Guest Post: Camryn Ryhs

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I am very excited to have Camyrn Ryhs on the blog today. Sit back and enjoy this guest post as we are told what Camryn's favorite book is.


Camryn: Someone asked me recently what was my favorite book I’d ever written. I think they expected me to say, “The Barn Dance, of course!” Because that’s the book I was there to promote. But as much as I love foodie erotic romance and the love story that Leo and Mindy have, I will never love any book as much as the first book I ever wrote.

I was nineteen, I was in love with Braveheart and Outlander. I studied literature and writing, and found that I had a knack for putting words together to form sentences. Sometimes. I adored romance novels growing up, so I thought: I’ll write a romance novel!

For three solid months, I researched. I didn’t even write a word. I spent hours in the map section of the library. I read entire books on thirteenth century Scotland. I did everything I could do short of buying a ticket to Scotland, and that was only because I didn’t have a job, so I didn’t have the cash. If I knew what a credit card was, I guarantee I would have been there.
I researched, read, plotted, and sketched. I knew more about the clans of the characters than I did about my own family. It was the most fun I’ve ever had.

When I finished, I wrote that book in less than a month. Almost 100,000 words of complicated, swoony, bodice-rippery goodness. I sent it to my three best friends, who all loved it, and then I put it down until after the Christmas break. Pass two months in the way writers do, with very little detail, and I pick it up again. I read it straight through and was horrified. In fact, a couple of times, I didn’t finish it and had to come back again.

I threw it away. Thankfully, years later, I still have a digital copy of it. But I threw it away. And I didn’t come back to it for almost eight years. When I did eventually come back, it was because I missed the characters and the story. I re-read it, fell in love with it again, and threw it away again.

Because, let’s face it, it was my first book, and it was crap. I hope to take those characters somewhere else in the future, and will hopefully use some of the same story elements. But there’s too much wrong with it to salvage.

So while it might be my favorite book I ever wrote, it’s also the worst book I ever wrote, and the only thing that will never, ever see the light of day.

No, you may not read it. No, really. Really.

Have you ever written something that you think is absolutely a nightmare? Ever decided to press the delete button on an entire manuscript? Ever thrown a whole book in the trash?

Thanks so much for having me. You can find my blog at http://camrynrhys.blogspot.com and at http://dirtybirdauthors.blogspot.com. I’m on Twitter @camrynrhys and Facebook @CamrynRhys. I’m on Google+, and you can buy my book on Amazon, All Romance eBooks, and the Breathless Press website.

THE BARN DANCE: When Mindy needs a baker’s expertise, Leo offers a trade: one day in the kitchen for one night at the Barn Dance. Either way, the heat is rising. http://www.breathlesspress.org/Book/327