On Not Writing in Pretty Journals

2014-08-27 08.34.39Last night, as I was getting ready for bed, I had a rush of ideas for a new story.

It’s partly Carolyn Crane‘s fault, because we were IMing and we started riffing on story ideas. Actually, to back up, she’d watched two episodes of Game of Thrones, hated that the dog died and wanted me to promise her nothing else bad would happen.

HA!

She’s so adorable. So I explained who was still alive of my last watching, we started talking about our favorite – female, naturally – characters and what made them heroic. And then we segued, as you do, into my heroines in The Twelve Kingdoms books and what would be a really awesome plotline for Dafne. My brain was still buzzing with it as I brushed my teeth and the opening scene for book 4 crystallized in my head. Now, I always think I’ll remember these things the next day, but sometimes the intervention of sleep and other dreams will muddle them. So I went back to my desk to write down some notes.

Any of you who follow me regularly are snickering, because you know my issues with the cryptic notes I leave myself

NEVERTHELESS.

One of my many issues along these lines is that I tend to grab a sticky note – which has the dual complication of being small enough to encourage even more crypticness (cryptnicity? crypniticism?) and can be easily lost. I have a bad habit of using what’s at hand. For example, the page of notes above are on the back side of the title page of my galley proofs of The Tears of the Rose, book 2 in the series. When I reviewed those galleys, I’d finished book 3, The Talon of the Hawk. As I was reading, all sorts of tweaks occurred to me that I needed to work in during edits. Thus the mess above.

You’ll also note the pretty notebook with my name on it.

Followed by three exclamation points.

This was a gift from Carolyn, meant to poke at me because I’m forever excising exclamation points from her manuscripts when I critique them. Every once in a while I let her keep one. NEVER multiples.

I have a number of adorable little notebooks like this – with pretty covers and enticingly blank pages within. Some have been gifts like this one. Some I’ve bought for myself. I keep them around and have for many years. When I first decided to become a writer, friends gave notebooks like this to me with encouraging messages in the front pages. I treasure them all. Many of them I never marked a word in, feeling like I needed to be worthy of those blank pages. Or I saved them only for the “good” stuff – carefully penned sentences and transcribed poems. Things I never look at.

So, last night, instead of grabbing a sticky note – let’s be honest, I couldn’t find one under the stacks of books – I opened the journal and used that to jot down the basics of that opening scene. And now I’ll have those in a place I can find them. Something to go back to someday, maybe even long after the book is on the shelf. Not careful or pretty or perfect.

But useful and real.

Which is what our notebooks should contain.

Birthdays and Bluebirds

Third BirthdayIn honor of my birthday today, I dug out this photo of my third birthday. Possible first hat sighting. 🙂

One of these years, I totally want to have another swimsuit-clad birthday party. Maybe in the Caribbean. Everyone can come! (We may need a bigger cake, however.)

rainbow over Sandia - Marlita Reddy HemfeltToday feels very blessed and special to me. When I blinked my eyes open, David rolled over and wished me happy birthday. I’m so lucky to   have him in my life. It’s raining today, always a welcome blessing in the desert – and Sandia was lit up bright pink, complete with rainbow. We went and ran at the gym. I’m in bSialia_mexicana_07094etter cardiovascular condition than I’ve maybe ever been in my life, thanks to the running and my treadmill desk. I rotate through a number of playlists and today’s happened to be a hit list of longtime favorites – Every Rose Has Its Thorn, Tonight Is the Night I Fell Asleep at the Wheel, Dar Williams’ Alleluia, Running Down a Dream, and the Waltz for Eva and Che. Interestingly, they all follow the theme of reviewing the past and taking in both the regrets and joys. At the end of Waltz, Eva wishes for a hundred years – something I wish for, too.

A flock of bluebirds dashed past the windows as we ran.

Migas with chorizoDavid took me out to breakfast, my mom sent me beautiful flowers and since then I’ve been catching up with all the warm and wonderful 10599556_10151969113019364_9074084243050980582_ngood wishes from my online community – longtime friends, new friends, authors, readers and everyone in between.

A few readers and reviewers are celebrating the occasion by posting favorite reviews of my books, or quotes from them. That’s a first for me – and it’s just staggering. It feels like the most amazing way to give me a virtual hug. One of them, that I particularly loved seeing, partly because I don’t remember reading it before, says this of The Mark of the Tala:

I felt different after reading this book. The lines of my imagination were tested, and I LOVED IT. Jeffe writes with a paintbrush of a talented artist. Her words are filled with beauty and pain all at the same time. I found that this story was so well written, that even the simplest line, And there was Rayfe. Waiting for me,” overflowed with emotion. You could feel what she was feeling as she wrote the words. It was an amazing feeling to be so tuned into the author just by reading her words.

Amazing for me, to read THAT.

Lucky for me I have presents to give back! I just happen to have a box of hot-off-the-press ARCs of The Tears of the Rose. I’ll be mailing out a bunch tomorrow, so let me know if you want one!

~passes cake, too~

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Pre-Orders Open for The Tears of the Rose!

THE TEARS OF THE ROSE high resYou can pre-order print here:

Amazon, B&N, BAM, IndieBound, Bookish.com, Target, Walmart

Or ebooks here:

amazonkindle, Apple, Google, Kobo, Nook

And if you want to be part of a “Thunderclap” – and, hey, who wouldn’t? – you can sign up here:

http://www.roxannerhoads.com/2014/08/please-join-this-social-media-campaign.html?zx=dd7a3398572c006c

Going Under is Up!

Going Under
Available July 14!

Guess what? Going Under is up on Net Galley!

I know I’ve been all The Mark of the Tala lately but, amazingly enough, Going Under comes out only a month from now! Where does the time go???

Going Under marks the first full-length erotic romance I’ve written and I *loved* doing it. There will be two more in the Falling Under series, with the next out in January.

Here’s the blurb on it:

Knowing all too well the damage online trolls can inflict, game designer Emily Bartwell takes privacy seriously. Living in solitude and working remotely under a male alias gives her a sense of security. The sexy writer renting the house next door ignites desires she’d forgotten she had, and when he invites her to play games of a very different sort, Em is ready and willing. Even if it means breaking all her own rules to abide by his.

Undercover tech reporter Fox Mullins is so close to the biggest scoop of his career: finding the elusive programmer Phoenix. An increasingly erotic adventure with his reserved but passionate new neighbor is the ideal way to heat up the chilly Pacific Northwest nights as he tracks the brilliant gamer.

At first Fox is happy to help Em explore her newly awakened kinky side, no holds barred, no strings attached. But as thPW Reviewey push the limits of intimacy, both physical and emotional, Fox discovers he’s not the only one keeping secrets. And revealing hers may mean betraying the one woman who embodies everything he desires.

And it already got a review in Publisher’s Weekly! (The link may be easier to read than the image, alas.

 I really love the bit about “talent for organic relationship-building” because that’s so important to me. The stuff about secondary characters and showing more of the gaming world? Absolutely not what I wanted to do with this story, so I’m good there.

 For those looking for news on the next Twelve Kingdoms books, I’m nearly done writing book 3, Ursula’s book, The Talon of the Hawk. It’s going to be a long one – fair warning. Probably a quarter again as long as Mark and The Tears of the Rose, Amelia’s book. I think you all will be pleased.

Crystal Balls, Party Pics and Giveaways Galore!

BoUzkFjIgAEpBUkThis is the awesome crystal ball/snow globe I got at the Kensington Books party at the RT Booklovers Convention. On the flip side is the cover for The Tears of the Rose. It’s one of the best party favors EVER.

If you want to see some photos from the party, Aloha On My Mind posted some very fun ones. Yes, I wore my sash from the Mardis Gras party – what??

Release day for The Mark of the Tala is already on Tuesday! So I’m kind of everywhere,

The lovely Veronica Scott interviewed me over at the USA Today Sci-Fi Encounters blog. Reading Between the Wines also interviewed me and is hosting a giveaway. And we’re up to Day 5 of The Bookpushers Seven-Day Countdown and Giveaway. We’ve been doing the Vacation Guide to the Twelve Kingdoms, which has been very fun.

Finally, I’m over at Here Be Magic, talking about Fairytale Tropes and how we love to explore and bend them.

 

Getting Rid of Debt – the Karmic Kind

THE TEARS OF THE ROSE

I’m over at Word Whores today, talking about the reveal of the cover for book 2 of The Twelve Kingdoms, The Tears of the Rose, as well as the word of the week: debt.  I’m not going to chide you about your credit cards, but we there’s another kind to be thinking about.

On Becoming a Sociopathic Writer

002In the mornings, we get up at six o’clock, get dressed for the gym and leave the house via the garage. This means that, blearily stumbling about as I’ve been – not a chipper morning person – the moment we hit the button to raise the garage door is my first real sight of the day.

This time of year, it’s right at the onset of sunrise and what a spectacular sight it is.

There’s something about the dimness of the garage, the way the heavy door lifts, with its cranking motor, that reminds me of a theater curtain – that unveils the large screen of this.

The outside comes in and steals my breath away.

It’s an amazing way to start my day and I treasure that.

I value so much about my daily life and am truly blessed to have it. Our daily routine is dull by most standards. Most days I don’t leave our property except to go to the gym. I love each phase of my day, from the kitties walking across my pillow when the alarm goes off to ensconcing myself in my reading chair at night with a glass of wine. The sun shines, flowers bloom, rains fall, the sun sets and rises again. It’s a good rhythm. A long-term cycle.

All through this, my steps seem to be set by the words I lay down in whatever I’m writing. I mark the passage of time by the change of seasons and the accumulation of word count. Writing a novel is an exercise in this kind of patience, I’ve found. For long periods of time – days and weeks and months – the the project continues. Every day I add a little more and track my progress. But it’s incremental and I can’t worry about it feeling like it’s taking forever because it takes as long as it takes.

That’s one of the keys to understanding novel-writing. Patience, persistence and endurance.

Until, suddenly, I’m near the end.

That’s where I am now. On Tears of the Rose, Book 2 of The Twelve Kingdoms, I’m at 84, 502 words. I’d originally thought it would end up around 85K, but once I dug in, once I judged the pace and length of Act I, in fact, it became clear that the first draft would top out around 98K. Writing about 2,000 words per day, as I am now, that means I’ll be done in a week.

And I’m filled with all kinds of odd, restless energy.

It’s as if, now that I can see the city on the horizon, I’m no longer satisfied with traveling 65 mph. I want to go faster and to hell with a speeding ticket. I want to drive all night, just to get there already.

I’m filled with impatience for everything else.

News articles – from frivolous to searingly serious – irritate me. People post jokes that I find facile, ridiculous or even infuriating. Every Facebook and Twitter post I see seems to elicit a snarky response from me and I have to stop looking, because I’m afraid I’ll lapse and actually type one of these comments. Even pics of cute baby animals annoy me.

It’s like I become a total sociopath.

I sometimes think that if I were a full time writer, I would take myself and my last 15-20K and just lock myself in a remote cabin or beach house somewhere. Which I find bewildering, because I love my beautiful, peaceful home and the life we have in it, with our lovely daily rhythms.

Somehow, though, this process of completing the book – which means the ending, because I write my stories from beginning to end, no jumping about – absorbs so much of my thoughts and mental energy, that I snarl at anything else impinging on it.

Also, I’m pretty sure I write a post like this every time.

You all are lovely to put up with me, really.

Thunder on the Battlefield Coming Thursday!!

Thunder on the Battlefield v2 cover

Okay, so it’s not a pet-the-pretty cover, but bloody decapitations for the win! The Thunder on the Battlefield anthology is out in digital on Thursday! (Or so they promise – it’s not up anywhere yet.) There’s to be print editions as well, theoretically out “mid-August.” I’ll try to keep you all apprised. My story, Negotiation, is in Volume II (pictured). It’s a bit of a prequel to my Twelve Kingdoms trilogy that will be out starting next June. Here’s the blurb:

A wounded warrior trapped by the sorceress who knows him better than he does himself…

General Uorsin escapes the last devastating battle, only to find himself alone on a mountain, feverish and no closer to finding the paradise that drives him on. Salena, greatest shapeshifter and magic-worker of her people, springs the trap she’s set to protect her land—and to prevent the ravager Uorsin from ever reaching it.

Together, they spend a night setting the terms that will determine not only the rest of their lives, but the fates of the peoples of the Twelve Kingdoms—and the thirteenth.

Amusingly, since this will be the first story about this world that any of you see, I’ll have to obey everything I set up in it. This is a bit unsettling as I’m currently drafting book 2 (The Tears of the Rose) and revising book 1 (The Mark of the Tala). I swear, you guys, I’m having to set up a series bible and draw maps and everything. I don’t know what’s gotten into me.

I can tell you one thing – no one does this kind of thing for the erotic romances.

At least, I haven’t had to. Though, now that I think about it, seeing a bible for such a thing would be hysterical. I’m imaging a catalog of sex acts and so forth. Come to think of it, I’ll have an erotic novel coming out in the next year or so that might need it. I’ve just received a contract from Carina for three full-length erotic romances (yay!) and one will involve a very complex, living BDSM contract. I very well may have to lay that out. So to speak.

Hee.

Anyway the first of those isn’t due until March 1, so I’ll think about that in the spring. Fiddle-dee-dee.

(Did you all know that Scarlett O’Hara was only 16 at the beginning of Gone with the Wind? It explains so much…)

At any rate, here is the new, reduced book pile. Three commenters will win a book!

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