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The Hardest Working Man in Show Business

Well…maybe not show business. And I don’t mean James Brown. I’m talking about Mr. Yates.

You might have noticed, I redecorated the website. Well, I is an overstatement. I found a theme I could modify and them set out to do what I envisioned…and asked for help about nine million times. And he gave it, happily, sweetly, and without making me feel like I was lacking because I’m not fluent in HTML.

Without him, I wouldn’t have a website. Sure, WordPress is easy to use, but I wouldn’t have known about wordpress if not for him.

And it’s not just the website, without him I wouldn’t write books. It’s his help, his love, and his support that helps me get things done. He cooks, he cleans, he changes diapers. It’s not a ‘this is my job, this is your job’ thing, we have a partnership, one that means so very, very much to me.

For the first two weeks of December, he was pretty much the housekeeper. I rewrote The Highest Price to Pay in the beginning half of the month, and I was basically crazed. But he handled it all with grace and understanding, and he *mostly* didn’t laugh at me for hanging out in thermals and muk luks for fifteen days, and for talking about The Frenchman like he was a real live person I was gonna beat the snot out of.

It’s always been that way between us. He’s always understood me, and my eccentricities and I’ve always understood his. (he’s a musician, you can check out his stuff here!) We met while working together at a coffee house. He was older, handsome, and in love with someone else. I and every other high school girl in the vicinity harbored ridiculous crushes on him, but he still treated us all like we weren’t giggling idiots. I got to know him, became his very close friend. He got promoted and became my boss. (we’ve got two GREAT romance themes here.)

I was there when he got his heart broken, and I saw the way he dealt with it, and I remember thinking, I want a man like that. A man who treats even the person who hurt him like that with so much kindness and respect.

And then, with that other girl out of the way (bwahaha) our friendship turned into love. 🙂 It was such a natural thing, and when I married him, I truly married my best friend.

Sometimes it’s easy to think that things just *work* and I don’t stop and appreciate everything he does to ensure that things work. To ensure things get done. The man gets up at night with the baby. He’s a true gem.

He’s my other half, he’s my sanity and my support. He’s the love of my life.

So thank you, Mr. Yates. You’re the best. I love you.

What The Beast Taught Me About Alpha Heroes

I realize this is intensely random, but bear with me. I got the Disney version of Beauty and the Beast on Blu Ray for Christmas. With apologies to Sassy Sister Jane, it is my absolute favorite version of the story, and one of my favorite Disney movies evah.

I had a little epiphany while watching it on Christmas though, and I figured I would share it with you.

The Beast is an alpha male. Oh yeah and like whoa. He’s in charge, the ruler of his castle. And he has his moments where, in order to protect himself, his secrets, he lashes out at Belle. He can be downright scary. I think I was seven when the movie hit theaters and I’ll never forget being scared out of my mind when Belle went into the West Wing and he came in shouting “Get out!” and turning over tables and stuff. Yikes. Scared me senseless.

He can be cold. Mean. Ruthless. The meanest bastard this side of Gaston. His sense of justice uncompromising as he takes Belle prisoner in place of her father.

He’s closed off to love, his feelings hidden by his intense aggression.

But…there’s more to him than that. Sure, he can come in all strong and even scary, but under that is where the true man is. One who has been wounded by his own youthful stupidity. One who is afraid to take a chance on love, because he feels unworthy of the woman he’s fallen for.

He’s awkward when asking her to dinner. He gives her a library because he knows she loves books. He saves her from wolves, for heaven’s sake.

Point being, he’s not one-note. When you have an alpha hero who comes across very…well…intense, I guess, it’s important for there to be balance. For there to be cracks in his armor so that the reader can get a sense for his humanity, so that the reader can see him falling for the heroine…and why she would fall for him.

I thought Caitlin Crews did a brilliant job of that with Luc in Pure Princess, Bartered Bride. He was a very intense and hardened type of hero, and yet there’s this moment where he gives the heroine a ring, and he’s nervous to do it…wondering what her reaction will be. It was one of the most romantic moments I’ve ever read, and the power that it possessed was because in all other areas he was a supremely confident, even arrogant man. But the heroine broke through. The heroine reached beneath it, and the reader got to see it.

Alpha does not=bastard. And if you are dealing with a hero who has his moments of…well…you know…then it’s nice to see a balance so that he can be human. He lends more weight to his strength if he has some weakness. It adds more to his character if the supremely confident businessman is undone by his heroine. And not just in the last five pages. It’s the ebb and flow of the story, bringing them closer, undermining it, bringing them a little bit closer, pulling them apart. Making him vulnerable, bringing his walls back up, then demolishing them completely.

But, IMO, showing the readers what’s underneath that facade of absolute strength and power, is the thing that will keep them hooked. It’s the thing that will allow them to fall in love with the hero, and want the heroine to love him too.

More Things I’ve Learned

Every time I write a book, I learn something new. Each MS, each version of each MS, and each revision letter that comes with it, teaches me something huge. Or several somethings huge.

As most of you know, I had to rewrite The Frenchman. Well, I consider it a rewrite because…well, I had to write a whole new 50K words, but my editor said it’s not really a rewrite because the characters were there, the conflict was there…but I hadn’t executed it properly.

I had saved some big secrets until the end, and ultimately the thing that was making my MS interesting was what the secrets were. However, I was cheating the reader out of real character development by doing that. I didn’t see it that way at the time, of course, but having gone through and done it with those revelations up front, part of the characters from page one, I see it now.

What happened was, we weren’t getting to the crux of the conflict until the end of the book. And that was wrong. I do think that in this case, it took me a rewrite to get me to understand what the MS was truly about, what the conflicts really were. I had to get a draft down to I could peel back everything that was unnecessary and get down to the heart of the MS, to take it back down to the characters and their conflicts.

I have a little list of things I’ve learned over the past year. These are things that are helpful for me, and I hope will be helpful for you.

1. Keep it character driven. Don’t let the plot do the driving, put your characters in charge. Say you want your heroine to get on a plane with the hero, but she’s not the kind of girl to go off with a man she doesn’t know…so you have her do it anyway, that’s putting the plot in charge. She’s violating who she is to follow a road map you the author has laid out, that doesn’t necessarily ring true for the person you’ve created.

2. Keep impact in mind. When you do have a revelation for a character to make, or similar, make sure it’s revealed to the reader in a way that has the most impact. Is it more impacting to have the character make the revelation to the reader in her own thoughts, or is it better for us to find out the extent of the heroine’s issues along with the hero?

3. What is it really about? Is it about learning to trust? The power of love? Redemption? This is the issue I run into a lot of times: What story am I really trying to tell? What are the core themes? And with a more complicated book, I’ve had to rewrite them to discover what the core truth of the story really is. If I can figure this out BEFORE writing the whole MS it saves me a lot of grief, because it helps me keep my focus, and that helps the story maintain its focus!

4. Where to your characters begin, and where will they end? What do you need your characters to learn over the course of the MS? They need to have an arc. They need to have an internal conflict that is sorted out over the course of the story. This means learning, growing, changing. If your hero is a reclusive tycoon closed off to love, he needs to go on a journey to open up his heart, and ideally, it will be the heroine who helps him, and even more ideally, the journey she takes him on will also advance HER journey.

So say we have Reclusive Tycoon who is closed off to love, and the heroine is afraid of sharing herself with anyone for fear of being rejected. But she has to give of herself to draw him out, and then both of them find themselves opening up to each other. But then one of them, say the hero, can’t handle it and he pulls back, but the heroine stands firm, revealing her love, her heart, despite her fear of rejection. Because she isn’t afraid anymore.

Anyway, maybe something better than that but that’s my example to sort of illustrate what I’m talking about.

5. I would never go back to the original version of an MS. The revised versions, the rewritten versions, are always stronger than the original. Always. And no matter how perfect I think what I’ve done is, revisions, or even a rewrite, have always made it better. Doesn’t mean a revision letter doesn’t hurt, but I know why I need to do them, and I can even be excited for the chance to make my MS the best I can make it.

So that’s what I’ve learned. Some of it. 🙂 Have you learned anything brilliant this year? Share it with me. I always want to learn!

Oh, and Merry Christmas! 😀

The Highest Price to Pay

Catchy…no? 😉 Sounds like it could be a title…Oh yes, it is!!

I’m very happy today since I’ve heard back from my editor about The Frenchman and the news is good, good good! She loved the revisions and the unique location and said it was a deeply emotional story (yay!). It has been titled The Highest Price to Pay and will be released in the UK in…August. Eep! That gives me TWO August releases in the UK. That’s the like the double rainbow* of book releases.

It’s always such a relief to have that approval. This book became so personal to me, and I’m so, SO, honored that M&B jumped on board with me for this one.

On a related note, this was my last book with my most beloved editor until 2012. I was able to ‘meet’ my new editor on the phone this morning, and she’s absolutely wonderful. I have every confidence that we’ll get along great together and that we’ll have fun working through my next contract together. 🙂 Oh yes, and I’m on contract again! Already! Yay!

This was the source of my cookie binge a while back, because I will miss Jenny tons. But knowing I have another ed that is so sweet and is more than willing to write me those six page revision letters I love so much makes me feel much better. 😉

So it will be a very Merry Christmas for me! All is right in the writing world, and I have a new idea itching to get out already.

But I have to give big thanks to Jenny for making my first six books all that they could be. It has been a wonderful year. I’m confident that this next year will be just as wonderful.

YAY THE FRENCHMAN!

*

**(and this is the double rainbow song)

Christmas Vids!

I love Christmas. 🙂 I do. I love it all!

Wanted to share my very favorite new Christmas song by a band I’ve long loved, Relient K.

I thought this sounded silly, but I finally watched it and I really loved it.

Merry Christmas!

Borrowing Trouble

I was thinking about this today though, not really because of my own deep thoughts, but because it was the topic in church this morning. How we as people tend to cling to the bad things, legitimate bad things, such as health and family issues, which, let’s face it, is only natural. But then there are the bad things that haven’t happened yet, or won’t happen at all.

My pastor and his wife are adopting a little girl from Uganda, and their headed there in January. In order to prepare to go, they had to get roughly a million immunizations to prepare for the trip. He was saying how the worst part of getting a shot is the fifteen minutes before hand, or maybe right when they brush your arm with the cotton. But the actual shot is never as bad as all that anticipation.

Well, it struck home to me since I have been a nervous, cookie-eating wreck this week, as you all may remember. And then, after turning in The Frenchman, what did I do? Worry more. And eat more.

She’ll hate it. It’s horrible. It’s awful. Waaaaah!

Well, she emailed me Friday, and she’s halfway done and she said, “STOP EATING COOKIES!” (she didn’t say that, but she did say she liked what she’d read so far. The word Fabulous may have been used.) Point being, I was literally broken out in hives over…nothing. And even if it were something…what’s the point? No matter the outcome, I’ll have caused myself more grief by worrying, even if the outcome is bad. Same as building up a tiny little shot into a huge, fat deal.

What will be will be. Que sera sera and all that. It’s human nature though, I think, to focus on the bad, or even create it when it isn’t there. I know I do.

It’s funny (here comes another song reference) I was getting ready to send the Frenchman on Wednesday and as I was obsessing, praying, trying to figure out what more I could or couldn’t do to the book, the song Let It Be by the Beatles popped into my head. Why not? 🙂 So I let it be, and I hit send.

Not to say I didn’t obsess again immediately after. But there are so many good things in life, in MY life, and yet sometimes I insist on clinging to bad things, made up or real, rather than seeing and rejoicing in the good. Or just letting it be.

That’s my encouraging word to all of you, and to me. 🙂 Let’s try not to allow extra worry make things more traumatic than they need to be. There is simply too much good in life. It’s a shame to waste time focusing on the bad. Especially the bad that may never happen!

Counting my blessings now, and trying to let go of my worries. 🙂

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all of you!

Excerpt!

You can check out the beginning of The Inherited Bride at Amazon UK !

This makes me all kinds of excited! *eyes cookies* no…I promise not to eat more cookies. *sneaks some into pockets* *whistles*

The Inherited Bride

I have to send out a big thanks to Caro for sending me over the cover blurb for The Inherited Bride! (February UK, May US!) And I’m very excited to get to share it with you!

Princess Isabella was certain of three things…

And, having kissed the stranger once, she was never going to be the same
again…

And a little bit from the inside flap on the cover:

“You don’t think I feel anything, Isabella?” Adham’s voice was soft, as
tightly reined in as the rest of him. He drew his finger over the line
of her jaw, his dark eyes intent on hers, and then she felt the first
crack in his facade. A slight tremor in his hand, unveiled fear in his
eyes.

“I feel. Things I have no business feeling. I want things that are not
mine to covet.”

The Inherited Bride will be available from Mills and Boon UK January 1st and widely released February 1st!

I Eated Lots of Cookies

Yesterday was one of those days. I was stressed, I was a little sad, catching a cold (the same one I’ve been catching for like…three weeks), and trying hard to get to the end of The Frenchman. So what did I do? What any sane person would do. I ate chocolate chip cookies (provided by my mother) and drank coffee until I was sick. Real mature.

Then I wrote an obscene amount of words and fell into bed when my brain was officially mush.

Yesterday was one of those days that had me confronting some of the uncertainty in the industry (more on this later, don’t worry, it’s not a catastrophe or anything). It’s been a week like that. Good stuff, and bad stuff. The good news is, I know I’m getting another contract after The Frenchman, so that’s a big sigh of relief all around, and really, it’s the most important thing at this point. And the bad stuff isn’t truly bad, it’s just change, and I have to admit to being a goober about change.

I really don’t want to sound all emo, because honestly, there have been a lot of great things over the past few days (contracts! impending endings!) and then there’s The Cold That Will Not Go Away. >:( Bleah!

But what I really liked, was that with all the upheaval, good and bad, there was something I could do: Write. (and eat, apparently, but that’s not constructive…) But that’s so cool, because even when things were shifting feeling skeery and my nose was stuffy, I could work on my book. It’s the thing I can control.

Oh, and one more thing, not huge, but I have a much better quality image of my April US release, An Accidental Birthright! (Formerly, A Mistake, A Prince and A Pregnancy) (I think she looks like Kendra from the Girls Next Door…and he’s…*drools*…I love him)

Updates and Stuff I’ve Learned

I have been a baaaad blogger. Very bad. In my defense, I have been basically locked in my internet free office for the past 10 days pounding out 35K words. *halo*

I *think* it’s going well, and I have a feeling I won’t be totally confident in it all until I type The End and can go back and survey it all. But I have learned things from this, I really have.

Now, when I had to rewrite The Inherited Bride, my editor told me, this is the kind of book you write ‘across’ and then on the second time through you write down deep. When I did the rewrite, I understood what she meant by going deep. In the original version, I had the characters…ish…the conflict…ish, but not quite pinpointed…and the plot. And on the second pass through I was able to get down into the characters, characters I already knew, and truly find the real heart of the conflict.

And this MS has been the same. But I had this sudden, odd realization while I was writing a scene the other day: I couldn’t have written this on the first draft. I couldn’t have found this very special, essential scene on the first time through the book. Because the first time through, I hadn’t gotten down into what the book *really* was yet.

That isn’t true for every book. But for The Inherited Bride, and for my Frenchman, it is. Not to say someone else couldn’t have done it in one take, but for me, this is definitely something that was too complex for me to explore thoroughly the first time through.

And now, drawing on things I discovered about the characters in the first version, I’m able to bring more focus to the MS. I know the character journeys, the conflicts, what worked when exploring them, and what didn’t. I also saw things in the first version that were superfluous, and yet they didn’t seem like it until midway through this version. I figured out ways to streamline it, to use the plot, the external, to advance the central, internal conflict, and to have it all tie together to make it all more cohesive.

It’s funny, because, let’s face it, no one really wants to hear they need to rewrite a book, but it seems like when I do, I emerge from it with a greater understanding of writing, and of my own process. And it’s always a book I end up feeling more connected with than one I didn’t spend as much time on, one that didn’t stretch me quite as much as a writer.

So, I’m actually enjoying this process. Feeling close with my characters, which isn’t always the best thing, but it’s happened. Crying for them, smiling for them, dreading their black moment and so looking forward to their happily ever after.

What’s new with all of you?

Tell Me Your Secrets

No…not you guys. *covers ears* My fragile psyche couldn’t handle that. 🙂 My characters, I need them to tell me their secrets.

Sound familiar?

Oh yes, I’ve been here before, I’ll be here again. But this time, it turns out there were still things I didn’t know about The Frenchman and his Fashionable Lady even after having done an entire 50K, polished and done MS. So, after getting some advice from my wonderful editor, I set to work on fixing the problems with the MS.

But it wasn’t going well. I realized something: I had neutered my hero. I was afraid of him being unlikable. So while I had set him up as this man in need of redemption, we didn’t have the full scope of why he might need redemption, of how his mistake had affected his life, of how far he needed to grow as a person. Because I had pulled my punch and like whoa big time.

So, good write friend Lisa Hendrix said, write a scene you would never put in the book. Explore all the things that you think will make your hero too unlikable for print. Let it all go.

And I did. I wrote a scene with the Frenchman at his worst, and I learned so much. From why he lives in the apartment he lives in, to how he reacted to a major, live changing incident.

I was set to go.

Almost.

I thought my Fashionable Lady was all ironed out. I knew her conflict backward and forward. I knew everything there was to know about her.

Um…wrong.

I got to this point in the MS where she was worried about The Frenchman taking so much control over her business and I thought…why? Why does it matter so much to her? And I realized I didn’t know. Beyond the desire to maintain the control, I didn’t know why the business meant so much to her.

So I clicked back over to the document with Blaise’s big unusable scene. And I started writing. I just let Ella talk. Rant, actually, to her parents, about why she’s afraid to lose her business, about how angry she is. And everything just sort of spilled out. And I learned so much about a character I thought I knew.

All her motivations were suddenly there, all of her fears, everything she needs to let go of.

If you’re stuck with your characters, I highly recommend it. It helps you get it all out in a very obvious way so you can work at weaving it into the MS, and I found it more organic than a character sheet. (yes, this is me, the crazy writer talking…we are SO crazycakes.)

Hope some of you find this helpful!

*stalks back to revision cave*

Awesome Author Post!

My dear friend Lisa Hendrix is at the Sassy Sisters blog today talking about her Immortal Brotherhood series…she has nine sexy vikings with her! Come say hi!

(check out an excerpt from her next release, Immortal Champion here!)