Jenny Holiday

Pack your bags for happily ever after

romance

That time I eloped and accidentally wore the same outfit as the heroine of my romance novel

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Is it me? Or is it Rose? (It's me.) Groom cropped out to protect the innocent.
Is it me? Or is it Rose? (It’s me.) Groom cropped out to protect the innocent.

The Engagement Game, book 3 in my 49th Floor Series, is out today! Yay! I love this book so hard! It’s definitely my favourite of the trilogy, but, oddly, it was the hardest to write. Took me the longest, needed the most intensive editing, and generally drove me the bat-shittiest! I sometimes wonder if that’s why I love it more, but I honestly don’t think so. I just think it’s the best book of the three. Why? Heck if I know. (I would make a bad critic: I’m not very good at talking about books, other than to note the way they make me feel.)

The Engagement Game cover image
The book I hated and then loved.

It’s been a big week because in addition to having a book out, I also:

1. Went to see Taylor Swift in concert.

2. Eloped! Aka, had a super secret surprise wedding that no one knew about!

Ha! And I did both of those things in the same afternoon, practically back-to-back, with a quick stop for dinner and a change of clothes in between.

In other words, it was perfect.

But something funny occurred to me on the train ride home: the outfit I wore to my wedding was exactly the same as one worn by Rose Verma, the heroine of The Engagement Game. And this was NOT on purpose—at least not consciously-on-purpose.

In the book, Rose is on a mission to find a boyfriend—she has a deadline of sorts—so she’s internet dating with a vengeance. Between her serial dates and attending lots of high society events with the book’s hero, with whom she’s entered into a bit of an unholy alliance, she’s often dressed to the nines. Unlike me, Rose is quite a fashionista. I, when I’m not taking part in secret wedding ceremonies, am usually wearing leggings and sweatshirts.

But we do have one thing in common, which is that we like bright colours. Rose, because she has so many events and dates to attend, goes through many consume changes: emerald green dresses, blue-and-silver ballgowns—you name it. One of her outfits—one the hero takes special note of as she heads out on her date, is an electric blue dress with red heels. Now, I don’t wear heels as a matter of principle, the principle being that I enjoy not suffering. But other than that, check me out! I’m wearing Rose’s outfit!

Yep, I am wearing the same outfit as the heroine of my romance novel. It was an accident!

I think? Probably this is the part where we should call in the psychologists, but I’m going to stick with “accident.”

 

 

 

 

 

Taylor Swift is a master of point of view

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Oh, look, it's me and my BFF / imaginary daughter.
Oh, look, it’s me and my BFF / imaginary daughter. (Photo by David Shankbone via Flickr Creative Commons.)

So I have a new book out today, and I’m supposed to write a blog post about it because that’s what one does. But instead I thought I’d write one about Taylor Swift. It’s not actually that much of a stretch because there are shades of Taylor Swift in my new book. Amy, my heroine, looks a lot like Taylor (in fact, she even talked herself into a club once when the bouncer mistook her for her celebrity doppelganger). And when she’s dumped in spectacular fashion at the beginning of the book, she wishes she had Taylor’s ability to chancel her heartbreak into sly songs about her exes, converting breakups into platinum records. And then of course there’s an epic scene in the book in which Amy and her girlfriends do karaoke to “Long Live,” which might be my all-time fave Tay song.

If you know me, or you follow me on Twitter, none of this is a surprise because you already know that I am a superfan. What can I say? I have that kind of celebrity crush on her where I feel like we could be BEST FRIENDS, if only she’d give me a chance. Except in this case, I also feel sort of maternal. I get really excited when she succeeds, and I’m thrilled by her current “girlfriends before boys” phase. So it’s like she’s a cross between my imaginary best friend and my imaginary daughter. (I hasten to add, though, that my imaginary pregnancy with my imaginary daughter happened in my teen years. My EARLY teen years.)

But why? Why am I such a superfan? People ask me this a lot. The obvious answer is that I love her music. It’s clever and infectious, and it makes me happy. But when I interrogate that sentiment further and ask WHY I love her music so much, the answer I come up with is that Taylor Swift is a master of point of view.

Writers talk about point of view all the time. In a crude sense, point of view in a book is about who is narrating. Who knows what, and when do they know it? In many, but not all, romance novels, you get some of the story told from the point of view of the heroine and some from the point of view of the hero. The vogue in romance right now is something called deep point of view. Google it for a more detailed explanation, but basically, we’re talking about a filtering everything through a character. There is no omniscient narrator. For example, the hero walks into a room. Maybe it’s a room with a really cool decor. But if our hero is not an aesthete, not the kind of guy who notices that stuff, we as the readers cannot be told about the teal antique Persian rug over the glossy walnut-stained hardwood. It might be there, but if he doesn’t notice it, we don’t get to know about it. But by seeing everything through his eyes, we get to know more about him as a character. We get a richer, more immersive experience of these characters, and hence of the story. (And if that rug is important, our heroine will have to remark on it later. Or our hero will have to spill his drink on it. Or something.)

Taylor Swift has always been really good at deep point of view. Earlier in her career, I always said that I liked her music because she wrote songs that sounded like songs a teenager would write. She captured an experience I remembered well. Many of her songs reminded me of stuff I would write in my diary. “Fifteen” is about being fifteen. “Mean” captures perfectly the experience of being bulled. Mind you, I didn’t love all her songs from this era. Some of them seemed a little melodramatic to me. But, perhaps counter-intuitively, I liked that. Being a teenager IS melodramatic.

(As an aside, I also think it’s telling that unlike many of her peers, the Taylor Swift of this era didn’t seem to be in any huge rush to grow up, to present as more mature than her actual years. Lots of moms I knew liked this about her because, in a hypersexual culture that fetishizes women’s bodies, they appreciated that their daughters had a role model who wasn’t playing this game.)

So what I’m saying is that Taylor Swift was a teenager writing about being a teenager. It’s simple, really, even though it’s kind of revolutionary.

And here’s why: At the same time she was mastering deep point of view, she was simultaneously the omniscient narrator of her own life. She had a perspective that was really rather amazing, both in general, but also given her youth. She was a teenager, yes, and perfectly capturing that experience, but part of the reason she was so perfectly capturing it was because she somehow knew what it was going to be like later when she was no longer a teenager. She had the wisdom or imagination or the something to know that her point of view was fleeting. That is some serious zen shit. People spend years in yoga and/or therapy trying to get there.

As an example, think about the song “Mean.” On the one hand she’s all:

You, with your switching sides
And your wildfire lies and your humiliation
You have pointed out my flaws
as if I don’t already see them
I walk with my head down…

We’ve all been there, right? (Well, I have!)

But in the same song, she steps back and says:

Someday, I’ll be living in a big old city
And all you’re ever gonna be is mean

She goes on to imagine her tormenter years from now, drunk in a bar, ranting on with no one listening. She’s doing deep point of view, but she’s also the omniscient narrator. Brilliant.

Or take my favourite song, “Long Live.”

It’s one of those songs where it’s hard to tell exactly what it’s about, but in a good way that lets you project onto it. To me, it seems to be about either a couple or a pair of friends getting away with something, playing a prank and reveling in their own success. It’s anthemic and delightfully defiant. But there’s also a built in sense of loss in the song as the narrator instructs herself to “remember this feeling.” And in the same breath that she asks her companion to promise that they’ll be together forever (you can practically see the pinky-swears) she’s telling him to show his future children pictures of her.

I’ve been talking about her early songs, but of course Taylor is not a teenager anymore. But she’s kept up with the perspective shifting, though it’s gotten more sophisticated.

“Out of the Woods” is a master class in this sense. Unlike in “Mean,” where she’s mostly shifting perspectives between verse and chorus, here she is doing both things at once all the time, infusing the whole song with this dual point of view.

We were built to fall apart
Then fall back together
Your necklace hanging from my neck
The night we couldn’t quite forget
When we decided
To move the furniture so we could dance,
Baby, like we stood a chance
Two paper airplanes flying, flying, flying

I find the image of moving the furniture to dance so perfectly indelible. But at the same time, we know—because she knows—it’s fleeting. It isn’t going to last. The fleetingness that we only know because of her omniscient narrator perspective is infused in the moment that is so perfectly crystalized because of her deep point of view perspective.

But it’s not all serious! She’s gone delightfully and wackily meta in “Blank Space:”

“Cause we’re young and we’re reckless, we’ll take this way too far.”

And also, come on, I’m acting like we’re in grad school here. None of this would matter if she wasn’t also writing the catchiest, danciest pop songs known to humankind.

I love her. Mr. Holiday loves her (though I take the credit for slowly and determinedly converting him). My five-year-old son loves her. There has been many an early morning “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” dance party in my house. And perhaps less glibly, there has also been many a family dance party to “Stay,” which I maintain is one of the sweetest and most realistic love songs ever written.

So there you go. My ode to Tay, master of point of view. And, hey, maybe you want to buy my new book. It’s probably not as good as a Taylor Swift album, but I try.

 

 

 

10 thoughts about reviews and how and why (not) to respond to them.

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I almost didn’t write this post. Then I almost didn’t post this post. I’m a newbie. I just published my first book a couple months ago. What the hell do I know? Mostly when the twitterverse explodes with some publishing controversy or other, I keep my mouth shut. But dang. I couldn’t help it.

1. I read all my reviews.
Yup. All of them. I admire authors who don’t read reviews. I want to be them when I grow up. I have a bunch more books coming out this year, and I hope that I won’t always be like this, that I’ll become uber busy and, I dunno, SUCCESSFUL, and I won’t care anymore. But I doubt it. I think it’s just the way I’m wired. I care what you think of me.

 2. Sometimes, I read a review and I think, “Was this person on crack when she read my book?”
Did she even read my book? If she read a book, was it perhaps someone else’s and not mine?

3. When this happens, this is what I do.
I send the review to my writing friends and I say, what the everloving hell? And they say, what the everloving hell? And then I get over it. Because I have other shit to do.

4. When this happens, this is what I don’t do.

a) Contact the reviewer in any form up to and including stalking.
b) Write a blog post about it.
c) Respond in any way other than to send it to my friends and say what the everloving hell?

 5. In fact, I don’t respond to reviews at all.
Sometimes, when I read a good review on a blog and there are some comments, I want to jump in to answer a question or something, but I DON’T DO IT. The only fashion in which I “respond” to reviews at all is when someone tweets at me that they reviewed my book. I usually say, “Thanks for reviewing!” or, if they liked it, “I’m glad you enjoyed!” I stress out about even this. But it seems rude to ignore someone tweeting at you when they took the time to review your book. So I err on the side of vague gratitude (which is underlain by real gratitude). Sarah Wendell gives a great conference session on this topic, and she’s funnier and more articulate than I am on this topic, so I encourage you to check her out if you ever have the chance.

 6. I have become friends/friendly with some reviewers. Sometimes I worry about this.
But I think it’s inevitable. We like the same kinds of books: I write them, and they read them and review them. It’s a kind of self-selection: it’s bound to happen. I also think that if you’re worried about turning into Kathleen Hale, you’re probably not going to turn into Kathleen Hale. You might make some mistakes, but they’re gonna be smaller than hers.

 7. I don’t think this means they owe me reviews on any subsequent books. 

8. I don’t think this means they owe me positive reviews on any subsequent books.

 9. I’m not going to say anything one way or the other if they do or do not review or do or do not like my subsequent books.

 10. Because basically, I hang on to two first principles.

 a) I wrote a book, but then I put it out into the world. I cannot control the world. (If I could control the world, I would not be writing books. Okay, yes I would.) The world is full of people who will not like my book. I cannot make them like my book. All I can do is send their reviews to my friends and say what the everloving hell? Sometimes this is hard, but you know what? So is being a grown up, yet I manage to do that every day—mostly.

b) I am so crazy-lucky that people are reading and reviewing my books.

This is not rocket science, people.

End rant.

Now because that was so heavy, here’s a picture of my boyfriend.

My boyfriend has not reviewed my books. But if he did, I would not respond. I would die, but I would not respond. Photo by Ewen Roberts via Flickr Creative Commons.
My boyfriend has not reviewed my books. But if he did, I would not respond. I would die, but I would not respond.
 I would die, but I would not respond. Photo by Ewen Roberts via Flickr Creative Commons.

 

 

 

 

In praise of critique partners, one in particular.

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Sandy's shy. (Really.)
Sandy’s shy. (Really. I know it’s hard to believe, but you try taking a picture of her.)

Once upon a time there was a girl named Jenny who liked to read romance novels. One day she thought, hey, maybe I should write a romance novel. How hard can it be, really?

Well, the gods heard that one, and after they finished laughing and doing some minor smiting of the prideful, they sent her a critique partner named Sandy.

Sandra Owens and I met in an online chapter of Romance Writers of America. We were both writing Regencies at the time—or trying to. We shared some opinions in common about that experience but I can’t tell you what they are OTHERWISE I WOULD HAVE TO KILL YOU. And I like to leave the suspense-writing to Sandy.

I’ve written before about the weird and awesome relationship that you develop with critique partners, about how you skip all the “real life” getting-to-know-you stuff and get right to the guts of things: you want to be a writer. Hi, you say, here’s this thing I wrote, tell me what’s wrong with it, and also, should I get a blog tour company for this next release or is that just a waste of money?

Sandy was the first person I practiced being a writer with, both technically, in terms of honing my craft, but also emotionally, in terms of ADMITTING I WANTED TO DO SOMETHING I MIGHT FAIL AT. I’ve said before, and I don’t think Sandy would disagree with me, that on paper, we don’t have that much in common. Our books are different, we live in different countries, we’re in different stages of life.

But it never mattered. (I guess it could have. We’ve both talked about what a relief it was to meet for the first time in person and actually, you know, LIKE each other. But I think we were always destined to end up with our feet propped up, drinking wine and talking about the fake worlds inside our heads.)

Sandy and I read each other’s “bad” books. (Hers is getting overhauled; mine will never see the light of day.) When we met each other, neither of us had any pubishing credentials and neither of us had an agent. One of us (not Sandy) might have been a little shaky on the concept of point of view.

Fast-forward a few years. Today, a funny thing happened.

It's like we're at the Olympics and we're on the podium and there's an American flag and a Canadian flag, I didn't check who was #2. Probably the Ukrainians.
It’s like we’re at the Olympics and we’re on the podium and there’s an American flag and a Canadian flag. I didn’t check who was #2. Probably the Ukrainians.

Yes, there we are, #1 and #3 in the Amazon romance series store. Dang. I rewrote this a thousand times because like most women, I’m socialized to be uncomfortable with self-praise, but I’m just going to say it. There was a lot of luck in there, for sure, and a kick-ass literary agent. But there was also a crapload of hard work.

We did it, Sandy.

 

The Thaw: A Christmas Romance

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12 Days of Christmakwanzakah
12 Days of Christmakwanzakah

This is the story of Danny, who is the best friend of Cassie, the heroine in my holiday novel Saving the CEO, which is book 1 in the 49th Floor series. You don’t need to have read Saving the CEO, though, to read this story—it works as a standalone.

In Saving the CEO, Danny spends a lot of time trying to convince Cassie to join him for Christmas at his mother’s hobby farm, where his hippie mom is undergoing a back-to-the-land-themed midlife crisis. Cassie, having visited with him the previous Christmas, decides she’s too fond of things like central heating and running water to accompany him. (And, of course, by the time Christmas rolls around, she’s too busy enjoying her happily-ever-after.) So Danny is on his own.

Enjoy! And check out the other free stories in the 12 Days of Christmakwanzaka blog hop! Some of my favourite authors are participating.

Happy Holidays!
Jenny

The Thaw
by Jenny Holiday

If Danny had known that his mother’s back-to-the-land kick had gotten so serious that she’d let the pipes freeze, he never would have agreed to come up to the farm for Christmas.

“Dammit!” he yelped as he tripped over something on his way to the outhouse. It was only nine o’clock, but on Christmas Eve in Cowbit, Ontario, it had already been dark for a good five hours. And since Mom had also decided that electricity was another bourgeois luxury she didn’t need, it was dark.

The flashlight on his iPhone barely punctured the unremitting black as he swung it around, trying to see what he’d tripped on. He stooped to pick up the large, oblong…butter churn? He wasn’t totally sure because even though Mom used the phrase “back to the land,” as if she were returning to some bucolic past, she had actually spent her whole life before moving to Cowbit in a succession of Toronto apartments. The only time Danny had seen a butter churn had been while watching reruns of Little House on the Prairie in one of those “shoeboxes in the sky,” as she now called them, so he wasn’t overly confident in his ability to ID one in the wild.

The thing about shoeboxes in the sky, though, is that they generally had heat, light, and running water. Not to mention TV, cell service, and nearby delis. In fact, he missed his own shoebox—his gorgeous, tricked out shoebox—something fierce right now.

Sighing, he aimed his phone in the general direction of the outhouse. “Merry fucking Christmas.”

“And happy fucking New Year.”

“Jesus Christ!” Danny jumped about a foot.

“Sorry.” The beam of a strong flashlight came closer, as did the sound of feet crunching in the snow. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

“It’s okay,” he said, straining his eyes to make out the man behind the low, gravely voice. He was only able to see the guy’s legs, clad in jeans and Sorel boots.

“I’m Jake Arnet. I live over there.”

He could imagine Jake pointing over his shoulder, because other than his mom’s, there was only one other house on this stretch of rural road.

“Daniel Carlson,” he said. “I’m visiting my mom.”

“Ah,” said Jake, and Danny could hear the smile in his voice. “Son of the pioneer woman. Let me guess, you killed a deer for Christmas dinner, and you’re out here tanning its hide.”

“No. I consumed a veggie-soy loaf and a sugar-, dairy-, and gluten-free pumpkin pie for Christmas dinner, followed by a secret bag of potato chips I smuggled onto the premises, and now I am on my way to the outhouse because my mother apparently can’t be bothered to prevent her goddamned pipes from freezing.”

Jake laughed. A throaty, sexy laugh that warmed the frigid air. Danny wondered suddenly how old Jake was. Probably a sixty-something hermit like Danny’s mother. Why would you choose to live out here unless you’d been around the block a few times and/or were slightly mentally unhinged?

“You want to use my bathroom?”

The offer sent a jolt of pleasure through Danny’s frozen system. To take a piss without a coat on. To not have to worry about dropping his phone into the abyss. To wash his hands with hot water. The sound that ripped from his throat sounded vaguely, embarrassingly, orgasmic.

“I take it that’s a yes?”

“A thousand times yes.”

Another chuckle. “I hear you. I’m just out here for some firewood, and it’s cold enough. I don’t know how your mother does it.”

“Can I ask you a question?” Danny said as he let Jake’s beam of light guide him along a shoveled path. “Would you happen to know if my mother has a butter churn?”

“She does indeed.”

Danny shook his head at the impossibly starry night sky, and soon they’d reached Jake’s house, its windows dotted with warm, yellow light.

“Oh, you have electricity. God bless you.”

“And a furnace, and running water. I like to live large.”

Danny tried not to run the last few feet to the door.

“It’s open,” said Jake from behind him. “Just go in. I’m going to leave some of this wood on the porch.”

Danny gratefully did as instructed, pushing open the door and emerging into…the Davy Crockett edition of Architectural Digest.

The house was gorgeous. There was wood everywhere in the open-concept space—floors, a wall of cabinets, an enormous island that divided the kitchen from the living area. Low, warm light made everything glow. This was a log cabin fit for a king.

“Bathroom is just down the hall,” said Jake, coming in behind him and facing away from Danny as he shook the snow off his coat in the entryway.

The voice from the dark, it turned out, inhabited a tall, trim body. The jeans he’d caught a mere impression of outside hugged a spectacular ass. Danny closed his eyes for a moment. Look at him, ogling a straight, elderly mountain man. Had it come to this? This was the last year he spent Christmas in Cowbit.

Jake straightened, turned, and smiled.

Holy shit.

Not only was Jake not elderly, he couldn’t have been more than thirty-five.

Too bad Danny couldn’t also have been wrong about the straight part. Because Jake was gorgeous. But these butch mountain men always were. This one had black hair, green eyes, and full, pink naturally-pouty lips.

“After you use the bathroom, I’ll fortify you with real Christmas dinner—I’ve got leftovers.” When Danny didn’t say anything, just stood there gaping, Jake added, “If you want. Or, just use the bathroom.”

The prospect of contraband mashed potatoes jarred Danny into moving. As he passed a roaring fire in the living room, he almost wept as he stopped for a moment to hold his icy hands up to the flames. “I thought when you said you were getting firewood that maybe you heated this place with a wood stove.”

“Nope, forced air.” Jake grinned. “Just having a fire for the sake of it. If you can’t have a roaring fire on Christmas Eve, when can you?”

###

After standing with his hands under the hot tap for several minutes, Danny came back out to the main room to find a plate full of food on the coffee table in front of the fire.

“Oh my God,” he moaned. He knew he should probably wait until Jake reappeared, but the sight of gravy-drenched turkey and the mashed potatoes of his dreams threw all sense of decorum out the window, and he just sat right down and picked up a fork.

“You want a drink?” Jake asked from the kitchen. “I’m just back from dinner at a friend’s, and I could use one—it’s too dark and icy out here to mess with even one drink when you’re driving. Wine? Beer? I’ve got whiskey, too.”

“You choose,” said Danny, unable to form a more articulate sentence on account of the goat cheese and bacon-flecked mashed potatoes he had just placed on his tongue.

He swallowed as Jake approached with two glasses of red wine. “These potatoes are the best thing I have ever eaten in my entire life.”

“Aww. You’re just saying that because you’ve only had soy loaf today.”

“Did you make them? They’re unnaturally good.”

“I did. Took them to a potluck—all the local strays banded together for Christmas dinner—and I came back with some leftovers of everything.”

“Which I am demolishing,” Danny put his fork down. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Jake motioned for him to continue. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I imagine staying with your mother is…challenging. Providing some protein and booze is the least I can do.”

“Do you know her well?”

“I’ve only been here ten months, so not really. We’re friendly enough. I tried to give her some advice about her corn last summer.

“Let me guess?” Danny said. “You told her to—I don’t know—water it, maybe?” Danny’s mom was under the impression that nature would provide everything. That all people needed to do was adjust their consumerist ways and then bask in the bounty of nature.

“Guilty as charged. I may have also suggested fertilizer.”

“Oooh. I bet she has a voodoo doll of you somewhere in her house.”

“She has been a little…distant lately.” Jake laughed. “It’s good of you to come visit, though.”

“I almost didn’t. My best friend usually comes with me, but she didn’t this year.” He thought of Cassie, who was no doubt cozied up with her billionaire boyfriend. They had only just admitted their feelings for one another, and it had been a happily-ever-after worthy of a romance novel. He’d be lucky if he ever found that kind love. He was happy for her, but in truth, he was a little jealous. And not just because she had heat and running water this Christmas.

He was getting maudlin. Time to change the subject. “So what about you? You farm?” Danny mother’s use of the word farm was impressionistic. Her place was a hobby farm at best. He hadn’t really noticed any crops in the immediate vicinity, but then, it was the dead of winter, and what did he know?

“Nope. I’m a carpenter.”

“That’s why this place is so gorgeous.” He eyed Jake, who, with the warm glow of the fire dancing on the sharp planes of his face, was just as gorgeous as his house. What a freaking shame. “How does a carpenter such as yourself end up in Cowbit?” He gestured at the wall of cabinets. “You could make a fortune selling those in Toronto.”

“I grew up in Peterborough,” Jake said, naming the small city that lay a couple hours to the south. “I’ve moved around a bit recently.” He smiled sheepishly. “Well, I went through a big break up recently, to be honest. One of those that makes you reassess your whole life, you know?

Danny didn’t know. He’d had a few doses of minor heartbreak, like anyone, but the idea of a love that changed everything was totally foreign to him. If he hadn’t watched Cassie and Jack tumble headlong into it, he would have said it was the stuff of fairy tales.

“I’d always wanted to start my own cabinet-making business, and after I picked myself up and dusted myself off, I thought, why the hell not? I don’t have any more to lose.”

“But why here?”

Jake shrugged. “If I’m being honest, I think part of the answer is that I was running away. My life was so intertwined with my ex. Same friends, all that. I needed something radically different. And this place was cheap, and it has a huge heated outbuilding I use as a workshop.”

Danny wanted to whistle his admiration. Jake seemed to be saying that he was a mess, but Danny saw quite the opposite: a man who’d taken control and changed his life, making it into something worthwhile and admirable.

It was strange to be sitting by the fire with a stranger, listening to him talk so openly. He was struck with the overwhelming desire to reciprocate, and, before he could think better of it, he blurted, “My best friend just got together with the guy of her dreams, and I’m afraid things will never be the same between us.

Where the hell had that come from?

“And also that I’ll be alone my whole life.”

And that?

But instead of getting up and running away screaming, Jake just nodded. “I know the feeling. But if you’ll excuse me going all Walden Pond on you for a moment, I think it’s important to accept that you might be alone forever. Any of us might be.”

“Well, aren’t you a bundle of Christmas joy?” Danny had been trying to lighten the mood, but the joke had almost caught in his thickening throat.

“I’m serious. That’s my big takeaway from the break up. You have to be okay with being alone. I know I sound like a self-help book, but it’s true. It’s impossible to have a meaningful relationship, romantic or platonic, if part of the reason you’re in it—even a tiny part of the reason—is that you’re afraid to be alone.”

Jake shook his head. “Dude. Sorry. I got carried away there.” He poured some more wine into Danny’s glass. “You came over to use the bathroom, and now I’m laying all this philosophy shit on you.”

Danny smiled. “It’s okay.” He refrained from saying that Jake’s comments had hit a little too close to home. He took a big gulp of wine, then cleared his throat. “Well, whoever your ex is, she sounds like a great big idiot to me. If she can walk away from a guy who makes mashed potatoes like this, she’s not right in the head.”

Jake, who had been staring at the fire, swung his gaze to Danny. Stared at him for a long moment.

“He.”

“Excuse me?”

“My ex. The great big idiot who’s not right in the head is a he.”

Oh, shit.

Here’s a cupcake and a glass of wine. Don’t worry, your innards are safe with me.

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I went on a retreat, and this was my bath. Really there's nothing else to say, so OI should probably stop here.
I went on a retreat, and this was my bath. Really there’s nothing else to say, so I should probably stop here.

Writing friends are weird. (And by “weird” I mean “THE BEST.”)

You go about your normal life. You have friends. You also have “friends.” Your real-life friends are neighbours or co-workers or older friends you’ve made a point to keep in touch with. Your “friends” are people you care about—or don’t care about but don’t have the balls to unfriend, even when they post status updates about their latest firearms purchases—but don’t really interact with in any meaningful way. If you’re lucky, you have a real life friend who really knows you. I’m talking about knowing all your secrets. Hopes and dreams and all that shit. And frustrations: they know what makes you rage-y, which is just as important as hopes and dreams and all that shit. I’ve been lucky in this department.

But then you have your writing friends. They’re in their own category. You meet them because you’re both writing. You might have nothing else in common, but the thing that you both get is that even though you have nothing in common, you have everything in common. Because your writing friends? You might as well slice open your stomach and literally spill your guts. They get to see what you write before it’s ready for anyone else’s eyes. They see it while it’s still half-baked, ill-formed. You trust them enough to say, “Here’s this thing I made. Now tell me what’s wrong with it.” The best of them see what you meant, rather than what you wrote, and I’m telling you, you can’t pay for that shit. (Also there’s the part where they will happily talk about comma splices for twenty minutes at a time.)

And even more than all this, your writing friends are the first people with whom you practice being who you want to be. Because you’ve already put your vulnerable, quivering innards on display, it goes without saying that these people understand that what you’re saying is: “I want to be a writer.”

I might be a party of one here, but saying that was a big deal for me. It meant saying, “I think I can write something good enough—eventually.” It went against my ingrained Midwestern self-deprecation. It meant saying, “Here is what I’m trying to do. It might not be good enough, but I’m showing it to you anyway.”

Oh, I’m speaking in  abstracts here, and what’s more boring than that? Let’s get real. I have two writing BFFs and I want to talk about them a little bit. I’m gonna go chronologically.

One, named May (who isn’t published yet, but it’s only a matter of time), I met because we were match-made by a friend in common who somehow knew we were both romance novel readers with vague ideas of maybe-someday-writing-one. I have been trying to figure out when we first stared corresponding, but since I have the worst memory in the world, all I can say is 2007? 2008? I don’t know? But weekly email updates have been exchanged for MANY years. Bribes have been enforced. (I may or may not have pledged to give $200 to the George W. Bush presidential library fund if I didn’t finish manuscript X by date Y.)

The other, Sandra Owens, I met in a funny way. I can’t talk about it (or I’d have to kill you), but suffice it to say that we met because we were both complaining about a situation we found ourselves in. I don’t think Sandy would disagree with me when I say that on paper, we don’t have a lot in common. Stage of life, geography, even subgenre: not the same! But it doesn’t matter because she’s seen my innards. I will say that when we met in person at RWA in Atlanta last year it was a huge relief that we clicked in “real life.”

So last weekend the three of us, who have doing weekly email check-ins/cheerleading sessions for years, rented a house on Lake Erie.

It was my second meeting with Sandy, my first ever (!) with May.

Oh, my God. The house was huge and gorgeous. The beach was gorgeous. The sunsets were gorgeous.

The view. You know, no big,
The view. You know, no big,

The company was the gorgeous-est of all Everyone was working on different stuff. Everyone was also juggling various real life demands, but as pledged, everyone put those aside (except for that one time May decided to do her Latin homework “for fun” over lunch).

We got up every morning, and by unspoken agreement, we wrote. Sometimes we peeled off individually for walks on the beach, naps, and so on, but we all  had our noses to the grindstone pretty much all day.

Then came wine o’clock, which meant readings. And by “readings,” I mean reading out loud from works in progress. Dang, I’d rather be on a roller coaster. But Prosecco helps.

Look at Sandy reading from a book y'all don't het to read for MONTHS.
Look at Sandy reading from a book y’all don’t het to read for MONTHS.

Then we talked about what we read. Then we drank more wine. And ate cupcakes. Then we went to bed.

Then we did it all again the next day.

My outdoor office. Which is kind of a lie. It was really more like a still life that I arranged and photographed and then it was too cold so I went back inside. But still.
My outdoor office. Which is kind of a lie. It was really more like a still life that I arranged and photographed, and then it was too cold so I went back inside. But still.

So I’m having a little trouble with reentry. Because I want to live in that place, that lovely zone where you meet the people who see your guts all year long, and they say, “I understand. You’re doing a good job. Here’s a cupcake and a glass of wine. Don’t worry, your innards are safe with me.”

 

In which I turn 40 + one day, and I get a book deal.

by

 

 

BOOK.
BOOK.

 

DEAL.
DEAL. (Yeah, I’m good with the clip art.)

 

Well, yeah, so there’s this thing where I signed a book deal. (Some of you are going, “Wait? What?” and some of you are going, “FINALLY.”)

If you don’t know about my not-so-secret life as a romance novelist, you can go here to catch up.

How did I get this book deal? It went like this:

Me: I like to read romance novels. I am a writer. Maybe one of the things I write should be a romance novel. HOW HARD CAN IT BE?

Universe: Um, actually super hard, you asshole.

[Insert laughably bad first manuscript here. Point of view? What’s that?]

[Insert years of rejection here.]

[Insert that one time when I thought I would go on maternity leave and finish my book and get an agent and get a book deal…oh, and care for an infant here.] [In my defense, I do live in Canada, Land of the One Year Mat Leave.]

[Now you should go fix a snack in order to simulate time passing. Eat it and watch a TV show, then get back to me.]

Well then, my friends, I got me an agent. I got me a kick-ass agent. That had always been goal number one. Like, to the extent that I actually avoided having my work seen by editors, which made for a few pathetically-comic situations in which editors wanted to see said work. (More on this in another post. Maybe.) There is more to say here, for sure. I can make entire speeches on the following topics: Why do you need an agent in the current publishing climate? Why do you need an agent when many publishers accept unagented manuscripts? Couldn’t you make 80 bazillion more dollars self-publishing? But I shan’t make them now (the arguments, not the dollars). (More on this in another post. Maybe.)

The relevant point is that said agent called me the day after my 40th birthday to tell me there was interest in my books.

Picture this, if you will: you just turned 40. It was fun. You got a massage and then you went to dinner sans child. However, now you are 40 + one day. And your very-early-January birthday always lines up with the first week back to work after the holidays. And you always extend your holiday overconsumption to your birthday because, come on, when your birthday is this close to New Year’s you might as well round up. So when it is one day past your birthday, the fun is over on SO MANY FRONTS. Holidays over. Time for kale. Back to work. You are 40 and there is NOTHING TO LOOK FORWARD TO EVER AGAIN.

I was, in fact, having a monologue on this very topic to my friend Lulu whilst washing dishes when my agent called. (ON THE OTHER PHONE. Sometimes I want to go back to my 1985 self and be like, you are NOT GOING TO BELIEVE THIS SHIT.) Then a complicated chain of emails and voicemails and calling back commenced, because my 1985 self is basically still in charge of my life.

So there was some to-ing and fro-ing (not in my heart, just about the contract details) and, lo, a couple months later I have signed a three-book deal with Entangled Publishing. Regencies! Like, it’s 1813 and shit! Maybe you will want to read them! (Probably you should just go back and re-watch Colin Firth in Pride and Prejudice but you can only do that for six hours every day, so what the hell else are you going to do with all those other hours?)

So, in summation: Being 40 kind of sucked. Being 40 + one day kind of rocked.

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