Originally, Forbidden Games was supposed to be published under the Arabesque imprint but got switched over to Kimani Romance. So a new cover was needed and here it is. Forbidden Games will be out in time for Valentine’s Day 2009. So, what do you think of the cover, folks?
I don’t know how many years before I was born this picture of my dad was taken. I only know it was way back when smoking was cool not cancer causing.
My dad’s a lot grayer and he gave up smoking more than a decade ago, but he’s still cool to me.
Like most holidays, the Savoys and other members of our clan get together for food, good conversation and to honor our men.
I hope you have a moment with your dad today, if not in the flesh, then in good memories. Happy Father’s Day to you and yours.
I have to admit I was annoyed at NBC last week for canceling my favorite Sunday program, Meet the Press, in favor of some sporting event I couldn’t care less about. Clinton had just conceded defeat to Obama and I was dying to know what Tim Russert’s commentary on that event would be. I guess the world will never know, since Russert died yesterday of what is said to be a massive heart attack.
I was not only shocked by Russert’s sudden death, but profoundly saddened. There are few things in this life one can count on, but Russert’s hard-hitting, penetrating reportage was one of them. My favorite tactic of his was to let guests blather on about what they said or what they did, then in rebuttal he’d pull out clips from earlier shows to refute whatever the guest just said.
Yet for all his professional success, Russert was still a regular Joe and a family man. He’d just returned from a family trip to Italy to celebrate his son Luke’s graduation from Boston College to prepare for this Sunday’s program when his heart gave out.
I could list a host of Russet’s career accomplishments, if I were so inclined, or post a list of luminaries with kind words to say at Russert’s passing. But I think the most relevant thing I can say is that in my house, as well as millions of others, if it’s Sunday, Tim Russert will be missed.
I’m crazy busy, still revising this site, writing, babysitting my new baby niece and all manner of other things. So rather than come up with my own post today, I’m sharing other folks’.
Let’s start with Crimesistahs, where Angela blogs about the latest survey from Sisters in Crime . It’s amazing what information you can find on the market if you just look around. I hadn’t realized the mystery was genre non grata until I read this post. From now on I write thrillers, dammit.
Next stop is Sarah Weinman’s blog. She steals a bit from an essay on suspense written by Thomas Perry for LA Weekly.
Suspense isn’t a pleasant sensation. We go to great lengths to manage our lives in ways that will keep us from having to go through periods of uncertainty — particularly when it’s prolonged, and when the stakes are high. But in reading fiction, especially a novel, we crave this sensation of increasing tension, and the higher the stakes, the better. We love the experience of sitting somewhere in perfect safety with a book while some character serves as our surrogate in facing a world full of danger. What we’re enjoying is growing excitement, followed by a tantalizingly delayed cathartic ending. It’s a quality of all good fiction, and it’s why the reader keeps turning the pages.
My response is exactly! I know that’s why I read and the experience I hope to engender in my work.
Weinman also posits that Perry is correct when he speculates that the literati aren’t enamored with suspense is “perhaps because [suspense] seems to stimulate emotion rather than intellect: It makes readers care rather than think.”
Isn’t that the mission of all genre fiction? To bring the reader into the world of the protagonists and make them feel what the characters feel? And perhaps that’s why romance is the most denegrated genre of all, since the character’s feelings play such a prominent role in the development of the story.
And finally, Patricia Woodside blogs about finding your literary voice.
Hope you enjoyed this mini-roundup. Now that the heat wave here in New York has broken, I’m actually going outside.
Romance Slam Jam goes live once again. The website is up already. Due to scheduling problems, I missed the last one. But I’m not going to miss the one in Cali. Hope you don’t either.
And just so you know, the picture is me receiving the very first Emma ever handed out by Ms. Emma Rogers herself. What a thrill!
Damn, I was not happy with my television yesterday. I couldn’t wait for Big Brown’s chance at winning the Triple Crown. But it was not to be. Two factors influenced Big Brown’s last place finish in my mind:
Now I’m no fan of steroids for any type of athlete, but right before the big race might be the wrong time to give them up.
Oh, well. At least BB fared better than Eight Belles who had to be put down on the track after breaking both forelegs in the Kentucky Derby.
I watched Hillary Clinton give her concession speech this morning, and have to admit I was quite moved. At one time, I was a staunch supporter of hers, salivating over the chance for the first woman to make it to the White House as something other than the president’s missus. But after some of Clinton’s missteps, foibles and, let’s face it, underhandedness, I switched camps.
Then, as the pundits expounded before Hillary took the podium, i wondered what she would say. According to the pundits, Clinton needed to give on helluva speech, spoken on just the right note, to start to mend the Democratic party in time to win in November. She needed, as I think Tim Russert put it, to, not only concede, but to endorse Obama in a way that her constituency wouldn’t refuse to vote at all or defect to the McCain camp out of spite.
I wondered if Clinton had that much graciousness in her. I half expected her to fall short of the goal for her speech, but the more she spoke, the more impressed I became. She really made a decent call for her supporters to help elect Obama, if only to make sure there wasn’t another Republican in the Oval Office.
After a bit of a plug for herself and her supporters for coming so far, Clinton exhorted her supporters to help Barack Obama become the next president of the United States.
But to my mind, where she really excelled was in talking about the impact her candidacy has had for women. Thanks to her, the ultimate glass ceiling has been cracked, if not broken. Those are her words, but I believe them, too. If she had stuck with this hopeful message instead of drowning in offensive, quasi and real racial insults and other nonsense, I wonder whether she would have had to make that speech.
Another thing that struck me was her smile. I don’t think I’ve seen another candiate bow out with such elan. In fact I’m sure I remember a few men with great big tears in their eyes (and perhaps running down their faces) when it came time to give up the ghost. So much for women being the weaker sex.
To read more about it, go here. Then again, there’s always this guy.
Some of you astute visitors may have noticed the addition of a couple of genres in the header. No, I haven’t sold something yet I haven’t told you about, but I’m working on projects in all those areas.
From my more esoteric pursuits, I’ve learned the best way to manifest something is to act and intend as if it is already so–some call that operating from the I AM consciousness (others call it wishful thinking)
Whatever you call it, I am seriously hoping to sell those projects. So I hope you’ll add your wishes to mine. Now, if only a few editors are listening . . .
Thanks so much for stopping by my new website and my new blog. As I said in my reader message, I did it all myself. Scaree. But somehow I survived, so I hope you like the new look.
Part of the reason I moved the blog was so that it was attached to my new website and bore the same design. Truthfully, it all turned out better than I had hoped.
While you’re here, please come in and look around, and tell me what you think.
After a couple of years of blogging on this space, I’m moving the blog to my new website. I want to thank everyone who supported me during my tenure here.
To see what I’m saying now, join me at my new blog and check out my new website. If you link to either to this blog or to my old website, please update your links.
All the best,
Dee
An added note to subscribers, if you want to continue to read my blog, please change your feed to the new one. Thanks you!
