A critical element to great chemistry is respect. Your hero and heroine should see each other as equals, and not out of some politically correct we-all-have-the-spark-of-divinity worldview, but because they forcibly strike each other as so.
A perfect example below, from the Loretta Chase classic Lord of Scoundrels:
“Perhaps I had better demonstrate how the thing operates,” said Dain, yanking her attention to him.
In his low voice, Jessica recognized the too innocent tones that inevitably preceded a male’s typically idiotic idea of a joke. She could have explained that, not having been born yesterday, she knew very well how the timepiece operated. But the glint in his black eyes told her he was mightily amused, and she didn’t want to spoil his fun. Yet.
“How kind,” she murmured. more…
Reader Beth had suggested that I make a blog post of the workshop on romantic chemistry that I gave at RWA National. My immediate response was a demurral. I had 11 pages of speaking notes–it couldn’t be done. But then I gave the workshop again recently to my local RWA group, and afterwards I thought, you know, the best part of any such workshop is always the examples. And I definitely can put up the examples and why I used them as a series of blog posts. So thank you Beth, and here we go.
What makes for good chemistry? Great conflict.
What makes for great conflict? As my critique partner Janine asks, what are the lies that your character tells himself to get through the day? Who is the person who by the very fact of her existence, by everything she says and does, exposes your character’s lies to himself as just that, lies?
In other words, who is this person who would cause the greatest amount of emotional disturbance in your character? Who is the person your character most fears for the truth she represent, and yet who cannot be dismissed, precisely because of the truth she represents?
Put these two people together and you have tension, conflict, and chemistry.
Example: more…
There is nothing I love more than the unveiling of covers, especially foreign covers.
And I totally dig this one for PRIVATE ARRANGEMENTS.
You can’t tell me that’s not Monica Bellucci in mirror. 
French PA drops October 7.
Stays in the Las Vegas Suite, of course.
But below, in no particular order, are the highlights of my trip.
1) The Woodley Park Zoo metro stop. The escalator coming out of the metro stop is the longest and steepest escalator I’ve ever seen. Going up for the first time, I had the distinct sensation that the man some ten, twelve steps higher up was hanging on for dear life directly above me. It was dizzying, but in the best way.
2) The digital publishing experts. I think I’d met both Angela James of Samhain Publishing and Kassia Krozser of Book Square and Quartet Press before–Kassia owns a very cool Barbara Cartland romance board game, if I remember correctly from RWA 2008 in San Francisco–but I didn’t really have a chance to speak with either. This time I did. And it was informative and eye-opening and most reassuring, to know that the wild, wild frontier of digital publishing is manned by cool, calm, in-charge women who know exactly what they are doing.
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I know, I know. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Today Meredith’s long-awaited WRITTEN ON YOUR SKIN hits the shelves and we’ve nothing for it. In fact, I totally forgot about it until I saw the fabulous A+ review it received at Dear Author.
So I’ll just post a video of Meredith I stumbled across on YouTube last week.
As you can see, her photos don’t do her justice and she is disgustingly gorgeous in person. Now time for everyone to run out and get WRITTEN ON YOUR SKIN!
RWA National Conference is upon us again! Meredith and I will be there, not with bells on exactly, but with enough wide-eyed eagerness that you can’t really see our deadline-induced raggedness underneath.
We will both be signing at the Literacy Autographing, which is open to the public.
Wednesday, July 15
5:30-7:30 p.m.
Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, Exhibit Hall
I was reading Joanna Bourne’s blog a while back and Jo, much better prepared than either Meredith or I, had custom bookplates printed ahead of time so that she could give them to readers who already had her books at home. And I thought, what a great idea. I emailed Jo and asked her about it, she very kindly emailed me back with step-by-step instruction on how to obtain similar bookplates. Alas, then I asked the crucial question: How long would it take?
Well, there just wasn’t enough time. So I abandoned the idea for a while. But then I since I regularly make bookplates from mailing labels–not very pretty ones by the way, just functional–I thought, oh, what the heck, let me give it a try at home.
So for Meredith, I took the masthead from her website and shrank it down to fit a 1″ x 2 5/8″ label.
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I can tell you this much. Neither Meredith nor I planned to be on deadline so soon together. But well, we are.
Meredith has a deadline in August. And so do I, since 10 days ago when my agent emailed and said she wanted the first draft of the next tour-de-force done by August 1. LOL, guess no-matter how much I deny being in the shitty-first-draft camp, I’ve been unmistakably tainted by my undeniably shitty first drafts.
Had things been different we’d hold a much grander celebration. But now we’ll just toss this little interview out and call it a release party. Enjoy!
You have said on this blog that you brainstorm to blaring Top 40 hits on the radio. Can you give me some examples of songs that have helped Bound by Your Touch and Written on Your Skin take shape? more…
UPDATED: Now with map!
Because every unfamiliar setting deserves one. Passages in blockquote are from the book.
NOT QUITE A HUSBAND starts in Rumbur Valley, on the North-West Frontier of British India (today’s North-West Frontier Province, Pakistan) Rumbur Valley is one of the three valleys known as the Kalash Valleys, so called because of their unique Kalasha population. The Kalasha are a tribe of pagans who worship a pantheon of gods. They believe themselves to have descended from the soldiers of Alexander the Greek–and it is not unusual to find among the Kalasha fair hair and blue/green eyes. Unlike the Kafirs of Afghanistan who were forcibly converted to Islam in mid-1890s by the Amir of Kabul, the Kalash Valleys happened to fall on the British side of the Durand Line, and the Kalasha were allowed to continue in their ancient beliefs first under the British, then later under the constitution of Pakistan.
Across the stream, fields glinted a thick, bright gold in the narrow alluvial plain—winter wheat ready for harvest. Small, rectangular houses of wood and stacked stone piled one on top of another along the rising slope, like a collection of weathered playing blocks. Beyond the village, the ground elevated more rapidly, a brief stratum of walnut and apricot trees before the bones of the hills revealed themselves, austere crags that supported only dots of shrubs and an intrepid deodar or two.
Image by Yodod
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While I was putting together the sidebar for the new blog, I noticed that my May release and Meredith’s August release bear more than a little resemblance to each other. They are both red dress clinches! So of course we must have a red dress-off.
First, a little background on the books themselves.
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Orbitz was a drink introduced in 1996. It didn’t take and disappeared from the shelves soon thereafter. I swear I’ve never seen one in real life. Now take a good look at the bottle on the left, then read the below snippet from my unfinished SF romance masterpiece:
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