Or does he see you?
Looks like the winner was Gunnar’s eyes. Or rather, eye. One really intense eye…
Yes, he has both. Just not here.
On the other hand, several people wanted a peek at that little Y of hip/6-pack, so check it out after the jump and let me know what you think in comments. (And be sure to come back tomorrow for the whole delicious package.) Read the rest of this entry »
Cherie Priest has put together the links you need in order to help with the BP catastrophe. Please visit her site and find one thing you can personally do, then do it. Follow through. Don’t be like BP and try to pass responsibility, because we are *all* responsible. Every time we start our car, use an unnecessary plastic bag, or drink bottled water*, we are responsible.
______
*The bottles alone use 17 million barrels of oil each year, and then there’s the shipping — of what’s almost always just municipal water.________
I apologize for being so delinquent about posting here. I have an excuse that’s both good and bad.
The good part: I’m writing my brains out on the third Immortal Brotherhood book, IMMORTAL CHAMPION, which will be hitting the shelves in January 2011. It’s the story of Gunnar the Red, who was briefly mentioned in Immortal Outlaw.
The bad part: I’m overdue getting the manuscript in. I got way behind last fall when the whole family fell victim to H1N1 and haven’t every managed to catch up. That’s bad news, because I have the fourth book due soon too. That’s really why I haven’t been posting here, because I have trouble justifying time spent blogging when I need to be doing my paid writing.
To help make it up to you and tide you over, here are a couple of pics of the lovely Steven Waddington, my major model for Gunnar.
I am closing in on the final chapters, so I’ll be back here on a more regular basis soon.
Hang in there, Viking lovers.
My dear friend Lucy Monroe, one of the most generous women I know, has a new book out tomorrow, so I wanted to give her some Monday love. Let me tell you, I do crave this book — and that Highlander werewolf! Be sure to check out the contest at the end (below the trailer, which you should also check out):
If it were up to him, Talorc—laird of the Sinclair clan and leader of his werewolf pack— would never marry. But when the king orders that Talorc wed an Englishwoman, the lone wolf is shocked to find his mate in the strong-willed Abigail. And after an intensely climactic wedding night, the two fiercely independent souls sense an unbreakable bond…
Deaf since childhood, Abigail hopes to keep her affliction from Talorc as long as possible. And for his part, he has no intention of telling her about being a werewolf. But when Abigail learns that the husband she’s begun to love has deceived her, it will take all of his warrior’s strength—and his wolf’s cunning—to win his wife back. And Talorc will have to face his biggest challenge yet: the vulnerability of a man in love…
Read an Excerpt | Buy the Book
Watch the Book Trailer
As a special thank you to readers, Lucy is giving away a prize pack of pamper yourself products and paranormal romance. All you have to do to enter is send an email with Moon Craving Contest in the subject line to moon_craving at yahoo dot com before February 28th, 2010. The drawing will be held March 1st and the winner will be announced on her blog at http://www.lucymonroeblog.blogspot.com.
The official NORAD Santa Tracking site went live as of midnight. 
According to the site, the US Military started tracking Santa when a Colorado Springs Sears store inadvertently misprinted Santa’s phone number and children started calling what was then the Continental Air Defense Command. Possessed by the true spirit of Christmas, Director of Operations Col. Harry Shoup had the radar operators check their screens so they could provide updates on Santa’s progress to the kids who called in. The tradition was born, and the Christmas Eve updates continued even after CONAD joined with the Canadian military to form NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command.
Col. Shoup passed away earlier this year, but his legacy lives on. NORAD’s Santa team also posts updates to Facebook and Twitter.
Colonel Harry Shoup. Christmas Hero. (Photo from NORAD Santa website)
You’ve seen him in his beast form.
Now have a peek at my human inspiration for Gunnar the Red:
That’s English actor Steven Waddington. You may know him as Maj. Duncan Heyward in LAST OF THE MOHICANS, or, more recently, as Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham, from THE TUDORS. If you want more, more, more, of the delicious Steven, there are a whole herd of pix of him at Flixster.
And now you know why I’m smiling so much while I write IMMORTAL CHAMPION…
I learned this morning that Kate Duffy, long-time Kensington editor and extraordinary friend to romance, has died. I met Kate the first time in 1993, and although I never had the opportunity to work with her, I learned a lot from her over the years. She will be missed.
For those who never had the chance to hear her quick laugh, or those who just want to hear it again, here’s a glimpse of the amazing Kate:
Left nearly powerless by the wounds she received during the battle at the end of Immortal Warrior, Cwen the sorceress found refuge in the nunneries of England, eventually ending up at Kirklees, a Cistercian priory in the forests of what was traditionally known as the West Riding of Yorkshire. There, she worked her way up to Prioress (second to the Abbess), and that’s the point where we meet her again in Immortal Outlaw.
The Cistercians are an order of enclosed monks founded by St. Roger of Molesme in 1098 at Cisteaux, France. They were strict followers of the Rule of St. Benedict, which called for vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, and dictated self-sufficiency and a simple life that included manual labor (St. Bernard was another famous founding member of the order.) Women were admitted to the order almost immediately, with the first nunnery opening at Langres in 1125. The nuns were known as White Ladies because of their white robes. I’ll confess right here that I screwed up on this point and talked about how Cwen liked her black robes, because they honored the old gods from whom she draws her power. Oops. I didn’t catch the mistake until well after galleys were done, and strangely, my usually perfect copy editor didn’t catch it either. However, in our favor, the nuns did wear a black hooded surplice over the white robes (as in the image of St. Alice of Schaerbeck to the left). Perhaps we can both be forgiven.
Kirklees was founded in 1155, during the reign of Henry II, with the grant of land confirmed in 1236 by Henry III. In addition to nuns, the house was used as a sort of boarding school by local noblemen intent on keeping their daughters out of trouble. This effort had mixed success: the young noblewomen brought luxuries and a sense of fun with them that sometimes spread to the nuns, and there are several recorded incidents when nuns ran off with priests or otherwise carried on scandalously, sometimes right on priory grounds; those stories inspired both Cwen’s magic-weaving in her cell and the story of Sr. Paulina and Fr. Renaud and their clandestine affair.
Kirklees escaped the initial rounds of the Dissolution in 1535, but was eventually surrendered in 1539, when only eight nuns remained. After the inmates left, the chapter house was razed and its stones eventually were used to build Kirklees Hall nearby. However, the gatehouse escaped the predations and still stands today, though parts were apparently rebuilt in the intervening centuries.In the traditional Robin Hood legends, it is in that same gatehouse that Robin meets his end, bled to death by his cousin, the prioress of Kirklees, whom he sought out when ill. When he realizes his cousin has betrayed him, Robin summons help with his hunting horn. It’s too late, however, and all Little John can do is help Robin shoot an arrow out the window, promising to bury him on the spot where it fell.
A well-marked grave exists at Kirklees today, surrounded by an iron railing and showing a Victorian era headstone in pseudo-Gothic English that claims it’s where Robin lies. Suspiciously, it lies a good 600 yards from the gatehouse — over twice the distance of a good medieval longbow shot. However, travelers to the area during the mid-16th century report visiting Robin’s grave in a different place, at about the right distance for a bowshot. And indeed, human remains were found in that spot during renovations of Kirklees Hall during the mid-18th century. It’s unclear wherther those remains were reburied at the spot now marked for Robin.
The Victorian headstone, pictured, reads:
Here underneath dis laitl stean
Laz robert earl of Huntintun
Ne’er arcir ver as hie sa geud
An pipl kauld im robin heud
Sick utlawz as his as iz men
Vil england nivr si agen
Whether Robin lies in the marked grave or not, both locations sit on private land, inaccessible to the public. Somehow, I think it’s appropriate that Robin remains as elusive to us today as he was to the Sheriff in the 13th century.
Over at the Huffington Post, writer Joanne Rendell provided a terrific report/critique on the recent Princeton Symposium, Love as the Practice of Freedom? Romance Fiction and American Culture. In the article, she points out that even the pro-romance pros present didn’t quite go far enough in their analysis of why romance is proving so recession-proof.
Here’s a snippet:
“Although Crusie wasn’t talking specifically about the appeal of romance in this recession, it struck me that these “emotionally just landscapes” are perfect antidotes for our current times. When shady Madoffs are making off with billions of dollars and banking executives are awarding themselves huge bonuses from bailout monies (while the rest of us watch our 401ks disappear like puddles in the midday sun), the appeal of a world where integrity and honesty are rewarded seems obvious.
But as the Princeton conference continued,…I realized that it was too hasty to rush to this conclusion. Romances are not one kind of thing. Neither are their readers. And to draw fast conclusions about the genre and its audience is to perpetuate the kind of stereotyping which has always made romance the “most maligned of literary texts.”
Click over to HuffPo for the complete article, “Heaving Bosoms: A Tonic for the Recession?”
The heaving bosoms in the title, btw, refer to the wonderfully outrageous book by Candy Tan and Sarah Wendell: Beyond Heaving Bosoms, The SmartBitches Guide to Romance Novels (CLICK HERE to buy at B&N.com). This story came by way of their blog, SmartBitchesTrashyBooks.
