Tuesday, December 31, 2013

THE INSPIRATION FOR MY CAT BOOKS

With the release of Geek with the Cat Tattoo, people have been asking if I have a cat. "You must have a cat! You know them so well!"

This is kind of a downer, but I thought I'd rerun a post from two and a half years ago. My cat of twenty years was the inspiration for the Cool Cats books. He and I actually had a conversation about it.

"I should write a book with a cat narrator," I told him. "What do you think? Maybe a romance. Readers have been asking for another romance."  Of course he thought it was a great idea.

 It's very strange, but I don't think I've gotten over losing him even though it's been more than two years. About a month after he died I had to fly to promotional events for Grand Central Publishing.  A book gig in New Orleans was the first time I'd left the house, and I suddenly found myself at this long table at a fancy fancy fancy restaurant where each meal must have cost several hundred dollars.  I was supposed to perform, but I just wanted to be home with the covers over my head. Weird to look back and realize I've been kind of shut off since then. Or at least not fully turned on. :D

*************************

To preface the following: I sometimes tweeted as him and called his tweets kitty memoirs.

June 5, 2011

His story...

“Yesterday I was put to sleep.” Kitty memoir

My story…

It shouldn’t hurt this much, but it’s like the death of a person. I wish I’d waited one more day. And one more day. I retrace the past week, I examine and wonder, and see the days through a different lens every time I look at them. One minute I think I waited too long, years too long. Another, I think I didn’t wait long enough. I wish he were with me right now. That’s all I know.

He was old. Almost twenty.



The princess (my daughter) and Latoya, St. Paul 2003

The last animal from what I call our old life, the life on the farm.

“He’s so charming,” people always said.

He loved it when a group of people got together and sat around talking and laughing. He loved the sound of laughter.

It’s like the death of a person.

He showed up on our farm as a kitten, probably a dump.
“Don’t touch it,” I told my daughter, who was already mentally cuddling the animal. “It might have some disease.”
“It has devil eyes,” my husband said. “Look at how it’s looking at me. Making eye contact.” There was fear in his voice. “Don’t feed it and it’ll leave.”


But the cat didn't leave, and we began calling him Latoya, thinking he was a female.

He hung around the corncrib and caught mice.

One day I found him there, sick. I took him to the vet.
“Pneumonia,” the vet said. “Never seen a case this bad. If he lives, he’ll always be in bad health.” I found out he was a boy, not a girl.

So I took him home and put him in a box in the basement.
“I don’t want that devil cat in the house,” my husband said.
“What is he going to do? Put a spell on you?”
“Maybe.”
The cat recovered and he was returned to the outdoors. I got him neutered, but we continued to call him Latoya.
He was always around. In the field near the house. In the evenings, when I went for a jog, he would follow me, get tired, and wait in the roadside ditch for me to return, then follow me home. I fed him, and he became my cat.

In 1994, I went on a trip.
“Don’t forget to feed Latoya,” I told my son and husband. “I don’t want him roaming, searching for food.”
While I was gone, my husband accidentally ran over Latoya with a sickle mower, a mower used to trim ditches. He was so mangled that he should have been put to sleep, but my son coaxed him out of the culvert where he’d gone to die. The vet did what he could. “I don’t think he’ll live, and he’ll never walk or use the litter box. Take him home, but you’ll probably need to have him put down.” Poor Latoya had two and a half legs, and half a tail. They’d shaved him, and he was as naked as a mole rat.

Over the next month, pieces of him fell off, but he slowly recovered, and the devil cat became a housecat. My constant companion.


St. Paul, 2005

He had no trouble getting around, and could even run and climb a tree if taken outside. Like the vet said, he had respiratory issues off and on his whole life. But he lived and lived and lived.

Two years ago, he was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism, but he couldn’t tolerate the medication. And as time passed, he got so he could no longer go up and down the stairs to sleep with me in my bed. His weight dropped from sixteen pounds to five.


Church house, 2009

I would spend evenings downstairs in the living room with him, watching television. He lost his hearing, and began to yowl if he thought he was alone. The social butterfly. A few days ago, my daughter came by and we realized he could hear us, and he enjoyed sitting with us as we talked and laughed. He still loved the sound of laughter.

This day has been coming for a long time, but I didn’t know it would hurt so much. He was a cat. A cat. But it feels like the death of a person. I don’t understand how humans bond so strongly with their pets, but it’s something profound and crazy and painful and maybe beautiful. I’m not sure about the beautiful. It hurts too much for beautiful.

Twenty years. He was with me through the death of my husband, my move from the farm to Iowa, my move to St. Paul, my move to Wisconsin. In the past several years, he required constant care. Because of that, my adult children and I took him with us when we went up north and stayed at a cabin for a week. I’m not sure if he enjoyed it, but he took it all in stride, the way he did everything.



 Latoya and me at cabin in northern Minnesota, 2010
(Yes, he even came with us on a family vacation.)


I’ve had a lot of cats in my life, but he was special. Unique and almost human. I can’t believe he’s gone. The house is so empty. There’s a giant hole in my heart that I don’t think any other pet could ever fill.

Monday, December 30, 2013

GEEK WITH THE CAT TATTOO IS .99!


 Have you heard me go on and on about this book? And have you been thinking God, that sounds AWFUL? I'll wait for her suspense. But then you see the great reviews of GEEK WITH THE CAT TATTOO and you're confused?

Are these people NUTS?

Now you can find out for yourself! .99! 

If you end up being surprised, if you end up thinking wow, this isn't half bad. And wow, I actually LIKED this weird book, then maybe consider leaving a review on Amazon. 

Something readers might not know is that one of the few ways writers can promote their books is through paid online advertising. And most advertisers won't accept a book with less than TEN decent reviews. (Goodreads reviews don't count when it comes to advertisers.) Sometimes they won't accept books with less than TWENTY Amazon reviews. So it's tough out there. A cat needs all the help he can get.

 I honestly think GEEK WITH THE CAT TATTOO is my best romance to date, and I'm very proud of it.  I set out to write something that was a romance in the truest and purest sense of the word, and I hope I at least partially accomplished that. I'm not going to give up trying to get people to read my cat books, but I'm also being realistic about them.

Check out the latest WONDERFUL (sob, it's SO wonderful) review from Penelope's Romance Reviews.

PENELOPE'S HIGHEST RECOMMENDATION:  Grade: A+++++++

 "This book has a series of incredibly romantic moments strung together with beautiful writing and sassy cats and funny bits and music. "

" ... all of my favorite things...laugh-out-loud humor, gorgeously-written prose, characters who are real and flawed and lovely in their own way, and old-fashioned romantic moments I forgot still existed." Penelope






CAT ON!! 




A Dear Author Recommended Read!



Saturday, December 28, 2013

WRITING JOYFUL - A LETTER TO READERS

Dear readers:
I want to thank you for all the enthusiastic support you've given the Cool Cats books. I put Girl with the Cat Tattoo out there as an experiment -- to see if there was any interest in a romance told partially from a cat's POV.  The answer was yes! People said the book made them happy, and it made me happy to write it, and it made me happy to hear it made readers happy. 

And now the second and probably final book is out, Geek with the Cat Tattoo.

The unsurprising truth is that romances with a cat's POV simply don't sell very well even with the mad Max and Sam love. I changed the original cover in hopes that it would generate more sales because the original cat cover seemed to confuse non-romance readers and romance readers alike, but I can't change the cat narrator and the perception that a cat narrator is going to make books corny.

 I hate to disappoint people, and I know readers will be sorry to hear the news of no third book, but writing is a business. It takes about two months to write a Cool Cats book, and to tell the truth the books hardly break even. I'd hoped they'd would sell well enough that I could just keep writing and writing them. As my agent used to say in response to poor sales, the readers have spoken.

 It's a weird thing trying to get people to read something they think they're going to hate. I love the cat books. I loved writing them, and I think Geek with the Cat Tattoo might be the best romance I've ever written, but…

If by some fluke the books finally catch fire or I win the lottery and can write cat books until I'm a hundred, pretend you never read this blog post. ;)

BUT, what I most want to say is that it's been a fun journey, one I'm glad you took with me. Thanks for the support. Your response to the books brought me so much joy.

As Max and Sam say, life is good.
>^..^<
XO
Max, Sam, and Theresa

Friday, December 20, 2013

Geek with the Cat Tattoo is now available!



It's December 20, which means Geek with the Cat Tattoo is now available from most online vendors!  It's still too early to get a handle on overall response to the second book in the Cool Cat series, but early feedback has been very positive.  With this story I tried to focus a bit more on the human relationship. 



Short blurb: Shy music geek Emerson Foshay breaks into a cold sweat and is rendered speechless whenever Lola Brown, the girl of his dreams, steps into his guitar shop. But once a stray cat named Sam follows him home, everything changes and Emerson becomes the coolest guy in town.


First online review: A Willful Woman
A- Recommended Read from Dear Author

=^..^=

Interested in donating to a Twin Cities no-kill rescue group?
Consider Feline Rescue of St. Paul/Minneapolis


=^..^=

Purchase the ebook here: 


(The paperback should be available on Amazon in a few days.)

BUT WAIT!  THAT'S NOT ALL!
Girl with the Cat Tattoo (book one) is currently .99 through most vendors.




Thursday, December 5, 2013

CHRISTMAS RAFFLECOPTER GIVEAWAY





I've once again joined a group Rafflecopter giveaway. I'll be giving away five digital copies of Geek with the Cat Tattoo, so sign up!  Also included is L.K. Rigel's new Jane Eyre Retold series. I've read book one, My Mr. Rochester, and loved it. A lot of good books here ranging from sweet romance to erotica.

 When you first open this page the space below might look blank because it takes Rafflecopter forever to load on Blogger. Be patient!

Giveaway ends December 19 and winners will be selected December 20.



a Rafflecopter giveaway


Giveaway ends December 19th at 11:59 PM EST. Open internationally. Warning: content possibly not suitable for minors under the age of 17. Prizes will be sent electronically via mail. Winner will be selected on 12/20/2013 by Random.org and be notified by email. The product offered for the giveaway is free of charge, no purchase necessary. My opinions are my own and were not influenced by any form of compensation. Facebook, Twitter and Google+ are in no way associated with this giveaway. By providing your information in this form, you are providing your information to me and me alone. I do not share or sell information and will use any information only for the purpose of contacting the winner.

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

GEEK WITH THE CAT TATTOO

 It's been a long time coming, but Geek With the Cat Tattoo is now available for pre-order on Amazon.


Release date: December 20

Once December 20 rolls around, the book will also be available at B&N, iTunes, and Kobo.

 Girl With the Cat Tattoo has some huge fans, but understandably sales of cat romance novellas aren't that great, so it was hard to justify time spent writing a second book. And yet I knew quite a few people wanted it and were waiting for it.

The other thing? The people who loved Girl With the Cat Tattoo REALLY loved it. I'm not sure how they'll feel about Geek. I suspect part of the love of the first book came from the novelty and tone of the story, and the reader will go into the second book without that element of surprise. I really like Geek With the Cat Tattoo, but I've never been a good judge of my own stuff. 

In preparation for the release, Girl With the Cat Tattoo has a new cover to match the geek cover. I know people will be disappointed in the new cover, but from a marketing standpoint I hope it makes sense. Even though the first cover was adorable, many book browsers didn't realize the first book was a romance, so I'm trying a bit of branding here while hoping for stronger genre recognition. 





Story description:

Shy music geek Emerson Foshay breaks into a cold sweat and is rendered speechless whenever Lola Brown, the girl of his dreams, steps into his guitar shop, but once a stray cat named Sam follows him home everything changes and Emerson becomes the coolest guy in town.

Setting: Minneapolis, Minnesota

Cast of main characters:

Emerson Foshay, shy music geek
Lola Brown, Melody's (Girl With the Cat Tattoo) sister
Sam the cat, Max's (Girl With the Cat Tattoo) brother








Monday, November 11, 2013

WRITING TIP



Every story, no matter the genre, should contain truths that resonate with the reader.

What do readers highlight in ebooks? What passages are highlighted again and again? 
Those things the reader relates to. Those passages that put words to unformed thoughts. ~ Theresa Weir

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Huge Rafflecopter Giveaway

A bunch of New Adult and romance authors (including me) have banded together to give away A LOT of amazing, funny and sexy Ebook prizes for you to win! COMPLETELY FREE!    photo giveawaybanner10-2013version3tiny_zps8d6d64f9.jpg

These books are all given away by the authors themselves and you could win one of them! All you have to do is enter the Rafflecopter giveaway below and press the options you'd like to signup for! Lots of opportunities to win an awesome prize! Please note: Some books aren't suitable for readers under seventeen. a Rafflecopter giveaway Giveaway ends October 22nd at 11:59 PM EST. Open internationally. Warning: content possibly not suitable for minors under the age of 17. Prizes will be sent electronically via mail. Winner will be selected on 10/23/2013 by Random.org and be notified by email. The product offered for the giveaway is free of charge, no purchase necessary. My opinions are my own and were not influenced by any form of compensation. Facebook, Twitter and Google+ are in no way associated with this giveaway. By providing your information in this form, you are providing your information to me and me alone. I do not share or sell information and will use any information only for the purpose of contacting the winner.

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

COME AS YOU ARE


I went back and forth about putting Nirvana stuff in the blurb for Come As You Are. I decided against it after reading the article going around about the twenty-something girl who'd recently written a letter to Nirvana asking if they could play at…something. Homecoming, maybe? And so I thought better not mention Nirvana. But reviewers ARE mentioning the band, and that's good! Yes, there's definitely a strong Nirvana…center.

The weird thing is that I had no idea In Utero was being reissued this year until the book was almost done. That was just serendipity. Molly, the heroine, even writes a story for one of her University of Minnesota classes about the recording of In Utero. (Trivia: In Utero was recorded at Pachyderm Recording Studio in Cannon Falls, Minnesota. My son worked there for a few years before starting his own studio in Minneapolis called Old Blackberry Way.)

There are other musical nods in the book, some obscure and some not so obscure. There's one line in particular that I've wondered if people will get, and it's in reference to Big Star. If you pick up on it let me know.

When my kids were little I used to love to create scavenger hunts, and the clues became more elaborate the older the kids got. I think burying stuff in a story, or even hiding it in plain sight, has a bit of that fun to me. Like, will anybody get this? And if they do, will they think it's fun?

The reissue of In Utero is September 24. Release date for Come As You Are is October 1, but we're hoping to get it out earlier. (Waiting on paperback.) Really hoping we can hit September 24. And not just because of the reissue. If you read the book you'll understand why that date has added significance.



Sunday, September 15, 2013

HOW I CAME TO WRITE A NEW ADULT ROMANCE


Come As You Are 

This book was an accident. Kind of.  Because it's also one of those accidents that makes perfect sense in retrospect. Back in the late spring I started a Facebook writers' group with the idea that members would post their goals for the month and we'd see if we could meet those goals. But it wasn't just a place for goals, it became a place to discuss trends and writing in general.

One of the members, friend and fellow writer L.K. Rigel, was talking about the New Adult book she was working on.  I asked her a lot of questions, and I read some samples of NA. What struck me is that these books were kind of similar to what I was doing when I wrote romance. And the good news for me? Back then one of the complaints I got was that my books were too dark and too full of angst.  Wounded characters. That kind of thing, so in some ways NA seemed right in my wheelhouse. The other thing is that about seven or eight years ago I asked my then editor what she thought about my writing a book, not about high school kids (she'd mentioned a YA to me), but about COLLEGE KIDS. Because I could definitely see myself doing that.  She said there was no market for books featuring people in their twenties, and those people didn't have time to read anyway.

I never went to college and I have a particular fascination with that period of a person's life. I suppose a romanticized fascination.  And I love that age.  Plus, I'd tested the romance waters with The Girl with the Cat Tattoo. And in thinking about that book… It almost felt a bit NA even though it didn't really contain all the elements and the main characters were a little bit too old. But Melody could have easily been an NA character. And the followup book, The Geek with the Cat Tattoo, features people in their twenties. So I was kind of dancing on the fringes of NA but just didn't know it.

So… back to the writing camp. I decided to see what I could get written on an NA in our July writing camp. Thought I'd maybe just work on it for a few days. That turned into a week. Then another week. Then the whole month because I found I loved writing the story. By the end of July I had the first draft finished.  By the middle of August I had the edit complete. Crazy.

Come As You Are release date: October 1

Come As You Are will be available as an ebook through Amazon, iTunes, B&N, and Kobo. Print will be available through Amazon.  I think with expanded distribution the print edition will be available elsewhere after a few weeks.



If you're curious about the book, check out this review on Goodreads, complete with GIFs and images.  And maybe add the book to your library while you're there. :)

Sunday, September 8, 2013

New Adult Romance Cover Reveal


Coming October 2013

 New Adult Romance



Molly Young has a secret. To keep it she holds the world at a distance. Behind her lies a trail of dumped boyfriends who came too close to discovering what no one can know. When her estranged father dies of an unexpected heart attack he leaves an even deeper secret, one tied to Molly's.

At the funeral repast Molly is unable to tolerate the shoulder-to-shoulder mourners and runs out the door and down the street to the nearest bar. Come dawn, with no memory of the past ten hours, she finds herself in bed with a beautiful stranger. She slips away before he wakes up, unaware of the role he's about to play in her life. Is he the one guy who can convince Molly to face her disturbing and painful secret and become the person she's meant to be?
 ~

I've set up a separate NA FACEBOOK PAGE where you'll be able to get the most current information on new NA releases. I also have a newsletter for release announcements of both Frasier and Weir titles.


And since I'm doing cover reveals...  Here's the cover for The Geek with the Cat Tattoo, which will be out in 2014.



Monday, September 2, 2013

TRUE STORY, PART TWO


Got a hankerin' to read part one? Go here: 

PART TWO

Debbie and I continued our lunchtime smoke breaks under the carport. I was surprised to find that a junior high school that beat the crap out of you with a special paddle if you were caught chewing gum didn't seem to care if you left campus at noon. We weren't the only ones wandering away, and the exodus was no secret.  Nobody seemed to care what we did as long as we didn't do it on school property. High school guys would pull up in front and wait for their younger girlfriends to run down the sidewalk and jump in the car. And speaking of cars. Debbie sometimes drove herself to school even though she was way too young to have a license. On those days we didn't smoke under the carport. Instead, we cruised the strip, cruised the high school, and cruised the other junior high across town while we smoked our Marlboros and drank whiskey from the fifth Debbie kept under the seat. I was thirteen.
Debbie must have finally thought it was time to take our friendship to the next level because she asked me to stay the night.
"We can ride horses on Saturday. "
 Horses? Her aunt and uncle must have been rich, and they must have let her run wild because she wasn't their kid and they were just giving her a place to sleep until her mother came home from Paris. I was almost jealous.
After school Debbie drove me to her house.  Down dusty New Mexico roads that never seemed to stop. Over flat land that stretched out forever.  After twenty miles I finally spotted a mailbox that marked another dusty lane, this one with a house at the end.
 I immediately understood that her aunt and uncle were poor. Really, really poor. The house was this sad bunch of squares sitting on top of dirt. There was the main square made of plywood and stuff that had probably come from other houses. Nothing fit, but the building did have windows and a roof and some paint here and there.  The biggest square must have been the start of the home, and then as time went on other rooms were added, all with salvaged wood and mismatched windows. Inside it was clean, with nothing but a kitchen table and chairs, and off in one corner a couch and television.  Debbie said hi to a woman standing at the stove frying chicken in a cast-iron skillet.
The woman turned and gave me a smile. She had very few teeth, her skin was like leather, and her hair was a wild tangle around her head. Debbie's grandmother? Great grandmother?
One of the additions to the house turned out to be Debbie's room, and we headed straight for it, shut the door, and settled on the bed with a scrapbook.
 "There's my mom." She pointed to an elegant woman standing next to a fancy car.  She was so pretty. Like a movie star. Did she pay the aunt and uncle to take care of Debbie? I'll bet she did.
"Is that your grandmother out there?" I whispered.
Debbie laughed. "It's my aunt.  Isn't she something?"
"She looks so old."
"She's in her forties."
A door slammed and the aunt shouted that it was time to eat.
We sat down. Four of us now, because Debbie's uncle had arrived from the oil refinery.  He didn't look nearly as old at the woman, and he had all his teeth.
 Green Formica table. Aunt and uncle at opposite ends. Debbie and I across from each other. Fried chicken. Baked beans. Potato salad.
I got the feeling this wasn't their normal meal, that they'd prepared it because of company. I felt honored.  We passed bowls of food in silence. Ate in silence.  Struggling to come up with a topic of conversation, I finally looked across the Formica to my friend and asked, "When's your mom coming back from Paris?"
Debbie froze.
The aunt and uncle froze.
What had I done? What had I said?  Maybe the mom wasn't coming back. Maybe she'd left Debbie here forever.
The uncle finally spoke. "Your mother?" he asked Debbie.
She said nothing.
"Your mother in Paris?"
Debbie still wasn't talking, so I tried to smooth things over. "Debbie told me about how her mother is living in Paris, and how she's staying here with you two for a while."
The aunt and uncle looked at each other, then burst out laughing. The guy tossed back his head and roared. The woman joined in with her toothlessness.
Debbie threw her chicken leg on her plate and ran to her room, slamming the door.
Which left the three of us. The aunt finally stopped laughing. When the uncle could finally talk, he said, "That's what she told you?  That we're her aunt and uncle?" He burst out laughing again.
I finally got it. They were Debbie's parents.  I felt so stupid. None of her story had made any sense. None of it.
Later Debbie unlocked the door and I joined her in the bedroom. She'd been crying. "I'll bet they told you they're my parents, didn't they?" she said. "Well, they aren't. They're a couple of liars."
This was the new story she'd concocted while I sat at the table.  I actually liked her parents. Liked the way they hadn't gotten mad. "You are the liar," I said.
If I'd been older I might have been more sympathetic. I would have tried to figure out why she'd done what she'd done. Invented a mother because she was ashamed of her own. Invented a life because she was ashamed of the one she had.
Instead, I never talked to Debbie again. I never forgave her. Occasionally I'd spot her in the hall, but she always looked away. And I'd wonder if she was waiting for a new kid to come along so she could tell her about the mother who lived in Paris.

* * *
 Author note: I'm fuzzy on how we got from school to her house.  We might have taken the school bus, or she might have driven. In the sixties in New Mexico it wasn't unusual for kids to drive even if they didn't have a license. Especially farm kids who came to town from as far as eighty miles away.  

Friday, August 23, 2013

STAY DEAD RELEASE


Stay Dead, the sequel to Play Dead, has a release date.



Coming April 22, 2014

Writing book descriptions is a skill I lack, and I'm confident the publishing house and my editor will come up with cover copy far more enticing than my feeble attempt:

Stay Dead


Savannah homicide detective Elise Sandburg is recovering from injuries received while being held captive by a killer now in a coma when she gets news of a fresh murder with the same MO as the unresponsive man in the hospital bed. Elise is forced to cut her recovery short and risk her life once again in order to help her less-than-stable partner, David Gould, track down a madman the media has nicknamed The Organ Thief.

Coming close to death left Elise questioning her occupation as a detective. She has a teenage daughter to think about, and Elise wants to be a better mother. Dealing with a more immediate deadline, Elise hopes to make her home livable in time for Thanksgiving and her daughter's return from a foreign-exchange trip.  But when Elise tries to leave the world of homicide behind, a repressed memory comes back to haunt her, and in a surprising twist she discovers that she and The Organ Thief have more in common than she could ever have guessed…

On top of that, Elise's mother calls to beg her estranged daughter to investigate Elise's Aunt Anastasia's mysterious death. It seems that the dead Anastasia made a midnight phone call to Elise's mother, leaving Elise to question her mother's sanity and ask the recurring question: Doesn't anybody stay dead around here?




Thursday, August 15, 2013

TRUE STORY


Let's just call her Debbie. We met on my first day at the new school. Mom had remarried and we'd moved from the city of Albuquerque to a small desert town in southern New Mexico. Way beyond where the sidewalk ends. Eighth grade. Girls dressed like the past, talking with strong accents.

When you start a new school in the middle of the year, you have to be careful of the kids who latch onto you. I knew the drill. Don't be too friendly. Don't let them talk you into a visit.  But Debbie seemed different. Not desperate, and other kids didn't avoid her.  She was kind of cool in a tough cowgirl way.  At noon, when boys and girls stood in the lobby drinking pop and eating candy bars, she crooked her finger at me and tipped her head toward the door. I went, curious, glad to get away from the stares.

 With shoulders hunched and her gate rolling—all of this accomplished in a print dress, oxfords, and white knee socks—she strode past the flagpole with deliberate intent. I followed.

We crossed the street to a beige ranch-style house with a For Sale sign and carport. The place was empty, windows smeared and a yard full of pale dirt and dead grass. Hidden from the school, Debbie produced a pack of Marlboros from the pocket of her jean jacket and we lit up. She told me how she wasn't from there, and how she hated the one-horse town. Her mother was an artist studying in Paris for a year, and Debbie had been sent to live with her aunt and uncle. She hated them too. "Dumb, drunk rednecks."  It was nice to know another outsider.

But I was feeling queasy.

Back in the school, Debbie showed me where the science class was located, then, like a weary bronc rider,  she lumbered down the hall.

Slinking into a seat near the door, I burped and a puff of smoke came out of my mouth.

To be continued…



Friday, July 12, 2013

WHEN THE MUSE BITES YOU IN THE JUGULAR

I've been a writing fool lately. I spent so much of the past few years making my entire backlist available that I feel I really neglected NEW writing. Also in there I took a year off to dedicate to the promotion of The Orchard, which in retrospect probably wasn't the wisest thing to do. But anyway, I think subconsciously or consciously I felt I had a lot of catching up to do as far as getting new material written.

 I wrapped up the third draft of Stay Dead, the Play Dead sequel, about a month ago. I'd planned to take a couple of weeks off, then dive into the Geek with the Cat Tattoo, my second cat book which is still 1/3 done.  But I somehow got caught up in New Adult fiction. Not all that many years ago I asked my then editor about writing for college kids, and she said there was no market for books like that. And at the time I guess she was right. Well, nobody had really tested it, but now with NA being such a hot market, I started thinking about it again. And instead of taking some time off, and instead of cleaning my house, I had this idea for an NA, and I thought I'd just get the stuff in my head down on paper. Day or two of writing. A week and a half later the first draft of the NA is 1/3 done.  So I have two books 1/3 done.

But...

I'm excited about this new project. Really excited. I love the book, I love the characters, love the setting, love the concept. It has three pretty big twists, and when you think the twist are done, it will have a final one. Takes place in Minneapolis, in and around the University of Minnesota. Female lead is 22, male is 25.

But...

I would never have written this if not for self-publishing. I would never, ever have even started it. Not in a million years. Because I would have known there would be no place to send it. But now... NOW....   THIS is how self-publishing is changing the face of publishing. And what a concept to be able to think of an idea, love it, and actually WRITE IT. It's exciting.

Funny thing, as the story progressed it took on more levels of complexity until I now think it might appeal to a publishing house, but I don't think I'm going to submit it to one.  Think I'll self-pub it.

When I started the NA I had this idea that I'd pub it under a whole new name and I spent too much time deciding on a pen name and I created a Facebook page for that name. But as I wrote I realized...wait, this is really morphing into a Theresa Weir book, so to hell with the pen name. I plan to publish it under my own name.

I have my contracted book, Stay Dead, which is a priority right now.  I have to be ready to put all other stuff aside whenever I get edits, etc. back on it, but  in the meantime...  WRITING FOOL.

And for those people asking about the Geek with the Cat Tattoo. I can't be a 100% sure I will finish it, but at this moment I plan to to finish it once I have the NA completed. So both books should be out in 2014.  Stay Dead also comes out in 2014, so that will mean several books out in the upcoming year.


I took this about a year ago in Luck, Wisconsin.

Sunday, June 2, 2013

PREMISE AND ROMANTIC COMEDY


Another week and I'll be done with the second draft of my contracted suspense due to the publisher the end of the summer. But as I'm wrapping up round two, I'm suddenly hit with a dream plot for a romantic comedy. By dream plot, I mean I actually dreamed it. 




 I love the concept, and I want to write it. But the premise is a bit far-fetched. Not horribly far-fetched, just a bit. It kind of treads Nick Hornby About a Boy territory. Not the plot, but the far-fetched aspect. I've never written romantic comedy or any comedy other than the Girl with the Cat Tattoo, so I started thinking of comedy books and movies, and it occurred to me that they all have a bit of a far-fetched element.  In writing suspense, especially crime fiction, you have to be so careful to keep it real, but is it okay to step outside that with romantic comedy?  I'm thinking it is? 





Tuesday, May 28, 2013

WOW, HARLEQUIN. REALLY?

Outraged friends have been contacting me about this new Harlequin title.  Not sure if I should be outraged, flattered, or if I should just shrug it off.  I tend to think shrug it off, but some people are spitting mad.




Friday, May 17, 2013

Chewy emotional center

Don't neglect a character's emotions even when dealing with an externally driven plot.

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

WRITER AT WORK

The thing that's hard? Finding time to write. I blocked out entire month of May for nothing but writing, and I'm also forcing myself to avoid the temptation of social media. It's working.I'm halfway through second draft of the sequel to Play Dead due to publisher September 1. I actually keep thinking of things I want to blog about, but restrain myself!