HelenKay Dimon

The cover flats for YOUR MOUTH DRIVES ME CRAZY arrived on my doorstep at the end of last week. The cover truly is gorgeous, even more so in person. The actual one is a bit different from the original. In my view, it’s even prettier. The art department did a fabulous job.

When I read Meljean’s blog over the weekend, I saw that her upcoming cover (June ‘07) got a small update too. She posted photos of hers. I thought that was cool, so I’m posting mine:

The new one is on the right. The pink of her shoulder in this photo and the one on Amazon is more pronounced than on the live version. I’m thinking the sepia tones didn’t translate all that well into photos. The updated cover also highlights the correct spelling of my name, which is just the best news ever.

So, yes, go order with abandon.** You need to own it and hold it to see what I mean about the pink. None of this just fondling it in the stores stuff. Go pre-order.

**Regular blog readers may notice how my promo plan for 2007 closely resembles my promo plan from 2006 – begging.

Happy Tuesday.

I’m blogging over at Access Romance today. Stop by and say hello.

Lori Foster frequently donates items to benefit the Animal Adoption Foundation, her local no-kill animal shelter. This year, Lori, Erin McCarthy and I have an auction item you might be interested in. Yes, signed books are involved…

If you win, you get a copy of our anthology, WHEN GOOD THINGS HAPPEN TO BAD BOYS, and it’s signed by all three of us. Also included are signed copies of Lori’s not-yet-released book CAUSING HAVOC, Erin’s A DATE WITH THE OTHER SIDE and my VIVA LAS BAD BOYS!. That’s four signed books. How often do you get an anthology signed by all the authors and have the money go to a good cause? Not often.

Here is the link for you to bid. You have until January 31st. Don’t make me mention the poor little puppies and kitties. Just go bid.

Believe it or not, I have still more selections on my TBR pile. This one is from Christopher Moore. The book is You Suck, where Moore visits characters from his earlier book Bloodsucking Fiends. While I know there is a bit of vampire fatigure going on out there – and, truly, I feel your pain – this one is a bit different from the usual vampire romance. Mainly because, well, this really isn’t romance. Moore writes funny, focusing on offbeat characters and odd situations. He has a clear voice and identifiable style. And, well, you decide after reading this blurb from the publisher:

Being dead sucks. Make that being undead sucks.

Literally. Just ask Thomas C. Flood. Waking up after a fantastic night unlike anything he’s ever experienced, he discovers that his girlfriend, Jody—the woman of his dreams—is a vampire. And surprise! Now he’s one, too.

For some couples, the whole biting-and-blood thing would have been a deal breaker. But Tommy and Jody are in love, and they vow to work through their issues. Like how much Jody should teach Tommy about his new superpowers (and how much he needs to learn on his own). Plus there’s Tommy’s cute new minion, sixteen-year-old goth girl Abby Normal. (Well, someone has to run errands during daylight hours!)

Making the relationship work, however, is the least of Jody and Tommy’s problems. Word has it that the vampire who nibbled on Jody wasn’t supposed to be recruiting any new members into the club. Even worse, Tommy’s erstwhile turkey-bowling pals are out to get him, at the urging of a blue-dyed Las Vegas call girl named (duh) Blue.

And that really sucks.

Reading that, I couldn’t say no. Had to buy it and throw it on the pile.

I was reading an article in USA Today about moms in fiction. Actually, the title is Fiction: Motherhood. I have no idea why I was engaging in this reading activity, but I was.

A bunch of new titles are referenced. You can click on the article title (above) to go check them out. The titles were not what caught my attention. Nope. This introductory sentence of a blurb/review of The Yummy Mummy by Polly Williams did it:

In the USA, novels about exhausted young mothers are called Mommy Lit. The more practical British call it Baby Sick Lit. The Yummy Mummy by England’s Polly Williams is a scrumptious example.

Ignoring for a second the title of Williams’ book, is this statement true? There is something out there called Baby Sick Lit? Really? Uh, why?

A quick google search of this…what exactly is it, a new subgenre title, a term, what? Well, whatever it is, goggle produced a few results. Most lead back to the Williams book. Another was an article in the Sunday Independent. To read the entire article I would have had to register for the site. I didn’t care enough about this topic to do that, so I didn’t. But, the beginning of the article goes like this:

Thirty years later, we have the ickily-titled ‘Mummy lit’ – or ‘Baby Sick lit’ as it is sometimes called. Like its predecessor, Chick lit, Mummy lit is popular writing for women, but now we have exchanged nightclubs, mojitos and Manolos for Sudocrem and biodegradable nappies.

I think we have officially found The One Step Too Far in the Lit-naming craze.

Esquire did a little experiment. Even gave it a name – The Napkin Project. It went like this:

It’s an old story, we figured. Someone, in a bar somewhere, scribbling on a napkin in the failing afternoon light; the kind of story or list or note that might be crammed in a pocket and pulled out years later to tell something deep and forgotten — perhaps life’s most intimate first chapter, nearly lost forever. So we gave this spontaneous medium a shot. We put 250 napkins in the mail to writers from all over the country — some with a half dozen books to their name, others just finishing their first. In return, we got nearly a hundred stories. We present a sampling here — from lush to spare, hilarious to terrifying.

If you follow the link (click on “Esquire” above), you’ll see the list of authors who participated. Click on each name and you’ll see the actual napkin with the story written by that author. If you can’t read all the writing – and you’re not alone on that – the good folks at Esquire were nice enough to print out what the napkins say at the bottom.

The whole idea is pretty clever in my view. What I was most amazed by was the amount of crap people could fit on a napkin. There’s one by Unknown (I’m guessing that’s not the author’s real name) that is longer than my first novella. Here’s the link - see for yourself. Others are short. Take, for example, Aimee Bender’s napkin which played off the “Esquire” printed on the white napkin and went like this:

To J. Smith [Esquire],

Please accept my resignation. The printer is broken. The stationery is gone. Malty is angry, angry, angry.

I tried.

Sincerely, Janet

I could waste hours of time reading these…

Wendy just gave me an ARC and cover flat for a book called All Jacked Up by Penny McCall. It’s a romantic suspense from Berkley Sensation. McCall also writes under the name Penny McCusker, her real name (I think), for Harlequin.

This one caught my eye not only for FBI hero, but also for the cover…the red cover with the guy holding the gun. After checking out McCall’s website, I can report a personal positive reaction to the covers for both of McCall’s upcoming Berkley releases, All Jacked Up in April ‘07 (the cover is lighter and cooler in person than it looks on the Amazon site) and Tag, You’re It! in July ‘07.

Here they are (click on the images to enlarge):

All good guesses. One of you picked the right name: Maria Duncan.* Congratulations!

The newest reviewer for Paperback Reader is Alison Kent. We’re so excited to have her join us. Her first review will post at the end of this week. Make sure you check it out.

*Maria – email me so I can get that book out to you.

Most of you who check in here know that I’m a co-founder and contributor to Paperback Reader, a romance review site. Well, we have a new reviewer coming on board. Her first review posts on Friday. We’ll officially introduce her at PBR on Wednesday.

So, for the next 24 hours you have an opportunity…

The new reviewer can be found on my blog sidebar links. Go ahead and guess who it is and post here. If you guess right, you get your choice of my books – VIVA LAS BAD BOYS! or WHEN GOOD THINGS HAPPEN TO BAD BOYS. If more than one person guesses correctly, I’ll randomly select the winner from the right responses. If no one gets it right…or no one comments…then I guess I keep my books until the next contest opportunity arises. Good luck!

Quite some time ago a bunch of authors posted photos of their office spaces. There was even a website that collected them… I think. The memory came to mind while I was paging through a magazine over the weekend. There was an article on office cubicles of the future. Some of the examples made me happy to own a laptop and be able to move my office as needed.

For those searching for the perfect cubicle in which to dream up that perfect novel (or that perfect place to hide from the children and get some well-earned peace), here are some options:

From Denmark and the firm of Bosch & Fjord we have the concept of “Plug and Play offices” which consist, basically, of office spaces in wooden boxes:

The UK prefers blow-up offices…there’s a joke in there somewhere:

And then we have Dilbert’s Ultimate Cubicle from a company called IDEO. That’s not a joke. I know Dilbert is fictional and all, but here’s the cubicle:

You can click on the images to see nice, clear photos. Or you can go to your desk and get to work – your choice.