Power of Positive Energy

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Iowa, Romance Writers of America, Girl Who Stopped Swimming, Caribou Coffee, Sisters in Crime, Joshilyn Jackson, Cinnamon roll, central iowa area, homemade cinnamon rolls, turning of the screw, jennifer cruisie, southern accents

Today my local chapter of Romance Writers of America met to retreat. One of the members who had to drive the furthest, also brought breakfast. A great egg, sausage, and hash brown breakfast, homemade cinnamon rolls and orange juice. Most of us stopped at the local Caribou Coffee for our shot of caffeine and then we focused on writing until 12:30. After lunch we went straight into a workshop on using cliches and ended with each one of us sharing the goal, motivation, conflict and inciting incident for the story we are currently working on.

Do you determine your characters’ goal, motivation, and conflict when you plot your story. Do you plot, or do you sit down and write letting the story tell you where it wants to go?

Love spending time with my writer peeps and look forward to the next time. Actually it won’t be that long. Our monthly meeting is next Saturday. If anyone lives in the central Iowa area and is looking for a writer’s group. My RWA chapter and my Sisters in Crime chapter meets the third Saturday of every month. Romance in the morning and mystery in the afternoon. Let me know if you’d like more information and check out our website - http://www.iowaromancenovelists.org/. For Sisters in Crime Iowa you can find us on facebook.

What have I been reading?  I’m half way through ‘Maybe this Time‘, by Jennifer Cruisie. If you like ghost stories, you need to read this one. It has plenty of humor which should be no surprise but it does have a few spooky moments and a great story line. I did guess that her inspiration was ‘Turning of the Screw’. Her blog says she took the story and told it the way she thought it should have been told. Very entertaining.

I recently finished reading ‘The Girl Who Stopped Swimming‘, another story that surprisingly had a few ghosts too. This was an audio book I listened too during my commute to and from work. The author narrated it and she did a superb job. Loved the southern accents and her ability to read in very distinguishable voices. Loved the relationship between the sisters and the authors ability to weave all the subplots together with the main story into a tapestry of emotion, action, and conflict as beautiful as if it were the finest literary silk. Will watch for more from Joshilyn Jackson in the future.

Happy reading and writing,

Virginia

2012 – Prioritizing and Perfection

Tags

Alan Bradley, Christmas, Christmas Eve, Holidays

The holidays felt like a blur. So many things to do and so little time, I enjoyed the time with my family and I did manage to carry out most of my personal traditions but many didn’t feel so important this year. I managed to get the tree up the Tuesday before Christmas and the presents wrapped the next night. Instead of setting out the Christmas Village, I left it packed away. I can remember years when I was wrapping presents Christmas Eve knowing they would be opened later that day. I hated those years. I used to decorate almost every room and put up two trees. I don’t try that hard anymore. A person could drive themselves crazy trying so hard to be perfect. I no longer seek perfection. I hung red ribbons on the outside lights, a big wreath at the top of the stairs and I set out my big Santa Clause next to the tree and called it good.  I bought candy instead of making it. I shopped a little bit each week so that it wasn’t a mad dash to buy everything in one shot and though it was still hectic, it was doable.

I learned something important from the holidays this year that I intend to carry over to my writing. I don’t have to do everything. I only need to do what is important. My word count did not grow very much on my current wip. With the holidays, I did feel a little overwhelmed so instead of trying to meet my writing goals, I fit in what I could each day. Instead of actually writing, I continued to note story ideas, build my characters, and work on plot and structure. I know that I need to quit with the perfectionism, especially with the first draft or it will never happen. I can accept that the first draft won’t be perfect.

I also snagged a new critique partner. Someone who was right in front of me looking for someone to work with and I am so glad she approached me.  Carrie belongs to my local RWA chapter. She is our 2012 Board President and she has written a non-fiction book about Winterset, Iowa. You know that place where Bridges of Madison County was set. We plan to start critiquing in February, so now I have to actually start writing. Having a partner who expects something from me will make me produce. I hope to be able to write at least one blog a week but forgive me if I skip  once in a while and know that I am working on my novel. When I do post, I will try to write about where I am in the process as well as what I have been reading.

 As far as reading, I finished ‘I Am Half Sick of Shadows’; the latest Alan Bradley novel. I love the little protagonist Flavia De Luce. She is an expert with poisons and chemicals and somehow always helps the local police solve murders. If you haven’t read this series you really should check it out.

 

I am currently reading – a paperback of  Jennifer Crusie‘s ‘Maybe This TIme.’ and Claire Cook’s ‘Life’s a Beach‘ on my nook. I normally try to read only one book at a time but have found that while the nook is re-charging it’s nice to have a real book handy.

Happy reading and writing…

Virginia

2011 in review

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WordPress, WordPress.com Stats

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 1,400 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 23 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Who Do Voodoo? – Book Review

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Cozy Mystery

I happen to love stories with a paranormal twist.  It is the first in a series of Mind for Murder Mysteries by Rochelle Staab. 

It took me a little while to really get into the story and there was one time that I almost set it aside to not finish. Then I saw it sitting on my nightstand with a bookmark in it and decided, what the heck, I’ll give it another try. What drew me to this story was the fact that it involved tarot cards. I have taken a few classes to read tarot myself and wanted to see how the author would use that in the story.

With my second attempt to read this book, I did get hooked. The protagonist, Liz Cooper, is a psychologist whose best friend, Robin, an assistant for a talent agent, is threatened by someone who has been leaving tarot cards taped to her front door. They aren’t just any tarot cards; they are the same tarot cards used in a reading the night Robin’s husband died.

The protagonist spends most of the book investigating the murder of a Voodoo priestess who didn’t get along with Robin. The two argued, the night she was murdered and Robin became a suspect. So as any best friend would do, she had to prove her friend’s innocence.

• While investigating, Liz discovers a cursed spell book. 
• She becomes romantically involved with her brother’s friend, Nick Garfield, a professor who lectures on the occult. 
• Her brother, who is a police officer, discourages her from getting involved in the investigation and with his friend because he doesn’t think she knows what she is doing and he thinks his friend will break her heart. 
• Her ex-husband, a professional ball player, who played around on her tries to get back into the picture and her tarot card reading mother attempts to play cupid with them because she liked him more than Liz did. 

This story is a cozy mystery with a paranormal twist and though the characters are not as well rounded as those in a more literary novel, it meets the standards of this genre. It had a satisfying ending that even made me feel good. The story-line was well plotted and it kept me guessing right up to the reveal. I will watch for the next one in this series.

Happy writing and reading.

Virginia

 

‘The First 50 Pages’ – A Book Review

Tags

Fiction writing, Publishing, reading, Writers Resources, Writing

If you can’t hook an agent or an editor, how can you expect to hook a reader?

Just finished reading – ‘The First 50 Pages’ Engage Agents, Editors, and Readers, and Set Up Your Novel for Success by Jeff Gerke.

Donald Maass even wrote a blurb for the cover – “From the insider’s perspective, everything they’re not telling you about your first 50 pages. Invaluable.”  Jeff is an editor and author of fiction and nonfiction. I haven’t read any of his fiction but I had read ‘Plot Versus Character: A Balanced Approach to Writing Great Fiction”. If you are writing to publish, I would recommend this book as well. It breaks down the differences between people who outline and those who don’t and how you can improve by looking at the process from the other kind of writer’s perspective.

Jeff broke ‘The First 50 Pages’ down into two parts. Part one covers the submission process, including proposal killers and a list of mistakes he has seen over and over again with submissions.

Part two consists of what your first 50 pages needs to accomplish. He spells out what you should and shouldn’t do to get published. Jeff’s explanations are easy to understand and he uses examples of both good and bad writing. I was surprised that some of those examples were from published books and well known authors. He showed how they could have been better.

Most of the mistakes made are considered lazy writing. It’s easier to tell instead of show is probably the biggest misstep. He used both books and movies for his examples.

I plan to keep this book handy once my first draft is finished and I’ve started revisions. Jeff reinforced how important beginnings are for publication. I think my biggest surprise was his advise on prologues. He thinks they have been given a bad rap and if done effectively, he thinks they can improve the beginning of a story. Jeff did admit that some Editors are so against them that he has heard of one in particular who would rip it off the front of the manuscript and throw it away before reading the material.

If you’re looking for a writing book to help motivate you to write better, check this one out, I don’t think you will regret it.

May your writing week be productive and your reading enjoyable.

Virginia

Sacrifice – S.J. Bolton

Tags

Author, Bolton, Books, Fiction

There are maybe five authors I read that I can’t wait for their next book. Whenever I find a new author to add to that list, I get excited. S.J. Bolton is one of them. ‘Awakening‘ was the first S.J. Bolton novel I’d ever read. It involved snakes. Lots of snakes and a female protagonist who as a veterinarian, gets pulled into helping investigate the deaths because she is one of the few people who is an expert on poisonous snakes. The story starts when she is called to the neighbors to get a poisonous snake out of a babies crib. Within a short time, several residents die and there are a few close calls. The snakes involved in the deaths are not from the area.  It was a mystery with a little paranormal twist and I loved it.

I finally found the first book – ‘Sacrifice‘. It too is a mystery with a dash of paranormal story line. This one has a female protagonist who is a medical doctor who delivers babies at the local hospital on the Shetland Islands.

It starts out with her digging a grave for her horse and finding a body. At first they think it is an archaeological burial because the body had been buried in peat that causes it to be more preserved than you would expect with a normal burial. When she finds an engraved wedding ring, she suspects the body is more recent. The story goes into a local legend about an all male race of trolls with special abilities. The mothers are, of course, sacrificed for the cause but no one will believe her. It looks like all the prominent men in the area are involved, including the police and her own father-in-law and husband.  Ms. Bolton weaves the story line in a way that you believe.

Bolton is great at pacing. She tells just enough to reel you in and when it gets to the scary stuff she draws it out just enough to make you suffer. Because you never know exactly what is happening, I would call her books more mystery than horror. There is always a puzzle to piece together right to the very end.

There are a couple more for me to read and with my pile of to-be-read growing steadily, I wouldn’t be surprised if she gets another out before I get her current stuff read.  If you like your mysteries with a little bump in the night, you need to check out S.J. Bolton.

 

 

I’d Like to Introduce Sparkle Abbey

Tags

Books, Texas, Writer, Writing

I continue to plug along writing my current work in progress. Each day I get a few more pages done. I truly think writing a novel is probably the most difficult thing I have ever attempted. When it is finished, I hope I will think it was the most satisfying.  It’s just getting there. Each day, I try to enjoy the moment and there are moments that are enjoyable. I love when I get in the zone. If you write, you know what I mean. When it happens, it feels like you are lost in the story. I tend to produce a lot more words. I know what I want to say and it flows easily. That doesn’t happen every day. I have found that it happens more often though, when I glue my butt to the chair and write. Even though I would much rather curl up in front of a good movie with Mr. G. I keep telling myself it will be worth it in the end.

Over the years, I have met quite a few writers and some of them use their own name and some don’t. Some publishers request you use another name. After working so hard to finish a book, I think it would be nice to be able to put my name on it but I also know that it is a business and as writers we probably should listen to the people who want to see us be successful. I suppose if that was a requirement for publication, I probably would do it.

I ran into a couple of my author friends at an event this weekend and they have their first book out. They had to make that choice and I know how difficult it was for them, because I know how long they have been writing and like me, they really wanted to see their name on that cover. They agreed to use a pseudonym.  They go by the name Sparkle Abbey. They came up with that name when the publisher insisted they needed a name to tie the series together because they co-write. Sparkle is Maylee’s cat and Abbey is Anita’s dog. Marylee Woods is a writer friend I met at least 15 years ago when I joined the local chapter of RWA. She co-writes with Anita Carter, someone else I have known for a while. They co-write the Pampered Pet Mystery Series and the first of four books they have sold came out recently, Desperate Housedogs. They have a unique way of collaborating. They share the same setting, Laguna Beach, CA and the same secondary characters. They each have their own protagonist. They plot their books together and often sit across the same table to write so that they can bounce ideas off of each other, along the way. Marylee wrote book one, Anita wrote book two that will be coming out in early 2012, Marylee will write book three and Anita, book four. Marylee’s protagonist is a pet therapist, while Anita’s protagonist is a cousin to Marylee’s and she owns a pet boutique. The two women are former beauty queens from Texas and currently are not speaking. They are both feuding over a god-awful ugly brooch their grandmother left to “her favorite granddaughter”. She didn’t specify exactly who she meant. I read the book and think it is so clever and such a good read. If you like cozy mysteries that make you laugh; you really need to check this one out. I think they have a great future with this series. Future books are titled, ‘Get Fluffy’, Kitty, Kitty, Bang, Bang’ and ‘Yip, Tuck’. I can’t wait to read them.

I know they each would rather have seen their own name on the cover but I think they made the right choice and if they keep producing this quality of cozy mystery, it really won’t matter. They will be around for a long time and everyone who really knows them will know who Sparkle Abbey is.

Until next time, keep writing… and reading.

Virginia

Gathering My Books for Winter

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Alexandra Sokoloff, Beautiful Lies, Elizabeth George Speare, Lisa Unger, Manitou Springs Colorado, Mary Roberts Rinehart

I feel like one of those little squirrels you see this time of year, hopping all over the yard gathering nuts, cheeks puffed out, storing them away for winter. I haven’t been gathering nuts but I have been picking up books for the snowy Iowa winter ahead.

We have an annual community book sale in my area that is so huge, they hold it at our state fairgrounds. Writer friends have driven to Des Moines from Omaha to check it out. It starts on Friday evening and runs through Monday. It used to run for two weekends in a row but the past few years they cut back to one and added Monday. The first night there is an entrance fee but for the remainder of the time, it’s free.

I happened to have both Saturday and Sunday off this week. Saturday I skimmed the long rows of novels and mysteries and felt pretty good when I walked out with – ‘In the Tenth House, by Laura Deitz – a Tarot mystery, ‘The Unseen’ by Alexandra Sokoloff, and ‘The Novelist’ by Angela Hunt. I read Tarot so was intrigued by that. I have always wanted to read Alexandra Sokoloff and was pulled in by ‘The Novelist’ because it was about writers. I spent $19.00.

I thought I was done until this morning I was playing around on the computer and joined a few groups on yahoo. One was a readers group that reads women mystery authors. They sent the reading list for the rest of this year. For October they are reading ‘ Episode of the Wandering Knife’ by Mary Roberts Rinehart, November – ‘An Expert in Murder’ by Nicole Upson and for December – ‘Beautiful Lies’ by Lisa Unger. Because they were not books I chose to read, I decided to check out the library first. The only book they had was Lisa Unger’s.

So I trekked on back to the book sale at the fairgrounds and started searching the tables of books again. Didn’t find any of the three I needed but I did find four more books I had to have. ‘The Witch of Blackbird Pond’ by Elizabeth George Speare, ‘Writers of the Purple Sage’ by Barbara Burnett Smith, ‘Murder on the Ghost Walk’ by Ellen Elizabeth Hunter, and ‘All Hallows Evil’ by Valerie Wolzien. In case you couldn’t tell, Halloween is one of my favorite holidays and yes I do dress up, when I get a chance. For those four books, I spent $3.75. Sunday is half price. Monday they knock it down to 75% off but alas, they will be closing about the time I get off from work. If any of my local friends have any of the books from my reading list and wouldn’t mind loaning them, please let me know. I plan to check 1/2 Price Books on Tuesday.

What are your reading habits? Just curious.

Virginia

Book Store, Library, or E-Reader?

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Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble, E-book, Kindle, Nook

Just got home from my weekly meeting with writer friend Sara. We get together one night a week for dinner and a chat. Because we both write and read, we always have a lively discussion. Since we meet at the local Barnes and Noble, books are a regular weekly topic. What we have recently read and what we are currently reading, always comes up.  She is a staunch paper book reader. I have a Nook that, I have to confess, I have not used as much as I had hoped.  I still catch myself buying paper. There is something about the cover and the feel and the whole experience that seems diluted with the electronic version. But, on the other hand, I have caught myself buying a book more than once because I take it home and forget that I have it and buy it again. With the Nook, I can buy it once and when I am ready to read it, it’s there. No searching through my bookshelves. Since so many of my friends have either a Kindle or a Nook, I thought it would be interesting to take of poll, just for fun, to see how everyone else is reading.

Virginia

Don’t Expect More From Yourself Than You Expect From Your Hairdresser

Tags

Audiobook, Janet Evanovich, Sue Grafton

Okay so the idea for this post came to me the last time I got my hair styled. Kelli, my hair stylist has been doing my hair for some time now. She recently moved to a different shop and because I couldn’t find her, I kept going to the old one. No one seemed to understand what I wanted. Luckily, Kelli sent me a postcard telling me how to find her. Her shop isn’t too much further from me than the old one so I promptly set up an appointment.

Because I was so thrilled to have her do my hair again, I may have been a little giddy. I told her that I wanted something that would make me look 10 years younger and significantly thinner. She laughed at me and said, “You aren’t serious,” as she pointed to herself? “If I could do that, honey, don’t you think I would have done it for myself, by now?”

I assured her I was joking but it made me think about what I expect from myself with my writing. Even though I am not a perfectionist, I tend to expect perfection in my work. I write a scene and try to go forward but the next day I read what I’d written the day before and cringe. Then I revise and edit and then go on. That is when I need to stop because if I don’t, I will re-read that section again the next day along with what I added to it and revise again. It can be never ending. There comes a time when a writer needs to just set it aside and go on. Worry about editing later. Going forward will get the book done. Continuously editing the same section all the time will give you a polished beginning but nothing else.

First drafts are not meant to be perfect. It’s okay to have misspelled words, grammar errors, out of sequence scenes, not enough conflict, drab description, and even cardboard characters, as long as those things are corrected later. That’s why we revise and edit.

This year I’ve had the opportunity to critique with a couple of published authors. Just having had the chance to see their process from first spark of an idea through the whole writing process and editing has been enlightening. They have encouraged and said that it is better to have a crappy first draft than nothing at all. At least with the crappy first draft, you have something completed. It can then be revised.

Go ahead and read your favorite authors but don’t expect your first draft to live up to that standard. They don’t even live up to that standard. Their work goes through many edits. You can no more make it perfect the first time, than my hair stylist could style my hair and make me look like a new person. Granted I can’t take off 10 years but with work, I can lose the weight. With work, you can revise a crappy first draft and have something worth sending to a publisher. Once you do, you’ll feel like a new person.

WHAT HAVE I BEEN READING?

I’m currently reading ‘Wicked Appetite’ by Janet Evanovich. I’ve also been listening to lots of audio books while driving. ‘Cemetery Dance’, by Douglas and Child,  ‘S is for Silence’ by Sue Grafton, and every other Evanovich book I can get my hands on. Her audio books are so entertaining, I am addicted. I spend so much time in my car, it’s a treat to be able to listen while I drive. Now I look forward to my commute each day. I highly recommend it.

Virginia