Anyhow, as authors are wont to do, I was jotting notes on the paranormal at the same time. My paranormal involved aliens (as an aside, I think this is why I never got into it the way I might have if I’d used another creature) in a parallel universe who entered our world through portals opened during a ritual of a sort that I can’t remember. I wrote a prologue with the ceremony as the first rogue alien was summoned through, but that notebook seems to have been filed away in the depths of my idea closet.

I did find this notebook, and the first page of notes.

Their society has been dying for two thousand years, since the RACE ELDERS removed seven ASCENDANT STONES from their world to an alternate realm created during the collision of their universe with that where human beings dwell.

I capitalize stuff I need to give proper names. More from my notes:

The alternate realm can only be reached through 7 portals protected by 7 deadly sins. The Cadre of 7 are aliens each trained in one of the seven deadly sins, and in human emotions. Using their training in human form, they are charged to protect the spiritual status quo of their society and prevent ROGUE aliens from using the sins to cross into the alternate realm to locate the hidden ASCENDANT STONES.

Yes, just like Allison Brennan, I had an idea involving the seven deadly sins. Hers are demons. Mine involved an alternate realm between earth and my alien world with 7 entrances protected by the sins. Humans knew nothing about them. The aliens did, but since the aliens didn’t sin, they had to take human form to find and access them. Each story would center around one of the sins, the humans involved, and the member of the Cadre of 7 assigned to guard his portal from the alien rogues determined to find the ASCENDANT STONES and use them for nefarious purposes.

The first book was going to be about envy. Here’s the opening:

They took a picture each month.

The same day. The same location. The same setup every time.

Jennifer stood on the porch, turned to the side, and lifted her shirt. Allen snapped the picture, jogged to where she waited, and bent to kiss their unborn child.

He envied what they had.

The routine had been the same for eight months, though the first two times had seemed random, meaningless. It was only when she began to show that understanding dawned. Jennifer and Allen would soon be parents. They were beautiful people. They owned a beautiful home. They were well liked, well mannered, gracious and friendly to a fault. They would make perfect parents for their perfect child.

He envied what they had. What he never would.

Last month brought the first inkling that all might not be right in their world. After taking the picture, Allen suffered a seizure. Jennfer screamed. Neighbors came running. Moments later, Allen pushed to his feet. He declined to seek medical help. He insisted his health was fine. His eyes had told another story.

And today, when he’d taken the picture, he’d walked into the house without a word to Jennifer or a kiss for their child.

He envied what they had. What he never would. Without taking it for himself.

The seizure was Allen being taken over by the ROGUE alien searching for the envy portal. It was really a very cool but VERY very complicated system of checks and balances and motivations and goals. I never found time to get back and figure it all out. I’ve got a second paranormal world I’ve built that I’ve never done anything with, and a third for which I actually wrote a full proposal. We’ll see what happens with that, but I doubt I’ll ever revisit the other two. Too much time has passed, and if I don’t push forward with something when it’s fresh, well, it ain’t so fresh no more!

It’s not unusual at all for authors to come up with similar ideas around the same time. Things are in the air, whether pop culture goings-on, or news items, or whatever. Something seems to generate these creative waves that we latch onto. This is one reason many authors will no longer judge writing contests, to avoid being accused of taking the ideas of others when more often than not the ether put it out there. It’s all about luck, and whoever has the fastest – and grabbiest – hands!

Allison beat me to this one. *g*

Middle grade readers are between eight and twelve years old, and they are just starting to think about breaking away on their own. But many may still be close to their families. And they consider their favorite books to be friends, of sorts. They are also trying to navigate their personalities, and they relate to stories that exploit the growing pains of the age – school and negotiating relationships.

2) Anita Burgh says about dialogue:

We want to make the reader think it is real. Of course, like most things to do with writing, it is completely artificial. People in books speak in a different way to conversation in life. Normal conversation is full of waffling and rambling, ums and unfinished sentences – a lot of understanding comes from facial expression and body language which we don’t have in fiction. The aim is to make the dialogue appear real yet using it all the time to convey plot, information, characterisation and pace.

3) Darcy Pattison says about Plot, Plot Layers, Subplot:

OK, you’ve narrowed down your story to a plot template and you know what characters, events, settings are implied by the story you are thinking about and the plot template. You know some of the pitfalls of plots. Now what? It think this is the hardest part of plotting a novel, going from generalities to particulars, actually choosing and writing scenes. But you have to make a start, so let’s get to it.

4) Darcy also goes over the Outline Level of Plot, saying:

There are three levels of plot: outline level, scenes and pacing. The outline level is the most abstract level, or the skeleton level, where each section of a story is categorized in some general way. We do this by dividing stories into acts, for example. Some prefer 3 acts, some 4, doesn’t matter, as long as the division is helpful to the writer (as opposed to helpful to the critic).

5) Johanna Harness uses Magic Notes Cards (which I LURVE), explaining:

I’ve been doing a lot of work with note cards lately, sighing and saying, “Ah, note cards. Is there nothing they can’t do?” Questions follow, condensed mainly into one basic question: “Why are you so in love with note cards lately?” Most basic answer: note cards help me see the big picture.

6) The Creative Pen shares some lessons from James Rollins on writing thrillers.
7) Sarah Duncan authors a new to me blog, one I’m loving a lot.
8) The Sharp Angle shares some thoughts on rule breaking.
9) Kiersten White says Being on Submission Sucks.
10) 30 Days to a Stronger Novel offers 30 ONE-MINUTE Tips.

Another was a lime jello with pears, pineapple, pecans, and a topping of some whipped cream and mayo and vinegar combo. We don’t eat jello. @cuppacafe can’t stand it. I’ve never made either, but I loved them when she’d make them. (The closest I’ve come was to whip fat free cream cheese into hot water with sugar free jello, subbing out half the water for diet soda. Sounds weird, but was really very good!)

I know she never had access to the same conveniences I do now, or even all the same foods, so it’s fun to think about the things I’ve learned through practice or from @cuppacafe or even the Internet about cooking and food. But from my mother, I learned about cornbread dressing, and I still make her banana spice cake with penuche icing, and No. 1 Daughter makes her chocolate orange balls at Christmas.

We didn’t eat much variety when it came to vegetables. Corn and green beans were a staple. Potatoes and carrots. Peas. Almost all vegetables were canned. I remember her making turnips and cauliflower, but I wanted nothing to do with either. I’m still not on board with the turnips, but cauliflower is a regular here at home, steamed with cheese sauce, or roasted with garlic and parmesan.

My kids grew up with that and with broccoli, and cabbage. I seem to remember cabbage as a kid, but like with the turnips and cauliflower, the stench turned me off. I couldn’t get beyond the smell to the taste. She would also cook okra. I’d eat it fried, but never EVER would I eat it steamed. All that slime . . . though now I’ll eat it in gumbo, no problem!

Oh, and spinach. We ate spinach. I LOVED spinach. I still do. My first mother in law was a country cook like no other. She stored her bacon grease in an aluminum can in the pantry, and liberally used it when cooking greens (which I do NOT like, except for spinach). She did everything by hand, and my first father in law would say nobody whipped better left-handed potatoes. No mixer for her. (I had wonderful first in-laws.) Her table was always loaded with fried foods, gravies, etc. And I learned chicken fried steak from her and my mother both, combining their methods into my own.

I don’t remember my mother cooking with garlic except garlic powder or salt. I never peeled and minced a garlic clove until I was married to @cuppacafe. It just wasn’t on my radar to do so. The garlic powder served its flavoring purpose, but oh do I love having discovered the difference. I also never ate Chinese food until he introduced me to it. Italian and Mexican yes. My mother made tacos and enchiladas, and lasagna.

Every Sunday we had yummy pot roast with potatoes and carrots and gravy. My mother would put this in before we went to church, and her oven timer would come on while we were gone so the house smelled wonderful when we came home. This meant that on Mondays, we usually had leftovers. She would slice the roast beef and warm it and the vegetables in a big iron skillet so the edges were crunchy and brown.

We had meatloaf (I’m a HUGE meatloaf fan) and meatballs with cream of mushroom soup gravy (which I still make) and spaghetti. We had hamburgers with the meat patties fried up in that same big iron skillet. We had chicken, fried or baked, and back then I only wanted to eat the thighs. I thought breasts were too dry. Now breasts are the only thing I want. We had Swanson pot pies. Most of the family had chicken, I wanted beef. I would cut chunks of cheddar cheese and push through the crust to melt. These days, Marie Callender’s pot pies are my fave, but the extra big ones, with things like broccoli and parmesan and THOUSANDS of calories. I don’t eat them often.

We rarely went out to eat. Picking up Whataburger was a huge deal. And it was usually on Saturday, maybe once a month, because Saturday was a big prep day for Sunday church. Shoe shining. Ironing. Hair rolling. With four kids, a stay at home mom and a preacher’s salary, I’m pretty sure even those hamburgers and milkshakes were a huge splurge. I remember taking Home Ec my sophomore year in high school, and having to cook dinner for a week, and my teacher coming to the house to make sure I did. The only thing I remember making was a tuna dish with mandarin oranges and dried noodles. Oh, and peanut butter cupcakes with a crumble topping.

I still have that recipe somewhere. Those were SO good.

Let’s just say, not so good. One, because I’ve been lazy. Two, because I’ve been . . . not lazy. I’ve been working every day, but since I’m all over the place at the moment with getting stories and synopses together, I haven’t been doing my 1000 words a day. That should change this week. My Vows story should be finalized, and if I do get to write the one I’ve seen, I can’t wait to get started on it. And really, I know I’ve been doing 1000 words a day. I’m just not tracking where they’re going unless they’re manuscript pages.

For example, on Saturday, doing some story brainstorming with two friends via email and Google Docs, I wrote a couple thousand at least. So, I can tell my past me that, yes, I have been getting the words down, just not in the focused story telling that I’d been planning. That will change this month, and as a result, I may not be around here much. I will, though, post some snippets of what I’m writing rather than abandon the blog completely as I did for awhile last year when overwhelmed.

This time when I write an email to my future self, I’m going to be more specific. I’ve done several things in January that will take time to pan out, so it will be interesting at the end of February (March 2nd, actually, 30 days hence) to see if any of them have.

*****

I used Random.org to pull January’s winners then linked to the comments. If you’re listed, click to make sure it’s your comment, then email me your mailing information!

Copies of DEEP TROUBLE

Nancy Bristow
Charlene Teglia
Blanche
Jackie
Donna Hunt

Amazon $15 Gift Certificate

Alan

The current WIP isn’t going to be so nicely wrapped up. There are any number of directions these characters can go, and the ending, though neat and tidy, isn’t going to come as easily as a straight genre romance. Yes, this book has a major romance subplot, but how it wraps up is going to depend on the twists and turns the main plot takes. I haven’t faced this before. It’s kinda fun, but it’s also kinda scary, all unfamiliar territory, a big bad scary leap into the unknown. A leap of faith that’s been a tough one to make.

I like familiarity. Not the part about it breeding contempt . . . but, I get where that comes from. The same thing over and over can get old. Very old. And stale. And boring. But I like familiarity because it’s easy. Not easy in that there’s no work involved in writing a genre novel, but because the genre formula (and, yes, there is a formula) means the writing will go a certain way each and every time.

What makes genre novels unique is the voices of the authors, their take on the formula, the spins they put on girl meets boy – girl loses boy – girl finds boy that keep the reader turning the pages. But there comes a time when the muse wants to tweak the familiar, and that might just take the book out of genre and put it into the expansive seas of commercial fiction not so easily defined. That’s pretty scary, but in the end, I’ve got my fingers crossed that it’ll be totally worth the angst!

Bizarre and cryptic messages found on a pair of corpses in Mobile, Alabama, launch junior police detective Carson Ryder and veteran cop Harry Nautilus into a desperate search for a mysterious killer. With the body count rising, Ryder descends into his family’s terrifying past by seeking advice from his brother, a violent, taunting psychopath convicted of similarly heinous crimes. Ryder soon confronts not only his past fears and nightmares, but also the knowledge that someone he knows is the next target.

And time is running out.

In my post about the books I’d pre-ordered for the year, Lisa suggested I try Jack Kerley, an author I’d never heard of before. The Hundredth Man was my first book of his to read. It won’t be my last. Right up front I need to say this is not a romance by any means, though there’s a small romance subplot (putting that out there since I know many of you read only romance), and though the book is suspense, it’s also borderline psychological horror, very graphic, very gory, very gross. And VERY good.

Here’s a piece of the Publisher’s Weekly review that recaps the plot.

First-time author Kerley debuts with a classically constructed, psychotic-killer-with-a-horrendous-childhood thriller featuring young detective Carson Ryder, himself troubled by a problematic past. Carson and partner Harry Nautilus are the newly formed two-man Psychopathological and Sociopathological Investigative Team, referred to as Piss-it by the other members of the Mobile, Ala., police force. While Piss-it’s official mandate is the investigation of murders committed by particularly horrendous killers, the formation of the team is actually a public relations scheme.

Nevertheless, when a headless body turns up in a local park, Piss-it has its first real case. At the autopsy, Carson meets new hire Dr. Ava Davenelle, who is handling corpse-cutting duties. Of course he’s immediately smitten, though his polite advances are rejected. Turns out she has her own life as well as a job-threatening problem, which Carson must solve while simultaneously identifying the killer who has meanwhile added several more headless victims to his growing list.

Here’s why I loved this book.

1) Kerley is a wordsmith. I love wordsmiths. I tweeted a few pieces from the book while I was reading it. Sleep, when it finally arrived, was paper thin and shot through with rats and the smell of burning silk. And another. A nose ridge like the spine of a slender book, and a mahogany tan independent of seasons. I know lots of readers find such language indulgent of the author, but I eat it up. For me, it sets a book apart.

2) The dynamic duo of rookie Detective Carson Ryder and his veteran partner Harry Nautilus. The two feed off one another with whiplash banter, a marriage of the best sort, and Booklist calls Harry “perhaps the most appealing character in the book.”

3) Carson’s OTHER partner. Since I was reading the e version on my iPod Touch, I didn’t have the back copy to read, so knew nothing about the part Carson’s brother Jeremey plays in the story – and, it seems – the whole series. From the PW review: Carson’s secret weapon of detection is his brother, an insane mass-murderer who feeds him clues on the nature of madmen from an asylum, à la Hannibal Lecter. Their relationship is freaky, and more than a bit frightening, but I couldn’t look away.

4) In the Booklist review, the reviewer says: Kerley’s plot is a treasure chest of interlocked pieces, each holding a secret, a link in the chain connecting the novel’s characters to the demons in their various closets. I LOVED that about the book because for awhile I thought a couple of the subplots were side trips to nowhere, but they all fit in an amazing puzzle – even though not all of them impact the main plot. Kerley did a great job with the red herrings. They never felt like a waste of time.

5) Kerley shows insanity brilliantly, and there’s much here to show, but his portrayal of the Hannibal Lecter beautiful mind insanity is exquisite. Some of the backstory that leads to the reader understanding where the crazy came from is hard to read, but the words on the page, the way they’re written, truly SHOW rather than TELL the insane.

Now a couple of things that I didn’t love.

1) Again from the Booklist review: Kerley jacks up the tension effectively with nicely placed jumps between Carson’s narration and the tortured thoughts of the killer, building to an all-stops-out climax involving a raging river and a supremely horrific home movie. While I loved the all-stops-out climax that read like a movie ending, or even like some of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher over-the-top action scenes, the horrific home movie part had me rolling my eyes. I got it, but it was a villainous stretch I found hard to make. Don’t get me wrong. It was clever and well done, but my inner cynic wasn’t onboard.

2) I bought THE HUNDREDTH MAN for the Kindle, then found out the second book in the series, The Death Collectors, was not available electronically or even as a new paperback. I had to order it used. Then I ordered the third, A Garden of Vipers, to read on my iPod Touch. The next three books, Blood Brother, In The Blood, and Little Girls Lost, I had to also order used. I can’t tell from Kerley’s Website, but it looks like the recent ones have only been released in the UK. Very irritating to make it hard to get them, but I know the author has nothing to do with this, and I wanted them badly enough to suss them out used and pay the premium. Just wish Jack instead of the bookstore was getting the cash – which would have happened if I’d figured out earlier enough in the shopping process that I could’ve ordered them from Amazon UK, sigh.

If you’re a fan of Criminal Minds and Thomas Harris and Jack Reacher, THE HUNDREDTH MAN is worth hunting down. Thanks, Lisa!

Of course, when I tried to explain this to the husband, he didn’t let me get out more than a couple of words before telling me I did not need a Kindle. Once I pointed out he needed to, ahem, LISTEN TO WHAT I WAS SAYING, I told him that I agreed. I do not need a Kindle. I love reading on the iPod Touch. I don’t need light. I can read in the dark, and depending if I’m inside or out, I can switch from black text on white to white text on black; the latter probably wouldn’t have occurred to me until I saw the woman in front of me in the theater when @cuppacafe went to see Avatar reading in white text on black on her iPhone. I don’t read blogs or Websites set up similarly, but the resolution on the iPod Touch is super clear, crisp and clean.

Of course, my dilemma now is giving equal attention to my bookshelves full of dead tree books. I refuse to buy electronic copies of the print books I already have, so I’m alternating between the two formats to try and make even a small dent in the personal library I’ve accumulated too easily thanks to Amazon Prime. Between Prime and Whispernet, I’m not sure if Amazon is the devil, or my BFF