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Category Archives: Reading

Writing resolutions for 2009

This year, I will:  • write consistently more than 50 hours per month (12-15 hrs/wk) • finish 2 submittable books • build up ideas for 3 new books • enter 3 RWA-linked writing contests • volunteer to judge 3 or more writing contests • continue to volunteer as WRW Web goddess • attend 2 writing [...]

Posted 01 January 2009 † nickyp § Thinking § Writing ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: ,

Not party people

Still on the fantasy/SF kick, I just finished the first two Ender novels by Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead, and now I’m all political-philosophical. I was completely hooked by the brainiac-thriller Ender’s Game; read it in all my “spare” time (on the Metro, at lunch, on the Metro, after dinner) [...]

Posted 20 December 2008 † nickyp § ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged:

Lucy loves George

This month’s bookclub book was A Room with a View, so I read the book and watched both the theatrical film and the newer BBC version. Also found a great travel story in the New York Time on traveling through Florence the way E.M. Forster does in the book, not the way Baedeker’s (or Fodor’s, [...]

Posted 08 December 2008 † nickyp § ‡ Comments (1) °

Heaping helpings of fantasy

In this break between writing frenzies (I’m plotting up a contemporary romance with a traveling woman heroine), I’m plowing through fantasy stories. Not sure why, but in the past week, I’ve watched The Golden Compass (already read the trilogy) on DVD, and Twilight (didn’t read the book) and Bolt (3-D!) at the movies. I’ve read [...]

Posted 06 December 2008 † nickyp § ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged:

Romance still sells

Had fun at the New Jersey Romance Writers Put Your Heart in a Book Conference this past Friday and Saturday. Lots of workshops, less candy (which is a good thing) and more good conversations than last year. I didn’t pitch a story to agents or editors this year; feels too soon for the new story [...]

Posted 26 October 2008 † nickyp § Marketing § Writing ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: , , ,

Old romantics

Reading Lord Jim this week for book club, I was reminded again of the many readings of the word “romantic.” Jim’s trouble (boiling way down) is that he wants to see himself as the hero in some adventure story but does not (always/ever) act the hero. Another character describes Jim repeatedly as romantic. The word [...]

Posted 20 October 2008 † nickyp § ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: , , , ,

Characters vs. types

Talking about David Copperfield today at book club, we wondered which character in the book we’d most like to be. Not any of the women, although Peggotty was one of my faves. A few said they’d want to be David who, though he suffers, does grow (and ‘learn discipline’) and ends up well.   Today [...]

Posted 28 September 2008 † nickyp § Writing ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: , , ,

‘I fall into captivity’

That’s the chapter title from which this excerpt from David Copperfield comes. Though Dickens writes hecka long stories, the basic characterizations are tight and—wow!—effective. Peggoty, Uriah Heep, on and on. I cut away lots of secondary characters in my last manuscript because they took too much space in the story. Copperfield is a textbook in [...]

Posted 17 September 2008 † nickyp § ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: , ,

Enriched editions

Nicola Cornick’s latest historical fiction novel, Unmasked, is available as an “enriched edition” e-book at eharlequin.com.  Harlequin promo:  Have you ever read something in a novel and wished you could see a picture, find a definition, or learn more about it without having to look it up? Now you can! This special electronic book is [...]

Posted 01 September 2008 † nickyp § Marketing ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: , , , , ,

“Procrastination is the thief of time”

Due to my Sharpe fixation in August, I now have only four weeks to read the entirety of David Copperfield before we meet up for book club. From “I am born” through “A last retrospect” is 715 pages in my Barnes & Noble Classics edition. Turns out, though, this is a perfect time for Dickens’s [...]

Posted 31 August 2008 † nickyp § ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: , , , ,