Jaci Burton’s Muse

I watch a lot of television. A LOT of television. Probably too much, judging how far behind I am in my current deadline. Eek! Good thing I work well under pressure, huh?

Anyway, one of the things I’m finding in my television watching is that when I choose my favorite shows, I’m discovering it’s all about characterization. Greys Anatomy, Ugly Betty, Men in Trees are some of my favorite shows this season…and you could take away the plotlines of every show and I’d still be riveted, because I’ve fallen deeply in love with characters. Who they are, what’s going on their lives, their heartbreak, what they’re thinking and how those thoughts make them act and react.

As a writer, I’m all about the characters. The characters drive my plot. Their every thought, every emotion, determines what happens in the book. A strong character can make or break a book, in my opinion, just like strong or weak characterization makes or breaks a television series. If you have dynamic characters, you have a winner. If your characters don’t win over the reader, it doesn’t matter what kind of plot you have. The reader won’t be invested in the story.

Now granted, you need to have SOMETHING happening to these characters, because they’re nothing without a good plotline. But the best plotline in the world won’t help lousy characterization. In my humble opinion.

So what about you? What most drives your reading enjoyment? Great plot or great characters? And you writers out there, what hits your hot buttons the most? The plot or the characters?

I’ve been DYING to read this book ever since I first heard about it. I’ve already preordered it from Amazon. And the video trailer below rocks! :hips:

NIGHT RISING by Chris Marie GreenAce, February 6, 2007
0-441-01467-4

Welcome to Hollywood—after dark…

Stuntwoman Dawn Madison is a girl with attitude—and a lot of issues, mostly about living up to the legacy of her mother, a world famous movie star whose untimely death left Dawn to be raised by her dad Frank, nobody’s notion of single-father-of-the-year. Now that she’s grown up, she and Frank aren’t on the best of terms, to say the least.

Still, he is her dad, and when he vanishes while investigating the bizarre sighting—caught on film—of a supposedly long-dead child star, she comes home to Tinseltown to join the search for him. Working with his colleagues—a psychic short in stature but big in dreams, a beautiful Latina techno-geek, and the P. I. firm’s never-seen boss—she discovers an erotic and bloody underground society made up of creatures she thought existed only on screen.

They are devious. They are deadly. And some of them are dangerously attractive…

Book teaser link:
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/395573/night_rising_vampire_babylon_book…

Excerpt:

http://www.vampirebabylon.com/books_night_rising_excerpt.htm

ABOUT CHRIS MARIE GREEN

Chris Marie Green also writes as Crystal Green for Silhouette Bombshell and Special Edition, plus Harlequin Blaze. Her first vampire book, THE HUNTRESS, allowed her to indulge in her love of horror movies and novels. NIGHT RISING is book one of the Vampire Babylon trilogy.

REVIEWS

Night Rising – Vampire Babylon is the first book in a new trilogy set in the exciting world of paranormal Hollywood…. Described as a noir-mystery-fantasy series, it is dark, erotic and compelling reading – Amanda at Lovevampires.Com

Green’s storytelling prowess is hitting on all cylinders in Night Rising: a brilliantly developed plotline; compelling, realistically drawn characters; and enough ghoulish antagonists, horrific murders and erotic encounters to satisfy fans of all genres. Regardless of categorization, Green’s latest is pure, unadulterated storytelling gold. Highly recommended. -Paul Goat Allen, Barnes and Noble

Chris Marie Green does a wonderful job of bringing this gritty, dark novel to life…. If this is the first installment of the VAMPIRE BABYLON series, I can’t wait to see where [the author] takes the rest of the books. – The Best Reviews

Websites

Vampire Bablyon Website
Crystal Green Website
MySpace Site

I bought new shoes yesterday. Gorgeous new shoes for my upcoming booksigning. Something about girlie shoes just does something for my happy meter. Biker dude took me out to breakfast, then was forced to trek the mall with me–he was not happy about it, but as usual was a real trooper about the whole thing, especially since I didn’t linger at the mall.

Then we went to Barnes & Noble where they had Surviving Demon Island in three places! They featured it on the paperback revolving rack right as you walk in the door, it’s on the New In Romances shelf in the romance section as well as alphabetized on the romance shelf. I love that B&N!

So, on to this week’s To Do List. I made some progress on last week’s list and knocked out a few major to do’s, so that’s a relief. This week I still have some leftovers from last week that didn’t get done (like go to the Post office–oops). But I promise that I’m going this week.

To Do’s:

1. Work on Born To Be Wild
2. Go to Post Office
3. Hair appointment (I so need a haircut)
4. Make pups appointment at groomer (THEY so need a haircut!)
5. Blog about some awesome books I’ve read
6. Read and judge RITA books (can’t blog about those…sorry, it’s a secret :giggle:)
7. Work on proposal for next Demon Hunter book.
8. Blog about new book releasing.

That’s enough for me. I need to really make some headway in my book. Serious headway. Deadline is approaching.

What’s on your to do list?

Another week has zoomed by.

We had warm weather this week. 60 degrees yesterday, melting a ton of the ice around here. And now today it’s cold again with a forecast for a mix of rain and snow. Mother nature needs to quit screwing with me. It’s pissing me off and making me cranky.

So I’m working on a bookmark order for Wild, Wicked & Wanton. The draft looks VERY cool. Hopefully I’ll have a finished product to show you all soon. And then I’ll start mailing them out to anyone who wants them. I also worked on some promotion and advertising this week for the book. Amazing how much time that sucks up. No, it’s not all about writing. There’s so much more to do besides that.

Must work on Born To Be Wild. I need someone to stand behind me and kick my ass so I’ll work faster. Of course it would help if my characters would stop having sex. Oh wait. Their supposed to have sex. Never mind.

Of course it would help my word count to write more. Can I help it that there’s so much great stuff on television? I’m hooked on some great shows. Like Greys Anatomy, CSI, Ugly Betty, American Idol, Men in Trees….

Oh, and for all us Nora Roberts fans, y’all know what’s coming on Lifetime starting this Monday, right?

Nora Roberts TV Schedule:

Angels Fall, Monday, January 29th at 9pm ET/PT on Lifetime.
Montana Sky, Monday, February 5th at 9pm ET/PT on Lifetime.
Blue Smoke, Monday, February 12th at 9pm ET/PT on Lifetime.
Carolina Moon, Monday, February 19th at 9pm ET/PT on Lifetime

I saw the commercial for the movies last night. It was killer awesome! Go Nora! :hips:

So I was fortunate to receive an ARC of the upcoming SUCCUBUS BLUES by the extremely talented Richelle Mead.

I just love that cover!

Here’s the blurb about the book:

Succubus (n) - An alluring, shape-shifting demon who seduces and pleasures mortal men.
Pathetic (adj.) - A succubus with great shoes and no social life. See: Georgina Kincaid.

But dreaming about Seth will have to wait. Something wicked is at work in Seattle’s demon underground. And for once, all of her hot charms and drop-dead one-liners won’t help because Georgina’s about to discover there are some creatures out there that both heaven and hell want to deny…

Immortals are being offed by some unknown, and Georgie turns into otherworldly, amateur sleuth while trying to dodge the affections of a couple human males she really likes—so of course she doesn’t want to completely suck out their life force. The girl is busy, let me tell you. Georgie has angst and emotion that will tug at your heartstrings, there’s action and suspense (and sex…did I mention fun sex?) and a mystery unfolding, a cast of characters that I absolutely adored, both good guys and bad guys. Richelle did a fabulous job drawing shades of gray even in her bad guys, which I just love, because I hate absolutes in characterization.

I loved Georgie. I mean in a big way. This book isn’t your typical dark urban fantasy. Though a succubus and charged with ‘doing her duty’, Georgie isn’t really happy in her role, though she does what she has to do to keep her powers charged up and to toe the line, hellishly speaking. I loved her journey, the slow unveiling of her past and how she became a succubus. It was a beautiful presentation of a character and Richelle did a fantastic job with this book.

I can’t wait for the next one and I highly recommend it!

You can preorder the book here

Thirteen Things On My Desk Right Now

1. Something to drink – it’s either coffee (in the morning), or Diet 7 Up in the afternoon/evenings. Sometimes Diet Dr Pepper if I can handle the extra caffeine. And if it’s been a really bad day, it might be Captain Morgan and Diet Coke.

2. The synopsis for the book I’m working on, Born To Be Wild

3. About 3 issues of Romantic Times magazine as well as the RWA’s Romance Writer’s Report (it always takes me forever to file these away. Plus I refer to them every now and then for re-reads)

4. Rodale’s Synonym Finder – a writer’s best friend

5. A pink pig that Angie sent me – she’s adorable and is actually a character in my book, Rescue Me, my Samhain book that Angie edited. Um, the pig is a stuffed animal, not a real pig. Just to clarify.

6. Copyedits for Wild Wicked & Wanton. I’m entering in the copyedited parts so I can create a pretty ARC.

7. A white stuffed bunny rabbit. Press it’s belly and it says ‘Some bunny loves you’. It annoys the crap out of the puppies. So of course I press it’s belly every now and then. I’m certain the pups want to eat it. I think it’s adorable.

8. A copy of Surviving Demon Island (have y’all read my book yet?)

9. My grandmother’s rosary – My little Italian grandmother died in….1973? I have her rosary that came from Italy, and it sits in this tiny little marcasite container. I remember playing with both the container and the rosary in church when I was a little girl. It conjures up very sweet memories for me and both the rosary and the little container are just gorgeous.

10. A box of Junior Mints *drools*

11. My ‘To Be Mailed’ folder. I keep a folder with printouts of contest winner name and addresses and things I need to mail out so I can centralize my ‘go to the post office’ list. But since I always seem to procrastinate about going to the post office, the list is growing.

12. Post it notes – I use them for a variety of reasons, mostly to jot things down so they don’t get lost in the great swiss cheese of my mind.

13. A crapload of junk that either needs to be filed away or pitched—aka the stuff I need to clean off my desk…but don’t