Wonderful post! So insightful and well-put. In the future, instead of trying to explain my motivations for writing difficult and/or unlikable heroines, I’m just going to link here.

Plenty of people out there are loved and they do not deserve to be. And plenty of people who deserve to be loved, aren’t.

This. This, exactly. And to add to it, the amazing, wonderful thing about love is that true love sees flaws and loves not despite, but because of those flaws. Love is diverse, love stories should be, too. There is no universal standard of lovability. The very qualities that make me hate a person could be the reason someone else is head-over-heels in love–and I think that’s awesome.

I know quite a few very nice men who are married to very mean women. For a long time I wondered what they saw in each other, until I realized that perhaps each saw in the other qualities that they, themselves, lacked. The reason those men are so nice is because they don’t have to be mean. Their wives are the ones who demand better seating in restaurants, and tell people talking in movies to shut the hell up, and bitch out people who don’t treat their husband right.

As cheesy as the phrase “you complete me” is, if we’re lucky, that’s just what we get when we love–we are complete. Not completely good, but whole and functioning and happy. And when I get to the end of a romance novel, that’s the way I want to see the hero and heroine–not shagging from sunrise to sunrise, not having scads of babies or fostering deserving orphans, just happy, whole, and better than they were before.

Get it while it's hot…

I’m taking a break from my nonstop writing orgy (32K since Thursday) to pimp the book of a friend. Now, I just bought my copy today, so you will have to wait a bit for me to rant and rave about Evie Byrne‘s new novella, Dante’s Inferno, but I’ve read another book of hers that will be coming out soon from Samhain, and I’m currently reading one of her works in progress, and they are both fab-u-lous.

And if you want a professional opinion, just check out Mrs. Giggles’ review of Dante’s Inferno.

Not bad for book number one, eh? So buy yourself a copy. Get hooked.

And now, back to my regularly scheduled lack of blogging.

Now that I’ve read it, I wish I hadn’t liked it quite so much. Perhaps then I wouldn’t have read it so quickly. And if I hadn’t read it so quickly, I would have had more time to enjoy it.

Private Arrangements is a grand book. Really, that’s the only word I can think of to describe it, except, perhaps, “delicious” and Delicious happens to be the title of Sherry Thomas’s next book, which I will be buying the day it comes out in August, 2008, so I really should conserve that word for further use this summer. And speaking of this summer, expect another terse blog post telling you to go away. I apologize, in advance, for my future rudeness, but if today was any indication, I won’t be in my right mind.

I should start by saying, this is not a review. I’m lousy at reviewing, and I’m suspect, besides, since Sherry Thomas wrote a lovely double review of my novellas Ember and Like a Thief in the Night for Dear Author back in January which probably sold more copies of Like a Thief than all of my confused, sorry little attempts to promote the story, combined. But please don’t think I am biased just because I have reason to be, because if you do, you will miss out on one of the best historical romances ever. Ever!

You think I’m exaggerating. I must admit, I’m prone to hyperbole. What I love, I love, and I can’t shut the hell up about it. Which usually leads people to nod and smile as they back away from me. So I try to tone it down. I try to mention any possible flaw in a book when I recommend it so that people won’t think I’m some sort of blindly rabid fan girl. So that people will think I’m reasonable.

This time, I’ll just admit it: I’m not reasonable. Technically speaking, Private Arrangements’ wind-up to the end was a little slow, and the end felt a little fast, but really, that’s just me grasping at straws trying to think of something critical to say about a book I devoured in three hours and forty-two minutes, and plan to start rereading at a more leisurely pace once I finish this post.

You must understand, when I read this book, I got shivers. The experience was akin to the first time I read a book by Judith Ivory, Loretta Chase or other authors from the very short list of names on my Read Everything They Ever Wrote list and Keeper Shelf (actually, it’s more of a cabinet…).

I didn’t think about the writing, or the plot, or wonder where it was going. I just read. Page after page. I was entranced, insatiable, totally p0wned. I could not put it down. To be blunt: Sherry Thomas made me her bitch, and I liked it!

I was swept away by the grand, Gilded-Age setting (note, I love this time period, and I wish there were more novels set in it), and the grand passion between Gigi and Camden. The hero and heroine are intelligent, beautiful, rich, passionate, larger-than-life…and they are idiots. Complete, utter idiots. They are complicated, proud and obsessed — and completely irrational because of it. I adored them.

The plot is this: When Gigi and Camden were young, they were terribly in love. But love made him stubbornly noble, and her passionately deceitful. When his nobility met her deceit, the clash of two such indomitable, unreasonable personalities drove them apart. Camden rejected Gigi and put an ocean between them.

The story begins eleven years later, when Gigi has filed for divorce. Camden returns to England from New York to tell Gigi that he will grant her a divorce–if she will give him an heir. Huh? That seems backwards and dumb and completely illogical. But I totally bought it because these characters are experts at deceiving themselves. They are each their own worst enemy.

Those two, their love is like a blues song; it’s like the tastiest type of tragedy–the kind where it isn’t fate or the actions of villains that keep the lovers apart, but their own human flaws and foolish pride. They push, they pull, they rage, plot and insult — and in every instant, in every action, it is achingly apparent to the reader that these two characters are still madly, passionately in love. Oh, the drama! It’s delicious.

As the story unfolds, they begin to relate to each other as grown-ups instead of hormonal, over-dramatic young people. Camden comes to understand why Gigi did what she did, and Gigi experiences a bit of Camden’s old stubborn nobility. It’s lovely.

Also lovely is the secondary plot involving Gigi’s social climbing mother. I love the nuances to her character. She could easily have been the villain of the piece, a wretched caricature of a modern-day stage mother in historical drag. Instead, she is complicated, intelligent, self-deprecating, and, eventually, self-aware. In fact, all of the secondary characters are wonderfully well-drawn, with flaws and virtues all their own.

This “not a review” is getting pretty long. I suppose I should wrap up the love fest so I can start my rereading, but first, I need to say a few words about the writing: it’s wonderful. Smooth, sophisticated, elegant and intelligent, the narrative carried me along, never talking down, never dumbing down (I’ll post examples later–I was so busy reading, I forgot to mark my favorite passages). And, oh, that vocabulary. :sigh:

Private Arrangements is all the things I’ve always loved about historical romance. It’s a vivid, intense, Technicolor-bright tale of compelling characters and dramatic love painted across the wide, glittering canvas of a fascinating historical era. It’s one of three books I’ve read this year that I’m going to press into the hands of friends who love to read as I say, “You must read this. It’s grand.“

Now, since I was lucky enough to win an early copy of this book in a contest on Dear Author, I’m holding a contest to give away the copy I would have bought at precisely 11 am on March 25 from the Borders on Lake Ave (no Amazon–I hate to wait.) to someone who comments on this post. The deadline is Friday, March 28, 2007. As with the Dear Author contest, the catch here is that the winner will have to mention the novel in a forum, or blog post.

But come back on March 25th when I’ll give away the copy of Private Arrangements by Sherry Thomas that I would have bought, if I hadn’t been so lucky as to win a copy in the Dear Author contest.

The World Without Us presents houses, cities, museums and monuments–the man made environments we imagine will last centuries after we are gone–as fragile, perishable creations that endure only through our constant vigilance and care. We are ants, ever building, patching, pumping, and shoring-up our constructions. Without us, the passage of decades would wear down even the greatest cities, bury them in greenery, or wash them away like sandcastles in the rain.

This book is a must for anyone who reads or writes sci-fi. I just started reading, and only 6 chapters in, it has reshaped the baker’s dozen of post-apocalyptic futures sitting in limbo on my hard drive. This book rocks. Get it, read it, love it. The World Without Us by Alan Weisman.

My ARC of Ann Aguirre’s Grimspace arrived in the mail today. If her vast Grimspace Publicity Juggernaut has somehow missed you, Grimspace is an exciting new sci-fi novel which Jane of Dear Author recently reviewed very favorably and of which Sharon Shinn said the following:

An irresistable blend of action and attitude. Sirantha Jax doesn’t just leap off the page–she storms out, kicking, cursing and mouthing off. No wonder her pilot falls in love with her; readers will, too.

This book is one of my top five awaited reads for 2008. I wanted to read this book so much that when Ann asked if she could hire me to do a bookmark for Grimspace, I said, “Love to, but you have to give me an ARC.”

And now my ARC is here, in all of its pristine, white paper covered glory. So, if you’ll excuse me, I am going to go read.

Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune
If you have a PS3, you need to own this game. You need this game like you need air, food and water, because this is the game your PS3 was made for.

For a long time, video game makers have been touting the cinematic qualities of their games. But in the video game world, “Cinematic Qualities” usually add up to long, talky cut scenes and movies with awkward dialog, and Parappa-style button-pushing sequences that get annoying real fast. But watching someone play Uncharted is like watching an Indiana Jones style adventure where the main character sometimes dies, and restarts the action sequence.

Aside from a tendency to push you into shoot-outs after cut scenes, Uncharted offers a great blend of platforming elements and third-person shooting (which I much prefer to 1st person shooters). The graphics are realistic, yet painterly, the animation is superb, and the dialog and story are better than half the action movies that came through the theaters last year. Nicholas Cage and National Treasure, Eat your heart out.

There are a hundred things I want to say about this game, but time and space are limited today, so I’ll wrap up with the following

• Game Play: It’s a baby bear game–everything is just right.
  
• Character design–superb! The main character, Drake, is easy on the eyes, and the female character, Elena is strong, capable and so realistic looking. Don’t let the tank-top and shorts fool you, she’s like the anti-Lara Croft.
• Voice acting–awesome. Really. Nicholas Cage should watch and take notes.
• Environment–beautiful. The texture artists deserve a raise and a trip to an island as beautiful as the one they created in the game. And the programmers who did the water need some sort of medal proclaiming that they have designed the Best Water Effects in the History of Video Games. Evah! I got shot a couple of times because I was distracted by the ocean, or the pretty, pretty waterfalls.
• Chutzpah: This game is a platform shooter about lost treasure, Spanish gold, Nazi experiments, curses, zombies, modern-day pirates and germ warfare. It really has something for everyone, and it juggles every aspect in a most entertaining manner. I can’t recommend it enough.

You may have read her book reviews on I Swear it’s Not Chick Porn, or her short story in “The Serial” but if you haven’t read her blog, you are missing out. Her blog posts totally rock. They’re insightful, interesting, and thought-provoking. They are, in short, the kind of blog posts I would want to write if a magical fairy one day floated down from the heavens and blessed me with the gift of Good Bloggery.

She has a marvelous ongoing series of posts on classifications of Romance novels. Her posts on fairytales are tons of fun. And she dares to ask the question, “What in the bloody hell is up with the anatomically misplaced hymens in so many Romance novel love scenes.” Okay, maybe she didn’t say “what in the bloody hell” because as she has wisely pointed out, “why in the bloody hell” is not terribly British.

Anyway, point is, this is a blog that always gets me thinking, and if you haven’t read it, you should give it a try.

Yeah, What She Said is an ongoing series in which Bettie will discuss the blogs she reads instead of writing her own blog.

1. Update: December 26, 2007 through January 1, 2008: Free Harlequin eBooks! You can download one book a day.
2. Paperback Writer’s 2006 Free eBook Challenge
   This here is a big, mama-jama list o’ free fiction. Lynn Viehl (she of the Stardoc & Darkyn novels) challenged her blog readers to write original free stories for their readers. Also, check out the sidebar for links to Viehl’s outstanding freebies.
3. be delicious by Annie Dean (Ann Aguirre)
   Friends to lovers. Short. Sweet. Hot. There are actually four free stories on this page. I haven’t read them all yet–but only because I’m pacing myself. ;o)
4. Meeting in Darkness by Imogen Howson
   Clicking around on the Drollerie Press site, I came across the cover of Ms. Howson’s forthcoming YA novel, Frayed Tapestry. It is a thing of beauty. And the hook is cracktastically hookalicious. That book’s on my list. Meeting in Darkness was Howson’s contribution to the Romance Divas Free eBook Challenge. It’s short, sweet, and I adore her writing style. Also, her freebie, Helen is available at Drollerie Press.
5. One Night Stand by Dionne Galace
   What happens when they stay for breakfast? (Good gory fun. This story is not for the faint of heart or the weak of stomach.)
6. The Serial
   No, this isn’t shameless self-promotion. Okay. It’s not just shameless self promotion. It’s a Watch This Space announcement. Tumperkin‘s two-part short story, the Ring, is on it, and, come January, there will be something new.

All right. That’s it, y’all. It is time for me to go forth and shop. (Yes, I know it’s Christmas Eve). Here’s hoping your Christmas is full of peace, love, and many, many good reads.

P.S. This list is by no means complete. Mostly, it’s what I could think of off the top of my head. If you have recommendations for good free reads, please post them in the comments.

Which is quite a nice kick in the pants for yours truly. I keep meaning to hold a contest (all the cool kids are doing it), but I have this problem when it comes to actually putting stuff in the mail. (Yet another reason I like ePublishing.)

Knowing my natural penchant for postal-avoidance, I thought and thought and thought, and ate a Godiva truffle, and thought some more about how to give something away without having to mail it.

Here’s my solution: I do an electronic give away. Instead of oh-so-cute and cuddly hand-sewn items, I will give away cold hard pixels. I have at my disposal, Photoshop, Illustrator, Fireworks, Flash and a lovely new toy called a Wacom tablet that lets me draw straight into the graphics program of my choice.

Maybe you’ve been wanting a flash banner for your website, or a pretty cover for your free ebook, or an anime avatar drawn in your image. Here’s your chance. The first three people to respond to this post get the web-only file type of their choice, three hours of work by me and up to three of their favorite royalty-free images from dreamstime.com or istockphoto.com to be purchased by me for use in their shiny new file.

Examples of graphics stuff I’ve done:I did a bookmark for Ann Aguirre using images from the cover of her forthcoming novel Grimspace. Check her kick-ass quote from Sharon Shin! I asked that part of my payment be a signed copy of the book–I am so looking forward to reading it. Have been since I read the excerpt on her site ages ago.

I did the cover from Ember using this royalty free image, and, depending on the version, a copyright-free illustration from the original Perrault version of Cinderella or a curl of smoke as the background.

Then there’s the anime avatar, which, apparently, looks enough like me to get me recognized at a LARA meeting IRL. But maybe that’s just because anime me also has short hair and brown skin and there aren’t so many women fitting that description being newbies at RWA local chapter meetings.

Also, here’s the Flash banner I did for Like a Thief in the Night before I got the cover.

Here’s the static banner ad I did after. I still need to update the Flash image…

I also did all of the graphics on this blog layout, and my web site (but don’t take the website as an add–I did it all in one afternoon and I totally intend to re-do it up nicer when inspiration strikes me. :g:)