotionally invested in the book as I became, I couldn’t accept it.

That aside, I continue to find A HINT OF WICKED fascinating on different levels. I love that Jennifer Haymore took an “erotic romance” scenario, grabbed the popularity of the menage, and turned the recent acceptability of threesomes in fiction on its ear. (For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t classify A HINT OF WICKED as “erotic romance,” so please – don’t allow the threesome premise to chase you away.) I love that she tortured her characters instead of giving them an easy out (even as I squirmed uncomfortably at the prospect of being in a similarly difficult situation myself). I love that the end is not rainbows arching across the sky and doves flitting merrily toward the clouds.

But I really, really wish Sophie had lost her shit just once and hurled an expensive vase at somebody’s head. Maybe two vases.

So. What, you ask, do you have to do to win this autographed copy I have?

You have to answer my question in COMMENTS:

Who has the right of place in Sophie’s bed – the husband she lost and rediscovered, or the husband who healed her? No answer is a wrong answer! I’ll pick a winner at random from the comments and mail the prize Friday, June 5.

BONUS: If you link to this review via MySpace, Twitter, your blog, Facebook, etc., and you come back to tell me where you left your link, I’ll enter your name in a drawing for an e-book of winner’s choice from my currently available titles.

Thirteen things every good story should have

Well, I am reading through Donald Maass’s Writing the Breakout Novel, and he has a lot of good information in there. A lot of stuff that doesn’t apply to me (probably because I’m not really after being The Next Big Thing, I’m more about plugging away at my stories), but a lot of the information in this book is really helpful. The thing I find surprising about this is how much the reader in me finds this information useful. I am finding that a lot of the things that really bother me about stories that fall short of my expectations are addressed in this book. That makes me a happier reader and a better writer. Already, I’m looking at Hannah (one of the WIPs) a bit differently, particularly with regards to subplots.

So, this whole process got me thinking – from the reader perspective – what are things good stories should have? Here’s my list.

1. Conflict.  This seems obvious, but it’s not. Plot often provides the conflict, but conflict can just as easily come from a deep inner turmoil within a character.  This is one of those places that character-driven works have to be very careful – without external plot to provide conflict, it can be easy to forget to include it.

2. Good dialogue.  This means that dialogue should be true to the characters saying it, should make sense, should provide momentum and balance in the story. Dialogue is the workhorse of fiction. It can be internal dialogue, but it must be there.

3. Balanced prose.  By this I mean that the story cannot lean too heavily on any one construction.  I freely admit this has been a struggle for me at times, as I have a tendency to want to be very terse in describing action, to the point of repetitive sentence structure. This is not good. Prose should present a balance of long and short construction, flowing and choppy construction, and anything else that is appropriate.  Good prose acts in some ways like another character – giving life and body to the narration.

4. Memorable characters. Again, this seems obvious, but it’s not always easy to either achieve or see.  Sometimes the most memorable character isn’t the one you expect it to be. Sometimes the villain is the most memorable. In some genres that works just fine, but in Romance – not so much. If your villain is more memorable than either the hero or heroine in your romance, you need to rethink your story.

5. A setting. I think this gets misused and maligned quite a bit.  A good setting does more than simply hold a place, it acts as a foil for the action.  A setting might be nothing more complex than an office or a ship or a living room. Any number of plays take place entirely in a single room, and that room takes on a life of its own.  Setting can be more powerful than you expect – and I think it’s underutilized as a heavy hitter.

6. Action. This doesn’t necessarily mean gunfights and chase scenes (though those clearly count). It simply means something that keeps things moving along, something to attract the reader’s attention.  Consider the graveyard scene in Hamlet (Alas, poor Yorick!). The entire scene has very little movement – the gravediggers digging the grave, Hamlet and Horatio arriving and leaving. No sword fights, no yelling, no double-dealing play within a play. But this scene conveys so much of Hamlet’s inner turmoil through the interaction with the skull. A simple action, but one given weight and meaning.

7. Tension. Maas is a big fan of tension all over the place. Tension on every page, says he. Eep. I dunno. I don’t think I can sustain that level of tension as a reader – I end up taking a break from the book or skipping ahead and coming back to sections I find too tense. But tension is necessary. Without tension, the reader’s interest wanes. The book starts to drag and I just don’t care. Not a good sign for a story.

8. Decent editing. Lord knows my stuff isn’t clean when I finish a first draft, or even a third or fourth draft. But by the time it gets to the point of publication, that thing should be clean as a whistle.  I HATE reading along and finding major editing mistakes.  Misspelled words, improper punctuation, odd formatting, line notes still included. Ugh.

9. Appropriate word choice. Maybe I’m showing my inner nerd, but inappropriate word usage makes me cringe. It throws me right out of the story and breaks whatever tension the author had been trying to build. Literary cold shower.

10. Sympathy.  Someone, somewhere in that story needs to elicit my sympathy. If I dislike all the characters, the story is in trouble.  I actually just read one  where I actively disliked the heroine – she was whiny and angsty and kept sending mixed signals and getting mad at the hero for her own shortcomings. Really didn’t like her. I liked the hero, though, and it saved me from metaphorically tossing the book across the room. If the hero had been similarly unlikeable, the story would have been hurled into a wall.

11. Depth.  A shallow story is fine for a very short piece, but for a longer piece of fiction, I expect some depth. I want characters to be developed, situations to be explored, problems to be discovered and considered and resolved. And it should not be surface, it should dig in and look around.

12. Intensity.  This goes with several of the other points, but for a story to be really good, there needs to be an intensity to the interactions – between characters, between character and setting, etc. If I can’t find that intensity, I can’t invest myself in the story – and that is a key goal.  I want to be invested in the story.

13. Surprises. I should not be able to predict every step of the story. I might be able to predict a few, but there should be surprises along the way. Good example here is the new Star Trek movie. (If you haven’t seen it, you should. And you shouldn’t read this paragraph, because it contains SPOILERS. BIG UGLY SPOILERS. LOOK AWAY.) Like all ST movies you know basically what is going to happen. The bad guys show up, the good guys show up, the good guys almost lose, then the good guys pull it out and save the day. Hooray. Like romance and the HEA. You’d feel cheated if you couldn’t predict triumph at the end. But… and this is the point… there are surprises getting there. Did I expect the alternate reality thing? No. Did I expect Spok and Uhura? Hell, no (but, wow, was that great!). Did I expect Spok to chuck Kirk off the ship and strand him on the Star Trek equivalent of Hoth? Oh, damn, no. But the surprises made the story so much more interesting – engaging and fresh. I want to be surprised.

Bonus:

Good stories should NOT have the contrived, pat, or deus ex machina resolution going on. Inclusion of this is automatic smack back to non-keeper status.

So. There you have it. What do you think?

Emotionally & Ethically Compromised

Via the on-board tracking console located next to the lift, Neve located Grigori Enchev on the engine deck. She debated whether she should go to him or issue a summons to her station. Neither option afforded privacy but she refused to grant him access to her private quarters. Even West, whom she both liked and admired, was unwelcome there. Worrying her bottom lip, she tapped a series of access codes into the console and cross-referenced a floorplan of the systems deck with the ship’s heat map. A block of cold space drew her eye.

There. The spacious meeting room reserved for target-world representatives was equipped with both mediascreens and consoles to access the Mercy’s internal operations. She rerouted her course and headed for the meeting room. Halfway there, she touched the tiny transmitter at her ear and said, “Commander Enchev, please meet me at TWR immediately.”

He responded as soon as she released the transmitter. “Can’t. I’m currently occupied. Ma’am.”

Gritting her teeth, she smiled amiably at a passing colleague and said to Enchev, “Delegate. Your attendance is not optional.”

Continue reading Emotionally & Ethically Compromised…

Mission: Relaxation, Part II (explicit)

Dhaji’s cabin, like all junior officer quarters, consisted of a bed, a desk, a small seating area and a hygiene station with individual lightbath. Framed art and unframed drawings personalized the space.

“I like the new bedcover,” Cav commented, toeing off her boots.

Following her lead, Dhaji stepped out of his.  “It’s a gift from my foster mom. Do you want a drink?”

“No, I don’t think so.” She paused in the act of stripping off her shirt to watch him.

The soft light of the cabin accentuated every shadow on his body. For all Dhaji’s face bordered on unattractive, her mouth watered at the sight of his body. He used the conditioning equipment onboard, and it showed. His shoulders seemed somehow broader without the uniform to camouflage the muscle. The planes of his chest gave way to hard ridges at his abdomen. A sparse trail of hair led from his shallow navel into his uniform pants. Cav’s breath hitched and she wrenched her shirt over her head.

“You have the most amazing breasts,” Dhaji breathed. His pants hit the floor in a pool of fabric.

Continue reading Mission: Relaxation, Part II (explicit)…

Saturday with Nora & Sarah

Yesterday, Elise and I crashed the Washington, D.C. RWA chapter meeting, which featured speakers Nora Roberts and Sarah Wendell, who discussed plagiarism.

I want to say up front that prior to the meeting, I was not a fan of either lady. Nora Roberts had always left me ambivalent with a side order of off-handed professional respect (the woman is accomplished). Sarah…well, I’m not a fan of the Smart Bitches, Trashy Books community. During the best of times, I’m neutral; the worst of times, I’m disgusted. Yesterday, I decided part of my regard (or lackthereof) is tone-related. After hearing Sarah speak (loudly, warmly, intelligently, personably), I truly understood the concept of text and tone. When I read SBTB articles, I hear Candy and Sarah via the voice my internal ear created for them, and that voice? It is unflattering.

I’m pleased that I left the meeting having smacked the internal ear into submission. Between Nora’s strong convictions and Sarah’s very smart bitchery, I’m a converted fan of both women.

Even better, now that I’ve re-dubbed SBTB with Sarah’s speaking voice (have I used the word “fantastic” yet? powerful? dare I say seductive, even, tempting  my intellectual brain out of its “math is hard, let’s go shopping” hibernation, and re-awakening all those Urges to Debate and Discuss that kept me company in college?), I look forward to revisiting my SBTB issues with a more open mind. And a less isolated ear.

My secret desire to phon3s3xx0r Sarah aside, Continue reading Saturday with Nora & Sarah…

Thirteen Lyrics that make me giggle

Sometimes a lyric in a song just makes me laugh.  Sometimes it’s because the lyric is so cleverly crafted it just hums – like the Aerosmith lyric below. Sometimes it’s just fun and silly – like Weird Al or the B-52s or Ray Stevens. And sometimes a lyric is funny because it wasn’t meant to be – but it’s so ridiculous that you just giggle. There are several of those here.

Do you have a lyric that strikes your funny bone? Share!

1. “My hump, my hump, my hump, my lovely lady lumps.” – from My Humps by The Black Eyed Peas (totally self-explanatory – can you see this in a romance novel? When he ran a hand over her lovely lady lumps, she went wild with desire.)

2. “Gimme a ring-a-ling when you want some ding-a-ling.” – from Ding-a-ling by Hi Town Djs (I swear I’m not making this up)

3. “And I’m too sexy for my hat/Too sexy for my hat what do you think about that” from I’m Too Sexy by Right Said Fred (his hat? srsly? I kinda got the shirt – but… the hat?)

4. “Don’t give me no lip I’ve got enough of my own” – from Falling in Love (is hard on the knees) by Aerosmith (and this one is clever, too. giggle inducing only because it’s Steven Tyler singing it)

5. “Hop in my Chrysler, it’s as big as a whale and it’s about to set sail!/I got me a car, it seats about 20″ – from Love Shack by the B-52s (I love the image of this – I knew a guy in high school with a giant yellow chrysler or something, and this song always makes me think of the Banana Boat)

6.”Oh, I lose control/When you serve filet of sole.” – from Filet of Sole by the Dead Milkmen (because we all know that serving your man filet of sole will make him a lust-crazed animal. Truthfully, though, I find the Dead Milkmen to have exceedingly clever, socially satirical lyrics. and some really offensive ones. lol)

7. “The day the squirrel went berserk./In the First Self-Righteous Church/Of that sleepy little town of Pascagoula.” – from Mississippi Squirrel Revival by Ray Stevens (okay, that whole song puts me in major fits of giggles – actually, most Ray Stevens songs do)

8. “My anaconda don’t want none unless you got buns hun!” – from Baby Got Back by Sir Mixalot (another self-explanatory one)

9. “Got skills, I’m a Champion of DND/MC Escher that’s my favorite MC” – from White and Nerdy by Weird Al Yankovic (you’d be hard pressed to find a Weird Al song that didn’t make me giggle)

10. “And if you tell my heart/My achy breaky heart/ He might blow up and kill this man” – from Achy Breaky Heart by Billy Ray Cyrus (come on, you know you’re laughing, too)

11. “She had dumps like a truck truck truck/ Thighs like what what what” – from Thong Song by Sisqo (seriously? bwahahahahaha!)

12. “Take a piece of your pie and say bye/Or be honest and rub your thighs?” – from Rico Suave by Gerardo (oh the cheese of it! it’s like if mantitty were a song!)

13. “She had taken the bed and the chest of drawers/The mirror, the TV, the guitar cord/ My remote control and my old skateboard” – from She’s Crafty by the Beastie Boys (for some reason, the inclusion of the remote and the guitar cord here crack me up).

Excerpt Monday

Yeah! It’s Excerpt Monday.

Here’s an excerpt from Twice as High (WIP) – totally raw and draft. Enjoy!

Some days are just better than others. Madeline Crane stood in the door to the SBC, Inc. conference room wearing khaki shorts, a skinny red tank top and a grin a mile wide. The outfit was completely inappropriate for work. Which was only one reason she was smiling.
“What is the meaning of this?” Paul Shelton spluttered his indignation at her interruption. He looked a bit like a weasel in a three piece suit. She wanted to choke him with his own tie.
Her grin just got bigger. She aimed a paper airplane at his head. He dodged at the last minute, so it hit the chair back, but watching his eyes go all big and buggy was worth it. Worth two stinking weeks of silent, careful planning. “Kiss my ass, Shelton. I quit. No notice, I’m outta here. I’d say it’s been swell, but I’d be lying. You and your partners here are slimy little toads, and I’ve had enough.” She checked her watch. “Well, that’s all the time I have for you. I hope you all fall into a pit of angry fire ants.”
She turned on her heel and sauntered out, leaving the partners shouting and cursing behind her while the employees gaped like startled carp. She popped the ear buds of her ipod in her ears and cranked up the volume on Cypress Hill. As she stepped onto the elevator, she nodded to the federal agents getting off. Oh, yeah. Some days are definitely better than others.

***

Other Excerpt Monday participants:

Alina Morgan

Kate Willoughby

Kinsey Holley

Crista McHugh

Bria Quinlan

Mission: Relaxation, Part I

Cavanaugh James rubbed a hand over her face. She wanted some food and sleep. She knew herself well, though, and knew that she was too wound up to sleep just yet. With only twelve hours until her next shift, she didn’t want to waste any of it lying in her bunk counting Earther sheep. No, she needed relaxation – and she knew just how to get it. A tiny smile tilted the corners of her mouth in anticipation: some of the tension of the past twenty hours began to seep away.

Smooth ceraglass paved the level 28 main corridor, the pale gray of the walls nearly white against the shiny blackness. The low heels of her uniform boots made no sound on the hard surface thanks to the dampening material. At the delta intersect, Cav turned toward the port side exterior of the ship. The ship was designed for ease of movement. Each level had a main corridor loop. Off the main corridor the intersects ran the width of the ship. Crossing the intersects were offshoot corridors running lengthwise to the ship. Find an intersect and you ended up back at the main loop corridor.

Ignoring the interior offshoots, she strode easily to the end of the intersect at the terminal offshoot – and the door leading to the Relaxation Lounge. Just seeing the doors caused an expectant tingle in her nipples. She really did need this.

Continue reading Mission: Relaxation, Part I…

Foreplay First follow up

Okay, lots of great ideas from that – thanks everyone. I’m looking forward to next month’s.

I did, in fact, get Feisty’s Bound to Please – which I enjoyed. Also finished Eden Bradley’s Tempt me Twice – which was fun. At the brick and mortar bought the aforementioned Feisty and La Nora’s newest (also very good), and I thought seriously about buying the new Christine Feehan, but I just couldn’t convince myself. The step back with the animal print man-titty was too much.

I think the first Foreplay First was pretty good.  Is anyone interested in maybe doing a discussion thread on a book from Foreplay First? Kind of a modified book club? What do y’all think?