My poor blog has been sorely neglected of late. I used to write blog posts on my lunch break (i.e.: when my kids napped). Now that their daily nap has gone the way of the dodo, I’m struggling to find the time to blog. Having committed to going to the RWA conference in June, I’m devoting every spare moment to revising one manuscript and finishing another. The result: Monkey Bear Reviews is lacking fresh content.

So what have I been up to for the past few weeks?

WHAT I READ

Hardly any fiction. The majority of my reading has consisted of writing craft books and course material for the workshops I’m attending.

WHAT I WROTE

Quite a bit. My current task is revising a completed manuscript.

WHAT I WATCHED

The new series of Upstairs, Downstairs. It suffers from the inevitable comparison to Downton Abbey, but it’s well-acted light entertainment.

WEBSITE

I updated my author website. It’s pretty rudimentary but I kind of like it that way.

PERSONAL

My son is going through a hyperactive phase at the moment. I’m finding it hard going. He’s currently on his winter break and I’m counting the days until he goes back to preschool. His wild behaviour coincides with his sister starting the dreaded Terrible Twos. Mischief and mayhem reign in our household. I keep telling myself that this, too, shall pass.

♦♦♦♦

Here are a few links which might interest you:

♦ Nadia Lee has published a guide on How to Format Your Manuscript for Kindle and Nook. It’s available from Smashwords for $1.50. I bought a copy and I think even I could manage to follow Nadia’s instructions to create .prc and .epub files.

♦ Historical romance author Megan Chance has reissued some of her backlist digitally. They are available in Kindle and Nook formats. I bought a copy of The Portrait to read on my iPhone and I’m thoroughly enjoying it. I’d been hearing about this book for years but it was out of print.

♦ Author Laura Leone a.k.a. Laura Resnick has also reissued a few of her backlist titles. They include Fallen From Grace which received a rave review from Karen Knows Best last year. (Thanks to Keishon for the heads up.)

♦ Over the summer, I bit the bullet and entered two Romance Writers of America chapter contests. Both contests required the first fifty pages of my manuscript, which amounted to the first four chapters.

I didn’t final. Although I didn’t really expect to as my entry wasn’t particularly polished, of course I hoped I would. However, my scores were respectable over all (the most painful was 94 out of 150 – oochy ouch!). There were a couple of criticisms that the judges shared, including the one who gave me my highest score (136 out of 150). Some of their quibbles are things I’ve already changed since submitting my contest entry in July. Others are issues I need to work on. Others still are things I’m going to ignore and leave as they are.

This writing lark is not for the faint of heart.

Moving on…

♦ I really enjoyed Jill Shalvis’ latest book, Simply Irresistible. It’s the first in a new series set in Lucky Harbor, Washington. It’s a fun read with a truly drool-worthy hero. I think it’s my favourite of her books so far. I have a proper review half-written and I’ll post it later in the week. Stacy has already reviewed Simply Irresistible and my thoughts on the story are similar to hers.

♦ Harlequin are running an editorial week for writers called So You Think You Can Write. It will be on from the 1st until the 5th of November and will feature blog posts, podcasts and writing challenges.

♦ If you’re interested in participating in this year’s National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), you can now sign up for the challenge on their website. I did it last year and found it useful. I’ll be blogging about it next week.

♦ Last but not least, here are a couple of links to blog posts I particularly liked over the past few days:

• Angela James discusses the manuscript acquisition process for Carina Press
• Libba Bray’s Your Mileage May Vary made me tear up, and that very rarely happens

I meant to do a weekly round-up post on Sunday, but as with so many things I’m meant to do these days, it never happened.

Last week, I bit the bullet and submitted my entry form for the Golden Heart, Romance Writers of America’s annual contest for unpublished writers. Filling in the entry form and paying the fee is only the first step. Now I need to polish my WIP like mad so that I can submit it before the December deadline. My personal goal is to send in my manuscript at the beginning of November, thus allowing me to participate in this year’s NaNoWriMo. Fingers crossed!

On the reading front, things slowed down considerably for the first few days after I got back from France, but then I read four books over the weekend. My favourite was the second book in Laura Lee Guhrke’s new Edwardian series, Scandal of the Year. While it’s not my favourite of her historical romances, I found it to be solid entertainment. It will be released in February 2011.

I am several books behind in my reviewing schedule. This is due to both a lack of time and motivation. Blogging feels like a chore at the moment. It’ll pass, I know, but things might be a bit slow around here until I get my mojo back.

After bitching all weekend that C.J. Sansom’s Heartstone was only available digitally in Kindle edition, I found it in ePub at The Book Depository. It must just be up as of this morning as it wasn’t there yesterday when I checked. Anyway, I bought it, despite the crazy price, and was very thankful that the Euro-Swiss Franc exchange rate is very much in my favour. Now let’s hope the kids let me read!

I won’t be online until the end of the month. However, I have a few blog posts and reviews scheduled, including Brenda Novak’s Killer Heat (my review will be up later today), Anne Stuart’s Breathless, Deanna Raybourn’s Dark Road to Darjeeling, and Courtney Milan’s Trial by Desire.

Hope you all have a nice September!

♦ The past week has been crazy. I was sick; my son was sick; we had several appointments and we were late to all of them (Note: I am NEVER late); I got us locked out and had to call C to come home from work and rescue us; I lost my keys – twice; my laptop, iPod and cell phone all died on the same day (thankfully, they now work again); my daughter dumped water all over my ticket for the parking garage and I had to plead with the security guy not to charge me for a full day’s parking as the ticket was unreadable. All in all, I’m looking forward to August ending. Hopefully, September will be a better month.

♦ This was another slow reading week for me. I read Brenda Novak’s Killer Heat and I’m halfway through Jeannie Lin’s Butterfly Swords.

♦ My second draft for my book is coming along. The first part of my revisions went quickly as the the first half of the book was already fairly polished. The second half is more challenging. I need to re-write quite a bit of it. My goal is to have my second draft finished by next weekend. Fingers crossed!

♦ I finally saw the finale for the second season of Sons of Anarchy. It ended on a cliffhanger and want the third season to be on now! We’re also addicted to The Shield. I got the complete series box set as an early birthday present. We’ve already seen the first season and we’ve started the second. For anyone who enjoys character-driven cop shows, this is really good.

♦ Now for something which has been irritating me for a while: Remember that whole Amazon Fail business last year, when we were all encouraged to boycott Amazon, Google bomb them, etc.? How many of the people baying for blood back then are now linking to Amazon again on their blogs and/or the proud owners of a reduced-price Kindle?  This is just one example of why I no longer engage with online “controversies”. The age of Twitter, blogs and 24-hour news makes information immediately available in a way that wasn’t possible in the past. However, instant information is not always accurate, and Twitter tweets and retweets are like a game of Chinese Whispers. Having been burned more than once by people jumping to conclusions and posting/tweeting stuff that later turned out to be inaccurate, or not representative of the whole story, I prefer to wait these days before getting irate about anything.

So how was your week?

♣ My reading was slow this week. I read two books: Reckless by Anne Stuart (my review is half-written and should be up late next week) and Dangerous Allies by Renee Ryan (my review is scheduled for tomorrow). I’m still behind on my reviews, but I hope to get caught up over the next few days.

♣ I’m about a third of the way through my revisions for my book. My goal is to get them done by the end of the month, then send it off to my beta readers. I then want to step away from it for a couple of weeks before starting my third – and hopefully final – draft.

♣ There were some interesting blog posts this week. Janet W has a great guest post at Read React Review on Twitter Dos and Don’ts.

♣ Sandy at All About Romance writes about Change is Good (Except When it Comes to our Favorite Authors).

♣ Keishon gives her take on Women and Violence in Crime Fiction Novels.

How was your week?

♦ Why do some category romance authors not bother to update their websites? It is seriously annoying. I looked up one author’s site recently and her “new” release was three books out of date! With Harlequin releasing all their books digitally, it’s more important than ever for their authors to update their websites regularly. Back in the days when category romances were only on the shelves for a month, it might not have been necessary, but now readers have access to the books for longer via online stores such as Amazon and the Harlequin ebook store.

♦ Why don’t ebooks have blurbs? I know everyone talks about covers being essential for ebooks as well as for print – and I agree with this point – but blurbs are even more important to me. I’ve had to resort to creating my own database of blurbs for the ebooks I buy.

♦ Why do people on Twitter ask for more followers? Isn’t that like an open invitation to the spam bots? I figure at least half of my followers are spammers. I used to go through my list regularly and block spammers, but it’s an exercise in futility. As soon as I get rid of a few, more follow me.

♦ Why do some authors restrict their Twitter contests to people who follow them? What’s to stop someone following them briefly in order to qualify for the contest, than unfollowing them?

♦ Why do some authors restrict excerpts of their upcoming books to people who become a member of their site? I get the whole newsletter thing, but these ‘Members Only’ sections are stupid.

♦ Why are Karen Rose’s ebooks not available for purchase by customers outside the US and the UK? I can’t even buy them from W.H. Smiths because they are restricted to residents of the United Kingdom. FFS! I can get them in print in my local bookstore!

Any Whys or WTFs you’d like to share?

♣ I may have mentioned the Book in 3 Months Challenge a time or ten. The good news: my writing is going really well. The first draft should be done by the end of the week. I still have about 10,000 words to write to reach my goal, but that should be feasible. The bad news: I’m behind on everything else. I have a backlog of reviews to write, ARCs to read, laundry to wash, friends to call…well, you get the picture.

♣ Books I’ve read since I last posted a reading update include: Death on Beacon Hill by P.B. Ryan; Hot Finish by Erin McCarthy; a really bad Harlequin book (the title eludes me but I think it won a RITA); half of Eloisa James’ A Kiss at Midnight; Meljean Brook’s steampunk novella, Here There Be Monsters.

♣ Books I have which need to be read and reviewed a.s.a.p. include: Burning Up by Susan Andersen; Reckless by Anne Stuart; Finding Perfect by Susan Mallery; and Dark Road to Darjeeling by Deanna Raybourn.

♣ For anyone on NetGalley, they now have Jeannie Lin’s Harlequin Historicals debut, Butterfly Swords. It’s set in China during the Tang Dynasty and sounds wonderful. I just received my ARC and I intend to read it on my holidays.

♣ My current DVD addiction is The Shield. I got the complete box set of all seven seasons as an early birthday gift. Yeah, I know I’m cheating by watching it already, but I’m not going to get through all seven seasons between now and the 4th of September. So far, I like it a lot. It’s well-acted, fast-paced, and features interesting storylines.

♣ I haven’t been blog hopping much lately, but I did read a couple of interesting posts. One of my favourite bloggers is Heidenkind. She’s an Art Historian and bibliophile and always has interesting stuff on her blog. I particularly liked her recent piece on When Art Meets Life – and Murder. I need to read the book featured, What Alice Knew by Paula Marantz Cohen.

♣ Smashwords founder, Mark Coker, gave a candid interview on Wetmachine. My favourite part:

Some large NY publishers don’t distribute their ebooks internationally because they fear this or that, and by limiting distribution they’re only encouraging customers to access it by illegal means. The bigger risk these big publishers face is obscurity.  Their potential consumers have unlimited alternative choices for their next good read.

Authors and publishers can reduce piracy by making their content more accessible in more places to more consumers at a fair price.  If you make it more convenient to access the official copy of your work from a legitimate retailer, most customers will pay for it.

So…have I missed anything interesting on the interwebz?

Stacy is  one of my favourite bloggers, so I was thrilled when she asked to interview me as part of her series of blogger interviews. She asked some great questions and it was fun to do. The interview is up today at Stacy’s Place on Earth.

♥ As I type, I’m listening to fireworks. Today is Swiss National Day, when everyone in Switzerland sets of fireworks, eats too much, drinks too much, and commemorates the signing of the Federal Charter of 1291. From what I can gather, this involved three guys meeting in a field and agreeing not to kill each other, and promising to to defend one another against the evil Habsburgs.

♥ As I mentioned last week, I don’t believe in a Writing Muse. The old butt-in-chair routine is the way to go. However, there are days – and sometimes even weeks – when it just flows. This was one of them. I added 10,000 words to my WIP; polished my first four chapters; wrote a short and a long synopsis; and entered two RWA chapter contests. Honesty (and Irishness) compel me to add that my synopses are really bad. Hopefully, the chapters rock.

♥ I’ve been rolling with the spurt of enthusiasm for writing, so I was neither a prolific reader nor a productive blogger this week. I read two books. My favourite was Brenda Novak’s Body Heat (my review will be up on the 9th of August). I liked the first book in her Hired Guns trilogy, but this one made me look up her backlist. I gave it a B+, but I’m still thinking about the hero several days later, so I might go back and upgrade it to an A-. Note: I rarely change a grade I’ve given a book, but some just stay with me, and I think those stories are worth another look.

♥ This week, the annual Romance Writers of America conference was held in Orlando, Florida. I’ve enjoyed reading blog posts from various attendees, but some of the coverage on Twitter was…odd. There were a few people at the conference who insisted on tweeting every damn thing that was said in a workshop or speech, or constantly tweeted between events. It made me wonder if they ever took the time to interact with their fellow attendees.

♥ I noticed that Where Shadows Dance, the sixth book in C.S. Harris’ excellent Regency mystery series, is slated for a March 2011 release. I want to read this book now, but it looks like I’ll have to be patient.

Enjoy your Sunday!