Alpha men

[image deleted]

Ah, M&B Modern Heat alpha males... Gorgeous, authoritative, ruthless, sometimes tortured, often perplexed.

But do they really exist? Should they exist? Would you want to live with one? Do you live with one? Does anyone actually know a truly alpha male? Here's a lady who has some interesting views on the subject: The Romance Hero v the 21st Century

(And here's a moral dilemma for a Saturday - if a Modern Heat hero came knocking on your door, promising the sort of things only a Modern Heat hero could, what would you do?)

The Irate Virgin Passenger's Hilarious Letter of Complaint

This is fab.

Hearts pounding - not

Hooray! The tweaks went off yesterday. I swear, if I ever have to see the phrase 'her heart pounded' again I may just scream.

I won't hear back for a couple of weeks, so I now find myself kicking up my heels and doing things that need doing: getting a hair cut, filing, replying to emails, maybe setting up a website, signing my M&B contract...

I have an idea for the next book, but don't really see much point in jumping in until I've had a chance to chat it over with my editor and that won't happen for ages. Instead I'll do some thinking and throw a few ideas around my head. It's due in June. And this time I managed to refrain from saying 'June? How about the end of Feb?' (See, am learning.)

PHS

Today I'm blogging over at the Pink Heart Society about 'The Call'.

There's been a lot of press in the UK recently about how hedge fund managers are responsible for the demise of the UK economy. Booooo, hissssss. Guess what my (fictional) hero does for a living...

Doubts

The revisions are due tomorrow and am head down, tweaking frantically. I've added 2000 words. Have I done it right? Is there now too much internal agonising? Too little? Is my heroine now too confrontational? Do my tweaks stick out like sore thumbs? Where's the gin?

Agghh.

Revisions

Having just about got my head round the fact that I actually sold my book, I'm now eating, sleeping and breathing revisions.

Apparently these are minor, but as I have nothing to compare them with, I've no idea whether they are or not. But Kim, my editor, says they're tweaks and who am I to argue with the person who also said that my story has 'intense emotional conflict, excellent dialogue, appealing characters and an engaging plot'? (Although personally, I'm convinced she's got my book muddled up with a proper writer's.)

So, these tweaks...

Mainly I've skipped over some of the most crucial emotional moments. Those'll be the chapters at the end that I galloped through then. Heavy on dialogue, light on emotional exploration.

At the moment the emotional events happen off stage. This is Not Good as the reader takes on the role of observer instead of seeing the action through the characters' eyes and is pulled out of the story. And that affects the pace. Now this is something I probably should have known, but didn't. Like I should probably have realised that my hero is a control freak. And known that my heroine on occasion accepts things a little too easily. It all seems kind of obvious now. As is how little I do know...

So this week, I've been struggling up that learning curve with a highlighter pen and postit notes and am working on upping the emotional ante.

Hello

Welcome to my new home - which looks remarkably like the previous one!