Winter Weather (or not)

"There are only two seasons: winter and baseball."

~Bill Veeck

Hey all, if you didn’t get a chance to see it, my article on character development is up at WOW. I love what they did with the graphics and the pics ,too. Very cute. Got an email from the editor yesterday afternoon telling me one of their regular writers saw it and mine was the first article she read in the Feb. issue. She loved it!

In other news, all the teachers and students around here spent yesterday hoping for snow to fall and cancel school today ( it didn‘t). See, with the crazy warm temperatures we’ve had so far this season, we haven’t had a single school closing.

Now let me digress: I grew up in central NYS, smack in the middle of the lake effect snow belt. Then I spent 6 years in college and graduate school living in 2 cities on the Great Lakes. More lake effect snow. So when you talk about winter to me, it means temps below zero and wind chill WAY below zero. It means shoveling snow from November to March and having at least 2 ice scrapers and 3 extra pair of gloves in the car at all times. It means learning to take your driver’s test when you’re 16 on snow-covered roads, and mastering the art of the controlled skid, because otherwise you’ll have to wait months to get your license. It means the kind of cold where, when you breathe in, the inside of your nose crinkles up.

It does not mean, as people in my newly adopted hometown think, 3 inches of snow that falls in one night. It does not mean temperatures that flirt with zero overnight and then inch their way up to 30 during the day. It does not mean school closings for 2 days straight because the towns can’t manage to plow the roads.

When I was growing up, one of the most familiar sounds in the wee hours of the morning was the plow going down the street, scraping it clear and taking out people’s mailboxes on the way (we had to get a new one every spring). School never closed. Ever. Are you kidding? We would have missed ¾ of the days from December to February.

But here? We get an average of 5 snow days each year. And don’t even get me started on 2-hour delays. 6 a year? 10? No limit, apparently. I’d never even heard of the concept of the 2-hour school delay until I moved here. I guess it allows the plow drivers to sleep in until 5 or so and get the roads clear by 9, so that the buses can lumber on to school and collect their state aid for the day.

One time a couple of years ago (this is the best), every school in the county closed because of the threat of a storm. Guess what? Not a single flake fell.

Sorry for the tirade, but sometimes I just have to laugh. OK, have at it: what does “winter” mean to you??

Happy Weekend!

P.S. - If you haven’t signed my guestbook yet, what are you waiting for???

Today's the Day!

“Do everything with so much love in your heart that you would never want to do it any other way.”
~Yogi Desai

Today’s the day! My article about character building is supposed to be up at WOW. Of course, I jumped out of bed extra early this AM to see, and the February issue hasn’t been posted yet, but maybe by the time you read this, it will be. So check for me, OK?

Meanwhile, Marianne has a fun meme going on at her place, so drop by there, too!

Sign My Guestbook!

“Real love stories never have endings.”
~ Richard Bach

My goodie bag arrived yesterday from WOW, for earning an honorable mention in their Fall Flash Fiction contest. Too cute!




Update to yesterday's news about my guestbook:

Anyone who signs it during the month of February (and yes, this means those of you who lurk out there too) will be automatically entered into a drawing for a giveaway of freebies which will include…

Lindt chocolates (come on, it’s the month of Valentine’s Day…what did you think?)
AND
James Patterson’s best-selling novel Honeymoon
AND
A $5.00 gift certificate to Virtual Tales, so when my serial novel Paradise USA is released, you’ll be able to get about half the installments for free!

Now isn’t that worth stopping by and leaving me a comment? Spread the word to your friends and fellow bloggers, too.

And have a great day!

What Are You Up To?

“Remind yourself that the book you’re bogged down in was once bright and sparkling.”
(JoAnn Ross)

Well, Prison Break was only so-so last night. [Still, it gives me an excuse to post pics of Wentworth Miller on my blog :) ] Looks like, from the previews, that next week’s episode will be action-packed, though. Good thing!




I’m adding a guestbook to my website (and the link is here, too, on my sidebar), with a little incentive: anyone who signs it during the month of February will qualify for a freebie giveaway (and given that February is Valentine’s Day month, you can pretty much guarantee that at least part of the giveaway will have something to do with chocolate). So scurry on over there, and I’ll count anyone who signs it today and tomorrow in the February pool too. Giveaway to be posted later this week, so stay tuned!

I’m loving my interaction with Samhain Publishing, by the way. They have a terrific editorial team, along with several author chat groups on Yahoo and wonderful resources posted in the files there as well. I’ll post some periodically to share.

How about you? How’s your writing going? Anything new? Digging out the old to dust off and revise? I was skimming my latest Romance Writers Report, which arrived yesterday, and came across an author interview in which the author warned against not finishing manuscripts just because they get hard somewhere in the middle. Unfinished manuscripts will always be unpublished manuscripts, or something like that.

Well said! Now tell me what writing project you’re working on these days…

So How Old Is Old, Really?

There is a place you can touch a woman that will drive her crazy. Her heart.
~ Melanie Griffith, Milk Money

Is there a moment, somewhere in your past, that you look back on once in a while? Is there a day you yearn for? Is there an hour you’d capture, pin down, try to do again? Do you remember what it was like to look on the person you’d fall in love with someday and be left breathless with that desire of first glance? Do you recall the power in being a child, on the young side of twenty, looking forward and holding tight and leaping without knowing what was waiting for you but wanting, more than anything, to do it all with the person beside you?

Sometimes I think that’s why we read romance--and why we write it. To remember those awesome, and sometimes awful, sweeping emotions that knock us over. That exhaust us. That exhilarate us. It is amazing to me how the details of everyday life, how jobs and families--as wonderful as they are--can carry us so far away from the magic falling in love.

With the high school quarterback. With the gorgeous rock star. With the boy next door. With our first true love. With our second one. With our first sex. With the bad boy. With the good one. With the one who’ll eventually get down on one knee and ask us to stay.

With ourselves.

###
Now that my contracts are in with Samhain, I have all this work to do: put together a promotional blurb, choose an an excerpt, write up tips and requests for my cover art, send a bio to their site for my author’s page. It’s still all a little surreal to me. Who knew that having a manuscript accepted was just the teeniest bit of the iceberg? It’s exciting but overwhelming too.

###
A funny story from work: last week my high school seniors read the short story “Miss Brill” by Katherine Mansfield. It’s about an elderly woman who goes to the park each Sunday to people-watch, knowing she will be missed if she doesn’t show up, only to be made fun of by a young couple in love.

I asked my class how old they thought the main character was (she’s probably 70+ or so). One girl raised her hand and said, “Older?”

I said, “How old is older?”

She thought for a minute, and then, in all seriousness, looked up at me and answered, “Thirty?”

Oh. God.

TGIF

“A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous“.
~ Ingrid Bergman

Just received the proof of my article that’s appearing in the WOW February issue and am really happy with the way it turned out. It debuts next week…keep an eye out for it!

And, because my brain is sort of shot by now, a Friday Meme to end the week:

My Muse
January 26, 2007

1. What inspires you?
Mmm... a good book, a movie, a run, a song, a shower, a dream. Yeah. I get inspiration from pretty much anywhere.

2. What blocks your creativity?
Too much on my plate at work. Darn that day job, anyway!

3. Do you do anything special to get your creative juices flowing?
Actually, not really. Usually discipline works the best: telling myself to sit down and write for X amount of time.

4. What time of day do you feel most inspired?
Well, if I had time, I'd write in the AM, since I'm a morning person. But (see day job above) since I can't drag myself out of bed before 5:30, that pretty much leaves any other time in the day to steal a few minutes and tell myself to feel inspired.

5. How do you like to express your creative energy?
Um...writing...of course. OK, I play the piano, too.

Happy Weekend!

To Market, To Market

I would rather have had
One breath of her hair,
One kiss from her mouth,
One touch of her hand,
Than eternity without it. One!

~ from the movie “City of Angels”

OK, be honest: how much of your writing time ends up devoted to other things?
And I don’t mean the time during the day when you’re working or cooking dinner or running errands or spending time with family.

I mean the time you set aside to sit down at your computer, determined to write the next 1000 words or whatever goal you’ve set for yourself that day…

And you end up surfing the Internet/blog-hopping/playing games/checking out fave sale sites/planning your next vacation/emailing your friends from college that you haven’t heard from in umpteen months??

I haven’t written anything new in 5 days. Not good. It’s not that I don’t want to; it’s just that I seem to squander all my time in front of the computer doing other things. I’ve decided it is not at all good to be perennially hooked to the Web. In fact, maybe that should be my solution: writing on my laptop instead, which isn’t wireless and doesn’t do much but word process.

In other news, I just ordered the book 1001 Ways to Market Your Books and can’t wait to start going through it and getting some ideas. It’s a little more than slightly intimidating to search “romance writers” online and see the hundreds--wait, make that thousands--of hits that come up. How on earth does anyone become close to a best-seller, with all the prolific authors out there?

Hump Day

“Love doesn't make the world go round. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile."
~ Franklin P. Jones

Does anyone remember when Wednesday used to be called "hump day"? Or maybe it still is, and I just haven't heard the term in a couple of decades. My mom always called it this, when I was a kid. (Am I dating myself??) But it feels like it fits today, like if I can just get up and over it, the weekend and some time to relax might actually be in sight from the other side.

I added a fun little poll on my sidebar, so make sure to check it out and vote for your favorite romantic movie! I know, there’s a finite number of choices listed there, so if your fave isn’t one of them, make sure you leave a comment and let me know what it is! One that I just recently saw and enjoyed (more than I thought I might) was The Lake House, with Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock. The time travel/futuristic element is a little hard to adjust to at first, but it’s a great story about finding your true love--and waiting for him or her--even with tremendous obstacles in the way.

On another note, I really can’t say enough about my positive experience working with the Editors at WOW on my article that’s coming out in their February issue. If you get a chance to interact with them in any way, whether it’s offering an article or entering a contest or just checking out their many writing links, definitely do so. Angela, the editor I worked with, is super kind and professional and 100% committed to putting together a really resourceful ezine.

Time to tackle some more revisions…

An Almost-Published Author

One advantage of marriage it seems to me is that when you fall out of love with him or he falls out of love with you it keeps you together until maybe you fall in again.
~ Judith Viorst


A rockin' good episode of Prison Break last night...that is, as one of my college friends used to say about "ER", the fastest hour on television. Great writing, great characters (especially Robert Knepper playing the uber-evil T-Bag), great twists and turns. Only thing missing was a reunion with Michael and Sarah (c'mon, it's the romantic in me--you know I want the love story too!).

Yesterday Marianne asked me how the life of an almost-published author was going. Here's the answer:

Weird.

First I have to get past that "almost-published" idea. I mean, I suppose in the back of my mind I always thought I'd like to be published someday (who wouldn't?!), but for it to be on the horizon, taking shape? That's a different animal altogether.

And because I am negotiating these weird waters for the first time, obviously every step is new. I'm waiting on the edits for Paradise (they're thinking late Feb. release) and to get my contract back from Samhain so that process can start going forward too.

Meanwhile, I haven't written anything new in 3 days. Amazing how even a little time away can get me out of the rhythm. So today I have to strap myself to the keyboard and WRITE!

Counting the Hours 'Til Prison Break

The hottest love has the coldest end.
~ Socrates

Ooh, I’m so excited: Prison Break is back on with a brand new episode tonight!!!!

Not only do I like watching yummy Wentworth Miller as the intelligent and incredibly sexy escaped felon Michael Scofield, but the show’s overall writing, and the character development of all these bad guys, is not to be missed.




C’mon, check it out if you’re not already a fan. You know you want to…

In other news, it looks as though my article “Character Trouble? Try Man’s Best Friend” will be in the WOW Freelancer’s Corner on February 1st. Mark your calendars, and I’ll keep you posted!

Falling in Love Again

“Savor each breath and each blessing. Remember the time you laughed so hard, jumped so high, held so tight. Remember the hour when you watched the scarlet sky fold to night. Remember the holy moment when you touched the tiny fingers of birth. Miracles are not to be asked for. They are to be witnessed, discovered, and praised, for they are happening, all the time.”
~Mike Levine

Last week I wrote about a novel I was pulling out to revise, another 24-hour novel that I thought had potential for Samhain.

And I was bored by it. The characters had no oomph, no flavor, and the plot fell flat. Ugh.

Guess what? I like it again. I re-outlined a major section and changed up the ending and a driving force of conflict. Then yesterday I spent a few hours writing like mad, and it was one of those times when the characters worked and the dialogue worked and I liked where it was heading.

It’s amazing how sometimes you can tweak things and fall in love with your writing and your story ideas all over again.

From Marianne's blog:
A meme from Booking Through Thursday:
Grab the book closest to you.
Open to page 123, look down to the 5th sentence.
Post the text of the next 3 sentences on your blog.
Include the title and the author's name.

Hmm...OK...

From Paradise, USA:
Ash was asking him something. Eddie fought back the fog of anger and tried to focus. “Sorry. What?”

Not too bad, I guess.

From One Night in Boston:
Maggie stood in the middle of the dance floor and fought for stillness she couldn’t find. This isn’t happening to me. It can’t be.

Decent (notice the repeated use of "fought." Hmm)

And from One Night in Memphis, the WIP I'm currently revising:
Resentment seeped into her brain. She hadn’t wanted this. She had avoided any connection with everyone here tonight.

A good exercise. Try it.

Happy weekend!

The Day The Words Went Away

“…we are part of one another--laughing, loving, losing each other in the endless universe of fire and ice and darkness and finding each other again, a union of souls and stardust. The wonder is not that we die, but that we ever were.”
~Mike Levine

Our community suffered a great loss over the weekend: the editor of our local paper died at the age of 54.

Too young!

He was a great champion of the community. He was the kind of guy you felt as though you knew personally. And he was a brilliant writer. Readers would clamor for his columns to be re-run, especially the one about giving thanks at the holidays & the one about watching children grow up as you say goodbye on the first day of school. It ran every September, the latter one.

He left, a few years ago, to take a bigger position at a NYC paper. Within 5 years, he had returned. He missed the small town feel, he said. And the community embraced him for it.

And the saddest thing for me, really, is that I'll never read another column by this witty wordmaster. Makes you realize how much the written word can get inside and affect people you never even meet in person.

Finding New Words

“Of course I hang on tight, she said. You can’t believe the kind of stuff that happens when you let go.”

Anyone watch American Idol last night? I watched the first 3 seasons devotedly, but the last 2 I sort of lost interest. It’s been interesting to watch talents like Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood make it big, though, and you wonder how many other really talented singers there are who never get discovered.

Or how many really talented writers there are who never get published…

I was working on a new (well, a serious revision of an old) 24-hour novel yesterday and BAM! This idea for a completely new story leaped into my mind like it was about to take up residence for the long haul.

I brainstormed like crazy for about an hour and churned out an outline that I really like. The I reluctantly added it to the file of “Story Ideas” while I returned to the one I was actually working on to begin with.

Do you ever do that? Find yourself torn between ideas?

Side note: I’m reading The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards right now, quite an interesting story about a doctor who delivers his own twins (this is 1964) and when the daughter turns out to have Down’s Syndrome, sends her away with the nurse and tells his wife she died at birth. The nurse, rather than give the baby to an institution, leaves town and adopts her. And that’s as far as I’ve gotten.

I like the author’s writing, and I think the story and the characters have a lot of potential. The one thing that’s bugging me right now? Every other chapter, she refers to a baby’s (or even a small child’s) hands as “stars” or “starfish.” Well, yeah, it’s a good image, but it’s getting overdone.

Ever notice writers who do that? Use the same mannerisms or comparisons or phrases in the same book or from book to book? I haven’t decided if it’s an author’s mark, making it sort-of OK, or the inability (or lack of desire) to think up a new turn of phrase. Ah, well.

Conflict

"'Anyone can slay a dragon,' he told me, 'but try waking up every morning & loving the world all over again. That's what takes a real hero.'"

~Brian Andreas

Only time for a quick blog today, as I’m off to school after a 3-day weekend. The weather says the storm that hit the Midwest is heading this way, but it’s not here yet…

Conflict.

Why do I have such a hard time creating it in my writing? I noticed, over the weekend, that 3 of the novels I’m currently working on end up with the hero and heroine having their Black Moment in (or just about to enter) a hospital. As soon as I realized that, I changed the plot of one of them entirely. But why is that? Why do I equate conflict with pain and injury and possible death? I suppose that is one way of creating a desperate, tense climax. But it’s not very creative, I’m afraid.

I have another writing friend who falls back on a natural disaster--storm, tornado, flood--to create her Black Moment. The third novel she wrote with this M.O, she finally took a second look and realized she should use something else.

Do you find yourself relying on the same techniques to up the conflict in your writing? And if not, how do you avoid it?

Making a Difference

“This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy…Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.”
~Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.






If you didn’t see Al Gore’s documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” (and I didn’t, but wanted to), you can go to this website and get a free DVD: SHARE THE TRUTH






I do believe we have an obligation to be careful consumers while we’re here on this earth, both of natural resources and material items and intangible ideals, and as much as possible strive to make it a place where our children will be cherished and safe in decades to come…

You've Experienced 88% of Life

You have an amazing amount of life experience. In fact, you've seen and done more than most people. So congratulate yourself on what you've done so far. The future is only going to be more of the same!

How Much Life Experience Do You Have?

Hmm...so I guess in 2007 I should work on experiencding the other 12%, whatever that is...

Got my contracts from Samhain Publishing this weekend, signed and popped them in the mail. Exciting!

Am currently working on a writing-craft article about using animals to show character development, and the editor at WOW-Women on Writing is interested on publishing it in their March issue. She’s been terrific at email correspondence, sending these very long and detailed letters about her thoughts & suggestions. My impression is that WOW is a brand new ezine trying hard to make it, and, from the looks of some of the author-agent-editor interviews they’ve had, and the level of activity with their contests and links and columns, they’re doing pretty well so far.

Today? I'm enjoying a day off from work and revising some old stuff to get it newly ready for submission in the coming months.

Oh! And I ran a 5K yesterday (that’s 3.1 miles…the .1 is very important) in 26:34, which is pretty good for an old lady like me, better than I had hoped for.

What about you? Doing anything interesting today?

Vote!

The sweetest joy, the wildest woe is love.
~ Pearl Bailey

OK, go vote in the Preditors & Editors 2006 Reader’s Poll…

and make sure to cast one for Marianne’s short story (romance), “Now That We’ve Found You” and either Virtual Tales or Samhain Publishing in the E-book Publisher Category (I have to promote both my publishers here, so take your pick. Samhain is currently running 1st in the results, which makes me feel good…)

I finished Paradise! Really and truly, it’s finished. OK, well, it’s not entirely finished. But all 30 chapters are done, and only the last 15 have to be left to simmer for a few days until I go back over them one more time. I’m not entirely happy with the last line(s), so that needs a little work. But it’s about 55K words, which is longer than I anticipated.

So…here’s hoping that it will be available on Virtual Tales sometime soon…

Have a great weekend! Now go and vote!

Waiting...

“Men are like firemen. To men, sex is an emergency, and no matter what they‘re doing, they can be ready in two minutes. Women, on the other hand, are like fire. They’re very exciting, but the conditions have to be exactly right for it to occur.”
(from “Seinfeld”)

What do you do when your characters bore you?

I’m serious. I dug out an old story with thoughts of revamping and submitting to Samhain, another “One Night” story that’s about 55K words.

And I don’t really like it. I mean, the writing’s OK, but the characters sort of make me yawn and I don’t even feel like I care if they get together at the end.

Has that ever happened to you? And did you just trash the whole thing, or did you try to save something? I mean , I do have some ideas about improving the plot and the conflict, but still, the characters…

Any advice?

On other fronts, I am waiting. Waiting for my Virtual Tales cover art and waiting for my editor to finish the first half of Paradise. I know they have other work to do. I know my story isn’t the only one waiting to be put up for sale. But I want to be done with it! I want it to be up and published and ready for people to read it! Is that too much to ask?

I’m also waiting for the publisher from Samhain to get back to me about the contract questions I emailed last week. Now of course I’m worrying that by not just signing and returning the contract, I’ve somehow jinxed myself into losing the publication offer altogether. That doesn’t happen, does it?

I’m also waiting to hear back from WOW-Women on Writing, as I submitted a query for a writing craft article to their ezine. They liked the concept and wanted to see sample paragraphs, so that’s a plus. But now more waiting.

I’m not a good waiter, by the way.

Actually, I was an excellent waiter (or rather, waitress) back in graduate school, when I was supporting myself in the restaurant biz, but that’s a story for another time…

What Have They Done For You Lately?

To love someone deeply gives you strength. Being loved by someone deeply gives you courage.
~ Lao Tzu

Try this map game from Judy...

I got 84% right, 40 miles average error, 483 seconds. I drove cross-country one summer, which is probably the only reason I sort of remembered where all those Midwestern states are. But come on! They’re all square! Give me a break! (Sorry, Marianne…I know Colorado must have its own unique qualities, square or not)

So last night I was working on the final chapters of Paradise, USA (why are endings so hard for me? Are they hard for you?). My hero is in the hospital, on death’s door, and he’s supposed to be (according to my outline) thinking about how the heroine is giving him a reason to live.

Guess what he ended up doing?

No, not dying.

He ended up talking to his dead younger brother. I didn’t even know the brother was going to make an appearance in the novel! How weird. And yet it does make sense, because my hero has to move on from his brother’s death before he can really commit to falling in love again.

Why did my characters know that better than I did? Gosh, I hate when they do that. (OK, not really.)

What have your characters done for you lately?

Hard Work

"I was nauseous and tingly all over. I was either in love or I had smallpox."
~ Woody Allen

Your Hippie Chick Name Is:

Skye

Your Hippie Chick Name

Skye, huh? Actually, I kind of like this name. And I'm looking for a new name for one of my heroines. Hmm. I'll have to think it over.

There’s a great article in this month’s Romance Writers Report about setting goals. Shelia Rabe writes,

“We don’t reach a goal simply by wiggling our noses or clicking our heels together and chanting ‘There’s no place like the top.’ We reach that goal by mapping out a strategy for achieving it. Here’s where many of us writers fall down, because it’s often so much easier to talk about what we want to achieve than to go about the business and rolling up our sleeves, digging in, and working through the stages required to get there.”

Hard work. Wow. Who knew?

That reminds me of the people who, after the New Year arrives, start taking pills or going on crash diets to lose the extra 30 pounds that holiday cookies and eggnog chunked on. Newsflash: the only thing that works is exercise and cutting calories. Hard work. Discipline. Believe me, I know. But why are we so loath to commit ourselves to it? Is it because our society has turned into a place where you can have just about anything--microwavable food, $$ from the ATM, a downloaded song, answers to your kid’s research on koala bears, the weather report in China--in just a few minutes?

Anyone else think that we (and especially our children, raised in this amazing and sometimes frightening era of technology) are losing the ability to sustain effort over a long period of time? Have we forgotten how hard “work” really is--and how good it can feel when it pays off? Has the term become relative? Or does it not even matter, when everything is so easy to get?

Except a story. A well-developed, complex story with characters who are so real they make you cry and a plot that weaves together in just the right ways. I guess that’s why writers--published or not--deserve praise for committing themselves to a goal that at times seems unreachable. It’s work. Hard work.

What about you? Do you have a tough time committing to goals? Have you found a way to break down the big ones into smaller ones that you can manage? And what’s the last thing you accomplished that required really hard work? Better yet, how did you feel (and how did you reward yourself) when you came to the end and saw what you had done?

I Never Had to Do This Before...

“If you judge people, you have no time to love them.”~ Mother Teresa

How’s this for karma: four days after I received my offer from Samhain to publish One Night in Boston, the Wild Rose Press asked for the full ms. (I’d sent them a partial a few weeks back). This is on a story that, when sent to agents in the fall, had a handful of requests for a partial and no follow-up requests for a full.

I read somewhere, recently, that it’s tougher to find an agent than sell a manuscript. That may well be the case. I’m just hopeful that, after some e-publishing credits of my own, I might snag either an agent or a print publishing deal. You do have to consider that an agent automatically takes 15% of your profit, though, so you’d better hope they do a really good job of selling your work to the top publishing house out there.

Anyway, it was the first time I actually had to email anyone back to say the story they wanted had been contracted by another publisher. Weird. And sort of nice.

Coupled with temps in the 60s this weekend, it was a pleasant Saturday and Sunday!