M. Leighton Pulls Her Book From the Shelves

Hello, Scribes Fans. Sugar here. I’m sure some of you may know that indie author M. Leighton pulled her book UNTIL I BREAK from the shelves today.

Why? That’s a very good question.

If you want a synopsis of the book click HERE. I learned about this after seeing a conversation on Twitter about it. For me 97% of Twitter is white noise but this topic grabbed my interest and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. An author pulling her own book? Not because of low sales, not because it was poorly edited or badly written but because it was too dark, too ugly for some readers tastes.

Here’s what Leighton had to say about it.

When I wrote Until I Break, I could’ve watered down the story, made it more palatable, easier to accept.  But as an artist, I didn’t want to cheat Sam and Alec out of their story.  As I’ve said before, life isn’t always pretty, but I had hoped that the majority of people would be able to see beyond the ugly to the wonderful story of love and acceptance and healing that was embedded in Until I Break.  Sadly, that hasn’t turned out to be the case.

So, rather than risking people misunderstanding Sam and Alec and, therefore, me as a person and author, I’m pulling the book from publication. It will no longer be available in any format from any source after tomorrow.  Yes, I could leave it out there to earn money, but every cent would be bitter, knowing that there are some who not only don’t “get” the story, but who are misunderstanding it in a disheartening way.

Every book is not for every reader. We all know that. And no matter what we write we always know that there are going to be readers out there who don’t like or misunderstand our work. I think that’s all apart of being a writer.

And as another writer that makes me so dissapointed in Ms. Leighton. If you want to read her entire post click HERE. We’re writers here so we know what it’s like to pour ourselves into something and I can tell that from Leighton’s words that she loved these characters and their story. I’m sad that she pulled it down. I sad that she cared enough about what a few people thought that she had to hide it from the world. I’m sad that she didn’t say F YOU and stand by it. 

Part of me gets it. Our books are like our babies and we want to protect them, but sometimes being a good mother is letting your baby go out there into the world and letting it fly. I wished she would have let it fly. Especially since it seems that more people loved the book than hated it, more people thought it was insightful and thought provoking and compelling. 

Part of me thinks that Leighton is pulling some big trick on us, that by announcing that she was pulling her book she drove people into a frantic rush to buy it and see what was so dark about it. Last night her book was number 6 on the Amazon list. Even I was sucked in and Until I Break is so not my kind of book. And if it is a trick it’s damn near brilliant. I hope she is laughing all the way to the bank.

So what is your take on this? Would you pull a book that you loved even though some people didn’t understand it?

It Was A Dark & Stormy Night …

And it’s not even Hallowe’en as I write this.

Thea Devine here, waiting on the storm, and feeling that an unbridled hurricane can be every bit as scary as a supernatural Hallowe’en scenario. For one, it comes out of nowhere with its own unearthly sounds. You’re at the mercy of its driving winds, and the full force of its destructive and uncontainable nature. You’re powerless and yet you try to defeat it every time.  And when you survive it, you feel as if you’ve gone through some mystical transformation.  You feel superhuman.  You feel you’ve cheated death.

Maybe that’s why Hallowe’en — and ghosts, ghouls, vampires and zombies — has such a powerful hold on the imagination.   Life beyond death, no matter form it takes, is beyond seductive, and perhaps worth the price you might have to pay.

It’s fun to fictionally play with the idea of life beyond eternity. But that’s underscored by the certain knowledge mortality is just around the corner for all of us.  That’s why we write about the monsters, the ghosts, the storms.  Leaving something tangible behind is a way to conquer the beast. Wading into the storm gives you strength.  Manipulating fears with words makes you feel superhuman again.   Overcoming the threat gives you the sense that you can surmount anything.

Hallowe’en always reminds me of the times I watched the classic horror movies with a friend who lived several floors above our apartment.  She would have to go up two or three flights of steps in a dimly lit stairwell after we watched that week’s movie.  Now, remembering those nights, I wonder what would have happened if she’d just disappeared.  In the stairwell. That was barely lit.  Her footsteps echoing and then suddenly, not. With no witnesses. And no clues.  And she was never found.  Ever …

Are you a ghosts and ghouls Hallowe’en person?  Or a princess and fantasy Hallowe’en person?  Your favorite old horror movie?  (Me, The Mummy — love 1920′s Egypt )  Any Hallowe’en moment in your life that you could make into fiction?

Thea Devine has been delving into the world of vampires with The Darkest Heart, and its sequel, Beyond the Night (April 2013 Pocket Star eBook). There are no vampires in her just reissued erotic contemporary novel, His Little Black Book, available now.

The Vampire Secret

Thea Devine today,having just finished Beyond the Night (Pocket Star eBook April 2013), the sequel to The Darkest Heart, and I thought you might enjoy a little insight into how I got the idea for the Darkest Heart.

Actually, I’m Romanian on my father’s side, so you’d think I’d be steeped knee deep in vampire lore.

But in fact, apart from being scared to death on viewing Dracula when I was eight years old, I never gave vampires a half a thought until I was looking for an idea for my thirteenth book. And even then, and in the subsequent vampire book I wrote, the hero was not a vampire.  In Sinful Secrets, the whole English parliament were vampires;  in Forever Kiss, the vampire had a doppelganger who pretended to be him, so that when the vampire finally returned to his stomping grounds, he had to pretend to be the doppelganger pretending to be him.  Believe me, he was royally peeved — for lots of fun-to-write pages.

However, I couldn’t find a way to wrap my head around vampire as romantic hero.  So when I was thinking about my next book, which it was suggested to me should have vampires, I really was at a loss.  I needed an idea and I needed this vampire to be a hero.

And I really needed to figure out some real ways a woman would feel an attraction to a vampire — because all I’m thinking is blood, gore, dessication and rot.  Coffins and fetid grave dirt.  NOT very sexy.

I was in a local store one day, talking about this current project, when the teenaged clerk overheard me say, vampires, and she exclaimed, “Oh, I love vampires.”   I asked her why and she said, because they were sooo Romeo and Juliet.

Right:  yearning for something, and never to have it.  And it all ends in bloody gory death.  Murderous immortality.  Not hardly romantic.  Not quite the jump-start I was looking for.

So I listed all the reasons why a vampire is supposed to be seductive:

He is the love that cannot be

He’s immortal.

He has super-powers

He’s dangerous to love

He’s super sexual

He’s protective (paternal and sexual)

You yearn for what you can’t have

Reckless endangerment:  death is but a kiss away

Still — nothing in that list sent plotlines roaring through my head.  I was discussing it with my husband one night and I read him the list.  Then I asked him why he thought vampires were so seductive.   I mean, there’s nothing like the male perspective, right?

John said, “they’re victims.”  He said, “they have no choice.”

My jaw dropped.  The heavens opened.  Light flooded the earth, angels sang, and everything fell into place.  Of course.  Genius.  But my husband always says genius things just when I need to hear them.

Victim.

A whole other side of the vampire.  Immediately plot questions steam-rolled through my mind.  What would he do, feeling like that?  How could he take anyone else’s life?  How would he live?  Did he want to die?  How would he survive?  What lies would he tell himself?

AND, if he’s a victim, you then have a heroine wanting to somehow help, nurture, make it better, change it.  If you have the love that cannot be, one might feel the call to sacrifice for the other at some point.  And there was the bedrock of the story — vengeance and sacrifice.

So I wrote this as my logline:

He’s been exiled to the dank bloody world of the undead

He lives solely to destroy the one who sired him

He’s been living to die

Until he encounters the one he can’t live without

And eternity is not an option.

And from that one astute observation, I wrote The Darkest Heart, and the sequel, Beyond the Night.

Thank you, John!

What about you?  Has your husband ever contributed something brilliant to your plotting and planning?   Does he have any input at all, ever?

Thea Devine’s books defined erotic historical romance.  She just completed Beyond the Night (April 2013, Pocket Star eBook), the sequel to The Darkest Heart.  The reissue of her erotic contemporary romance, His Little Black Book, is available now.

Let’s Have That Sex Talk

Thea Devine today, talking sex.  Or writing sex, actually, based on a talk I gave at the NJRWA meeting this month.

I’ve been writing erotic romance for nearly all my writing career.  I don’t plot and plan all the sexual compass points.  I have an idea of something I want to do, like, oh say, nipple rings, but I’m pretty sure I haven’t ever started a book knowing just when and where I’d use something like that.  It all comes organically out of the plot and conflicts, and that’s overlaid by other things, like my watching an HBO show one night with a belly dancer and those rings, and thinking, after a week of walking around with my arms crossed over my breasts, what if the rings weren’t pierced, what if they hung there. Just so.  Just so you feel them.  Where could I use that?

As it happened, I was writing Beyond Desire at the time and the heroine was in a harem, and there were all these bare breasts and …  Beyond Desire was the first historical romance that RT reviewed as erotic romance.  That was 1993.

It didn’t cause even a ripple in the industry.  But in 1999 Kensington books shook up mainstream publishing when it released Captivated, a trade paperback anthology of steamy novellas. And they put the words “tales of erotic romance” on the cover.

Nobody fainted.  And the book blasted onto USAToday in about thirty seconds.  Fascinated, the follow-up, blew out of the stores and onto USAToday as well, proving — obviously — that women will pay for sex.

Erotic was suddenly the next new thing.

Then recently, for the last two years or so, there’s been a pull-back on the assumption that readers were going to the internet for erotic content because — why? more privacy, more variety, more tailored-to-the-taste choices, easier access, e-readers.

And then came 50 Shades of Grey , and erotic was suddenly the next new thing.

So what about erotic romance as a platform for you?  Can you write erotic romance?  There are editors who believe that authors who write it can’t NOT write it, that it’s absolutely integral to the way some authors write.

If you’re wondering what your husband will say, your mom, your sister, your minister, if you think people will wonder what goes on in your bedroom — then maybe erotic romance is not for you.

I never had those qualms.  I’ve written explicitly from the get-go, right from that scene in my first book where, as I’ve recounted elsewhere, I had the cornered heroine put her hand between the hero’s legs.  In that scene, I found my erotic philosophical footing — that adversarial relationship which gives a just-can’t-help-themselves edge to the sex and the story.

But when I first started out, in 1987, I couldn’t use four letter words, or proper terms for body parts.  We used none of those one syllable hard hitting hard-core words you would expect when writing a sexually explicit book.  .

Try to describe something which is essentially indescribable:  I mean, how do you describe a kiss?  And orgasm?  A man’s touch?  How do you do that without relying on those time-tested sex words?  There’s no language for it.  Yet we could — by using plain old every day household words to write about sex from a woman’s point of view.

I think that was extraordinary and a revolution all on its own.

Now, when nothing is off the table,  you can be as over the top as you want or care to get.

Is anything goes right for you?  How far are you willing to go?

I essentially write erotic male/female relationships, with the heroine and the hero constantly wresting for control, tons of sex, and a happy, or cusp of happy, ending.

My own guidelines from day one were:  no negative visual images (she isn’t on fire;  he doesn’t impale her with his molten rod). He doesn’t hurt her (he can, emotionally).  She has some control.  Sex is consensual (no matter what’s going on).

But you could push even further — orgies, male/male, triads, foursomes, bestiality, hard core bondage/domination/punishment, corset discipline …  There’s a place for all of it now, and readers for every taste, from graphic and raw to sweet and super romantic..  Only you can decide where to draw the line on how far you’ll go.

A guest at a conference once asked me how much of what I write is really me. That’s a question to strike full-blown terror in a writer’s heart. I really had to think about it.  And truthfully, in the end, some of it.  Not everything.  But that scary thought is huge barrier to some authors to actually put themselves “out there” that nakedly in fiction.  I mean, what if someone thought all of that sex toy play was all about you?  Was it?

If you have constraints but you want to write erotic, why not try?  It’s you and your computer screen.  No one ever has to see it if you don’t want them to.  You can let yourself go — or you can say NO — and delete before things go too far.

But if you really love to write explicit romance, write those scenes as if your characters are Adam and Eve and they just discovered sex — and you did too.

I have to confess I have been asked to tone things down a couple of times.  Once I was told there was too much semen in a particular novella.  Really, people, can there ever be too much semen — in fiction or in life?

You could view erotic romance as a love letter to men — or as a sex act in and of itself (lots of foreplay, climaxes and reader satisfaction).  It’s safe sex, and the best fun in the world.  And if you choose to play, I promise I’ll respect you in the morning.

Can we talk?  Do you write, or want to write, erotic romance?  What are your boundaries? What won’t you do?  What won’t you read?  How far can an author go with you?

Thea Devine is nearly done with Beyond The Night, the sequel to The Darkest Heart.  She is the author whose books defined erotic historical romance and the USAToday best-selling author of 25 historical and contemporary erotic romance novels and a dozen novella. She is looking forward to the reissue of His Little Black Book next month.

Romance Review: Devil’s Bargain

Hello Everyone!  Vivienne Ylang, here.  I just finished a wonderful book and I wanted to tell you about it.  Devi’s Bargain by Jade Lee was delightful.  There is even a puff on the back by our very own Thea Devine saying that it was “A luscious bonbon of a read – the education of an innocent; hot, sensual, romantic and fun!”  I couldn’t agree more, and likely wouldn’t express it as well.

Now, I didn’t actually choose this book.  A friend gave it to me and I’m not sure where she got it.  To tell you the truth, I’m a bit of a romance snob.  I’ve read hundreds of romances, quite probably more than 1,000, over the last 25 years.  I often judge books by their cover.  At least when it comes to selection.  If the author is not one I recognize, then the cover is what gets me to decide whether or not to pick it up and read the back.  It may not be fair, but it’s the truth.  I suspect that’s the case for a lot of people, which is why publishers put so much effort into the covers.  This cover is not one that would have prompted me to pick it up off the table in Barnes & Noble.  In fact, I selected it off my To Be Read shelf in the dark with no thought to what book I would have in hand. 

But I ended up with Devil’s Bargain the other day and I’m thrilled it worked out that way.  The characters, Lynette and Adrian, quickly became quite likeable.  I doubted it in the first chapter or so, but again, I was likely still influenced by my erroneous, snap, pre-judgement of the cover. 

If you like a good romance story pick this one up.  If you like a bit of heat with your romance, without the overt eroticism of a Beatrice Small or EL James (both of which I enjoy from time to time), buy the Devi’s Bargain. 

And the thing that pushed me to write this review – Ms. Lee does a wonderful job of adding complication and higher stakes for her characters.  I read this in paper form (as opposed to an e-book) and there was a thin stack of pages left when I remembered the classic line, “How’re you gonna write your way out of this one, Joan Wilder?”  But Ms. Lee did it quite well with just a handful of pages left.

I’ve started writing my new WIP (currently titled Some Times) and while I’m writing the beginning, I’m plotting the middle.  I had skipped the middle when I was writing my outline because that’s the hardest part of the story for me.  I know how it starts, I know how it ends, but the piece after the second turning point up to the third has me flumoxed.  I know I need to add complications and raise the stakes for my characters but for the life of me I can’t think of any.  

Isn’t that terrible?  What kind of a writer am I?  Hello Doubt Monster, long time, no see! Ugh!  And the worse part is, being stuck plotting the middle has caused me to lose motivation in writing the beginning.  Sigh.  So the next thing I’m going to do is go back to the drawing board.  Literally.  I shall go somewhere with delectable eats (Panera?)  and brainstorm things that could complicate the lives of my main characters.  I shall re-read their GMC statements (Goal, Motivation and Conflict) and find nuggets of problems to throw their way. 

Perhaps I’ll review some work by Suzanne Collins.  She’s meaner to her characters than anybody I’ve read in a while.  All Peeta wants is to live happily ever after with Katniss.  All Katniss wants is to save her little sister.  All Gale wants is for Katniss to pick him.  If you’ve read the Hunger Games trilogy, you know how all that works out.  Stephenie Meyer did a nice job with complications, too.  Just when you think everything is hunky dory, ooops, Bella gets a paper cut. 

Today’s Secret: Read Devil’s Bargain by Jade Lee.  I really liked it.

Today’s Question: How do you come up with complications and higher stakes to challenge your characters?

The Men Who Make My Heart Beat…

I saw Magic Mike today for um… research purposes. Was it well written? No. Did the male and female lead have any chemistry whatsoever? No. Did it have a satisfactory ending? No. Did I like it?

Hell yes!

There was man booty in it.  And Channing Tatum is probably one of the most physically perfect men I have ever seen. He’s got beautiful lips, and eyes and …. sigh… everything. But as yummy as he is he just doesn’t do it for me.

So in honor of Gratuitous Man Monday I’m going to share with you my list of men that I would sell my mama for.

1 The Rock. AKA Dwayne Johnson.  I fell in love with this man when I was fourteen years old. Not a girly crush. Not an ‘Oh I think he’s hot.’ But in total absolute LOVE LURVE LOOVVEE. Up until that point boys had merely existed. I had crushes on some, even liked others but when I saw The Rock on Smackdown asking the world if they could smell what he was cooking I was a goner. He was a man. A thick muscular man with pretty brown skin and perfect white smile and calves. Gorgeous calves! (I hate men with chicken legs.) I didn’t even like wrestling but I watched every damn show just for a glimpse of him. I bought his poster and even read his biography cover to cover. I’d watch him talk and get all flushed. He was my first and only celebrity crush and if it came between saving him or my mother from a burning building I’d have to think about it for a little while.

Jamie and Dwayne sitting in a tree K I S S I N G!

2. Simon Baker. I’m not usually a fan of blond men. But this man is so DREAMY. He’s the kind of guy you want to wake up looking at for the rest of your life.

What would you like for breakfast? French Toast or Waffles?

3. Old School Hottie Marlon Brando. Because before he began a love affair with food he was pretty damn yummy himself.

4. Javier Bardem. Because everybody needs a latin lover in their life

5. I haven’t ever seen an episode of his show but Joe Manganiello has got it going on. The man has got a twelve pack and if he let me I would count every one.

What about you? What man makes your heart beat?

Dialogue That Made Me Swoon

 DIALOGUE THAT MADE ME SWOON

 Hi everyone.  Thea Devine here. It probably won’t come as a surprise to anyone who knows me that GWTW is among my favorite books.  I first read it when I was sixteen, and you can probably guess my teenaged reaction to the love story.  But, as I subsequently discovered, it’s wholly different book when you reread it when you‘re older (say, oh — thirty and forty), and as I did recently with my sister-in-law.  However there’s one thing in GWTW that never changes and that, for me, was always the whole key to anything about romance.

It’s the moment at Twelve Oaks before the picnic, when Scarlett — in the book — has just encountered Charles Hamilton on the staircase, and turns to see Rhett staring up her, and indignantly thinks, “he looks as if — as if he knows what I look like without my shimmy.” (sic — my edition).

I love that moment. I always thought it went beyond prurience, that he was not envisioning her naked, he was not thinking sex; rather he was seeing her whole, her beauty, her vanity, her greed, her flaws and phony flirtatiousness, and everything about her right there that made her “her” — and he decided in that moment, he wanted her, that he loved her.  Not just the body, but the whole person, just as she was.

Don’t we all?  Want the  guy who wants us just as we are?  Without lists, demands, requirements must-haves, guarantees?.  Don’t we want to say to him, “I love you,” and have him respond, as does Han Solo in a critical moment to Princess Leia in The Empire Strikes Back, “I know.”

Oh, be still my heart.  That he knew in his deepest core that she loved him.  That acknowledgement was more than him saying “I love you.”  It said that he’d always known and everything he’d ever done was colored by that, in spite of the bickering, the clashes, in spite of everything.

I love that.  Who wouldn’t love that?  But even better — a moment on House:  you can quibble about whether House and Cuddy belonged together (and I will, because I didn’t think they did), but when he said to her in a last year’s episode, “I always want to kiss you,” –   I melted into a puddle of swoon.  Always .. Are you imagining that?  Always … God, I wish I’d written that line.  Think what means. Always …

But then, I’m hopeless romantic. I love love.  I love being in love.  I think love is forever, in spite of all the recent public and humiliating break-ups in the news. I think those moments above expressed in dialogue are at the heart of romance — and that we all yearn for that deep visceral knowledge of the other person that transcends everything but the need and desire to be together because …

Because we love – and they know.   Always …

Do you have a favorite line of dialogue?  Or something amazing your husband ever said to you?  Or something else that made you swoon …?

Thea Devine is the author of twenty-five historical and contemporary novels and a dozen novellas.  She was honored as a Romance Pioneer by Romantic Times. She’s currently working on a sequel to her June 2011 release, The Darkest Heart.

Dark Hearts and Chocolate – Interview with Thea Devine

Happy last Thursday of 2011, Scribe fans.  Suze here.  I’m absolutely thrilled to bring you a special guest today.  THEA DEVINE, author of THE DARKEST HEART, is with us.  If you haven’t read THE DARKEST HEART, get it!  It’s hot and it’s scary in the best tradition of a Gothic thriller — but I don’t recommend reading it alone at night!  Welcome, Thea.

Irresistible!

Your name, Thea, is beautiful and unusual.  Is there are a story behind it, or did your mother just choose really well?  (FYI, the mother of one of the Scribes is named Thea!)

Thea is my real full name, not short for anything, and I have no idea why my mom and dad chose it for me.  Devine is my married name, so in reality, I owe everything to the amazing John Devine.

You have a long-established (the fan girl in me wants to say “legendary”) career as a writer.  Do you still battle the Doubt Monster–the nagging feeling that your prose is terrible, your plot is silly, your characters are insipid, and no one would read your drivel, let alone buy it?  What are your secrets for conquering Doubty, or have you ground him to dust under your stiletto?

I definitely have my moments — ask my husband.  I love starting the story.  It feels like flying.  And when things are going right, or unexpected things are happening that grow organically out of the story and take me by surprise, it’s biggest high.  When the plot isn’t moving, it feels like slogging through molasses.   I bullet-train my way through.  The point is to finish the book.  Everything else can come later.

Have you thought about writing something that is completely different for you?  Perhaps writing in a new genre or just taking a story someplace that you haven’t done before?

I would love to write hearth and home novels.  I love a good cathartic novel, one that gives good cry — like Luanne Rice’s books for example.

What is the most surprising thing that has happened in your writing career?

That I even have a writing career.  Back when I was writing as a hobby, I never dreamt in a million years that anything I wrote would be published.   My cousin Anita ,  who remembers way too much about our childhood, will tell you that I was always at the typewriter and I didn’t want to do much else.  A slight exaggeration, but I still have things I wrote in high school and college where when I reread them, I can see vestiges of the way I write now.  And that has changed dramatically over the years as well.

They say that every author has a partially completed, quite-possibly-terrible half a story shoved in a drawer somewhere.  What is yours?  What is it about?  What makes it terrible?  Would you ever consider picking it up and finishing it?

I actually do.  I started a sprawling civil war historical back in … well, I won’t tell you the year but it was when I was working in advertising in the “Mad Men” days where everyone in house was writing a novel, by the way. The problem was I didn’t know how to write it back then even though I have reams of manuscript on it.  But I DO know how to write it now, and I’m slowly excavating and reconfiguring it, and I’m enjoying the process a lot.

Countess Lazlaric in THE DARKEST HEART is so deliciously bad.  How much fun was she to write?  Was there a real life inspiration?

Countess Lazlaric was the first character actually that came to me for The Darkest Heart.  She’s an amalgam of several types, among them, the patronizing aristocrat, the secretive monster and the uber-mother.

Plotter or Pantser?  When you are working on a new novel, how aware are you of character and plot archetypes (i.e, chief hero + waif heroine = woman in jeopardy plot)?  Do you plan this out ahead of time, or does it happen organically as you go along?

I am a pure pantser.  I do do an outline, about 5-10 pp.  I know, from working as a manuscript reader for many years, that the dreaded feared outline is not the deal breaker in a proposal — it’s a guide to show the editor you know how you will get from here to there.  It doesn’t have to be super detailed — mine are not — I just want give an overview of what will happen and how it will end.  For me, after that, all bets are off.  Things happen.  I love the process of discovery as I write.  I’m a big fan of “what if-ing” the problems.   I do know the main motivations, weaknesses and strengths of the hero and heroine before I begin, but I don’t chart that out according to types or archetypes.  I make lists and notes as I go along, and I believe things will happen.

THE DARKEST HEART is your latest release.  Can you tell us a little bit about it?

My husband actually gave me the idea that motivates The Darkest Heart.  I couldn’t see a vampire as a hero, really — even though I can list all those things that are on the surface so attractive about him as a character.  I asked my husband why he thought vampires were so alluring, and he said, they’re victims.  They had no choice. That observation gave me the whole key to the story.  And you see that theme echoes throughout The Darkest Heart, which begins with the return of Dominick, who having been turned into a vampire to save him from dying, has come to wreak revenge on his Maker, only to find his plans disrupted by a flim-flam artist who has taken up residence in his mother’s home pretending to be an indigent relative, unaware of the teeming danger that surrounds her.

What’s next for you?  Can you give us a hint about your next novel?  The Scribes love secrets!

I’m doing a sequel to The Darkest Heart, because there are things unresolved at the end of The Darkest Heart, and I’m working on several other projects just because I love them, including my bottom of the drawer Civil War historical.

You also read and evaluate manuscripts.  Do you have a word or grammar-related pet peeve?

Oh, do I.   In brief, my three (among many) top peeves were (and are):  using “may” for “might” — which almost seems like common usage now and is still jarring to the ear;  “drug” for “dragged” (also coming into common usage);  and “that’s why” when, how, what — instead of “that was why” — again using present tense inappropriately.

How many books do you read in a year, other than the manuscripts?

Well, I’m not reading manuscripts now, and I read lots — during the summer outages, I devoured all of Karen Rose’s books, even by a teeny reading light late at night.  I periodically revisit old favorites like Emilie Loring and Elswyth Thane’s Williamsburg novels.   I read some Nancy Drews last winter — the ones I remember with the frocks and roadsters — great fun.  I love the old girls’ series books — this summer I got one called “The Red Cross Girls at the Russian Front.”  Honestly, could you have passed that up?  I love romantic suspense, and ”object of desire” thrillers, cathartic women’s novels, cozy mysteries. Right now, I’m reading Carla Neggers’ The Whisper, and the Mysteries of Udolpho, one of the first gothics, and the House at Riverton, by Kate Morton.  (Suze here.  I loved the title so much I had to see if I could find The Red Cross Girls — it’s available for free  at Project Gutenberg: click here.  You can find The Mysteries of Udolpho (I read this recently, and loved it!) at Project Gutenberg as well)

How long does it take you to write a first draft?  How do you handle revisions?  Do you revise as you go along, or do you save them for after you type “The End?”

It takes about five or six months to write the book — I revise as I go along, make changes, reroute things, gut other ideas that I think will work in my current book.   There was one time I was hemming and hawing about using an idea that I wanted to save for a different proposal, and my husband said to me, but there’s always another idea.  That was so brilliant.  Always another idea.  That really frees you up as a writer when you embrace that thought.

What is your junk food of choice?

Chocolate, chocolate, chocolate.

What’s the most dangerous or risky thing that you’ve done?

Can’t think of a thing.

What is your guilty pleasure? {Remember: this is a PG-rated blog! }

This is going to really disappoint you — I love curling up on the couch on a weekend and watching Hallmark Channel movies.

You can get THE DARKEST HEART here.  Wanna see a hot book trailer?  Click here.  And be sure to check out Thea’s website, which has more information about Thea and links to all of her books currently in print.  Thea is here to answer your questions, so ask away!

Spice, Spice, Baby! Interview with Harlequin Nocturne Author Mina Khan

Hello, everyone!  Suze here.  Business first:  the winners of Joan Swan’s giveaway are:  Amazon gift card: Jennifer Mathis.  Gorgeous bookmarks: Ashley, Nancy, Jamie Pope, Kristan Higgins, and Highland Love Song.  Congratulations!

The Djinn's Dilemma -- Hot, Hot, Hot!

Today I’m thrilled to bring you another debut author, Mina Khan, whose novella THE DJINN’S DILEMMA was published by Harlequin Nocturne Cravings.  Welcome, Mina!

How do you battle the doubt monster? Doubt Monster: the nagging feeling that your prose is terrible, you plot is silly, your characters are insipid, and no one in their right mind would read this drivel, let alone buy it.

When I’m plagued by the Doubt Monster, which is often, I take a deep breath & remind myself that I wouldn’t have the life I have if I hadn’t trusted myself: travelling half-way across the world from Bangladesh to America, venturing out to West Texas by myself, marrying a cowboy, daring to have a second child after I almost died the first time, and writing despite the Doubt Monsters and Naysayers in my life.

Have you thought about writing something that is completely different for you?  Perhaps writing in a new genre or just taking a story someplace that you haven’t gone before.

Each story is unique and I’m always surprised by how different each one is. For example the second Djinn/genie story I have turned in to my editor is so different, it scared me. LOL. But in the end I had to trust my gut feeling that it was a good story, this was how it was meant to be written and send it in.

What story haven’t you told yet that you want to tell? What is holding you back?

It’s a story that has haunted me since childhood and I hope one of these days I will have the courage to write it down. I think it will be a quieter, more literary story.

What is the most surprising thing that has happened in your writing career?

I always expected to sell a food-related book before fiction, so when THE DJINN’S DILEMMA sold…I was ecstatic but surprised.

What would you do if you couldn’t be a writer any longer?

I’d own a small café and cook to my heart’s content

They say that every author has a partially completed, quite-possibly-terrible half a story shoved in a drawer somewhere. What is yours? What is it about? What makes it terrible? Would you ever consider picking it up and finishing it?

I don’t give up on stories. I may put them aside and focus on growing myself as a writer and then come back to them. I have been writing since third grade, so I have quite a collection under my bed , including the book of my heart and a screenplay.

Author Jane Haddam says that anyone who seriously annoys her gets bumped off in her next book. How do you incorporate your real-life experiences into your stories?

I cull down to the very emotions of the experience and try to incorporate that into my writing. Also, my food writing slips into my fiction from time to time, so Rukh, the hero of THE DJINN’S DILEMMA, tastes like dark chocolate!

Mmmmmmm, chocolate. . .   Tell us about THE DJINN’S DILEMMA. What’s it about, and where can we buy it?

THE DJINN’S DILEMMA is a paranormal erotic romance where an otherwordly assassin falls for his human target.

Rukh O’Shay, half-djinn and assassin, is used to taking out the bad guys. But his latest assignment, Texas Journalist Sarah White, is nothing like he expected. A glimpse of her bright aura reveals her gentle spirit, while her beauty makes him long for only one thing—to taste her.

Sarah shares the raw desire to connect with Rukh. He can turn her on with a glance, and satisfies needs she didn’t even know she had.

But Rukh had been hired to kill her—and the only way to save her is to find out who wants her dead before someone else finishes the job….

You can buy THE DJINN’S DILEMMA on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBook, and Harlequin’s eBookstore. Last time I checked both Amazon and Harlequin were giving a discount

What is your junk food of choice?

Chili-Cheese Tots …um, yes they are as dangerous as they sound.

What’s the most dangerous or risky thing that you’ve done?

Not saying “I love you” back when the love of my life said it to me…I had to know exactly, truly, how I felt and for that I needed some time. Fortunately for me, he stayed around and eventually even asked me to marry him.

Author Mina Khan

That’s so sweet!  What is your guilty pleasure? {Remember: this is a ‘PG’ rated blog! 

Sriracha Hot Sauce ( Lol, I like my food & my fiction Spicy!)

Bio:

Mina Khan is a Texas-based writer and food enthusiast. She daydreams of hunky paranormal heroes, magic, mayhem and mischief and writes them down as stories. Between stories, she teaches culinary classes and writes for her local newspaper. Other than that, she’s raising a family of two children, two cats, two dogs and a husband. She grew up in Bangladesh on stories of djinns, ghosts and monsters. These childhood fancies now color her fiction.

You can find her at :

http://www.facebook.com/Mina.Khan.Author

http://minakhan.blogspot.com/

Twitter: @SpiceBites

Thanks for being here, Mina!  Questions, anyone?  You want to know about that cowboy husband, don’t you?

Julia Rachel Barrett – Ghostly Love

Happy Freakish Friday everyone! Casey Wyatt here.

Please welcome today’s guest  Julia Rachel Barrett.  If you haven’t read any of Julia’s books, you are missing out on some great reads. Click here to read my review of her book Beauty and the Feast.

 And in  the spirit of our  Spooky Week theme – please check out her ghostly love story Incorporeal.

Let’s here what Julia has to say about romance.

****

Why Write? 

Perhaps the better question is, why not? I have a spotty history in the world of literature. Like so many readers, I knew I wanted to be a writer from the time I was very young, maybe five or six years old. Here’s a truism, if you love to tell stories, to make up stories in your head, you probably love to read and chances are you’d like to write.

It’s not as simple as it seems and a lot depends upon what your goals are. Do you want to sell a whole lot of books? I suspect anybody can sell bunches of books if the subject matter is prurient enough. Do you want to be a damn good writer? Takes work.

A Tale of Ghostly Love

How did I begin? I began by reading everything in sight, in every genre available to me. My early loves were poetry, mystery stories, fantasy/science fiction, and even comic books. Don’t laugh. Comic books are great for learning economy of words. The creator has to express an emotion and move a story forward in very few words. Of course comics also contain expressive action words like Pow! Bam! Smack! Crash!

I moved from poetry to short stories – which are making a comeback with the advent of e-publishing – to nonfiction articles for nursing and medical journals to literary fiction. Aside from freelance articles, finding a publisher for my works of fiction was an exercise in futility. I queried agents and publishers for too many years without results. While I was raising small children and working part time, I filed the manuscripts away and focused on my job as a hospice nurse.

Smokin’ Hot Good Read

In 2007 I found myself sidelined by a climbing injury…tore my left knee up pretty bad. For a year I either wore a titanium brace or used crutches while researching surgeons and then waiting for the surgeon I chose to fit me in for a repair. A friend took pity on me and brought me a romance novel – Kill and Tell, by Linda Howard, and I was hooked. I had always dismissed romance as ‘bodice rippers’ and it was one genre I ignored. Linda Howard told a damn good sexy story. I went on to read everything she’d written up to that point and moved on to Karen Marie Moning, then Hannah Howell and Lynsay Sands. I realized that with the life I’d lived, I had stories to tell, romantic stories, gripping, touching, loving stories, and I wrote my first romance.

Never looked back. Now I look forward to a brave new world of self-publishing. I can revise and release the series of short stories I worked so hard on years ago. In the meantime I have a full-length paranormal romance available on Kindle, Incorporeal, and I’ll soon release the sequel, In the Flesh. I have nine romances out to date with publishers in ebook and print and I’ve self-published another five books in a variety of genres and lengths.

Coming soon!

Come visit me anytime on my site – Julia’s World – http://juliarachelbarrett.net

Thanks for having me, Casey!

Any time Julia. Thanks for being our guest today. Please feel free to leave Julia a question.

Tell us, what are your writing goals? And why do you write? And for our readers, what are you looking for when you choose your next book?