Showing posts with label Lyrical Press. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lyrical Press. Show all posts

Friday, October 14, 2011

The Theme is Travel

In the near future, I've got plane trips and blog tours. It's enough to send me into a tizzy. What has to be done before I leave for Mexico next week? Two weeks in Puerto Vallarta, lounging about breathing in the sea air, storing up Vit D the natural way, and doing my best to just hang loose.

And yes, I'll be taking my laptop. The mini one. I'm torn between hoping there's readily available internet or praying there isn't. After all, what better excuse to totally goof off? Sorry, but I just can't get to the internet easily.

Part of my goal is to get a really good handle on the next book in a series I'm writing. Maybe even start another one. But even more pressing, the day after I return I have a new release!

November 7 is the debut of my long awaited Romantic Suspense novel, Rachel Dahlrumple, by Shea McMaster. (That would be Morgan's sweeter side. The good twin, as it were.)

November 7 also is the launch date of a two week blog tour, celebrating the release of Rachel Dahlrumple. Or Rachel as the book is affectionately known.

So here's the schedule. There will be a quiz later, and I'll be asking for people to drop by.
As of this time, I'm only about half done writing the blogs. The interviews are done and I've only just begun to gather things to pack for my trip.
With all this traveling in the near future, both live and digitally, I'm feeling a bit frazzled and have started a check list.
  • Snow tires on car. Check. (It will snow any day now. Any day. There were ice crystals falling from the sky yesterday.)
  • Swimsuit, cover-up and hat - because I'm a red head who has been hiding from the sun for the past 6 years - Check.
  • Launch tour dates set. Check.
  • Sunscreen. Still need to buy.
  • Books for trip, both paperback and ebook. Almost check. Have the first four books of the Game of Thrones to read, in addition to several other selections.
  • Interviews written. Check.
  • Sandals and flip flops ready. Check.
  • Shorts and tops. Check.
  • Sundresses. Check.
  • Blogs written. Well, two down... not even close to check.
Ah, the list, it never ever ends. How do you cope with traveling? I do it so rarely, it's all one big adventure until I get to the airport. Lines. Pat downs. Worrying about what will be stolen from my suitcase once it leaves my hand. Long, long, long hours of sitting. Twenty hours from start to destination, if there are no delays.
Here's hoping the destination is worth the journey!
Morgan O'Reilly / Shea McMaster
Web Page
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Thursday, May 19, 2011

Coming Soon

New from Morgan Q. O'Reilly


Til Death Undo Us
Book One of the Open Windows Series


She never imagined love could happen twice—until her husband returned from the dead.

Cassidy thinks she’s getting on with her life just fine after her husband’s fall to cancer. Life is quiet, which is just the way she likes it, half a continent away from her overbearing Irish family.

Niall doesn’t want to scare the fragile Irish rose, but her husband, supposedly two years in the grave, has been caught on security tapes at a secret government laboratory. Together, they unearth evidence of industrial espionage and identity theft ...and frightening connections to the Irish Mob that will put more than just their own lives at risk.

Sex, bullets, more sex, intimate body piercings and a few red roses. What more could a girl want?



Excerpt:
“I’m Cassidy Malone.”
“Niall Malone.” He didn’t offer a hand to shake. A part of me was glad, because I couldn’t have disguised my sweaty palms.
Jacob stopped at my side and I had the distinct impression he wanted to step in front of me. “Jacob Levin, senior partner here. What do you want with Mrs. Malone?”
The intense blue eyes shifted to my boss for a moment. “I’m afraid it’s personal. Mrs. Malone, is there some place we can talk?”
“I’m in the middle of a project with a deadline, if you could give me a hint of what this is about?”
“I need to ask you a few questions about your husband.”
“All right.” I folded my arms and waited.
His gaze flicked to Jacob then back to me. “Really, if we can do this in private it would be best.”
“Cassie?” Jacob took my arm and glared at Malone. “She’s been under an incredible amount of stress. I can’t imagine what you have to say will make it better.”
“Nevertheless, it’s important. Mrs. Malone, we can do this the easy way, here and now, or the hard way.”
I didn’t need him to spell that out. I’d watched too many crime dramas. “Give me the first question and I’ll decide if it’s good enough to drop what I’m doing. Otherwise we’ll have to schedule something for later.”
That didn’t go over well. A muscle in the side of his cheek twitched and his lips tightened for a moment. “All right. Just tell me how to get in touch with your husband.”
Ever had one of those moments when it seems the world stops moving? The blood stops, then draws inward, leaving the sensation of limbs filled with ice water, heavy and cold. The roaring in my ears might very well have been the rush of blood leaving my head.
Jacob plucked Malone’s card from my numb fingers and studied it as the receptionist gasped.
“That’s not funny,” I managed to whisper from a throat so dry I could barely swallow.
“I’m not joking.”
“You want to know where my husband is?”
“Yes. Please.”
“All right.” If this were some sick joke, I’d play along for a minute. Maybe the goons at lunch had been setting me up after all. I didn’t think so, but the same conversation, twice in one day, less than two hours apart, who knew?
I gave him the street and number. I drove past it every single day. Sometimes stopped and sat on the grass to pull the weeds and tend to the Forget-Me-Nots I’d planted there.
I watched as he drew the map in his head. A crease formed between his heavy black eye brows. It took a minute, but he had it.
“That’s the Oak Knoll Cemetery.”
“Precisely.”

Coming July 18, 2011 from Lyrical Press
Morgan Q. O'Reilly

Books available on Kindle, Nook, Sony eReader and many places where ebooks can be found.
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Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Editing: Does it REALLY matter??

Spell checkers and other editing things.

Love them or hate them, they are helpful and useful tools. In fact, I recommend every writer have Spell Check turned on at all times. In MSWord, that little red line will help you catch misspellings immediately. Then there's the blue line to alert you to the wrong spelling, or possibly the wrong word—also a useful tool. The green grammar lines? Those I tend to ignore since fiction writing takes some liberties with proper English.

However.

Yeah, you knew that was coming. However. These built-in tools in super-smart word processing programs do not take the place of the human eye and, I hope, human intelligence.

After the program has done its best to help is when a really sharp-eyed editor or beta reader comes in. Someone who can catch the things your MSWord program and tired eyes won’t. There, their, and they’re all sound the same with very different meanings. She’s and she’d are very easy to mix up with the “s” and “d” keys being side by side. I see loose and lose mixed up more times than I care to mention. Your program won’t flag any of the above as misspelled.

Same with roll and role. “He acted out his roll with finesse and skill.” Does this mean he knew how to play a bit of bread? (Ha! Word just tried to correct the word for me. I set it straight.) I suppose it could mean he did a perfect job of rolling down the hill, across the floor, into bed… but in the context of the story, this was not the meaning.

I recently found this sentence in a published book: “He drew in a shaky breath, tried to recall if this was how he felt about her first kiss as a green lad of fourteen.” One word. Just one word is out of place here and makes the sentence ludicrous. Yet to a spell checker program everything is just hunky dory. Had that been the only instance of an error, I probably would have blown it off. Sadly, it was one of at least half a dozen errors that leaped off the page and threw me out of an otherwise entertaining story.

Of course, I’ve seen the spell checker do harm by trying to correct a word here and there. A badly spelled word can be switched in the blink of an eye. Back in the day when I edited technical reports for scientists, I caught one trying to marinate a laser. He’d tried to type “maintain” but mangled it so badly MSWord changed the word to “marinate.” I learned to read his reports very closely.

The key here is editing. Careful, thoughtful, intelligent human editing. A good edit will catch these little goofs that can cause an author’s intelligence and education to be called into question. Yes, typos will at some point escape everyone. It happens. I’ve seen it in NYT bestseller books. If there are no more than two per novel, those are easily shrugged off. More than that? Well, that’s where credibility begins to be called into question.

Years ago, two or three at least, I was reading a book released by my then publisher (the book was not mine, thankfully) and was horrified to see that consistently throughout the book, barely (Merriam Webster Definition of BARELY 1: in a meager manner : plainly 2: scarcely, hardly) was consistently replaced with barley. (BARLEY: a cereal grass.)



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Friday, November 19, 2010

Metaphors and Rivers

For my current WIP I needed a metaphor. Preferably something to do with water. I’d already used one concerning sirens, and needed something deeper.

Deeper.

Still waters run deep.

Ever stop to think about that old saying?

The old adage immediately brought two images into my mind. The first, a cheerful, sparkling, babbling brook tripping down the stones of a garden. The other, a wide, flat-surfaced creek. The exact picture that came to mind was Sally Field and Rob Liebman in the movie Norma Rae, swimming in the crik. Other images of steady waterways in my mind include the Yukon and Mississippi Rivers. I’ve actually spent more time sitting and watching the Yukon than I have the Mississippi, which still isn’t saying much. Neither can be counted in hours or days.

Anyhow, to get on with my metaphor situation--ahem, I sidetrack easily--some people are like brooks and streams. Bright, pretty, active. They provide a pretty melody, and if there’s no other source of water around, they could, in a dire emergency, keep you alive. Provided there’s not a drought going on, as they’re amongst the first of water sources to diminish and dry up. And if you were a small fish, or a leaf, you could catch a ride on a stream and tumble your way down to the larger creek or river or lake it runs into. Useful in a limited capacity, sometimes all you need from a stream is a pretty song, a peaceful interlude, and time to luxuriate in its beauty. You can see right clear through to the bottom and might see your distorted reflection smiling back at you. When stormy weather comes, they bubble up fast and furious. A strong enough storm can change their course and rearrange the rocks along the way, perhaps forever drastically altering the nature of the stream.

On the other hand, there's the broader, steadier, deeper river. The surface is mostly smooth, the water giving the appearance of slow movement, but sometimes when you climb in, you find the current is stronger than it looks. For the most part, you can depend on that river to be a solid predictable support. Water, fish, plants… it provides for an abundance of needs. It sustains life in many forms as well as means of travel.

Sure, there may be rapids along the way, but you generally know where they are and how to navigate through, or, around them. That’s not to say rivers are boring, but no means. Even they can change their nature, but usually it takes a pretty big event to rile them. A huge rainstorm or extra large chunks of ice breaking free in the spring can devastate for miles, wiping out homes and villages. The bigger they are, the more immense the havoc they wreak. All things in proportion. However, smaller storms often to unnoticed by them. They can absorb the tempest with hardly an extra bubble.

The power it takes to stir up a river is awesome, mighty and far reaching, but you know, in the end, eventually it’ll settle back down, possibly with a slightly altered course, maybe with a little more silt, or maybe with a whole lot less. But essentially, the changes won’t be great, and once more you’ll have your solid, dependable, nourishing river back.

So how does this metaphor work? Turn it around to the people in your life. Are you drawn to rivers or brooks? Of course it isn’t that simple. People are too complex to fit into a narrow description such as river or brook, but I think I can see signs here and there that make for amusing comparisons. Sort of like using astrology to figure out your friends and loved ones. Doesn’t always work because there are too many other factors at play. A Taurus with Irish ancestors. Now there’s a mix.

I find I’m drawn to both the brook and the river. I tend to be more river-like, slow and pondering and appreciative of a steady course. But every once in a while, I want to break out and let my bubbles go wild. I want to sing and dance and carry a pretty leaf along for a ride. I get to do this with my characters. Which woman is the hero most drawn to? He can have a most difficult choice. This is what makes my job interesting. I get to study both the brook and the river and the man choosing between them. Or the woman contemplating her options between attractive heroes. If she's really lucky, she lives in a world where she gets to keep one of each.

Maybe I should just stop with the dreaming and get the book written…

Morgan Q. O'Reilly

Come Play with Morgan and Get Some Tonight

http://morganqoreilly.com for books by Morgan O'Reilly and Shea McMaster
Available now: Borealis II A Space Anthology, Bleu Lies by Shea McMaster
Coming 2011 from Lyrical Press: Til Death Undo Us and Rachel Dahlrumple

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