Word Wenches

Come Say Hi in Hyannis

From Susan/Miranda:

Next week I’ll get my turn to play the ugly stepsister, and head off for a break on Cape Cod. But even on vacation, a writing Wench’s work is never done, and I’ll be signing copies of DUCHESS at the Borders in Hyannis, MA on Sunday, August 13, at 4:00 p.m. (For more information or directions, please call the store at: 508-862-6363.) If you’re on the Cape, I hope you’ll stop by and introduce yourself as a Word Wench-er!

Deadlines & Distractions

From Susan/Miranda:

I loved Loretta’s last post, and by extension, Nora’s RWR article, too. There are many challenges to being a Working Writer. Writing romance doesn’t necessarily mean you can romanticize writing. The ivory-tower ideal of hanging out with your muse until inspiration wafts towards you is a charming fantasy, but it’s not reality, not by half. If you don’t write on some sort of a schedule, if you can’t make your imagination bend to the demands of deadlines, you won’t have much of a career.

For most of us, that first book truly was a labor of love, without any constraints of time, length, marketing, or editing. It’s whatever you want it to be, and then some. But once you sign a contract and cash a publisher’s check, it’s a job like any other. It’s a swell job, true, but it can also be a righteous bear that shows no mercy.

In other words, I don’t have a muse. I have a mortgage.

Like most of the other Wenches, I write for two different publishers. While this offers more security and diversion, it also more than doubles the difficulty. We’re gluttons for punishment. We have two sets of editors and publicists to appease, two different writing voices to keep straight in our heads. In this last week alone, I’ve had to finish one manuscript, read and correct galleys for another, come up with suggestions for the cover art for a third, and sign the finished books of a fourth at a local bookstore.

The actual deadline can be fraught with more peril than a month of retrogrades. It’s not so bad now that I can submit a finished book as an email attachment, but in the Bad Old Days, everything would (and did) go wrong. The supply of printer paper would inexplicably disappear. The printer cartridge would go dry, the back-ups missing. Trusty old MS Word would suddenly be possessed by demons, putting gibberish in the middle of my hard-fought sentences. My final high-speed victory-lap to the FedEx depot (which accepted drop-offs until 8:00 pm, bless their purple-and-orange souls) would slow to a slug’s pace, so clogged with traffic that I’d have to sprint through the parking lot after the last truck.

And, of course, there’s plenty of Life going on to trip up the best of intentions. The cat needs to go to the vet. A next-door neighbor invites an entire team of yowling lumberjacks with chainsaws to cut down the trees in her yard, while, not to be outdone, the neighbor on the other side hires a crew of leaf blowers determined to blast every last blade of grass into high-decibel oblivion. Another cat throws up on a $65.00 research book. Children and husband plaintively ask if there’s anything to eat. That “routine” tetanus shot makes my arm bulge like a bodybuilder’s and turns my brain to mush, so when I have to speak at a booksigning, my voice echoes in my head and I begin every sentence the same way –– “Another interesting thing about Sarah Churchill” –– even when I’m asking directions to the store’s restroom.

As careers go, writing ain’t pretty, and it sure ain’t for sissies. It’s no benefits, no health insurance, no pension, no paid vacation or sick days. It’s waiting six months for a check from your publisher after you turned in your manuscript on time. It’s staying up so late to beat a scene into submission that you fall asleep with the keyboard imprinted on your cheek. It’s having your editor get fired, and being tossed out along with her. It’s seeing your manuscript returned to you so disfigured with editorial red pen that it’s unrecognizable. It’s being told that your story would be ever so much improved with the addition of a vampire or two. And it’s natural disasters beyond your control –– Blizzards in the Midwest! Earthquakes in California! –– that magically become your fault because readers weren’t able to buy your books and your sales numbers plummet.

And yet I can’t imagine giving it up. I’ll take the pitfalls because the good stuff is, well, so good. I love being able to take the story from my head and make it real on paper. I love being able to escape those leaf-blowers and go back into the past with my characters. I love having such a supportive group of smart, funny peers. I love not having to watch the rush hour traffic reports. I love hearing from readers (yeah, and not just my mother, either) that they enjoy what I do.

I’ve written a bunch of books (less than Nora, more than Margaret Mitchell), but last week was the first time I actually saw a stranger buy one in a store. I was near the new release table, browsing through the magazine racks, when a woman nearby picked up a copy of DUCHESS. I bowed my head over the new issue of “Lucky” and held my breath, watching and eavesdropping shamelessly. The woman read the back cover, read the first page, and held it out to her husband.

“Now this,” she declared, “looks very good. Buy it.”

On that day, anyway, I’d wrestled the bear, and I won.

Signs of the Times

It's Sunday.
It's me, Edith.

And it will be the best of times or the worst of times today. At least, for me. I'm going to a book signing at a huge Barnes & Noble Superstore here on Long Island today.

Are you an egotist? A bad signing will cure you forever. People shopping for books, passing you and avoiding your eye for fear you'll try to sell them something, or stopping to ask you where the lady's room is. A bad signing can make you think of abandoning writing and taking up clamming for a living.

Are you feeling low? A good signing will make you feel like Queen of the World! So many people who love your books! (note: good signings are rare.)

I love to get together with other authors and compare signing stories.

Do any other authors have one? Do any readers have any?

The best I ever heard was one my son-in-law, a Brit, told me. It's a little Monty Python, but it's true. When he was a student he got a job in a bookstore. They had an author in to do a signing, and as often happens, nobody came. The author was downcast, the manager of the bookshop, upset.

So he hit upon a plan. He had all his salespersons leave their posts, and one by one go to the author and ask for an autograph. Then the manager had his workers come back to the author after exchanging hats and coats, as well as altering their postures so as to appear taller or shorter. The overwhelmed author was frabjous, and hardly had time to look up from his signing as he was besieged by all these avid fans.

My son-in-law wore three different outfits that day. But that was one happy author!

Hoorah for understanding booksellers!

Well, here I go.... Wish me a good bookstore.

(Uh, and to cover my ego, I'm signing with Barbara Metzger and Joan Wolf. We can blame each other if no one shows.) 

Working Wench

       From Loretta:
      
      I haven’t been to a Romance Writers of America annual conference since the last one in Washington, DC, and then I made only a brief appearance.  The last one before that was the one in St. Louis when they had the flood and the tornado warnings and 20 lightning strikes per hour.
      It’s true that I’ve met several Wenches at RWA conferences--they say it’s true, and I have to believe them because a good part of my past is a blur, especially the past involving those endless-sea-of-people conferences--but these days I prefer to meet new friends and renew old acquaintance at smaller gatherings, like chapter conferences.
      As a member of RWA I get the monthly Romance Writers Report, which this month contained an interview with Nora Roberts.  And I am here to say, Thanks, Nora.  I needed that.
      Not that I haven’t been on the same page with Nora--ah, if only I had the same results--previously.  However, she has a short, blunt way of cutting through the b.s. in which this business of writing often becomes mired.
      People talk about the Muse and I nod, Uh huh, uh huh, and meanwhile I’m thinking, Muse, what muse?  It’s just me and the computer for as far as the eye can see.  My brain is like the home of someone with the pack-rat version of OCD:  tons and tons of junk crammed in there, and no, I don’t know where everything is.  I have to keep looking until I find it.
      That’s how I write.  I keep looking until I find it.
      Unlike the amazing Ms. Roberts, I do start with an outline and very much unlike her, I cannot write one book a month.  One book a year is my great accomplishment.  I would like to write more.  It isn’t for lack of trying, believe me.  It isn’t for lack of discipline, either--although I’m not sure anyone’s at Nora’s level of discipline.  Besides, I didn’t go to Catholic school and I’m not Irish, so there’s a cultural gap, too.
      But my attitude about the job seems to match hers pretty well.  This boils down to It’s my JOB.
      And as she points out, it’s a terrific job.  I don’t have to get up at a particular time in the morning (good thing, because I’m not an early riser), I don’t have to fight traffic to get to work (good thing, because I hate driving--and that’s another story), and I don’t have to wear panty hose (not that panty hose has no place in my life, especially the control top kind).  I don’t have to look businesslike.  I don’t have a boss trying to manage me (I’m not very manageable) and I’m not a boss trying to manage others (I’ve done it; I’m bad at it).
      When I was a meter maid (a job I kind of loved, actually, because the experience was so Dickensian), I not only had to get up at a certain time, dress in an unattractive brown polyester uniform that included panty hose and ugly shoes, but I had to deal with drivers.  Everyone in the world but me thinks he/she is a great driver.  No one seems to realize that this is statistically impossible, especially in Massachusetts.  Not only this, I discovered, but everyone in the world--with occasional exceptions--thinks he/she is a great parker, too.
      A parking ticket contradicts this rosy self-image.  Many drivers did not take the contradiction well.  Some of them even threatened me with bodily injury.  Mostly, though, the abuse was verbal.  I wanted to respond, but not in the polite way the meter maid rules insisted upon.  I wanted to say things like, “Hey, Big Guy, learn to tell time.”  Or, “Learn to read the signs, Lady.”  I wanted to point to the NO PARKING ANYTIME sign and ask what part of it was giving them trouble.
      Above all, I wanted to say, “Get over it and pay the $^>%&*#  ticket”--which at this time BTW was in the great majority of cases a meter violation, to the tune of $1.  Yes, you read that correctly.  Drivers went ballistic over a $1 ticket, despite their being clearly in the wrong.  I made one error regarding a fire hydrant, when I started out--and the guy took me to court, another interesting part of the job--but meters were easy.  You had that helpful yellow VIOLATION sign, which popped up when time ran out.  It didn’t matter.  People yelled, stamped their feet.  Once a man practically started a riot on a street.  Over a whopping $2 ticket.
      Sometimes my hecklers were funny.  Once, after shouting down at me for a time--from a window of an apartment--a guy finished with, “And I don’t like your hair, either,” and shut the window.  My hair, too?  I was so hurt. 
      At least once a week, someone serenaded me with “Lovely Rita Meter Maid.”  Various street people of the mentally unbalanced variety ranted at me.  Drunken men wooed me. 
      Well, I could write a book.
      Which I’d much rather do instead.  Even if it means that this year I have to give up my two weeks of August vacation to do so.
      This is necessary if I don’t want to run the risk of turning my book in late.  People--especially non-writers--tell me that it isn’t the end of the world if the book’s a little late.  To me it’s a catastrophe.  In spite of my best efforts, I have missed deadlines, and it always upsets me and I hate myself.  So I was grateful to Nora for saying it was important not to miss them.  This is not only because I had someone on my side on this issue, indicating that I was not neurotic--or no more so than at least one other published writer.  I was grateful, too, because I could quote from the interview to my husband and other family members.  You see, if I act like that, I’m a nut case.  But Nora makes the big bucks.  Nora has a kajillion books in print.  She gives me total credibility.  For a time--until people forget about what she said--my obsessive work ethic is not only not insane but actually quite intelligent.
       So after this, I’m going right back to work--even if it is Saturday, my usual day off as well as what could have been the first day of a Maine vacation.
      Am I sobbing?  Please.  Not hardly likely.
      I’ve got a POS to wrestle into submission, and I can’t wait to get my hands on it.
      Thanks, Nora.

How We Wenches Met

From Mary Jo:
“2000 introverts pretending to be extroverts.”  Yes, the RWA national conference in Atlanta has come and gone.  There were no major scandals, the hotel was one of the nicest ones we’ve been in—compact, easy to navigate, and with good hangout spots.  The Marriott Marquis is in central Atlanta so there are restaurants and other hotels around, and it was no hotter than Baltimore (not that that’s saying a great deal at the moment!) 

One fun tidbit I’ve not seen mentioned elsewhere is the conference badges.  Once upon a time, they were simple: name, maybe hometown, that’s all she wrote.  But over time, they’ve evolved.  Orange roses for the Orange County Chapter.  Conference pins for each year.  And lots of other Stuff.  These days, nametags are like the battle ribbons of a Ruritanian general.  Lots of hardware, plus ribbons for things like being a volunteer, a speaker, a contest judge, et al. 

One can read a lot about a person’s writing life from their badges.  For example, a fellow WRW member has about five Golden Hearts on hers for the number of times she’s finalled in the Golden Heart, RWA’s unpublished manuscript contest.  This year, she also sported a pink ribbon for First Sale.  (Yay!)  Being a Rita finalist gets you a silver bas relief pin of the Rita statue; winning gets you a gold one.

Some people wear badge holders with a canvas area equal to the badge just to have enough room.  I had my share of hardware, but what captured attention was the two inch long cockroach.  <g>  I was on a PAN panel with Rexanne Becnel, fine writer and Katrina survivor, and she graciously brought cockroach pins for the other panelists.  She’d bought them in the French Quarter, and the card said, “Adaptable.  Tenacious.  Resilient.  It rises, even flies, to the occasion.  The original SURVIVOR.” 

That was meant to be a symbol  for New Orleans, but it’s also a perfect metaphor for writers.  Thank you, Rexanne!  The card claims that no cockroaches were injured or killed in production, but I have to say that it’s squickily convincing, except for the sparkling holographic finish.  I wore it on my badge all weekend, despite my general preference for keeping bugs a long way off.

But enough of insectoid musings.  The best part of a writers conference is schmoozing with friends.  Err….make that “networking.”  Sure, it’s good to touch base with agents and editors, or possibly look for new ones.  It’s smart to hear about new market trends.  But it’s truly rewarding to see the friend who could barely walk two years ago now leaping around like a gazelle on her new knees.  (I exaggerate only slightly.) 

Or the lovely young lawyer who helped with the research on TWIST OF FATE—the last time we’d talked at a conference, she had been aching as her marriage fell apart.  Now, several years later, she is remarried and so radiantly, happily pregnant that her announcement was in the second sentence she said to me.  Yes!  Conferences reflect the circle of life—ups and downs and ups again.

This philosophical mode got me to thinking about how I met the other Wenches.  (Caution: this is memory, and maybe inaccurate after so many years and conferences!) 

I met Lady Layton at my very first conference ever—the RT convention in NYC in 1986 (in the hotel that was part of the World Trade Center complex.)  She and Barbara Hazard, both goddesses of the Signet Regencies, were kind enough to invite me, a sold but yet unpublished Signet newbie, to join them for a drink.  Such generosity is never forgotten.  Plus, they were so funny!  I also met Edith’s daughter, the Amazing Susie, only ten years old then but already well on her way to becoming amazing.

Pat Rice and I shared an editor at NAL.  With my second book, I was having trouble coming up with a title.  Eventually it became LADY OF FORTUNE, but not before I submitted endless lists of possible titles. All of which the editor knocked down ruthlessly, followed by her pointing out that this brilliant Patricia Rice person had come up with a lovely title, INDIGO MOON, from a phrase in her book.  I developed a deep resentment for the title paragon.

Then at the national RWA conference—1987 or 1988?—I noticed that the woman sitting next to me in a session had “Patricia Rice” on her name tag.   I pondered for a few moments.  I could either slug her or introduce myself.  I chose to introduce myself, and we began to talk.  Almost 20 years later, the conversation hasn’t stopped. <g>

It must have been at an RWA that I met Jo Beverley.  She was a new Regency author, but already winning acclaim.  We became acquainted.  Just before the conference ended, she mentioned that she needed a roommate for the RT convention in San Antonio and did I know anyone who was looking?  Well—I happened to need a roommate, and Regency people do tend to hang together.  (It’s a cult, not a genre.) The rest is history.  (But of the white nightie that disappeared into the bowels of the Menger Hotel laundry system, reappearing at ghostly intervals, I shall say no more.)

Susan Sarah and I met at a smaller conference, the WRW Retreat in Harpers Ferry.  A very petite person edged up to me and said in a soft voice that she’d sold her first book to NAL, my publisher.  I’m sure I offered the appropriate congratulations—selling a first book is one of life’s great moments—but what sent my antenna shooting straight up was learning that she was an art historian—and I was working on my creative process/painting book, RIVER OF FIRE.  Chattering about art history and publishing, we took the long walk down the hill to the town center, and the even longer walk back up.  In good times, when neither of us are in deadline hell, we live close enough to meet for lunch and brainstorming.  And we do.

Susan Miranda was also met at Harpers Ferrry.  I didn’t really know her for some time—I was just vaguely aware of this tall historical romance writer with great blond hair.  That was all until the year when Susan Sarah ended up with three possible roommates, so Susan Miranda and I paired off in the room next door.  We found that we are really good roommates.  <g>  And she brings the most FABULOUS research books for me to drool over.  The very best were the historic fabric books which contain actual swatches of materials used in clothing so one can touch and feel.  I drool—then go home and order the books. <g>  ( http://sallyqueenassociates.com/products.htm )

Loretta Chase was different.  (Loretta is always different!)  I “met” her by sending a gushing fan letter about her second book, THE ENGLISH WITCH.  (The first Albanian Regency.  Loretta has since written a second.)  This was in the dim dark days before the internet, but I’d run into Loretta’s editor (at a conference) and mentioned how much I’d enjoyed the book. The editor offered to forward a letter to Loretta, so I wrote.  She wrote back.  Actual snail mail.  (You’ve read her blogs and books, right?  Is it any surprise that she wrote great letters?)  It was years before we met in person.
At a conference.

Which is one of the big reasons we go to them.  Where else can we hang out with so many great people of our own tribe?                                                      

I haven’t yet met Sherrie Holmes face to face.  I’m told that if one does, it’s best to ply her with red wine and dark chocolate.  One of these days...

Mary Jo

Last week we were talking a little about early influences -- how we got started storytelling, what influenced us, listing books we loved, and the dolls and teddies and whatnot – so fun! – with the occasional Barbie and Cabbage Patch and fairy tale image tossed in there. And I was thinking about some of the books I loved as a kid, because these early reads are not only important in the shaping of ourselves as people, but as writers too, very much so. Some of the ones I loved are pretty familiar choices, Secret Garden and Anne of Green Gables, Pollyanna and Little Women, Heidi, The Silver Skates, The Velveteen Rabbit... the list goes on and on, and you know the books on it already, because chances are you read a lot of those stories too.

I sobbed my eyes out over Heidi, Pollyanna, The Five Little Peppers, and Little Women (though, unlike Joey on "Friends," I didn’t have to hide it in the freezer because of the scary parts!), and I laughed over others, like Otis Spofford and Ellen Tebbits... I was fascinated by A Wrinkle in Time, and some of them – sorry to say – didn’t appeal (Anne of G.G. for some reason annoyed the heck out of me). Most of them I read not only once, but again and again. I lived in their homes, thought their thoughts, learned, grew, loved it. There’s really too many to count when you're a crazy-mad reading kid like I was.

But I started thinking the other day about what single book, or single character, appealed to me the most, bar none. Who did I want to be, who helped me, who endeared herself to me more than anyone else?

Pippi! Pippi Longstocking was my girl. I read those books (Pippi Longstocking, Pippi Goes on Board, Pippi in the South Seas, all by Astrid Lindgren) until they were in tatters, got new ones, tattered those. I adored Pippi... she fascinated me, and made me laugh every time over her silliness and her bold goofy heart. She made me cheer, made me want to be her, funny and unique, brave and independent, and very, very kind. She was way more interesting to me than Pollyanna or Anne of Green Gables, and she didn’t make my heart break like Beth in Little Women.

Running a close second was Beverly Cleary’s Ellen Tebbits – but I didn’t have to aspire to be Ellen. I was Ellen. Her world was similar to mine, and everything that went wrong for her had gone wrong for me in some similar way. I could have been pulling a beet out of someone’s garden in the rain, or wearing itchy long underwear. I totally identifed with Ellen, and read those books over and over.

Ah, but Pippi. I couldn’t be her. Couldn’t come even close. She had spitfire down to an art. I didn’t have a lick of it as a timid little kid. She could do what she wanted, live alone, no parents to complicate things (mother was an angel, father was a sea captain, always on his way home to fetch her) – and she had her own house, her own horse, her own monkey, and pirate gold. She was stronger and braver and brassier (I could use another word but hey, I won’t!) than anyone. Pippi said what she wanted, stood up to anyone, threw robbers out and rescued kids from fire, and didn’t have to go to school (even though I wanted to go to school, and loved learning, I appreciated the sentiment!). And I, stuck in my Ellen-Tebbitsian world, longed for that sort of freedom and fire.

...said the teacher, "And now I will tell you that seven and five are twelve."

See that!" said Pippi. "You knew it yourself. Why are you asking then?"

She had the same color hair as my mother, which I loved (though my mother’s bright red-orange hair didn’t stick out in pigtails, it was thick, wavy, and quite the beacon in a crowd–she was once asked if she dyed it, to which her reply was, "Why would I dye my hair this color?!"). I used to imagine slinging a rope from my bedroom window over to the neighbors and zipping over there, but the kids who lived there were not as cooperative and pleasant as Tommy and Annika, and I’d probably fall anyway. Astrid Lindgren was brilliant-- because Pippi was a kid’s delight, all the freedom and chutzpah a kid could ever want, and Tommy and Annika were EveryKid, the placeholders for the readers.

Pippi was a fantasy, sometimes way too silly and over-the-top, and not someone who fit into my world, but why did she appeal to me so much?  She could do what she wanted--I could not, always. She had the red hair that my mom had, but I didn't get (really, it was cool). AND she opened a door for me on imagination and creativity, opened it wider in some ways than some of the other books. She taught me that you have to let go, let loose, let it fly to get that creativity up and off the ground. And I still benefit from that to this day.

There’s a little bit of Pippi in me still, and a little Pippi in some of the heroines I write, particularly when it comes to humor, sass, and fiesty moments. Now that I’m using my imagination for a full-time occupation and living, I do owe some of that to Pippi.

After all, she did teach me some very useful stuff:

"Can you dance the schottische?" asked Pippi, looking him gravely in the eye. "I can."

So how about you all? What was your favorite book as a kid, and your favorite character? Who did you identify with, or wish you could be -- and what character made a difference in your life?

~Susan Sarah

p.s. The drawing is of my sister reading, by me, Susan King, from years ago....

Blogging into the mist

Jo blogging here. Hmmm. In England "Joe Blogs" is a term for everyman. I'll have to think about the ramifications of that. As we've been talking toys, I thought I'd image this post with our resident not-quite-
people, CBKs. Cabbage Patch Kids. One day I'll blog about how we, with only boys, because CBK people. There are four but this is a picture of two -- Charlie and Ernie, welcoming Billy, who'd been liberated from a box in the attic in Florida. He's being awarded his cloak of power, but he came with the whirligig, which we thought cute.

That's Charlie in the middle. He's our original, acquired in 1983 during CBK mania. One day I'll tell you the story.

After being home from the conference for two days I've caught up with e-mail and a number of other things to do, but been whammied by an urgent request for a title for my next book. It doesn't come out until September 2007, for heaven's sake! I've only written about half of it. But I'm trying. The problem is that it would be nice to use "rogue" in the title, because then there'd be three flow-through books, all with Rogue in the title, and I never manage to do that.

Flow-through. I came up with that the other day and I like it. There are linked series of many sorts, and my Company of Rogues is really a "world." And one in which I mean to keep playing, even though Dare getting hitched means the Rogues themselves are taken care of. (Coming in September. Which means late this month. To Rescue A Rogue. It's not too soon to order a copy on line or from your favourite bookstore!) But links come in many forms, and these three do flow one from the other. In The Rogue's Return, Simon St. Bride returns to England from Canada thrilled to hear that his closest friend, Dare Debenham, is alive, not dead at Waterloo as thought. When he lands, he hurries to see Dare, who is still weak from wounds and ill-treatment, and also addicted to the opium he was given for his wounds. We briefly meet Mara St. Bride, Simon's sister, then pick up in the next book with Mara in a pickle from which Dare, who is like a brother to her (ha!) rescues her. Mara's an active sort, and decides that letting Dare set his own pace of recovery is a mistake and plunges in to drag him back into society. I'm sure it's not a spoiler to say that she succeeds and that in the process they discover they're in love etc etc.

But I didn't have a third book in mind until a walk-on at the end of the book became a complete person called Viscount Darien. "You can't be Lord Darien" I told him. Who's in charge here, anyway? "This book is about Lord Darius. A Lord Darien in the next would be ridiculous."

(If you want an easy guide to titles, there's one here on my web site.

"That," he said, "is your problem," and went on to perform the bit part I'd assigned to some central casting military officer.

Who's in charge here anyway? Ultimately the characters, so I told myself it wasn't too bad -- he's very sexy in a dark and dangerous way I don't often get -- because Dare's title is a courtesy one. He's a duke's son, thus Lord Darius Debenham. Darien is a real title, Viscount Darien, so he's Lord Darien, full stop. (Which is what we English call a period. So much more assertive, don't you think? Let any unruly sentence try to run on over a full stop, I say.)

But then as Darien strolled out of the Yeovil ball he said -- perhaps trying to immitate James Bond, but then how would a Regency gentleman know? Hmmm. There is Hawkings' time theory.... "The name's Kahvay. Canem Kahvay."

When I did a Huh? he gave one of those cynical heroic smiles and said, "Think about it. Family motto is Beware," and disappeared into the night.

Beware. In Latin, beware is cave pronounced kahvay. Cave Canem, Beware of the dog. I race out of Yeovil House after him and shout, "You can't be called dog!"

Lightly his voice floats back out of the dark. "That's what I thought. Blame the Rogues."

So the title for the next book could well be The Man Who Hated the Rogues, but I know that'll never work. And I didn't mean to blog about this at all, but blog thoughts are what blog thoughts are, so there it is. But I will post a conference pic. Not one of mine because I took all of mine, but a good shot taken by Lori of the wonderfully fun and friendly Tony and Lori, who write together as Tori Carrington.
Click here for picture. They have oodles of pictures up there and lots of other good stuff on their site.

That's Tony in the middle -- very Greek and dashing -- with me on the left, Anne Stuart next, , Maggie Shayne on Tony's other side, and Brenda Hiatt next to her. We're out in the hall of the Ritz escaping the heat of the Harlequin party.

So I sort of flowed through this blog.

Cheers,

Jo

To Be a Lady

From Pat Rice:

Just back from the RWA conference and my brain is utterly wiped.  And I really don’t think it was all the dancing in Pradas, either, although we probably would have melted from the heat if we’d tried to do more than breathe. 

The Literacy signing was utterly spectacular, so any of our readers out there who went---a huge thank you!  I have never seen so many people in one place, and craven that I am, I was thrilled my plane arrived too late to chance taking a table.  I don’t mind stopping in and doing my part for a few minutes, but three hours in that din and I would have been deaf.  So I think those who participated ought to be given some kind of charitable version of a Purple Heart.

The whole conference was quite upbeat, and the wenches are all happy to know that historicals are walking away with 40% of the romance market!  Yeah, team!  It looks as if publishers are really catching on to new trends in the historical market, so you ought to be seeing lots of great history and stories in the coming years.

I’m still playing catch-up after being gone nearly a week, so I’m running late and kicking myself for not bringing back pictures with which to fill the page.  (Did you know that it’s perfectly all right to end a sentence with a preposition? There is nothing wrong with “…pictures to fill the page with?” The preposition rule applies to Latin, not to English!)

So, now the big debate here is---do we want to brand ourselves as Barbies, teddy bears, or ancient ladies?  Right now, I’m leaning sadly toward ancient lady…  creak, rustle.