It's Raining Covers (Suzanne Forster)

I just got a cover too! It’s for my May release, The Arrangement, and even though it took a few tries for the art department to get it right, I love the final result. The original version had a classic gothic mansion, which was ultimately—and magically--transformed into a three-story Mediterranean manse, where all manner of sins and secrets are buried. I was actually torn when I saw the first version—the gothic house on the cliffs, shrouded in ocean mists and lit by a moon in full. It was beautiful and moody and all the things we associate with gothic dwellings, but I’d already done my share of gothic mansions, and since I’d written this entire book with a Mediterranean mansion in mind, I asked them to make the change, and they did, beautifully.

The Arrangement was a story I never expected to write. I probably shouldn’t be sharing this because I’ve never shared it with the powers that be, but what the heck. I came up with idea several years ago and was immediately thrilled with the concept and the twist—a marriage of convenience that results in a woman accused of her own murder? I could hardly wait to get started on the story, but I was between contracts, in the midst of changing agents and publishing houses at the same time, and instead of going to contract with The Arrangement, it became the proposal that I sent to prospective agents.

The agents I queried responded with surprising enthusiasm, each of them offering to represent me, but the one I eventually went with asked if I had something bigger in scope, still suspenseful, but with more of a women’s fiction feel. She wanted a “big book” to show prospective publishers. I pitched her an idea stored only in my head at that time. It involved three prominent women, one of whom was the First Lady, who became suspects in a murder committed twenty years ago when they were poor scholarship students at an exclusive boarding school. It ultimately became The Lonely Girls Club, and resulted in a three-book contract with Mira Books.

Writing The Lonely Girls Club was challenging, but I loved every second of the process, right up until I saw the final product. The package, as they call it in publishing, was a bit of a shock. The cover art was striking and the back blurb compelling, but there was no hint of a romance there, no mention of a hero. The story actually has a piping hot romance, but you would never have known it from this package. Not that the cover wasn’t gorgeous. It was, but I was worried about my readers, the ones who’d been with me from the very first book. I hoped they would trust me enough to try it. What else could I do? And to my everlasting gratitude, they must have, because The Lonely Girls Club did very well.

For the next book, I geared my thinking toward more of the same—a big story with lots of scope and mainstream elements. I came up with an idea I loved called The Private Concierge, but then I got word from my editor that they needed a new proposal quickly. I realized The Private Concierge wouldn’t be ready in time, so I dusted off The Arrangement and sent it in, thinking they would probably say no, but it would buy me some time to finish TPC. To my great surprise (I’m surprised a lot, can you tell?), they green-lighted The Arrangement immediately, despite the fact that its scope is limited to a man and woman engaged in the eternal war between heart and head, known and unknown, trust and fear. Yes, the physical attraction between them is palpable, lives are at stake and sanity suffers, but the story itself is deliciously intimate, in my opinion, from beginning to end.

It goes like this: A woman awakens from a coma, wed to the man of her dreams, but living in a nightmare. He’s tall, dark and wealthy—every woman’s fantasy—except for the shocking arrangement he insists upon, one that my heroine cannot refuse. She is trapped in a marriage with a man whose past is spoken of only in whispers. Worse, he despises her, or so she believes, yet can’t keep his hands off her. And the attraction is mutual. She lies awake at night, next to him, afraid to breathe for fear of giving herself away.

In short, The Arrangement is about a marriage of convenience with a deadly twist, a dark, intimate, sexy and scary tale in the extreme—and perhaps the opposite of what I thought was expected of me for the second book of my contract. Fortunately for everyone concerned, my editor loved it, and it’s exactly the kind of book I love to write, so I was thrilled.

And for me, there was another bonus. The entire process so far has been a lesson learned. Go with your bliss. Do what you love in life—and most of all, don’t assume. If there hadn’t been a need to move quickly, I might never have submitted The Arrangement for consideration, assuming that it wouldn’t be what they wanted. So, whoever in his or her infinite wisdom came up with that great advice must have had me in mind.

Suz