Starting afresh and psychic distance

The Roman Undone left the building yesterday and despite a small hiccup of forgetting to attach it (I blamed on a kitten up a chimney!), my editor now has it. What she will think of it is anyone's guess. I liked it but one never knows.

As my long suffering editor currently has the revisions on HRG and the first draft of TPE plus the Roman Undone, I do not owe Harlequin Mills & Boon anything for awhile. So I am going to work on a single title that I have wanted to do for awhile. The plan is to have it done in 65 days or so. It should be doable.

One thing I read about in the Manuscript Makeover was psychic distance. It basically means the distance the reader is from the scene. And a reader does need to know a character before they can get truly intimate. It is one of the reasons why starting a novel with a graphic sex scene is not good. The act is far too intimate for the average reader so early in a novel. It is also why sometimes a book can seem too gory or what ever. As an author you do have to decide -- is this a close up or a distance shot. Is it middle distance? Sometimes, the camera angle is too far away and intimacy is needlessly sacrificed. But readers need to get to know characters before they can readily accept intimate scenes.