Happy Birthday, Anne Gracie!

It's that time of year again -- Anne Gracie's birthday!

If you aren't already familiar with Anne's wonderful warm witty books, get thee to Amazon or Book Depository or Barnes and Noble or your favorite neighborhood bookshop and start ordering all of her terrific back list.

If you have already read them, you know what I'm talking about, and you'll be delighted to know that she's got another great story nearly ready to send to her publisher. I've had the pleasure of reading bits and pieces of Nash Renfrew's story when she feels charitable enough to send me a piece. I'm loving it.

So rather than encourage her to go out and celebrate her birthday, instead I suggested she stay home and write. There will be plenty of time for merry-making AFTER Nash has been safely bundled off to the publisher (but he could make a quick trip by my house on his way, just so I can find out how it ends, please!)

Happy birthday, Anne!

Thank you for your friendship, your sense of humor, your maravelous books, your wonderful heroes and delightful heroines. Thank you for your wisdom and your laughter.

Thank you for making me make George pull his socks up and be a hero. Ditto for Demetrios, Christo, Seb, PJ, and Spence. They thank you, too.

And Nash will thank you if you'll please just go back now and get to work!

Welcome to Procrastination

As I've now left Demetrios standing on a corner (watching all the girls go by) for the past week, it should be no surprise that I understand the fine art of procrastination.

I need to get him moving again today. And I will because I finally (I hope) have figured out the reason he's still standing there. Short answer: Even though I knew where he was going next, I didn't know how to get him there. Now I think I do. And so I will.

But in the meantime, I've discovered that my dear friend Anne Gracie has developed two new levels of procrastination at once!

She's begun a blog. And she's taken up twittering.

While I completely endorse her blogging (as if twice monthly on Word Wenches isn't enough), and I'm happy she's twittering so I can follow her (though I don't twitter myself), I understand this for what it is -- avoidance.

I'm avoiding Demetrios. She's avoiding Luke. Why are we avoiding these strong compelling men?

Well, possibly because they are so strong and compelling we can't quite figure out what to do with them -- and we're a bit nervous of letting them do what they want. No, not a bit. In my case, I'm very nervous about letting Demetrios do what he wants.

So I've stranded him on a street corner while I figure out what to do with him. And the last I knew, Anne had set Luke to digging a grave.

Her scenario sounds way more interesting. You don't often get to have contemporary heroes digging graves as a matter of course. It's worth thinking about, though.

Anyway, I'm delighted she's blogging because I can read her -- and get to see pics of her very photogenic dog, Chloe.

And thus take even more time away from Demetrios.

Or not. Actually, since I'm off to see Henry & Ellie on the weekend, I need to get Demetrios off that corner and doing something seriously heroic.

I hope.

Wild About Harry

I love Anne Gracie's books. Never met one I didn't like, want to hang out with, read from cover to cover, then go back again and start all over.

I'm particularly wild about Harry, the hero of her new book, His Captive Lady, which just came out this month.

Harry Morant is the half-brother of Gabriel Renfrew, hero of the first of Anne's Devil Riders series. If Gabe's childhood was difficult, Harry's was well-nigh impossible. He's past it now. Grown up. A man of his own making -- but still something of a work in progress.

And the man Harry is going to become is in large part due to what happens when he meets Nell.

As the back cover tells us, "Harry Morant's tough exterior hides a badly scarred heart. Home after eight years at war, Harry is planning a practical, unemotional marriage. But his careful plans are threatened by an unexpected passion for an unknown lady.

"A lifetime of lies has brought Lady Helen Freymore to the brink of ruin. Forced into a marriage she never thought to have, she soon finds herself powerfully drawn to this deceptively gentle soldier... and increasingly worried about his reaction once he discovers her secret."

Oh, yeah. Wounded hero. Unexpected passion. Mysterious heroine. What's not to love?

Brooding, intense Harry captured my heart. And as she always does, Anne tells his story with equal parts deep emotion and gentle humor.

Her characters are wonderful to know. I fell in love with Harry when I read him in rough draft form. And he's only improved with polish.

And Nell? Nell is the last woman Harry would ever have imagined himself falling in love with. He fights it. So does Nell. But love is more powerful than fear, than bitterness, than the past.

Harry and Nell's love -- in spite of themselves -- is what makes the story so special.

Thanks, Anne, for another great read. Now get back to the computer, hurry up and finish Rafe's book! Your public is waiting.

Chloe Picks a Winner

Meet Chloe.

She's Anne Gracie's dog. She has sparkly collars and feather boas for all occasions. And in this case she was picking a winner from among the commenters on my blog about Anne over on Tote Bags 'n' Blogs on Monday.

So here's what happened, in Anne's words:

"Papers bearing numbers 1-18 were laid out over the rug. Wagging tail
and leaping dog (who knows a camera means Treats) disrupted original
neat layout.

A dried liver treat was tossed onto the rug. There was a flurry of dog
and sparkles and a piece of paper bearing a number got pawed away in
the scrum.

And the number on that piece of paper was #13, which was... Deseng..ie.
Michelle L, the winner."

So, congratulations, Michelle L! If you will go to my website and hit the 'contact Anne' button at the bottom of the sidebar (or just click the link here), you can leave me your mailing address and I'll see that you get your prize -- a copy of my The Boss's Wife For A Week and one of my favorite book of Anne's, The Perfect Waltz.

Thanks so much to everyone who commented. I think Anne enjoyed her birthday!

And for those of you who are contest-oriented, check back on Feb 1 when Kate Walker and Liz Fielding and I -- and those grooms! -- start up the second annual "Here Come The Grooms" contest.

Where do you get your ideas, part 4

I have no idea how many times we've talked about where you get your ideas -- or I get mine. But there have been a few posts at least. So consider this a sequel and let's talk about football.

Football?

Why not? It was the best weekend for football all year. Four games between the eight best teams. What more could you ask for?

There was drama, excitement, snowstorms, controversy, old gunslingers and new kids on the block. All the stuff that great stories are made of.

If you watched, you would have a ton of story ideas. Who wouldn't warm to the Ryan Grant two-fumbles followed by three touchdowns and 201 yards bounce back from disaster? Who didn't delight with Brett Favre in yet another amazing game -- this one complete with snowballs?

Who didn't wonder whether Tony Romo should have gone to Cabo -- or if they didn't wonder that, they probably wondered why on earth anyone would care where he went and with whom?

And Eli? Who expected Eli to be the last Manning standing on Sunday evening? And who doesn't know who the Chargers' backup quarterback is now?

People ask, Where do you get your ideas?

Watching football. Or doing whatever else you did this weekend. You don't even have to write about football. In fact, if you're writing romance, you probably don't want to be writing about football because, Susan Elizabeth Phillips aside, most romance writers who tackle (only slightly intentional pun) football don't endear themselves to their editors -- or at least to marketing.

The point is, the ideas are there. It's being open to them. Spotting them. Twisting them and turning them. Perceiving them in this light, then in that one. It's all in what you do with them.

And anyone who writes will tell you that even given the same ideas, we all do different things with them.

Today I wrote a guest blog about a writer who does great things with the ideas that come to her -- and who never ceases to delight me when I read her books. You can find the blog over on Author Sound Relations' Tote Bags 'n' Blogs. Check it out. Leave a comment.

If you do, you might win a copy of my most recent book, The Boss's Wife For A Week. You might win a copy of my favorite book of hers, The Perfect Waltz.

Know who I'm talking about?

Anne Gracie.

And it just happens to be her birthday. Happy birthday, Anne!

Dialogue

One of the biggest stumbling blocks for me in writing -- and one of the most absolutely essential parts of every story -- is the backstory: the part that happens BEFORE the part I'm actually dealing with in real time in the book.

It's vital because it is the reason the characters are the way they are. It's a stumbling block because there is a fine line between putting in what readers need to know and telling them more than they need to know.

It's crucial, and yet it can stop a story dead if there's too much of it.

Because my two new characters have a history, they have a shared backstory. Some of it readers will need to know. A lot more of it I need to know. Just how much to share in the first stages of the book is critical.

I've recently been thinking I've got too much backstory as narrative. So today I spent cutting it all out (decreasing my word count. Argh). But also, increasing the pace of the book because now the backstory is in dialogue.

Anne Gracie and I were talking about this last night (well, it was my last night; it was her this afternoon, which is now her yesterday but is still my today, if that makes sense). She had just mentioned teaching a master class in writing and talked about dealing with dialogue.

And it made me remember a course in playwriting I took in college (for which we will have a moment of silent gratitude here for William Reardon, excellent professor of drama and playwriting) who taught me the whys behind what I was already doing in dialogue.

Thinking about what he said made me take another look at this book -- and this scene. And cut all the narrative and tell the story in dialogue. Great challenge. Picked up the pace. Hmm.

Maybe I should go write a play instead.