This post's purpose is to collect my common tags in one place, so readers (and I!) can easily access entries on several subjects.

ETA: I also emailed my editor to ask if she had a preference between the first two ideas on the list.

Poll #1304642 My Next Proposal
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 51

Victoria Janssen's next novel proposal for Spice should involve:

I was tagged by drinkingcocoa.

Once you've been tagged, you have to write a note with 16 random things, shortcomings, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end choose 16 people to be tagged, listing their names and why you chose them. You have to tag the person who tagged you. [Except she already did this meme, so I don't get that part.] [So if the exercise appeals to you, consider yourself tagged].

( Cut for length. )

My brain is empty.

Entertain me, primates who are online!

I know there are those who write only to earn money, but most writers I know also write to express or fulfill themselves in some way, even if their income is dependent upon it, and of course there are those who write only for personal fulfillment, some who show their writing to others and some who don't. I want to go a little deeper than that. What, exactly, do we get out of writing? What do you get out of it?

I shall make a numbered list.

1. Stories. There are stories I want to read that no one else has written, so I write them myself.

2. Sharing. I want to share my joy in my stories. I want others to love the story of them, to think about my characters, to put their own spin on my ideas.

3. Pride. I have pride in my skill at making characters, stories, prose itself, and I have pride in my perserverance and market savvy that got my work published. I have pride in my dedication, that allowed me to publish over and over again.

4. Money. It's very, very satisfying and validating to be paid money for doing something you love and find fulfilling. Also, I like spending the money on things like The Man from U.N.C.L.E. DVD boxed set.

5. Secrets. Having secrets is having power. Writing is something all my own; my characters and stories are all my own; I can think of them in my head, planning and plotting and exploring new ideas for future projects, all the while keeping it to myself as a secret pleasure of which I share only fragments.

Anybody else?

Yesterday, I again expressed my deep desire to see fanfic for the eunuchs (Kaspar and Arno) in my book. feklar helped me to come up with the plots for the early Kaspar -n- Arno 2GtR4EVR Canon.

( Behold. )

Please, feel free to add your own in comments.

Poll #1217213 I would love to read that!
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 42

Given the choice, I would choose to read this novel first:

700 or so words last night.

But I got cover flats!!!!!

I spent rather a long time caressing them, admiring them, calling people on the phone to read them my ISBN and back cover copy...I was shameless, yes, indeed.

I HAVE A COVER!!!!!

And it is beautiful. It is photographic. The Duchess is too young and her hair is red and curly instead of straight and dark. Must be one of her disguises. It is a lovely cover. I can't wait to share it. Will post when I have permission.

I HAVE AN ISBN!!!!!!!!!!!!! AN ISBN-13!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What should I read next? is a very interesting site.

"Enter a book you like and the site will analyse our database of real readers'
favourite books (over 47,000 and growing) to suggest what you could read next."

It can get a little consuming, remembering which books you want to add to your own list, which is supposed to help the results. You can thank me later.

I haven't yet seen the new Dr. Who episode, but I just remembered I had a DW dream last night. I was watching one of those special eps, like "The Five Doctors," except it had Ten, and Five, and Seven...I think that was all, until there was a glorious walk-through by Six, accompanied by Peri, and oddly enough Tegan and Nyssa, and some other character I was supposed to recognize in the dream but who was in fact not a real character from the show; now that I think about it, he looked a bit like one of the characters in my current novel, only blond instead of red-haired. I was cheering that Six was there, and then after the show, I seemed to be in a theatre setting, and talking to Colin Baker (whom I've never met). In the dream, he looked as he did in the late 1980s, and was wearing the costume but not the coat, with his sleeves rolled up like Peter Davison in "Planet of Fire."

I was apparently watching with someone else, and when Seven did some kind of wacky acrobatics with a cart, I said, "That's him. He's the kind of person who'll stick ferrets down his trousers. And juggle at the same time."

I find it interesting that I didn't include Four, who hasn't done much DW stuff at all, or One through Three, as if I knew One through Three's actors were dead and couldn't be in it.

Last night's thousand-plus words were all synopsis, using my scene list for a reference. There are some...gaps. Why this, and not that? "Because this way leads to the erotic scene" is not the best answer.

My next step is identifying the gaps; if I list them, maybe I will expire from despair and no longer have to worry about synopses. [ahem] If I list them, maybe it will help me to solve those problems.

My subconscious is clearly working on them. I couldn't sleep, then woke up in the wee hours, then had a nasty dream in which I was blocked at every turn, then woke up again...you get the picture.

Though, oddly, cell phones have entered my anxiety dreams. The first time it happened, a while back, failing to get the phone to work was part of the anxiety. This time, I was lost and used my cell to call someone and find out the restaurant's location. Maybe I was waking up a bit by then. It was weird, anyway.

It cheered me up to sign up for WisCon programming this morning. As usual, I tried to be conservative, but still signed up for more than I could actually really do, on the theory that one doesn't get assigned to everything one requests.

3500 words on the weekend in various spots. I need to make a list of scenes I'd like to include. I've done that before, and it helps me if I sit down with the laptop and feel at a loss.

Still waiting for the first check. I have decided that the day a check finally arrives, or maybe the day after since that's the day I can deposit it, shall be named "Money Day," and it shall be celebrated annually from now on. Any suggestions for how I should celebrate?

Finished entering paper edits on Friday night. Finished chapter 20 on Saturday morning and worked on 21 in the afternoon, total word count approximately 1700. Spent Saturday evening making notes on what needed to happen in the last two chapters, and what I thought I needed to show, and what I could maybe skip, and the outcomes for the characters (I actually thought of something new and better for one of the minor characters). Sunday, I finished chapter 21, just over 1800 words; it was a little shorter than I wanted, but everything's been getting longer with edits, so it should be okay.

Am not sure if the final chapter will actually need to be two chapters or not. A lot will depend on how much time I have, and when my brain sputters and collapses.

Tentative personal title for chapter 21: "Nothing Says Love Like Doin' It Up Against a Wall."

Today I got an email about an online system which my publisher maintains, which allows the author to provide information on their book to the art and marketing departments. There's also a section to provide a bio for online retailers.

The bio was easy; I just took the one I'd already sent my editor and shortened it to the required 500 characters or less.

For the rest, I had to give descriptions of the characters. That wasn't so bad. I was even able to quote myself on one of them. There was a questionnaire, asking about themes and turning points in the plot, and interesting visual elements. I already knew all those things.

I especially liked the question about how you would describe the book to your friends. I wrote: "This book is about reveling in genre tropes, especially using classic elements of historical romance in new ways...It's meant to be fun and fantastical...."

The hard part was the synopsis. As many of you might remember from my previous [unsold] novel, I not only hate doing synopses, but am terrible at them. This time it was a little easier, since I wasn't afraid of leaving out plot elements. Also, the plot is simpler. The hard part was when my editor asked for it to be a longer than my initial three sentences. I got very involved, deciding what was really important and what wasn't; also, in articulating some things about the last two chapters, which aren't yet written and are still forming in my head. I went back and forth a lot, editing, putting things in and taking them out. I'm still not sure how I'm going to do the epilogue-like ending in the actual novel, but it has to be there, or the [subtle? I hope?] commentary on romance novels will collapse. So I think the exercise was useful for those chapters, and for my ongoing edits as well.

I also realized that in trying to make the Duchess unlike other erotica heroines, who always seem to need a Mysterious Other male to help them reach fulfillment, I failed. Because she does need the stableboy to help her reach fulfillment. True, he's not a Mysterious Other, but he still has something she lacks. Then again, what would be the point of a relationship if neither partner possessed something the other needed but lacked? Maybe it's just Mysterious Other males who bother me, especially when they're patronizing. I think it's okay to be a little patronizing if you're a Duchess, though...[ponders] [head gets hot] [decides to stop worrying about feminist implication in order to finish novel so others can worry about feminist implications of novel].

After I saved it all and emailed back that I was finished, then it turned out my editor wasn't expecting such an instant turnaround. Oh, well. Done is good.

The Duchess, Her Maid, The Groom, and Their Lover, by Victoria Janssen.

I can deal with that.

All of you who write--professionally or not--what are your goals for your writing?

I've managed some of my goals: 1) sell a story and 2) sell a novel. "Get better at writing" is of course always going to be a goal.

But at the moment I seem to be living in the short-term:

1) finish manuscript, send to editor.
2) make notes for novel #2.
3) prepare at least one more proposal for agent to send out.

Sometime next year, I need to make a website for the pseud, and possibly get her some business cards, while working on the second book.

But after that, what? Aside from "write more books." That's all I really want. To be able to keep writing novels, and have people buy them.

Since I plan to turn in the duchess manuscript by the end of October (so that I can properly enjoy World Fantasy, among other reasons), I will have to begin writing the second novel for Harlequin fairly soon.

Given that my brain is slow, I can't just start from nothing.

When I first heard the duchess novel was going to Acquisitions, to either be bought or to meet its maker, the line's editor asked for some brief (like, a paragraph) proposals for possible follow-up novels. The one I'd thought about most was based on "The Magnificent Threesome," so I included that, the Hades and Persephone novel I've been wanting to do if I could only figure out what it would be like, a science fiction scenario based on a very old novel attempt, and the thing I'd been working on before I had to go back to the duchess, which was a werewolf novel set during WWI, even though I'd intended that to be fantasy/romance, not erotica.

I'd sort of mentally assumed they'd want the cowboys, but I asked my editor anyway this week, along with some other questions. It was weird for me to realize I had no idea how it normally worked, to sell a to-be-named novel. I think just about everybody I know who's sold multiple novels in one go did so as part of a series. I had no idea when and how the editor would pick what I'd be working on for the next year or so.

It turns out, they already have a historical cowboys series. Not that my idea was going to be really historical, because it's more the 1960s television view of cowboys. But I digress. The ideas she liked most were the mythology one and the werewolf one. Since I submitted those ideas, I found that P.C. Cast had written a Hades romance (has anyone read it? Is it good?), so I decided the werewolf story would be best.

So I'm going with the werewolf, for now. I hadn't done more than one chapter, but I did have a lot of notes, including some for two additional characters, who will now prove even more useful. I just need at least one more woman, and I'll be set. I have to think if I still want first-person narrator. I don't think it will work to do the whole novel that way, as narrator can't be in every scene; I plan to show multiple pairings again (it offers more variety for me as writer as well as for the reader). I'm not sure how annoying it would be to have first person pov in some chapters and third in others. Overall, though, it should be easier (she says, with imaginary confidence) to make this erotica than to make it a "regular" novel, because I already know where the plot has to go. You know, towards climax. [heh]

My backbrain is already busy with it. And now I have an excuse to go back to reading books about WWI.

"with a triumphant grunt" is a phrase that perhaps should never appear in a romance novel.

It should definitely not appear twice in the same romance novel.

Even if it's a good romance novel by an author whose work I like.

This post was actually a comment over in oyceter's LJ, but it was so long I figured I might as well make it a post. She had asked what tropes in romance novels always work for you, and which ones drive you nuts, and which that could go either way, depending on execution.

My list:

Generally sword-proof:
*Conflicts that arise from within the characters
*Nice, ordinary heroes (think Carla Kelly)
*PTSD, Napoleonic Wars-style
*Marriages of convenience
*Virginal males (not that you see this one often)
*Banter
*Cross-class romances
*Secretly intellectual heroes/heroines
*Angstful spies, bonus if it's wartime
*Equestrians, musicians, and the well-traveled
*Comfort sex

In-between tropes:
*Virgin widows
*"It was all planned by our parents for us to fall in love! And we never knew!"
*I mostly don't like very young heroines, because I want them to have some life experience.

Things that drive me bugf*ck:
*Destined Lurve and/or reincarnation and/or Genetic Mating or scent-marking or whatever the hell weird shit means there's no WORK to the relationship
*Melodramatic suspense plots
*Instantaneous cures for lifelong angst
*Stupid misunderstandings that could be solved with one conversation
*Historicals in which all behavior is completely modern (though I can sometimes handle modern-sounding dialogue, depending on my mood and the book)
*Women who long to be Mastered by a Man, and not for occasional erotic thrills
*Men who Know What's Best for their women and don't learn better
*Long separations between hero and heroine, especially if reason is stupid