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

I do want to tell you about some fun stuff I’m doing today to celebrate. And as with any good party, there are prizes involved!

I’ll be guest-blogging today at Romance Vagabonds about the timely topic of friendship–both in romance novels and behind-the-scenes of their creation. The post isn’t live yet as I write this, but I understand there will be prizes up for grabs!

The lovely Vauxhall Vixens also threw me a virtual surprise party to celebrate the release. If you want to read the words of overly generous friends saying completely gushy things about me, by all means, click over.

And last but not least, over at Courtney Milan’s blog, she explains the day-long Goddess of the Hunt Twitter Talk contest. She’s giving away copies of my book, as well as some of the other fabulous historicals releasing today. All you have to do is get on twitter, use the hashtag #tessadare, and make patently outrageous assertions about GOTH and/or its characters. Elyssa Papa takes an early lead with this hilarious pic of President Obama holding “GotH”. See Courtney’s blog for specifics.

And somewhere in there, if you find time to actually order, purchase, and/or read the book, that would be awesome, too.

Thank you everyone, for making this day so very special!

The fun started Wednesday with the Eloisa James/Julia Quinn Bulletin Board get-together, catered by the amazing Kim Castillo (we were enjoying the fruits cookies of her labor all week). Later that day, I had my first-ever book signing at the RWA Readers for Life literacy benefit. I only had about 15 copies there, and they were all gone within minutes, thanks to my wonderful friends. I can’t tell you how touching it was to see people I’ve “known” online for three years show up with hugs and misty eyes to support the release of GODDESS OF THE HUNT. I am so blessed with a wonderful network of friendship and support.

Thursday started with breakfast with my roomies Courtney Milan and Carey Baldwin, plus…oh…a dozen? of the historical romance genre’s most esteemed authors. Oh my stars – Joanna Bourne, Sherry Thomas, Mary Jo Putney, and several more – all before I’d had my coffee. I may have dreamed it.

After breakfast, I attended the Rogue Digital Seminar presented by Sarah Wendell of Smart Bitches Trashy Books, Kassia Kroszer of QuartetPress, Angela James of Samhain Publishing, and Jane Litte of Dear Author, along with authors Maya Banks and Lauren Dane. It was standing room only. These ladies did an awesome job of packing that hour with valuable information on digital rights, e-publishing, the Google Books settlement, and more.

Then it was off to the RWA Annual General Meeting. I can’t claim to understand exactly what all went down at that meeting, but it was fascinating to see the organization at work and very exciting to see that we had achieved a quorum, through proxies and attendance.

The Thursday keynote luncheon address was given by Linda Howard, bless her heart. She delivered absolutely side-splitting speech of anecdotes and advice, delivered in smooth Southern storytelling style. I can’t wait until she visits my chapter this September.

Later that afternoon, I had coffee with my wonderful agent and attended a hilarious and inspiring chat session with the amazing Nora Roberts. Then I caught up with a dozen or so members of the Orange County chapter for drinks in the bar. (Are you beginning to see why I had no time for blogging?)

And then my fabulous friends surprised me with a release party for GODDESS OF THE HUNT!

Courtney, Carey, Sara Lindsey, Kim Castillo, and (I’m sure) many more worked to put together an amazing (and surprising!) party for me and many new and old friends from FanLit, Twitter, the online review community, and more. Even my dear Ballantine editor, Kate Collins, came by! Vagabond Lindsey and author Toni Blake were generous enough to offer up their swingin’ suite as the venue, and there was delicious cake, food and drink, and hunting and fishing party games! But I cannot forget the piece de resistance, this poster fashioned by Sara Lindsey:

Click on the image to see the whole thing. Sara photoshopped my face onto the GOTH cover. Ingenious, no? And a little disturbing…

I had a wonderful time and was so touched by all the effort they put into planning such an extravaganza. I love you all! And Lucy and Jeremy thank you.

My goodness…look at the length of this post, and I’m still on Thursday. I’ll be back tomorrow to roundup the fun of Friday and Saturday!

As Courtney points out in her great post, Maggie and Tiff are just two more successes from the amazing circle of friendship and support that grew out of the 2006 Avon Fanlit event and the Eloisa James Bulletin Board. (Now also Julia Quinn’s BB!) Courtney does a great job of discussing how that network has led to success – through various friendships, critique relationships, and sub-groups, many of us have gone on to complete manuscripts, land agents, and sell.

But another thing many of us have had in common? The advice and critique prowess of Ms. Courtney Milan. Which is why her critique up for bids in the Brenda Novak Auction to benefit diabetes research just may be the steal of a century.

There’s no way I could have completed or sold Goddess of the Hunt without my critique partners, one of whom is Courtney Milan. Her comments on my manuscripts have always been insightful, useful, and unfailingly honest. And her expertise in legal matters is unparalleled. If you’re an aspiring author of historical romance, I don’t think you could spend your money any better than to bid on her critique and then (important step) make use of her brilliant advice. I wouldn’t be a published author today without it!

And if you’re curious to see the results of Courtney’s critique, a rare advance reader’s copy of Goddess of the Hunt is up for bids, as well. Upon request, I will furnish first draft scenes to the winning bidder, so you can see the “before” and “after”.

Tessa Dare’s next three historical romances (tentatively titled the Stud Club trilogy), in which a duke, a warrior, and a scoundrel are united by chance, divided by suspicion, and brought to their knees by love, to Kate Collins at Ballantine, for publication in 2010, by Helen Breitwieser at Cornerstone Literary (world).

Suffice it to say, I’m floating on air and feeling very warmly toward my agent, my editor, my CPs, my friends, my family, everyone at Ballantine, strangers passing in the street… I’m in love with love right now, but most especially with Spencer, Amelia, Rhys, Meredith, Julian and Lily…all of whom you will meet in mid-2010!

Holy smokes, I have to get writing.

The first rule of Stud Club is: You do not talk about Stud Club.

Talk about it all you want!
ETA: The heroes are all studs of course, but before anyone starts freaking out about anachronistic slang in historicals, the stud in “Stud Club” refers to a horse.

(Side note: Do you know, I get many, many hits a day on this post, from people googling “Brad Pitt Fight Club”? If you want to increase your internet traffic, I highly recommend working those words into your blog.)

But it’s a happy day in the Dare household for yet another reason:

Yes, my ARCs arrived!  But…there are ten of them.  Ten.  Don’t they know I need at least 200?  Ack.  I’m not sure what I’ll be doing with them, but for the moment I’m holding my preciouses close and just staring at them a lot.  Okay, and fondling them, but we won’t talk about that.

Hope it’s a happy day for you all as well!

Now 2009 is starting off with a bang!  Huge congratulations to Erica Ridley, who has just announced her first sale–a two-book deal with Kensington.  Hooray, Erica!  Congratulations are also in order for former Fanlitter Lori Brighton, who also recently inked a two-book deal, also with Kensington!

My own exciting news: As of today, all three of my books are available for pre-order on Amazon!  Here are links to Goddess of the Hunt, Surrender of a Siren, and A Lady of Persuasion.  (I just have to stop once again and marvel at the fact that I actually got to keep my books’ original titles!  How often does that happen?) Over the holidays, I completed my copy edits on SIREN, and now it’s back to working on Stud Club while I wait for book three edits.

Everyone’s talking and blogging about New Year’s resolutions this week, it seems.  Well, 2009 is going to be a busy year for me.  I have three novels and one e-book novella releasing.  I plan to complete at least 2-3 more new books.  I’m serving on the board of my local RWA chapter, and I’ll be sending my first dareling off to kindergarten.  So I think it’s appropriate to renew my first resolution from last year:  “Maintain tenuous hold on sanity.”  Coincidentally (or not), it was the only one of my three 2008 resolutions I managed to keep.  The other two were “Walk more to prevent brain atrophy” and “Go to England”.  I’m renewing those, as well.  Actually, I think a walking tour of England is in order!

Aside from resolutions, I do have professional goals for the year.  It’s very easy to get all fretted up about promotion, as a new author.  I’ve spent a lot of time worrying about it–not just the how’s of it, but the wherefore’s.  I do not have a “sales” personality–in my entire life, I’ve had exactly one job that involved selling goods for profit, and I detested it (even though I was selling books!).  I am the girl who would rather sit at home and miss the Girl Scout camping trip than go door-to-door hawking 48 boxes of perfectly delicious cookies to the neighbors.

My complete aversion to commercial enterprise (I’m reminded of that whole speech from Say Anything–”I don’t want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything…” Here, read the t-shirt.) was largely responsible for my career choice.  In addition to being a writer, I’m also a public librarian.  And I had a little epiphany this week:  librarianship (at least, the kind I practice) is all about book promotion.  The best part of the job is discovering great books and putting them in the hands of people who will love them, too.  It’s connecting with fellow readers–people who adore books, live for compelling stories, and are forever in search of the next great read.  Aha, I said!  I don’t need to force myself into a “sales” role to market my books.  I can take a cue from my years of librarianship instead.  When I stopped thinking about it in terms of sales and dollars, and started focusing on ways of connecting my books with the readers who might enjoy them, promotion suddenly seemed like a whole new endeavor–one that almost sounded fun!

My promotional strategy for the year is this:  To continue writing the best stories I know how to write, and to get those stories into the hands of readers who’ll enjoy them. No buying, selling, or processing required.  (Unless you count word processing, which I don’t.)

So, which of last year’s resolutions did you keep?  Are you extending any for a second (or third or tenth) year?

The blog will be on holiday for a few weeks, as the Dare family gathers ’round to celebrate Christmas and New Year’s.  Grandma and Grandpa Dare will be arriving for a visit, to the delight of all.  The darelings are all aflutter with excitement for Santa’s arrival.  And I got the lovely Christmas gift of copy edits for SURRENDER OF A SIREN, which I must complete before the year’s out.  It’s appropriate, because SURRENDER is the only of the three books which actually includes a Christmas!

Oh, and I’ve seen the mockup for that cover…it’s beautiful!  And I still can’t show it to you.

One of my New Year’s Resolutions will be to be a more consistent blogger.  But until then, I wish you all a very Happy Hannukah, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and more!

Wishing you all a lovely holiday with your families and friends, safe travel, and good fortune at the malls!

The Dare family will be laying low this weekend–Mr. Dare is working the holiday (someone has to, and we luvs that holiday overtime pay), and I just received my copy edits on Goddess, which will keep me busy.  I am thankful that they look pretty minimal!

As a family, we have much to be thankful for this year and every year.  But as a writer, I am especially thankful for all of you, my wonderful friends who come visit this blog and give me your support and encouragement.  I can’t imagine muddling through this process alone in the dark–for one thing, it wouldn’t be half so fun.  For another, I’d be banging my head against a lot more walls.    Thank you, thank you, all of you!

Happy Thanksgiving!

My first book, Goddess of the Hunt, is now listed on Amazon!  It’s not available for pre-order quite yet, but imagine it will be soon. You can pre-order it now!  Hooray!

Actually, you can already pre-order it from the Random House site here.

It’s all starting feel so…real.