Ellora's Cave Day at Love Romances Cafe

Sorry, I'm not in. I'm on my way to Love Romances Cafe to see if anyone's awake yet stateside.

Join the party to win prizes, read excerpts, pick the brains of Ellora's Cave authors, or listen in to

Kaily Hart 

Dalton Diaz

Tina Donahue

Stephanie Mowery

Tracy Cooper-Posey

Emma Petersen

Katherine Kingston

Shayla Kersten

Cris Anson

Lise Fuller

Ari Thatcher

Michelle Polaris 

Cindy Spencer-Pape 

Nina Pierce

and that Parker girl, Dita I think her name was, who'll be in good company to see how it's done.

Today, all day, at Love Romances Cafe.

[Program subject to change. Parker girl subject to do a disappearing act and go on mommy mode for an unforeseeable period of time. Subject subject to forget shedding mommy mode and talking funny upon return to the chat OR subject to forget shedding author mode and making no sense whatsoever upon return to Real Life. Either way, it ought to be entertaining.]

Into the great wide open

Okay, that's done. Last week, I mean. Good riddance. There was a lesson there, I bet. The rejection mail was educational, and losing the laptop got me in touch with Linux. Except I wasn't up to learning Linux. I know many swear by it, but I just swore. I wanted something that worked, right now, for me, my way. And so by Sunday I felt like a crybaby, and I do hate feeling and acting and talking like a crybaby.

The more I learn of the world, the more I understand how little I do know. The more I read, the more I come across things I should be reading and looking into. The more I travel the more privileged I feel and the less inclined I am to sweat the small stuff. And we do sweat the small stuff, way too much and all too often.

Your editor rejected you then your laptop died. The sun stopped shining, the temperature dropped, stupid brown hare ate all your crocuses, and the kids are at each other. Cry me a river. An ocean while you're at it. There's a term that escapes me but which explains our myopia and much of our depressed thoughts. I guess the layman's equivalent would be a lack of sense of proportion.

We don't compare ourselves, our lives or our circumstances to those less fortunate, much much less, say a single mother in Sierra Leone. We look at our neighbors, our friends, our peers, and feel disadvantaged. That is nuts. A misconception. The more time we spend wrapped up in ourselves, the smaller our frame of reference, the less content we feel. When it's all we know, we really don't know much. In that sense we are poor and in none other.

The more you venture outside yourself the more you understand your truth, your reality, is only that, yours. Almost seven billion other possibilities of seeing and interpreting and understanding the world, of living. As valid, as precious, as unique. Some find that thought depressing. I find it liberating and sobering and a comfort somehow. It doesn't have to make you feel small and meaningless. Let it make you feel ten feet tall and priceless. No better than the next man and no less deserving.

It's not my mission to educate, it's to learn. It's not my place to tell you this is how you do it, it's to ask how do you do it. Except I just did, didn't I? Oh well. This concludes today's sermon.

It's not paranoia if they're really after you

D: My laptop died on me. Caught its death somewhere. And I'm protected. Was. Really, truly...fortified. I don't believe this.

Doc: I'm not that kind of doctor. I said I'm not that kind of doctor.

D: Do you moisturize? Your hands don't look a day over fifty.

Doc: I'm forty-five.

D: That's what I'm saying. Everything was running smoothly during the day. I go back in the evening and everything's...kaput. It started berserking and it hasn't stopped berserking since. It's laughing at me. Well, not as in a skull flashes and laughs but you know...I think it knows I've had a shitty week and...it's trying to make it worse.

Doc: Speak up, dear.

D: It's adding insult to injury, is what it's doing.

Doc: How long have you believed inanimate objects are out to get you?

D: Could inanimate objects do such things? That's what I'm saying.

Doc: These things happen.

D: Do they have to happen all at once?

Doc: They don't know they're all happening at once.

D: I don't understand what you're saying. What kind of a doctor are you?

Doc: It's a coincidence. They're not out to get you. It's all in your head.

D: Fine. I still feel violated. Like after a robbery. Unsafe.

Doc: Of course you do.

D: I sit at another desk on another computer and it doesn't feel right.

Doc: Of course it doesn't. Maybe you need to step away for a while. What would you do if you had no desk, or a computer?

D: I'd use pen and paper.

Doc: Let's pretend you couldn't. Let's pretend they were out to get you, to make sure you never wrote another word. Took away all your tools, messed up, no, wiped out everything.

D: I'd find a way to write.

Doc: But if you had nothing to write on? If you were told you couldn't?

D: That I was prohibited to write? Is that what you're saying?

Doc: That is what I'm saying. That you could never write again. Ever.

D: I'd write in my head.

Doc: So what you're saying is all you need is in your head.

D: It's all in my head.

Doc: And can they get to your head?

D: Keep it down, will you.

What kind of love are you on?

I noticed this is my one hundredth post on Dita's Den. I'm celebrating it with news of rejection. The quickie I wrote to get away from my Brothers Grim was not an Ellora's Cave Quickie, as my editor pointed out, and you bet I'm kicking my own butt right about now.

Lesson one: Don't assume anything. Wrote a book that got published? Congratulations! Think everything else you do from then on is golden and greeted with open arms? Wake up. Instead:

Lesson two: Do your homework. If there are house rules, abide by them. Learn them by heart. They are the guiding light, they exist to make your life easier, your writing super focused.

Lesson three: It's not them, it's you, or in this instance, me. It really is and there's nothing else to it. Decided not to follow that guiding light but do your own thing instead? Go back to lesson one and do not assume anything.

After Alex Rising got reviewed by Night Owl Romance, I wrote them a thank you mail with a few notes on the book and my writing. I wish I could post the answer I got. I remember saying I doubted I'd ever write a simple romp. I also remember saying "but never say never."

Hell froze over and I ended up writing that simple romp. Just not simple enough, intense enough, tight enough for EC, and that is no one else's fault but mine. It got me thinking. If it wasn't a simple romp I was comfortable writing, what the hell was I doing trying to write one? (Except assuming it was golden even when I hadn't done my homework properly.) What was I out to write Romantica wise anyway?

I'm still mulling over that but initial reports indicate it can't be just sex, all sex and nothing but with plot enough to hold the edges together. I'm not dissing anyone writing strictly sex driven stories or readers who enjoy them, absolutely not. These are insanely hard to write because of that tight format and focus and I just failed royally at it. Because I wanted there to be more to it. Because the premise was fun and I had fun with it, my way, not the EC way.

It's not an Ellora's Cave Quickie but it just might be a short for some other publisher. We'll see. And I need to have a serious discussion with myself about what kind of love am I on, Romantica wise; spell it out, clear, crystal. High time, wouldn't you say? It would make my writing life that much easier, to say nothing of targeting those queries and submissions. Maybe I wouldn't feel like such an idiot after being rejected, either.

Scorchio!

Do not adjust your screen, I'm fooling around with the blog, utterly displeased with everything and going Wordpress any day now, or as soon as I have time to learn the ins and outs of it. That would be in 2015, so brace yourself for more weirdness and bmw from yours truly madly deeply.

Last week, it snowed in Southern France. Today, it's 23 degrees Celsius in the shade. This isn't Southern France, it's the Arctic. Not unprecedented, only unusual, and do not tell me it has nothing to do with global warming. Maybe if we take into account every type of weather we've had since the last ice age, this is normal. No it isn't. It's freaky. Last winter, this sudden heat wave... Not that I'm complaining. It's fabulous, really. Flip-flops, flowers, ice creams on the terrace, long and even longer walks I've been taking since the snow and sleet melted.

I love walking. I don't think of it as exercise. I can go any distance and it's the perfect way to catch things you never would sitting in a car, riding the bus or even a bike. It's meditation. Relaxation. Time to think things over. Look back, plan ahead, do a head cleaning. I'm alert but calm, excited but not jittery. After a day spent meeting goals and deadlines, it's a treat to step out, wander off, breathe and observe.

Am I going somewhere with this? Absolutely not. If you're waiting for the punch line, the point, leave, now. Take a walk, a really long one, to get from A to B, or go in no particular direction, just wander off and let your mind roam free as well. You might be happily surprised with what you find.

[Blog and temperature update: it's now 25 degrees Celsius outside. Maybe this is Southern France, and France got our weather in return. They can keep it. ]