Contract Announcement and What's Next

I can officially announce my latest contract offered in April!

I am pleased to announce that Stone of Wrath will be released in November as part of Ellora's Cave birthstone series.

I had a lot of fun writing the story of Jed and Topaz and I managed to do it in three days. Something I'm not sure I'll do again as it was not without its agony. But I did it and sold it too. Not bad for a story I basically wrote on the spur of the moment. I had vague notions of an idea back earlier in the year but had discarded them, but talking with my friend, Ava, made me think about it again and before I knew it I was writing it. She'll probably stop talking to me because she is the one who told me about Amber Quill's contest as well.

Okay so a first for me. The attempt to write a novel-length gay romance. So far the stories I have written have all been novella or quickie/kiss lengths.

I have probably mentioned this before but I have trouble with word counts. The longest book I have ever written is Duke's Project and that was around 93,000. All other novels since have come in well under that. A Man Not Her Own comes in around 70,000 and Prisoner around 63,000. Duke Pretender is 10,000 less than that. So you get the idea. Sinful is only 50,000 something too so if I ever do want to try and market it I will need to double the pages/words.

So in some ways I like writing the novellas as I tend toward that. The Squire, Stone of Wrath and Another Chance are particularly short stories, but both Perfect Man and Unexpected make it over 20,000 but under 25,000.

Since the presently named story, "Trust", is only vague ideas in my head with no real plot other than former lovers reconnecting years later, how do I think I am going to manage the novel length needed for that story? I checked out Amber Allure today and their novel length is anything over 41,000 words. With Ellora's Cave I know their novellas go up to 30,000 and I have found out their short novels are 30,000 to 45,000. I think their novel lengths go from 45,000 to 75,000. After that it becomes a Plus Novel and a Super Plus Novel. I know Cerridwen Press starts at 50,000 but because Duke's Project was 93,000 it was rated as a Plus Novel. So if I can make "Trust" in the 40,000 to 50,000 range I should be okay for either Amber Allure or Ellora's Cave. But that's a lot of words on a story I have no real plot for. And I think based on my contracts I will have to offer "Trust" to Ellora's Cave first (this may change if they do not offer for my recent May submission).

So I am thinking of making "Trust" a romantic suspense type story. So one of my main characters would be in danger from something in addition to the trust/reconnecting issues they must deal with. Since it would be a novel length I wouldn't have to necessarily throw my couple into bed in the first chapter. EC views their stuff as 50% plot, 50% sex. I can probably manage that.

I thought of a title of maybe Broken Promises or simply Promises but not sure those haven't been done to death.

I have recently realized I start too many sentences with "so" and "well" when I am conversing with people.

Anyway...should I write the Duke of Scarborough's story for Cerridwen Press? How do I manage it? My original plot won't work for them at all so I would have to scrap that. I could go back to my original idea of having Scarborough get together with Lucy, Jack and Simon's sister (which changed when I started writing the story), but I would have to tread carefully with any interaction between Julian and Lucy before they were married. I could begin the book with them already married or getting married and then having them interact would not be a problem. I recently wrote a new, darker prologue which could work for the story. Hmm..I tentatively titled the new version Duke Restrained to go with the other duke books but I may need a different name than that. Could I work on both that book and "Trust" at the same time? Work on one Monday, Wednesday, Friday and the other Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday/Sunday? Will that be too much? Too confusing? Only my fevered brain knows.