The Hardest Book I've Ever Written

I have six books published now, plus the short story, Meet Olive on GoodReads. The hardest thing I’ve ever written? Never Ready, hands down. You’d think it would be Chrysanthemum, because that was technically the first novel I wrote, and the longest. Actually, no, A’gust was the longest, and still is (working on that). Or AKA Lexi Frost because it was the first with an erotic scene. No, those all just flowed. No problem.

I haven’t really struggled with any in the Lexi Frost series. I’ve hardly struggled with the three I’ve completed in the Death of Secrets series, other than sheer length, or the fourth that I’ve got half done (working on that too).

The genies? Be Careful What You Wish For wasn’t difficult to write, although it was a pain to revise. It took a long time to get Viv’s character where I wanted her. Olive was remarkably easy, I mean for being such a troublemaker. The next book, Make A Wish! seems to be fine (half done with the edits, yes, working on that). Hmm. Before Never Ready, I would have said revising Be Careful What You Wish For was the hardest book I’ve done.

Writing Rerun, which next to none of you have had the chance to peek at, wasn’t this hard. It was different. Killing, a lot of killing. Darkness, but hey, it’s a thriller not a romance. But it wasn’t difficult. Okay, sure, I cried because, you know, killing, a lot of killing. Bloody doesn’t equate to hard.

No, it wasn’t until I ended the Lexi Frost series and started the Thousand Words series that trouble started. Wrapping it all up in one nice, neat package. I should have left it messy, it would have been easier. I wrote Transitions. But what about Never Ready? Didn’t I just say that was the hardest book I’d written? I’ll get there.

First: Transitions crossed marketing strategies. It started as Contemporary Romance and ended as New Adult Romance. Those assignments (as well as YA and MG) are based on the age of the main character. Well, there’s the other problem: It was kind of two books in one – choose your main character. Based on the number of scenes/focus, the main character was Dev, so I decided to make this the first book in the Thousand Words series, not the last in the Lexi Frost series and focus more on the New Adult side of marketing. And to make matters slightly more complicated, he’s seventeen when the book starts – in the Young Adult age group (not that I would in a million years classify this as Young Adult!) – but he went off to college midway through the book and was firmly twenty by the time it ended (Whew! safely New Adult).

Also, as mentioned before, it’s a ‘choose your character’ book. In romance, you typically follow only one romantic couple in a book, but I clearly had two: Teri and Flynn, and Dev and Lindsay. I start with one and over the course of the novel transferred attention to the other. It’s also traditional not to have intimate interaction until you get about 80 pages in. I didn’t necessarily break that tradition, it just seemed that way at first. No real problem there. And you don’t have intimate relations between anyone but the romantic couple, but as I said, I had two, meaning I had more than one intimate encounter between different couples. That’s kind of a no-no.

The big headache was how to let readers know what the hell I’d done with this book. It’s really two stories written together, and a progression of events. Some books are character-driven, meaning readers follow along because they identify with a character and need to see what happens to them (most Disney movies are like this or chic-flicks). Some books are story/plot-driven and the readers follow along because they have to know what happens (think Lord of the Rings, or any action-movie). Good books tend to be a mix between the two. Writers want the readers to be invested in the main characters, but also interested in the story as a whole because then cliffhangers work. We’re kind of evil that way. Sorry. This was meant to be story or plot driven and I just assumed readers would like the characters and follow along as I wanted them to. That’s not the way it usually works.

So I have this book, it’s appropriate novel-length with two couples, two love stories, but the events are so intertwined trying to pull it apart into two books just seems like a poor idea. And while I’m starting a new series for new readers of a (probably) different age group, I’m trying not to either overwhelm them with backstory or lose them entirely because they have no idea what happened in the Lexi Frost series. Meanwhile, those who read the Lexi Frost series may or may not be game for what mischief her troublemaker of a son is up to.

The whole time I was writing this book, I knew what I was going to do (plot-wise, and I won’t give spoilers) and that had me on edge. I knew it was going to be hard marketing-wise, and I couldn’t see a way around it. It was like I had a cloud over my head the whole time. Not even chocolate helped, although Hubby made a valiant effort and kept me supplied.

Even when I finished, it wasn’t really over. Revisions were like reliving the drama of writing it. And then I lost my editor. My second editor. So I gave it to the most anal of my beta readers and said ‘go for it.’ Then I washed my hands of it because I’d had enough. When it came back from formatting, and it was all perfect, I made one small change – and suddenly nothing was perfect anymore. So I got to spend all day fixing everything.

With a dramatic sigh, I stuck Transitions on Amazon – for 24 hours before an alpha reader decided to pipe up a concern that I really did need to separate the story lines. She made a good argument, and I pulled the book. There are five copies of Transitions out there. Sigh again and reach for a bottle of something mildly alcoholic. Hubby handed me Irish Cream, and thus Never Ready was born. As if writing and revising Transitions wasn’t hard enough, Never Ready was pure torture.

I figured out where the book would be divided and reassigned scenes as needed. Neither book was very long now, nor were they full stories anymore. I was already resigned to ending the Lexi Frost Series, and it was incredibly difficult to become reinvested to go back and fill in the blanks in Never Ready. I’d sown the seeds of trouble that wouldn’t sprout until the next series as it turns out.

It was also hard to go back into Transitions and finish it a second time. To be honest, I’ve written the two books following Transitions, and I went and stole scenes from the second book in the series to put in Transitions, so that made finishing that book a little easier. Although I moved a whole plot complication up by half a book and now I have to go fix the sequel. Then I had to fix Transitions to actually introduce all the characters. In Never Ready, it’s assumed you know the players, but I can’t do that for Transitions, it’s the start of a new series. Done.

Except Never Ready still leaves you with Dev and Lindsay on your mind, so I didn't really accomplish all that much by pulling the book apart after all. The troublemaker alpha reader sort of disagrees. Never Ready focuses more on Teri and Flynn (true). Dev and Lindsay are a big part of it, but their story doesn't really get underway until Transitions, so I can justify that book as New Adult Romance and Never Ready as Contemporary Romance. I at least solved the marketing problem. Knowing what genre your book is can be a big relief and that alone was worth the tears, frustration, and headaches. And the two pounds I gained from the chocolate. I actually put the chocolate in the acknowledgment for Never Ready. I'm serious.

Great, so I gained a specific genre, but did I solidify the story? It’s still the finale and transitional novel that I originally wrote so I'm concerned. My alpha readers think so, but they may be biased by this point. My actual readers are not given to reviews, although some do send me messages directly from my website. (I think that's great.) Time will tell.

I'm a Literary Psychopath

I’ve come to the horrifying realization that I’m a literary psychopath. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you why. Spoilers. Not a literal psychopath, a literary one. There’s a very big difference. Please don’t send people with torches or the police to my door. 

Most writers know that some of their counterparts, if they’re not among the sect themselves, like to kill the occasional character. It depend on what you write. If you write murder mysteries, it’s a sure bet you get to do this. Thrillers? Almost guaranteed. Literary fiction? Maybe, it depends. Write it and see where it goes. SciFi/Fantasy? The same. Romance? Um . . . not usually. Not graphically anyway. Long death scenes just aren’t romantic. (Take that Shakespeare!)

I write romance – usually - and I kill characters. Habitually, it turns out. But I don’t draw it out, except once. Well, and I have another one coming up . . . never mind. I also write literary thrillers, but that’s a new thing. Since I killed a character something like five times, I decided maybe that one wasn’t romance after all.

It’s okay, it’s good. It’s healthy. I save my emotional scenes (death, sex, whatever) for when I’m in the appropriate mood for them. When Hubby has a bad day, he takes it out on the dishes. Pots slam against the counter as he makes dinner, or unloads the dishwasher (and I shoot dirty looks to The Boy for not having done it already because it’s his job!) When I have a bad day, I calmly walk to my computer, lock myself in my room, and kill a character or otherwise ruin their life. The Lexi Frost and Thousand Words series? I’ve had those mapped in general for years. And I’ve been writing key scenes for years. I still have to write the actual books and jigsaw in the scenes I wrote a year or two ago, but the biggies I’ve got written or outlined because I was mad at someone or just really had to write a good sex scene and knew these characters hooked up at this point in the future. It’s the unexpected sex scenes I have to write now. Pretty weird for someone who doesn’t plot things as a rule.

And yet I still haven’t found a way to kill someone off by feeding them to piranha. (Everyone needs goals.)

Anyway, writing death scenes helps. It releases a lot of tension. Writing the aftermath of the death of someone from the viewpoint of someone who was close to them is even better. A lot of emotion there. (Okay, that’s worthy of the romance genre.) For those who enjoy writing, I suggest considering this as an exercise, assuming of course you have a supply of tissues on hand and no small children who are going to interrupt and ask you what’s wrong. It’s really difficult to explain a connection to a fictional character to a child.

“Your imaginary friend died?”

“No, honey, he’s not my . . . Yes. My imaginary friend died.” I killed him by having his parachute fail to open. Then his backup got tangled, forcing him to struggle with it and blowing him off course. He landed in a tree, breaking several bones. Falling from the tree, he then fell backward down a ravine where he landed among boulders and was bit by a rattlesnake.

“That’s sad.”

“Yes.” It was overkill. Literally literary overkill.

A Review and a Confession

          Okay, I got a one star review on AKA Lexi Frost the other day. This is the point where authors cry and/or freak out. No. Not even when I first saw it. It’s one star, and she was mad, but I can’t actually say it’s a bad review. Sound a little odd? Let me explain myself.
 

Ms. Upset-With-Me put spoilers in her review so I won’t quote it here. As a reader, I hate it when reviews do that, but I can see her point and it is a warning to others who are just looking for something typical to kill an afternoon. She read Be Careful What You Wish For and liked it and moved on to another one of my books. Logical, except she didn’t post a review about the book she liked, only the one she didn’t. Sigh. The Lexi Frost series is a little different. I didn’t have a warning on Amazon that I don’t think like other romance writers, and perhaps I should have. I’ll do that now.

Anyway, she picks up the book, clearly expecting me to play within the range of typical romance themes and I didn’t. I really, really didn’t. Here’s the thing with romance, there are a limited number of tropes out there. By ‘tropes,’ I mean the theme. At the most basic level, there aren’t that many. It’s not just the romance genre, this problem effects every genre. If you read enough, the stories are familiar. (Avatar & Pocahontas for example.) And just because a trope has been done a million times doesn't make it bad, it makes it popular. It also wears it out and readers may go looking for something fresh. A new trope, a new genre, or maybe something as simple as a new twist.

Tropes I see a lot are:

• Love Triangle –It’s a cliché, but it’s still around for a reason. Who doesn’t want to choose between two hotties? It’s a fantasy. But it’s old, and writers have to do something, anything to wake it up. Although, according to my reviewer, I went too far.
• Surprise pregnancies/babies – This is almost always from a brief encounter, which usually means someone was behaving irresponsibly but that’s usually glossed over. There are only so many ways to make the hero noble and the heroine pure of heart when they had a hot one-nighter and then have to pay for it. And every way to soften this has been done.
• Amnesia – Always fun and rarely are there moral qualms, but again, there are only so many ways to approach this, and they’ve been done.
• Finding someone who’s been right there all along – A sweetheart of a theme, and it gives you a lot of flexibility as a writer. The innate awkwardness of the situation can be great, and sometimes you have an ‘it’s inappropriate’ to make the ‘choice’ seemingly harder. It almost always has the “aww,” sigh of satisfaction at the end. Because of this, there are a million of these in the marketplace. Good news if you like them, but these books don’t stand out because it’s been done so many times.
• Rediscovery – A specific spin off theme, rekindling an old romance is somewhat popular, but limited. I swear every way there is to write this has been done repeatedly.
• Mistaken identity -– Like amnesia, there are a limited number of ways to make this work. Readers will overlook small plot holes (usually), and they’ll suspend disbelief (to a point), but making this theme fresh is hard to do.
• Servant or someone lower in the social ladder posing as something they’re not is a common idea in the mistaken identity trope. There are multiple movies in this trope, which shows how popular it is, and they’re all the same.
• Redeeming a rogue/rake – This is big in historical romance, and is frequently used in support of or supported by other tropes in contemporary romance.
• Forced marriage – Usually you see this in historical or time travel romance. It’s hard to set up in contemporary romance. Women today are intelligent (usually) and independent. When I’ve seen it in contemporary, it’s usually associated with blackmail or the need for money or the like. That doesn’t put your hero in a good position and makes your heroine appear weak. Still, characters are meant to grow and change and they have to make some big strides to come to a satisfying end.
• Marriage of convenience – Again, usually in historical. Like forced marriage, it’s hard to sell in contemporary romance, we just don’t want our heroes too sleazy or our heroine too pathetic. This often forces them to compromise too much of their character and that they would go for it in the first place lingers even when they salvage the situation.
• Changing a woman/man hater – Another common sub-theme in this category and more common in contemporary romance.
• Forbidden love – This is common in historical settings, but there aren’t as many barriers in today’s world. If your characters are sufficiently restricted for some reason, or unusually shallow, social standing will still work. There’s potential with the trope, but this is hard to pull off without the reader wanting to scream at one or both of the characters in contemporary settings. In case you’re wondering, that’s bad. Writers of contemporary romance usually tie this with another trope. It can’t stand on its own anymore, the world has evolved.
• This is frequently tied up with the “Finding someone who’s been right there all along” trope as a psychological reason why they can’t be together (Hero loves his ex-wife’s sister or such). I used this as a hurdle in AKA Lexi Frost as a companion to the Love triangle theme as did Stephanie Meyers in the Twilight series. (The two books otherwise have nothing in common, just so you know)
• The teacher/student and guardian/ward themes are touchy as it implies youth in one partner but not the other. Doctor/patient or other professional barriers have a place in contemporary romance, but you need to address the risk. If there isn’t a risk, then is it really forbidden?
• Waiting for the heroine/hero to be old enough is one that’s out there, but it’s so hard not to imply your hero is a pedophile or at least a predator. Some people like it. It makes other people uncomfortable.
• Rescue me – The hero or heroine needs help to accomplish something. Hopefully something interesting. Both characters can remain strong and this can stand alone as a theme. Every time I see it though, it looks familiar because it is somewhat limited. I can see potential in this trope breaking down some walls, the challenge is to be truly original.
• Save me from myself – I’m not sure what to say about this one, I don’t care for it as a rule because the characters frequently are weak and I want to scream at them. That’s me, some readers really love this. This theme is often tied with another theme to make one hero/heroine feel obligated to help the other. This one is frequently associated with redeeming a rogue/rake if the rescuing is internal, it’s just a softer version of it. 

I’m sure I missed some. Don’t sweat it, a complete list wasn’t the point. The point is: I’d like to see more original thinking in romance. To me, these themes are old and I’d love to see something completely new. (Fifty Shades of Grey wasn’t new, it was the BDSM backdrop that made it shocking/go viral. It’s a redeeming a rogue/save me story.) I’m not sure something completely new is even possible at this point. Instead, my challenge to writers of romance is to shake it up and think outside the box. Don’t just write one that fits in nicely with what’s already on your bookshelf. Be original.

To the readers: who cares if the trope is overdone if you like it? It means you have a ready supply of books. But when you thought you recognized how the story was going to unfold and there’s a twist, it can be a nice surprise. Of course, what one person likes, another may not. That’s why I’m not upset about the review. Reviews are personal opinion. When people read books they may like it, they may not. That’s the risk of breaking out of the mold a little. Readers may not be ready, they may not be receptive.

Okay, confession time. I knew my twist on the forbidden love aspect of my love triangle might get some push back. As a writer, it’s not going to stop me from trying to write something new and different, I’m willing to accept the consequences.

"Flynn's In" is out

For those of you who picked up AKA Lexi Frost during its free Amazon weekend awhile ago, the sequel is now out. (Because we're still at the beginning of the series, you can get away starting with the second book. Starting with the next one, you really need to know the backstory.) I had a lot of fun writing Flynn’s In.  Something about teenagers.

I know teenagers aren’t fun. They’re annoying. Mine are whiny, grumpy, lazy, inconsiderate, and seems to have a hearing impairment. Actually, The Girl isn’t lazy or inconsiderate, she’s a walking panic attack and going overboard to prove her little brother is the worst kid on the face of the planet (in theory so we’ll buy into her sales pitch to just get rid of him). I’m pretty sure pharmaceutical companies invented things like Valium because of teenagers.

The Boy isn’t the worst kid ever, he’s a fairly typical teenage boy. Trust me, that’s enough. Writing Flynn’s In, I didn’t get much inspiration from my teenagers, mostly because they weren’t teenagers yet when I wrote it. I did see the writing on the wall, however. Granted it was in crayon, but it was there, and it told me to do something a little different.

Writers tend to read a lot, it goes along with the job. If you don’t read, you shouldn’t write. I read a few books on raising teenagers to write Flynn’s In and the next one, A Thousand Words. It’s more obvious in the third in the series, but it’s there in the second too. Some of those little tidbits of advice to frustrated parents leaked in. Recently, I’ve been reading up specifically on teenage boys, so we’ll see if some of that advice leaks into the books I’m writing now.

Of course putting six teenagers in the heroine's house is just for fun. The point of romance is to escape. Fall in love again, feel those stirrings deep inside and remember your first kiss, get lost in the story and the seduction. Stories have hurdles, a house full of teenagers is one. I bet it’s a hurdle none of you would want. And these teenage boys will probably make you feel better about yours.

Two Great Romantic Couples, And You Can Keep Them.

I’ve spent the last week or so re-formatting three books for paperback. Three? But wait! There are only two published! Yeah, I can count too. Flynn’s In is formatted and the cover is done for print, and I’m still trying to get one teensy-weensy little detail cleared up before I can release it as an ebook. Okay, it’s the cover for Chrysanthemum, stop nagging. I have the “Coming Soon” section at the end and I have a blurb for Chrysanthemum, but not a cover to preview. Even close is fine. But I rejected the first concept and haven’t got the second one back. (It takes hiring a model for one lousy picture, which takes time.) Romance! Now if I’d gone with kidlit, I could grab The Girl, hand her some crayons and tell her to draw me a picture of Cat or something for the cover. No. Had to be romance. More sex than in kidlit.

So, yeah, I write romance. Sort of. I write a different kind of romance.  Just wait, you'll see. In my formative years, my favorite romances - the classics - were Gone with the Wind and Jane Eyre. I'll just say it now, I wasn't an Austin person. Pride And Prejudice And Zombies? Yeah, I was there for that, but only because of the zombies. Sorry, lynch me now.

So, Gone with the Wind came first. I didn’t like Ashley, I didn’t like Rhett, and I thought Scarlett was a bitch who needed to be slapped. As an adult, I'll give Rhett the benefit of a second glance and we'll see. I really don't know why I liked the book so much considering the only character I liked was Mammy. (Did anyone like Ashley? Besides Scarlett and his idiot wife I mean?)

So much for romance, but hey, 7th grade, moving on. Jane Eyre, let's get dreary. Yeah, I never saw what she saw in Rochester. At least when they filmed Gone with the Wind it was in color. Even when they film Jane Eyre in color it was still in black and white. The character's life was really that drab. And I liked her that way. (I'm really mean.)

The point of this is two great works of literature, great romantic couples, and I don’t like them. What does that tell you? No idea. I'll have to ask my shrink about that.

AKA Lexi Frost

AKA Lexi Frost

Lexi Frost is a successful photographer in a specialty niche: tasteful nudes. All she wants is continuing success and to keep her private life private. She didn't want to attract the attention of millionaire Paul Lovett. And she really didn't need rock star Flynn Peterson to fall for her during a photo-shoot either. Both are persistent but Lexi isn't interested, in part because she isn't Lexi Frost.

Teri Giles has a successful career, two teenagers, and their four friends. Okay, maybe having six teenagers in the house isn’t ideal. And her son’s basement band makes her buy aspirin in economy-size bottles, but she makes it work. Trying to hide an alternate identity and career from a house full of teens is a little chancy, so Teri was ready to scream before attracting unwanted attention.

Then her worst fear is realized: her cover is blown. In a split-second decision, she takes a chance on one of her suitors after swearing she wouldn’t love again. But Teri isn’t the only one who’s been keeping secrets . . .

Okay, so there’s my second book. Although it was written a good year before my first one. No one said this writing and publishing thing had to be linear, right? Good. As long as we got that straight.

As you can probably tell from the cover, this one has sex. I’ve been writing since 2008, and my first two books had a couple things in common: vampires and extraordinary length. This has neither. This was the book that broke that mold. Instead it has teenagers driving adults nuts and sex scenes. Life imitates art?

Erotic romance is kind of a good market to be in right now, in theory. You couldn’t tell by my attempts to get this book out there though. My editor was a hoot when I first tried to give this to her (keep in mind I also write paranormal with only implied sex). I said ‘contemporary erotic romance’ and her mind went to 50 Shades of Grey. Her stance was hell no! I assured her I didn’t write BDSM, it’s all normal vanilla sex. (I crossed my fingers because I imply . . . never mind. You’ll find out.) She caved, edited it, and didn’t complain.

Note: seeing red all over a manuscript returned from an editor is bad enough. Seeing red marks encroach into a sex scene is just wrong on a whole other level.

Fine, editor: check. Cover: no. Sigh. Cover artists have boundaries, and the one I had for the first book didn’t do erotic romance. She gave me some other names, so I had to shop around again. Okay. Cover: check. Amazon: uh, well . . .

We all know there’s contemporary erotic romance on Amazon. There’s erotica on Amazon (erotica = sex but no love story). I went to upload this puppy, it took the book and went into review like normal. Review is supposed to be about twelve hours.

Twenty-four hours later, I’m looking through the forums wondering why my book is still in review. I haven’t received an email, there isn’t any notice to say Amazon’s having problems, nothing. It took nearly thirty-six hours to get this darling online. But it’s there now. That’s all that matters. (I suspect it’s the cover.)