Haven’t posted in a bit, sorry.

I’m currently in the middle of edits of book 2, SUCCUBI LIKE IT HOT. Edits are currently eating my brain to the point that I’m not really functioning like a normal person. I just stare at my computer and reword the same sentence over and over again.

I’ll be back in a few weeks when edits are turned in. In the meantime, I offer a (very small) snippet from book 1, GENTLEMEN PREFER SUCCUBI:

(Jackie and Zane are in the New City Museum of Art, looking for clues)

“Are you going to be in there long?” From outside of the claustrophobic storage closet, Zane’s voice echoed in the quiet hall. “Or shall I wander off?”

Oh hell no. I didn’t want him wandering off at all. I had to think fast. “Wait,” I called out, cracking the door and sticking my head out to look at him. “Do you know what Nitocris’s cartouche looks like?”

The vampire gave me a blank look. “I beg your pardon?”

“The cartouche?”

An offended look crossed his face. “How dare you ask me about such a thing? She is my queen, not some common slut-”

I blinked hard, and resisted the urge to giggle at the piss and vinegar look on his normally blasé face. “Whoa there, stud. I meant her name. Spelled out in Egyptian hieroglyphs.”

He flicked his cigarette butt on the floor, no doubt to tick me off. “No, I wouldn’t know.”

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See you on the other side of edits!

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The Edit Letter

On Tuesday, I hit a milestone in the publishing sprint/marathon/turtle-crawl. I got my first edit letter. This is book 2 for my series, but book 1 never had an official letter – it was mostly verbal “Can you change this” or “Let’s go back to this version” etc etc. Book 2 was going to be my first, honest to goodness edit letter.

I was terrified to think of what it might contain. There’s always the horror story lurking in the back of your mind:

Dear Jill,

Love,
Your Awesome Editor

Luckily, this wasn’t the case! My edits were actually pretty light, and the letter clocks in at 7 pages. For those of you wondering what the edit letter contains, here’s a quick and dirty breakdown of what mine has:

Page 1: Editor tells me how much she liked my book and a broad overview of what I did right. Yay!

Page 2: A broad overview of what I need to fix in the story. For me, I short-changed two subplots and have questionable motivation for two characters. Still easy fixes.

Page 3-7: Page notes. For example: “Page 231, you say “200 years but it’s really 400” or “Page 76: Man, she’s kind of being a jerk right here, isn’t she?”

All really great stuff. I printed my manuscript and have started working on it already. I wasn’t sure what my reaction would be – I’ve heard stories of authors weeping, calling their agents ranting about cruel editors, and all over the spectrum. Here’s basically how I reacted:

Page 1: This doesn’t sound bad…

Page 2: Ohmigod – that’s EXACTLY WHAT MY BETAS said. Wow. She caught that!

Page 3 – 7: Er…wow…there are a lot of notes here.

In all seriousness, I love my notes. My editor knows exactly what I’m trying to do with the book, and there wasn’t really one single thing I disagreed with. She pinpointed my weak-spots with laser accuracy. And sprinkled into the letter are comments about parts that she found funny (which I loved) and parts which were…not (which made me realize I am not as funny as I think I am, hee).

I have difficulty with constructive criticism at the day job, so I was worried I’d be really upset at her notes. As in, must lay in bed and stew for 24 hours before I can possibly read these notes ever again (cue back of hand against forehead). But after reading her notes, I am totally pumped. 100% excited and ready to fix this bad boy.

Here’s the thing, though. You think critiques are hard? Those tough beta-readers? Those agents that gave you feedback that made you curl up into a fetal position? Those editors that passed on your submission because they didn’t like it?

Suck it up, because it doesn’t change now that you have a contract. Your editor is going to ask you to change a lot and she’s only going to sugar-coat it on page one. Your book is now a Product (Yes, I said the “P” word), and she’s going to expect you to act like a professional.

My letter is absolutely great, but my editor doesn’t pull punches. She gives it to me like an adult. If my character acts like an asshole in chapter 20, she tells me. If I write an idiotic phrase, she points it out. And not with “Oh dear, special snowflake! You might have made a mistake! But it’s okay!! I love you!” Nope. Your editor is not there to lovingly stroke your hair and tell you that you are the bestest writer evaaaaaaaarrrr. She is there to make your book successful. And she already thinks you’re awesome because she bought your book. And if she thinks you wrote a moronic subplot in on page 157, she’s going to tell you to take it out, no matter how much you might love it.

If you want petting and love and sympathy, talk to your agent (well, maybe) or your parents (definitely).

But you’d still better fix that shit in your book, or the copyeditor is going to tear you a new one.

(And I got agent notes on a different project yesterday. She didn’t stroke my hair either, come to think of it! But she pegged everything I thought was questionable. Love that. Best Agent Ever.)

Purple things to buy today…

Start with this:

And move on to this:

You know you want to. Purple is the new black. And won’t your bookshelf look cutting-edge and slimming with these two on it? I thought so.

Finding Your Inner Squee

Someone asked how I come up with the elements/themes of a book that bring out my inner geek. Long story.

So, once upon a time there was this valkyrie book. This author absolutely loved this book, but it had flaws. For one, it was poorly written with a character that liked to talk with exclamation points!!! And talked to herself because that was how she was explaining the story to the reader. Noob mistakes. Happens to the best of us. But this author loved this book so much that she decided to rewrite it. And decided to update a few things in it. The first version had a funny, talking horse that the author loved – gone. That romantic interest that shows up in the second half of the book? Gone too. The wacky shenanigans? Gone. This was going to be a serious, extremely dark urban fantasy. Gritty. Dark. Noir. Despairing with just a touch of hope. The love interest would still be in the story, but the love plot wouldn’t come in this book. The author made him a junkie instead, because that was edgy.

I’m sure you can guess who wrote that second valkyrie book. And you know what? Writing that book really sucked.

Oh, it wasn’t a total loss. There were a few cool worldbuildy things I liked, and some neat twists I’d given the story. But writing it was a total slog, and by the time I was done with it, the end result was much better, grammatically, but I’d given up on it mentally. One crit partner told me that the second one was a better book, but it had no spirit. The first one was the one with the spirit.

So where did I go wrong?

I was so frustrated after finishing that book (and believe me, it took forever just to finish the first draft) that I turned to comfort reads instead. The Elfquest comic book series. Julie Garwood’s THE SECRET. Jude Deveraux’s A KNIGHT IN SHINING ARMOR. Sharon Shinn’s ARCHANGEL. And as I re-read each of these, it stewed in the back of my mind. What did these books have that I loved so much? So I made a list.

Elfquest:
1) Prehistoric fantasy (you have to admit that’s neat)
2) ‘Stranger in a strange land’ theme
3) The epic quest
4) Soulmates (I’m a nerd, I love this trope) & Romance
5) Exploring old ruins & learning forgotten history (Book 4)
6) Factions warring with each other (Go backs vs Wolfriders, etc)
7) Animal bonds (another nerdy trope I’m a sucker for)
8.) Moments of light-hearted humor

Julie Garwood’s THE SECRET
1) Medieval England & Scotland setting
2) Heroine is a ‘stranger in their strange land’
3) Humorous circumstances involving the heroine and her efforts to ‘help’
4) The warring clan factions
5) The heroine’s quest for her own history
6) Romance between the gruff clan leader and the cheerful heroine

Jude Deveraux’s KNIGHT IN SHINING ARMOR
1) Time travel (love this trope too)
2) Heroine is a stranger in a strange land
3) Humorous circumstances involving the time travel and the heroine’s lack of knowledge
4) Elizabethan period
5) Romance between the strong hero and the weaker heroine

Sharon Shinn’s ARCHANGEL
1) The warring factions of slaves (edori) vs angelic society
2) The soulmate thing
3) The heroine is a stranger in the hero’s society
4) Romance between the strong asshole hero and the equally asshole heroine
5) Angels!

So. These are some pretty different books. One’s a time travel. One’s a fantasy. One’s a ‘classic’ medieval romance. One’s a freaking comic book (which I love, but are a little different from the norm). But there are a couple of themes that happened in all 4 of these stories.

1) Every story had some sort of faction/group pitted against another
2) Every story had the ‘stranger in a strange land’ trope
3) Romance

These are the ones that popped up repeatedly, but not every time:
1) Fantastical elements (time travel, angels)
2) Soulmates
3) Humor

Okay. Then I looked back at my first valkyrie manuscript. It contained the following:

1) Stranger in a strange land
2) Two factions fighting each other
3) Romance
4) Fantastical elements (norse mythology, hello)
5) Humor

Sure, there wasn’t a way for me to squeeze a soulmate or two out of it, but not for lack of trying! Then I looked at the second valkyrie manuscript to see what elements were in there:

1) Stranger in a strange land
2) Two factions fighting each other
3) Fantastical elements

No romance. No humor.

I had no idea those two things were so important to me as a writer, but it was a stark contrast between one manuscript that I wrote in six weeks (and loved every moment) and one that I struggled with for six months. I figured I was on to something, so I went back and looked at a few other manuscripts that I’d written. Ones that were missing the humor? Major fail. The romance? Fail again. Some didn’t have the theme of the ‘stranger in the strange land’. Equally fail.

For me to get excited about a project, it needed to have pretty much 4 out of 5. All 5 was like mental jackpot. 4 out of 5 means I’m happy with it. 3 out of 5 means that I can put my finger on it that something is not quite right, but it’s hard to identify. 2 out of 5? I’ll be lucky if I even finish the darn thing.

After all, 2 out of 5 doesn’t press my internal squee button hard enough.

You can play this game with your own stuff, or a few of your favorite comfort reads. Moreover, you can apply it to your writing. Does your current manuscript hit 5 of squee points? Or are you further down the food chain?

Think of your writing as, well, a wagon at the top of a bumpy hill. The bumpy hill is the path you take to complete your project. The wagon is your book. If you let it coast down on its own, it’ll eventually get to the bottom. Consider each of your squee-points as weights. We can toss those weights into our wagon. One will definitely add to our momentum, but five will make it race down that hill like, well, like a racing wagon. A racing wagon gets to the bottom a lot faster and might not go off on track as much as a slow one with lots of minor path corrections along the way. And a racing wagon is far, far more thrilling than a plodding one.

I think we all want the racing wagon.

(PS – GENTLEMEN PREFER SUCCUBI contains all 5 squee elements. /plug)

How do you write AND hold down a full-time job?

Some authors can afford to work on writing full-time, and some have day jobs. It’s just the nature of the business. There are so many factors in play (health insurance is a big one) that sometimes having a job is a safety net you just can’t do without. So how do you manage to squeeze in writing time after working the 40-hours-a-week day job?

Here’s what I do:

1) Have no children. Opt to be known as the ‘crazy cat lady’ when you get older.

2) Don’t clean the house. Seriously. Don’t bother. It’s just going to get messy again. And the cats like the mystery of random piles of junk in the living room.

3) Make use of your lunch break. I used to edit on my lunch break (back when I took one). Bring a laptop or alpha-smart with you, or go over what you wrote the night before with a red pen. This can be difficult if you have a shared kitchen at work, but I find snarling at co-workers that approach and muttering to myself does the trick nicely.

4) Suck at social networking. I have a twitter window of, oh, about an hour. My LJ gets neglected when I can’t take a lunch at work. I don’t even remember how to log in to MySpace and I haven’t seen my Facebook in weeks. I might reply to your email…someday.

5) Don’t have hobbies other than writing. All work and no play makes Jill a dull girl, but she hits her deadlines.

6) Catholic Guilt. It’s a great motivator.

In all seriousness…there are lots of ways to squeeze in writing. Sometimes you’re more successful at it, and sometimes you’re not. The trick is to recognize what your strengths are and what your weaknesses are.

My biggest weakness is the internet. I’m a compulsive, A.D.D. browser. Even at work (shhhh). I can’t work on a project for longer than 5 minutes before I feel the need to click over to something else. I’ve gone to look up a state capital on Wikipedia and emerged 5 hours later after reading up on the Black Death. Seriously. Don’t let this happen to you. When I find myself sucking all my writing time away on Facebook, I set up the (non-internet-connected) laptop in the living room, or grab my alphasmart. A good time to write? My small window of reading time just before bed. I can crank out a few pages in 20 minutes and feel virtuous that I wrote.

But the biggest thing that will stop you from writing?

Do you want to write it?

No, seriously. Wanting to write a novel for the sake of writing a novel is very different than writing THAT novel because you are so excited to put the words on the page that you can hardly stand it, and you race home and race through dinner so you can give yourself a few more minutes with your book. That’s the kind of writing we all want, right? Not just putting pen to paper because you NEED to have output? (I am so guilty of that at times)

I used to have that crazy obsession with fanfiction. I used to have that insane NEED to write with some of my early novels. Somewhere between there and here, I lost it for a while. I was writing stuff that felt like homework, and I hated it when it was done. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong.

So I sat down and figured out what geeked me about the fanfiction, and what geeked me about the geeky novels. I wrote lists. What did I like about this? What made me squee? Some common elements came up, and I decided that I needed to start including these things in my new projects. Even if they’re subtly hidden in the background (major props if you *really* think I’m subtle), they’re there in one way or another.

That’s my recipe for success, in this order:

1) Sloth.
2) Ixnay on interwebzay
3) Geekiness

If you do those, you’ll find the time to write. Oh, and waking up early on a Saturday morning for a write-a-thon helps things too. Or a husband that watches hockey and you, say, don’t want to watch hockey. But mostly the above three.

When You’re Not Writing…

…what do you write about?

I started this journal because I wanted to keep myself honest about the writing. And for a while there, when I was writing every day, I was journaling every day with metrics and snippets and details and life was great. I haven’t done metrics a lot lately, mostly because they’d read like this:

Monday: 0
Tuesday: 0
Wednesday: 0
Thursday: Does paying my bills online count?
Friday: 0

You see the drill. No darlings, no snippets, only the occasional emo angsting on Twitter. I haven’t been going out and doing exciting stuff, I’ve just been sleeping and working, sleeping and working. Occasionally winding down with some X-box 360. Very little reading. Little to no writing.

I’m in the nebulous ‘between’ stage again, and we hates it, preciousss. For a variety of reasons, I’m holding off on new projects and am working on completing an old one that’s about 75% done. You know how it is with old projects. They’re like leftovers. They loiter in the back of your fridge like the virtuous, stockpiled-for-later things that they are, and you tell yourself “I’m going to eat that tomorrow!” Except when tomorrow gets here and all you have staring back at you is leftovers, you opt for pizza delivery (or the new manuscript) instead.

I *KNOW*. I do this with manuscripts all the time. “I’ll come back to this one later! No problem!”

Except it IS a problem when it turns into leftovers. Still, I am being virtuous and slowly working my way through it, even if it is by small spoonfuls. I’m hoping April provides a little more excitement and guidance, but I think it’s going to be a slow burn until the beginning of summer. We’ll see. In the meantime, I am debating what to do with said story when I am done with it, since it looks like it will only be about 55k or so, max. And kind of nerdy. Romantic, but nerdy.

But who cares about all that, right? Did you see that Meljean Brook’s awesome novella, “Thicker Than Blood” in the FIRST BLOOD anthology has been nominated for a RITA Award? The only paranormal novella – I’m so excited for her and I hope she wins! I absolutely loved this story.

Also nominated? Roxanne St. Claire’s excellent NOW YOU DIE and Nalini Singh’s MINE TO POSSESS.

Congrats to all the RITA nominations.

Rumors of My Demise…

(Not so greatly exaggerated)

Ok, so this has been the month from heck and we’ve still got at least a week to go. I’m not dead! Really! But between work and home and, well…work…I haven’t been up to much.

Will share news as I get it. I’ve updated my website a little, but it’s mostly tinkering. I haven’t quite decided how I want specific pages to look, so I’m still going back and forth. But my schedule will be clearing up in April, so that’s lovely!

Speaking of April, I will be at the Dreaming In Dallas Conference on April 4th. Not doing anything special other than hanging out. Should be fun!

I’ll also be going to RWA National in DC this year. Woot! Who else is going?

Snippet!

Here’s a quick snippet of GENTLEMEN PREFER SUCCUBI (pre-copy-edit, so please ignore errors):

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Noah took his sweet time getting to the cathedral, I must admit. I’d been checking my watch every thirty seconds since the clock had struck seven, and still no sign of Noah or his friend. When seven-thirty crawled around, I got up from the pew I’d been hogging and decided that he had been yanking my chain. He wasn’t coming. This was just another joke in the long line of misfortunes that had been my life recently.

Of course, just as I stood up, Noah walked through the double doors, sending my hormones through the roof. At the sight of his broad shoulders, my insides quivered and I felt a flush sweep over my body and centralize between my thighs.

Not two seconds later, I noticed following close behind him was what appeared to be a supermodel, and distaste flared as well. How dare that jerk make me wait because he was on a date? Self-consciously, I smoothed my hair and hoped my Notre Dame sweatshirt didn’t have any stains on it.

Noah looked as delicious as ever. Dressed in a cool grey jacket, his wavy dark-blonde hair was pushed off his face in tousled bed-head fashion, and he wore dark grey slacks as well. His shirt was a dark garnet color, which I wouldn’t think would go well with a business suit, but he made it work. No tie, again, and his collar gaped slightly, revealing a smooth, tanned chest.

“Hi,” I managed to choke out, trying to control myself at the sight of him. The urge to dive onto him and kiss him madly was a tough one to resist. “Thank god you’re here.”

The supermodel behind him took off her sunglasses and revealed pale blue eyes. “Wow, she’s got it bad, Noah. Check out her eyes.”

“I see them.” His grey ones stared into my own. “Are you all right, Jackie?”

“I don’t think so,” I said, unable to keep the whine out of my voice as I sized up the competition. The girl behind Noah was utterly gorgeous, a tall, exotic supermodel type. She must have been Indian, or Arabian, or something along those bloodlines. Her hair was a smooth black curtain rippling down her shoulders, and she was built like a Barbie doll. Her light-colored eyes made her look striking, and her skin was the most delicious shade of caramel I had ever seen. A short, tight mini-dress revealed impossibly long legs and a svelte figure that had likely never seen a Slim-Fast shake in its life. I was pretty sure I’d seen her before somewhere. Like on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

I hated her on sight.

“Why’d you bring her?” The petulant words slipped out of my mouth before I could stop myself.

Supermodel took one look at me and began to laugh. She nudged Noah forward. “Did you not explain anything? Good lord, man. Her panties must be soaked at this point, and here you show up with a date.”

I blinked at the woman’s crude words. “I beg your pardon?”

Noah put his hands on my shoulders, and my entire body began to tingle. God, he smelled good. I grew dazed at the thick, masculine scent of him—he smelled like leather and cinnamon. I leaned closer to him, admiring the hard angle of his jaw. If I moved in close enough, I could tuck my head under it and be enveloped in his arms. Held against that broad, delicious chest.

“Are you okay, Jackie?”

He repeated his question a third time and I managed to nod at him. “Something’s wrong with me, Noah.” I reached for him, dying to touch him, and then pulled my hands back at the last moment. Maybe I was being too forward.

Noah sat down on the pew, and I sat down next to him, so close that I was practically in his lap and stared into his eyes.

“Do you believe me now?” he asked.

“About?” I said, distracted by the nearness of him.

“You’ve been turned into a succubus.” His hands clasped my own.

“Right…” My skin began to itch, and I wanted to rip the jacket off his shoulders. I was having a hard time concentrating. If he moved his finger just slightly, he’d rub against my palms. My thighs quivered just at the thought alone. “What exactly do those do again?”

“It’s a long story,” Noah’s friend explained. I’d almost forgotten she was there, like a buzzing fly. “I doubt it’ll sink in until we take care of your current Itch, though.”

“My itch?” I echoed her words, wondering how she’d managed to put her finger on the exact word for what I was feeling. I was itching, all right. My whole body was pulsing, and the feeling was centralized right in my pelvis. Noah’s close proximity didn’t help things much either. I shifted a little closer to him, my thigh brushing up against his.

“The first time’s always the worst,” she said, her voice cheerful.
I barely heard her. My entire being was focused on that knee so close to mine. Noah had very large thighs, I noticed.

Noah must have sensed what I was telegraphing. He picked me up off the bench and slid me into his lap, and my nerves thrilled at the contact. My mind swam from the sudden rush of blood, senses fogged, all nerve-endings focused entirely on the small of my back where his hands rested.

“I guess we’d better find some place to take care of this.” His voice sounded from far away, heard through the roaring of blood in my ears.
I wrapped my arms around his neck and pressed my breasts against him.

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Still on hiatus for most of March, but wanted to share…

Someone’s on Amazon! Yaaay!

Click here to pre-order, because you know you want to.

Official Release Date? December 29, 2009.

YAY!

(Will update my page shortly, and a snippet is still forthcoming, promise.)