As of April 2011, Harlequin Enterprises is removing the Silhouette branding from several of its lines. Only Harlequin branding will remain. While I have yet to find a link to a formal announcement, the news is all over Twitter and Facebook, with a well known editor confirming that Harlequin/Silhouette authors have either already received letters advising them of the change or they will receive the letters very soon.
Silhouette Special Edition, Desire, and Romantic Suspense will all fall under Harlequin branding, joining Harlequin Nocturne, which was previously branded as Silhouette Nocturne. Word has it that Love Inspired will remain a Harlequin brand, but Steeple Hill will be no more. I’m not familiar enough with the Inspirational lines to comment on the change.
Silhouette first emerged in 1980 as part of Simon Schuster. Harlequin bought Silhouette Books in 1984 and continued to run the Silhouette-branded lines from its New York offices while overseeing the Harlequin brands at its Toronto office. There was some overlap. Harlequin Intrigue, for example, ran editorial out of the NYC offices.
Now all the lines will be branded as Harlequin. What does this mean to readers? I’m not sure. Will they follow the line or wonder what happened to the brand? I would think they will follow the line, if Harlequin publicizes the transition well.
Pure speculation on my part, but the melding of the brands has me wondering about the future of “former” H/S lines. Harlequin Superromance and Silhouette Special Edition offer different editorial visions, but both are “long contemporary series.” Harlequin Intrigue and Silhouette Romantic Suspense are similar in some aspects, different in others (Intrigue apparently has a higher suspense to romance ration, and SRS has a longer word count). Harlequin Blaze and Silhouette Desire, however, in my mind at least, are totally different.
Some households have a Honey-Do list or a Job Jar. I have a Cindy-Do list. It sits on my fridge and reminds me every day that I’m not upholding my end of the bargain. I’m very behind in catching up on the list. In fact, once I realized that the last time I crossed something off the 3-page-long list (notepad-size pages, I’m not a freak) was about three years ago, I ripped it up, wrote a new one and labeled it “2011.”
I know when I’m beat.
This summer I’d planned to attend RWA National in Nashville. Then, right before My Leige and I were leaving for our 3 weeks in Peru (Gawd, will she never stop talking about Peru?), Nashville was unfortunately flooded and the conference relocated to Orlando. Realizing I could not survive flying from small-town B.C. to Florida and back after the three flights down and four return it would take to get us to Peru and back only a month earlier, I opted out of the conference. No matter, I thought, because there was a biggie on my Cindy-Do list, and I was confident not attending RWA would give me more time to work on it.
What a fool!
The job was painting our sundeck, which is very big. It’s in two parts, the big part off the living room hall that holds the dog house and our patio set, then the smaller deck down a couple of steps that holds the barbecue and My Liege’s hot tub (I can’t in all conscience call it mine, because I’m in it for maybe 5 minutes once a year tops, while he enjoys it nearly every night) (I’m not anti-social, I just overheat quickly). To top it off, some of the wood was rotting. But if we stay in this house, we have more renovation plans that will occur sooner or later. That includes rebuilding the deck with a product that doesn’t require repainting every three years at the very outside. But for now we’re stuck with the old deck. So I did my google searching and found some great products to help the bad areas withstand another couple of years. But between all that scraping and sanding (kids helped with that), the prepping of the bad areas, the priming, two coats on the deck, two coats of two different trim color on the trim…combined with the fact that our summers are either so hot that you have to get up at 5 a.m. and get any painting done before 8:30, or IT’S RAINING. It’s either one or the other, I swear.
I finally finished the deck. Then realized I needed to do the carport. Then realized I needed to do the courtyard gate, little fence, and steps. So then I did the outside door frames and lower windows while I was at it.
Because September was FREEZING and RAINING ALL THE TIME, I finally finished all that painting the weekend before this past one. My shoulder was in such pain and massage therapy didn’t help. I got smart, went to the chiropractor, who told me it had “dropped.” I am now fixed and back to abusing myself with just the mouse.
I hate painting the sundeck. Hate it with a passion. Family members insist that I MUST like it because otherwise I would hire someone else to do it. But let’s just say I hate painting the sundeck a little less than I hate paying someone an arm and a leg to do something I know I’m fully capable of doing…if the weather would just cooperate.
No more Cindy-Do until 2011. Do you have a You-Do list? What’s your least favorite You-Do task? Do you have a favorite? Assure me I’m not alone in my Do-It-Myself-Itis.
It’s Thanksgiving up here in the Great White North. I had turkey dinner at my mom’s last night. Aren’t you jealous?
As some of you know, I’m erotic romance author Kate St. James’s slave. So, although I really wanted to update this website last week, Kate insisted that I do hers first. After all, she doesn’t have a blog and relies on me to trumpet her accomplishments to the world…because she’s just so darn shy. Why, she’s so shy she can’t even show her face in public.
What are her accomplishments, you ask? Several great reviews for Secrets Volume 28: SENSUAL CRAVINGS, which includes Kate’s erotic romantic comedy, Kiss Me at Midnight. What, you think it’s not possible that a novella is both funny and erotic? Buy Kate’s book and put it to the test!
Here are some reviews for Secrets 28 and a new one for Secrets 26: BOUND BY PASSION, which includes Kate’s story, Exes & Ahhs, set in Victoria, B.C. (where I went to university. Kate does this type of thing to honor me). Because I’m lazy, I cut and pasted these reviews from the new Welcome message on Kate’s home page, but there’s more to see on her Bookshelf.
New reviews are in for Kiss Me at Midnight. Whipped Cream Erotic Romance Reviews has awarded Secrets 28: SENSUAL CRAVINGS 4.5 cherries and says of Kiss Me at Midnight, “The sex scenes in this story were absolutely sexy and hot, but you could tell that love was in the air and not just lust. Marc…is a truly exceptional man and one any woman would be proud to call her own.”
Bitten by Books says, “I loved this story. It was fun, realistic and super hot. The erotic scenes are steamy and will get the attention of all the right places…. A definite great read for me.”
Also, a new review for Exes & Ahhs in Secrets Volume 26: BOUND BY PASSION. Joyfully Reviewed says, “Risa and Eric are perfect together, and I have to say that Eric is one hunky hero. He made my toes curl from the beginning of this story and they stayed that way until the end. There is a great deal of love between these two, and watching them discover it provided pure satisfaction.”
And, lest you think Kate’s only out to get me to talk about (and therefore help) her, she sacrificed several hours when she could have been relaxing in a hot tub to write this article now up on her Extras page, Turn Up the Heat: Tips for Writing Erotic Romance Novellas.
While I’m at it, Kate has a new interview coming at the Red Sage blog next Monday, October 18th. She’ll be around (there) to answer questions, if you’re so inclined. So mark your calendars.
Okay, it’s been a few days…where was I? Oh, yes, our last day in Peru and our very looooooooong flights home.
So we woke up in the little Puno hotel on our last day eager to get home, but we had one more stop to make—to a pre-Inca burial site that is considered one of the oldest in the world, Sillustani. We saw no need to book a tour to Sillustani, as I’d read on the ‘net that you could basically ask your taxi driver to take you there on the way to the airport, which is 47 miles away in Juliaca (for geographical reasons, there’s no airport in Puno). So that’s what we did. While we were still with our guide, Tito, from the Lake Titicaca excursions, we asked the best way to get to Sillustani on our way to the airport. He had the perfect thing. He’d call his tour company, arrange something for us, and phone us at our Puno hotel the evening before to let us know everything was copasetic. We got the phone call, and were told to meet a “guide in training” at our hotel at 11 a.m. Our flight out of Peru left Lima at 11 p.m. or close to midnight, I can’t remember which. We just had to get from Puno to Lima several hours beforehand, to accommodate the Lima airport’s windows.
No problem! I really wanted to see the ancient funerary towers of Sillustani. You see, a long time ago when the earth was green and there were more—um, a long time ago, 1976 to be exact (I finally phoned my dad and nailed down the correct year), my parents went to Peru. Some of my dad’s photographs still hang on the walls of their house, and their travels partly inspired our trip. One of the stories I remember my dad telling me was about losing his roll of film featuring Sillustani near Puno. Well, he didn’t actually lose his film. It was confiscated. The story goes something like this (with apologies to Dad if I screwed up anything):
My parents traveled Peru during a time of political strife. There was quite a military presence, especially around Puno. My dad’s a history buff. So when he realized he could take pictures out his hotel window of the military presence and machinery, he couldn’t resist. Don’t ask me how, but he was spotted. They received a visit in their room from a military personnel/soldier type. And Dad’s film was confiscated. Luckily for him, they took just one roll of film. My dad was very much into photography at the time, and what a shame it would have been if he’d lost all the photos of his travels. Like us, they were at the end of their stay in Peru. The film was ripped out of his camera, and the camera returned to him. That film contained not only the photos of the military presence, but also of Sillustani. And my parents didn’t have time to return. My dad always bemoaned the loss of those pictures.
Trip Tip! Nowadays, in a similar situation, you’d get your entire digital card confiscated. Consider that when you’re waxing prosaic about the wonders of the digital age! Or maybe DON’T make like James Bond and snap photos of a military presence out your hotel window with your zoom lens attached. It’s especially essential not to do this if you’re like 5’6″ tall, weigh all of 140 pounds, have black hair and a dark skin tone. Because then you might look really suspicious! Especially if you add in that you have piercing blue eyes. You might be considered a sloppy spy masquerading as a tourist with really odd colored contact lenses. (The things you people learn from me!)
Anyway, my father mentioned that if we had a chance to visit Sillustani, he wouldn’t mind if we got some photographs to jog his memory. Of course, I simply had to make his dream come true. Because I’m such a thoughtful daughter. You know how it is.
So, we’re back to Day 21 and that our Lake Titicaca guide, Tito, had arranged a time and price for a “guide in training” to arrive in the morning and drive us to Sillustani on the way to the airport. Now, I can’t remember the name of the guy who was supposed to drive us, I know it began with an R, but that’s it, so let’s just call him Not Tito. The morning of Day 21, Not Tito arrives at our hotel only a little late. The language barrier was great, which confused us because a “guide in training” would have at least a bit of English and desire to learn more—hence the “in training” part. Our fellow insisted he was Not Tito, but he knew nothing about taking us to the pre-Inca burial site on the way to the airport. He thought he was there just to drive us TO the airport. Yet he wanted the price Tito had prearranged.
After help from a very nice employee of the hotel and an older gentleman who was on the street and decided to lend a hand, we learned this fellow WASN’T Not Tito, after all. Not Tito couldn’t make it. So Really Not Tito came in his place. And Really Not Tito was “just” a driver, not a guide. After much discussion, during which we tried to explain, over and over, that we didn’t desire a guide to take us around the ruins, we were more than capable of making up stuff in our heads as we walked the grounds. We just wanted to see them because we’d heard they were really cool, and we had this time before we needed to be at the airport (from what I could tell, aside from people-watching in the plaza de armes, Puno isn’t a town to hang around in, not when you can go explore a pre-Inca burial site. Plus, we’d had our fill of people-watching the night before, when an entertaining political rally rolled through the streets while we ate dinner in a little restaurant with a balcony view of it all). Eventually, Really Not Tito agreed to the arrangements we’d made the night before and for the same amount of cash. I think he was a little ticked that he wasn’t getting extra cash to stop for an hour at a tourist attraction. From our point of view, we’d made the arrangements with Tito and wanted to stick to those arrangements.
So, everyone happy now, we left Lake Titicaca and Puno behind and fed Really Not Tito one of our last few Globbopops, the Peruvian cherry lollipops with gum inside that we’d become addicted to. Really Not Tito decided we weren’t so bad.
We had 45 minutes at Sillustani. It’s really cool. Really Not Tito sat in the van while we walked around. At the last minute, he tried to find us a guide and again we explained that we didn’t need a guide. But he had the Globbopop in his belly by this point and wanted to make us happy. Once he realized, yes, he could really nap in the van for an hour, everything went along smoothly.
Sillustani features several ancient, pre-Inca burial tombs, circular structures called Chulpas.One of the more well-preserved structures. The Sillustani site isn't as well preserved as other sites in Peru, and it's too bad. It's incredible.
The rocks on the ground were probably inside the structure at some point. The Peruvian government filled the structures (the bodies once inside them long gone) with rocks and cement to try and help them retain their shape. Some of them have boards, etc., trying to hold them up:
One of the crumbling chulpas.
My Liege peeking in a hole at the bottom of one of the structures. My dad actually climbed inside when he visited. No wonder they confiscated his film!
The opening at the bottom faces east toward the “reborn” rising sun. Chambers inside the tombs (not there any longer, but at one time), were built to resemble wombs. The dead were placed in the fetal position, like we’d seen at the underground cemetery in Nasca (only there are no mummified dead at Sillustani).
There was a nice path that you could meander around that would take you to every structure. But we only had 45 minutes, so we hightailed it to the ones we most wanted to visit.
Did I mention that while we were on Taquille Island on Lake Titicaca, we bought these nifty little matching bracelets off a girl in the square? We decided they were our real anniversary present, and we wouldn’t take them off until one of them rotted off. In fact, I had the audacity to suggest that whoever’s bracelet didn’t last as long as the other’s clearly wasn’t as invested in the relationship and should suffer a punishment of some sort. My Liege thought this was awful, simply awful of me! (I think he was afeared he would lose the competition). He called me a Nasty Pants (which is his nickname, so I don’t know where he gets off trying to confiscate it!). Aw, well, you don’t reach your 25th anniversary without the need to constantly come up with new nicknames for each other.
Self-portrait of us showing off the bracelets (I have the pink bracelet):
Still at Sillustani. My bracelet came off three times over the next four months, you know, as karmic punishment for having made that Nasty Pants suggestions. Twice it came off while I was turning socks inside out doing laundry, and once it came off while I was doing the dishes. The dh didn't lose his bracelet ONCE! So apparently I wasn't as invested in the relationship. Or maybe I was just doing all the housework. HUH? The last time I lost mine, I couldn't find it, so we cut his off and put it in the souvenirs-that-go-in-the-photo-album pile. At least a week later, he was digging a pair of socks out of his drawer, and he found my bracelet! Phew, I wasn't a loser after all. It hadn't rotted off, you see, the force of me lovingly turning his socks right side out had taken it off my arm.
Back to Sillustani. We knew we didn’t have much time, so we made sure to get back to the van within the 45 minutes Really Not Tito had allotted us. He awoke from his siesta, and we continued on our way to Juliaca. Well, it turned out Really Not Tito had neglected to inform us that he Really Didn’t Have a Clue Where the Juliaca Airport Was. He had to get directions, and those directions took us through Juliaca instead of around it. On the up side, we got to experience our last terrifying experience of crazy Peruvian city driving and see parts of Juliaca. On the down side, it was starting to look like—thanks to me wanting to visit Sillustani for my dad—we might not ever ARRIVE at the airport.
Finally, we did. And with enough time to spare. In fact, when we got to the airport in Juliaca, our flight hadn’t been announced yet. It wasn’t on the monitors. We couldn’t find ANY employees in the airport! And Really Not Tito was long gone. Turned out we were just too early. Why arrive to work when the security gate won’t open for another 20 minutes? I mean, really. Eventually, other tourists arrived, and we began to feel some assurance that we would make it to Lima in time for flight #2.
Our first flight was from Puno to Lima by way of Arequipa, the only city and area of Peru we missed that we’d wanted to visit. It’s known for having the deepest canyon in South America, Colca Canyon, where you can see Condors in flight, and it’s also known for volcanoes. We flew close to a few of them:
The tourist in the row behind us took pictures EVERY FEW SECONDS all the way from Puno to Lima. It was a 3 hour flight, so it was ultra-irritating.
Isn’t that a cool volcano, though? We had a brief respite at the Arequipa airport, but weren’t allowed to get off the plane.
Three hours later, we landed in Lima. We didn’t have much time before we had to catch the Lima-Houston leg of our journey home. We were pretty tired and grouchy by this point. We tried to upgrade to first class in the Lima airport (remembering the offer of upgrading on the way down for only $70 each one way, that we stupidly declined). But we were told it would cost $1700 each, and that was just to get us to Houston. Forget about it!
At this point, all I wanted to do was play Sudoku:
Tired and grouchy, losing at Sudoku.
So of course we were stuck with an obnoxious aisle-mate all the way to Houston (about 6 hours). I was in the middle and had to sit beside him. I wanted him to just shut up already (have I mentioned I’m not very talkative on planes? I don’t want to know your life story, sorry. I want to sleep or read and/or play Sudoku!)
Another layover in Houston, very short this time so we were running, and then we flew to Calgary with an EXTREMELY obnoxious aisle-mate. This time My Liege was in the middle, and reports have it that the Obnoxious One was super reluctant about giving up any elbow room. M.L.’s philosophy is that the middle seat is the worst seat, so the others should accommodate you. I’d have to say I agree.
In Calgary, we had enough time to grab something to eat. It was blissful! We ate at Montana’s. We had ribs, the most delicious ribs I have ever consumed. From Calgary, it was a one-hour flight home. By the time we arrived in small town B.C. and my dad picked us up from the airport, 24 hours had elapsed. We were so glad to be home!
We thoroughly enjoyed the journey, but decided we’re too old to experience another “Cindy holiday” for at least two years. (Cindy holidays are when you do anything except lay on the beach). (Cindy is easily bored and quickly gets overheated in the sun). However, only five months have passed, and I am eagerly looking forward to another trip to South America, this time to the Galapagos Islands off Ecuador. Don’t ask me how we plan to pay for it. For now, I’m dreaming and planning. And will even welcome the snafus. Because every snafu we encountered in Peru became a funny memory. And our wonderful experiences more than made up for the few snafus. The snafus made it interesting.
Is it too early to start thinking about Christmas? Not for me, because I have a brand-new release—THE NAUGHTY LIST, Brava’s 2010 holiday anthology. This is my first multi-author anthology for Brava—and I’m thrilled to be there alongside stars Donna Kauffman and Cynthia Eden.
When Kensington asked me to be a part of this holiday anthology, I immediately started playing with ideas.
The last Christmas story I wrote, “Unwrap Me” in UNWRAP ME, was set in Vancouver, BC. I live in Vancouver and love it, but we’re not exactly known for snowy Christmases. This time, I wanted a holiday story set in snow country.
And the setting was obvious, because I was brainstorming this novella in the build-up to the 2010 Olympics in Whistler. Whistler, when the Olympics aren’t happening there, is perhaps an even more intriguing community. It’s a small town—yet it’s an international resort.
As I started thinking about characters, I realized it was the small town aspect I wanted to focus on. I love “going home” stories, such as “you can never go home again” or “you have to go home again.” In “Tattoos and Mistletoe,” I chose “you have to go home again.” In other words, if you’ve had a really rotten past, you have to come to terms with it before you can be a truly whole person and move on to build a happy future.
So I found (because characters and I find each other, it’s not like I actually “create” them) Charlie Coltrane. The girl from the wrong side of the tracks who…well, I’ll let her say it in her own words, if you’ll pardon the language.
People had assumed the kid of two loser drunks had to be a loser, too. That gave Charlie two choices: let them know she gave a fuck, or tell them to fuck off. She’d had enough pride that the first choice wasn’t an option.
A graffiti artist, arrested, suspended from school, almost raped by her date at the Christmas dance, orphaned at Christmas, then shunned by her remaining relative, no wonder she dropped out of school, left town, and vowed never to return.
Of course, I had to force her back there—courtesy of the aunt who’d shunned her, who at the end of her life was suffering from guilt and, just maybe, the urge to matchmake. How the aunt and I finessed this… Well, let’s just say there’s one very hot tool-belt guy involved! A guy who just happened to play a role in Charlie’s past.
Don’t you think high school geeks deserve happy endings? Those genius science nerds whose brains were overdeveloped but who kind of lagged behind in other areas? The ones who had crushes on the very baddest girls—like Charlie Coltrane? Yeah, that’s LJ Jacoby, and man, did he grow up fine!
As I had fun getting to know Charlie and LJ and the two of them got to know each other, we all found out that sometimes, if you work through the baggage you’ve dragged around from your teens, you can envision a brighter future than you’d ever dared dream. Especially if there’s a sprinkle of Christmas magic, and a big bunch of mistletoe!
What’s your view on baggage from the past? Should a person just toss it off the bridge and forget all about it? Could you do that? Or do you figure that, at some point in a person’s life, they’re going to have to come to terms with it? And, as a second question, if that one’s too heavy for you, when do you think publishers should release their holiday books? Is late September too early?
Someone who comments will receive a copy ofTHE NAUGHTY LIST—autographed by all three authors!
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Please leave a comment to enter to win THE NAUGHTY LIST. If you’re reading this blog through a feed at Facebook, Goodreads or another social network, please note you need to leave your comment at www.museinterrupted.com to enter.
To read the back cover blurb for THE NAUGHTY LIST or to read Susan bio, see yesterday’s post. Visit Susan’s website to learn more about her and her books.
Romance author Susan Lyons/Fox visits the blog tomorrow. Susan’s blogging about Christmas-themed stories and will give away a copy of THE NAUGHTY LIST, her September 2010 Kensington Brava anthology featuring “Tattoos and Mistletoe” by Susan Lyons writing as Susan Fox, as well as novellas by Donna Kauffman and Cynthia Eden.
About “Tattoos and Mistletoe”:
Why would you ever want to go home again, when the town treated you like trash? Yet, in Susan’s “Tattoos and Mistletoe,” Charlie Coltrane has to return to Whistler this Christmas and supervise renovations on her aunt’s B&B if she’s to inherit the money to open her own tattoo parlor in Toronto. What a surprise that the contractor in charge of the renos is LJ Jacoby, high school geek transformed into the town’s hottest bachelor. LJ’s about to teach Charlie that sometimes you have to confront your past to find your future—and that Christmas really can be the most romantic time of the year.
About Susan:
Susan Lyons/Susan Fox is the award-winning author of sexy contemporary romance that’s passionate, heartwarming, and fun. She is published by Kensington Brava, Kensington Aphrodisia, Berkley Heat, Harlequin Spice Briefs, and The Wild Rose Press. A resident of both Vancouver and Victoria, B.C., Susan has degrees in law and psychology but would far rather be writing fiction than living in the real world.
Visit Susan’s website to learn more about her and her books.
