What kind of love are you on?

I noticed this is my one hundredth post on Dita's Den. I'm celebrating it with news of rejection. The quickie I wrote to get away from my Brothers Grim was not an Ellora's Cave Quickie, as my editor pointed out, and you bet I'm kicking my own butt right about now.

Lesson one: Don't assume anything. Wrote a book that got published? Congratulations! Think everything else you do from then on is golden and greeted with open arms? Wake up. Instead:

Lesson two: Do your homework. If there are house rules, abide by them. Learn them by heart. They are the guiding light, they exist to make your life easier, your writing super focused.

Lesson three: It's not them, it's you, or in this instance, me. It really is and there's nothing else to it. Decided not to follow that guiding light but do your own thing instead? Go back to lesson one and do not assume anything.

After Alex Rising got reviewed by Night Owl Romance, I wrote them a thank you mail with a few notes on the book and my writing. I wish I could post the answer I got. I remember saying I doubted I'd ever write a simple romp. I also remember saying "but never say never."

Hell froze over and I ended up writing that simple romp. Just not simple enough, intense enough, tight enough for EC, and that is no one else's fault but mine. It got me thinking. If it wasn't a simple romp I was comfortable writing, what the hell was I doing trying to write one? (Except assuming it was golden even when I hadn't done my homework properly.) What was I out to write Romantica wise anyway?

I'm still mulling over that but initial reports indicate it can't be just sex, all sex and nothing but with plot enough to hold the edges together. I'm not dissing anyone writing strictly sex driven stories or readers who enjoy them, absolutely not. These are insanely hard to write because of that tight format and focus and I just failed royally at it. Because I wanted there to be more to it. Because the premise was fun and I had fun with it, my way, not the EC way.

It's not an Ellora's Cave Quickie but it just might be a short for some other publisher. We'll see. And I need to have a serious discussion with myself about what kind of love am I on, Romantica wise; spell it out, clear, crystal. High time, wouldn't you say? It would make my writing life that much easier, to say nothing of targeting those queries and submissions. Maybe I wouldn't feel like such an idiot after being rejected, either.