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    Lazy days are gone again …

    Since I’ve been working like crazy and finally finished my Assassin revisions, I gave myself a rare weekend off. I absolutely did nothing all weekend but read books, eat junk food, and watch my A-Team DVDs. Good times. 😎

    But now, it’s time to get back to work. First up: writing a rough draft of Assassin 2. I hope to get that done by the end of July/first of August. We’ll see how it goes. Then, I need to think about Assassin 3, crank out another fantasy idea I have, and maybe play around with this Southern contemporary I want to work on.

    Oh yeah, I also need to whittle down my TBR pile, update the Web site, and do some promo stuff for Jinx. I need a clone. Sigh.

    What about you? Got any projects you want to get done now that it’s officially summer?

  • My year in books … so far …

    Since July is creeping up on us, I’d thought I’d do a post about the books I’ve read so far this year (which is halfway gone again!).

    Number of books I’ve read this year: 29. Not too bad, considering I’ve also written (and rewritten) two books in the same time frame. And yes, Virginia, I have a day job too. I’m hoping to hit 60 books read by the end of the year.

    New authors I’ve read: 13, including Stephanie Meyer, HelenKay Dimon, Patricia Briggs, Ilona Andrews, Lilith Saintcrow and more. (Also, this isn’t counting a bunch of new people I read through various anthologies). I’ll try anybody at least once.

    Best read so far this year: Warprize by Elizabeth Vaughn. I really enjoyed this fantasy romance.

    Runner-up: The short story Dead Man’s Chest by Rachel Caine in the My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding anthology. It’s about pirates, yargh! And it probably would have taken the top spot, if it had been a whole book.

    Strangest read so far: Batman: The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller. Not what I was expecting from a Batman story. Weird, just weird.

    Books/authors in my TBR pile: Lover Enshrined by J.R. Ward; Ill Wind by Rachel Caine; Bitten by Kelley Armstrong; a bunch of books in Marjorie M. Liu’s Dirk & Steele series; and Tripwire by Lee Child, among others.

    Books I plan to buy at some point: Fire & Ice by Anne Stuart; Devil May Care by Sebastian Faulks; and some titles by P.N. Elrod, along with too many others to list here. 

    What about you? What’s your favorite read so far this year? Have you discovered any new authors you absolutely adore? Share in the comments.

  • 881 and counting …

    Finished Resolution by Robert B. Parker. I was looking for a quick read and spotted this one at the library. Plus, the setting intriguied me, since Parker leaves Spenser and his other Boston characters behind in this western. Yep, it’s a western. And I do love me some westerns. 😎

    Tough guy Everett Hitch hires on as a lookout at a saloon in the dusty town of Resolution and soon finds himself in the middle of a fight for control of the town. The players include a saloon owner, a miner, a ragtag group of ranchers, and a couple other gunslingers. But Hitch always remains cool under pressure, especially after his friend Virgil Cole comes to Resolution to help him sort things out. Gunfights and more ensue.

    I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Nobody does tough-guy dialogue better than Parker. His books are almost completely dialogue, which makes them quick reads. I just love his breezy style.

    The plot, well, it’s a pretty typical Parker story. An honorable tough guy with his own code stands up to some unsavory characters. But it works well in the western setting. I would have liked Hitch to have to work a little more to sort things out (especially since he kills the town’s reigning gunslinger a couple days after he gets into town). I also thought the mine owner (another one of the bad guys) bit the dust a little too early.

    But overall, if you’re looking a quick summer read or want to try Parker, pick up this book. It’s a good introduction to his style without the backstory involved in his other detective series. Thumbs up.

    Up next: Sugar Daddy by Lisa Kleypas.

    Books in my TBR pile: 17 or so. I keep adding and subtracting books …

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    ‘Tis done … for now …

    2 Comments

    I finished up the Assassin revisions last night. Huzzah! The new, shiny book has been e-mailed to my agent for her perusal. I’m sure she’ll have some more suggestions for me on how to tweak it, but for now, it’s done.

    This is probably the hardest book I’ve ever written. I’ve been wanting to write a book about an assassin for about seven years now. Over the years, I’ve taken a couple different stabs at it. The book started out as an epic fantasy. But I’m not really good writing about swords and horses and castles. So I put that aside and started a new epic fantasy. Again, it sucked. And I finally realized I needed to write something set in a more modern, contemporary world. Somewhere along the way, I got the idea for Karma Girl and started writing that.

    But in between writing the Bigtime books, I wanted to start a new series, so I sent a bunch of proposals to my agent. She picked the Assassin one and basically said, “Write this one. Now.”

    So I wrote it and sent it to her. She wanted me to revise it. So I did. Other people read it. We got some more feedback on the book. And now, I’ve revised it again. We’re talking major revision here. This time, I gutted the last half of the book. Yep, I threw away about 50,000 words and rewrote the back half. Characters, scenes, story arcs, all of it changed. But the book is much, much better because of it.

    And I did all this in three weeks. I’ve pretty much been working on the revisions nonstop, three, fours hours every night, half of the weekends. But now, it’s done, and I’m taking a few days off from writing — before I start plotting out Assassin 2.

    But you know what? Rewriting the last half of the book was probably some of the easiest work I’ve ever done. Makes me think I’ve finally found my groove with this series. After seven years, it’s about time, ain’t it? 😎

  • Summer body count …

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    I managed to finish my Assassin revisions and read back through the manuscript this weekend. Huzzah!

    I think the changes that were suggested have made the book much, much stronger. Now, I sort of know what I’m doing with it and where the story’s going. But more importantly, it feels more like a Jennifer Estep book now, even though it’s quite a bit darker than the Bigtime books.

    Now, I just need to make my edits this week and send the whole thing off to my agent — and then I can start my next project. That one has a working title of Charm Queen. Think a Western with magic.

    While I was going back through the Assassin book, I started thinking about Entertainment Weekly. In previous summers EW has had a summer movie body count, in which staff writers go through each summer movie and count the number of people who die. By the end of the summer, the total is in the thousands.

    So I thought I’d do my own body count for the Assassin book. Gin (my main character) kills 16 people during the course of the book: 2 at an insane asylum, 2 at the orchestra, 1 at a restaurant, 3 at her friend’s apartment, 4 at the house of a police detective, 1 in a subdivision, and 3 at a rock quarry.

    Whew! She’s a busy girl, my Gin. But that’s what happens when you get framed for murder and are on the run for your life. 😈

    For those of you who are curious, the Assassin book has a working title of Gin on the Rocks. Now, I’ve got to start thinking about the sequel — and how to up the body count. Because sequels should always be better than the original book, don’t you think? 😎