Where have I been, you ask? Well, I’ve been off visiting!
The lovely Jaye Wells and I are still going strong over at Border’s Babel Clash. We’ve talked about all sorts of interesting things involving heroines, humor, and urban fantasy. In my last post, I talked about why I added hedonism to the list, or why I chose to write a female character who’s so unapologetically self-indulgent.
In other news, I want to send out HUGE congrats to one of my fave UF authors, Carolyn Crane, whose sequel Double Cross just received a starred review from Romantic Times. I absolutely adored Mind Games and I can’t wait to read Double Cross. Carolyn’s created a world that’s truly unique in UF, and I find her books thrilling to read.
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Check out Carolyn’s books if you haven’t already. The first one was great, and the second looks like it’ll be even better.
All rightie, folks, with that I’m off to write more Jane. I’m at over 25.000 words on Eye of the Tempest and it’s going great.
I’m leaving you with this video about Newport, in Wales, that Dr. Ruth showed me and that I find endlessly entertaining. Ohhhhh how I love a Welsh accent.
Hellooooo my friends! I’m writing this from a Pittsburgh airport hotel. I’m supposed to be in Chicago as of yesterday, but my flight was cancelled due to weather. Here’s hoping I make it back to IL today, so I can fly back to Shreveport tomorrow.
My stay in Greensburg has been awesome. The residency was fantastic, and I really, really like my new colleagues as well as the students in the MFA. I think this program will be really challenging and beneficial for me, both as an author and as a teacher. It’s going to be a sharp learning curve that first semester, but then I think it’ll be a great job.
As for finding an apartment, in the end and despite all my protestations about wanting to live in Pittsburgh, I went with an apartment near the school. I drove the commute a few times, and it’s one of those routes that could take 30 minutes OR it could take two and a half hours. Plus I couldn’t find an apartment I really liked that wasn’t ridiculously expensive. But I found something in Greensburg that is absolutely gorgeous and HUGE (I’m going to have to buy some more furniture). It’s an old building, right down town, with tons of character and gorgeous original features. I’ll be living in the Penthouse, which is French for “pray the ancient elevator doesn’t break down.”
But now I’m going home and my thoughts are firmly on launching Tracking the Tempest. Sightings have been thick and fast: Borders definitely has it on shelves, and I think that Amazon has shipped. So those of you who pre-ordered should be getting it right on time.
My big launch party is over at Bitten by Books, where I’m doing a contest to win a Kindle. RSVP here for the event to earn extra chances to win, and stay tuned to BbB for more info on the actual event. They’ve also posted their review, here.
Melissa, from My World in Books and Pages, reviews Tracking, here, and I’ll have an interview and contest up at her site on July 1st, so stay tuned!
Finally, here’s a review of Tracking that absolutely made my day. It’s spoiler free, and she really gets what I’m doing. Thanks, lady!
Don’t forget about the upcoming signings talked about on my appearances page, and I’ll have some very fun contests to announce on my site and over at the League when I get home. So see ya round, and go forth to buy Tracking over the weekend! YAY!
Things in the UK are great for me; not so great for Ruth. She had to have an emergency appendectomy yesterday. Naughty, naughty appendix! But she’s coming home tomorrow, at which point I will blog with her AMAZING pictures of Brighton (pre-burst appendix).
Today I met with Orbit UK and it was fabulous. They were a great bunch, and are very excited to launch Jane True here in Britain. They tweaked the covers a bit, and you can see the finished product on Amazon.co.uk.
And when I got home, I discovered that Publisher’s Weekly (a very important trade source) reviewed Tracking the Tempest,here. The didn’t review TR, so it was exciting they picked up Tracking. And the review is stellar! Yay!
Here’s my favorite bit: “Peeler’s chick lit tone adds sparkle to the most spine-tingling scenes with a style that never strikes a false note, and the seamless plot weaves together Jane’s paranormal and personal growth while linking both to the swelling suspense.”
Mmmm. Swelling.
I’ll travelogue for serious once Rootie’s back, and give everyone more details about the meeting with Orbit UK, etc. So keep comin’ back y’all!
Romantic Times has given Jane & Co’s sequel 4.5 stars, saying, “The trajectory of Jane’s first-person adventures means that this increasingly hazardous ride is fast and furious, but the author still takes time to develop character and relationships. Peeler deftly proves she knows how to tell an irresistible story!”
In the immortal words of Team America . . . “FUCK YEAH!”
For this Monday I thought I’d fire off a couple of recommendations. One is a film and one is a novel, but what both have in common is some of the most creative, hilarious use of vulgar language I’ve heard in quite some time.
As you’ve probably already figured out, I have a bit of a potty mouth. And by “a bit” I mean a rat infested sewer of a mouth. As a wee little girl from Niddrie (a council estate near Edinburgh) told my friend, in a lovely Scottish accent, no less: “I love swearing. It’s fucking great.”
I come from a family of swearers, I am a swearer, and many of my friends are swearers . . . so when I find something that shocks me–that reminds me of the power of a truly inspired bit of obscenity–it’s gotta be pretty extreme.
Therefore, if you don’t like swearing, never, ever go near the following film, although this theatrical trailer is (relatively) clean:
The film is In the Loop and it’s up for an Oscar. All I know is it’s one of the best films I’ve seen in years. On a superficial level, it is utterly, absolutely entertaining. I laughed through the entire film, as did all of my friends. I want to see it again because not only were the lines so rapidly delivered, but everyone in the theater was laughing so hard, at times, that it was hard to hear. It felt like I sat down, started laughing, and then suddenly it was all over, leaving me wanting more.
That said, the film is also brilliant, with one of the bleakest, most frightening portrayals of modern politics I’ve ever seen. It’s easy to miss, simply because you’re too busy watching the characters tear around insulting everyone. But underneath all that humor, In the Loops suggests that modern politics are still as much about ego, competitiveness, and personal aggrandizement as Shakespeare depicted them in King Lear. Only the weapons have changed, making the stakes so very much higher and deadlier.
With fantastic performances all around, and a storyline that works on a number of levels, I can’t recommend In The Loop enough.
And speaking of King Lear, my second recommendation is Christopher Moore’s The Fool:
Bawdy and irresistible, this is another story that works on two levels. I was pinging from one image to another (little man in a canoe!) and reveling in the language of this work, but meanwhile the literary academic in me was squealing over the layers of allusions to various Shakespeare productions. I adored this book, as did all of the ladies in my book club. And it wasn’t just the Chatham Artillery Punch, talking, either!
So if you’re bored this weekend, try to get your hands on either of these fantastic works. Due to the Oscar nod, In the Loop is back in theaters (especially independents) the Fool is coming out in paperback any second. Both will floor you with their use of language, but also with their wit and intelligence. Filthy AND smart . . . it’s a combination I find absolutely irresistible.
And just because I’m in the mood for a little heinous fuckery,* here’s a picture of my trifle:
The song was, indeed, originally, “my trifle brings all the boys to the yard,” till that bitch changed it.
Fuckstockings!*
*For true heinous fuckery in action, you have to read The Fool
First of all, I am flexing my wrist in preparation of EXERCISING MY PIMP HAND.
For the ever lovely and fabulous Dakota Cassidy’s new book, Accidentally Demonic, is out tomorrow!
I haven’t read this one, yet, but I’ve read all the other books in this series and they’re SO FUN. Dakota’s marvelous sense of humor shines, her characters are adorable, and these books are always fab reads.
So go forth and purchase if you already know and love Dakota. Or, if you’re looking for a new para rom series to embark upon, try the first in the series, The Accidental Werewolf:
As for me, I have been having a fabulous start of the semester. I much prefer teaching my ENG 115 class to the other freshman comp course, my night class is my favorite ENG 215 (so very little pressure for a lot of enjoyment), and Modern Poetry is turning out to be very manageable and enriching, for me, as a writer. In other words, my primary career is going very well, and the writing is fab, as well! I’m figuring out my plan of attack for editing Jane True book 3, Tempest’s Legacy, and I’ll start writing my edits soon.
In the meantime, however, I’ve been watching a lot of movies and series on my Netflix, and one of the movies that I was randomly inspired to order was the 80′s classic, Jumping Jack Flash:
I was OBSESSED with this film when I was a kid. I adored it. I can’t really describe how much I adored it, because it would be like me trying to explain how much I love my family . . . it became a part of me and I would give it my kidney if it asked politely.
This film came out in 1986, eight years after my birth. And watching it as an adult I can absolutely see where it had a HUGE influence on me and my writing.
First of all: the swearing. I swear like a pirate, this is true. My family is a family of swearers, in general, but I seem to have taken up the swearing mantle and run right the fuck off with it. Then I watched this film, again, and Whoopi has a mouth so potty it’s like a psych ward.
Second of all: my love of a non-traditional heroine. Where do I start with my admiration for this film, in terms of its heroine? First of all, Whoopi is BLACK. How many films can you name that star (entirely) an African-American, let alone an African-American woman? And that are mainstream? Even nowadays? Second of all, while I think Whoopi is an extremely attractive individual in this film, she is by no means your traditional blonde bombshell. She’s Whoopi, and she’s gonna wear some MC Hammer OVERALLS (cause the only think that makes Hammer pants better is some straps!), and dreads, and YELLOW REEBOKS and she’s not gonna give a fuck! For dress up, she caps off that outfit with a turban!
As a kid, I was blonde and blue eyed, but I was also way too smart, way too mature (in some ways), and already short and chubby. So I knew I was never going to be the leggy, doe eyed thing expecting some hero to come along and rescue her because even though she’s a bit of a bint, DAMN SHE IS PHOINE.
In other words, I was looking for films that expressed my solidarity with the outsider, the underdog, the eccentric, for those who “sang his didn’ts” and “danced his dids.” For the most part, however, I was getting Melanie Griffith. And, while I love me some Working Girl, I knew that while my brain was going to be all about sin, my bod would, at best, most likely suggest white-collar misdemeanors or parking violations.
So Jumping Jack Flash was a revelation. I wanted to be Whoopi: a woman who was strong because she was smart, passionate, and brave, not because she’s beautiful and manipulative or, like Red Sonja, beautiful and ‘roided right the fuck out.
On watching the film as an adult, as well, I clap at how it handles “the issues.” Whoopi is constantly being told she’s not welcome because of her gender, her skin color, and her class. But she enters anyway, on her own terms, and uses her enemy’s cultural expectations against them. If they expect an African-American woman to be a singer, by golly she’ll dress up like a Supreme. She’ll give them what they expect, in an unexpected way, to get what she wants from them. If they expect a woman to be weak, delicate, and easily victimized, she will BITE HER WOULD-BE EXECUTIONER IN THE NADS. Cuz that’s what she does! Bites him! In the nads! I think this is partly why the film, despite being over twenty years old, hasn’t aged. Okay, the computers look a bit silly, but the real story is based on Whoopi’s character. And she is both ageless and paradoxically original, for Hollywood, it seems to me, has actually gone backwards in terms of its depiction of real women of any race.
My final plea: If you haven’t seen this film, please do. I think you’ll see some of Jane True in it, and you’ll definitely have a good time. Watch out for the giant toothbrush!
First of all, sorry about the title. I have no self control when it comes to an opportunity for a ”Who’s Your Daddy?” joke.
Second of all, Oh dear lawd and lady, I love me some Dr. Who. And yes, I know EVERYONE ELSE has already been loving Dr. Who for years now. And I’m also well aware that it’s completely lame I wasn’t loving him from the start, since I lived in Britain for six years including the years he was resurrected.
But I’m bad about telly (don’t own one now) and have always been rubbish about watching series when they were first aired. I finally got around to watching Dr. Who because I now have Netflix, and I’m trying to “relax” and “not work” for a few hours each day (crazy! I know!). So I started watching. And I haven’t been able to stop. Why, you ask?
Because I’m good like that, here are my top five reasons to watch Dr. Who, if you haven’t already:
Number 5: The Casting
Could the casting be any more brilliant? Seriously? First of all: the Doctors. Christopher Eccleston is one of my all time favorite baddies (I always had him mentally cast as my character, Jarl). So to cast him as the Doctor? Brilliant! It was so unexpected, and therefore genius. And David Tennant couldn’t be more adorable if you put him in a pink fluffy bunny suit and made him wiggle his nose. And the women! The women! First of all, Billie Piper. She is AS adorable as David Tennant, and should really be wearing a pink, fluffy bunny suit at all times. And I love how she’s adorable but she’s also normal. She’s not a stick insect scary model lady from the bowels of planet Norexia. She’s so lovely, but in such a normal human girl way that she would never be cast in America. And then they had Catherine Tate! THE Catherine Tate! One of the funniest women ever to walk the planet, but, again, not cast simply because her dead, dead eyes are framed by slightly starved symmetry. And I’m just starting Season Three, so I can’t wait to see who comes next.
Number 4: The Patriotism
Until China and/or India usurps the title, it’s tough for Americans to be the superpower. When you’re at the top, a little humility is expected, and Americans are no exception. So we’re taught either to be self-conscious of American patriotism, OR we’re taught to be self-conscious about our self-consciousness regarding patriotism. So one of the things I most enjoyed about living in Britain and that I enjoy about watching Dr. Who is how the show revels in, and reveals, New British Patriotism (pronounced with a long “a,” daaahlings). It’s both fun and enlightening for me to see how the most recent superpower before America has recovered its sense of place in the world. We’re gonna be scrambling to think of something soon, my dears, so we should all watch Dr. Who as a crash course in cultural realignment. And in the meantime: God Save the Queen!
Number 3: The Heroism
It is unapologetic! Nary an episode goes by when someone doesn’t offer themselves up to save their friends, or simply for the greater good. People die right and left in this show, but only after we’ve come to really know and like them. Then some monster comes along and is all, “I’m gonna destroy the Earth! Because I’m a MONSTAH!” and the doctor is all, “Dude, I need more time to jimmy-jack some shit with my Sonic Screwdriver!” and the person we just came to know and love is all, “I will make a stand in order to buy you enough time for your jimmy-jacking of your shit! And I will die terribly doing so!” And then they DIE! For real! Okay, not always for real. Sometimes, if they are extra sexy-spicy (Captain Jack! Captain Jack!) they are brought back in all their omnivorously sexual glory. But usually they are really dead! REALLY dead! In the meantime, I think that shows a hell of a lot of chutzpah on the part of the writers of Dr. Who. Heroism is so nineteenth-century, and here we are in the Noughties! Maybe we’re getting into a cycle of retro-heroism? Or maybe the writers just know we all need a little hope, as a species. Which leads me to . . .
Number 2: The Philosophical sub-currents
I could write a million things under Number 2 (snicker) but I’m going to focus on just one: I love how this shows plays with the expected Sci-Fi trope of Bad Humanity. Most current Sci-Fi seem to have accepted that, as a species, we are all a bunch of fuck ups. Take Avatar, for instance. You have to stop being human, in that film, to be worth anything. But not in Dr. Who! Dr. Who is constantly excited about humanity. In the Doctor’s estimation, what makes us so stupid makes us so great, and vice versa. We’re not simply damned, corrupted humanity. Instead, humanity is shown in all it’s ridiculous, divine, complicated glory: as capable of greatness as we are greatly capable of pig-headed acts of purely narcissistic self-destruction. So yay for humanity!
Number 1: The Seventies Aesthetic
It’s AMAZING. When Americans remake shows from the seventies (BSG!), we’re all, “Obviously we’re not going to use that CRAZY SEVENTIES SHIT they came up with back then. We’re gonna soup everything up and make it look modern! POST-modern, even!” But not Dr. Who! The Daleks still look a bit like the Jetson’s maid. If an American studio were behind the show, they would have been upgraded to look like the Jetson’s maid, if she had been designed by Dyson. That robot would clean the fuck out of your house–serious, black hole suckage, people. Not Dr. Who, however! The old enemies haven’t changed all that much, leaving all the fancy-schmancy computer graphics for the new enemies. And the Doctor, himself, hasn’t changed his old ways. When he builds stuff, it still looks like it was built with the contents of an Antiques Roadshow: Bakelite Edition. It’s amazing, and I like to imagine that the show’s aesthetic is a bit like what you’d get if Graceland were a spaceship. A thought that makes me happy, on about four-hundred levels.
So these are just some of the reasons I love Dr. Who. Oh yes, my friends, it is wicked nerdy. But so fun, so joyous, and so smart! Do check it out if you have a spare hour or two . . . I guarantee, you will be hooked.
(And yes, every number before 5 consists of a single entry: Captain Jack! Captain Jack!)
I’m not going to lie to you: I like terrible movies. I think it’s because I read so much serious stuff for my academic work and for my teaching that I enjoy really, really dumb films. My one caveat is romantic comedy: I would rather have my corneas scraped by sporks than watch pretty much any romantic comedy. But if it’s got explosions, monsters, robots, dragons, Ben Stiller, Adam Sandler, or any of the Judd Apatow boys, I am in like Fynn.
In San Francisco, while waiting in line for the film we intended to see, my dear friend Jana and I discussed how we share this similarity. Yeah, we can totally see super intense indie films, but, for the most part, we prefer happy go lucky shenanigans over eye-opening exposés of the human condition. We were going to see Me and Orson Welles (hoping it would be lighthearted-ish), when Jana said, “Ooo, look! They have Crazy Heart! I want to see that!”
And so we did. We bought tickets, sat down, and then enjoyed about two hours of pure torture. Here’s the trailer:
Now, when I say torture, I’m not being a jerk. I say torture because I have no doubt the director of Crazy Heart wanted his audience to understand the reality that is severe alcoholism. And understand we do: there is not one iota of glamorousness in Jeff Bridge’s incredible depiction of his character, aptly named Bad. Bad is, quite simply, “bad.” He is not evil, nor is he even wicked: he’s bad in the way that selfish little children are bad. Bridges even looks a bit like a child, at times, rolling around with his pants and shirt always semi-undone. His belly squidges about and his underpants droop, as he boozes and vomits his way through his own existence.
Occasionally, there are flashes of the Bad that exists when he’s not halfway through a bottle of hootch, and despite every bottle full of urine we’ve seen emptied out on the roadside(Bad likes to pee and drive), or every trash can we’ve seen hurled into, the audience can understand why Maggie Gyllenhal’s character falls for the Big Bad. She has a penchant for wayward boys, and Bad, even well into his fifties? sixties?, is as wayward and boyish as a girl can get.
What happens next is part train wreck, part Greek tragedy. We know it can’t get worse, and then it does. Until Bad’s descent is over over, leaving him officially broken.
At this point in the film, I was quietly trying to chew through my own wrists so I would bleed out, and not have to endure any more belly-shots, or barf-shots, or see the comely lass kiss that very same mouth that just did that in the toilet.
And that’s when the film took off, taking me with it. I’ve heard the words “quietly redemptive” applied to other films or novels, and I think that Crazy Heart should be the example of this rather vague, and apparently oxymoronic term. I say apparently, because as audiences we are so used to a form of redemption that is anything but quiet. We are used to racked blue smurfs apologizing for their misunderstanding the circle of life by BLOWING UP AN ENTIRE ARMY OF ENEMIES. Or a father making up with the child he walked out on by GIVING HIS SON A KIDNEY AND THEN A LIVER AND THEN PART OF HIS LUNG. You get the drift. In Hollywood movies, people are forgiven for all sorts of things, by working the sorts of miracles that often require teams of special effects experts.
Bad doesn’t get that kind of redemption, because that sort of redemption doesn’t really exist. But he does get a second shot at life, and the quite fortitude with which he digs into his new existence is what made this film almost sublime for me. We see that modest, kind, thoughtful, and gentle Bad that kept getting drowned in whisky come to the forefront, and we see him try (and mostly fail) to make amends for the terrible hurts he has caused.
That Bad fails to achieve redemption, sometimes, doesn’t disappoint. For what is truly redemptive about Bad, and this film, is watching him offer himself up, again and again, to the realities of the hurts he has caused, and quietly ask for forgiveness
In 1985, when I was seven, there came a movie that would be my obsession for many a year: Young Sherlock Holmes.
I adored everything about this movie. The special effects were, at the time, out of this world. The story was amazing. And I already loved Sherlock Holmes.
This will be a shocker to (none of) you, but I was raised on PBS. So I was already well familiar with Holmes, as played by Basil Rathbone, and I was becoming increasingly familiar with the Sherlock who will forever remain my quintessential Sherlock, Jeremy Brett. He first played Holmes in 1984, and, for me, he will always be the closest Holme’s to Conan Doyle’s ever created.
Watching Young Sherlock Holmes, then, offered a lot of insight into the depictions of Holmes I already knew: how he came by his method, why he wasn’t married, etc. But there was thing that bothered me. Granted, the young Sherlock Holmes was, indeed, young, but he also has so much energy in that film. He’s so alive, and physical, that I couldn’t see him growing up into the Holmes I “knew” from television.
And that’s where the newest incarnation of Sherlock Holmes comes into play. I went and saw it recently, and I adored it. It’s great fun, with amazing visuals, and RDJ and Jude Law have fantabulous chemistry together.
But what I really loved about that film is that this new Sherlock Holmes is the clear sequel to that movie I loved as a child, the Young Sherlock Holmes; Robert Downey Junior’s Holme’s is that little boy (whom I admit I had a bit of a crush on) all grown up.
That certainly wasn’t Guy Ritchie’s intention when he made the film, and he probably never even saw Young Sherlock Holmes. But that’s what the film felt like, to me. And that’s why, even without the bustles and the carriages and the like I would have loved it. That same energy and joy that infused the character of young Sherlock Holmes is in this Sherlock Holmes, and it made the film a pleasure to watch.
And in Other News . . .
Locus has weighed in on Tempest Rising, saying, “From small-town hijinks to otherworldly intrigue, this is a fun start to a new series, and a promising first novel.”
First of all, I would like to send huge thanks to Thom Marrion, who is AWESOME. He’s the one who made that gorgeous picture of the selkie girl reading Tempest Rising. And this time, he’s found Jane in the hands of her perfect man: large, hairy, and big-footed in such a way a girl just has to wonder . . .
It’s Sasquatch! And he’s got his hairy mitts on Jane. I think she loves it, don’t you?
For those of you (like anybody who knows me in real life) who is all, “Ummm . . . angels? Really? Nikki?” have no fear.
We are supposed to be the Archangel Michael and Lucifer, and from the positioning (me getting my ass kicked), I’m assuming I’m Lucifer. Which makes PERFECT SENSE. So all of you who were like, “WTF?” can calm down now.
The wings will soon be stripped and the horns implanted. As they should be.
In OTHER EXCITING NEWS, Mark Henry got rather irate on Twitter about people hijacking his yahoo group to talk about Tempest Rising. In response, the ever-lovely @QQwill said, “Well, then, fine. I’ll make Nicole her OWN page.” So now, all eight of my fans can use yahoo groups to talk about how much they love me, my books, and everything Nicole. Granted, this will consist of probably about 5 posts (four of which will be prompts, from me, begging people to talk about how much they love me, my books, and everything Nicole). This scenario will undoubtedly be very amusing to anyone who enjoys watching me make an ass of myself, which seems to be everyone I know and love. Ya’ll are lucky I’m always happy to oblige.
If you want to see me shamelessly begging for attention, you can join my yahoo group here:
That said, I totally can’t work technology, so go ahead and be as snarky as you want. I will probably figure out how actually to enter the group and read your posts in about a month. So you’ve got a good four weeks to say crazy shit before I come in and bust heads (read: cry).
If you’re someone new to my site who’s all, “I saw this hot purple book but want to know whether or not it’s shite?” go check out my updated Tempest Rising page. It’s got all the reviews I could find plus some new author quotes.
I gotta admit, a few people DO think it’s fairly shite, but most people seem to enjoy it. Some of them even like it quite a bit.
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already well familiar with Holmes, as played by Basil Rathbone, and I was becoming increasingly familiar with the Sherlock who will forever remain my quintessential Sherlock, Jeremy Brett. He first played Holmes in 1984, and, for me, he will always be the closest Holme’s to Conan Doyle’s ever created.
