Addendum: Double Dog Dare Accepted

It must have been the double-dog-dare: Susan zapped me a picture of her office. I'd just like to point out that I didn't have fast food styrofoam anywhere in my office. Mostly because the fast food places I frequent are too cheap to use styrofoam. What's wrong with a plan old paper bag, Miss I'm-Too-High-Falutin'-For-A-Cardboard-Box? And she's kept her poinsettia alive past Christmas, which clearly means she's made a deal with the devil.

Susan writes:
"Okay, Missy, here's my office as of this very minute. Thank God you didn't challenge me to take a picture of myself because the office looks a heck of a lot better than I do. I am cringing, however, at the fast food container on my desk, but I just had my very nutritious lunch of leftover salad with no dressing. (As long as I'm making you mad...) In total fairness, I cleaned up my desk 2 days ago, but even at it's worst it never looked like--- Never mind. My headache is coming back."



"Here's the thing. Your godawful mess of an office looks like the inside of my head ALL THE TIME, which is why I have to keep my workspace reasonably organzied. Otherwise, it would all just be too painful. That mess you work in is a credit to your amazing brainpower."

See, THIS is why she's my pal, even when wearing an electric bubble shirt and lying to Rod Stewart about me. Of course, then she ruins it by adding:

"By the way, I love your new cover for DON'T LOOK DOWN. Still angry that you only gave me that first amazing chapter to read. So unfair to keep me dangling like this, but then that cruel streak of yours does have its way of sticking it's head up, now doesn't it?"

Sigh. So of course I'm sending her an ARC. How can I not?

Mare 2, Kind Of

Well, it's been one of those days, what with Susan answering my double-dog-dare, and the new tile going in my bathroom (and it's GORGEOUS, too) and about twenty million e-mails coming in, including one with the first review of Don't Look Down: "This is the first collaboration between best-selling and award-winning romance writer Crusie and adventure-thriller writer Mayer, and it is a rare and original delight. Mayer's delectably dry sense of humor perfectly complements Crusie's signature brand of sharp wit, and together the two have cooked up a sexy, sassy, and smart combination of romance and suspense that is simply irresistible."

God, I'm so happy, I'm doing the Snoopy Dance all over the house.

But I didn't get to Mare this morning. Or this afternoon. When it got to be 8PM and I was still handling business stuff and e-mails, I realized I wasn't going to get to Mare or Baby (the scene from Agnes) today. I also realized I have to get a grip on my life. I truly typed from 9:30 this morning until 8 this evening without writing one word of fiction. I did four blog entries, though. And I proofread the newsletter and did a bunch of editor and agent e-mails and an agent phone call (except we talk about everything so that's not exactly all business) and a partner phone call (except she's my kid, too, so it's not exactly all business), and then e-mails with Krissie and Eileen about the anthology and the trip next week and promotion, and then there were the lists I have to keep up with, and the call from the vet because Lucy has a double heart murmur even though everything else about her is fine and I swear to God she knows it because before she went to the vet she used to jump up on the bed just fine and now she sits on the floor and looks up at me with those big eyes and does everything but clutch her heart until I pick her up . . .

Clearly there's a lack of focus here. As if you didn't already know that from my desk.

But I did think a lot about fiction today, including writing long e-mails to Bob about what Agnes would be doing baking six kinds of cupcakes while Shane grilled her until Bob wrote back, "TMI," plus yesterday, I was out because of the vet et al and stopped by Home Goods and looked at their Christmas markdowns and there was this angel that marked down from $38 to $5 ("as is"), and I am not an angel kind of person but the face on this one was so amazing, plus she was holding her halo in her hands as if she'd just decided to take it off, plus there was something about an "as is angel" that really appealed to me, plus she was five bucks, for cripes sake, so I bought her and she's sitting on my desk and I keep looking at her fascinated. I know she's going to fuel a book. Maybe Charlotte. Maybe the one I'm going to do a couple of years from now, my verson of The Turn of the Screw. I don't know. But since I have nothing to show for my day, I thought I'd show you the As Is Angel instead

And now Mare . . .

So I’m at The RWA National Conference in Reno last July, and Eileen Dreyer (one of my favorite people and also I’m in love with her husband Rick which is why she calls me “Mormon Wife”) sits down beside me and says, “I have the best idea for a book. The heroine is a shape-shifter but she’s a virgin because every time she gets excited, she changes shape, like into the guy’s mother.” And I said, “How much have you had to drink?” and she said, “Enough,” and we talked of other things. Fast forward a couple of months and she e-mailed me and said, “Here’s the idea: Three novellas, three sisters, all with paranormal powers that they can’t control. I do my shapeshifter, Krissie does one [that’s Anne Stuart], and you do one. What do you say?”

I said, “I’m in.” Well, who wouldn’t be?

And then it turned out Jen Enderlin was in, too, so now sometime in 2007, The Unfortunate Miss Fortunes (working title but hoping it will be permanent) will be published, which means I’m now writing the youngest sister, Mare. (There are three sisters: DeeDee, Eileen’s shapeshifter; Lizzie, Krissie’s girl who changes the shapes of other things; and my girl Moira Mariposa, better known as Mare, who moves things with her mind. Psychokinetic? I know there are terms for all of those powers, but that’s what they do.) So I'm figuring I'll try to do Twelve Days of Mare and see what I get.

BUT I also have to do Agnes with Bob because I can't keep him waiting. And I can't delay Mare because Krissie and Eileen and I are meeting in New York for three days to talk this through, and I need to get a chunk of it done before then so I know what my story is about because I don't really know what I'm doing until I see what I've written.

So here's the plan: I'm going to dedicate an hour to Mare every morning. Afternoons and evenings are for Agnes, but the mornings belong to Mare. Since my mornings are really short--I usually start work about ten--and I have to answer e-mail in there, too, it should work out to about an hour a day, although it'll get trickier once I'm on the road. Twelve days starting tomorrow ends the last day we're in NYC, so that should make things more interesting. January tenth is going to be tricky because I'll be traveling plus that's Mollie's birthday (she'll be twelve) and we're going to do the NYC thing, which for us usually means a great lunch and a walk through Central Park where we talk a mile a minute, but . . .

Where was I? Right. The Twelve Days of Mare starts tomorrow. As with Trudy, the posts will be short, just a way of keeping me honest and on task and probably not very interesting, so be forewarned. And if you want to know how Agnes is doing, schlep on over to He Wrote She Wrote, because that's where we'll be talking about that. About once a week.

Meanwhile, here’s the start of the Mare collage. It's only the very beginning, but I’m liking it.

Just Like Cheerios

You know, the business part of writing never fails to amaze me. There's so much to it, even if you're not insane about it the way I am. My latest insanity, which I have thoughtfully inflicted on Bob, is branding the collaboration so we can sell it just like General Mills sells Cherrios. Or whoever it is that sells Cherrios.

Branding is the new buzzword in publishing. (Well, not that new. I'm never cutting edge.) The idea is to sell an author as someone who produces a certain kind of book, a product if you will. I kind of hate it because it does hem a writer in, but for the collaboration, I think it's necessary. We're trying to sell an idea here, the idea that a book with a man writing all the male points of view and a female writing all the female points of view, each writer coming from a distinctly different tradition, is fun and classy and well worth $24.95 or whatever the sucker is going to sell for. Plus Bob and I really like to teach and we want to do a five-day writing workshop in the spring, so we needed a look to market that, too. And then there's the collab website which will also need a graphic. Basically, what we needed was a logo that summed up the partnership in a clean, not-too-detailed image that we could use anywhere, in one or two colors, and that would work large or small. Not an easy design project.

So we called on the brilliant Mara Lubelle, and said, "He's a little bit violent military thriller, she's a little bit hot romantic comedy, together they solve crime," and Mara came up with four logos. And they were all good, but we're only using one, so this is the only chance to see all of them.

The first one was good, but it didn't capture the off-the-wall quality of the collboration. Nice type face, though:

The second one was better--I particularly like that bullet--but it seemed too busy and it was a little too detailed to reduce down well:

The third one I really liked and so did Bob: very clean and simple. But it was a little more violent than I was comfortable with: after all that's me in the crosshairs, or at least that's my symbol:

Which brings us to the last one, which we both liked because it made us both laugh and because it really does sum up our partnership:

No, you don't get to vote, the last one is it. But isn't it great?

Thank you, Mara Lubelle, genius logo designer.