I’m sorry to be running so behind this morning. I am juggling multiple projects and responsibilities at the moment, including my children’s deadlines for school projects, and settling my brain down to write a blog post has taken me several hours.

A friend of mine has often lamented that her editors seem to have a radar for when she’s buried in work for another editor and that they inevitably hit her with something they need at the same time. This has been my experience, too. Weeks can go by with blissful quiet during which I can write in peace, and then *bam* a dozen things need to be turned in, worked on, considered or finished at once. Right now I’m in that position editorially and that’s put me in a contemplative mood about edits and the process of working with editors.

Some authors are heavily dependent on their editors to the point that they don’t think they write quality work without one. I can’t say I’m one of those. I can write a good book without an editor. I’m not faultless with grammar and punctuation, but I usually get copy editor notes that say, “This was a very clean manuscript.” Some things are natural to me (meaning I don’t think about them at all while I’m writing), such as structure and pacing. When I get compliments on those from my editors, I don’t know what to say since I don’t consciously work on those aspects. All that said, I firmly believe the right editor/author relationship is worth its weight in gold.

I’ll never forget sitting in a bar in Dallas with Kate Duffy and Eileen Dreyer, and Eileen’s analogy for working with an editor. She compared it to being in a swamp filled with alligators, with the author swimming through the treacherous waters and the editor sitting safe on the shore, saying, “Alligator to your left. Alligator to your right.” The author has to navigate the hazards in his or her own way (and I firmly believe they should be left to figure it out on their own), but the editor is there to point out problems that the author may not see.

And that’s really where I find editors hugely invaluable. Not because they tell me how to write a book or try to rewrite my story, but because they see what I can’t. Another friend of mine compares it to having your face pressed into the glass of a window–you just can’t see clearly. You need someone to stand behind you and give you the overall picture… then to stay back so you can figure out what to do with that picture. It’s a delicate balance. The author needs to be able to say, “You’re right. I have to rethink because my original vision isn’t going to work.” and the editor needs to be able to say, “Okay, you don’t agree with me and it’s your story to do what you need to with it.”

My favorite type of edits are the “more” edits. Dig deeper, try harder, go bigger. I wish I could say I didn’t skip corners here and there, but I do. I love it when an editor basically says, “You copped out here. Do it right.” Going back to the alligator analogy, I think it’s awesome when an editor tells me to stop dipping my toes in on the shore and jump the hell in and get messy. Maybe a little bloody. Maybe drown a little. I’ll be the first to say that I can use a good shove or kick in the ass now and then.

So, I’m off to jump back in the swamp.

I’ve got a copy of The Promise of Love to give away to a random commenter. Oh… Did anyone else watch Spartacus: Vengeance on Friday? What did you think?

I have a new cover to share! The pretty wrapper for my story A Hunger So Wild, which is Elijah’s story in my Renegade Angels series. I have to confess, I’ve been sitting on this cover for a few months now. Since Elijah’s story doesn’t release until July 3rd, I thought it would be better to wait until after the New Year to do the unveiling. I might have waited longer still, but the publisher is about to scoop me in the sales catalog, so it was time. You get to see it here first.

The cover artist is Tony Mauro, the same brilliant talent that was behind the cover for A Touch of Crimson. Tony isn’t just a wonderful artist, he’s a really awesome person with a generous soul. I love him madly. It was one of my career dreams to have a cover designed by him and now I have TWO!

July 3, 2011

Sylvia Day draws us back into the shadows of a seductive underworld where lycans, vampires and angels vie for supremacy…

Elijah Reynolds is the most dominant of lycans, a rare Alpha whose skill on the hunt is surpassed only by his primal sexuality. When the lycans revolt due to the iron fist of angelic rule, he steps into command, becoming both enemy and coveted ally in the conflict between vampires and angels.

Vashti is the second most powerful vampire in the world, a lethal beauty with a path of devastation in her wake. Tasked with proposing an alliance between vampires and the lycans who killed her mate, Vash approaches Elijah, whose need to avenge a friend demands Vash’s death even as his passion demands her surrender.

Soon, their enmity erodes beneath an all-consuming desire. Elijah has never encountered a woman whose warrior spirit and fierce sexual appetite rivals his own, while Vash is faced with the one man strong enough to be her equal. But as war looms, each must decide where their loyalty lies–with their own kind or with the enemy lover they can no longer live without.

So what do you think? Like it? Hate it? Indifferent to it?
I’d love to hear your opinion.

The randomly selected (via random.org) winners of the three copies of Men Out of Uniform (from the giveaway in my last post) are: Maureen, Gwen Hansen, Denise A. Agnew. Just email me at sylvia@sylviaday.com with your mailing address and I’ll drop the books in the mail to you.

Happy Monday!

The first Monday of the new year. Here at Murder She Writes we have a new blogger, Josie Brown! You’ll get to meet her next week and I know you’ll love her like we do.

I’m really excited to say that not only did I meet my reading goal last year, I doubled it! Yay, me. After a nearly four year-long reading drought, I’m so happy to be reading and enjoying books again. I wanted to read at least 26 books last year and ended up reading 52 instead. So I’ll be doubling my reading goal in 2012. Just meeting it would be great, but if I manage to go over that would be even better.

This year, I’ll be wrapping up a few things, including finishing out contracts and series. It’ll be exciting for me to wipe the slate clean so to speak, so I’m feeling ready for this new year to begin even though it crept up soooo fast. Really. What happened to 2011? It zipped by on fast forward.

So, did you meet any of your 2011 resolutions? What will you be wrapping up in 2012? I have some copies of Men Out of Uniform, so I’ll give three away today. Happy New Year!

Over the weekend, I received an email from a reader/aspiring writer asking me to share how I’m able to “concentrate, organize, and write consistently.” As I thought about my response, I realized it would possibly end up being long enough to write a blog about and so I am.

Now, there are lots of reasons why people don’t finish books. They don’t think the story all the way through so they hit a point where there’s nothing in the well to write. They have a fear of success/failure. The actual writing part (typing, sentence formation, description) is too miserable–they have a story but they don’t want (or know how) to do the work. But I’m not going to get into those reasons, because that wasn’t the thrust of the email.

I wish I could say I was an ace at concentrating, but I can’t. I wish I could say I was organized, but I can’t. I can say that I write consistently, because I write every day, but the amount of my word count varies. Some days I’ll write five words, another day I’ll write five thousand.

When I first started writing, I was prolific. I could write a 100K book in a month that was ready for turn-in, and I wrote lots of novellas and shorts for fun. The first couple years were awesome. The money was amazing, I was selling everything I wrote, and I was releasing stories most months of the year.

Then I burned out. Writing became a chore, deadlines gave me heart palpitations and kicked off crying jags, and I was unhappy with the quality of my writing. I thought about quitting, because I’ve never wanted to be committed to doing something that made me unhappy.

So I took some time off. About a year. I reconnected with my love of writing and I came back to it with a determination to make sure I didn’t have turn-ins that made me crazy. I stopped focusing on the demands of outside forces and focused on ME and what makes me happy as a writer. Frankly, I’m the most important part of the creation of my stories. Everyone and everything else in the process/production is expendable, but I’m not. My stories–good and bad, flaws and all–wouldn’t exist without me. And so making me Priority #1 brought me back to a place where I love to write and I love the stories I’m producing.

For me, being organized or able to concentrate isn’t what makes me a writer who starts and finishes books. What gets me from beginning to end is my love of what I’m doing. I’m a Grade A procrastinator. If there’s something I’d rather be doing, I’ll be doing that. When I’m not madly in love with a project, then I have problems concentrating on it. BIG problems. So my solution was to build in enough time to find out why I’m not loving something. That goes back to making me Priority #1. My books and I are in a relationship, and as with any relationship when you stop feeling the love you have to take the time to examine why. I hate, hate, hate not having enough time and it just about killed my career because it just about killed my love for doing it. So I fixed it.

But the gal who wrote me mentioned “other things seem to get in the way.”

Now I take a hard stance to that. It’s not something I have a lot of sympathy for. My husband is very understanding about the time I spend writing, but if he wasn’t, I’d kick his ass. I don’t get in the way of him doing the things he wants to do and he damn well won’t get in the way of me doing what I want to do. That’s a relationship–give and take. My kids are 13 and 10 yo and they do their own laundry. They’re perfectly capable of it. My hubby does his own laundry. He’s perfectly capable of it. I do my own laundry. We take turns cooking and shopping. He gets in a car and drives to work Mon-Fri, but overall, I put in more hours doing my job every week than he does his. So household chores/up-keep is split down the middle accordingly.

Sometimes I miss family events. It sucks and I hate it, but sometimes work has to come first. I work hard to make sure it doesn’t happen often, but it does happen and I don’t make excuses for it. If I have to work, I have to work.

So what do I think it takes to start and finish a book? Priorities and drive. You’ve got to want it. You’ve got to want it really, really bad. You’ve got to want it to the point where there’s not much you want more. And then give yourself permission to go after that thing you want so damn badly. Don’t let anyone or anything stand in your way. If you don’t want it enough to taste it, you’re not there yet. And if you’re working on stories that you don’t get antsy being away from, you’re working on the wrong projects. If you’d rather be doing something else, you’re working on the wrong projects.

That’s it. That’s the extent of my process. Your mileage may vary. Good luck! I’m rooting for you.

Today’s awesome guest blogger is a dear friend–Deborah Cooke. I don’t see her nearly often enough, but whenever we do catch up, it’s always a treat and we never have enough time to talk about everything we’d like to. Her latest Dragon Diaries story releases this week and I’m excited to have her visiting to share it with you. Happy Monday!

Since I’m visiting Murder She Writes, I thought I’d talk about killing characters today.

There are always characters who deserve to die in my books. The most likely candidates are villains and I like to ensure that bad guys get what they deserve. In my Dragonfire series of paranormal romances, there are good dragon shape shifters – the Pyr – and bad dragon shape shifters – the Slayers – locked in a battle for control of the treasure that is the earth. The Pyr are almost all guy dragon shape shifters, and each will have one firestorm in their lives, which is the mark of the dragon in question meeting the human woman who can bear his son. Sparks literally fly between the destined couple – but destiny isn’t always that easy to fulfill. For one thing, Slayers kill humans, too, and particularly like to target pregnant mates. Generally, I find Slayers pretty unsympathetic and I like ensuring that they suffer before they die. They are a feisty bunch, though, given that some of them have drunk an Elixir which gives immortality – this means that I can really draw out their deaths.

Each Dragonfire novel focuses on the story of one firestorm – that is one Pyr hero meeting the woman who can turn him inside out and upside down. The next Dragonfire novel is FLASHFIRE, coming January 3, which stars a hero who doesn’t want to be a dragon shape shifter. Lorenzo is fed up with his shifter powers, never mind the idea that he should fight for the team. Lorenzo wants to be left alone. He has a plan to ditch his powers and the rest of the Pyr, severing that connection forever. He’s a stage illusionist and considers this to be his greatest disappearing act of all time. Of course, he’s not counting on his firestorm, much less the persuasive passion of Cassie Redmond, the most unforgettable woman he’s ever met. And Lorenzo certainly isn’t counting on the gathering of Slayers who come to meddle with his plan and target the woman who is capturing his heart. You can probably guess that Lorenzo discovers that being a dragon has its upside – and that he’s not the one to die.
(Excerpt at www.deborahcooke.com/flash.html)

But there are other characters who die in my books, and they don’t necessarily deserve it. Probably the most memorable one for me was the death of Sophie. Among the Pyr, there is one female dragon shape shifter at a time. She’s called the Wyvern and has special powers – she’s also kind of mysterious. We met Sophie at the beginning of the Dragonfire series, but in KISS OF FATE, Sophie fell in love. The problem was that she fell in love with a Pyr and that’s against the rules. I’ll let you read the book to find out what happened, but – spoiler alert! – near the end of that book, Sophie the Wyvern died. There was no Wyvern. And the child that was conceived in that book by Erik and Eileen turned out to be not only a dragon shape shifter’s child but a little girl. Zoë was born to be the new Wyvern.
(excerpt at www.deborahcooke.com/fate.html)

It wasn’t long afterward that I started thinking about Zoë and her special powers. You see, the boy dragon shape shifters come into their powers at puberty. I realized that would be the same for Zoë and could only imagine the special kind of trouble her life would be. I had always thought that it would be something to have a dragon shape shifter teenager in the house, but a girl would create so much more angst over it. Plus – unlike the guy dragon shifters who are her friends – Zoë would have no one to ask for advice about her special powers, let alone any tips or training on conquering them. My YA paranormal Dragon Diaries trilogy is the story of Zoë’s coming of age

In FLYING BLIND (now available), Zoë’s powers make their debut – perhaps predictably, the first appearance of her powers happens involuntarily when she defends her best friend from a bully. Of course, nothing is simple. Not only is her inner dragon out of control, but her Wyvern powers are elusive. She gets sent to dragon boot camp with her buddies, and she meets the hottest guy on the planet, who not only turns her inside out but apparently knows more about dragons than she does. Everything is complicated by a new threat to the Pyr – their old adversaries, the Mages, have new powers but only Zoë and the next generation of Pyr can see the truth and save the day.

Yup. Mages die in this book and it’s fun.
(Excerpt at www.thedragondiaries.com/flyingblind.html)

In WINGING IT (on sale December 6), Zoë has had time to catch her breath and think she’s got her dragon powers under control. It’s almost her sixteenth birthday and all she wants is a dragon tattoo, the right to tell her friend Meagan the truth about her nature, and the chance to see that rebel rocker Jared again. Instead, she gets an invitation to the popular kids’ Halloween party which she knows is really a trap set by the Mages who want to eliminate all shifters. (Excerpt at
www.thedragondiaries.com/wingingit.html)

You can probably guess that instead of the shifters being eliminated, it’s most Mages who bite the dust in this book. I really love the big finish in this book!

So, what do you think about authors killing characters? Do you think only the bad guys should die? Or are you interested in seeing what happens after a character sacrifices him or herself for the greater good, like Sophie did?

Deborah Cooke has been writing romance and exploring the genre for almost twenty years. She sold her first book, a medieval romance called THE ROMANCE OF THE ROSE, in 1992, and since then has sold almost fifty romance novels as well as a number of novellas and shorts. She writes as Claire Delacroix and as Deborah Cooke and has also written as Claire Cross. You can read more about her books on her websites:
www.deborahcooke.com
www.thedragondiaries.com
www.delacroix.net
She blogs most weekdays at Alive & Knitting at www.delacroix.net/blog and can be found in two places on Facebook:
www.facebook.com/AuthorDeborahCookeFanPage
www.facebook.com/AuthorClaireDelacroix