The Bourne Supremacy

Joanna Bourne, author of The Spymaster’s Lady, does not have much of a web presence. But she does have a blog, and she’s posted a most useful writing class, the beginning of a series.

Example

Word choice: Superfluous ‘that’s’.

At the polishing stage of the redraft, do a search on ‘that’. Every time a sentence reads fine without ‘that’, pull it out.

Not – It is clear that Joanie dunks donuts.
But — It is clear Joanie dunks donuts.
Or better … Clearly, Joanie dunks donuts, which frees the predicate from the verb ‘to be’, which is nearly always an improvement.

If you care about the employment and deployment of language in your writing, head over and read. She gives great examples–I can’t learn without examples–and you are definitely learning from a master here. And even if you already know how to structure a sentence for maximum clarity, efficiency, and impact, you should still head over and read. It never hurts to review what you know.

(I would love to be able to give similar lessons, but I don’t know a predicate from a syndicate and judging by my desperate word-stripping during the page proof phase of Delicious, I still use far, far too many words.)

This & That

A long time ago, I read that Barbra Streisand made some environmentally friendly suggestions to her fans on her website, one of which was asking them to line-dry their laundry. Some people demanded to know whether she line-dried her own clothes and there was a small-scale to-do over it.

I am not going to ask anyone to line-dry their wash. But, but, but, in honor of Earth Day, which came and went without my awareness, since at the Thomas household, everyday is Earth Day, much to the dismay of DH–I keep turning off the water when he’s doing dishes…Okay, where was I? Oh, my solar-powered dryer, let me show you it.

Everyone had laundry lines when I was growing up in China. Shirts and pants fluttered from balconies and yards and sidewalks. I didn’t realize how much I missed that sight until I passed through Hong Kong, after my first six years in the States, and could not get enough of all the “flags of ten thousand nations”–as we used to call colorful washing on a line.

There is something exuberant about a city district of apartment buildings all festooned with jeans and sweaters and sheets and pillowcases. My washing hanging in my backyard looks rather insipid in comparison. Suburban laundry. 🙂

It takes me about half an hour to put everything out–sock-sorting included. I think of it as my weekly meditation, a time when it’s just me, a sunny day, and my very ordinary backyard that for some reason is at its prettiest when I’m hanging up the washing.

In other news, book 3 (book 1 of my new contract) now has a title. I drew a complete blank on this one, so I pulled a title that had been suggested for Private Arrangements: Not Quite a Husband. Since the marriage between the H/H had been annulled, I figured it was accurate enough.

My editor replied that Not Quite a Husband had been put into the list over her strenuous objection. So I said no problem, we’ll figure another one–the last thing one should be attached to in publishing is titles.

The title I really wanted was Untie My Heart, which is a Judith Ivory title. So DH, being methodical, suggested that I look up synonyms for “untie.” We had a few good laughs over the exercise. “Oh look, how about Disembroil My Heart?” “How about Unclog My Heart?”

And then we came upon “unlock”. Oooh. Unlock My Heart. I immediately e-mailed my editor and my agent. My editor loves it right away. My agent likes it and also suggests Unchain My Heart, name of an old song.

I like Unchain My Heart even better than Unlock My Heart. But in discussion with my friend Janine, she pointed out that “unchain” might have a slightly different connotation than “unlock.” Untie My Heart had a scene where the heroine was literally tied to an upside-down chair while the hero had his way with her–an awesome scene by the way, though I still haven’t quite figured out exactly how the physics aspect of that scene worked.

We then had a discussion about those messages certain words convey in titles. A dark book would often have “shadow” in it, like Shadow Heart and The Shadow and the Star by Laura Kinsale, and the more recent The Duke of Shadows by Meredith Duran. And then I realized that omg, “arrangements” means sex is exchanged for something else. 😛

What to do? Unchain or unlock? Turns out neither. Marketing overrode my editor again and chose Not Quite a Husband. (I imagine my poor editor somewhere in a ditch, depleted from her valiant but ultimately doomed fight.) And so Not Quite a Husband it shall be, my most romance-y title yet.

And now, last but most certainly not least, I have put an ARC of Delicious up for bid in Brenda Novak’s 4th Annual Online Auction to Benefit Diabetes Research. But how can you put up a title called Delicious without having some goodies to go with it? So after a lot of strenuous research, I settled on a box of graphic print chocolate truffles from Viva Chocolato.

Isn’t it gorgeous? And costly too. That little box set me back more than $20. So please be generous and bid at least my chocolate’s worth! The bidding starts on May 1, 2008, at www.brendanovak.com. And as I’ve realized again, recently, karma can be a very nice doggy when you help others. But that’s another post for another day.

PA Book Release Contest and Pay-It-Forward Contest Winner

Well, there’s a new book in town. 🙂

And to help it along a bit, I’m having a multi-prize contest. To participate in this contest, purchase a copy of Private Arrangements in the first 2 weeks of its release (3.25.08—4.7.08). Send me a scan of your receipt to writer sherry thomas at gmail dot com, with the subject “ARC Contest”, or send me a physical copy of your receipt to Sherry Thomas, P.O.Box 201372, Austin, TX 78720-1372. Three winners will each receive an advance copy of Delicious, my August 2008 release. And three more entrants will each receive, as a consolation prize, a beautiful Private Arrangements t-shirt.

The drawing will be held on May 1, 2008.

And now, the victim winner of the query consultation contest is–drum roll please–CM. Please contact me at writersherrythomas at gmail dot com to claim your prize. (And please be a little patient with me as I must wrap up copyedits on Delicious in
the next couple of days as well as a number of other PA publicity-related items.)

Directed by Sherry Thomas

The book trailer for Private Arrangements is up at YouTube.

And it actually tells the beginning of the story, a condensed version of the first scene of confrontation, just beyond what is in the excerpt.

Gratitude and acknowledgments go out to Jane of Dear Author, whose ROTFL video reviews for The Courtesan’s Daughter by Claudia Dain inspired me to make one for myself; to Diana Holquist, for her timely article, “The Down and Dirty Guide to Making Your Own Book Promo Videos” in the February issue of the Romance Writer’s Report, which provided very helpful resources; and to the wizards behind Windows Movie Maker, the easiest, most intuitive software I have ever come across.

I had tons of fun making this. I think I’m in the wrong line of work. Writing books makes me tired and haggardly, this makes me feel so young and hip. 🙂

Hope you enjoy.

Pay-it-forward Contest: Query Consultation

The Fine Print:

  • Nobody ever sold a novel on a query letter. (Yeah, I know somebody must have somewhere, but most of us don’t get struck by lightning.)
  • Since I could write a seductive query letter long before I could write a book worth reading, I always encourage people to obsess more about their manuscripts than their query letters.
  • A query letter need not be perfect, only effective.
  • However, in the process of crafting an effective query letter, we might hit on certain major deficiencies in your manuscript. For example, if we can’t synthesize a good hook, it might mean you do not have good hook for us to synthesize.
  • Eventual success on any level not guaranteed.

Okay, that said, a query letter is important. I hereby offer a snark-free e-mail consultation. You must have a query letter already written for me to critique–I won’t write it from scratch. I don’t need to read your manuscript or even a partial to help you, but chances are I will need you to fill out a questionnaire after I’m done reading your query letter to help me hone in on the set-up and the conflict.

If you only have half a book, but want to enter in the hope that you might be able to use a consultation later, that’s fine with me. Just be aware that right now I have a bit of time, later I might be on deadline again.

Notice: I don’t go easy on my critiques. Sometimes it’s important to hear that you are doing fine. Other times it’s more important to get it right.

This contest runs until March 25.

Totally unrelated but have to share: I just got an awesome review from The Romance Reader, one of the most venerable romance review sites around. I think my jaw is still bouncing around on my kitchen floor somewhere. Get this, Camden, my male protagonist from Private Arrangements is said to rank “right up there with Jamie Fraser as a hero for the ages.” I don’t know about you, but for me that was a “Holy @#$%!” moment. Jamie Fraser? Holy @#$%!

ETA: Let me know in the comments if you are interested in the query consultation. One victim winner drawn on the 25th.


Michelle, You Tease, You

A couple of days ago Michelle Buonfiglio dropped me an e-mail.

I’d come across her name a couple of times before–she gave the cover blurb on Eve Kenin’s Driven, and Lisa Lleypas thanked her in the acknowledgment section of one of her contemporaries–but I didn’t really know who she was. Well, she is a great advocate for the genre, lifetimetv.com’s romance columnist, and the marquee name at Romance B(u)y the Book.

And she picked up PRIVATE ARRANGEMENTS out the hundreds of ARCs she receives every months, read it, liked it, and wants to feature it. (Can you tell how thankful I am that my publisher gave PA a distinctive cover?) I feel like Lana Turner, discovered at a drugstore soda fountain.

And the woman works fast. She’s already posted a fun tease for PA.

Really, I’m a little overwhelmed with the attention PRIVATE ARRANGEMENTS is getting. Maybe I should fly up to Hayden Christensen’s farm up north and have a chat with him about how to deal with sudden fame. 🙂 Oh, look. Here’s another stack of 1065 tax returns. Okay, that will do too.

My very own Desert Isle Keeper

I was at AllAboutRomance this afternoon doing my usual drive-by review reading. And then I had to blink and look at my screen again. It’s still five weeks before PRIVATE ARRANGEMENTS’s street date, but AAR’s review is online.

Now when I go to RWA nationals next time, I’ll get to wear one of those “I’ve been DIK’ed by AAR” pins that I so coveted in Dallas.

This is a true milestone. I’ve been reading AAR since the previous century–indeed, the previous millenium. 🙂 And I have waited a long time for one of my own books to join that venerated desert isle. My grade is an A-, rather than an outright A. But oh well, next time.

In other news, the excerpt of DELICIOUS is up at last.

SherryThomas.com

Yesterday was an excellent, excellent day.

I know you’ve been thinking, well, sixty hours a week isn’t that much, there is still 52 waking hours left to update this blog and run the pay-it-forward contest. 🙂 That would be very true, if I hadn’t spent so many of those 52 remaining waking hours getting my new website into shape.

Well yesterday, after all sorts of wrangling, the new website finally went live–which necessitated some further wrangling, as the remote browser turned out to be a lot less forgiving than my local browser. But now everything works–in IE and Firefox at least, though it is somewhat wobbly in Firefox: the formatting is a little off at times and the “back to top” links remain stubbornly comatose. And my gorgeous and smart husband just pointed out to me that my printable book list is a Microsoft Word document, which is limited to the Windows platform. So I guess I’ll be switching it to a pdf file very soon.

And I know this will be disappointing to the two diehard Sherry Thomas fans out there, 🙂 but the DELICIOUS excerpt isn’t live yet. I had actually styled the exerpt and everything before I remembered that I can only post as excerpt what my publisher uses on its website and in print. So that will go up as soon as I know what portion of DELICIOUS Bantam plans to use.

But still, go ahead and give it a look-see. The newsletter subscription is live, though it will be a few more days before the subscription page is styled to look exactly like my site.

A great big happy-sobbing “Thank You” goes out to my friend Michelle McGinnis, a true web maven, who has been instrumental in helping me achieve my dream of becoming my own webmaster. Just think, before Michelle came into the picture, I didn’t know about syntax-sensitive editors or link checkers or even how exactly my html files would upload into my server.

A great big “Thank You” also goes out to Frauke of CrocoDesigns, the woman responsible for the look of the new site and a consummate professional in every way.

And thank you so much, dear blog readers, for your patience. I will try to better at blogging when all the craziness calms down a little.

Here’s a little guest-blogging I did at the Valenduckie event at The Good, the Bad, and The Unread, in case you are desperately looking for something to read. 🙂

Until next time.

Updated to add: My Library Journal interview is online and that is everything you’ll ever need to know about me. 😀

Death by Tax Returns

No, not my own, those at work.

I’ve been doing lots of them. Lots. On Monday I worked 14 hours. On Valentine’s day I worked 10 hours, and that’s only because in the afternoon I took a 2 hour break to work on my website, otherwise another 12 hour day.

So the Pay-it-forward contest will have to postpone a little. Sorry. ::hangs head in shame::

My contract expires on February 28. (I’m a seasonal worker. Saying that makes me feel a bit like migrant farm labor but that’s what I am.) I suspect at the beginning of March I will still be flat out racing to finish my line-edits and all sorts of promotional stuff for PRIVATE ARRANGEMENTS.

So the new date for the pay-it-forward contest will be March 15. And I’ve decided not to promote it elsewhere. It will be just for readers of this blog. The contest closes on March 25. I will wake up that day ready to pay it forward. 🙂

Christmas De-hiatus

I think I’m in love.

Yesterday, I made my usual visits to the gossip blogs and came across this.

“Douchebag.”
“What a douchebag.”
It feels good to say, “douchebag.” It’s got two different plosive sounds, the “D” and “B”, and nicely wedged between is a wonderful “sh” sound (technically known as a voiceless palato-alveolar sibilant, at the risk of coming off douchey) that, when preceded with “oooooh”, give your lips the sensation of sliding on a hardwood floor in a pair of woolen socks.

It was someone quoting John Mayer, on his dissection of that ever-useful, ever-in-vogue term after he learned by googling himself that he is considered a douchebag by many. I didn’t know anything about John Mayer, other than he dated Jessica Simpson for a while and he’s a weird-looking musician of some sort–the tragedy of our times is that all too easy a man becomes better known for whom he bangs than what he does–but after I read a hundred words of his writing my interest spiked higher than the price of milk.

I read the paragraph again, aloud, lolling like a pig in mud in the texture and weight and sound of his words, and shivered as I recited “the sensation of sliding on a hardwood floor in a pair of woolen socks.” And then I immediately went to read as much of his blog as I had time for.

I still haven’t tried his music, but what a gorgeous writing voice the man has.

If you are bored, or suffer from blog-itis as I do, here are links to a bunch of blog entries I have up at various places around romancelandia.

Old Dudes I’d b–date, I mean.

Turn of the Century means people bathed.

Please don’t read this if your name is Anne Stuart. (Ha, like Anne Stuart cares. But I’m still scared of her.)

I hate heart-warming unless it has Hayden Christensen in the shower.

In other news–though I could be eating those words in two weeks–I think DELICIOUS will turn out to be a superior book to PRIVATE ARRANGEMENTS. Now everybody pray hard that I’m right.

A safe and fun New Year’s Eve to everyone. And a happy and healthy 2008 to all. Should be an interest year for me.