Whether we're talking boy meets girl, boy meets boy, girl meets ghost, or vampire meets viscount*, if it's truly romantic, it has a place on this page.
*(or any combination of individuals, regardless of gender or sexual orientation, whether dead or undead, of which the foregoing list should be regarded as illustrative and not exhaustive).
There's no easy way to say this, so I'll jump right in: I really really hate the phrase making love.
Actually, I don't merely hate it, it makes me retch. If Mr T ever uses the phrase, I will mime throwing up and say Ugh, don't use that phrase! It is a completely visceral reaction to the spoken words. I can just about cope with reading it, though I do roll my eyes. Particularly when I'm assured that This wasn't sex, This was making love...
It is actually in my novel though.
I am totally fine with the phrase in the old sense of flirtation and mild seduction so that when you read that Arthur spent the whole afternoon making love to Catherine, it merely means that he was paying her lots of attention and perhaps stealing a few kisses, rather than doing her over the pianoforte.
What about you? Are there any perfectly ordinary everyday phrases that set your teeth on edge?
I announced recently that I would be hosting some guest bloggers here at Isn't It Romance? and Shawna Thomas has the dubious honour of being the first. My plan with these guest posts is to ask readerly questions that interest me of my guests. But before I start interrogating, some details.... Shawna's novel Altered Destiny releases today and is a fantasy with romantic elements. You can buy it here.
~~~
Altered Destiny, the blurb:
Selia has run her family's tavern since she was fifteen and can hunt and fight the equal of any man. When she rescues a badly wounded man and nurses him back to health, she has no idea she's about to change not only her life, but also the destinies of two peoples...
The battered warrior is Svistra—a race of bloodthirsty savages determined to destroy her homeland. Or so the stories claim. Jaden reveals a different truth: how his ancestors were driven into the barren northern mountains. Now they are strong and war parties are pushing south wanting their land back.
The son of a Svistra Commander, Jaden is looking for a way to bring peace to both humans and Svistrans. He tries to ignore his growing passion for Selia, but when she is captured he has to decide what he would be willing to sacrifice to save the woman he loves. ~~~
Tumperkin: The thing that strikes me about the blurb is the sense of upheaval and trauma. Did you set out to write a book full of high stakes drama? Was it something about the characters or the story you wanted to tell that made that appropriate?
Shawna: Wow, what a good question. When I start writing a book, it's all about the characters. I want to learn about them, what makes them tick, get a feeling for the interaction between them. Then I torture them. So no, I didn't set out to write a book with drama, but reading a book without drama is like reading an 8 year-old's diary. Not so exciting. LOL (I recently found my diary when I was 8). However, in learning the characters, I discovered an almost impossible situation. One in which no one was completely right and everyone was, at least in part, in the wrong. No easy solutions. I like that.
Tumperkin: I can relate to that. As a reader, I love the ambiguous places in books, where there are lots of shades of grey to explore and ponder. I don't like too-easy answers.
So, why fantasy?
Shawna: I love the fantasy genre because you can go all out. You are only limited by your imagination. That said, I like worlds that make sense. Currency, language, religion, even paranormal beings all need to mesh into a believable world. I think my love of history helps me there. That said, and this is something I've never revealed before, this story is actually set in a post (as in hundreds of years after the event) apocalyptic North America. I don't highlight that fact, but there are hints throughout the book.
Shawna: I honestly don't remember choosing that setting. It came about naturally. I was trying to find a reason a race of people would need to consume blood (like mosquitoes, only sexier. ; )) so I was researching and hit upon radiation which caused a mutation in the body's DNA. This mutation prevented the body from absorbing certain amino acids necessary for life. The fantasy part of my brain took over and the Svistra were born. By the way, only female mosquitoes consume blood. Male mosquitoes drink plant nectar. Yup, we know who wears the pants in that family. ; )
So, I was at the End of the Road festival in Dorset last weekend and it was amazing. (The picture above of the Garden Stage is nabbed from a Guardian blogpost about this festival in 2008 so it's not from last weekend but it looked exactly like this).
We saw lots of artists - some great favourites and some new to me - but the definite highlights for me were (in ascending order): the Unthanks on Saturday teatime (lovely gig. I cried during The Testimony of Patience Kershaw); John Grant on Sunday night (just, wow. What a voice. I've been playing his Queen of Denmark album all week and now I'm going to listen to his Czars stuff) and top of my bill, Midlake. They were unbelievably fantastic. I think it might be the best gig I've ever seen! I love their music anyway but everything they played was more than it is on the albums. They were more more than anyone else I've ever seen. And it was just... transcendant. It's funny actually. I've always sniggered at prog rock but they did these huge prog-rockesque jams and they were just crazily good! Best new-to-me artist was probably Canadian, Kathryn Calder.
I also ate some excellent carnitas nachos and drank some pretty good beer.
What else?
Oh, yes. I'm moving law firms. This is kind of a huge deal for me as I joined my present firm straight from university 16 years ago. *gulp* It's exciting though. And good. Timing-wise, I move job in the same week that my novel comes out. So November's going to be a big deal of a month for me.
Writing-wise, prior to getting the news from Carina that they wanted to publish The Lady's Secret (as it became) I was writing a UF. Yes, really. I put that aside to edit TLS and then, having gotten immersed in the historical vibe again, I picked up my old pre-TLS Regency WIP (submitted to handful of agents then shelved). I've been totally gutting and re-drafting that WIP for the last couple of months. The benefit of a bit of distance - it's so much easier to ditch whole chapters after a year! I do intend to go back to that UF though. It probably doesn't make much commercial sense but I want to write that story and I think it'll do me good to try a different style.
Reading-wise, I read the following ebooks in Dorset: Mary Balogh's The Secret Mistress (pleasant), a fab little Josh Lanyon short, In Sunshine and In Shadow (nice working of the Irish theme), K A Mitchell's Chasing Smoke (mostly liked but it sort of petered out at the end). Now I'm home I'm looking forward to reading Miranda Neville's The Amorous Education of Celia Seaton and Tessa Dare's A Night to Surrender, both of which Janet W sent me (thank you, Janet!) I also purchased, having liked the excerpt, a book from M&B's Riva line: The End of Faking It by Natalie Anderson.
Pondering-wise, I've been musing on the consequences of my recent m/m glom. Yes, consequences. Positive ones! These musings have been prompted to some extent by twitter exchanges with Sunita. I'm planning to blog about this very soon.
Here's one of the best tracks from that Midlake set: Acts of Man from the Courage of Others album. Is that Douglas Fairbanks in the vid? Jnr? Snr?
Posts
