Note from Suz: I had a little extra space here on the countdown, so I went back to my reader interview questions!
Melissa from South Carolina writes: You always have at least one other story going on in the background or the past. Is it hard for you to keep them separate in your mind while you are writing them? Do you write them simultaneously or wait until you finish the main story and then go back and insert the secondary? Those of us who can barely walk and chew gum at the same time are really hoping you don't say "simultaneously".
Suz: I pretty much write the book scene after scene in the very same order that you read it. To me, the stories are intricately interwoven -- I have to do it that way. But please note that I said "TO ME." Every writer has his or her own methods. What works for me might not for another writer, and vice versa! That’s one of the cool things about writing -- there’s no wrong way to do it -- only YOUR way!
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Jennifer C from Blaine, MN asks: Do you ever read your earlier works and wish you could change anything? If so, what would you change and why?
Suz: Typos and small mistakes that slipped through the editors and my own proofreading are about all I would change. (Like, in THE ADMIRAL’S BRIDE, I mentioned baseball player Sammy Sosa, except I called him "Danny" Sosa. Typo? Maybe. Look at how close the S and D and the M and N are on the computer keyboard. But it’s also possible that it was something I call a "brainfart." I mean, come on, I live with Mr. Baseball. I oughta know Sosa’s first name.
Ironically, this was the first of my books that Ed didn’t read until it was in the published format. I still remember how he came to me -- I was in the bathroom fixing my hair -- with this uh-oh look on his face, the book in his hands. And he solemnly intoned, "I found a mistake."
My reaction was "oh, my God, did I make some kind of math error?" I thought maybe I miscalculated and Ed had done the numbers right, and found that the hero, Jake is really 73 instead of 53. (I’m math challenged.) But no. He told me about The Sosa Mistake (as I’ve come to refer to it, because you bet, when the book was released I received many, MANY emails from readers setting me straight! LOL!), and I laughed -- truly appreciating the irony. This was the one book he didn’t proofread. Of course. <g>
But as far as the actual writing goes... You know, I’ve grown a lot as a writer since I wrote my first book back in 1992. Even though I’m a better writer today, I can still appreciate my earlier efforts. They were, for me, at the time I wrote them, my personal best. So I value them for that. I might think to myself "Gee, I’d write that scene differently if I were writing this book now." But that’s mostly observational -- it doesn’t carry with it any burning desire to go back and make changes!
The big exception was the second-ever romance novel that I wrote -- original title MATTER OF TRUST. I sold this manuscript to Meteor Kismet, and it was scheduled to be released in October 1993 with the title LOVE SCENES. Well, Meteor crashed and burned (ie went out of business, but I really think the whole crashed and burned metaphor goes really well with the company name! <g>) in July of 1993, so LOVE SCENES never saw the light of day.
The rights were eventually returned to me, and the book was rejected by just about every editor out there! LOL! Finally, when my career started to really take off, Silhouette expressed interest in it. (I had submitted it to my editor three years earlier, and had pretty much forgotten about it!) I made the deal to sell them the book... BEFORE I HAD THE CHANCE TO RE-READ IT.
Yeah, you guessed. I read the thing (which was released last year with the new title SCENES OF PASSION) thinking, "Oh, sh*t." And then I got on the phone with my editor and told her I wanted to revise it. Extensively. She asked, "Well, that’s good because you need to shorten it so it fits into the Silhouette Desire format. What do you have in mind in terms of changes?"
And I said, "Hmmm. I think I’ll take out everything that SUCKS and put in something that doesn’t suck." LOL! I basically rewrote the entire book. Changed the ending, performed a stupid-ectomy on my TSTL (too stupid to live) heroine.
But that’s really the only one I’d change like that. Well, okay, I have some other old moldy never-before-published manuscripts in my closet that I would definitely rewrite before releasing into the world. (Although there’s one called GALLAGHER’S CLAIM that my mother really, really likes!)
That's all for now! Be sure to come back on Monday for the final installment in the Countdown to FLASHPOINT!
See you then!