Stacia Kane

I had a great time this Sunday doing my Author Day at the Loves Romances ebook Yahoo group-everyone there was very friendly and made me feel welcome.

It also massaged my little writer’s ego that, when I mentioned in passing The Black Dragon (my unsubbed novel that I still adore but need to get off my lazy butt and show someone!), people actually asked questions about it!I’m sure they were just being polite, but honestly, it was less an ego massage than a “duh”.

Why the hell haven’t I submitted that? What’s wrong with me? I only had an excuse for the first few months after I finished it-it was an entry in the Goldren Heart so I really couldn’t submit it until I’d heard back on that (didn’t final, but did come close-one more tenth of a point was all I needed. Damn.) But after that, there was, and is, no excuse. (Pregnancy was an excuse not to write-well, not an excuse, because it totally blocked me, but still. It was not an excuse not to send out a query letter for a book that was already done and that I knew people enjoyed reading.)

Yes, part of me is convinced the book will never find a home. It’s not an Erorom, so I’m afraid the big unwritten rule I break (my hero kills the bad guy, instead of waiting for him to drown, or letting random highwaymen do it, or trying to rescue him from a cliff but the bad guy falls and dies anyway, or whatever other deaux ex machina are brought in to keep the hero from actually taking real revenge) will be a problem. Erorom breaks more rules all around, so I’m not worried about such a plot point there. Which is good, since I’m a bloodthirsty kind of girl. But TBD isn’t Ero, and I don’t want to make it so-it would mess with the characters too much. Frankly, my hero would be a total hypocrite and nowhere near the man he really is if I let him play willy-nilly in the heroine’s pants. Or chemise.

But I’ve woken up this morning filled with a terrible resolve. I will re-edit it (it’s been a year or so since I even read it) and I will start subbing it.

Dammit.

(And the first review for my Teaser came in-Maysreviews rated it “Excellent-4 stars”! Happy me.)

The couches were delivered yesterday! Yay! We finally have something to sit on. And it only took 6 weeks since the day we moved in here. So that’s good.

I burned dinner last night though. That was bad. But then Stephen went out for fish and chips, which was good. So I’m not entirely sure where my karma is with yesterday.

Got some more work done today! Yes! The Faery fell asleep on the way home from dropping Princess off at school, and stayed asleep until we picked her up. So that was several lovely hours of free time. Unfortunately, the batteries on my Alphasmart were too low for me to work for longer than 40 minutes. See the good/bad pattern at work here?

Tomorrow we go to buy a car, which is good. But the money my Mom transferred to us hasn’t cleared, so that’s bad.

I’m now watching Buffy. Buffy is definitely good.

What’s good and bad in your life today?

My Mom is insisting on reading my book, despite my pleas to her not to. She says she wants to brag to her workmates and show it to them. I keep trying to explain to her that, much as I appreciate it, maybe she doesn’t want to share her daughter’s repeated use of the word “cock” with her fellow nurses.

And speaking of cock, how do we all feel about blow jobs? More specifically, how do we enjoy reading about them? Do you? Or do you think that if you wanted to hear about blow jobs you would go to bed with your man?

In other words, is it sexy, or is it dull? We might do it, and enjoy it, but do we enjoy reading about it in what is, after all, our fantasy?

A good cunnilingus scene is hot, but is a blow job scene just something that makes us think of the guy who used to shove our heads into his lap, a la the guy Charlotte dates on Sex and the City?

Inquiring minds…

My first piece of published fiction is released in ebook format today by Whiskey Creek Press-Torrid! (Of course, those of you who found me through the Torrid Temptations blog already know this!)

I’m very, very excited about this and hoping that it does well! So go check it out (http://whiskeycreekpress.com/torrid/) and let me know if you like it!

I finished the Moore “Serenity Falls” books. I still recommend them, but have to say that they suffered the fate a lot of horror books do, in that they fell apart at the end. I just didn’t get it, ultimately.
This could just be me. I like to have everything very clearly spelled out in my horror. Other book I’m A-OK for subtlety (with the very obvious and fervent exception of sex scenes in romances, of course! We need those to be as explicit as possible!), but horrors I want the full Who What Where When and, most especially, Why. I want every detail. Don’t bring up intriguingly scary little things and then don’t fully explain them later! Don’t assume I know why that woman killed her husband. I want the full denoument. I want the bad guy to start Monologuing.

This is one reason (among many) that I find The Changeling to be one of the scariest movies ever. Not only is it just plain freaking terrifying, but at the end you know exactly what happened and why. The full horror of it is permitted to sink all the way in, leaving you nervously looking over your shoulder at every house creak.

Any thoughts? What books disappointed you with a fudgy ending or just a non-ending? Like The Crimson Petal and the White, another book I loved until the end just fell apart on me? Like John Carpenter films and his damned ambiguous endings (The Thing, while a fantastic movie that I love, is guilty of this)?

Share!
If anyone actually reads this…

No, not of failure, or of the story dying my head.I can’t write today because I’m too scared of the hellhounds. And the demon corpses. And the little wooden figurines that are apparently possessed in that spare room.

In other words, once I calm down enough to explain exactly what I’m talking about, I’m scared because I am currently reading a fucking fantastic horror novel.It’s called “Serenity Falls” by James A. Moore. I guess it was originally published as one enormous book, but now it’s been divided into three parts. I’m in the middle of the second, “The Pack” and I feel perfectly OK about admitting that I am really, really creeped out by it.

One of the cover blurbs-several of the blurbs, in fact-mentions Stephen King’s early work. I would agree with this, but I think it’s scarier (except for parts of “It” that really were terrifying-this book is on a par with them.) And with less reliance on old song lyrics.

I love horror novels, but it’s rare to find some that are truly scary. Too often I’m disappointed. Anyone else notice this? How hard it is to find a really good scary story?

When we were looking for an apartment we looked at one inhabited by a lovely couple. The wife was a horror writer. She mentioned something about how she had always secretly wanted to write literary fiction, and I said, “THat’s funny. I’ve always wanted to write horror.”Which is true. I’d love to be able to write horror.

What I’d really love to write is genuinely scary horror with some good sexy romantic scenes in there too, but I don’t know that anyone would buy that.One of these days…sigh.

Anyway, go buy Serenity Falls. There’s three books-Writ in Blood, The Pack, and Dark Carnival. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Baby has refused to properly nap the last couple days, so no writing was done.

BUT…there is some good news. Two weekss ago we started the Princess on these digestive enzymes, Peptizyde and Zyme Prime. The theory is that some autistic behaviors (which she has, but she’s never been diagnosed with anything) are caused by problems with digesting certain foods, namely gluten (from wheat) and casein (from dairy). The lack of proper digestion of those foods means the pollute the bloodstream, which creates an opiate effect in the brain while at the same time starving it of essential nutrients. I read about this and decided to give them a try.

While I won’t say the improvements have been dazzling, there have definitely been improvements. She seems to understand concepts better, and is more attentive. There’s been a definite improvement in her behavior towards the Faery-she likes to play with her now and is much nicer. She’s also not so fussy and bratty, and she doesn’t complain that her tummy hurts anymore.

So yay!

So we’ve been planning today for the last couple of weeks. Hubby is taking me to Glastonbury to do some shopping. Most exciting.

Except, of course, nobody slept a wink last night. We have the Princess on these enzymes that are supposed to help her with her behavioral issues. The big side effect is they make her wet her bed. So she crawled, soaking wet, into our at likw 5:30. When I was still awake because I have not been able to fall asleep to save my life lately.

Now Princess’s ear hurts, and we’re pretty sure she has an infection. Of course, we’re not signed on with any particular doctor yet so I have no idea what to do. I suppose if it comes down to it we’ll take her to the hospital.

Will I get to Glastonbury today? We’ll see. To be honest, I’ll be a bit pissed if I don’t because I originally wanted to do this by myself on the train, but hubby insisted on driving me, so here we are.

When I should be working?

I’m actually about 2500 words into my new book. Yippee! And it’s going pretty well. I know it will need some work when it’s time to edit but on the whole I’m quite pleased-it’s coming out nicely, not so dialogue-heavy, and I’m establishing all my stuff early on so nobody will be confused later.

So why am I playing online instead of working?

Because we got a new computer today, so I am indulging myself in online fun.

And here’s a question, in case somebody stumbles across this and feels like answering: When a man finds a wounded woman, takes her home, and undresses her to get her in the tub to warm her up, is he an unredeemable cad for noticing she has nice tits? Does it help that he’s ashamed of himself for noticing?

Sheesh, the kinds of questions that come up when you enter the fun and exciting world of erotic romance…

I was talking to my Dad the other day and mentioned that I’m getting ready to start work on a new novel, getting everything straight in my head. Because nobody wants to be a “pantser” forever.
My Dad was fascinated by this. He couldn’t understand how I can keep all that in my head. He said he would forget it all before he got halfway through.

The best explanation I could come up with was to say it’s like a movie, one that you’ve seen a lot, so you’re just telling the story the way it exists already. Except it came from your head.

But it’s already in my head. All of it. I just have to unearth it, scrape off the layers of junk and dust and pull it whole from where it is. That won’t be done until it’s all written, but I need to find the barest bones of it so I can get my synopsis done. Which is always handwritten in a special notebook I keep just for such things-bits of dialogue, scene ideas, character studies, lists of names, stuff like that. Not all of it ends up being used, but eventually I may find use for the discarded stuff-for my last novel The Black Dragon I ended up using a scene I’d planned for a different book, and I have every confidence that eventually these things will turn up useful.

It’s about elves, and an elf war, and a spy, and another spy, and an Elf Queen who wants to destroy the planet.

Sound fun?