The prompt: I wanna see a girl tell a guy what she wants. Sexy, zany, crazy, whatever. I wanna see her pipe up and ask for her heart’s desire.

The word count: 400.

The prize: $50 gift certificate from Amazon.

The deadline: 15 May.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: This contest is one of my favorite writing exercises, ever. The word limit, the deadline, the faint whiff of competition–all these things combine to get the creative juices flowing. I’ve gotten two novellas out of entries I wrote for Bam’s contest. One was Like a Thief and the other–you may be hearing about it soon… Point is, it’s a lot of fun, and if you haven’t entered before, don’t be afraid.

And if you’re not the writing type (oh, come on, you know you really are!) you can have fun just reading the entries. I love how a bunch of writers can take the same prompt and produce so many different stories.

So, go forth and enter!

3/23/2008 Update: Thanks to everyone who voted! After a very close contest (55% to 45%) Like a Thief in the Night advanced to the next round, where it will be up against Joey W. Hill’s The Vampire Queen’s Servant.

3/21/2008: Almost forgot — Like a Thief in the Night is up against Jane Lockwood’s Forbidden Shores at the Dear Author / Smart Bitches March Madness tourney. For, like the next half hour…

Now that I’ve read it, I wish I hadn’t liked it quite so much. Perhaps then I wouldn’t have read it so quickly. And if I hadn’t read it so quickly, I would have had more time to enjoy it.

Private Arrangements is a grand book. Really, that’s the only word I can think of to describe it, except, perhaps, “delicious” and Delicious happens to be the title of Sherry Thomas’s next book, which I will be buying the day it comes out in August, 2008, so I really should conserve that word for further use this summer. And speaking of this summer, expect another terse blog post telling you to go away. I apologize, in advance, for my future rudeness, but if today was any indication, I won’t be in my right mind.

I should start by saying, this is not a review. I’m lousy at reviewing, and I’m suspect, besides, since Sherry Thomas wrote a lovely double review of my novellas Ember and Like a Thief in the Night for Dear Author back in January which probably sold more copies of Like a Thief than all of my confused, sorry little attempts to promote the story, combined. But please don’t think I am biased just because I have reason to be, because if you do, you will miss out on one of the best historical romances ever. Ever!

You think I’m exaggerating. I must admit, I’m prone to hyperbole. What I love, I love, and I can’t shut the hell up about it. Which usually leads people to nod and smile as they back away from me. So I try to tone it down. I try to mention any possible flaw in a book when I recommend it so that people won’t think I’m some sort of blindly rabid fan girl. So that people will think I’m reasonable.

This time, I’ll just admit it: I’m not reasonable. Technically speaking, Private Arrangements’ wind-up to the end was a little slow, and the end felt a little fast, but really, that’s just me grasping at straws trying to think of something critical to say about a book I devoured in three hours and forty-two minutes, and plan to start rereading at a more leisurely pace once I finish this post.

You must understand, when I read this book, I got shivers. The experience was akin to the first time I read a book by Judith Ivory, Loretta Chase or other authors from the very short list of names on my Read Everything They Ever Wrote list and Keeper Shelf (actually, it’s more of a cabinet…).

I didn’t think about the writing, or the plot, or wonder where it was going. I just read. Page after page. I was entranced, insatiable, totally p0wned. I could not put it down. To be blunt: Sherry Thomas made me her bitch, and I liked it!

I was swept away by the grand, Gilded-Age setting (note, I love this time period, and I wish there were more novels set in it), and the grand passion between Gigi and Camden. The hero and heroine are intelligent, beautiful, rich, passionate, larger-than-life…and they are idiots. Complete, utter idiots. They are complicated, proud and obsessed — and completely irrational because of it. I adored them.

The plot is this: When Gigi and Camden were young, they were terribly in love. But love made him stubbornly noble, and her passionately deceitful. When his nobility met her deceit, the clash of two such indomitable, unreasonable personalities drove them apart. Camden rejected Gigi and put an ocean between them.

The story begins eleven years later, when Gigi has filed for divorce. Camden returns to England from New York to tell Gigi that he will grant her a divorce–if she will give him an heir. Huh? That seems backwards and dumb and completely illogical. But I totally bought it because these characters are experts at deceiving themselves. They are each their own worst enemy.

Those two, their love is like a blues song; it’s like the tastiest type of tragedy–the kind where it isn’t fate or the actions of villains that keep the lovers apart, but their own human flaws and foolish pride. They push, they pull, they rage, plot and insult — and in every instant, in every action, it is achingly apparent to the reader that these two characters are still madly, passionately in love. Oh, the drama! It’s delicious.

As the story unfolds, they begin to relate to each other as grown-ups instead of hormonal, over-dramatic young people. Camden comes to understand why Gigi did what she did, and Gigi experiences a bit of Camden’s old stubborn nobility. It’s lovely.

Also lovely is the secondary plot involving Gigi’s social climbing mother. I love the nuances to her character. She could easily have been the villain of the piece, a wretched caricature of a modern-day stage mother in historical drag. Instead, she is complicated, intelligent, self-deprecating, and, eventually, self-aware. In fact, all of the secondary characters are wonderfully well-drawn, with flaws and virtues all their own.

This “not a review” is getting pretty long. I suppose I should wrap up the love fest so I can start my rereading, but first, I need to say a few words about the writing: it’s wonderful. Smooth, sophisticated, elegant and intelligent, the narrative carried me along, never talking down, never dumbing down (I’ll post examples later–I was so busy reading, I forgot to mark my favorite passages). And, oh, that vocabulary. :sigh:

Private Arrangements is all the things I’ve always loved about historical romance. It’s a vivid, intense, Technicolor-bright tale of compelling characters and dramatic love painted across the wide, glittering canvas of a fascinating historical era. It’s one of three books I’ve read this year that I’m going to press into the hands of friends who love to read as I say, “You must read this. It’s grand.“

Now, since I was lucky enough to win an early copy of this book in a contest on Dear Author, I’m holding a contest to give away the copy I would have bought at precisely 11 am on March 25 from the Borders on Lake Ave (no Amazon–I hate to wait.) to someone who comments on this post. The deadline is Friday, March 28, 2007. As with the Dear Author contest, the catch here is that the winner will have to mention the novel in a forum, or blog post.

But come back on March 25th when I’ll give away the copy of Private Arrangements by Sherry Thomas that I would have bought, if I hadn’t been so lucky as to win a copy in the Dear Author contest.

I sincerely apologize for letting things at this here blog hang. The winner of the Hard Boiled Contest is Katie, who noted that this passage from Like a Thief:

“You don’t mind being so…close to your victims?”

She met his eyes. “I like it. I don’t shoot and run. My targets are always dead when I leave because I watch them die.”

He gave her a rude, toothy grin.

She returned it. “I haven’t left yet, have I? Did you bring me down here just to pick my brain for pointers on the simple art of murder?”

…is a reference to Raymond Chandler’s essay and collection of short stories, The Simple Art of Murder.

The second reference, which Katie also correctly identified, is to Dashiell Hammet’s The Glass Key .

So, Good job, Katie! I hope a $25 gift certificate will help you forgive me for being so late to announce the winner of this contest. Email me: bettiesharpe at gmail and let me know what email address you’d like me to send your GC to.

Hard Boiled. It’s not just the name of one of my favorite movies, it’s one of my favorite subgenres of mystery, too. While Like a Thief in the Night isn’t a mystery or a detective story, I did sprinkle in references titles by two of the subgenre’s most famous authors. Why? Because I could.

Weird, right? But my thematic non sequitur can add up to cold, hard, Amazon gift certificates for one lucky reader.

Email me (bettiesharpe at gmail dot com) identifying Like a Thief in the Night‘s references to Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammet titles by February 28, 2008 and you’ll be entered to win a $25 Amazon gift certificate.

But how should I promote the novella? Maybe a contest? I wracked my brain, which took all of 2 seconds, and came up with these ideas:

• The “Guess Bettie’s Favorite Color Contest”
• The “Tell Bettie Why You Deserve a Free Book” Contest
• The “Guess How Many Fingers Bettie is Holding Up Behind her Back” Contest.

Maybe I’m not so good at this contest thing. Maybe I used up my one good idea on the Hard Boiled contest. No, wait, I have one more idea: I’ll let potential contest entrants make up their own contest.

So, here’s the deal. Post your single best idea for a contest in the comments of this post. If I pick that idea, you’ll win a free copy of Like a Thief in the Night and I’ll hold the contest in February, with a second copy of Like a Thief… as the prize. Entries must be submitted by 6 P.M. Pacific on Monday, January 14, 2008.

Weird, right? But my thematic non sequitur can add up to cold, hard, Amazon gift certificates for one lucky reader.

Email me (bettiesharpe at gmail dot com) or leave a comment on this post (or any other posts advertising this contest)* identifying Like a Thief in the Night‘s references to Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammet titles by February 1, 2008 and you’ll be entered to win a $25 Amazon gift certificate.

* Update: I just realized, if you post the answer to the comments, the answer won’t be a secret (duh). So, scratch that part about comments. Email me at [bettiesharpe at gmail dot com] or [bettie at bettiesharpe dot com]. I’ll make sure to check my spam folder so no mail gets lost, and I’ll post a list of entries I’ve received the day before the drawing so people can notify me if their name isn’t there.

1. Moral ambiguity
   I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: I like villains. My protagonists aren’t all bad people, but they sometimes do bad things. My goal at the outset of any story is to write it in such a way that if it was told by a different character, the hero would be the villain.
2. Secondary characters with lives
   Another storytelling goal of mine is to write secondary characters with lives and secrets. There are things you don’t know about your friends. There are times when you are just a support character in their story–and if there aren’t those times, you don’t have friends, honey, you’ve got back up singers.
3. Fairy tales
   I love the gory ones. No surprise here, but almost every story I write references fairytales or folktales as a general idea, or a specific comparison.
4. Romance
   But it ain’t all hearts and flowers. Love is a battlefield — violent and explosive. Or an ice-skating rink — cold and treacherous. Or a race track — fast and competitive. Or a waltz — dreamy and whirling in perfect accord. Love is different things for different people. Why should my characters all have the same version of it? Though, to be honest, I really like the battlefield.
5. Multi-racial and international characters
   Why? Because when I was a kid, there were so few nonwhite characters in books that weren’t about race that I used to randomly pretend heroines in my favorite adventure stories were brown girls. Because as a reader I am damned tired of seeing the word “white” used as a description of the heroine’s beautiful skin. Because I want my characters to look like me and my friends. Because I think authors who refuse to write about characters who aren’t their own skin color or ethnic background are wusses.
6. Violence
   Most of it movie-like and stylized. Some of it not. Fact is, I like adventure stories. When it comes to movies, I like car chases and sword fights and Hong Kong style fight scenes. And sometimes I use physical violence as a symbol of emotional turmoil.
7. Strong female protagonist
   Do I even need to say this? I can’t imagine writing a weak female protagonist–leastwise, not one who didn’t end up strong by the end. Those martyriffic heroines who let everyone shit on them for an entire book before the hero realizes that they are pure and virtuous and wonderful are not my heroines. No way, no how.
8. Virtue is NOT its own reward.
   See above. I hate the idea of noble suffering. Usually, characters who spend a whole book suffering nobly could have ended it all by telling a few people off. I also am not down with selfless heroines who will always, always, always sacrifice themselves to help or save people they love–Self-sacrifice like that isn’t noble, it’s co-dependent.
9. A is for “Alpha” and “Asshole”
   I admit it, my heroes are kind of assholish. But all they need as motivation to end their asshole ways is the no-nonsense love of a strong female protagonist (see # 7, above). Just like in real life, right? ;o)
10. Dark
    This isn’t part of my manifesto, it’s just something people keep saying about my stories. Even the sweet ones. I don’t set out to write “dark” they just end up that way.
11. Bonus Feature: References to classic/hard boiled mysteries.
    Not in every story, but in a few. Email me or leave a comment on this post* identifying Like a Thief in the Night‘s references to Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammet titles by February 1, 2008 and you’ll be entered to win a $25 Amazon gift certificate.
    

* Update: I just realized, if you post the answer to the comments, the answer won’t be a secret (duh). So, scratch that part about comments. Email me at [bettiesharpe at gmail dot com] or [bettie at bettiesharpe dot com]. I’ll make sure to check my spam folder so no mail gets lost, and I’ll post a list of entries I’ve received the day before the drawing so people can notify me if their name isn’t there.

And speaking of the Pay it Forward Contest,Sarai, you won my Pay it Forward Contest. I.O.U. some kinda graphic. But I don’t have your email address. I’ve just discovered that some email from respectable ISPs has been shunted to my Spam file, so if you mailed me before, I might have missed it. To be on the safe side, copy me at bettie at bettiesharpe dot com when you write to let me know what you want.