Lacey Kaye

As you must know by now, this week the Mavens are doing the Novel Meme. It goes like this:

Hey, Maven Lacey, what books have you written?

And the answer is…Not nearly enough.

1) As with a few of the other Mavens, my first-ever attempt to write a novel happened before I turned 10. I wanted to write a Babysitter’s Club-style book because that’s what I knew. I started it on one of the pcs at my mom’s work, where it remains to this day. Needless to say, it also remains incomplete, which very well may be why it has yet to be published.

Or maybe that’s not why.

2) My first earnest attempt to write a novel resulted in If You Asked the Devil to Dance, which is the launch title of my Romance with Color series. In DTD, the fierce, passionate Shawano warrior heroine is forced from her tribe into English society in the hopes she will be able to save her people from ruin. While attempting to collect her English father’s inheritance, she meets the ton’s idea of your cliched romance novel hero: He’s reserved, dark and devilishly handsome, with wicked eyes and a lady-killing smile…only he doesn’t know that because he’s too shy to ask anyone why it is everyone backs away from him all the time. These h/h are about as star-crossed as they come, and even I wondered how the story could ever end happily.

3) The second novel in my Romance with Color series is If You Asked an Angel to Love. ATL follows the first story out of England into war-torn America, where the first heroine’s brother continues the Shawano fight for independence. Armed with guns, money, much-needed supplies — and a fiery, female stowaway — he returns just a little too late. His people have surrendered to despair and given up. His attempts to lead them to victory are met with loss of life and eventual mutiny. As his life spirals out of his control, he becomes more and more attracted to the woman who dares to take what she wants. And therein lies the catch: to truly have her, she must want him. And the silent, unyielding warrior has yet to give her a reason to…

4) If You Asked a Rake to Reform is the third novel in my Romance with Color series. The hero is a moronic ninny whose primary purpose in life is to demonstrate proper wear of the latest cravats. The heroine is a half-black former slave with a burning desire to become an Abolitionist. These two collide in a darkly humorous battle of wits and parasols with a toss-up ending I still haven’t quite decided on.

5) VHM, the novel is my contemporary Geek Lit romance. Also known as The Novel that Shall Never Be Published, the basic plot was conceived by my coworkers after they realized I write historical fiction and they’d never want to read my books unless they took my career in hand. (But their wives, I am assured, can’t wait for the day they can snatch up my girlie books.)

VHM is about an engineer who writes a book about her coworkers because she’s got writer’s block between her first and second novels (cough, cough) and suddenly Real Life is more interesting (and easier to write about) than historical fiction. She never intends for it to see the light of day…

YOUR TURN: Which one do you want to read first? Why?

Twenty-something more to go. But a scene is a scene, so I’m treating myself. And a big shout-out to MD, who FINISHED HER SECOND MANUSCRIPT THIS WEEKEND!!

You, too, can finish your manuscript! One measly scene at a time

Looks like the unofficial theme this week is bringing personal experience into our writing. I figure that means it’s time to dust off the half-written post that’s been up in my drafts folder since late last year and actually, uh, post it.

A defining moment in every woman’s life is the day she realizes she looks and/or sounds like her mother. For me, that point of no return occurred when I got my Washington Driver’s License. I took a good look at the tiny picture printed there beside my name, swallowed, double-checked the image (just in case), and put it into my wallet.

I vowed never to show it to anyone ever again.

A few years went by and I started to think maybe I had been wrong about the picture. Besides, the more years that passed by, the more I wanted someone to ask me for my license. (Another defining moment in a woman’s life?) Then I got the brilliant idea to take my personal photographs to work and put them up as flare in my office. One day a picture of my mother at about 17 or 18 years old went up on my shelf at work. Next to it, and without first realizing the implication, I placed a picture of me at 19 or 20 sitting next to my mother at the kitchen table.

I uttered some very non-PC things, realizing there actually existed inarguable, side-by-side proof I am the spitting image of my mother…and that I probably have been a lot longer than I’ve wanted to accept it (or even noticed it). Not surprisingly, the people at work picked up on it really fast. At least three times a week I’m asked whether it’s me or my mom in the black and white high school photo. I’ve come to accept it’s not a bad thing to look like one’s mother when one’s coworkers stand and gaze at her photo appreciatively (usually citing that it takes them back to their own high school days…but I say, Go, Mom!). But I grew up hearing I looked like my father and my grandmother on my father’s side, so when did I become my mother?

None of that is particularly related to writing, in case you were waiting for the aha moment. But something closely related to the looking like one’s mother is the sounding like one’s mother, and that IS a subject I can relate to writing.

Curious how I’ll do it? (That makes two of us.) Read the rest of this post!

I’m back, and this time, I have an Epiphany to share with you. Buckle up your seat belts, ladies and gents — this is going to be bigger, badder, and better than ever.

Note: my office chair at work actually has a seat belt. After the Ergo department evaluated my office space and decided to remove the armrests on my chair, one of the “moonshine” guys came by and decided my seat now posed a safety hazard, so he brought in a seat belt and affixed it to my seat. When Lisa’s armrests were removed, she got one, too. See? All the cool kids are doing it. And you thought I was kidding.

Buckled in? OK. Here we go.

This is one of those things you probably read on other people’s blogs and go duh. I’m certainly not the first person to realize this, so I’m not claiming to be hiking mountains here. (For the record, I have hiked exactly one mountain in my life. It is an experience sure never to be repeated.) For some reason, even though I’d heard this a million, billion times and it is one of those things that everyone knows, I never truly understood the big deal. Of course your story needs to be the biggest, most awesomest story you can make. Duh, it’s a book. We read it to escape things like my slog through 20 consecutive work days. But ask yourself this: Is it?

I have a vision for my Romance with Color label. It’s overarching and dark and humorous and sexy and my characters are complicated, tortured souls. But I think my work falls short of that right now. They’re not terribly active people, my people. They are afraid of obstacles and you know what? I am, too.

I’m pretty lazy. Dialogue and internal narrative are what I do well. Action…not so much. So I skip it. I write what I write really well, don’t get me wrong. But my manuscripts are by no means as big and kickass as I want to believe they are. When I say big, I mean story-scope-wise. The fate of the world isn’t on my characters. If my characters decide to crawl into a hole and die, maybe like five people would care. (Besides you readers, of course!) But they’re not taking away anything anyone else really needs. The world isn’t a better place because they’re in it.

I finally had the nerve to plot the story I wanted to write in the first place, and daily I wish I were working on it now. (That would be my third manuscript, If You Asked an Angel to Love.) But I am a finisher, and I need to finish the book I’m writing now. I just don’t need to finish If You Asked a Rake to Reform the way I was writing it.

*Curious? Finish the fabulosity at manuscriptmavens.com!*

A few weeks ago I blogged about deleting the beginning of my novel and starting over again. According to that indesputable source, me, “Nothing could live up to [the opening of my novel] in voice or humor.” But as the story goes, I deleted it anyway and came up with something new.

The truth is, the opening to my novel sucked. It did pretty well when it went to contest (coming this close to needing a discrepancy judging) but it couldn’t sustain a 400-page novel. Why? Because I almost did too good of a job setting up the main conflicts between the h/h. There was no mystery, no character to explore, no peeling back of the onion because I’d already given the secrets up in the first thirty pages.

Continue reading this post!

I haven’t been posting because I’ve been working. Between Golden Heart entries that need to be critted (not mine…/ducks) and books that need to be plotted (not mine, either), not to mention a manuscript that needs to be written (!!! MINE), I’ve been a busy little beaver this holiday weekend. I did take time off to spend Thanksgiving with my friends (yummilicious!) and have successfully managed to avoid anything to do with Black Friday, Black Thursday, or shopping in general. Other than that, write write write write write!

It feels great.

Today, a few people are coming over to learn a bit about Maven Storyboarding 602. I’ll let you know how it goes!

Any progress during your weekend?

So you know I handwrote RTR in a little book last year. Well, I finally got motivated enough to sit down and start reading, and whoa. It’s fun. It’s not that bad. And it makes way more sense than I thought it did.

I always felt like I wandered around and around and around with that book, looking for the conflict/story. I KNOW that’s a reason I procrastinated it so long — long enough to think my historical voice sucked, blah blah blah. But mostly, I had this “perfect” DTD and this woefully corrupt RTR and I didn’t want to deal with it. But it makes more sense than I thought. So I’m reading it through — it reads remarkably like a story, even though it’s not typed and there are notes in the margins, etc. — and then I’m going to read it again and make a storyboard for it. I’m psyched! w00t! If I can get the storyboard done by Christmas, I can work on it on vacation. Especially if Maven Erica figures out the secret to flying them on airplanes.

Nothing much else. Just wanted to share in my excitement…. I know some of you are like, duh, Lacey, but it wasn’t duh to me.

Is anyone else realizing how far they’ve come in the last X years? How much less second books suck in the first draft? How nice it is to know your process and only be required to follow it, not to have to figure things out from scratch?

Spending this weekend with Maven Darcy and the lovely ladies (and occasional gentleman) of the Greater Seattle RWA at the Emerald City Writers’ Conference. Networking, tally ho!

BREAKING NEWS!!!

CARRIE RYAN ******SOLD******* HER POST-APOCALYPTIC YA THRILLER!

Congratulate her here. Then, get your own query letters out the door!

After flying high all weekend (yay, Darcy!), I met up with the Purple Pen Posse for a little plotstorming. Actually, I didn’t mean to go in looking for ideas. As you may or may not know, I’ve been dragging my heels a lot lately when it comes to writing new scenes. The great news is, when I realized I could run some ideas by the girls and get their reactions in real time — and remembered how much fun that is — I did, and wham! Stellar ideas.

Better yet, some mojo. Incentive. Get up and go.

Didn’t finish the scene (I think one reason I’ve been procrastinating it is because I knew it would be a long one, and without instant gratification awaiting me it’s easier to put writing off) but I got more than halfway through. Longhand, I might add.

It’s like I’m just remembering all the good tricks to getting scenes done. What happened in the interim?

Good weekend? Bad? Have you congratulated Maven Darcy yet? And India Carolina, bosom friend of the Mavens? They’re supastars!

We shall rule the world yet!

I’m trying to find the right name for the hero of my contemporary romance i.e. VHM, the novel. The name has to sound “right” and so far, just haven’t hit on it. I will gladly send a special prize to someone if they happen to suggest something I like (and use) one lucky random winner. Most likely, this special thing will be a Book.

Hey, you’re the one who has to be original, not me.

Hero is tall, dark and handsome, from a middle/lower class family, and in his mid-thirties. He’s quiet and athletic. He loves his mother. Can’t be a unique nickname (Trist for Tristan is not ok, though Nick for Nicholas would be fine) and I’m thinking no Jacks or Sebastians (Sebastian is hardly a lower class-sounding name, anyway).

Ready, set, GO!