Whose stupid idea was this anyway...

Okay, finding a bit of time for blog duties in between a major case of angst over my latest project... and no small amount of prevarication.

So, after three weeks of re-writing the first chapter of my new WIP I'm thinking 'whose stupid idea was it to resurrect this story?'

My reasoning was simple at the time... or maybe just lazy. I had to make a mid-July deadline, I had a great hook already, a story framework all worked out and characters that I loved... Why not go with it, and I might have a hope in hell of getting it done in time because I'd already done the donkey work (so to speak).

But uh-oh, as I've found out over the last few weeks, what the heck do you do when the tone of the story is wrong, the characters are not doing what they're told and you're a pantser who finds it hellish hard to get inspired if you already know what's going to happen. So now I'm having to rethink my characters, my story arc, my motivation and my whole way of working, and everything in between.

And if it's going to take me three weeks to write each chapter it might have been easier to start from scratch. The good news..? Is there any, oh yeah I've finally moved on to chapter two. But guess, what, I'm still not sure chapter one is working. Arrrghhhhh!

Pierce and the new WIP

So the furore of my last ms is behind me and I'm slipping into my new wip. As I have a deadline for the 15th July (yikes!), I've decided to go back to an old friend rather than try and start one from scratch.

So, you're probably wondering, what is that uber-sexy and sophisticated picture of Pierce Brosnan in The Thomas Crown Affair doing on the side of this post. Well, he was the original inspiration for the hero I'm working on. He's called Lincoln Latimer and he's a billionaire bad boy who's been forced to do community service at a summer camp for delinquent boys in Maine. There he's going to have to take orders from supervisor Ali Connor. A sassy, no-nonsense British tomboy who's passionate about the kids in her care, Ali is the sort of woman Linc wouldn't look at once in normal circumstances (thinking he prefers sleek, shallow socialites), but after two weeks at the camp, he's going to look, not once but many, many times, until he starts to get an inkling what's missing from his life — and his sexual frustration reaches fever pitch.

Anyone who has read my first book Bedded by a Bad Boy (aka Bedded by a Playboy in the US) might remember Linc and Ali who appeared as secondary characters - so this is a prequel of sorts, but also has to stand alone. I wrote Linc and Ali's story as my first ever completed ms and (having reread it recently) it's going to need a lot of work to turn it into the sparky, super-sexy Modern Heat I want, but at the moment I'm enjoying it, not least looking up juicy pictures of my muse on the internet. Always a valuable pastime. Darn, I guess now I need to go write something.