Ready to be COURTED?

It's weird, being a writer.  You spend a lot of time alone.  Even when you're not alone, you spend a lot of time in your own head.  You can spent months--years--with your characters, with your story, until they become a part of you.

And then you have to let go.

You have to watch your work take on other shapes.  Shapes you never even dreamed of.  You get to see the reactions of beta readers, family, friends, agents, editors.  You get to hear from people you don't even know--people who have reacted to your characters with love or hate or anything in between (the worst, though, is indifference).  Sometimes--if you're lucky--you get to sit in on discussions where people talk about your story, about character motivations and events and images.  You get to learn what other people experience--and it can be so very different from your own or what you intended.

You get to see what images others relate to your work.  Cover art and interior design.  Fan art and who they might cast if the book becomes a movie.

And after a year--or two--it almost seems the book isn't yours anymore.

That sounds sad, like I'm mourning, but I'm really not.  I'm delighted.  It's fascinating.  And for me, it's a  very good thing, because if I continued to hold so tightly to my stories that I couldn't accept anyone else's vision, I would never be able to move on and write another.  I have to let go in order to move forward.

My first book, GILT, takes a new shape this week.  It will be conjoined with TARNISH in a mass-market paperback edition called COURTED.

So I get to see the book I wrote as a stand-alone (GILT) become forever a part of the book I wrote next (TARNISH), knowing it would lead into my third (BRAZEN).  The historical time-line is confusing (GILT takes place from 1539-1542 and TARNISH from 1523-1225).  Catherine Howard in GILT refers to the death of Anne Boleyn, who is only a girl in TARNISH.  It's mind-boggling.

But somehow it works.

I get to watch my work grow and evolve and proceed out into the world in a completely new form.  And I love it.

BTW--I have not seen a hard copy of this book yet, so if you see it anywhere, Tweet me or post on my Facebook page!  (Release date is Thursday, so extra points if you find it early!)