Samhain Publishing

We've taken over Chicago!

Not really .

But there are a few of us here at the Romatic Times Convention and we're having an absolute blast! Jet lagged and exhausted, but still smiling. We started out doing the tourist thing downtown, visiting the Art Institute of Chicago (our art galleries don't have Monets so seeing those lillies is pretty exciting, not to mention American Gothic, one of the most recognisable paintings in the world). We've worked our way through deep dish Chicago pizza–twice–and been up to the skydeck in the Willis Tower. I put one toe on the glass floor of the deck but that's as far as I was going (shudder).

Right now we're neck deep in sessions, meetings and parties…I mean work related communication opportunities. Some of us have to go back home on Sunday (sniff, sniff) and we're really not looking forward to the 24hrs of travel it takes to get us back on home soil. But it's all worth it to get together with other authors and the readers we love so much. Thanks for having us Chicago!

I had intended to share some photos here but the open wi-fi seems to disagree with my antivirus software, vehemently in fact! Keep an eye out on my website in the near future for all the piccies.

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Love,
Sami

Let me preface this post by saying this: I hate spiders. Some people are grossed out by snakes or rats or lizards or even butterflies. Most everyone it seems has a particular creature that shares this planet they simply cannot deal with no matter how tough they think they are. For me, that creature is the humble eight legged arachnid.

For an Australian this is a difficult fear to manage because we have several poisonous varieties here, not to mention a host of really REALLY huge ones. One type we have commonly in Queensland is called the Huntsman. It’s not poisonous, but it isn’t the least shy about coming inside your house. They can grow up to 6 inches from leg to leg, they have long hairy legs and large, flat bodies that allow them to scurry into small dark spaces (and out again when least expected!). These spiders also move very fast.

I’m grossing myself out just typing this. So you can imagine my horror the other day when I plopped my straw hat on my head unknowing that there was a Huntsman living inside it. Yes, inside it. The thing crawled down my hair and BIT ME ON THE NECK before I even knew what it was. When  I looked at my shoulder to see that big hairy beast staring at me… well, let me just say it wasn’t pretty. I don’t think I’ve ever screamed so loud, which apparently frightened the spider as it ran around to the centre of my back—you know that spot that you just can’t reach?—and tried to hide there. I was in the bathroom at the time. I could see it in the mirror.

Oh, shudder shudder shudder.

I ripped off my shirt and went screaming through the house. Thankfully it had flown off me when I discarded the shirt and hubby went into the bathroom and squished that bugger dead. But I was hysterical, crying, on the verge of throwing up. It was IN MY HAIR. Ewwww. I thought I’d be plagued by nightmares since it happened but those have been strangely absent. Perhaps once one of the worst things has happened (did I mention it was in my hair and bit me on the neck???), the fear settles down a bit. Like they say—face your fears and vanquish them.

I’m not sure this is a rock solid theory, but there might be some truth to it. I’m pretty sure I’m always going to check behind the toilet door for spiders before I go in there, like I’ve done since I was five. When I was nineteen I bungee jumped off a bridge hoping it would make heights less of a problem for me. All it did was confirm I never want to die by falling. However, I can ride in glass elevators now, something I never used to be able to. I can eject small spiders from my living space (read: squash) without breaking into a sweat. I can send submissions off to editors without stressing too much that they aren’t going to like my work. I can receive rejections without curling into the foetal position in tears (well, not for long anyway). So some things that used to terrify me don't seem so bad now. Others will probably always be a problem—a big hairy problem (in my HAIR, I say again).

So have you ever faced a fear and overcome it? Or not? What’s the one creature you wish you didn't have to share this planet with?

Sami 

website blog divas twitter @divasamilee

I hated the first romance novel I ever read. I don’t remember the author or title. I was fifteen and found this old Mills and Boon in a pile of stuff that came, I think, from my grandmother’s house. It was from a time when Mills and Boon novels were written entirely in the heroine’s point of view, and as a person she was largely subservient to the hero. She sprained her ankle and basically waited around tearfully for the hero to decide she was worthy of his love. The book confused me—why would anyone want to read this? And it made me angry—women aren’t like that! I wouldn’t marry that guy if he was the last man on earth! I swore I’d never read another book of its type again.

Fortunately, I found another book about a year later that had a more modern take. I admit, I picked it up because the couple on the cover were in a passionate clinch (this was before I knew I should be embarrassed to be seen reading a clinch cover romance novel J) and I was curious to see if the book would teach me something. Did it ever. It taught me that not all romance novels are equal or alike. It taught me that I loved getting into the hero’s viewpoint, that the heroine could have a cool job (in this case photographer) and that she could make decisions about her own life and body without a man’s permission or approval. And it taught me that sex could be enjoyable (high school health education classes hadn’t left me with a positive impression), and that a woman wouldn’t necessarily go to hell, get pregnant or contract a venereal disease if she did it before she was married, as long as she was discriminating and knew what to do with a condom.

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Welcome to Samhain’s new website. Isn’t it pretty?

We talk a lot about heroes in the romance writing community. Our heroes range from commanding billionaires to alpha shape shifters, from brooding bad boys to charming vampires. They’re all gorgeous of course, and most important of all devoted to our heroines.

Today I want to talk about a different kind of hero, the real heroes who work tirelessly hour after hour to ensure our communities are safe in a time of crisis. You may have heard reports of the devastating floods we’ve experienced here on the in Australia’s north-east. Violent storms, torrential rain and flash flooding have wreaked havoc on many of our towns, caused multiple deaths, and inundated  Queensland’s most populous city of Brisbane. At times like this we understand what real heroism is.

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A little over two years ago I opened a new Word doc. and wrote a scene about a man I knew well, a man who’d been rattling around in my head for a while and who played a major role in my menage novella, Chasing Sunset, but who missed out on his happy ending that time around. This time he was sailing back into Knight’s Bay completely unaware he was about to be blindsided by an attraction to a woman he’d known for years, a woman who’d never made an impression before but who was destined to change his life forever.

I’m talking about Brody Nash, the hero of my novel Sunset Knight, which is now—two years after I sat down to draft that opening scene—available in print. The woman who convinces him he’s worthy of love is Lana Green, a shy waitress on a mission to change her life—and get her man.

Not only is Sunset Knight now a beautiful print book, I just found out it’s finalled for an EPIC award! I’m thrilled to announce this and to talk about the book yet again. So here’s the blurb, and there’s a link to my website after, where you’ll find a yummy excerpt, a deleted scene, a delicious barbeque sauce recipe and buy links.

Thanks for reading!

Good things come to those who dare…

Lana Green is looking for a lover. At twenty-three, she’s more than ready to shed her shyness and shake up the status quo. Lucky her, the aloof bad boy she’s always wanted to shake it with, Brody Nash, is back in town. Too bad he barely knows she’s alive. Then an unexpected kiss makes her think her days of lusting from a distance are over. Despite the fact she’s no femme fatale and has zero clue how to seduce a man, she sets out to do exactly that.

Brody hardly recognizes the alluring woman as the same gawky computer geek he left in Graceville six months ago. Lana has him spellbound, but his temporary stay in town is strictly business—running his friend’s restaurant while the man’s on his honeymoon. Brody doesn’t do relationships, and he doesn’t do permanent. But when he finds her asleep on his boat, he can’t keep his hands, or any other part of his anatomy, to himself.

Things get complicated when he discovers what he thought was a casual sexual encounter has just cured her of the one thing she wanted to get rid of—her virginity.

Note: This is Brody’s story, a follow up to Chasing Sunset. It can also be read as a stand alone book.

For an excerpt and more, head to my website. You can also visit me any time at my blog or at Down Under Divas

Cheers,
Sami

Once upon a time there was a girl who wanted to be a writer. She loved books, but there was always something missing from the reading experience. The stories never seemed to go exactly the way she wanted them to. Not even the stock standard happy ever afters satisfied her—so sure Beauty loves the Beast, but isn’t it a little wrong that he had to turn into a handsome prince for her to be fully happy? So Sleeping Beauty is a looker. What else has she got going for her? No job, no witty one liners, nothing. Yawn (you see? witty). This girl had a yearning to write her own books, her way. What’s more she figured if she applied herself, it’d be easy.

Wasn’t she a deluded individual?

Yes, the butthead who thought writing a book was akin to writing any old essay, just longer, was me. Writing my first book was not like writing a freaking essay—it was much, much harder. And it wasn’t even any good. It was littered with exclamation points and clichés. Good Lord, my tall dark and handsome hero caught my sweet pretty heroine when she fainted, lent her a handkerchief when she cried and even said something about her eyes being like pools of… something. I shudder to think what. The next book wasn’t much better, the one after was okay. There was some more mucking around, years of quitting and taking it up again (I fear I understand smokers. Really I do), until at last—aha!—I wrote something someone wanted to publish. Yay for Samhain and my editor’s good taste. At this point I thought: “The best part about this is that now I know how to do it. Now it’ll get easier”.

Future Sami was I’m sure, even then, shaking her head at Past Sami, saying, “Listen numbskull: It. Doesn’t. Get. Easier.”

The cruel joke is that every book is different, so the rules change every time you type Chapter One. In addition you raise your own expectations of yourself, just to make it challenging (I hear complacent is a nice place for a holiday, I just don’t know how to get there). What would have been acceptable to me five years ago, now gets the flick. It needs to be more intense, more interesting. Each book has to be more real… yet still satisfying as romantic fantasy. Each sex scene has to sizzle, not fizzle. Each word has to be carefully chosen, yet ordinary enough not to pull readers out of the book because they have to go get the Oxford Dictionary to understand what you’re trying to say. Real. Intense. Satisfying. Relatable. Easy to read, impossible to put down.

Sounds simple, right?

How does one blow a raspberry in cyberspace?

All the best,

Sami (who’s just junked the first two chapters of her latest work and is feeling bitter. Come visit me at my website or blog or at down under divas and help me through it. All offers of chocolate and/or alcohol are quite welcome)

I have what is often referred to as a creative brain. At least, that’s what I like to call the confused lump of grey matter keeping my ears apart. It’s the kind of brain that functions, sort of, in absolute chaos. Never a single thought will run through my head at any one time; multiple ideas hit me, vying for supremacy. I need to pick up some milk on the way home—wait, do I need dog food too? Did I feed the dog this morning? What time is it? 11:30, not time for lunch yet but I’m starving. Maybe it’s time Jake and Libby had sex. But if they have sex now that won’t fit in with my future plans for them. Did I do a load of washing this morning? I know I didn’t hang one out. Darn it, I left the clothes in the machine again.

Is it lunch time yet?

This is pretty much the ‘process’ by which I live day to day. Jake and Libby as you might have guessed are characters in one of my current works in progress. They don’t cause the confusion, so I really can’t blame my crazy brain function on being a writer (pity). Although I do wonder if my becoming a writer was in part pre-destined by my erratic thought patterns, my ‘creative’ brain. You see, thinking about what makes my characters tick, what they’re fighting about and whether or not they’re going to have sex anytime soon calms the noise. It gives me something to focus on besides the stress of not being able to remember if I have any milk left.

Let’s face it, thinking about sex is far more interesting than worrying whether you’ve hung out the washing. So yes, I daydream a lot. I can usually carry on with all the necessary drudgery of life while I’m doing it, so I don’t find it too debilitating. I do get distracted and forget things, like my good friend’s birthday or that form I was supposed to hand in at my daughter’s school. I hope the birthday thing doesn’t make me a bad friend, as I try to make up for those lapses in other ways. I’d drop everything if a friend needed me to do something for them and occasionally I give my friends and family a present just for the hell of it—a book, a box of chocolates. I hope they realize this is because when they get their wisdom teeth out I’ll completely forget to take them chicken soup even though I wrote the date down in my diary and everything (I write a lot of things in there, I just don’t always read them).

So am I creative or just plain scatter-brained? Both. Am I scatter brained because I’m creative or creative because I’m scatter-brained? Just like the riddle of the chicken and the egg, I guess we’ll never know.

I’d love you to come and visit me at my website or blog anytime. And of course you can meet any one of my characters with a few clicks of a mouse at the fab new MBaM site.

Have a creative day,
Sami

Recently I was reading a book—a romance of course—which was fairly well written and had a good plot hook. I was looking forward to sinking into the pages (or onto the screen) and thoroughly enjoying myself. Then something happened that pulled me out of the story, something that irritated me so much I felt like emailing the author. From then on all I could think about was that thing and I couldn’t fully enjoy the novel.

What I’m talking about is describing physical attributes. As romance novelists it’s something we’re required to do. People need to know if their heroine has dark hair, blue eyes, long legs, or that their hero has a scar on his right hip. But how specific should we be?

Back to this book I was reading. The heroine had body issues when it came to her chest. She describes her breasts as ‘fleshy’, ‘big’ and even ‘enormous’. She complains of the many times men have leered openly down her top. I’m starting to think this poor girl has a serious Dolly Parton issue happening. Being of not exactly small proportions myself I sympathized. I saw myself in this girl, which is what any author wants.

Then she mentioned her size. Our heroine’s breasts were a size D. Excuse me? Thinking there must be some cross country size misinterpretation (I’m Australian), I had to google US bra sizes just to be sure. A D is the same down under as it is over there—and to my mind folks, a D is not enormous. A quick search of average bra sizes provided varying information, but some articles state it’s 34B and others go as high as 36D. So this would put our heroine’s breast size at average or one or two sizes above. Which makes the descriptors ‘enormous’ and ‘fleshy’ a bit inaccurate, to my way of thinking. And without wearing my measurements on my sleeve, I was an early developer and with weight fluctuations and two pregnancies behind me, I haven’t seen a D cup bra in quite some time. I’d love to be as SMALL as a D. I know, I know. Don’t pelt fruit at me, it’s not as much fun as it looks. I couldn’t help but take exception to the author’s use of so many negative size descriptors for breasts that were smaller than mine and not a lot bigger than average.

I recently penned a heroine who was a smidge under 5’10” and I described her as ‘tall for a female’. In light of my recent reading experience I wonder if that’s going to put all the 6’ tall females off side. 5’10” seems tall to a short stuff like me but what do I know? Dress size might be another potential minefield. I can’t recall many romance novels where the heroine’s dress size was mentioned specifically, but what woman doesn’t know hers? Love it or hate it, we all KNOW it. The size issue is very often avoided in romanceland—to reduce the chance of a reader having a reaction like the one I had?

What do you think? Should authors just not mention size at all and let the readers paint their own picture, or would you prefer to know? Are there any physical descriptions that have boggled your mind? Totally upset that I’ve ranted on about boobs for five paragraphs? Let me know.

Sami
website
blog

Brody and Lana’s story available today!

Brody Nash has been in my head for a long time. He started off as the ex-boyfriend and occasional lover of the female lead in a book that went nowhere. Then when I needed a second man for my menage novella Chasing Sunset, I decided to bring him in. Really, I was quite happy to have him, so to speak. At the close of Chasing Sunset Brody didn’t get everything he wanted, and he really started bugging me about it. So when I was in the midst of writing something else, determined not to get sidetracked, Brody ignored my requests for peace and I ended up writing his story just to shut him up. Now, at last, it’s available for all. You too can buy Brody’s story, and have him in your head—or even your heart—if you dare.

Blurb:

Good things come to those who dare…

Lana Green is looking for a lover. At twenty-three, she’s more than ready to shed her shyness and shake up the status quo. Lucky her, the aloof bad boy she’s always wanted to shake it with, Brody Nash, is back in town. Too bad he barely knows she’s alive. Then an unexpected kiss makes her think her days of lusting from a distance are over. Despite the fact she’s no femme fatale and has zero clue how to seduce a man, she sets out to do exactly that.

Brody hardly recognizes the alluring woman as the same gawky computer geek he left in Graceville six months ago. Lana has him spellbound, but his temporary stay in town is strictly business—running his friend’s restaurant while the man’s on his honeymoon. Brody doesn’t do relationships, and he doesn’t do permanent. But when he finds her asleep on his boat, he can’t keep his hands, or any other part of his anatomy, to himself.

Things get complicated when he discovers what he thought was a casual sexual encounter has just cured her of the one thing she wanted to get rid of—her virginity.

Go here, for a PG 13 Excerpt
Or here, for a naughty one
Have a great day!
Sami
blog
website

More than once I’ve had inquiries about whether I have plans to write a follow up manuscript featuring a supporting character from one of my books. This usually surprises me, as it is never my initial intention to turn any particular story into a related series. As a rule I’m not a series book reader. Usually I need the certainty that a book will stand on its own, that it won’t bring in characters and subplots from other books that detract from the main couple dynamic simply because I’ve picked up a novel from the middle of a series. I hate feeling like there’s a long running joke that I’m not in on.

Having said that the series format seems to be immensely popular. When done well, it can be an enriching experience. If an author really hooks me with book one, I’ll be in it for the long haul. Since the letter A, I’ve been with Kinsey Millhone in her private detective adventures and wild horses couldn’t keep me from following her to the end of the alphabet—if X sucks, I’ll still continue on until Z. Which brings me to my question—how much is too much? Has an author ever gone on longer than you would have liked? Do you judge a series by the last book, or the first?

As an author I understand the desire to hang on to certain characters. Sometimes, it’s difficult to let go of those characters who have touched us deeply, or the settings we’ve come to love. So how do we know when it’s time to move on if you have people asking for more? Is it a decision that must be based on writer’s instinct, the muse, or should business sense come into play? After all, giving readers what they want is a big part of publishing success.

But then, isn’t there something to be said for leaving ‘em wanting more? Hmm…

Cheers,
Sami (Who’s releasing a couldn’t-be-denied follow up story to Chasing Sunset later this year, he ha)
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