The Chris Blog

A week after its release, I’m finally sitting long enough to tell you all about it. This is the book I wrote related to the ‘be in the book!’ and the ‘name the book!’ contests of 2008. The lucky (and exceedingly helpful) winners were:

Addison Albright, who gave the novel its name, and
Carrigan Chantz and Stephanie, who lent me their names and fragments of their personalities.

This book is a personal favourite of mine. The premise was fun, the contests were fantastic, but the actual story took on a life of its own, as these things often do.  Thank you to the many hands who helped shape it, from Addison and Carrigan and Stephanie to Tory Temple and Jordan Castillo Price for the hand holding and cheerleading, and Michelle, Jean and Lorna at Torquere who all piled in and helped me find and fix the seventeen million errors and loose ends, and thank you to Sara Bell for her lovely review at TP.

Keep reading for an excerpt!  Acquired Tastes is available here in e-book and print from Torquere Press. 

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I seem to have missed the end of September for updating the website and things. My apologies. Life, it is busy.

So, to quickly bring everyone up to speed, I had a couple of stories come out from Torquere in September — Apotrope and Speed Dating the Slow Way. Next month my novel, Acquired Tastes, will be released.

I got caught up on my e-mail, so if you didn’t get a reply from me I’m afraid you might have fallen into the spam and junk mail filters. I have also discontinued the use of the chris at prettymuses.com e-mail address, as it was a HUGE collector of spam, numbering in the hundreds of messages a week. I just don’t need that much V*iagra, thanks. Please use the contact form on my website to reach me, or chrisowen.net at gmail.com Thanks!

Speaking of e-mail, I’ve been meaning to post a note right on my website for ages and ages and haven’t yet. I better do that today. (hahahaha!)

I DO answer all my e-mail. I promise, I do. (Well, unless you’re trying to sell me V*iagra or are very, very rude to me.) I am, however, not quick about it. It’s not unheard of for me to take up to two (okay, three) months to get all the way caught up. This is not something I’m proud of, but after years of it being this way, I just have to admit I’m not going to get better about it. I promise to answer. I can’t promise to be quick about it. If you don’t get a reply — especially if you’ve asked questions about a story! — please don’t hesitate to try again and light a fire under me.

I’m thinking I should probably do a FAQ, too. There actually are frequently asked questions (Yes, I’m a woman. No, there won’t be any more Jake and Tor novels, but there will likely be short stories. No, there won’t be any more Gemini stories at all, sorry. No, no more 911, either. Yes, there is a fifth Deviations book, Jodi and I are working hard and getting it ready to submit. Yes, Travis was a rat bastard and no, he won’t be getting his own novel, either. Yes, I do like mint tea, and yes, Scott’s book addiction, Phan’s hair, and any references to The Princess Bride are me putting myself in a story. Bad author!) Oh, wait. No need to do a FAQ.

What else. OH! You may (or may not) have heard that I’m taking a wee break. This is true. I am not stopping writing! Promise. In fact, I’m working weekly with Vic, doing Drew Zachary things. But I’m taking a good long step back from writing solo stuff in order to concentrate on a few things that really need my attention, including a major house reno. I’ll be back! In the meantime, I’m puttering with a couple of story ideas and making notes, learning to ride my new pink scooter, sewing, spinning, weaving, painting, taking photos, running (I did the couch to 5K! I’m going to do a half-marathon in a year!) and hanging out with my family. Recharging the batteries, if you will.

I’ll get links up to the new stories (um, soon?) and be back with a celebration of Acquired Tastes in November. Enjoy October, everyone!

It’s my day at the Torquere Anniversary contests!!

http://torquerebooks.com/contest/index.html

The prize is signed paperbacks, so go and enter.  Dooooo eeeeeet!

*crossposts, sorry*

Posting at the Torquere Press LiveJournal today.

http://community.livejournal.com/torquere_social/

Chris is still here. Promise.

Summer was lovely — I travelled a lot, I had company a lot, and I wrote not a single word after about the third of July.  Well, I got some edits back from editors, but I didn’t start or finish any new projects. Oh, wait — I totally just made an error. I worked with Vic Winters through July on a Drew Zachary novel that we just finished a few days ago. No solo work, though —  I worked very, very hard in May and June to ensure I could take the whole summer off, and I loved it.

In July I went to Washington DC for a vacation with Tory Temple (and met up with Shea Meier whilst there!), then went on to Ohio for a lovely weekend with a ton of friends. In August my mother-in-law came to stay for four weeks, and the day after she left my parents came for a few days.  Yesterday was my first day with an empty house.

Today I looked up and discovered that I really had taken the summer off of life. It was kind of groovy.

Anyway.  I have a few things I need to post about, inform you about, link you to, etc etc, but they require thought and my brain is still on vacation.  So here’s the highlights of what’s going on this month here at Chez Chris:

Next week, new title out on Wednesday. It’s for the Spice it Up! line at TP, and I selected garlic. The story is called Apotrope which might be the worst title I’ve ever come up with. I can’t seem to remember it!  But if you go to Wiki and look it up you’ll get it. I’ll be at the Torquere Press LJ that day (September 16), and it’s also my day in the Anniversary giveaway. Signed paperbacks, yo. Toss your name in the hat that day.

I have another release this month, a Single Shot for TP’s anniversary — I’ll figure out the date and let you know asap. It’s called ‘Speed Dating the Slow Way’ and is a hot little thinky piece.

Acquired Tastes is with the editor and is scheduled to come out November 11. I am insanely excited about this novel. This is the book that resulted from the Summer Contest of 2008, in which I asked for titles and for people to put themselves in the novel. I know three people are going to read it, woohoo!

I have a couple of other things still getting ready for submission — small things for Turn of the Scew that I’m doing with others (my Blue Sky Lodge stories, for those that are on TotS). Jodi and I are plugging at the last Deviations book, getting it ready to submit. Life is getting in the way, I hope you’ll continue to be patient.

The response to the new website has been very positive — thank you all for your lovely e-mails! We still have no idea why the Excerpts page is acting up, but we continue to poke at it.

At the end of the month there will be a low key announcement regarding my plans for the next few months; nothing huge, don’t panic. I’m going to take a little break, is all. Not from writing entirely (I mean, I wouldn’t give up breathing, either, and that would be easier in a lot of ways), and I’ll be working steadily with Vic, but I’m going to pull back while my house undergoes some pretty huge renovations. I’ll be back, I promise! Anyway, watch for more details and navel gazing about that in a couple of weeks.

… I think that’s it for now. See you next week when I babble about Apotrope and push you to the LJ.

Vacation. I’m off for a couple of weeks, traveling.  I won’t be checking e-mail which means I’m going no mail on the lists and putting away messages up (assuming I remember to do that part tomorrow morning — if I forget, I just won’t reply until I’m back. LOL )

Be good. Don’t burn the place down.

Woot, here I come, America!

Please be patient with me for a few days, though, while I go through and fix the blog links.

Thanks.

Hope you like the new look!

today I played with wool for five hours while my husband played with the new site and figured our a few things for me.

Tomorrow I’ll be working on the site and from there I expect I’ll be able to get help from Larry-the-dude-who-built-it. Look for activity ’soon’.

What? I’m an artist. I am creative with time. Blame it on the Rift.

Hi all!

There may be website issues over the weekend.  I’m going to take the new site live (God, I hope so!) either over the weekend or Monday. If it doesn’t happen, I’ll post with an update as to why and a new time line.  The new site will have a ripple effect.  The blog URL will be changing — actually, it’s entirely possible that all the URLs will, since I’m moving chrisowen.net from a sub domain of prettymuses.com to its own domain.  If you’d saved, for example, the sneak peeks page as: http://www.chrisowen.net/sneakpeeks.html you’ll be okay. If you have the actual URL of http://chrisowen.prettymuses.com/sneakpeeks.html it’s going to go away.

If you’ve linked the blog anywhere, you might want to check it AFTER I post that things are all good to go. You may always keep up with the mirror over on LiveJournal: http://chris-owen.livejournal.com/  At one point I’d wanted to do away with mirroring, but I seem to be followed in both places, so mirroring will stay.

Also, I’m going to be shifting my e-mail over to chrisowen.net @ gmail.com  since the other one is an incredible spam attractor and the gmail filters are more robust than the multiple rules I’ve set up in Mail. This change will be gradual and I’ll have an auto-reply set up for a few weeks as I take care of that.

In other news, I finished a Single Shot, a Spice it Up, and the novel, Acquired Tastes.  Acquired Tastes is going through a beta process but it’s the last thing I have to submit before I take a very long break. I’m SO happy with the stories, and so very, very looking forward to a rest.

omg the last chaser will be out later today!!  ….. I’ll likely post to pimp that next week, when it’s time to show off the new site!

Have a good weekend!

I just went no-mail on all my lists, and I’m setting e-mails to an out of office message for a few days.

I’m off on a wee vacation with my family and will be back next Thursday.  I will not have internet access at all, and for a good chunk of the time will not have cell access, either. Totally out of touch.  I may die.

Have a good weekend, all!