Sourcebooks Casablanca Romance Authors

Not all parts of a book a created equal. Some fly off the fingers, other bits have to be dragged out or coaxed with chocolate and bribes. And not all tricky bits are the same for all people. First page fear (or the horror of the blank document) doesn’t bother me as I plot and I know the start. I know the turning points. That pivotal bit in the middle is no drama, the black moment holds no terrors and I love the rush to the end. I get stuck in the second quarter. That bit that happens sometime after the story has started and the characters have met and the stage has been set and before the big thing in the middle. Something has to happen for 20,000 words in there…. This is the bit of the story where I also get the wobbles (my characters suck, this story is awful. What was I thinking there’s not enough to make a novel!). I get the second quarter blues on every story regardless of length. You’d think in a 30,000 word novella it wouldn’t be a drama, but it is. I have however discovered...

Talk about new beginnings. In my writing world I was doing a nice long line dance where my characters were all dancing together in time with the music ... step forward, kick back, slap your fanny and yell, “Hell, yeah!” Like the line dance, I had all my ducks in a row. One Hot Cowboy , coming out in April…check. Woman’s Fiction book (although we were having trouble with just the right title) coming out in August…check. Mistletoe Cowboy , October…check. Just a Cowboy , December…check. Now slap my fanny and yell, “Hell, yeah!” and get on to the last book in the contract … check. Then the music stopped. The line dance broke up and new beginnings began as the band switched from playing a fanny slapping line dance to a two-step. Uncheck, uncheck, uncheck as I watched the ducks waddle back to the pond in the space of a twenty minute phone call. One Hot Cowboy , still coming out in April …check. But there was a whole new bunch of new beginnings on my dance card. It was time to partner up wit...