storytelling

Dancing Gypsy won the first pile o' books, if you'll recall. She chose the more serious pile with Possession and Soldier of the Great War and other such stories. Which means the second pile o' books is still waiting for a home.

We're going to do this in a different way. Here's how you enter.

Comment on this post. In your comment, write this sentence: I agree to the conditions of this drawing. If you care to write something else in addition (a limerick, a drawing of a cow, your mathematical proof that there is indeed humanoid life on other planets -- whatever), you are welcome to do that, but I do need that one sentence first.

Rules:

You may only enter once.
You have to use a valid email.
You can't enter if you've won anything in the last six months.

When there are fifty or so comments, I'll pull a number out of the proverbial hat. I will then multiple that number by the number of characters in your valid email address, take the square root of that number, and dance a tarantella. The rest of the formula for picking a winner is top secret, but I can promise you: one random person will get the books.

Posted by at 3:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (54)

Update: If you can see the list in the right hand column marked swap? -- ignore it. The links won't take you to the right edition.

Yet another update/clarification: A few people have emailed to say that many of the books on my list are available at half.com and other similiar websites. Which tells me that I wasn't clear enough in what I'm looking for. I don't generally go for ex-library copies or remaindered copies. A book doesn't have to be pristine, but it should be in good or very good shape, including the dust cover. A few of the books I've got on the list are to be found on half.com, but as far as I could see, they were all ex-library. This has been the for as long as I've been checking over there.

However. This link will take you to a page in my library catalog at LibraryThing. At this moment there are nine books on that page, a subset of my search list. Please note that in every case there is specific information (ISBNs, dates, etc) about the specific edition of the book in question that is of interest to me. In some cases it's the illustrator I collect. None of these books can be bought new. Some of them can be bought from collectors at considerable cost. Some are just impossible to find in the edition I want.

If it turns out you have one of these, or run into a copy at a used book store for a reasonable price, you could do one of the following:

• keep it for your very own
  
• sell it on ebay or to a used book seller
  
• swap
  

As Kenzie pointed out there are official swap sites out there. I keep my eyes on those as well, but I figured that y'all might be interested in one of my (signed) books. So email me if you want to talk swap. I don't have any great expectations here, but if things do begin to move, there are other books I could add to the list. As long as I have a storeroom full of my own books to swap, of course.

Posted by at 12:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

I've got a list of hard to find books, all out of print. I search for these titles on a semi regular basis in a variety of ways.

I've also got many, many copies of my own books. A whole storage room full.

What would you think of this idea: I post my list of sought-after books. If you happen to have a copy of one of these books, and you would like one of mine, email me and we'll talk swap.

Thoughts?

Please note: I doubt there will be a lot of movement on this swap thing, if I should go ahead with it. Most of the things I'm looking for are pretty obscure and/or plain hard to find.

Posted by at 5:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

This out of curiosity. I've seen a dozen different ways that people chose to right their 'about me' blurbs on weblogs and websites. Some boring, some cheesy, some too cute for words. The 100 things about me approach is about 99 things too long.

So if you could submit a question that had to be answered in the 'about me' section, what would it be? You can go for the standard birthday or favorite novel kind of thing, or you could come up with something a little more surprising.

If you want to list more than one, fine. Just don't go hog wild. Five tops, say.

Posted by at 5:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (12)

The Mathematician and I are not very good about anniversaries. We both forget them. Sometimes we'll remember at the same moment and then we both get a little cranky, thinking the other one should have thought to say something. The most we ever do is go out to dinner, and usually -- if he remembers in time -- the Mathematician will bring me some flowers.

I'm also very bad about birthdays. The three I really should remember (my own, the Mathematician, and the Girlchild) can even cause me to pause. I would plead early onset Alzheimers, but I have always been this way.

So it shouldn't be a surprise that I completely overlooked the fact that this weblog turned three on September 13. In fact, that really isn't important in the general scheme of things. I hesitate to write about really important things (good or bad) because no amount of logical reasoning or education can conquer the superstitious Italian in me. Who right now is in high gear, tossing salt madly over one shoulder and hissing at me to stop, for dog's sake, before I do real damage.

Thus I point you to somebody else with a really good post. Paperback Writer has a list of ten books she'd like to read. You'll have to go look if you're interested because there's no way to describe it without being reductive.

I don't have the energy to come up with ten books, but I do have one book I can tell you about:

I'd like to read a literary novel -- a novel marketed to the litcrit crowd and written by one of their established superpowers-- with an unabashedly happy ending. I'd challenge Updike, Munro, Byatt, just to start with. These three are masters of their craft, and as masters should be equal to the challenge: tell a story and make the ending happy. No excuses, no tricks.

Some other rules:

• this novel has to be written in third person POV
  
• it may not be set on a university campus
  
• none of the main characters may be writers, aspiring writers, editors, publishers, teachers of writing
  
• it doesn't have to contain a love story, but extra points if it does
  
• it may not be a parody or satirical treatment
  

What major figure in the literary world would take up this challenge? Be brave enough to put aside, for one book only, the cherished no pain no gain ideology that has permeated the entire genre?

If I had $100,000 dollars to spare, I'd open up a real competition.

Posted by at 4:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

This was tough. Almost, I do not hesitate to admit, impossible.

There were at least a dozen entries that were so well thought out and persuasive (some short, some long) that they deserved to win. The books you all nominated as worthy of memorization are from all over the map, from classical children's lit to vintage romance, from prize winning literary fiction to erotica to science fiction.

It was hard, but here you go: the winner is DancingGypsy

...who would memorize Alice in Wonderland
Her reasoning:

If I were living during such a depressing and repressive period, I would want a book to make me laugh--one that would bring me joy from the sheer exuberance of the language and could be enjoyed by both children and adults. That book, for me, is Alice in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll. Who can resist chuckling at the Mad Hatter's tea party? It's a book is perfect for reciting aloud--part adventure, part slapstick humor, part poetry, and totally fun!

I kept come back to this entry because of the first sentence, and the idea that memorizing this book would be beneficial not just for the sake of posterity, but because in such a society people would need hope and stories to make them remember better times.

Runners-Up

LovelySalome, for her choice of Atonement by Ian McEwan. She described this book as damaging and complex, and I have to agree that it is disturbing in the best way. I don't think I could bear to memorize it, but I'm glad she'd be willing to.

Malbrec92 chose Like Water for Chocolate, and wrote very convincingly about the way that novel evokes a visceral reaction with its descriptions of food. It's one of those novels that manages to convey the strong bond between different kinds of nourishment -- physical and emotional.

Both LovelySalome and Malbrec92 will get a signed copy of Tied to the Tracks -- or, if they prefer, one of the Wilderness novels.

I've also decided to award one more copy of TTTT to Wolfwhispers for his very concise entry on Aesop's Tales. Because in all the discussions I've had with friends over the years on this topic, nobody has ever raised that title -- and it's an excellent choice.

All the winners should email me and let me know where to send their books. Also, I am sure everybody is curious about which pile o' books DancingGypsy is going to pick. Don't keep us wondering for too long.

Posted by at 6:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Tomorrow late afternoon I'll be announcing the winner of the Pile o' Books, along with two runners up. The runners up with get copies of TTTT or, if they prefer, one of the Wilderness novels.

About six people have registered on the forum over the weekend, but most of them have not actually posted an entry in the pile o' books thread. So if you're one of those people, please don't leave it until too late.

Posted by at 7:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Here's the good news: I just read the four novels Julie Anne Long has out. Historical romance, mostly regency. And she's good. She can write a sentence, she can tell a story. The first two novels are light(er) reads. With her third one -- Beauty and the Spy -- she really finds her footing.

There's an interesting plot here, one that actually had me wondering how things would resolve themselves -- and that is unusual. This is not bragging. This is somebody who reads and writes for a living just stating a fact: it's not unusual for me to get to page three in a book and know pretty much everything that's going to happen, and how. Within the romance genre, there are some givens. You know who will end up together, but you don't know how they'll get there or what the roadblocks will be.

JAL manages to tweak some expectations. That's an excellent thing. I think that she has a good chance of evolving into a major name in historical romance if she continues along this trajectory.

So it's with a heavy heart that I have to report this flaw.

Has nobody ever talked to this woman about how she portrays dialect? Because there's only one word: sloppy. Or maybe two words: sloppy and uninformed. There seems to be a formula:

1. Is this character of a lower or working social class? If your answer is yes, pepper his or her direct dialogue liberally with any and all of the following:

• dropped h
  
• replace every instance of 'you' with 'ye'
  
• don't stint on the tortured spellings
  
• lots of apostrophes (and don't forget the exclamation points!!!)
  
• sprinkle with an occasional dinna or couldna
  

For example:

For the love of dog: what the hell? This poor Biggs guy is linguistically schizophrenic. He is possessed by speakers from all over the British Isles. His symptoms:

• He's dropping his h-es as though he just escaped from a My Fair Lady Cockney casting call.
  
• 'avena seen you since' -- What is this compulsion to hang Scots verb morphology like a caboose on the back of working class London phonology?
  
• Poor Biggs, he's possessed by a torment of second person pronouns, Yorkshire and Middle English and ... what, exactly? Some terrible mixture. Tha and ye and your... put the man out of his misery. Please.
  

You might think this is nitpicking. Unimportant to the story. But when you've got a duke's eldest son posing as an Irish groom, it would really help this rather standard plot device if the duke could actually sound Irish. Because it's likely that the upper class English household that employs him would notice right away if he claimed to be Irish but instead sounded.... confused. The way to do that is not with ye, and absolutely not with dinna, but with lexical choice and syntax. If you really want to pursue writing dialogue so it evokes English as it is spoken in Ireland, there are places to go for that information. There's a great list of features on Wikipedia, which includes lots of examples of regional phonology (you'll note -- the Irish do not drop initial h), as well as word choice and syntax. for example, you might hear:

"Why did you hit him?" "He was after insulting me."

The Wikipedia article has a nice, concise explanation of the origin of that usage.

Ms. Long will likely never see this post, but if she does I hope she will take this in the spirit it is meant. Such promising work deserves more attention to detail.

So I'll put down here my rule of thumb, which I have talked about before (but not recently): don't mess with spelling. Do. Not. Mess with Spelling. Do some basic research about differences between various dialects. Don't confuse the Irish with the Scots -- it will make them cranky.

And I'll finish by pointing you to my tried and true demonstration of how not to handle dialect in dialogue, with examples from Gone with the Wind.

Posted by at 11:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

I am in real need of a short email consultation with a native speaker of Swedish. I've got six or so sentences I need to have translated into colloquial, every day Swedish.

Anybody?

My eternal thanks, and a mention in the author's note as a (very small) reward.

Posted by at 12:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)

I'm going to stop accepting entries on Monday, September 25.
We've got almost fifty people interested in one or the other of the piles o' books. Haven't put your name in the hat yet? Head over to the forum.

All you have to do: tell us about the one book you would save from extinction. Just one book. All books are disappearing from the world, but your job is to pick one and to memorize it for posterity, and the day it becomes legal to write things down again. For this exercise, you should pretend you have an excellent memory. You have to tell me which book and why you chose it, in a few sentences. If you win, you get to pick which pile o' books you want.

Once again: I'm going to stop accepting entries on Monday, September 25.

On that same day, I'll start another one right here on the weblog. That winner will get the second pile o' books.

So go forth and save a book from the firemen. Do it right here. The only restrictions: you can't pick something I wrote, and you can't pick a book that has already been chosen. A few people have made that error and need to go back in to change their entries. I've marked those cases directly.

Posted by at 1:58 PM | Permalink

the light at the end of the tunnel.

Posted by at 3:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This is a first edition (1962), first printing of One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. The graphic design trends of the early sixties usually don't do much for me, but I really like this.

So if you happen to run into this book -- and it's the real thing -- you should buy it. Because a true first edition in excellent shape? Worth at least three thousand (though the original price, printed on the dust jacket, was $4.95).

Now you're wondering if I found this one at a garage sale. No such luck. And if I did find it for six bucks on some sale table, I wouldn't sell it anyway. I'd put it in protective wrapping and place it on the shelf with my other much cherished first editions to look at it lovingly, but from afar. And then I'd read my ratty old paperback copy.

Posted by at 3:24 PM | Permalink

Fall is the season when the Mathematician seems to be most accident prone. He's been home from England for a week, and we spent this morning in the emergency room getting his head stapled back together.

Yes, you read that right. This morning he was doing his physical therapy exercises which involve a great big rubber band and a hook on the door. Have I mentioned the Mathematician is a rather big guy? So he was pulling straight out from the shoulders with his back to the wall and suddenly there was a terrific bang, which almost woke me up.

--I need a towel, sez he.
--Huh, say I (still half asleep)
--Right now! sez he. And: Too late.

And he lay down on the bed.

This is what happened: The hook flew off the wall propelled by the giant rubber band (an impromtu slingshot, if you will) and bashed the Mathematician on the back of the head. It broke in half, and his scalp was lacerated in two places. So at that point he was shaking and very white. Blood was everywhere (and this not ten seconds after the impact).

I ran for a towel, he sat up and I squeeked. Head lacerations bleed a lot, but this was scary. Two pillows half soaked with blood.

They were very good at the E.R. Got him cleaned up, and put five staples in his head. Now were home again and I'm wondering if these down pillows really can be machine washed, as the tag claims. Also, I'm thinking this has not been a good year. I wish I believed in astrology so I had something to blame it all on.

PS And the physical therapy had really been going so well. His back symptoms completely under control, no more heavy duty drugs for the pain.

Posted by at 12:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (15)

You're wondering what the connection is: there isn't one.

On Freud. I've been trying to come up with names of well known, long dead men who looked something like Freud (as he is seen here). So far I've got Walt Whitman and Robert E. Lee. If you can think of any names, please speak up. I'm writing a scene about Halloween, in case you're wondering.
(Robert E. to the right.)

On the contest: I should have thought to say this before, but I have to exclude my own books. A couple people have very kindly volunteered to memorize one of my novels for posterity, but I'm asking them to withdraw their 'why I'd memorize this book' entry from the forum and substitute a different novel. Because really, I can't pick one of my own. Flattering? Yes. Did I take offense? Absolutely not. A possible winner? no no no.

Posted by at 8:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Thus far not too many people seem to be interested in those lovely piles o' books. Maybe you desire the books, maybe you'd absolutely love to have them, but you're feeling a little odd about going over to the forum.

Let me reassure you: you can use a pseudonym as long as you provide a valid email address (which nobody but me will see, please note). All you have to do? Just tell me about the one book you would save from extinction. Just one book. All books are disappearing from the world, but your job is to pick one and to memorize it for posterity, and the day it becomes legal to write things down again. For this exercise, you should pretend you have an excellent memory.

You have to tell me which book and why you chose it, in a few sentences. If you win, you get to pick which pile o' books you want.

I will also pick a two also-rans at random, and send them a copy of TTTT.

Shortly after I end this drawing, I'll start another one right here on the weblog. That winner will get the second pile o' books.

So go forth and save a book from the firemen. Do it right here.

Posted by at 3:52 PM | Permalink

Here's the cover for TTTT when it comes out in trade paperback next year with Berkley Books.

I like this cover. I can't tell you how it's connected to the story, but it has the kind of energy that I associate with Angie.

And credit where it's due:

Jacket design by Rita Frangie
Jacket photo by Altrendo Images

Posted by at 10:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

So here we go. I've got two POBs ready to go out to eager readers.
Here's how it will work:

1. I'm announcing the first giveaway right here and now. The winner will get to choose which POB they want.
2. The next giveaway will be for the POB that remains.
3. This first giveaway will be on the forum; the second giveaway will be here on the weblog.

Here's what you've got to do. Go to the forum and answer this question:

If you found yourself inside the novel Fahrenheit 451, and you were one of the people working to preserve the written word, you would have to memorize a novel to save it for posterity. Which novel would you memorize, and why?

In your answer you may pick only ONE book, and your "why" can't be more than 200 words long. Short and to the point will go over better than long and redundant.

Decisions of the judge (me) are final. I'll pick a winner when I've got more than fifty and less than a thousand entries. That is: when the timing seems right to me. So go to it.

I will send the POB to the winner anywhere in the world, but if the winner is outside the continental United States, I will be sending by surface mail.

I'm turning off comments on this post because this is NOT where you answer the question. You answer the question over on the forum. You'll need to register if you haven't already.

Posted by at 5:55 PM | Permalink

Yiiiippppppeeeeee! A really good review from Booklist:

Donati, Sara. Queen of Swords. Oct. 2006. 564p. Bantam, $27 (0-533-80149-X).

In the fifth volume of her popular Wilderness series after Fire Along the Sky (2004), Donati sweeps readers into two strong women's personal journeys of rescue and redemption. It is 1814 in the French Antilles, where Scots noblewoman Jennet Scott Huntar is being held captive. But when her future husband, Luke, and his half-sister, Hannah, finally locate and free her, their troubles have just begun. To ensure the safety of her son, born during her imprisonment, Jennet had made a devil's bargain with a dissolute, untrustworthy man. As the trio travels from Pensacola to New Orleans in their attempts to learn the child's whereabouts, Jennet struggles to heal herself and her marriage, while Hannah, half-Mohawk, uses her medical training to help the city's Indian populace and faces deadly illness herself. It's both a smoothly written, engrossing adventure about an early American family and a vivid depiction of the little-explored War of 1812, yet it's more than that. Donati also delves into much deeper realities, such as race and prejudice in one of America's famously multicultural cities, the complex patterns of revenge, the price of loyalty during wartime, and the transformative power of love. Avid historical fiction and romance readers will devour it. —Sarah Johnson

edited to add this link to Sarah Johnson's weblog

Posted by at 2:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)

This is what I'm doing on the fifth anniversary of the attacks: I'm refusing to watch anything on television that touches on the subject at all. No news, no talk shows, and absolutely no specials or so-called documentaries.

There are many things I admire about Quakers, but the one I'm borrowing just now has to do with silence and reflection. I prefer to spend some time today considering the families of the victims, how they've survived in spite of merciless media scrutiny and the contempt of people like Anne Coulter.

Here's my question: do we really need to keep revisiting those images? My sense is that none of us who turned on the television that morning and watched things as they happened will ever forget what we saw. Going back to those pictures again and again strikes me as morbid. The worst kind of voyeurism.

Far more important, to me at least:

The way our government is busy overseas creating more generations of desperately poor and angry people. The kind who, driven to the wall we helped build, embrace extremism and violence.

The thousands and thousands of civilians who have died and will continue to die while we are busy imposing democracy on them. In order to save the village, we had to destroy it.

The thousands of young people we have sent to fight; the ones who come back in body bags and coffins. Those are images you don't see, because the government doesn't want you to.

The way this administration has dedicated itself to the steady chipping away of civil liberties.

These things that are happening. Right here. Right now.

Posted by at 9:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (35)

reviews. I know what you're thinking, just when the firestorm has died out, here I am blowing on the embers.

But it's something different.

You may be aware that over in the forum (link above) there is a workshopping section, with subsections for various genres. Some very active people there, talking to each other about work in progress.

In the process of discussing ground rules and expectations, the subject of critiquing came up in general terms, and then the idea of a subform to discuss the review process, or critique process or feedback -- whatever you want to call it.

This would be a place for people to post reviews of books or films and then to discuss what the review accomplishes, or fails to accomplish.

The workshop forums are for members only, but if you are intrested in participating in any of them (fiction, poetry, reviewing, etc etc) you just need to be a registered member and then drop me a pm or an email asking to be given access to the workshops.

I personally don't have much time to participate in the workshopping, but I check in now and then. Just to be very clear: this isn't about me teaching anybody anything. Not how to write fiction or how to write a review. This is a community of writers offering help and support to one another.

Just fyi.

Posted by at 7:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Some of my very favorites, but not exactly light reading. But oh, what great stories. What characters. If you stay with the book, the characters will grab on and refuse to let go.

In this pile, Wrongful Death is probably the novel that you have to read most closely and carefully in the first couple chapters. After that it takes off like a rocket. Some of the most amazing female characters I have ever run into.

Possession is also a demanding, but extremely rewarding read. It's got two love stories (one in the Victorian era, and a parallel one in the modern era), a mystery, a sendup of academics and lit-crit types, and a final major scene in a graveyard in a howling thunderstorm. What more could you ask of a novel? Okay, here it is: beautifully, stunningly written.

What can I say about Niccolo but this: when Bookseller Chick asked which character from a novel you'd want to sit down and talk to, Niccolo came to mind immediately. Niccolo Rising is not a quick read. I've read it (and listened to it on audiotape) at least ten times and I'm still taken aback and surprised every time. Set in fifteenth century Bruge, France, Switzerland, Italy. It will take your breath away.

A Soldier of the Great War is about just that: as a young man, Alessandro Giuliani fights for Italy in what we call the first world war, and what was called in his time The Great War. They couldn't imagine a war that might be more destructive. It's true that the devastation was horrific and unprecedented but we do seem to be determined to top that. We first meet Alessandro as an old man, and he tells his story to a young man as they walk through the night from Rome into the mountains. I always cry when I read this novel. Always. One caution, though: Helprin is better with male characters than with female. His women tend to fall into the madonna or freak categories, which in any other book would be the kiss of death for me. So you see it must be something extraordinary if I can look past that.

I'm not going to say anything about Bride of the Wilderness except that it is my favorite historical novel set in colonial New England. Hands down.

And then there's one of mine in the pile, too. Signed.

I'll leave you to consider this pile and the other one. Next week I'll post instructions on how to get into the drawing. I'll send the books anywhere -- but if they end up going out of the U.S., they'll be coming by boat rather than airmail.

And on to the next pile.

Posted by at 2:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (14)

People often ask me about well written romance. So here you go, five of my very favorites (and the Australian edition of Tied to the Tracks to round it out).

Bliss and Dance by Judy Cuevas (aka Judith Ivory) are long out of print and very hard to find. This copy of Dance has a cover that has seen some abuse, but the innards are whole. You'd actually have to pay quite a lot for these if you ran across them in a used book store (unless the bookseller isn't paying attention, in which case, grab them and pay with a huge smile). I've seen copies go for more than twenty bucks each on ebay. Now, if you win this pile o' books they will be yours to do with as you please. But. I'm going to ask the winner to promise that s/he will read them first before thinking about selling.

Like the Cuevas stories, Flowers from the Storm and Hearts and Bones are historicals. Very different in tone and approach, but both are gorgeously told.

The two contemporaries in this pile are Jenny Crusie's Welcome to Temptation and TTTT. Jenny's stuff isn't for the faint of heart -- lots of blunt talk about sex (and during sex). I say this in the spirit of full disclosure. But really, it's such a good story even if that kind of thing isn't usually what you go for, give it a chance.

There will be two names drawn. The first name drawn will get to pick which pile they'd prefer. People who have won stuff in the last year aren't eligible to participate.

The actual mechanics of how to enter your name in the drawing will be put up by Monday.

I find this kind of thing great fun. Hope you do too.

Posted by at 2:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I have been writing pretty well today, and I want to stay with it as long as it lasts, given the bumpy ride I've been having lately.

However. I wanted to say that I have a pile o' books almost ready to give away. This is a selection of my all time favorite novels. Not the Judith Ivory novels, which I'm saving for next time, but six novels I would take with me to that infamous desert island. Some of them are out of print and hard to find.

I'll post a picture as soon as I've got the pile o' books organized, and time permits.

I haven't decided yet if I'll run this giveaway through the forum or here on the weblog. Speak up if you've got an opinion.

Oh and: I still plan to give away some signed first editions of Queen of Swords. As soon as they show up on my doorstep, you'll hear about it.

Posted by at 11:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

Do those of you outside the States know the expression say uncle? It's when you've got somebody in a lockhold and they won't admit they're beat. You demand say uncle! and eventually the poor bugger gives in and whimpers: uuuuuuncle.

And then you let him go.

You know those autographed pages of the Queen of Swords galley proofs? Well I've got about twenty still to send out, but I've also got a problem. Somehow my neat piles of postcard requests got messed up. I don't know which requests I've already filled, and which I haven't. Consequently I have two choices:

1. I could pretend I hadn't sent any pages, and start from scratch. That way some people would get a second envelope from me.

2. I can cry uncle, and admit I'm stumped.

I'm going with the second option. So here's the deal: If you are not in the States and you've already sent me a postcard requesting a signed galley proof page, and if you haven't received one yet, please email me to say so. Then with your name in hand, I can find your postcard and send along your page. If you have received a page from me, please don't email to say so. I just want to hear if you haven't got one yet.

sokay?

Posted by at 6:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

• The good news: Bunny still has his eye.
• The bad news: He is blind on that side.
• The good news: Chances of him keeping the eye are much improved.
• The bad news: If the bad eye shows any worsening in the next few days, they will still have to take it out.
• The good news: He's his silly old quirky self, friendly and full of energy.
• The bad news: He now looks like Marty Feldman. His blind eye points off in the wrong direction and protrudes.
• The good news: We love him just the way he is.

Posted by at 8:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

There had been some theorizing in various webby corners that the new Judith Ivory might be a reprint of one of her early novels. But no. No, I say. It's a new novel, and I am thrilled.

How sad. It is a reprint (but a revised reprint) of her first novel, Starlit Surrender. Robin was the first to dash my hopes, so credit goes to her.

However, she also informs us that Ivory is working on a new novel, and there's soon to be an interview with her on the AAR website. So Robin dashed my hopes only to raise them up again.

First, a suggestion: If you ever run across either Bliss or Dance (written under Judy Cuevas) for less than twenty dollars each, I suggest you grab them as they are out of print. Set in France in the late 1800s and early 1900s, these novels demonstrate what historical romance can be. I like Dance a little better than Bliss, and in fact while Dance is a sequel, it does stand on its own.

I intend to give away both Bliss and Dance in a drawing sometime in the next couple months. Both novels, along with the new one. Watch this space.

The information on the new book (now up at Amazon) has this little blurb:

Beautiful, level-headed Christina Bower has every reason to avoid Adrien Hunt. He is an earl while she is of common birth-he will never offer marriage. He is a man of intrigue, perhaps playing both sides in a most perilous game. Worst of all, the arrogant, lethally charming rogue revels in his reputation as libertine, unrepentant of the many bedchambers through which he's romped and the many hearts he's broken.

If only the blurb writers were as talented as Judith Ivory. This sounds like run of the mill historical romance, but I have no doubt she will work her usual magic. The thing about Judith Ivory is this: no fluff. Humor, yes. She does humor well. But mostly she does interesting characters. Complex, intriguing, beautifully written characters. So I'm looking forward to this newest novel of hers (out one month from today), which I am sure will be worth the wait.

Note: I had a brief look on the web for reviews of Dance, and here's what I came up with:

Three years ago Marie DuGard fled Paris on the eve of her wedding to Sebastien de Saint Vallier's brother. Now she has returned, slimmer, prettier, bolder and even more of a challenge to Sebastien who has never forgotten their one illicit liaison. Marie has spent the intervening years in America where she has perfected her film-making skills and received some acclaim, yet she longs for her father's acceptance and is secretly pleased that he has sent Sebastien to meet her at the station. [...]Dazzling in its subtlety, brilliant in its ability to capture the aura of the changing times and sensually alluring, "Dance" is a novel to be savored by those who enjoy a sophisticated, thought-provoking read that stretches at the boundaries of the genre. Well done, Ms. Cuevas! Muze, Inc.

Posted by at 11:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)

Today the Girlchild comes home from England. She's been away a lot this summer, and I'm looking forward to having her home. I'm not so much looking forward to picking her up from the airport, which involves crossing the border (twice) just when long delays are likely. But hey. Audiobooks were made for such situations.

I haven't been writing well this week. Think good thoughts, I'm hoping for a turn around in the next couple days.

Today Bunny goes back into surgery.

If you've got any questions, please feel free to post them in the comments. I might even be able to answer some of them this weekend.

Posted by at 7:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)