Countdown to
8/14/06
Into the Storm will be available tomorrow August 15th!
Note
from Suz: Almost there! One more day 'til the book hits the
stores!
Don't forget to check my appearances page to see where my INTO THE STORM tour takes me in August and September! (I'm doing a bunch of New England visits, and I'll be heading to Ohio, too. Also, a mini-East Coast expedition through Pennsylvania, Jersey, Delaware and Virginia.)
Fellow writer alert: I'll be presenting an all-day writing workshop in Portland, Maine on Saturday, September 16th. Visit www.geocities.com/mainerwa/index.html to register. (It's open to the public for a $30 registration fee!) I'll be discussing deep point of view in the morning, with a discussion on the business of writing in the afternoon.
For those of you who've been interested in the progress of Justin, the Navy SEAL who needs a bone marrow donor, click HERE to read a recent and inspiring news story. Also, his mom has posted a note on www.soldiersangels.org, which also contains an announcement about an upcoming (9/5/06) bone marrow drive in Michigan. (Thanks, Linda Brock, for helping to set that up!) Click HERE for the note from Justin's mom.
Happy Anniversary -- to me! LOL! My wonderful husband Ed (pictured above with me and our son, Jason!) and I just celebrated our 23rd wedding anniversary yesterday, August 13th.
Let's get to today's countdown page -- A Conversation with Jules Cassidy. Here it is, in one complete installment!
A Conversation with Jules Cassidy
by Suzanne Brockmann
Jules Cassidy didn’t knock. He just came into my office, walking right through the closed door.
(Fictional characters can do that.)
“Wow,” he said, clearly disgruntled. “I was sure I’d find you, I don’t know, doing something a little more… important.”
I didn’t look up from the computer screen, where I was searching for suitable hotels along my upcoming INTO THE STORM booksigning tour route. I don’t like to think of myself as a diva. I’m more of a screaming-crazy control freak, and when I get to choose the hotel, then at three a.m. when the mattress is shaped like a bowl, and the sound of the interstate shrieks through the cellophane thin window panes, and the room smells like ass, well, it ain’t no one’s fault but my own. “This is important,” I said.
“You said you were going to start writing the new book today,” he countered.
“Yeah,” I said. “But I just got an email with the list of confirmed bookstores on the tour, and I need to give the publisher’s publicist” –a lovely woman. Extremely nice and very patient when faced with my freakish control issues– “a list of hotels, or else she’ll pick ‘em, and you know what that means.”
Jules sighed and sat down.
“You’ve really got to learn to delegate.
When I travel, I say Laronda, I’m
going to
I finally looked up from Mapquest’s list of three hundred hotels within
five miles of the signing store in
Jules had that look on his handsome face – the one that silently conveyed his belief that I was completely insane. “And that’s a problem because...?”
“You’ve spent several solid days in the mini-van,” I reminded him.
He nodded. He had.
I was late meeting my deadline when I wrote BREAKING POINT, yet I had
made a promise to attend the American Booksellers Association in
(And yes, according to my book of urban slang, those grab bars are indeed called “oh shit” handles.)
“But the hotel we stayed
in in
“Different situation,” I came back. “Fabulous is lovely. Fabulous is great – particularly if we’re in one place for a few nights in a row. But when we’ve been in the car for hours and hours and HOURS and we just need a place to stop for the night before we head to the next event -- or the next day of driving for hours and hours – the last thing we want to do is spend forty minutes winding our way to our fabulous – and remote – luxury hotel.”
He understood. “After eight or ten hours in the car--"
"Plus four hours meeting readers and signing books, which is wonderful but draining--"
"Avoiding that last forty minute drive becomes a matter of life and death," he finished.
I nodded. "Proximity to the interstate trumps fabulous."
We just sat there, then, in silence, for several long moments.
We both spoke at once. I said, "I'm so procrastinating," and he said, "What are you going to do now, clean the bathroom?"
I turned to face him. "Why don't I want to start working on this next book?"
Jules just smiled at me.
I waited for him to say at least something, and he finally shrugged, and gave me his usual. "You're the writer. You tell me."
I narrowed my eyes at him, which never frightens him the way I hope it will. In fact, it just makes him laugh. Of course, that's one of the things I love about him. He's fearless.
"If you write this book," he prompted, almost as if talking to a pre-schooler, "what are you afraid will happen?"
"If I write this book," I said slowly, thinking aloud, "your subplot'll move you another step closer to your happily-ever-after. And what if..." I couldn't say it.
Jules said it for me. "What if you can't find a publisher willing to market a romance novel with a gay man as the hero."
"I don't want to torture you," I confessed, "just to give you some lousy secondary-story-line wrap-up in some book where you don't get to--"
He cut me off. "You really think I care whether my story happens as the main internal conflict or not? Sweetie, it's this limbo you've got me in that's pushing my cranky button. You wrote the proposal for FORCE OF NATURE. You know what's going to happen. I, however, can only guess, and yeah, I'm willing to bet big money that, for me, it's going to suck. God only knows what trauma you lived through as a child that makes you buy into this it's always darker right before the dawn crap. But okay. I can feel it. It's about to get very un-light here in the already shadowy dimness of my story arc. But just do it. Just... sit your butt down and write the book already."
"I had a very trauma-free childhood," I told him. "My parents -- you know them -- they're great. Although..."
He waited. Not only was he fearless, but he was also extremely patient. Which was why I knew that, since he had become impatient with me about my not writing the book, it was probably time for some behavior modification. Like my actually sitting down and writing the damn thing.
And I would.
Tomorrow.
Maybe.
"Do you know," I told him, "that I actually remember the first time I ever saw a cat?"
He sighed. It was just a little one, almost inaudible.
"You were the one who brought up childhood trauma," I reminded him.
At that, he laughed. "Okay," he said. "You got me. You were traumatized by your first cat sighting... how?"
"I don't really remember how old I was," I admitted. "Certainly pre-kindergarten. Probably even younger. I'd seen cats in picture books, but even back then I was more of a dog person, so I didn't really pay attention. I'd definitely seen plenty of dogs before -- there was at least one in my neighborhood that was huge, and we'd always walk way out of our way to avoid passing his yard. But cats? Nope. And then one day, there it was. This strange creature walking across my backyard. Being a curious child, I was not merely content to look from a distance."
"Uh-oh," Jules said, wincing.
"My mother must've gotten a new washer or dryer," I continued, "because my sister and I had made a playhouse out of the cardboard box. Mom had cut out windows, complete with shutters that opened and closed. Small windows, barely large enough to see out of. So I took this huge box..."
"Uh-oh," Jules closed his eyes, knowing what was coming.
"And yes," I said. "I caught the cat by putting the box on top of him. Or her. It might have been a her." I shook my head. "Talk about completely clueless. It never so much as crossed my mind that the poor animal must've been terrified. I was in exploring scientist mode, and I wanted to see this cat from a closer vantage point. So there I am, peering in at this cat, and I'm like Wow, it's all furry and soft-looking, and -- this is where the trauma became mutual -- I reached my arm into one of the little windows, so I could pat it."
"Hello cat claws," Jules said.
"We both ran screaming, in opposite directions," I said. Do you know, to this day, I'm afraid of cats? I'm allergic to them, too, but really that's just an excuse for me to keep my distance because of the fear factor."
"You were an interesting child," he said.
"Interesting as in socially backwards?" I asked. "I mean, way to make a new friend. Capture it with a giant box. I'm lucky I didn't get the brilliant idea to crawl in there with it."
"Ouch," he said.
"Yeah. Anyway, that's pretty much it for childhood trauma. That and the kid on the playground in third grade who threw the muddy kickball into my face. But that wasn't quite trauma. It sucked, sure, but..."
Again we sat in silence.
"Although when I was a teenager, I did have a poster on my wall that said, It's always darkest right before the dawn," I added. "Also War is not healthy for children and other living things. I still believe that one, too. And I've recently added Winston Churchill's If you're going through hell, keep going to my collection."
Jules pulled himself to his feet. "Just finish the hotel search, and start writing the book, okay?"
I took a deep breath. "Okay."
He narrowed his eyes at me. When he did that, he didn't look very scary either. "Don't you dare clean the bathroom."
That was a promise I had no trouble making. "I wouldn't dream of it."
"Write the book," he ordered.
"I'll try."
"Try." He laughed his disdain as he went out the way he'd come in -- right through my office door -- muttering something that sounded vaguely Yoda-esque.
I went back to Mapquest, but it wasn't more than a few seconds before someone cleared his throat, and I turned to see Ric Alvarado standing there. He's the former Sarasota Police detective who was in the on-deck circle as the hero of FORCE OF NATURE -- that book I wasn't writing.
He and Jules were clearly tag-teaming me. It was only a matter of time before Annie, the book's heroine, showed up.
"So how's Gina?" Ric asked. He'd been pretty hot for her in GONE TOO FAR, the book where he'd made his first and only appearance in the Troubleshooters series. "She leave Max yet?"
He knew it pissed me off when he suggested that Gina deserved better than FBI team leader Max Bhagat. As always, Ric's delivery was calm and laid-back. And he spoke with an easy-going smile that implied he was only kidding.
Yeah, kidding on the square.
"They just had a baby," I said.
"Boy or girl?" he asked.
"I don't know," I said. "I haven't decided yet." Subtext of my message: Careful, dude. I'm the writer here. I get to call the shots. Including deciding when I would start writing the freaking book. "I'm tempted to give them twins and name them Zoe and Jake. Just for the sake of balance in the universe."
He hasn't read THE ADMIRAL'S
BRIDE or
"Okay," he said, backing off both figuratively and literally. "There're obviously things here that I don't understand. I can appreciate that. I just... thought I'd drop by and give you my two cents. I'm ready when you are, boss."
Ric has really lovely dark brown eyes that glisten with his advanced sense of humor, and he twinkled them at me before he shimmered once and vanished.
The knock on my door came almost immediate.
I sighed. "Okay, Annie, come on in."
But it my husband Ed who poked his head through the door. "Who's Annie?"
I rolled my eyes at him and just shook my head.
He knew I was insane back when we got married, so little fazes him. "Want lunch?" he asked. "Eric's getting take out from Demo's."
Demo's was a great little Greek place right down the street. I put in an order for my usual and as Ed closed the door again, there she was. Annie. Stepping out from the corner of the room.
"For the record," she said, "I told Ric that I thought it might not be a good idea to disturb you."
I signed off AOL and reached for my notes for FORCE OF NATURE. Clearly it was time to start writing the book.
"Tell Jules," I instructed her, "that I am going to write a book where he's the hero. There's definitely room in the romance genre for his story, and it was completely my intention to tell that story right from the start, back when I wrote HOT TARGET." In truth, the thing I was most afraid of was ending Jules's story arc. It had been hard enough to say goodbye to Sam and Alyssa. Saying goodbye to Jules would be impossible.
Except, who said I had to say goodbye?
To anyone.
And wouldn't that be a fun book to write? Bring Sam and Alyssa back for major roles in Jules's as-yet-unnamed book? I already knew the basic external conflict, and yeah, there was definitely room for them.
Except before I wrote that book, I had to write FORCE OF NATURE.
I looked up to see Annie standing near my office door, looking perplexed. "Who exactly is Jules?" she asked.
"That's right, you haven't met him yet." I smiled. "You will. Give me about seventy-five pages..."
* * * *
A
Conversation with Jules Cassidy
By Suzanne Brockmann
© 2006 by Suzanne Brockmann
That's all for now! Be sure to come back tomorrow for the final installment in the Countdown to INTO THE STORM!
(Note from Suz: I'm going to try to post each new day's countdown page before noon eastern time. Please be patient if I'm a little late...)
See you on tomorrow!