Oh, the terror!

I'm about to start a new romantic suspense novel! I've got my notepad and pen handy for plotting and character development and several hours left of the day with no pressing obligations. The laundry is done, husband busy with his own projects and I'm…

Terrified.

What if I can't think of anything to say? What if my characters fall flat, my plot is insupportable, there isn't enough conflict? What if my agent hates it?

Or what if it gets published and every review is negative?

I don't know why I go through this every time I write a book. I've written several and had three published so far, so it would follow that I'm somewhat confident. And I am…somewhat.

This is my first try at a trilogy. I've got the first book written and almost half of the third—which I thought was the second, but realized it needed to be the last book. There are three siblings in the Hunter family: Nathan is the oldest, and his book is written. Rick is the middle child and Kat is the youngest.

Nathan is a wounded former cop turned P.I. who specializes in finding missing kids. He takes on the search for a senator's son, which leads him to the boy's stepsister—a woman with a past who doesn't want to be found. In order not to spook Sophie when he meets her, he doesn't tell her he's tracked her down to find her stepbrother, all of which sets up a disastrous chain of events for Nathan and his family.

Here's an excerpt from Nathan's book, which I'm calling Trust No One:

In the bedroom, Sophie could hear Nathan's voice very faintly from the powder room off the kitchen. Either he was talking to himself or he was on the phone.

In the bathroom. On the phone.

Her gut seized.

Please, God, don't let him be one of them.

A moment later his silhouette filled the bedroom doorway and she was sitting on the bed in the dark, wrapped in a towel, frozen with doubt and fear. He unbuttoned his shirt as he walked over to the bed, but didn't take it off.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"Of course," she said. How could he tell there was something bothering her? He could barely see her. "Why do you ask?"

The bed creaked when he sat down beside her and reached out to stroke her hair. "I can feel the tension rising off you, that's why."

Tell him to leave. Tell him you changed your mind.

But he was big and warm and smelled so masculine, and he'd already given her a taste of what it would be like. And there was the way he smiled and the way he was with Max…

"I thought I heard you talking to someone," she said, hoping he couldn't hear the tremble in her voice. "Were you on the phone?"

His hand didn't falter. "I called my little sister, Kat. I spoke to her yesterday, and she didn't sound so good. Her husband's kind of a schmuck."

Very smooth. But was it the truth? "Isn't it a little late to make a phone call?"

"Kat has trouble sleeping," he said. "Especially when her husband's on the road, which he is now. She's alone with three kids, including twins not much older than Max."

"Oh." She couldn't think of what else to say. She had to make him leave now, before he touched her again. "Nathan—"

"What are you afraid of, Sophie?"

She closed her mouth. If he were one of them, wouldn't he have arrested her by now? Or was he planning to screw her first and then pull out the cuffs?

"Talk to me," he said softly. "You can trust me, I swear. Get it off your chest."

Oh, God, how she wished she could tell him everything and make him understand. But what if he was just manipulating her into confessing? No. She couldn't trust him. Couldn't trust anyone.

"I was just going to say that I think we're… moving a little too fast."

He nodded. "I'm happy to go very, very slowly. Whatever you like."

He bent down and planted a kiss on her bare shoulder, and every nerve ending in her body lit up. Her breasts swelled with need, as did the hard nub between her legs. Was it so bad that she wanted this man, even if…

No, he wasn't one of them. He couldn't be.

-- Ana

I love to hear from readers. If you liked this excerpt and would like to read one of my current ebooks, either leave a comment or email me at: ana@anabarrons.com, let me know which book you'd like (WrongfullyAccused, Son of the Enemy or Betrayed by Trust) and in what format and I'll send you a copy. Easy as that!

Writing Communities

Writing is a solitary occupation. Unless you’re co-writing a book, a writer must tackle the project alone, getting words on paper/screen until the work is done. Then comes the polishing and the submission process, which is also essentially something that is done alone.

If you’re feeling alone or lacking support from your nearest and dearest joining a writing community is the answer.

So why do I think writing communities are so great?

1. Networking – a community gives you the chance to meet likeminded people who are going through exactly the same trials as you. They “get” what you go through during the writing of a book.

2. Opportunities to attend conferences – writing communities often organize conferences with guest speakers and more opportunities to network with other writers. These conferences can be either in person or online.

3. Opportunities to pitch to agents and editors.

4. Market information – Communities pool information and are excellent places to learn about the various publishers or self-publishing.

5. Opportunities to learn with online classes

6. Opportunities to learn from guest speakers

7. Making friends and finding critique partners

But I can’t afford to join a community. What then?

While it’s true that communities like Romance Writers of America and the RWA chapters cost money to join, but there are others out there that are free or have a basic level of membership that is free.

Check out:

Absolute Write and the Absolute Write Water Cooler Forum—lots of information for writers of all genres.

Romance Divas – mainly for romance writers. The Divas forum is periodically closed to new members, so you might need to check back. Lots of market information for traditional and self-published authors.

Savvy Authors – they have basic membership for free and premium membership for $30 per year. They run excellent online courses and have lots of opportunities to pitch to editors and agents.

Other writing communities

Romance Writers of America - This is the biggest community if you're a romance writer. Once you join the RWA you can also join your local chapter or a special interest chapter as well.

If you live in Australia, Britain or New Zealand all have groups especially for romance writers.

Romance Writers of Australia http://www.romanceaustralia.com/

Romance Writers of New Zealand http://www.romancewriters.co.nz/

Romance Novelists Association http://www.rna-uk.org/

Are you a member of a writing community? If so, which one and what made you join?

Shelley Munro lives in New Zealand with her husband and a rambunctious puppy. Her next release is Past Regrets, an erotic contemporary romance from Samhain Publishing. If you would like to learn more about Shelley and her books visit her website at www.shelleymunro.com

BICHOK – Getting in the Groove

Write a little every day and soon writing becomes a habit.

This is great advice, but it’s much easier to nod and agree than move forward and obey. I’ve been away a lot this year, and while I take my laptop with me, most times I end up doing a little plotting and catching up on my reading instead of actually adding words to my work in progress. On my return home I always find it hard to get into the swing of writing again. I tell myself I’m busy doing laundry and unpacking when really I have my feet firmly in Procrastination City.

I’ve developed several strategies to get my butt in a chair and my hands on the keyboard. (BICHOK)

1. Join in some speed sprints #1k1hr on Twitter. My competitive streak won’t let me report a low total.

2. Use Freedom http://macfreedom.com/  to block Internet access for a selected amount of time. This works well for me because when I’m procrastinating I do a lot of playing on the Internet. I tell myself I’ll just check out Facebook and get sucked down the black hole. Freedom stops me from doing this.

3. Take myself off to one of my favorite cafes and set up camp there. I call them my coffice. I try to pick one without Internet access and usually get a lot of work done because I can’t get up and wander around.

As well as getting me writing, I meet interesting people in my coffice. A few months ago a man at a neighboring table asked me how to spell a couple of words. Then he asked me about wording his letter. It turned out he was writing a letter to a judge and if the court session didn’t go well, he’d end up in jail. He’d done bad things, he told me. I wasn’t brave enough to ask for details.

After writing the letter to his satisfaction, he left to change for his court appearance. Weeks later, I was busy working in the café and he said hello. He happily told me the letter did the trick with the judge. I’m sure there’s fodder for a story there!

How do you get into the writing groove when every particle of you wants to do something else?

Shelley Munro lives in New Zealand with her husband and a rambunctious puppy. Her next release is Past Regrets, an erotic contemporary romance from Samhain Publishing. If you would like to learn more about Shelley and her books visit her website at www.shelleymunro.com

Romantic Suspense?

In 2004, I won an EPPIE (now the EPIC awards) for my book “Harley Street.” I won the Romantic Suspense category. It shocked and delighted me. Delighted is obvious. Shocked? Because I’d always thought of “Harley Street” as a historical romance. But when it came to enter the EPPIEs, I had three books to go in, and I didn’t want them to compete against themselves. So since “Harley Street” involved solving a murder, I decided to try the romantic suspense category.

“Harley Street” is part of my Richard and Rose series. The whole series is about one couple, and follows them through the course of several years, from their meeting in “Yorkshire,” to their final confrontation with their enemy in “Lisbon,” a book that hasn’t yet been published. The series consists of eight books, and while each book has a separate story, it also has an overarching tale, too, when Richard’s past comes back to bite him.

I was a bit tired of historical novels about reformed rakes, as though finding the one true love and reforming negated all that went before. Richard made the cold-blooded decision to become a rake, to run through as many of society’s women as he could and to destroy lives, after society condemns his brother and sends him abroad for what at the time seemed like a lifetime’s exile.

So it was ironic that the event that has consequences that nearly kills Richard and his beloved Rose happened before that career, when he was only fourteen.
I wanted to be true to the age of the story. The events all happen in the 1750’s, a time of turbulence for Britain, a time when constant wars, new inventions and the development of philosophical thought helped to change the way people thought and acted and paved the way for the new world of the French Revolution and industrialisation. I’ve always been drawn to this period, and I decided to concentrate on one aspect of it when I told Richard and Rose’s story – the development of the modern police force, and the changes made to criminal law. Because in the 1750’s, the two Fielding brothers, magistrates at Bow Street, started to campaign for a real police force, something the populace had constantly opposed, as they didn’t want a “police state,” as we might put it.

It all sounds very worthy, doesn’t it? But it wasn’t. Britain, and in particular, London, was a wild place, with several ‘rookeries,’ or no-go areas for the authorities, where criminality ruled. Streets of unbelievable filth, because where the authorities didn’t go, neither did the night-soil men, and the other people who helped keep the city reasonably clean and habitable. There were some criminal masterminds, but wipe the thoughts of the romantic outlaw out of your head. The most famous was Jonathan Wild, who ended on the gallows, but in his time, had informants, informants on informants, whose stock in trade was betrayal. Not a romantic figure at all. So I created a wannabe Jonathan Wild, someone who had more ambition than maturity, and set him against Richard, who wanted reform, but also wanted a few years of tranquillity when he could make his peace with the world and spend some time with his beloved Rose.

He first becomes aware of the identity of the person out to get him in “Harley Street,” when he and Rose return from their honeymoon in Venice. The three previous books hold hints of what is to come, but in “Harley Street” it comes to fruition. Rose finds a dead maid in the house of her great aunt, and when Richard arrives, he recognises the dead person as an ex-lover from long ago. It soon becomes obvious that coincidence has little part in this tragedy, and if he and Rose aren’t to end up dead, then they have to solve this one.

So what is romantic suspense? Blowed if I know.

I recently started to write a story aimed at Harlequin Presents set in New York and Naples, Italy. But from the start it seemed a little too edgy for the line. For a start, the heroine is an ex drug addict, trying to reinvent her life. But I continued to write the book, about her reconciliation with a man from her past, but what draws them together is his search for the body of his brother. So they find him. Then the firebombs start to arrive. Then I stopped writing and realised I had more on my hands than a simple romance. I did some research. Then I did some more, and I found that a casual remark by my hero had led to a firestorm of revenge and violence. Until I started to write, I hadn’t realised that the gangs in Naples used the port as a place to distribute knock-off goods over Europe and the United States. I knew the gangs of Naples had morphed from the mafia of old to something different and even more threatening and dangerous. I never thought I’d write a book about that.

But I rewrote the book, giving up all thoughts of the Presents line, replotting and rewriting. It was huge fun to write, and I kept my central couple well into the action. It became “Learning to Trust” which comes out from Carina this November. Then at the end I had a character who had fascinating possibilities. Was I planning to write his story? my editor wanted to know. You bet.
So I meet another character in this book who deserves a story. I can’t believe a trilogy has come out of this book, and I’m so pleased the Carina people are so enthusiastic about it.

I still don’t know what Romantic Suspense is, I only know that I write it.




Lynne Connolly http://lynneconnolly.com