Release Day = Graduation + First Day of School

I'm so excited and I just can't hide it. Heiress Without a Cause has been quietly available on Barnes and Noble all last week, but today is the official launch. It's like the first day of school, my birthday (before the stupid terrorists ruined it forever), and graduation all rolled into one. In many ways, it's like a graduation -- the culmination of a lot of work over several years, ending in one lovely day full of celebrating and laughter and merriment. Some of my friends are taking me out tonight, which will be a great way to end the day, and I've gotten some wonderful emails and tweets and comments from all over the world. So today is truly a day to celebrate and reflect on everything that's happened over the last few years (preferably with some champagne and possibly a mani/pedi).

But in other ways, it's more like the first day of school. Will the other kids (readers) like me? Am I wearing the right clothes? Am I smart enough to handle the work? What's that smell in the cafeteria? (I've been shamefully neglecting my kitchen this weekend...). While all the work of getting my book out in the world has culminated in this, the next phase of work -- connecting with readers, writing to deadlines, mastering the art of juggling writing and promo -- is just beginning.

Still, it's an exciting day, and I'm going to enjoy it. Thank you for celebrating with me, and I'm so glad you're here as I kick off the next phase. If you want to stay updated when the book launches everywhere, or if you want to be invited to signings/events/launch parties, please sign up for my mailing list.

And really, if my outfit is a wreck, promise you'll tell me?

Writing Retreats - Finding Your Focus

I'm not afraid to admit that my writing has been a bit unfocused of late. I traveled like mad this summer, which is why my blog went on a bit of an extended hiatus. I also submitted my latest book to publishers this spring, and I'm always a bit of a basketcase during the submission process (perhaps a post for another time). But now that I'm settled and eager to get back into my writing, I needed to jumpstart my process and find my focus again. Ironically, I found that the best way to focus was to run away again.

It's so easy for 'real life' to get in the way. Since I work from home, it's also easy to find supposedly-legitimate reasons to procrastinate - laundry, cleaning, cooking, watching "Bones" marathons. I also have trouble saying no to friends who want to get together, since they know I don't have anything else going on (as though the writing doesn't count, or can easily be put aside).

All of that is my problem, not anyone else's. But if you're struggling with similar issues, going away to write for a few days may do wonders, if it's within your budget. I found an extremely cheap vacation rental in Squaw Valley, Tahoe, which was perfect for my needs. Vacation rentals (found on sites such as vrbo.com and airbnb.com) can be perfect for a writer's retreat - you can look for places with kitchens or kitchenettes, desks or dining room tables, and other amenities that make your retreat feel more like a productive haven than a prison. My unit had a kitchen and dining room table so that I had plenty of space to work (and could cook my own meals), while the living/dining combo meant I didn't have to spend all my time in the same room where I was sleeping.

All in all, it was wonderful - I wrote ~40 pages, did a lot of revisions, and took care of other writing-related tasks. But if you can't afford to get away or have too many responsibilities at home, think about how you can create your own retreat where you are. Can you lock your bedroom or office door for a day and let your family fend for themselves? If you're single and have another writer friend in the area, can you swap places for a few days so that it feels like you're going on vacation to someplace new? Changing your scene just a bit can have long-term impact in terms of how motivated and energized you are about your project.

Have you gone on a writing retreat? Does it work for you? Or have you found other ways to keep yourself energized in your daily life? Please share in the comments - I'd love to hear what works and doesn't work for you!

Check Out My Guest Blog on Using Screenwriting Tricks in Your Novel!

Apologies for the blogging hiatus, dear readers; one of my friends passed away a month ago, just before I went on a three-week roadtrip (during which I drove 4500 miles), and it has taken me awhile to get back into my regularly scheduled life. I will be active here again any day now -- but to tide you over, check out my guest post on the Ruby Slippered Sisterhood blog. I'm chatting with my fellow 2009 Golden Heart finalists about using screenwriting tricks to plot your novel -- please stop by and say hi!

Writing Life: I Wish I Could Be "Limitless"

I saw the Bradley Cooper vehicle "Limitless" a few weeks ago and loved it, despite the somewhat mixed reviews. Early in the movie, he starts taking a drug that grants access to the 9/10ths of the brain we supposedly don't use, and the first thing he did was overcome his writer's block and finish his novel in four days. He went on to do lots of other things unrelated to writing and entirely related to shady dealings, but for me, the writing fantasy was simply wonderful. And my fascination, despite the negative side effects the character suffered, certainly worried my friend -- she kept leaning over the armrest to whisper, "No! No drugs!"

Luckily, the drug was fictional, and given that I don't indulge in anything stronger than Diet Coke (and the occasional mojito or three), I'm not in serious danger. But I read a Salon book review today that brought it all rushing back. And if that book can cure my block without the side effects of a (fictional) drug, perhaps it's worth exploring.

The article is here; it briefly discusses "Limitless", but is more focused on a book called "The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer's Block, and the Creative Brain" by neurologist Alice Weaver Flaherty. This quote from the article stood out to me: "In other words, beyond a certain point, the more difficult a writing task, and the more you think it matters, the more likely you are to become blocked."

I'll have to buy that book and get back to you on the rest of it, but that pretty much sums up my writing experience to date. If I'm just writing for fun, or if I have a pressing deadline, the words come out automagically. But if there is no deadline, just an exhortation to write the best book possible, and if the idea I have is so wonderful that I despair of ever getting it onto the page, I end up curling up into a ball and staring at the ceiling, wishing that my calling was something less difficult and more lucrative, like dentistry or accounting. (note: no offense meant to dentists or accountants)

I eventually manage to get the story out of my head, once I get over the fear, but the fear stage is a dark one. And if someone offered me a pill and said that it would cure the block...

...I don't think I would take it. Not out of any sense of nobility or morality -- I'm not a saint. But I would question whether whatever I wrote was really me, whether the experience was an authentic one or was somehow twisted as the chemicals in my brain realigned themselves. And for all that I complain about the block, I love what I produce when I overcome it -- and overcoming it is just a part of my process, the same as proofreading or daydreaming or rewriting is.

Do you struggle with writer's block? How do you handle it? And would you take the magic pill or suffer on without it?

On Pulling A Book Out Of Thin Air

The glow of finaling in the Golden Heart is still strong, but I spent enough time celebrating over the weekend. The task for this week, my dear readers, is to write an outline for my next book (tentatively titled ONE NIGHT TO SURRENDER, although all titles are subject to change without notice). The challenge with writing the outline unfortunately extends beyond trying to remember whether to use uppercase or lowercase Roman numerals - and since it's more like a synopsis than an outline, Roman numerals never come into play. Rather, the challenge is that as of right now, all I really know is that the heroine is named Ellie and that the hero is Nicholas Claiborne, marquess of Folkestone. I'm on such a roll, right?

But despite the stress of coming up with a plot out of thin air, this is one of the most entertaining parts of the entire process, and I don't want to rush it. This is when you can fall in love with the characters, before they do something unexpected on page 150 and blow your carefully constructed plot-boat out of the water (to make a somewhat questionable metaphor). This is when you can brainstorm ridiculous plots and subplots (he's a pirate! no, he's a vampire! no, he's a were-whale!) without committing to anything. This is when it all looks like it's going to be an easy, effortless book, one that you can write in perfect bursts of productivity every afternoon before going out with friends and pretending to be a glamourous writer.

So, I intend to enjoy this week, and I will keep you posted as developments unfold. I also intend to get back into blogging now that I've emerged from my editing cave - if there are Regency topics you'd love to see addressed, please let me know!

There, but for the grace of God...

One of the authors I follow on Twitter is Courtney Milan, who has released a series of excellent historicals over the past year and has another book, UNVEILED, coming out in January. If the cover alone wasn't enough to seduce me, I'm quite intrigued by the premise - the hero has just found information to get the heroine (and her brothers) declared illegitimate, which means that he will inherit their father's dukedom while the duke's kids will be cast out of society. But, as these things happen, the hero and heroine meet and fall in love despite all that. Sounds lovely, right? So I was quite saddened for Ms. Milan when my Twitter feed gave me all the details of a review for her book that went horribly awry.

Basically, Publishers Weekly's review (scroll to the middle of the page) of UNVEILED proclaimed "the love story...genuinely satisfying and Margaret's dilemma movingly portrayed", which is a v. good thing. But, the reviewer also said "the conflict [is] dependent on the unlikely scenario of Parliament legitimizing a bigamist's bastards, fatally marring an otherwise promising novel."

Daggers, right? That's the kind of review that kills a little bit of a writer's soul, or at least I imagine it is - particularly writers who really, truly care about and strive for historical accuracy. And Ms. Milan does care about accuracy; while she didn't respond to the review directly, she did a very calm, thorough post about the historical research that went into her plot, and there really was a case in Britain in which a family under similar circumstances was legitimized by an Act of Parliament. As a result of the tempest in the Twitter teakettle over this, PW did revise the review slightly to say "unlikely scenario" (before, I believe it said something more along the lines of "impossible", but don't quote me), but the review still stings.

Now, I don't know Ms. Milan (although I have won two different books from her on Twitter, so I suppose I'm biased towards thinking she's a v. nice person), I don't know the reviewer, and I don't know the deep intricacies of English inheritance law. But the hard thing about writing historical romances is that there is a divide between "history" (i.e. what really, factually happened) and "romance history" (i.e. what is commonly accepted as fact in the world that Smart Bitches/Trashy Books would call "Romancelandia"). As a minor example, in Romancelandia, the waltz is danced in nearly every London-based Regency romance -- but in the real world, everything I've read indicates that it wasn't danced until at least 1813, and didn't get a broader blessing until 1816 or later.

So the readership and the reviewers have what they consider a very clear sense of what "Regency" (or, in Ms. Milan's case, Victorian) is, and writers who stray away from Romancelandia into the "real world" are treading a very narrow line. And I must admit that before this brouhaha, I would have also said that the plot sounded unlikely - I'm part of the Beau Monde online special-interest chapter of RWA geared toward the Regency, and the fact that bastards cannot and will never inherit has been rehashed in that group many times. But, the legal case that Ms. Milan found has never come up there either, and I believe her now that I've seen it.

But as an author, how do you handle these questions of historical accuracy? As a reader, can you trust that the author has done their research, or do you throw the book against the wall when it violates the precepts of Romancelandia? As editors and agents continue to look for new and fresh stories, writers must go farther afield in search of inspiration - and what they bring back, while based in fact, may not meet the sniff test for those who believe that Romancelandia's Regency period and the real Regency are the same thing.

Ms. Milan said that perhaps an author's note explaining her research might have helped; perhaps that really is the only way to win over the disbelieving reviewer. It's certainly something I will consider if I publish a story that doesn't match readers' understanding of the period - after all, if I felt major sympathy pangs for the author after reading the review, I can't imagine how it would feel to be the direct recipient of that kind of unfounded criticism.

But what do you think? Are most readers more forgiving than the reviewer was? Or is an author's note the only way to deal with this?

And now, a word on the day job...

So I have exciting news - I've decided to focus some time on my writing career. The alternative phrasing is that I quit my day job! I know, I'm crazy, and this is totally not recommended on any website I've ever seen that gives advice to writers. But, I feel strongly that giving myself a chance to focus on my writing is going to yield huge rewards, even if I don't become self-sufficient through writing in time to avoid getting another job in the future. And, I planned ahead for this day for quite awhile, so it will be a couple of years before I starve to death.

If you're curious about how I made this decision, I'm blogging today at the Ruby Slippered Sisterhood (http://goo.gl/Sf6M). Stop by and share your thoughts! I also expect to get a lot more vocal here in the coming weeks - stay tuned.

RWA 2010 Day 2: Eloisa, Agent, Etc.

I volunteered to report on today's happenings at the Romance Writers of America convention for the Ruby Slippered Sisterhood (my fellow 2009 Golden Heart finalists), so I'm not going to repeat myself; you can read it here. I will say that the post is slightly misleading because I didn't attend most of the events that I reported on. I know, I'm terrible. But, I had lunch with Eloisa James (squee!) and was too nervous beforehand to eat. Then, I had a meeting with my agent, and was so hungry after that that I returned to my room, ordered room service, and talked to my parents before going out for dinner with some fellow writers.

All said, though, it was another great day; I'm really questioning where I'm going with Madeleine and Ferguson (particularly Ferguson), but at the same time I'm really excited to see where I end up with them. Now, though, I must go to sleep. I'm pitching to an editor tomorrow morning, so I can't oversleep. And then I get to get all dolled up for the awards ceremony tomorrow night -- I can't wait to see who wins the RITAs and Golden Hearts!

RWA 2010 Day 1: Nora, Nora, Nora

The conference officially kicked off today with the Annual General Meeting of RWA, which I skipped in a desperate attempt to catch up on sleep. Unfortunately, several hundred/thousand other people had the same idea, and they apparently ended the meeting after only fifteen minutes because they didn't have quorum to conduct official business. I feel like a slacker/user for not doing my civic duty -- but then again, I'm pleased that I slept eight hours last night, so clearly my guilt doesn't run very deep.

I did rouse myself in time for lunch (shocking achievement, I know), which consisted of a strange green (pesto?) encrusted chicken and a fantastic keynote speech from Nora Roberts. Nora is the acknowledged Queen of Romance in RWA land, since she has written 150+ books and done so much to advance the cause of romance writing in America. She has a smoker's voice and a no-nonsense approach to life; she doesn't hesitate to tell people that they're being whiners, and the main message of her speech is that writing has always been hard, that publishing is no easier or harder than it ever was, and that you can either shut up and write, or waste your energy wishing that things were different. Her speech made me want to start smoking a pack a day while writing nonstop, and while I think I'll forsake the cigarettes (I would love to have that voice, but I don't even know if she smokes, and I'm too much of a clotheshorse to accept the smelly consequences), I left feeling very inspired.

I spent the rest of the afternoon attending workshops; first off was the PRO retreat, for authors who have finished a manuscript but are not yet published, where there were some discussions of craft and agent hunting. I skipped the end to attend Ethan Ellenberg's talk on what happens after publication, and he discussed a lot of the details about print runs, returns, marketing, etc. I'm in this strange middle area where a lot of the workshops don't feel like they apply to me -- I don't need the agent or query workshops since I already have an agent, but I'm not published and so am not ready for some of the post-publication workshops.

And so, my focus really needs to be on writing my book, not distracting myself with news of the industry, thoughts about marketing, or endless trawling on Wikipedia. I'm spending some quality time tonight and tomorrow morning working on my next manuscript, since Madeleine and Ferguson are languishing in the middle of their first sexy times and are likely as desperate to climax and move on to the next part as I am (that implies that I'm desperate to climax too, but you get the idea). I still had a good time tonight, as I attended the Golden Network reception, where we celebrated the new Golden Heart finalists and the Golden Heart finalists from past years who have sold their work. But I'm excited to spend some time writing; I haven't written since Sunday, which is too long.

Check back tomorrow for my recap of Day 2: if nothing else, I'm having lunch with Eloisa James, which should be noteworthy ;)

RWA 2010 Day 0: Settling In, Catching Up, and Trying Not to Be a Fool

The 2010 RWA conference doesn't kick into high gear until tomorrow, but I overscheduled myself as usual -- rather than giving my poor California body clock a chance to catch up, I forced myself out of bed at 7:30am (4:30am at home, alas), into a dress AND makeup AND defrizzed hair (miracle of miracles), and downstairs in time to attend the Beau Monde retreat. The Beau Monde is a special-interest online chapter devoted to all things Regency; I joined a couple of months ago, and am consistently impressed by the quality and quantity of historical knowledge demonstrated on the loop.

So, I was quite looking forward to the retreat, and it didn't disappoint. The first panel I attended was about a Regency romance seminar taught at Yale last year, which thrilled me to no end because I'm glad to see romance start to get a teensy tinsy modicum of respect in academia. The second panel likely would have shredded that teensy tinsy modicum of respect -- it was all about courtesans, whores, and the men who loved them (or, at least, paid them a farthing to toss their skirts up against the nearest available alley wall).

After the Beau Monde lunch (with Gaelen Foley, acclaimed Regency writer, as the keynote speaker), I skipped over to the Golden Network retreat. The Golden Network is another special-interest online chapter, but this one is only open to current and former Golden Heart finalists. They had similar content as last year, but it was still eyeopening; in the most brutal display of sadomasochistic behavior I've seen since "Secretary" (or the Folsom Street Fair, perhaps), authors anonymously submitted first pages of their works, and then the moderator read those pages while a panel of editors and agents said 'stop' at the point where they would stop reading. Only one entry made it all the way to the end of the first page without anyone saying stop; several of them lost every single agent/editor in the first paragraph. The bar for publication is so incredibly high that it can be scary and disheartening to hear this; but as I did not submit a page, I just sat back, drank my coffee (while wishing desperately that it was Diet Coke, my one true love) and enjoyed the show.

After the Golden Network retreat was over, I hung out for a couple of hours with Grace and Tina, who are both part of the San Francisco chapter. Grace is up for a Golden Heart in Regency this year (which I am presenting at the awards ceremony on Saturday, since I won last year!), and Tina is doing some fascinating stuff with self-publishing on Amazon -- and more importantly, we seem to click well, and Grace and I share a love for Catherine Coulter and some of the other "ew, gross, 80s" romance novels that gave romance a bad name, what with all the abductions, rapes, bodice rippings, forced marriages, etc.

Tina, Grace and I then attended the Literacy Signing, at which published authors sell and sign their books, with the proceeds going to benefit literacy programs. I bought way too many books -- on the first pass, I got books from Eloisa James, Courtney Milan, Elizabeth Hoyt, and Carolyn Jewel from the San Francisco chapter. I may have been utterly awkward with Eloisa James; I'm having lunch with her on Friday, which I won in an auction, but she now probably thinks that I'm a weird stalker fangirl because I a) knew that she had been in Paris, since I follow her on Twitter, and b) bought a paperback of the book she *just* released after saying that I already read it on the plane yesterday (but in my defense, I read it on my Kindle, and it was good enough that I want a paperback as a keeper). So, we'll see if she shows up to lunch, and whether there are any hotel staff standing by in case I turn out to be rabid and crazy.

I parted ways with Grace and Tina, came back to my room with the intention of taking a nap before dinner -- then remembered that I had forgotten a couple of people whom I meant to get signatures from, because the room was huge and I failed to plan ahead. So I dashed downstairs again and got books from Tessa Dare (adore - she actually ran out of books, but signed a nameplate for me), Sabrina Darby (have been meaning to read her book for ages, and she was at the Beau Monde retreat this morning), Sarah MacLean (loved her "Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake"), and Addison Fox (one of my Ruby Slipper sisters, who writes paranormal). I failed to track down the other Ruby Slippered Sister who was signing, but at that point, I was loaded down and late for dinner, so I ran upstairs...

...and then as it turns out, dinner ended up being much, much later than anticipated. We left the hotel on time, got to the restaurant fifteen minutes early for our 8:15pm reservation -- and then weren't seated until almost 9pm. The food was outstanding (we ate at Kouzzina, owned by Cat Cora, whom I adore from 'Iron Chef America'), and I had a Greek lasagna that smelled strongly of cinnamon and tasted divine. I also had two glasses of wine, which made me quite chatty, particularly on an almost empty stomach. But, my table had a v. good time, even if we didn't eat until 10pm.

And now, I really, really must go to bed -- I'm not going to be foolish enough to get up at seven tomorrow morning, but I should get out of bed sometime. More to come tomorrow!