WEEKEND WRITING WARRIORS - Please Welcome a Newbie!

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Saturday, July 11, 2015

WEEKEND WRITING WARRIORS - Please Welcome a Newbie!



I love teasers! That snippet of a scene that coaxes you inside for an intimate taste that whets the appetite. Finding this unique blog hop (of sorts) was just what I needed to examine my own work … and to get a preview of what’s brewing on the creative keyboards of my fellow wordsmiths. 

Take a bite out of my vampire romance MIDNIGHT KISS:

She closed her eyes and reached out to him, calling his name, not aloud, as before, but silently, with all her senses straining. Louis.

I am here.

Her gaze flew open and she saw him, just a faint shadow in the open door, a shadow without enough substance to block the light from beyond. It seemed to spill through him as if his figure was transparent. A moment of fright was quickly overcome by longing as he took on a comforting solidity. Her will fell away in that instant, her mind smothered by the intensity of his, her heart beating with the power of his as a trance-like stillness overcame her.

“I’ve come for my wife.”
These aren’t brand new words. They were first written in the mid-‘90s when vampire romance was a just awakened creature. So new, in fact, when MIDNIGHT KISS was released, booksellers weren’t sure what to do with it and often mis-shelved it in horror or with historicals. The first three books had brief two week stints in the light of day, then were buried for 20 years, while the other six books in the series did well (and continue to do well) through another publisher. After 15 years of struggling to get the rights back, ImaJinn Books is resurrecting the entire series, together for the first time, with all new covers (which I haven’t even seen yet!) for book-a-month reissues beginning this month with MIDNIGHT KISS.

The best part is getting the chance to go through the books again . . . and make changes. The ‘90s was a world of the passive “was” and the semi-colon, where no one blinked an eye at POV shifts – within the same paragraph! I’ve been up to my eyeballs in those first three books, going through three passes apiece to update (as much as one can with a historical paranormal!) and polish for consumption by a new millennium of readers. I hope you’ll follow my journey with these books and with my current W-I-P, the latest book in my By Moonlight dark shape-shifter series. And I look forward to finding exciting new voices and reads!

See you next weekend! Happy writing!

Weekend Writing Warriors is weekly hop for everyone who loves to write! Share an 8 to 10 sentence snippet of your writing on Sunday. Your post needs to be live between 12:00 noon on Saturday 07/11/15 and 9:00 AM on Sunday 07/12/15. Visit other participants on the list and read, critique, and comment on their 8sunday posts.

Visit other Weekend Writing Warriors to see what they’re up to this weekend!

Spread the word, share the love, warriors. Twitter hashtag #8sunday.

17 comments

  1. I remember Midnight Kiss. It was the 1st vampire novel I ever read. Looking forward to reading it again.

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    1. I remember you telling me politely, "Those really aren't my kind of books." Hah!

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  2. Hi Nancy, welcome to WeWriWa :-) Pretty intense excerpt here, this is great! I have an idea of how pleased you are to be able to tweak things this time around; I'm working on draft 2 of my WIP and am finding all sorts of discrepancies that it feels great to fix. Congrats on getting your rights back!

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    1. Isn't there always just ONE more thing we could tweak . . .

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  3. Very romantic with a sort of gothic feel to it. Welcome to WeWriWa! :D

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  4. Welcome to wewriwa, Nancy. Congrats on "revamping" your vamp series :) I've been a huge fan of Max and CeeCee for years. They're like the paranormal version of Eve and Roarke.

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  5. It seems to me that some other woman, perhaps Lutze or McKinsey or...well, loved taking a bite out of this series! LOL! You made me love the genre all over again!

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    1. You mean that McKinsey chick it's dedicated too? LOL!

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  6. An intense excerpt, must be a very interesting challenge, updating the books. Best wishes!

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    1. It's even worse when it's a contemporary. All that techie stuff! History remains, well, history. But writing style hopefully improves with age.

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  7. Welcome to wewriwa, Nancy. We're so glad to have you!

    Incredibly smooth writing. I liked that last line. What a zinger!

    I'm glad you're getting to reissue your books. What a tough thing--to have been so far ahead of the curve with your original release.

    The changes in preferred style and writing rules... wow is all I can say. I review a lot of Indie books, a lot of new writers. And I still quite often encounter POV shifts mid-scene. It never bothers me unless it's done in a way that leaves me confused. I've talked to a lot of average Joe-readers, and the common consensus is the same. As long as the reader understands. Most readers want real passion, and want to connect with the characters, and they want a story. Non-writing readers are far less concerned with things like POV, grammar, punctuation etc. All of us are in the same boat. We only recognize that something is a "mistake" up to the level we've been taught it's a mistake.

    But, as in your case, when you're dealing with a publisher who has particular needs for how things are done, it leaves little choice. :-)

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    1. Thanks for the welcome, Teresa! I totally agree about POV. If it serves the scene and doesn't distract the reader, I'm all for it. I still get away with it sometimes (wink!).

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  8. Welcome to the club! :)

    He's a little scary, isn't he?

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    1. Thanks,Caitlin! I'm thrilled to be here. If he's scary (and sexy), my job is done!

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  9. Vampire novels in general aren't my "thing" (mostly don't have a thing--I just like what I like no matter what it is).... I liked this. I like how his status as something beyond human is shown. Nice piece, Nancy.

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