Romancing the Blog | Romance Authors and Readers Who Blog

by Special Guest Deb Smith (aka Leigh Bridger) of Bell Bridge Books

All right, I admit it. I took a trip to the dark side, and I am back to report: Dude, it is really fun over there.

I know, I know. I swore I’d stick with nice, tame women’s fiction, that fantasy isn’t my cuppa. But then my partner, Deb Dixon, and I launched a new imprint of BelleBooks, our nine-year-old small press. BelleBooks focuses on feel-good southern fiction. We wanted to branch out into other genres, so we added Bell Bridge Books.

Fantasy. Young Adult. Thrillers. Mystery. And miscellaneous other “stuff.” Whatever catches our fancy. Since last summer we’ve pubbed nearly ten books, ranging from BOOTH’S SISTER, a highbrow historical based on the life of John Wilkes Booth’s sister, to MURDER TAKES THE CAKE, a cozy food mystery.

Our two newest books went on sale last week: TENDER GRACES and FLOWERS FOR ELVIS, both of them intense family dramas (I call them our Oprah books). Next week THE TWELVE SACRED TRADITIONS OF MAGNIFICENT MOTHERS IN LAW hits the bookstores. Our pal Haywood Smith, the NYT bestselling author of THE RED HAT CLUB and others, wrote this fun humor/advice booklet as a companion to her WEDDING BELLES novel (St. Martin’s Press.)

This summer we’re doing more women’s fiction, more mystery, and this fall, a big-time scary thriller novel, PRIMITIVE, by (drumroll, please), our first MALE NOVELIST. Mark Nykanen has published three previous thrillers to major reviews. He’s an Emmy-winning former NBC reporter. Cool, eh?

But our biggest group so far has been our fantasy novels. So there I was, Ms. Non-Fantasy Writer, editing vampire books ONCE BITTEN and BITE ME, and teen-with-magic-powers books, MOONSTONE, all of which are the first books in series we’re publishing. And me, Ms. Genteel Women’s Fiction Writer, was reading a huge e-stack of queries about elves, demons, bloodsuckers, werewolves, and supernatural beings I can’t even describe except to say: OMG How Do You People Think Up This Stuff???

Slowly but surely I was lured to the edge of the shadows. Hmmm. Interesting. Lookee down there . . . into the abyss. I think I hear music. Sounds like a party. I began to find myself in the dark and spooky sections of the local bookstore, timidly peeking inside the covers at first, then going “Gah!” and reading avidly. My big light-bulb moment came with a starry alignment of Jim Butcher and Patricia Briggs novels. Dazed with appreciation, I found myself in front of my computer chanting, Must. Try. Writing. Urban. Fantasy.

There are occasional moments when some amazing alchemy erupts and a book seems to write it itself. A blissful experience, and a rare one. From the second my fingers typed the opening sentence I fell into that groove, channeling ideas that had, apparently, long been lurking in the subversive kingdom of my alter ego.

Yeah, flesh is temporary and souls are forever, but that was no [freaking] comfort as I got ready to kill the man I’d loved for hundreds, maybe thousands, of years.

The first chapter zoomed out of my fingertips.

I collapsed on a couch, stunned, drained. If I still smoked, I’d have had lit a shaky cigarette.

I was hooked. Gone, baby, gone.

Soon I was emailing updates to Deb Dixon and other pals as the story progressed.

Wrote the threesome today. Hot!

The cannibalism scene is going well.

I could practically hear Deb Dixon chortling in her email replies. I told you so. It’s addictive.

Other friends replied with polite shock. Are you sure about this? Do we need to stage an intervention?

No need to worry. This isn’t so different from my women’s fiction novels. There’s a romance. (The hero was butchered by a demon two centuries ago, and he dies again in this life, but what the heck.) There’s a close-knit family. (Some living, some dead, some non-human.) And feel-good scenes with friends and pets. (Talking demon-houseflies count as pets, don’t they?)

My urban fantasy opus is finished. Title? Soul Catcher. I’m publishing it under a pen name, Leigh Bridger, because I don’t want to surprise the nice old lady who always emails me to say I’m her favorite author next to Jane Austen.

I’m ready for more. Planning a sequel. I even hauled out my partial for a long-deferred paranormal romance, SOLOMON’S SEAL, and posted it on Fictionwise.com. I’m writing part two of the story right now. No one gets butchered, eaten alive, or tongue-kissed by a demon in SOLOMON’S SEAL, but it’s still pretty wild by my sissy standards.

So you could say I’ve been converted. Lost my virginity. Bought a season’s pass for the Scary Tour of Creepy Town.

I feel liberated. And empowered. And just a little bit tempted to get a tattoo and pierce a second set of holes in my ears, so I can wear my dangly pearls and my opal studs at the same time.

How wild is that?

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