These have been hectic weeks since I last blogged. I’ve been the guest on other blogs and have generally spent hours and hours promoting THE RUNAWAY MCBRIDE. Some attention is not the kind of attention a writer wants, as, for the example, the following review.

When I opened my Sunday paper this morning, there it was, a review of my book. As far as I can tell, the reviewer hasn’t read my book but only skimmed it. Right off, she says that the book is set in Scotland. It’s not. Only the first chapter is set in Scotland. The rest of the book is set in London. She also implies that this is a bodice-ripper. Doesn’t she know that so called “bodice-rippers” disappeared from the genre almost twenty years ago? THE ENGLISH PATIENT by Michael Ondaatje is an exception. He resurrected some of the old clichés to great effect. But he wasn’t writing a romance. He was writing a love story.

According to this reviewer, romance writers should take Maeve Binchy and Kathleen Winsor as their models. I would agree that Maeve Binchy is a first rate writer, but she doesn’t write romances. She writes relationship books. As for Kathleen Winsor’s FOREVER AMBER (published in 1945!), her heroine is not a sympathetic character and the ending, for romance readers, is disappointing to say the least.

Something else the review got wrong: my heroine does not teach “ladyhood” (the reviewer’s word) at a girls’ school. She teaches classical Greek at a progressive school that is preparing its students to take the entrance exams for university. This is an important development in the history of women. The universities were becoming accessible to them, and so were the professions that had hitherto been occupied by men.

I could go on and on.

There are valid points the reviewer makes that are legitimate and well taken. What got me riled was her condescending attitude and her glib use of sarcasm. It says more about her than it does about my book.

Was it only yesterday that I told an unpublished writer that the first thing she had to develop if she wanted to succeed in this business was a thick skin?

My words have come back to bite me!

Hi Visitor: for the next week, I will not be blogging on this site.

I am guest blogging on  Ask The Author forum on the Romantic Times website,

Visit me there and let me hear from you.

Elizabeth

Tricia: I was struck by your comment on my books - “It’s like I’m watching a movie and the scenes are brought to life with your words.”

That’s how I plot my books. I make a list of scenes with emotions that are running high, not necessarily love scenes, but action scenes or scenes of great conflict, and I try to visualize them as if I were watching them on a screen. Then I think up ways and means of building my story around these scenes.

Of course, if the characters are flat, I might as well not bother.

In my new series, I’ve added a touch of the paranormal. Someone who came across my website, a psychic, no less, emailed me privately. She sounds like a lovely, normal granny, just like me. I’m hoping to get some tips from her.

I have to say, I don’t want the paranormal to take over my books, so the three wordly Scottish grandsons of the Witch of Drumore are none too happy with the psychic powers that become theirs when their granny dies. Each grandson has a different gift. Each has to learn how to master it.

This is not the first time I’ve introduced the paranormal into my books. You Only Love Twice and The Pleasure Trap were the first. For me, using psychic elements is just a way to add flavor.

My favorite paranormal story is still Mary Stewart’s Touch Not The Cat. And my favorite TV show is Medium, due to reappear in February this year.

Talk to you later.

Elizabeth.

For more on Elizabeth and her books, go to the Romantic Times blog, Ask The Author.

Talking about heroines . . . something that has always puzzled me. Every month, Romantic Times names its K.I.S.S. heroes. This month, James Burnett, my male protagonist in The Runaway McBride was one of them. I have nothing against singling out men for an award. But there’s no mention of the female protagonists. This seems odd to me. Since I was a young girl and reading on my own, I’ve always been influenced  by the heroines in the books I’ve read. Think Heidi; think Jo of Little Women; think Anne of Anne of Green Gables; and Jane Austen’s Elizabeth Bennett and Emma. Closer to my own time, think of Sara Paretsky’s V.I. Warshowski.

I don’t want to take the K.I.S.S. award away from the men. I just think our heroines should get equal billing.

Of all the books I’ve published, my favorite heroine would have to be . . . Rosamund in The Perfect Princess, I think. No, make that Abbie in Whisper His Name. No, on second thoughts . . . I give up. It’s always more interesting to hear what my readers think.

If you haven’t picked up January’s issue of Oprah’s magazine, you’re missing out on the best New Year’s motivational piece I’ve  yet to read. I’ve read many motivational writers’ books and listened to their spiels. The message always seems to be “if you do as I say, you can be as rich, as svelte, as healthy and as successful as I am.”

Bless Oprah! She sounds just like me. She has dropped off the wagon, gained back much of her weight and is starting over. She learns from her failures. Now that is what I call a heroine.

She talks about finding balance in her life. I know what she means. If the job comes first, everything else goes by the wayside. Writers hardly come up for air as that deadline looms closer. I’ve just finished the second book in a new Victorian three part series and I can see in the mirror I’ve gone to pot. This can’t be me!

Same with Oprah.

If you are in the same boat, do yourself a favour. Read the January issue of  O, The Oprah Magazine 

Finding balance. That’s my New Year’s resolution for 2009.

P.S. Starting January 12, for 2 weeks, I’ll be the guest on Ask the Author forum on Romantic Times web site. Ask the Author. Hope to see you there.

I sure wish the US election was over. I’ve become a CNN junkie - Campbell Brown, Larry King, and Anderson Cooper and let’s not forget David Gergen - every night. I know the red states, the blue states, and the all the shades-in-between states. John King appears and my husband says, “Not that map again!” But we stay glued to the screen.

The election is fascinating, exciting, engrossing. And the irony? I’m Canadian and I can’t vote!!!

Not fair!

Just working on the bookpage on my website, checking the availability of my books and discovered that My Guardian Angel, a 1995 anthology in which I had a short story, The Trouble With Angels, is listed for sale at $23.00!! $23.00 for a paperback? What is going on?

During the sermon this morning, our minister asked us to recall some particular moment that he called “The ah-h-h . . .” moment that we had experienced during the past week. This was supposed to be a faith based moment.

What came to my mind were moments I had shared with my husband and three grown sons. The youngest son phoned his dad and me on Thanksgiving (Canadian Thanksgiving, October 13) — he lives in Toronto — just to talk and hear the sound of our voices (We e-mail all the time).

The second “ah-h-h . . .” moment was when my husband and I sat down to Thanksgiving dinner with our middle son and his family.

And the third moment came when my husband and I were out for dinner at our usual eatery on Friday night and our eldest son and his wife surprised us by walking in and joining us for dinner.

Now, can I tell you about those special moments with my grandchildren?

I had to do a lot of rewriting this week before I was satisfied with my new novel (I’m amost finished it). As I read what I had written, I began to feel really dissatisfied with a couple of my characters. They just didn’t come across as real people. They seemed two dimensional, not fully drawn out, and I was shocked. Really shocked. I mean I created these characters and I know these characters so well. What had happened?

So, I was back to rereading and rewriting previous chapters, adding a sentence here, another paragraph there, more dialogue in places, so that my characters could come alive and be real people.

Now the weekend is over (almost!) and the rewriting is over (for the moment!), and I’m ready for a new week and on to a new chapter. And my characters? Yes, I feel much better about them. They are rounding out nicely into full blooded people.

Phew! Who said writing was easy?

This weekend, I had a visit from an old friend who is a lawyer with the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands. We are both older (definitely – we haven’t seen each other for 20 years) and wiser (perhaps) and it was so good to bring our life stories up to date. He and his wife live in downtown The Hague. One thing I do envy him is the ease with which they can travel Europe. Just hop in the car and off to Berlin, Paris, Rome. All so easily accessible. I do miss that aspect of living in Europe!

He is an avid reader and he recommended an author to me, someone I have never read, in fact, never heard of – Boris Akunin, a Russian writer who writes two series of mysteries set in 19^th century Russia, the Sister Pelagia series and the Erast Fandorin series. Both characters, Sister Pelagia and Erast Fandorin are unconventional sleuths. I found more about him on his website and on the 52books blogspot.

My friend is so enthusiastic about this author and about both these series of books that I am totally convinced. Next visit to my favorite bookstore and I will be on my way to 19^th century Russia!

Meantime, I have just read John Grisham’s Playing for Pizza. What a fun book! As a writer, I can learn a lot from Grisham. This story is set in northern Italy, and the city, Parma, just comes alive under Grisham’s hand. The lead character is a former NFL quarterback who gets a job with the Parma Panthers. I learned more about American Football than I want to know, but once again, Grisham tweaked my interest. And as for his descriptions of the food . . . mouth-watering.