Another free book drawing...

This one is really good!



Coming 12/22/09 from Bloomsbury...

Nimira is a music-hall girl used to dancing for pennies. So when wealthy sorcerer Hollin Parry hires her to sing accompaniment to a mysterious piano-playing automaton, Nimira believes it will be the start of a better life. In Parry's world, long-buried secrets are about to stir. Unsettling rumors begin to swirl about ghosts, a madwoman roaming the halls, and Parry’s involvement in a group of corrupt sorcerers for whom the rules of the living and dead are meant to be broken for greater power. When Nimira discovers the spirit of a dashing fairy gentleman is trapped within the automaton, she is determined to break the curse. But even as the two fall into a love that seems hopeless, breaking the curse becomes a perilous race against time. Because it's not just the future of these star-crossed lovers that's at stake, but the fate of the entire magical world.

Want to win an ARC with original sketches from the author inside? See http://fabulousfrock.livejournal.com for details!

Another chance to win cheese

And here's another chance to win your very own copy of The Secrets of the Cheese Syndicate, by my very own fellow crit group member Donna St. Cyr.



It's a great adventure story plus Greek myth plus cheese that would also be a fun read-aloud for elementary school to middle school aged kids.

Various and sundry weekendy things

Well, the craft event was this morning, and I'm SO glad I survived. It's nice to socialize and eat other people's food, but not so nice to have a raging sinus thing. I wanted to leave in the middle and just go lie down, which I couldn't do because I was supposed to be helping run the thing. I think people had a fun time, though, and I did get to meet the other organist who plays the organ I do, for a congregation that shares our building, and compare notes on the sudden weirdness of the organ.

It sounds strange, but I'm really looking forward to Monday. The whole back to school week has been just so busy I am gasping for air! Day 1 ended with DH taking the boys to scouts. (This was also our anniversary. We got married at totally the right time, but August is a horribly inconvenient time for an anniversary. We barely got to see each other, let alone do anything. We'll have to pick a random day soon and call that our anniversary instead.) Day 2 I had to go help set up for this craft thing. Day 3 was DH's departmental food event, which meant he went off to do his duty and greet the grad students while I made food for today's event at home. I was also sick and felt very gross. Then today was the craft thing, the installation of a desk we bought a couple weeks ago which they never delivered, so we had to pick up. Which meant a lot of barricading things so PMB didn't get squished. And DH has more stuff tonight. It's not like we don't have stuff on Monday to do, but hopefully some of these evening events can simmer down and we can have time to all see each other again.

As to writing, I'm back in Revisionland. I have been to Revisionland so often that I think I need to order extra pages from the State Department to add to my passport. It will be nice when I get rid of this cold and can think straight. I feel like I make progress while I'm there, but I often feel frustrated because I think I've gone ten or twenty miles and then discover that actually I've just gone around in a circle. I need a better map, methinks.

unreliable narrators

I asked this on Verla's and am repeating it here because I got a revision request and it's one of the things I'm considering changing. Of the following two scenarios, which appeals to you more:

1. The reader gets the MC's denial story/tampered-with memory, so to speak, until the MC is ready to deal, at which point both reader and MC see the evidence of the truth at the same time. The focus is on finding out What Happened.

2. The reader knows that something happened (and maybe even knows what), and that the MC is avoiding confronting it. The focus is on the MC's character growth towards dealing with it, as opposed to just getting the information out. The reader could learn The Truth long before the end, but there would still be tension in the story toward the MC coming to terms with it.

Which one is more appealing to you, and why? Examples of books like this that you liked (or didn't)?