Remember way back (years ago) when I said I was going to update A Bride for Tom so there’s a sex scene at the end?  This way people won’t stumble upon it and assume I write clean/sweet romances.

Once in a while I get a comment or email about how excited someone is to find a “clean” romance author and think, “Uh oh.  This person has yet to read anything else I’ve done.”  So I really did need to put the wedding night in the book.  I don’t want to give anyone the wrong idea of what I write.  Sorry, guys, I happen to be a spice kind of gal.

I did upload the new version, but it hasn’t gone up on some of the retailers yet, such as iBooks when I checked today.  I expect it will take another week or two to make its way to all the retailers.

You can download it on Smashwords at this link now if you wish.  (All I did was add the wedding night and fixed a few minor things.  The story itself is the same.  And this book will stay free.)

Stephannie Beman revamped the cover for me!

I’ll let you know when the new version is up on all retailers and put links in for them.  And, for fun, I’ll bring Tom on to see what he thinks of it.  (I love the Larsons, so it’ll be fun to see him…and Joel, who we just know can’t keep from picking on poor Tom…again.)

Anyway….

The Why I Write The Way I Do Portion of this Post

While I was working on this book, I was thinking of Adam Sandler (yep, the actor).  This probably happened because I just watched Pixels, which I really enjoyed.  It’s a fun movie. My point, and I do have one, is that as I was thinking of Adam Sandler a couple days later was that he’s not afraid to do things his way.  I really admire that about him.

He likes 80s music and having the same people in his films.  I don’t necessarily care for every single movie he makes, but I do appreciate how well he’s stuck with his brand and has, on occasion, stepped outside his brand to try something new.  It’s obvious he enjoys what he’s doing.  There’s a passion in his work that can’t be faked.

That’s what I want to be as an author.  I have my own preferences, and for the most part, I stick with them.  My first love is romance, specifically historicals, and I have an appreciation for the marital relationship between a husband and wife (hence why my characters often marry early on in my books).

A Love Scene is More Than Sex

I’m not afraid to add that I enjoy adding sex in them.  I like knowing how the characters respond to each other during sexual play or the actual act.  I realize some people consider this unnecessary, but for me, it is necessary.  I learn a lot about my characters when they are intimate (aka vulnerable) with each other.  The sex isn’t about the sex: it’s about delving in deeper into the psyche of the character.

There’s so much going on within the scene that has absolutely nothing at all to do with the sex, but it’s subtle.  For example, while writing The Convenient Mail Order Bride the other day, I worked on a sex scene, and at the end of it, I realized the hero never, in his entire life, ever felt like anyone had ever accepted him.

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I couldn’t have gotten that revelation without that scene.  Characters often reveal who they are best when they’re being intimate.  That is why I have a hard time writing books without sex in them.  I can only manage it if the characters either marry at the very end of the book or don’t marry at all.

Characters Guide Me (I Don’t Guide Them)

The thing is, I don’t tell the characters who they are.  I don’t give them what they think or feel.  They have to tell me this stuff.  This is why I can’t plot.  I have to write by the seat of my pants, and I only have a vague idea of how the book is going to go, which is why my description is often changed during the course of writing the book.  I try to stick with the main things (beautiful heroine; ugly hero; marriage of convenience), but everything else is fair game.  If you gave me an outline to go by, I guarantee you it’ll be useless by chapters 2-3.  Sometimes the first paragraph in chapter 1 is where everything takes another turn.  But often, it’s chapter 2 or 3.

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For example, yesterday as I was writing Her Devilish Marquess, I suddenly realized the hero and heroine are automatically attracted to each other, something that wasn’t supposed to happen.  This took place in chapter 2, and my entire concept for the book is gone.  I do know he scandalizes the Ton whenever possible, so that point stays.  I know she is scared to death of her reputation being harmed, so that point stays, too.  But the point is, they LIKE each other.  They weren’t supposed to like each other.  And this will change the entire course of this book.  How?  I don’t know.  The description still works, but the contents will shift to make room for whatever the characters are going to throw my way.

I can’t know until I write the book what will happen.  This happens in most of the romances I write.  Each time, the characters pull it off, and they do a better job than I would have done.  But, it’s always a process to finding out HOW they’ll make it work.  This is probably a plotter’s nightmare, but for me, this is why writing is so much fun.

Sometimes, someone will ask me why a secondary character did or said something in the book, and honestly, I don’t know.  Unless I can write in that character’s point of view, I have no idea why they do and say the things they do.  I know that seems weird, but it’s how  writing works for me.

In Conclusion

So what is the point to all of this?  I want to be like Adam Sandler.  I like how he does things.  He has fun doing it.  You can tell it by his enthusiasm, and he’s prolific.  He has a ton of stuff out there.  I just finished my 50th romance, and I love writing more today than I did when I got started.  The more I write, the more I appreciate the characters and the more I have fun writing their stories.  When I reach my goal of writing 100 romances, I want to be able to say I’m even more excited about writing than I was when I hit 50.