Megan Hart

While looking for something else in an old folder I found  a poem I wrote in high school, and I would like to share it with you today.

* * * * * * *

Dawn breaks over the hills

like a sword slicing through veal

A slice slips down, sliding down

veal cutlet

Is the sun.

We eat it.

The moon is a cheese biscuit.

It’s over.

Nip/Tuck is over. FOREVERRRRRRR! *weeps*

Ok, so they summed it all up in the way I wanted — sure, we *think* they’re all sort of on the right path, even though we know what they’ll all continue to mess up their lives because not a one of them is mentally healthy, but at least there’s the APPEARANCE of them making it all work. And the last scene? Brazilliant!

Moving on…

I was thinking about what I write. I get emails from people pretty frequently about “Is X a [certain kind of book]” and…you know what? If you think so, then it is. Are my books romances? Some of them are. I could point you to some that definitely are — No Greater Pleasure is a romance. Tempted? Absolutely not. What about Dirty? Hmmm. I used to say no, it’s romantic, but not a romance, but really…maybe it is.

But here’s the thing: I don’t write “romances.” I don’t write “erotica.” Well, lemme back up. I DO sometimes write romances, and I DO sometimes write erotica, but most often I write a sorta kinda mishmash of whatever it is that I’m doing or feeling about the story, and sometimes that means the books come out more romantic and sometimes they’re more erotic and sometimes they’re sexy and sometimes they’re sensual, but here is the thang…

THEY ARE ALL ABOUT AN ENTIRE STORY.

Of course they are, what does that mean?

Well, it means that there’s more going on, most of the time, than the relationship between the hero/heroine. There just IS. That’s the way I write, that’s the way I like it, and I understand, I really, really do, if that’s boring to some folks, or that it takes away from the sexy times, or if hey, you just don’t CARE about the heroine’s life outside of what she feels about the hero. I totally get that. And if you like to read books that focus solely on the one man/one woman thing, then perhaps my books are going to leave you with a little something missing (or maybe too full, like there’s too much going on that you don’t care about.)

There’s nothing wrong with loving books that are only about people falling in love and getting it on. If that’s what you love, then go on witcha bad self and read them! The world is full of things to love and when you find it, please, please, PLEASE! consume it! Read it, watch it, listen to it! And if you don’t love it…don’t waste your time or money on reading, listening to or watching it. Life is too short for that!

But I don’t write books that are only about one thing. My books for Spice tend to be heroine-centric. They’re her story. Not “their” story. And my heroines have lives aside from their relationship with the hero. They have parents, they have siblings, co-workers, they have issues that having nothing to do with the man or men in their lives.

I find this totally realistic, because *I* have more in my life than the man I married. I had more in my life than just him when I met him. I had a past, I had friends, I had stuff going on that had nothing to do with him. Meeting him, falling in love with him and marrying him did not complete me. I was already a whole person when we met. Falling in love with him was an exciting chapter of my life — but it’s not the whole thing. We’ll have been married for 15 years this summer, and I wouldn’t trade those years or what’s happened during them for anything, but falling in love with him was not the beginning or the end of my story. Because it’s LIFE.

A book is different. A book needs a beginning, a middle and an end. The characters are not REAL, but I try to make them realistic. They had stuff going on before that first sentence, and if I write them well enough, you’ll believe they have stuff going on after the final period on that last page. Whatever happens on the pages in between is the BOOK, and it’s their story, but it shouldn’t be the only important thing about those people. I don’t really want to write about that, characters that have only one story to tell. I might only tell one of them, but I like to think they all have many.

So, if you’ve stumbled across one of my books and you’re thinking, WTF, I wanted a romance, this wackadoo has these people actually talking to their parents and stuff instead of spending the whole time knocking boots with their true love…there’s an explanation.

I can’t tell you if Book X is a [certain kind of story.] I might think so, and you don’t, or the other way around. I can’t tell you that I write romance, or that I don’t because again, you might feel differently. I write what I write. I hope people who like it, read a lot of my books. I hope people who don’t like it, don’t read it.

M

I haven’t been here in a long, long time. Barnes and Noble, that is. Sunday mornings are sometimes spent at home, doing laundry and working on stuff while Superman takes the spawn to religious school. Or they’re spent buying groceries and running errands while the spawn are in religious school. Or, sometimes, but not lately, they’re spent at the Barnes and Noble writing.

I worked on some articles today (I write for Helium.com on a variety of subjects, nothing fancy.) Wrote a new “How-To” Guide for Helium (on how to apologize to your girlfriend, of all things!) and I checked out the shelves for my books.

Didn’t see any.

Saw books by Lauren Dane, Cynthia Eden and Beth Kery — oh, and I did see Naughty Bits 2 so I guess  I am on the shelves here after all. Checked out the final two books in Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series. Looked at all the teen books. There’s really a plethora of paranormal teen fiction out there right now, just the kind of thing I loved as a teen and still do. Also lots of books about angst and woe. Guess what, I like that, too.

Tomorrow I’ll get back to working on By Its Thorns, and I have confidence I’ll get back into the groove. I feel…overflowing…with ideas lately. I write them down. Sometimes I even plot them out a bit. I keep a notebook of idea snippets, though lately I’ve taken to writing a plot synopsis on the computer instead of doing it long-hand, and I made a folder on my hard drive to save all these “proposals.” My problem is not lack of ideas, but too many.

It’s a good place to be. Full of ideas. Full of the feeling I could actually write most of them, that the ones I really like, the ones that have been hanging around, in some cases, for years, are good ideas. Viable. They’ll be good books, if I have the chance to write them, which really depends on a lot of things, since some of them aren’t in genres for which I have current contracts and would therefore require I get new! exciting! contracts!

I’m all for that.

I don’t want to write the same kinds of books forever. Rather, I do — I want to keep writing what I love and what I think I’m maybe a little good at, or at least decently skilled. But that doesn’t mean I want to write ONLY those books. I have a lot of books in me and the drive to write them.

One of the problems in becoming complacent, in writing the same sort of books over and over, is that I could forget how to write something else. Like, how exciting it is to follow a different path, not the same formula (and listen, there’s always a formula, or else how would you be able to do the same thing over and over?) — to remind myself that I don’t have to keep to the restraints of certain genres, or I don’t have to limit myself to one certain kind of plot point; that some things in some books are necessarily more important than in other kinds, and what will simply not work in an erotic romance is totally fine in horror novel.

Yeah.

I like that.

I want to keep doing this for a long time, and I don’t want to run out of enthusiasm. I don’t think I’ll run out of ideas. I guess you never know. But for now, I have notebooks and documents full of some crazy, crazy ass shit, ya’ll.

Write on!

M

So, I started the book with the tentative title By Its Thorns (apt to change) last week and got a whopping…41 pages. Yeah, I know, not quite the amount I’d hoped. HOWEVER — I lost my notes from the other three books, so that was sort of annoying. I know I have them, I just can’t find them! Then, the character’s name changed. The heroine still has a name I don’t really like, so I have to think of one I do. And then it just took some time to switch the gears and move from one book to another, one genre to another.

By Its Thorns is the fourth Order of Solace novel so the world is established and yet there’s so much possibility for more stuff! (Of course, if I could find my notes, it would help. A lot.) On the other hand, the style of it — the language, the way the characters interact, is very different from the contemporary erotic fiction book (Collide) I just finished the rough draft of. Things take longer in the Order of Solace world. People talk a lot more, using more words to say less.

It takes a little time to get back into that. Plus, while Pleasure and Purpose was pretty hot, sex-wise, No Greater Pleasure was quite a bit less graphic. The third book, Selfish is the Heart, out this fall from Berkley  Sensation, is also less graphic. It was my plan that By Its Thorns would be a little more on the erotic scale rather than sensual, and so far, it seems as though it just might be. But four chapters into it, I realized something — the heroine’s been in love with the hero for YEARS! Which means I have to make some changes in the first chapter or so to reflect that. He, on the other hand, has no idea who she is at all.

Delicious.

It’s tricky, getting people into bed. Sure, they can just have sex for the sake of having sex (people in real life do it all the time) — but in a book, well, I kinda sorta like to have it mean something, if only to further the plot or make a point or something like that. It’s not real life, it’s a novel, every word counts. So while they can get into bed on page one, for me, it still has to make sense and mean something.

Of course this week I have TWO days with obligations, but I hope I can get into the writing groove again and pound out the pages on this book! Hooray! Hooray!

M

So, with Collide finished in its rough draft form and put to the side so I can get new eyes for it (not literally, obviously) I am about to begin a book tentatively titled By Its Thorns. I think that’ll change. But it’s the fourth Order of Solace book, and I am SUPER DUPER excited to be working on it. I actually plotted out the story eons ago, and I still really like the idea for it.

I’m also stoked because it seems I’ve managed to keep my 20 pgs a day habit, which means this book should flyyyyyyy along, fly along, barring issues with plotting or kids having days off from school, etc. I already know there are days off coming up (oy!) so if I could finish the rough draft of this before that all starts, I’d be in a very very good place. Editing and tweaking and polishing is easier done around interruptions than page count.

So, here I go. Beginning today, officially! Starting…now!

M

First, we were going to go away for the weekend.

Then, we were not.

Then, we got a call that a tree went through the roof of the beach house, so we had to go.

Then, we had to stay longer and therefore, the day I thought I’d get to make up work because of the days I missed work due to snow days…well,that day was spent not working.

And today, I have to go see my kid’s play.

However, I’m going to shower and eat breakfast and get started on the work. I want to finish Collide this week, though it’s Tuesday already — GAWD! and I’m not sure…wait a minute…yeah, I could very well finish this week. Rough draft, I mean, nothing in readable format. But that means I’d be well on my way to making my goal.

Cool! See? Not so doom and gloom after all. (Well, let’s forget about the holes in the roof and the lack of a heat pump and all of that junk.)

Yeah, okay, so I’ll get to work and finish Collide so I can move onto the next project. Awesome!

Hooray!

M

PS — this post has been brought to you by the letter “M” — my internal monologue. My private pep talk. See how it works?

What, it’s not enough to seduce me, you have to tease and taunt me, then leave me weeping, writhing, screaming NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO?

Yeah, eff March 25th, bring me more Supernatural next effing week!

I *loved* this episode. My Bloody Valentine, anyone? Oh, haha, so clever. *snerk* I mean, starting off with a pretty steamy (for Supernatural) sex scene that was NOT including Sam or Dean sort of made my insides shrivel, but when they started eating each other…wow.

I was eating during this episode, and lemme tell you, I was disgusted.

I loved it! So much to love. So gross. So many funny lines. Cupid of course knocked my socks off with his naked bear hugs and intrusion on Dean’s personal space. Castiel — “They’re not incontinent.” BWAHAHAHA! Oh, God, Misha Collins, you slay me. Seriously. The writers write the lines, but the DELIVERY, oh, my goodness.

They worked through the mystery, figured out what was going on, it all tied in nicely with the overall arc, Sam drank demon blood and though I know it’s wrong, oh, how I know it’s wrong…Evil!Sam, with the one hand out and the sneer, I’ll wait my turn if that’s what you want. I know it’s wrong to like Sam slurping demon blood but…well…listen there are a lot of reasons why the bad boy trope is so well-loved and it makes it even better when the damage is something he can’t help. So, bonus points for Evil!Sam! Hooray!

More demons, more nasty stuff, Famine’s teeth seriously made me want to barf. He reminded me of the guy from Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and that really really old decrepit guy with the creepy voice…I can’t remember what movie he was in or what his name is…dangit…he made a career out of being old and decrepit and creepy in a wheelchair being evil and gross! Well, Famine reminded me of him. AND IT WAS GROSS, Y’ALL.

And then the end.

Dean. Oh, Dean. Dean, Dean, Dean.

Dean.

I stopped watching Lost because Jack cried too much, but I could watch Dean’s eyes well up every single freaking episode and want to cradle him to my bosom and comfort him and tell him it will be okay; but of course it won’t, you know, it’s the motherfucking apocalypse, son, and you and your brother CAUSED IT.

Jensen Ackles, seriously? Why are you so good at breaking my heart? WHY?

So that was last night’s episode, and now I have to wait until March 25th for a new one. Yeah. I am sad.

Not quite snowed in any more, but still have work to do to make up for the snow days. Twenty pages a day, dolla dolla, holla holla. Gonna finish COLLIDE next week or even this weekend, depending on the craziness that ensues (I don’t usually write on weekends but if the family goes skiing or some such thing, I will work.)

Today I also have to clean my house, because…ew.

M

Well, I cleaned off my desk today, and let me tell you something. It always takes a really long time. I also did laundry, and that takes a long time, too! Which makes my eyes all squinty, the laundry and the cleaning.

I also edited a Spice Brief called The Experiment and sent that off to my editor; so that’s what I do instead of watching The Super Bowl. I work. Oh, I did play some Sims 3 earlier today, but I don’t really count it since I was actually editing while I just let my Sim lady go about her business.

She discovered a star.

I know, right? Who knew they even could? Left to her business, she will play her guitar a lot and flirt with people. She also apparently likes to discover stars. And she found some seeds, but I don’t think she’ll plant them. Well, maybe she will, I don’t know.

Tomorrow I aim to get up at a good time (instead of letting the alarm just go off, then again, then again later…) which means I intend to get to bed very shortly. Which is also what I’m doing instead of watching the Super Bowl. Going to be early. I believe I shall read. Now, I just finished Under the Dome which was a doorstop of a book, my God, over 1000 pages, really? REALLY?! And I think I’m going to read The Lightning Thief or possibly The Dead and Gone next. Because I feel like it.

On the other hand, if I’m going to dive back into Collide tomorrow, I really should read through it to refresh my memory. So maybe I’ll take that to bed with me instead, and go over it.

See, that’s what I do instead of watching football.

I work!

M

So this past weekend was spent in Gallifrey, only this time instead of relaxin’, chillin’ and general loungin’, it was work, work, work. Yeah, we had a writing retreat.

Not that it wasn’t fun, you know — when we all get together it usual leads to some sort of mayhem. I’m not posting the video of the Lady Gaga dance party. But check out the pictures of snow at the beach — it started snowing Saturday and dropped about 10 inches — more snow than Bethany’s had since the 70s, according to one source. All’s I can say is, snow on the beach is pretty darned cool!

Everyone worked really hard, well, except for me. I slept. I did do some writing, some editing, but I was the slacker for the weekend. Really, it’s okay. I needed to catch up on my napping.

M

First off, I have the great pleasure of announcing that my spec fic novel, EXIT LIGHT, has been acquired by Carina Press (no word on release date or anything like that, but I’ll post updates as I find out more.) Exit Light is not romance, not erotic…it deals with the dream world and I’m very excited that it will get some readers!

For those of you who like my Spice books, you can look forward to another three over the next…gosh…I dunno how many years. Three more in addition to the two that aren’t out yet. Just found out yesterday, so that’s super exciting news, too! Hooray!

Hooray!

Haven’t done a lick of writing work today, nor did I watch a movie that I wanted to, so where did the time go? Oh, and I HAVE TO MISS SUPERNATURAL TONIGHT. This is a tragedy of epic proportions, believe me, I can’t really believe it.

M