The HEA Cafe

It’s my day to blog today. I’m sick. I’m going back to bed.

And yeah, I should have prepared this ealier, but I can’t think my brain hurts.

See you all next month.

Since the day is almost upon us, let me wish you all the very best of the season.

All I want for Christmas ~~~ is a new name!
I always thought I would write under my own name and have done so since 2006. Imagine my surprise when my new publisher asked me to find a new name because they had too many authors with my first name.

The request opened up a couple of  possibilities and a couple of concerns.

The pros:-I could keep my last name
My last name being near the end of the alphabet means my books are always on the bottom shelf in the corner. Always. So I could pick a last name that came in the middle of the alphabet, at eye level, which sounded like a pro to me.
The cons:- People who were reading my current books wouldn’t be able to find me.

I would lose my author brand.
Who would I be?
In the end I decided to go with a completely new name, and a new website, but I would still keep writing under my own name, for other publishers, but to deal with the reader issue,  I would have my new persona contribute to blog with my old persona and we would be bff’s.

So here I am, meet the new my new best friend forever.   Ta daaa.

Ann Lethbridge, writing for Harlequin Historicals. My first book comes out with them as a short story in the Undone line, cover shown here. It is called The Rake’s Intimate Encounter. It will be available in January from e-harlequin.com. I love the cover and I must say I am very excited to be writing for Harlequin. This novella  is a prequel to my full length book ~The Rake’s Inherited Courtesan which is out in April 2009.

Next time I will tell you how I set about choosing the perfect new name.   Or at least, perfect in my humble opinion.

Hopefully, I am not going to upset anyone celebrating Thanksgiving — Canada celebrated their in October, probably because our winter comes earlier than yours.  Anyway, yesterday I went shopping for the ingredients for my Christmas Pudding. Yep, to me the Christmas season always starts when I make Christmas pudding.  Stir up Sunday, the day for making Christmas puddings is the last Sunday before Advent, though I may get mine done a bit earlier.

In our family, everyone must stir the pudding before it is cooked, so I have to time it around when I know everyone will be available. And this is what makes it one of life’s simple pleasures, remembering stir up Sundays with my mum, when she remembered the same thing with her mum.
So what does this have to do with my title.  Well, while I was shopping for the stuff, it made me think how wonderful it is still to be part of a tradition that has been going on for so long, just like the American Thanksgiving. And since I write Regency historicals it is kind of nice to know that I am still doing something the same as my characters experienced.
I do wish you all the happiest of Thanksgivings with your families and friends.

And since this is a writers blog, I should mention that The Lady Flees Her Lord, should now be in a store near you.  Seeing your own book in a store is another of life’s pleasures (but not quite to simple).

Yesterday was a lovely day in here in Ontario, bright sunshine, warm, my flower beds looked lovely, pretty, with pink impatience and yellow snapdragons.  But it is October. Any day now we could have snow and those bright pink impatience will go all yucky, a sort of wet, cold, soggy mass that freeze your fingers when you try to pull them up.  But killing plants that are so vibrant and alive just seems so awful.

But, having pulled up the wet soggy masses in the past, or worst yet, dealt with the wet soggy masses in the spring when the snow has gone away, I gritted my teeth and put perfectly happy plants in a big brown paper bag, so the recycling folks could collect them this morning.

While I was wreaking this destruction, I was thinking about blogging today. I was also thinking about editing my next manuscript. The little plants became symbolic of all of those lovely scenes I have written, bright little descriptions of happy little events that have to be cut. Scenes that were beautiful that have to be cut. Scenes where the prose seemed to flow, that have to be cut.

Pretty pink and yellow scenes, that aren’t working hard enough. Every scene has to do at least three of the following things, or it is pretty and useless.  It must advance the plot, reveal something new about a main character, reveal backstory or foreshadow something about the future. And in addition, every scene must have conflict. Because if they are only pink and pretty, quite soon they will be horrible soggy messes holding your story down. You have no doubt heard this before, (you know, kill your darlings) but it doesn’t hurt to hear it again. It helps me to think clearly as I begin my day of revisions.

Today it is a cold and wet rainy day in Ontario, my flower beds are tidy and my wet soggy masses of plants are sitting in brown paper bags at the curbside. Today, I will be looking at my scenes with a jaundiced eye, ready to pull them out if they are not working hard enough or making sure they do.
Have a lovely day.

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