My first novel for Samhain Publishing, Venus in Blue Jeans, releases today, January 27, 2009. I’m still sort of stunned about that. I started working on Venus three years ago and now it’s actually going to be published. Whoopee!

The whole Venus saga is kind of an illustration of the way romance publishing works, which is, I think, very different from the way other kinds of publishing work. I started writing Venus because, frankly, a contest judge had pissed me off. I had another book that I was sending around the contest circuit. These days I can admit it wasn’t very good, but at that time I really thought it was. One contest judge told me flatly that my book wasn’t any good because my hero and heroine didn’t meet within the first ten pages, and everyone knew that all romantic heroes and heroines had to meet within the first ten pages (preferably the first five). Now since I could immediately think of at least three very good romance novels where that didn’t happen, I was, shall we say, annoyed by this pronouncement.

So, I thought, what about a book where I spent the entire first chapter not having the characters meet? In fact, what about a book where that was the whole point of the first chapter? Thus was Venus born. Part of the first chapter is available at Samhain, and I’ve posted the whole thing here on my Web site at https://www.megbenjamin.com/excerpt.html.

Having had my revenge on the contest judge, I now had a collection of characters I really liked and sort of a plot. I say “sort of” because I knew in general terms where I wanted it to go, but I wasn’t sure about the specifics. And from this point on, I had a lot of help from a lot of different people. The folks in my critique group at my local RWA chapter, for example. They not only told me when I was going wrong, they also applauded me when I was going right. Contests were a huge help. A lot of judges liked that first chapter, but they also told me things I could do to make it better, and the things they told me often helped me whip the rest of the book into shape, too. And I also had a wonderful editor at Samhain, Lindsey McGurk, who always managed to pick out just the part of the book that wasn’t working (and the part I really hoped she wouldn’t notice!).

In general, this book, like a lot of romances, came out of a very supportive community of writers. Romance writing differs from other types of writing in that respect. I think romance writers want other romance writers to make it, and that’s a nice feeling to have if you’re trying to get started in your craft.

So Venus In Blue Jeans is available at Samhain Publishing in ebook form, starting today. I hope you’ll like it, and if you do, I hope you’ll tell me so. Actually, I guess I hope you’ll tell me if you don’t like it, too. That’s how I got into this thing in the first place, after all. You can reach me at meg @megbenjamin.com. Drop me a line—I’m really anxious to hear from you!