My New Baby!

I got my author copies of The Beast Within! ::dance:: This is my 20th published book and, no, you NEVER get over the thrill of holding your book in your hands for the first time! It’s an incredible feeling. ::bouncing::

You can read the Behind-the-Book secrets here about how I came up with the idea for the PAX series, but here are a few more secrets behind The Beast Within!

Silhouette had Her Man to Remember, Cole Dempsey’s Back in Town, and The Beast Within at the same time. My editor loved The Beast Within but it was decided I should establish my name in the Intimate Moments line with some more “regular” suspense stories first, thus The Beast Within became my third SIM.

I had requests for The Beast Within from single titles houses, but I determined that writing the series in SIM was the best way to reach the most readers at a high distribution and low price point to build my name in paranormal romantic suspense. Does this mean I have plans for later? Ahahaha. Some secrets can’t be told yet…. Suffice it to say The Beast Within is part of a larger plan.

I was scared to death the entire time I was writing this book. I’d never seen anything like it in category with its combination of intense romance, sci-fi, and horror. It’s a genre-bending and genre-blending book. I rewrote the last third of the book repeatedly until I was ready to throw myself off the back deck. This is why you can find “Scenes from the Cutting Room Floor” on the Bonus Features page of my PAX League site. I had plenty of deleted scenes!! And by the way, if you want to check out any of the deleted scenes, they were edited before being placed on the PAX site so that they don’t contain any spoilers. Just remember that the things that happened in these scenes never ended up happening in the book, so if you read the book after reading the deleted scenes, don’t let that confuse you. The ending changed, repeatedly, and drastically, so these deleted scenes no longer bear any connection to what really happens in the book other than that they involve the same characters. There is also a really hot love scene in the deleted scenes section because I decided that particular love scene was gratuitous. LOL.

After rewriting the book repeatedly, a month after I mailed the manuscript to my editor I rewrote it AGAIN, asked her to throw out the manuscript she had, and I mailed her a new copy.

I was still so freaked out about how “different” the book was from what I had ever seen in category that I waited on pins and needles to hear what my editor thought about the book. One day she sent me a pithy email that said simply: I need to talk to you about PAX 1. I started shaking, literally. I was terrified. I thought, that’s it. She realizes I’m insane, how could I submit a book like that to SIM. Well, it just turned out she wanted to tell me the book had been moved up in the schedule from later in the year to July. When she did read the book a few months later, she told me, “This book rocks.” I’ve never been so relieved in my life.

The book’s original title was A Dark and Stormy Night. My editor came up with The Beast Within and I was immediately in love with it. (WAY better title!)

Due to production issues, the book was not copy-edited or line-edited. It went straight to the printer from my disk. The weight of this responsibility freaked me out for months…..one of the biggest publishers in the world was trusting me enough to publish my book straight from my disk…..until I got the 4 1/2 stars Top Pick review from RT BOOKclub. I’ve since suggested they don’t line edit any of my books ever again, but I don’t think they like that idea, LOL.

I’m off to have lunch today with my buds Desire author Emilie and Intrigue author Cynthia. It’s a good day for a Fruity F*cker!!