We've got an exciting new author visiting the blog today!   Erica Ridley writes Gothic romance and Eloisa James called her debut, Too Wicked To Kiss, "one of the wittiest returns to the gothic since Jane Austen made fun of Miss Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey."

But not only is her book getting great buzz, Erica's also super cool.  So without further adieu, please give Erica a warm RWR welcome!  Chance, make her a glittery hooha and someone round up a couple of crewmembers....

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TOO WICKED TO KISS has a psychic heroine. Would you like to have visions of the future?

Only if the future could be changed. If not, I'd rather not know bad things were imminent, (nor have good surprises be ruined.) Unfortunately for Evangeline, she has very little control over what she sees, and no way to stop the visions from coming. Since they're brought about by any skin-to-skin contact, she's spent her entire life quite literally out of touch from other people... no matter how big a crowd she might be in.

The hero isn't Mr. Sociable himself, either. Right?

Right, although Gavin has physically sequestered himself for emotional reasons (he's been shunned from Society for the alleged murder of his parents) whereas Evangeline is emotionally isolated for physical reasons (her cursed visions.) The situation forces them to reach out. Their interaction breaks the loneliness, helping each of them to grow and change as a person while also falling in love.

Tell us about Blackberry Manor. Why set the story in such a scary place?

I remember reading My Sweet Audrina by VC Andrews as a teen, and being struck by the heroine's struggle to make sense of her environment. She was constantly disoriented as to passage of time by a house where every clock told a different hour and every calendar a different date. I liked the idea that there *was* no safe haven. In Too Wicked To Kiss, Evangeline not only has to worry about which of the houseguests is a murderer, but also learns to fear Blackberry Manor itself, for very good reason.

Are Gothic-style stories what you prefer to read?

I love to read just about everything! Historical (particularly Regency-set) is my number one favorite romance genre, but my bookshelves are also crammed with everything from paranormal to romantic comedies to romantic suspense. There's plenty of (non-romance) genre fiction competing for shelf space, too. Whenever I find a new-to-me author I really like, I'm infamous for heading straight to the bookstore and loading up on the author's entire backlist!

For example?

The first Julia Quinn book I bought was the third or fourth installment in the Bridgerton series. I immediately went back to the store and cleaned them out of her older titles, including the previous non-Bridgerton books. Another I hit mid-series was Kay Hooper with her Special Crimes Unit. *Love* those books, and got my hands on everything she wrote, even from before her romantic suspense days. I've got an entire bookshelf filled with to-be-read books... who knows how many more authors will be sending me on a return trip to the bookstore!

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HIS TOUCH HOLDS HER CAPTIVE...

From the ravens circling its spires to the gargoyles adorning its roof, Blackberry Manor looms ominously over its rambling grounds. And behind its doors, amid the flickering shadows and secret passageways, danger lies in wait.

TO HIS EVERY DARK DESIRE...

Evangeline Pemberton has been invited to a party at the sprawling estate of reclusive Gavin Lioncroft, who is rumored to have murdered his parents. Initially, Gavin's towering presence and brusque manner instill fear in Evangeline...until his rakish features and seductive attentions profoundly arouse her. But when a guest is murdered, Evangeline is torn. Could the man to whom she is so powerfully drawn, also be a ruthless killer?

TOO WICKED TO KISS

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How about you? When you read a new-to-you book you really enjoy, do you seek out that author's other titles? Or do you only a small number of books on a single "keeper shelf"?

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Get to know Erica at:

Author Website: http://www.ericaridley.com

Book Bonus Features: http://www.2wicked2kiss.com

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/EricaRidleyFans

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/EricaRidley

Music Choice: “One Feeling” Dommin. CD: Love is Gone (2010)

Fantastical CD. Manda loves to tell people that we saw them in concert last June and I had a chance to speak to the lead singer. Instead of fawning over him, Manda says that I strolled right up to him, double fisted my hands in his t-shirt, pulled him close and blew her mind away. When I pulled away from him, Manda turns to me and says, “What did you say to him?”

And I merely shrugged my shoulders and said, “I told him I wanted more music and he needed to get on that ASAP.”

***

I sat on the dock, lily pads dotted the edge of the pond, frogs chirped and the wind rustled through the overgrown cattails. I brushed my hair away from my eyes and unfolded my legs out from under me. The water cold on the bottom of my feet and I wiggled my toes. Gentle ripples waved from my feet and fanned out until they faded back into the calm water. I was all alone. Alone with my thoughts, alone with my fear of the unknown. The bottom of the pond was a dark and solitude place and something I’d never conquer unless I tackled it head first.



My heart thumped in fear, adrenaline rushed through my veins as I stood up and peeled off my shirt. I threw the shirt onto the bank and my jeans followed. The wind caressed my skin and called for me to get closer to the water. I tiptoed, mesmerized by the calm, and watched the reflection of clouds float by me. Sunlight dimmed on the water and I came to the edge of the dock. My toes flexed over the rough wood and dug in as if they could hold me back from what was inevitable.



I took a deep breath and held it as I worked up enough courage to face my fear. I breathed out slowly and I threw myself into the air. The water was cold as it rushed over me and I gasped as I dipped below the surface. I shot to the surface and coughed and sputtered and floundered. The sound of my heart roared in my head, my lungs hurt from lack of oxygen and I looked up to the sky one last time. The sun peeked through the clouds and haloed around me. I closed my eyes and stopped fighting. The dark embraced me.

***

I’ve been on vacation. In case you didn’t notice. During vacation, I usually try to write, stretch my wings creatively and just chill out. This vacation was different. I didn’t write at all. Didn’t pull out my laptop once. Fielded no calls from the office. My life was blissfully work stress free and silent. Before I left for vacation, I found myself sitting in the quiet peaceful room with a psychic massage therapist at the request of my BFF. Apparently, I am too wound up to enjoy relaxing properly. Now, I am a very private person.  Most people who know me know that without a doubt I don’t want anyone to know what I’m hiding, what I’m thinking or what I’m doing. Going to a psychic massage therapist doesn’t really mesh well with my need to hide in plain sight.

You can just gather from my meeting with her that she’s pretty freaking accurate. Then I turn around and the first day of vacation a tarot card reader throws down an accurate read of my past and my current status. I’m kinda pissed that I’m losing my ability to hide. If you can just tell someone your full name (sans the middle because no one gets that kind of power over me- people who use middle names own souls in my fcked up little fictional world), year you were born and occupation (which we all know I answer vaguely) and they can throw down a read that you have a hard time lying about and are still thinking about two weeks later, warrants some respect.  I blame this on the psychic massage therapy breaking my wall and I didn’t have time to properly rebuild it before the tarot card reader threw down with me. It’s like she knew exactly where I was going to be and lured me in.

So, for the remainder of my vacation I was left with a few thoughts brewing in the back of my brain. Change is coming, the type of change I’ve been looking for and striving for seven years. I’m left with forcing my writing because creatively I’m stunted due to my lack of change so I have to reflect and take a step back. And last but not least, my life is looking to be turned upside down. I like change and I thrive when it comes to living on the fly. It comes from years and years of biding my time.

Relaxing is not something I do easily. I’m too wound for sound, always moving and always doing. Pausing to reflect and change course on something I’ve set my mind to is always too difficult for me. I’d rather scratch it all and start over. Clean slate with no marks and no scuffs and no issues to address. Walk away before it gets ugly- that’s my motto. Diana has caused me to take a step back and think about what I really want out of my writing. I spent a lot of time in the pool, on my back, staring up at the sky while I thought about in theory what writing means to me and my mental state. Where I want my characters to go and how to grow. But the goal was to not put anything on paper. Think, reflect, relax, enjoy and learn.

After two weeks, I can’t say that I’m any further along in my self-examination of my writing psyche.

Sabbaticals, hiatuses from writing- Do you think they are a good idea? Any writers you can think of that have taken years off between books only to come back stronger than they were before? What is your favorite relaxation technique?

I have abysmal taste. Ask my gay ex-boyfriend and his neighbor. They will tell you stories of my horrible, godawful taste in men, shoes, clothing, and drinks.

1.) English Bonnet movies. Masterpiece Theatre is my God. North & South; Pride & Prejudice; every version of Persuasion. Lately I've been mad about Cranford and Return to Cranford. I've been dying to get ahold of the Larkrise shows. I cannot get enough of small town England with big drama over the molehills.

2.) Country music. I'm an unabashed country music fan. And not just a modern country music fan--I love the old stuff. Like Hank William, Sr, old stuff. Long Black Veil and Green Green Grass of Home makes me cry every time I hear them; and I always laugh when I hear Saginaw, Michigan. You don't get better love songs than from a bunch of country crooners.

3.) 80s Big Hair Bands. Okay, I suppose there are some folks who can give country crooners a run for their money in love songs.

4.) The Dukes of Hazzard. Two words: Bo Duke. Two more words: Waylon Jennings. To this day, hearing the opening riff to "Good Old Boys" stops me in my tracks like a person who has been hypnotized to cluck like a chicken every time she hears the word "blue." (I don't cluck, but I am in a fog for the duration of the song.)

5.) Levi's jeans. I never feel sexier than in a pair of Levi's jeans. Not sure why because I'm sure a better cut jean is out there somewhere, but I'll never know because I think my ass looks sexiest in Levi's.

6.) Daisies. They're my favorite flower. I loathe carnations because I think they are the Flower of Death. Roses are nice, but they're kinda uptown. Daisies are the flower for a Dukes of Hazzard, country music, Levi's wearing lover.

7.) Pepsi. I can tell the difference between Coke and Pepsi, and Pepsi is superior. I believe Heaven must have soda fountains with nothing but Pepsi because God is clearly of the New Generation.

8.) Scrawny rather than brawny. I prefer my men more lanky than too muscular. Dwayne Johnson is definitely a good looking man, but the slightly weedy ones are my favorites. Especially if they're wearing Levi's and come around begging for cookies.

9.) Regency rather than Medieval. I love historicals, but I typically prefer the Regency period--even with its influx of dukes--than a knight in shining armor. Regency tends to lend itself to more rompy, humorous fiction, which is what I prefer. It's hard to laugh when your castle is about to be stolen from you.

10.) Jack Sparrow trumps Edward Cullen. Seriously, no contest.

So there you go. Some of these you may agree with; some of these you may horribly disagree; and some of these you may never have heard of at all. Whatever. The thing is we're all allowed our own list of likes and dislikes, right? This is America. We're of an age. We don't have to please anyone but ourselves at this point, right?

And we've all lived long enough to realize that if you troll about on the internet long enough, you can find a club that would probably have all the same interests as you. I'm pretty sure I could find a handful of people who liked the same things I liked. I could probably find a larger group who liked about half of what I liked. I could find a really, really large group who prefer Jack to Edward.

I know Bo'sun prefers brawny men. More power to her. That leaves more scrawny little intellectuals for me. Sin prefers angry, ANGRY music; and would be apt to ask, "Brad WHO? Oh I don't care. He probably sings something [BLEEP]." Clearly we don't have to like everything together.

I spent Friday in Barnes & Noble, touching all the books in the rows and rows of fiction. I'm sure it was the tip of the iceberg of what is available in fiction, and yet there seemed to be something for everyone. There was historical fiction set in the Revolutionary War; and contemporary fiction chick-lit where one girl goes to Italy to get over a broken heart. There was science-fiction which I skipped over entirely and couldn't tell you anything about; and there were rows and rows of the types of historicals I love to read. A lot of them in the Regency period. I'm sure a lot of them featuring dukes. There was historicals about Queen Elizabeth and Henry the VIII; novels about Joan of Kent and novels about Charles II. World War II novels. Housewives in the 1950s. Oh, and let's not forget the Navy Seals, Special Ops, or FBI novels.

I'm sure if you turned all of us loose in Barnes and Noble, we'd all walk out with something different and varied to our tastes. And all those authors are depending on that. They're depending that we all have different tastes and some of us will buy their novels. The only thing these novels really had in common was that each of these authors were passionate enough about their subject to write and revise a book about it.

A variation of Abraham Lincoln's famous line goes something like: "You can please some of the people all of the time; and you can please all of the people some of the time; but you can never please all of the people all of the time." So really you should just please yourself, and shoot for one and two. There's room in Barnes & Noble for you.

What are some of your preferences that your friends don't understand? What do you wish there was more of in fiction? And are you writing it? How is your writing going this week? (Mine is very minimal with the birthday stuff that stretched out far longer than my birthday. I'll try to have something more writing related next week!)

 



You ever have that feeling that you might have bitten off more than you could chew? I know, it’s a well-known saying, but I think it can also be used to illustrate the writer’s dilemma.

I’m creating worlds, as I’ve mentioned before…(blogs are by definition supposed to be about personal experience, right? I worry sometimes that I’m being a big egocentric, always writing ‘me’ blogs…)

OK, for the sake or being different, let me talk about some other writer. Some other…unknown writer. She starts a story…tra la, la, la, la. Things are going along swimmingly. Great story, fun characters, nice plot… La, la, la. La. L…a.

Ooops. Ran out of plot at 65,000 words. Uh, this is supposed to be a big book. Hmmm. Well, this isn’t so much too big a bite as not really enough to satisfy. (What do they call that on the Food Network or Bravo’s Top Chef? Some French word that is supposed to mean one bite. Scar a bouche? (A prize for whoever knows this word!) Or for those of us uncultured…a snack.)

The market is tough for a manuscript this…uh, short. (Unless the eventual folderol known as the Harlequin Mess ever gets straightened out. Harrumph.)

OK. So, this writer says to herself, “Chance…” Uh, I mean, “Self! You need to do something to fatten this puppy up. It’s a good story, it’s a fun story. The characters are cool. Let’s get going!”

Self re-opens the document and begins to work on her 65k. Decides that isn’t really the ending…it was too quick. Too easy. She throws in more angst, more drama, another killing, kidnapping, oooh! Yeah, I’ll add a bigger villain! I mean, she adds a bigger villain! An über villain! Not just a threat to the heroine, but a threat to the WORLD!

On a roll! Really moving now! Yes! Toss in this plot line, this secondary couple! This… Wow. This has gotten a bit…large. From a snack to a buffet table.

Now, I like a buffet. I mean, she likes a buffet. And the market is better for a more fully developed manuscript. What market there is at present.

The rewrite begins, because this buffet needs a theme, a sense of organization. The entrees need to be near the end of the line, the deserts at the end, the salad at the beginning… (And I’m off on another metaphor! Damn!)

The gist of this blog is about starting projects that grow out of control. (Like this blog.) I do watch those cooking shows and time and again, it’s the chef that starts out too complicated that gets booted off. Or, as the picture illustrates, you start off thinking you can tackle this and then…wow, that is a big ship! And we’re small pirates.

I feel this way in general about writing at least once a month. That I’ve started something that is way too big for me. Then I get over that. But the Work In Progress will loom up with a similar theme… I’ve started something that is way too big for me. I get over that. Editing? I’ve started something…

You get the picture.

Everyone has these feelings. Every time we start an endeavor that seems overwhelming in the attention it needs. I’ve been guilty, many times in my life, of starting something with the best of intentions and then sucking at the follow through. Sometimes it works out anyway, despite my own unique way of running-away. (My house, for example…it’s still going up in value, even in this market… I live ½ from the Monterey Bay. I could let the walls fall down and it’s still going to be worth moolah.) (No, I’m not letting the walls fall in, but the paint is bad, the outside is two-toned, the yard is a jungle (and not in a pretty way…) … we redid the kitchen, never cook…. Blah, blah, blah.) Best of intentions, rotten follow through. (If I did the follow thru, the value would really climb! Whoop!)

Other endeavors I’ve managed to run away from? Making jewelry. I liked forging, soldering, sawing, filing… Casting. What was it I didn’t follow through with? Well, I really sucked at polishing. And pretty much sucked at marketing. But the big downfall was polishing. The buffing, the compounds, the patience to make something shiny instead of just…sorta shiny. Me? Sucked. Me? Don’t make jewelry anymore.

Singing. I like to sing. I have a good voice. I took classes when I moved away from my beloved, afore-mentioned, voice instructor. But…no follow-through. Didn’t look for someone who would like a voice to go with that guitar, that piano, that mandolin. Didn’t reach out, find venues for open mics…look for people who might need a voice to go with that… Uh huh. Me. Rotten follow through. I sing in the car now, that’s about it.

Now, I’m writing, and working so blessedly hard at not sucking with follow through. I’m learning how to polish a MS. I’m learning how to talk to editors/agents…write those awkward letters… “Remember me? You requested a partial from… Have you had a chance…”

Sigh. I think I suck at it, but I’m doing it. I sent some stuff out way too early…but I’m not going to just pull it. I love A Caribbean Spell, and I’ll push it until I find someone willing to work with me on making it sparkly. (Thanks fer the feeback, Q!) And I work to make it better periodically. And I work very hard at making sure the next manuscript I put out there is closer to perfect.

I constantly fight the feelin’ that I have bitten off more than I can chew. That I have a tiger by a tail. That this ship has too much sail… (I love metaphors!)

So, your turn! You feel often like you’ve over-reached yourself? Do you see a pattern in your life of being a bit…overly ambitious? True or not? (Because in truth, we are all brilliant and sparkle like the stars we are.) You know where your weaknesses lie? Am I so over the map I’ve lost you? (That’s OK, I get lost, too.) You ever read something where you can tell the author really overdid it with that buffet? You juggling too many chainsaws? (Can I fit in another metaphor?)

 

The undead monkey screeches, swipes his grubby paws through the icing on the cake, and darts off. Chance keeps the drinks coming, and keeps all the pirates loaded.

Cap'n Hellie stumbles up to the front, and Sin helps her stand on a whiskey barrel. "Attention crew! No one, and I mean no one, was supposed to know!"

Hal leans over to Marn: "How much has she had to drink?"

Marn: "Not that much. What's Chancey putting in these drinks?"

Cap'n Hellie totters on the Whiskey barrel, but regains her footing with the help of one of the cabin boys. "Thank you, dear. If you stick around, I'll thank you properly."

The cabin boy pinched her butt as he walked away.

Ter raised her glass: 'Now this is turning into a party!"

"Noooo!" Cap'n wailed. "No one was supposed to know!"

Sin and Chance, at the bar, looked at each other and burst out laughing. "Right, secrets on a pirate ship. Does she think she's commanding a crew who actually listens to her?"

"Apparently not!" Hellie sat down on the barrel to avoid to avoid tottering again and re-adjusted her birthday tiara.  "I thought I'd fooled you all last week with saying I was taking time off for no special reason."

Ter refilled her glass and whispered to Sin, "Right, like that was going to actually work."

"But the point," Marn said, "Is that now we get to have a party! Where'd the cake go?"

"I think the monkey ate it," Hal said.

Santa came rushing up from the galley, J hot on her heels. "I saved the cake! I saved the cake!"

J held up the undead monkey by his scrawny neck. "And I caught the little bastard." Icing coated his face while he squeaked away.

"Okay!" Hal said. "Now it's a freakin party!"

Happy birthday to Hellie! Who wants to party with us today? Chance, what are you putting in those drinks? Santa, this cake is delicious!  Who put these decorations--they're awesome! So Hellie, what did you decide to do with your time off? Johnny's at the bar. He seems sad waiting for you. He has a very special birthday present to give you!

(Sorry, no musical influences for the week. I’m not Sin. She’s off playing somewhere other than the ship, and I graciously took over for the day. Sorry. No angst. No music. No murder. Or thoughts of murder. Live with it.)

            2^nd Chance

 

On with the blog!

We were all newbies once. We all took the first step to a conference or a convention or an RWA meeting or a classroom at one time…stepped into that room and wondered if the big neon sign above us, shouting out TOTAL IGNORANT BOOB was working.

Admit it, we all have these signs.

I know how terrified I was at my first event. The Romantic Times Booklovers Conference in Pittsburgh, April of 2008. I was lucky. I’d signed up for the Aspiring Author workshop and one thing Judi McCoy does brilliantly is set up a bulletin board for everyone to join who takes her class. Months in advance.

So, we all had a chance to babble about our nerves, to address the questions about what we needed to bring to class a bazillion times, how to format our writing… OMG! What if we do it wrong???? We’ll be cast into no-more-chances hell and never see daylight again! Nooooooo!

Yeah, total chaos and lots of diving into the chocolate bins. Would have been much worse without the BB. As it was, because of that BB, I arrived to meet Jane in person. We’d already found common ground on the BB and started a friendship apart from that link.

Last year, Judi asked Jane and me (should that be Jane and I? These grammar things confuse me sometimes…) Anyway, she asked us to join her newbie board as a pair of experienced students who could help her, and them.(I’ve come to the conclusion this gives Judi more time to write and helps her save patience for the convention. Smart woman!)

We agreed. And we had a blast. Made friends with most of them, several we are still corresponding with. And several I lured to the Revenge. (Hi! Sabrina!) We were told by many of them how our joking back and forth set them at ease and made them look forward to not only everything they’d learn, but how much fun they’d have. And they weren’t worried about arriving at the con feeling terribly alone.

Jane and I both felt this was our opportunity to give back to the community. And to help out with making sure the newbies don’t feel as scared as we did, despite knowing each other when we arrived in Pittsburgh. (I mean, what if we’d really disliked each other on site? What then? It could have happened that way!)

We’re doing it again this year, another crop of newbies to encourage and work with. And Jane e-mails me, “Were we this freaked out?”

And I e-mail her back, “Yes! Of course we were!”

How quickly we forget! Granted, what freaked me out didn’t freak Jane out. And vice versa. But yes, we both freaked about different things.

In Orlando, it was fascinating to see how certain newbies prepared for the conference. Sabrina had a color coded notebook of all the panels, when, who…she was über organized! Willie had a pack to haul away books and I think she ended up with around 200 in that pack. (Not all freebies.) Kathy and Darelle, a niece and aunt, put together the most amazing costumes for the fairy ball! Damn, I wanted to steal that crackle glass globe atop her staff!

We’re looking forward to what this next group will surprise us with. Last year, we had goody bags for them, a total surprise for Judi, who cried at seeing her newest book included in the bags. A surprise Jane’s husband sprang for.

(The dog that inspired Judi to create her new dogwalker series passed away right before the first book made it to the bookstores. Bryan, Jane’s DH, is a big softie and wanted to contribute something to make Judi feel better. This box of books arrives at Jane’s house from an unknown benefactor and we didn’t know until months after the conference that they came from Bryan. Now, that’s romantic!)

We filled the bags with some snacks, chocolate, small notepads, pencils, snacks, pens, bookmarks I made printed with the most basic of the acronyms that had confused me in the beginning…just fun stuff. Oh, and buttons. And info about the Revenge!

And several of the newbies had visited Disneyworld before the con. Brought me a pirate flag pin and Jane got a TinkerBell mug. Sweet girls!

Even though Jane and I aren’t published, or agented, we feel it’s important to do what we can with what we know to help out the how ever we can. Jane, the insane one, is going to volunteer at the con this year. I might tag along, but nothing official. I hate being scheduled at these things…

So, you remember what it was like to be so brand new you didn’t know what HEA meant? (I do.) How did you feel the first time you walked into a conference, did it feel to you like everyone knew everything while you knew nothing? (I did!) Have you been to a conference yet? Worried, at all? (I admit, I still worry.) How do you give back or plan to give back to the writing community?

I’ve been spending a lot of time lately, thinking of things to do with my time off on Thursday and Friday. I took time off with no particular vacation hot spot in mind; just wanted to be free to do Hellion Happy Things. Incidentally refining the list of Hellion Happy Things has been quite entertaining for several evenings, as I prioritize what I really want to do.

Most of the list involves girl stuff. Hair cut, eyebrow grooming, hair dying, and a pedicure. And some wine drinking. Just basic: “I want to loll around all day, pretending I’m a New Jersey housewife.” Minus the tanning. (And no vajazzling, so don’t bother asking.) If you saw me right now, you’d realize why all these activities made my list. Spring is coming, by God. And before Spring gets here, I need to make a half effort to actually not frighten strangers with what I look like now. It’s bad. Kathy Bates from Misery bad.

My hair style’s grown out; my eyebrows are crazy; my toenails look boring; and I’ve got a general malaise where Winter is concerned that I’m hoping some laughter with girlfriends and a bottle of wine will cure. The problems are plain and obvious and they’re things I can fix. Or more honestly, my checkbook can fix.

Then as I was making my list, I had a mini-epiphany: when you leave things alone for three months, it’s a lot easier to see what needs to be fixed.

Consider a finished manuscript. Once I finished my first manuscript, all I saw were articles constantly harping to leave your manuscript alone for at least 6 weeks (better three months) before you do revisions. But no one ever wants to do that, do they? No. They want to do it now. They want to polish and polish and then send it out in the world (which of course I did) for everyone to love it.  And which of course nobody did. At the time, I was dejected by this global rejection, but now I can see the point.

I realize now a lot of our efforts to polish and polish newly finished manuscripts is like sending Joan Rivers New Jersey Housewives out to find husbands when they’ve spent the last month in a spa. They’re too tanned, too false, too plucked, and too alike. There is nothing natural anymore because they spent all their time looking in one of those mirrors that magnifies your pores by ten times. They fix the molehills instead of the mountains. They lose their inner sparkle. They’re husks of their real selves.

I beg you: learn from Joan Rivers. Don’t start cutting right away! Let your natural beauty rest and shine for a while, then carefully and prudently correct where correction is needed. And don’t overpluck. Do not turn your manuscript into a husk of its former glory because you can’t step away long enough to look at it objectively.

I realize a lot of us like to write cleanly, edit as we go—and I’m not trying to change that. That works for a lot of writers; and if it works, don’t tinker with it. (Bull Durham: don’t fuck with a winning streak. I get that.) But once you’ve written your first clean draft; once you’ve finally gotten to the end—let the damned thing sit the Winter in a drawer before you run it through its final polish. It’s a lot easier to see the obvious when you do.

Have you ever overplucked one of your manuscripts? How do you keep yourself from editing too soon? How do you feel about eyebrows? What things do you like to do to get ready for Spring and chase away the blues of a long Winter? And if you had a day off to do whatever you wanted, what would you do? (You don’t get extra brownie points if you virtuously say: “I’d write all day.” I won’t believe you.)
P.S. SPECIAL SHOUT OUT TO WACKIE JACKIE, WHO IS CELEBRATING HER BIRTHDAY TODAY! DRINK UP A CELEBRATORY DRINK FOR MY DEAR FRIEND, JACK!