Some books come so easily, they seem to write themselves.

Others are a little more… challenging.

I had grand plans for The Lady Doctor is a Vamp. I was going to write the entire book while I was on a writing retreat. Five days of non-stop writing, with minimal breaks for meals, sleep, and sanity. I had reason to believe I could get that much done in a single get-away session. I’d written a similar number of words just a few months earlier, while I was finishing High Stakes Trial.

But the Lady Doctor had other ideas.

When I started the book, it was going to be a send-up of a certain type of romance–those super-sexy billionaire books, where an uber-alpha male utterly captivates a naive, submissive woman. I wanted to tell the story of what happened when the billionaire alpha-hole was rebuffed by the object of his passion.

There was just one problem.

My billionaire hero could be rebuffed once. Maybe even twice. But if he didn’t get a clue after that, he wasn’t a fun, sexy hero. He was an obnoxious jerk.

My carefully plotted book would never work. It wouldn’t be an enjoyable romp for my readers. It would be infuriating.

I had a literary precedent for the story I’d started to tell:  William Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew. I just had to figure out what Taming would look like in modern dress. With an independent heroine who never submits. And vampires.

The result?

You can read the first chapter of The Lady Doctor is a Vamp here.

And you can buy the book at your favorite vendor:

           

(Print books will be available within a week.)

Let me know what you think!