F*&%ing Snow
Just came in from shoveling a foot of snow out of the driveway….they don’t tell you about things like this when they’re talking up how wonderful it is to live in Colorado… And since this is the second snow storm we've had this year, I decided to post some pictures for comparison.
You can tell the "today" pics are taken from inside. Snow was too deep to venture out! Also note, the street has disappeared. No snow plows in our neighborhood!
Mario, bless his soul, is missing all the fun. He’s gone to LA for the weekend. To party with Hollywood types. I imagine he’ll come back with lots of stories. Hopefully, that’s ALL he’ll come back with. This is what he said: I’m going to attend a tribute to Hollywood director Jesus "Chuy" Trevino (NYPD Blue, ER, The Practice, Law and Order, Star Trek: Voyager, Babylon 5). Basically I'm there to schmooze and pay my respects to him (and get away from you). And THEN he asks me to post for him on Monday. I’ll post for him all right.
A couple of our writer pals have new books either just released or about to be released.
First is Jennifer Rardin, one of the Reluctant Adults. Her new book, BITEMARKS (I love that name) is the sixth in the Jaz Parks series. Here’s a blurb: Jaz is possessed. After biting the neck of a domyter during a forced visit to his territory, she now has unwelcome voices in her head. While fighting for supremacy in her own mind, she finds herself confronted with a near-impossible task: perform perfectly on her next mission or face the unemployment line. Here’s the Amazon Link, or check out your friendly Indie to pick up a copy.
This just in: Jennifer is doing a contest over at Bitten by Books and offering some serious swag. Hop on over and enter before midnight tonight.
Next, Caridad Pineiro’s Sins of the Flesh. The blurb: Caterina Shaw's days are numbered. Her only chance for survival is a highly experimental gene treatment-a risk she willingly takes. But now Caterina barely recognizes herself. She has new, terrifying powers, an exotic, arresting body-and she's been accused of a savage murder, sending her on the run.
Mick Carrera is a mercenary and an expert at capturing elusive, clever prey. Yet the woman he's hunting down is far from the vicious killer he's been told to expect: Caterina is wounded, vulnerable, and a startling mystery of medical science. Even more, she's a beautiful woman whose innocent sensuality tempts Mick to show her exactly how thrilling pleasure can be. The heat that builds between them is irresistible, but surrendering to it could kill them both . . . for a dangerous group is plotting its next move using Caterina as its deadly pawn.
Everyone has been waiting for this and finally, we have the answer to one of life’s most burning questions. Who will be the next J.K. Rowling. Well, here it is--maybe:
From Shelf Awareness: Is Australian kitchen saleswoman Rebecca James the next J.K. Rowling? The Wall Street Journal asked this question now that "the 39-year-old mother of four has discovered that her debut novel Beautiful Malice, a gritty psychological thriller for teenagers upward, isn't merely to be published, but has become a publishing phenomenon that is sparking an aggressive bidding war world-wide."
Well, we’ve heard that before. I wonder if she’ll live up to the press (and the advance). I’m sure the publisher is wondering it, too.
The 2009 Anthony Awards were presented at a ceremony during the Bouchercon World Mystery Convention in Indianapolis, Ind. Here are the winners:
Best Novel: The Brass Verdict by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown)
Best first novel: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson (Knopf)
Best paperback original: State of the Onion by Julie Hyzy (Berkley)
Best short story: "A Sleep Not Unlike Death" by Sean Chercover, from Hardcore Hardboiled (Kensington)
Best critical nonfiction work: Anthony Boucher: A Biobibliography by Jeffrey Marks (McFarland)
Best children's/young adult novel: The Crossroads by Chris Grabenstein (Random House)
Best cover art: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, designed by Peter Mendelsund (Knopf)
Special Service Award: Jon and Ruth Jordan
Here’s a video from Penguin Classics about Vampires on Paper.
The blurb: Elda Rotor of Penguin Classics interviews Twilight expert Donna Freitas about the appeal of Stephenie Meyer's blockbuster vampire series and how it compares to Emily Brontë's enduring classic Wuthering Heights. Elda then speaks with Dacre Stoker, a direct descendant of Bram Stoker, and Ian Holt, authors of Dracula: The Un-Dead, who talk about Bram Stoker's masterpiece, why Dracula wears evening clothes, and how vampires pick up chicks even when they smell like the grave.
There are several others in the series that you might want to check out, too. Here’s the link to the site.
Yet another new reader: As indicated earlier this year (Shelf Awareness, July 20, 2009), Barnes & Noble will sell the QUE proReader from Plastic Logic in its stores and on its website--after it is introduced at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nev., January 7, the retailer said yesterday. The QUE is designed "to support the lifestyle of modern business professionals" and is the size of an 8.5 x 11 inch pad of paper and about 1/3 inch thick. The QUE offers access to a range of documents, including more than a million e-books available through the QUE store, powered by Barnes & Noble.
Bad news for anther library: Seattle Public Library is proposing a 23 percent cut in library hours in response to Mayor Greg Nickels' directive to city departments to cut budgets in response to a $72 million revenue shortfall. Lit Life correspondent Mary Ann Gwinn argues the cuts are too deep.
Just got my contracts for the audio editions of the Anna Strong Chronicles. So here’s my question to you: If you listen to audio books, do you have favorite readers? Not that they’ll ask me (I have about as much input as I do with my covers) but I can always pass along recommendations.
And to end with a smile, Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest for the Worst First Line 2009 Results are in!
Grand prize entry buy David McKenzie:
Folks say that if you listen real close at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blowin' off Nantucket Sound from the nor' east and the dogs are howlin' for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the crew of the “Ellie May," a sturdy whaler Captained by John McTavish; for it was on just such a night when the rum was flowin' and, Davey Jones be damned, big John brought his men on deck for the first of several screaming contests.
My favorite: Grand Panjandrum's Special Award
Marguerite Ahl:
Fleur looked down her nose at Guilliame, something she was accomplished at, being six foot three in her stocking feet, and having one of those long French noses, not pert like Bridget Bardot's, but more like the one that Charles De Gaulle had when he was still alive and President of France and he wore that cap that was shaped like a little hatbox with a bill in the front to offset his nose, but it didn't work.
Every one is hilarious-- the contest, began at San Jose State University in 1982 is an international literary parody contest, the competition honors the memory (if not the reputation) of Victorian novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873). The goal of the contest is childishly simple: entrants are challenged to submit bad opening sentences to imaginary novels. Although best known for "The Last Days of Pompeii" (1834), which has been made into a movie three times, originating the expression "the pen is mightier than the sword," and phrases like "the great unwashed" and "the almighty dollar," Bulwer-Lytton opened his novel Paul Clifford (1830) with the immortal words that the "Peanuts" beagle Snoopy plagiarized for years, "It was a dark and stormy night."
The weather here in Los Angeles is nice and warm. I had to go buy the tot a new coat, long sleaved dresses, tights etc, etc (mostly pink), since we're going to Kansas for a funeral this weekend and there's no snow yet, but it gets pretty cold. We have a connection in Denver so the tot and I will wave to you from the airport...
she gets to experiance trick-or-treating with a jacket, lol.
hmmm....last time I was in the denver airport I was reading x-rated bloodsuckers, and got really funny looks, lol.
Lady K, DH and I went sledding this afternoon. When life gives you snow, you go sledding (our version of lemons and lemonade). Lady K was over the moon that school was closed today and DH and I had the call this morning not to go to work...darn the luck. So we shovelled and put knobs on kitchen cabinets and drawers. Then sledding. I posted pics on my blog.http://iyamvixenbooks.blogspot.com/
Thanks for the reminder on Jennifer Rardin's contest over at BBB. I rarely win, but always like to try and it's fun visiting with authors I dig or will dig soon.
I listen to audiobooks on my 50 mile RT commute for work. They keep me mellow when all around me is crappe drivers. My favorite narrators are Johanna Parker (she does for the Sookie Stackhouse series and Meg Cabot's Mediator series), George Guidall, Davina Porter, Barbara Rosenblatt, and the one who I am listening to now for BLOOD AND CHOCOLATE - Annette Curtis Klaus. The narrator is Alyssa Bresnahan. She would be a perfect Anna, at least how I hear Anna in my cranium when I read the books. I'm going to read LEGACY for one of my December holiday reads.
Thanks for reminding me of why I'm glad Colorado is no longer part of my territory (if it were I probably would have been there this week.) That, and the godawful turbulence flying over the Rockies into the Front Range.