www.JudiFennell.com

Genie Knows Best

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  I Dream of Genies

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And check out these websites for my blog tour where we’ll be giving away copies of Genie Knows Best.

So, my publicist just sent me a few more Advanced Reading Copies (ARC) of Genie Knows Best (November 2011) and I’m now giving away 2 copies (see sidebar). Just leave a comment and your email address below to be entered to win. I’ll draw the winner on Oct 1, so you’ll have it a full month before release date! I will add your email to my mailing list, but there is always an Unsubscribe option, and I do NOT share your email address with anyone.

And if you tell your friends, and they include your name in their post, you’ll have another entry into the drawing, so feel free to share the word! Contest starts now! I do have to limit the winner to US addresses only. Sorry. [No purchase necessary. ]

A little bit about the book:

Genie Knows Best

• second in the Bottled Magic series
• Sourcebooks Casablanca, November 2011
• ISBN: 978-1-4022-4190-1

Be Careful What You Wish For…

Samantha Blaine is about to make a fateful discovery. A tall, dark, handsome, ohmygosh kind of fateful discovery…

Kal is very pleased to meet his attractive new master–especially since he intends to seduce her into granitng him freedom. But when seriously dark magic spells trouble for both of them, Kal can’t help himself from falling for the woman who holds his fate in her hands…

Warmly acclaimed by readers and critics alike, Judi Fennell brings to life a fabulous world of magic and mayhem where wishes come true in the most unexpected ways!

Praise for I Dream of Genies, book 1 in the Bottled Magic Series:

“You will want to believe in magic!” – Kerrelyn Sparks, NYT Best-selling author of The Vampire and The Virgin

“Ms. Fennell leaves you breathless with wonder and laughter.” – Bitten by Books

“Sultry sex scenes, sweet but passionate romance, and quick-moving action…will keep the reader enraptured.” – Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Absolutely delightful…will keep readers amused and completely enthralled.” – Fresh Fiction

and decide we had to pull off the highway, find this restaurant, and then TAKE the picture of his wife in front of the place?

Hubs stood in the middle of street to take this picture

Too bad the place was closed.

The family and I went up to Alexandria Bay, NY to take a two hour tour (cue Gilligan’s Island theme) of the Thousand Islands region, ending up at Boldt Castle on Heart Island.

Quick history: George Boldt (of Waldorf-Astoria and Bellevue-Stratford fame) built this home for his wife Louise. Sadly, Louise died before it was finished and George halted construction. The buildings on the island fell into disrepair and victim to the elements. Then the Thousand Islands Bridge Authority bought it in 1977 and are still in the process of restoring it. This past weekend, the main floor and main bedrooms on the second floor are completed, but the “basement” with the Roman bath/indoor swimming pool and upper 3 floors are still a work in progress.

This was my first trip to the Thousand Islands and, OMG, it is gorgeous. Millionaires’ Row and the 99% pure crystal blue water, the beautiful weather (sandwiched between two wicked storms), the Pirates’ Weekend in Alexandria Bay, and the great time with the kids… this is a weekend we will always remember. I hope you enjoy the pictures. You can check out the official website of Boldt Island at http://www.boldtcastle.com/visitorinfo/

Heart Island

Millionaires' Row

I'll take this one

and, of course, what would the well-appointed mansion be without a yacht...?

The Gazebo on Heart Island. At least 4 weddings were held while we were there

From the 4th floor balcony

Me and the Pump House

Dome in the foyer

The Grand Staircase

You know who you are. All of you. Every day.

Seriously. E-v-e-r-y day.

I read my site stats. Every day there is a search for Mer Sex and at least one person ends up on my blog. There are also searches for MerSex. and Sex Mer. And SexMer.

What could you possibly be looking for? I mean, I get when my first book came out, that was the big question: How do my Mer men have sex with Humans? I have to admit to being surprised by the question because, to me, it was a no brainer. (And, no, I’m not going to answer that; you’ll have to read the book.) But I seriously never saw that question coming. So, when it did, I admit to having some fun with it and that’s why I wrote the post: Everything You Wanted to Know About Mer Sex But Were Afraid to Ask. It was fun and it was funny.

But that was TWO years ago. Two YEARS. Who is searching mer sex these days? It’s certainly not to get to my books. My new series about genies is out. And just because Pirates of the Caribbean featured mermaids doesn’t mean that sex with Mers (notice: the search is not for sex with merMAIDS) is a hot search topic. So why? What are you possibly hoping to discover? What made you think of it in the first place? And what else are you finding when you google it?

If anyone can answer this, I’d be much obliged because it really is a head-scratcher for me. I know you can find out just about anything on the internet, but I have to wonder HOW someone even thinks to search Mer Sex.

Well, if you want to feel better, see the picture below and know that I also bloody up my own manuscripts. This is the last round of edits before I sent the third genie book, Leave It To Genie, into my editor. I print it out and go through with a red magic marker. This is the result.

Leave It To Genie--once Bloody Judi got her hands on it.

I can’t even claim to have sorted out the worst of the pages; this is a random sampling. I’ve done this with each of my manuscripts before sending it to my editor, and then, of course, she works her magic on the pages.

As you can see, it’s a process.

So take heart if I give you a critique. You are not alone in cleaning up a mess.

Genie Knows Best, November 2011

This one, to me, is worth almost 200,000. That’s how many I had to write to get this thing in my hands.

Why so many? Well, this is The Book That Tried To Kill Me ™, aka: TBTTTKM-2 ™ (kudos to my friend Lisa Brackmann for coining that phrase; hers is the original TBTTTKM.)

I’d written Genie Knows Best and turned it in a few days before my deadline. (yay, me!) Unfortunately, it turned out that my editor didn’t like it. At all. Now, normally, there are a few points we need to change/clarify/fix and I do some revisions and the book is ready. But this one, for various reasons, didn’t work for her. So it was Back To The Drawing Board. Ugh. Can I just say that again? Ugh.

I had to start over. Had to come up with a different spin on the story, a different spin on the world, and a new way of doing things. The only things I kept from the original book were the main characters’ names, the love scenes, the basic idea for the world, and the ending. I love this ending; I truly do.

So, okay, maybe we’re talking 150,000 words.

Was this what I wanted to do? No way. Was it what I had to do? Yep. Am I satisfied with the result? I am. It’s a whole other story about the same characters, whom I love. Kal is an alpha male in a beta role, or maybe even a gamma one. I had fun trying to contain him within The Service he’s been in for four thousand years with the end in sight for him. Samantha Blaine was someone I wanted to help. All she wants is someone to love her for her (and not her inheritance/bank account) and to find herself being used at every turn… well, she deserved a happy ending, too. As did I. Honestly, I was never so happy as when I turned this new story in because it’s one thing to write a book under contract and know that it’s going to go into production; it’s quite another to write that book only to have to completely re-write it.

I haven’t really spoken about this bummer of a year writing this book because, of course, you want to put your best foot forward in the marketplace. “Sure, I write books and they all go on to win awards!” is a good image, but the reality is, writing and publication are hard work–and this is why you need an editor. Mine could have tried to fix the original version up with me, but who knows what the result would have been since she had such an adverse reaction to it. She wasn’t “feeling” it, and therefore, she couldn’t get excited about it. Trust me, you want your editor excited about your work.

So, I pulled up my big girl panties, took a deep breath, and started off on story #2 for this couple. And, like I said, I love the result. It’s a fun story, a lot of action with the largest cast of characters I’ve ever written. I had a blast writing the fight scenes (try orchestrating a fight scene with centaurs, trolls, leprechauns, dragons, and gnomes and keeping all those body parts straight!), and loved creating Harv’s lair that was inspired by Riley’s comment in National Treasure, “Who wants to go down the creepy tunnel inside the tomb first?” And, of course, I got to spend more time with Kal and Samantha and learned more about them, what made them tick. That journey is always fun, so I really can’t complain (though I did, loudly) about having to spend so much time with them.

And I recently turned in Leave It To Genie and am waiting for my editor to read it. You can bet (and the leprechauns in Genie Knows Best already are…) that I’m waiting with baited breath.

Now these ARCs go out to the reviewers and I have another reason to wait with baited breath to see if this version of Kal and Samantha’s story is as well received as Eden and Matt’s was (starred review in Publishers Weekly). That’s this business: hurry up and write, revise, and wait.