Starting My Next Book!

I am excited to be starting my second novel, with Amoret as the working title. It is the first in a planned trilogy revolving around three sisters. The unusual name comes from Edmund Spenser’s epic poem, The Faerie Queene. Spenser was an Elizabethan poet whom Charles Lamb called “the poet’s poet.” So what does an Elizabethan poet have to do with a Regency romance? Nothing, other than an eccentric, intellectual father, obsessed with Elizabethan writers, naming his children after characters in The Faerie Queene!

One of the things I love about writing is the huge amount of research that goes on behind the story. Every day is an opportunity to learn something new, whether it’s French perfume, famous gardens of the Regency period, horses, or a reintroduction to famous Elizabethan poets. My problem is that I often get immersed in the research and have to tell myself to get back to writing!

Anyway, each book is like birthing a baby. I’ve just delivered my first, and now I am excited to announce that I am pregnant again! Give me a few months, then the excitement will wear off and I will be feeling like a heavily pregnant woman in the throes of a hot, humid summer like we have had here in the southeast! Sweating, lethargic, and wondering what did I get myself into! My self-doubt and procrastination, driven by my perfectionism, will kick in. Luckily, my stubborn streak will serve me well in seeing my baby through to delivery. Wish me luck!

Neurotic Authors

Just finished a wonderfully informative and encouraging book called The Forest for the Trees by Betsy Lerner, former editor, and current partner with Dunow, Carlson, and Lerner Literary Agency. Perhaps I would have been dismayed to discover how close to home her writer portrayals were had I been able to stop laughing long enough to own my own neurosis! I loved the inside stories of writers and agents, and editors and publishers. The story of an author at his first reading had me laughing so hard tears were streaming down, I woke up my kids, and the dog was looking at me like I had gone crazy…which apparently is a prerequisite for being a writer.

In regard to a writer’s neurosis, as Jane Austen says: “For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors and laugh at them in our turn?”

Should I have the thrill of having a book published…I promise, Ms. Lerner, that I will not show up at a reading in a bathrobe, and with hand towels pinned to a safari hat, and…I will be nice to my publicist.

Want to to Know What Famous Author You Write Like?….

Nathan Bransford, an agent with Curtis Brown LTD in San Francisco, posted about a fun app that, after analyzing the word choice and structure of your writing, will tell you which famous writer you write like.

I tried it with two separate sections from my novel and my results were: Margaret Mitchell (Gone With the Wind) and Ann Rice (Interview With a Vampire). What?…Not Jane Austen?!!!

My conspiracy theorist husband (usually my role) said the app was probably by someone looking to steal other people’s plots! Anyway, take it for what it’s worth (it’s free and…you get what you pay for). Here’s the link. Let me know what your results are!

I Write Like…

Hello world!

Welcome to my site! I am an aspiring author and have finished my first novel, Pearls and Moonstones. I recently started the thrilling process of querying literary agents. It’s a lot like gambling, you just never know what the cards will turn up when you open that reply from an agent. Happily, I have had some winning hands already and am waiting to hear back from both partial and full manuscript requests! Check back often for updates on my journey to publication, all things Regency England and Jane Austen, fun things I come across, and great resources if you, too, have a book…or 3…or more in your head wanting to come out!