Sharing Time: My First

A few weeks ago, the nice ladies over at Murder She Writes were discussing their first novels. Today, Gena Showalter and Jill Monroe blogged with excerpts from theirs. (Gena, I really don’t think yours was all that bad. And Jill. Well, you got much better!) So I thought I’d reach way, way WAY under the bed, brush off from dust bunnies, and share um, er, questionable choices I made with my first book.

Title: A Bride Walks Into A Bar…
Target Market: Harlequin Temptation
Score in Golden Heart Contest: Top 25% (which says a lot about the GH, since any halfway decent manuscript I sent them got ones and twos).
Rejections: One (and bless her for making it such a nice one!)

Prologue

The bride stood alone on the dimly-lit train platform. She clutched a small black evening bag and peered through her veil up and down the length of the chilly concrete station. No one had followed her off the train.

Thank God.

Jill Jensen gathered up her voluminous satin skirts and gingerly crossed over to the ramp leading into the parking lot. She stuck out like a sore thumb on the raised platform. It was almost as bad as the train itself. Worse – for here, Jill had no protection. If Anthony’s men found her now, she had no idea what they do to her. Samantha had led her to believe that these guys could get deadly if provoked, and she imagined that between her own subterfuge and the bride’s disappearance, Anthony and his cohorts were plenty provoked. She had to find a place to hide – quickly.

And dump this darn dress.

She looked down at the neighborhood with dismay. The station appeared to be located in some sort of business district. Dark office buildings lined the streets on either side of the station. There was a donut shop on one corner, but Jill doubted that the teenager she saw sweeping the floors inside would provide much protection. She needed a crowd. Preferably a large, intimidating crowd.

A neon sign flashed orange and pink reflections off the damp asphalt to her left. Perfect. Jill tried to make out the name of the establishment. Harvey’s Pub.

Not so perfect.

She remembered it well. The cozy atmosphere, the smell of hops and pretzels, the worn pool table and the friendly regulars. She remembered the dart games she’d always let him win, and the way his arm felt against the small of her back whenever he asked her if she’d like to order another round. If Jill didn’t know better, she’d think that she’d subconsciously chosen this train station, knowing that Harvey’s Pub would be a safe haven.

There was no way he would be in there. Whenever Jill thought of him, she imagined he lived in some artist colony out west, or maybe a loft in Greenwich Village. Still, maybe she’d find his uncle inside the bar. The elder Harvey had always liked her, and she could trust the old man to keep her humiliating secret. It would never do for him – for Nathaniel – to find out her most recent intrigue. He’d be more relieved than ever that he’d gotten out when he did.

Jill was grateful to whatever instinct had led her to keep her black, maid-of-honor mini-dress on underneath the gown. She could blend into a bar atmosphere easily in that get-up. And, if she played her cards right, maybe she could convince some of the men inside to stand up for her, should Anthony’s thugs make an appearance. She might not be as talented a flirt as Samantha herself, but Jill was confident she could hold her own, at least until Sam managed to get her act together and drive out to pick her up.

Jill unzipped her small black purse and whipped out a cell phone. Pushing her veil aside, she dialed the number her friend had given her for the hotel, but the phone wasn’t getting any reception.

“Connecticut,” she said in annoyance and stamped her heel, ignoring the way it made the crinolin shake like a top-heavy meringue. What else could possibly go wrong tonight? She caught sight of a pay phone at the edge of the platform, and rushed over, praying she’d find some change at the bottom of her purse.

No one picked up in the hotel room. Jill’s mind whirled with terrifying possibilities. Could Anthony have caught Sam after all? Oh, she never should have left New York.

The machine beeped, prompting Jill to leave a message for the room’s occupant. “Samantha, honey, it’s Jill. Look, I couldn’t meet you at the hotel. They followed me. I’m in Fairport, Connecticut, at a bar near the train station called Harvey’s Pub. My cell isn’t getting reception here, so call the bar. I need you to come pick me up, and the farther you get from New York, now, the better.” She paused, then added. “Some wedding night you’re having, huh?” Hanging up the phone, she squared her shoulders and looked over at the bar. Great, Jill thought.

Oh, Sam, what have you gotten me into? The most embarrassing moment in my life, and look where I’m forced to go for help.

Harvey’s. Just my luck.

_________

I would like to point out that this book did not originally have a prologue. I added one at the behest of a multipublished friend who thought that it was too confusing to have the story start with the bride actually walking into the bar. Bless her, nothing could have helped this one, but she was trying.

I almost wish that this was bad in a more humorous way, instead of just being dull and info-dumpy.

I still feel that the most humorous element of this story was its convoluted plot. To wit: Heroine is helping her friend escape from a marriage to a violent mobster by dressing up in friend’s bridal gown and pretending to be runaway bride in one direction, while friend escapes in another direction. Why heroine thought it would be a good idea to risk neck in this manner may never be discovered. Friend is further playing heroine for fool by using her (in dress) as a mule to smuggle out diamonds friend has stolen from violent mobster fiance and hidden in bridal dress. Some friend. Heroine, in doing her runaway bride routine, takes refuge at small Connecticut pub owned by family of heroine’s college boyfriend (enter hero), who of course had once dumped heroine due to Big Misunderstanding and also because of heroine’s flighty ways. Heroine is sure that hero does not work at bar anymore, and furthermore, that by entering ex-boyfriend’s family’s bar in wedding dress she will not cause a stir. Hero sees heroine in guise of runaway bride and assumes she is still flighty. However, he still loves her. And she still loves him. (It’s a Reunion story. Awwww.) But she’s pretending to be a runaway bride. Plus, the mobster reunites with his girlfriend and she tells him that the heroine stole the diamonds. (Again, some friend.) So then hero and heroine go on the run.

I think first books are so important. There are still things I love about this book (I had a sex scene on a pool table!), but the main thing I love is that it’s a whole book. A whole book I wrote. By the end of it, I had grown so much as a writer that I knew it would never fly, but I kept working on it anyway, and I finished it. And once I did that, I knew there was nothing that could stop me. I wrote a whole book. Now all I needed to do was write a whole good one, and I’d be golden.

I challenge the rest of you to blog about your horrid first books. And if you’re one of those precocious types whose first books were amazing and vaulted them into huge deals and onto prestigious lists, then, well, you can’t play, can you?