Too many anniversaries

Had I won the Mega Millions lottery last week, I would've spent a large part of the next few years on battlefields. If you're interested in military history, as I am, our time is filled with anniversaries. We're 200 years out of the later parts of the Napoleonic Wars, a year into the American Civil War's 150th, and World War I is coming back into public consciousness as we approach its 100 year mark.

Tomorrow (April 6) my hypothetical rich self would need to be two places at once. It's the 200th anniversary of the Storming of Badajoz, which plays a significant role in my first book, The Sergeant's Lady.

Badajoz was an unusually gruesome battle for its time--the elite Light Division lost 40% of its fighting strength. The aftermath was even worse, as the victorious British sacked the city in a rampage of looting, rape, and murder.

It's also the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Shiloh, which at the time was the bloodiest battle in American history.

Badajoz and Shiloh are both grim enough to make me stop and question my own fascination with military history. I'm by no means a pacifist, because I think there are some evils that can't be stopped short of a war. World War II and the Civil War, viewed from the Union side, both strike me as just and unavoidable. But I'm also by no means unthinkingly militaristic. Few things make me angrier than seeing good men and women sacrificed for no worthy purpose in an unjust, unnecessary war. I find World War I all but unbearable to contemplate precisely because it was so damn pointless, and if it served any purpose beyond decimating Europe and making World War II all but inevitable, I've never been able to find it. And even the most just of wars...well, I'll quote William Tecumseh Sherman in May 1865:

I confess, without shame, that I am sick and tired of fighting — its glory is all moonshine; even success the most brilliant is over dead and mangled bodies, with the anguish and lamentations of distant families, appealing to me for sons, husbands, and fathers ... it is only those who have never heard a shot, never heard the shriek and groans of the wounded and lacerated ... that cry aloud for more blood, more vengeance, more desolation.

So, I don't love war, but I can't look away from its history. Maybe it's in the blood--though I'm not an Army brat, I've got a lot of soldiers in my family, both in the present and living memory and at least as far back as the American Revolution. (Though, as noted above, I firmly believe the Union had all the right on its side in the Civil War, my roots in Alabama go deep enough that I'm the great-great-granddaughter of a Confederate soldier. I'm neither proud nor ashamed of that fact--it simply is what it is. He was a product of his place and time. If anything, my eligibility for the Daughters of the Confederacy, which I would never, ever join, is a useful reminder to occasionally ask myself what injustices I condone unthinkingly because they're normal for where and when I live.)

Whatever the cause, I expect I'll continue studying military history and writing about soldiers--the glory, moonshine though it be, and the horror, and the courage, honor, and sacrifice. And there's one anniversary I intend to make. Barring catastrophe, I'll be at Waterloo on June 18, 2015.

Release Day!

Today is release day for my SECOND novel (which I think means I get to call myself multi-published now, woohoo!), A Marriage of Inconvenience.

I got a lovely review at Heroes and Heartbreakers. Also, Carina Press is offering my first book, The Sergeant's Lady at half price through April 29.

A happy anniversary - no foolin'!

Unpublished writers dream of The Call (always with capital letters). That's the happy day when an editor tells you she wants to buy your book, and you are magically transformed from writer to Author (I always capitalized that one in my mind, too). I dreamed of The Call for years. I'd even rehearsed exactly what I was going to say to Mr. Fraser when I called him to tell him the news.

A year ago today, as I was walking back to my office after lunch, I remember thinking about my current submissions, and how some of them were approaching the editor or agent's usual response time. I decided I was OK with not getting The Call that day, because it felt a little weird to have such a major, life-changing event on April Fool's Day. Also, I was recovering from laryngitis and could still barely talk, so I would just as soon not have to deal with any calls, mundane or momentous.

Less than an hour later, I noticed I had a new message in my Gmail folder, so I got to a stopping place in my work and checked to see what it was, expecting a note from my husband or something from one of my writing email loops. To my absolute amazement, it was from Angela James at Carina offering to publish The Sergeant's Lady. She even apologized for sending The Email instead of giving me The Call--she was home with a sick kid whose coughing made phone conversations difficult.

I was thrilled and amazed. I'd been submitting manuscripts for years and was beginning to believe for the rest of my life I'd follow the same ritual of sending out queries and getting rejected. Now someone wanted to buy my manuscript?! That really happens?!

But I didn't act out that script I'd spent years envisioning. I couldn't scream for joy, because laryngitis, and also because I'd recently started working in a cube farm. I couldn't CALL my husband--again, the laryngitis--so I opened chat windows with him and one of my critique partners to squee and boggle. I just looked up the chat transcripts (I love how Gmail makes it easy to save EVERYTHING), and I have to share the opening of the conversation with my CP:

2:07 PM
me: hey!

2:08 PM
OMG OMG OMG!

S: ??????

me: Carina Press wants to buy TSL!

S: OMG OMG

YAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

me: bounce bounce bounce bounce


Good thing I'm more articulate in my books, huh?

A year later, I'm happy to be where I am. Like other big life events in my experience, getting published changes everything and yet changes nothing--it doesn't (usually) solve your old problems, and you still have all your old blessings, but there's a new layer of joys and challenges. And nothing, but nothing, beats people other than your critique partners and family reading and loving your work, whether it's that first editor who wants to buy it or a reader who sends you fan mail once it's out.

April Madness

April is going to be a busy month for me. To put it very mildly.

Miss Fraser turns seven next week, and we're having her birthday party Saturday at Chuck E Cheese. After two hours of the noise and crowds there, I'm going to want to come home and sit alone in a quiet room for the rest of the day. But it's what she wanted and she only gets one birthday a year, after all. I ordered her cake today–chocolate, with Littlest Pet Shop decorations.

As regular readers of this blog know, my next book, A Marriage of Inconvenience, releases April 11. So I'm busy with all the things an e-book author does to promote a new release–preparing guest blog posts, making sure my online ads are ready, obsessively monitoring review sites, etc. And on the days those guest blog posts are live, I'll be busy commenting and interacting with readers.

And then there's Easter. I sing in a choir, and this is the busiest time of our year. We have two Palm Sunday services, Maundy Thursday, plus 3 services on Easter starting at 7 AM. Somehow Mr. Fraser and I have to squeeze in the family aspects of Easter, too–getting Miss Fraser's Easter basket ready, planning a festive meal, and so on.

To add to the fun, Mr. Fraser is teaching a college class this quarter on top of his full-time job. Some weeks at least one of us has an evening commitment four workdays out of five. He did this for the first time last year, only then it was even crazier because I'd just sold The Sergeant's Lady and was in the middle of edits, AND we found the house we wanted and were scrambling to buy it before the first-time buyer tax credit went away. But even without that added layer of insanity, we are going to be seeing less of each other, and I'll need to do more of the day-to-day housework and childcare than normal, until mid-June.

Some people might use my April schedule as an excuse to take a break from writing. And if I hadn't spent the last five months battling carpal tunnel syndrome, I might do just that. But I'm just now starting to write regularly again, now that my hands are feeling better and I've got a copy of DragonDictate for when they start to feel sore. (I'm using DragonDictate right now, so if there are any really insane typos or my sentence structure seems a bit less polished, that's why. I'm still learning to speak like I type.)

I've missed writing. I'm behind schedule on my manuscripts compared to where I wanted to be at this point in the year. So I'm going to write in April. I've made a resolution to write every day. I'm not setting myself a word count or page count quota. That's my one concession to how busy my schedule is. But I have to write every day. Even my daughter's birthday. Even Easter. Even on the days Mr. Fraser has class. Some of those days it will probably only be a paragraph or two. But I will write every day.

I won't make this blog boring by posting daily progress updates. But I think I will include a weekly report, maybe on Saturday, maybe it's part of my Six Sentence Sunday posts, just to keep myself honest.

Awaiting my fate

I am awaiting my fate. In one more week, I shall Know.

My fate in the 2011 RITAs, that is.



The RITA is the Romance Writers of America's big annual award for published authors, equivalent to a Nebula in science fiction/fantasy or an Edgar for mystery writers. I entered The Sergeant's Lady in the Historical Romance category, and it's also eligible for Best First Book. The scores have already been turned in to the RWA office (first-round judges are fellow authors), and the finalists will be announced on the 25th. A week from today. Board members call the finalists, and throughout the morning the blogosphere and the twitterverse are humming as people squee over having gotten The Call. Then, at 2 PM RWA time, high noon my time, the whole list is posted on the RWA site.

This is my first year in the RITAs, since The Sergeant's Lady is my first published book. But I entered the Golden Heart, the equivalent contest for unpublished romance writers, three or four times on my journey to publication. So I know what I will be doing next Friday morning. Because of the time zone factor, calls can go out pretty early for us West Coast women. So the phone will be on the bathroom counter while I take a super-quick shower, its ringer turned to its highest volume. If I take the bus to work, the phone will be in my hand the whole time. If I drive, it will be on the seat beside me--and should it ring, I can't promise to obey the local law against talking while driving.

At the office, the phone will sit on my desk. I will warn my husband not to call me on my cell phone--if he needs to reach me, Gmail text or my work number are better, since I won't be, like, disappointed it's just him. I will have vowed the night before not to look at romance blogs or my twitter feed until after noon. Oh, no indeed. I will be a busy little worker bee.



I will break that vow. I will not be able to resist checking at least every 20-30 minutes to see if anyone from my categories has been called yet.

And if I do get that call? It'll be a first, since I never finaled in the Golden Heart, but I figure I'll do my best imitation of Felix Hernandez striking out the side against the Yankees. If I had a cheering section, I might be tempted to do a Cam Newton, but that'd look a little odd in the office, methinks. I'll then call my husband, email my critique group, tweet the news, congratulate all the other finalists I know, and break my diet with a celebratory lunch at that awesome Indian place around the corner.



And if, as is statistically far more likely, I don't final? Well, I'll feel disappointed. I'm terribly competitive, and I wouldn't have entered if I didn't think I had at least a tiny chance. So I'll probably take a few minutes to feel sorry for myself, then congratulate all my friends who made it through (and whom I'll be cheering for at the awards ceremony in NYC this summer!)...and go drown my sorrows in a diet-breaking consolatory lunch at that awesome Indian place around the corner. Mmm, gulab jamun...

Cover!

I just got the cover for my April 11 release, A Marriage of Inconvenience:



Isn't it pretty? Yet another win for the Carina art department! I love how it echoes the look of The Sergeant's Lady while clearly showing that Marriage is a civilian story with a pastoral setting. And so far I'm two for two in heroes wearing clothes. Boo-yah! (I know some people love the shirtless covers, but to me historical clothes are so hot it's a shame not to use them. And I trust my writing and my readers' imaginations to show what the guy looks like nekkid when the proper moment comes.)

Research Wednesday: My philosophy of historical fiction

This week instead of talking about what I've researched lately, I'm going to say a little about why I research, and my goals when I sit down to write historical fiction.

I know there are readers and writers out there who love historical fiction, especially historical romance, for what I'll call the "once upon a time" factor. For them it's not so much about 1315 or 1815 or 1865 as escaping to a world unlike ours, and probably one with better clothes and manners and far more hot single dukes.



I get the appeal of that, I really do. And I hope that anyone who picks up my books looking for an escape gets it. I always try to provide a full dose of romance and adventure. Granted, I haven't written a hot single duke yet, but I like to think Will of The Sergeant's Lady could hold his own in more aristocratic company. (Way before I sold, I used to pitch the book to my friends as "Nathan Fillion in a Rifle uniform, ammirite?!") And A Marriage of Inconvenience has a viscount who looks a bit like Ian Somerhalder.



But as both a reader and a writer, I'm not looking for "once upon a time." (Not in a historical novel anyway. It's just right for certain kinds of fantasy.) If the logline atop Chapter One says "1815," I want it to BE 1815. I write Regency/Napoleonic era because I'm fascinated by all the upheaval of that specific quarter century. Many of the key figures of the era feel as real to me as anyone in 2011. In some obscure way I feel like I owe it to them to respect their time and their culture and to write it as accurately as I can--and when I do something as off the wall and unlikely as pairing an heiress with a common sergeant, to not make light of the degree to which my hero and heroine are breaking the rules. I know I can't recreate the past perfectly. But I feel obliged to try.

Guest blogging today at Vivi Andrews' blog

No Research Wednesday post this week because instead I'm a guest today at Vivi Andrews' blog talking about The Sergeant's Lady, my non-writing dream job, the best books I've read lately, and who I'd be if I could be any character from any book. And next week Vivi will be here on Thursday to talk about her hellish paranormal Christmas novella, No Angel.

Guest post at Pink Fuzzy Slippers

Today I'm a guest at the Pink Fuzzy Slippers blog, talking about where I get my ideas and how I avoid giving writer's block power over me.

Stop by and say hi. One commenter wins a $10 Amazon gift certificate.

Interesting blog on e-book pricing

I'm too busy writing to blog much of late--gotta ride that new idea adrenaline while it lasts! But to keep this blog from growing cobwebs, today I'm linking to fantasy author Jim Hines' discussion of e-book pricing. Interesting stuff, more musing and discussion than answers.

For what it's worth, the list price of The Sergeant's Lady, a 94,000-word historical romance, is $5.99, but most retailers offer at least a bit of a discount. If you buy it directly from Carina Press, it's DRM-free and will cost you $5.39. At Amazon it's just $4.69, but you're buying a Kindle edition with DRM.

A comparable mass market paperback historical romance averages around $6.99. To me, that price difference feels about right. When you buy that paperback book, only a small fraction of the cost goes to the production and shipment of the physical object. Most of it goes to the labor of producing the book--all the work the author, editor, cover artist, copy editor, and so on did to take it from a creative gleam in the author's eye to a complete, polished, and packaged story. And when you're buying an e-book from a professional, reputable publisher (like Carina!) or the e-edition of a book that's also in print, those creative labor costs are exactly the same. So I can see discounting e-books by a dollar or two--or, to look at it another way, asking customers to pay a small premium for a paper book to cover printing and shipment--but no more than that, at least not as a regular thing. Promo offers or listing one's backlist for $0.99 to build interest in a new release is another story.

And this post is longer than I intended, so I'll leave it at that for now.

What if my characters had been born 200 years later?

Some authors, when developing characters for a new story, write their characters' biographies or interview them. I don't. For me, a story usually starts with a strong vision of two characters interacting--usually at their first meeting--and I think, "Well, who are you, why are you here, and is there a novel in you?" I build forward and backward, imagining what might happen next and what brought these people to the point of meeting in the first place, but it's not a structured process. In a sense, I know who my characters are as soon as that vivid first interaction appears in my imagination. Everything else is just fleshing them out.

Without getting into a long digression on my process, I'll just say that sometimes while I'm writing, my critique partners will ask questions about a character or I'll find myself wanting to verbalize my instinctive understanding of a protagonist or antagonist. One of the ways I approach this is by imagining who the character would be if they were born in my place and time rather than their own. What would they do, in a world where gender and class still matter, but not nearly as much as they did 200 years ago? This both gives me a clearer sense of what kind of person they are and what conflicts they have within their own time. (Though I try not to overdo the latter, lest they seem like frustrated time travelers longing for opportunities someone really born in the late 18th century wouldn't have begun to imagine.)

So I thought it would be fun to post about who Will and Anna from The Sergeant's Lady and James and Lucy from A Marriage of Inconvenience might have become if they'd been Americans in the early 21st century rather than Britons in the early 19th.


Will is the easiest of the bunch. He would've still pursued a military career, but instead of enlisting would've secured an appointment to West Point or a spot in an ROTC program and generally become an officer and a gentleman. (And a damn fine example of both.)

Anna is more of a challenge. She's intelligent and fairly extroverted, but she doesn't have any one ability or ambition that leaps out at me and makes me think that in my world she'd clearly be a lawyer or a research scientist or what have you. Of the feminine accomplishments she learned as a Regency young lady, the one she most enjoys and has the most talent for is music, but she's no prodigy. She's more like the best musician in your high school graduating class than the best musician you've ever heard. So she's no concert pianist or opera singer, and I don't see her as a music teacher or choir director, either.

She's curious and adventurous, and she wants to see as much of the world as possible. I can see her doing a stint in the Peace Corps after college, and maybe going into international development or diplomacy from there. Or, heck, she was pretty comfortable with army life in The Sergeant's Lady, so maybe she'd go to West Point, too, since that's been an option for women for 30-something years now.

James, the hero of A Marriage of Inconvenience, is Anna's brother, and the siblings share a certain idealism. But where Anna's idealism has an inward focus--she's utterly true to her principles and willing to defy the rest of the world for both love and her own sense of right and wrong--James is more the type who wants to change the world. He's a visionary, and he enjoys exercising power (for the good at least 90% of the time, since he's a hero).

In my book, he inherits a title and with it a seat in the House of Lords, so he's already a rising political power broker at 24. In our world he'd have to be a bit more patient, but at 24 he'd be a star law student, and by his early 40's he'd be the junior senator from some state or other, possibly even meditating a run at the presidency or at least on his party's short list for the next VP nomination if he happened to represent a swing state.

Lucy is another easy choice. She's an unusually gifted amateur artist in Marriage, and in the 21st century she'd doubtless be a professional artist. I'm not sure what medium or style she'd work in, though. I can't see her as an envelope-pushing avant garde artist, but nor do I see her as conventional and conservative. Maybe she'd be a photographer. Yeah, that's it. She'd be a young portrait photographer starting to get a lot of buzz.

Now available in the UK!

Due to some kind of glitch with the rights, up until now The Sergeant's Lady wasn't available for British Kindle users shopping at Amazon.co.uk.

Happily, the issue has now been remedied.

So, British readers! You can now buy my book and tell me all the things I got wrong and see if there are any linguistic Americanisms my Aussie critique partner didn't catch!

...and the blog tour is back!

Today I'm at Historical Hussies, talking about the history I left out of The Sergeant's Lady and giving away a $10 gift certificate to Amazon, B&N, or Books on Board to one commenter.

I haven't had much time for blogging here lately, between work, editing A Marriage of Inconvenience, working on my desert island WIP, and getting my daughter ready for school. (She starts first grade today.) But I promise a real post soon, maybe a nice picture-filled one so you'll know what James and Lucy, the protagonists of Marriage, look like in my head.

My website--the real story

Much to my surprise, my website has been all over the internet in recent weeks. It was on Smart Bitches and Dear Author, and later showed up on Barbara Vey's blog and at The Chatelaines, to name just two.

I want to clear up one misconception right away: the website was NOT designed as a publicity stunt. I'm not complaining about the fact it worked out that way, but it wasn't intentional, not even a tiny bit. The day it went viral on Smart Bitches and Dear Author, I was out in the middle of the woods, literally. We were on vacation and had taken a side trip to Mount St Helens. I had no clue anything was going on till Mr. Fraser's cousin tweeted us about it. And I promise you, if I was going to stage a deliberate publicity stunt, I would not do it on a day I planned to spend driving through Gifford Pinchot National Forest!

The second misconception I've seen is that I asked my husband to design my website to save money and that he doesn't know what he's doing. Also not the case. He's a professional web developer who's been working in the industry since 1999. I'm not going to link to any of his other sites to preserve at least a thin veneer of privacy between my writing and day job identities, but suffice it to say he's very good at what he does. He's a regular conference speaker and he's taught a university-level web dev class. So the mid-90's look of the current site was a deliberate stylistic choice on his part.

So. As for how the website came into being, well, 2010 has been a year of good things for the Fraser family, only they all decided to happen at once. If you'd told me on January 1 that Mr. Fraser was going to have an opportunity to teach a college class on top of his full-time job, thereby enhancing his resume and bringing in some extra money, that we were going to finally buy a house after a decade of renting, and that I was going to sell a book, I would've said that was a wonderful year. And it has been. It's just that the way it went down turned out kind of insane.

When Mr. Fraser got the chance to teach the class, he asked if I could take on more of the housework and childcare than usual since he'd be working such long hours. I was fine with that because it was just for one quarter and because I was between things in my writing. The added responsibility gave me an excuse to step back for a few months, send out queries, and just poke at some of my new writing ideas to see what felt right before committing.

Everything was going fairly smoothly until I found The House while idly visiting open houses one Sunday afternoon. All our plans to wait on serious house shopping till after the class ended went out the window because we--and admittedly I was the leading half of the "we" on this one--didn't want to risk this being the only case of the right house for the right price in the perfect neighborhood. So we made an offer, it was accepted, and suddenly we were both having to work hard at moving prep on top of the extra workload from Mr. Fraser's class.

Then Carina accepted The Sergeant's Lady, and I was thrown into an immediate whirlwind of edits to prepare for my August release date. On top of everything with the house and Mr. Fraser's class.

It was wonderful, and I'm thrilled that every piece of it happened, but it was INSANE. We had a good three months of more than two people can reasonably manage. And at the very end of it, I had the opportunity to list The Sergeant's Lady in a newsletter with upcoming releases and my online contact info.

The smart thing would've been to just leave my as-yet nonexistent website out of it and put my perfectly good blog there instead. But instead of being smart I asked Mr. Fraser could he please, please, pretty-please just put up a tiny, basic website, and we'd get the real thing up by my release date. He agreed, albeit reluctantly. But then the last pieces of our move and getting in the grades for his class took longer than we expected. Suddenly it was 11 PM the night before this newsletter was supposed to go out and my husband was putting together the website. He showed it to me, half expecting me to have a meltdown, and instead I laughed and laughed, because it was so HIM and so US and so in keeping with the madness of the two months we'd just made it through.

And I thought that would be that, because surely in the six weeks or so we still had before my release date, between the two of us we'd have time to get my new site up. But it didn't happen. I think once we got past the sheer insanity of our spring, we just kind of crashed for the summer. We needed the break even if we hadn't intended to take it.

So the site stayed on longer than we expected or intended, and we became accidental marketers. I'm glad for the attention, but I wanted to tell the real story of what happened. And in another week or two, I'll finally have a real website to show off!

Trying to catch my breath

It's been a crazy week, but more because of the day job than anything to do with my book, to tell the truth. Next week should be more settled, thankfully. I have a job that's fairly peaceful about 75% of the time but goes chaotic at often unpredictable intervals, and this happened to be one of the out-of-control weeks.

Anyway, on the book front, yesterday I posted at Rose Lerner's place about historical crushes. I've already given away the free book for that stop, but you're still welcome to stop by and comment, of course!

Today I have excerpts up at two sites: The Season and Unusual Historicals. Two different excerpts, and both different from the one I posted at the Carina blog on Tuesday, so if you're exploring my work to decide whether or not to buy, you might want to visit both. :-)

Tomorrow I'm at Once Written, Twice Shy, talking about the challenges facing introverts when they have to come out of their writing cave and work with their publishing team, and Sunday I'll be back at Unusual Historicals and also at Risky Regencies, with giveaways at all three sites.

On the reviews front, well, they continue to trickle in. I'm particularly happy with the B I got at Dear Author and my 9-star Top Pick from The Season.

At some point I need to write about my website and how it came to be, but that's just not going to happen for another few days. On top of the work madness, we have out of town company and a party planned, so it's all I can do to breathe, work on my CURRENT manuscript, and keep up with my blogging obligations.

Today on the blog tour

Today I'm at my publisher's blog, and by the end of the day I should have three posts up, talking about my influences as a writer and including an excerpt from The Sergeant's Lady. The first post is already up, reflecting on my adolescent love of Sunfire YA historicals and traditional Regency romances and the degree to which The Sergeant's Lady is a combination of the two, with sex scenes. No giveaway today, but please stop by and say hi anyway!

I'm going to post more about what it's like to go through my debut week as an author, but I think I'm going to wait till I've had time to reflect on the experience a bit more. It's oddly like your wedding day, in that it's something you dream of for a long time before it actually happens and you expect to be walking on air, but when it gets there it's awesome, but nothing like what you expected, and your mind tends to glom onto the most trivial things instead of the fact you're Actually Finally Getting Married. When I look back at my wedding day, I remember being tired (I was diagnosed with mono maybe two weeks later--I got chicken pox at 18 and mono at 28, and I hope I continue the pattern of getting diseases ten years past the usual time, 'cuz I'll live longer that way), the logistics of moving in a big dress, the problems with the caterer, and so on. All the romantic high points were before or after that day. When I look back at this week...well, I'll let you know once I'm actually looking back!

Release day!

My release day is here at last, and The Sergeant's Lady is available just about anywhere e-books are sold.

I'd have more to say, but I woke up this morning to a dead battery in the car we didn't take on vacation, so my schedule for the day has gone catawumpus. Sigh. The glamorous life of the writer.

Today I'm guest blogging at Magical Musings and will be giving away a free download of my novel to one commenter. Please stop by!

Almost there...

On Monday morning I'll wake up--that's assuming I sleep at all Sunday night!--and check my Kindle. If nothing goes wrong (or, as we used to say in Alabama, if the Good Lord's willing and the creek don't rise), The Sergeant's Lady will be waiting there for me. My very own book, out there for all the world to read.

It's been a long journey, one that started as a marathon and ended as a sprint. I started writing seriously in 2001, nine years ago. In my naive optimism--or maybe newbie arrogance would be a more accurate term--I never dreamed that it would take me nearly a decade to sell. And there were times in the past year or two where I wondered if I was deluding myself by thinking that I had any kind of writing gift worth cultivating. I even thought about quitting...for maybe a few hours. That's all it took to realize that even if no one wanted to read my stories, I still wanted to tell them.

The sprint started once Carina offered to buy the book. That was in April. Less than five months ago. In that brief time I've been through three or four rounds of edits, deciphered a contract, provided input on cover art and copy, planned a blog tour, built a web presence for myself (at least the beginnings of one--my website itself, the one talked about on Smart Bitches and Dear Author this week, is very much a work in progress and will hopefully be replaced by the real thing in the next couple weeks), and attended a major conference as an author with a First Sale ribbon on my badge and a book to publicize. All while moving to a new house and living my life as a married mother with a full time day job. It's been dizzying at times. Wonderful, though. Nothing like having your dream come true after almost giving up all hope that it's possible!

And the journey continues. Carina has accepted my second Regency historical romance, A Marriage of Inconvenience, exact date TBD but probably March or April 2011. Watch this space for further details...

One week to release date, and my first few reviews

Just one week till release date now, and I'm starting to get reviews. So far, they've all been good, and I've got my fingers crossed the pattern will hold.

Night Owl Reviews made it a Top Pick.

The Bookkeeper enjoyed it even though it's not one of her usual genres.

The Reading Reviewer thought it was delicious!

And I'm delighted to announce my book is finally up for pre-order at Barnes & Noble. Given that I've had several readers specifically ask about reading it on their Nooks, I was starting to bite my nails. Now I'll just have to find something else to bite my nails over--which just before release week isn't hard at all!

Blog Tour!

I'm about to embark upon The Sergeant's Lady Blog Tour 2010! It's a bit like a physical book tour, only without the travel to glamorous destinations, but also without the room service food or the sitting forlornly at a bookstore table hoping the next person who walks up will actually buy my book instead of just asking for directions to the restroom or where the Stieg Larsson books are shelved.

I'll be visiting various blogs and posting what I hope will be amusing and/or informative anecdotes about me, my book, and my writing process. At almost every stop I'll be giving away a free download of The Sergeant's Lady or an Amazon gift certificate to one lucky commenter, so do check the calendar on the sidebar and stop by for your chance to win!