Addicted to Love

One of my dear friends mentioned to me the other day that she owns a book by a favorite author, Barbara Michaels, that she hasn’t read. The book has been sitting on her shelf for a while now. She’s saving it for a time when she really needs a sure-fire comfort read. Another friend chimed in that she, too, has a book by a favorite author that she’s saving until she has time to savor it.

I was astounded by these two comments. I mean, I know all about delayed gratification. I eat my vegetables before my dessert (mostly) and I save money now for next summer’s vacation (mostly), but I’d never, ever considered applying the concept to my reading material.

If you put the new Christine Feehan, Nalini Singh, or Colleen Gleason book in front of me, I’m not sure I’d be able resist reading it. Even the thought of doing so makes me twitchy.

Unfortunately, I’d probably enjoy these books on a whole different level if I didn’t snatch my reading time late at night or when I really should be doing something else. Some enterprising mental health professional is going to start a 12 step Reader’s Anonymous group one day for people like me…but I won’t be going.

How about you – do you wait for the time or the right moment to savor those highly anticipated books by favorite authors, or, like me, do you devour them as quickly as possible?

Day of the Red Lioness

Hi all, March 3 is the launch day in the magical month of March for my e-novel, Red Lioness Tamed, published by Liquid Silver Books, a Molten Silver release.

If yer partial to a futuristic adventurous romp of lust and love on the high celestial seas of space...if you have a yen for those cat shifter types, this might be the read for you.

Year 3051, the Earth calendar used on Terra-Mars, a terra-formed moon orbiting Mars, the home world of my heroine, Sun Rocket.

Blurb: What does a lioness shifter do when she's suddenly trapped in an unknown space cruiser's cargo hold? Then, despite her ability to savagely defend herself, she's trapped beneath the handsome human Captain. And next, cat-scratching ridiculously, she finds herself carnal-trapped, and meow yowl! bound by leather straps in his bed?

Answer: She fights tooth and claw. Problem: The loner Captain is nova-hot at seducing her.

The Power Of The Paranormal

I'm delighted to welcome Nancy Haddock as our guest blogger this Friday. Nancy writes fun vampire mysteries. La Vida Vampire, the first book in her new series, will be released on April first. Congratulations Nancy! Check out the wonderful cover.

Good Friday, Title Magic readers! I’m sooo delighted to be guest blogging with this outstanding group of American Title Contest finalists! They have The Power!

“The power of what?” you might ask.

For starters, they have the power of the paranormal in their writing. That’s right! Romance promises a brighter future, and the paranormal element in romance -- or in any genre -- brings a touch of mysticism and magic into our lives.

What is your favorite paranormal element in a book? Preternatural beings, such as vampires, faeries, or dragons?

Do you like your paranormal flavor in the form of witches or wizards? What kinds of magical abilities would you claim for your own? Throwing fireballs, making love potions, casting wealth spells?

If you love the paranormal of psychic phenomenon, would you choose to be clairvoyant, clairaudient, clairsentient?

I’ll be honest. My wildest fantasies aren’t about men. Nope, mine are about paranormal powers. I had a blast mixing and matching paranormal abilities in my upcoming release, LA VIDA VAMPIRE, but I have two favorites I didn’t give my main characters.

The first is teleportation! Yep, I want to be able to teleport – and not just to avoid the whole airport scene, or the increasingly expensive not-so-friendly-skies. I want to teleport simply so that I don’t have to pack for trips. Not only would teleporting get me where I want to go, it would let me pop home if I forgot my favorite hairbrush. Handy, huh?

My second paranormal ability – my back up if the whole teleporting thing didn’t work out – is to change clothes with a snap of my fingers. A new outfit appears, the old one goes into the ethereal cleaners, and all without setting foot in a clothing store!

Fun as it is to fantasize about paranormal powers -- and to give our characters a whole slew of them! -- the truth is that we often forget the powers that already reside within each of us. One of those is the power of choice. The American Title Contest finalists exercised their power to submit their work, and in a very public forum! This couldn’t have been easy, but they chose to seize the opportunity. They have The Power!

Next time you’re enjoying a paranormal romance, and really digging the powers the author has given the characters, remember you, too, have the power! Oh, and if you learn the secret of teleporting, give me a call. I’ve got a pot of gold with your name on it!



Nancy Haddock’s debut book, LA VIDA VAMPIRE, is a paranormal mystery romance, the first in a new series from Berkley. LA VIDA VAMPIRE will be released on April 1, 2008 in trade paperback. Nancy gives presentations on the Power of Persistence and other topics, and is currently persisting in her quest to re-learn surfing. To enter her monthly, “Where’s Cesca” contest, visit http://www.nancyhaddock.com/, and click on the Beach Party page.

STOP PRESS!

LA VIDA VAMPIRE is a RT 4 1/2 stars Top Pick for April.

Mega congratulations, Nancy. I'm thrilled for you. Helen

Are You Sitting Comfortably?

The other night, I was lying in bed beside my husband well on the way to oblivion when he asked, “How fast do you think you’re moving at the moment.”

Despite the fact my mind was fogged with sleep, that question should have been a no-brainer. But as he obviously knew something I didn’t and wanted to share, I gave him the reply he wanted. “You tell me.”

Turns out, the Earth spins at about 1000 miles per hour. So lying in my cozy bed, I’m actually whizzing through space at that speed. Okay. A little mind bending, but I can cope with that concept, as I’m sure you can. Don’t get too comfy though, we’re just getting started.

While we spin at 1000 mph, we travel around the sun at a speed of 50,000 mph. Mind-boggling. Oh yes. Add to that the fact our solar system (our sun and all its planets) travels once around our galaxy every 200 million years at the speed of 100,000 mph, while our galaxy (The Milky Way) is being pulled toward a large neighboring galaxy called Andromeda at a speed of 600,000 miles per hour (167 miles per second!).

The question is, if you combine all the above speeds, how fast are you moving?

I haven’t got a clue!

Any math geniuses reading this?

(Speeds quoted are approximate!)

Rocking Out

When I was a kid, I always had this image in my head of my grown-up self writing. I'd have a desk in front of a window that looks over something pretty. A Lake, mountains, gardens. I would use a fancy fountain pen and have solitude and quiet all day long so that I could concentrate and create wonderful things.

My adult self is a little bit different. Well, okay, my adult self is 180 degrees away from what I envisioned twenty years ago. These days silence and solitude make me twitchy, so I take my laptop wherever the action happens to be. When I'm not hanging out in my living room with hubby, friends, and cat, I'm parked in the local coffee shop, the break room at work, etc, people watching and pecking away at my latest project. No matter the location, though, I always always have music.

I'm a big fat philistine when it comes to my tunes. I think I own some Mozart somewhere. It's probably still wrapped in cellophane. I need to hear words, beats, riffs, wails. Something that makes me feel my scene. Something that makes me feel my characters. For example, Voice of the Bard was Rock/Southern rock. There was a lot of road music. Tom Petty's Running Down a Dream, Saving Grace, Last Dance With Mary Jane. Sheryl Crow's Diamond Road. Live For Today by 3 Doors Down. That's Anna. My current protagonist, Em, is a lot different. She's Patti Griffin. Natalie Merchant. Marjorie Fair. Sometimes Alison Krause. There's also some Rosemary Clooney in there. Hey, it's weird, but she fits the plot quite nicely!

Music is so important to my process that creating a book's soundtrack is part of the planning stage for me. Right now, I'm working on an outline for a fantasy that's related to American hobo culture, so I get to play with songs like Kimmie Rhodes' Desert Train. And just as my outline and plot may change while I write, so does the playlist. If something I chose at the beginning of the process doesn't feel right anymore, I remove it. If I stumble upon something new that fits my work, I'll add it.

So, what about you guys? Do you need dead silence or do you rock out a little while you write? Anybody have strange pre-writing rituals like mine?

Don't take it personally!

It hurts when someone tells you something you didn't want to hear. No matter how nicely they put the information it still stings to be on the receiving end of a rejection. The problem is that writers must deal with rejection regularly. A writer's life involves more rejections than acceptances.

In "Don't Take it Personally! The Art of Dealing with Rejection" author Elayne Savage explores how subtle and not so subtle rejection messages from childhood can follow us into adulthood. These lingering feelings of rejection can make even the smallest slight balloon out of proportion.

For example: you get back a letter from an editor about your novel and she said, "I had a difficult time relating to your heroine" and a part of you reads that as, "I don't like you."

This is obviously an extreme example but always remember not to take a comment like that personally; the editor was talking about your manuscript, and not you as a person. It can be difficult to make this distinction because your manuscript is your baby and you've slaved over it for months, if not years. If they attack your manuscript, it can feel like they attacked you. But look at what she said and you'll see she wasn't even attacking the manuscript; she simply couldn't relate to the heroine. That isn't good or bad; it's just a comment. Analyzing that comment could help you refine and deepen your manuscript.

One part of "Don't Take it Personally!" that relates to writers in particular was about an actor who was disheartened after so many auditions where the casting director said, "you aren't the right type". This actor bolstered her spirits and continued auditioning by remembering it is about selection, not rejection.

This applies to writers as well: editors are selecting not rejecting. Your manuscript might not have registered the right note with this editor but there are many editors. Never let one "selection" letter discourage you, but do pay attention to what they said.

Case in point: Dorchester rejected "Thief" for the "New Voice in Romance Contest" in 2003 because I had too much back-story that dragged the pace. This "selection" letter hurt but I paid attention, and I removed that back-story for later in the novel and then submitted the updated manuscript for American Title, and bingo! I was in. In round three, I got eliminated. But that doesn't mean, "we don't like you", it just means the other entries struck stronger notes with readers.

Elayne Savage in her introduction to "Don't Take it Personally" said, "I discovered that the opposite of rejection is not just acceptance--it's also perseverance." I think this applies to writers as well because the only way I've found to get over a rejection is to learn from it and then move on.

So, what have you learned from your "selection" letters? Did you ever have a big “Ah-ha!” moment that helped you edit a manuscript?

Safe till St. Patrick's Day

I'd like to welcome today's guest blogger Alethea Kontis! Alethea's a real renaissance woman in the world of publishing. She's sold short stories to Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show and Realms of fantasy, she's a contributing editor at Apex magazine, small press publisher of Nyx books, author of children's book Alpha Oops: the day Z went first, and, most recently, NYT best selling writer of The Dark Hunter Companion.

She might be a little away from keyboard today, but make her feel welcome so she'll have some Title Magic love when she gets back!

Safe till St. Patrick's Day
by Alethea Kontis
February 22, 2008


"Everybody, it seems to me
Just wants to be
Just like you and me…"
~John Mayer, St. Patrick's Day


The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Your life is what you make it. Be careful what you wish for. We've heard these sayings all our lives, and they all boil down to the same universal truth: perception means everything.

I was four when Mom fought the system and got me into Kindergarten. She went to the ends of the earth, her bored daughter in tow, attacking psychologists who refused to believe that her child was performing above her age level. When they finally decided she wasn't full of crap (as I was reading the TV Guide), they let me into school. It wasn't long before I was spending more time in a fourth-grade science class than I did with Mrs. Murray.

My father loves to tell the story of one Parents' Day, when a precocious young five- or six-year old approached him and announced, "Alethea can spell words I don't even know."

It was no secret: I loved school.
Of course, it helped that I had some pretty great teachers. (Mr. Stafford, Mr. Oberly, Mrs. Bowers, Mr. Hendrick…)

I started writing poetry in the second grade. In the third grade, my Aunt Theda taught me algebra and anatomy (she was premed at Duke and needed a study partner). In fourth grade, I learned the International Sign Language alphabet and used it to send secret messages to my friends. When I took French, I filled up the front and backs of test papers writing scenes using all my vocabulary words. I shaded the thirteen colonies with the flags of the states, and the class voted to give me extra credit. I passed notes in Spanish class…in Spanish. I memorized Shakespeare, and Poe, and Byron, and Carroll, and anyone else in the Literature book who lived in a pretty how town. My junior year, I alphabetized the periodic table of the elements and used THAT to send secret messages.

There are words for kids who love school. Nerd. Geek. Freak. Teacher's Pet. Loser. And there were people who made my life hell because of it.

When you're thirteen and your mother tells you that the kids only treat you the way they do because they're jealous…like hell you believe her. There is obviously something wrong with you, you're no good to anybody and never will be, and no one will ever love you. You let the jabs and whispered insults and cold shoulders get under your skin, and you wish you were dead. You shut yourself in your room and cry every day when you come home from school. You're the most miserable person on the planet and no one understands you.

And that's exactly what they want.

What your mother doesn't tell you when you're thirteen is that the rest of your life is just like high school all over again.

Do what you love and the money will follow. That one's true too, but it's really, REALLY (did I say really?) hard to get there. It's work--hard, unforgiving work--but you do it because you love it, you eat sleep and breathe it, and you can't imagine your life without it. It's an obsession. It runs in your veins.

Cut me and I bleed the publishing industry.

There comes a time in a writer's life when the veil falls away and the romance is gone. When you're slogging through the middle of a project you MUST FINISH because you have things like bills and deadlines hanging over your head. It's the last thing you want to do when you get up in the morning, but you have no choice. Then you finish the project, turn it in to the editor, and move on to the next thing. By the time it actually hits the shelves it's a bittersweet reunion, because you've long since been passionate about something else.

I live in a different world, a world of deadlines and word counts and time travel, a world where everyone I meet and everything I do is inevitably part of my next story. I write my own life, and it's a fantastic adventure.

Of course, it helps that I've had some really great teachers. (Andre Norton, Orson Scott Card, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Rebecca Moesta, Kevin J. Anderson…)

I can't tell you the exact day that I woke up and realized I was on the other side of the Looking Glass…it just happened. And what I saw when I looked back to the Real World was that all those Green People were still there thinking I was some untouchable, ethereal being, and hating me for being happy. I wanted to climb on my soapbox and yell at them, remind them that I was still human. I lost friends and missed family just like everyone else. Last year I was stripped of my privacy and my innocence, was abused and mistreated by crazy cultists, got passed up for promotion, and had my heart broken into a million pieces. I have a laundry list of depressing events, proof enough that I have a right to be just as miserable as all of them.

Suddenly I realized: making me miserable only made them powerful.

Why would I want to lose the magic that makes me ME?

You know, sometimes the grass is just greener. But it's greener because some beautiful man with a passion spends all the time he's not scaling cliffs working to make the world a nicer place to live in. He digs and tills and plants and tends, over seasons and years, and eventually that love shines like an immortal beacon from the top of windswept hills. His garden has every right to be greener, and we should all celebrate him for it.

More importantly, he should celebrate himself.

Do what you love, and the Green People will follow. It's high school all over again. But you can't let that stop you. Ever. You are fabulous. Remember that. The curse of the Green People is that they get to be themselves and wear their misery for the rest of their lives.

You and I only have to wear green on St. Patrick's Day.

I was emailing a friend from high school earlier and telling him about my week. His response was: Who are you? And whose life are you leading?

It's still just me, I told him. But this is my life now. My crazy, happy, beautiful, green, magic and miserable life.

It's no secret. I love writing.

There are words for people like that: New York Times Bestselling Author.