There is romance and then there's love. Just plain old love. And among the creatures I have loved most in my life, one stands out--Dancer Dog. Here is her story, with love on Valentine's Day.
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Monday, February 13, 2012
Friday, February 3, 2012
Writing in the Arena by Michelle Miles
Miriam was kind enough to invite me here to promote my latest release from DCL Publications, Phoenix Fire. So today, I’d like to introduce you to someone who is near and dear to my heart. She’s a tough ol’ gal and she can kick just about any man’s butt. She’s muscular and buff and carries many a scar from her journey.I’m talking about my heroine, Elena. She’s my gladiatrix.
When I started out with the book, I wanted her world to be authentic to who she was and the struggles she’d gone through. I wrote a long backstory that wouldn’t make it into the book but would give me insight into her character. There were certain things I knew: she fought to live another day, hoping she could someday earn her freedom and knowing it may never happen.
I set out to create this world by researching Ancient Rome and the gladiators. They were heralded. They were heroic. They were larger than life. Yes, most were men. But there were women, too. And not very many of them. They were thrown into the arena as punishment for some crime they committed, entertainment for Citizens and Senators alike.
It fascinated me.
For the story, I put myself in Elena’s shoes (sandals) and imagined what it would be like to live like that. It sucked, quite frankly. To step into the arena, wondering if would be your last day to live. I couldn’t imagine being in a world like that, though I did imagine it. I used every fear I had about dying and put it into Elena. I had to figure out how to write fight scenes with swords, scimitars, tridents, and all manner of weapons. When I wrote Elena’s fight scenes, I wrote them as her.
Here’s a sneak peek:
After participating in the Games for years, Elena could no longer smell the familiar reek of blood and death and rot. She could no longer hear the death noises of men and beasts slaughtering each other. The screams of defiance. The splish of blood against sword. Being inside the arena was like home—and hell.
"Elena, look out!"
Heart pounding, she whirled in time to block the sword. Holding it two-handed, her muscles contracted to ward off the attack. Fatigue had slowed her reaction, turning her limbs into sweat-soaked noodles. The seedy-looking fellow grinned, showing off decaying yellow stumps of teeth.
Their swords clashed and he threw all his weight behind his, pushing her backward. Energy failing, she stumbled, giving him enough opportunity for his stumpy fingers to latch onto her throat and squeeze.
And then later, when Elena is remembering her hatred for the Emperor and how she’d ended up in the arena:
"But aside from all that, you have raw talent," he continued. "In time, I believe you could be one of the best. You will begin training at once and be put into the Games as soon as possible."
"But--"
"If you wish to live, then you’ll learn how to kill your opponent quickly." He gave her an icy stare. He meant every word. That thin-lipped smile appeared again as his steely gaze moved over her. "Or...you can choose to stay here in the palace and serve me."
She knew all too well, even at her tender age, what he meant. Fury bubbled in her throat, sending hot pinpricks through her. That was the moment she first discovered how to shove Fear and Anger into the black void in which she kept them locked. The black void that eventually took shape as her vault. The vault where she kept unwanted things.
Elena personifies her fear and hatred and shoves them away. Until the day the black void nearly overtakes her when she learns she has to fight her lover to the death in the arena.
Here’s the blurb for Phoenix Fire:
Kill, or be killed.
Elena Gaius is Hixyl’s most heralded gladiatrix, catching the Emperor’s eye with her unspoiled beauty and fiery temper. Determined to let no man have her, he forces her into a life of unwanted accolades—for slaughter in the Games. With independence out of reach, Elena knows each day could be her last.
Cassius Antonius is a former general hired by an underground secret order to assassinate the Emperor. When he refuses, they take away the only thing precious to him—his freedom. Forced into servitude, he meets Elena and manipulates her into helping him, forming a shaky alliance and a searing romance.
The two become unwitting pawns in the struggle to save Hixyl from the Emperor’s tyranny. But plans spin out of control with the discovery of their secret tryst, and for their ultimate act of betrayal, the Emperor demands one last entertainment—to be pitted against each other in the Games in a fight to the death.
I hope you enjoy the story, now available from All Romance eBooks and Amazon!
Michelle Miles writes contemporary, paranormal and fantasy romance and is published with Samhain Publishing, Cobblestone Press and DCL Publishing. You can follow her on Twitter @MichelleMiles and “like” her Facebook page at Facebook.com/MichelleMilesRomance. To sign up for her newsletter and read her blog, visit her website at http://www.michellemiles.net/.
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Sunday, January 29, 2012
CELTIC ROSE WRITERS
For those of you interested in the Celtic genre, there's a new Yahoo group available: Celtic Rose Writers. Just go to www.yahoogroups.com, type CelticRoseWriters in the Search box and it will take you to a beautiful pic of the Cliffs of Moher. Click on it to join. It's an open group and promo is welcome. We hope you'll join us.
Saturday, January 7, 2012
THE ATTRACTION OF OPPOSITES
The New Year did not necessarily start off well, though it did start with a bang. "BRRNNGGG!" That was my phone at 6 a.m. Either someone was still celebrating, I cursed as I dove over four sleeping animals to my telephone, or it was an emergency. Oops...emergency. It was a semi-tearful friend on the other end of the line. She was away on vacation until after the holiday. Her mother was with her, and both their house keys of course were with them. I was the only other person with a key and...the police were at her house. Her alarm had gone off three times, they had had to go to her house three times and they were-not-happy. Could I please go into the house for a walk-through? Oh, and call the security company if it was a sensor problem? It was, I did, and then I zoomed off to...the dentist. I had already noticed that a little sensitivity I had been feeling in the upper left hand corner of my mouth was no longer little. The gum and roof of my mouth seemed to be turning into a growth the size of a small lemon and were oozing blood. I've never had an abscess, but a little bell in the back of my mind said that I by golly had one now. So off I went. I basically had a mouth full of blood, which the dentist discovered as soon as he lanced it. I spent quite a while hanging over the sink. Then I went off to check levels to be sure I wouldn't exsanguinate from a tooth extraction and get some Vitamin K to be on the safe side, since until recently I was on anti-coagulants and my clotting doesn't seem quite back to normal. Later in the day, it was back to the dentist. Needless to say, I never made it back to work, though I had managed to put in about a whole two hours.
It probably wasn't bad, as such things are reckoned. Forty-five minutes and a whole lot more bleeding later, after a caution not to drive unnecessarily because my hemoglobin might be a little low, I walked out clutching my jaw and my antibiotics, $118 poorer. Oh, and the phony tooth to be put in two weeks later would be $680, by the way. Apparently that's a bargain. One of the titanium jobs that screws into your jaw bone is $3,000+ and that sounds like just way too much money for the pain, so I figured I'd settle for the cheapie. We'll see how it works out. I don't have many dental problems as a rule, so I'm charting unknown territory. But I cracked that tooth years ago in a fall from my horse so hard that I whacked my jaws together with a force that probably registered on a seismograph somewhere.
Those were the good old days. I don't do stuff like that any more because, let's face it, I'm just too damn old. Would I do it again? In a heartbeat. I was a dynamo in my younger days, all too willing to pack up the hamper and go freeze my tush off at any football game, climb a mountain or foxhunt until I was shaking with exhaustion. This would have delighted many husbands, but did I pick one who appreciated my finer points? Ah, well...no. My husband would dutifully meet me at the door when I traipsed in covered with muck, kindly inquire if I had had a good time and pour me a sherry, after which I would collapse under a comforter and watch football on the TV, which is what he would have preferred me to do in the first place. That was where he watched football, if he watched at all. No, I married a man who could spend hours happily wandering through the grocery store. He was a food broker, so I understood that this was professional fascination, but he could also, God help me, do it in the mall. The Mall? The place I passionately detested and avoided like grim death? I bless whatever fate decreed I would be born in the age of on-line shopping, but my husband LOVED malls.
That was only one small example of the differences between us. Our marriage lasted despite them, maybe even because of them. And as I sit here at 5 a.m. cradling my aching jaw, I wonder how many times that works out. Dave never learned to foxhunt and I still hate malls, but we managed. Do marriages of flaming opposites burn themselves out or smoulder into comfortable old age? Should we view these vast chasms as challenges to be overcome...warning signs of trouble ahead...intellectual exercises...opportunities to broaden our horizons? My spirit was always duty-bound to make a challenge out of climbing things--or jumping a horse over them. Are some of us marital thrill-seekers? If so, do we ultimately enrich our lives? What do you think?
It probably wasn't bad, as such things are reckoned. Forty-five minutes and a whole lot more bleeding later, after a caution not to drive unnecessarily because my hemoglobin might be a little low, I walked out clutching my jaw and my antibiotics, $118 poorer. Oh, and the phony tooth to be put in two weeks later would be $680, by the way. Apparently that's a bargain. One of the titanium jobs that screws into your jaw bone is $3,000+ and that sounds like just way too much money for the pain, so I figured I'd settle for the cheapie. We'll see how it works out. I don't have many dental problems as a rule, so I'm charting unknown territory. But I cracked that tooth years ago in a fall from my horse so hard that I whacked my jaws together with a force that probably registered on a seismograph somewhere.
Those were the good old days. I don't do stuff like that any more because, let's face it, I'm just too damn old. Would I do it again? In a heartbeat. I was a dynamo in my younger days, all too willing to pack up the hamper and go freeze my tush off at any football game, climb a mountain or foxhunt until I was shaking with exhaustion. This would have delighted many husbands, but did I pick one who appreciated my finer points? Ah, well...no. My husband would dutifully meet me at the door when I traipsed in covered with muck, kindly inquire if I had had a good time and pour me a sherry, after which I would collapse under a comforter and watch football on the TV, which is what he would have preferred me to do in the first place. That was where he watched football, if he watched at all. No, I married a man who could spend hours happily wandering through the grocery store. He was a food broker, so I understood that this was professional fascination, but he could also, God help me, do it in the mall. The Mall? The place I passionately detested and avoided like grim death? I bless whatever fate decreed I would be born in the age of on-line shopping, but my husband LOVED malls.
That was only one small example of the differences between us. Our marriage lasted despite them, maybe even because of them. And as I sit here at 5 a.m. cradling my aching jaw, I wonder how many times that works out. Dave never learned to foxhunt and I still hate malls, but we managed. Do marriages of flaming opposites burn themselves out or smoulder into comfortable old age? Should we view these vast chasms as challenges to be overcome...warning signs of trouble ahead...intellectual exercises...opportunities to broaden our horizons? My spirit was always duty-bound to make a challenge out of climbing things--or jumping a horse over them. Are some of us marital thrill-seekers? If so, do we ultimately enrich our lives? What do you think?
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