A NOVEL GIFT

So here’s the deal—we are about to go into “the cave.” Which means we have a book to finish by the end of the year (so it’s out in January ’09, for all of you who fuss at us for taking too long between books). That means we won’t have much time for coming up with subjects (timely, clever or otherwise) to blog about twice a week—but we do enjoy the interaction. So we’ll save our new comments for Thursdays (because we’d burst if we had to keep them all in), and we’ve come up with a way to post regularly on Mondays with something that will be new to most of you— that way we can save some of that writer juice for the book we’re writing, What Doesn’t Kill You—which will make our editor happy and we hope that come 2009, it’ll make you happy too.

Now, there were a variety of responses to the Writing White blog we did two weeks ago—a number of them from other writers, who have bumped into the same issues regarding readers of their work. Clearly there is more to the conversation about where in the bookstores we shop and who reads what and why.

In that blog we mentioned that the first book we wrote was Exposures, originally published in 1990. This first joint effort was written before Waiting to Exhale paved the way for contemporary African American fiction-- the characters in Exposures are not Black. But we think you'll find that while our style has matured, they are drawn with the same care and attention to detail we became known for in Tryin' to Sleep in the Bed You Made, Far From the Tree & Better Than I Know Myself.

We also had another name back then—not because we were hiding. At the time publisher didn’t think readers would ‘get’ a novel written by two people, so our pen name was Marie Joyce—for Donna Marie and Virginia Joyce (pretty good use for middle names). After reacquiring our rights we re-published the book in 2005 through the Back-in-Print program of the Authors Guild.

Exposures was a Popular Library Lovestruck paperback original and had moderate success—but we didn’t really get a name for ourselves until Tryin’ came out in 1997. Now we have decided to give Exposures a third life—right here on our blog. Even though it was written as a romance, it’s not a traditional one. And what’s even more interesting to us are the themes that were present in our work even then (before we had any work)—the most evident among them being the importance of true friendship. So, even as the romance ebbs and flows, the friendship of Brett Larsen and Lizzie Powell remains.

We will serialize the novel-- like books used to be way, way, way back in the dime novel days—like soap operas. Every Monday—starting with this coming Monday—and running until January when Gotta Keep on Tryin’ is released, we will post a couple of chapters of Exposures on the blog. The catch is that except for the first post, the subsequent ones won’t remain on the blog—they will be removed as the next two chapters are posted. Example: Monday we’ll post the prologue, Chapters 1 & 2 and they will remain on the blog. When we post Chapters 3 and 4 the following week, the prologue and Chapters 1-2 will still be there. BUT when we post Chapters 5 & 6, chapters 3 & 4 will be removed. So that means you have to tune in regularly, or you might miss something!

Now if you get impatient, and you really have to know what happens next (or you missed an important plot twist), the whole book can be ordered through your favorite book seller, or online bookseller (we know B&N.com, Amazon.com & iUniverse.com have it listed)

Brett Larsen is a fashion photographer and Exposures, set in the fashion capitals of New York & Paris, is a tale of friendship, family secrets, betrayal, love, loss and Brett's search for self and the truth.

Tune in Monday for the first installment—and spread the word!