There’s so much going on, I hardly know where to begin. 🙂

Let’s see…

Here are my (hopefully) pre-July books… 

I’m about 10,000 words away from finishing Ruined by the Earl!  This book has been so much fun to write.  I love the hero and heroine.  They have so much chemistry together, and the things the hero says to rile her up is funny.  I’ve discovered it’s easy to mix in a lot of humor into Regencies because of how formal the Ton was.  Pretty much anything was scandalous, and this leaves me open to so many fun ideas.  If everything goes according to plan, I should finish the first draft by the end of this month.  *fingers crossed*  I really want this book out by the end of March.

I’m still in the beginning stages of this one, but it is the last one in the Marriage by Deceit Series.  (The Earl’s Secret Bargain is #1, Love Lessons with the Duke is #2, Ruined by the Earl is #3, and this is #4.)  Anyway, the hero in this book has been pining for the heroine for years, and in this book, he finally gets his chance to be with her.  The catch?  Her husband just died, so she’s still in the mourning period.  Needless to say, her family isn’t going to be too happy because it is scandalous for her to marry someone so soon.  See what I mean about the Ton making it fun to create these scenarios?

And of course, Janet and I just did a video post about this one.  June is the hopeful publishing month on this book.  *fingers crossed*

Then there’s Wagon Trail Bride.  I haven’t been able to get back to this because of my focus on Ruined by the Earl.  But I do want this out by this summer.

So I think it’s safe to say I have all of my books planned out up to this summer.

Now for other books….

I am going to work on finishing up the Enchanted Galaxy Series, so I can have it all out by the end of this year.  

Fortunately, Royal Hearts and The Royal Pursuit only require some tweaking and minor scene changes.  The first book in the series, A Royal Engagement, required pretty much a full rewrite to get it to where I wanted it.

Royal Hearts is pre-ordered for July 4.

The Royal Pursuit is expected to be out sometime later this year.  I don’t know when yet, but I don’t know I can have it out by December (at the latest).

Stephannie Beman and I have returned to the drawing board on our co-authored projects.

 What made this whole process so difficult is that we weren’t sure where to take this story.  It is book 2 in the Wild Hearts Series.   We have received some inquiries about this series, and up to about Wednesday or so, our answer has been that we don’t know what to do with it so we had given up on it.

But…

We had a lightbulb moment, and suddenly everything about this book just fell into place.  I don’t know how to explain it.  We spent almost a year stalled out on the story, brainstorming tons of ways to get it to work and none worked.  It was painful for both of us because we were trying to force the characters along, and the characters obviously didn’t want to do what we had in mind.  But more than that, the characters weren’t even telling us what they wanted.

I do think putting it aside was the best thing to do because the story would have suffered if we’d pushed through it.  But now, I’m happy to say we now know what to do with it.  I need to finish up Ruined by the Earl and go through initial edits on it before I can do anything in The Rancher’s Wife.  But I think we’ll be getting to it soon.  Most of what we’ve already done can stay in the story, but there are things we need to adjust or take out.

I’m going to try my hand at horror with Stephannie as a co-author.

For the past couple years, I’ve been wanting to write something in the horror genre.  This would just be for fun and to flex my creative muscles.  I like experimenting with different genres, but my heart is (and always will be) with romances, especially historicals.

We will be combining our names to have the pen name R.S. Norman.  At the moment, we’re working on a flash fiction piece.  But our main project will be converting this book….

Remember this from way back when?

to a horror suspense story.  And we’re going to retitle it His Brother’s Widow.  (And yes, it’ll have a different cover.)

Now, when I say I want to do horror, I’m talking about things that could actually happen.  I’m not into occult horror or stuff with ghosts.  I’m more into “why am I being tailed by this car late at night?” kind of horror.   I love a high level of suspense.  I do expect violent scenes to be a part of this.  I’m not sure how violent, but I see suspense as being the bigger factor in it.

For example in this story, the hero (Thad) finds out his brother died, and he’s going to investigate the matter to see if he was murdered (and if so, why and by whom).  But someone isn’t going to like the fact that he’s there and will try to get rid of him.  People will inevitably die, too, along the way.

I don’t expect to go into the horror side of my writing a whole lot on here since this blog is dedicated to romances.  But I wanted to mention it because the story we’ll be working on is  going to be His Brother’s Wife, and I have mentioned that work in progress on this blog in the past.  Then, if anyone wonders, “Whatever happened to that idea for His Brother’s Wife?”, I can direct them to this post. 🙂