Hi,
Got lost for a while in page proofs and revisions and a computer switch. Sorry, guys. (And I want to seriously hurt the Apple techies who thought… Let’s just really mess with people and completely redo how the trackpad works. That would be fun.) And I’m a huge Mac fan. I adore them.
Anyway, one of the things I had to do was retitle the MIP. Was so happy weeks ago when I head a song lyric (can’t remember the song) that made me want to call the book She Walked Into My Life. Because it really fits the book, and it’s a theme that keeps coming up. The hero is at the worst point in his life, just a mess, and he looks at Grace and keeps thinking… Now? Really? She had to show up now? The most beautiful, kind, loving, wonderful woman in the world, walks into my life now?
But it’s really long and for a couple of other reasons, I decided to change it.
Going with Five Days Grace, because her name is Grace and Grace as a concept is so nice. Multi-faced and fits in so many ways. From Merriam-Webster:
-Unmerited divine assistance given humans for their regeneration…
Well, Grace certainly feels like a divine kind of assistance that Aidan fears he doesn’t deserve but is so grateful to have.
-act or instance of kindness
They both see the other as kindness personified and both are in need of it.
-a charming or attractive trait or characteristic
People have always thought Grace was an angel. She dressed up as one too many times to count as a child, and she remembers a time when she was three or four, when she really thought she was an angel and kept staring at her bare back in a mirror, waiting for her wings to grow.
-sense of propriety or right
Grace definitely sees meeting Aidan as something that was meant to be, feels a sense of rightness, or life moving into place, as it should be, and she needs that. Because her previously perfect life has completely fallen apart recently, and she’s baffled by the whole mess. What she did wrong, what she could have done to save herself from all this grief, how she could have thought she was just lucky and her life was truly charmed.
And the Five Days part is a) A play on the name of the band, Three Days Grace, and b) Because they spend a glorious five days alone in a cabin on a lake, time out of time, when the whole world disappears, and it’s just the two of them. Funny how time can slow down sometimes, especially when you get out of your normal routine and are away from home. It can feel so much more important, so much better and leave you feeling like normal life is so far away.
Have about 300 pages now. Hoping to finish the book in June or July for upload this fall.
Have been so busy lately, I keep forgetting — I have a new Special Edition coming out any day now. First wrote
Matchmaking by Moonlight
Silhouette Special Edition and then had to erase it. Can’t get used to Harlequin doing away with Silhouette and publishing them under the Harlequin brand.
But anyway, I have a Special Edition coming out. Matchmaking by Moonlight. My little, old lady matchmakers who first showed up in Runaway Vegas Bride are back, up to their old tricks. Kathleen, Gladdy & Eleanor’s newest project, Eleanor’s cousin, Lilah, just divorced, sick and tired of all the years she’s spent trying to please a man, to make herself into what he wanted instead of what she wants to be. Especially doing that for a man who left her for a younger woman.
So Lilah has decided she’s going to live her life just to please herself, and if that makes her a bit outspoken, a little outrageous, maybe even a little bit weird, so be it. She holds seminars for women trying to get over divorce, dresses like a hippie and likes to dance under the full moon. (See the book’s characters and setting as I see them on my Matchmaking by Moonlight Pinterest board or the one about how much I love the moon, because I truly love the moon.)
Judge Thomas Asheford — Ashe to his friends — does not need to be anywhere near an outrageous woman like Lilah or the matchmakers. He has no idea what he’s gotten into in agreeing to do a favor for Eleanor, but he knows these women are trouble. Especially Lilah.
Here’s a little excerpt to show you what I mean:
“I’ll try to be good from now on, I promise,” Lilah said.
Ashe leaned back and studied her once more, shaking his head back and forth, probably trying to figure out if he believed a word she’d just said. “And there you go again. What are you doing?”
“Trying to apologize, to say I’ll stop baiting you.” She laughed a bit, couldn’t help it. Something about this man….
“You’re enjoying this!” He took a step closer, which actually put him a bit too close for comfort. “That’s what I keep thinking, that you know exactly what you’re doing, that it’s deliberate and you’re enjoying it. I think you like to play with people, shake things up, push people out of their comfort zone, shock them a bit.”
“Well, yes – the shake things up, push people out of their comfort zone. People come to me because they’re uncomfortable with their lives. They want to change, and to bring about change, you have to shake things up. As a therapist—”
“I’m not talking about you as a therapist,” he said, taking one more step forward, until he was absolutely looming over her, crowding her, trapping her between the kitchen cabinets and his big, powerful body.
“Oh,” she said softly, when he was so close she could smell the scent he was wearing, something dark and spicy and very, very sexy. She could have stood there, happily, taking in that scent and feeling little waves of heat coming off of his body for a long, long time. “You mean me….”
“As a woman, Lilah,” he said quietly, and his already deep voice got a little deeper and a whole lot sexier.
She gave a little shiver that was part pleasure and part… okay, no. All pleasure. Nothing but.
But toying with him?
Was she really?
She thought about it. She liked him, or liked poking at that very serious side of his to see if there was another side, a more fun side.
Was that toying?
Was it… too intrusive? Kind of mean? Annoying?
He wasn’t a patient, a student or even a friend, an acquaintance at best.
“Is it really so bad?” she asked him.
He growled, looking even more irritated with her.
“No, I really want to know,” she tried to tell him, then got a little nervous because he didn’t look like he believed that, either.
“Okay, just tell me. Is this some kind of come on? Are you trying to start something?”
“No,” she said, honestly surprised and puzzled at that. “I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so?” he repeated. “I don’t know if I can be any clearer than that. Are you trying to let me know you’re interested in me and to find out if I’m interested in you? Because, if that’s what it is, just say so. It might be… interesting.”
“Interesting?” She wasn’t sure at all how to take that. Strange? Amusing? Distracting? What?
“No, I’m certain it would be interesting,” he decided. “I’m just not sure it would be wise–”
“Fine,” she said. So it would not smart to have anything like that to do with her? Gosh, he might have some fun? However would he handle that? “I’m fairly certain it’s not a come on–”
“Fairly certain?” he repeated again.
“I… I… I had to think about it,” she said, practically tripping over her own words with nerves and maybe a hint of excitement, even anticipation. Damn. “I might have to think about it a little more before I’m absolutely sure. But you put me on the spot, and I did my best to give you an answer. I’m fairly certain I’m not coming onto you or trying to start something with you because…. Well, just because…. You’re really not my type… anymore.”
“Fine,” he said, as if it wasn’t fine at all. And then he leaned in closely enough that for a moment, his mouth was only a breath away from hers and said, “Let me make myself absolutely clear. I’m not a toy. Stop playing with me.”
“Well, if you insist,” she said, feeling something she could only label as regret. Over no longer playing with the judge? She looked him up and down, the near scowl on his handsome, tanned face, the beautifully put together body, the sense of leashed power that seemed embedded in him at all times.
Maybe she had been coming into him, like an unconscious reflex or something…. Some need to try out her newfound freedom or just… feel like a woman again.
“See, right there,” he said, not backing up an inch. “You’re doing it again. Teasing, trying to provoke me.”
“No, I’m not. If I was truly trying to provoke you, I’d tell you that the little old ladies who live here spent their afternoon tea time telling me that someone needed to loosen you up—”
He groaned.
“And I’m pretty sure, they think the person to do that should be me, though I have no idea why. Maybe they think it would be amusing to watch me toy with you—”
“Lilah, I swear, if you don’t—”
“And if I really wanted to mess with your head a little bit, I’d tell you that Gladdy spent the afternoon telling me about the… frustrations of dating a man of a certain age—”
“What could that possibly have to do with me?” he asked.
“That they have certain… performance issues… that they have to rely on little blue pills to solve, which I gather can be frustrating to women, but assured me that a woman wouldn’t likely have that kind of problem with a man your age. No pharmaceuticals required.”
He gaped at her, both angry and a little bit horrified, she suspected.
“You’re telling me that you and an eighty-something-year-old woman have been speculating about what I can or can not do all on my own in the bedroom?”
“Not me,” she insisted. “Gladdy. It was all her.”
“Unbelievable,” he said, still right up in her face, so angry, so very handsome.
He was breathing hard, his breath warm with a hint of mint as it fanned over her face, her mouth, and his body was so warm, heat radiating from it toward her, and it had been so long since she’d been this close to a man, one she truly found attractive, even if he was maddening.
Part of her just wanted to cuddle up against him and enjoy all the warmth, the strength and solid bulk of a man. She was swaying toward him, she feared, and maybe… just maybe, he was swaying toward her, as if there was some kind of invisible force field between them, drawing them together.
She wasn’t sure if he was the one who moved closer or if she was, but she caught her breath at the contact, at how deliciously sexual it felt and how much she found herself wanting him in that moment.
He felt it, too.
She knew he did.
No hiding from it, either.
He either got a little turned on, arguing with a woman, or he wanted her… Okay, more than a little bit turned on, from that momentary brush of his body against hers.
Because he was most definitely aroused.
Gladdy was right, no pharmaceutical help necessary.
Lilah had been staring at the pattern of his tie, avoiding his gaze at all cost, but she finally gave in and looked him in the eye.
“Well now you know. Satisfied?” he growled at her as he eased away.
No, not nearly.
But for once, she managed to hold her tongue, as he turned and walked away.
So, the thing you have to know, is that I’m bad with certain story details. Like how old everybody is from one book to the next, especially when I do continuing characters and series. I’m really bad at that. And what day of the week it is, whether weeks or months have gone by since the book started. Sometimes, I’m bad with whether any time has gone by at all.
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One of my former editors called me after reading a book I’d turned in and said, “You realize, the whole book takes place in two days?” And I said, “No, I’m sure it’s at least three or four.” Needless to say, I did some more work on that book.
With this book, The Edge of Heaven, I thought time might be a problem, but I was writing in this absolutely glorious, white heat, pages pouring out of me, things just clicking in that way that books seldom do for long. So I just went with it, thinking I’d figure out the details later, when the writing wasn’t going so well.
Before I knew it, I had a book, so fast it never was a proposal. And… well, honestly, because I thought if my agent or editor saw it in proposal form, they might freak out about certain story elements. Writers have to be tricky sometimes. I knew this was what happened to my characters. They spotted each other, and they were in love before they knew the whole truth about each other. It was too late. Love is love. So I wasn’t going to let a little thing like a proposal get in the way.
The thing is, Emma is not yet 25, and Rye is not 25 yet, either. There are quite a few years between them. I wrote the book thinking there were X number of years between them, when in fact there were even more. Because I am bad with numbers, and by then, it was too late. The book was done. I loved them. They loved each other. And their ages were set in the previous book, Twelve Days. Too late to change anything.
Luckily, by agent and my editor both loved the book as it was. I’m not sure if my editor ever told the absolute truth about the age difference to her bosses or not. 
But the book was published, and here’s the E-Book version at last.
I adore this book. Do all authors say that about all books? Maybe we do. I’ll tell you the truth — we lie about that. Some stories just work for us and we love them. Some of them are a struggle all the way through, or we’re writing in the midst of some awful family drama or with terrible things happening to friends. In those cases, we do our best, but they will always one of those troublesome books.
I love Emma & Rye. She’s in trouble, and she comes home to the safest place on earth to people she knows will take are of her. But her family’s off helping someone else, and she ends up alone, until Rye shows up out of the blue, searching for someone, someone he’s half-afraid of finding. She’s sweet and innocent and younger than he knows. He’s strong, protective, secretive and older than she imagines. There’s more going on. It’s more complicated than just the age thing, but they adore each other, despite all that.
Hope you love them, too. This is the second book in The McRae’s series, which starts with Twelve Days. The third book, Bed of Lies, will be available in E-book form… maybe in late April, but probably more like May. I’m hard at work to make it happen.
NOTE: I have just discovered Pinterest.com. OMG, I could live there. Did a Story Board for Emma & Rye. Lots of beautiful images from their story. Check it out.
Been going over four single titles I wrote for NAL years ago, and it’s hard to go back and take a critical look at your own work. We all want to think we were okay writers back then, and yet, we all hope we get better over time, too. I was scared to see how those books held up now.
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Went through the first three and only changed a handful of things, tiny things, like everyone having and relying more on cellphones and all the things we do commonly on the internet now.
Then I got to Bed of Lies. (Heavy sigh.) I wrote this book in 2001, after some really crappy things happened in my life. I’ve written through crap before and written immediately after crappy things. One time, I looked at some things written immediately after an earlier seriously crappy time, and it was so odd. I had absolutely no memory of writing that piece. (Wasn’t writing books then. Really short things, newspaper articles.) That was disconcerting.
I remembered Bed of Lies. It was 100,000 words after all, taking six months, maybe nine to write, and through the editing process, authors see a book multiple times. No way I could have forgotten it.
But this time, it just seemed so depressing, so grim even. I didn’t want to be in these characters’ world, so how could I expect readers to want to be there.
So I’m rewriting it. Never thought I’d do that with an older book, but I am. I don’t know how much I’ve redone, because I’m cutting stuff as I’m adding. Rushing and cutting the sad stuff, playing up the couple stuff, making it sexier. I mean, it was sexy before. But there just wasn’t enough of that in the book. If people are going through really hard times, they could at least be having great sex, right? They deserve some good times.
As I say above, Life is hard. Love makes it better. I hope I’m making this couple happier, hope I’m doing something readers will be happier reading.
Update: I did it! This book is done and for sale now.
Hi,
I took so long to actually draw the winners (or have the random number generator pick winners) that I drew three instead of one. Congratulations to Pat, Lora and Sarah.
I hope many of you won great books in the contest and that you enjoy them all.
This is one of the cutest, most practical things I’ve ever seen, and I want one. I want it right now, and I’m living in an old, 
brick ranch with a terrible lack of closet space. But look at it. A reader could disappear happily for hours in here. Doesn’t everyone want one? I found it at DigitalBookToday, via Pat Ryan, via Twitter. (Thanks Pat, for the Tweet.)
When I was little, we added on to the house, and a window in my bedroom ended up getting closed off, and my cool, handy, book-loving father turned that old window into a built-in bookshelf!!! I adored it. And I adore this one. If Daddy was younger and in better health, he’d come right over and make me one of these. Although, I have to say, I really loved what he did to the window.
Love you, Daddy. Miss you.
Finally settled on the cover I want for The Edge of Heaven, which I hope to have uploaded for sale in a week or so.
Mock-up of New Cover
Went back and forth between two cover possibilities. It’s so hard to have these people in your head for so long, to feel like you know them so well, and then, suddenly, they’re supposed to become these people in a photo.
I suppose writers could try to find photos first, but I don’t feel like I know my characters well enough to do that when I start a book. Hmm. Maybe I could do it about half-way through writing the book, and then I’d know the characters well enough to pick a photo, but not be startled by how they look. Or how they will look to readers.
But I am happy with this couple. Emma looks a little bit young and sweet, and like she absolutely adores Rye, which she does. And Rye looks adorable and sexy. Maybe a little too clean-cut, but… he’ll do nicely, I think.
This book is the second in a series that starts with Twelve Days. I’m doing some rewriting now on the third book, Bed of Lies.
What fun!
Click on the photo to go to the Reader Rally site. Lots of authors and reader sites participating.
I will be giving away your choice of books: Twelve Days, a sweet Christmas story and the beginning of The McRae’s series or Unbreak My Heart, a contemporary romance with the feel of a gothic novel, spooky, old house, scared heroine, sexy guy next door who might not be the person he seems.
Post a comment below for a chance to win.
Ladies,
So sorry I haven’t been here to welcome you and chat. My Mother-In-Law passed away last week, and things have been a little crazy. Just got home Sunday night from the funeral. She was nearly 91 and suffered from Alzheimer’s for more than a decade, so in many ways it was a relief. Still hard, and I’ve been trying to be a good wife to my sweet husband through this.
I will confess, five days into the New Year, mostly all I’ve done about resolutions or goals is think about them and read a bit.
But I have found some gloriously cool, useful things on the ‘net so far, things I think I can use and that have me excited.
1. Zenhabits.net by Leo Babauta. What an incredibly cool guy. First, look at his website. It’s the simplest,
Take the Zen Path to Change
cleanest one you’ve ever seen. I mean, I like pretty when it comes to design. I can get lost in pretty. But I can still appreciate clean and simple design, too. His is the epitome of clean and simple. (No accident, the man is devoted to minimalism.)
Greatest tip to me so far: his post suggesting we give up New Year’s Resolutions, since so few of us keep them anyway. But it is a natural time to think about what we’d like to change about ourselves and our lives, and I like thinking we’re all capable of change.
So, from ZenHabits.net, the idea of adopting one new habit a month. We’ve all heard it takes 30 days of a new behavior to reinforce it enough that it sticks with us. So once he suggested it, it seemed a natural to not do a ton of big resolutions at once, but instead, pick a new goal or habit each month. If you stick with it, at the end of the year, you’ll have 12 new habits. Sounds like a ton of change for one year, but much less painful than making them all at once.
For January, I’ve vowed to get out and use the bread machine I got for Christmas one year ago and never opened. (Oh, so bad of me, and I picked it out myself. It was not a gift someone gave me out of the blue. I wanted it.) Will bake at least once loaf of bread. I have the mixes, the whole wheat flour, everything I need. I’ve had it for a while, just never used it. Why? I have no idea.
My pretty bike, beside my pretty Subaru, Annabelle. (Yes, I named my car.)
That’s January. Either February or March — depending on the weather — will be riding my beautiful red bike more. Also, will get a carrier for my car, so I don’t have the big, scary intersection between me and the glorious Swamp Rabbit Trail, old railroad right-of-way my county turned into a big, long, wildly popular bike path. I biked across the intersection a number of times in 2011, but it scares me, and I don’t need to be scared. I just want to ride.
I know there should be a writing goal in there, but I’m still thinking. Get The Edge of Heaven, The McRae’s — Book 2, uploaded for sale in January. Move next book, Bed of Lies, along toward uploading in February, hopefully. Keep working on final book in series, Five Days Grace, hopefully to finish and put on sale in April. Okay, that wasn’t hard.
2. Always need an eating plan. (I find I do much better with an eating plan, instead of a diet.) I know it’s partly just a play on words, but it’s better for me. I love having a plan, rather than a list of things I’m not supposed to eat.
A friend posted to an e-mail loop I’m on about Chef Alton Brown’s Plan of Four. It is the simplest thing I’ve ever seen and seems very workable. Basically, it’s four short lists. Things to eat daily, three times a week, only once a week and not at all.
I’m into simple, especially simple plans. I think I’ll try this. Did much better with my eating plan last year, but, as always, there’s so much more to do. I can see printing a copy of his list, posting it on the frig and checking things off as the week goes on. Very, very simple.
3. Love, love, love DailyCheapReads.com, the list for bargain e-books on Kindle. If there’s a list like this for Nook, I don’t know about it yet.
Sign up at their site, and they’ll send you an e-mail once a day with a list of great books that are mostly free or 99 cents. Often, the sales are just for the day, so if you love to read, you want to look at this e-mail daily. I’ve found so may new authors to try this way, found some new favorites and then gone on to buy more of their regularly priced books.
Warning: you will buy lots more books.
4. Interesting, fun new blog of the year: ReinventingFabulous.com Writer friends Jenny Crusie and Anne Stuart are transforming and vowing to blog about it all year.
Jenny’s bought a fixer-upper in New Jersey that needs tons of work before she can move in, and she’s a packrat who’s downsizing from her current home. So she has work to do. Krissie, as friends call her, wants to lose weight, be more active and maybe give up trying to rescue everyone she loves — all tough things to accomplish.
The discussions so far have been fun and inspiring. Check it out.
5. Finally, absolute best list of what it’s like to write, what people need to do if they want to write, etc from Chuck Wendig. A truly kick-ass column. Bravo.
Happy New Year, everyone.
Dear Aidan,
I’m trying to be patient and not push, but it really is time for you to let me in on some things. Like 
what exactly happened to you in the helicopter crash? Were you in the helicopter? Or did you get hurt on the ground, trying to help the soldiers in the crash? Why was it so difficult for you to handle emotionally? Why do you feel so guilty?
I mean, obviously, it was really bad. And I’m sorry. I know you don’t want to talk about it. I get that. But it’s time, and I have to know. You’ve been through things like this before and handled it, so what was different this time? Why do you think you’re going to get kicked out of the military? Who’s looking for you? Why are they looking for you? Are you in danger right now?
I know it’s not easy to open up this way, and I’m sorry for that. But this is your story. We’re going to have to talk about some tough things, and things won’t get better until we do. That’s just the way it works.
But things will get better. I promise. You found Grace, after all, and I know you really like Grace. She likes you, too, but surely you realize she is not going to have sex with you until you tell her what you’re hiding.
Please remember, we’re all in this together. You want me to tell your story. I want to tell it. I want you to be happy, and you will be in the end with Grace. We just have to work through some of these things first.
I’m here. I’m ready to listen.
Oh, and knowing your last name would be really good, too.
Sincerely,
Your Author, Teresa
PS — calling your book Five Days Grace
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