Oooh, this is like the best birthday ever. Coming next month from Samhain: Dear Sir, I’m Yours (blurb)
Dear Sir, I’m Yours Cover
Tag: contemporary erotic romance
News Flash
We’ve really been working hard on a new title for “Letters to an English Professor.” We’ve been back and forth through all sorts of ideas and had tentatively settled on “Make Me.” It does have a signficant meaning in the story, but sounds rather childish and didn’t really convey the BDSM aspect of the story. It didn’t SING.
Angie suggested “Dear Sir,” which we’d sort of touched on with “Dear Conn” or “Dear Conn, With Love” like the famous “To Sir, With Love,” but “Conn” didn’t do much for the title. Google is my friend (as Rae would say) and I saw the formal “Yours Faithfully.”
So combining, we have approved the final title: “Dear Sir, I’m Yours.”
Rae doesn’t really call Conn “Sir”, but it definitely implies the right mood as well as conveying the theme of “Letters.”
Woo-hoo! Now to come up with a catchy tag line….
Title Help!
We’re trying to come up with a new title for “Letters to An English Professor.” Something fun, sexy, slightly kinky, that screams romance with light BDSM. The story’s hero is an English Professor who loves Romantic Period poets, gives interesting pop quizzes with sizzling extra credit, and quotes poetry throughout. The heroine specializes in restorations, calls herself the “Fix-It Lady” and her company’s slogan is “Making Things Right.”
Some title possibilities we’ve considered:
Pop Quiz, A Poem to Bind Me, Poetry Lessons, Extra Credit, Poetic Submission, The Professor and the Fix-It Lady…
Well, you get the idea. None of them really stand up and shout PICK ME! PICK ME!
Do you have any ideas? If so, shout it out. If we end up using your title suggestion, I’ll give you a $5 gift certificate to Ravenous Romance. My friend Jenna writing as Anna Black has a brand new story out with them today.
The News
I didn’t know that Ann was prophetic.
Before Christmas, she mailed me the coolest goodies. Inside, I found signed Larissa Ione books (fan girl squee!), shells, and RT swag, including dozens of postcards, bookmarks, and a big comfy red blanket.
Of course, I didn’t get to keep the blanket for long.
Someone was always stealing my blanket!
Then some wonderful news came. I danced and yelled down the hall and the monsters came running. When they heard the news, they grabbed the red blanket and raced around the house shouting and waving it like a banner.
You see, Conn and Rae of Letters to an English Professor have found a home at:
Conn’s story will be getting a new title too. So if any of you have read snippets or my blabbering about the story and have a title suggestion, shout it out!
Thanks to everyone who has read Letters in its various incarnations and provided feedback; who gave me the courage to send out such a spicy story; who talked me off the cliff once or dozens of times; and a huge thank you to Angela James and Samhain for giving Dr. Connagher a chance for more pop quizzes and smoldering poetry lessons!
Insomnia Inspiration
I started waking up at 2:30 a.m. Was wide awake by 3:30 a.m. Finally gave up and decided to be productive. Yeah, I’ve got a few things weighing heavily on my mind, but I had some incredible breakthroughs.
One thing that’s always bothered me about Mama Connagher in Letters to an English Professor: I didn’t have a clear picture of her in my mind. I’ve mentioned doing casting calls before, and if you’ve been reading here long, you know that Conn was always inspired by Clive Owen. In fact, my writing laptop’s desktop is still an image of him from Shoot ‘Em Up. It’s totally the badass Conn, the one revealed when his careful professor veneer peels back, the one that Rae fears–and desires.
Miss Belle and Colonel Healy were always played by Maureen O’Hara and John Wayne in my mind.
Victor, Conn’s older brother, would be perfectly cast as Adrian Paul.
Vicky, I’m not sure yet, but I’ve got a little time to figure her out.
Who, though, was Mama Connagher?
I didn’t know. I also wasn’t sure about her husband. While he’s been dead quite some time, I needed to be able to SEE them together in my mind. I needed to build a history for them beyond the hints that MIss Belle dropped in Letters, and I couldn’t, because I couldn’t see them. WHO was she?
For Mr. Connagher (and you know what, I don’t think I ever decided on his name–I need to fix that), I’d been leaning toward Sean Connery. Or maybe Sam Elliott, because it was his movie Conagher that inspired the family name. I could totally see him as a hard-bitten Texan rancher who could sire the kind of men that Conn and Victor turned out to be (although, to be honest, their mother’s steely core of strength played just as big a role).
Mama remained blurred and indistinct. I need her. I believe she’ll be on page in Victor’s story, and I’d like to weave the family threads together tightly across all three books that I know about. To do it, I need to KNOW her.
Lying awake around 4 a.m., I finally saw her. I can’t find the exact image online (without searching longer than I care to right now) but I don’t need it. It’s etched in my mind. Remember in Gone with the Wind, near the beginning, when Scarlett is dressing for the picnic at Twelve Oaks? She refuses to eat and marches toward the door. Mammy makes a comment about Ashley Wilkes and how a lady can’t go eating like a pig. Certainly Melanie would never do that, right?
Scarlett turns her head and gives THE LOOK to Mammy.
That, my friends, is Virginia Connagher to a T…or rather a “V”.