Author Archives: krissieo

Collages (Anne Stuart)

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I’ve been doing collages of my books-in-progress for years now, with varying degrees of success.  I first heard of it from Barbara Samuel and I loved the idea, so I immediately began to paste pretty pictures onto oaktag to inspire me.  It didn’t further the plotting process but it meant I could go buy expensive magazines and the results were very nice.

But I lost interest when things weren’t advancing plot, and I realized I was simply doing it to keep from writing.

Writers will do anything to keep from writing, even dishes and making the bed.  Cutting pretty pictures out of Veranda and Vogue definitely beats household chores, but sooner or later you gotta hit those keys.

Then I went to a seminar Jill Barnett did on collage, and discovered you could use words!  Silly me for not thinking of that.  Jill used the try-fold poster board kids use for science projects, so I went out and bought a lot of those and new magazines, cutting out words as well as pretty pictures and got this:

That one was for ON THIN ICE — the blonde guy is the villain.  Again, inspiration but not progress.  Then I went to a meeting of the local RWA chapter and someone there gave talks about doing collage via scrapbook pages.  LOVED the idea. It  meant I could go buy scrapbook stuff.  Unfortunately they don’t have many scrapbook tchotchkes for my kind of books, except maybe at Halloween, so I gave up, until Jenny Crusie, former art teacher, got me under her wing.  She and Lani Diane Rich and I are plotting a fairy tale book, so we spent an evening doing scrapbook pages and having a great time, and this time I think it will really help with the plot as well as serve as inspiration.

But with collaging it works well if you’ve got an avatar, a stand-in for your characters.  I often start that way anyway, until they become their own people as the book progresses.  I’ve got heroes for books two and three.  Book two is a bad boy former pirate ship’s captain from the slums, and I thought Ian Somerhalder had the combination of gorgeousness and sauciness to get me started.  The brooding heir and accused wife-murderer works will with Richard Armitage.

But I’m stuck on the first hero.  Sir Richard Durant is charming on the surface, devoted to the son he knows isn’t his, hates his evil wife with a fierce passion, and is trying to destroy his life with morphine and absinthe.  So I need someone gorgeous (of course, for inspiration), charming, but with a hint of desperation.  More noble than the captain, more open than the brooding heir.  Someone with brown to blond hair, not black Irish like Armitage.

Anyone got any ideas?  His heroine is tall, calm, with a strong organizing streak, very maternal and brave, with scars across one side of her face.  She’s always had a crush on Sir Richard, but because of the scars she hides away.

So … who’s a good hero?  Throw some names at me — I need help.

Pedal to the Metal (Anne Stuart)

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Why am I always late on a book?  It makes me insane, ruins my sleep, makes me eat too much?  And yet I do it every time.  This time it wasn’t my fault.  My computer crashed with no backup and no second computer to work on even if I had backed it up.  Fortunately Saint Jon at Small Dog Electronics saved the work, and I bought a second laptop (mine could be saved but I’d lost my second one right before Christmas) and now I’m keeping things in Dropbox plus backing up (or, er, I will back up, I promise).  But that threw me off.  And the book is just that kind of book — needing time.  Hell, I figured out the ticking clock part of it (an important thing in books and movies where there’s a reason everything has to be done within the set period of time) at the second to the last chapter.  So now I have to go back and weave that in, plus tighten tighten tighten.

So today (and tomorrow and Wednesday) I spend curled up in my chair doing revisions.  Mind you, I’ve been revising and rewriting like crazy on this already, planning, taking notes, writing new scenes, so it’s not as if I’m just diving in.  I know what I need to do; I just need to do it.

Writing is such an interesting profession.  I’m usually a very instinctive writer — I sit down and the story flows.  Sometimes it flows so beautifully it’s like it’s being dictated by my muse/god/the girls in the basement.  Sometimes it stops and starts.  And sometimes it’s a real pain in the ass, like with this one.

But the funny thing is, the pains in the ass are challenging, and I like that.  I’m enjoying the challenge of making this sucker work, when I used to believe that only the easy books were the good books.  And in fact, if the idea is brilliant and it soars, then those are the best books.  But you can write a damned fine one by rewriting and fine-tuning.

I’ve never seen anyone revise and rewrite as much as Jenny Crusie, and you certainly can’t argue with the brilliant stuff she turns out.

Now, no way am I ever going to revise and rework like Crusie.  The very idea makes me head for my fainting couch.  But you know, sometimes hard work can be fun.

I’ve got my iPod set, my red pencil out, my Tab by my side.  I’m ready to rock and roll.

Onward!

Insomnia (Anne Stuart)

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I don’t know if I slept at all last night.  I went to bed listening to an audiobook, as always.  Well, wait, maybe I need to back up.  I’ve been pushing myself a lot.  So on Saturday night, exhausted, I went to bed at 9 pm.  Fell immediately asleep, and woke up at nine on Sunday morning.  12 hours of solids sleep?  Well, I must have needed it.  Spent the day in a blizzard of hard work, and suddenly my windows began to fog up (my term for when the words on the computer screen blur and I have to take a nap or die).  So at four pm I went up for a nap and slept another two hours.

Then, at 11, feeling tired, I went to bed, listening to a Nalini Singh novel (Prey to Passion or something like that — one of her Psy-Changeling series.  Very nice).  I kept falling asleep as I was nearing the end and rewinding (or whatever you call it when it’s digital). Finished the book around 1, took off the earphones and tried to sleep.  I might have drifted off once or twice but around 4 I decided enough was enough.  Too off the cpap machine (which usually helps me sleep) and went down and wrote 1700 words.  Now it’s 6:29 am and I think I’m finally able to sleep.

Argh.  I have a book to finish.  I’ve sworn I’m going to be healthy about doing it, factor in swimming and sewing time this week as I surge on through to the end.  But if I go back to bed now when will I swim?  But damn, right now I’m so tired I can barely see straight.

But here’s my plan.  This week I will write approximately 10k words to finish the rough draft.  I will swim three times.  I will eat healthy foods.  And I will go up and sew the pillows I wanted to sew for my mother.  Oh, yeah, and I’ll write up the new idea I have for a historical series and get that off to my agent.

Remaining sane and good-tempered the entire time.

Think I can do it?

SQUALOR ON THE RIVER (Anne Stuart)

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I’ve been spending the last week at Jennifer Crusie’s Mansion o’ Fun on the Ohio River, and having a wonderful time with her and Lani.  We’ve been shopping and going out for healthy lunches.

 

 

(see me having an foodgasm over a single french fry after all my dietary goodness)   But mostly there have been no french fries in my life, just healthy, good stuff, and I’m hoping when I get back home that I’ll have lost some more weight.  If not, I’ll just hunker down and work harder.

We’ve also been doing crafts (mainly watching Crusie build collages), watching movies (The Big Sleep, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and several episodes of the new contemporary Sherlock Holmes series bestillmyheart), I fixed Crusie’s sewing machine, christened her bread machine (the best 100% whole wheat bread recipe ever), and mostly sat by the fire (gas, so we don’t have to haul wood like we do in Vermont) and talked, and laughed, and even cried a little bit.

I needed this break.  Even though I had to leave my darling husband behind, I needed to get away from all the responsibilities that are dragging me down.  I’m already feeling the edginess begin creeping back, since I have to have a smack down with my agent over a couple of things and I hate displeasing people.  It’s time for me to grow a pair (so to speak — I’m sure Richie would rather I didn’t) and decide what I want out of life.  Maybe it’s time to grow up at age 63.

Anyway, tomorrow’s my last day in Ohio, then home to all the stress life has to offer, including taxes and credit cards and deadlines.  I’d rather go to Australia.

But in the meantime Northern Vermont is the best I got.  And we’ve had so little snow it’s not even as breathtakingly beautiful as it usually is.

Hey, life’s a bitch and then you die.  I’m not going to be Mrs. Crankypants again.  I’m going to pull up my socks and get on with life, shoulders back, whistling in the dark so no one knows I’m afraid.

Because it’s not the monsters in the dark who will get you.  It’s the fear that drags you down.

 

Audio Redux (Anne Stuart)

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God, so I love audio books.  I love them with a fierce passion, and it’s probably easy enough to understand.  I assume everyone who reads this is either a reader or a writer and a reader.  We all started out loving books. Nancy Drew, horse books, ballet books, Cherry Ames, our grandmother’s Harlequins.  It doesn’t matter what, we loved them.

I had a pretty awful childhood, with an alcoholic father and a raging mother, and books kept me alive.  I would go in my room and read, anything and everything, usually with a box of oatmeal cookies under my bed to nibble on.  The YA room at the Princeton Public Library (not the new one, the old one in a house from the 1700s) was my save haven.  It’s really hard to communicate just how much I loved it there, loved those books.

It continued, of course.  I read MISTRESS OF MELLYN by Victoria Holt when it first came out, and my life was changed.  I became a writer then, whether I knew it or not.  In fact, a writer of gothics, which I am to this day, no matter what form the books take.  Look hard enough and you’ll see gothic elements.

I gave up my day job when I was 23, moved to Vermont to write gothics, mainly because there weren’t enough to read.  Nowadays business-savvy writers know that means the market is drying up, but that was in the old days, and I spent that first winter alone in my family’s vacation house in Vermont and wrote my first book.  And sold it.  All the while reading everything I can, ordering books from the back pages of books that I loved (people actually used to do that).  I got pretty desperate, living in such isolation.

But the more I wrote, the harder it became to read.  I worked so hard at my craft that I became increasingly impatient with the occasional clumsy phrase or mixed point of view.  It got to the point where there were only a few writers I could read, like Loretta Chase and Laura Kinsale, and I lost what had enriched me and sustained me for most of my life.

A couple of my old Harlequins came out as abridged audio books, and I listened to one and shuddered.  I tried a later one, and while not quite as bad, it still was a far cry from enchanting.  I’m not sure what turned me around.  First, some of the ICE books, which were my absolute favorite, came out on MP3 and I could listen on my iPod.  And then I saw my favorite Georgette Heyer mystery, BEHOLD HERE’S POISON, was available on iTunes.  I downloaded that, and became obsessed.

Because listening to books makes me able to turn off the overly critical mind, the competitive mind, the jealous mind, and simply enjoy.  I listened to favorite books, and then started branching out into books I hadn’t read in print first.  Right now I have 465 audio books in my Audible account, and probably another 25 I downloaded from CDs. I’m hooked.  But more importantly, I got the joy of reading back.  I glom audio books the way most people glom paperbacks, and a huge, gaping hole in my life is filled again.

Some people hate to listen to books — Jenny Crusie can’t stand to be read to.  Some haven’t tried it.  For others, holding onto the book is important (they also don’t like e-readers for the same reason).  But for me, my iPod is now my best friend (and I keep buying more iPods to fill them with audio books).

This all is in honor of ON THIN ICE, which was an Amazon exclusive (meaning you couldn’t buy a physical book of it, though we’re working on that).  It’s been recorded by the divine Xe Sands, who did a brilliant job on the previous ICE book, FIRE AND ICE, and it comes out today at Audible and on Amazon, among other places.  And I can’t wait.  The book was a labor of love, and having an audio version of it was the best reward.

Go listen to a sample, either of this, or of one of your favorite books available on audio (Audible.com has them).  And see if you might not get hooked too.

ADVENTURE TIME (Anne Stuart)

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I’m sitting on the train, heading down to New York City, and the internet isn’t working, so I’ll write my blog in Word and transpose it if the internet ever becomes active again.  I shouldn’t complain.  I’ve made this almost 10 hour trip often enough before internet became available, so I shouldn’t be so spoiled, but I was counting on it to make blogging possible.

Eh, whatever.

I’m off on an adventure.  Down to the Big City, where I will have a brainstorming strategy session with my agentss.  Might see my current editor or I might now – it all depends, but I WILL see Alan Rickman (be still my heart).  Anyone who’s read my books over the years can easily guess I have a thing for him, since parts of his characters show up in my characters.  Even my golden prince from The Unfortunate  Miss Fortunes started talking like him.

Two nights in a New York hotel, maybe a side trip to Macy’s if I can hobble that far.  Makeup and pantyhose and getting to be a grown up – what fun!

And the best thing of all is  can spend most of the ten hours on the train writing.  I’m hoping to wrap up REBEL by the end of the week, which would be a good thing since it’s due on February 1st.  But I love the book – wonderful, delicious characters, great tension, etc.  I’m going to have a wonderful time immersing myself in it, and then on to new and glorious things.

In the meantime we’re putting out some of my treasured classics (at least as far as my not-humble self considers them).  Most of the romantic suspense books are out, including the Maggie Bennetts, MOONRISE, and RITUAL SINS at the bargain price of 99 cents for a few days longer.  Plus, of course, the new one, ON THIN ICE, which is coming out in audio by the beginning of February.  The incomparable Xe Sands did the audio, and I cannot wait!  I’m hooked on audio books anyway, and I love hearing my own, because the emphasis is always different and fascinating.

The historicals are coming out slowly.  Speaking of Alan Rickman, we have the divine HIGH SHERIFF OF HUNTINGDON novella for $1.29, which is a play off the sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves.  Yes, I made him a hero, but just barely, and gave him a hard-ass nun as a heroine.

Also out are TO LOVE A DARK LORD, which many people consider my best historical, and SHADOW DANCE, which is one of my rare, slightly black-hearted romps.

Coming soon are PRINCE OF SWORDS, a Georgian about a Tarot reader and an aristocratic cat burglar, and LORD OF DANGER, on of my two beloved (to me at least) medievals.  Those should be out soon, and next I think I’m going with THE DEMON COUNT and THE DEMON COUNT’S DAUGHTER.  It’s so much fun to be able to read these again, with new covers and all.

Okay, that’s the end of my self-serving ad.  Except, if you’re reading this presumably you’re interested in my books, or why bother?  So with luck good news for you is good news for me.

Enough about me.  What is your favorite book I wrote?  <g>

PROGRESS REPORT (Anne Stuart)

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So I decided it was time for an all-new me, even more fabulous than before, and I thought I’d give you a status report.  Progress, not perfection is a 12 step saying, and since I’m not a perfectionist it’s one of my favorites.   So here are my own babysteps, in hopes of encouraging the rest of you guys.

I’ve gone from at least 8 Diet Cokes a day down to one, first thing in the morning.  I could probably even cut that one out, but hey, it’s little enough, and I’m not tempted to have another one.  Originally I was going to cut to three a day but after a day the later DCs just tasted odd.  I’m trying to push water but that’s something I could definitely improve on.  If I went for bottled water it wouldn’t be a problem but I’ve got delicious water from my own well so I don’t want to use up all that plastic.

I’ve lost 10 pounds so far, which will slow down — it’s always easy to lose a chunk to begin with, and a stomach bug sped things up a bit.  So far I’ve cut out all fast food, all fried food, sugar, white flour.  Trying to push at least 5 veggies and fruits a day, preferably more.  Going for one vegetarian meal a week, no red meat (Richie doesn’t eat it so that’s easy enough).  No seconds.

That’s all been pretty do-able so far, but it’s early days so far.  However, I’m in the zone, and it’s easy enough to drink iced tea instead of DC, easy enough to get stuff from a supermarket salad bar instead of Mickey D’s.

I’ve been working on decluttering –  my bedroom is a disaster area.  I’ve been emptying one laundry basket a day, and I only have one more to go.  Of course, then I have to deal with all the crap on the floor that was underneath all the laundry baskets, but it’s a step in the right direction.  As soon as I finish I get to set up my new tv (but not before).

Haven’t done too well on the exercise part yet.  I keep wanting to get over to the pool (the main exercise I can handle at this point) but I keep having to take care of my grandson, take care of my mother, take care of my life.  I’m hoping for later this week.

And I’ve been writing.  Not as much as I could wish, but there’s always room for improvement.

Mostly, I’ve been surviving family trauma and not turning to food.  It’s always so easy to find excuses, but I’ve been fighting it, trying to be as sane as possible.  Most of all, I’m trying to keep it one day at a time, one moment at a time.

So check out www.reinventingfabulous.com.  Crusie’s blogging with me too, and she’s one of the wisest women I know.  Come and heckle, or be inspired.

Because it’s never too late to reinvent yourself, no matter how fabulous you were to begin with.

REINVENTING FABULOUS (Anne Stuart)

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It’s time for a change.  I’m 63 years old and fat fat fat (I hate that word).  I feel bad.  My back hurts, my knees hurt, my stomach hurts.  I want to live forever.  I want to be as glorious as I can possibly be (though I’m not sure the world is ready for that).  So I need to get healthy.

I was driving to the grocery store (where else?) and I came up with a plan.  Came back home, emailed Crusie and she was with me, and then Lani agreed to come in and heckle us.  It’s time to reinvent our already magnificent lives. We’re drowning in clutter, in responsibilities that aren’t really responsibilities.  We’re drowning in guilt and bad food and no exercise and hating where we live.  It’s time to shed the thick skin we’ve built up around ourselves and reinvent our own fabulosity (I know that’s not a word but I like it).

And I decided journalling was the way to do it, and journalling in public would keep me honest.  And Crusie said “oh, boy, a website I can play with” and we were off.  I’m going to post daily – my weight, my progress, the things I can shed, the way I view myself, etc., and see where I am at the end of the year.

Jenny will post on a weekly basis, but we’ve declared it a guilt-free zone so she doesn’t have to do anything she doesn’t want to.  And Lani will appear every now and then to harass us, because we need harassing.

So stop on by.  Have a glass of ice cold water (I’m trying to give up on Diet Coke).  Weigh in (literally and figuratively).  And we’ll so how the year progresses.

www.reinventingfabulous.com

BOXING DAY (Anne Stuart)

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I’ve been sitting here staring at the computer in a dazed stupor for the last half hour.  I was going to go through a list of the high points and low points of the last year, but I don’t want to think about negativity.  I’m too tired.  Maybe I’ll do that next week.

In the meantime I’m sitting here in my jammies with a diet coke by my side, the Christmas tree lit (we keep it up till 12th night).  Richie’s in the kitchen doing the pots and pans (I have a great husband), the cats are curled up on my bed, I’m going to eat stale ginger cookies for breakfast (even stale they’re terrific).  We got snow just in time for Christmas, and everyone was happy and cheerful yesterday.

So all is calm, all is bright, and I am not going to do one damned thing that I don’t want to do today.  I’m gonna play on the computer and read and curl up with Christmas tea.  Life will start again at full speed in another day or two.  For now …

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.

CHRISTMAS PRESENTS (Anne Stuart)

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I just read two absolutely fabulous historical romances.  They made me laugh, made me cry, turned me on.  They were glorious.

And I happened to write them.  So long ago that reading them felt like reading someone else’s books, but someone I really really liked.  No, it’s not that I’m totally infatuated with my own work (though I confess I tend to be).  It’s just that the Anne Stuart who wrote these books knew exactly what kind of hero I adore, what kind of heroine I identify with, the level of hot sex (I was gonna be polite and say sensuality but you know what I mean) that I like.  These are the kind of books that seem as if they were written just for me, and, in fact, they were.

Thanks to my glorious agent and the fabulous Storywonk.com they’ve been digitized, and are now available at all the various ebook outlets, not just for the Amazon Kindle.

First, there’s one of my all-time favorite novellas.  Think what a lovely job I have.  I drag myself to see Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, and suffer through Kevin Costner’s strange interpretation of a British accent just to fall in love with the baddest, most delightful villain ever to show up in the movies.  I was already in love with Alan Rickman, but his Sheriff of Nottingham put it over the top (in more ways than one).  So I got to write out my romantic fantasies and enjoy myself prodigiously in the novella THE HIGH SHERIFF OF HUNTINGDON, with a very wicked sheriff who meets his match with a nun, of all things!

Next, we have TO LOVE A DARK LORD, the first of my really dark heroes.  So dark, in fact, that my editor made me tone it down twice before I finally dug in my heels and said “take it or leave it.”  She took it, thank God, though I’ve always wondered what the book would be like if she’d let me go for broke.

Nevertheless, despite the darkness it’s laugh out loud funny, and I think I need to re-find my sense of humor.  It’s amazing the lessons you can learn by revisiting your old work, and enjoy yourself at the same time.  TO LOVE A DARK LORD is the story of another very bad man, this one truly bad, with some really wonderful supporting characters and a heroine who opens the book killing her uncle.  What more can you ask?

So they’re new and cheap and just right for your brand new Nook or Kindle or whatever.  Trust me, you’ve love them.

And while you’re doing it, spend some time being a little easier on yourself.  Here’s a newsflash — life is hard.  I’m grieving the suicide of an old friend while I’m rejoicing in the presence of my children and grandchild.  Life is like that, and you have to take joy in what you can, take comfort in what you can.

So I’m wishing you guys the very best of the holiday season.  The good stuff, not the bad.  The family, with all the attendant traumas that come with them.  Don’t sweat the small stuff.  If you didn’t get around to Christmas cards, don’t worry.  If the turkey’s too dry, just slather it with gravy (there could be worse culinary fixes).  If you don’t get around to making the cookies just buy them.  On-line gift certificates are a great invention.  Most of all, don’t fuss.  The holiday season is about light coming back to a dark, dark world, whether it’s the miracle of the oil, the miracle of the baby who brought hope to the world, whether it’s the miracle of the sun returning and the days finally growing longer.  It’s about hope, and your assignment is to go out and find the hope in your life and in the world.

So Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah (I can’t spell Hannukah) and Blessed Solstice and Happy Kwanzaa.  And most of all, believe in a happy new year.  Things get better.  Always.  I promise you.