finally. I didn’t actually do any book writing on Tuesday, but I did do a lot of writing. I had a couple of email interview requests from vampire romance and dearauthor that had to be answered, so I spent all morning doing those. And in the afternoon, the revisions for Eryn–my erotic paranormal novella that’s coming out with ImaJinn late March–came in, so those had to be done straight away.
Even Wednesday morning didn’t see a whole lot of book writing done. I had to write a backcover blurb for Eryn, which oftens feels harder to do than actual book writing. Here’s what I came up with (remember, this is in ‘as is’ form. My editor will probably tweak it to smoothe out the rough edges):
Eryn James was a medical secretary, not a police officer, but when the police came calling for her assistance in tracking down a killer, she jumped at the chance. Not because she had any real desire to hunt down a killer, but because the task involved playing bait in Lifemate Connections–one of the most exclusive and expensive bars in town.
In a world where men outnumbered women ten to one, and long-term relationships were frowned upon, bars like Lifemate provided a safe environment for women and men to meet and ‘test drive’ possible suitors without the initial risk of taking them home. Only five patrons of the bar had recently been murdered, and as a shifter with a keen sense of smell, it was now Eryn’s task to track the killer down.
But no matter how much she trusted her nose to get her out of trouble, she wasn’t about to go in there alone. The club was full of security, and there were cops sitting in a van outside the club, listening to her every word and move.
How dangerous could playing bait actually be?
Then she met Grey Stockard…a man who oozed sex appeal and danger with every movement.
A man she wanted with every ounce of her being.
A man she just might end up dying for.
See, there’s not a whole lot of words involved in that blurb, but it still took me an indecent amount of time to do. But finally, in the afternoon, I was free to work on Riley 6. The plot is still shifting away from my original ideas–though it is currently following a similar plot line. It’s just the settings and the characters that are changing. I’d originally planned to set some of it in a brothel, but the brothel as now become a group on rich, bored women known as the Toorak Trollops. They’re much more fun to write about that ladies of the night, I can tell you  Anyway, I ended up writing 8 pages, which wasn’t a bad effort. I’m closing in fast on 50 pages done, which is always a good milestone to reach–the books starts feeling real by about page 50
oh, and while I remember, I’m taking part in a chat today over on D.M. Simmons site, along with Kelley Armstrong, DM Simmons (of course), Skylar Sinclair and Dana Littlejohn. So if you’re got nothing to do around 7pm, U.S. Central time (midday Aussie time), then pop in for a chat
I use it, but I hate it.
As you can probably gather, Frontpage turned out to be a major source of the problems I had once I loaded up the new site on Sunday. After a very restless night of sleeping (ie hardly any sleep because my mind refused to forget about it, and I was laying there half the night wondering what in the hell had gone wrong), I got up this morning, opened up the webpage, and looked at the source files. The coding was all over the place– font tags were breeding like rabbits through the entire html, I had these weird ////file////whatever/ tags that were almost as popular, and all the links were pointing to a file in e-drive rather than being actual links to other pages or to the image folder.
Why?
Ask the wonderful designers of Frontpage, because I sure as heck don’t know. I certainly didn’t put it all there. I ended up just bringing up the html and fixing all the code by hand. Luckily for me, I did teach myself html–in fact, my first ever webpage was coded entirely through notepad. It was basic, but it worked.
Of course, I’m now trying to teach myself CSS, and the new site is designed using one of the many free CSS base templates out there (code-sucks is a good site for these–the link is in my links page). One of the more minor problems I had was getting the header pic on the site using css (I tried doing it via html on the page itself, and it went everywhere but where I wanted it. And the CSS styling was half hidden underneath it). Of course,I had no idea how to do this via CSS. Once I googled the answer, I could have hit myself, because it was so damn obvious. Still, that’s how I tend to learn–being dumb, then uncovering obvious answers.
So, the upshot is, the new look website is mostly loaded. I haven’t checked all the links, but most of the main pages and links are all working. To all those folks who hated the links on the last design, hope this one is easier to read!
yep, I’m screaming here.
Screaming in frustration. I just spent the whole damn weekend designing a new website, based around the header currently sitting in blogger. It’s also sitting on the index page of my old site though heaven only knows why. It shouldn’t be.
Anyway, it’s nearly eleven at night, I’m loading up the pages, and everything seems to be going all right. So I click over to my page to check the result.
Not what I expected. It’s scattered. Far and wide. Bits and pieces all over the page, and I have no damn idea why. It all works in my computer just fine, on both IE and Firefox, but I load it up and it just goes everywhere.
I going to bed now, before I’m tempted to throw the computer out the window in frustration.
after mucking about all day yesterday designing a new look for my website (which I hope to unveil next week sometime), I finally decided at about 9 o’clock last night that I had better get my rear end into gear and do some writing. Which I did. I don’t think it’s the greatest prose I’ve ever written, but at least it’s words on page. If I decide it’s total crap later on, I can fix it in edits. Right now, I’m just happy to be going forward, rather than staring at a blank page.
But, as usual, things aren’t going to plan. This almost always happens when I have a rough plot outline–the story just doesn’t go where I’ve planned it to go. I know a lot of people can’t understand the concept of a story controlling events, but that’s just the way it works for me as a pantzer. I can plot all I want, but it’s the way words come out, what is said between the characters, that actually control where a story actually goes. I could be aiming for a plot point, but something one of the characters says or does has ideas leaping to the fore, and that’s what I follow, rather than the predestined plot point. So when I say the story and the characters control events, what I’m actually meaning is the words I’m putting down is what is controlling direction. Not the actual characters. I’m not crazy. Really. 
In other news, Tempting Evil has received several more good reviews. There’s too many to blurb, so I’ll just give the links:
All About Romance
Coffee Time’s review
Fresh Fictions Review
And here’s some new reviews for Full Moon Rising and Kissing Sin:
Vampire Romance Books
Coffee Time’s review of Kissing Sin
Romance Reviews Today review of Kissing Sin
I’m back in Melbourne. Sydney might be a great place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there. It’s far too muggy for me to handle. I hate walking out of a building, and instantly feeling hot and sticky. Melbourne may get hot–often hotter than Sydney–but we don’t often get the high humidity. It’s more a dry heat in good old Melbourne town, which I can cope with better. But the food was good, the company even better, and we even had time leftover from committee duties to do some sightseeing
Writing wise, not much has been done. Not for lack of trying, mind. I’ve sat at the computer every day since returning home, and I just haven’t been able to type more than a few words. The story wasn’t working for me, and I had no idea why. Up until late last night, that is. It was then I realised that it wasn’t working because what I’d written just wasn’t logical given what had happened over the last two books. In many ways, Riley’s not the same person–she’s been hurt, emotionally as much as physically, and her carefree attitudes to many things would have at least taken a bit of a dive. She’d still be hurting, and that would change how she interacted with many people.
Once I figured that all out, it was a matter of changing the two offending scenes. Which I’ve now done, so hopefully tomorrow I’ll be able to do a decent amount of writing.
for the next few days to Sydney. The Romance Writers of Australia have their face to face meeting this weekend (the only time of the year the committee actually meets–besides conference time) and as webmistress and general committee dogsbody, I get to be there and join in the fun…er, hard work 
writing wise, nothing much has been happening. I’ve been readying the new website designs for the committee meeting, and testing out a new password system, and discovered in the process that I can be very, very dumb sometimes. But it all worked out in the end, so I’ve stopped swearing at my computer, whose fault it never was anyway
Kissing Sin is still sitting on the New York Times extended list, this time at number 32. And it’s 51 on the USA Today list, which is all pretty cool. And Tempting Evil got it’s first review the other day. Susan, from CoffeeTime Romance said, “Tempting Evil is an amazingly awesome book that completely blew me away. Ms. Arthur’s world building skills are absolutely second to none. Her take on the legends of vampires and werewolves is utterly unique and mind bending. Riley and the men who inhabit her world fascinate me totally. I did not want this stupendously superb story to end and I cannot wait to see what happens to Riley Jenson next. I simply must have more please, as soon as humanly possible.”
have a good weekend, everyone, and chat to you all next week!
to everyone over my side of the world. Hope the day is filled with good times and loved ones I’m not a big believer in the whole roses and prezzies part of Valentine’s Day myself–I think all that is just a commercial beat-up. So how am I spending Valentine’s day? I’m taking the leaping lab to the specialists. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, Ella’s been limping for a while now, and we’ve all presumed (us and the vets) that it was arthritis. But treating her with anti-inflams did nothing, so they decided to take x-rays. Which showed up the stunning fact that there was hardly any arthritis in her front legs at all–a little in her toes and a little in her elbows, but certainly not enough to be making her walk like an old woman. There was a bit of odd blurring along several disks along her neck they weren’t sure about, so they sent the x-rays to Werribee (the major vet facility here in Victoria). They came back saying there was nothing there to worry about. Great, except that she’s still hardly able to walk. So, we got referred to the specialists at Werribee. Here’s hoping they can find out what the heck is wrong and make her the leaping lab again.
In other news, Karenne–webmistress extraordinaire for the Coffee Time Romance website–has set up a Coffee Time forum for all things Riley. So, if you feel like a chat about the series and the character, head on over there. I’ll be popping in regularly to answer any questions that might arise, and there’s also a Riley news section with all the latest goss about the series.
of writing, now that all the good news is a few days old. Not that the silly grinning has stopped yet–I mean, it’s not everyday an aussie gal gets to hit the New York Times extended (except if your name is Stephanie Laurens. And if I ever get to be half as successful as Stephanie, I’ll be one happy lady.) Anyway, I managed to finish the first chapter of The Taste of Death on Saturday (which sounds better than it was–I only had to write one page to finish it ) and I did my required five pages yesterday. So,TToD now totals a whole 31 pages, and I’m slowly getting into the main story. I have to say, this one is starting out a whole lot more light-hearted than the others, which is somewhat surprising considering the way book five finished (and yep, that’s a tease, and no, I can’t say anything more). But I don’t think the book will remain that way–the focus is off Riley’s lovelife a little in this one, and is shining Rhoan’s way–and the result is not going to be nice. Well, that’s the plan at this stage, anyway. Given the book is only 31 pages in, anything could yet happen.
And here’s another pic for you. This one is of the lulus out celebrating my good news on Saturday night. We’re minus one in this–Chris had a wedding to attend. Missed you, Chris! On the left, there’s me and Carolyn. On the right, there’s Mel, another of Miriam’s (aka the super agent) clients, with Freya next, and Robyn at the back. As you can tell by our faces, a good time was had by all 
my editor (the lovely Anne) emailed me today with some exciting news. Kissing Sin has debuted at number 29 on the USA Today bestseller list…and at number 18 on the extended New York Times bestseller list! As the youngest caped cruisader might have said, holly freaking hell, batman! I think my cheeks are beginning to ache with all the silly grinning I’ve been doing this morning. Of course, I’ve downloaded the USA Today list to print and frame (just to prove that, see, I was there), but the New York Times list apparently isn’t released to the public until the 18th. So, I’ll have to wait another week for my printable evidence . But a huge THANK YOU to everyone who went out and bought Kissing Sin. You really have made my day
In writing news, the muse has decided to play games. After me saying in the last post that Destiny’s Thief was rolling along so well, it all came to a grinding halt yesterday. Every word felt like teeth being pulled. After I spent an entire morning writing three pages, I switched to The Taste of Death in the afternoon, and the muse decided, yep, this was the one she was going to play with today. So the writing roared along, and I ended up doing ten pages. Of course, it did help that I was writing a Kade scene. He’s always fun to play with It’ll be interesting to see what happens today–although, with all the good news, it’ll be a miracle if the muse will actually settle down and write today
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