My thanks to Helen Scott Taylor for inviting me to write a guest blog about Knight's Fork, and also to Savanna (your chocolates are in the mail) for the warm welcome, and also for the inspiration to do my own version of a Don't Buy list.
ELEVEN REASONS NOT TO PICK UP KNIGHT'S FORK
11. Disrespectful words such as tallywacker and joystick are used with reference to male body parts
10. It's long. (Not the tallywacker—well, it is, but you don't wish to know that—I meant the book.) Knight's Fork has 340 pages, and most new Chapters do not begin on a fresh page.
9. It has a Prologue and an Epilogue. That's two beginnings, and two endings!
8. It's going to take about eight hours to read.
7. The hero is a 28-year old virgin and proud of it.
6. The heroine is locked in a chastity belt, and she doesn't have a key
5. The family tree is so complicated they needed to spread it over two pages.
4. If you read in bed, your significant other might be disturbed by your giggles and snorts.
3. The F- word is used, but only by villains, and only in conversation
2. If you read it in public, someone may ask why the naked man on the cover is lying in a puddle
1. If you don't read every paragraph, you may ask yourself why the naked man is lying in a puddle.
IMHO, my "Eleven Reasons…" is the perfect companion piece to my Mission Statement.
I write to entertain… myself and others. I expect to provide my readers with six to eight hours of amusement, a couple of really good laughs, a romantic frisson or two from the sensual scenes, something to think about when the book is finished, a thoroughly satisfying happy ending, and possibly some useful information.
For a start, the list is more amusing, but makes substantially the same points about what I write, and what my weaknesses (or strengths) are. Secondly, I seem to have been officially saddled with "wacky" as a one of the twenty most important words describing Knight's Fork.
I don't think a seriously humorous futuristic romance about a Knight on a quest, a Queen in search of a sperm donor, and a right royal scandal is … that… so I should very much like to condition booksellers and librarians to read "wacky" and think "tallywacker".
Do you think it is doable?
Do you think that is wise?
From the heroine's point of view:
Knight's Fork is about a Queen whose life depends upon giving her King an heir. (Very Ann Boleyn!!!) The problem is that she is an alien on his world, and they are genetically incompatible. She cannot fake a pregnancy and adopt, because these hairless aliens don't wear clothes.
She needs a sperm donor! One who doesn't advertise. One who is the soul of discretion. Only one green-eyed god-Prince has the right stuff.
From 'Rhett's point of view, the last thing he wants is to become entangled in any sense of the word with an Imperial Princess who is not only an enemy King's consort, but Tarrant-Arragon's sister. He has no desire to play a latter day Prince Paris to her Helen of Troy.
23 comments:
Rowena, thank you so much for joining us on Title Magic. Your book sounds like a lot of fun for anyone who enjoys speculative romance. I think there's four books in the series. Do they need to be read in order?
Welcome, Rowena! Your book sounds right up my alley. And congrats on the LASR award! Those ladies have great taste!
Helen,
It is my pleasure to join you, and you are right. Depending how you count, I've either written three and a half books or five.
They are all intended to be stand alone books, but if you've ever read or written a series, you'll know that an author can never fit enough of the backstory from the previous book in... unless she's JK Rowling.
Forced Mate was my first book (and the book that was a finalist in the Dorchester/Romantic Times contest "New Voice In Romance" which preceded "American Title".
Forced Mate is available as a paperback, published by Dorchester, and also as an e-book (published by me!).
The next book is the short story Mating Net, which is only available as an e-book from New Concepts Publishing. It costs $2.50 and is only 58 pages, so not worth printing.
Then, there's Insufficient Mating Material which is available in paperback and also on Kindle.
Insufficient Mating Material recently won third place in the PRISMS, recently it won the Romance category of the 2008 Hollywood Book Festival, it also won a CAPA, and a Fantasm....
My latest release in KNIGHT'S FORK, which was released this month, and which has already been awarded a LASR readers' choice for best book of the week, and a PNR Reviewer's Top Pick.
That's the best order (chronological) but Mating Net is a prequel, so can be skipped altogether, or read first.
Thank you for asking,
Rowena
mel hiers,
Thank you very much for your welcome, and kind words about the LASR.
Best wishes,
Rowena Cherry
"If you've made up your mind to impale someone, do it with conviction."
~Rhett, Knight’s Fork
Rowena, so wonderful to see you here. I just woke up since I'm on the night owl schedule.
Yeah, I think that would work. Tallywacker or Tallywacky instead of wacky.
Can a gentleman havee a tallywacky rather than merely a tallywacker?
I loved your list even more the second time around.
Hmmmm, now I know what to purchase for the entire series.
Hi Rowena, love your list! And love wacky books too. Especially ones that include long tallywackers.
Congrats on the LASR award and the TNR top pick. :)
Hi Rowena,
I love your sense of humor, and your books sound like a hoot!
Congratulations on all of your success!
Tamara Hughes
Savanna,
I'll tell you a secret. I'd never heard the word tallywacker until Deborah Macgillivray mentioned it, and I fell in wordgeek love with it.
It was too late to insert a tallywacker in the scene in Chapter Five which I would have posted, but for the guidelines. However, I did give one to my villain.
To me, tallywacker reminds me of
"Tallyho!" the hunting cry of aristocratic gentlemen in tightly fitted pink coats.
Also of a weedwacker....
I must pop off to look up the proper etymology.
Thank you for commenting.
Rowena Cherry
"Nice legs, shame about the...morals!"
~'Rhett, Knight's Fork
I'm back. My face aches from laughing and so does my tummy. This was more fun than sneaking into the dictionary stacks in the school library and looking up rude words.
In the end, I combined the word in question with "Etymology". I still learned more than I needed to know about Kentucky turtles.
However, apparently the term in question comes from a notched tally stick used in banking.
http://www.altacoustic.net/?page_id=48
The mind boggles.
Edie,
Thank you very much for your kind remarks.
Rowena Cherry
Hello, Tamara,
Thank you. I'm hoping that a good bit of escapism that makes people laugh is on the market at just the right time.
Best wishes,
Rowena Cherry
Rowena, yeah, I can see how tallywacker would remind you of tallyho, as in after the fox -- my only knowledge of that term, except as in tallyho, I'm departing now, spoken by British characters. Or the uppercrust.
A tally stick used by bankers, that makes sense. Power and money and sex.
Of course, now weedwacker could have a whole new funny twist put on that term...hmmmm...
Off to check out the link...
Savanna,
I have been advised that I have to conform to very high standards of politesse here.
However, a male hippopotamus has a built in weed wacker. I visited the hippo enclosure at exactly the right moment to be shocked and damaged for life one day.
I'm afraid that I have never looked at respectable weedwackers in the same way ever since.
Omygoodness, I never experienced that particular hippo reality. I've always thought they were adorable, if incredibly dangerous creatures -- drowning the unfortunate during mating season.
However, now I've got a new breed of alien for one of my OtherWorlds.
Weedie, for short? Unless, he's particularly 'long' of course. Extra Weedie?
Savanna,
MIT (the highly learned Massachussets Institute of Technology) puts out a poster that might interest you.
It is a too-scale, accurate set of diagrams of male members "of the animal kingdom". The P... word is used in the plural.
Thanks, Rowena...Hmmmm...the poster would be good for alien character research. And I'd certainly be taking a walk on a wild side I haven't fully experienced yet.
Rowena,
Thank you so much for joining us on Title Magic! I'm always late for our guests...Fridays are very busy days for me.
But I did want to write in and say the excerpt looks wonderful!
Lexie
Savanna,
Dr Desmond Morris wrote a lovely book called "Manwatching". From him, I learned about the concept of "body mimicry, where for one reason or another, one part of the body looks like another.
Imagine a pig's corkscrew tail. Imagine if body mimicry applied (which apparently it does)...
However, when designing your aliens, you cannot go entirely for the slapstick or you could paint yourself into a corner.
There is always the possibility that this book's alien may be required to be the hero or villain of your next book. In either role he has to be equipped to be taken seriously, either as a threat or as a romantic possibility.
:-) IMHO.
The oh-so-careful Rowena
Lexie,
Thank you very much for your generous comments about my excerpt from Knight's Fork.
Also thanks for the hospitality.
Rowena
Rowena, excellent point. I recall reading Dr. Desmond Morris's first book, but not Manwatching.
Since I adore writing about other sentient species I'm always on the lookout for ways to create them, uniquely, or in a way which fits the story.
Like most authors, I've painted myself into some tight corners. So far, knock on wood, I've managed to imagine my way out of them.
Actually, I could use your pig example as one of the characters in a sequel to Tangerine Carnal Dreams -- just one of the many species visiting Yemisque, for a really good time.
The first book would probably be "The Naked Ape", right?
Yep, that's right. The Naked Ape. My ancient memory banks weren't cooperating. Excellent book. Very revealing about the animal side of our nature.
Thank you for that Savanna, and thank you Helen, and all the American Title IV finalists for giving me this opportunity to visit your blog.
Best wishes,
Rowena Cherry
Post a Comment