I've submitted a new novel proposal to Spice. It'll be a while before I hear anything. *drums fingers*

Time to work on something else.

My Amazon link has the cover now!

Done! With the draft, at least. Editing this week, then off it goes. Then on to the next projects.

After spending a day or so freaking out, I told myself to let the title thing go. I will chat with my editor in a week. In the meantime, I will finish the book. That's the most important thing.

The draft is almost done! But now I need a new title for it; the previous suggestions aren't going to work out.

I imagine we will come up with something, me and my editor.

I sent my author edits in on Monday, and am now full speed ahead on the werewolf draft.

I'm back from RWA Nationals, but now have my Author Alterations copy of the duchess novel--which means the next several days, at least, will be painstakingly reading it once again and making small changes.

Then it's back to the werewolf novel, which is due September 15.

I'm off to San Francisco on Wednesday, for the RWA's National Conference.

See you all on the other side!

Review of PERIPHERY by Julia Watson.

Of my story, she wrote, "Silver Skin" was one of the most imaginative of the bunch, with a mechanized substance that encases the body like a second skin playing a role both in the sexiness as much as the plot. This story also boasts giant, man-eating turtles, a touch which filled me with geeky glee.

I love my giant people-eating turtles.

I cut words. Maybe a thousand or so, I didn't count exactly; they were talky-not-showy words I would have cut later, so I might as well cut them now.

Then I made changes relating to the Law of Conservation of Characters (I don't know if that's a real law with a name, but it ought to be) so that instead of a younger brother and a sister and her husband and his brother who is the important one, the brother-in-law is now the younger brother. And the rest are neighbors or something, they might end up gone, I don't care at this point. It is hot outside and humid and I am tired and feeling pressured.

I also made some other changes, copy-editing types, so the brother-in-law would be the brother all the way through.

Then I made a list of new scenes that my critiquers had suggested or inspired; there are other changes they suggested I really liked, but those can wait until the draft is done, I think. I still need to write a better scene list for the last third of the book.

Due date is September 15th.

Yesterday was money day again--I got a check!

I like money days.

You can read an excerpt of the first chapter of The Duchess, Her Maid, The Groom and Their Lover here.

Now that my second book for Spice has a publication date, it's time to provide information so the production folks at Harlequin can design the cover. I spent yesterday refining my original synopsis (a few things had changed since I'd submitted it) and writing up character descriptions. I also answered their list of "author questions" about the book. This process actually helps me a little, helping me to think of the big picture while the draft is still in progress.

I just spent three days lolling around and filling my brain with books and television. I feel reborn! Definitely ready to get back to writing.

I've created a Facebook Profile.

And sold a reprint of "17 Short Films About Hades and Persephone" to the Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica.

Banishment

I am banished from the patient men who fight
They smote my heart to pity, built my pride.
Shoulder to aching shoulder, side by side,
They trudged away from life's broad wealds of light.
Their wrongs were mine; and ever in my sight
They went arrayed in honour. But they died,--
Not one by one: and mutinous I cried
To those who sent them out into the night.

The darkness tells how vainly I have striven
To free them from the pit where they must dwell
In outcast gloom convulsed and jagged and riven
By grappling guns. Love drove me to rebel.
Love drives me back to grope with them through hell;
And in their tortured eyes I stand forgiven.

--Siegfried Sassoon

Book two for Spice is tentatively scheduled for October, 2009. Which means my deadline is a couple weeks later than I thought it was. Awesome!

I turned in the revisions to the duchess novel!

Might be a bit scarce; am working on revisions to THE DUCHESS.

I'm back! 500 words last night.