The HEA Cafe

Last fall I was in a writing slump. My suspense novels weren’t selling and my agent was unimpressed with the romantic comedy I’d whipped up in three months over the summer when I should have been playing with my kids. Failure tightened around my throat like a noose. Pressure froze my fingers on the keyboard.
            Halloween, one of my favorite holidays, was approaching. One morning I woke up with an idea for silly story about a bad witch who wanted to cut her ties with Lucifer and go good. My muse offered nothing more than a title, Witches Anonymous, and the main character, Amy. It seemed harmless to write something just for fun, and I had nothing else pressing that day, so I tackled a scene.
The noose around my neck loosened a micron. My fingers pulled out of neutral and flew over the keys. I laughed out loud at Amy’s sassiness. The scene became a chapter. Over the next few weeks, my pulse jumped every time I thought about the story. It was just for fun, right? I could throw in crazy characters and twist the plot as much as I twisted my hair. I could write as much or as little as I wanted. I could toss it into the pile with the rest of the unsold manuscripts at any point and not worry about genre or word count or selling.
The process of writing Witches Anonymous freed me creatively. It gave me my writing life back and opened something that was blocked inside of me. In March, I sold my first suspense novel in my Super Agent Series, Operation Sheba. In June, Witches Anonymous won a contest (thanks to Chiron O’Keefe, our wonderful challenge board guru, who insisted I enter) and will be published in February of 2009. I just signed a contract for the second book in my suspense series.

If someone had told me last fall that writing a short story – a paranormal comedy no less – would save my writing career, I’d have scoffed. Now, I’m encouraging other writers to give it a try. This week at Five Scribes blogspot, http://www.fivescribes.blogspot.com , author KL Grady offered her take about writing short stories, “Writing short fiction gave me the opportunity to craft a story without having to commit to a long-term project - no pressure. It also allowed me to learn the quick and dirty route to telling a story.”
Whether you want to refine your skills, experiment with a new genre, or just enjoy a break from the pressure of a full length novel, consider writing a short story. You might find your fingers flying over the keyboard and new doors opening for your career.

It is becoming more and more common to see writers who write for more than one house these days.

Why do I do it? It is a question I often ask myself when deadlines are looming.

Like a number of other authors, I started of with a small press. My first house was Five Star, right at the time when they were de-licensed by RWA for recognition. But what did I care? I had my first book in print and got paid for it too.

My agent, Scott Eagen continued to try to sell my next books to larger houses, and after the American Title contest, we sold No Regrets to Sourcebooks a mid-size independent. In the meantime I wrote some short stories for a very small press, thinking to keep my hand in and my name out there. It looked good on my newsletter and I loved writing them.

This year turned into a bumper year for me. Not only did I sell my next book, The Lady Flees Her Lord, due out in two weeks time, to Sourcebooks, and another one in the works, hopefully, but I landed a five book contract with Mills and Boone under a new pen name ~ Ann Lethbridge. So expect to be hearing from Ann from time to time. Ann writes Regencies too.
Now I have multiple deadlines. But I get to write different types of stories, the longer single title for Sourcebooks and the somewhat shorter regencies for Mills and Boone. I get to see how different publishing houses work, and they are very different, and to work with more than one editor.

Having listened to several big name authors over the years, I have concluded that it is important for an author to be flexible, where he or she can. It is not easy to be flexible about your voice or your writing process, but you might need to change houses or be assigned a new editor without warning. Writing for different houses gives you this experience before it is dropped on you out of the blue.

And writing for more than one house means more books out, more opportunities…. and lots more work.

Do I recommend it. Yes. Absolutely. If you have the time and energy.

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You can find Michele at her website www.micheleannyoung.com or at her Regency Rambles Blog

I went walking in the woods last night.  We’re nearly into fall here in the Mid-Atlantic region, and a few leaves are starting to turn, nuts and acorns litter the ground, the scent of woodsmoke is in the air.  And I started thinking about how much I enjoy walking in the woods on an autumn day — and how much pleasure I get from other simple things.

 So, at the risk of sounding as if I’m in The Sound of Music, I thought I would compile a (partial) list of my favorite things:

-Freshly laundered sheets. 

-My house when I’ve had the windows open, and the air smells fresh.

-Flowers, whether they are in a vase or planted in pots on my deck.

-A fire in the fireplace.

-Watching a flock of birds twist, expand, and dip in the sky.

-Gray skies.

-Walking on a dirt trail in the warm sunshine.

-Cuddling up with a good romance novel (of course!).

Well, I could go on, but I won’t.  But it occurred to me while I was compiling this list that many of the things I enjoy the most have to do with my environment or setting.  I’m very affected by what’s around me — colors, scents, scenery.  I love to drive in my car and look at the trees, the sky, the way the colors merge or contrast.

So it’s no surprise that the setting of my books is also very important to me.  Since I’m so influenced by my surroundings, I assume my characters will be, too.  Showing the setting of a scene can be a challenge, but it’s also a fabulous way to foreshadow danger, show the character’s mood.  In fact, the setting is usually the first thing I decide on when beginning a new book.

So is anyone else out there a setting fanatic?  Any simple pleasures you enjoy?

… to write!

It’s scary to think how much time I can waste checking emails, reading blogs and generally surfing the Internet, especially when recently I had a total of sixteen hours over a weekend in which to write, but probably wasted a good twelve of them fiddling around.

But time spent on the Internet garnered gold for me when I stumbled across a piece of writing by Johann Von Goethe. “Lose this day loitering,” Goethe wrote in the early nineteenth-century, “twill be the same story tomorrow …(and soon) days are lost lamenting over days.”

That brought me up by the bootstraps, especially when I found other long stretches of what could have been writing time spent “loitering” wthout intent to do much of anything in particular. In the same essay, Goethe stresses that we must “seize this very moment … only engage and the mind grows heated, begin it and the work will be completed.”

So, inspired by Goethe I stopped loitering and began … In the past three days I’ve written over 6,500 words, that’s probably 5,000 words more than I would have done without Mr. Goethe’s inspiring (and scary) words pushing me forward.

It’s easy to form habits - good or bad - the trick is to form the ones that hurtle us forward toward our goals and dreams, not hold us back so that we end up lamenting over lost days. Goethe’s words are pinned above my computer screen and I set them out below in the hope they might inspire other “loiterers” out there …

Lose this day loitering, twill be the same story
Tomorrow, and the rest more dilatory;
Thus indecision brings its own delays
And days are lost lamenting over days.
Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute;
What you can do, or dream you can, begin it.
Courage has genius, power and magic in it;
Only engage and then the mind grows heated.
Begin it and the work will be completed.

Tricia
www.tricia-jones.com

It’s time again to talk about heroes. Not the one in our books who struggle through incredible odds and eventually succeed, but about heroes whose HEA–Happily Ever After–was cut short. The HEA is a staple, a requirement of the romance novel. In a romance novel, an HEA is guaranteed.

There are no such guarantees in real life.  

For three hundred forty three NYFD firefighters, September 11, 2001 was a day where heroism and HEA collided.

None woke the morning of his or her shift thinking this was the day to be a hero. None donned his or her gear and raced to the alarms at the World Trade Towers thinking this was going to be part of history. They all answered the call for help, not knowing the call was greater than even that.

Three hundred forty three lives were changed forever. Three hundred forty three families were left with an empty space that would never be filled.

Three hundred forty three were the last, best hope that day. But even the best would not be enough.

It’s been seven years. The flags that flew from every passing car are rarely seen. The pride that our best had tried is rarely voiced. It’s good that the grief is passing. It makes me pause that the importance has also.

You see, I’m in the business of building heroes: fictional ones. But I look to those 343 and know that no words I can pen can tell one-tenth of their greatness.

So if you’ve fogotten or need a reminder, please visit the sites below:

http://www.fdnylodd.com/9-11-Never-Forget/FDNY-Heroes/Gave-It-ALL.html

http://www.newyorkfire.com/nyfd/memorial.jsp

~Linnea