The serialized publication/value price of Eden  actually relates to this post.  As I was working on edits yesterday, I clicked over to Google News – my home page for Internet Explorer.  I’ve customized my version to show certain types of stories, and yesterday up popped a Bloomberg Businessweek story of all things.  Naturally, I got distracted from my work and had to read the piece right away.  The romance genre meriting a piece on a prominant business site was worthy of notice, and its worthy of mention here.

The piece was titled:  Romance Fiction:  Getting Dirty In Dutch Country. It focused on how romance fiction is – even in this Friday the 13th of economies – on the rise.  The story mentioned the writer’s opinion that  the many and varied categories of romance, including Amish, knitting and paranormal specifically, helped keep romance climbing towards the top.  I don’t really disagree with the piece, I just don’t think the writer attributed the rise to all the right factors. 

  According to the article, publishers say that book sales declined by 1.9 percent in 2009 after a 3 percent drop the previous year and books appear to be “suffering a slow and rather boring death.”  The article doesn’t talk about ebooks, which have been undergoing dramatic growth. 

The piece notes that despite declining sales in books overall, one genre has been experiencing “steady and unusual growth.”  Yeah, that’s right, ROMANCE.  The Romance genre increased to $1.4 billion, up by $100 million, or 7.7% from the prior year.  In a down market and a down economy people are buying more romances than ever.  Well, duh.  When have we ever, ever needed to believe in happy endings more than today?

Mysteries can get your mind working on a puzzle instead of the Citibank bill.  Thrillers can tingle your spine and make you forget the debt collectors who keep jingling your phone.  Women’s fiction can remind you that you should spend more time hugging your friends and less worrying about the bank balance that won’t cover your bills.  Nonfiction can teach you to love yourself and to ignore the wolf at the door.  But only Romance can remind you that the heart matters more than the bottom line.  Only Romance guarantees that you’re plunking down those scarce dollars for a happy ending.  And more and more, if readers are going to spend money, they’re going to do it for work that lets them curl up and take a trip that’s going to end in a good way.  There won’t be a wierdo in a Freddy Kruger mask – unless the characters are into that sort of thing. 

It all reminds me of a conversation I had with a cousin who is a big used car dealer.  He had recently sold the new car dealership and was back to his real line of work.  I asked if he was worried about business in the current economy.  He tilted back in his chair and said, “Slick (that was his nickname for me), when the economy is good, the used car business is good.  And when the economy is bad, the used car business is great.” 

And just this week, my boss and I were talking to a Claims Rep for one of our insurance companies, who was worried about a hotel owner/insured.  His business had been going through some tough times but my boss had talked to him and things were going better.  That’s true all over the Grand Strand region of South Carolina this year.  The Myrtle Beach International Airport has said that just about each month this season has broken the record set the month before.  I can tell you that judging by traffic jams and lines at restaurants, business in Myrtle is booming. 

Our good fortune in Myrtle is partly due to the bad fortune of our brothers and sisters along the Gulf Coast.  And I see license tags of many, many other states were I’d bet the folks would normally be vacationing along the Gulf beaches.  And we sympathize for the owners in those states that were already suffering and are now suffering more.  But Myrtle’s growth is due to much more than just fortunate geography. 

Myrtle Beach has always been one of the cheapest family friendly places to vacation.  But even so, last year, business was down in Myrtle.  I think its that after such a long stretch of stress, people need a break.  They can’t afford Vegas or Atlantic City.  The pricey beaches of Florida and the Mouse that requires a golden budget or the rich folk areas of Florida are beyond too many budgets.  But a vacation in Myrtle?  It’s an affordable splurge. 

Used cars do good in good years and great in bad years.  Everyone has to have a car to get to work.  In good years, many folks will trade the three year old car they bought new for another new car.  In the present year, which is not just bad, but is the worst year I can ever, ever, recall, most people will drive their car until it just won’t go anymore.  Then, they’ll get the best deal they can on an older model in the best condition they can afford.

But we’ll all still look at the Mercedes, or the Ferrari or the restored to cherry condition Vette or Mustang.  And we’ll sometimes weave fantasies about the guy driving that car.  A writer might build a whole book around those fantasies.   In other genres, the car might be hot and police might be looking for the driver, who just killed his business partner.  It might be driven by a man whose identity was just stolen as part of an elaborate plot to overthrow the government or to control some imporant part of a big buisness.  It might be driven by a killer who washed away every trace of blood before he garbed himself in a designer suit to look for his next victim.

But if the reader is very, very, lucky, the writer who spotted the bad ride was a romance novelist.  Then the driver will be a bad boy billionaire who can buy everything he could possibly need and most of what he wants.  He believes he can buy everything but he’s about to be taught a lesson in love by……his secretary, or his ward, or his best friend’s little sister.  No matter what smart lady teaches the rogue that the one thing he can’t live without doesn’t have a price tag, the story WILL have a happy ending. 

And just like Myrtle Beach’s gain may be another resort’s loss, the romance writer’s gain is more and more another genre writer’s loss.  But that’s okay.  Romance writers are a friendly bunch and there’s always room for new converts.  The Bloomberg piece talked about suspense writer Kelly Irvin who’s new book is…………..yeah, you guessed it………..a Romance. 

In these bad times, the romance genre is the Myrtle Beach vacation that more and more readers are plunking down their hard earned dollars for and getting in their used car to drive to, but that’s okay……… a happy ending is just around the corner!!!

Most of the articles trying to “explain” women’s love of the romance genre make me want to throw something at my computer screen.   The other Mary Anne’s piece didn’t make me mad so much as it made me pity the author.  First of all, as a researcher, she should have known she couldn’t base an understanding of a vast and complex genre like romance on one atypical type of book of the genre.  It makes all her conclusions laughably wrong. For example, based on her study of Harlequins, Fisher decides that romance novels are too short and characters are therefore too underdeveloped.  Certain types of Harlequins are intended to be short fast reads that get the reader in and out fast.  But not all Harlequins are short – some of the publisher’s imprints are long, slow, luscious reads.  So Dr. Fisher bases her conclusions one type of one imprint from one publishing house.  I hope she does a better job with the psychological research she gets paid for.

Fisher concludes that romance novels are “candy for women’s brains.”   She concludes that they allow the reader to live vicariously through the heroine and fall in love with the hero but without any of the consequences.  Of course, she also thinks that the plots revolve around the woman trying to decide if the hero is “Mr. Right.” So, at least Fisher is consistently wrong.

Romance novels are, in fact, many different things and a reader will reach for a novel based on the experience she’s looking for.  Some may be brain candy but others are hot chocolate for the soul or salt and pepper, salsa or onions and peppers to season a slice of life.  And lets not forget the ones that are just dessert – a big old slice of strawberry cheesecake.  Romances are intimate experiences where a writer takes a reader on a journey that the reader will paint with the flavor of her life and her outlook. 

No, Dr. Fisher, not all romance novels provide skimpy descriptions of the heroine and detailed descriptions of the hero because the reader will imagine herself in the heroine’s place. Some romances, like mine, will provide a few general details about the descriptions of the hero and the heroine because we want the reader to draw the character in her mind the way she imagines him or her. 

My basic problem with the other Mary Anne’s piece is that she imagines herself as being so very much smarter than the writers and the readers that she can profile all of them.  She can’t just acknowledge that much of the genre is so far beyond her understanding that she’ll never get it.  People who think they’re smarter than everyone else like to do that.  If they encounter something they don’t get, then they’ll pull out one tiny piece of it, label it, and pronounce that one size fits all.  Who among us doesn’t know that one size NEVER fits all? 

But Dr. Fisher’s piece got me to thinking about the flip side of her query.  I know that the reasons readers read romance are as varied as the way writers write the books.  No, based on an experience I’m having with a novel, I wonder – what makes us put the book down and close it without finishing? Perhaps that’s as varied as the reader and the writer too.

A while back I got a bad review for my book, Brotherly Love, on Amazon.  That reader found that there were few decent characters and felt the book was written so that it made her feel guilty for wanting the main characters to end up together.  She thought the book contained some “unnecessarily graphic” rape scenes and advised readers not to “bother” with the book.   Bad reviews are always tough for writers, including me, even though we should know better.  Mentally, I know that I’m not writing “pablum” so for some people my books won’t digest well. 

I wonder if that reader finished the book?  When a book doesn’t connect for me I know I can’t finish it.  And sometimes, it doesn’t connect for a particular reader even if the author is very talented and wrote a hell of a book.  That’s happened to me with one I’m reading now and have just decided to close and walk away from. And when I tell you about the book many of you will have read it, will have possibly read some of the author’s other work and enjoyed it all very much. 

The book I’m about to put away without finishing is by a fellow South Carolinian – Dorothea Benton Frank, who seems to be a fine writer.  It’s called Bulls Island and is about characters from Charleston, a community right down the road from my home in Myrtle Beach.  My family and I love Charleston, so I thought I’d love the book.  But the story is about a girl who’s been dating the scion of a rich Charleston family for many years.  When they finish college they decide to marry and bring her family to have dinner with his because historically, there’s been bad blood between the families. 

At the dinner the hero’s mother acts so vile and nasty that the heroine’s parents leave suddenly, in the middle of a pouring rain storm.  The mother dies in a car accident caused by the bad weather.  The heroine leaves the area and the hero and moves to New York because she can never marry into that woman’s family.  That woman killed the heroine’s mother, or so she thinks.  The heroine moves to New York without a word to the hero and has a baby she never tells the him about.  The hero lets his mama play puppetmaster and ends up diddling some female bait she waves in front of him and so marries the girl.  The hero and the bait have no children and the bait turns out to be a spineless alcoholic. 

The heroine rears her son in New York and doesn’t even tell her father or sister about the kid.  She tells her son that his father died in a car wreck with both of her parents.  I haven’t read what, if anything, she told the kid about his father’s parents.   Anyway, the heroine gets a big deal job involving real estate projects and financing and one day gets called into her boss’s office and told she’s going back to Charleston to manage a project developing “Bulls Island” with a local real estate family.  (Yes, the hero’s family). 

While that’s going on, back in Charleston, the hero’s wife is falling further into the bottle.  He learns that the heroine is coming back to work with him on the Bulls Island project. On the same night that  his daddy has a heart attack he finds out that his mama has been having an affair with his daddy’s business partner for years.  He wonders if that means he can have an affair with the heroine.  

While the heroine is dealing with having to go back to Charleston and face all of her lies, she also dealing with her son going away to college. She picks this time to start dating an Italian guy she describes like a mafia prince, considers to be a joke, and finds way, way beneath her socially and intellectually.  Yet the heroine ends up bedding Mr. Mafia who sends her 4 or 5 dozen roses after each mattress mambo and reaches the point where she intends to kiss him off.  After all, she was just playing. 

Okay.  That was the breaking point for me.  It was the stupidity that was just too much.  Got to put the book down, which is a shame.  I wanted to read the writer’s descriptions of Charleston but never got back there with the heroine.  These people are all too stupid and self centered for me to tolerate.

I had trouble right from the get go.  The dinner and death of the heroine’s mama was hard for me to take.  Why didn’t the hero stand up, tell mama she was being a prize bitch and she could stop right now and apologize or he’d walk away?  Even if the hero didn’t do that voluntarily, why didn’t the heroine put him to the test?  They’d been together for 8 years.  She should have stood up at the dinner table and told the hero to handle mama or he wouldn’t be handling her anymore. 

And the heroine flits off the New York without ever sitting down with the hero and telling him about her feelings, the whole situation and especially the baby.  Yeah, his family’s been in Charleston for years and he would be walking away from generations of legacy.  But if they were so much in love, she should have given him the choice.  The heroine never even tells her own family about the kid and she lies to her son about his family.  She walks away from her father and sister just when they lose her mama.  To top it all off, the heroine treats the Italian like the hero’s mama treated her family.  Enough is enough. 

But it’s only enough for me.  Like that reviewer who didn’t like Brotherly, my life and my experiences make it impossible for me to like – or even to finish - Bulls Island.   I find the hero to be a wiener, the heroine to be a self-centered bitch and all of them to be terminally stupid.  I could have even tolerated the dinner and death with something akin to mild indigestion and finished the book if the heroine had pushed the hero to choose and then he chose wrong.  I can tolerate the hero being a prick, but I can’t tolerate the heroine being a stupid, self-centered liar. 

Back to Ms. Fisher’s piece - maybe she did get some of it right.  Women generally expect men to behave like they’re motivated by their egos.  We get that.   But we expect more from our heroines because we expect more from ourselves. I can deal with the improbable — I adore the improbable – but I can’t deal with the pathetic. 

So yeah, Dr. Fisher, I’m fine with the hero being a cad as long as the heroine is woman enough to teach him a lesson.

Pauline aside, a host of acclaimed books have been serialized. One of the first was One Thousand And One Nights which introduced famous characters like Sinbad the Sailor and Aladdin.  One of the most famous serial authors was Charles Dickens who published each chapter as a serialized piece.  That’s why most of his work is so long - more chapters equal more money.  Dickens’ left off each piece with a cliffhanger.  Famously, for his chase story The Old Curiosity Shop,  American fans waiting at the docks to meet the ships bringing in the next installment shouted at the ships’ crew demanding to be told whether Little Nell was dead.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created his Sherlock Holmes  tales as serial pieces for a magazine.  Thomas Hardy created many pieces via serialization, including Tess Of The D’Urbervilles.  More recent writers have also returned to the format.  Stephen King has dabbled in the genre.  King began offering “The Plant” in serial form on his website, charging $1.00 for each of the 6 chapters that he’d written.  However, in late 2000 he abruptly halted the project, leaving readers without an ending.  Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities was serialized by Rolling Stone magazine, and Douglas Clegg got a 5 figure advance for serialization of his novel, Nightmare House.

Some of the next entries to the long list of serial novels will be a couple of the new ones that I’m currently writing.  I’m planning to serialize my new historical (tentatively titled either The Duke Regent’s Dilemma, The Duke Regent’s Eden, or Eden Without The Apple — Hey, it’s a work in progress, people).  I’ll also be serializing my new contemporary – at the intersection of love and the law like E-mail Enticement and Griffin’s Law.  The contemporary is titled The Office Ink Spells Murder. 

Why serialize?  Well, it’s an experiment but it seems to serve a whole bunch of useful purposes.  First, let’s recognize the elephant in the room.  Yes, Virginia, serializing the books will add to the family coffers and that is always a good thing.  Hey, if Dickens didn’t sneeze at the money, I won’t either.  And while making money is always an important goal, it’s not the only one.

 Serializing the books will help in the writing/creative/editing process.  Readers’ comments can hurt, but they’re the ultimate judges.  Those comments are my Simon Cowell moments and, like the best of the American Idol contestants, I can use the comments to edit, revise and polish the book before it’s finished and published.  In that way my readers can participate in the creative process and become an important part of the work.  Heck, with the historical, I haven’t settled on the title yet and reader feedback would help with that as well.  I’ll have to work on growing a thicker skin but readers’ opinions are always to be valued – even the bad ones – because a reader took the time to review a book.  Like they say in Hollywood – any press beats no press. 

Getting serialized versions out there also keeps something new being published fairly often.  Writing a full book takes a while, so there is apt to be a long period when nothing new is added.  I think keeping readers who like my work having something new fairly often will keep them checking back more often.  Someone who’s read part 1 will hopefully stay on the look out for part 2 and 3 and 4….

Serializing a book and getting each piece out for 99 cents should also stir interest in the other work that’s out there.  So it will be a good marketing tool.  Maybe those buyers will come back and invest the $2.99 (a dirt cheap price IMHO) to buy one of the other books.  So getting my WIPs in the hands of readers for a price beyond dirt cheap should be a good investment in the health and well-being of all my books. 

I’m going to serialize them on Kindle first.   I’m not sure about Smashwords.  SW distributes to all the other channels – Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Sony, Apple, etc.  And I’m not sure whether or not the big e-tailers would be interested in a serial work.  It might work on the SW site, and I’ll probably put it up there come to think of it.  As to putting it out for distribution, I guess I’ll email SW Guru and the indie author’s best friend, Mark Coker, get his opinion and then go with that.  Going with Coker’s coaching has turned out to be a good thing all the way around.  Coker regularly gives out pointers on his web site and I recommend the SW blog to all indie readers and for sure to all indie authors.

How often the pieces will appear may vary, along with the length.  Dickens may have gone with one chapter at a time, but to give the readers a good value and a decent helping of the work at a time, I’m thinking of 2-3 chapters per piece.  I’m already upwards of Chapter 6 in each MS, so I’m a little ahead of the game with material.  I’ve had my lightbulb moment with each book, so I feel pretty certain I’ll finish both of them – not finishing would be unfair to readers and poor business on my part. 

The first to appear will be The Duke Regent’s Eden.  How soon it’ll appear depends largely on my graphics guru, Mr. Quack.  Hubby’s “blessed” with projects at the moment – his father wants him to do a political piece, I want him to do a book trailer for E-mail Enticement, and I want him to do the cover for the new serial historical.  However, because serials are time sensitive and because that project will add to the family coffers for the serial and for all the books, Mr. Quack will surely give the cover priority.  After all, his interest is as vested as mine in the coffers. 

Mr. Quack does face an interesting dilemma with the new cover, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the subject of his mid-week blog update.  I’m asking hubby to boldly go where men prefer never to tread.  As we speak, he’s looking for good stock photo material featuring…. MAN TITTIES.  Why?  Well, women like to look too and I’m interested in the marketing aspect of having a fine brawny speciman on the cover of the historical serial.  The contemporary, love-and- law murder mystery won’t provide such fodder for experimentation. 

So, keep a keen eye out on Kindle and (likely) the SW site for the first installment of the new serial.   I’ll blog more about the plot when we get closer to publication.  It’ll be interesting to see if the new serial format, AND THE MAN TITTIES, steer the good ship Quacking Alone to greener waters.      

I germinate ideas or script scenarios in my head all the time.  My imagination is where I go to escape when the job is too sad or demanding or when reality bites too hard.  But it’s not only stress or sadness that sends me to Mary Anne World.  Sometimes a great TV show will send me there.  I’ve written alternate scripts for many a Grey’s Anatomy episode, and I’ve made up whole romances that only lived in my head (Cristina and Webber, anyone? And I always thought Izzie belonged with Dr. Burke)  Like I said, my head is a strange place. 

Of course, it’s not just Grey’s that gives birth to ideas.  I’ve gotten romance ideas for Dr. House and Cuddy or Gordon Ramsey and a Hell’s Kitchen contestant.  So far, none of those has grown up to be a book, but in the future, you never know.  Griffin’s Law came to be after I imagined Grey’s in a law school. 

But its not just TV that brings ideas.  Sometimes they grow from reading an interesting legend on the Internet (the MacLeods of Skye and their famed faerie flag became my – so far – three part Forever Series).  The idea for E-mail Enticement came during a CLE seminar.  The first book I ever wrote , Brotherly Love, came from the most unique place.  Usually the characters create the story but with my first book, the message created the story.  I got to thinking about how big and broad love is and I wondered why we create boxes and rules to try to limit and define what we should only celebrate.  The characters in Brotherly are more “real” than in most romance novels, because they were intended to be more like us – flaws and all – and the story was written to make the reader think instead of just experience.

I hear that “famous” authors get emails all the time, suggesting story ideas.  I understand that most of them respond, if at all, with a reply stating that the author creates her own ideas.  In my daily life, whenever that’s happened to me, I usually suggest that the person sit down and write the story.  I say that because an idea will never grow up to be a book unless it sprang from the twisted mind of the author. 

I’ve had ideas without number and most of them never made it to my computer screen at all.  But a few have gotten that far.  I have, on my hard drive as we speak, 5 or 6 books, at least, that I’ve started but haven’t finished.  Why did those books sputter to a halt? 

In my creative process, the characters have to take over to tell the story.  I’ll start with a germ of an idea.  Basically, I’ll start in the place where my characters start.  In my current project, a Regency historical, I started with this idea:  what if a duke held the title only because of a betrothal made when a future duchess was just a wee infant and the duke grew into the title but never grew into the relationship. 

There comes a point where I know if I’m ready to tell the story I’ve started.  Those 5 or 6 unfinished projects on my hard drive?  I wasn’t ready to tell those stories yet.  Or rather, the characters weren’t ready for the story to be told.  Because at some point, the characters have to take over, and the germ of the idea has to grow into a story with conflict and drama and passion.  The idea has to grow into a book where the complications are created by the relationships.

For me, as I write, that means two things have to happen.  First, I find that the story is creating circles, plot points at the beginning that get connected and looped back at page 30 or 40 or 50.  Then those little circles start back along the track to become bigger circles and at the end, there’s a giant circle that connects back to the beginning. 

The second thing that has to happen is the light bulb moment.  That’s the “a-ha” time when out of my deviant brain, springing from my busy little fingers on the keyboard, emerges the glue that’s going to tie the story together.  It’s going to keep me interested in writing and a few months from now, will hopefully keep readers interested in reading. 

In those unfinished books on my hard drive, I’ve usually had the circles starting to draw themselves, but the light bulb hasn’t gone off yet.  I’ll go back to those stories from time to time, and see if the characters are ready to tell their tales yet.  Happiness happens, like it did in my current WIP, when it all comes together as it’s pouring from my mental pitcher. 

The glue is different for every story but it has to be there or the tale will wait on my hard drive, unfinished and occasionally knocking at my mind, waking me up at night.  In Faerie, the glue was the curse that provided a reason for the intervening interest and involvement of the wee folk in the lives of the characters.  That same glue held together for Sixth Sense, but also held echoes of the personal trauma of the heroes’ background continuing to haunt the way he lived his life – which was the glue from Golden.  The glue for Griffin’s was secrets and for E-mail it was perception, reputation and a duty to a family legacy and business.  For Brotherly the glue was always relationships and perceptions of morality.  But finding the glue – that light bulb moment – it has to happen or the tale won’t get told. 

My new one doesn’t have a firm title yet, and perhaps soon I’ll blog about that process.  Finding a title is a big deal, and it’s part of the process I may not have gotten right yet.  I know that the right title will help to sell the book, and in the world of big publishing, the author doesn’t get much say so at all in what title their work will have.  That seems wrong to me from a creative point of view, but I can see the benefits from a business standpoint.  In the long run, a title is a lot about marketing.  For my current WIP, I’m still playing with titles.  One possibility is Eden Without The Apple, which I like but I’m not sure it screams Regency or historical.  Another thought is The Duke Regent’s Do-Over, which speaks more to the period and the history.  Like I said, I’m still playing with that title.  But I’ve had my moments so I know this one’s gonna make it.  

After the circles start to draw themselves, and then one of those circles activates the light to show me the glue – that’s when I know that my precious little idea is going to grow up to be a book.

I’m working on a new book. Actually, I’m juggling two – a historical and a contemporary. I was working on the historical yesterday when it struck me that the hero was pretty damned tarnished.  My mind flipped over to the contemporary and realized that yep, sho ’nuff, the hero has potholes in his character big enough to drive an 18-wheeler through.  

My personal creative process starts with the characters and builds from there.  From the characters flows the story.  When its going well, one of them will often lead me down a path I never intended to travel, he or she will change the direction of the whole bloomin’ book in a way that’s gonna cause me no end of re-writes.  Those characters, the ones whose tale I’m telling?  They’re never the good guys in the white hats from stable backgrounds earnestly seeking only a permanent committed relationship. 

Invariably, my hero will be the spoiled rascal who’s always lived life on his terms, by his rules.  And those rules, like everything else in his world, tend to favor allowances rather than limits.  His background may have been more or less stable, but it’ll have enough instability, enough challenges, that it’s made him tough, wily, and smart.  My heroes are always smart.  But he won’t be looking to right the world’s wrongs.  Heck, he won’t even be looking to right his own. 

My hero will never walk into the story as the guy avoiding the tawdry, temporary pleasure of sex without strings.  He surely won’t be seeking a committed relationship.  My hero will embrace the tawdry and wallow in the sex whilst avoiding good girls like they were one of those diseases he might pick up in his favorite brothel. 

Yes, you guessed it.  My heroes have always been varmits. 

Now, don’t get me wrong.  I said varmits, not villains.  Varmits are tarnished.  Villains are evil.  A few cracks and blemishes in the character of the varmit blur the sunlight.  The character of the villain is a portrait in black too dark for the sun to penetrate.  My heroes aren’t evil because evil is beyond healing and beyond even the possibility of a happy ending.  In my books the one thing I can promise, each and every time, without fail – Amen – is that there WILL be a happy ending.

So each of my heroes starts his story as a varmit or a rascal, if you will.  In each man are things the reader should see as admirable, things the reader should see that make him redeemable. 

In Brotherly Love Jake was a young man who should’ve just been learning his way in the world when his father died.  Jake stepped up to raise not only his brother, but Jessi, the daughter of his late father’s fiancee, the little girl who would’ve been his step-sister, except for a train crash.  Jake’s a strong man who raises his family to go to church on Sunday and to work hard at building their ranch the rest of the week.  Oh, don’t get me wrong, he’s a varmit and he has issues.  Any family that grew up without a mother or father and had to emotionally assign roles without rules or structure would have a boatload of issues.  It’s how the family reacts when a sudden change in the feelings Jake and Jessi have for each other that makes the story.  Every reader will see the story differently, but I hope most will conclude that love among consenting adults should always be celebrated rather than discouraged, defined, limited or labeled.

In A Faerie Fated Forever,  Nial is the handsome, famous, sensual prey of hordes of women who chase him mercilessly.  He must avoid the good girls in that group while he tries to fulfil a faerie curse.  His issues come from being spoiled with women and from being the child of a father who didn’t marry his faerie fated love and a mother who knew she wasn’t the woman her husband needed.  Nial always had it all on his terms and when his wicked behavior creates a situation where he should wed the neighborhood’s dowdy lass whose crush on Nial is infamous, he creates a solution designed to hurt her enough to let him have what he always has – his own way.  Varmit he might be, but Nial is also a good man, a strong laird who guards his clan and adores his homeland.  His story lies in how he searches for his fated love blinded by his belief that she’ll be what he expects.  When he has feelings for a dowdy lass regarded as a joke rather than a dream, his flaws and failings make him sure that Heather should only be his friend.

And flaws?  Colt of A Golden Forever should’ve coined the term. He was a half-breed bastard raised by a mother who died too young, leaving him to sell his body to the squaws of the tribe in exchange for food and shelter.  His father, an English Earl, comes looking for him too late to save him, and he makes his way among the ton and earns a place in the only way he knows how – by selling his body in exchange for social acceptance.  He grows up to be a man who’ll never again give any part of himself to another person.  He makes his living by running saloons and gambling halls, where his strong appetites makes him cut a swath through the soiled doves.  He’s stubborn and he’s judgmental and he’s willing to take what he wants from Viv, the English lady who sails into his life.  He’ll take, but he won’t give anything beyond the pleasure they can make together in bed.  She’s a virgin, but he’s far from a gentleman so he sends her on her way back to England, the land of his father, the soil he’ll never enter again.  His flaws give rise to his story – how he gives more than he meant to and why he must punish her for taking more than he could safely allow.

In A Sixth Sense of Forever we find Boz, Nial’s cousin who appeared in both of the first two stories.  Boz spoke often of Nial and Colt’s idiocy and vowed he’d never be a fool for love.  He said it in good fun, but the reader always felt he meant it, really meant it.  And he did.  We find that Boz can’t risk love because he suffers from a secret curse, the dark side of the faerie curse under which his cousin Nial labors. Boz was raised by a dutiful but abusive father.  And Boz grows up to be a man willing to listen to his sixth sense to save others, but refusing to examine it to save himself.  He’s the suave jokester who appears to be open, but is actually more closed and secretive than Colt.  He’s an engaged man who is still willing to grant his friends’ request to teach their little sister about sex.  Boz just plans to take the lessons further than his friends’ ever intended.  He has to have Lily and plans to take her even if it means jerking her away from the station she was born to and making her a social pariah.  His story lies in that secret curse, in what it is and in how he tries and fails to avoid it. And it lies in the lessons the man must learn about pride and tradition.  It’s about how he makes the journey to become the only duke in the history of his line who’d break a betrothal.  

In E-mail Enticement  Alix Angelis is a Greek Billionaire who rebels against a family legacy of falling in love at first sight by marrying a Myrtle Beach lady he knows he’ll never love in a quickie Vegas ceremony.  Alix has a pretty stable family, although his mother expects to have her way always.  But he’s spoiled by life, born into a rich family as the only son and heir, the world is his oyster.  He gets what he wants in business and in the bedroom and he expects he’ll always be in control.  The dictatorial man isn’t expecting fate to take a twisted path, but when it does, he ends up falling in love at first sight with his Belle Bitch of a wife’s little half-sister.  He stays in his unhappy marriage longer than he would have otherwise, just to be near Rachel, the love he’s never touched or kissed.  But even for Rachel, he can’t tolerate the Belle Bitch for too long, and he ends his marriage with a plan to try to slowly let Rachel know of his interest.  He’ll court her gently until she’s old enough to be courted fully.  But Rachel is a Southern girl who grew up early, and when she demands a full relationship, Alix’s lust joins his fear of losing her and he gives in.  But he knows his business colleagues wouldn’t approve of the relationship so he tries to keep it in the closet where Rachel has no intention of staying.  How he courts Rachel, how he fights his tendency to rule and control, and what he does to get her and keep her are part of the story.  The rest of it is what happens when Rachel disappears and the old Alix the dictator emerges, only to be confronted with a trial televised across the world on television after he’s charged with enticing Rachel by e-mail – a serious felony in South Carolina that could land him in prison for years.  Email is the story of what happens when a man used to running the world, can’t even run his own life.  It’s a story of a divorce, a courtship, a criminal trial, a mysterious disappearance and of a man learning that losing means winning.             

Grey Griffin, the hero of Griffin’s Law, wears his flaws like a calling card for the world to see but he holds his secrets close to his heart.  He’s a law school professor so by nature he’s egotistical and sure that he’s a little smarter than the rest of the world.  He keeps an ever-changing list of ladies’ numbers in his Blackberry and they all know he promises a good time and wild sex and nothing else.  He’s a half-breed who has learned to pass and he’s abandoned the tribe because he was sure it had abandoned him first.  He’s crafted a world where vows mean nothing more than his ticket to freedom forever.  The only law Griffin lives by is the rule that he’ll never get involved with a student.  When the twelfth of never arrives in the person of Shea Ramsey, he plans to break his law in a way that might break Shea.  His story, too is in his oh-so-interesting blemishes.  It’s in how his character defects lead him to the place where he comes full circle.

Part of my interest in my leading rascals lies in their transformation.  I write  stories where there’s a guy at the beginning that the reader won’t think very much of – until she gets to know him.  The reader will have to realize what there is about this guy that makes him someone to be admired, despite all his baggage.  And the reader gets to be a part of the love that transforms him, that changes him into the man the reader suspected all along that he could be.  Masterminding that transformation requires strong, wily, and determined women who won’t give up even when it looks like surrender is the only possible solution.  Perhaps that’s at the heart of all of my stories – that it takes a strong woman to help a man become more than he planned, more than he wanted, more – even –  than he ever thought possible. 

To paraphrase Willie Nelson:

My heroes have always been varmits. 

And they still are, it seems. 

Sadly, in search of, but one step in back of, 

Themselves and their slow movin' dreams. 

Varmits are special, with their own brand of misery

From being alone too long...

A varmit or a rascal isn’t evil. He’s just a man who hasn’t met the right woman yet. In my stories, he’ll meet her and the reader will get to see how much fun it is to watch a varmit become a dreamboat. 

Varmit watching may not be every reader’s cup of tea, but give it a try.  I hope that most of you will find that watching a rascal get turned right is much more interesting than watching that guy in the white hat meet the girl in the white hat and raise little white-hatted offspring.  Varmits and rascals are a little dirty –  and who wants to read a romance that’s not?    

Read somewhere (hence the hubby alert above) that some of the editors at the big publishing houses are now looking for contemporary romances.  Actually, I think I read in a couple of different places over the last week or two, news that contemporaries may be the next hot thing.  What do I say to that?

THANK GOD, THE GREAT GREEN TOAD FROG AND ALL THE RE-FRIED CLAMS IN THE UNIVERSE!!!

I like historicals and I write historicals, but there are times, many times, when only a contemporary will do.  Some of my favs from that genre are folks like Diana Palmer, Linda Howard, Susan Elizabeth Phillips and Jayne Anne Krentz.  I can curl up in a chair and watch hours pass like minutes while I read one of theirs in paperback form,  or – as I add more to my Sony Reader – in ebook form.  I’m eyeballing a purchase of a Diana Palmer and a Brenda Jackson Westmoreland anthology for my e-reader as we speak. 

I also love contemporaries.  I also WRITE contemporaries.  I previously published Email Enticement, a contemporary set in my home town of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.  I just published Griffin’s Law, a contemporary set at the University of South Carolina’s Law School in Columbia, SC.  Both books take place at that interesting mental spot where love and the law intersect. So, does my gratitude about the return of the contemporary contain some amount of self-interest?  You bet’cha.

But, keep in mind, that I write contemporaries because I read contemporaries.  I write contemporaries because I love contemporaries.  I don’t agree that you have to write what you know.   I do agree that you have to write what you love.   Enthusiasm and joy and a page turning experience will never happen for a reader if they didn’t first happen for the writer.  Fun is contagious. 

What does it mean that the contemporary is about to make a comeback?  I hope it’s a sign that the economy and the job market are about to rebound.  Many contemporaries feature romances that kindle in the workplace – a boss and a secretary, a rancher and a cook, two lawyers or a lawyer and a paralegal or a client, a law professor and a student (Griffin’s Law).  Almost all contemporaries contain some elements of the story that center around what the hero and heroine do for a living.  Over the last couple of years, too many talented folks have been unemployed or underemployed, so I don’t think many readers wanted reminders of jobs and the workplace in the books they read. 

Instead, the recent rise and focus has been on the paranormal romance novels.  America fell in love with Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight novels.  Yours truly even fell victim to the Vampire Virus when I watched the first Twilight movie because I was missing my away at college son who loves the series.  My infection was brief – I never bought any of the books  – but America has been suffering from the malady for a while – a long while.  What caused the Vampire Virus?

Paranormals have been with us always and will surely continue to have their day.  But paranormals used to be mainly the work of talented, highly creative souls who created other species and crafted a world for them to inhabit.  Reading one of those books introduced us to another place, governed by other laws and inhabited by strange and exotic creatures.  In those worlds we were the visitors.  But the vampire virus plagued us right here on our home planet. 

Why?  What caused the monster malady?  And when will we be cured?  I think the plague arrived when contemporary reality became too hard to take.  Too many people either had no workplace at all or had one where they toiled at some job for which they were way overqualified.  How could they imagine love in such a setting?  When survival became a dream American women fell in love with monsters. 

I view the current rumors and rumbles about the revival of the contemporary as a sign that reality has begun to improve.  It means that we can again see love in our world as a possible dream.  Out there, on the far horizon, we see a glimmer of light and it reminds us how good sunshine feels.  America is a country born of hope and filled with fighters and dreamers.  The glimmer of light is all we need to begin pushing forward, to begin shoving the darkness behind us as we head for a world where love can bloom again.

Perhaps the vampires and the zombies served their purpose.  Americans had to embrace something, even if it was something dark and deadly.  But writers of vampire and zombie romances still had to give their monsters redeeming qualities.  Through its darkest hours, Americans still refused to embrace the worst qualities of those monsters.  And now, I hope that women are ready to put away the lovers who dwell in darkness and embrace those who toil beside them on a sunny day. 

It’s time for the vampires & zombies to exit stage right.  The cowboys and the business tycoons are waiting in the wings, ready to take center stage.

Hurrah for the contemporary romance!!  If you’re in the mood for a taste of reality, flavored with some over the top fun, pick up Email Enticement or my new one, Griffin’s Law, now available in ebook and paperback.

The Amazon process for Kindle puts the book out in stages. As I write this post, Griffin’s Law is up on the Amazon site, complete with hubby’s fantabulous cover image and, by the Great Green Toad Frog, with a buy button. The cover blurb hasn’t fed up yet. And this blog post is partly about Griffin’s and why it was my most fun book to write, and partly about that cover blurb.

Anyone who reads this blog knows that I’m a huge fan of Grey’s Anatomy and of its creator, Shonda Sunshine (Rhimes). And Grey’s Anatomy inspired this book. One night, as I watched the folks at Seattle Grace Hospital, I asked myself one question – What if Grey’s Anatomy took place in a law school? 

But no book could be set in a law school without shades of The Paper Chase  creeping in, so I let all of those thoughts twist and tangle in my perverted little brain, and Griffin’s Law was born.  The book is set in the University of South Carolina’s School of Law in Columbia, SC, which I attended.  Descriptions of the school are, as far as I recall, fairly accurate.  The book includes scenes that take place near the “tunnel” that runs under a street. It allows students to park in the Carolina Coliseum lot and then trudge a long – long (did I say long) way to the law school.  And law students carry huge, heavy stacks of books, and have to tote them uphill past the coliseum and through the tunnel. They emerge from the tunnel to walk up the staircase from hell before they arrive at the law school. 

When the school was being built, some enterprising soul who wasn’t a fan of lawyers, wrote in the wet concrete a quote from Shakespeare .. “First, kill all the lawyers.”  When I was there the quote remained to greet students entering the building.  I also included an experience of mine from orientation.  The Dean of the Law School was manning the keg to greet the first years.  I thought that Dean was the spitting image of the (now) late Jerry Falwell.  Getting a beer from the Reverend was an interesting experience for a girl that grew up going to Church a lot. 

Unfortunately, the law school did not have a single Professor McDreamy when I was there, let alone one who had an almost equally yummy Professor pal.  Sigh.   It’s just as well we didn’t have those things, because I had enough trouble getting through law school without mooning around over a professor.  Ah, but in Griffin’s, Professors McDreamy and McSteamy are there.

The book starts when a first year student at the orientation party spills a beer on a guy outside the school, near the street.  Things get hot and heavy without the pair exchanging much info at all. Then things go wrong, and the student, Shea Ramsey, delivers a kick to the balls to the McDreamy Grey Griffin.  The next day, both are surprised when they meet again in the classroom of Shea’s first law school class where Grey is the professor and Shea is the student. 

Grey is a player and he has an ever-changing list of ladies’ phone numbers in his Blackberry.  All of his Blackberry ladies know that the only thing they can expect from him is hot sex and no strings.  Grey generally has a string of students mooning around after him and batting their eyelashes at him, but the students are out of luck.  Grey lives his life by the law that he’ll never get involved with a student.  But fate follows fewer laws than even the mysterious Professor Griffin. 

When the book was finally edited and the amazing cover finally done, I had to write the “cover blurb”  that appears on the back of the book and goes up as the product description at the sales sites.  There I encountered the dilemma that inspired the title of this post — To Compare or Not To Compare?  The blurb I wanted to post went like this: 

You’ll find Professor Griffin at the intersection of Grey’s Anatomy and The Paper Chase. That is, you’ll find him there if he’s not otherwise occupied with one of his Blackberry ladies. If he’s at the intersection, he’ll be teaching a class of law students how many ways the government forgets the Constitution on a daily basis. That’s where 1L Shea Ramsey saw him the second time they met – standing at the podium of her Con Law class.

Griffin keeps the personal and the professional strictly separated by one law – he never, ever gets involved with a student. But aren’t all laws made to be broken?

But hubby felt that including the comparison in the blurb was cheap and gaudy.  Okay, I’ll plead guilty to being a damned gaudy kind of gal.  I search for the big gold earrings that hang down to my neck.  I’m still hunting for a killer pair of gold or bronze shoes that are also comfy (I’ll only sacrifice so much to the God of Gaudy!).  And boy, howdy, you should see my purse.  Got it at a TJ Maxx sale where a horde of women were pulling out and showing each other these tasteful (boring) little handbags.  I had to crawl up to the top shelf (I’m short) and fish for Bagzilla – but it’s as big and gaudy and gold as you’d ever want to see.  So gaudy, I am.  But cheap?  Hubby would be the first to tell you I tend more to the “high maintenance” than the cheap. 

So hubby’s opinion of my proposed blurb made me pause and think.  He’s good at that.  While Iwas thinking, I started to ponder the thought to end all other thoughts – WWSD – What Would Shonda Do?   Or, more accurately, WWST – What Would Shonda Think?    Shonda Sunshine might not like my book or might not appreciate me being so bold and brassy as to compare it to the world that she built. 

Griffin’s doesn’t include the characters, the setting or the plots of Grey’s.  It’s more a similarity of attidude and ambiance.  And while I hope I got some of the atmosphere spot on, Griffin’s is also my take on everything. My take is, as always, over the top.  In my version, you’ll get The Paper Chase version of Grey’s — on steroids. 

In the end, I went with a cover blurb that doesn’t include the comparison.  I describe the professor as McDreamy and I did name him Grey, so I hope readers get the intent anyway.  Maybe, at some point, when my gaudy roots finally conquer my efforts to be tasteful (likely a futile battle), I’ll change the blurbs to see how the books sell with the comparison in place. 

Griffin’s Law is the same as Grey’s Anatomy - except that it’s completely different.  What do I mean by that?  The facts and the location are different. It’s the spirit that’s the same.  I hope that Griffin’s will take the reader to the same emotional place they visit when they watch Grey’s Anatomy.

For now, I’m happy to have the book getting out there and being available for the readers to discover.  I had a fabulous time writing this one and I hope the readers will have just as much fun reading the book.  So go, and pick up Griffin’s Law on Amazon’s Kindle site or on Smashwords, and tell me what you think.

Anyways, Mr. Brick has not been seen recently, so we suspect Muse is working like a maniac to avoid him. She is alive and well, though, unlike many others who’ve had run-ins with His Brickness.

In the meantime, I present Mr. Brick’s premiere video, The Bricks-For-Me Challenge, which was his answer to the infamous Blasphemy Challenge. Enjoy, and until later, kiddies, AOFM out.

They’ll pull up pictures of the act, watch one internet video after another showing a different set of people doing similar things.  A whole genre of movies exists to cater to the male desire to watch generously endowed females wiggle, squirm, slither and squeal in high-pitched tones as the man gives it to her good.  A few scenes later, the same man – we’ll call him Dick - gives it to three different women (at the same time) and they enjoy it every bit as much as the first piece he left behind. 

Women like to read about how Dick discovers Jane – the woman who makes everything in the bedroom so different that he’ll change the way he lives after the orgasm’s over. 

Women want to see Dick meet Jane, figure out that Jane’s going to be different, and watch Dick try to walk away from Jane.  Women want to see Jane teach Dick that she’s not so easy to leave.  Women want Dick and Jane to struggle with any of a million different dilemmas before both of them realize that it’s love and that’s worth any cost.  Women want to see Dick learn that the groans won’t always sound better coming from a new mouth.  By the Great Green Toad Frog, women want to see Dick find the one woman he won’t – can’t – leave.   

Romance novels aren’t about When Dick Leapt Jane; they’re about When Dick Kept Jane. That’s a fundamental difference in the way men and women see sex.  And it’s the lesson that Alan Elsner is too MALE to learn.  It’s why Mr. Elsner got it wrong in the piece he wrote for The Huffington Post.  He’s written a new book and because it has the word romance in the title, he said he was often asked if he’d written a romance novel.  The piece is about what he discovered from checking out from the library – and ALLEGEDLY reading – a stack of recent romances.

The real thrust of Mr. Elsner’s piece is a secret he reveals in the opening paragraph.  He says that when people asked him if he’d written a romance novel, HIS INSTINCTIVE REACTION WAS NO.  Then he says he hadn’t read romance fiction “for many years” so he checked out a stack from his library to read and investigate.  Guess what?  I know, you’re on the edge of your seat to discover whether he liked the novels or not.

No, you’re not on the edge of your seat at all, are you?  Because you’re all smart enough to guess that he’s a man so his investigation proved that he was right all along.  He hadn’t written a romance novel.  He’d never write a romance novel.  Because romance novels – unlike his book – have a predictable script and include too many graphic descriptions of sex.  He concludes, in damnably patronizing  fashion, that romances are “escapist fiction” and that women have ”as much right to enjoy pornography packaged to their liking as men.” 

Well, thank you very much Mr. Elsner.  Women appreciate your being gracious enough to recognize that we have rights -just like men do – imagine that!  But you can keep the “right” to enjoy pornography packaged in any form or fashion.  I’ll just pat Alan on the head and say, “Poor thing, he’s just a victim of his gender.”   Mr. Elsner read romance novels and DIDN’T GET what made them romantic. 

Today’s romances don’t generally stop at the bedroom door.  Once upon a time, on I Love Lucy, Lucy and Desi slept in separate beds.  Today, Meredith and Derek on Grey’s Anatomy don’t just sleep in the same bed, viewers get to watch while they celebrate their relationship in that bed.  Mr. Elsner points out that Jane Austen’s Elizabeth and Darcy shared a physical attraction but the reader doesn’t see them having sex.  Elsner says that in Pride and Prejudice “the real romance takes place in their heads.”  He says that modern romance makes a mistake in opening the bedroom door.  Personally, I’m guessing that if Ms. Austen wrote today, she’d open that door too.

 Elsner says that the sex scenes in romances are “pretty much all alike” and rely on “an unfortunate mix of strained metaphors and graphic anatomical detail.”  After all, Elsner claims, one stiff nipple is pretty much like another” and this engorged penis is pretty much like that one.  I’m not at all surprised that a man, like poor Mr. Elsner, would see it that way.  That’s why internet and movie porn exist, after all – for men who see sex as serving a physical purpose like pissing.  And one toilet is pretty much like another – right?

In romance novels many authors will show the hero frolicking with other women – before he meets the heroine.  That shows the hero as a typical man, finding one bout of grabbing and growling pretty much like another.  What Mr. Elsner, the poor thing, misses, is that sex between the hero and the heroine shows the difference between random sex and sex that expresses love.  Alan can’t see past the stiff nipple or the engorged penis, but if he could, he’d see that sex in romance novels is about how the hero and heroine got there and it’s about what this stiff nipple means to her and how much more this engorged penis matters to him.  This act matters more because they matter more to each other. 

And Elsner claims that in romance novels “love is expressed through sex and only sex.”  How sad that Alan read a stack of romances and couldn’t far enough get past the male preconceptions about peaked nipples and hard ons to see that the most romantic acts in the book didn’t occur in the bedroom.  A former rogue turning down a trip to the bordello with his old running buddies is romantic.  A committed bachelor who looks at a room full of ladies and sees only one is romantic.  A man’s gut-churning desire to beat his former cohort in debauch bloody for dancing with one certain lady is romantic.  A rake known to appreciate the swell of a bosom yelling at the heroine for wearing a low cut gown is romantic.  Poor Mr. Elsner sees none of that.   

Perhaps it’s just as well that Mr. Elsner doesn’t write about sex.  Men don’t do it well because they dwell where their mind sticks – on descriptions of the physical.  I guess that explains why the author who won the seventeenth annual Literary Review’s “Bad Sex In Fiction” award is a MAN. The winner, Jonathan Littell for The Kindly Ones, compares a woman’s vulva to a Gorgon’s head and a “Cyclops whose single eye never blinks.” If you read the description, you’ll see that it describes the act, but never the emotions or the feelings.  The passage almost denies the woman any personhood. It treats her like an object, and portrays her the same way that porno pictures, video or movies portray, or rather don’t portray,  women. 

 Elsner says he doesn’t write romance and he doesn’t write sex because he’s more interested in love  “and love takes place in the mind where it has to fight for its existence against all of the other challenges presented by life.”  Well, thank the Lord that Mr. Elsner doesn’t write romance.  He can’t even identify the right organ.  He thinks love springs from the mind.  If that were the case, then no one would love.

Love is not a choice reached through logic.  It is abandoning logic to follow the heart.  It obeys the soul rather than the limiting bonds of reason.  Who would ever decide to fall in love?  Who would voluntarily surrender their sense of self, their very happiness and give it over to the keeping of another?  If love were about the mind and logic and reason, it would cease to exist. 

Romance novels are about the triumph of the heart over the mind.  Perhaps that’s why they’re best written by women who generally take more emotional risks than their male counterparts.  Elsner says that romance novels do a disservice to other writers who want to tell a “real love story” about “real people grappling with real dilemmas.”  Poor Mr. Elsner misses the point of romance novels.  The real dilemma at the heart of every romance is the surrender of the mind to the heart that changes ”me” to ”we.”  And I bet that if Jane Austen were writing today she wouldn’t just know that, she would show it, inside and outside the bedroom.

If you want to watch how Dick Leaps Jane, then play a porno movie or read a “love story” by a male author who is courageous enough (or foolish enough) to write descriptions of sex.  If you want to know why Dick Keeps Jane, then read a romance novel written by a woman who understands that everyone deserves happy endings.

I had a plan.  I blogged about my plan last time.  I was working on a new historical romance.  Once it was done or (at least) well underway, about the beginning of next year, I was going to stop and do an edit of Griffin’s Law.  The next to be published Griffin’s is complete and has been resting pending an edit.  Griffin’s is a contemporary romance set in a law school and is sort of a crossover between E-mail Enticement and a historical.  Okay – if you insist- think of Griffin’s  as the Grey’s Anatomy of the legal profession.

Anyway, I’ve been hard at work writing my new historical.  Rather, I’ve been trying to be hard at work on the historical.  I’ve been coming home after work and opening the computer to the MS every night.  I’ve been opening it faithfully every Saturday and Sunday morning for the past few weekends.  Sometimes, I’ve even written a few lines on it.  But inevitably, after a line or two, the story leaves me and I start sneaking over to my desktop to play Snood or Solitaire.  Or flipping over to check sales on Amazon, Createspace, Scribd, Smashwords, etc.  Or getting sucked into something on Google News that I keep in customized form as my homepage for Internet Explorer.

After a while, I’d feel guilty for doing whatever it was rather than writing, and I’d go back to the MS.  And I’d manage a few more lines before something lured me out of it again.  The whole thing did get me some unusually good sleep.  I wasn’t getting pulled away from the land of dreams by lying there and plotting dialogue in my head.   As Miss Snark would have said, something in all of that should have hit me over the head with a cluestick.

But no cluestick loomed on the horizon.  Just me, and my creative conundrum.  Oh, and my plan.  Don’t forget the plan.  I had plotted my course and I swore upon the altar of all of the deep fried, refried crabs in the universe that I would stick to the plan.   So there I sat, day in and day out, just me and the flying Snoods. 

See it was my plan.  When I made it, I didn’t need no stinkin’ Muse and I didn’t consult no stinkin’ Muse.  I used logic and reason in plotting a path.  And I learned all over again why I’m not a plotter.  Some writers never sit down to start a book without a pretty complete outline of all of the major plot points.  Those writers know where they’re going before they get there. It’s hard for me to understand them or to imagine how they do it, but may God Richly Bless Them and all folks in the universe who are careful and organized. 

I sit down with an idea and my keyboard and I know it’s going well when my characters take over to tell the story.  I’m not a plotter, so why didn’t I know I wasn’t a planner either?

The distraction didn’t work and none of the Snoods hit my thick skull hard enough.  So Muse got desperate.  She recruited —–MR. BRICK.  And we all know, Mr. Brick always gets the job done.  So Friday night after work, I gave a deep sigh and opened my keyboard, never knowing that the cohorts in crime were about to strike.  

They were devious.  It started as just another bout of Muse’s distraction.  Only this time, instead of Snood, Solitaire or Google News, Mr. Brick struck my head or my mousing finger or both.  I frittered away time by reviewing some of the files in “my documents.”  And EUREKA -   Muse finally got her way.  I landed on one I’d started sometime between E-Mail Enticement and A Sixth Sense of Forever.  

It’s a contemporary romance/legal suspense that follows in the footsteps of E-mail.  Yes, Virginia, it occurs where love and law intersect.  There’s a love triangle, a family law firm and a murder.  The hero’s gonna be charged with killing his brother and there’s gonna be a trial.  A real, live murder trial.  I’m sure there’s also gonna be a Mary Anne style over-the-top high drama happy ending.  It’s just that right at the moment, I don’t have the vaguest idea what it’ll be. 

See, there’s no plot, no outline and most definitely — no plan.  There’s just me and my fingers itching to get back to the keyboard because I can’t wait to tell the rest of the story.  By the Great Green Toadfrog – I can’t wait to find out what the rest of the story might be.  All I know is that if I have fun telling it, I believe you’ll have fun reading it too. 

I seriously hope Muse lets me get back to my historical.  I loved the story, loved the characters and thought and think it’ll be a great tale.  But for now, Muse seems to want me to linger right there at the intersection of love and law.  As she usually is, Muse is probably right.  There’s a great goobeldy gob, frog kicking humongous pack of great writers doing historical romance. 

However, there aren’t quite so many writers out there with law degrees who tell tales about what happens when love and the law throw down.  I’m not sure if its Muse or Mr. Brick gifted with the marketing genius.  Maybe it’s a combination.  Just what have those two been up to, anyway?  Should I look forward to some buff little creative…..err,  Mricks?  Bruises?  Musey B’s? 

Guess I should have suspected that Muse and Mr. Brick would get together sometime.  In a few months, if my skull survives, y’all can look forward to a Myrtle Beach Murder Mystery where once again the law learns that tangling with love can only lead to one place — a happy ending.

So, I leave you with one piece of advice.  In an insane world, planning and plotting is the most insane, inane waste of time.  Instead, just follow the Muse wherever she leads.

You may not wind up where you thought you would, but you’re bound to be someplace interesting.