February, 2013

Good morning!

This month my Larkville Legacy story, THE BILLIONAIRE'S BABY SOS is released! I'm very excited about it because the series has an interesting overall concept.

We finish up our article series on How to Write a 3-Book Series.

And we have an excerpt from Book 3 of the Babies in the Boardroom series, Baby on the Ranch. This ties in with the 3-book series lessons.

Enjoy!


Coming Attractions

February 2013 CAN THIS MANUSCRIPT BE SAVED? Writersonlineworkshops

In February, my book in the Larkville Series BILLIONAIRE BABY SOS is released

March 2013 WHAT'S A SCENE SUPPOSED TO DO Savvy Authors

May, the first book in a duet about sisters is to be released. No title yet! But the heroine is a wedding cake baker with triplets! Tons of fun to write!

June 2013 CONFLICT AND THE CATEGORY ROMANCE, STAR RWA Chapter

July 2013 a short 2-week workshop on Theme for Savvy Authors


For the Writers Among Us

Last year I did a 3-article series for Savvy Authors on Writing a 3-book Series. If you missed it, here it is. LOL Well, article three, anyway. Articles 1 and 2 appear in the prior two ezines. You can go back and check those out. Enjoy!

Writing the 3-Book Series

Book 3 Wrap up

     Welcome back to our series of articles on writing a three-book series.

In the first two lessons, we learned that a well-planned three-book series has an overarching story that runs through all three books. BUT, each individual book must stand alone, so the “series story” cannot dominate the book. The romance of the hero and heroine must be first and foremost in a category romance, just as the main story must be first and foremost in a single title (thriller, suspense, mainstream, women’s fiction, etc). The overarching series story takes a back seat in books one and two.

     We’ve been taking a look at my BABY IN THE BOARDROOM series, but I haven’t mentioned much about book three in the two prior articles because I didn’t want to spoil the ending.

     I’m hoping by now you’ve read it, but if you haven’t…this is a major SPOILER ALERT.

     Because in book three, the mystery shareholder drives to Whiskey Springs, Texas and finds Cade. Why? Because book 3 is all about wrap up. And the best way to wrap up the overarching series story line is to make it the primary story of book 3.

Suzanne Caldwell is a twenty-two-year-old single mom. A university professor more or less pursued her for her grandmother’s fortune, but…what did we learn in books 1 and 2? Andreas Holdings isn’t doing so well. It’s not paying dividends. And the professor who thought she had money drops her like a hot potato when he finds out her grandmother’s fortune is nearly gone.

So are we surprised when Suzanne rolls into Texas, looking for Cade, because she’s broke? No.

     Her grandmother has died and when accountants and lawyers got a hold of her estate, they discovered she wasn’t just broke. She was in debt. Because Gram was accustomed to getting scads of money in dividends, when the dividends stopped, she should have stopped her spending. But she didn’t. And Suzanne had to sell everything, even some of her own clothes, to pay her debts and have a little bit of money left so she could go on the road looking for Cade.

     He’s the closest brother, by the way. That’s why she chooses him. She drives from Georgia to Texas rather than the whole way to New York. She wants a job at Andreas Holdings because, guess what? The London firm that scared the snot out of the Andreas Brothers in book 2 by trying to buy into Andreas Holdings has found Suzanne. They wanted her shares, but when they realized she didn’t own controlling interest (so they can’t gut the company and earn back their investment by selling it off in pieces) they weren’t interested anymore.

     She tries to sell her shares elsewhere, but can’t. No one wants shares of a company that appears to be dying.

So, she’s broke. And she figures owning 1/3 of a company gives her the right to work there.

            And what did we just do? Well, Cade is obviously the hero of book 3. He’s the only brother left! LOL  So, we just set up Cade and Suzanne for our next romance.

     Plus, the appearance of Suzanne ties up the question in the last segment of the overarching story. We now know who the missing shareholder is.

     But what about her shares? Can she cause trouble?

     Potentially, yes. By now two years have passed. Darius and Nick have been working tirelessly to turn the company around. When the next annual statement comes out, everyone will know the company is solvent again. Which is good news and bad news. The Andreas brothers want a healthy, profitable company. But with the company in the black now, they also know Suzanne’s shares will once again be sought after.

     They cannot afford to let her twisting in the wind. They have to help her.

     Knowing the brothers (and their wives) as readers do, we also know that once she makes an appearance they will consider her “one of their own” – family. Because this series is all about building family out of disjoined people who need love. Anyone who owns a share of Andreas Holdings is family.

     So when Suzanne wanders into Whiskey Springs and eventually (there’s a bit of fun before that) tells Cade who she is (in a hysterically funny scene) he’s floored, but he knows he has to take her to NYC to meet the family so that Darius and Nick can figure out what to do with her.

     Darius and Nick come up with a plan to buy her shares, but they put Cade in charge of keeping track of her, making sure the Brits don’t find her once the next annual statement comes out, and scoop up her stock.

     And a romance novel is born.

     Here’s poor widower Cade who basically wants to be left alone, suddenly saddled with a baby and a gorgeous twenty-two-year-old with a smoking hot body.

     It’s a very fun, very funny book.

     But back to our concepts.

     What happens in the third book of a series?

     From the above, you can see several things happening.

1. The series story becomes the main story of book three.

Interesting, isn’t it? If you want to write a series that really hooks people in, string them along with a lightly-developed, but potentially interesting overarching series plot then have that plot turn into the main plot for the last book.

All along we’ve been hearing about the mysterious shareholder. We’ve also been following Cade through two books. Getting bits and pieces of his past, growing to like him, then really feel for him when we realize the “love of his life” had died.

When we connect the series plot (through a gorgeous heroine who IS trouble…she isn’t just IN trouble…she IS trouble) with a well-loved character, someone everyone wants to see get a break…well, people, that’s just magic. LOL

2. Well-loved characters return to amuse readers and give them moments of happiness.

Notice that Cade takes Suzanne to New York to meet his brothers. He’s dumping the responsibility for figuring out what to do with her on them, because he’s too damned attracted to her and he’s afraid that any decision he makes about her might be construed as him being kind to her so he can get her into bed.

Much to his horror, they put her back in his charge, after they give her a holding fee not to sell her stock for eighteen months.

By now, Gino is two-years old. Readers are watching a child they met as a baby growing up.

Maggie and Nick also get married in book 3. We return to Nick’s beautiful beach house. Get a few minutes with Maggie’s loveable dad. See Whitney’s parents at the wedding. All the while Cade’s attraction to Suzanne grows and Suzanne’s determination to stay away from him solidifies. Why? Because she knows about his devotion to his deceased wife. She’s been seeing for about eight chapters how loyal these brothers are to one another…

Whoa? How loyal they are? What just happened? The #3 purpose of book 3:

3. Show the end result of the already completed story threads.

For two books these brothers have been building a bond. At the end of book 2, we knew it was complete. Now in book 3 we see that it’s strong. It’s similar to showing that the heroes and heroines from the first two books are happy. Book three should demonstrate that any progress made in the first two books is complete.

Plus, that strong bond works itself into our ROMANCE because it showcases how strong they are as individual men. Suzanne knows Cade is so strong he’ll never bend or change…not for her. And she’s not going to be taken advantage of again. (Remember, she’s been taken in by a man before!)

4. Tie up some loose ends.

Maggie and her dad had some problems in book 2. Because her stepmom never really accepted her, she and her dad weren’t as close as they could have been. In book 3, we see them at her wedding, teary-eyed, happy.

Whitney has a very sad back story (which I won’t spoil here), but she comes full circle with a pregnancy that’s announced in book 3.

Holy cow! That’s a lot of secondary character stuff for a short category romance!

Not really because these things are not scenes. They are bits and pieces of information I slide into scenes to give them warmth and texture, to highlight different aspects of the hero or heroine’s story.

Whitney’s pregnancy, for instance, reminds Cade that if he never remarries he’ll never be a dad.

Maggie’s wedding shows Suzanne that she wants the same love Nick and Maggie have. Not the half-baked love she’d have with a man who only wants her for sex, as Cade does.

Seeing the bond between Cade and his brothers shows Suzanne the kind of man Cade is…shows her he is somebody she’d want to commit to for life…but also shows her that he’s a stubborn, stubborn man who has decided never to replace the woman he considered the love of his life. And physically manifests for her and readers that she’d be foolish to try to win his love. It would only make him angry with her.

So the wrap up of the story of book three also wraps up the series. Three estranged brothers who hated their dad at the beginning of the book don’t just get to know each other and band together to save their dad’s company, they also bring the missing shareholder into the fold of their family. Preserving Andreas Holdings as a privately held company for life.

And through it all, we saw the three brothers fall in love. We saw them bond as a family…as they grew their family…or maybe it’s better said that they created the family they hadn’t had because their dad had deserted all their moms.

You can see that readers got a much richer, much fuller story because it wasn’t just told through the life/romance of one brother, but three. With three unique heroines. Also with three adorable babies.

Who, by the way, have stories of their own. If readers can’t get enough of this lovely family, I fast-forwarded thirty years and gave the babies in BABIES IN THE BOARDROOM, the opportunity to find their true loves. These are short stories I’ll be publishing on Amazon—as soon as I get a minute. LOL

That’s the test of a really great series. Can it go on? Are readers really interested? Or am I just amusing myself by writing stories that keep going on and on and on?

So there you have it. Susan Meier’s guidelines for writing a great 3-book series.

1. Have an overarching story that easily blends into the stories (romance for category romance, bigger, broader story for single title) without taking over!

2. Get backstory in by making it relevant in a scene that’s necessary in the book you’re writing. Never have info dumps. Never have characters have conversations with the singular purpose of delivering backstory. Everything must move the current story forward.

3. Make sure each book stands alone!

4. Set up in book 1.

5. Follow through in book 2.

6. Make the romance/bigger, broader story of book three the series wrap up.

7. Bond readers to your characters. Make them likeable or engaging enough that readers want to see what happens to them. All of them. Even the babies!

Hope that helps all of you plot a wonderful series!

susan

Excerpt


Because there's an excerpt for THE BILLIONAIRE'S BABY SOS on the website, I decided to treat you to the first few scenes of BABY ON THE RANCH, so you get a sense of what we discussed in the writer's lesson above!


 

Chapter 1

     Suzanne Caldwell shoved against the spot in the door of Amanda Mae’s Old West Diner where the “waitress wanted” sign filled the glass. The scent of fresh apple pie greeted her, along with a rush of noise. Though there were no more than ten people at the counter and in the booths, the place was as rowdy as a party. Women wearing jeans and tank tops sat with men dressed in jeans, T-shirts and cowboy hats.

She didn’t get two steps into the room before the noise level began to drop. As if noticing the stranger, people stopped talking mid-sentence.

She clutched her six-month-old baby, Mitzi. There was nothing like walking into a roomful of staring strangers to make you realize how alone you were in the world. And she was definitely alone. She’d run out of gas about a mile out of Whiskey Springs, Texas, and, literally, had no one to call for help.

No family. Her grandmother had died six months ago and her mom had died when Suzanne was six. Her dad, whoever he was, had never acknowledged her.

Her mom and grandmother were both only children so she had no aunts, no uncles, no cousins.

And no friends. The wonderful sorority sisters who’d vowed to be her ally for life had dumped her when she got pregnant by a popular university professor. It was her fault, they’d said, and had accused her of trying to ruin Bill Baker’s career. As if. The guy had gone on a campaign to seduce her and had wormed his way into her life because of her grandmother’s fortune. When Martha Caldwell made some major mistakes in money management and lost the bulk of her wealth, Professor Baker suddenly didn’t want to see her anymore. And he most certainly wanted no part of their baby.

So, yeah. She was alone. Alone. Broke. Desperate to make a home for herself and her baby. And she’d left Atlanta bound for Whiskey Springs hoping to find some help.

But after walking the last mile on a hot June day, her heels thumped in her black stiletto boots. Mitzi squirmed in her arms. Her heavy diaper bag was dislocating her shoulder. Still, she kept her head high as she made her way to the first empty booth. By the time she got there, the diner was dead silent.

A waitress shuffled over. “Help you?”

She cleared her throat. “I’d like a piece of the apple pie I can smell, a cup of coffee, a glass of milk and some pudding, please.”

“What kind of pudding?”

She swallowed. Not one person had turned back to his or her coffee or food. They just stared as if she were a zombie or vampire or some other mythical creature they’d never seen before. “What kind do you have?”

“Vanilla or chocolate.”

“Mitzi loves vanilla.”

Without so much as a word of acknowledgement, the waitress scurried away.

“You’re not from around here.”

Knowing the man could only be talking to her, she followed the voice and found herself staring into a pair of the shrewdest eyes she’d ever seen. Cool, calculating, so black the pupils were almost invisible, his eyes never blinked, never waivered as they held her gaze.

Toto, we are not in Kansas anymore.

“No, I’m not from around here.”

“What’s your business?”

“None of yours.” She turned away from the penetrating, unsettling eyes and shifted Mitzi on her lap.

To her horror, the man walked over and plopped down on the bench seat across from hers. His full lips pulled upward into a devilish smile. His dark eyes danced with pleasure. “Now, see. That’s not just a bad attitude; it’s also wrong.”

She should have been scared to death. He was big. Not fat, but tall and broad-shouldered. The kind of guy who could snap a little five-foot-five girl like her in two. But instead of fear, a very unladylike shiver of lust rippled down her spine.

“Everything that happens in Whiskey Springs is my business because this is my town.”

Not at all happy with herself for even having two seconds of attraction to an ill-mannered stranger, she said, “Your town? What are you, the sheriff?”

He chuckled. The people at the counter and in the booths around them also laughed.

“No. I’m Cade Andreas. I own this town. I bought all the buildings last year. I lease the businesses back to their proprietors, but I still own every square inch, including the one you’re sitting on.”

Oh, good God. This was Cade Andreas?

Fear and confusion immediately replaced attraction. Wasn’t the Andreas family broke? She owned one-third of Andreas Holdings stock and hadn’t been able to sell it because the company was on the skids. What was he doing buying a town?

“And I’d like to know what brings you to my town.”

She raised her gaze to his face. A day-old growth of beard covered his chin and cheeks, giving him a sexily disreputable look. His lips were full, firm, kissable. His nose had been broken – undoubtedly in a fight – but it wasn’t disfigured, more like masculine. Definitely not dainty. There was nothing dainty about this man. He was all male. One-hundred percent, grade A, prime specimen sexy.

Finally, their eyes connected. Her chest tightened. Her breathing stalled. She could have blamed that on her unwitting attraction, but refused. A guy who bought a town had to be more than a little arrogant. Definitely past vain. Maybe even beyond narcissistic. And she’d learned her lesson about narcissistic men with Mitzi’s father. It would be a cold, frosty day in hell before she got involved with another self-absorbed man. So she refused to be attracted to Cade Andreas. Refused.

But she still needed a job. She might own stock worth millions of dollars, but nobody wanted to buy it. Potential didn’t sell stock these days. Dividends did. And in the past two years Andreas Holdings hadn’t paid any. So she was hoping that since she owned one-third of the company they could at least let her work there. The choice to approach Cade Andreas, the youngest of the three brothers who owned controlling interest of Andreas Holdings stock and ran the company, was simply a matter of practicality. Texas was driving distance. New York City, the headquarters for the corporate offices, wasn’t. Still, if they gave her a job, she’d get there somehow. She’d go anywhere that she could put down roots and make a home. Maybe find some friends.

“What brings you to my town?”

This time the words were harsh. Not quite angry, but definitely losing patience.

She glanced at the waitress who stood behind the counter, balancing a coffee pot and Suzanne’s piece of pie, obviously holding them hostage until she answered Cade.

She looked back at him. His already sharp eyes had narrowed in displeasure, and she had the sudden, intense intuition that if she told him who she was – in front of his adoring friends and the frozen waitress – he would not jump for joy. She would bet her last dollar that none of these people knew how much trouble Andreas Holdings was in and Cade would not be happy with the person who announced it.

There was no way she could say who she was and why she was here without talking about something he would want kept private, and no way she could explain her presence in this two-bit town so far from a major highway that no one was ever just passing through.

She glanced around, saw the sign in the door advertising for a waitress and grabbed the first piece of good luck that had come her way in over a year.

“I heard about the job for a waitress, so I came.”

“In your fancy boots, with your baby all dolled up?”

“We put on our best stuff --” she said, making herself sound as if she fit the part of a waitress. She regretted the deception, but if anybody ever deserved to be played, this guy did. Owned a town, huh? She potentially held the future of his family’s company in her hands just by whom she chose to sell her stock to, yet he’d never once considered that she might be somebody worthy of his time. “-- For the interview.”

A short, round, dark-haired woman wearing an apron scampered out of the kitchen. “You’re looking for a job?”

“Yes.” The truth of that brought her back to reality. Her purpose for coming to Whiskey Springs had been to get a job – from Andreas Holdings. Now that plan was on hold. She wasn’t exactly here to be a waitress, but money was money. And she needed some. Now. Today. She had enough cash to pay for her piece of pie and even buy extra milk for Mitzi, but after that she and Mitzi were sleeping in her car.

“I’m Suzanne Caldwell.” Because her grandmother had held the stock in a trust, her name wasn’t mentioned on any documents, so she could give it without worry. “This is my baby Mitzi.”

Mitzi picked that exact moment to cry. The little brunette scrambled over. “I’m Amanda Mae.” She shot Cade an evil look, causing Suzanne to immediately love her. “Real men don’t make babies cry.”

Cade held up his hands innocently. “Hey, I was on my own side of the booth the whole time. I didn’t touch her.”

“You’re threatening her mama.”

His face fell. “I never threatened her!”

“Just your voice is threatening.”

He sighed. “Yeah. Right. Whatever.”

She took the baby. “Would you like a bottle, little Mitzi?”

Suzanne said, “I ordered some milk and pudding for her.”

Amanda Mae looked horrified. “June Marie, where are you with this baby’s food?”

The waitress hustled over, set Suzanne’s pie in front of her and poured her a cup of coffee before she rushed away and got both the pudding and the milk.

Eyes narrowed, Cade studied the woman across the booth from him. She was a pretty little package. Eyes so blue they bordered on the purple color of the wildflowers that grew on his pasture in the spring. Black hair cut in a straight, blunt line at her chin, giving her a dramatic look that didn’t fit with a woman who needed a job as a waitress. And those boots. Black stilettos. The kind a man envisioned on his chest, pinning him to a bed.

     He stopped those thoughts. She might be a pretty with her perfect nose and full, tempting lips, but he wasn’t interested.

Still, he had no doubt that he had to keep an eye on her. Something wasn’t right with her. It wasn’t just her city-girl clothes. Her demeanor didn’t fit. Waitresses didn’t have smooth hands, perfect posture, an unblinking stare.

He rose from the booth. “Well, seeing as how you got the job you wanted, I guess we’ll be running into each other from time to time.”

She only smiled. A cool, remote smile that heated his blood and all but challenged him to turn on the charm and see how long it would take to get that smile to thaw. Luckily, he was smarter than that.

Amanda Mae said, “Do you have someplace to stay, honey?”

She faced the diner owner. “I – No. Actually, I need a place to stay.”

“Hotel’s in the next town over,” Cade said, striding back to his seat at the counter and his now cold coffee.

Amanada Mae shot him another evil glare. “Or she could use the apartment upstairs until she gets on her feet.”

“I’d like that.” Suzanne pressed her fingers to Amanda Mae’s hand in a gesture of appreciation that stopped Cade cold. Maybe she was in need of a little help? Her crisp white blouse and fancy jeans could be the last good things she owned. He hadn’t heard a car drive up. He glanced out the big front window into the street. He didn’t see a car. She could be dead broke--

Nope. His business sense wouldn’t accept that. Something about her screamed money. Big money. If she was pretending she didn’t have any, there was a reason.

Damn. He was going to have to keep an eye on her.