The End

No, it's not the end of my blog, but I finally was able to close out my latest Work in Progress. I've been working on getting the last story in my Stones series finished for a while now. The problem was it just grew and grew and grew. It out grew novella length by some publisher's standards and now sits as a full novel. I'm pleased with how it's turned out. It was rather harder to do and the longer length I think comes from the need to build the backstory for the character. When you're writing a Were story you can sometimes rely a bit on the pop culture awareness of the lore. There isn't such a wide base of knowledge for the incubus and so I had to do a bit more world building.

Actually it was more of world revealing. I already knew exactly what role the incubus and some of the other species played in my world. But I found I had to explain more of it than I'd anticipated.

It's time to enter the world of self and peer edits. Then it will be time to see if Soul Stone (the working title) and my little incubus Tarris can find a publishing home. But in the mean time I plan to take a few minutes to celebrate before I start editing.

Contest:

The contest I'm sponsoring to mark the release of Mating Stone (currently available from Ellora's Cave and the first in the series I mentioned above) and Seeing Me (releasing March 28th also from Ellora's Cave) is still open.

To win the 17" freshwater pearl and amethyst bead necklace, write a brief answer to the following question and send it to ElyssaWrites@aol.com with “Mating Stone Contest” in the subject line. I’ll pick the best response as the winner, and two honorable mentions to receive smaller prizes. The winning entries will appear in my blog on April 13th.

In Mating Stone, Mark falls in love with Sarah. Sarah, a young human woman who has no idea that Were’s even exist beyond novels and movies. Strictly fictional. As a human woman, how do you react when Mr. Yummy tells you he’s the one with claws and may just leave fur on the sheets? So tell me: What type of Were is Mr. Wonderful and how does he break it to you?

Seeing Me Releases Friday!

My one and only Quickie from Ellora's Cave releases on Friday. Seeing Me is the story of first time author CJ Ellison who finds herself on a panel at a large scifi/fantasy convention. Not only is she on the panel with some big time authors, but also with one of the most yummy actors in the business today. When she opens her big mouth, as usual, and speaks before she things, as usual, she gets His attention in a big way. Now not only are her professional aspirations coming true, so are some of her fantasies.

Excerpt:

“And then you come…”Cara jerked her head up at the sound of the words. He gave a short harsh cough, took a sip of water and continued. “Sorry and then you come to the pivotal moment in the story and if you aren’t focused you can ruin what needs to be the payoff for the viewer.” He cleared his throat again, “That’s why it’s important to me to be able to commit myself to one project at a time. It makes having a personal life of any kind hard but there are often sacrifices you have to make.”

Looking down she realized she’d actually sketched the body of the nude male, no face but his hands were definitely…

She felt the heat wash over her cheeks and lowered her head, letting her hair fall across her face. She flipped the page over on the table and continued her list. She should choose a safer topic but right now she doubted her mind could focus on anything else.

The questions continued from the audience and she thought she noticed Him grow a bit uncomfortable. True, ninety-nine percent of the questions were for him but that was something she was actually grateful for. God help her if someone asked her a question right now.

She was up to twenty on her new list, having just added the delightfully archaic “deflowering,” when she heard the voice of the angry writer from earlier denounce the idea of film representation of his books as a bastardization of the art, as selling out for the money. “No screenwriter, no director, no actor can do justice to a well-written story or character without cheapening it, without robbing it of some essential element that a given reader holds dear,” he’d practically sneered. “So there’s no chance I’d ever sell one of my stories to the commercial Hollywood machine.”

“Are you crazy?” The words were out of her mouth before she realized she had spoken them. “You’d sell your left testicle if someone wanted to make a movie from one of your books with that kind of budget.” She waved her hand at the actor and author who were being criticized.

There was an undercurrent of laughter and she suddenly realized everyone in the room was looking at her. He was looking at her and wearing that wickedly seductive smile that had put him in the pages of many a magazine. Her face flushed hotly and she looked down at her hands. I can’t believe I said that, she moaned silently. The moderator quickly swung the conversation back on track. A quick glance down the table saw that indeed, the offended writer was glaring at her in disgust. Great, just great, she thought. He’s got twenty times my sales, we share the same agent and I go and piss him off. Well, it was nice while it lasted. My agent is going to kill me.