Cat-Hunting (and other fine sports)

There is a stray kitten living in my neighborhood.  I know this, because the day before the garbage man come, when the dumpster outside my apartment is bulging with bags, so that the plastic top won’t close properly, this tiny little black and white cat, maybe three months old, appears.  She rummages through the trash looking for victuals, and hiding when people come.

It’s getting cold out.  I don’t want to think about this little cat shivering outside in winter.  I have been trying to draw her out.  But she and I speak very different languages.  I want to pick her up and take her inside, where I think it is safe.  She wants to hide under dumpsters, where she thinks it’s safe.

I went out to the dumpster, under which the cat crouches, armed with a delicious can of wet food, a plate, and a fork.  I set the plate on the ground, close to, but not under, the dumpster.  I took the fork and put a good-sized chunk of food on the plate.  Finally, I tapped the plate with the fork, and then sat back to wait, about a foot and a half away.

The smell of fresh food is almost overwhelming to a cat–but there was a scary, scary person sitting there.  She crept to the edge of the dumpster.  Then she dashed out and started bolting food like a maniac.  When she was almost done, I took the fork, got another piece of food, and slowly, slowly reached out and set it on the plate.

Of course, as soon as my hand reached out, poof!  She was under the dumpster again.  I tapped the plate with the fork, and sit back.

Hm, she thinks.  More food.  She darted back to the plate and started eating canned fish.

Repeat the process–reach out, put food on the plate with a fork, sit back.  Pretty soon, she starts associating the sound of the tap on the fork with the signal that I’m leaning back, so it’s safe for her to come out.  Most importantly, I’m translating from my language into hers:  It is good for you when I reach out.

I didn’t manage to get the cat inside last night.  But at the point when we’d gone through three cans of wet food, I’d managed to move the dish to inches from my feet.  I’d stopped using the fork, and was instead lifting the food with my hands.  And at the very end, I stopped, fingers above the plate.  She came close, sniffed my fingers–and then licked them.  There was a brief moment while we looked in each other’s eyes–and then she realized how close she was, and off she went.

Victory will be mine.

Squee again!

The good news keeps on coming!  I’m so excited that Beverley Kendall (website here to be created, soon, I’m sure) has just sold her first two books to Kensington.  She will be right there with me in a Fall of 2009 release.

Yay, Bev!

Those of you who know Bev know that she’s nice, sweet, and an extremely hard worker.  Those of you who’ve read her writing know that her book (which I think will be called “A Lady’s Compromise”) is going to be truly awesome.  I can’t wait to buy it.

It’s great to know that Bev is the latest–but not the last–of the FanLitters to publish her books.  The real question is . . . . who’s next?

Politics and the Blogging Author

It is the political season, and in some sense, it feels very strange to let that time go by without comment on this blog.  That is because–I have to admit it–I am a politics junky.  I like keeping abreast with what’s happening (although I don’t have a TV–it’s all newspapers and online youtube clips, which these days encompasses everything).  I think about policy.  I care about the result of this election.

It somehow, though, seems almost . . . wrong . . . to blog about it as an author.

Why?  It’s what a friend of mine calls “jurisdictional boundaries”–big words that basically mean, if I am wearing my Author Hat, I shouldn’t surprise you all by putting on a big Politics Hat.  You didn’t ask for it.  You don’t care what I think.  If you want politics, you’ll open your OpEd page.  At best, you want to read my books–I hope you want to read my books.  So as an author, politics are not my bailiwick.

Likewise, you shouldn’t care whether your doctor votes Democrat or Republican, as long as she’s a good doctor.  You shouldn’t care if your doctor supports raising the social security age, nor should you switch physicians because you discover that she just doesn’t get what all the fuss is about Harry Potter.  None of that matters to the fine art of doctoring.

But there are small pieces of overlap.  For instance, I would want to know what my doctor thought about the quality of local water.  And, truthfully, no matter how little a writer says about politics, her books inevitably betray at least some of the things that are nearest and dearest to her heart.  So do you disclose it?  Do you admit that it’s been done that way on purpose?  It’s never intended as a lecture, but when an author chooses a “happily ever after,” the way she makes her characters happy often shows what she thinks people need.

Likewise, while I never plan to make this blog political, and especially not overtly so, is it horrible to think about becoming a supporter of my favored person on Facebook?

How much is too much?  I’d love to hear thoughts on this.

How Not to Sell a Book

Most people sell because they write a great book, write an awesome query, and then land an agent and an editor. Now, I won’t say anything about the book (at least not now), but I sold because I can’t write queries.

This is the story of how that happened.

After literally months of struggling with a query letter while I polished my manuscript, I was ready to give up. Then Sherry Thomas announced on her blog that she was going to give away a query critique. I saw that, said, “I need that!” and entered.

Lo and behold, my name was drawn from a hat (a hat of random number generation, actually), and Sherry asked me to send her my query. I did. She was very polite—“Gee,” she said. “I can hear your voice here. Now, um, maybe we should work on mentioning the conflict. Because what you have mentioned doesn’t seem to be quite enough.”

She asked me a series of questions. I shot back rambling nonsensical answers. She very kindly pointed out that my answers didn’t add up to a hill of beans, and asked some follow-up questions. I rambled more. She asked more follow-up questions. Her follow up questions continued to be polite and kind, but started to get a certain edge to them. An edge like, “Wait, when did he see her naked?” and “Why didn’t you mention that his heir knew her for years?”

Finally, she gave up on getting me to describe my book and told me to send her the opening scenes. I did.
“I really like this,” she said.

Did I mention that she was being extremely patient with me? I took this Not Seriously at all.

“No,” she said, “I really like this. Are you planning to query my agent? I’ll tell her to keep an eye out for your pages.”

Planning to query Sherry’s agent? I was planning to pitch Kristin at Chicago North‘s Spring Fling conference. And oh, I desperately lusted after Sherry’s agent. The instant I had found out she was going to be at that conference, I had signed up for it—even though I lived 1000 miles away at the time. (Admittedly, my fiancé lives in Chicago—but he was just an added benefit.)

Fast forward a few days. It was Saturday. I had gotten two hours of sleep the night before, as my flight had been delayed six hours and then cancelled. I’d practiced my pitch a little bit, but I wasn’t particularly excited. I walked into my pitch appointment, full of neither vim nor vigor. Kristin looked at my name, said, “Oh, my client Sherry told me about you. Don’t worry—I’m going to request the full.”

What went through my mind was something like this: No! You can’t do that! I’m not done with revisions! My pitch went out of my head. So did all coherent thought. I peered at her and tried to figure out if my top choice for an agent really had just said that I didn’t have to pitch her. She told me how to submit the full, handed me her card, asked some questions about my job. Small talk. I didn’t really do very well at it. Then I left.

Five minutes after doing so, I realized I hadn’t told her one thing about my book. Not one word! Not that it mattered; I wasn’t done with everything I needed to do. There followed five mostly sleepless nights, after which I sent the full to Kristin and collapsed, assuming I’d hear from her much later. I didn’t query anyone else at first, because I figured Kristin had the full. When she rejected me, she might give me helpful feedback. After about a week, I decided I was being silly and I couldn’t wait the month or two it would take to get a response, so I bit the bullet and sent out a few queries.

The next day, my phone rang. The conversation went something like this:

Woman with pleasant and chipper voice: Hi. Is this Courtney?
Me: Yes…?
Woman: Well, this is Kristin Nelson, and I’m calling to say I love your book and want to represent you.
Me: <Dead silence.>
Kristin: Is this not a good time to talk?
Me: You read it already? Shouldn’t it take you months for that?
Kristin: Oh, was I supposed to take longer? I can call back tomorrow.
Me (suspiciously): Are you sure you’re really you?
Kristin: . . .
Me: Because if you’re not, it’s okay.
Kristin: Right. We’ll talk tomorrow. In the meantime, I’ll send you my agency agreement.
Me: Right. Yeah. Okay. This never happened. La la la.
Kristin: Talk to you then.
Me: Sure, fantasy Kristin. Whatever you say. Let’s meet on the moon.

Eventually I figured out she was really Kristin and really offering to represent me. Naturally, I jumped at the chance. She sent over some suggestions for how to improve my book—smart, insightful suggestions that really took the book up a level. And then she sent out my book to editors.

Days after we’d gone on submission–before I’d even really run through all the possible rejections that I could possibly get–I got another phone call.

Kristin: So, I have offers on PROOF BY SEDUCTION.
Me: What do you mean, offers?
Kristin: Editors want to buy it.
Me: Editors? But that is a plural.
Kristin: Yes.
Me: Hm. How odd. What does all this signify?
Kristin: It means you are going to be published. But first, there will be an auction.
Me: . . . . Does not compute.

By this time, Kristin was inured to my inability to process good news. So she told me not to share my strange fantasy that editors wanted to buy my book until after the auction, and instead dragged me with her to parties at conference and introduced me to a staggering number of people who shook my hand and talked to me in a way that seemed to indicate that they had read my book. And yet they were not mocking me or throwing things!

By the time the auction started, I thought I had my disbelief well in hand. People wanted to buy my book—this was a Good Thing. And I was going to be a Good and Rational Author. Really. Truly. I would take everything in stride. I would ignore the nightmares in which the high bid for my book was $3.29. I would put everything in nice little columns, and balance the pros and cons. And I would keep my fingers crossed, just a little bit.

But when Kristin told me the terms HQN offered, I don’t even remember what I said. I think I offered the extremely noncommittal, “Okay. Sounds good.”

I hung up and stared at the wall.

And then, for the first time in this entire chain of improbable events–one that I never could make myself believe, at any stage of the process–I sat down and wept. Because you know what? It was real.

* * *

So there. I don’t advise shooting for that particular path for anyone. If you want to know how to sell a book, though, I will try to give you my best advice now.

Ready for it?

Surround yourself with awesome people.

No, really. That’s it. Because I would never have gotten to this point without the many, many others around me who offered help, criticism, support, and praise.

First and foremost, Tessa Dare and Amy Baldwin. I can’t describe what these two women have done for me. They read every scene I wrote, sometimes more times than you can imagine. They gave me snark and feedback and support. They pushed me when I needed to be pushed, hugged me when I needed a hug, and put up with me when I did not deserve it. They inspired me with their own writing and kicked my butt when I needed it (which is about 80% of the time). I love you guys!

I am also lucky to be part of an extended critique network. I’ve gotten comments and reads on my writing over the last two years from innumerable people, who have all pushed me and helped me understand what I can do to improve: Lacey Kaye, Amy Atwell, Erica Ridley, Darcy Burke, Jackie Barbosa, Lindsey Faber, Elyssa Papa, Maggie Robinson, Manda Collins, Lenora Bell, Terri Osborn, Sara Lindsey, Diana Chung, and Janga. I have tried to make this list comprehensive, but I fear I may have left someone off. If so, I apologize profusely–it’s not because I don’t appreciate you, but because I am extremely forgetful.

I’ve also gotten great feedback and comments from contest judges, who I can’t name because I don’t know them all. Thanks to all of you for letting me see my book with a fresh set of eyes.

I mention Anna Campbell separately. Last year, I won a critique from her on Brenda Novak’s Diabetes Auction. The advice she gave me was spot-on–a lot of support and praise, but a frank assessment of what I was doing wrong. “You need to fix your pacing and your scene setting and the emotion on the page,” she admonished me (although not in those words). “And these are all part of one related problem. Once you figure that out, you will sell.” It took me months and months to figure out what she meant, but when I did, I knew what she meant. And look, Anna–you were right!

Thanks to the entire FanLit community, too numerous to even dare to mention, for support and help and for voting for my chapters. Special kisses to Ervin A, for late-night fabric-of-the-universe-bending fun. Thanks especially to the Chocolate Mafia–we rocked!–and VaNo and the Vauxhall Vixens, for ongoing support and love. You guys are the best! The 2008 Golden Heart Finalists, collectively known as the Pixies, pushed me to query, and offered support and pixie dust at all levels of this journey.

Thanks to the FanLit authors, who read my finaling chapters and gave me such wonderful encouragement. I don’t think I would have had the courage to write with the goal of publication without your comments. Julia Quinn, Eloisa James, Victoria Alexander, Teresa Medeiros, and Cathy Maxwell, I adore you all. If you weren’t all already autobuys because of the quality of your work, you made a fan for life with your sweet comments on the first fiction writing I had done in years.

Obviously, I have to thank Sherry Thomas. She’s tried to disclaim responsibility in subsequent e-mail conversation, but this story starts firmly with the moment of surprise when I saw my name listed on her blog as the winner of the query critique. She came up with a damned awesome query–and it’s also her fault that I never had to rely on that query in order to sell. Beyond that, she was already pimping my book at Nationals. Her encouragement means a lot to me, because she writes absolutely incredible novels herself–she is so obviously the Next Big Thing in historicals. If you have not yet purchased a copy of Delicious, whatever are you waiting for?

Finally, my agent, Kristin Nelson. If you read her blog, you’ll know that she’s smart, competent, efficient, and relentlessly nice. You’ll also know that she knows how to sell books. But what you can’t tell from her Publisher’s Marketplace listing is what an incredible agent she is–an all-round star. Yes, she sold my book. But she also really worked to make sure that the house was a good fit for me. She brought me around to meet what felt like hundreds of editors at Nationals, so that I would know who I clicked with. She was really absolutely phenomenal behind the scenes, and showed that she is interested in my long-term career, not in just inking the deal. She is the epitome of a perfect agent.

I have hated trying to come up with this list because I just know I will leave someone off. So if you are not on this list, rest assured it is because I’m forgetful. Nudge me, and I’ll put you on.

The great thing about being part of this community is that I know that of the unpublished friends I have, others will soon come on board. I can’t wait to celebrate when they do!

First sale!

Puppy pictures will follow soon–but I wanted to announce here that my awesome agent, Kristin Nelson, has just finished my sale to HQN at auction. PROOF BY SEDUCTION will be released in Fall of 2009, and the second book–still working on that one–will follow shortly.

I will have a longer post–with all the many attributions that I must make, because this book owes a huge amount to many amazing people–but I thought I would start with this.

UPDATE–I’m on publisher’s marketplace!

FICTION: WOMEN’S/ROMANCE

Golden Heart Nominee for Breath of Honor Courtney Milan’s PROOF BY SEDUCTION, about a rigidly logical marquis who uses the scientific method to save his heir from the clutches of a fraudulent fortune teller, only to fall for her and discover that the one hypothesis not susceptible to proof is love, to Ann Leslie Tuttle at HQN, in a good deal, at auction, in a two-book deal, by Kristin Nelson at Nelson Literary Agency (World).

Tuesday!

Right now, the only thing I can think about is next Tuesday at 11 AM central. For years and years–since I was barely eight years old–I have dreamed of getting a dog. My very own doggy–not one shared by brothers and sisters, but MY dog. But I have also tried to be generally responsible. I didn’t want to get a dog in college–I had roommates. And I was always so busy in grad schools, and I lived in places that didn’t allow animals, and then I worked jobs that required me to spend billions of hours away from home. . . . Needless to say, it was all just a little disappointing, and I was dogless.

But, lo and behold. I finished my job, and now I can get my heart’s desire: a puppy. I have been talking about this dog endlessly. I talked about this dog so much that my incredible critique partners threw me a surprise puppy shower at Nationals–and many of the people who visit this blog came.

Yesterday, I drove down to visit the litter. The little dogs are all adorable. At this age, they aren’t much bigger than large hamsters, but they are still loving and wonderful. They mobbed me en masse once they figured out that I brought treats.

And Tuesday at 11 AM, I pick up my dog. Later that day, or maybe Wednesday, I’ll post pictures. I promise not to be an annoying dog owner, who can’t talk anything but puppy. But for the first few days, I’ll probably annoy the pants off of everyone I meet.

Delicious Release

Whether you are traveling to Nationals or staying at home, there is something you should do today.

Yes, you.

Go to your store.  Go to Amazon.  Go anywhere that sells awesome books, and buy one of the best historicals available.  That would be, for those of you who don’t know yet, Sherry Thomas’s incredible Delicious.  I was lucky enough to win an ARC, and I avoided everything else for several blissful hours to devour Sherry’s sophomore debut.  Private Arrangements was awesome, but I have no vocabulary for how good Delicious is.  It’s hot, emotional, funny, and it made me very, very hungry.  I loved Stuart–a true alpha male, in every excellent sense of the word and none of the stupid, bumbling ones–and Verity with a burning passion.  Seriously–buy a copy for the plane ride to Dallas.  You won’t regret this one.  Except after you finish it and curl into a little ball, hitting yourself over your head for your own inadequacy.

I am going to go face out the copies of Delicious in the airport bookstore; you are going to buy this book and read it.

Movie Logline Pitch

As conference rears its mighty head in the not-too-distant future (days?!  When did it become mere days away?), loops and blogs have gone haywire as people practice pitches.  There are the short-paragraph pitches, designed to capture the conflict in the book and boil it down to its essence.  There are single sentence pitches.  And then there’s the movie pitch.

Apparently, this works like this:  someone says, “It’s a cross between NORTH BY NORTHWEST and STEEL MAGNOLIAS.”  Everyone sits around and nods sagely, understanding precisely what the book is about.  Apparently, this makes a lot of sense to them.

Confession time:  I write historicals because my knowledge of pop culture is pea-sized.  I see movies–on occasion.  In fact (she says proudly) in the last two years, I have seen five movies, which is about as many movies as I saw in the first ten years of my life.  My pop culture knowledge is increasing at an exponential rate!  (Unfortunately, pop culture is increasing at an exponential rate, too, and its exponent is bigger.)  None of the movies I have seen are like my book.  So my movie lexicon is a little skimpy, to say the least.  And even those movies that I have seen, I can’t quite figure out how to cram into a pitch.  I imagine that if I tried it, it would come out like this.

Person:  Tell me about your book.

Me:  It’s kind of like, WHEN HARRY MET SALLY.  Except without Harry.  Or Sally.

Person: Uh.  So what’s left?

Me:  Meeting?

SO.  Moving along, then.  This looks to be a fruitless endeavor for me, but that’s no reason you should stop!  Tell me what movies your book is like!  If I have seen both movies, you will win!

What will you win, you ask?  Glory!  Heaps and heaps of glory!  Also, potentially something else that I am too lazy (and too busy packing) to think of now.

My Workshop!

I’ve been meaning to flog my workshop–uh, I mean, tell you how much you really want to go to my workshop at the Beaumonde/Hearts through History conference on July 30th.

It’s entitled Women, Property, and Personhood (not the title that’s showing up on the Conference List), and it’s a short look at the legal development of property rights in England (and only England, sorry, Scotland has its own courts of equity and I’ve never researched anything from them), with a particular look at how they pertain to women’s property rights and personhood. As this is a writer’s conference, the focus is on plots rather than particulars of the law.

You are probably thinking something like this: “Oh great. I would rather be bludgeoned to death with a baby seal then attend, at 9:45 in the morning no less, a workshop that delves into legal details from three centuries ago. Well, look at it this way: This workshop is 55 minutes long. The subject matter could fill a small room chock full of microfiche. If I tried to convey a great amount of legal detail, (a) I would run out of time before I hit 1400 A.D., (b) you would all fall asleep, and (c) there would be no guarantees I would get to material that would be useful to you.

So what I’m doing, instead of conveying vast amounts of factual detail, is giving a very broad overview of how people thought about property throughout history. I’ll explain how these give rise to a number of rules, and I’ll hand out a common checklist of “ways to figure out if you may be making a legal error.” The last half of the workshop will be hands on–we will examine wills and devises from actual romance novels, and I’ll show you how to use my checklist to figure out whether they can (or can’t) hold up, and if they can’t hold up, I’ll explain ways that the author could have achieved the exact same plot points.

In short, it’s designed to be useful for writers, to facilitate your plots (rather than to pull them to pieces), and to be more fun than you ever imagined law could be. Which, believe it or not, is pretty darned fun!

So come, and win various and sundry prizes, such as CDs containing scans of complete legal treatises (some of which are not available on Google Books), and never-seen-before-dare-you-to-wear-them buttons promoting the coolest, legally-accuratest Regency-set trilogy that 2009 will see!