The Rockville 8

Entangled Publishing Requests . . .

2012-01-25T19:35:00.003-05:00

Editors at Entangled Publishing have made their choices based on your amazing pitches on Sunday!

Thank you, Rockville 8, for hosting us. We really appreciate the opportunity to take pitches here. There were some really great offerings, and we unfortunately had to arm wrestle over a couple of these. If we haven’t requested your manuscript, and you believe we’ve made a mistake, feel free to submit it to Entangled via the usual channels. You can find our submissions info here: http://www.entangledpublishing.com/submission-information/

All requests are for full manuscripts. Please send them as RTF attachments, and mention this pitch in the cover letter (please type this in the e-mail – don’t attach a separate cover letter). The subject should include “Requested Submission” and the title of your work.

Adrien-Luc Sanders requested (adrien-luc at entangledpublishing dot com):
Jacqueline Corcoran – Heroine with the mechanical hand
Melisse Aires – Clinical trial...of DOOM
Pam Champagne – PTSD
Sutton Fox – Ice and Ash
Engchik – Chasing the Marathon Man
Sherilee – Geek Ever After
Jaycee DeLorenzo – Christmas wedding Flirt

Josh Vogt requested (josh at entangledpublishing dot com):
Evie Owens – I see dead people

Lewis Pollack requested (lewis at entangledpublishing dot com):
Kat Maguire – Playboy Prince

Kerry Vail requested (Kerry at entangledpublishing dot com)
Candy Lyons – Guardian angel gets her sexy on:
Dawn Montgomery – Undead starlets Flirt

Kerri-Leigh Grady requested (kerri-leigh at entangledpublishing dot com):
Jenna Rutland – Adopted baby
Jillian Hallowell – Marriage of convenience on accident
Robin Blythe – Cinderella Ever After
Ally Broadfield – Regency Flirt

Thanks to everyone for participating, and thank you, Rockville 8!
--Kerri-Leigh

Thanks again to Entangled Publishing and all the wonderful writers for participating in this event! It was a blast.

Best of luck with your writing this winter and stop by and visit us again soon.

Check Back Tomorrow Night for Entangled Publishing Requests!

2012-01-24T19:47:00.007-05:00

Time is ticking. And our Entangled Publishing editors have already had one arm wrestling match to work out their differences over the fabulous pitches you gave them on Sunday. They've identified several manuscripts they'd like to see and hope to select a few more within the next 24 hours. They're just working out the details among themselves. Let's hope there's no mud involved in the next round!

Check back tomorrow evening (Wednesday, January 25th) for a list of manuscripts they'd like to read. The Eight can hardly wait to see who they've chosen.

Good luck! See you tomorrow night!

Entangled Publishing Pitch Event Closed!

2012-01-23T03:00:00.005-05:00

Thank you to all the excellent writers who posted a pitch at yesterday's Entangled Publishing Pitch Event (and thanks for your patience with Blogger). We received 36 pitches. What a fun event. The creativity and talent was amazing to see. Thank you for participating.

The event is now closed to pitches.

What's Next? Check back later this week, on Tuesday or Wednesday, to see a status update. We'll post which manuscripts the editors have requested to see. Good luck!

And a big thank you to Entangled Publishing for allowing Rockville8 to host this event today. It was lots of fun.

Entangled Pitch Event Today

2012-01-22T07:00:00.009-05:00

Give us your best pitch! Welcome to Rockville8’s one-day Entangled Publishing Pitch Event. Today's the big day when six Entangled editors will take blog pitches for the following lines:

Flirt (10k-15k words)
Ever After (20k-40k words)
Lori Wilde's...Indulgence (50k-60k words)

Okay, here's how it's going to work today. Post your two-line pitch and the first 100 words of your story as a comment. Be sure to read the line descriptions linked above. Any level of heat works as long as a romance is central to the story, and the plot is intimately entwined with the building romance. Stories must end HFN or HEA. The event will close at midnight PST tonight.

Editors will then fight over the pitches that have been posted and we will post their submission requests a day or two after the event. So be sure to check back on Tuesday and Wednesday for status updates. Now, let's give them something to fight over! Go for it! Give us your best pitch. We want to see lots of homeruns.

For more details about the publisher or specific Editor's attending, see below.

About The Publisher: Entangled is a boutique publisher of romance fiction. They pride themselves on quality stories and commercial covers, and their innovative business model offers their authors the best of indie and traditional publishing. To find out more, see their website. And don't forget to look through their current open submission calls.

Entangled Editors Attending (See last week's post for their wish lists):
Adrien-Luc Sanders, Senior Editor
Libby Murphy, Associate Editor
Kerry Vail, Associate Editor
Kerri-Leigh Grady, Associate Editor
Josh Vogt, Associate Editor
Lewis Pollack, Associate Editor

So give 'em your best pitch. Good luck! Enjoy the event. It should be fun.

Rockville8 Entangled Publishing Pitch Event - January 22, 2012

2012-01-15T09:00:00.010-05:00

Sharpen those pitches and bring them to Rockville8’s Entangled Publishing Pitch Event next week. Rockville8 will host a one-day pitch event next Sunday, January 22, 2012.

Six Entangled editors will take blog pitches for the following lines:

Flirt (10k-15k words)

Ever After (20k-40k words)

Lori Wilde's...Indulgence (50k-60k words)

About The Publisher: Entangled is a boutique publisher of romance fiction. They pride themselves on quality stories and commercial covers, and their innovative business model offers their authors the best of indie and traditional publishing. To find out more, see their website. And don't forget to look through their current open submission calls.Instructions: Pitches will be accepted in the comments section of this blog on Sunday, January 22, 2012, when the blog post goes live at 7:00 am EST until midnight PST. Posts after midnight will not be considered.

Editors will fight over the pitches that have been posted and post their submission requests after the weekend.

To participate, have a two-line pitch and the first 100 words of your story ready to post as a comment. Be sure to read the line descriptions linked above. Any level of heat works as long as a romance is central to the story, and the plot is intimately entwined with the building romance. Stories must end HFN or HEA.

Entangled Editors Attending & Their Wish Lists:

Adrien-Luc Sanders, Senior Editor
His current interests run towards sci-fi, contemporary, and urban fantasy—the darker, the better—with a love for gritty dystopian, cyberpunk, steampunk, supernatural, and that rare cross-genre gem. He likes stories falling into that gray area of the battle between good and evil, with strong antiheros and believable villains, or heroes who face temptation and corruption and don’t always get away unscathed, though he can also be won over by quirkiness, sweetness, and humor, with a love of oddball characters and whimsy. He’s also interested in stories that portray people of color and LGBT people as mainstream characters whose cultural, ethnic, sexual, and gender diversity are enhancements to their character rather than the primary focus of the story. Adrien-Luc was interviewed here recently.

Libby Murphy, Associate Editor
Libby would like to see submissions for adults and young adults written with a killer voice, and she especially loves quirky characters and plots. She loves sci-fi with aliens, robots, and high tech; urban fantasy and time travel; contemporary romance; women’s fiction with a strong romantic element; and suspense and mysteries. She craves humor, anti-heroes, and underdogs, and strong, capable heroines are a must. For Indulgences, she's looking specificaly for the following: Best friends, best friend’s younger sister, millionaire playboy, athletes, relationship because of a bet, arranged marriages, bad boys, revenge plots, reunions, adventure (Indiana Jones meets Bridget Jones!), romantic comedy, forbidden love, geeks (hero or heroine), and military heroes. I’m not likely to request sheiks or royalty, but if the royalty is the heroine, that’s definitely more likely. I’m a huge sucker for snarky heroines, funny heroes, and heroes who are the strong, silent type. Libby was interviewed here recently. Libby is especially interested in Flirts and Ever Afters that fit the following:

Scientists or inventor-types who walk the line between good and bad (like Batman)
Paranormals with a villain hero/heroine who is redeemed by the end
Disaster or apocalyptic events in which people find love, despite everything falling apart around them (can be sci-fi, fantasy, or contemporary featuring a natural disaster, for example)
Quirky contemporaries or paranormals—humor is a must!
Sci-fi, especially if it has a Tron, I, Robot, or a Terminator type setting
Thrillers set in a small town
Zombie hunters :)
Romantic Comedy (would love to see a trilogy about a group of girlfriends finding love)

Kerry Vail, Associate Editor
Kerry loves the whole spectrum of speculative fiction, from hard scifi to space opera to sociological. She loves dystopian futures and alternate histories, especially when combined with a compelling voice and an unusual twist. She also enjoys urban fantasy, high fantasy, and paranormal thrillers, and gravitates toward strong female leads who are intelligent and can save themselves and fall in love. She is open to stories of love in any of its many forms and any heat level.

Kerri-Leigh Grady, Associate Editor
She loves paranormal romance and UF worlds that aren’t complicated by numerous mythical beasties, smart romantic comedy, dark comedy, romantic thrillers/suspense/horror, dystopian romance including steampunk, reunions, BFFs falling in love, marriage of convenience, [strong] woman in jeopardy, man in jeopardy, supernatural elements, clever monster elements, multi-cultural characters, alpha nerds, high stakes adventure, and general hilarity. She’s open to F/M, F/F, and M/M pairings in all heat levels. For Indulgences, she's looking specifically for the following: reunions, BFFs, marriage of convenience, ugly duckling, [strong] woman in jeopardy, man in jeopardy, road trip, alpha nerds, high stakes adventure and suspense, forbidden love, fish out of water, and smart romantic comedy. I’d love to find a military hero where the romantic conflict rings true and is related to the challenges of being a mil-girlfriend or milspouse.

Josh Vogt, Associate Editor
He has a passion for reading and writing speculative fiction. He’s seen all sides of the publishing industry, and works as a freelance copywriter and editor as well as a writer. He brings to the team his love for books, plus a desire to help aspiring authors in their quest for publication success. Find him on Twitter at @JRVogt. Josh is interested in all types of fantasy and science fiction, from urban fantasy to steampunk to space opera to epic and YA fantasy. He loves stories that suck him in without warning and compel him to keep reading thanks to fascinating characters, great dialogue, twisting plots, and powerful worldbuilding.

Lewis Pollack, Associate Editor
A student of philosophy, psychology, and the sciences, Lewis Pollak has an appreciation for both characters with complex motivations and stories that are thought-provoking. Find him on Twitter at @LewisPollak. Lewis loves books that take readers to new worlds, whether they are alien landscapes, alternate histories, or contemporaries with a twist. He also enjoys books that strike a balance between serious and humorous moments. While partial to all sorts of speculative fiction from high fantasy and urban fantasy (but not Keith Urban fantasies) to science fiction and paranormal, interesting characters with genuine emotions and snappy retorts usually win him over regardless of genre.

So be sure to stop by next Sunday, January 22, 2012, between 7:00 a. m. EST and 12:00 midnight PST, to pitch your project. It should be a fun event!

Come on, you know you want to . . . If you have questions, please post them this week. So we'll have a clean pitch session next week in the comments section. Thanks!

A New Year

2012-01-08T21:03:00.008-05:00

The New Year brings about thoughts of new beginnings. As I watched fireworks over the harbor bring in 2012, I thought about what things in my life I would like to change. The one thing that immediately came to mind is that I would like to have more time to write.

But in order to have time to write, something else has to be either put on the back burner or eliminated from my life. I am full up on obligations that I won’t bother to list here. The point is that I am at my limit and looking for a way to change my situation.

A couple of days later I noticed something in my inbox. I am on financial guru Dave Ramsey’s bulk email list. In a recent installment, he describes a method to get what you want out of life.

First, he advises you to look at your values and passions. Forgetting about money, what would you do if you could do anything in the world? For me, it would be to live on the water, with a desk in front of a water-view window, while I write during the day.

Next, Dave says look at your skills and abilities. What do you enjoy? What kind of activities and jobs get you excited? Likely, these things fall within your skills and abilities set. Concentrating on what you do well will help you plan your next step. When you love what you do, the odds are that others will love the outcome. I love to write. I can feel my pulse slow and the tension drain away as I write. Work-wise, it is the one thing that I do that while I am doing it, I don’t feel like I should be doing something else.

Now, use these things to create your goals. Well-written goals should have a time limit, be measurable and be specific. The example Dave uses is “By December 31, 2010, I will lose 40 lbs. by working out three days a week and limiting myself to 2000 calories a day.” This one I’m still working on for myself.

Lastly, your goals should be used to compose a mission statement. Dave says, “This says in concrete terms who you are, what’s important to you and what you want to accomplish in life in 100 words or less.” Dave Ramsey’s description of composing a mission statement sounds remarkably like advice I’ve heard about writing a story pitch. I figure if I can write a pitch for my story, I can write a mission statement about another story I know—my own life.

My own life. That’s the part I sometimes forget—this is my life and not everyone else’s. Though I often feel trapped by too many obligations, how I compose the story of my life is largely my decision.

How successful are you at prioritizing your goals? Do you have any hints regarding what worked and what didn't?

Dave Ramsey has published several books and conducts a radio show on financial advice.

Happy Holidays!

2011-12-25T06:00:00.002-05:00

May the wonder of the Season capture your imagination and inspire you all year long!

~Happy Holidays from the Rockville8

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Time Travel, Indeed

2011-12-18T13:24:00.008-05:00

This week the Rockville 8 are thrilled to welcome Elaine Fox, USA Today Bestselling author of fifteen historical and contemporary romances, and four novellas.

I recently e-published my very first book, putting it up on both Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Traveler—a time-travel story about a Civil War soldier who comes forward in time—was written in 1994/95 and published in 1996 by Leisure Books, but has languished in out-of-print obscurity for a decade or more. E-pubbing for the first time was an interesting process, but as it has been exhaustively covered elsewhere, I’m not going to go into that here.

No, what I found interesting was re-visiting a book I’d written that I hadn’t looked at in probably fifteen years.

Anybody who’s ever written anything knows that on many days the outfit to wear for reading one’s own work would not be complete without mud-colored glasses. We can be our harshest critics, knowing just where to thrust the knife for maximum despair. What was polished once needs polishing again. What was never polished should be cut altogether. The plot’s unbelievable —the main character’s a fool—the book should really start at Chapter Five—and the whole thing reads like it was written by a fourth grader. What was I thinking?

I’ve read page proofs of books of mine about to be published that made me cringe with shame, and curse the page-proofing stage for its demand for close reading coupled with rules on limited input. Change a word, sure. Change a scene, forget it.

So I fully anticipated re-reading Traveler and wanting to gut the thing. I was ready to slash adjectives, adverbs, dependent clauses. Beef up plot, hack out internal thought, enhance characterization. I could do that now. I had the rights back. The book was all mine again—as it was when it was born—and the deadline was my own.

I sat down with mental red pen in hand (a.k.a. a keyboard with an eager Delete key.)

Imagine my surprise when I got caught up in the story. I actually liked the characters. The pacing was pretty good. Some of those adverbs even seemed necessary. I couldn’t always remember what was coming, but whenever I thought, “I should change it so that X and Y happen next,” I read on to discover that I’d already written X and Y! To my relief and surprise, the book worked. For me. One of its harshest critics.

While much is written about trusting the reader, maybe what we should be cultivating is trusting the writer. Try this on for size: You know what you’re doing. You’re actually good at this. You’re a reader so you know not only what you like, but what works.

If you’re a writer who’s spent too much time thinking about genre and marketing and rejections and reviews, here’s my advice. Throw out those mud-colored glasses and start entertaining yourself when you write. Have fun. I mean it. I had fun writing Traveler because it was my first book and I was writing for myself. Because of that, at least for me, the story holds together, even sixteen years later.

I’m sure there were days while writing it that I got discouraged and found I’d donned the mud-colored glasses without realizing it. But on the whole, I was writing free, and I think it shows. (And I mean that in the good way.)

P.S. For those of you who don’t own a pair of mud-colored glasses … I bow to you. But I’ve got some you can have, if you want.

The Hustle and Bustle of the Christmas Season

2011-12-11T16:33:00.009-05:00

Once Thanksgiving hits, there’s a mad dash to January. If you’re anything like me, you don’t have a moment to spare. Every December I struggle to do it all--the full-time job, the writing, the holiday shopping, the decorating, the baking and cooking, the usual juggling of family obligations, the Christmas parties, and so on and so on. Sigh. Just thinking about it all makes me tired. ‘Tis the season to be jolly and I feel like I can’t keep up. I’m sinking under the extra load of the holidays.
Every year, I’m determined not to do it and every year I do. It’s a crazy season. Some days I don’t feel sane. And, yet, most of it I wouldn’t give up. It’s a wonderful time of year filled with family, friends, good food, and lots of festitivies. We build memories. Give. Receive. Laugh. Play.

That’s what it’s all about. This past weekend, I found myself taking time out to relax and enjoy time with friends. It helped me destress, find perspective and build my community. It was a much needed break from the hustle and bustle of the season. I still shopped, ate good food, wrote, read--all the normal things I’d have done anyway, I just found a more relaxing way to do it; in the company of friends. It was a little thing really. But it helped me find an oasis of sanity in an otherwise insane season.

So what do you do? What tricks have you found to release stress and find moments of peace during the holiday season? As writers, what do you do to keep writing during this harried time? As working moms, how do you juggle it all? I’d love to hear your ideas.

Maybe we can all help each other gain a little joy and peace this Christmas.

Work in Progress

2011-12-04T11:45:00.006-05:00

Thursday, my big boy dog and I headed out for our customary walk, and stepped into a work in progress. The project began three months ago, involves five square blocks, and requires teams of city workers to cut holes in the streets. These holes are the size of Volkswagens. For safety’s sake, the workers cover these holes with vast steel plates at the end of the work day. They tack down the plates with ridges of asphalt high enough to ruin any SUV’s suspension. They heap their barrels and caution tape at the curb, and circle the whole area with those inevitable orange pylons. Result? It ain’t pretty.

Many of my neighbors are none too happy about this. But what can they do? The project may be time consuming—and it may be ugly—but it’s necessary.

This is a work in progress.

Well, on Thursday, one of my neighbors did something about this work in progress. He celebrated it. He strung faerie lights between the pylons, festooned them with red glitter balls, crowned his creation with Fosters beer cans, and voilá! As my big boy dog and I admired my neighbor’s handiwork, it came to me. Whether we’re wrestling with a manuscript, pounding the pavement in another round of job hunting, or pursuing our weight loss goals, we all have works in progress. At times, these works may not be pretty. But they’re necessary—to our wellbeing, to the wellbeing of those we love, to the wellbeing of our community.

Really, as we struggle with these projects day by day, we ourselves are the true works in progress. We’re not always where we’d like to be, not always as we want to be, not always as we hope to be—but we’re working on it. And that, my big boy dog and I decided, is certainly worth celebrating.

Do you celebrate your own work in progress? Does your celebration include faerie lights and Fosters? How do you celebrate where you are while keeping your eye on where you’d like to be?

A Little Headbanging

2011-11-27T19:06:00.001-05:00

Here we are, kittens. The 27th of November is sliding down the hill, taking my four-day weekend with it.

Sigh.

Wasn't it lovely? And don't look now but my dodgy math skills tell me there are just 34 days left in the year. It was a good year, 2011. The entire world of publishing is changing all around us, but in the center, midst all the noise, we writers and readers are still here.

We can bang our heads all we like, trying to figure out delivery systems and income streams and things like that, but at the heart of it all are the people looking for a good book to read and the people working to write them.

And thank goodness.

On another note, my granddaughter, CR, lives all the way in Oregon. None of us has as much vacation time as we'd like to stay connected, but we have Skype, and it's a miracle. It's almost like living in the world of the Jetsons, isn't it? Those flying cars should be coming off the assembly line any time now.

When my daughter and her family were here in Maryland at the end of the summer, CR was a year old and fast on her feet. At one point, she slid on the wood floor and ended up banging her head. Not bad, or not that bad, at any rate, because all of us, including my granddaughter, laughed it off. But then, because we were laughing, she did it again, on purpose. Which of course made us all laugh more. So she moved to one of the throw rugs and did it again. Smart kid, right? I mean, I know I'm biased, but still. Same comic effect, now with less pain.

But for some strange reason, everybody blamed me for her new trick. Which I thought was unreasonable--I mean, we all laughed, didn't we? Until after they went back to Oregon and we connected again on Skype and when CR saw me on the laptop screen, she bent down and banged her head on the floor.

She still does this every time I see her and it still makes me laugh.

Sometimes, banging your head can be fun.

It's good to remember that, when all around you the world seems to be going cRaZy and you feel like banging your head.

I say, turn the bass up and go for it . . . just make sure you're on the carpet.

Thanksgiving Gifts in a Michael Hauge Onion Sauce

2011-11-21T06:22:00.005-05:00

What, you ask, does Michael Hauge have to do with Thanksgiving?

Two weeks ago, Lisa posted here Michael's parting question from his seminar: "I would do anything to complete my goal. Just don't ask me to do ______, because that's just not me." He said our first answer would not be the real nut keeping us from our goal. Rather our first answers would be planted in our protective identities and it might take some digging to get to the essential root of what keeps us from accomplishing our goals. (Insert collective groan here)

As we prepare for the feast of Thanksgiving, I've been thinking about gratitude and what I'm thankful for. I've come to realize that there is room for identity and essence even here. My first answer when I ask, Keely, what are you thankful for this year? is pretty standard identity stuff: my job, my friends (you all rock!), my family.

These are all true, don't get me wrong. But they are also surface answers, protective answers, easy answers to share at the thanksgiving table before moving on to the main course.

So where does the essence come in? For me, it's when I peel back the layers of the onion by asking why.

Why am I thankful for my job? Beyond paying the bills, this job over the last nearly eight years has engaged my brain and my heart. It has challenged me, nurtured me, provided a safe space to grow and learn and grow some more.

Why am I thankful for my friends? Because when I had a really bad day last week, they rallied around me, offering support without telling me I was silly or lacking or to "just get over it."

Why am I thankful for my family? Because being in their space makes me feel - everything from grief to rejoicing to kooky humor to love. My family is present moment hijinks and long ago baggage and future hopes and dreams.

So there you have it. Thanksgiving gifts in a Michael Hauge onion sauce. As writers, that's what we're supposed to do, yes? Peel the layers of our characters' protective identity onion away until we reach their essential core? (yes, yes, this metaphor would be even better if onions actually had cores...maybe on the rewrite...)

What are you thankful for this season? What are your characters thankful for? Identity vs. essence: Is it either/or for you? An onion of many layers? Or do you make sense of it using some other construction or metaphor?

Sustainable Conflict and Believable Setbacks

2011-11-13T11:59:00.001-05:00

I got a lot out of Michael Hauge’s two-day seminar last weekend. More than I’d gleaned four years ago when he visited WRW the first time. I think his presentation is better today than it was back in 2008. Well worth the money I spent. He’s refined his material and deepened the concepts.

One of the biggest points to hit home for me was that all story must elicit a positive emotional journey for the reader/viewer and that emotion flows out of conflict. If I think about the books I read and the movies I watch, this is definitely true. When I say positive, I don’t mean all happy-go-lucky. But a journey that strings me a long and draws me into sustainable conflicts and believable barriers and setbacks, as well as triumphs. I want to experience the highs and lows with the protagonist. And I want to experience her growth over the arc of the story.

Readers pick up books and movies for the emotional journey. They want to lose themselves in the stories of someone else for a little while. At the hands of skilled writers, we find ourselves laughing, cheering, cringing, and crying with the best of them. It’s the credible twists and turns, confrontations, conflict, and successes of a character that allow us to experience universal truths that resonate with us all and showcase what makes us human. In his book, Writing Screenplays That Sell, Hauge says: “People do not go to movies so they can see the characters on screen laugh, cry, get frightened, or get turned on. They go to have those experiences themselves.”

I’d argue this is why we see certain movies and why we read certain books--because we enjoy the emotional journey that particular genre gives us. The tropes or reader/viewer expectations of that particular genre draw us like a magnet and speak to us in a satisfying way. I read books across the spectrum of genre fiction and enjoy them, however, I adore romance novels. And romance novels are the novels I choose to write.

No matter what the characters go through in a story, no matter what their personal arc, in a romance I know I will not get a tragic ending. While I know the ending will be happy, it’s the believable setback or the point where all hope is lost that makes me worry that these two characters won’t get their happy ending. Will the character be courageous enough to push through that final setback to find their happy ending? Or will they revert to their old life, the status-quo where they live a desperate life of mediocrity trapped by their fears? Isn’t it the secret hope we all cling to in life? That we’ll make a difference and that when adversity strikes that we’ll rise to the challenge and push through to find triumph?

The importance of getting this final setback right in a story and pinpointing an emotional journey directed at a particular audience hit me hard twice in the past two days. First, as I sat watching The Proposal with my youngest son and then as I sat watching Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II with my middle son. At the point of the final setback where all hope is lost for the protagonist, in each case, I heard my son sniffling.

These are two totally different movies. Drastically different stories. However, in each case, that final setback spoke to that teenager. So much so that the setback moved them to tears. In The Proposal when Margaret realizes she’s forgotten what it means to be part of a family and then admits to a roomful of people that she blackmailed Andrew into marrying her and then she runs back to New York, she sets off a whole series of events that show the other characters how much she truly loves Andrew to give him up and give him the life she believes he deserves. The audience is rooting for them. We know they’re perfect for each other. And when all hope is lost, we worry for them.

In the recent Harry Potter movie, the final setback where all hope is lost is where Harry realizes he’s the eighth horcrux and he must sacrifice himself--he must die--at Voldemort’s hand. J. K. Rowling is masterful. She makes us truly believe that all hope is lost--that Harry dies and all is lost. When I read the book for the first time, I sobbed uncontrollably at this point. The author builds a credible setback that rips our hearts out and makes us believe that this teenaged boy will not triumph.

And it’s this mastery of sustainable conflict and believable setbacks that prove the hallmark of a great writer--a writer who provides a satisfying emotional journey for her readers/viewers.

So what stories have worked for you on that emotional level? And tell us the genre.

Identity vs. Essence

2011-11-06T21:55:00.005-05:00

I spent this past weekend with Michael Hauge, the screenwriter, in his Story Mastery class. One topic seemed to catch the attention of many attendees. It was the discussion of a character living in their identity versus living in their essence.

Identity is the false self we present to the world to protect us from the fear that grows from a belief created by an emotional wound. In order for the character to achieve their goal, they must face this fear. The way for the character to do this is to live in their truth. Michael Hauge calls this truth the character’s essence.

Michael describes this character journey as moving from what is safe (identity) to destiny (essence). He said “A character can be safe and unfulfilled or can attempt to fulfill their destiny and be scared shitless." The character arc is the journey between living fully in their identity and living fully in their essence.

In his book, Writing Screenplays That Sell, he states, “The character’s transformation from someone stuck in his inner conflict to someone who has found the courage to overcome it is his arc. It’s an arc from fear to courage, from inner conflict to true self-worth."

At the end of his Saturday lecture, he told us that the notion of identity vs. essence applies to real life as well. He said that given the choice, most people choose to live in their identity rather than live in their essence because they choose safety over potential happiness. He challenged us to apply this to our own writing life. In other words, he told us to complete the following sentence:

I’ll do whatever it takes to achieve my goal, just don’t ask me to __________________ because that’s just not me.

At lunch today, many of us said fear held us back. But Yvonne said that fear is too easy an answer. I agree. Fear may be the result but if fear is keeping you from your writing goals, then there must be an underlying cause. In other words, fear is the result of something else and that is really what’s keeping you from achieving your writing goals.

I’ve been thinking all day about what my answer would be. And I still don’t know.

What are your thoughts on the subject, either for yourself or for development of character arc? What are some good examples of this in movies or books?

What’s in your closet?

2011-10-30T11:59:00.013-04:00

The Rockville 8 is proud to welcome Diane L. Kowalyshyn as guest blogger this week. Diane writes heart-hammering, tall-stake adventures—romantic suspense novels that run on high-voltage action, intrigue and intimacy. She is a daughter, sister, wife, mother, aunt, friend, and Seton Hill WPF MFA graduate, who in perpetuity, survives in Toronto, Canada. There’s only one skeleton left in her closet. Visit her at http://www.dianelkowalyshyn.com/.

Writers write.

We punch keyboards. We mutter or shout to ourselves or inanimate objects. With head-down diligence, we work to decipher and expand our fictitious worlds as they unfold.

If you’ve been writing for any length of time you have skeletons in your closet.

You know what I’m talking about. They’re the manuscripts you’ve locked away. You haven’t touched them in days, weeks, months, maybe even years. They gather dust because you’ve lost interest—maybe you couldn’t find them a home. They hang, untouched, because you can’t get rid of them. They’re an integral part of you. They mark your journey on this uphill climb and define you as a writer. They’re the carrion you’ve left behind.

Here’s the challenge. Don’t hide these bone-racks. Harvest them.

Time is on your side. Inactivity and separation have returned your objectivity. I guarantee your story is nothing like you remember. It’s much, much worse. But here’s the thing. There is no better way to affirm your growth as a writer than to revise a previous work. Everything you’ve learned is put to the test. My nemesis is grammar and I’ve found Claire Kehrwald Cook’s Line by Line to be a solid reference. She’s compiled great information on everything from modifiers, to conjunctions, to punctuation—she’s even attached a handy glossary of usage.

Shake those bones to make sure they still hold together. Revision tones flabby, drooping flesh into muscle. And muscle supports and fortifies the skeletal system. I use my own method to make sure the plot is solid. It’s called the Writer’s GPS—a tool I devised based on Deb Dixon’s GMC: Goal, Motivation & Conflict. Another good reference is James Scott Bell’s Revision & Self Editing. He breaks fiction down into a simple formula: CONCEPT + CHARACTERS x CONFLICT = NOVEL , and provides a process to sustain this formula. He calls it the LOCK system—lead (character), objective, confrontation, and knockout. If style books make you want to run and hide, or if you only have room for one revision book in your arsenal, I would recommend Renne Browne and Dave King’s Self-Editing for Fiction Writers. It’s the bible of all revision books. Seriously. I love it because not only does it show, it tells.

Add new flesh to those bones. There’s a reason you let them molder. If you were tired with the story concept then, no doubt you will be now, but not if you inject new life into the existing framework. Weave a fresh sub-plot throughout the story to get the creative juices flowing again. It will be the vascular connection that feeds the muscles and keeps those bones in motion. It will make the old concept new again.

Persevere. You’ll want to throw in the towel every single day and your muse won’t play fairly. She’ll interrupt you with various other more appealing story ideas and try to lead you astray. Don’t let her. Jot down those new ideas in a separate folder and get back to revising.

Why bother? Because you’ll get a return on all you put in. With your unfinished business fully fleshed out, you’ll be sitting pretty, ready to set off in search of that elusive Shangri-La—publication.

Reaction, Inaction, Action – Weight Loss and Empowerment

2011-10-24T09:46:00.005-04:00

Reaction

Last November, I approached a close relative about a pattern of behavior I’d noticed in them that had me concerned. I did it from love, but my timing sucked – and bringing up delicate matters is often dicey no matter what the motivation or the timing. This family member hadn’t asked for my two cents. And I approached the person as they were indulging in the (to my mind) bad habit in question. [I’m purposefully not outing my relative here, so please bear with the gender-neutral pronoun awkwardness!]

Well, dear readers, my relative turned the tables on me. Got up in my grill, called me fat, said my obesity was a far cry more serious health issue than their “perceived problem” and that I could come back to state my case once I had lost 100 pounds. As in the pages of the very best writing, the situation worsened for this protagonist when my relative said:

“100 pounds? Hell, lose 75. Then we’ll talk.”

Ouch.

Inaction

I cried. I got mad. I gained more weight. I felt helpless and stuck. Gaining weight did nothing but hurt me, not my relative. But losing weight would mean they won. Right? Right?

I started a food journal in January and lost 12 lbs. Yay! Then I had a visit from the relative, stopped the food journal and over the next six or so months kept gaining and losing the same five pounds. In midsummer, I broke down and bought three pairs of pants in the next size up. I cried.

Action

By the end of this summer, I knew I had come to a crossroads. I could take control by committing to a weight loss program or I could continue to punish myself. Act or react?

I chose to act. Since mid-September I’ve lost about a fifth of my intended goal. I feel fantastic, like I crawled from beneath a rock to frolic in the sun. I have a long way to go, but I’m moving in a healthy direction. My family member and I will come to rapprochement. Or not.

Either way, I've grown throughout this process, from having a better sense of when to keep my mouth shut to learning how to unhook my actions from someone else's expectations. I'm not losing weight because of my relative. I'm losing weight because it's the right thing for me to do right now.

How about you? Are you an actor or re-actor? Or somewhere in between?

Anticipation

2011-10-16T22:42:00.002-04:00

Do you know when your favorite author's next book is due out? Do you wait with bated breath? (or is it baited breath, which makes me picture a hook with a minnow stuck to it hanging form my uvula.) Maybe pre-order it? Are you one to read the reviews first, then decide to buy, or do you trust your author enough to just snap it up, willy nilly? And then, do you sit down right then and there and read the thing?

When I first graduated from college, I worked for a bookstore, and there was introduced to the likes of Jayne Ann Krentz, Katherine Sutcliffe and Julie Garwood. I would snatch those new books straight out of their boxes and spend the rest of the day waiting to get home to read them. The orange couch saw many a late night with me curled up on it, reading. Julie Garwood and I pulled more than one all-nighter because I was completely unable to stop reading.

And, oh Lord, when Harry Potter and I became acquainted. Well, thank the Good Lord for the internet, because I was ordering the UK editions from Waterstones. When Book 4 (HP & the Goblet of Fire), I picked it up from the small bookstore on 23rd Avenue in Portland, took it home that night, and read it nearly straight through. I was off on Sunday, skipped church, and read. I'd finished it by dinner. The day after its release. And the only way I could stave off the growling anticipation was to order, once again, the UK edition and read that through. And, sweet mother happiness, when that woman, that author, began taking more than a year, more than two between books, I would read through the whole series, US and UK editions, just to while away the time.

I have a friend who will buy her long awaited new book - maybe by Karen Marie Moning, maybe by Susan Elizabeth Peters - and then not read it until ... later. It was placed on a shelf (left in a bag in the car? Shoved in a drawer?) for sometimes weeks before she picked it up to read. So the anticipation could grow. And all I can think is, how on earth do you stand it??? Another friend made the decision not to buy the latest HP until the next was about to be released. Oh, for the love of Pete, do you know how many secrets from the damn Order of the Phoenix I had to keep to myself because she wanted to hold off the gratification? Now, was that nice of her to do that to me??? (Good thing my name's not Sheldon Cooper!)

I find trilogies and continuing series particularly difficult. Nora Roberts is a complete master of the trilogy, particularly. And each one offers a piece of the whole. In her Blood Brothers series, I mean, of course I knew the three couples would form out of the six characters, but still... how would they save the world together?

I am already counting down to October 25th - as long as UPS decides to actually leave the parcels at my door - as two of my go-to authors have new books coming out. Kristin Higgins latest, and Tamora Pierce's final book in Beka Cooper's trilogy. The next nine days will find me re-reading the other two books in that trilogy to further tighten my eagerness to read Beka's book. And I've heard tell that Kristin Higgins may actually be adding the hero's POV to this book. But don't quote me on that. Maybe that was for the next book and not this one. All I can say is, I am going to be very tired come Wednesday the 26th...

A woman sitting beside me at a Starbucks said in sympathy to me one afternoon as I closed my book, obviously having finished it, what will you do now? I smiled at her, and calmly pulled the next book in the series from the depths of my bag. I'd come prepared. Even if I didn't open the new book immediately, it was there, ready to soothe my nerves and lead me into the next adventure.

The Art of the Prologue & Edgar Allan Poe

2011-10-09T20:49:00.005-04:00

When it comes to Page One of your glorious work-in-progress, some agents, as well as some editors, often say skip the prologue. Their reasons are many—and they’re right. Regardless of genre, our prologues may be:

1) backstory that may or may not be interesting, but has nothing to do with what’s happening at the start of the novel.
2) sentence upon sentence that delays the incident which gets the ball rolling for our characters.
3) a passage that kicks off the story just right, but should really be labeled Chapter One.

So how does a writer know if her prologue really ought to be a prologue? Here’s my rule of thumb: If the passage passes my Edgar Allan Poe Test, it’s a prologue.

You can put your writing to the Edgar Allan Poe Test, too. If you haven’t read the works of Edgar Allan Poe, all I can say is whoa, Nelly! Run right out and get yourself a copy of his Selected Tales. Next, gobble up Poe’s classic short story, “The Purloined Letter.” Done? Good!

Now, let’s consider “The Purloined Letter.” Poe’s revolutionary detective, Auguste Dupin, must recover a letter a very nasty man has stolen. Smart guy that the nasty man is, he’s hidden the letter so well, the police aren’t able to find it. But Dupin does. He visits the man, hangs out awhile in the guy’s living room. He takes note of everything in the room, including the cheap, utilitarian letter rack full of notes, and cards, and envelopes. And wouldn’t you know it? That’s where the nasty man has hidden the purloined letter—right there in the letter rack—in plain sight.

To me, a good prologue is like the concept behind Poe’s “The Purloined Letter.” It subtly reveals to the reader the answer to your mystery, the key to your love story, the tool needed for the quest, or in other words, the significant detail that will be important to the climax of your work. If this passage doesn’t do this, if it details backstory, or if it delays the inciting action or event, it needs to be outta there. If it kicks off your story but has no bearing on the climax of your story, it’s really Chapter One so label it accordingly.

Now, it’s your turn to give the Rockville 8 your take on prologues. Do you write them? Do you read them? What do you think a good prologue should do?

The Idea Fairy

2011-10-02T20:00:00.002-04:00

Dear readers, the Rockville 8 are honored to introduce debut author Jane Sevier. Jane's first book, the award-winning novel, Fortune's Fool is available now and she's here to tell us about The Idea Fairy.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Where do you get your ideas?” It’s a perpetual question writers are asked, and they smile over it. The Idea Fairy brings them, of course.

If you really think about it, though, that’s not such an outlandish question. It relates to the nature of creativity and how the mind works, which fascinate me. If I ever go back to school, I’d like to study creativity scientifically.

But back to ideas. Sure, people have them all the time. Lots of them are crazy or boring or too hard to carry off. But every now and then, you get a good one. But how do you turn it into a story that people want to read and will connect to?

Take this blog, for example. When the lovely Rockville 8 invited me to join them today, I was thrilled. Then it occurred to me that I needed an idea to blog about that was more than just nattering on about my book, and the terror set in. Fortunately, I had an idea about where to get ideas.

Have you ever tried a logline generator? Loglines are those 25-word-or-less descriptions screenwriters use to pitch their movies. Novelists call them elevator pitches. Here’s mine for Fortune’s Fool: When her husband dies and leaves her penniless, a 1930s Memphis socialite becomes a fortuneteller, only to discover she has the true sight.

Let’s say you decide to write a novel, but you really and truly don’t think you have any ideas. Total. Idea. Block. Never fear! You simply Google “logline generator,” and come up with a site called—what else?—Random Logline Generator! I’ll give it a whirl. On my first try, I get, “A mechanical noodlemaker doesn't get along with the ex-husband of a thief.” I don’t know about y’all, but I find that one a little hard to work with.

I hit the “Generate Random Logline” button again and end up with, “An adolescent interior decorator, a drug addict, and a dyslexic outlaw cook dinner in a whorehouse.” The adolescent interior decorator and the dyslexic outlaw cook are promising, but I don’t want to write about drug addicts.

I’ll give it one more spin. “A car salesman and a team of yodeling criminals find a lost gorilla.” Now, that’s what I’m talking about. Who can resist a good car salesman story? And I can think of all kinds of scenarios with yodeling criminals and gorillas. What if the gorilla could also yodel?

The point is not that a logline generator will give you a story you actually want to tell, although it might. But it will make you think about possibilities, and that’s where good ideas come from. If I’m having a slow writing morning, I sometimes go to the Random Logline Generator! to get my brain cooking. The hard part is stopping after 2 or 3 or 70—the silly thing is highly entertaining.

So, where did the idea for Fortune’s Fool come from? I was in the Westlake Barnes and Noble in Austin, Texas, where three mystery writers were doing a reading. Louisiana author Deborah LeBlanc was a few paragraphs into a scene at a voodoo ceremony—alas, I can’t remember which book—when I thought, “What would it be like to discover that you have the true sight?” I dug out the little notebook I carry for writing down ideas and scribbled, “Woman who finds herself down and out and decides to become a psychic, only to discover that she has ‘the sight.’ Uses her grandmother’s tarot deck. Or the mojo sack that brought her parents together. Grandmother met grandfather playing piano in Mineral Wells.”

You see where I really got my logline. Except the piano playing in Mineral Wells, all of these elements ended up in the book. Members of my extended family will recognize the bit about the mojo sack. Perhaps because I am so Southern and know hundreds of my cousins of all degrees, most of whom are natural storytellers, lots of family lore figures in what I write.

Then, of course, I had to decide where to set Fortune’s Fool. I wanted to tell a Southern story and didn’t want to make it modern-day. Because it has always had a fascinating cultural history, I have lots of family there, and I like to eat ribs at the Rendezvous, I chose Memphis. I love the ’30s and ’40s with those wonderful movies and style. A little research told me that in the 1930s, Memphis was the murder capital of the United States, and, voilà. I had my setting.

So you see, Virginia, there really is an Idea Fairy. You just have to trust her to find you.

To find out more about Nell Marchand and the cast of characters who will populate the Psychic Socialite series, visit me at www.janesevier.com.

Real Dukes

2011-09-25T17:08:00.014-04:00

This week the Rockville 8 is thrilled to host historical romance author Lavinia Kent! She’s here to share her thoughts on Dukes.

Which may have led her to wonder, “What woman would refuse a Duke’s kiss?”

(Or maybe that’s just what we were wondering, after we saw the cover of her new book, What a Duke Wants . . .)

One lucky commenter will win a “Go to Bed with a Duke Tonight!” t-shirt.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I originally planned to write about muses versus hard work and how great it is to have both, but if you only have one, choose hard work. I’ve written ten blogs in the past two weeks, and I can promise you that my muse would have been out shopping for fall boots after the first two. She is not the most patient of beings.

But she did pull through on this one.

I was sitting here, thinking of her, and whether I really needed to add green to my wardrobe (clearly I should have put down the Vogue magazine a little earlier), when my mind started wandering to dukes. I always have my current cover up as a screen saver on my computer, and if you had my duke staring at you, you’d spend some time staring back.

What a Duke Wants is my first published “duke book,” and I’ve been amazed at just how enthusiastic readers have been. I’d always heard that readers liked dukes, but I still wasn’t prepared for the response.

First, I should confess that I love a good duke book – they are probably my favorites. I know that when I advise friends on what romances to read, I’m always a little embarrassed by how many of the have “Duke” in the title. (Julia Quinn’s The Duke and I, Galen Foley’s The Duke, and of course Mary Balogh’s Slightly Dangerous – which may not have a duke in the title, but is certainly a perfect duke book.)

I’d always been a little bit hesitant to write one myself, because once you’ve written a duke book, where do you go? And then there’s this picture, “Ten Dukes-A-Dining.”

A friend sent it to me a while ago and I was forced to confront the reality of dukes as they are (completely not thinking about the new Duke of Cambridge, or I’ll start thinking about his wife and my new obsession with nude pumps). Now, there are several men pictured here who are quite distinguished and may once have been dashing and handsome. Number Seven, the Duke of Argyll, actually plays elephant polo and I can almost imagine him wading through the pages of one of my books. But I must face the fact that this picture does not have one thinking of the seven or so six-foot-two, dark-haired, flashing-eyed dukes who wander through What a Duke Wants and The Real Duchesses of London – and I am sure that I have another couple just waiting to find their way onto my pages. And I am not even going to consider how many dashing dukes we’d have if we were to put all the romance dukes together in a room, a building, a park, a town . . .

And does it matter? That is my ultimate question.

I love my duke, Mark Smythe, Duke of Strattington. He is tall and handsome and, although he has a learning curve, in the end he knows just how to win Isabella, his heroine – and hopefully the reader, too. I am more than willing to follow him through cases of mistaken identity, a little blackmail and scandal, an accusation of murder – and more than a few steamy encounters. I don’t care that he might not have a counterpart in the real world.

All historical writers have their story of being called out on some fact they got wrong, but I’ve never heard anyone complain because there are just too many dukes in that book.

What do you think? Where do you want fact and reality in your romances, and where do you want delicious fantasy?

Let me know, and I’ll send one lucky commenter a signed copy of What a Duke Wants and a “Go to bed with a Duke tonight!” t-shirt. (And – with due respect to his Grace - I promise it won’t feature number nine, the Duke of St Albans.)

Thank you so much for having me at the Rockville Eight. I’ve always wanted to come and visit.

Please visit me at my website for an excerpt from What a Duke Wants: http://www.laviniakent.com/excerpt_duke.html

For more information on Ten Dukes A’Dining: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1218628/Ten-dukes-dining-Gathered-lunch-unique-picture-grandees-2bn-340-000-acres-them.html

Reclaiming Your Mojo

2011-09-18T13:04:00.005-04:00

mojo, a slang word for self-confidence, self-esteem, or sex appeal

The last two months, I’ve felt like something’s missing and I couldn’t figure out what I’d misplaced. Life is good. Nothing had really changed all that much. My family is happy and healthy. We’re on track. I’m working hard and pursuing my writing goals while I provide for my family. Everything important is still firmly in place. Purpose, check. Goals, a little dinged, but check. Dreams, check. All still right where I’d left them. So what’s making me crazy? Has me walking in circles questioning myself and wondering what’s the point of it all?

Then it hit me. I’d lost my mojo. No, not my sex appeal. My self-confidence. How? I’ve finished four manuscripts. Won writing awards. I earned an MFA in writing. Editors and agents have requested each of my finished manuscripts. For an unpubbed writer, I’ve found my share of successes along the way. Not the pen ultimate success--publication--but getting closer. So what’s suddenly robbed me of my mojo?

I’ve heard it countless times. Creative types are often harangued by self-doubt. For some, this self-doubt can be debilitating. True. I’ve always struggled with self-doubt, but until recently, I’ve been able to push through it to achieve my goals because I’m not just a right-brained thinker, I’m a left-brained one, too. Creative and analytical. Many writers are both.

So as any good scholar and writer would do, I went searching for answers at the book store. I came across a new book by Russ Harris called The Confidence Gap: A Guide to Overcoming Fear and Self-Doubt. The book has helped me identify that I’ve allowed my feelings to circumnavigate my actions. I’d begun to believe the fears and self-recriminations I throw at myself every day. Harris’s book has done a lot to help me reclaim my mojo and put me back on the path to achieving my goals.

With Harris’s help, I’ve come to realize fear is normal. Confidence is all about trusting yourself to take action. Practice makes perfect. Authentic confidence comes from mastery of a skill. If you commit to action, you won’t languish in fear. You can’t wait for the feeling of confidence to come before you act. By facing your fears and taking action, you can transform your relationship with fear and use it as a performance tool. If you identify negative thoughts as unhelpful, you can begin the process of neutralizing them. Acceptance of yourself is paramount. Knowing what matters most to you and what you value gives you powerful choices. Fully engage in life; live in the moment and enjoy the journey.

The book is definitely worth the price of admission.

DIRECT QUOTES, For Your Illumination

Here are a few nuggets from The Confidence Gap that have helped me regain my focus:

“We may be weeks, months, or years from completing our goals, but we can live by our values every step of the way, and find ongoing fulfillment in doing so” (pp 17).

Fear is normal. “[T]he more there is at stake, the more we tend to have feelings of fear and anxiety, and thoughts about what might possibly go wrong” (p. 21).

Confidence is trusting yourself to take action, no matter how afraid you are (p. 23).

“If we want to do anything with confidence--speak, paint, make love, play tennis, or socialize--then we have to do the work. We have to practice the necessary skills over and over, until they come naturally. If we don’t have adequate skills to do the things we want to do, we can’t expect to feel confident. And if we don’t continually practice these skills, they either get rusty or unreliable or they never reach a state where we can fluidly and naturally rely on them. Each time you practice these skills, it is an action of confidence: an act of relying on yourself” (p 25).

Five reasons people lack self-confidence: excessive expectations, harsh self-judgment, preoccupation with fear, lack of experience, lack of skill (p 26).

The confidence cycle: practice the skills, apply them effectively, assess the results, modify as needed (p. 29).

“Only through committed action--stepping out of our comfort zones and doing what truly matters deep in our hearts--will we experience authentic confidence” (p 32).

If you hold onto the mantra that you must feel confident before you do what matters most to you, then “you’ll spend a lot of time, effort, and energy trying to control your feelings” (p 34).

Fear results from the primitive “fight or flight” instinct. “[F]ear is a powerful fuel. Once we know how to handle it, we can use it to our advantage; we can harness its energy to help us get where we want to go. But while we’re looking at fear as something bad, we’ll waste a lot of precious energy trying to avoid or get rid of it” (p 38).

Hugh Jackman says: “I’ve always felt if you back down from fear, the ghost of that fear never goes away. It diminishes people. So I’ve always said yes to the thing I’m most scared about” (p 42).

“[T]here’s no way to expand your comfort zone without stepping out of it--and the moment you take that step, fear is going to show up” (p 44).

“It’s not fear that holds people back--it is their attitude toward it that keeps them stuck” (p 45).

“Genuine confidence is not the absence of fear; it is a transformed relationship with fear” (p 46).

“[Y]our mind has a tendency to be negative. . . . The human mind is quick to judge, criticize, compare, point out what’s not good enough, and tell us what needs to be improved” (p 51). This comes from a primitive survival instinct.

“[W]hen we fuse with our thoughts, they have a huge impact on and influence over us. But when we defuse . . . our thoughts--when we separate from them and realize that they are nothing more nor less than words and pictures--then they have little or no effect on us (even if they happen to be true)” (p 60).

“Recognizing a thought or belief as unhelpful often helps to reduce its influence over us; it makes us less likely to act on it. . . . [T]he question we’re interested in is simply this: ‘If I let this thought dictate my actions, will it help me to lead the life I want?’” (p 70).

“[I]n a state of defusion, our thoughts are nothing more nor less than words. . . . Once we can defuse from our thoughts--that is separate from them and see them for what they are--we have many more options in life. No longer are we at the mercy of our minds, pushed around by ingrained patterns of unhelpful automatic thinking. Instead we can choose to pursue what truly matters to us, even when our minds make it hard with all that reason-giving” ( p 74).

“The purpose of defusion is to be present and take effective action” (76).

Defusion calls for you to: “notice it, name it, neutralize it” (p 82).

“Self-acceptance, self-awareness, and self-motivation are all far more important than self-esteem” (p 92).

“[J]udging ourselves does not help us in any way; it does not work to make our life richer and fuller” ( p 84).

“What matters most in life is what you do, what you stand for, the way you behave. This is far more important than the stories you believe about yourself” (p 95).

“If we want to get the most out of life, we need to be fully present: aware, attentive, and engaged in what is happening. This involves a mindfulness skill ‘engagement’: connecting with the world through noticing what we can see, hear, touch, taste, and smell” (p 100).

“If you’re caught up in your thoughts, you won’t find it a satisfying experience--especially if your mind is giving a running commentary on how you’re performing. If you want to enjoy the experience, you need to be engaged in what you’re doing” (p 101).

“When we say that someone looks confident, we have no idea what they are thinking or feeling. But we can observe what they are doing, how they are behaving. And one thing you’ll always notice about confident people: they are very engaged in whatever they are doing” (p 102).

Thank you, Flight 93

2011-09-11T21:47:00.004-04:00

Somehow writing about writing on September 11 seems inappropriate. Today, I'm just going to write.

I almost didn't go to work that day. My husband was home with our infant and I wanted to stay with them. But I ignored that feeling and went to work anyway. Trying to cheer me up, he promised to bring the baby and meet me for lunch near my job in Washington, D.C.

As soon as I arrived at work, smoke started to billow up from the street to my second story window, obscuring the view to the Capitol Building. A car was on fire below my window. I told a coworker I had a creepy feeling something awful was going to happen.

When we found out that there had been an accident at one of the Twin Towers, we huddled around a black and white TV. I glanced out the window and saw a nearby federal building that had a daycare on the first floor. Suddenly, all of the workers were running out with the children. Those too small to walk were being wheeled out, crib and all. That's when I started to get scared.

"What do they know that I don't?" I thought.

While watching the North Tower burn, a second plane hit the South Tower. We realized it was no accident. Soon afterward, we felt our building shake. Across the river, a third plane had struck the Pentagon.

I tried to call my husband at least 50 times, to tell him to stay home--from my cell and desk phone. I was dialing one while listening to the other. I couldn't do or think about another thing until I reached him. All of the lines were jammed with everyone trying to call their loved ones.

After speaking to my husband, I withdrew $100 from the ATM, thinking I would catch a cab to take me as far away as it could. I fled out of the building with thousands of others. My building is situated between the Washington Monument and the Capitol Building. I could see them both from where I stood. The White House is nearby. A deaf coworker, who lived close my home, was with me.

No cab would pick us up. Cabbies circled but refused to take any passengers. One even sped away when I put my hand on the door handle and I was forced to jump back or be dragged under it.

We were standing in front of the gates to the Smithsonian Castle. They slammed and locked the gate on us. The guards actually hit us with the gate when they locked it into place. The roads were jammed with cars. The subway workers told people to get off the trains and out of the stations. They closed and locked the station gates to the subway as well.

The police were speeding up and down the road, back and forth, with no seeming destination. The smell of rubber burning hung in the air and burned the back of my throat. I heard an engine rev and looked up to see a police car on the sidewalk barreling toward us. I grabbed my coworker, who couldn't hear it, and yanked her back. The car brushed our bodies as it drove by on the sidewalk. People were screaming and jumping out of the way to avoid him.

It looked like the set of a disaster movie. Everyone was running in different directions. People were yelling and screaming, crying and panicking. A woman, on a business trip from Boston, who'd been dumped out of the subway asked me how to get to Crystal City, Virginia. I told her she'd have to go over the Potomac on the 14th Street Bridge. Later, I found out armed military were standing on each of the bridges in the area, not letting anyone cross.

The worst moment occurred when a woman ran up and screamed, to no one in particular, that another plane was headed toward Washington--to where we were standing. I grabbed her arm and pulled her around to face me.

"What did you say?" I asked.

She repeated the CNN story, saying that the plane was headed our way. My friend grabbed my other arm and started pulling at it, wanting me to translate what was being said.

I couldn't think in English, let alone American Sign Language.

My heart did one tha-thrum in my ears before the the world ground to a halt, like a giant cog slowing down degree by agonizing degree. I was simultaneously icy and calm. Everything fell away, even my friend who was still tugging at my arm. I thought of my new baby, of how I would become a memory Daddy tried to keep alive. I was glad for the fact that I had just upped my life insurance. I thought about my loved ones. I forgot about all the stupid, petty problems that I was fretting about. I thought about seeing my beloved grandmother who had died ten years earlier.

Facing a possible death, I felt more alive than I ever had. Life boiled down to a few, select things. The good ones.

Last night, I was telling my child I had taken on another volunteer position, one that would be challenging.

"You always step in there," she said. "You've been on the school board. You've been the room mother. You've written the newsletter. You've done other stuff, too. You're not afraid. You just do it. You're my hero."

The kind of moment every parent cherishes. The kind of moment those who lost their lives on September 11 aren't here for. The kind of moment the ones they left behind can't have with them.

If not for the people on United Flight 93, I might not have been here for that moment.

I thank every single person on that flight. Because of their bravery and selflessness, countless lives were saved. They are the true heroes. I'm just fumbling along, doing the best I can with the life I've been given.

If you would like to share your thoughts and recollections with us, I would love to hear them. Thank you for listening to mine.

Pioneer, Go Home!

2011-09-05T00:03:00.000-04:00

I grew up in a very rural area. Not the ruralest of ruralest. But pretty fricking rural. Rural enough that we had an outreach library service. There was a different term for it, I think, but that escapes me now. What it meant, though, was that we were able to check out books through the mail. Return them by mail, and check out more. It was free and wonderful (Books! And mail!) but also s-l-o-w.

In addition to using the outreach library, my parents subscribed to Reader's Digest Condensed books. Which meant that, several times a year, we got a book in the mail. And that book was pot luck. You never knew what you were going to get, and I loved it! As soon as I could get my hands on the new volume (my parents were both avid readers), I would pick and choose, reading the stories I thought most likely to please. Going either by title or description or first few lines. In the end, I read all of them of course, but never in order.

Pioneer, Go Home! by Richard Powell, though, was in the winter volume of 1960, so I hadn't even been born when it came to the house. I must have come across it when I was combing the shelves, looking for that reading fix. I can't remember how old I was when I read it. I just remember laughing and laughing and loving it. But I didn't hold on to it. My parents moved several times after I graduated and over the years, the Reader's Digest books disappeared. Later, when my own kids were old enough that I thought they might have appreciated that book, I couldn't remember what it was called or who wrote it and without that information, I couldn't figure out how to find it.

Until recently.

I've been in a slump, as a writer and as a reader. I won't bore you with the details, I'll just say that I was trying to find the magic again. I NEEDED to find the magic again. And that got me thinking about the books that turned me into a writer. You know, like you do. And that got me thinking about that one book, that one I read when I was a kid, about the crazy family who built a home on a highway median in a swamp, and the social worker who went in to save them. It was romantic and funny and it was in Reader's Digest and I couldn't remember that darn title, but I was desperate and now we have the internets! Hurray! Of course, even with the magic of the internets, it took some digging, but in the end, I figured out that the book I was looking for was "Pioneer, Go Home!" by Richard Powell and I ordered a copy of it.

AKA, The Magic

I wanted to read the real book this time, not just the condensed version, so I ordered the paperback. It arrived a couple of weeks ago and it is a thing of beauty! It arrived during a family visit, though, so I set it aside and didn't pick it up until this afternoon. (It's so old, it doesn't even have a barcode on the back. Can you imagine?)

This afternoon I sat down and opened it up to the first page and read this:

None of this would have happened if Pop had minded what the sign told him. The sign was on a barrier across a new road that angled off the one we was driving on, and it said, "Positively Closed to The Public." But after all his years of being on relief, or getting Unemployment Compensation and Aid to Dependent Children and things like that, Pop didn't think of himself as The Public. He figured he was just about part of the government on account of he worked with it so close. The government helped Pop, and Pop done his best to keep the government busy and happy . . .

And there it was. The Magic.

I haven't read very much of it. There were other things to do. My spouse-like-boyfriend and I ordered sushi for dinner, and then we had to watch True Blood. And then my iPhone popped up with a reminder that it was my turn to blog for the Rockville8.

Never in my wildest dreams could that child I was--that child checking the mailbox every day on Rt 41 in Upper Michigan--have imagined something like an iPhone. Let alone imagine being nagged by one . . .

Anyway. I'll be savoring my little trip down memory lane when I finally crawl into bed tonight, and then some more tomorrow afternoon, after my writing date with an R8 pal. And slowly, but surely, I'm getting back into the writing.

Or more accurately, the writing is getting back into me.

How to Make Sure They ALL Like It Hot by Grace Burrowes

2011-08-29T09:40:00.000-04:00

The Rockville 8 welcomes steller historical author Grace Burrowes! She shares some excellent confidence-building advice on how to approach writing your loves scenes and make them memorable time after time. One lucky commenter will receive an advanced reading copy of her November release, "The Virtuoso, " book three in The Duke's Obsession trilogy!

Let me start by saying that I write traditional historical romances—not erotica, not romantica—so my approach to intimate scenes is predicated on certain assumptions. First my characters are going to grow as people from the beginning to the end of the book, and second, their intimate encounters will take place in the context of a mutually caring relationship.

The third assumption I make about the steamy scenes is that they are going to be some of the toughest for me to write. Now why is that?

Plenty of reasons. For starters, readers may not have ever driven a race car, they might not have trekked in the Mojave Dessert (or whatever your protagonists are up to), but erotic intimacy is a fairly universal adult experience. Readers will catch us if we stumble logistically in these scenes.

Then too, as authors, we’re going to have to write several steamy scenes per book, book after book. Considering that I’m on the seventh book in an eight-sibling series, the twentieth hot scene to flow from my pen is a tad more challenging to make novel and riveting than the first three were. Consider too, that my readers have probably buzzed through at least a thousand hot scenes before opening my book, and you begin to see the magnitude of the problem.

But before you decide writing thrillers is your true calling, here are a few tricks to tuck under your romance writing pillow.

First, make SURE your intimate scenes advance plot or character, and preferably both. There has to be something admitted between the characters, a purloined letter spied across the room, a little bruise revealed, that makes the scene valuable to the dramatic or character arcs. If you can advance both, then chances are your scene will be “uncuttable” and that’s what you want.

Second, do not focus on the usual sequence of actions in an erotic encounter. Yes, of course, you will describe foreplay, coitus and afterglow, (or the absence of same), but these are the scenes where using the senses and dribbling in the telling details really come into play. Except, don’t dwell on the erotic details. If she’s staring at the canopy, make her wonder why all the Cupids are boys, and what they’re doing grinning like idiots when there are no girl Cupids. You will of course add in that hero’s beard stubble scratches her neck, but the Cupid issue is unexpected and will pull the reader into your heroine’s heart, not just her bed.

Strut your ability to use show writing rather than tell. Don’t tell us his iron self-discipline is slipping. Have him, for once in his miserable life, toss his boots half way across the room and leave his cravat draped willy nilly over the escritoire. His waistcoat goes on the floor, and then—while she watches, fascinated—his shirt and breeches are flung onto two different chairs.

Show, show, show.

And finally, do not focus on desire, arousal and the predictable biological agenda at the expense of the emotional landscape unique to your characters. This is the secret handshake, friends. It isn’t just the sensation of penetration that can make your scene sing, it’s also the impatience that crashes through her when he’s trying to be so dratted considerate. It’s the last minute insecurity she feels because the portrait hanging across the room confirms that his first wife was beautiful. It’s the cat sitting on the nightstand, whose inscrutable gaze accuses the hero of taking advantage of a lonely woman.

Move your camera around to the non-erotic details, make your characters ‘fess up to what feelings lurk under their desire, and make the scene advance plot and character arcs. Tough to do, but pull it off and your steamy scenes will turn into some of your best writing.

I heard a rumor that the Earl of Westhaven, Lord Valentine Windham, the Earl of Rosecroft and perhaps even their respective ladies will be joining us for the comment portion of the blog… assuming they can take their eyes off each other long enough to read our questions and comments.

Writing Away

2011-08-22T10:58:00.000-04:00

I wonder if you are like me. As a child, I believed it was my shoes that would make me run fast. Only I didn’t have those shoes. So I didn’t run fast. If I just had the right work out outfit, I’d be at the gym everyday. Or at the very least, jogging. Of course that called for the correct sports bra (one that gave support but wouldn’t garrote me when I tried to take it on or off). With writing (or being creative in any way) it was work space. If only I had a desk. If only my desk were cleared off. If only I had the right jar/mug/vintage planter to hold my pencils and pens. And finally, if only I had the right computer. Fast enough, comfortable enough, new enough, with extended battery life. Oh, the list goes on.

And my critique partners would be the first to remind me that I often write long hand first. Barefoot. On the couch.

But I have discovered something. It is another secret that I am telling from the R8 blog.

Even in the perfect bra, at a hot springs spa, with a fox in a box, on a train in the rain, with my new MacBook Air, I still sit and stare at a blank page. Because the damn words won’t write themselves.

I know, I know. When you tune into Marjanna day at the R8, you often read about how writing is hard work and how I am forever surprized by that. Completely. I mean, I am totally and completely convinced that there are words out there, floating around, like the flotsam the Little Prince fell through on his way to earth, just waiting to be plucked out and strung together into sentences and paragraphs and etc. I’ve read things that are meant to be written. I’ve talked about this before, whether it is Stevie Smith or JD Salinger or Loretta Chase. They used the words as they are meant to be used.

And of course, I think in my head (as opposed to thinking in your head that would seem to imply), it must have been effortless for them. It must have been a noble moment of yes. And like Hemingway who stood at his desk to write, they must have had their perfect spot to write. Maybe like one of Wilbur Robinson’s relatives, they had on their Brain Augmenter to help them Think Deep Thoughts.

(Or maybe they just sat down and wrote, either plotting it out ahead of time or not. It doesn’t matter. Really, when you plot doesn’t matter. Having a plot is what matters. Unless you write Post Modern novels; then you might as well not even bind the pages but shuffle them about every morning and read a new book every day.)

So, getting back to me. Because I don’t write Post Modern anything, I was surprized to come up to Berkeley Springs, open up my new MacBook Air, and discover that Mac does NOT have an app for Writing Fairies. Quelle surprise! You can imagine my surprise because I just exclaimed in French, what a surprise! (I still want to put a z in that word.) Anyhoo, much to my shock, I found that even on a MacBook Air, I am the one expected to write my stories. At least on my MacBook Air. I don’t think others would truly expect me to write my stories on their MacBook Airs. Quelle surprise to them to!

So, the interesting thing is, getting away, with my MBA, with a few authors I don’t generally spend time away writing with, with very loud cicadas and the occasional squirrel, I actually did write. Not long hand, but barefoot and on my Mac.

Now, why why why couldn’t I do this in my own flat, on my own couch, with my own music playing in the background instead of the cicadas? Why do I have to join with other writers in a cabin in the woods of West Virginia in order to get my novella started?

Because being with other writers, motivated writers, writers with goals, with revision deadlines, makes me sit down and write. There is an energy that says, write. Not watch tv. Not read. And only take a very short nap. Twice. I know my writing ethic is not what it could be. But I also know I want to write. Somewhere, the twain must meet, or I may as well have bought this flipping expensive computer to download other people’s ebooks, stream television, and order my next sports bra to join the others in a drawer.

Ch-Ch-Changes

2011-08-15T07:41:00.006-04:00

Each year I celebrate my birthday with 5-6 folks who share the same happy date. Often we exchange small gifts. Last year, a former coworker made cell phone bling and gave us the opportunity to choose among several options. Each had a silver bead with a power word on it. I snagged the one that read “change,” thinking to use it as a touchstone for meditation, for acceptance of that fact that, as Patty Loveless sings in that old song, "Life's about changing, nothing ever stays the same."

I’m not comfortable with change as a general rule. I don’t like surprises, curveballs or things I can’t anticipate. But I knew last year that I’d be enduring a gauntlet of changes in 2011 and I thought: Bring it on. I know you’re coming for me. I’ll be ready.

Some things you are never ready for.

I wasn’t ready for my grandfather to die this spring, even though I knew the end was near. And this summer, I wasn’t ready for two critique partners to choose new paths that lead away from our little band of writers. In a few months’ time, I doubt I’ll truly be ready to say good-bye to my boss of seven years.

Change. It’s hard, dammit.

I think my favorite protagonists would hold a similar opinion. For all the sh** we writers put those poor folks through, it’s a wonder they’re willing to show up on the page to find out what we have in store for them next. Life is swell then, bam, they stumble across an unexpected betrothal, get caught up in the search for a murderer, or learn that humans aren’t the only species at the top of the food chain. Or they are forced to come to grips with all three changes to life-as-they-knew-it at once. But show up they do and watching how they triumph, sink, fight and rise again not only keeps me reading, it keeps me writing.

In 1930s Hollywood W.S. “Woody” Van Dyke (director of The Thin Man among other great films), used to push people into his pool during parties he hosted. How his guests responded to this unexpected turn of events helped him figure out whom he wanted to work with in his next films (thankfully for all of us, Myrna Loy passed the splash test with flying, if drenched, colors).

It got me wondering. My hero, Joe, would likely stay in the pool, naked, the rest of the night. Especially if he could entice his mate, Della, to join him. Della would probably fail the test (she likes change just about as much as I do. Go figure.). She might even try to arrest Mr. Van Dyke for frivolous frivolity. That is, if she were still a cop. And if she could find such a statute on the books. I’d like to think my little touchstone has prepared me so I could pass the pool plunge test like Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed in It's a Wonderful Life.

But it probably hasn’t.

How about you and your characters? How would your favorite hero/ine take to getting pushed into Van Dyke’s pool? How would you?

The Bright Black Moment

2011-08-07T14:57:00.003-04:00

I confess. Until I started hanging out in writerly circles, I’d never heard the term Black Moment. Naturally, like every kid who’s been to junior high, I’d been taught the major features of the Western novel. These features are (Say it with me, class.) introduction, exposition, climax, denouement or falling action, and conclusion. But Mrs. Daugherty never said anything about a Black Moment and I imagine your seventh grade English teacher didn’t either.

So what the heck is the Black Moment? How does it fit into that spectrum, and where? That’s a question I’ve heard again and again in writers’ workshops and conferences, and seen in articles and blogs. In her workshop, The One Page Plot: an At-a-Glance Method for Building Story, author Christie Ridgway tackles the Black Moment, saying it’s when the opposite of the story goal happens. Renowned Hollywood script doctor and lecturer Michael Hauge teaches it’s the point in the story when all is lost. That’s all as in, everything the protagonist hoped to gain or achieve.

Of course, as readers and as writers, we want more than just a Black Moment that meets these minimum requirements. We want a good one. A real humdinger. So what’s a good Black Moment?

R8er and critique partner extraordinaire, Candy Lyons, recently told me she knows she’s got the Black Moment right when it makes her cry. That’s when I realized what I want in a good Black Moment. I want to cheer.

When I’ve reached the point in the story where everything is stripped from the protagonist, I want to bite back tears, ball my fists and, through gritted teeth, cheer that hero or heroine on, saying, “Come on! Come on! I know you can do it!”

As it turns out, that desire may be hard-wired in many readers as well as writers—particularly those who love mysteries, thrillers, and suspense of all kinds. Furthermore, it may be connected to the reader/writer’s desire to see justice in the world. Theoretically, it doesn’t matter if that justice is meted out by nature (as in Tony Hillerman’s Coyote Waits); chance, fate, or Karma (like in Michael Dibdin’s Ratking); or societal authorities (such as judges and jurors and the likes of Perry Mason and Ben Matlock). Some readers and writers just have to have in their reading experience. The theory snagged my attention at the first writers’ conference I ever attended, and though it’s one of many I’ve studied, I think there’s something to it.

What do you think? When all is lost for that poor protagonist, do you cry, cheer, sigh, or dance? It's your turn to confess. What makes a bright Black Moment?

Romance Novels and Emotional Intelligence

2011-07-24T12:00:00.022-04:00

"Anyone can become angry--that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way--that is not easy." Aristotle, The Nichomachean Ethics

Ever been on a bender where nothing else but the moment mattered? Where you wake up dehydrated, eyes glued together, and feeling older than dirt? I think we’ve all been there a time or two in our lives.

I’ve been on a bender. The best kind of bender possible--a reading bender. I’ve used every moment of my spare time over the last two weeks to read. Even working full-time, I can read a novel a day. Yes, so I’ve blown through a lot of contemporary romance titles over the past fourteen days. And it’s been pure bliss. I highly recommend it.

I’ve visited my favorite authors with new titles on the shelves, a few old faithful books I had to read again, and authors new to me suggested by friends. And out of fourteen choices, fourteen books--I only had one novel I put down and wouldn’t finish. Life is short. And when you’re on a purpose-driven bender to reconnect with the reason for writing the genre you’ve chosen, you can’t afford to “tolerate” a book or a character who just isn’t doing it for you, who doesn’t ring true.

I discovered three things during this reading binge. One: I love to read. I’ve always known this--since I was a teenager. But I remembered. Remembering what you love is important, at any age. Two: I love to read romance novels. Three: The best romance novels take hold of me and keep me in a vice grip until that final page because the author possesses emotional intelligence.

She gets the emotions right between her characters and she opens up a whole world where I, as the reader, can understand this fictional world, and, by extension, my own world and experience, because of what I learn through the emotional journey she’s taken me on. For an hour or a day, I’m a stranger in a new land learning a whole myriad of truths about what it means to be human.

It doesn’t matter how quirky the plot. Or if the community is composed of a small harbor town in Washington (Shilvas), a hockey team in Seattle (Gibson), a bar in Vegas (Stevens), a hero and heroine on a road trip from Montana to New York (Higgins), or a tornado-ravaged reclaimed village in the mountains of Georgia (Bond). If the author gets the emotions right, I’ll follow.

Why? It’s all about the emotional journey for me. The best romance authors nail the emotional ups and downs of their characters and take me along for the ride. Daniel Goleman in his book, Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ, says that the goal of his book is to “serve as a guide in a journey through scientific insights into the emotions, a voyage aimed at bringing greater understanding to some of the most perplexing moments in our own lives and in the world around us. The journey’s end is to understand what it means--and how--to bring intelligence to emotion.”

This is exactly what romance writers do for their readers. So why is Goleman heralded as a pioneer in his field and romance novels are relegated to the status of “trash”? It’s the genre with the highest sales. Readers of romance buy the books by the armfuls--yes, I was just in Borders yesterday, I can attest to it. Romance is a genre of empowerment written by women for women. Is it emotional? You betcha. The best ones are. Because we’re not robots, we’re human. We possess hearts and out of our heart comes life and meaning. Romance is a genre that helps women take conflict and adversity and turn it into something beautiful, meaningful, and lasting. It helps them find a happy ending or a happy for now ending. And that’s not bad.

So what does a good romance novelist do? The author makes me believe in love, causes me to worry about a happy ending, reminds me what it’s like to fall in love, and how passion and lust can make you weak in the knees and a little crazy. But what she also teaches me is that men and women who are adrift in life can find their soul mate and their purpose. They’re not alone. They can make old wrongs right. They can make choices and decisions that lead them toward their destiny and make them a better person or they can turn away and stay where they are--mired in whatever emotional quicksand that has sucked them to a standstill in their own lives.

Romance novels give us the human condition--men who want to be better men for their women and women who will face whatever obstacle in their lives they must to win the man they love. These men and women sacrifice. Care about fulfilling their partner’s needs. Do the hard work of building relationships despite the influences and conflicts found in a sometimes ugly, mixed up world.

And who knows? If men and more women read romance novels, maybe the world would be a little better place. Who couldn’t love that? The best romance writers are masters of their craft who understand the human condition and the need for community and love and hope. They write about emotion with intelligence and truth. I’ll take that any day over the alternative.

Why do you love romance novels? And tell us about your latest reading bender. I'm always looking for another good book to read.

Here’s my bender reading list:
Baby, Come Home - Stephanie Bond
Baby, Drive South - Stephanie Bond
Man Hunting - Jennifer Crusie (a re-read)
True Love and Other Disasters - Rachel Gibson
Nothing But Trouble - Rachel Gibson
Any Man of Mine - Rachel Gibson
My One and Only - Kristan Higgins (a re-read)
Match Me If You Can - Susan Elizabeth Phillips (a re-read)
Simply Irrestible - Jill Shalvis
The Sweetest Thing - Jill Shalvis
Yours to Keep - Stacey Shannon
Ever Night - Gena Showalter (novella in On The Hunt)
Negligee Behavior - Shelli Stevens
The First Love Cookie Club - Lori Wilde

My Gift to You

2011-07-17T20:43:00.014-04:00

Today, 30 years ago, my husband and I met. The teenagers we were had no idea of the journey ahead.

We went out last night to a restaurant that we love and ate on their brick patio, complete with a small waterfall fountain. The food was good, the weather was spectacular and we never ran out of things to talk about. It was just one of those magical nights where everything comes together.

We reminisced about all that has happened since that day. Like the time we went out to eat and he ended up in the floor of his old car trying to scrape up enough change to pay the bill because he forgot his wallet. He didn't have enough and I ended up staying as collateral until he returned. The time we went camping in Virginia Beach in July and how God-awful hot it was. He told me on that trip that his car was so overloaded I couldn't buy anything unless I could eat it or wear it. When his father died of brain cancer when my husband was 25 years old, how we attended my graduate school graduation and his father's funeral in the same week. Our wedding day. How I laughed and cried when he got into graduate school. The joy on his face when he held our baby for the first time.

It feels like yesterday and a long time ago all in one package. Through it all, he has encouraged me to write every step of the way. He’s made sure I could go to writing club meetings, surprised me with writing classes, hurried home to stay with our child so I could meet with the Rockville 8, encouraged, pushed, prodded and told me I can do it. He has never disagreed to any time, any amount of money, any effort I’ve made toward a writing career.

So, this post is my gift to you for all that you have given me over the past 30 years. My love for you is immeasurable.

For every writer there is at least one unsung hero who’s had a part in their writing life. Tell me about the ones in yours.

Where Do You Get Your Ideas?

2011-07-10T16:23:00.006-04:00

Where do I get my ideas?

This question comes at a steady pace from all those interested in the writing process. The response, even if in a half-joking manner, wonders if my life is the source of the sixteen-plus books I've written. As time wears on, I answer less adamantly. There is no right or wrong answer.

However, my quick negative was there to dismiss any speculation that I was throwing my "love life" onto manuscript pages. That my strengths and weaknesses hidden between the lines of the pages were some sort of literary therapy for public consumption. That these books were my not-so secret fantasies for a variety of needs. Here's the thing, I'm not an exhibitionist.

Nine years later, I'm steadily working in my career, creating new stories, and conducting research on a long list of items that will hopefully be part of future books. In this reflective moment, I will attempt to answer the burning question.

The source of these ideas do come from me. No, it's not bits of pieces of my life being confessed. However, it's very much my impact on life and people around me.

I made the annual pilgrimage to Romance Writers of America's conference in New York. From my hotel room on the 43rd floor, I would look down on Times Square on various times of the day where the area constantly teamed with people, vehicles, even sounds and smells colliding, and shops and lights that rattled the senses awake.

After NYC, I headed to Barbados. From the airport security check process, to hoping that the plane's issues would be resolved for the flight, to a scalding cup of coffee being spilled down my leg -- these nuggets provided more than enough "meat" for a story.

Soon my vacation will end, my (writing, energy, passion) reservoir has been refilled and enriched for the long hours of writing ahead of me. My activities included tours, swimming, brisk morning walks, visiting friends, and enjoying fine dining. I even managed to get much needed reading in with two James Patterson's, one Lee Child, two Amanda Hocking's--all very enjoyable and a reminder of why I must keep doing what I do. I have chatted with locals, visitors from Ireland, other U.S. travelers sharing concerns on world topics, specific interests, personal accomplishments. As diverse as we all are, we have so many similarities that connect us.

Television, Internet, newspapers all kept me informed on the big news, entertainment craziness, and the latest social media must-see. I soaked everything in, freeing the imagination to play, throwing out what ifs for the creative process to do its thing.

So, where do I get my ideas?

From me and my world.

I'm in love with the moon!

2011-07-04T15:17:00.000-04:00

Much thanks to Candy for keeping us posted on what she was up to in NY. Internet was so tres espensive that I only accessed it on my phone and couldn't quite negotiate the mechanics on there for adding to the blog.

And now that I'm home, what can I say to add to the knowledge base?

I attended the literacy signing. And completely freaked OUT. So many people, so loud, and I couldn't figure out how to get those paper thingies with the pretty covers onto my Kindle where I could actually, you know, read them, so I ducked out as soon as I could.

Bright and early the next morning, the conference was off and running. I loved the opening session, as Candy said, very inspiring. I attended some great workshops. Hung out with some fabulous people. Ate at several fantastic restaurants. In short, I loved it all.

But more and more I find myself wondering where I fit in this game. As an unpublished writer I can't really say I'm in the industry. But having had an agent, and won some contests, etc., I can say that I'm in the game. Even if I'm not sure where.

Of course I'm not the only one looking for landmarks. Digital publishing, self publishing, the death of the bookstore, etc., are all changing the game and there was a general fog of panic hanging over the conference this year. As if everyone was just looking around and wondering: Where the Hell are we?!?

I saw a LOT of that. But I did not come across anyone who had The Answer. Which makes me feel a little better (I'm not the only one feeling lost) and a little sad.

After the conference officially ended, my roomie and I stayed on a day and saw some sights. One of the things we wanted to do, while staying right there on Broadway, was see a show. Thanks to our friend Eileen's wheeling and dealing, we got GREAT seats to the matinee performance of The Addams Family Musical. Which was everything you could want from a musical based on Charles Addams famous characters. It was whimsical and weird and laugh out loud funny while at the same time addressing some very real themes about growing older and letting our kids grow older, and falling in and out of love.

At one point, during dinner, Uncle Fester announces that he's fallen in love with the moon. And in the end, that pretty much sums up what I have decided to take away from RWA 2011. Don't be afraid go after what you love, no matter how impossible it seems.

Gone To The Big Apple

2011-06-26T12:00:00.004-04:00

Many of us from the Rockville8 are packing our bags for the RWA national conference in New York City this week. Please stop back over the next few days to enjoy our bite-size commentaries on the goings-on at the premeire romance writers' event of the year. We can't wait to be in the company of so many successful, smart authors. Come join us for the latest buzz.

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Tuesday - June 28, 2011 - Times Square

Okay, I've been in NYC less than twenty-four hours. There's been one bomb threat at Times Square and this morning some guy decided to climb a traffic light and sit on top, right at the corner of Time Square and Broadway (I think). Crowds gathered round to watch both times, pulling out their video cameras and trying to capture the latest scoop. Gotta love NYC!

Officially events start (for me) tonight with the Literacy signing. So I was off at 7:00 a.m. to hunt or gather, I'm not sure which. My youngest sprog designs jewelry. So I found a few wholesale bead shops in the Garment District. Happy Day! Yes, only a mile away from my hotel. Resting my feet now while I wait for my roomie to arrive from Canada.

Dinner last night at Ollies with friends. Great Chinese. Yum. Stay tuned for lots more literary/romance writing nuggets as the conference kicks off tonight and I'm sure a few culinary delights as well. I'll be sure to start carrying my camera to get pics, too.

Ciao!

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Wednesday - June 28, 2011

Opening Session - Tess Gerritsen, Steve Berry, Diana Gabaldon

Awesome panel with these three NY Times Best Selling authors. Great sound bites. Diana Gabaldon's analysis of characters as either an onion (with layers), a mushroom (someone who pops up and walks away with the scene), or a hard nut (a character you need to do the best with you can) was brilliant.

Steve Berry's perseverence in the face of 85 rejections and writing from 6:30 to 9:00 every day while holding down a career as a lawyer and a county commissioner was awe-inspiring. His encouragement to "stay long enough for the world to change" and "make your own luck" were words taken to heart by the crowd.

Tess Gerritsen admonished writers to "keep the forward motion" by continuing to write the first draft, even when it gets hard. "Only once you finish the book do you know what the story is about."

The panel's favorite authors were:

Tess Gerritsen ~ Stephen King

Diana Gabaldon ~ Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson, John E. McDonald, Dorothy Sayers, and P.G. Woodhouse

Steve Berry ~ Clive Cussler, Robert Ludlum, James Michner, and David Morrell.

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Wedesday night - Fabulous dinner out at Trattoria Del Arte on 900 7th Avenue. The Brooklyn-born waiter was funny and played along with the antics of our group of ten romance writers who teased and gave him a hard time. We ate lasagna, tuna, warm sea food salad, pasta bolonaise, and for the vegetarian among us--mashed potatoes and mushrooms. Limoncello topped off a perfect dinner. Thanks, girls. A night to remember.

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Thursday - June 30, 2011

Sherilyn Kenyon gave a heart-wrenching motivational speech that had us all laughing, crying, and cheering. We'll all fight a little harder for our dreams because of her words this afternoon!

Several members of the Rockville8 pitched their projects to agents and editors today. Hopefully a few of them will report on their successes later in the post.

Tonight members of WRW donned their fancy dresses and headed to the St. Martin's party, thanks to Jen Enderlin's generosity.

Stay tuned to more updates tomorrow . . .

something from nothing...

2011-06-20T06:55:00.000-04:00

Hello All,
Welcome to my Monday post here at R8. It's a Monday where I am experiencing serious writer's block. So as I was racking my brain for something enlightening and encouraging for you my fellow writers, so I went searching for inspiration. I stumbled upon the TED website and ended up listening to the following talks given my writer's Amy Tan and Elizabeth Gilbert.

I decided to share their words of inspiration with you directly instead of giving you a watered down, uninspired, totally lacking in creativity post from moi. Trust me it's better this way...I can't wait to see what you draw from these extremely talented women, so be sure to comment.

First up author Amy Tan who wrote one of my favorite books of all time "The Joy Luck Club". She is wickedly funny and speaks such truth about creativity and the creative process. So much wisdom...

Then we have Elizabeth Gilbert of "Eat, Pray Love" fame on nurturing creativity:

Do you remember your first?

2011-06-14T10:22:00.004-04:00

Do you remember your first? Oh my, but I do. And with the memory comes all the feelings-- the excitement, the shyness, the sheer naughtiness of it all. I remember as I dove into the experience the nervous twinge, the flutter of joy, the tight anticipation, the tears of release, and finally, contentment.

My first was a powerful Greek. A war hero turned shipping magnate. It must be said, he could be surly, with an absolutely shitty disposition. And yes, he took arrogance to a then un-heard-of extreme. But he had a fondness for unicorns and when push came to shove, was willing to sacrifice his life for his love.

Sigh.

My first was The Honey is Bitter by Violet Winspear, a Harlequin Presents written in 1967. I read it over 30 years ago one afternoon at the beach house, where I found it on a shelf above my grandfather's Tijuana Brass albums, tucked between Harry Kemelman and Jean Plaidy. By the end of the novel, Paul had nearly died, was blinded, and never once told Domini he loved her. And poor Domini! She'd been traded to Paul to cover her cousin's debts, had nearly been crushed to death in a cave-in, and had miscarried her baby.

And some of the lines... like this one: "...as he laid his face against her heart, her hand dwelt with compassion at the back of his head." What does that even mean? Who knows? And really, who cares? The book is riddled, literally riddled with enough sentiment to make any modern woman's head explode. But, well, it was my first romance. And Paul was my first romance hero. This book was my first sortie into the written word of love and emotion and longing, and as such will always remain close to my heart.

The experience fo that first novel is forever imprinted upon my heart and mind, and I continue to seek it whenever I pick up a new book, try a new author. And as a writer, this si the experience that i want to give to my readers. It is twisty and painful and joyful and happy. An experience that begins with anticipation and culminates with satisfaction and the good kind of wanting more.

Tell me about your first, and i fyou have ever had it as good as or better since.

Publication is not a zero sum game

2011-06-06T00:01:00.001-04:00

Publication is not a zero sum game.

What’s a zero sum game, you ask? Say you have a city with 500,000 citizens and 5 hospitals that serve 100,000 people each. In order for Hospital A to gain new clientele, it must lure patients away from Hospitals B, C, D and E. Growth for one organization means a decline for the others in this closed system scenario.

Over the years, I noticed a lot of fear among writers (pubbed and unpubbed) that one author’s success somehow comes at the expense of another’s, as though there is some arbitrary limit to the number of books/stories that readers will purchase in any given year.

Possibly it is human nature to think in terms of scarcity rather than abundance. Certainly over the last few decades, traditional publishers have slashed the ranks of their mid-list authors and poured their money into larger advances for fewer writers. Perhaps this has left folks with the impression that the pursuit of a publishing contract is a competition for finite resources where there is only so much to go around. So on the surface, it may appear that fear of someone else’s success is justifiable.

But I’m going to make two arguments against that premise.

First. As a reader, I am always on the lookout for a good story. Always. As a romance reader, I fall into that happy category of buyers who purchase multiple books a month, if not a week. There are a lot of us out there. So if Loretta Chase, Eileen Wilks, and Kristan Higgins all come out with a release one week and my friend recommends a debut author’s new book too, hello, I’m buying all 4 books. I am voracious and I am not alone.

Second. With the proliferation of indy-publishing and electronic readers, there has been a commensurate explosion of opportunity for writers. You don’t “write to the market” and no publisher will sign you? You’ve been cut by your publisher after a so-so book or two? Today you have options online that simply didn’t exist a couple of years ago.

So an audience hungry for stories exists. As does an accessible, flexible and powerful set of online tools for marketing and distribution.

Someone once told me that FEAR stands for False Expectations Appearing Real.

It is a fallacy to believe that another person’s success impedes one’s own. To a large extend, success in publication will always remain a crapshoot. You can’t make people buy your books. But you can control your output and attitude. Write the best stories you can. Woo your current and/or would-be readers. Be kind to yourself and to others. And know this to be true: Publication is not a zero sum game. Good stories find their ways into the hands of readers and that’s a win-win for all of us.

What do you think?

Did I make my case?

Do you agree there’s room for all of us at the table?

Or have I got rose-colored shades blinding me to the realities of the publishing industry?

Staying in the Saddle

2011-05-30T00:01:00.004-04:00

The final Monday of every month, the Rockville 8 cuts loose and kicks back with a guest blogger, and this Memorial Day Monday is no exception. With June and the Romance Writers of America National Conference right around the corner, the Eight chats with 2011 RWA Service Award winner and debut author, Amy Atwell.

Amy worked in professional theater for 15 years before turning from the stage to the page to write fiction. She now gives her imagination free rein in both contemporary and historical stories that combine adventure and romance. Her debut romantic suspense, Lying Eyes, is available from Carina Press, Amazon and Barnes & Noble, while her historical Ambersley is slated for a mid-June release. Visit her online at her website, Facebook, Twitter and/or GoodReads.

And now, a few words from Amy Atwell...

Thanks to Nichole and the Rockville 8 for inviting me today. I love groups of women, writers, laughter and, yes, even Mondays. Especially holiday Mondays.

My path to publication has been a long one. I started writing with an eye toward publication in 2000. Back then, the vision I had was clear: I would write engaging, popular, well-crafted stories and attract an agent. The agent would sell me to a big NY publisher who would acknowledge my talent by printing me hard cover and then paperback. I would earn a substantial advance and create a string of sales that would earn me a comfortable living.

That dream sustained me. It kept me “in the saddle” as a writer, despite a lot of hard knocks and spills. I “fell off” the writing horse a few times due to stresses—job changes, cross country moves, the deaths of both my parents. There were also times I “unsaddled” my writing horse because of rejections or negative contest feedback. These were balanced by successes that encouraged me to hold fast to that original dream. I resaddled that NY-published writing horse in 2008 following a string of contest wins, being named a Golden Heart® finalist and signing with an agent.

But after two agented submissions failed to sell to New York, I took a hard look at my dream. My NY-published writing horse was still sleek and beautiful, but it hadn’t earned me more than a few dollars in ten years. Like a real pleasure horse, my writing dream had become an expensive hobby. I didn’t want to quit riding (or writing!), so I considered other options for selling my manuscripts.

Fortunately, publishing has been rapidly evolving as digital technology has offered a new way for readers to buy, store and read books. My agent submitted a manuscript to Carina Press, and that became my debut release. My decision to sell to a digital first publisher was not because I’d abandoned the notion of ever selling to New York. It was a career choice to add a second horse (publishing platform) to my stable. I’m even adding a self-publishing horse to my stable next month when I release my historical, Ambersley.

With three publishing platforms in my writing stable, I have more choices to further my career and create the income stream I envisioned so long ago. I can target a manuscript to New York or digital or self-publishing with the same ease as saddling a horse. And if it’s the wrong fit, I can try that same saddle on a different horse. I’m not convinced that any one platform is better than the others. I think each offers benefits and potential drawbacks, but I’m continuing to pursue all three.

The key is to keep writing, keep improving your craft and keep exploring your options for publishing. And when those hard knocks force you to the ground, dust yourself off and get back in the saddle.

Thanks, Amy! Okay, readers, it's your turn to take the floor. The Rockville 8 and Amy Atwell want to know: How many horses and saddles are in your writing stable? What keeps you in the saddle when the trail gets tough? Is there anything that would make you hang up your spurs?

My Kitchen Floor and Other Sticky Situations

2011-05-23T00:01:00.002-04:00

Writing, when you think about it, can be rather like cleaning the house. That’s to say if you’re a writer, you have to write. And if you live in any accommodation short of a coal bin, you have to clean.

The problem with cleaning your house is that it gets dirty again. Consider my kitchen floor. It’s a glorious, golden maple marked by eighty years of family life. Recently, my own family announced plans to visit so I swept it, mopped it, and waxed it. Boy, did it shine.

Then, a rogue brussels sprout skidded across the floor, leaving a trail of butter sauce. The scent of broiling lamb chops drew my drooling dog to the kitchen. After the meal, I spilled a hot cup of coffee—complete with cream and sugar. I wiped up these messes, but the damage was done. Now, my kitchen floor isn’t just dirty. It’s downright sticky!

Writing is the exact same way. You may think you’re done with that draft, but are you? Time and your trusted critique group can help you decide. In my case, the opening scene, which seemed so spic and span, is really a sticky situation. It snags readers on too many points instead of sending them on into the rest of the story. My manuscript doesn’t touch their hearts because too many questions are sticking in their heads.

How does a writer fix this kind of sticky situation? I’m treating my opening scene like my kitchen floor. Instead of a quick swipe, I’m going back to the beginning and cleaning it up.

In my current revision, I’m asking myself what does the reader need to know right now?

Next, I make a list of those things, and I keep the list short.

I work hard to reveal each listed point in description, dialogue, and action.

I cut anything that doesn’t fall under the heading of Needs to Know Right Now, but I save these bits. After all, the reader will need to know those details as my story progresses. If she doesn’t need to know them now, they don’t belong in this scene. If she doesn’t need to know them ever, they don’t belong in the manuscript.

Just like cleaning the floor, cleaning up this opening scene is proving to be hard work. I’ll get it done, though. Once I’m finished with it, hopefully, it’ll shine.

Now, the Rockville 8 wants to know what part of your manuscript is the sticky part? How do you plan to fix it? Which household chore do you hate the most? If I promise you tea and cake afterward, will you come over and mop my kitchen floor?

Protecting The Dream

2011-05-15T12:00:00.008-04:00

Somewhere between the age of ten and thirty we forget how to dream. Who really knows what the magical age is that all our hopes and aspirations, those limitless possibilities, vanish in the face of the harsh realities of life? One day you turn around and poof. They’re gone. But I believe it’s more important than ever for writers--and women, especially--to keep the dream alive. We have so many demands on our lives and responsibilities that can weigh us down and pull us in a hundred different directions that we often overlook or push aside those secret dreams and goals we’ve nurtured deep inside. Instead, we choose to sacrifice what’s good for us for that which seems best for our families and loved ones. However, I’d argue, it’s when you’re pursuing your goals, when you’re tasting the fruit of your dreams, that you become a stronger person and have more to offer those who depend on you. What are your dreams? And what are you willing to do to achieve them?

Here are five key things I’ve discovered are important to breathing life into your hopes and dreams, no matter what your age.

Believe in Yourself - If you don’t believe in yourself, no one else will. Start there. Recognize your talent. Work hard to be the best writer you can be. Acknowledge you can achieve anything you set your mind to and then do it. Realize that no one else really cares if you finish that novel and they’ll all do everything in their power to make sure you don’t. It’s all up to you. You must believe in yourself and your writing.

Know What You Want - If you don’t set goals, you’ll never achieve them or know that you’ve achieved them. Are you afraid of success? Start little. Baby steps will get you moving in the direction you want to go as long as you know the destination. If you never have a destination, you’ll float through life. That’s okay if you’re a balloon. Not if you want to be a published author.

Keep Your Focus - When the rest of the world is frittering away time on x, y, and z, keep your focus. Write. Write. Write. Those pages add up. If you want to be a published author you need to write like a published author. No excuses. What are you willing to do without to complete your manuscript?

Take Risks - Don’t let your fear cripple you. Take appropriate risks to further your publishing career. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Push yourself outside your comfort level. Yes, it’s scary. But you’ll grow exponentially. Pitch to your dream editor. Corner that rockin’ hot agent at the bar. Take a class that will push your writing to the next level. Present a workshop. Courage and confidence will take you far.

Surround Yourself With Cheerleaders - The writing life is hard. It’s a lonely, solitary life. Find a group of writers who will help you grow and cheer you on when the process becomes overwhelmingly hard. We can’t do this alone. We need to know that even though writing is a solitary journey that there are others like us walking a similar path.

So, what are you prepared to do to make your dream a reality?

Opinions Are Just That

2011-05-08T19:52:00.005-04:00

One day, my child came home from school upset that another child had called her a name. After she told me what happened, I told her that just because another person said something doesn’t make it so.

“But she said it.”

“What if I said elephants can fly,” I answered. “Does that make it true?”

Recently, I entered a Romance Writer’s of America (RWA) chapter contest. I won’t say which one but it’s not one I belong to. Of the four critiques, three of them were encouraging and contained constructive criticisms—helpful and professional. One was not. This critique was insulting, demeaning and, in some places, contradictory and rambling. After I read it, I moped about a bit, emailed the Rockville 8, told my husband, and then moped a little more.

Then our family went to the Bahamas. Amidst the beautiful surroundings, the steel drums and the Kahlua coladas, I gained some perspective. I remembered that just because someone said it doesn’t make it true.

Ahhhh...don’t you love when your own advice comes back to you?

In other aspects of my life, I usually see that cruelty can stem from insecurity or having a bad day. But, because writing is so personal, so much a part of you, it’s harder to brush it off.

Three people encouraged me and liked the story. One did not. The one that was insulting was where I focused all of my energy. I realized that this one person’s opinion doesn’t define me. I define myself.

I’ve re-read each judge’s critique, even the unprofessional one. I’ve taken the good points from the nasty critique and ignored the catty and insulting remarks.

I decide which comments I should use and which ones aren’t valid. I decide what I want to do and how I want to do it.

I decide if I’m a writer.

What things inspire you? What have you learned from a harsh review? Do you think it’s healthier to ignore it?

Codename: Indie-published author Amanda Brice

2011-04-25T00:01:00.003-04:00

The Rockville 8 welcomes YA debut author Amanda Brice!

First of all, I just wanted to thank the Rockville 8 ladies for having me here today to talk about my indie-publishing journey and to celebrate the release of my debut YA mystery, Codename: Dancer.

By now, unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard of Amanda Hocking. We may share the same first name, but that’s about where the similarity ends. Well, other than the fact that we both self-publish books for teens. (I wish that wasn’t where the similarity ended. I’d take even a fraction of her sales!)

I never set out to self-publish. If you’d told me 6 months ago that I would self-publish, I probably would have laughed at you. Actually, I’m wrong. I definitely would have. At this time last year, the idea wasn’t even on my radar screen. Some of my author friends had taken J.A. Konrath’s advice and started putting their unpublished manuscripts up on Smashwords and Kindle, but those were the ones who already had a backlist and dedicated readership who knew them. Surely nobody would buy a debut self-published book from a complete unknown.

Then Barnes & Noble created PubIt. More authors rushed into self-publishing, but still I resisted. I was convinced that self-publishing was only a good deal for previously published authors who wanted to put up their backlist (such as all the abandoned Dorchester authors who’d gotten their rights reverted). Any debut author who went this route was seriously deluding herself.

You see, I was still working under the mindset from a few years ago, when the average self-published author was lucky to sell 100 copies over the lifetime of the work. In my narrow worldview, self-published authors were hacks who shelled out hundreds and possibly thousands for the privilege of calling themselves “authors.” They had boxes of their books in the trunk of their car, and would hang around in the Wal-Mart parking lot trying to hawk them to unsuspecting passersby. Or the person standing behind them in the line at the grocery store. Or the desk clerk at the gym. Or anyone with two brain cells, really.

No, I would never go this route. After all, we’d all heard Yog’s Law that money should flow towards the author, not the other way around. And wasn’t self-publishing just a glorified form of vanity publishing? You’ll never find a readership, and will never make any money.

Except that isn’t necessarily the case anymore. At some point in the last year or so, the Kindle revolution made self-publishing a legitimate career option. I just hadn’t been paying attention.

In my defense, I have a 16-month-old, so from roughly December 2009 to December 2010 I was living in one big sleep-deprived haze. So I feel like I get a pass for not quite getting it until this year.

Once my non-writing friends started talking about Amanda Hocking and direct publishing on Kindle, I realized that maybe there was something to all this fuss. And maybe I needed to examine it a little closer. And I liked what I saw.

It occurred to me that I had several manuscripts just languishing on my hard drive. Now granted a few of them shall never see the light of day. And for good reason. But others were actually pretty darn good. I just hadn’t managed to find the right editor on the right day.

My former agent shopped Codename: Dancer widely. The book was named a finalist in Romance Writers of America’s prestigious Golden Heart® Awards, and it had gotten a lot of attention. Editors at several Big Six houses raved about the premise, the writing, the voice, the characters…and even though the manuscript made it to several final acquisitions meetings, ultimately they all passed. Despite editors who loved it, marketing didn’t know where to place it.

The kiss of death.

The YA imprints called it Middle Grade. The Middle Grade imprints called it YA. I’ll let you in on my dirty little secret…they’re both right. It wasn’t that I didn’t know my audience. I just had a different audience in mind.

For years I’ve lamented the fact that there isn’t a category between Middle Grade and Young Adult, despite a large segment of readers who could benefit from one. There’s a real market void. The Middle Grade books are too babyish for this group, yet many YA books are too mature (for lack of a better term). My middle-school-aged niece is a prime example. She’s a voracious reader, and is ready for something meatier than what’s offered for her age group. But my sister-in-law doesn’t want her reading Twilight (and Twilight is actually on the tame scale compared to some YA books out there) yet, and frankly I don’t blame her. Intellectually, she’s ready for it. Emotionally? Not so much.

So with this age group in mind, I sat down and wrote Codename. But because NY didn’t know where to shelve it (is it a “children’s book” or would it go in the “teen section?”), it never sold. Apparently main characters can only be 12-or-under or 16-or-older. Fourteen-year-old high school freshmen need not apply.

Some might consider my book to be “tween” but even that seems a bit limiting, because I know several teenagers who have read it and loved it. And what 13-, 14-, or 15-year-old wants to be lumped in with the 10-to-12-year-olds? Uh-uh. No way. So I’d call it a “Younger YA,” but that’s not an accepted trad-pub term. Where do you shelve it?

New York called it “niche,” but that’s the beauty of indie publishing. Doing it on my own, I can afford to take risks. Sure, I invested in a freelance editor, a cover artist, and a freelance formatter, so it certainly wasn’t free, but I’ve always spent money (organization fees, chapter fees, conferences, workshops, postage, etc.) on my pursuit of publication. This is merely another cost of the journey. The manuscript wasn’t doing anything for me while wasting space on my hard drive, so I decided to roll the dice and see if I could find it a readership on my own. Get it out there in the world and let readers decide whether it has any merit.

Granted this means I’ll also sink or swim on my own, too, but I’ve always been a risk taker.

I think if you have a niche book, indie-publishing is perfect for you. Or anything out-of-the-box. I do love NY, and I hope to have a traditional contract one day, but sometimes the definitions are a little too rigid. And I can understand their reluctance to take a chance, because that's their risk on the line if a book doesn't sell out its advance.

But I don't think you should simply bang out a book and put it up on Kindle. Ultimately it's your professional reputation at risk, so just like a traditionally-published book, you must put forward the absolute best product possible. And that's the problem. The best thing about self-publishing is that anyone can do it. The worst thing about self-publishing is that anyone can do it.

I hope I don't sound elitist, but unfortunately, there are a lot of self-published books out there that never should have been published. It's not that they're not good books, or their authors aren't good writers -- they're just not ready. But there are also a lot of really excellent self-published books, and the revolution of the last year has shown that it's a viable career choice.

So I guess my advice is that if you've gotten excellent feedback on your manuscript (and not from your mom!) and you think that NY is not quite right for it for whatever reason, then indie-publishing might be for you. But please do yourself a favor and give it as close to a traditionally-published experience as is possible.

Invest in a professional cover. Hire an editor (or at least utilize multiple critique partners and beta readers...as well as a qualified proofreader). Teach yourself formatting or hire a freelancer. Set a "launch date" and build up buzz ahead of time by giving away copies in contests and undergoing a blog tour. Send it to published authors in your genre for a cover quote. And send it to reviewers. Call on your networks. Were you in a sorority in college? Ask them to feature your book in their alumni magazine. Is there a particular hobby or activity featured in your book? Contact the various magazines or organizations for that activity and ask if they would help you promote. You never know unless you ask!

But remember that for every Amanda Hocking, there are hundreds or even thousands of indies who will struggle. And it's a marathon, not a sprint. Even the indies who have hit the NY Times list in the recent months started off selling just a handful of copies.

So the moral of the story is that if you have a “niche book,” don’t be discouraged. It might be perfect for indie publishing. And I bet you’ll have a blast!

Amanda Brice lives outside of Washington, DC with her husband and toddler daughter. An intellectual property attorney for a large federal government agency, she combines her love of writing with her legal career by speaking on basic copyright and trademark law on the writers’ conference circuit. Her debut novel, Codename: Dancer, was released on April 16, 2011. You can learn more about Amanda and her books at her website (http://www.amandabrice.net/).

All About Evie

2011-04-18T00:58:00.002-04:00

I've been thinking about this A LOT and it would be oh-so-easy to stay in the thinking stage, but enough with that! Enough with the wait-and-see and agonizing over whether or not I've got enough information.

I'm doing it. I'm changing my name . . . and in the process, I'm turning into someone completely different. Someone who publishes her own work. Someone who takes full responsibility for her own words. Someone who--hopefully--writes anything she wants to write, without regard to genre or market, and publishes the best of it.

And that someone is: Evie Owens.

Evie's going to be a blithe spirit. But she's also, poor thing, got her work cut out for her. Covers and blurbs and formats, oh my!

So far, the cover has been the easiest part for me. Mostly because I work in electronic publishing at the day job. Turns out, being able to make every decision all by myself is a little nerve-wracking! Which surprised me a little. But it was also as liberating as taking off your shoes at the end of an eight-mile hike.

And that didn't surprise me a bit.

I guess there's always been a little Evie in me.

So Watch This Space.

There will be more to come . . .

I Hyate Revision (sic)

2011-04-11T00:01:00.001-04:00

I had a friend at uni who was afraid of snakes. But being a strapping lad from Norn Iron, he never admitted he was afraid of them. He hated them. In fact, big Craig hyated them (down on the hyate, up on the them). And, really, being from Bangor, he was never likely to trip across one so I have no idea where this fear came from. But it was real. I sat next to him at the cinema, and could feel him cringe and cover his face and mutter, “I hyate snakes”. To man up, his fear was articulated in hatred, but bottom line, he was never going to own Raiders of the Lost Arc.

Last year, to the great hoorah! and brava!, I finished the first draft of my novel. It was a moment. I took pictures. I was very proud of myself. I read it, and thought, hey, this is ok. It needs some tweaking here and there, but it is nearly just fine.

I let it rest. Like beef straight out of the oven, I left it on the board to relax and finish cooking. And about six weeks later, I re-read all fifty-five thousand words, and thought, hey, this is, well, ok. It needs some work, but everything is going to be ok. And I picked up the knife, to carve it up, and was faced with the task of revision.

And once again, I laid down the knife. And I walked away.

For six months.

For the last six months, the printed copy of my novel found itself shifted round my flat, on the desk, in a stack in the bedroom, next to my chair in the living room, cozied up to the travel guide to Andalucia in a pocket of my laptop’s bag, and in more than one panicked moment, lost. Not that I was telling anyone.

After all, I was thinking about the story, if anyone asked. Yes, it’s requested material, but I need to get the opening just right. I need to work on the conflict. I have to go through and organize the chapters.

And then, I didn’t talk about it at all.

I’m fairly certain I’ve not actually bitten anyone’s head off when asked about my progress. But I’ve certainly shut them down. Because my manuscript is flawed and I don’t know what to do about it.

And I feel like such a failure. Ashamed that I’m not writing – or re-writing, as the case may be. Because I hyate revision. And by hating it, I don’t have to say I’m afraid of it. I don’t have to show my fear that my writing is crap and my story is, well, you know. By hating it, I can keep lazy track of it as it makes its aimless way round my home, the pages a little curled at their edges and a little gritty from the dust.

By hyating revision, I can say, yeah, sure, the draft is done, but it’s not quite ready to go to the editor. I’ll get it done.

It won't be long now.

Chart Your Course

2011-04-04T12:39:00.006-04:00

It's April 4. The year is a quarter of the way to another New Year's celebration. And yet, I don't think it's too late to talk about goals--that one, two or maybe three things in life that you want more than anything else. I've never been shy about making my goals. They may even start out as a casual declaration.

Once said, that seed takes root and then I formulate the what if's because now I want it to become a reality. Some goals turn into way more of a challenge than I estimated and then I have to weigh the pros and cons to dedicating more energy in pursuit of this goal. When I've achieved that goal, victory is sweet, but not long-lasting. I need the challenge for what comes next. Do I go for a higher rung on the ladder? Do I step off the ladder and take a different path altogether. One thing for sure is that I'm not adverse to risk.

No matter what or how I plan to accomplish that goal. I'm pretty sure that it takes being open to possibilities. Read more than you usually read. Read outside of what you usually read. Meet new people. Look at the other interests in your life as ways to stay mentally fresh and excited about life. Don't be afraid to play the what if game where you place yourself in a winning role.

Success rarely falls on the unexpectant. Success is not guaranteed. Your energy, desire, and discipline are all tenets at your disposal. Work hard and chart your future. Good luck!

What Makes a Hero?

2011-03-27T15:55:00.001-04:00

This week we welcome one of our favorite authors, Mary Blayney, to talk about one of her favorite subjects: Heroes.

What fun to be asked to spend the day with the Rockville8. Not long ago I spent a weekend with most of them at a writers’ retreat that I hope is well on its way to becoming a tradition. In the course of our free-wheeling, food and drink aided discussions, I brought up the subject of heroes. I am going to enlarge on it here because it’s a favorite theme of mine. Thanks to the 8 for giving me a chance to share it with a wider audience.

First one very important caveat: for this exercise I use hero as a gender neutral term, with thanks to Keely for reminding me of that.

For romance writers heroes are our stock in trade. Because the happy ending, or at the least an uplifting one, is an essential element of our stories, the hero triumphs, almost always on more than one level.

Due to early exposure to Joseph Campbell’s HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES I’ve been thinking about my definition of a hero for years. After writing more than fifteen books and novella I’ve got it! What fun to open it up for further discussion here.

For me and my characters a hero has honor at the core of his being and is willing to give more than he can afford to give.

Every hero I have written accepts the burden of those two qualities. With gender neutrality in mind, I would say that Charlotte Parnell in TRAITOR’S KISS is the ultimate expression of those elements. Charlotte lost and then rediscovered her honor in a hard school. By the time we meet her Charlotte is willing to give up everything, including her identity, to right wrongs of which she has been a part. Her behavior in living her concept of honor does not ring true with her nineteenth century peers, but it is there as deep and sure as it is in the more conventional hero, Michael Garrett in LOVER’S KISS.

As disappointing as it is, I know not everyone has read my regency set romances published by Bantam or the novellas Berkley publishes. (But, hey, you can always check out the title at MaryBlayney.com)

With that in mind, let me give you some more widely known heroes in literature. Atticus Finch in TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD ranks high as does Sidney Carton in TALE OF TWO CITIES. My favorites are lesser known but worth the effort if their names do not ring a bell: Aral Vorkosigan and Cordelia Naismith from the book CORDELIA’S HONOR by Lois McMaster Bujold.

Aral and Cordelia meet when they are on the opposite sides of a war set some time in the future. Their journey to a much challenged happily-ever-after is the epitome of honor and willingness to sacrifice. Indeed, it’s hard to decide whose sacrifice is greater. In fact Aral does sacrifice his honor for a greater good, but then Cordelia is willing to jeopardize hers to spend her life with the man she loves. Cordelia’s success at maintaining her honor is the theme of the second half of CORDELIA’S HONOR.

Cordelia and Aral’s journey brings them together for a lifetime that we, as readers, share through the journey of their son, Miles Naismith Vorkosigan. In the rest of the books in this series Miles struggles constantly with the same questions.

I would love to know what your definition of a hero is and if you have any suggestions for my list. How about someone loved by readers who does not exhibit those qualities? Both Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara come to mind. Is that why their love story fails? I think that’s the subject for another blog. If I’m invited again.

~~~~~~~~~~

You can find Mary's latest Novella, "The Other Side of the Coin" in the anthology The Other Side, out now.

The Cutting Edge

2011-03-20T15:04:00.017-04:00

Recently, I had the privilege of sitting in on someone else’s critique. The scene under discussion was a gripping one. The hero and heroine were in danger—and he was at a distinct disadvantage. To my surprise, though, several writers told the author, “Cut his vulnerability.”

Why? Because his situation touched something visceral in each and every one of us. And none of us were entirely comfortable with that.

Now, if you’re a writer, you’ve been to those workshops where the industry's top editors and agents teach us to up the stakes. Make things bad for the good guys, they tell us. Then, make things worse.

But how do we know when things are worse? Well, in real life, our palms sweat and our stomachs knot. It’s the same in fiction.

Of course, there is such a thing as going too far. When your hero is too hot to handle for no reason at all, or your heroine is TSTL (Too Stupid To Live), or your villain vividly violates the deepest taboos of our society and we see it page after page after page, you might consider dialing it back a notch. Because your reader needs to have a knee-jerk reaction, not a gut-wrenching experience.

However, it’s a visceral reaction that gets your readers emotionally invested in the outcome of your story. When your reader laughs or cries or cheers or boos, she’ll stick with you to the end of your novel—and throughout your career. So don’t be afraid to make that heroine a little more brash or that hero a little more vulnerable. Provoke a reaction. Rather than cut those details from your scenes, push the situation to the very edge. That’s what I call the Cutting Edge.

Many of our favorite books engage us emotionally by pushing us to the Cutting Edge. If you're not sure you can lay your finger on the Cutting Edge, check out these bestsellers from Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre to Lisa Kleypas’ Sugar Daddy, Harlan Coben’s Long Lost to Michael Connelly’s The Lincoln Lawyer, and J.D. Robb’s Naked in Death to Lisa Scottoline’s Dirty Blonde.

Now it’s your turn to talk to the Rockville 8. As a writer, have you ever stepped back from the Cutting Edge? Why? Did you regret it? As a reader, which of your favorite books push your emotional buttons to the Cutting Edge?

The Magical Power of Fairy Tales

2011-03-13T19:10:00.007-04:00

Fairy tales are a hot commodity these days. You have only to look as far as your local movie theater’s playing of Little Red Riding Hood and Beastly (a retelling of The Beauty and the Beast classic) to see how fairy tales that have been around for hundreds of years are making a resurgence in popular culture today. Authors are taking these age-old tales and adding their own twist for modern readers and movie goers to recreate compelling stories that speak to us in a brand new, yet fundamental way. But is the use of fairy tale or myth really a new trend? No.

The Brothers Grimm first compiled their collection of Children’s and Household Tales (Kinder- und Hausmärchen)--commonly known as Grimm’s Fairy Tales--in 1812. This two-volume compilation started with 156 stories and grew to 211 stories by its seventh edition in 1850. Hans Christian Andersen wrote his version of Fairy Tales in 1835.

James Frey, author of How to Write Damn Good Fiction Using the Power of Myth, argues that: “[F]undamental mythic storytelling techniques have survived and developed through the millennia and are with us today just as much as they were with ancient man. The hero of popular fiction is the legitimate heir of stories going back untold millennia, and the forms of the stories and the cultural ideas that they illustrate are unchanged. If the modern writer is made aware of these forms and the cultural role of myth in the lives of modern man, he or she will be able to use them as a powerful tool that speaks to the reader at the deepest levels of the unconscious mind” (Frey 31).

He pulls examples from Greek mythology, the Old Testament, Jung, and a myriad of others to support his argument that myth and folklore (or fairy tales)--the stories that communicate the core of a culture’s myth--are just as integral to writers of popular fiction today as they have been to our predecessor. So whether it’s The Frog King (and who says paranormal romance, with a bona fide shapeshifter, is a new development?), Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, or Cinderella, writers throughout the years have used this myths to draw their readers on a deeper level into a more profound story.

Popular fiction romance writers have known the power of retelling fairy tales for years. The last cycle seemed to have emerged in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Victoria Alexander wrote The Emperor’s New Clothes in 2004 and The Princess and the Pea in 1996. Linda Jones published Cinderfella in 1998. Christine Feehan wrote Lair of the Lion, a Beauty and the Beast story in 2002.

The stories that the Brothers Grimm and Andersen penned nearly two hundred years ago are as relevant today as they were then. They speak to something deep within us. As Frey explains: “Somehow, mythic forms resonate in every individual human being on this planet. When a human being encounters some version of a myth, the individual responds at a very deep level, subconsciously, and is powerfully drawn to it as by magic. The force of myth is irresistible. Mythic forms and mythic structures are the foundation on which all good stories are built; these forms and structures are the key a modern fiction writer can use to create powerful fiction” (Frey 36).

Whether you’re a paranormal romance writer or a writer fashioned in the mold of A.S. Byatt, using fairy tale and cultural myth can deepen your stories and draw your readers as if by magic. And who doesn’t want that? So dust off your primers (okay the originals are not really children’s stories) and learn your mythic structures. You’ll be glad you did. Magic is at your fingertips. Tap into it.

What follows is a list of fairy tales written by the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen.

Hans Christian Anderson’s most famous fairy tales include:
• The Angel (1843)
• The Bell (1845)
• The Emperor's New Clothes (1837)
• The Galoshes of Fortune (1838)
• The Fir Tree (1844)
• The Happy Family (1847)
• The Ice Maiden (1861)
• It's Quite True! (1852)
• The Little Match Girl (1848)
• The Little Mermaid (1836)
• Little Tuck (1847)
• The Nightingale (1844)
• The Old House (1847)
• Sandman (1841)
• The Princess and the Pea (1835; also known as The Real Princess)
• Several Things (1837)
• The Red Shoes (1845)
• The Shadow (1847)
• The Shepherdess and the Chimney Sweep (1845)
• The Snow Queen (1844)
• The Steadfast Tin Soldier (1838)
• The Story of a Mother (1847)
• The Swineherd (1841)
• Thumbelina (1835)
• The Tinderbox (1835)
• The Ugly Duckling (1844)
• The Wild Swans (1838)

The Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales:
• The Frog King, or Iron Heinrich
• Cat and Mouse in Partnership
• Mary's Child
• The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was
• The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids
• Trusty John or Faithful John
• The Good Bargain
• The Wonderful Musician or The Strange Musician
• The Twelve Brothers
• The Pack of Ragamuffins
• Brother and Sister
• Rapunzel
• The Three Little Men in the Wood
• The Three Spinners
• Hansel and Gretel
• The Three Snake-Leaves
• The White Snake
• The Straw, the Coal, and the Bean
• The Fisherman and His Wife
• The Valiant Little Tailor
• Cinderella
• The Riddle
• The Mouse, the Bird, and the Sausage
• Mother Hulda
• The Seven Ravens
• Little Red Riding Hood or Little Red-Cap
• Town Musicians of Bremen
• The Singing Bone
• The Devil With the Three Golden Hairs
• The Louse and the Flea
• The Girl Without Hands
• Clever Hans
• The Three Languages
• Clever Elsie
• The Tailor in Heaven
• The Wishing-Table, the Gold-Ass, and the Cudgel in the Sack
• Thumbling (see also Tom Thumb)
• The Wedding of Mrs. Fox
• The Elves & The Elves and the Shoemaker
• The Robber Bridegroom
• Herr Korbes
• The Godfather
• Frau Trude
• Godfather Death
• Thumbling's Travels (see also Tom Thumb)
• Fitcher's Bird
• The Juniper Tree
• Old Sultan
• The Six Swans
• Sleeping Beauty or Little Briar-Rose
• Foundling-Bird
• King Thrushbeard
• Little Snow White
• The Knapsack, the Hat, and the Horn
• Rumpelstiltskin
• Sweetheart Roland
• The Golden Bird
• The Dog and the Sparrow
• Frederick and Catherine
• The Two Brothers
• The Little Peasant
• The Queen Bee
• The Three Feathers
• Golden Goose
• All-Kinds-of-Fur
• The Hare's Bride
• The Twelve Huntsmen
• The Thief and His Master
• Jorinde and Joringel
• The Three Sons of Fortune
• How Six Men got on in the World
• The Wolf and the Man
• The Wolf and the Fox
• Gossip Wolf and the Fox
• The Fox and the Cat
• The Pink
• Clever Gretel
• The Old Man and his Grandson
• The Water Nixie
• The Death of the Little Hen
• Brother Lustig
• Gambling Hansel
• Hans in Luck
• Hans Married
• The Gold-Children
• The Fox and the Geese
• The Poor Man and the Rich Man
• The Singing, Springing Lark
• The Goose Girl
• The Young Giant
• The Gnome
• The King of the Gold Mountain
• The Raven
• The Peasant's Wise Daughter
• Old Hildrebrand
• The Three Little Birds
• The Water of Life
• Doctor Know-all
• The Spirit in the Bottle
• The Devil's Sooty Brother
• Bearskin
• The Willow-Wren and the Bear
• Sweet Porridge
• Wise Folks
• Tales of the Paddock
• The Poor Miller's Boy and the Cat
• The Two Travelers
• Hans My Hedgehog
• The Shroud
• The Jew Among Thorns
• The Skillful Hunstman
• The Flail from Heaven
• The Two Kings' Children
• The Clever Little Tailor
• The Bright Sun Brings it to Light
• The Blue Light
• The Willful Child
• The Three Army Surgeons
• The Seven Swabians
• The Three Apprentices
• The King's Son Who Feared Nothing
• Donkey Cabbages
• The Old Woman in the Wood
• The Three Brothers
• The Devil and His Grandmother
• Ferdinand the Faithful and Ferdinand the Unfaithful
• The Iron Stove
• The Lazy Spinner
• The Four Skillful Brothers
• One-Eye, Two-Eyes, and Three-Eyes
• Fair Katrinelje and Pif-Paf-Poltrie
• The Fox and the Horse
• The Shoes that were Danced to Pieces
• The Six Servants
• The White and the Black Bride
• Iron John
• The Three Black Princesses
• Knoist and his Three Sons
• The Maid of Brakel
• My Household
• The Lambkin and the Little Fish
• Simeli Mountain
• Going a Traveling
• The Donkey
• The Ungrateful Son
• The Turnip
• The Old Man Made Young Again
• The Lord's Animals and the Devil's
• The Beam
• The Old Beggar-Woman
• The Twelve Idle Servants
• The Three Sluggards
• The Shepherd Boy
• The Star Money
• The Stolen Farthings
• Looking for a Bride
• The Hurds
• The Sparrow and his Four Children
• The Story of Schlauraffen Land
• The Ditmars Tale of Wonders
• A Riddling Tale
• Snow-White and Rose-Red
• The Wise Servant
• The Glass Coffin
• Lazy Henry
• The Griffin
• Strong Hans
• The Peasant in Heaven
• Lean Lisa
• The Hut in the Forest
• Sharing Joy and Sorrow
• The Willow-Worn
• The Sole
• The Bittern and the Hoopoe
• The Owl
• The Moon
• The Duration of Life
• Death's Messengers
• Master Pfreim
• The Goose-Girl at the Well
• Eve's Various Children
• The Nixie of the Mill-Pond
• The Little Folk's Presents
• The Giant and the Tailor
• The Nail
• The Poor Boy in the Grave
• The True Bride
• The Hare and the Hedgehog
• Spindle, Shuttle, and Needle
• The Peasant and the Devil
• The Crumbs on the Table
• The Sea-Hare
• The Master Thief
• The Drummer
• The Ear of Corn
• The Grave-Mound
• Old Rinkrank
• The Crystal Ball
• Maid Maleen
• The Boots of Buffalo Leather
• The Golden Key
• Saint Joseph in the Forest
• The Twelve Apostles
• The Rose
• Poverty and Humility Lead to Heaven
• God's Food
• The Three Green Twigs
• The Blessed Virgin's Little Glass or Our Lady's Little Glass
• The Little Old Lady or The Aged Mother
• The Heavenly Marriage or The Heavenly Wedding
• The Hazel Branch

True Confessions

2011-03-06T22:15:00.009-05:00

I have a confession to make.

I don’t know what I’m doing.

I’m a pantzer. I’ve always been a pantzer. You know the type. The writer who knows a couple of plot points then starts writing to see what happens. Or, the one who has a character they really, really like then throws obstacles in front of them to see what occurs.

It’s worked pretty well. I’ve finished some manuscripts. I’ve placed in some contests. But, I’ve always felt like things were off kilter. The plot just wasn’t enough of something.

There weren’t enough echoes that reverberated throughout the story. Ideas that I’d start at the beginning I didn’t use to their potential. There wasn’t enough—and I shudder to say this—structure.

Structure. The thing my creative side has railed against since the beginning. My day job has plenty of bald-faced, there’s-only-one-way-to-do-this structure. Codified laws, regulations and guidelines to be followed or else. So, my writing has always felt like a walk down a breezy beach, stopping where I wanted to pick up the shells that I like, not the shells someone else told me to like. Jumping into the water periodically or digging in the sand to find a sand crab.

I get to do what I want to do, when I want to do it, how I want to do it. There are no laws governing me when I write. Or are there?

Two weekends ago many of the Rockville 8, along with other great writers, spent a weekend on retreat. Some writing was done. But a lot of concepts were discussed, too. Some of the writers took time out to prepare presentations and discuss books and movies as examples. They generously shared what they have learned or discovered.

There are so many theories on how to plot that I won’t even go there. But while we were talking, this thought occurred to me: They’re all good. They’re all valid. And they’ve all been successfully used by someone. For years, I’ve been buffeted by all of the classes I’ve taken. The presenter will say “This is how I’ve done it.” The author is a multi-published success so this must be the Holy Grail. “The Way To Be Published.”

But somewhere during these successful author presentations, almost all of them said something like “This is the way I do it. However, you need to find your own process.” I know this intellectually. Knowing this emotionally is a whole ‘nother story.

So, here I am, rambling. Pantzing, really. I see the plotters rolling their eyes. What’s the point of all this musing?

The point is that the conversation we had Saturday night about structure really galvanized me. I think I may have found the beginnings of a spreadsheet/flowchart that I can work with-another aspect to my process. I spent the Sunday night after I returned home figuring out where my scenes fit into the structure that I decided to use. I deleted, added and rearranged scenes.

I’ve used spreadsheets for years. Footed and cross-footed them. Ticked and tied them. Reworked them. Rearranged them. Programmed them to calculate all sorts of things. But I never really used them for writing. Again, wanting to be the wild-child writer, I didn’t want to fool with that. I was off the clock.

Sunday night, while I was tinkering with my plot points, I had a lightning bolt to the brain. Studying my little spreadsheet, I discovered the worst thing that could happen to my main character.

And it will happen. I see it now, on my spreadsheet, that it must.

Tell me about your plotting process. I’d love to hear what is. Or, in the case of you pure breed pantzers, what it isn’t.

never alone...

2011-02-28T13:49:00.000-05:00

This is my first post for the Rockville 8! It is an honor to be included in such talented and gifted company. When I was contemplating what I would write today I kept asking myself “What would X write?" "What words of wisdom would Z pass along?”

In asking those questions I had my answer. Community.

I belong to a fabulously talented community of writers. I don’t know everything there is to know about writing. Whether it be about the hero's journey or the seven anchor scenes of a novel. There’s the goal/motivation/conflict of my heroine or the publishing industry at large. I struggle with my pacing, plotting, structure and voice. I HATE grammar, probably due to my post traumatic stress flashbacks of 7th grade diagramming at the hands of my middle school English teacher, Mrs. Loftus.

Even with all of these hurdles to overcome, I know that I am not alone.

Writing is a solitary endeavor at times, as I toil away in silence trying to create a world filled with beauty and wonder where happily ever after is a possibility. I can’t count the times I have stared at my computer screen ready to rip my hair out because of one issue or another. This is usually when I activate the Bat Signal, sending out my SOS. Before you know it I have received several messages of encouragement, steeped with information and suggestions. I am never disappointed with what comes back to me. If I don’t know it, someone else will.

My community is there for me to celebrate when the contest wins come through or the agent calls back. They are there when my participles are dangling and my hero is not cooperating. They are there for me when my real life is falling down around my shoulders and the thought of finishing my book is so daunting I wish to run away and hide and never, ever come back.

Lena Horne said it beautifully:
“It’s not the load that breaks you down. It’s how you choose to carry it.”

I choose to walk beside a group of woman who have supported, encouraged, critiqued, corrected, brainstormed and laughed...and laughed...and laughed with me over the last two years. Even when I was quiet for a time, I knew they were there when I was ready to jump back in. So, I take this opportunity to thank this community of writers for helping me carry the load.

Ladies, I raise my glass to each of you.

Cheers!

PS. If you are looking for a community to join check out Romance Writers of America or American Christian Fiction Writers. There's a group for everyone no matter what genre you write!

This Blog Post Has No Answers

2011-02-20T22:44:00.032-05:00

There are big things going on in the world of publishing. If you're paying any attention at all you know who Amanda Hocking is and why unpublished writers of all genres are so avidly following her success.

But just in case you haven't been following all of it, the upshot is this: Amanda Hocking is an "indie" publishing phenomenon (aka self-published writer) who, according to a recent USA Today article, sold more than 450,000 copies of her ebooks in January. Just in January. Not through one of The Big Six traditional publishing houses (as J.A. Konrath calls them), but straight from her computer to digital bookstores like Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

I don't know how to explain what she's done. I'm not sure anybody really can explain exactly how it happened. But the fact that she—and lots of other independently e-published writers—have done it raises all sorts of questions. You know, little questions. Little easy questions like, Who am I? What am I doing here?

And my particular favorite, at the age of 48, What do I want to be when I grow up?

Questions I used to know the answers to.

Hi, I'm Yvonne and I'm a writer. Some day a publisher in NY will buy one of my books and bookstores will put it on their shelves and I will be able to hold it in my hands.

That used to be the answer.

For almost 40 freaking years, that was the answer.

But the economy sucks and publishing is adjusting and making cuts, just like any other business. And now you can self publish without having to buy cases of your own book and then selling it out of the trunk of your car.

You can format it for digital platforms and upload it to Amazon and B&N where story-hungry readers are trolling for low-priced ebooks and depending on how much effort you put into promoting yourself, you too might become an indie publishing success.

The thing about answers, though, is that once you figure them out, once you've got them fixed in your mind, they're really really nice to hold onto.

And really really hard to let go.

That sound you're hearing out there in the world of writing, that low, sub-woofer-y, bone-rattling noise that you're hearing is the sound of our long-held dreams hitting the rumble strips as we take the exit ramps off the publishing highway. We need to pull over and have a think.

Our dreams are in publishing. And publishing is changing. Do our dreams have to change with it? Or will the dream still, always and forever, remain the same?

We in the Rockville 8 are all—to varying degrees and in different ways—struggling with these questions. And so far, like the title of this post says, we have no answers.

What about you?

If you're a writer are you thinking about publishing straight to digital? Or is that too far away from your dream?

If you're a reader, do you pay any attention to who publishes the books you read? Would it make any difference to you if you found out the book that's been keeping you turning the pages wasn't published by one of the traditional publishing houses?

Inquiring minds want to know . . .

Voice and the Valentine

2011-02-13T23:55:00.001-05:00

On Saturday, I had lunch with some chapter mates from the Washington Romance Writers. The subject of “author’s voice” came up – what elements go into crafting a story so that a reader knows who the author is after reading a single page. We agreed it was in part a series of choices an author makes from vocabulary to core story to setting to how a hero and heroine relate to one another.

Over lunch, I mentioned I was thinking of writing a vignette about two teens and their high school Valentine’s Day dance for my blog post today. As I sat down to write it, I started to wonder how some of my favorite authors might take this situation and make it their own. What elements would they combine to infuse the story with their voice?

Betty Neels would have made our heroine a bit of a wallflower, possibly bullied by her beautiful step-sister, and resigned to the prospect of staying home the night of the dance. The afternoon of the dance, our plucky heroine, in her practical anorak, would have rescued a starving kitten or a drowning puppy. The hero would have arrived just in time to help and later would make it clear to the evil step-sister (and the harpy step-mother) that our true-blue heroine was his intended and they’d just have to lump it.

In Jayne Ann Krentz’s hands, our intrepid and determined heroine would have pestered her reluctant hero into taking her to the dance so they could break into the office of the crooked high school principal. She’d be certain that the principal used his psychic talents against her cousin who went missing at the beginning of the school year. Our trusty heroine would know on a deep metaphysical level that, with the help of our brooding hero, their combined psychic talents would save the day, the dance, and her cousin.

Linda Howard’s bad-boy hero would make a point of coming to the dance in his torn jeans, maybe even roaring into the gym on his motorcycle. He’d lay a hot, sexy kiss on our smart-mouthed heroine and ride out, leaving her to get on with her life (and occasionally to wonder what-if) for the next decade before he comes rumbling back into town as an ex-Special Forces officer on the same Ducati bike, looking to rekindle their relationship. The make-up sex will be hot, hot, hot, but our heroine won’t make a permanent reunion easy for him as they race to stop the bad guys from winning.

Each of these authors has an extensive body of work that makes this exercise relatively easy to do. Betty Neels wrote over 90 books, mostly capable and compassionate heroes who recognized the true worth of often overlooked, overworked and underappreciated heroines. Jayne Ann Krentz (also writing as Amanda Quick) has developed a successful paranormal romantic suspense series in which her protagonists must work together as equal partners in order to overcome the bad guy. A Linda Howard hero is always the alpha in the room, if not always Special Forces, and her heroine does her damnedest not only to hold her own against him but to forge a link between them that is more than just passion. In the end, I still don’t have a great definition of voice. But I definitely know it when I read it.

I never did get to writing my vignette. But I’m pretty sure my heroine’s heart flutters whenever he’s around. She watches him when he’s not looking so her crush is not completely obvious. My hero’s hands sweat just a little when he’s in the same room with her. He teases her relentlessly so she’ll notice him but not guess just how into her he is. What, besides the standard teenage approach-avoidance tango, keeps them apart? A centuries-old blood curse.

Yeah. My voice tends toward the paranormal. Also often the quirky, the sentimental, the flowery, the obvious, the comic and the visceral. This is, in turns, deliberate, instinctive and subconscious. But always distinctly mine.

So, given this set-up – teenaged not-quite-lovers and the Valentine’s Day dance – how would you or your favorite author spin it? A happy ending? A dose of the macabre? A mystery to unravel? A peril to escape and defeat? Curious minds want to know!

How BattleStar Galactica let me down.

2011-02-07T00:01:00.001-05:00

OK. It is true. I love a happy ending. It is satisfying. It has a payoff. For me, it makes the story a good one. It gives me hope. It makes me happy. Maybe this makes me shallow? Or anti-intellectual? Certainly, it would remove my cred from literary circles. (At least I assume so; not that I actually know any literary circles. It’s not like I live in NYC or Cleveland Park.)If it’s going to be unhappy, then, Writer, you’d better prepare me. Let me know going in. And give me something to make it all worth it.

By and large, my predisposition for a happy ending has led me to reading commercial fiction. Laura Kinsale made me cry when Christian and Maddy are parted in Flowers from the Storm – and cry more when they are reunited in that cold church yard. Susan Elizabeth Phillips made me angry when Dean treats Blue like the hired help in Natural Born Charmer but I kept reading because I knew SEP would show me just how steadfast both of them will become. Earth might be destroyed to make way for the hyperspacial express route through our galaxy, but Don’t Panic! because The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is Ford Prefect’s and Arthur Dent’s story.

Yes, it’s true. I am your audience, oh you happy-ending authors. I will buy you, I will read you and I will crow about you. So, what happens when you do me wrong? (e.g. male authors who subvert romance readers by promising a love story but instead of a happy ending, giving them death and separation.)

For the last eighteen months, I have been without network TV in my house. This whole digital television transition and converter boxes and the like only brought me a single Spanish-speaking network over the digital air-waves, and in protest, I’ve refused to pay the cable companies money to bring me what I should be getting for free. TV commercials and PBS. Now, that is an entirely different blog post, but in a nutshell, this means I’ve been borrowing and watching season after season of shows I never managed to watch when they originally aired.

One such was the newly envisioned Battlestar Galactica. I am of an age that memories of Dirk Benedict striding about in his cool brown uniform, laughing his charming Starbuck laugh and smoking his stogies are now nostalgically warm and fuzzy. Even then, I knew Apollo was a bit of an uptight prick, but there you go. Somebody has to be the goody-goody. My story-loving teeth were cut on the likes of BSG and Star Wars, David and Goliath, and the idea that a small ragtag band could essentially save mankind from the evil Emperor or evil Cylon.

I was a ready, willing audience. I loved the new Starbuck. And Apollo? He still had a stick up his ass, but hey, at least he was gorgeous. That Starbuck was cast as a woman in the new series was terrific. She’s brash and she’s free and she’s the best pilot in the fleet. She is flawed and she is vulnerable and I am right there, rooting for her all the way.

Well, nearly all the way.

ATTENTION!!! Please know that all that follows are ***SPOILERS***

So, what the heck happened, Mr. Ronald C. Moore? Do your viewers mean so little to you that you would do to Starbuck and Apollo what you did? Where is your shame? Why did you dabble in the glorious sexual tension between Starbuck and Apollo only to kill Starbuck off and bring her back as a flipping ghost? Why, when you have that beautiful parallel story of lost love between Adama and Laura, would you send Apollo off into isolation, away from his father, and never fulfill the promise dangled in front of us through some (let's be honest) very excruciating seasons?

Mr. Moore, you used your characters abominably ill, and not necessarily for the sake of story. Gaius was caught in his eternal default loop of cowardice and ego until the second to last episode. Don't get me started on poor Dualla. I actually liked what ultimately happened to her character, but the unbalanced pairing of her with Apollo was so unbelievable that is took me right out of their stories and provided me with many a beverage break.

And then we have poor, battered, abused, brave Starbuck. You never even told us what really happened to Starbuck at that baby farm – and no woman watching could simply dismiss that. Her character was abused as a child, made choices that would harm her relationship with the one man she truly loves and respects (Adama), tortured on Caprica, and because of her sense of duty, she left the man she (might) love behind. Over and over, she is pummeled and twisted and her character changed and softened and arced. And after all that, you scripted her death as though that were some kind of prize. Nice one. Good one. Quite the Bazinga! to your audience.

From the first episode, the sexual tension between Starbuck and Apollo sizzled, in anger and heat. You even gave us that boxing match. You even sorta gave us a love scene. And then you took it all back. Why? How did Starbuck's presence as a ghost/angel serve the story better than her returning alive? How did her simply disappearing from the new Earth, leaving Apollo to face this new world alone make a better story? What kind of survival of mankind was I to be given when my two favourite characters weren't even going to pro-create in it? Together?

And how can I ever trust you again?

***Spoilers (I think) finished. Read on.***

Yes, I do believe that a writer has the full right to write her story. I am all for an author trying new directions in his career. I am against the blasted marketing departments in publishing houses and their blankety-blank boards who deem whether or not an editor can trust her judgment and buy a book on a hunch. But I am also for readers (and viewers), and not using them to get numbers to then simply ignore their expectations.

Yes, a good author will torture her characters, some more graphically than others. This is how we create conflict and display character growth. This is what makes a good story. It is difficult to take two perfect people and make them the least bit interesting. I promise you. We do this to serve the Six Magic Words, to Keep The Reader In The Story. That’s correct. We do this for you. Really. Truly. You may not believe it, but at the end of our books, you will thank us by buying the next one.

And we know we have a contract with you, too. Maddy will not write her paper to the Friends and denounce her association with Christian. Dean will not abandon Blue, and Blue will not walk away from this new home and life she's opened her heart to. Ford and Arthur will not be destroyed with Earth.

So, I promise here and now, and even in public, to do my utmost to never do to you what was done to me by Mr. Moore. I will never taunt you or lie to you or make promises throughout a character’s life and story, and then not fulfill them in a satisfying manner. Their endings may not all be happy, but I will not make false promises to keep you reading. Your intelligence, your trust and your free time mean too much to me.

Myths for you and me

2011-01-28T11:36:00.006-05:00

The Rockville 8 welcomes Harlequin Spice Briefs author Lynne Silver who's been thinking about how myths affect our modern lives. Read on!

My 6 year old is reading The Odyssey. Yes, he's very smart. We're very proud.

It all started a few weeks ago after watching the movie Percy Jackson.

Medusa, Hydra, and Minotaurs began to feature prominently in imaginary play and artwork. I adore mythology, so I encouraged it. Imagine our delight when we discovered that Mary Pope Osbourne, author of The Magic Tree House series, has adapted The Odyssey to an absolute perfect reading level for my children.

So we've been reading about Odysseus's journey supplemented with another children's book of general Greek mythology.

What stories! Intrigue, romance, monsters, epic battles...everything popular fiction authors strive for and much more.

As a romance author do my heroes live up to the standard set by Perseus, Theseus or Jason? Are any of my heroines as beautiful or wise as Io, Atalanta, or Helen? Or as vindictive?

Could I ever come up with the best “forced marriage” plot ever in the form of Hades kidnapping Persephone and forcing her to the Underworld six months of the year? Or poor Orpheus who braved Hades wrath to win back his beloved?

Maybe not, but I can use mythological themes as spring boards for plot lines. What about you? Where do you look for inspiration? Or what do you like to read? Any favorite myths?

-Lynne Silver
“Behind the Duke’s Door”
http://ebooks.eharlequin.com/B20C00B3-BA34-41E6-8B10-7CB654EF2FDC/10/141/en/ContentDetails.htm?ID=11CD83C1-7A77-4DFC-BB75-D516C5B70D25

What A Little Poetry Can Do

2011-01-16T22:25:00.006-05:00

We spend a lifetime gathering, sharpening, even discarding tools from our kit to lift our writing to a higher level. Poetry is one such tool that I occasionally reach for to immerse in, meditate on, and use to free myself from external obstacles and inner fears that stifle my writing.

Poems take me on a journey where language, rhythm, imagery, and voice come alive. The words stimulate my writing muscles to create, in similar vein, such vivid scenes and to seek and be unafraid of the truth through each character's arc. I'm encouraged to dig deeper to string together words that stir a reader's passion.

Rules permeate a writer's world, especially in genre fiction. Sometimes, those very rules bind the writer's creativity until the "corset" becomes routine. The writing becomes stale, predictable, flat. Therefore, it is not unusual for the writer to lose her passion, procrastinate, or shelve the very thing that used to bring such joy.

I use poems to heal, to stir love, to communicate, to boost the creative juices necessary to be a well-rounded writer. Poetry saved me many times. I had wonderful teachers who nurtured and supported my writing talents. On the flip side, I had a few teachers who doubted that I owned my talent with accusations of plaigerism. In middle school, I had tested two grades above my English class and had skipped a grade, nevertheless, the school placed me in the English class's lowest level for that new grade. In high school, the teacher said my style sounded like a text book (from her desk) and with no proof tried to fail me. Then she met my mother...'nuff said. In college, my technical writing teacher accused with no proof. A university peer evaluation dismissed the teacher's opinion. It was noted that since I was schooled in my early years under the British system, my writing reflected that style.

Maya Angelou's poems said all that I had to say. Her words celebrate who I am and what I have to contribute. One of my favorites is Still I Rise.

(excerpt)
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops
Weakened by my soulful cries

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm like a black ocean, leaping and wide
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wonderously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave
I am the dream and the hope of the slave
I rise
I rise
I rise

The benefits of poetry are countless. Read a poem and be liberated.
Happy writing, my fellow writers.

Be Fearless

2011-01-10T09:17:00.009-05:00

A great American once said, "We have nothing to fear, but fear itself." Never have those words been more true. Whether you're a reader and the struggling economy has got you down, or you're a writer and the often-bleak publishing picture bothers you, I believe we have to go forward... and we have to go fearless.

That, of course, is easier said than done. As both a reader and a writer, I've come up with a plan for going fearless this year. By putting things in persepective, I find I can go forward. Maybe my plan doesn't work for you. But that's all right. Feel free to come up with your own method for moving forward. Because that's the bottom line: moving forward in spite of fear.

Nic's Tips for Moving Forward
As readers, we can:

~ Remember why we read in the first place. All those things we have to worry about? They fade away when we're lost in a good book.

~ Remember reading doesn't have to be expensive. We can borrow as well as buy. Trade with your girlfriends. Hit the library's sale shelf and take a chance on a new writer for a few cents.

~ Remember reading is an excellent value. Even when we buy a best-selling hardback, we're getting bang for our buck. That book will make for many hours of entertainment. Where else will a dollar go so far?

As writers, we can:

~ Remember why we write in the first place. All those things we have to worry about? They fade away when we're lost in a good book - our own book.

~ Remember there are still readers out there. So there will need to be books out there. When we see the headlines about publishers' problems and bookstores' troubles, we need to keep in mind most of them are still looking for product. And that means they're looking for our books.

~ Remember you're free to write your story your way. With tighter strictures and tougher criteria from agents, editors, contests, and even critique groups, a writer can feel under the gun when she sits at her keyboard. But be free. Write your way. Listen and learn, but the bottom line is, be fearless.

But whatever you do, keep reading, keep writing, move forward, and most of all, be fearless.

Will you join me in this? Let the Rockville 8 know . . .

Things Yet to Come

2011-01-03T21:46:00.005-05:00

Last week, my family and I went to "A Christmas Carol" at Ford's Theater. The play was wonderfully directed and acted with a good theatrical interpretation of the visits by the Ghosts of Christmas.

This story always makes me think about my own past, present and future. I'm reminded of regrets, accomplishments and upcoming events as each ghost makes their entrance. It's a good story to mull over at the end of the year because it fits into the New Year's Eve notion of reviewing the year past and planning for the one ahead.

Regarding my writing, there are times that I wished that I'd written when I could have instead of wasting time. The sense of pride I felt at participating in NaNoWriMo and coming away with more words written in a month than I'd ever done before. The exciting promise of the story I've started and hope to finish soon.

"A Christmas Carol" shows us that it's never too late, no matter what you've done in the past. The power to change the course of your life lies within you. Or, in the case of writers, in your fingertips. So, here's to a year of productivity if for no other reason than you don't want the "Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come" visiting you.

Seriously, I saw him. You don't want that pointed in your direction.

Happy Holidays

2010-12-24T09:00:00.001-05:00

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

From all of us in the Rockville8, we wish you and yours a very happy holiday season filled with all the joys of family and friends. May the year ahead overflow with blessings and grace to keep you encouraged and fulfilled. Peace be with you.

Almost

2010-12-20T12:29:00.000-05:00

As I write this (a day late) it is almost Christmas, for those who celebrate. Almost the end of 2010, for those who might want to celebrate that. There were years, oh yes, there were years, where I didn't so much ring in the new year as kick out the old one . . . and good riddance to bad rubbish!

But 2010, thankfully, was not one of those years. 2010 brought me an agent and a grandbaby and I am thrilled to pieces about both of them.

The Rockville8 will be doing a bit of summing up in January, so more to come on that. But in the meantime, I leave you with a couple almost perfect links.

First, The Popcorn Dialogues, which is a podcast from the FABULOUS Jennifer Crusie and Lucy March. They watch a movie, then record themselves (and sometimes special guests) discussing the movie from their writerly perspectives. For a structure-hungry student like myself, it's almost as good as sitting in a classroom with them. It took me a long time to start listening to the podcasts, but now that I have, I'm hooked.

And then there's this animated Xmas card, featuring a poem by Neil Gaiman. It's not even almost festive, but I'm including it here anyway because I love it and because it captures something of my own personal mood this time of year almost perfectly . . .

Have a holiday, y'all!

Whether you want to or not . . .

The Creativity Well revisited/Moving Eve: A Love Story in Brief

2010-12-05T21:57:00.007-05:00

A few months ago I blogged about my creativity well, the old farmhouse and grounds my grandparents inhabited for over forty years. I returned at Thanksgiving, knowing that the place had sold, steeled to say my good-byes to this once immutable touchstone of my life. My mother told me she knew the couple who ended up purchasing the house were it because the day they viewed the property, the husband sat on the bench of the breakfast nook in the spot my grandfather had always claimed as his.

This man looked through the multi-paned wavy-glass windows to watch the birds at the feeders, studied the enormous white birch that pops like a torch from the thick patch of grey-brown-green trees along the road, and gazed out at the three-seater outhouse hugging the ravine that leads down to the river. Perhaps he conjured up a story exploring the wherefores and whys of that peculiar structure. Then he relaxed into the cushioned bench seat as though he'd been groomed to take over stewardship of that particular piece of Earth's real estate. In the space of a minute or two, the Three and a Half had become his home.

And while I am sad, sad, sad to lose the physical demesne of my creativity well I know two things. One is that its magic will flow, zesty and sparkling, through my veins the rest of my life. And second, I am grateful beyond imagining that the new owners, this husband and wife I know only through a few words from my mom, "get" just what a marvel they have in store for them. The dreams they will dream. The times they will have. The stories they will create together and share with others. What an adventure they have in store! What an adventure.

Moving Eve: A Love Story in Brief by J. Keely Thrall

"Judy," Gib said, taking hold of his wife's hand. In a fresh set of pajamas, he was once again in bed lying next to the lady he'd loved with all his soppy heart the last seventy odd years.

"You awake?"

"Where were you? Are you all right?" Judy's warm fingers squeezed his. Her voice had faded along with her memory, but his cool blonde always knew him. Always needed to know he was okay.

"Fine, fine. Just soaked through my PJs. Damned night sweats." He brought her hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles. Earlier in the year the doctors determined the bladder cancer had disappeared. Buggering cells had simply decided to migrate, taking up new residence in his lung and kidney. Not much the medicos could do about it. His heart was too weak to undergo vigorous or invasive treatment. A damn shame the spirit of his heart hadn't imparted its robust strength to the muscle. Suppressing a sigh, he kissed Judy's knuckles again before tucking their arms, still linked at the hand, under the covers. Even in a warm house, the Michigan December leaked inside. It wouldn't do for either his lady or himself to come down with a sniffle. "We're moving house today, sweetheart, remember?"

"Now?" Judy's voice rasped into the darkness, at once detached and fretful.

"No, no. Later. We're going to live with Megan and Jeri, downstate. We'll have Christmas there."

"That's right, that's right." She patted his hand as though to reassure him. About what, he couldn't tell, but any kind of pats and pets from his wife were welcome, anytime, any-why, anywhere. Sex may be a non-starter at this point, but a little skin to skin was all right by him. Even if it was just snuggling in bed with his best girl, holding hands.

"This will be our seventy-third Christmas together." What was the point in being a retired mathematician if he couldn't throw down a few facts and figures every so often?

Judy chuckled. The sound of bells on his ear. "Mother was fit to be tied when that Halsted boy let on that you and Eddie were out in the car Christmas Eve."

"We'd just about frozen our nuts off when Howie came and got us."

"Language, Gilbert."

He grinned into the darkness. Change might be coming, but some things stayed constant.

"That night was the beginning of a grand adventure, wasn't it, dearheart?"

"It was?" Judy asked, vague again but willing to be persuaded.

Irritation spiked in a rush of heat. Anger at the aging process that had stolen his mate in snatches and gulps over the last few years drew a flush to his neck. The contrast to the cool night air made him shiver and he shrugged the blanket up to cover his shoulders.

"Yes," he declared, unwilling to cede way to personality's thief. "Sixty-six years and nine months of marriage. Four children, five grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. Travel, foreign and domestic. This home." His voice cracked and he swallowed. Sentimental slob. Blinking moisture from his eyes, Gib cleared his throat. "And our next adventure begins tomorrow."

"Well, maybe you should get some sleep now so you can be rested for this new adventure of ours, hmm?" Tart and unexpected, the zinger triggered a second round of tears that needed to be blinked away. The moments when his dry, witty blonde stepped through the haze of dementia to tweak his pretensions came with less frequency but, man, they still carried a punch.

"All right, dear. Good night." Gib squeezed his wife's hand.

"Good night." His hand was squeezed in return.

In the country four am was dark no matter the season. But in the depths of a northern winter, the black outside the windows felt especially heavy. As though Dawn might not be strong enough this time to roll away her brooding brother Night.

"I said good night, Gib."

Gilbert laughed and turned onto his side, facing Judy. He wiggled to find a comfortable spot, then hunkered down and closed his eyes. He'd trust Dawn to flex her might and usher in the day that would bring his and Judy's next grand adventure.

And in a few days, they would celebrate another Christmas Eve together. His blonde may or may not come out to play, but his Judy would be there, holding his hand, loving him as deeply as he loved her. He was a lucky, lucky man who could still claim rights to the grandest adventure a man could hope for: true love.

The above is an exercise in trying to put myself in another's shoes, as writers are wont to do. In this case it's my grandpa and how I imagine the night before he and Nana leave their home for a new one might unfold.

In thinking about the ways in which one could examine a life and reflect on the ups and downs and curve-balls one encounters, it seems to me that we have an infinite choice in how we address our baggage. First, do we call it baggage? Scars? Experience? Adventures?

Language helps craft our attitudes and our attitudes help form our emotions. I deliberately chose to imbue this narrator (my fictional version of Grandpa) as taking strength in looking to his future with bright expectancy. This move is the Next Big Thing. Something to look forward to, to anticipate. He deals with the cancer, he lives for the brief glimpses of the woman his wife used to be even as he loves the woman his wife is now. But he's not dwelling on the crap. He's looking up and out.

Aside from the personal journey portion of this post (can we say coping mechanism, everyone?), I'm realizing it was really useful as an initial character sketch. Now, I doubt I'll ever write a story in which my grandpa is the hero per se.

But the determination of spirit in the face of adversity? Hmm.

Someone who loves not just from habit, but from nuanced choice as circumstances change over the course of a life. Hmm, hmm.

Someone who sees life as a grand adventure? Hmm, hmm, hmm!

Who do you think would be the perfect match for that hero?

Guest Blog: Sherry Lewis on Conflict, Part II

2010-11-28T20:35:00.003-05:00

Welcome to Week Two with our guest blogger, author Sherry Lewis.

Sherry’s career path toward being an author didn't exactly follow a straight line. Sherry has worked such prestigious jobs as manager of a convenience store, Christmas tree decorator, poinsettia dresser, keyboard player/vocalist in a band, secretary in an insurance office, secretary in a bank, and finally secretary and administrative assistant for an attorney who eventually became a federal judge. In late 1993, Sherry sold her first three books to Berkley Prime Crime. By early 1994, she'd sold her first book to Harlequin Superromance. CALL ME MOM was published in January 1995, with NO PLACE FOR SECRETS following in July. In 1996, Sherry gleefully left the court to pursue a full-time writing career.

Still as much in love with books as ever, Sherry writes for Berkley and Harlequin. She’s a long-time member of Romance Writers of America, where she served for four years on the Board of Directors, including one year as President. She's also a member of Novelists Inc., KOD, and Sisters in Crime, and is a deliriously happy grandmother.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

External conflict should rear its ugly head for the first time at the beginning of your story. Readers want to be in on the trouble from the beginning. If the trouble’s been going on for a while, your readers will probably feel cheated and wonder why you’re bothering them with it.

Maybe you’re writing about a woman who grew up poor. Maybe about a woman who was left at the altar by her fiancé. Maybe you’re writing about a man who found his wife in bed with his best friend. Or about a woman whose best friend was killed in an accident. Maybe your hero went through a particularly bitter divorce. There are infinite possibilities, but readers won’t really care about the past unless there’s some real connection to the present.

Readers really begin to care about the character’s past when they perceive a threat of the past being repeated. Growing up poor doesn’t matter much unless your protagonist suddenly finds herself in desperate need of money or she starts to fall in love with a wealthy man. . . or a poor one. Her financial background isn’t really an issue unless the current conflict makes it one.

Likewise, with internal conflict, timing is everything. Your heroine who has sworn off men completely isn’t likely to spot that hot hero and suddenly start worrying about the fact that he lives in L.A. and she lives in Paris. The idea that they live on opposite sides of the world doesn’t even become an issue until later, after she’s resolved some of her internal conflicts so they can develop some kind of relationship.

As I start planning layers of conflict, I ask myself a couple of questions repeatedly: “What if this conflict were resolved? What would keep my hero and heroine from getting together (or my protagonist from achieving his goal) then?” If my protagonist is searching for the kidnapped scientist and the missing formula for a biological weapon, what will keep my protagonist from saving the day if he finds the professor on page 150? Either I need a new conflict to arise at that point, or I need a twist on the original conflict. And if that conflict is resolved on page 200? Again, I need either a new conflict or another twist.

The more layers of conflict you can find to torment your characters, the less chance you have of running into saggy middle problems or endlessly repeating yourself. Each book will be different, of course. In one book it may work best to introduce the conflicts during the first part of the book and resolve them at the end. In another book, some conflicts may only arise after another is resolved.

Figuring out how and when to introduce, heighten, and then resolve your conflicts is a function of your internal editor—that much maligned, but endlessly useful part of ourselves that we too often try to keep chained up and out of the way.

Your internal editor understands the necessity of logic in a way that your creative self doesn’t, and faulty logic can be the death of an otherwise remarkable piece of fiction. Your characters might be brilliantly drawn, your setting painted beautifully, your voice crisp and unique, and your plot well thought out, but you can kill all of that with illogical actions/reactions, by introducing goals and forgetting to let your characters actually pursue them, or by creating “conflict” that sounds good but never actually creates a problem for the character.

Your logical internal editor is crucial to conflict resolution because the key to believable conflict resolution lies in being able to think through the conflict logically from beginning to end. Once you understand the steps you must take to resolve the conflict successfully, then you can plan in advance how you’ll work those steps into your novel, or you can write your first draft and revise afterward to make sure the conflict has followed those logical steps to eventual resolution.

Remember that in your book:

There must be at least one problem that must be solved. If the resolution doesn’t matter, none of the conflict you make up for your character will matter, either.
Your viewpoint character(s) should be the only one(s) who can solve the problem. If someone else can or should do it, readers aren’t likely to care much about your character’s efforts.
Your viewpoint character(s) must take active steps toward solving the problem as the book progresses and the forces working against them (whether internal or external) must increase in strength and/or urgency.
Actual conflict is always stronger and more interesting than anticipated conflict or remembered conflict.

There’s no quicker way to kill the tension than to indulge a character’s urge to think endlessly about something that might happen in the future. Even the biggest problem is going to bore your readers to tears if the characters only think about the problem and never actually encounter it. By the same token, the urge to avoid a difficult scene can also deflate tension in the blink of an eye. Some of us take it a step further, by combining the two—a sure way to let the air out of your story’s balloon.

We write scene after scene in which the heroine thinks about what might happen if the hero finds out about her sordid past. The author mistakes these scenes for motivation, believing that all that angst is necessary to explain why the heroine continues to lie to the hero. Finally, just when the reader would rather gouge out her eyes than read another “I can’t tell him or I’ll lose him” monologue, the heroine decides it’s time to come clean.

She squares her shoulders, lifts her chin, and sets off to tell the hero the truth. The scene fades to black, and the next time we see her she’s picking at her Cobb salad over lunch with her best friend. While we struggle to make ourselves care, she regales her friend with the details of her encounter with the hero.

What’s wrong with that you ask? There’s absolutely no tension in the scene. The confrontation is over. The conflict is past. Instead of getting to sit in on the discussion and experiencing the heart-stopping fear when the hero learns the truth, we learn about it after everything’s been decided. Anticipated conflict and remembered conflict are slightly better than no conflict at all, but not by much.

Good conflict is what makes a story worth reading. We need internal and external struggles to create tension and force characters to make choices that matter. If we can provide those, readers will not only keep reading this book, but they’ll come back for more.

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We're having a drawing at Dancing on Coals. Purchase any of our workshop booklets during the month of November and your name will be entered into a drawing for a free copy of "In and Out: Putting Characters in Conflict" coming in December.

Each booklet contains the full text of the Dancing on Coals workshop by the same name. Booklets currently available are:

Mastering Scene and Sequel

Spinning Straw into Gold: The Art and Craft of Revisions

Riding the Emotional Roller-Coaster

Creating Characters with Character

Plotting the Organic Way

Your name will be entered once for each booklet you purchase. For more information, visit us at http://www.dancingoncoals.com/ and click on the "Booklets for Download" button

Guest blog: Sherry Lewis on Conflict

2010-11-21T20:10:00.006-05:00

For the next two weeks we have the honor of hosting author Sherry Lewis and the good fortune of having her discuss conflict.

Sherry’s career path toward being an author didn't exactly follow a straight line. Sherry has worked such prestigious jobs as manager of a convenience store, Christmas tree decorator, poinsettia dresser, keyboard player/vocalist in a band, secretary in an insurance office, secretary in a bank, and finally secretary and administrative assistant for an attorney who eventually became a federal judge. In late 1993, Sherry sold her first three books to Berkley Prime Crime. By early 1994, she'd sold her first book to Harlequin Superromance. CALL ME MOM was published in January 1995, with NO PLACE FOR SECRETS following in July. In 1996, Sherry gleefully left the court to pursue a full-time writing career.

Still as much in love with books as ever, Sherry writes for Berkley and Harlequin. She’s a long-time member of Romance Writers of America, where she served for four years on the Board of Directors, including one year as President. She's also a member of Novelists Inc., KOD, and Sisters in Crime, and is a deliriously happy grandmother.

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Thanks for inviting me to visit your blog. I’m excited to be here and to talk about one of the most profound things I’ve learned about writing over the course of my career: Conflict.

Everyone reading this is probably aware that there are two basic types of conflict: internal and external. We hear about them almost from the moment we make the decision to become a writer. In almost every book we write, we’ll probably work with both types of conflict, but getting the mix just right is sometimes tricky.

We all know that internal conflict is a war that takes place within a person, while external conflict is a war that takes place outside the character, on another stage. Both types of conflict should be ongoing, active, and changing as the story progresses.

Every one of us lives through moments of conflict on a daily basis, but they’re rarely interesting enough or strong enough to work in a novel. I might want the prime rib for dinner, but I can really only afford the ground sirloin. Which one to choose? Those shoes are so stinking cute, I’d love to buy them, but if I do that, I can’t pay the water bill. What to do? My daughter and I can’t agree on what to watch on TV or where to go for dinner.

Realistic? Yes. Interesting? Not so much. Compelling enough to keep me glued to the page when the kids are screaming and dinner’s on the stove? Ummm. No.

To craft a strong, compelling novel, we need to carefully select internal and external conflicts that will dovetail as the story progresses and ultimately push the characters to make a choice that’s going to rock their world.

Your romance novel heroine can agonize for 300 pages over whether she’s willing to give her alcoholic mother another chance, but unless she’s facing an external conflict that makes her decision absolutely necessary, nobody’s going to care about your heroine’s angst. Your romance hero might be locked in a competition with his arch-rival for the promotion he wants, but if getting that promotion doesn’t put another area of his life in danger, their competition might just be a big yawn.

Compelling conflict must force the character involved into a decision she really doesn’t want to make. Climb the mountain or risk death in the snow-covered valley. Risk becoming involved in a new relationship or give up forever the dream of having a wife and kids. If the choice won’t change things in a major way, the decision probably isn’t interesting enough to keep readers interested. Go after the promotion that will mean moving to NYC but will also provide the financial stability he’s always longed for, or stay in Portland to be near his daughter.

When you’re making a statement about your character’s internal conflict, make sure you’re forcing them to make a choice:

John wants success in his career and financial stability, but he also wants to stay in Portland to be near Chelsea. Which one will he choose?

Nellie’s fear of heights has paralyzed her for years. Now she’s faced with a choice: climb the mountain or wait at the isolated crash site for someone to find her before she does. Which one will she choose?

David always wanted a traditional family—wife, two kids, and a dog. He even thought the picket fence looked pretty good. But after his fiancée betrayed him, his parents divorced and his older brother cheated on his wife of fifteen years, David’s not sure he believes in marriage anymore. When he falls in love with the pastor’s daughter, David has a choice to make: marry her or lose her.

The choice of the right characters is crucial to making conflict come to life. In David’s case, just meeting a new woman isn’t enough to put him into deep conflict. He must meet and fall in love with a woman for whom it’s marriage or nothing. If David doesn’t have to make the tough choice, his story won’t be nearly compelling enough to keep readers turning the pages.

A common mistake I see is when an author introduces “conflict” that isn’t actually conflict at all. A woman whose ex-husband cheated on her and who has sworn off men is not in conflict—not even when the hot, hunky hero walks into the room. Her distrust of men is simply a statement about her current emotional condition. It’s potentially one-half of a conflict, but it’s not conflict unless there’s something equally strong pulling her in the opposite direction at the same time. Sadly, even the hero’s incredible hunkiness is not sufficiently strong to create a strong, believable conflict for this woman.

Nor is his hotness enough to motivate a woman who’s truly determined to avoid men to seek out the hero and spend time around him.

What would put her in internal conflict? What would motivate her to take a chance?

I’m sure we could come up with countless possibilities, but let’s say this woman is also driven to find the man responsible for destroying her father last year. If she believes that the hero has information that could help her, she’ll seek out the hero and her reasons for doing so will feel realistic and believable to the reader. Once you’ve created a chink in her armor by creating a pull that’s every bit as strong as the push, you can believably motivate the character to take the risk she’d rather avoid.

One of the best places I know of to look for strong conflict is where the character’s childhood teachings are at odds with an adult need. Maybe your heroine longs for children of her own but doesn’t see marriage in her future. Her strong religious beliefs won’t allow her to explore alternative options for conception, so her longing for a baby will compel her to work through her trust issues when the hero moves in next door. Her story isn’t just about the conflict between woman and man it’s also about the conflict between her moral beliefs and her human longing.

Or maybe she has a bit too much to drink one night, has a one-night stand with some guy and finds herself pregnant. Is she in conflict now? In an historical novel, maybe. In a contemporary, not so much ... unless she also has deep-seated beliefs against abortion and adoption and also believes that a child needs both parents to grow up happy and healthy. By itself, the fact that she grew up without a father doesn’t put her in conflict, even after she meets the hero. But if she’s backed into a corner by an unplanned pregnancy, her own needs will be in conflict with the needs of the child.

Maybe your hero chooses to stay in a loveless marriage so his sick wife doesn’t lose her health insurance. His desire for happiness is in conflict with his sense of duty. He can either leave her and find a new love, or he can look himself in the mirror, but he can’t do both.

Or maybe he was taught as a child that compromise is a sign of weakness and now he’s forced to compromise to save someone or something important to him.

Every one of us is carrying beliefs from childhood around with us, and our characters should be no different. Those beliefs are probably a huge part of who you are, whether they’re relatively unimportant like the “right” way to decorate a Christmas tree or something more integral, such as what we believe about religion and spirituality, politics or sex.

Beliefs that come from our childhoods are often so powerfully embedded we continue to believe them even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Even in middle age, the things we were taught as children can hang us up on the paths we’ve chosen as adults.

One of the big mistakes authors make is when we don’t let our characters hold onto their beliefs. We write about people who change life paths because of one conversation with a stranger. About people who abandon the teachings of their youth because of a set of soulful eyes or the touch of a hand. We write about people who throw away everything they believe because their best friend tells them to change things up over chicken salad croissants at lunch.

When you’re creating internal conflicts for your characters, don’t short-change them. Your characters must hold to their belief system just as you cling to your own. It’s the other side of the internal conflict that creates the chink in their armor and allows change to happen—eventually. But even with that chink, they’re going to need something close to an internal earthquake to shake them from their original beliefs. The hero who feels responsible for his wife’s death isn’t likely to go chat up the perky redhead standing by the elevator no matter how green her eyes are—unless he needs something else as badly as he needs to protect himself.

Remember that internal conflict is a two-edged sword. It forces the character to make a difficult choice. We write the story to find out the answers to the questions that arise from those conflicting desires. Readers read the story for the same reasons. Without the questions, there’s no reason for the reader to keep turning pages. Force your characters into a corner and give them a life-changing choice to make—a choice they can’t avoid. If you can do that, your readers will become invested in the character’s journey every time.

Join us next Sunday for Part 2.

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We're having a drawing at Dancing on Coals. Purchase any of our workshop booklets during the month of November and your name will be entered into a drawing for a free copy of "In and Out: Putting Characters in Conflict" coming in December.

Each booklet contains the full text of the Dancing on Coals workshop by the same name. Booklets currently available are:

Mastering Scene and Sequel

Spinning Straw into Gold: The Art and Craft of Revisions

Riding the Emotional Roller-Coaster

Creating Characters with Character

Plotting the Organic Way

Your name will be entered once for each booklet you purchase. For more information, visit us at http://www.dancingoncoals.com/ and click on the "Booklets for Download" button

Are Books Scary?

2010-11-15T14:22:00.002-05:00

Years ago, I shared a flat with a non-reader. In fact, Carmen went so far as to say books scared her. She would cast my five sets of bookshelves a wary glower, then retreat from my room to her world of chrome and found objects. One day, I returned from work to find my cookbooks piled in the closet. Carmen knew in her gut that books did not belong anywhere near the kitchen.

She isn't an ignorant person. She can read; she's an artist and an incredibly creative person. But books - and reading - hold no interest for her. And the physical inactivity of reading bores her silly. (And believe me, she is silly enough.) Information and entertainment, for her, comes from televisions, movies and music. Not books.

I, on the other hand, am a reader. My five bookshelves have grown to eight. Books are my crack and my solace and my teachers. Barring an emergency, I cannot make it through a day without 45 minutes (minimum) in the morning, drinking my coffee and reading (or re-reading) a book.

I've spent the last month working on an estate sale in Georgetown, in a house that has been in the same family for 120 years. And there in the entrance hall was the most beautiful 7 x 8 foot set of mahogany and glass bookshelves. Full of the books a family collected between 1890 and 1950. Mostly novels, some books of knowledge, and of course the pre-requisite mid-century Readers Digest condensed volumes.

The vast majority of these books were charming children's novels from the early part of the last century. And tucked amongst the pages were little treasures - postcards, birthday cards, and other mementos. These books were read. Enjoyed. Treasured and saved for nearly a century in that phenomenal glass and mahogany home.

I understand these people. I am still, 10 years later, puzzled by my former flatmate. Non-readers are as foreign to me as, well, seafood on a pizza. It doesn't make sense. People who don't need to read the book because they saw the movie. People who don't read because they had to read too much in school. People who don't read because they just don't have the time. People who don't read because they are too busy writing. People who don't read because books are scary.

It's a fundamental divide. As elemental to me as religion. And though I try to have compassion on these people, I find it a trial because I have no empathy for them. Only pity. It's a puzzle. Maybe there's a book out there that will help me understand them.