Empty nest

So here's the stuff they don't tell you...or the stuff you're not ready to listen to...when you're going to all those workshops and conferences, polishing those three-line elevator pitches, focusing on taking a machete to every instance of the word "that" or the word "was" because that's what they told you to do in your critique group...and sending out all those query letters to agents and submission packages to editors...hoping to one-day be PUBLISHED.

Publishing is, as you may have heard, a business. It's thrilling. And it's also kind of exhausting.  So much to do. So much that isn't...writing. (Like, right now I'm fiddling about, obsessed with Jeannnie Lin's clever idea of Romance Trading Cards. Which, huzzah! Angela Waters, the fabulous artist who created my gorgeous HEALING HEARTS cover, has agreed to design for me.)

And then there's all that larking about, here and there on various social media sites, hawking your, er, wares.

And then...there are reviews.

When SLEEPY HOLLOW DREAMS, my erotic paranormal for The Wild Rose Press came out, it was a hurried thing with a small window of opportunity, because the publisher, editor and I were all trying to get the book out in time for Halloween -- when it had only been contracted about two months before. There were few reviews. None in advance of the release. Mostly from my friends.

But for HEALING HEARTS, the reviews started coming out even before the book was released. People were reading it. People I didn't know were actually discussing it! Debating it, even! I felt like Goldilocks. People were telling me it was too short, too long, too hot, too cold, too hard, too soft, just right. They wished they were the heroine, Emma; they were in love with the hero, Adam.

(Oh, no. Wait. You can't have him. He's mine. Um, I mean...he's Emma's.)

So your baby is not exclusively your baby anymore. It's what you wanted, didn't you?  But...you kind of go through empty nest syndrome anyway. You've launched your newly-hatched (no matter how long the labor pains) chick out into the wide, wide world. And now it must flap its wings on its own. Sink or swim. You've done what you can.

It's time to step aside.  And move on.

No matter how tempting it is to keep wandering into its room (or its slot at CarinaPress.com or Amazon or Goodreads) and moon over its picture! (Or gorgeous cover.) Which you've become obsessed with making romance trading cards out of.

Inspire Me!

Let's talk romance.

      Why do we read historical romance? Personally, I like to be swept away to a time that lives more in my imagination than between the pages of a history book, to times more romantic and fantastic from the rosy-filtered distance of centuries than they ever were to those living in the moment.

       Research is all well and good and has its place, but do not bog me down in it! If I wanted to learn all about The Insidious and Enervating Effect of London Fog on 19th Century British Constabulary and the Criminal Classes 101, I would have enrolled in the course.

       I want to hear the silken swish and rustle of the ball gowns of the beau monde, not the cries of workhouse orphans. I want to inhale the innocent scent of lavender or lemon verbena, rather than the stench of poor sanitation and rotting teeth. I want to live the fantasy, not be treated to a history lesson!

       Oh, dear me. I am in a mood. 

      Yet, I do not think these dark humors call for the application of leeches or smelling salts. They call for the mouthwatering sight of a romantic hero, a dark and brooding Byronic devil like the handsome and taciturn Mr. Darcy.

Colin Firth in Pride & Prejudice

       Or, as with my hero in Healing Hearts, a soldier as brave and true as Richard Sharpe.

Sean Bean as Sharpe

         Don't you agree?

         (Come on people. Gavotte with me!)

        And yes, do give me poetry!       

        Although there are no ballroom scenes, Assembly turns or Almacks interludes in Healing Hearts, my Regency romance releasing from Carina Press on February 28, I tend to go back to Byron (his ambiguous sexual orientation and unfortunate liaisons with Lady Caroline Lamb, his half-sister and wife nothwithstanding) to get me in the proper Regency frame of mind.

          Tell me you can read this without getting your imagination all fired up! 

         

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling place.

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Bennett

              So those are some of the places I get my inspiration.

              Where do you get yours?

             And what's your favorite read?

              
Taryn Kincaid is the author of an erotic paranormal romance, Sleepy Hollow Dreams. Her debut historical, Healing Hearts, a Regency romance, will be released by Carina Press, February 28. Please come visit her blog at http://dreamvoyagers.blogspot.com/. Her free-read Christmas story, I'll Be Home for Christmas, will be up all month!