4.24.2008

Truth in sexual advertising

I'm loving this YouTube R&B song I first saw on Jo Beverley's blog:


My favorite line has got to be: "Chafing...." Or maybe: "I could give you 7 minutes if you don't move around too much."

4.23.2008

Back to romance with Lady Beware

I've finally had some time recently to pick up some fiction. I've been enoying Lady Beware. I always love Jo Beverley's writing. She's a very skillful writer, with obvious competence in plotting, characterization, and dialogue. She's one of my biggest inspirations for what I want my romance writing to be like. I don't feel like I'm up to her level yet, but when I'm editing my work, I always compare it to writers like her.

I also love her Company of Rogues series. I think if you came in on the series in the middle that it would be confusing, which is why I always check bibliography lists to make sure I read series in the right order. Usually the library will have any earlier works as well as the current ones, and often they're automatically arranged by publication date. But to be sure, I check the author's website, such as Jo Beverley's book list here (it's not the easiest site to navigate, but it has a lot of info, including links to her blog and for joining her Yahoo! Group).

Anyway, I'm not done yet with Lady Beware, so I won't comment too much yet except to say -- man, I missed romance novels! It's so fun to be reading one again. Hooray! I love how drawn up I can get in the story, and at this point the Rogues characters seem like old friends to me. I'm always rooting for them, and for the romance, and Jo (I call her Jo) has never let me down!


4.03.2008

A poem a day

I mentioned in my last post that I get WritersDigest.com emails, and I was fortunate enough to read the latest one in a timely manner.

Because...

Robert Lee Brewer who is a poet and has a blog called Poetic Asides --

http://blog.writersdigest.com/poeticasides

-- is hosting a poem-a-day challenge for April, which is National Poetry Month, to get some good raw material going. These are supposed to be quick and dirty attempts to achieve some first drafts -- then, at the end of the month you'll have 30 poems to start working on during May, which is apparently National Poetry Revising Month.

(A separate topic to muse upon would be the dubious necessity of magazines anymore given the quantities of information and entertainment now online, as WritersDigest.com and its bevy of blogs is proving. Remember when some online sites, apart from porn, charged money just to be read? That was lame. Thank goodness for advertising revenue!)

So, I know this is a romance writer's blog and all, but I'm so geeked by this challenge. Is it all right to be a poet and a romance writer? I usually try to keep the two separate in people's minds, because be honest -- are you wondering which one I must suck at? The truth is, I'm awesome at both...)

But, seriously, if you're eclectic with the genres like me, feel free to play along. You can post your poems in the Poetic Asides blog's comments, or you can be a reclusive wretch like me and just accumulate privately.

Today, as Day Three, is haiku day, a three-line form (as practiced in English, anywho). I've learned a lot about haiku from reading Robert Lee Brewer's various blog entries on the subject and the links he gave. I especially like the easy-to-follow run-down with lovely example haiku in this resource by Michael Dylan Welch. (Does having Dylan as a middle name automatically make you a poet?)

I did not, however, learn enough about haiku to be brave enough to post my attempts. But I welcome future prompts that motivate us to wrestle with poetic forms. I love freestyling it, too, but I love the way a framework can provide security at the same time as inspiration. Being a fan of puzzles, I love the challenge of fitting my words and ideas into the form. Being a fan of history, I love knowing that a multitude of poets have come up with countless other conclusions to the same challenge.

I guess that's what intrigues me by the whole idea of the poem-a-day prompts in general. The first two were to write a poem on firsts, and to write a poem from someone else's perspective. (You can see that attempt at my parenting blog here.) I love being given a little bit of structure that I can add my own creativity to.

To all my fellow poets and poetry lovers out there, enjoy April!
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