Hey all! It’s been one heck of a crazy week here in the land of hockey tournaments, more hockey tournaments and oh yeah, mid winter break. I can say I survived the trip to Jordan and the trip to Buffalo. I managed to make it through two days at a hotel with 14 kids, their families including siblings and an unhealthy amount of pizza, wings and beer. (Bud Lite Lime rocks!) On a side note, my son’s hockey team kicked butt on both sides of the border!

So, these distractions have been swept away and now I’m faced with The Next Step on my road to publication. I’m sure most of you are aware that I’m the newbie around here. I signed with Laura Bradford last summer and she sold my book to Avon/Harpercollins. (I still get all squeeeeeeeeeeish when I think about it!) Since then I’ve gone through many firsts. Revisions, contracts, line edits and now, (horns blowing in the background please!) discussing my COVER!

I’m so pumped I just can’t even tell you. My editor told me to jot down ideas about what I’d like on the cover. I can honestly say I had a moment, because truthfully I’m not artistic at all when it comes to this stuff. I just want the cover gods to smile on me and give me something great. But, I decided the professional thing to do was a bit of research, and then give Esi my opinion.

What I found was a lot of covers that rocked and some that were mediocre at best. I think that covers are the most important tool you can have when it comes to attracting readers….especially if you’re a newbie like myself. I realized that most of the books I’ve purchased lately (from new authors), I bought because the cover drew me in and the blurb was well written. So, this is important stuff.

I want my cover to look great and thought this would be a great place to ask all of you out there in Bradford land, what is it about a cover that makes you grab that book from the shelf? What do you like and dislike? What’s your favorite cover?

Currently, I’m favouring one with my dude on the front, but I want to see his face. I’m not so enamored of books where you can’t see the guys face. But, would a couple be better?

What do you all think?

And this is totally unrelated, but any early predictions for American Idol? I have to say, I’m really digging Adam Lambert. He’s like a really yummy young version of Nikki Sixx without the smelly heroin addiciton thing going on. And the little chick with the red hair and raspy voice? Luv her too!

Hey, all!

Happy Wednesday, everyone! I am sitting here, my fingers freezing, but looking out the window at a world covered in snow and ice.  I want to go back to bed and maybe I will, since I was out late last night (for great reasons, but this old lady gets tired, ya’ll) and my kids are in school for another couple hours…

But here’s the thing.

I also need to write. Because if I don’t write it, I can’t sell it. If I don’t write it, the superfabandgroovy Laura Bradford can’t put it out there in the world for editors to buy. If I don’t write it, ain’t nobody gonna give me any money for it!

And no, I don’t write solely for the money. Heck. If I wanted to do anything just for the bucks I’d pick something other than novel writing. But I don’t do this as a hobby, it’s not something I toss off in between bon-bons and soap operas. Writing is my job, it’s my career, it’s something I love enough to sacrifice for!

So, if I want to make it in this business, I have to make it (the writing.) I have to actually produce. I can’t sit around on my ever-widening bum and moan and complain and eat thistles because nooooobody’s going to buyyyyy my storrrryyyyyy…I have to do the work. I have to make the effort. I have to get up early and go to bed late and not watch t.v. and not make quilts or play the Sims2 all day!

I mean, life’s about balance, and I will always find time for sleep and the Sims, but really, there’s nobody who’s going to do my work for me. My editors aren’t going to approve checks just ‘cuz they like me, and Laura B. as fab as she is, can’t sell books I haven’t written (well, technically she CAN but that’s because I’ve proven I *will* write them…and I had to do that buy actually finishing a whole bunch before I got to the point where I can sell on proposal and not on a full. It’s part of the way it goes.)

This falls on me. So as much as I’d like to crawl back under my blankets in the soft, warm, flannel cavern of my bed…I’m going to write today, darn it. I’m going to write and write and write some more! Because I want to MAKE IT in this business!

And I can’t make it…if I don’t make it.

As Ringo says, people: Peace and love, peace and love,

Megan

First of all, the lovely Laura Bradford has crit for three chapters and a synopsis up for auction for the Jo Leigh auction! Check it out! I can say firsthand that Laura is wonderful with editorial and her eye has made all my books better.

I’ve also got something up for auction - all of my Chase Brothers books and all my Witches Knot books - all in print and all signed and personalized.

Fellow Bradford Buncher Cynthia Eden has a manuscript critique up for auction! ALSO autographed copies of Hotter After Midnight, When He Was Bad, Everlasting Bad Boys, Midnight Sins

Ann Aguirre offers up a mentoring opportunity: a full manuscript (romance / fantasy (which includes UF) / SF) critique and help with query letter for same manuscript, to be submitted to Ann within 6 months of auction. and ALSO - autographed copies of Grimspace and Wanderlust

Vivi Anna offers copies of HELL KAT and INFERNO

Denise Agnew offers a copy of Meant To Be

For those unfamiliar with the story - Jo Leigh - an author whose fabulous romances have made many a day better - lost her husband this year and the proceeds of the auction will go to paying the medical bills.

A full listing of the auction items can be viewed here

It all started on Tuesday night with this…

This yummy little thing jumped started a fabulous time in Pittsburgh at RT.  I had a great time.  And can’t complain about one thing.  Not even the fact I had a sore throat. I thought I sounded sexy after that.

The best thing about RT….seeing old friends and making new ones.

My bestest buddy Kimberly Kaye Terry and I.  Good times!

I loved being on the erotic paranormal panel and holding my own on a panel with Caridad Pineiro and JR Ward.  I was nervous as all get out, but managed to get a few laughs.  And from that I sold probably 10 books at the bookfair.   Very cool!

I had a chance to host a big party with my friends the Allure authors, Sylvia Day, Delilah Devlin, Myla Jackson and Sasha White and we signed books to almost 400 people.  It was AWESOME.  And I of course couldn’t resist the marjaritas…

Best of all, I loved hanging out with the ladies of the Bradford Bunch.  Megan, Lauren, Anya (also sexy super agent man) and Ann rocked big time, and of course the lovely Laura Bradford herself.  I couldn’t have asked for a better bunch of authors to hang with.  Beautiful and talented–every single one of them.

It was so good that I’m already thinking about next year in Orlando!

Well, I’m finally recovering from RT 2008. By this I mean I’ve unpacked my suitcase, paid some bills and organized (though not cleaned off my desk,) and started to get back into the swing of family life.  You know. Yelling at the kids, doing laundry, generally being the domestic diva I am.

I didn’t feel well at the convention, unfortunately, and I wasn’t alone. But even so, I came back energized, writing-wise. No, I didn’t come up with a brand-new, shiny, full-fledged idea the way I did last year when Lauren and I brainstormed Taking Care of Business while standing in line. (Though we did talk about a followup to that book!) But I did come home with inspiration and ideas for layering some themes into the edits for my current WIP, Switch. 

I finished SWITCH before I left for RT and had planned to let it sit for awhile while I worked on some other things, but while there my mind kept turning back to it. Switch hasn’t been an easy book for me for many reasons. For one, it took me a lot longer to write than usual, partly because I stopped a few times to work on other things and partly because I struggled with the writing of it. I was really glad to have finished the first draft because it meant I could take a break from it, so to discover when I got back from RT that I really wanted to dive back in was…suprising.

Here’s the thing: I take a lot of my work from my life — not things that have happened to me, necessarily, but feelings and emotions and situations that make me THINK about “what if.” I don’t live everything I write about (my goodness, who has time?) but I do…FEEL it. I do feel what I write. Sometimes I feel it first and hold onto that and use it. Sometimes during the writing I start to feel the work, instead, which is also interesting.

I’d had an inkling about what Switch was meant to be for a few months, and it was pretty far from what I’d first anticipated the book to be. In its first incarnation it was a story about dominance and submission, a woman who finds misplaced notes in her mailbox meant for an anonymous person being given increasingly erotic commands. She discovers she likes the content of the notes — craves it, in fact. But when she discovers who the notes are really for, everything changes and she becomes the note WRITER instead of the note receiver.

The book is still “about” that — it’s what happens, anyway. But somewhere along the way a minor, throwaway character became more important, and now he’s an irreplaceable part of the story. I didn’t expect that.

And somewhere, somehow, the book became about choices. The ones we make, good or bad, right or wrong, and how sometimes no matter how much you think you want something, in the end you don’t take it because not having it is better for you. Sometimes, as Paige, the heroine says, you walk away.

So now I have to finish entering all my receipts and put some laundry away and take a shower and have some breakfast, and then I need to crank up the iTunes and get lost in this world again. But you know what?

I feel it.

M

PS — I was so happy to hang with my lurvely agent the glorious Laura Bradford (or LB as I like to call her) and Lauren Dane, Anya Bast and Ann Aguirre and Vivi Anna, and we missed Cynthia! NEXT YEAR IN ORLANDO!!!!!!!!!!!

Some of my favorite photos –

Now that we’ve got a newly expanded team - Saturdays will be days for guest blog spots and also some fun industry type stuff. Today’s entry is a bit of question and answer from Laura Bradford herself.

Question: Do you think it’s important for an author to be flexible and adapt easily to the changes in our genre or to stick to one sub genre and master it?

Laura Bradford:  Well, in a perfect world I think everybody should get to write what they want but since when is this a perfect world? Some subgenres are more popular than others–all you have to do is go to a bookstore to see that this is true. I think we can all understand that it would probably be easier to sell a historical romance set in London than one set in Warsaw and that the market for romantic suspense is probably bigger than the market for futuristic romance. With that said, sometimes an author’s voice doesn’t always translate well across certain subgenres and themes.

If you naturally write material that is dark and gritty and intense, maybe it isn’t a great fit for you to write breezy, light romantic comedy. Just because your preferred subgenre isn’t the “it” thing at the moment doesn’t mean that you should necessarily write something else. Certainly you can try on other subgenres for size, but I don’t think anybody should change their writing universe if it isn’t a good fit for them personally.

Flexibility can be a great thing but so is being a real master of your subgenre.

Question: Any tips or valuable advice she can give us?

Laura Bradford: Educate yourself as best you can about your targeted genre or subgenre…

Know who your competition is. In a non-fiction proposal, one of the elements an author is required to include is a “competitive analysis” and I think that this can be a helpful exercise to do for fiction writers, too. What kinds of books are hitting the bestseller lists, the light and frothy ones or the gritty and intense ones? Understanding that the big authors like Nora Roberts and Linda Howard will almost always hit the lists, which NEW authors are hitting the Borders top 20 Mass Market list or the USA Today top 150 list? Are there any surprises? Where do you see your voice and style sitting amidst the rest of the marketplace? Is your material full of classic themes and tried and true favorites or does it have a never-before-seen plot element? What is your strength? Is it voice? Characterization? Unusual plot twists? Once you have looked around, taken a serious inventory of the market, evaluated your place in it, I think the next step is to know what you want and to have a plan.

Set goals, be resolute, know what kind of trajectory you want your career to take.