Plotters & Manipulators United
…and anarchy ensues
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!
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!
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.
I have no idea how other authors begin a new project. But with Bound by Your Touch rushing toward the shelves (the first review is already in!) and Written on Your Skin off to print, it’s time to start working on the next book. For me, that usually begins with a backstory that pops into my head, fully formed. (This is not as cool as it sounds. The backstory is what happens before the book starts. Suffice it to say, I would much prefer to have PLOTS pop fully formed into my mind. (Plotters, you have my undying envy.))
The question then becomes: how does this backstory make for a plot? To answer this question, I… procrastinate. I play with random ideas, read everything I can get my hands on, and daydream to a long and inspiring playlist of Music that Deeply Offends My Boyfriend’s Superior Taste.
I also occasionally entertain myself by searching Parliamentary records and date-restricted Google results. During my most recent search, I discovered a Ghost in the Google Machine: Eva Fox-Strangway, birthdate: unknown; death: March 1910.
Eva Fox-Strangway: who were you? Not who you said you were: that much is clear.
Both DELICIOUS and PRIVATE ARRANGEMENTS are in the DABWAHA Tournament. It’s set up like March Madness, 64 books, 1 champion. Go have some fun and vote for your faves. First round is on.
I just received the audio CDs for DELICIOUS in the mail yesterday. Now I feel like a rock star, or at least like Diane Settlefield, whose book The Thirteenth Tale, was the last book I listened to on audio. The narrator is Virginia Leishman, who also narrated Possession by A. S. Byatt for Recorded Books. Boy, does she make me sound like Masterpiece Theater. And it’s got a great cover. (My camera is broken. I’ll see if I can’t take a picture of it with someone else’s camera.) I’m wondering if I should do a giveaway. This would be the perfect romance conversion item, cuz your quarry wouldn’t even have any idea s/he was listening to romance, until it’s too late of course. 🙂