It's a Wrap!

This week marks the release of the final installment of the Adrenaline Highs! I'm so excited to get Always Dangerous out into the world.

 But ending this book brought up a few questions.

Are you one of those people who like seeing everyone (from all or most of the previous books) show up at the end of the final book? Or have you read a book that did that and because you hadn't read every book in the series, you didn't know who some of the characters were so you ended up feeling a little out of the loop?

One of the things I liked about the Adrenaline Highs is that each book ended with two happy main characters (sometimes more). At the end of every book, I wondered if I should toss in a person or two from a past story or stories, but ultimately I wanted all of the books to stand alone, so I refrained from going overboard.

Honestly, I actually considered having some kind of party at the end of Always Dangerous... Something that would bring in all the characters from the previous books, but then I read a book deep into a series by a favorite author and she'd done something similar. In the end, I thought it didn't feel right. Not because she'd already done it, but I didn't want to leave any reader (who hadn't read all of the books) feeling left out.

Who knows...maybe I'll save the "party" for a free read down the line.

An excerpt was already posted a few dys ago, but I thought it might be fun to post a different (quick!) one today since it is release week.

Damn, he’d forgotten how much he liked her. Their two-month separation had been good, because he’d been able to focus on other things besides how much he wanted to be with her. Touching her set his blood on fire. She blinked a few times, fast, as if their contact was another shock to her system. And standing there, with his legs between hers, with their mouths so close together, the only thought in his brain was kiss her. Now.

“Leo,” she whispered. Her lips seemed to move in slow motion as he slowly bridged the gap between them.

“What?” he growled.

“I don’t think this is a—”

He kissed her before she finished the sentence, because she was right. It wasn’t a good idea. But damn if he could stop himself. She was his Achilles heel. His weak spot. The more distance she put between them, the more he wanted her. He started slow, worked his way into the kiss, waiting for her to push him away or move back. She did neither, so he took it farther and tasted her lower lip with a gentle brush of his tongue. A little moan vibrated from her throat as their lips stayed connected. She tasted different…she tasted like a luscious cinnamon stick, all hot and spicy. “You found my cinnamon gum in the shorts pocket, didn’t you?” he breathed against her mouth. The gum was her fault. Whatever perfume she wore smelled like cinnamon and he’d started to chew the gum. Whether to remind himself of her or not was something he purposely hadn’t analyzed.

She barely nodded, her wet lips brushing against his in an erotic glide. “I had nap breath,” she murmured.

He smiled against her lips before going in for more. Still slow, still sexy as hell, still doing his best to inhale her without scaring her off. They had history, yes, but her unpredictability always threw him off. He missed the softness of her hair under his fingertips. The way her pulse beat rapidly right before contact.

“Leo,” she murmured, her mouth still moving against his as his hands moved down her thighs.

“Mmm,” he managed.

“We should stop. This isn’t going to get either one of us anywhere.”

Just like last time, she was relying on his will power to stay away. Hadn’t he failed that test already? In a colossal way?

So, tell me… How do you like saying goodbye to a series? With a full cast of characters or mainly the ones in the book you read? 

Always Dangerous is at Amazon | Nook | iTunes | Kobo | ARe

 

You can find Dee J. at her website

FaceBook | Twitter | Goodreads

 

Stalking Ideas

by Janis Patterson

One of the questions authors are asked the most is “Where do you find your ideas?” - as if ideas were rare and wondrous things as difficult to discover as flawless emeralds. As far as I and most of the writers I know are concerned, there are fewer questions more maddening.

As if one has to ‘find’ ideas. They find us, as ubiquitous as mosquitoes during a lake holiday, and sometimes just about as annoying. For example : you’re working happily on a sophisticated big city humorous mystery, when all of a sudden the sight of an axe in a hardware store brings up a flash of inspiration for a dark and noir-ish story about a suburban serial killer. It lurks at the edge of your consciousness, waiting to leap on every unguarded moment with yet another character or plot twist.

The sleuth you’re trying to write is an urbane, wise-cracking former male model who speaks four languages and not only knows but actually cares about the difference between white tie and black tie evening wear. (Sigh) The sleuth who is trying to creep into your mind is a wise-cracking suburban mom who hates soccer, has a daughter mad for ballet and who, through her knowledge of some arcane middle-class suburban pastime, deduces the killer who has been decimating the neighborhood.

Finally to propitiate the annoying creature you take a few precious hours to make some notes, jot down an idea or two, scrape together the bare bones of an outline and file the results into your bulging Ideas file. (You do keep an Ideas file, don’t you? I have for years. Mine is now roughly the size of Rhode Island.) The only problem is, when you decide the suburban mom has to have a garden, there is the flicker of an idea about a well-known television writer who loves to raise poisonous plants and his encyclopedic knowledge allows him to solve crimes as there is suddenly an epidemic of poisonings on the set of a controversial new series...

See how insidious this is? Before long you’re doing nothing but making notes about possible story ideas while your sophisticated and urbane city detective languishes somewhere in black tie (appropriate to the occasion, of course) waiting for you to come back to him. Ideas are everywhere, and catching them can take over your life.

Now, as we must never forget, I will repeat my mantra – an idea is not a plot. An Idea Is Not A Plot. Repeat that three times every day before you sit down to write. An idea is a situation, a frame, a slice of a singular moment in time. For a successful book, you need hundreds of ideas, and you need to be able to mesh them together seamlessly to provide a workable story. That part is work. Fielding a couple of the bazillions of ideas that flash by you every minute is not.

For the record, my second-most-disliked question is when some bright-eyed naif comes bouncing up (for some reason this is usually a middle-aged male at a cocktail party) and says with the utmost generosity of a Lord Bountiful, “I’ve a wonderful idea for a book – why don’t I tell it to you so you can write the book and we’ll split the money.” If it weren’t so maddening it would be funny to see their faces fall with disbelief when I tell them that ideas are literally everywhere and why would a writer need or even want to borrow ideas when there are more around for free than we could ever even make notes on in our lifetime? Let alone that the writing of the book is the work part, not finding an idea or two.

There have been a few, foolish ones who forge ahead and tell me their idea anyway, apparently convinced that once I hear it I will find it so irresistible and wonderful that I will fall all over myself begging to write it. Huh. Usually this idea is either an improbable farrago of wish-fulfillment or a twisted re-hash of some recent television show. Sigh. Unfortunately, there is nothing in any etiquette book about how to handle this situation and stabbing the innocent but tenacious offender with a cocktail pick is frowned upon. (I say that from sad experience...)

See the problem? It’s not that we have to stalk ideas – it’s that ideas stalk us, continually battering at the gates of our mind until we acknowledge their existence, which diffuses our focus. Perhaps a friend of mine said it best : “It’s not the idea; it’s what you do with it.”

What we do with it – writing the story itself – is the important part.

UPDATE :

Well, my one book release every two weeks from 30 June-30 October publishing blitz ends in a scant handful of days, and am I glad! It was madness to undertake such an insane schedule. What surprised me was how many people – including many writers, who should know better – asked disbelievingly if I were writing a new book every two weeks. Yes, two of the releases were new, but they were completed and edited before this all began, and all the rest backlist books whose rights had reverted to me. Still, it was all a tremendous amount of work that distracted me from everything else in life. Luckily The Husband likes frozen pizza, but he will be glad when I have the energy to get back in the kitchen, though the local restaurants will regret the loss of our all-too-regular patronage. In a way I too will be glad, for the business end of publishing has been so all-encompassing that my writing has been ruthlessly shoved aside. Only recently, as the publishing obligations started to decrease have I been able to approach the computer creatively. Jump-starting my brain and switching from the mind-set of publisher to author was more difficult than anticipated, but slowly the words have been creeping from my fingertips and once again I am feeling the radiant glow of creation. It’s about time.

The ultimate book in the blitz is a re-release of a traditional Regency romance entitled LACEY. It’s a fun book about three couples finding love in spite of societal conventions, meddling relatives and past hurts. Like all the rest, it has been re-edited, re-formatted, given a beautiful new cover and is available in both electronic and paper versions.

Now I am going to rest for a while, at least until the siren whisper of ideas becomes too strong in my ear!