It’s been a loooooong time since I’ve added anything but a book review to my blog. I feel like a diver that ’s coming up for air after a very lengthy submersion.
A couple of days ago I turned in my third book for Steeple Hill Love Inspired Historicals, a book that I had been referring to as THE WEDDING TREE, but the Powers That Be at my publisher have renamed it THE SHERIFF’S SWEETHEART. Sigh. This was out of a list of alternate titles I gave them, but I have to admit to you, my blog readers, that it’s not my favorite title. I was really invested in THE WEDDING TREE, since I’d been to San Saba County last April and visited the real “Wedding Oak,” but I understand what they’re doing at Steeple Hill–they’re trying to give the series titles a certain same rhythm based on the occupation of the hero. So the books in this series so far will be: MAIL ORDER COWBOY (Nov. ‘10), THE DOCTOR TAKES A WIFE (Jan.’11) and THE SHERIFF’S SWEETHEART (Apr.’11).
It’s been a long, hard sprint through a deadline I made short–I had a lot of the book done when it was contracted, so I figured it wouldn’t be hard to finish in the allotted time, but some early revisions and some medical problems definitely slowed me down during the middle writing. After a flareup of tendinitis, I spent many long hours and $$$ in the podiatrist’s office, treating the pain of aging nurse joints and getting fitted for orthotics. They’ve helped some, but a long night in the ER still has me reaching for the ibuprofen bottle. :/
Now we’re getting ready to take a much-deserved vacation in Wyoming to see Yellowstone, the Grand Tetons, Cody and Jackson Hole. I’ve sent off my computer with the techie to get some service, so hopefully it will stop locking up in Word and “sticking” on AOL, so that my typing doesn’t appear on the page until it suddenly appears in a rush. I felt like I was sending off my firstborn, seeing it go off in the techie’s arms…I’m getting ready to write the next book in the contract, another “Simpson Creek Brides” story, COURTING CARO. Oh, but they’ll change it from that, I’m sure. :/
Anyway, thanks for being patient about my absence. I hope to be blogging a lot more often now that I’m done with this deadline. I’ve missed it! I’d love comments–it gets lonely on here with the only comments being spam from online poker and drug companies….
Blessings, Laurie
I’m actually a little late announcing this, but it’s been a busy week. I can finally say I’ve sold two more books in the Simpson Creek Brides series! The book I am presently writing, working title THE WEDDING TREE, will be the first book in the contract. It’s Prissy’s story. Prissy Gilmore was the best friend of Sarah Matthews in THE DOCTOR TAKES A WIFE, and I felt it was time she had her own story–and her own hero, Sam Bishop, a down-on-his-luck gambler who decides he needs a different location after he runs afoul of gambling hall kingpin Kendall Raney in Houston. He also wants a different direction in his life, and thinks nothing could be better than marrying a pretty girl who is also conveniently rich. Prissy is a girl who’s in love with love. She’s watched several others of the Simpson Creek Spinsters’ Club find their matches, including best friend Sarah, and she’s more than ready to find her own true love. Neither is what the other expected, and the course of love never does run smooth, to quote Shakespeare–but if it did, that would make for a mighty short book. My deadline for this book will be June 1, and I’m already revising the first part a bit per my editor’s suggestions.
I just thought you might be interested to know that SOMEONE FOR SARAH, my January 2011 Love Inspired Historical, is now officially THE DOCTOR TAKES A WIFE. As I told you in my 1/14 blog, I knew the previous title was going to go. So I submitted several titles to the editors but they didn’t like them. I think the best titles included the word “Yankee” in them, for the hero, a doctor from Maine, but I’m guessing they thought it would sound like a Civil War novel and wanted to stay away from that. I wanted to stay away from titles that would make it sound like a 1950’s medical romance in which the ordinary girl becomes a Cinderella/great success if life simply because she managed to snag herself a doctor to marry. My editors suggested more titles. I didn’t like them, so I came back with a few more. THE DOCTOR TAKES A WIFE was one of the ones I suggested, and this time they decided they liked it. It does sound a little medical romancy, but not too much. I like the way it plays off the old nursery rhyme, “The Farmer in the Dell”–”the farmer takes a wife, the farmer takes a wife, hi-ho the dairy-o, the farmer takes a wife. (Apologies to those who now have that song stuck in their heads…) It’s a title that’s been used on books before, but not recently. I’d hate having a title that had been used many times before–I remember back in the early days of romance titles when DAWN OF DESIRE was done to death, and the year that there were three–count ‘em three–FORTUNE’S LADY’s.
