Another New Thing

One problem I'm having with all the different social media platforms is remembering what I've posted where. I get annoyed with people who post the same thing everywhere, but then there are people who only follow on one platform, so it kind of needs to be posted everywhere. The trick is mixing it up so that the post fits that platform rather than just doing a one-size fits all. But then I need to remember to put the info everywhere.

Something I forgot to post here (I think):
In addition to the new book on December 13, I'll be releasing a free short story set in the Enchanted, Inc. universe. This one is about Sam the gargoyle on a case. I originally wrote it for the FenCon program book in 2009, and I've read it at a few conventions, but this is the first time it's been published beyond that. I'm including a short excerpt from Enchanted, Inc. in it, so it should serve two purposes. It's a fun little bonus for existing fans and maybe a free sample for people who haven't tried the series yet. Here's what the cover looks like:

I should have pre-order links for everything soon, so stay tuned.

The Damsel Under Stress Reread: Chapters 14-16

I didn't realize I'd gone so long without posting on the Damsel Under Stress commentary. I guess I got sidetracked by so many other things and never quite had the time to read and think.

But I picked the book up again this morning. In Chapter 14, we're still in the middle of the disastrous dinner date at the fancy restaurant, after Katie and Owen's planned simple night out got hijacked. Amid all the wacky hijinks, there is a plot clue hidden (and that's actually something that sets up the new book). It's funny, as I was rereading this, I was thinking back to my thought process in writing it, and it was all about how the idea of the perfect date isn't a one-size-fits-all thing. A super-fancy, celebrity-filled restaurant might be great for some people but miserable for others. The comparison that came to mind was the way they come up with these "dream" dates on shows like The Bachelor (I've never actually watched, but it's difficult to escape the imagery) that sound pretty painful to me. There's this ideal of what's supposed to be romantic, but if that's not the kind of person you are, it's not going to work. Then I got to the passage where Katie has the exact same thought.

That's where a lot of the Ethelinda stuff came from, the idea that a fairy godmother who wasn't keeping up with the times would come up with some crazy ideas of what was romantic. Then when that didn't work, she might look to popular culture for ideas, and that would be equally disastrous.

And then we're back to the plot, where Katie has to temporarily lose her magical immunity in order to see what's going on with the enemy's ad campaign. This is where the magical folks could use more "normal" people on their side, since all they have are either magical people or immunes. It's easier to make an immune normal than it would be to take away magical powers, so in order to see how Idris and his gang are hiding the ads, Katie has to step up. As we learned in the previous book, this also makes her vulnerable to magic.

We get a contrast between the "dream" date and the date that's truly ideal for Owen and Katie when they have dinner at his place while watching for one of the Spellworks ads on TV. It's just burgers and TV, but they get to talk about their childhoods and interests, and it feels comfortable and genuine.

Meanwhile, they're getting ready for a costumed New Year's Eve party. I recall going through a lot of different ideas for how a really wacky magical party would go, and I settled on costumes because that creates a lot of opportunity for intrigue. Still, it can be kind of a pain coming up with a costume at a non-traditional time of year for costumes. One company I used to work for once had a costume party for Christmas, and that was a challenge. I imagine it's less difficult in New York.

And Katie has come up with a way to fight an extremely ADD villain: distract him. I actually don't remember how that plays out, so I'm looking forward to reading on.

We end with a cliffhanger in which it looks like Ethelinda might be about to spill the beans to Katie's friends about her magical life. Stay tuned (or read ahead) to see what happens next!

Rereading Damsel Under Stress: Chapters 11-13

I suspect that doing the re-read and commentary of the earlier books in the Enchanted, Inc. series had something to do with sparking an idea for a new book, or else it just reminded me of how much fun these are to write. Working on it is almost like taking a vacation from my other writing.

So, we're at chapters 11-13 of Damsel Under Stress, where the Spellworks ad campaign is in full force, and they've realized that they've even opened a store. Yes, this is all a deliberate riff on Apple, but I should say that I'm a rather loyal Mac user. I have a MacPlus from 1990 in my closet (thinking of turning it either into a terrarium or a fish bowl), and I'm on my sixth Mac (probably soon to be a seventh, as the current MacBook is more than five years old, and that's getting into the danger zone). Mostly, all this came from the idea that the magic industry was like the computer industry, with spells being the software. At the time I came up with the idea for the series, I was working in high-tech public relations, so I'd dealt with software companies. These were the people I knew and the part of the business world I was most familiar with. When I was researching the first book, I read a few books about Silicon Valley and life inside Apple, the battle against IBM and Microsoft, etc. Since my "hero" company was the establishment, that meant the villain had to be "Apple." Plus, Phelan Idris isn't particularly imaginative, and he was deliberately and blatantly ripping off Apple because that's how he saw himself. I don't know if the "I'm a Mac, and I'm a PC" ads were yet running at the time I wrote this book, but that was the basic attitude behind the way Spellworks was set up.

In the planning for what to do about all this, I set up a couple of things. One was Katie volunteering to lose her immunity so they could have a "normal" person who was in on the secret. That's a progression of her character, after she spent much of the last book trying to get her immunity back. Now she's being pretty brave in offering to do it (and that sets up something that happens later). We also start getting the sense that Owen is letting his personal feelings get in the way. We've seen that he has the potential to be dangerous, and does it make him even more dangerous when he's more worried about someone he cares for than he is about the greater good?

Then we get to the dragons. This whole bit was inspired by the chapter header art from the first book, which showed a dragon twined around the chapter number. When I saw that, my first thought was, "You know all those urban legends about alligators in the New York sewer system? They're not alligators." I'd already written the second book before I saw the interior of the first book, so this book was my first chance to play with that. It was a nice fit for the incompetent and out-of-date fairy godmother subplot, since there are all those stories in which rescuing a maiden from a dragon was a surefire path to romance. Of course Ethelinda would set up something like that in her matchmaking efforts. Only, as Katie told her, dragons really aren't that romantic. Then again, it did lead to a cozy evening in at Owen's place, so maybe she was on to something …

And then Ethelinda intervenes yet again in a way that could be disastrous, or it might actually be helpful, when Katie and Owen end up getting their dinner plans hijacked so that they're sent off to a fancy restaurant -- where they just happen to see a celebration dinner between their enemies. I think this scene was largely inspired by reading restaurant reviews in the local newspaper. I'm not a super picky eater, but I'm also not a big gourmet foodie. I tend to read restaurant reviews with a sense of morbid fascination because most of the dishes they describe sound rather revolting and really just an excuse to throw together things that should never go together in the name of "innovation." In this scene, I created a restaurant that sounds like the kind of place you'd read about in a restaurant review. And then, because Idris is there, chaos ensues ...

New and Upcoming Stuff

In case you missed the big news on Friday, the book I've been talking about working on is a new Enchanted, Inc. book. I've been saying all along that although I was satisfied with the ending of book 7 as an ending to the series, I wasn't closing the door on it. If I got an idea, I'd write it. And then I got an idea. Since I'm halfway through with it, I'm pretty sure it's viable and will turn into a book. There's some stuff to work out before I can settle on a release date -- like getting booked with the copyeditor, seeing about audio and coordinating that production, etc.  Oh, and finishing writing it -- but I would guess that it will be out by the end of the year.

I did a bit of a social media experiment to see how the news propagated and where it got the most reaction, and it seems like Facebook is where I get the most response and readership. My Twitter followers seem to be more in the Rebel Mechanics camp and/or don't follow links to my blog. I'll have to do more thinking about strategy in social media and stuff like that, but probably after I finish this book and get convention season out of the way.

Here's a general list of what projects I have planned for the near future (and this list is subject to change based on lots of variables):
Right now -- Enchanted, Inc. book 8 (still no title, that usually comes later)
Next -- a totally new YA project that I just want to play with for a while and see if it's viable. It's burning a hole in my brain, so I need to do something with it, enough to see if it either forms into a book or if it needs more development
Then -- Rebel Mechanics book 3
Then -- I'm not sure. I'm planning a fourth Fairy Tale book, and I even have some brainstorming done on it. But that series is weirdly hard to write for me, very nebulous, so it may need more brewing time. I have an idea for a main plot and a few scenes have popped into my head, but the scenes and plot haven't yet clicked. Otherwise, I have this idea for a big romantic fantasy that's starting to demand attention and development. It's very different in structure than anything I've done before, and that means I can't quite tell if it's going to be a standalone or a series. I'd like to spend some time playing with it so I can see how it will shape up and if it needs more development or if it's ready to go.

And there's that TV Christmas movie script I wrote a few years ago -- I'm not sure how likely it is that I'd be able to sell it as a script. I wrote it more with Lifetime or ABC Family in mind, since they did a lot more fantasy/paranormal stories, but now most of the movies are on Hallmark, and I don't recall seeing anything with magical elements there in ages. I've thought of writing it out as a novella and getting it out as a seasonal thing, but I guess I'd need to do that quickly if I'm going to do it for this year. In my head, it would be quick and easy since it's already plotted and with the dialogue written, but reality might be different.

And yeah, this is all stuff I'd like to do this year. Which means I need to spend more time writing.

Halfway There!

I have reached the halfway point of the current book, but now I think I need to take some brainstorming time. I had a very vague outline starting out, but I've mostly been pantsing this book (writing by the seat of the pants rather than with a plan). Most of what's happened has been whatever struck me at the spur of the moment. I haven't planned the new characters who've popped up. I've just been going with it as it comes to me. But now I think I need to take some time to figure out exactly who these people are and what they want, and I need to look at what they're doing to get it.
When I'm on a roll with the writing, sometimes I resist stopping to think because that doesn't look like forward progress, and I've been so very excited about all the progress I've made. I have to remind myself that a day of thinking will lead to faster progress in the future rather than several days of frustration, staring at the screen, and then more extensive rewrites later. In this case, I think I have a character who's potentially fascinating because he doesn't fit expectations at all, but I need to dig a little deeper into him and how he works (he's a very nice villain -- good to the people around him, probably helps little old ladies across the street, but utterly ruthless when it comes to achieving his goals).

But since I am at the halfway point and it seems like the book is viable, I now feel safe in announcing what I'm working on:

It's a new Enchanted, Inc. book!

I've been saying all along that I was open to writing one if I got an idea, and then a couple of months ago I got an idea. It was easier than I expected to fall back into that voice and into Katie's world, and I'm having a lot of fun with it. No firm release date yet, since I'm not done with it and there are things to work out (like whether Audible wants it and we have to sync release date with them). I haven't even talked to my agent about it other than to tell her I was planning to do it when I got the idea. I would think that unless something horrible bogs down the process, it will be out by the end of the year.

And, yes, I know I buried the lead in not making this announcement the headline, but as I evaluate what to do with my blog, I thought this might be a fun test of how many people read it and how much they read it.

Rereading Damsel Under Stress: Chapters 8-10

It's Book Day Plus 2, and the new book seems to be pretty well-received. Whew! I'm always nervous about that. I work in a fairly isolated bubble, and then suddenly hundreds of people are reading something that was pretty personal to me up to that point.

But enough of the new book. Now, back to an old one, with chapters 8-10 of Damsel Under Stress.

We start with Katie and Owen arriving at his foster parents' house in his hometown. Before I wrote this book, I had a very particular image in mind of the kind of town I thought he was from, which was possibly informed by some small Connecticut towns I'd seen when I was on a business trip visiting a client, and the co-worker I was traveling with and I did a bit of sightseeing after the meetings ended (one of those occasions when we were assumed to be on a date when we went to dinner). When I visited New York to do my location research, I decided I needed to get out of the city and visit one of these towns. I got a map and the railway schedule and ended up picking a town called Irvington to visit, mostly because it looked small enough to fit what I had in mind, had a train station, and wouldn't be too long a train trip. Also, I live in Irving, Texas, so I felt like it was kind of a sister city (there's some debate as to whether Irving really is named after Washington Irving, but the Irving library has decided that it was and has run with it. Irvington is definitely named after him, as that's where his house is). For even more of an Irving connection, my mental location for Owen's house is near Irving Place in New York. So there's a definite Irving thing going on with a tribute to my hometown (I didn't grow up here, but I've lived here my entire adult life, which should count for something).

And boy, was I glad I made the site visit because it was nothing like what I imagined. It was possibly better for my story than what I had in mind, but my mental image was all wrong and needed to be corrected. I didn't describe too much, but I need to see what I'm writing about clearly. I'd pictured something more Colonial, but this town was very Victorian, kind of Dickensian. It was December, so they had the Christmas decorations out, and it had snowed the night before, so it was just perfect.

I struggled with how to write Owen's foster parents. That part of his backstory was some of the explanation for his shyness. For reasons that become apparent later in the series, they were worried about his power, so they were concerned with keeping him from getting too full of himself, and they may have overcorrected. The way Owen has talked about them, they sound very cold and intimidating, but once Katie seems them for herself, I wanted to show that there was a lot of love and concern underlying it all, that these were people given a very difficult task in very difficult circumstances and were doing the best they knew how to do. They may not have been totally right, and there may have been some pain caused, but he did turn out okay, so maybe they were right, in the long run.

For the melee at the post-church fellowship, I had some fun with taking a real situation and amping it up to about 13 on a scale of 1-10 by using magic. In just about any small town, if a local boy made good comes home and is still technically single (a new girlfriend doesn't count), the mothers of daughters will get really competitive to try to reel him in. It's just usually more polite than an all-out brawl, though what I've depicted is probably what's happening in people's minds. These things can also get pretty competitive in who baked what and whose is best (speaking as the reigning champion baker at my church, with the blue ribbon to prove it).

I will admit that the brownie cleaning the house at night is a bit of wishful thinking from folklore. I'd dearly love to wake up in the morning with a clean house.

When I was trying to figure out how Owen and Katie were going to get back to the city in an emergency, I used the technique of making a list of at least 20 things, and I tried all kinds of ideas. I thought borrowing the parents' car was probably the least interesting. I'd already used flying carpets. I considered making a pumpkin coach. I ended up coming back around to a car, but with crazy gargoyle drivers. I'm still not sure where that came from, though I guess the tag-team driving method is the ultimate backseat driver. Rocky and Rollo sprang fully formed into my brain, complete with names and their boastful chant. Their voices were utterly vivid to me.  I had so much fun writing their scenes.

Then we get to see why, exactly, people were a little nervous about Owen when we see him able to momentarily freeze time in Times Square. It's a show of raw power, and we get the idea that if this guy had gone bad, everyone would have been in a lot of trouble.

The Damsel Under Stress Reread -- Chapters 5-7

Back to the Damsel Under Stress reread with commentary … now on chapters 5-7

The scene in which Ethelinda and Katie go out to a restaurant was the one I used for readings when I was promoting this book. I even recorded it for a feature on the local newspaper's web site. There were a lot of characters to work with, which let me do voices and generally have fun. I didn't name the restaurant in the book because I have this curse in which any restaurant I name in a book will promptly go out of business, and this one is something of a landmark, so I didn't want to be responsible for killing it. I don't know if the curse applies to blog posts, but just to live dangerously, the restaurant I had in mind was Pete's Tavern, which is famous for being the place where O. Henry wrote "The Gift of the Magi." I went there when I was in New York to research this book, hoping the mojo might rub off. Actually, I've been there multiple times, since it was very close to the hotel where I used to stay when I visited New York (they've since put mini refrigerators and small microwaves in each room and declared them to be "extended stay" suites they only rent for at least a week at a time, so I can't stay there anymore for quick trips).

A few of Ethelinda's blunders during this meal were somewhat based on real-life bits of awkwardness I've either experienced or witnessed. There was the non-couple eating together on a business trip who got mistaken for a romantic couple, and that happened a lot when I was traveling on business. People seem to have these blinders or filters so that they assume that when they see a man and a woman together, they're a couple. There were so many times when I'd be at a trade show and having dinner with a client or colleague because we both happened to get off the show floor at the same time and wanted food or I'd be visiting a client with a colleague and we'd grab dinner together after our meeting wrapped up before we headed to the airport or our hotel, and the restaurant staff behaved like we were on a date. We weren't necessarily being all business and talking business, since when you're thrown together in that kind of proximity you tend to become friends, but there were certainly no signs of affection. It got really awkward when a waiter would treat us like we were having a romantic date. Then there was the proposal Ethelinda rigged that wasn't intended, which reflects those really uncomfortable times when a relationship is way out of sync -- one of you thinks you're just friends, the other is thinking things are inevitably building toward romance. So, yeah, I created a bunch of one-scene characters just to torture them emotionally for our entertainment.

We start to get a bit more backstory on Owen when Rod preps Katie for the Christmas visit. This all stems from when I was drafting the first book in the series. At that time, I really didn't know his backstory. I was just having fun with the idea of the really cute guy who was also painfully shy. A friend who was reading along as I wrote fell madly for Owen (as you do) and wanted to know more about him, especially how he came to be that shy. That was when my quiet, shy character suddenly got very chatty in my head, and I learned/figured out all about his background. I had it in mind from about midway through the first book and used that in writing the next book before I started giving more of it in this book. The full story behind that backstory finally hit in book 5.

I get to go on another anti-shopping rant when Katie has to find gifts for Owen's foster parents. Do you get the impression that I hate shopping for gifts? It's not that I don't like giving things to people. I guess I'm just something of a perfectionist about it, which makes it stressful. There are a few people who are easy to buy for -- I know them well enough to know their interests, they actually have interests, and they don't buy much for themselves so you don't have to worry about what they already have. But buying gifts for people you don't know well is sheer torture, especially when you think you're going to be judged by that gift.

Then there's Katie's undercover assignment, posing as an oil baron's daughter to infiltrate the business that was stolen from Philip -- only to learn that they're probably in league with the bad guys. I think I originally had more planned in this plot line, but the book got very long. I couldn't cut this scene because it sets up some stuff later that explains what's going on with Idris, but at the same time, the reason Katie and Philip are there gets brushed over.

Another part that got trimmed a lot was the day out with Owen. I'm afraid my research was showing, as I wanted to fit in all the fun details I got from visiting New York in December, and I wanted to convey the experience. I found it particularly interesting that the theme for the store windows that year all over the city seemed to be fairy tales. It was like they planned it for me! But I had to cut the scene that was about the magic behind the store windows. This is one of those tricky things as an author -- you need to keep the plot moving and not have scenes of people just having a day out together, but then there are also the Katie and Owen 'shippers who desperately want a scene of them just having a day out together. I believe I put at least one deleted scene from this part of the book on my web site, so the ones who just want to see the characters together can do so, but it doesn't drag down the book itself. All this culminates in the dramatic fall through the ice, which shouldn't be possible on that particular ice rink. Gee, do you think something funny is going on here?

The Damsel Under Stress Reread: Chapters 2-4

Getting back to my Damsel Under Stress reread with commentary after all the travel and home repair issues … Now with chapters two through four.

Katie jumps at the excuse of needing to find a Christmas gift for Owen as a reason to get away from her friends, and then she goes into a burst of paranoia about what would be appropriate to get him so soon into a relationship. This is based on a situation I faced when I started dating a guy right around Thanksgiving. Since we'd just met (it was a blind date that went well), I was wondering if we were even at a gift-giving stage, but then he mentioned wanting to get together so he could give me my present. I went into a panic of trying to figure out something to give him. As I mention in the book, with women you can give stuff like candles. There's not really a male equivalent. Most of the less expensive, less intimate gifts, like books, CDs or DVDs, require enough knowledge to know not only what the person would like but also what they already have -- and that's the tricky part, since if they want something, they tend to get it right away. Even buying things for male friends is a challenge. I'll have an idea for a brand-new DVD as a gift, and then hear how he bought it for himself the day it was released. I've run into similar problems with office gift exchanges. There are tons of potential generic gifts for women, but fewer for men. (Incidentally, his gift to me was what ended the relationship pretty quickly, because it was soooo not appropriate that early in the relationship and showed a complete disregard for my stated tastes and interests. I noticed the red flag, among other red flags, and ended things.)

Rod's makeover starts in this book. I guess that magically crazy semi-date with Katie was a wake-up call for him. He's starting to work on his real appearance instead of relying on illusion. I think some of this was inspired by the fan mail I got for him. I was a little surprised by how much readers liked him, and that made me consider humanizing him a lot more and making him less of a punchline.

Writing a real date for Katie and Owen was rather difficult, and I suppose that's appropriate, given how awkward the transition from friendship to romance can be. I was trying to capture that sense of nerves and shyness as they make that transition. Of course, it helps that they can't seem to have a normal date without some excitement, and after that excitement, things seem to settle more into a comfort zone.

I never seemed to let poor Katie settle into any one job for any length of time. In this book, off she was sent to work in Owen's lab, having to leave her spot as Merlin's assistant behind. Into the gap comes Kim, Katie's biggest rival as a magical immune. Actually, from Katie's point of view, Kim is just another coworker, but Kim sees Katie as a rival. That's somewhat based on an experience I had in my career, where I've had a few people whose jobs I had zero interest in who seemed to see me as a major rival and threat, and who jumped at multiple opportunities to undermine me. Writing these books and using all my work experiences was very cathartic for me. Incidentally, many years later, I made a friend named Kim who was very similar to the way I described book Kim -- physically, not in personality. It was a little weird meeting someone who looked like my character and had the same name.

I really like the bit about wanting a fairy godmother for work -- getting the killer suit and awesome presentation, but you have to get out of the office by five before the Armani suit turns into JCPenney separates and your laptop becomes an Etch-a-Sketch. But I'm not sure a career fairy godmother would have helped me much, as I wasn't really cut out for the career I had. I sure could use one now in my publishing career. Poof! Publicity!

Then I had to pick up on what happened to Philip -- why he was turned into a frog all those years ago. I sort of tied that off in an offhanded way in the fifth book, but I think that's still a dangling plot thread. There was just too much going on in this book to really deal with it.

Rereading Damsel Under Stress -- the Beginning

Now we're moving on in the reread with Damsel Under Stress. This was a challenging book in a lot of ways, and it remains probably my least popular in the series. It was because bookstore orders of this book (before it was even published) had dropped a lot from the previous book that the publisher decided it didn't want to continue the series beyond the books that were contracted. During the pre-publication process, the editor who'd initially bought the series left the publisher, so I ended up with a new editor in midstream. It was also really, really hard to write this book. Although I'd planned more books all along, in a way I felt like I'd closed out the story with Once Upon Stilettos. As a former romance novelist, it was really easy to write about a couple getting together. It was a lot more difficult to write about a couple that is kind of together and who gets along. There really wasn't a lot of romantic conflict left, unless it came from outside sources. I also had a plan in place to move the action to Texas for the next book, which would affect the romance, but it relied on something else having happened that I changed my mind about (it involved an undercover mission). Even the title was a challenge. This book still didn't have a title when I turned it in to the editor. We were joking about being all arty about it and not giving it a title at all. The people at the publisher couldn't think of anything. I finally had a brainstorm in the shower after the book had been through a round of editing. Meanwhile, it was difficult for me personally. I had a friend who'd been serving as beta reader for the first couple of books, reading each chapter as I wrote it and giving feedback (and spurring me to write the next chapter). At about the time I started writing this book, she was diagnosed with cancer. I was still fiddling with the opening and not ready to share what I'd written yet when she passed away (she was a lot sicker than she let anyone know). That made it really hard to write something I associated so much with that friend, because just the act of writing made me miss her. I was in a fog for much of the first draft, then when my agent gave me feedback and I looked at it again after a break, I wasn't even sure where some of it came from, and that meant a lot of it had to be totally rewritten. On the positive end of things, this book gave me an excuse to go to New York at Christmastime. It even obliged me by providing snow. I got to see the store windows, the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, and all the other stuff that's in all the movies.

So, it should be interesting to revisit this book about a decade after I turned in the finished version. I may have a very different perspective.

The fairy godmother was what I came up with to make things not be too easy for Owen and Katie. I've often joked about needing a fairy godmother, and how the one I got would probably end up being incompetent, knowing my luck. Having that thought yet again sparked the idea. What would happen if the fairy godmother had been coasting for centuries on the success she had with Cinderella and hadn't updated her tactics? Fairy tale romance is lovely in fairy tales, but using those exact same methods would be disastrous in the modern world. I'm not sure where the idea of her just throwing new outfits on top of the old one came from. It's possible it was somewhat inspired by the book Heidi, where instead of carrying luggage, she had to wear all her clothes at once (hmm, maybe a way around airline baggage restrictions? Though the TSA probably wouldn't be amused). That was an odd little detail that stuck with me when I was a child. I think it also plays into the idea of her never really updating herself -- she doesn't shed any of her old methods. By bringing in a fairy godmother, I also wanted to deal with the idea of fate and destiny. It seems in romance novels, if you're fated for someone, you probably hate him, at least at first, since it's not a very interesting story if you like someone and find out you're fated for each other, or if you find out you're fated for someone and decide you're okay with that. I was told my whole life when I wasn't very romantically successful that there was someone out there for me and he'd come along when the time was right. What would happen if you thought you'd found the right person and then suddenly that was when your fairy godmother showed up to help you out?

The other romantic monkey wrench is the fact that it's really difficult to date when you're busy saving the world against magical evil. I've often griped about the typical cop wife/girlfriend on TV shows, where she gets outraged that her significant other puts saving the city/world ahead of that dinner date they had scheduled. Katie's fighting the same fight as Owen, so she understands, but it's difficult to get things off the ground when he's always having to respond to the latest crisis.

I had to rewrite the scene of skating at Rockefeller Center after going there on my research trip (to watch, not skate) because in reality it's not laid out quite the way you'd expect from pictures and TV. The rink is pretty small, and there's stuff all around it. This is where I start to incorporate the subplot because I hadn't ever dealt with how poor Philip got turned into a frog.

And so the story begins ...

The Once Upon Stilettos Reread -- The End

Because I'm so close to the end and because it's my favorite part, I'm going to wrap up the Once Upon Stilettos reread with commentary today.

First, there's the date with Rod. In my original vision for this series, before I'd even settled on characters and a main plot, when it was just a concept, I had planned on there being a variety of love interests, with maybe the Mr. Right being a slow burn kind of thing on the back burner. In my wildest fantasies, I imagined raging Internet 'shipper wars over which guy Katie would end up with (though at that time, she didn't even have a name). That never happened, in part because it was so clearly Owen from the moment I started writing and in part because I don't think I have a big enough fan base to have factions, and there doesn't seem to be much in the way of Internet discussion about my books. Anyway, while things were being weird in this book, I figured it was a good time to at least touch on some of the possibilities and show the "what if" scenarios.

Normally, Katie wouldn't be interested in Rod, but with her immunity on the blink, she's fallen under his attraction spell, and he doesn't realize that she's affected. Meanwhile, there's also something working on him. The result is a perfect storm of awkwardness (and a good reason not to even try to date a friend you're not usually that attracted to).

And then we get to my favorite scene, the scene that was playing out in my head before I even started writing the book, where Katie ends up at Owen's house, and things are playing out according to her wildest dreams, with a truly dreamy first kiss -- followed by the realization that it was the shoes all along, that they were under an enchantment. That bit is one of my favorite things I've ever written. It's kind of an emotional sucker punch because up to that point, it's pretty swoonworthy, and then the rug is pulled out from under Katie.

By the way, I don't know if my red shoes are under that kind of spell because I've never actually worn them on a date (not that I've had that many dates since I bought them -- I kind of gave up on dating around then).

I also like the follow-up parts a lot -- Katie's embarrassment and awkwardness, and the way that led into her finally confessing her immunity loss to Owen. The kiss may have been magically induced, but there's real intimacy that comes in the aftermath.

I put in a lot of work of setting up the way Katie's immunity might have been compromised and why it took a while to work when the water in her building was drugged. You may recall the scenes of the roommates arguing over who forgot to buy bottled water and Katie just getting water out of the tap. There's also the way the shoes affected her -- she just admired them in a normal way at first, but Ari was present, and so the spell was put on them later when Katie bought them.

Then we have the final showdown at the company holiday party, followed by a real kiss. When I wrote this book, I wasn't sure I'd be able to continue the series, so I wanted to give some sense of resolution. I've sometimes regretted moving the relationship along so quickly since then because it didn't leave me very far to go from there. They were already together, so I had to either just accept the relationship as an established fact with no drama, or I had to find ways to separate them.

Sales of the series dropped significantly after this book, even though I think it had a strong ending that would have made people want another book. I guess people thought the series was over? I don't know. I know that the third book isn't exactly popular, but people would have had to read it to know they didn't like it, and it seems that a significant number of people who read this book didn't go on to the other books.

Next week I'll move on to the next book. It'll be interesting to get a fresh perspective on it now that a decade has passed. It was a difficult book to write, and the process of writing it was kind of a blur.

The Once Upon Stilettos Reread: Chapters Fourteen through Sixteen

It's time for more Once Upon Stilettos commentary, today with chapters 14, 15, and 16.

This is where Katie's lack of magical immunity starts to get more intense, and it plays into her impostor syndrome. She'd always felt a little out of place in a magical company, and now she's lost the one thing that gave her a reason to be there. In this section of the book, I tried to parallel incidents from the first book where she used her immunity to show how not having it was affecting her. First, we get the meeting where she's supposed to let them know if the other person is using magical tricks. She manages to get through it by relying on her people skills and common sense, which have actually been her best assets all along. I'd imagine that having magical powers might stunt someone's personal development. If you can get what you want with a wave of your hand, you don't need to build a lot of other skills, and that's why Katie's common sense sets her apart from other people at her company.

But she does want to get back to "normal," so she starts taking action by trying to look up her condition in one of Owen's books. The bit about her frustration at not finding the information she needed or finding way too much being like looking up the common cold in a medical journal is based on something I experienced once. My first job out of college was at a medical school, and the library was just downstairs from my office. I was working on a book, and it involved one of the characters getting knocked out. I knew that the way concussions and head injuries are treated in fiction isn't generally realistic, so I decided to go to the medical library after work one day to look it up in actual medical books. I never did find anything as straightforward as "here are the symptoms to look for and here's what to do about it." I couldn't even find anything on whether the advice to keep a person awake was on target or not. There was a lot of stuff on physiological changes and what to look for on scans, but nothing that was useful for someone who wasn't at a hospital. I've actually thought about teaming up with a doctor to write a "medicine for writers" book because even the one I've got isn't very useful and is about the treatment someone with that injury would get at a hospital. What I'm more likely to need is how someone's condition would progress until they got some kind of treatment, since it's no fun to injure a character and then call an ambulance right away. They're more likely to be trapped somewhere or in a time period before ambulances existed.

But I digress … The next part of the book, the big girls' night out (another parallel to the first book) required subtly showing the effects of the red shoes plus the loss of immunity in a way that I hoped wouldn't be screamingly obvious. Reading it now, more than a decade after I wrote it, I'm actually rather impressed at the way the tension built throughout the evening until Katie found herself face to face with Idris, and realized that he knew about her immunity.

Then for a contrast to the night out that was so not Katie's thing, there's the shopping trip with Owen. I did a fair amount of research on jewelry to come up with what she'd recommend for his foster mother, and then I had to rely on help from a friend in New York when I realized that the rare books portion of the Strand is in a different location, where I'd never been. An online friend went there to tell me how you get in and how it looks. She did a great job describing it because I went there myself while I was doing revisions on the book and didn't have to change anything based on what I saw.

When we find the camera in Owen's office, it's obvious that the book was written in 2004-2005 and set in 2005 because it's wired. WiFi and Bluetooth existed then, but weren't quite as common as they are now. I doubt anyone would plant a hard-wired spycam these days.

I recall not being quite sure I should have had Katie figure out who the spy was so early in the book, but I decided that the rest of the book could be about her finding evidence and trying to stop the spy, and if she hadn't figured it out by this point, she'd look pretty foolish. I like that she figured it out while her immunity was out, before that got fixed. It was important that she be able to do this as herself, with nothing to do with magic playing into it.

Up next is one of my favorite scenes I've ever written as we get closer to the end of the book.

The Once Upon Stilettos Reread: Chapters Eleven through Thirteen

Now that I'm back from my trip and done with copyedits, back to the Once Upon Stilettos reread, with chapters 11-13.

The loss of Katie's magical immunity is a pretty big deal, and it was interesting trying to imagine the full impact. Emotionally and psychologically, she feels like she's lost the thing that made her special. At the beginning of the first book, she was on the verge of giving up on New York because she didn't feel like she had what it took to make it. She was so ordinary that she didn't stand out in any way. Then she learned that magic existed and that she wasn't at all magical. That was a flip on the standard fantasy story that's about discovering that magic exists and that you can use it. It was a real blow to learn that she wasn't magical, but then she learned that her very ordinariness was at such a level that it counted as special, so she was valuable in her own way. That gave her a big confidence boost. She had something rare that she could contribute. And now, just as she's gotten used to that, she's lost it. That could mean losing her job, since she got her job by being immune. If she loses her job, she could lose some of her friends. She also worries that her friendship/whatever relationship she has with Owen might not exist if she weren't immune.

Then there's the physical danger and sense of vulnerability. She's been able to see past the magic to spot threats, and now it's like being blind. She knows there are things out there, but now she can't spot them. I can imagine that would be terrifying.

At least one review of this book criticized Katie for not telling anyone about the immunity right away, but I thought that made sense for her as a character. She's got a stubborn streak that makes her want to figure it out for herself (gee, I wonder where that character trait came from). But also, there are all those very good reasons to keep it to herself until she knows more because she has a lot to lose. She doesn't know how the company will react if she's no longer immune, and she doesn't want to be cut off from the magical world now that she's truly normal again.

Owen and Katie spend a lot of time in this book walking to and from the subway station, but you should have seen the first draft. I ended up cutting a lot of those scenes, or else I added more action to them. It was tricky because that was their main time of interacting, so that's when all their good conversations took place. At the same time, I didn't want this to be a book about commuting.

The secret Santa as team-building/mole investigation is something I got from my days in corporate America. Well, not the mole investigation (that I know of). There's always that social butterfly in the office who thinks it will be really fun to have to buy something for a random co-worker you don't know very well and to receive a gift from a random co-worker who doesn't know you very well. Like we all need more candles (which seems to be the generic secret Santa gift). It can kind of work in a really small office, though that also opens things up to having to live with the ugliness later if someone gets it wrong. There's always the overachiever who goes over the spending limit and the slacker who forgets to do anything and comes up with something like the coupon book for favors at a later date that they hastily make on their computer that morning (but just try to redeem them and see what happens). It's worst when the slacker is the Santa for the overachiever, who ends up feeling ripped off. So, yeah, there's a lot of potential there if you're trying to depict (or create) tension within a company.

Then we have the scene that all the Katie and Owen shippers were waiting for: Ethan breaking up with Katie (and clearing the way for the one true pairing). I've never actually been on a break-up date (that I knew of -- there was one that I later realized was meant as a big send-off, but he didn't actually break up with me while on the date), but I've known people it happened to. I'm more likely to have guys just disappear on me right when I thought the relationship was going well, but apparently for the guys who do actually break up with a woman in person, it's a thing to do so in a public place so they can avoid a big scene and possibly soften the blow. It's particularly painful for Katie at this time because she's already reeling from losing her immunity and therefore her sense of specialness, and now she's getting dumped for being too normal.

My agent loved the line about even the evil magical creatures knowing not to mess with a woman who's just been dumped.

It's funny, even though I wrote the book, I get a little teary-eyed on Katie's behalf during this scene.

The Once Upon Stilettos Reread -- Chapters Nine and Ten

I got up early this morning and am on target for a productive day, so before I go into a frenzy of packing, I leave you with more of the Once Upon Stilettos reread, with chapters nine and ten.

We start with the scene in Times Square in which Katie has just realized that her mom may be magically immune. I had way too much fun writing that. Times Square is actually my least-favorite spot in New York. It's too noisy, crowded, and flashy. But it's also very familiar because I've been to numerous conferences in hotels on or around Times Square, and the headquarters for the company I used to work for was on Times Square (in the same building where Good Morning America has their studio), so when I visited the New York office, that's where I was. The only good thing about that area, to me, is the fact that this is where the theaters are. It can actually be quite entertaining to people watch there and see the tourists reacting to things. This scene in the book is somewhat based on spoofing things I observed from tourists, with the added layer of someone who's reacting to the magical stuff that's also there. But because of the oddities in that area, it's easy for someone not in the know to think that this person is just reacting to the "normal" oddities.

Then we had to run into a gnome digging around in the park because how could I resist the chance to have a real garden gnome in a scene? Sometimes I can't help myself.

The scene in which Katie buys the red shoes is pretty similar to my own experience buying my Infamous Red Stilettos, though I got mine at Nordstrom in Dallas rather than Bloomingdale's in New York (they did carry them there -- I checked, and sold a pair for them while I was there). It really was like they had magical powers that I was sometimes able to resist. I went back and forth on whether to buy them, and then was still trying to justify them to myself when I got them home. I only wear them a few times a year and for special occasions because they're not super comfortable, and they're kind of hard to coordinate with outfits unless I'm using them as a pop of color against all black. But they are rather stunning, and I have walked a red carpet in them (when I went to the Hollywood premiere of Serenity). I still hold out hope that I'll get to wear them at a red-carpet event for a movie or show based on my books.

To be honest, I go through the same justification exercise for almost everything even remotely splurgy that I buy. That part of Katie is heavily based on me.

The deli scene in which Idris is messing with Katie and her mom was meant as the big comic set piece of this book. I guess you could say it's my own version of the infamous When Harry Met Sally deli scene. I was trying to start with something that's maybe a little odd that may or may not be magical and ramp up from there. I remember the first time I had matzo ball soup at a New York deli, and it wasn't quite what I imagined it would be. And then I escalated from there. I've been to one of those restaurants with singing waiters doing show tunes, and I can imagine it would seem really odd if you didn't know that was likely to happen. On the other hand, if you've seen a lot of musicals, maybe you halfway expect everyone in New York to suddenly burst into spontaneous musical numbers. I'm pretty sure I wrote this before the movie Enchanted came out, in which the "normal" guy expresses amazement about everyone just falling into the musical number and knowing the song, but that's the kind of thing that appears to be happening here, and poor Katie is stuck being the "normal" one trying to explain it to her mother. This was usually the scene I read from when I had convention readings related to this book.

We end on the big midpoint twist -- Katie's realization that her magical immunity is on the fritz. I don't know if it's still the exact middle of the book, but it was the precise middle of the initial draft. Since the fact that Katie didn't react to Rod the same way everyone around her did was one of the first clues that she was magically immune, it's only fitting that seeing his illusion rather than his real self was the clue that her immunity wasn't working anymore. She's been wanting "normal" through the whole book, and now she's got it. Spoiler: I don't think she's going to like it.

The Once Upon Stilettos Reread -- Chapters Seven and Eight

Back to my re-read/commentary on Once Upon Stilettos, now covering chapters 7 and 8.

I remember putting a lot of thought into that fight by the car, including researching exactly what to call the particular wrench in question and figuring out the difference between a tire iron and a lug wrench. Really, hours went into that brief scene. Ethan's overpreparation is somewhat based on me. I don't have quite the amount of stuff he does, but I do have a first-aid kit, an air compressor, and one of those electric battery jumper things in my car at all times. I probably should carry extra water, especially in the summer, and I do when I'm on longer trips where I'll be out in the middle of nowhere.

The party was meant as yet another sign that Ethan just wasn't the right person for Katie. I didn't want the "Mr. Wrong" to be a bad person. Someone can be a great person who even has a lot in common with you and still be the wrong match. He's not being a bad person here. It's just that his idea of fun isn't the same as Katie's. I think there's also some holding back on her part when it comes to the magical world. In this book, she's still trying really hard to be "normal" instead of embracing the wackiness.

Then her parents show up. I want to state for the record that Katie's parents are not my parents. They aren't based on my parents. But there have been things about my parents that inspired them. Like Katie's mother and her bag full of traveling snacks, including fried chicken. That's something of an inside joke with my family. We lived in Germany for a few years when I was growing up because my dad was stationed there with the military. The way we did most of our touring was to take bus tours. We were fairly centrally located in Europe, so we could get on the bus around midnight and arrive at the destination first thing in the morning, spend the day touring, then get on the bus soon after dinner and get back home around midnight. We also took a longer tour, from Germany to Spain, that involved overnight on the bus and then spending about a week there. We learned very quickly that you can't trust the published itinerary. They always mentioned stopping for breakfast or dinner, and that might or might not happen. The driver might be feeling great and just skip the stop. You might stop and the place had already run out of food after several other tour buses had stopped there. You might stop, but there were other buses and a long line, so it was time to leave before you got any food. So we started bringing our own meals. My mom would make fried chicken, and we'd be ready for a picnic wherever we went. There was at least one occasion in which we fed half the bus full of young soldiers after a dinner stop was skipped. Now we joke that we should open a fried chicken restaurant and say that the chicken has been enjoyed internationally. So, of course Katie's mother had to travel to New York with fried chicken in her carry-on bag.

The travel stuff is kind of dated, since I wrote this book in 2004, before they started restricting liquids in carry-on bags and before they started charging for checked bags. Ah, the good old days of air travel.

I can't remember when I made the decision to make Katie's mom immune to magic. I don't think it was in the original plan, but it came about when I was writing. If Katie's trying really hard to stay "normal" and if she has a nosy and intrusive mother who's likely to worry about everything, of course her mother had to see all the other crazy things in New York. This has a real-world parallel to the way tourists see the city and the way locals see it, where tourists notice all the things that are going on while locals just go past it all. The scene in Times Square was at least somewhat inspired by a conversation I had with my editor when I was writing the book. That morning on Good Morning America, which is broadcast from a studio overlooking Times Square, they were talking about the 80-foot tall robot that had been put in Times Square to promote a movie. When my editor called me that afternoon to talk about something, I mentioned the robot. She walked through Times Square on her way to work and didn't remember having seen an 80-foot tall robot. She also probably wouldn't have noticed any fairies, giants, ogres, or anything else odd. Meanwhile, the tourists were all taking pictures of the robot. I experienced a similar thing on a trip, when they had a giant inflatable ape in Times Square. I stood back and observed the number of people who walked past without even looking and the number of people taking pictures of it. I'm not sure what you'd have to put in Times Square for commuters to notice it. I figure that validated the premise of my entire series.

So, now we've got a nosy mom prone to worrying who can see magical stuff and who is in New York at a time when Katie is likely to encounter lots of magical stuff. We're in for some fun.

The Once Upon Stilettos Reread: Chapters Five and Six

Now that the book is done and I can think about anything else for a while, back to the Once Upon Stilettos commentary, with chapters five and six.

The visit from the parents came from two things. One, I realized that we were approaching Thanksgiving on my book calendar, and two, when I was thinking of the worst thing I could do to poor Katie, it was having her parents show up while she's in the middle of all kinds of craziness. She's still getting her bearings in the magical world, and then she's having to confront what to her are the primary symbols of her nonmagical life. She doesn't want her family to worry about her, but she's now in a situation where she's actually under attack.

The other big thing going on is the office politics plot, where they know there's a mole and that makes things get kind of crazy as everyone in the company becomes paranoid, and backstabbing ensues. This was roughly based on my experiences near the end of my tenure in the corporate world. We'd been in a real boom period in my industry, so we were expanding and hiring so many people that they joked about how you could get a job if you could fog a mirror when you breathed on it. Things were already getting shaky even before 9/11, but the bottom fell out afterward, and there were multiple rounds of layoffs. At first, it was just the fog-the-mirror people being let go, but then they started closing entire offices, including some that had just been actively recruiting. With each round of layoffs, people got even more paranoid that they would be next on the chopping block. I was dealing with an immediate supervisor who seemed to see me as a threat, so she kept deliberately excluding me from meetings, including the pitch team to re-pitch our biggest account, the one where I had become the CEO's personal speech writer. We lost the account, and I got laid off (which worked out for me in the long run, and that company hired me as a freelancer). If we'd set up an anonymous tip line around that time, I can only imagine the kind of stuff that would have been on it.

You know it's bad when even Owen is getting paranoid enough to rig a new security system on his department. It's worse when, as paranoid as he is, he misses the fact that his own office is being bugged. I liked when he was getting testy while working because it kept him from being too, too perfect.

By the way, I came up with this plot and figured out who was going to be the mole when I was midway through writing the first book. so the clues were already being planted in that book, even though the possibility of a mole didn't get raised until this book.

Then we have yet another big date with Ethan. I remember doing a lot of research to figure out things they might do. I knew I wanted it to be kind of an out-of-town event, but I hadn't actually planned all the other stuff that might happen. I was looking up some famous foodie restaurants in the outlying areas, and stuff like that. And then I thought it more likely (given what's to come) that he'd want to come to a magical party. There's also his spontaneous nature, which isn't a great fit for someone like Katie, who'd rather plan and know what to expect. So, all that research, and I didn't use it. But some good stuff spun out of it that I hadn't planned on, so I'm not complaining.

The Once Upon Stilettos Reread: Chapters Three and Four

It's re-read commentary time again (mostly because original thought is escaping me). Today I'll cover chapters three and four of Once Upon Stilettos.

I have to say that re-reading this book has become a total nostalgia trip. I'm remembering the process of writing it and all the stuff that had been living in my head before I wrote it. In a weird way, this book was kind of like my own fanfic for my own series. I'd written the first book but didn't want to invest time in writing a second until I knew it would sell, but I was still making up stories in my head in that world. Selling the book and a sequel gave me the chance to write those stories down. The whole book didn't come from that, but there were a lot of scenes that had their origins in daydreaming about these characters.

So, chapter three really gets into the plot about the mole within the company, which allowed me to play with all the corporate life tropes. One of my early descriptions of the series was "Bridget Jones meets Harry Potter and goes to work with Dilbert." I didn't get to do quite as much of that as I wanted in the first book, so this plot let me go crazy with all the stuff I remembered from my corporate life (and I was doing freelance work at the time I was writing it, so I was still embedded in corporate America). There was the office grapevine more powerful than the CIA, where everyone knew everyone's business. I slipped in the reference to Merlin reading Who Moved My Cheese? because my original concept of the character, before I decided he was Merlin, was a wizard who'd been out of commission for a long time and who was getting re-oriented by reading modern business books. I didn't go quite as far with that as I originally planned because Merlin turned out to be too sensible, but my plan had been for the boss to go from management fad to management fad, depending on which book he'd just read. That was based on my corporate experience, where it seemed like we had one company retreat a year in which they presented a whole new plan to make us like our jobs more and do our jobs better based on yet another management fad.

Then there was the introduction of the frog boss. That was a nod to the cover art. I fell so in love with the businessman frog on the cover of the first book that I wrote him into the second book. I had a draft of the cover for the first book while I was writing the second one, so I was inspired to write him in as a character.

Chapter four was my sneaky way of working in some quasi-romantic scenes between Katie and Owen when they weren't actually romantically involved. I'm a big fan of the slow-build romance, and having Katie be dating someone else allowed me to develop a strong friendship between her and Owen. I think that also worked with his character, where he was too shy to ask her on a real date, but he could manage "hey, wanna grab dinner?" on the way home from work. And then readers got to see lots of the two of them together and bonding. I did have a specific diner in mind. It's near Union Square, and I ate a meal there when I was researching the book.

The Once Upon Stilettos Reread: More on Chapters One and Two

I'm picking up again with the Once Upon Stilettos author commentary re-read. In case you missed it, here's part one, which was mostly about the background of the story and the title. I have it on my to-do list to compile the entire commentary for Enchanted, Inc. and add it to the web site, but I'm not sure when that will happen.

Since part one was mostly about the title and the background, I'll do more about chapter one and then also cover chapter two.

So, the date with Ethan … When I was working on the concept for this series, before I started writing it or even had a firm plot outline and specific characters developed, what I had in mind was a number of potential love interests for Katie, and over time maybe one would turn out to be Mr. Right. I didn't want to do an outright triangle, and I didn't want her going back and forth, but I liked the idea of her having a few men in her life who were potential love interests and letting her do some casual dating before one became the obvious winner. I envisioned shipper wars on message boards and people declaring themselves "team whoever."

And then I started writing, and the character who was barely on my radar suddenly became obvious. But I didn't want to go there too soon, so in the ending of the first book and the beginning of this one, I let Katie date someone else, just so we'd have the comparison (and because Owen was way too shy to make a move so soon). Ethan was my idea of the "good on paper" guy. They had a lot in common, and he was the kind of guy a mom would rejoice to see with her daughter. But having some common background and the same magical status doesn't mean it will work out in reality. He's not a bad guy. They just aren't right for each other. That's what I was trying to show in that first date at the wine tasting. He's perhaps trying a bit too hard to impress her, and it utterly fails because this isn't the sort of thing that does impress her. She just finds the whole thing a bit silly.

The wine tasting is somewhat based on an event I went to not too long before I wrote this book. There was a fancy wine shop in the neighborhood where I went to church, and they donated a wine-tasting party for a fundraising auction. One of the choir members bought it and invited the choir. They went through all these wines and then handed out order sheets so you could buy them. I like wine, and I do drink it, but I couldn't honestly tell the difference between most of them at that tasting, and I never could taste all those flavors they said were in there. I could catch things like honey and pear, but not oak or coffee. I went through a few ideas of what kind of date Ethan might have come up with for an impressive first date, but most of them would have required a lot of research to get right, and then I remembered the wine tasting.

Meanwhile, this scene serves to remind us about the magical immunity and how it works while hinting that something might be wrong with Katie's immunity. I didn't plan it at the time I was writing it, but I realized after the fact when I was doing revisions that the wine fit thematically, since potions that change behavior or perception were so important to the plot of the book.

Then we get the meat of the main plot near the end of the chapter, where we learn about the possible mole within the company.

Breaking Out (Or Not)

I got about a quarter of the way through the major surgery phase of revisions on the book yesterday, but this is the easy part because it's mostly the section that I submitted to the publisher, so it was pretty polished. And at the end of the day, I realized that I'd forgotten to add or fix a couple of the things I'd planned. I guess it's a good sign that I got so caught up in the story that I forgot about those things. Today I'll do that backtracking and then see how much more I can get to before choir practice. At least I don't have children's choir tonight.

I'm having my usual bizarre transition to Daylight Saving Time. The clocks have moved ahead, so everything feels an hour earlier than it says on the clock. And yet I've moved even earlier. I'm going to bed earlier and waking up earlier, and I'm getting more things done earlier in the day. I guess summer time fits closer to my regular body clock. I sleep later on Standard Time because when I naturally wake up, it feels too early to be getting up, so I go back to sleep and go through another sleep cycle before I wake up. During Standard Time, when I get sleepy earlier in the evening, it seems too early to go to bed, so I force myself to power through and get a second wind. Now, it seems like a reasonable time to go to bed when I get tired, and it's a reasonable time to get up when I wake up. And then through the whole day I feel like I have more energy, so I get more done.

The response to my Enchanted, Inc. series reread has been fun to see. It seems a lot of people love these books. And yet, they're still rather obscure. The major genre-related web sites haven't covered them or me. I've noticed in various fantasy-related groups that they're seldom mentioned when people are asking for authors or books that mine would fit into. I think some of that is on my original publisher because they didn't treat these books like fantasy, and so they didn't make much effort to promote them to that audience. It does seem as though fantasy readers who find them really like them, but a lot of my readers aren't the typical fantasy reader. I go to a lot of science fiction conventions, and my books seem to be popular there, but that doesn't seem to have spilled out to create any kind of overall fandom buzz, and I don't really know how to fix that. It's even harder now that the first couple of books are more than ten years old. Even if there were a new book, the major book news sites that didn't cover the earlier books aren't likely to cover the new book, and they're not going to get into a first book in the series that's ten years old. Still, the series keeps plugging away, and the first book is usually my highest-ranked book on Amazon at any given time.

It's been interesting going back and re-reading Once Upon Stilettos. I wrote the first draft of that book in the fall of 2004, did revisions in early 2005, and did copy edits in fall 2005. As a result, it's now been long enough since I wrote it that I can almost read it as a reader without trying to mentally edit it and without being constantly conscious of having written it. And at risk of sounding egotistical, I have to say that man, this book is good. The voice is strong, the writing just snaps and sparkles, and there are so many good moments. This book isn't usually top of mind for me. It's sort of a middle child of books, but when I really think about it, it may be my favorite thing I've written so far. I'm rather surprised, looking at it now, that this wasn't a breakout book that made the series really take off. It got up-front bookstore placement and was even in Target (though in small enough quantities that in my neighborhood store, it sold out within days and was never restocked). So I'm not sure what happened, but to me, being able to put aside my writer hat, this reads like a breakout book that should have just exploded and propelled the series to another level.

On the other hand, a lot of "breakout" books from that same time period are out of print, and this one is still selling well enough that I can't get the rights reverted.

I guess the answer is to keep plugging away, and maybe someday something I write will hit whatever magic formula that makes it break out, and that will then spread to everything else I've written.

The Reread Continues: The Infamous Red Stilettos

Last year (maybe -- I lost all track of time), I did a reread/commentary on the first Enchanted, Inc. book, and this morning when I spotted the Infamous Red Stilettos lying on my bedroom floor (where I really need to put them away after having worn them to a convention a month ago) I thought I ought to pick that up again and do the second book.

So, now for a reread/commentary of Once Upon Stilettos. There may be spoilers for the entire series, as I'll likely address things that come up later. I'm not on any particular schedule. This may be something I do when I can't think of anything else to talk about.

Now, for the beginning ...

It all started with the red shoes, except it actually didn't. While I was writing the first book, I started getting ideas for what would happen in the rest of the series, based on random bits of conversation when someone brought up the possibility of something happening, and I made a note that it should probably happen. As an aside, I guess I was pretty obvious about that because a few years ago there was a team attempting to turn this series into a TV series, and I had a conference call with the lead writer in which she was giving me the pitch she'd give to network executives. She outlined the pilot and first season, then possible plot lines for subsequent seasons. I had to stop her and ask if she'd read the whole series, and she said she'd just read the first book. But her outline for the way each season would go followed the books pretty closely, with season 2 being a lot like book 2, and so forth. It was kind of eerie (but, alas, no network picked it up, and I thought these people would have done a great job with it).

When I got an agent and she was getting ready to try to sell the book to publishers, she had me put together blurbs for possible sequels, to demonstrate that it wouldn't just be one book. Then she made me combine what I had for books two and three into one book. My planned book two was about the mole in the company, with book three about Katie losing her immunity. Combining those plots made the story a lot stronger.

Around this time, when I had an agent but hadn't yet sold the book, I went shopping with a friend. Really, it was just window shopping. We went to one of the upscale malls and treated it almost like a museum. At the time, I had very little income. I'd been laid off from my job a couple of years earlier and was freelancing some, but that money didn't quite cover my living expenses, so I was living off my savings while writing books. And then I saw the shoes, those candy apple red stilettos. They called to me. I wanted them. They were totally impractical. I wouldn't have too many places to wear them or things to wear them with, and for that price I could have bought at least six pairs of shoes in my usual price range. I told my friend that if I sold the book, I'd buy those shoes. The shoes were not in the original plan for the book, nor were they in the plot line that was submitted to the publisher. I wasn't even thinking about them being incorporated into the book at that point.

Several months later, I did sell the book, and it was a two-book contract, with the book I'd already written and a sequel I'd planned but hadn't written a word of. I called my friend to tell her the news, and she asked what time I'd be over to pick her up to go shoe shopping. That day, we went to Nordstrom, and I bought the Infamous Red Stilettos. I must say, I was still wavering on whether I should do it because for me that was a lot of money and I'd never bought an item of clothing that expensive. When we got back to my friend's place, I was still talking myself into buying the shoes I'd already bought, justifying it to myself. I mentioned that the shoes had called out to me. They were magical.

And then, click, I had the opening line and the opening scene for the book I needed to write. Since the book was going to involve Katie losing her immunity, the shoes were the perfect way to show that effect on her, as sometimes she was immune to the spell on them, and then there were moments when she absolutely had to have them. That opening scene was very much my experience when I first saw them and then later when I went to buy them. I just moved the scene to Bloomingdale's in New York (because that was the store in New York where I saw the same shoes and knew for sure they were there) instead of Nordstrom in Dallas.

Incidentally, the original planned title for this book was Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered, which I thought fit it perfectly. Except we found out that a much more famous author was going to be releasing a book with that exact title a few months before mine, so there was a last-second scramble to retitle it. Someone in the marketing department came up with the new title.

Ten-Year Bookiversary

I had another late start this morning thanks to a constant stream of flash flood warnings setting off the weather radio throughout the night, every one hitting just as I fell back asleep after the previous one (argh). But now that I'm seeing just how bad it was, I can kind of understand the urgency. They were having to do high-water rescues using boats on city streets, and on one highway, they were having to use heavy equipment to break through the median divider so trapped cars could get out. We've now broken the record for wettest May since they started keeping records. I saw a statistic that said the amount of rain the state of Texas has had this month would cover the entire state 8 inches deep -- 7 feet if it were snow.

But supposedly we have three whole days in the forecast with no rain coming next week. I normally like rain. I'm just not into flooding and deluges.

In non weather-related news, I have a big anniversary coming up. This Sunday, it will have been ten years since the original Enchanted, Inc. book was published. I suppose around ten years ago today it was starting to show up in some stores. I was already getting e-mails about it. It's hard to believe it's been that long. The book is still in print and going strong, and often has the highest Amazon ranking of all my books. People are still discovering it even now. If all the copies that have sold in the past ten years had sold in one week, it would have been a bestseller. It's probably outsold in total copies some of the books that were bestsellers at the time, many of which are no longer in print. But since those copies sold over ten years and the bestseller thing is what publishers and bookstores value, it's only considered a modest success and the publisher doesn't want more books from me.

That's okay. I'm making a good living doing what I love, which I have to keep reminding myself when I get discouraged. I ended up writing more in that series than I planned. Those books have been published around the world. The first book was optioned for film and a screenplay was even written, though they let the option lapse (I got to keep the money). There was an effort to get it made into a TV series that didn't pan out but that involved some people in the industry I admire (and they really, really got the concept). The series finally came out in audio last year and was a huge success there.

Am I where I thought I'd be ten years ago? To be honest, not really. I felt like I had a really special book that would catch on and lead to great things, and it didn't quite work out that way. I've never been able to coast. Ten years on, and I haven't been nominated for awards, haven't been invited as a special guest to any conventions (the kind where they pay for your travel and use your name in the promotion), still get the "we'll  have to see" about getting on programming at WorldCon. I haven't been given a big promotional push by a publisher that could make me a bestseller, haven't been sent to BEA or ComicCon, or anything like that. No banners, bus shelter posters, or magazine ads.

But you know, that's all ego stuff. I'm making more money than I probably would have been if I'd stayed in my day job career (though there were some lean years in between). I'm doing something I love that I would be doing for fun even without getting paid (though perhaps not doing as much of it). I'd probably have to take a pay cut to go back to a day job career, so it would be silly to quit because I'm discouraged about not getting any recognition.

So I will rejoice in having a book that's been in print for ten years, that's still selling and finding new fans, that's introduced me to all kinds of interesting people and made so many things possible.