Alison Kent's Blah Blog

One of the very cool things about releasing out of print backlist novels is the chance to read through them again, deleting overwrought writing (in my case) and basically cleaning up what eighteen years in the biz have shown to be a mess. I have never read a printed copy of any of my books. At that point, there’s nothing I can do about mistakes or cringe-worthy sentences that no one else pays attention to but that have me, well, cringing. It happens to all authors. This isn’t unique to me.

I put off digitizing PLAYING LOVE’S ODDS longer than I did LOVE ME TENDER and LOVE IN BLOOM. Those two were written and released approximately eight years after Meteor Publishing closed its doors the same month PLAYING LOVE’S ODDS was released. It was #167 out of 168* books published as Kismet Romances. I was orphaned after only one book, and it took two years to find a home at Harlequin Temptation with CALL ME** where I wrote five books before moving to Harlequin Blaze. At the same time, Kensington started the Bouquet line of category romances where I sold LOVE ME TENDER and LOVE IN BLOOM.

Anyhow, LOVE ME TENDER and LOVE IN BLOOM are of a similar tone as both were manuscripts I started writing before selling to Temptation*** in 1995. I was a big fan of home and hearth stories which both LMT and LIB are. But PLAYING LOVE’S ODDS is a romantic suspense. My very first woman in jeopardy story. And this particular scene won every RWA contest I entered. (For the digital edition, I’ve put up a new excerpt.) So even those my style has changed and my voice been refined, my work tightened, I’m still a big fan of this story. And I can see the roots of who I am now in the prose.

Now, about the updating – yet not. Seeing as the story is a romantic suspense written in 1992 for a 1993 publication date, it reflects the technology of the time. Meaning . . . cell phones were not the handy dandy conveniences they are now. At several points in the story, one of the characters needs to find a pay phone. And this is why I put off updating this book longer than the others. To make the plot current, or not? Tami Hoag and her 1985 set suspense novels (reviewed here and here) decided that for me. I left the book set in 1993 and added an author’s note explaining this is not a 21st century set book. It’s true to its time period, from fashion to technology to culture.

The other difference is how sex scenes were viewed in 1993 vs today. My editor on this book was Kate Duffy, who also edited me at Kensington Brava. There’s a shower scene in the book where the heroine is realizing the danger she’s in and admitting to her love for the hero. In the manuscript, he joined her, but that didn’t make it into print. Kate thought it was too edgy ;) It’s now included in the digital edition.

Sex scenes weren’t the only changes. I made an allusion to sex slavery, which was also edited, but which I didn’t remember until reading through the manuscript and checking the print book to see how the copyeditor had punctuated a sentence.

This is in the manuscript:

“Before we take off I wanted to take this opportunity to let you know what a joy it was working with you. You are a most capable technician. It’s a shame you had to stumble across my true agenda because unfortunately, I don’t think you’ll be able to use your skills once we get where we’re going. However, your … shall we say … more feminine talents will no doubt be of great interest to Mr. Torres. He is a very physical man.”

And this is how it came out in the book:

“Before we take off I wanted to take this opportunity to let you know what a joy it was working with you. You are a most capable technician. It’s a shame you had to stumble across my true agenda because unfortunately, I don’t think you’ll be able to use your skills once we get where we’re going. Perhaps you can get a job harvesting coffee beans. Or cocaine.”

Fun stuff, huh! The digital edition is now live on Amazon for the Kindle, and at Smashwords with the ePub file that can be loaded onto the Nook. It will be available at Barnes & Noble in a day or so. Smashwords also has the Sony Reader compatible file, though it will be in the Sony store (as well as Kobo and iBooks) soon.

*168 was written by Suzanne Brockmann.

**Here’s the video of that 1995 sale:

***It’s all thanks to Jennifer Crusie’s GETTING RID OF BRADLEY that I even considered writing for Temptation.

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Here are the two options. The Kiss vs The Hunk. Which do you like best? Vote above, or just tell me in the comments, or do both. I’m curious as to what would appeal to someone who doesn’t know the story or doesn’t see the characters the way I do!

It was not the sort of investigation Logan Burke usually handled. Nowadays he was hired by your average Joe – not sleek, polished corporate players in plush Houston office suites. But it was a straightforward case of industrial espionage with one advantage – a hefty check from ViOPet Chemical Company. All Logan had to do was watch Hannah Evans, a ViOPet employee, and figure out how she was leaking valuable research secrets.

In the six weeks that he spent watching her, Logan began to feel a special bond with Hannah. For the first time in years, he actually considered dumping the case and pursuing the mark. It was not enough to view Hannah across a crowded restaurant or through the lens of a camera. He wanted to breathe her scent. He wanted to hear her voice. He wanted to find the innocence he’d given up on finding in his life again.

Hannah knew someone was following her. She didn’t know who he was or why he was there, but his presence was unnerving. It was time to take action, time to let a professional call the shots. She would pay a visit to a private investigator who had come highly recommended – a Mr. Logan Burke.

If you visit me here or on Facebook or follow me on Twitter, you know I have dogs. Snickers (5) is a pointer beagle mix who looks pretty much like a half-pint pointer. At 43#, she’s the alpha dog of the pack, believe it or not. She came to us the day my son and daughter-in-law were married. On the way home from the wedding, #1 Girl stopped for gas and found two hungry, thirsty strays. We ended up with Snickers, while #2 Girl ended up with her brother Tobi.

A couple of years ago, my daughter-in-law’s Katrina rescue dog, Takumi, came to stay with us. He was overly protected of her which wasn’t a good thing with the grandson toddling around. Taka is a chow mix with the curled tail and mottled tongue, but his coat is coarse and short. He’s just as protective with us as he was with Taylor, and is the most obedient and loyal of the three. Last time we weighed him, he was 59#, and he’s also five years old.

In December, I had Snick and Taka at the park, and saw a car dump a dog. We picked him up, had the vet check him out, and kept him. On his first doctor’s visit, Duke (a lab / retriever mix with the webbed toes and water repellent coat) weighed 25#. He’s about 9 months old now, and weighs 65#. He has turned our house into a playground that would go on 24/7 if he had his way. He and Taka will wrestle in the living room and sound like they’re killing each other, yet no blood is shed until Snickers tries to stop their fun, bird dogging them into behaving. She’s a total spoil sport.

Lately I’ve been walking every morning alone rather than taking the pack to the park. I can do an hour on the trails pretty quickly when I don’t have to keep three dogs from sniffing all the poo and pee mail left by overnight critters. Then there are the other dogs, some roaming free, that make it hard, not to mention dangerous, to walk 167# of canine alone. Either the husband or #1 Girl walk them in the evenings.

Today Duke is at the vet for his neuter. After talking over the timing with my good friend Loreth, who owns a gorgeous English Labrador named Hudson, we put it off until he was just about at his adult size. He’ll still put on some weight, no doubt, but his growth spurt has slowed over the past month. Hard to believe he’s put on 40# in three months. It is so quiet here today without him!

I had a wonderful time on Saturday at my local RWA chapter’s meeting. I love visiting with old friends and meeting new. I got to hear Robyn DeHart talk about building characters, and it was as if she was describing the way I work to a T. No multi-page character charts. No interviews or questionnaires. Just discovering what I need to know FOR THE BOOK, most especially the goals, motivations, and conflicts.

During her talk, she mentioned that she tends to write the same type of character (heroine) over and over. I don’t remember exactly what she said, something about librarians, but it was funny. :) She also asked everyone to think about their own body of work, and look for their own common thread or theme, that we most likely all have one.

I’ve actually been doing that a lot lately with my own projects because similarities have been popping up like whac-a-moles. I’ve written several stories where the hero or the heroine build things, furniture, houses, or sew, or bake, or garden, and the theme is often crafting a family together, a patchwork extended group that is more closely knit than any of its individual members are to their own blood relatives.

Robyn also discussed the character arc, and she broke it down so simply that it was like a light bulb going off. She said at the beginning of the book, the character has an “error in thinking,” and by the end of the book, the character has “learned a lesson” or corrected that error. And wow. That really struck a chord. Especially since I just finished writing a synopsis where several characters had BIG errors in thinking, heh.

This is why after forty-something published works and many unfinished ideas, I still love listening to authors talk craft. Yes, we talk a lot about the market and what’s selling, and about promotion and what works, but in the end, none of that matters if the craft isn’t there to support the book. I can’t remember ever sitting in a craft session and not coming away with a tidbit to use, a trick to try, a way to look at something I’ve never before considered. Craft is everything. I want to say books live or die by craft, which should be the case, though I have read some which are very popular and yet could have been SO much better had the author delved deeper.

In a recent post at Tess Gerritsen’s blog, author Julia Spencer Fleming talked about having three years between releases in her Clare Fergusson series, saying:

Here’s the thing: I think it’s one of the best novels I’ve written. (It’s not the perfect, Platonic-ideal book in my head, but they never are.) Those extra months gave me the luxury of expanding the story, to look into every nook and cranny of the characters’ lives. Then, I had still more time to pare it down and polish it to a shine.

“It’s a wonderful, wonderful piece of writing,” my agent said when I turned it in. “Just please, don’t take so long next time. They want a book a year.” I know they do. And I need to get back on that merry-go-round. It gets hard, reintroducing yourself every three years. But still, I can’t help but realize I couldn’t have written this book if I hadn’t taken all that time. And I wonder, what stories aren’t getting told because of that book-a-year clock ticking away.

Let me emphasize that last bit: And I wonder, what stories aren’t getting told because of that book-a-year clock ticking away. Something to think about, isn’t it? And that’s in hardcover mystery/suspense/thriller. In romance, authors are writing three, four, five books a year. It boggles to think what isn’t getting told. Sigh.

THE ICING ON THE CAKE is a nominee for The Romance Reviews (TRR) Best Contemporary Romance of 2010 if you’d like to pop over and vote! Voting closes on March 31, and you do have to register at the site.

With Beauty Killer Gretchen Lowell locked away behind bars once again, Portland detective Archie Sheridan can finally rest. Meanwhile, the city of Portland is in crisis. Several people have drowned in heavy rains that have flooded the Willamette River. But the medical examiner discovers that in fact the latest victim was poisoned before she went into the water—she didn’t drown. A little detective work shows that so far three of those previously thought to be accidental drownings have actually been murdered. Portland has a new serial killer on its hands, and Archie and his task force have a new case. Meanwhile reporter Susan Ward is following up on an entirely separate mystery: the dramatic flooding has unearthed a skeleton, a man who might have died during catastrophic flooding more than sixty years ago that washed away an entire neighborhood and killed at least 15 people.

As Archie follows the bizarre trail of evidence and evil deeds to catch his killer, he has to battle the rising waters of the Willamette first.

Late last year, a publicist for St. Martin’s whom I follow on Twitter tweeted a photo of the advanced readers copy of Chelsea Cain’s THE NIGHT SEASON. I begged for a copy. I wasn’t the only one. And Liz was great to send out a half dozen or so ARCs for review. THE NIGHT SEASON releases today.

I’ve made no secret about reading thrillers almost exclusively. Or the fact that I love recurring casts. Rizzoli and Isles. Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro. Clare Fergusson and Russ Van Alstyne. In THE NIGHT SEASON, Chelsea Cain brings back the team of Archie Sheridan, Susan Ward, Henry Sobol, et al. The one character she doesn’t bring back as part of the plot is Gretchen Lowell. That’s right. This isn’t an Archie and Gretchen book. Gretchen’s presence is always felt, always influencing Archie, and she does make an appearance. But this is a straightforward thriller, one missing the psychological twists of an Archie and Gretchen story. That doesn’t make it any less a success, any less compelling and suspenseful, or any less a twisted plot.

It’s storming in Portland, Oregon, the Willamette River rising, the city in danger of flooding in an eerie parallel to a real life flood that swept away the working town of Vanport decades before. Three bodies, drowning victims, have washed up, as well as a partial skeleton which Susan Ward quickly connects to the Vanport disaster.

When a fourth victim is found draped on a carousel ostrich at an amusement park, the medical examiner makes a stunning discovery that connects the drowning victims – none of whom are drowning victims at all. No, each is a victim of a deadly toxin and all have been poisoned by a killer seeking vengeance for wrongs brought to light by Susan’s Vanport story. The search for the killer becomes personal when one of Archie’s team is attacked. It’s a race against time to keep others from falling prey, and to do so while the city is under siege from the continuing deluge.

I’ve been a fan of Cain since Heartsick. She is fearless in making her characters suffer, and she shows no mercy in THE NIGHT SEASON. Watching Archie and his team pull together the clues and battle the raging river made the book impossible to put down, especially with the ticking clock of the poisoned team member. There were secondary characters to root for and to mourn, and heart stopping rescues and losses.

If I had any quibble, it was with the weakly (imo) and rushed explanation of the killer’s motivation. And I wanted more from the “keys” left at the crime scenes. The story of the killer’s “apprentice” seemed tacked on. He was a great character, and I loved how smart he was as the book reached its climax, but the motive for his being there at all felt thin. None of that kept me from enjoying THE NIGHT SEASON immensely. Cain is one of “my” authors who doesn’t write fast enough, and since she’s already said in an interview that the next book will be more grisly, I can’t wait.