SquawkRadio

Unfortunately, it doesn't want to work, either. And it eats even more than my regular head does.

Just making my nightly blog title rounds, Eloisa of the #7 on the Waldenbooks list. La la la.

Elizabeth

Eloisa James's anthology TALK OF THE TON is #7 on the Waldens Romance List!

Christina sits back and waits for many forms of congratulations to flow

MY SURRENDER is hitting the bookstores!



We made a sort of half-ass vow to one another not to turn this blog into an egregious self-promotion tool. Guess what? I lied! Better yet, since I�m the administrator, I can get away with it! Yeah me!

So here�s a wonderful bit of a review from a wonderful and wonderfully perceptive reviewer at THE LIBRARY JOURNAL :

"This brings RITA Award-winning author Brockway's Rose Hunters trilogy to a truly fabulous conclusion. By brilliantly blending an exquisitely sensual romance between two deliciously stubborn individuals into a plot rife with danger, deception and desire, and then wrapping the whole thing up in wickedly witty and elegant writing Brockway deftly demonstrates her gift for creating richly imagined completely irresistible love stories."

Now, generally when someone gets nice news amongst this lot it is an excuse for much celebrating and congratulations. Of course, sometimes that congratulation takes an odd form, but we know what each other means to say. Still, in the interest of keeping this interactive here�s a poll.

One of SQUAWKERS announces good news (a nice review, a showing on a best seller list, an award, etc.). Match the squawker to her most likely squawk:


a) Eloisa
b) Connie
c) Christina
d) Elizabeth
e) Lisa
f) Teresa



1) �That�s wonderful and no one deserves it more than you!�
2) �%#$&$ and the horse you rode in on!�
3) �Yawn.�
4) �That�s so sweet. Can we talk about me again now?�
5) �Who are you and why are you cluttering my email box with this spam?�
6) �But *I* wanted that to happen to *me*!�

Before I was published I wrote both contemporary and historical. My first book was a historical, probably 200,000 words long (my current books are 90,000 words Ð honey, I was writing GONE WITH THE WIND) set in É um, never mind. Anyway, it featured dramatic unveilings and volcanoes and an earthquake and a smallpox epidemic and a Spanish landowning hero tortured by the inequities of the Colonial system. It took me six years, but I learned to write on that book. I could never sell it mostly because it was set in É um, never mind. But after finishing that tome, I wrote a contemporary series book (like a Silhouette Desire about 55,000 words) which took me six months.

I could never sell that one, either.

Then I wrote my second historical (set in Medieval England, by God!), sent it to an agent who said she could sell it, and started a contemporary because by then IÕd been writing for ten years, wracked up enough rejection letters to paper my office, and believed publication would happen about the time it snowed in hell. Apparently Satan was wearing an overcoat because the agent sold CANDLE IN THE WINDOW in two weeks (on Friday February 2, 1990 at 3:30pm, not that I noticed). While I was waiting for the contracts to come through, I finished the contemporary and sold LADY IN BLACK to Kismet, a short-lived but very profitable mail order publishing company. There are still copies of LADY IN BLACK floating around, and while itÕs dated (it features a dot-matrix printer) some things are eternal Ð like the sex in the shower. Very steamy.

My point is that while I concentrated on historicals to build my name in one field, I always read both historicals and contemporaries, I always wrote both, and I always intended to write more contemporaries. When I got the idea for the Lost Texas Hearts Series (JUST THE WAY YOU ARE, ALMOST LIKE BEING IN LOVE and CLOSE TO YOU), I knew I had the perfect vehicle and my contemporary career was off and running.

Both parts of my career, historical and contemporary, are doing very well, thankyouverymuch, and IÕm having a great time. I also love paranormals (yum on the heroes!) and have a great idea for a four-book series, but I can only write so fast. But I really really want to write them, so É weÕll see.

They've been in my basement all this time. I should have thought to tell the Pentagon right off the bat to look there first. God knows what else is down there.

How am I doing, Eloisa?

Eloisa has informed me that my blog titles aren't jazzy enough. So I'm going to work on that. Stay tuned.

Elizabeth

I think the kind of pressure that Elizabeth talks about is rampant in publishing. Let's say you have a modest career going as a historical author and suddenly all the readers are buying contemps. There is no question but that your editor and possibly your agent are going to ask you how you feel about switching periods. Part of this comes from a lingering feeling in New York City that romance is a "product," and if you can write "to formula," what the heck does it matter what period you write in?

My experience is rather like Elizabeth's, except I got a little farther. The publishers at my previous house thought I should give contemp a try. So I did. I happen to love baseball and sports heros (Susan Elizabeth Phillips is a hero of mine). So I wrote 100 pages of a great baseball story. My hero was a baseball player and at some point he got hit on the head by a ball and after that he could only speak in verse and so he asked the heroine to marry him by singing "When I'm 64." I KNOW this sounds crazy! OK, it was crazy.

At that point I was switching publishers, and everyone who was bidding on my work read the 100 pages and all said politely, "well, if you really really want to publish it, we will do it." I finally realized that I had written it for the wrong reasons, and that I don't have a contemp voice. All that freedom that Connie talks about in a contemporary setting just made me come up with crazy stories about men who sing their proposals.

On that note...back to writing a story set in 1807. Or thereabouts.