I just got done with a very rough draft of Mark Pryce's and Hilary Rosenberg’' (Gavin Lloyd's executive administrative assistant — if I call her a “secretary” Mark's going to get mad lol) story. So while it's marinating, I'm treating myself to two days of taxes (fun!) and another day or two of reading.

(In case you're wondering what I'm planning to read, I downloaded a copy of Alphas After Dark.)

After a careful read-through, Mark & Hilary's story is going to be self-revised, then it's off to my editor. While she's working on the story, I'll be working on Meredith Lloyd's story, where I plan to reveal the whole secret / mystery surrounding her son Eric's paternity, plus pair her up with the super-sexy brother of her best friend. Oh and I'll have Forever in Love (Blaine Davis and Catherine Fairchild's story) proofread and formatted. I'm aiming to have it released on May 12. Don't forget to sign up for my mailing list if you want to get notified when it's available! :)

Several fans have asked me if they'll ever find out who's behind the embezzlement at The Lloyds Development. All that is answered in Forever in Love, I promise. :)

status: I feel awesome today! Weather's finally cooling down some. W00t!

Last night Hero Material and I went out. I was feeling restless because I was stuck on WIP. I had the basic story arc for my h/H, but I had no idea what was going on with my villain. After weeks of tinkering with the story, I was getting mighty frustrated.

So as we were sitting at a bar, I kept thinking about my story and suddenly blurted out, “Do you think you can salt human heads? You know, to preserve them for several years so you can give them to someone as presents?”

Hero Material looked totally grossed out. The piece of chicken between his chopsticks stopped moving toward his mouth, and he stared at me with a what-the-heck-are-you-talking-about expression on his face.

Oh that poor man.

But that little thing — salted human heads — got me thinking about other possibilities that I hadn't considered. Some members of Romance Divas gave me some pointers on how to preserve human heads as well. Special thanks to Kim Knox and Ayla for fabulous suggestions.

P.S. I'm glad nobody at the bar spoke English. Otherwise somebody might have called the police.

status: I'm still jet-lagged and having a very nasty reaction to Oil of Olay Quench soap. This makes me sad since the soap does make my skin soft, but my arms and legs aren't happy. :(

I just had an epiphany about my WIP as I was fast-drafting. Some part of me knew I had all the right events in the draft so far, but another part of me knew something was totally messed up. I just didn't know exactly what.

Well, as I was working through another scene and another stilted and awkward interaction between my h/H, I realized that I had the dynamics between h/H all wrong. No wonder their romance is going nowhere more than eighty pages into the story.

Now I have to go back and toss out most of the story. Though it's going to be a lot of work to rewrite it, I'm totally excited now. Plus, I'm only on my first draft. Better now than later. :)

I :wub: my Muse.

Since August 16, I've written over sixty pages. That's a good thing. Today was hard particularly because I was tired — sleep-deprived from cat allergy, traveling, packing, etc. — and the part I was working on felt wrong and I had to stop to think it over. The blocked scene is entirely from the hero's POV, but I'm still not getting any sense of his voice or character yet. Another thing is that I'm waffling between 1st person present POV and 3nd person past POV. I'm hoping to figure it out before I finish this draft.

I'm leaving the States tomorrow, bright and early, and I plan to work on the project on my flight to Japan. Can't wait to see everyone in Japan again, including my hamsters! :)

I'm still struggling with the ninth chapter from All the King's Women. Nothing's happening!!!!! My h/H brood, brood, brood, eat, brood, brood, brood, brood. I want to delete the entire chapter or just pretend that everything's fine in it, but I know better. Ch. 9 shows the aftermath of my h/H's first love scene. I can do better than having my h/H brood.

Another thing I noticed as I revised — I used different spellings for the same thing. *sigh* Usually they're for words that do not exist in ours. So I made a vocab list in Excel and sorted it alphabetically. I haven't realized this until I put them on the paper (or on my trusty computer screen) but I have fifty-five world-specific terms.

I finished reading Butcher‘s Small Favor. Very very good, although the middle part felt a bit slow. Also read Cole‘s Wicked Deeds on a Winter's Night and Rich‘s Free-Range Chickens.

On my own writing front — I figured out what's been bugging me about the second quarter of the book. There are two sex scenes, and they're so…dry.

What I mean is that the characters are doing this and that, but very little emotions are coming through. My characters have a lot of history together, so the scenes rang false when I reread them for the sheer lack of feelings from both of them. A lot of missed opportunities.

I also decided to add a couple of short scenes to advance the main subplot (the court intrigue part). They're all new and feature secondary characters. I think they'll add a bit more to the subplot because currently the book's about 85% romance.

After dinner I spent about ten minutes jotting down notes on my next project — a futuristic paranormal romance. I can't decide if I want to write it in 1st person or not. The heroine is snarky and slightly eccentric, but I think the snarky 1st person narrator is a bit of a cliché now. I wonder if her voice can come through just as clearly in 3rd person.

Hmmm.