Rewrites and Gwyneth Bolton

First, I need to thank all of you for being so patient with me during my absence.  I can finally say that I’m beginning to feel more like my old self and since I’ve pushed my oldest daughter off to college this morning everything is starting to fall into place.

I’ve been very lucky to have a number of critiques from my RWA colleagues during this down time.  Boy, do they know how to steer a writer in the right direction when it comes to mastering a romance novel.  Now the tough part is to do another re-write.  That’s right the edits continue.  I say it’s tough because I have to let go of passages or character statements that I loved so much when I first wrote my novel.  (Sighs)

I just have to be brutally honest and say, “Yes, they’re right.  This [insert passage or phase] doesn’t work so surgery must take place.”  I just need to forget my precious word count or how many hours it took to perfect the prose.  The professionals have spoken and I agree with 85 percent of what they said so this medicine isn’t really a bitter pill to swallow.  

So before I move on to working on my North Star re-write, I just had to tell you about Gwyneth Bolton, an African-American romance novelist I discovered today.  I’ve seen her novels featured in Romantic Times Magazine Book Reviews so I visited her website to learn more about her latest work, Sizzling Seduction (scheduled to be release in October 2009).

I instantly loved her ‘Frequently Asked Questions’ area on her ‘About’ page of her website; it was very insightful.   Please visit http://www.gwynethbolton.com when you get a moment.

I promise to return tomorrow to blog again.  Thanks for all of the emails and get better soon wishes.  You guys really make my small place in the world wide web feel like a second home.