Look at these wonderful renditions of This Rake of Mine:

This Rake of Mine, Japanese Edition

This Rake of Mine, Dutch edition

I have to admit that when I opened the package yesterday with this Dutch version, I thought for a moment they’d inserted a vampire into the book. Just kidding!

This Rake of Mine, Czech edition

Actually I love how each edition reflects a different aspect of the plot. In the Japanese edition, it gets that Jane Eyre treatment, with the lonely house on the hill, which is very much the shadowy sort of look I had in mind as I conjured up Jack’s house, Thistledown Park. Then in the Dutch version, they capture the lonely sea cliffs and the pirate/smuggler aspect of the plot–love this clinch on the cliffs, vampire notions aside. And then the Czechs go for that wonderful detailed gown, that I love so much, as well as the flowers–a nice touch from the end when the girls gather them for Malcolm. Very interesting how with one book, three translations, each can go in such diverse directions.

Yes, when these packages arrive, I just shake my head in wonder. Copies of my books all over the world, and wonderful readers as well! I know this because I look at my website statistics to see where my visitors are coming from–and in the last month, readers, the curious, the diehard fans have dropped by from 95 different countries and territories. 95?! In just the last 30 days?! It blows me away. I never imagined, ever, when I started writing that my books would have such a reach. I just hoped my local Barnes & Noble would carry them.

Actually, I’m still hoping for that one. They have a shelf for local authors, but I don’t rise to being local enough–despite living only five minutes from the store. Terry Brooks, yes. Susan Anderson, yes. (Apparently, according to the snooty manager, Susan Anderson doesn’t write romance–and don’t forget to hold your nose up a bit when you say that horrid word. Romance.) That used to bug the pants off me, but now I don’t care. I’ve got readers in Benin, Belarus, and the Maldives. Take that, you lowly local shelf.

©2010 Elizabeth Boyle Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Question No. 1: Will you write John, Ginger and Nate’s stories?

This has to be the most popular question that I get. And the answer is “Absolutely.” There seems to be a moment as a character comes to life on a page that as an author, you just know that they will need their own stroy. I knew that immediately with Dash and Clifton as I was writing This Rake of Mine. Especially with Dash! His character kept arriving in my stories, more insistent and more demanding with each book he appeared in. As for Clifton, his story shifted and changed and eluded me for years until I came up with the character Lucy and the idea for How I Met My Countess. And then I knew I had hit on the perfect, ahem, lady, to bring the light back to his broken heart and battered life.

As for John–I think it is obvious he needs to discover his heart (and his Dashwell tendencies) with that scamp Molly. She’ll lead him on a merry chase. As for Nate–he needs to fall and fall hard–just like his father did. As for Ginger, while she is currently married to a fuddy-duddy lord in Memoirs of a Scandalous Red Dress, things can change. Thankfully, I have no morals when it comes to killing off inconvenient husbands.

Question No. 2: Are you going to finish the Marlowe series?

Oh, I hate this question. Not because I don’t love the Marlowe series–His Mistress by Morning and Tempted by the Night–which I do, more than you can know– but because the answer is so difficult to write. The further I get from that series, the nearly impossible it will be to get it approved and finished. Every time I broach it with Avon, I get this sort of dead air sound over the phone–like “did she just mention that again?” The problem being that some readers just love Paranormal and others just love their Historicals, but put the two together and it is about appealing as strawberry jam and licorice mixed together.

And there is a very small but vocal number of readers who just HATE combining the two. Hate it with big capital letters and long loud emails to New York complaining about it, while with their other hand they are typing rabid posts on Amazon. The squeaky wheel syndrome. I have tried to wage my own counter campaign–because I do get a lot of supportive emails about the series (much more than the negative) and I pass them alone to my editor and agent as proof that the series (which BTW, sold well, thank you very much) would be beloved if it was allowed to continue. I won’t give up fighting for you lovers of magic and true love, and I have yet to give up.

Question No. 3: What happened to your Footnotes that you used to have with each book?

I got this question for the first time about three months ago and since have gotten it about three more times. Surprising, because I discontinued doing the Footnotes several books back. (See this example from Love Letters from a Duke.) Honestly? I quit doing them because no one was reading them. If you don’t know what they are and you didn’t miss them, you aren’t alone.

After studying my web stats over a period of time, I realized they were getting hardly any visits. And since they took a lot of time, money and effort to put together and have the pages built, I just couldn’t justify all that if no one was reading them. They are fun and interesting, but I would rather put my time into writing pages people will actually want to read–like the ones in my next book. What two pages are the most popular on my website? The Bookshelf and Coming Soon. Which is another question I get frequently: What’s next?

Any other questions?

©2010 Elizabeth Boyle Blog. All Rights Reserved.

What Colin Firth was describing was the excitement and passion that an actor (or in my case, a writer) can put into projects, because the work we do is so finite. You start a film, you finish a film, you go to the next project. You sell a book idea, you write the book, the book is published. But while you are on that project, it takes all your attention and passion. And you love it, embrace it and revel in it, because it won’t last forever and there is a shiny new project always glimmering on the horizon. And the best part is that sometimes you have no idea what that next project will be, but you know that it will fill you with a brand new excitement and a new joy.

Someone asked me recently how it felt to have written 17 books. Wasn’t I afraid of running out of ideas? Wasn’t I worried about doing the same old, same old. Well, yes sometimes, and definitely no.

Every book is like meeting a brand new lover, my own secret creative promiscuity. It really is why I love the work I do–every book has its own challenges, ones I create and ones that are unanticipated. I love getting to know the characters in the stories and I adore the secondary characters who can be as quirky and devilish as they want. I love the surprises that writing brings, the “aha” moments, the days when the words sing in my ears as if they are being whispered from on high. When Colin Firth talked how he loves acting because it is a distraction from life, I knew exactly what he meant and I grinned. My writing, like his acting, is a place to escape. For me and hopefully, for those who read my stories.

I suppose this got me grinning because right now I am between projects. I am in that small, rare (hopefully rare, because I do like working) black hole in a writer’s life where you have turned in a book, the proposal for the next one and am in a holding pattern until all the answers get shaken down from on high, ie, my beloved editor. And while it is a mini-vacation, I find it disconcerting not to be knee deep in a book.

Of course, the first two days I totally played around. Got a pedicure and went to the movies. But I am too practical to live like that for long, and my “vacation” since has been organizing my taxes, cleaning out files and basically getting the decks cleared for the work to come. Honestly? I am lonely. I want to get on with getting to know Minerva and Lord Langley. I want their love story to fill my heart with smiles, and I look forward to the secrets that I have yet to unearth about these two characters. In other words, I am ready for a new affair.

What is your passion?

©2010 Elizabeth Boyle Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Astatalk – How I Met My Countess — Boyle, Elizabeth download request
Romantic Fiction → How I Met My Countess — Boyle, Elizabeth. 29 Dec 2009, 15: 36. Download. Sponsored 50 MBit/sec direct download. Does anyone have this? …

Yes, here was a reader asking for an illegal copy of How I Met My Countess. Damn, girl, Barnes & Noble wasn’t open yet, so you have to steal a copy? Come on!

I really wanted to meet the reader who posted this on one of the myriad of download boards and ask her this: Would you go into Walmart, put a copy of the book in your purse and walk out with it? And when she said (and probably emphatically and in an insulted tone) “No!” and I would have to follow that up with a “Why not?” and the answer is obvious: Because that’s stealing.

When I worked in software piracy, I heard all the excuses about why we should all look the other way on electronic theft–it doesn’t hurt anyone, it’s just one copy. First of all, electronic theft hurts everyone. And it is never just one copy. It may seem like thin air to the myriad of thieves out there, but they are no better than the Mob–you are robbing companies and authors of their legitimate revenue and worse, you are robbing yourself. Because legitimate revenue is taxed: B&O taxes, personal taxes, corporate taxes. Counterfeiting and electronic piracy account for one third of lost revenues in North America–everything from software, watches, purses, toothpaste and baby formula. One third. Think if that revenue was legitimately and fairly taxed? Think of the jobs that could be gained with that revenue. In the long run, we would all be richer with better roads, schools, and yes, health care.

And it isn’t just the authors and publishers who are robbed, it is everyone up and downstream in the life of a book: from the warehouse workers, to the artist, to the shippers who move books, bookstores and their employees, printers, box-makers, gads, even the tape that goes into closing the boxes, the list goes on and on. Because when the electronic book is stolen with impunity online, it cuts into legal and legitimate sales of the hard copy book, which is the lifeblood of this industry. And eventually those losses turn into layoffs, less offerings from booksellers, less bookstores, less books, less authors. Sound familiar? The people who think they are getting a free book are robbing themselves of what they love.

Here is the other argument that makes me shake my head with wonder at the ethics and upside down values that these online shoplifters and thieves use to convince themselves that they are in the right: I read too many books to afford them. Whaaaah? Does anyone else look at this and just shake your head. Do they feel the same about shoes and handbags and lattes that they need to consume gives them the right to steal their goodies from Nordstrom, Macys and Starbucks? I doubt it.

Here’s the simple solution: If you can’t afford the books, go to the library and check out your books for free. At least the library pays for their copy(ies). And if they don’t have the copy you want, I have yet to meet a librarian who wouldn’t track that book down for you and get it for you via inter-library loan. Again, for free. And here’s another question for the “i-can’t-afford-my-habit-so-I’ve-turned-to-crime” crowd: If you can’t afford your groceries do you steal them from the grocery store? Do you break into your neighbor’s house ’cause you’re out of beer or they have a dvd you’ve always wanted? No, of course not, so why are you stealing books?

Now I know that there are no arguments that will stop some people, but I want to add one last image that I ask you to hold in your heart: Tiny Tim. Every author out there has their own Tiny Tim–a mortgage to pay, kids to feed, an electric bill, medical bills and electronic piracy robs their ability to take care of their Tiny Tim, chipping away at his little broken crutch as sure as if Ebenezer Scrooge was standing there trying to make kindling out of it. My Tiny Tim is an eight year old boy with autism. His medical bills run 25k a year–and that’s the part our insurance won’t cover. So when you steal my books, upload them or download them, I want you to envision this child and the speech therapy ($100 per hour) and physical therapy ($85 per hour) that you are depriving him of. That’s my Tiny Tim and when you steal my books, that is who you are robbing of a legitimate chance at a good life.

So I would ask everyone who loves all these “free” books, to realize nothing in life is free, and eventually you are only stealing from yourself . . . and perhaps even this small child. Resolve in 2010 not to steal. Every author, composer, designer and creator on the planet will thank you by continuing to be creative.

©2010 Elizabeth Boyle Blog. All Rights Reserved.

(That in itself is a subject for another day).

But as for my current dilemma, I glanced up at my page count the other day as I’ve been doing my clean up work on Mad About the Duke and was thrilled because it was coming out perfect–until I got to the middle of the book and realized this huge section was missing.

Gone. Poof. As in not there. Now aside from the need for air and medical intervention via Writer 911, I finally did find the pages and tucked them into their rightful place, and to my horror saw my page count go up, and up, and up and then over what I can turn in. 420 pages? And I still have a love scene and half of another chapter to fit in.

I can see my dear and beloved editor falling out of her chair if my book hit her desk like the NYC Yellow Pages, and so to avoid having to call Editor 911 on her behalf, I know I have to do something.

Rather, something has to go.

I hate getting out my red Uniball and drawing big red X’s across a scene, but I do it nearly every book. You might not know it, but there is a huge chunk of How I Met My Countess that got axed in much the same fashion. Sorry, but the fun ballroom scene where Clifton and Malcolm take the sisters out to prove that society will welcome them (which it doesn’t) got the Uniball bloodbath.

But this time, I don’t think I can just chainsaw out a chapter and call it good. I am going to have to do some really precision cutting and thoughtfully remove some, ahem, fat. But what to cut?

I think I’ll bake a batch of sugar cookies and mull it over. But then again, I suspect the cookies are the real problem here . . .

So how are you getting rid of your holiday excess?

©2010 Elizabeth Boyle Blog. All Rights Reserved.

EW: Well, first of all…the main characters are married. I know, I know, usually the romance comes first with the wedding as the end result, but Colton and Brianna have made a fashionable, aristocratic match. Our independent duchess, however, is head over heels in love and doesn’t want her handsome husband to fall into the dilettante habits of the beau monde. He could very well take a mistress, but she is determined to hold his interest. Unfortunately, she has been raised as a proper English lady and has no idea how to go about it all until she stumbles across a copy of the scandalous Lady Rothburg’s Advice in the back of a dusty little bookshop. Written by a courtesan and banned years ago, it isn’t a volume any true lady should own, but she is intrigued and impulsively buys it anyway.

From there, as they say, sparks do fly. As she implements the daring suggestions, her stuffy duke becomes more and more captivated, but also more and more suspicious of how his innocent bride could be suddenly such a vixen.in the bedroom. Their mutual lack of understanding made for a lot of fun when creating their journey from husband and wife to lovers in the true sense of the word.

EB: Funny story–I took your book on the plane with me, but since it was in manuscript pages it was big and bulky, so I only took half the book. Okay, I wasn’t sure I would like it or not–so I was being cautious. My mistake, because I was halfway between Seattle and Florida and I was through the pages I’d brought and spent the rest of the flight trying to figure out a way to get into the baggage compartment to read the rest. What I loved were the characters–not just the hero and heroine (who were great) but the secondary stories as well. What have you got coming up in the near future so I can plan accordingly?

EW: How nice you are! I’m so glad you enjoyed it. Hmm, next in May is a Scottish trilogy in one volume, Seducing the Highlander. I admit to a weakness for bold, roguish Scots! In September 2010, the first book in the Lords of Notoriety Regency series comes out, My Lord Scandal, followed in October by Our Wicked Mistake, and in November, His Sinful Secret, all from Signet Eclipse.

3) Wow! You put me to shame! And I love that title, Our Wicked Mistake. Sounds like lots of fun. Just to make sure no one else misses all these great reads, where can folks find you on the web?

Keep an eye on me at www.emmawildes.com and I am also on Facebook.

©2010 Elizabeth Boyle Blog. All Rights Reserved.

So you’ll want to stop over at Romantic Crush Junkies and Book Talk with J & J if you want to be part of the action.

So now, I am off to bake a cake for someone’s birthday. I baked one for a funeral yesterday, so today I think I need to make one to celebrate another year of living. And thank you to all of you for making it so very heartwarmingly worthwhile to get up each day and do the one thing I’ve always wanted–write. As for me, I am taking today off. Twenty years ago today I met my husband. He was the best birthday present I ever got. So we are shipping the kids off to school and make a day of it. I tried to talk him into dueling manicures/pedicures, but he nixed that idea.

So, what would you do if you and your DH/SI/Partner-in-Crime had an entire day to go out and play hooky? And that’s hooky, not nooky. Gads, I can’t turn my back on you people for a second!

©2010 Elizabeth Boyle Blog. All Rights Reserved.

First of all, I have to say that I’ve felt that 2009 was just not my year. It was challenging, difficult and when I got sick, nearly deadly. But now with my feet back beneath me, I can’t wait for it to end. I put up the 2010 calendar tonight and honest to God, I got shivers. I saw that bright shiny new month, without a lick of commitments on it (what an illusion, I have lots to do in January) and it made me giddy. I find I’ve been guarding 2010 like a mother hen–saying no to a bunch of commitments, picking only what I really want to do (PLA in March, and RomConInc in July) and that’s it. The rest of the year is devoted to writing and refreshing the well. A year of blank pages yet to be filled, just like my calendar.

BTW, do you need a calendar? Download this one. I think it’s awfully pretty. And it doesn’t come filled with a bunch of appointments and commitments.

And right now I’m working crazy hours to put the finishing touches on Mad About the Duke. Jack Tremont’s stuffed shirt brother, the Duke of Parkerton is a hoot to write about. Think Mr. Darcy Gone Wild. He’s starting to make Mad Jack Tremont (This Rake of Mine) look like the sensible Tremont. I’m living in my office, drinking too much espresso, and living off leftover Christmas cookies, but having fun working on bringing this story together. It’s rather like a juggling act on speed.

Finally, How I Met My Countess comes out on Tuesday. Now some of you lucky customers found it early. Heck, some readers got a copy before I got mine hot off the press. Apparently Santa has been dropping off early copies all over the place. Leave it to the man in the red suit to make all your reader wishes come true. For those of you who haven’t hit the holiday jackpot, tomorrow it will be on sale everywhere. Or save yourself the trouble of snow and ice and packed parking lots and use that gift card that’s burning a hole in your pocket to order one online. I told my son, who got a Barnes & Noble gift card for Christmas he could use it to buy a copy of How I Met My Countess. I won’t repeat his comment. It’s best left in this old, and almost gone decade.

So tell me, How Will You Find Your Copy?

©2010 Elizabeth Boyle Blog. All Rights Reserved.

The funny part of the story behind this cover is that the powers to be were a little worried that a black gown on a cover would seem to widowish or like a funeral. I think in execution, nothing could be further from the truth. This cover is daring, exciting and sexy. My thanks to Avon and the artist Jon Paul for giving my story such a gorgeous wrapping.

And a huge round of applause to everyone who voted. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

©2010 Elizabeth Boyle Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Oh, and to top it all off, my beloved Alphasmart had a bit of a heart attack yesterday. Lost everything I’d written in the morning and nearly put me in the ER. Envision me, standing over it, User Book in hand, trying to give it life support to find those freaking pages, sobbing and calling out, “Stay with me, Alphie. Don’t go near the light. Not just yet.” I got everything back but a few paragraphs–yes there is an emergency salvage code for it–but my heart was still pounding when I went to bed hours later.

I know we all have piles to do this time of year, everyone bites off more than they can chew, and so I send my love and sympathies to my fellow frantic friends. Here is what I did last night: I began delegating. Laundry to the husband, as well as all the wrapping and shipping duties for his family. Promo work went to the eldest. 10 year olds are wiz’s at stuffing envelopes. I mean this is why we had them, right?  Also, it keeps them both out of my hair. Just a suggestion if you have spare hands around.

If I am a bit scarce in the next few weeks, my apologies, but mostly Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

I know I can’t wait for 2010.

©2010 Elizabeth Boyle Blog. All Rights Reserved.