Talking Dirty With the CEO – A Love Story

Okay, so obviously it’s a love story since it’s a story about love. But this post is also a story about my love for this particuar book.

I first wrote this back in 2008.  It was the third story I’d written for publication and I thought it was absolute genius because it had the hero and heroine meeting via Instant Messaging. Awesome, I thought. It’s different. Mills and Boon will snap it up!

Unfortunately for me, they did not. Yes, they liked the story. Yes, it had potential. But it was missing that crucial element – internal conflict. I was but a baby writer at the time and knew not of conflict. I was all, like, ‘I don’t understand, man!’. I tried, valiantly I tried, but in the end couldn’t deliver that much needed element. Two rounds of revisions on a full later, I got the, ‘Unfortunately, your manuscript is not suitable for publication’ email. So after a vat of wine and Willie Wonka’s entire factory worth of chocolate, I put the story away and decided it would probably never see the light of day again.

About a year later, the New Voices competition came along. I thought, ‘bugger it, I’ll enter’ – mainly because I suffer from severe FOMO and have a masochistic streak a mile wide. I thought the IM convo would be good to enter because, hey, I liked it, and if I made it slightly different, M&B wouldn’t guess it was the old rejected story right?  So I fiddled with the opening chapter, changed the names of the characters and entered the competition. This was my first taste of complete strangers reading my writing and I was very happy to see that quite a lot of people liked it. Naturally I assumed I would win since I was quite obviously awesome. Naturally, I was wrong. I got precisely nowhere.

So back went the story into the bowels of my hard drive. Never to see the light of day again.

Another year passed. Rejections all round were received. Then after a pep talk with some writer friends, I decided that dammit, Talking Dirty was a good story. And I couldn’t let it languish. So I rewrote that mother-effer and pitched it to another publisher. They thought it sounded great! Six weeks later, they rejected it.

So back went the story into the bowels of my hard drive. Never to see the light of day again.

Another year passed. More rejections were received. I got sick of being unpublished so I wrote another book, intending to stick it to the publishing industry as a whole. It was such a good experience that I hauled out Talking Dirty and decided to try again with it because it was a GOOD BOOK, damn you!  This time I had a better understanding of conflict and character and this time the book was better. Then I heard about a pitch session to an Entangled editor and I thought (or rather the CPS told me) I should enter so I did. I expected nothing. Got a full request. Full wasn’t written so I had to rewrite that mother-effer (you’re seeing a theme here perhaps?) in two weeks. Managed it. Sent it off.

Four months later I was still waiting. I nudged, fully expecting the ‘Unfortunately your manuscript…’ email in return. What I got was ‘The story doesn’t quite work for me BUT [see the but??] it might work for someone else I know’. So I bited  my knuckles (yes, I’m aware bited isn’t a word but who cares??)  and about a month later I got an email from another Entangled editor.

This time the story did NOT go into the bowels of my hard drive. It stayed on the editors desk and I got a three book deal.

A year later, Talking Dirty is a book. That you can buy. And even read if you’re so inclined.

And that’s why you should NEVER give up on a story you love. Because you never know what might happen with it. 🙂

Gadget journalist Christie St. John is more geek than chic. But when research for an article she has to write on online dating leads to the bed of the hottest guy she’s ever met, she knows that if the geek is to keep the hottie CEO, she’s going to have to come out of her digital shell.

Tech mogul Joseph Ashton never expected an Internet blind date to end in the best sex of his life. Yet as the chemistry between him and Christie burns out of control, he can’t help but think this woman is out for his money like all the rest. She claims she wants his heart instead – but that’s the one thing he can never give.