In Serving Sin, I get to show readers the beautiful city of Guanajuato, Mexico.
SERVING SIN cover reveal!
The reveal of this gorgeous cover for Serving Sin is bittersweet: While it is my next book release (YAY!!!), it is also the last book in the Filthy Rich series (😢).
LUSH MONEY now available at Wal-Mart!
I'm thrilled to announce that Lush Money with its new beautiful cover is now available in Wal-Mart stores in the United States and Canada!
Cocktail Recipe: Cranberry Sauce Old Fashioned
You might be scraping up the last of your cranberry sauce as you finish up Thanksgiving leftovers. But before you put it on your plate, I have another suggestion: put it in a cocktail shaker.
When you think about it, cranberry sauce — with softened cranberries, sugar, spices, and orange juice and zest — is a perfect base for the sweet-and-savory Old Fashioned.
Cranberry Sauce Old Fashioned
2 jiggers bourbon (I used Maker’s Mark)
1/2 Tbls cranberry sauce (I use this recipe)
1/4 jigger ginger simple syrup*
2 dashes orange-flavored bitters
Add all ingredients to cocktail shaker. Add ice. Shake hard, 15-20 seconds (shake hard so the ice can break up the sauce). Add ice and drink to rocks glass. Twist orange peel swath over top then add to glass. Enjoy!
*A recipe for ginger simple syrup is pretty easy to find online. I also provide a recipe on the free stuff page for my newsletter subscribers.
Read Henry's love story, DREAM GIRL, for free!
Dream Girl, the love story of Henry, our sunny Texas bodyguard in the Filthy Rich series, is now available to read for free on Harlequin Online Reads. The story will be released over 20 days, from Nov. 23, 2020-Dec. 20, 2020, so it will take a little patience to discover how Henry’s one night stand turns into so much more!
You can catch up on his journey through the Filthy Rich series in my previous blog.
And you can get a sneak peek below!
I hope you love it. Please let me know what you think in the comment section!! And share with your friends if you’re enjoying it!
Dream Girl
by Angelina M. Lopez
Chapter One
Henry Walker didn't want anything getting between him and his whisky. Especially not the gorgeous redhead who sidled up to him at the mahogany-and-brass bar of the San Francisco hotel and laser-beamed him with her eyes while specifically ordering a bottle of wine produced by his world-famous best friend.
He might be known for his sunny Texas disposition and good ol' boy manners. But if she'd wanted to make his dark mood blacker, reminding him of his connection to PrincesaSofia de Esperanza y Santos, winemaker and owner of Bodega Sofia, was certainly the way. His best friend in the whole world was going to kill him. He'd just told that winemaker's sister-in-law—his boss, in fact—that he was quitting the job of his dreams.
He used all of his six-foot, three-inch height and healthy 260 pounds to glower away the pretty hanger-on. Then he finished off the double of twelve-year-old single malt Japanese whisky and signaled for another.
He needed to drown the image of his billionaire boss's hurt brown eyes.Henry Walker didn't want anything getting between him and his whisky. Especially not the gorgeous redhead who sidled up to him at the mahogany-and-brass bar of the San Francisco hotel and laser-beamed him with her eyes while specifically ordering a bottle of wine produced by his world-famous best friend.
He might be known for his sunny Texas disposition and good ol' boy manners. But if she'd wanted to make his dark mood blacker, reminding him of his connection to PrincesaSofia de Esperanza y Santos, winemaker and owner of Bodega Sofia, was certainly the way. His best friend in the whole world was going to kill him. He'd just told that winemaker's sister-in-law—his boss, in fact—that he was quitting the job of his dreams.
He used all of his six-foot, three-inch height and healthy 260 pounds to glower away the pretty hanger-on. Then he finished off the double of twelve-year-old single malt Japanese whisky and signaled for another.
He needed to drown the image of his billionaire boss's hurt brown eyes.
continue reading Dream Girl…
Henry's story coming to Harlequin Online Reads
Catch up on Henry’s journey through the Filthy Rich series before the 11/23 release!
After the release of Lush Money, I started regularly getting one question that I couldn’t answer:
“When is Henry getting a book?”
Eep! I hadn't realized how much readers would fall in love with billionaire Roxanne Medina’s sunny Texas bodyguard, Henry Walker. As far as I was concerned, he was just a good ol’ boy good man who made the other men green with envy!
Fortunately, my editors at Carina Press/Harlequin are wiser than I am!
On Nov. 23, Henry’s 20-chapter short love story, Dream Girl, will be available for free on Harlequin Online Reads. The story will be released over 20 days, from 11/23-12/20. The story is a sexy little number about Henry’s one-night stand that becomes so much more! Newsletter subscribers have already gotten to read the first chapter (sign up now and you’ll always gets stuff free and early!).
If you’d like to get caught up on Henry’s journey through the Filthy Rich series, I’ve provided excerpts and page numbers below. Re-visit all of Henry’s cocky grins, sweet care for the ladies he protects, and moments when he makes the guys in the ladies’ lives crazy!!!
Lush Money, pg. 98 (Loc 1166)
Lush Money, pg. 347 (Loc 4204)
Lush Money, pg. 359 (Loc 4354)
Hate Crush, pg. 45 (Loc 500)
Hate Crush, pg. 114 (Loc 1362)
Hate Crush, pg. 210 (Loc 2546)
Hate Crush, pg. 239 (Loc 2889)
Read Henry’s love story, Dream Girl, beginning Monday, Nov. 23!
5 Cocktails to Toast the Impending Apocalypse
So…2020.
Amiright?
One of the things that have helped me get through it is live video happy hours. Moseying up to my favorite bar (Dogwood, I’m looking at you) has now been replaced with launching Zoom or FaceTime to share a drink with friends and family. Just because I’m in yoga pants does not mean I skimp on the cocktails.
Below are five drinks you can enjoy as we watch the ship go down.
The Maple Manhattan
This Friday (10/16), I’ll get to enjoy cocktails with my Boozy Book Broads mates Melonie Johnson and Danielle Dresser as we chat with Diana Biller, author of the PHE-NO-MEN-OL The Widow of Rose House (a perfect Halloween read). We’ll be enjoying a Maple Manhattan during the chat, which is very much like the original Manhattan (which my Instagram friends can attest I’m a huge fan of) with one fall-friendly addition: maple.
I got this recipe from SidewalkShoes.com. Shake it up and join us Friday!
2 oz bourbon
¼ oz sweet vermouth
1 tbls maply syrup
2 dashes bitters
1 cherry for garnish
Add bourbon, vermouth, maple syrup, and bitters to a cocktail shaker. Add ice. Shake for 15 seconds and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with cherry.
Recipe courtesy of SidewalkShoes.com.
Texas Martini
In honor of my recent move to Texas, I wanted to re-create this drink I heard everybody ordering at a Tex-Mex restaurant in Austin. The Texas Martini, according to the bartender, is just a margarita -- up or frozen -- in a martini glass with olives. They are DELICIOUS!! Briney olives act like the salt on the rim!⠀
2 oz tequila
1/2 oz triple sec
1/2 oz simple syrup
1/2 lime, squeezed
3 olives on a pick⠀
Chill martini glass. Shake first four ingredients over ice. Empty into chilled glass. Garnish with olives.⠀
Instant Sangria
I love red wine. It’s a family requirement. It also might be an authorial requirement, since I based the Filthy Rich series on the production of delicious red wine. But I also love cocktails. So in honor of my many alcoholic loves and my pretend Spanish kingdom, the Monte del Vino Real, I came up with this cocktail that tastes like Sangria without all the soaking and waiting.
1 oz whiskey, bourbon, or vodka (pick your poison)
1/2 oz triple sec
1/4 oz simple syrup
Chunk of orange (no peel)
Chunk of apple (no peel)
Cheap red wine
Apple slice, halved
Orange slice, halved
Club soda (optional)
Put first five ingredients (down through apple chunk) into stemless wine glass. Mash fruit and blend with muddler or back of spoon. Fill 2/3 of glass with red wine. Add ice or large ice cube. Add orange and apple slices. Stir to combine. If it’s too sweet or thick for your preference, you can top it with club soda or sparkling water. Enjoy! 🍷🍹
(Note: I like brown liquors in this because it gives it a fuller, richer flavor, like sangria that’s been soaking for awhile. But vodka is a cleaner taste. Pick whichever you prefer.)
The Angelina
While I was slaving away this spring on Serving Sin, my third book in the Filthy Rich series, I invented this Mexico-inspired drink. Since Serving Sin spends half its time in the incredible city of Guanajuato, Mexico, it makes sense. I named it the Angelina because it is: 1) sweet, salty, spicy and tart, and because 2) I invented it. So there.
1 oz of mezcal⠀
3/4 oz ancho chili liqueur⠀
1/4 oz simple syrup⠀
1/2 lime, squeezed⠀
3 drops chocolate or mole bitters⠀
Rim glass with seasoned salt. Fill glass with ice. Put all ingredients in cocktail shaker. Shake with ice. Strain shaker into glass. ¡Salud!⠀
The Ol’ Monte
We fell in love with this drink at one of our favorite bars in D.C., Densons. But when they took it off the menu, my hubby figured it out how to make it at home. THAT was a fun (and blurry) evening of taste testing.
1 oz Rittenhouse Rye
1 oz Amaro Montenegro
3/4 oz Dolin Blanc ("Blanc" NOT "Dry")⠀
Stir with ice. Serve up in a coupe glass with a lemon swath⠀
You're welcome. We love you.
Old-school romance recommendations
Recently, I made an ass of myself – in the most consensual, I-was-totally-on-board way – by being romance author Andie J. Christopher’s inaugural guest for her new Instagram Live program Drunk (Romance) History. Essentially, I drank sangria and got increasingly goofier and foul-mouthed as I told her about one of my favorite old-school romance books, Teresa Medeiros’ Fairest of Them All.
It was awesome. Not just because of the mid-Saturday drinking and being able to hang out virtually with Andie. But because it also allowed me to wax rhapsodic about my babies: My two-layer deep keeper shelf of old-school romance novels.
I’ve been reading romance since I was 12-ish. I’ve been buying it and relying it as a form of self-caring escapism since I was 14. Once e-books became a thing, I switched much of my purchasing to that platform. But my old-school keeper shelf is evidence of my early dedication to this incredible, female-centric art form.
In her podcast Fated Mates, historical romance author Sarah MacLean said: “I think romance does so much important work in the world…. Romance taught me that women had agency, that heroines were proactive, that you can expect parity in a relationship, that you could expect love and devotion and intellectual stimulation from a partner, that you could expect sexual agency and sexual pleasure from a partner and that kind of lesson is so important.”
That quote was so meaningful to me, that I cried. 😅
This stack of books, read at a crucial period of growth as a maturing girl then young woman, taught me so much about what to expect as a woman, what to expect from the men I was with. I also read fantasy and horror and mystery and scif-fi and literature. Just as I was able to close those books and walk away with important lessons without thinking I needed to fly to the moon or turn into a giant bug to put those lessons to work, I was able to differentiate in a romance novel what was heart-poundingly entertaining and what was valuable insight into the human condition.
“ Just as I was able to close those books and walk away with important lessons without thinking I needed to fly to the moon or turn into a giant bug to put those lessons to work, I was able to differentiate in a romance novel what was heart-poundingly entertaining and what was valuable insight into the human condition.”
These old school books lack diversity. You’ll notice I have few books by authors of color. Sherry Thomas’ “My Beautiful Enemy” was published in 2014 and Beverly Jenkins’ “Forbidden” was published in 2016 – by then I was purchasing most of my books on my e-device. I was so accustomed to seeing myself absent from all the media that I consumed that I never even recognized that I and women with dark skin were missing from the books I read.
Issues of consent are real, too. I began to re-read the first book I ever bought for myself, a much-loved book in which I know whole passages by heart, but I had to put it aside. It was just too much for now. But I can appreciate what that author did for me then, writing with our “then” understanding, trying to appease a middle-American audience who fervently believed good girls said “no” but wanted heroines to be getting it, yes. I appreciate that the author, ultimately, showed me a journey where a heroine determined her course and a hero valued her pleasure.
These are some of my most-read favorites:
Teresa Medeiros, Fairest of Them All
I sold Andie on it by telling her, “This has butt stuff.” It was shocking at the time because NO books had butt stuff back then. It’s the gentlest, sweetest, most illusionary butt stuff you can imagine. But it’s HAWT!!!! Medeiros had this fantastic knack of writing intensely emotive books – truly funny, truly weepy – that were just so damn fun. And hot!!!! This book is about a beauty who shields her beauty to avoid an unwanted marriage, and then falls in love with the man who believes he’s married an ugly duckling who will break his family’s curse. You can get the drunken Cliff Notes here.
Nora Roberts, Tears of the Moon
Nora’s so good at writing big, sweeping books, but this is a little, tiny, hugely heartwarming tale of two people who’ve grown up together in a picturesque Irish village. She’s a handywoman and he’s the cook at his brother’s pub and they discover, out of the blue, that they have the burning-hots for each other. The sex of convenience becomes SO MUCH MORE. I want to bone the hero of this book, a dreamy Irish wanna-be musician, so hard. Apropos of nothing, Nora signed this book in 2005.
Bettina Krahn, The Husband Test
Bettina, like Teresa, could write in any genre and make it awesome. She wrote pirates like nobody’s business. This one’s set in medieval times and it’s a little Sound of Music-esque: The heroine loves being a nun, even though she’s bad at it, and hopes to prove herself by being the best husband judge the convent’s ever seen. When she’s sent to the hero’s broken-down estate to judge him, they both are drawn to each other, even though they both intensely resist it. Because of course. This is one of those books where the heroine pitches in to the community and ultimately makes the world a better place – I love those books.
Julia Quinn, When He Was Wicked
This book was part of the Washington Romance Writer’s retreat swag bag when Julia Quinn and Eloisa James came to our retreat – when I tell that story, I feel like I’m talking about the time I saw Mumford and Sons in a little club with 15 other people. Anyway, this best-friend’s-widow book grabbed me and wouldn’t let go – I stayed in my room to read it and missed the first half of the retreat! Bad boy Michael (gloriously hot Michael) is the new earl after his best friend and cousin died prematurely, leaving behind a widow that Michael has loved since he met her on her wedding day. He can’t have her – and she’s shocked when she discovers he wants her – and sometimes-prim Julia, who isn’t always my cup of tea, writes yearning SOOOOOOO GOOOOOOD in this book.
Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Dream A Little Dream
I’ve met SEP five times and I’ve cried every single time. Her writing… If the job of a horror writer is to make you scream and the job of a mystery writer is to make you puzzle, then a job of a romance writer is to make you feel. Viscerally feel the sensation of falling in love. No one does that better then SEP. She creates complicated characters and gives them joy and anguish and humor and irritating habits and makes them fully fleshed creatures we can deeply empathize with. In Dream A Little Dream, the heroine and her young son are as destitute as they can be – her scraping the thinnest layer of peanut butter out of a jar is a detail I can never forget – when their car breaks down in front of what looks like an abandoned drive in. The drive-in’s surly, damaged and HOT owner, whose half-heartedly trying to fix the drive-in up, wants nothing to do with them. Of course. This is a fantastic gut-wrenching book of two broken people finding peace together.
Laura Kinsale, The Shadow and the Star
I’m pretty sure I picked this book up for its Fabio cover. But the incredible insides…Kinsale was a literary romance writer, always pushing herself and the genre to its limits. One of her books was written in Middle English. Another was about a man’s debilitating brain hemorrhage – he loses his speech, ability to reason, control of his movements — and the woman who nurses him back. The Shadow and the Star is about a man who was sexually violated as a child before he was rescued by an aristocratic family. Now, he seeks peace and knows how to commit stealthy violence. He meets a Jane-Eyre-type woman – although she’s beautiful – who finds her strength and peace in propriety. It’s an incredible and unlikely pairing and a beautifully written book. Kinsale writes sentence that you want to lick.
I’m taking a social media break for the month of October, but I’ll still be blogging.
Supernatural and self-care: The value of escapism
Every time there’s a crisis in my life, I escape into pop culture. After 9/11, I read all three books of The Lord of the Rings and spent hours watching Star Trek: Next Gen. When my dad died, I got addicted to Bones (yeah, I know it’s weird).
And when a social anxiety disorder brought my fantastic son home during his freshman year in college, forced him to put on hold his dream to be a physicist and made me learn new skills to be parent and person, I turned to a little, weird show that my romance author friends had been talking about for years: Supernatural.
Sam and Dean Winchester. The boys. Baby. Chuck be with you. Or not.
“This bonkers, escapist show is my self care.”
This November, this little cult-ish show will air its final episode after 15 seasons. I was a late adopter and didn’t start watching until 2017. But when it bit – phew – it bit hard. I went to my first Supernatural convention in the fall of 2017. I went to my second in 2019, where I asked co-star Jensen Ackles to pose my book cover with me. The smoldering look he gave me has become famous in some circles (called my friends) and is the basis of my next book in The Filthy Rich series, Serving Sin. I am currently in the middle of my THIRD Supernatural re-watch. THIRD. And the show has more than 300+ episodes!
I don’t know what the special sauce is that has made Supernatural such a phenomenon for myself and so many others (yes I do, it’s two hot good ol’ boys totally devoted to each other without love interests so there’s no chance of jumping the shark). But what I do know is that the show got me through a particularly hard and sometimes scary three years of my life. It didn’t “solve” anything. It didn’t teach me anything. It didn’t improve me.
What it did was allow my brain to rest and relax when I was overwhelmed and scared, when there was so much I couldn’t fix or control. Watching an episode – apocalypses and all -- before bed relaxed me enough to sleep. Reading the fanfiction kept me from fixating in the middle of the night. Adding the stars’ gorgeous images to my ridiculous Pinterest page “Supernatural is Lady Porn” gave me an endorphin shot and made me smile.
This bonkers, escapist show is my self care.
I learned the value of self-care in escapist form in the eighth grade. I’d just moved to San Francisco and it was my first experience with mean girls. I didn’t understand them. I couldn’t reason with them. I wouldn’t change for them. And I knew, for the course of that year at least, I couldn’t escape them. So I had to withstand them.
The way I did that was by going to B. Dalton after particularly rough days, buying a romance novel and a bag of Ruffles potato chips, and camping out on my bed for the next seven hours. My mom let me skip coming down for dinner. But those classic romance novels were the one thing that allowed my brain to relax and freed me mentally from a situation I couldn’t change and had to withstand.
To this day, I believe those books helped me to learn an important skill at an invaluable time.
Part of the reason I’m a romance writer is because I believed in escapist self care, of getting lost in fantasies that allow your problem-solving brain to relax. And, oh baby, there is no better fantasy than that of the handsome Jensen Ackles smoldering at you. I want to give adults escapist fairy tales because I believe they have value.
“The show got me through a particularly hard and sometimes scary three years of my life. It didn’t “solve” anything. It didn’t teach me anything. It didn’t improve me. What it did was allow my brain to rest and relax when I was overwhelmed and scared, when there was so much I couldn’t fix or control.”
Now, as an adult with two adult-aged kids, I feel like there’s even less under my control. Many of us Americans are feeling this way as we stare in shock and awe at the way our federal leadership continues to ignore this pandemic. I’m not advocating we be like them (him) – I’m not saying we throw up our hands and stick our heads in the sand.
I’m saying that after you’ve worn your mask and washed your hands and helped your kids and finished that Zoom call and registered to vote, you allow yourself to sit down with a good romance book and embrace it as one of the things that allows you to take care of you.
Or turn on the tube and start watching a weird little horror sci-fi show. With 300+ episodes, it’s that escapist fantasy that you won’t get tired of anytime soon.
Join me Saturday, June 12 at 5 pm CT/6 pm ET when I celebrate the release of Serving Sin with Clif Kosterman, the bodyguard for Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki for the last thirteen years. Click here to learn more and register.
How to avoid the sophomore slump
Ah, the journey of the sophomore book. The road to that second-book-for-publication can vary widely. Maybe the first book published was your first book written. Or maybe it’s the 100th. Perhaps you published traditionally. Or published indie. But in the trenches of the sophomore book, many things are similar for writers. And yet we think we’re the only ones who’ve battled there.
“As authors enter into deadline pressure, the most common struggle is learning how to juggle everything else,” said editor extraordinaire Angela James. “The second is learning how to just deal with the deadline pressure and realizing that you’re not writing just for ‘fun’ any more, but writing under an obligation to someone else. That can sometimes paralyze authors!”
And I can tell you from personal experience, that paralysis is not fun!
My latest released book, Hate Crush, was my sophomore effort. The curse and blessing of the first book, Lush Money, was that when I delivered it, my editor complimented it for its clean copy and said it needed few edits.
The perfectionist, Virgo, ex-journalist in me preened. There is NOTHING I like better than giving clean copy. So I thought I could write Hate Crush just like I wrote Lush Money: pantsing it, amping up the bonkers, and writing with the same bravery and exhilaration that I wrote when I didn't have a contract or a deadline.
Yeah… No.
During the months of writing, the words HOT MESS began to scroll across my brain like a Times Square ticker. I tried to rein the book in. I suggested to my agent and editor that I felt the book was “experimental” and “taking a new direction.” They were gently and kindly silent. They both knew that this is just what happened with sophomore books.
Ask multi-published romantic suspense author Adriana Anders: “I wrote Book Two before Book One was published, so I actually felt pretty good about it, overall... until Book One came out. My first release had some good responses from the trade mags, which was great. It also made me miserable, convinced that I was a one-hit wonder. Writing after that first release was very, very difficult.”
When my editor got back to me with revision notes for Hate Crush, she never said the words, “Hot mess.” But what she did say was, “Fix it. I believe in you.”
For thirty days leading up to Christmas of 2019, I re-wrote Hate Crush with 50,000 new words. I dropped plot lines and characters. I made my protagonists softer. I clarified my villains.
I saved the damn book. I hoped.
And although the first review for the book was a scathing 1-star that the reviewer made sure to post EVERYWHERE, the other reviews let me know that my career wasn’t over: Readers said they might love Hate Crush even more than Lush Money. Author friends said it didn’t read like a sophomore effort. And then came these reviews from Booklist, Entertainment Weekly, and NPR.
I’d done it. I’d pulled that book back from the brink.
My hope is that these encouraging how-tos from me and other romance folks help you avoid the sophomore slump before a 30-day re-write and help you embrace the fact that, if you’re having a tough time, it’s part of the process and you’re not alone.
1. Take your time (and try to make the time)
“One of the things I used to counsel authors on when we were doing their first contract was to think about how they were setting new manuscript delivery dates,” Angela James said. “Most new authors don’t have any experience with what it’s like to write a book while also editing, marketing, promoting, reviewing cover copy, chiming in on cover art and doing everything else that comes along with publishing the first book. So I would always tell authors to take a step back before they confirmed manuscript delivery dates and to think about how much extra time they’ll need to write a new book, now that they’ll have the distractions of everything else publishing added in while writing.”
Many romance authors wish they could deliver books like a Pez dispenser. But we need time to write books that readers will fall in love with and that will help build our brand. So try to be realistic about the amount of time you’ll need to write the sophomore book so that it’s a reflection of the quality that readers fell in love with in your first book.
One way to manage your time wisely: Time blocking. Block out the time each day you will devote to your book, and deny the distractions (social media, the news, the dog) that will corrupt that time. Just devoting one hour is still one hour closer to being done!
2. Allow your process to change
I entirely pantsed my first book, Lush Money, and figured I would write Hate Crush the exact same way. But as I tried to stick to the freedom and exhilaration of pantsing, I knew I was getting lost in the weeds. Hate Crush was a different kind of book, a second-chance romance with a bit of a whodunit element, and it needed a plan.
Unfortunately for my editor, I didn’t figure that out until after I’d gotten the book back from revisions. When I broke down the plot threads, streamlined and clarified them, the book was so much stronger. I wished I’d embraced the fact that my process could change earlier in the writing. But as internationally bestselling historical romance author Diana Cosby said, “Ignore your doubts and keep writing, get the story out. You can edit later.”
Thank God for the opportunity to edit!
“You can’t get to a place of confidence by thinking about it or planning it. You gain the most confidence by doing it. Action helps stop fear and doubt.”
3. Believe in yourself
Imposter syndrome and the fear that we’re a one-hit wonder plagues many writers. That fear intensifies as more people – readers, agents, editors, book bloggers – look over our shoulders.
“You have to do a series of ignoring them for a time and purging negativity. Take what they say, use if it you agree but let go of the rest,” said best-selling romantic suspense author Tracee Lydia Garner. “We allow things into our psyche like residue and think about them at length. Residue is something that is often stubborn and needs scrubbing. Folks, impressions, thoughts, really do take up too much residence and yet we let them drive the moving truck to our brain… We don't often take the time to evict, we just let folks hang out eating our popcorn, wine and cheese.”
When I got my revisions back from my editor and knew I had to re-invent that book in 30 days, the one thing I wouldn’t allow myself to do was cry. If I started, I was afraid I wouldn’t stop. What I did was tell myself over and over again: You’re a professional. You can do this.
You’re a professional. You can do this.
Whether the first book you published was the first one you’d ever written or whether you had eight books (cough, cough) under your bed, you did something the majority of people don’t: You finished a book. You figured out plot, characters, love scenes, a dramatic high, the black moment low, and the HEA. You sat your ass in the chair and did the hard work.
I promise, you can do it again.
4. Rely on your resources
When a book starts going off the rails, the last thing you want to do is show it to other people. But those other people – beta readers, your agent, and most importantly, your editor – are exactly who you need to lean on for help.
Award-winning romance author Alexis Daria said: “I wish I’d asked for more support from my editor when I was stuck or didn’t know something.”
My editor told me repeatedly that sophomore books were tough, and although I was too much of a chicken to show her the tough stuff, knowing that I wasn’t the first author in her talented cadre that experienced difficulty was helpful.
I did show the book to beta readers. Romance author Cate Tayler and romance lover and life coach Wendy Reed were instrumental in helping me figure out what wasn’t working. When working with beta readers, be very clear about what you want their insight on. I asked specific questions about areas that I felt were weak, and they gave focused answers. If you’re already feeling shaky about a book, getting advice you don’t need can push you further from clarity.
5. Know you’re not alone
“I think many authors hit a moment when they start to believe they only had one story in them, that they can’t possibly write a second book, and that the second book is going to be awful when they do finish it,” said Angela James. “That’s just not true, it’s just a function of nerves, imposter syndrome, putting too much weight on reviews, comparing yourself to your fellow authors, and basically forgetting to focus on all the great things about you-as-a-writer instead of focusing on fears, expectations and doubts.”
I’ve always felt like a distinctive person, a unique individual. I’m sure you do, too. But I’ve been ASTONISHED during this journey how often my writer insecurities are echoed by other authors. Multi-published authors. New York Times bestselling authors. BIG authors. I was once at an event when Eloisa James talked about feeling imposter syndrome.
So this feeling that your first book was a fluke – it’s not just you. It’s part of the process. But how do you get past it?
“Keep writing. Keep writing. Keep writing,” said Angela James. “You can’t get to a place of confidence by thinking about it or planning it. You gain the most confidence by doing it. Action helps stop fear and doubt. And even when the fear and doubt are still there, if you keep writing, at least you’re moving forward and not staying stuck!”