Nadia Lee :: Paranormal Romance Writer

…is….

Stacey Smith! (Comment #9)

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Today I have a special guest. Please welcome AJ Chase! Her paranormal romance debut featuring shifters Cat and Mouse is out now.

Now…here’s our guest! AJ has generously offered to give a copy of Cat and Mouse to one lucky commenter! Answer her question at the end for your chance to win! The giveaway is open to everyone regardless of their location. The drawing ends midnight October 29th (US ET).

In my book Cat and Mouse, released October 20th from Freya’s Bower, my hero and heroine are both shifters. But they aren’t the cool or glamorous kind. Since the name of the book is Cat and Mouse, I guess I won’t be revealing much in saying that one is a cat and the other a mouse.

The heroine mentions early on in the book that she knows some were-lizards, were-turtles and were-otters (they just lie on their backs and do cute little things with their hands.) So if you were capable of changing into an animal and all the super cool options given to us by books and movies were unavailable, what sort of shifter would you be?

Lets say, for the sake of this exercise, that you also can’t chose cat or mouse, because lets give the hero and heroine their moment in the were-sun. I think, if pressed, I would choose to be a were-fox. I’d like to tell you there’s some deep, significant reason for this. But the truth is I just think foxes are cool. And female foxes are called vixens. How fantastic is that for a moniker? Rock on, little vixen. Rock on.

I also think it might be kind of fun to be a were-monkey. You could take a break from a hard day at the office by flinging yourself around off the ceiling and throwing crap at people. Slightly gross yes, but I bet it would be immensely more satisfying then lodging a formal complaint with the proper authorities.

Just for the sake of doing things in threes, it might be a lot of fun to be a were-parrot. You sit on people, eat with impunity because people keep shoving crackers in your mouth and no one would ever hold you responsible for anything you say. Don’t blame me. I’m a parrot.

So what about you? What sort of under rated animal would you change into? Personally, I also wouldn’t mind being this thing.

I look forward to hearing your answers and you can find Cat and Mouse here.

Melinda Lightfoot, a preschool teacher with an unusual ability to flit in and out of fairy tales, never thought she would get into trouble…

…until the Fairy Tale Police arrest her while she is in Beauty and the Beast. They offer her a deal: Find Beauty, who left the story when Melinda trespassed into it, or be charged with the ultimate crime — Fairy Tale Killer. If that’s not bad enough the Beast tags along in search of his true love, and Melinda starts falling for the fairy tale prince. She must choose between doing the right thing and having her own happily ever after.

Warning: This title contains the following: Fairy Godmother, the Wicked Witch, dysfunctional fairy tale families, ax-wielding executioners and a happily ever after (or two).

For those of you who missed the earlier chapters, please read them first here:

1. In Which Our Heroine Is Charged
2. In Which Our Heroine Gets an Unwelcome Companion
3. In Which Our Sleep-Deprived Heroine Breaks Into Tudor Land

Please note that this installment is available to my newsletter subscribers only. If you’d like to know what happens to Melinda and the Beast, please sign up! It’s absolutely free and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Thanks and enjoy!

IV. In Which Our Hero and Heroine Face an Executioner

I know I talk about my hamsters a lot, and some of the blog pictures are a bit low quality, so Hero Material took some good ones.

Here are three pictures of Shiro & Peanut. Shiro is a pearl white Siberian hamster, and Peanut is the first son she had with Kuro.

First up — Shiro. This is her surveying her kingdom. Hero Material and I call her Kuiin Hamu (Queen Hamster).

The next two are pictures of Peanut. He’s very even-tempered and sweet. He adores eating egg yolks, and as a matter of fact, he’s eating one in one of the pictures. (He looks very ferocious when he eats.)

Aren’t they just adorable? :wub:

A couple of people asked me if I’ve ever used WriteWayPro and if so, what I think of it.

It’s my fourth day using the program. I think it’s a fine program, and it does what you want it to do.

Strengths:

• Everything you need for your writing project is right there on the screen, so it’s very easy to keep things organized.
• It’s very easy to move scenes around or reference certain scenes, etc.
• It starts fast.
• You can set it to open to your last active chapter or scene, so you can start working right away.
• It’s not that difficult to learn.
• Customer support is great. I’ve seen some really crappy customer support, but this is excellent. I’m happy with the response time and so on.
• Word count report and analysis are fabulous. I love looking at them and see how many words I need to write to hit my target completion date, etc. (I no longer need to mess with Excel, although I adore Excel…)

Things WriteWayPro can improve on:

• It’s currently lacking auto-save, so you have to remember to save every so often.
• The composition screen shouldn’t be in print layout (to use Wordspeak). It’s a personal preference, but I find it very distracting to see empty headers and footers as I go from one page to the next. Since the composition font and the final manuscript font are different anyway (and lovely WriteWayPro formats everything for you automatically!), I don’t see any point to having a ton of blank space on the screen. Besides, it really breaks the flow as I draft and/or edit. I wish I could hide the blank space like in Word.
• I’m not sure if it’s just me or Word 2007 or what, but when I export the entire manuscript into rtf and open it in Word, the text looks justified, and the right side is smooth instead of jagged. But if I copy paste the entire manuscript to another blank Word doc, the format comes out fine. It’s not a deal breaker, but it’s something to be aware of if this kind of stuff really really matters to you.
• Unlike Word, which can check for typos as you type, WriteWayPro checks typos only if you click on the spell-check button. I find this to be somewhat annoying because I like to fix typos as I draft / edit.
• This didn’t bug me, but it may bug you: the user interface is very basic and not as polished and fancy as the latest Microsoft Office. But it does the job, and I don’t think it’s something WriteWayPro should put any priority on addressing. If you simply must have the slickest GUI, however, this may bother you.

So there it is. Any questions? Have you used WriteWayPro or any similar software? If so, what do you think about it? If you’ve never used any, why not?

So the FTC doesn’t come after me, here it is again: I’m not in any way shape or form related to or employed by WriteWayPro. I never received any monetary compensation for this post. I’ve downloaded WriteWayPro, and I am currently drafting my novel with it.

Scrivener has a deal for NaNo, but they don’t offer a Windows version. For those of us who use Windows, we’re SOL.

Well…not really.

If you want something similar for Windows, try WriteWayPro. You can download the demo and try it out for thirty days. I’ve heard good things about it from a lot of writers, including Larissa Ione. Also, it was created by Lara Adrian’s hubby, so it’s much more writer-friendly than many other programs out there. WriteWayPro is also on Twitter, and I found them (him?) to be very responsive.

There’s also a special coupon code valid until November 30, 2009: $20 off the WriteWayPro download version. Just type NANO-PRO20 when you check out.

Disclaimer: I’m not in any way, shape or form related to or employed by WriteWayPro. I haven’t received any monetary compensation for this post. I have, however, downloaded WriteWayPro, and am currently drafting my novel with it.

A store that sells new husbands has opened in New York City, where a woman may go to choose a husband. Among the instructions at the entrance is a description of how the store operates:

You may visit this store ONLY ONCE! There are six floors and the value of the products increase as the shopper ascends the flights. The shopper may choose any item from a particular floor, or may choose to go up to the next floor, but you cannot go back down except to exit the building!

So, a woman goes to the Husband Store to find a husband. On the first floor the sign on the door reads:

Floor 1 – These Men Have Jobs

She is intrigued, but continues to the second floor, where the sign reads:

Floor 2 – These Men Have Jobs and Love Kids.

That’s nice, she thinks, but I want more.

So she continues upward. The third floor sign reads:

Floor 3 – These Men Have Jobs, Love Kids, and Are Extremely Good Looking.

Wow, she thinks, but feels compelled to keep going.

She goes to the fourth floor and the sign reads:

Floor 4 – These Men Have Jobs, Love Kids, Are Drop-dead Good Looking and Help With Housework.

“Oh, mercy me!” she exclaims, “I can hardly stand it!”

Still, she goes to the fifth floor and the sign reads:

Floor 5 – These Men Have Jobs, Love Kids, Are Drop-dead Gorgeous, Help with Housework, and Have a Strong Romantic Streak.

She is so tempted to stay, but she goes to the sixth floor, where the sign reads:

Floor 6 – You are visitor 31,456,012 to this floor. There are no men on this floor. This floor exists solely as proof that women are impossible to please. Thank you for shopping at the Husband Store.

PLEASE NOTE:

To avoid gender bias charges, the store’s owner opened a New Wives store just across the street.

The first floor has wives that love sex.

The second floor has wives that love sex and have money and like beer.

The third, fourth, fifth and sixth floors have never been visited.