Historical and Contemporary Romance Author
Hey, get your mind out of the gutter. I’m not talking about those kind of balls; I’m talking about the ones we often have to keep simultaneously in the air so our entire lives don’t crash to the ground in a pathetic heap of broken glass. I’m in heavy-duty balls-mode right now. In addition to juggling my kids’ school and…
I have to say, one of the hardest things for me about having many friends who are also writers is that there are writers who I dearly love on a personal level, but whose books, for whatever reason, just don’t work for me. I actually live in a kind of perpetual dread of the release of my dearest writer friends’…
In honor of all authors who’ve recently experienced a series of rejections, whether from agents or editors, I offer the following somewhat tongue-in-cheek (and somewhat NOT) overview of the process of moving on. The Seven Stages of Grief SHOCK & DENIAL You read the rejection letter for the third time. Then a fourth. And it really IS a rejection, not…
I’ve often said I don’t make New Year’s Resolutions because I figure if there’s anything I should stop or start doing, I should start doing it/not doing it when I think of it instead of waiting until January 1st. Something’s either virtuous and a good idea or it’s not, right? That said, goals are not the same as resolutions. Goals…
Today marks the second day of November, which means it is day number two of that much-heralded event, NaNoWriMo (short for National Novel Writing Month). If you’ve never heard of NaNo, I suspect you of having lived in a cave for the past 3-5 years or of not being in any way connected to the writer community. Because NaNo haunts…
I’m a little less than three thousand words into a new project, and already I’m angsting about its direction. Now, I’m always a trifle neurotic about whatever I’m writing, but usually the actual worrying about whether I’m “doing it right” waits a little longer than one chapter to settle in. The “OMG, what if this sucks?” anxiety normally sets in…
So, I’m sitting here this morning listening to my iPod and just really getting a kick out of my music. (Partly, this is because the darn thing wasn’t working for months. I thought I was going to have to take it to the Apple store to get it fixed, but my 12yo son figured out how to reset it manually,…
I think it’s safe to say that one of the most common conflicts for heroes (and to a lesser extent, heroines) in romance is a fear of commitment. This fear usually extends from an incident in the character’s backstory wherein said character loved and lost in a big way. Having been hurt by one woman (or man), the character has…
I’m off early Monday morning for a five-day visit with my aunt and uncle in Minnesota. It’s become something of an annual tradition since we went the first time back in 2007, and my kids were pretty disappointed when we told them we might not be able to fit it in this summer. As luck would have it, though, we…
It’s over. The proposal we had out on submission didn’t pick up any offers. Most of the rejections were along the lines of “love the writing, but…” (FWIW, I always think that’s a cop-out. If you really loved the writing, there would be no “buts” because the writing is what makes the characters come to life and plot work.) Naturally,…