Last of the 3 a.m. hour and good news for book bloggers
The weekend was action packed, as weekends often manage to be. If my weekend were a film, it would star Steven Segal and feature an improbable scene wherein Segal is roundhouse kicked by a midget Russian gangster named Oleg.
Friday evening was a kitchen warming party to christen my new space. Team Seattle were in attendance, along with Psynde, Ellen and various spousal units. I got everyone good and liquored up, and then challeneged them to eat slippery finger foods. Mark also insisted on looking at the dead people in my forensics reference books. It is not a party until someone brings out the crime scene photos.
Saturday, I helped Cherie and Aric move into their new apartment, which is elegant and lovely, and almost worth hauling a forty-pound box of frozen food up three flights of stairs to see. I was bribed with pizza and diet coke (so much diet coke!), and really, once there's diet soda in me, Cherie could have harnessed me to a small cart and I would have trotted back and forth between new apartment and old happily, for hours.
Sunday, I worked on line edits for my novella Down in the Ground Where the Dead Men Go, including a brand-new rewrite of the sex scene within. I don't have a lot of sex scenes in my longer work...in fact, the only explicit scene is in Night Life, my first novel. Getting all out up front, I guess. Sex and violence don't usuallycrop up in great amounts in my novels unless they're plot-necessary (though violence happens a lot more often than sex, proof that my heroines have stressful and problematic fictional lives and are most likely plotting to take over and write themselves into Jamaican vacations.) At any rate, my CP helped me out with The Dread Scene, and now it is, dare I say, quite good.
Sunday evening, I accompanied Mark and Caroline to a showing of My Bloody Valentine 3D. What can you say to a film about Dean Winchester fighting a cannibalistic coal miner bent on revenge? In 3D? Quite honestly, words failed me. (Except when I hollered "He's gonna get you, Ackles!" during one of the "scary" moments.)(Yes, I'm one of THOSE people. But only at horror movies.)(I would not, for example, walk into Revolutionary Road and screech "Ennui is overtaking you, Kate!" It's just not the same.)
Most importantly, Sunday marked the last of my long 3 a.m. sojurns to have this project or that finished in time. The line edits are my last urgent and immediate project...Shades of Gray has 14 more chapters owed, but I have time enough that 10-hour days ending in the wee hours won't be visiting me until the next deadline crunch. 10 hour days have their place, and I can maintain them for a certain period, until the telltale signs of insanity start to set in--forgetting to feed cats, forgetting to feed self, a flexible definition of "pants", downloading Fall Out Boy from iTunes... (Okay, it wasn't FOB. It was Modest Mouse. But STILL, people. STILL.)
But today, I have bid farewell to 3 a.m. It is for sleeping, or for drinking and walking up and down steep Seattle streets in heels looking for a restaurant that will make me an omelette, but it is not for writing. Not until next time.
---
Here's some excellent news for book bloggers and authors who blog:
St. Martin's Press, who publishes both of my adult series at the moment, is offering a sneak peek of Street Magic, Book 1 of the Black London series, to the blogging community as a way to say thank you for their continued support of my work.
All I ask in return is a little bit of blogging action about the novel.
Here's the flap copy:
Her name is Pete Caldecott. She was just sixteen when she met Jack Winter, a gorgeous, larger-than-life mage who thrilled her with his witchcraft. Then a spirit Jack summoned killed him before Pete's eyes--or so she thought. Now a detective, Pete is investigating the kidnapping of a young girl from the streets of London...a case that brings her face to face with Jack.
Strung out on heroin, Jack is a shadow of his former self. But he's able to tell Pete exactly where Bridget's kidnappers are hiding: in the supernatural shadow-world of the fae. Pete follows Jack into the fae underworld, where she hopes to discover the truth about what happened to Bridget..and what happened to Jack on that dark day so long ago...
If you're a book blogger or a commercially published author who blogs, and you're interested in reading an electronic, advance galley of Street Magic (ARC's won't be printed for another couple of months), please leave a comment with a link to your blog and an email address where the galley can be sent. I'm very happy that St. Martin's gave me this opportunity and this book is one I'm thrilled about, so help spreading the word will be regarded kindly.
---
Lastly, since I was too slackery to put this picture in email in time for Warren's Blue Monday Message thread, here it is:
Please ignore the slightly deranged expression on my face and focus instead on the cheerful message!
OBEY.
Or, you know, don't.
Time for me to go poke the angsty superheroes.
Originally published at Caitlin Kittredge.
Friday evening was a kitchen warming party to christen my new space. Team Seattle were in attendance, along with Psynde, Ellen and various spousal units. I got everyone good and liquored up, and then challeneged them to eat slippery finger foods. Mark also insisted on looking at the dead people in my forensics reference books. It is not a party until someone brings out the crime scene photos.
Saturday, I helped Cherie and Aric move into their new apartment, which is elegant and lovely, and almost worth hauling a forty-pound box of frozen food up three flights of stairs to see. I was bribed with pizza and diet coke (so much diet coke!), and really, once there's diet soda in me, Cherie could have harnessed me to a small cart and I would have trotted back and forth between new apartment and old happily, for hours.
Sunday, I worked on line edits for my novella Down in the Ground Where the Dead Men Go, including a brand-new rewrite of the sex scene within. I don't have a lot of sex scenes in my longer work...in fact, the only explicit scene is in Night Life, my first novel. Getting all out up front, I guess. Sex and violence don't usuallycrop up in great amounts in my novels unless they're plot-necessary (though violence happens a lot more often than sex, proof that my heroines have stressful and problematic fictional lives and are most likely plotting to take over and write themselves into Jamaican vacations.) At any rate, my CP helped me out with The Dread Scene, and now it is, dare I say, quite good.
Sunday evening, I accompanied Mark and Caroline to a showing of My Bloody Valentine 3D. What can you say to a film about Dean Winchester fighting a cannibalistic coal miner bent on revenge? In 3D? Quite honestly, words failed me. (Except when I hollered "He's gonna get you, Ackles!" during one of the "scary" moments.)(Yes, I'm one of THOSE people. But only at horror movies.)(I would not, for example, walk into Revolutionary Road and screech "Ennui is overtaking you, Kate!" It's just not the same.)
Most importantly, Sunday marked the last of my long 3 a.m. sojurns to have this project or that finished in time. The line edits are my last urgent and immediate project...Shades of Gray has 14 more chapters owed, but I have time enough that 10-hour days ending in the wee hours won't be visiting me until the next deadline crunch. 10 hour days have their place, and I can maintain them for a certain period, until the telltale signs of insanity start to set in--forgetting to feed cats, forgetting to feed self, a flexible definition of "pants", downloading Fall Out Boy from iTunes... (Okay, it wasn't FOB. It was Modest Mouse. But STILL, people. STILL.)
But today, I have bid farewell to 3 a.m. It is for sleeping, or for drinking and walking up and down steep Seattle streets in heels looking for a restaurant that will make me an omelette, but it is not for writing. Not until next time.
---
Here's some excellent news for book bloggers and authors who blog:
St. Martin's Press, who publishes both of my adult series at the moment, is offering a sneak peek of Street Magic, Book 1 of the Black London series, to the blogging community as a way to say thank you for their continued support of my work.
All I ask in return is a little bit of blogging action about the novel.
Here's the flap copy:
Her name is Pete Caldecott. She was just sixteen when she met Jack Winter, a gorgeous, larger-than-life mage who thrilled her with his witchcraft. Then a spirit Jack summoned killed him before Pete's eyes--or so she thought. Now a detective, Pete is investigating the kidnapping of a young girl from the streets of London...a case that brings her face to face with Jack.
Strung out on heroin, Jack is a shadow of his former self. But he's able to tell Pete exactly where Bridget's kidnappers are hiding: in the supernatural shadow-world of the fae. Pete follows Jack into the fae underworld, where she hopes to discover the truth about what happened to Bridget..and what happened to Jack on that dark day so long ago...
If you're a book blogger or a commercially published author who blogs, and you're interested in reading an electronic, advance galley of Street Magic (ARC's won't be printed for another couple of months), please leave a comment with a link to your blog and an email address where the galley can be sent. I'm very happy that St. Martin's gave me this opportunity and this book is one I'm thrilled about, so help spreading the word will be regarded kindly.
---
Lastly, since I was too slackery to put this picture in email in time for Warren's Blue Monday Message thread, here it is:
Please ignore the slightly deranged expression on my face and focus instead on the cheerful message!
OBEY.
Or, you know, don't.
Time for me to go poke the angsty superheroes.
Originally published at Caitlin Kittredge.