Vixenwriter

Finished with my last edits of Taking Chase last night. I got comments back from beta which always helps mightily. Anyway, I find that I really like writing romantic suspense because it enables me to create emotionally complex characters working out their shit. And I like the mystery aspect as well. Anyway, it was fun to write and according to beta, I made them cry more than once, hee! This book’s heroine is a domestic violence survivor on the run from a homicidal ex husband. She lands in the small town that the other book is set in and the sheriff from the last book is who she ends up with. Only after a lot of struggle and they’re both very hot headed and so it’s complicated because she doesn’t trust herself or anyone else and he’s got his own baggage. Anyway, I think I did justice to both of them. We’ll see what my editor thinks.

And so I got back to Threat of Darkness last night after I finished up with TC. And woot! I’d been sort of stuck before so I put it aside and it’s in the zone now. Yay! I feel like I have a better handle on Mei’s character now for some reason. The muse is an odd thing but it just goes to show that sometimes you need to listen when she wants you to put something aside. So I’m already halfway finished with it from before (and as I read it over, it was something I was really happy with so that’s good) and I’m hoping to finish up by the end of the month or early September. It’s nice to do something paranormal after writing a few contemps in a row. The variety is really good for my creativity, keeps me sharper and interested.

The longer I do this, the more interesting I find the whole process of being a writer. Because it’s not just about the writing of the books. I know many authors wish that were the case, but it isn’t. There’s writing and then revising and editing, submitting. And submitting is different if you’re sending your manuscript to a new publisher or an already established relationship. It’s WAY easier for me to submit to EC and Samhain because I know what to expect and I know how to write for each. A new publisher is different, each publisher has its own rules and formats. And now that I have an agent, that’s a different process as well. She’s going to look things over and suggest revisions too. And of course you’re writing differently if you’re doing a proposal, which involves a detailed synopsis and a partial, or a full manuscript.

And then you deal with waiting. This is what I suck at. I HATE waiting. I’d rather hear a no back right away than wait months. I hate it. At my established publishers, the wait is not nearly as long as my stuff waits in NY. I try not to think about NY once something goes there but I fail. Refer back to the ” I HATE waiting” sentence above.

Once you hear back and it’s a yes, you deal with edits. Again, with EC, my editor and I have a good relationship and some good timelines set up. I have a rough idea when to expect things from her and I know in most cases it’ll be two rounds of edits and then off to final. With Samhain, things are a bit newer, I’ve only gone through the process once so we’ll see what happens this time.

If the submission is a no, you have to decide what to do from there. Do you submit elsewhere? Start something else? Revise? Thrice United, a the next Witches Knot book that should be out late this year or early next from EC, started out as Witches Knot and my EC editor didn’t think it was romance enough. My agent didn’t like the sheer number of characters. So I revised it and resubmitted it a year after first subbing it and my EC editor LOVED it. Sometimes your books need a cooling off before you can make them into something else. Sometimes you can’t bear to change them at all and they become “trunk books” that you hope you can sell at some time in the future. Enforcer was originally a proposal for an EC anthology. It didnt’ get chosen but my editor loved the idea and told me I should make it into a novel. I did some eight months later and it turned into a completely different direction and it’s probably one of my favorite titles. Sleight of Hand was an idea for a very short story that ended up a novella at Whispersl

And then it’s all final and line edits and releases and promotion. And I am a firm believer that promotion is important. But I often find that a lot of promotion out there is ineffectual or outright annoying. Honestly, I’m a reader too and I hate it when an author I never see except on a release day comes and drive by promos one of the lists and is off again. Readers are not a commodity! Show them the respect they deserve. For goodness sake, get to know them, talk to them! Don’t shove your book at them and run off.

There are chats, which I started off wary of but I really enjoy. And author days and that sort of thing. I do ads in RT and other places but I prefer the personal touch and one on one with readers. I like to hear what they like and don’t like, what they want to see more and less of. It may or may not affect what I write, but I’m interested anyway.

And then you write again. LOL. Usually, I’m writing, editing and in promotion mode for two or three books at once. It keeps me busy and I can’t complain about that at all!!

Okay, I realize that with vacation and computer woes I haven’t done any contests in a while!

So, for a dowload of reader’s choice of my available titles – I want you to respond – TO THIS POST (so i can keep track easily) to this question:

Who is your favorite Lauren Dane hero or heroine and why?

I’ll choose TWO winners from the posters on Wednesday the 16th at noon my time.

Good luck!

Lauren

Today my middle kiddo is five. Wow. People always tell you when you’re growing up that time will move by quickly once you’re an adult and they’re so right. Only you don’t know it then, which is kind of sad. I was telling him his birth story last night, a tradition round here on birthday eve, and he *got* it for the first time. Last year he sort of looked around and asked about his cake, LOL. This time he was like, “Really? The doctor had purple tie dye clothes on?” He’s starting kindergarten in three weeks. My baby will be two in four days and my oldest nine in three months. Time does fly and every minute, even those in which my kids are tying themselves to bookcases and running, is precious.

Weepy mommy moment over now, LOL.

I finished Taking Chase yesterday! Woooot! I’m editing it now and it’s out for beta so Angie the magnificent should be getting it soon. It’s an interesting process, writing a book. You write it bit by bit and have an idea of what it is but it’s not until you finish up and read it as one solid thing that you truly see it. Sometimes you have to shore things up and other times it’s better than you thought it would be. Usually, I find myself in the middle. I have to say that I really love this book and the characters.

Now it’s back to my paranormal universe!

I am sooooo close to being done with Taking Chase I can taste it. I always hit this point at the end of every book when I feel simultaneously anxious to be done and a bit sad it’s over. I’ll be sending it out to beta by the end of the weekend and getting it to Angie the magnificent shortly thereafter.

Then I’ve been really thinking about whether to finish up Threat of Darkness (Jayce’s book) or to write Minx and Connor’s book (Deadly Beautiful is my working title). I’m halfway finished with TOD, which makes it the better choice but I can’t get the opening of DB out of my head. We’ll see when I finish up with Taking Chase.

I was reading a magazine earlier where a reader wrote in to complain that all reviews should have a warning if the book is in first person and called for people to write publishers to demand an end to all first person books. Now, I haven’t written a first person book but there are several I quite enjoy. It seems to me that it’s akin to writing to demand no blonde heroines or no horses in books – you read what you like and realize that there are people out there who like what you don’t (heroines who scream every time they orgasm for instance). I can’t get worked up over it, I just don’t read what I don’t like. But I’ve found over my years reading, that if a story is well told, it doesn’t matter what POV is used or if there are horses or race cars or screaming heroines even. It’s a bit disturbing as I realize I’m sort of mellowing in my uh, not middle age.

Today, two of my three children gave me the “what the HELL possessed you to do that?” moments. Firstly, my five year old tied a scarf around himself and then to a bookshelf and ran. Yes. Ran. CRASH!!! I run into the room and he’s still trying to run, like one of those hyper little dogs and I’m yelling at him to stop before he hurts himself and I see that one of my favorite Japanese containers has broken into pieces and it had the roses that my dad gave me when I had my first child in them and my grandmother’s rosary and they were everywhere and I’m so pissed off and scared that he’s hurt himself and he’s STILL running and I’m trying to hold out the 2 year old with a foot and grabbing the other by his shirt and trying to untie the damned scarf as I’m gritting my teeth and crying. Ugh!

And then my two year old walks up, naked as a jaybird and hands me something. Yes, ladies and gents, the contents of the pull up she’d taken off. Sigh. I look up at my husband who’s figured out what it was she’s just handed me and I rush to dispose of the package and hold the child at arms length and toss her into the bath tub.

Honestly! Turds and scarves and I don’t know what the hell the 9 year old has up his sleeve but I shudder to think.

I’m back from a solo vacation with my husband to Las Vegas (and oh was it wonderful!) and some family road tripping which was fun but I’m done with being in my car with my kids for anything over 45 minutes for the next little while. I love them but they drive me nuts when they’re in enclosed spaces.

My computer is now being fixed (or I hope it is) and I’m sitting here on an old Mac. I am not a Mac person. I’m not disparaging Macs, they are just not my cup of tea. Plus all my books and excerpts are on my desktop so I can’t do anything here just yet. Sigh.

My most wonderful agent gave me a few ARCs to read on a new line that I’m quite excited to submit to. I had lunch with her on Sunday and it was really cool to put a face to the voice and emails. I do so love my agent and so it was nice to meet her face to face and discover she’s just as wonderful in person as she is on the phone and online.

I did get some reading done on vacation. Some of it was really good and left me quite satisfied. On the other hand, I have to admit that I hate stupid heroines and people who ALWAYS scream when they come. Seriously, it’s too much. Plus, in one book, the screaming orgasmic heroine always said the hero’s name with an exclamation point. What’s up with that? I can’t imagine knowing this woman. I don’t want to. Sure, sometimes it’s pretty darned hot when you come and occasionally you may scream. Screaming each time seems a bit of overkill as well as cringeworthy.

Back to my glamorous life, I need to change a diaper.

Generally, I hate rules. I know, how messed up is that when I’m a lawyer? But I digress (not uncommon, I know). I don’t buy into the “rules” about romance writing except for the HEA and basic punctuation stuff (and I am sort of a fascist about certain things like when people automatically put apostrophes in every word with an “S” at the end, WTF? There’s plural and plural possessive, LEARN THE DIFFERENCE) Whooops, that was a tangent.

Okay, back on track – So essentially I write the book that comes to me how it comes to me. I didn’t even know it was like some uber sin to kill off a character until I did it (and I’m not saying which book for those who haven’t read it). But you know what? Readers love that book, even if I make them cry (and he had to die, I swear).

And I write in multiple POV too. I can’t tell you how many other authors have clapped a hand over their hearts and gasped at me that I’ll never sell a book and how much readers hate multiple POV books. And I know there are readers who don’t like multiple POV books. Just as there are readers who don’t like erotic romance or who don’t like inspirational romance or whatever – you read what you like and that’s unavoidable and frankly, if I tried to write something everyone would love, how boring would that book be?

As a reader, I have my likes and I buy accordingly, but POV isn’t something I find jarring or distracting if it’s done well – so if you tell me a great story in 3rd person, go on with your bad self, or first or in multiple – the key is, tell it well. Tell it organically because if you are obsessed with the rules it shows. It bogs the story down and it becomes about form instead of substance. If you hate multiple POV don’t write it, if you hate to write erotic, don’t do it. Write your own story your own way.

Anyway, I do my thing and it seems like I’ve got folks who like it and I’ve sold 13 books so far which seems pretty darned good in my judgment. I write what I like and I’m darned lucky that people seem to like what I write (and there are exceptions, LOL).

I don’t outline unless I’m working on proposal either. I do pants it, I admit. As my mother would say, I’m a free spirit, I can’t help it. A free spirited control freak, which does not make me an easy person to be married to, LOL.

But I am superstitious. I don’t want to be, but I am. I have this new book I’m fleshing out, my husband and I are actually doing a bit of collaboration on the plotting and I’m really excited about it. But I won’t give details until I have a title and I’m further along. I can’t work until I get a title. It drives me insane!

This is all pretty pointless but I simply can’t think about Jan Butler anymore and so I thought, hey, Lauren, wouldn’t it be cool if you like, talked about, oh I don’t know, writing?

Let’s see, I’ve been terrible since my computer died about putting my new reviews up (oh and my ftp is all wonky on my laptop and I had to beg the ever marvelous Frauke for help, which she gave, to update my website)

Today I learned that Sudden Desire got an RR and FIVE angels from FAR! Jen says in part: A little wild and absolutely wonderful! Ms. Dane shows herself to be a very talented writer with this piece. All authors have the daunting task of creating likeable and substantive characters, and Ms. Dane successfully accomplished this feat in 43 pages, which I find truly admirable. I felt proud of Tess for standing up for herself and not settling for less than she deserved, and no matter how apparent Trevor’s flaws were, he proved to be an irresistible hero! With its touches of humor and a few blisteringly hot scenes, Sudden Desire was a complete pleasure. In fact, I think this is one of the better short stories I’ve read in a while.

Novelspot gives Sudden Desire an 8 and Elizabeth says in part: Sudden Desire is a fantastic novella that will surely tempt you – as it has me – to read more of Lauren Dane’s tales, and with choice aplenty that should not be a hard thing to accomplish. I already have a few tales picked out. Sudden Desire is stunningly sensual from the get go, and the pace is kept up right throughout the story. Rest assured, the sex is very detailed, and slightly adventurous in terms of locations, but no taboo acts are engaged in.

Suz at Ecataromance gives Sudden Desire four stars and says in part: Ms Dane has a rare flair for showing the true emotions of her characters. With the desire between this unlikely couple slowly simmering, you will simply be unable to resist reading on for the fireworks. Although short and sweet, WARNING, Sudden Desire is too hot to handle!

Cynthia at A Romance Review gives Sudden Desire Four Roses and says in part: Sudden Desire perfectly blended eroticism with humor. There’s nothing like a smart-aleck heroine to move the action and dialogue of a story. Lauren’s version of the office romance will make you grin long after you have finished the book.

Erotic Escapades gives Giving Chase Four Tattoos and Ophelia says in part: Giving Chase by Lauren Dane has many plot twists and turns to keep the reader guessing what will happen next. Maggie’s character has had very little love and affection in her life. She is not used to the boisterous and outgoing Chase clan. They open many emotional doors that she never knew existed. Kyle is an easygoing man comfortable with his good looks and uncomplicated lifestyle. His immediate lustful reaction to Maggie overloads his senses until he can think of little else. I was particularly impressed by Ms. Dane’s use of the vivid secondary characters which helped embellish the book. (…)

Giving Chase is a delightful story that I will pull out to read again and again. I hope Ms. Dane continues this series about the Chase brothers. They all sound so yummy.

Candy at Coffeetime Romance gives Giving Chase four cups and says in part: Kyle and Maggie are two excellent characters that bring absolute enjoyment and scorching, explosive passion to every page. Ms. Dane definitely has a winner with this story. I hope that this author will bestow more books upon us about the rest of the Chase brothers, especially the emotionally wounded Shane. I definitely believe everybody should make time for this book. This story was a pure delight.

Cynthia at A Romance Review gives Enforcer four roses and says in part: Cascadia Wolves: Enforcer , the first book in Lauren Dane’s new werewolf series. A feisty heroine and her forceful but sweet alpha male lover drive this clever engaging sexy romance filled with equally compelling secondary characters. Very well plotted with quick droll dialogue.

Contessa at The Romance Studio gives Sleight of Hand Four and A Half Hearts and says in part: Sleight of Hand by Lauren Dane is a thrilling romance story that is sure to set your blood on fire. From start to finish I was caught up in the dynamics of this exciting book. Both Lissie and Xander were very headstrong characters that did not believe in giving up on what they believed in. They were constantly butting heads, which made this novel a highly erotic and interesting read. The sexual encounters between Lissie and Xander were scorching hot and intensely passionate to say the least. I recommend this enjoyable read to all vampire lovers!

So Witches Knot Book Three: Vengeance Due, released yesterday from Ellora’s Cave!

Blurb: Simone Charvez admits she’s high maintenance, but she’s also more than the pretty piece of fluff everyone seems to take her for. When Kael Gardener walks into her shop, tattoos, piercings and bad boy attitude she knows she’s in for trouble. For Kael, the news that not all vampires are like the monsters that slaughtered his entire family is nearly as hard to take as his all encompassing attraction to a witch with a family that includes one.

Simone fights to get Kael to let his guard down and love her and Kael fights to keep his emotional distance from a woman he’s sure he has nothing to offer to. All of this as they race to find and kill the Oathbreakers who threaten not just all of New Orleans but Simone’s very soul.

Me, this morning, wet hair and no makeup, taking five thousand vitamins that my husband forces on me every day, LOL. I had two hundred emails, sigh.

We had breakfast and then walked down to the Fashion Show Mall (which in true LV fashion looks two blocks but is like five miles) but it wasn’t as hot as it was yesterday and we had a lovely walk. And they had a Borders which had Touch of Fae on the shelves and I signed it and left bookmarks too. They had Annalee’s book and two of Anya’s which was very nice to see. Even a Samhain title and the manager told me to come back the next time I was in town to sign more. A very good trip indeed.

Couples massage yesterday? Heaven. I love the spa services here.

We had gelato yesterday and then a late lunch at Sensei and I have to say it was the most satisfying dining experience I’ve ever had. I had the Tai (not my spelling) red snapper with rice flakes on the outside for crunch on a bed of pad thai veggies with a green curry froth (and I was dubious about froth on food but goddamn it was good). Deeeelicious. The man had the mushroom risotto with halibut and it was to die for too. But to start we had red chili naan and lobster and shrimp rolls served on an ice block ever so minimalistically cut to hold them and keep them cold. Honestly, I can’t even describe how good it was.

Then off to see Lewis Black. Excellent seats, third row although I hate the four people to a table thing they had. He was on, I laughed a lot.

Las Vegas, sigh. Seriously, I know that what happens here is supposed to stay here but can someone please tell the woman with the spandex super mini that it’s not made to look like it’s going to snap off and hit someone in the eye at any moment? I love that women are not self consious about their body size, that’s a wonderful thing, but not every outfit is made for every woman. Mini skirts are fine, just wear one that FITS. And polyester rubbed together over and over as someone walks in this heat is bound to cause an industrial accident. Men, okay, sir, please, please either wear a belt or get smaller pants, I don’t want to see your hairy ass. Nor do I think sandals with black socks and white bermuda shorts is a postive choice.

I need to corner someone later on today to have them snap a few pics of me and the dude. We got some at Benihana the other night but I don’t have a scanner here. Anyway, we’re having a great time! I miss everyone and hope you all are doing well and behaving!

The winner of a pdf advance copy of Vengeance Due is…

AvidR! Email me at laurendane @ comcast. net (no spaces) and I’ll get your copy to you!

Congratulations and than you everyone for your really great answers!