Living Right?

Or at least writing right - the deities of blurbosity have been smiling on me. First the oh-so-wonderful Cyn Leitich Smith gave NIGHTSHADE a big writerly high five, and today the uber-awesome Becca Fitzpatrick offered a gold star. Squee!

Sexy and thrilling, NIGHTSHADE had more than enough suspense to keep me flipping pages all night. I was pulled into Andrea's seductive, twisted world where humans are pawns to a powerful pack of werewolves, and nothing is what it seems. I was left guessing until the very end.

Becca Fitzpatrick author of Hush, Hush

To celebrate: I iz going shopping in preparation for my New York voyage. I'll be hitting Manhattan in one week; will spend the rest of this week making key decisions about New York wardrobe...oh, and revising WOLFSBANE.

In honor of these wonderful words here's one of Calla's favorite songs.

My Heart Aflutter!

I think one of the most thrilling moments for a writer is having another writer say nice things about one's book. *You like me! You really like me!*

When it is a phenomenal writer, like Cynthia Leitich Smith, the thrill quickly morphs into hyperventilation and fainting spells.

NIGHTSHADE just got its first blurb. From the amazing author of so many wonderful books, but most recently TANTALIZE and ETERNAL (raise your hand if you are so excited for BLESSED), and creator of the deep well of writing resources that is Cynsations.

“Filled with love, lust, action, suspense, and mayhem, NIGHTSHADE is a glittering dark gem. A finely-wrought, compelling tale of romance and treachery that artfully explores the relationship between loyalty and servitude.” -Cynthia Leitich Smith, author of TANTALIZE

Someone hand me the smelling salts. SWOON.

Origin of the Blurb?

Reading through Captain John Smith's* History of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles, first published in 1624, I became mired in the excess of testimonials that preface the work. As I perused the glowing remarks of Smith's endeavor I realized I'd seen this sort of thing before.

They're book blurbs.

To give an example (one of the shortest of the four pages of blurbs in this seventeenth-century piece - note: about the spelling, regular English spelling didn't happen until the eighteenth century. In the 1600s "f" was often "s," "i" often "j," and "v" often "u.")

To my worthy friend Captaine Iohn Smith. How great a great of knowledge had wee loft, Both of Virginia and the Summer Ifles, Hand not thy caerfull diligence and coft Inform’d vs thus, with thy industrious stile! Like Caefar now thou wri’ft what thou haft done, Thefe acts, this Booke will lieu wile ther’s a Sunne. Edw: Worfeley.

Quite the endorsement. If anyone ever compared my writing to Caesar's in a blurb, I don't know what I'd make of it. And a work that will live as long as the sun shines? Impressive.

With the rise of the Kindle and e-books much buzz in the writing world focuses on how much have changed in the life of print, but reading these early modern blurbs made me realize just how much remains the same.

*A note on Smith's exploits. Even without taking the "blurbs" into consideration, John Smith was a notorious self promoter. He's most famous known in American mythology for being "rescued" by Pocahontas, daughter of Powhatan - the powerful leader of the Powhatan Confederacy. Smith knew how to spin a good tale.


But this (see above image) never happened. Smith capitalized on romantic images of "New World," and particularly sexually exploitative ideas about indigneous women, in order to puff up his own adventures for public consumption. Though many people believe, and have been further convinced by Disney, that some romantic element played into the Smith/Pocahontas episode, that story is the Englishman's own well-deployed smoke and mirrors.

(The early American historian's nemesis: Walt Disney.
This film makes me cringe so often, it's painful!)

Pocahontas would have been about eleven years old at the time of this encounter, and the ceremony that took place wasn't a near-execution, but an adoption ritual in which Smith was given kinship to the Powhatan becoming a brother/father to Pocahontas (a relationship Pocahontas invokes when he runs into Smith in England much later in life).