SURPRISE

I just got the cover for my next Samhain book SURPRISE. This is a re-release but it's going to be SO VERY DIFFERENT than the original.

Let me 'splain. . .

I started writing SURPRISE when I was pregnant with my youngest daughter. I was trapped at home with a 3 year old and a 2 year old. I'd run out of books that I hadn't read a million times and my head was going to explode, so I started writing.

Time passed, baby Shannon was born and I didn't do much with the story, like so many of my other books that I'd started, it just languished in my documents folder waiting to be finished. I'd sit down and write a little more when I got bored or when inspiration hit me, but it just kind of was there in the background. Until my husband challenged me to finish it.

So I did.
Then he dared me to do something with it.
So I queried Sillouette Intimate Moments, who actually requested it. Wow!

I cleaned it up (Ha!) and sent the whole manuscript in. Two months later they sent it back to me. Thanks but no thanks.

I was crushed. I decided my writing career was over. I sucked.
Several of my friends kicked my butt and the next thing I know, I'm writing erotica and submitting again.

Surprise sat in a corner, begging for another chance. Finally I sent it in to Triskelion who put it out in January of 2004, a little over a year from when it had been rejected.

Now that I have a little more writing under my belt, I've gone back into the book and could see EXACTLY why it got both rejected and accepted. It was rejected because there were so many first time writer mistakes in there it should have been in a "How not to write a book for publication" manual.

But I can see why it got accepted from a smaller company, because it has a tiny, tiny, kernal of hope in it. There is a good story mixed in with all the mistakes. Now that I've had some time to grow, I'm hoping I can take that tiny shred of good story and clear away the crap from it to make it an even better story.

My hope is that someone reading it for the second time will be pleasantly surprised, and someone reading it for the first time won't be disappointed.

I'm also hoping my editor won't attempt to strangle me when she sees it. . .