What I’m Working On
I am finally done with this book. It took me a little over a year to write the whole thing. That’s the longest it’s ever taken me to write a romance. Since it did take me so long, I had a celebration for completing it. Last week and this week, I’m working on the initial edits. After that, this goes out to the editing team. I haven’t picked an official date yet, but this will be published in late July. I plan to have it on pre-order for a week or two so that I have time to write the blog posts announcing its release and to get the links, etc.
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Still writing these two books:
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It looks like I’ll finish Worth the Risk before I finish The Earl’s Jilted Bride because Worth the Risk is shorter. But The Earl’s Jilted Bride comes before Worth the Risk, so I’ll sit on Worth the Risk. I just did a scene in The Earl’s Jilted Bride that I’ll have to rewrite. As I’m editing Midnight Wedding, I realize that the main characters from Midnight Wedding can be back in London by the middle of The Earl’s Jilted Bride. Since I think it would be fun to include those two characters, I’m going to use them rewrite the scene with them in it. I’m not sure if the arrival of these two characters will change anything in The Earl’s Jilted Bride or not. Actually, as I write this, I realize there is something that can change, and it will add to the plot of the story. So I’m excited to be able to bring the main characters from Midnight Wedding into play in The Earl’s Jilted Bride. I should warn everyone that Worth the Risk is an off-shoot (of sorts) because this takes place pretty much exclusively in the country. I don’t know if I will be able to wind this up in London. I’d like to, but it depends on how the climax of this story plays out.
I know that’s all vague, but mentioning the specifics would spoil the stories.
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Got a Cover for Book 5I have the receipt and the image, but I see it’s still on the site, so I want to be sure the transaction went through before posting it on this blog. I went ahead and got a premade cover. I didn’t feel like trying to make a cover from scratch. While I was at it, I bought two other Regency-era premade covers for future use.
I hope to start writing Book 5 later this week. I like writing three books at one time. I find when I work on one book, it often inspires me to do something in another book. For example, I wrote Nobody’s Fool (Book 2) and A Deceptive Wager (Book 3) at the same time. I wanted the heroine in Book 3 to have someone to help her in the “battle of wills� against her new husband. So I introduced this character in Book 2. Suddenly the hero had an uncle that I didn’t originally plan to create. 
It’s more enjoyable to bring in a character from an earlier book in the same series whenever possible because people will remember that character. Plus, as a writer, it’s like being able to say “hi� to an old friend.
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Also, there are times I’m writing a story in one series that gives me an idea for a book I’m writing in another series. Nobody’s Fool is a Regency. Suitable for Marriage is a historical western. In Nobody’s Fool, the hero has no idea that the heroine is trying to get him to “fall out of love� with her. In Suitable for Marriage, the hero is very much aware of what the heroine is doing and plays along in order to spend time with her.
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I’ve done things over times that have an overlap between stories like that, but those are the examples that came to mind while writing this post. Essentially, there is a lot of piggybacking that occurs when I write more than one book at a time, and I’ve found my sweet spot to be three books at once.
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My new mission is to figure out what stories I want to read.I have spent the last two weeks listening to the books I’ve written that I enjoy the most. When you write to market, the focus is on what other people want to read. Doing that for years has led to some of my burnout. There are other factors, but trying to produce work that I believe others want to read most is the main contributor because I am not allowing myself to write the stuff I want to read. While I enjoyed those books well enough, they aren’t the books I listen to over and over again.
Would you believe that Midnight Wedding is my 99th romance? I am almost at 100. I have used up many ideas that I was excited about writing. The nice thing about creativity is that ideas don’t completely go away. New ones do come to you. It can take some time, but I’ve found that being relaxed and consuming my own content helps with two questions: 1. what makes this one of my favorite stories and 2. what else would I like to read that I haven’t written yet?
In order to write from a place of passion, I think those two questions matter the most. It’s the opposite of what writers do when they write to market. Writing to market, you ask yourself these two questions: 1. what makes a story top the best selling charts on various retailers and 2. what can I do to give my own spin on it? I think it’s easier to write to market because it’s safer. You’re sticking with the tried and true. The tried and true works over and over again. That’s why we have so many retellings of stories like Beauty and the Beast. I enjoy some of the tired and true myself. I’ve written some of them and have enjoyed them a lot. So it’s not always bad to pursue the tried and true if there’s a way you can tell it that is going to excite you.
But there are times when you start to think it might be fun to take an idea that isn’t tried and true. Sometimes the most intriguing idea is one that you can’t really pin into a hole that makes it easy to market. I’ve been told that my romances aren’t really “romances� because I go into other plots. If you’re talking about the standard hero and heroine with the back-and-forth “does he/she or doesn’t he/she love me?� formula, then you’re right. Because the basic romance formula is that the two main characters aren’t guaranteed the other loves them until the end of the story. To me, that’s not interesting. There needs to be something more for me to want to write it. My favorite part of my stories are the romantic parts, and, to me, the romance is a big part of the story. There might be something else going on, but if you took the romance out, I wouldn’t want to read it. So essentially, I write romance. It’s the kind of romance I want to read.
While I have fun with the Regencies, I want to write a historical western. I just having pinned down the idea that gets me excited about writing it. I have plenty of ideas for what the market might want, but those aren’t that interesting to me. Somewhere on the edge of my consciousness, I can feel an idea for a historical western tickling my brain. It think there’s a gothic tone to it. I’d love to mix some gothic element to a historical western because I haven’t done it yet. Maybe I’ll have this set in Arizona. I’ve been there once for a Phoenix writer’s conference so I have an idea of what the terrain is like. I’ve have so much fun working on Midnight Wedding. I want something that gives me that kind of excitement in a historical western. I’m thinking of possibly a desert setting with a legend about ghosts or some kind of mythological story. And our cowboy is set out across the desert where he will have to encounter this. I’m not sure where the heroine would come in, but this story isn’t worth writing unless she’s there. I’ll keep working on it. I want something with danger, maybe a little humor, and a lot of romance. I’ll let you know if I finally get the set up I need to start the story.
