Whip the WIPs

You may notice I've added some of those word meter doohickies to the sidebar.

Dangerous Lies (aka Danglies) is the book I'm working on editing now, albeit slowly around the demands of work and the MA. This is the one that got a blinding critique, and will be submitted on my behalf by the Romantic Noveslists Association.

Taken (aka Frenchman) Involves a terrified heroine and her delectable French missing persons expert hero. They hide out in the Pyrenees until she conquers her fear and forces him to take her back into danger. The final confrontation with the villain takes place among the battlements and towers of the medieval fortified city of Carcassonne, and it's breathtaking, if I do say so myself.

Danger - Deep Water (aka Going Down) has the heroine I got aquainted with yesterday. I do so love my tortured heroes, and this one's a doozy. He crops up in Danglies as a largely benevolent if silent figure, an ex-military diver who makes his home on his own yacht. After Danglies, he finally plucks up the courage to admit his long-term love for the fiance of a colleague who died in his care - and is promptly arrested when she accuses him of her deceased fiance's murder. Poor lad. Thankfully, the heroine is on hand (or rather, in the sea) to rescue him from his self-imposed exile on his yacht after he's cleared of all charges.

In the 'it's darkest before the dawn' tradition, things get a lot worse for him before they get better, but he finds his way in the end.

Changes to those little word meters will be slow, but I'm hoping to make steady progress on Danglies, and then work down the list. It helps that I've now got a reasonable idea of what I want to do in 2006, writing wise.