Intro by Dame Jenna

Let’s give a big welcome to today’s Dame for a Day, Alyssa Day. (There’s a pun in there somewhere, but my brain has not yet returned from vacation, so I’ll leave it to our readers to come up with it.) Alyssa is the RITA-award winning and USA Today bestselling author of the Warriors of Poseidon series about a race of warriors from the lost continent of Atlantis who have a special affinity for water (but not gills!) and who fall into a world-bending kind of love with human women with very special talents.  Her newest release, ATLANTIS UNLEASHED, will be in a store near you on June 2nd.

Here’s the blurb:
Lord Justice of Atlantis made the ultimate sacrifice for his brother and paid for it with an unimaginable torture. Now he’s back, rescued from death, his sanity shaken, and his mission inescapable—the search for the lost Star of Artemis. But the beautiful human scientist whom he has sworn to protect has dangerous secrets of her own. When two hearts collide, power and passion must be unleashed!

Critics are raving:
Romance Reviews Today gave Atlantis Unleashed a rare Perfect 10!:  “ATLANTIS UNLEASHED is an epic thrill ride that should not be missed.”

Romantic Times Book Club gave it a Top Pick!!  “Day is back and better than ever . . . Power and passion unleashed make for outstanding reading!”

You can visit Alyssa on the web at http://www.alyssaday.com or watch her TV interview about being a Mom and Navy wife and writer here. But now onto her post!

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Emotional Epiphany

Thanks so much to Jenna and the wonderful authors here at Deadline Dames for inviting me to stop by!!

One of the things I love best about this blog is the way the Dames write so intelligently and articulately about publishing and writing.  So I thought I’d write about an epiphany that changed the way I write books and propelled me on to the bestseller lists.

Intrigued?

Here’s, as we “in the biz” say, the backstory:  I’m not really a girly girl.  Oldest child, Type A++++++, recovering trial lawyer.  Let’s just say that I’m tough and assertive and have never been one to talk about my feelings.  It’s not that I don’t have any, it’s just that feelings are so private—so personal, that I was never much for spreading them around.

The problem is that I didn’t want to talk about my characters’ feelings, either.  This worked out okay, to a certain extent, when I was writing romantic comedy and chick lit as Alesia Holliday.  I’m funny, sometimes very, very funny (I have proof:  my cherished reader letters from around the world telling me how I made them snort various things from their noses while reading!), and so I thought being funny was enough.  Of course I wrote emotional resolutions into my books, it’s just that I didn’t want to get too . . . up close and personal.  Not too messy.  Not too painful.

In one book, for example, NICE GIRLS FINISH FIRST, I built up throughout the entire novel to a confrontation between the protagonist and her mother, and then when it finally occurred, it took place OFF THE PAGE.  I only alluded to it in conversation about the confrontation.

“What an idiot!” you’re thinking.  “How did that get published?” you’re thinking.  Well, in my defense, it was a very funny book.  Readers told me how much they enjoyed the humor, or enjoyed seeing the villains get their comeuppance.

But you know what I didn’t get?  I didn’t receive letters saying “my friend told me I HAD to read this book!” like I do now, with my Atlantis series.  And without those—without the precious word-of-mouth buzz from readers—an author can’t build her readership.  In this economic climate, she will be lucky to even survive in publishing.

So I had to take a cold, hard look at what I was doing wrong.  What was there about other books that made them live in my heart long after I’d read them?  What made me recommend them to others?

It didn’t take me long to find the answer: It was the emotional connection I felt to the characters.  Humor is great, action is wonderful, wildly exciting pacing and plotting are superb!  But if I hadn’t emotionally connected to the characters, I didn’t care enough to want to re-read the book or tell everyone else to read it.

So I dug deep, put on my big-girl panties, and put my emotions onto the page.  It hurts, do you know that?   I had no idea that writing an emotional scene about fictional characters would actually make me cry at the keyboard.  (Naïve, right?)  But it did.  And it still does.  And those scenes – the ones where I have to type my raw, bare heart into them, where I allow my characters to be real and emotional and honest – those are the ones my readers talk about and write to me about.  Those are the books my readers care about. Those are the books I’ll write forever more.

Thanks for giving me the chance to share my epiphany with you here at Deadline Dames!!  And I hope you love Justice and Keely in Atlantis Unleashed as much as I do, because this book has such a special place in my heart.  (Guess I’m becoming a girly girl after all!)
Hugs,
Alyssa

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Just one more note from Dame Jenna: Brenda Novak’s auction to support diabetes research ends tomorrow! The Deadline Dames basket, which includes 14 books (mostly by Dames, and including an ARC of Dame Devon’s Magic in the Blood) as well as some other goodies, is still selling for less than the retail value of its contents. Please do stop by the auction and place some bids, either on the Dames basket, or on one of the hundreds of other great items available. (A link to the Dames’ basket is in the sidebar.) *This concludes Dame Jenna’s Public Service Announcement.*

Related posts:

1. For a Good Cause
2. Quick! Write Faster!
3. Dame for a Day: Jesse Petersen

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 30th, 2009 at 7:35 am and is filed under Dame for a Day, General Posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.