My friend’s name is Courtney Milan, and her debut historical romance is Proof by Seduction.

When Courtney and I met over three years ago, neither of us had ever written a full novel. We started working with another friend, Carey Baldwin, who had a full draft under her belt and a few more clues than we did, and together the three of us worked our butts off to figure out this romance-writing thing.

I still remember the day Courtney sent me the first draft of her first scene with Proof’s heroine, Jenny Keeble. Jenny just leapt off the page with intelligence and secrets and desires and delicious potential, and I did a little dance in my chair because I just knew Jenny would be the star of Courtney’s dazzling debut. And here she is!

Of course, by now, a lot of other people have figured out how brilliant Courtney and her book are, so don’t take my word for it! Here’s what the early reviews are saying:

“Historical romance fans will celebrate Milan’s powerhouse debut, which comes with a full complement of humor, characterization, plot and sheer gutsiness.”

—starred review, Publisher’s Weekly

“A dazzling debut by a multitalented author… Milan steams up the pages while drawing readers into an emotionally powerful relationship centering on the true meaning of love. Completely satisfying, this is a book meant for all time.”

—4½ star review, TOP Pick! RT Book Reviews

(To read yet more praise and an excerpt, check out Courtney’s website.)

To mark the release of this amazing book, today (Monday) we’re kicking off a Twitter countdown to the official release day. It’s the 12 Days of Proof!  If you’re on Twitter, join the fun by following me at @tessadare, or the #12pbs tag. For each of the twelve days, we’ll be tweeting a twist on the classic Christmas song, inspired by Courtney’s book. The…verses?…are the collaborative creation of Courtney’s most devoted fan base, the Bonbons/Vanettes.

AND, on each of the 12 days, we’re giving away at least one autographed book. Authors who’ve graciously donated their books include Eloisa James, Julia Quinn, Anna Campbell, Sherry Thomas, Elizabeth Hoyt, Sara Lindsey, Julie Anne Long, Carolyn Jewel, Victoria Dahl, Jennifer Haymore, Zoe Archer, and of course Courtney Milan herself and yours truly, Tessa Dare. We’re all fans of Courtney!

To enter each day, just follow @courtneymilan and use the #12pbs hashtag in a tweet—either by RTing our 12 Days tweets, or by using the hashtag to do your own gushing, yearning, posting of book-spotting photos, etc. Winners will be picked at random from the #12pbs twitter stream. The entry period for each day will run from 12:00 AM to 11:59 PM EST, and I will do my best to announce winners promptly after close of each day, but it being the holidays and all, please forgive minor delays. Winners will be asked to DM their snail addresses.

On the 12th day, Carey Baldwin and I will be in Courtney’s hometown to celebrate her official release day! We’ll be heading around to different bookstores, spotting and signing stock, and we’ll give away copies of PROOF all day long.

If you’re not on Twitter and want a chance to win PROOF and two other great debuts (or even if you are on Twitter and want to hedge your bets), enter my monthly website contest!

Thanks for playing along!  However you celebrate the holidays, I hope you find the time to give yourself the gift of reading!

A Lady of Persuasion

You see, when I started writing Goddess of the Hunt, I had this thought that it should feel a bit like the TV show Friends, only set in the Regency.  A group of…well, friends…who are at that time in their lives where they’re figuring out their futures and pairing off, who know each other well enough to throw around a lot of witty set-downs and the occasional incisive remark.  A group of people who genuinely care about one another, even though they’d sometimes rather not admit it.  And it was just so much fun, to write Henry, Toby, Felix, and Jeremy giving each other sh*t in the way guys do.

There are several sections of A Lady of Persuasion where the main characters from all three books are together–sometimes for pleasant reasons, and sometimes not.  Don’t get me wrong–I adored Toby and Bel as a couple, and their journey to love was a pure joy to write.  But those ensemble scenes were a unique pleasure, because I really believed each of the three (four! shhh.) couples’ happily-ever-afters would be supported and strengthened by this larger circle of friendship and love.  And because I just can’t write enough of those guys giving each other sh*t.

So, here’s how this party works. Any comment will enter you to win a prize (more on those in a bit).  We’re just going to play a big long game of “Remember When,” and the theme of the day is friends.  You can share a memory about the friends in my trilogy (Remember when Jeremy and Lucy made out under that pear tree?  Yeah, that was hot.) or Friends the TV show (Remember Chandler and his ‘nubbin’? Ew.), or our real-life friendships (Remember when went out for that awesome barbecue in Dallas during RWA? Those rolls! Like buttah.).  Or if none of those appeal to you, just bring out cocktail party conversation of any variety!  Or make something up.  (I write fiction; creativity’s encouraged.)

Now, the PRIZES!

They are books, of course.  I will give away 3 copies of A Lady of Persuasion, and 1 copy each of Goddess of the Hunt and Surrender of a Siren (all signed, of course).  Because she is my friend and she is awesome, I will also give away 2 copies of the recently released The Heart of Christmas anthology, featuring Courtney Milan’s most excellent debut novella, “This Wicked Gift.”

So that’s seven books — but wait!  It’s not!  Because if you’re a winner, I will double your prize and send a copy of the same book to a friend of your choosing, with a message that it is a gift from you!  Your mom, your sister, your neighbor down the street…a senior center, a teacher, a soldier…anyone you think might enjoy reading one of my (or Courtney’s) books.  (Don’t worry–any addresses collected will be used strictly to mail this one prize, then deleted.)  Winners will be picked at random from all comments.

As the day goes by, I may have prizes on Twitter as well, if you follow me there.

So…let the fun begin!  Thank you all so much for your friendship, readership, and support. I hope you enjoy  reading Toby and Isabel’s romance as much as I enjoyed writing it!

Your friend, Tessa

When Jackie and I were discussing the best way to celebrate and handle this here guest blog, we decided perhaps we’d chat and interview one another about the writing of novellas–since I just recently released one of my own. Here’s our conversation on the long and short of it.

Tessa: *clearing throat*
So, Jackie–it amuses me that we’re having this conversation, because
we are both writers who end to write novels on the long side, but who
have also written short novellas (under 20K words). What made you
decide to attempt a novella in the first place? Did anything surprise
you about the writing process?

Jackie: I wrote my first short novella on a dare from Ann Aguirre, actually. She mentioned an Ellora’s Cave call for submissions, said she was going to write something for it, and challenged her blog readers to try it, too. At first, I didn’t think I had a story that short in me (it had to be under 15,000 words), but almost at the last minute, an idea popped into my head, and voila, Carnally Ever After was born. It wound up being the first manuscript I ever sold and, as the prequel to the novellas in Behind the Red Door, it was really the stepping stone to my first New York contract.

As far as whether anything surprised me about the process, I suppose it was how freeing it is to be able to concentrate almost exclusively on the romantic relationship and conflict and not have to worry about multiple subplots and tying them all up at the end. Not to mention, wow…when you hit 50 pages, you’re already halfway there instead of only finished with the partial!

I have to admit that I found writing novellas (I’ve done quite a few now) to be really helpful for learning how to write a story and not lose sight of the romantic tension. In my novels, I have a tendency to go for quite a bit of plot (which is a reason I often run long, especially in the first draft), and one of the reasons I wasn’t completely happy with my first novel was that I felt the romance kept getting run over by the plot. Now that I’ve got a few novellas where the romance is the plot under my belt, I think I’m better able to tackle single-title length. Although, dang, 100k seems like a long haul when you’re at 48k and, if it were a novella, you’d already be done!

How about you? What did you like best about writing your novella? Was there anything you found especially challenging about it after having written three single-titles (you came at your novella from the opposite direction I did)?

Tessa: My novella started out as a dare, too! Or more of a joke amongst
friends. A random conversation about paranormal shifters put the bug
in my mind that it would be hilarious to write a werestag story,
especially since there’s a line in GOTH that says the hero’s estate
includes “one of the last woods in England where one can hunt stag.”
But that conversation took place almost a year before I actually wrote
the story. The idea just wouldn’t die, and after I turned in the
third book of my contract, I decided I wanted to write it just for
fun. In that way, the pressure was off, and I really just had a great
time with it.

I meant it to be a 12-15k story (ended up 19k, so I guess I still write
long!), so one thing I decided right away was that my hero and heroine
should have some history and know each other fairly well. I didn’t
think 12-15K words would be enough to get from introductions to a
convincing HEA. In BEHIND THE RED DOOR (where you’ve got 30-35K words
to play with in each story), you have a great mix — one couple
just meeting, one couple who have known each other casually, and a
hero and heroine who’ve been best friends for some time. Was any one
of those more difficult to write, or just different from the others
for that reason?

Jackie: I barely kept my first short under the limit (it was 14,600 words, so I had 400 words to spare, lol), and my Red Door novellas never ran as short as they theoretically could (the minimum was 25k), so I think I’m like you in that even my novellas tend to run long.

I completely agree that it’s very difficult to get a satisfying HEA in a short word count if the hero/heroine are just meeting for the first time at the beginning of the story. In fact, I’d say that was the reason SCANDALOUSLY EVER AFTER (the middle novella in my anthology, which is the one where the couple just meet at the beginning) was the most challenging of the three to write. It’s the one I tackled last because I just wasn’t sure I could pull it off in a way that would be both believable and emotionally satisfying. I’m convinced the only reason it works in that story is that the heroine’s profession (she is a “working girl” in a high class brothel) allowed me to skip over the initial “getting to know you” phase of the relationship straight to physical intimacy, and because of who the characters are, that physical intimacy led naturally to emotional intimacy. Even so, I still ran some parts of that story past my critique partners with the question “Does he/she fall too fast? Is this believable?” because I was concerned about the very fast pace of the romantic relationship. They told me it was fine, though, and my editor didn’t complain, so I guess I pulled it off.

One of my favorite things about LEGEND OF THE WERESTAG is the way you keep the story moving right along but still manage to have great character development and emotional, meaningful character arcs. I think in novella, one can fall into the trap of concentrating on the plot elements–I have x many scenes, during which I must accomplish x, y, and z plot points to arrive at the HEA–and fail to develop the characters and their emotional growth. It’s hard to make characters feel “real” to readers in a shorter word count, yet all your characters felt very real to me (even the secondary characters, particularly Brooke, whom you already know I adore!). Did you find that difficult to achieve, or did it come more naturally than you expected?

Tessa: Wow, thank you! I’m blushing. You know, I really love writing large
groups of friends. In my novels, too. Nothing makes me happier than
writing a scene where I can have 5 or 6 (or 8!) friends, lovers,
enemies pinging off one another. And those group scenes do a lot of
the characterization work for me, because I think readers learn the
most (and the most quickly) about a character by watching him or her
interact with others. In Werestag, I knew I needed one character to
be an outspoken skeptic, to give voice to the reader’s (and my own!)
internal skepticism. That’s where Brooke came from. I had a great
time writing him.

And it’s been wonderfully surprising to hear people say they’re now
curious to read Brooke and Portia’s story, or even Denny’s! I hadn’t
planned to write their stories, but you never know… One of the
things I loved about BEHIND THE RED DOOR is how masterfully you tied
the three stories together with overlapping characters and, of course,
the all-important setting of the Red Door brothel. Any advice for
writing connected novellas? How did your vision of the Red Door
originate?

Jackie: I’d love to be able to say that my vision for the three novellas came to me as some overarching idea and that I knew in advance how the brothel would factor into the stories and how the characters would overlap. The truth is that it happened a lot more organically and in a very piecemeal fashion.

The first novella, Wickedly Ever After, was conceived while I was writing Carnally Ever After. In that short novella, the hero and heroine (Alistair and Louisa) throw over their respective betrotheds and elope. As soon as I wrote the first scene in which heroine’s betrothed (who was a horribly dissolute rake, drank too much, and at the beginning of the story, jilted her at the altar) appeared, I knew I had to write a story for him. What motivated Nathanial? Why was he such a jerk? And how could he be redeemed and find love? And then it became clear that the heroine most likely to save him from himself was Eleanor Palmer, Alistair’s icy, uptight former fiancee. I had no plans for additional stories at that point, though.

It was as I was writing Eleanor and Nathaniel’s story that I “found” the characters who would populate the other two novellas. The third novella in the group is the one that came to me first. Early in Wickedly, I wrote a scene in which Nathaniel has dinner with his family. During this scene, his younger sister, Jane was introduced, and she demanded her own novella. She wasn’t beautiful, she was “on the shelf,” and she took a lot of abuse from her parents for both failings. Then, later in the story, Nathaniel went to visit the Red Door brothel, which had been mentioned casually in the first few pages of the novella. Not only did the character of Calliope introduce herself to me during that scene (and demand her own HEA), but the fact that the brothel would play an integral role in all three novellas became clear to me.

I’m glad you liked the way the characters and setting were woven together, though. Because I was writing a set of three novellas that I knew would be published in one volume, I felt they needed a strong enough connection so that readers wouldn’t feel they were being jerked from one “world” to another throughout the course of the stories. And although each novella can be read independently, I find they wound up supporting each other in wonderful ways. I don’t know how I could have created a believable HEA for Callie and Jack in Scandalously Ever After without Nathaniel, for example, or how I could have engineered the plot of Sinfully Ever After without Callie.

So, at this point, I think I’m probably supposed to plug my book and encourage all your readers to rush out to the store and buy it. But I’m kind of bad at that sort of shameless self-promotion, so I’ll just thank everyone for reading our little discussion and perhaps getting a glimpse inside the (weird, virtually inexplicable) mind of a writer.

And thanks for the opportunity to chat about this, Tessa. It was great fun.

Tessa: Don’t worry, Jackie! I will do the shameless promotion for you. Thank you so much for coming by on your busy release day. We’re all so excited for you!

Everyone, be sure to go out and buy BEHIND THE RED DOOR! On sale today, May 26th, from Kensington Aphrodisia. The cover is gorgeous, the prose is beautiful, and the stories are heartfelt, intelligent, and sexy.

Jackie’s been generous enough to give me a signed copy of BTRD to give away! For a chance to win, just leave a comment. I’ll close the comments Wednesday midnight PST, and announce a winner Thursday.

ETA: If you want to double your chances to win, go comment at Courtney Milan’s blog.  She’s giving away a copy today, too!

Do you like to read novellas? Write them? Or do you prefer a full-length novel? Are your expectations different going in? Any reading recommendations? And just what (or who) do you think is behind that Red Door?

I usually do most of my writing at cafes, because I find it too hard to concentrate whenever I have the darelings around or convenient internet access. So I pack up my laptop and head off to Starbucks or the Bean and Leaf or Borders and camp in for a few hours. Sometimes I change it up and go to McDonalds, and I’ve become a regular customer at the one near my kids’ preschool on Thursday mornings.

You see, there’s an older couple that comes in on Thursday mornings, too. I’ve chatted with them a few times–the gentleman is always interested in my laptop and how it works. And he’s very proud of his successful kids and grandkids, as any father or grandfather should be. His wife is always with him, and though she seems like a lovely person, she’s not able to speak much. She seems to be in an advanced stage of Parkinsons or some disease that affects the muscles–she can’t move her arms or hands, and she walks with difficulty. But every Thursday, they come into McDonalds and have breakfast together. The gentleman sees her to their regular table, and he goes to get their food. Then he feeds himself and his wife, too – holding the food to her mouth and telling her when to take a bite, or urging her to swallow a sip of juice.

While this goes on, I’m there writing my stories of love in its first blush–attraction, infatuation, courtship, wooing, and..well…romance. But I find it so touching and inspiring to see the proof of real-life HEAs sitting just a few tables down. And I’ve been fortunate to see similar examples within my own family–couples who truly live out that “richer or poorer, in sickness and in health” part of their wedding vows.

Detractors of the romance genre often decry the ubitquitous happy endings as “easy”. I’d argue they’re anything but. A happily-ever-after ending implies a lifetime of commitment, sacrifice, and hard work to come. Anything but easy, but wonderful and rewarding in the way only difficult things can be.

I’m sure my McDonalds couple has a very romantic story to tell about the beginnings of their relationship, too. Some Thursday morning, I’ll probably get to hear it!

What examples of real-life romance inspire you?

This quirky, sexy historical romance novella is not a paranormal shifter story, but rather the tale of five romantically entangled Regency-era houseguests who become intrigued by the local legend of a cursed man-beast.  Among them is Miss Cecily Hale, a young lady who’s spent four years waiting for her girlhood love, Luke Trenton, to come home from war.  And Luke himself, who has come home from battle alive but changed, only to spurn Cecily’s long-held affections.  But everything changes the night they forge into the forest in search of the fabled “Werestag.”

To read a longer blurb and Chapter One, click here.  I’ve posted an exclusive excerpt from Chapter Two to the Samhain Cafe loop here.  Check back later this morning.   And I’m blogging today on the Samhain blog about how ALL romance heroes are legendary man-beasts.

Later this afternoon, kindly bloggers at Dear Author will be helping me give away ten free downloads of the novella, as well as my last three Advance Readers Copies (ARCs) of Goddess of the Hunt.  That’s right – get over to Dear Author and leave a comment today, and you could win an ARC!  (And if you don’t win, there’s still one up for bids in Brenda Novak’s benefit auction.)

Sarah Wendell of Smart Bitches, Trashy Books gave The Legend of the Werestag a very favorable B+ review a few weeks back, and author Ann Aguirre called it “the best novella I’ve read all year.”

Best of all?  It’s only $3.15 if you buy it this week from My Bookstore and More!  It’s also available in the Amazon Kindle store, and from a variety of e-book retailers.  If you’ve been wondering about my print books, here’s your chance to try my work for a low price.

Wow, my first release day.  This is so exciting!  I can’t wait to hear what people think of it.

I haven’t got a page for it up on my bookshelf page quite yet — I’m waiting for the cover art. But the blurb and excerpt for my May 12th release went up on the Samhain website. If you read the title and laugh, that’s good! It’s a comedy. And the story is very loosely linked to Goddess of the Hunt.

Also – I finally have a contest going on this here website! So when you click that Contest link, it gives you something other than a vague promise of “coming soon.”

I had plans to blog more today, but I am terribly sick. I did just want to comment briefly on the latest online debate. There’s been a lot of discussion in the past week about the Kindle2 and it’s TTS (text-to-speech) feature – whether it constitutes a copyright violation, whether Author’s Guild was right to protest the feature, and whether Amazon was right to back down. (See here and here, for example.) I really can’t pretend to understand all the legal arguments involved, but I tend to agree that clutching our intellectual property tighter to our chests is not the best way to protect our income. And what I can’t understand is why an organization devoted to protecting authors’ interests would not view protecting readers’ interests as paramount to that mission. What are authors without readers? Sure, authors create the words on the page, but any cultural significance of a book is a joint product of the author and the readers. To put it Zen-ly: if a book sits alone, unread, in the middle of a forest, does it make a point?

Maybe it’s because I was a public librarian long before I became an author, but I’m all about access. I’d let them read my books aloud over the PA at sports arenas and shopping malls, if anyone cared to do such a thing. I’m pretty sure my royalties would only go up!

What say you?