Am I An Author If You’re Not A Reader?
The giveaway is progressing nicely, and my evil plan is coming to fruition … It looks like several of my books were moved out of the To Be Read pile and achieved the exalted status of read. Hooray!
I’m reading the reviews (hope that doesn’t weird you out) and LOVING them! It’s bad to choose favorites, but MaryAlice – you ROCK! It’s wonderful when a reader is willing to try genres she’s not sure of. After all, reading time is dear, and you want to spend it on the kind of stories you like. I’m always so grateful when a reader is willing to try mine.
Yesterday, three reviews appeared for the Apocalyptos by J. Magee that charged me up with new enthusiasm for the series. Yes, there will be more books! Copperhead is next, and I’ll be focusing on it as soon as Bride of Fae comes out. I was having a stressful, blucky day yesterday. Reading those reviews changed my outlook.
So am I an author if you’re not a reader? I don’t think so. The real magic happens when you read the story and make it your own.
So thank you, all of you, for spending some of your time reading my books – so much more precious than the 99 cents or six dollars – and thank you from the bottom of my heart for your feedback. I wish everyone could win!
I Can’t Not Look!
It’s Sunday! What fresh new insults to women – and men who like women – will Game of Thrones bring tonight?
If I had any grit, I’d stop watching the series. But I can’t not look! I want to see Arya use the pointy end, and I want to watch someone – preferably Sansa – chop off Joffrey’s loathsome noggin.
And I want dragons, dammit!
$100 Gift Certificate Giveaway
I’ve been trying to think of another giveaway while I finish up Bride of Fae, and I’ve frankly stolen this idea from my author friend Sandra Edwards and decided to run a CONTEST for all my readers out there!
GRAND PRIZE: $100 gift certificate from Amazon or B&N (winner’s choice).
TO ENTER: all you need to do is review one (or all) of my books. The review can be GOOD or BAD, it doesn’t matter to me. Just leave a review giving your opinion of the book.
[see a list of book links here]
Post your review anywhere online (i.e., Amazon.com, BN.com, Goodreads, your blog, or any other place you can think of), then leave the link in the Rafflecopter widget below (or send me a message via the comments, Facebook, or email and I’ll enter it for you) to let me know where you posted the review.
PLEASE NOTE: YOU MUST LEAVE A REVIEW OF AT LEAST TWENTY (20) WORDS (BASED ON AMAZON’S GUIDELINES) FOR YOUR REVIEW TO QUALIFY AS AN ENTRY.
ALSO PLEASE NOTE: TO BE ENTERED IN THE CONTEST, YOU MUST CONTACT ME TO LET ME KNOW YOU’VE LEFT A REVIEW AND WHERE YOU POSTED YOUR REVIEW OR LEAVE THAT INFORMATION IN THE RAFFLECOPTER WIDGET BELOW. You can leave the information in a comment here, on my Facebook wall, or send it to me via email. Or you can enter the information yourself in the Rafflecopter widget below.
For each review, you’ll get one entry per site where you post the review. So, the more places you post, and the more books you review, the more chances you have to win!
If you have already posted a review for any of my books at Amazon, BN, etc., you can enter too!
First round of the contest ends May 31st. Winner will be chosen via Random.org. Winner will be notified via email, and will be announced on my Facebook fan page and here at the website by June 10th.
For subsequent months, the contest will end on the last day of the month and the winner will be announced by the 5th of the following month. You only need to enter each review once. Your information will remain in the “pot” for future months until you win!
For the latest news on the contest, visit my fan page on Facebook.
Disclaimer: A positive review is not necessary to win. Contest will likely end someday. In the event the contest is cancelled, a prize will be issued for the month in which cancellation takes place.
Good Luck!
LK
Leopold’s (Final?) Upgrade
Here is the latest upgrade for The Loves of Leopold Singer. I think this one will stick at last. It’s coming out of Amazon Select on April 25 and will be back at B&N and iTunes.
The Ugly Treatment of Women in Game of Thrones
I’ve been grousing about Game of Thrones a lot since the new season started. The rampant degrading treatment of women is pissing me off. I’ve been bitching about it on Facebook, but I find I have a full post’s worth of disgust to express.
Martin’s created a world of beautiful pornographic sex and pornographic violence too. By that, I mean it feels like a lot of times the sex *is* violence, and the violence is getting somebody (Martin?) off. It’s easy story-telling. A shiny object designed to fake the viewer into thinking something is going on.
I call it pornographic because the sex or the violence turns characters into objects and uses them without acknowledging their humanity.
And all with a wink to the audience. See how cool I am? How clever? See what nasty and degrading things I can say and get away with? Oh, but it’s fine because I’m awesome!
Martin throws in token undegraded women in positions of (secondary and compromised) power. But Arya! but Dani!
Even Yara Greyjoy, elevated to the position of heir, couldn’t get away with it unmolested. Her brother had to feel her up and talk dirty to her all way from the docks to the castle.
But it was supposedly okay because she had snappy comebacks.
The show tries to pull me, the viewer, in on it. Puts me in the position of compliance, agreement. I’m not compliant. Do men who watch this crap get off on it? Do other women feel abused by it like I do? I don’t find it clever. I find it lazy, abusive. It makes me wonder if only men are involved in positions of power on the production team.
There are two scenes in Firebird where characters are abused sexually for different reasons. They were difficult to write, and I debated whether to keep them in. In the end, I did because they are essential to the story. But I don’t try to make the reader enjoy the scenes or think of the abuse as clever or entertaining.
It comes to this: I’m not against abusive sex or violence in stories. I’m against presenting them as sources of gratification to the reader/viewer. At least, that’s my hypothesis. I’m still testing it.
I’m still watching Game of Thrones. I keep watching for Dani and Arya and Dinklage. But I feel myself losing interest. I feel myself not wanting to waste my time.
April Reading Challenge and $25 Amazon Gift Card Too
Stella at Ex Libris is hosting a year-long reading challenge, and the Apocalyptos are sponsoring the month of April.
This month, it’s all about Science Fiction Romance.
If you review any (not just by LK Rigel) science fiction romance this month, be sure to sign up for Stella’s challenge and post the link to your review. It’s fun, your review will get new readers, and you might win a $25 Amazon gift card. It’s all good!
Of course I’d love to see some more reviews of Space Junque, Spiderwork, and Bleeder out there. And the poor Apocalypto Omnibus has zero reviews at B&N and only four at Amazon. Two of them aren’t very nice, ha. One reader couldn’t finish because they were so lacking in imagination, ha, and another found them pornographic. (?)
Anyway! If you’ve read any science fiction romance you’d like to leave a review for, April is a good month to get that done.
Some Science Fiction Romance To Consider
(Click on the pix for their Goodreads pages)
Discovery: A Far Out Romance – you know I love this fun romance!
Grimspace – the one that starts off the Sirantha Jax series.
Once Upon a Time in Space – how can you resist this perfectly titled novel?
Heather runs the wonderful Galaxy Express website. There just happens to be a current post about SFR news!
Encrypted – if you haven’t discovered Lindsay Buroker yet, dooooo eeeeeeeet!
Win a $100 Gift Card from Amazon or B&N
As Ereader News Today reports:
Sandra Edwards is having a monthly contest for anyone who has read any of her books where she is giving away a $100 Gift Certificate from Amazon, BN or iTunes – winner gets to choose.
All that you need to do to enter is leave a review for one of her books – good OR bad.
You can leave a review at any number of sites and you will get one entry for every site that you leave a review.
So, there’s not much that you need to do to get entered but the reward will be very nice!
You know we’re all about winning gift cards here – and Sandra’s books are so fun to read. Good luck!
Firebird (Bleeder) and Give Me Nominated For Best of 2011!
This is fun! The Romance Reviews has nominated Give Me – A Tale of Wyrd and Fae as Best Fantasy Romance of 2011!
(Give Me is on sale now for only $1.49 for both Nook and Kindle.)
But wait! There’s more!!
TRR has also nominated Firebird (Apocalypto 3) as best Romantic Science Fiction / Futuristic of 2011.
The voting has started and continues until March 31. There are lots of wonderful books in the matchups. If you enjoyed Give Me or Bleeder, I’d love some support in the voting!
And thank you SO MUCH to the nominators.
Tweet Convo of the Day
Give Me – Back at B&N and on sale.
My experiment with Amazon’s Lending Library isn’t over, but it’s certainly in a new phase. I’ve taken Give Me – A Tale of Wyrd and Fae out of the Select program, and it’s again available for Nook.
Nook readers (and Fire users) will enjoy the beautiful interior design by TERyvisions.
Everyone will love the sale price: $1.49. Wowzers!
Space Junque, Spiderwork, and Bleeder are also back at B&N, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised – there have been sales!
I’ll probably still use the Select program for the first three months of stand-alone books. I just don’t have a large enough fan base chomping at the bit to buy my books when they come out, so I need to use what promotional tools are available to me. But I can’t see staying in the LL as viable in the long term.
500 Fairy Tales Freed From Archive
This story from The Guardian sounds like it could be a modern fairy tale in itself.
I wonder what the magic words were to open the archive?
A link to one of the new stories is included. I like the one about the girl, the pond, the witch, and the knife. Gruesome!
Fathers and Daughters
I think today is my father’s 80th birthday. I’m not sure – all the time I was growing up, I was confused as to whether it was the 19th or the 20th of February.
That’s the relationship I had with my father – it was hard to ask him even when his birthday was, and then later too hard to admit I didn’t know. I say “had” though he’s still alive because I have no relationship with him now. It’s better that way.
Thinking about it, I write about father/daughter relationships quite often. In The Loves of Leopold Singer, the woman with the better father (and by that, I mean the father who is there for her and actively cares for her) ends up with the hero. When a rake becomes a good father, he becomes a better man. Even in my fantasy Bleeder, a king who is a good father goes against ingrained custom to give his daughter something royal first-borns are always denied: a name.
A lot of my heroines are orphans.
In the upcoming Bride of Fae, the fairy Aubrey is tormented by feelings for his daughter Elyse. He’d rather not deal with the inconvenience. Hm. A psych candidate could write a dissertation on my books….
At any rate, I don’t wish my father many happy returns of the day. It isn’t a sad thing. I’m glad to be free of him. But then, maybe I’m not.