Joely Sue Burkhart's Blog, page 72

Dom vs. Domme

There's a general consensus in the "what sells best" gossip that I listen to that femdom books don't sell as well as the male dominants.  Let me be quick to clarify that I'm still going to write the book I'm thinking about and then I'll see if it's accepted or not.  I won't NOT write the book just because I don't think it'll sell as well as Conn.

To be specific, I'm talking about Mal's book.  You first meet "the Mistress of Dallas" in Victor's HURT ME SO GOOD and she ends up hurt and angry at the end.  I've known about her hero for awhile and they first meet in Vicki's book.  The whole reason I'm talking about this now is because I'm working on a new scene where Mal first gets her hands on him, hopefully setting the stage for her book.  It's seen through Jesse's eyes–so you don't get this hero's feelings first hand.  Needless to say, Mal manages to scare the shit out of him, but…he can't walk away.

I was talking about this scene to an author friend, and she said her publisher doesn't even touch femdom books.  I was like, really?  According to personal reader taste, I know there are tons of ways any book could go that I personally wouldn't like, including femdom.  But Mal's story…  I think it'll be hot. 

As I told my friend, it takes a very special sort of tough alpha male who's actually willing to go on his knees for his lady.

Anyone who's read Return to Shanhasson (early) knows what kind of hero I'm talking about.  Warriors who'd lay down their lives in a heartbeat just to see her smile, viciously capable and eager to kill in her defense.  If she points, they go, without question.  And if she ever points to her bed…

Laughs.  They'll go before she can even open her mouth.

What do you think – have you read a story with a Domme that you really enjoyed?  Please recommend it in comments!

Revision Hell: Vicki

I wasn't going to work on Vicki until next year.  But I was listening to music on my iPhone last night and Need You Now by Lady Antebellum came on.  So I couldn't help but pull up her file. 

That song speaks to me so loudly.  The back and forth angst is totally Vicki and Elias.  They need each other so badly, but they've screwed up, swore they weren't going to call or get back together, but it's late.  Cold.  Lonely.  I need you now.  Then Jesse comes along, and Elias has to be there, at first, to make sure she's okay.  Then he can't tear himself away, even though he's uncomfortable.

Last night I got through the first 40 pages.  They're pretty smooth because I've had them done the longest (and read those pages the most).  Latter sections will take much more work, and somewhere, I need to find room for 5-10K more words to make it a nice length.  I know I have several [fix] and [add] notes, so I'm not going to stress about adding too much right now.  Let me get a good, solid, polished meaty draft, and then I'll see where I am on length.  I think expanding emotions during the steamy scenes and filling the known holes will be enough.

I adore the ending.  ADORE.  Absolutely love it.  It's just the middle that needs work!

Goal:  be ready for beta readers by Christmas.  Synopsis and submit by end of the year!

Review: Hurt Me So Good

Kelly of I Work for Books says

Hurt me so Good is a novel which was written beautifully and evocatively with powerful imagery and insightful emotion and thoughts description and even if you are not into reading this genre, is still a good book for the romance it entails and you know what? I think I'd read a sequel!

Read her whole review here.  Thank you so much, Kelly!

How to Fake a Death

Not just any death — but a spectacular one.  One that will be the talk of Town for years.

I did an insane amount of brainstorming tonight in Lady Wyre's universe.  (I swear, there's something magical about purple ink.)

All along, I've had several different story ideas in various stages with only a vague notion of how they connected.  Amazingly, all these pieces are starting to come together.  I know that after Lady Doctor Wyre, she instigates events on a Chinese-like planet that ties to Seven Crows (title will be changed). 

Even more frightening–because I didn't deliberately plan any of this–the free prequel I'm working on is tied to Deathright.

One event sets up or explains another.  Awesome, right?  Except…

I have one major event that sets up her prequel, Lady Wyre's Regret.  I know how she meets Lord Regret.  I can hear their dialogue in my head.  But her spectacular demise…leaves me scratching my head.  I know the whys and wherefores, but not the details.  It needs to be signficant and meaningful.  Preferably tied to her House or the history I'm warping so irrevererently.

I guess I need to do a little more research.

Organized, Who Me?

I'm trying to get more organized NOW instead of waiting until Jan.  I always start out the year well, but then get busy and lazy.  I work best when I make myself state weekly goals, and then reassess each week to see how all that panned out.  I've got so much to do that if I don't keep a list and read it regularly, I simply forget.  I really hate spinning my wheels, too, so I'm going to work harder on keeping up on my calendar and to-do this month.  I'd like to get a lot of baking done with the girls this month, which I never seem to have time to do because I'm running around last minute Xmas shopping, finishing the NaNo novel, etc. 

I printed out 4 months worth of a calendar and used sticky notes to move projects around.  I'm sure it'll change another time or ten before Jan (which is why I used sticky notes!) but at least I have a plan for now.

So far, Dec has been pretty productive.  I made one submission and returned Lady Wyre revisions to my editor today.  I also made a trip to the post office (you know how much fun that can be, especially in Dec!), but I didn't get all mailings out yet.  I ran out of padded envelopes, but a trip to Sam's Club resolved that!  I've got just a few more to drop in the mail.

This week, I need to access where I am with the new novella (Phantom) and brainstorm a bunch of new stuff for Lady Wyre (one of my favorite things to do).  While running through her edits this weekend, I took notes of all place names, character elements, and "backstory" mentions that I might need to remember for the prequel.  I've got one major event to figure out — namely, a faked death! — and then I can move on to plotting a new Lady Wyre novella, which will set up events for Seven Crows quite nicely.

Ah, I love it when a plan comes together, and I didn't even know there was a plan.

After that….Vicki revisions!

Lady Wyre Acknowledgements

Lady Wyre wants to make sure she thanks everyone who helped make her sparkle before she went to visit my editor.  If you were kind enough to read an early version of Lady Doctor Wyre, please comment here or e-mail me with how you'd like your name to show in the final book.

I have Sherri, Shannon, and Sharon listed already, but it was long enough ago I can't remember if anyone else beta read and I do NOT want to forget anyone.  You guys make it possible for me to submit with confidence!

December Goals

I've got a lot of work to do in the next four months.  I've loosely mapped out my schedule through the end of March, and it's going to be a crazy fun time!

First up, my number one priority was to finish expanding the short story I mentioned back in Sept. into a short novella.  I was aiming for 20K and hit it right on the nose!  This is one of the projects I worked on for NaNoWriMo.  I spent this week on revisions, and tonight I wrote a very short synopsis.  (Hey, the whole story is only 20K so it doesn't need more than a page or two of synopsis.)  I really like this story, but we shall see.  It's risky.

Now on my list for Dec, I need to decide what to do about the other novella I'm working on.  It's not coming together like I want, so either I need to do more plotting or I don't have a solid enough character.  Something.  I'll read what I have for the next few days and make a decision about what to do.

This next week, I'll also be working on editor revisions to Lady Doctor Wyre, and since I'll be working in that world, I'll make notes and plot out what I want to do for the freebie prequel I'll be giving away in March.  Can't get started too early on that.  I'll also be making some notes about another possible Lady Wyre novella, which oddly enough, has some research material in common with the short novella I just finished.

I love happy coincidences.

I won't share the rest of my to-do list right now.  It's pretty scary.    Just know that Vicki revisions are on the horizon too.  I'm itching to get it out to a few readers to see what you think!  Dec/Jan will include lots of revisions and submissions!  Yay!  (Which is exactly why I needed to finish those projects for NaNoWriMo instead of starting a brand new one.)

So what are you hoping to work on this month?  Don't wait until the New Year to make some goals!

Cover Exclusive: Lady Doctor Wyre

I am sooooo thrilled to give you a sneak peek of Lady Doctor Wyre's final cover!  Love, love, love it!   But you're going to have to skip over to The Galaxy Express to see it, where Heather talks about her first impressions.  Go over and weigh in!

My Beloved: How It All Began

I haven't talked about The Shanhasson series in the past year or more.  I kept thinking, "Oh, I've talked about it so much already–I don't want to bore people."  But then I realized that I lost years of posts when I left yahell hosting, and so if you're a newish blog reader in the past year or so, you might not have any idea how it all began.

The first dream.

I've always tinkered with writing.  I was writing Walter Farley The Black Stallion and Gone with the Wind fanfiction way back in elementary and high school.  I have enough credits for a minor in English, and one of my all-time favorite classes really was a Romantic Period class on Byron, Shelley, Blake and crew (alas, Conn was NOT my teacher).  But in all those years of writing both for school and pleasure, it was a hobby.

I never took it seriously, until my beloved sister called me in the fall of 2003 because she'd finished her first book.  Other than fanfic stuff I'd finished as a kid, I couldn't say I'd ever finished anything.  Certainly nothing that was entirely MY OWN.  She even sweetened the pot by saying she'd only let me read HER story if I let her read MINE.

The story I had the most finished was then called My Beloved Barbarian.  It was a kind of mishmash of all my favorite elements of both fantasy and romance.  A little bit of Johanna Lindsey, Robert Jordan, George RR Martin, not to mention all the Scottish and Regency romances I'd read in my 20s and early 30s.  I adored both fantasy and romance, but it's hard to please me as a reader with "romantic fantasy" because it's usually not romancy enough.  Fantasy Romance is usually too lite on the fantasy for my tastes. 

So I set out to write what I couldn't find at the time.  Steamy, highly romantic yet very epic fantasy.

With my sister's encouragement, I finished the first draft of My Beloved Barbarian around October of 2003 and went on to write its sequel, then titled Khul's Beloved by Christmas.  YES — a huge amount to accomplish in just a matter of months.  MBB clocked in well over 500 pages and the first draft of the second book was almost as long. 

Remember, these were the first books I'd ever finished.  e.g. I didn't know ANYTHING.  My POV was all sorts of messed up.  My heroine had significant problems, speaking too modern–while my heroes spoke too stiffly and formally.

But it was a start.  The beginning of the dream.

Yes, there were dark patches.  Like the first time I entered an RWA contest.  Yowsa, did I learn a LOT!  I rewrote the books entirely from scratch and tried again in 2004 with contests.  MBB even finaled in a few that time and I got some nice agent requests but no bites. 

Then I hit another bad patch in 2005.  I was learning all this new stuff about plotting and characterization — basically figuring out all the things I'd messed up and feeling overwhelmed that I'd never get it right again.  I doubted that I'd ever finish a book with the same kind of overwhelming love and excitement.  I was too hung up on the rules and I'd lost the love.

I started to fear I'd never finish a book again.  In fact, I didn't finish a single book in 2005.

But Beautiful Death helped break that vicious cycle, and in 2006, I decided I was going to rip MBB apart and rewrite it yet again.  I murdered my heroine and recreated her.  But as I threw out those hundreds of pages to start over for the third time, I realized I'd done quite a few things right.  It was my job in this third and final draft to highlight those things I'd done right and fix the things that were wrong.

It might sound depressing to think about throwing out yet another draft and starting from scratch (by now, I'd written over 1000 pages in this series only to throw them out), but it proved my love for these characters.  Turning MBB into The Rose of Shanhasson was like coming home and finding it more wonderful than even I remembered.  Surely I didn't really love this story that much (wrong!).  Surely it wouldn't make me cry AGAIN.  (I was mistaken.)  Surely it wouldn't keep me up until all hours of the night when I already knew exactly what happened (ditto, again). 

After years of learning and writing other things, my voice in this world was firm.  I'd learned to write with authority because I believed.  The dream lived in me and I refused, absolutely REFUSED, to give up on it again.  Rhaekhar and Shannari lived and breathed on the page, and Gregar…well.  Let's just say that Gregar whispered in my ear.  "It's about time you came home to us."

The biggest plus to working so hard and rewriting so many times:  years had gone by and I found the courage to do things that never occurred to me when I first started.  I'd grown so much.  I wasn't afraid to make the difficult choices, to really put my characters through the Three Hells and bring them back again. 

It was a long road, and so "Faith of the Heart," the original theme song for Enterprise, became the major theme song of this series.  Along with Kiss from a Rose by Seal and Everything I Do (I Do It For You) by Bryan Adams.  Those songs instantly put me in the Shanhasson world.  I can't hear them on the radio without thinking of Gregar, and usually, I burst into tears. 

I'm not kidding.

So the dream that began in 2003, continued with the publication of The Rose of Shanhasson in 2007 and The Road to Shanhasson in 2008, will be complete with the release of Return to Shanhasson.  The story began in Dalden Bay and that's where it ends.  It began with a barbarian declaring his love was unshakeable, and ends with him proving that he was right.  This is not "romance" in the true sense of the word (WARNING:  major characters do die – but they are never gone) but if your heart isn't singing and crying at the end, overwhelmed with the love of these characters, then I should become a sports mystery writer like my husband wanted.  *wry laugh*

It's been a long road fraught with tears and heartache and doubt, but through it all, the Lady's Moon shines down with love from above.  Love, the greatest gift of all, and the greatest sacrifice.

My Beloved

After finishing up the third project this month, surviving Thanksgiving, and coming down with a cold, I did nothing all weekend except read.  My comfort reads, the books I can always turn to and fall in love all over again.  This time, I was able to read all three books back to back to back, the whole saga, tears and joy, love and sacrifice together.

Yes, I read the Shanhasson series.  My own series.  Self-indulgent?  Perhaps.  But oh, how I love these characters and their story.  My first dream.  My first love as a writer.  Na'lanna, my beloved.

I can't explain what I feel when I read these books.  My heart… sings.  Then it feels sore and swollen, too full like the Grinch's heart at the end.  I can hear one of the theme songs (Everything I Do by Bryan Adams) and bawl, because it reminds me of a certain moment in Rose.   Reading the last book (which will hopefully be available soon) and seeing how it all comes full circle—it's magic. 

Everything has a purpose, even if I had no idea what was I doing.

Oh, there are a few things I'd change now, years later, but very few.  Even how things tie into the Keldari world gives me chills.  In Return to Shanhasson, everything comes together.  Worlds collide.  Some loves die and new love is born, but in the end…the same dream shines in the full moon above.

From Rose:  Run toward the Moon that shines in your eyes.  Run to your beloved Evening Stars.  Run!

to the last line of Return to Shanhasson:  Now, my heart, I run to you.

*wipes tears away*

With the release of Return coming soon, I'm going to give away several copies of both The Rose of Shanhasson and The Road to Shanhasson to get as many of you hooked as possible.  I hope you love this series as much as I do.

If you haven't yet read Rose and would like a print copy, please drop me an e-mail at joelysueburkhart AT gmail DOT com with your snail mail addy.  As long as I have copies and postage funds on hand, I'll send out copies to anyone who wants one and is willing to talk about the books in some way, whether with friends or online, simple ratings at GoodReads or Amazon or a full-fledged review, good or bad. 

In a few weeks, I'll do the same for Road (although I only have electronic copies).

Love, the greatest gift of all, and the greatest sacrifice.