Insomnia leads to rumination, so as I lay on the couch, my pondering of the thrill of instant gratification yielded to memories of other kinds of gratification. I believe it was Remembrance, by Jude Devereaux, that was my first hardcover purchase. (Can this be right?) It was 1994; I was fourteen years old and I had a bit of a cash flow problem, as fourteen year olds generally do, and I babysat with the specific intention of saving up for the momentous event of this book’s release. It seems to me, in my dim recollection, that this was the first book Devereaux had published in (what seemed to my fourteen year old self, at any rate) a very long time. I had planned ahead for it, carefully lining up income opportunities, and informing my parents, very seriously, that they would need to deliver me to the bookstore at 11AM (opening time) The Day Of. And because my parents are awesome, they did exactly that.

I walked out with that hardcover feeling so high, so triumphant, that I can still recall the walk with perfect clarity.

I had many such experiences in years following. Once I discovered AAR, their “Upcoming Releases” page became my first stop on the internet on those occasions when I mustered to the computer lab in my dorm to experiment with this thing called “The World Wide Web.” I had a little notebook in which I kept a list of books, sorted by date, that I needed to save for and buy. And oh, the anxiety of going into the bookstore, not knowing if the book would be there, if it had sold out already, if I was going to have to hop the subway (for I was in NYC by this time) to make the forty-five minute trek downtown when I had class in two and a half hours but who cares because I really *needed* this book, ASAP.

And then, the library visits! Seriously, I collected library memberships by the bushel. Oakland, Berkeley, West Contra Costa, Alameda and San Francisco: none of you were safe, in the summers. At my boarding school, I was the only student I knew with a membership to the town’s public library. At college, joining NYPL was my last stop of move-in day. In my head, I was an elite hunter, a sophisticated and merciless tracker of books; I entered these libraries like an assassin, intent on leaving no good book spared. I felt…ridiculously glamorous and self-important as I corralled the books that other library-goers had somehow, in their carelessness, missed or forgotten to check out. Again, my triumph, in exiting with a new release I’d had the unbelievable good luck to find on the shelf (no doubt two seconds after its return, or so I imagined) gave me the sort of giddy elation other people look for in shady drugs manufactured in basements.

For the most part, complaints about e-readers puzzle me. Don’t get me wrong: I understand the peculiar, sensual appeal of paper. I like to dog-ear and underline. Being brutal to my books was how I showed them love. As a kid I was so jealous of friends who loved their stuffed animals enough to wear away eyes and noses; I could never invest the time; feeling bad for my animals’ clear signs of neglect, I’d rub them over the gritty surface of the sidewalk to manufacture signs of wear and tear. But my books? Those required no extra treatment. Row upon row, shelf upon shelf, their spines were cracked, their pages bent, their covers creased, and I was proud of that. My friends whose books looked untouched roused my silent suspicion when they claimed to love to read.

In other words, I get the longing for paper. I understand intimately the pleasures of a physical interaction that registers one’s involvement with words.

But that alone is not enough to diminish my love of the miracle that is e-readers. Last summer, marooned at 12,000 feet above sea level, much nearer to the equator than my sunblock was apparently designed to handle, and much farther from English-language bookstores than I could like, I nevertheless read a book every thirty-six hours, thanks to the Sony Pocket Reader I’d stuffed to the gills before leaving home. To risk a really vulgar and possibly offensive analogy, for which I hope you’ll pardon me: my e-reader felt to me much as I imagine a stocked liquor cabinet feels to someone who’s developing a drinking problem: I felt safer, more comfortable, somehow *settled* in myself, knowing that I had a good supply of books to see me through my Peruvian summer. But I also felt anxious, uneasy, to know I had so many, many books available at the touch of a button. And in the course of the summer I came to understand this curious anxiety a little bit better, because I found that for me, e-reading is a very different game than reading in paper—and here is where my ambivalence about e-reading truly lies.

For a book addict, once the thrill of the hunt is removed, once the chase is no longer required, the experience of reading changes, somehow.

I find myself skipping from book to book like a madwoman.

I find myself ripping through the electronic pages at a pace that leaves me feeling at once glutted and vaguely nauseated.

I find my greed expanding exponentially, with no obstacles to regulate it.

And, of course, I find that I miss the signs and tokens—the bent pages, the cracked spine—that visually register the interior journey I took through a story.

My e-reader is my personal Xanax for travel: if I know I never will be without a book, I have no doubts about my journey. For the same reason, it also comforts me on sleepless nights. But I confess: I miss the chase. I miss the thrill of victory when books seemed objects that required careful planning, strategizing, and even a bit of luck to obtain. And I miss, above all, what I might call…the *friction* of paper books.

I mistrust myself with my e-reader. In its thrall, I’m becoming a different sort of reader. Sometimes, now, when I have a paper version in my hands, I forget to dog-ear.

This is useless romanticism. I’ll never give up my e-reader, and clinging to it does not mean that I must stop reading paper or that paper is dying. But such are the thoughts born of a sleepless night.

So, about eight weeks ago, my younger sister, Shelley, comes to me and says, “Hey, I wrote a book.”

(You may recognize Shelley’s name if you read The Duke of Shadows.  The book is dedicated to her for good reason.  She found the manuscript under a bed, where I’d abandoned it after numerous literary agents declined to represent it.  Having read and liked the book, Shelley convinced me to try again. She is the reason that I’m now a published author.)

I’d always known Shelley was a talented writer and an avid reader, but I had no idea that she’d been writing fiction, much less novel-length fiction. So here’s how our conversation went:

Me: “You’ve been writing?  Hey, that’s awesome!  I always said you should give it a go.”

My sister: “In fact, I’ve been writing for some time.  This is my…oh, seventh manuscript?”

Me: “What?!?”

My sister: “Yeah, I enjoy it.”

Me: “Um.  Okay, that’s awesome.  A bit…secretive, but purely awesome all the same.  So, what kind of book is it?”

My sister: “YA, set in the near future.”

Me (thinking myself witty): “Hmm, let me guess: it’s about a girl who meets and falls in love with a mysterious and slightly sadistic stranger in her chem/bio/gym class.”

My sister: “Wrong all around.  For one thing, the protagonist is a teenage guy.”

Me: “A guy?  Huh.”  (I think to myself: Bummer.  I prefer female protagonists.)  “Well, can I read it?”

My sister: “Sure!  Emailing it now.”

24 hours later…

Me (purely astonished): “Shel, this book is…amazing.  I mean… I’m kind of speechless.  It’s that good.  Totally intense, but also amazingly funny in parts.  I literally couldn’t put it down until I was finished reading it. It’s just…awesome.”

My sister: “Thanks!  Good to hear!”

Me: “What I’m saying is that this book could be published. You should be querying agents RIGHT NOW.  I could give you some tips—”

My sister:  “Oh, I already have an agent.”

Me:  “…What? You already have an agent?”

My sister: “Yep.  I queried a while back and [big fancy NY agent] liked it a lot.  He’s planning on submitting in January.”

Me: “Um.  Um.  YOU NEVER BREATHED A WORD OF THIS.  YOU DO REALIZE THAT?”

My sister (no doubt blinking innocently):  “Well, I didn’t know if anything would come of it.  Still might go nowhere, you know?  Maybe just forget you read it.”

Me: “NOT LIKELY.”

My sister: “Seriously, you never know.  Maybe nobody will want it.”

Six weeks pass

Me (unable to play it cool any longer): “Shel, any news from your agent?”

My sister: “Oh, yeah, nice news!”

Me (dying of excitement): “What kind of news?”

My sister:  “It just sold in a pre-empt for [a sum that my brain translates to a gazillion trillion dollars].”

Me (collecting jaw off floor): “…This means you’re buying me dinner from now on, right?  ’Cause I’m a starving student, you know.  You owe me dinners.  You owe me LOTS of dinners.”

My sister:  “Dude, WTF?  No way.  You’re the big sister!  You buy the dinners!”

Me: “You’re the super-secretive 007 writer whose book just got bought AS A PRE-EMPT about ten seconds after I found out that you’d started writing!”

My sister: “Okay, fine.  I’ll send you a Cliff bar in the mail.”

Here’s the text of the Publisher’s Weekly announcement that just appeared:

S.J. Kincaid’s INSIGNIA, in which a teenage video gamer becomes a government weapon in a futuristic world at war, to Molly O’Neill at Katherine Tegen Books, in a pre-empt, in a significant deal, in a three-book deal, by David Dunton at Harvey Klinger.

If you’re curious to learn more, go check out her blog (http://sjkincaid.blogspot.com/)!  Me, I’ll be over here on the fainting couch, recovering from the vapors.

TANGENT/

Speaking of Brussels sprouts, I’ve been noticing a disturbing web-wide trend of disparaging these heroic vegetables.  (Carolyn Jewel, I am looking at you!  Yes, I saw that interview!)  While driving along the coast, I obtained two stalks of Brussels sprouts and they changed my world.  I am here to tell you that said stalks are 1) fun to wave like wands; 2) ideal for bopping people atop the head; 3) DELICIOUS.  I now issue a dare to all the haters:

1. You get some Brussels sprouts and slice them into thirds.

2. You put them into a bowl and add a whole lot of olive oil, salt, and chopped raw garlic.

3. You mix it all up.

4. You toss the contents onto a tinfoil-covered pan and cook it for twenty to twenty-five minutes at 400-425 degrees, depending on your oven.

5. When the sprouts look nicely browned on top, you remove the pan and you eat the sprouts with sour cream.

6. Then you come back and talk to me about how you like Brussels sprouts!

* Disclaimer: If you steam the sprouts, all bets are off.  I cannot argue with the awfulness of steamed Brussels sprouts.

/END TANGENT

I am one of those curious children who truly enjoys being at home with my parents, doing nothing.  Indeed, if left to my own devices, I would have been shamefully content to spend all twenty days of my break sitting on my parents’ couch, egg nog (AND BRUSSELS SPROUTS) to my left, sourdough bread and e-reader to my right, mainlining various World War II-themed miniseries. Winds of War and War and Remembrance?  So fantastic!  (Apart from the whole miscasting thing. Robert Mitchum is a fantastic actor, but he was 65 at the time the first series was shot, playing a character who’s supposed to be 39 or 40.  As a result, a romance that thrilled me in the book began to seem rather…icky…on-screen.)

But the Lad, AKA my partner in crime, was out in California to meet the parents.  And he insisted we Do Stuff.  Which, you know, sounded reasonable.

So off we went to the aquarium in Monterey, where I ogled a great many jellyfish, cuttle-fish, octopuses (nope, it doesn’t pluralize to octopi, apparently.  This bums me out for obscure reasons.  I guess I like the idea of a Latinate sea creature), sharks, and otters.  I return to you with a discovery: the underwater world is twice as weird as anything ever shown to me in Star Trek: The Next Generation (a formative influence).

The aquarium experience also got me thinking about how wonder is such a devalued feeling in adult life.  As a child, so many things are new and strange, but once we grow up and settle into jobs and learn the art of juggling bills and various other responsibilities, we tend to forget to take time to search for the strange and unexpected.  I certainly forget how rejuvenating it can be to encounter something you knew absolutely nothing about.  Sea horses, for instance—did you know they could look like this?

Not a great photo, but trust me, the sea horse is technicolor.

At the aquarium, I felt like a wide-eyed kid as I walked through those rooms, and I left feeling younger and lighter, somehow.

The other wondrous highlight of my holiday was The Secret River, by Kate Grenville.  This is a beautifully written piece of historical fiction that conjures 18^th century London and Australia with vivid, gripping immediacy.  I highly recommend it to the historical fiction fans out there!

All right, I feel a wee bit bad having posted and said not a word about writing.  Suffice it to say that A Lady’s Lesson in Scandal is off my desk, into production, and features a heroine who’s my favorite yet.  (How amusing: I feel slightly bad admitting that…as though Lydia and Emma and Gwen et al might take offense.  Ha!)  I’ll be sure to speak more of ALLiS in my next post. In the meantime, please attend to your Brussels sprouts!

I did my packing over several days and remembered a lot of things that I might otherwise have forgotten, had I packed in a hurry.  As usual, however, I forgot my hairbrush.  But not to worry, you can’t tell the difference–which was why I demoted hairbrushes from friends to nodding acquaintances in the first place.  :-)

Another thing I forgot was a pretty basket to display all the promo goodies I’d taken to NJ.  I took a look around the hotel room and pressed into service the lovely black box used to hold paper coffee cups, coffee pouches, teabags, sugar packets and such.  It was perfect.  I might never bother taking a basket with me again.  :-)

But you are here to read about Meredith.  So allow me to report that yes, she is alive and well–and looking awfully cute in a cowhide-print dress and red boots.  Chic with a touch of bohemian quirk.  (My conference attire, on the other hand, swing from twee to tarty and back, with very little in between.)

She is very close to finishing her next book–due out in July 2011.  The book is going to have a marriage of convenience theme and a heroine who knows her way around salty language, both of which I love.  Alas, I did not get a chance to read the manuscript, but I did get to fondle  the lucky Alpha Smart that will birth the next Meredith Duran masterpiece.

Meredith gave her very first romance writing workshop at the conference, on using backstory to shape what a character fears, and then having those deep-seated fears drive the story forward.  It was brilliant and profoundly insightful.

I give an occasional workshop on evoking emotions which advises entering a character via their deepest, darkest pain.

Fear and pain, two sides of the same coin, wouldn’t you say?  Little wonder Meredith and I see eye-to-eye on so many things.

(But as exceptional as Meredith’s workshop was, I’m afraid I am going to have to hand the best-in-show award to the one given by the one and only Anne Stuart.  I am never going to write a hero dark enough to rival Anne’s renowned antiheroes, but I went to her How to Write the Dark Romance workshop just to be nearer her barbed halo.

Okay, I went because I was curious as to just how fun and fearless she could be.  I left a squealing fangirl of her sheer awesomeness.  On my gravestone I want the epitaph: “There is only ever one Anne Stuart, but Sherry Thomas made herself into a pretty good fascimile.”

I only regret I didn’t invite myself up to her room to see the pig.)

And wouldn’t you know, Meredith promised that after she’s done with the current manuscript, she’s going to blog on a regular basis.  I can’t wait.  Meredith has one of the most immense and satisfying minds around.

Which was why I was saddened that she left the conference right after the book signing on Saturday.  But if her going home sooner is going to produce the next Meredith Duran oeuvre sooner, then I must do my part for romance and let her go.  :-)

Let’s see, what else?  If you have the chance, definitely attend the NJRWA conference.  It is run with wonderful vigor and efficiency.  Robyn Carr gave a great speech on her 30-years-in-the-making overnight success.  (We got to sit at conference chair Miriam Allenson’s table; she was on the opposite end of the table from us, but it was a thrill getting a special seating asignment!)  Virginia Kantra showed me the Roman woman strut–definitely ask her to tell you the story should you be lucky enough to run into her.  And the one and only Anne Stuart sat down next to me toward the end of the book signing and said, “I hear you write pretty racy books.”

Folks, at that  moment I’d have admitted to writing anything, least of all racy books!

And at the booksellers’ luncheon I met Stacey Agdern, who works at the bookstore at Grand Central Station.  I really can’t think of a cooler place on earth!  Here’s me, Stacey (r), and Kate Garrabrant (l), who is more familiarly known as Katiebabs around the romance blogosphere.

And this, just because it’s the next picture in my camera, the tableau Senior Kidlet arranged before the house.  The Great Pumpkin Pickaxe Massacre.  Pretty good way to salvage a destroyed jack-o-lantern, I say.  :-)

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!

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?

I knew that was going to be a dangerous confession! In many cases, the lyrics are very simple, even trite. But when they touch off an image or a vibe that brings alive some aspect of the characters’ relationship, they become profoundly important to my brainstorming.

With Bound by Your Touch I was particularly struck by “Eyes Open,” by Snow Patrol. The lyrics brought to life, for me, how James inhabits the wreck he has made of his life — the numbness he courts to get through his days, the anger he represses beneath his easy, freewheeling charm (“All this feels strange and untrue… My bones ache; my skin feels cold… The anger swells in my guts and I won’t feel these slices and cuts”). They also capture how central Lydia becomes to his journey toward redemption. He desperately needs to see himself clearly, and that only happens for him when he sees himself through her eyes (“I want so much to open your eyes because I need you to look into mine… “). The lyrics also seem to capture how his redemption ultimately becomes her path to freedom as well (“Get up, get out, get away from these liars, because they don’t get your soul or your fire / Take my hand, knot your fingers through mine, and we’ll walk from this dark room for the last time / Every minute from this minute now, we can do what we like anywhere…”).

So, on my playlist, this would be a “James” song.

With Written on Your Skin, the most influential bit of music wasn’t even a whole song — it was the fiddle solo that comes about two and a half minutes into Dave Matthews’ “Crush.” Seriously — whenever I was stuck, I would listen to that thirty second snippet. It’s funny; listening to it now, in order to answer your question, I can’t understand any longer what I found so inspiring. But I recall being enchanted by how its ecstatic and dramatic quality was leavened by hints of humor. It got me into the headspace of the power play between Mina and Phin, which is certainly dramatic but also, occasionally, very funny.

And here’s the mildly embarrassing part of this answer: another song I listened to quite often when writing Written on Your Skin was Britney Spears’s “Circus.” Mina, the heroine, is a force, and this song is about a woman under pressure (“All eyes on me in the center of the ring just like a circus”), who rises to the challenges thrown at her, and demands that anyone who wants her attention earn it the hard way (“Don’t stand there watching me, follow me, show me what you can do”). Mina, of course, has never met someone who can follow her, much less someone who can beat her at her own game. Until, of course, she meets Phin.

I have to girdle myself to do my research. But you, you like history. You would read primary sources even if you don’t have a book to research. What kind of historical readings do you enjoy the most?

I find travelogues immensely interesting. Judging by what I can find in my university library (and on Google books as well), they were greatly in vogue throughout the Victorian period. Since the authors are generally foreigners to the land about which they’re writing, they end up documenting the social scene and the local mores and everyday customs, all the little things that they would never think to remark on with regard to their own society. Victorian-era travelogues written by Americans visiting England are hugely useful for this reason.

My favorite sorts of travelogue are those that were written and initially published for a limited audience of family and friends; they’re chatty and personable, and often pair fabulous descriptions of various cities and countries with bits of gossip and social commentary about influential figures of the day.

You have written both damaged heroes (Duke of Shadows, Written on Your Skin) and roguish, golden-boy heroes (Bound by Your Touch). Which one do you enjoy better? Or do you just like to alternate them to keep things interesting?

Oh, I think James (Bound by Your Touch) is fairly well damaged, too. Certainly he’s better at hiding it — from himself as well as others. That fabulous sense of humor makes his scars a bit more difficult to spot.
I can’t really imagine writing a perfectly well-adjusted hero. I’m sure I will one day write a hero who *seems* perfectly well-adjusted,but ultimately I find my characters’ flaws more interesting than their talents. And I find it particularly interesting when their talents are inextricably linked with their flaws — as James’s humor and charm are.

Your two 2009 releases are both set during the 1880s, late Victorian, so to speak. The Victorian reputation in pop culture is the cover-the-piano-leg prudishness. But prudishness was largely a phenomenon of the Victorian middle class. The upper class were a rather naughty bunch–upon whom the middle class frowned mightily, I might add. In another one of your interviews I’d read, you mention that you’d come across “descriptions of parlor games played during country weekends that, let’s just say, you wouldn’t want your teenage daughter playing with her friends.” Inquiring minds want to know. What kind of parlor games are we talking about, exactly?

So, the upper crust played a lot of intellectual parlor games — freestyle poetry or charades, for instance. But they also played rather more physical games, which many of us might recognize from childhood: Blind Man’s Bluff, Sardines (hide-and-seek in which only one person hides; as others find this person, they must squeeze in to hide with him/her), and various “Sit on me” games, like Squeak Piggy Squeak.
Have you played any of these games since you turned sixteen or so? Probably not. Why not? Because piling into closets together, groping each other, or sitting on each other becomes rather more risque once you hit puberty.
Now think of a whole lot of adults playing these games after a night of wine and champagne, in a dark, sprawling country house in the middle of nowhere. Good, clean fun… no?

Your 2010 release is currently titled Wicked Becomes You. Along with Bound by Your Touch and Written on Your Skin, they are a trifecta of total triumphs as far as titles go. Who came up with those titles, you, your editor, or the marketing team at your publishing house? Are there any interesting stories behind those titles?

Yep, they were all my suggestions. Generally, I come up with a list of possible titles for each book, submit it to my editor and agent, and we all confer. (What this pithy summary elides is the many days I spend ripping my hair out while brainstorming titles. Some of my rejected suggestions are laughably bad.)

Interesting stories, hmm… Well, Written on Your Skin was named before it was written, and my agent floated the concern that the title conjured an erotic romance rather than a historical. I occasionally wonder if this is why WOYS ended up being even hotter than BBYT — I “wrote to the title”, as it were.

Then again, when a friend of mine heard the title, she said, “Rethink that. It sounds like it’s about a serial killer.”

Ah, well. You can’t win ‘em all.

Yes, you can, Meredith. Your gorgeous books will win readers and influence aspiring writers! Congratulations on the book release. I’m getting off my bum to the bookstore this minute!

She is talented.  God, is she talented.  You could put her on the cover of a romance directly, no retouching required.  She can drink George Clooney under the table–a quality, particularly in a woman, that makes me green with envy, as a cup of hot cocoa can drink me under the table.  And she will mostly likely put a Ph.D. after her name in a couple of years, something that my shallow, snobbish soul covets, but is too lazy to do anything about.

Meredith and I have always been destined to meet and fall in mutual fangirl adoration, though neither of us knew it.  Or at least, I didn’t.  You see, we have been part of the same menage for years, both of us sharing the same critique partner, Janine of Dear Author.   But we’ve never critiqued each other–and still don’t–and I didn’t even know she existed until she won the Gather.com contest.  Upon which point, Janine excitedly mention to me this other critique partner, and I asked, sobbing, “Since when have you been cheating on me?” 

(To Meredith, once and for all, I came first, I’m the chief wife, you are just the concubine!)

We met in person at last year’s RWA Nationals in San Francisco, she, Bettie Sharpe, and I.  The three of us sat down in my hotel room and played a little storytelling game.   (The game had actually begun the previous night at Courtney Milan‘s puppy party.  We randomly pointed our fingers to a few words in a newspaper, and Courtney came up with this fun beginning, “All women on the Moon have small breasts.  That is, until a woman arrived from Mars with double-D cups.”  But nobody at the party did anything with that intriguing premise. )

Well, Bettie, Meredith, and I, we did everything with that intriguing premise.  From double-headed twins to the bowels of Uranus, we went on an interstellar adventure that would have the writers of Battlestar Galactica speechless with wonder.  But the line of the night belonged to Meredith, who, upon being presented the Mars lady with double-D cups bankrupted by her venture into plus-sized lingerie–no other woman on the moon needs anything other than training bras–came up with this immortal plot twist, “And then, coming to her rescue, the Greek billionaire tycoon who is pregnant with his own secret baby!”

That was the moment I became a Meredith Duran fangirl.  And now I am excessively delighted to announce that Meredith has joined Plotters & Manipulators United to fulfill this blog’s manifest and plural destiny.

Welcome, Meredith, and may you bring me the notoriety I have never achieved on my own.  Uh, I mean, may we blog long and prosperously together.

Cheers!

P.S. Many heartfelt thanks to Michelle McGinnis, who held my hand patiently as I gingerly dipped my toes into WordPress.  Heck, she put me in a life-preserver, and pushed me across the pool. 

P.P.S.  I have incredibly twee tastes and love, love, love this cute little theme.  But if it’s too slow loading, let me know and I’ll switch–sob–to something more lightweight and efficient.