Guest Blogger M.J. Fredrick - Road Trips

I love a road trip. Some mornings when I’m driving to work, I wonder what would happen if I just kept heading down the highway instead of taking that exit. I love the open road, I love seeing new things, things you can’t see from the air. It’s nice to not have to go through security, and to have more room to spread out. I love the camaraderie of being with my husband and son. My husband always makes it special, stopping for snacks and for lunch. They’re always better if we’re not trying to meet an impossible deadline. So it makes sense I would want to send my characters on road trips.
It’s a fun way to isolate them, to have them on their own against the world, to be able to concentrate on the growth of the relationship, pushing them closer every chance I get.
Even though Road Signs is a straight contemporary romance, I’ve seen the theme in my other books as well—my hero and heroine in Hot Shot are trekking down a mountain after being separated from the fire crew, my hero and heroine in Don’t Look Back are crossing Africa on their own after being separated from their team. In Sunrise Over Texas, the hero and heroine are crossing the wilds of Texas to the safety of civilization.
In Road Signs, I wanted to give two best friends the push they needed to turn from friends to lovers, and what better impetus than a road trip on Thanksgiving weekend, when they can’t get a flight or a room at a decent hotel and have to share, while money’s running out, the kinds of things that can make or break a relationship. It was fun throwing things at Cam and Willow to see what would make them stick together.
Do you like road trips or would you rather just get to your destination? Do you enjoy road trip stories? Best friend stories? What draws you to them?

Procrastination Control?

I was going to write a post about procrastination, but I decided to do it later...

But really, this has been the biggest hurdle to overcome when I transitioned from a traditional day job to working at home. it's so tempting to read or watch TV or nap...hell, even cleaning looks more appealing than that blank page.

Let's be honest--you're not "working from home" if you don't get real work done. All (even though saying "most" might have less inherent generalizing, I'll stick with "all") writers who want to be published also want to be taken seriously. I know I want my friends and family to see writing as a career path, not a hobby.

And that means I've got to put in the time. Buckle down, get my butt in the chair, hands on the keyboard (BICHOK) and put in hours similar to a traditional workday. Do I write for six hours a day? No (not yet). But I do spend at least that long writing, reading (craft and fiction), editing, and social networking. For the latter, I put myself on a timer for 30 minutes, and only as a reward for getting the other chunks done. Checking my e-mail can only be done in this "break" time. After trying endless methods for keeping myself from procrastinating, I've finally developed a few key elements that keep me going every morning.

1. Set long-term goals
Write them down and refer to them often. Make them reasonable but not necessarily easy. These are the things you're working toward, like making enough money to go to a conference or buy an iPad 2. My goals (1-, 3-, and 12-month) are in a spreadsheet I look at ever day (along with my daily tasks, below). Sometimes, making yourself publicly accountable is good, too. Have friends know your goals and support you in reaching them. Post on Facebook or twitter or 43 Things but don't just keep them inside your head. Make them come to life on the page.

2. Set daily tasks
I have a spreadsheet (yes, another one) for all the things I need to do in a given day or week. If I get it done, I put an "x" or the details, like the number of words I wrote in a given WIP. If I don't, I put a "0." But here's the important part for me: If I fail on one day, that's fine. I put the info from past days in a pale gray font so I can't really see it, but I can refer to it if I want to see my progress. It's like dieting--"they" say when you write down what you eat, it helps with your accountability, which often leads to weight loss. But if you obsess over those calories, you'll do yourself more harm than good. My daily tasks range from writing to my morning pages (from The Artist's Way) to reading craft books to exercising (see below).

3. Get out of the chair
Yes, this seems counter to BICHOK, but when you ache after a day of work, it's just going to contribute to your workplace anxiety. When doing what you love becomes tainted by backache or joint stiffness or eye fatigue, you're not going to love it as much. Period. Unless you're a masochist, in which case keep your eyes peeled for an upcoming post ;) I know, you have too much to do to take a break but trust me on this--every hour or so, take a five minute break. Stretch, walk a lap around the house, hell, just stand up and touch your toes, but move. You'll be far more efficient the next hour...and the one after that, and after that...

4. Keep up to date in your field
See what other writers are writing, bloggers are saying, graphic designers, creating. Not only will you see what's already been done, you'll learn from others in your arena, and not just the professionals. This is not about checking out the competition. It's about being a voracious learner. It's about reminding yourself why you chose a tough-ass path as a freelance worker. Pick up the books written by experts on how to do...anything in your field. And that author who puts out X books a year? You know her, the one you'd kill to be? Read her books, her blog, her grocery list...find the passion and dedication in her words.

5. Remind yourself why you love what you do
If you're a visual person, slap up pictures of the things or people that inspire you. I'm a wordie, so I have signs hanging in my office that say "believe in love"and "all because two people fell in love" and "Once in awhile, in an ordinary life, love gives us a fairy tale." Put your favorite book on your shelf as a reminder. Mine sit next to my NaNoWriMo WINNER certificate. This also relates to what Julia Cameron (yes, The Artist's Way Again) calls "refilling the well." Creating is hard work. It's draining, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise because even if you love writing beyond belief you're putting something of yourself onto the page (although I hope you're not bleeding onto the keyboard, literally or figuratively). You've got to spark your creativity every now and then. Be re-inspired. Movies, museums, nature walks, whatever floats your boat and ices your cake. And yes, you can call it work.

Tag, you're it!: What is your task mistress? Does she carry a bullwhip or nudge you with a twitchy little bunny nose? What strategies worked--and failed--for you?

Moving into the Future

I've been spending a lot of time at the airport lately, mostly picking people up and, when you do that these days, you frequently end up having a lot of time to think about the sorry state that airports have fallen into.

You know what I'm talking about, right? There are all these hastily built walls that look like they were put up over night; signs that still point you toward places you haven't been able to get to in a decade; increasingly complicated security mazes to navigate; and shops and restaurants that are all--for the most part--on the far side of said mazes and, therefore, off limits to anyone not actually traveling. 

For those of us who are waiting for our travelers to return, there are not always a lot of amenities. with which to amuse yourself while you're waiting. If you're really unlucky--if, for example, your loved one had the incredibly poor judgment to arrive at SFO's Terminal 3 (AKA the gates of hell)--you have virtually NO amenities. There's nothing to do but sit and wait (and not much of a place to do that either, btw) and wish that there was somewhere you could go to buy a book...or a newspaper...or some gum; or that one of the two restaurants (and I use that word very loosely) that are there would actually be open, or not out of food, or vaguely interesting.

Sorry, Peets, I love you dearly and coffee is a lot of things to me, but it's not dinner, okay? Not all by itself. Not even with a package of cookies. Anyway, to get back to my point...

There's a very impermanent vibe to airports these days, an air of making-do in an emergency. And I realized recently that it's lulled me into making the assumption that all the inconvenience was temporary, that someday  the emergency would be over and things would go back to something approaching normal. Now I find myself wondering whether the airports haven't been making the same mistake.

That must be the case, right? Because, as bad as things are, there's still no sense that they're making plans to improve the situation. And they'd do that, wouldn't they? If they cared at all about their passengers' comfort?

Or is that too naive?

I'm as sentimental and nostalgic as the next person, but sometimes you just have to accept that what's gone is gone, put the past behind you and move on. I sure wish the airports would get that message soon .'Cause this holding pattern they're stuck in is the pits.

Potato Chip Books

Unlike a lot of people, I’m not a true chocolate fanatic. I enjoy the taste, but I can take a single chocolate and leave the rest of the box without feeling particularly deprived. Potato chips, on the other hand, are another story. Put me near a bag and my self control promptly takes wing.

This rather labored explanation is meant to serve as the basis for an equally labored metaphor. Some books, you see, are like chocolate for me. I read a chocolate book over several days and then I may or may not get others by the same author. It’s pleasant reading, I like it, but it doesn’t really drive me to read nonstop. Other books, believe me, are more like potato chips. Once you start you just can’t put it down.

I first encountered the whole potato chip phenomenon when somebody gave me a box of Linda Howard’s old Harlequin romances from the eighties several years ago. I soon discovered I could polish one off in a few hours if I didn’t do anything else, and I usually didn’t want to do anything else while I was reading. After a couple of Linda Howard binges, I started rationing. I’d come home from work on Friday afternoon and curl up with a Linda Howard series romance. Three hours later, I’d probably be finished, but if I wasn’t, I’d go on reading after dinner or the next day until I was done. The whole process made Fridays something I looked forward to all week long.

After Linda Howard, I discovered Jayne Ann Krentz. Now Krentz’s books were a little longer, but I tore through them in the same way I’d torn through Howard’s. Weekend reading—I’d always check to make sure I had one on hand. Just like potato chips.

I don’t think it’s any coincidence that the writers who grabbed me this way (and I’d add Elizabeth Lowell to this list) were all old school. They’d come up through the ranks of series romances and they’d learned their trade well. Plots moved along at a very brisk pace. Characters were drawn in broad strokes and tended to fall into predictable patterns—the brooding alpha male, the headstrong, passionate woman. You didn’t spend a lot of time thinking when you read these books—you just plowed ahead.

By now, of course, all three of these writers have moved into Living Legend status, and they no longer write in the same way. They publish longer works and they seldom do more than one a year. Moreover, their characters are usually more complex, with more complete backstories. But the lessons you can learn from potato chip books are real. Stories matter. Characters may be stereotypical, but they’ve also got to be interesting. And most of all, once you’ve got the readers hooked, you’ll hold onto them. For those of us who write books in a series, that’s the Holy Grail, believe me.

Potato chip books. Betcha can’t read just one.

So who have I missed? What other potato chip authors would you add to this list?

Guest Blogger Catherine Cade - Self Doubt

Hi, there! Many thanks to the Naughty 9 for hostessing me on their fab blog today. I write erotic romance for Samhain Publishing.

The other day on the Savvy Authors Loop, an aspiring writer asked, 'What if my writing is really just doo-doo?'

Her heart-felt question inspired a discussion that is still going on several days later. There are very few authors, romance or otherwise, who haven't wondered if they were awfully good or just plain awful.

The question hit home for me, too. I just wrapped up my Orion Series, about the alpha crew commanders of the spaceship Orion. The series is erotic sci fi paranormal romance, fast paced, full of adventure and red hot. Readers so far have embraced each book in the series, buying and enjoying them each in turn. So I can do that. My new series? I'm not so sure. What if I can't do this?

But then I remember that with each Orion book I suffered the same self-doubt in the process of weaving the story. And I got over it each time by fighting my way through it, by writing until the characters were once again showing me the way. There's a mystical thing that happens when I go deep into the world of my story, and it's flowing through me. But it's not easy to get there—it requires dedication. It requires the courage to keep going even when I'm convinced I can't do it ... until I remember I can.

The heroines in the romance stories that I love to read and write, go through a similar journey. Confronted with adventure, and a large, intractable male who might be her destiny if she doesn't shoot him first, each heroine struggles to discover her own power, the unique strengths that will help her triumph in both her adventure and her love story. If it comes too easily, her story is going to lull me to sleep, not keep me turning pages. I want to race one step ahead of the villains, be held at laser gun-point, menaced by dangerous thugs ... and then be rescued by the hero, and rescue him. I want him to

take me with a passion so great it consumes me, and enthralls him long enough to realize he can't live without me.

So, in creating a romance, I suppose it's only fair that I suffer a little of the perilous journey my characters do. Yeah, I'll keep telling myself that.

How about you? Is there anything you love to do, but struggle with? Is it worth the fight?

The final chapter in The Orion Series is now available from Samhain Publishing.

I've had so much fun creating the alpha males and feisty heroines who inhabit the world of Orion. In a way, I've saved the best for last.

I always thought Spock was the most intriguing character in those fab old reruns of Star Trek--all that intellect and power, held in check with such superb control, passion seething under that chill exterior. Love the way his story was brought to the forefront in the new Star Trek movie, don't you?

In a way, Deep Indigo is a tribute to Spock. Ah, space opera. Hokey as you were, with cardboard sets and plastic masked aliens, we loved you.

Here's a taste of the story…

"Navos led her into his stateroom, only his years of training controlling the desire flaming inside him. He knew that after a battle, soldiers often found themselves in the grip of lust, the less honorable among them committing rape.

He and Nelah had just won a deadly battle, although fought with empathic power. And now this slender, naïve young woman had him ready to shove her up against the nearest wall and take her there.

He’d nearly done so in the elevator—he had the access codes to shut it down and blank all surveillance. And knowing she wouldn’t stop him inflamed him. However, he was damned if he’d behave as a mere human male.

He had a thousand years of Indigon evolution in at least half of him and he meant to make sure that half remained uppermost, even in what promised to be a heady liaison. He might be throwing his rules about sex with passengers out the escape hatch, but he was still Indigon.

As the hatch slid shut behind them, he led her across the few steps to the large bed waiting in the shadows and turned her toward him. He wanted nothing more than to unwrap her like a gift and enjoy her tender body with slow care, but he had little time.

They both needed sleep. She would have it. He must go and aid in the investigation now beginning. Whoever the dead man was, whoever had been controlling him, he’d been acting as a terrorist. The Orion was obviously not rid of her tormentors.

But before Navos did the work at which he was so skilled, divining the patterns and motivations in a crisis situation, he desperately needed an outlet for the sexual flames fanned by their mind meld.

He sent his power twining about her, silently urging her close to him. She shivered visibly, her plum-like breasts rising and falling quickly as she fought for breath. Her eyes rose as far as his mouth, then her own lips parted on a shuddering sigh of surrender and she swayed toward him like a lovely, slender reed.

Triumph surged through him. She was so attuned to him. He spoke to her silently once more. Would she hear him, or had their earlier communication been a fluke, forged in the fire of urgency?

“Touch me.”

Her hands settled like birds’ wings on his chest, slipping up over the sleek fabric of his flight suit. She found the fastening at his throat, baring a long vee of flesh

His hands curved around her tiny waist, urging, guiding. She swayed closer, first her moist breath and then her soft lips brushing against the column of his throat.

Every cell in his body thrilled.

“More!” He had to feel that torturously delicate exploration move up his throat, then down, across the smooth hardness of his chest, her eager hands pushing his flight suit back until her fingertips found his nipples. A hard shudder arrowed through him as she traced them.

She was trembling in his hands, a fact that filled him with savage delight. He wanted her shaking, wanted her desperate for him.

He pushed his loins against hers, rocking his erection into the juncture of her thighs as she tasted his skin with the tip of her silky little tongue. He hung on the feathered edge of orgasm. His nostrils flared, jaw clenched, as he fought the urge to let go just from the graze of her mons on his straining phallus.

But no, he wanted every bit of her, wanted to be deep inside her before he put them both out of this delicious agony.

He traced just the fingertips of one hand, so large against her delicate frame, up the sleek front of her flight suit, over one pebble-hard nipple thrusting underneath, up under her chin, tipping her face toward his. Her eyes were heavy-lidded, dazed. Good.

He nipped at her lower lip—hard. “Open your suit to me.”

She fumbled with the fastening under her chin, her eyes drowning in his. It parted under his waiting fingertips. He slid his fingers down with hers, so under his tutelage she unfastened the garment clear to her belly. Her skin was unbelievably silken, shivering at his touch.

His mouth hovering against hers, he stroked the suit open farther, until his fingertips found the firm mound of her mons. Ah, like a velvet peach and a few inches farther, the luscious juicy center of the fruit, the sleek folds of her vulva. Indigons had only the faintest traces of hair around their sex. It gave the women a delicate, vulnerable beauty.

She whimpered some incoherent plea against his lips, her hips tilting forward to meet his touch.

“Yes,” he breathed into her mouth. “Give yourself to me.”

“I already—have.”

... visit the Samhain site for more excerpts, and to buy the book.

http://store.samhainpublishing.com/deep-indigo-p-6258.html

Women's Intuition: fact or myth?

Have you ever experienced that “gut feeling”, or knowing something without knowing how you know it? Some people seem to have more “intuition” than others, but what is it really? A sort of “sixth sense”?Wikipedia defines intuition as “understanding without apparent effort”. That seems a simple definition for something so complex and difficult to explain

Psychologists have historically lumped “intuition” in with astrology and mental telepathy and have never really taken it seriously, but researchers at the Univerity of Leeds in England recently studied intuition in more depth. They wrote in the British Journal of Psychology that “ intuition is a process that lies beyond conscious awareness, a form of rapid information processing deep inside the brain structures in which the brain draws on past experiences and external clues to make a decision.”

Using technology that measures blood flow to different areas of the brain, they were able to deduce that when someone processes information and makes a quick “gut” response, their brain is actually doing several things at once – analyzing and using their past experience to process the information rapidly.

Lead author Gerard Hodgkinson, a professor of organizational behaviour and strategic management and head of the Centre for Organizational Strategy, Learning and Change at the University of Leeds says intuitions are "a combination of pattern recognition," It’s “mental short cuts by comparing the circumstances in front of you against some kind of template of similar past experiences." Scientists call this rapid primed decision making.

“That triggers a physiological, emotional response, a bodily sensation, where people know clearly what the course of action is, but they don't know why," Hodgkinson says.

So when you get that feeling, that sense of something, knowing something that happens quickly and you can’t really explain how you know it, what your mind has done is taken the information you have – even if it’s not complete information – and rapidly analyzed it, compared it to past experiences and quickly come to a conclusion.

How about “women’s intuition” and the generally accepted belief that women have more of this quality than men?

Dr. William Ickes, writing in Psychology Today, said that when he started researching this, it was expected that they would find that women have more “intuition” than men. But that was not the outcome their research led to, in fact. At first they found very little difference between men and women and they were about to conclude that the stereotype of women’s intuition was a cultural myth, but then a change in their research methods led them to see there were some differences. After additional research they found strong evidence that “the gender difference we had occasionally observed was indeed based on differential motivation rather than differential ability. Women, on average, don’t have greater empathic ability than men, but they do try harder to live up to their stereotype in situations in which they are reminded of it.”

So it comes down to the fact that women are expected to be more intuitive and therefore try harder at it, while men aren’t really motivated to be intuitive -  so they don’t.

I think I’m pretty intuitive. I can often sense how people are feeling. I often read “back story” into situations based on subtle clues, reading people’s motivations, even imagining things that have happened that I have no way of knowing. Sometimes I never know if I’m right...but often I am!
Do you think you’re intuitive? Here’s a quick on-line test to see how intuitive you are. Try it!

Fooooooooood.

I admit it. I'm hooked.

I'm completely addicted to food-based shows.

It doesn't matter if it's a competition, like Top Chef, or a "how twinkies are made" expose, or just a cooking demonstration complete with recipes. If there's food involved, I'm so there.

My newest favorite is Cupcake Wars. Who knew the world of handheld individual cakes could be so cutthroat? Or that Peanut Butter Banana Bacon cupcakes could actually look appetizing? Sure, there are misfires, but those are part of the charm. And all-pink teams competing against guys who look like ex-Marines appeals to my "opposites-attract" sensibilities.

Midkid prefers any of the cake decorating competitions. Forget the bite-size treats - bring on the towering creations with spinning tops and pyromaniac displays!

The DH is a fan of Man vs Food, and I have to admit I can't seem to change the channel when it's on, either. By all rights I should be appalled by the sheer volume of food that poor host shoves down his throat on a regular basis, but there is a touch of the quixotic about it.

And don't even get me started on the cooking demonstration shows. One of these days I'm going to make a mandarine orange martini. Or a beef and pepper sandwich on ciabatta. Or...

Damn. Now I'm hungry.

*wanders off to raid the fridge*

Do you watch any cooking/food-related shows? What's your favorite?