Weekly Reading Round-Up
In between wrangling Miss Gwen, I’m still reading through that care package my wonderful college roommate sent me. I’ve been taking a break between 70’s gothics to read the first few of Laurie King’s contemporary mystery series, featuring detective Kate Martinelli of San Francisco. So far, my favorite is the first one, A Grave Talent,…
Read MorePink Goes on Vacation
Sadly, not my vacation (I’m still here with Miss Gwen), but I was thrilled to read this article in Kirkus by the wonderful Sarah of Smart Bitches Trashy Books about vacation reading generally and the Pink books specifically. If my books go to the beach, does that mean I get a tan? What’s your vacation…
Read MoreMea Culpa and News
My apologies for the missing Writing Wednesday yesterday! (To paraphrase Jasper Fforde, one of my Wednesdays is missing.) Miss Gwen was in the midst of warding off bandits with a trunk full of billiard balls. As long as Miss Gwen behaves– and stops lobbing those billiard balls at me– we should have Writing Wednesday back…
Read MoreTeaser Tuesday: Breaking the Rules
On internet message boards and at writers’ conferences, one hears all sorts of bizarre do’s and don’ts about novel writing. I’m very glad I didn’t know about any of these before writing the first Pink book, since that book, The Secret History of the Pink Carnation, broke several of those so-called rules. It was set…
Read MoreMiles's Manor
Thanks so much to everyone who contributed a suggestion for the name of Miles’s ancestral estate! I have to admit, I’m still dithering over the name, but, in the meantime, I’d like to offer anyone who contributed a house name one of these snazzy Ashford Affair calendar magnets: (It was late. I was bored. There…
Read MoreAnthology Give Away
It has just come to my attention that Laurel Ann Nattress is giving away copies of Jane Austen Made Me Do It on her website, Austenprose. Way back last fall, when the anthology came out, she had all of us authors answer a bunch of questions about Austen, the anthology, our stories, and so on.…
Read MoreWeekly Reading Round-Up
I’ve been wallowing in 1970s gothics all this week. My college roommate, the best of all possible roommates in the best of all possible worlds, sent me one of her wonderful book care packages of findings gleaned from used bookstores. When I came across a pile of crackling paperbacks, all by someone named Isabelle Holland,…
Read MoreWriting Wednesday: the Heroine
While plotting my RWA workshop with Sarah MacLean, I had two major epiphanies (the fact that both coincided with the arrival of the waitress refilling our coffee cups has nothing whatsoever to do with it). Here they are: 1. We want our heroines to be likable and our heroes to be lovable; 2. We love…
Read MoreIf You Like….
To make up for not doing an If You Like yesterday, I am shamelessly piggybacking off Shelf Awareness, which just posted a list of novels in which Napoleon makes a cameo appearance– including our own The Garden Intrigue. For today’s Shelf Awareness recommendations, click here. For a much longer list of Napoleonic-set novels (including Pink…
Read MoreTeaser Tuesday: Inversion of the Tropes
Yesterday, as I was polishing off Chapter Thirteen of The Passion of the Purple Plumeria, I had a Deep Thought. Okay, maybe it wasn’t that deep, but midway through the book is usually the point where plots and patterns start to become clear to me and I begin to pick up on themes, trends, and…
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