I just submitted a new story to a press I\u2019ve never published with. They publish romance, and I don\u2019t write romance. I write stories about strong men doing daring deeds and beating the bad guys. And I may mix a bit of romance in there. Nothing naughty, you understand, but the relationships between the characters are what moves the stories forward. And a long time ago, I got really sick of a whole mess of \u201che\u201d in my stories. If a story has a series of \u201che\u201d and \u201cshe\u201d it makes it easier for the reader to understand who is talking. That is why I started writing stories about men and women all those years ago. Just simply targeting readers to make my stories easier to read.<\/p>\n
And if I\u2019m going to go to all the trouble of writing them, I\u2019m going to write people I generally like. And that like each other. Because I don\u2019t want to write a story about people who hate each other. And if they like each other, why not play with it? I grew up reading and watching stories where guys and gals liked each other and flirted with each other, so I started writing that in my stories. And things grew from there. I\u2019m told by ladies who read my stuff that I write good romance. So I decided to throw my hat into a romance anthology that asked for no naughty stuff. I much prefer the \u201cfade to black\u201d and \u201cclose the door\u201d kind of stories, so that\u2019s right up my alley.<\/p>\n
I took an existing story that had been through a few versions. Each one aiming at a different anthology. Each one showing the same basic events but changing the story around them to fit the anthology it was aimed at. I did some minor surgery on it, added a bit more as the thoughts flowed, and I came out with an entirely different story that showed the same events but worked much better than any previous version did. I like it. I hope the ladies I sent it to like it. If they don\u2019t, there\u2019s a real good chance it will show up on my substack or in a collection soon. I like it the way it is and don\u2019t think I\u2019m going to alter it again for another submission. It finally feels right to me. And the artist in me tells me it\u2019s time to move on now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I just submitted a new story to a press I\u2019ve never published with. They publish romance, and I don\u2019t write romance. I write stories about strong men doing daring deeds and beating the bad guys. And I may mix a[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-diaries","uentry","postonpage-1","odd","post-author-medron-pryde"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14064"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14064\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14065,"href":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14064\/revisions\/14065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}