A reviewer who read In the Darkest Night is having a contest on her blog to give away a copy of the book. You can check out her website here and enter the contest if you’d like. And while you’re over there, you can read Riley’s review of Darkest Night.
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Tuesday, March 9th, 2010
How Real People Talk
Tuesday, March 9th, 2010There are times I read a story and wonder if the author has ever spent time listening to and registering how real people actually talk. It’s not only new writers who are susceptible to this, I’ve also seen authors that have been around for a while write dialogue that has me cringing.
The thing I see most–and it makes me absolutely crazy as a reader–is the constant use of names. Picture the scene. The hero and heroine are alone together, it’s a romantic moment, and every single time either of them open their mouth to speak, out comes the other one’s name. No one talks like that. Listen the next time you’re alone in the room with someone. How often do you use their name? How often do they use yours?
“Mary, you’re so beautiful.”
“Oh, John, you sweet talker.”
“I love your eyes, Mary, the way they sparkle when you laugh.”
“Kiss me, John, I need you.”
“Yes, Mary, I’m going to kiss you.”
If you think I’m exaggerating, you’d be wrong. I’ve read a few books like this recently, one by a very well-established author, that had exactly this kind of name use going on. Seriously. Every single freaking time a character talked, they used the other character’s name. It made me wince. It made me mutter. It made me wonder where the hell their editors were and why they didn’t point out how ridiculous it reads.
Writers, I challenge you to go through your Works In Progress (WIP) and cull this out. It’s horrible to read and jarring because no one–and I do mean no one ever–talks like this.
A Little Cam Part 4
Sunday, March 7th, 2010I added another page to the Cam and Damon scene I posted last week. I’ve included the original pages so that if you didn’t read it, there’s no need to search backward. Also, so that anyone who wants to read it in one fell swoop has it all in one place. I will try to post more next Sunday.
Warning: This is rough first draft and only part of the scene.
This story is copyright 2010 by Patti O’Shea. Please link to the story if you like, but do not copy.
* * *
Cameron Brody leaned back, propping both elbows on the deck railing, and looked inside the house. His parents were in the kitchen, cleaning up after dinner and he could see them talking with each other. There was a lot of smiling, frequent laughter, and he felt something around his heart ease.
Coming home on leave had been the right decision.
He’d almost stayed on post. Cam knew he’d changed a lot since the last time he’d seen his family, but then battle did that to a man.
His brothers had taken off hours ago. It was Friday night and they had things to do, places to be. He’d never been all that close to them, but the age difference made it hard to relate. Cam was twenty-four–he’d been through West Point and fought in the war. His brothers were six and eight years younger–still in high school and more worried about the brand of jeans they wore than about things that really mattered.
As he watched, his dad danced his mom around the kitchen, and with a faint smile, Cam turned, resting his forearms on the railing. He stared off into the woods that surrounded the property and allowed himself to enjoy the warmth of the summer evening. All his life he’d had his parents’ love for each other and their love for him as a bulwark against the world. It steadied something inside him to see nothing had changed, that their feelings continued to run deeply. He wanted that, too. Some day.
Cam sighed and watched the birds flit around the trees. His dad had been in combat, he’d been part of Special Operations, and if he could make it through war, so could Cam. But damn, he thought he’d been prepared. His dad had told him what it was like, had been brutally frank about the ugliness of battle, and between that and the simulation training he’d taken, Cam had thought he’d be able to handle it easily.
He couldn’t.
Nothing could have prepared him to kill, to watch men around him fall to enemy fire. Nothing could erase what he’d seen from his memory. He leaned farther forward, dropping his head nearly to his hands.
“Are you okay?”
With a jerk, Cam straightened. He hadn’t heard his dad come up and he hadn’t thought anyone would be able to get the drop on him, not as wound up as he was from being in the field. “Fine.”
His dad looked skeptical, but instead of arguing, he invited, “Why don’t we take a walk?”
The urge to refuse was strong, but there was no good reason to say no. There were hours of daylight left, and if he declined, it would probably lead to more pointed questions. With a shrug, Cam capitulated. “Sure.”
Parkland abutted the property, isolating them from civilization, and despite his worry about his dad quizzing him, they simply walked. Early evening sunshine filtered through the leaves of the trees, dappling the path they were taking, a light breeze ruffled his hair, birds called to each other, and rabbits scurried away. Jamming his hands in the pockets of his jeans, he focused on all this and tried to ignore the presence of his dad beside him.
But the silence begin to wear on him. When was his dad going to say something? There was no doubt he would and the waiting pulled Cam’s nerves taut. Another ten minutes passed and he couldn’t take it anymore. “Aren’t you going to interrogate me?”
“Did you want me to ask questions?”
Cam felt his dad’s eyes on him, but he kept his gaze straight ahead. “No.”
“Then I won’t.”
What did that mean? Cam turned the words over in his mind, but he didn’t find any answers. Damn, his dad could be cryptic when he wanted to be. Cam lost his focus on the trees, on the birds. The quiet coming from the man beside him seemed heavy, oppressive.
He cracked. “When I close my eyes, all I see is blood. I thought I could handle this, but I can’t seem to take it in stride, not like you did.”
“You think I escaped unscathed?” His dad’s disbelief came through loud and clear. “No one leaves war unaffected, certainly not me. I still have nightmares about things that happened when I was your age.”
That stopped Cam in his tracks. “You?” he asked, looking at his dad for the first time since they left the house.
“Yeah, me.”
“But you never said anything, not about any specific incident.”
“I don’t like to talk about it, something you should understand.”
Yeah, Cam didn’t have a lot of room to complain. He didn’t want to discuss the stuff that he’d seen either. “How much does Mom know?”
“Everything.”
He tried to wrap his mind around that. “You told Mom?”
“We don’t have secrets, not about anything important.”
Yeah, he could see how close they were, but to share war stories? “But Mom is delicate.”
Throwing his head back, his dad laughed. “Damn, Cam,” he said when he had the amusement under control, “I thought you were more observant than that.”
Cam scowled. “Mom’s tiny.”
“Compared to us, yes, she’s tiny, but she’s not delicate. Your mom is as tough as they come, she’s had to be.”
Tough? His mom? “But you’re so protective of her.”
“Because she’s my world.”
The words were simple, but held so much emotion that Cam became uncomfortable and he had to look away. He pulled his hands out of his pockets, found a broad tree trunk just off the path, and leaned against it.
“Sure, maybe Mom’s tough when it comes to facing down a teacher who’s been treating one of her kids unfairly, but no way is she tough enough to deal with the kinds of things we’ve seen.”
For a long moment, his dad stared at him and Cam wondered what he was thinking. He didn’t have too long to wait.
“You know, your mom was on a Colonization Assessment Team. They don’t send people who aren’t tough to planets light years away from Earth. She was one of twenty on Jarved Nine–it takes a special kind of courage to be part of that.”
That gave Cam pause. He’d known about the CAT assignment, but he hadn’t considered what it meant. Not really. He tried to imagine the isolation and couldn’t. Pushing away from the tree, he said, “Let’s head to the creek.”
As they walked some more, he thought about his mom, but he couldn’t seem to switch his mindset about her. “You know, I can’t even visualize that. She’s just Mom.”
“Then the rest will blow your mind.”
Cam couldn’t read the note in his dad’s voice, but something about it had him tensing. “What rest?”
The quiet lengthened, but he didn’t push–his dad had respected his silence, Cam could do the same. When they reached the creek, his dad leaned against a large boulder and Cam hopped up and sat on the one next to it. And he waited.
“Most of this is remains classified,” his dad said at last, “but what I can tell you is that your mom’s CAT team was massacred and she was the only survivor. And when the rest of my team was murdered, she and I were alone on J Nine with a killer after us until help arrived from Earth. She saved my ass more than once during those weeks and I couldn’t have taken down the murderer without her.”
“Mom?” Cam’s eyes bugged out.
“Yes.” His dad looked over at him. “Mom. Still don’t think she’s tough enough to deal with my baggage or yours for that matter?”
Slowly, Cam shook his head, more in disbelief than in denial. “She must have her own nightmares.”
More silence, then, “It was dark and she couldn’t see anything. Mom discovered the bodies when she fell over them. When I found her, she was covered in the blood of her friends, so yeah, she has nightmares.”
Cam had a dozen questions, maybe more, but he fought off the need to ask them. Classified meant his dad probably couldn’t answer, but Cam put together a few pieces on his own. “This is a far different version of how you met than what you told us.”
Some of the grimness left his dad’s face. “Did you think we were going to give you the gritty details when you were a kid?”
No, because both his parents were protective and Cam doubted he would have been told any of this today if he hadn’t faced his own hell in battle. He couldn’t have truly appreciated how bad the situation had been way back then without the experience he’d had. “Dad? How do you put it behind you? How do you forget what you’ve seen, what you’ve done?”
To Be Continued
Copyright 2010 by Patti O’Shea – All Rights Reserved.
Just About 25 More Days
Thursday, March 4th, 2010I have another awesome review in for In the Darkest Night! This one is from Riley’s Reviews. She says:
I love the Light Warriors series. In a market saturated with vampires and were-beasties, Ms. O’Shea’s world of magic-users who eat solid food and don’t turn furry is a wonderful breath of fresh air.
I loved everything about this book. The action was fast-paced, the plotting intricate and well-written, and the characterization and dialogue spot-on. Their chemistry , both sexual and emotional, absolutely sizzles off the pages.
How cool is this? (The “their” in the last sentence refers to Kel and Farran, BTW.)
Seeing positive reactions is one of the fun things about release date drawing closer–In the Darkest Night comes out March 30th. I love it when people love my books. 
BTW, tomorrow it will be 25 days until In the Darkest Night releases. Not that I’m counting or anything.
Adventures In Hat Shopping
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010You’d think finding a winter hat in a neutral color wouldn’t be that difficult. You’d be wrong. Or at least I couldn’t find one when I started looking in December. Maybe I’m too picky, but I didn’t want a knit cap that would smoosh down my hair and leave it full of static electricity when I pulled it off.
When it quickly became apparent that the stores were sold out, I tried online shopping. I found a couple that were okay, but when I tried to order them, they were all out of stock. I kept searching and coming up empty.
I thought I’d finally hit the jackpot when I found a hat seller on eBay. Okay, so they were located in Asia, the hat was cheap, the shipping wasn’t outrageous, and it was cute. I ordered it and waited impatiently for it to arrive. It finally came folded up in an envelope that left permanent creases in it. I decided those would work their way out eventually and it really was cute. I tried it on and discovered it was tight, but the big problem was that it didn’t go down over my ears. Since I didn’t want to wear an earmuff in addition to a hat, this wasn’t going to work.
I continued to wear my old hat. This hat is wool and super cute, but the color clashes with my new jacket and it’s a huge Glamour Don’t to wear the two together. It’s bad enough that one of my engineers noticed and commented on it. I resumed my hat search. Unsuccessfully.
Then I received an email from a shoe website I frequent. Hats!
Immediately, I clicked over. Most of what I saw was for men and I didn’t like a lot of the rest, but there was one hat for women that was cute. Afraid that this, too, would be sold out in neutral colors, I clicked through and surprise, they had them! Wow, half price, in stock, neutral color and cute! Awesome. I placed my order.
My hat arrived yesterday. In a box so big that I couldn’t figure out what was on my doorstep until I read the return address. I opened it and they had it packed with paper to help it keep its shape. Again, awesome. Not like the other hat that arrived all folded up. I unwrapped my new hat. My excitement diminished. I could see through the weave of the hat–that couldn’t be warm.
I tried it on. It fit. It was cute. I could flip up the front brim. The only problem was that it sure didn’t feel like a winter hat. I examined it more closely and discovered it’s a summer hat! No wonder they had them in stock!
Now that it’s March, I guess I’ll give up the hat shopping. If it wasn’t in stock in December, I’m sure not going to find a warm, cute winter hat now. I guess I’ll have to hat shop in July if I want something neutral and non-smooshy. I just hate the idea of thinking about winter clothes in summer. There’s something wrong with that.
Sorry
Sunday, February 28th, 2010
RT Book Reviews
Thursday, February 25th, 2010Romantic Times Book Reviews says about In the Darkest Night:
O’Shea has another winner. Equal parts passion and horror blend to create one great read.
This is on the heels of my starred Publishers Weekly review where this book was called “a riveting thrill ride.”
I’m excited that this book is being so well received! Kel is very special to me and he just grabbed me hard and wouldn’t let go.
And I’m sick right now, so I hope you’ll forgive the short blog post. I can’t focus well enough to write much of anything.
A Few Too Many People
Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010Yesterday I cut a 6 page scene from the Work In Progress (WIP). It hurt to do it, but the feedback was right on the money.
This scene was in the Point of View (POV) of a character who wouldn’t appear again until the third (and final) book of the series and I doubt he’d have another POV scene. The comment I received was that I was verging on the cast of thousands and that I’m giving this character a lot of importance by giving him a scene like this.
The first comment was dead-on. I’d been worrying about that myself, but ignored that little voice in my head. So far in not that many pages, I’d introduced my heroine and a friend of hers. I’d introduced the hero, one of his friends, some of his coworkers, and the hero from the third book. The coworkers were more of a hey, hi kind of thing, so they weren’t too overwhelming, I hope. But using this very minor character’s POV tipped it over the edge.
The second comment about it making him seem like a major character is also accurate. I’ve done POV from minor characters before, but they’ve always been reoccurring throughout the book, as in if you had Seth’s POV once, you got it four, five, six more times. I also dropped the first of those scenes deeper into the story, after the major characters are established. Not so in this case. This would have been very early in the book and it gave the character importance that he doesn’t hold. He’s a catalyst for book 3, but doesn’t need a scene in his head for this role.
I also had another problem that my friend didn’t mention–I felt like some of the information given in the scene was repetitive. The cut pages were necessary before I added the prologue that set up the world, but after I revamped where the book opened, it became superfluous.
So there were very valid and sound reasons for cutting and I couldn’t come up with a single strong reason to keep the scene. Aside from the fact that I didn’t want to lose 6 pages off my total. Yes, a very weak reason. I cut the scene and the pages. It hurt. I’ll recoup them, though–as soon as I figure out what happens next.
A Little Cam Part 3
Sunday, February 21st, 2010I added another page to the Cam and Damon scene I posted last week. I’ve included the original pages so that if you didn’t read it, there’s no need to search backward. Also, so that anyone who wants to read it in one fell swoop has it all in one place. I will try to post more next Sunday.
Warning: This is rough first draft and only part of the scene.
This story is copyright 2010 by Patti O’Shea. Please link to the story if you like, but do not copy.
* * *
Cameron Brody leaned back, propping both elbows on the deck railing, and looked inside the house. His parents were in the kitchen, cleaning up after dinner and he could see them talking with each other. There was a lot of smiling, frequent laughter, and he felt something around his heart ease.
Coming home on leave had been the right decision.
He’d almost stayed on post. Cam knew he’d changed a lot since the last time he’d seen his family, but then battle did that to a man.
His brothers had taken off hours ago. It was Friday night and they had things to do, places to be. He’d never been all that close to them, but the age difference made it hard to relate. Cam was twenty-four–he’d been through West Point and fought in the war. His brothers were six and eight years younger–still in high school and more worried about the brand of jeans they wore than about things that really mattered.
As he watched, his dad danced his mom around the kitchen, and with a faint smile, Cam turned, resting his forearms on the railing. He stared off into the woods that surrounded the property and allowed himself to enjoy the warmth of the summer evening. All his life he’d had his parents’ love for each other and their love for him as a bulwark against the world. It steadied something inside him to see nothing had changed, that their feelings continued to run deeply. He wanted that, too. Some day.
Cam sighed and watched the birds flit around the trees. His dad had been in combat, he’d been part of Special Operations, and if he could make it through war, so could Cam. But damn, he thought he’d been prepared. His dad had told him what it was like, had been brutally frank about the ugliness of battle, and between that and the simulation training he’d taken, Cam had thought he’d be able to handle it easily.
He couldn’t.
Nothing could have prepared him to kill, to watch men around him fall to enemy fire. Nothing could erase what he’d seen from his memory. He leaned farther forward, dropping his head nearly to his hands.
“Are you okay?”
With a jerk, Cam straightened. He hadn’t heard his dad come up and he hadn’t thought anyone would be able to get the drop on him, not as wound up as he was from being in the field. “Fine.”
His dad looked skeptical, but instead of arguing, he invited, “Why don’t we take a walk?”
The urge to refuse was strong, but there was no good reason to say no. There were hours of daylight left, and if he declined, it would probably lead to more pointed questions. With a shrug, Cam capitulated. “Sure.”
Parkland abutted the property, isolating them from civilization, and despite his worry about his dad quizzing him, they simply walked. Early evening sunshine filtered through the leaves of the trees, dappling the path they were taking, a light breeze ruffled his hair, birds called to each other, and rabbits scurried away. Jamming his hands in the pockets of his jeans, he focused on all this and tried to ignore the presence of his dad beside him.
But the silence begin to wear on him. When was his dad going to say something? There was no doubt he would and the waiting pulled Cam’s nerves taut. Another ten minutes passed and he couldn’t take it anymore. “Aren’t you going to interrogate me?”
“Did you want me to ask questions?”
Cam felt his dad’s eyes on him, but he kept his gaze straight ahead. “No.”
“Then I won’t.”
What did that mean? Cam turned the words over in his mind, but he didn’t find any answers. Damn, his dad could be cryptic when he wanted to be. Cam lost his focus on the trees, on the birds. The quiet coming from the man beside him seemed heavy, oppressive.
He cracked. “When I close my eyes, all I see is blood. I thought I could handle this, but I can’t seem to take it in stride, not like you did.”
“You think I escaped unscathed?” His dad’s disbelief came through loud and clear. “No one leaves war unaffected, certainly not me. I still have nightmares about things that happened when I was your age.”
That stopped Cam in his tracks. “You?” he asked, looking at his dad for the first time since they left the house.
“Yeah, me.”
“But you never said anything, not about any specific incident.”
“I don’t like to talk about it, something you should understand.”
Yeah, Cam didn’t have a lot of room to complain. He didn’t want to discuss the stuff that he’d seen either. “How much does Mom know?”
“Everything.”
He tried to wrap his mind around that. “You told Mom?”
“We don’t have secrets, not about anything important.”
Yeah, he could see how close they were, but to share war stories? “But Mom is delicate.”
Throwing his head back, his dad laughed. “Damn, Cam,” he said when he had the amusement under control, “I thought you were more observant than that.”
Cam scowled. “Mom’s tiny.”
“Compared to us, yes, she’s tiny, but she’s not delicate. Your mom is as tough as they come, she’s had to be.”
Tough? His mom? “But you’re so protective of her.”
“Because she’s my world.”
The words were simple, but held so much emotion that Cam became uncomfortable and he had to look away. He pulled his hands out of his pockets, found a broad tree trunk just off the path, and leaned against it.
“Sure, maybe Mom’s tough when it comes to facing down a teacher who’s been treating one of her kids unfairly, but no way is she tough enough to deal with the kinds of things we’ve seen.”
For a long moment, his dad stared at him and Cam wondered what he was thinking. He didn’t have too long to wait.
“You know, your mom was on a Colonization Assessment Team. They don’t send people who aren’t tough to planets light years away from Earth. She was one of twenty on Jarved Nine–it takes a special kind of courage to be part of that.”
To Be Continued at some point if y’all like it and think I should keep on writing it.
Copyright 2010 by Patti O’Shea – All Rights Reserved.
I’m Not a Historical Writer
Thursday, February 18th, 2010I don’t write historical romance. I have no interest in writing historical romance. I don’t even read historical romance any longer, not after I realized I read all the contemporary set books (whether they were paranormal or not) and the historicals sat on the TBR month after month. The pile became hugely unwieldy and I had to stop buying them because I wasn’t reading them. Ever. I didn’t even have a vague desire to pick one up–with the exception of Julie Garwood. I’ll still reread her historical romances.
I honestly have no idea why I’m so averse to reading historical romance, but that’s not what I wanted to talk about. I’m writing a proposal for a contemporary set paranormal romance. Only in discussing it with a friend, she recommended a prologue to set up the basics of the world. I decided it was worth a shot and the event would not only set up the world, it would give the heroine depth from the start.
The problem? I needed to research Medieval nunneries in order to write this scene.
It didn’t take long before I was cursing as I googled.
I like history. Honest, I do. It was one of my favorite classes in high school; I even was in Advanced Placement American History and scored the highest mark possible on the test.
I like research. Mostly. When I was researching particle accelerators and M Theory, I couldn’t read enough. Now granted, I didn’t understand everything–M Theory is mind boggling, especially for someone who didn’t take math in college–but it was fascinating to me.
But I hate researching history for my book. Hate it. I feel frustrated and bored and just want the damn information so I can write my scene and be done with it. I didn’t expect to feel this way. I figured it would be just like researching any other topic and I’ve gone off on some obscure and esoteric subjects to get one piece of information for a throwaway line in a book. I’m pretty anal about accuracy and I’m not opposed to digging deeply to find what I need. I even find the Medieval period to be one of the more interesting in European history…and it doesn’t matter, I’m resenting every second I’m spending on this.
The thing that’s so puzzling is why I’m feeling this way. Why is researching history–something I can understand–an aggravation while reading M Theory–something that’s difficult for me to grasp fully–something I was excited about reading?
Part of it might be that finding the specific kind of information I’m looking for has proven to be difficult. There’s a lot more information on monks and friars than on nuns. At least that I’ve been able to find online. I did order a book that looks like it might have good information. I sure hope so because I want to finish this opening scene.
My next blog might be complaining about trying to find a historical voice for the opening. Honestly, how do historical writers convey the tone/formality of the period without bogging down? I will be blundering my way through this little problem. Sigh.
