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Warriors’ Woman releases this Friday! To celebrate I’m giving away a $25 Amazon gift card! All you need to do is leave a comment mentioning what you’d like for Valentines. Winner selected by random number drawing. Be sure to check back Friday to see if you won.

A couple of those cute rings must have slipped, because I’ve fallen a little behind on the current manuscript.

The good news is; I have two releases this month.

Warriors’ Woman, Book One of the Seduction Mission series releases February 10th

Demon Hunters II, A Very Demon Valentine’s releases February 14th

Goodness knows what I’ll talk about next month.

Do wonderful surprises fluster y’all too? Or is it just me?

The same way a baseball player wears the same lucky socks for each game, I practice my own superstitious rituals to coax the characters to reveal themselves. I sort through images to find ones that approximates the pictures in my head. I build a playlist of music that speaks for the story’s cast. Spreadsheets, notes, and sometimes drawings gradually fill a story’s notebook. Eventually the magic happens. The imaginary people take on life and the movie version begins to roll in my head.

And then the real work of capturing the right details to portray the action begins.

I keep adding to chapter one. By the time I’m satisfied all the important stuff has been included all I’ll need are a couple of graceful transitions and the first couple of chapters will done.

For each book, I make a spreadsheet to keep track of pages, plot points, chapter breaks, and the timeline. The current notebook includes a table of ages and maps. Seems a bit over the top even to my OCD self, but it took me ages to work out these details and google won’t help if I forget something important.

This time I’m struggling to capture the heroine on the virtual page. I’m sure the hero will be difficult later on when he finds out why she’s not going to drift off into the sunset with him, but for now the challenge is to do justice to the woman. It is precisely because I care about her that I’m fighting to give her the voice she deserves. Like most writing, the process is solitary and soul grinding.

The other day I ran across this post on Sean Ferrell’s blog; Pathetic Email. Be sure to scan through the comments. The post and the responses reminded me while I may feel alone in this struggle to find the right words, I have some pretty awesome company on this journey.

The current manuscript is a contemporary romance, plain but not a bit simple. I’m beginning to think contemporary romance is the literary equivalent of a little black dress. It looks easy, but finding one that does what I want it to do is a challenge close to seeking the holy grail.

I started out with every intention of writing something light and fun. Swampy made rude noises, the Alpha hero started seething, then things got more complicated and a lot darker than I’d planned. But I’m just the factotum around here, the characters are in charge. Although I get credit for all mistakes.

So far, I have resisted killing off anyone, adding a stalker, or giving anyone special powers. Still early days.

The new story has a cast, a beginning and I know how it ends. Now there’s the minor problem of finding the right seventy some thousand words between the opening scene and the end.

I’m sensible woman, except for my career choice, so I asked Swampy for reasonable characters with a resolvable conflict.

Naturally he ignored me delivering a couple of onion-layered people with way too many issues. So I’m shaking my head as I try to peel away enough of their outer shells, eyes streaming with tears to find the heart of their story.

Years ago when the idea of writing for publication crossed my mind, I read advice from a successful author: if you have any choice in the matter don’t write.

Since then I’ve questioned my commitment to this endeavor regularly. Sometimes it’s when the words on the page fail to capture the exciting adventure in my head that I wonder about writing. Other times Swampy, the contrary muse, shows up with a concept and cast beyond my skill level, making me question my sanity.

But if I don’t write these stories, then they won’t happen because no one else knows the stories playing in my head. So there really is no choice.