…if you look out the French doors in your kitchen and see a chicken waiting to come in.

Good grief.

I complained to my hubby about the ridiculous snail population in our neighborhood. If you walk across the lawn while there’s still dew on it, it’s like walking on eggshells. Crunch Crunch as you crush the hundreds of snails traversing the lawn on the way to my flower beds. They’re eating everything in sight. Hubby’s solution was to get up at the butt crack of dawn to drive an hour roundtrip to a feedstore to buy me a chicken.

A freakin’ chicken!

Our dog, which is about the same size as the chicken, just sniffed some butt and went on his merry way. The chicken, however, refuses to leave my doorway and tries to run into the house every chance it gets.

A freakin’ chicken!

I asked this on the message board? Anybody want to play?

Don’t forget to add your blog while you’re there.

Yeah, and I blogged twice today. *g* What’s up with that?

Holly Lisle is asking interested readers to pre-order her new book, because this will affect future deals offered to her. This is not a unique situation. I didn’t know this before I became a published author, but after I was offered my first contract certain things were explained to me, one of them being the importance of pre-orders. Unfortunately, I think most readers aren’t aware of this, so I’m going to tell you–If you want to support your authors, pre-order their books. That’s why the authors put those Amazon.com and BN.com pre-order links on their websites and say things like, “My book is available for pre-order now!”

Hint. Hint.

I failed to mention this when I explained the process of initial print runs. In addition to those orders made by booksellers after the pitch from the publisher marketing depts., the booksellers also track pre-orders on their websites. This gives them somewhat of an idea of reader interest in a particular book.

However, it seems to me that most readers wait until the book hits the shelves and then sometimes weeks pass before they pick up the book, even though they have every intention of doing so. Pre-ordering is good for both you and the author. You get the book delivered straight to your door (usually they ship before the actual release date, so you could get it on your porch before your local bookseller has it on their shelves) and the author benefits by the early interest shown in their book.

So… if you’ve got a book you know you’re going to buy when it comes out and it’s available for preorder, preorder it!! The author will thank you.

I’m going through a big thing right now where I’m seriously evaluating my career choices. Maybe I’m approaching this whole author/writing/career thing all wrong. I need to decide, am I doing this for fun or am I doing this because I want to be successful? Because if I’m doing it for fun, than I need to just have fun. Right now I’m not. I’m stressing out over whether certain deals will help my career or harm it. If it was just about fun, wouldn’t that not matter? Why would I care? Write and sell. Thing is, I do care. A lot. I want to keep writing, but it will be harder for me to sell if I make bad choices.

It’s taken me two days of soul searching and a lot of stress. This is the part, I guess, where writing either becomes a business or it doesn’t. It’s a painful process. For me anyway.

For those of you who may be interesed in GH scores, Sapphire’s Worth scored:

9, 8, 7.8, 9, 5 = 38.80

Top Quarter = 37.60

Surprising all around to me. I thought it would tank. The very first sentence has the heroine in bed with a man not the hero (and yes, they’re doing it). The 53-page entry also contained a 6-page mutual oral sex scene between the H/h. (Yep, 6 pages.) So I guess some of the judges like a little spice with their romance.

Hi.

I’ve been considering the purpose of my blog for weeks now, whether I wish to continue it or not. When I first mentioned this thought to Sasha she said, “Why are you thinking about getting rid of it?”. The answer is, it doesn’t have a focus. When I started the blog it was a way to document my road to publication, as many aspiring authors do. Then it became a place to network. In both instances it was a joy to me and the need to blog was an everyday, sometimes multiple times a day, urge. Before I bought my laptop, when I’d be on vacation I’d miss blogging so much. Nowadays, it’s more of something I sit down and check off my to do list. I think this shows in the blog itself and I’m very sorry about that. Also the idea of having a site that is more about my books and less about me is very appealing. I used to wonder at Lisa Kleypas’s site, which has no Contact page and until recently didn’t even have a mailing list. The only way to reach her was through the Avon Authors message board and through her agent. But now the idea of that kind of detachment seems really nice in a way.

However, since I have a couple blog skins in the works, now would not be the time to get rid of the blog. So you all will have to put up with me a little while longer. But for how much longer, I don’t know.

Alright. This topic has been beaten to death, but still I have to vent my anger and fear somewhere so my blog is as good a place as any. The last few weeks have really shocked me with the venom directed toward erotic romance. Loops, listservs, blog postings, the RITA fiasco. Now the RWR, where in a letter to the editor a writer says:

“Also we may want to stop prattling on about how ‘we just don’t get no respect’ when we allow dopey-looking hunks in ridiculous costumes advertising an erotic publisher
on our back cover. There’s a big difference between sensual romance and erotica, and I think we made a big mistake in lowering our standards to accept such a publisher.”

I get it. Some of you don’t like erotic romance. Fine. Whatever. Go ahead and complain. I don’t care. That is your right.

But here’s the deal. I don’t care. However, it appears my publishers may care and this frightens me.