I got an ARC (Advance Reader Copy, aka Galley) of Kiss Me if You Can because I was the lucky blog reader whose name got pulled out of the hat. So I read it and figured I'd post a review for all five of my loyal readers, only one of whom reads romance novels.
Let me just say that I will probably pull a few punches because it was free and because the author comes across as genuinely nice.
It's OK. About 6/10. I liked it better than her "Lucky" books which were her series before this one.
The heroine seems so much more put together and balanced than what everyone says about her. I know some of that is meant to be that her family always treated her fairly shabbily because she wasn't as uptight and as much of an overachiever as her parents and sister, but it still came across as odd. She has a website business and is successful and travels a lot for the joy of it - doing some of her best work in Timbuktoo and Outer Mongolia and so on.
She always patterned herself instead on her wacky grandmother, but when Grandma ends up not having always had much of a moral code and the heroine (no, I can't remember her name) is thrown for a loop.
The hero feels like he failed at everything. He meant to be a cop, but had a shoulder injury and had to give it up. He was married to a stewardess who cheated on him and left him. He wants to be an author, not a journalist, but almost no one bought his first book and he has writer's block. His main problem with the heroine is that she likes to travel and sometimes goes on long trips, so he decides he shouldn't fall for her because she is therefore just like his ex. Neurotic much?
I mean, they almost break up because the heroine asks him to travel to Australia with her. Even if he doesn't want to quit his job so he can he becomes a fabulously rich author overnight (because surely we all know that's how it works!), surely he has some vacation time coming up? She usually travels for long periods of time, but even she should know she can take shorter trips and doesn't have to give up all travel forever.
When they have long conversations, the author pretty much says "they had a long conversation" instead of making it about anything, which would at least show us that they were sharing a bit about their interests.
They're brought together because he foils a jewelry robbery and the store owner's daughter offers him a reward, so he takes the ugliest, cheapest thing he sees, and it turns out to be a ring that was stolen in the 50's and it matches the ugly, horrid necklace that the heroine's grandmother only wears at home. He's also in the news and then featured on a blog of handsome, available bachelors (which subplot pretty much falls off the map about halfway through), and the jewelry store owner sees the ring and has to get it back so no one knows.
I felt the stolen ring plot was a bit silly, with the grandmother and her best friend providing geriatric laughs and being a bit over the top.
The sex scenes were hot, but we all know that good sex does not a great relationship make, right?
So it was a light read and a bit of fluff. Fun, but a bit frustrating.
Friday, June 11, 2010
Monday, June 7, 2010
revision, revision, revision, books, kids, and other stuff
My class started yesterday!
I'm taking Lani Diane Rich's StoryWonk Revision class. She's an excellent writer and has been running these classes for a while - and I need all the help I can get with editing for plot, structure, and story.
So first week, we have to read the story without editing (hard to do, so I have made it a pdf and put it on my eReader) and write all the scenes on note cards, then identify the major turning points and where the Acts are (ideally 4 acts). It doesn't sound like too much, but, *ulp*
I'm still waiting for the critique of 10 pages that I won in the raffle at a day-long writer's conference I went to a couple of months ago. I need to email.
PLUS, I got a CC of the email to Joanna Bourne, whose 10 page critique I won in the Novak diabetes auction, informing her that I am the winner, so I need to get in touch with her and decide if I want the same 10 pages critiqued or a different 10.
And my laptop is ailing and is in the laptop hospital. I might just be dirty and overheating, might need a new video card. We should have news today, I hope. Definitely slowing me down on writing and revision, though...
And yesterday, I was reading one of the huge number of books I got at the library book sale (half price day on Saturday as I was helping at the sale and then I helped pack up the leftovers). I was wandering around the house with it and kept picking it up and thinking, "Hey, I already read this part. How in the world did I manage to put the bookmark in the wrong spot?" until I finally noticed that I had two of them - one from the sale and one from the library.
I did get some other doubles of things already on my shelf so wasted a whole - whoooo - $2.33 or something. I will either donate them back to the library for the next sale or else sell them at the used book store for more than I paid for them. (method to my madness).
DS1, my 10 year old, 4th grader, went to camp for the next two nights. My ickle baby boy! Strangely, there were nine kids out of the two classes (43 kids, according to ds1) who are not going along. One I know really didn't want to go and another his parents were worried about less-than-optimal supervision. I just remember having loads of fun at camp with my school (though sometimes being homesick) and I helped him pack and waved bye-bye. So we won't see him again until Wednesday, which isn't all that far away. And who knows? They're panning for gold up by Sutter's Mill, so he might end up making us all rich (hahahahaha).
DS2 got his thumb slammed in the hinge side of the bathroom door yesterday. DS1 was just closing the door - a bit too hard because DS2 was right there, so he's not completely blameless, but it wasn't one of their running and slamming times - and he somehow got his right thumb in the hinge. I really don't know how his right hand was in the hinge area, which is on the left side of the door, but there it was. I just heard the thump and the scream. So his thumb is swollen and achy and bruised around the knuckle, but he can move it, though not all the way, so I'm trying to decide if he needs an X-ray.
DD is potty training. It's going well. Mostly. Accident on the floor yesterday, but generally, if she has her diaper off, she remembers to use the potty without too much prompting. I'm not totally comfortable with her running around nakey-bop with older brothers, but that's more in my head than in theirs.
So that was our weekend :)
I'm taking Lani Diane Rich's StoryWonk Revision class. She's an excellent writer and has been running these classes for a while - and I need all the help I can get with editing for plot, structure, and story.
So first week, we have to read the story without editing (hard to do, so I have made it a pdf and put it on my eReader) and write all the scenes on note cards, then identify the major turning points and where the Acts are (ideally 4 acts). It doesn't sound like too much, but, *ulp*
I'm still waiting for the critique of 10 pages that I won in the raffle at a day-long writer's conference I went to a couple of months ago. I need to email.
PLUS, I got a CC of the email to Joanna Bourne, whose 10 page critique I won in the Novak diabetes auction, informing her that I am the winner, so I need to get in touch with her and decide if I want the same 10 pages critiqued or a different 10.
And my laptop is ailing and is in the laptop hospital. I might just be dirty and overheating, might need a new video card. We should have news today, I hope. Definitely slowing me down on writing and revision, though...
And yesterday, I was reading one of the huge number of books I got at the library book sale (half price day on Saturday as I was helping at the sale and then I helped pack up the leftovers). I was wandering around the house with it and kept picking it up and thinking, "Hey, I already read this part. How in the world did I manage to put the bookmark in the wrong spot?" until I finally noticed that I had two of them - one from the sale and one from the library.
I did get some other doubles of things already on my shelf so wasted a whole - whoooo - $2.33 or something. I will either donate them back to the library for the next sale or else sell them at the used book store for more than I paid for them. (method to my madness).
DS1, my 10 year old, 4th grader, went to camp for the next two nights. My ickle baby boy! Strangely, there were nine kids out of the two classes (43 kids, according to ds1) who are not going along. One I know really didn't want to go and another his parents were worried about less-than-optimal supervision. I just remember having loads of fun at camp with my school (though sometimes being homesick) and I helped him pack and waved bye-bye. So we won't see him again until Wednesday, which isn't all that far away. And who knows? They're panning for gold up by Sutter's Mill, so he might end up making us all rich (hahahahaha).
DS2 got his thumb slammed in the hinge side of the bathroom door yesterday. DS1 was just closing the door - a bit too hard because DS2 was right there, so he's not completely blameless, but it wasn't one of their running and slamming times - and he somehow got his right thumb in the hinge. I really don't know how his right hand was in the hinge area, which is on the left side of the door, but there it was. I just heard the thump and the scream. So his thumb is swollen and achy and bruised around the knuckle, but he can move it, though not all the way, so I'm trying to decide if he needs an X-ray.
DD is potty training. It's going well. Mostly. Accident on the floor yesterday, but generally, if she has her diaper off, she remembers to use the potty without too much prompting. I'm not totally comfortable with her running around nakey-bop with older brothers, but that's more in my head than in theirs.
So that was our weekend :)
Saturday, June 5, 2010
school pics
not the good ones. just amusing :)
Maybe too late for my mom to see before she goes to conference!
Friday, June 4, 2010
Saturday, May 29, 2010
reading reading and reading
Not much writing around here this week. Tuesday, I got a big box o' books from B&N AND two other books from Amazon, which were a delayed birthday present. Oh boy.
So keep in mind that I actually have to faint from joy and/or drool all over a book to give it a perfect score. I am against grade inflation in colleges, too, can you tell?
And I'm not putting them in the order I read them, because I want you all to know about Rose Lerner.
Rose Lerner, In for a Penny. 8/10 stars - Wow. just wow. This is her first book (unless she formerly published under another pseudonym or something). It's the story of an early 19th-century wild-boy nobleman whose wild-boy father dies and leaves him in such deep debt that he marries a brewery heiress and gives up all his fun (drinking and gambling with his friends and going out with his scandalous mistress) and moves out to his estate, where everything's falling apart - not the house itself, but the lands and the people are all hungry and the other landowners and renters are right b*st*rds and so on.
She really gets deep into the class issues and the fear that the H&H both have of offending each other and of losing each other and of how they have a hard time communicating. She repeats herself a bit and goes a bit far on the melodrama, but what a good book.
I'm not sure where I heard of it, since I read about 20 different romance book blogs, but more people need to read this book. Awesome! (EDIT TO ADD: I must have seen it on the B&N book blog, where Eloisa James writes a column. EDIT AGAIN: or else it was when she did a top ten favorite romance list for dear Author? Anyway, she's being noticed...)
And if you have a Nook or the patience to read on your computer screen, they have it for $2.56 as an ebook. I have a hard copy, because though I have an eReader, I am actually a Luddite and if it's a book I would like to keep, then I want a real book, darnit.
Julia Quinn, Ten things I love about you. 8/10 stars - cute and funny, but not as funny as the one before it, plus I felt there were subplots that were set up that never got resolved.
Sherry Thomas, His at Night. 8/10 stars - angsty, but not as heartrending as her first two books (Private Arrangements and, um, the one about the chef? Delicious?). Her writing is so, so good that even though the plot felt a bit contrived at times, I loved it. Does she publish her grocery lists? I'd buy them.
Joanna Bourne, Forbidden Rose. 9/10 stars - spies and French Revolution and ... I was about to give some huge spoilers, but I won't. And her writing is every bit as good as ever, though I didn't get as strong a feel as I did in her first book of the cadence of French in the dialogue. Ditto on the grocery lists.
Lisa Kleypas, Married by Morning. 7/10 stars - A fairly typical Kleypas, by which I mean quite good, but no drooling.
And then there was a an anthology with stories from Catherine Anderson, Loretta Chase, and Samantha James.... Whose description I should have read more carefully because these were old novellas, reprinted. I had read the Anderson and Chase ones and hadn't even liked the Anderson one, so skipped it this time. And the James one was a bit meh. So that was a waste of six or seven bucks, ya know?
Next up, Indigo Blue, which is a Catherine Anderson re-issue, then, um, what else do I have? A couple of Guhrke from the library because she writes late-19th century London which is what I am trying to do, and, uh, well, I have 20+ books out of the library to be honest.
So keep in mind that I actually have to faint from joy and/or drool all over a book to give it a perfect score. I am against grade inflation in colleges, too, can you tell?
And I'm not putting them in the order I read them, because I want you all to know about Rose Lerner.
Rose Lerner, In for a Penny. 8/10 stars - Wow. just wow. This is her first book (unless she formerly published under another pseudonym or something). It's the story of an early 19th-century wild-boy nobleman whose wild-boy father dies and leaves him in such deep debt that he marries a brewery heiress and gives up all his fun (drinking and gambling with his friends and going out with his scandalous mistress) and moves out to his estate, where everything's falling apart - not the house itself, but the lands and the people are all hungry and the other landowners and renters are right b*st*rds and so on.
She really gets deep into the class issues and the fear that the H&H both have of offending each other and of losing each other and of how they have a hard time communicating. She repeats herself a bit and goes a bit far on the melodrama, but what a good book.
I'm not sure where I heard of it, since I read about 20 different romance book blogs, but more people need to read this book. Awesome! (EDIT TO ADD: I must have seen it on the B&N book blog, where Eloisa James writes a column. EDIT AGAIN: or else it was when she did a top ten favorite romance list for dear Author? Anyway, she's being noticed...)
And if you have a Nook or the patience to read on your computer screen, they have it for $2.56 as an ebook. I have a hard copy, because though I have an eReader, I am actually a Luddite and if it's a book I would like to keep, then I want a real book, darnit.
Julia Quinn, Ten things I love about you. 8/10 stars - cute and funny, but not as funny as the one before it, plus I felt there were subplots that were set up that never got resolved.
Sherry Thomas, His at Night. 8/10 stars - angsty, but not as heartrending as her first two books (Private Arrangements and, um, the one about the chef? Delicious?). Her writing is so, so good that even though the plot felt a bit contrived at times, I loved it. Does she publish her grocery lists? I'd buy them.
Joanna Bourne, Forbidden Rose. 9/10 stars - spies and French Revolution and ... I was about to give some huge spoilers, but I won't. And her writing is every bit as good as ever, though I didn't get as strong a feel as I did in her first book of the cadence of French in the dialogue. Ditto on the grocery lists.
Lisa Kleypas, Married by Morning. 7/10 stars - A fairly typical Kleypas, by which I mean quite good, but no drooling.
And then there was a an anthology with stories from Catherine Anderson, Loretta Chase, and Samantha James.... Whose description I should have read more carefully because these were old novellas, reprinted. I had read the Anderson and Chase ones and hadn't even liked the Anderson one, so skipped it this time. And the James one was a bit meh. So that was a waste of six or seven bucks, ya know?
Next up, Indigo Blue, which is a Catherine Anderson re-issue, then, um, what else do I have? A couple of Guhrke from the library because she writes late-19th century London which is what I am trying to do, and, uh, well, I have 20+ books out of the library to be honest.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Right. Get on with it. Easier said than done.
I've got to get my big girl panties on and get back to work.
The new story I'm working on is stuck, currently, so I need to think about where to go next and how to get there. I can put it on the back burner and read some more research material for inspiration for a while, but i also need to know where I am going to try to take it.
And the edits I've been doing of the 2nd book that I finished are languishing away in a binder. I've gone through about half of what I meant to do and stopped both due to the story mentioned above and the rejection letter, which was 10 days ago already.
I went to the meeting of my RWA chapter - the speaker, Jeannie Ruesch, is a graphic designer/ website designer and a novelist and talked about making a brand name of yourself - and sat at lunch with her and with a couple of other people I've spent time talking to at these things before. one is/was a life coach and between her and Jeannie Ruesch, they were shoving me back at work, reminding me that they've been rejected and rejected and yet now have contracts and one is published and the other will be soon.
So I came home all renewed and yet tired because being around all those people all morning wears me out, no matter how good it is. So the boys were using my computer to play on lego.com and I let them and instead I read a book and dozed off with the toddler.
I *will* get to work. I *am* a good writer.
And I am starting an online editing/revising workshop with Lani Diane Rich in a couple of weeks, so i am getting excited about that. I don't know which book I will choose to revise during the workshop, so i have to think about that a bit, too.
The new story I'm working on is stuck, currently, so I need to think about where to go next and how to get there. I can put it on the back burner and read some more research material for inspiration for a while, but i also need to know where I am going to try to take it.
And the edits I've been doing of the 2nd book that I finished are languishing away in a binder. I've gone through about half of what I meant to do and stopped both due to the story mentioned above and the rejection letter, which was 10 days ago already.
I went to the meeting of my RWA chapter - the speaker, Jeannie Ruesch, is a graphic designer/ website designer and a novelist and talked about making a brand name of yourself - and sat at lunch with her and with a couple of other people I've spent time talking to at these things before. one is/was a life coach and between her and Jeannie Ruesch, they were shoving me back at work, reminding me that they've been rejected and rejected and yet now have contracts and one is published and the other will be soon.
So I came home all renewed and yet tired because being around all those people all morning wears me out, no matter how good it is. So the boys were using my computer to play on lego.com and I let them and instead I read a book and dozed off with the toddler.
I *will* get to work. I *am* a good writer.
And I am starting an online editing/revising workshop with Lani Diane Rich in a couple of weeks, so i am getting excited about that. I don't know which book I will choose to revise during the workshop, so i have to think about that a bit, too.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
whining
That's ME who's whining.
The little handle of my Brita UltraMax water filter pitcher broke. Just the teeny-tiny little knob that holds the handle onto the nozzle part, so while it's not catastrophic (especially because we've had the pitcher for ages and only paid a couple bucks for it at a garage sale in the first place), it's now unusable. I emailed Brita to see if I can get a new little handle. If not, I'll have to decide if we're getting a new one or relying on the fridge's water dispenser, which is slooooowwwwww.
I have a weird rash on my belly. I thought it was mosquito bites when the little dots first appeared two weeks ago, but they spread and raised up and itch like a... itch. I finally started using topical steroids left over from about 5 years ago when I had a really enormous rash. I hate using weird stuff like that, but it was out of control. I thought I threw the ointment away a long time ago and now feel bad because DS2 is allergic to something out in the yard, too and has suffered a couple of rashes and the benedryl ointment stuff didn't help much. Not that i wanted to use steroids on him unless absolutely necessary, but, well, poor guy.
And though I have been fake-gloating on facebook that I gave my cold to all of my kids as revenge for all the colds they've given me, it means that DD had a couple of bad nights. Last night, she had a hard time getting to sleep because she was coughing, but she then slept for a long, long time, so we were nice and rested this morning.
And I needed to be rested, because DS2 didn't want to go to bed last night and so was tired and cranky and difficult this morning - didn't want to get dressed, didn't want to eat breakfast, didn't want to tell me if he wanted hot lunch (grilled cheese) or a packed lunch, so he got a packed lunch because it's slightly cheaper and because I'd had enough by then. Oh, and it's standardized testing this week, so we'll see how well he does.
At least it's sunny today, so they will play outside at recess and maybe not be as hyped as they were yesterday.
Oh. and the big thing? (yes you have to read all the way to the bottom to get to the big thing.) I got a letter from the agent who had my partial manuscript and she didn't like it. So poop.
Better get to work on that query letter.
The little handle of my Brita UltraMax water filter pitcher broke. Just the teeny-tiny little knob that holds the handle onto the nozzle part, so while it's not catastrophic (especially because we've had the pitcher for ages and only paid a couple bucks for it at a garage sale in the first place), it's now unusable. I emailed Brita to see if I can get a new little handle. If not, I'll have to decide if we're getting a new one or relying on the fridge's water dispenser, which is slooooowwwwww.
I have a weird rash on my belly. I thought it was mosquito bites when the little dots first appeared two weeks ago, but they spread and raised up and itch like a... itch. I finally started using topical steroids left over from about 5 years ago when I had a really enormous rash. I hate using weird stuff like that, but it was out of control. I thought I threw the ointment away a long time ago and now feel bad because DS2 is allergic to something out in the yard, too and has suffered a couple of rashes and the benedryl ointment stuff didn't help much. Not that i wanted to use steroids on him unless absolutely necessary, but, well, poor guy.
And though I have been fake-gloating on facebook that I gave my cold to all of my kids as revenge for all the colds they've given me, it means that DD had a couple of bad nights. Last night, she had a hard time getting to sleep because she was coughing, but she then slept for a long, long time, so we were nice and rested this morning.
And I needed to be rested, because DS2 didn't want to go to bed last night and so was tired and cranky and difficult this morning - didn't want to get dressed, didn't want to eat breakfast, didn't want to tell me if he wanted hot lunch (grilled cheese) or a packed lunch, so he got a packed lunch because it's slightly cheaper and because I'd had enough by then. Oh, and it's standardized testing this week, so we'll see how well he does.
At least it's sunny today, so they will play outside at recess and maybe not be as hyped as they were yesterday.
Oh. and the big thing? (yes you have to read all the way to the bottom to get to the big thing.) I got a letter from the agent who had my partial manuscript and she didn't like it. So poop.
Better get to work on that query letter.
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