Revisions are Groovy

It's kind of amazing how a couple of editorial sentences can make you look at an ms and suddenly you see exactly what isn't working. The email I just got from M&B was just like that. In fact, in terms of revisions, it was one of the best ones I've ever received in that it was very clear what wasn't working and had suggestions about what could make it stronger.

Admittedly, the things the editor pointed out were things I had wondered after I'd completed the ms and sent the partial away. The heroine's conflict wasn't enough for example. The hero, hey, he was fine - joy! - but she needed work. I think I'd got to the point where I just wasn't sure of the balance. The hero's conflict was very dark and I thought giving her too much heavy stuff would be over-egging the pudding. Apparently not. :-)

But, happy days, I had an idea to make her conflict much stronger and more intense, and also tied in to the other thing I'd forgotted - external goal. Bah. I've even done a blog post on it and yet I STILL forgot in this ms. I got so focussed on creating tension between the hero and heroine that I forgot the external goal could create the tension, not the other little things I'd put in there. It's like I'd given the hero and heroine bicycles, their conflict driving the pedals and making them move forward, but instead of putting them on the road and letting them pedal to the finish line, they were on a circular track going around and around, and going nowhere. Doh.

In fact, it's quite amazing how the interaction of conflict, motivation, and goal intersect! Yes, I know, I should have realised this YEARS ago but I haven't seen it quite as clearly as I have this time.

I guess you learn something new every day. Anyone learn anything else new today?

How Throwing a Tantrum Can Work

Soooo....you know how I threw an epic tantrum about how nothing was happening??  And many of you said to hang in there and things will start to move?

Well, I woke up this morning to an email from the wonderful editor at M&B about Mr Sheikhypants. They love him and his conflict (yay me for getting the hero right for once!) but the heroine needs a little more work. Best of all I got a great list of the issues that were of concern and some ways to tackle them. So thrilled! They were actually things I was feeling a little doubtful about anyway so it's great my instincts were spot on. I have to tweak the partial and send back as they were keen to see how I dealt with it.

As you know, my subs with M&B haven't worked out in the past couple of years so I'm beyond pleased that a) my voice works for Presents and b) they like my hero.   Oh and c) it's not NO!

Have already sorted out how I can make my heroine's conflict stronger which will make her pursuit of the external goal stronger too. And everything will tie in together and it will be wonderful and rainbows and unicorns and flying ponies shall flourish. :-)

Here's to finally getting out of the quicksand! Clearly I need to throw tantrums more often.

Oh and you know how I've been waiting in the supermarket? I've actually been in a couple of other supermarkets too and now I've finally reached the checkout and my goods are being rung up and bagged as we speak. ;-)

In Which Jackie Drags Out Yet Another Tired Analogy

For the few people still reading this blog, I thought I'd vary my analogy today. I've given up supermarkets for the moment, since supermarkets imply movement. I'm going with quicksand today since there is absolutely no movement whatsoever. Plus I can also get in the whole 'journey to publication' thing since, apparently, it is a journey.  Except I guess that too is a misnomer since 'journeying' also implies movement. And I'm not moving. I'm stuck in the quicksand of waiting.

It's depressing. You can't do anything. You can't move forward and you can't even go back. Oh, you keep writing but you wonder what the point of it all is. You've got stacks of stories but why write more? No one's ever going to read anything you've written anyway, right?

Even your blog posts start sounding the same.

I'm not quite sure what to do really. The quicksand is steadily sucking all my enthusiasm for writing away and soon I'll have nothing left. The real world is calling and a job that actually pays money for hard work is seeming all the more attractive.



I thought this year I would start to get somewhere. I've had few modest successes and I think my writing is better than it's ever been. But now the successes haven't lead anywhere but into more quicksand, things are starting to feel like retread of last year. And the year before that. And the year before that.


So what's the point with continuing to standing here, stuck in the middle of a journey that isn't going anywhere?  Anyone got any sage advice for a quicksandee?

Supermarket Queues

So I'm at a packed supermarket and I'm trying to find a checkout that hasn't got fifty million people queued up and not having much luck. I can't use the 12 items or less checkout because I have more than 12 items and the self-serve checkout is a little bit new-fangled and freaky for me.

My heart is sinking cause I know I'm going to be in the supermarket FOREVER at this rate, and then I happen to see a checkout that only has one old lady in it. So I nip in behind her, looking at everyone else and feeling smug because I know I'm going to get out before them.

And then the old lady starts taking coupons out of her bag. And she's got a LOT of coupons. And then the other queues start going really fast and I realise, with another sinking sensation, that I have picked the wrong queue. *dramatic music*


Desperately I search for another queue that looks like it's going faster and get into that one. And it works. For a minute. But then the man in front of me pulls out something he has in his bag that he wants to return, and starts arguing with the checkout operator. Another wrong queue.

I skip to the next one but this one has a young woman who is trying to buy alcohol and has to have her ID checked and the operator clearly doesn't have the authority to authorise it and has called their superior. But their superior is currently arguing with the man who is still trying to return something.

I find another queue and this one looks like it's going fast, and I'm feeling once again so pleased with myself. But just as I start putting my shopping on the conveyor, the checkout operator slaps a 'checkout closed' sign down and goes off on her break.

So I whip in behind a mother and her kids and hey, she's got a LOT of shopping but there's no one else behind her, and it's going really well. Until her kids start playing up. And she starts arguing with the checkout operator about the specials. Then she realises she's forgotten to get something and heads off towards the shelves.

I am beginning to think I will never get out of this supermarket.

I try the queue with the man returning stuff but he's still arguing and now there's another checkout operator involved. Brieflly I consider the queue with the young woman buying alcohol but realise her operator is now the one involved with the man arguing. The mother still hasn't come back from the shelves and the old lady is still fumbling around in her bag for her coupons.

At this point I know that my fears are correct. There are no shortcuts. Some queues are faster and there's no rhyme or reason to them, they just are. If you're lucky you'll get a short queue. If you're not, you won't.

I go back to the queue with the old lady. And I wait. And wait. And wait.

That new-fangled self-serve checkout is starting to look better and better.

Research. It's Weird.

Another WIP finished, another ms to add to the pile. Yeah, finished Mr Rough yesterday. And I mean finished very loosely. My endings are so bad, mainly because I hate writing em. Usually because it's not until I write that I figure out what's missing in the rest of the ms. With Mr Rough I was so concentrated on the hero's thorny and knotty conflict, that I completely forgot about a major loose thread with the heroine! Argh.

Anyway, I always feel depressed after finishing an ms, usually because the ending feels so rushed and blah. But I do try to resist the urge to go through and fix it up immediately. I find that some time away from the ms and the characters does wonders when it comes to editing. A fresh eye and all that. Doesn't help with the blahs though.

The best way to help with that - apart from a  couple of stiff martinis - is, of course, to get stuck into the next idea. And this one, since it's kind of connected to Mr Rough, is one that is going to be HARD. Because the conflict for the hero is REALLY HARD.  You see he's a gambler. And a womaniser. And he's giving the big finger to the world in general. Which means that something really bad happened in his past and with a little help from Ms Yates, I decided what it was. And it's baaaaaaad.

And it's going to be fantastic to write because if there's one thing I love it's a tortured hero who really does have a reason to be tortured and not just because his mummy didn't wuv him enough.

*rubs hands* *is evil*

But I really should do some research first. Because he's a gambler, I am now going to have to go off figure out the finer points of poker etc. In fact, now I think about it, I've had to research a lot of very odd stuff over the years I've been writing. Chess. Astronomy. Handguns. Genetics. Anyone looking at my search history is going to get an eyeful of WTF. 

So what about you? What's the weirdest thing you've ever had to research for the sake of your story??

Jackie's Little Checklist

Again, thousands of apologies for my lack of keeping this sorry excuse for a blog up to date. And also apologies for not doing my usual round of visits to other people's blogs. I've been keeping my social media distractions to a mimimum for the purposes of pretending that I am an NYT #1 bestselling author with millions of readers waiting for my next book. I'm kind of doing a series you see and that's a little risky for an unpublished author. So to minimise my risk, I'm pretending that I'm not unpublished. It's working so far...except when I happen to catch glimpses of my bank account....

Aaaaaanyway, moving right along....

I think in my last post I mentioned a little checklist of things I need to keep in mind whenever I start a new story and some of you suggested that I post it. This of course meant I had to think about it and actually list some those things. It was a lot of work I tell ya.. :-) It is by no means complete - there will be other things I don't know that I need to know to add - and also it is my list and designed to help me and my weaknesses when it comes to crafting a story. Some of the things on it you'll probably think 'WTF? She hasn't got that yet?'. Other things may make you get down on your knees and worship my genius (I'm not imagining this will actually happen but dreams are free).

Okay, this is complicated and actually, I'm wondering if this mightn't be better as a flow chart or mind map...yes, a freaking mind map!  But basically this checklist is a series of questions, since that's what works best for me. They're also all interelated which further complicates stuff.



1. Character: The most important part. Character should always come first IMHO.
Who is this person? How do they behave? What do they do when they're under stress?  How do they act when they're confronted or challenged?  What do they do when they're happy? How do they see themselves? What do they want most? How do they handle emotion? What are their opinions about: friends? family? love? work?  What annoys them? What makes them happy?  What makes them afraid? What emotion are they most afraid of and why?
  
2. Conflict: What was the event/thing/person that changed the course of the character's life?  What was the character like before it? How did the character change afterwards? Does the character think they changed in response or do they think it didn't affect them? What story do they tell themselves about this event and is it what actually happened? What fear did the conflict plant in the character? And how does the character hide this fear? What does the character do to make themselves feel better about their fear/conflict? How does the conflict relate to the character's view of love?

3. Goal: What does the character want? How does it relate to their internal conflict? Why is it important to them (conscious/unconscious)? How do they feel about it? What do they think it will give them? What are they prepared to do to achieve it? What lines will they not cross (and why)?

4. Motivation: Does the conflict affect the character's motivation (hint: it should)? In what way? What emotion is driving the character's motivation? Are they aware of it? If not, then what other reason do they give themselves for what drives them? Why do they deny the real reason?  

5. External conflict/set up: How does this relate to the internal conflict? Is the external goal reflective of the internal goal?

6. Character arc: I guess this should go up with character but what the hey! How does the character change? How is this reflective in their behaviour?  Who are they under the mask they wear to show the rest of the world? Why do they hide their true self? What do they discover about themselves that helps them overcome the problems of their conflict and drop their mask? How does the other character help them discover their potential? What is their true potential??

Now, I don't hold this list up in front of my computer screen and tick off each little box, nor do I have to have all the answers up front (but at least an idea is a good plan).  It tends to happen in a much more organic way and depends on how the idea came to me at the time. If the conflict idea comes first, I think about who this thing might have happened to and why it would have been so terrible for them. From there the character starts to form in response to the conflict. Or sometimes I'll have an idea for a character, then I'll try and think about what could have happened to them to make them who they are.

No doubt there are more things I need to think about that I haven't listed here and I'll probably add to it. When it comes to discovering these things, I don't do characters sheets or whatnot because I find them artificial and I end up with a robot, not an actual person. The best way for all this to come together is just good old-fashioned thinking about it. When I'm doing the washing. Or having a shower. Or yelling at the kids. :-) It works for the most part.

Anyway, that's my checklist for you. It's kind of random. I might see if I can mind-map this though it may be waaaay too complicated. Anything anyone else wants to add? 

Alternatively, if you don't want to read this post, head over to the Sassies site and see some pictures of moody men. :-)

Emotion - The Heart of the Character

Hmmmm, bad blogger me with the weekly posts. I should be doing more. But well, I tend to slow down when I'm feeling in a low patch and have had another dip in the trail in the past couple of weeks. The journey to publication has gone way downhill, past the swamp and the garbage heap, and it's taking a while to come back up the other side. No particular reason it went downhill, just the waiting angst. And a severe case of whats-the-pointitis.

To take my mind off the incredibly long, winding back road that is my journey to the fabulous city of publication, I have been thinking of a...checklist (for want of a better word) for things that I have to remember whenever I start a new ms. I'm not thinking of a list of boxes here, more a list of things that I commonly forget to think about whenever I sit down to write.

For the past couple of mss, I have been getting way better at character (if I do say so myself). At least the characters are coming together more organically. They're not just a collection of traits I picked out of a hat with conflict tacked on the end, they actually feel like real people to me. Their external conflict is even reflective of their internal conflict and everything!

But there are some things that I forget to consider and one in particular is pretty damn major - a character's emotional life. Why is it important? Well, because romance is all about emotion. And emotion is what motivates a character. Oh, they can tell themselves all kinds of things about why they do what they do, but at the very heart of it, it's emotion that drives them.

Yes, you have your conflict but it's the character's emotional response to that conflict that shapes the story. For example, in Mr Rough, my hero is very, very angry. He's conscious of his anger and he embraces it because it drives his need for justice. And from that I realised that he will not let any other emotion take the place of his anger. It's the only emotion he will allow himself. I was very happy with that because for me if I know that anger is his reigning emotion, then everything he does will be because of it or about protecting it. It makes him consistent in other words. It also gives me a layer to his character and a simple character arc. Because in order to find love, he has to give up his anger and everything that the anger fuels (justice, control etc etc).

The thing I did NOT do however, was consider how my heroine feels about her feelings. And this gets problematic when the hero and heroine meet because of course when they do, suddenly everything becomes about the feelings. So you have to know how your character will react when confronted by an intense attraction. How do they feel about the attraction? Does it make them uncomfortable? Or does it excite them?  When they feel these things, what do they then do?


In the case of my heroine, I didn't really know and it wasn't until a CP mentioned her reactions seemed a little off, that I realised the problem. She was behaving inconsistently because I didn't really know how she would react when she was uncomfortably attracted to someone. And in fact, I didn't really know how she viewed emotion at all. It wasn't until I sat down and figured it out that I realised that at the heart of her was anger as well. Except instead of acknowledging it like the hero, she denies it (because of her conflict). And in fact, emotional control in all things is very important to her. So her reaction to intense attraction is to ignore it, pretend she doesn't feel it, in order to maintain her emotional control. That's her layer. Her identity. The mask she wears. If she wants to find love, she will have to acknowledge her emotions, acknowledge her anger.

So now I know what to do when it comes to the next mss. I need to know the emotional landscape of my characters. How they view their own emotions and how they deal with them. How their conflict has changed this. Sometimes I won't know this immediately. Sometimes you just have to sit down and write until you get a feel for the character. But at least next time it's something I know I'll have to keep in mind so that the characters act consistently.

What do you reckon? Do you think about this kind of stuff before you write? Or are you a get it all down first kind of writer?

The Trouble with Women

So I had problem with alphas in my last post. My new hero, Mr Rough, is being let off the reins and he's loving it, but now I'm wondering all over again about sympatheticness (if that's even a word) as it relates to the heroine. The romance heroine does have a reputation for being a perfect, self-sacrificing, paragon of a woman, brutally manhandled by the hero before making him bow down before her like a unicorn before a virgin (and she's often that too).

Now, I have to say right up and here and now that I hate those heroines. I don't want to read about perfect, self-sacrificing people. I want to read about flawed, imperfect individuals who go on a journey to either overcome those flaws or to learn to accept that they're actually not flaws at all. And yet right now, in my WIP, I have a heroine who wants to take control of her father's money. She wants to control her father's money because he controlled her as a child and she wants payback. For herself. And yet I'm trying to make this motivation less mercenary and cold by including her feelings about protecting her mother in there, purely because I'm wondering if a reader will find her too mercenary. Too unsympathetic. Too selfish. And this annoys me because it's predictable. Always the heroine has to have some unselfish motivation because no one likes a cold-hearted woman. It's always her mother or her brother or sister or her poor widowed auntie.

Why can't she want to have something for herself? Why can't she be as cold and as ruthless as the hero? Especially if she's motivated enough?

We're hard on our heroines I think. They're supposed to be the placeholder for ourselves and so they can't be seen as selfish or anything too extreme or else they risk alienating us.

Me, I'm a forgiving reader. But I hate stupidity in heroines and doormattery and too much self-sacrifice. I also can't stand kick-assedness for the sake of it. But I can handle a heroine being selfish. I can handle a heroine who takes the diamonds the hero wants to give her and also the hot sex because she wants it and she likes it. None of this 'oh no, I can't. It would demean me!' or 'I must take the diamonds to pay for healthcare for my poor sick granny and bear the sex because I said I would' crap.

What about you? What turns you off in a heroine? What can't you forgive? And is liking her instantly really that important?

A Hard Man is Good to Find - Fear of the Alpha

I think you'll all know by now that when it comes to heroes, I'm an alpha girl all the way. I like a hard man. A man who doesn't take any crap from anyone. A take charge, protective man. And most especially a tortured man. Mmmmmm....tortured man....*Homer Simpson donut noise*

Ahem.

So anyway with all this alpha-love going on around Ashenden House, it annoys the crap out of me that in my latest WIP I keep softening up my hero. I kept doing it with the skeikh and I did it in the ms before that too. In fact I keep softening them up so much that they may as well be blouses instead of alpha heroes. And not in the billowy, loose, cool pirate shirt way. More in a frilly, girly way. May as well have put a pussy-bow on them and called them Fanny.

I know why I'm doing it of course. In my head I'm thinking frantically 'he MUST be sympathetic!'. And 'there MUST be some soft moments right NOW!'. And 'he MUST be likeable!'. Argh. So I keep making him gentler, making him likeable and sympathetic and....well....soft. Which for an alpha Presents hero isn't really all that good. Because people don't read them because they like soft men. They like them because of their powerful, alpha hot men. Who aren't soft in ANY way.

Sigh. My real problem is the fact that in the last couple of WIPs my heroines have been strong. Very, very strong and ballsy. And that's a problem because you have to have a hero who is even stronger and ballsier than she is. He must win their encounters - at least at the beginning. Which kind of scares me a little because I'm worried about all the things like not being sympathetic, not being likeable, hearing the word 'alp-hole' in my head. Opening up that alpha box all the way is scary.

However, what I need to remember is this: his motivation is EVERYTHING. No, he may not be likeable. No, he may not be sympathetic. What he needs to be is understandable. He has to have good reasons for doing what he does and if he's properly motivated he can get away with a lot. I know I'll forgive a hero a lot if I can understand why he acts the way he does.

The second thing I have to remember is that at the heart of the alpha is a good man. Whether he thinks he is or not, underneath everything, he's the protector, the carer, the defender. Yes, he can act like an a-hole sometimes when he believes he's right. Yes, he might sometimes be a little scary when he's threatened. Yes, he'll fight like crazy not to be vunlnerable. But fundamentally he's a good person.

Which brings me to my current WIP. I need to get over my fear of letting my hero be who he is, which is one hell of an angry SOB. So angry in fact that my MOC story is turning into a revenge tale because he was NOT happy with just a MOC. He wanted more.

So I can't go softening him up because it's not in his character (soft guys don't really pursue revenge so single-mindedly). Plus the fact that his heroine won't take any crap, especially from him. In fact the past couple of days I've been rewriting a particular chapter because I realised I'd pulled back on him. So I rewrote it and just let him have his head and honestly, writing it was like watching a car-crash. You just can't look away. I kept writing and thinking, 'what did she say to him? Oh my god, this is going to be bad'. And then I wrote more and it's like 'Oh no, he did not just do that!' It was actually kind of awesome. Because it finally felt like he was being who he was. :-)

Right, so, my lesson for all those afraid of the alpha, is basically don't hold back on him. Give him the proper motivation (and not just because his mummy didn't wuv him). And trust him to be a good man. He may not be intially sympathetic or likeable, but as long as the reader can understand him, then they'll forgive him a lot. Oh and if he's a really bad boy, nothing like a good grovel at the end. :-)

Anyone else have trouble with their alphas? Or are you a beta girl?

Lucky 7

The lovely Rach has tagged me for the Lucky 7 Meme and since I've been away for Easter, this is slightly late but...well....better late than never, right?

The deal is this:
Go to page 77 of your current MS/WIP
■Go to line 7
■Copy down the next 7 lines–sentences or paragraphs–and post them as they’re written. No cheating.
■Tag 7 authors
■Let them know

Now in my current WIP, I don't have a page 77 since I haven't written that far. So I'm going with Mr Sheikypants. I guess this is more than 7 lines/paragraphs whatever but I do like to end on a high note. :-)

He did have a point. Anyway, what was the big deal? "My mother is lovely. She was a PA before they adopted me and—"

"You are adopted?"

Lily frowned at the interruption. "Yes. Is that a problem?"

Blue eyes flickered. "No."

"But it bothers you?"

"No. I am…surprised."

"About what?"

He ignored that. "Tell me more about your parents."

Lily stared at him, hearing the edge of demand running through his voice. He didn't look at her but tension had crept into the set of his shoulders, his knuckles white where they gripped the steering wheel. A seething, shivering tension that abruptly made her feel like she was in the car alone with a very powerful, very dangerous animal.

I need to tag people but since I'm late with this and no doubt everyone has already been tagged, I'll do a blanket 'if you haven't done this before, considering yourself tagged' thingy!

Hope everyone had a nice Easter!

Treadmill Blues

I wish this was a post about running on an actual treadmill and burning actual calories and getting awesomely fit. But it's not. It's about running on an analogous treadmill, where no calories are burned and nothing actually happens, you just keep running and running and not going anywhere.

Yep, you guessed it, this is a moan post. To be fair I haven't done one for a while so, y'know, I'm feeling entitled.

Possibly this could also be post-sub blues, or beginning blues, or the waiting blues. Or the NTAI blues. Or the dammit-I-will-never-be-a-rockstar blues. Or the kind of blues you have when you know that the chance of chocolate occuring in the next couple of hours is zero to nil.

But no. It's the kind of blues you have where you've subbed everything everywhere. You're keeping ahead of the rejections by soldiering on with the next story. You've done everything you possibly can to keep the momentum going. But you're still stuck in the same place as you were two months ago. Three months ago. Six months ago. A year ago.

Still nowhere in other words.

I'm sure it'll pass. At least, sometime something will happen and then I'll either be going up or down. I hope it's up, though realistically, given my track record, it's more likely to be down. But until something does, I'm stuck on the treadmill, running and running and going nowhere.

I guess at least my Pinterest boards give me something pretty look at while I'm here.

Anyone else got the treadmill blues? Or is it more the realisation that you'll never be a rockstar blues? :-)

I Hate Beginnings

It wasn't always this way. I used to love them. I used to find them really easy. An idea would pop into my mind and five seconds later I was writing it and it would just flow and the world was full of happy bluebirds and fluffy bunnies and singing princesses. Of course afterwards I'd have to rewrite the whole story fifty times over (including the stupid beginning) but hey, at least the start went well...

Sadly this is no longer the case for me. I've started my new WIP and it's taken me a week to get the first chapter right. This is unusual for me since when things are going well I can write a chapter in a day. My problem is - I think - that the more I know about character and conflict, the easier it is for me to see when it's missing from my story. Last year I'd push through the hard bits and just write in an effort to find the story. Now I'm finding I can't do that. Now I'm realising that when it gets hard, it's usually because I'm missing something vital and if I write through, I'll only end up rewriting over and over so it's better to get it right first time round.

This beginning hate is also partly a change of process. Instead of having an idea of the set up and writing instantly, I spend a LOT of time thinking about the story first, getting it straight in my head initially. This has been great in terms of conflict etc but when I sit down to write I've sometimes got too much information in my head and I struggle to get the balance of conflict, backstory, and character right in that first chapter.

Then there's the writing away and suddenly having to stop because you've realised you haven't nailed the characters down as well as you could have. This in particular has been a real bugbear for me, especially with this WIP, probably because my sheikh and his oil baronness were so strong in my head. I always knew what they'd say in any given situation because I knew them. But this time round it's been a struggle to fix Mr Rough and Miss Prim. She was easier. But he...I just couldn't get him. It's like the difference between a statue of a man and the living, breathing reality of him. I knew his appearance, his conflict, a fair bit of backstory but he just wouldn't come to life for me. I suppose the good thing is that now I know the feeling of having a character come to life - my chessman, my sheikh - I can recognise when it's not happening and can stop and try to find the 'key' to the character. And for me that's usually figuring out their layers. ie what's the mask they wear in public (their identity) and who are they behind this mask (their essence).

Anyway, to cut a long and VERY boring story short, once I'd figured out Mr Rough's identity (after only having to write his POV twice!) the stupid statue finally began to show signs of life and now I think I have him. Just as well since his conflict is going to be an extremely tough one to write and he's going to be another dark, angry hero that I will have to break. Hehe. *rubs hands*.

Does anyone else find beginnings tough? Or is it just me??

Peek of the Week - With Ink

See the inspiration for my new hero - and be afraid. Be very afraid!

Marriages of Convenience - Hot or Not?

I've kind of been slack at blogging lately. And slack at Twitter. About the only social media thing I haven't been slack at is Pinterest. Sigh. I've never been one for collages for my mss but there's something about Pinterest that's just so...Hmmmm.....

Anyway, my excuse for this slackness is due to finishing Mr Sheikhypants. Which I now have. Yay. Of course it does mean that now I have to write the synopsis. Not yay. Synopses and I do not get on. I'd far rather immerse myself in my new idea. Because yeah, now the sheikh is done, I have to put him away and think about the next story, and in the interests of staying ahead of rejections, I'm going ahead with a new Presents/Modern.

This new idea has come together rather different to anything I've done before and I think it's a good thing. Instead of coming up with a set up and charging straight into it, I've actually taken the time to think about it before I start writing. Isane, right? ;-) I've decided to do a marriage of convenience story since I haven't done one before and they're always popular, with an enemies to lovers slant on it. But it isn't really the trope that's the important bit. It's the characters that matter most. And this time I've actually tried to think about who they are as people first, before I decided on their conflict.

What I find interesting about this process for me now is that it feels like the characters come together in a much more organic way rather than merely being a collection of traits and conflicts stuck together. And now I know what type of people they are, I can look back over their pasts and see what their conflict might be and how it has shaped them. All of this without writing a word of the story.

However, this is going to be a tricky story. My hero has a very dark conflict, though actually, that's not the tricky part. The tricky part is thinking of a good reason for a marriage of convenience! Anyone read any good MOC stories lately? Was the reason for the MOC plausible?? Any hints gratefully recieved...

Adventures at 3.30am

I am a slacker. I was going to post earlier but I've totally been recovering from the trauma of getting up at 3.30am to pitch Mr Sheikhypants to unsuspecting editors (not to mention actually writing as much of Mr Sheikhypants as I possibly could). Naturally enough I had the usual nightmare - that I'd slept through and missed the pitch. You cannot imagine my relief when I looked at the time and saw it was only 12.30am. Thank God.

Anyway, a couple of hours later I dragged my sorry self out of bed and (despite terrible worries that the power would suddenly cut out or my computer refuse to work) managed to log on. It was a wonderfully friendly experience. I've never really been in a chat situation and it was fabulous that the editors were hanging out in the waiting room chatting with everyone too.

I was last on the list and around 5am eventually got to pitch. And I'm not ashamed to say that I froze. Completely. Twice. My head was full of GMC so when one of the eds asked me how my hero would pick her up in a bar, I kind of just stared at the screen going 'huh?' Of course AFTER the pitch I thought up all kinds of fabulous things to say such as my hero does not go to bars to pick up women! But did I say that? No. However, what I did manage to do was get across his conflict which they thought was 'very emotionally powerful'. Cue yays from me!

The editors also gave me some good advice re the heroine and also that since my voice is 'light' I need to get some darkness in there - cue more yays from me since I do love the darkness.

Anyway, I think I did all right since they asked me for a partial and synopsis, which is fantastic (the partial bit, not the synopsis)!

So go the sheikh!

Master Class at the Sisters

Naturally since I am the WORLD EXPERT at pitching, I am doing a post on pitching at the Sisters today. Here in fact. Of course, when I say world expert, I mean that term very loosely. Exceedingly loosely. In fact, I'm actually no expert (shock, horror), more of an enthusiastic amateur. And it's basically a post I wrote about the route I took when pitching. If you're interested...or you could have a look at this picture instead. Who is the inspiration for my blue-eyed Sheikh...

Mr Sheikhypants Wins!

Okay so I was naughty and didn't tell anyone that I'd entered the Presents pitch on eHarlequin. I probably should have but to be honest I have been getting a little sick of announcing that no, I didn't get anywhere so I thought if no one knew and I didn't get picked then I wouldn't have to say anything.

But, well, I did get picked. And Mr Shiekhypants seems to have been a winner.

To say that I am moderately pleased would be to say that Sally Field was quietly satisfied with her Oscar win. :-)

And I have to say, I am quite shocked because it was only an 80 - 100 word blurb, plus a 250 word excerpt so you had no room at all to pitch your idea. I am also not the world's best pitcher. However, I will say that having a hook really, really helps. And some books are 'hookier' (if that's even a word!) than others. I have no idea whether that was what made it with mine, but having a tough oil baroness for a heroine helped. She was totally my hook and I shamelessly used her!

I do hope, however, that I haven't bitten off more than I can chew with doing a sheikh story...

Oh well, I guess that's me all up. I like to make it hard for myself and not play it safe. But at least it's another small step forward in this ridiculous roller-coaster ride of a journey.

Playing it Safe

Sometimes I wonder if I'm not making things harder for myself. I'm thinking this after reviewing some feedback for a contest I entered a while back. It was my chess playing hero's story and he didn't do all that well in the contest. Why? Because one judge HATED the story. Now, most of the other judges really liked it. They scored me really well. But this one, particular person just did not like it at all. In fact, the only thing that would have made this story better for them would be if I had never written it at all. Same with my other entry - which actually did really well but only just missed a final placing. One judge did NOT like Presents. They did NOT like alpha males. And they stated it in the feedback sheet and scored me accordingly.

So now I'm wondering if entering my writing into contests is really a good idea. I knew my chess hero wouldn't get anywhere because he's a very polarising hero. He's damaged and hard and screwed up. He's a love him or hate him kind of guy and sure enough one judge loved him and one judge hated him. Perhaps if I'd played it safe and softened him up, he would have done better in the contest. Perhaps that's what I should be doing with all my stories.

This is why I'm wondering if I'm making it harder for myself. Because I don't like safe, tried and true conflicts. I like difficult, dark conflicts. I like flawed characters. Because they're interesting and when they overcome their difficulties, the emotional pay off is that much more intense. But it IS hard to pull off and some readers just don't like reading that kind of stuff.

It's a conundrum. My chess player was, I think, the first character I've written that truly came alive to me in my head. Who made me see that my characters in previous stories were amalgams of forced together traits and conflicts, like a badly put together mosaic. But he came together really organically, as a whole person, and just leapt off the page at me. I never had to question what he would do at a particular moment in the story because I always knew, because I knew HIM as a person. He has a special place in my heart for precisely that reason and when I write now, I remember how his character came together and if I'm not feeling that way about the characters I'm currently writing then I know I have to stop and think about them some more. I must admit though that when I wrote it, I did wonder if I should pull back on him. But then to do so would have been to make him someone he wasn't and I couldn't do that.

So I guess that's my conundrum, do I play it safe with the tried and true and make it easy for myself? Or do I keep writing about the characters and conflicts that interest me and perhaps make that publication goal harder? What would you do?

Mr Sheikhypants

When I was at university, I got through my English degree with a healthy dose of Mills and Boon. Shakespeare and Chaucer and Dickens and Bronte were leavened with lots of billionaires (or millionaires since a million bought you a hell of a lot more then than now!). But back then I was most particular about my heroes. I didn't like Mediterranean heroes and I didn't like sheikhs. I used to find them ridiculously over the top and one things was for sure, even when I thought I might give romance writing a go, I swore I would never EVER write one.

Oh how times change.

In my quest to challenge myself, I've decided to tackle a sheikh. When I announced this to some dear friends of mine (you know who you are!), one of them in particular could NOT get his head around it (he is a guy so fair call). He had many questions, all of which stemmed from the most basic of misunderstandings - why would anyone find a sheikh sexy? Of course, he's thinking real life. But these stories are NOT real life. They are fantasies. And for many women, a sheikh is the ultimate fantasy.

He's dark. He's brooding. He's alpha. He's kind of mysterious. What's not to like?

So I figured out a premise and considered my sheikh. Dark? Check. Alpha? Check. Brooding? Well, I tried to make him brooding. I really did. I wanted him kind of harsh and angry because that's what sheikhs are, right? Except Sheikh Fred (as he came to be known) wouldn't. He kept kind of morphing from Angry Sheikh into Amusing Sheikh. I did have to consult the inimitable Ms Yates who is experienced in all things Sheikhy and she suggested I let him do what he wanted to do. You'd think I would have learned about not imposing what I wanted on my characters but noooo.... Anyway, so it seems that this hero is not to be a dark, brooding, ruler of a mysterious desert desmene. He's to be a wry, amusing, charming ruler of a mysterious desert desmene.

I don't know whether this will work. It could be that this is my point of difference on the sheikh story (I'm not saying there aren't other sheikhs like Fred out there though). It could be a terrible travestry. However, I DO know that underneath he IS dark. He's got major issues. He just covers them with an amusing front. Which kind of makes it darker in a way....

So, anyway, back when I first read M&B, the heroines in sheikh stories tended to be ingenues thrown onto the mercy of this powerful, brooding king. I get that part of the attraction is the heroine being totally out of her depth but - again in my quest to do something different - I didn't want to do that kind of story. What I wanted to write was about what would happen if an alpha male was given an alpha female for a heroine. A woman powerful in her own right. So I thought I'd make Mable (my heroine, and no, her name isn't really Mable) be an incredibly successful businesswoman. But not at something traditionally 'female' like interior design or whatever. I wanted her to be powerful in a man's world. So why not an oil baroness (my friend couldn't get his head around this either. No, I know there are no women oil barons and I know the oil industry doesn't work that way but, hello!, fantasy here!)?

Of course, what they do isn't really what's important. What's important is who they are as people and how they overcome their various issues in order to find happiness. The sheikh part of the equation is just window dressing.

I'm going to have fun with my window dressing though, that's for sure. So anyone else tackle a trope or a genre they've always sworn they'd never write??

More Novella Love

I am boring for New Zealand about writing something different on the Sisters' blog today. I'd like to say you might win something if you do. But sadly all you'll win is my excellent regard for your good taste. :-)