Working Wednesday, November 29, 2023

I was up late last night working on Anna–Bob went through and rewrote Nate and made him a much stronger character–and I forgot today was Wednesday, so I apologize for the late post. He’ll shortly be sending me his newest pass at Very Nice Funerals, so I need to get Anna revised with new scenes and back to him. And I need to clear out enough stuff that hasn’t been unpacked yet so I can get my car in the garage so the local maintenance people can plow the drive. One thing after another.

So what did you work on this week?

A Ramble About Titles (Not a Rant)

I was reading through BookBub and saw a lot of On-The-Nose titles. You know, The Billionaire’s Secret Ranch Baby (not a real title) (I hope). The upside of those is that you know exactly what you’re getting, which is good. I mean, I would probably buy A Hot Hockey Romance Where the Hero Looks Like Wentworth Miller. (I would totally buy that book.). But it also seems like it cheapens the book somehow. Not the content, there are probably many great books behind OTN titles. But just the reductive-ness of it. I mean, they didn’t call The Mummy, Indiana Jones Set in Egypt (was that set in Egypt?) And Loretta Chase did not title Mr. Impossible, My Version of the Mummy with a Brilliant Bluestocking and a Hot Aristocrat (that book, by the way, is fantastic) although I would have bought it for that title. Well, I would have bought it because it had “Loretta Chase” on the cover, but you know what I mean. OTN Title Marketing works. Continue reading

Starting the Second Book

Writing a series has been eye-opening in many ways, but the biggest surprise is how fast the second and third books go. Well, went. This is just our second series, so stay tuned.

The thing I’m realizing now, as we start Very Nice Funerals, is how this has shifted the romance plot for me. Writing stand-alone, the lovers meet, work out a relationship, and commit. That worked for me until I did the Liz/Vince series and realized that the interesting stuff happens after the okay-let’s-do-this ending. Now they’re together. The hard stuff starts. I had a great time with that in the Liz/Vince books, showing how they tentatively got in deeper with each other, trying to navigate their issues and their needs. It was so much more interesting that my standard romance plot (although I really do not know how I’d arc that further in a second Liz/Vince series, so I’m still cogitating on that.)

But the Rose/Max relationship is even more off the wall than Liz and Vince. Continue reading

Happiness is Working Internet and a Lot of Yarn

Krissie fixed my internet–she spent a lot of time on the phone talking to a very nice rep who got us online which I needed Krisse for because she has the patience of a saint and I have the focus of a fruit fly–which made it possible for me to hit the Knitpicks/WeCrochet Big Sale hard. For those of you not fiber freaks, once a year the two sister sites have a two week sale that’s really a blow-out, and even though I swear every year I have enough yarn (because I have enough yarn) they get me. So for the past week I’ve been killing my budget with new yarn, and now it’s starting to arrive, and it’s like Christmas every time another box lands. (For the record, this is my Christmas to myself. That makes it okay that I’m spending that much money. I think.). So for me, this week, happiness is yarn, and a working internet because that’s actually more important than yarn. Continue reading

The Vanilla Protagonist: A Grimm Problem

The new season of Grimm has started, and I’m still hooked; in fact, I think it’s gotten better. I’m trying to figure out why because there’s so much about I shouldn’t like. The romantic relationship is too Mary Sue, the Wesen-of-the-week bit should be getting old, and sometimes the plots don’t quite work (“Quills,” I’m lookin’ at you). But the biggest flaw, the thing that should be the dealbreaker, is that the protagonist, Nick, is one of the most vanilla heroes ever written. The actor playing him does a good job, but there’s only so much Good, Truth, and Beauty I can take in a protagonist before I wander off. Yet I’ll be logging onto Hulu every week to see what happens to him next. Which brings me to the big question: Why?
Continue reading