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Category: General Writing

Stuff in general about writing techniques and genres.

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(Upset Hubby Alert - I can't remember where I read it!)

Read somewhere (hence the hubby alert above) that some of the editors at the big publishing houses are now looking for contemporary romances.  Actually, I think I read in a couple of different places over the last week or two, news that contemporaries may be the next hot thing.  What do I say to that?

THANK GOD, THE GREAT GREEN TOAD FROG AND ALL THE RE-FRIED CLAMS IN THE UNIVERSE!!!

I like historicals and I write historicals, but there are times, many times, when only a contemporary will do.  Some of my favs from that genre are folks like Diana Palmer, Linda Howard, Susan Elizabeth Phillips and Jayne Anne Krentz.  I can curl up in a chair and watch hours pass like minutes while I read one of theirs in paperback form,  or - as I add more to my Sony Reader - in ebook form.  I'm eyeballing a purchase of a Diana Palmer and a Brenda Jackson Westmoreland anthology for my e-reader as we speak. 

I also love contemporaries.  I also WRITE contemporaries.  I previously published Email Enticement, a contemporary set in my home town of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.  I just published Griffin's Law, a contemporary set at the University of South Carolina's Law School in Columbia, SC.  Both books take place at that interesting mental spot where love and the law intersect. So, does my gratitude about the return of the contemporary contain some amount of self-interest?  You bet'cha.

But, keep in mind, that I write contemporaries because I read contemporaries.  I write contemporaries because I love contemporaries.  I don't agree that you have to write what you know.   I do agree that you have to write what you love.   Enthusiasm and joy and a page turning experience will never happen for a reader if they didn't first happen for the writer.  Fun is contagious. 

...continue reading "Will Vampires & Zombies Exit Stage Right?"

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The book that, to date, I had the most fun writing, Griffin's Law, is being published as I type. It's out there on Smashwords and almost out there (it should be through the publishing grinder shortly ) at Kindle. It'll take a couple of weeks or so for us to get the paperback version out.

The Amazon process for Kindle puts the book out in stages. As I write this post, Griffin's Law is up on the Amazon site, complete with hubby's fantabulous cover image and, by the Great Green Toad Frog, with a buy button. The cover blurb hasn't fed up yet. And this blog post is partly about Griffin's and why it was my most fun book to write, and partly about that cover blurb.

Anyone who reads this blog knows that I'm a huge fan of Grey's Anatomy and of its creator, Shonda Sunshine (Rhimes). And Grey's Anatomy inspired this book. One night, as I watched the folks at Seattle Grace Hospital, I asked myself one question -- What if Grey's Anatomy took place in a law school? 

...continue reading "Griffin’s Law – To Compare Or Not To Compare?"

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Hello again chiljens, it's me the angry old fat dude. Just popping in to tell you Mary Anne has been very busy not working on one book, but two books. Her muse is working overtime, swinging her back and forth between two time periods. Hell, I have trouble keeping up with what year it is in real life, much less numerous crazy fantasy worlds.

Anyways, Mr. Brick has not been seen recently, so we suspect Muse is working like a maniac to avoid him. She is alive and well, though, unlike many others who've had run-ins with His Brickness.

In the meantime, I present Mr. Brick's premiere video, The Bricks-For-Me Challenge, which was his answer to the infamous Blasphemy Challenge. Enjoy, and until later, kiddies, AOFM out.

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Men like to watch random people having sex. 

They'll pull up pictures of the act, watch one internet video after another showing a different set of people doing similar things.  A whole genre of movies exists to cater to the male desire to watch generously endowed females wiggle, squirm, slither and squeal in high-pitched tones as the man gives it to her good.  A few scenes later, the same man - we'll call him Dick - gives it to three different women (at the same time) and they enjoy it every bit as much as the first piece he left behind. 

Women like to read about how Dick discovers Jane - the woman who makes everything in the bedroom so different that he'll change the way he lives after the orgasm's over. 

...continue reading "Dick Leapt Jane vs. Dick Kept Jane"

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My muse is either very fickle or very smart.  Or, perhaps, I'm either exceptionally stubborn or exceptionally stupid.  More likely, it's all of the above.

I had a plan.  I blogged about my plan last time.  I was working on a new historical romance.  Once it was done or (at least) well underway, about the beginning of next year, I was going to stop and do an edit of Griffin's Law.  The next to be published Griffin's is complete and has been resting pending an edit.  Griffin's is a contemporary romance set in a law school and is sort of a crossover between E-mail Enticement and a historical.  Okay - if you insist- think of Griffin's  as the Grey's Anatomy of the legal profession.

Anyway, I've been hard at work writing my new historical.  Rather, I've been trying to be hard at work on the historical.  I've been coming home after work and opening the computer to the MS every night.  I've been opening it faithfully every Saturday and Sunday morning for the past few weekends.  Sometimes, I've even written a few lines on it.  But inevitably, after a line or two, the story leaves me and I start sneaking over to my desktop to play Snood or Solitaire.  Or flipping over to check sales on Amazon, Createspace, Scribd, Smashwords, etc.  Or getting sucked into something on Google News that I keep in customized form as my homepage for Internet Explorer.

...continue reading "Cohorts In Crime"

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This week over at one of my favorite Internet spots - Romancing The Blog - there was an interesting discussion about the importance of historical accuracy in romances.  A Fine and Dandy Problem was posted on the site on October 13th by literary agent Emmanuelle Alspaugh.   Check out the post if you can - Ms. Alspaugh used a specific example from one of her clients to highlight the issue and she did a fine job of tossing a meaty bone for blog followers to chase.  I chased it and lost on the site, but (cue music) I stand by my stance.

I think historical romance is any romance that takes place in a previous era.  In other words, if it's not contemporary, then it's historical.  To me, the period of a piece sets the mood.  Beyond that, I think details are pretty much fair game.  Okay, a Regency novel where the heroine e-mails a friend for advice might be (are you sitting down?) a little over the top even for me.  But precise details like whether the railroads ran a specific route, intricate details about heirs to a particular title,  the names of places and people -including dukes, earls and the like - can, and often should be created entirely from the mind of the author.   I don't care whether women were wearing a particular style during the years of my story - in fact, I don't care that much exactly what anyone was wearing.  If I describe a gown in detail, it's because those details will play an important part of the scene.  Otherwise, I don't sweat the small stuff.

...continue reading "It's Called Fiction For A Reason"

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I write romance so, obviously, I read romance too.  Try writing a book in a genre you haven't read for years -- go ahead, I dare you. 

As readers, I think we all have some things that turn us off from the get go.  I know there are plot descriptions I can read and almost every time I'll slide the book back on the (real or virtual) shelf.  I've created taboos because if I buy a book with one of these plots, I'll almost always have buyer's remorse.  Do I hate the book because it's bad? Maybe, my preconceived ideas created hurdles so high that no writer could have written a story about these plotlines that I'd have enjoyed.

Here are some of the plots that turn me - the buyer - off:

...continue reading "Plots That Make Me Say — No Sale"

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A while back, shortly after the death of the late, great Paul Harvey, I blogged about his catchphrase - "the rest of the story." As that blog post advocated, the rest of the story can be a writer's best friend.  This post is a follow-up to that one because even the rest of the story has a flip side.  That flip side can be the rest of your story.

A Faerie Fated Forever was inspired by my muse and I discovering the famous Clan McLeod legend from the Isle of Skye in Scotland.  That clan has a faerie flag and shares blood with the wee folk thanks to a handfast marriage between a former laird and a faerie princess. After a year and a day the faerie had to return home, leaving behind the laird and their infant son.  The faerie returned to comfort her son one evening when music from a party drew his nurses away.  Left alone for the first time, the baby cried and the faerie mother soothed her son by wrapping  him in a special cloth.  The swaddling cloth was a faerie flag that could be used 3 times to save the clan. 

Well, that's a great legend, but my muse had to finish it - to find the rest of the story.  What happened to the laird who let his faerie bride leave without a fight or a fine bargaining session with the King of the Faeries?  Why didn't he at least try to renegotiate his deal with the King?  And later, surely the then-single laird married.  Let's say, he contracted a marriage because the clan coffers were dwindling.  How sad his forsaken faerie princess would have been on the laird's wedding day!  And would her father, the powerful King of the Faeries, just stand idly by, doing nothing at his daughter's tears?  Likely not.  Why, surely, he'd have visited the groom after the wedding and pronounced a curse on the lairds of the clan! The curse would have been aimed at making sure no future laird cast aside another beloved to wed for money or power.  It would have been a curse of love. 

And so the rest of the story of the McLeod legend became my first book in the Forever Series, A Faerie Fated Forever. 

While faeries may appear in the books at unpredictable intervals (the wee folk thrive on the unexpected, after all) the series isn't about faeries.  It's about what strong alpha males will do to secure their happily forever after.  The whole series is a flip side of the rest of the story.  Real life is too often about what women change, alter, amend or surrender in the name of love.  What do the men face?  What would we like them to face?  Wouldn't we like to see men who've had it all their way for way too long get so crazed with love that they'd surrender pride and duty and even do the thing they'd sworn never, ever to do?  Of course we would, and in the forever series, they do just that.

...continue reading "The Flip Side of The Rest of The Story"

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I'm currently in the midst of a  pre-publication edit of A Sixth Sense Of Forever.  Yeah, Boz's story.  He played prominent roles in Faerie and Golden as the friend who kept his cool in the midst of Nial's and Colt's chaotic adventures.  So he's got it coming and he gets it - over the top and then some. 

In the course of this edit, given the current state of the world, the job market and everything, I keep thinking - what if we could edit our lives?  Think of the sections you could go back and rewrite.  You could take back the phrase "I quit" or you could say it instead of saying "I'll accept that."  You could respond differently to a job review or rewind all the way back to college and major in something different.  You could keep the one that got away or re-script a fight or nasty e-mail exchange with your spouse so that the words you can never take back get taken back.  So wouldn't it be great to get a shot at editing your life?

Well, there's a problem with that.  Like the old cliche about woman's work, editing is never done.  What book is ever the absolute best it can be in the mind of its greatest advocate and worst critic - the writer?   If Shakespeare had another shot at Romeo and Juliet  or if Margaret Mitchell could revise Gone With The Wind would they change anything?  As a writer who knows how I'd answer that question, I'm betting they'd find a hundred or more things they'd revise in what legions of readers find to be great work.  Because if you ask any author whether this book or that play is the absolute best it can be, the answer is always going to be - no, I can make it better.

With this edit of  Sixth Sense I find that the big bones of the story stand up well.  It's the little details I'm revising....a word here, a phrase there, rewriting a description or changing a comparison.  Mostly, as is generally the case, I find I can tighten up the language to make the story flow along faster and smoother.   The numerous places where I can tighten dialogue, edit lines and revise scenes are likely products of my creative process.  When I sit down to write something new, I make no effort to contain or control - I follow my muse where she leads.  With the hindsight of editing, I can make muse's meanderings make sense.

I suspect that all writers are prone to editing, but I don't know if they're as prone as I am.  I never like to post anything or send it to anyone without looking at it one more time.  If I got a call from an editor or agent tomorrow saying they'd read the posted free samples of Brotherly or Faerie and wanted to read the fulls, I'd make changes.  If they said they'd read the fulls and needed a word copy to present to a board or to revise themselves - I'd still make changes.  I expect that if they published the book and I passed it on a bookstore shelf somewhere I could leaf through it and yes, find things I'd like to change.  I wonder if my favorite writers - Julia Quinn and Johanna Lindsey - pick up one of their old volumes, flip through it and think - Boy, I could do that so much better today.   

The bottom line of the editing process is that as long as I'm growing and changing, as long as I'm working and improving my craft, then I'll see changes I could make to improve any past project.  If I didn't see those changes it would mean I'd stopped growing and learning and improving.  And that would be a very, very bad thing.

It's too bad that we don't get a chance to edit our real life stories to make them flow more smoothly.  Maybe that's because the bumps and bruises, the miscalculations and mistakes give us the experience that got us to today.  And maybe, where we are today is where we're meant to be right now, at this moment. 

We can't edit our pasts, but we can use that editor's eye to change our futures.  We need to pull out the story of our yesterdays and see the places we'd like to re-write and revise and understand the spots we'd like to alter.  We can't change yesterday's mistakes but we can refuse to bring the past into tomorrow.

Today is Volume I.  Tomorrow is the sequel.

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To query or not to query, that is the question.

I stay about a project ahead. So right now, I'm doing a final, pre-publication edit on Boz's story, the third in my forever series - A Sixth Sense Of Forever.  My talented hubby, the graphic design guru, is working on the cover.  We hope to have it up and out very soon. 

I started editing Sixth Sense  after I finished my just-written legal-contemporary romance, Griffin's Law.  In the olden days of yore, before the gates of freedom and the rise of the internet made self publishing financially viable, I'd be working on a query letter about now.  That means, I'd be getting out my old, faithful list of literary agents and crafting the best letter in the history of letters to try to convince them that they want, need, bloody have to read the full of my MS.   This time around, I haven't even started the query. 

So I could be, perhaps should be, composing a letter to sell my MS to agents in the hope that one can sell it to a publisher.  The publisher would take a year or more to turn it into a book and then try to sell the book to Barnes & Noble, Wal Mart, Books a Million, etc.  If all of that succeeded, then the book might eventually, someday, be sitting on a shelf, trying to lure you -  all of you -- to put it in their basket and take it to the register.

Today, I can skip all the steps and put it out there for you to read and hopefully buy and more hopefully enjoy.  And it's not just little old me lured by the possibilities of getting it out there fast.  I understand that the Vonnegut estate is about to put the late, great literary geniuses' final work, short stories, out as an ebook first.  If the goal is to get the work in the reader's hands, ebooks do it a lot faster.

I love writing.  In my dream world, I'd get up every day and sit before my computer and write.  When reality and a day job don't intervene, I'm a pretty prolific writer.  I don't love trying to sell myself to an agent.  I don't look forward to getting a query letter together and getting it out there so that eventually agents can request material.  I'd then spend weeks and weeks, sometimes months, and in the case of my last contact with an agent - over a year and a half - waiting to get the letter that says thanks, but no thanks.  Oh, I suppose I at least progressed in the process.  My latter letters all generally said, you're a good writer, but....  Yeah, having folks who work with so many excellent writers say you can write is a compliment.  And I do and did appreciate it.  But it's a back-handed compliment at best - you're good, you're just not good enough for me and I've decided you're not good enough for publishers or the American public.

Self publishing is the ultimate act of democracy.  Am I good enough for the American public?  Will you enjoy the stories I so enjoyed writing?  Will you get my over-the-top style and understand it's a little bit "I wish men in love acted that way" and a little bit tongue in cheek?  Maybe or maybe not, but I don't have to convince a bunch of folks in the middle that I'm good enough to have the opportunity.  America is the land of opportunity and I can put it out there and let you decide. 

...continue reading "To Query Or Not To Query?"