Sunday, December 22, 2013


Win a Signed Copy of She Likes It Rough!

 Just be one of the first 15 people to write a review of 

She Likes It Rough on Goodreads and/or Amazon! 

1. Download She Likes It Rough, FREE now through December 26, by clicking HERE

2. Read the book and compose an honest review.

3.Before you post your She Likes It Rough review on Goodreads and/or Amazon, contact me on the Meet Me page of my website or by commenting on this blog, telling me under what name you will post the review.*   

4. Once the review is posted, contact me again via the Meet Me page on my website or in the comments below. Make sure you contact me using the same email address you used when you contacted me the first time.*  If your review is one of the first 15 to be posted on 12/23/2013 or later, you will win a signed copy of the book. When you contact me, let me know where to send the signed copy and whether you want me to sign the book to anyone specific.

*These steps are to insure that you are no cheeky monkey trying to take credit for someone else's review.


Good Luck and Happy Reading!






Happy Holidays!

-GVR Corcillo

Wednesday, December 18, 2013




It's That Time of Year...

Chestnuts crackling over a toasty fire, a snowy sleigh ride through a field of firs, peace on Earth...Mmmrrh!

But most of us never actually experience the stuff of the most iconic images Winter Wonderland. Still, we giddily trip into season after season of poinsettias and carols dreaming of silver bells and reindeer and miracles. And that's oaky. In fact, It's Wonderful. Holiday magic isn't about expecting to actually get the ideal. That just leads to waking up on the 26th in your own bed under your own cracked ceiling to realize that, once again, nothing magical happened.

Holiday Magic is about everybody essentially agreeing to be a little happier for a few weeks. We allow ourselves, for one month, to tap into the dreams that make us recognize the flurries of crystalline beauty in our own lives.

I love watching It's a Wonderful Life every year not because I expect my whole town to rally round me and tell me how amazing I am, but because I revel in the joy of having friends who love me and who I love right back.

Twinkling lights all down my block fill me with joy because people are simply deciding to make life a little brighter, a little more special than usual. Because we can do that – we can make our lives better by simply deciding to celebrate every day.

I jump out of bed on Christmas morning not to open gift-wrapped bling under the tree, but to roll up my sleeves along side my husband as we start preparing a feast for those we love most. Mmmrrh... No one dresses up, no gifts are exchanged – we simply enjoy each other's company on a day when life takes a breath and we all just relax. Well, relax...and cook, and arrange chairs and tables, and clean up – but we all do it together so it's cool. (Hint: If you are not the Mom of a family, get off your ass and help Mom this Christmas! The magic doesn't happen all by itself, you know!)

A Christmas Story isn't about Ralphie getting the Red Ryder BB Gun. It's about his Dad giving it to him - his irascible, foul-mouthed Dad who doesn't seem very dialed in to his kids' lives unless they are in trouble. But his Dad really was paying attention and does understand Ralphie's dreams.

Holiday Magic isn't about what you want or what you get – it's about realizing and appreciating what you have. Mmmrh...



...to Fall in Love with Your World












GVR Corcillo


books available 
at Amazon

Sunday, December 15, 2013

Mmmrrh...

Mmmrrh.... . . you know, that sound you make when biting into the most succulent piece of peanut buttery chocolate, or when you see an incredibly hot guy and you know you’ll never have him, or when you see the totally cutest little dog ever.

Mmmrrh . . . I live for that sound. More precisely, I live for those moments that create that sound – those drops of life that land on my skin and make me hurt, make me cry, make me tingle, make me feel. They pull me down and touch a core of pure sensation, if only for a few seconds.  But these seconds are too often scattered by the whirlwind pace of frenetic life. 

Moments of mmmrrh... flutter all around us everyday.  We just need to stop, notice, and appreciate.

-Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens...

-Crashing into someone's cart at Big Lots 2 weeks before Christmas. Could have turned into a macing or knifing, right? But we just  just apologized and smiled at each other with a sense of rueful conspiracy, a la Laverne and Shirley. 

-Seeing the bottom half of the moon. It was late, I was exhausted, and my car was chugging down the freeway. And there it was. The golden orange bottom half of the moon. I guess cloud cover made it look that way, but it really was the coolest view of the moon.

-Forgiving the NY Giants  for their phoned-in season all because punter Steve Weatherford tweeted Happy Birthday to a fan just because that fan asked him to in a tweet of his own.

 These are random drops of mmmruh... Moments that cut right to the essence of love, trust, compassion, understanding, nobility. Moments that I savor in life. Moments that I crave when I’m reading. Moments that I strive to evoke in my writing.

If I can recognize these moments, find these moments, access these moments, re-create these moments – but most of all, remember these moments and the way they make me feel – mmmrrh... what a wonderful world it can be.

Monday, November 11, 2013

Phoenix

If the NY Giants shoot the moon, they will become the first team in NFL history to win the Super Bowl after starting the season 0-6. And they'll do it in The Meadowlands, no less. Is this their year? Are the stars aligned for them? Will they work their butts off and stop giving up in the middle of a play? (Yes, I'm talking to you Justin Tuck - 3rd down, second drive of the game today.) Think they can't do it? Think it's impossible? Just remember, late in the season in 2007, they put their heads down, gritted their teeth, and got their act together to vanquish team after team in hostile territory through a brutal playoff schedule.  No one picked them to be the survivors, but survive they did. And they made it all the way to Super Bowl XLII where they faced the undefeated New England Patriots.

Here is what I wrote in 2008 after The Superbowl:


Romance, like sports, is an aching quest for the moment of perfect climax.

Why else was this Sunday’s Super Bowl XLII the most watched thing ever on TV, second only to the final episode of M*A*S*H? Are there so many Patriots and Giants fans out there? Maybe, but I suspect the game's popularity was due to not just the foreplay, but more significantly, to the guarantee of an explosive climax.

As Sports Illustrated so succinctly says, "The Super Bowl would be either a CORONATION or a COLOSSAL UPSET." In one corner is a smug, undefeated, championship team who wants to make history by becoming the only NFL franchise to go 19-0 in a season. In the other corner is a scrappy wild card team who has unexpectedly beaten redoubtable play-offs rivals to become the second-worse franchise ever to make it to the Super Bowl. New York’s Plaxico Burress predicts a 23-17 Giants win. Tom Brady laughs at a press conference at the notion of his Patriots scoring a mere 17 points. Can the New York defense stop the locomotion of the New England offense? Tom Brady looms infallible - can Eli Manning, league leader in interceptions thrown during the regular season, step up?

As it turns out, Plaxico is wrong. The Giants hold the Patriots to 14 points, not 17, thanks to a defense that sacks Tom Brady 5 times and breaks up the Hail Mary. And in the last 2 minutes of the game, Patriots on top by 4, young Eli steps up. Courtesy of an offensive line that wouldn't quit, he breaks out of a near-sack to throw to third-string receiver David Tyree who makes one of the most amazing catches in NFL history. Seriously, who catches a football with his head? A final pass to Plaxico in the end zone, and those scrappy Giants win the Super Bowl.

It was the perfect climax.

It's never too late to get it together. To play your hardest. To win. Just ask David Seidler. 


Day 2:
Fixed pricing - the paperback She Likes It Rough is now on sale for the  holiday season!
Tweaked website

Sunday, November 10, 2013

Dear Diary

Saturday, November 9, 2013

After many months, I'm back. Self-publishing is hard, with so much to do and so much to learn, and life is hard, with so much to do and so much to learn, but time to get on with it. 

Today at my Orange County Chapter meeting of Romance Writers of America, I relentlessly questioned a number of writers all along the publishing spectrum. Jennifer Lyons and Rebecca Forster were so generous and helpful. And what would I do without Mindy Neff and Marianne Donley? They answered with such alacrity. OCC rocks when it comes to just being cool and supporting fellow writers. I cannot wait until I know more and get a chance to be an answerer.

After careful cleaning of an incredibly rusty flash drive, I found the jettisoned prologue to She Likes It Rough so I can use it as a marketing tool on perhaps on my website, perhaps at the end of the short story I will be publishing soon. Thank you, Sandra Paul!

I bought another domain name - can a girl ever have too many? This one will be for my publishing company.

Downloaded all the documents I need to fill out from copyright.com...bet you're jealous. 

Tweaked prices and descriptions on Amazon and Kindle. My paperback is going on sale for the holiday season!

Peace out.
(I just really like it when Chad, played by Hill Harper, says that in The Nephew, story by Eugene Brady, Doug Mayfield, and Jacqueline O'Neill. Screenplay by Jacqueline O'Neill and Sean P. Steele)

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

I Am, I Said

And it doesn't even matter if no one is listening, not even the chair. I am saying it. Lately, I have been spending a lot of time building my connections as an author. I need to do this, but even more, I need to write more books and stories. I just decided about 20 minutes ago that I will write a chapter a day for the next two weeks.

There. I said it. Now, I am going to go do it.







GVR Corcillo

author of
  


Queen of the Universe coming this Fall

Friday, March 8, 2013

There Is Only One Response

As a self-published novelist, I am constantly working to publicize, market, distribute, and sell my book. I am a writer who wants to make money from selling the books that I've written. Recently, when I was discussing my sales endeavors, someone said to me that writers should not expect to make money - for most writers it is enough that people are buying their books and reading them. So, if all the money goes to other people along the chain that gets books into the hands of readers, writers should not mind.

I was discussing this conversation with my husband, who is a TV writer. He said, "There is only one response to the argument that writers should not expect to be paid for their work, and that is FUCK YOU."

Profane? Yes. Harsh? Yes. But it accurately conveys a writer's anger and frustration at the utter disrespect or, worse yet, the deliberate exploitation motivating such an argument.

If you are a writer, then I know that at some point in you career, someone has expected you to write for no money, or to write for just enough money to cover costs, or to write for a great deal less money than the amount received by the entities that help make your books available to readers. Some of you may have even been asked to pay in order for someone else to sell and make money off your work. Where does this idea come from, that writers should write merely for the love of it?!

Okay, the next time someone suggests to you that writers should expect to make no money, you shouldn't curse at them, though you may really want to, because such a response would not further our attempts to achieve recognition as people who do work deserving of compensation.

But you could say something like, "Oh, and should Honda make cars for no money, just for the sheer love of driving?"

"Or what about Coca-Cola? Should Coke forego all profits simply because they love the taste of Coke so much and really want others to enjoy it, too?"

"Should Ivory distribute soap not for money but for the love of cleanliness?"

But, some might argue, these products are not artistic, which is a very different thing.

Okay. Should Josh Groban get a second job to support himself as he funnels all of the profits from his music hobby to marketers, publicists, concert coordinators and record companies? Should he earn no money from his CDs and sing just because he loves it so much?

Should Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson have earned no money for the Twilight movies? After all, they were unknowns when they were cast, and the exposure from the films should have been payment enough. And come on, any actor should feel lucky to be in those movies without getting uppity and demanding payment on top of the privilege of being cast.

You might argue that Josh and Kristen and Robert's products sell A LOT of inventory, thus justifying the money they make. True, the more you sell, the more you earn. But writers should make their fair share, regardless of how little the pot of money earned from a book might be. After all, Kristen and Robert did not play Bella and Edward for free, told they were not going to make a dime until everyone else made a bundle. And that is so often what writers are expected to do - take whatever money might be left over after everyone else is paid in full.

Writers refusing to take egregiously unfair contracts that strip them of almost all rights for very little in return is one step to empowering writers to the shocking point that they earn money for their work. I know this could be very hard indeed for an unpublished writer desperate to cross over into the world of publishing. But keep in mind that today, the writer has options. A writer can self-publish - thus keeping her or his rights and getting a bigger share of the profits for all the hard work a writer does. Many established, published writers are choosing to go self-published. Why? If you are one such writer reading this blog please answer in the comments. I'd love to hear from you! I suspect you may see a better deal for yourselves in self-publishing.

Now, I must urge you to consider this: as a self-published author, do not let anyone tell you what your fair share is. Self-publishing is emerging, nascent, and constantly developing. There is no industry standard. If someone tries to squeeze you into the framework of traditional publishing standards, well, refer them to my husband and he has two words for them. As writers, as we charge into this new era of independence, we have to be ready to look at things honestly, stay wary of exploiters, do our research, stay tough, and pave our own ways into artistic control and solvency.

I am a writer. I create products made of words and white space between the words and numbers. I sell these products to people. As a result, I expect to make money.





GVR Corcillo

author of
  


Queen of the Universe coming this Fall

The Very Best Part

What a day! I have spent a great deal of today doing doing necessary work things that make my stomach feel icky and uncomfortable. But then I forgot all about that when I opened an email message tonight that I thought was from my nephew but really it was some sort of awful spam trap that signed me up to some skeevy dating site! Before I even realized what was happening, sixteen guys liked me and one wanted to meet me! It was so - gross! The site had raided my facebook profile and knew all my personal stuff! I was freaking out until my husband finally got my info and picture (Eeeew!) off the site. Yick!!

I feel like I need a shower and a whiskey. But I don't drink and I cannot blog from the shower.

So, I will instead focus on a more pleasant aspect of my day.

My little sister bought my book today!  Now let me tell you about my kid sister Marice. There's too much history and a lot of it involves shouting, frustration, lots of ruined clothes and shoes, lots of good money thrown after bad, arrests, two trips to the hospital, and, once upon a time, a punch. But that history also involves a beautiful woman with a ready laugh and an unbelievable Zen optimism. It also involves some of the funniest stories woven through my life. It involves a beautiful young man, an amazing girl, and an adorable boy who have my sister's life force. It involves shared hurt, tears, and confusion. It involves dreams that never die.

But most importantly, no matter what happens between us or what words are said, I can't help but just plain like her!

And today she bought my book. And my sister and I like to read the same kinds of books. So, I think she will actually read it!! And then - and this is the VERY BEST PART - we can talk about it! I am dying for someone to read my book and talk to me about it - tell me what they think and how they felt. And I KNOW I can trust Marice to be honest. We have never had to take off the gloves with each other because they have simply never been on.

Here's the thing - I love my book. It's, like, one of my favorite books, up there with The Witch of Blackbird Pond and Ender's Game and Touch Not the Cat. I want to talk about the book like I cannot wait to talk to my friend Rebecca as soon as I read an Izzy Spellman book or how I want to talk to Greg after I see a Battlestar Gallactica or Sherlock episode.

So, if you have read any of my books or stories, I would love to hear from you - either as a comment on this blog or send me a note on my website by clicking the "Contact GVR" button at the top of this page.

I'd love to hear from you, because discussing my book with readers is the very best part.






GVR Corcillo

author of
  


Queen of the Universe coming this Fall