Just a quick note to say I'll be offline for about a week or so, catch y'all later.
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Image by Yupa1 via Flickr Kindle's coming to Target ! Just like peanut butter and chocolate, and fine wine with a good cheese (must be lunchtime with all these food similes), two of my favorite things are coming together. Target stores are going to be selling Kindles in the near future. It's starting with stores in Minneapolis ('natch) and South Florida (Yay!). This makes me happy as a Kindle author, and as someone who's been a loyal Target (or as my pretentious friends say, "Tar- zhey ") fan for many, many years. Related articles by Zemanta Target to begin selling Kindle (news.cnet.com)
Image via Wikipedia Back from visiting the family in Minnesota. I want to thank the North Star state for having excellent and warmer than average weather while I was there, especially after I warned my Florida native husband it could snow in April in Minneapolis. He was not excited by this news. While I was gone my yard man planted the orange tree I bought. When I went out to check on it today and give it a drink, it was covered in fragrant flowers! I'm so looking forward to eating fresh oranges from my own tree next year. Didn't get much writing done while dealing with family business, but I did tweak a couple of scenes to my satisfaction. Tomorrow it will be back to my regular schedule, and I'm looking forward to finishing this first draft soon.
"Johnson’s Books might not be the first stop a sailor made in Portsmouth–the brothels likely had a better claim to that distinction–but it was popular among the officers and seamen who could read. A good book, like music or games, helped to make the voyages pass more easily. She’d seen men who were seamed and scarred by flying shot and timber caress a book of poetry in anticipation of long nights and little to do." --The Bride and the Buccaneer I sent some books off yesterday to Operation Paperback , an organization where volunteers mail gently used books to soldiers serving overseas. I was sorry I couldn't send more. There were quite a few requests for military histories and biographies, but I'm still holding on to all my research books so I couldn't send those. I could fill a request for paranormal romances, and I'm thinking I need to catch up on my suspense reading so I can send those paperbacks along. I still find books that end up on my keeper shel...
No Pink Plume for Me Ah well. Like my Gators, I was eliminated early on. I won't be winning the coveted pink plume in the DA BWAHA, but I can say "Wait 'til next year!" And the radio show went very well. We had quite a few callers on "Conner Calling" and I think we could easily have gone another hour. It was great fun, and I look forward to returning on a future show.
Radio Daze Reminder! Listen for me at 1 p.m. EDT on "Conner Calling" on Friday, and you can catch the show on streaming audio here. It's WUFT/WJUF's phone-in/email-in talk show about books and authors. The North Florida NPR station reaches from Lake City down to nearly the middle of the state, so you can hear me live or on your computer. We'll be talking about The Bride and the Buccaneer , ebooks, Florida history and more, so tune in!
I'M IN THE TOURNAMENT!!! "64 books. 1 champion. Get your game on." It's time for the March Madness of the DA BWAHA . As one wag said it so well, the annual competition is "where romance fans stomp all over their favorite authors' hearts to get to the finish line and a shiny new iPad!" You can sign-in and fill your brackets until Wednesday, and then the voting and elimination begins. The Bride and the Buccaneer is in the Historicals category and I'm flummoxed to have been chosen given the array of talent alongside my book. Nonetheless, I would appreciate your stomping all over those other authors' hearts and voting for me. Want to buy some of the books in the tournament? Go to All Romance DA BWAHA store for the ebooks, or follow the Amazon link at the tourney site for the paper editions. Read great books! Win wonderful prizes! Does it get any better than that?
MORE LIBRARY LOVE I attended a Foundation meeting yesterday and heard some great things about awards our library is winning, ones we're nominated for, and perhaps most importantly, the work we're doing at the county jail. We believe our public library may be the only one in the nation with a full branch of the library housed in the jail. It has much of the material you'd find at any library branch, with a few differences. For example, all the books are paperbacks so they cannot be used as weapons. Only the librarians have internet access on the branch computers, though the patrons can use CDs such as the Florida Statutes to do research. But here's the surprising part. The sheriff's office pays half of the expense to maintain the library, and has for years through administrations of sherriffs both Republican and Democrat. I've known all the sherriffs in the 30 years since the jail library opened, and none of those men and women were bleeding-heart libe...
Radio Daze! I'm going to be on "Conner Calling", WUFT/WJUF's phone-in/email-in talk show about books and authors. It's our North Florida NPR station, with a signal reaching from Lake City down to nearly the middle of the state. Listen for me on Friday, March 19 at 1 p.m. ET, and you can catch the show on streaming audio here.
Congratulations to Goodreads Winners! Three people will receive signed copies of The Bride and the Buccaneer in the mail this week, and nearly 1,000 entered the Goodreads contest. Thanks to all of you who entered! If you've purchased a copy of The Bride and the Buccaneer or any other Darlene Marshall novel and would like a signed bookplate, email me at darlenemarshall[at]darlenemarshall[dot]com.
Image via Wikipedia Reflections on Wedded Bliss I celebrated my 34th wedding anniversary this week. We went out to supper the night before with friends, exchanged gifts (he got cufflinks, I got a lovely peridot ring), and our plans to watch a movie and open up that special bottle of whisky morphed into watching ice dancing and drinking herbal tea, but hey, we're old. It got me thinking though. One of the remarks I hear about my heroes is that they're "nice". Sometimes I hear they're too nice. One faithful reader said she loved Jack Burrell from The Bride and the Buccaneer because he's my "sweetest hero yet", a description that would annoy Jack greatly and cause him to scowl ferociously. He sees himself as a fierce privateer, the scourge of Caribbean shipping. He is that fierce privateer. But he's also the hero. And I can't write a hero without looking at him critically and asking myself, "Could I marry him?" My perception...