Book-Talk Monday: What Are You Reading?
This is “Book-Talk Monday,” so let’s talk about books!
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- What is the most recent book you’ve finished reading? (Please tell us a little about it, and whether or not you enjoyed/would recommend it.)
- What are you currently reading?
- What’s the next book on your To Be Read stack?
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The last book I read was Seduced by Grace which I discussed on last Monday’s post, so I won’t bore you with the details again.
You’d think that with me being sick for almost two weeks (I’m feeling much better, just trying to deal with the lingering cough now) that I’d have gotten a few books read by now. However, reading was the last thing I wanted to do. And since I really need to be writing (as in a couple thousands words a day) this month, I probably shouldn’t be thinking about reading. But I do have some things waiting on my Kindle (some good free downloads) to be read for when I do get my first draft finished.
What about you?
Fun Friday–A GREAT TV Weekend!
I should be writing this weekend, but as I’m still fighting this infection (today makes day NINE!), I’ll most likely be spending the weekend camped out in front of the TV. But that’s okay . . . because this is going to be a GREAT weekend for TV! (All times listed are US Central.)
Friday
Grimm (8 p.m. NBC)
Even though it’s a re-run, this is one of my favorite new shows, so I’ll be watching!
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Merlin, Season 4 Premiere (9 p.m. SyFy)
I spent several hours catching up on the Season 3 episodes I missed last spring, so I can’t wait for the season 4 premiere tonight! And this season, they’re adding several key characters from the legends as main (or regularly recurring) characters including Sir Gwaine (Eoin Macken), Sir Lancelot (Santiago Cabrera—though he’s only listed for a couple of season 4 episodes), Sir Percival (Tom Hopper), Sir Elyan (Adetomiwa Edun), and Agravaine (Nathaniel Parker).
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Sunday
Once Upon a Time (7 p.m. ABC)
This is my favorite new show of this season. Could have something to do with the fact that I love re-told fairytales . . . could also have something to do with the fact that it’s spearheaded by two of the writers from LOST who have access to the Disney fairytale vault. Warning: If you haven’t watched this show from the beginning, you should do that. This is not a show to try to pick up mid-season!
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Downton Abbey, Season 2 Premiere (8 p.m. PBS)
We’ve been waiting for this for a year, and now the time has finally come!!! And I read somewhere the other day that it’s been renewed for a third season—it was an article about how Joan Collins (yes, Dynasty’s Joan Collins) has been cast for a guest appearance in the third season. I have assiduously been avoiding reading any blog posts about Season 2—I want to be completely surprised by what happens. Though, I’m sort of hoping that the DVD releases early again this year, as Season 1 did last year, so that I don’t have to wait a week between episodes. 😉
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Monday
BCS National Championship Game (ESPN, 8:30 p.m.)
GEAUX TIGERS!!!
Thursday Thought Provoker 1/5/12
Writer-Talk Tuesday: 2011 in Review and Goals for 2012
After two years (2009 and 2010) in which I was under deadline to get three books written each year, 2011 turned out to be a much different year for me.
Starting the Year with a Missed Deadline
I started the year pulling a couple of almost-all-nighters to get The Art of Romance finished—the book that was already a couple of weeks overdue when I fell and broke my ankle in November 2010. I sent it in on January 3, then got the first round of feedback from my content editor back a week later—and at her prompting, ended up adding nearly 9,000 words to the manuscript, making The Art of Romance officially my longest published novel.
After finishing Art, I got to work writing sample chapters for the first book in my proposed new historical series, Follow the Heart. It was nice to be writing something new—even though I could spend five hours “writing” and end up with fewer than 500 words because I had to figure out how long it would take someone to get from New York to Liverpool via steamship in 1851—and what the ship was like and where, exactly, it made port, and how far the train station was from the port and how one got from port to train station . . . But I got the sample chapters (prologue and first three chapters) written and sent back to my agent so he could send those out with the proposal.
In February, I received the galleys for both Ransome’s Quest and The Art of Romance to edit, which I did in the last couple of weeks I was in Arkansas, before I got the all-clear on my ankle and got to come home to Nashville.
The Last Contracted Book
Once I was home, I had to turn my attention to my last contracted book, Turnabout’s Fair Play. But I also needed to be working on what I was going to write after that—and since I hadn’t heard anything on the historical proposal I’d sent to my agent in August 2010—except that one editor wanted those sample chapters—I wrote and submitted two different contemporary series proposals, sending both to Barbour, which has published both of my contemporary series so far.
With a looming deadline of May 15, I tried my best in March and April to get a handle on the story, but Flannery and Jamie just didn’t want to work with me. So I actually wrote the bulk of the novel, more than 70,000 words, in the two weeks before deadline—and that included making a post eleventh hour change (because it was after midnight, making it officially May 15 when I did so) to one of the major plot points of the story when I learned that even just using character names from the Lord of the Rings series would mean getting permission due to certain copyright laws. And thank goodness for the editorial process—because there were a few places where I didn’t change something Eomer related to something Gawain related!
After a quick editing process, with the final proofing of the galley at the end of July (when, of course, I was traveling), I found myself free for the first time in three years. Free to write whatever I wanted—
Well, not really. You see, I had three proposals out being looked at by different publishing houses. B&H had expressed interest in the historical series, and my editor at Barbour had asked for the second contemporary proposal, so surely a contract was coming, right? But until I got a contract, I didn’t want to start writing anything new, because I knew if I did, I’d get caught up in that story only to have one of the other proposals sell.
A New Series
In mid-August, I signed my new contract with B&H publishing for the Great Exhibition series. With a deadline of May 1, 2012, it seemed like I had all the time in the world to get it written. So I set a goal of finishing the first draft by October 31, 2011. After all, my local group does a month-long writing marathon in October (our version of NaNo), so surely that would help motivate me to get whatever remained of it finished.
However . . . on September 1, I went back to work part-time (25 hours/week) because the editing I’d been doing the last few years dried up, and the part-time job was the only one for which I even got called for an interview. Sure, I still have my afternoons free (I’m off work at 2:30), yet I couldn’t get myself pulled together enough to get onto a good schedule. So by the end of October, I’d only added a few thousand words to Follow the Heart. So I set a new goal of Christmas . . .
And, as we all can see, that didn’t happen either.
I learned in September, when I saw my Barbour editor at the ACFW conference in St. Louis that they’ve changed their editorial lines and the proposals I’d sent them no longer fit what they were going to be doing. However, my new editor at B&H asked to see one of the contemporary proposals, so that one is still out there.
2012—The Year of Not Just Making but BEATING Deadlines
Follow the Heart is due May 1, 2012—now just under four months away. And I’m still sitting at 25,000 words (with a finished ms. length contracted at 80–90,000 words). I wrote a little bit just before Christmas, but have been using the excuse of having come home from Baton Rouge last week with an upper respiratory infection that just won’t go away for the reason why I haven’t made myself sit down and write in the afternoons when I get home from work. But my goal is to have a workable first draft by the end of January.
This year I will not wait until the last few weeks before a book is due to get it finished! And I will NOT miss the deadlines on this new contract! My local group has decided to do another marathon month in January. So I set a goal of getting Follow the Heart up to 25,000 words by the end of December so that I can push through and get the first draft finished by the end of January (meaning I need to write between 55–65,000 words).
The biggest problem I’m having with writing this book? I’ve forgotten how to write a first draft! I’ve become so accustomed to editing as I go—I had to with those two- to three-month deadlines on my last six books—that it’s hard for me to just write without having to make it perfect.
The second book in the series is due October 15, 2012, so not only do I need to get a handle on the first book and get that first draft finished in time to have a couple of months to work on edits/revisions before I turn it in, I’d like to get a head-start on the second book. And then the third is due April 1, 2013. And while that seems a long way off, I know it isn’t.
Once I get this series well in hand and am comfortable with knowing I’ll make those deadlines, there are two other pieces I’d like to start working on as well . . . Jenn Guidry’s story, as a fourth and final installment in the Brides of Bonneterre series, since so many have asked for her story; and the backstory of the pirate El Salvador from Ransome’s Quest, along with his crew, especially Declan. If I ever get these written, they would probably be nontraditionally published—mainly for my own edification as well as the entertainment of those who enjoyed the characters in the published novels.
I’ll also be back to blogging five days a week. And I have an idea for a possible nonfiction book. Where, oh, where shall I find the time for all these writing projects??? 😉
What are your writing goals for 2012?
Finish a long-neglected work in progress? Get proposals out to that dream agent? Blog more? What will you commit yourself to when it comes to writing in 2012?
Book-Talk Monday: What I Read in 2011, and Goals for 2012
Happy New Year!
Now that the holidays are past us, it’s time to get back down to business . . . and the business of this blog is to talk about reading and writing (for the most part—and movies and TV and whatever else happens to cross my mind when I sit down to write a post). So let’s begin 2012 with a review of the reading we did in 2011. You don’t have to post a list of everything you read—you can post just your favorites, or you can post a link to your 2011-In-Review post on your site/blog.
2011 was a banner reading year for me.
Ever since I started graduate school in 2004, and especially since I started working as an editor in 2006 and signed my first book contract in 2007, my pleasure reading has suffered—to the point at which in 2010, I hardly read anything at all for pleasure. In 2011, not only did the book contracts end, freeing up my time, but the editing tapered off to very few projects (few and far between) which also freed up my mind to be able to make the switch from editor mode to reader mode much more easily.
It may not sound like a whole lot, but I read thirty novels completely for pleasure this year. And considering that I didn’t do much reading in the first four months of the year (when I was recovering from my broken ankle, completing edits/revisions on Ransome’s Quest and The Art of Romance, and writing Turnabout’s Fair Play), I’ve actually been doing a lot of reading in the last six to eight months—helped along by the fact that I went back to work (part-time) in September and now have a 20-minute commute during which I listen to audiobooks, increasing my reading time.
Here are a few highlights of what I read in 2011:
Favorite New-to-Me Author
Late in the autumn, the Nashville Library system started offering Kindle e-book lending. So I went through my wishlist on Kindle (sample chapters I’d downloaded and read and wanted to read the rest of the book) and found some books that were available to borrow from the library. And that’s how I found my favorite new-to-me author this year: Jennifer Blake. I read Blake’s Three Graces trilogy—By His Majesty’s Grace, By Grace Possessed, and Seduced by Grace—between Thanksgiving and New Year’s. While Blake has a few quirks that do annoy me (like the tendency to get stuck on a word/description in a section of or throughout the book), her storytelling ability and character development are such that I’m willing to overlook that slight annoyance for the enjoyment I know I’ll get from the story. I also really enjoyed the fact that Blake chose a unique time period in which to set her trilogy: the court of the first Tudor monarch, Henry VII—the father of Henry VIII—opening just a few years after the end of the War of the Roses.
You can click the titles to read my further thoughts on the books on Pinterest (and links to the reviews of Possessed and Seduced on Amazon). Please note: these are general-market romance novels with content that may be offensive to some readers.
Feeding My Tudor Obsession
One of the things I did do with my pleasure reading this year was to find books that feed my current obsession with the Tudor era (as evidenced by the books discussed above), and I read three books that not only fed that obsession, but which took me by surprise with how much I enjoyed them.
To Die For by Sandra Byrd. I cannot tell you how absolutely thrilled I was when I saw that a Christian publishing imprint (Howard) was putting out not just something set in England but something other than a Regency. To Die For is the story of Henry VIII’s second and most famous wife, Anne Boleyn, as told through the viewpoint of one of Anne’s best friends and ladies in waiting, the fictional Meg Wyatt. I had the added bonus of listening to this on audio, read by the incomparable Charlotte Parry who brought Byrd’s excellent prose/story to life in a way that shot the book from great to excellent for me.
The Tudor Secret by C.W. Gortner. There’s a trend in this section of the post, because this is another one I “read” via audiobook, and it, too, had an excellent reader. Gortner’s book is set during the tumultuous time after Henry VIII’s death when his son, Edward, was king—but pretty much in name only. It’s the first book in a planned series (The Elizabeth I Spymaster Chronicles) and is told from the viewpoint of Brendan Prescott, a squire to Robert Dudley, who gets caught up in the intrigues of the court and becomes a friend of Princess Elizabeth during a time fraught with danger for the future queen. I’m anxiously awaiting the second book in this series!
The Boleyn Inheritance by Philippa Gregory. For years, I’ve avoided Philippa Gregory’s books—mostly because of my experience watching the theatrical-film version of her most famous book, The Other Boleyn Girl. But when I read the description of The Boleyn Inheritance—that it focuses on Henry VIII’s fourth and fifth wives (Anne of Cleves and Katherine Howard)—I knew I had to give it a try. And like the other two books in this section, I decided to do so on audio. What a great decision. Not only does Charlotte Parry (who read To Die For) make Katherine Howard’s character come vividly alive, but the other two narrators did a fabulous job with the voices of Anne of Cleves (my favorite of the six wives) and Jane Boleyn, Lady Rochford (Anne Boleyn’s sister-in-law). I also enjoyed Gregory’s writing style, so I’ll be looking for more of her books to read in 2012.
Hey—I just noticed another trend in this section . . . all three of these books were written in first-person, the POV I usually don’t enjoy. Just goes to show how well written each was that I loved them so much!
First Book, Great; Second Book, DNF
When it was announced that HBO would be making George R.R. Martin’s fantasy series (the books are the Song of Fire and Ice series, the TV show is the Game of Thrones series) into a TV show, I downloaded the sample chapters of the first book so I could see what it was all about. By the fifth or sixth page I was so confused/lost that I deleted the sample from my Kindle and decided to wait on the reviews of the TV series to see if I’d be interested in watching it. For the first few weeks of the show’s airing, I read detailed episode synopses—which not only pulled me into the story, but helped me visualize the characters with images of the actors in the roles. Not wanting to have the story spoiled for me by these episode descriptions, I went back and re-downloaded the sample. And as soon as I whipped through that, I downloaded the entire book, which I blazed through in less than a month. While Martin has some quirks/writing habits that annoy me (what author doesn’t, really?), I enjoyed the story enough that, as soon as I had the disposable income to do so, I bought the second book. 
It took me at least two months to get through the first half of the book. And, eventually, I just didn’t pick it up again. Though we lost a couple of viewpoint characters from the first book, the second book introduces at least double the number of viewpoint characters and spreads them out all over this fantasy world so that it’s hard to remember who’s where and what they did eight chapters ago last time we were in their viewpoint. So the second book is a “DNF” (did not finish) for me, though I’m still eagerly awaiting the release of Game of Thrones on DVD in the spring.
Looking Forward to 2012
You can see the rest of the books I read last year and my thoughts on them on my Pinterest page, “Books Read in 2011.” And this year, rather than set a specific list of books I want to read in 2012, which I’ve done in years past and utterly failed to accomplish, I’m only setting a number goal—my goal for 2012 is to read at least 36 new-to-me books by December 31. (My total of thirty for this year includes several re-reads.) And considering how many books I currently have sitting unread on my Kindle right now, that shouldn’t be hard!
It’s your turn! What did you read in 2011, and what are your plans/goals for 2012?
What May Happen in the Next 100 Years
(predicted in 1900)
I saw this online and had to share. Click the image to view it full size, though it’s rather blurry—it’s definitely worth the effort!
Pinterest (It’s Writing Related, I Swear!)
It’s official . . . I’m addicted to Pinterest. See—this is why I didn’t want to try it in the first place, because the last thing I need is one more thing that gives me an excuse/means to procrastinate from writing.
So I’m trying to redeem the time I’m spending on it by using it for research purposes. This includes (click the thumbnail to view the full board):
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So now you can see first-hand how I do the bulk of my research on costume and setting—and in this case the historical event that ties the series together.
Holiday Hiatus
From now until the end of the year, I’ll be taking a break from blogging to concentrate on trying to get the first draft of Follow the Heart written.
I may check in every so often with progress on the book, or maybe a fun Christmas-themed meme or quiz, but for the most part, the blog will be going “dark” so I can take the time I’d usually spend coming up with and writing blog posts and apply that to writing.
While I’m on hiatus, it might be a good time for you to explore older posts on my blog (after all, I have been doing this since 2006!). Be sure to check out the Writing Series Index, where all of my past courses on fiction writing are archived, and my posts on Singleness. And if you’re looking for a particular subject (such as a movie title or an actor’s name) to see if I’ve blogged about it before, use the search feature at the top of the right-hand column.
Happy holidays! Looking forward to “seeing” you back in the new year!
One Question
I only have one post, one question, for this week:
Fun Friday–Stuck in Tudor England
Up until a few years ago, my fascination with British history didn’t extend much further back than about 1800—except to be entertained by “medieval” romance novels (most set in the Middle Ages—or between the retreat of the Romans from the British Isles to the earliest beginnings of the Renaissance era, or the 5th through 15th centuries).
- And when I say entertained by them, I mean that many of the ones I so thoroughly enjoyed in the 1980s and 1990s bear little historical accuracy. I re-read one a couple of months ago in which the men in the late 11th century (around 1098–99) are depicted with the sun glinting off their plate armor, which didn’t exist until the 14th or 15th century. So it’s really more the “feel” of history, not the actual history, that worked for me in those books.
But then Cate Blanchett made a little movie called Elizabeth. Which was followed a few years later by Elizabeth: The Golden Age.
And I remembered enough of my British history to recall Henry VIII and his six wives and that Elizabeth was the daughter of the most infamous one of them all, Anne Boleyn. (And it took me a few years to actually be able to spell Boleyn without having to look it up!)
At that point, though, I wasn’t interested enough in it to pick up/read any of Philippa Gregory’s books on the subject. However, I did make the mistake of renting The Other Boleyn Girl when it came out on video. (Talk about lack of historical accuracy! Not to mention poor casting choices and horrible fake British accents. But the costumes were gorgeous.) That got me a little more interested in the history of that era. But really just enough to look Henry VIII up on Wikipedia and read the overview of his reign and marriages. (Divorced, Beheaded, Died; Annulled, Beheaded, Survived)
Then . . . The Tudors, the epic series from Showtime about Henry VIII and his wives (and the religious/political turmoil of his reign) came out . . . and I was addicted.
Sure, I knew it wasn’t historically accurate—some of the timelines were shrunk while others were stretched; major “characters” were given tasks to do/credit for things that were done by others in real life. A few real people were rolled into one character. Dropping real events or conflating minor events into major ones. Tweaking the history to make it “more interesting.”
Even after seeing all four seasons of The Tudors, while I know knew so much more about those times and how they changed the history and shape of the world in which we now live (because I would look up the real history as I watched), I still wasn’t seeking out reading materials set during that time or involving any of those historical figures. Of course, I was trying to write six books of my own in under two years, so that rather stunted my ability to follow through on that.
That’s changed recently, though. It began with a re-watch of The Tudors, followed by:
Lady Jane
Elizabeth
Elizabeth: The Golden Age
The Other Boleyn Girl (the made-for BBC-TV version)
The Six Wives of Henry VIII
Elizabeth R
The Princes in the Tower
Elizabeth (Documentary)
Henry VIII (with Ray Winstone as Henry and crazy-eyes Helena Bonham Carter as Anne Boleyn)
(and a few others I can’t find the titles of in my Netflix backlist right now)
And now that I actually have time to read (with much of that coming in the form of audiobooks during my commute and at the gym), I’m once again delving into the era with:
The Tudor Secret by C.W. Gortner
The Lady Elizabeth by Alison Weir
To Die For by Sandra Byrd (which I just finished last week)
The Boleyn Inheritance by Philippa Gregory (which I’m listening to now—in fact, I listened to it for a couple of hours this afternoon while cleaning the kitchen)
The figure I find most fascinating in all of this, though, is one who is a central focus of The Boleyn Inheritance—Anne of Cleves. She’s always the least-mentioned of the six wives; granted, she was only married to Henry for seven months and she was gently set aside with an annullment, called the King’s Beloved Sister, receiving Richmond Palace and Hever Castle—the former home of the Boleyns—and being given precedence over all women in England except Henry’s wife and daughters. After the annullment, she never remarried. She died at age forty-two, still beloved by and close to both Mary (then queen) and Elizabeth. While I personally have done no research on her to know how much is available, I can’t believe there’s much—after all, except for about one year, she led a very private life. Which is probably why she fascinates me—because there’s so much more left to the imagination with someone like that.
So now . . . is it any wonder I haven’t been able to make any progress on my Victorian-set Follow the Heart? But at least I have the excuse that whenever I hear the name Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, I’m picturing this:
He is, after all, the template for Andrew in FTH!
KayeDacus.com 