HE WROTE: Two Months and Counting

Two months from today DON'T LOOK DOWN will be published
Less than five months from now AGNES AND THE HIT MAN is due.
I'm looking at my to-do list and it's getting longer, not shorter. We're working on the .pdf's for our handouts. Got two e-mail interviews to finish. Oh yeah, someone wants a photo of my office to post on a web site.
I just took a couple and they're lousy. But what the hey.
I just tried to post it in the blog and failed. Sigh.
I believe I have one slot left in the March retreat. Right now there are seven people signed up. I'm thinking about running one 26-29 October but it's not certain yet. Depends how we survive this year. A lot hinges on how DLD does. That's weird, just as I was writing that I got an email from the Marriott where the retreat is held with the contracts for the meeting room.
We got a very good review so far from Booklist and, as our editor said, a 'blah' review from Kirkus. I consider it a strange one since it said the book was 'wimpy'. Hmm. I've never written wimpy before. I think the problem is, and will be, that people are having a hard time figuring out exactly what genre DLD is. Jenny and I call it Romantic Adventure. Our goal is to make that our brand, or so out media consultant told us. We shall see.

SMP is working on seeing if they can make the coupon thing work. Initially it was no, then the director of marketing said he might have a way to make it work, so he's working on that, for which we're grateful. We'd really like to give some sort of break to those who've signed up on the email list. I met the director when we did the sales forces meeting in December in Scottsdale. Jenny poked fun at my 'taking one for the team' line in DLD. After our talk he told me he didn't' see anything wrong with taking one for the team. At the risk of controversy one of the interesting aspects of doing a book with a legitimate female and male POV is that you get conflict over the way the characters look at things. For instance, Jenny has a hard time figuring out how to legitimately get her heroine to have sex with the hero in such a compressed timeline for the story. My hero, of course, has no such problem. What he has a problem with is the emotional commitment required in such a compressed timeline. When we presented in Reno at National last year the crowd of 300 women hissed at me when Jenny told how my hero never said "I love you" to the heroine in the course of the book. So I rewrote, bowing to the pressure, and as the chopper comes flying in for the final showdown and JT is standing on one skid and Lucy is standing on the other side on the other skid, he yells across the cargo bay: "Hey, I love you." Well, that didn't go over well either.

As happened with DLD, I'm getting emails from Jenny where she wants to change antagonists and change the initiating event and change everything. Argh. As I noted in an earlier email don't try this collaboration thing without adult supervision.
Ok. Back to writing Agnes so I can send it to Jenny first thing Monday morning when she's done partying.