Monday, July 19, 2010

Outlaw Love in Kindle

Outlaw Love - Brenda Joyce Anthology
Lady Desperado is my story in Outlaw Love. Monday is a business day for me, so I can devote the rest of the week to writing.

I was going through contracts and struggling to make a so-called "paperless office" by scanning legal stuff, i.e. contracts, etc. when I hit material about this anthology. Naturally, I wanted to check it out and found that it's still going strong.

I need to reread my Lady Desperado and post a back story for it. If you're following the new epublishing of my early books, you'll see that I enclose a back story to each one. Love those.

I was thrilled to be invited for this western historical anthology by Dell Books. In the lead was Brenda Joyce, Connie Brockway (isn't she super?), Cait Logan (moi), and Stephanie Mittman, new back then.

Thrilled. Short stories, and I think this was 30k maybe, are extremely difficult for me to write. I tend to think in layers. Lady Desperado was one of the most difficult work I've done, though all of it is pretty intense. Very intense.

A 1997 release, it is now in Kindle form with my other books. It continues to sell but now in a new form.

So if you like westerns, I wrote as Cait Logan and will soon be working on Delilah and her Mountie.

Friday, July 16, 2010

A Writer's Choice

After just finishing Kindle's A LADY'S DESIRE, early category romance, I'm questioning which project to start next.

Let's see: 1. There's life stuff; 2. business (that ugly underbelly of the fun writing-part)which is scanning, filing, oh yeah--need to update my website really badly. I have new software, so it's not that easy a re-do; or 3. finish the 100 pages and edit my WIP that basically stopped while learning how to work with my reverted early books.

Any one of the 3 is major time consuming. So time vs. priorities is one of a writer's "real life" problems. I did a seminar on this for writers, complete with help from Julie Hood's and my own handouts, blocking time.

DELILAH'S Stepback.

Mm. Then there's Delilah, my "Mountie" western historical. It's all scanned and waiting.

This book is special to me, as they ALL are, because I've invested so much of myself and love into the story. For Delilah and Simon, her Mountie, I drove the entire route from basically Okanogan, WA up the Cariboo Trail (that's Canadian spelling is correct) to Barkerville, B.C., a perfectly restored historical mining town, complete with Chinese waterwheels.

I took pictures of this great car trip, so if I can just dig them out, they'd be great to work into Delilah's cover.

I always research heavily, more than what shows, and this trip, complete with Northern lights, Fraizer River, mountains, Barkerville was supreme. My westerns and some contemporaries are set in the Northwest, the westerns following the Indian, trapper, gold miner, etc. trails. The Oregon Trail was unbelievable, even car-driving, because you actually see how much the pioneers suffered in crossing.

And the interviews! Loved interviewing local history buffs and gathering regional materials.

So right now, it looks like DELILAH is in the lead for priority.

But then, I'm really really wanting to finish my women's fiction, the first of a series, I hope.