A Real Quickie

Today is Friday, which is always crazy day around here because my kids have after school activities they must be ferried to and from. But it is extra crazy today because 1) my oldest son has an extra appointment, this one the dentist and 2) it's my husband's birthday, which means I have to take the kids to my mother in law's and drop them off so hubby and I can have a nice, romantic dinner and movie.

And somewhere in there, I need to get my husband a birthday present (especially after he unexpectedly brought me a present on Valentine's Day, which we normally don't celebrate!). He dropped the hint last night that he'd like his own iPod because the stuff on the speakers in the office is more like people randomly banging pots and pans and hollering than anything that resembles music.

I'm probably not going to get a chance to write today (or, indeed, until next Tuesday, because the weekend is packed). I mean, I might find time to whack out a few sentences or even a couple of paragraphs, but anything other than that is pie in the sky.

And I hate it when I don't get a decent chunk of writing time for days at a stretch. I begin to lose touch with my characters, with my story, and my passion for it. I don't need to write a lot, but if I don't write at least four manuscript formatted pages each day, I definitely start to feel like a slacker.

So, what about you? Do you have to write every day or do you just write whenever you have the time and/or feel like it? Do you have a target number of pages/words or do you just write as much as comes out and then walk away, no matter how much or how little it was? Inquiring minds want to know!

Lyric Thursday--The Last Chance Texaco

I mentioned back in December that my husband gave me a 30 GB iPod for Christmas. And I have to admit, it's incredible. Not because I never listened to music before (I did, and a lot), but CDs tend to fall to the back of the pile as new ones come into the house and then inertia takes over and I stop listening to the older ones. But ripping to them to iPod has meant I listen now to songs I've always loved but haven't heard in years.

But in addition to music, I'm in love with words. And rediscovering some of these gems in my CD collection has made me want to share them. So starting today and until I run out of great musical poetry to share, I'm going to post the lyrics to one of my favorite songs (mostly lesser known ones) every Thursday. Hopefully, I'm not busting anyone's copyright by doing so, but I'd like to think the artists would appreciate this rather than hate it. I'd share the music files, too, except, darn it, I know that's naughty!

As you might have guessed from the title of the post, the first installment is a song called The Last Chance Texaco, by Rickie Lee Jones. It's from her first, self-titled album, famous mostly for the hit Chuck E's in Love. I love the lyrics to this song because they're such a wonderful poetic (and double-entrendre filled) twist on the language of car mechanics and transportation. I wish I could share the music and her singing with the words, because they're an integral part of the package. But if you've never heard the song before and you like the lyrics, I hope you'll consider finding a copy for yourself!

The Last Chance Texaco
by Rickie Lee Jones, copyright 1979

A long stretch of headlights
Bends into I-9
Tiptoe into truck stops
And sleepy diesel eyes
Volcanoes rumble in the taxi
And glow in the dark
Camels in the driver's seat
A slow, easy mark

But you ran out of gas
Down the road a piece
Then the battery went dead
And now the cable won't reach...

It's your last chance
To check under the hood
Last chance
She ain't soundin' too good,
Your last chance
To trust the man with the star
You've found the last chance Texaco

Well, he tried to be Standard
He tried to be Mobil
He tried living in a World
And in a Shell

There was this block-busted blonde
And he loved her - free parts and labor
But she broke down and died
And she threw all the rods that he gave her

Ah but this one ain't fuel-injected
Her plug is disconnected
She gets scared and she stalls
She just needs a man, that's all

It's her last chance
Her timing's all wrong
Her last chance
She can't idle this long
Her last chance
Turn her over and go
Pullin' out of the last chance Texaco
The last chance

There's another Rickie Lee Jones song from her second album, Flying Cowboys, called Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying on the iPod right now and it's fabulous, too. Damn, this woman is a lyrical and musical genius!

Sex, Love, and a New Wardrobe

Probably because I've decided to put myself in the business of writing love stories with explicit and (I hope!) steamy sex scenes, I find the results of studies like this one more than a trifle disturbing. (In case you didn't feel like clicking the link, this study found that the average woman would be willing to give up sex for 15 months in exchange for a new wardrobe. I won't bore you with the other details; that about sums it up.)

First and maybe foremost, I'm disturbed because I hate the idea that women are such shallow consumerists, they would rather have new clothes than share a physical expression of love with their partners. It's so...materialistic. So...I don't know...American!

I will be the first to admit I am something of a clothes horse. My husband often doesn't know I've bought new items of clothes because I have so many already, if he sees something he doesn't remember, he's just as likely to think he's suffering from wardrobe amnesia as that it's a new item. So I like clothes. A lot! It's just that I wouldn't dream of giving up sex for them, any more than I'd dream of giving up food or shelter for them.

Perhaps my knee-jerk "no way" response to the question is driven by the fact that I'm married and very contentedly so. There were periods before I was married when I probably abstained from sex for 15 months at a stretch and, because I wasn't involved with anyone, I didn't particularly miss it. (I also didn't get a new wardrobe in exchange, more's the pity!) I gotta have the emotional connection to find sex satisfying. But if I have the emotional connection, giving up sex for any length of time would be to starve myself (not to mention my partner) every bit as much as if I were to stop eating. And that was true even when I was pregnant or breastfeeding and my libido was in the tank due to a combination of mommy hormones and lack of sleep. I wasn't necessarily hot to trot most of the time in those days, but even then, I wouldn't have been willing to abstain for more than a year!

But the second reason it disturbs me is because I think it's such a sad commentary on how unfulfilling sex must be for so many women. I mean, really, if 60% or so of women are willing to give up sex for 15 months or more, whatever they get in exchange, it's got to be in large part because they don't find sex as satisfying, either physically or emotionally, as (say) chocolate. (How much would you like to bet that the results would be the same if they'd asked women how long they'd give up chocolate for a new wardrobe?) And wow, that's such a bummer!

Now, back to the romance novel.

I've always enjoyed reading good love scenes because they put me into the characters' physical and emotional reactions to one another so well. I can easily translate my experiences to theirs and thoroughly immerse myself in their relationship. A love scene is a huge "show" for me when it comes to feeling that the hero and heroine are truly in love with one another, even if they don't realize it themselves yet. (It doesn't hurt that a good love scene can also stoke the homefires a bit! I joked when I first saw the results of this study that maybe the average woman just needs to read more romance novels.)

And up to now, when writing them, I always assumed that the fantasy aspect of a romance novel love scene was more in the intensity of the sexual interaction than anything else. In other words, I hadn't really considered the possibility that I was writing about something that a sizable proportion of my readers might never (or only very rarely) have experienced for themselves. That the sex/love scenes in my stories might be as much a fantasy to many readers as the Quidditch game in Harry Potter.

Perhaps paradoxically, these reflections have also given me a greater sense of "mission" than I had before. I've always felt the romance novel (and perhaps to an even larger extent, erotica) is in large part about giving women permission to enjoy and appreciate their sexuality by providing healthy, positive role models. But post-sexual revolution, I've often wondered if the need was still there. It seems, however, it's not only still there, it's as prevalent as ever.

Or maybe I'm just suffering from a powerful case of pretension and self-importance!

Retreat Report

So, I see from Lacey's blog this morning that I am under some pressure to post something about our retreat over the weekend. (Of course, in the time it took me to write this, she's already made not one, but two ginormous postings about our weekend!)

Well, of course, it was fabulous! Do I need to say more than that?Apparently so, since my post is supposed to take the place of the long one that Lacey couldn't get ported to WordPress!

So, where to begin?

Well, first of all, Darcy and Lacey are as lovely and fun in person as they are in email. Okay, that's not true. They are even more lovely and fun in person! I spent most of Sunday after they'd left moping and wishing they were still here.

Since they came to visit me in my hometown, I won't tell you about the small bit of sightseeing we did. I'll leave that up to Lacey. (I'd leave it to Darcy, too, but she keeps refusing to get a blog! Seems to think it will interfere with her actually writing. Smart woman!)

But mostly what we did was sit in the hotel room and talk. And talk and talk and talk. About our books, even! Speaking of sitting in the hotel room, here are a couple of pictures:

Lacey and Darcy

Darcy and Me

We did have a nice dinner out on Friday night with my family and an amazing lunch at a restaurant called The Prado in Balboa Park (the steamed lemon cake with blackberry sorbet dessert was divine) on Saturday, but by and large, we spent our time very productively.

We got a ton accomplished. Or, at least, I feel we did.

We figured out how to cut Living in Sin down to a reasonable size. It turns out there's a lot more that can go than I initially thought. It might even wind up being a standard, 100,000 word single-title historical when all is said and done. Yay!

We also came up with a revamped plotline for Darcy's Notorious which we all think is going to resolve the most significant problem that manuscript has always had (to wit, the hero and heroine aren't physically together often enough in the first third of the story) and reworked her characters' GMCs and arcs to match the new story. I'm so excited about it, I wish I were writing it!

Of course, we also (perhaps perversely) decided that she should finish writing the second book in the trilogy, Glorious, before revisiting Notorious for the third or fourth time. Because the first half of Glorious completely lives up to its name! And that means she can probably pitch it sooner than Notorious, assuming she finishes it.

Finally, in addition to discussing some minor issues in Lacey's new partial for If You Asked the Devil to Dance, we actually plotted out the third book in the series in about a half an hour of discussion. And it's going to be awesome! Again, damn it, I wish I were writing it.

So, here's the thing I didn't know before we had our retreat: the energy and immediacy of having your critique partners in a room with you is incredible. I don't have any local critique partners--everyone I work with, I work with via email. And that's certainly not bad. But it's not real time. I never realized how different it would be to have my critique partners in a room with me, brainstorming ideas with me. Call me stupid, but it's true!

Needless to say, I can't wait to do this again. Even if I wind up in the doghouse with my husband for a week afterwards instead of just a day! (He was a little shocked to discover he was on his own with the kids all day Saturday, LOL!)

What Is Happily Ever After, Anyway?

Since I'll be spending most of my day tomorrow picking up people (Lacey and Darcy at the airport, my kids from assorted after-school venues), I thought I'd best write my Friday post a day early.

During my typical morning bout of procrastolation, I visited Alice Audrey's blog (among many others). One of her posts (about whether or not "cold feet" are normal for brides and grooms on their wedding day) got me thinking about romantic relationships in general. Specifically, I started ruminating on the question of what makes a romantic partnership happy and successful.

As I said in a comment on Alice's blog, I didn't have cold feet on me wedding day. I had "performance anxiety"--you know, am I going to trip coming down the aisle? am I going to faint during the ceremony? I going to mess up my vows (it was my husband who did that, BTW--he said "With this wing, I thee wed")?--but I was completely confident I was marrying the right man. And after 17 years of marriage, I haven't been proved wrong. In fact, to this day, some of my worst nightmares are the ones in which I either marry one of my ex-boyfriends or do something incredibly stupid and wind up divorced from my husband. Happy dreams where I never met my husband or didn't marry him are exceptionally rare. In fact, I can't remember one.

I assume this (among other things) means we're happily married. Oh, that's not to say we don't have our moments of discord. Nope, there's plenty of those! (And having three kids gives us way more opportunities to disagree than when we had none.) It's just that, on balance, our relationship is way heavier on positives than negatives.

Thinking about this made me recall a sermon our pastor gave about a year ago about some research done by a sociologist, John Gottman, on why marriages succeed or fail. (You can click here and here for his books on the subject.) And one of the things Gottman found was that the positive interactions in successful marriages exceeded negatives ones by a ratio of 5 to 1. That is, for every negative interaction, there had to be five positive ones or the relationship was on shaky ground. He then goes on to describe what he calls the Four Horsemen of the Marital Apocalypse (don't you love that phrase?): criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling. When people start using these tactics with one another on a regular basis, they're headed straight for divorce.

I'm sure by now, you're all thinking, "This is very interesting, Jacqueline, but will you get to the point already?"

Okay, the point is this: how many romance novels have you read where the hero and heroine, in the process of falling in love with each other, have more negative interactions than positive ones? Perhaps I'm jaded by some of the books I read twenty or more years ago when forced seductions and, yes, even rapes, abounded, but it does seem to me that authors occasionally resort to having their characters do an awful lot of arguing and disagreeing as a way to ramp up the sexual tension. After all, if the hero and heroine are getting along famously, there's not much conflict, is there?

On the other hand, shouldn't there be at least as many positive interactions between the hero and the heroine as negative ones (I'm not asking for 5 to 1 here!) to make us believe the characters have enough in common that they actually can live happily ever after? That they might like one another beyond wanting to get into each other's pants?

I'm not saying this is the case in most romance novels. It's just that the ones that seem to stick with me are the ones where I felt rather sorry for the hero and heroine for ending up with one another. I've read a few of those recently, and while I won't say which ones or by which authors, I will say that reading them has convinced me I'm not into "dark" romances.

I have to say, in my own stories, the conflict is rarely caused by the hero and heroine not getting along. I like to show how the characters make each other better, stronger, happier. That doesn't mean there isn't conflict, of course, but it's more to do with their inner resistance to being the better, stronger, happier people they make one another become than anything else. Because I think that's a lot of what love is about: surrendering to becoming the better person you think you're not.

To Excerpt or Not To Excerpt

I've enjoyed reading excerpts on many aspiring writers' blogs of late. Beverley, Courtney, Maggie, Pam, and Tessa have all posted lovely little morsels from their stories recently and I've gobbled them all up with great glee. (Pam's Cindy Rella story is priceless, by the way!)

This raises the question, however, of why I don't post excerpts on my blog. Partly, it's because I do have an excerpt from Living in Sin posted on my website. And partly, it's because I don't intend to share more of the my writing than what's on the website with anyone other than my critique partners.

Why not? Mostly, it's just a feeling. A feeling that I shouldn't overexpose my work too soon. A niggling concern that if I flaunt what I write everywhere, it will become less valuable. Less saleable.

Now, maybe that's a silly concern. But it gives me pause, anyway.

Secondarily, but not insignificantly, I worry about plagiarism. I'm not so vain as to believe that I'm such a great writer, anyone out there will deliberately steal my work. On the other hand, I'm not so naive as to think it couldn't happen, consciously or unconsciously. There have been enough incidents in the publishing world in the past year or so to convince me it could happen.

And so, for the most part, I'd rather keep the majority of my ideas to myself until they're safely published and protected. I know, I know. Anything you write has an implied copyright. But it's not the same and it's not as easy to enforce.

That said, Erica's lovely praise for Carnally Ever After, the "quickie" I just wrote and submitted to Ellora's Cave, has moved me to share a tiny little scene from it here. I don't want to post this excerpt on the Jacqueline Barbour website because, if Ellora's Cave picks it up, it'll be published under a different pen name with a separate website. But that doesn't mean I can't post it here, where it'll certainly get buried under hundreds of posts over the years!

So, without further ado:

Louisa picked through the larder, shaking her head as she rejected vegetables in turn. Lettuce? Definitely not. Carrot? Too narrow. Turnip? Too short and too fat.

At last, she lighted on a cucumber. Wrapping her hand around it, she nodded with satisfaction. Just right.

“Can I help ye wi’ summat, milady?”

Startled, Louisa nearly bumped her head on the low ceiling above the vegetable storage bin as she backed out. She folded the purloined cucumber in her skirt and secured it with one hand before turning to face the scullery maid. “Oh, no, that’s quite all right.” She didn’t meet the eyes of the frizzy-haired girl, but focused instead on the servant’s red-knuckled hands.

“Are ye sure?” The maid’s hands wrung one another.

Louisa nodded. “Most assuredly. I was just leaving.”

Making good on her words, she straightened and brushed past the maid, forcing herself to keep her steps slow and unhurried. It was only when she heard the scullery maid mutter, “Now, I knowt there was another cucumber only this morn,” that Louisa quickened her pace.

She didn’t slow down until she reached her bedchamber three floors up and closed the door. Leaning against it, she took a few calming breaths and extracted the ill-gotten vegetable from her skirts to examine it.

It was a good deal longer than the real thing, but the circumference seemed about right. The skin wasn’t as smooth and entirely the wrong color, but that couldn’t be helped. All in all, it ought to do the job quite nicely.

I'm not sure this is quite as funny to read as it was to write. (I laughed myself quite silly at the time.) Still, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I've enjoyed everyone else's "sneak peeks."

On iPod: Lady Writer, Dire Straits

Manic Monday

To go with my Friday Follies, I suppose.

I had a great, writing-related topic all lined up in my head and then, in the craziness that has ensued since Friday night, I completely forgot what it was. You see, they're falling like flies here with a high-fever-and-vomiting virus that I pray either skips me or gets through me before this coming Friday. If I were seriously ill, it would seriously detract from our first ever Manuscript Mavens retreat!

So, I have nothing particularly interesting to impart unless you want to read Lacey complimenting Living in Sin in not one, but two different places in the blogosphere today. First, she posted on Romantic Inks and then on her own blog. I told her she'd better stop lest I be unable to get out the front door of my house, but the truth is, I'm mightily pleased she's finding this version of the manuscript so engaging and so textured. I have no idea how I did it, but I'm glad I did! I'll let you all in on the secret if I ever figure it out.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I have sick children to attend...again!

Friday Follies

This post is going to be kind of a mishmash of stuff with no great unifying theme, so bear with me. Keep in mind that I spent 16 hours either working or on planes/in airports on Wednesday and then all of yesterday fighting a monstrous, sleep-deprivation headache, so I'm still a little disjointed.

Next Friday, Lacey and Darcy are coming here to San Diego for our first ever critique partner retreat, and we are all looking forward to it. Of course, we've all also been working madly to get our manuscripts to a point where we can provide one another with meaningful input. And that means finishing this week so we all have a week to read through each other's stuff before the retreat.

To that end, I completed my first pass through Living In Sin late yesterday afternoon. It's still too long (a little over 116,000 words), but I did manage to whittle it down by about 10,000 words out of it while adding some stuff that wrapped up some previously unresolved plot points. There are a few scenes that could probably be eliminated or collapsed into other scenes, but I thought I'd make Lacey and Darcy (and Erica, who won't be coming to the retreat but will be reading and commenting) do the hard work and figure out which ones and how, LOL!

The other thing I've been working on for the past few weeks (which I debated mentioning on the blog because I wasn't sure I wanted to make it "public" if it sells, but in the end, I'm just to gabby not to tell!) was a "quickie" erotica for Ellora's Cave. Annie Dean mentioned the call for submissions on the Naughty Nuptials theme, due February 1, and issued something of a challenge to those of us who read her blog. I wasn't sure I'd be able to come up with an idea, but within 48 hours of reading the submission guidelines, a story presented itself to me and once that happens, all bets are off.

I wrote Carnally Ever After, a Regency-set short story (the mandated length is 10,000 to 15,000 words; my story clocked in at a little under 14,600 words), in just under two weeks, and, after making a few changes based on critiques from the ever-wonderful Darcy, Erica, Lacey, and Leigh, submitted it to Ellora's Cave on Wednesday morning. Publication date is June of 2007, so I should hear something by late May at the outside, I'd expect. We'll see what happens, and it was fun to write, however it turns out!

In other, completely writing-unrelated news, my oldest son (9 1/2 years old) will be playing Mr. Teevee in a production of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory tonight. I'm looking forward to it immensely.

So, what's your week been like? And thanks for the greetings while I was in Alabama. They definitely made me feel more "at home!"

Sweet Home..er, Hotel, Alabama

Well, I made it from Southern California to Alabama without incident yesterday. I'll be here until Wednesday on business. The bad news, of course, is that this means I actually have to work during the day. (Worse, I have to talk to people and try to convince them to buy my company's software. Now, mind you, I'm a big believer in my company's product. I don't have any trouble finding enthusiasm for it. But I am so not a salesperson!)

The good news, though, is that after I'm done working, the rest of my days are my own to do with what I will. And we all know what I'm going to do with them--write!

Craft: Internal Conflict and "Globalness"

I've been remiss in posting this week but I swear, it's because I've been working! And I mean the paying stuff that I typically put off. I put the finishing touches on a revision to a course I'd been dragging my feet on for more than a month and sent it off to my editor yesterday. It wasn't exactly fun, but it did give me a sense of accomplishment and alleviated some of my guilt.

I was in a crunch to finish it because I've been asked to go on a sales pitch trip to a potential client in Alabama next week. And while I'm not really looking forward to being away from home for four whole days (I shudder to think what I'll be coming home to!), the good news is that travel time is writing and revising time. And I need every extra bit of that I can snap up.

In between all the real work and the writing (my meters keep moving to the right!), I've been taking a "pitch" class through the Hearts Through History RWA chapter. The class is intended to help you come up with face-to-face pitches of several lengths as well as to help you write a rockin' query letter. I'm not sure yet where the class and the exercises are going to take me in terms of my pitches at National or what they're going to do to the current version of my query letter, but this week's lesson did provide a valuable reminder about internal versus external GMC (short for goals, motivation, and conflict).

In this week's lesson, we were supposed to pinpoint our hero and heroine's internal conflicts. That is to say, what character flaw does each character have to overcome in order to live happily ever after? I wrote mine up in a flash. I knew this stuff about my characters. But even though I knew it, I still didn't manage to write it the first time in a way that made the conflict "global" enough.

When I first started writing Living in Sin, I had this idea that it would be "enough" for my hero and heroine to be kept apart by external factors (difference in their social classes, her fear of losing her property if she marries a man her brother deems inappopriate for her, etc.). The problem was, my characters didn't have any flaws. They were perfect and the only thing keeping them apart was other people. Can you say boring?

Thankfully, Lacey imparted this lesson about internal GMC to me early enough that I didn't have to go back and start from scratch. I can't precisely quote her, but her main point was that both the main characters had to have internal conflicts that had nothing to do with each other. In other words, the heroine's internal conflict can't be that the guy she's falling in love with is someone her family would disapprove of. Because that conflict is specific to him, it's an external conflict, not an internal one. It's not a character flaw, but a plot complication.

The internal conflict has to be something the character would have to resolve regardless of whom he or she is falling in love with. For my heroine, the internal conflict turns out to be that she's deeply afraid of being subordinate to or dependent on another person, and because of the period in which she lives, marriage means being subordinate and dependent. In order to live happily ever after, she has to overcome this belief and realize that when two people love one another, they can depend on each other as equals.

The external plot and the hero's personal qualities are what lead her to overcome this character flaw, of course, but it's a problem she'd have whether the hero ever came into her life or not.

And speaking of internal conflicts, I think it's time to end this post. I hear my muse calling me...

Yet Another Installment of Query Madness

I promised another query letter critique today, and at last, I deliver on my promise. Today's sacrificial lamb is Leigh, one of my wonderful critique partners. You'll find the other half of this conversation over on Erica's blog. (I'll wait here while you click and bring up Erica's post.)

Back? Great!

Before we begin, I want to say that of the queries we've worked on so far, Leigh's actually went through the fewest number of revisions before we decided it was "final."

First, Leigh's comments on the process (otherwise known as how we put her through hell!):

What the heck are these 400 pages are about? That question bounced through my mind all week as I worked on my query. Suddenly my book was a plotless blur. I looked over my charts. Graphs. Notes. Index cards. Little by little it came back to me.

Through the process of digging out the (basic and obvious) plot, I realized two things:

One: A query needs to be specific but simple.
Two: It needs to have ROMANCE (Oh yeah...) and conflict.

Sounds easy, doesn't it. ;-) I still don't feel like I have found my 'magic hook' yet. I'm waiting for that perfect sentence that will have editors begging for more. Hopefully it will come to me in some unexpected moment. But I do feel like I have a solid, workable query that I can rely on.

Thanks ladies! I am grateful for your help!

All right, here's the first version of the query letter, with numbers corresponding to Erica's inimitable comments.

My completed manuscript, The Unbound Heart, is a 101,000 word historical romance set in 1828 England. Saturated with danger, intrigue and desire, it is suitable for the...romance line.¹

Threatened with the exile of her people, Onatah Elizabeth Dillon journeys to London determined to print a special edition of her late father's famous travelogues.² A mixed blood woman-part Seneca Indian, part English-she intends to raise money and purchase her people's land. Unknown danger³ lurks in London, and Elizabeth finds herself under the domineering protection of The Marquess of Blakemore.⁴

Determined to solve the mystery of his brother's murder ⁵ and atone for his past mistakes⁶, Blake cannot understand why his quarry is trailing the intriguing American.⁷ As their ambitions blend and clash⁸, Elizabeth and Blake are drawn into a dangerous world of unbound desire.⁹

An active member in my local RWA chapter and two critique groups, I have been writing for seven years. ¹⁰ I have a BA in EnglishLiterature, with a minor in Creative Writing, from Tufts University. My poetry is published in several small literary magazines, including "4x4" and "Queen's Head and Artichoke".

I look forward to your response and have the completed manuscript available upon request. Thank you so much for your time. ¹¹

And now, on Erica's blog, you should find the final query letter. My comments on this version are below:

1. Yay. A hook!
2. Great, her heroine's external goal, motivation, and conflict are clearly spelled out.
3. And an internal goal, motivation, and conflict, too.
4. This is funny. Hmmm, maybe the manuscript has some amusing moments in it, too.
5. More external conflict. Hey, this thing actually has a plot! Awesome.
6. And now we see the romantic conflict as well. Sweet. In one intermediary version of this, there was no mention of the hero at all in this paragraph and I commented that there didn’t seem to be any hint that the heroine knew he was alive, much less that she wasin danger of falling in love with him! This resolved that problem.
7. Introduction of the hero, including his external goal and motivation. Superb.
8. Ah, so his goal and hers intersect somehow. Intriguing…
9. Mmmm, conflict. Juicy conflict, too!
10. Uh-oh, the l-word. He’s in trouble now! I’m interested. Wonder if this thing is finished yet...
11. Nice set of credentials. She’s serious about romance writing and has a contest final under her belt. She has a BA in English lit so she can probably string together a grammatically correct sentence. And, wow, some poetry credits. Not bad!
12. Okay, now I know the target market. (Note: This query is being sent to an Avon editor with a contest entry, so it makes sense for Leigh to mention Avon here. She’d want to take out the reference to Avon if she were querying another agent or editor, since she obviously doesn’t want to limit herself only to Avon as a publisher.
13. And it’s completed, too! Yippee!
14. Aw, she’s also polite. Where’s her address so I can request the full?

That's all, folks. I think Lacey and Erica have one more for ya next week, but as far as I know. Unless, that is, someone else wants to play. Then again, maybe since I have a big, fat "R" tatooed on my forehead, you won't want to play with me any more!

Whee! I'm for Real!

Because this morning, I received my first real, live rejection letter from an agent:

Dear Author:

Thank you so much for sending your query.

We'd like to apologize in advance for this standard rejection letter. The volume of queries as of late has been too overwhelming to personalize our response anymore. Rest assured, we do read every query letter carefully and although your work sounds intriguing, we're sorry to say that we don't believe we are the right agency for you.

You deserve an enthusiastic representative, so we recommend that you pursue other agents. After all, it just takes one "yes" and with so many different opinions out there, you could easily find the right match.

Good luck with all your publishing endeavors.

Sincerely,
Agent

I know, I'm supposed to be sad that I didn't get a request for a partial. And I am, a little. But I really didn't expect to hit pay dirt on my very first try, so I'm not crushed. Now, I would have preferred to get a more personalized rejection letter that told me a little more about why my story didn't appeal to this agent, but it is what it is.

I'm pleased, though, because I now have proof I've queried an agent and can apply for PRO status through RWA. And since that's one of my major 2007 goals, any response from an agent, even a rejection, is progress.

Still, perhaps you all want to take my advice about query letters with a considerably larger grain of salt. More of which will be dispensed later today in concert with our hook/query queen, Erica Ridley. (Pssst! Trust her!)

When Short Is Sweet

In the comments on yesterday's query madness entry, Ann(ie) said:

One truth I can pass on about query letters: brief is better.

I said as much on my blog, but let me elaborate here. The number one mistake authors make is trying to sum up the WHOLE story in the query letter. It gets long, overly detailed and makes the agent/editor think the author doesn't know how to self-edit. The (sometimes erroneous) conclusion then becomes that if the query letter is that unwieldy, the novel must be one bloated mess, so they just reject and move on.

What needs to go into that first paragraph is word count, hook, and genre, and that's all, really. They'll find out whether your writing is right for them by reading it. Get them reading your pages and if they're good enough, you're set.

I think this is absolutely right with one caveat: you can cut your description of your story to three or (at most) four sentences if you're sending your partial with your letter. The only purpose of the query letter in this case is to induce the recipient to read your pages.

I'm not sure you should try for quite that degree of "lightness" if you're querying an agent/editor to get a request for a partial, though. Agents and editors differ in whether they want only a query letter or whether they'll take a partial and (typically) a synopsis along with the query.

My guess is that it behooves you to have two versions of your query letter: one that accompanies your partial and one that tries to convince the agent/editor to request your partial. Both should be short, sweet, and hooky, but the first can be a lot shorter and sweeter than the second. Because if the person you're querying doesn't have your pages, a single paragraph about your story may not be sufficient to convince her you can string enough sentences together to produce an actual book-length novel.

I do have a much shorter version of my query letter that I plan to use when I submit to agents who'll take the partial up front. It goes like this:

What's a duke's daughter to do when her ideal man arrives on her doorstep in a most unsuitable package? Why, live in sin, of course! Too bad the object of her affections will settle for nothing less than "I do."

Living in Sin, a completed 100,000 word single-title historical, finished third in the 2006 Golden Rose and is a finalist for the 2006 CONNections Award. I am a member of RWA and several specialty chapters. I hold a Master’s degree in Classics from the University of Chicago and write technical training materials by profession.

Thank you in advance for your time and consideration.

I think it's pretty hooky, sets up the conflict nicely, and is definitely short and sweet, but could I really get away with something that short if the agent wasn't getting my pages with my letter? I'm thinking no, but then, I'm a rank amateur at this and have never sent an unsolicited partial or received a request for a partial from a query (I'm still waiting on my first attempt), so maybe I'm all wet and I should use the short-but-sweet route for everyone.

Thoughts? Opinions? Raw tomatoes?

Return of Query Madness

So, when Lacey, Darcy and I posted our queries a couple of weeks ago, we promised to humiliate...um, help anyone who sent us a query letter. Our first vict...volunteer is Beverley, whom we've known since we all participated in Avon's FanLit contest last year.

Here's how the process went, in Beverley's words:

If anyone ever tells you that writing queries is fun you can be sure of one of three things:

1. They're lying.
2. They've never written a query.
3. They're lying.

Okay, I'm only kidding because I'm sure that for some (I don't know who these crazy people are), it can be very fun. But if the rest of you are like me (a first-timer who didn't know whatthe hell I was doing and didn't really even know what to put in a query), it's a special purgatory. I slaved for an entire week on this ONE PAGE LETTER and did so many revisions I stopped counting. Thank God for the people (and they were many including, of course, Lacey and Jacqueline) who didn't want to see me completely humiliated should I have sent the original out to any of the publishing houses.

And thank goodness I learned something about GMC before starting my 2nd draft!

Just as a reminder, this works like it did before: the original query letter is posted here, while Lacey's comments on it are on her blog. Click here to bring up Lacey's post in a new window so you can read them side-by-side.

In An Honorable Rogue, a sexy Victorian 100,000 word novel, ¹ Millicent "Missy" Armstrong² has known since the age of thirteen who she would marry and when.³ Five years later, the when has arrived, and the who—sinfully handsome, Lord James Rutherford—is one of her brother's closest friends⁴ and an unapologetic rogue.⁵ But getting one of London's most eligible bachelors to the altar proves more difficult than she imagines and Missy finds that the road to love is one fraught with the unexpected.⁶

Once compromising Missy Armstrong would have been one of the worst things that could happen to the heir to the Windmere earldom,⁷ James Rutherford. The fact that it isn't⁷ only intimates the incredible predicament he finds himself in when Lady Victoria Spencer claims that he is the father of her unborn child. Not only does James have no memory of the night in question,⁸ he has no desire to wed. But before a full blown scandal can erupt, the truth behind Victoria's false claim is discovered, freeing James to do the honorable thing.⁹ What he doesn't expect is the response he receives.¹⁰

With rumors of an affair between James and Victoria still swirling thick in society's air,¹¹ Missy is heartbroken and insulted when in a reluctant proposal of marriage from the man she loves,¹² James makes it clear that she is not to expect fidelity. Unwilling to share him with other woman, Missy declines. It is only with her refusal that James realizes the love he has long taken for granted. So the tables turn and James, long pursued, becomes the pursuer in a game where the only winner can be love.¹³

Every writer begins as a reader and I am a testament to that fact having been an avid reader of historical fiction for twenty-five years.¹⁴ I am a member of RWA and I belong to the GRW chapter.¹⁵ I am currently at work on my second novel.¹⁶

Thank you for your time and consideration.¹⁷

And now we have the new, improved, and much trimmed version below. The new version of the letter is posted on Lacey's blog with comments courtesy of Darcy below.

1. A hook!
2. He sounds like a very bad boy.
3. Good, conflict.
4. This restates what I already learned in the first paragraph, but I’ll keep reading.
5. She’s going to court him? Unusual.
6. Decisions, decisions. More conflict.
7. More conflict. Hmmm, can these two get together?
8. Tough for a rake to do, I wonder how he manages?
9. He IS a very bad boy!
10. Lots of potential for conflict and a sustainable plot here.
11. Great, she’s serious about this.
12. Hard at work on the next one – and it involves characters from this one. Series can be good for business.
13. I already know it’s complete from the first paragraph, but it’s nice to know she’s ready to send it at a moment’s notice.
14. Nice closing.

So, there you have it: a much improved, much hookier query letter that spends more time on the romance than the plot!

We have a couple more query letters in the pipeline that we'll be posting soon. In addition to my blog and Lacey's, however, we'll be adding cross-posts to Erica Ridley's blog. Erica's a member of our little critique circle and rocks at writing hooks. I am not exaggerating here: Erica managed to hook the redoubtable and notoriously unhookable Miss Snark in her last Crap-O-Meter and also liked Erica's first three pages. Ignore Erica's advice on queries at your peril, I say!

So, keep your eyes peeled. More fun is headed your way. (This is fun, isn't it?)

The Best-Laid Plans

If any of you watch my word meters (which I update diligently any day I write, even if I don't blog), you may have notices that the Write-O-Meter for Lady Libertine has stalled at 1,700 words, but the Revise-O-Meter for Living in Sin has been moving steadily toward the right.

I know, I know. I said I was going to write Lady Libertine and worry about revising Living in Sin later. But a funny thing happened on the way to that plan: Living in Sin finaled in another contest and I got so excited about my query letter that I absolutely had to send it to an agent. And even though I don't expect a request for a full from either of the contest or the agent (I believe in underexpecting and overdelivering!), if I were to get one in the coming weeks, it would be so not ready.

After fretting for several days over my manuscript's utter unreadiness for prime time, I realized I had a pretty good feel now for what should go and what should stay, as well as where I needed to tweak to ramp up the romantic conflict. So I decided to set Lady Libertine aside for a couple of weeks and focus on getting Living in Sin down to something approaching a saleable word count. I'm hoping for 105,000 words in this pass, but suspect it'll wind up being closer to 110K. But then I'll hand the whole stinking mess over to my wonderful critique partners for additional suggestions, and maybe on a final pass, I can get it to 105K or even 100K.

So that's what I'm doing with my time. What're you up to?

Penis Envy

No, I don't suffer from it. Well, except when it comes to the purely plumbing-related aspects. Penises are certainly convenient when you have to take a pee in the forest or alongside the highway!

Really, this is going to be a post about romance novels, I promise. But first, I have to tell you the story that got me started thinking about this topic.

Last night, I was getting my almost-5yo son out of the bathtub when he started repeating, in a sing-songy sort of voice, "Oh penis, oh penis, I love you so much."

Naturally, this made me laugh which encouraged him to repeat the phrase several more times, much to the amusement of his 7yo sister. After reflecting that most men probably feel this way about their penises to at least some extent, I finally thought to ask him why he loved his penis so much.

His response, delivered instantly and without a hint of irony, was, "Because it's so big."

People, he's four! No four-year-old on the planet has a big penis, okay?

But of course, this whole episode got me thinking about penises and, well, size. Courtney blogged a while back about the tendency toward "dick inflation" in romance novels: the hero always seems to have larger-than-average equipment to go along with all his other larger-than-life attributes. And perhaps there's some truth to the notion that size does matter. I know it matters to men. But do women really prefer men with...er, bigger packages? Or is that more of a masculine fantasy?

At this point, I will interject with my personal opinion: It's not the pen, it's the penmanship. And guys who are convinced they have awesome pens, in my admittedly somewhat limited experience, tend to have lousy penmanship.

Question is, am I in a minority of women here? The emphasis on the impressive size of the sex organs of the heros of romance novels would imply that I am. Most romance readers are female, after all, and if big dicks weren't popular with women, it's hard to imagine writers would keep sticking them in their books (or their heroines, for that matter). If women don't care one way or the other, then it seems to me that romance writers are feeding the male obsession with making their penises larger, which is in turn responsible for a large portion of the spam that winds up in my email. And frankly, it seems to me that even men with substantially more there there than the average guy still all want to be John Holmes.

When I write love scenes, I try to concentrate on emotion and physical sensations in addition to stage direction. What I don't dwell on so much is describing my characters' physical attributes. There's really nothing less erotic, in my humble opinion, than a heroine who's getting out her mental ruler to assess the size of her guy's erection before doing the nasty.

So, please, if you don't care how big the hero's dick is as long as its sexy and emotionally satisfying when he gets it on with the heroine, will you let the romance publishing industry know? Take a stand against penis envy in all its forms, I say, including the ones that drive insecure men to watch videos like this one (shudder) or consider cosmetic surgery (bigger shudder).

Believe me, you'll be doing society (and my inbox) a favor!

The Query Letter Strikes Again

Lest you think you are suffering from deja vu, let me assure you that this really is a new post. Those of you who joined our little query letter workshop last week may remember that Lacey posted a final version of my query letter on her site while the comments on it resided here. That came after the complete (and somewhat brutal) deconstruction of the original version.

I think I may have mentioned, however, that I wasn't completely happy with that "final" version. It was okay, but the first paragraph just didn't reach out and grab me by the throat. Ergo, I figured it wouldn't grab an agent or editor by the throat, either. So, I pondered and fretted and then I happened to stop by Annie Dean's blog to discover she was doing her Workshop Wednesday post on hooks. And Annie is so clever, she came up with a great hook for Living in Sin inside of about ten minutes. I posted a couple of versions of that hook here last week.

With that hook rolling around in my head, I took a fresh look at the opening of my query letter. I ultimately decided I couldn't use it as my opening sentence, so I had to come up with some way to set up the conflict in the first paragraph without giving away that hooky sentence before I'd even started. After tossing around several ideas with my intrepid critique partners, here's what I came up with:

What’s a duke’s daughter to do when her ideal man arrives on her doorstep in the most unsuitable package imaginable? Lady Rosalind Brighton isn’t sure, but marrying him isn’t it!

Rosalind is facing the unwelcome prospect of being the oldest debutante on the ton’s marriage mart if her thoroughbred breeding estate doesn’t start turning a profit by the start of the Season in just six weeks’ time. Her brother is determined to see her wed to safeguard her future, but to Rosalind, matrimony means surrendering everything—her possessions, her independence, her very person—to some fortune-hunting suitor.

Into the breach steps brash and ambitious Patrick O’Brien, a racehorse trainer with a reputation for handling horses and ladies with equal aplomb and a penchant for pulling the odd swindle. Their business partnership may save Rosalind from the fate she abhors, but his easygoing charm and infectious enthusiasm for life could prove a more serious threat than bankruptcy ever did.

Soon, Rosalind finds herself contemplating behavior no virginal Victorian lady should know about, much less engage in. Imagine her surprise when her desire to live in sin is blocked not by herself, but by Patrick’s unyielding sense of honor. Who would have thought a straight-laced spinster could con a con man out of his heart?

I left out the credentials and last paragraph since they haven't changed. (Well, okay, I added the final in the CONNections Contest, but other than that, they're identical to what I had before).

So, what do you think? Better? I think it's a significant improvement, myself, but I'm open to hearing otherwise. If you have any suggestions to really make it stand up and sing, I'd love to hear them. (That second sentence still bothers me a little, so any thoughts there would be especially appreciated.)

Also, while we're at it, I want to thank the willing victims...er, volunteers who've already stepped up to play future rounds of Kill...er, Critique the Query Letter. We have a couple of letters already in our possession and as soon as we have "final" versions, you'll find new samples on Lacey's and my blogs.

Stay tuned...

I'm a Finalist--Again!

Two minutes ago, I received this in my inbox:

Congratulations! Your Historical entry, Living in Sin, is a finalist in the Connections Award and is on its way to the final round editor judge for placement. Good luck!!!

The final round judge is Tessa Woodward at Avon, who is supposedly looking for Regency and Victorian-set historical romances.

I've been waiting a long time for this announcement. Now, I get to wait some more. Oh goody! (I think.)

On the very plus side, I guess my query letter can list another contest final for my manuscript. That's gotta be a good thing, right?

Let's Do Queries, Day Three

In our third and (as far as we know) final round of Query Letter Madness, I get to take a crack at Darcy's query letter for Notorious. As before, pull up the corresponding post on Lacey's blog to see the original query letter as well as my comments on the final version posted below:

1) This is a great setup that puts the conflict right out there from the get-go, but the last bit is a tad awkward. It sounds like the hero is going to pursue the heroine with some sort of weapon called "a reputation as a cold-hearted prude!" Since the very first sentence in the next paragraph tells us the heroine is a widow, that information probably isn't necessary, so he can just be pursuing a "cold-hearted prude."

2) Can't see anything wrong with this. Tells me right up front I'm going to be looking at a Regency-set historical. If I represent that genre, I know it's up my alley. If not, I'll reject, but not because I don't like the query or manuscript. Nice!

3) No reason for "is entering", which is passive sounding; "enters" will do just fine. "Clouds of rumors" is another slightly awkward phrasing. Otherwise, this is good. We know the heroine is a widow whom people suspect might have killed her husband. Not sure how her father's "outrageous lifestyle" fits in, but maybe we'll come to that later.

4) Okay, I know what her goal and motivation for being in London is, but so what? The reason it's "so what" is because I don't get any sense of why her search for a half-sister is going to result in any conflict between her and the hero. Why can't she search for her half-sister and fall in love at the same time? And there's nothing here to support the first sentence claim that she's a "cold-hearted prude." I need a little more about her before I can care...

5) Wow, that sentence is a mouthful! What does the hero's role as a libertine have to do with the heroine? And is the man his best friend's sister wants to marry suitable? "Flush out" implies the other man is somehow not up to snuff and the faux courtship is intended to prove that. Also, does the hero have a name, or is he just the Earl of Romsey? This wants breaking up and a bit more detail to flesh out the GMC.

6) At first glance, it appears that Violet is the hero's best friend's sister. So why is there a problem? The faux courtship turns real. How does that interfere with the hero's desire to shed his libertine status or the heroine's search for her sister? There's about enough conflict here to last, oh, twenty pages.

7) Gives me title, word count, and market. But wait, she's a newbie.

8) And it took her more than a year to complete a 95K manuscript. Kinda slow...

9) Okay, there's a potential for a series here, but if this book isn't very good, the fact that she's got another one using the same characters isn't encouraging.

10) Nice credentials here. History is a perfect subject for a historical romance writer to have studied and she's a member of the romance writer's organization so she's plugged into the market.

11) The technical writing credit is good. I know now she can string a few sentences together, likely without butchering the language. Not sure what her project management and volunteer work have to do with anything, though. Seems like she has her hands in a lot of pots, though. No wonder it took her a year to complete the manuscript she's pitching!

12)And she's polite...

Overall, this query letter is pretty darned good. The question is whether the "hook" at the beginning and the two subsequent sentences are describing the same story. On a first read, I can see an agent or editor being intrigued. On a second, however, I think she might reasonably wonder where the 95,000 words worth of conflict is going to come from.

And now, we have the new and improved version (comments on Lacey's blog!):

What would happen if the ton's most notorious rakehell pursued Society's most cold-hearted prude? 1816 London is about to find out.¹

Fresh from a short-lived marriage to a wealthy merchant, Violet Cavanaugh enters London Society under a cloud of gossip about her husband’s death and her deceased father’s debauched lifestyle.² Ignoring her notoriety, Violet sets out to find the half-sister she has just learned about – the only person with the potential to be true family. Instead, she finds the Earl of Romsey, her father’s former protege.³ Julian Masters is exactly what she abhors: an unrepentant profligate certain to break her heart.⁴

Weary of his role as a libertine, Julian would prefer to toss his London life altogether, but he has one last favor to complete before settling into anonymity at his estate.⁵ He’s promised to engage in a faux courtship with his best friend’s sister to bring the toe-dragging duke she wishes to marry up to scratch.⁶ When he meets Violet Cavanaugh, however, all of Society can see the fireworks that threaten his plans and her heart.⁷

Notorious is a completed 95,000 word Regency-set historical. I hold a Bachelor's Degree in History and am a member of RWA. My professional background includes technical writing. I currently serve on the editorial board for an international women’s organization magazine.⁸

Thank you for your time and consideration.

This concludes our query letter posts for the time being. But stay tuned! There may be more to come in the weeks ahead.

Also, if anyone out there has a query letter she's just dying to have ripped apart in public by the Query-cizers, post a comment or drop a line and we'll work out a way to have at you!

A Coupla Shout-Outs

Yeah, I know, I know! Way too many posts in one day. But, my travels through the blogosphere have revealed news I simply must share.

First, Ellie Marvel's Birthday is included in Secrets, an anthology now available at Amazon (and possibly at a bookstore near you). Sadly, the Amazon page doesn't do justice to the cover, so I suggest you click here instead. For those who don't know (or haven't figured it out by clicking here back there), Ellie Marvel is another persona of Jody Wallace, aka Typing Slave for meankitty. I've already put this baby in my shopping cart, but I have to find another $15 worth of books to buy so I can qualify for Super Saver Shipping. (Yes, I'm terminally cheap.)

Second, Annie Dean has sold her Average Girl's Guide to Getting Laid! (In a somewhat interesting coincidence, the heroine's name is Ellie. Hmmmm.) She hasn't revealed yet to whom or release dates or anything wunnerful like that, but it's good news and worth sharing. Also, while I'm at it, Annie's got a bit of free fic she's been posting serially to her site, Loser's Waltz. My favorite bit? Well, so far at least, it has to be what Annie makes of the phrase "man-made materials." I'll let you read and find out exactly what!

Anyway, just wanted to hand out some congratulations and blow kisses. No, I swear, it's not that I hope to ride on your coattails! (Okay, maybe a little...)

Here's My Line, Round Three

As if you weren't already sick of reading about my book, but Annie Dean's Workshop Wednesday post on taglines got me thinking about my "one-liner" again. What I had before, though clever in its way, just didn't work very well. Annie made a great suggestion which I tweaked a little to arrive at this:

Who would have thought a straightlaced Victorian spinster could con a con man out of his heart?

I like it because it uses the best line from the query letter, sets the period (Victorian), and lays out the conflict (her uprightness against his naughtiness--even though he's really a very good, noble guy!).

The only thing that concerns me about it is the use of the word "con", which I know is 20th century and American. I doubt many people know that, but it trips me up because I know it! The non-anachronistic alternative here would be "swindle a swindler" but I think that looks too much like the same word twice!

Annie also suggested it could do without the word Victorian, which is helpful but perhaps not necessary. And then we get the nice, alliterative line:

Who would have thought a straightlaced spinster could con a con man out of his heart?

What sayeth the masses?

Let's Do Query Letters, Day Two

So, here's the next installment in our cross-blog, almost-a-workshop query letter process. Today, Darcy (who doesn't have her own blog yet) takes her shots at Lacey's query letter. To see both sides of this, you'll want to open Lacey's blog and resize it so the two sit side-by-side.

Here are Darcy's comments on the original query letter:

1) Dark and mysterious are pretty vague adjectives and a little cliché (perhaps more than a little). As a first sentence, this doesn’t hook me, nor does it tell me anything interesting about the hero.
2) A hero who’s looking for a friend? Snore.
3) Isn’t that what we all want? So far, this hero doesn’t strike me as particularly exciting.
4) Good, tells us important facts about the heroine. Probably not the best intro line to the heroine, but I’ll keep reading.
5) This sentence is totally unnecessary.
6) I’m not at all drawn into caring about the heroine and her conflict (which I’m still not sure about). Most of this paragraph is about her father and since he is neither hero nor heroine, I don’t care.
7) Now this is a much better description of the hero. Mysterious is better used here (without dark it loses its cliché-ness) and wallflower tells us a lot about him. And sexy – bring him on!
8) I’m curious how they develop an “easy friendship.” I see they have conflict because they have two different sets of dreams: he wants a friend and she wants her “unknown” relatives to see past her dark skin. But wait, both want people to see the real them on the inside. Seems like they have exactly the same dreams…their conflict ought to last about five minutes.
9) She can write a book or so once a year. Seems a little slow. And she’s new at this. But nice to know she’s hard at work on the next one.

Overall, this query doesn’t give strong enough pictures of the main characters and their romantic conflict. There also isn’t much plot information. The premise is interesting, but it falls flat without the story and characters to back it up.

Now, we have the new, improved query letter below. This time, the comments are on Lacey's side of the house:

Jonathan Hart, Viscount Rader, is weary of his position as the ton’s scandalous wallflower.¹ Determined to overcome his notoriety, he resolves to marry a gentlewoman who can aid his transition from cold aristocrat to approachable luminary.² But choosing such a woman proves impossible. His silent attention is drawn to the unsuitable but deliciously exotic Lady Kit, ³ and soon she seems to be everywhere he turns.⁴

If Kitha Wallingford ever thought about the life her father abandoned, it was to wonder how the respected Shawano warrior had ever been the privileged son of an earl.⁵ Now she knows why he fled. The English are a stodgy lot, and her handsome new neighbor is the worst of them.⁶ Shy Lord Rader proves an irresistible target for a female used to having her way with men.⁷ She sees his reserve as a challenge, and stalks him until the obstinate man has no choice but to relent.⁸

Jonathan’s dream of respectability is dashed the moment he beds the little hellcat. After weeks in her passionate company, forever with anyone else looms like eternity.⁹ But the minx refuses marriage, saying life is too short to worry about tomorrow, and his deepest fear is unburied.¹⁰ His frustration turns into purpose, and the huntress becomes the hunted. It takes murder, manipulation, and a healthy dose of laughter to help his caramel beauty realize marriage isn’t about what might be, but about what is.¹¹

If You Asked the Devil to Dance, my 100K word Regency-set historical, is available in full.¹² I’m currently working on the second novel in my Romance with Color trilogy.¹³ I’m the president elect of my RWA chapter, a winner of Avon’s FanLit contest, an engineer by day,¹⁴ and open to editorial suggestion.¹⁵

This concludes Episode Two of query letter madness. Stay tuned for more in the exciting saga of Beat Up the Query Letter.

Let's Do Query Letters!

Last week, Lacey mentioned that she, Darcy, and I had been writing (and rewriting) our query letters. Well, this week, we've decided to share our process with you, our loyal readers and fellow writers. I know some of you aren't daunted by queries (for Jody, it's the "sucknopsis" that induces panic), but Pam, bless her heart, actually asked for pointers.

Keeping in mind that our queries will probably change many more times before we're successful at this, you can get a sneak peek into our efforts by click here pull up both blogs side by side. Then you can follow along with the comments on my first attempt at the query and read the final version on Lacey's blog.

(Actually, I have to admit in the spirit of total honesty that this wasn't my first attempt. The first attempt was written at 2am one morning when I couldn't sleep due to a hacking cough. It was about as good as you'd expect something written at 2am to be. Which is to say that, except for a couple of clever sentences, it was pretty darned bad!)

In this version, I tried very hard (and very unsuccessfully) to work in that "high concept" sentence I sweated over a couple of weeks ago. You'll see why it didn't stay...

Dear Agent,

Lady Rosalind Brighton knows knights are more interested in winning castles than princesses, so when her knight turns out to be an Irish racehorse trainer, she faces a thorny dilemma: defend her castle or surrender her heart.¹

Being on the shelf may not be fashionable, but it suits Rosalind.² Marrying, after all, means giving up everything she values: her possessions, her independence, her very person.³ Unfortunately, avoiding matrimony may prove harder than she thought.⁴ Her thoroughbred breeding estate has been sabotaged to the brink of financial ruin and her brother, the duke, is threatening to put her back on the London marriage mart if she doesn’t right the ship before the start of the Season in just six weeks’ time.⁵

Into the breach steps the cocky and ambitious Patrick O’Brien.⁶ His proposal for an unorthodox partnership could save Rosalind’s estate, but his easygoing charm and infectious enthusiasm for life pose a more serious threat than mere bankruptcy.⁷ She knows she shouldn’t trust him despite his unexpected penchant for altruism.⁸ Not only is his former employer the man who’s been bad-mouthing her stock, there’s also Mr. O’Brien’s pesky little predilection for pulling the odd con job…⁹

Living in Sin, a single-title historical (100,000 words) set in early Victorian England, finished third in the 2006 Golden Rose contest sponsored by the Rose City Romance Writers chapter of RWA.¹⁰ I am a member of RWA as well as the Hearts Through History and Beau Monde specialty chapters.¹¹ I hold a Master’s degree in Classics from the University of Chicago and write technical training materials by profession.¹²

Thank you in advance for your consideration.

Now, in addition to the comments on Lacey's blog, let me point out that as I read this again, my immediate impression is "Too long, too wordy." Bleah. This needed work! Fortunately for me, Lacey, Darcy, Janice, and (most especially) Lacey's genius brother, Luke, came to my rescue!

The new version (posted on Lacey's blog) works because:

1) Flipping the last sentence around (not to mention shortening it to the very basics) makes a nice, neat thread: Marriage, marriage, marriage - problem!
2) Ah. By including "the odd swindle" as a characteristic of the hero, his "con man" status doesn't seem to come out of nowhere later on.
3) "Partnering" sounds a lot more businesslike, and "fate she abhors" is some pretty strong wording. She's clearly been driven to desperate measures.
4) Oh! That's what his charm and enthusiasm is endangering. I was wondering :-)
5) Uh-oh. England, we have a problem!
6) And an internal conflict!
7) Now that's just a great line. I mean...story question. Ahem.
8) Nice and short. Same credentials, just tightened until my ADD brain can conceive of them all at the same time.

I should add that I'm still not completely sold on the first sentence and, hey, I'm open to suggestions from the public at large.

Stay tuned for our next round of query madness tomorrow, when someone is going to post a query letter on Lacey's blog and someone else will beat it up here! (We're still discussing who's doing the posting and who's doing the beating.)

Happy New...Book?

I suppose it's utterly appropriate to begin a new book at the beginning of a new year. I managed to bang out a rough synopsis of Lady Libertine last week and send it to Darcy, Lacey, and Janice, critique partners extraordinaire. They all liked it. Yay!

Now, my most persistent Waterloo as a writer has always been the inability to stick to one story until it's actually finished. I almost inevitably get bored with the story I'm currently writing because a thousand new (and, naturally, better) ones pop into my head and demand my attention. For years, I discarded stories and started new ones almost as often as I did laundry. I've never had problems starting stories; finishing, now that's another story.

So, why am I so daunted at the prospect of writing Lady Libertine? Why do I find myself staring at the blank computer screen, writing a couple of sentences, finding the words don't take me anywhere else, deleting them, and then staring at the blank screen again?

Of course, I have no idea why. Maybe I'm just not completely ready to move on from the book I just finished, although I have to say that the synopsis fell out of my head so easily that it's hard for me to believe that's the issue. More likely, it's just that I've been writing Living in Sin for so long (it took me exactly ten months!), I'm not sure how to tackle writing anything else.

Whatever it is, it's a new and odd sort of writer's block for me. I never have trouble with new beginnings. I suppose there's a first time for everything!

The cure is simple, though: just write! It's good advice. But I was never much of a one for following good advice...

Done Is Only Just Begun

If you're hoping to be a bonafide published author, writing a completed manuscript is only a little more than a baby step in the right direction. To be sure, it's a step you must accomplish, but in some ways, it might be the easiest one.

As you all know from my incessant musings on the topic, Living in Sin might be finished, but it's not anywhere near being done. Aside from any other issue, it's simply much too long to be saleable in its current form. And this means hefty revisions. It means, in all likelihood, that I'll have to eliminate some secondary characters and their scenes, and invent new (hopefully shorter!) ones using the characters who remain to fill in the gaps in motivation or plot that occur as a result of the cuts. It's a huge task and not one I can say I look forward to.

So I've found other things to do this week instead, and I'm a bit embarrassed to say that they're not the things I promised myself I would do, starting with finishing a project for my paying job that I've been struggling with and dragging my feet on for what feels like months. Oh, I've been working on that project. It's just that I haven't done it at anywhere near the pace or with anything like the exclusivity I told myself I would because I keep getting sidetracked by "writey/publishey" tasks.

It started with taking a stab at my query letter. One of my goals in 2007 is to apply for PRO status through RWA (note that you might not be able to get to this link if you're not an RWA member and signed in to the site) because I'm told it gets you a better priority for appointments with agents/editors at the national convention. And one of the requirements for acheiving PRO status is that you prove you've queried an agent or editor.

Writing a query letter was every bit as hard as I expected. After making an initial attempt at 2:00 a.m. (I was up nursing a tickle/cough I just couldn't shake) that sucked about as much as you'd expect something you wrote in the middle of the night to suck, I went through a series of versions with Lacey, Darcy, and Janice. Just when I thought I'd nailed it, Lacey showed it to her brother, Luke, who instantly tore it apart by saying, "Yeah. So what?" (Thanks, Luke. I think!) Another few rounds later, we got something we all agreed was pretty good, although whether it's good enough to sell my manuscript is whole 'nother thing. It's entirely possible that after a few attempts with this version, I'll toss it out the window and start from scratch.

The weirdest thing about the query letter, though, is that I couldn't find a way to work in that "high concept" sentence you all helped me with last week. It just didn't fit, no matter how hard I tried. Square peg, round hole and all that.

Then, after knocking off the query letter, I started on my character backstories and synopsis for the next book, Lady Libertine. And that, my friends, has been a real kick. Neither the heroine's nor the hero's backstories are written in anything approaching a historical, Victorian voice, which means I'll never get to use them except as my own prompts, but it was so much fun to write something new, to invent new people. Even though the heroine, Amelia, is featured in Living in Sin, we don't find out much about her in that story. Before I could write her book, I had to understand why she's as selfish and vain as she is, why she hates her husband and step-son, and why she's promiscuous. Now I know. And finding out the answers, which just flowed out of me without much thought, as if I'd known them all along when I really hadn't, was definitely interesting and exciting!

The hero's backstory turned out to be even more enjoyable to write, though. Keeping in mind that this is really a rough draft primarily for my own edification, here it is:

Remy Giroux isn’t blessed with his eldest brother’s primogeniture, his middle brother’s religious calling, or his youngest brother’s Midas touch with finances. But the third son of a minor French barony has to make his own way in the world, and Remy has the right stuff to embark on a career in the post-Napoleonic French military: innate physical toughness, a sharp wit, and nerves of steel. The top brass quickly takes note of another characteristic it can use to its advantage: Remy has a surprising facility with languages accompanied by a face and form tempting enough to invite even virtuous women to sin. Remy soon finds himself posted on various ostensibly “diplomatic” missions—to Russia, to Prussia, and to Mother England—with express instructions to gain as much intelligence as possible from the wives and mistresses of the men who control government.

Remy is good at his job, but he finds it has its drawbacks, starting with the inability to ever be honest and ending with the inability to trust anyone, ever. After making the near-fatal mistake of believing himself in love with a woman he’s been sent to shake down only to have her betray him to her government’s authorities, he decides it’s time to get out of the military intel game. But he doesn’t know how to do much besides gain information from unsuspecting marks and so he strikes out in the private intelligence market. It’s not overly profitable, but finding missing people (who usually want to be missing) and misplaced valuables (which usually turn up right where you’d expect them) is a living, and one he doesn’t have to sell his soul to make. At least not until his next client hires him at an exorbitant retainer to retrieve a set of blueprints from beneath the nose of England’s most beautiful and passionate lady.

Hey, it’s dirty work, but someone has to do it.

So, what have you been doing with this curious time between Christmas and New Year's?

Christmas Comes But Once a Year

And thank God for that!

Oh, not because I'm a Scrooge or anything like that. I adore Christmas. And I love watching my kids light up with delight as they open their presents and discover both the things they requested and the things they didn't expect. What I don't enjoy is getting all of those wonderful toys out of the packaging (have they raised Harry Houdini from the dead to design these things so only magicians can open them?) and cleaning up the trash! Oh, and finding a home for all the new stuff. Oy!

Speaking of things you didn't expect, my husband surprised me with a 30 GB iPod. I suppose this means I have actually entered the 21st century. Now if I can only figure out how to use the darn thing!

But the best part of Christmas this year was knowing I'd finished my first manuscript in 20+ years. Thanks to everyone who congratulated me, either here or in personal email, on finishing. You all know who you are!

The Two Best Words in the English Language

Bet you know what they are. And I just wrote 'em.

The End!

Merry Christmas to me! (And you, too, of course.)

Here's My Line (Round Two)

Okay, so the basic structure of this seems to be holding some water. With input from a variety of sources, here's the new version:

Lady Rosalind Brighton knows knights in shining armor are more interested in winning castles than princesses, so when her knight turns out to be an Irish racehorse trainer with lofty ambitions and an unexpected penchant for altruism, she faces a thorny dilemma: defend her castle or surrender her heart.

Given that it's ideal to cut the sentence to the fewest possible words, however, I wonder whether the following isn't a bit better, length-wise if not structurally:

Lady Rosalind Brighton knows knights in shining armor are keener on winning castles than princesses, so when her knight turns out to be an ambitious Irish racehorse trainer with an unexpected penchant for altruism, she faces a thorny dilemma: defend her castle or surrender her heart.

What sayeth the masses?

Here's My Line (Round One)

Okay, I made my first stab at this. I don't know if it's great, but I don't think it bites like a pit bull with a raging case of rabies, either.

(Deep breath) Here goes:

Lady Rosalind Brighton knows that knights in shining armor are more interested in winning the castle than the princess inside, so when her knight turns out to be an Irish racehorse trainer with lofty ambitions and an unexpected penchant for altruism, she’s faced with a thorny dilemma: surrender her heart, her castle, or both.

Okay, maybe it does blow. But it's a start, right?

I'm open to suggestions here...

What's My Line?

As I mentioned earlier in the month (or maybe all the way back in November), I enrolled in a query workshop given by Rosemary Clement Moore through Candace Havens' Write_Workshop Yahoo group. Now, I'm sure it will come as no surprise to you that one of Ms. Moore's suggestions was that we all distill our books to a single sentence, a sort of one-liner we might imagine could be used to describe our story in TV Guide. That one sentence is the "high concept" of the novel.

So, I tried to come up with a high concept. And was hopelessly unsuccessful. Oh, I wrote a few one-liners, but they all sucked like a Hoover on steroids. (That's a darned good phrase, by the way, and I'd use it in my high concept except I'm reasonably certain they had neither Hoovers nor steroids in 1839.)

But one of the problems I kept running up against was whether to write the "high concept" from the hero's perspective or the heroine's. Whose story am I telling here? It seems whichever character I choose, my one-liner must necessarily demote and devalue the other. And to me, at least, it seems I am telling (or trying to tell) both their stories, equally and even-handedly.

The germ of the idea for Living in Sin was so simple, it's hard to consider it a "high concept". I had two characters in my head: a highborn English lady disenchanted by marriage and high society who takes the unconventional step of managing her own estate and a working-class Irishman with a thirst for self-improvement and a disconcerting penchant for achieving noble ends through decidedly ignoble means (that is, con artistry, though the Victorians didn't have that phrase, which is darned inconvenient when writing a novel that involves a con game!). I knew these two people belonged together, but I didn't know how to get them into the same room, much less give them enough time with one another to fall in love.

From that germ came a plot involving a thoroughbred breeding estate brought to near ruin by a thieving steward. The hero's profession became clear: a racehorse trainer who offers his services to the heroine when he discovers his former employer purchased horses stolen from her estate and raced them under false pedigrees. Along the way, the hero concocts a "pig in a poke" scheme to fleece a neighboring landowner who also purchased stolen horses in hopes of ensnaring both the steward and his former boss in the process. And the heroine befriends the local tavern wench, whose insights into life and love offer a striking parallel to her own.

In the final analysis, though, the conflict in the story isn't the plot, but the heroine's certainty that men care more about winning the castle than the princess and the hero's fear of being nothing more than a rich woman's plaything. Pretty conventional stuff, really, except that perhaps the genders are reversed from the typical historical romance.

So, having written all that, I've distilled the most essential elements of the story and characters, but I still haven't found anything I could call a high concept one-liner.

I'm doomed! I'll never write a query letter, LOL!

Tagged Again!

I have to thank Lacey for supplying me with today's topic, as I'd have been hard-pressed to get an entry done today otherwise. (Holiday insanity has hit full-bore and I'll barely have more than an hour of computer time today if I'm lucky!)

Four jobs I've had:

1. Girl Scout camp counselor
2. College dormitory maid
3. Technical writer
4. Instructional designer

Four places I've lived:

1. San Diego County (during childhood and now)
2. Santa Cruz, CA (college)
3. Dublin, Ireland (college year abroad)
4. Chicago, Illinois (grad school)

Four favorite foods:

1. Sushi
2. Mexican
3. Any Mediterranean cuisine (ideally while in the Mediterranean)
4. Okay, I admit it, all foods are my favorites (with the notable exception of brussel sprouts!)

Four movies I could watch over and over (some of which I often do because my kids watch them):

1. The Princess Bride
2. All That Jazz
3. Blazing Saddles
4. Any movie ever made by Pixar

Four TV shows I enjoy (do these all have to be current, I wonder? I hope not, because if so, I'm cheating!):

1. Curb Your Enthusiasm
2. PBS's Mystery series
3. Nova
4. Star Trek: The Next Generation

Four Places I've Traveled (Only four? So limiting! I have to find a way to sneak in more, because I'm an inveterate traveler):

1. Every US state except Alaska, Maine, and (I think) Rhode Island
2. Asia (Bangkok, Hong Kong, Macau, and Canton)
3. Europe (England, Ireland, Belgium, Germany, France, Spain [twice], Italy [three times], Greece [twice])
4. Mexico (Tijuana and surrounding, Puerto Vallarta, Zihuatanejo, and Mexico City)

Four websites I go to (almost) daily:

1. Lacey Kaye's Fantabulous Blog
2. Romantic Inks
3. Online Etymology Dictionary
4. Slate Magazine

Four people I'm tagging to do this, too:

1. Lainey Bancroft
2. Annie Dean
3. Pam Skochinski
4. Jody Wallace

Of course, you can do it even if I didn't tag you!

AWOL

I know I was AWOL on Monday. Sorry about that. I had the stomach flu. As have all of my children and my husband. Such fun it's been around here the past few days. And I have absolutely nothing interesting or funny to write today. Just posting to reassure anyone who was worried that I'm still alive. (Ah yes, my public. All ten of you, LOL!)

Love everyone's Spice Girl names. Keep 'em coming!

If You Were A Spice Girl

I know, I know. I didn't blog on Friday. I always try to blog on Friday, but yesterday, it was just not happening.

Today's entry will be short and sweet. I have Darcy to thank for this topic. She told Lacey and me in email yesterday what her name would be if she were a Spice Girl. I won't tell here (if she wants to tell you, she can comment!), but I've decided mine would definitely be Flaky Spice.

Maybe this is why I can't finish my book--too flaky!

Okay, share! What would your Spice Girl name be?

Benign!

Whew!

The doctor called during dinner. We normally don't answer the phone at dinner time but I made an exception because I thought it might be him.

He's really a great doctor and so nice/reassuring. I love him to pieces. Even more because he called me at 7:00 at night to give me peace of mind.

Good night!

If You're Waiting for Results...

...well, join the club. Because I haven't heard either.

I was told they'd be in yesterday or today and that I'd surely have a call from my doctor today with the biospy results. When I hadn't heard anything by 3:30, I called myself. The receptionist says the results are there and the doctor will call me back either today or tomorrow morning.

Of course, being me, I promptly freaked out. And I haven't quite stopped freaking out. I'm sure that if the results were anything other than benign, they'd want to let me know as soon as possible, so I should be taking their apparent lackadaisacal attitude towards informing me as a good sign. But I'm a headcase, so of course, it's just making me crazy.

The radiologist who took the sample told me I could call her for results if I didn't hear from my doctor, so I tried that. Got placed on hold for a long time and was then told she was with a patient and she'd call me back to tell me.

It's now after 5:00, both offices are closed, and no one's called me. Will I sleep tonight? I have my doubts...

100%, But Not Done, Darn It!

So, I hit my projected page count of 510 about 15 minutes ago. And have realized I have at least one and possibly two more chapters to write. This ending just doesn't want to be rushed!

Thank God, It's Monday!

Okay, I know that's not a popular sentiment. But I love Mondays. Much more than Fridays, in fact.

I particularly love the Monday when my former housekeeper comes back to work for me after a six month hiatus. I could never bring myself to hire someone else to clean for me because she knew us so well and did such a wonderful job, but I simply couldn't keep up myself. And I knew once her new baby got a bit older, she'd want to come back, so I couldn't bear to fire someone else to hire her back.

Anyway, six months of dust and grime has been lifted from my shoulders, and it might as well be the weight of the world.

Obviously, I haven't had any word yet on the biopsy, but I want to thank those of you who dropped by and left me comments and well-wishes. I haven't heard from Beverley or Laura since FanLit, so it was sweet of them to stop by. (Beverley, if you want to use the wordcounter I use, you can find instructions at http://www.writertopia.com/toolbox/meters. It's so easy, it's scary!)

The most painful part of the whole experience turned out to be untaping myself. The medical tape actually pulled off the top layer of my skin in spots. Ouch! The small puncture from the needle turned out to be nothing by comparison. Well, except for the time when my 4yo decided to dive on me and stick his elbow right there!

Meanwhile, I continue to make slow (painfully, inexorably slow) progress towards the end of Living In Sin. Today I may exceed 1,000 words, but I typically don't get out much more than 500 and some days, it's less than that. But something is something.

I know at this point I won't be done when I reach 510 pages. I'll be lucky to finish at 525 pages! But I'm not changing the word meters any more. I'll just overshoot them and when I'm done, I can be 110% finished instead of 100% finished. (That's got to be better, right?)

The Saga Continues

Since I posted on Wednesday about the lump and freaked ya'll out (well, Lacey anyway, apparently!), I thought I'd better post an update since I've had my mammogram and ultrasound.

The mammogram (aka "mashogram") on Thursday was uneventful. I didn't talk to the radiologist afterwards, just was told to have my ultrasound the following day, which told me they saw something. (I looked at the films myself on the off chance I could understand them. I mean, I did once read my oldest son's x-rays and knew instantly that his arm was broken! But it all looked like...I don't know...tissue to me!)

This morning, I had the ultrasound and, again, it all looks on the monitor like tissue to me. (Not like a cute, waving little peanut/baby, which is my only other experience with ultrasounds. At least breast ultrasounds don't require the Chinese Water Torture experience.) The radiologist reviewed the films and then did her own scan. She said the mass was "very non-specific", which I could certainly agree with, since everything on the screen looked pretty non-specific to me.

Her guess is that it's an inflamed milk duct and when I told her I'd only quit nursing at the beginning of the year, she thought that made the explanation even more reasonable. But, she said, while it didn't "look like cancer", it didn't look like for sure "NOT cancer", so she wanted to do a needle biopsy just to be sure.

The good news is the needle thing, while looking scarier than hell, didn't hurt at all after I was anesthetized. It does make a rather startling snapping sound when they take the tissue sample, though, that makes you think it hurts even when you don't feel it.

So now I'll all patched up with steristrips and tape and an ice pack. So far, it actually itches more than it hurts, though it's a bit tender, I'll admit.

Of course, no writing has been accomplished thus far today and the rest of the day isn't looking much better. I've got to get all the awards ready for tonight's cub scout Pack meeting plus help my son put a casserole together (it's a potluck) and then actually go to the meeting. See what I mean about life.

Results of biopsy expected by Wednesday. I'll keep you posted!