May 23, 2009
Lauren Dane came up with a cool way to network, promote and share excerpts from authors’ works. She invited a bunch of writers in different genres to participate in a round-robin every Saturday. They all will follow a single topic—and we know that even if they’re writing about the same thing, everyone’s voice is completely different. This Saturday’s theme is “Defining Moment.” The authors below have all posted a writing sample on their blog. Next week is “First Kiss,” and I’m hoping to join the crowd and lipsmack away. In the meantime, please visit as many of the sites below and enjoy the snippets!
May 13, 2009
My husband teases me that I’m got a family of squirrels in my head, chattering and pelting each other with acorns. It’s perfectly true I feel very distracted. For someone who’s a pantser in real life as well as writing, all of a sudden I’ve got to think of the future and organize the squirrels into formation. A cadre of them have taken revision notes from my
Berkley editor Kate Seaver and are attempting to arrive at the same place in the manuscript by a significantly different route. Several artistic squirrels are contemplating favorite colors for a website design (Yay
Frauke! Coming eventually:
https://www.maggierobinson.net/). A few distinctly grumpy rodents are still doing laundry and cleaning the toilet and going to work every day, counting the days until summer vacation on their tiny paws. Some are working on proposal ideas for another Heat book. There is one mangy, desolate little furball who is curled up in a corner, forbidden to even think about Gemma and Andrew until Hart and Eden get squared away and sent again. And to top it off, they’re all on nut rations, because the squirrels were getting awfully fuzzy. They’ve been drinking Slim-Fast instead of pina coladas and they are not in a celebratory mood. They’re not rabid yet, but it’s getting close, although collectively they’ve lost 5 pounds—a mere drop in the bucket of fuzz.
So writing a blog post becomes a challenge. There is not much to say except the squirrels are leaping from tree limb to tree limb, hoping they don’t crash to earth. Squirrels don’t bounce.
What are your squirrels up to?
May 10, 2009
Here are two very special people I’m going to spend my Mother’s Day with. Whether you’re a mom or someone’s precious baby, have a lovely day!
A daughter may outgrow your lap, but she will never outgrow your heart. ~Author Unknown
May 7, 2009
I bet you’ve been checking and checking, saying to yourself, Maggie posts once a week. She’s dependable, like a good bowl of oatmeal with cream and brown sugar and maybe even a pat of butter. Where the heck is she?
I’ve been lounging about like these ladies to the left, sitting on exciting news. Congratulations to Tiffany Chalmers, Vixen Extraordinnaire, on the sale of her exotic, delicious Hidden Beauty! Much better than oatmeal! Tiff is St. Martin’s Press’s (look at all those esses and apostrophes) latest author. We’re pretty excited in the Pleasure Gardens, so drop on by and wish Tiff the best as she begins what will be a long and luscious career.
As for me, I have been madly ripping apart the last seventy-five pages of Paradise (eventually to be re-titled). I said somewhere it’s been like drowning kittens. But when I’m done I hope to have a stronger third act. My perfect hero Hart’s bad boy side is finally showing itself. I always knew he had it in him. *w* My Courtesan Court trilogy is also making the rounds, so synopses had to be written and a few things tweaked. For a day I was working on four books simultaneously and I’m happy to say my head didn’t explode.
What secret have you been keeping? What’s making your head explode? Tell all!
Apr 24, 2009
My husband and I had a delightful time in Sin City. The temps were in the 90s, and I sat slathered in sun block and read Marrying the Captain by Carla Kelly, Cocktails for Three by Madeleine Wickham, Why Mermaids Sing by C.S. Harris, The Secret Wedding by Jo Beverley and Beyond Heaving Bosoms by those smartypants bitches Candy Tan and Sarah Wendell. The latter, a gift from Ely, is a hoot. Since I’ve been giving major thought to what makes the ‘essential’ romance, I’m paying careful attention to their theories and themes.
My books fall pretty solidly into what I call the Redemption Range. Everything I’ve written in the past couple of years features characters who have made mistakes, usually when they were much younger, but have not let the mistakes make them. Oh, there’s plenty of guilt and regret to go around, but I’m reminded of the layers necessary to form a pearl. Without the irritant, that mollusk would not secrete the calcium carbonate and conchiolin to create one of nature’s beauties. Everything in our past determines who we are today.
I’m looking forward to transforming Paradise’s Hart and Eden into lustrous, smooth, layered characters. It’s been a while since I reflected on them. Eden’s mistakes are rather more spectacular than the usual Regency heroine’s, and I’m sure I made a few of my own as I worked on the manuscript. I’ll keep you posted.
Read any good books lately? What’s your theme?
