All About the Writing

Six Sentence Sunday: I Do. . .or Die #18

It's the last Six Sentence Sunday in 2012! This has been so much fun, and I'm really glad I've gotten to "know" all of you these past few months.

Here's another snippet from I Do. . . or Die, where Shelby, the commitment-phobe bridesmaid, is having lunch with her best friend Alexa, who is on her 4th husband. They're discussing Shelby's feelings for Ryan, although she's not quite ready to admit they're long-lasting feelings:

If there was ever a time for carbs slathered with creamy fat-laden butter, this was it. My hands were shaking a little, probably from carb deficiency, but most likely from all this marriage-related craziness surrounding me: first my parents, then Alexa settling down for good. It looked like I would be next—

I nearly stabbed myself with the butter knife.

Accidentally of course. It had gotten way too slippery from the stick of butter I’d been applying to my bread. 

Thanks again for your comments--they help keep me motivated when the muse thinks of flitting away!

And if you haven't had a chance to vote for the Sizzling Read of the Year, voting ends on Monday, December 31st. Lord Midnight is one of the ten books there, and it's in some amazing company.

4 Ways to Wake Up Your Creativity

I've spent most of the past couple months writing blog posts and promoting the release of I Do. . .or Die. Today I'm thinking about the WIPs I want to get back to, and planning how to make the best use of the next year's writing calendar. All of that appeases the logical part of my brain, but the creative side is having a bit of performance anxiety.

It has good reason to be nervous, since it hasn't been called into action for a while. It feels rusty and creaky and fearful that it doesn't know how to do its job anymore. Even when I'm writing on a daily basis, there are times when creativity does not flow. It's not necessarily stuck. It's just dormant. It's taken me a while to learn that it is recharging, and gathering steam, and it will end up being almost too strong to handle when it does come back.

So what do you do when you want to be creative but your creativity is hibernating?

1. Don't panic -- This is the hardest part. It always, and I mean always, feels like we've had our last date with the muse, and we can't help but wonder what we did to drive her away. We don't believe her when she flits away, tossing over her shoulder, "I'll call you". We wring our hands, desperately trying to figure out a solution, ready to sell our soul to make her happy once more. But just as we have a need to step away from the work, so does the muse. Give her some space. Everyone will benefit from the separation.
2. Fix the easy stuff -- Concentrate on things that are more rote, or mundane--all of those little details that you don't have time for when you're in the giddy phase of word sprints. Now you can search for extra spaces in your manuscript. Check the formatting. Or spend some time on that research that makes you feel guilty when you "should" be writing. Check the links on previous blog posts. While you're re-reading them, see if they spark any new ideas and write down some notes for when the muse is back in town.
3. Read your own work -- This time read your story as a reader, not a writer. Let yourself get lost in the characters and the events you created. Fall in love again with the world you imagined a long while ago, before you had to tear it down and rebuild it. Remember what it was like to immerse yourself in a book that sprang from your heart. Sometimes this is enough to resuscitate that creative spirit that has gone dormant temporarily.
4. Take time to play -- We get so absorbed with writing, and writing-related activities, we don't know how to enjoy other aspects of life. We forget that writing is a reflection of our non-writing experiences. We need to replenish those, so that we have something to draw on when it's time to add words to the page. So enjoy the unexpected break from the writing routine. Go outside and see what the rest of the world is doing. Store up some events that will inspire you at a later date. You might be surprised at what is outside your four walls.

So get your pens and laptops ready. Creativity is on its way!

Six Sentence Sunday: I Do. . . or Die #17

Hi Sixies! Hope you're having a great holiday season. Here's another snippet from I Do. . .or Die, where commitment-phobe Shelby tries to figure out her changing feelings for her sexy bodyguard, Ryan, and what to do about it:

I needed a distraction, because I was still rattled by the tender kiss Ryan and I had shared the day before. I preferred passion--it had a beginning, a middle, and if done correctly, a spectacular end.

Love-type emotions were too hard to handle. In my experience, they had a beginning, and an end. There wasn’t usually a middle, and if there was, it was only there to speed you to The End.

So instead of thinking how Ryan’s tenderness had practically made my skeleton dissolve, I planned to resort to my old standby: lust. 

Thanks, as always, for stopping by. Hope Santa brings everyone lots of great presents!

Interview with Angela Quarles

Today I'm happy to welcome Angela Quarles to my blog. I met Angela through Six Sentence Sunday, and it's where I first got to enjoy her fun brand of contemporary and historical romance. I also was lucky to beta read an earlier version of her new release, Beer and Groping in Las Vegas, and I can't wait to read this on my Nook.

Welcome, Angela! You refer to yourself as a geek girl romance writer. What started you on the path to geekdom?

My dad! We used to watch reruns of the original Star Trek when it came on Sunday evenings back in the 70s (man, I'm showing my age). I loved that show. If my brother and I weren't playing Cowboys and Indians, we were going on Away missions outside, with our bridge we made out of sticks and things. We ordered communicators and those plastic phasers, which shot little round discs, from ads in the back of comic books, and we used dad's light meter as our tricorder. I really wanted to order a pair of Vulcan ears, LOL. I also remember going on road trips and when my parents would say 'another hour' I'd run through in my head a Star Trek episode to pass the time.

Then in 1977, when I was ten, Star Wars! My brother and I saw it ten times in the theater that year. We got to a point where we could recite every line as we watched it, which I'm sure annoyed the other patrons. We ordered the Star Wars Fan Club kit and held our local chapter meetings (consisting of just my brother and I, you understand) on the floor of our kitchen.

My dad later introduced me to science fiction books, which I still love reading. It was my boyfriend after college that solidified my geekdom by introducing me to computer games, which has become one of my few addictions. Before that, computer games to me were games like Pong, or even back when I was really little, ones where my brother and I tried to play games by typing in lines of Basic computer code from a little spiral-bound notebook for our Commodore 64. But the boyfriend and I played an adventure game that took place in the Arthurian world (can't remember the name) and it would show a still image and a blank box beneath where you typed in what you wanted to do, like 'dig under stone' and I was hooked. We also played Civilization when it came out as a computer game; before that we used to gather with friends and play the board game in an all-day marathon.

I'm laughing about Pong, because I remember how that seemed so high-tech! You have some of the best book titles I've ever seen. Do you come up with the title first, or the story?

Thank you! I wrote a blog post yesterday on Jillian Chantal's blog about how to brainstorm titles, but in short, they come to me now during the brainstorming phase. I say 'now' because Must Love Breeches did not come to me until the third draft. However, after I got my brain tuned to the idea that I needed good titles, they've come either before the story idea or during brainstorming (so far!). Beer and Groping in Las Vegas, which released Wednesday, is the only one where the title came first.

It's such a great title! How did this story come about?

I work in a bookstore and was trying to think of possible titles for a new project (but one I didn't have a premise for yet), and was shelving some Hunter S. Thompson, and I was like hmm, what could be a twist off of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and first I was like Beer and Loathing, but I write lighthearted romances, and then 'groping' popped into my head. In the next instant I had the hero, as I thought he should be a microbrewer, and that the heroine would be an overworked software programmer. Once I had that, things started falling into place, including the description for him of being a geek trapped in a good ole boy's body. I had that tagline for him before I even started writing the story. I knew I wanted to try my hand at writing a shorter length than a full novel, and this seemed like a good candidate.

Tell us more about the book trailer you just made. I'm not usually a fan of them, but I loved this one.

Thanks! I did a blog post Wednesday at Cara Bristol's on how to make trailers. Honestly, I wasn't sure if I could pull it off myself, and on a small budget to boot, but I thought I would try and if I wasn't happy with it, no one had to even know I'd tried! I think once I saw this book trailer by Maggie Stiefvater for a book about kraken love, it showed me that I could not only do something myself, but also that I could have a conversational style and have fun with the viewer, which I felt set the right tone for Beer and Groping. Snippets of one-liners started popping into my head. I had a lot of fun, and giggled a lot while making it :)

I did a lot of giggling while watching it. It's really fun. I tried to embed it here, but my geek skills are lacking today, so everyone, just click here to see it. Angela, do you have a favorite writing spot?

It really depends! If I'm writing the first draft, it's usually at my desk at home, but if it's the weekend, I sometimes go to Starbucks to get that word count in. For revising, I like to sit on my front porch, which is one of those old, wide, deep Southern porches. If the weather is bad, then I have a table in a nook off the Library where I revise. Both spots are nowhere near my laptop, which is critical!

I love front porches! I think I could do a lot of great writing on one. When the writing gets tough, what keeps you going?

Yerba Maté tea!

Seriously, I think the support I have from other writers helps, but if you're talking about just making myself get the wordage down and stop putzing around, I LOVE #1k1hr on twitter as it keeps me focused and on task. I've also started keeping notes from contest feedback or reviews in my writer's journal so when I start dealing with bad reviews and it gets me down, I can look back at those to stay positive and keep going.

If I'm stuck as far as where to go, I turn to that same journal and just start having conversations with myself, writing it long hand, where I go over what I know so far, and start asking 'what if' questions about the plot and characters to see if anything jars loose.

I get so much done when I do the #1k1hr sessions. Plus it justifies me being on Twitter! So what are you working on next?

I'm in the research/brainstorming phase for a sequel to Must Love Breeches, my time travel romance, and all I can say right now is that it will be another time travel set in the past. How's that for vague? LOL. I don't want to say more as my agent and I are still working that out and I don't want to make any promises I can't keep.

I don't blame you for being vague. Sometimes I get a little superstitious about talking about a story too early. If you could play hooky today, what would you do?

Read! I know that sounds boring, but the only leisure time I allow myself to read is when I'm eating or when I go to bed at night, so curling up with a book during the day would be awesome! I love going someplace private in the house and just reading for a whole day and allowing myself to be completely immersed for hours in someone else's world. Now, if you'd said money was no object, and I had access to a transporter, I'd beam over to Scotland or some other country and explore for a day.

I know what you mean about reading. It's such a rare treat now. If you could sit and have coffee with any writer, living or previously living (I didn't want to say dead, because ewww!)--who would it be?

LOL! Can I have tea? I prefer it to coffee, as I can only drink decaf (You just fell out of your chair in shock, didn't you? That's tantamount to heresy for you!) But anyway, I'd have to say Jane Austen!

I did fall out of my chair! But yes, you can have tea -- as long as you share Jane Austen with me. I'd love to visit with her too. Thanks again for visiting, Angela, and I know you'll have great success with your books. This year has been a banner one for you! 

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

Beer and Groping in Las Vegas 

Can a djinn and a magic slot machine bring two geeks together?

Riley McGregor is a geek trapped in a Good Ole Boy body and as owner of a microbrewery, smart chicks never look at him twice.

Rejected by a geek who wanted to “trade up,” Mirjam Linna would rather immerse herself in work than be the girlfriend-of-the-moment. Stranded in a Vegas hotel, she makes a wish—a night of hot sex with the man of her dreams. It's granted. She agrees to dinner, but afterward, she’ll say thanks, but no thanks, and see what’s on the SyFy channel. But when they meet, they're surprised to find they had a shared connection in their past. Sparks fly as these two learn to be in the moment, be themselves and find love.

Fans of Star Trek, Star Wars, Monty Python, Firefly and Marvin the Martian will enjoy this romantic comedy.

Bio: Angela works at an independent bookstore and lives in an historic house in the beautiful and quirky town of Mobile, AL, with her two matched gray cats, Darcy and Bingley. When she's not writing, she enjoys the usual stuff like gardening, reading, hanging out, eating, drinking, chasing squirrels out of the walls and creating the occasional knitted scarf. She's had a varied career, including website programming and directing a small local history museum.

She's an admitted geek and is proud to be among the few but mighty Browncoats who watched Firefly the first night it aired. She was introduced to the wonderful world of science fiction by her father, by way of watching reruns of the original Star Trek in her tweens and later giving her a copy of Walter M. Miller Jr's A Canticle for Leibowitz as a teenager. She hasn't looked back since.

She has a B.A. in Anthropology and International Studies with a minor in German from Emory University, and a Masters in Heritage Preservation from Georgia State University. She was an exchange student to Finland in high school and studied abroad in Vienna one summer in college. She recently found representation with Maura Kye-Casella at Don Congdon, Assoc.

Links:

Buy Beer and Groping in Las Vegas

Website  ~  Blog  ~  Twitter  ~  Facebook  ~  Goodreads  ~  Shelfari 

My First Christmas Romance Story

Today I'm at the Reading Romances blog, as part of A Very Romantic Christmas Week, and I'm talking about my first Christmas romance story. It might surprise you which one I picked!

Guest Post at Romance University

Today I'm at the Romance University blog, chatting about "Tools, Not Rules". You've heard me talk here, many times, about not letting the rules get in the way of our writing. Now I'm advocating it at another spot! Feel free to stop by and talk about your favorite, or not-so-favorite, writing rules.

Six Sentence Sunday: I Do. . .or Die #16

Thanks to everyone who helped me celebrate the release of I Do. . .or Die this week. It's been a lot of fun. I've got another snippet for you, right after Shelby and Ryan have done their best to stay away from each other, but without much success:

   So much for hoping this "leaving each other alone" thing would be easy. I had barely agreed to the hands-off agreement before I had subdued Ryan with a full-body assault, right there in the hospital elevator.

   Silly me thought it would relieve some of the tension. Like I was some kind of pressure cooker with a wonky safety valve needing adjustment. Turns out I was more like a teakettle. Get me next to a heat source like Ryan again and I'd be letting off steam that could fill fourteen saunas.

  Instead of defusing the sexually charged atmosphere, I had actually made things worse. 

Thanks again to everyone for stopping by and saying such nice things about my book! I hope you have a great Six Sentence Sunday.

Guest Post at Fictional Candy

I'm excited to be a guest at the Fictional Candy blog today. Liz had some really wonderful things to say about Lord Midnight a few months ago.

Today I'm at her blog talking about I Do. . .or Die, and Serena, the cat who starts out as the heroine Shelby's nemesis. I've posted an excerpt which shows the first "meeting" between Serena and Shelby. Hope you'll stop by and check it out!

Stranded on a Deserted Island

I'm on a deserted island today. . .well, figuratively speaking. I'm at the Snowdrop Dreams of Books blog today, and Chrystal has a fun feature where she asks authors to talk about which 5 books and which 5 items they would bring if they were on a deserted island.

It was a lot of fun. But it was harder to limit myself to 5 books than to figure out which 5 items to bring! Stop by and see what I chose. I wonder if any of my choices will surprise you. (Probably not!)

Word Wizard Wednesday

Today I am a guest at Mae Clair's blog, in her "Wizards with Words" segment. I have a never-seen-before excerpt from I Do. . .or Die that I think you'll enjoy.

So stop on by. It's always fun hanging out with Mae!