Thanks to Galleycat, my friend Lois Winston and the Macmillan people for this revealing look at how the publishing business works (NOT!)
Hope you all have a good weekend!
Thoughtful Thursday – Baby It’s Cold Outside!
This Thursday’s Thoughts are mainly about the cold, but also about how we become creatures of habit as we get older.
For example, if it’s over 30 I wear one coat. Over 40 another. Below 30 and out comes my big long coat and I add a sweatshirt underneath. When it goes below 20, as it has the past few days, I stick my head out from all the bundling and decide whether or not to do the walk to work.
Below 15 — definitely do the subway. If I do take the subway, I am totally spoiled because I walk straight into my building and never go outside in Manhattan. Which why I was surprised to see those big flurries of fat snowflakes dancing outside my window.
Of course, all that snow has me thinking of warmer locales because I am so not a person who loves the cold! I always tell people it’s because I’m not genetically prepared for it, having been born in Cuba.
That’s just my work habit. Then there’s my writing habit, especially over the weekend. Get up at 6 and make the coffee. Head up to my office at home, plop down on my couch, drag the blanket over me, grab the laptop and power it up. While it’s booting up, turn on the TV and look for something to have on while I write and if nothing interests me, slip in a favorite DVD. 😀
Habits. Funny ones to some people, I’m sure. What about you? You have any habits you’d like to share?
Guilty Pleasures Monday – Colin Farrell
I must confess this Guilty Pleasures Monday choice is all Bad Boy. He’s got those wonderful Black Irish looks and I’ve enjoyed him in several of his movies — from his villian turn in DAREDEVIL (which is so not as bad as people say) to his appearance in THE RECRUIT and THE NEW WORLD.
Colin comes from a family of footballers, both father and uncle, and I understand that at one time he considered becoming a soccer player as well.
Last night Colin won the Golden Globe for Best Actor: Musical or Comedy for his role in IN BRUGES.
Hope you enjoyed this Guilty Pleasure Monday!
Fun Friday – Ads that you probably never expected!
I cannot take credit for today’s Fun Friday collection, in fact, I can’t post it here, but I can lead you to this interesting review of ads you probably never expected — condom ads, that is. 21 of them in fact.
Some are rather humorous, others . . .
Well, we are talking about condoms.
Anyway, I hope this review of the condom ads gives you a little ha-ha on this Fun Friday. You can click here to see the ads! Thanks to Dahlia Rideout for the article.
Thoughtful Thursday – Ponzi Schemes and Social Security
My sis and I were having lunch the other day and got started on the topic of Madoff and the alleged Ponzi scheme he allegedly ran for several years. (Innocent until proven guilty hence the alleged comments.)
What’s a Ponzi scheme? It’s when someone is offered a high rate of return on an investment and the money paid to them comes from other investors and not from any kind of profit made by the company.
So my sis says, “You know who’s got the biggest Ponzi scheme going — the U.S. government.”
To which I went, “Huh?” (I hadn’t had enough coffee that day!)
Carmen, my sister, replied, “Social Security. Think about it. We pay and pay into the system and eventually we’ll get paid from the monies other people are paying into the system.”
Dare I say that both of us added to that comment, “Or not get paid.” Yes, many of us worry Social Security won’t be around when we reach the age where we can collect (which age seems to be getting higher and higher every time we look).
Now, practically speaking, I’m sure Social Security gets monies from other ways, such as interest, taxes, etc., but in general, it’s paying off one set of investors with money from another set of investors. To keep going, it will obviously need lots of other investors out there paying into the system unless some kind of bail out eventually occurs.
What do you think about Social Security? Has it treated you right? If you’re not yet retirement age, are you counting on it being there for you?
My thoughts on this Thoughtful Thursday and looking forward to hearing some of your thoughts on it as well.
Wicked Wednesday – FURY CALLS available March 2009
This Wicked Wednesday treat is a little tidbit from my March 2009 release in THE CALLING Vampire Novels — FURY CALLS.
It’s such a WOO HOO 🙂 for me to be able to say THE CALLING is back and with not only a fury, but with a vengeance (LOL! – VENGEANCE CALLS will be out in 2010). It’s a series of my heart and I’m blessed to be able to continue it.
So after HONOR CALLS in February (a Nocturne Bites novella), you’ll finally get to see the conclusion to Blake and Meghan’s story. Those of you who have been with THE CALLING for awhile may remember their first appearance in TEMPTATION CALLS back in 2005 as well as Blake’s appearance in the free read, DESIRE CALLS.
Now I finally get to give Blake and Meghan their full and complete story and it’s become one of my favorites. I hope it’ll become one of yours as well.
So without further ado, here’s today excerpt from FURY CALLS.
Blake Richards shuffled the empty glass from one hand to the other across the pitted surface of the bar.
The remnants of cheap beef blood clung to the sides of the glass, painting it with thick fingers of red-violet. A vintage libation fresh from one of The Blood Bank’s regular human contributors would have left far less proof of the nature of the grisly beverage.
But then again, maybe it was that no self-respecting vampire would leave behind a drop of something so fine as fresh human blood.
Something so fine which was relatively lacking tonight, Blake thought and glanced around the interior of the bar. In recent weeks there had been a decided decline in the number of vampires frequenting the bar and that had resulted in a slowly decreasing stream of humans seeking the more dangerous fun and games for which the Blood Bank was known in Manhattan’s undead underworld.
Rumor had it that a goodly number of his fellow vamps had begun pairing off with some of the more intrepid humans and taken their business to Otro Mundo, the new hangout that Ryder Latimer and Diego Rivera had opened adjacent to Diego’s art gallery in Soho.
Otro Mundo provided fine dining and the possibility for other adventures in the kinds of decadent surroundings that the two older vampires had experienced over the course of their long lives.
Apparently the two human wanna-bes had struck a chord with a growing contingent of the undead, providing them and their human consorts with such opulence that the Blood Bank no longer held any interest. Not that he would know much about such opulence, he thought, recalling the hungry days of his youth in Wales.
After his father had been killed in a coal mining accident, his family had been forced to live off whatever they could grow on their small plot of land. Not nearly enough for the brood of six. At times his hunger had been so great that he would make a thin soup from whatever greens he could gather in the woods so that he could leave what little food they had for his mother and younger siblings.
Until he had found a way to earn some money. He considered now that starving might have been better.
Shoving those painful recollections away, Blake scoped out the occupants of the bar, needing to satisfy the hunger that the inexpensive beef’s blood had failed to quench.
As his gaze swept over the dance floor, he noticed the attractive blonde moving to the hard beats of the music spewing from the Blood Bank’s stereo system. Foley, the owner of the Blood Bank, was too cheap to hire live musicians.
When she turned in his direction as she danced, her gaze briefly skimmed across his.
He thought he detected a glimmer of interest there and so he rose, added a bit of swagger to his walk as he approached the dance floor. He weaved through the crowd of people gyrating and grinding to the deep bass beat until he was just an arm’s length from the blonde.
No doubt remained about her interest as he came near since she shot a knowing grin his way. He joined her in the dance, her luscious young body plastered to his, sweet firm buttocks caressing his front, but even as he did so, he knew the attractive chit could only fulfill one need — his thirst for blood.
Satisfaction of an emotional kind had eluded him for too long and as for the physical . . .
His recent interlude with vampire elder Stacia had taught him a thing or two about physical satisfaction. Despite how good it had been with the beautiful and powerful elder, it had occurred to him too quickly in the relationship that there was something lacking.
Something he hadn’t experienced since . . .
He drove thoughts of her away as the young woman eased up onto her toes, slipped an arm around his neck and drew his head near. She whispered into his ear, “Would you like to go somewhere more private?”
She inclined her head in the direction of the Blood Bank’s back rooms and he knew just what she wanted — a quick tryst and maybe even some painful play with the toys Foley kept in the rooms for his more daring clientele.
He smiled, slipped his hand into hers and quickly strode toward the vampire guarding the hall to those private back rooms, intending to fulfill the young woman’s needs and his own.
But even as he did so, memories sprang up of the last young blonde he had taken into that area. Of the joy and pain that tryst had brought.
He cursed beneath his breath as all desire fled.
Building an Effective Web Presence Part 1
One thing that I’m often asked is how I decided to build my website and what tips I can offer to someone who has to either create a new site or update one. So today’s Tuesday Tip is Part 1 of a series of articles on how to build an effective website! I hope you find it helpful.
Before you even go with a programmer or other web professional, the first thing to do is to consider how you want your site to look. A site should reflect what you do as a writer (or what you plan to do in the near future). If you’re writing paranormals, your readers and other industry professionals may expect a look that’s quite different from what they expect to see at a site for someone who writes romantic comedy.
So, visit sites for writers in your genre and see what they are doing in terms of color, graphics, etc. Make a list of your favorite sites to send to whoever is programming your site so they can have a reference point for where to begin. If there are certain images that you like, save the links to where they are on the web or visit one of the stock photo places to find images of interest (istockphoto.com and fotolia.com are two good ones).
Decide whether you want any animated features on the site, like those flash intros which are the opening pages or the headers at sites (you can check www.caridad.com or www.thecallingvampirenovels.com to see what I mean by a flash header).
Also make a note of the names of the designers on the sites you like the most. You may wish to approach them to design your site. Prices may vary from a low of $150 or so to tens-of-thousands of dollars. That range will depend on whether the programmer is creating animated intros for you or whether they are creating custom fonts and graphics.
Finally, what kinds of pages should you have on your site? A nice opening page where you tell people a little bit about yourself and what’s happening with you. A bio page for sure. Contact page where you have the information on how people can reach you. A list of either your published books or projects you have in the works. Those are pretty much the basics, but think for the future so that however the site is designed, it will be possible for someone to easily expand it.
Will you be blogging in the future? Have a Myspace or Facebook page? Add an Amazon store or calendar? Make sure to let the programmer know that you have these ideas in mind for the future and it will help them decide how to code the website.
One thing to know is that having all this information on hand is one way to keep down website programming costs and get a site up and running in a reasonable amount of time.
Also – you may wish to have your designer do a banner or button that you can upload to other sites and use for web advertising. This is generally easy to do and shouldn’t cost much more. In addition, if you’re going to do a Myspace page, try to use the same design if possible. You’re building your brand with this website and it’s good to reinforce that brand at every web presence you have if it’s possible.
Stay tuned for next Tuesday’s Tip – Types of sites and how to get them up and running!