Praise The Lord, It's Done!

I have finished the fourth Sophie book, Lust Loathing And A Little Lip Gloss (In stores June 09'). My wonderful editors have it in their hands now. Of course they'll have notes that I'll need to address but that's a ways down the road yet and it's not the same as writing a whole 400+ page book from scratch. I did put my ALL into this one and hopefully it shows.

I'll admit that when I started writing this I wasn't all that enthusiastic about the project. I know Sophie has her following but I was afraid that doing a series was begining to limit my ability to stretch my wings and explore different styles.

But by the end of this book I had fallen in love with Sophie all over again. She's so much more complicated that I originally realized and I find the people she meets in this latest adventure to be as fascinating as they are insane. I know it sounds like I'm talking about someone else's work. Or maybe it sounds like I'm blowing my own horn. I suppose the latter is true to a degree but oddly enough the former feels true. This time around I got so involved in the story and the characters that it honestly felt like they existed apart from me, like they had a life of their own. That was true with my first book too but not to this extent. Sophie, Venus, Maria and Kane (you'll meet the last three when the book comes out) continue to hang out in my head, accompanying me on my errands and on my walks through the park. And Marcus, well of course I love Marcus. He's never far from my thoughts either.

Of course I have no idea what readers will think of it. The one other person I gave the manuscript to likes it a lot but again, that's one person. I know there are those who will find fault. The critics will probably say that the sex scenes are a bit gratuitous. That's probably true in that I didn't really need to put them in but...well, tell me you wouldn't be disappointed if Sophie didn't get Anatoly out of his Calvins at least once per book. When I introduced everybody to his Mr. Happy I knew there was no going back.

Anyway, now that I've finished book number four in the series I have to get started on Sophie book number five. I'm not entirely clear what that's going to be about but I'm sure I'll come up with something...and I'm equally sure that I'll change my mind about whatever I decided after the first fifty pages or so and be forced to start from scratch. People are always asking what my "process" is. If I could sum it up in one word it would be "chaos." Oddly enough, it works for me.

Kyra Davis
Bestselling Author of:
SEX, MURDER AND A DOUBLE LATTE,
PASSION, BETRAYAL AND KILLER HIGHLIGHTS,
OBSESSION, DECEIT AND REALLY DARK CHOCOLATE
and
SO MUCH FOR MY HAPPY ENDING