To my surprise, the two cp’s who looked at my synopsis today liked the darn thing! 
A couple of suggestions, but overall they thought it was good as written and even made them want to read the story. And isn’t that the point of a synopsis?
*Whew* I’m so relieved!! Really.
Of course, I have several more stories that can use decent synopses, but now I think I have a pretty good idea of how to write one worth reading. 
I’m back to editing, working on two ms edits simultaneously, one historical and one futuristic paranormal. Talking to Cece today, I figured out that I will most likely be doing edits until January. That pretty much blows, since I have a couple of mss started that I would dearly love to work on. 
Jordan and I were discussing the pitfalls of writing in separate genres early in your career. So far, I can’t seem to get into the mood of a contemporary. I just don’t find much sexy or exciting about present day. Now go a few hundred years back or forward and I’m thrilled. But I worry about attracting a reader with one work, having them come to my site and read another excerpt and go, “Whoa! Not what I expected.” Fine if that’s in a good way. But what if it’s not?
My contest finalist entries are a great example.
- The Brava finalist, Stolen Pleasures, is a historical romantica.
- The Golden Opportunity finalist, Almost Too Much, is a traditional historical.
- The Tawny Taylor contest finalist, A Taste of Sin, is a futuristc paranormal romantica.
If one finalist story attracts someone to my site, they might be surprised at the other types of stories they find here. Most especially I’m thinking of traditional readers who stumble across my romantica works. I think I’ll need to separate the different types of stories on my site. What do you think?
I’m so TIRED of revisions!!!!!
That’s all I’ve done since August..whine whine whine! At least I finished one!
As far as writing across genre’s I honestly don’t know. I know LLM said when she spoke at our Luncheon last spring that the vampire books disapointed a lot of her traditional fans. Now, of course, she’s doing her westerns, her contemp suspense and a novella for brava, so who knows!
AS a suggestion you could post something on page one of your site about different genre’s you write–if it’s not there. I’m too lazy to go look right now.
I know I’d like to explore different genres (young adult, fantasy/time travel, historical westerns–go figure LOL) but right now I’m stuck writing contemp chick lit style stuff. This isn’t a bad place to be stuck, though. I like writing contemp. and my agent knows I wanna give YA a shot at some point. The other two will be fun, but if I don’t write them for years I”m fine with it.
on October 16th, 2004 at 8:42 am
Yay on the synopsis! I suck at them SO bad. Ugh.
And funny on the editing until January, because I’m in the same boat. I JUST finished the Brava (but don’t have feedback yet, so I WILL have revisions later,) and now I have to revise Snowbound. When that’s done, I have to revise Vital Signs. At that point, which is sounding like January-February to me, I can FINALLY get to work on something new!
on October 16th, 2004 at 7:10 am
Re different genres: Back when I started writing professionally, in 1998, mainstream publishers did actively discourage authors from writing different subgenres under the same name. (If you wrote two different subgenres you usually used two pen names, like Jayne Ann Krentz/Amanda Quick.) That seems to be less true today– I know several authors for major publishers who write different subgenres under the same name. (MaryJanice Davidson is a good example.) And in e-publishing, anything goes– lots of us write several different subgenres under the same name. I really think that’s something that is changing in NY publishing too. Of course if you write a paranormal, you won’t carry over all your readers when your second book is a historical– but you might bring along more than you expected. I’ve had several people tell me they didn’t read contemporaries, but they picked up mine (having read my historicals first) and enjoyed them.
on October 16th, 2004 at 5:34 am
Like you, I write across several romance genres and I am still trying to find which one is right for me in terms of getting published in novel length. I’d love to write them all, but as I’m getting more bites in contemps I know I should concentrate my efforts there for a while. It’s a tough one though, isn’t it!
on October 16th, 2004 at 1:58 am