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Free To Be Me

The Vengeful Rogue got all Vengeful on me. I got revisions today! What does that have to do with being me? More on that in a moment. I have to ramble first.

These revisions were slightly different to the norm. And by that I meant it didn’t center around my characters being jerked around by the plot. In fact, the elements of the plot are good. Actually, so is the conflict. Actually, everything I have is fine.

So what’s the problem?

Layers. It’s all there, but I haven’t gone deep enough into it.

The heroine for example. She’s not a simple woman. She’s a CEO. She majored in business. She’s a daughter. She’s doing what she’s supposed to do, what her father needs her to do. She’s keeping the family business, the family tradition, alive. She’s failing at her job. She doesn’t want to do it. She’s an artist. She’s confident in some things, insecure in others.

In short, she’s complicated. Anyone surprised I haven’t managed to get her perfect? 🙂

But it’s all about showing things in layers. Not just throwing it all out there and down on the page. But slowly peeling back the exterior layers to get down to the real woman, not just to the things she does, but who she is.

And what about being me?

That’s another big thing. They want me to focus on making it more unique. On making it more ME.

This is cool, because I was talking to very cool twitter buddy Jen Lazaris about this very thing the other day, and now, I need to take my own advice! It’s not about copying or imitating what you see other people doing in a line. Yes, it has to fit the requirements, but if your voice has humor, use humor.

My characters tend to have a bit of quirk, and I really like to use humor. I also like to pair it with dark conflict. And I’m sure there’s a host of things I do that I don’t even realize I do! (Again, on twitter, I saw Angela James mention your voice being like a regional accent…you don’t hear your own the same way other people do.)

With this particular MS, I played it a little bit safe. I didn’t step outside the theme I had chosen for the book. I didn’t really make it my own.

So that’s what I’m going to focus on. Peeling back layers, sprinkling in a little Maisey. Bake at 425. 🙂

I’m very, very excited about these revisions. Hopefully they won’t need to rein me back in. 😛

Help Haven Win!

As some of you know, my dearest hubby Haven is a musician. He’s entered the Blue Microphone song writing competition and the voting starts today! The winner gets a trip to LA and a day in the studio to record their song!

Haven has been doing music since waaay before he met me, and he’s truly put everything on the backburner so that I could accomplish my dream of becoming a writer. He works, he cooks, he cleans, and he’s sacrificed so much for me.

So if you could cast a vote for him and help me give back a fraction of what he’s given to me, I would be so grateful!

You can vote here: http://www.indabamusic.com/submissions/show/44846 !

It asks for your email but if you uncheck the thingy, they won’t send you anything. 🙂 It’s to keep people from voting more than once, a la New Voices and the like. (It does ask you to confirm your vote via your email, I just realized)

Thank you!

The Post of Many Pics

I have had a very big day!!

First off, I got my Mills and Boon Leander Rowing Calendar in the mail…and no, I didn’t buy it just for the half-nekkid men.

I bought it because my book A Mistake, A Prince and A Pregnancy (NA April title An Accidental Birthright) is featured in one of the pics! Oh, and you know I have to show a close up too…

And in addition to that bit of loveliness, The Inherited Bride is releasing in the UK (officially) tomorrow and it’s available NOW on Mills and Boon AUS!!

So now I can post the cover I have been DYING to post. Adham and Isabella, on a Mills and Boon Sexy. 🙂

*sigh* I love that cover. It’s really fun to have different versions of the same book.

And lastly, but certainly not leastly, we were having a little fun on twitter with the stereotype of romance writer looks and so I *had* to take this pic. Yes, I look like this all the time. Okay, no, but it’s a great thought.

In truth my husband reminded me (nicely) that it is nice when people don’t spend the whole day in their PJs. :p

Writer vs Email

In honor of the STYCW waits…waits in general…and the fact that I have a full in with my editor.

Releases and Covers and Frenchman! Oh My!

So February is the official month for my dearly loved sheikh book, The Inherited Bride. It’s actually already on some shelves in the UK, so I hear…it will be on Mills and Boon Aus February 1st as well! (and on February 1st…I will reveal the very Sexy cover…)

I love Adham and Isabella tons and tons, and I hope you all do too. 😉

And speaking of covers, my April UK release Marriage Made on Paper has one! And it’s GORGEOUS! I have been so very, very happy with my covers to date. Seriously they’ve been amazing.

Lily is the heroine, a public relations guru and consultant to Gage Forrester, AKA The Land Stud. Image is everything to Lily and she’s always done up nicely. Perfect makeup, manicure and clothes. Of course, that is, until Gage sweeps her off her stilettos and ruffles her feathers. 🙂

Lastly, not that the Vengeful Rogue is in, and while I wait for revisions…it’s time for me to start The Frenchman, part deux!

Blaise’s brother Luc will be getting his own book and I’m very excited since in The Highest Price to Pay we find out his younger brother did a Very Bad Thing to him and poor Luc has been suffering with a bit of a broken heart…I thought he needed an HEA and my editor agreed!

So for those of you who missed me shaking my fist at The Frenchman…I’ll be doing it again! XD

At least until I get schmacked in the face with revisions the The Vengeful Rogue (this is HIS title, BTW, not the book title. :p)

All right…Roll On Frenchman inspiration!

I Can Haz Cookies?

The End. Typed it last night, and tonight I did a final pass through and tightened up some scenes, added some words, tweaked some sketchy motivation and in just a little bit I will be passing The Vengeful Rogue on to my editor!

I’m nervous, but I’ve come to realize this is par for the course. There was only one MS I wasn’t nail-bitingly scared to send in, and that was because I’d had a personal trauma that day that made anything writing related seem silly to worry about. And since I don’t WANT trauma all the time to help me get my priorities straight, I’ll keep the angst, thankssomuch.

Now, not even in my wildest fantasies do I think this is perfect. Well, okay, in my *wildest* fantasies it’s perfect. And I have a pony and there’s a FULL ON double rainbow. All the way across the sky*.

In my deepest, darkest nightmares it’s the book that ruins my career and I end up living in a cardboard box begging for editorial feedback.

Neither scenario is likely, however, and that’s fifty percent reassuring. (I really would like that double rainbow)

Sad to report, submitting is pretty much always scary. It’s easier on this end of things on the one hand, because I have the assurance of editorial feedback. Which is also sort of a frightening thing, because sometimes that feedback isn’t the best thing for one’s ego, but it is something one needs to hear.

So while I get ready to send, and get ready for another revision letter, I’m gonna share some quick truths I’ve learned about submission and revision.

1. It’s always better in the end. That’s been my honest to goodness experience, that no matter how much I *hearted* the original version of a MS, no matter how much I resisted the changes, it was better for the revision/rewrite, and not only would I never go back to an original version, I’ve never even been tempted to go back and reread one.

2. Worrying doesn’t make your editor read faster. (neither does eating lots of cookies)

3. At some point you have to let go and write. This is a big one. I read my revision letters a few times, I think it over, I let it settle. I make notes. At some point, I stop looking at the revision letter. Because I can’t keep turning it over, I can’t keep referring back to it every other page. I also can’t stack every revision letter on top of the other and worry about everything I’ve done wrong EVER.

Now, I learn from each revision letter, so I’m not saying I discount them. I’m just saying, I can’t second guess everything I do or the book will NEVER get done. Not only that, I think the insecurity translates onto the page.

4. Go big. I approached my rewrite of His Virgin Acquisition with this in mind: More seduction, more emotion, more glamour. And if I go over the top, great, but I’d rather they know I can go too far, than wonder if I can go far enough.

For the record, they’ve never told me I’ve gone too OTT. 😉

So that’s what I’ve learned. And in the meantime, I’ll try to practice what I preach and NOT angst TOO much and begin work on Presents #8.

Got anything you’ve learned ready to share?

*so intense

Oooh…That’s Not Sexy

I know the very funny Flo Nicholl has been doing a series of great posts on M&B UK about writing, and one of the topics she hit on was…love scenes. And now I’m going to talk love scenes.

So, hide yo kids and hide yo husbands.

Love scenes if present, should be a big part of the book. At least that’s my opinion. And by that I don’t mean they should take up a lot of pages, but that they need to mean something. They need to push the relationship forward, push it backward, reveal things about character, about conflict. It should be anything but just there to be there because it’s page one hundred and it’s about time these two crazy kids got it on.

Every scene in a book needs to accomplish something, and a love scene is no different. In an upcoming release I have a heroine with bad physical scars and the way she makes love to the hero, the fact that she does at all, says something about her character, about how she feels about him. And the way he responds to her and her physical imperfections says something about him, and what she means to him.

That’s kind of an obvious, no fair one because there was a physical manifestation of conflict dealt with partly in a physical way.

But really, it is easy to write a love scene that’s similar to what you’ve read in the line/genre you’re aiming for (guilty!) without really thinking of what YOUR characters would really be doing in that bedroom. Or beach. Or dining room. Whatever.

Does your heroine want the lights off? Or on? Why? What position? (and you might laugh, or alternately cringe, but for me that can say a lot about the scene too…if you have a power struggle, or a hero intent on distancing himself then you might find ways to convey that by…switching things up. 😉 )

Now we get to the part that inspired the title. *takes deep breath* Sometimes more description…not better. Sometimes very much worse. And this is my opinion, again, other people have different preferences, but I think there’s a point where something becomes over described (and I don’t write real gauzy love scenes, mine are pretty well…there…) and byoverdescribed mean…the hero’s armpit hair or something…(I’ve seen this). Or several paragraphs devoted to capturing each and every detail of a certain member of his body. My mind can fill in the blanks, thanks. 😉

Because when it gets like that, it all becomes very tab A into slot B, and as I mentioned at the top…it really needs to be about more than that.

(Erotica, I’ll grant, has a different set of rules. I think the over share applies there too though.)

So those are some of my thoughts. Have any of your own?

And…look what I got in the mail today! I don’t have a pic on my computer so I actually took a pic of the book. 🙂 It’s the North American cover for The Inherited Bride coming to the US in May 2011 as Presents Extra! (this cover? Totally sexy. OMgsh)

Whoa-oh We’re Halfway There…

I’ve reached the halfway point with The Vengeful Rogue! (haven’t talked about him much over here, I know)

This has been a different MS for me for a few reasons, one being that the hero and heroine has a past. It’s been really interesting, especially as the hero has completely changed his life in the years since knowing the heroine. She knew him then, and she knows him now, which gives her a lot of insight into the man beneath the protective layers.

As for the heroine, she has, as one of my CPs pointed out, a talent for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. She’s also unhappy with the path she’s taken in life, but feels like she’s way too far down the path to turn back now.

That’s been sort of tricky to write. Usually, my heroines know who they are and what they want. But she doesn’t. She’s just going along because she started something and feels compelled to finish it. She doesn’t want to let anyone down, and she feels like quitting at this point would be letting herself down.

For both of them, this MS is kind of a journey of discovery, and that’s also been fun. The Vengeful Rogue thinks he knows what he wants, and he thinks he knows how to get it. My heroine doesn’t know what she wants, and she’s always turned away from finding out since it seems pointless to her in some ways.

This is where I come in and force them to change their perception, on life, on what they want, on what success really means. And you KNOW I love that. 🙂

You also know I love, love love a tortured hero and I just finished reading Zoe and the Tormented Tycoon last night by Kate Hewitt. I love Kate’s books. They’re so wonderfully emotional and this one was no exception. Talk about your deep conflict. I really loved her bad girl heroine with a party girl past and her hero, forced to face a life of unknowns because of a genetic condition that’s stealing his sight. It really was a wonderful combination of characters, so great to watch them grow together. *sigh* I highly recommend!

What are you reading right now? I’m taking recs until my RITA books get here and I’m knee deep in judging. 😉

Writer’s Cycle of Confidence

Confidence is a funny thing. Some people have too much, some people have too little…it’s a rare thing for a person to have just the right amount. I know my amount fluctuates wildly and randomly, and not so randomly. So I have created an illustrated* guide to the Writer’s Cycle of Confidence.

It can all begin with feedback. Word back from a CP. A revisions letter. A rejection letter. A bad review. It can take a peaked level of confidence down to zero.

Then the crows start to descend. Ugly ones. Big ugly crows that have the blood of vanquished writers dripping from their evil hooked beaks!! You can’t do it, the crow whispers. Your writing is full of suck and you suck and basically you live in opposite land where everything you thought was awesome is actually sucky!! (my crows are mean…MEAN!!)

But then you sit down at the computer, and you tentatively type a few words, even though the DOUBT CROW is looming behind you looking all spectral and ebil and watching you with his hollow, creativity devouring eyes!!

Somehow though, you power through, and you write something. And you realize, hey…I’m not so bad! You’ve tortured your hero, you’ve had a breakthrough on conflict…you didn’t give up even though you were beset by doubts and CROWS.

And you have to celebrate the victory because, inevitably, trust me, the evil tricksy crows will return. 😉 It’s a cycle, and kind of a vicious one. Some days I feel great about what I’m doing, other days each word is a struggle because I’m afraid that I’m not even a fraction as good as I’ve started believing I am.

But it’s not about never having doubts, it’s about what you do with them. Or to them. I have a baseball bat, evil crows, and I’m not afraid to use it.

*I use the term ‘illustrated’ in its loosest sense

Planning Ahead…

I actually did that. I actually planned ahead. While I’m waiting to hear my editor’s take on the new proposal I’ve sent her, I cobbled together some synopses. Now, I hate to write synopses…at least…I thought I did. But I survived all this, and quite nicely!

In fact, having ideas down, concrete like that, feels really good. Usually, I reach the end of a book with very little clue of what I’m going to do next and I just sort of hope that another idea is going to drop out of the sky. But that’s not what I did this time.

I have four books mapped out for this contract. The ideas might change. I might change my mind, my editor might end up not liking them, etc, but the ideas are there and there’s a little bit of nice security in that! There’s also some nice security in knowing it isn’t all set in stone. That’s the pantser in me, afraid TOO much planning might make it hard for me to allow the story to develop as it needs to while I’m working on it.

But it’s a really great feeling to know ideas are in there and I can pull them out. They need more developing for certain, but so much of it is there, and it gives me a very nice feeling. It’s out of the box for me, but I think it’s good to think in new ways. It helps us grow. 🙂 And I know I can always use some growing, as a writer and a person.

New Year, new things, how is it going for all of you so far?

Some News and the Things I Don’t Know

First off, very happy as I spoke with my editor this morning and we got the particulars of the new contract all ready to go. Four books again, and I’m basically all scheduled out for the next twelve months which is a very secure feeling! (New contract is so sparkalay!!!)

I have a partial in with her now, and I’ll spend the wait time working on some proposals. I’m really excited about the 2nd book we discussed…well, I’m excited about the first one too. And the other two, even though the ideas are vague. Oh, I just find it all exciting. Lots of fabulous, passionate, glamorous ideas are swirling around in my head. I can’t think of anything better than writing about two people overcoming their issues and finding love with each other. *swoons*

To write what you love is such a wonderful thing. And that’s what I get to do. I’m always excited about the next book, the next idea, and of course, the finished product. The thing that comes from all that cookie-eating-angst-ridden-revision work. In short: Love this job. Everything about it.

The WIP I’m starting on is my 7th Presents and I still feel…new. Unsure. I was totally plagued by doubt crows before sending off this partial, maybe because it needs work, maybe just because it was my first submission to my new editor, and it felt like a first date*.

I learn so much with each book I write, and that throws all I don’t know into sharp relief. It’s okay though. It’s a very exciting thing, knowing you have so much learning ahead. At least it is for me.

So much of the advice I give here is advice I’m giving myself. Things I need to take to heart and remember. And a lot of it is simply MY take on things. I’m not the authority by any means, all I can do is talk about what has and hasn’t worked for me. But if it helps anyone at all, I’m always so pleased.

It’s so nice to have some people on board to share my journey with me. 🙂

I’m hoping to have some new cover art this week (yay!) and I’m really excited to say that The Inherited Bride is the #5 bestseller of the week on Mills and Boon UK! (Yay again!)

*sudden subject change* Also, I have a question! (yes, I may be thinking of using this in a book..so don’t answer if it’s your idea and you don’t want me to steal it! LOL) What are some of your favorite locations in books? Or, what are some of your favorite locations that are underused? (I like an unusual setting. My UK April is partly set in Thailand and my UK August is partly set in Malawi)

Thanks!

Maisey

*Only one chance to make a first impression…guess what I did when I subbed to my editor? I sent her the WRONG PARTIAL. EEEEK! It was fixed quickly thought but…egh. *scurries away*