I think I’m excited about getting new foreign covers because it’s like getting new clothes.  I like new clothes, but I am in general disinclined to shop.  We are in July now and this entire year I’ve spent less than $300 on clothes and accessories combined.  For the money I’m willing to fork over per piece–as you can guess, not much at all–there is usually something not quite there with the style, the cut, the fit, the whatnot, which means time spent browsing is time largely wasted.  And as for White House Black Market, which has the style, the cut, the fit, and the whatnot, alas, they do not carry enough color and I can only wear so much black before the twee-ness of my soul rebels and I begin to long for all kinds of pastels.

But getting foreign covers is like having fun, fabulous new clothes delivered to your home–free!

First up, Spanish DELICIOUS.  Did I mention above how much I adore pastels?  Well, here’s pastel heaven, that’s what.

I only wish I knew for sure whether she’s hugging a fancy pillow or a small sack of potatoes. 

Next, pocket edition of Spanish PRIVATE ARRANGEMENTS.  I was quite surprised to receive those books in the mail, as I didn’t know there was to be a pocket edition.

Niiiice.  Rather an Orientalist flavor to it.

Now, Japanese DELICIOUS, which is the largely the same cover as the North American one.

I like the title, though, which says SEDUCTIVE DINNER. 

I can spot a Russian cover from a kilometer away.  They have a certain old-fashioned je ne sais quoi.  Here’s the hardcover Russian DELICIOUS.

Here it is, with a mighty rose, the paperback edition.

The title translates to EXQUISITE, according to Google translator.

Indonesia gave PRIVATE ARRANGEMENTS its first landscape cover.

The title is COVENANT OF LOVE.  Pretty.  Greek-ish.  But Camden and Gigi have plans to sail the Aegean, so it’s all good.  Besides, I’m sure they had cobalt-blue swimming pools back in the 1890s.   And nice rubbish collectors with ashtrays on top. 

And last, but most definitely not the least, my Thai publisher is not about to be outdone.  Here is the second landscape cover for PA.

Mamma mia!  Lest you think this is just generic prettiness, look at this detail.

As it so happens, there is an important horse-riding scene in PA, with Gigi on the horse and Camden leading.  Although it took place in the dead of winter, so Gigi probably wouldn’t have been so scantily attired.  But what an adorable little touch.

(And omg, I just noticed the package on Camden.  Holy @#$%!)

Now if someone would only send me my Slovenian and Turkish covers.  I’m sure those would be pure amazingness. 

Update:  And now thanks to Neja, we have Slovene covers.  Here’s Slovene PA, which translates into PLANNED LOVE or LOVE DESIGN, a close parallel to SCHEMES OF LOVE, the original title.

Here’s Slovene DELICIOUS, titled DELIGHT.  Me like.

Thank you again, Neja!

The scenes are from Dhoom II.

Left to my own devices, I wouldn’t have bothered.  These things already fit me, right?  Wrong.  I’d put on a few pounds and they all showed at the worst places: right above the decolletage on my strapless frocks.  Ack!  How can someone who doesn’t even have boobs have overboob squish-age?

So immediately I took a look at the Master Cleanse–the lemon-juice-plus-red-pepper-flake-fluid-diet I’d heard my friends talk about–and immediately jumped away from my laptop in fright.  That @#$% ain’t for the faint of heart, and I am nothing if not faint of heart.  After I recovered my will to live, I went to read GOOP, Gwyneth Paltrow’s newsletter.  Because my gossip lady is always talking about Ms. Paltrow, I occasionally take a look at GOOP and remembered that a while ago Ms. Paltrow posted a one-week cleanse of her own.

Remember what I said about being faint of heart?  I didn’t manage Gwyneth’s cleanse either.  But I did come away with a great recipe for a quick, nutritious, and pretty tasty breakfast shake.

You will need:

• 1 cup of blueberries, blackberries, or raspberries
• 1 cup of unsweetened almond milk (or just enough to cover the berries in your blender)
• 1 scoop of your favorite protein powder (I used my husband’s Muscle Milk)

Pour everything into a blender and blend to your preferred consistency.  I like mine smooth, Senior Kidlet prefers his berries to be chunkier.  His Hawtness likes milk so we make his with milk.

(If you are a careful examiner of pictures and wonder what is that green substance, it is a scoop of Pro Green powder.  Ms. Paltrow specified it.  I bought a canister in a moment of weakness.  It tastes like grass powder on its own, but kind of disappears in the shake.  But I chose not to include it here because it’s hella expensive and now that I’d finished with the one at home, I most likely won’t be buying it again.)

That hand is not mine, by the way, but belongs to Sr. Kidlet.

It makes a big old glass of smoothie, gets my energy up, and get me to actually ingest all those gargantuan Costco containers of berries I can’t help buying when they are in season.  If you are on a low-carb diet–hi, Meredith–it’s pretty perfect.  If you are on a vegan diet–hi, Janine–with a soy-derived protein powder, you are good to go too.  If you are me, who doesn’t like to eat anything healthy, low-carb, or low-fat, but will make an occasional sacrifice to get rid of overboob squishage, this is SPARTA!

Bon Appetit.

And then one day I said to myself, you know, these dishes are pretty simple but they hold up pretty well. I’ll bet there are other readers/writers out there who wouldn’t mind a few of those recipes–more time for reading/writing, right?

Except, well, our inaugural recipe is really simple but it isn’t exactly fast–not to mention it is also highly calorific.  So I held onto it for a long time until I had a book signing recently. And used it to lure folks to my table. I can’t speak to its success as a promotional product for my books, but one teenage boy came around five separate times for the cake pops. Ha!

The original recipe can be found at food blogger Bakerella’s website.

Here’s what you need: 

Ingredients:

• One box Red Velvet Cake Mix plus the oil, eggs, and whatnot to bake it with
• One 16oz can cream cheese frosting
• Chocolate bark/coating
• White chocolate chips (I used Nestle because it has directions on the back for how to make dipping chocolate)
• Vegetable shortening to combine with the white chocolate chips during metling (not pictured)
• Popsicle sticks (not pictured)

Steps:

1. Bake the cake according to directions.  Let it cool completely.

2. Crumble the cake.  (I did mine in my food processor.)

3. Combine the frosting with the cake crumbs.  (I used about 3/4 can of the frosting.)

4. Form the cake crumb frosting mixture into popsicle-size balls. And stick the popsicle sticks into them.  Now put them in the fridge or the freezer for a while so that the cake spheres firm up a bit.

5.  Now melt the chocolate bark/coating according to directions.

6.  And melt white chocolate with some vegetable shortening, according to directions.

7.  And dip!  (And drizzle, if you feel like.  I drizzled with a spoon.  I  have no talent for food decorating, but I don’t think anyone cared.  And in case you are curious, the cake pops are standing on a block of florist’s foam.)

The chocolate bark is rather heavy.  But chocolate morsels, once melted with some vegetable shortening, is really easy to work with.  So this past weekend, for Junior Kidlet’s birthday, we did an at-home chocolate fondue with my teeny tiny crockpot.  Yum.  And impressed the heck out of the kids. 

(And here you thought the shea butter was an isolated instance of crazy.) 

But I promise, next recipe will be really, really superduper simple.  And healthy too.

And in other news, HIS AT NIGHT is finally released into the wild today.  Phew.  That means I’m almost done with publicity stuff and can go back to just writing.  What a relief.

So off I went, all by myself, deeply dubious of my ability to enjoy myself.  And guess what?  I managed to have a pretty decent time, thanks to all the wonderful people I met and re-met along the way.

Stuff I can remember now:

• I had to open a box of shea butter tins for airport security.  The security lady asked, “Oh, are these wedding favors?” 
• My fellow Austinites Emily McKay, Robyn DeHart, and Hattie Ratliff were in attendance.  We hooked up for various meals throughout the conference, and came back home together.  Thank you, ladies, for adopting me and raising me so well!
• I made my first two gift baskets ever.  The baskets were bought from a neighbor’s garage sale at a quarter a piece, I shredded construction paper I already had at home for the filling, cut lengths of Christmas ribbons, and discovered such a thing as pre-sized basket bags at Michael’s.  All the pieces were packed separately in my luggage and assembled in my hotel room.

Aren’t they cute?  I was so insufferable with pride that I recounted the entire process step by step to my Austin friends, who were kind enough to listen to my long how-to soliloquy–and only later let on that they’d been doing gift baskets for years!

• Went to the Ellora’s Cave Ball the first night and danced, as I hadn’t danced in probably ten years, with Zoe Archer and Carrie Lofty.  Woo, these ladies have moves.  And boy, Carrie can shake those hips something fierce.  Picture here.  I only regret the picture didn’t show my bad-ass shoes.
• KristieJ in her mullet wig.  If you don’t know the backstory, KristieJ was robbed of her rightful victory in the Great Mullet Showdown, USA vs Canada–those Canadian mullets were so divinely terrible–and had to wear a mullet wig.  But she looked really cute in the mullet!  Hats off to KristieJ for carrying off a mullet with aplomb.
• The centaur woman at the Fairy Ball.  The other costumes were nice and beautiful, but the mostly naked lady centaur on stilts blew me away.  Of course I forgot to take a picture.  If anyone knows where to find a picture online, please let me know.
• Actually having time to go to workshops.  I’ve been so overbooked my last few RWA conventions, so it was really nice to get around to a bunch of writer workshops at RT.  The quality is just as good, and the crowd is much less so I could ask whatever questions I wanted.
• The Carina Press launch party.  A mashed potato buffet!  I had three helpings and now I wish I had even more.  That’s the kind of party I’m throwing next time at home.
• Hearing the numbers called for the superstar authors at the RT Book Fair.  “Charlaine Harris, 850-875.”  “J.R. Ward, 910-925.”  Oh wow, can you imagine having that long a line of readers waiting for you?  I want.  I want!  (I also met Kathe Robin, senior reviewer of RT, in person at the signing and she was so sweet.)
• Mr. Romance competition.  I am an avowed hater of mantitty, but the competitors seemed overall a nice group of young men.  My favorite was an actual male writer who was roped into the competition.  He’s written a book on 37 philosophers and their bad choices in love–which saddened him so much that he turned to romance for comfort, or so his intro said.  Smart Bitch Sarah, seated several seats down from me, screamed “MARRY ME!”
• Julie James and Beth Kery also semi-adopted me during the conference.  When we met last year at RWA D.C., Julie told me that she wrote heroines who are slightly more sexually experienced, but not sluts by any means.  According to her, I replied breezily, “Oh, I write sluts.”  I was, of course, astonished to hear this.  But it does sound like the kind of stuff I might say when I’m in the mood–which is quite often. 

And yes, the tins of shea butter disappeared really fast.

Because HIS AT NIGHT went through such repeated and arduous rewrites after it had been copy edited, I decided to hire an outside copy editor myself, just for quality assurance. Tiffany Yates, a professional freelance copy editor who has worked with many of the New York publishing houses who also happens to be a member of my local RWA chapter, proved a totally awesome choice.

Her queries, suggestions, and story advice were spot on. Which meant, by the time final galleys came, and changes had to be handwritten in the margins, I made if not substantial then at least noticeable changes to the manuscript. It killed me. I find final galleys nerve-wracking as such, to make so many changes–every page almost–oh, Lord have mercy.

In the months after that, I wanted nothing to do with the book. Even when I was at the RT Convention admiring the finished copies, I still couldn’t bear to crack the book open. Beth Kery, whom I met through Julie James, suggested that I was having mini-PTSD flashbacks. And she was right.

But since making the book trailer required consulting the manuscript, last Monday I flipped open HIS AT NIGHT at about a few chapters in. I began with a lot of trepidation, but soon I started enjoying myself. With just the usual breaks to pick up Junior Kidlet and hold him captive until homework is done, I read the book all the way through to the end that same day.

Phew. What a relief. End of mini-PTSD.

And here, without further ado, the book trailer:

After an in-depth consultation with Random.org, we offer congratulations to the winners of our contest:

Carrie

Joie

Barb in MD

Liz (1:05PM)

and our GRAND PRIZE WINNER, Vi (6:08PM)!

Soon-to-be-gleaming winners, please let Sherry know where to send your goodies!

(Please note that while Sherry will ship anywhere, the gift certificate is only good for purchases in the U.S.)

Sherry and I both have new releases coming up – mine next Tuesday, hers on May 25th. You may have heard certain shocking rumors about these books. For instance:

His at Night has no flashbacks. (Not a one!)

Wicked Becomes You has no drug addictions. (No laudanum, no habitual heavy drinking, and not even a hint of opium!)

Disbelieving, you may have asked, What’s going on here? Has the sky fallen? Are pigs flying?

Okay, so I can’t comment with any certainty on the last question. I’m in India right now, and I often spot bands of roving street pigs doing very odd things.

However, I can definitively reassure you that the sky has not fallen, and what’s going on here is simple: both of these books represent a real departure from our work to date.

For all that it lacks flashbacks, His at Night is my favorite of Sherry’s books (and that’s saying a lot, because I love all of them). And Wicked Becomes You – well, I thought about pretending that Sherry and Janine were being mean girls by talking on Twitter about how it made them laugh out loud, but the truth is, it’s supposed to be funny—a good deal of it, at least. So it’s actually good news that the book made them laugh.

But what’s most interesting about writing a book that veers out of your comfort zone is the new clarity it brings to the relationship between you, the writer, and the novels you produce.

During a recent email exchange with Janine, my crit partner, I realized that when I write, I “get into character.” That is, much as an actor might, I try to put myself completely into the head of the person whose POV I’m using to tell the story. It makes sense, then, that when I think back on other books I’ve written, I don’t recall the events that unfolded in the narrative. What comes to me is the…pardon my vagueness, here…the general feel of the character who sucked me in most completely.

With The Duke of Shadows, that’s Emma. For a good part of the book, her outlook is very bleak. I remember how that bleakness gripped me while writing most of the second half of the book, and how liberated I felt when she finally let go of her own guilt.

With Bound by Your Touch, it’s the feel of Sanburne’s manic charm that colors my memories of the book.

Written on Your Skin is a bit different: both characters gripped me equally. I recall the sharp, quick-witted feel of Mina’s strategizing and the dark undertow of Phin’s demons.

With Wicked Becomes You? The book sings in my head; it feels light and free. This amazes me in several regards.

First, writing the book was anything but “light and free.” I finished it up after my arrival in Delhi, doing dissertation research by day and writing by night, in an apartment without a backup energy supply, in a season with endless power cuts. Many evenings, I sat in the black-out, sweating (no power back-up means no fan or AC!), the keyboard illuminated only by the glow coming from my laptop screen, typing the words in my head while my eyes strayed nervously to the little battery icon, draining far too quickly for my comfort…

And I was sick. A lot. Apparently, once I hit thirty, I lost that glorious good luck that had protected me, heretofore, from Delhi Belly. Last September, Delhi Belly paid me several visits.

And during this time, I realized that my saving grace was – my characters.

Had I been writing about Emma during this time, or about Phin, the power cuts and illness would have felt so ominous to me. Instead I was in the heads of Gwen and Alex, two of the most resilient characters I’ve ever written about. Don’t get me wrong: they’ve certainly got issues, and the longer and harder they try to ignore these issues, the less funny and more serious Wicked becomes. But these two simply aren’t the brooding types. And learning what their POVs felt like, and immersing myself in those POVs, I, too, stopped being the brooding type…

…temporarily, at least. I mean, let’s face it – I’m a total sucker for high drama, and brooding heroes are fun. My next book, in 2011, will probably be Angsty in the extreme. But that book lies in the future. Right now, I’m grateful to have spent those nights in the autumn of 2009 with two people so determined to laugh through every hardship they encounter.

Around that time I learned about this website called From Nature with Love, a wholesaler for quality beauty ingredients.  So at some point in the following months, I decided that instead of giving out bookmarks, I would have a promo product that I would be  interested in receiving.  I would offer the public little tins of pure shea butter–which otherwise cost $4.95–with the cover of my new book on it.

Fast forward to March.  Well, if I was going to have little tins of shea butter to give away at RT, I’d best get started.  I ordered a gallon of organic shea butter, five hundred 1/4 oz slide top tins, and a box of high-gloss labels just the right size to go on top of those little tins.

And I got to work.

Here’s that one gallon container of organic shea butter.

With sterilized craft sticks, I filled the slide top tins.

Those went into the oven and came out clear and beautiful.

Then cooled.

Of course I have labels ready for them.  The top:

The bottom:

And here are some finished products.

If you click on the image to look at the larger picture, you’ll see that the tins are in little plastic sleeves.  That was because when I was telling my friend my idea, she asked if I had any means to show that the product hadn’t been tampered with.  So I bought shrink wraps for them!  And I loved shrink wrapping, which basically involved me pointing my hair dryer at a tin in a plastic sleeve and presto, the plastic shrinks and wraps.  It even comes with a perforated strip for easy opening.  I’m telling you, these little tins are unbelievably cute.

And then, toward the end, I ran out of shrink wraps for a while.  So I looked at the couple dozen or so tins that are left, and I suddenly realized, wait a minute.  Of course I was being selfish.  So I asked Meredith for a high-res image of the cover of her upcoming release–in one week!–and made some more labels.

(The label is off center for a reason.  Properly centered, the E gets cut off by my printer.)

Unfortunately, the lovely deep purple did not get rendered very well.  But still, I think these are pretty sweet, non?

Now that’s a collector’s item, if I’ve ever seen one, as there are only 36 of them in existence

So, you are shaking your head in disbelief.   I know what you mean.  500 of them!  I look back and shake my head too.  What was I thinking?  I’m surprised His Hawtness didn’t tell me I’d lost my marbles.  Instead, awesome dude that he is, he rolled up his sleeves and helped.  At one point, all the three men in the house were working on it–without me asking.

But yes, even so, there were some long hours when it was just me against the work.  Thank goodness I’d found The Movie Preview Critic, who deconstructs previews, and sometimes entire movies–in audio.  So while I was filling tins or wielding my hair dryer–which saw more action in the past couple of weeks than it had in the 15 preceding years–I was also going to a story and character workshop.

So it wasn’t too bad.  And it could have been a lot worse.  I could have done 1000 of them, like I originally envisioned!  o_O

And thus ends this account of my crazy, which strikes rarely, but boy does it strike hard. 

Also, if you are going to RT, keep your eyes peeled.  I hear my publisher will be drop-shipping about 100 copies of HIS AT NIGHT directly from the printer, almost a month ahead of the street date.

Squee.  This is such a gorgeous cover.  Please click on the image to see all the details.   Full of food, yum, yum, yum.  Spices at the top:  dried red chilies, star anise, vanilla beans, and I think those are nutmegs.  And on the bottom, piles of chocolate and berries.  Ahhh.  Nom nom nom.

I love the warm palette.  I love the scale.  I love the title–which I think means Forbidden Fruit.  I love everything about it.  The only possible detail that can better this cover would be if there were a few madeleines sitting on that scale!

The best cover of my career.

Update:

And Quinta Essência, my Portuguese publisher, made these matching magnetic bookmarks to go with it.  Now suddenly I can’t wait to visit Portugal.    The book comes out April 28th.