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Happy Friday, everyone!  This week has been... well, weird.  For the first two days of the week, I was the regular old writer me.  I walked the dog, ate toast for breakfast, went to the day job, came home and walked the dog again, wrote in the evening, went to bed.

But on Tuesday, my first book Seduced By Shadows officially hit the shelves at bookstores everywhere.  Friends and family from around the country sent me messages via Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and my website, telling me they'd spotted Archer's abs rippling in new romance sections, on end caps, in free-standing displays, over by the escalator, even on their Kindle.

I went to my local Barnes & Noble to sign the copies there.  I brandished a nice pen sent by my critique partner, special for the occasion.  I placed pretty gold stickers-"Signed by Jessa"-on the covers and slipped glossy bookmarks between the pages.  I beseeched a store employee to take a picture of me.

 

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Yesterday, I said one of the FAQs writers hear is "Where do you get your ideas?"  But this is actually a softball question lobbed by people who already like you.  The trickiest question is "Oh, yeah, you're a writer?  What do you write?"

When your interrogator has one hand propped on hip, you know you're in for good times.

"Books" is the safe and obvious answer.  People think you're being facetious, but honestly, that's the part that still delights me most: I wrote a book!  With pages and a cover and stuff!  Admittedly, though, it's not a complete and satisfying answer and I haven't been able to get away with it yet.

Romance is the most fun answer, because seven times out of ten, someone will be blushing by the time the second question rolls around.  As long as you don't mind defending the value of stories where love elevates the spirit (and we need to defend this?  still?  really?) saying "I write romance" can be the start of an-ahem-invigorating discussion among bookish types.  But romance has become such a diverse genre-ranging from erotica to inspirational, historicals to futuristics--that too is not enough of an answer anymore.

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One of the questions most commonly asked of writers is "Where do you get your ideas?"  Some smart-mouthed writers quip, "The Idea Warehouse."  Which is dumb because everybody knows ideas come from the Idea Fairy.

I suspect our silly answers arise from the fact we don't often know where ideas come from.  Oh sure, sometimes you succumb to an opium-induced dream--who hasn't, right?--and jot it all down in a fevered Xanadu rush only to be interrupted by your Twitter account notifying you that you have one new reply and you abandon your opus to see what somebody was saying about you. 

But for me, I often find that ideas come together more like a dung beetle's ball.  I get some crap; I roll it around for awhile.  Stuff sticks to it.  It starts to take shape and starts rolling a little faster.  The eggs incubating inside it eventually hatch, along with a few random seeds, and, look, I have a story!  This is less sanitary and more effort than the "came to me in a dream" version, but more (ha) organic and gives me the illusion of control. 

Of course, if you've seen nature show footage of dung beetles at work, you know that control is probably tenuous at best.  And by the end of the process--with baby dung beetles running around and unidentified seedlings sprouting everywhere--it's hard to look at the scattered clumps of elephant poop, dirt and dried grass and say, see, there's where the idea started.  Plus, who wants to look that closely?

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Okay, confession time.  How many of you were secretly kind of bummed when the Beast became a prince?  Yeah, me too.

What was Beauty's complaint with him anyway?  The Beast was strong, rich, smart, rich, and powerful.  And kept the bed warm at night with his furry self.  We already knew he had a secret gentleness because he loved his magic roses.  And how could anyone object to invisible servants and a house that could only be found when you wished it so?  All that, and he had to have a perfect nose too?

I know the allegory was supposed to be about love taming the savagery inside man.  (Man as in man, not as in mankind, mind you.)  But I never wanted the Beast domesticated.  Nope, I wanted him at my side in all his wild glory.

Thus, the allure of the dark hero.  In the dark hero of romance, the bad boy is never broken, the arrogant alpha needn't cry, the rebel might find his cause but it's the heroine herself, not some socially acceptable outlet for his anti-establishment tendencies.

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Standing on the edge of the blank page is one of my favorite places to be.  From here, anything could happen.  Ooh, the curiosity, the excitement, the burgeoning sense of infinite power!  Bwa ha! 

But with each word I type, the probability waves collapse and a story emerges.  That act of creation (or unveiling, depending on how much stock you put in the Muse) happens in all genres, but there's an added surge of unpredictability when the story contains science fiction, fantasy or paranormal elements.  Those otherworldly facets are inexhaustible -vampires and aliens and were-sea cucumbers, oh my!-so how to choose?  Alternate dimensions and time travel are thrilling to contemplate, but the writing has to take place in linear time in this boring old dimension with only one storyworld emerging from the limitless potential.

The world of the Marked Souls-my urban fantasy romance series from Signet Eclipse debuting with Seduced By Shadows tomorrow!-arose out of one simple question: Are we basically good or basically evil?

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Jessa Slade is our guest blogger during the week of October 5. If you have any questions for Jessa Slade, add a comment to any of her posts. Here is some more information about Seduced by Shadows:

When Sera Littlejohn meets a violet-eyed stranger, he reveals a supernatural battle veiled in the shadows, and Sera is tempted to the edge of madness by a dangerous desire. Ferris Archer takes Sera under his wing, now that she is a talyan-possessed by a repentant demon with hellish powers. Archer's league of warriors have never fought beside a female before, and never in all his centuries has Archer found a woman who captivates him like Sera.

With the balance shifting between good and evil, passion and possession, Sera and Archer must defy the darkness and dare to embrace a love that will mark them forever.