Anya Bast

…is finished and sent!!! *butt wiggle*

There’s nothing like the feeling of a deadline met and a project finished. I love it. Of course, on October 1st the next countdown clock starts. This one will be for Witch Heart, the third book in the Elemental Witches series.

I’m really looking forward to writing this one. Of course, I’m always looking forward to writing all my books. The anticipation comes from having the story and characters spread out in front of me like a shining sea of possibility. But the heroine of this book especially intrigues me and I can’t wait to get inside her head.

This weekend I’ll be taking it easy, though. Tomorrow I have a booksigning in Lexington with Lora Leigh, Shiloh Walker and Toni Blake. If you’re near Lex, it’s at Joseph-Beth Booksellers from 2-4pm — 161 Lexington Green Cir. On Sunday we have a family outing planned. We’re taking our daughter on a hay ride and to pick pumpkins. Should be fun!

I hope you all have an enjoyable weekend!

I’m still buried under deadline. I’ll be back full force after next Friday (that’s D Day for me). The Darkest Kiss is complete, but I’m revising and polishing, being generally anal retentive, and generally worried about the book right now. That’s the last phase of my editing process.  Having a toddler chasing the cats around (she went from crawling to walking to running in like the span of a week!) is not helping (but it is seriously cute). 😉

The book itself ended up at about 92k. That means for Sweaty Seventy I wrote…*calculating*…  62k on The Darkest Kiss. BUT…I wasn’t only writing on TDK during this time. I also wrote… *more calculating*… 15k on another project (a skreeit one!). That brings my grand Sweaty total to 77k. I did it!

That’s actually not what I came here to write…

I had a question emailed to me by a reader. She asked why I don’t use the harder words in Witch Fire and is wondering if my editor asked me not to. I thought I’d answer this one here.

No, it was my choice to not use the harsher words in my Berkley books. I use them in profusion in my Ellora’s Cave books, but in writing books that I knew would reach a wider audience, I chose to refrain. I still use sexy language, especially for the male parts of anatomy. For the female parts I’m going a bit softer.

My Berkley books are still very hot, much hotter than most mainstream romances, (I think…), but I never, not even at EC, wrote sex scenes that had that harder edge to them anyway. I know lots of readers like that, but it’s just not my voice. When I write a sex scene I’m striving for emotion, sensuality of language, and titillation. I do want the scenes to be hot, of course, but not in a coarse way. This is all a matter of perception, though. One person’s sensual sex scene is another person’s coarse.

Oh, watch me tangent!…

Sometimes I’ll write sex scenes that are little harder in the beginning of the book, before the characters have had a chance to connect in a deeply emotional way. As the characters fall in love, the sex scenes change and become more sensual/emotional, to show the development of the relationship. They’re still going to be erotic and kinky (I love to write kinky) but they’re going to have a softer edge to them emotionally.

Anyway, coming back to the question, I deliberately left out the harder words in Witch Fire (and Witch Blood, The Darkest Kiss, ect), while still trying to maintain a high level of hot, in order not to alienate a large portion of my readers. I don’t think the harder words add anything to the plot or the character development, anyway. They haven’t for me so far, in any case.

Caveat is if I ever write a character who I think would use the harder words and it skews his/her character not to, I would use them in his/her POV. I just haven’t run into that yet. Maybe down the line I will.   There’s always a caveat.

Just a note to say that I’m all full of deadline right now. Any spare moment I have beyond the day job and my daughter is spent writing/revising The Darkest Kiss. I will still be blogging here and there, but not steadily again until the beginning of the month.

Oy!

The fantabulous Lauren Dane had a new release last Wednesday! (yeah, I’m a little behind. Blame deadlines.) I love her books, so I can’t resist giving a plug.

Fire and Rain is now available from Ellora’s Cave.

Rain Foster works as a waitress while working hard to make her career take off. Her paintings are the center of her life until Laurent Cole walks into the cafe. Suddenly she’s dealing with a very alpha male pursuing her and the not so very tiny detail that he’s a werewolf too.

Laurent Cole has been the Third in Command in the Cherchez Wolf Pack for decades. His life is simple, good – but he knows he’s missing something and when he claps eyes on Rain, he knows what it is.

Their coming together is complicated further by the past Rain has worked so hard to keep a secret. Laurent isn’t about to let anyone do his wife any harm and Rain begins to believe Laurent and her new family will keep her safe.

But the world becomes more complicated every day…

Our air conditioning has been on the fritz all season and we’ve been too cheap to kick in the $$$ for another one, even though it’s been one of the hottest summers on record. Funnily, however, it’s been okay. The nights are cool, and as long as we get those nice cool nights, we’re pretty comfortable. If I wanted to go all environmental and simply turn off the air conditioner altogether, I think I could do it. As a result of having the air conditioner shut off, we’ve had our windows open. That means we have more bugs in the house than usual. I found a cicada on the bedroom floor this morning. *has the willies*

Clearly, I don’t have much to blog about today.

I’m just sitting here, revising The Darkest Kiss and eating Cheezits (I luuurve Cheezits. They’re one of my guilty pleasures). For the record, TDK will be about 90k when it’s all finished. That means I’ve written about 60k on it for Sweaty Seventy (which haven’t been very good about updating lately). I need to get to 70k, since that’s the goal, but there’s still time! I have lots of other projects in play.

On October 1st, I’ll start Witch Heart (title subject to change). I’m really looking forward to writing this book.  I might even start early.

I can’t upload this particular video to wordpress, but go see for yourself.

My houseguests are gone and I miss them already. It’s sad when good friends live far away. Now I’m back to normal life which, for me, means DEADLINES. I have a proof of Witch Blood to do, and I also have the deadline for The Darkest Kiss looming at the end of the month.  Because I have a wee one in the house, that complicates matters. Oh, and a day job. Yes, I still work my day job. So if I don’t blog very much this month, you know why.

Blogging always runs hot and cold with me anyway. If I have something to blog about, I blog. If I don’t…well, then I don’t.

Recent books I’ve read…..

Magic Lost, Trouble Found, by Lisa Shearin. Did I post about this one? Very entertaining fantasy. I really enjoyed it and am looking forward to the next book in the series.

Poison Study, by Maria Snyder. Loved. This one is historical fantasy. I couldn’t put it down and had to run out and get the sequel right away.

Now I’m reading Beyond Varallan, by S. L. Viehl.  Still loving the series.

I’ve been blessed with lots of yummy books lately.

I’m not blogging much this week because we have house guests and we’re busy off doing things. BUT…I do have some news.

Berkley bought three more books from me this week — the last two books in the Elemental Witches series, and the first book in what I hope will be a new series, currently titled Wicked Enchantment. Wicked Enchantment is a dark urban paranormal, featuring the fae. I’m really excited about writing it, and I’m SO thrilled I’ll have the chance. 🙂

[Cross posted to The Bradford Bunch Blog]

My husband and I finally saw the movie 300 last night. Yeah, I know. But we’ve got a baby at home so our days of jaunting to the theater to watch the latest flick are long gone.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TG6FZZY9ciA]

Wow. Has anyone seen this movie? There was no body fat anywhere in the whole thing. I know because I looked. Er, a lot. Because, uhm, drool. I guess when I leaned over and told my husband I could feel myself ovulating just watching these actors he might not have appreciated it much. Heh.

And when they marched off to war, it was a full on man titty parade! I had to stop myself from fumbling for the remote control to pause and zoom in, (again with the non-husbandly appreciation).

Yeah, so, I might get it on dvd.

Ahem.

Aside from the exceptional eye candy, I liked the movie for other reasons. See, I am fully aware that I have the theatrical tastes of an adolescent boy. I will watch any movie that is based on a comic book character, no matter how bad it might be. (With the exception of Superman. He just doesn’t do it for me). My favorite by far is The Punisher. I absolutely love that one. It’s Frank Miller flick, btw, just like 300.

I loved the supernatural aspects of the movie. How the film felt not like your regular historical movie, but something with a paranormal edge. That owed, of course, to the fact the movie is based on a graphic novel. It felt like a graphic novel.

So, tell me, seen any good movies lately? Anything you want to tell me about? I love a good film…even if they do make me want to immediately start exercising once the credits roll, (don’t worry, the impulse faded pretty quickly. I didn’t damage my perfect non-exercising track record).

So I discover The Tea Party and develop the The Big Lurve for them…only to discover they’ve been broken up for two years. Ehn.

Ehn. Ehn. EHN!

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFzQX2i6mwo]

I’m sorry I have no nice, neat blogging schedule. I go for days without blogging and then, wham, post three times in one day.