Alison Kent

I have hit a gig of traffic on my site for the month of June! Yes, it takes so little to excite me! :P :hehe: :cool:

By the way, I got another big fat envelope of ARCs for THE BANE AFFAIR yesterday!! Watch this space as I’ll be giving away another one soon!

Okay, I’m going to work now. Really this time. I am. Seriously. Now . . .

I need to keep my behind in the chair and my hands on the keyboard. The end of the month brings so much web work that I lose page writing time. I will catch up after tomorrow, however!

I will hopefully also catch up on my sleep since the dh and I, along with my son, his son, and my daughter went to the TWELVE-THIRTY A.M. showing of Spider-Man 2 last night, er, this morning. In line at 11:30 p.m. along with 400 or so other nutcases - but not into the theater until 12:20 or so. Thankfully, we were early enough that there were only 50 people or so in front of us, and we got to wait inside. (Except my son, coming from work, who was LAST in line, LOL!) The Cinemark was showing two shows right past midnight. Ours was delayed until 12:30, however, as they forget to cancel the last showing of White Chicks. (Why that movie is showing anywhere, or was even made to begin with is a WHOLE ‘nother matter, sheesh-o-mighty, what passes as entertainment these days!)

Much pathos true to the mythology of Spiderman and Peter Parker. Will he or won’t he do what he’s been called to do. Great special effects, but too slow in too many spots. Still, my theory is that movies on the big screen - the ONLY movies I will see on the big screen (except when dragged by my daughter to a chick flick) - must be HUGE spectacles. People / character movies don’t need to be seen anywhere but on a laptop DVD player! Give me Riddick and Hellboy and huge action adventure every time! I get enough political spin on television. And enough character drama in my own writing! Which I now must go do . . .

Mattel says popular doll finds new love from Australia to replace the dumped Ken. The popular doll from Mattel Inc. has a new love in her life, an Australian surfer named Blaine. (Guess she’s been reading Nancy Warren!)

Meet . . . Blaine

Seven pages today.

I probably would’ve managed more but I FORGOT, how dare I FORGET, that I had to return YET again to the dentist with the daughter. Sigh. Ripped out of the writing zone for 2 1/2 hours. But I do finally feel that I’m getting a handle on these people, and I will finish after the holiday weekend, yay! Oh, and lest I FORGET. I have to take the daughter BACK to the dentist AGAIN on the 28th. :doze:

In doing a WEE bit of cleaning yesterday, as in avoiding the manuscript by vacuuming and shampooing the office carpet (okay, the dh did the scrubbing / shampooing part), I rounded up a few old RWR magazines that I don’t appear to have ever read. One has an article that includes the use of SPREADSHEETS. I am in HEAVEN! :P

I’m shipping off a box of books on the 30th! Details here!

Pages, pages, pages. Today I must write pages. The scene I described yesterday got stuck with Kelly John just inside the front door of Emma’s apartment - and the cab outside got really tired of waiting for them while I goofed and played with the scene, LOL! I believe I need to go back to the beginning of the story and read through the entire manuscript - which isn’t much - up to this point so I can get back into the zone of what’s happening. Each one of the Smithson stories seems to be harder to get into than the previous, but once I do it’s fine. I think it’s just me and beginnings. Which is why I’ve already written the beginning to SEX ON STILETTOS, my 08/05 Blaze, and THE SAVIN ASCENT, my 06/05 Brava. (Or so is the current plan for both!)

I used to love beginnings, the getting to know the characters, the inventing of the worlds, but the fast pace at which I’m writing has made beginnings more difficult as I don’t have time to contemplate the wall in front of me for hours on end. (It used to be the trees and the sky, but the rain has made writing outside impossible now for days!) I have to keep the words flowing. I do have up my requisite character photos, which helps, but I just don’t yet know these people well enough to tell their tale.

I never have been one to do a lot of character pre-planning. I don’t do charts or graphs or lists of favorite things or traits. I tend to come up with background info as I need it for a scene. And my short Smithson novellas don’t allow for much background anyway - and the background that’s important is that of the heroes, how they came to be where they are, etc. I’ve also been real big in the past about writing perfect pages and editing as I go. I’m still doing that in a large way, but I’m also moving forward as that’s how the story gets under my skin - as I discovered in a big “A-Ha!” moment when writing about Julian and Katrina in THE SAMMS AGENDA.

I got distracted from writing yesterday by the arrival of my ARCs! Plus, knowing how much I have on my plate, I wanted to knock out as many lingering tasks as I could - one being a critique I did as a prize for an RWA chapter’s incentive program. I’d been holding onto it way too long, working it in increments because I wanted to give it the time it deserved! I got that finished - really cute story! - and did a bit of work on loading content for the website I’m building next. I need to figure the “flourishes” to set it off, as right now it’s too plain jane for me. One cool thing about rebuilding an existing website is that a WHOLE lot of the information is already there and simply needs to be transferred in a similar format. Still, putting a new spin on the lay-out can be a challenge!

Today, however, is all about the writing. So off I go . . .

That would be Advanced Readers Copies, for those not in the publishing know.

First reader who is NOT a close personal friend or a crit partner ;) to post a comment here in response, gets one!!

Claudia Pattison, author of Wow! and Fame Game, tells you how!

Now I’m on a manic race to write my own. :cry: Or at least to write a novella staring me in the face and going nowhere. Today Emma and Kelly John will get up close and personal so that when the time comes to play their roles as lovers, they’ll be used to, uh, touching - and being touched by - one another! Yes. I see the scene laid out before me. Rather than facing a blank screen, I’ll close my eyes and face my mental pictures and, voila! The scene will write itself, yes???? :cool:

One of the questions asked recently on my message board was about where I come up with my characters’ names, whether a baby-naming book, the white pages, etc.

I thought I’d share a funny. For the outline I did last Saturday night of my next Brava? I named three secondary characters by staring at the bookshelf to the side of my writing chair and stealing author names! I’m using Jeanne, Holden, and Spencer!

I also realized that I have now used the same last name in two different situations, and the same first name in one. In PLAYING LOVE’S ODDS, I had a character named Graham Elliott. In NO STRINGS ATTACHED, I created Deanna Elliott. Then, my Mother’s Day novella, UPSTAIRS, DOWNSTAIRS, told the story of David Marks. Quentin Marks was a secondary character in FOUR MEN & A LADY and will get his own story in SEX ON STILETTOS next year! PLAYING LOVE’S ODDS also featured Jess McCandliss as a secondary character, and the gIRL-gEAR stories all feature Jess Morgan. (And then there was Jessie Buchanan in JINGLE BELL ROCK!)

And I’d always prided myself on not reusing names. I have obviously failed on a large scale, LOL!

I’ve been swamped lately with writing and web work. After finishing Suzanne’s McMinn’s revamped site, I had a few tweaks to make for Cherry Adair. I also started working on design ideas for Dorie Graham, but have to get back to July updates for Lori Foster. (If you’ve been interested in her past Brava novella contests, you might want to sign up for her newsletter for her July news!)

I’ve got one page left to finish (I think!) on my own redesign, and have a lot of content to load before my next new client’s site will be ready to go live - hopefully before July 4th. (If I have not mentioned this before, let me do so now. I wouldn’t manage half of the web work I do if not for help from the dh. Since he works contract and has odd hours (as in he was coding this morning at 3:00 a.m.!), I rely on him WAY too much!)

Too bad he can’t write my pages for me . . . which I’m now getting back to!