Friday, May 25, 2007

Back to writing...

I'm giving it another shot. A wonderful friend of mine (who writes under the name Sarah McCarty... you really should read her stuff) told me that Harlequin opened a new line called Spice Briefs. Short erotic, romantic interludes. I've already sent them one submission. A short historical I wrote a while back. I wrote this as a short follow-up to a submission I'd sent to Ellora's Cave, who has yet to respond even though I submitted to them over two years ago. I wanted to be able to send something quickly, but, of course, they never responded.

Not good business practice. Oh sure, they acknowledged receiving my submission. But they never got back to me. Trust me, I understand overworked and underpaid, but to never get back at all? Definitely poor business practice.

So I sent off my historical to Harlequin's email address. Now, them I expect to take time to get back to me.

In the meantime, I've got a contemporary done. I sent it off to a friend to read just to check the ending. I'm not sure. Seems a bit contrite and way too neat to me. But if she likes it, I can deal with it. I have several different ways that I can write the end, so that can be adjusted, though the end result is always the same.

Lastly, I'm working on a short paranormal. Not sure they're going to like this one, though. It's not romantic at all. Erotic and need driven is more like it. Lots of lust. Lots of sex driving the whole story. Hard part is that, to stay true to the idea, one of the characters has to die in the end.

The good thing is I want to show them that I can be versatile. They've already got a historical (and I have at least one other idea for another) and then I've got a contemporary and a paranormal in the works. Basically, I can write just about any genre or time frame. Tell me what you need and I'll write to specification. I used to do that way back in the days when I wrote for Penthouse. (Yup, another dirty little secret... ) Had a couple features and quite a few letters. Paid really well, too. It just got old really fast. I wanted to write more than just sex. I like a little story to go with it.

Anyway... what else is new? Graduations are over. At least for the university. Still have my daughter's high school graduation to get through, but that won't be until next month. Prom was last week and both girls looked absolutely gorgeous!

I've started to work on my gardens. One down and eight more to go... See if I can get another done today. My arms are killing me. Had to get out the manual hedge clippers and trim back a few bushes. They were attempting a coup on the whole yard, so I had to nip them back and put them in their place. My arms are screaming at me now. Telling me that they're used to knitting and typing. What's up with this clipping cr@p?!? >

Monday is Memorial Day. Can't believe it's already here. Mark has informed me that he doesn't want a picnic this year. I don't blame him. He wants a quiet simple day at home with no pressure. No jobs. No list of things to do. Frankly, I don't blame him. We'll have a picnic later in June. Invite everyone over ... er, just because. But now just give him a day of rest where he can do what he wants or nothing at all if that's what he wants.

So I'm just going to make pasta with good fresh bread and invite a few (very few) people over to sit on the deck and relax.

Hence the reason to get the yard in shape. So it's off to work...

Have a terrific day!!!

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