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Cheat Sheet for My Future PitchWars Mentee

I am going to tell you how to win PitchWars. Why? Because I want everyone to win! And while you can’t all be my mentee this year, you can ALL get agents. When I mentored in contests in the past, it broke my heart to see great writers with huge potential being held back by preventable mistakes. So I’m going to make it really easy on you (and really hard on me) by telling you all the tricks I use to decide which entries I don’t want. First, objective things. These are the things agents will also be looking for, and other mentors. This is good SH*T to know, whether you are submitting your manuscript to me for the PitchWars contest or not. Objective Things –Word Count: Know your genre and RESEARCH what is an acceptable word count for your...
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Romance In Real Life, with Sandra Reads & Reviews

In my Romance in Real Life series, I’ve been interviewing authors about reality in romantic fiction. But it occurs to me that it might be fun to ask a READER about their thoughts, too. So I asked Sandra of www.readsandreviews.com to come and share her thoughts. She’s a voracious reader of 250-300 romance novels a year, and in her real life is married to a hyper-intelligent and badass Spec Forces soldier, which made me think she might have a pretty fantastic perspective on reality and fantasy when it comes to romance. ♥ Sandra, recently, you wrote an amazing blog (linked here) about the hypocritical nature of romance readers demanding more realistic (read: imperfect) depictions of women’s bodies while still demanding chiseled six packs from all our heros. Is it wrong to have a double standard in our romance reading, with...
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Romance in Real Life, with Samantha Joyce

Love is the center of life. In all its many forms, it drives us, disappoints us, lifts us up and wrings us out. I know it certainly drives my writing, no matter if I’m in paranormal, contemporary, or suspense. Lately, I’ve been having a lot of conversations with my husband about how real life and love are depicted in romantic fiction. About when people want escapism in their reading, and when they want their fiction to ring true to their real lives. About how much that might be changing with this new generation. So I decided to do this blog series interviewing other romance novelists about what they thought. Today’s interview is with Samantha Joyce, author of FLIRTING WITH FAME, and the upcoming DEALING IN DECEPTION (November 14, 2016) 1. Has your real life inspired or influenced the way you...
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