Agh, for the third time, I'm starting again at the beginning of IN TOO DEEP and reworking it! I know I ought to just move forward and fix afterwards, but in this case, it's got to feel right before I can be confident in it.
It's still the 'tone' issue. The book's not quite sure what it wants to be, and neither are the characters. I think the problem is that - and I may have mentioned this before - the book idea stems from a time *before* was was 'officially' writing erotic romance. Long before... It's one of a number of ideas I submitted to my editor, and he's expressed an interest in it several times, even though we slotted GOTHIC HEAT in before it finally became the time to actually write it. Basically, and originally, it was a 'women's erotica' concept, a woman's voyage of sexual discovery... but that's not so much what I want to write any more. I really want to write a romantic love story with a lot of sex, and marrying these two concepts is like the proverbial square peg/round hole [oooer] dilemma. I can see a way to do it, but getting the voice and everything right is a very delicate balance... and the damn thing is also a menage of sorts, where the heroine, Gwen, is involved with two different blokes at the same time. One of them, Nemesis, an anonymous correspondent she plays games of sexual daring with, is proving particularly tricky to get right. He's benignly wicked and writes the most outrageous things, but I need to convey him as a teasing, extremely rude but sometimes lyrical sensualist, rather than just a dirty mack pervo guy. When I started, he sounded like pervo guy, then he sounded like ridiculous lovelorn twit with a hard-on, and only now, on attempt #3, is he starting to come out right...
Eeh, it's a tough old game, this writing business...
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