A Writing Horror Story with a Happy Ending!

This is the book cover for my new HQN e-book, The Secrets of a Courtesan, which is coming out next month from e-harlequin. It's the short story prequel to my new Brides of Fortune series and introduces the village of Fortune's Folly and some of the characters. And once again I think the cover goddess has been smiling on me because I think it's beautiful!

I've been lucky in more ways than one because this is the short story that seemed destined to crash and burn. I love writing short stories and particularly enjoyed my recent one for Harlequin Historical Undone, The Unmasking of Lady Loveless. So I set out on this one with the same cheerful intent to create something that was fun, witty and sexy (of course!). I wrote the story at the start of the year. I had a tight deadline of my own making because I was going on holiday and it simply had to be finished before I left so that I could press on with a new book on my return. And I had what I thought was a good story idea, I loved my characters, I had included what I immodestly thought was some sparkling dialogue, so what was the problem? The plot, as it turned out. Specifically the lack of conflict. Even as I was writing the story I knew that something didn't quite work. It should have done - but it didn't.

It was the classic story idea of the hero requiring a temporary wife, but with a twist, and I loved the concept. So I made a big mistake. I carried on writing it instead of acknowledging my gut instinct, admitting that it wasn't going to work and stopping to rethink. It was only when the whole thing was finished and I read through it that the nagging doubts returned, but I liked it so much and I was determined it would be okay so again I ignored them. Then my editor read the manuscript... and put her finger on the problem straight away, as she always does. The characters were too nice, they had no flaws, there was no real conflict between them, the whole story simply didn't work.

With ten days before I went away I scrapped the original idea totally and tried to write a different short story. That was probably mistake number two because that didn't work either. By now my writing confidence was plummeting and my stress levels rising exponentially. I hadn't done my holiday packing because I'd been too busy trying to write this story, which was why I ended up in the Grand Canyon in the snow without a hat, scarf or gloves. Fortunately my editor had pointed out to me that as long as I could write the story in a week when I got back from holiday, we would still be okay to go.

Which was where I made my first good decision. I didn't think about the story for the entire three weeks that I was away. Instead I took a break, enjoyed my trip and lived in the moment. When I got back to the UK I was raring to write, and produced the Secrets of a Courtesan in a week. It was the third incarnation of this particular story, different again, but with some deep conflict, slightly flawed characters, still some sparkling dialogue (I hope!) and lots of hot and sensual romance.

Maybe one day I will use the first version of the story in my creative writing classes as an example of how every writer can make mistakes regardless of how long they've been writing or how many books they've written (I'm assuming here, of course, that I'm not the only person this has happened to, but please put me right if that assumption is incorrect!) I'm a great believer in the idea that you should follow your writing instinct, and from now on I'll be listening more closely to mine. In the meantime I think I'll just look at the cover of The Secrets of a Courtesan - and enjoy the happy ending!