Lacey Kaye

Just before Christmas this past year, I bought two sexy little spencers. (A spencer, for those of you who aren’t familiar with the term, is a tiny, cropped, jacket-like top girls wear over tank tops. It cuts just under the bust line and may or may not meet over the navel with a button or snap.)

Two sexy little spencers that did *not* close at their respective buttons. The sales girls watching me try on these spencers assured me a spencer was not required to close. They suggested I buy the size that fit across the shoulders and wear it open. Even if it didn’t close, it still accomplished its purpose, which in my case was to draw attention away from my shoulders and focus it on the middle of my chest while smoothing out the hour glass line of my waist.

So I did, and I wore them, proud I’d finally defeated the fashion god who strove to keep me out of such trendy accessories by refusing to make them in my size.

And then today, after months of letting them hang in my closet because it was simply too cold to wear them, I took one out. Put it on. Realized…hey…I think the button over here actually might just reach the hole over there.

With baited breath, I brought the two ends together and…

The girls lied. These particularly cut jackets were definitely meant to close.

So if you’re wondering why I missed the book signing tonight, it’s because I decided this is a gain I’d like to keep. It’s a workout day. Next stop: bikini?

Last week, I told you about my perceived cluelessness when it comes to writing contemporary-style romance. A few of you had some great recs, and after yet another thought-provoking discussion with MaveFave Keira (I owe her so much!), I’ve spent the last few days curled up with various women’s fiction novels. Flirting With Forty, fellow Eastsider Jane Porter’s novel-turned-soon-to-be-made-for-tv movie, really has deep POV nailed down. Also-Eastsider Shannon McKelden’s recently re-released Venus Envy (let the spam comments commence) does “deliciously smitten hero” in a way that makes me wish Luke Stanton was stalking me. And fellow Washingtonian Lisa Kleypas’s Blue Eyed Devil mixes contemporary issues with her classic, lyrical writing so well, it makes me wonder why I ever swore I’d never read her new, first-person Texas-set novels. (Which is actually the same thing I thought after reading Sugar Daddy last year, but whatever.)

So what have I learned thus far? (Besides being sick is a great excuse to get to all the TBRs stacked up next to my bed.) Well, two things. One, what I said to Keira the other day actually turned out to be true. Which is weird and not weird, because I knew it was true when I said it, but it was one of those you know it’s true but it doesn’t make it any easier to sit down and do it. Oh, what I said…right. I said there was nothing in the world that makes me want to write my books more than reading other people’s books.

Good books, bad books, books I’d never write and books so close to mine I want to jump out of the nearest barouche. All books make me want to write my books. Similarly, watching very good tv (How I Met Your Mother, House) and very good movies (Becoming Jane, Becoming Jane) makes me want to write books. But in the last year — ever since I stopped watching tv — I’ve watched zero tv. As in, no tv. At all. Even sneaked. And the number of movies I’ve watched has dwindled to almost zero, too. And the number of books I’ve read…well, you get the picture.

I’ve been living with a scripted entertainment deficit, and it seems to have gotten to me.

So I popped in my Sex and the City DVDs after last week’s post, and this week I read a few books. Which brings me to thing I learned number two: I desperately want to finish my book. My historical book. Which makes no sense, seeing as how I’ve been building up my contemporary stores, but there you have it. I miss Roman. I love Roman. I want Roman to get his HEA, dammit, and I want him to get laid already. Desperately.

YOUR TURN: How do you feel about entertainment input? Do you live a deficit-inducing lifestyle? Does watching really well-written tv make you want to compete, in a sense, with the emotion/witticism/characterization/etc? Do you keep up your reading while you’re writing, or do you put it away for fear you’ll accidentally copy a voice/plot/etc? Do you ever want your characters to get laid, or am I projecting? Oh, maybe don’t answer that…

I’m sick. I hate being sick. Not that anyone likes being sick, but I hate all the laying around. I’m not a lay-arounder.

Hope the Eeeeeevil Illness passes over your house. It’s a big no-fun.

A friend of mine from college dropped by my city not too long ago. As chance would have it, a mutual friend gave me the heads up and I was able to contact my college friend and take her out to dinner. On the way to dinner, she turned to me and said something on the order of, “I’m so glad we got to meet up! I was wondering if you still lived here, but I had no way to contact you. I looked you up on the internet and couldn’t find you.”

Which made me wonder, what internet? I’m one of the most googable people I know. If you just google Lacey — nothing else — I am on the second page. If you google my real name, I’m the first hit (followed by two pages of mostly me in various forms), and if you google Lacey Kaye there’s two solid pages of me. So who was she looking for?

Number of pounds lost since last week: 1

Number of additonal lost pounds needed to meet second milestone: 1

Number of new outfits purchased to celebrate approaching milestone: 6

Number of new hairstyles: 1

Number of colors in new hairstyle: 2

Number of people who requested Lacey’s digits this weekend: 2

Number of people who used that number to call Lacey: 1

Number of times Lacey answered: 0

Number of new experiences in LaceyLand: 2

Number of new experiences that shall never be repeated: 1

Number of new scenes in VHM: 1.5

Number of scenes consisting solely of IM dialogue: 1

Number of new hotties spotted: 1

Number of new hotties coming up with lame excuses to invite Lacey out to lunch: 1

It’s been a good few days.

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?

You’re sitting with your critique partners, either in mind or in body, and you’re plotting. (And for you pantsters out there, this is how it goes, so listen up!) You say, “I have an idea for a story where the heroine completely misunderstands everything about the hero and jumps to all sorts of belittling conclusions about him and in the end realizes she totally misjudged him and he’s actually a super-nice person and she’s the beeyotch from Hell who just ruined all possible chances of an HEA with said hero only that can’t be completely true because it’s a romance novel. Now what?”

And your cps say, “Ok, that sounds like a Pride & Prejudice-esque plot, so first we have to build credibility with the heroine so the reader will believe her. And how are you going to keep the reader from knowing the heroine is wrong until the end?”

Now that pretty much traps you into a single POV novel, but you’re ok with it. After all, your heroine knows nothing about the hero until she figures out what she basically made up in her head was wrong, right? Sounds fun. So you start with the obvious plot points and begin your brainstorming.

If my hero did this, my heroine could reasonably think this.
If my heroine did this, my hero could logically respond with this.
If my heroine’s friend whispered this, my heroine would have no choice but to agree and do this.

And on and on until BAM! Unrecoverable play on the heroine’s part. The reader is sent back in time to flip through all the clues that were there but that the heroine missed out on because she was so sure of her path, and now everyone, including the heroine, is wondering how on earth the story can end happily.

I think of this as one form of Disaster Plotting, and Maven Erica was the first person to ever bring it to my attention as a technique. It’s what many chick lits and chick flicks rely on and I, personally, gobble it up. (And I CAN’T WAIT for Forgetting Sarah Marshall this weekend!)

But it turns out, Disaster Plotting can actually happen TO YOU. In Real Life.

And maybe that’s almost more fun.

You know I’ve joked about how vixenating should be tax-deductible because it’s great hands-on research for my Geek Lit contemporary series, but it turns out, my fictionalized reality (VHM, the novel) was so close to actual reality (LaceyLand) that it’s almost stalker-like. One comment I repeatedly received from Maven Erica while writing VHM, the novel was that she was constantly able to feel the awkwardness of the situations the heroine (Lizzie; yes, intentional) got herself into. Now it turns out our If-X-then-Y plotting was so close to reality I’m going to look like a freak if my novel ever gets published (I’ve often referred to it as The Unpublishable Novel, and this was before the creepy stalker stuff came to light). So does that mean that we’re getting very good at plotting, or does it mean we’re not thinking larger-than-life enough to escape reality, or both?

In other words, unrealistic plots can be fun or they can create an instant wall-banger. A lot of it is how the author handles the plot itself, and the sparkliness of her writing and the lovability of her characters. But sometimes a plot is so realistic, it’s boring. Who wants to read about something that could’ve happened to you yesterday?

YOUR TURN: What sort of plot do you prefer? Realistic, completely fictional, or a little of both?

Take the Quiz here!

vin·di·cate   Audio Help  [vin-di-keyt] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation

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[Origin: 1525–35; < L vindicatus (ptp. of vindicare to lay legal claim to (property), to free (someone) from servitude (by claiming him as free), to protect, avenge, punish), equiv. to vindic- (s. of vindex claimant, protector, avenger) + -atus -ate¹]

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Used in a sentence: Maven Erica vindicated my crazypants actions when she found the lure of the Target completely, utterly irresistible.

There’s a man in one of the meetings my team supports who I just know was the playground bully when he was a kid. Whenever a new person comes into my group, I have to help them overcome their fear of working with him. It’s not that he’s a bad guy, but he’s intimidating. An ex-cop with massive forearms and very little patience — and no problem telling you what you’re doing wrong. He’s one of my favorite people now, but I clearly remember a time when I wasn’t as sure of myself around him.

Not too long ago he and I were put on a project together. Around Valentine’s Day he said he wanted to tell me about the gift he got his wife because he knew I’d appreciate it. He went to an antique store and bought an actual Victorian-era Valentine, one in the shape of a heart about the size of a dinner plate. He traced the heart and hand-drawn curlicues onto a piece of expensive wood (like teak or something) and used a jigsaw to cut them out, making a lace pattern out of the wood. Then he cut the “card” down the middle. He hinged these doors onto a solid piece of wood so they would unfold. Then he bought some aged-looking paper, like a thick, pulpy card stock, and printed the Valentine message on it. The paper showed through the card’s window, making a very pretty presentation, and the final touch was a hanger on the back so it could be displayed on a wall.

Needless to say, I was impressed. Not just with the extent to which he’d gone to make Valentine’s Day memorable for his wife of 17 years, but by the way his eyes lit up when he talked about her. I asked him if this was normal for him, and he told me about the curio cabinet he’d made for her wedding dress. It stands in the corner of one of their sitting rooms and has little lights that shine down, etc.

Someone came up to us then and said, “Hey, what are you guys doing?” I looked at the intruder and back at my friend and said, “[He's] melting my heart.” And the intruder looked at my friend and then back at me and went, “Yeah, right.”

Because seriously, who would believe that?

I was telling Maven Erica this story (in preparation for her meeting said friend) and she pointed out that the reason this is a story at all is because of who my friend is perceived to be. Nobody cares about the nice guy who makes the extensive Valentine’s card for his wife. But the motorcycle-riding ex-cop with a chip on his shoulder who takes off work for her birthday every year? That’s intriguing. That makes you stop and go awww.

May have to rethink my love-affair with beta heroes.

YOUR TURN: Tell us about someone you know who made you stop and think twice. A nice guy who did something mean, a mean guy who did something nice, a pastor who slept with a member of his congregation — something that became news not because of what they did, but because of who you thought they were when they did it.