Lynn Raye Harris

L. Kahler of Parkersburg, PA; L. Dovey of New Castle PA; and L. Soo of Woodbridge, VA are the lucky winners! Details can be found on the Contest page. I’ll be posting a new contest soon, so keep checking back!

Sorry, I’ve been a bit behind, but will announce winners of the December contest and update the site either later today or first thing tomorrow morning! Thanks for your patience.

I have followed the comment trail over at I Heart Presents with sadness and even a bit of disappointment. It’s up to the editors to sort out the rules, and I will not comment on that at all. And while I DO understand the disappointment of some of the people who are commenting, I have to say that I don’t think personal attacks are ever warranted.

Yes, I was an unknown when I won the first Presents contest. And you can bet I was damn happy. Thrilled to freaking pieces. I didn’t expect I had an automatic pass through the publishing doors, however. As it turned out, I did not. I had to work hard, through two sets of revisions in which I wanted to tear my hair out and even cried because I thought I was failing big time and would never get bought, but would quietly fade away when my lovely editor rejected me and stopped answering emails.

Happily, I finally nailed those revisions and my lovely editor bought the book. Four books later, I’m still thrilled and amazed. And I still have revisions and I still work hard and bite my nails and wonder if my editor will reject me. Because it DOES happen, y’all. Being published is not a guarantee of future publication. (So if you tell me that because I’m published, it’s easy for me, I can assure you that you are wrong. Whether you believe it or not. And no, I didn’t believe it before I was published either.)

I will not speak to rules, because I am not qualified to make that judgment. But I can tell you that the two published winners didn’t get an automatic pass into the top two. Their work had to be outstanding, and it had to live up to the Presents promise. I don’t believe either one of them deserve to be attacked personally, whether or not you like that they won or think they violated a rule. It’s your right to be disappointed, and to express dismay that published authors were allowed to enter. It’s even your right to demand to know how the rules were applied and whether or not they were violated. But it’s not your right to be mean to these women.

And I will say this until I’m blue in the face: JUST BECAUSE YOU DIDN’T WIN DOES NOT MEAN YOU WON’T SELL TO THE LINE! Ask Tina Duncan, Maisey Yates, and Mira Lyn Kelly! Of the two runners up when I won, one of them went on to sell into TRADE PAPERBACK under another name. I won’t out her because she may not want that, but believe me when I tell you the woman is amazingly talented! I am thankful to call her a friend and to run ideas past her even now.

I understand being disappointed to realize you were competing against published authors. But who do you think you’re competing against whenever you submit a manuscript? Your work has to be as good as what’s published in the line to get bought. You are competing, whether you know it or not. And I really don’t know whether there were published authors in the contest I won; being published already does not automatically make you a better writer for a particular line than someone unpublished who is targeting the same line. I’ve heard, from reliable sources, about single title writers who want to break into Presents and can’t. They don’t have the voice, and all the publishing credits in the world won’t get them bought if they can’t write the story.

Okay, so that’s my opinion. If you were disappointed by the outcome, good grief I don’t blame you at all! But please don’t listen to the naysayers who tell you that you might as well give up because you’ll never get a fair look and you can’t compete with published authors. YOU CAN. You do it every time you submit, so keep writing and keep growing. It took me 15 years to get published. How long will you keep trying before you give up for good?

My December contest is live, so be sure to check out the contest page and see what the prizes are this month! There will be three lucky winners this time! Congratulations again to Jillian S. of Dayton, OH, who won the November contest. Just as soon as I dig myself from under this deadline, I’ll pop your goodies into the mail!

I’m still working hard on the sheikh story. I only have a few days left to get it done and turned in. I’ll get there, because failure is not an option, but man can it be tiring during the trek to the finish line. I love what I do, but sometimes I just want to take a break and do nothing but sit on the couch in front of the fire and read all day.

Since that’s not an option, I keep my nose to the grindstone and keep working. I admit that I spend a little more time than I should online, but I also think of it as a way to keep my sanity.

Have you ever seen “For Love of the Game” with Kevin Costner? I don’t like sports very much, but I love sports movies. I like the story behind the events whereas I don’t actually like to watch real games all that much. Give me a character in crisis, and even if he’s a sports hero, I love it (I also feel this way about SEP’s football romances and Rachel Gibson’s hockey romances).

Kevin plays a great character in this movie, and one of the things he does, while pitching this huge game of his career, is tell himself before he throws the ball to “clear the mechanism.” Then the crowd noise fades and there’s nothing but him, the ball, and the batter on the other end. I think of my online forays during the day–or even the times I get up and do something else, like throw in a load of laundry or fix lunch and watch 15 minutes of TV while eating–as clearing the mechanism.

It’s necessary to the way I work. I can’t go away for long, because that interrupts the flow too much. But a short break where the brain is engaged in something else entirely? That clears the mechanism and I find when I sit back down that I might see the path I’ve been trying so hard to find.

This blog post today is clearing the mechanism, too. I decided I needed to write something other than the story, and I wanted to share this process because it’s one of the things that helps me. It may not help you. You may need to focus completely, so I can’t guarantee this will work. (But if you try, you must resist the temptation to wander down country lanes, so to speak. Quick breaks, get back to work, etc.)

So now that I’ve spent the last fifteen minutes writing this post, it’s time to get back to work. What tricks do you use to clear the mechanism?

Cynthia Gander, you won a signed copy of Cavelli’s Lost Heir last week! Please email me at lynn AT lynnrayeharris DOT com, or use the contact page, so I can send your book.

You have until November 2nd to enter the latest Harlequin Presents competition! Here is a current post from the new Harlequin Blog about it, and you can also, of course, find much info over at the I Heart Presents site.

Best of luck to all entering! And remember, you don’t have to win to see your dream of selling to HP come true.

But if you DO win, oh my. Enjoy that ride. It’s great.

I have author copies of Cavelli’s Lost Heir! Tell me why you want one, and I’ll pick a winner from the comments. This book isn’t out until January so don’t miss your chance for an advance copy!

UPDATE:
I simply couldn’t pick just one winner, so I decided to giveaway 3 books! I trotted over to the random number generator, and this is what it told me:

First winner: Pearl!
Second winner: Lynne!
Third winner: Lois!

Send me your contact info at contact AT lynnrayeharris DOT com and I’ll get your books on the way to you!

And if you didn’t win this time, keep checking back because I simply can’t resist holding contests. And if you click over to my Contest page, you’ll notice I’ve put up the next contest for a book and goodies!

Thank you all so much for the wonderful comments. I enjoyed reading them all! You quite made my day!

I bet you’ve been wondering where I went to! Well, I’m in the home stretch of Book #4, and I hope to finish it sometime today if I’m lucky. So the last few days have been spent hunched over the computer, my fingers trying to keep up with what was happening in my head. Thank you so much for all the comments and congrats on my one year anniversary of The Call! And it’s been great seeing what kinds of events you’re celebrating.

We’ve had, I believe, two new home purchases, a couple of anniversaries, and some celebrations over finishing a manuscript and getting a full request! Everyone has a lot to celebrate it looks like!

And now, the winner of a copy of Cavelli’s Lost Heir is Fatima! Fatima, send me your contact info and as soon as I get my author copies, I’ll pop one in the mail to you. You can use the contact page, or email me at contact AT lynnrayeharris DOT com.

Everyone else, there will be more chances to win, so keep checking back! And keep an eye on that contest page of mine. I’ll be launching a new contest soon — but because they’re so fun for me to do, I’ll still have impromptu blog contests as well. Another way to win is by following me on Twitter where I’ll tweet chances to enter for books and other goodies as the mood strikes!

Thanks for reading this blog, and thanks again for being readers of my books.

I realized this morning when I woke up that today is the one year anniversary of The Call. One year ago today, at 7:27 AM, my lovely editor called to buy Spanish Magnate, Red-Hot Revenge and one other book from me. In February, my second book was accepted, and then my editor called to buy three more books. She also recently called to buy a novella.

It’s been quite a road since that day one year ago! I can remember the excitement, the heart-pounding inability to concentrate on anything other than the fact I’d just sold a book. It was an amazing day! Best of all, my poor patient long-suffering husband was at home when I got the call. Five more minutes, and he’d have been out the door on the way to work. But he was here, and I didn’t have to scramble around trying to find him so I could tell him. You know how you always read call stories where someone was at home alone, and then she couldn’t get her husband or any of her family on the phone?

Thankfully, that wasn’t me. I can’t remember the order in which I called people after. I may have called my mom, and then my dad at work. And my in-laws. After that, it’s a blur. My hubby had to trot off to work, and later that day, he had to leave town on a business trip. I remember that my celebratory dinner that evening was a Lean Cuisine pizza and a glass of wine. But when my hubby returned at the end of the week, we went out for a proper celebration! And of course he brought me flowers and a card before he left for that trip.

It was a great day.

One year later, I’m hard at work on Book #4, which is due in a little over a week, and thinking about the novella I have to write next. It’s been fun, busy, stressful at times, but I wouldn’t trade this job for anything.

Most of all, I want to thank my readers for all the wonderful comments and emails you’ve sent to me over the last year. Your support when my book came out meant so much to me. I hope you enjoyed it, and I hope you’ll enjoy the next one. You landed me on the Waldenbooks/Borders Bestseller list and on the Bookscan Top 100 Bestselling Romances list. I thank you all very much. I write because I love it, but I also write because I hope you will love it.

Now, because I feel so celebratory today, I’m going to give away a copy of Cavelli’s Lost Heir to one lucky commenter! You’ll have to be a little patient, however, because I don’t have my copies just yet. I expect them soon, and when I get them, I’ll pop it in the mail.

So tell me what you’ve celebrated recently, or what you will celebrate soon! Any milestone or event counts.

PS You will have noticed I have a new Contest page on this site. Stay tuned for a new contest soon….

Today I’m giving away a signed book by my friend, chapter mate, and line buddy Kimberly Lang! It’s amazing how much fun it is to live right down the road, in the same town, as another person who writes for the glamorous and gorgeous Harlequin Presents line. This means lots of lunches and plot talk.

Kimberly’s books are called Modern Heat in the UK (mine are Modern), so we definitely aren’t writing the same thing. When I want fun, sexy, and glamorous all at once, I pick up one of Kimberly’s books. And this book definitely lives up to that promise! (In fact, I emailed Kimberly from under a dryer at the salon because I was cracking up over a line she’d written. Too funny.)

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Tell me why you want to read Kimberly’s book! On Sunday, I’ll pick a winner from the comments. Go!