I’m shamelessly borrowing it from my good friend (and roomie!) India, because Ms. Eloisa James came up with the phrase while giving India pitch pointers and it quickly became our battle cry.

RWA was phenomenal. Meeting those of you who were there was awesome, because without exception, everyone was even more fantastic in person than I’d imagined. (Geez, I’m already running out of superlatives, and I’ve barely started the blog!) I was so proud of everyone who pitched and got requests and networked their little badges off. There were so many great moments, I can’t begin to list them all. Well, okay, I can begin, and I’ll just have to save the stuff I forget for a later post:

Highlights:

• High tea with Julia Quinn and Eloisa James and several of their esteemed readers
• Meeting more of my idols at the literacy booksigning
• CM’s birthday bash – after which we caught a pimped-out limo for our Harry Potter showing
• Pitching and plotting with the Manuscript Mavens
• Lisa Kleypas’ inspiring keynote address, and Lisa Jackson’s Hot Tamales giveaway
• Attending the Avon off-site booksigning with several Fanlitters, including a couple of the Romance Vagabonds
• Hanging out in the pitch room with any/all of the above
• Hanging out in the bar with any/all of the above

Of course, there was the RWA bylaws drama to keep things interesting, and the nerves inherent to pitching and networking … Read More »

This will be my last post for a week or so … off to Dallas! I’m so excited, but I haven’t packed a thing.

I’ve been off in the woods for a few days, so I’m late doing my bit to notify the masses, but if you haven’t already heard, we’re having a little to-do for CM’s birthday on the evening of the 11th. India, Sara and I are hosting a little cocktail hour in India’s and my room from 7-8:30ish. Afterwards, we’re off to see the new Harry Potter movie! If you haven’t already RSVPed on India’s blog or to one of us by email, feel free to leave a note here. We’ll let you know how to find out the room number, or which theater/showtime to get tickets for on Fandango.

Hope lots of you can make it to the party and/or movie! Those who won’t be in Dallas … *sniff.* You’ll be missed.… Read More »

Okay, so a friend of mine who drops by this blog occasionally saw Chandler’s picture down there and accused me of being “an apostate from the church of Firth.”

No.

No, no.

I think Chandler is funny. I do not yearn for Chandler. I do not ardently admire and love Chandler.

Just to prove the point, let’s have a little Friday Firth-fest, shall we? In black-and-white no less. (I find it lends a bit of class to my rather adolescent obsession.)

Who is your most enduring celebrity crush?

Edit: Sorry, my linked pix kept disappearing … I think I’ve got it fixed now.… Read More »

Okay, I am just stumbling out of bed and realizing I have no TMI Tuesday up. This post is incredibly off the cuff and short and lacking. I do apologize.

So I woke up this morning thinking about Chandler. I have to admit, I still love Friends. When I first got the idea for GOTH, my “high concept” was something like, “An episode (or perhaps a season) of Friends, set in the Regency.” The characters are all young, good-looking, witty, and at the time in their life where they’re pairing up and settling down. Plus, I wanted to write lots of fun, snappy dialogue. Of course, the idea evolved from there and became a bit more complex – but there are definitely Friends-inspired scenes in that book – big groups of characters, talking at cross-purposes and taking good-natured jabs at one another.

So I was thinking about Chandler this morning, and how he was picky. Do you guys remember this? Before he hooked up with Monica, there was a point where he believed he’d end up alone forever, because any little thing could be a deal-breaker for him. He’d eliminate a girl from the ‘possibilities’ list for the most ridiculous reasons – her head was too big, her voice was too high, she had too many goldfish, etc.

Chandler’s case was extreme, but don’t we all have those little lines we just can’t cross?

What, for you, is a deal-breaker? Any personal habits you just can’t or … Read More »

Over on Manuscript Mavens, Erica has a great blog today about creating sexual tension with effective use of details. And Lacey suggested I blog about this, too. Well, okay! Actually, I’ve been looking for an excuse to post a some kind of excerpt from Goddess of Beauty, so this works well.

Details are everything, aren’t they? I’m still learning how to incorporate them smoothly – historical details, physical details, backstory details – but I know this is something I’m doing much better in GOB than I did in GOTH. This is in large part because I did much more research before beginning this book. So I have more details at the ready. I’ve also given my characters qualities that make them keen observers – the heroine is an artist, so she has an eye for color, line, beauty. The hero is accustomed to sizing up the quality and worth of things – and people – in a glance. So one lesson I’ve learned is, give your characters a unique look on the world. That way, the details they notice can be different from what anyone around them notices, and therefore A) worthy of mention, and B) revealing, in terms of characterization.

Specifically regarding sexual tension – I just love it when the hero notices details about the heroine that no one else does, and vice versa. There’s a lot of that going on in GOB.

Another thought – when you want to describe a scene vividly for the … Read More »

I have come to a conclusion, in my continued quest for self-knowledge.

I don’t do quick transitions.

I’m not referring to the transitions in my prose. Actually, I’m pretty proud of those. I try to keep my chapter and scene transitions snappy and full of momentum. I just wish ‘snappy’ and ‘full of momentum’ were words I could apply to myself.

I once had a roommate who was like a light switch. When she went to bed, she fell asleep. When her alarm went off in the morning, she was awake. End of story. Me? It takes me a half-hour of thinking/processing/obsessing about anything and nothing before I can ever drift off to sleep, and in the morning – oh man. Multiple swats at the snooze button and some serious caffeine intake are required before I can be called remotely ‘awake.’

I’m similarly sluggish when it comes to transitioning from “doing anything else” to “writing.” I have to sit in front of my computer for an hour sometimes, just puttering and waiting for my brain to shift into writing gear. Or maybe it’s more like I’m waiting to get out of my head and into the character’s. It takes forever. And once I’m in the zone … if you interrupt me when I’m writing, don’t expect a relevant or articulate response. I’m not home.

And now, I’ve aggravated the problem by alternating back and forth between writing new stuff (Goddess o’Beauty) and revising old stuff (Goddess o’da Hunt), and coaxing … Read More »

Sorry for yet another week of flaky blogging. That page-counter over there has been frozen for a while, which probably looks like I’ve been slacking off. But no, I’ve just gone back to concentrating on GOTH for a while. I’ve been working like a fiend to get some submissions in. Plus, I had a sick kid.

Okay, enough excuses. I’ll make rounds later today, promise.

In the meantime, I want to put together a master list of everyone who’s going to be at RWA in Dallas. (Can you believe it’s less than a month away? Yikes!) So please tag the comment trail here, or send me an email. I want to make sure I get to meet everyone in person! Those of you who frequent Fanlit Forever, are there any plans afoot for a get-together?

Those of you who are going, what event or workship are you most looking forward to attending?

Oh, and congrats to Lacey, Erica, Darcy, and Jacqueline for starting the fab Manuscript Mavens blog (which I have just now crawled out from under my rock to find)!… Read More »

Here’s something I’m curious about.

What makes you cry?

Tears are important in both of my books thus far. I’m not sure how that happened – I didn’t exactly set out for it to be a theme. Lucy almost never cries and Sophia bursts into tears at the drop of a hat, so they’re quite different at least. Crying is cathartic, it’s raw, it’s intimate. It can be a sign of vulnerability or a sign of trust. It fascinates me, so I write about it.

Maybe it’s because the weirdest things make me cry. Although I was devastated, I barely shed a tear when I had to put my poor, very sick kitty to sleep (not recently – no condolences necessary). But then I’ll burst into tears at the doctor’s office for no apparent reason. Perhaps India can explain this to me. For some reason, talking about the inner workings of my body to a stranger – even the most benign, unemotional stuff – always makes me tear up.

The one time I tried to give blood in a college blood drive – after like, 50 personal questions about everything from my travel habits to my sex partners, then two student phlebotomists and finally their supervisor poking about in both of my arms to find a good vein, then lying there for twenty minutes squeezing the ball while I sobbed uncontrollably, only to be told my veins were ‘bad’ and they hadn’t collected enough blood and I’d failed – FAILED … Read More »

Okay, I’ve been putting this off for a week or so now. I’m supposed to tell you eight interesting things about me. Huh. I feel like you all know my more interesting qualities – the stuff you don’t know is pretty boring, really. Or it’s something I’m just not gonna share. 🙂

But here goes:

1. I don’t collect anything. I am vehemently anti-collecting. Once you tell one person you collect things with owls or pansies or whatnot, that is all you will ever receive for Christmas gifts, EVER. And then you must find places for all your owl-shaped salt-and-pepper shakers and pansy-emblazoned tea trays. Which brings me to a corollary…
2. I abhor tchotchkes. Of all kinds. So far as I am concerned, their only function is to collect dust and look creepy.
3. That all said, let it be known that my bookshelf is crowned with a Jane Austen action figure, and my baby was wearing his “Future Mr. Darcy” onesie today. Both gifts, of course. But I will always make an exception to points 1 and 2 (and probably 7 or 8 of the 10 commandments) for Darcy.
4. But I like it when other people collect things, because I hate to shop and it makes my Christmas list quite easy – just gotta find those fuzzy aardvark slippers for Aunt Whatsit.
5. Oh, and that reminds me – I have a deep and abiding adoration of Madeleine L’Engle. And Giotto. Which means I absolutely looooove this book.
6. I rarely read

This is not a titillating TMI Tuesday, sorry. I’m thinking about giving my hero a phobia. Phobia may be the wrong word, because it’s not exactly an irrational fear. But a strong fear of something in particular.

This can be hot when done well, right? I mean – I’m thinking Indiana Jones. “Snakes. Why did it have to be snakes.”

Or even the OCD extreme, like Jack Nicholson’s character in As Good As it Gets, or Tony Shaloub on Monk.

Why is it that we love strong heroes, but a phobia can be dead-on sexy?

And now for the TMI. What’s your biggest, most irrational fear?

Me? I’m horribly afraid of suffocation and drowning, which usually manifests as a fear of being more than a few feet underwater. Love swimming, love snorkeling. But I tried scuba once, and it was not pretty. I can’t tolerate watching movies that take place underwater, or in outer-space, or anywhere where the people have a limited air supply. Literally cannot watch.… Read More »