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Category: Writing

Posts in which we talk about the writing craft and process

Dreams, works under reconstruction, and other good ideas

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I must tell you that next week it will all about the one year anniversary of Hidden Paradise and the Baltimore Book Festival, where I’ll be speaking and reading from the WUR (that’s the Work Under Reconstruction) on Friday, September 27. But to maybe win a signed book (including one of mine) and start planning your attendance, check out this post all about the festival at the Romantic Times blog today.

I want to talk a bit about the Work Under Reconstruction today. It’s my first venture into self-pubbing and I’m a bit nervous about it. Its title, rather than referring to it as the WUR, is A Certain Latitude. It was published six years ago and was my major flop for many and good reasons, one being that it wasn’t that good a book. It had moments–many of them–but as a whole it didn’t do the job. Well, you try writing a book about sex and abolitionists and see what happens…

So I’ve been rewriting. Mostly I’ve been trying to make sense of the heroine. I think I have her nailed now (haw de haw haw, so do both the heroes).  About five times in the last couple of months I’ve hit save, turned off the computer and grandly announced “I’m done!”

The last time was yesterday afternoon. Then one of my beta readers gave me a fantastic analysis of the book that I read last night in which she suggested something about my favorite chapter. And she said … she said get rid of it. Noooooooooooooo.

But then I went to bed and had an amazing dystopian, Stockholm syndrome type of dream that tied into a novella I’m planning to write and I woke up with that bouncing around in my head and also absolutely clear about what I was going to do in terms of sorting out my heroine some more. And yes, it does involve cutting that chapter. It will make the book shorter, it will make it tighter and stronger and I need to go write what I have to do on the back of an envelope before I forget. Or maybe this blog is the equivalent.

Thanks, Anna!

Do you find dreams sort things out for you? Do you remember dreams at all? Do share, within reason.

Posted in Writing | 4 Replies

Riskiness Ahoy!

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djimon-hounsou1Many years ago, I started working on an erotic historical with a former slave hero and a French whore. Because, you know, just having ONE risky character wasn’t enough. I set that aside for a long while, but have just returned to it, and it now doesn’t feel that risky at all, given what romance has exploded into in recent years.

One thing it remains, however, is far too serious. I need my characters to lighten up, for goodness’ sake. Because sex is intense and meaningful to these characters, but it doesn’t have to be so ponderous (that’s my fault as the author, not the characters. Poor things, they’d probably like to enjoy themselves).

It is hard, however, to make erotic moments humorous. It can come off as slapstick, and not funny at all. I don’t want to go that far, but I do want my characters to have fun.

I haven’t read that many erotic historicals, but I keep looking for ones that are both super-sexy and not anachronistic (hard to find, for sure). Of course Pam Rosenthal springs immediately to mind, as does Robin Schone and Alice Gaines.

Have you read, and could recommend, any erotic historicals? Meanwhile, I’ve got to go un-serious-fy these poor people who just want to get–well, you know.

Megan

Posted in Writing | Tagged | 4 Replies

Winter is coming

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The instant I stepped out of the house this morning, I looked at the sky, sighed, and said, “Winter is coming.” (And, yes, that was a deliberate George RR Martin reference.) You see, I live in Seattle, and the sky above was a gloomy gray. It wasn’t raining right at that instant, but my car was dappled with raindrops from a recent shower.

Contrary to what the rest of the country seems to believe, it ISN’T always like that here. The weather gods console us for eight months or so of annual gray gloom with the best summers in the world. It hardly rains at all between July 4 and sometime in mid-September. Most days the highs are in the 70’s, maybe the 80’s, but even then it’s comfy in the shade because in keeping with our nonexistent summer rainfall it’s a dry heat. And because we’re so far north, we have long, long days to savor the perfection of our summer.

Summer in my city

And this summer? Arguably the best weather we’ve had in a generation. So you can understand why this morning’s cloudy reminder of what my city looks like the rest of the year made me want to weep a little:

Winter is coming for YOU.

That’s what my morning commute looks like in early November. In late December it’s still pitch dark, even though I don’t get to work till 7:45 or so.

Our local weathermen faithfully promise our sunshine will be back, maybe as soon as tomorrow. But I still can’t escape the signs of the changing season. We’re starting to get mail from the school district with logistical info for Miss Fraser’s fourth grade year, which starts in less than three weeks. We’re planning our holiday vacation time at work, since we have to juggle our schedules to make sure someone is in the office. The spam in my inbox is giving me great offers on new fall fashions.

But throughout the seasonal rhythm of the year, my writing remains a constant. Now that A Dream Defiant is out, I’m hard at work on my proposal for its sequel, which is set mostly in America in the aftermath of the Battle of New Orleans. And I’m already busy researching my next manuscript–one with a French hero, set during Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812. The winter that’s coming for Jacques Gordon (yeah, he’s French, but he’s also half-Scottish, and related to the Gordons in my earlier books) is far more dire than anything Seattle is likely to throw at me….

Retreat

What does the changing season have in store for you?

Posted in Risky Regencies, Writing | Tagged , , , , | 12 Replies

The great SF mobile writing retreat

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I’m on my way home after a week in San Francisco hanging out with Pam Rosenthal and staging the great SF mobile writing retreat. Mobile in the sense that we had no fixed address (apart from my solo turn at Pam’s kitchen table yesterday), but parked ourselves in whatever coffee shop had wifi–which is of course essential to good solid writing–and power. (btw, Starbucks, you cannot make a nice cup of tea. I don’t know what it is but it tastes stewed from the get go. I guess this is what happens when you order tea in a place renowned for its coffee.)

We both got a lot of stuff done and also polished up our presentations–mine was on writing humor, which I gave to the SF-RWA last Saturday (and it’s coming to Maryland Romance Writers in November). Pam’s was last night at the Pink Bunny, an upscale lingeries/sexy stuff store, about writing BDSM. Both very well received. All this and I got to have nachos with the lovely Ms. Jewel, Korean food with the lovely Isobel Carr, and lots of book talk. Lots more great food in good company and a memorable day in the Asian Art Museum.

It’s interesting how productive you can be with a friend parked opposite you also being productive. Why is this? We didn’t resort to cries of encouragement or word counts within a certain amount of time. I don’t know that either would have worked since we both have such different styles and I am doing a rewrite/reconstruction (don’t ask me how, I lost my final manuscript. Well, it was written seven years ago). We didn’t even talk to each other much (not while writing). We just sat there and plugged away.

An interesting process. I don’t know how long this would have taken on my own, weeks or months rather than days, and I got some icky plot problems solved from the original and figured out how to work in a final sex scene. Pam very wisely told me I needed more talk less action and she was right. And I got to see a couple of excerpts from her WIP. (No, I’m not saying a word.)

I don’t know why this particular chemistry happens, and I’d like to hear your thoughts. Is it because writing is such a solitary pursuit that having a bit of company is a comfort? That  if you get to one of those places where you get stuck knowing that you have someone to bounce an idea off gives you the oomph to move forward?

What do you think?

 

 

Posted in Risky Regencies, Writing | 2 Replies

“I Ain’t Sayin’ She’s a Gold-digger”

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I discovered this series earlier this week, and I am just beside myself with how funny and how generally accurate it is in its synopses and analyses. My absolute favorite kind of humor is the high-low, where something gets put through a pop culture filter, and this is the epitome of that (also why I like Eddie Izzard’s stand-up so much).

Writing is going okay; I hope to have a proposal for my editor within a week. I’m writing a Duke for the first time, and it’s definitely fun, because everyone does what he wants. And he doesn’t always want that (should I call it The Oxymoronic Duke?)

Posted in TV and Film, Writing | Tagged | 2 Replies