Review of Spinning

Well;
I haven't had a review of one of my stories in what seems like a really long time. This one was interesting, and full of really good points. I'm flattered about the comments about my writing, and had to nod my head in agreement about the world-building, the length and the ending. The good news is that this is only the first book in the series, and the next will be out in October. There will be more of Ken and Mikko and the new oder of the world they live in soon. If you're at all interested in seeing what Kassa at Rainbow Reviews had to say about the story, here's the link: http://www.rainbow-reviews.com/?p=6401

"The writing is once again top notch, as expected of Samms, and the emotion connects with the reader immediately. "

(Sorry. I really couldn't resist, and that is such a fantastic compliment. I'm all ablush and yet indulging in self-pimping at the same time. Go me.)

Spinning Release

You may or may not have heard me mention this around. I've been very excited about ths book. It's very close to my heart for many reasons. It's a little dark, and was a little scary for me to write, but I think it has turned out fantastic, and it does end on a hopeful note. If you liked Poor Boy, you might enjoy this, though it's more paranormal and post natural disaster than urban grit. I hop you like it.

BLURB: Ken has fallen in love twice in his unnaturally long life. He's spent the rest of it trying to forget what falling out of it feels like. Not even the end of civilization has distracted him from his own misery, and now, desperate and achingly lonely, he calls the one person who's never hung up on him.


Mikko lost Ken once, letting life get in the way of love, and ever since the day Ken ran, he's been trying to track him down. He's honed his skills over the years, tracking Ken through the morass of men and ugly affairs, waiting for the chance to make things right.


Ken thinks his messy past is a secret from Mikko, and is too ashamed to admit any of it. Mikko has secrets of his own, things he's discovered about their very nature he's sure Ken's not ready to hear. Back together, after years of cat and mouse, Ken has to learn to trust a man he knows isn't telling him everything, and Mikko has to figure out how to fix something his own negligence might have destroyed beyond hope of repair.


Ken gazed out the back window of the house to the waves; dark, rolling mounds lifted the horizon and dropping it again into the abyss on a rhythmic schedule. Gulls wheeled and cried over the water, white dots between the grey overcast and the darker ocean.
"Newfoundland?" The incredulous accusation jerked Ken's attention back to the phone call, "Seriously?"

"What about it?" Ken tossed his soccer ball up and caught it one-handed. Held in his other hand, the cool plastic of his ancient cell warmed against his ear.

"Um...it's a rock, for starters." Mikko's indignation echoed thinly across the poor Atlantic connection. "Nothing grows there."

Ken's breath caught and his grip on the phone tightened. "So?" Belligerence, he noticed, had no echo. "You can't re-grow a broken heart, anyway." Gardening is for idiots who fall in love. He fixed his gaze on the barren rocks outside the window, taking comfort in their never-changing strength. The waves rose and fell on the same cadence as his breathing. Or maybe it was the other way round.

Silence didn't echo either, strung out along the line. He hung up. Sea waves splashed up over the rocks. He gulped in great breaths around the jagged edges. After a moment, the chirping ring tone soothed over his uneven breathing, and he flipped the phone open.
"I know it's tough, Kenny."

"You don't know fuck all." He snapped the phone closed again. A minute passed. Another. His knuckles ached. If he loosened his grip, he'd throw the damn thing. It wasn't Mikko's fault. Or the phone's. Still, he turned it to vibrate and tossed it onto the coffee table as another minute ticked past. The ring's vibration carried it almost to the floor before he lunged after the phone. His momentum carried him to the window and he leaned his forehead against the glass. The waves rolled in steadily as he opened the phone and held it to his ear.
"So where are you staying?" Mikko's voice drifted, soft over the connection. He never stayed properly hung-up on.

"Why does it matter?" Ken turned away from the ocean view and tossed the ball. This time it thumped off the wall, onto a bare table behind the couch, and obediently back into his hand, just like a soccer ball should. Gravity was predictable that way. Not like men.

"Because if I know you," came Mikko's reply, "and I do, you searched out some pre-furnished dump of an apartment and are sitting on someone else's lice-ridden mattress bouncing that ball of yours against paper-thin walls. Any moment now, an irate neighbour's going to come screaming down on you, and I should know where to send the cops after your bruised and bloodied self."
"It's a room, actually." Ken caught the ball on its second trip and hugged it against his chest. "I'm not sitting." He glanced at the grungy couch and grimaced, turning back to the comfort of the watery view. "No one wants to live this close to the ocean since the Wave hit. It was cheap."

"Even better."

"Shut it."

"So. Where?"

"What difference does it make?" You let me go. He smothered the logical, unwelcome follow-up that'd been impossible to stop, and Mikko had never been far, oceans notwithstanding. He always, always, answered his phone. Maybe he was a bit more like gravity than he was like other men.

"Kenny" Mikko's voice caressed his soul, even over the crappy connection. "Talk to me. Tell me what happened." He could be so gentle.

Ken's fingers shook as he closed the phone on that sweetness—that gentle caring.

Not even a minute passed before the phone amplified his trembling with its vibration. He opened it, brought it to his ear. This time, Mikko did not speak.

"Everyone leaves," Ken whispered at last, into the waiting silence.


Buy link: http://pinkpetalbooks.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=26&products_id=98

On Being a Professional

I have been formulating a post in my head about somthing for a while now. So much of our time as authors is spent on line, chatting with readers, with each other, and just generaly being social. Some of us are just not social creatures to begin with, so this venue is a heady outlet. But it's so important to be careful just how much we let out. I've been wanting to post about this issue or  while now, but since Lex Valentine just did, on the Avoid Writer's Hell blog, and she has said pretty much what I wanted to, I didn't see the point in reinventing the wheel.

So take a mosey on over and see what she has to say about it. It's great advice for new writers, and a fantastic reminder for anyone, really.

http://authorsalacart.com/awh/2010/04/06/how-much-is-too-much/

What do you think bout this?

Live and Let it Go

I blogged about this topic a couple of years ago. (You can read the post here ) Seems I wasn't the only one to have noticed that set of Submissions guidelines. Rick Reed posted today about the same thing (read his post here) and if you scroll through the comments, you'll see a lot of people had a lot to say about it, and nothing complimentary.

Now, like I maintain in my first post, every publisher has the right to publish what they like. There are publishers out there who don't publish straight romance, and that's just fine. The issue was in the wording. I had my own non-helpful comments to make, but one intrepid writer took action. (That I know of, anyway)

She contacted the publisher and opened a dialogue. She pointed out the offence, and asked politely that the publisher take another look at her guidelines and maybe see if they couldn't be changed. She received a favourable response, and if you go to the site now, you'll see that the guidelines have been changed. They still don't publish GLBT romance, but they don't lump it in with the dregs of society, either.

Why am I bringing this up, you ask? Well, because. I read all those comments. I read comments from people I respect and like, and my own comment, after the fact of the conversation between writer and publisher that brought about the change, and it saddened me.

So many of us were ready to sit back and bitch. Ready to complain and condemn, but only one of us took action, only one of us extended an olive branch and tried to breach the gap and bring understanding. And please be sure I'm including myself in the bitchers...okay, so that's not a word, but you know what I mean.

So why are we so ready to jump to the conclusion that we are being marginalized? I know. It's happened over and over for so very long, that we no longer expect anything different, and our reaction, perhaps understandably, defaults to defensive. Assume the worst. Protect, circle the wagons. It takes a special person to step outside that protecive circle and try to make a difference.

Some of you will point out that some person, somewhere, wrote those guidelines originally, and they maybe did, or do, believe that homosexuality is as great and terrible a thing as those vices with which it was grouped. You might be right. Maybe they did. Maybe they needed one person to say the right thing, to help them understand, to change their mind. Maybe it was a grave misjudgement, a thoughtlessness that they didn't notice what they were doing, or how it might be perceived, and one person pointing out the problem was enough to make the change. Maybe, they still think what they always thought, and just don't want to be perceived as offending anyone. The point is, we can't know what was or is in anyone else's head unless we ask.

Rather than ask, we all sat back and vented our own anger and frustration. That, my friends, is not communication. That isn't reaching for understanding, or striving for change. Are we immune to the hate and anger we're accusing others of? I don't think so. I know I'm not. There are two things I was reminded of today.

The first, and most important, is that I must be the change I want to see, and the other is that there is only one person whose actions I have any real influence over. Mine.

Let's hope I manage to hold on to my moment of clarity and do better next time. Anyone else have an eye opening moment when they realize they fell into a pattern that wasn't maybe as constructive as it might have been? Tell me about it, please.

On Writing Someone Who's Not You

I've been thinking, as happens occasionally, and as I have a do to attend tomorrow, the thought on my mind is about what I write; specifically, gay men. Lots of people would question how I know enough about gay men to be able to write about them. What can I tell those people? I'm not a gay man. This much is obvious. I'm a woman in a hereto marriage sitting firmly in the middle of the rainbow.

I've often wondered what men think about the men I write. Do they seem like the men they know? The men they hang out with? The men they might date? Some have said yes, my men are sufficiently manly to pass as gay men, and I'm pretty proud of that. My experience with men deals mostly with my straight, and sadly uninformed and often unacceptably biased relatives. But I have a lot of them around. I can write men. I know men. I just don't know a lot of gay men other than my friends on line.

So I write with what experience I have in mind, and hope I don't screw up the relationships too badly.

I think there might be (I don't know, but it stands to reason there probably are) gay men out there who resent women writing about them. I can see why they would. Won't say I understand the feeling. How can I? I'm not them. But I can logically follow their reasoning and it makes sense to me they might be uncomfortable, upset, downright mad about the situation. For more reading, I highly recommend the following articles, both extremely thoughtful and interesting views on the subject that is very important to a lot of people in the genre: http://gwailowrite.livejournal.com/292699.html and http://logophilos.livejournal.com/347199.html

Now, think about this: Haven't women objected to being fetishized and objectified in writing, movies and other media for, well, for decades upon decades? I might get in trouble for drawing this comparison, but bear with me for a moment. I'm not just talking about the Sheik and his kidnapped sex slave here. I'm talking about the strong, independent woman virginalized so her man can show her all the wonders of the bedroom, and the princess, presumably being trained to run a country, who needs a prince to save her. These are not role models I want for either of my children, the girl or the boy. I want my daughter to grow up knowing she has a right to her own sexuality and not to feel ashamed of it, and being confident and competent enough not to need a man. I want my son to grow up respecting the women in his life, caring for them, and honouring them and their right to know more than him and be stronger than him, because sometimes, this is the case. (Sorry guys. Gay or straight. You know it's true.)

So why would men want these stereo types any more than we do? Simple. They wouldn't.

So next time you think about writing your men, get into their heads. It might seem odd at first, but it's necessary. If the guy you write doesn't ask for directions, it isn't enough to use that stereotype. Ask yourself why. That's what's going to make your man an individual, pull him away from the stereotypical into the unique. "Because men don't" isn't an answer. Why does this man not? If it's for fear of his peers mocking him, where does that fear come from? No one acts in a vacuum, and the important thing here is to realize this. You are writing about people. Treat them that way. It will not only help to avoid hard feelings, it will make your story a better story, your characters more enjoyable, and you a better writer.

There is far more to this debate than I've encompassed here, I know. The links I've provided are a good start. If you want to know more, want to ask questions, come out to the chat at AvoidWriter'sHellChatters yahoo  (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AvoidWritersHellChatters/?yguid=339205342) tomorrow (Sat, Jan 16) and ask away. There will be plenty of writers there to answer questions and everyone is welcome, readers and writers alike.

Loveyoudivine Alterotica Newsletter

Because the newsletter fits better on my livejournal, I've posted it there. Wander on over when you get a chance, and have a looksee.

Hard to Believe.

It's been over a year, and yet, hard to believe it's only been about a year. But there it is. My first release with Freya's Bower came out October 1, 2008. Just over a year ago. I'm going to guess I didn't spend nearly enough time in the interval sleeping. And yet. I'm not really a prolific writer, as these things go. There are writers who put out a far sight more work than I do. Lots of them even have day jobs and families, as I do. So how do they do it? How do they find the time to write so many words and do so much promotion?




I can't answer the question for them, I only know, in my life, there has to be a balance. I have two extremely competent young children. A nine year old who can, in a pinch, or just when she feels like it, cook supper for the entire family. And we aren't talking about bowls of cereal, either. I mean slicing, dicing, and cooking up a mess of Sheppard's Pie. We're talking full course meal. Then there is the six year old who knows, if he's going to eat, he's going to have to fend for himself during the day. And he's recently graduated from Rice Crispies to toasting himself a bagel.



I know. I'm lucky. All I have to do is sit at the kitchen table and supervise, and things get done around me. Because I taught them to be self sufficient. I want my job with them to be over. Much as I love them, I am just the mother. Not the life support system, and they are coming to realize that.



So I sit at the kitchen table and write while they learn stuff around me. Now, the trick becomes finding meaningful time alone with my other children. The made up ones. The ones who really cannot exist without my input. The characters who wander in and out of my life and onto the pages of my stories are as much a drain on my resources as the children of my loins. I don't know how it is for other writers. I just know how it is for me. When I get into the throes of a writing binge, the rest of the world falls away, and heaven help anyone who comes tapping on my shoulder looking for a missing sock or a snack or spouting any problem short of oozing blood.



The trick, I've been told, is balance. I've never been much of one for balance. All or nothing. Multi-tasking ends when writing starts. The more quiet and distraction free my environment, the happier I am. But to write prolifically means shutting out more of the world more often. Hard to do when there is the constant "Mommy, Mom, Ma!!!" going on in the background, just under the skin of concentration. And really, they are young, still, they do need attention after a sort, and so cannot be shut out. Not really.



So how do you find the balance between one set of children and the other? How do you do it? I'd love to hear your thoughts.