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The strong, domineering hero of the romance novel has long been the subject of criticism. What critics don’t realize is that it is the hero’s task in the book to present a suitable challenge to the heroine. His strength is a measure of her power. For she must conquer him.
Robyn Donald, “The Hero in Romance Literature”

Most romance writers I’ve talked to, or whose critical writings or interviews I’ve read, say that their ideas for their novels begin with the characters. I’ve found this to be true for myself—and for me, it’s usually the hero who comes first. After all, the true romance novel is, as we learned last time, a story about the developing relationship between two characters. Meaning that it is the characters who are the central focus of the story, the characters who drive the plot, the characters whom, at the end of the book, the reader really cares about. Therefore, when setting out to write a romance novel, a considerable amount of care and attention needs to be paid to developing your characters.

F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote, “Begin with an individual and you will find that you have created a type; begin with a type and you will find that you have created—nothing.” Back in the glory days of the books that gave us the term bodice-rippers (the 1970s and ’80s, just in case you don’t remember reading them yourself!), most of us who were avid romance readers had our favorite authors, because we could count on them to give us the kinds of heroes and heroines we were looking for. Jude Deveraux, Julie Garwood, and Catherine Coulter were my three favorites. In fact, I didn’t read very many other authors at all, because I had all I wanted in their prolific writings. They gave their readers warrior-heroes who took what they wanted no matter the consequences, who resented the heroines for distracting them from their tasks, who felt love was showing weakness and would bring them dishonor; and heroines who were strong, sometimes well beyond what was realistic for the medieval or other historical time periods in which the stories were set, who put up with the men’s brutality and eventually came to not only love them, but soften/tame them as well—while never giving up their own identity.

I’ve recently re-read two old Julie Garwood novels, Honor’s Splendor and The Wedding, and I came to the realization that even though the heroes are technically different—one is an English Baron, the other a Scottish Laird—they’re basically the same. And the heroines are too. And I’m now remembering that even though I considered Julie Garwood my favorite of the three authors I mentioned, I never really did like her heroines. Like the heroes, they’re all very similar, and relatively silly. Jude Deveraux, while still giving the warrior-heroes at least didn’t make her heroines silly. But for the most part, all of them wrote characters that were stereotypical for their era: the warrior and the damsel in distress.

Sure, there are a lot of readers out there who still want those two archetypal romance characters. Or they want the Scoundrel and the Socialite, or the Rich Man and Poor Girl. And if we study all romance novels deeply enough, we’ll find that for the most part, all of our characters fall into some kind of “type” in one way or another. But we have to fight against the stereotypes to make our characters fresh and appealing.

If a romance novel features a heroine with red hair and green eyes, what kind of personality do you expect her to have? If there’s an African American man as a secondary character in a book and a crime is committed, who’s the perpetrator most likely going to be? Are all Italian men hot-headed, lusty, and linked with underground crime? Are all medieval men warlords, barons, or lairds? Do all historical heroines have to be feisty, spunky, educated beyond what is historically believable, hate their corsets, and want to run around all over the place unchaperoned?

In inspirational romance, we have our own set of stereotypes to deal with: the pioneer widow who must marry a stranger to survive; the nineteenth century teacher who’s gone west to teach and bring God’s word to the heathens; missionaries and preachers; secretaries; characters with jobs so vague as to be nonexistent; ranch owners who take in wayward boys; the good Christian girl who must “save” the backslidden or non-Christian hero; and so on.

Quite a lot has changed in the romance genre since the heyday of Deveraux, Garwood, and Coulter. We’ve seen the splintering of romance into subgenres: chick lit, paranormal, romantic suspense, inspirational, sweet, historical (which has its own genres, the two most popular being Regency and medieval), etc. We’ve also seen the decline in popularity of the warrior heroes and damsel-in-distress heroines. Oh, sure, they’re still out there, but modern readers are looking for something more. They’re looking for a twist on the type. They’re looking for unique individuals, so that each story they read seems different from the last.

One thing that has become possible in the last ten or fifteen years has been the beta-male hero. He’s Clark Kent without the Superman alter-ego. He’s Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. He’s the Hollywood mega-star’s personal assistant (George in Stand-In Groom). He’s most likely not buff nor capable of physically sweeping the heroine off her feet, doesn’t hold a “romantic” job (systems support analyst, anyone?), and definitely doesn’t go around intimidating people because of his physical prowess. Yes, typically, these beta-male heroes are found mostly in contemporaries. (We still like our historical heroes to be alpha-males.)

With the rise of the beta-male has come the rise of the alpha-female—the “bitch,” in other words. She’s the powerful woman who’s completely given up on men. She’s the attorney, the vice president of the company, the CEO, the governor, the senator. She has taken over as the character who must be conquered, whose stony dispassion must be chiseled away by our more in-touch-with-his-emotions beta-male.

But once again, in these scenarios, we tend toward types. Our job as authors is to make sure we’re not falling into the trap of beginning with a “type” of character. Is your character telling you she’s a teacher? Great. Make her a shop teacher at an inner-city high school instead of a kindergarten teacher at a private school where all the children are precocious little angels. He’s a medieval Highland laird? Super. Make him a pacifist. Do something to give some kind of twist to your character’s “type” to keep him or her from becoming a stereotype.

In inspirational romance, we’re so scared of giving our characters any kind of flaws, sins, or pasts that they come across as perfect, sanctimonious prigs. Let them have pasts that they’re still paying the consequences for. Let them say things that not everyone around them agrees with. Let them argue. Let them fall down and fail. Let them get angry at God. Let someone else take them down off of their holier-than-thou high-horse.

Because there’s no way to cover everything about romance heroes and heroines in one blog entry, we’ll continue talking about them tomorrow. But for now, let’s get some discussion going.

For Discussion:
In your WIP, what “type” is your hero? (Alpha? Beta? Highland laird? Nerd?) Your heroine? (Damsel in distress? CEO? Silly girl who gets into one catastrophe after another?) What have you done to keep them from becoming stereotypes? Do you have a favorite author who tends to use stereotypical characters in her/his novels? What are your favorite “types” to read in romances?

We all have them . . . those days when we’re just in a funk, feeling like we don’t really want to do anything, like even if we attempt to do anything we won’t accomplish it. I’m having one of those days today. Hard to drag myself out of the bed because it’s overcast and I have a sinus headache. Annoyed with the people on the radio for droning on and on and on about how they need all their listeners to send them money instead of just giving me Morning Edition as usual. Annoyed that it took me longer to get ready this morning so that when I left the house, I knew I would be ten minutes late to work (not that it’s a huge deal if that happens every once in a while, just that I hate being late). Frustrated that after joining Weight Watchers last night, I was so tired that I just sat in front of the TV for a couple of hours before going to bed instead of reading through the materials and figuring out what I’m going to eat today to start the Core plan. 

It would be so easy to just give up today. Not deal with the diet until tomorrow. Not post a blog entry. Not write. Just coast. Do what has to be done at work, skip the gym (because my walking partner can’t go tonight), and go home and watch Miss Austen Regrets and possibly pull screen captures from Sense & Sensibility and post my final thoughts on it and the Jane Austen series.  

But I’m not going to allow myself to do that. I’m going to take what I’m feeling and pour it into my writing. I’m going to give one of my characters the same kind of funky mood that I have right now . . . which is going to be really bad, because they’re putting on this fancy-schmancy menu tasting for the board of the charity they’re planning a benefit for. There’s nothing like having to put your best-foot forward when you’re in a mood like this!

What do you do when you feel this way? Do you make yourself write? How do you channel your energies (positive or negative) into your fiction?

I’m about to write the scene when the board for the charity Meredith and Major are planning a black-tie benefit for are coming in for a tasting to choose the final menu for the dinner. Since I like all the dishes on the menu, I thought my dear readers could help in choosing the final menu for the Hearts to H.E.A.R.T.S. benefit (raising money for the cardiac unit at Bonneterre’s University Hospital). And believe it or not, I actually found heart-healthy versions of all of these recipes!

The point of the tasting is to narrow the menu down to the choices that will be presented to the guests at the banquet. So if you were attending a black-tie, $500/plate benefit (dinner, dancing, silent auction), what would you want to see on the menu? (Click on the menu to enlarge)

Picture this scenario: You’re watching your absolutely favorite show. Things are getting dicy for the heroes. All of a sudden, there’s an explosion! Your heroes’ lives are in danger! What’s going to happen to them? Are they okay? Will they survive? Then, the screen goes black. And then you see: TO BE CONTINUED. “NOOOOOOOOOOO!” you scream. “I have to know what happens next!”

And what does happen next? Well, you tune in when the next episode airs or the new season starts. Why? Because you’re HOOKED. Because you need to know the sequel: what happens next.

Though I wouldn’t recommend reading it straight through, just like with Stein’s books, I recommend everyone should at least check Scene and Structure out from your local library and read the sections on Sequels. It’s not about subsequent books, but the pattern of how scenes follow-up the disaster that happened in the previous scene.

The way you structure the flow of your scenes is one of the primary ways, after dropping disasters on your characters, to keep the reader hooked. Remember, the purpose of each scene is to move the character further from quick fixes and shortcuts. Once you’ve written to the hook, the disaster, you can keep the reader frustrated and wanting to find out what happens next by breaking away from one character’s disaster to a subplot or other POV character’s scene. But change POV only when it creates more tension and suspense, not just to be in the other character’s head.

Bickham gives a few ways to amp up the conflict for each character within the scene that then ties that scene to either the next one or what happens later in the book (setting up sequels to keep the reader turning pages):

• Drop hints that the antagonist knows something which the hero/POV character doesn’t—something that is advantageous to the antagonist and/or disastrous for the hero. This is Malfoy taunting Harry Potter with stuff he knows that Harry obviously doesn’t. This is the serial killer taunting the detective. This is someone (either an antagonist or someone well-meaning but ill-informed) telling the heroine that the hero is cheating on her.
• The antagonist could actually reveal something the hero didn’t know yet—a bit of bad news that alters the hero’s assumptions or decisions or even make him deviate from his scene goal (or at least make the reader believe he will).
• Show that the hero has faulty information—and that he doesn’t realize it—to lead the reader to believe he’ll make the wrong decision.
• Have the antagonist (or an outside source) set a ticking clock on the duration of the scene (Can Jack Bauer stop the terrorists in twenty-four hours? Can Rose get Jack unshackled before the room fills with water as Titanic sinks?)

Once you’ve upped the tension in a scene, then ended it with a disaster, there are six ways to keep the conflict going in the sequel that will give the reader some closure on the previous conflict and yet still keep the tension level rising:

• As already mentioned, set a timer on your character’s actions, a time-limit in which to make a decision. You end a scene with the hero receiving a ransom note from the kidnapper who has his child: You have three hours to deliver $5 million or I kill the kid. What happens in the sequel scenes is shaped by that disaster, by that time-limit.
• Have the POV character come to understand—on his own or with help—an entirely different aspect of the previous disaster he hadn’t thought of before. How can that disaster actually be used to his advantage?
• On the flip-side, instead of realizing how the disaster can be advantageous, the character is now overwhelmed by the disaster (and the emotions resulting from it) and plunges back into the conflict with insufficient understanding of what’s going on, leading to more disasters.
• Introduce roadblocks (have you ever seen Amazing Race?) that create a “sidebar” conflict the character must get through to get to the next scene—conflicts which the character (and thus the reader) sees as relating directly to his stated goal for that scene, but which, in reality, only serve to throw him further off course.
• Have the character hint that he has more of an agenda than he’s revealed to the reader. Something along the lines of, “He knew what he had to do.” [End of scene].
• Stage an interruption—an outside stimulus—which forces the character to stop “sequelizing” and meet the new threat/conflict. This is very similar to the roadblock idea. Something interrupts the very straight-forward direction of the plot and either waylays the character for a little while or throws him completely onto a different trajectory for the remainder of the story.

Now that you’ve read the “how to,” let’s look at some examples of how published authors have put these techniques to work. I probably should have put these on the “disasters” page, but I think from these, you’ll also be able to see how the disaster sets up the sequels to come:

Janet Evanovich, Eleven on Top, end of Chapter 5:

“How could you be the big bounty hunter without knowing how to pick a lock? How’d you ever get in anywhere?” Lula stood back and looked at the store. “Ordinarily I’d just break a window, but they got one big window here. It’s just about the whole front of the place. It might look suspicious if I broke the window.”

She ran across the street to the Firebird and came back with a tire iron. “Maybe we can pry the door open.” She put the tire iron to the doorjamb and another car drove by. The car slowed as it passed us, and then took off.

“Maybe we would try the back door,” Lula said.

Sandra Brown, Play Dirty, end of Chapter 13:

She must have parked around back, where he’d parked the first time, because the red Honda was the only car in the driveway. In the time it took him to reach it, he was already considering going back inside to apologize. He was still mad as hell, but he couldn’t afford his anger. The price tag of it was half a million now, and millions more to come. Not worth it. Not by a long shot.

He turned on his heel and had started back toward the house when he spotted something that drew him up short.

Susan May Warren, Happily Ever After, End of Chapter 21:

He needed Mona. But he was the last thing she needed. She had her hands full building her life, and the Joe Michaels deluxe package, complete with handicapped brother and covert identity, did not fit into that reality. She needed a man who could hang up his backpack and invest in her dreams.

Instead he’d spent the past month knitting together a façade of white lies. Lies meant to keep him and Gabe safe. Lies that could unravel at any moment.

No, he couldn’t stay.

He closed his eyes and fought the urge to weep.

Linda Windsor, Maire, end of Chapter 25:

Unable to speak, Maire strained against the hold of the guards, leaning into the sword and toward the fire as though she too were ready to walk into its deadly mouth, even if it meant perishing with him . . .

Rowan stepped to the fire’s edge where the heat slapped him and reached into his lungs with invisible hands, clutching his breath. The perspiration on his forehead evaporated. Lord, use my example to Your glory. He lifted his foot, ready to take the final plunge from which there would be no return, when a voice of protest cut through the bonds of tension holding all in check, save the beasts of flame.

“Hold, in the name of God Almighty!”

For Discussion:
Are there some scenes/chapters in your WIP in which you can apply one (or more) of these techniques to tie the scene to what comes after it (sequel)? What are some ways in which you’ve planted information or dropped hints that the hero doesn’t know everything he needs to know before facing the next conflict? Do you tend to immediately follow your disaster with a scene that resolves it, or do you leave your character hanging off the cliff and cut to another character/subplot?

On Tuesday, we discussed the five elements of keeping the reader hooked into our stories: characters, POV, suspense, balance, and bomb-dropping. Today, we’re going to look at what goes into the development of an individual scene, and for help, we’re turning to my new favorite writing-craft book, Scene and Structure by Jack Bickham.

According to Bickham, the structure of a scene is threefold:

• Statement of the character’s goal
• Introduction and development of conflict
• Failure of the character to reach the goal; a disaster

The scene should start with the POV character who has a definite, clear-cut, attainable goal: Anne is going to show George potential sites for (what she thinks is) his engagement party. George is going to reveal the identity of his employer to Anne before the man shows up at the site for the party. Meredith is going to the pet store to buy food for the puppy she found. Major is attending his employers’ New Year’s Day open house because they’ve asked him to come to talk to him about something. And so on. Each scene should start out with a goal that is an important step in the character’s game plan—a small goal that gets them one step closer to attaining the main goal of the story (or what the character thinks is their main goal for the story—that’s where the conflict/disaster part comes into play). But the goal cannot be easily attained—it’s your job as the author to make sure your characters suffer.

Once you know what your character’s goal for the scene is, you must determine what Bickham calls the “disaster” that will happen at the end of the scene to keep them from reaching that goal. Now, when I first read this, I thought, but that doesn’t work in every genre. But I think I’ve figured out what he means. From the examples above:

• Anne is going to show George potential sites for (what she thinks is) his engagement party. However, by the end of the scene, she’s actually ended up sharing with him the details of her past: that she survived a plane crash that killed her parents—pushing her ever closer to the edge of what she believes is falling in love with a client (because George, after all, is the Stand-In Groom). For Anne, at this point in the story, her real goal at the beginning of the scene was not getting him to choose a party site, but trying to keep herself from falling ever closer to the precipice of falling in love with him.
• I’m not going to reveal the disaster that George faces—you’ll have to read the book!
• Meredith is going to the pet store to buy food for the puppy she found. She’s dressed in her skuzzy clothes because she’s been at her house, which she’s refurbishing, stripping paint. In trying to get the puppy out from under the back porch, she fell in the grass and got soaked (because it’s pouring rain). Though she’s dried off and cleaned up, she’s definitely not looking like she does when she’s planning black-tie events for her parents’ Fortune-500 company. So, naturally, she runs into the recently elected mayor’s wife—a woman who was not only in Meredith’s mother’s sorority, but the woman whom Meredith must work with to plan an upcoming black-tie fundraiser event. Not a great first impression, and Meredith dreads news of the encounter reaching her always very proper and appearance-minded mother.
• Major meets with his employers at their open house and receives an offer for a business opportunity he can’t pass up. Not a disaster, right? Well, he then meets someone who has the potential to make-or-break his career—and his personal life.

See how it works? It’s not a disaster in the truest sense of the word: a car accident, a stock-market crash wiping out the hero’s livelihood, a death, or whatever. It’s a disaster in that it puts our character further into the hole of narrative debt—a setback, a redirection. And, as in Major’s case, it doesn’t even have to be an immediate setback, as he won’t know for several more chapters that this woman he’s met has the potential to affect his life so greatly.

In other words, you’re starting the scene out with a question: can the character do/attain this? To keep a reader hooked into the story, the answer at the end of the scene should be no. Or at least yes, BUT . . . or yes, IF . . . —if it’s a yes answer, it cannot be unconditional. The end of the scene has two primary jobs: to answer the scene question (preferably “NO!”) and to make the reader want to read the next scene to find out when the character will attain that goal.

Sometimes, you may have to work a scene backwards. If you know the disaster that needs to happen—because of what comes after it, because it sets up what happens next (a.k.a., “sequel,” which we’ll get into later in the series), examine the disaster and determine what it is that the disaster is stopping the character from doing/attaining. But don’t forget that all of your “disasters” must also fit logically into the main “disaster” (climax) of the story.

“Well-planned scenes end with disasters that tighten the noose around the lead character’s neck; they make things worse, not better; they eliminate hoped-for avenues of progress; they increase the lead character’s worry, sense of failure, and desperation—so that in all these ways, the main character in a novel of 400 pages will be in far worse shape by page 200 than he seemed to be at the outset.”
~Jack Bickham, Scene & Structure, pg 44.

A good scene will end with the characters making “backwards” progress; it eliminates options for an easy answer or solution; it makes the walls start closing in (think about the trash-compactor scene in Star Wars); and it has an impact on later events (consequences/sequel).

But one caveat: don’t contrive a disaster just to create a cliffhanger—hooks should be unexpected, but they should also be realistic and logical for your plot, the world of your story, and the development of your characters. Make the lead-up to the disaster subtle enough that the reader is suspicious something’s going to go wrong, but not so that they can see it coming from a mile away.

For Discussion:
Pull a scene from your WIP and examine the structure of it. What’s the scene question/the character’s goal at the beginning? What conflicts build during the scene? And, finally, what’s the “disaster” that happens at the end of the scene that keeps your character from attaining his/her goal? Did you find, as I did with Anne’s scene above, that the character’s goal at the beginning of the scene was actually more subtle than you originally thought?

I’m cracking the whisk!

During the month of March, I was supposed to be writing about 31,000 words on Menu for Romance during MTCW’s March Madness Marathon. Unfortunately, I didn’t think about the fact that edits on Stand-In Groom were due at the end of the month nor know that I’d get feedback on Ransome’s Honor and want to take time out to make revisions on that as well.

So, I might be limiting the number of new posts here until I get caught up with where I need to be on the word count for Menu for Romance, if I’m going to have the first draft of it finished by the end of April. That gives me five weeks to write about 60,000 words—which means I need to average 12,000 words per week, or about 1,715 words per day. I only wrote 750 yesterday.

At the top of the screen, you’ll see a page entitled MFR Progress. I should be updating that page daily with what I’ve accomplished (either that day or the day before). If I go for more than a couple of days without updating that page, please contact me to find out why I haven’t written anything!

If I can get at least 1,500 words written today, I’ll have another Hooking the Reader post for you tomorrow!

Don’t forget, if you would like to be an influencer for Stand-In Groom and receive a copy of it from Barbour about a month before it hits shelves (so sometime in December) in exchange for posting a promotional review on your blog/Amazon/B&N/CBD, etc., please e-mail me with your name and mailing address and I’ll add you to the list.

Well, I just e-mailed the final version (at least, my final version) of Stand-In Groom to the editor, along with the dedication and acknowledgments.

I made one last little tweak to it before sending it in—introducing the heroine of the third book, A Case for Love, by name through a voicemail message Anne listens to (she’s an important secondary character in Menu for Romance as well).

If you would like to be an influencer for Stand-In Groom and receive a copy of it from Barbour about a month before it hits shelves (so sometime in December) in exchange for posting a promotional review on your blog/Amazon/B&N/CBD, etc., please e-mail me at kaye (at) kayedacus.com with your name and mailing address and I’ll add you to the list. I can submit up to 75 influencer names, so it’s first-come-first-served.

Hope you enjoy the rest of the weekend and have a blessed and reflection-filled Easter.

I had the opportunity during my Christmas vacation to read the ARC of a historical romance. The opening Hook Line was good, the first few paragraphs strong. But then as I read, I started losing confidence in the writer. You see, the story started with a bang . . . then went stagnant pretty quickly as the author had to go back and explain, in about two full pages of narrative, the events immediately preceding the opening line. Then, the hero, whose POV this is all seen through, not only comes up with an implausible plan—which takes several pages—he ends up accidentally taking an action that makes those pages and pages of his original plan null and void, as the accident sends him on the run. Then, once he’s on the run, the logic of the story falls apart even more with various and sundry minor characters suddenly popping up as someone he’s supposedly built friendships with, not to mention the poor historical research.

I put the book down at the end of the fifth chapter and haven’t picked it up since. What might have kept me reading? A character I liked. There are a lot of flaws I’m willing to overlook in a book if the author immediately draws me into the character, gives me a reason to care what happens to him. In that ARC, not only did I not care what happened to the main character, he was unlikable.

Once again, Creating Credible Characters is a topic I’ve already covered at length, but let’s take a few minutes to look at how, once we create them, we can use them to hook the reader into the story.

A couple of weeks ago, my agent forwarded an e-mail to me from an editor at one of the big CBA houses in response to the proposal for the Ransome Trilogy. The gist of the very long e-mail was that while they like my writing, they don’t like how gloomy the heroine is when we first meet her. They wanted to know if there was a way I could either revise the opening or write a prologue that would introduce Julia when she’s in a happier frame of mind, so that the reader understands that Julia isn’t going to be like that throughout the whole book. Guess what I’ll be working on this weekend!

Last year, I judged an entry in the YA category of the Genesis in which the main character, in first-person POV, was so extremely negative, after a couple of pages, I didn’t want to read any further.

Yet there are some authors who are so adept at characterization, they can introduce a gloomy or negative character as a POV protagonist in the beginning of their novels and they don’t lose us. The secret is building the rest of the narrative around the character so that the reader feels invested in what happens to the character—whether for ill or for good—and wants to know what happens next.

One of my favorite quotes about writing comes from historical novelist Jeff Shaara: “When the characters are ready, the story will come out of me.” As a character-driven writer, this has almost become my mantra. For me, story comes from character. If the characters aren’t well developed when I start writing, or if I’ve misinterpreted who they are, I write myself into a hole and usually have to start over. When I start thinking of a story idea, I don’t just write out a summary of what the story’s about. I write page after page of backstory for each main character—figuring out who they are before I can figure out what the story’s about. Because I have to care about the characters before I can start writing their story.

Not only do they have to be real to me, they have to be unique. F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote, “Begin with an individual and you will find that you have created a type; begin with a type and you will find that you have created—nothing.” I think that’s the problem with most books in which we aren’t immediately invested in the main character from the first page. The author didn’t spend as much time getting to know the character before they started writing. They just started out with a type—a “good guy,” perhaps—and worked that type into their story.

Readers don’t necessarily have to like our characters—I mean, look at the popularity of characters such as Scarlett O’Hara or Hannibal Lechter. They can be morally ambiguous or even morally reprehensible like those two are—and yet the authors managed to draw us in, to make us want to know what happens to them. Readers must have a reason to invest in the characters, to care what happens to them next—even if it is more of the morbid curiosity that makes us slow down to rubberneck at a car accident.

For Discussion:
Who is your favorite literary character? What makes you like (or even loathe) that character? How was the character introduced in the book? Why did you care what happened to that character? What was it about the character that made you want to read the book?

Since I ended up spending most of the day yesterday shopping, I just now finished making all of the changes in the file of Stand-In Groom. My editor is on vacation this week, so I’m going to wait until next Monday to e-mail it to her. But it’s finished!!!

I only ended up cutting 1,573 words and a total of six pages from the length.

I still need to write my dedication and acknowledgments, figure out three authors whose writing style I would compare mine to, and determine 1–3 key issues the book deals with that someone could use to help a friend “through the softened message of fiction” for my April 1 deadline.

One of the things that I had to do while reading through the manuscript for edits was to make changes based on decisions I’ve made since starting the second novel, as well as check on details that I need to make sure remain consistent through the series. Here’s a photo of my continuity notes (sorry it’s blurry):

As of 1:32 a.m. on Sunday, March 16, edits on the hardcopy of the manuscript of Stand-In Groom are complete! Yay! Now I can spend a few hours making those changes in the electronic file Sunday and enjoy my day off on Monday!

I’m curious to know what the final word count will be and how much I’ve managed to cut out.

But for now, I’m going to bed!