Lori Devoti, paranormal romance and urban fantasy author

I’ve had it in my sidebar for some time, but the new Harlequin Paranormal Blog is officially open. And guess who just guest blogged there? That’s right! Moi! Stop by. :)

Harlequin Enterprises Limited (www.eHarlequin.com), the global leader in series romance and one of the world’s leading publishers of women’s fiction, today announced the creation of Harlequin’s Paranormal Romance Blog (www.paranormalromanceblog.com), a blog dedicated solely to paranormal romance novels, one of the fastest growing romance fiction categories in the world.

Created and hosted by the editors, authors and other personnel behind Harlequin’s various imprints, ParanormalRomanceBlog.com is the first such site dedicated solely to the genre. “There are blogs dedicated to paranormal fiction and others committed to romance novels but there was no forum devoted strictly to paranormal romance. Now there’s somewhere a fan can go to discuss the love a woman might have for a vampire or alien or werewolf,” says Jenny Bullough, Manager of Digital Content and Interactivity. “We created the blog because we are all avid fans of paranormal romance novels—it just so happens that we work or write for a publisher. It may be called Harlequin’s Paranormal Romance Blog but we encourage posts, comments and discussion about paranormal romances by any author or publisher.”

Editors, authors and readers exchange ideas and opinions and engage in friendly, passionate discussions about the paranormal romance genre. Editors and authors explain the allure of the supernatural and the forbidden—such as the eternal magnetism of vampires. Readers are encouraged to weigh in to the discussions with their likes and dislikes about paranormal romance books and—as some of the individuals writing and shaping the stories are hosting the blog—perhaps even help shape the plots and themes of future paranormal romance novels.

Paranormal romance is one of the fastest growing genres in fiction. In October 2006 Harlequin Enterprises Ltd. Launched Silhouette Nocturne, a new romance series dedicated to paranormal romance. To date Nocturne has enjoyed tremendous success, with two Nocturne titles appearing on the NYT Bestseller list, in addition to numerous bestselling paranormal romance novels by prominent authors such as Brenda Joyce, Gena Showalter, and Susan Krinard from their HQN and MIRA imprints.

About HARLEQUIN ENTERPRISES LIMITED
Harlequin Enterprises Limited is the global leader in series romance and one of the world’s leading publishers of women’s fiction, with titles issued worldwide in 26 languages and sold in 109 international markets. The company produces 120 titles monthly and publishes more than 1,300 authors from around the world. Harlequin Enterprises Limited is a wholly owned subsidiary of Torstar Corporation, a broadly based media company listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TS.B). Harlequin’s Web site is located at www.eHarlequin.com. Harlequin has offices in 18 countries, including offices in Toronto, New York and London. For more information please visit www.eHarlequin.com or press.eHarlequin.com.

I hit the halfway point in my current WIP today. I’m feeling particularly good about this since it has been a kid-filled week. No school Monday, kid sick on Tuesday, doctors appointments (so no school) Wednesday, and early release today.

I cut back my goal slightly this week and was able to make it, and best of all (remember my little word goal addiction) I marked the weekends off, so any writing I get done then is gravy.

I so love that.

My friend Laura Drewry emailed me today saying she is in writer overload. She has been writing at an incredible pace lately. This just drains you. It’s weird that it does as much as it does, but there you have it. My suggestion was to write out of order. I do not do this very often, but sometimes you get too fixated on what is going to happen next. If you hit a rough spot you can’t get past, skipping ahead to a scene you know you will enjoy writing, or one you have thought out, can really get you rolling again. Another thing that sometimes helps me is changing POV character. This may explain why I have a lot of POV switches at times–or maybe I just feel like I do. Thing is for a scene to be easy to write there has to be tension, something to lose. (This is also what makes a scene worth reading.) If you hit a place where you are having to pull every word out of your brain, it very well may be that the point of contention in the scene has gotten lost–that the person whose brain you are in isn’t the person with the most to lose. So, voila! Switch POV characters. Works for me a lot.

In other news, tomorrow is my local chapter meeting. Our speaker is a tarot card reader who I am really looking forward to hearing. In Wild Hunt I introduce the Norn and one Norn who reads runes. I also assigned a rune to my hero–which is something this woman is going to talk about, except tarot, not runes. If I learn anything fascinating, I’ll post a report.

Then next week is Love is Murder in Chicago. A few people from here are going–my lovely friend and roommate, Kathy Steffen, Harlequin Intrigue author, Ann Voss Peterson and her mom Carol Voss, also a Harlequin author. AND my mom is going to be there. She’s also a writer and a big fan of guest speaker Tess Gerritsen. Three plus days away from laundry, settling TV channel disputes and mixing up juice cups–how will I survive?

I will miss the little snot-noses though…

I thought I’d expound on my exploding head blog a bit more today. See there’s more to it than the threat of my head bursting while I sit at my computer. There’s the issue of my little problem, my addiction.

I am addicted to deadlines. I don’t know exactly when this happened. I used to work for newspapers, but I don’t think that was the cause–I think it’s more what made me a good fit in the job.

And when I say I’m addicted to deadlines, I don’t just mean making them–I mean beating them. It’s sick, really it is. Here’s how it works. I set a deadline. That’s right I do, based on nothing really, just when I think something should be done–might be months before it is actually due. Then, thanks to my lovely writing program WriteWay, I plug said deadline, total estimated words of the project and any days I know I won’t be able to write into my computer. WriteWay quite nicely then spits out a word goal that I must hit each day to make my deadline. (Just in case you think WriteWay is the problem, let me fess up that back before I owned WriteWay I had built a spreadsheet of my own in Excel to do this same exact thing.)

Now this might not seem too bad. I have a goal. It’s reasonable. Gives me the security of knowing if I do that amount every day I’ll hit my deadline, right? Yeah, this is where the sick part kicks in. I find myself saying, “Hmmm. It says 1,237 words a day. And I have 34 days before the deadline SO if I wrote an extra 8,058 words (237 x 34) I could get the goal down to 1,000. Which would mean 8 days of an extra 1,000 words or so…” Because see my goal is never to make my goal, it’s to beat it, to drive it into the ground.

And thus I face the head-exploding dilemma.

Someone help me….

You ever feel that way? As a writer I get frustrated because I have TIME to write, but I hit a point where I just can’t…well, that’s not true…I can, but my head might explode.

I asked my friend, Eve Silver, who writes for three houses, how she does it–the woman has had deadlines out the wazoo this year. She says she just buckles down and writes, turns off all internal editors, and doesn’t get up until one of her predetermined to-be-allowed breaks.

Ann Voss Peterson takes naps. Writes, hits the wall, refreshes her brain with a nap. I can’t do that. I’m one of those, once I’m up…people.

I have friends who have written entire books in two weeks. And as far as I know their brains are still intact–or as intact as any writer’s brain is, which probably isn’t saying much since in general I think we are a pretty bizarre lot.

It isn’t that I’m not productive. I’m very productive, some people would even say I’m prolific, but I have more time. Why can’t my brain fill that time working on my chosen WIP? Why does it feel the need to wander over to Webkinz for a game of CashCow? or to RTB for a bit of blog hopping? Seriously, I need to slap it around, but then, of course, I face the risk of head explosion.

And that really wouldn’t help me, now would it?

There has been a lot of drama and outrage the past week or so (I’ve kind of lost track of the time) over not only the issue of plagiarism, but the lack of outcry by other authors. I have seen some really ugly remarks on various loops and blogs painting any author who did not stand up and join the hunt with the same brush as the accused plagiarist.

I’m here to say plagiarism is wrong. Parking in a handicap spot when you’re not (handicapped) is wrong. “Borrowing” copyrighted images from an Internet page and posting them on your own site or blog is wrong. Stealing ideas is wrong. Posting a personal letter from some one who did not give you permission to do so is wrong (and contrary to what I’ve seen posted on at least one blog, a violation of copyright law). All of these things are wrong, and some illegal. But does that mean, that public flogging of the perpetrator then becomes right? Do I want to pick up a tomato and join in?

Hester Prynne was forced to wear a scarlet letter so all would know her sin and could treat her accordingly. Public liars at one time risked the stocks (and tomatoes). Our society did away with those things many years ago. It’s nice to see the Internet has filled that hole.

Frequently when I’m designing a bookmark or other promotional material I find myself in the position of trying to match a font to a book cover. People who have not taken graphic arts classes tend to think this is a simple task–trust me, it’s not. I took a class in college where that was one of our assignments, we were given a two or three word sample and volumes of fonts. Then we had to find the font! WooHee!! What fun!
But today I found this cool online tool that searches through fonts for you–not EVERY font in existence, but the fonts this site has for sale. And while neither of the fonts I tried matched perfectly, they were a lot closer than hand grenades.
Here’s the link.

I’m interviewed at Reading Is So Much Fun today. She’s also going to be posting excerpts from my books–including one from my June release, Wild Hunt (Venge’s story). Oh, and I’m giving away two copies of Unbound.
Stop by!
Lori

It’s been a while since I posted any refrigerator art, but I thought I’d try and start up again. Because, well, it’s fun. :)

It’s 30% off–what a deal. Here’s a link. It’s worth that just to stare at the cover!

While the rest of romance land rips and tears at whether Cassie Edwards should be killed, gutted and stuffed, I thought I’d provide a link to another copyright issue I find somewhat interesting–the JK Rowling suit against the Harry Potter Lexicon Site.
If you haven’t heard the story what it boils down to is that this site, an online encyclopedia of sorts for HP fans, was looked on with favor by Rowling–that is until they decided to take their facts and put them in book form. Then Rowling and her publisher decided they too might want to put together such a guide and objected to the site owners compiling their own. Here’s an article from Slate regarding this.
I find this fascinating. First, let’s face it, a lot of the creatures in the HP books are not original. They came from folklore. I can’t see how Rowling would have suddenly gained rights over them. On the other hand, she did create the characters and the world. And I can understand her frustration at someone else making money off her labors.
I wonder how Jane Austen would feel about all the books that are now being produced that use her characters? Is that wrong? Her copyright is up. So even if she were alive she couldn’t sue, but if she were alive would people feel she was being stolen from? Would people be in outrage? She did create all the basics after all.
Back to Harry Potter. It will be interesting to see what happens. HP is most definitely still under copyright protection–but what exactly does that protect? Is HP himself enough of a brand (for lack of a better word) that Rowling can use the law to protect him and the world she created?
I have no clue, and I’m not even sure where I stand on it.