Jennifer Crusie's Blog: Argh Ink

Susan Elizabeth Phillips just cleaned out her office and sent me a picture of it to show that she is once again superior to me in every way. I love her, but I fail to understand why she thinks a clean office is a good thing. She’s never going to find a rough draft on there that she suddenly knows how to fix because she lost it at exactly the right time. She’s never going to have everything she wants right under her fingertips (and elbows and keyboards) because she’s put it all away. She’s never going to have the delight of finding a half-eaten Snickers bar just when she needs it most. Really, is there any point in working in a place like this?

I think not.

This is the second in a series of Three Goddess Chats, brought to you by Krissie (aka Anne Stuart and Kristina Douglas), Lucy (Lucy March aka Lani Diane Rich), and Jenny (Jenny Crusie), who meet in a chat-room called ThreeGoddesses to talk about everything. Krissie has been writing supernatural romances for a long time, and now as Kristina Douglas she’s started a new series about fallen angels, The Fallen (Raziel, Demon, and Warrior, out in April 2012). Jenny came to the supernatural late with The Unfortunate Miss Fortunes (written with Krissie and Eileen Dreyer) and Dogs and Goddesses (written with Krissie and Lucy) and Wild Ride (written with Bob Mayer). Lucy’s newest book is also a supernatural romance: A Little Night Magic, in stores on January 31. This time, we got together in our Three Goddesses chat room to talk about what we’ve learned writing the things that go bump in the night. The chat has been heavily edited to cut out excursions into TV criticism, moaning about the business, and a short argument we had about French Kiss, but otherwise, this is what we said:

[Lucy and Jenny got to the chat first, so we started without Krissie]
Jenny:. So, Lucy March, what made you decide to write supernatural in A Little Night Magic?

Lucy: I wanted to stretch out, work in that fantasy space. I felt like I was treading the same water writing what I was writing. I wanted to write a first person series, with Liv as the protagonist, do some long form storytelling, but that’s not what the publisher wanted. So, I caved, because they said, “We’ll pay you,” and at heart, I’m a whore. Eventually, I want to do a long form first person series, though. read more >>

This is the first in a series of Three Goddess Chats, brought to you by Krissie (Anne Stuart), Lucy (Lucy March aka Lani Diane Rich), and Jenny (Jenny Crusie), who meet every now and then in a chat-room called ThreeGoddesses to talk about everything. Krissie doesn’t write romantic comedy so this is actually a Two-Goddess post, but she’ll be here tomorrow for the supernatural romance chat. This one is Lucy and Jenny trying to synthesize everything they learned watching romantic comedy movies for nine months for their Popcorn Dialogues podcasts, although they tend to veer off into talking about writing romance in general.

Jenny: So what have we learned from nine months of PopD, Lucy? First: character. Character, character, character.

Lucy: Character is sacred. Always.

Jenny: In a rom com, it’s because it sells why we should want these two characters to be together, and why we care desperately if they’re not. In It Happened One Night, you really want them together, especially after the scene in the motel where they pretend to be married. I think that’s key, making the reader really need for these two people to be together.

Lucy: Absolutely. And how is the humor handled. It should come from character, not from jokes. That’s a comedy with a romance tacked on. read more >>

So here’s the story so far.

I was going home to my brother’s house for the parents-niece-and-nephew-brother-and-sister deal. Lani’s kids were having turkey with their dad so they were going to have pizza here. And previous to that, I had brought home the ingredients for about four Thanksgiving dinners because Scylla is cooking in You Again and people get shirty if I don’t have the recipes later. I put the turkey in the sink to thaw (this was a week ago), took some anti-sinus meds, fell asleep, and left the turkey out for over twelve hours. This will kill people so I had to throw it out and buy another turkey two days ago, which I left in the fridge to thaw. Got all that? read more >>