Tamara Morgan

Welcome

2011-09-20T21:30:00.001-07:00

Thanks for stopping by the home of Tamara Morgan, contemporary romance author.

There are lots of exciting new developments underway, including the 2/14 release of my debut novel, Love is a Battlefield. The book is the first part of my Games of Love series that depicts a team of Scottish Highland Games athletes and their brethren undergoing various battles of the sexes (and, of course, battles of the heart).

I'll be over the place promoting Love is a Battlefield in February, covering such important topics as re-enactment underwear and trebuchets.

2/9 Vauxhall Vixens

2/10 Seductive Musings

2/12 Good Choice Reading

2/13 Everybody Needs a Little Romance

2/14 Love Romance Passion

2/15 Romance Writer's Revenge

2/16 Night Owl Reviews

2/17 Author Rescue
2/17 D. Renee Bagby Presents

2/19 Ramblings from this Chick

2/20 Denise Tompkins

2/21 Novel Reflections
2/24 Alexia Reed
2/28 As the Pages Turn
3/21 Ex-Libris

Book two, The World is a Stage, follows the athletes as they go up against a Shakespearean acting troupe. Coming June 2012!

And for those of you who are hiding a deep and abiding love of comic books, my superhero novella, tentatively titled Playing with Fire, will be released as part of a Spring 2012 anthology.

I'm really excited about these upcoming releases, so stay tuned as I update my website with new information about the books. Poke around or feel free to come find me on Twitter at @Tamara_Morgan or drop me an email. I'm always happy to hear from readers, writers, and fans!

2011-09-20T16:17:00.001-07:00

Updates and Things

2011-09-16T22:17:00.000-07:00

I know I've been terribly remiss in updating this blog, but it's been a busy few months in TamaraMorganville. In addition to turning in my first round of edits for Love is a Battlefield (yay!), I just turned the sequel (tentatively titled The World is a Stage) to my editor.

WIN

I've also got grand plans in the works for a new website rolling out, so stay tuned.

Congratulations! You Sold a Book. Now Get to Work.

2011-07-10T12:04:00.000-07:00

It's all official. I signed the contract. I got a release date (Valentine's Day, no less!). My debut novel is really going out there into the world. And I'll admit, I'm enjoying the ride so far.

BUT

Holy crap--I always thought writing the book was the hard part. Sure, everyone says getting published is even more work, and it was, but not in that time-consuming, five hours in front of my computer every day sort of way. But this promotion stuff? I. Am. Freaking. Out.

Samhain has these awesome author loops and forums, which help with all those promotional and marketing things that need to get done. This morning, I went through and joined all of the ones I thought would help me along. Fact: THERE ARE A ZILLION OF THEM.

Now, me--I'd always had a somewhat hazy plan for marketing my book. Things like:

Get a website (I mean, technically this is a website, but not exactly what I had in mind for my fancy authorial career, you know?)
Get author pictures taken (I know I don't need one for ebooks, but I want them. So there.)
Be more interactive on Twitter (It's work, dammit!)
Get an author Facebook page (See above.)
Sit back and watch the sales pour in (Oh, admit it. You imagine this, too.)

Of course, I realize this list isn't exactly going to cut it in the real world. I've got enough author friends and information under my belt to know that there are promotional mountains ahead of me. And these author loops? Well, they just serve to reinforce that idea.

I'm hoping, as time goes on, that I'll feel more comfortable navigating those forums, asking my questions, and getting concrete answers. And my marketing-background husband is helping me to get a firm business plan in place so that I can take things one step at a time.

But for now, I'm going to sit here and weep into my triple tall caramel macchiato. I think the real work is about to begin.

In Honor of NOT Going to RWA Nationals...

2011-06-24T12:41:00.000-07:00

...I will not wear one lick of make up for a whole week.
...my shoes will be flat and very, very comfortable.
...my daily uniform will consist of sweatpants and a t-shirt.
...I will write 3,000 words per day.
...instead of pink cocktails, I'm going to drink plain ordinary beer.
...my diet will consist of fresh fruits and vegetables from my garden.
...I'm going to get to know at least 5 new Twitter friends similarly stuck at home.
...my evenings will be spent with my Kindle and a new novella every night.

Have fun, everyone in New York, and good luck to all the GH and RITA finalists!

THE NEWS

2011-06-21T09:00:00.000-07:00

It's been a long journey filled with quite a few bumps and jostles and outright head-on collisions, but I am very, very, very, very happy to announce that I have accepted a contract offer from Samhain for my contemporary romance novel, Love is a Battlefield.

SQUEEEEEEEEEEEE

Kate and Julian will see the light of day! Men in kilts! Women in Regency gowns! Land feuds! Renaissance fairs! LARPers! Battle Axes! Ninja stars! I absolutely love this story and can't wait to get it out into the world.

Of course, being a part of the Samhain team is pretty awesome (and surreal), too. They do such incredible work and build such great relationships between their writers and editors that it's all I can do to keep from stopping in the middle of the street and doing a dance every five minutes.*

The contracts haven't been signed yet, so nothing is set in stone, but I will be working with the wonderful Linda Ingmanson, and we're looking at a publication date in February 2012.

Did I mention SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE?

*If you do see a crazy woman dancing in the street wielding ninja stars, don't worry. It's just me. Or do worry. And run far, far away.

Fun With Pictures

2011-06-18T17:42:00.000-07:00

Remember when I posted a few weeks ago about wanting to go play with Polyvore to make character scrapbooks? Yeah. That's what I did today.

You can go view my handiwork on the My Books page. SO. MUCH. FUN. I intend to make this a ritual for each and every book I write from now on. (And also for all ancillary characters I really want to play dress up with.) Yay for Internet distractions!

Memorial Day, 1860s-Style

2011-05-30T10:38:00.000-07:00

My favorite Memorial Day activity is to attend our annual Civil War Re-Enactment. Sure, I live in the Inland Northwest and, as far as history books are concerned, we have no real claim to the war, but I loves me some historical re-enacting. Annual Renaissance Fair? Check. Civil War Re-Enactment? Done. Scottish Highland Games? My heart already palpitates in anticipation.

What's interesting about my obsession with these types of events is that I have no desire to partcipate—only to watch. I love their costumes and their passion and the idea that (for the Civil War re-enactors, at least) they spend almost every weekend out of the year dedicating themselves to this hobby. Entire families take part, new families are formed in the process, and the weddings to celebrate these unions are full-on period-costume-only-affairs. (I've never been to a wedding like this, but if you are having one and send me an invite, I promise to bring a nice gift.)

The Civil War Re-Enactment is nice because it combines a little live-action role playing with the somber nature of Memorial Day. After the battle finishes, a group of hoop-skirted women do a quick ceremony in remembrance of those who gave their lives, and the bugler (who always survives these battles unscathed) plays Taps. It's the right amount of reverence and kick-ass-be-costumed awesomeness to make a great day out for the whole family. (And yes, I make my family come with me every time. See how much my daughter loves it?)

IMPORTANT UPDATE: In looking up local LARP groups, I came across a Spokane Firefly LARP. Are you kidding me? These people rule.

A Whole Day Off gasp

2011-05-10T17:19:00.000-07:00

Fact: Every writer I know is a workaholic.

Sure, it may look like we're slacking off, what with the pajamas at three in the afternoon and the beer at two, but the truth is that a writer's job is never done. I mean that for both freelance writers and fiction writers, published or not. That's because there's always something around the corner: the next batch of articles due next week, some self-marketing and promotion, another 1k words on the good old WIP. Going anywhere without the computer in hand seems downright indulgent, since you never know when a spare five minutes will pop up. Those five minutes MATTER. Believe me.

In an attempt to find a better work-life balance (ah, the buzzword that everyone loves to love), I made 2011 the year of The Schedule. Each project that comes my way is divided into sections, and each section is given a place on The Calendar. Since so much of my work is easily divisible (short articles, blog posts, real estate blurbs, or, you guessed it, another 1k words on the good old WIP), I can spread things out over the week and avoid burning out on any one topic.

And you know what? The Schedule works. I feel a tremendous sense of relief when I hit my daily goals before 5pm, but know I can push through to get it all done at 11pm, if that's the way the day rolls. I can handle each day as it comes, and I've had my most productive year to date.

But somewhere along the line I forgot to schedule days off.

It's absurd, really. If you don't count my fiction writing hours, I work about 25 hours per week, leaving me plenty of wiggle room and days off. That's far below the standard 40 hours (plus commute times), and I have no excuse for scheduling things the way I do. Hell, if I really wanted to do it, I could work three days per week and leave the rest open for whatever I want. But for some reason, I max out at about three to four hours per day. My brain, the absurd little thing, would rather look at an entire week full of three or four hour days than even consider longer hours and a free and clear weekend.

And it's been okay. I've pushed through and gotten everything done and the sky is still in place where it belongs. But the result has been that I cannot take a day off without having a panic attack. I've tried—believe me, I've tried—but I can't resist opening the laptop and banging off a few articles, just to put me ahead for the next week. Or answering emails or last-minute client demands. Tamara! She's here! She never stops working!

So I took a day off. Last week, I decided Mother's Day would be an official no computer day. I would not work on a single thing. I would not check email. I would not even update Facebook.

It worked.

Of course, that's only because it turned out I had a 100 degree temperature, a killer sore throat, and a vigilant child who refused to let me even “check my email really super fast.” Those were the pushes I needed, though. Because you know what? I actually took a whole day off. And all day long I thought about how much I wanted to work on my WIP, what I would do first on Monday morning, how productive I could be once I got back to the computer. I actually looked forward to getting back to work.

And I haven't had that in a very, very long time.

More Movie Reviews: African Cats

2011-05-02T10:42:00.000-07:00

So, despite the fact that I profess to be a writer, I spend an awful lot of time at the movies and sharing opinions about movies. Fortunately, my review ties in to large testicles and shifter paranormals, so I'm counting it as romance novel research.

The basic idea behind all these Disney nature movies is that they took a lot of existing footage from Planet Earth, got even more footage of animals in the wild, and then gave them stories. Anthropomorphic stories, really, in which parental love and feminist power plays are imposed on the lions of Africa.

I'm not against this idea. Two hours of cat footage is fine and dandy, but if they want people to keep coming back for more of these movies, they need a plot. In this case, a Disney plot, in which the slaughter of gazelle is carried on off screen and the mating of lions is only hinted at.

Since I was deprived of the sex and gore I really wanted from my savage feline friends, I found myself comparing the actions of the African cats to romance novel characters...and found things very, very similar. The male lions walked around with their huge testicles dangling, every move calculated to show their dominance and badassdom. Their entire existence was wrapped up in their pride of womenfolk, and in eliminating the other male lions so that said womenfolk could only procreate using their own top-quality DNA. (Cue the alpha male hero of your choosing.)

The female lions were pretty badass themselves. Although they were submissive to their male protector du jour, they never went down without a fight, and often saved the male lion from imminent death. They were fiercely loyal and protective of their pride, and I could just imagine a vampire-werewolf-demon trying (and failing) to take them over. (Cue the kickass urban fantasy heroine of your choosing.)

Now, I'm not really a big fan of shifter paranormals, though I've read my fair share. I prefer my humans to be humans and my lions to be lions. But I get it--and I'm pretty sure Disney does, too. There's no way it was a mistake that the story they chose to tell about these African cats was one that we've read, time and time again, in romance novels. Fiercely masculine protectors, females who are both soft and hard, a whole lotta sex and death. It was all there, whether the lions wanted it to be or not.

Go Disney.

Jane Eyre: My-Not-So-Professional Review

2011-04-25T10:59:00.000-07:00

I finally got to see the new Jane Eyre movie this weekend. Living in a smaller, not exactly artsy city means that it always takes a few weeks or months before we get a lot of the films on my must-see list. And this one was definitely on that list. Jane and I have been besties since I was about twelve years old and my aunt gave me a lovely hardback copy for Christmas. Since that time, I've read it probably 20 times (not an exaggeration), written a few papers in college on it, and seen every movie version there is out there.

So I was kind of excited.

And I wasn't disappointed. Now, it wasn't the movie I'd make (for one, they didn't put in my FAVORITE fortune teller scene), and I always hate that Hollywood is so afraid to disfigure Rochester in the end. But I enjoyed this telling of the story.

Because to me, that's what it is. Another telling. I don't go into movie adaptations expecting perfection. I know that what I am watching is filtered through someone else's eyes, someone else's storytelling lens. And that's okay. To me, it's a lot like the Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys. Anyone who is a Jane Eyre aficionado should add this to their must-read list; it's basically Rochester's story of when he lived in Jamaica and got married to Bertha. Now, the book wasn't written by Charlotte Brontë, so it's obviously not the “authorized” biography of everyone's favorite misanthropic hero—but I still love the depth it adds to my Jane Eyre obsession.

So, yes. I enjoyed the movie, and I will most likely buy it the second it comes out on DVD. My husband, the wonderful man, already picked up the soundtrack and the movie version of the book for me (the new version's got a reader's guide and movie notes, and it looks good next to the eight other copies I have on my shelf).

I will, say, however, that Hollywood has yet to cast a Rochester I really like. I eagerly await the next adaptation. Maybe they'll get it right next time.

Character Fashions: Not Just for Historicals

2011-04-23T09:11:00.000-07:00

Most of the historical romance readers I know are obsessed with the fashions. It's why I think Steampunk appeals to so many of us; sure, the gadgets and politics are pretty awesome...but corsets! Steel corsets! Leather corsets! Corsets worn over the top of clothes! Corsets paired with kick-ass boots and plenty of leg!

I love a corset as much as the next gal, and my contemporary romances have plenty of costumes in them. My Jane Austen re-enactors go full ball gown alongside a league of not-really-Scottish highlanders in formal kilts. In my newest manuscript, my heroine is an Oktoberfest waitress who can often be seen in pantaloons and braids.

So when I followed a link on Twitter to this little gem (http://authorcarolyncrane.com/links-extras), you can imagine my excitement. Character Fashion Ensembles? That you can make for yourself on Polyvore?

I know what I'm doing instead of writing today...

Welcome!

2011-04-22T13:19:00.000-07:00

Confession: I've taken up blogging about eight times in the past. I'm not good at it--consistency has never been my thing. I'll have lots to say for a week and then offer either mind-numbing glimpses at my breakfast choices or not post at all.

Come to think of it, that's how I play tennis, too. I can slam a serve right into your face only to swing and miss the next eight times in succession. I'm pretty sure my tennis partner from high school hated me.

So. There. I'll blog a little...about writing, about my life. But I'm not promising anything. :)