More Buzz for Barbara

A new review of Barbara's Vampire Paranormal THE CONSOLATION PRIZE (Loose-Id) can be found here.

Congrats, Barbara, on another great review.

Three More Novels Coming By Barbara Elsborg

Well, it's official. Barbara is definitely on a major roll!

Ellora's Cave has just accepted three more of her novels to be e-published in the near future. All of us here at Take it to the Stars are very excited about Barbara being on a very fast track toward "Star-dom." Someday we'll all be able to say, "I knew her when..."

Congratulations, Barbara, for the...what?...fifth, six and seventh times? :)

Sex, lies and reviewers

Oh criticism. Can't live with it and can't live without it. I'm convinced that my natural state of - say no until it's proven you need to say yes - has led me to be the world's worst pessimist and a hardened critic. My mother spent her life criticising me in an attempt to make me better - a better swimmer, reader, piano player etc etc. The only lasting result has been to make me hyper - critical of myself and others. Somehow every job I ever had - apart from the selling of cyanide, involved me picking fault with others. I inspected businesses and then moved on to inspecting schools and wrote reports listing their faults - oh and the good bits too. So I'm used to giving criticism. I critique others work as honestly as I can and they critique mine. So I'm used to receiving criticism too.


Now I'm out in the wide world and strangers are offering opinions on my stories. I hear the cries - All subjective. One person's POV etc etc. I never read them - many proclaim. I couldn't not read a review of one of my books. The very typing of those words still sends a shiver of delight down my spine. I'm lucky. I finally heard yes from a publisher. Not in the sphere I wanted but it was still a yes. Now I live with the consequences. My babies have faults and it's my fault they do. I wanted them to be perfect and they're not. I still love them. But I'm going to keep trying to be a better and better writer and maybe one day I'll please everyone.

Ohh - a flying pig!!!!

How to deal with stress

Well for those who thought this was going to tell you how to deal with stress - sorry. I wish I had the answer. Maybe living on an isolated island - adequately supplied with food, water and books (and writing materials of course) would mean no stress. But wait - I couldn't go swimming - there might be sharks. If I stay on land - there might be maneating spiders and I want to be the only maneater around - assuming a decent hunk gets washed up. There would be no one to listen to my stories. No one to complain to. No son to pick up after. No daughter to console on the phone. Oh no, I'm stressed. I'm too expert at imagining problems to ever have a calm moment. Even stroking the dog is stressful - not my dog, he needs walking, feeding, playing with. Oh and that sad face - he always wants food and I have to say no. I've had my instructions.
Ohh I've had an epiphany - say NO. NO NO NO NO. I am not going to do your ironing, your washing, walk your dog, cook your meals, listen to you moan. I'm going to be selfish for the first time in my life and do what I want when I want.

Moment over. I'll just do the ironing and stick a brush up my backside to clean the kitchen floor while I'm at it.

From Take it to the Stars

More Sales!!!

Barbara and Dawn have both just sold short stories for the upcoming anthology "Men in Shorts" to be published by Ravenous Romance.

Congratulations Barbara and Dawn on your latest successes.

I Love Your Blog Award

Frances of Frances Writes blog recently awarded the "I Love Your Blog Award" to Take it to the Stars. Such an honor.

The rules for this Award are:

1) Add the logo of the award to your blog

2) Add a link to the person who awarded it to you

3) Nominate at least 7 other blogs

4) Add links to those blogs on your blog

5) Leave a message for your nominees on their blogs!

We'll put our heads together and post our nominees as soon as possible. :)

Tony Hillerman 1925-2008

Tony Hillerman, author of Navajo Tribal Police mystery novels featuring Navajo police officers Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee — died in Albuquerque, New Mexico on Sunday of pulmonary failure. He was 83.

Born May 27, 1925, in Sacred Heart, Okla., population 50, Tony Hillerman was the son of August and Lucy Grove Hillerman. They were farmers who also ran a small store. It was there that young Tony listened spellbound to locals who gathered to tell their stories.

Hillerman wrote many novels including "The Blessing Way" in 1970, "People of Darkness" in 1978, his commercial breakthrough "Skinwalkers," 1987, "A Thief of Time," which made several best seller lists, "Talking God" and "Coyote Waits." In all, he wrote 18 books in the Navajo series, the most recent titled "The Shape Shifter."

Many of his novels explored cultural conflicts and differences in undersstanding. Tony Hillerman said, "I want Americans to stop thinking of Navajos as primitive persons, to understand that they are sophisticated and complicated."

Although he was accused of exploiting the Navajo culture for personal gain, the Navajo Tribal Council honored him in 1987 with its Special Friend of the Dineh Award. He said he took greater pride in that than from the many awards bestowed by his peers, including the Golden Spur Award from Western Writers of America and the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America, which elected him its president.

Although best-known for the Navajo series, he also wrote more than 30 other books, including the memoir, "Seldom Disappointed"; and books on the history and natural beauty of the Southwest.

In "The Spell of New Mexico" a collection of essays, Hillerman wrote "Those places that stir me are empty and lonely. They invoke a sense of both space and strangeness, and all have about them a sort of fierce inhospitality."

He also edited or contributed to more than a dozen other books including crime and history anthologies and books on the writing craft.

I had the great pleasure to meet Mr. Hillerman when we were both members of Southwest Writers, and I will always remember him as being very personable and down-to-earth. He will certainly be missed.

Ravenous Romance

Earlier, we mentioned that Dawn has an upcoming short story for an anthology on Sex and Shoes that will be e-published by Ravenous Romance.

To find out more about Ravenous Romance you can read the press release here and sign up for a free iPod Touch giveaway here. This is an exciting new site.

Ravenous Romance is being added to our sidebar, as well.

Missing Chapter Twelves and the Strange Things Writers do.

I was recently asked why chapter twelve is missing from my novels.
Uh, okay I'll fess up.
It's cursed.
Really it is. In the spirit of Halloween I'd thought I'd tell you about it.
One morning about a year ago, I woke up at 3:00am to a chapter trying to pound it's way out of my head. All writer's know how it is when a good muse goes bad. She demands at the oddest hours to be heard. Ignore her at your own peril.

Anyway, she was banging away in my head screaming at me to get up. So, like a good little writer I did, and gave into her demands. Come six-o-clock it was done. I was so pleased with myself. Some of the best work I'd done to date. Original, creative and just plain inspired. I was in love with that chapter. I backed it up to disc, I backed it up to a travel drive and I backed it up to the hard drive...

Do you get the feeling something bad happened???

In spades.

The disc became corrupted, the computer crashed and the travel drive fell out of my purse somewhere when I'd been out and about in town. I re-typed, doing my best to recover the exact placement of each clever word, the feel for the chapter. No matter how I tried, I just couldn't get it to work. After I'd worked to retreive the original for several hours and finally managed to throw something together that was okay, I backed it up to another computer (the one my kids use) and left it open to come back and play with. Thinking it would be a great idea to put it on another disc, since I lost my only travel drive, I did and left it at the desk.

Bad idea. My children decided they needed a disc for their music and erased (yes it was re-writable) and I not only lost the chapter, I lost the entire story. The children also managed to lose the open page. Never, leave a story open with teenagers around.

The only way I could recover the story (Yes, you guessed right. Only up to chapter 11) was to go to my online critique group and pull it from the post. I can't tell you how glad I was I'd posted it to my private queue. (If you're not a member of this site BTW, I highly recommend. http://www.critiquecircle.com/)

So, to make a long story short, I re-wrote that blasted chapter five times before it stuck, and never did it seem as good as the original.

This chapter has been a nightmare for me in other stories as well. I've lost it in one other, I've hit major writer's block on multiple occasions. All disaster seems to drop on me when I hit chapter 12. It never comes to me smooth and I've begun to despise it.

Therefore, if you notice the header Chapter 12, with one sentence under it "Please proceed to chapter 13", this is why. Crazy? Oh yes. Superstitious? Without a doubt. Am I afraid of that chapter? Oh yeah.

Moral of the story...
Back up everything to Gmail and don't write a chapter 12. (However, I sometimes will change it after I finish the story) Don't want anyone to think I can't count, or heaven forbid, I've lost it.

So, what are some of the crazy things you do? Tell me I'm not the only one who's gone insane. Do you have anything you do for luck when you write? Any routines you won't break because of bad Ju-ju? What?

On Genres: A Necessary Evil

Here's an always informative and thought-provoking subject from the Fictionautics:

On Speculative Fiction, Science Fiction and Genres

This article focuses on informing readers what falls into what genre (or the best guess) and why.

As a writer, I struggle with how to pitch my work. The boundaries that define many of the genres and subgenres are blurred at best. If I describe my novel as "near future military science fiction romance with paranormal elements," most agents or editors won't read past the first line. Calling it simply speculative romance, slipstream or paranormal romance doesn't begin to give a sense of the elements of the story. I normally fall back on science fiction romance and then try to cover or at least hint at the other elements in the pitch paragraph.

So why even have genres?

Doing away with genres altogether creates a new set of problems. As a reader, I want to be able to filter or search for books that tend to have science fiction romance elements (even though when I execute that search, I often get novels that I'd categorize as pure fantasy). If there are no genres, will I have to sift through thousands of titles and blurbs to find the type of story that interests me?

So we struggle with genres, subgenres and cross-genres as best we can. The author of the article made a point that I agree with. When writing, don't restrict creativity to labels. Just write it and worry about pidgeon-holing it later.

Interview Up

My interview is up at The Galaxy Express if anyone wants to take a peek.

And Now for a Little Shameless...

...promoting of my co-blogger's work.

Barbara's PERFECT TIMING was reviewed on The Good, the Bad and the Unread blog and what a lovely review it is! Not to mention, spot on! :)

Check it out here.

And Then There Were Two...

Notice our new look? I thought a bit of spiffing was in order since we're on the verge of making a major announcement.

*fanfare and drumroll please*

Our own Dawn Jackson is going to be published!

We're very excited to announce she's had a short story accepted for publication in an anthology, and this has created a lot of interest for some of her other work. I'm not sure if I'm at liberty to share the title of the short or anthology yet, so I'll save that for a follow up post. What I can tell you from first hand experience is that Dawn is a very talented and highly prolific writer. All of us here at Take it the the Stars are certain this is just the start of a long and wonderful career.

Congratulations, Dawn!

From Arlene, Barbara and Laurie

Weird Titles

For the past 30 years, the Bookseller magazine has awarded a prize to the oddest book title it can find. BBC radio is curently offering a prize to the listener who invents the most interesting opening paragraph for any of them.

I had to share these titles -
I think my favourite is 2005.
I also have to admit I bought one of these - 1989 - well you never know when it will come in handy!



1978: Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice (University of Tokyo Press)
1979: The Madam as Entrepreneur: Career Management in House Prostitution (Transaction Press)
1980: The Joy of Chickens (Prentice Hall)
1981: Last Chance at Love: Terminal Romances
1982: Population and Other Problems (China National Publications)
1983: The Theory of Lengthwise Rolling (MIR)
1984: The Book of Marmalade: Its Antecedents, Its History and Its Role in the World Today (Constable)
1985: Natural Bust Enlargement with Total Power: How to Increase the Other 90% of Your Mind to Increase the Size of Your Breasts (Westwood Publishing Co)
1986: Oral Sadism and the Vegetarian Personality (Brunner/Mazel)
1987: No Award
1988: Versailles: The View From Sweden University of Chicago Press)
1989: How to Shit in the Woods: An Environmentally Sound Approach to a Lost Art (Ten Speed Press)
1990: Lesbian Sadomasochism Safety Manual (Lace Publications)
1991: No Award
1992: How to Avoid Huge Ships (Cornwell Maritime Press)
1993: American Bottom Archaeology (University of Illinois Press)
1994: Highlights in the History of Concrete (British Cement Association)
1995: Reusing Old Graves (Shaw & Son)
1996: Greek Rural Postmen and Their Cancellation Numbers (Hellenic Philatelic Society)
1997: The Joy of Sex: Pocket Edition (Mitchell Beazley)
1998: Development in Dairy Cow Breeding and Management: and New Opportunities to Widen the Uses of Straw (Nuffield Farming Scholarship Trust)
1999: Weeds in a Changing World (British Crop Protection Council)
2000: High Performance Stiffened Structures (Professional Engineering Publishing)
2001: Butterworths Corporate Manslaughter Service (Butterworths)
2002: Living With Crazy Buttocks (Kaz Cooke - Penguin
)2003: The Big Book of Lesbian Horse Stories (Kensington Publishing)
2004: Bombproof Your Horse (J A Allen)
2005: People Who Don't Know They're Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It (Gary Leon Hill - Red Wheel/Weiser Books)
2006: The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification (Harry N Abrams)
2007: If You Want Closure In Your Relationship, Start With Your Legs (Simon & Schuster US)

On Collaboration

I recently had a revelation. My brother also writes. This was a huge surprise. I mean, you’d think two siblings would talk about the driving forces in their lives. Not always so, apparently. It took a family tragedy to get us talking.

And as we talked, an even bigger surprise followed—he writes Science Fiction with some decidedly male/female interaction. (Notice that I don’t call it “romance,” because, well you know, he’s a guy and there’s this stigma against guys writing romance.) Makes you wonder if there’s some sort of genetic connection to our writing compulsion, doesn’t it? Or maybe it’s just the way our brains are wired, not just genetically, but since we were shaped by the same environmental factors in our formative years. I dunno. But I do find it, as Spock would say, “Fascinating.”

So after a deluge of emails back and forth, we decided we’re going to try our hand at collaborating on a series of short stories, and possibly a novel that he’s been working on for a number of years.

I thought this might make an intriguing series of posts for Take it to the Stars. I’ll keep you all informed about our progress. I’ll title these articles: The State of the Collaboration. Maybe Terry will even chime in with a post or two. And if we get to the point of publishing or e-publishing something, well, you’ll hear it here first. Deal?

*sticking figurative toe in figurative water*

This could be a blast. Or not.