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Brain is on Holiday

Plus, I did a post today at the Sassy Sisters blog, so mosey on over and check it out! But here, I leave you with just a little something to brighten your day…

*brighten*

**BRIGHTEN**

And…*brighten* I leave you finally with Mark Consuelos, the inspiration for Hot Rod, my current hero!

We interrupt this blog…

To bring you news! Notice anything new about my banner? *big obnoxious grin*

An Accidental Birthright is #54 on the USA Today Bestseller list!! And now I can officially say I am a bestselling author! That sounds so official, and fancy!! And it’s so much more than I ever hoped to achieve. Really.

Thanks so much to my readers. 🙂

Do As I Say…Not As I’ve Done

It’s no secret, I’ve had some revisions in my day. Having just turned in Presents #8, patiently (ha) waiting the revisions that will come with them, I feel at peace. Revisions are part of the job. They aren’t an intrusion, or an extra, they’re the way a book truly reaches it’s full potential.

It’s like, I sent my book out into the world, but I forgot to give it its Wheaties. So my editor reminds me and sends it back so I can give its breakfast of champions, so it can really be all it can be!!

But here are some great things I’ve learned along the way, mistakes I’ve made that I hope to help you avoid!

1. Copycat. Nobody wants to be that!

Bring you into whatever you write. It’s not enough to simply imitate or analyze, you have to bring your own unique voice and take into your writing. It’s what makes you different, the thing that makes you stand out. Now, with category, you have to do that while keeping with the promise of the line, not so easy, but once you sort of find that marriage, it’s a really beautiful thing!

2. Big Secret, Big Reveal, What the What??

There are a few people this actually works for. (Desire Author Tessa Radley is one). And I’m sure there are quite a few instances it *does* work in, but there are times when The Big Secret can be a Big Bad for a few reasons. Number one, it can keep the reader from really knowing a character. I did this, and it resulted in a rewrite. Because while I had conflict to spare, I did not have a chance to explore it as I would have, because I was trying to save something for a big reveal, and while that secret certainly kept my editor reading, it made the whole thing lack depth.

The other reason The Big Secret can work against you is that it can seem like your characters didn’t really get to know each other. It can make it all feel very rushed and forced in the end.

So it’s always good to ask if you actually benefit more from pulling that secret out of the drawer early so you have time to really make it part of the conflict, and explore it with enough depth.

3. Cliche.

This is something I think I’m slowly beating out of myself. It’s a strange realization. I can honestly say I’ve added details to books simply because other writers I admired seem to use them a lot. (en suite bathrooms and strappy sandals) There is NOTHING wrong with these things if they need to be there. But I KNOW I’ve been guilty of adding them to try and make sure I was ‘fitting” the category.

This kind of goes back to number one. You have to be you.

4. Putting the Plot Before the Character

This is my big one. It’s caused me the most extensive revisions. Putting a theme and plot before characters. There are a limited number of plots in the world. That’s just a fact. There are a limited number of themes. But it’s the people that inhabit that plot that take it and make it something truly unique. And when that plot is dominating those characters, it can steal some of that. Now, I usually have a glimmer of plot/theme before character (usually being the key word…I don’t think any book has been quite like the one before it in terms of process for me) but, I try not to map out events before I have character conflict in mind, because I want the internal conflict of the characters to be the engine that’s driving the train.

Some tips from me. 🙂 Because these are mistakes I’ve made, and will make again. But it’s nice to write it all down. Now I need to do what I say too…

Sent That Sheikh and a Guest Post

Oh, well, that about sums it all up in the subject there. 🙂 Yep, the Beast Sheikh is now safely in my editor’s inbox and I am Beast Sheikh free!! (till revisions…then I get to torment him some more…I have a feeling he’s afraid to come back to me!)

This means I’ll be spending some time getting ideas collected for my bright shiny new MS (AKA Sooper Sekrit Projekt…). I’ll be taking of with Hot Rod soon enough and very much looking forward to it! (hey, I had my day of sloth…now I need to be…un-slothy.)

Also, I did a little interview for Get Lost in A Story (I was hosted by brand new Desire author Cat Schield…So cool!). It’s a silly interview wherein I mention Gaston, reviews and coffee. (other things too!) And I’m also giving away a copy of The Inherited Bride!

So come comment! Make me feel all not lonely!

Maisey Yates and the World’s Most Terrifying Manuscript

Sounds like an epic saga worthy of being adapted to a Summer blockbuster. The story of The Girl Who Wrote and her perilous journey to the heart of a manuscript so terrifying it was only referred to as The MS That Must Not Be Named…

Hmmm…may be a good plan. But, if that doesn’t shake out, I just have to get this thing sent and polished. And it is terrifying.

This is Presents #8. Beast Sheikh. And I’m a bit scared of it. Why? Because when you try something outside of your comfort zone it. Is. Scary.

Now, there’s nothing new under the sun. I’m not breaking any new ground here, but it’s new ground for me. And as a result, I’ve felt as thought I was feeling around in the dark at times without any clue of how to figure out where I was going.

A scene would come into my head and I would say…no. No, my imagination, you have gone TOO FAR. And it would be all, no I haven’t. Write the scene.

So, with much trepidation, I would write the scene. I’ve built a full MS off this system now, and this weekend has been the challenge of going back through it and deciding where I’ve gone too far…and where I haven’t gone far enough.

That’s the things with The Fear. It can pull you back. Keep you ‘the safe zone’. But something I’ve realized while working on Scary McBad MS is that there is no room for fear when you’re stepping outside the Comfort Zone. It’s all or nothing.

Now, that gamble may mean you miss by a hundred yards. It may also mean that your shot richochets off a tree, bounces from the metal weather vein and shoots down into the bullseye. One things for sure though, if you play it safe, you won’t have pulled off much of anything but a watered down, scaredy cat story with half-realized conflict.

That’s the place I’m at. Turning all the nobs up to 11 (I am mixing my metaphors like MAD up in here…do you see the crazy??) so that if I miss, I at least miss with flare. (Now, I’m hoping to hit, but y’know, I’ve had to rewrite *coughalotcough* before.)

That requires taking those risks that scared me. Going for bold strokes instead of tracing in little faint outlines of what I’m trying to say.

Now, I must get back to the MS That Shall Not Be Named…Go on, paint with bold strokes. 🙂 Don’t let fear stop you from getting something truly great.

Release(s) Day!!

It’s crazy, crazy releases day! I will try to be concise, and not make your heads explode, and not get all nervous and excited. *breathes into paper bag*

So…this post is split into sections by nation. That way I don’t information overload anyone. :p

United Kingdom: UK readers, Marriage Made on Paper should be on the shelves! It’s also available today for your Kindles!! You can check that out at Amazon UK!

Australia and New Zealand: Marriage Made on Paper is now on Mills and Boon AUS! You can get it in print or ebook!

Marriage Made on Paper is the story of Gage and Lily, and their professional lives getting very, very tangled with their personal lives! Gage is a hot-shot property tycoon with a lot of charm, but his personal exploits and professional decisions tend to be frowned on by the public, which is why he needs public relations whiz Lily Ford to handle his public persona. But when two driven, ambitious people clash, sparks tend to fly. And a fake engagement forces them into very close proximity…

And in North America there’s…

An Accidental Birthright! It’s now available everywhere you can buy Presents! It’s available on Kindle, NookBook and all kinds of other e formats. And still on eharlequin.

Also on eharlequin today…The Inherited Bride. In both print and ebook. (There’s also a coupon code for April first…if you buy from eharlequin using the code with print books it’s buy two get the third free, and for e it’s 5% off your entire order!)

The Inherited Bride is full of forbidden desire and what happens when duty and honor are at odds with love. You can listen to the song my husband wrote for the book in the post below.

There…I hope I haven’t confused you all. And I hope you enjoy the books!

The Inherited Bride Song!

I’m really excited to share this. My husband, who is amazing and talented, decided to write a song for my North American May release, The Inherited Bride!

I was really touched by the lyrics, because they so much capture the book from Adham’s point of view for me as a writer. I only wish I would have had this while I was writing the book, for my all powerful Writing Playlist.

I’m also really touched by the fact that he did this for me, and that he cares about me enough to do special things like this. And I’m impressed, because he wrote the music and lyrics, played all the instruments and did the vocals. Plus, he recorded it on the PC in the living room…most likely with kids hanging off of his arms, because that’s how we both work!

So…*drum roll* the world premier of The Inherited Bride Song!

Inherited Bride by havenyates

A Cover and A Squee!!

So, I’ve been holding back this super Sexy cover of my Australian release, Marriage Made on Paper, but I have decided to have pity on you all and post the hotness that is this cover for your general viewing pleasure. Am I not merciful? (All right, I just got permission to post it, but the other sounded cooler!)

Love it! Captures the scene (and I know what scene it is!) on the island of Koh Samui! It’s also pretty perfectly Gage and Lily. Love that he actually LOOKS old enough to be one of the heroes! Rather than looking like some shiny, 18 year old model named Chad who escaped from Jilly Aston’s mansion. 🙂

And now for the squee!! On twitter, fellow Harlequinite Sandra Hyatt congratulated me on my #1 position on the Borders bestseller list for series romance…surely she was mistaken, I thought. So I abandoned Beast Sheikh and dashed over to Borders…and it was true!! An Accidental Birthright is currently number one!! You can see the list here at the RWA site if you’re so inclined!

Also, to my amazing shock, An Accidental Birthright is number one on the eharlequin ebooks site!

There. I feel like I’ve officially bragged for Oregon. :p Truly, feeling stunned and very grateful to my readers! Because it feels like a big thing to me. 🙂

Now, I must stalk on back to Le Writing cave and spend quality time with Beast Sheikh. He is lonely.

What’s It Gonna Be, Neo?

No, this isn’t really about The Matrix. It’s about the rabbit trail of conflict. And the need to see how far down the rabbit hole goes. (I forgot which pill I was supposed to take to get there…red or blue…so I took both and now I’m dizzy)

Conflict in non-category books has room for several threads, a bit more external, a villain, a secondary story, actual, real secondary characters that are more than just peripherals.

A 50K or so book doesn’t so much. And that means that focused conflict is required.

Now, I’m not a plotter by nature, but when I start, I like to sort of know what I’m dealing with conflict-wise. It may take me the whole partial, or longer, to really nail it down. But the whole time I’m writing I’m always thinking about the internal conflict of the characters.

I try to think of mine as…ta-da…a rabbit hole.

So let’s take a hero. Hi, Hero. We’ll call him Colby, because that’s an underused name in Romance.

So, we have Colby. He wants revenge. (This is the surface, the clear, obvious stuff we get from page one) Why? It’s retribution. A bit deeper now. He’s out to see himself elevated to a higher position, to be better than those who wronged him, and he’ll bring them down in the process. Why? Because there’s something in himself that he’s insecure about, which makes the need for glory and recognition, and the chance to spit upon his enemies, an all-consuming drive.

And that’s where following the ‘he wants revenge’ rabbit trail takes me. It also covers all those lovely things: Goal, Conflict and Motivation. His goal is to get revenge which will lower his enemies and make him better, which is motivated by his need for retribution, which is made even more compelling by his conflict, the insecurity that will be salved by his newfound position of power. *gasps for breath*

So what do we do with Colby? How do we now fix this vengeance needing insecure hero with a need for material glory and elevation? If the material has been the most important thing for him in the book, he needs to realize that the heroine is more important than that, and he needs to demonstrate that change in a real, profound way that shows us the arc he has undergone as a character.

If his goals were to gain status, connections, he could sever those ties. What if being with the heroine, who is of low station, or was the girl who jumped out of cakes at bachelor parties, or something, asks him to compromise that goal?

Even better. Because when he can set all that aside. The vengeance, insecurity and need for retribution via status and possession, he’s had his arc, and his conflict is all dealt with.

And he can have his HEA with Cordelia, the girl who used to jump out of cakes for a living.

So that’s an example of how I follow the conflict rabbit trail back. We have the surface, we go beneath it, get all the way to the bottom of it, and then figure out how to best bring about change in the character, in a way that suits all that lovely conflict.

Hope that makes sense, it’s the analogy I use in my head. 🙂

The Week that Was On Like Donkey Kong

That’s the official name for this week, extending into the next. Okay, maybe not, but that’s only because no one asked me what we should call it!

But this is one crazy awesomesauce week and I’m going to try and cover it all…

First: I got the official title and release for Presents #7 (which you all knew as The Vengeful Rogue, or, the one with the Before and After scene).

THE ARGENTINE’S PRICE will be out in the UK, November, 2011. So, if you want to read about a bad boy made good, who comes back to claim the woman he can’t forget…well, then read that!

Second: AN ACCIDENTAL BIRTHRIGHT (North American) and MARRIAGE MADE ON PAPER (UK) are officialy on the shelves in their respective release countries.

This is my second US release, so only the second time I’ll have been lucky enough to see my book on the shelves! So, so excited. And currently stalking Barnes and Noble, since they hadn’t put it out yet and I’m desperate to see it…*stalks*

And then we have…Blogs! I will be at The Pink Heart Society AND I heart Presents! So please come and comment so am not looonely.

But wait…there’s more!

Tomorrow is also the day they announce the finalists for the RITA and the Golden Heart. Not holding my breath…no…I’m not…*turns blue* *passes out*

I also got the review for The Inherited Bride from Romantic Times Magazine…it was given 4 1/2 stars! (which is the best you can do, beyond getting a little Top Pick! tag by your stars) It gets to join together with the 4 star review I got from them for An Accidental Birthright.

Together, they will fight the forces of ebil, otherwise known as Doubt Crows! (Doubt Crows! Blech!)

This is good, because with all these releases, Beast Sheikh issues and other happenings, I need Doubt Crow insulation like whoa!

So this is the Week That Is On Like Donkey Kong. And I even had edits to do.

(up, down, A, B, B, A, left, right, left, A, B, A,A, up, down, select)

Sorry, someone told me if I pushed that button combination I’d get infinite lives. Liar. Ah well…shall go get more coffee!

How’s your week been?

No Pain, No Gain

That’s what They say anyway. Whoever They is…

But this came up in my writing group, or rather, it has been a constant topic of conversation on and off. Y’see, one of my CPs found out a very inconvenient truth about her heroine. One she didn’t want to write. Or face.

(Side note, I told my mom this story and she laaauuughed. She thinks writers are crazy, cuz if we make the people, how can they surprise us? Or have things in their past we don’t want them to have? Well, I have no time to explain that perfectly logical bit of information to her. No. Time. But it’s logical. And we’re not crazy)

Anyway, my CP decided to embrace this element of her MS, even though it’s taken her a whole direction, and even though it’s like shoving toothpicks under her fingernails to write.

Sometimes I find that when I’ve gone the wrong direction on a MS it’s because I’m denying the essential truth of it. Sounds weird, yes, I know, but hey, bear with me and my crazy writer self for a moment. Just a moment. Take my hand, go on the magical journey. O_O

Really, I do that. Sometimes I miss the whole point of my MS trying to gloss over something that I half-realized at the beginning, but that I didn’t want to deal with.

The Inherited Bride, which I wrote *coughthreetimescough* was like that. I had the basics down from draft one. Forbidden love, yada yada. He wants her, but he can’t have her. However, in the initial drafts…he did just give in. And again, and again and again he gave in. Because it was easier. It was easier than having him fight it. Easier than facing the fact that, with his character, there would be no easy fix. Because for him, having feelings for his brother’s intended bride is a violation of all he believes in.

I had to understand that. To realize I had given my hero a core of unbreakable beliefs that would have to be broken if he was going to pursue the heroine. Yeah, yay me. And I cried writing those scenes. Those scenes where I had to break that strong man. (You all know I like it too, but honestly, at the time it’s always death!)

In the end though, the payoff was much richer. It took pain to get there, but it was better.

I had the same thing happen a few MSs later with a heroine. In my mind, I wanted to make her innocent of this pretty terrible thing she’d been accused of. And I trucked along for 100 pages covering my ears, humming, and pretending she was just the victim. But I was lying to myself. She wasn’t the victim. She wasn’t innocent.

That was another case of having to take on something tougher than I’d anticipated. But those MSs, those ones that shocked me like that, that made me deal with hard issues, or dig deeper into characters, are the ones that have truly grown me as a writer.

I’m dealing with Beast Sheikh right now, and he is…well, he’s a beast. I think there are some hard truths left to learn about him too. That’s why No Pain, No Gain has to be my motto for the next few weeks while I work on uncovering his secrets.

You should do the same! Take on the hard stuff. One of the best pieces of advice from my editor was that she would always have me take on the hard ones and do revisions, rather than just skim by with easy.

Daily Affirmations for the Insecure Writer

I think it was the lovely Barbara Wallace who, on twitter, referenced taking insecurity pills. Or yanno, chocolate eating. Yeah, that’s about right for some of us. And it doesn’t even take a major setback to throw a lot of writers/creatives into a spiral of self-loathing/doubt/mass of quivering, seething nerves.

And then there are times when there are major setbacks. And they’re gut wrenching. They may not even be fair. You see other people around you get farther, faster, and you start to wonder what’s wrong with you. Well, maybe nothing. The other people may have just had that magic timing/editor/MS combination. I truly think that was my trick. My MS needed a lot of work, but I happened to get an ed who was willing to put the work in. A lot of times, that doesn’t happen.

And you know, sometimes it is you, but that doesn’t mean you’re horrible, it just means you need to keep working. It doesn’t mean you need to curl up in the fetal position and wail. (I say this, but my fetal position is always at the ready)

But it’s hard to get anywhere when you’re curled up on the floor, so, for that reason, I have come up with Daily Affirmations for the Insecure Writer (egotists need read no further).

1. My MS did not morph into a soul-destroying demon of suck between my inbox and my editor’s. (it’s the same MS, trust me.)

2. It’s okay to be wrong. (really, it’s okay to need revisions, to get rejections. It SUCKS, but it’s okay. It’s part of learning and growing and what it does not mean is number 3)

3. I am not a failure just because I got a rejection. (You aren’t. It’s part of the process, more for some than others. But if does NOT mean you’ve failed.)

4. I can trust myself and my unique point of view.

5. Most stories have been told before, but they haven’t been told by me. (this relates to number four. And also means you don’t have to panic just because x bestselling author just released something similar to your brilliant idea)

6. Some people will like me, some people won’t. But hey, I don’t like Matthew McConaughey and he’s still a millionaire. (published and unpublished, this is true. Some readers will like you, some won’t. Some editors will like you, some won’t.)

7. There will be more books. (Only you can stop you from trying again. Don’t hang it all on one book…or ten books. Keep going. Keep trying.)

8. I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and gosh darnit, people like me. (yeah, I went there)

9. Doubt Crows aren’t allowed to win this game. (They can hover all they freaking want, but the game will go to me. I will be the champion. I will not be defeated by a bunch of imaginary spectral BIRDS)

10. Just because it’s hard, doesn’t mean it’s wrong. (whether you’re unpublished or multi-published, it being hard doesn’t mean it’s not right for you. Anything worth having is worth striving for.)

And those are my Daily Affirmations. You can add your own in the comments if you want! Go on, affirm me. You know you want to. O_O