Anya Bast

For very, very GOOD (and joyous!) reasons, this blog is taking a brief leave of absence.

I’ll be back, though. I always come back. I’m like a boomerang that way.

Thirteen Things I can’t live without (or wouldn’t want to, at least). (not in any particular order or importance)

1. Writing — I think I’d go crazy without the ability to write. The thought of one day having arthritis sends me into paroxysms of fear.

2. Reading — My one most pleasurable past time. I can’t sleep at night if I haven’t read at least one page of a page. It’s something my husband (a non-reader) just doesn’t get.

3. Sex — Enough said

4. A cat — I need a feline in my life. I’m lucky enough to have been chosen by 7 of them. They help me cope with life by cuddling with me, purring at me and making me laugh every single day.

5. A sense of humor and irreverence — I couldn’t get through this life with these things. Sometimes, when things seem their darkest, you just have to laugh. You just have to. This life is far too mysterious and complicated to take seriously.

6. The ability to live moment-by-moment — see above. Another coping strategy. If you can concentrate on this moment right here, you can get through most any kind of stress.

7. Meditation — It does a body (and mind) good.

8. Water — I love water. Show me a pool or bathtub full of warm water and I’ll show you a happy Anya.

9. Dark chocolate — I know, it’s such a cliche. All the same, I love me some fine dark chocolate, the kind that’s so dark it’s almost bitter.

10. Wine — Mmmmm. Red wine. I love the red wine that comes from the Côtes du Rhône the best.

11. Good food — Cheese. I love all kinds of cheese, but not the truly stinky stuff like Limburger. Unfortunately, my husband likes those. Bleh. I’ll do any variety of the rest, though — Camembert, Brie, Bleu, plain old cheddar. I love the big gourmet olives, and well, the culinary list goes one.

12. Pajama pants, slipper socks and soft, many-times-washed sweatshirt — my official writing uniform. I would also put well-washed Gap jeans on here too.

13. Lingerie — I’m a lingerie fanatic. Victoria’s Secret knows me well.

Links to other Thursday Thirteens!

1. Christine

2, amy

3. Shiloh Walker

4, Ingela F. Hyatt

5. L-Squared

6. Qtpies7

7. Lauren

8. Raggedy

9. Robyn

10. Anni

11. miladyinsanity

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!View More Thursday Thirteen Participants

Whisper of the Blade will release on May 16th! This book is a M/M + F — that means it’s a menage with sexual contact between the men. This book also dovetails with Lauren Dane’s Sword and Crown, available April 25th. Both Whisper of the Blade and Sword and Crown are part of EC’s new Torrid Tarot series.

Once I have cover art, I’ll post an excerpt.

Blurb:

Emmia feels the emotion of all who surround her. Her Talent is empathy
and it’s more curse than blessing. She employs her skill as a justice
mercenary, discovering criminals and meting out punishment.

Magnus didn’t kill his lover, Caith, the way everyone suspects. Now he
is lord to a keep filled with suspicious, angry people.

Quinn, part three of the menage a trois that ended in Caith’s death,
wants only to set things right and resume the loving relationship he
once had with Magnus. He seeks out Emmia and employs her.

In a sexual tangle…

But both Magnus and Quinn are drawn to Emmia, just as they are drawn
to each other. All three of them become lost in a weave of scorching
and erotic desire coupled with emotional need.

Soon Emmia is balancing the two men like swords to uncover the truth
and not be hurt in the bargain…

The Maverick Authors are having a chat with literary agent Laura Bradford of the Bradford Literary Agency in our chatroom tonight (march 10) at 5 pm pacific/8 pm eastern. Laura is a very accessible and friendly person, so come on over and ask her some questions!

I couldn’t resist nipping this one. I tag Lauren Dane, Megan Hart & Patrice Michelle…and any other writer who wants to do it. Of course, don’t do it if you have issues posting bits of your WIP the way I sometimes do. 🙂 I didn’t today, I guess.

Turn to page 123 in your work-in-progress. (If you haven’t gotten to page 123 yet, then turn to page 23. If you haven’t gotten there yet, then get busy and write page 23.) Count down four sentences and then instead of just the fifth sentence, give us the whole paragraph.

I’ll give a few paragraphs instead. From Witch Blood…

He turned to the oven with the plate of chicken in hand. He put both the chicken and the asparagus over a low flame in a wide skillet. Soon the gentle scent of basil chicken wafted to her nostrils and made her mouth water. As the chicken and asparagus warmed, Thomas found a bottle of champagne in the fridge and popped it.

She bit into another slice of avocado and watched him. “Are we celebrating?” She didn’t see anything worthy of such at the moment.

Thomas only lifted a brow, theatrically shot his cuffs and then poured a few drops of the Veuve Clicquot into an oyster.

Isabelle curled her lip and tossed the half-eaten slice of avocado to her plate. “Ugh. That is such a waste of good champagne.”

First, our word of the day…just because I like it.

lum·pen·pro·le·tar·i·at (lmpn-prl-târ–t, lm-)

n.

1. The lowest, most degraded stratum of the proletariat. Used originally in Marxist theory to describe those members of the proletariat, especially criminals, vagrants, and the unemployed, who lacked class consciousness.

2. The underclass of a human population.

So the next time you get in an argument with someone you have a new insult at your disposal, (sounding like a total noob using it is just a bonus). “You, sir, are an utter lumpenproletariat!” It’s bound to kill their response right in their throat.

Books I have read/are reading….

Ain’t She Sweet, by Susan Elizabeth Phillips.

I know this is an older book, but I’m just getting around to reading it now. I’m new to Susan Elizabeth Phillips and, wow!, I like her. Here’s the thing about this book…it is chalk FULL of “gray” characters, characters who aren’t good or bad, but flavored purely human. They do horrible things sometimes out of fear and selfishness, yet the author takes these people and manages to make them all sympathetic. I don’t normally read non-paranormal contemporary romance, but I was intrigued by the main character of this story, Sugar Beth Carey, a girl I would’ve hated with passion in high school. (I definitely knew a few Sugar Beth Carey’s in my day) Phillips made me like her by page twenty. That’s saying something.

Hitting the Mark, by Jill Monroe

I just started this one, so I can’t give a full review of it yet. Mostly I wanted to talk about her book trailer, which you can see here. GREAT book trailer. I probably would not have sought out this book at the bookstore had I not seen it. Totally sold me. I love books about con artists (even ones who aren’t but appear to be at first blush) anyway. Again, I don’t normally read non-paranormal contemporary, but I love Blaze. They’re like irresistible dark chocolate candies. Mmmmmm.

Blood Bound, by Patricia Briggs

I’ve been waiting for this one for a long time. I really enjoyed it. It’s more urban fantasy than anything else, but I love fantasy of any kind. I don’t have a whole lot specific to say other than, dude, buy it. (Sequel to Moon Called)

I’m back! All is well, no worries. Life is muchly busy right now, but when is it not?

I recently read this post over on Lauren Dane’s blog and it made me wax philosophical in my pea brain about reader perceptions, including reviewer perception.

In an ideal world ruled by moi, Queen Goddess of All She Surveys, everyone would luuuurve my books and I’d be on the NYT bestsellers list. However, it is not an ideal world and I certainly have only limited control over it. So sometimes I get a not-so-great review. There have been times, even, (*cough*) that I have received bad reviews.

They might prick my ego a little, might make me pout for a while and eat some chocolate but I know they’re inevitable. I know that each and every person who comes to one of my books has had a different life experience than I’ve had. I know their perceptions of Life, The Universe and Everything are different than mine. I know they probably have a different favorite jam than I do (blackberry!) and they may have voted for the other guy in the last election. I also know that because of these differences, every single reader sees my books through a different lens. Not all those lenses will be rosy.

So I tend to try (note the word try) to be philosophical about bad reviews and those readers who are less than enthused about my writing. Otherwise, I’ll make myself crazy, you know? And I don’t need more crazy.

Mostly, what I aim to do in my writing is create worlds of escape for people to slip into for a while. My goal is to build places where readers will want to spend time and characters they want to spend time with. Well, and I also aim to heat up the pages. 🙂 I love to build emotion between my characters through hot sex scenes. I love writing sex.

But, basically, I just love to write, (I do it the very best way I know how), and I’m thankful to each and every reader and reviewer that supports my work and allows me to do more of it.

Tomorrow I’m going to talk about three books I’ve read/am reading now: 1. Blood Bound, by Patricia Briggs, 2. Hitting the Mark, by Jill Monroe, and 3. Ain’t She Sweet, by Susan Elizabeth Phillips, because not only do I love to write, I love to read.

I apologize for missing my Writerspace chat last night. I had a family emergency that kept me away and one that I am still dealing with today. I’m so very sorry for all of you that made the effort to be there. I appreciate you all so much.

If you attended the chat last night, email me at anyabast (at) gmail.com and I’ll think up a special contest for you all.  When I can, I’ll reschedule a chat.

According to recent research, Americans spend an average of ten more minutes a week watching TV than they did five years ago. They spend forty minutes more a day than they did a decade ago.

On the flip side of the media coin, books sales have been steadily declining. Logic says that perhaps TV is replacing books as a favored form of entertainment. Scratch that, I’m sure TV has already replaced books as such.

The truth is that there are many competitors for the attention of our eyeballs. Not only are there TV and books, there are movies, the Internet and computer/video games too.

I admit I’m a big Internet junkie. I’m on the ‘Net a lot. Movies are another downfall of mine. I love to watch movies both in the theatre and at home. Computer/video games hold little interest for me.

And TV? We actually don’t have TV. Well, we have a TV, but it only gets one channel and we only watch one show. That would be Survivor. Yes, yes, I know. It’s one of my guiltiest pleasures. Otherwise, we don’t watch TV mostly because of the commercials. Commercials just freak me out, man. Most of them treat the viewers as if they have the intelligence of a three-year-old and others are just flat out frightening. Dancing bears and toilet paper, anyone? Mucus throwing parties in your sinus cavities? Shudder

We do Netflix some shows, however. Right now our favorites are Battlestar Galactica, Deadwood, & Prison Break. We just started watching season one of Desperate Housewives too (blessedly without commercials). We’ll see if that show makes the cut. I absolutely loved Dead Like Me, Angel, Buffy and Firefly when they were on. (Bring back Dead Like Me and Firefly, you TV producers! They never got a fair shot!)

However books will always remain my favorite form of entertainment, and the reason reaches further than the fact I write them. Why? Well, read my last blog and you’ll understand.

When I watch movies or TV, everything is handed to me on a silver platter. They allow me no opportunity to create a world in my mind and fill it with my own sights, sounds, smells and tastes. TV and movies offer me no way to use my imagination. They don’t transport me the way a good book does. They usually don’t immerse me so deeply that I can’t hit the stop button and I end up watching all night, regardless of the fact I’ll be exhausted the next day. I can always flip off a TV show or a movie and not regret it. I can’t always close a book and not regret it. I never finish a movie and then instantly say, “I want to watch it again!”, the way I’ve closed some books, turned wistful for a moment, and then flipped to the first page again.

Movies and TV are wonderful and entertaining forms of media, but I guess overall I prefer the imagination expansion that reading allows me.

Indeed, putting tassles on 500 bookmarks by hand does suck in many horrible sucklicious ways.

They are very pretty, though!