RWA Conference

I’m still immersed in my book, but I just wanted to give you all a brief heads up: RWA has finally posted panel information for the 2009 Conference Workshops, and I’m in it!

Here’s the blurb:

It’s Not the Hottest Genre, So How Do Debut Historical Romance Authors Get Six-Figure Deals? (PUBLISHING)
Speakers: Helen Breitwieser, Courtney Milan, Kristin Nelson, Sherry Thomas, Tracy Anne Warren, and Tessa Dare
Two agents and their debut historical romance clients, who were initially bought for six figures, discuss the how and the why behind these big deals.

There are a lot of other exciting workshops that I can see on the list, too.

Book II

An update on the status of Book II, which has been called “Ned’s Book” the whole time I’ve been writing it.  The title is tentatively TRIAL BY DESIRE (and since it looks like they are keeping the title for my first book, PROOF BY SEDUCTION, they just might keep this one too!).

This book had given me conniptions in the writing, but I am finally in the homestretch–the point where I slowly, but methodically, plug holes until my head hurts and then I have to take a break and go write a cease and desist letter.  (I joke, I joke!  Mostly.)

I will post more about this book when my editor okays it.  Right now I am afraid to jinx myself.

BUT–excitement abounds! It is April, and https://www.courtneymilan.com/ is apparently pink!

Dear Author: Stop violating our intellectual property!

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Ms. Jane Litte
Dear Author Literary Agency
[address redacted]

Ms. Jane Litte:

I am writing on behalf of my clients, Tessa Dare and Samhain Publishing.  As you know, Tessa Dare is the registered owner of, among others, the Werestag™ and Weredeer™ trademarks (hereinafter referred to collectively as the “wereruminant marks”), having used both those marks extensively in commerce in connection with her upcoming release of THE LEGEND OF THE WERESTAG.  Samhain Publishing has acquired an exclusive license to deal in the protected wereruminant marks from Tessa Dare, and thus has a material interest.
It has come to our attention that you have recently sold a book written by Ann Aguirre, (hereinafter “Aguirre”) detailing the escapades of several supposed “weredeer” to Harlequin.

Further, both you and Aguirre were aware of Tessa Dare’s claim to the wereruminant marks, and were made aware of my efforts to protect Tessa Dare’s marks, as can be shown through multiple twitter postings.  For reference purposes only, I point you to Aguirre’s twitter posting of approximately 10 AM EST:

ann_aguirre Thank goodness my secret is out. Hooray for were-deer! And I have @courtneymilan to thank for all my success.

As you neither asked for nor received permission to use the wereruminant marks, nor to make or distribute works in commerce that rely upon the source-designating wereruminant marks, you have willfully infringed Tessa Dare’s protected intellectual property.

I demand you immediately cease the use of the protected term “weredeer,” renege on your publishing deal, and refer to the beasts in question by their appropriate generic name: “four-legged beasts having four-chambered stomachs, with or without prongs, capable of shifting into one or more forms upon application of sufficient quantities of moonlight.”

If we have not received an affirmative response from you by 5 PM today indicating that you have fully complied with these requirements, we shall be forced to take further action against you, including the filing of a lawsuit, a request for an immediate injunction to avoid the irreparable harm that the book of Aguirre’s hart will wreak on Tessa Dare’s wereruminant marks, and a request for punitive damages.  (We are aware that punitive damages are not normally available, even in instances of willful trademark infringement, but those are just because you’re a mean girl.)

Sincerely,
Courtney Milan
Attorney at Law

P.S. You note we have not cced Harlequin on this.  I do feel a few tiny twinges of ethics, despite being a lawyer, and feel it is probably not a good idea to send a cease and desist letter to my own publishing house.

P.P.S. In compliance with your submissions requirements, this letter to arrive simultaneously via courier on 110 pound Crane paper, folded into an actual crane.  Like this one:  http://papercranetheater.com/images/peace-crane.gif

cc: Ann Aguirre

ETA: For those of you who read this much after the fact…. check the date out again.  And April Fools!

Fear and the Oxford English Dictionary

So, Book #2 has a bit of a running theme here and there with breath, and the word breathtaking, and riffs thereon.  It’s enough of a theme that it becomes material to a crucial scene in the book, a scene that I could not imagine rewriting in any way to be anything other than it was.

Imagine my wince of pain when the infinitely wise Franzeca Drouin pointed out that the OED does not list “breath-taking” until Mark Twain uses it in . . . 1880.  Ow.

Or, to use more historically inaccurate language: Fuck.(*)

A frantic search ensued for synonyms or near synonyms.  As the search drew on, I would have settled for things that might have looked like synonyms if viewed in extremely dim lighting.  And I was tempted.  I was sorely tempted.  Historical accuracy be damned; how many readers were going to notice that the word “breathtaking” is not period for 1844?  But down that road lies a million different historical inaccuracies, and once you start down that dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny and turn your books into historicals breathtaking (ha ha) in their wallpaperishness.

Finally, I checked google books and found this.

Whew–breath-taking, figurative sense, 1831.  There are a few more in the 1830s to 1840 range.  And I am content, sitting at 1844.  This just goes to show that the OED is not omniscient.  Almost, but not quite.

*heaves giant sigh of relief*

—

* Fuck, of course, has been in use as a noun and a verb for ages–“I’m eager for a fuck” is period even though it sounds ridiculously modern to my ear, as is “he fucked her.”  But fuck as a general expression of dismay is not.  Alas.

It’s Announcement Eve….

One year ago minus one day, calls for the Golden Heart started going out.  I was lucky enough to get one.

On the evening before the call went out, I was nervous.  The Golden Heart seemed so incredibly important.  It would be something to set me apart from all the millions of other queriers out there.  It would be a stamp of approval in a way.  I thought that finaling in the Golden Heart would be a huge boost in selling–it would get me agent attention, and editors would perk up and want to request my manuscript.

I did final in the Golden Heart.  I did get an agent.  And I did sell. . . .

Except, y’know.  The book that finaled in the Golden Heart was not the book that was ready to go on the market.  The book that was ready to go was the one that missed a nomination by a hair.  So–no luck there.  And while I had a lot of really awesome luck in the course of making my first sale, the Golden Heart final had approximately zero effect on that.

In fact, after I had signed with Kristin, I got a call from the Golden Heart coordinator saying that one of the contest judges had requested my full manuscript.  She wanted my needs-revisions-oh-my-God-what-am-I-going-to-do-about-this manuscript, that happened to final in the Golden Heart.  As RWA had a copy of the full manuscript, they were just going to send it along to the editor judge, no matter what I said–and I didn’t want an editor to get a copy of the manuscript and then say, “Holy cow, this Courtney Milan woman really sucks!  I’m never reading anything by her again!”

That would not have been good for Kristin’s submission plan.  So I called her, and we had a very befuddling conversation in which I tried to explain why a manuscript she had never read was going to an editor I couldn’t name.

The point where we made a breakthrough went something like this:

Kristin:  I still don’t understand why a Golden Heart judge is requesting your manuscript.
Courtney: Um, because she liked my entry?
Kristin: *silence*
Courtney: And because I am a Golden Heart finalist?
Kristin:  You’re a Golden Heart finalist?  That’s exciting!  Were you planning on telling me?
Courtney:  Oh.  Um.  Heh.  Did I not mention that?

So, yes.  My own agent didn’t know I was a Golden Heart finalist when she signed me.  That tells you precisely how much the Golden Heart final mattered.

BUT.  And this is a big but.  I am still enormously happy to have been a Golden Heart finalist–for a reason I never considered when I entered the contest: The community.  The 2008 Golden Heart finalists set up a loop, tracked down all the finalists we could find (and we had to use all our collective googlefu, let me tell you).  The loop has been unflinchingly supportive, warm, and caring.  We met in person at Nationals.  25% of the 2008 Golden Heart finalists have sold, and I expect that percentage to rise with passing years.  Some had already sold when the announcements went out; others made sales as the year went on.  Three of us announced sales within minutes of each other, on August 13th (I was one of the August 13 babies!).

I’ve read books and pages for my other finalists; they’ve read pages for me.  (In fact, I was out visiting a handful of them the weekend before my novella was due, and I had people staying up until 1 in the morning to give it a read through.)  When I whined about how badly my second book sucked, I got a few choice kicks in the rear that I desperately needed to make me buckle down and make it work.

So just remember this.  The best value of the Golden Heart is not the credential, although that is nice.  It’s the community.

A question

Blogging will be light in March.

But here’s a question.

Why is it, in historicals, that all carpets are Aubusson, all vases are Sevres (or, more precisely, “precious Sevres”), and all gowns are made by Worth?

I mean, I realize these are excellent manufacturers, but not all purses have to be Prada and some stiletto heels are made by manufacturers other than Mahnolo Blahnik.  The only thing more cliched than a Sevres vase is a precious Sevres vase, and the adjective is only applied to make the reader wince when it is tossed against a wall in a fit of pique–presumably, because the man doing the tossing has been trying to get a hold of a vase by another manufacturer and is furious at the stranglehold monopoly that Sevres keeps in Regency times.  Damn those vase cartels!

I want options!

All righty then–it’s back to my broken Grecian urn–which is my non-Sevres vase.

FAQ Contest: winner!

Okay, it’s time to announce the winner of the FAQ contest! In fact, I should have done so this morning, but one thing led to another led to another, and the end is that it’s 10 PM and I still haven’t gotten around to it, mostly because I also said I would post the answers to my FAQ section and I have not gotten around to doing that, either. [ADDED NEXT MORNING: And I fell asleep doing this, so . . . not so much on the timing.]

All righty then–time to announce winners? Yes.  Time to post answers to FAQ section? No.  That I put off for another day.

There were a lot of really great questions.  And apparently, I didn’t say that I would pick the winner by lottery, but that the person who asked the best question would win.  Well, you know the statement–there are no stupid questions, right?  Well, there are no stupid questions, but there are questions I don’t want to answer.  And then there are questions that I am going to really enjoy answering.  So the question I had the most fun answering was this one:

Q. If cavemen and astronauts got into a fight, who would win? Note: No weapons.

A. Astronauts. I was originally going to say cavemen, because they are scrappy, but cavemen basically all suffer from malnutrition and astronauts train physically, are in top physical form, and must pass mental and physical exams that put them in the top percentage of today’s population. The cavemen don’t stand a chance.

And it looks like C.J. Redwine [ETA: OOPS!  Not that CJ!] asked this question — so, congratulations, CJ!

You are the winner of an entirely completely thoroughly double-plus wonderfully truly incredibly awesome fantastic very good prize!

The absolutely completely thoroughly double-plus wonderfully truly incredibly awesome fantastic very good prize, as you may recall, is a $15 gift certificate to a bookstore of your choice and a super-secret something, and now I have to reveal what the super-secret something is!  Which brings us to the other reason I haven’t written this post yet–I do not know what the super-secret something is!   In fact, in a fit of too-clever-for-my-own-good, I decided that the super-secret something would get better every time I mentioned the vitally absolutely completely thoroughly double-plus wonderfully truly incredibly awesome fantastic very good prize, which I didn’t do all that often because I’ve been busier than usual, and now I have to go through and figure out what is happening with the super-secret something.  And I am supposed to be clever about it, because hey, otherwise it will be boring, plus it will take up two pages.

Ha ha!  Solution: I will wait until 10 PM after a busy day, and then everything will seem funny!

So, without further ado:

The Super Secret Something

prize = paperclip

good prize = piece of three-hole punched paper

very good prize = ball-point pen

fantastic very good prize = sharpie

awesome very good prize = autographed sharpie

incredibly awesome very good prize = pad of paper

truly incredibly awesome very good prize = empty 3-ring binder

wonderfully truly incredibly awesome very good prize = post-it flags

double-plus wonderfully truly incredibly awesome very good prize = copy of George Orwell’s 1984 and The Road to Wigan Pier (which moves us out of the office supplies, and into the creative arts!)

completely thoroughly double-plus wonderfully truly incredibly awesome very good prize = CD of Mahler’s 6th

absolutely completely thoroughly double-plus wonderfully truly incredibly awesome very good prize = DVD of the Princess Bride

vitally absolutely completely thoroughly double-plus wonderfully truly incredibly awesome very good prize = … okay, I fell asleep last night trying to figure this out.  I was initially gung ho for chocolate, because who doesn’t like chocolate?  But then I realized that my very rhetorical question has a very nonrhetorical answer: C.J. Redwine doesn’t like chocolate.  Darn.  [ETA: Except CJ Redwine didn’t win, and I am just dumb.]

So I tried to find something else that would work.  And then I got all confuzzled and decided that this stupid idea of deciding super-secret things–things so secret that even I do not know what they are–after the fact is just the dumbest thing ever, especially when I am on a deadline, and so I hereby announce that the super-secret something is a gift certificate for $20 to wherever CJ picks for the first gift certificate.

—

A note on valuation: It is hard to assign “value” to these things, as I said the prize would become “better” with each iteration.  For instance, how many things can be said to be “better” than a DVD of the Princess Bride?  I can’t think of much, honestly.  But then, I figure just about everyone already has a DVD of the Princess Bride–including me, and I don’t even have a TV–and so the real question is: how many things can be said to be better than a second DVD of the Princess Bride?  Which, you must admit, is a totally different question altogether.

I am never doing a contest with a super-secret something again.

All FAQs to be posted tomorrow (or, y’know, by the end of the week seeing as how I’ve been so good at all of that so far).  If I don’t answer a question, it’s because my answer would be really stupid and I have nothing clever, smart, funny, to say in response.

FAQs again

It is the fifth day of the FAQ-contest–ask me a question, and you will have a chance to win a $15 gift certificate, and a super-secret something, which together make up a thoroughly double-plus wonderfully truly incredibly awesome fantastic very good prize.

Q. Why do you write romance fiction?

A. Because that is predominantly what I read.  99% of what I read is genre fiction–and of that 80% is romance, and the rest is science fiction and fantasy.  I write the kind of books I love to read.  And the truth is, even in science fiction and fantasy books, my favorites have always shared fundamental elements with romance: love stories and strong character arcs.  I write what I love.

Q. What are your top five books that have influenced you?

A. Ooh.  This is a really hard one, because I don’t see how I could possibly pick just five books.  But I will give it a go.  Keep in mind, these aren’t necessarily the books that I love the most–I love too many books, in too many ways, to ever narrow those down to a mere five books.  But these are five books that have had a significant impact on my life.

Mary Jo Putney’s Thunder and Roses.  This is the first “modern” romance that I read, and it was so good and so powerful–and so intelligent and emotional and sexy–that it set me on a glom of not just Mary Jo Putney’s work, but of all historical romance.  Thanks, MJP.

Barry Hughart’s Bridge of Birds: A Novel of an Ancient China That Never Was.  This is quite simply the best damned book that I’ve ever read.  It’s technically a “fantasy” novel, but it is like no other fantasy I have ever read in my entire life.  It’s kind of a romance, kind of a fairy-tale, kind of a comedy . . . .  but not in the way you would imagine.  This book is proof that if you write a book that is good enough, there will be a place for it on the shelves, period.

Lois McMaster Bujold’s A Civil Campaign.  A romance.  A comedy.  A piece of lovely science fiction.  It was the first book by Bujold that I read–even though it is one of the last in the Miles Vorkosigan series.  It stands alone brilliantly; but once you’ve read all the other books, you can go back and read and reread, and every time you do, you’ll find another layer of the story unwinding around you.

Robin McKinley’s The Blue Sword.  A fantasy.  A romance.  A YA, with a kick-ass heroine who doesn’t need no stinkin’ man to save the world–but she’s rather happy she has one.  I read this when I was 13 and then reread and reread it and reread it.  And then I read several thousand books between the ages of 13-16 desperately seeking one that would be its equivalent.  I think I would have always been a reader, no matter what, but this one changed me from someone who reads because she’s filling time to someone who reads to fill a void.

Susan Elizabeth Phillips’s Ain’t She Sweet? I was late to Susan Elizabeth Phillips; in fact, she is a hit-or-miss author with me.  But when she hits, she hits it straight out of the park.  I read Natural Born Charmer and put the book down and said to myself, “If I ever manage to write a book that is as funny, as heart-felt, and has as incredible a character arc as this one, I will be able to die right then and there with a grin on my face.”

Q. What things in real life influence your writing style? Do you find yourself putting neighbors in as characters or anything like that?

A. I never use real people as characters.  I’m sure that certain people have influenced me–but the person my characters are most like is myself.  The rest, they get from an amalgam of observed human nature that I store up inside me.  But there are things that influence my writing in real ways.  I often find that the emotional heart of a book, for me, have a lot to do with my own emotional fears.  I can’t just decide, this book is going to be about blah blah, because if that’s not what I’m experiencing at the time, the book will lack a certain depth.  Of course, whatever I feel gets magnified in fiction.  When I lived apart from Mr. Milan for a year, there was a certain loneliness I felt that would not go away, and that crept into PROOF BY SEDUCTION.  In the book I’m writing now, I’ve found that my fears for my mother’s health are creeping out on the page–even though I never imagined that they would do so.  My characters are all fake–but their emotions are drawn from reality.

Q. Do you see yourself writing anything else beside historical?

A. Not right now.  I’ve just never had an idea for a contemporary story–and I don’t think that suspense/thrillers/dramas/mysteries are good fits for my writing voice.

Q. Did you splurge on anything when you got your advance?

A. My biggest expenditures when I got my advance were all boringly practical: I sprung for a receipt scanner, an automated back-up system, and a new printer.

This is the last entry before the winners are announced, so if you want to make sure you have a chance to get a completely thoroughly double-plus wonderfully truly incredibly awesome fantastic very good prize, ask me a question this weekend!  On Monday, I’ll announce the winner, the super-secret something, and I’ll put up an updated FAQ page–complete with the answers you’ve seen this week and some you haven’t.

Answers! Pleas for questions!

It is the fourth day of the FAQ-contest–ask me a question, and you will have a chance to win a $15 gift certificate, and a super-secret something, which together make up a double-plus wonderfully truly incredibly awesome fantastic very good prize.

It is also a day before two of my sisters come into town, which means I am trying to double down on writing so I can have the weekend free.  This means the blog is going to get somewhat neglected–ack!  In good news, I deleted 10,000 words this morning!  Um, yay again.  I think.  At this point, the words deleted on this project are 2x greater in number than the words that have made the cut . . . for now.

BUT–back to the FAQs:

Q. How do you pronounce your last name?

A. However I feel like it.  I started out pronouncing it MILE-in, but everyone seems to think that it should be mill-AN, like the Italian city, and since it is not my actual name, I figure you can pronounce it however you want, and the majority will rule.  mill-AN it is.

Q. Are you planning to quit your day job? Do you think your writing will interfere with your work?

A. No.  I started writing because there was a dearth of creativity in my daily work, and I needed a creative outlet–almost desperately.  If I did not write, I don’t doubt that I would find some other way to fill that creative void.  But the truth is I just adore hard-nosed analytical stuff, and I think if all I did was write, I would feel as unbalanced as I did when all I did was hard-nosed analysis.  I’ve found that when I take long vacations from all that intellectually rigorous stuff that I will invite analytical problems for me to solve–e.g., figuring out precisely the contours of a computer game.  I need both!  As for whether writing will interfere with my work–in the long term, no.  I actually think that keeping both these elements in my life has been very good for me intellectually and creatively, and the two forms of writing are very complementary.  On the day-to-day level . . . sometimes.  From time to time–if I have a tight deadline on either end–one job will sometimes suffer for the other.  But that short-term setback is more than made up for by the benefits I find from having a really balanced workload.

Q. How many words do you write a day, on a day-in, day-out basis?

A. Varies.  Somewhere between zero and (my max, ever) around 7,500.  I cannot do 7,500 words on command–that only happens when I hit a part that is truly on fire, and then I just can’t stop.  It usually burns me out for days afterwards, too.  My ideal pace–the one that doesn’t leave me feeling like I just want to die, but does stretch me a little bit–is about 1500 words a day, 5 days a week, with weekends for revision and clean up.

You’ll get more answers tomorrow–and of course, you should ask more questions!