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I am not the person who originally came up with the concept of this comparison – it’s been around for some time, but this is my take on it.

I openly admit to struggling with the editorial process. Not that I don’t know I need it – hey I’m only mostly perfect – but it can be painful. It doesn’t matter how prepared you are for criticism it’s never a fun process. Your beautiful words are being challenged, and all your hard work and effort is being abused for no good reason. Okay, okay – maybe a good reason – that third hand is definitely a problem unless your character is a mutant.

I opened the edits on a work in progress several months ago and this is how I went through the five stages.

Denial – there is nothing wrong with what I have written. These words are usually followed by a quick scroll to the next page. Nope – I am simply not looking at this!

Anger – Who do you think you are? In my case, this is always followed by a string of expletives. I am nothing if not articulate when it comes to stringing expletives together. Really, I do get mad on the first look and I do swear – right after I deny that there’s a f*$#($* problem.

Bargaining – Well, maybe a few small changes are in order, but I’m not giving up the hug and apology in Chapter Two no matter what you say. I am not a good negotiator. In fact, I’m terrible at it. My idea of negotiating is I say no, and then I pass you your straw and tell you “Suck it up, buttercup.” Then I default back to angry and string more expletives together.

Depression – This is the part where I sit around in the funk that comes when people simply don’t understand me. This is also where I forget that out of 85,000 words, the editor has issues with only about 1,000 of them. All I can see is the 1,000 and it’s crushing. It doesn’t matter that fixing those 1,000 will make this a better book. This is the stage where I’m sure that I should go find something else to obsess about. Maybe I’ll just string some more expletives together as I cry in the corner…

Acceptance – By the next day, I am able to approach these notes in a more rational manner. I’m able to say yay or nay based on something more reasonable than emotion, and I can communicate with my editor in a way that doesn’t make me sound like an inmate in the state asylum.

Almost all of these things happen in private. Almost. I have been known to call Dean and “vent.” Hey, he’s more than just my publisher, he’s my friend, and it comes with the territory. He listens, sympathizes, and in general tries to help me come to a better place. Then, because he’s my friend and my damn publisher, and because he knows me so well, he hands me my straw. I make the needed changes and it’s a better book.

I soooo do not write romance. I’ve never once had my characters hearts stopped by the sight of breathtaking beauty or rippling muscles. My men don’t glower and my women don’t flirt from under lowered lashes. My guys don’t wear silk shirts, with tailored slacks that show off their “assets” and most of my gals wouldn’t recognize a Jimmy Choo if you poked her eye out with the stiletto heel of one.

My goal is to write stories about people who are more realistic – people that I might actually meet and would like to be around. I write fiction about two people (both human and vampire) with some type of military connection, who are in some sort of predicament, have to form a partnership to survive, fall in love, there’s some hot fooling around, and then they face the threat together, usually with a couple of cool friends. The sex isn’t the point of the story, it’s just part of the story.

Last year as I was writing Protecting Parker, I wrote myself into a corner and had to write an intimate scene from the hero’s point of view. There are a lot of things that I can imagine, but a man’s point of view during sex isn’t something I’d ever tried before. When I’d done the best I could with it, I called Dean to ask him if he’d read it and see if I got it even close to right. Dean writes – he should be able to help. It was then that I had one of the more unusual conversations in my life.

Me: “I’m not sure I have it right. Would you mind reading it for me?”
Dean: “Well, how long is it?”
Me: “About sixteen pages or so.”
Dean: “Too long.”
Me: “What?”
Dean: “Is he thinking a lot about what’s going on?”
Me: “Well, we’re in his point of view.”
Dean: “No. Is he thinking about how everything feels and comparing it to something else. You know, like about her skin being like silk type stuff?”
Me: “Sure. There’s some of that.”
Dean: “Get rid of all that. Men don’t really think about that kinda stuff when they’re in the moment.”
Me: “What?”
Dean: “Let me give you an example. You buy a new teddy and spend an hour getting ready. Bathing, primping, worrying about whether the color works or if the lace makes you look too fat, and all that other stuff. You walk into the bedroom and the very most a man thinks is, ‘Ooohhh, lace… boobs… lucky.’ Mostly the blood rushes from our brain and we just sorta go into reaction mode.”

The conversation went on for some time as Dean explained that men really don’t think the way we do. He said when it came to thinking, men thought a lot about sex, right up until it happened and then there wasn’t a lot of thinking going on. While we ladies might be evaluating the moment, men have a tendency to be sticking with the basics. A week later, I told him I’d rewritten it and taken out all the emotional content and compound sentences, thereby cutting it by more than half. Then he agreed to read it.

When one of my male beta readers finally read the whole book, he was appreciative that I’d kept things fairly simple. You’ll understand why I’m hiding his identity when you read this. I want you to have respect for my beta readers and this won’t help.

Him: “Thank God, it wasn’t all anniversary sex.”
Me: “What?” (I always ask such concise questions.)
Him: “You know most of the time sex is sorta basic. You really only go for all the fancy stuff on birthdays and anniversaries.”
Me: “Who does?”
Him: “Guys. All the extras aren’t really an everyday thing after the first year or so. You guys don’t show up in the fancy underwear every night and we don’t trot out our best moves. You know, everyday sex is sorta basic, birthday sex is better, and anniversary sex requires your best moves.”
Me: “Um, okay.”
Him: “Too much romance in books just sets men up for failure. We aren’t that sensitive or energetic on a daily basis.”

I’m reminded of the old adage: Never ask a question that you don’t want to know the answer to. So, I’ll ask Dean about computer stuff, Dave about specific weapons, Del about tactics and structure, my other Dave about military and tactical equipment, Gunny about bodyguard stuff, and my cops about cop stuff.

But, now you know why I don’t write romance.

Have you ever seen the movie The Green Berets? One of my favorite characters in that movie was Private Provo. Provo noticed that all the people who were killed in action had something on a military installation named for them, and it bothered him terribly that he couldn’t figure out what building would go well with the name Provo. Throughout the movie, Provo worried about what they could name after him because, whatever it was, the name needed to “sing” to him. With his dying breath, he asked John Wayne to take care of that issue for him, and at the end, we see “Provo’s Privy.”

Well, much like Provo, I want the titles of my novels to not only reflect something about the novel, but I also want them to “sing” to me. There are times when I have considered banging my head against the wall in frustration as I try to figure out an appropriate title for a novel. Protecting Parker had the working title of “The Shirt’s Tale.” Several people had made suggestions for titles, but none of them really worked for me. My husband’s niece Heather was the one who came up with Protecting Parker, and from the moment, I saw it, it sang to me.

I didn’t have a clue what I was going to do with my military vampire series. The working title was “Sam’s Story” for the longest time. Eventually, I woke up and smelled the coffee. I was writing the explanation of the Blood Link that is unique to this group of vampires, and there was the title. As I laid out the next books, I called them simply Blood Link Two, Three, and Four, but then one day, I had the reality check that each of these books was about a specific member of the team and the names fell into place. Blood Link II – The Doubter, Blood Link III – The Civilian, and Blood Link IV – The Damaged.

Sadly, that group was the only thing that’s been reasonably easy to title. My next stand-alone book has been untitled since its inception. I often refer to it as “Evie’s Story” based on the lead character’s name or sometimes as “The Genealogist and the ATF Agent.” They are working titles that simply keep me from losing the books in the shuffle. Then a random trip past the Harlequin rack at the bookstore polluted my brain and transported me to a very bad place that I will call “Bad Title Land.” Did they run out of interesting titles? I won’t use the real ones because this isn’t about abusing an individual author who may or may not have had any say in the title. This is about the broader problem of titling a book. But here are some examples that are pretty close to the real ones: Administrative Assistant by Day – Mistress By Night or The Billionaire Heir and the Hot Nanny, The Cowboy CEO and the Secret Baby (it’s not really a secret if you put it on the cover) or Katie and the Cop. I think you get the idea. The books suddenly stopped sounding like romance and a lot more like bad 1970s porn.

At the same time, I get the marketing strategy – you know exactly what you’re getting. No need to waste any of your precious time reading a blurb to find out what the book is about. Now, before you send me hate mail for picking on Harlequin, let me just say that company doesn’t have a corner on the market for bad titles. Many of its titles are actually quite good. Its rack simply happens to be a place where you can see a lot of them in one spot. It’s kind of like a watering hole on the Serengeti. Eventually, every type of animal is going to show up. Some good, some not so good, and some that you never want to see when you don’t have a gun with you.

At that point, finding an appropriate title for Evie became a bit of an obsession. I’d burn the novel before I’d allow my work to be published with the title of “The Genealogist and the ATF Agent.” As my first round of beta readers began to work their way through the book, I asked them to send along any ideas for a title. I’d hit the jackpot with Heather; maybe I’d get lucky again. There were quite a few suggestions. Some were amusing, some were completely inappropriate (my ex-military members are often a crude lot), and a few of them were interesting enough to be worthy of consideration. In the end, I found it myself within the story. A Shared Fear is the title. Simple, effective, and appropriate.

Blood Link and A Shared Fear will be coming out this summer.