S. K. Williams' Livejournal

Trey and I woke up at midnight to watch the Super Bowl. We actually made it through the whole thing - I didn't get too sleepy until the last five minutes of the game. Fortunately, it was entertaining to watch. And the commercials were pretty decent, too. Saw the trailer for the new Robin Hood movie. It looks pretty awesome, but I don't think it will come close to outdoing the Prince of Thieves for two reasons:

Will Scarlet. Oh, how I love him. Seriously, biggest movie-character-crush ever. One of my favorite parts of Prince of Thieves is when Robin and Azeem first meet the rabble in the woods and Will sings:
"There was a rich man from Nottingham
Who tried to cross a riiiiverrr;
What a dope! he tripped on a rope! 
Now look at him shiiiiverrr." 
(Yes, I still have this memorized after all these years.)

The Sherriff of Nottingham. Alan Rickman's portrayal of this character is fantastic! And he has one of my favorite movie lines ever: 

 "I'll carve your heart out with a spoon!"

Seriously, that line ranks right up there with Jack Nicholson's Joker's "Where does he get those wonderful toys?"

Speaking of Batman and favorite movie lines, anyone remember Christian Bale in the musical, Newsies? LOVED that movie, and it has one of my favorite movie lines, too, delivered by Spot Conlon, who says at the last protest/fight: "Never fear, Brooklyn is here!" (I had a bit of a crush on Spot.)

I can't think of any of my other favorite movie quotes. Anyone else have a few quotes you love? Do you think the new Robin Hood will be awesomer (TM) than the Prince of Thieves?

It's official. The contract is signed and on it's way to Texas!

And, yes, this is the reason I've been relatively quiet on LJ for the past, oh, two or three weeks. A few days before my b-day, I received an offer of rep, which turned into another offer of rep, which turned into a third offer of rep, which turned yours truly into a crazy person. (Yeah, that was me you heard squeeing at the end of January.)

You know what's really crazy? I had a very small list of Dream Agents back when I started querying, and ever since I first heard of this one agent, she was on that list. Her clients rave about her. Other agents sing her praises. She has a great web presence and fantastic sales in a short amount of time. In our emails back and forth about my book, I knew everything I heard about her is true: she's a genius. For realz! She pointed out weaknesses in my story which no one else had caught before (except reneesweet but she's a genius, too). Now, I'm revising, working on making SKOF, er, FISSURED, the best book it can be!

!!!! I'm almost a real writer, yall !!!

So, who is my fabulous agent???

She can be seen here, last stall on the right. :-)

Have you ever cheated? (On a test, people. Please, please don't tell me if you've cheated on your wife/husband, boyfriend/girlfriend.)

Trey and I somehow got on this topic at dinner the other night, and I realized that I've never cheated on a test. I had to really sit down and think about it because, surely, everyone has cheated at least once in their lives, but nope. Not me. If I accidentally saw someone else's answer, I never just bubbled it in. My eyes would dart back to my paper, I'd reread the question, the answer choices, and then I'd make my own decision.

I'm so disappointed in myself. I mean, yeah, it's a good thing I never cheated, but how much more of a nerd could I be? I didn't cheat because I liked to know how much I knew. Tests were fun. Seriously, I looked forward to them. I never stressed too much. If I didn't know an answer, I didn't know it, I wrote in my best guess, and then I looked up the answer later and learned it.

I feel like I'm missing out on the whole cheating experience, on all the anxiety over possibly getting caught, on all the guilt about doing something wrong (Or do you feel accomplished when you get away with it?).   

So, anyone else out there like me? Have you ever cheated on a test?


P.S. I have, however, let people cheat off of me. It always depended on my mood and if I liked the person or not. :-)

Thanks, everybody, for the birthday wishes! I had a fabulous day. We didn't have any real plans, but spontaneously decided to take the train into London to see a show. Trey read some theater reviews Saturday morning. We were both surprised to see that Legally Blonde, the Musical, was really well reviewed. When I first heard of the production, I thought it would be horrible, maybe as bad as the disaster that was the LOTR Musical, but after one guy wrote, "I really tried to hate this, but couldn't," we decided to give it a go.

It was fantastic! I'd say it's right up there with Mama Mia. I laughed out loud too many times to count. It follows the movie exactly, but the songs were upbeat and catchy. They even had a few hip-hop sections. And there were PUPPIES! Yes, Elle had a cute-little-very-well-trained dog that she carried around. And the salon lady had an English bull dog she had to rescue from her evil ex-boyfriend. The best part of the show, though, was the actors' expressions. Their reactions to everything were brilliant. I highly recommend seeing Legally Blond, the Musical if you get the opportunity!

Since we had to go to Leicester Square for cheap tickets, we made our obligatory trip down the street to The Forbidden Planet. As usual, angels sang when we walked inside. We spent an hour or so looking at books, but managed to make it out of there without buying anything. Yes, miracles happen.

Had Thai food for lunch before the show - aromatic duck and tom kha kai, a delicious coconut based soup. I'm not a huge birthday person, but I have to say, when I take into account my day and some other news, this one absolutely rocked!

Since I've been mysteriously absent the last couple of weeks, I thought I'd write a quick post to say I'll be AWOL a few days more. Gotta clear my head, make some decisions, and then... Happy Things!

I know I owe some people emails. I'm going to take an Internet hiatus today, maybe tomorrow, but I'll get back to you guys next week, I promise!

Today, though, I shall celebrate my birthday!

I'm relatively new to gaming. Before meeting my husband, 'games' consisted of Monopoly, Scrabble, Uno, and other brightly colored boxes sitting on the shelves of Target and Wal-Mart. While these can be fun, they don't compare to the geek games Trey has introduced me to.

Now, gaming is my favorite   my second favorite  my third favorite past time (reading and writing beat it). We've played a lot of great games over the years: Settlers of Catan, Puerto Rico, Power Grid, Twilight Imperium, Runebound, and others, but our most played game of 2009 might just be my favorite game ever.
 

Technically, I think this game was released in 2008, but we didn't start playing it until '09. It's a card game. Each player is dealt a hand of ten cards, 7 gold and 3 victory cards (which are important for scoring at the end of the game, but just take up space for the rest of it). A market of cards is placed in the center of the table for purchase by the players. Most of these are Action cards: they allow you to earn more money, attack an opponent, draw extra cards from your hand, and other super cool stuff. Your hand grows as you play, so you're shuffling cards almost constantly during this game. The game ends when three different stacks of cards in the market are empty. Then you count up your victory points.

You really have to play this game to understand its awesomeness. Though we've only owned this game for a year (a year in which we were out of the country for six months), it's still our most played game of all time. When we get together with friends, we usually play 2-3 times. It never gets old. The main reason for this is there are many, many different cards you can choose to put in the market. Every game is a little different, requiring tweaks to your strategy. Here are examples of some cool cards:

I read about Agent Inbox in the November 20th issue of Publishers Lunch and was intrigued. I’ve always been astounded by the query stats agents post. The numbers are crazy, but what really gets to me is the amount of queries which don’t match an agent’s genre or don’t have anywhere close to an acceptable word count. Some queries aren’t even queries, just directions to an author’s website or a list of reasons why a manuscript is sure to be a bestseller. These queries take time away from the writers who have done their research and learned how to write a query letter, and I’ve always thought it would be great if there was a way for these to be weeded out before they clutter an agent’s inbox.

So I was interested in WeBook’s Agent Inbox. The list of agents was pretty impressive. Then, Colleen Lindsay jumped on board, announcing that she would be experimenting with the site during the month of December. Since she was closed to email submissions, I also decided to experiment. I submitted to her and to a Writer’s House agent who usually only takes snail mail submissions.

I received a partial request and a full request, so I’m 2/2 with Agent Inbox. Am I sold on the site? Um… not so much.

( Read more... )

Yes, that’s right. Heaven. Not hell.

A lot of writers post about the query process, comparing it to hell, to limbo, to everything dark and unholy in the world.

My dirty little secret: I LOVE the query process. I love checking my e-mail, getting a response from an agent and feeling that little rush of emotion as I open the e-mail. When I finally accept an offer of representation, I’m going to miss all of this.

Is it easy? Heck, no. The waiting kills me as much as it does the next person, but you know what? If querying was easy, I wouldn’t love it so much. If querying was easy, I wouldn’t try so hard to do it right. And if querying was easy, those requests for partials and fulls wouldn’t mean so much.

I achieved one of my goals for 2009. I read 50 books this year. Hurray! 50 might not sound like much, but if I read many more, I would have been cutting into my writing time. If I read many less… well, it would have been sad and probably stifled my creativity.

I’m declaring 2009 the year of historical romances. It seems like I’ve been reading hist-roms longer than that, but when I checked my GoodReads account, the first hist-rom I tried out was about this time last year. I loved it so much I decided to try other authors, and I discovered that I absolutely adore this subgenre. I’ve read on-line about how people are sick of the same tropes and sick of regencies, but I’m just now reading these types of books. They’re new to me and I love, love, love them!

I’m also declaring 2009 the year of Meredith Duran. All three of her books are in my top reads of the year. I’m so jealous impressed with her writing. Like Linnea Sinclair, she’s one of those authors who make me feel so… I don’t know. Mundane maybe?

Anyway, here are the books I gave 5 stars to this year:

The Duke of Shadows by Meredith Duran
This was my first Meredith Duran book and my favorite.

Written On Your Skin by Meredith Duran
No, wait. This one was my favorite Duran book.

Bound by Your Touch by Meredith Duran
No, no! THIS one... Ugh. I can't make up my mind. All three are awesome.

The Way of Shadows by Brent Weeks
I don't often read big fantasy novels anymore. They take too long and I'm always afraid the authors going to over-describe things like Robert Jordan does or kill every character I love off like GRRM, but Brent Weeks' debut fantasy was brilliant.

If You Dare by Kresley Cole
I'm not too keen on Scottish romances for some reason. Not sure why because I haven't really read any of them. I decided to try this book because I love Cole's paranormals and I figured if anyone can make me love a Scottish romance, she could. And she did. A fabulous quick read.

Three Nights of Sin by Anne Mallory
I must have read good reviews of this book somewhere because I don't think I would have picked it up otherwise. The summary kind of bothered me because it really sounded like the heroine was selling herself to the hero in order to get his help to clear her brother's name. I doubt I could get into a book like that because I would detest the hero for abusing a woman like that, but this turned out to be an awesome read and, honestly, I think the summary was incredibly misleading.

Bone Crossed by Patricia Briggs
Another installment in the Mercy Thompson series. Just as great as all the others.

The Spymaster’s Lady by Joanna Bourne
Love this author! She's one of my favorite historical romance writers now. Her other book, My Lord and Spymaster, was great too. I don't know why it's not on this list. *scratches head*

Shards of Honor by Louis McMaster-Bujold
This author's name kept coming up when I was searching for science fiction romance. I decided to give her a try even though it sounded like her books wouldn't have enough romance for me in them. I'm happy to say that I loved this book and look forward to reading the rest of them set in this universe.

Hope’s Folly by Linnea Sinclair
Ah, Linnea. My idol. Oh, how I love your books. You're currently my second favorite author. Yes, Meredith Duran has dethroned you, but I highly suspect you'll regain your position when your next book, Rebels & Lovers, is published.

Scandal by Carolyn Jewel
I read this one earlier this year, so it was amongst the first historical romances I tried out. I think this was the book that convinced me that, yes, I do love this genre. I didn't like her most recent book as much, but I'll definitely buy her next. And I'd really like to try her paranormal series, but I can never find the first book in the store. Grr.

The Lost Fleet series by Jack Campbell
I'm cheating on this one. The whole series is going on my Awesome List. This is military sci-fi, hardly any romance at all, and I love it! Not many books make me breathless as I read, but there are so much tension and excitement and close calls that I feel almost as stressed as the characters must. I'm putting off reading the next couple of books until Campbell finishes the series because I want to read the rest all in one sitting.

The Devil’s Due by Jenna Black
I'm still loving this series by Jenna Black. This book was good enough for 5 stars, but it was a close call because it felt kind of like filler to me. I think the next book is going to get back to the main story line. I hope!

Shadow Kiss by Richelle Mead
The only YA book on my list. Sad, I know, but I don't read that much YA these days. When I do, I always get the itch to go back and revwrite my YA sci-fi. Anyway, I put off reading this book for nearly six months because I heard it had a cliffhangar ending. Uh, yeah. A terrible, excruciating cliffhangar ending. When I finished, I immediately went out to the book store and bought Blood Promise. And then - I'm so ashamed to admit this - I read the last chapter of Blood Promise first. I never do that! But I had to know! Now, I can't wait for the next Vampire Academy book which is supposed to be comming out in May, I think.

If these pop-up adds aren't gone by the new year, I'm gone.

The Dragonriders of Pern meets Ferngully.

That is all.

• Have discovered that some of my snail mail wasn't forwarded to temporary address while we were gone. I've had three different people send me emails saying their letter/package was returned to them. I know the temporary address is receiving some (maybe most?) of our mail, but I have no way of knowing what all has bounced because I doubt most people will resend or cotact me.
• I researched military ranks this week. It annoys me that a 'general' outranks a 'major general'. Isn't the major general, like, major or something?
• I hate the word 'got'. I'll delete whole paragraphs while writing to try to avoid its use. Oddly, though, it doesn't bother me when I read it in published books.
• I hate strongly dislike December.
• I want to read the Wheel of Time series when Brandon Sanderson finishes it, but it's so damn long. I read the first 10 books several years back. Vaguely remember the story line so I probably wouldn't have to re-read them. I'm just hesitating because, if I do decide to tackle the series, it'll take sooo much time away from reading vampire novels and historical romances.
• I've discovered a way to give ATOF (my vamp novel) a more unique hook. I think. The story will be the same, but Reagan's job and her co-workers will change. I love the book like it is, but the New! Shiny! idea will make it more sellable. I hope.

• About a year ago, Amazon used to show books' word counts when you clicked on “Look Inside”. I found this helpful when writing – it gave me something to compare my novel's length to – but now I can’t find word counts anywhere. :-(
  

Patrick Rothfuss, author of my favorite epic fantasy novel, The Name of the Wind, has started his annual fundraiser for Heifer International. Like Pat, I love this organization because they give chickens, sheep, heifers, and other animals to families suffering from poverty and starvation. The families then have access to eggs, milk, wool, etc. Heifer also provides education so the families can take care of themselves, hopefully for the long haul.

Pat is a class act. Last year, he promised to match all donations to Heifer, never imaging donations would reach $58,000. Yet, despite the awesomely high number, he still matched the funds.

This year, he's matching 50% of the funds so he can still feed his family. :-)

Anyway, you really should check out Patrick Rothfuss' Worldbuilders Blog and Heifer International. And if you can, make a donation. Authors and other cool folks have donated hundreds (thousands) of items that you could win: ARCs of not yet published books, critiques from writers/publishing people, authographed novels, CDs, and tons of other stuff. Also, this year Pat's offering something new and cool: a Golden Ticket.

From his blog:

If you win this prize, I will owe you one (1) favor. You can cash it in however you like.

You want your name in book two? We can do that. You want me to read your book and give you some criticism? No problem. You want me to attend your local convention, perform your wedding ceremony, or just give you a nice backrub? Consider it done.

A few stipulations:

The favor has to be legal. (More or less.)
It has to be something I can actually do. (Duh)
I can't make anyone fall in love.

So I was thinking: what would I ask for if I won a Golden Ticket? It took some thought, but once the idea came into my head, I knew it was what I wanted. I'd ask Pat to promote my debut novel.

Debut novel? You don't have an agent.

I know. I'd hold on to this favor for a while, perhaps a long, long while.

Now, I realize Pat can't do all my promotional work for me, but I figure he might be able to mention my book on his blog. I wouldn't ask him to endorse it - I highly doubt he reads my genre - but he could say something along the lines of, "if you like romance and magic in the real world, this book might be your thing." And then those individuals who do read my genre might pick it up.

Or maybe I could ask for a blurb? I think it would be pretty awesome if The Patrick Rothfuss read my book and gave me a quote. :-)

So what about you? If you won Patrick Rothfuss' Golden Ticket, what would you ask for?

You guys, I'm finally writing again! God, it feels so good. I can't begin to explain how much it sucks to be 'between projects'. It's like my life had no purpose. I know, I know. Exaggerate much? But it really was awful. Those two weeks of no writing felt like a century.

I'm sticking with SoT, the sci-fi romance I planned to work on after finishing SKOF. I have 47k written, but all of it needs a major overhaul, and I imagine I'll lose about half of those words. It's a tricky book. I feel like I'm walking a tightrope, trying to give the reader information so that she knows what's going on, but not so much information that it slows down the book or over-explains everything.

The tone of SoT is different from my previous books. That's one of the things that has been worrying me. People liked my voice in ATOF and SKOF; I hope they like this new voice/tone too. It's just... different. Third person past tense. Can you get more opposite of first person present than that?

But I'm writing again!

*happy sigh*

I've spent most of the last few days going through critiques from my Super Awesome Betas (thanks guys!). It's fun to read people's reactions when they reach certain points in the story, whether they want to strangle my MC (or me *grin*) or if they're laughing at something a character does. I think I've done a good job on this book. When people tell me they like it (most used the term 'love', but I like to tone things down lest I get my hopes up too high), it makes me feel more comfortable with the book, like I really have written something worth reading. Some things I've learned reading through the critiques:

• I love sarcastic comments. Love. Them. One beta kept throwing them at my MC and a certain love interest. The love interest really could do no right (poor guy), but it totally cracked me up. Plus, there's always something to be learned from sarcasm. Some of the issues, I can fix, others might have to remain because of my MC's history and personality, but it's really helpful to see what goes on in a reader's mind as they move through the story.
• I've had a couple of people cringe when I suggest Love Interest #1 is around 40 in human years, but looks 20 something because the Realm ages people slower than Earth. I find this funny and interesting considering most of the world is totally okay with a certain teenager hooking up with a 500 year old vampire. :-)
• I realized the importance of having multiple beta readers. If I had just one or two, it would be impossible to tell what needs to be fixed and what would be okay keeping the same. I hate to change something that works, but if two or three betas all point out a certain scene that's unclear, then it's obvious I haven't done my job. It's still tough, though, when the verdict is split on something. At that point, I guess it just comes down to a judgment call on my part.
• So far, no one's been annoyed by my present tense. Yay! Hurray! Yipee! *throws confetti* I love the present tense and what it does for the tone of the story.
• Last, but not least: I love this book.

That is all.

I think what I'm doing is legal, but I feel like I'm cheating "the system". I downloaded the US version of iTunes to my new laptop before we came to the UK. I'm not a huge fan of iTunes - I'd much rather use Amazon - but iTunes allows me to buy things in dollars instead of pounds and it gives me access to TV shows which haven't aired over here yet. So, I finally downloaded the pilot episode of The Vampire Diaries.

I loved it! I loved it even though I know the director/writers have tweaked the plot. I was obsessed with LJ Smith's books when I was in junior high. I read them over and over. I even loaned the books to a friend, which was a huge deal to me back then because I couldn't stand having the spines of my precious books broken. Don't worry. I've (mostly) gotten over this infliction.

I don't know if there's anything the show could have done better. I loved the casting. Elena is great so far. I was kind of worried about her. When I originally read the books, I loved her, but when I think back on them now, I'm surprised by that. You know that Taylor Swift song 'You Belong With Me'? Elena is the cheer captain, the girl wearing the short skirts, the high heels. I usually hate this type of character and go more for the girl in t-shirts and sneakers. I'm happy that I like the on-screen Elena despite her being beautiful and popular.

I'm also surprised by how much I like Stefan. And I'm a bit ashamed, ashamed because when I read these books, I was definitely a Team Damon girl*. Watching the pilot and remembering this, I had to ask myself WTF? Damon killed people. He did, right? In the books? I'm pretty sure and, yet, I still had the biggest book-crush on him. I think this fact proves that teenagers are INSANE.


* It's been so long since I've read the books. Did Elena ever seriously consider being with Damon? I can't remember. I think my mind might be rewriting the series.

And not just because I need one to get published. ***

I don't know what book to write next. T tells me to "write what you think will sell". The problem with that advice is I don't know what will sell. I love all my projects. If I didn't, I'd never be able to finish them, not even if I was guaranteed a spot on the NYTimes List. I can't write to the market. I can only look at my ideas and guess which one might be my break-in novel. (Break-IN, not break-out. Rachelle Gardner has a great post here on this.)

Even though there are no guarantees in publishing, an agent at least has a better idea, an inside view, of what is selling and what editors are looking for. It would be nice to have someone to discuss my ideas with so they can say, "Hey, I know of an editor who likes BLANK. Project Awesome would fit that. Work on it." But I don't have an agent, so I'm left bouncing between projects, asking myself:

"Should I rewrite my ya sci-fi? I think it has great commercial potential, but it already had a round in NY."

"Should I finish SoT? I love its characters and it's already at 45k. But will anyone else love it?"

"What about the SB novel? It's new and shiny and I'll be able to incooperate the emotional turmoil of a historical romance into a sf-romance. But will that even work?"

I could pull my hair out over this. I guess I'll just have to make a decision and stick with it.

Do you guys have any advice? How do you decide what project to work on next?

*** Yes, there are other ways to get published, but they're not easy.

To procrastinate moving on to my next project, I opened up the folder containing the millions of files of my first real attempt to write a novel. The earliest file dates back to 2001, but that was three computers ago and I think I may have started working on TFC when I was in high school (pre-2000). I didn't "get serious" about writing until 2005/2006, though, and really just piddled with TFC during college. (To all of you college students who go to classes, make the grades, and write a book, I salute you.)

Anyway, I don't know if I'll pick up this project again, but I thought I'd post a little snippet from it. It started off being straight science fiction, but a love story crept in. Oddly, this was written during a time when I would never have picked up or chosen to write a romance novel. Go figure. This is the beginning of the book. Seems kind of info-dumpy, doesn't it? It doesn't get to the action soon enough (there's action in another page or so).

( TFC Snippet )

It ocurred to me that two out of my three completed novels contain love triangles. I never set out to write this type of love story - another guy always shoves his way into my books, thus complicating my MC's life. I partially blame Apopcalyptica's Bittersweet for this. Music inspires me, and I love the contrast of the high and low voices and the anguish in them both.

So I decided to do a little research. I went a-googling for more love triangle songs. I found on a Yahoo! message board a reference to a song called What About Now by Kenny Rogers and some other folk. I dashed off to YouTube it, but, alas, the KR video had been blocked (the UK blocks so much more stuff than the US). There was, however, a song called What About Me by some guy named Ryan Knorr. On a whim, a clicked it.


Love this guy's voice. And the song? Wow. It has so much emotion in it, my heart kind of aches.

Have any of you ever stumbled across good music by unknown or little-known artists on the web? If so, who? I'm always on the lookout for new stuff to listen to. :-) 

I want to like your bookstores. Really, I do. They remind me a bit of Barnes & Noble, though they're never quite as large and I've yet to find one with a coffee shop inside. Like B&N, they're in most large-ish cities in the UK. I stumble into them whenever I have the opportunity, always on the lookout for new books and authors. But, dear Waterstone's, I find that I leave all too often without making a purchase. Do you want to know why? Do you? It's a simple reason, one which can easily be remedied.

You have no romance section.

None.

This is apalling. Do you know romance is the top selling genre? A quarter of all books sold are romances. Granted, these are US stats, but I wouldn't think the English are so different. So why not give them their own shelf? I'm from Texas, a notoriously conservative state. We have aisles dedicated to romance, so it can't be that you're afraid to offend costumers with half-clothed people on the covers. It can't be a shortage of shelving space. You do carry romances, so you can just take them from your general fiction aisle and group them together somewhere else. You will sell more books if you do.

This lack of a romance section was only an annoyance in the past. I could go to Murder One, to their room full of romance and find many somethings to read. But, alas, Murder One has closed *sob* and unless I order books on-line, it's a tremendous labour to locate romance within general fiction. Usually, I don't have the time or patience to try. And to accidentally stumble across a new-to-me, interesting writer of romantic fiction? Near to impossible.

But maybe I've only stumbled upon anti-romance Waterstone's? I feel like I've been in one that had a shelf - a shelf! - of romance, but I can't remember where that one store was. It's certainly not in any of the town's I frequent. I almost believe I dreamed the ocurrence. 

So, Waterstone's, until you decide to create a romance section in all of your stores, I shan't return to any of them. I will purchase my books on-line from Amazon. *gasp*

Sincerely,

Sandy