Laura Kinsale

Laura Kinsale, Laura Kinsale. I just met an author named Laura Kinsale, and suddenly I see, how delicious a tortured hero can be...oh Laura, Ms. Kinsale! Say it loud and there's poetry flowing, say it soft and the sexual tension's growing...Laura Kinsale, Laura Kinsale, I'll never stop reading Laura Kinsale.

Please forgive my horrendous tardiness in discovering this legendary author. How could it have taken me this long to read Flowers From the Storm?

When did you discover La Laura?

The 1992 Fabio cover

The tasteful 2003 edition

The winner is...

...SHERRY THOMAS!

You were randomly selected by my cat (shown here selecting a fine Porter):

Email me at lenora AT lenorabell.com, and I will put your prize in the mail.

Check out Sherry's website, ogle the gorgeous cover of her upcoming novel, Private Arrangements, and read what Mary Balogh and Jane Feather have to say about this "irresistible new voice" in romance.

Thanks for making my first contest fun, everyone!

Good luck with your RWA national preparations.

Deadline Extended

We're unpacking the Uhaul and rearranging our basement so I'm extending the contest deadline to 7/7 at midnight. I'll announce a winner on Sunday morning.

Keep those entries coming!

Inaugural CONTEST! The Measure of Success

Eleven months ago, I packed up my bags, and my fluffy cat, and moved to China. I vowed I would not come back without a book deal. Well, here I am, with no book deal, but lots of cute shoes and silk scarves. Now, while I never underestimate the power of shoes, I am disappointed that I wasn't as productive as I wanted to be. But the good news is that during a little contest called FanLit I met a group of supremely talented and supportive people who share my passion for romance.

Was my journey a success? You can measure success in many ways. There are the small victories. Rejection letters mean you actually sent something out, so that is a kind of success if you have writer's block. There are larger triumphs, like finaling in contests, or being asked to submit a rewrite. I know many talented writers who are celebrating those successes right now. There is the success of seeing your book in print for the first time, the moment you hit a bestseller list, the RITA nomination.

And then there is the thrill every time you write a passage you know is better than anything you've written before. That's the success I'm celebrating right now.

I have a phobia about posting excerpts on my blog. I think it stems from the fear that I will read them next week and feel horribly ashamed. But I want to post a few excerpts now, to show you how far I've come, and what I have to celebrate.

My first attempt at writing romance featured a squeaky-clean missionary's daughter who was dragged into 1890 Shanghai's seamy underworld by a bad-boy opium trader. Unfortunately, the hero and heroine did not meet until page 50, and when they did, much head-hopping, leaden dialogue, and cliche-ridden situations ensued. I vomited out 400 pages, and then realized it was truly awful.

Here, for your amusement, is an excerpt from The Devil of Shanghai--completely unedited, in all its unbridled glory, rendered in purple, because purple it is:

So many layers of cloth between them, yet Mabel felt naked with longing. She had seen the beauty of this man’s naked chest, had lain beneath him in dreams and in reality. He was the inevitability of the pleasure and delight she could no longer deny herself. He was the reason she breathed. She was swept up in the dazzling passion of a boundless love. She could hear the Queen of the Night's aria ringing in her ears as his hands freed her heaving breasts and his lips teased the aching peaks of her nipples. Even if he lost all respect for her, even if he only wanted her as a mistress, regardless of the consequences, she was his. Even though they were members of two different worlds. Wasn’t it ironic that her mother had found solace and love in the arms of a penniless American doctor and now she, a penniless American herself, was finding passion with an Earl?Mmhm. I said "heaving breasts." Good lord.

I know you're saying to yourself, "But what does this have to do with me winning something?" You're right, I've been awfully slow getting to the contest part of the post.

Here are your choices:

1. You can submit an excerpt that make you terribly ashamed, or one that makes you darn right proud. It can be the thrilling tale you wrote about My Little Pony in the fifth grade, or something from your latest WIP. I don't care. Just make me laugh, or sigh with envy, or both.

OR

2. Tell me how you define success at this point in your writing career.
The winner will be randomly selected by a process that involves my cat and slips of paper soaked in a catnip solution, and announced on Friday, July 6th.

The prize is a silk scarf I bought in Suzhou, China from one of the most famous Chinese silk brands, Xiu Niang.



The scarf is HUGE, you could use it as a table cloth, or wear it to RWA National (if it arrives in time). It's high-quality 100% pure silk that shimmers in the moonlight. The photos don't do the vibrant colors justice.

And so begins my first contest. Thank you for reading, thank you for getting me through the dark times, and thank you for helping me celebrate the small successes in life.

p.s. Guest blogger Carrie Ryan is talking about a similar subject today over at the Manuscript Mavens blog.

Where the Air Is Clear

The first thing that hits you when you step out of the airport after a prolonged sojourn in China, is the blessed blueness of the sky and the sweet, fresh air. I'm still marveling about it two weeks later.

We're grandma-sitting in Palo Alto right now, giving my bf's aunt a vacation. During the day I field the many questions of a wandering mind, dole out reassurances, and think up clever distractions to calm anxiety. But grandma goes to bed at 8:30, and then I take my laptop out under the stars to write. We're here for two more weeks and then it's back to our little 1886 farmhouse in the Pacific Northwest. Our renters say there's a bountiful crop of luscious raspberries and plump blueberries in our yard this year--yum. Cherry trees and fresh rosemary will be so wonderful after six months living in a hotel.

My favorite baby was in the hospital getting a cleft lip operation on my last day at the orphanage, so I couldn't say goodbye. But I knew his life was improving, and I have high hopes for his eventual adoption. I'm staying in contact with the other volunteers, and they will keep me updated. For some obscure reason, the Chinese government makes it impossible to adopt from a facility where you were a volunteer, and they recently tightened their adoption restrictions, so that my bf and I would have to be married for two years before we could adopt. I sobbed and sobbed when I had to leave. I wanted to take pictures of the babies but it was forbidden. I'll never forget their dazzling smiles and pleading eyes.

I'll post reflections about my time in China as they come to me, as well as the long-promised post on men reading romance. I've been a very inconstant blogger lately, and for that I apologize. I've never been good about sticking to routines during times of change. My writing suffered as well, but now I'm back on track and sinking my teeth into a dark and sexy gothic featuring a brilliant, obsessive hero named Rodric. More on that later. And check back next week for information about my very first contest. The prize will be a treasure I bought in China.

Oh, and speaking of contests, I am dying to win a coveted single-maven critique from one of the fabulous Manuscript Mavens. Read all about this priceless prize here. I haven't won a blog contest yet. Maybe this will be my lucky link.

I'll leave you with some photos. Thanks for reading, and sorry for the long dry spell.

No, I do not play the pipa (more's the pity), but the gentleman sitting next to me is a zither master. He was teaching me a traditional pingtan aria for voice.

Scene from the opera we saw in Beijing, The Marriage Between the Dragon and the Phoenix.

Azumeth on top of the Beijing Ancient Observatory.


Shadow puppet play in Wu Zhen.

Rice wine distillery in Wu Zhen.

Beijing Again

I'm back in Suzhou after my third, and favorite, visit to Beijing. More about that later. For now, here's proof that we climbed a section of the Great Wall on a blustery yet clear and pollution-free summer's day. I promise to make my next post writing related (since I owe you a review of The Taming of the Duke from a male perspective), but here's a romantic detail for you. My partner and I have taken photos of our hands every May since our first year together. This is the eighth photo and the second one in China.

Snapshot

Did you notice what was missing in my last post? Yes, that's right. There was no Lenora Bell, only Emily Bronte. That's my sneaky way of posting without actually having to write anything. Get those wet noodles out--I've assumed the position.

I just have to give you a snapshot of our hotel room right now. I'm sitting on the bed, alternately cheering and cursing at the television set, because I want the Houston Rockets to win this game in Utah. My bf is curled up (as much as a 6'4" man can curl up) in a comfy chair by the window, reading Eloisa James' The Taming Of the Duke. Yep, you heard that right. I'm swearing like a sailor because T-Mac only made ten points in the first half, and my better half is reading a romance novel.

I only became a basketball fan in the last few years, and he is reading his very first romance novel. Did I choose a good one for popping his cherry?

Have you given your significant other a favorite romance novel to read? What was their reaction?

I've dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they've gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind.

--From Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Pages in Bloom

I'm going to spend the rest of April chained to my desk, finishing my current WIP, Heart of Ash. So no blogging for me (see NTW post). My parents come to visit in two weeks, and I won't get much writing done while they are here, so it's now or never. Wish me luck, and I'll see you back online in May.

I'll leave you with some pictures of spring in China, in the hope that they inspire your pages to bloom.

NTW

Sometimes things come to you when you need them the most. That's what happened today when I opened my Absolute Write newsletter and clicked on an article about writer's block by Mayra Calvani. You see I've been struggling lately. I sit down at my computer with the best of intentions. And then I inevitably get sidetracked. Last night I spent four hours reading about George Eliot's extraordinary life because I was looking for the right book to have my heroine read. Unfortunately, my story is set in 1853, almost twenty years before Middlemarch was published. One of my critique partners says this should be known as NTW (network time waster) from now on, and is to be rooted out before it can rear its ugly head. Given my propensity for NTW, the article was exactly what I needed to read.

One important point it raised was that lowering your expectations might actually make you more productive. If I set a goal that is impossible for me (20 pages a day) then I'm more likely to write nothing because I get depressed about my inability to reach the goal. But if I try to write five pages a day, I might just surprise myself and get excited enough to write more, thereby surpassing my initial goal.

I know there is only one cure for not writing, and that is to write. Author Elizabeth Hoyt wrote in a recent article on Romantic Inks:

Here’s the deep dark secret that we published authors hide: we’re not necessarily better writers than the unpublished. What we do have is a finished and polished manuscript. Ninety-nine percent of writing is finishing the product...which is why, every day, I sit down and write. I sit down and write even when I don’t feel like it—especially when I don’t feel like it.

I have a long history of writer's block. The most famous example is the college paper I turned in six years late. It was a paper about a Vietnam war book, and I finally managed to write it while I was traveling in Vietnam for three weeks. I somehow needed that historical immediacy in order to finish a task that had been weighing on me for so many years.

Have you ever struggled with writer's block? Have you done anything extreme to jolt yourself out of it, or do you have a simple little trick that works?

I know, I know. Just sit down and write.

I will.

Good News

Thank you all for being so supportive! I went to the orphanage again today, and it is so emotionally draining. I was the only volunteer this afternoon, and when I walked into the baby room there were at least ten babies balling their eyes out and no one in the room at all. It made me soooo sad. But I have really good news. There will be a team of surgeons visiting Suzhou in October to perform cleft lip and palate surgeries! They are from Alliance for Smiles, a wonderful organization out of San Francisco.

If you would like more information about the orphanage, you can pm me (link on my website). Thanks, again, for all your kind words and thoughts.

Two Tigers

Today I began a volunteer job at an orphanage. Somehow I just didn't picture all the babies with disabilities. Cleft lips and palates, Down's syndrome, preemies, they were all strapped into cribs, tearing my heart out with their bright eyes and big smiles. The orphanage was as clean and cheerful as it could be, and I was happy to hear them playing Mozart's Twinkle Twinkle variations, but there just aren't enough arms to hold them, let alone families to love them. The adoption rate from this particular orphanage is abysmally low, and I have yet to determine why. Perhaps because of the high percentage of children with special needs.

One tiny sweetie with a shock of fuzzy hair and the spindliest little legs I ever saw, fell asleep in my arms after cooing along to the tune of Frere Jacque. They have their own words to this song in Mandarin, here is the literal translation:

Two tigers, two tigers
Running fast, running fast
One has no ears, one has no tail
Truly strange, truly strange

There were over fifty little tigers in those two small rooms, and over half of them were there because of their "strangeness." It it made me feel so helpless when I saw their legs curling up from disuse, their eyes hungry for affection.

All I could do was sing them a song, and tell them they were not strange, but beautiful.

Weekend Getaway

We're going to the sleepy little town of Nan Xun for the weekend. Should be relaxing since it's not in any of the guidebooks. I'm bringing paper and a pen instead of my laptop.

Here's hoping your weekend is peaceful and productive.

xoxo

Lenora

Scrap Bag

Life is progressing...creamy magnolia blossoms unfurl...a car hit the bus we were riding in and thirty dollars changed hands outside our window before we were on our way again.

I am slogging through a synopsis of Heart of Ash because I think it's time to stop being such a complete pantser. Lydia Joyce's website has an excellent list of synopsis writing resources.

Pam Rosenthal's The Slightest Provocation is up for a RITA. Go Pam! Intelligent, lush, lyrical...her work is my inspiration.

Blocked Again

They've blocked blogger again in China--just when I was getting into a nice posting and commenting rhythm. Now I have to go through a proxy website and it takes forever...aargh!!! *shakes fist at the government censors*

My Apologies

Please accept my apologies for subjecting you to that photo--it's the cover of the box of extra underwear that most Chinese hotel rooms stock. Just because I feel so sorry for your eyes, here's some candy to make up for it.

Mmmm....Stuart...




















Feeling better now?

















How about now?

xoxo
Lenora

Senior Man Trousers

In response to the many discussions about mantitty and its dubious merits as an inducement to buy novels, I hereby submit this disturbing photo. Now this particular specimen of homomammaries is not selling romance novels, but Senior Man Trousers--for the gentleman who forgot to bring extra underwear during his stay at the hotel. What does this have to do with romance novels? Absolutely nothing. I just thought it was hilarious, and wanted to inflict share.

AutoSummarize

Yet more evidence of Tessa Dare's genius. Check out her post on AutoSummarization--the MS Word feature that allows you to distill your manuscript into ten sentences (under the Tools menu). She found it while searching for a way to make synopsis writing less painful, and it fulfilled its function by giving us all a good laugh.

Here is the ten sentence AutoSummary of the first chapter of my latest WIP, working title Heart of Ash:

No doubt his face matched those hands—blunt-edged, intimidating, restless. “Where is my great-aunt Ethel?” blurted Lucidora. “My lord, if I may--” “Raise your eyes when you speak to me,” said Lord Ashe. Lucidora bowed her head. Never look a man in the eyes.
Lucidora inhaled sharply. Fenton will show you to a room.” “Ada--” With his stained hands and dismissive eyes.

So what does your MS look like in ten sentences? Kerry? Meljean?

To National, or Not to National

We've decided to return home a month early, and that means I could attend RWA's national conference if I wanted to. Of course I would only have been back in the states for a week--but since it is the biggest event of a romance writer's year, I'm thinking I should hop back on a plane and go to Dallas. I've only been to one smaller conference, so this would be a new experience for me. And I've only been to Texas once, and pardon me for saying so, it did not leave a good impression.

I was hired by a national speech coaching company to manage their San Francisco office, but they were headquartered out of Houston, so they flew me there for training. The moment I walked into the shiny corporate offices, I knew I was going to stick out like a...well like a San Francisco girl in Texas. Everyone was coiffed and power-suited and chipper, and they could all tell with one quick downward sweep of their blue-frosted lids that I was not a member of their sorority. I will spare you the details of that painful week, but I will let you know that I quit that job a mere two months later, even though they offered me a huge raise, stock options, and money for a new, more corporate appropriate, wardrobe.

But I'm sure this time around Texas would be different. Especially if I had some friends to seek out. So are you going? Is it worth the money? If I buy you a lemon drop will you let me sit at your table?

Shoes

Pam asked about the new brand of shoes I found--so I thought I'd post a few pics.

My new favorite brand is Safiya. Inside the shoes it has a sweet little logo of a snail and the words, "My world. The Safiya's world. The young world."

My other favorite brand is Changes and Insects 100. Rather Kafkaesque.

Anyway, here are my most recent Safiya purchases:

Shoes with Scales (yes, it makes a fish if you put your feet together).















Black tap shoe style with crimson appliqued flowers.
































So what do you think? I can take orders...