Read In Bed!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

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

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

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 –

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Let’s break it down…

Friends. Parties. Fun!

This year was my second RT, but we arrived the day before the official start so we could settle in and get the party started. Though we’d intended to hit a club Tuesday night, we had little luck. We went out. We came back. Even so, it was a good time! Wednesday began with more fun, meeting friends, a Black Lace panel nobody came to give so LD and I jumped on it. Dinner with my editor and agent and friends. The EC party, yay!

But Thursday morning, I was feeling pretty lousy, and I continued feeling lousy almost the entire time. I rallied every now and then but mostly…felt like ICK. I blame the hotel — lots of people were sick. I think it was bad air.

I know RT makes some people’s lips curl. Cover models, they say, GROSS! Mr. Romance, EWWW! People in their underpants on the dance floor! HOW HORRID! Okay, I’m sort of with you there on the whole wearing your underpants on the outside thing, but you know what? Whatever.

RT isn’t RWA, okay? RT is a reader/fan convention, it’s not a professional organization’s professional conference for the purpose of learning. RT is parties and meeting readers and friends and hanging out and yes — some get a little wild. There are cute boys (and really, honestly…the whole “they’re gross, or he does nothing for me” comments…these are people, you know? They have feelings. Not everybody in the world has to melt everyone’s butter, you know?) and there is mayhem, but I have to say, I didn’t see anything that I thought was out of line. Maybe I have a higher tolerance. Maybe I’m one of the people misbehaving — but I was having fun. I didn’t go upstairs with a Chippendale, okay? I only talked to one in the bar.

Do I agree with all the behavior that allegedly went on? No way. Do I think it’s okay for ANYONE to be rude to a reader or an author who’s not wearing a name badge, or an aspiring author who’s not yet published? Erm…what’s the point? What, really, is the point of being a moron to someone who could decide to read, OR NOT, your books? To another author, editor, agent, bookseller or librarian? In fact, the bottom line is, you shouldn’t be nice to strangers because they might be someone you can use later, but because you should BE NICE.

Anyway, I’m sorry for those who didn’t have fun. I felt like death not even warmed-over, and I still had fun. Because I was there to meet friends and readers and other authors and yes, Mr. Romance contestants, because life is too darned short NOT to fill it with fabulous people, and how do you know who’s fabulous until you’ve met them?

We had a fantastically attended reader appreciation party, THE LOVE SHACK, with food, goodies and karaoke, and it was great! And I got lots of swag, and met tons of new people and saw people I’d met last year and didn’t expect to see ever again, so that was a thrill.

On another note, the decorations were amazing. I didn’t eat much food (but I LIKE CORN!) and missed most of the official lunches and dinners due to illness, but I heard it was good. RT really puts on a fantastic event.

And you can see all of it, if you wish, below…

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

…You WILL buy our book…

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

I finished it! Rough, rough draft and we have mucho editing to do, but that’s the fun part. Haha! I’m done! And guess what, I only have to cut about 7000 words in order to fit the new word count.  HAHA!

M

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

So now that it’s official I can announce that Lauren Dane and I have SOLD our joint novella project (joint as in working together, not the smoking kind) to Black Lace!

Can I get a whoop whoop? :)

It’s the project formerly known as Risky Business. Now it’s called Taking Care of Business…

And I’m so excited! Our new editor seems to totally “get” where we were going, so even though we’d planned two intertwined novellas and now we’re doing one book with alternating chapters, it’s going to be such a great experience. It will have a UK release of October 08 and hit the US in Dec/Jan 09! Which I know seems like a long time from now, but it’s not in the publishing world, believe me.

This is the story, btw, that we brainstormed while standing in line for dinner at RT 2008. And I’m not saying that there was any one person or persons who directly inspired this idea because, of course, that’s simply ridiculous to think so *coffcoff* — other than in the most roundabout, vague and entirely coincidental way, of course. And even if this idea sprang from the inspiration of an actual, living breathing person (and I categorically deny it did) the actual written work has little or nothing to do with such a person, because that’s what happens when you write, things happen and it ends up in a different place from where it began.

AHEM.

At any rate, I love this story, the hero is…guh…and I’ve really enjoyed writing it. I’m almost done with the rough draft and it will be fun to work with LD on the polishing and tweaking.

I’m just thrilled this project, which honestly is a story of my heart, something I wanted to do just BECAUSE and for no other reason, has found a publishing home. Thrilled I tells ya!

M

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!