Five more things... I've started stories with.

Hi everyone,

Hope you all had a great Christmas.

I was going to post something festive and seasonal and do a last plug for The Gift before everyone had their fill of Christmas and Christmas stories.

But my editor just sent me an e-mail to let me know that she's offering me a contract for the last story I sent in - In the Heat of the Moment! So excited about that. It's the tenth story I've had accepted, so I thought I should do a post to celebrate that.

Quite some time ago I posted five things I started books with. Now that I can add another five first lines to that, I thought that would be nice to add them all together.

So here are ten things I've now started stories with.

1. Flickering firelight lent an enchanting glow to Nicky's body.
- The Gift

2. Sheridan Haswell put a final touch of red paint to the heart on his left bicep.
- Secret Service

3. Zachariah Radcliff ran his fingertips over Charlotte’s throat, slowly tracing the line of her jugular.
- Whispers

4. The twirling spotlight hit the table dancer for one perfect moment.
- Turquoise and Leather

5. Luke Anderson was not going to come first.
- You First

6. “This is an incredibly stupid idea.”
- Between Tooth and Paw

7. "Don't waste your time."
- Silent Night

8. Brennan Talbot was not going to stare at his best friend's arse.
- Time To Do

9. “If you’re too prissy for a bit of kink—”
- Imperial Topaz

10. “I thought you’d like the look of him. Rumour has it he’ll do anything you want. Really—Anything.”
- In the Heat of the Moment. (No link, and nothing finalised so pretty much everything is subject to change at the moment.)

And that's it for now.

I'll post up the blurb and a little bit more about In the Heat of the Moment when I have some definite info for you.

Happy Boxing Day everyone!

Ops, almost forgot my other news...

Finished writing Parry's War yesterday. Planning to edit and sub that somewhere in February as the first in a new series.

Also started writing my new project - another M/m, BDSM novella for an anthology call. Hoping to finish the first draft of that by the end of the year ready to edit and submit either in January or February next year.

Friday's Five things that... I've started books with

By the Hour is dead.

I usually start writing a story and write it straight through to the end no matter what. Even if I know I'm going to have to come back and re-write 90% of it at a later date, something that can be called a first draft gets written before I move onto another project. It takes a lot for me to say there is no way to make a story work. In fact it's only happened twice since I started writing seriously.

By the Hour is the third time. I've tried to start it 7 times, and I finally worked out what the problem is. The characters can't have sex. They are perfectly nice characters, but there is no way people in their situation can get it together (let alone get kinky) without being transformed into characters I don't like. I don't want to write about characters I dislike that much, so I'm not going to.

Now, that story is gone and I've been looking through my files for a story to take it's place at the end of the Perfect Timing line up. I've found one and I started it yesterday. I love it. It's called The Morning After. It's sooooo nice to start something from scratch after spending so long doing re-writes.

My other writing project this month is another completly new story (Yay!). It's going to be the third book in the Collared series, but I still haven't picked which story idea I'm going to write yet.
All this means, I've been looking through my file of first lines quite a bit while I was trying to pick the right story idea to fit into each series.

(Yes, I really do have a file dedicated to first lines...)

Many of the lines don't have a story to go with them yet. They're just hanging around, waiting for me to decide what happens next.

For some reason I also note down the first lines of stories I've already written. I thought I would share the first lines of the stories I've had accepted with TEB so far with you.

Five things that... I've started books with.

1. Flickering firelight lent an enchanting glow to Nicky's body.

- The Gift

2. The twirling spotlight hit the table dancer for one perfect moment.

- Turquoise and Leather

3. Luke Anderson was not going to come first.
- You First

4. "Don't waste your time."
- Silent Night

5. Brennan Talbot was not going to stare at his best friend's arse.
- Time To Do (I'll come back and put a link in when I've got something to link it to.

....

And that's it for today.

Hope everyone has a good weekend.