Should she believe him? (Excerpt from novel-in-progress)

"Mom, what took you so long?"

"Just adult talk, sweetie." Surely Nicholas wouldn't notice the flush in her face. Her cheek, her ear, her neck all felt like they were on fire.

Aaron had always affected her this way - physically, sexually. But what of his comment about love? She was wise enough now to know that allowing herself to love him again would be a bad move. He did not know how to make the kind of commitment she would seek from a man.

But how to deny the desire - the tingling from her head to her toes - that she felt when Aaron touched her? She'd had a few dates about a year after Todd passed, but she hadn't been intimate with a man in a long time. Could they...?

Not a good idea, she told herself sternly. They had confused lust with love once before, and it had cost her dearly.

Damn, but I do miss it..

TWO romance book tour stops today!

The second is Diane Craver's Blog at www.dianecraver.com/blog

She asked me how I met my husband, and I told her about my difficulty with flashbacks while writing Last Chance Rescue (hint: they kept trying to steal the show).

Check out HER books too!

Point of View Changes in Popular Author Novels

I'm about 80 pages into a novel by an extremely popular author (Nora Roberts). It's a suspenseful, enjoyable novel, but here's my beef with some of these popular authors (the other that comes to mind is Jodi Piccoult)...

It has been pounded into my head by my ex-English teacher mom and writing instructors (and other writers) that you should NOT have multiple points of view in a single chapter (and that, further, you should limit how many points of view you tell the story from, period).

In this book (and the Jodi Piccoult one I recently read), the point of view not only changes from chapter to chapter ('Last Chance' changes by chapter but only between TWO characters) ... it can shift from paragraph to paragraph! As a reader, I'm not ready for it - it interrupts the flow of the story when I have to backtrack a paragraph or two to make sure I understand whose 'head' I suddenly jumped into.

Is it just me, or have other writers (and readers) noticed this?? Is it just the immensely popular authors that can get away with this??

Agent or No Agent?

Last week, in a sudden fit of inspiration, I wrote a rough draft of a query letter for Novel #2 - despite the fact that I haven't consciously decided to go that route this time around.

Why the (potential) change of heart?

Struggling to get the word out about 'Last Chance Rescue' (with mixed results) has had the interesting effect of *encouraging* me to seek representation.

I didn't believe an agent would seriously consider any proposal I would have made for "Last Chance Rescue." After all, my 'writing credentials' were, well, nearly non-existant. And the market was (and is) saturated. (And then there's the little matter of my IM-patience...)

But now I've proven that I can finish what I start (a novel) and even that I have the chutzpah to market it myself (however questionably successful that has been). AND - perhaps most important - that the book is GOOD (according to others, NOT just myself and I).

So perhaps it's no longer 'wasted' time; an agent might actually read through my query and synopsis now. What have I got to lose?

(one little drawback: I've got to actually WRITE the dang novel...)