Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Happy Romance Day!

Happy Valentine's Day. Here's hoping you're among those who celebrate love and romance (and not that bitter crowd I'm hearing from on Twitter, LOL).


Lyrical Press has a huge sale today--50% off all ebooks. http://www.lyricalpress.com/


Find a love story that tickles your fancy, download, and enjoy. :)




Piper Denna and Autumn Piper
Got sexy romance?

Friday, February 3, 2012

Pitches, pitches

I'm taking pitches over at Word Wranglers next Tuesday. Here are the deets:



On Tuesday, February 7th, http://www.wordwranglers.blogspot.com will host Lyrical Press Editor, Piper Denna.

Piper will be taking 1-3 line pitches.
The rules are simple:
1. Contest opens at 7:00 A.M. EST and closes at Midnight
2. 1-3 lines
3. 1 pitch per person
That's it. We're easygoing over at Wordwranglers, but if you break the rules, you'll be disqualified.
Don't miss this chance to get your pitch in front of an editor!

Piper's bio:

Writing is a craft, a skill which improves with practice. Grammar can be learned.

Spelling...notsomuch. Either you're good at spelling, or you're not. And unfortunately, Spellcheck might be helpful, but let's face it: it's only as good as its programmers, and we all know how many problems certain software programs have. Which is why, no matter who you are, no matter what you write, you need an editor. If you don't believe me, ask Stephen King-we're very close. Like two peas in a pod. (At least, in my mind, which I mean in a completely un-stalkerlike way.)

Now that I'm done name-dropping... Books have always been my thing. And I've been a writer since I could pick up a pencil. My thoughts didn't turn toward writing professionally until about 2005, when I wrote three novels. Through a couple of critique groups and thousands of crits, both given and received, I honed my craft quite a lot. So much so, in 2008 after watching two of my books go through the editing process at publishers, I got the wild idea (the wild, incredibly overconfident idea, in retrospect), that I could do that.

My poor authors have to learn my lingo: "Innerds"-deep third inner thoughts from a character, generally requested as a replacement for narrative ("She wondered why he hadn't arrived yet" comes off much stronger as "Where the hell was he already?") or "Holding Pattern", which I type as a shortcut to remind an author to mix up sentence structure, rather than going with a repetitive subject/predicate format every time.

And I still write. (When I have time, and when I can tranquilize that inner editor enough to shut her up so I can type.) My characters must endure extensive suffering and conflict, and sometimes they do things certain readers don't approve of, but they always get their happy ending.

What kind of books do I prefer to edit? Deep conflict, relatable characters, believable plots, and a strong romantic element. Because romance makes the world go round. Right?

Piper Denna
Romance is sexy!

Thursday, February 2, 2012

All about acquisitions

We contracted a record number of books at Lyrical Press last month. Check out my blog post about it.


Piper Denna
Romance is sexy!

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Body Language Tips

While posting YouTube videos to the Coffee Time Romance YouTube Channel, I sometimes come across gems.


This video is all about body language, and how to tell if a guy is interested. Which I thought was pretty useful and interesting as a writer. (It's so much nicer to use a "showing" bit of body language, than a telling sentence of narrative.)


Anyway. Hope you enjoy it!


Piper Denna
Romance is sexy!

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Wow. I wrote THAT?

Occasionally as writers, when we're reviewing or revising, we end up pleasantly surprised by something we did.

That happened to me yesterday.

I spent some time cleaning up the Fantasy Mountain web site, and updating the Calendar. In the process of checking pages for errors and re-reading all the text, I had a few of those proud moments. I particularly like the Introductions page and the Testimonials. But either way, it sure was fun building that site.

Happy Wednesday!

Piper Denna
Romance is sexy!