Dad: “Boys are made of snips and snails and puppydog tails.  Girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice.”

Little Raine: “Why?  Can’t I have a puppydog tail too?”

We’re making a quick trip through ye olde Double S ranch today.
That’s “S” for “Standard”.

A great many romance readers seem to like the proverbial “bad boy”.  I’ve written one or two myself.  He’s the gruff, charming, sleazy, Alpha, can’t-keep-a-job, spit-in-your-face, don’t-like-it-bite-me kinda guy your mom always told you to stay away from.
Yeah, right. 
He’s also, generally speaking, a whore.
Whoops.  S’cuse me—a stud.
At least, until he meets the heroine that makes him change his ways.

I find myself thinking of this guy when I’m working on one of my latest heroines.  In a brief conversation with Ames recently, I told her I’d given up the ghost, after a prolonged war, and decided to write the character the way she seemed to be demanding.

She was a total bitch.

Ames asked if I wasn’t writing her that way because I was worried she wouldn’t sell.

And although I wasn’t really CONSCIOUSLY aware of it, I think that was probably true.
And shame on me for thinking it, and not writing the story as it needed to be written.

This heroine is aggressive.  Pitiless.  Immoral.  Deadly.
She’ll do whatever’s necessary to get exactly what she wants.  Whatever.
Her one redeeming characteristic is that she has the capacity to love, and she finds that with the hero.

So why should a reader find her any less acceptable that a hero with the same traits?

Do you find yourself expecting your male and female characters to adhere to different standards in your reading and writing, whether you intend it or not?

Okay 1 UWP to my freaking mouse because it, you know, sucks right now.

Patience is not one of my virtues. It never has been. I seriously doubt it ever will be.

I was all set to blog about my promotional event which was originally on the 14th but has now been moved to the 21st (Murder at the Book Signing - it’s a virtual murder mystery game! WOO!). Which is no big, but it left me topicless for today.

So. Since I have zero patience with my stupid mouse and just about the world in general, I figured that’d be as good a topic as any.

I’m a here-and-now kind of girl. Ask anyone who knows me and they’ll tell you I don’t wait around for anything. Or anyone. And when I make up my mind to do something, nothing will get in my way.

I remember telling a friend of mine last summer - I think it was in June - that I was going to buy a house. I had never bought a house all on my own before. It was a first. But by the end of September, I had keys and was moving.

About five years ago, I decided to start writing again. I had dabbled - not seriously - when I was in high school and then after. I thought at first I wanted to write children’s books or YA. But my characters never cooperated with me and I always ended up writing sex scenes. It was then I discovered Romance was the genre of choice. Two years later and still unpublished, I found and joined the RWA. And a year after that, I made my first sale to Samhain.

Three long years of writing, polishing, learning, honing, writing, editing, rewriting, polishing, and writing some more. Three long years. And I’m still not exactly where I want to be. It seems like a lifetime ago when I wrote that first short story that got me back into writing. The one that placed as an Honorable Mention in the 2001 Writer’s Digest Writing Competition in the Genre Short Story category. I think 41st out of 1500 entries is pretty darn good, right?

You’d think in three years, I could have finished more than the handful of manuscripts I have finished. You’d think I could have made the Big Sale by now. You’d think. But sometimes life gets in the way of things. And it’s only been recently I’ve decided that I do in fact have a second job. And it’s called “I’m an Author.” With a capital A.

I feel like I could accomplish so much more if I just had the time. But time is a luxury and I’m divided by so many things and so many people. Sometimes I feel like a squirrel on crack. Like I have to hurry hurry hurry to get things done.

And speaking of getting things done…the Book From Hell is still calling my name. It’s time to hurry up and edit.

PS how come the freaking smilies don’t work in my freaking post?

I never heard this term before. The other day on one of my numerous loops, someone mentioned netiquette.

And I thought hmm . . . .

With all the ways to network via the internet now–MySpace, Blogs, yahoogroups, mailing lists, I could go on–you can really get your name out there. But does every one you send it to want to hear it?

I have been to many conferences and signed up for folks’ snail-mail promo offerings. Now with online newsletters, they can get it to you quicker, cheaper and loaded with info. I personally receive 14 online newsletters–yes that is a one and four. The kicker, I only signed up for about 5 of them.

It’s easy enough to delete them from my inbox–I am not so terribly lazy that an extra push on delete is going to tax my strength the rest of the day–but when I saw “netiquette” the other day, I wondered at the nerve to just sign someone up.

Maybe I need to be more intent on getting my name out there, because I guarentee, I remember each one of the authors who have added me without my asking them to. Would I buy their books, dunno, I am weird when it comes to shopping for books, but I remember them. I have even found myself bringing up their name in conversation–nothing disparaging, and often at that moment I may not remember why I know their name–so it is all free advertising for them. Obviously it works to a degree.

It is still one of those gray areas of newness. But am I the only one with issues (Lord knows I have LOTS of issues)? Tell me, do you have “netiquette” gripes?

Which is, as you know, always dangerous. But after reading Raine’s post which sort of, kind of, tied into my current WIP, I got an idea for today’s blog post.

What if you could go back in time and change one thing in your past….what would you change, and how do you think it might alter the rest of your life?

What if you could go back in time and change one thing in HISTORY….what would you change, and how do you think it might affect life as we know it today?

For me, I think if I could go back and change one thing, I’d wait to have sex. I have no one to blame but myself but I think that a lot of the bad man choices I’ve made in my life go back to that one moment. What would be different now? I hope, if I did do that one thing, I’d have made those better man choices (and been a hell of a lot more discriminate), and just flat out had more respect for myself. Youth really is wasted on the young.

And for history (and this one ties into my WIP), I’d like to stop Kennedy’s assassination. I think this country would be a very different place. Or maybe something smaller. It’s amazing the little things that can cause such a domino affect.

Now it’s your turn. And BTW I just made my first kill–ON PAPER!

The world is going to end on Sunday at midnight.

Why?

Because it’s my story—that’s why.
Now—where was I?
Oh, yeah…

The world is going to end on Sunday at midnight.

And because there’s no time to avoid the catastrophe, we’re going to borrow a page from an old Star Trek episode.
We’re going to send all of you into the past to save your lives.

There you may assume the identity of someone else, and live out a normal life.  And because I’m in charge of the Time Shuttle (why?  because it’s my story—that’s why), I’ve chosen identities for some of you to assume.  The sexual identity you take on is not important, but I’ve basically assigned writers to be writers, and tried to choose people you might relate to on some level.

If you disagree, feel free to choose another identity you’d prefer (someone already dead, if you please, this is a Star Trek rip-off,  not Invasion of the Bodysnatchers).

MIK—H.G. Wells
DENNIE—Georgette Heyer
AMIE—Harper Lee
RAINE—Daphne Du Maurier
JORDAN SUMMERS—Mary Shelley
BERNITA HARRIS—Isak Dinesen
PAPERBACK WRITER—Dorothy Parker
TRACY SHARP—Raymond Chandler
JORRIE SPENCER—Marie de France
BAILEY STUART—Beatrix Potter (revised to Dr. Seuss)
JILL SHALVIS and DAISEY DEXTER DOBBS—scriptwriters for the I Love Lucy Show.

Tori Lennox—Agatha Christie

Sela Carsen—Gypsy Rose Lee

This list is incomplete, so feel free to come aboard. Who would you choose to be?
But remember, this is a limited time offer. The last shuttle leaves on Sunday at midnight…

WTF? I posted this and WordPress gave me NOTHING. So I’ll try again.

You know, every now and then you just HAVE to award UWP (Useless Whore Points) to folks around you because…well, they just deserve it.

The rules for awarding UWPs are…well, there really aren’t any. Basically it’s for folks who have done a completely useless act.

1 UWP to fucking WordPress this morning for fucking up my post and deleting my ONE small moment of brilliance. 

1 UWP to the bitch in the red POS that nearly ran me off the road this morning. You might want to plan ahead next time before you DIVE toward an exit and nearly kill people in your wake. You stupid bitch.

1 UWP to the blondie Butt-Her-Face beotch who sat down next to me and The Man at an empty bar and horded in on our conversation. And by that I mean, she kept talking to HIM. Sha. As if you’d ever have a shot in hell with him, honey. Especially with me sitting right next to him and my hand on his crotch clearly marking him as my territory. HAR.

1 UWP to SH 121 because it was shut down last night and caused me to go 114 East which is the opposite direction from home. This is a collective UWP for the accident that shut down the entrance ramp to 121 so I couldn’t get home from my date last night.

5 UWPs to all the losers who cheated and tried to cut in line while being diverted to aforementioned POS highway. I waited my turn buddy. Now you wait yours.

2304981 UWPs to the chickie who eavesdropped on my personal and private conversation, told me she eavesdropped, and then wanted to DISCUSS my situation. Clearly, she has no idea how to conduct herself as a human being and therefore gets the UW of the Week Award. Congratulations! You’re a Useless Whore!

There. I’m so glad I got that off my chest. I feel much better now.  :cool: 

So. Who do you want to award a UWP to?

Yesterday, Amie commented on those who denigrate their genres–and I started trying to figure out if I knew any people who did that. And that made me think of all the folks who have trashed erotica. Kinda made me laugh.

I got my new RT yesterday as well, and was paging through–and might I add Amie’s ad with Rachelle Chase and Lacy Danes on page 137 is SMOKIN’!–Anyhoo, I digress, I was thumbing through my mag and I always check out the review pages first. To see who I know. Who I like. How my Publisher is doing, and when I got to the last section of reviews, I noticed something odd. . . The erotica list took up … the … entire … page. Only one other category took up a little more than half a page, the rest less not so much.

How very odd.

I cannot tell you how many times, I have heard something nasty and or vile said about erotica. YET, it is the largest BY FAR section of newly released and newly reviewed book. Hmm………

My books are probably tame by most erotica standards, but they have been classified as such some places so I don’t think I am out of line when I saw HELL YEAH!  :evillaugh: 

So I asked on my blog yesterday for ideas for blog topics today because I had to blog here and at LSB.
Jordan suggested a blog on people who denigrate a genre they write in *cough* I can’t imagine why.
Jorrie voted for Beta Heros which I’m saving for another day. It’s one of those posts that’s going to take a while to pull together.
Raine came up with, “Why can I blog all week long and come up blank on group blog day?” and the difference between paranormal and urban fantasy–yeah like I’m qualified to answer that one.
Bernard had the most interesting suggestion by far though–the fine line between a scene portraying feeling, and one dropping off the edge of feeling into pathos.

Raine….this is my opinion–performance anxiety. Ok just kidding. Anything involving the fae in an urban setting is urban fantasy. Anything involving succubus, incubi, the devil, ghosts, witch craft, and demons regardless of setting is IMO a parnaormal. KMM’s Darkfever is IMO really urban fantasy while Lynn Viehls’ Darkyn books are paranormal. I do not expect anyone to agree with me. That’s just how I sort it out in my head.
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