Archive for the ‘Proof by Seduction’ Category

Cover! Books! Exclamation Points!

Friday, September 4th, 2009

Yesterday was a very exciting day for me.

First, I got an e-mail containing the cover for Proof by Seduction. I know; I already have posted a cover for PROOF. But this was the final cover.  So let’s do that comparison thing again:

Old Cover for Proof by Seduction

Old Cover for Proof by Seduction

Final Cover for Proof by Seduction

Final Cover for Proof by Seduction

Wow. Look how different they are!  It’s like, they changed the alignment of the Julia Quinn quote.  But what you do have, attached to this, is a much larger version of the cover. And now you can finally see how that locket actually stays up: my heroine does, in fact, defy gravity.  (Needless to say, this ability of hers drives my scientifically-minded hero completely mad).

BUT in any event, yesterday I also got my very first author copies.  With my name on them.  Admittedly, my name is underneath “Mary Balogh” and “Nicola Cornick.”  Still, it is there!  My husband opened it up and began reading, making snide commentary which totally didn’t help matters at all (even though it was funny).  Naturally, I did what all authors do when they receive their author copies: I built a fortress.

Behold, the impenetrable fortress!

Behold, the impenetrable fortress!

Notice the large black beast in the wild . . . uh, wild tan carpeted yonder. That foul beastie is about to come and breathe a hurricane gale upon my author copies, causing my impenetrable fortress to collapse into a sad pile of books. Which makes it a not very impenetrable fortress.  (But then again, I don’t suppose I would have much luck writing a romance novella that had no penetration, so it’s probably all for the best. Good cat.)

This was more than enough excitement for me, so I shall have to share it with you! One of the commenters to this post will win a copy of the anthology.

Dangerous Excerpts!

Friday, July 24th, 2009

Those of you who were at RWA Nationals know that we had the Dangerous Book of Excerpts–a book that had first chapter excerpts from both me and Tessa Dare–in full force there.  We printed 400 copies, and walked away with maybe 30 between us, total, left over. And that’s only because we didn’t put those 30 out in the Goody Room.

So for those of you who missed out, we made a PDF version of the Dangerous Book. Warning: it’s 1MB in size (and I tried to get it as small as I could–this is down from the initial size of 10MB.  Sorry, but that’s just how it turned out!) Second warning: The original Dangerous Book of Excerpts had the full first chapter of both my novella, “This Wicked Gift,” and my debut novel, Proof by Seduction. But I got special permission from Harlequin to reprint those, as they’re longer than the average 2,500 word excerpt.  Since I only have permission to post up to 2,500 words on my website, this copy contains not quite the full first chapter.  Those of you who got one of those print versions should count yourselves very, very lucky.

Enjoy! Celebrate! And buy Tessa Dare’s July 28th, 2009 release this Tuesday!

Cover Tease

Wednesday, May 27th, 2009

So, I’ve seen my cover for PROOF BY SEDUCTION, and it is lovely. But I’m not sure if I can show it to anyone yet.

In any event, since I am still waiting for the go-ahead, I thought I would share one of the things I loved about this cover with you: The font they used for the title.

prooftextIsn’t that gorgeous?  Okay, the title isn’t in red on the cover of my book; it’s in white (the rest of the cover is a fairly rich purple).  But I had to make it red here, just for fun.

I love it!  The rest of the cover is even better (including, um, the part that is most interesting to me and least interesting to you, namely, my name).  But I’ll have to wait to post it until I get the official go-ahead.

For now, you’ll just have to believe that the rest of the cover is as gorgeous as the title.  :)

Because you asked

Monday, February 9th, 2009

Yes.  I’m doing this because you asked.

Okay, nobody asked–but, like the romance hero who just knows the heroine really wants a kiss even though she’s saying no, I can magically intuit that, even though you are all leaning slightly away from me, you really mean yes.

You were thinking to yourself that 12 months–at this point, eleven months and a mere handful of weeks–was too much to wait for PROOF BY SEDUCTION.  February of 2010 is impossibly far away.  None of you could wait that long.

Well, don’t tell me I don’t give my readers what they want!  Here at courtneymilan.com, we (that would be the royal “we”) wouldn’t want you to wait one day longer than necessary.  And so instead of making you wait eleven months and 19 days for PROOF BY SEDUCTION, we’ve decided to shorten the wait.  In just ten months and nineteen days you’ll be able to buy PROOF!  That’s right–PROOF’s been moved up a month.  Yay!

P.S.  I just wish it were coming out on January 2.  Then it would be 01022010, and that’s a palindrome.  :(   Off by one!

Covers, Part II: Movie Actors

Tuesday, January 13th, 2009

HQN gave me a big huge form to fill out for my cover art.  (Suzanne McMinn has posted about the system, so if you want to get an idea what it’s like visit her site.)  I actually found the form really fun, in part because I’m not a hugely concretely visual person.

They asked me if there were any actors who looked like my characters.  My initial answer, which I figured would not start my relationship with the Art Department off on the right footing, was, “Probably, but I don’t know who they are.”

Some people pick actors to represent their characters.  My problem is that I don’t remember actor names.  In fact, I am awful with names and face-recognition.  When watching movies I can barely remember the guy’s name in the movie, and if he changes his clothes drastically, I’ll turn to Mr. Milan and prod him and say, “who is that dude that just showed up onscreen?”  And Mr. Milan will be like, uh, the main character, the guy we’ve been watching for two hours?

So my first strategy was to sit down with Mr. Milan and have him list names of movie actors.  “Ben Affleck,” says he.  “Ben Affleck,” I dutifully repeat, typing it into Google Images search.  Images come up.  Ugly images.  My nose wrinkles.  “Okay,” I finally say, “That dude is not Gareth.  He’s ugly.”  No really.  Ben Affleck is ugly.  Seriously ugly.  I can’t believe it.  I know I’ve heard of him; I just did not realize that he was ugly.

“Fine.  Orlando Bloom,” he says, knowing that I actually think Bloom is cute.  But the answer is already no–Orlando Bloom always looks like he’s sharing a private joke with the world and Gareth is not so much into smiling.  So that is a no go.

We go through about twenty more names.  For some reason, Mr. Milan keeps feeding me extremely awkward looking dudes.  He explains that he thought I wanted someone that looked different.  Different?  Possibly.  Ugly?  No.  Finally he mentions John Cusack, I look up John Cusack, who is all wrong but at least cute, and I say, fine, John Cusack.

I e-mail my critique partners with the good news–which I ought to have done immediately, without bothering with Mr. Milan, who I now know has terrible taste in men–and Tessa says immediately, no, no, he’s Viggo Mortenson!  I look up Viggo when he is not being Aragorn and lo and behold.  He is, in fact, Gareth.

The moral of the story is that my critique partners have better taste in men than my husband.

So here are my main characters.  Hi, guys.  Nice to meet you.

Gareth (Viggo Mortenson)

Jenny (Laura Fraser)

Jenny (Laura Fraser)

Query Letter Outtakes

Tuesday, January 6th, 2009

Over on Kristin Nelson‘s blog, she is analyzing the query letter that I sent her.  Admittedly, at the time she had already requested the full, so it wasn’t a query query letter, but she does say she would have requested based on those pages.

This might give you the impression that I am actually capable of writing a good query letter.  That impression would be . . . insanely offbase.  If you’ve been following me, you know that Sherry Thomas wrote my query letter.

My own query letters for the book…. they sucked.  So I’m posting the outtakes on this blog.

(more…)

First sale!

Wednesday, August 13th, 2008

Puppy pictures will follow soon–but I wanted to announce here that my awesome agent, Kristin Nelson, has just finished my sale to HQN at auction. PROOF BY SEDUCTION will be released in Fall of 2009, and the second book–still working on that one–will follow shortly.

I will have a longer post–with all the many attributions that I must make, because this book owes a huge amount to many amazing people–but I thought I would start with this.

UPDATE–I’m on publisher’s marketplace!

FICTION: WOMEN’S/ROMANCE

Golden Heart Nominee for Breath of Honor Courtney Milan’s PROOF BY SEDUCTION, about a rigidly logical marquis who uses the scientific method to save his heir from the clutches of a fraudulent fortune teller, only to fall for her and discover that the one hypothesis not susceptible to proof is love, to Ann Leslie Tuttle at HQN, in a good deal, at auction, in a two-book deal, by Kristin Nelson at Nelson Literary Agency (World).

Movie Logline Pitch

Saturday, July 26th, 2008

As conference rears its mighty head in the not-too-distant future (days?!  When did it become mere days away?), loops and blogs have gone haywire as people practice pitches.  There are the short-paragraph pitches, designed to capture the conflict in the book and boil it down to its essence.  There are single sentence pitches.  And then there’s the movie pitch.

Apparently, this works like this:  someone says, “It’s a cross between NORTH BY NORTHWEST and STEEL MAGNOLIAS.”  Everyone sits around and nods sagely, understanding precisely what the book is about.  Apparently, this makes a lot of sense to them.

Confession time:  I write historicals because my knowledge of pop culture is pea-sized.  I see movies–on occasion.  In fact (she says proudly) in the last two years, I have seen five movies, which is about as many movies as I saw in the first ten years of my life.  My pop culture knowledge is increasing at an exponential rate!  (Unfortunately, pop culture is increasing at an exponential rate, too, and its exponent is bigger.)  None of the movies I have seen are like my book.  So my movie lexicon is a little skimpy, to say the least.  And even those movies that I have seen, I can’t quite figure out how to cram into a pitch.  I imagine that if I tried it, it would come out like this.

Person:  Tell me about your book.

Me:  It’s kind of like, WHEN HARRY MET SALLY.  Except without Harry.  Or Sally.

Person: Uh.  So what’s left?

Me:  Meeting?

SO.  Moving along, then.  This looks to be a fruitless endeavor for me, but that’s no reason you should stop!  Tell me what movies your book is like!  If I have seen both movies, you will win!

What will you win, you ask?  Glory!  Heaps and heaps of glory!  Also, potentially something else that I am too lazy (and too busy packing) to think of now.


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