Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Writers' Wednesday: Win a Nook!

Hey all, The Long and the Short of It Review site is celebrating its 3rd anniversary (which I can't believe, since I remember when Marianne and Judy began it!).


So they're holding a scavenger hunt for the month of August - find the "Nook" graphic on participating authors' sites, and you can win tons of great prizes...a Nook (eBook reader) is the grand prize of all, and they're giving away 3 of them!


Click on the graphic below for more information:

Monday, July 26, 2010

Monday Mentionables: Writing Sweet

I'm off to a remote lake location for a couple of days, which means no Internet, but I'll have my laptop and hope to do some writing. What am I working on now? A "short" work (20K words or so) for submission to Samhain's Just Romance anthology. This is actually the first story of this length that I've written, and it's interesting how it's different from either a true short story at 5K or a full-length novel at 60K+.

Mostly, I like the word count limit. I'm finding that it forces me to stick to a tight storyline and character development, because I have to accomplish a whole story in 1/3 of the space it usually takes me. It's also a challenge, though, getting the characters to fall for each other and have good, honest conflicts as well. Since it's a sweet romance - no sex allowed, which is what I write anyway - there's a whole lot of building up of intimacy and tension.

And speaking of that, I found myself looking up video clips of "The Age of Innocence" - did you ever see that movie? Ah, I loved it. One of the best portrayals of love denied, and the building up of sexual tension is so, so yummy. Here's the trailer:



See you in a couple of days! Fingers crossed that I finish my story in the meantime...