Crossed Wires

I had a very exciting day today. I finished the first complete draft of Misplaced Princess, book one in the Crossed Wires books I'm co-writing with Lexxie Couper. Lexxie and I pitched these to our Ellora's Cave editor a few weeks ago and she bought them! On proposal! Nothing like a signed contract to get the old fingers tapping the keyboard. LOL.

The premise of the stories is a fun one. Basically, Dylan and Annie meet in an online dating site. They begin chatting, become friends, and start to wonder if they could actually become more. The problem: Dylan is an Australian stockman and Annie is a New York City journalist. One day during a playful IM'ing session, Dylan offers a challenge, asking to meet face to face. Annie accepts. Unfortunately their wires get crossed. Dylan flies to New York at the same time Annie takes off for Sydney! Sounds dire, right? Nope. Fate steps in when Dylan meets Annie's best friend, Monet, and Annie is swept off her feet by Dylan's identical twin brother, Hunter.

The co-writing of the books has been quite a challenge simply because the setting of my story and the lifestyle of my hero were completely foreign to me. However, I knew working with Lexxie would make it easier. For one, Lexxie is uber-talented. I absolutely adore her writing style. And secondly, she's funny as crap. The first time I met Lexxie was in a hotel room at the Romantic Times convention in Columbus, Ohio. I knocked on her door and Lexxie (who was suffering from extreme jetlag) opened it (in an exhausted stupor) standing before me in nothing but her Australian flag undies and camisole. We've been laughing together ever since that day.

So…how are we co-writing these stories? I wrote the Misplaced Princess story and passed it to Lexxie. She's now going to turn my American cowboy into an Aussie stockman. I can't wait to hear Hunter's accent! She's also going to correct all my Australian setting screw ups. Lexxie is nearing the end of Misplaced Cowboy. Once she's finished, she's sending it to me to Americanize Monet and add the New York City features. So far, our biggest challenge has been keeping our timeline straight. I emailed Lexxie late last week and asked what we were thinking setting our two stories in the same week in two different time zones! Ack. It was murder trying to figure out who could call home when!

I suppose you can tell I'm really excited about this project. Once release dates are assigned, I'll post them here. It's still early days and I couldn't even begin to guess when they'll hit the EC shelves. My hope (and this is a wish, not a reality) is that they'll come out this summer.