Jennifer Crusie's Blog: Argh Ink

Krissie (aka the Fabulous Anne Stuart) has a new historical series coming out–Ruthless, August 1, Reckless, Sept. 1, and Breathless, Oct. 1–and she’s written a free prequel just for you. As she explains:

Miss Kathleen Strong is a governess who’s stranded in Venice, ready to eat pigeons raw (or fight them for the breadcrumbs). She’s been unfairly dismissed from her job, she’s penniless, and a slimy little vermin of an aristocrat offers her a job. Alistair Rohan, a decadent, delicious rake, and his cohorts have come up with the idea of The Heavenly Host (a fictional version of the Hellfire Club) and decide to begin festivities with the ritual deflowering of a virgin, and the slimy vermin thinks Kathleen will fill the bill. Alistair recognizes her as the little sister of a friend and decides to save her by making her unsuitable for the ritual.
All in 10k words. Sin, redemption, sex, humor. Lots of good stuff and all for free.

And three full novels to come after that. It’s an Anne Stuart extravaganza! Go here to download The Wicked House of Rohan.

So it turns out that blogs aren’t designed for the kinds of conversations we keep having. Those conversations are supposed to be on forums, of which we have one. So we have two choices:

We can move all the discussions to Cherry Forums and fight them out there.

Or we can keep them here and stop nesting comments to the fifth level or whatever it is. It appears to be the nesting that goes that wonky. read more >>

Our latest Good Blog recommendation is Awkward Family Photos, the LOLcats of family history, some with extra creepiness:
read more >>

So thank you all very much for participating in the Argh poll I put up a couple of weeks ago. I was interested in knowing what worked and what didn’t, not so much for deleting anything as to see what the shape of this blog should be because any good blog is shaped by its readers, I think. My theory is that there are two kinds of blogs: the kind that are for entertainment/information and whose writers think a lot about audience, and the kind that are mostly journals, here’s-what-I’m-thinking-today stuff, that’s mostly for the person writing it. Argh is both because I am both concerned about pleasing an audience and egocentric to the point of solipsism. (I was just looking through old speeches because Gaffney was harassing me and found one that began, “Thank you all for coming. But enough about you.”) I have accepted the fact that I’m arrogant–if I wasn’t, I’d never survive publishing–but that doesn’t mean I want it to be obvious on the blog. So I figured the rants and the Random Sundays and the Twelve Days of Cleaning My Office would be the ones that people would go “Eh” about, and the stuff like turning points would be voted most useful. As usual, I was completely wrong. read more >>

I am curious about the reading preferences of Argh People, so there’s a new poll up so I can get a feel for what’s working here and what isn’t. You can select as many answers as you want or none at all (I should probably have put in an “I hate all your posts” but then why is that person reading? so no). I’m just curious as to which kinds of posts you think we get too many of and which kinds you’d like to see more of. So . . . a poll!

Meanwhile, I’m writing Lavender. She’s still alive, so you know I haven’t gotten to the halfway point yet.

And in other news, I just sprained my ankle, so there’s either going to be a lot of I’m-stuck-on-the-chaise-so-I-think-I’ll-ramble posts or a long silence while Lani waits on me hand and foot. That Lucy March, she’s a keeper.