Saint Patty's Day, a long lost manuscript and first book advances

The Goddess Empress Moonshadow approves of the move, and is busy discovering intriguing new places to artfully arrange her goddessy feline limbs.

It’s good to be in Florida. It’s supposed to be 85 and sunny today and I plan to soak up the rays. I’ve suffered a bit of a relapse, the move kicked my butt, and I had to cancel my April appearance at a conference and booksigning at my Doctor’s orders but Leiha and I are working on putting something together for the release of Faefever, a sort of FeverCon 2008, where I hope to meet with many of you.

The move unearthed an interesting find. I burn everything I write that I don’t like (which infuriates my mother, who has half an early manuscript, is dying to know how it ends, and I no longer remember. I don’t know how she managed to get her hands on that half. I thought I’d burned it all.)

Turns out, over the years, my older sister was pilfering things to save. Last year while I was very sick with Lyme she gave me a box, which I never got around to opening, then forgot about. I rediscovered it in the move and lost a day sorting through it, appalled and fascinated. The box contained work from my high school and college days. Angsty but interesting now that I’m far removed. I was obsessed with the triad of sex, time and death even then—what healthy teen isn’t? The box also contained two early manuscripts, one of which was pretty good. I owe her for saving the stuff. It was a trip down memory lane I would have regretted not taking. A word of advice: don’t burn your work. You’ll enjoy every awful word of it some day.

The Lady Lies was the working title of the somewhat decent ms. (which has since been used by someone else.) It was the third novel I attempted to write (BTHM being the fifth, and the first to get published) and is a straight historical set during the Regency. I wrote it fourteen years ago, submitted it to a couple of agents, got a request for the whole manuscript but life interfered and I never sent it.

It’s not on par with what I write now. Yet it has… something. I considered polishing it up and publishing it, but it’s no longer good enough by my standards, regardless of whether or not it would make money. I write, I get better, I move on. Never look back. Still, at the same time, I love to read early stuff by my favorite authors. So, I’ve decided to post it here, online—an early Moning romance for those of you that wish I’d return to my roots. Just remember, it’s one of my first novels and I’m not rewriting it. It is what it is—a romance I wrote fourteen years ago. If there’s interest, I’ll continue posting more as time permits. It may be a week or so before I get the first chapter up.

I’ve been getting questions about ARC’s for Faefever. There will be a limited quantity of numbered editions printed. Very few are being made and sent out. I ask that if you receive one, please do not post spoilers at the board prior to release of the book. There are big developments in Faefever. Don’t spoil it for other readers.

Today is Saint Patrick’s Day which is always a day of celebration for me. Ten years ago, on March 17th, 1998 at 2:23 in the afternoon—no, you never forget--I was working at Great American Insurance when I got the call: Maggie Crawford with Bantam Dell had finished reading Beyond the Highland Mist and wanted to offer me a two-book contract.

Life distilled to a moment of perfect happiness. I walked around in a bubble of imperturbable joy for weeks. After I got off the phone, I read and re-read the salient points of the deal that I’d scribbled (on a lunch-stained paper towel because I’d been so shaky and nervous that I’d not been able to find a single sheet of paper on my paper-covered desk) trying to convince myself that it had really happened. I’d sold a manuscript to a major publishing house; the eight-hundred pound gorilla, no less! Little did they know, I was so hungry to be a writer, I would have paid them to publish me.

For the curious: I got a $5,000.00 advance for BTHM. We don’t get into this business for the money up front. If we’re very lucky, we make some on the other end.

When I first began writing I taped a quote to the top of my computer screen so I’d see it every time I wrote.

When you chase a dream the Universe conspires to help you get it.

I believe this. Chase hard. And have a blessed and happy Saint Patty’s Day.