Caturday Fun

So, it seems that my dogs are slackers and don't help enough around the house. After seeing the clip below, I've decided they need to started earning their room and board. Maybe I can get Fergie wiping down the kitchen bench. Dougie putting rubbish in the bin. Jazz can bring the remote, and Ollie can put the clothes in the washer...

Favourite Book For The Year

by Michelle Douglas

Reading: For The Sheikh's Pleasure by Annie West

Watching: The bird wars in my backyard

Listening to: Pink

Making me smile: The block of Lindt dark chocolate in my pantry

I made a big mistake earlier this year - a stupid mistake. I became so busy with my MPhil that I made a resolution not to read any more fiction until I'd waded through all the necessary academic texts requiring my attention.

Like I said, big mistake. You'll be pleased to know I've since broken said resolution. No one should ever give up reading for pleasure. The book that broke my drought was a birthday gift - The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society. Believe me, this book was a gift in more ways than one. It was a delight and a joy. I read it twice. It made me realize what a stupid resolution I'd made. It made me realize reading is my life's blood. For all those reasons and more it has become my favourite read for the year.

Which got me thinking about my other favourite reads for the year.

And here they are in no particular order:

Fave category romance: This year I'd be lucky to have averaged one category romance a month. It hasn't stopped me buying them, though. You should see my tbr pile! However, what I have read has been brilliant. I have a tie for first place: A Special Kind of Family by Marion Lennox and Christmas Angel For The Billionaire by Liz Fielding.

Fave non-fiction: How To Suppress Women's Writing by Joanna Russ. This is a wonderfully angry book that made me feel righteously indignant.

Fave re-read: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. I hadn't read this since I was a little girl. It now makes the list of my top 5 favourite books of all time.

What about you? What have been your favourite reads so far this year? (Go on, tempt me, make me blow that stupid resolution so far out of the water that I never make another one like it!)

Catwalk Wednesday

Name: Dr Watson
Abode: Stalking the food bowl. Failing that: blanket, lap, pillow, dog’s bed, washing basket in the sun. Anywhere it’s warm. Or tasty.
Human slave: sniff. You are all my slaves, feeble vermin. If only I were a little larger, I’d have killed and eaten you by now.
Likes: if you don’t know, I shan’t waste time explaining it. Just do as I say and everything will be fine.
Dislikes: see previous answer. Don’t make me tell you twice.
Ambition: to bend the world to my will, so long as it doesn’t involve too much effort.

Help me choose a story....

Reading: Scoundrel by Zoe Archer
Watching: The A-Team remake
Listening to: Snow Patrol
Making me smile: Playing Wii with hubby

It’s time for me to start writing a brand new Nocturne Bites. I have one coming out soon called One Night with the Wolf and I want to get started on my next one. I love those moments just before I start a story – where ideas and inspiration churn and anything and possible!

Usually I just *know* which story I want to write next…but this time I have a few different ideas knocking around in my head and one hasn’t risen to the surface yet.

So I thought I’d let the LoveCats blog readers vote on which story I should tackle next. Here are the options:

Dragon Prince – a follow up story to my very first Bites, Savage Dragon. It’ll feature the cousin of the hero in SD who is a dragon prince and wields some powerful elemental magic. The heroine is a human out to expose dragons to the world.

Marked by Shadow – a vampire story set in the same world as my Bites, Hunter’s Surrender. It’ll feature a vampire doctor hero in Las Vegas and a heroine desperate to avenge the death of her sister at the hands of vampires.

At the Wolf’s Mercy – a wolf story set in the same world as One Night with the Wolf. It features a wild alpha hero who leads a wolf pack in the untamed wilds of northern Canada and a pilot heroine who crash lands in his territory.

Racing the Dark – this is a new one. It’ll be set in a world where a small group of humans race against paranormals to secure ancient artifacts of power. The heroine is a tough human dedicated to her cause and the hero is a sexy, mysterious half angel, half vampire.

So vote below and thanks for the help. If anyone has any questions about any of the stories, ask away!

Anna

"Love Is Blue"

by Sharon Archer


Watching: Mad Men - series one

Listening: to a fantastic thunderstorm!

Reading (and loving!): The Earl's Dilemma by Emily May

Making me smile: The Italian translation of Jack and Liz's story which has just arrived in the post box! "Insieme ancora una volta"





It's spring! Signs are everywhere of flora and fauna revelling in the longer, warmer days. We were away recently, camping with friends near the Kosciuszko National Park in New South Wales. Our camp was visited by a handsome male satin bower bird on the scrounge. Spring is the time when his thoughts turn to "home decor". His sex appeal and ability to be a successful mate are measured by the beauty of his bower and the goodies he's managed to collect to show it to advantage. It's all about blue!

I looked around our camp and realised it must have seemed like a overload to his senses. Fortunately... or perhaps unfortunately from his point of view... all our "blueness" was too large to pilfer. Blue tarps, blue buckets, blue towels, blue plates, a large blue esky, a blue box of tissues.

He was a shy fellow with his glossy midnight plummage and every time I pointed the camera at him he was off! But I found a gorgeous picture on Wiki and this entertaining clip on YouTube.

What signs of spring are happening at your place?

In Defence of the Cliche...

by Nikki Logan

When has a word concept ever been such an anathema as the dreaded cliché? Writers fear it, readers bristle at it. Yet it’s often confused with its cousin, stereotype, and generally misused and misunderstood.

The word itself has come to mean something that is overused and trite. Written, visual, aural. Shutters banging against a house wall during a storm or a ticking clock to build suspense – aural cliché. A photograph of a beautiful lake framed in the space between two trees – visual cliché. (Can’t tell you how many pictures in my 'Europe 1990' photo album are framed exactly like that. I thought I was being terribly arty and clever. Erm…not so much.)

Literally speaking, the term cliché originates in the French printing industry. Back in the day when finger-stained typesetters laid out the tiny metal letters of a written sentence in racks to be slotted into printing presses, coated with ink and then transferred as print on paper, some words, sentences and phrases were more oft used than others. Phrases like ‘he said’, ‘couldn’t believe his eyes’, or ‘non-non, Monsieur, we will be caught for certain’ were common enough to be permanently cast as a single piece and kept aside for repeat use.

According to the source of all knowledge, Wikipedia, the word actually comes from the sound made when ‘the matrix is dropped into molten metal to make a printing plate.’

Cliché.

Tssss…. Go on, say it out loud. You know you want to.

Anyway… back then a cliché was a good thing. A time-and-effort saving thing that helped revolutionise the already revolutionary print industry. But today, the poor old cliché has a bad rap. It’s equated with laziness, lack of imagination, absence of new thought. But the reality is that it’s still an efficient way of communicating simple concepts. Like texting, a kind of print shorthand. It’s not lazy, per se. Just…expedient.

Cliché is also often mislabeled and applied to concepts that more rightly belong under that other printing term, stereotype. Again from the printing industry and refers to a phrase/sentence that warrants a whole duplicate copy of the original typeplate, presumably to ward against wear because it was used so very heavily and often. A stereotype is a cliché all grown up. Where a plot or a situation or a setting has become so overused it has become commonly and immediately recognized.

The other woman. The bandana-wearing train-robber on horseback. The frustrated spinster with nine cats devouring romance novels.

Oh… pardon me, my subtext is showing…

Therein lies the most important part of the enemy we know as cliché/stereotype. The only thing technically wrong with either is that they have become ‘common’. So the first person to write it is an artist, everyone else is a thief.

Sure, I don’t want to read a book laden with clichéd phrases or scenes. Yuk-o. But similarly, I don’t particularly enjoy (or even fall for) books where it’s obvious the author has gone out of their way to rewrite clichéd sentences or concepts ‘freshly’. The chances of most of them being able to write something that no-one has ever used before isn’t high and so the book ends up wobbling on its skinny little knees with the burden of page-after-page of overly complicated, metaphorical, granite-based equivalents.

Kind of like that one.

Romance, as a rule, turns successfully on the most clichéd of literary clichés: the Happy Ending. Successfully to the tune of billions of dollars a year. So, clearly there is still a place in our lives for immediately recognizable literary themes like boy-meets-girl and happy-ever-after. Just with moderation. We can still read and love rags-to-riches stories, we can still put a swarthy sheik on the keeper shelf, we can still shed a tear over an Ugly Duckling modernization.

In a genre which unashamedly—in fact, proudly!—targets the common man (or woman, in this case) in volume, why are we so hung up on the presence of the occasional cliché?

Embrace the cliché. Learn to love the cliché. Don’t sacrifice to it on the alter of good taste, certainly, but don’t fear the cliché. Fearing it gives it power.

After all, it’s just a bunch of letters in a drawer in France.

You tell me... Do you slip into a familiar story theme like a comfy pair of slippers or do you like something out-of-the-box every time?

(PS: My latest release is out now in the UK in print and ebook and it's partnered with the wonderful Barbara McMahon. A hot firefighter and scorching ex Special Services operative under one cover!! Tsssss!! Grab it now or wait until January for the US release.)

Caturday Fun

I'm obviously in a dog dancing mood, because this Caturday I'm posting another video of coordinated canines.

(I'm not sure how to paste the full width of the video on the blog (I'm technically-challenged), but I just played and found you can change it on your screen so you don't cut the right hand bit off:

Right click on the video and scroll down to "Show All" and click. It'll be a bit smaller and show the full width.)

Enjoy!