Write, Edit, Revise, Repeat

Whoo, it's been all about revisions over here this week. For a variety of reasons, I've had to get up close and personal with six of my already written books this week. At various times, my eyes have felt like bloody meatballs that were going to fall right out of my head! As I've mentioned before, most of my writing work gets done at night after the day job and kids are attended to, so by the time I get to it, my eyes have already put in a long day. This week they were particularly challenged.

A lot of writers complain about revisions. I don't mind them. Usually whatever is being suggested makes the book stronger. I am always in favor of that! Since I don't do critique groups or critique partners, this feedback is invaluable and always welcome. My usual process when receiving a revision letter is to do nothing for the first few hours. I just think. And plan. And process. Usually what needs to be done is fairly clear by the time I dive in and it never takes me all that long to revise. At least it hasn't so far... I'm sure my day is coming.

Going back and re-reading already-written books is like spending time with old friends. I always enjoy that. Because a big part of my writing process involves re-reading what I've already written and because I'm a trained copy editor, my first drafts are usually pretty clean. So when I go back to re-read long after I've finished a book I'm usually reading for story more than grammar. Sometimes I've forgotten exactly what happens next, so plot twists and turns can be surprising to me (which I hope means they would be surprising to readers, too!)

So that's what I've been up to this week. Read. Read. Read. Revise. Revise. Revise. Not much writing got done—at least not enough to bother reporting it on the sidebar. But it was a week well spent.

What've you been up to? Any plans for Valentine's Day? My friends Emily Bryan and Dalton Diaz and I will be participating in a Valentine's author event at the Duxbury Public Library in Duxbury, MA tomorrow at 2 p.m. It's free and open to the public. Come on by and say hello!

Reader Mail

One of my favorite parts of my writing journey is meeting and hearing from satisfied readers. I get lovely emails from readers who've connected with my characters and my stories, and this is ALWAYS thrilling. Sometimes, however, you get one of those emails that really hits you where you live. Today, I received one of those mesages from Aimee in Michigan, who asked me to add her to my mailing list after she enjoyed both books. I asked how she came upon my books, and this is what she said:

I have always enjoyed reading however in March of last year I was ill and in some pain and my husband bought the dvd and subsequentially the books of The Twilight Saga, and became immersed in romance novels from that point forward. The characterizations, the intriguing plots, the sense of humor, the angst. I began reading JR Ward, Sherilyn Kenynon, Lisa Kleypas among many others. While looking for some different types of books to read on a recent trip to mexico to celebrate my wedding anniversary - I found Love at First Flight and went to Amazon to check out some reviews and thought it sounded interested and light hearted. Usually I can set a book down but with your book - I was immersed, enthralled and just dying to know what would happen next. I just was invested in your characters - it's a rare thing...It's only happened for me personally a few times. Next I read "Line of Scrimmage" and what did i find but the same thing!!! You have this wonderful ability to make the reader engaged and fully invested in your characters. I was hooked by chapter one and actually rooting for your hero in so many different ways! As a side note, it was the first time my husband did not make fun of my books because he was SUCH a big fan of football - I would ask him football related questions and he kept saying "I like this one." It was some good fun in our household.

Something about Twilight made me find my love of reading again - there are SO many fans out there that lost the love of a good romance paranormal or contemporary :) and I'm thrilled to have found yours!!! I have added reviews to amazon and will be spreading the world via twitter and Facebook about your books!

Isn' t that so sweet? Thank you, Aimee. As I said in our emails, you made my day, my week, and my month!

Line of Scrimmage Fresh Pick of the Day

Got this message last night:

Greetings from Fresh Fiction,

LINE OF SCRIMMAGE was chosen to be a Fresh Pick at Fresh Fiction. Your cover and a link to LINE OF SCRIMMAGE will appear on every page of FreshFiction.com on February 3, 2010 and mailed to the subscribers of the Fresh Pick newsletter on February 3, 2010. We'll also Twitter and post on our Facebook Fan page about our selection on February 3, 2010.

The Fresh Pick is chosen by a group of readers and is never a purchased advertisement or promotion. We've chosen your book
because it appeals to us and we like to share our diverse tastes in reading and hope other readers will give it a try.

YAY! Thank you Fresh Fiction!

More of My Personal Pet Peeves

You've been waiting breathlessly for this list, right? Well, I've been doing a LOT of reading lately, and my list of peeves grows longer by the day. So here goes nothing...

1. Abandoning the core couple halfway through the romance. I've read a few books lately where the main couple is all but forgotten for the last half of the book. I love a good sub-plot as much as the next reader, but if you've asked me to commit to your couple at the outset, give me their full story. Please.

2. Data dumping. I don't want to know your characters' entire life story in the first ten pages. Don't do this to me. Nothing is more boring to read than nonstop recitation of past history. There are so many clever ways to get this job done. Please be clever.

3. If you build me up with crackling chemistry and sensual encounters that lead to the happy couple landing on a bed, please oh please do not have the next scene open with the sun creeping through the blinds. I beg of you. Show me what happens. Especially if you are writing for a line that promises a certain heat level. I have expectations. Please meet them.

4. Please remember your characters' names. I recently read a book where the name of a secondary character changed halfway through the book. I notice these things. Please remember the names of the people you create. If you don't, who will?

5. Kids in romances who are bratty, not cute. Thinking of what I would say to the kid takes me out of your story. Please discipline your bratty fictional kids the same way you would if they were actually yours. Don't make me have to do it. Don't make me.

UPDATE: Bonus Peeve that I thought of last night after I posted this: unplanned pregnancies in romance. Sorry, ladies (and gents), it's 2010. We all know how to prevent pregnancy. The unplanned babies need to stop. We're also grown ups, not horny teenagers in the back seat of Dad's car. The minute you foist an unplanned pregnancy on me, I think your characters are too stupid to live. ESPECIALLY if one of those characters work in the medical field in ANY capacity. That makes them even stupider. Now I have a pregnancy SCARE in my next book because of a "malfunction." I think that's different, but you may disagree. If you do, let me have it! :-)

Those are the latest additions to my list. Tell me some of yours!

OH and please don't forget to vote for Love at First Flight for Best Book of 2009 at the Long and Short of It Reviews! We're in 2nd place!!

L@FF Nominated for Best Book of 2009

The Long and Short of It has nominated Love at First Flight as its Best Book of 2009!! This is super exciting and a huge honor! Thank you to Marianne and Judy for giving L@FF one of their coveted Best Book reviews in July, which qualified the book for this nomination.

So how can you help? Mark your calendar to vote any time between Feb. 1 and 14. Don't worry, I'll remind you!

Here is the review that got me here, one of my favorites for L@FF

What if the guy in the airplane seat next to you turned out to be the love of your life?

Juliana, happy in her career as a hair stylist, is on her way to visit her boyfriend of ten years who's working out of state. She's wondering why they're not engaged yet. Michael is going to his fiance's parents' home for an engagement party he doesn't want. A states' prosecutor, he's about to try the biggest case of his career, he hates the distraction, and he's having doubts about the relationship.

They sit together on the plane, and discover they're on the same flight coming back. When the weekend is a disaster for each of them, they bond on the plane ride home. But life is full of complications, including their exes, who don't want to let go, and when Michael's trial turns dangerous, the two must confront what they value most in life...

Marie gives us a touching, heartfelt and dramatic love story with memorable characters and a plot that will keep you on the edge of your seat.

Not many authors can give you a romance novel that is ripe with heart stopping suspense and make it work, well Marie Force definitely can and does with Love at First Flight. Her main characters are involved in a love triangle that make you root for each of them at different times in the book, and said characters are well developed and so interesting that when the story's over you wish there were more to read. If that’s not enough she throws her readers into a murder trial with seriously evil bad guys and sequestered witnesses starring her supporting cast of characters which are so good they could support their own story. Her writing style is wonderful and her descriptive dialogue takes you to all the places the book visits in vivid detail. The love scenes are sultry and sensual and sexy and add a certain depth to the story.

So if you love a great romance with a lot of suspense, and you're not opposed to using a box of tissues as a prop and you like your love scenes on the sizzle burner. Then this should definitely be your next read. Great work Marie!!

My Missing Gene

I didn't get it. You know the gene I'm talking about, the one that requires women to fuss with their houses. My HDTV-addicted friends are forever painting, redecorating, rearranging, redoing. It's a really big week for me when my house gets cleaned. Sometimes I wonder if I shouldn't be doing stuff to my house, but then I realize I am quite all right with it just the way it is. I've also been relieved of my paint roller after an unfortunate paint vs carpet disaster (the paint won) in our Florida house. I was told I was no longer "allowed" to paint (oh PUNISH ME, honey, PLEASE). Shortly after the disaster, I saw the episode of Everybody Loves Raymond where Ray teaches soon-to-be groom Robert that if you screw something up, SHE won't ask you do it again. Works both ways, and I wish I had seen that episode earlier in my career as painter.

You see, at one time, before the writing bug bit hard, I did have the fuss-with-my-house gene. I once attempted sponge painting a wall to match the red flowers in a new sofa. We tried five or six different shades, but just couldn't get it right. After an entire day of sponging paint onto my wall, my cousin walked in and asked who'd been shot. My mother, who was supposed to be on my side, laughed her booty off. It was not funny! However, I can't deny there was a St. Valentine's Massacre-esque feel to it. My sponge was soon revoked, never to be seen again. Dan got so frustrated by the many paint purchases that he poured them all together and created a Pepto Bismal pink living room that the new owner insisted we paint over before he would sign on the dotted line at closing. Can't say I blame him. People walking by the house would double take in horror when they saw the hideous color of our living room.

Prior to the disaster that ended my interior painting career, I once painted the 10-foot walls in my Florida family room with two toddlers (aka ankle biters) underfoot while their father was at sea in the Navy. I remember starting on Friday afternoon and about an hour later, the idea was looking really bad to me. I had to use a roller on a LONG pole to reach the top and it was brutal. My neck and shoulders were tin man stiff for days afterward. My neighbor Bob came in hallway through the project from hell and recoiled, calling my color "standing-on-the-sun-yellow." I can't deny it was bright. My eyes were hurting from looking at it. Many future visitors (including the guy who lived there between Navy deployments) recoiled from the brightness, but once I had the crown molding done and added furniture that matched, people said it was clear I'd had a "vision" all along. Not really, but if they wanted to believe that, I was okay with it. Martha Stewart I am not.

In our current house, we're still living with the walls three of us painted during a frantic "the-furniture-is-coming-Monday-and-this-all-has-to-be-done-before-it-arrives" weekend with one dimly lit lamp lighting our way. We painted the ENTIRE HOUSE in one weekend. The entire house. One weekend. The same weekend Dan ended up with stitches in his hand (not my fault). Keep painting, I cried. Turpentine will prevent infection! Needless to say, our walls are slightly "less than." Guess what? Seven years of looking at them, and I couldn't care less if I tried. If there's anything great about living in this old house it's that it can be a bit beat up and no one really cares. It's old. It's supposed to be beat up. That's not to say I wouldn't move back to my brand new fabulous Florida house in a New York minute if I could just have the house re-located to Rhode Island. However, I don't miss the pressure of keeping that sparkly new house looking new and well, sparkly. This old house often looks crappy. I'm okay with that.

I'd rather be writing. That's one gene I did get, and I wouldn't trade it for anything, especially a sponge or roller.

(After reading this, Emily noted I used the word "recoiled" several times. I was glad she recognized the theme. That's my English honors girl!)

What about you? Did you get the fuss gene? Had any disasters? Roller or sponge?

Proof That I Am Losing It!

People who know me well won't be surprised to hear I'm turning into a bit of a glue bag lately. My once legendary memory certainly isn't what it used to be, and sometimes I do stupid things. (To any family members reading this, I say: SHUT UP.) Ahem, anyway, where was I? Ah yes, I remember now. We were talking about how dopey I've been lately. Here are two recent examples:

Thanksgiving 09. My dad, who LOVES turkey more than any other food on earth, informs me he wants to pay for the turkey. Knowing he likes to contribute, I say fine. I buy the biggest bird in the store and wrestle it home to the fridge. (Emily was gagging over the clear plastic wrap, but that's another whole story.) I tell my dad $42 for the turkey. Of course he gives me a check for $50. I point out that it's $8 more than it is supposed to be, and he says the extra is for shipping and handling. Isn't he cute? Okay, so my house is ground zero for Turkey Day festivities. We have my immediate family during the day and the raucous extended family (the same ones who need that SHUT UP referred to above) for sandwiches in the evening. One of the ways I prepare for this invasion is to take all those stacks of paper that accumulate in the kitchen and move them to my bedroom, also known as the staging area when we entertain. I figured I'd get back to the stacks the next week. Thanksgiving was great, the turkey was yummy, my dad was happy. All was well.

Now, since my mother died, he has gotten very anal about that checkbook. He is proud of his ability to balance it down to the last penny every month. So I figured I'd better cash that check and be done with it. Except, I couldn't find it. It had totally VAPORIZED. GONE. I figured I'd put it somewhere for safekeeping and it would turn up. Only it wasn't in any of my usual safekeeping spots. Uh oh. End of part 1 of the story.

SIDEBAR: Also around Thanksgiving, Jake's school sent home the forms for their after school enrichment programs. I signed him up for basketball four Thursdays in March, wrote the $20 check, and sent it back to school. They had sent a nice note saying they wouldn't cash any of the checks until the first week in January so as not to tax anyone's funds during the holidays. Nice of them, huh?

Resuming part 1, after a thorough search, I had to confess to my dad that I had somehow lost the check he'd given me for the turkey. Of course he said no big deal, wrote me a new one, which I promptly cashed, and that was that. Like Amelia Earhardt, the Bermuda Triangle and other enduring mysteries, I figured I'd never figure out what had become of that check during the holiday madness. Ahhh, but then it gets better...

First week in January I get a phone call from a volunteer at Jake's school. Thank you very much, she says, we received Jake's registration for basketball and he's all set. Except. . . there wasn't a check for $20 in the envelope. No, there was a $50 check made out to you from a George Sullivan. . . That's my dad. Oh my God. I laughed and laughed and laughed and then I laughed some more. I don't know the woman who called but chances are she won't soon forget my hysterical laughter.

Mystery solved. I am mental. I have NO memory of how this could have happened. It's all a blur. People ask me how I can juggle a full-time job, a demanding writing career, two kids, a house, a husband, etc. The breakdown apparently occurs in the small details of everyday life.

Second example. . . Near disaster at work. . .

This week I discovered a free online software product called Log Me In.com. It allows me to network all three of my computers so I can access any of them from any of the others. This is very exciting for a number of reasons, but mostly because it allows me access to my home computers from my laptop when I'm traveling. It's hard to explain how this will revolutionize my life. Trust me when I tell you it will. Big time.

Okay so yesterday I was testing out my ability to make updates to our website via this new groovy connection. Normally, I use the PC in my basement to make web updates. So I am upstairs on my Mac laptop, logged into the PC and clicking away on updates to my company's home page. To say it's pretty cool to be using a Mac to make updates using a program that is available only for the PC is putting it mildly. It's revolutionary. My friend April, who works with me, agrees, so I am not the only geek in town. Anyway, I digress....

So I make the updates, click on the link to publish and voila. I punch in the URL for my company's website and get THIS.

Just to be clear, I work for an English-speaking company. If you clicked on the link, you will see that I immediately thought I had overwritten my company's home page with what looks to be Chinese. Can you spell total FREAK OUT??? Since our webmaster is in France this week, if I had overwritten, we would have had an even bigger problem than usual. I ran downstairs to the PC, but couldn't do a thing because it was still being controlled by my laptop upstairs. Ran back upstairs, closed down the browser. Ran back to the basement, hands shaking profusely, and republished the page and checked it. Phew. Everything was where it was supposed to be. Came back upstairs, took another look at what I had typed into the browser.

OH.

MY.

GOD.

I left a very important G out of our web address: http://www.agacGfm.org. That is our address. Leave out the G and you get a trip to the Orient. My hands shook for an hour after this incident. After hearing about my self-made near-catastrophe, Dan said G is for GEEK in this case. Suffice to say my excitement over this new software was short lived.

I am losing it. There's no doubt about it!

But hey, at least I'm not John Edwards, right? :-)