Plotters & Manipulators United
…and anarchy ensues
I think the title is Hearts in Shadow, but I’m not too sure. Anyway, here’s the Italian cover of Meredith’s debut book, Duke of Shadows.
Old-school, ain’t it? 🙂 Love all that pink and lavender.
Updated:
And then of course, doing a little reading on the backlog of Meredith’s twitter, I discovered some other foreign covers for Duke.
I love covers, and to my surprise, Spanish book club version of PRIVATE ARRANGEMENTS showed up at my door a few days ago, with a different cover.
The provenance of the image, according to the info at the back of the book, was Shutterstock, a stock image website. By going to Shutterstock and typing in “proposal”–since that’s what the man looks like he’s doing, though it’s also possible he’s a Regency Jesse James begging forgiveness, judging by the expression on her face–I found the image. But the only information that came with the image is that it is an illustration circa 1830. (And it was mislabeled as Victorian. But to be perfectly fair it’s hard to know what to call those years post-Regency and before Victoria’s ascent to the throne.)
So, art history majors and art lovers, please ride to my rescue once more. (Last time it was Seton who correctly identified the regular Spanish cover as a Tissot painting.)
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And a word on RITA® nominations, which were announced yesterday. While I’m deeply honored that NOT QUITE A HUSBAND received a nod, I am completely bewildered that Meredith has again been overlooked. Of course I’m partial, but I’m hardly alone in my opinion that Meredith is one of the greatest talents the genre has ever known. And her two 2009 books were two of the finest historical romances to be published that year or any year. So feel free to commiserate with me.
And a brief coming-up-for-air update.
It was an overhaul again–HIS AT NIGHT, that is. One of those days I’d love to have only revisions but so far it’s been overhaul after overhaul. It’s still not finished yet, but it’s getting there and of course it was worth it.
Heard briefly from my fellow blogger Meredith at the end of October. She is superbusy in India but will hopefully be able to breathe easier soon. We miss you, Meredith.
And now onto the covers. 🙂
Here it is!
The art department will be working to make the dress pop more from background. I asked for my usual corrections (longer fingers and less boob on the hero). And then, making my agent laugh her head off, I asked for a daintier foot on the heroine.
But other than those minor quibbles, I love this cover. Love the color and the flounces on her dress. Love that there is more ladyback and less mantitty. Besides, this cover continues the tradition of putting my heroine in a dress she never wears in the book. 🙂
When I get the final cover, we’ll do a side-by-side (or more likely a top-by-bottom) comparison to see if I get my wishes.
And in other news, the release date for HIS AT NIGHT is now May 25, 2010.
Updates below the fold.
There is nothing I love more than the unveiling of covers, especially foreign covers.
And I totally dig this one for PRIVATE ARRANGEMENTS.
You can’t tell me that’s not Monica Bellucci in mirror. 🙂
French PA drops October 7.
I know, I know. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Today Meredith’s long-awaited WRITTEN ON YOUR SKIN hits the shelves and we’ve nothing for it. In fact, I totally forgot about it until I saw the fabulous A+ review it received at Dear Author.
So I’ll just post a video of Meredith I stumbled across on YouTube last week.
As you can see, her photos don’t do her justice and she is disgustingly gorgeous in person. Now time for everyone to run out and get WRITTEN ON YOUR SKIN!
I can tell you this much. Neither Meredith nor I planned to be on deadline so soon together. But well, we are. 🙂
Meredith has a deadline in August. And so do I, since 10 days ago when my agent emailed and said she wanted the first draft of the next tour-de-force done by August 1. LOL, guess no-matter how much I deny being in the shitty-first-draft camp, I’ve been unmistakably tainted by my undeniably shitty first drafts.
Had things been different we’d hold a much grander celebration. But now we’ll just toss this little interview out and call it a release party. Enjoy!
Orbitz was a drink introduced in 1996. It didn’t take and disappeared from the shelves soon thereafter. I swear I’ve never seen one in real life. Now take a good look at the bottle on the left, then read the below snippet from my unfinished SF romance masterpiece:
To know Meredith Duran is to hate your own parents.
She is talented. God, is she talented. You could put her on the cover of a romance directly, no retouching required. She can drink George Clooney under the table–a quality, particularly in a woman, that makes me green with envy, as a cup of hot cocoa can drink me under the table. And she will mostly likely put a Ph.D. after her name in a couple of years, something that my shallow, snobbish soul covets, but is too lazy to do anything about.
Meredith and I have always been destined to meet and fall in mutual fangirl adoration, though neither of us knew it. Or at least, I didn’t. You see, we have been part of the same menage for years, both of us sharing the same critique partner, Janine of Dear Author. But we’ve never critiqued each other–and still don’t–and I didn’t even know she existed until she won the Gather.com contest. Upon which point, Janine excitedly mention to me this other critique partner, and I asked, sobbing, “Since when have you been cheating on me?” 🙂
(To Meredith, once and for all, I came first, I’m the chief wife, you are just the concubine!)
I couldn’t resist. I could not. Once I saw that the site existed and I could make a three-D video just by typing, well, I couldn’t resist.
I think I went where no romance writer has ever gone. But that’s very likely because I am the frog at the bottom of the well who doesn’t know what’s going on in the big, wide world. So if there are other romance trailers made this way, please let me know. (I still think I must be among the first five, if not the first.) 🙂
So here it is, a talking trailer for NOT QUITE A HUSBAND.
P.S. And I just learned this myself. Click on the little triangle at the bottom right corner of the youtube video. And then click on the little tab that pops up. It will recede the video and reveal both its url and its embed code.