just received notice that my badly titled manuscript, better known as Legalese, finaled in the Golden Network’s Golden Pen contest.

More importantly, I got some great feedback that will help me get the manuscript ready for the mother of all contests, the Golden Heart.

This has really been a week of great news–feel free to share yours, too! The more, the merrier!

  have to admit, there is nothing I like better than being right. And being able to tell someone “I told you so” makes being right even sweeter. I read the first scene of Goddess of the Hunt after it was first written, and made comments on it. Since then, I have read every scene–even the ones that didn’t make it into the book–and I have loved it all the time. I told Tessa over and over and over again that this book would be published. Going back through e-mails, I see that on January 31st, 2007, I told her that her book would sell at auction.
Tessa got the call. Not just the call–she got the auction. And everything else I have predicted for this book has come true. I can’t wait for the rest of you to be able to read Goddess of the Hunt–and its incredible two sequels–when Ballantine releases them in 2009.

I predict that you will love it. And you know what? So far, I haven’t been wrong about this book once.

ook! In the last two weeks, I’ve gone from 361 pages, to . . . 361 pages! And it only took me 5,000 words to do it, too!

There’s a certain kind of unholy glee that arises as the pages pile on, and the number of words gets larger and larger. It makes you feel like you’re progressing, even as your scenes slip into haphazard gobbledygook. Bigger numbers are better, right? Wrong. There’s something about highlighting 20 pages and pressing the delete key that’s just awful. Nobody likes having a negative word writing day. But even the common maxim, “save them in some other file–maybe you’ll use them!” didn’t help. They were bad. They were not good. They were very not good. Those three sentences will give you a decent idea of how very not good those pages were.

But I fixed it–and now I’ve nailed down the two hardest parts of the book: the black moment, and the necessary set up for it in a few key chapters before hand. There are still two major external threads I need to deal with. But I now know what the underlying emotion is for much of it, and I feel like I can go on. It’s liberating–even though today’s word count is officially negative four thousand.
What about you? What have been the hardest negative words you’ve ever written?

here are a couple of so-called rules that exist in romance novels, all of which can be broken. But there are some things that I suspect looked like rules ten or twenty years ago, but which we might scratch our heads about now, or even roll our eyes when the execution is too ridiculous.

For instance, I’m suspecting it used to be a rule that the girl had to be a virgin. Unless she was a widow, and then–MAYBE–fifty percent chance, she was a virgin. It also used to be a rule, I think, that the girl had to resist the idea of sex as much as the man pursued it with single-minded zeal. But I think the new generation of readers is breaking those rules to bits. I don’t have a problem with sex, and I don’t have a problem with virgins, but I have to roll my eyes at the convolutions that used to crop up to keep those rules inviolate.
Now I’m beginning to wonder whether there’s another romance trope that’s going by the wayside. You know what I’m talking about: the hero and heroine hate each other on the surface; they’ve spent well over a hundred pages fighting; but that rage boils up into physical attraction and then they can’t keep their hands off each other (or he kisses her to punish her or prove his dominance) and next thing you know, he’s lifting her skirts and bam–he plunges inside and she has the first orgasm of her life. Even though we’re all reading it and thinking–no WAY. If she were that sensitive, wouldn’t she have noticed it before when she touched herself? And who is that sensitive? Seconds? Really? They were just yelling at each other half a minute ago! There’s only one conclusion: The hero has a magic schlong. Everywhere it touches, orgasms burst forth. (This is not to be confused with the other romance trope, the glittery hooha, which I suspect is going nowhere).

So I was thinking about the last two debuts that I read (see previous post), and I realized that although both books had a sensuality level that was burning hot, neither one featured a hero with a magic schlong. Sex–good sex–takes work and an emotional connection. The sex isn’t always good in both those books, and that fact makes both books stronger. In a way, that made the sex that was good even hotter, because it felt more real. And they aren’t the only ones–Eloisa James writes heroines who don’t always have orgasms with their heroes, and I’m sure she’s not alone.

So what do you think? Trend or aberration? Is the magic schlong going by the wayside? How do you feel about magic schlongs–in your fiction reading and writing, of course; we’ll leave the TMI for Tessa on Tuesday.

  have a dirty secret. I listen to conversations. I listen to private conversations. In restaurants, on the bus, on the street–you name it. If it’s in earshot, I’m listening. I can’t help it.

Okay. I can help it. I just don’t want to. And occasionally–like tonight–I hear things that make me want to jump up and shake the person in question. Tonight, I heard a girl who insisted, rather vociferously, that the American fascination with all things Japanese is just about sex. The rationale is one I won’t repeat here, but the person made the assertion that (1) the fascination with anime (she meant “manga,” incidentally, since she was talking about print cartoons) was all about pedophilia; (2) if Americans really were interested in Japanese culture, they’d understand that Japanese culture was all about death, witness their preoccupation with suicide; and (3) you didn’t see anyone interested in samurai culture.

Mr. Milan had to forcibly restrain me from getting up out of my seat to beat her over the head with my soup bowl. If I’d been talking to her, I would have scoffed in her face. The problem? I wasn’t talking to her. I don’t even know her. I was just overhearing her commentary. (It didn’t help that it feels like it’s 4 AM here.)

So . . . . We’re all authors. Do you ever listen in on conversations? What’s the most egregious thing you’ve ever overheard, and what (if anything) did you do about it?

ver on the Mavens, they’re talking about critiques. Now, I have some people who I critique on-and-off with (you know who you are), and two very regular critique partners, who I plot with–and dissect materials. And they’re both truly awesome, because they both make me mad from time to time. And anyone who makes me mad makes me think. The hardest critiques for me have been ones that are things like, “You need to do X, because this just won’t work.” Very often, I won’t do X itself–but the critique is really good, even though I hate, hate, HATE getting them, because it points to fundamental flaws in my writing.The hardest one along those lines–and one that changed the way I write a novel–came at the end of my first book, when one of my genius CPs, (who will remain nameless, but her name rhymes with “Wessa”), told me I needed to have a confrontation between the hero and the villain (who are friends). My other brilliant CP (who will remain nameless, but her name rhymes with “Windia”) told me I needed a stronger resolution with the brother.

I resisted. I argued. I muttered to myself that I wasn’t writing That Kind of a Book, and besides, my hero wouldn’t act like that. Not at all. He would act like–like–lightbulb moment! And there followed a scene that was wholly unanticipated, which wrapped up two loose ends at once in a manner that was wholly consistent with my hero’s character.

After I wrote it, I had this incredibly depressing feeling. You see, I’d spent all book trying to make it so that my heroine’s brother wouldn’t be in too big a trouble–because I didn’t know how to solve too big a trouble, and so how could I start it? I’d just solved too big a trouble. And I’d spent the whole book pulling my punches.

Lesson learned: Never dial down a conflict just because you think you can’t solve it. You’re the author. It’s easier to solve problems then it is to make them. I still do this–avoid conflict because I’m afraid of what it’ll mean for the book. But I’m getting better at it, thanks to my critique partners.And that’s the real beauty of awesome critique partners: They don’t just make your manuscript better; they improve your skills. And hopefully, you improve theirs.

  just wrote a scene that took on a life of its own, in a rather frightening way. It wasn’t supposed to be a happy scene; it features my heroine and a rather unsavory character who we meet in the first chapter of the book. In my brief sketch of the chapter, I’d labeled the scene “J. confronts T.”
The scene was supposed to be a little frightening. But it turned incredibly squicky, and it almost horrified me to write it. This is not at all the kind of thing I want to think about. I kept thinking that I shouldn’t go down that path–but the fact of the matter is, I think I do need to go there. I can’t pull my punches on this one, and if I just settled for a mere threat of physical violence here, I don’t think I’d be properly escalating the tension.
Frustratingly, the scene’s not very good yet, because it is so squicky that I’m shying away from writing it well. I have to fight myself not to dial down the language; it’s probably the hardest three pages I have had to write all book. This is not the kind of scene I signed up to write when I said I wanted to be a romance author. And yet it is exactly the scene that’s demanded here. When I made a decision to raise the stakes and punch up my heroine’s conflict, I think I knew in the back of my mind that this is what I was doing to myself. And to her. This is so far outside of my comfort zone.
Without further ado, one sentence from the hardest scene I’ve ever written:

“Jacob,” Thalia said quietly, “I am your sister, not your wife.”

So what about you? How far outside your comfort zone have you had to push yourself? And how do you make yourself get there?

f you haven’t noticed, I really like words. And one of my favorite words ever is just not usable in a historical.

Metastasize.

It’s a beauty of a word. There isn’t another word out there that can quite capture the sheer virulence of metastasization. It’s a word that carries with it all the fright of uncontrollable growth along with the impotent fury of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. It’s a really loaded word.

Similar in meaning, yet opposite in form, are two other truly beautiful words: Event horizon and critical mass. Both, of course, have that delicious feel of a point of no return. But they’re opposite in a sense. Once you pass the event horizon, your choices are limited. Light can’t escape; how could you? Critical mass is almost the opposite: Until you reach that critical mass, you’re inert, unable to undergo a chain reaction that fundamentally changes the nature of things.

In some ways, it almost aches to not be able to use these words. But it’s a challenge, too.

So which words do you miss, if you write historicals? And likewise, if you write contemporaries, are there any words from historicals that you miss? Do you ever wish that your modern character could say, in a fit of rage:

Damnation seize every limb of your body! What, you bloody hell-kite! you blazing imp of melted pitch! dare you stand there, and wag your devil’s-jaw at me? Flaming oil and sulphur be my lot in Satan’s arse, if I don’t teach you better manners, whoreson!

ou’ve heard it a million times. “Such and such is an anachronism,” somebody tells you.

Really? Some examples are, as Tessa Dare points out, “I am sorry.” Some people say that the use of “I’m sorry” as an apology is anachronistic, dating only from the early 1900s. False! Tessa pulls up three examples from Pride & Prejudice alone.But maybe you haven’t memorized Jane Austen like Tessa has. Perfectly fine, I assure you–Google can help you out. Go to http://books.google.com. Insert the phrase you’re looking for “I am sorry” and then restrict it by date, by adding: “date:1750-1820.” Lo and behold, “I am sorry” is used in Pilgrim’s Progress, as well as by Edmund Burke (surely a crusty old man, if ever there were one).

Ditto for “bloody hell,” something that Leigh mentioned that others complained about. And we find that Regency Misses could well have heard both “bloody hell-hounds” (1772) and “bloody hell-kites” (1813). (I particularly like “You blazing imp of melted pitch!”), even if she never heard the stable hand talk.

I’ve also been told that “debutante” wasn’t used until the 1830s. This is wrong, too; it shows up in 1809 in the Quarterly Review.

On Smart Bitches, someone complains about “bloke” being modern–except it was used in 1750, in the supposedly “modern” sense.

It takes about ten seconds to check your instincts. Those of you who want to nitpick anachronisms are free to do so, but don’t do it before you’ve checked Google Books. It’s free, it’s easy, and it stops you from looking like a complete idiot. I have found that sometimes the worst people to read my writing are those who write in the historical era. There are so many misconceptions that historical romance writers have, that are completely unfounded.

WA is suggesting the following changes to its categories:

9.2.6. BEST SHORT HISTORICAL ROMANCE BEST HISTORICAL ROMANCE TO 1820- novels or sagas that have a strong romantic element throughout. The word count for these novels is 40,000-95,000 words. Romantic historical novel with a primary setting up to the year 1820. The story may take place at any geographic location. The level of sexuality may range from sweet to extremely hot.
Judging guidelines: In this category, the love story is the main focus of the novel, and the end of the book is emotionally satisfying. : In this category, the story takes place primarily in years through 1820. The love story is the main focus of the novel and the end of the book is emotionally satisfying. If a book spans many years, the author should best determine the category in which it belongs. These novels may or may not contain a high level of sexuality.

9.2.7. BEST LONG HISTORICAL ROMANCE BEST HISTORICAL ROMANCE FROM
1790 – 1945- novels or sagas that have a strong romantic element throughout. The word count for these novels is over 95,000 words. Romantic historical novel with a primary setting in the years 1790 through 1945. The story may take place at any geographic location. The level of sexuality may range from sweet to extremely hot.
Judging guidelines: In this category, the story takes place primarily in years 1790 through 1945. In this category, the love story is the main focus of the novel, and the end of the book is emotionally satisfying. If a book spans many years, the author should best determine the category in which it belongs. These novels may or may not contain a high level of sexuality.

Rationale for changing historical categories: Again, the board wished to eliminate the word count problem. With numbers dwindling, we examined merging both short and long historical into one category but felt that the historical novel could grow in the future. We hoped to allow for the change in popularity of one time period over another by providing overlapping years. An author whose book spans many years should determine where the novel best fits.

I like the idea of getting rid of “short” and “long” historical–those keywords were holdovers, I think, from the days when there were a number of “category” romances. But those days are no longer. But what exactly happened to the times? So if you write a book set in 1817, you can submit to both categories? Why would you have one category that was all the Regency and the Romans and the cave-dwellers, and another that was Victorians and Georgians? Is that really what they intended?

UPDATE:  I e-mailed RWA Nationals and they said:  Yes.  It is intentional, because there are so many Regencies out there.  Well, okay!