Eilis Flynn

The Thanksgiving Day Song

2011-11-24T08:42:00.000-08:00

Years ago, I was driving to work and started to sing out loud. This was shortly before Thanksgiving, and my commute isn't more than ten minutes, so it wasn't exactly inspired, but I had fun coming up with it. Please join me:

TURKEY TURKEY TURKEY DAY
TURKEY TURKEY TURKEY DAY
TURKEY TURKEY TURKEY DAY

LOVE MY TURKEY YES I DO
LOVE MY YAMS, MARSHMALLOWS TOO

TURKEY TURKEY TURKEY DAY
TURKEY TURKEY TURKEY DAY

LOVE MY TURKEY YES I DO
LOVE MY MASHED POTATO TOO

TURKEY TURKEY TURKEY DAY
TURKEY TURKEY TURKEY DAY

LOVE MY TURKEY YES I DO
LOVE MY GREEN BEAN CASSEROO

TURKEY TURKEY TURKEY DAY
TURKEY TURKEY TURKEY DAY

LOVE MY TURKEY YES I DO
LOVE THOSE TASTY BISCUITS TOO

Or

LOVE MY PARKER ROLLS I DO
SOFT AND FLUFFY, CHEWY TOO

TURKEY TURKEY TURKEY DAY
TURKEY TURKEY TURKEY DAY

LOVE MY TURKEY YES I DO
LOVE MY DRESSING CHESTNUTS TOO

TURKEY TURKEY TURKEY DAY
TURKEY TURKEY TURKEY DAY

LOVE MY PUMPKIN PIE I DO
LOVE MY APPLE CHERRY TOO

TURKEY TURKEY TURKEY DAY
TURKEY TURKEY TURKEY DAY

LOVE MY TURKEY YES I DO
BUT MOSTLY THANKFUL FOR YOU AND YOU

TURKEY TURKEY TURKEY DAY
TURKEY TURKEY TURKEY DAY
TURKEY TURKEY TURKEY DAY
TURKEY TURKEY TURKEY DAY

The Riddle of Ryu: Coming soon to Amazon!

2011-08-28T14:42:00.000-07:00

Okay, I just spent the last couple of hours finding out how to convert and putting The Riddle of Ryu up at Amazon. Not hard, but definitely nerve-wracking, since I have a long history of technology disasters, many of which I made use of for my upcoming YA book.

Anyway, Ryu should be available for the Kindle in the next day or so. Only $1.99. And find out why he's wearing a bedsheet from Ralph Lauren (can't see it with the cover, but he is)!

I've been lucky with my covers in general

2011-08-24T18:47:00.000-07:00

And that streak of good luck continues with the cover I got for my young-adult novel STATIC SHOCK! I don't have a release date yet, but Crescent Moon Press sure came through with this rockin' cover!

The Riddle of Ryu: the details

2011-08-16T06:40:00.000-07:00

As I was saying (in small bits, since my hands aren't happy if I try to do it in large bits), Riddle of Ryu is a novella that was written for an anthology that didn't come to pass, but I still wanted to find it a nice home. It wasn't easy, so I figured I would do it myself, joining the indie revolution at Smashwords.com! Here's the story (but his name's not Brady):

The Stars Have Always Been There For Her…For lonely UFO hunter Ginevra Kincaid, the stars have always been her friends. She’s always been sure she would one day have a close encounter of the third kind—until one strange night, she arrives at the site of a meteor crash and meets…an alien? He might be, or maybe not…he can’t remember anything about himself, except his name: Ryu. But he’s being pursued by men in black, who claim he’s not who she thinks he is.

Can Ryu and Ginevra escape the men in black, and recover Ryu’s memories as well?

The Riddle Of Ryu By Eilis Flynn

Smashwords.com

$1.99

It's been a while

2011-08-14T01:08:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I posted (thanks, carpal tunnel), but here I am and here's my latest ... a foray into indie publishing, the start of a new series! Cover by Dar Dixon:

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/81227

Whee!

Happy Interdependence Day! It's been 26 years

2010-07-04T08:33:00.000-07:00

For those of us in the US, today is Independence Day, celebrating the day we as a nation decided not to be ruled by another nation. In other parts of the world, though, it's just July 4. But wherever we are, no matter what culture we're currently in, today is Interdependence Day for my husband and me, because it's
our anniversary.

We got married on July 4 in Brooklyn, NY, 26 years ago, and had our reception in the restaurant in the tallest building in Bay Ridge. We chose that spot because that's where we lived; we loved the area (the southernmost tip of Brooklyn, right before the Verrazano Bridge, which leads you to Staten Island), and by having our reception in that building, we could see the fireworks over in Manhattan. It was one day that we knew most everyone we wanted to invite would have off, and surprisingly, neither the church nor the restaurant were booked. It was a lovely, sunny day (okay, it was summer in New York: It was scorching, the church wasn't air-conditioned, but the sky was a beautiful blue), and we remember it fondly still.

Eventually, we moved away -- across the country, even, to Washington state -- but we had the opportunity to go back to New York a few years ago, just in time for our anniversary. We had dinner at the restaurant at the top of that same building, and watched the fireworks over in Manhattan again. We remember that fondly, too.

How is any of this relevant? Well, I write romances. And our wedding was
romantic. And it's Interdependence Day. So Happy Interdependence Day, one and all!

How multitasking is not a good thing sometimes

2010-02-18T13:00:00.000-08:00

Everyone thinks that they can multitask. Everytime you see someone on the phone as they drive, texting as they drive, texting as they cross the street (and sometimes blithely STOP in the middle of the street as they do so), work on the computer as they chat with someone either on the phone or over the cubicle wall or outside the office — anyway, you get my point. Multitasking is part of our lives.

But it’s not necessarily something we should be doing. Note the rising number of accidents because drivers are chatting or texting and not paying attention to the traffic. Or, in my case, trying to podcast as I’m trying to make dinner. This morning I have a lovely wound at the tip of my thumb because I was chopping carrots and managed to scrape off the epidermis into my curry mixture. To my credit, I didn’t scream; I did keep talking and wadded a paper towel onto my thumb, chatting away as I lost blood.

That’s not so bad, you think. It was fun times, I tell you. I sliced off a bit of my thumb, but then the coffee I was trying to make kept not getting made and I didn’t notice, only to discover that my cup had a hairline fracture, so the water went all over — and I kept pouring water in, not realizing I had already prepared it, only noticing after the podcast that water was everywhere. I just kept thinking I hadn’t done it because I was chatting and bleeding all over the place.

And there’s more: my cellphone battery kept beeping, telling me it was almost dead, so when it did die (during a Q&A), I had to grab another phone and log in again.

And that was all during one podcast. So multitasking is a lovely theory, but I’ve known for some time that it’s not for me, or at least not most of the time. Think about this the next time you think you can do more than one thing, or even two things, at a time. Maybe you can … and maybe you can’t.

Eilis Flynn
INTRODUCING SONIKA and ECHOES OF PASSION (both are available at CerridwenPress.com and on Kindle, incidentally)

What everyone's in an uproar about

2010-01-28T08:13:00.001-08:00

Steve Jobs has long been one of my heroes — I never thought I’d admit that in public, but there it is. The hero of my first book was based on him (now an online graphic novella, many decades after it was first written), and everytime Apple came up with something new, I’d have to find out more about it. And yesterday’s big reveal of the iPad (oy, such a name!) was no exception. Is it the greatest thing that’s ever been invented? Probably not — the wheel’s position on the list is still safe — but it’s a jump forward in the hopscotch of technology.

Notable among the complaints is what it can’t do. It’s not set up for multitasking. It’s slow. It’s not a laptop. It’s an overgrown iPod touch (incidentally, am I the only one stumbling over that “touch” not being capitalized?). But it’s also been pointed out that it’s not supposed to be those things — it’s a jump forward, it’s not man-on-the-moon leap forward. And it’s the reveal, the beginning. I have no doubt that it’s going to be fine-tuned in coming months and years.

I’m so embarrassed. I sound like an evangelist for Apple, and I don’t even have that much stock.

Anyway, it’s still an infant. Give it time. Five years from now, like an iPod or an iPhone, it’s going to be different, and it may even be in your hand. (Truth in commentary: I have neither an iPod nor an iPhone. We have a touch, but we got it as a premium for buying a car. We are VERY slow in adapting. So by the time the iPad overcomes its original problems, we may consider one.)
I’m not sure I should mention we still have an Apple Newton. Remember those? It’s around here somewhere. But it has its own place in that hopscotch board.

Eilis Flynn
INTRODUCING SONIKA, ECHOES OF PASSION
Now available on Kindle

The obligatory year-end note

2009-12-31T08:54:00.001-08:00

Okay, it’s obligatory for somebody. But the year is over, and for some, it was a year to be forgotten, while for others, it was one to be revered. Whichever is the case for you, it’s time to celebrate the change of the years. Do you have resolutions to make (again, for some) for the coming year? My usual resolution has been to make no resolutions, but this ending year I made some and only managed to keep a few (I resolved to write two novels and ended up writing one, thanks to a flare-up of carpal tunnel). And this coming year, instead of going back to my tried-and-true, I’m going to try again, but instead of two novels, I’m going for one novel, two novellas, and a partridge … uh, never mind.

Happy new year, one and all! If you have resolutions, good luck in keeping them. In any case, enjoy life.

Eilis Flynn
ECHOES OF PASSION, on sale now

Wrapping the season

2009-12-16T17:04:00.000-08:00

I don't know what it is, but I have long had this habit of buying Christmas gifts that have to be sent and ... letting them sit. We're awful at wrapping in our family. For the past few years I've been buying and having signed by the authors all sorts of books for the Hub's cousins, but there they sit in a very big box, patiently waiting to be sent ... someday. And it's not just a dozen or so. No, by now it's approaching a dozen's dozen, and I may take the plunge at last. We have boxes ... tape ... and even the addresses. The only excuse I have now is laziness and the fear of going to the post office and an inability of properly packing a box.

And of course, that fear of the post office (and being a lousy packer) at this time of year is why we tend to do a lot of online shopping. The only time we've forced ourselves to go through with this torture is when we're sending things to my relatives in Japan, and that's iffy.

But all that has to change. With a deep breath, I'm going to approach that very big box of books and ... start to pack. If nothing else, it'll be one fewer thing in my living room. Wish me well!

Eilis Flynn
ECHOES OF PASSION, on sale now

Baseball and Claude Levi-Strauss

2009-11-04T20:12:00.003-08:00

For the most part, these two things wouldn't be mentioned in the same breath, but today, it is inevitable. Because it's the World Series (game 6, Yankees vs. Phillies, or as the kid of one of my coworkers refers to the team, the Philistines!) tonight, and famed anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss died only a few weeks shy of his 101st birthday.

Social science majors, and anthropology majors in particular, will tell you that few classes pass by without a mention of Levi-Strauss' works. Cultural anthro wasn't my focus, but I read his work nonetheless (because honestly, you can't take an anthro class without reading Levi-Strauss), and it's only in retrospect that you can truly understand how broad the man's scope was in looking at human society and culture. (I could swear I remember some comment he made about baseball, but could I find it? Of course not.)

From the piece from The New York Times:
"His legacy is imposing. Mythologiques, his four-volume work about the structure of native mythology in the Americas, attempts nothing less than an interpretation of the world of culture and custom, shaped by analysis of several hundred myths of little-known tribes and traditions. The volumes — The Raw and the Cooked, From Honey to Ashes, The Origin of Table Manners and The Naked Man, published from 1964 to 1971 — challenge the reader with their complex interweaving of theme and detail.

"In his analysis of myth and culture, Levi-Strauss might contrast imagery of monkeys and jaguars; consider the differences in meaning of roasted and boiled food (cannibals, he suggested, tended to boil their friends and roast their enemies); and establish connections between weird mythological tales and ornate laws of marriage and kinship."

I always found the differentiation between why one cannibal boils and why one roasts to be illuminating and inspiring. It makes you see the world differently, doesn't it?

That's why it's good to be an anthro major, kids, especially if you want to be a writer: You get to explore the world in a whole new way.

Eilis Flynn
ECHOES OF PASSION, on sale now

Promoting oneself

2009-10-21T12:12:00.001-07:00

It's something that most writers, introverts that we are (for the most part), don't like to do, but we've got to do it. Sometimes it's in the form of an interview, sometimes it's in the form of marketing material like bookmarks or postcards or magnets, sometimes it's in the form of modern technology, like a podcast. Promoting yourself -- or at least your work -- is inevitable and necessary and sometimes can be downright frightening.

Which is why when Jacquie Rogers, one of the cofounders of the 1st Turning Point website on doing your own marketing and promotion, originally asked me whether I'd be interested in contributing a piece on occasion about marketing and promoting, I said no. I didn't know much about it, because that was the bailiwick of the Hub, who is a professional Marketing Guy. Well, it turned out that what she really wanted was to pick the brain of the Hub, but through me! No problem, I said. I could parrot someone else, if he had a chance. (If there's baseball on, all bets are off. And guess what's on right now? Yes, baseball.)

Of course, that said, I only found out the topic today ... and the podcast she assigned me to is this evening. Do I have time to do any research? Of course not. So I have to use what knowledge I have. The topic is tag lines: the good, the bad, and the indifferent.

Thank goodness I have others around me with more experience and knowledge. If you're interested in what real professionals have to say on the topic (and me), check it out at http://www.pivtr.com or http://www.internetvoicesradio,com at 6pm Pacific Time, 9pm Eastern Time. It's only an hour, so if you've got questions, there will be answers. Drop on by! And if I'm lucky, the Hub will come home in time for me to give a professional's answer!

Eilis Flynn
ECHOES OF PASSION, on sale now

About conferences

2009-10-08T22:03:00.000-07:00

While EC and CP authors and readers will be whooping it up in Ohio with the first ever Romanticon, I’ll be whooping it up in Bellevue, WA, at the Emerald City Writers Conference. I haven’t missed one since I joined the local chapter of Romance Writers of America, in the mid-1990s, and this year certainly wasn’t going to be the first (er, it would be bad form if I did, since I’m co-presenting a workshop on dragons around the world)!

Conferences can be fun, and they can be dreadful — it depends on why you’re there, and whether you want to be. Sometimes it can boil down to workshops the conferences offer — are they useful to you, and again, do you have to be there? Do the sight of other conferees fill your heart with joy or dread? I know some people only through conference, but that doesn’t stop us from greeting each other with happiness and a hug. (For that matter, there are some people I greet that way, but we can’t quite remember the other’s name. It’s mutual, so we’re not offended.)

It’s like this. Writers are notorious introverts, and we don’t get out that often. (In fact, I have a day job three miles from home, so weeks can go by without my leaving my neighborhood.) Conferences are ways to connect with others, remind ourselves that we are still part of a larger family, and even promote ourselves and our books. I go to Emerald City every year, I go to RWA’s National conference from time to time, I go to a comic book convention on occasion — I attend other conferences for other reasons, all so that we can reconnect with others, to remind ourselves that we are part of something bigger. And I’ll be reminding myself of that this weekend when I see friends I see only once a year or so.

So for those at Romanticon, enjoy! And we’ll be doing the same at ECWC!

Excitement can be good and bad, you know

2009-09-09T19:04:00.000-07:00

It's been one of those days that you scratch your head and wonder to yourself if it's actually the magical date (it's 09-09-09, and when my dentist's receptionist booked my appointment for 9am, I laughed; and I was late and actually walked in at 09:09!), or the fates had been saving stuff up to announce all at once. An epress that was just announced a couple of months ago, with publishing professionals the driving force and everything, just as abruptly closed its doors before they got going with simply a letter. Just like that. And Warner Communications, parent of DC Comics, announced that DC would henceforth be known as DC Entertainment, reflecting its reach beyond simple comics. (There was also a presentation by Apple Inc. about its updated iTunes store and updated iPods, but that's not particularly relevant. Although a video camera in the new Nano is certainly a fun idea, Steve.)

Now, the epress going under was a surprise, but the renaming of DC Comics (which, you may know, has always been redundant, since the "DC" stands for "Detective Comics") was more so, especially since the president and publisher, Paul Levitz, stepped down to be replaced by a Warner executive with no comics experience. (Levitz is going back to writing comics, in case you were curious.) This isn't the first time the comics publisher has changed names; it was known as National Periodical Publications as recently as 1970s. And it's not the first time that someone with no comics experience has been at the helm. On the one hand, it's a reaction to the Marvel Comics (sorry, Marvel Entertainment) acquisition by Disney, and on the other hand, it's also a nod from Warner that DC, always a cash cow but sort of overlooked, is being recognized as a more important property than it was when it was first acquired by Kinney (a parking-lot company) back in the 1970s. And there are lists you can look up showing that comics-related movies are among the top earners of all time.

So what does all this mean? Maybe nothing, maybe everything. This company's been around since the late 1930s (home of Superman! Batman! Wonder Woman! Green Lantern!), under changing names through changing times and cultures. It's endured, through good times and less than good, through changing technology, offering the stories of demi-gods reinterpreted for the modern age.

Now let's see how it changes for the 21st century.

Disney acquires Marvel

2009-08-31T10:51:00.000-07:00

For you geeks out there ...

Howard the Duck vs. Donald Duck: Death Match!

My Adventures in Romance-land

2009-08-13T19:45:00.000-07:00

Like a couple of thousand other writers, I attended Romance Writers of America's National Conference in mid-July, this year in beautiful Washington, DC. It was warm, but since it turned out to be even warmer when I got back to Seattle, the weather in DC in comparison (in hindsight) was lovely.

The conference itself was a mixed bag. I hadn't attended in a few years; the last time I went was in 2006, when it was in Atlanta. This was the first year I got to attend as a member of PAN (Published Author Network), which allowed me to check out a whole different series of workshops, which was both interesting (we had Amazon evangelists espousing the goodness of Amazon and, of course, the Kindle) and mystifying (there was a motivational speaker who didn't do much for me motivation-wise). I got to see old friends again, see Washington again (the Hub's alma mater is there), and endure the discomfort that has become travel by air.

But no matter what else the conference brought, it was all wiped out by an incident when I stopped to speak to someone whose blog I read fairly regularly. As I turned to leave, someone from my home chapter called me by a wrong name. I was momentarily confused, because she knew me and I knew her; but she repeated it. She called me by the name of another chapter member, and when I corrected her, she shrugged and said that she couldn't tell us apart, and that it didn't matter.

That would have been funny, but see, I'm tall and Asian. The chapter member she was confusing me with is short and of Indian extraction. We're pretty different. She couldn't tell us apart? Why, because we didn't fit into her mold?

There are so many things I wanted to say, most of which wasn't politically correct ("All blondes look alike," I was tempted to say to this person, who is a blonde, but I know that's not correct). But I bit my tongue, because, you know, I was trying not to be impolite.

This short exchange has bothered me since. I live in an area that's predominantly Caucasian; my writers' group is predominantly Caucasian. It's times like these that I am reminded, in an abrupt fashion, that I am not Caucasian.

Sadly, that's what I'm going to remember the most from this year's RWA conference.

When reality reflects fiction

2009-07-30T17:27:00.000-07:00

In my recent ECHOES OF PASSION, I described a scorching hot arid environment that my hero, Daegon Bosaru, comes to. It wasn't a pleasant place, but then it wasn't just the weather that was dreadful, but the circumstances too. Little did I realize that I would be experiencing that hot, icky, scorching climate just a while after the book came out.

And it is horribly, ickily, dreadfully hot. Here in the Puget Sound, in the state of Washington, we are used to mild weather: mild winters, mild summers. But with the blast of ice and snow that we were subjected to this past winter (in the two decades we've lived here, it was the first time that we had police advisories not to leave the house if we didn't have to), it was inevitable that we have this horrific heat in the summer. We are not used to 100-degree-plus days, multiple ones. We are not used to glaring heat. Mild heat, yes. Mild sunshine, yes. But not THIS. When Seattle temperatures hit 103 around the city, it is truly unnatural. This is a city without a real history of air-conditioning, mind you. I think we are getting there. Right now, I have one coworker who has air-conditioning. I think by next year this time, I will have more. It doesn't help that I drive a car without air conditioning (bought in 1986, back when a/c wasn't standard issue).

Why am I whining about this? Well, as we were all whining about the heat (and around here we were), I realized that I didn't add enough details about the heat and the glaring sun in ECHOES. Every time I was out and about the past couple of days, I thought about a detail I should have added. The sweat around the hairline. The belabored breathing. You get the idea.

The moral of this story? THINK about those details. THINK about those senses. I was used to a mild climate. I should have been thinking about a much harsher one. Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to go find some air-conditioning. The grocery store, the library, the bookstore. I think we're going out for dinner.

Happy Interdependence Day! It's been 25 years

2009-07-04T11:38:00.000-07:00

For those of us in the US, today is Independence Day, celebrating the day we
as a nation decided not to be ruled by England. In other parts of the world,
though, it's just July 4. But wherever we are, no matter what culture we're
currently in, today is Interdependence Day for my husband and me, because it's
our anniversary.

We got married on July 4 in Brooklyn, NY, 25 years ago, in the restaurant in
the tallest building in Bay Ridge. We chose that spot because that's where we
lived; we loved the area (the southernmost tip of Brooklyn, right before the
Verrazano Bridge, which leads you to Staten Island), and by having our
reception in that building, we could see the fireworks over in Manhattan. It was one day
that we knew most everyone we wanted to invite would have off, and
surprisingly, neither the church nor the restaurant were booked. It was a lovely, sunny
day (okay, it was summer in New York: It was scorching, the church wasn't air-conditioned,
but the sky was a beautiful blue), and we remember it fondly still.

Eventually, we moved away -- across the country, even, to Washington state --
but we had the opportunity to go back to New York a few years ago, just in
time for our anniversary. We had dinner at the restaurant at the top of that
same building, and watched the fireworks over in Manhattan again. We remember
that fondly, too.

How is any of this relevant? Well, I write romances. And our wedding was
romantic. And it's Interdependence Day. So Happy Interdependence Day, one and all!

It's about a guy, see, and he's dreaming about a girl

2009-07-02T08:42:00.001-07:00

ECHOES OF PASSION releases today! It's part of the sci-fi Hunters for Hire series available from Ellora's Cave and Cerridwen Press! Here's a bit about it:

Neotia Prime… The home world of the Neoti and the Vozuans was destroyed by a doomsday device twenty years ago, but the troubles and unrest that led to the event still plague those who resettled on the twin planet.

When Daegon Bosaru arrives on the unnamed world, determined to uncover who is out to smear his dying father’s good name, he discovers that the tragedies of that civil war still haunt those who remain. Not only that, the mysterious, beautiful woman he’s been seeing in his dreams over the past twenty years may have information he needs. But when he finally meets Imreen Dal in the flesh, she seems not to know him—and furthermore, she runs from him every time she encounters him. Why?

Rumors persist that the crazed dictator who set off the doomsday device may still be alive…with fresh plans for conquest. Bosaru needs to find out how his father, the mysterious Imreen and the madman are related…and stop another world from being destroyed.

Buy it now (since I have no shame left) at: http://www.jasminejade.com/p-7007-echoe..s-of-passion.aspx

The countdown begins ... well, it continues

2009-06-17T17:57:00.001-07:00

I got my author copies of ECHOES OF PASSION yesterday, and I was pleased. For one reason or another, I didn't see the book after I turned in the manuscript, and so I was in the dark as to whether it had weathered the editing stages. As a rule, after I finish writing a book I don't revisit it (I mean, if it's done, it's done, and I don't see any reason to go back unless it's to look something up), but it had been so long since I had seen it I felt I had to do something. So I did: I sat down and read my book.

As I did, a few memories of the writing process came trickling back, little by little. I remember writing descriptions, piecing together the descriptions of a war that was waged twenty cycles (approximately two and a quarter years) ago, the battles and the outcome. I remember writing the descriptions of a settlement that had seen more than its share of sorrow and mystery, the descriptions of a lover who never was. Sometimes the descriptions came on like a waterfall, while other times ... well, they didn't. (I'm sure you know that feeling.)

Most of all, as I was reading, I remember shaping the people. The green skin of the Neoti and the golden skin of the Vozuan, so close in so many things cultural and physiological but so far in others. And I remembered why I write; shaping those people, the places, the stories can be an amazing experience.

Only 15 more days until launch! I can't wait!

ECHOES OF PASSION, 7.2.09

Voice is picky

2009-06-03T09:05:00.000-07:00

So many other people do articles on craft, so I tend to shy away from them. But something happened a few days ago and I felt compelled to comment. (If I didn't feel compelled I don't know what I'd be doing writing about it. But anyway.)

I work with someone at the Day Job who's not much of a reader. In fact, she jokes (but not really) that she reads one book a year, and she chooses it just before she goes on vacation for a week to the family vacation place beside a lake. The place has no Internet, barely electricity, so reading is the way to go. She's got a dozen books that she's started to read at the lake but never finished. She'll finish them someday, she says.

This year, though, she may finish the book she chooses. Recently, she saw the movie Twilight, and got so curious about the story that she picked up the source novel ... and LOVED IT. She devoured it and had to read the next ... and the next. She can't imagine what those people who disparage these books are thinking, she says. She's never read anything like them!

Now, I have to admit I've never read anything by Stephenie Meyer. Like my coworker, I figure I'll read 'em someday, but they're not really in my bailiwick (I've read enough vampire novels in my day, and I can't imagine that these YA versions are much different from the adult romance version). But my coworker was raving about them, and that makes me curious. I know it's got to be the voice -- and voice is, as we're told, over and over, what makes all the difference.

Two examples. Stephen King. Brilliant writer of short fiction and nonfiction, but his horror novels leave me cold. But I know it's the voice that brings 'em in. I've read two of his novels, and I remember admiring his technique, but while I recognize his craft, it's not something that hits my heart or gut. Will I have nightmares? Eh. I applaud him for everything he's done, but it's not to my taste for the most part. Next.

Barbara Michaels/Elizabeth Peters/Barbara Mertz. My personal favorite. Her voice spoke to me the first time I read Ammie, Come Home, and it has greeted me like an old friend every time since. I've always loved her work, but I know others have only nodded and said, "She's okay."

And that's mostly voice. Does it suck you in? Does it transport you to a land not of your choosing, and do the characters appear in your dreams? If so, damn but the author's done his or her job. And won a convert to boot.

My coworker is afraid that she'll finish the fourth book in Meyer's series before her vacation, but I pointed out that even if she does, there ARE other books out there that she'd probably like just as well. I could suggest a few (more than a few, in fact), but of course, it's her own personal journey to find that voice that speaks to her in quite the same way.

And it's every writer's wish that a reader makes that discovery of his or her own books!

ECHOES OF PASSION: 7.2.09

Only 29 more days to launch!

Technology stares me in the face

2009-05-20T19:31:00.001-07:00

Technology is an underlying theme in much of what I write, mainly because it both fascinates me and alarms me. And the fact that I managed to destroy three computers at work in three months has a little something to do with it too.

So knowing that, what does The Hub get me for my birthday? That's right, technology. He got me a Sony eReader because, as he explained, an epublished author needs to have a Reader. Or a Kindle, but the Reader was closer, and he could examine it (and I have certain reservations about the Kindle). I spent the entire day (because I took a vacation day) on line trying to find out how to make it compatible with my Mac, because of course it's Windows only. And I found the software to do it, and so I rubbed my hands together with glee!

And could not get it to work. Not unusual; my learning curve for tech has always been fairly long, and this was no exception. And managed to run down the battery completely, so the next day I had to go out and get an AC adapter. And then I charged it, and sat down to work with it again.

And managed to wipe out the data that already came with it. Sigh. Still couldn't upload any books. The next day either.

It's been a week and it stays there, mocking me. I may have to break down and see if I have any better luck on the Windows machine downstairs. Sigh.

But at least I have high hopes that I'll be able to read my next book on it -- ECHOES OF PASSION is coming out on July 2, so one way or another, I will! I will!

ECHOES OF PASSION, 7.2.09

Only 43 more days! I will conquer the Sony beast. I will! I will!

I'm starting to wonder

2009-05-08T16:39:00.000-07:00

I managed to kill computer no. 3 at work today. The third in three months. I'm starting to wonder about the jokes I've made through the years, about how technology doesn't like me. I DON'T THINK IT'S A JOKE!

Meanwhile, in decidedly nontechnical matters, I'm down to my last three teas in the house. Well, there are six, but I've decided that the liver tea etc. will stay where they are. Until I feel like drinking icky-tasting tea. The other three teas I have left are a motley bunch -- one of them is Market Spice tea, from Pike Place Market; one is unnamed, but I prudently put it into what used to be a Superman peanut butter jar (which gives you a clue when I got both the jar and the tea, which is to say, a long, long time ago); and a tea from a foreign country not Japan or China, but somewhere in Africa, if I can make out the postmark. The end is in sight. I cannot wait. Fresh teas, somewhere ahead!

ECHOES OF PASSION, 7.2.09

Only 55 more days to launch!

Does it ever change?

2009-05-06T14:23:00.000-07:00

I have a book coming out from Cerridwen Press on July 2, and I find myself looking forward to it. And I'm amused by that, because I thought I was over that kind of thing. ECHOES OF PASSION is my fourth book with CP, and I figured I was pretty much in the groove, downright blase, for the routine -- you know, you write the book, you submit the book, you get the book accepted, and then your editor takes over. (Oversimplified? You betcha!)

But the deal is, everytime is a little different. The first one is different from the second one (the first one is WAY different from anything else!) is different from the third. The first you're terrified of doing something wrong; the second you're wondering if you're going to do something wrong; the third you're fairly sure if you keep doing the same thing you'll be okay, but the fourth ... can you make any new mistakes?

And the answer is, of course you can. You just don't know what it is yet. So I'm keeping that in mind. And because I've changed editors, the way things get done is a little different too; it's something else to remember.

But the big thing I have to remember is that it's only 57 days until ECHOES OF PASSION comes out. It's still a thrill!

ECHOES OF PASSION, 7.2.09!

earth day, and the I-5 mountains

2009-04-22T11:34:00.000-07:00

This past weekend The Hub and I went down to Portland, OR, where he had lunch with his cousin Jonathan and I went to the Readers' Luncheon, sponsored by the Rose City Romance Writers. The speaker was Lucy Monroe, and she was fabulous, as always. After lunch (and Luncheon), we headed back north to Seattle. The trip going down (at an unspeakably early time of morning) we couldn't see much, thanks to the thick fog that blanketed the route, but on the way back home? Wonderful. Scenic. Mountains!

At this time of year, most mountains are covered with snow, and yes, there is a certain sameness to them because of it -- but the snow is gorgeous, particularly when the sunlight hits it just right, and the entire mountain glows. That was the case with Mt. Hood, seen here without that glow, but quite handsome, nonetheless:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Hood

What we found remarkable is that with all the times we could have seen Mt. Hood in all its glory, we'd never seen it like that, whether because of pollution or weather or stress (if traffic's bad, do you notice anything else? I thought not).

Farther north, we saw a mountain with an amazingly rounded top. Never seen anything that before. Until we realized it was Mt. St. Helens, and we'd just never seen it from that particular angle. The image of St. Helens here is clearly not rounded, but it sure looks as if the top's blown:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mt._St._Helens

I was in Seattle in 1980 when St. Helens blew. A fine layer of ash fell on my mother's yard, but it quickly disappeared. Not so in Yakima, in the middle part of the state; the wind must have been just right, because the town got something like six inches or more of ash, and it was not nearly as easy to get rid of, but it had to be done, and fast, because it could suffocate local vegetation and animals. And people, who were advised to stay inside for a while. The mountain's still around, after all these years, and still reminding us that we've got to keep an eye on her.

An hour or so later, we saw the first signs of home. Mt. Rainier is just known as "the mountain" in Seattle thereabouts, because it is omnipresent. It's there when the weather's clear, and it's there when the pollution's high (just murky). The first Japanese who came to this area saw the graceful lines of the mountain and were reminded of their own distinctive mountain, and referred to Mt. Rainier as "the American Mt. Fuji." The angle of this picture makes it look far less like Fuji than it does from other angles, but on a clear day, from the right perspective, it's understandable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Rainier

Where we live, the mountain's not quite visible; we need to go five minutes one way or another to be able to see it. But we still regard ourselves as fortunate that it's close enough to see.

Happy Earth Day. And that includes our mountains.

ECHOES OF PASSION, 7.2.09

Coming soon from Cerridwen Press

The shape of things to come

2009-04-08T11:18:00.000-07:00

Terry Odell's post on green tech (terryodell.blogspot.com) had me thinking about the tech of tomorrow, specially tech like "electronic paper," tech as thin as paper and reads like it but changes -- imagine a newspaper that holds the information of a Sunday New York Times but is one sheet thick. You turn the page to whatever you want to read, to the size you want it to be. It's an amazing concept, but when you consider there's a light source just as thick and easy to manipulate, RIGHT NOW (but not marketable due to cost), you know it can't be too far away. The Star Trek (original series) inspired us to expect something the size of a paperback book to read from and write on, and we have something a lot like that now. If that's the future realized, what's the real future going to hold? I'm not sure we can fathom it!

It's not just the far-flung future, either, that this is the case. I remember reading recently that the spy gadgets we were amused by on the TV series GET SMART back in the 1960s were the source of inspiration for the real-life CIA. The CIA scientists would see something on the show and try to figure out how they could make a variation for their own uses. (But no cone of silence, as far as I know. And on GET SMART, after all, they never could get the cone of silence to work!)

The book I have coming out in July, ECHOES OF PASSION, has a control device that's smaller than a paperback but a little thicker than a sheet of paper, easy to pocket and easy to overlook. It's a coin, basically; distinctively shaped and integral to the plot. Because The Hub works at a mint (where they design coins), I got a chance to see how intricate coins could be, and that was my inspiration.

But once I thought about it, it's not new at all. I have something about that size, something distinctive, a control device. And you probably do too. Got a garage-door opener?

83 days to ECHOES OF PASSION, on sale at Cerridwen Press on 7.2.09!

Modern tech again

2009-04-02T08:41:00.000-07:00

Last time I bought a new computer, after a week, I was producing pages productively. This time? After a week, I no longer have consistent Internet access and my writing software is actually hampering my writing output. Modern tech, I do love thee.

After a knowledgeable co-worker came over and started to hook up what needs to be for our Windows machine, my new laptop, and two printers to talk to each other, what he thought would be a quick thing has turned out to be hours and days of frustration. So the most reliable Internet connection is my 1998 iMac, dial-up.

Snort. I love modern tech. Of course, that iMac's videoboard blew six weeks after I bought it too. I was told it was a freaky thing. Like the AlphaSmart's capacitor dying right after I bought it. One out of twelve thousand, I was told.

It's not modern tech, I know. It's ME!

Snow.

2009-04-01T09:52:00.001-07:00

Worst. April. Fool's. Day. Joke. Ever!

Every year, April fools come out of the woodwork

2009-04-01T08:16:00.000-07:00

Every year, I dig out the link to the piece I wrote about April Fools' Day, just to remind myself that having a sense of humor is important. If you try to nurture the child within, if you have a fondness for pranks, if you, frankly, have a juvenile sense of humor and see no reason to grow up, you'll appreciate the article:

eilisflynn.blogspot.com/2008/04/april-foolery.html

Ninety-three days until ECHOES OF PASSION hits Cerridwen Press!

Once is a fluke. Twice ...

2009-03-20T08:15:00.000-07:00

I don't know how I did it, but I managed to melt down a second hard drive at work, making that two drives in three weeks (at least the second drive could be revived; not so with the first). Everyday I go into the office, eyeing the one I currently have nervously (the machine, not the office -- although ...), wondering if I'm going to do something to that anytime soon. I've always had a reputation for being bad luck for technology. It continues.

And of course, two nights ago, it doesn't help that I loaded a dishwasher we haven't had more than a few years ... and it started to leak water when I started it. The Hub examined it (knowing my amazing talents and tech), didn't see anything wrong, and had no problem when HE started the load of dishes. My magical touch, he figured. Grr. Can't disagree.

Yes, I know it's convenient that I have this talent around household appliances (and The Hub is perfectly happy to do such chores), but I'd like to not worry about being around modern technology!

Modern technology, how I am conflicted about thee

2009-02-25T19:40:00.000-08:00

Note for things to do: learn html. Or learn how to deal with html with a
little more sophistication. Having a website is a wonderful thing, but updating
it? I can upload articles, but I have yet to figure out how to upload an image
of my next book, ECHOES OF PASSION, let alone a blurb about it. Modern
technology: A pain in the rear, I tell you. It doesn't help that my computer at the
Day Job suffered a catastrophic meltdown on Friday, three days before deadline,
and could not be revived. Its replacement is noticeably slower. But deadline
is gone, and now I've got to figure out life and work with this thing.

But anyway. Modern technology isn't all bad, because it allows my new book to
exist. Yes, that's right, the new book! The release date is July 2, 2009, two
days before The Hub and my 25th wedding anniversary. It's very nice timing.
It's a sci-fi romance in the Hunters for Hire universe, which was established
and created by Ellora's Cave and Cerridwen Press authors a couple of years ago.
The Hub insisted I should do a salute to the Science Police from the Legion
of Super-Heroes, so my hero, Daegon Bosaru (the early books in the line had
some names randomly generated, which was a fun challenge), is a Secret Sciences
Police officer. Then there's my heroine, the mysterious Imreen Dal, whose name
may be familiar somehow to those fans from the same source. More details as
release date approaches!

One thing that modern technology doesn't have much to do with: My Tea
Project. I continue to clear out the elderly teas in my kitchen. So far I've gone
through five boxes, with only fifteen more to go (hurray!). The liver detox tea
continues to taste terrible. And I'm starting to make a list of Teas: The Next
Generation. If you have any suggestions, let me know -- after these teas are
done, I'm going to be looking forward to fresh teas!

Eilis Flynn

ECHOES OF PASSION, on sale on July 2, 2009!

www.eilisflynn.com

Echoes of Passion release date

2009-02-09T18:50:00.001-08:00

I got email today from my editor at Cerridwen Press that ECHOES OF PASSION, my bit for the Hunters for Hire series, has a release date: July 2, 2009! Considering I was waiting for line edits, this was a surprise, to be sure. The novel was apparently relatively clean, so after Shannon (my editor, bless her heart!) worked on the copy edits (the commas, the semicolons, the run-on sentences ...), she sent it along to the final line editor.

Amazing!

Relearning an old art form and studying a new one

2009-01-28T17:40:00.000-08:00

I finished writing a short story (only another one and two novels to go for
the year! New Year's resolutions can be hell), and it felt ... weird. Not
impossible, but weird. The novella I wrote toward the end of the year last year was
nearly impossible, but I managed (thanks to a piece I found by Angela Knight
comparing plotting a novella to plotting a comic book story -- that I can
understand). Clearly I've been writing novels too long.

The thing about the short story was that it was, yes, short. Just as I was
figuring out where the story would go next, it was over. Just like that. I was
actually confused for a few seconds. But a short's a short. (Now, editing a
short ... let's find out if that's any different.)

The Tea Project continues. Some concern was expressed about the ancient teas,
but so far everything's been fine. The twenty-year-old tea was flavorless,
but since the packet still had the original plastic wrapping intact, I wasn't
too worried about it poisoning me. So far I've finished off four boxes,
including the old one. I'm going through ginger, peppermint, Eater's Digest, and the
detox currently. And when I want to indulge, I buy a cup of decaf coffee. Only
twenty more boxes to go!

And at long last, www.eilisflynn.com is live. A few tweaks needed, but
otherwise, it looks okay. I know how to add articles, but anything more on the
fiction page has so far stumped me. But this is a new challenge, and I'll figure it
out before the book's release date!
 ************** From Wall Street to Main Street and everywhere
in between, stay up-to-date with the latest news.
(http://aol.com?ncid=emlcntaolcom00000023)</HTML>

The Tea Project

2009-01-14T06:16:00.000-08:00

When you open a cabinet and boxes of tea fall out, you know it's time. Some
people clean their office (which I should do, but that's not my point here) and
others their kitchen, but this year, I'm going to clear out my tea collection.

It didn't start out to be a tea collection … it was just tea that we
happened to have a lot of. But I realized that we had had some of that tea since we
lived in Brooklyn — and we moved to Seattle in 1989. Yes, that's
some mighty old tea! So if nothing else, if my office continues to look like
a sty, if my kitchen … no, actually, I keep the kitchen pretty clean, that's
not a problem … I will do this one thing this year for my home. I will drink
all of the tea already in my home and actually end up with no tea that's not
actually from this century in my cabinet.

Inspired by this idea, I started a little early, guzzling tea during the
great snowstorms of December 2008, polishing off three types by the end of the
year. (It was cold, and the weather was dreary. But you've already heard all
about that.) There were several boxes of tea that hadn't been opened, even, and I
know I bought one particular one at a little shop in Bay Ridge, in Brooklyn.
There was also a box of "Chinese-style tea," and that's how it was described on
the box, complete with quote marks. Not the greatest, but it's gone, it's
done, go 'way now. I also have no idea where I picked that up. I can see now
that drinking through all this stuff is going to be tea paleontology of sorts.

Currently I'm drinking Twinings green tea. Not bad, but not great — but
I'm picky about my green tea. There's a liver detox tea and then a
morning-pick-me-up tea that's next on my list. I'm not really looking forward to
something that claims to be a liver detox tea, but hey, that's the point of this
"Tea Project." If it's there, it will be drunk. And no, I have no recollection
when the liver detox stuff came into the house and snuck into my tea cabinet.

And that's it. None of this is earth-shattering, but I suspect it may inspire
a few of you out there to go look at your own tea cabinet. Little by little
the tea in my house will all be drunk. And at the end of the year I will reward
myself with something amazing, maybe even some Queen Anne tea from Fortnum &
Mason, a lovely English breakfast tea. But not until the end of the year!

Eilis Flynn
www.eilisflynn.com
ECHOES OF PASSION, coming in 2009

Looking backward, looking forward

2008-12-31T09:35:00.001-08:00

For the month:
Finished: Novella. It's true what they say, PLOTTING IS GOOD! Should do
that more in 2009.

Do: Make some effort to holiday-ize the house. We did! We put up our
minitree and dug out our Meowy Christmas Cats Caroling wreath, since clearly we
have no shame or embarrassment left.

Plan: Gift purchases for THIS year. Sent out. At least some. Better a
few than none!

And since this worked better than I thought it would, for the coming year:

Do: Two shorts and two novels. At least plotting. I could get to like
this novella business, too. But it all requires more plotting than I'm used
to. Guess I'll get used to it.

Straighten: Office. Seriously, when you have to pick your way through
the space to get to the computer, it's time to clean and eradicate and
straighten. And speaking of computer...

Replace: Computer. Sadly, my 1998 iMac is no longer up to the
challenge of modern-day requirements. It's been a good one, though. Time to do res
earch. Technology has never been something I see eye-to-eye with, so this will
be particularly challenging.

Launch: New website. It's up, but not quite done -- a few tweaks
needed that my webhost, Bill Hibler, is addressing. The Hub and I have known
Bill and his wife for many years, so I have full confidence that I'll be asking
many stupid questions. It's that tech thing again. Check out
www.eilisflynn.com, and get a glimpse of what's coming in the new year. If nothing else, I
have all those eNotes articles I want to put up there. At last count it was
something like 60.

Happy new year!

Nice surprise

2008-12-28T15:16:00.001-08:00

A few days ago, I got email from Mark I. West, famed children's literature professor and editor of a number of volumes on the same, saying that Japanification of Children's Popular Culture had been published from Scarecrow Publishing. This pleased me because about four years ago, when he pitched the idea to his editor at Scarecrow (originally conceived as a tribute to the 50th anniversary of Godzilla), he asked me to write an essay on the topic (I don't have a copy yet, so I don't know exactly how many contributors Mark ended up with).

After some thought, I came up with "Two Worlds, United by Anime," about the anime and manga I read and watched when I was a kid growing up in Japan, and then about the anime I watched when we came back to the States. Then the way these things go, I sent it in and promptly forgot about it. I was happy to read that it had finally been published, and now I can't wait to see how it turned out. Take a look!

Solstice greetings

2008-12-21T15:29:00.001-08:00

I work with someone whose birthday is on the Solstice, so let me say firstly: Happy birthday, Karen! I remind her that without her birthday being celebrated we can't have longer days.

Snow is appropriate for this time of year, no matter how much I complain. So far we have something like eight or nine inches, and since this is Seattle, that's messy business being near or on a hill. No newspaper -- not a surprise, considering the awkward series of steps necessary to deliver one; if there's a problem anywhere, either from the printers to the distributors to the dealers to the delivery guys, there is no paper on our doorstep. There's a good reason why newspapers are endangered.

But there's enough to look at. Everytime we look outside, there's another flurry of snowflakes. Once in a while there are folks braving the elements, either on foot or in a vehicle, chained and moving slowly (well, chained if they're in a vehicle, but everyone's moving slowly). None of them look happy. And I surely don't blame them for that. We're not used to icy cold temps and snow around here. I've run into more than a couple of locals who're from Southern California, who moved here because they thought this was a mild climate. They shiver a lot. The sensible ones don't drive. But since the buses don't move most of the time in this weather, they end up waiting and shivering a LOT, poor people.

But how often do we get a white Christmas around here? Not often. And I'd like to keep it that way!

Thunder and snow

2008-12-18T07:57:00.000-08:00

That's a combination I haven't run into before, or at least if I have, I don't remember. We had thunder and snow occur a few hours ago. I woke up at 3:30 am -- Fido was persistent in wanting food, and even though I didn't give him any (I mean, isn't 5 am early enough for him to have breakfast?? Really??), went down to check my email when I couldn't get to sleep, and soon enough I heard a sound I assumed was a very large truck going down the street. Nope. Thunder and snow. And it's been snowing since.

If I wasn't on deadline at The DayJob, I wouldn't think twice about not going in. But deadline's next Monday ... I have articles to look over and figure out how to fill a few empty pages ... and I probably should go in later. But once it's light out, and maybe once the snow stops. If the buses come; it's only three miles, but it can be a messy three miles to walk (I've done it in snow and in rain. It can be wet and cold and slippery, as you can imagine).

This is the kind of day to stay at home and read. If you have that option!

People are outside playing in the snow

2008-12-14T07:09:00.001-08:00

Weirdoes. *shiver*

Porta-Potties to the left of me, Porta-Potties to the right of me

2008-12-03T17:27:00.000-08:00

Why Porta-Potties? Well, you see, the city is doing its maintenance thing in my neighborhood, and so far, the workers have taken over all available parking, cut off water once when they cut into the wrong pipe (they're working on updating the gas lines), broken a hydrant so I came home to gushing water running down the street, covered their holes with large, awkward steel plates, and covered everything with a fine grit, which since this is Seattle has combined with the rain that comes with this season, making everything, well, icky.

It's the Potties that make me crazy, though. There are two of them on my block. They're not even color-coordinated, since one is this institutional green and the other is this flat, faded peach. Not just one. TWO. We are truly blessed. I know this is all temporary, and the Porta-Potties and the spare pipes tossed around and abandoned and the other things just dumped in places randomly will be gone before I can complain too much longer (can you sense the hope in my words? Yeah, I couldn't either).

But in the meantime, in this season of happiness and joy, I'm tempted to decorate the Potties with some Christmas decorations, just to perk them up a little.

31 Days of Busy

2008-12-01T20:54:00.001-08:00

Finish:
Novella. Do basic research (what does the Nevada desert look like?). Three pages a day. Then:

Do:
Make some effort to holiday-ize the house. Pack up and send out packages to relatives and friends, considering we haven't done a lot of that in the past few years. We've been saving it all up. Postage is going to be fun.

Plan:
Gift purchases for THIS year. Those packages from "Do"? All from LAST year. I swear, packaging stuff up and standing in line is the worst.

Meanwhile, Thanksgiving was lovely, thank you. The oven worked this year, and no casserole dishes exploded, and no other pieces of kitchen equipment shattered (last year was NOT fun, I tell you). No wonder The Hub's cousin was afraid to join us this year for T-day, but did say he'd come up for Christmas. We just have to make sure nothing explodes, breaks down, or shatters.

Target today, Walmart tomorrow?

2008-11-29T10:32:00.001-08:00

Target -- TARGET, of all places -- is offering Sony eReaders, according to an ad last week. I was amazed and agoggled; if Target is offering them, I figure Walmart and Kmart and so forth can't be far behind. Truly ereaders are going for further acceptance. And I guess we have persistence, and of course Oprah, to thank for that.

But I still have my reservations. They're still expensive, no matter which you choose, whether it's Sony eReaders or Kindles or even eBookmans; and the way these things go, they're going to be antiquated within days or months, and you'll have to replace them.

This logic, of course, is why I'm still using an iMac I bought back in 1999 (I should say here that I can't access MySpace with that machine; I have to make a point of going for the Windows machine, built in this century, to do so). Yes, that's right, I'm still using 20th century technology. But times are achanging, because The Hub suggested buying a Kindle recently, because as an epub writer, I should have this new technology. It's a nice idea, but I can't help but think that I should get a computer built in this decade first.

But this is the holiday season. The Hub tends to have these splurge tendencies when this time of year comes around. I may find myself the recipient of modern tech on December 25 yet. And then I'll have to deal with it.

About Jeff Rivera

2008-10-29T17:44:00.001-07:00

You might have heard about this guy recently. Here he is again...

Eilis: You took a sort of back-door approach to getting published by Warner/Grand Central with self-publishing first. How was that experience for you?

Jeff: You know,I think I set out to be the exception. To be one of the few who self-published first and then got picked up by a major. It was a personal goal of mine that began out of frustration actually when Hollywood wasn't getting the screenplay version of Forever My Lady. I knew that real people, not suits, really were loving the story so I had to get the story out there one way or another. And because of that rejection experience I didn't want to experience it again so I decided to self-publish. But in my heart of hearts I did want to eventually be picked up by a major publisher.

Eilis: What does it feel like being one of the few guys in the industry writing about love?

Jeff: I love it actually. It's like being the only guy visiting an all girls college dorm. Haha! I get all their attention! Just kidding. I think it's great because I come at my stories from a different perspective, my stories usually come from the male perspective and I think women do want to know how a guy feels about love. I always tell my female friends that guys and girls have the exact same feelings, it's just that guys have been conditioned by society to mask their feelings. That's why it's great in a book like Forever My Lady that is so internal in many ways and through the letters the main character Dio writes to his love, Jennifer, you get to see inside his head.

Eilis: Why do you think Forever My Lady is touching so many men and women readers?

Jeff: I think maybe it's because there's a part of each of us in each of the characters. We all know what it's like to love someone more than anything that you cannot sleep at night, that you cannot put them out of your mind, that you long for them. And we all know what it's like to have our heartbroken so hard that we feel like someone has just stabbed us in the chest. Those are feelings my characters in Forever My Lady experience.

Eilis: Where can my readers pick up a copy?

Jeff: They can pick up a copy of Forever My Lady on Amazon.com, their local bookstore or of course, my website: http://www.JeffRivera.com

Trying something new

2008-10-22T18:09:00.000-07:00

I don't know if you've noticed, but it's election season. (Pause for the exclamations of disbelief.)

Well, anyway, I don't know about you, but I'm sick and tired of campaign commercials and radio ads. Whether it's TV or radio, we're being bombarded with politicians trying to wheedle us into voting for them. Oh good gravy, are they ever. One day recently, fed up with those ads on the radio while I was at work (actually, I was sick and tired of something I was doing, but never mind that), I started to move the dial up and down, looking for a station that didn't have a campaign ad. Actually, that was a lot more fun than the work I was taking a break from, which might explain why I was sick and tired in the first place.

After a lot of spinning (the dial, not my chair -- my chair's sensitive that way), I found a radio station that didn't have a single campaign ad that I could tell. I was overjoyed! Of course, the music wasn't something I was used to listening to -- modern music compared to the classics I'm partial to -- but I settled in. As long as I didn't hear a mutter about "vote for," I was happy.

Day in and day out, I kept it there, and I marveled at how much better I felt not dealing with those election commercials. The music wasn't bad, and I even bopped along as I worked. There was even a song that seemed to be on heavy rotation called "Supergirl" (at first I thought it was "Stupid Girl," which considering the history of the superheroine from DC Comics wasn't necessarily off the mark by much), which delighted me, because The Hub and I keep a running list of super-hero related songs.

Today, finally curious enough -- and with a break in working -- I looked up the station. There was a good reason there weren't any election ads: It was a radio station from an area high school. OF COURSE there weren't any election ads! They're not old enough to vote! I didn't know if I should be embarrassed or not that I was enjoying the station, but heck, those people at Nathan Hale High School are doing a fine job of keeping me tuned to their part of the dial. I suspect if I had listened to the dj I might have gotten a clue, but I was in it for the music and the lack of annoying ads, and that was fine by me.

So I'm staying put until after the election. I may stay put afterward too, who knows, until I need to hear Beethoven or something again. Who would have thought I'd like modern music, having avoided it since the 1980s?

What's in a title?

2008-09-24T19:18:00.000-07:00

Title? What title? Any writer could tell you that titles are the trickiest things. They have to be evocative, they have to be clever, they have to be sharp.

I can either write the book or come up with the title. I can't seem to do both. They seem to engage the same part of the brain, and if one is in functioning order, the other is not.

The latest book I turned into my editor took me a while to write. Coming up with the title might have taken longer than writing the book itself. I couldn't come up with a title worth spit; what I finally ended up with was the most unimaginable one I'd ever thought up. Echoes of Neotia Prime, a futuristic romance, involves bounty hunters, recurring dreams, a mysterious, alluring yet familiar woman, zombies, more. I could not come up with a title that was worth anything, even with all sorts of tantalizing topics.

As it turned out, I had to change the title, because it wasn't working for my editor, either. I finally came up with one that combined recurring dreams and romance, sort of. It's Echoes of Passion, and I just hope the title works for the book.

Here's a cheerful note: Yasmine Galenorn, noted urban fantasy NYT-best selling author, did a Q&A with me. That is, she asked me a few questions and I answered them! Check it out at yasminegalenorn.livejournal.com!

A wonderful feeling of accomplishment

2008-09-04T20:30:00.001-07:00

I finished writing an article and sent it off today, and it felt WONDERFUL! That feeling of accomplishment cannot be beat!

Of course, it was just the top of a very long list of things to be accomplished. But that doesn't matter, because at least I finished ONE thing! I celebrated by actually cooking. And later, I will finish celebrating by doing the dishes. But I'm not going to go so far and actually cleaning up.

Well, maybe tomorrow. Next on the list is starting my dragon story for the anthology. I have a rough plot, a short synopsis, names, backstory, and even an ending. And a little research. I LOVE research!

The heart of the thing

2008-08-27T19:14:00.001-07:00

When I read about the cancellation of Stargate Atlantis the other day, I was disappointed but not surprised. It was listless and really, it had become aimless. And I knew more than anything else I'd miss watching Joe Flanigan and Jason Momoa. And that made me wonder: Was that the only reason I was watching? Flanigan to me has always looked as though he had been drawn and brought to life by a comics artist named Joe Staton, and even as his lines have softened over the years, I've found him fun to watch. Same with Jason Momoa (but who does not look as though Staton drew him). I decided that no, there were other factors, but one drew me in and the other gave me another good reason to watch (actually, I like the other actors too, but that's not my point here). That made me start to think about shows I'd watch.

The only reason I ever watched the X-Files to start with was the show that led into it, The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr., starring Bruce Campbell. I'd watch Bruce Campbell in anything, and because of that, I'm happy to watch Burn Notice now. Couldn't stomach Enterprise, though, no matter how much I liked Scott Bakula. What's the secret ingredient that the other shows had but Enterprise didn't (besides the fact that it was a mediocre show)?

And that made me think of books and authors. We have authors we will pick up books by unread and unknown, completely trusting that we will not be disappointed. Most of the time we're happy; once in a while we're not, and if that happens too often, that author falls off our list of favorites. In both those shows and those books, something speaks to us, something connects with us.

The question is, do we really want to analyze what that thing is too much? If we identify it, will the magic vanish?

Am I overanalyzing the cancellation of a favorite show?

One more step to reading green

2008-07-31T09:34:00.000-07:00

It shouldn't have come as any surprise that when the newest iPhone was revealed, one of the apps available was to use it as an e-reader. Of course, it was from a third-party developer, available as an add-on, because Steve Jobs has stated that reading is passe.

Steve Jobs, while a visionary in many ways, is clearly not a reader. What he is, clearly, is a marketing guy. Mind you, I bought my first Mac in 1985. The stores offering IBMs wouldn't deal with me; they actually ignored me while they catered to the men. If they had paid attention to me, maybe I wouldn't have walked into a store selling Macs, played with one, and promptly shelled out $3,000 for a Mac and a printer. I'm a longtime Machead, and because of this, I'll forgive Steve's brashness and lack of reading ability (well, I'm sure he can read).

He decided that people weren't reading anymore, and that's not true. They're not reading the way he expects them to be, and I assume that's what he's referring to. That app for the iPhone is sort of a limited device for an ereader, but I have full confidence that it's going to get better, and it's going to catch on. And Steve -- dear, dear Steve -- is going to realize that people are still reading, and the iPhone, among its many possibilities, will be a wonderful device to read with, and much more useful than the Kindle. Because it'll be just one thing to carry instead of many.

The iPhone is cheaper now (although it comes out to be the same thing when you account for the rates and the fees), and it may get cheaper yet, faster yet, with more doodads. The reader thing will be right up there. I have faith.

PS. If you're bored and you're not going to a conference or something, come on over to www.loveisanexplodingcigar.com and see why I'm complaining about The Dark Knight!

When July Isn't Conference Time

2008-07-30T11:52:00.001-07:00

I belong to an organization that holds its annual conference in late July. I
have in the past gone to that annual conference many, many times, in many
different locales. I have fond memories of many of those conferences -- I love
talking books to others who also love talking books -- and less than fond for
other conferences. I'm sure you understand.

In my case I have less than fond memories for conferences for a reason
completely unrelated to the conference itself. No, for whatever reason, when I think
of July I think of conferences I have gone to, conferences I could have gone
to ... and my teeth. I don't know what it is, but every July my teeth act up.

You know how this works sometimes in families. Some members of your family
have great eyes, while others may have lousy ones, or some may have great teeth,
while others have teeth made of tissue paper. Anyway, every July, whether I
go to conference or not, something with my teeth go wonky. Most of the time
it's something innocuous, like a chipped tooth. Sometimes it's less innocuous,
like two infected root canals that have you sitting in a daze in the middle of a
workshop, unable to talk to editors or agents without looking drugged. I have
yet to go to New York for this conference that didn't end up with my hunting
down a dental painkiller. And this is NOT the way I want to think of New York!

Some Julys you stay at home, because the conference timing just didn't work.
Such as it was for me this year. San Francisco. I was looking forward to San
Francisco, a lovely city on my coast! But with one thing or another, I couldn't
get the timing to work, and so I stayed home.

Just as well. Yesterday, the day most of the conference-goers would have been
getting into the conference hotel, I spent at the dentist. This time it was
another infection, and a molar had to go. My only consolation was at least I
hadn't shelled out money only to be wandering the conference in pain this year.
Well, no, I have another consolation. I'm getting some reading done, putting
my feet up and not eating solid food.

So conferences and the dentist is a strange connection to make. Do you have
something familiar? You probably do. And for your sake, I just hope it's not
something quite as painful!

Topsy, meet Turvy

2008-07-16T20:40:00.001-07:00

At the moment, HELLBOY 2 is the top-grossing movie in the country. HANCOCK is
second. THE DARK KNIGHT debuts in a day. IRON MAN is still in the theaters.
San Diego Comic-Con is coming up fast, and if last year's attendance is any
indication, there's going to be enough geeks, fanboys, and popculturati hanging
around to populate a small city. Or take over part of a larger one (ever try to
get a hotel room near the convention? Book FAR in advance). I heard 125,000
were in attendance last year; I'm afraid to find out what it's going to be this
time. These are not numbers that indicate a minority, a fringe element.
Somewhere along the way, comics went mainstream.

I am SO confused. I would ask when it happened, but I know darn well it
wasn't overnight. What I notice are familiar names in credits in TV and the movies,
producers and writers who were comics fans way back when before they went
pro. One example that pops to mind is Frank Miller, who's best known for movies
like SIN CITY and 300, who was a comics fan way back when. He's the mastermind
behind an upcoming movie called THE SPIRIT, based on a classic comics work
from the 1940s by Will Eisner. I understand the anticipation to this movie is
strong enough that it currently has a Christmas Day release. That's not a fringe
element, not a minority behind that.

So what does all this mean? If I were uncharitable (and not an old comics fan
from way back), I would say that the inmates are in control of the asylum.
Having been an old comics fan from way back, I have to say, FINALLY! Movies I
actually want to SEE!

Now I want superheroines. REAL superheroines. I'll be waiting!

Happy Interdependence Day!

2008-07-04T06:24:00.000-07:00

For those of us in the US, today is Independence Day, celebrating the day we
as a nation decided not to be ruled by England. In other parts of the world,
though, it's just July 4. But wherever we are, no matter what culture we're
currently in, today is Interdependence Day for my husband and me, because
it's our anniversary.

We got married on July 4 in Brooklyn, NY, 24 years ago, in the restaurant in
the tallest building in Bay Ridge. We chose that spot because that's where we
lived; we loved the area (the southernmost tip of Brooklyn, right before the
Verrazano Bridge, which leads you to Staten Island), and by having our
reception in that building, we could see the fireworks over in Manhattan. It
was one day that we knew most everyone we wanted to invite would have off, and
surprisingly, neither the church nor the restaurant were booked. It was a
lovely, sunny day (okay, it was summer in New York: It was scorching, the church
wasn't air-conditioned, but the sky was a beautiful blue), and we remember it fondly
still.

Eventually, we moved away -- across the country, even, to Washington state --
but we had the opportunity to go back to New York a few years ago, just in
time for our anniversary. We had dinner at the restaurant at the top of that
same building, and watched the fireworks over in Manhattan again. We remember
that fondly, too.

How is any of this relevant? Well, I write romances. And our wedding was
romantic. And it's Interdependence Day. So Happy Interdependence Day, one and
all!

2008-07-02T23:13:00.000-07:00

As others in the blogosphere have noted, models are often used for book covers, and mine are no different. While FESTIVAL OF STARS has no one recognizable, THE SLEEPER AWAKES has someone who looks like a hungover bleary-eyed Colin Farrell (or is that redundant?) and INTRODUCING SONIKA has a blonde who, from the moment I saw the cover, looked very, very familiar. I wasn't the only one who looked at it and had the same reaction. We all said, "Haven't we seen her in something? Who is that?" But no one could come up with a name, just that we knew her from somewhere.

Now, the way things go, the answer might have dropped into my lap. There was a TV show a few years ago called SPECIAL UNIT 2, which lasted no more than twenty episodes. But they were a good twenty episodes. It was gleefully cheesy, about how those monsters and things that go bump in the night were all real and had to be contained and policed by a part of the police force called Special Units. Michael Lande starred. Now, Lande is an actor I've often assumed will be as big as George Clooney when he's older, but right now, he's just too ridiculously good-looking to be taken seriously. In SU2, he hit just the right combination of cheese and tongue in cheek as tough cop Nick O'Malley, who is reluctantly partnered with another cop just introduced into the unit, played by Alexondra Lee.

I've watched this show over the years. We watched when it was on, back in 2001 (I think that's when it was), and we've watched episodes from time to time. I must confess, my eye immediately went to Michael Lande, sort of skipping over Alexondra Lee. Until last night, when we were watching episodes recorded during a SciFi Channel minimarathon, when The Hub said, pausing TiVo at an opportune moment: "Take a look. Doesn't she look like Sonika to you?"What could I do? I wrenched my eye away from Michael and looked, actually looked, at poor overlooked Alexondra (sorry, Ms. Lee!). And then I ran upstairs and grabbed one of the oversized postcards I ordered of the cover to compare.

"Holy Toledo, it does look like her," I said (well, I didn't actually say "Holy Toledo"). Then I corrected myself: "Well, it looks a lot like her, but it's not." Then I looked again: "Yeah, it's got to be her. A little change here and a little shift here—it's got to be her! Well, maybe not."

Through the rest of the episode I scrutinized Alexondra Lee, nearly ignoring Michael Lande for the first time. Afterward, I looked again. Yeah, she very well might have been the model for Sonika. I will never look at an episode of SPECIAL UNIT 2 the same way again.

What does this mean? Nothing, really. But it's good to put a name to the face.

Scary organized

2008-06-18T22:03:00.000-07:00

Alexis Morgan is scary organized. Mind you, writer Alexis Morgan isn't the only person I know who's highly organized. As she pointed out in the talk she gave tonight at a local library, in order to write most efficiently, you have to be organized. (And if you're not concerned about writing efficiently, well, we're talking about writing efficiently right now.) She uses charts to check her progress, sets goals to make, not big ones that might be intimidating or easy to fail at, fills out sheets about her characters.

Okay, maybe a lot of you may have seen worksheets to fill out about your characters; if you're familiar with the website Ninth Moon (that's www.ninthmoon.com), owner Laron Glover offers useful things for the writer, including charts and cards (and the site's worth a look, so I urge you to do so). But Alexis offered a worksheet that called for way more detail than I have ever imagined I would need for one of my books, and I realized that was my failing. I should need that much detail. I realized that at the end of the book, after the many drafts, most of the time I had detail like that -- but it would never occur to me to put it all into a sheet for easy reference. Like, that would make way too much SENSE. Her books are great; if you're not familiar with them, check them out at her website at www.alexismorgan.com.

Yasmine Galenorn (www.galenorn.com) is another writer I know who's organized like that (and her books, too, are great -- the next one in her Sisters of the Moon series comes out in a couple of weeks, and I look forward to it). She too keeps thick notebooks filled with details about her books, but at least she doesn't use charts (okay, I'm not actually afraid of charts, but seeing charts at work everyday, and seeing them used in this way, creates a weird dissonance). And I mention all of this because I have to ask: Am I the only one who uses Post-Its to track details? Yasmine and Alexis both have multibook series with many characters to keep track of, so for them to be super-organized makes not only sense, but really, it makes financial sense. To make deadlines, to be ... yes! efficient, that much organization is the only way to keep on top of things.This comes to mind not just because of Morgan's talk, but because upstairs in my office, I have two characters with green hair and gold hair. And I realized last night that each HAD THE WRONG HAIR.

Crap, I'm going to have to get organized. Darn it.

Movies vs. novelists, and The City

2008-06-05T09:34:00.000-07:00

I finally got around to seeing Stranger Than Fiction the other day. If you're not familiar with this movie (and since it didn't set the world on fire when it came out, there's a very good chance you aren't), Will Ferrell plays a depressed IRS auditor who realizes one day that he has a narrator in his head who isn't him, but a novelist who has been trying to finish a novel for ten years. And he comes to realize (because, of course, the narrative tells him) that she is going to kill him off, and she's trying to figure out how. He objects to this because, among other reasons, he has fallen in love with an anarchist baker (played sweetly by Maggie Gyllenhaal (sp. unc.)), and he wants to live!

The writer is played by Emma Thompson, who milks the role for all it's worth. I enjoyed this movie because it's quirky and sweet and it's a good change of pace from the superhero and fantasy movies I tend to see, but I did find amusing how the novelist is depicted. She uses an IBM Selectric, first of all, and second, I could have sworn that the size of the manuscript actually changed from scene to scene in a way that I doubted was deliberate.

The use of the typewriter just did it for me. Mind you, more and more of those who remember writing on typewriters, and manuals at that, are fading off into the sunset, but I cannot imagine writing an entire manuscript on a typewriter anymore, let alone a manual (but I still tend to hit the keys of the computer with more vigor than is necessary). (And the idea of retyping each page, and making the painstaking corrections for each error, makes me shudder. Be glad, you youngsters!) The charm of creating that way remains, I guess. As long as it's just an idea.

That reminded me of the movie The Royal Tenenbaums, which wasn't about a novelist (although if I recall a character was supposed to be one—maybe Gwyneth Paltrow—it's been a while since I've seen it), but used a framing device that was supposed to resemble a novel. Unfortunately, the charm palled when it became clear that the frame was a rickety one (simply a script presented in novel form, which didn't work for me). So enough about that.

What else do these two movies have in common? They both seem to take place in a mythical New York. In Tenenbaums, the myth is deliberate, by referring to the city, and then referring to locales in the city that don't exist in reality. Or didn't the last time I checked. In Stranger Than Fiction, the city's name is never revealed, but there are New York–like details.

Could these stories have been told with any other city as a backdrop? Sure. But you know, it wouldn't be the same, would it?

About anthropomorphism

2008-05-21T11:29:00.000-07:00

Humans are all about it. We ascribe human traits and personalities to the world around us, whether it's trees or the skies or the animals. In this day and age, it's quite frequently our pets. If we didn't think of them as being furry little humans, maybe it wouldn't hurt so much when it's time for them to go -- "over the rainbow bridge," or "down the crimson path," or as I've been referring to pet death as, "going to college" (think of it: they go in their late teens, and then they never call, they never write).

Sometimes it's their time earlier than we think it should be. Bowser, who died last year, was only about ten, but he had lymphoma and cancer of the small intestine, and he slipped away (ie, went off to college) even before we could discuss treatment options. Then there was Spot, who was the queen of the original three we adopted from an ad in the local newspaper nearly two decades ago, who wasn't one to suffer anything she didn't want to. She only tolerated The Hub because he wasn't scared of her. She tolerated Fido, but never ever Rover.

And why should she? Rover was scared of most everything. But Rover was a survivor, and perfectly willing to explain to us what we were doing wrong (so many one-sided conversations with her meowing at us, until she finally gave up and realized we were dunces!). Then, two years ago, when she had a couple of strokes and we were told that she had a brain tumor, that sense of fear went away for her ... and she became the Green Lantern of cats (or the Daredevil of cats, if you lean more toward Marvel than DC), the cat without fear. She demanded food! She stole food from everyone else! She demanded attention ... and pretty much got everything she wanted. Talk about pampered.

It was two more years than she might have gotten otherwise. A few days ago, she had her last stroke, and went away to college. She was 19.

If we weren't prone to anthropomorphizing our pets, it wouldn't hurt so much. But we do.

Snappy comebacks for writers

2008-05-07T12:51:00.001-07:00

For the longest time, you don't have any problem with the jokes. You
tell someone you haven't met before that you write, and you tell them
what you write. For the people I know, it's mainly romance, and it's
mainly fantasy (and it's often comic books, but that's another
topic). "That must be easy," they tell you, and often they'll wink
and add, "I'd be glad to help out with the research." Or they'll say,
"I hear you can just write in different body parts and there you go,
you have another book already!"

Most of the time you're patient. They speak out of ignorance, you
tell yourself, and they think they're being funny. After all, people
make jokes about lawyers all the time, and about dentists, and about
politicians. And quite often lawyers and dentists and politicians
will be good-natured about it, laugh it off, maybe add a joke or two
of their own.

But once in a while it gets to you. Once in a while you grit your
teeth and if you must be polite, you'll smile and turn away. Once in
a while, you find yourself opening your mouth and saying ...

What? What's your snappy comeback?

This is the question I asked of writers around me, and I got a range
of answers. I got some answers that were thoughtful, some that forced
the "kidder" to rethink the wisecracks, some that gave as good as
they got. And the variation I got made me believe that there was more
to explore. So tell me...

What's YOUR snappy comeback? Is it a quip, is it quirky, is it funny,
is it punny? Did you leave them speechless? Let me know!

April Foolery

2008-04-01T14:07:00.001-07:00

In honor of the day, here's a piece I wrote for RWA's online publication, eNotes. In my monthly column "Writer's Notes," I look at various aspects of the writer's life, and in this particular article, which I originally wrote a few years ago, I was musing about how some of the ingenious hoaxes that come out on April 1 should inspire anyone, writer or not:

APRIL FOOLERY

by Eilis Flynn

Now, I'm not much of a hoaxer myself, but I enjoy April Fool's Day. The day is rife with possibility, and I know it's inspired others to play some memorable tricks -- and if that doesn't inspire us as writers, what can? The day can relieve the tension of writing -- and you KNOW those times, when the plot doesn't twist and turn the way you really, really need it to. The tricks played on this day can turn out to be treats for your writing! It's also a day that can be likened to Halloween, in that you can't necessarily trust what you see or hear. In short, it's an entire day based on fiction. You never know what's going to happen -- and that's something we would really like to use in our own work.

Intrigued? Take a gander. For starters, here's a look at the 100 greatest April Fool's Day tricks of all time. You might have heard of some of these, others not; what you have to admit is that at least some of them will make you laugh. I laughed, and I have no sense of humor! The Swiss spaghetti trees ... Sidd Finch ... the Taco Liberty Bell ... And who knows? Some of these may work very well somewhere in your plotting.

http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/aprilfool/

Have I piqued your curiosity? Do you want to find out more about the day of fools? Glad you asked. April Fool's Day has serious origins ... or so we're told. One source posits that it came about from the adoption of a new calendar. This site has its own file of hoaxes, a history of the Gregorian calendar (vs. the Julian, but some of you may already be familiar with that subject), and more. Kidding ... or not? See for yourself. Consider how this can work for you.

http://www.infoplease.com/spot/aprilfools1.html

Here's a site that may be a little more trustworthy. What you'll find is that there are all sorts of different origin stories for April Fool's Day, and while some may be more credible than others, you have to admit they're all entertaining -- and they're all food for thought. And don't forget what Mark Twain said:

The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_Fool's_Day

Have I whetted your appetite? Want to try a few jokes, tricks, or hoaxes yourself on friends and loved ones (or not-so-loved ones, but make sure you're nowhere in sight if you execute 'em on these folks), or your characters, beloved or blackguard? Bless the children, because kids really know the value of a good practical joke. Put food coloring in the victim's milk! Super-glue coins (or dollar bills) to a sidewalk! Get some friends together and stare and point up at the sky!

http://www.kidzworld.com/site/p593.htm

And of course, chances are you won't be reading this until after April Fool's Day. In that case, pull a prank anyway -- when your victims won't expect it. Go! Enjoy! And take a few notes on how a twist or prank could work into your latest plot!

Copyright 2005 Eilis Flynn

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Faeries all over

2008-03-18T18:00:00.000-07:00

Got word that the workshop that Jacquie Rogers and I submitted to do for Emerald City Writers' Conference in October, "Faeries Along the Silk Road," has been accepted! It's got to be trimmed and smoothed and cut down to an hour, so we've got work to do in the meantime. A challenge!

A great way to start the week!

2008-03-17T18:06:00.000-07:00

I just got a mention from someone who does a weekly column about romance comics (sort of)! John Lustig's website is LastKissComics.com, and his comment about INTRODUCING SONIKA was: "If you like superheroes, steamy romance, action and a splash of humor, then this is a heck of a fun read." This was a great way to start the week!

Today's Ebook Market, Redux

2008-02-27T14:17:00.000-08:00

I work at a magazine, and the way these things go, I get a whole lot of junk mail, both email and snail mail. It was the snail mail kind that grabbed my attention a few days ago.

The magazine itself had a title that caught my eye: "EContent," the magazine for "creating, distributing, and managing digital content." The lead feature was about "The True Price of Privacy: What users are willing to exchange for (free) content."

But there was something in the small type that got me. "Today's Vibrant Ebook Market," I read.

Huh. As an ebook author, I had to check it out. Generally, it was an interesting article, with a lot of information I already knew--that ebooks have been around for quite a while, but technology had to catch up. The article goes into how ebooks are available 24 hours a day, no more waiting around for bookstores to open, etc. And what a boon it was for academia, because students didn't have to deal with large, cumbersome tomes, the professors could direct the students to the ebook versions. Yadda yadda yadda.

I know, this is all stuff we know. Ebooks, we are told, with each passing year, are getting to be more and more the thing. "People are expecting more things to be available in digital form. However, as it is when there is anything new, people need to take time to get used to it," the article concludes.

Okay, here's my complaint. WHEN?! WHEN ARE PEOPLE GOING TO GET USED TO IT?!

Anyway, that's my whine for the day!

Eilis Flynn

INTRODUCING SONIKA, on sale now

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Finally, a Reader to read those ebooks with

2008-02-24T08:50:00.001-08:00

Announcing The Cerridwen Press Spring Contest!

READERS! Here's the information you've been looking for!
Go here for rules you can download:

http://www.jayellwilson.com/CPContest2008.htm

Here are the rules for the First Annual Cerridwen Spring Giveaway:

· The Grand Prize winner must be a United States resident (due to mailing and
custom costs, we cannot ship the grand prize out of the country).

· You must be a member of the Cerridwen Chat Yahoo group to participate in
this contest. All clues and contest information will be posted on that loop. To
subscribe, send a blank email to: cerridwenchat-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

· You cannot share information about the contest with other readers. All
participants should act independently.

· Every day, starting on March 1 and ending on March 15, a clue will be
posted on the Cerridwen Chat loop. This clue will lead you to a specific web site
or blog location. You must find the hidden/special word on that web site or
blog. There will be fifteen words to find, one for each day of the contest. The
word will be in a special font, something like this so it will stand out and
you should be able to see it easily. If you want to be eligible for the grand
prize, you have to find these words. Note the word and the location where you
found it.

· You also need to find a tree icon and note that location. Beginning on
March 1, look for the tree icon on the web site or blog of the participating
authors (see the author list at the end of this page). Make a note of the location
of the tree icon or blog.

· The contest ends on March 15 at 5 PM. The tree icons and the 'secret words'
will be removed from the author locations at that time.

· Assemble the words you've found into a sentence. Send the sentence and the
location of the tree icons you found in the following format in the body of an
email to GreenBookFriend@yahoo.com.

          Sentence: write your sentence here
          Location of Secret words:
          1st word: http://www.websitename.com/website page.htm
          2nd word: http://www.blogorwebname.com/date (if blog)
          3rd word:
          4th word:
and so on ....
          Tree Location 1: http://www.websitename.com/websitepage.htm
          Tree Location 2: http://www.blogspotname.com
          Tree Location 3:
and so on .....

· You will need to find 15 words and 13 trees for a total of 28 entries.
Sound like a lot? It is, but the prize is pretty big, too!

· E-mail your response by 5 PM (central standard time) on March 16. No
entries will be accepted after that time.

· The grand prize winner will be chosen from those who submit correct
responses.

· Winners will be announced on the Cerridwen Chat loop on March 20, the first
day of spring, at 5 PM (central time). Winners will also be notified by email.

Prizes
· Grand Prize: A Rocket 1200 Ebook reader with 7 downloads already loaded.
Complete instructions will be provided for using the reader and for transferring
books to the reader.

THIS IS NOT AN EBOOKWISE ebook reader. You cannot directly download books to
the Rocket Ebook reader. In order to use the Rocket Ebook reader, you will
need to use GEB Librarian software or the REBlibrarian PC software. Both are
available for purchase for a minimal cost ($20-$30).

You will also need a Compact Flash reader/writer device for your PC. These
are available at any computer store for approximately $15-$30.

See http://www.chromakinetics.com/REB1200/move.htm for an overview of the
process used to transfer content to this reader. We will also provide
instructions for device use.

This is a used device. The cover is slightly scratched but the reading screen
is clear and unmarred. The device is in good working order. It will be
shipped to you with the winning books already loaded and will include instructions
for adding new content, a spare rechargeable battery, and a power adapter (to
recharge the unit). This device operates for 5-6 hours on a fully charged
battery.

· Runner-up: 6 downloaded books, emailed to you

· 1st place: 5 downloaded ebooks, emailed to you

· 2nd place: 4 downloaded ebooks, emailed to you

· 3rd place: 3 downloaded ebooks, emailed to you

This contest is sponsored by the authors listed here.

It is not sponsored by Ellora's Cave, Cerridwen Press nor affiliated with
that company.

These authors will have a tree icon on their web site or blog for you to find
starting on March 1:

Amy Corwin

http://www.amycorwin.com
Charlene Leatherman

http://www.charleneleatherman.com
Catherine Berlin

http://www.CatherineBerlin.com
Dorothy McFalls

http://www.dorothymcfalls.com
J L Wilson

http://www.jayellwilson.com
Janet Miller

http://www.janetmillerromance.com
Lise Fuller

http://lisefuller.com
Liz Jasper

http://lizjasper.com
Marianne Stephens

http://mariannestephens.net
Ariana Dupre

http://melissaa.com
Micqui Miller

http://www.micquimiller.com
Vicky Burkholder

http://www.vickyburkholder.com
Jude Atkins

http://www.judeatkins.com
Jean C. Gordon

http://www.JeanCGordon.com

The following authors are participating in the Secret Word part of the
contest (some authors may be participating in both: tree and word). You will receive
a clue by noon on each day to find out where to find the secret word.

Amy Corwin Jenyfer Matthews Liz Jasper
Frances Stockton Mary Ann Chulik Vicky Burkholder
Sam Cheever N.D. Hansen-Hill Eilis Flynn
Terri Thackston Terry Odell Micqui Miller
Karen McCullough Jude Atkins Sharon Horton

Enjoy the hunt!

************** Ideas to please picky eaters. Watch video on
AOL Living. 
(http://living.aol.com/video/how-to-please-your-picky-eater/rachel-campos-duffy/2050827?NCID=aolcmp00300000002598)</HTML>

2008-02-22T17:29:00.001-08:00

Today I did something that I hope made someone's day.

Some of you may know I work for a specialized magazine. It pays the bills,
close to home (I could, and have, walked home on rare occasions, but that's
about an hour and it's fifteen minutes on the bus door to door), but it's not
thrilling. Most of the time I don't have a say in what we run, though I do have a
voice in the suggestions. As I said, it's a specialty magazine, and it's not
my specialty.

Today, facing a deadline (Monday) and finding myself REAL short of copy (one
of those months when everything you estimate will take up space ... doesn't),
when I was handed a recent over-the-transom submission, I jumped on it. It was
within the range of what we've published in the past, it was relevant and of
interest to the readership, and best of all, it would eat up two pages that we
had to fill. I didn't think twice: I grabbed the phone and asked if it was
still available (since it just came in a couple of days ago, it was likely). I
said we wanted to use it, please sign the form I send over, you'll get paid
when it hits the stands in just a few weeks.

Now, mind you, this call would have been out of the blue for the author. It
was classic, if you think of it: Hey, I have a spot I have to fill, this just
came in, I want to buy it, okay, it's bought.

I'd like to think I made that author's day. It made mine -- I don't have to
worry about the space I have yet to fill over the weekend!

2008-02-13T17:56:00.001-08:00

A while back, I was thinking about ebooks vs. print books. Right now, ebooks
aren't as common as they will be in the future, with the most common thing I
hear about them that "I can't read that much on my computer." I can sympathize,
because I used to say the same thing, until I realized that since I work
on-screen (eliminating the need for unnecessary paper) and edit on-screen (it's
quicker and neater than paper), I spend a lot of time with my computer (my sweet
little computie!). Once you realize you CAN read on your computer, or any
screen, life becomes easier.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, ebooks vs. print books. Anyway, to entice those
who may be on the cusp about these matters, a few Cerridwen Press authors
decided they were going to make it a little easier for them, especially if they
like the challenge of a contest -- a scavenger hunt, really.

Check out the rules and regs over at

http://www.jayellwilson.com/CPContest2008.htm. JL Wilson did a fabulous job of organizing everything, even to offering
an amazing grand prize -- ebooks, and a way of reading them. There's going to
be one clue a day starting on March 1 for the hunters involved -- that's all.

Check it out. There are prizes galore, and who knows? You might find yourself
winning a few books that you're willing to read in a new, unfamiliar format!

Eilis Flynn
www.eilisflynn.com, eilisflynn.livejournal.com, eilisflynn.blogspot.com
INTRODUCING SONIKA, now on sale at cerridwenpress.com

Boxes of books are surprisingly heavy

2008-01-30T11:22:00.001-08:00

The other day, I got a stack of advanced reading copies (ARCs). If
you're not familiar with the term, basically, an ARC is a prefinished
book that may not have the finished art or even edits and is meant to
be given to reviewers or whoever for prelaunch promotional purposes.
(This is a simplified explanation, so please don't hit me over the
head.)

Anyway, the box was sitting at my front door when I came home from
The Day Job, and rather than pick up the box and unlock the door and
fend off a pair of cats who really, really want to get out, all at
the same time, I decided to unlock the door and shove the box inside
(and thus startle the cats into backing up for a second or two,
giving me enough time to get in).

Good theory -- but no. Ow! That box was HEAVY! My toe was saved only
by the sturdy tip of my shoe (now that's a glowing testimonial:
"Crocs: The tips are sturdy enough to kick around boxes"), and the
fact that there was enough of an impact that the box tripped and
rolled over the threshold, allowing my foot to skid off.

Fortunately, I hopped inside, again startling the cats into backing
up, again allowing me to try a quick maneuver and close the door
before the cats could dash out. (I should say here that these cats
are elderly -- they're about 18-plus years old, neither in the
greatest of health -- but obviously, they're spry when they need to
be!)

As you might have imagined, the cats were bouncing around, not only
because of my homecoming, but because I kicked (or at least shoved)
something new into the house. But then they got bored and wandered
away, yowling for their dinner.

And after I took care of that -- feeding the cats asap when I get
home allows me to deal with other matters while they're chomping away
-- I opened the box and took out the books. There weren't that many,
mind you -- maybe twelve, ARCs of THE SLEEPER AWAKES and FESTIVAL OF
STARS, but they were dense enough -- and I decided to put them in an
organized pile, on top of the dining room table, which was crowded
enough (still clearing off from Christmas). And I had to do so a few
at a time, because those suckers were cumbersome.

When I was done, I had a pile of those books taking up precious real
estate at the corner of the table, and I knew that I would have to
figure out where to move them next when I had to clear off THAT area
(because, you know, once in a while we eat at the table or invite
someone else to eat at that table).

So the box was heavy; the books were cumbersome; and they needed to
be shuffled around. Now tell me, considering all that, don't ebooks
make sense? This is all leading up to two things: one, go visit
greenbookfriends at myspace, where Cerridwen Press authors have
gotten together to talk about ebooks and how they're actually a good
idea, and two, we'll be announcing a contest soon, also with the
theme of how ebooks are good.

Meanwhile, I'd better make sure the tips of my Crocs are okay!

Eilis Flynn
INTRODUCING SONIKA, on sale now from Cerridwen Press!

2008-01-16T17:58:00.001-08:00

Although I expect to have my (e-pubbed) Cerridwen books in (paper) print
sooner or later, a couple of days ago I had the rare opportunity of getting a few
ARCs (as in "advanced reading copies") of my first two books. Ordinarily I
wouldn't have had the chance, but I got these as the result of a contest entry
that didn't go off (long story, don't ask). And as I held them in my hands -- in
"real," perfect-bound book form, trade paper size, with the cover art in
black & white (and in the case of one of the books, with the earlier version of
the art, not the final version, which amused me no end) -- I felt a strange lack
of elation.

Mind you, I DID feel a certain amount of satisfaction. It's one thing to know
your book has been published and edited, with cover art, copyright notice and
everything, but if it's electronic, the knowledge is purely intellectual.
It's different if you hold it in your hands. (However, holding the books in my
hands doesn't make my actually reading them after the fact any easier. For some
reason, I don't like reading my own work after it's done -- it's FINISHED,
fergoshsakes, I have other things to do! No, after I'm done writing, the reading
of my books is in your hands, dear reader.)

But it's anticlimactic. If this were the first time I'd "greeted" these
books, that would be one thing. Getting my author copies a few days before official
release day, now THAT's the first time I held those books (even though the
"holding" was actually "beholding," but you know what I mean). That's when I
said, "Well, lookit you!" Or something like that. The feeling of accomplishment.
Even some pride, but not too much, because that's asking for trouble. No, the
ARCs I held were an afterthought. That's not to say I'm not proud of them --
but it turns out I didn't need the printed books to be proud.

Who would have thought? Not I, that's for sure!

2008-01-10T07:13:00.001-08:00

I've got my first two reviews on INTRODUCING SONIKA, and I'm happy with 'em
-- so far people seem to like her!

From Jacquie Rogers, for ParaNormal Romance:
Introducing Sonika is a seamless blend of the comic book world with the
Happily Ever After of romance. We have a sexy, uber-intelligent hero who's
protective, even though Sonika could, indeed, kick his ass, too. Depth and complexity
of character along with non-stop action make this book a must-buy for any
reader who's looking for romance, but kicked up a notch.I'm hoping this is only
the first in an Eilis Flynn superheroine series because I can hardly wait to
read the next one.

From Anne Boling for Review Your Book reviews:
Introducing Sonika by Eilis Flynn is a bigger than life, tongue-in-cheek,
fantasy novel. The plot is humorous and imaginative. I was reminded a little of
the Batman TV series. The characters are wonderfully real, as real as a
superhero can be. John is adorable in his dorky way. Sonya is strong and smart. I
wish I could kick butt like her. I hope this is the first in a series.
Introducing Sonika is sure to please fans of fantasy.

And it looks like if I wrote a sequel, somebody might read it. What else
could a writer hope for?

2008-01-02T15:21:00.001-08:00

As a rule, I avoid making New Year's resolutions. Why bother? It's just one more thing that you have to try to remember that more likely than not you won't. So every year I resolved not to make a New Year's resolution. And for the most part, I succeeded in keeping that resolution, and I was pleased as punch that I kept my resolve in that.

Then about December last year, I started to think about it. Should I? Should I not? I have to do something -- it was time, I decided. It's a new challenge! And I suspect it's going to be a lot cheaper to learn to plot and organize than, say, going back to graduate school. So I resolved that I would learn how to plot. And I would learn to organize (pretty much in the same category as organizing).

So I dragged out My Plot Doctor by Carolyn Greene, and Debra Dixon's GMC. Let's see if there's anything I can actually learn from them this time around!

2007-12-23T21:29:00.000-08:00

Peace on Earth

A symphony of sneezes

2007-12-19T15:38:00.001-08:00

I know I should write something cheerily appropriate for the season,
warm hearts and glowing faces and all that, but everything I can
think of comes down to the chorus of coughs around me, the symphony
of sneezes, the whalloping wheezes, the hellacious hacking, that
sense of impending doom, that I'm not sick but I'm surrounded and my
arsenal of health aids are running low ... anyway, I guess that's
appropriate for the season too -- along with the decorations and the
food and the conviviality, there's the all-too-often cold or flu that
makes the planning and shopping and conviviality a big pain in the
kazoo. With every festive wrap of a box meant for a loved one,
there's the possibility of a less-than-festive wrap of Vicks Vapo-Rub
and crumpled tissues that even your loved ones are reluctant to get
near.

Whether it's because you're stuck inside this time of year, trapped
with others who are coughing or wheezing or hacking and downright
germy, or the weather's far too foul to step out without being
whapped with a flu or two, you find yourself surrounded by sickies,
illies, flu-ridden Flos or cold-clogged Carls (note: I actually know
a flu-ridden Flo. Flo, I apologize! But when the alliteration bug
gets to me, it gets me good) even as you're trying to keep your
festive spirits up, wishing everyone around you a happy holiday of
your choice (and less than secretly trying to edge away from them
before they cough, wheeze, sneeze, and glorph over you) -- uh, sorry,
I've lost track of what I was saying.

(Note to self: Watch the run-on sentences. If I can't recite the
sentence without losing track of the topic, it's too long.)

Anyway, too many people are too worried about being cheerful and
cooking and shopping and so on and find themselves getting stressed
and then unfortunately getting sick. It's especially true at this
time of year. And working your way through, cooking and shopping and
partying despite it all, just makes the coughing and sneezing and
hacking all the worse.

So relax. Got a chance to go skiing? Don't. Just relax. Yes, the
skiing would be fun, but not being able to breathe because you
overdid it on the slopes takes the joy out of the activity. And the
following few days of feeling oozy and icky isn't any better. And
having to read what you know makes it worse.

So I'm going to let you go now. Enjoy your holiday! Get some sleep!
Read another book (and if you're interested in superheroine romances,
try INTRODUCING SONIKA)!

That is all.
--

2007-12-13T10:24:00.001-08:00

At long last! Sonya Penn finally takes off in INTRODUCING SONIKA, the story
of the child of superheroes who tries to turn her back to her destiny ... only
to have it come up behind her and tap her on her back. Here's an excerpt:

Even if John noticed the car, he wouldn't be able to react fast enough. An
out-of-control driver on rain-slick streets, or was he aiming? And Arlen? An
easy target on crutches, crossing against traffic, helpless to jump out of the
way.

What could she do?

She decided the instant the screech of the Mustang's tires against the wet
concrete cut through the little shopping area, when she saw John realized what
was about to happen and he froze, bracing for impact—

The squeal of the tires was enough for her to grab onto, in a way she had not
allowed herself to since the death of her parents. In front of her eyes, the
rest of the world seemed to slow down as she reacted to that single,
all-encompassing screech of the car's tires.

She reached out and clenched her fists. Now!

The raindrops shimmered and solidified, the soft sounds of the rain and the
shriek of the skidding tires coming together to form a giant, translucent net,
almost directly above John Arlen, who was still frozen in that split second.

Yes! Twelve years without practice and she could still do it!

Eight seconds.

She didn't have much time. Swiftly, she stepped forward and caught the edge
of the net, yanking it down. It floated into her hands as if it were gossamer,
wisps caressing her skin, and she wrapped the stuff around her fists.

Six seconds.

With a cursory yank, she wrapped the net around John Arlen and cocooned him
in it, gliding the wispy substance with him in it across the street. His left
hand slipped out and scraped along the ground before she noticed and tucked it
back in. His glasses had fallen off—folding them, she slipped them into his
pocket.

Four seconds.

The net started to dissipate—the short time it existed hadn't changed since
the last time she had done this. Sonya arranged Arlen into a sitting position
on the curb, letting the net fall around him, and watched as the net crumbled
away into the chilly rain. Right at that moment her own hyperworld and the
regular world met and merged, the harsh meeting of the two making her stomach
roil as it always did.

And then—nothing. None of the pedestrians had noticed.

Sonya winced. She was starving. That hadn't changed since the last time
she'd done this, either.

She watched as John, shaking his head, came to and stared at the bleeding
gash on his knuckles.

He was dazed. Good.

Fighting her nausea, she knelt beside him. "Can you walk?" she asked, her
voice soft.

He blinked and looked at her. "Sonya. I-I think I was in a car accident," he
stammered. Then, "Why can't I see?"

His glasses. Sonya slipped them out of his pocket, wiped the lenses against
the fabric of his shirt and slipped them on his nose. "Is that better?"

He looked up at her, blinking. "Yes…but there's something wrong with them."
He unhooked his glasses from around his ears to examine them.

Oh, crap. One of the lenses had cracked, probably in her haste to wrap him
up. She hadn't noticed the hairline fracture.

He stared at it. "When did this happen?"

When someone tried to run you over, she wanted to say, but instead, she tried
to scold. "You can't run across the street when you're on crutches. Can you
stand up?" She touched his cheek.

He shook his head. "I'm still a little dizzy." Together, they watched as the
blood welled across the skin of his knuckles. It wasn't a bad scrape, but it
had to smart. "I remember checking to make sure the street was clear and then
that Mustang came out of nowhere and—what happened?"

She chewed on her lip. He remembered more than she thought he would, con
sidering. She didn't know whether that was good or bad. "Did you hit your head?
What are you doing here, anyway?" She placed her hand across his forehead.

His skin was moist and cool. Probably a little shock, she decided. "I decided
to get breakfast at Adelaide's," he mumbled. "I don't think I hit my head. I
don't know how I hurt my hand or broke my glasses, though."

Sonya glanced up at the sound of rapid footsteps. "What happened out here?"
Addy exclaimed, hurrying out of the coffee shop. "Johnny, what are you doing
down there?"

The rain was coming down in earnest now. Blinking, he looked up at her.
"Addy? How did I end up on this side of the street? I started off on the other
side. I was at the music store. Where's the triangle?"

Damn it, he was coming out of it too fast. If she wasn't careful, he might
actually remember something she couldn't afford for him to remember. "You're
still holding it," she said, tapping the little paper bag clutched in his hand.
"It was almost a hit-and-run," Sonya explained to Addy as she stood up and
introduced herself. "I was running some errands when I saw Mr. Arlen crossing the
street. There was a car going way too fast—I don't think the driver even
realized what happened." That fit what happened—she wasn't sure it was true, but
it would explain why the Mustang was nowhere in sight.

Of course, in her haste to make sure she had John out of harm's way, she had
neglected to take note of the car's license plate. If she hadn't been so
happy Arlen was more or less intact, she would have been furious at herself.

Just then she heard him repeat, "How did I end up on this side of the street?"

At least he didn't remember how. She knelt again. "We'll figure it out, but
let's fix your hand up first. Do you think you can stand now?"

"I think so." He grabbed his crutch, then stopped. "Where's my other crutch?"

Sonya looked across the street, where a single crutch lay on the sidewalk in
front of the music store. He saw it too.

Damn it.

INTRODUCING SONIKA, now available at cerridwenpress.com!

2007-12-10T20:09:00.000-08:00

INTRODUCING SONIKA is finally being released on Thursday, December 13, from Cerridwen Press, and it's been a series of hurdles getting there. A few years ago, my then-agent persuaded me to have mocked up a comic book cover to get some visual interest about the character, and to do so, I turned to my old friend Jim Chadwick, who is a comic fan and a professional artist. He obliged with the work you see here. The character's original name was spelled with a "c," as you'll note. You'll also see here the cover of the book as it will be available on Thursday. Certain factors are the same -- the character is still dressed in gold, still blonde, and still dressed in skintight yellow. In Jim's cover you'll see a faint image of Patrick Dempsey; The Hub thought the actor was nerdy enough to play the hero, John Arlen. Dr. McDreamy nerdy? I dunno about that!

Faeries, faeries, and more faeries

2007-12-05T12:24:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I participated in an Internet talk radio show called
"Crazy Tuesday," hosted by Rowena Cherry, discussing, of all things,
faeries. Intrigued, I actually studied for this; I dragged out
reference books I'd bought for classes decades ago and hunted down
references I'd bought since then, just because I like reference books.

Of course, I discovered at that point that I don't have that many
reference books on faeries. Creation myths, Pacific myths, Celtic
mythology (in general), Welsh mythology, Japanese folktales, Asian
folktales, the Encyclopedia of the Supernatural (ever seen these? A
24-volume set, really interesting and creepy too!), and more ... but
not as much on faeries as I should have! Of course, the term "faery"
is strictly European, although there are equivalents in Asia, so I
could talk about those ... but I realized I had large gaps in my
knowledge. For goddess' sake, I was an anthropology major! Folklore
was one of my specialties! And I don't have that much on faeries?! I
was SO embarrassed.

Fortunately, I didn't need it -- since it was a talk show with others
far more conversant on faeries (EC's own Sahara Kelly, Elaine
Corvidae, Jacquie Rogers, Rowena Cherry, and the one and only Roberta
Gellis!), I got to ask questions and learn more. Fortunately, I do
know a little more about earth spirits of Asian myths (having used a
crow spirit as a helper in my FESTIVAL OF STARS) ... and I got to
reveal my theory that superheroes may be the modern faery equivalent.
It makes sense ... aiding mankind for the good faeries, out against
them for the bad ones. Right? I've got to consider this some more...

I don't know. This is a theory I've only come upon in the past year
or so. I have a superhero romance coming out next week on December 13
from Cerridwen, INTRODUCING SONIKA, so if my theory holds, I guess I
know more about faeries than I thought I did. If not? Well, I know my
superheroes!

>Eilis Flynn
>INTRODUCING SONIKA, available on 12/13/07 at www.cerridwenpress.com

2007-12-04T06:26:00.001-08:00

Who Knew Faeries Did This at the Bottom of the Garden?

Join Rowena Cherry and friends for Crazy Tuesday, blogging out loud on
Internet Voices Radio!

Tuesday, December 4
10am until noon Eastern Time

Guests are Jacquie Rogers (Faery Princess Keely, of Faery Special
Romances)... Jacquie is the VIP guest, Roberta Gellis (yes, the real one), Eilis Flynn,
Elaine Corvidae and more!

Roberta Gellis http://www.robertagellis.com/
Eilis Flynn http://www.coffeeonsundays.info/
Elaine Corvidae http://www.onecrow.net/
Jacquie Rogers http://www.jacquierogers.com/
Rowena Cherry http://www.rowenacherry.com/

We'll have some fun games, and maybe even have some prizes (if allowed).

We'll be discussing faery important topics, such as: Modern Retold Faeries,
Bad Ass Faeries, Faery Matchmakers, Faery Good Deeds (faery favorite
charities), Faery Advice, other faeries behind their backs, quizzes for what kind of
faery you are, favorite faery stories, and of course, faery history.

Internet Voices Radio
http://www.internetvoicesradio.com/

So let's have some fun!

Institutionalized gratitude

2007-11-21T09:36:00.001-08:00

People in general should give thanks from time to time, just to
remind ourselves that, after all, it could be worse. It just so
happens that here in the United States, we have such an occasion
institutionalized, using the excuse of our ancestors having lived
through their first year in an unfamiliar place. (The fact that their
having lived through that first year meant that they managed to doom
the locals who gave them a helping hand is only recently being
acknowledged.) So in the grand tradition of being grateful for what
we've got, I give thanks that (among other things):

I know elsewhere in these United States, the weather is horrible. I
know tomorrow, the forecast is for cold, nasty weather here. But for
right now, it's a little brisk and it's sunny and the sky is blue.
I'll remember this relatively balmy weather when I'm standing out in
the rain, waiting for the bus, because I know the sun will be out
again, if not tomorrow, then surely another day in the near future.

I know others aren't as fortunate, but I have a roof over my head
that's intact (especially since it was replaced the year before last)
and working gutters (especially since they were replaced last year)
and the basement hasn't leaked since, so I'm assuming it was all
connected.

I know others haven't had this kind of luck, but I have a splendid
The Hub, who is amazingly patient considering I am not known for such.

I know others get despondent, but I know that for every
disappointment, there is a bright spot, and all I have to do is reach
for it.

And I am thankful for all that. Happy Thanksgiving!

Eilis Flynn
INTRODUCING SONIKA, on sale 12/13/07
www.eilisflynn.com
--

Darn, I should have lost weight when I had the chance

2007-11-07T09:40:00.001-08:00

I had a fun experience recently. I gave an interview to a local
alternative newspaper, The Seattle Weekly, one person among a
number the reporter talked to about the changing face of romance
fiction. A few days later, I got email from the art director, asking
if I'd be willing to participate in a photo shoot. Not being the most
photogenic person (I tend to look either slightly deranged or
constipated, sometimes both), I hesitated for all of a few seconds.
Sure, I wrote back, because how often does an opportunity like this
come about?

I didn't hear anything else for a few days. I'd told the art director
that the only advance warning I needed was a few hours, because the
photographer she was considering was a bus ride away of a couple
hours (don't get me started on the mass transit in this town). Then
she dropped me another line that they went with another photographer,
one in my neck of the woods. Great! Not necessarily for the other
people involved in the shoot, I thought. It wasn't until later that I
found out that they didn't mean a group shoot, they wanted to get
three individual photo shoots of three local writers to consider for
the cover. Not only that, the photographer was someone I knew --
years ago, The Hub and I frequented a local restaurant, where the
photographer had often been our server!

The photo shoot was a strange but amusing experience. The
photographer, David Belisle (www.davidbelisle.com), had discussed
several ideas with the art director. He set up mine in the display
window of a local furniture store, Murphy's Furniture -- you have to
see this place to believe it, a combination of kitsch and collectible
-- and the background was the modern variation of the Barbara
Cartland look, complete with white Apple laptop, with me chewing on
my reading glasses now smeared with lots of red lipstick, sitting on
a flowery settee and half-covered with a fuchsia sari, with fake
flowers and a giant ceramic greyhound in the background. If you
remember an episode of Friends in which Joey gets his own
high-priced apartment and fills it with giant ceramic animals, you'll
get the idea of the kind of ceramic greyhound.

Let me add here that everyone I've told this story to looks at me as
if I've gone mad and asks, "He DID know that's not you at all,
right?" And no, that's not me at all. Possibly the crazed look in my
eye, but that wasn't anything David asked for, that was just natural.
But the shoot was like one of my stories -- fiction, with a grain of
reality (admittedly, a very small grain).

The shoot was quick and painless, and David made it a fun experience
overall. As of next week, he's a full-time freelance photographer --
he does a lot of work for SubPop Records, the president of which is
flying him to Mexico and putting him up when the guy gets married.
And I can say I knew the photographer when he was a young'un!
(www.davidbelisle.com, if you want to see what else he's done.) Is it
a sad thing that my first thought was, "Thank goodness I'll have
something to blog about"?

As it turned out, the Weekly went with one of the other writers for
the cover and a new focus, but it was still fun, and publicity's
still publicity (and I have a new book coming on next month)!

Check out the article here:

http://www.seattleweekly.com/2007-11-07/news/a-billion-dollar-romance-novel-industry-and-its-lonely-black-author.php?page=full

Eilis Flynn
www.eilisflynn.com, eilisflynn.livejournal.com
THE SLEEPER AWAKES and FESTIVAL OF STARS, cerridwenpress.com
INTRODUCING SONIKA, available 12/13/07 at cerridwenpress.com

Emerald City Writers' Conference

2007-10-24T06:05:00.001-07:00

Every year the Greater Seattle chapter of Romance Writers of America puts on
the Emerald City Writers' Conference. It's a wonderful two and a
half–day conference, filled with useful workshops (and I'm not just saying that
because I've given workshops for it), given by a good group (again, I'm not saying
that just because ...).

I'm giving another workshop this year, this one on whether the beginning
writer should start his or her writing career at the epubs. It's an interesting
topic, and one that as I finished writing the speech I realized has a lot of
different subtopics that in themselves are interesting, but I only have an hour.
My only (other) problem will be staying awake giving the workshop, because
it's scheduled for 8 am Sunday morning! (And not only that, it's scheduled
against THREE other workshops at the same time! Much coffee will be guzzled that
morning, I suspect.)

Besides the interesting workshops, I'm also looking forward to the author
signing. Every year, that's how I start off my serious Christmas shopping.
Speaking of which, I'd better start making my lists now! I don't necessarily know
what authors will be signing or available, so nothing's for certain, but I can
at least get an idea.

There's one thing that IS certain--Cerridwen Press books are going to be
gifts this year!

Eilis Flynn
THE SLEEPER AWAKES, Cerridwen Press
FESTIVAL OF STARS, Cerridwen Press
30-DAY GUARANTEE, myromancestory.com
www.eilisflynn.com, coffeeonsundays.info

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2007-10-14T08:59:00.001-07:00

The Hub and I saw that this would be on at the local community theater, so we
immediately had to get tickets. In a world filled with yet another rendition
of the same ol', same ol', Bat Boy: The Musical promised to be the proverbial
breath of fresh air.

And it was! True, it was rough (with sound system problems that made the
lyrics for some of the numbers incomprehensible, deadly in a musical), and a scene
out of nowhere that felt as though it had been shoved in there from something
left over from someone's pile of not-good-enough-to be-seen under the bed,
other than that, it had whimsy, it had humor, and it had minimal dancing. If
only I could make out the lyrics!

The actor playing Edgar (as Bat Boy is dubbed here) did a great job. Not the
Bat Boy of The Weekly World News, but splendid for the play. Any actor who
willingly hangs from the railings and such, sometimes upside down, gets my
applause anytime.

Using our review system of rewrites, I'd give Bat Boy: The Musical a glowing
one rewrite!

Eilis Flynn
http://www.eilisflynn.com/, eilisflynn.livejournal.com
THE SLEEPER AWAKES and FESTIVAL OF STARS, cerridwenpress.com
30-DAY GUARANTEE, now on sale at myromancestory.com

Word games

2007-10-10T10:32:00.001-07:00

Sometimes the mind stalls at a most unfortunate time. Sometimes the mind
needs a pick-me-up of a cerebral kind. Sometimes the barking of three
Yorkshire terriers drives the mind to a far, far away place where there are no
yappers, at least none where a mute button can't be used. That's when word
games come in handy. It's a word game! It's a way to get your mind in gear!
It's-oh heck, it's another way to waste time.

At this website, the urban dictionary allows you to make up your own slang
phrases and your own definitions, and allows others to vote whether they
should enter into common usage. For instance, there's "January joiner,"

someone who joins the gym in January and by February is back to being a
couch potato.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/

Then there's the game of group or collective nouns. What about an
abandonment of orphans? An absence of waiters? An accompaniment of
condiments? Or an addition of mathematicians?

http://www.ojohaven.com/collectives/

Then there's Fictionary the game, which resembles the game Balderdash,
which hones your dissembling skills with the use of an unabridged dictionary,
blank cards, and a writing implement:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictionary

And if none of that suits your fancy, then you can make up word games
yourself, or choose one from this collection:

http://www.eastoftheweb.com/games/
http://www.armoredpenguin.com/wordsearch/

My current favorite's got to be collective or group nouns. The plural for my
sister's dogs? A yap of Yorkies. Rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?

Eilis Flynn
THE SLEEPER AWAKES, FESTIVAL OF STARS
www.eilisflynn.com

--

2007-09-24T10:43:00.001-07:00

"Kindle of cats." "Kith of kittens."

"Yap of Yorkshire terriers." Yeah, that fits, doesn't it?

Heard in the street

2007-09-21T08:54:00.001-07:00

There's nothing more charming than hearing street musicians playing
the theme from the original Star Trek, blasting away on a trumpet.
You have to give money for that!

Timeless themes

2007-08-29T11:03:00.001-07:00

I take the bus to The Day Job, and even though it's a short trip, I
try to write or read to make the twenty minutes useful. Right now I'm
reading a lot of Mary Balogh on those bus rides. Balogh, if you're
not familiar with the name, writes Regency-set historicals, and I'm
enjoying them thoroughly. Before two or three months ago, I'd never
picked up any of her books, but a friend of mine is a big fan of hers
(so Roberta, I blame all this on you!), and I found I enjoyed them
(though the overuse of the word "haughty" set my teeth on edge with
one book -- Josh and Lady Freyja's story, if anyone familiar with
Balogh's work is wondering). These books, set against the Regency and
the wars on the continent as a backdrop, are a perfect counterpoint
to the sf shared-continuity I'm writing and rewriting for Cerridwen.
Reading one cleanses my mental palate for writing the other.

But these stories about Regency England and a farflung fantasy future
(FFFF) have more in common than you would think. My story got its
start from an op-ed piece I read in The New York Times, a son finding
out his father had been accused of war crimes -- and never told about
them, or allowed to clear his name. Doesn't that sound like a Regency
story? If not Regency, certainly something historical. But it's a
timeless theme, so of course it works even in the FFFF.

Which is why, of course, romance fiction is big. Love is a timeless
theme, and so is family. Love and family, among other timeless
themes, connect the distant past with the FFFF. Timeless themes
resonate in us, and that's why they're popular. Love and family are
two such themes. How many others can you think of off-hand?

Eilis Flynn
THE SLEEPER AWAKES, FESTIVAL OF STARS, Cerridwen Press
"30-Day Guarantee," myromancestory.com

Will Psychics' Heads No Longer Explode?

2007-08-15T08:34:00.001-07:00

The saddest news in publishing entertainment this week has to come
from the folks at the Weekly World News, home of the
adventures of Bat Boy and headlines like "Famed Psychic's Head
Explodes!" (That headline had been cut out from an issue and tacked
above The Hub's office desk, where it served to inspire him to
greater heights of creativity.) That august periodical, which has
amused, amazed, and inspired us to reach for the improbable (at least
those of us who write out-of-the-normal-world stories), has shut its
doors. The issue now on the newsstands is its last.

We've always been fond of the periodical, and in more recent days it
didn't hurt that one of our oldest friends worked there. It gave us
Bat Boy (complete with his being discovered, escaping from custody,
and my personal favorite, the gleefully crudely mocked-up photos of
Bat Boy DRIVING, screaming as he does so -- and since I don't
remember any stories "reported" that he took driving lessons, no
wonder he was screaming as he drove on the freeways), stories of
aliens having passionate affairs, most notably with Hillary Clinton
(or was it Bigfoot?)(or aliens with Bigfoot), the ghost of Ronald
Reagan appearing in front of True Believers, as well as a number of
other US presidents appearing also in improbable places and doing
unlikely things. Speaking of Bigfoot, there was the issue with the
lady Bigfoot consenting to a centerfold, complete with turn-ons and
turn-offs (no body hair, it turns out, is a turn-off. Who would have
thought?).

But like all wonderful, wildly creative things, it had to come to an
end. The last issue reported that a set of aliens who invited humans
to their outer-space lair wanted the WWN staffers to join them, and
so the print edition would cease. But I'm guessing the online version
will continue to amaze, amuse, and inspire us ... at least until the
WWN staffers come back to tell us about the wondrous things the
aliens have taught them.

Eilis Flynn
THE SLEEPER AWAKES and FESTIVAL OF STARS
www.cerridwenpress.com
--

2007-08-06T21:07:00.001-07:00

A few days after the Fourth of July 1999, in the evening, coming home from a baseball game, The Hub noticed the shadow of a familiar-looking cat across the street when he got out of the car. He thought it was Fido, our Tonkinese, somehow gotten out of the house and now waiting to be let back in. Getting closer, though, he realized it wasn't Fido -- coloring was wrong, though the shape was similar. The cat came running toward him anyway, and even though The Hub told him to shoo, go home, the cat wasn't having any of that. The Hub started down our sidewalk, and the cat followed him. The Hub went up the steps; the cat followed him.

Long story short, The Hub figured that the cat was too domesticated and friendly to be wandering around since it was clearly lost, so it resided in our garage for a month while we tried to find its owners. We had no intention for "The Little Gray Cat Who Lives In The Garage," as we referred to him, to join the family. We had two others, much older, and we had recently lost another older cat six months previous. But as the days and weeks went on, it seemed inevitable: the cat was going to be part of the family. Bowser, as he was renamed, must have been abandoned: He was dirty and scrawny and had three different kinds of parasites, but he was insanely friendly.

After the vet checked him out -- and for some reason, the name of "The Little Gray Cat Who Lives In The Garage But Isn't Really Ours" cracked them up -- we began the slow process of moving him from the garage to the house. The other two cats weren't happy about it -- in fact, Rover, the calico, nearly had to be put on tranquilizers at one point -- but they got used to each other eventually. In fact, Fido and Bowser got to be best buds, sleeping together all curled up, following each other around. (Rover, not so much, but that was another story.)

Last week, we noticed Bowser wasn't eating -- not even ice cream, which he loved -- so we took him to the vet, who told us the cat had a large tumor. Further investigation revealed that he had cancer of the lymph nodes and of the small intestine, and the diagnosis was grave.

After we brought him home, he wouldn't eat. In fact, he went and hid. We thought it was because he wasn't happy he had been poked and prodded -- this despite the fact that he was the friendliest cat in the world. And he wouldn't come out. After a day of that, we tried to get him to come out.

He'd died sometime during the night or even the day, because he was already stiff.

Bowser was the only optimist in the house. Rover is a fatalist, Fido neurotic, and The Hub and I tend to be pessimists. But Bowser was sunny and friendly and sweet-natured, and he was only eight years old.

Life sucks.

Eilis Flynn
www.eilisflynn.com, eilisflynn.livejournal.com
THE SLEEPER AWAKES and FESTIVAL OF STARS, cerridwenpress.com
30-DAY GUARANTEE, now on sale at myromancestory.com
 ************************************** Get a sneak peek of
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2007-08-01T07:14:00.001-07:00

The final "why" -- this one's the toughest. It's a matter of interpretation. How do we write? Are we talking psychological, are we talking physical? Are we talking fountain pen, no. 2 pencil, Microsoft Word on a laptop? I was an anthropology major, so I'm thinking ... physical.

Years ago, I wrote my stories with a fountain pen. I'm a fountain pen fan. I think I was nine when I was first given a fountain pen, a simple Sheaffer, and provided with a gross of refill cartridges (hey, you find something on sale, you take it!). Previously, my life was all about crayons and Bic pens, but the fountain pen ... it just flowed. My words would appear as if by magic, accentuated by the twist of the letter, enhanced by a downstroke. Suddenly I understood why all those old documents looked the way they did, why there were flourishes where none were necessary, with uneven strokes and letters with sharp strokes and blots. At some level it's art. (Of course, if the pen malfunctions, the blots are on your hands, but there was a charm to that, too.) And in a way that elevated my writing to art.

Then there was the Royal manual typewriter ... it succeeded the fountain pen, mainly because I learned how to type, and I'd seen one too many black & white movie. From this stage came plays ... terrible, terrible plays. And papers for school; many, many papers. And letters to the editor. Mostly I wrote a lot of letters to the editor. When I think of my Royal manual typewriter, I think of those. Not that creative (but some), certainly not like the fountain pen. But efficient.

Even though the electric, and then the electronic, typewriter came soon after that stage, I lump these together with the manual. These encouraged more creativity (possibly because my hands didn't get quite as tired as the manual), but the art wasn't there. But the Selectric certainly allowed for faster, more efficient production. The electronic, not so much, because for whatever reason, they slowed me up (the buffer wasn't much of one).

These days, like most people, I use a computer. It's more efficient, it's faster (hey, no matter how fast I type, it can keep up with me), and I can do what I need to do.

But I miss the fountain pen days.

Eilis Flynn
www.eilisflynn.com, eilisflynn.livejournal.com
THE SLEEPER AWAKES and FESTIVAL OF STARS, cerridwenpress.com
30-DAY GUARANTEE, now on sale at myromancestory.com

Why We Write When We Write

2007-07-18T09:11:00.001-07:00

Again, the heading is ambiguous. Is "when" we write the point at which we take pen in hand or (more likely these days) set fingers on keyboard and let fly those words rolling around in our heads? Or is "when" we write the period or era that we like to write about? Both interesting questions.

The "when" when we write... I know writers who prefer to do their writing in the middle of the night. For them, of course, it's the best time to write. It's quiet, there are no distractions (or at least fewer), and the entire world seems to be waiting for them. I really wish I could write in the middle of the night.

Then, of course, people like me are asleep in the middle of the night. In fact, because I wake up at a gruesomely early hour (allowing me to do my own work before I go into the Day Job), I tend to start dozing at an embarrassingly early hour in the evening. If the Hub is off at a baseball game, I write later into the evening before hanging it up about nine. If not, and we try to catch up on what we have waiting on TiVo (love that TiVo!), just the act of sitting down in front of the TV increases the odds that I'll be out like the proverbial bug light. And that annoys me, because I'll wake up a couple of hours later, just in time to go to sleep, to again wake up at a gruesomely early hour. Quality time with the Hub? More likely quality time with him listening to me snooze. So for me, the hours between coming home from the Day Job and drifting off/making dinner/taking care of something else are precious. Heck, any time that I'm not dozing off is precious!

Now, the other "when." I write fantasies, futuristics, contemporaries and near-future stories. Why? Those speak loudest to me. That doesn't stop me from reading and enjoying historicals, but I couldn't write 'em. For me, the stories that are right around the corner, whether literal or figurative, are the ones that make me sit up (hey, maybe even wake up!) and take notice, and make me wonder. I know that history has its own mystique and charm -- a time no longer within memory, a time with questions of its own, questions that may never be answered because, hey, it's past. But I also know that history is written by the winners, and the voice of the losers, those who lost out on the social evolution, may never be heard. Although that's an interesting idea too.

Oh heck. I may find myself writing a historical yet.

Eilis Flynn

THE SLEEPER AWAKES and FESTIVAL OF STARS, Cerridwen Press

"With The Sleeper Awakes, Eilis Flynn has quickly catapulted herself to the top of any fantasy fan's 'must buy' list."--Two Lips review

"Festival of Stars allows two loving people another chance in life to be with each other. ... a heartwarming read, one full of emotions and family issues that transpire in real life."--Fallen Angels review

--

Happy Interdependence Day!

2007-07-04T11:18:00.001-07:00

We got married on July 4 in Brooklyn, NY, 23 years ago, in the restaurant in
the tallest building in Bay Ridge. We chose that spot because that's where we
lived; we loved the area (the southernmost tip of Brooklyn, right before the
Verrazano Bridge, which leads you to Staten Island), and by having our
reception in that building, we could see the fireworks over in Manhattan. It was one
day that we knew most everyone we wanted to invite would have off, and
surprisingly, neither the church nor the restaurant were booked. It was a lovely,
sunny day (okay, it was summer in New York: It was scorching, the church wasn't
air-conditioned, but the sky was a beautiful blue), and we remember it fondly
still.

Eventually, we moved away -- across the country, even, to Washington state --
but we had the opportunity to go back to New York a few years ago, just in
time for our anniversary. We had dinner at the restaurant at the top of that
same building, and watched the fireworks over in Manhattan again. We remember
that fondly, too.

How is any of this relevant? Well, I write romances. And our wedding was
romantic. And it's Interdependence Day. So Happy Interdependence Day, one and all!

"30-Day Guarantee" goes live!

2007-07-02T21:27:00.001-07:00

Back in the mid-1980s, after having gotten to freelance copy edit a couple of
Harlequins and thoroughly enjoyed the experience, I decided to take a stab at
writing one. So I wrote one -- about a University of Washington linguistics
professor, newly divorced, who meets a computer tech mogul (more than loosely
based on Steve Jobs) who gives her a "30-day guarantee" -- go out with him for
a month, and if she decides he doesn't suit her, she can walk away.

All sorts of hurdles had to be overcome, of course, before there could be a
happy ending, and you know? I had a good time writing it. When I finally
submitted it to Harlequin, I got back a lengthy revision letter -- which at the time
I didn't realize was a GOOD thing. It was pretty daunting, let me tell you.

Anyway, I revised it, it got passed on, but I still kept it in mind. Until
last year, when I got email from someone I knew who was a freelance editor for
them, who asked me, since I'd written a few comic book stories, whether I'd
want to take a stab at romance comics online. So "30-Day Guarantee" got
resurrected, after all this time.

It's not the story I first came up with, but that's to be expected. It's not
how I imagined it, but then that's what the artist does. But despite all that
... the story of Astra Maris, PhD, and Gray Reiss, maverick computer mogul,
lives at last!

Eilis Flynn
www.eilisflynn.com
THE SLEEPER AWAKES and FESTIVAL OF STARS, cerridwenpress.com
30-DAY GUARANTEE, available now at myromancestory.com!
 ************************************** See what's free at
http://www.aol.com.

In the blink of an eye

2007-06-26T19:07:00.001-07:00

It's one thing if you see it coming. If someone is sick, and failing in front  of your eyes, you get a feeling that the inevitable is near. It's a shock  when it comes nonetheless, and the sense of tragedy expands.  But when it comes out of nowhere, in the proverbial fell swoop--then the  sense of shock is sharp. And if it's like that for someone who on the outskirts,  what must it be like for those in the inner circle?  Eilis Flynn www.eilisflynn.com, eilisflynn.livejournal.com THE SLEEPER AWAKES and FESTIVAL OF STARS, cerridwenpress.com 30-DAY GUARANTEE, coming in June from myromancestory.com 


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Why We Write Where We Write

2007-06-16T16:53:00.001-07:00

It occurred to me (as it did to you all, of course) that this title could be
misleading. "Where" as in where to write, or "where" as in the locale of our
stories? Both good questions. Glad I (we) asked it.

Where we write...I had a laptop years ago, back in the earlier days of
laptops. It was relatively heavy as far as laptops went, relatively large as far as
they went too, but I was thrilled with it. I could work with it at the kitchen
table, at the dining room table, at a table not in the house, in bed, even. I
was Freed! Freed, I tell you! (Not that my NAME is "Freed," but...you know.)
The disadvantage of it was its relative clumsiness in editing. And in those
days I was doing a LOT of freelance editing. So much so, in fact, that during
the longest, most painful assignment, I broke down and upgraded to an iMac. It
was one of the early models, lime green (because it clashed with everything, a
fact I found charming), and it sat square in my office, and it didn't travel
(except to the repair shop, but that's another story, and should not be taken
as a negative reflection of the iMac in general, because it's just mine, which
is usually the case). And you know what? I LIKED the fact that it didn't
travel. And that's how I realized I was a stay-in-one-place kind of editor and
writer. I can do both while traveling, but not with a laptop.

Where we write...locales. I like making 'em up, myself. That way I don't have
to worry about getting everything right. In FESTIVAL OF STARS (on sale now
from Cerridwen Press! Go check it out at

www.cerridwenpress.com/productpage.asp?ISBN=9781419909054)(what, me shameless? I've learned that to have shame in
this business is to starve, so check it out now!), I used West Seattle and Mercer
Island as locales. One I had some familiarity with, and when real life kept
changing it on me, I decided to keep it the same, because it's a fairy tale,
and I didn't see any reason to make the locale any more real than the story. In
SLEEPER (www.cerridwenpress.com/productpage.asp?ISBN=9781419908552), it was
easier...because the only thing the locale in the story had in common with
reality was the name "Seattle." Nothing else, and then the locale moved to a
fantasy, so I didn't have to worry about it. And in 30-DAY GUARANTEE, well, it's a
graphic novella. I wrote the script, didn't do the art. If the artist wants to
go for details, images of Seattle are all over the place. (Subscription at
myromancestory.com!)

I also remember the fretting before I let the details go. I don't see how
people writing nonfiction keep up with reality. It keeps changing!
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Why We Write Who We Write

2007-06-08T06:24:00.001-07:00

Why We Write Who We Write

After I wrote about why we write what we write in an earlier CP author
blogpost, I started to wonder about the other journalistic questions: how,
where,
why ... and the topic of today's post, the who. How do we create our
characters?
Some of us create characters out of the air, and then the story, while others
create the story and then the characters to suit. Sometimes they leap into
our imagination out of the blue, while others have to be dragged out of our
consciousness, inch by determined inch. I don't know about you, but I much
prefer
the former.

Before I wrote THE SLEEPER AWAKES, I was musing about how sometimes people
rise to the occasion, or don't. And then I was musing about someone who had a
terminal illness and what they would do or decide if they knew they had a
limited time. This isn't a new idea in fiction: I didn't see it, but I know
that was
basically the story in a recent movie with Queen Latifah. And I came up with
the story of Cat Deveney, who had an inoperable tumor, a bad boyfriend, and o
nly a little time left...when she found herself with an opportunity to help
someone else, an entire people, after an earthquake trapped her under a
table,
facing off a civil war and a weather phenomenon that is sentient.

With the story of FESTIVAL OF STARS, though, I had the plot already because
the plot was centuries old: the legend of Tanabata, the festival of stars,
when
two lovers up in the sky can only meet once in a year -- if it's not raining
and they're helped along by their servants the ravens (or magpies or crows or
blackbirds -- always a black bird of some kind). Not a story original in
Japanese myth, because the Chinese have the same legend (they call it the
weaving
maiden story, though), but one that can be translated into any time, any
situation. And with that I gathered the bits of the story of Kristin Olafsson
and
Dare Borodin, who both stared into a cultural mirror...and came up with
differing interpretations.

I'm always on the lookout for memorable characters and memorable situations
to put them in--and I'm always curious to see which comes first, the
character
or the plot!

Eilis Flynn
www.eilisflynn.com, eilisflynn.livejournal.com
THE SLEEPER AWAKES and FESTIVAL OF STARS, cerridwenpress.com
30-DAY GUARANTEE, coming in June from myromancestory.com
 ************************************** See what's free at
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Why We Write What We Write

2007-06-08T06:19:00.001-07:00

It's like the Sapir/Whorf hypothesis, which is something I was introduced to
when I was a youngster in college, many moons ago. Does our environment shape
our language, or does our language shape how we see our environment? My
website partner Heather Hiestand asked me to update our Amazon store on the
website, choose some new items to highlight there. I did -- and the theme I
saw there
was enlightening. I chose:

-Inu-Yasha, both books and DVDs: It's manga, a book (and anime) I was
introduced to by CHANGELING author Yasmine Galenorn when I did a workshop for
a conference on the different types of comics. A little bit of romance and a
whole lot of action adventure, what's not to love?

-Superfolks by Robert Mayer (book): I read this when I was a kid, when it was
self-published and somehow found its way into my local library. It's J.
Alfred Prufrock in comic form, basically, about an over-the-hill super-hero, now
married working stiff commuting on the train, who must save the world one more
time. This book as much as anything else influenced me when years later I wrote
INTRODUCING SONIKA, coming soon from Cerridwen Press.

-Legion of Super-Heroes Archives: The Hub and I met over this comic book.
Some couples have their song, their movie? We have Our Comic Book. (All
together
now: Awwww!)

-Futurama (DVD): Ending where we started, with a little bit of romance and a
whole lot of action adventure ... and because what's life without a little
humor? Great series.

What do these choices say about me? I was meant to write genre fiction,
romance and action adventure. It's where my heart lies. What's on YOUR list
(making
me sound like an Amex commercial)?

Four-rose review for Festival of Stars!

2007-05-15T16:56:00.001-07:00

From Kay James of Romance Reader at Heart Reviews:

FESTIVAL OF STARS by Eilis Flynn is an engaging story. It drew me in
right at the very first page, beginning with the telling of an
ancient legend involving star lovers and the Milky Way. Who could
resist a tale that begins this way? Not I.

By the time I was fully engrossed in the story, I hardly batted an
eye at the sometimes out-of-this-world details that come into play,
seemingly from all angles. Multilingual doctors, head-sitting dogs
causing car accidents, conversations in Japanese and Swedish and
packed full of surprises–-this book is highly entertaining. Eilis
Flynn has a vivid imagination and it makes her stories, and
especially her characters shine.

This author knows how to write a love scene, too. Let's just say
there was one shower scene that truly left me breathless--and I loved
it!

Well written, with witty dialogue and a story that had me wondering
until the very end whether or not the legend would be satisfied, I
enjoyed reading FESTIVAL OF STARS by Eilis Flynn.

Eliz. MS Flynn, w/a Eilis Flynn
www.eilisflynn.com, eilisflynn.livejournal.com
THE SLEEPER AWAKES, on sale now at cerridwenpress.com
FESTIVAL OF STARS, on sale now!
 ************************************** See what's free at
http://www.aol.com.

Take a look up at the sky

2007-05-10T11:08:00.000-07:00

If the weather's clear on the seventh day of the seventh moon, look up at the
sky and check out the stars. If you're lucky, you'll be able to see two stars
just touching. That's if you're lucky.

They are meant for each other, but they only have one chance a year to find
each other. Have you heard of the ancient Japanese legend of Tanabata? Gaze up
at the evening sky, and if you're lucky, you'll see the Weaver Princess and
the Cowherder meeting after spending an entire year apart. They are reunited
once more on the wings of their helpers, the star ravens. Hope for good weather,
because if rain or fog prevents them from finding each other, the star lovers
must wait another year.

The lovers look for each other in every generation. This time, Kristin
Olafsson and Dare Borodin must struggle against the protestations of their families,
their loved ones and even themselves to reach each other.

Sometimes when the stars shift in the sky, the lovers are a little farther
apart, and they struggle to reach each other. And reach each other they must,
for unless they do so, eventually, the stars will move away from each other,
never to meet again.

And so each year, they must try.

That's the heart of FESTIVAL OF STARS, my contemporary romance that launched
today. The story is a contemporary one -- but it's also one as old as the
stars.

Eilis Flynn
www.eilisflynn.com, eilisflynn.livejournal.com
THE SLEEPER AWAKES, on sale now at cerridwenpress.com
FESTIVAL OF STARS, on sale today!
 ************************************** See what's free at
http://www.aol.com.

2007-05-09T18:55:00.001-07:00

I don't know if this is going to work, but I might as well try. What's this? Well, I haven't been able to post at Blogger for months. And a few days ago, when I finally got in, I got a message saying "illegal URL" after trying to publish.

Maybe this thing with Blogger, being able to post remotely, might be the way. I hope so. I have a new book coming out tomorrow, and I would like to post there about it, make use of the space!

Eilis Flynn

www.eilisflynn.com

THE SLEEPER AWAKES, on sale now

FESTIVAL OF STARS, on sale tomorrow!

www.cerridwenpress.com

AOL now offers free email to everyone. Find out more about what's free from AOL at AOL.com.

2006-12-30T10:50:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year!

Countdown To THE SLEEPER AWAKES

2006-10-15T10:22:00.000-07:00

Elsewhere in the 48 continguous states, there's snow. Elsewhere in the same 48 continguous states, someone's lounging at the beach (without a coat and a hat).

Here, I woke up to the sound of rain. We have the best weather.

Am I in? I'm in!

2006-09-21T18:20:00.000-07:00

I have no idea what I did, but this is the first time in two years almost I've been able to log in! Whee!

For something resembling blogging on a far more frequent basis, go to eilisflynn.livejournal.com or even coffeeonsundays.info, both of which I can log into regularly.

I'm still shocked!

Now this is really freaky.

2004-11-17T07:47:00.000-08:00

I took this test twice, figuring the answer would be different. It wasn't. Vewwy weird.

You're Cyprus!

Your parents probably had different ethnic backgrounds and now they're
almost certainly divorced, or at least they argue all the time. You mostly just wish
they'd leave you alone instead of using you as a pawn in their tortured conflict with each
other. Instead, you've become the battleground for a fight that doesn't really feel
like it's yours. You'd rather just go fishing. But that doesn't look likely in
the immediate future. Just keep cooking with olive oil and you'll live longer, at least.

Take
the Country Quiz at the href="http://bluepyramid.org">Blue Pyramid

Too late!

2004-11-11T07:59:00.000-08:00

Too late, too late. At odd times I sit up (I slump too much, if truth be told) and remember something else I should have done with that last manuscript I sent out. Not enough emotion; had to put in a detail that becomes a plot point; forgot this; forgot spell-check (although I don't trust it, I do it anyway -- it'll do as a backup).

Too late, too late. I have other manuscripts, and other stories, to address. One more to edit and send out before the end of the year. One more and then, finally, I can work on something new. Working on old stuff for what seems like forever just tuckers me out. Sometimes it's a thing of wonder: Why did I do that? That's a nice twist of a phrase -- have to cut it now. (It's true what they say about murdering your darlings -- you must edit to grow. But it hurts!)

Sometimes you gotta wonder...

2004-11-09T08:43:00.000-08:00

... If you have any brains at all!

The second manuscript out of three requested is out the door! In two forms: email attachment (only to be sent out again, because the Mac's StuffIt is a mystery to those of the Windows persuasion) to the agent, and then, printing out 450 or so pages for the publisher. And of course, weirdly, the printer works just fine printing out the synopsis and cover letter until the spouse sits down and uses my machine before the manuscript itself must be printed. Five minutes and all of a sudden, the printer JAMS. Couldn't fix it during the evening. Had to get up early to print out the manuscript.

I think our computers become attuned to the primary user. It must be so; more often than not, my machine does something odd after the spouse uses it for just a second, while the spouse's computer bombs whenever I get near it.

This particular manuscript is longer than what I usually use. It required nearly a ream of paper. And considering I work on a magazine, with those short little articles the norm, it took FOREVER to not only write it, but to rewrite it, revise it, and polish it.

There are advantages to nonfiction articles!