See??? Is it not hot???

OMG, it’s swoon worthy!

It’s perfect. My heroine really looks like that! And it’s got a chessboard! And a cool font! And my hero who thinks he’s got it all under control and yet she’s the one holding the reins!

Oh and have decided that my inaugural newsletter will include an excerpt from BKWQ so if you’re interested, do sign up to it. I don’t send newsletters out often so you won’t get spammed but if you’re interested in what I”m working on and release dates and such, and don’t have time to read blogs etc, then have a go subscribing.

Anyway, this book is out at the end of July from the fabulous Samhain peoples!!

Whadday reckon?

Details of how to pitch are here.

So if you have an awesome story burning a hole in your hard drive, come along and take a punt. I actually got my three book deal with Entangled via a blog pitch so they can work big time.

Plus also, Samhain is a fabulous company to work with.

And if you don’t want to pitch but want free books then there’s heaps to choose from too.

Firstly I know this post should go up next week but it’s Christmas and I want to do a giveaway so I’m doing it now. If you would like a copy of my debut book Falling for Finn to test the Ashenden waters (so to speak) before you decide on whether you may like the below ms, I’m giving away a copy to one commenter. And just to make it fairer, the more comments I get the more books I’ll give away. Will draw the winner(s) on Sunday night.

To enter just leave a comment saying ‘yo’. 

Where did the idea for the book come from?

My Samhain editor tweeted that she wanted to see more virgin heroes and Maisey nudged me. I got thinking about why a guy would remain a virgin…et voila. 

 What is the working title of your Book?
 
Working title is Dirty Virgin Hero. Hehe. Or if you’re on Twitter #dirtyeffingvirginhero. ;–)

What genre does your book fall under?

Contemporary romance.

What actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

I wouldn’t. No actors are ever right for my characters. Lame huh? However I do have a Pinterest board here.

What is the one sentence synopsis for your book?

Ugh. Sorry but I’m going to cheat.  Taking Him – Game designer Ellie’s last mission before she leaves the country is to seduce her older brother’s best friend, the man she’s loved for years. But little does she know that construction company owner Hunter has a past darker than the black feathers tattooed on his back and a secret he’ll do anything to keep.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

It’ll be published by Samhain in November 2013 and is represented by Helen Breitweiser from Cornerstone Literary.

How long did it take you write the first draft of your manuscript?

Probably about 3-4 weeks.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

Um. I don’t really know to be honest. I guess I would compare the screwed-upedness of the hero and the emotional intensity of it with Sylvia Day’s Bared to You.  Except the hero isn’t quite as screwed up as Gideon Cross.

Who or what inspired you to to write this book?

Well, the idea of the virgin hero is something I wanted to write about because you don’t see many books about male sexual shame. It’s an interesting issue and a challenging one to write.

What else about your book might pique a reader’s interest?

A geeky girl game designer, a man with wings on his back, motorcycles, hot construction workers, cosplay, hookers, tattoo parlours, and some hot how’s your father. How’s that for starters?

I’m supposed to tag people now but I’m not sure who has been tagged and who hasn’t so if you haven’t, consider yourself tagged!

 And if you want a copy of Finn in your stocking, don’t forget to yo me! 

*Number of times entire ms rewritten – 3
*Number of times beginning rewritten – 6
*Size of ‘deleted scenes’ folder – 227k
*Number of times hero/heroine conflict changed – 3
*Number of times I wanted to kill hero/heroine – 20
*Number of tantrums pulled while writing – 50
*Number of times I wanted to give up in disgust – 100
*Number of times I DID give up in disgust – 100
*Number of times cried while writing – 5
*Number of working versions of present ms – 8
*Number of titles decided on – 0

That was in December last year.  After I’d finished that post and finished rewriting the story, I sent him off to SYTYCW, plus entered him into the Aussie Emerald competition.

He got precisely nowhere.

Didn’t get ANY feedback at all from SYTYCW and because one judge in the Emerald absolutely loathed him, I didn’t get anywhere with that either.

Here’s some stats for my Talking Dirty book from around the same time:

*Number of times entire ms rewritten – 5 – 6
*Number of times beginning rewritten – 4
*Size of ‘deleted scenes folder’ – Rewrite folder 37k, Original folder, 20k
*Number of times hero/heroine conflict changed – 6
*Number of times I wanted to kill hero/heroine – 100
*Number of tantrums pulled while writing – too many to count
*Number of times I wanted to give up in disgust – too many to count
*Number of times I DID give up in disgust – too many to count
*Number of times cried while writing – too many to count
*Number of working versions of present ms -50 million
*Number of titles decided on – 3

Oh and I should add one more line.

*Number of times rejected – 3

As you can see, both of these books nearly did me in. For the chess player I berated myself daily for the fact that I’d decided on a chess playing hero who everyone CLEARLY hated. For Talking Dirty, I berated myself daily for the fact that I knew I had a good story there, yet I couldn’t seem to find it.

BUT

I am a stubborn-ass b*tch sometimes. And I’d be damned if I let these stories – one of which got to the 2nd revision stage with M&B – languish.

So I started rewriting Talking Dirty for the 7th time and pitched it in a competition. It got a request for a full – which I wrote in a week (from chapter 3) – and then four months later, it sold to Entangled. It’s going to be out sometime in 2013 (May tentatively).

And then with my chess player, I rewrote it for the 4th time and submitted it to my editor at Samhain and that sold too.  Black Knight, White Queen, will be out in July 2013.

Why am I telling you this? Well, sometimes it’s a good thing to give up on a story. Sometimes you don’t have the experience at the time to be able to make it better. Or sometimes you’re too close to it to see it objectively. I first wrote Talking Dirty back in 2008, but it wasn’t until 2012 that I finally had the experience and knowledge to turn it into a book that sold. The chessplayer I started at the beginning of 2011 but didn’t sell it until a year and a half later. Again, it wasn’t the fact that my hero was a chessplayer that didn’t work, it was the fact that I still hadn’t got a handle on conflict or character.

But some stories you can’t let go of. Nor should you. Some stories deserve to have their time in the sun. I don’t know if this inspiration or not, but for those of you who have stories that you just can’t let go of, keep going. Keep working on them. Keep learning your craft. And one day, a year and a half, or four years, or even ten years later, eventually someone’s going to say yes.

And then you can shock everyone with your stats too.

So if you want to read an excerpt, go…

HERE!

Because I sent in my proposal (three chapters and a synopsis) of my Dirty Virgin Hero ms to my Samhain editor and the next day – along with my Finn edits – she says she loves it and also the idea for the linked book that I included. Oh and also she’d like it for print so make sure it’s over 50k.

AAAAARRRRGHHH!!!!

I do not know how this has happened. I’m sure the ride is going to stop soon because it HAS to.

I do know that I am extremely pleased that my Russian chess player hero – whose story I wrote and rewrote so many times because I’m a stubborn bitch and I WANTED it out there because he’s cool, and how can you not love a chess playing dude?? – is sold. Black Knight, White Queen is currently slated for release in July next year.

And now my tattooed virgin bad boy – tentatively titled Take Him – also has a contract. Plus the possibility of print which I NEVER expected at all.

I am…well….rather gobsmacked.

Even with all this, I’m still hoping the ride will contine because I’d love my sheikh to be released into the world. But I’m not sure real life happens that way. Right???

Anyway, I also just want to reassure those of you entering SYTYCW that if you don’t get through to the next round, it’s NOT the end. All of you who read this blog know I entered both New Voices and SYTYCW, and I got nowhere. However, my first New Voices entry now has a three book deal with Entangled and The Chessman – which was an SYTYCW entry last year – sold to Samhain (admittedly, as a very different story but same concept).  I also know of several people who also didn’t get anywhere with their contest entries and yet sold the same book to M&B later.

The main thing really is to believe in your story.  Believe it deserves to be read.  And if you can’t do either of those things then just being as stubborn as hell does the trick too.

Right….*delivers chocolate martinis* *raises glass* A toast to my virgin hero! Who’s with me?

Is it not gorgeous?? It’s got my name on it and everything!

Basically waiting is the one constant in the whole publishing process.

In the middle of all this waiting is some good stuff though – I got to see the first version of my cover for my Samhain book! Reader, I cried. Yes, hearing I’d sold didn’t make me cry (I was too busy hyperventilating), getting the contract didn’t make me cry, but seeing that cover with my name on it in big, shiny letters…  And it’s a FABULOUS cover. Not just because it has my name on it but because it’s actually really, really beautiful. I mean, if that was someone else’s book I’d be going wow, that cover so makes me want to buy it.

Anyway, I can’t show you the cover yet but since Samhain is really a well oiled machine, I won’t be surprised if I get a final version soon-ish and then I can squee and wallpaper the internet with it.  Hehe.

Which brings me to my question of the week – what sells a book for you? The cover? The blurb? A review? Bribes of chocolate from the author??? *stands by with pen ready to take notes while staring at cover again*

As you all know, I’ve been aiming at Mills and Boon for years. I had some success early on but basically, because I knew NOTHING about the craft of romance writing, I wasn’t able to follow up on the editorial input I got. It was incredibly frustrating. Then, back in 2010, I decided I really had to figure out what all this conflict/character/structure/plot crap was instead of just ignoring it and letting my instincts do my writing for me.

Learning craft was very, very hard for me. I’d had 20 years of writing purely for my bad self but writing for publication is different to writing just for your own pleasure. I took one or two courses but they didn’t really work for me because I don’t really learn like that. I struggled with figuring out how to apply them to my own writing. I struggled to put the lessons into practice. I basically just struggled.

The end of 2010, beginning of 2011 was a killer. I won an Aussie contest and got a request but then this and another partial was was rejected and I got sent back to the slush instead of working with an ed. To say this sucked was an understatement. I’d had a couple of years of working my butt off trying to figure out what they wanted from me but I hadn’t managed to give it to them. This wasn’t their fault. It’s only now I can see that the reason I didn’t get anywhere was because I still hadn’t got the craft stuff right and it was majorly messing with my writing ability. I’d lost my voice in other words.

By 2011 I was second-guessing everything I wrote. The process had become a nightmare. Did I have enough conflict? Were my characters acting inconsistently? What the hell was GMC and did I need to know? Did I have too much exernal stuff going on? Was it flirty enough? Was it too sexy?

I’d lost any pleasure I had from writing. I hated it. Basically I wanted to give up.

My CPs and my family told me I needed to go on. I needed to keep going. That I’d got too far too give up now. And because I’m actually quite a really stubborn old cow and  I HATED the thought of giving up, I decided they were right.

So I got back in the saddle. Being the glutton for punishment I am, I decided to keep trying with M&B but to write something a bit different from the Modern Heat/Rivas. So I wrote a Presents. It wasn’t anything particularly different and despite the dread of putting myself out there again, I entered it into an NZ contest. I finalled with it. This was the first positive writing thing that had happened since I was slushed and – I’m not ashamed to admit it – I cried! I didn’t get anywhere with it alas and I didn’t get a request which was gutting, but it was a sign to me that maybe I didn’t actually suck after all.

After that, I wrote another Presents and entered it into yet another little contest. This time it won. By this stage I was looking at the Presents I was writing and trying to figure out what I was doing right this time that I hadn’t before. I wasn’t holding back on the angst that was for sure and I really liked that aspect, but it still felt hard.  Anyway, I had a great conference year that year. Two great pitches and lots of lovely feedback from M&B about my writing. I was very happy. I’d dragged out an old Modern Heat that I’d rewritten and pitched to another ed from another publishing house. She loved the sound of it and told me to send it so I did.

The conference success was great and I was on a high. But then I got a bog standard rejection for my rewritten Modern Heat from the previously keen publisher and this made me incredibly unhappy. I couldn’t figure out what the problem with it was because I received no feedback. Plus, the partial I’d sent to M&B was very hard to write and once again I felt back into the ‘my writing sucks’ hole.

Which is when I finally decided to take the advice that everyone had been giving me all year but I’d been too stubborn (AKA too dumb) to listen to: WRITE SOMETHING DIFFERENT JACKIE.

Well, something had to change. I either gave up writing or I got back the joy again because my loathing of the process was eating into my stories and killing my voice.

So I decided to write the way I used to when I loved writing, without thinking of craft or whether an editor would like it. Or whether it fit guidelines. Or whether a character had to be sympathetic. Or whether a reader would hate my idea. I threw all of those fears in the bin. I wanted to write what I wanted to write. Something with tonnes of emotion, sexy times and angst. I wanted to put everything I liked to write about in it and I would NOT send it anywhere. It would be just for me.

I had an idea for my heroine that I’d been toying with for a while now but that didn’t fit into any guidelines for category – a woman who was recovering from a sexual assault. She wanted to reclaim her sexuality and the man she wanted to help her reclaim it with was her best friend, the one man she trusted absolutely. Friends to lovers is one of my favourite tropes and the theme of recovery from sexual assault complex and difficult and one I’d been wanting to explore for ages. So I decided I’d just go ahead and write it.

Like my heroine reclaiming her body, I was reclaiming my voice and my love of writing. I didn’t second guess anything. I just wrote the way I wanted. And I LOVED writing it. Absolutely loved it. My hero was hot and dirty and alpha, and my heroine was gutsy and tortured and strong and it was the best experience.

And somewhere in the process of writing that all the craft I’d been learning just clicked. I didn’t think about craft or character arc or goal or motivation or anything while I was writing it, but somehow it just happened anyway.

Douglas Adams in one of his Hitchhiker’s Guide books has Arthur Dent learning how to fly. The trick to flying is missing the ground. Arthur gets distracted just before he hits the ground and ends up missing it entirely. I think this is what happened to me. I got distracted, somehow missed the ground and ended up flying.

When I finished writing this book, my CPs told me I HAD to send it out. Since I’d never intended to send it anywhere this somehow made it easier. So I thought I’d give Samhain a go since I’d never sent anything there before. I didn’t think it would get anywhere. It’s such a hot-button issue and I worried I hadn’t dealt with it sensitively enough. But I loved the story and decided to take a chance anyway.  Three months later, the editor sent me an email saying she loved the story too and wanted to buy it.

Just after I finished writing it though, the good feeling I had with that book stayed. And because of it I began to realise what I’d been doing wrong with my M&B subs. The two characters in my Samhain book came alive for me in a way my characters hadn’t before and that’s what I realised was missing. Decent characters. I’d got it right with some mss – the contest winners – but not others. In others they were a collection of traits, robots going through the motions.

So after I sent my novella to Samhain, I rewrote my old Modern Heat that had been rejected again. I kept my heroine but I finally found the key that made my hero a real pereson. He had ADHD. And this is the one that I sold to Entangled.

There was something so freeing about writing my Samhain book. It was like everything came together in a perfect storm and finally slotted into place. And now everything I write is so much stronger because of that.

I’m so pleased that book was my first sale. It changed the way I wrote and it’s the reason for my subsequent sales. If I hadn’t written that book, I wouldn’t have sold.

So if you’ve ever got to the same point I did and can’t remember why you ever thought writing was a good idea in the first place, try writing just for yourself. Put in all the things you love. Don’t think about where to send it. Don’t think about an editor reading it. Just write because you love to write. And don’t, whatever you do, look down.

If you’re lucky, you may just miss the ground and end up flying.