I am participating in a blogging experiment hosted at dearauthor.com. To enter the contest, put up this blurb, image, and trackback and you are entered to win the following prize package.

• $200 Amazon gift certificate
• Signed copy of Slave to Sensation
• New Zealand goodies chosen by Singh
• ARC of Christine Feehan’s October 31 release: Conspiracy Game

You can read about the experiment here and you can download the code that you need to participate here.

SLAVE TO SENSATION

Nalini Singh

Berkley / September 2006

Welcome to a future where emotion is a crime and powers of the mind clash brutally against those of the heart.

Sascha Duncan is one of the Psy, a psychic race that has cut off its emotions in an effort to prevent murderous insanity. Those who feel are punished by having their brains wiped clean, their personalities and memories destroyed.

Lucas Hunter is a Changeling, a shapeshifter who craves sensation, lives for touch. When their separate worlds collide in the serial murders of Changeling women, Lucas and Sascha must remain bound to their identities…or sacrifice everything for a taste of darkest temptation.

Excerpt

After much thought and introspection, I finally got up the nerve to tell someone whose WIP I was critiqueing that I didn’t think the story fit in the genre it was stated as. The writing itself was quite good but the parts of the story that stood out and were memorable to me were pretty much at direct odds to the genre.

My heartfelt belief was that the story needed to be reworked to either fit the intended genre or to fit the other genre which is where I actually feel this author has a very strong voice.

Finally, after much soul-searching, I wrote a private email last week with my thoughts to her. It was hard because I am SURE it is not what she wants to hear at all but I just don’t think I would be doing her any favors by not telling her, either.

My personal feeling is that if I am reading someone’s work to offer feeback or critique them, I owe them honesty. Not cruelty, mind you, but definitely honesty.

What do other people think? What do you want or not want in a critique partner? What is the hardest part of being someone’s critique partner?

Whew – it was a very full week it Atlanta! Then I had a ton of things waiting for me at home and work when I got back.

Lots of people have done blow by blow tales of Atlanta so I won’t do that right now – maybe when I finish the submissions I have to send out and catch up at work.

But I will share the weirdest thing…..

You get a LOT of books and swag at Nationals. I had swag for friends collected and a bunch of books so I decided to be smart and send a box home on Friday. I’d arranged with one of the wandering manager trainees to take my carefully taped box to the hotel’s shipping and receiving and filled out the form to have the shipping charges put on my room tab.

Come Sunday the hotel nicely delivered the bills for myself and my three roommates. A careful examination showed no shipping charges. I thought this was very odd and called Shipping anh Receiving to ask what happened to my box.

Answer — they have no idea.

Oh no.

I ended up talking to an assistant manager, the manager and the nice lady in S&R who was so polite despite the fact that I’m SURE she really wanted to shoot me. No dice.

So I took off for home, convinced that I’d seen the last of my books and swag.

Fast forward a bit – I’d finished mourning for the box and was getting on with all the rest of the things I needed to do. Then I get a phone call from C telling me that there was a box on the porch addressed to me from a certain hotel in Atlanta.

The box has reappeared!!!!!