Ack! I forgot to blog!

Sorry this is late, folks!  My usual organizational skills failed me and I just realized today was my day to blog here. Bad me.

I pride myself on my organization and planning skills so I'm feeling very ashamed. And as you can tell, I have nothing prepared. :-)

My excuse for forgetting is that I've been so wrapped up in working on our next serial story this week. I think it's too soon to say much about it, but we've got a prologue and two chapters written and it's shaping up to be pretty darn good!

I have to say I had misgivings about this story. But then again, I did the last time, too. I've never written about werewolves and vampires - that was all new to me. But I managed to do that, so I was ready to tackle this new idea. Just to clarify, my misgivings weren't about the STORY - I thought, and still do think, it's a fabulous idea full of lots of romance potential. It was myself I had misgivings about. But a funny thing happened when I started working on my chapter. I started doing research and I got all caught up in it and I got excited about writing it. And then when I did sit down to write it, I LOVED writing it!  I will admit I had a lot of placeholders XXX's for things that I wasn't sure about and had to go back and do a bit more research. But I really, really had fun with it and it also reminded me that writing SHOULD be fun. Sometimes I get all caught up in the business of writing and sometimes I get dragged down by the negatives, like rejections and bad reviews and...rejections. Ahem.

So this was an important reminder to me of how much I love writing, and doing something like this, something that's just fun, is a great way to get the creative juices flowing again. The night after I wrote my chapter, I even dreamed about it all night!

So now I hope you all are teased a little about what we have coming up and forgive me for the late post. :-)

Inspiration In Reverse

Sometimes people ask where I get the inspiration for my characters. Though they're all fictional, I do take some cues from real life from time to time. Particularly with descriptions. Sometimes I take a picture of an actor or model and use that to ground my descriptions of the character; sometimes I mix it up and combine a feature I like from one person with a feature I like from someone else. (I'm sounding like Dr. Frankenstein here!)

But for Take A Chance On Me, my upcoming book from Samhain, I just developed the character descriptions off the top of my head - no celebrities, no real-life friends, just a picture in my head of how the characters looked.

TACOM was the first full-length manuscript I wrote, and it's been through a lot of revisions since it was first put down on paper (or pixels, as the case may be). But one thing has remained steady - how Tom Cameron looked.

So it was startling, to say the least, when I went to make up my cover art sheet and started delving into the descriptive text a little deeper, to get more specific in my request.

Because what I discovered was that the description sounded a whole heck of a lot like this guy.

And yes, he's one of my favorite actors - NOW. Back when I wrote the book, I'd never even heard of Eric Sheffer Stevens before.

To tell you the truth, it was a little spooky. :)

I can honestly say this is the first time I've ever found the inspiration for a character description well after the book was written.

Do you like seeing visuals of characters in books, or do you prefer picturing them on your own? How important is the physical description of the characters to you?

Home is Where the Computer Is

At 5 am this morning, we’re landing in Anchorage after a blissful two and a half months in Hawaii including a wedding, tons of family and friends, lots of fruit tree planting and, ahem, very little writing. We’re going from 77 degrees to 7, warm sunshine to snowdrifts. Clearly, this is going to be a rough transition. Clearly, this calls for some emergency self-brainwashing. So here goes.

Ten Reasons not to Jump Off the Plane Before Landing in Alaska

1. All the bugs in Alaska are still sleeping. After many close encounters with ants, cockroaches, centipedes, and other unidentified creatures, I’m ready for a break.
2. Enough with the green and blue. Okay, lush jungle and blue skies are nice, but white has a lot to be said for it. Bring on the snow!
3. Outerwear. It turns out that weddings are not a low-calorie occasion. Those parkas are going to come in handy hiding the extra pounds.
4. Uh oh. There’s got to be more than three. Think, think.
5. Seeing my writer friends again! I don’t know any writers in Hawaii (although I did get to meet the fabulous PG Forte!
6. Jumping off planes is a very bad idea.
7. Cold weather builds character. Yeah, I’ll keep telling myself that.
8. Peace and quiet. Okay, this is a good one. Hawaii is a noisy place at night—coqui frogs, crickets, early morning guinea hens, the rooster next door. Alaska in the winter is absolutely still and quiet.
9. Time off. This may sound strange, but we’ve been working nonstop since we got here—getting ready for the wedding, tending to our guests (many of whom stayed for a couple weeks), planting our wedding gift trees. When we get to Alaska, my days of digging up lava rocks and machete-ing cane grass will be over! Until next time.
10. I CAN FINALLY GET BACK TO WRITING! My own desk, my brand new computer, and no distractions. And that’s really all the reason I need.

Yay! Alaska, here I come!

There, I feel better now. Sleep-deprived, but better.

Guest Blogger Emma Jay - Wedding Movies

Even though I’m a romance writer, I don’t usually write wedding scenes. I guess by that point in the story all the conflict has been resolved and it’s not as much fun to write. But writing from a bridesmaid and groomsman point of view, that’s a different story, and that’s where I went with Two Step Temptation, a short story available now from Samhain Publishing.

Since I’ve been married 24 years and I’ve only been to one wedding in the past 15 years, I had to turn to the movies to jog my memory about weddings. Here are some of my favorite wedding movies.

The Wedding Date. Now. I cannot tell you why this story works for me when Pretty Woman doesn’t. I guess that’s a blog for another time. But the heroine who hires the escort to go to her sister’s wedding was just fun. I loved the close-proximity trope, and the way he was there for her when everything fell apart. I totally bought into the fantasy. Also, in Two Step, I have the wedding party spending the weekend of the wedding together, as they did in The Wedding Date.

Father of the Bride, with Steve Martin. This is not so much a romance as a comedy, but boy, does it touch my heart.

27 Dresses. I bought this movie after I saw it. I love the scene where Katherine Heigl is trying on all the dresses for James Marsden, and I love their drunken singing, and I even love how she pays back her sister’s selfishness. And the ending was perfect.

Four Weddings and a Funeral. I love the progression of the romance as Hugh Grant and Andie Macdowell encounter each other over and over. I love the crazy friends, and of course I cried at the funeral.

What are your favorite wedding movies?

Valentine's Day Special-Nine Things We'd Love/Hate to Receive on Valentine's Day

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Books and Burritos

There is a Mexican restaurant here that boasts the best burritos in town (pretty sure you have one of these wherever you live too). My husband agrees with their claim. He talked about this place for weeks and finally it worked out for us to go together. I won’t say I was excited about the burritos, but I was glad to give them a try based on his experience and, let’s face it, who doesn’t hope to find the best they’ve ever had somewhere? The best is a pretty big order, of course, but hey, if I was about to discover burrito nirvana, I was okay with that.

Unfortunately, it didn’t happen. Not only was it not burrito nirvana—it was more like burrito-ghetto.

I couldn’t believe my husband had raved about them. “What do you like about these?” I asked. “Everything”. He was shocked I didn’t like them. So, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be having these burritos again. However, I wasn’t completely opposed to coming back to the restaurant. I’d just try something else. The enchiladas, the tacos—there were lots of choices.

We haven’t been back yet, but this past week got me thinking—how many tries would I give this place? If the fajitas are bad would I go back for tostadas? If they’re bad would I try the tacos?

Books got me thinking about these burritos this week. Not just any books, but my books. I was given a chance for a free giveaway for the Kindle and nook of my first Bradford book, Just Right. This was a great opportunity. It gets the book into new hands (obviously those downloading likely don’t already have it) and gets my name out there with new readers.

However, as with anything, there are pros and cons. The pros—great reviews, reader e-mails, new sales for the next two books, new followers on Twitter and friends on Facebook. Dare I say I have some new fans? So there I was coasting along thinking this is the best thing to ever happen to me and then suddenly—bam!—a bad burrito. A two star review on Amazon. A reader who *gasp* didn’t like my book.

So yeah, okay, I pouted a little. I re-read all the *nice* things people had said. I reassured myself that she was just crazy, or drunk, or someone who clearly had no taste whatsoever.

Then I realized— she and her review aren’t the bad burrito in this scenario. My book is.

I don’t mean that I think my book is bad or equal to the bad burritos my husband loves but—it’s not going to be for everyone. I won’t be everyone’s favorite author (I know, it was a shock to me too). And you know what else? It’s okay. Though I don’t care for those burritos, my husband loves them and will go back again and again.

Of course, I hope this woman doesn’t look at this “burrito” as a reason to not try my other offerings. Maybe I’ll write a chimichanga that will really do it for her.

And maybe not. Maybe she’ll never come back. Or maybe the chimi won’t be her taste either. And that’s okay too. ‘Cuz there’s a great burger joint down the street that would love to be her favorite place.

So here’s what I’ve learned from all of this:
1. My long-held belief that enchiladas are superior to burritos has been proven true once again.
2. I’m still glad I had the chance to do the free give-away
3. I will never *like* two star reviews (and will likely always pout after getting one)
4. Even Big Name Authors (even Nora! Shhh!) get two star reviews
5. I’m a needy enough person that I looked to see if Big Name Authors have two star reviews too

Incidentally, yes you can still get Just Right for FREE at Amazon and Barnes and Noble for another few days.

Oh and I'm thrilled that it stayed in the top ten for over a week and that there are 8 five-star reviews and only 1 two-star. But if any of you would like to stop over there and say something nice I would mind ;)

So, how many chances do you give a new-to-you author? Or a mexican restaurant for that matter?

A Bridge Too Short

Have you ever thought to yourself, "Hmm. I wonder what it's like to plot a book"?

No?

Well, I'm going to tell you anyway. For some people it's easy - some people find spinning plots the easiest part of writing. But for people like me, it's really hard. In fact, it sucks. I bitch to the other Naughty 8 about this all the time - and they're tired of hearing it, which is why I'm now griping to you.

See, I find it easy to invent characters - their backgrounds, personalities, motivations, sticky emotional wickets. And I find it easy to write dialog. I can invent people and make them talk. I just have trouble thinking of stuff for them to do.

As I was starting to try to plot this new steampunk I'm working on -- I can't go whimpering to my sister-in-law for help, because she'll say I should be working on Seth's novella instead -- I finally thought of the perfect (at least to me) analogy for building a plot:

It's a bridge across a chasm. You stand on this side, with the beginning of your story. Way over on the other side is the end of your story. The plot is the bridge going from here to there.

Now, writers can be broadly divided into two camps: pantsers and plotters.

Pantsers, of course, are writers who write by the seat of their pants. A pantser doesn't know what she's going to write until she picks up a pen or sits down at the keyboard. In other words, a pantser will walk up to the edge of the chasm and go - "Hey, look. There should be a bridge here." And then she'll start building the bridge -- and she'll walk across it as she builds it, one board at a time. She's constantly working at the edge of the abyss, and it doesn't bother her at all.

I'm not a pantser; I'm a plotter. A plotter stands on solid ground, looks out over the chasm, and gets queasy. So she backs up a few steps and says "Nope. I need to build part of a bridge before I look at that again."

So she'll bang together the beginning of the plot, at least enough so that she can throw a few boards across the chasm. She may not build the whole bridge beforehand -- i.e., she may not plot the whole thing from beginning to end before she actually starts writing -- but she won't walk out there one board at a time.

Sometimes, though, plotting is just an excuse to procrastinate - and when it comes to procrastinating, I don't really need excuses. I'm already more than a little ADD, and I'll use any excuse not to sit down and actually write. So I've adopted one of the Diva's techniques for dealing with the ADD, which involves taking the task in little bitty bits. If I break a plot, or a partial plot, into scene-sized sections, and concentrate on writing one scene at a time, I can actually get it done.

Some people use index cards - I use large lined Post-It notes, and then - no lie - I stick them into the pages of a magazine. I use a magazine to be cheap and recycle, and because it's compact and I can fold the whole thing up and carry it with me. Each Post-It contains the notes for one scene. I don't have to write them in order, but I lay them out in the magazine's pages in order. Then I can flip through, pick a Post-It and write that scene. When I've written the scene, I rip the Post-It out.

Here's part of Seth's plot:





Now. About that steampunk...

First scene: Hero in his Galveston casino. Heroine emerges from her cottage. They flirt and chat and observe the glow from the Indian campfires across San Luis Pass. He goes back into his casino.

Second scene: Her pet street urchin joins her on the pier. They chat. She goes back into her cottage.

Third scene: The alcalde drops by the casino -- which isn't unusual, except that he's accompanied by [what were municipal law enforcement officers called in Spain's New World cities?] Hero asks the alcalde the reason for his visit. Alcalde replies that someone thought they might have seen a submarine surfacing beneath the [name of the casino?] the previous night. Hero laughs. The smugglers' submarine comes in on Sundays, as the alcalde knows, and it surfaces on [calle rompeolas/seawall boulevard], two blocks down the street from the alcadià . If there have been any submarines prowling the West End of Galveston, the hero doesn't know anything about it.

Fourth scene: ?????

Somebody pass me a board.