Sale starts Now

99 cents to download Keep You now through Sunday. Link is here.

Favorite Things: Randoms

I like sunsets.

I like chocolate, and white wine, and blue fingernail polish.

I like boots. All kinds of boots.

Leather jackets.

Clover.

The smell of snow.

I like classic cars.

'67 Chevelles with black cherry paint.

I like Christmas lights.

Twice baked potatoes.

The smell of book ink.

The sleepy sounds of a barn bedded down for the night.

Everyone is full to bursting with inane little aesthetic favorites: things that only those closest to them know or understand. They're insignificant to strangers; but sometimes, learning that someone likes the smell of diesel fuel and cries through the last ten minutes of Seabiscuit brings about a certain closeness. They can make friends out of acquaintances. They can also make friends out of characters.

Characters need quirks, too. It takes them to the next level - transforms them from names on paper to living breathing people with which an audience can connect.

Kindle Sale

I HATE having to do promotional stuff. It's just not my thing; it makes me feel like a skeevy used car salesman. But because I'm almost done with the last book in the series, I wanted to run a special on the first volume. This weekend, Friday through Sunday, Keep You will only be 99 cents in the Kindle store.

So there: sale announce, promo over! 99 cent download tomorrow thorugh Sunday if you wanna take advantage!

Favorite Things: Dressage

Steffen Peters, the U.S. anchor rider, and Ravel

© 2008 by Nancy Jaffer

The great drive and swing and leap of eighteen-hundred pounds of muscle and bone beneath the saddle. The crisp white gloves. The pressure of reins on fingers. The lightness of the bridle in those precious moments of self-carriage. The thump of hooves; the creak of leather; the swish of tail; the tumble of silent conversation. The dance. The sugar cubes and ear rubs and shirt stains. The dirt between teeth. The smell of sweating horse. The solid, steaming necks, clapping underhand after a job well done.

Dressage is mental and physical gymnastics. It is details, details, details. It is feeling, at moments, like Alec on the beach with The Black. It is nothing in the world but sand, and hooves, and horse, and rider.

For me, it's the dream: sell enough books to support my very favorite thing.

Favorite Things: LOTR

Whenever I've been a little down and been a little stressed - whenever external factors begin to take their toll - I like to think about my favorite things. No...not raindrops on roses: things that pull me out of the daily lurch and remind me...

"That there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo... and it's worth fighting for.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers

 

 

 

So, this week, I'm talking favorite things. And I couldn't start that list without the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy.

 

 

The Lord of the Rings

 

The LOTR seems to be fairly polarizing: there are those who have no real opinion, but for the most part, there are those who can't stand it, and those who love it almost obsessively. I fall into the latter category. For a lot of reasons.

 

I was a sci-fi/fantasy child; I read The Hobbit at ten, the trilogy at twelve, and was smitten with Middle Earth and its heroic citizens. And then, my freshman year of high school, Peter Jackson turned the books I'd loved into the truest book-to-film interpretation I've ever seen, and he brought Middle Earth to vivid, tangible life.

 

The trilogy is artistically important for the fantasy genre, but for me as well. I think childhood inspiration has a way of shaping our adult sense of creativity, and in my case, I'm a sucker for good vs. evil; for true heroes; for the sort of wisdom that transcends elves and orcs and speaks to us as humans.

Plus, I always had a bit of a thing for Orlando in that blonde wig. I'm an adult. I can admit that.

And I named the farm in honor of the fields of Rohan.

“Where now are the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing?
Where is the helm and the hauberk, and the bright hair flowing?
Where is the harp on the harpstring, and the red fire glowing?
Where is the spring and the harvest and the tall corn growing?
They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadow;
The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow.
Who shall gather the smoke of the deadwood burning,
Or behold the flowing years from the Sea returning?”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers

 

Stirring stuff, no?
 

 

 



 

 

Delta's Poem

 

 

 

 

In the shining sharp cold silence,
She heard what warmth disguised:
The sturdy welcome of his heartbeat;
The laughter in his eyes.

In the quiet of a winter dawn,
She breathed in without fear:
The closeness of his soul;
The love that shone so clear.

Saturday

Snow, anyone? So far, March is living up to it's lion best.

Riddick update: No surgery! Turns out an old fracture in his hock and some sort of soft tissue strain are causing his pain, so he's on pain meds and rest. Huge sigh of relief.

Writing update: I'm exhausted. I should have some new content next week, maybe even tomorrow. I have a peace offering of lines. 97k words in on Fix You and coming to a close. Yay. And I got to write within some new POVs, which may or may not be fun. I can't decide.

          With a look that was a clear warning, Jo melted out of sight behind the door and Tam stepped in front of it, pulling it closed behind him as he joined Walt on the stoop. Tam gave him the up/down and moved past him, dropped down on the wooden step and stretched his legs out in front of him. He was in jeans, socks, and some old threadbare band t-shirt. He fished a pack of smokes from his back pocket and shook one loose; stuck it between his teeth before he asked, “Why’re you here?” in a flat, disinterested voice.

            Wales had always been smug; he’d never had a damn thing to his name save a leather jacket and that old Detroit-made hunk of steel his mother had left him. How could a man with no accomplishments have anything to be smug about? Walt had always supposed it was nabbing Jo, gaining a place in the family, that had fueled his sense of victory. It was a notion that had spawned a loathing, one that he was having a hard time swallowing tonight.

            “I came to wave the white flag,” he said, biting back the contempt in his voice.

            Tam lit his cigarette and turned to glance back over his shoulder, blowing smoke into the night through his nostrils. “Not buying it.”

**

           “I may be the baby, but I’m not an idiot.”

            He felt a faint smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Did I ever say that?”

            “That or something very much like it.”

            He couldn’t apologize – he wasn’t ready for that – but he draped a careful arm across her little shoulders. She stared at the house across from them, but didn’t shrug him away, and Walt thought that might be a start.

 

Material Copyright © 2013 Lauren Gilley