This is the End

Friday, June 30th 2006. It's the end of the month, the end of the week, end of the first half of the year. Time to take stock, look back, and look ahead. I hope all of you out there, readers and writers are meeting your goals and setting exciting ones for 2006 part B.

On to the links. The following are posts of note from the last half of this week.

Smokin' in romance novels was the topic yesterday at Smart Bitches.

After receiving a variety of deeply opinionated responses to her heroines' choices (and nary a peep about all sorts of bad boy behavior from her heroes, Karen Templeton discusses Why can our heroes get away with all manner of scurrilous behavior, and yet we’re often so hard on our heroines?

And it seems I'm not the only one who thought the cover of Sinderella was striking, because over at Access Romance, Tawny Taylor talks about Cover Art (with lots of pretty pictures of book covers that make me want to touch.)

And on the subject of covers, I wonder if any e-book publishers bother to make back cover art. An attractive presentation of the blurb could be enticing.

Over at Murder She Writes, Karin Tabke recently attended her first Weight Watchers meeting and ends up giving us a fascinating post on Weight Watchers and Writing that ends up discussing goals and writing.

And congrats to Shiloh Walker who's experiencing butterflies because her first paperback, Hunting the Hunter is due on the shelves this week.

Finally, over at WriteMinded, Amy Knupp discusses her own paralyzing stumbling blocks and invites other authors to share what parts of writing they put off for as long as possible.

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Thinky Posts

Here are three posts from the last few days in my little corner of the blogosphere (that is to say, the blogs I've happened to visit this morning)

Sandra K. Moore discusses the contrast between The Spare and The Lush writing styles after a marathon reading session over at 2 B Read.

Over at Pub Rants, literary agent Kristin discusses when strong writing is not enough.

Literary Sass brings us Ten reasons why being a writer sucks ass.

And the always useful Paperback Writer brings us ten links for writing better dialogue

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Notable Weekend Posts

Saturday

@ Access Romance - Alison Kent discussed her feelings about booksignings.

@ 2 B Read, Cheryl Bolen had a few questions and opinions regarding Series, Sequels, and Stand-Alones.

Paperback Writer responded to a previous comment about plotting with her post on Plot Habits.

Shelly Munro wants to know what hooks you in? What, as a reader, makes you read past the first page.

Sunday

Another funny post from Paperback Writer on Sunday, this one about figuring out when your personal problems are taking over your novel.

Also, if you're a Changeling Press Fan, you should head over to Dear Author where Jayne gives us a publisher profile, website usability review, and Q & A with the Owner, Margaret Riley. There's also a one time promo code for %5 off total purchase in this useful post.

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And a heads up to Ellora's Cave fans, Jan Springer gives a heads up that she will be chatting at Writerspace this evening at 8:00 P.M. Eastern about her new Ellora's Cave release, "Sinderella". It becomes available this Wednesday, and if you've got questions for her or other EC authors like Lorie O'Clare, Denise Agnew, TJ Michaels or Lauren Dane, you should head over to Writerspace Chat at the appropriate hour. She's also (presumably during the chat) giving away a black vibrator in honor of another new release.

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Sexy Ellora's Cave Cover - Duplicity by Nikki Soarde

Nikki Soarde got a lovely cover for the Ellora's Cave print publication of her novel Duplicity . It's a contemporary, novel length and cover (a woman in black lingerie kneeling in the back seat of a car, looking out the back window) has a sexy, mysterious feel that evokes a mood, but leaves me to imagine the heroine's face. It's claustrophobic, but in a good way.

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Ellora's Cave Authors

Ellora's Cave Authors list from R. Casteel, an Ellora's Cave Author.

I'm not sure I'm down with the horizontal scroll aspect, but it's exhaustive, includes recent authors, and has plenty of links to author blogs, so I'm sure I'll find it useful.

ETA: I also stumbled across this lovely and large list of EC Authors, at The Fantasy Shoppe.

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Pretty Ellora's Cave Cover - Fantasy Fix by Christine Warren

With the recent kerfluffle over ugly e-book covers, I thought I'd buck the trend and point out some of the lovelier ones I run across. I surfed to the Ellora's Cave Ebay Store and was flipping down the covers and the one for Fantasy Fix by Christine Warren caught my eye. Simple, sexy without being tawdry, and eye-catchingly simple. It didn't make me think vampires, but it caught my eye and made me want to click to read the back cover copy. A really lovely use of stock photography (I'm assuming) and attractive text that couldn't have cost that much more than a cgi vampire, and far more likely to catch my eye when I see it from across the brick and mortar book store.

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Ellora's Cave Author Blogs

For a while, I've wanted to gather a list of Ellora's Cave author blogs, but it seems the lovely Lauren Dane has done it for us right here. The post is from October of 2005, and I don't know if it's been updated since then, but I'm looking forward to reading the older posts of fifteen or so EC authors she lists here.

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Observing

I wanted to get all the links to my favorite romance novel related blogs in one place, and note some of the entries that caught my eye. That's what this blog is about.

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