Stacia Kane

So…I’m not going to RT. I’m staying here. And sulking about it.

Staying home seemed like a good idea at the time, really. RT is expensive, and LA is far and I’d have to fly and I hate doing that. I hate it a lot.

But I also do love LA, and my friends are there, so now I’m feeling like a big blah, and I want to be having fun with my pals too.

So last night on Twitter I came up with something all we shut-ins can do. SULKATHON 2011, where we prove we can have our own damn fun all by our damn selves.

How to participate? It’s easy. Just use the Sulkathon hashtag (which has been shortened to #SK11, which I happen to think works out pretty cool). Then do something on Twitter or on your blog or whatever, and post the link with the tag (or do a chat with the tag if you like).

I have a few authors agreeing to play along; they’re doing chats and giveaways. I plan to give away some books myself, too. I know my lovely friend Yasmine Galenorn is doing a giveaway on Friday, I believe.

I’m putting together a schedule now. This is a really, really loose thing; I don’t have the time, honestly, to set up a really full schedule, and besides, we need lots of time for sulking and bitching about our dull shut-in status.

So. If you are an author who wants to play, leave me a comment and let me know what you’d like to do. If you’re a reader/blogger and want to do a post on your blog about something book/reader/whatever related, let me know. I’ll keep updating this post with info.

Here’s what I have so far:

Today, 4/6: Sulking until 8 pm. At 8 pm or so (schedules are loose at Sulkathon, because really, who cares? It’s all worthless anyway) we’ll do some chatting on Twitter, perhaps, about why being at home drinking by ourselves and writing in our jammies is so much better than having fun with other human beings. I may also give away a signed book or something.

That’ll go on for an hour or so, at least with me there. I’ll come back around 11 for another hour of chatting and drinking cheap beer before I get to work for the night. And who knows, maybe I’ll do another giveaway.

Tomorrow, 4/7: Some readers have indicated they’d like to give themselves manicures/pedicures. If you’re one of them, set up a time in comments, if you like, and I’ll amend the post to reflect it. The rest of us may continue to sulk, with some whining about being left out thrown in for flavor.

Once again we’ll converge on Twitter for the evening; L.A. Whitt/Lauren Gallagher has promised to do a giveaway, so we’ll see if she’s up for doing it then.

Remember, you don’t have to do a chat, and you don’t *have* to be on Twitter. If you want to do a blog post or something–preferably a sulky one, but we shut-in losers aren’t picky–and have it included, just let me know.

Yasmine’s giveaway is on Friday, I believe, and BronwynK has a giveaway happening at her blog on that day, too. I’ll update as I have more info. Friday night also seems like perhaps a good night for the corset party, in which we all put on corsets and post pictures of them.

I’d love to do some panel-type chats, as well. Perhaps on the downsides of being a writer? That could fit the theme. Any ideas are welcome. Again, leave them in comments and I’ll update here as I can, and don’t be afraid to use the #SK11 hashtag (it’s been pointed out that if you look at it fast, that looks like SKULL. Also very cool).

So come sulk with us, this week until Sunday. Do a blog post, do a giveaway, start a chat topic, whatever you like, and let me know it’s happening, and I’ll post it here.

Let’s at least try to have some fun, huh?

UPDATES:

Michele Lee has posted some funny images on her site in honor of Sulkathon.

Erotic romance fantasy author Mima is giving away some backlist books on Twitter; check this post for details.

…I know there are more but I can’t find them.

I didn’t actually end up doing a cool effect this week, because if all goes well I’ll be doing something really awesome next week. The nails are getting a wee long for dark colors at the moment, but this particular thing will require at least a little length, so…anyway, we’ll see. I’m excited.

This week we’ve done orange.

Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in “Sun Kissed,” to be exact.

It’s…okay. It’s a nice color. It looks cheerier in the bottle than on the fingers. And oddly enough, it went on a bit gloopy, too. Perhaps it’s too dry in the house?

So really, this is a bit of a stopgap for today. I like the orange–I actually quite like orange as a color–but it’s not really exciting me. (Although again, if all goes well next week will be awesome.)

I did have a thought, though, as I was putting together today’s post, about my workspace and the fact that there are a number of different hand lotions around at any given time. I’m kind of obsessive about hand lotion, so keep it everywhere. These are the ones near me as I work (the bag balm and Aquafor are only for pre-bed glove-wearing, admittedly):

The Carmex tube I bought just before Xmas, and it’s pretty much empty, so currently I’m mostly using the “Udderly Smooth,” and I like it pretty well. Of course, this doesn’t include the cocoa butter lotions next to the bathroom and kitchen sinks, the two small tubes of L’Occitane in my purse (one vanilla, one unscented), the lavender L’Occitane or the cocoa butter ointment or extra E45 tub next to the bed, or the lotion spray in the bathroom.

So, it’s sort of about nails, because it’s about hands. And there you go. And fingers crossed I have something really cool to show you next week.

1. I tried to approve a comment this morning that had ended up in my spam folder. It was a comment to my post about Elder Griffin and the commenter had a gay brother, I think? And was also an addict. Please, please re-leave your comment if you’re the one who left it; you and your comment are important to me, and I appreciated your words, and I honestly don’t know why it ended up in my spam folder to begin with but I feel awful about whatever dumb clutzy thing I did that made it disappear.

2. All this talk about short stories has me thinking. And there may be some stuff going on this summer as far as promotions etc. Certainly I have that story in HOME IMPROVEMENT: UNDEAD EDITION which frankly needs no promotion from me at all, given that the other authors in it are actually successful, but I’d like to do something for it and I’d certainly like to have some stuff to offer to piggyback from it a bit, if you know what I mean. I like my story in the antho pretty well–certainly I think it’s the best short I’ve written, but then you all know I’m not crazy about my short stories in general.

But that brings me to another question, actually. I’ve mentioned here that there’s a (very) dark erotica/erotic romance story I want to do. But I also have HOME, the Downside short which would have gone to the MMBO GHOST ROMANCE, (which made me realize earlier that I also have TRUST ME, my short from the MMBO VAMPIRE ROMANCE II, which is now essentially reverted to me–it was a non-exclusive contract after the first year). And I’d really, really like to get some more Downside stuff out there for you guys, and have been considering a few options.

So…

I thought there was a way to do a proper voting poll on WordPress here but I can’t find it. So I’ll just ask and you guys can leave our thoughts in comments or @ me on Twitter or whatever.

I’m having some thoughts re the following short/novella-type projects. Keep in mind that not only do I of course want to do something special for you guys but I’m hoping to do something that might be accessible to those who haven’t read the books, something that might entice them a bit and get the word out? I know there are people who think the series is very successful because of the great reviews it got last summer but really that’s not the case, so I’m working really hard on finding a way to reach a larger audience.

Here are some of the ideas I have in mind; I may actually end up doing all of them, but I’m really interested in what appeals to you:

1. An “origin”-type story for Chess from her Church training

2. UG/UM/CoG from Terrible’s POV

3. ” ” ” from Lex’s POV

4. Some shorter in-continuity stories; nothing you’d have to read to understand/follow later books (I hate that) but, you know, “Further Adventures”-type things (HOME is one of these already)

5. Origin-type stories for other characters (Bump, Terrible, Lex, Edsel, etc.)

What do you guys think?

Anything I don’t have there that you’d really like to see?

Let me know!

(There is a point to my saying this, I swear.)

I’m pretty sure most of you know that already, actually, although I did see a bit of confusion over the summer when the subject of a possible youthful dalliance/crush of his came up in UNHOLY MAGIC (and for the record, for those curious: yes, there was some canoodling, although it was more curiosity/ego-feeding/careless fun for the other party). I thought that was fairly obvious, but didn’t see any reason to press the point or have him running around monologuing about being gay; the man is gay, and Chess obviously knows he’s gay, and nobody cares that he’s gay, so why would he do a speech about his gayness? Especially in that world, where being gay isn’t remotely an issue to anyone and gay marriage is totally legal.

(I can’t resist throwing in another worldbuilding note there: for certain people, like Church employees, simple cohabitation is not permitted [gay or straight]. You’re either married or you live alone, period.)

(Oh, and those of you who read THE BRAVE TALE OF MADDIE CARVER may have noticed a slight reference to his sexuality there, too, when Maddie thinks about how his family abandoned him because of it.)

Anyway. So Elder Griffin is gay. And his part in the next books is a bit bigger, and (minor spoiler) he does have an active love life and that becomes part of the next books as well, and it’s something that makes me happy. Because it’s important to me to add that to my books. It’s important to have some diversity. It’s important because the real world is diverse, and it’s important because who knows might see it and maybe think about it, or maybe feel better about it. Elder Griffin is first and foremost a good man, a smart one and a kind one and a loving one; one who adds great value to Chess’s life. His being gay is part of him but it’s also incidental. He is more than GAY. He is (at least I hope he is) a full, living, breathing, thinking, feeling, human being of worth who happens to be gay.

All of this is my way of explaining why yesterday I emailed Trisha Telep to pull my short story HOME from the MAMMOTH BOOK OF GHOST ROMANCE anthology.

You can read the background on this here and here.

HOME is a Downside story; I think I’ve mentioned it before? It is, I think, the closest thing to a “happy” Downside story as can exist–at least one from Chess’s POV–and for that reason it was fun to write (again, plus kinky hippies, which was a hoot).

It also involves–revolves around, to no small extent–bisexuality/homosexuality, in an important and positive way.

HOME is not dead. I’m considering some other options at the moment, because I absolutely want to make sure those of you waiting for the next Downside book get to read the story in the interim. And in fact there are a few potential Downside stories in the works for you guys in addition to the one appearing in HOME IMPROVEMENT: UNDEAD EDITION, which will be released August 2nd. So you’ll get to read it, I’m just not sure how, where, or when (but my plan is sooner rather than later).

Because I feel that to not speak up here, to not pull the story, takes something away from Elder Griffin, and from every other gay character I’ve ever written (Carter in the Demons books, too, as another example). In fact it takes something away from every character I’ve written, because it makes them all less human. It treats them like characters and not people; it treats them as unimportant, as lip service. They’re not that. They matter to me. And hopefully they matter to readers. And maybe they even matter to someone who sees themselves in them–in any of my characters, no matter what traits or differences or faults or personality quirks or whatever else they may have that some people feel it’s okay to judge or condemn–and realizes it’s okay to be exactly who and what they are.

Because it is.

(I had a typo in the title so it said “Fingernail Ruesday.” Which would have been quite fitting for last week, huh?)

So this week’s polish experiment is a bit odd. Well, it’s not really an experiment, but…anyway. Whatever.

After finally getting last week’s icky yellow off my nails, I decided to go with the color I’d originally planned for last week, because it’s pretty:

Sally Hansen Insta-Dry in “Jade Jump.”

I actually have this polish on my toenails at the moment, too.

It’s a nice color. And I love the new brushes Sally H is using; they’re wider and flatter, with a slight curve at the end, which makes it so, so much easier to paint neatly. I was talking to my lovely friend Fae Sutherland about this on Twitter a few weeks ago, in that “How the hell did nobody invent that brush before this?” kind of way, because seriously, it’s genius.

But for some reason I had a rough time applying it on Sunday night. It was…goopy. The polish itself, I mean. It didn’t want to go on very smoothly.

It was fine when I did my toes with it two weeks or so ago, so I’m really unsure as to why I’d suddenly have an issue. Maybe because of the humidity or something, although that doesn’t actually make any sense either. It’s not an old polish; Jade Jump is a new color, and I bought the bottle maybe a month ago, so it’s not like I grabbed a bottle that had been sitting in the back of a rack for three years. But still it was gloopy and not very smooth. The first time I’ve ever had a problem like that with polish.

It turned out okay:

And I still really do like the color. I certainly like it better than last week’s yellowy vomit-looking crap. And I still love the SH polishes. But…yeah, something went wonky with this one.

Years ago I remember my mom reading something that said nail polish wouldn’t go gloppy if you stored them in the fridge. Personally I always found fridge-stored polishes to be already gloppy from the cold, so thought it was kind of silly to deliberately glop them up in hopes that they’d stay only partially gloppy for longer. But then I’ve never had one do that on me before.

Apparently you can add a little polish remover and shake it up well to de-goop polishes; anyone ever tried that?

Next week I want to try doing some kind of cool effect or something again. Maybe the newsprint nails someone sent me in a Twitter link, or the black french manicure? Something interesting.

Ideas welcome, both on that and on the sticky gummy nail polish.

A week or two ago now I was looking for white pens, so I could write on black paper. Pens with white ink, that is. A reader named Missy Ann recommended Jetpens to me, and I of course fell in love, and ordered several pens (the best part is, their prices are extremely reasonable). So for the past few days I’ve been using the Pilot Preppy and the Kuretake Zig, with blood red ink. And I started a Wish List, not so people could buy me things (please don’t) but to keep track. So if you’re an obsessive pen freak like me we can compare. We’ve had lots of pen discussion on Twitter the last few weeks.

As you can see, I am very into ink. I have a beautiful blue glass artisan pen, which I bought a few years ago and could not for the life of my figure out how to fill. I bought it at B&N, and bless the B&N booksellers, they’re wonderful, but they didn’t know how to do it either. I ended up finding the phone number for the manufacturer and calling them up. The woman on the phone was a bit perplexed, and originally told me they were just the makers and I’d have to talk to the retailers about returns etc. (she was nice about it, she wasn’t being a bitch or anything) but once I explained my problem–and we both sort of laughed–she told me that there are little holes at the top of the bulb part. You have to dip the pen into the ink so the little holes are covered, and the ink will pour into those holes, so you’ll have a little reservoir with which to write. So there you go. I don’t remember if I actually tried it or not; sadly the only things I really write by hand are notes etc. for work (I write on the living room couch, and it has leather arms; the one on my right is covered with Post-it notes).

But I still totally love pens, and paper, and really any sort of office supply or stationery or whatever.

And. I’ve just written a lovely little sex scene into the fifth Downside book, which makes me very happy. I’m behind on my word count at the moment, because the last week or so hasn’t been very good in general, but I’m hoping to make it up.

I’m also working on a little erotic romance story–well, more like erotica with romance, really–that I’m not sure what I’m going to do with. It’s very dark. Like, really really dark. I’m not sure how much people want something like that from me but I’m having a bit of fun with it anyway.

And of course we still have the New Project, a Megan novella, and another little Downside project that I’m not talking about but have high hopes for.

We went shooting today!

There’s a Sharpshooters shooting range maybe fifteen minutes up the road from us; I’ve never actually even noticed the place before, but there it is. And I didn’t know we were going there today; the hubs set it all up as a surprise for me. It’s been years since I’ve shot a gun–and the last time was with rifles at cans in a field–so I was pretty excited about this.

It was just as much fun as I remembered it being.

The gun range is kind of a weird place to be. Not in a scary way, but in one of those “These people are all so friendly and nice but they could drop you in a heartbeat” kind of way. Like the lane attendants who were really friendly and helpful but who had loaded guns in holsters on their waists, I guess in case somebody decided the power was just too much for them and they were going to open fire on people. It’s kind of dimly lit in there, too, and since you have those super earmuffs on everything is very subdued. It took me a few minutes to stop jumping when people fired, just because I still hadn’t acclimated.

It was kind of like stepping into another world, a little. A world where the wording of the Second Amendment is printed on the walls around the room, and people take “personal defense” very, very seriously. I don’t say that to make fun or anything, at all. It’s just that like with any other specialist kind of place, the sudden focus on one particular item or issue or whatever can be a bit jarring. But seriously, a nicer bunch of people you’d never want to meet; everyone was friendly, everyone was excited to see us and help us and everyone sincerely hoped we had fun and that we’d come back, which I totally want to do. They even have a Ladies Night, which you can bet I’m going to attend as soon as I can.

First we rented a Glock; the Glock 19, to be exact. Which was fun, but…eh. I wasn’t crazy about the Glock, to be honest. The grip was texturized even up the back, which meant it irritated the skin between my thumb and forefinger, you know that web of skin there? Firing the Glock made it reddish and kind of itchy, and I didn’t like that.

Aside from that, though, the Glock was fun. We bought 50 rounds and went through them in about twenty minutes, taking turns (we’d load 5 rounds into the clip, fire them, then hand off). What’s cool about that place is that in addition to the “classic” targets, you can also choose a burly prowler or several zombies at which to shoot.

We chose Zombie Steve. Read the rest of this entry »

Oh, dear. This week’s Fingernail Tuesday is not good, I’m afraid.

Well, first of all. It kinda broke my heart to remove last week’s pretty opal-y sparkly polish. They were just so gorgeous! Really, even sparklier and prettier in person.

But, I made a Commitment. And when you make a Commitment, it’s a Commitment, and you don’t break a Commitment because then it’s not a Commitment. Right?

The polish itself echoed my reluctance. I have never had such a hard time getting polish off my nails. Literally. I scrubbed at them with a remover-soaked cotton ball forever. It took half an hour just to get my left thumb clean. I finally resorted to sticking my fingers into the remover bottle and soaking them in it for a minute or so, and then going at them with the wet cotton ball. And it still took ages. I think it was almost two hours before I finally had all the polish removed. Of course that might have been partly because I’d done three or four coats of the sparkle polish, and about that many of topcoat after.

Anyway. So it started out kind of rough.

I didn’t know what color to do next; I think I’m going to start running a poll. Maybe on the Tuesday posts, or on Friday? Anyway. I’d planned to do this really pretty matte pale-jade green, but instead, on a whim, grabbed this one:

I bought it at Sally’s, in the clearance tower. Again, on a whim. The color kind of intrigued me; is it yellow? Is it green? It looked like a really 50′s-type color, very Rat-Pack-in-Vegas, if you know what I mean. Which is very cool. Plus I don’t have any yellow polishes. Actually, I have very few light polishes, and the ones I do have are pearly-type or white.

So I decided to give it a try.

It goes on beautifully, really smooth, and not too clear. I hate those polishes that are so watery and need like a dozen coats to make a solid color, don’t you?

So the polish itself is really nice. And I’ve done some cooking, done some dishes, showered, all that, and no chips.

But the color…I just don’t like it. Nope. It’s actually prettier in the pictures than in person. It looks like more of a pale pure yellow below, but in person it has a sort of burnished greenish tinge to it that just doesn’t appeal to me much.

If I liked the color, it would be gorgeous. It’s very shiny. But I just don’t like it.

So I’m debating trying to add a glitter polish over it to make it look a little nicer. I don’t want to remove the polish–it’s only Tuesday–but I’m really not crazy about it.

If I do put another topcoat on, I’ll update this post.

Got any stories of the polish you regretted buying?

I was updating my FAQ a little while ago and wanted to link to the Polish editions of the Demons books on Amber Publishing’s website. And guess what I found? The Downside books are available in a boxed set over there! How cool is that? (Google translate tells me the wording at the top is “STACII KANE in a Box.” Which makes me think of the end of the movie SEVEN. Eek.)

Anyway, I was excited to see it, so there you go. Also, it occurs to me that I haven’t really updated the FAQ in a while, so if you have any questions you want in there, please ask them! (I did remember to add “How do you pronounce “Cesaria?” because I do get asked that fairly often.)

So. I saw something yesterday that reminded me of this; I’d ranted about it a bit on Twitter one night but not in a post here. You know what I really dislike? I really dislike kissing scenes in books where at any point one character “runs his/her tongue” over the other person’s lips. Eeeew. I don’t want my mouth licked, thank you. It tickles, and it feels slobbery.

I asked about this on Twitter and one of my pals there said he’d once dated a girl who really, really liked it. I think she’s an anomaly, since I’ve never known anyone else who did. And yet, this happens all the time in books. Why? It’s such a weird thing to do! Especially before that very first kiss, at least I think so. The lip-licking makes me think of a snake. Or a dog. It doesn’t make me think of sexy times.

There are plenty of places on the human body where tongues are welcome (that’s what she said, yeah, ha ha). But having the outside of my mouth licked just feels like the guy has bad aim, or like he’s trying to figure out if I’m something edible or a rock, or maybe like he’s seen way too many movies and thus will probably try to pull all those slick moves that look erotic but aren’t at all, and thus will bore me to death before anything actually happens.

I don’t want tongues inside my ears, either. In fact, I don’t want anything inside my ears. Not even air gently blown.

So…who is it out there who likes this, and keeps sticking it in books? It’s kind of like how someone got the idea that it felt good to have the cervix banged into, and for a while there were tons of books where men were banging into cervixes and that was driving the women wild. Um, actually, that hurts every woman I know. (But I confess, even I wrote it; I can’t remember what book it was in, but I did write it. Mainly because it seemed like it was in every book so I started wondering if maybe it was just me who found it painful, and everyone else loved it. It wasn’t until I had the guts to ask around that I discovered no, it hurts pretty much all women. I don’t remember if it stayed to publication or not.)

Anything you see in books and don’t “get?” How do you feel about the lip-licking thing? Got any questions you’d like put in my FAQ?

To-do update:

Finish Downside 5 (just over 50k now)
edits for SACRIFICIAL MAGIC
more words on New Project
possible exciting new Downside thing I can’t discuss yet
erotic novella (not yet started)
Demons novella (not yet started)

My Sexy German is named Gunter. Ha! No. I do not have a sexy German. What I do have, though, is a box full of copies of GEISTERFLUT, and this book is awesome. Seriously, check out how fucking cool this is:
Read the rest of this entry »