GENREALITY

I love and hate getting galleys. My new one for TAKE ME IF YOU DARE (Harlequin, Feb. 2010) came in yesterday. The love comes in the fact that it makes it feel real. It’s my first chance to see what all those words look like in book form. It’s exhilarating in many ways, and absolutely horrifying in others.

I’m not one who second guesses herself too much, but it’s the very fact that this is final look at the book before the public sees it. Why didn’t I do that? I should have thought to? I can drive myself crazy with it. I do have the opportunity to make small changes at this stage, but the publisher generally frowns on it if you want to revise huge chunks.

But the truth is, I have to make myself look at it and ask myself, “Did you tell a good story?” The answer, so far, has thankfully always been “yes.” There might have been some tweaks here and there, but overall I ended up telling the story I wanted to.

I’m often asked if I could go back and write those first books in the “Charmed & Dangerous” series, would I want to? Part of me says yes, but the other part realizes that I told the story I wanted to in that moment of time. All of my life experiences up until that moment made that book what it was. Have I grown as writer since then? Goodness, I hope so. But I’m okay with what I’ve created.

It’s that idea of living with no regrets. That’s sometimes a hard for me, because there are lot of moments in my life I’d like to do over. Those moments usually have to do with something I said, that I wished I hadn’t. I have a big mouth, and it often gets me into trouble. But even those moments have made me more aware of how I want to act in the future. Hopefully, they made me a better person.

And I’ve discovered I can “do over” things through my writing. Many times the scenes and dialogue come from very real experiences in my life that I wished had gone a different way. Those witty comebacks are so much easier when you’ve had a day or so to mull them over. And in a book you can punch someone and or in Bronwyn’s case, blow them up when they’ve done you wrong.

So what do I wish I could do over with “Take Me If You Dare”? So far, nothing. I’ve found a few tweaks but nothing to major. It helped that I have an amazing editor who caught those moments in the revision process. She made it a stronger book and I’m grateful for it.

My only regret with that book is that the hero isn’t real. I’m telling you, he’s my ideal man. Sigh.

So I want to hear from you. Any thing you’d like to “do over”? Is there a witty comeback you wish you’d said at the right moment? Tell me. I want to know

At what moment did writing, for you, turn from being just a hobby to play around in to something you took seriously enough to create a salable novel, and a resulting career?

I actually have two stories one for non fiction, which lead to a 21-year career as a journalist. The other of how I came to be an author. I’m going to tell you the latter.

I was at the TV Critics Press Tour about seven years ago. At an ABC party I had a slight mishap (read: I tripped on my flip flops and almost did a face plant in the middle of the horseshoe gardens at the Ritz in Pasadena, now known as the Langham). I was completely mortified and ran to the corner near some bushes where a friend of mine stood surveying the party.

It was the normal network soiree with lots of celebrities standing around wondering which one of them was the most important. It really is like that. My friend, Paulette Cohn, who writes for ET online, started talking about books. My non-fiction book “Joss Whedon: The Genius Behind Buffy” had just come out, and she made the comment that I should try my hand at writing fiction.

I told her she was crazy, I could never do anything like that. She told me that if I ever did, she knew a great editor at a publishing house.   I returned home a week later and wrote my first novel in about two weeks. It was God awful. No, I mean, really, really bad. Of course, I didn’t know that at the time.

I’ve never told anyone this story, but I actually emailed her friend, the editor, with a brief query, something I hadn’t a clue how to write. He was quite kind and told me that he didn’t really have a place for a 35,000 word novel, that might be a romance. Yes, I’d actually said those words in the query. Sigh. My only saving grace was that years later he didn’t remember what I’d done, and I never said a word.

With that one rejection I decided my career as an author was over. Then something crazy happened. A new family moved in next door. The mom of the family happened to be a columnist, just like me, and she too had written a book. We agreed to swap manuscripts.

After reading the first three pages of hers, I called and told her I wanted mine back. She declined. A week later we swapped again. I had a found a few typos on hers, but the prose was nearly perfect. My manuscript was red from the first page to the last. But she wrote something that kept me from giving up: “You are a great storyteller and have an amazing voice.”

From that moment on, everything sort of went on a fast track. I polished that manuscript and then began another one. I only slept about four hours a night for more than six months. Within the year I had an agent and my first book sold to Berkley. My friend had sold her book, about five months earlier to Warner.

The truth is, it might have been a higher power. It could have been a lucky string of coincidences. But from the time I decided I wanted to write a novel, until I was published was about 14 months. Now, I can’t imagine not writing fiction. I live for it. My second book, Charmed & Dangerous, was the first one to sell. The very first book I wrote, was completely revised and became “The Demon King and I,” which was my fifth published novel.

I began a new journey yesterday. It was my first day of graduate school. I’m studying for a Masters of Humanities. It will be tough to balance the day job covering TV and Film, writing books and going to school, but I’m determined to make it work.

But that isn’t what I really wanted to talk about. I wanted to talk about how the first day of school has all ready helped with my writing. Yesterday the class was all about introducing ourselves. As I read through everyone’s introductions, characters began dancing in my head.

Funny how that works when you are a writer.

While I won’t give specifics, because I don’t want one of my classmates to kick my ass, I did find it interesting that how, from only a few words, you could determine so much about a person. It reminded me of something I heard Janet Evanovich (The Stephanie Plum Series) say about writing memorable characters. This isn’t a direct quote, but it went something like this… She said, a well-developed character has quirks, flaws, dreams motivations and values. …With only a few important words you can know everything about them.

These people in my class, sometimes by how much or little they said, gave me such insight into their psyche. I found it fascinating.

Most writers are people watchers. I know I am. And many of my characters are loosely based on people I know well, or strangers that I meet. The character Aspen, the crazy rich girl who is making the very busy dragon slayer Alex plan her wedding in “Dragons Prefer Blondes” is based on a waitress I met in a restaurant in Austin. Her name was Aspen and she was gorgeous. She was in no way crazy like the character in my book, but her name and petite frame spawned that character in my head immediately.

It’s a habit of mine creating alternate realities for people I meet. It’s something I share with many of my fellow writers. But this whole thing with the first day of class made me wonder what my classmates might think of me. Looking at what I wrote from an objective viewpoint made me laugh out loud. Seems I’m that over-achiever who wants everyone to know just how important she is.

Yes– mortification has set in. While everyone had a few lines about who they were and what they did. I had three paragraphs. In my defense, I’m a very busy person. But I see now that perhaps they didn’t need to know everything about my various jobs right up front. It might have been good to keep a little mystery alive.

And don’t get me started on my email to the professor where I spelled the word “class” wrong. Sigh. Not my best first impression I’m sure.

So how about you? Do you people watch? Do you make up stories for the people you see? Have you ever made a horrendous first impression? Please, make me feel better about myself and share.

I have trouble relaxing. I can never quite shut my mind down, even when I’m forcing myself to take a break. For the past week, since I turned in my revisions for my upcoming release “Take Me If You Dare” for Harlequin (Feb. 2010) (Do you like how I slipped in that plug? Snort), I’ve been doing my best to take a break.

It’s so not happening. I still have to work on the day job, which is writing about television, movies and celebs, but I thought I’d give the fiction side of my brain a little rest. A vacation of sorts. Something that hasn’t happened in more than six years when my first book, “Charmed & Dangerous” sold. I’ve had some kind of deadline every few months since then, not that I’m complaining. But I’m a busy chick and I worry about burnout.

So I turned in the revisions on Monday of last week. On Wednesday my editor called. She loved the changes I made and said the book was great — but I needed to revise the proposal I’d sent for the next book. Sigh. I had to write a new chapter and rewrite the synopsis. I turned everything in on Friday, determined to take that self-imposed break over the weekend.

On Saturday I had a lovely book signing with my friends Dakota Cassidy and Michele Bardsley. We did a Q&A session for about 45 minutes, and then we signed books. I had so much fun, and was inspired by the whole event. So much so that I had to stop in a parking lot on the way home. Pull out my notebook and write down some ideas for a character in a YA I’m working on.

But I wasn’t at the computer so I didn’t count that as “real work.” On Sunday I’d promised myself a day on the couch. I was a little under the weather and it seemed like a great idea. I was catching up on some of my screeners for the new TV season. In the middle of “Destination Truth,” which is coming up on SyFy, something clicked in my brain and I had an idea for an interesting plot twist in another project I have stewing. LOL.

I can’t wait to write both books, which means my break is over. If I’m counting right, I think it might have lasted 8 hours. At least I was able to squeeze a nap in there.

So how about you? How do you force your brain to slow down? Or do you?