Vixenwriter

I am finally finished with revisions on Undercover. They were pretty light but I wanted to be sure they were as good as possible so I was extremely careful with them. Whew. Now I’m on to a last polish of Sensual Magic, which is due to Harlequin April 1, that shouldn’t take more than a day or so, and finally I can get back to Unexpected. Yay!

I have to say, I got pretty sweaty when I read back over the sex scenes in Undercover. It’s hard when you’re writing something and then editing the first time. You’re very close to the book so you can’t really gauge. But reading it over again, some months later I was like, “wow!” I think this is the hottest book I’ve ever written but also, I was pleased to see the emotional depth in places too. I feel better about it and I already liked it before. Sweet relief.

I ordered some goodies for RT for our Love Shack reader party on Friday (don’t miss it folks!) This party will have goodie bags filled with excellent swag that’ll be exclusive to the party including books from the participating authors. I also ordered postcards for Undercover and Vegas and they turned out so pretty.

I wanted to take a moment to say thank you to Frauke, the person behind the creation of this website (and also the hosting service for it, Janus Portal Hosting) and a great many other websites you you see around. As well as the person who designs my bookmarks, my RT ads and other various graphics like business cards etc. She is truly wonderful. I will give her a few elements and she always turns them into something wonderful. I’ve been a client of hers for several years now and I’m always just so awed by her talent. Plus she helps me with technical stuff when I just can’t figure it out. She always takes pity on me and with good humor. So thank you, Frauke - truly, you make my job so much easier and you do it with style.

Totally UNconnected to any of the above - did you know there was Fraggle Rock fic? I sat in a corner and rocked for a while once I found that out. And then I saw a guy in a furry suit with black leather assless chaps. Don’t ask where I found it. But, well just don’t ask. I think I may have bad dreams.

Now, I’m off to catch up on the stuff I let slide today to finish up with Undercover. Happy Hump Day!!!

In closing, to combat bad dreams - my dreamboat, let me show you him…

Marcus Patrick

Okay so it’s not really a secret that I get crushes on my heroes. I’m a hero-ho. While I’m writing him, he’s number two in my heart (right after my dude, who is sort of the template in some way or other for all my heros). ANYWAY, so I’m writing Sensual Magic right now. It’s the paranormal follow up to Stripped (coming in the What Happens in Vegas antho in May!) and it’s oodles of fun to write - my favorite kind of heroine, Nell is a cop of sorts. She totally KNOWS William is meant for her even though he’s all wounded and stuff, making him irritable at times and always arrogant.

Now William has been in my head since I wrote Stripped (fall of 2006, god that’s forever ago it seems) and with eighteen months of him in my head, I’ve really got a crush on him. The other day, I was looking at something at a celebrity site like Go Fug Yourself but not one and I can’t remember now anyway. So, I came across this man and I thought, this is him.

Josh Lucas. Who can be effortlessly sexy, classy, elegant and yet, he’s also fabulous in jeans, white cotton oxford shirts and no shoes with a corona in his hand. I like that range. I like the amusement in his eyes. Now every time I write I see him and William lives inside.

I’m currently attempting to hack up a lung so I’ll leave you with pretty pictures of pretty mens and stuff.

I’ve often spoke about how connected music and my writing process are - well so I’ve found myself listening to all this 80’s rock and I just scrapped what I had for Sensual Magic and started over. And yet, I’m totally cruising with it now. It’s now about Nell - which is what I needed. I knew about William but I didn’t know Nell. She likes buttrock. Score.

My soundtrack:

Rock You Like A Hurricane - Scorpions
No One Like you - Scorpions
She Sells Sanctuary - Cult
Hot Rockin - Judas Priest
Mr. Brownstone - Guns N Roses
Patience - Guns N Roses
Round and Round - Ratt
Live Wire - Motley Crue
Too Young To Fall In Love - Motley Crue
Livin After Midnight - Judas Priest
Shout At the Devil - Motley Crue
You’ve Got Another Thing Coming - Judas Priest
Paradise City - GNR
Welcome to the Jungle - GNR
Snowblind - Ozzy (technically a 70’s song but still, totally buttrock)
Close My Eyes - Ozzy and Lita Ford
Crazy Train - Ozzy

lml Wheee! lml

A pretty insane and yet sort of lazy weekend here. Yesterday was my birthday, the big FOUR OH. I was not pleased by this for most of last week but I was pretty much so busy I didn’t notice it until it was right on me. Which, you know, isn’t that bad. I did have a nice day. My husband let me sleep in, he brought me so many cupcakes even I couldn’t eat them all. My kids drew me pictures, friends sent me notes and I even wrote.

I found what I think is the foundation song for Sensual Magic. Sensual Magic is the next novella for Spice, the follow up to this May’s What Happens in Vegas -

Soundgarden - Fell On Black Days

Yeah, this one might be darker than I’d thought originally. Part of it is that I’m struggling against this other idea I really want to write but I have NO time to do it so it’s poking at me.

Now, I’m going to see if I can’t actually, um, well you know, write and stuff! Later this afternoon I’ll be hanging out with Maya Banks, Jaci Burtron and Diane Craver over at the Samhain Cafe. I’ll be there from 2 - 5 or so my time (pacific) but there’ll be fun to be had until 8 pm pacific!

Another song from Sensual Magic’s Playlist:

It’s just before the time when I need to leave my warm house again and take my middle kiddo to school. Madonna’s Ray of Light is playing and I’m drinking coffee and taking vitamins.

When I get back I need to finish up some revisions and get them back to Megan so we can turn Taking Care of Business around and get it to readers. Each book is its own journey and I have to say, Kate (my heroine) was hard to learn at first. Part of it was that I’d been interrupted a dozen times so each time I had to put the story aside to finish up something else, I had to re-learn her all over again. But each story has a sweet spot, at least for me. And that sweet spot is like an epiphany. All the sudden it’s clear - whatever it is that’s been lacking. You see it. You know your hero, or your heroine. You finally get what her big problem is, or you know what happened to him in the past and why it’s making him a dick now, or whatever.

It’s not necessarily writing blind - it’s like tasting the book and suddenly the full bouquet of it comes to you and it’s so vivid. I love that moment! Sometimes it doesn’t even come to me when I’m writing. I can be driving and see something out the window or hear a song on the radio or it comes to me while ironing. With Tri-Mates I had no real outline, I just had the idea of this tri mate bond thing and started writing (the concept came to me when I was writing Enforcer but I don’t do brother menages) and I’d planned on making Tracy good friends with Sarah, the Alpha female of her new Pack. but suddenly Tracy and Nick were fighting about Sarah and Sarah was not the character I’d imagined. She was such a fun villain to write because she was so totally unexpected. The whole money laundering storyline was something that just fell into my head as I was writing the first scene at the Pacific Pack House.

Other times, I plot very carefully and follow the synopsis I craft. But even then I still have the epiphany moment at some point or other. Because for me, the process is a surprise. I love that! I love that I find new things I hadn’t even imagined no matter how much planning I do. And sometimes I have to go back and re-craft something, other times it changes the ending a bit. It’s flying through my brain fast and furious or slow and sensual but it’s part of me and I couldn’t ask for a job I loved more.

I was chatting with Megan about theme songs for books earlier yesterday and she was telling me she’d found the one for her newest WIP and I was telling her that Dave Matthews Band - Crash was the theme song for Dirty/Bad/Wrong - my half of our jointly written novel - Taking Care of Business.

For those who’ve never heard the song, the video is a few blog entries below this one. The line “I’m bareboned and crazy is like a touchpoint of how Dix feels for her.

See, we started off pitching it as a dual author anthology with two side by side category novels taking place at the same event. Our heroines are best friends and there’d be some interweaving of storylines, dialog, etc. But a few editors mentioned wanting to make it one novel with alternating chapters and hey, well okay then.

So anyway, my part of the book was originally entitled Dirty/Bad/Wrong and it’s about Katherine Edwards, a contracts attorney who’s having a secret scorching hot affair with the in house counsel for a corporation she’s doing work for. The two are both at a conference and sure yes, hot sexin ensues but she’s now living in the same state he is and he wants more from her than just hanging out and having sex whenever it suits them. They get to each other in different ways but he’s surer of it, of himself. She lives a very bifurcated life - her private life is not something she lives during the day but he challenges that.

So as I began to plot the book I thought about who my hero was.

Oh Dr. Troy. He’s got some of Christian Troy from Nip/Tuck in him. But he’s not as selfish, not as wounded. But he’s still just naughty. I love that about him.

As for Kate, she lives in my head. I don’t see her face as clearly as I see Dix’s face. But I know her heart, I know her mind and I understand her. She doesn’t hate sex or men, she’s just careful. She makes the RIGHT CHOICES. And the right choices are very important to her. The right choices keep her safe. But Dix is sooo the wrong choice, but you know what? Sometimes you have to make the wrong choice just to know you’re alive. And sometimes making the wrong choice is actually the right one. But it’s going to take her a while to figure it out.

Anyway - that’s a little bit about my process, about my part in Taking Care of Business - it’s been really fun to work with Megan on this project. It’s a hoot to write about friends with your friend and the jointly written scenes with their back and forth dialog always makes me laugh. I hope people like it when it comes out late this year.

So I’m writing the tail end of Dirty/Bad/wrong - my part of Taking Care of Business and Dix and Kate are on the precipiece here - he wants her for more than just a woman to have sex with. She’s unsure for a host of reasons but she’s got a major thing for him because he gets to her in a way no one does - in a way she’s never allowed anyone to.

So as it happens, I have this very sex laden soundtrack for this book but one song that I keep returning to is The Dave Matthews Band’s Crash…

He says to her: “Bullshit, Kate. You know what to want. You want what you want.” He shrugged. “That’s not the complicated part. Wanting is easy.”

wanting is easy, needing is hard, loving is hard - love isn’t enough and she knows it.

There’s something about the song that gets at the rawness of desire tinged with love, with adoration. Because it means something more to desire someone you love.

50K on Standoff! Yay!

Also, in yay news - Witches Knot: Thrice United is now available in print from Ellora’s Cave’s new print store!

To celebrate the recent release of Feral Fascination, the anthology containing Reluctant, in print, several of the anthology authors will be at the EC Reader Chat tomorrow afternoon so pop over to say hello, read fun excerpts and have a good time!

I’m caught up in writing today so I don’t have much else to say! Oh, other than if you write a disgruntled letter to the RWR and pretend to be just a reader but you’re really an author in competition with the books you’re complaining about? Naughty. And not the fun kind of naughty either.

But on to the good kind of naughty - I hear it’s Gerard’s birthday. My goodness, I think someone needs some birthday spankings!

oh and

after looking at those it feels more like it’s my birthday!

Last night the dude and I watched Rise - a vampire flick starring Lucy Liu. I love vampire movies and this one was unusual and in the end I enjoyed it. I did think the timeline issues - flashback sequences threaded with current time sequences - were jarring and IMO, took away from the fluidity of the story. It was confusing AND, as my husband pointed out, kept calling attention to how she apparently had time to stop in at Gene Juarez for a color and makeup session in between killing evil undead. She did look very stylish, by the way. I think the wardrobe people did a great job.

It got me thinking about how technical issues in how we choose to tell a story can either enhance or take away from the overall experience for the reader/viewer. On one hand, it’s a bold move to do the flashback sequences the way the director did. An info dump slows down the story but with a story like Rise, it’s necessary. It could have moved more traditionally from the moment she was changed to the end, but he went another way. Interesting choice, it opens with girl kissing which well, let’s face it, keeps the dudes happy and it’s not like Lucy Liu is hard to look at by any stretch of the imagination, but it sort of fed into a quick buck sort of feel and then you’re jerked backward in time and then forward again.

Anyway, I’m rambling, but it made me think of Outlander (a book I love, love, love) and essentially, you do have some folding back and forth in time but it’s judicious and in Gabaldon’s case, it totally works because it’s judicious.

What do you guys think? What are some unusual technical things that worked for you and didn’t work? Memento comes to mind as a really brilliant story told unconventionally and just works well. Pulp Fiction too because it’s circular and you don’t quite realize it until the end and you’re like, “Oh!” In books though, I think messing with timelines is far more tricky than in a movie because the thread is mental and not visual. It takes longer to track back to the main story.