Picking favorites

Jennifer Elbaum posed this question in my blog comments earlier today and I decided to make a post out of the answer, since odds are not that many people see the comments section.

Jen asked me:

Since you're so prolific, do you have a "favorite" story? And if yes, why?

Good question. Picking a favorite story can be like picking a favorite child. I love them all but some more than others at different times for different reasons.

Usually my favorite story is the one I'm working on at the moment. If I'm really in the zone, I'm in love with the hero, best friends with my heroine and totally committed to giving them the bumpiest ride I can think of toward their happy ending.

If I had to choose a favorite of my published works, I'l probably pick The Soul Jar. Why? Because it's got all the elements I love in a book. It's an adventure story first and foremost, somewhat in the spirit of Indiana Jones--at least that's what I was shooting for. The hero, Chance MacKenzie, is Australian and there's just something about Aussie men! Yum. Bree Sennett, the heroine, is tough and clever, but she's vulnerable too. Chance hurt her badly in the past, [not by his own choice] and he has to work very hard to win her love and her trust back.
The story spans the globe from Chinatown to Cairo and I really enjoyed researching the information I needed to get the characters from one place to another in a realistic manner.

Another reason I love The Soul Jar is because it's sort of an underdog. It never got the press it deserved and has been largely ignored by review sites. I don't know why. The cover is hot, the story is steamy, but not a lot of reviewers have bitten. In fact I've been promised reviews by a couple of sites that never delivered. [Shrugs] I don't have time to hunt people down and demand to know why they didn't read my book.

For snippets of some of the reviews it did get, check out my website page. The now defunct Literary Sass girls loved it and voted it not only a One Shot Wonder but a Favorite Read of the Year. So not a lot people have read The Soul Jar, but those that did really liked it. I really liked it. It's a fun story.

That being said, if I had to choose my all time favorite story I've written so far in my career from ALL my work, pubbed and not yet-pubbed, I would pick The Matchmakers, my single-title Fae novel which [fingers crossed here peeps] will be winging it's way to several NY editors before the month is out.

The Matchmakers pits banished Fae, Calliope, against the likes of Nick Garrett, a "barely shaven, part-time carpenter, all-around handyman, loner, drifter, screwer-of-women and enemy of true love." Calliope is lovely. She's funny and sassy and she's in big trouble in the Fae world after granting a wish gone bad. Nick is a cynical smart-ass. He's hot as Hades too, which makes him irresistible to all the wrong kinds of women. I love their story because, believe it or not, I sob uncontrollably through the next to last chapter EVERY single time I read it. And I WROTE the damn thing. Sometimes I get misty-eyed just thinking about it. Hopefully an editor will, too.

So there you have it. My favorite stories and the reasons why. That doesn't mean that next week or next month my opinion may change, but this is how it stands for now.