Guest Author - Jade Lee & Contest

First of all, I must apologize profusely to Ms. Lee. This post was supposed to go up yesterday, but I got sidelined due to the two jobs I'm working this week. Please, please, please accept my sincerest apologies.

I hope everyone will stop by and comment, she has so graciously offered one lucky commenter a free book, so here she is........

I SCOFF! I SNEER! .... Was I wrong?
By Jade Lee

You know how everyone talks about a book of the heart? Write the book of your heart. Who cares if it’s alien frogs in the regency, it’s your heart! You can make it work!

Up until now, I have scoffed–nay, sneered at such advice. I’m sorry, but my heart is odd. Let me give you an example. I had this great story idea about alien frogs in the regency era. I also wanted to do a book set in the Forbidden City with a concubine and a eunuch. No fooling. You don’t need a male organ to be a great lover, right? It’s edgy, it’s challenging, it’s honest. Let me tell you flat out that market-wise, they were both STUPID IDEAS!!!! Fortunately, I had people in my life who said: DUMB DUMB DUMB!!!

But lately, I have been looking at my track record. My first Jade Lee book was Devil’s Bargain. I wanted to write a dark, sensuous story set in the ugly underbelly of London. A man trains young brides to be sensuous women, then marries them to older, wealthy men for a commission. I even created an early form of a pre-nuptial agreement to make it easier for the old guys. But then the hero falls in love with his last protegee. The book is 95% sexual tension and exploration. It’s dark, it’s steamy, it’s full out seduction from page 1 to the end. It is still one of my best sellers. And oh...up until that point, I had been writing light, funny regencies under the name Kathy Greyle.

My next what-the-hell idea was White Tigress. A Victorian woman caught up in a Chinese cult of Tantrics who use sexual stimulation as a means to attain Heaven. She was actually kidnapped and sold into the cult. (At that time, most Chinese believed the propaganda that whites were actually large monkeys...not human at all). This book–even set in China–started what became a 6 book series.

But in the middle of all those Chinese Tantrics, I got really bored. For a complete change of pace, I wrote a fantasy romance about a woman who incubated a dragon egg and the dragon slayer who must kill the dragon and its owner. The dragonslayer uses our heroine to find the egg, then falls in love with her, and then discovers she’s got the egg. Oops. Now he has to kill her. Kinda a problem for the love story. Dragonborn was fun adventure with some good sex thrown it. It was dragons and maids and lords and ladies! Gawd,I had so much fun writing that book. And wham...it’s been a best seller for me.

So what have I concluded from all this reflection? That maybe I was wrong. GASP! Really? NO! Not about alien frogs in the regency or eunuch heroes. I still think those ideas were clunkers. But maybe that passion is what’s important in our books. Not passion between hero and heroine. Well, yes, that too, but mostly passion from the author for the story. What a concept!!! Passion for what I write. Hmmmm...

So, now the exciting wind up. Oops. I don’t really have one. Over 10 years, I’ve published 28 books. Is it possible that the stories that I adored, that I was most fascinated by, were my best? That the audience can tell when I’m writing to a market and when I’m just writing because the idea is so cool? OMG, have I learned something here?

Well... you tell me. If the above is true, then you’ll love Dragonborn which was published last year, and you’ll adore it’s sequel Dragonbound. I wasn’t going to write a sequel, btw, but Sabina’s story entranced me. Seriously. I couldn’t stop thinking about her path as she hates and adores her dragon-now-turned-man. Her history and her future are interwoven in a complex...in a ...damn, I can’t explain it. It’s just an awesome book and it’s coming out...probably now. (It’s an April book, but Dorchester always releases things early)

Somebody, please comment! Please tell me that you think I’m nuts. That ALL my books are equally fabulous whether I wrote them because the publisher demanded a sequel or because I just couldn’t get the idea out of my head. Or maybe that I’m right, and I should forget marketing all together. That I need to just write what is out and out inspiring to me. In which case...you could be getting those frogs, you know. One lucky commenter will get a free copy of Dragonborn or, if you prefer, a copy of my latest regency era historical The Dragon Earl which is totally unusual in its own way. (A white guy raised in a Chinese fighting monastery shows up in England to marry his betrothed. He’s bald and wearing a saffron robe. Would you marry him?)


Jade Lee
http://www.jadeleeauthor.com/

USA TODAY BESTSELLING AUTHOR

Dragonbound April 09
The Concubine (Blaze historical) Feb 09
Winter Heat (anthology) Jan 09
The Dragon Earl Sept 08

Contest will end Sunday, March 29 at 11:59 p.m. eastern time.