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Ana is thrilled to welcome Ines Johnson to HWH.
Ines writes books for strong women who suck at love. Aside from being a writer, professional reader, and teacher, she claims she is a very bad Buddhist. She sits in sangha each week, and while others are
meditating and getting their zen on, she’s contemplating how to use the
teachings to strengthen her plots and character motivations.
She says:
She says:
The first time I tried to write a book it took me one year to
write the first three chapters because I agonized over each word choice. Now, I
believe in fast drafting. Vomit the story onto the page without a care for
comma placement. All told, it takes me about six months from the first drafted
word to the final polished manuscript.
I take three to four weeks for the first draft, which I call The
Dirty. I let The Dirty breath for as long as I am able to be parted with it
-usually a week or two. Then I come back and Sweep up the grammar, spelling and
plot holes, which usually takes another three to four weeks.
Next, I send The Swept draft out to my trusted critique
partners. When it comes back I Clean it up for another three weeks focusing on
my weakness, which is setting.
I’m a screenwriter, and so for years, setting only consisted of
a Scene Slug. For example:
INT. BEDROOM -DAY
The Director would take it from there. But fiction readers seem
to like more details, so I’m constantly working on giving them more setting
description.
Finally, I send The Clean manuscript off to the copy editor for
two to three weeks. When it comes back I Polish up all the commas and rethink
my overused words. Then I hit publish, and start all over again!
My current release, "Pumpkin: a Cindermama Story" was
written in 30 days as a part of NANO WRIMO. Since then its gone through two
revisions, beta readers and a copyeditor. I was still trying to upgrade my
action verbs as it was uploading to Amazon! Old habits die hard I guess!
Single mother Malika “Pumpkin” Tavares lost faith in fairytales
after she fell for a toad. Town royalty Armand “Manny” Charmayne has been
searching for his soulmate all his life, whom he’ll recognize at first sight by
a golden aura, that only he can see, surrounding her person. Manny doesn’t see
gold when he meets Pumpkin, but the more he gets to know her the more he
considers defying fate, if only he can convince her to take a chance on love
again.
Excerpt:
Pumpkin turned and
stopped in her tracks. Not because of the near collision, but because of the
Adonis who stood before her. Tall and lean with dark, thick curls atop his
head. But it was his eyes that arrested Pumpkin. They took her back to her teen
years, watching Donnie Simpson on Video Soul; or farther back to Smokey
Robinson doo-wopping with The Miracles. They were a pale gray. And he smelled...
edible. Like fresh baked, butter croissants sprinkled with earthy spices.
"Excuse me,"
he repeated, with a slight Southern drawl that was more refined than lazy. He
prolonged his vowels just enough to let you know he was Southern, but the
consonants he pronounced perfectly. "Are you Heather?"
And of course, he was
looking for someone else. "No, my name is Malika."
He looked at her and
squinted. Then his eyes rolled past her up the steps of the Department of
Family And Child Services building. "Oh, sorry. I thought you could have
been one of my volunteers." He stepped away, clearing her path to the
entrance.
I thought you could have been one of my volunteers.
Pumpkin looked beyond
him to see a voter registration table.
I thought you could have been one of my volunteers.
Part of her knew she
should simply walk into the DFACS building to find her cousins and her son,
because who knew? LaRon and LaTom could've let him go to the bathroom by
himself and just forgotten about him —again. But another part of Pumpkin
smarted. He'd taken one glance at her, paired it with her
Eubonic-consonant-rich name, added it to her current location, and come away
with an incorrect assumption.
"You know, I could
have been yours," she said.
He turned back.
"Mine?"
"I mean, I have
done something like this before."
"Something... with
me?"
"No! I've never met
you before."
He opened his mouth to
speak, thought better of it, then started again. "What exactly are we
talking about?"
This was not going the
way she'd planned. But what exactly had she planned when she opened her mouth?
Her filter malfunction needed to be repaired soon.
Pumpkin took a deep
breath, clearly aware of his smokey eyes watching her with... was that wariness
or amusement? Growing up in her family, she had trouble deciphering the two.
"I mean, I have
been a volunteer. I've done a voter registration drive before."
Having cleared up that
misjudgment, Pumpkin assumed the conversation was over. Only, he looked
doubtful at her proclamation.
Pumpkin gave her
internal filter a kick. In response it sputtered, "I organized it,
actually." Pumpkin gave it a mental shove to keep quiet. And then,
"It was very successful, actually."
"Where?"
"What?"
"Where did the
drive you organized —successfully— take place?"
"Oh," she
said. "At my school. My college —university, actually. Louisiana State
University."
"I know LSU,"
he grinned.
Good. Grinning meant
amused. He had a nice grin, Smokey Eyes. Straight white teeth. Plump lips that
stretched wide. Maybe a little too wide. Almost big bad wolf wide.
"Well," she
said. "There's a community college with the name Louisiana so..."
"You have a problem
with community colleges?"
"No! I just... I
just wanted to make sure you knew... which one I meant." Pumpkin wouldn't
have thought it possible, but his grin stretched even wider.
"My opinion matters
to you that much?"
Definitely a wolf.
Then, in confirmation,
his eyes slipped from her face and did a quick assessment of her body: the
B-cups she no longer bothered to pad, the stubborn muffin top she'd given up on
a year ago, the wide hips that looked voluptuous on her cousins but pear-shaped
on her.
"I don't even know
you," Pumpkin said. And she had no intention of getting to know him.
Wolves blocked the paths of good girls whether in the forest or on the road of
life. Pumpkin had no intention of getting jammed up by a man, ever again.
"Yet, within sixty
seconds of meeting me," he said, "you offered to be mine."
If you rocked out to the twisted triangle of Jem, Jericha, and Rio as a girl; if you were slayed by vampires with souls alongside Buffy; if you need your scandalous fix from Olivia Pope each week, then you’ll love Ines' books.
Barnes and Noble
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Wow, I'm impressed with how fast you write, Ines. I'm much slower. Love the excerpt and welcome to HWH!
ReplyDeleteThree to four weeks for a first draft? Wow! Mine usually take about six months, followed by another 3 months tweaking, polishing, editing etc.
ReplyDeleteYour blurb is intriguing, and the excerpt told us a lot about both characters!
Goodness, you have me hooked straight away. I admire how quickly you work - it's mind-blowing. And Pumpkin sounds intriguing.
ReplyDelete