The perfect crit group

As many of our blog readers might know, the Minxes of Romance started as a crit group put together after the 2009 Presents contest. In the months since then, the group has gelled into an incredible team - this blog is evidence of that! So I thought I'd share my thoughts on what makes the perfect crit group. I haven't really got anything new or ground breaking to say, but I'm going to say it anyway.

Before I joined the Minxes, I had a few individual CPs and belonged to an on-line crit group or two. Some I worked well with, and we're still friendly, others not so much. But from the moment that I 'met' the other Minxes, I knew I was onto a winning streak.

So what are the important elements of a good CP relationship?

1. The first thing is that you all need to be at about the same place in your writing journey. This is important because a complete newbie might be forever wondering what you're going on about if you use 'insider speak', and a more experienced writer might not want to spend time having to explain the difference between internal and external conflict, for example. Mentoring has its place, but you usually want a CP relationship to be between equals, not one-sided.

2. You need to speak the same language. And I'm not just talking about the difference between say a writer who writes in English and one who writes in Japanese. I mean that you should read the same type of novels, be targeting similar lines etc. So that when your CP says 'this hero is more Modern than MH', you can appreciate what she means.

3. You and your CP(s) need to be able to give roughly the same amount of time to the writing process. The relationship is going to struggle if one of you is prolific and writing a book a month while the other takes a year to write one. The writer who takes longer is going to become even slower as she spends her life critting rather than writing! This is why I like a crit group. We all have lives that sometimes get in the way of writing. In a group, it's easier to take a break from critting without feeling like you're letting anyyone down. In a one-on-one situation, if you're having a busy week at work and your CP is on a deadline ... let's just say, I'm already very good at making myself feel guilty! But you also need to beware against a group getting too big and impersonal.

4. Personalities. Sometimes you can have a really good CP, someone who gives you great feedback and you enjoy each other's work, but that's as far as it goes. And then you meet a CP that you just click with. It's a bit like falling in love; you can't explain it, it just happens. And before you know it, you're not just crit partners, you're best friends. You know more about each others' lives than anyone else does. Your CPs provide shoulders to cry on, friends to laugh with, and they're good listeners when you just need to get something off your chest.

5. Trust. This is a biggie for me. I know I can trust the Minxes with the one thing that I hold most sacred: the words that I write and the ideas in my head. (Okay, so that's two things!) I know that they'll always be honest with me, but they'll also be kind and supportive. We've shared our joys, fears and secrets. They know who I am and still pretend to like me. When you find a CP like that, hang on to them!

6. A similar taste in men. Don't under-estimate this important bit! If one CP likes her heroes hot, sexy and Alpha, and the other likes her heroes tender, sympathetic and Beta, it's not the strongest basis for a relationship. Do you want to guess which type the Minxes prefer?

Thanks so much to all the Minxes for sharing this journey with me!

Help! I need a doctor!

Well the Minxes have been busy, this month. And we're glad to announce that both Minx Jo C, and Minx Suzanne have responded to the call from Mills & Boon Medical Romances, to send in Medical Romance chapters, and both have been asked to send more!

So in honour of this week's medical theme, we're pleased to post the requisite pictures of lovely doctors.

Minx medical advice?

Take two, with a glass of water, and have a lie down.

Next Friday, we have Medical Romance expert Kate Hardy guest blogging, so do pop in and say hello!

Author Spotlight: Autumn Piper

It's always treat when we Minxes do author spotlights with authors who are special to one or all of us. Today, I'm very honoured to welcome Autumn Piper, a fabulous writer and one of my CPs. Autumn and I "met" at our first crit group and have been through a few more together ;) She's a fantastic CP and I'm very thrilled to welcome her to the Minx blog today. Take it away, chica!

1. Where were you in your writing career 5 years ago?

5 years ago, I’d composed most of my first (still as-yet unpublished because it’s entirely too long) manuscript. I was on a roll writing, but completely oblivious to the “rules” of publishing—e.g. Books don’t market well when they are 186,000 words long…

2. Where did you get the idea from for this particular book?

Ever hear the mantra, “Write what you know”? Well, I was inspired to write Trouble Under Venus because of what I don’t know. My father disappeared from Miami when I was 4 years old, never to be seen again. His involvement with the Cuban Mafia is highly suspect. And since we’d never met, he’s a huge mystery in my life. So I wondered: What if I could travel back in time to just before he disappeared, meet him, and perhaps learn something about the circumstances regarding his disappearance? And voila, I had this daredevil heroine willing to sacrifice anything to join an experimental timetravel program in order to go back and meet her father. Didn’t take much for me to throw in a troublesome (if hunky) FBI agent trying to pose as a geeky geologist in her timetravel group, and a couple of suave, sexy Cubans in Miami, along with lots of intrigue and danger. The hardest part was accepting the ending, which really broke my heart…

3. Where do you hope to be in 5 years time?

Well, if it’s August, I’d think we should be at our new place on Maui, heading over for dinner at Oprah’s… Oh. You mean real-life goals? I’d certainly like to have a few more releases under my belt by then, and maybe catch the eye of a bigtime agent. But mostly I’m hoping ebook sales go crazy and my publisher, Lyrical Press, grows by leaps and bounds. That’ll help me both as an author and an editor there.

4. Which was the last book you read that you wish you'd written?

Any of the Outlander books, or the Harry Potter series. Diana Gabaldon and JK Rowling truly own my admiration!

5. Was there any particular author or book that made you want to be a writer?

I grew up reading romance from Jude Devereaux and Kathleen Woodiwiss, and continued to be inspired by Nora Roberts as an adult. Also, Stephen King has always impressed me.

6. Do you find writing love scenes giggle-worthy or cringe-worthy?

I actually love writing love scenes. It’s a toss-up whether I like them more than fight scenes, though!

7. What's the most romantic moment of your life so far?

When Valentine’s Day, 2003 rolled around, my hubby had been working out of state for about 6 months, and was only home for a weekend every 4-6 weeks or so. He made it home that weekend, in time to assist with delivery of his fabulous order of flowers. Twelve dozen red roses! The independent florist had almost passed out on the phone six weeks before when he’d ordered them. They were lovely, and I’ve still got boxes of dried roses saved.

8. What do you wish you'd known about being an author before you were pubbed?

It took me a long time (at least to my thinking) to get published, so I knew about all the hard work of revising and self-editing. Also got lots of experience with queries and rejections. Probably the biggest eye-opener for me was learning how many acquaintances would be excited to hear about my books, so if I could do it over, I’d announce my success a little sooner and a lot louder.

9. What's the best writing advice you've ever been given?

That would be about avoiding those “ly” words—and I got it first from Stephen King’s On Writing.

10. Tell us about your latest release.


Trouble Under Venus is my most recent release (although I do have another Trouble book coming out in September - click here to read about Fallen Star Trouble).

Here’s the cover copy for Trouble Under Venus:

For some love lasts a long time, for others a lifetime. Can theirs outlast space-time?

Randi’s summer vacation plans? Attending Professor Sudo’s Time Travel Academy so she can blast back to 1980 Miami and figure out where her father disappeared to. She’s the head of her class until hottie Mitch arrives disguised as a geeky geologist and totally messes up her meditation. Goodbye Soulful in Sedona, hello Yearning in Yoga. So long solo time-travel, hello pushy partner--who happens to be a buff tri-athlete, a sympathetic listener, and an ace FBI agent on a top-secret mission. With his help, she’ll conga her way into the Cuban mafia, try not to destroy the delicate fabric of the space-time continuum, dodge a few bullets, and solve The Mystery of the Missing Dad. And maybe fall just a little in love…
Content Warning: A new adventure in women’s fiction, with a heroine who boldly goes where no chick has gone before, tons of danger and intrigue, a roller-discoing Granny, life and death betrayal, steamy Miami nights and one hot FBI agent.

11. What’s next for you?

I’m still writing Trouble books, and working on another series, and have also recently been promoted to EIC at Lyrical Press, so I’m really trying to immerse myself deeper in the publishing biz and get farther from “real life”. And maybe closer to Maui…

You can keep in touch with Autumn via the following links:
http://piperpatter.blogspot.com/
http://www.autumnpiper.com/

Great to have you visit us today, Autumn!

A New Minxy Arrival

The Minxes would like to congratulate Sri Minx on the arrival of a beautiful baby girl. 

We wish you lots of joy with your new princess!

The Write Attitude

Today we're very pleased to welcome Sue Moorcroft to the blog to discuss a matter that occupies most of our minds at one time or another if we're honest - can we actually make a living out of writing? Her own writing credentials are rock solid and the Amazon reviews for her novels (five stars, readers can't wait to buy her next book) speak for themselves. But we'll let her tell you her story herself:
I’m going to write a book about how to make a business out of writing and I’m going to call it The Write Attitude.
You probably think I’m joking – but I’m not.
The proposal and a chapter is written and I’ve talked to Accent Press about it, as they published Love Writing – How to Make Money Writing Romantic or Erotic Fiction. It just hasn’t come to the top of my ‘to do’ list. Yet.
This is because I am what I like to term ‘a working writer’. I’m not suggesting other writers don’t work (as if I would!) but I suppose I’m trying to convey that this what I do. Writing is my living. There is no day job or pension.
So these are some of the things that generate my income. I:
Write
- novels
- short stories
- serials
- articles
- ‘how to’ books
- courses
Appraise manuscripts
Judge competitions
Lead workshops
Teach creative writing via distance learning

My major focus is my novels. I’m now with publisher Choc Lit and my current books are All That Mullarkey , Starting Over and the next will be Want to Know a Secret? in November. There are two planned for 2011, one of which is 20,000 words written.
And my major writing focus has ALWAYS been novels … it’s just that I took a long time getting here.My first paid published work was letters to the press. Don’t discount letters as a stream of income! The most I ever earnt this way is £150 for 89 words, which is about £1.68 per word. Extrapolate that into an 85,000-word novel. £148,258.42! Woohee, yes, I’ll have some of that … Maybe one day.
Around the same time I wrote two novels. They were dire. Publishers returned them without comment. When the second one had clunked onto my doormat a few times somebody gave me a ‘how to’ book about writing by the late Nancy Smith and I took to heart one piece of her advice: if you can sell about twenty short stories to national news stand magazines, a publisher of novels may take you more seriously. So I decided I would do that and I took a course, a distance-learning (then called correspondence) course. If I hadn’t earnt my fees via my writing by the end of the course, they promised, they would refund my fees.
But they didn’t refund my fees because a) I had covered my course fees three times over by the time I reached the end and b) they went bust. Whoever they owed money to, it wasn’t me!
And, aside from the actual number, Nancy Smith proved to be right, because I did, eventually, begin to sell novels – but I had sold eighty-seven short stories to national news stand magazines by then and my ‘first’ novel, Uphill All The Way (Transita, ISBN 1905175000) was really my eighth.

I do have one thing that I feel is invaluable on the journey from part-time writer to full-time writer: a husband with a regular salary. This has allowed me to write for the past 20+ years without a full-time ‘proper job’ – although I have had many part-time ‘proper jobs’ (one for him but I have wriggled out of that).

I hope I’m not letting out any trade secrets here, but not all novelists earn enough from their novels to live on. As I proved.

And I’ve never had the kind of contract that a) included large advances or b) covered more than one book, so I’ve carved out – or cobbled together – a career based on writing by being versatile and looking out for opportunities, reading newsletters, networking, attending conferences and doing all the things that make me contacts and get me contracts.

I suspect a ‘proper job’ would have been easier – but nowhere near as enjoyable!

I work ten hours a day, five or six days a week (sometimes seven) and, loosely, I work with students, appraise manuscripts and/or judge comps in the morning and I write during the afternoons.

I shoehorn in promo, accounting, emailing and research where it will fit.

And now you see why The Write Attitude hasn’t made it to the top of my ‘to do’ list yet!

(But I expect it will …)

Sue Moorcroft 17.08.2010

If you have any questions for Sue please post them into a comments box. 'Love Writing. How to Make Money writing Romantic or Erotic Fiction' is available to buy from Amazon. As Are 'All That Mullarky', 'Starting Over' and it's possible to pre-order 'Want to know a Secret'