The Next Big Thing

The fabulous Joyce Tremel threatened invited me to take part in this blog chain thing going around called The Next Big Thing. It's for writers, and has to do with our WIPs - or Works in Progress, for the uninitiated.

The deal is, someone tags you, you answer ten question about a new or recent project, and you tag five more people who wait a week and do the same. Joyce tagged me last week (check out her post and her WIP here), and I'm hereby tagging the following victims... um... writers for next week:

Jamie Lee Scott
Teresa Watson
Jody Wallace
Diane Alberts
Chloe Jacobs

Be sure to visit their blogs next week to learn about their WIPs.

Now, onto the good stuff:

What is your working title of your book?

Contingent On Approval - a real estate term that means that someone's concent or agreement is necessary to move forward with the transaction.   

Where did the idea come from for the book?

It’s a novella that takes place right after the events of A Done Deal, my 5^th Cutthroat Business mystery that was released last Christmas. It ends on Christmas Eve, with the hero and the heroine tumbling into bed together. It’s taken them five books to get there. Not physically, because they’ve been in bed together before, but to a point in their relationship where they’re actually committed to one another.

I thought the series was over at that point, or at least I never really planned past it. But as I was reading a lot of holiday novellas myself last Christmas, the idea came that maybe I should write Savannah and Rafe’s version of a Christmas novella.

I played with it a little last year, but then I had to start working on other things because deadlines were coming due. I picked it up again a week or so ago, and aim to have it finished and out by December 1. My very first novella!

What genre does your book fall under?

The Cutthroat Business series has been either a five-book mystery series or one long romance, depending on how you look at it. To me, it was always about the relationship between the two main characters, with the romance taking place against the backdrop of the mysteries, so to speak... but I suppose someone else might call it a mystery series with a romantic subplot. Either way, the novella is mostly just a little romantic interlude with not much mystery about it. The biggest question is whether Rafe will survive dinner with Margaret Anne Martin, Savannah’s sainted mother, who is fully capable of slicing a man to ribbons with nothing but her tongue—and whether he’ll still want to be involved with Savannah afterwards.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

Ever since I saw Agatha Christie’s By the Pricking of My Thumbs (2006) with O.T. Fagbenle as Chris Murphy, I’ve pictured him as Rafe. If I can’t have him, I’d settle for either Shemar Moore or Boris Kodjoe, although they’re both about 8-10 years too old for the role by now. As for Savannah... I’m not really sure. I’ve always imagined her a bit like Faith Hill: pretty, blonde, and Southern, a girl-next-door type rather than a femme fatale.   

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

Guess who’s coming to (Christmas) dinner? Or maybe, Will Rafe and Savannah survive Christmas dinner with Savannah's sainted mother, or will Rafe decide Savannah isn't worth the trouble?  

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

This is my self-published series – as opposed to the DIY books, which belong to Berkley and the Good Fortune series, which goes through Entangled Publishing – so the novella will be self-published.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

I’m not done yet. I figure another week ought to do it, which will put me at about two weeks, all told. Rather a lot for a 20,000 word novella. I wrote 53K in 13 days in June...

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

If Janet Evanovich wrote a Christmas novella for Stephanie Plum, I guess maybe that’d come close. Gemma Halliday has a High Heels Christmas story, and Misa Ramirez has a Lola Cruz Christmas story... maybe something like that? It’s like any short novella wedged into an ongoing series, you know?

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

No one and nothing, other than that it seemed a logical continuation of the series as it stood. As for what inspired me to write the series in the first place, it was a combination of reading all the Stephanie Plum books, hearing Tasha Alexander tell me that if she could write a book and become published, I could too, and going through real estate school where there was a lot of talk about safety and empty houses. I had the idea for a new-minted realtor walking into an empty house and finding a dead body, and the rest, as they say, is history.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

I don’t imagine anything much will. People who have read the first five books in the series, will probably enjoy seeing Savannah and Rafe’s first day together as a couple, but this probably isn’t a good place for anyone not familiar with the series to jump off. I’m mostly just writing it for fun and to keep the readers happy while they wait for book 6, Kickout Clause, to be available in the spring,   

* * *

So there you have it. The nitty-gritty on this week's WIP, Contingent on Approval, in which Savannah wakes up in bed in the Martin Mansion in Sweetwater, looking at Rafe and the rest of her life... just as soon as they both live through Christmas dinner with Mama Martin. The novella should be available around December 1, or so I fondly hope.

Until next time!  

 

Houses, Hunks, and Whodunit - Part 2

Since I talked about houses last time - specifically, Aunt Inga's house, or more accurately, the Second Empire Victorian - I guess it's time for hunks. Or more specifically, one hunk. This one:

I know. Yum, right?

His name is O.T. Fagbenle - also known as OT or O-T - and he's a British-Nigerian actor. In addition to acting, he sings, and he also writes music. And did I mention yummy?

Anyway, he can do an American accent. I saw him in Masterpiece Theatre's Miss Marple, By the Pricking of My Thumbs, and he played an American GI. And I have decided that if anyone ever - or in the next two years or so, before he gets too old - decides to make a movie out of A Cutthroat Business, he's who I want to play Rafe. Just check it out:

It took me four minutes longer than the fifteen I had promised before I could pull my pale-blue Volvo — the safest car on the road — to a stop behind the sleek, black Harley-Davidson waiting in the circular driveway. The man straddling the seat matched the motorcycle: dark, muscular, and more than a little dangerous. The T-shirt might as well have been painted on for all that it left to the imagination, and the tattoo peeking from under the left sleeve looked like the tail end of a viper curled around his bicep.

I hesitated before I opened the car door. Real estate can be a scary business on occasion. Those of us who are involved in it advertise our faces and phone numbers all over town, then agree to meet total strangers who call, claiming to want to see an empty house somewhere. Often in an area that isn’t the best, like the one I found myself in now. Sometimes — rarely, but it happens — one of us gets attacked. And there was something about this man that suggested that I ought to step carefully. So I did, both because it seemed prudent and because the gravel was difficult to navigate on three inch heels. “Sorry I’m late. I’m Savannah Martin..."

And then I stopped — dead, if you’ll pardon the pun — when he removed the mirrored sunglasses and I met his eyes.

They were as dark as those on a Jersey cow, and surrounded by long, thick, curving eyelashes. There’s nothing wrong with my lashes — nothing a liberal application of make-up can’t correct, at any rate — but I would have sold my soul to possess his. He could hawk mascara for Maybelline with those lashes. Not that that was the reason I was staring.

“Struck speechless by my good looks, darlin’?” His voice was amused.

“Sorry,” I managed, fighting back a blush. How mortifying, to be caught staring! “For a second there you looked familiar, but...”

“You ain’t never forgotten me?” He grinned. White teeth flashed against golden skin, and a ghostly memory stirred, like an alligator in a swamp, but it subsided without breaking the surface.

“Um...” I said, distracted. The grin widened wickedly.

When a few seconds passed while I didn’t say anything else, he added, “Been back to Sweetwater lately?”

So he was from back home. Well, it made sense. The drawl, slow as molasses, was pure South, and he wasn’t someone I had met recently, or I would have remembered.

“A few weeks ago,” I said slowly, running mental mug shots past my inner eye. “You?”

“That’d be telling.” Another grin curved his lips and the alligator stirred again. I concentrated, and almost had it, but just as I was about to reach out and grasp it, it slipped through my fingers once more.

You couldn’t give me a hint, could you?”

I smiled hopefully. He contemplated me in silence for a few seconds before he said accommodatingly, “Sure. Columbia High.”

I nodded. Of course. He was someone I had gone to high school with. That explained it. Long enough ago that I wouldn’t necessarily remember him right off; not so long ago that I had forgotten entirely. But there had been hundreds of students in my high school, from all over Maury County and beyond. How in the world did he expect me to recognize him after all this time...?

And then the brick dropped, or the alligator reared, or whatever. I jumped back. “Oh, my God! Rafael Collier. You’re...”

“Guilty as charged.” He made a little mocking half-bow. His voice was pleasant, but his eyes were anything but. They had turned as black as the motorcycle he’d been riding, and approximately twice as hard. I swallowed and opened my mouth. And put my foot in it.

“I thought you went to prison.”

He lifted an eyebrow. Just one; the other didn’t move so much as a fraction of an inch. “That was twelve years ago, darlin’. I got out.”

Obviously. I swallowed again and took another step back.

# # #

 

So what do you think? Does he look like Rafe or not? And if you don't think so, who do you think would do a better job?