Sara Reyes | Get These Voices Out of My Head!

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I was so excited this week, the latest Sookie Stackhouse Southern Vampire book went on sale, and I got my hands on a copy finally on Friday. So after a nice dinner with the family -- no reading at the table, sigh -- I was ready to drop all work and settle down for a nice couple of hours of reading enjoyment. Oh, yeah! Everyone knew to leave me alone, it was just me and Sookie, and Bill, maybe Quinn, definitely Eric. It was going to be great. Until...

OMG, get Anna Paquin's whiny voice out of my head! And while you're at it take her stringy little ponytail and the gap between her teeth, too. She's too perky for my Sookie. EEEEG. this is so-not-a-good thing! See, I'm one of those who after hearing someone (thing) read a story will forever hear the voice in my head when I read it myself. And mostly it is NOT A GOOD THING. Yeah, I'm shouting. The previous phrase is to be read with much emphasis. Seriously, I do not listen to any audio books I may later read, except for Jim Dale and Harry Potter. Other people connect with the HP movies. Me, not-so-much. I always hear Jim Dale doing all the voices. Thankfully the producers were smart enough to get Alan Rickman as Snape because that is JUST the way Jim Dale voiced him in the audios. Love Jim Dale. So the Harry Potter books are an exception, but others, sigh, I'm sorry to say, I can't mix and match audiobooks with 'real' books.

A friend was saying just the other day she found the Sookie books slow going. I was amazed, appalled and dumbfounded. The pace is very lively in Charlaine Harris's books. I mean, perhaps outlandish but definitely not dragging. Then I found out she hasn't really "read" them, she's listening on audio at the gym and the reader has a horrid accent. Keeps pulling her out of the story and she really hopes Bill goes away (she's in the middle of book three, no spoilers please). She started to 'read' the books after watching and enjoying the HBO series on Hulu.com And that is another whole blog in itself. But she really couldn't get the charm of the books. The rest of us were CH fanatics and thought T was just not 'getting it.' But since our book club is a no-judge-zone, we all smiled nicely and let the conversation move on.

But the conversation came back to haunt me last night when I got to chapter three and realized Anna Paquin had invaded my book. I mean, I'm sure she is a very nice person, a great actress, but she is NOT my Sookie Stackhouse. I tolerated her through half of the season on HBO and then gave up. The episodes are still on the TiVo but I simply don't have time to watch them. Or more honestly, it's not too high on my priority list. But her voice was in my head and interfering with my read of DEAD AND GONE. Instead of MY Sookie, I was hearing Anna Paquin's Sookie and worse, seeing her! Oh, the agony. I stopped enjoying the story line and just got caught up in critiquing how Anna Paquin would look in the bikini, would the FBI guy be ogling Anna Paquin's breasts? Oh, shake it off, shake it off.

So, I guess, am I the only one who has this problem? Are the voices okay for the rest of you? Not that it really matters, after all everyone reads on their own and I've got other books to get into but seriously, I'm still a bit miffed. Sigh.

Until next time...
Get out there and READ a book...

Sara Reyes

DFW Tea Readers Group

Join us at Readers 'n 'ritas November 13-15, 2009!

Stop by FreshFiction.com to enter our weekend blog contest.

Deirdre Martin | Patience Is A Virtue, Or So I’m Told

About eleven years ago, a friend talked me into going to see a psychic. It was an amazing experience; she predicted many things about the future which have come true, including my becoming a full time fiction writer. But she also said I needed to learn patience. Boy, she was she right.


I learned to practice patience when it came time for me to find an agent. It was required again when I finally got one and she sent out my manuscript, which seemed to take forever to sell. And now that I’m published, I have to be patient every time I hand in a book and wait to hear back from my editor about revisions (not to mention waiting for my publisher to pay me.) Believe me, none of this has been easy for someone whose blood pressure spikes when it takes a barista more than three minutes to whip up a single latte. But it’s been worth it, because in the process, I’ve learned to be patient with myself when it comes to writing. I now know there are days when my Muse doesn’t want to do her job. But I soldier on, patiently awaiting her return. My patience is always rewarded; she always comes back.

Read the rest of Deirdre's post...

Deidre Knight | It’s a Crazy, Small, Connected World!

Recently Samhain Publishing released a true book of my heart, BUTTERFLY TATTOO. This edgy and genre-bending contemporary romance is my seventh published book although it was the very first one that my agent shopped on my behalf. The winding path this novel took before becoming published is a true study in how important relationships are, not only in publishing, but in all walks of life.

I thought it might be interesting for my friends and readers to learn the crazy relationship connections that are involved in my road to publication. The story begins with Louisa Edwards, the editor who ultimately bought my first book, PARALLEL ATTRACTION. Louisa is literally one of my favorite people in all of publishing. We’ve worn a lot of hats together, and it’s almost amusing as time goes on to see just how many caps and beanies we can swap.

While Louisa was still an editor at Penguin Putnam, I placed three authors with her, and we always felt that our tastes overlapped and blended almost mystically. So when my agent Pamela Harty—a super goddess among agents, by the way—shared BUTTERFLY TATTOO with her, Louisa fell in love. I mean, head-tripping-over-heels, crazy in love. She fought hard to acquire the novel, but ultimately the book was just too edgy and ahead of its time. Still, Louisa’s love for BUTTERFLY opened a critical door for me and just a few months later, it led to her snapping up my paranormal series that debuted with PARALLEL ATTRACTION.

Click to read the rest of Deidre's blog, comment or enter her blog contest.

Maria Geraci | Got Bunco?

In case you don’t know what Bunco is, let me explain. Think of a guy’s poker night. Then substitute the beer for frozen margaritas, the cards for dice, and the cigars for gossip. Sound like fun?

I got the idea for my debut novel Bunco Babes Tell All while at the RWA writing conference in Reno. I was at dinner with friends and I was wearing my “lucky” Bunco bracelet. I was laughing when I happened to glance down at my bracelet and faster than you can roll a couple of dice, it all came to me. I needed to write a book about a group of women who play Bunco! I’d been an avid player since 1992 and knew firsthand that it would make a great backdrop to a fun and quirky women’s fiction novel.

So now you've got to read the rest and comment to be entered into today's contest to win a signed copy of BUNCO BABES TELL ALL...

Virgina Kantra | Fairy Tales or Real People...

Orange Fairy Tales

Russian version

When I was a kid, I read my way through our library's whole rainbow row of Andrew Lang's fairy books. That's hundreds, maybe thousands, of fairy tales and folk tales from all over the world.

So naturally now that I'm all grown up, I read and write romance novels. I love being transported to another place, whether it's Regency England or the coast of Maine. I love when the deserving heroine gets her shot at the ball. I love it when the handsome prince (or vampire lord or Texas billionaire) puts love for the heroine above everything else. I really love the happy endings.

But thinking back on those stories, the other thing that strikes me is how ordinary the most of the characters are. The woodcutter's son, the merchant's daughter, the fisherman with the nagging wife, the soldier returning from war. Even the princes and princesses are taken up with the real life concern of getting married to an appropriate partner and producing heirs.

The tales of the selkie--mythical creatures who shed their seal skins and come ashore as beautiful men and women to have hot, anonymous sex with human partners—come from a time when people lived very close to their environment. In the ballads and stories, you can feel the characters’ longing: the lonely sailor, the woman who loses her love to the sea, the farmer searching for a wife beyond the local girls he knows, the unmarried village girl who can’t or won’t name the father of her baby. There’s a palpable, poignant conflict between their day-to-day experience and their yearning for something more.

That is certainly the case with ordinary Lucy Hunter, the heroine of SEA LORD.

Hooked? Now read the rest and comment to be entered into today's contest to win a signed copy of Virginia Kantra's SEA LORD

Lauren Dane | Relentless

We’ve all got tropes we like – assassin heroes, marriage of convenience, small town romance, older man/younger woman (or vice versa), uber alpha heroes, beta heroes, certain historical periods (me? I love me some wallpaper regencies), friends to lovers, whatever your preferences may be – we’ve all got em.

Relentless is a story of opposites. In Abbie, we have a woman without political power. In the world I built for my Federation books, the haves are Ranked. As in they are members of the ruling Families who hold the reins of political and economic power across all the Federation Universes. Everyone else is unranked and therefore able to rise only so high.

So Abbie is unranked. She’s also a barrister, a public defender if you will and she has spent her adult life working to bring a more representative form of governance to her home ‘Verse. She’s small and fiery and full of passion and conviction.

Click to read the rest of Lauren's blog and to comment.

Sandi Shilhanek | READ ME RIGHT NOW!

Recently I attended a book signing for Kate Jacobs the author of several books including The Friday Night Knitting Club, Comfort Food, and Knit Two. Ms. Jacobs was promoting the paperback release of Comfort Food, and as she read a scene from the book it made me want to race home, and find the book in my TBR stack (well, really on my Kindle, but we won’t argue the semantics of it), and begin reading immediately.

What you ask stopped me from doing just that? Two things…one I was already in the middle of a great romantic suspense, Behind the Shadows by Patricia Potter, and two I have review books that I am committed to getting finished before I do any pleasure reading. Can you hear the big sigh I have given out for not being able to just read whatever book is sounding good to me at any given moment?

One solution that I have come up with is to do the audio version of the book yelling READ ME RIGHT NOW!!!! However, that’s not really the best solution either because my audio pile is also growing, so when I hear about a good book that I have on audio I want to listen to it immediately!

As you can see I have a dilemma…it’s a good one in that I have lots of choices, but it’s a bad one in that I have lots of choices. What about you? Do you have read one book, and know immediately which book is going to be next? Is there anything that can derail your reading train? What are you reading? What will be next?

Until next week I wish you happy page turning.