Romy Sommer

I hit send yesterday evening and the partial of Beneath the Ionian Sun is now hopefully, finally, sitting in the editor's inbox. And not in her spam filter. Or email heaven. Or the hundred and one other places lost submissions go. Me, anxious?

I’ve been toiling away at polishing Chapters 2 and 3 of Beneath the Ionian Sun for what feels like weeks now, in anticipation of finally getting another submission out there. The reason for the toiling was because I just couldn’t get Chapter 3 to sparkle. This is the all-important end point the editor is going to read up to, so of course I want this chapter to end on a high note. Except that the sparkly dialogue and pivotal decision were sitting at the end of Chapter 2, and Chapter 3 was more of a bridging chapter. Re-write after re-write just hasn’t worked, so in pursuit of a solution I re-read the third chapters of all my favourite category novels. Without exception, every single one had a pivotal point in which the stakes were raised. It took me until just a few days ago to realise what I had to do: swap the chapters around. So simple! Why couldn’t I have figured that out weeks ago? Now I’ve cut and pasted sentences all over the place, rewritten so that the chapters flow ...

I have now started "Beneath the Ionian Sun" four times. Four different beginnings and I'm now so far behind my self-imposed schedule that I feel like crying. Why, you might wonder, is this so hard when I already had such a good grasp on my characters? I started Attempt #1 on a high and the words just flowed. I worked on that opening for three days. The story starts on Corfu, with a summer romance between hero and heroine. A brief encounter that both know will not last. Then the doubt set in. How could I hope to hook a reader (or an editor) with a story that opens with sunshine and roses? I needed more conflict! So I rewrote the beginning, starting at the moment of most dramatic conflict. Attempt #2 opens when the hero and heroine are thrown together months later and he discovers that she's pregnant ... and that she planned to keep it from him. Enter the next set of doubts. I've seen this opening done countless times. Where's the fresh twist I need to hoo...