Lynn Raye Harris

For the writers amongst you, I’ve put the links to my series on how to write a Harlequin Presents in the sidebar. Scroll down to the “For Writers” category, and all the posts are listed there to make it easier to find in future. Hope you enjoy.

I’m still buried in this Russian book, but things are looking better. I was browsing the web for images for my inspiration file, and I came across these that I want to share with you. (Yes, these were taken by talented photographers who are not me.)

I believe this is from the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, but I’m not quite sure. (It might also be from the Smolny Convent.) Years ago, and I won’t say how many, ahem, I had the privilege of traveling to Russia. We flew to St. Petersburg first (still called Leningrad, if that gives you an idea), and spent 3 days there before boarding an overnight train to Moscow, where we spent another 3 days. It was an amazing trip. The palaces are beautiful, and the landscape was prettier than I expected it to be. Fortunately, we were there in May, and it was quite warm. It also never got fully dark at that time of year.

This next picture is of Peterhof, Peter the Great’s palace on the Gulf of Finland. We got to tour it, and I have a photo of me standing on one of the bridges over the canal with this palace in the background. It’s an amazingly beautiful place, full of gilt and art and antiques. My hero also has a palace, but it’s not this grand. And of course he had to buy it back from the State after the fall of communism. But looking at these photos gives me an idea of what his palace is like, though on a smaller scale.

This is the Winter Palace, also known as The Hermitage Museum. It’s a gorgeous palace on the banks of the Neva river. We spent hours wandering through the galleries. I see this photo as representing my hero’s home. The Winter Palace is actually quite grand and vast, but this small slice of it makes it look like it could be a grand house on an estate somewhere. I especially love the snow capped trees.

More info on the Winter Palace here.

I love finding photos for inspiration. It’s one of the most fun parts of beginning a new book. Thank heavens for Google! You can have photos at your fingertips and start writing about a place you’ve never been in a matter of hours. Yes, I’ve been to Russia, but I’ve never been to Argentina (The Devil’s Heart, July 2010 UK) or the Arabian desert (Kept for the Sheikh’s Pleasure, Sep 2010 UK). As much as I’d like to go to these places for real, I’m grateful for the tools that bring them to my fingertips. Even with Russia, it’s been a long time and I needed a refresher.

I’m starting a new book this week, and I’m at that stage where I’m trying to figure out what the driving emotional problem is. I wrote a chapter back at the end of August on a new idea, and I think that’s what I’m going to go with, but as I reread what I had, there’s a big gaping hole: emotional conflict. *sigh*

I always do this. I always see a scene, write it, and wonder what is really going on. I still don’t know, but I hope to figure it out quick. This book, if I am able to figure it out, takes place in Russia. That’s a new setting for me, but I have in fact been to Russia — though it was many years ago, and things have no doubt changed quite a bit.

But I remember how extraordinary Red Square was. How vibrant the colors on St. Basil’s. How brilliant the golden onion domes of the churches inside the Kremlin walls. The Faberge eggs were amazing too. I can hardly remember all the impressions I had of the country, but I love exploring my memories this way. It was a truly extraordinary experience.

What kind of settings would you like to read about? So far, I’ve written about Spain, the Caribbean, a Mediterranean kingdom of my invention, a desert kingdom, and Argentina. Next, it looks like Russia (assuming I figure out what the emotional conflict is). Have you been anywhere that you would love to read about in a novel?

P.S. Cavelli’s Lost Heir has spent four weeks on Bookscan’s Top 100 Bestselling Romances List! Thanks so much to all my readers for making this happen.

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?

The end is in sight, y’all. I hope to get there very soon, but when I looked at my daily totals recently, I realized I’ve written nearly 20k in a little over a week. It’s a lot of work, at least for me, and I can’t believe how much I got done in so short a time. I don’t recommend you do this if you don’t have to, btw. Thinking this hard, feeling my characters’ emotions so strongly over so short a period, wears me out. I really look forward to at least a week of vegging and enjoying holiday activities. (Though I expect revisions, I hope I won’t get them immediately.)

But I did have some good news to bolster me! (Besides Cavelli’s Lost Heir appearing on the eHarlequin bestseller lists!) First, I learned that my fourth book has been accepted. The Devil’s Heart is a July 2010 release in the UK! I’m very excited about this story. There is an Argentinian hero, a half-American half Italian heroine, and a priceless jewel.

The last bit of good news I got was the UK cover for The Prince’s Royal Concubine, due out in March 2010, and a North American release date! The book will be out in Harlequin Presents in June 2010. To whet your appetite, I’m giving you an exclusive sneak peak at an excerpt right here on this blog. But first, the back cover copy:

Two glittering royal houses…

Prince Cristiano di Savaré hunts his prey by ruthless means. Tonight’s pickings…Antonella Romanelli, crown princess of a rival country and part of a dynasty he has every reason to despise…

…one majestic seduction

Antonella is rocked by Cristiano’s unexpected magnetism. But there’s ice in his wolfish smile… She’s far from the promiscuous, spoiled socialite he believes her to be, but Cristiano is here to persuade her into compliance. If bedding her is what it takes, then it will make his mission all the more pleasurable…

EXCERPT:

Antonella emerged onto the top deck of the yacht, in search of someone who could arrange for a launch. She nearly stumbled when she caught sight of the man conversing with the yacht’s captain.

Cristiano di Savaré in a tuxedo had been magnificent. But Cristiano in Bermuda shorts, a crisp Polo, flip-flops, and Ray-Bans was downright sinful. He looked nothing like a prince and everything like some erotic fantasy of a muscled cabana boy who lived to serve the woman lucky enough to hire him.

He turned at her approach, no doubt because the captain ceased paying attention to him and watched her progress. She could see the captain’s eyes moving over her appreciatively, but it was Cristiano’s gaze she felt most keenly. Though he wore mirrored sunglasses, she was aware of the burning scrutiny behind them.

She’d dressed in a cotton wrap dress and sported a pair of sandals with a sensible heel. Her hair was pulled into a ponytail, and she’d gone minimal with her makeup. She wasn’t trying to attract attention, and yet it never seemed to matter. Attention was what she got.

“You have heard about the storm?” Cristiano said, skipping the preliminaries.

Antonella pushed away a tendril of hair that escaped her ponytail and blew across her lips. “Yes. When is the launch?” she asked, turning to the captain.

“There is a slight delay,” Cristiano said before the captain could reply. “Many in the harbor are requesting transportation.”

“I see.”

“Have you made flight arrangements yet?”

“No. I had hoped to go straight to the airport and take care of it.”

“Bueno. You may fly with me.”

Antonella’s pulse beat like the wings of a thousand hummingbirds. The man was unbelievable. “Thank you, but no. I will get a flight when I reach the airport.”

Cristiano shoved the Ray-Bans onto his head. The sunlight had disappeared as clouds rolled into the harbor. His eyes, she realized, weren’t blue or gray. They were deep, dark brown.

No, green.

Hazel, that’s what it was called. Brown ringed the pupil, but the bulk of the iris was green.

Striking.

How had she missed this at dinner last night? She’d sat across from him, but she’d barely looked directly at him with Raúl sitting beside her. The one time she had, she’d been far more mesmerized by the look on his face than the color of his eyes.

“Antonella,” he said sharply.

She jerked. “What?”

“Did you hear me?”

“You were talking about your jet.”

“Yes. It’s ready, and I have room for you. All commercial flights off the island are booked.”

“But you just asked me if I’d made arrangements!”

“I meant last night, before the hurricane changed direction.”

She shook her head emphatically. “I’ll take my chances at the airport.”

Was she crazy? She might despise him, but was it worth putting herself in danger to have the satisfaction of refusing him? Wasn’t the most important thing to get back to Monteverde and speak to her brother? If only Dante had been the one to come to Canta Paradiso! He’d have gotten Vega Steel and this would all be moot.

Except he had to stay to hold the country together. And his wife was about to give birth. Antonella had been the only choice, and she’d failed. She wanted to climb back into bed and pull the covers over her head until it all went away.

But she couldn’t. Cowardice was not an option.

“Don’t be childish,” Cristiano snapped.

Arrogant bastard. She forced herself to take a long, slow breath before speaking. “It’s not childish to avoid the company of people you despise.”

“No, but it is childish to put yourself in danger because of it.”

It was disconcerting to hear her thoughts echoed in his words.

Antonella stared at the mountains rising around the harbor. The airport was on the other side of those mountains. It could take hours to reach at this rate. Dark clouds billowed over the green peaks like a thick blanket unrolling. The wind had already picked up speed in the few hours between the time she’d gone to bed and now.

How she got home didn’t matter, so long as she did. “I will fly with you if there is no other option. Though when we reach the airport, I will check to see if I can book a flight first.”

“As you wish, Principessa.”

“But I cannot fly into Monterosso.” How would that look? And how would she get home to Monteverde? There were no direct flights, and the border was cut off. A princess of Monteverde could not be ferried across the border by Monterossan soldiers. It was unthinkable.

His expression hardened. “Of course not. We will land in Paris first. You can arrange transport from there.”

A dark thought occurred to her. “How do I know you will keep your word? That you won’t take me to Monterosso and demand a ransom for my return?”

His voice stroked over her like silk. “If I were to kidnap you, mia bella, I could think of far more interesting things to do than demand a ransom.”

What do you think of this cover? (I think I need a fan and some ice water!)

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?

Sometimes, when we are still unpublished, we think that if only we could get The Call, everything would be easier. We’d have an editor and our books would be on the shelves. And, yes, while this is true and it is a most wonderful thing, there is still work to be done. The kind of work that when you get it as an unpublished writer, you are discouraged and think you’ll never get there.

But I have to tell you that part of your life as a published author is rewriting. Successfully, regularly, and when asked. I have recently done a lot of rewriting. And right now, I’m rewriting the novella that’s due in two weeks. Why? Because my editor wanted my internal conflicts to be better. I thought they were pretty good in the 25 pages I sent to her, but she was right as always and they could be better.

So I chucked those 25 pages and started again. Now, I have only days until it’s due and a lot of pages still to write. Which means I will be scarce, but I’ll check in and report on my progress when I can.

Remember, if you’ve recently gotten a rejection with a suggestion for massive rewrites, don’t be discouraged. Published writers have to do it too. And so will you, so get used to it now and get busy.

(And can you believe that tomorrow is December already? OMG!)

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’m getting immersed in my sheikh novella — or, more appropriately, in the setting for the novella. My mother has a book on Arabia and another on the Bedouins that I’ve borrowed, and I’ve been viewing photos of deserts and tents and etc. And I’ve reviewed my copy of T.E. Lawrence, which is water-logged and has sand in the binding (due to reading on the beach in Hawaii). Things have changed over the years, of course, but it’s wonderfully atmospheric.

In case you think the title of this post is poetic, it actually comes from a joke my husband tells. He’s been telling it since I met him, in fact, but the only part I remember is ‘desert winds and caravans’. There’s also something about Timbuktu, though I’m purposely not remembering it….

Do you like sheikh stories? Which are some of your favorites? Know any good desert jokes? (Or do you know this one?)

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….

It approacheth at light speed. The deadline. Or, as Kate Walker calls it, the dreadline. I like that. Because you do start to dread it, knowing you somehow have to wrap up this latest story into a neat and tidy bow and ship it off to your editor. Who will then unwrap it and either shriek with horror, shake her head sadly, or jump up and down with glee.

I’m banking on the first two, truthfully. There are rumors of authors who send in books with no revisions, but I’ve yet to experience it, so I always expect them. I just hope my editor doesn’t shriek.

But as I type my merry way along toward that day that is oh-so-close, it makes me think of when I was still unpublished and wanting to cross that sacred line to being published so much. When you’re unpublished, time is on your side. (Or so it seems, but more about that in a moment.) Life creeps in, other tasks take precedence, and it’s easy to shove your little hobby manuscript to the back of the burner while you attend to everything else.

And yet, I say to you, that is a mistake. Because time is not on your side, not really. As you push your manuscript aside to do fall cleaning, drag out the pumpkin carving kit and autumn leaf table cloth with matching napkins, someone else is writing. Someone else is finishing a book, which they will then send to an editor. They might sell that book, and be contracted for another.

Publishing is not a zero sum game, as the amazing Linda Howard says. Just because someone else sells a book doesn’t mean you won’t. But you have to figure out how to complete those books, regularly, and how to submit them in a timely manner. Taking a year to write a category romance is not good practice. Depending on the line you sell to, they might want 3 or 4 a year.

Now of course you shouldn’t ignore your family and hide in your writing cave every minute of every day, but you really have to find the time to write regularly. Because it’s good practice, a good habit, and will benefit you in the end both in work completed and lessons learned while writing.

The best writing teacher is writing itself. You have to write a lot to learn how to write. The anonymous “they” say you should write about a million words before you’re good enough to be publishable. Malcom Gladwell, in his book Outliers, says that it takes about ten years of practice to get really good at a thing.

And you know what, both are true for me. I easily wrote a million words (probably about 250K on my first book alone), and though I quit trying to publish and went back to school for several years, I studied writing and I read a lot of romance during that time. My total time as a writer of fiction thus far? Sixteen years.

So figure out how to give yourself a deadline, and then meet it. It’s good practice, and it’ll be expected once you do sell.