It’s release day at EC, and my fabulous friend Mel is on the home page twice!
In the anthology Ellora’s Cavemen: Legendary Tails III (which is available in e-format and print):
The Last Bite By Melani Blazer
Once the hunter…
Laura hasn’t seen her partner in six years—when an easy bounty capture went horribly wrong. She’s back with a secret that threatens the man she once loved, who still sets her blood on fire with little more than a look.
Now the hunted…
Elliot has his sights on one vamp—his brother’s killer. He’s swayed from his mission only by the reappearance of his former partner. Their blistering passion makes him forget her cryptic warning, until he’s forced to face it. Will Laura fare as well when his secret is revealed?
And in the anthology Things That Go Bump In the Night V:
Haunted Redemption By Melani Blazer
He isn’t the Scott she once knew. Lili never expected to see him again, but when she does, the sparks between them make Halloween a night to remember. It had been at a haunted house ten years earlier that Scott had disappeared. Lili has no intention of letting history repeat itself.
Scott returns, desperate to see the woman he’d left behind, knowing he’ll have one night—one night to savor for an eternity. He hasn’t counted on the power of their attraction—and the devastating effects his secret will have on the woman he loves.
I’ve been haunting the Coming Soon page, but Roadtrip isn’t there yet. Jaci & CJ’s book is there, which also releases Oct 5th, but Sylvia and I haven’t made it there yet.
I’m adrift today. I was working on something and made a decision about that based on some annoying internal dialogue and now I’m figuring out what the hell to work on today. Big sigh.
Oh! And Public Service Announcement: Get thee to Diana’s blog and read the entry on Passive Voice. Please. It’s something I’ve wanted to jump up and down and scream about, but I really don’t have the grammatical integrity to back it up. *g* She does. :clap:
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:nookie:
Shan, I just wuvs you!
And I really can’t wait to see you up on that coming soon page… that’ll be more exciting to me than my own! :dance:
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Hey, congrats, Mel! The stories sound great! :woot: It must be so cool to see your book out there at last!
And thanks for the props, Shannon. It’s funny you mention my grammar skills, becuase that’s ALL I DO in my day job and I’ve been absolutely wretched at it recently. :cursin:I think I need to turn in my copyeditor’s union button. If I were in a union. If there were a union. Oh shucks, I just feel like I suck of late.
Still, I can handle the difference between passive voice and past continuous. :crazy:
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Shan, that link doesn’t work. Although, I read it yesterday so I don’t know what prompted me to click it anyway, but I did and it doesn’t work. :whip:
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Oooh, don’t get me started on “Da Rules.” :cursin: Especially when they’re WRONG, the passive voice thing being a prime example.
IMO, there’s no such thing as an absolute “don’t.” At least, none that I can think of offhand. While some techniques or usages should be used sparingly, like a strong spice, that doesn’t mean they need to be totally banished. That’s not to say that there aren’t common weaknesses in many new writers’ work, such as overuse of adverbs, wordiness, limp verbs, etc. First drafts usually suck because the stuff that sits on the surface of our brains is usually pretty banal. Gotta dig deeper for the gold, doncha know. And that’s HARD :nod:
Still, bleh stuff gets published all the time. And sometimes, as has been said, sells remarkably well :shrug:, while more strongly written work goes unnoticed. So, yeah, most readers aren’t going to notice if the writer uses fifty adverbs every page, or relies on cliches, or any other so-called “amateur” technique. They just want STORY, baby.
What that two-by-four-upside-the-head moment did for me was to ease the obsession about all the piddly stuff, even though nobody cringes at the thought of being mediocre more than I. Obviously, during the editing phases, I’m still going to strengthen the prose wherever I can, weed out extraneous adverbs, and the like. But neither am I about to cower in fear of Da Rules Police. I figure if Toni Morrison can use adverbs with impunity, I’m in pretty good company. :thumb:
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WOOOOO Mel!!!!! :cheer: