Some Fun, Some News From the Homefront

First, the Fun

I've been surfing the web in between working on the 2nd book in the series (in between working on the cover of the first book). I Googled a certain phrase and found a couple of fun blogs on crappy SF and fantasy covers.


A couple of the covers weren't that bad.

But most were horrific. One had 5 different fonts on the cover. One had a squid in among a bunch of other crap. (I kid you not.) A few had naked warrior-type (I think) men with strategically placed...stickers, sparkly things, and who-knows-what-else. (I kid you not.) There was even one mostly-naked woman whose groin area was (wait for it)...dark. I mean, darkness as in black-hole-in-space darkness.

Wow.

Here's the first one: The Joys of Awful Sci-Fi and Fantasy Book Covers. Appears to be U.S.-based (but what do I know, lol?) The June 20th entry starts off with a truly bad Ray Bradbury cover. Didn't he deserve something better? (I think so.)

The second one is U.K. based: Good Show Sir - Only the worst Sci-Fi/Fantasy book covers. This one has one book per blog post. Read the comments; they're as hilarious as the deadpan captions under the crappy covers.

You're welcome. :-)

From the Homefront

So, yes, I'm working and working on the cover for Changing Faces, the first in the Haven New Jersey series. They're short novels/novellas, all contemporary fantasy. Plenty of humor; the MC, Tessa, doesn't take herself seriously at all. (First person, BTW.) I'll probably post a couple of excerpts at some point.

Life Imitates Art? (I'd Like to Think So)

Okay, so I've been writing the next in this trilogy of short novels/novellas, showing (hopefully) that the main MC, Tessa, has grown some cujones. She actually gets pissed at the woman who's been helping her out; not the nicest thing to do, but Tessa felt she'd been babied for way too long.

Segue into last night. Hubby and I had an argument, a heated one. (Everything is fine; just one of those things.) He was yelling at me about something, and what I usually do is not say anything and avert my eyes - you know, try to make myself even smaller than I am (and I'm pretty tiny).

However...I had just written the part where Tessa grows a pair, and that scene stuck in my mind. So I yelled back. For more than a minute. Cursing. I hated doing it - I hate arguing about anything - but I felt it was necessary to stand my ground, considering what he said (which I won't go into here).

You know what? Hubby gave me a thumb's up for standing my ground, after all was said and done. No broken dishes or broken windows or anything else. Just an "Okay, I see where you're coming from," kind of a statement.

So maybe what I'm writing isn't literature with a capital "L". Doesn't matter. If someone gets an idea or enjoyment out of reading my stuff, it's all worth it.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Yup, it's me birthday. :-)

Before I get to all the gushy stuff...

LOVE The Beatles.

The music from the video below actually takes me back to when I was a young girl.  I'm a Joisey Girl through and through but I haven't sounded Joisey in quite some time (living in another part of the country for a year does that to you ;-)).

I grew up in northeastern New Jersey, and all my cousins and aunts and uncles pretty much lived in that area.  But what the music below really zeros in on are (of course) summers and pool parties.  My dad's niece and her husband had a nice house with its allotted 1/10 of a square inch backyard (that's a Jersey joke; if you've ever lived here, I think you'll understand).  They had a round, above-ground pool that took up most of that space, with the rest for chairs and a small grilling area.  I had a ton of fun, and I look back on that time very wistfully.  (This is why I rarely stroll down memory lane; the memories are too painful.)

The wistfulness comes from all those tons of cousins I used to see on a fairly regular basis and from all the aunts and uncles who have passed away.  All the cousins have moved out of the area, they have their own families.  (Think of the Jewish Diaspora, where all the Jewish tribes were blown to the winds.)  And as I said, all of my aunts and uncles are gone.  Anyone who wants to be immortal can have it - I can't handle the thought of having to deal with the death of loved ones over and over again for an eternity.

Sorry for the downer; this is supposed to be a happy day (and it is :-)).  After all, I've made it to 49, more or less physically intact, my humor intact, my mental capacities...mostly intact ;-), and with my first book to go live by the end of the month (if all goes to plan).

So, for your viewing and listening pleasure, Theme From a Summer Place...

Google Reader

I have one person (or maybe more; what the heck do I know?) who has been reading posts off of Google Reader, and for some reason, the new posts weren't popping up.

I did some finagling with the feed, including pinging this blog, and I'm hoping this means new posts (like this one!) will finally start to appear on a regular basis on Google Reader.  And don't forget to hit that refresh button over at Google Reader - my posts do pop up that way.

Sorry I haven't posted much, but it's crunch time!

More in a day or two...

Be Careful Out There

If you are contracted with any of the traditional/legacy publishers, make sure you read your contract.  Among Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Dean Wesley Smith, and the lawyer dude who is Passive Guy, there are a lot of crappy clauses and what-not that publishers are hoisting onto writers, whether those writers have been in legacy publishing for a while or those writers who are about to sign their first contract.

More info here:

http://www.thepassivevoice.com/05/2011/strip-mining-the-authors/

What was it that they used to say on Hill Street Blues?  Oh yeah.

Be careful out there.