Got it! Thanks, Susan. Sending back.

Lordy, someone write something. I feel like a threadjacker.

Lordy, someone write something. I feel like a threadjacker.

I'm working on a poem, which is actually part of the novel, but it ain't anywhere near done yet. It's in my head, but it's doing that rattling at the cages thing.

Will post if I ever finish the damn thing.

Other than that, pimping the column, and working on the next one.

But now I have to go to Staples.

I've just drafted pitches for both my novels to use at the conference. Is it OK if I post them here for comment?

Hell, yes. All about the writing.

OK, here goes. I'd be giving these as oral presentations, so I wouldn't always use the exact words, and the latter paragraphs are mostly to give me a guide for what to say when the editor or agent starts asking me questions.

Lady Wright is a 100,000-word historical set in Regency England.

For Lucy Jones and Sir James Wright, first comes marriage, and then comes love. James, who is very rich, offers marriage to Lucy two weeks after they meet when she finds herself in desperate financial circumstances. When he kisses her after she accepts him, the attraction between them is immediate and strong. Love and understanding take longer.

Both enter the marriage believing their hearts belong to others. Lucy thinks she loves her cousin, a brave, noble, and virtuous soldier, and has to learn to see the goodness in James’s more impulsive, mercurial personality, and to accept that there’s nothing to feel guilty about in her sensual response to him. She must also forgive him for the cruel, flirtatious game he played with her cousin Portia before their marriage—and he must acknowledge that no matter how cruel Portia had been to others, Lucy is right that that doesn’t excuse his own behavior. James must also let go of a love he intended to carry forever and accept that Lucy is the best possible thing that could’ve happened to him.

(I’m in the midst of a major rewrite based on suggestions from a friend who’s a former romance editor. The first three chapters are rewritten and ready to submit, and I hope to have the entire manuscript edited and polished by the end of November, December at the latest.)

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Soldier’s Lady is a story of star-crossed love where the right people from the wrong backgrounds meet under the wrong circumstances at the wrong place at the wrong time.

The year is 1811, the setting with Wellington’s army in Spain. Anna Arrington is a wealthy heiress and the granddaughter of an earl. Recently widowed, all she wants is to go home to England, be alone, and try to put her disaster of a marriage behind her.

Jack Wilcox is a sergeant without grand ambitions. While he is highly intelligent and very good at what he does, he doesn’t waste his time striving to be an officer and a gentleman. He’s content to be a soldier and a good man, and his only dream is to survive the war, go home to his large and close-knit extended family, purchase a small farm, and settle down.

When the fortunes of war throw Jack and Anna together, friendship is immediate and passion not far behind. For the span of one month, they have a desperate affair, knowing their every moment is stolen and that a future together is impossible. So when an officer from Jack’s regiment discovers their affair and attempts to blackmail Anna, she decides it’s time to make a clean break before the heartbreak gets any worse. She calls the blackmailer’s bluff and returns to England.

A year later Jack returns home, no longer fit to be a soldier after losing an arm in battle. When he and Anna are reunited, they immediately realize the bond between them is too tight to ever dissolve. Both must find the courage to sacrifice the lives they thought they wanted and meet in the middle.

(Anna is a secondary character from Lady Wright. I expect Soldier’s Lady to be about 100,000 words, and I’m 20,000 words in.)

Victor, there were some errors in your piece. Do you want me to post them or e-mail them to you or just tell you that I think it's very good (which I do) and leave it at that?

Jack Wilcox is a sergeant without grand ambitions. While he is highly intelligent and very good at what he does, he doesn’t waste his time striving to be an officer and a gentleman. He’s content to be a soldier and a good man, and his only dream is to survive the war, go home to his large and close-knit extended family, purchase a small farm, and settle down.

Susan, this may be only me, but it seems that you're doing the opposite of offhandedly shooting the guy you don't like, here. You're Marky-Sue-ing Jack. I'd remove, post-haste, the "highly intelligent," the "very" before "good at what he does" and just go with "smart." I'd also ditch the "waste his time striving to be an officer and a gentleman." You almost certainly show these things in your story, so I'd not make such a selling point of them beforehand.

Just my take on it, of course. It feels like you're selling him too hard.

That's a good point--it's probably my impatience with the common "supposedly ordinary person really turns out to be the son/daughter of a duke, and that's where all their beauty and brains and natural nobility come from" plot device showing through. So I'm all, "My ordinary guy is as smart and sexy as can be, and he doesn't NEED to be anything other than what he is, dammit!"

Hee. Well, of course.

Susan, I'm with Bev on the description of Jack. Does it need to be nearly that detailed? I mean, surely one of the purposes of this sort of pitch is to pique the editor's or agent's curiosity.

Also, in the Lucy pitch, I really don't go for this:

Lucy thinks she loves her cousin, a brave, noble, and virtuous soldier

I'd scale all the way down to "Lucy has grown up believing herself in love with her cousin Sebastian, a soldier in (whatever regiment)" or something along those lines. The "brave noble etc" thing, really, NOT so much, especially since it's only half the story: he's really something of a prat.