It’s been a wild week. I am thrilled to announce that Laura Bradford of the Bradford Literary Agency has offered to represent me and Paradise! According to Publishers Marketplace,she’s ranked #2 on their list of top dealmakers in romance fiction. Even after I babbled like a complete, consummate, crazed idiot on the phone for forty-five minutes, she didn’t change her mind.I’ll be doing some tweaking to get it ready. Cross your fingers, toes and eyes.
In other news, I made it through the first revisions of Mistress by Midnight. I also entered it into another contest. I’m 1/3 of the way through Mistress by Mistake, too. (That’s 32,600 words in two weeks.) And I’ve worked on the premise for the ‘Courtesan Court’ trilogy.I’ve actually plotted! Not a lot, but still. *g* I’d have to say the summer was pretty good writing-wise, even if it rained a lot. The weather kept me indoors hunched over a hot keyboard. 😉
But one of the best things to happen this past week was to talk on the phone to one of my Vauxhall Vixens critique partners, Elyssa Papa. She and Tiffany Kenzie and J.K. Coi have been so super supportive! (and they put up with my alliteration too) I don’t know what I’d do without them. They even sent me a basket with wine and goodies to celebrate. I told them I’d try to save the wine for when we finally all get together, but I can’t make any promises, LOL. And one bottle won’t be enough anyway. Vixen kisses and hugs all around.
Congratulations to Courtney Milan, who also had a great week. Her first book Proof of Surrender will be published by HQN in the fall of 2009!
I have a zillion printed pages of Mistress by Midnight to go through with a fine-tooth comb, a red pen and a stack of stickies. I want to revise. I do. *snort* I’ve even started. But mostly I’m riding into the sunset (well, actually dawn—I write much better early in the morning) with my new WIP, Mistress by Mistake instead.
I always gallop in the beginning. The dust hasn’t been kicked up, and there’s no horsesh*t yet. Hi-Ho-Silver-Away! Silver isn’t tarnished or lame or swaybacked in the middle. I wrote 15,000 words this week! I worry I’m like the John Travolta character in Phenomenon, who gets a burst of creativity and then croaks. Pray for me.
Here’s a snippet. Remind me later to beat myself with a riding crop to finish. Set up: Our heroine Charlotte Fallon is mistaken for her sister Deborah, a notorious courtesan. (hence the title) Hilarity ensues. To sooth you from your icky thoughts, the hero Sir Michael has engaged the services of Deborah as his mistress but has not yet had the opportunity to seal the deal, so to speak.
As if she heard his thoughts, she stiffened beneath him. And then she screamed.
Ear-piercingly. Perhaps she had not recognized him when she woke. But honestly, who could she be expecting? She was his.
He looked up at her, suspicious. She gave him a look he’d seen only in battle, when the other side was hopelessly outnumbered, pushed beyond recklessness and there was nothing left to lose. He hoped very much that she was not sleeping with a French bayonet beneath the mattress.
“You! You!” she sputtered.
“Yes, my pet, it is I. I know I gave you no notice, but thank you for your very warm welcome last night. It was worth every minute of the harrowing six weeks we spent apart.” He set back to massaging her nipple again with his tongue.
She hit him on the head with a fist. “Get off me! This instant! You are much mistaken, Sir Michael. I am not Deborah.”
Was this some sort of fantasy? Perhaps she liked her loveplay rough. To be the reluctant virgin, he the barbarian conqueror. His ex-mistress Angelique had liked to play highwayman and victim, as he recalled. He was the victim, and a most willing one. He stood, and he delivered.
“I shall call you anything you like, sweet, but please don’t strike me again. It’s not a bit sporting when I don’t know the rules of your game. But I’m willing to learn.”
“This is not a game, you stupid man! Oh, I do beg your pardon! But you are under a severe misapprehension, sir.”
She was scrambling under him quite provocatively. Her skin was on fire for him, blushing most delightfully. And here he had thought La Fallon cool and a little calculating.
“Hush, my dove.” His lips captured hers and she squeaked. Soon he would make her sigh again. See, she was softening already. Her lips opened and he swept into the warmth. His tongue tangled with hers in a dance as old as time. He was fisting his cock to slide between her smooth thighs when she bit him.
***
Where are you now in your writing/reading? The bright beginning, the muddy middle, or the glue factory?
You wonderful regular readers know I’ve been immersed in Mistress by Midnight since early spring. The first draft, all 93,000 words of it, is finished and I am beyond excited! I aimed to stop at 85,000 but something happened…kind of like when we had the perfect family with a boy and girl and then had two more girls. Those extra words are just as precious to me as the last two children—like the kids, they continue to surprise and delight me. Generally my endings are written well in advance, but that didn’t happen this time. I wondered if there would ever be an ending.
In every other manuscript I’ve completed, there has been an element of self-sabotage. Unfaithful heroes? Books One and Two. Metafictional kitchen-sink craziness? Book Three. BDSM unpleasantness? Book Four (known in the Robinson house as “The Bad Book”). But Book Five—hey, I gotta tell you, I love it. Yes, there’s angst, betrayal, pyramids, a secret baby and sheep, but I don’t mind claiming authorship—at least until I go through revisions. We’ll see if I’m still surprised and delighted then.
Maybe the fifth time is the charm.
The YouTube clip shows you what I’ve been using to inspire me. You now have a glimpse into my head (a very scary place to be). Enjoy. What’s in your head this week? Check the post below for other August news!
What a great way to start the month. Vixen J.K. Coi’s second book in her Immortals series Immortal Kiss is out today. And Vixen Elyssa Papa wins first place in the Fool for Love contest with Take a Chance on Me! Congratulations to them both! Success!
My oldest daughter thinks I’ve become a recluse. She doesn’t seem to understand when I’m at work, I talk to hundreds of people every day, and in the summer, all I want to do is write and not talk to anybody (except for my husband, kids and their kids…and even then…*g*). But the Other Grandmother, a wonderful woman who shares my joy with Sadie, invited me out to see three published romance writers at her local library, a place with which two of them were amazingly familiar.
Yes, Kensington vampirist Kathy Love and Golden Heart nominated, Harlequin and LBD author Julie Cohen both grew up a few towns over, went to high school together, hung out at the library and now take the romance world by storm. They were joined by debut romantic suspense author Anna Louise Lucia.They made me laugh, answered my obnoxious questions, and gave all the proceeds of the sales of their books to the library. I had my own mini-RWA conference right here in Maine and now have three authors to glom. Their call stories were inspiring. Anna waited eighteen months to hear about her book from a publisher. I’ve only been waiting ten, LOL.
This week the romance world will go simultaneously dark and bright. San Francisco will be the epicenter of light; those of us not there will glumly go about our business in the gloom, living vicariously. My goal is to ‘almost’ finish Mistress byMidnight, when perhaps the Internet distractions will not be so alluring. If you’re going to SF, what do you hope to achieve? If you’re not, what’s your goal this week? Do you want to go to Washington, D.C. next year? What authors have you met/inspire you?
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