Theme

One of the questions that I sometimes get asked is what's the theme of your book? Or what theme do you write about? I guess I should know these things, but I don't. Even after a book is done, I still can't figure out what the theme is. I guess it's acceptance? I honestly don't know.

But on the Work In Progress (WIP), I actually do know the answer to this question. The theme is forgiveness! Yes, I am all proud of myself for knowing this. :-) I've been published since 2002, but I've never figured out my theme before.

My heroine needs to forgive herself for not being there when she was needed. It really wasn't her fault that she couldn't be reached, but she blames herself anyway for being absent when those she loved needed her.

My hero needs to forgive his father, and because the man is dead, accept that he'll never get an apology or a chance to mend their relationship.

So, yea! My theme in this book is Forgiveness.

A Few Too Many People

Yesterday I cut a 6 page scene from the Work In Progress (WIP). It hurt to do it, but the feedback was right on the money.

This scene was in the Point of View (POV) of a character who wouldn't appear again until the third (and final) book of the series and I doubt he'd have another POV scene. The comment I received was that I was verging on the cast of thousands and that I'm giving this character a lot of importance by giving him a scene like this.

The first comment was dead-on. I'd been worrying about that myself, but ignored that little voice in my head. So far in not that many pages, I'd introduced my heroine and a friend of hers. I'd introduced the hero, one of his friends, some of his coworkers, and the hero from the third book. The coworkers were more of a hey, hi kind of thing, so they weren't too overwhelming, I hope. But using this very minor character's POV tipped it over the edge.

The second comment about it making him seem like a major character is also accurate. I've done POV from minor characters before, but they've always been reoccurring throughout the book, as in if you had Seth's POV once, you got it four, five, six more times. I also dropped the first of those scenes deeper into the story, after the major characters are established. Not so in this case. This would have been very early in the book and it gave the character importance that he doesn't hold. He's a catalyst for book 3, but doesn't need a scene in his head for this role.

I also had another problem that my friend didn't mention--I felt like some of the information given in the scene was repetitive. The cut pages were necessary before I added the prologue that set up the world, but after I revamped where the book opened, it became superfluous.

So there were very valid and sound reasons for cutting and I couldn't come up with a single strong reason to keep the scene. Aside from the fact that I didn't want to lose 6 pages off my total. :-) Yes, a very weak reason. I cut the scene and the pages. It hurt. I'll recoup them, though--as soon as I figure out what happens next.

Just the Sunday Blog

Today, I wrote 10 pages. That's a lot for me. I normally manage 8 on a really good weekend day, so this was stellar. (Although once upon a time, I used to be able to write 20 pages on a Sunday. Ah, well.) Anyway, these 10 pages left me pretty mentally drained which means writing a blog post is challenging. To say the least.

I really like this story. I really like this hero and heroine, but they've given me fits from the start. I rewrote the first chapter of this book more times than any other first chapter ever. I wish I was exaggerating, but I keep track of any substantial changes to a chapter by sticking a letter after the chapter number. I made it to "O" on this story. Or maybe I should say "P" since today I was rewriting chapter one again.

Tonight, I have no perspective on whether or not the change I made worked, but I sure hope it did.

The beginning is very important for me to get right. It's the foundation the entire rest of the book rests on so it has to be level and sturdy. Sometimes this is harder to do than other times, but I'll get it. Eventually.

Rugby and the Haka

This weekend I was back into the Work In Progress (WIP). As it turns out, my hero is a rugby fan, particularly the New Zealand All Blacks team. Since I don't know thing one about rugby, I've had to do some research. I still don't know the game, but I did discover that the All Blacks do the haka before each of their international matches. It started in the late 1800s, if I remember correctly. If not, it was right around the turn of the century, so it's a tradition that goes back a long way.

There are a lot of cool videos of the All Blacks doing the haka on You Tube including some where the Somoan and Tongan teams do their own version of the haka right back at them. I'm afraid I didn't learn the names of their dances in my research.

I'm going to share one of the videos of the haka here. It's short, just slightly over one minute, and the quality is pretty good. The best part, though, is that there are subtitles at the bottom that explain what the players are saying and giving a little context on the dance.

Voice

Each character has their own voice, their own way of talking and thinking in various situations. For me, a lot of the writing at the beginning of the book has to do with finding those characters' voices. The thing that makes it so difficult is that it's situational.

The original chapter one in my Work In Progress (WIP) was in my heroine's Point of View (POV) and I had her voice. But this chapter took place when her world was almost completely ordinary.

In the original version of chapter two, the hero's voice was the one I struggled to find. I'd written the prologue in his POV, but that had been maybe a year and a half and two (or three) other heroes ago and I didn't have it when I got to his scene. Then, after much cutting and rewriting, I had him! And there was much rejoicing.

All was not well in Patti-land, though. I knew there was something wrong with what I had written in the book. I just couldn't figure out what. I added another scene to the front of chapter two, but that still didn't fix it. And then one of my writing buddies said that after the prologue, chapter one was just flat. There was nothing in the chapter that did anything for the story until the very end. She suggested I start with the scene in my hero's POV instead.

And she was right. I did what I always tell beginning writers not to do--I wrote a whole chapter explaining the story to the reader. Blah, blah, blah. While the interaction between the heroine and her friends was interesting (and helpful) for me, it had no place in the book. I cut it with barely a whimper.

This required a great deal of rewriting of the hero's first scene which was now the opening of the story. It took a few fits and starts--okay, it took a lot of fits and starts. I have more versions of chapter one for this book than I've ever written for any chapter in any book ever--but I did eventually persevere. And then an interesting problem cropped up with chapter two. I lost my heroine's voice.

I knew why. The situation had changed. Events that I saw happening at the end of the original chapter one have now already happened and that changes her actions and behavior. Plus I'm opening with her in a scene that's high stress for her anyway and really unusual.

I've been struggling and cutting and restarting this chapter over and over, too. But today I think I finally found her voice. I think I finally have keepable pages in this chapter. I think. I hope.

Story Hopping

I've always liked to work on one story at a time and switching back to work on revisions or to jump ahead and work on a proposal while I'm writing something else has been difficult. Because of this, I'm finding it extremely odd that I'm story hopping right now. Voluntarily.

Two stories are alternating for center stage--my time travel short story (still untitled) and the story I'm writing for a proposal (paranormal romance). I'll write in one until I hit a wall, then work on the other until the same thing happens, then start all over again. I'm not sure how to evaluate the effectiveness of this.

On the one hand, maybe I'm making the best use of my time and triggering ideas to make each story better by working on something else for a day or two. On the other hand, maybe I'm needing to have ideas triggered because the version I'm putting down is impacted in a negative way by the other story. Maybe I'm hitting these walls because I'm mentally divided. Maybe it would be faster to focus on one the way I have in the past.

I don't know and that's a little frustrating. My time travel story was going well until my hero and heroine met. I kept writing, moving forward (or so it seemed) for about a week, but what I was putting down seemed bland and uninteresting and that's not good. Last night, it finally occurred to me that my heroine was acting out of character. She's not a passive person by nature and I didn't portray her that way--until the third scene of the story. It should never have taken me a week to figure this out, so did hopping over to my paranormal instead of thinking about the time travel slow me down?

Interesting question and it needs an answer. Because if working on the other story did camouflage the problems in the first, then switching doesn't work for me.

Of course, it's always possible that I might not have seen the problem for a week anyway and that I needed to wander aimlessly story-wise for a while before I could see the truth. Just in case, though, I'm going to focus solely on the short story until it's finished. (Besides, it's due June 1st!)

Done. Done.

Two projects with March 1 deadlines. One project turned in early. One project turned in on time. And we all know what making deadlines means. Yes, it's dancing Hobbes time!







I put him up twice, one for each deadline successfully made. I, however, am too tired to happy dance tonight and my brain hurts, too. Maybe tomorrow.

Plans

Monday, on my lunch hour at the necessary Evil Day Job, I took my notepad and started working out scene goals for the next chapter. These were kind of vague, I confess, but then I went through and listed all the things I had to have happen and which chapters I thought I was going to put them in.

This was reassuring because I do have enough story for the book, but it also started me worrying, too. This storyline requires a lot a confrontational/action scenes. Now I'm thinking, okay, how do I balance this book so they don't seem overwhelming? Am I going to get deeply enough into the emotional issues my characters are dealing with? And what about the romance? If all they're doing is going from fight to fight, where's the down time?

I'm still thinking, but my brain is sluggish because I'm getting something. Half the office is sick right now, so it's not surprising, but the timing is terrible! I've been popping vitamin C like crazy and going to bed early this week in an attempt to avoid the crud. I'm not feeling great, but I'm not full-blown sick either, and the longer I can hold it off, the more antibodies my immune system can build. :-) And I'm trying to figure out how some authors manage to write when they're sick. Any hints? Because I have to tell you that even with this limbo stage before the cold/flu hits, I'm still worthless.

Anyway, that's why I'm behind on comments and why I didn't blog last night--all I want to do is sleep. Right now, I have to get moving. It snowed--again--and it's going to be another ugly commute in to work this morning.

Visions of the Future

The past few days, my characters have been showing me scenes from the future. Scenes that take place after the Work In Progress (WIP). I usually get scenes after I finish a book of my hero and heroine together and happy a while after the actual written end of their story, but this is the first time I've seen a whole bunch of them at once in a get-together type atmosphere.

The interactions have been interesting. Ryne's pretty much forgiven Creed at this point although there's a reserve there that wasn't before the things he did. Deke says that Creed can't expect her to trust him 100% again and their friendship will never go back totally to the way it was before his actions.

I also learned that Ryne, Logan, and Kel--who are all about the same age--worked together guarding the Gineal library when they were fresh out of troubleshooter training, but while they were friendly with each other, they didn't really hang out together or anything.

Logan is the hero in Edge of Dawn, the book that will be coming out in 2009 and Kel is Logan's brother.

Creed let something slip to Ryne--I'm not sure what--and it was enough for her to dig out and read the untranslated version of the Twilight Time Prophecy. She's started to put pieces together and is leaning toward the same conclusion Creed reached: It's coming.

The other interesting thing is to watch Ryne reach out and develop a friendship with two of the heroines from later books--Shona and the heroine from the WIP.

It's not all about Ryne, though. I'm also getting a lot of information from Tris, Logan and Kel's sister. She's four years younger than them and she's Sin's heroine. Sin isn't factoring at all in these visions of the future, so this is obviously taking place after the WIP and before Tris' book.

Of course, the information she's giving me has nothing to do with her story and everything to do with her brothers and the characters from earlier books that she's met now. I'm not getting much that's personal about her either. Although, I guess the argument could be made that her impressions of other people does give me insight into who she is.

I do know that Tris has wanted to keep up from her brothers from the time she was a toddler and be part of their "group." The thing is that Logan and Kel are not only 4 years older than she is, they're twins and she simply can't have the kind of relationship with them that they have with each other. But she's still trying to "prove" to them that she's worthy and majorly bummed because now that both Logan and Kel are in love, she's even more of an "outsider" than she was before.

Okay, I take it back about not getting personal info about Tris. That was some pretty important insight into her personality and it'll definitely impact her relationship with Sin when they meet. Yeah, plays nicely into the big scenario for their story. I like it when things I don't even know are happening fall into place. :-)

I've loved getting these future scenes, BTW. My only lament is that they're really not helping me with the WIP. Maybe they will later in the story, but not with where I'm at right now.

Synopsis Hell - Over. Kind of.

I finished the synopsis for my next book this weekend and sent it off to my agent! This is huge because I've been fighting with this thing for weeks. It feels so good to have this off my To Do List, to not have to deal with the frustration as I fight with transitions or trying to figure out what goes exactly where. I think I can safely say that synopsis writing is my least favorite part of being an author and it's one of the most difficult things for me to do, but I guess it's a necessary evil.

Of course, even though I tried to cover all the bases in the synopsis and sent it to my writing buddy for a second set of eyes, it doesn't mean my agent won't have questions or things she thinks I can make stronger. Which means I might have this thing back at me for another pass. TBH, I'm hoping I don't get it back. I just want to start working on the actual story. I'm ready to really write, not synopsis write.

This week is also the week that I'm supposed to get revisions from my editor on Edge of Dawn and I am really ready for them. This is the last hard part in the process of getting a book together for publication. At least on my end of the deal. Edits are easier and galleys much, much easier. A book feels finished after revisions.

Focusing on the synopsis put me behind on other things, like email and housework and weeding, but they'll all be there tomorrow. Or the next day. :-)

Booksellers Best Award!

My weekend started out on a high note. I received an email Friday afternoon to let me know that In the Midnight Hour won the Booksellers Best Award in the Paranormal category!!!

Talk about an enormous thrill! I wish I could have been in San Francisco to accept in person because it's an hugely exciting moment to hear your name called. And this prompted me to update my website, although I still haven't hunted down the reviews for In Twilight's Shadow that I missed while I was on deadline.

I spent the rest of the weekend (aside from the really long nap I took on Saturday) struggling with the synopsis for my next book. I hit all I know about the story somewhere between pages 4 and 5 and floundered from there. :-) When I plot, I do chapter goals--coming up with the "big picture" is difficult for me.

I am proud of myself, though, for solving a huge plotting problem I had rear it's ugly head last week. It would have stolen any hint of suspense unless the heroine was Too Stupid To Live (TSTL) and I didn't want to do that. Somehow, though (and it might have happened during my nap), I worked out the issue and it opens both the hero and heroine up to risk. :-) Now if the rest of the plot would fall so nicely into place.

I also found a picture of my heroine for this book. I really like having images to work with and it's a major accomplishment to find just the right representation. Or it can be, depending on how long I've been scouring the Internet for the image I need. This one took a while to find so it was a relief to finally find her.

Pre-Book Time

I'm in pre-book right now. Pre-book comes before the writing of anything--synopsis or story. For me, it involves figuring out what the story is and getting a better grasp on the characters. This is where I try to figure out where the story takes place, what time of year, what the characters look like, what their issues are, and a slew of other things.

Not all of my questions need to be answered for each story. Sometimes it doesn't really matter what time of year it is, I can just start the story and figure it out from the characters. Are they wearing a jacket? Complaining about being too hot? This can also give me a bead on where the story is happening.

Pre-book can be fun. I love exploring the possibilities, testing different ideas to see if the hero and heroine will accept or reject them. They get final say. It's also fun to listen to them tell me what's going on or to get hints of what's going on from them.

Pre-book can also be frustrating for the exact same reasons it's fun. I can have a great idea, one I want to use, and have the characters say: no way! Or they can tell me things that I'm not that thrilled to write about. of course, this doesn't only happen before the book starts. :-)

This particular stretch of pre-book hasn't been the most productive ever, but as I mentioned in an earlier post, this hero and heroine have been largely quiet while Logan and Shona, from the book I just finished, have been showing me post-book scenes. (Which is another blog topic, but I love getting the after-the-story story from my hero and heroine.) So I'm getting small pieces of information from my pre-book h/h and trying to piece them all together to figure out the story.

Some of the information has left me excited and eager to explore the idea when I get to the story. Other pieces--not so much. And one of the things I thought was going to be a big deal for months is turning out to maybe not be as important as I thought. That's the frustrating part.

There were a few other things I thought would be different. I planned that the book would take place in Kel's territory, but it looks as if I'm going to have another book set in Seattle--that's Logan's territory. Everything I'm getting on the story says Seattle. This is making me wonder if Kel lost his territory--I don't know yet and he's not talking.

I've got some other big holes, too. Like the bad guy. Right now, he's robot-like, but I don't think he's some cyborg. I'm just not sure why he's the way he is, and while I complain about Kel being closemouthed, at least he is giving me information. This villain is totally silent and just looks at me when I ask him questions. When that happens with a hero or heroine, I ask their friends or family, but I just have no sense of others with this bad guy so that's not a possibility--at least not right now.

This is major because I can't figure out the story without knowing what the bad guy wants or why he wants it and that's keeping me in pre-book and not into the actual writing of anything. I just don't know enough yet.

Author In Search of a Title. Still.

No title yet for the just finished book. I sent my editor about a dozen suggestions, but none of them grabbed her. Me either for that matter. I wanted to fall in love with a title, but I haven't found the one that's done that yet. There is one I kind of like, but it uses the word "night" and I was hoping to save that one for the next book since it'll be a pretty dark, intense story. I think.

There are still half a million things on the To Do List and I'm not tackling any of them. Maybe I need to actually write them down to make myself do them. I have email backed up, I have things to go snail mail, I have vacuuming left to do, and assorted other things and I don't feel like doing any of them. That's so bad. I need to accomplish things. Seriously.

In other news, I walked out to my garden yesterday afternoon to take a look at it. It's kind of bare on flowers right now (just one type has a bloom on it. I need to find flowers that bloom right now for next year), but I usually take a look around every day. My tree ring and garden have chicken wire around them to protect them from the killer rabbits, but I have tiger lilies next to the evergreens that are unprotected and tree lilies behind the big garden because they'll end up being too tall to be part of the garden itself.

Anyway, I'd noticed while I'd been writing that something was eating the tops off my tiger lilies. Annoying, but they were free flowers from my parents, so I wasn't too heartbroken. Then the other day, I noticed that something had eaten the bottom leaves on my tree lilies. That did not make me happy. I was even less happy when something ate the top off one of my tree lilies. It was a small lily, though, and my bigger ones had been ignored and had a lot of flower buds on them. I'd survive.

Then came yesterday. I walked down to my garden and saw the one tree lily had been eaten bare. Then I noticed the top had been eaten off the next one in line. And the next. And the next. All the way down the row to my biggest tree lily--the one that had had 6 buds on there waiting to bloom. Gone. All gone! The rabbits got the bottom leaves, the deer had taken off the tops.

Steam came out of my ears. And then I began to worry. My elodie lilies are getting ready to bloom--it shouldn't be more than a week or so now--and they're against the back side of the garden. What if the deer, now that they're used to coming up to my garden, decide to stick their heads over my fence and eat my other lilies? OMG! My dad bought liquid fence for me today and he's going to spray tomorrow. Hopefully that stinky stuff will protect my garden from evil, killer deer.

Happy Indepenece Day, America!

Happy 4th to everyone who celebrates!

My own personal independence day was July 1, but I haven't known what to do with myself since I turned in the book. I watched a little baseball with the sound turned on; found some short, but very interesting documentaries on iTunes U; answered a couple of emails, although the bulk remain; and played around online a little. But I really feel kind of lost right now. Lost enough that I pulled out a project I was playing with before I sold the untitled story I just turned in and reread it. I decided the prologue is good, but the rest of it needs to go, so now I have no story for the book--just a hero and heroine.

Anyway, the title search is on for the book. My editor wants me to use a time word so that it fits with In the Midnight Hour and In Twilight's Shadow. The working title I used contained the word Dawn, so we're on the same wavelength. :-) So far, I've tried Dawn and Dusk and haven't come up with anything I like. Now I'm trying to find more time of day words to try. Let's see, there's:

Morning
Noon
Night
Day
Evening
Dusk
Dawn
Sunrise
Sunset
Sundown

But what else? I've done an online search and come up with a lot of very unhelpful hits. You'd think there would be some kind of helpful website with this kind of information, wouldn't you?

Oooh, what do y'all think of When the Sun Goes Down? Stupid? I'm terrible at titles. Really, really, really terrible.

I'm Free!

Hello, world, I'm ba-ack!

After many late nights, lots of hard work, and every hour of vacation time I have on the books at the Evil Day Job, I have finished the yet-untitled Work In Progress and have sent it to my editor at Tor! Whooo hooo!!! Wait! I always put up the dancing Hobbes when a book is finished. Let me run over and grab him.



There we go, dancing Hobbes, now the celebration is complete!

I have to say, it feels totally weird to be online using the laptop. I've had my wifi turned off forever--or at least it feels like forever. It's also hugely strange to be watching baseball with the sound on. During the past couple of months, I've done nothing but watch games with the sound muted while I wrote and wrote and wrote! Wow, I might even try to watch the movie I've had from Netflix since March. They're probably wondering what happened to it anyway. :-)

So what's up for me next? Well, the house must be cleaned. Gah! It looks hideous. I already have all my reference books put away and most of my notes, but the whole house needs a thorough going over. I also need to try and catch up on the half a bazillion emails I've barely skimmed over the past couple of months and my garden is full of weeds! I must get in there and take care of that. And I need to rescue a couple of plants that my dad potted for me while I was writing. He left them in the garage where there is no sunshine! I forgot to grab them today when I was over there.

I've got laundry in the dryer--I haven't washed clothes in probably 3 weeks. :-) And I need to fill out information for the art department on the latest book and come up with a title. Probably I should hold a contest or something. Of course, that might be too much work for someone in recovery.

I already can't figure out what to do with myself during lunch tomorrow at work. I always write during lunch hour at the Evil Day Job.

Anyway, hello, all and it's soooo good to be back!

I Think I Want a Nap

I think my head is going to explode. Seriously. I've spent the last 9 days writing from nearly the time I wake up in the morning until I go to bed. I kind of petered out today, though, after only about 5 pages. Horrible headache and I needed to write a fight scene. Those scenes should be high energy and it helps to feel energetic when I do one. Needless to say, that's on the agenda for tomorrow.

What else is stressing me out this week? Well, I'm blogging at 2B Read on Tuesday and Fresh Fiction on Wednesday. I need to send out a newsletter to announce the release of In Twilight's Shadow on Tuesday and I need to send half a bazillion emails, including review quotes to my agent and editor. I also owe my fabulous editor a thank you note because she sent me copies of Twilight's Shadow early!

No matter how many books I have out, I still get hugely excited to hold the finished story in my hands. I already checked and my point of view shift that I discovered in galleys did get fixed. Yea! I wish I had time to sit down and read the book--that's my ritual when a new one is released--I sit down and read it and revisit my characters. I'll have to save that for later.

Anyway, I'm feeling hugely stressed right now and I have to go back to the Evil Day Job tomorrow where I'll be running around like a mad woman trying to get caught up on everything that accumulated in my absence. Gah!

I'm On Deadline

I'm off from work this week to focus on my writing.  The days are passing too fast, that's for darn sure and all of a sudden, I realize it's blog day.  Oops.  I've been immersed to the point that anything that takes up my time that isn't my story is annoying me and I rush through whatever it is as fast as I can.  Guess how short this blog post is going to be.  ;-)

I went no mail on pretty much all my email loops.  I've got a ton of notes I need to answer; they're sitting in my inbox, making me feel guilty, but I doubt anyone is getting a reply until next week.

I'm trying to get 8 hours of sleep just because it keeps my brain sharper for writing, but if I could last longer without sleeping, I'd cut that down, too.

I do try to take breaks late in the afternoon.  I've walked down to my garden and taken a half hour to just look at my flowers and enjoy them.  It's not as much fun as it should be because I'm wearing a sweatshirt and a jacket and it's nearly June!  But I'm doing it because I know I need the time away from the computer.  Not the story, the laptop.

I know other writers who get like this, so I know I'm not alone.  Maybe if I didn't have to take vacation from the Evil Day Job to work, it wouldn't be so intense when I do.  Anyway, I won't be blogging on Friday because I'm on deadline.  :-)

A Little Color

A view of my garden.

So after posting about changing my ways on Wednesday, you might be wondering how I'm doing. The answer is not so good. :-( I might have to go order one of those bracelets as a reminder because this is a more ingrained habit than I realized. You wouldn't think it would be so difficult to be positive.

In other news, it has been a bad writing week. I've trashed pages again and again and again and again. Grrr! I'm still having trouble with this scene and I don't think it's because I made a mistake somewhere earlier. I've switched Points of View (POV) back and forth between my hero and heroine multiple times already. I think the scene is necessary; I have a general idea of what I want to cover; I can't get it down in a way that satisfies me. Very frustrating.

Switch

It's funny sometimes how things change in writing so quickly. Like with the chapter I'm working on now--I knew both scenes that would comprise this chapter and I thought both of them would be from Shona's Point of View (POV). In fact, I was certain the second scene would be in her POV right up until yesterday when I finished the first scene.

Logically, it makes sense to do the second scene in Shona's POV. It allows the reader gets to see Logan's condition through her eyes, but as I neared the end of scene 1 last night, it was Logan's voice I was hearing, not Shona's.

Unlike how things usually work for me, I had a general idea in advance of how the next 4 or 5 scenes would go. I was even getting words from the scene that was going to be in Shona's POV. :-) Her reaction to seeing him, her curiosity, the outcome that discomfits her--all in her head. And then yesterday, Logan took over and it's his voice I'm getting.

This isn't a bad thing to have my plan change. I figure it has to add more depth to hear the scene as one person sees it and then get it down on paper from the other's perspective, but this isn't something I'm accustomed to having occur.

I'm looking forward to lunch hour when I can start writing this scene and find out why Logan took it over.

Surprises

I think I've talked before about how my characters continually surprise me. No matter how well I think I know them, there always seems to be something I didn't anticipate or know about until later.

Examples:

Damon from Ravyn's Flight didn't tell me he had a traumatic experience in his military career--something he blames himself for--until I was halfway through the book. I had to go through and add all the foreshadowing later.

Ryne from In the Midnight Hour had a strong aversion to getting involved with humans. I knew that before I wrote one word in the story, but I didn't know why. I didn't even bother to ask why because I just figured the Gineal steered clear of them or something. A few weeks before I wrote the scene that revealed why she feels this way, she finally told me. My immediate response? I don't want to write this. I wasn't given a choice and Ryne was right. Without that semi-flashback scene, the information lacks the kind of punch the reader needs to feel to understand why she's so adamant.

I could come up with other examples from older books, but I had a new one arise in the Work In Progress (WIP).

Shona Blackwood is absolutely gorgeous. Super model gorgeous, but then all the Blackwoods are that attractive. The surprise for me came early in the story--Shona is awkward around men.

Totally shocked me.

I didn't realize it at first as I worked on the scene where she meets Logan. I just thought at the time that the awkwardness was something I was doing wrong. I did some cutting and reworking and then some more. I mulled. And then out of the blue, the information came. Her actions and reactions in the scene seem awkward because she's feeling awkward. I can't believe I didn't figure that one out quicker.

My excuse, I guess, would be that I didn't even consider that someone who looks like Shona would be a geek. She likes going out to clubs, she likes dancing with the guys who ask her to do so, but there are two things at work in the scene that made her uncomfortable.

The first is that she's attracted to Logan. The other guys were just dance partners. The second thing is that those dance partners didn't really require much in the way of conversation from her, certainly nothing more than some mindless small talk, but she's in a situation where she needs a little more to say.

Before I learned of her geekiness, I was having trouble relating to Shona. This made it much easier.

I like surprises like this. :-)

One last side note: Someone posted some links to blog posts that talk about the market and one of the things she said was something along the lines of "demons being the new vampire" and that editors are seeing too much of that.

I was like, whoa! When I first talked to my agent in 2004 about my idea of a hero and heroine who were both half demon, she said it would be a hard sell in romance, but that if I wanted to do it as fantasy, it would be easier. It was at that same conference that I discussed being part of the Crimson City series with one of my editors, and a few weeks later, when I discovered the story he wanted me to write was already taken, I pitched him my half demon idea. The rest is history. :-)

I just have to laugh about the whole thing--from hard to sell to a glut in less than 4 years. Amazing. And I feel slightly smug and very relieved to know I was on the cutting edge.

I better hurry up and get a proposal together for this other idea I have before it stops being unique.