So, I’m surf­ing some of the romance blogs I fre­quent, and I came across this post over at Mag­i­cal Mus­ings talk­ing about what makes an ideal book — com­plete with the cover for Karma Girl.

I sent an ARC of the book to Edie Ramer, one of the MM blog­gers, and she wrote me back to tell me how much she liked it. But putting it with a blog about the ideal book? Wow. That’s a tremen­dous compliment.

I got a good review in Pub­lish­ers Weekly and some kick-ass cover blurbs from other authors, like Mary­Jan­ice David­son and Erin McCarthy. But I’m most anx­ious to see what read­ers think about Karma Girl. Will they like it? Love it? Hate it? Think it’s the worst thing that’s ever got­ten published?

I know I’m going to get some bad reviews. Every author does (unless you’re J.R. Ward who seems to get uni­ver­sal acclaim). But one per­son liked my book — enough to rec­om­mend it to other people. That makes me smile. Makes me feel proud. Makes me feel down­right giddy. It’s the rea­son I wrote Karma Girl in the first place – to enter­tain some­one with my wacky world of super­heroes and villains. 

So, even if every other reviewer in the known uni­verse rips me a new one for writ­ing such dri­vel, I know I made at least one per­son happy. And the glow from that won’t fade for a long, long time.

How do you cope while you wait for the reader reviews to come in? Inquir­ing minds want to know …

I have given my first offi­cial inter­view for Karma Girl. It’s up on Mid­night Quills and was done by my fel­low Smoky Moun­tain Romance Writer Ruth Brown. Thanks Ruth!

So, go check it out!

Fin­ished Dark Lover by J.R. Ward last night.

This is the first book in Ward’s wildly pop­u­lar Black Dag­ger Broth­er­hood series. This one is about Wrath, the last pure-blooded vam­pire on the planet. Wrath is the leader of the broth­er­hood and an absent king to his peo­ple. But that all changes when an old friend asks him to look after his half-human daugh­ter, Beth Ran­dall. Beth is about to become a vam­pire — and she has no clue about it until Wrath shows up on her doorstep.

My first thought on read­ing this book? That Ward writes like a man. I don’t mean it as an insult, just a note on her style. Dark Lover is tough and gritty and, well, dark. More urban fan­tasy than para­nor­mal romance. This could eas­ily be a Reacher novel by Lee Child, if Reacher was a vam­pire instead of merely a mor­tal bad-ass. Or an Earl Swag­ger book by Stephen Hunter.

I’ve never been a big fan of the vam­pire romance, mainly because I don’t think suck­ing some­one else’s blood is sexy. And I just never got the whole blood = sex = life mys­tique. Plus, the mar­ket has been flooded with vam­pire romances in recent years, and I’ve read some pretty bad ones.

But I really enjoyed Dark Lover. Ward has crafted an imag­i­na­tive, inter­est­ing world that’s far more detailed than the usual we’re-vampires-we-suck-blood you get in so many books. The terms were a lit­tle con­fus­ing at first, but the glos­sary in the front helped. Ward intro­duced a pan­theon of char­ac­ters (all with pretty equal screen time), but wove all of them and the story threads together in some cool, unex­pected ways. My only quib­ble? There’s a cer­e­mo­nial scene in the last third of the book that really slooowed down the action. Other than that, big thumbs up.

And I have to admit that read­ing Dark Lover made me want to write some fan­fic. About a girl who’s fam­ily is killed by the lessers (Ward’s bad guys) and who grows up to be a war­rior her­self — such a kick-ass one that she wants to join the broth­er­hood. But they don’t want to let a human join their ranks — espe­cially a chick. Stuff blows up. Peo­ple die. There’s lots of sex. The Vir­gin Scribe inter­venes. The con­clu­sion is stun­ning and heart-wrenching and beautiful … 

Well, you get the idea. I do this a lot. Put my own spin on other people’s books, worlds, TV shows, movies. Insert my own char­ac­ters into the drama in my head, rewrite scenes, add new ones. Oh yeah, and totally dis­re­gard other people’s magic/caste sys­tems.

The girl-becomes-warrior story is actu­ally one I’ve been toy­ing with for a while now. I’ve writ­ten a cou­ple of ver­sions of it, but I finally think I know what I’m going to do with it — and make it totally my own. It’s on my to-write list, after I fin­ish Big­time 4 …

What about you? Do you like Ward’s tough style? Hate it? Do any authors make you want to write fan­fic? Inquir­ing minds want to know …

Saw 300 this week­end, the new movie based on the graphic novel by Frank Miller. It’s about a group of 300 Spar­tans who stood against a mas­sive army at the ancient Bat­tle of Thermopylae.

It was your usual swords-and-sandal movie. A noble, but brash king, Leonidas, leads his men into bat­tle with every­one know­ing that they’re going to die. Yet, some­how, they take lots of folks with them before they go. And everybody’s happy to be slaugh­tered in such a hon­or­able, glo­ri­ous way.

My sig­nif­i­cant other loves ancient his­tory, so he thought 300 totally rocked. It was actu­ally a lot bet­ter than I thought it would be. Cool affects, a good lead actor in Ger­ard But­ler, inter­est­ing bat­tle scenes. A lit­tle gory, and a lit­tle slow in places, but overall, thumbs up.

But I did have a cou­ple quib­bles. First of all — the boob shots. There were lots of bare breasts in this movie for really no rea­son. But then again, there are lots of boobs in comics and graphic nov­els (like Miller’s Sin City series). Very big, very unre­al­is­tic boobs that would tip a nor­mal woman over any­time she tried to walk. They’re just boobs, guys. Every other per­son has a pair of them. Get over it.

I also had a prob­lem with Leonidas’ wife, who basi­cally lets a cor­rupt coun­cil­man have his way with her in order to con­vince him to help her con­vince the Spar­tan gov­ern­ment to send troops to back up her hus­band. Honey, don’t you know he’s going to double-cross you? He’s cor­rupt.

Some of the folks/monsters the Spar­tans fight were also a lit­tle over the top, like the 10-foot-tall guy who tries to sep­a­rate Leonidas’ head from his body. But Miller seems to have a fas­ci­na­tion with grotesque crea­tures (like Yel­low Bas­tard in Sin City). And, of course, the mon­sters all had really bad teeth. You’d think they’d have good teeth, as much as they used them to eat people.

What about you? Have you seen 300? Plan to run scream­ing the other way? Inquir­ing minds want to know …

I wanted to let every­one know that I’ve com­pletely updated the Web site in antic­i­pa­tion of Karma Girl’s release on May 1.

There’s tons of infor­ma­tion on Karma Girl on the Books page, includ­ing what other authors are say­ing about it and some fun facts. I’ve also posted the lat­est info on my Nov. 6 release, Hot Mama.

On the Bio page, you’ll find infor­ma­tion about me (prob­a­bly more than you ever wanted to know!).

The Appear­ances & Con­tests page fea­tures my book sign­ings, talks, and blogs, as well as infor­ma­tion on my cur­rent con­test. (You still have until April 15 to sign up for my newslet­ter to be in to win some B&N gift cards and Rubik’s Cubes.) I’m also giv­ing away free book­marks. More stuff, like my newslet­ters and some arti­cles I’ve done on writ­ing, will be added soon.

The Media page has high-resolution pho­tos of the Karma Girl cover, press releases, facts about romance books, and more.

But I think the coolest things are all the extras I’ve added. On the Links & Fun page, you can take a quiz to see which Big­time super­hero or ubervil­lain you’re most like. There are also some teaser quotes from Karma Girl that give you more insight into the char­ac­ters and story.

And finally, on the Big­time page, you’ll find a who’s who of some of the more notable super­heroes and ubervil­lains, includ­ing Car­men Cole’s dossier on the Fear­less Five and Ter­ri­ble Triad. You can also take a tour of all the major land­marks in Bigtime.

Whew! It’s been a lot of work, but I hope you’ll take a few min­utes to surf through all the infor­ma­tion. And please, feel free to e-mail me at jennifer@jenniferestep.com or com­ment on the blog about what you like and don’t like. :cool:

What would you like to see on the Web site? More extras from the books? Arti­cles on writ­ing? What makes you visit an author’s Web site over and over? Inquir­ing minds want to know …