My books came yesterday! Read about it over at the 2BRead blog . . .

Here’s some blogs you might have missed . . .

Today, at Romancing the Blog, I wrote about Chemistry. Head on over and tell me who your favorite fictional couple is and why . . .

Colleen Thompson, who writes romantic suspense for Leisure, has a great column about why she writes RS. It’s something we’ve discussed here at MSW. I particularly love this:

. . . a world where, without exception, the mystery is solved, the mortal threat vanquished, the evil punished, and flawed yet worthy human beings find the love that they deserve.

For some holiday whimsy, check out Shirley Jump’s column at RTB, Santa Take Note. It’s her twelve days of Christmas for writers . . . I particularly liked:

10. Ten daily minutes. To be all by myself. Yes, to actually go to the bathroom without someone knocking on the door, asking how to divide fractions or complaining that their Science teacher is one of Stephen King’s unleashed monsters. If you can pull off the above miracles, surely this one will be a piece of cake.

I took that one to heart and had a private bath (i.e. locked the door!) yesterday morning. Bliss, total bliss, for forty-five minutes.

And check out the writer’s block cartoon over at the Backspace blog . . . it cracked me up.

And don’t forget our contest! Midnight Saturday we’re closing entries, and announcing the winner on Sunday, so if you haven’t entered, so it now! Rules here.

Miss Snark unsnarky . . .

Yesterday, Miss Snark (my guilty pleasure) posted this sad story, beginning:

A good guy was gunned down in the streets of Brooklyn two nights ago. He was a cop doing his job, chasing a guy who turned out to be armed, dangerous, and really stupid. The stupid guy lived. Officer Stewart, father of two, husband, brother, son, didn’t.

Read more about this senseless tragedy here and here and here.

Which leads me to why I write suspense. It’s exactly what Miss Snark says . . . “Crime novels make sense of the carnage. There’s always a reason. There’s always a motivation. And there’s always a sense of justice.”

My cops are the good guys. They get the bad guys. Justice is served. The end. It’s fiction, which Officer Stewart’s murder sadly reminds us.

Under the heading We Can’t Make This Stuff Up . . .

Yesterday, a judge ruled that a man was not guilty of rape because he’d been sleeping.

A sleep expert testified at his trial that the man suffered from sexomnia, a sort of sleep walking that includes sexual acts, likely brought on by alcohol, sleep deprivation and genetics.

Apparently, he’s done this with his girlfriends in the past so this is now okay behavior? What’s next . . . “I’m sorry officer, I didn’t mean to stab my girlfriend to death, I was sleeping?”

However, I bet next season we see this on CSI . . .

26 days and counting . . .

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, that’s okay. You’ll hear more later.

And then she was done . . .

I have 21 more pages to review on my copyedits of The Kill and then the 480-some page manuscript will be overnighted back to NYC. It’s sitting here in front of me reminding me that I need to finish up. So I’ll sign off for now.

One of my favorite movies is the musical 1776. Ken Howard played Thomas Jefferson, Howard DaSilva played Benjamin Franklin, and William Daniels (the voice of KITT in the old eighties show Knight Rider) played John Adams.

If you’ve never seen it, you should. My hubby and I went to see it on stage in Sacramento and had fourth row center seats. The stage production was fantastic, too, but I never tire of seeing the video.

1776 recounts the events leading up to the signing of the Declaration of Independence. I’ll admit that I love John Adams, who was “obnoxious and disliked.” Over and over he demanded a vote on independence. And he was thwarted. But he sends Richard Henry Lee back to Virginia to get the support of the first southern state in the cause of Independence.

When Lee comes back and says that he has Virginia, a committee is created to write up a “declaration of some sort” to be voted on.

BTW, there is romance here. Not only John and Abigail Adams from afar, through letters, (I love that story because Abigail was NOT a whimpy chick); but John Adams brings Martha Jefferson back to take care of Thomas Jefferson’s “needs.” (Yes, Karin, there’s sex in this musical.) Jefferson was supposed to go home to visit his wife until Adams roped him into writing the declaration. But Jefferson couldn’t do it because he wanted to see his wife. It’s after his romantic evening that he writes the brilliant document.

Which brings me to one of my favorite scenes in the movie.

Before Jefferson, Franklin, and Adams walk into the congress to present the resolution, they have a conversation (they also sing, but I’m sure they didn’t really sing in Philadelphia.)

Adams says it’s a masterpiece. Jefferson is worried. Franklin sees immortality.

Franklin sings:

A farmer, a lawyer, and a sage
A bit gouty in the leg
You know it’s quite bizarre
To think that here we are
Playing midwives to an egg

Now they have a conversation . . . what kind of egg? What bird should be the symbol of a new country?

Adams says the eagle. Jefferson says the dove. Franklin says . . .

The turkey.

Yes. This is a true story. Benjamin Franklin wanted the national bird of America to be . . . the turkey.

What in the world would we eat on Thanksgiving if the turkey was our national bird?

I’m glad John Adams won the debate.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Natalie, Karin and I met for a weekend of brainstorming and wine. Practically at gunpoint, Karin MADE me plot out my option book.

It was a story I’d been thinking about for awhile. Black market pharmaceuticals, mass murder, and a truly narcisstic villain with a God complex. I really didn’t know the hero, but I had a good grasp of the heroine’s backstory, why she did what she did, what haunted her, etc. Everything was pretty vague except for the opening scene, which took place in the middle of the Sierra Nevada mountains, north of Lake Tahoe, and basically was a bunch of dead bodies in an apparent mass suicide which, my smart and industrious heroine quickly figures out was a mass murder.

Okay, that’s pretty much all I knew. By the end of the torture, er, brainstorming, er, plotting party, I knew my hero, had excellent ideas about my villain (thanks Nat!) and had a great plot. I wrote up the synopsis quickly — eight pages! — and then realized there was no way I could write the book.

It felt artificial, planned, phony. And I knew the ending. Even though Karin tells me I don’t have to follow the synopsis, I still felt gypped. Sort of like when someone tells you whodunnit in a murder mystery before you finish chapter one.

So I emailed my agent and told her I didn’t want to write that book for the option, and I was going to send her another synopsis. I did. It was five pages double spaced (one of which was backstory) and very vague and I can’t WAIT to find out what happens. I am so excited to write this story. It’s about a topic I’m very interested in, the hero was a character in a previous novel, and I can’t wait to find out what makes the heroine tick.

So plotting be damned. I’m never doing it again. I tried, I failed, it’s time to bury that sorry attempt to turn me into a quasi-plotter. I’m hopeless.

But I can’t wait for the next “brainstorming” party–I’ll bring the wine, and we’ll talk about everyone elses books.