Another Milestone Passed!

Today I corrected the proofs for Star Crossed Seduction, also known to friends and foes alike as "The Scorpio Book."

Reading proof can be a dispiriting undertaking because by the time a book has reached the proof stage you aren't allowed to change anything substantial. So it follows, as night follows day, that the proof stage is the time where previously hidden flaws decide it is time to reveal themselves and glare balefully off the page at their hapless author.

But not this time! I'm even more enthusiastic about this book now than I was at the copyedit phase. Problems have been solved. Rough edges smoothed. And best of all, now that it's done, I will never have to read it again!

Only those of you who are fellow authors will know what a comforting thought that is. I must have read this book some seventeen times by now. Slowly and with great attention to detail.

Now all I have to do is wait and see whether you and thousands of others enjoy it. I hope you do. But at this point there is nothing more I can do to ensure that happens. It's up to Trev and Temperance, the pair of truly star crossed lovers who took over my life for a year and would not quit until I'd told their poignant story, to do that.

What's New?

First off, I want to thank all of you who bought Lord Lightning. Extra special thanks go to everyone who took the time to post a review on Amazon or Goodreads.com.

My editor tells me Lord Lightning has sold well for a debut release by a hitherto unknown author, even though it came out at a time when retail book sales across the industry were under a lot of pressure and during a month when there were 31 other historical romances released at the same time.

Some of you have wondered why my publisher has set the Kindle price so high. The answer is not, as some ignorant people post online, that the publisher is greedy. Far from it. The issue is this: brick and mortar bookstores order tens of thousands of copies of Avon's paperbacks. If the download was priced much lower than the printed book readers would go to the store, look through the books, decide which ones looked interesting and then download them, leaving the printed books sitting on the shelf unsold. Those books cost the publishers a lot of money to print and ship, and if people buy the download instead of the paperback, the bookstore strips the cover, throws the book away, and the publisher has to refund the bookstore the full cost of the unsold book.

Even worse, when too many of the printed books come back from the stores as unsold returns, the next time the publisher releases a book by the same author, the stores won't stock it. Because so many shoppers--even those who download--are still looking at bookstore books to determine which books they want to buy, if the book isn't in the stores, the author's sales will plummet. So Avon and other big publishers are pricing e-books in such a way that people who find the book on a shelf are not motivated to download them instead of buying the book they hold in their hands.

Quite a few readers have been asking me what my next book will be and when it's coming out. I'm thrilled to be able to tell you that my next release is the Scorpio book, which will be out this September 28. The publisher chose the title, Star Crossed Seduction, and they've given it a cover that I think is even better than the spectacular cover of Lord Lightning.

The cover for Star Crossed Seduction is both romantic and tasteful. But what really excites me about it is that the people on this cover look exactly like the way I imagined the characters in the story would look.

I'm not allowed to show you the cover yet, but as soon as I can, it will be posted here, along with more information about the story. I can tell you that people who have read and enjoyed Star Crossed Seduction and Lord Lightning tell me that Star Crossed Seduction is the better book.

Beyond that, this month I'm wrapping up work on the third book in the Lords of the Seventh House series, which will be the Pisces book. I'll tell you more about it once my editor has had a chance to weigh in on it this spring.
 

RT Book Reviews Nominates Lord Lightning for Readers Choice Award!

I'm delighted to announce that Lord Lightning was just picked to be one of RT Book Reviews' Reader's Choice Award Nominees as one of the "Best Historical Novels 2010."

Even better it was nominated in the "Historical K.I.S.S. Hero" category, spotlighting Lord Lightning himself, the inimitable Edward Neville.

I couldn't have asked for anything better. My hope was that readers would fall in love with Edward as deeply as I did and this nomination suggests that they have.

You might be interested to know that when the hero of Lord Lightning first showed up and informed me that his name was Edward, I was concerned. This was several years before Ms. Meyer had published Twilight and is name sounded a bit stodgy to me since the bestselling authors were writing about all those dashing Wulfs and Aidens and Blazes.

But I stuck with it because my hero insisted it was his name and because "Edward" is a real English name of the sort real English aristocrats would have given children born in the late 18th century who of course, are the people who grew up to be our Regency heroes.

Now of course, Lord Lightning's first name is fiercely trendy again, and I've even been accused of jumping on a bandwagon when, in truth, my eccentric hero got there long before that parvenue vampire boy.

Lord Lightning is Off and Running!

Lord Lightning came out on September 28th, though it took another ten days or so for it to make it to shelves in bookstores around the country. It's fully stocked now, and people have spotted it in stores from New England to Hawaii and even in Canada.

Because I live out in the middle of nowhere with very few chain bookstores anywhere nearby and wanted to see my book on real life bookstore shelves I put together a contest where people could upload photos when they spotted Lord Lightning. Several lucky spotters will win prizes.

You can see the spottings--including the one by the guy wearing a kilt--on this page:

Where's Lord Lightning?

But to tell the truth, it's been nerve-wracking couple weeks as I wait to see how my brand new first novel will do in the marketplace. I finally heard from my editor this week, and she tells me that sales have been very good. That was a huge relief.

I'm also starting to get some fan mail, which is very heartening, though I'm also starting to get the occasional extremely negative review, which my friends who have a lot of books under their belts tell me is normal. Hopefully the people who love Lord Lightning will outnumber those who hate it. If you liked it, do let me know!

While waiting for news over these past weeks, I've occupied my time by posting on quite a few romance blogs whose owners were generous enough to ask me to drop by.

You can find the whole list of guest blog posts and links to the blogs where they appear on this page: Jenny Brown's Blog Tour.

Among my favorite blog appearances were two interviews. One appears at Not Another Romance Blog . Another I enjoyed greatly was hosted by the pirates over at Romance Writer's Revenge .

Christina Phillips, whose debut romance, Forbidden has the most gorgeous cover you'd ever want to see and features an intensely erotic story set in one of my favorite settings, Roman Britain, interviewed me at her blog, Christina Phillips.


Finally, fellow Avon author and friend Miranda Neville and I interviewed each other over on The Season Blog.
Miranda writes witty Regency-set historical romances that stand out from the crowd. I love the way she respects the history of the period and how she takes her stories away from those boring ballrooms and shows us nooks and crannies of the Regency world we haven't seen before. The Dangerous Viscount (Avon) is her latest. Don't miss it!

In another week it will be time for me to turn away from the exciting life of the published author and get back to what it is that published authors mostly do--which is to sit at their desks typing while the house around them deteriorates into total decrepitude since stopping to clean would interfere with the creative process.

Must the Rake Be Tamed?

There’s no getting around the appeal of the bad boy hero: Dark and dangerous, the most infamous rake in England, an abandoned libertine--if you’re like me, you need only see these words on a cover blurb to reach for your wallet. While others may prefer spies or wealthy dukes, no hero interests me more than the man who, heedless of society’s strictures explores the outer limits of his sexuality.


So when I set out to write the Regency set novel that became Lord Lightning that was the kind of hero I chose to write about. The man society has nicknamed Lord Lightning in tribute to his shocking behavior has behaved so badly he is forever barred from polite society. He is famed for his cold heart and his boast that he will never give his heart to a woman for even a single moment. He is also, like most bad boy heroes, witty and devastatingly charming, exuding sexual power from every pore.

But what sets him apart from a thousand other heroes of historical romance is this: My hero really is a rake, and as Lord Lightning unfolds he continues to act like one. Unlike so many supposedly rakish heroes, he is not a very nice man pretending to be a rake. He is not misunderstood. The transgressions for which society has excluded him are real.

Nor does he instantly fall in love as soon as the heroine, the gently bred amateur astrologer, Eliza Farrell, appears on his horizon. For from it. Her confidence that his astrological chart shows him to be a man who needs to love and be loved annoys him, and he sets out at once to prove her wrong. This should be easy, as Eliza is destitute and easily lured into his bed.

It should be a simple matter to seduce and abandon her, but even her trusting response to his sexual predation does not make him fall in love with her. We are not following the usual script here at all.

It is only when Eliza gives Lord Lightning a taste of his own medicine—and behaves in ways that are not what he expects-–and shows herself as capable as he is of outrageous behavior—that he begins to find her interesting. But even then, it is a toss up whether Eliza’s astrological art will transform the notorious rake into a better man or his seductive skills that will transform her.

It’s always been a pet peeve of mine that in most rake stories the heroine falls in love with the bad boy hero and joins him in an adventure filled with forbidden, edgy sex, but by the end of the story this wild, exciting man’s love for the heroine traps them both in a conventional marriage. We find them in the sequel dwelling in their comfortable home surrounded by perfect children—living the same life the heroine would have had if she’d married a nice man who had never thumbed his nose at the rules of the society.

The author may wish us to believe this domesticated pair is still having the same kind of earth shaking sex they had when they were strangers taking bold sexual risks, but I don’t buy it. So that isn’t kind of ending you’ll find in Lord Lightning. Though the delicious man who loves to shock will, by the end of the story, find happiness with his Eliza, it won’t be because she’s turned him into a nice suburban husband.

For before Eliza can finally find happiness, she will have to accept that she loves Lord Lightning for what he has always been—in all his rakish glory—as much as she loves the “better” man he has become. And I hope that when you read Lord Lightning you will, too!
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This post originally appeared as a guest post at The Sisterhood of the Jaunty Quills.

The illustrations accompanying it are Plate 3 of Hogarth's series of paintings, "The Rake's Progress" and portraits of the infamous Lord Byron and self-dramatizing rake and dreadful husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Lord Lightning and Real Regency Astrology

Eliza Farrell, the heroine of my debut romance, Lord Lightning, which will be on the stands September 28, is a gently raised lady who is a direct descendant of William Lilly, England’s most famous astrologer.

Though you might be surprised to learn this, the use of astrology was very popular much during the Regency period, and among its greatest challenges was to figure out what the astrological meaning was of the new planet, Uranus, which had only just been discovered in 1789.

Not so coincidentally, this turns out to be Eliza’s biggest challenge, too. For Eliza reads the chart of an anonymous stranger and interprets it as being that of a man who was born to love, only to be told that the chart is that of a well known libertine, nicknamed Lord Lightning, who is famed for his cold heart and shocking behavior.


Sure enough, the outrageous Lord’s chart is dominated by the new planet Uranus, which stands at the very point that shows the role the person takes on the world’s stage. Can it be true Eliza wonders, that, as some speculate, Uranus causes explosive, unpredictable behavior?

It’s certainly true that, as his nickname suggests, Lord Lightning delights in shocking others. And the libertine lord does his best to shock Eliza, too, for her claim that he’s at heart a loving man infuriates him, and he sets out to prove that she’s wrong. How better to do that than to seduce and abandon her?

So Lord Lightning abducts Eliza and demands that she take the place of the mistress who left him thanks to her astrological counsel. But Eliza turns out to be just as capable of shocking behavior as is the Byronic lord. When he insists her reading of his character is wrong, she’s not going to let a little thing like Lord Lightning’s irresistible sexual allure keep her from proving she’s right.

I hope you enjoy the battle of wills that follows, in what I suspect may be the steamiest astrological lesson ever penned.

For those of you who are interested in the history of astrology, it turns out the person who first discovered the astrological effect of the new planet, Uranus, was William Blake's good friend, the water colorist John Varley.


An anecdote related by his son tells how one morning, after examining his transits, Varley predicted that some dire event associated with Uranus would occur that day.

When his house was discovered to be in flames, "He was so delighted at having discovered what the astrological effect of Uranus was," his son reported, "that he sat down while his house was burning knowing though he did that he was not insured a penny to write an account of his discovery. He had timed the catastrophe to within a few minutes."

Now that was a real astrologer!
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Portions of the post above appeared in a guest blog post published on Petit Fours and Hot Tamales.

Why I Write Wounded Heroes

I love learning about other historical periods, and I find astrology fascinating, but neither interest is what drove me to write Romance. I write Romance because romances let me work through my favorite theme: the process through which a person whose personality has been formed by the experience of betrayal learns to trust and love.

My heroes, as you will see when you read my books, are people who have very good reasons for avoiding close relationships. Lord Lightning's hero, Edward Neville, revels in the role he plays--that of a cold-hearted rake who has never let any woman get close to him. His chosen role keeps him safe from ever again experiencing the devastating betrayals that shaped his personality, and it will not be easy for him to shed the persona he's become so comfortable with.

The hero of my second novel has found a different way to avoid closeness. He's a soldier serving in India whose duties give him a plausible reason to avoid marriageable women with whom he might form a close bond.

Though these two stories are very different--Lord Lightning plays on light, theatrical Leo themes while the second book explores the much darker Scorpio archetype--both stories share one thing in common. Their heroes feel safe getting into the relationships that will transform their lives because they are so certain they have finally found someone they need not fear falling in love with.

I return to this theme over and over--even when I set out to write a different kind of story. The reason is not hard to find. It's the story of my own journey from solitude to committed partnership.

I found true love quite late in life, with a person who, on the surface, appeared so completely unlikely to become a long-term partner, that I let myself be lured out of my comfort zone. What I assumed would be nothing more than a very brief fling is going into its fifteenth year as a committed relationship. In order to make that relationship work, like my heroes, I've had to confront some serious inner demons and heal some devastating emotional wounds.

That said, neither my heroes or my heroines are autobiographical in anything but the nature of their inner journey. Their emotions may be ones with which I am very familiar--which is why I can write them in a way that will stir those who read their stories. But the fun of writing novels is that I can give them personalities far more interesting than mine.

Lord Lightning has the ability I would kill for, of being able deliver a witty riposte in real time. Like most people, my best retorts only occur to me hours after it's too late to deliver them.

Captain Trevelyan, the hero of my Scorpio book is skilled at political intrigue and has mastered the art of keeping his real thoughts and emotions completely hidden. Those who know me will understand at once why I find that fantasy so fulfilling. I'm lucky if I can hide anything that pops into my mind--or heart--for more than three minutes.