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Dazadi said:
"This one does not taste good with ketchup,"
from
Dragonswan - Sebastian Kattalakis said:
"Be kind to dragons, for thou art crunchy when roasted and taste good with ketchup."
Ah, yes, that book did bring the saying to my attention and I likely wouldn't have remembered if it hadn't been in one of Sherri's books, but it wasn't a deliberate nod, lol. I've heard the saying a few times since, so I don't know if Sherri made it up and it's caught on or if she heard it somewhere (I suspect the latter). It's always stuck in my head, though (most things to do with dragons sticks to me like glue. I adore them!
) I'm not really sure where
Daz would have heard it, but I kind of imagined it to be a fairly well-known saying, kind of like the things your mom tells you when you're a kid. "Don't talk to strangers, and be kind to dragons!"
I think I did actually join one of her yahoo groups aaaaaaaaaages ago but I don't get on with Yahoo. Too many threads and not enough organisation (I'm a tad OCD about being able to find things). I did check out probably every profile on her website, though, and you're sooooo right. I spent hours drooling. One of the pictures on there was actually the driving inspiration behind an NPC here on EF called Ren Kitsune, so even if you don't read the info, her webmaster has good taste in piccies.
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I also love the Peltiers from Sanctuary.
The idea of having your own living, breathing, teddy bear gets me..
omgosh yes! yes yes yes! Mama Peltier's seriously scary and I probably wouldn't like being Aimee, but the idea of having a clan of brothers who keep a coffin in their bar reserved for their baby sister's suitors just cracks me up. Not to mention Dev's tattoo. *snicker* Although I have to wonder what Artie'd say if she ever saw it... And you know, I don't think I ever thought of the Peltiers as
teddy bears. I've read too many books where the weres in there are snarling and scrapping and on the verge of killing each other to really imagine them as being soft and cuddly, except... I think that's the huge attraction of romance, for me, is the idea that these tough-as-nails guys will go floofy over a girl. Gets me every time. I just haven't seen any of the Peltier men go floofy yet. (Maybe the next Were-Hunter book? *fingers crossed*)
I'd love to see more of Dante's club though (and how funny is it that she had him name it
Dante's Inferno?)
... Dude, I really wish they were all real. Even Stryker's got his appeal. Oh, except the gallu demons. Daimons I can handle, but gallu, ew. But I want my own Simi!
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This is the first time that I've heard about Gena Showalter's Atlantis.
I can totally give you
moar authors to check out, mostly around the same theme. Except stay away from Christine Feehan. I have her entire Carpathian series and don't really like any of them, except I want to
know (Her characters are fun, the writing and plots not so much.) Maggie Shayne's
Wings in the Night vamp series was awesome but then she had to go and drag Dracula out of the box (one of those you need to try and start from the beginning, though, and the first books were published back in the 90s so... unless your library loves you?) I loved Melanie Jackson's
Lutin Empire/Wild Side books. She even had a fake website for the goblins.
The last book annoyed me a bit though, because she'd set up her heroines as these amazingly strong women and then it was a case of "oh let's send the MEN off to war". I'm not an active feminist but I don't think you can set your readers up for kick-ass women and then yank the rug out from under them by shoving those same women in the kitchen, either.
Oh oh, and J. R. Ward's
Black Dagger Brotherhood books are really fun! The second, Rhage's, man that was cool. Phury's (the latest in the series) is basically one to just kind of read while you wait for the next, but the rest are awesome. And yes, definitely try Showalter's
Atlantis, but she has an
Alien Huntress series too that's cool. I can't remember if I've read the rest of hers or not...
Stone Prince rings a bell.
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I agree with you with the whole vampire thing... Stephenie Meyer's Twilight for instance. Personally, the only reason I liked it was because of the romance but I'm not too keen on her take on vampire myth... The idea of vampires shining like diamonds are just...
I've felt that too in a way, the whole "how am I going to write this..." stuff. I've been trying to write a fantasy novel for years, and I've even joined the NaNoWriMo event last year. I just couldn't come up with anything that wouldn't sound like Lord of the Rings, or those other fantasy novels out there. It's hard to think of something different and then when you've read something that is... you'll go "Now why didn't I think of that.... Too late..."
I'm not going to comment on Twilight because too many people love it and I haven't read it. Except to say that, from what I've heard about it, wtf.
And omg squee, a fellow writer.
I started out in romantic suspense and had actually finished the first draft of a Harlequinn Silhouette before I was 17 but then I realised I knew diddly squat about the FBI or American legal system - or America in general - and that a lot of the romance was immature! I was working on redrafting while I was at university but my interests shifted towards paranormal romance so I started worldbuilding and planning for a wizards&dragons series. I had a bunch of heroes and heroines, overall series arc, and most of the first book plotted out before I got sick. And realised my concept of relationships was still too immature. (Hey, it's still too immature.
)
One thing I have learned, however, is that you can't worry too much about being original. What the Tolkien fans don't bother telling people is that he wasn't original himself.
Lord of the Rings was based on a Nordic legend called
Song of the Niebelung (don't ask me to spell it properly). Nordic mythology had elves and a few of the other key elements long before Tolkien was a twinkle in his daddy's eye.
The key to being a good writer in this regard, I think, is more what you
do with your ideas. I don't think Sherrilyn Kenyon's the first to suggest that the gods are real and living among us, but she's the best I've read to date and it's because of what she's done with it. She's taken that concept and mixed in her extensive knowledge of mythology, given us girls what we want out of a romance (hot guys, ftw!) and written it all with a passion for what she's doing that you can feel in every word.
*ahem* Sorry if I sound like I'm lecturing a class or something, but this is a subject I've hit a number of times since university and I've just come to realise that there are no new ideas (look how many
remakes they're churning out of Hollywood and the music industry!) but that you can still be creative and original. ^__^
I definitely feel you on the whole "awww, why didn't
I think of that?" thing, though. Everything I read/watch (the good stuff, anyway) has kind of a... "aw, man" deal to it for me.
And then, naturally, when you're sitting there
trying to get creative, you're either completely blank or you have other people's stuff running around in your head trying to pass itself off as an original idea.
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The thing with the covers... I'm also a bibliophile as well as bookworm, so cover and paper quality is a must for me.
I hate it when I see dog ears on my book. I can't help it though when my mom borrows one of my books
Whenever she returns them, there would bent spines and folded corners... >.< She just laughs at me when I try to scold her so I don't try anymore...
Ahhhh, you'd hate my bookshelves, then. >_> I have bad hands so books are hard to handle, which means bending the spines backwards to keep them open with minimum effort while reading. No doggy ears, but the spines are creased to hell and back. My mom's always telling me "sacrilege! sacrilege!" (not in those exact words >_>) but I'm like... well, I'll stop as soon as they release wayyyyyyy more e-books that I'll actually read.
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Or was it just that the romance part of the book seemed so fast since the entire thing was so big? 
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Her series is in my list of "to buy" books... 
)
.
My first Harry Potter book was a gift from a friend and it had a US version cover. Then I found out about the UK version and I went "No way!" 
that got me really disappointed. 
