Monday, April 27, 2015

The Plan

My current plan is this:  every day, I either write or I exercise.  I figure this way, either I have books or I have buns of steel.  Both seem to be healthy activities for me.

I've been on this plan for most of this year, though I hesitated to call it a New Years resolution. Not even a birthday resolution (I frequently save my new-years list for March and force myself to confront those ideas along with the hard evidence of a passing year).

I have not had a great year so far.  On the surface, it all looks pretty good. I've been working a lot at the day job, which for once I love. That makes it harder to find the time and energy to write.  Writing has always been a sort of emotional outlet for me, and it's been rough not being able to channel that into words lately. 

I am writing. Slowly. I am making forward progress on The Vegas Affair--a follow up to The Paris Affair that follows Helmut's impulsive little sister Kelsie (who's not exactly a kid) as she confronts her familly's ongoing issues and gets herself in hot water. Or maybe not water? Vegas is a desert. Anyway, I'm happy with the story that I'm writing, but I just need to keep my energy up to write it.

That, and I"m going to the RWA conference in July. I am looking forward to seeing New York City for the first time, to spending the week hanging with my critique partners, and to the crazy motivation that the conference always is.

But for tonight, I wrote. And now, to sleep.

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Getting Ready for #NaNoWriMo

I might have a chance of succeeding at NaNoWriMo this year. I have successfully cleared my writing plate, so to speak. My next novel, Accomplice, is edited and formatted and sitting in Amazon waiting for the magic go-date. And for once, I don’t have three other projects that are begging my attention. Well, actually I have exactly three other projects, but all of them are prime NaNo candidates and not mostly-done works in progress that I’ve been procrastinating on.

When I logged into my account just now, I reviewed what I have set up the past two years, where I participated but then failed miserably.  2012 I said I was writing The Vegas Affair.  2013 I said I was writing Take Me Down. So now it’s 2014, and those are two of the three contenders for my NaNo book. Because, you know, I never wrote them.

Take Me Down is the prequel (or really, just book 1 of the series) of the sci fi romance I wrote in 2009’s NaNoWriMo called Leap.  I have never sold or published Leap because after querying and revising it for a year or two, I realized that I really needed to introduce the world and some of the side characters in a different spot.  I already have about a chapter of Take Me Down written, but I’ve been dragging my feet about working on the rest of it.

The Vegas Affair is a sequel to The Paris Affair, which was my first published novel.  The Vegas Affair will pick up with the story of Kelsey, the sister of The Paris Affair’s hero Helmut.  Kelsey is the baby of the family and used to being coddled (and rescued) by her two older brothers. She’s also pissed at both of them, who have refused to talk to each other for over a decade.  Fed up, she comes up with a plan to get them into the same room—or at least the same city: she is going to elope to Las Vegas with the one man that both brothers can agree to hate, in the hopes that they will work together to save her from certain disaster. But, of course, things don’t go quite as she plans.

My third option is Steal the Sun, the next installment to Call the Rain, my fantasy novella.  Steal the Sun will also be a novella or short novel (short for the fantasy genre).  Trapped in the equivalent of an ivory tower by a ruthless dictator, my heroine will enlist the help of a criminal to escape the only world she has ever known.  But the hero has reasons of his own for helping the runaway princess. He believes that sacrificing her is the key to saving his own people from certain doom. The fantasy world for this story has been floating around in my head for three or four years now.  I have been reluctant to really start writing on this one, and I’m not sure if it’s because I don’t have the story line solidified yet, or if it’s because I’m having too much fun musing over all of the possible directions I could take it.  Once I start writing, I lock things down and the playground in my head loses some of its adventuresome qualities.


So now, I need to decide what to write. And then strategize my November.  It looks like I will have a week of business travel to work around.  That week should include two travel days where, battery permitting, I can write many words on the plane.  But the rest of the week may be a wash depending on how stressful my days become.  Plus Thanksgiving.  It can be done. I’ve done it before. The travel may end up boosting my writing, because I won’t be bogged down by housework and the distractions of the real world.

Thursday, October 23, 2014

New Release!!

So, after way too much procrastination and foot dragging and other assorted delaying tactics, I have a new release.  Accomplice, which I know I've mentioned on the blog before (I have tags to prove it!) is up on Amazon.

It can be pre-ordered now, and will be released as an ebook on November 25th.

Here's the official verbiage:

All the new widow Jessica Kingsbury wants is a quiet new life away from the Hollywood spotlight that made her infamous. But the paparazzi aren't the only ones interested in dredging every sordid secret they can from her past. 

All FBI agent Noah Grayson wants is to uncover the mastermind of a blackmail plot that touches the nation's highest ranking politicians. All the clues lead straight to Jessica's late husband, who died under suspicious circumstances. Though his instincts tell him that that the beautiful model is no criminal, he can't help but wonder how much she knew about her dead husband's business dealings. 

Then a diamond necklace with ties to the blackmailer is stolen from the Kingsbury mansion, and Jessica begins receiving death threats. She must decide whether she can trust the handsome agent with her secrets and her life, not to mention her heart.