Copyedits of Forbidden

Coming down to the wire on this.

Have I ever indicated by some slight subtle bitty hint how much I hate and despise and abominate the Chicago Manual of Style? Loathe and abhor it? It is a subject that does not leave me gravelled for lack of synonyms.

Ok. Why do we use double quotes for emphasis?

As in --
After the court martial, she was "out of commission" for about a year.

Has nobody noticed that double quote marks are being used in great numbers by dialog?

Single quote marks, on the other hand, hang around at the pool all day drinking Sex on the Beach.

Has anybody noticed how confusing double quotes are when we want to emphasize stuff in the narration surrounding dialog.
So why don't we use single quote marks for this? Huh? Huh?

And colors. I am just steamed purple by the stupid no-hyphen-in-colors bloody rule. A blue and white set of dishes. A yellow green field of wheat.

Are we richer, linguistically, because we don't use the hyphen? Are we, like, saving the hyphens for something important?

Right now my annoyance centers on certain French usages, which is not really CMOS's fault, but I will be mad at them anyway.

Sans-cullotes and counter revolutionary are the 1790s terminology.

Sansculottes and counterrevolutionary are NOT.
They're mostly MODERN. But they're in Websters and thus the pure quill as far as CMOS is concerned, (See, I got a swipe in at CMOS.) Webster's being, if not God, at least a theoretical construct of Infinite Wisdom.

So I've been stetting counterrevolutionary like mad all through the text.
Bet you didn't know counter revolutionary was a 1790s word.

In Japanese

I am in Japanese.

This is so wonderful.

I do hope this is a good translation. It's not just that I want Spymaster's Lady to be available to readers in Japan.
It's ...
(Ok. I'll admit it.)
I want somebody to read it
and say -- Manga!!
Yes. I want Annique to be a manga.
I have many unrealized dreams.
This is a particularly intelligent cover. Look at those wonderfully symbolic white cliffs of Dover. The scene where Annique comes ashore at Dover is not just a random point in the book. It's the division between dark and light. The turning of the action.
And the cliffs give a sense of the 'fortress' England presented to any invasion from France.

As to Annique . . .
This is not the face I picture for her,
but it's somebody I like the looks of.
It is here, at Amazon Japan, ready for all your Japanese Christmas shopping needs.
And see Spymaster's Lady visiting the Mejiro Gardens in Tokyo. Here.
Sherry Thomas tells me the title translates as The White Cliffs of Dover on the Other Side.
This, I like. Oh yes.

Off to California

Off to California to visit family,
and friends,
and more family.
Yes!!!

Technical Topics -- Page One

I was thinking about the first page.

The first page is a semaphore where the author sends the reader messages. It's a place of signals, flags run up the mast, secret handshakes.

What are we saying, as writers, on page one?

Ah .... the holidays

turkey
gravy
mashed potatoes
summer squash and wild mushrooms
cauliflower and cheese sauce
yeast rolls with walnuts
fresh spinach salad
pumpkin pie
apple pie

No dressing.
The refrigerator decided to freeze my vegetables.
Celery does not like to be frozen

Technical Topics -- Beginnings and Tipping Points

I was thinking about story openings, since I will have to do one soon. I was trying to decide what makes a good opening, and how I start my own stories. These two are not necessarily linked by bands of steel.

Thinking about process ...
The story opening is determined by the big crisis that lies at the heart of the story. The Climax. The Big Kahuna.

Now, of course, there's lotsa stuff that leads up to that Crisis. Various characters did this and that and weather happened and a declaration of war and Susie came down with the pox.
But when I go seeking for a good opening, I'm looking at what the female protagonist does -- Her thoughts, actions and decisions. Because, for me, the book is about the female protagonist. She's going to determine where the story begins.

So ... I look at the protagonist's actions as far as I have them figured out.

Of course, I don't look at every bloody thing she does.
There are those actions that are absolutely necessary for The Crisis to occur and the story to take the path it does. This is 'story action'.
Then there's a whole bunch of to-ing and fro-ing that could be changed without affecting the story much. That is not 'story action' and I can kind of ignore it.

Entering the vampire cave is necessary. It is 'story action'.
Buying eggs at the market -- not so much.
It's like that.

When I wander through the protagonist's story action, what I'm looking for is 'tipping points'.
One of these tipping points is going to be the first scene in the story. I just have to find the right one.

"'Tipping points'?" you say.
And "?"
Yeah. Ok.

Every story has many places where a different decision would lead to a different Crisis and a different story. These are 'tipping points'. These are moments where the protagonist has an opportunity to change everything. Her decision could go either way. What she decides matters.

Going aside here to natter about generalities ...
Tipping points make the protagonist strong and interesting. Story is not about what happens to the protagonist. Story is what the protagonist decides to do with what happens to her.
And the tipping points are her decisions.
This is where she grabs hold of the story by the throat and wrestles it down and makes it do what she wants.

Writers -- giving my opinion here and knowing it is not necessarily true -- want to show these tipping points, because they are so important and so revealing and just so generally cool. Even if everybody who's slogged their way to page 134 knows the protagonist will not run from the upcoming battle, the reader still wants to see that decision to stay and be brave. She wants to see the 'tipping point' where the protagonist has a choice and makes it.

All of which is just generally to speak in praise of tipping points.

Anyway. Getting back to where the beginning of the story is going to be.
I look at my protagonist's actions. I look at her decisions.
I want to start the story with a tipping point.

Why do I pick one tipping point and not another?
What is characteristic of the scene and the tipping point that starts the story?


*-- The tipping-point decision in the scene that starts the story is necessary for the action of the story. It directly leads to the Crisis at the end.

*-- The start scene is early in the long sequence of protagonist actions related to the Crisis.
(Right. The beginning scene is early. yeah. duh ...)
But not too early.

What it is ...
There's a long line of protagonist actions, stretching way into the past and extending far into the future. Maybe like, y'know, beads.
Only a little section of this action can happen 'on stage' in the book.
We know the last on-stage actions are going to be when The Crisis is resolved.
The first on-stage actions ...
Well, we're working on the beginning right now.

We want to scoop as much important story action into the book as we can. We want all the good stuff to happen 'on stage'. Essential story action that happens before the beginning of the book has to be shoved into some flashback or backstory or some kind or prologue. This is a weakness in the story structure.

Note how I'm talking only about 'story action'. We want to scoop in story action. The important stuff. We want to write it out as scenes and put it on stage.
We don't want to write scenes that have no story action and only convey information. We especially do not want to start with a scene like that.


*-- Ideally, we want to start with a scene that is chronologically tight with the rest of the story. That is, we do not want an outlier in time. This avoids a hiatus in the action.
If we can manage it, we don't go all prologue-y with a, 'Two years before' . . .

Prologues are necessary in some stories, but I feel it may not be the tightest of all structures. There are folks who disagree with me.
Full disclosure time here -- I have to keep knocking my hand off the keyboard to keep myself from writing prologues.

*-- A tipping point means the protagonist makes an active choice. She has the capacity for some sort of action.

Sometimes there doesn't seem to be much the character can do. The protag is a victim trapped in the dungeon. A Cinderella bound to her stepmother's will.

What the writer does is shake the story around to give the protagonist choice. Even a limited choice can be the tipping point.

In the dungeon, the protagonist makes a decision not to reveal her secrets whatever happens. Her silence keeps her alive long enough for the partisans to rescue her. She gives half her bread to the other inmate -- the man who will later be the key to getting her out of the fortress. She palms a spoon to scrape through the rocks and thus has a weapon the next time the cell door is opened.

Cinderella decides to approach each daily, demeaning, unfair household task with a stalwart heart and a generous spirit. It is her light-hearted singing --rather than sullen acceptance -- that leads the Prince to her.

The tipping point is a decision that changes the story.
It can be made even when the character is under fierce constraints.

And if the protagonist's actions and decisions keep not affecting the outcome of events . . . why not?

*-- It is especially exciting if the tipping point is a decision that rests on a knife edge. Where it could go either way.

*-- All else being equal, I like a tipping point that involves 'big screen action'. That is -- the protagonist makes a decision that results in big bodily motion. Getting-into-a-car-and-racing-down-the-mountain decisions, rather than stern conversation or hiding the jewels in the sofa cushions.

This is just me. Personal preference. Ignore it.

*-- For the first scene, you want a tipping point that reveals one of the most basic aspects of your protagonist. It's not just an important decision. It's the decision this character, idiosyncratically, would make.

*-- A tipping point is always encased within 'story action'. Every scene is built around 'story action, of course, (did you notice I don't use initials for tipping point?) but the first scene is especially built around story action. And the tipping point is embedded in this action. It is not just wandering off in the mist somewhere admiring the action over its shoulder.

The tipping point can never be description of an average morning or talking heads informing us about the lost gold mine.

*-- While the tipping point has to occur somewhere in the first scene, it need not be laid out right in the opening lines. It doesn't have to be the major action shaping the scene.

It can be quite a small thing. Not obvious.


*-- In genre Romance, one or more tipping points are likely to arise in the hero/heroine meeting.

These are neat tipping point to start the story with because the H&H meeting all by itself ties up a bunch of plotting thingums the writer has to get out of the way in the first couple chapters.

So, in genre Romance, a good beginning might be the tipping point where the female protagonist decides how to deal with the hero . . .

'Will she rescue the hero or leave him in prison?'

'Will she approach this dangerous man on the street, or back off and find some more cautious way to accomplish her ends?'

'Will she stay to spy on the approaching stranger on the chance he is the messenger she's waiting for, or will she run to safety?'

Three small decisions. (Three books.) The decisions pass almost unnoticed in the scene. But these tipping points define the protagonist. If she had acted differently -- no story.

Close to the end of Maggie

I am close to the end of Maggie. Just a little writing still to do.

Feels good.

Technical Topics -- Organizing the Manuscript

I cannot imagine a more boring topic.

How do I handle the sheer overwhelming mass of research, multiple drafts, out-takes, backups and so on
that constitute a novel?
 

ETA:  This is SO boring I put it all below the fold.

Technical Topics -- Bibliographies . . . French Revolution History

I was thinking I'd add a
'Useful Bibliography of the History of France, with particular attention to the period of the French Revolution and the Age of Napoleon'
on the off chance that this would prove interesting to somebody, someday.

So the bibliography is here , at LibraryThing.


A different kinda bibliography exists here.

This latter bibliography is about one third useful resources on France of the period.
And one third Regency England books.
And the last third is many, many refs on slang and dialect of the time.

I am not absolutely sure that just anybody can get into these spots. If you try, and you can't, let me know.

A week to Thanksgiving

I look up and Boing! it's a week to Thanksgiving.

Tuesday or Wednesday, I'll get the turkey from Whole Foods. They have always had a good, fresh, small turkey at the last minute.

We'll also do sage and onion dressing. Instead of gravy, I generally make cheese sauce. Then there will be sautéed mushrooms, broccoli, and some kind of potatoes. I'd like something else kinda crunchy. Canned corn? Braised carrots?

And I'll make an apple pie and a pumpkin pie.

So, anyhow, I'm pondering crunchiness.

Recent Keepers

I'm kicking back and relaxing a bit,

which is another way of saying that today I sat down to work and didn't get anything much done,

though I may have indulged in Deep Thought.

Anyway ...

Recent additions to the Keeper Shelf

Judith Ivory, Angel in a Red Dress

I imagine there might be a Judith Ivory book that doesn't go on the Keeper Shelf. I mean ... I subscribe to this as a theory. Hasn't happened yet, of course.

Pam Rosenthal, The Edge of Impropriety

I've been reading everything of hers I can get my hands on since she beat the pants off poor Spymaster's Lady in the RITA competition.
Just saying.

Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat

What kind of parent names their helpless and innocent kid, 'Jerome Jerome'? Is this the emotional trauma that leads one to write comedy?

Eloisa James, A Duke of Her Own

This may be her best. I'm going to come back to it in a few months and see why the plot works.

Loretta Chase, Lord Perfect

I love Loretta Chase. Y'know.

David Garrioch, The Making of Revolutionary Paris

Which has moved onto the Research Keeper Shelf -- a shelf which obeys wholly different rules from the Regular Keeper Shelf.

I'm going to have to do a Revolutionary and Napoleonic France Bibliography one of these days.

Tanith Lee, The Secret Books of Venus

I don't want to write like Tanith Lee. The writing is too complex and too distracting for the sort of story-telling I'm trying to do.
But she sure does write pretty.

I didn't read these half dozen books today and yesterday, of course. This is the pile of books ready to be put up on the Keeper Shelf. It's been accumulating a while. Six months or so.

I have great books still on the TBR shelf.
Including one by Mary Jo Putney
which is next on the list.

.

I finally sat down and opened Maass' Writing the Breakout Novel. I've been taking Maass down from the TBR shelf and putting him back for four or five years. Then, at the July RWA Conference in Washington I got to listen to about the first fifteen of a speech he was giving and it engendered in me a desire to get to the book.

Though I'm only through the Introduction.
Why I'm mentioning this ...

Maass says,

"Complexity will do that to you. [overwhelm you] Do not panic. Trust the structure of your outline; or if you are an organic writer who works in successive drafts, trust your unconscious mind. The story is there inside you in all its complexity."

So now I know that I'm an 'organic writer'.
I didn't have a name for it before, I just did it.

.

Whenever I see Maass' name, I think there's something wrong with typewriter keys, somewhere.

.

Oh. And being FTC compliant I just want to say that nobody gave me any of those books for free.
Or anything for free, really.
Though I did pick up the Jerome K. Jerome book at the SPCA Rummage sale so one could argue that the SPCA is paying me off, I suppose.

Technical Topic -- What an editor does

I was relaxing after the long sprint to the final on the manuscript of MAGGIE. And I knew I had to come back and face my echoing, empty blog. I feel like this teenager sneaking home and tiptoeing up the stairs WAY after curfew.

So this is me pussyfooting back into the blog, all casual like, and whistling a nonchalant little tune.

Anyhow ... I was posting an answer to a message board in response to how manuscripts get bought -- or not bought -- after an editor has shown some interest.

Having thought about this and made some notes about it, I thought I'd put the information I gleaned here in the blog, too.

n.b. I am not talking about things I have direct knowledge of. I'm pointing towards some more knowledgeable folks. This is useful and interesting but no one should mistake it for me actually knowing anything.

So. What happens after an editor says, "Yes. I like this"?

In a big New York print house, the editor takes the manuscript to a regular committtee meeting of the various associate and senior editors and the managing editor and some sales folks. They've mostly read the manuscripts.

The committee chooses among the possibles. They're going to do this based on what's good, but also on what books they've already bought, what other manuscripts are being offered this week, and generally what they think will sell.

The choices is ALSO going to depend on how enthusiastic the editor is about the manuscript. I think this is why we hear about editors turning down a manuscript they 'like but don't love'.
. . . Because the editor has to convince a hard audience to love the manuscript as much as she does.


Some 'day in the life of' blogs about being an editor are
Lori Foster's interview with Monique Patterson, Cindy Hwang and the much-missed Kate Duffy here, and a bit more stuff, here.
Bloomabilities here.
Moonrat, League of Reluctant Adults, here. And since you're nearby, go ahead and read about The Dream Author (from the Editor's point of view,) here.
Lucia at the Avon blog, here and here.
A Witchy Chicks interview with Kate Seaver of Berkley here.
And an interview with Betsy Mitchell of Warner here.
Steve Whacker, (Ok. Maybe it has nothing to do with committees,) here.

Chinese

We're coming out in Chinese.
'Chinese, Chinese, Chinese,' she sings.
Lord and Spymaster and Spymaster's Lady will be out in Chinese

in a really bitty bitty print run.

If the books were beer, the Chinese run would be a microbrewery.
Largest reading population in the world.
A handful of books.

I am continually impressed by the oddness of reality.

Technical Topics -- Four Necessary Things

I was looking at an incomprehensible snippet of writing yesterday. Someone had posted the first 300 or so words of their novel for comment. A brave deed. Like the '300' Spartans, this sample had been sent out to die in the interests of the greater good. Got pretty much mowed down in the comments section, of course.

The snippet was not just unpublishable and non-commercial in present form, but literally unreadable.

Yenta that I am, I gave the author a basic on 'telling' and 'showing' in fiction. A small crit because this looks like a newbie.

But it got me thinking.

'How do I know this is not James Joyce?' asks I to myself, being in an introspective mood this morning before I drink my coffee.
'How do I know this is baaaad writing,
(or a joke, or madness, or possibly a Turing machine,)
instead of good-but-experimental stuff I'm too stuffy and stupid to understand?

Am I telling Bartok he needs a melodic line?'

So I sat and thought about the irreducible minimums of good writing.
I came up with four things.


The first is STORY.

In fiction, an aliquot of 500 words plucked anywhere out of a work is going to contain comprehensible story.

Lookit this passage pulled at random from Joyce:

Burke's! outflings my lord Stephen, giving the cry, and a tag and bobtail of all them after, cockerel, jackanapes, welsher, pilldoctor, punctual Bloom at heels with a universal grabbing at headgear, ashplants, bilbos, Panama hats and scabbards, Zermatt alpenstocks and what not. A dedale of lusty youth, noble every student there. Nurse Callan taken aback in the hallway cannot stay them nor smiling surgeon coming downstairs with news of placentation ended, a full pound if a milligramme. They hark him on. The door! It is open? Ha! They are out, tumultuously, off for a minute's race, all bravely legging it, Burke's of Denzille and Holles their ulterior goal.

Confusing? Wow, yes. But Joyce tells us a little bit of story in those 100 words.
(Though the posted snippet also tells story, so it passes the first test.)


The second requirement is PRECISION.

Good writing is words chosen with skill, set in place with care. The language is precise within a dozen parameters. Expression is economical. The good writer doesn't deal only with the definition of the words. Sound, connotation, and cadence all convey meaning.

Joyce, of course, is a master. The paragraph above is poetry. Not a syllable is laid down by happenstance.

The snippet posted for comment was filled with clunky language. Lookit one phrase:

she was gradually beginning to feel like the point of life where you wait for something to happen, was passing, and the best part was yet to come
This is not a poetic way to say,
'The time of anticipation was over. Now for the good part.'It's a wordy, awkward way to say it.


The third requirement is ORDER.

At the sentence level, at the page or paragraph level, at the whole-opus level, a good work of fiction is skillfully and intelligently structured. This is especially true in experimental fiction.

The snippet -- this is a first page -- commits several obvious sins of structure. It is an info dump. It has POV problems. The sentences are too long, too complicated and contain too many disparate thoughts.

So this is not a skillful experimental structure. Such basic faults do not add to the work in any way.


The fourth, irreducible requirement of good writing
is that it is INTERESTING.

Unless you are lucky enough to be a Dead White Man from the 1800s, no one will ever be forced to read you. Good writing need not be pleasant, intelligent, accessible, grammatically correct, or morally uplifting . . . but it cannot be boring.

Boring is the cardinal sin of fiction.

Title, title ... I've got a title

We're going to call the MAGGIE story, The Forbidden Rose.

I'm pleased with the title, which I have decided has all kinds of thematic relevance.
Forbidden Rose is set in the same fictive world as Spymaster I and II.

They tell me Forbidden is not going to have scantily clad people on the front.
I don't know whether this is good or bad.
Many folks like the scantily.
But I'm game for anything. It'll be interesting to to see what they'll come up with in the not-so-much-nekkid category.

In other news, I'm doing the first plot layout of Adrian . . .
and working like the devil to fix Forbidden Rose,
(I'm not used to calling it that.)
which still has plotholes you could drop a mack truck through.

But, y'know ...
the fun part of writing, for me, comes when I'm doing the last fixes on a manuscript and making the language just right, or when I'm dreaming up the basic story.

Now I get to do both of these at once.
Yip -- as it were --ee.

Booklist -- The Top 10 Romances of 2009

And it's out ...

Booklist's Top Ten Romances of 2009,
Take a look at them here.

Always Look Twice by Geralyn Dawson
The Bridegroom by Linda Lael Miller
Dogs and Goddesses by Jennifer Crusie, Anne Stewart and Lani Diane Rich
Hot Flash by Kathy Carmichael
Laced with Magic by Barbara Bretton
The Magic Knot by Helen Scott Taylor
Practice Makes Perfect by Julie James
So Enchanting by Connie Brockway
Straight from the Hip by Susan Mallery
When the Duke Returns by Eloisa James

Way cool.

Technical Topics -- Registering Your Copyright

Since I'm not getting any appreciable amount of blogging done, I thought I'd repost something I put up elsewhere.

In answer to the question of whether someone should register a copyright for their unpublished manuscript:

The very short answer is that this is something you don't have to worry about.

The longer answer is . . .when you put your work in permanent form -- when you type it into the computer -- it is copyright RIGHT THEN.

The moment your work hits the computer, it has all the protection available under copyright law.
No further action is necessary.

Most folks who ask this question are worried about three considerations.

The first is -- 'What if somebody steals my work and claims it as her own?

What if a subeditor at the publishing house takes my manuscript and puts her name on it and submits it? What if somebody plagiarizes this scene?
How can I prove it's mine?'

I do not say this has never happened. But you are much more likely to get struck by lightning while playing the nose flute.

If you lie awake at night worrying about this, go register the copyright. It's cheaper than prescription sleep aids.

A simpler way prove authorship is to take the seven letters of your last name and start seven chapters in a row with those letters.
Or add seven sentences where the first word starts with those letters.
Or name characters after your greatgrandparents.

You now have evidence the manuscript is yours. Sleep in peace.

The second consideration is --'Will somebody steal my idea and go write their own book before I can get mine published?'

Skipping nimbly back from the brink of saying anything uncharitable about the originality of most people's ideas ...ideas cannot be copyrighted.

Even if your copyright registration proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that you were the first person in history to write about an m/m/m/f/m werewolf junk band that fights crime ... you can't keep other folks from using the same idea.


The third consideration --'Is registering copyright part of the business?' Am I supposed to do this to look professional?

Well, no. It doesn't make you look professional. It makes you look like a dork.

In e-pub and POD pub, copyright registration is often one of those upfront expenses the publisher passes on to the writer.
Check your contract to make sure the publisher hasn't grabbed the copyright himself.
Then pay to have the copyright registered if you want an official copyright.

In standard print publishing, the publisher pays to register copyright.

Little bits of Good News

I know. I know.

I promised I would be done with the manuscript on August One
and said I'd show up again bright and happy and full of blogwords after that.


Ummm .... Not quite.
I'm still stuffing the story octopus into the plot coke bottle.


So, not so much keeping up with the blog is going on, though it is only a postponement of blogkeepery and a veritable torrent of creativity will be unleashed when I finally finish the manuscript.

Maybe.


Two nuggets of news:

My Lord and Spymaster is out in Russian. Here. I had forgotten this was going to happen.
The title seems to be, 'My Sweet Spy'.
.

See the cover? Isn't that pretty?

In this case it is Sebastian who cannot keep his shirt on.
(Metaphor-taken-literally-itis sweeps Romancelandia.)
And Jess is blonde.
Yes. Yes. Yes.




The other news is that the French rights to Spymaster's Lady have been sold. Woot woot. Yes!

That one I'll be able to read.

Oh Frabjous Day.

Jo
My Indian name is AshkoHaHa.

Getting a RITA

I posted this in the comments trail, and then decided I would make it a post of its own. Because getting prizes is part of writing, and anyone who decides to be a writer should be prepared for What Happens in the Writing Life.

The RITA ceremony has about 3000 people there in a grand ballroom,
all of them sitting in rows and rows of chairs and looking down at this little stage in the far distance.

(How do they get 3000 people to come do this without giving them food? Though they give them food afterwards, of course.
But still ... would YOU come to hear thirty people get up on stage one after another to somewhat incoherently thank their editors and agents and families and stare like deer caught in the headlights?)

Since nobody can see the stage
the helpful technicians at RWA have set up huuuuuuge TV screens. Those puppies must be 40 feet high.

They show every pore on the faces of the RITA winners, (or Golden Heart winners,) when they get up to speak.
This is reality TV.

AAAARRRRGGGGHHH.

I do not say I would rather face a firing squad, because, of course, I would not.

I think.

But anyhow ... there I was and I had just found out I was NOT going to get a RITA for Spymaster's Lady, having lost out to the excellent and wonderful Pam Rosenthal whose work impresses me so much it is almost not like losing at all to lose to her ...
(though not quite,)
and I am now relieved because the ordeal is over and I am not going to have to mount the scaffold ...
ah ... podium ...
and can now relax,
and they say My Lord and Spymaster.

So I drop my glasses, without which I cannot see.
Anything.

And I drop my very short speech, which I have written in Big Letters on a piece of paper,
and which consisted of only five people to thank,
not because I am stingy but because I didn't think I was going to be able to say anything at all.

So they are gone somewhere in the darkness below my chair.
And I have to walk up on stage and make that set of acks.

I do not actually remember much that happened after this point. It was so horrible my mind has repressed it.

I do not AT ALL remember standing there and staring out at THREE THOUSAND PEOPLE and saying the right words, but I have been assured by people who wish me well that I did just that and that I did not make a fool of myself.

This is good.
This is very good.

I understand they played the theme from James Bond for the 'walkup'.
No memory of this.

So, anyhow, getting the RITA is like being beaten with long, flexible bamboo poles and at the same time being tossed in a blanket while someone plays La Traviata in your ear on a penny whistle. When you come to the other side you have this beautiful little gold statue sitting on the floor in front of your feet and you are sitting down again.

I am going to put the RITA on the shelf over my desk.

It's heavy, and the gold quill the lady holds is fragile. It would still be suitable for knocking burglars over the head with.

The RITA in the photos is not my RITA. It is the RITA of Jennifer Ashley who is here and who just wrote The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie. Go. Read it.

I WON!

I won the RITA for Best Regency Romance of 2009.