Favourite Things

A light-hearted post today with lists of my favourite things.

Favourite Romance Authors/Book
Nalini Singh - Caressed By Ice
Lora Leigh - Forbidden Pleasure
JRWard - Lover Awakened
Lori Foster - Too Much Temptation
Sherrilyn Kenyon - Night Play
Angela Knight - Jane's Warlord
Christine Feehan - Shadow Game
Marjorie M.Lui - Shadow Touch
Larissa Ione - Pleasure Unbound
Sydney Croft - Unleashing the Storm
Eve Kenin - Driven

Favourite SF/F Authors/Series
Cory Daniells - The Last T'en series
Anne McCaffrey - The Dragons of Pern + The Ship Who Sang series (couldn't split them)
Andre Norton - Witch World series
Mercedes Lackey - The Heralds of Valdemar series
David Eddings - The Belgariad series



Favourite Destinations
New Zealand
Scotland
Egypt
Tasmania
Samoa

Favourite Movies
Avatar
The Lord of the Rings trilogy
Terminator series
Star Trek - all of them
Star Wars - all of them
Underworld series
Pitch Black
The Chronicles of Riddick
The Matrix trilogy
Serenity
The X-Men series
Pathfinder
Batman Begins
A Knights Tale
Silverado
The Sting
Dances With Wolves

Favourite Ways to Relax
Read
Play computer roleplaying games
Fishing
Sitting beside a river
Watching a storm
Vege out on the lounge with a good movie

Favourite TV shows
Star Trek
Farscape
Firefly
Dark Angel
Jericho
NCIS
Stingers
Police Rescue
Law and Order:SVU
America's/Australia's/NZ's Top Model
Lonesome Dove
North & South

Favourite Bands/Singers
John Farnham
The Corrs
Michael Jackson
Clannad
Shania Twain
Faith Hill
Amici

Favourite Animals
Cats - all sorts but particularly domestic cats, panthers, jaguars
Peregrine Hawk
Dragon (mythical)



Favourite Drinks
Coffee
Bailey's
Mango smoothie

Favourite Fruits
Mango
Watermelon
Lychees
Cherries

A Bloody Good Read

Ever read something that just sideswipes your emotions and you find yourself crying, laughing, cheering or sighing with contentment ALL the way through the book? Hang on to it if you have - they're a "keeper".

The "keepers" on my bookshelf are growing. I'm pretty ruthless these days when I add one as I have limited shelf space, so when I read something it really has to impact me and be a book I can go back and read more than once or twice.

I was over at Writers' Gone Wild Blog late last week and Maree Anderson posted a great blog on "That Scene I Just Can't Seem to Forget" and it got me really thinking about what has grabbed me in the past.

I discovered paranormal romance author, Lora Leigh's, Breed series before I realised she wrote for Ellora's Cave in their Romantica genre. Checking out her back-list I found her Men of August and Bound Hearts series and bought every single one I could lay my hands on.

Marly's Choice was the first book in the Men of August series and the first Romantica book I read. Forbidden Pleasure in the Bound Heart series was the second.

MC was hot as it was dark in it content, dealing with a pretty unpleasant issue (the issue brought out in this book was one I never thought to see in a "romance", especially considering how some people would find it objectionable). FP was hotter and the premise of a stalker preying on the heroine was pretty creepy. Full kudos to Ms.Leigh for handling both in such an amazing way. The emotion in both grabbed you from the start and ripped you through to the end.

For those of you who've read either of these books, you'll understand what I mean.

For those of you who haven't here are the blurbs...

Marly's Choice
Marly's love for Cade has spanned her teenage years, and survived strong, and intact into womanhood. Her fantasies and daydreams have sustained her, but she's no longer content with merely imagining the touch of his hands, the taste of his kiss. It's time to seduce the tough, sexy cowboy.
She's heard the rumours for years, the tales of his sexual preferences. She's prepared herself to accept his desires. Prepared her body for his touch. But she wasn't prepared for the choice to come...
Cade's dark desires, his sexual excesses are based in the past. In a time where pain, shame and blood stains his very soul. He carries a secret shared only with his brothers. A secret that has scarred the bond, the ability to be a brother or to accept the love of the men he was raised with. He knows the only way to prove his loyalty, his love for those brothers...and Marly will be the key.
She has a choice. She can surrender to Cade's needs, his soul deep desires, or she can walk away. A choice only Marly can make. A choice that will change her life forever.

Forbidden Pleasure
People have heard rumours about The Club, located just outside Washington, DC. And only its members know where men fo when they want to indulge the desire to share their women with a carefully selected male partner...
Former FBI agent John "Mac" McCoy resigned his membership from The Club when he married Keiley Hardin. Tenpting and innocent, sweet and secy, she would never accept Mac's desire to share her with another man. However, Keiley's growing curousite and Mac's own fantasies of sharing his wife haunt his dreams. And his passions.
Unable to wait any longer, Mac invites his best friend, Jethro Riggs, to their home with the intention of drawing Keiley into the pleasures that can only be achieved when two men love the same woman. But there's more going on in Mac's neck of the woods than a little additional pleasure. A past case involving a stalker who likes to play games has turned up again, but now Keiley is in the middle of it all. Passion and pleasure, danger and desire comine as the forbidden landscape becomes an addiction none of them can escape.


As I said, it was the emotion imbedded in books, the way Ms.Leigh used it within and between her characters to such astounding effect that captured me and left me so wrung out by the end.

I didn't just shelve the books afterwards - I ended up rereading both of them again straight away - they were so powerful I wanted to experience it all again and pick up on the bits I'd missed.

After visiting Maree's blog I decided I would reread both again - for the umpteenth time.

So, do you have a "keeper" on your shelf?

CRAFT: Attention Grabbing Beginnings (Part 4)

I hope you've been looking at the keepers on your shelf with new eyes, analysing what makes them tick. Besides revisiting some great books it's a great exercise in analysing what works, what makes them so riveting.

The last couple of keepers come from Sydney Croft (a new author on my "to keep" shelf) and Lyndsay Sands.

Faith Black has been beaten, drugged and imprisoned, but none of that scared her. No, what frightened her to the core was the man confined with her. Chained to an improvised medieval rack and bare form the waist up, he lay on his back, arms over his head, his incredible chest marred by bruises and a deep laceration that extended from his left pec to his right hip.
He might have been rendered immobile, but he was in no way helpless.
His weapon, far more dangerous than the telekinesis-to her, at least-was his overpowering sexuality, a force that tugged her toward him, made her burn with need despite their grave situation.
The opening sentence in SEDUCED BY THE STORM by Sydney Croft pulls me immediately into the book. A woman in a horrible situation, suffering, possibly helpless, definitely in danger.
How’s she going to get out of it? Wait a minute, she’s not worried about the danger she’s in, but the man chained to the rack opposite her? Is he the enemy? Hmm, she’s attracted to him. He’s trouble but not the sort I was expecting. What is it about him that makes her ignore a life threatening situation?
Gotta read on.

It was a high-pitched scream that woke Elvi. Piercing and full of terror, it ripped her from her sleep and had her moving before she was quite awake. She started up abruptly only to curse and drop back down when her head slammed into the wooden lid of the coffin. (THE ACCIDENTAL VAMPIRE by Lyndsay Sands)
Screaming victim – seen it, read it, it’s been done before in countless books. Someone responding to the victim – yep, also been done before. Head slamming into a coffin lid to rescue the victim – say what? Didn’t that grab you? Simple but effective twist on a ho-hum situation.

So, what makes an attention grabbing beginning?

• Creating lots of questions in the readers mind that need to be answered.
• Try using dialogue to open your scene– it’s active and immediately draws the reader in
• Sentence structure – short and sharp, use of alliteration etc. (I’m no grammar guru but you can see from some of the examples what to look for when analysing your own work)
• Empathy with the character – make the reader be able to recognise or relate to them in some way
• Take a familiar situation and give it a twist

My advice - get your own keepers off the shelf, read the opening paragraphs and analyse the tools they’ve used to hook the reader. Then try out those tools with your own writing.

Give it a go and reel in those readers hook, line and sinker!

CRAFT: Attention Grabbing Beginnings (Part 2)

How have you gone reading some of your "keepers" and looking at their opening few paragraphs? Did you analyse what made them appealing? Was it the author's voice? Did they open with riveting dialogue or a fantastic action scene or something usual with an unusual twist?

Here are two more of my favourite openings...

Not many people can handle the pain of being ripped apart, of having your limbs twisted and morphed until you are convinced your mind will shatter into a thousand tiny shards.
I can. And I’m tired of hiding my true nature so that humans can sleep better at night, convinced their actually in control of this tiny blue-brown planet. They need to know the truth-they need to realize that they’re not at the top of the food chain.
Far from it.
An unknown character’s point of view begins this scene in RED by Jordan Summers. The subject matter certainly grabs your attention in the first eleven words, doesn’t it? The second half of the sentence just makes you wince and wonder who this character is. Surely it can’t be the hero or heroine?
The ominous overtones deepen in the second paragraph. Why is this character tired of hiding his/her true nature? Why are they hiding anyway? Is this a world that doesn’t tolerate non-humans? Why do they feel the need to show humans they’re not at the top of the food chain? What did they do to the character to provoke him/her out of hiding?
Hey, more questions and a need to read on to find out the answers.

In SHADOW TOUCH by Marjorie M.Lui we meet our heroine in a strange situation.
Shortly before being shot in the back with a tranquilizer dart and dumped half-dazed on a stretcher, right before being stolen from the hospital by silent men in white coats, Elena Baxter stood at the end of a dying child’s bed, her hand on a small bare foot, and attempted to perform a miracle.
She was good at miracles. She had been practicing them for her entire life, and at twenty-eight years of age, had become quite proficient at the art of doing strange and wonderful things.
I don’t know about you but my mind immediately said, “Hey, what?” when I read the part about being tranquilized and kidnapped. I just had to read on to find out why someone would do that.
Then I discover our heroine is a woman I can like – she’s at a hospital helping a child she doesn’t even know, risking exposure to use her supernatural ability to heal the child. How can we not care for her and worry when we discover she’s been harmed?
What do I do? Read on.

I'll post another in this series next week. Stay tuned! :-)

What are your favourite opening lines from a novel?

Over the next few posts I'm going to share some of my favourite opening paragraphs/sentences from a few books I have on my "keepers" bookshelf and look at why those beginnings grabbed my attention.
While I'm deciding which ones rate a mention (yes, there are THAT many), perhaps you'd like to share your favourite "grab you by the throat and won't let go" beginnings? Any genre, I don't mind.
What's prompting these postings? Having been a judge in a few contests, and having entered several myself ;-), I've come to realise just how important those opening few paragraphs are in hooking the readers attention.
Think about it - what do you do when you go into a bookstore and thumb through a potential buy? Unless you know the author and he/she is one of your favourites that you buy on name alone, how do you choose to spend your hard earned money? Is it based on the cover, the blurb or does the opening page or two become the deciding factor?
Share your opinion and your favourites - perhaps they might end up being one of mine. :-)