News from the Bedside

Filed in: blog | book reviews | slice of life | writing    Tags: courtney milan | justin hill | meljean brook | stephanie dray | susanna kearsley | upcoming releases

Rather than news from the Desk of Jeannie Lin.

As my Recent Update states, I’ve been on “hiatus” — more specifically bedrest as I incubate my little twins. I sincerely don’t want the blog to turn into a personal journal of my everyday ramblings or a baby blog, which is why I chose instead to remain a bit quiet rather than feel the need to chime in via blog, Twitter or Facebook. My newsletter has also been quiet since October. Typing is rather hard while laying down, but I finally found a comfortable position where I can use my computer now that I’m in the hospital, so I thought it was time for a little update post.

Hospitalization always sounds scary to me, so I didn’t want to alarm anyone. My little zygotes are doing well at 28 weeks and I’m getting good care as I try to incubate them a little longer. First pregnancies are scary things under normal circumstances and mine has been a bit of a roller coaster.

So let’s get on with a few Jeannie Lin authorial things…

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Thank You

Thank you so much for all the little notes and messages from readers either about the books or wishing me well. I really do read each one, but have been a little slower in responding due to bedrest and hospital visits. Each note gives me a much needed boost and I promise to eventually reply to everyone.

Also thank you to everyone for reading and reviewing or mentioning The Dragon and the Pearl and The Lady’s Scandalous Night. I really had to cut all promotion efforts short for this book and was a bit sad that I was only able to do one booksigning and a few blogs.

***

From the writing front:

My doctor was concerned because one of the biggest problems with bedrest is boredom and feeling unproductive. Everyone seemed a bit worried about my mental state having to go on such long-term bedrest. I revealed that though I had to go on leave for my day job, I did have a couple books on contract that I needed to finish. My doc was thrilled to hear that. She’s a fan of medical thrillers (surprise!), a big reader and had always been curious about what I was reading whenever I came to the office.

And it’s true…I do have a couple of titles contracts, novels and short stories, that I’ve been working on from bed. I wasn’t worried about boredom. I’ve always liked summer breaks as a kid. I was always able to find things to do — write in my journal, make up games, draw, and of course, write stories.

It is rough though. My brain hasn’t been as active without other tasks to keep me moving. I don’t want to blame “baby brain” either, but I do think about the little zygotes a lot. I can spend hours with my hand to my baby belly just feeling them squirm. I tell them to stay with me a little longer and try to become dragons (The Year of the Dragon starts Jan. 23, 2012).

Mostly, I try to brainstorm. My ideas don’t come flying at me as they do with many other authors (jealous!). I need to spend a lot of time developing them. I replay what I now call “the movie versions” in my head and do a bunch of what ifs and director’s cuts. A LOT gets thrown out, because I can see the storyline isn’t compelling or viable. I incubated my third novel for a good nine months before I really sat down to outline and write it in three months.

Tee hee…so try as I might, it takes nine months to make a baby.

What I’ve found is that now there are certain expectations about what to write next to “build readership”. I don’t mind. My editor and publisher have been lovely about giving me freedom in my stories, but there are still schedules and expectations for what comes next and it’s not always the most compelling story in my head that they want next.

I find myself course correcting a lot, which is not something I used to do. I’d start one project only to find I needed to redirect to another one. My latest dilemma was trying to write a short story linked to my next release, My Fair Concubine. I discarded so many scenarios trying to find a linked tale that would fit in a short story format. Because I started out as a short story writer, I take a lot of pride in my Undones and want them to be complete works of some merit. In this regard, sometimes I angst over them as much as I would a novel…maybe more.

But I’m putting words down now. I’m writing like I used to write on those long summer breaks in my notebook. Scene by scene. Raw. Just to keep writing.

***

Publishing news!

I have the title for my next novel release which is MY FAIR CONCUBINE. I believe it’s slated for some time next summer–June or July. By then, the US and UK releases should be synchronized. I’ll keep everyone posted. I’ve been very lucky to be able to retain all my working novel titles: Butterfly Swords, The Dragon and the Pearl, and now My Fair Concubine.

As the title suggests, it’s a nod to My Fair Lady in Tang Dynasty China. It’s lighter in tone and a departure from the usual political intrigue and angst of my first two books, but I hope readers will enjoy.

The title for my next Undone short release is CAPTURING A SILKEN THIEF. This story is what I consider the most “Tang Dynasty” of all my stories, depicting a classic match-up between an imperial scholar and a song girl. (Yes, in the Tang Dynasty, the heroes were scholars. If you ever wonder about how deeply the emphasis on education goes in Asian culture, this is a big clue)  I drew a lot from my time as a student at UCLA when writing the story (funny where inspiration comes from), at the same time it’s a glimpse into the culture of the entertainment district of Changan, at least as I imagined it. No official release date yet, but I’m really looking forward to sharing this one.

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Awesome Bedrest Reads

So what have I spent most of my time doing?

Reading. Reading and reading and reading.

I bought an iPad when I knew I was going on long-term bedrest and it’s been wonderful. All of my Kindle books transferred over and I’ve been able to read a book a day for nearly a month, making a huge dent in my TBR pile. I’m a little sad because there are still a bunch of paper books stashed downstairs in my basement that I want to read too, but dear hubby has been so busy attending to me as well as getting ready for the babies all by himself that I didn’t want to bug him — “Honey, down in my office, there’s a pile of books on the coffee table. Can you rummage through them and bring me The Shadow and the Star?”

He’s already complained about how many books I have lying around as he needs to convert my office into a guest bedroom.

Blame the hormones or the freedom (due to bedrest) to immerse myself in books without any distractions, but I’ve been blown away by so many great stories. I’m a bad objective reviewer of books, because I really give over a lot of trust to the author when I read. I want to be swept away. I want to believe.

So here’s my hit list of awesome bedrest reads:

The Winter Sea by Susanna Kearsley

I’ve had this on my TBR forever. Everyone was raving about it and then I met Susanna at RT in Los Angeles. We became convention buddies as we kept running into each other. I was so impressed by the dual storylines, past and present, and how they were woven together in this book. Each one enhanced the other and I just devoured the pages. I felt this book was as good, if not better, than The Time Traveller’s Wife. The historical detail was incredible and the story craft was the sort that filled me with writer envy. This book and the ending resonated with me a long time after I finished it.

Heart of Steel by Meljean Brook

One of the books I was hovering over to buy on release day. Great adventurous follow-up to The Iron Duke which also blew me away. This is probably the best steampunk worldbuilding I’ve encountered, though I’m a relatively new fan of the genre. I just love traveling in the world that Meljean has created and how she mixes in historical tidbits (they’re chasing after Leonardo Da Vinci’s sketches in this one), steampunk technology, and settings all over the globe. So much fun. I would love to see movies made of these books!

Unclaimed by Courtney Milan

I hate it when I read a review of one of my books that starts with “I had misgivings about reading this…” It always makes me sick to my stomach and then even if they ended up liking it “more than they thought they would”, it’s like having someone meet me and say, “Wow, you’re a lot nicer than I thought you’d be.”

So…um…I had some reservations about the hero Mark through the initial chapters. I love Courtney’s writing and also the psychological nature of her conflicts. In Unveiled, I wasn’t swept away because the hero was so superior to the heroine. Kind of smugly so. Power and emotional differentials are important to me when reading romance, and though Courtney’s heroines are also super-strong, her heroes as of late can be too noble, too self-assured, too perfect. It’s kind of the opposite vibe I get from Sherry Thomas whose characters are so broken and fascinating.

Ha, that’s another problem when I’ve read an author’s entire backlist. Baggage from other books. In any case, I was swept away by the courtship in Unclaimed. I loved how Mark was seeking true love and his idea of it was so very different from what everyone else assumed about him. I cried and cried when his heart was broken. (Oh, also I usually love Courtney’s books for the heroines, but Unveiled and Unclaimed definitely were more hero-centric.)

I said I was a bad objective reviewer, but that doesn’t mean I don’t analyze my reading experience to death.

The Song of the Nile by Stephanie Dray

I’ve been following this series from the first book, Lily of the Nile, and this follow-up took some bold moves. The magical realism or historical fantasy or whatever you call it in this series just pulls me in. I’ve said it before, but I do feel like I’m reading one of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s epic historical fantasies whenever I read a Stephanie Dray book. These books take me back to that time in my life when I hung around the library and books spoke so loudly to me. (Ah, the teenage years) Dray’s Cleopatra Selene is epic, unconventional, larger than life, yet very human in depiction. It’s the type of book that makes me want to Google for hours afterwards, reading up on Augustus Caesar and Selene and the lives of everyone mentioned in the book. I can’t wait for the third book and then I want to sit down and re-read the entire series.

Similar to how I felt with Susanna Kearsley’s book, Song of the Nile makes me believe, as fantastic as it seems, that this was how it happened.

Passing Under Heaven by Justin Hill

I came across this book while researching the life of Yu Xuanji: courtesan, poetess, and a bit of a rebel of the Tang Dynasty. I had come across one of her poems where she laments that her silken robes (being a woman) obscure the lines of her poetry (keeps her from being recognized for her talent). There’s another poem where she mentions being jealous of the list of imperial scholars. Something about her voice, coming from over a thousand years in the past, has always spoken to me.

Passing Under Heaven is a retelling of her whirlwind, restless, and ultimately tragic life. I don’t like Chinese tragedy for the sake of melodrama, but this book was more than just a lament about the trials of being a woman in imperial China. Yu Xuanji’s life provides a rare glimpse into so many aspects of Tang Dynasty culture since she was a concubine, a  Taoist nun, and a courtesan. Plus I loved seeing the depiction of Tang Dynasty culture, the North Hamlet, the justice system, the imperial exam system…I have so few reference works to go to that this was just a special, special find for me.  I would love to have a conversation with the author about Tang culture.

My doc says she likes to check out what her patients read because it says something about them. I guess you can see my hot buttons: stories about remarkable woman, throughout time, across cultures–real or imagined.

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Confession: Why I don’t hate promotion

Filed in: blog | promotion | slice of life    Tags: promotion | rambling

I was attending a Warrior Writer workshop presented by Bob Mayer last weekend and at one point he asked, “Who here actually likes to promote?” I raised my hand and since I was sitting near the front, I didn’t realize that all the chuckling was aimed at me. The odd ball.

I don’t hate promoting. I actually kind of like it. I like this whole author thing, really. (Stopping myself before I start sounding too Pollyanna.)

I know I’m supposed to hate promoting and networking and love the introverted writing part. Well, I do love the introverted writing part. I’m sometimes afraid that since I don’t babble enough about the angst of writing that people might think I don’t write, but who wants to hear about my day at the office? Well, maybe other writerly types might find it interesting, just like me and the techies like to go on sometimes about integration issues and data elements and message formats that only we understand–a day job aside there. Were you bored? I thought so.  And writing about the introverted writing part makes me more angsty and introverted, and I can only take so much of that even from myself.

Maybe I like promoting because I’m too clueless to realize I’m supposed to hate it? Or too self-absorbed to really realize that it’s a scary and confusing thing?

(more…)

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A Non-Objective Reader: A book experience

Filed in: blog | slice of life | travel    Tags: brenda joyce | deadly vows | seoul | south korea

You know in High Fidelity when John Cusack says he’s arranging his music collection autobiographically?

Like music, the books I’ve read provide a sort of context and an accompanying soundtrack to my life. I started thinking about this as I was reading DEADLY VOWS, the latest (and hopefully not the last) in Brenda Joyce’s Francesca Cahill series. Now, I’ll comment a little bit more about the book at the end. Be forewarned this is not a review. It’s an autobiographical slice of my life, scored by a particular series. There’s a reason why I’m not a great reviewer of books. I chat about them. This post will explain a bit why.

To this day – The DEADLY series is the only open-ended series where I’ve read every single book. For the last several years, I periodically checked Brenda Joyce’s website like one of Skinner’s pigeons hoping that there would be a new book in the series after such a long hiatus. This year, I was rewarded when I saw that HQN was re-releasing the last two in January and February and then the next book, DEADLY VOWS, in March.

Let’s go back to the very beginning. Not of the series, but of my relationship to it.

In 2002 I was in Seoul, South Korea for a three month contracting job. This was total immersion into another country and culture and I thought I was doing pretty well: working, learning the language, brave enough to go shopping and even haggling on my own. I had a little tiny shoebox of the apartment that my co-worker Moses Kwon (yeah, there’s a story there) told me was spacious compared to his apartment. I loved the adventure of it, but I did get a little homesick sometimes. There were two channels on TV that had English programming. One was the AFN (Armed Forces Network) and one would show Moonlighting and several other shows in English, but with Korean subtitles.

One of my crowning accomplishments was programming my TV and VCR to record Survivor which played at midnight. I had the Korean instruction manual in front of me, my little dictionary, and a lot of sheer will for that.

Well, during this long stretch, the English channels were showing NASCAR races, which I wasn’t desperate enough to turn to yet. I’d read all the books I’d brought along, so I ventured into the city to search out the few English language bookstores listed in my Lonely Planet: South Korea book. (I didn’t take enough pictures of Seoul, but luckily found a blog post on Buying English Books in South Korea on the FarmBoy and CityGirl blog and they allowed me to borrow their picture. Much thanks!)

Kyobo Bookstore

At one mall, there was a huge sale with long tables and books laid out across it. Two whole tables of English language novels. I was in HEAVEN. I can see those books now…if you can imagine it. I mean, I’d never been anywhere for a prolonged amount of time where every piece of paper, every menu, every billboard, every show, EVERYTHING was in another language I couldn’t read. In Korea, I really came to understand a small fraction of what it must have been like for my family coming to America. My dear grandmother wandered around southern California just like this, determined to make sense of a culture she didn’t grow up in.

So I spent hours browsing those rows and rows of titles. I really can see those spines right here in my head, the memory is that strong.

I picked up what must have been the third book in the DEADLY series-DEADLY AFFAIRS. Calder Hart has already made his arrival, but Francesca was still smitten with Rick Bragg. I devoured that book. I went back and found as many of the DEADLY books as I could.

I loved the historical New York setting in the early 1900s and Francesca’s impetuousness. Sure the mystery element was a bit light and the final showdowns became formulaic, but I was sucked in by Francesca’s innocent do-good ways and her obviously destructive infatuation with married police commissioner Rick Bragg and her subtle attraction to Calder Hart. Oh my gosh, in those early books it was so well-done and balanced. I want to read them again and again.

I had a small week-long hiatus to go back to the States for my sister’s graduation. Very convenient too, since you have to renew your visa every month. I went to bookstores in California and searched out as many of the books as I could to bring back with me to Korea. I collected and read until I’d filled out the whole series and was caught up. When I pre-ordered Deadly Kisses on Amazon, I was distraught to find it in a bookstore before the pre-order shipped because that would mean I’d have to wait…but I could see RIGHT there!

These books were my companions in a very pivotal time in my life. A period when I was learning so much about the world and about myself in it. I had a lot of time to myself in Seoul, yet it was more crowded than I’d ever experienced in Los Angeles. I’m not even going to draw flimsy parallels between Francesca braving the streets of New York and me braving the streets of Seoul, though they can be made if I really wanted to go there. I just loved the books and all the many little elements that came together in each of them.

So back to DEADLY VOWS:

Obviously I’m a non-objective reader here. Non-objective — Is that a word? A subjective reader? But I’m really a non-objective reader overall. Sure, I try to be objective when I’m critiquing unpublished manuscripts from writing partners, but I’ve never had a problem backing up and reading like a reader and just relaxing into it. I’ve always known this about myself. When I go to movies and when I read books, I let down my guard and I want to be taken away. Many of my cohorts say it’s hard to “just read” books anymore, but I don’t think you need to give that up when you become a writer. The brain is an intricate multi-threaded, parallel-processing machine.

So objectively *tee hee*,  I felt there was some catch-up of plotlines and characters in the book that made it a book for fans of the series. But after such a long break, it was necessary. There was a little too much repetition of characters’ feelings from one scene to the next and there was a scene in there that mirrored a scene in a previous book too closely that bothered me because it was such a powerful scene previously. Calder and Fran did acknowledge the similarities, but it bothered me to see it again played out again.

Calder Hart still sweeps me away. The way he masks his darkness and pain with arrogance and confidence is so appealing. And Brenda Joyce revealed him to me a little at a time in each book until I was so thoroughly reeled in. He moved me to tears when he was jilted at the altar. And the scenes with Calder and Fran still sizzle like crazy. I still yell at Francesca–”No, don’t do that!! You’re going to get yourself in trouble…again!” But that’s the point, right? And I’m glad to catch up with the other characters, though there are so many sub-plots and secondary romances now that maybe they deserve separate books? Or more page count in each book? I’d love to see the tortured relationship between Bragg and Leigh Anne develop into more of a romance. I don’t know though — I’d still be hungering for Francesca and Calder since it’s the way this series has been plotted so I don’t think there’s any way to satisfy here — barring five or so more books in the series.

So there’s my “not a review” of DEADLY VOWS and why this series is so irrevocably intertwined in my memories. Objectively — I think it’s a good book with compelling characters and a few writing quirks that can be distracting. Subjectively — Hook it directly to my vein!

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Up in the Air, Baby Time & Page 99

Filed in: blog | friends and family | slice of life | travel    Tags: baby pics | page 99 test | travel

After so many flights in less than a week, I find that my brain has jumped into air-space–that limbo where your body knows no time zone, you’re sleeping in different locations all the time, and eating out a lot. To add to the blurring of time zones, I’m visiting Sis and her bawling bundle of joy.

He’s cute, no? Looks exactly like Brother-in-law. I held Baby Perry (Short for Peregrine) through Top Chef last night so Sis could get a little sleep. He’s five weeks old which means the house pretty much runs on baby time.

Traveling does have some other little perks too. For instance, lots of editing done during some forced non-internet time while I was in the air. You know some airlines will sell you wireless up there for an arm and a leg, but I kind of like the no-internet zone.

I also found a cool site in the Southwest airlines in-flight magazine: The Page 99 test. A bunch of authors, published and unpublished, post their 99th page while readers click on whether they’d turn the page. The idea being that you should be able to open up any page of your book and get a feel for the energy and voice of the piece. I dunno–wish I had a fight scene on page 99. Really fun site to waste some time on though!

Page 99 test: Butterfly Swords

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Christmas Countdown

Filed in: blog | cool finds | friends and family | giveaway | slice of life    Tags: advent calendar | free kindle | harlequin historical giveaway | newsletter

Please excuse the glitter as I finish the last bit of gift wrapping and card writing. I can’t resist showing off my favorite buy from this year: a gift for my nephew-to-be.We’re counting down the days until Little Sis becomes a mommy!

I subjected this bunny to rigorous evaluation. First, he has big, sensitive eyes so you can tell all your troubles to him. He’s got floppy ears that a baby can grab onto. And he passed the hug test. I was a little sad to ship him off since he was so cuddly, but I have to remind myself that he’s going to a good home.

Along with the bunny, I sent my copy of The Velveteen Rabbit. I read it one more time before wrapping it up and, of course, had myself a good cry when the bunny becomes real. *sniff*

Speaking of countdowns, there’s only four more days until the Harlequin Historical Advent Calendar drawing. I’ll be drawing for my special giveaway and the group will be drawing for the Kindle 3G.

Check out the last several days on the calendar. A list of the daily winners can be found here. Many of the days are still open so if you want additional chances at the Kindle, feel free to catch up on any missed days. I’m pleased that there are still entries coming in for my giveaway. Find out more about Christmas in the Tang Dynasty if you haven’t found the ornament yet.

The December newsletter has also gone out with some preview information about upcoming releases for 2011. Also popular was the link to the online clothing store where I get my hanfu. Check it out here or click on the newsletter link if you’d like to sign up for future updates. I send out the newsletter once a month and always have a great time putting it together.

Happy Holidays! I’ll be back on December 23rd to announce winners.

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Birthday Presents and the Friendly Skies

Filed in: blog | events | friends and family | slice of life | travel    Tags: alison goodman | EON | kindle | MCRW | signing | workshop

Guest spot: Trish Milburn interviewed me for Romance Bandits. The post is up today. Come by and reminisce about what games you used to play

***

I got my birthday present early from hubby!

Isn’t she all pretty and shiny? I love my Kindle already. I didn’t need to hook up a single cable to sync it with my Kindle apps on my computer. Yes, apps plural, because I have an app on each laptop so I can read from anywhere. I’ve also downloaded a couple of sample chapters and bought a couple of titles on it. Hubby is happy that I like it, and I think he’s also happy I didn’t ask for the iPad instead which was about three times the price.

One book that I couldn’t find on Kindle was EON by Alison Goodman. No worries because that very same day, a package arrived in the mail from Little Sis. Apparently, we still share the same brain, because she’d sent me a hardcopy of EON for my birthday.

She said she hasn’t read it yet, but had an idea I might like it. How did she know? Just because there’s a woman wielding two swords and a dragon on the cover doesn’t necessarily mean that…Okay, so it was an easy call.

Little Sis said she sent EON to me so I’d have reading material on the plane, but she needn’t have worried. I gushed to her about the Kindle and how tiny it was. No more big bulky books on planes. No more grabbing something from the newsstand in the airport when I don’t have anything to read.

Through a last minute arrangement with the day job, I’m going to be flying on my birthday (Nov. 16) to NYC. Perhaps I can meet up with a couple friends for drinks. I feel so cosmopolitan.

After that, I get a quick stop at home before I head to Nashville for a workshop and signing. I’ll get a chance to visit with my fellow Ruby Sister Kim Law.

That’s a lot of flying for one week, so I’m glad I have my nifty new Kindle. With all the traveling I’ve done in the past, surprisingly I’ve never flown on my birthday before. Hubby said the airline gave him a bottle of wine when he had to fly on his birthday. I don’t know if service is that good nowadays. Maybe an extra bag of pretzels?

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The Last Stop on this Runaway Train

Filed in: blog | friends and family | guest blogs | slice of life    Tags: borders | ebooks vs. print books | true romance

The last stop on the Butterfly Swords blog tour is at Borders True Romance.

This was an emotional piece for me…unfortunately I’ve caught two errors. *grrr* I do proofread every blog, but with so many and especially with emotional ones where I’ve gone over the words again and again, I guess I just start to fill in the right words in my head until I get some distance between me.

But mistakes aside, I hope you enjoy this tribute to my BFF and my discussion of how I came to romance and what eBooks will mean for these BFF moments:  BFF Moments – How I Discovered Romance

Sue Grimshaw is also giving away free books to two lucky commenters.

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Random happy moment

Filed in: blog | slice of life   

I checked on Amazon to see what ranking Butterfly Swords was at. Yes, I do check to see if the number has gone down meaning someone pre-ordered. It’s so silly. *hangs head*

This morning, I was amused that it was ranked #88 among Harlequin Historicals so I took a screen shot of it. Eights are very lucky in Chinese culture because the word for eight sounds a lot like the word for “wealth”. I heard you have to pay extra to have an eight in your phone number as businesses would want to snatch up the numbers with 8s in them to seem more fortunate.

So double eight is doubly lucky. That’s why you have those 88 markets and in Kill Bill there was that gang called the “Crazy 88s”. It also kind of looks like the character for double happiness, which is very popular motif and symbol for weddings. Symbols upon symbols — that’s how these things work.

I’m not superstitious, but…well, seeing two 8s made me kind of happy. Then again, it seems like everything makes me happy these days as my publishing dream is about to come true.

I suppose if I wanted to brag, I should have waited until right after a sale for a lower number, and then took a screen shot.

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Random thoughts

Filed in: blog | slice of life    Tags: hanfu | tang dynasty costume

I was picking up a couple of things at the Walgreen’s and noticed that the woman on the Arizona tea label is dressed in a Tang Dynasty hanfu. There’s a little pagoda in the background. Hmmm….I thought, that might be a nice cover, if it was  “romanticized” a bit.

A sign that I’ve been jonesing to see what the cover to Butterfly Swords  will look like? I should also start practicing in my costume for the “Dress for Historical Success” workshop. The sleeves on this thing are just amazing.

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Happy 2nd Anniversary

Filed in: blog | slice of life    Tags: wedding anniversary

Hubby and I celebrate our 2nd anniversary today. It’s the cotton anniversary and I’ve yet to pick out his present. It’s right now between the practical: dishtowels. Or the amusing: silly briefs/boxers. He’s specified that for tradition’s sake, it should be 100% cotton.

For our first anniversary, we exchanged movie tickets to Star Trek — while I rolled my eyes at him. I wonder if there’s an updated list for the modern age.

I have until my lunch break to make a decision…

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