Microblogging

In today's world of ever-shortening attention spans, it seems that even blogging is beginning to suffer. (Hence, I haven't been posting here as much, as I'm sure you've noticed.) I've gotten away from traditional blogging in favor of microblogging on my Twitter and Facebook pages.

For those of you still living under rocks, Twitter and Facebook allow users to "microblog" via short sentences in their status updates. Twitter even goes so far as to limit how many characters you can use (140). Facebook is more user-friendly, with a lot more features (and a vast improvement over its clunkier, now-passe competitor, Myspace), and real-time updating that is completely addictive.

I've been using my Twitter account mostly to promote my Jamaica Layne-branded writing. I use Facebook the same way, but also take advantage of its other many features to not only promote my writing work and sales business, but also to microblog about my day-to-day life as a stay-at-home-slash-working mother. Being a full-time writer and mom to a rambunctious two-year-old definitely has plenty of not-so-glamorous moments, and I've built up quite a following of friends who wait with baited breath to hear what shenanigans my son has gotten into lately. Here's a sampling of my recent Facebook updates:

"Looked in the mirror today and was stunned at how thin I've gotten. Haven't looked like this since my mid-20s. I highly recommend breastfeeding as a means of weight loss."

"Kiddo hits me, kicks me, bites me, pulls my hair, destroys everything I own, misbehaves wildly, has no respect for "time out." But I love him anyway."

"Add my brand-new trendy wraparound sunglasses to the list of things kiddo broke today. sigh."

"My son's capacity for destruction knows no bounds. He destroys jewelry, calculators, remote controls, toilet seats, carpeting, computer cables, books, and clothes. All in 24 hours."

All this Facebooking and Twittering instead of doing what I really should be doing (like writing, or exercising, or reading a damn book) really makes me wonder. If even novelists get distracted by Facebook (huge time-sucker that it is) what kind of future do novelists really have?

Peace.

THE MERCENARY BRIDE releases today!

My latest novel, THE MERCENARY BRIDE, releases today at Ravenous Romance. This book is a bit of a departure from my usual style----it's a "sweet" (i.e., non-erotic) historical romance set in 12th-century England. Fans of my bestselling book KNIGHT MOVES will find a lot of familiar settings and themes, though, and lovers of traditional historical romance will enjoy it, too. The ebook is out now; the print version will release nationally (details to come, stay tuned!) on September 14.

Here's more info:

The Mercenary Bride:

Synopsis

It’s the year 1101, and England is still reeling from the Norman conquest a generation earlier. Lady Sabina of Angwyld is the eldest daughter of the Duke of Angwyld, a Saxon nobleman with estates near the Welsh border. The Norman invaders want to take the Duke’s land and title by force, and the only hope the he has for saving Angwyld is to marry his eldest daughter off to a ruthless, evil Norman nobleman, Lord Reginald de Guillaume. Sabina will have none of it, however. She thinks her only alternative is to take the veil and enter a convent. So she runs away.

Sabina is fleeing Angwyld on horseback on her way to the Abbey at Glastonbury when she meets Robert de Tyre, a swashbuckling Norman mercenary who serves as a cavalry officer in Lord Reginald’s army. Though Robert de Tyre has been sent by Lord Reginald to capture his intended bride and bring her back in time for her forced marriage, the sparks soon fly between them, and their worlds are turned upside down. Will Sabina overcome her hatred for all things Norman as her romantic feelings for Robert grow? And can Robert protect Sabina from the pursuing armies of his ruthless, jealous employer and make her his own? Only time will tell...

I'm in WRITERS DIGEST!

Some of you might recall last year when I (or rather, when my non-sexy, boring alter ego Jill Elaine Hughes) had to go through the rather unpleasant process of firing a literary agent. It's never a pleasant task, but it's something most writers have to do at some point in their careers. Firing an agent can be especially terrifying because industry etiquette requires that you fire your current agent before seeking a new one----and there's no guarantee you'll find another agent willing to represent you, either!

Fortunately for me, the process was a relatively easy one because I understood the importance of crafting a very graceful and carefully worded query letter that explained why I was seeking new representation. That query letter landed me a new agent less than a week after firing the old one. And this month's issue of Writers Digest magazine thought enough of it to do a special online feature on that very letter, along with commentary from the new agent I landed, the legendary Lori Perkins of the L. Perkins Agency.

Here's a link to the WD article. Enjoy!