May 10th, 2012
Evaluating Your First Page

I can’t even tell you how much I love this PowerPoint slide show about book beginnings. Let me count the ways:

1) Common 1st Page Troubles: Backstory, Info Dump, Character Dump

2) Biggest Bad Advice: Start with “action”

3) Action But No Character: Offers an action scene for the sake of excitement, but without any connection to the real plot, conflict, or story arc

4) Parting Wisdom: Writing is rewriting

5) Resources: ANYTHING by agent Donald Maass

April 30th, 2012
Z is for Ze

An Invocation for Beginnings – Ze Frank

April 28th, 2012
Y is for Yuvi

Yuvi Zalkow

April 27th, 2012
X is for Xebec

A xebec was a Mediterranean sailing ship that was used mostly for trading. It would have a long overhanging bowsprit and protruding mizzen mast. It also can refer to a small, fast vessel of the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, used almost exclusively in the Mediterranean Sea.

April 26th, 2012
W is for Walking

The value of mental-training games may be speculative, as Dan Hurley writes in his article on the quest to make ourselves smarter, but there is another, easy-to-achieve, scientifically proven way to make yourself smarter. Go for a walk or a swim. For more than a decade, neuroscientists and physiologists have been gathering evidence of the beneficial relationship between exercise and brainpower. But the newest findings make it clear that this isn’t just a relationship; it is the relationship. Using sophisticated technologies to examine the workings of individual neurons — and the makeup of brain matter itself — scientists in just the past few months have discovered that exercise appears to build a brain that resists physical shrinkage and enhance cognitive flexibility. Exercise, the latest neuroscience suggests, does more to bolster thinking than thinking does.

My good friend Loreth Anne White sent me a link to this article from which I’ve snipped the above. I’ve talked before about how much I love walking. As long as it’s outdoors. Because I cannot STAND to walk on the treadmill. So stupid when I could be in the air conditioned living room watching the big screen TV. Walking to me is about being outdoors. Usually in the sunshine and slathered in sunscreen, but even gloomy days will do, and misty days, and frosty cold ones, which we almost never get here.

I can’t even tell you how many words I’ve dictated while walking. I used to walk at lunch while working the day job, sometimes on the downtown streets, sometimes on the health club track. I specifically remember dictating a lot of LOVE IN BLOOM on that track. And I’ve walked the dogs in the neighborhood and dictated, two birds with one stone, and all. I’m quite sure people think I’m strange, but moving doesn’t require thought, so it’s the perfect time to let the muse have her way. And then there’s the part about my brain working better, and having more energy, and sleeping like a baby, and not wanting to turn to junk food (or at least as much) when I’m stressed.

I’ve slacked off the last few months, but am determined to get back to it. I feel amazing when I’m moving, even if it makes it doubly hard to sit and write when done!

April 25th, 2012
V is for Vegetables

From my backyard (and yes I know they’re really fruit, but I’m all about the irony)! Click for the bigger versions, which are pretty good considering I used my Blackberry!



April 24th, 2012
U is for Undeniable

UNDENIABLE (available now for pre-order in print at Amazon and Barnes & Noble; electronic versions to come closer to release date) will be Undeniable: A Dalton Gang novel - Berkley Heat - Alison Kentreleased October 2, 2012 from Berkley Heat. Heat is Berkley’s erotic romance imprint, and they publish such authors as Lauren Dane and Jaci Burton, and many many more. This means Undeniable is quite hot and spicy, a bit of 50 Shades of Grey on horseback, as it were – or at least in a barn, though now that I think about it, that sex scene is in the second book of the series. Though both couples do make creative use of pickup trucks!

This makes it a bit hard to give a sexy excerpt but I’ve posted a short PG-13 rated one after the cut.

Read the rest of this entry »

April 23rd, 2012
T is for Toes

Several weeks ago when I was complaining about my back being stiff after a long day of writing to a deadline, the husband dared challenged me to do a series of toe touches to stretch. (And honestly, I meant to include “stretch” in Saturday’s S sampler.) I guess he didn’t think I could, but I can. I can bend at the waist with straight legs and put my hands flat on the floor. I’ve always been very flexible. No idea why. So I did them. Maybe ten. And then later I did ten more. And then I got to the point where every time I got up from the computer – to use the restroom, to get a drink or lunch, to walk outside and say hi to the cats, to put in a load of laundry, to check the mail – the first thing I did when I stood up was to do twenty or so toe touches. My back has stopped hurting completely. I don’t groan when I stand up from the desk, but I also don’t sit for more than thirty minutes at a time. And I’ve learned after the week spent at the dining room table doing taxes and killing my shoulder in the process, that these days, I really do need to write at my desk. It’s not particularly ergonomic, or at least not planned to be, but it keeps me from aching in all the wrong places. I’ve had the same desk chair for ten years at least, and I love it. It’s a standard secretarial model, but it’s got a big wide seat for my big wide seat. I still like to write in the backyard, but these days I find I need to use pen and paper because neither my laptop or Alphasmart can be situated at the right angle to keep my wrists from complaining. It sucks getting old and decrepit, but I’ve got to say, toe touches have saved me a lot of pain and suffering. Just taking those few minutes several times throughout the day has helped my back, my shoulders, my arms and my legs. And it’s so easy! No gym or even shoes required!

April 21st, 2012
S is for Sampler

Sunshine
I don’t know why, but my writing flows so much better when the sun is shining. I’m sure it’s the natural light fighting the mild case of SAD I get when the weather is gloomy. I could never live in Seattle, heh, so I grin and bear the heat of the Texas summers.

Sleep
I’m very fortunate to work from home on my schedule. My kids are grown and gone, my husband doesn’t leave for the office until 9:30, getting home around 7:00. I don’t set an alarm clock any longer. I did for a gazillion years. I’m finally sleeping enough to keep my brain functioning at its best, and it’s showing in my work. It’s cleaner, deeper, more thoughtful. I lost many hours of sleep in the past, writing at 3:00 a.m. before leaving for the day job, and I know many many authors write on similar schedules. But sleep is vital. get as much as you can! And if you don’t believe me, there’s this study:

Belenky’s high-tech brain images show that sleep debt decreases the entire brain’s ability to function — most significantly impairing the areas of the brain responsible for attention, complex planning, complex mental operations, and judgement.

Support System
Every writer needs a strong support system, though not every writer will find it in the same place. Again, I’m very fortunate that my husband is behind me 100% through all the industry ups and downs. I also have a handful of close writer friends to whom I can say anything about what’s happening in our careers. The trust network we share is invaluable.

Slow and Steady
I’m not a speedy writer. I don’t fast draft. In my entire career I’ve written 20 pages in a day one single time. I’m comfortable at 5. Maybe 7. But I also polish as I go. It’s how my brain works. When I get to the end of a book, I’m done. Slow and steady works for me, and my process is exactly how James Rollins describes his in the video below.


April 20th, 2012
R is for Repetition

The wind was brittle, bitterly cold. She sat on the park bench, waiting, the wool of her coat and pants no match for the cold seeping up from the cement. Her toes were frosty, her fingertips near to frozen, her breath formed a cloud when she exhaled into the cold air.

Yes, I wrote that. Just now. With very little thought. Yet if I saw that same paragraph in a book I would grumble. If I saw it in one of my own finished works, I would weep (and I have, because no matter how many editing passes, bits of bad writing always slip through)! Why? Because of the overuse of the word cold in that one single paragraph. It’s unnecessary and smacks of inattention. I once read a paragraph on the first page of a book that described a character’s short white skirt three times. Again. Unnecessary. We got that it’s short and white the first time, just like we got that it’s cold outside up above in the first line. This is, for me, what comes out in my first draft. When revising, I’ll roll my eyes when I run across passages such as this. I was in the moment while writing. I was feeling the cold. I wasn’t thinking about word choice as much as sensation. The words frigid, frosty, chilly, or icy were out of reach. During revisions, however, I will rewrite and rework to keep the above from happening. And, yes, this sort of repetition is totally different than words or phrases repeated purposefully for rhythm or emphasis. The above is just lazy writing. It’s so so SO easy to make different word choices, to give a different feeling to the snippet with an evocative selection of descriptive words.

The wind was brittle, bitterly cold. She sat on the park bench, waiting, the wool of her coat and pants no match for the icy chill seeping up from the cement. Her toes were frosty, her fingertips near to frozen, her breath formed a cloud when she exhaled into the frigid, biting air.