testme72lg.jpgI’ve been thinking about this post for a few weeks now, wondering how on earth to condense the story behind the story to my current release, “Test Me!”. It’s been a five year voyage to get this book to publication and I finally realized where to begin. You see, it all started with a towel.dee-tenorio.jpg

For whatever reason, I remember thinking as I wrapped my head in a towel, that it sure would be embarrassing if I were wearing just a towel on my head and someone walked in. Not that I’m big on nude strolling, but you know, if I were to do it for 0.5 seconds…I’ve got the kind of luck that it would happen to me. And it wouldn’t be my Mom or someone who wouldn’t care. No. With my luck, it’d be some really hawt guy that I never wanted to find out the precise location of my cellulite. The idea was too delicious. It simply HAD to be written. Only, instead of me, it’d be some hot blonde or something. So, I got started on the scene and then I realized, these two have to have a good reason why he’s seeing her walk around nekkid. (You know, after I got pass the thought that she had to have a good reason for walking around nekkid.) That was when I discovered I didn’t really have very good plot skills.

(What? I told you this was a long story!)

Suffice it to say, it took quite a while to write the first complete draft of this book. I learned a lot of lessons on my way to the second draft and by the time I was sure I was done, I felt as if I’d ripped out my guts, inverted them, stretched them out and stuffed them back in. In other words, I’d learned quite a lot from several very forgiving authors and CPs and I began the long road of submissions. Believe it or not, “Test Me!” is actually now known as something of a pregnancy book. Every editor who read it had to transfer me to another editor as she went on maternity leave. I started to wonder what was in the ink. Either that or my love scenes were unbelievably potent. Let me tell you, nothing slows down a story read like three or four pregnancies.

One thing that did come out from all those editorial changes was that as likable as the homegrown hero was, there was something missing about him. His heroine was smart, sassy and intimidating and he wasn’t holding his own against her. I have to admit, I fought that. I wanted to control my hero. I wanted to make him a “Hero” with a capital H. A too good to be true and ‘why-can’t-I-have-one-of-those?’ Hero. The problem, it took way too long to admit, was that those kinds of guys are annoying as hell. They make no mistakes. They do everything because it’s the right thing and they never imagine that doing the right thing is anything but soulfully rewarding. If I had to live with that guy, I’d have killed him. I’m just not that kind of girl and neither was my heroine, Vetta. She knew that sometimes, doing the right thing really sucks. Most of the time, actually.Travis Carmichael, scientist and casual womanizer, was not one of those guys. He was that raw element of unapologetic maleness. He’s a guy. He’s a guy’s guy. If you don’t like it, go somewhere else. He needed that quality to make him worthy of my heroine. To make him worthy of me.

I don’t say that to be vain (she says, throwing her flowing hair over her well-moisturized shoulder). But write enough stories and you start to think about what kind of characters you want to be remembered for. You want to be known for believable characters. Real people with real chemistry and real conflict. At least, that’s important to me. Real characters. Real Romance. And on my good days, I want to be Really Funny. I didn’t want Travis to be a hero you forgot about. A guy with no balls who’s pretty much there for my heroine to control with little twitches of her hips. So, you might not always like him. You might want to wash his mouth out with SOAP–perhaps his brain too–but once you meet him, you’ll remember him.

Finally, the elements of the characters was right. So I sent it off to my editor over at Samhain Publishing and wouldn’t you know it, five years, five editors, two category lines retired and at least a hundred dollars in postage…Test Me! found a home. And a cover with boobs, but that’s a different story behind the story…

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Vanessa Jaye, here– You can get your hot little hands on TEST ME! at Samhain.