Tessa Dare

The Dare family is off for our Christmas holiday in sunny Florida, by way of a Caribbean cruise. Wheee! Now there’s just the matter of that frantic last-second packing…

This blog will be on vacay until New Year-ish. Hope you all have fun with your loved ones, dishing TMI the old fashioned way… over eggnog and Yahtzee.

First, winners!
Congrats, Sara Lindsey! Randomizer chose you – and boy, did you ever work for that prize. So many great suggestions.
Everyone made great suggestions, and it was really hard to choose. But for the meantime (and it’s always subject to change again), I think I’m going to go with Lindsey’s suggestion of “Stubb(s)” (I’m thus far ambivalent about that S at the end) – mostly for the simple reason that it rhymes with his old name. And because Stubb is a name crying out for a peg-leg, and that would be cool. So congratulations, Lindsey! Email me with your favorite dot-com book outlet, and I’ll set you up.

On to TMI…
Okay, so a long, long time ago (so long ago I’m not even up for searching the archives – but yes, I’m basically recycling that post), I blogged about how I wanted to write books where the reader fell in love with not just the hero, but the couple.

My example went something like this. There are some books where I am so in love with the hero, I would like to go through the book, page by page, and cross out the heroine’s name and write “Tessa” instead. If I could borrow the Jasper-Ffordemobile and travel into that fictional world… that man is mine.

By contrast, when I’m in love with the couple, I couldn’t imagine ever doing such a thing. Never ever in a million years would I part Darcy from Lizzy, for example. He just wouldn’t be the hero I adore without her.

So I was thinking…even though I generally prefer the second type of book, that covetable hero has his charms, too. Who would I steal? Fictionally, hypothetically, with all due apologies to Mr. Dare, of course. This is an alternate universe we’re discussing.

I think the object of my thievery would have to be Jamie Fraser, from the Outlander series. Now, I love Claire. She’s a fabulous heroine. But Jamie doesn’t need her to be the man he is. He just is the man. And whatta man. Plus, everyone loves him! Girls, guys…who wants to be the lone person left out of the Jamie love train? And he manages to find Claire across continents and centuries, so surely he could spare a hot decade in there for me. Yep. I would steal Jamie, plaid and all.

How about you? Is there a hero you would unabashedly steal? Any who are absolutely off-limits?

Any stray straight guys who happen to wander by…of course, feel free to steal a heroine.

My brilliant CP, Ms. Courtney Milan, has won first place in the Golden Pen with her manuscript, Abducting Oliver! Congratulations, CM! I’m so proud.

Not that this comes as any surprise.

Add your “I knew it” or “Of course she did” or “I told you so” here.

And by all means, keep adding to the contest entries in the post below!

And left a check, from Random House. Just in time for Christmas. I’m a paid author now. Wow.

So, I’m in the mood to celebrate. And speaking of grizzled, bearded old guys, I’m also in the mood to rename one of my characters. So, contest time!

I have a character in Goats on a Boat Surrender of a Siren (as it says in my shiny new contract) in dire need of a new name. He’s the steward of the ship, which means he’s the captain’s manservant. His working name has been “Grub” – because I wanted something one-syllable with an evocative sound, like “Smee” from Peter Pan. I chose “Grub” after picking out random syllables from Lewis Carroll’s The Jabberwocky. For some reason, I kept gravitating toward G – “gyre”, “gimble” (that was his name at one point), “grabe”. But alas, I already have two other characters whose names start with “G” – not least of all, the hero, Gray. So I need a name with a different evocative sound. His primary characteristics are a flair for theatrics and a lot of hair:

Surely there was a man in there somewhere, Sophia thought. Somewhere under all that hair.

The hunched, ancient steward shuffled down the narrow staircase, whistling a jaunty tune as he went. She followed, treading gingerly on the bowed boards. As her eyes adjusted to the dim lighting, she took in the greasy, gray tangle of hair that hung midway down the man’s back, the grizzled froth of beard that extended nearly as far down in front, the lightly furred forearms exposed by his loose checked tunic.

Heavens, even the tops of his bare feet sported a thick growth of hair.

“’Ere we are, miss,” he announced. “Ladies’ cabins.” He pushed aside a thin curtain of dark fabric, and they entered a small, low-ceilinged chamber with a round table and chairs occupying the center. Sunlight streamed into the space from a skylight above. Four doors opened off the small room, two on either side. The steward crossed to the door marked ‘Seven’ and opened it with a flourish. “Your berth, miss.”

So, what should I call this guy? Kindly list your one-syllable suggestions! Get creative with those Scrabble tiles. Something slightly onomatopoeic would be nice.

I’ll leave the contest open through Sunday, and I’ll choose two winners – one at random, one for my favorite suggestion – each will receive a $20 gift certificate to the online bookstore of his/her choice.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Well, my contest career is officially over. All my scoresheets and rankings and whatnot have at long last returned, almost eight months after I sent my first entry off. In total I entered five contests. In two I did not final, in three I did. I placed everywhere from (the bottom of) the bottom third to first place.

So, what lessons did I glean from this short foray into the craziness of romance contests?

I would say I learned something about hooks. The two contests I won were the two I entered with my first 50 pages. The two contests in which I did not final were ones that asked for 25-30 pages. (the fifth contest, for those doing math, was for sexy scenes) In my manuscript, 50 pages ended with the heroine nearly drowning, then calling the hero a cold, heartless man who hadn’t the courage to love. By contrast, 25-30 pages got me somewhere into the middle of breakfast.

Lesson 1: Breakfast is not a good hook. Not even a breakfast with chocolate.

Some judges adored my heroine. Others called her TSTL. Some judges thought my hero was “perfect”. Others said he was boring and blank. Some judges thought my sense of period was smooth and believable; others found errors in every garment, furnishing, and plant I described. And in every contest, one judge – the same judge? – would complain that I did not include enough smells.

Lesson 2: I’m never, ever going to please everyone. And that’s okay.

In the end, I guess I was a “successful” contestant, because I did end up getting the real prize we’re all after – a few editor requests for the full manuscript. However, by the time I received those requests, the book was sold. Between entering my first contest in March and getting the last rankings in November, I’d gotten a dozen crits, collected some rejections, done a huge rewrite of my book, then received a few agent offers, then there was the whole submissions-auction-deal shebang. Which brings me to the final lesson I’m taking away from the experience, and the big reason I’m writing this post.

Lesson 3: Contests are not a substitute for querying.

Perhaps I could have sold my book on contests alone – who knows? I might have sent my full to the editors who requested it, and one of them might have offered me a contract. But I wouldn’t be in the same position I am now, that’s for sure. My trilogy deal would never have happened if I hadn’t found the right agent, and found her through extensive querying and networking.

So this is my Go-Team rallying cry to all of you who just sent off Golden Heart entries and heaved big sighs of relief. Congratulations! It’s a great accomplishment, and you worked hard for it. But don’t let yourselves be tempted to sit back, to just “wait and see what happens” on notification day, four months from now. Keep working. Keep revising. Keep querying. I want to see you wearing Golden Heart pins AND pink First-Sale ribbons in San Fran! Go, go, go!!

*waves pompoms*

Okay, now I’m exhausted.

What lessons have you learned from contests?

Edit: I don’t want to give the impression that I didn’t get any useful feedback from contests. I most certainly did. In fact, I just recently got back my Vixen entries, and two of the judges singled out the same sentence for shaky POV – they are absolutely right, and I’m going to fix that in edits. Different judges in different contests quibbled with my use of a “winterberry” bush – and even though I had done research to show that they existed in England at that time, I decided it wasn’t worth the hassle or pulling readers out of the story and just changed it to “ivy”. And some of the early judges who called my hero “blank” were kind of right – because I didn’t really know who he was when I wrote that first draft. But I also learned that trying to follow every suggestion from a contest judge would be a short road to insanity – different readers will always have different reactions to my book.

You know, I just had this fairly salacious topic all ready to go today… and then I decided to save it for next week. I’m just not in the mood.

And then I thought – that could be a topic all on its own. Is anyone in romance ever allowed to be simply “not in the mood”? I’m rifling through my mental library and coming up empty. I can think of scenes where some “headache” or “female troubles” complaint is issued, but it’s always insincere. The complainer usually secretly longs to be ravished anyhow. And often enough, she gets her wish. And the men – I don’t think most romance heroes even have a switch that turns them off.

Anyone out there read or written a true “not in the mood” scene? Or is that just too real-life for a romantic fantasy?

I’m coming up on a scene in my WIP where the hero turns down the offer of more, because what he wants at that moment is just a kiss. But he’s still in the mood. Hm.