We called ourselves Platform Souls and we sang a lot of train songs.

Oh, were you the singer?

Ok I’ll go for a Frozen Nurple thanks.

I’m so glad the synopsis article helped. Best of luck with your submission.

I’m not sure if I’m going to Nashville next year, though I’d really like to. Can’t resist the capital of country music! (I was in a band once that played country —and rock and jazz and blues) But will depend on my deadlines.

Needless to say, I’m not cutting anything that good.

Anne – You can call it a Frozen Nurple and we’ll know what you mean.

Your synopsis example is going to save my arse. I hope you’ll be in Nashville next summer so I can hug you with gratitude! And buy you a frozen drink.

Thanks for hanging with us and congrats on the goodies, especially the tiara!

http://jobourne.blogspot.com/2008/07/out-take-from-spymasters-lady.html

Yes, you really know you’re a writer when you can cut scenes you love because they don’t serve the story. I once saw this brilliant — I mean brilliant– scene on Joanna Bourne’s blog, where the heroine’s mother makes her face her blindness and get over it. It’s amazing. Stunning. The kind of writing that makes other writers want to give up and shoot themselves

And she cut it because it didn’t fit. For that alone she deserves a RITA. (She won it with her second book.)

2nd Chance, I *always* have a secondary couple in my books. The secondary romance usually plays at a kind of counterpoint to the primary romance.

But also they’re *fun* to do. In my secondary romances I can have the kind of people who the market don’t want as a central romance hero and heroine, or else they’re a couple who don’t have enough conflict to nourish a full plot. But mostly they’re fun.

The only danger with the secondary couple is that they can distract from the main couple. I remember having to take out the scene where the secondary couple in Perfect Stranger finally get it together and make love. It was such a fun scene, but my ed said it distracted and detracted from the main romance, and dammit she was right, so i took it out.

Thanks, Sin, it was a very cool night, because 2 or my good buddies also won in their categories — we took out 3 out of 4 RBYs, so there was much celebrating.

I’d order a Bloody Annie, though

I don’t believe there is any “right way” to write. You have to find the best path for you.
I do have to control some characters — they could run away with the book otherwise — I’m forever pruning (slashing?) feisty old dowagers
But for me, if I stuck exactly to the characters as I first imagined them, they wouldn’t be as dimensional I think. And when a character surprises me — in a good way — it also surprises the reader, and I figure that’s got to be a good thing.

“Since you’re an organic writer, do you meet your deadlines with time to spare?”
No. I am, and always have been a scrape-in-by-the-skin-of-my-teeth meeter of deadlines.