Fun images

I thought some fun photographs this week because,  well, that's what I feel like :)

Okay, one of the reasons I've feel like fun photos is because my day job is being a complete pest. However, seeing this photo really puts it into perspective. Even on a day day my job's not this much of a balancing act, nor do I have this much risk hanging over my head.

Why this photo you ask? Well I've never seen a cat's tongue up this close, kinda fascinating. Also I couldn't help thinking of all those paranormal romances with cat shape shifters (I've just finished Nalini Singh's new one so that could be why).

These two cracked me up. These two are probably the baddest, bad-asses on their block. Look at the stance, look at ht menacing glare.  If they were people they would have leathers, big bikes, scars and gang patches. 

Not sure why I added this one. I'm not sure if it's funny, or creepy, or weird, or some combination of all three - or something else entirely.

A kiss

Photojournalist Richard Lam took the photo below and it's gone viral - and yes here I am adding to that :)     An Australian guy kisses his Canadian girlfriend to comfort her after she is caught up in the Canadian riots.

I think several things make this photo powerful.  Love surrounded by anger, caring surrounded by violence. A moment of calm in the chaos. That no one else in the photo is even aware of them, and they are aware of only each other.

This photo is a great symbol for what romance writers are trying to create. Two people at there center of a story, who find love regardless of what surrounds or challenges them, and who are there for each other. And of course there are other elements as well, tension, excitement, romance, etc... you get the picture - literally in this case :)

brain exhaustion

I've been working so much lately my brain feels like it's leaking out my ears, and not on my writing unfortunately. My day job has been a bit of a menace on that front. So I'm afraid I have no cunning or clever post for the week (in as much as they ever are :) 
Instead I have a silly cartoon for you from xkcd.

As a side note, I've been re-watching the first series of Alias. I only saw the first series & a 1/2 last time round, but I gather the later series rather jumped the shark. Nonetheless, I've been enjoying my re-watching. Something I've noticed about the writing as it goes on is that the writers have huge skill at ending each episode on a cliffhanger. Even if as you watch the episode you're feeling a bit blah, by the time the end comes round you have to watch the next episode. Yet next episode they take the extream situation and wrap it up neatly in the first 5 minutes :)


It's a skill that works really well on TV, draws the views back each week. However, I find that technique in books (cliffhangers end of each chapter) is rather annoying. Oh a few are good, drive the tension, too many and it gets annoying.

What are your feelings on cliffhangers?

Design a new cover....

Look at the cover below... It looks like a perfectly ordinary cover doesn't it?

It isn't.
That's not to say it's not a perfectly good cover - it's simply that it's not a real cover. Not in the sense that it was published with the book anyway. Over here, is a site where a designer has taken on the task or redesigning the covers of some of the books he reads :)
This appealed to me because as an author I dread getting a terrible cover, and I'm sure there are authors the world over who wish they could redesign a cover. Here's someone who's done that - if not for the reasons that most authors would like to :)

Titlelicious

Ever wonder what romance novels romance writers are reading (wow, that's a bit of a tongue twister. Try saying that 3 times fast).  A group of romance writers let you in on the secret - although in this case the secret is not so much what they're reading, as what they're misreading :)

A billion Wicked Thoughts 2

As I mentioned last week in their upcoming book A Billion Wicked Thoughts, neuroscientists Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam studied thousands of romance novels looking for clues about social expectations. I also warned you that I had a second blog planned for this topic, so here's more....
 
They found "in men, physical and psychological arousal are united. Men may be surprised to hear that this is not necessarily true for the ladies. A woman can be physically aroused yet mentally turned off—or downright disgusted—a finding replicated across dozens of studies. This disconnect explains why there is no "female Viagra": you can't arouse a woman's mind simply by arousing her body

….It turns out that men and women not only have different erotic tastes, they have astonishingly different tastes. As biological anthropologist Donald Symons explains, "To encounter erotica designed to appeal to the other is to gaze into the psychological abyss that separates the sexes."

...we all come wired with a set of sexual cues analogous to our tongue's taste cues. However, men respond to radically different cues than women. Male cues are primarily visual. Female cues are primarily psychological. Men do have psychological cues, but (with a couple exceptions) these cues are quite different from female psychological cues. A man's cues are all directed outwards, at his partner. Some of a woman's cues are directed outwards at her partner, but some of her cues are also directed inwards at herself.

...But not only are the male and female cues different, the mind software that processes these cues is different. The male sexual software is what a computer engineer would call an "OR gate." It is instantly aroused by any single cue. The male brain is turned on by deep décolletage or sashaying hips or the whisper of a sultry voice or two Applebee's waitresses kissing.

...The female sexual brain is what a computer engineer would call an "AND gate." It requires input from multiple cues simultaneously to surpass a combined threshold of activation before arousal occurs. The female brain may be turned on by a man who is handsome and a cardiologist and pets her beagle and is popular with her lady friends and plays the sensual melodies of Cat Power in the dappled candlelight. for women, no single cue is necessary or sufficient. The female brain is designed to be flexible and adaptive. In order to achieve this adaptive flexibility, the female sexual brain can mix and match sexual cues. If a man is smart, makes her feel adored, and is handsome, that might trigger her AND gate. If the same man slouches and has a comb over—but also an American Express Black—that might also get the job done. If he's not smart, gentle, nor handsome but is tall, confident, and a man of dusky mystery, that could still trip the same woman's AND gate. But there's not many women who can obtain sexual release by gazing at a disembodied photo of a naked man's buttocks. Even if it's Ashton Kutcher's.

...internet search histories above are a fair representation of what each sex tends to do online. Men seek out visuals and go straight for orgasm. Women prefer stories and often favor conversation over culmination. The five most popular adult sites for men are all within the top 100 most popular sites on the entire Internet. All are webcam or video sites featuring anonymous graphic sex, such as PornHub, the most popular adult YouTube clone, which draws about 13.9 million visitors a month. In contrast, the most popular adult video site for women, For The Girls, draws a meager 100,000 a month (and up to half of those visitors are gay men). All across the planet, with women free to access any erotic content they wish, they mostly seek out character-driven stories of sexual relationships: romance novels, erotic romance (sometimes called EroRom or Romantica®), fan fiction, slash fiction, gay romance novels, and erotic stories.

So, what does all this mean? Well, it should all be taken with a grain of salt. Generalizations are great but there are always exceptions, especially when it comes to people. That doesn't mean it not very interesting :)


And of course it means that as a women writing romance fiction I'm far more likely to have women readers - shock horror :)

To read more follow this link to read an except from their book or here to read something from their blog. 

A billion Wicked Thoughts

In the upcoming book A Billion Wicked Thoughts, neuroscientists Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam studied thousands of romance novels looking for clues about social expectations. 

After analyzing 15,000 Harlequin books, they came up with the most popular professions for heroes in romance novels. The complete list follows below–what do you think?
1. Doctor
2. Cowboy
3. Boss
4. Prince
5. Rancher
6. Knight
7. Surgeon
8. King
9. Bodyguard
10. Sheriff

Okay, so now I'm trying to think of my writing (published and unpublished to think of what my heroes do).
Human with a Twist he's basically an antiques deals (but not her boss)
Redemption's Kiss he's a police officer (is this close enough to Sheriff??)

What does the occupation of our favourite heroes tell us about ourselves. Of course studies like this need to be read with a critical eye - after all, any one who reader Mills & Boon/Harlequin know they are heavily skewed to certain tropes (& hero employment choices). But just because one is reading with a crietal eye - doesn't mena it's not interesting. They also say...

"While modern radiophysicists have discovered black holes and developed the means for communicating with extraterrestrials, scientists studying desire still struggle to identify basic differences between the sexual interests of men and women… Quasars don’t close the curtains out of modesty or suspicion. In contrast, most of us are unwilling to let curious scientists photograph us as we tumble between the sheets. Radio waves may be invisible, but they don’t try to deceive curious physicists and they’re incapable of self-deception. Humans are guilty of both."

They don't stop with what our heroes do, they look at how we describe them as well:
"...We analyzed the text of more than ten thousand romance novels published from 1983 to 2008 to determine the most common descriptions of the hero’s physical appearance.

Here are the seven most frequent masculine features:
Cheekbones
Jaw
Brows
Shoulders
Forehead
Waist
Hips
And the seven most common adjectives used to describe masculine features?
Lean
Handsome
Blond
Tanned
Muscular
Masculine
chiseled

...no synonym for penis appears in the hundred most common physical descriptors used to describe the romance hero. If we wished to describe the ideal-looking hero, we could use the most common two-word physical descriptions: the perfect hero boasts “blue eyes,” a “straight nose,” “high forehead,” and “square jaw” together making a “handsome face.” His head is framed by “dark hair” which accents the “white teeth” in his “sensual mouth” curved into a “crooked smile.” He stands tall with “broad shoulders,” a “broad chest,” “narrow waist,” “flat stomach,” “strong arms,” “big hands,” “big feet,” and “long legs”—though the heroine’s eye might ultimately be drawn to his “powerful thighs.”"

Mmmmmm, he sounds nice :)

Follow this link to read an excerpt from the book. 
And yes this stuff fascinated me so expect a couple more blog based on their material :)