SquawkRadio

I'm trying, Eloisa, but yours wasn't the most compelling blog title, either.

I'm opposite you. When I'm in Deep Write, I'm too distracted to read anything else, because my mind is so focused on my own story that it can't get into anyone else's. That's when I start looking at magazines, which provide 90% of my research materials. I subscribe to tons, many of them men's interest to get the male POV on stuff (Esquire is a particular fave). The stack in my office right now is--and I just now measured--waist high. (Obviously I'm not having trouble with the writing at the moment, except for not wanting to do it because we're finally having a beautiful day, and I'd rather be outside walking in the woods before it gets too buggy.) So I'll start flipping through the mags, reading articles that look interesting or which might provide story ideas or some kind of character trait. I'll clip pictures of rooms or outfits that look like ones I want to use, or pull pages with artwork or advertisements that might inspire a good cover. Ultimately, during times like those, I think I'm absorbing stuff that will go into the NEXT book, not the one I'm working on at the moment, because I already absorbed the stuff for my work-in-progress when I was flipping through magazines during the LAST book while I was distracted.

And when I'm not in deep write, but still writing a book, I find that I read less romance and more my other favorite genre--mystery. Or memoirs. I've developed quite a taste for those. Or if I do read romance when I'm writing, it'll be historical or paranormal or a traditional Regency. I don't read the type of books I write until after I'm done with a book. Then I'll take a coupla three weeks and devour all kinds of contemp.

Elizabeth

My current manuscript is one of those ones that's like pulling huge rocks out of a field...I work and work and at the end of the day I have two puny pages. So I find myself surrounded by a wall of books, because when I absolutely can't figure out what to do next, I open up Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone (my current favorite) and look at how he constructed a sentence. I looked at Lord of Scoundrels yesterday to see how Loretta Chase did male interior monologue (which she does better than anyone else). A scholarship book called English Professional Theater 1530-1660, because my characters are putting on a play. Also the index is brilliant for coming up with names.

How about the rest of you? Am I the only one who desperately thrashes around in other people's prose when I'm stuck for my own sentences? I don't plagiarize--I just look for inspiration.... if that makes sense!
Eloisa

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 � honey, I was writing GONE WITH THE WIND) set in � 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 � 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 I�d 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 it�s dated (it features a dot-matrix printer) some things are eternal � 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 I�m 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 � we�ll 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?