WEEKLY CONTEST!!!!!!!

I've decided to run a weekly contest here for a while. All you have to do is make a comment on the blog. It's that simple. Although, sometimes I might pose a question, which means you have to answer the question in order to be entered. Doesn't matter if you get the actually answer right or wrong, your name still goes into the hat. I will draw a winner each week from the names on the comments. I will post every Friday.

OK - so what to start with? Hmmmm.....

I'm working on a new book. It's more of a Suspenseful Women's Fiction type of a book. It started out different, but the feedback I kept getting was that the Heroine was a bitch and the overall feel of the book was too dark. I had thought long and hard about this, but couldn't figure out how to make it better. I had written in 3rd person, including the killer's POV, but every time I got to page 200 I had realized I'd written myself into a corner.

I knew this book wasn't a Thriller. Or a Mystery. However, it was starting to read like a horror novel, which is not what I wanted. I just couldn't put my finger on what was pushing the plot and characters in this direction.

In my romances, I tend to have a dead body. REKINDLED has one in the opening scene. IN TWO WEEKS doesn't actually have a dead body, but there is a deadly stalker. DARK WATER the heroine's sister was murdered, which is in the backstory, but it's there. JANE DOE'S RETURN we have a serial rapist/murderer on a rampage in Albany, NY. More than one dead body there.

But dead bodies doesn't mean dark. Plots including murder, rape, stalking, addiction, and other not so happy subjects, doesn't mean the tone or voice of the book is dark. It's in the execution and for the last year or so, my execution has royally sucked. I have a friend who has been telling me for years now that I need to lighten up in the beginning. Give the reader something to connect to, even though my heroine is very flawed, I need to pull back with her character before she goes off into the deep end as she tries to find out what really happened to her brother. It was also suggested to me that my voice is stronger in 1st person. I'm not sure.

With that said, it's still a bit on the dark side. It's suspense, and it deals with an addiction that society doesn't look very kindly on. Anyway, here is the deal. I'm going to post the opening few lines and I want your feedback. I want to know if you Like Vivian, or not. If you like the voice. If you like 1st person. If you'd want to read more. Any comments at all, I will take them.

And, someone will a copy of REKINDLED. You have a choice of either getting a downloadable version now, or waiting for the Print version which comes out around May 8th and I will sign it and send it off. It's entirely up to you.

I look forward to your comments.

OPENING LINES OF STOLEN LIVES

I picked a hell of a day to suffer the revulsion of relapse.

The coffee and cheese Danish I’d eaten for breakfast sloshed around in my stomach as I turned the corner into my mother’s neighborhood at nearly forty miles an hour. I swallowed the lingering food particles stuck in my throat, which tasted more like rotten eggs then the hot, sweet flaky thing the local bakery had promised would melt in my mouth. I suppose it was better than regurgitating the bodily fluids of the nameless man I had gotten on my knees for last night. At least with sexual addiction, one can avoid a hangover, sort of.

Approaching my mother’s house, I slowed my car and tried to force my heart rate to follow, but seeing my mother, dressed in mourning black, my pulse exploded. She paced next to the limo, checking her watch before looking down the street. Shaking her head, obviously seeing me, she opened the car door and disappeared from sight.

I parked the car in the street and took a deep breath. I could hear my mother now.
“Vivian Isabella Rose, I can’t believe you are going to make me late for Owen’s funeral. Do you have no respect? Don’t you care about anyone besides yourself?”

I stepped from the car and glanced toward the New York sky. The bright blueness would soon be replaced by rain. Figures. Just like my father’s funeral. When it rain, it poured.
Even though my knees nearly buckled, I chuckled silently. I might have fucked up last night with a nameless man, but at least I could honestly say, I cared about more than myself, even if that person was dead.

Before getting into the awaiting shiny black stretch limo, I looked toward my old bedroom window. I spent many nights shimming down the drainpipe praying that it didn’t pull from the house, flinging me flat on my back on the ground below. I never got caught, then again, I never cared. I only cared about getting my fix. The one experience that made me feel, if only for a brief moment in time, loved. Okay, maybe not loved, but my sexual escapades sparked a sense of existence, something seriously lacking at home.