Everybody knows what their own flaws are.  Ask any woman for her biggest flaw and she’s not going to need a minute to think it over.  Short legs.  Small boobs.  No waist.  Yellow teeth.  Dimply thighs.  The list is endless, but more to the point, it’s prompt.  We spend a fortune trying to fix these things.  We are not unaware. Writers are no different.  We throw our books out there with a kiss and a prayer but we’re fully aware of their fatal flaws.  We know what our weaknesses as writers are.  We know where our books fall short.  Believe me, we’d fix it if we could but since we can’t we just have to hope that whatever it is people like about our books is done well enough (this time) that they’ll forgive us our shortcomings.   And in each book, we try harder. For me, it’s setting.  I’m dismal at setting.  My characters have fabulous conversations.  It’s snappy patter and witty dialogue at every turn.  Unfortunately, they have their conversations in space because I’ve neglected to give the reader even the barest sketch of a setting.  Which is totally my fault because I’m a dialogue junkie and when I…

Welcome to Susan’s Money, Honey Blog Tour in which she will heroically address the Top Ten Responses Commonly Heard when An Ill-Groomed Stay-at-Home Mom Announces her Secret Career as a Romance Writer. (If you’re dying to see all ten responses, check out my website.) Hello, Fresh Fiction! Welcome to the blog tour! Today we’re discussing Response #9: The dreaded “Don’t you get tired of writing the same story over & over?” Okay, this one kills me. Really, it does. People who don’t read romance seem to have this incredible misconception about the genre. It’s like they think that because romance novels feature a love story and a happy ending, they’re all the same book. This is like saying all detective novels are the same because the plot revolves around a crime and we get to find out whodunit at the end. Or that all thrillers are the same because the hero gets to foil a Plot to Destroy the World As We Know It. That’s not a formula–that’s a contract with the reader. It’s the reason we read genre fiction in the first place. If I want a happy ending, I read romance. Exquisite world-building? Science fiction. A near miss…