This week, my words are from Serving Victoria: Life in the Royal Household by Kate Hubbard, a really interesting book about the men and women who served Queen Victoria. I am learning a lot about life in the royal household – not all of it good!

1. Prinked – dressed or groomed with elaborate care and vanity

“She judged the prinked and preening Leopold, King of the Belgians, ‘a very majestic personage.’”

2. Battledore - A game played with a shuttlecock and rackets; a forerunner of badminton

“The Queen took immediately to her new lady-in-waiting, finding her a most ‘amiable person’, happy to indulge her in a game of battledore and shuttlecock in the Corridor.”

3. Pelisse - A long cloak or outer robe, usually of fur or with a fur lining

“She was dressed in a plain white muslin pelisse and a ‘droll little Quaker shaped straw bonnet…”

4. Calomel - a white, tasteless powder used chiefly as a purgative and fungicide

“Dr Clark has mismanaged the child and poisoned her with calomel and you have starved her.”

Historic novels, whether fiction or non-fiction, are great sources for new words, so I expect more from this one next week!

“I am a product [...of] endless books. My father bought all the books he read and never got rid of any of them. There were books in the study, books in the drawing room, books in the cloakroom, books (two deep) in the great bookcase on the landing, books in a bedroom, books piled as high as my shoulder in the cistern attic, books of all kinds reflecting every transient stage of my parents’ interest, books readable and unreadable, books suitable for a child and books most emphatically not. Nothing was forbidden me. In the seemingly endless rainy afternoons I took volume after volume from the shelves. I had always the same certainty of finding a book that was new to me as a man who walks into a field has of finding a new blade of grass.”

- C. S. Lewis, author

Just about everything, in Blood Drama by Christopher Meeks. Ian makes a series of bad decisions: he’s smart enough to use his theater training to glean small details about his captors, but he can’t resist showing off what he’s learned, putting himself in grave danger. At least he’s smart enough to make his escape when the opportunity presents itself…but not quite smart enough to stay out of trouble.  Now he’s on the run with a vicious bank trigger man hot on his heels.

FBI Special Agent Aleece Medina wants to bring down this particular bank robber — The Busty Bandit — and she’s willing to fight dirty to stay on the case. Nash may be able to help, if she can keep him alive long enough.

I wasn’t sure what this book was trying to be. It wasn’t gritty enough to be a crime drama. It wasn’t wacky enough to be a comedy. And while Nash and Medina are drawn to each other, there was never enough heat for a romance. There are some funny passages, but I could never get caught up in the story.

Nash makes rash decisions that made me want to throttle him, while Medina bounces back and forth between fiercely professional and ridiculously smitten. I think Medina’s behavior bothered me more than Nash’s, precisely because she is supposed to be a professional. It’s clear that Nash can help in the investigation, but she should be able to find a way for him to help without endangering his life and without anyone else ending up dead. Instead, she takes him on a road trip, gets drunk, and flirts with him. Although I enjoyed parts of the story, I couldn’t like either main character enough to really be drawn in.

My copy of Blood Drama was an Advanced Reader Copy, provided free of charge.

“Sometimes it’s a comfort just to have a book around. Many of these books haven’t even had their spines cracked. ‘Why do you buy books you don’t even read?’ our daughter asks us. That’s like asking someone who lives alone why they bought a cat. For company, of course.”

- Sarah Addison Allen, author

This week, I’m reading Blood Drama by Christopher Meeks. I’ve reviewed a few of his books in the past, and I am enjoying the newest novel so far.

“Spiders can’t hurt you. Yes, they could. They could crawl all over a person’s body and bite little bits of flesh until he was a man without skin.”

Now, that is someone with a bit of a phobia, don’t you think? What’s teasing you this week?

“WHEN you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars”

- W.B. Yeats, Irish poet

My name is Erica, and I write chick lit.

My name is Erica, and I write chick lit.

It sounds like I’m introducing myself at a secret group meeting of similar genre writers, sequestered away in dark basements where we sip on full-caf vanilla lattes and chain-scarf chocolate bonbons while we trade stories about our cats, and console each other about our sad, unfulfilled lives, doesn’t it?

Okay, so maybe the part about the chocolate is true. I do dig the chocolate. But the rest? Pffft! Are you kidding me?

I don’t skulk around in dark hoodies, hiding my face like some sort of fugitive of fiction. Not me! I’m dressed in pink from head to toe, dancing around with a bouquet of fresh daisies clutched to my chest, ready for the “he loves me, he loves me not,” moment to present itself. And let’s face it… of course, he loves me.

And why wouldn’t he? My life has a soundtrack. It’s not unusual to find me skipping from room to room to the perky beat, as bubble hearts float up from my head. I’m not kidding! Even as I type, I’m salivating at the perfect man, cooking me breakfast—to be served in bed—while flashing his impossibly perfect abs for me to gaze at while I eat.

So, maybe that’s not true either. I’m just a regular chick who likes to write about stuff that will make people laugh, maybe make a few hearts go pitter patter along the way, and then leave you with an all-around good feeling at the end. And really, what’s wrong with that? I’m no Stephen King, no Jackie Collins, no JK Rowling, but I’m perfectly happy to be me… a chick lit writer.

When did people get so judgmental about genres anyway? Why does chick lit deserve less respect than say, drama or mystery? It’s that whole “commercial” aspect isn’t it? The minute you tack on commercial before the word fiction, you run into the whole, “You’re not a serious writer. You just wrote that because people will buy it,” crap.

And to my detractors, yes, I wrote it because people will buy it. Isn’t that the point? What good does it do to write a book if no one wants to buy it? But that’s certainly not the only reason. I have characters in my head screaming at me to get their stories out, and they could care less if anyone buys it. They just want someone to read it.

And sure, I could have easily written a sweeping epic of family drama that critics would hail as the next Gatsby, but where’s the fun in that? Not to knock Fitzgerald, he totally rocked, but sweeping epics are not my thing. I’m writing for the women of the world who simply want a fun romp to bring a smile to their lips. Life is meant to be laughed at—enjoyed—and chick lit does that. So as long as someone still wants to read it, I’ll keep writing. With… um…my little stash of  chocolate bonbons at my side. Because, yeah…

I’m still a chick who digs chocolate.

Now, Matt Bomer is pretty darned hot all on his own, even if he doesn’t bat for my team. And yes, he’s carrying a sort of wackadoodle cookbook (The Amazing Acid-Alkaline Cookbook: Balancing Taste, Nutrition, and Your PH Levels). But it’s a book – not a phone, or a magazine or an iPad. An actual book. And a man carrying a book is a sexier than he is without the book, in my opinion at least.

“When the Day of Judgment dawns and people, great and small, come marching in to receive their heavenly rewards, the Almighty will gaze upon the mere bookworms and say to Peter, “Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them. They have loved reading.”

Actually, I think the Almighty will give us the keys to the library.

- Virginia Woolf, author