I can’t believe it’s already June. Where has the year gone? It seems like yesterday it was New Year’s Eve. I hope you’re all having a good summer so far.

I’ve been under some pretty tight deadlines, but have managed to squeeze in some fun here and there. We took a trip to the lovely NC beaches recently (may they forever stay lovely) and hit our first Renaissance Festival of the season on Saturday. There’s nothing like dressing up in twenty layers of clothing and walking around in 90 degree heat (it manages to be a blast, anyway).

Mostly I’ve been writing, though.

Right now I’m working on a novel called JADED, it’s the second of a short historical fantasy series I’m writing for Berkley Heat. The first book is entitled JEWELED and it releases in November. As you may be able to tell by that gorgeous cover, this two-book series is very hot menage a trois romance. You can read the first chapter here.

I turned in DARK ENCHANTMENT at the end of May, the third book of my Dark Magick series. CRUEL ENCHANTMENT (the second book) releases in September. You can read the first chapter of Cruel Enchantment here.

The other morning I woke up and said, “Great Scott! Cruel Enchantment’s release is just around the corner!” (Okay, I actually didn’t say, Great Scott, but you get the picture.) In any case, September will be here before I know it, considering how fast the first six months of 2010 have flown by. So I decided to implement some Summer Fun Contests to get ready for the release.

In June, July, August & September (probably October and November, too), I’ll be holding monthly contests on my two newsletters and my discussion list. If you’re not a member of any of these and you want to participant in the contests, now is the time to subscribe. Just please understand that if you join the discussion list, you’ll get…you know, discussion. Here are the links:

Writerspace newsletter (link is over on the left)
The Sultry Pen (Yahoogroups)
Silverpurr (Yahoogroups discussion loop)

And, just for the heck of it, since I haven’t held a contest over here in ages, send an email to anyabast (at) yahoo.com before 5pm est on Friday, June 11th, and you’ll have a chance at an autographed copy of WICKED ENCHANTMENT. Winner will be chosen by random drawing and notified by email. International entrants are always welcome. This contest is void where prohibited.

So, what are your plans for summer fun this year?

And it’s not Cynthia, even though she is very tempting indeed. I’m sneaking in here with a little news. The winner of a signed copy of  Margaret Rowe’s Tempting Eden is Ana Renaisse, or should I say Anna Shah Hoque. Send your address to margaret@margaretrowe.net and I’ll get it to you this week.

Other super-exciting news: Maggie Robinson’s Mistress by Mistake is featured in New York Times best-selling author Eloisa James’s Barnes & Noble column this week! Eloisa calls MBM “charming and extra-sexy.” 

I’ve also posted my latest book covers on my blog, for a beautiful way to wake up on a Monday morning. Have a great week.

Happy Friday everyone! Can you believe it’s the first weekend in June? I have no idea where the time has gone but man, it’s flying by! This week has been exciting for me. I started book four for Avon and though it has characters from my first three books in the JAGUAR WARRIOR series, it’s going in a totally different direction!

I am writing Declan’s book and am so thrilled I just can’t stand it! I love him and have been looking forward to telling his story since I started this series! He’s not a shifter, but a man of magick who is dark, tortured and does he ever need a HEA.

But starting a book is always fun and to be honest sometimes frustrating. I’ve already scrapped the entire first two chapters and started again. But, I’m now loving it and the words are flowing.

I’ll also have a second time travel romance coming from Samhain publishing, BLACK DESTINY and once I have release deets I’ll post that!

So, that’s what’s new with me! I’ll be at RWA in Orlando and so looking forward to seeing all the Bunchers that are attending…and writing like the wind to finish this fourth book by September!

I have some copy flats to give away…beautiful, gorgeous copy flats of the second book in my JAGUAR WARRIOR series, HIS DARKEST EMBRACE. I’ve not been given permission to post the cover yet but trust me, it’s smokin’ HAWT!

Click HERE to link to the entire first chapter if you so wish!

In honour of my second release which will be this fall, (October 26th) I’ll give away 5 signed copy flats to random commentators…just tell me what book you’re looking forward to reading most in the coming months!

Next week my book Lost and Found comes out with Samhain Publishing. This book has a genre identity crisis!

This manuscript was rejected a number of times before I sent it to Samhain. I wouldn’t normally talk about rejections because:  1. I don’t want people to think this story is crap and 2. I don’t want people to think Samhain publishes crap! The reason I mention rejections is because one of them was an excellent rejection (if a rejection can ever be good!) that explained to me what the problem was with selling this story:  

“…the manuscript sent on (date) was very well written. The characters were believable with interesting histories, the voice was on target for a romance novel, and the pacing was great.  You have all the basic elements of a romance author that are so hard for most people to pin down.”

Then came the BUT:

“…it tackles issues normally reserved for women’s fiction…and melds it with romance.  In other words, it doesn’t fit quite right in either genre.” 

Ack! My story doesn’t fit in!

So what is the difference between women’s fiction and romance?

Wylie Merrick Literary Agency says: “Where romances are about, well, romance, women’s fiction is more about relationships. Where a romance most often ends with the main characters winding in a satisfying relationship of some sort, women’s fiction can end with a woman facing life without romantic entanglements. When I say relationships, I don’t necessarily mean those between a man and a woman. Women’s fiction, a good deal of it anyway, contains stories about siblings, mother-daughter relationships, friendships, and the relationships between mothers and their children.” http://blog.wylie-merrick.com/2006/10/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about.html

Yes - Lost and Found is about relationships – a romantic relationship, but also a woman’s relationships with her best friend and with her mother, how those have impacted her life and how she grows and develops the strength to resolve issues with them.

This is what agent Jessica Faust has to say on genres:

“The first thing to understand about genre definitions is that there’s a reason they are so difficult to understand. Genre definitions, like genres themselves, are fluid. They change with the market and with the times…Which is why I try to encourage authors not to get too hung up on the specifics of a genre.” http://bookendslitagency.blogspot.com/2009/05/womens-fiction.html

Despite that advice, it apparently is very important to fit into a genre, to be able to sell the book.

Laura Bradford, agent to all of us here at the Bradford Bunch, recently said: “I have also heard from several editors that they are looking for that kind of contemporary romance-women’s fiction hybrid ala Debbie Macomber, Sheryll Woods, Lisa Kleypas.” http://romanceuniversity.org/2010/01/11/contemporary-romance-hot-not/ 

So there is apparently a market for books that are “hybrids” of romance and women’s fiction…but Lost and Found is still a problem because not only does it contain elements of women’s fiction by tackling issues such as pregnancy and infertility, marriage and infidelity, as well as a woman dealing with her relationships with her best friend and with her mother, it also contains elements that many would consider belonging in an erotic romance: ménage a trois sex. No doubt that alone would rule out most publishers from considering this to be women’s fiction!

So is Lost and Found an erotic romance, then? What’s the definition of erotic romance?

Author Anya Bast provides her definition: “Erotic romance is a romance, where the development of the relationship between the hero and heroine is focused on, but is also very sexually explicit. Erotic romance interweaves the sexual and emotional journey of the H/H. If you cut away all the sexual bits, the story still stands on its own. However, sex plays a large role in the plot.” http://www.anyabast.com/2007/11/01/erotic-romance-romance-definitions/

Yes, Lost and Found is a romance that focuses on the development of the relationship between hero and heroine, and yes it is also sexually explicit, and yes, the erotic elements are most definitely integral to the story.

So you can see the identify crisis this poor book is facing!

To me, Lost and Found is ultimately a romance, but I like to write stories that are layered with other elements, with real, complex issues that couples face, with relationships that intertwine in their lives and impact their relationship with each other as well. Interestingly, after I commented on a blog last year and mentioned this story, I received a number of emails asking me about it and when it would be out. This tells me that there are readers out there who want to read stories that cross genres, stories that break the rules, stories that are different.

Hi, everyone!  Hope you are having a great week! I wanted to pop in and spread the word about my Deadly Days of Summer. I’m having a summer-long blog party, and you’re invited!

I’ve got wonderful guest authors scheduled to post & lots of fab prizes. So come on by and enjoy the summer!

Tomorrow’s the official day to get tempted! Margaret Rowe (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Maggie Robinson, LOL) has her erotic Berkley Heat debut Tempting Eden on the shelves on June 1. A fabulous reader in Hawaii sent me my two recent books snuggled up side-by-side, which was actually one of the reasons I chose my pen name. I wanted something that would be close and I could actually remember. Margaret is my real name. Rowe is a family name on my husband’s side, and the middle name of our son. He may not like to be reminded that his mom writes hot books, but oh well.

For a chance to win a copy of either Tempting Eden OR Mistress by Mistake (a bit tamer, but not much), just leave a comment below and tell me what pen name you’d choose if you became a writer of erotic romance. I’ll announce a winner by June 7, so there’s plenty of time for you to dream up a new identity!

Jenn Bennett’s RUN DEVIL RUN, about an outlaw magickian who teams up with an enigmatic earthbound demon in a search for the elusive creature who can exonerate her infamous (and on-the-run) parents, the first in a new urban fantasy series, to Jennifer Heddle at Pocket, in a two-book deal, by Laura Bradford at Bradford Literary Agency (NA).

Karina Cooper’s BLOOD OF THE WICKED, about a hardened witch hunter and the woman he needs to execute, not love, set in a post-devastation world where magic and murder have become synonymous, to Esi Sogah at Avon, in a pre-empt, in a very nice deal, in a three-book deal, by Laura Bradford at Bradford Literary Agency.

Ann Aguirre and Carrie Lofty, writing as Ellen Connor’s NIGHTFALL, MIDNIGHT, and DAYBREAK, the “Dark Age Dawning” trilogy, in which human survivors find love in the midst of an apocalypse, to Cindy Hwang at Berkley Sensation, by Laura Bradford at Bradford Literary Agency (World English).

Suzanne Lazear’s INNOCENT DARKNESS: A Steampunk Fairytale, in which an adventure-seeking sixteen year old who has been incarcerated at an abusive reform school for her delinquent ways is rescued by a mysterious man from the realm of Faerie who reveals she must die in sacrifice in order to save the entire Otherworld civilization, to Brian Farrey at Flux, in a two-book deal, by Laura Bradford at Bradford Literary Agency (World English).

Congrats, ladies!

Denise A. Agnew, Interview
By Michelle M. Pillow

Denise A. Agnew, fiction author of over thirty titles, loves to write about a diverse range of subjects, from paranormal to time travel, romantic comedy to romantic suspense, contemporary to historical. She attributes the fact that she has lived in Colorado, Hawaii, Arizona and the United Kingdom to giving her a lifetime of ideas. Her newest idea, an erotic paranormal romance/suspense novella, Meltdown, released in ebook this November from Liquid Silver Books.

* * * * *

Q: In your book, Meltdown, you delve into the world of psychic abilities. What inspired you to write about this?

Denise: Some of my books, but not all of them, have a grain of psychic truth in them. I’d heard of more than one person who can predict earthquakes because something physical happens to them. In my story, the heroine works in Earth Sciences and seismology, so she’s grounded in science. She has headaches that come a couple of minutes before a quake hits. I wanted to explore the conflict that would create. Her colleagues probably wouldn’t believe her. She doesn’t have enough time to really warn anyone about a quake. She knows it’s going to happen but she’s helpless. How does she react? How would the hero, who is a firefighter, react to this?

Q: Why do you think readers, and society in general, are fascinated by the paranormal?

Denise: Humans want to explore mysteries or they want answers to strange things they’ve experienced or read about. Mystery is a part of life.

Q: What are your favorite paranormal shows, movies and books?

Denise: Fringe, old X-Files, old Millennium episodes, loved Journeyman. Movies include The Shining, The Exorcist, and so many others. As for books, there are way too many to list.

Q: Do you believe in the supernatural? Or are you a skeptic?

Denise: I believe in the supernatural. I’ve had things happen to me and other people I know. I have one foot in the practical world and one in the supernatural. I balance healthy skepticism with that belief.

Q: Have you ever had a paranormal experience?

Denise: My most vivid experience was on New Year’s Eve back in the 90’s. We were in Edinburgh, Scotland and took a tour of the South Bridge vaults. I’m not claustrophobic but in one room I was instantly terrified. I was sweating, heart going two hundred, and I wanted out of there. I kept my anxiety to myself. When we left the relief was instant. I was compelled to research the experience and discovered that many other people had the same freak out in the same room. To this day I wonder what happened. When I toured other underground/basement type areas in Britain while I lived there, I never felt that way again.

Q: What does the future hold for your paranormal writing?

Denise: I’m writing a werewolf trilogy as well as a historical series that has heavy-duty paranormal elements. While I love to write about a variety of things, the paranormal is always going to be there, lurking in the background, ready to jump out. Maybe, if I do my job, I’ll scare the beejeebers out of the reader. It’s what I do.

Thanks for joining us, Denise!

You can learn more about Denise and her books at her website, www.deniseagnew.com or at her publisher, www.liquidsilverbooks.com.

Interviewer Michelle M. Pillow is an award winning author writing in many romance fiction genres. She can be found at www.michellepillow.com.

Denise’s paranormal titles –
Primordial
Dangerous Intentions
Treacherous Wishes
Bridge Through the Mist
Eclipse
Dark Fire
Night Watch
Haunted Souls
www.deniseagnew.com

Awards-
4 ½ Stars Top Pick RT Magazine for Primordial
EPPIE win for best historical romance in 2001 for Love From The Ashes

Join the fan club on June 1. You know you want to.

So Skin Tight comes out next Tuesday. If you didn’t know, it’s the second book in the SKIN series by Ava Gray. It’s helpful to read the first one beforehand, I think. I’m really pleased with this series overall. So far, we’ve sold SKIN GAME (which is now available in Thailand), SKIN TIGHT, SKIN HEAT, SKIN & BONE (novella), and SKIN DIVE. It’s like a dirty & violent blend of Fringe and Heroes, so that should give you some idea what to expect. Interestingly, this is the only series I have sold on proposal.

For instance, when I decided to write a YA, I cleared a space last fall and just went hell for leather on that manuscript. We sold it at auction a couple of weeks after I finished it, and recently, I just found out that Cliff Nielsen is doing the cover art. He’s worked for DC, Marvel, Star Wars, Star Trek, and Dark Horse comics. He also did Cassandra Clare’s covers, and I just love them. My editor said they’re going for a similar style / feel to City of Glass, only it will have both boy and girl on the cover. I’m way chuffed! And after having perused his portfolio online, I’d be hard pressed to find anything I didn’t love.

I’m very pleased with my YA result; that’s actually my preferred way to do business because otherwise I’m expected to write sample chapters and work up a really compelling synopsis. Given my inability to plan, this could easily take me a month, and you know, I can draft the book in six weeks. So for my money, I’m better off just banging out a draft and asking my agent to pitch it (because she’s really good at distilling a project to its essence). I know for some writers, it’s the dream to be able to sell an idea. And I have done that. But I much prefer selling a finished book for a number of reasons.

1) I hate writing proposals *so* much. You have no idea. I am incapable of plotting a book before it’s written so my synopses are a vague, hot mess full of phrases like “Complications ensue” and “they fight the bad guys” and finally, “they save the world and make out for a while.” I know perfectly well that a proposal won’t encompass the best aspects of any project I dream up.

2) I like having a finished manuscript going into a sale because it means my next deadline for subsequent books won’t be for a while. If you sell a proposal, then you have to drop everything and write that book. With my schedule, that’s a major concern. I basically can’t afford to pitch anything unless I have the book ready to go. I have books going into 2012 at this point.

3) This is just my opinion but I think it’s easier in this climate for editors to say no to a proposal. But a complete manuscript that’s ready to be purchased and slotted into the schedule, that’s more tempting. They can see the big picture, envision how they will position it, what’s the best way to market it. The full story, if you’ve done your job as a writer, makes your book a treasure they can’t resist. Ideally, anyway. Of course, if you’re super-famous this does not apply to you; you could jot an idea on a cocktail napkin and have it go to auction. *g*

Finally, I don’t think it’s a bad thing to have a finished book that doesn’t sell. Someday the market might be different, or you might be so in demand that editors are begging for anything you have ready to go. Which is when you whip out the manuscript and go, “Well, since you mention it…”

Finally, I think writing a lot improves your craft. I don’t see how it could be otherwise. You write; you learn. To quote Alanis:

You live you learn
You love you learn
You cry you learn
You lose you learn
You bleed you learn
You scream you learn

She can be quite anthemic for this business, no? So what do you guys think? Do you prefer selling on proposal or on a draft? Opposing opinions welcome!

Sorry! This was supposed to be up this morning, but I’m just behind on everything today. You wouldn’t think that would be possible considering I was up at 2:30 a.m. working on revisions…but then again, I was up at 2:30 working on revisions.

Right now, I’m in that very fearful stage where I’m trying hard to incorporate revisions that I KNOW will make the book better, but I’m also having trouble seeing it all pull together and hold its own–possibly because I’m still in the “you have to make a bigger mess before you can start cleaning it up” stage in the process. Ugh. So very scary! But I’m going to keep plugging away and doing my best, having faith that this will all turn out okay! In a little over two weeks…*gulp*

In any case, I have several pieces of good news to share. Yea!

–In this month’s issue of Seventeen magazine, on about page 71 or so, you’ll find the ad for the unRequired Reading tour, of which I am a part for my upcoming release, The Ghost and the Goth. The ad is just so cool! And I can’t believe I’m looking at it in Seventeen magazine!

–The release date for The Ghost and the Goth has been moved up a week to 6/29. Yes! Just a little over a month until I’ll be holding that baby in my hands. I cannot wait!

–The unRequired Reading Tour now has a facebook page, where you can find out all the latest info on the tour and fun, funky facts about those of us participating.

–And finally, here are the latest dates for the tour:
- June 18: Davis Kidd, Memphis, TN (Daniel Waters, Elizabeth Rudnick, Emily Franklin, and Brendan Halpin)

- June 18: Keplers, Menlo Park, CA (Kristen Tracy, Stacey Kade, and Brent Crawford)

- June 19: Books & Books, Coral Gabels, FL (Waters, Rudnick, Franklin, and Halpin)

- June 21: Pudd’nHead Books, St. Louis, MO (Tracy, Kade, and Crawford)

- June 21: Little Shop of Stories, Atlanta, GA (Waters, Rudnick, Franklin, and Halpin)

- June 22: Anderson’s, Naperville, IL (all authors)

- June 23: Watermark Books, Wichita, KS (all authors)

- June 24: Books of Wonder, New York, NY (all authors)

- June 25: Reception at American Libraries Association Convention, Washington, DC (all authors)

- June 26: Politics & Prose, Washington DC (all authors)

I’m sorry this is not a more substantive post, especially considering its tardiness. But my brain is not my own right now. I’m hoping it’ll be back the day after those revisions are turned in!