Read In Bed!

So, I’ve finished editing and submitted my novel Beneath the Veil to my agent so she can send it out for the world to love. (It’s much shorter now.)

I’ve finished writing/polishing/submitting the proposal for my follow-up submission to Black Lace (working title is No Reservations) so my agent now has THAT to send out for Adam Neville to love. We hope.

I’ve cleaned my desk. I even used a cleaning wipe! Yes, I did!

Now, it’s back to edits on SWITCH, which I hope to finish by the end of next week, so that I can finish writing Pleasure and Purpose while at my local writing chapter’s annual retreat.

I’m also wearing my SHIN/SUPERMAN T-shirt that my sister bought for my birthday.

My goodness, I do appear quite…pneumatic…in that photo.

Now. Back to Switch!

M

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Well, I’m finally recovering from RT 2008. By this I mean I’ve unpacked my suitcase, paid some bills and organized (though not cleaned off my desk,) and started to get back into the swing of family life. You know. Yelling at the kids, doing laundry, generally being the domestic diva I am.

I didn’t feel well at the convention, unfortunately, and I wasn’t alone. But even so, I came back energized, writing-wise. No, I didn’t come up with a brand-new, shiny, full-fledged idea the way I did last year when Lauren and I brainstormed Taking Care of Business while standing in line. (Though we did talk about a followup to that book!) But I did come home with inspiration and ideas for layering some themes into the edits for my current WIP, Switch.

I finished SWITCH before I left for RT and had planned to let it sit for awhile while I worked on some other things, but while there my mind kept turning back to it. Switch hasn’t been an easy book for me for many reasons. For one, it took me a lot longer to write than usual, partly because I stopped a few times to work on other things and partly because I struggled with the writing of it. I was really glad to have finished the first draft because it meant I could take a break from it, so to discover when I got back from RT that I really wanted to dive back in was…suprising.

Here’s the thing: I take a lot of my work from my life — not things that have happened to me, necessarily, but feelings and emotions and situations that make me THINK about “what if.” I don’t live everything I write about (my goodness, who has time?) but I do…FEEL it. I do feel what I write. Sometimes I feel it first and hold onto that and use it. Sometimes during the writing I start to feel the work, instead, which is also interesting.

I’d had an inkling about what Switch was meant to be for a few months, and it was pretty far from what I’d first anticipated the book to be. In its first incarnation it was a story about dominance and submission, a woman who finds misplaced notes in her mailbox meant for an anonymous person being given increasingly erotic commands. She discovers she likes the content of the notes — craves it, in fact. But when she discovers who the notes are really for, everything changes and she becomes the note WRITER instead of the note receiver.

The book is still “about” that — it’s what happens, anyway. But somewhere along the way a minor, throwaway character became more important, and now he’s an irreplaceable part of the story. I didn’t expect that.

And somewhere, somehow, the book became about choices. The ones we make, good or bad, right or wrong, and how sometimes no matter how much you think you want something, in the end you don’t take it because not having it is better for you. Sometimes, as Paige, the heroine says, you walk away.

So now I have to finish entering all my receipts and put some laundry away and take a shower and have some breakfast, and then I need to crank up the iTunes and get lost in this world again. But you know what?

I feel it.

M

PS — I was so happy to hang with my lurvely agent the glorious Laura Bradford (or LB as I like to call her) and Lauren Dane, Anya Bast and Ann Aguirre and Vivi Anna, and we missed Cynthia! NEXT YEAR IN ORLANDO!!!!!!!!!!!

Some of my favorite photos –

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74000 / 100000 words. 74% done!

lines of the day:I dropped the belt. It was a prop and I didn’t need it. Wasn’t going to use it. If I couldn’t leash and collar him with my words, then I didn’t deserve to have him.

I also finished my rough draft of Layover and I’m just waiting for final crit to make sure it’s all pretty and stuff before I send it in.

I have 100 pages to go in Switch and more story than that to fill them. EEEP! Oh, well. It will all work out in the end.

And then it’s on to Pleasure and Purpose, and man, am I excited!

M

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70500 / 100000 words. 71% done!

line of the day: It bothered me, the mess of it. The slick-slidingness and smell of it, too.

Ten pages a day. That’s what I’m doing. Ten pages a day. Day by day. And of course now I’m in the middle of a hot scene but because I didn’t get started on time today I had to stay up late to finish my ten and now it’s late and I’m too tired to kee going. Not so much that I’m tired NOW but if I don’t go to bed I’ll be tireder in the morning and then I’ll be worthless all day. And of course I have a chiro appt in the morning which means my whole writing day is pretty much kaput and I have to leave the couple at this point:

“Go to my bedroom,” I repeated and pulled the leather tight between my two fists. “Get on my bed, on your knees, facing the headboard. Put your hand on it and wait for me.”

But really, it’s the only kind thing to do, stopping right here. If I wrote more they’d be halfway through the sexxin’ and that’s just not fair.

M

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Author Julie K. Rose is doing a nifty thing! She’s doing interviews with authors about their musical choices. And you all know how much I love music. Check out the podcast she did from an interview with moi…HERE.

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Wrote a few pages while watching Queer As Folk. Ok, so it was only a few, but c’mon. I kept getting distracted. ;)

65500 / 100000 words. 66% done!

line of the day: Being unable to speak is different than not having words.

I’m tired. That is all.

M

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62250 / 100000 words. 62% done!

haven’t posted lately, so there it is.

line of the day: I’d imagined the sender, my secret commander, crafting each word with the intent of forcing me one more step along a path so curved I couldn’t see the end.

And on emoticons. It’s hard to judge someone’s tone in writing, but with the advance of written communication like emails and IM’s taking the place of in-person words, I think we’ve reached an overload of emoticons and exclamation points. Because it’s no longer enough to say

Thanks.

You have to say Thanks! :)

Because if you don’t, it seems like you’re being insincere.

And so we all add exclamation points! To sentences we’d never shout or exclaim! But it’s the only written way to show enthusiasm! :)

I don’t mind LOL, btw, but the whole emoticon thing and exclamation points thing is something I’ve noticed more and more.

We have to be happy! shiny! happy! Shiny! Bouncy! Bouncy!

And I know how it feels to get a one word reply without the exclamation — it makes you feel like the other person is just being conciliatory and doesn’t really “mean” what they said because without the smiley face or the exclamation ,they’re just going through the motions. That’s how it FEEEEEEEEELS!

:(

M

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54250 / 100000 words. 54% done!

line of the day: Whatever had his garters snapping, it was going to make it impossible for him to get some work done until it was resolved.

Good day today. 15 pages. Figured out what scenes I have left = about 130 (min) pages. Not sure if I’m going to keep the subplot which would actually make the scene with the gartersnapping unnecessary, but I do like it and will keep it if I can. Maybe just have to shorten it. This book isn’t going to be “Finished” at 100K only because I’m going to have to write more and cut a bunch I already wrote, but whatever.

It’s working.

And as an aside, might I point out I don’t have a muse cooing in my ear and floating me along on feathery wings of inspiration. I have sitted my arse in this chair every day this week from about 9 am to 4 pm (or later) and written.

And it has been hard, yo.

It has sucketh mightily.

My arse hath fallen asleep and my back hurts and I am yea verily most grouchy.

But I have sat my butt in this chair and worked and worked even when the words don’t want to come because that is what I DO and it is my JOB and I have a contract and no amount of whining or fussing or hysterical dramz can counteract the fact I signed my name and I took the money, and I owe the work.

And now I’m just in the middle of a sex scene and it’s the weekend and I won’t get back to it until Monday! Haha!

M

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48000 / 100000 words. 48% done!

line of the day: I folded it shut as though it might change what I’d read, but as though they’d been written in flames, the words burned my fingers through the paper.

also, I’m going by page count x 250 words to get my word count…the computer word count is slightly higher. Not that it matters. I’m aiming for 400 pages, regardless, and it’s likely it will still be around 100K, give or take.

M

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