I ROCK!

Why, you ask?

Because I just wrote a totally kick-ass love scene at Starbucks today. We're talking brave exposure of vulnerability, trust issues exposed and overcome on both sides, POV shift from female to male, AND the dreaded mutual orgasm. Fuck yeah, bitches!!

What was even better is that I took the time today to re-read the last 80 or so pages that I had written up to that point and they were clean and smooth and moved along a lot faster than I expected. Hell, I had my MP3 player on, the music rocking (dancing in my chair), and I was still able to read through and enjoy the emotional highs and get caught up in the push-pull of their fears and emotions.

I'm at a stage now that I distinctly remember from when I was ready to finish my last book. I've cast so many threads into the ether-- plot builders, character challenges, external conflicts -- that now I need to work on bringing them together in a way that will satisfy reader expectations, and my expectations, while still maintaining enough emotional tension to carry through to the last page.

I know of 4 things that have to happen in their lives before things will be set to rest externally. And just now they've taken a MAJOR step forward towards their HEA (that love scene) but I'm not sure what the black moment will be about. These things are revealed by the characters. It will have to speak to their deepest fears about themselves, but it can't be a Big Misunderstanding.

If you've been reading romance for more than a year, you know how nothing makes a wallbanger like a Big Misunderstanding. Instead, I hope, I really hope that my hero opens up to me a bit more (so I can put him through hell). Meanwhile, my heroine is a wide-open emotional wreck. She's just struggling to hold herself together.

It shouldn't be too difficult to wring a bit more angst from her. But I have to be careful not to give away the farm with her, not expose too much of her pain up front. Instead I have to piece it out to the reader, even though she's told me almost all of it by now.

Ooooh! I think I just found my black moment. The thing that has driven her to all of the painful choices she made in her life. And YAY, it ties in with one of the external conflicts. It's still a bit Big Misunderstandingish, but given that we're dealing with a category romance here and I'm already feeling pressed to work on wrapping my threads up, it shouldn't last too long. We'll just have to see how my hero deals with it all.






Currently reading: Caressed By Ice
Just about to start: B is for Burglar
Just about to start: Just The Sexiest Man Alive