by SB Sarah • Tuesday, March 16, 2010 at 11:26 AM
Pria and other kind folks have forwarded me this audio link to the BBC’s radio play of the week, Clarissa, by Samuel Richardson. The part of Robert Lovelace is read by Richard Armitage - which will send many hears a-fluttering.
It’ll only be available until 21 March, so listen and enjoy while you can!
by SB Sarah • Tuesday, March 16, 2010 at 12:31 AM
Romance writers have, or have had, a myriad of jobs. One of my favorite things about romance writer bios is how one snapshot of a writer’s career history could include everything from taxonomy to tax preparation. And, surprise, surprise, romance writers often write… other stuff.
Jenny Gardiner, whose book Sleeping with Ward Cleaver was the American Title III winner, has a new book out - but it’s non fiction. And it’s a memoir. About her psychotic parrot. No lie.
Alyssa Day, whose newest book, Atlantis Redeemed, just come out last week, also wrote a nonfiction memoir several years ago about her husband’s deployment and her correspondence with him. I got all nosy and asked them both about writing stuff that’s outside of romance.
Which came easier to you: romance novel writing or nonfiction memoir?
Jenny:
I came to the table trained as a journalist, so I can easily transition from genre to genre, which is handy ;-). I also have a column in our local paper, and have been writing creative non-fiction for years. I really was writing that before I wrote fiction even.
I joke that my memoir, Winging It: A Memoir of Caring for a Vengeful Parrot Who’s Determined to Kill Me, is sort of like David Sedaris meets Marley & Me, with a deadly beak. It’s about our bad-to-the-bone African gray parrot, who was a gift to us from my brother-in-law, who was living in Africa in the 80’s. He showed up one year for Christmas with parrots for the family. At first ours ended up sort of being the “dud” of the group, as, unlike the others, she was very disinclined to make nice and be friendly, which was particularly inconvenient since we had a newborn and life was already trying enough without a belligerent bird on our hands (have you seen a parrot’s beak? It can snap a walnut in one bite; imagine what it can do to fingers!).
But over the years, we sort of settled into a detente with our curmudgeonly pet, whose vocabulary grew exponentially and who took to conversing so regularly that we hardly noticed it. She puts my kids in time-outs (and at the appropriate time!), she often yells at the dogs to not eat and to stop barking. She says “dammit” in my voice. She sings happy birthday, but oddly only on people’s birthdays. She conducts entire phone conversations in my husband’s voice. She’s very entertaining and so darned smart.
And we have regaled many with tales of my parrots shenanigans over the years, and everyone has always been so fascinated with her. I’d written about her in my newspaper column before, and people were interested in reading more. Hence a memoir was born!
Alyssa:
One isn’t really easier than the other, just different. And I never thought of EMAIL TO THE FRONT as a memoir because I think of a memoir as writing about something that happened in the past, and ETTF was definitely in progress as we were still going through it. Judd’s Navy squadron (he flies P-3 Orions) was one of the first sent to Afghanistan after 9/11 and I was at home, working full time as a trial lawyer, taking care of 2 kids under the age of 5. It was shockingly hard, and I thought—somebody should write a book about how hard it is to be a military family when one spouse/parent is at war. That turned into, “I should write a book about it.”
I wanted to share the truth about the pain and emotion and terror that we, as military spouses, had to find a way to deal with in our ordinary days. You can’t watch CNN 24/7, praying for a sign of your husband’s plane, when you have to make the Cheerios and toast. Life has to retain at least some semblance of normalcy, for yourself and for your children, even while you’re wondering who is shooting missiles at your husband.
Has writing one informed or affected the other?
Jenny:
In my novel Sleeping with Ward Cleaver, I had to include a crazy parrot—to me she epitomizes the sort of insanity one is thrown into in the midst of parenthood. My protagonist, Claire Doolittle, was up to her eyeballs in insanity. So I gave her a parrot named RePete to just add to her stress levels—I was trying to portray her as out of control and needing to regain control of her life.
Having a parrot is much like having a clever and destructive two year old for the next 80 years. So certainly my reality informed my fiction.
Alyssa:
Writing an autobiographical non-fiction book first, and the way my readers responded to it, made me very aware of being truthful in my fiction. Truthful in terms of real emotion and honest reactions. I believe writing ETTF and opening myself up in that very personal way made my novels better.
Which story is your favorite from your nonfiction?
Jenny:
Once, when we were all seated at the dinner table, Graycie was atop her cage (which opens at the top into a perch) when she started flapping her wings. You can imagine the power of their wings—they are meant to catch the wind and pull them up into the atmosphere, so it’s no quiet moment when they do this. Her wings were beating hard against her body and she slipped (as she is known to do, hence the tongue-in-cheek name, Graycie) and landed on the ground. Well, the commotion aroused the attention of my dog Bridget (who’s got dingo blood in her and has always been a fan of a moving target) who was dozing in another room. She came charging into the dining room and skidded into the cage as the parrot yelled out to her (in my voice), “BRIDGET, STOP IT! NO! YOU’RE A BAD, BAD GIRL!”
At which point we all dissolved into laughter (after making sure the dog didn’t eat the bird)
Alyssa:
There are so many! I used our actual e-mails back and forth from two different deployments. So there was the time I had to teach my son how to pee standing up (I used “aim at the floating Cheerios”) and the time the raccoon got in the house and the time Judd told Lauren he was on the moon (she was 18 months old or so, then) so we had to go outside every night and wave night-night to Daddy on the moon and blow kisses.
There was the time CNN breaking news reported a plane down in the area Judd had been flying, and I had to wait for hours to find out it wasn’t his plane (and the crew of the plane that went down all got out safe). Every deployment is composed of a million stories – some ordinary, some extraordinary, all painfully poignant because of the razor-sharp edge of awareness that he might never come home. So many didn’t. We were so very grateful that Judd did.
Thank you to Jenny and Alyssa for answering my nosy questions. Have you read another work by a favorite author way outside their original genre? What nonfiction books by romance authors have you seen or read?
« Was it good for you?
by SB Sarah • Monday, March 15, 2010 at 12:51 PM
First: so many people forwarded me the link to today’s XKCD, I can’t possibly thank them all, but they are ALL awesome.
Porn for Women - and make sure you hold your mouse over the comic, too. Extra more win that way.
If you want more laughter, here’s a link courtesy of Gail Dayton, who was pretty sure we’d written about were-duck-erotica before.
Oh, yes, we did. it was a sad chapter in our history, when we were temporarily absorbed into the Dear Author Media Network.
But we had nothing to do with the creation of this book, Duck Fart, by Jade Buchanan.
This review, by Sidney, is rather marvelous:
:bent over laughing till my balls feel like falling off: I get the whole duck fart title now and I’m not telling. Read it for yourself to find out.
Now, I cannot read a book and laugh myself nutless, but if a book makes me laugh so hard my boobs fall off, you’ll be the first to know.
Another five star review states, “Throw together a timid siamese shifter, a twinky duck shifter with attitude, and a big, strong human and you get a fun read.”
Yes. That is exactly what I think when I put those three things together in my mind. Along with the thought that “twinky duck shifter” would make a GREAT name for a blog.
You can buy this book from Aspen Mountain Press and online from AllRomanceeBooks.
Yes, I’m buying a copy. Who knows if my breasts will fall off?
And finally: I’m over at the Harlequin blog this week talking about why romance is awesome in honor of National Women’s Month: Top 5 Ways Romance Novels are Important to Women’s Lives. My favorite part: “Romances celebrate women, and I can’t think of a more important reason to celebrate romances in return.”
by SB Sarah • Monday, March 15, 2010 at 10:14 AM
Jane and I have received a few email messages and some questions about the 2010 DABWAHA so she and I drew up a brief FAQ to answer them. Feel free to ask if you’re confused about anything!
Q. Who picked the books?
A. Sarah and Jane did with some help from Jane’s blogging mates
Q: Why isn’t X book on there?
A: We don’t know but probably because there were so many good books, it was hard to cull down to just 8 per category.
Q: Why does the Bracket have abbreviated titles and no author names?
A: The software has a character limitation and so we are only allotted so much space. You may want to print out the printable finalist lists to help you discern the title of each book with the author.
Q: Can I submit more than one bracket?
A: We ask that you don’t. We will have a second chance tournament.
Q: Can I resubmit my bracket choices?
A: Yes, anytime until Wednesday at 8 pm, EST.
Q: I’m trying to tell people to vote for me - but they can’t find where to vote! What’s going on?
A: Voting hasn’t started yet. Voting begins on Wednesday on polls that will run on the DABWAHA Blog.
Right now, people are selecting their brackets - who they think will win each round until Book of the Year is selected.
by SB Sarah • Monday, March 15, 2010 at 12:42 AM
When the wireless iRex was announced online, with the news that it would be available at Best Buy online an eventually in stores, I was so supremely curious. Even though the price tag is still way high, and way out of reach for most people, I ordered one thinking that if it would solve my Kindle problems, and perform the way I wanted a wireless reader to perform, it might be a better option for many.
Currently, I’m using Kindle II for most of my reading. I was using a Sony 505, but it had a very sad and unfortunate accident with the leg of a table, and half the screen doesn’t work. Plus, I have difficulties loading the content onto the 505 because I can’t always connect external devices to the computers I’m using.
I like using the wireless connectivity to load books on the Kindle. I like how light it is. I like the sticker I have on the back. I especially like that I can buy .mobi files from vendors other than Amazon and, by using Calibre’s preference set for Kindle, email those files to my device.
But I freaking HATE that I can’t organize my files. Holy crap, it makes me miserable, that hot mess of content organized by date added or date read or by author. “Most recent” could be the last file I looked at (because it arrived on the device with a name I don’t recognize) or the last file I sent (and I have to peek at it multiple times to see what it is).
So when I saw the iRex 800SG with onboard 3G wireless, along with on-board links to bookstores like Barnes & Noble, AND I found a link to a a potential hack to enable file organization, I thought, OH HO. This might work!
Alas, my impression of the IRex 800G: utter lamesauce. This is the first digital reader that I’m tempted to give a DNF review to - it’s that bad.
The good alluring points:
- HUGE screen. One big screen - that’s touch enabled!
- Wireless on board!
- Potential file organization - I can’t tell you how much that file organization possibility makes me giddy in my pants.
The fail parts:
You. Can only. Use. The Stylus. To Interact. With the Screen.
Seriously. I poked at the screen, pushed the buttons on the side, looked at the back. I handed it to Hubby and asked if he could figure out how to turn the page. Both of us were all, “WTF?” Then, I realized: it wouldn’t react to my fingers or my fingernails.
Just the stylus?
Yes. Just. The stylus. The screen will only react to the stylus, and not my fingertip, as do the Sony Touch and the iPhone, and other touch-sensitive device.
No damn way. I have to hold on to the subway pole with one hand and hold a reader in the other. There’s no way I can use this practically, to say nothing of the fact that the stylus is TINY.
AND there’s no place for the stylus to be stored on the device. Just a pocket on the case. This thing is asking to get lost.
What a shame. This big huge beautiful screen, and it looks spiffy, I must say. The menu screen is very easy to read, and the available categories make sense. I used the stylus to connect to the BN.com bookstore - piece of cake. The wireless didn’t hang like some carriers tend to do in my area (*ahem* AT&T) and the menus for the store and the book navigation were not unclear. Except for turning the freaking page.
Stylus only? No, thank you. You can NOT call it a touch screen if touching it with your actual finger does nothing!
The other shame is that I couldn’t get the file organization hack to work. This may be because I am not so good at hacking a file system, despite four tries on two computers.
So I remain on the Kindle, and await the iPad to see if my retinas scream at me in rage and ire at being asked to stare at a lit LCD screen all the time. Heck, maybe the color Kindle will have file organization please for the love of all that is digitally awesome.
But alas, as much as I was super excited to try it, the iRex is not for me.
It is, indeed, “Reading at ts Finest.”
« Was it good for you?
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