The Prince’s Royal Concubine is MY book, due out in March 2010 from Mills & Boon Modern. It will also come out in Harlequin Presents in the months after. Yet Amazon seems to think that my book belongs to Lee Wilkinson. How do these things happen? I wish I knew, but I’m having a heck of a time correcting it.

Want to see for yourself? Here’s the US link and the UK link.

Nothing like slaving over a book and having it attributed to someone else! How would you feel? I know they can’t forever call it someone else’s, like when the cover comes out and they can clearly see it’s mine, but I’m still pretty ticked off about this.

Amazon, give me back my book!

QUICK UPDATE: Thanks for all your words of support! I truly did not expect for folks to email Amazon on my behalf, but I do appreciate it! It seems as if they are in the process of correcting it right now. Hopefully it will be completed soon!

But I still think it happens. And I think the lady who pulled into the handicapped spot at Starbucks the other day was doing just that. She had no sticker, no plate, and no placard.

She sat there for twenty minutes and talked on the phone the entire time. Not only did she talk on the phone, gesticulating and yelling, but she popped her visor down and proceeded to squeeze pimples on her face. No, I am not kidding. Unfortunately, my table was facing that spot, and each time I looked up, there she was, hollering into her phone and picking her face. It was awful.

And what did she do after she’d sat there for twenty minutes while other people had to drive around to find parking? She left and used the drive-thru. Never even came into Starbucks.

People like that give me ideas for characters, so I guess I shouldn’t complain too much. But I was angry for anyone who legitimately needed that spot while she hogged it (there is only one). And absolutely stunned that someone would sit in full view of a cafe in which they could see people sitting and pick their skin. Hell, I think at one point she pulled out some tweezers and plucked hair. I’m not certain, but I think so. All while talking on her phone. Amazing, huh?

And now for much more pleasant tidings! I’ve employed a scientific method (scrambling names and taking mine from the mix) to arrive at my two winners: Rachael Johns and Patricia!! Please email me at contact @ lynnrayeharris dot com with addresses and your choice of prize.

$10 gift card to bookstore (Amazon, BAM, B&N),
OR
Presents trio, selected by moi from my stash,
OR
My debut book when it comes out, signed, along with two other Presents novels (unfortunately, you will have to wait until mid-July or so, but I’m good with that if you are!)

Congratulations to the winners! Keep checking back, because I plan to have more giveaways, especially as we get closer to my new site launch!

While you’d think it wouldn’t need to be said, here are some things you do NOT want to do:

1. Do NOT stalk editors and/or agents. Planning your time so you can “bump” into someone, and then refusing to go away, is not the correct course of action. Of course you need to be prepared, because there will be those elevator meetings sometimes, but don’t haunt the restroom door in the hopes of running into someone. Or the buffet line.

2. Do NOT misspell names on your query. Names are kind of unforgivable since you should be able to check and double check the correct spelling — especially if you’ve gotten a business card from the individual. I once got a letter from a utility company that referred to me as Mrs. Barris. Jarring. And if you want to compare yourself to another author, use caution — don’t say J.R. Rawling when you mean J.K. Rowling.

(Seriously, this should be obvious, but you’d be surprised.)

3. Do NOT take as gospel every word said by the woman sitting next to you at your RWA chapter meeting — even if she does seem to know a lot. If you’re a PRO member, download those PRO booklets and read, read, read. Then ask questions of published authors (or experienced PROs) you TRUST to give you good advice. Check and double check, because if someone tells you to stand outside the restroom door or linger in the buffet line looking for a publishing professional, it’s probably not the best advice.

(I did once listen to something someone told me when I was very green, even though my gut told me otherwise. The result was a rejection, of course. This was a long time ago, and believe me I learned.)

4. Do NOT send the same query for the same book to the same agent who just rejected it. Rework the query or submit somewhere else. Wish I could find the link, but I read a post last week about someone who kept submitting a query for an adult novel (not that kind of adult!) to a children’s book agent. She finally got frustrated and wrote back telling him to stop because she didn’t represent that type of book, which she had politely tried to tell him over the last several months. His reply? That she was an agent and therefore he would keep querying her because it was his job to query agents about his book. Talk about clueless! And, oh yeah, agents know each other. You can bet his name is now making a viral loop through Agentland as we speak. And not in a positive way.

5. Do NOT think you know it all. I’ve met these people and it’s frustrating as heck. I know I don’t know everything, but I’m pretty sure this stuff I just said is true. But you be sure and double check it before listening to me, you hear?

What kind of crazy advice have you ever gotten? Good advice? What sort of horrible hi-jinks have you seen at conferences? We’ve all heard the manuscript under the door story, but have you ever seen its equivalent? Thankfully, I haven’t, but I know at least one person who I think would do it. Sadly, some people don’t listen.

2. Why? Because I don’t KNOW what happens yet, darn it!

3. Wrote a synopsis for new book. Hate it. Book will not even remotely resemble synopsis. I know this from two books written for an editor now. Thankfully, she didn’t freak out either time.

4. Writing a synopsis, even when I won’t follow it, crushes down on my enthusiasm for the story like Dorothy’s house on the wicked witch.

5. Must get over this and write story anyway.

6. Proposal nearly done, in spite of traumatic encounter with evil synopsisaurus.

Got any tricks for the synopsis? Any tricks for tricking yourself while writing it? Do you follow it once you’ve slaved over it? I used to try, but that only made things worse, so now I figure it’s kind of like Captain Barbossa and the pirate code — guidelines to be followed when convenient or expedient. Or to be tossed aside when something better comes along.

The Big Misunderstanding

Characters are kept apart by something that could be resolved with a conversation. Kept apart for a brief while over such a thing isn’t unbelievable — not all of us suddenly jump up and demand to know the truth. We might labor under a delusion for a little while because we’re still trying to figure it out in our heads and making sure we aren’t jumping to the wrong conclusions.

But a misunderstanding that goes on for an entire book? Something that could have been solved with a conversation instead of the pages and pages of angsting over the past? I was seriously surprised at this book.

And I wonder if maybe I just didn’t get it, if the fault is with me as a reader because the Big M didn’t work for me or I wasn’t able to see how deeply this misunderstanding would affect the characters’ ability to discuss the truth. I’m just not sure.

I must say, however, that I’ve read other books by this author that were just fab, so I’m not put off entirely. I was just a little disappointed in this one.

I’m pretty positive I’m going to write things that don’t resonate with all readers. Of course that bothers me because I am a perfectionist. Realistically, I know there will be those who dislike my work. I don’t look forward to that, but I know it’s going to happen.

What do you do when a book fails to meet expectations? Do you write the author off? Do you give him or her another try? What plots drive you crazy?

Do people really not care if their cars get dinged with these runaway carts? Or do they feel that since they are leaving, their car isn’t in danger? Of course there are legitimate excuses not to take the cart back — sometimes a person is sick or hurt and just wants to get in the car and go. It happens — but not to every blessed person at the store on the same day!

I always walk the cart to where it’s supposed to be. I even walk carts into the store when I get out of my car and there’s a stray cart perilously close by. I still have a huge dent in my door where some lovely person in Hawaii shoved a car door or a cart into it and then skedaddled. It’s just a dent, not missing paint or anything, so I still haven’t had it fixed (2 years later). But I think about it every time I see stray carts all over the parking lot. Irritates me.

So, it’s the holiday season and I’m ranting. But in this season of giving and goodwill toward others, why are people so rude about shopping carts? Why can’t they return it? For most of us, there is no excuse.

What bugs you about shopping this time of year? Is the rampant outbreak of homeless carts merely an Alabama phenomenon, or is it happening in your corner of the world too?

I had to turn around. I couldn’t stomach it. There was a time when an overly perfumed person simply was annoying. Now, the danger is a migraine. I can’t handle it and I go elsewhere. It makes me sympathetic for people with allergies. I had no idea perfume could be so offensive until it started giving me migraines.

And then I got to thinking about my own perfume preferences. Ten years ago, I had a selection. Obsession, Ralph Lauren, Vera Wang, Opium, Sunflowers, Shalimar, Passion, J’Adore — I had mood perfume, and I often had the lotions and gels that went with each fragrance.

The only fragrance I wear now is the Victoria’s Secret Beauty Rush body mist. It’s not really perfume, and it isn’t offensive to my senses. It occurred to me as I flipped through one of my favorite fashion magazines recently that I was saving a lot of money by not buying perfume anymore. I remember Opium costing around $70 for a small bottle; I have no idea what it costs now.

What’s your favorite perfume? Has your ability to tolerate perfume changed over the years? Do overly perfumed people annoy you? What was your favorite perfume when you were a teen? In your twenties? Older? Do you still wear perfume?

When morning rolls around, the hubby gets up for work. And I can’t help but get up with him. Right now, his parents are visiting. And there’s a whole relationship with coffee that I thought I understood but apparently don’t. I love my coffee in the morning, don’t get me wrong.

But my FIL is SO worried about it, like I’m going to oversleep and he will have to sit there without it for hours on end, that I make sure I get up and put a pot on. I just can’t listen to the endless questions every night — “Will you make coffee in the morning?” or “Is there going to be coffee in the morning?” or “Are you making coffee?”

As IF.

So, even if I haven’t slept well, I have to get up and make the coffee. Add in the stress of revisions, submissions, and waiting for news and you have an insomniac writer. Guess I could work on the next book idea…..

Do you have trouble sleeping? What do you do for it? Do you have a crazy FIL who obsesses about coffee? Let’s talk. Just wake me up if I’m dozing….

Good openings are hard to do. It’s tricky to get a character on the page, let the reader know what she needs to know, and get the ball rolling. There’s a balance to be found, isn’t there?

My favorite openings begin with a character in crisis. And I don’t mean running from a killer either (though that can work too!). I mean someone encountering something they usually don’t. Being forced to make choices and act.

I hate set up. I hate a character angsting about a situation and telling me all the bad things that have recently happened in order to get me up to speed. Just dump me in the thick of it and let me figure it out!

Long passages of our emotionally torn heroine thinking about what went wrong when her sister ran away with the circus clown, and how that meant she had to go tell the hunky hero what her sister had done — and, oh yeah, turns out he now owns or controls something very important to her — while checking her hair and eyes in the mirror and talking about how she doesn’t feel sexy these days…..

Um, no. Don’t like. Not enough to make me want to keep reading.

But openings with immediate drama and tension, I’m there. And yet I think writers sometimes get confused about what constitutes immediate drama and tension. A person on the run from something in and of itself isn’t enough. There must be some kind of sense for the reader of the stakes. What will be lost if a character I don’t even know gets caught?

Which, I suppose, comes down to this: Make me care about your character. I’m not sure this can be taught in 3 easy lessons. It must be learned over time and with much practice, I think.

I have often rewritten my first chapters until they were right. I’ve rewritten first scenes a dozen times, until it clicked. I don’t always get it right, but I’m not simply satisfied with an evocative first line and then a bunch of backstory.

Get the ball rolling. It doesn’t matter what Famous Alice Author does. It matters what YOU do.

What are your favorite types of openings? Least favorite?

Random thoughts inspired by picture (and a few that aren’t):

1. Oh if only. I am not as organized as I’d like. I haven’t started my conference packing list. I haven’t even considered all the clothes I will need for the various events. Editor meetings, agent meetings, a champagne reception, a retreat featuring agents and editors, etc. Yikes!

2. I bought a beautiful filing cabinet recently that I intended to organize with all my important papers, both writing and household. Uh, no, haven’t done it yet. It’s a purty thing, but it’s disorganized as h*ll.

3. What the heck is that cat wearing?

4. How is it my husband can play World of Warcraft for three hours straight, but not be able to think of a single thing to talk to me about when he gets home from work?

5. Alabama is HOT. My yard needs rain. My sprinkler system costs too much to run on a regular basis.

6. I successfully talked the hubby out of declawing the cat at the last minute. She went for a spay only. I don’t like declawing cats. I don’t think it’s natural and I didn’t want to put her through the pain even though my vet does laser surgery. Regular trimming of nails, training to use a scratching post, and we’re good to go. Besides, the cat who *really* could use his claws out is too heavy to get it done.

7. Waiting for news on submissions is HARD. Checking the mail is cringe-worthy. The relief one feels not to see a white self-addressed envelope is ridiculous.

8. I think all those people who for the last several years have been tolling the death knell of paranormal romance because it was over-saturated are WRONG. Wish I’d realized it 3 years ago. Vampires, while a bit overdone, are still appearing at an alarmingly regular rate.

9. Wish I knew what the next big trend was. Not just writing, but in general. It’d be nice to be on the leading edge of something for a change instead of running flat out crazy in an effort to catch the train.

10. What’s on your mind?