To be honest, I still feel somewhat hung over from reading a book that Nathaniel and Richard both recommended I check out during my “research phase” I’ve been working through for my own romance scenes. The book they both thought I should check out, along with Elliott Kay’s Good Intention Series, was John Conroe - Demon Accords 01 - God Touched. You can find the link here: http://www.amazon.com/God-Touched-Demon-Accords-Book-ebook/dp/B003G2ZCW0/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1408784847&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=John+Conroe+-+Demon+Accords+01+-+God+Touched Another one of those books I just had to read in one setting after swearing to myself I would head to bed early after writing until 2200 hours (10PM for those of you not familiar with military time). I promptly went to bed by 0330 in the morning, which made for a really hard day at work for the next morning. Although I don’t know if you can count two and a half hours as sleep, it’s more on the side of being a long nap than anything else. As of abusing myself once this week wasn’t good enough, I did the same thing the next night, only this time I read the second novel in John Conroe’s Demon Accords series. Only this time I didn’t make it to bed until 0430. The only good news was that I finished both books in one setting HA!
Okay, I have to be good this weekend and next week. I have to have some time to recover. I mean seriously, I’m way too old to be going to bed so late on a school (I mean work) night. John Conroe, just give me some time to catch up and I’ll make sure I get those reviews out.
The crazy cool part of my week came down to two parts. One was I received an email from Elliott Kay this week. He liked my review I gave him on Amazon and was (I think) pleasantly surprised to see my happy praise for his Good Intention Series on my blog. You know sometimes when you’re reading a novel you feel like you’ve gotten a good impression of the writer just because of their perspective of their Main Character and what they focus on within their story. When I read Elliott Kay’s books I overwhelming had this impression. Maybe that sounds odd, but the more I write the more I get these impressions, because anyone who writes a novel puts their heart and soul into their work. I think it definitely bares one soul to a point.
I guess I’m saying all of this because Elliott was super cool in his email. He offered to give me some of his personal advice on writing erotica and overall good authoring stuff to be aware of and shared understanding of dealing with some people’s negative reviews. Seriously he’s a pretty awesome cat! I still need to answer him back, but I probably won’t make it until next week. Also, Nathaniel, if you read this before I get a chance to email back, this goes the same for you. I have to watch out how much time I spend on book, blogging and author stuff when I’m home around my family. I’ve been given the talking to that book stuff only happens during non-family time. My wife is working this morning, so I have a little bit of time to do a quick blog update before I have to finish up my house chores.
Currently my wife and I have been catching up on the Teen Wolf Series. We started it late and are just about half way through the third season, so I expect we’ll be staying up late tonight trying to cram in as much Teen Wolf as possible before passing out tonight from staying up too late.
The other somewhat crazy cool thing that I did was accidently share my part of my raw story with my bud Richard. I blame this lack of attention to detail because I’d been staying up so late reading. This raw story is something I usually work a lot together with Deanna and Patrick who both helped with giving their thoughts on the story for book one. The reason is that I’m very shy / embarrassed about my writing until it’s in a cleaned up state and also I try to keep the story under wraps as much as possible. Although Richard was on my list of beta readers, I hadn’t planned to share the story with him until it was finished, but all in all it turned out okay. Richard gobbled the story up in one setting and we talked about his impressions the same day after I got home from work. I was pleasantly surprised and happy with the feedback. It lets me know I’m doing a kick-ass job on book two’s story arc. The only thing is where the part of the story he read left him majorly hanging at an exciting part, which is cruel and usual punishment for those of us who love a great story.
After my research and discussions, I believe I’ll try to base my romantic scenes somewhere in-between Elliot Kay’s and John Conroe’s methods of addressing this. I just won’t know 100% until I put everything down on paper and then run it by my friends, but that’s the plan. Who knows, if Elliot is open to it I might run some of it by him.
Anyway, I need to get started on my weekend cleaning.