All About the Writing

What Do You Write?

I pause whenever I'm asked this question. If I know you read romance, I'll answer that I write humorous Regencies and contemporaries. For everyone else, I'll say I write romantic comedy.

But the more complete answer is this: I'm writing stories that will hopefully cancel out a craptastic day. Or month. Or a span when life is repeatedly kicking you in the tender spots.

Don't get me wrong. I truly value those books and movies that bring forth the big-time wails during rough times. (A bag of Hershey kisses, a box of tissues, and bawling through the thirtieth viewing of Somewhere in Time? Oh yeah, definitely therapeutic.)

Some days, though, I need a different way to make it through life's assorted aggravations.

Many years ago, I had such an awful day at work that I couldn't shake off the anger and irritation once I got home. I spent the entire commute plotting terrible things to the many recipients of my justifiable wrath. A glass of wine couldn't dislodge my ire. Chocolate knew better than to even try.

I decided to watch a movie a co-worker had lent me, before I misplaced it and had to buy a replacement copy. I had impossibly low expectations of this movie, and planned to grumble through it before returning it the next day with a shrug and a half-hearted thumbs up.

How could I hope to enjoy something called Ace Ventura: Pet Detective?

I don't remember much about it anymore, but I do recall the opening sequence where Jim Carrey is playing a delivery person. He gleefully does everything to that package that he should NOT be doing: kicking it, dropping it, you name it. It was over-the-top, but I started to chuckle. And then giggle. When he put the package inside the closing elevator doors, smashing and thrashing it repeatedly? I lost it. There might have been an unladlylike snort (or two). I had to rewatch that sequence even though I couldn't catch my breath from laughing so hard the first time. After a few minutes I couldn't remember why I was so out of sorts earlier.

And that's what I'm hoping to do with my books.

I want to divert you, for a little while, from the irritating moments in your day. If my humorously-ever-after romances can make you laugh, and fan your face during the smexy times. . .

I'll be as giddy as a delivery person squishing parcels in an elevator.

My 15 Minutes at Romance University

I'm a guest today at Romance University, where I discuss an editing technique that has proven SO useful to me recently. It just requires 15 minutes of your time. So stop by and you'll see what I'm talking about!

Also, don't forget that I've got a giveaway for my newsletter subscribers. I'm giving away ONE print copy of the Strangers on a Train book, which contains all five stories.

You have until April 17th to sign up for the newsletter, but why wait? Just add your name to the list in that little box in the right-hand corner!

Writing Process Blog Hop

I'm always fascinated with the writing process, because it's so different for each writer. Virginia Kelly invited me to participate in this blog hop--how could I say no? I couldn't! So thanks, Virginia, for giving me a chance to ramble on about one of my favorite topics. Without further ado, here are my questions, and answers.

1.       What am I working on?

Right now my primary focus is a Regency historical titled Lord Wastrel. Yep, that's him, over there. I'll wait while you have a chance to swoon over his cover. Okay, all set? This book has taken longer than I expected, partly because I had to set it aside while I finished writing, and then publishing, a few other books. It also got pushed aside because a novella, Lord Rakehell's Love, decided it should start this Curse of True Love series. Hey, I'm just here to do what the characters want! I'm just glad they still think I'm a necessary part of the process. :)

2.       How does my work differ from others of its genre?

I'm not really sure. I think the more popular books at the moment tend to be ones that have more angst and emotional drama. I write humorously-ever-after romance, so the characters do have emotional things to deal with, but it is done with more humor, less angst. I guess I'm a palate cleanser, so if you need to read something lighter between the heavier books, I'm your gal!

3.       Why do I write what I do?

I've always loved books with humor. I started writing Regencies a zillion years ago, primarily because I love witty banter between characters, as well as the humorous situations that arise from the stuffy rules Society imposes on the hero and heroine's behavior. I also write contemporary romances, and those are fun because some situations can only work in the modern era, and there is definitely a ton of humorous things happening in this timeframe.

4.       How does my writing process work?

Whew. How to answer this? It always involves a lot of staring out the window, and lately it feels like a ton of hand-wringing has been added to the mix.

The process actually changes from book to book, which can be aggravating, because just when I think I've figured out how all of this works, I realize that I've actually learned how to write the LAST book I wrote, not the one I'm working on now!

I'm a pantser, so I get an idea, or a scene flashes into my mind, and then I listen to the characters chat and I type what they're saying, like I'm an invisible court reporter or something. Then I have to figure out more about them, and what their story is going to be. Little snippets of dialogue or character development occur to me at the oddest times, so I scribble them on sticky notes or the back of envelopes I find in my purse.

It's a big messy process, and I always wish it was cleaner, especially when I have to slash and burn favorite scenes that no longer fit the story. *sob* But I love the fast-drafting aspect, and I've learned to tolerate the slow-revising part--because that's actually where I figure out a lot about the characters, and that's what intrigues me the most. I love when they make me laugh, because most times I only find out what they're going to say right when they say it! 

Okay, enough about me. Here are some writers who will be spilling their secrets for you next week!

Melissa Johnson

My favorite things in romance are often ghosts, time travel, historical settings, plots with amnesia, eccentric secondary characters, humor, and romantic suspense.  These characteristics describe what I love to read and I'm drawn to include them in my own stories. (So far, not quite all have been in one story, but it's close!)  I also put my love of writing and history to use in my blog and I have written The Historical Research Companion to Everything of Interest to a Romance Writer, a research/reference book.

I worked as a legal secretary in Washington, DC for many years before moving back to my small hometown in Northern Minnesota.  In recent years, in addition to my writing and my role as a mom to one, I returned to college for a degree in Biology, with an emphasis in Ecology.

Lorraine Paton

I work in a hectic office by day and let loose my passion for writing romance by night! Lately I've been thinking of myself as a fairy godmother bestowing happily-ever-afters on as many people—er, I mean, characters—as possible. I love Alberta, where my contemporary romances are set, and I love the magic of love, so I'm currently developing a paranormal romance series. I can't imagine anything better than writing what I love.

 

 

 

 

 

Patricia Preston

Patricia Preston is a Southern author who writes historical and contemporary romance as well as humorous Southern fiction. Her publishers include New Love Stories, True Romance, Affaire de Coeur, Cloverdale Press, The Blue and Gray Magazine, Sea Oats Review, and Carina Press. She won William Faulkner Award for Short Fiction, the Lone Star Writing Competition for Historical Romance, and Harlequin’s World’s Best Romances Short Story Competition. Her short stories have been best sellers on Amazon and listed on Amazon’s Top 100 in comedy. She is currently working on a historical romance series set in Louisiana and a contemporary series, the Doctors of Desoto Springs.

 

The Author's Journey: Guest Post at Indie Books R Us

Today I am with Cate and Landra and Mari at Indie Books R Us, and I'm chatting about the author's journey. It involves football fields, and goal markers, and. . . well, I hope you'll stop by and see how my description compares to yours. You can also see Cate's review of Lord Midnight, where she uses one of my all-time favorite descriptions of the villain!

Lord Midnight Madness Sale

I've just reduced the price of Lord Midnight to $1.99. You can get it at this price at Amazon and Smashwords right now. It's taking a little longer getting the price changed at Kobo, Barnes & Noble, and Sony, but it should be showing up there in the near future.

Hope you enjoy! Now I'm back to work on Lord Wastrel, and some other projects that I think you'll like.

 

A Contract for I Do. . .or Die

I'm so excited to announce this news. I've just signed a contract with Crimson Romance for I Do. . .or Die, which means that Shelby and all her craziness will be out there for everyone to read in the near future. I love this kooky character so much, and I know she's endeared herself to many of the Six Sentence Sunday commenters, so I'm looking forward to everyone else reading this story.

Here's the blurb, so you can see what it's about:

"Always a bridesmaid, never a bride" is Shelby Atwood's personal credo. She's managed to avoid commitment all her life -- no pets, no plants, not even a long-term lease. Heck, she's had colds last longer than her romantic relationships. How could she be any other way when she has a gigolo for a father?

But then gunfire erupts at the latest wedding she's been talked into, and it ends up being the best thing to happen to Shelby's love life. Detective Ryan Nichols is assigned to the case, and when the shootings don't stop, he becomes her 24-hour bodyguard. Shelby wouldn't mind except Ryan is too appealing, too sexy, and too happy to remind her of the raucous bachelorette party when she mistook him for a stripper.

Shelby's plan is simple: find the shooter, have a fling with Ryan, and return to her non-committal life. Unfortunately, the shooter is very elusive. Shelby's feelings for Ryan are way more than adrenaline-fueled lust. And returning to her normal life is now impossible since, despite her lifelong resistance, she's managed to put her heart smack dab in the line of fire.

Okay, I need to get the celebratory coffee drinks set up, and I've planned a huge virtual dessert banquet for everyone. Thanks for celebrating with me!

Signing the Contract

What an exciting moment, signing a publishing contract. For the first time. And hopefully for the first of many times.

And yet, as exciting as this moment is, it hasn't quite felt real. I'm still sitting here in my jammies, cajoling the characters in my current WIP, tweeting about coffee-related silliness on Twitter, and then all of a sudden I realize, "Hey, I just signed a contract. For one of my stories. To be published."

It's a completely different experience than I imagined.

For one thing, the contracts arrived via email, which makes sense in this day and age, and I do like instantaneous communication. Heck, who has time to check the snail mail box everyday? But it was kind of strange when I signed the forms and returned them--online. I also got an instant reply saying the forms were received, so there was no wondering or waiting or chewing of fingernails. In addition, there's a copy sitting in my email inbox that I can refer to whenever I want.

Absolutely no paper was used in the execution of this contract.

Which means there were no papers for me to misplace and then scramble around trying to find, hoping I wouldn't have to ask for another copy while covering up my extreme embarrassment at losing something so important. There was also no need for a trip to the post office, which I usually dread and put off until even later than the last minute, waiting in line longer than if I'd gone when I should have in the first place.

I didn't have to look for a pen, either. Which I can never find, even though I've accumulated easily forty-eleven billion of them in my lifetime. And when I do find one, it has run out of ink, because I always lose the cap, especially when it's in my purse--the better to stab me with when I'm frantically searching for a pen to sign very important papers.

No wonder this doesn't seem real. It was easy. Easier than easy. It was quick and efficient.

Which leaves me lots of time to think about how exciting this whole experience is.

Why I Love My Nook

I'm still in the honeymoon phase with my beloved e-reader, since we won't have our one-year anniversary until November. I'm not quite sure how to handle that milestone, though, since the first anniversary is traditionally celebrated with PAPER, and these books are made of e's, not pulp.

But I digress.

Since I love many, many things about my Nook, it's entirely possible there will be sequels to this post, with roman numerals differentiating my ramblings on the topic. But right now, the thing I love most about my Nook is. . .

Bookmarking.

Yes, of all the features my Nook possesses, this is the one that makes my heart flutter the most.

I have a love/hate relationship with bookmarks for paper books. I absolutely adore all the promotional ones I've received from authors, with the glossy printed covers, and tantalizing information about upcoming releases. I've collected a zillion of them over the years, and for all I know, I've got a first-edition bookmark hidden somewhere that's worth a fortune.

But that's my problem: I can't ever find these beautiful bookmarks when I need them. They disappear. I suspect they're all hiding in the same place. I just can't figure out where that is, nor am I willing to devote any of my valuable reading time to a scavenger hunt.

Don't suggest that I turn down the corner of the page. I refuse to do that, as I've mentioned before, because it feels like I'm causing the poor book to scream in agony if I do. I don't really like to place a book face down either, but I will do it, very carefully so as not to break the spine, if I can't find something to use as a bookmark.

Which brings us to what I usually do -- try to find something, anything, to use as a bookmark.

I'd forgotten how creative I am at this until the other day when I noticed something sticking out of a book on the lower shelf of the coffee table. It was a nail file, a hot pink zebra-print thing, marking my place in a book that I hadn't returned to in a while. In fact, I'd been wondering what had happened to that particular nail file. Now I know where it is the next time I snag a nail. But then I'll have to find something else to serve as a bookmark so I can use it for its original purpose.

Over the years I've used grocery receipts, envelopes, embroidery thread, pens, movie ticket stubs. . .

When you're a packrat, there is an endless supply of potential bookmark material within reach. There is also an infinite supply of frustration when you can't find the item that is living out its life as a placeholder for your reading material.

But with my Nook, I just have to tap the upper right-hand corner of the screen, and it places an adorable little flag-looking bookmark there. Heck, if I forget to do that, it creates a bookmark for me. The next time I wake up the Nook, it presents the screen I was reading the last time I was there, whether or not I was conscious enough to ask it to.

So while there are many reasons to wax nostalgic about "real" books (and I'm one who doesn't ever want them to disappear), I can say this with the utmost confidence:

My Nook can beat the bookmarks off paper books, every time.

Downsizing the Down Time

I've been seeing a lot lately about five-year plans, and planning for the future. I even wrote a post about five-year plans a while ago. I'm really feeling the need to revisit this topic, because it seems like time is slipping out of my grasp at a faster rate each day, and I'm convinced I can take control of it if I make plans.

And not only make them, but follow them.

Otherwise, time has a dreamlike quality. It's there, and then it isn't. I end up blinking, rubbing my eyes, wondering what happened to the past six months, and trying to convince myself maybe I really was asleep, because I couldn't have possibly lost such a big chunk of hours if I was actually conscious.

Of course, it's not easy to convince myself to plot out my life when I'm a self-proclaimed pantser. It's actually kind of funny, not to mention ironic, that the only way to get my pantser-based stories written is to write down detailed scenarios of how to spend my daily hours.

But despite the humorous irony of it all, it makes sense to chart out some things I need and want to accomplish the next few months. Because we all know it may be the beginning of a heat-filled summer now, but in a couple of minutes we'll be toasting the New Year, making heartfelt promises to do better in 2013 than we did in 2012.

My contrary self wants to complain about all the constricting restrictions that planning ahead can cause. But my practical self responds that there is plenty of room in each day to goof off, or change gears, or whatever we want to call that "down time" that holds together our productive moments.

My goal is to downsize the down time and supersize the productive moments.

I can start by putting on the calendar the things I've committed to, such as guest blogs and my own blog posts for each week. Then I write down what I'd *like* to commit to, such as the publication date for the next self-published books, to coincide with the scheduled guest blogs, so I can capitalize on having my name out there at the same time as my books. With these items firmly in place, I can work backwards, to today, to strategize what needs to be accomplished to meet those goals.

It's tricky to plan for some things, since there's a huge unpredictability factor in place, especially in the world of publishing and books. However, that's not always a bad thing. For example, the novella I sold to Samhain came about from a completely unplanned Twitter conversation with other writers. (It also reinforced my belief that I need to keep checking Twitter constantly throughout the day. That's a hard habit to break now.)

I can't plan for everything, but I can choose to make better use of the hours in each day. It's an incredibly satisfying feeling to see the accomplishments pile up. It's also great motivation to keep going, to see what else can be added to the Finally Done pile.

Even better, it's a relief to not have to deal with the guilt of seeing the sun go down and telling myself, "Oh well, maybe I'll get to it tomorrow."

Having these concrete deadlines helps to change "someday" into an actual day, filled with achievements. 

The Fear of Starting a New Story

Whenever I finish a story, I like to take a little break, so I can recharge my brain, and rejuvenate the muse. Yet I hate to be away too long, because then I worry that I won't remember how to write.

(That bike-riding analogy doesn't really work, since the last time I tried to ride a bike, as an adult, after transporting myself everywhere on the two-wheeled version of freedom as a child -- well, let's just say I managed to jump off before we both went sailing down a hill.)

The longer I stay away from writing, the easier it is to think I've completely forgotten how to put words together into sentences, and sentences into stories. Which is why I come up with some damn fine excuses for not writing. It's amazing how creative I can be when I'm worried I've lost all ability to create.

Starting a new story has its own set of anxieties. Will I like these characters? What if they're not as awesome as the last story I worked on? Will they like me, or will they run away whenever I try to tell their story? It's like the first day in a new school, checking out everyone else who seems to know each other, and you feel like the interloper.

The writer is always going to be the outsider, looking inward, in order to dredge up a story and characters that have not been formed yet, and worrying that it's the same tale that's been told before, and more exquisitely, by somebody else.

Yet when I finally drag myself to the laptop and force myself to sit and type, it's always a flat-out miracle how comfortable it all feels. Why did I stay away so long? It's like I'm meeting up with long-lost friends, and we can't stop chattering to each other.

Fear is a writer's constant uninvited companion. We treat it with healthy respect, because we know what it can do if it's allowed free rein. Still, the best way to harness that fear is to sit down amongst our new characters and become friends with them, leaving the doubt and anxiety on the outside of this cozy circle.

The fear never disappears, and we don't need to let loose of it entirely, but we ought to make it work within our parameters.

One new word at a time.