Take a moment to remember those who’ve given their lives to keep this country safe, please. Thank you to the soldiers, past and present, who fought for the US.
Archive for May, 2010
Memorial Day
Sunday, May 30th, 2010Take a moment to remember those who’ve given their lives to keep this country safe, please. Thank you to the soldiers, past and present, who fought for the US.
Living With a Troll
Friday, May 28th, 2010I woke up Wednesday morning with Troll on my mind. He’s the hero in The Troll Bridge from The Mammoth Book of Time Travel Romance.
Yes, I’m going to riff about characters again. They’re why I write and I live with them in my head for months and not just the months while I’m writing their story. They come in before that, spend time telling me who they are and letting me see who they are, and they’re with me while I write their proposal. They stick with me while I wait to find out if their story sold and sometimes this can take months or more. Then there’s writing the book and they stay after I’m done to help me through revisions and copy edits and galleys. So even if a story sells immediately, I’m still living with the heroes and heroines from my books for about a year–minimum.
I don’t mind. I love my imaginary people and I miss them when they leave. It’s part of the reason why I reread my own books. I want to visit with them again. It’s rarer for a character who’s left to come back on their own and that’s part of the reason why I was so pleasantly surprised by Troll showing up.
But I digressed. Again. Sorry. Anyway, Wednesday morning, Troll came in. I love Troll. Love him! He’s been around since I was writing Eternal Nights back in 2005, and when I had a chance to write the Time Travel, I knew I was going to the future (Well, duh, I don’t have a historical voice and I don’t read many historicals) and writing his story.
It was strange. The Troll Bridge is like an abbreviated version of his full book. Even as I wrote it, I knew I could do a full-length, 100,000 word story for him and Lia. But his story comes after the stories for Flare, Gravedigger, and the Z Man and I’d have to find time to do those first. Time I don’t have.
Troll, though, is major yummy. Not just because he’s gorgeous–I wish there were more pictures online of multi, multi, multicultural men because I’d love to find who looks like him to share–but because he’s a genuinely good guy. He’s close to his family despite being stationed on Jarved Nine and has respect and affection for his parents and grandparents. He also has some psychic abilities that he hides, but he’s nowhere near as good as his grandmother. She used to do readings in New Orleans.
Since I already have a list of things to write that’s half a dozen stories long (that’s counting trilogy/series ideas as one and not three or more), I know Troll wasn’t visiting because I’ll be writing him again. That allowed me to spend the day just enjoying him, like an old friend who unexpectedly came to visit.
The Proposal In Progress
Tuesday, May 25th, 2010Sunday in the late afternoon, I finally finished the rough draft of my proposal chapters for the latest Work In Progress(WIP). I was beginning to wonder if I’d ever reach this point, especially after my heroine was determined to hide her personality from me. I wrote and rewrote her first scene again and again trying to find her.
The work isn’t done yet, though. I have to revise and polish this opening and get the three chapters all bright and shiny. I have to write a synopsis where I lay out what will happen in the story. Yeah, I have no clue what happens, but I do know the final relationship scene between Liza and Jack and how that all works out. Too bad the end of the plot isn’t half as clear. :-/ Okay, let’s be honest here–I have no clue how the plot part of the story ends.
Flying into the mist or writing by the seat of your pants is always an adventure. I will confess to being more toward the center of the plotter-pantser continuum than I was when I started out, but I’m still not a big picture plotter and that’s unlikely to change.
That said, the miraculous thing is how close I’ve stayed to the majority of my synopses. Things have changed, sometimes a lot from the synopsis I turn in to the finished book, but it’s a nice little framework to use. Once I have one.
Yeah, that is the challenge. Anyway, I’m looking forward to getting this thing fixed up until it looks pretty, getting some answers to my research questions, and mailing it off to my agent. So that I can work on something else.
Writers. We’re always eager to pursue the next new shiny story idea that comes along. 
Sharing My Pretties
Monday, May 24th, 2010I can’t believe how beautiful my peonies are this year, especially since these plants just went in the ground last spring. I’m like a kid on Christmas morning and I get so excited whenever I go out and look at my flowers. I want to share some of the awesomeness with y’all.
This is what the coral peonies looked like on Friday afternoon.
And here’s what they look like today.
Group shot and yes, that is a creamy yellow peony in with the coral.
Coral flower
Close up on the coral
Double coral
Coral with the creamy yellow
Close up on the creamy yellow
Coral and dark coral
Close up on the dark coral
And finally, this small white peony flower is on the plant next to the coral
Pretty darn awesome, isn’t it? And I hope no one is still on dial up. There were a lot of pictures here, but I couldn’t help myself.
Listening To My Own Books
Thursday, May 20th, 2010Just like I reread my books to visit with my characters, I also listen to my stories on audio (Through a Crimson Veil and Shards of Crimson) for the same reason.
When I write, I hear a lot more often than I actually see anything. It’s always been like this and maybe this is why it’s so hard for me to listen to my books. Nothing against the narrator, but when they read, they don’t have the same cadence/rhythm/intonation as my characters do when they talk.
It throws me off every time.
I can hear them so clearly in my head–definitely while I’m writing them, but also when I reread even years later. I know exactly which word they’ll stress in a sentence, I know the tone of voice, if it’s sarcastic (mild or strong), if they’re laughing while they talk, if there’s a lilt in her voice, an edge in his. I often leave it up to the reader to decide intonation because I know how frustrating it is for me to have the author’s vision intrude over my own when I’m reading her book, but I never considered what that meant for a voice talent. How do they figure out what the author is going for when the context isn’t spelled out?
Then there’s another problem–Mika doesn’t pronounce her name the way it’s supposed to be said. Standard pronunciation is Mee-kah. My heroine says her name Mike-ah. It’s hugely jarring.
The other thing that’s jarring is how the reader pronounces the made-up words, like the demon branches. With some of them, she was spot on, with others, I’d be thinking, no, not like that, it’s ____ (fill in the blank). I suppose I should have put together a glossary for my website, but I never have. At least not with a pronunciation guide. (I do have a small glossary for my Light Warrior series. Some day, when I have time, I’ll have to add how to say it, not just what it is.)
Overall, though, I think it’s fun to hear my stories on audio. I wish all of them were available like that. With time so tight for me, it would be awesome to revisit my heroes and heroines this way since I can listen at work.
In Search Of a Personality
Tuesday, May 18th, 2010Characters come in my head, talk to me, let me get to know them, and I write their stories. They’re not always cooperative. I’ve had them lie to me, refuse to talk, stonewall me, and a bunch of other maneuvers, but I’ve always gotten around them. I’ve never had a character hold back their personality–until the Work In Progress (WIP).
The book opens in the hero’s Point of View (POV) and he didn’t give me any problems, but my heroine! I wrote and rewrote her scene over and over and over and it was bland. Boring. She displayed absolutely no personality. Liza was this cardboard cutout moving around, but not feeling anything, not reacting much to anything and generally making me insane.
I went forward in time and wrote a prologue in her POV. As it turned out, it was a pivotal moment in Liza’s existence, the thing that shaped who she is today. It was absolutely invaluable to know what lurked in her past, but who she was back then isn’t who she is now and it didn’t help with her personality.
I ended up cutting the prologue. It was unnecessary and all it was really good for was showing me what shaped Liza. It just wasn’t anything a reader needed to see up front.
And I continued to write and rewrite the scene in chapter 1 from Liza’s POV. Still nothing. No personality and it was frustrating the hell out of me. I’d rather have a character lie to me than have them hide who they are. I’m still not sure why she did it, but I did know one thing about her: She doesn’t like interacting with humans.
Finally, in a move that was sheer desperation on my part, I backed up her scene. Not much, probably less than half an hour, but it put her in a situation where she was surrounded by humans and in a nightclub yet. She was not having a good time. And she was unhappy enough that she stopped hiding from me. As I wrote, her personality showed up on the page. At last!
I’ve decided that it’s my job in this story to keep her in situations that have her grumbling. I torture them because they torture me, and Liza deserves it!
Mother Nature’s Surprise
Monday, May 17th, 2010Last year, I planted peonies. I’d had a tree peony before this, but no regular herbaceous peonies. They’re beautiful flowers and my mom has gorgeous plants which have left me spoiled. We tried to split hers, but my dad and I both chickened out because we didn’t know what we were doing. Instead, I went to a garden center and bought some. This year, I’m going to have some flowers.
This is the first one to bloom. It’s a bit redder than it appears in the picture, but the flowers are absolutely gorgeous.
The whole plant
Fully open
Close up of that flower
A side shot of a different flower on the plant
Still opening
The flowers turned out even more beautiful than I was expecting. And you know what else is cool? How quickly they opened. I spent time in the yard yesterday, and while the blooms were big, they seemed days away from opening. Then I looked today and I was going OMG!
And this wasn’t the only surprise I had. My tree peony had a bloom open, too, and again, I thought it wouldn’t open for days more.
Tree peony
I can’t wait until the other peonies bloom, although they seem a bit farther off. There are also a few peonies that won’t have flowers at all this year. Maybe next, though. I can hope, right?
Finding People Like Me
Thursday, May 13th, 2010One of the really nice thing about the online community is finding like-minded individuals to hang out with. I’ve always been a voracious reader–I’m betting I averaged 20-25 books a month there for a while–and finding people who read like I did was impossible. No one I knew read that much. In fact, I hardly knew anyone who even read romance. And To Be Read (TBR) piles? Forget about it. I thought I was some kind of mutant freak and I never told anyone I had about a dozen books piled on my bookshelves that I hadn’t read yet.
Then I entered a magical world known as the internet and there was a romance readers’ board. OMG! I found people who read the same books as I did. They read the same huge amount that I did. And they had TBR piles! I promptly gave up television so that I had time to talk books with all my new friends.
There was only one downside. Book recommendations. My TBR pile swelled alarmingly. It’s still alarming, only more so because I have a lot less time to read now than I ever had before.
But these are the women that introduced me to Linda Howard and Mackenzie’s Mountain, to Anne Stuart, Rachel Lee, and a host of other authors I hadn’t read before this. There were also a large number of authors in this community and they did online workshops for us. Free! I read and I learned.
The online community is also awesome for writers because we’re just not normal. It’s why we tend to congregate with each other. We talk about our characters as if they’re real people, and hey, I’ll be honest with you. My characters are real to me. It’s like we’re sharing a house while I’m working with them. When the story, revisions, edits, and galleys are done, they leave and it’s as if my best friends just moved to the other side of the country. It’s also why I like to reread my books–it’s a chance to visit with my h/h again.
We can get into grammar discussions like on the comma, the semi-colon, the colon, and the em-dash and go on forever quite happily. Normal people don’t find this interesting. ::shocked face::
Speaking for myself, I spend a lot of time in my head. TBH, I like the worlds I build much better than the real one. In my head, there’s justice and the people who deserve to win, do. The people who are bad guys or unpleasant or whatever also get what they deserve. My characters might have to keep working at it, but they do get a happy ending. The real world? Not so much.
Writers can also talk happily with each other for a really extended time about what’s the best way to kill a demon, to mate with a demon, to use magic in a fight, to capture the bad guy. I’ve seen authors’ eyes light up as we’ve brainstormed these kinds of things.
You can see why the internet helps everyone. Readers can find awesome book recommendations (although wow, the noise now is incredible compared to back when I found my first group) and writers can discuss punctuation without boring others comatose.
Talking Demon Kissed
Tuesday, May 11th, 2010I forgot to mention this! I guested over at the Paranormal Romance Blog. Come on over and read about how Demon Kissed went from idea to story.
Mythbusting
Tuesday, May 11th, 2010I was reading comments on an article posted online about romance books and realized there are a lot of misconceptions about authors out there. That made me think, hey, why not dispel them? Or at least give it a try.
1. Authors are rich and once they have a couple of books out, they can quit their day jobs and live on easy street–if they can’t do that after their first book sells.
If you break it out, probably 1% of the authors make 90% of the money. Kind of like in Hollywood where Russell Crowe and Tom Cruise get huge contracts and other actors wait tables to make ends meet. I’ve had coworkers assume that I’m still working because I’d get “lonely” if I stayed home and wrote all day. This is my dream and I’m an introvert. Staying home alone isn’t a huge hardship for me. 
Then throw health insurance into the mix for US authors. Unless the author in question has a spouse with good health insurance, that’s a huge consideration when it comes to quitting the day job.
2. Conversely, there are a ton of people who believe authors have to pay to get published.
No. Vanity presses charge authors to print their books. The author ends up with a garage full of books that they can try to sell to their friends and coworkers, but the vast majority of them will not sell many copies, certainly not enough to get picked up by a legitimate publisher. Legitimate publishers do not charge the author anything, in fact, the author is the one who gets paid by the publisher. BTW, self-publishing and vanity publishing are two different things. If you’re someone who wants to self-publish, do your homework. (And since this isn’t something I’m interested in doing, I have no links or references. Sorry.)
3. Authors pick their covers and I should tell them when they hire a “bad” artist, so they choose someone better next time.
Oh, how I wish this were true. I get whatever cover my publisher decides to put on my book and I’ve never been successful in getting changes made. I’ve had a few covers that I’ve loved, but… Well, I’ll leave it there. I’ll also say that covers are apparently subjective. I saw comments online saying they didn’t like one of the covers that I happen to love. Not only did this cover totally fit what I write, it also had people on it that actually matched my vision of the h/h. That’s rare.
4. Authors know where their books are being sold and in what formats. If I can’t find their book in the store or in ebook format or in my preferred ebook format, I can just contact them and they’ll fix it for me.
I’d love to be able to help readers out, but the author is often the last to know these things. I also have no control over whether or not my books are released in ebook format. If I did, all of them would be available this way because I want you to be able to buy and read my stories in whichever way makes you happy.
I also can’t really help you find where my books are being sold, not in paper and not in ebook. I’m not given this information, and when it comes to ebooks, well, I own a Kindle and pretty much just shop on Amazon. Other ebook venues are largely unknown to me and I end up googling to answer people’s questions because I simply don’t have that information. Sometimes I’ve spent hours trying to track down the answer for them to no avail.
5. Authors get so much fan mail that they don’t need another email from me telling them how much I love their books.
We get a lot less than most readers think and it’s not just me. I’ve talked to a lot of authors who say the same thing. If you love our stories enough to think about letting us know, please, email! There is literally nothing more awesome than a note from a reader saying they loved your book.
