Tomorrow is a Big Day!

Tomorrow is a big day for me, so I hope you’ll allow me a few minutes to tell you about it!

 

‘Her Only Option’, my fourth novel, will be released by Whiskey Creek Press tomorrow. Although I say ‘fourth’, it’s actually my eighth, if I count the four novels published between 1968 and 1978. My writing career has been divided into two parts, separated by 30+ years, and I tend think of my first four as my ‘early’ books, and the four published since June 2011 as my ‘new’ books. ‘Her Only Option’ was, as you already know, inspired by my visit to Egypt two years ago – and is the only book where I can pinpoint the moment when the seed first started to germinate in my mind. Here's a link to my blog about its early development http://paulamartinpotpourri.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/third-novel-accepted.html

It’s also the first book that has been classed as ‘romantic suspense’ as it does contain an element of mystery and suspense. I have to admit that part of the suspense was mine, because I kept changing my mind about who the ‘villain’ was, until I finally managed to pull it all together! I wonder if you’ll be able to guess before it’s eventually revealed?

 

Fortunately my print copies arrived last Friday, and I’m hoping for some sales tomorrow, as I shall be doing my very first book-signing session—6pm to 8pm at a small Gift Shop/Coffee shop/Ice Cream Parlour! This is the poster currently displayed in the window. Not wildly high profile – but it’s a start! A friend of mine knew the owner, and introduced me to him. We went round the local shopping precinct about 3 weeks ago, and managed to persuade several stores to put up posters in their windows, but I was still getting worried that no one would turn up, mainly because it’s not really the best time of day. However, my friend who lives near the shop has persuaded some of her friends to drop in, and yesterday I heard that 6 of my friends, plus one of my daughters, will also be coming, so at least I won’t be sitting there all on my own!

 

Finally, because it’s supposed to be lucky to have 3 good things happening on the same day, tomorrow will also be the day when I finally submit my current novel. This new one, ‘Dream of Paris’, is a revamp of a story I wrote back in the 1970’s. I started to rewrite it as part of NaNoWriMo last year, then put it to one side while I finished ‘Changing the Future’ and also worked on another story. Apart from the basic premise of the story, it’s very different from the original version, not least because I’ve had to update various things. Its main setting is a high school – and schools have changed a lot since the 1970’s (and since I finished teaching in the 90’s, too). Fortunately, one of my daughters is a teacher, so I’ve been able to check things out with her and say ‘Does this sound right?’ Paris plays a large part in the story, and in the 70’s the usual way of getting across to France was on a cross-channel ferry. Now, of course, the Channel Tunnel and the high speed Eurostar trains have reduced the travel time dramatically. Last, but not least, there were no computers or cell phones in the 70’s. It’s so easy now for people to keep in contact, but sometimes, in romance novels, you don’t want them to be able to contact each other easily! Having to get around that problem gave me some headaches at times!

 

So – tomorrow is a big day. A new release, a book-signing, and a new submission – please wish me luck! 

Bedtime Stories

The one event in my childhood that has had the greatest effect on my writing career is due to my mom. When I was little and couldn’t fall asleep, my mom would bring me back to my room (because why would I stay there when I could go find my parents and hope they’d let me stay up just a little bit longer) and tell me to make up a story. She’d sit with me and rub my back while I would think of a story.

Usually, it was something that happened to me during that day or week—an event at school, a play date with a friend or a family event. One of my favorite things to think about was Indian Princesses, a father-daughter activity sponsored by the YMCA. We’d go sledding, camping, dancing or get together at people’s houses and do a father-daughter craft.

I would replay these events in my head and create a story out of them. I’d create characters—sometimes based on real people, other times not—and add to the end. Usually, I’d fall asleep before I did get to the end, allowing me to have more to think about the next night. If the story was good enough, I’d actually look forward to going to sleep so that I could get involved in my characters.

When I got older, I used the same techniques to tell my own stories and eventually wrote them down. Even today, most of my thinking time for my stories comes in the minutes while I’m trying to fall asleep. The challenge is to be able to write the ideas down and make them as good on paper as they were the night before in my head!

So, thanks Mom!

Reviews : is honesty the best policy?

     Driving the mile to work the other day, I heard on MPR the intro for a discussion on whether the anonymity of the Internet means people are more honest or more snarky. (Not how they described it, but hey, I also had to watch for road-crossing deer.)
    With my new Kindle app, I am able to read many more romances than before. Authors--sister RWA members--as well as Amazon ask me to 'like" and to post reviews. But I don't know the proper protocol. Does each of us have to create our own guidelines?
    I try to practice the "do unto others" Golden Rule. My mother preached to me any my three brothers, "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all." I believe in "what goes around, comes around" karma.
    Does this mean I should say only something good about the books I might review and cast aside any commentary on weaknesses or flaws? Every book has some good elements. The fact the writer finished it, submitted it or self-published it is an achievement in itself.
    If everyone only praises, does this make reviews worthless? Do reviewers need rating, too?
    I have read reviews that are critical that I agree with. If I add my chorus, will I help deter someone else from buying a novel? My opinion is only my opinion. Or can I view reviews as a big stage critique group whose feedback can help the author?
    I am sure some reviewers delight in going to extremes. Their motivation may be more to elevate, to celebrate themselves.
   Novels are verbal art. Art appreciation is subjective.
   What's your view on reviews? I really want to know.
 

Do your characters know more than you do?

Ana’s post earlier this week about the writer’s‘subconscious’ triggered several thoughts about how your subconscious can be at work while you write a story.

I’ve never been one for defining my characters before I begin to write, despite the advice in some ‘how to write’ articles about making a long list of all your characters physical attributes, upbringing, education, family, traits, habits, attitudes, fears, secrets etc. etc. I prefer to find out about my characters as I write their story. I see it as a similar process to getting to know a person in real life i.e. you gradually discover more things about them.

To continue the analogy, when we meet someone new, obviously we can ‘see’ them. For me, it’s the same with my characters. I don’t need to write a list of their physical attributes because I can see them in my mind almost as soon as (or even before) I actually start to write. In ‘Her Only Option’, for instance, I had a picture of Ross from the first moment I visualised my (as yet unnamed) ‘hero’ vaulting over the rails from one cruise ship to another. In ‘Changing the Future’ I ‘saw’ Paul walking along the pathway at the college at the same time as the heroine first saw him. It's almost as if they decide on their appearance and then appear in my inner vision.

I also feel that writing a detailed account of their background beforehand can sometimes lead a writer into including too much irrelevant detail about them (which I’ve seen in some novels). Instead, I let them tell me what’s actually necessary. In one of my current WIPs, Luke is a veterinary surgeon – and later I learnt (from him, and over several chapters!) that he’d been brought up at a local farm, his parents had been killed in a car crash a few years earlier, and when the local vet retired, he’d been able to use some of his inheritance from his parents to buy the practice. I hadn’t worked any of this out beforehand, but he explained it perfectly! Or maybe that was my subconscious at work? He hasn't yet told me how he came to meet his American ex-wife, but I'm sure he will eventually!

Some pro-forma outlines for character sketches ask you to list their favourite colour, animal, food, books, music, art etc! I wouldn’t know where to start with this, and don’t really see the point of listing such things. IF any of that information is needed, then the characters reveal it as and when necessary. In my recently completed ‘Dream of Paris’, I couldn’t have told you when I first started writing that Matt’s favourite singer was Edith Piaf. He told me that information later in the story, when one of Piaf’s songs came to have a special meaning for him and the heroine.

My very first experience of a character telling me something I didn’t know actually happened in my first book, published in the 1960’s. By the time I got to the end of the story, I realised the heroine’s ex-boyfriend needed a happy ending of his own, rather than being left out in the cold. After some thinking, I decided he had met someone else on a business trip to New York but had ended their brief relationship because he’d still been involved with the heroine at that time. Okay, so I needed to go back and add some ‘hints’ about this. Except that, no, I didn’t need to add anything. The hints were actually all there in the things he said and did – but I hadn’t picked up on them. I didn’t need to add anything at all.

Is that my subconscious at work, or do my characters really know more than I do, and simply reveal it at the right time?

Calgon, Take Me Away*…To Block Island

 If I could spend a week anywhere in the world to escape, there are two places I’d go—Block Island and Wyoming.

Block Island is a tiny island in the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Rhode Island. It’s a fairly unpopulated, non-touristy summer destination for people who want to relax, hang out by the beach, bike ride and explore the one-road main street in town. You get there by ferry. There are no major businesses or stores (other than small ones), so it’s quiet and peaceful—other than the murder that happened on the beach in front of my uncle’s house one of the times my husband and I stayed there. Because my uncle rents out the house during high season (Memorial Day to Labor Day), we tend to visit off-season, either really early in the summer, or right after school starts. It’s still warm enough to swim, but there are even less people there than usual.

When I dream of escaping somewhere to write, I dream of going there—taking my laptop, sitting on the beach and writing during the day; then moving to the wide, wrap-around porch to write during the evening. Walking on the beach to work out plot points (or to ponder that murder), sitting in the run-down bar to talk to the locals and work out dialogue. Letting the waves lull me to sleep.

My other fantasy escape is Wyoming. I’ve never been there and I have no idea what it’s like. But when life gets too hectic, too much, I dream of running away to Wyoming. What I’d do there, I have no idea. Probably ride horses. Maybe write. Hopefully decompress. Or maybe become so bored and lonely I’d hop the first flight home to be back with my family where I belong.

Where would you go?

*For the Brits: “Calgon, take me away” is an advertising slogan for bubble bath.

Partnering with my Subconscious

My WIP's first act is still not right.  My first chapter, first page, first paragraph, first line are not delivering the punch I want.
Months ago, I axed the first two chapters because I recognized they were backstory.
I have two possible openers that, in my view now, still deal more with setting than introduction of my heroine, hero and plot.
I think my plot twists advance the story, and I still like my overall story arc--even more than when I first conceived it.

I have not been able to work on my story much over the summer; my physically demanding work schedule leaves me braindead by 9 pm. But come December, my evenings and weekends will open up. I am committed to finishing my rewrite and sending out the manuscript.

What I have been able to do this fall, as I get closer to my liberation,  is craft study. The book I am reading now is "Writing Love: Screenwriting Tricks for Authors II" by Alexandra Sokoloff.  She posits that "film is a compressed and concise medium...you have two hours, really a little less, to tell the story." She starts by assigning the drafting of a list of 10 favorite love stories, film and novel. Then she says to identify the one(s) that one's WIP most closely resembles.

I thought my time travel was a "road trip" story, but after sleeping on it, realized it is more a "Cinderella story." This ah-ha is clarifying how my Act I should flow.

Sokoloff says one's "subconscious knows way more than you do about writing." Between now and mid-December, I am consciously partnering with my subconscious. I am finding the story I have been trying to tell.

Show Don't Tell

As writers, we hear this all the time. We need to show the emotions of our characters, not just tell the reader what they're feeling. At times this is easier said than done. One of the main revisions requested by an editor on "This Feels Like Home" was to use more showing and less telling. To be honest, I thought I was. Obviously I need to revisit what I know about these two things.

Then, while I was checking e-mail the other day, an article popped up on my homepage along the lines of "Signs that tell you a man is in love with you". Well, the timing of that couldn't have been more perfect. Bring it! So, I clicked on the link and got these eight fabulous 'signs' from the people at Cosmo. Apparently they polled 'real' men (As opposed to what? Fake ones?!) to get these answers. In short, I don't care how they got them...or even if they made them all up. All of these definitely focus on showing, rather than telling, and I plan to incorporate several into my revisions.

1) - You catch him staring at you.

2) - He gazes into your eyes.

3) - He buys you food you like.

4) - He keeps your stuff out at his place.

5) - He talks about the future.

6) - He wears the sweater you gave him.

7) - He stands right next to you in public.

8) - He's okay with you answering his phone.

I love them all. This is a list I will keep handy so my heroes can show off those tender feelings of love, even if they're not quite ready to say those three little words.

Until next time,

Happy Reading!

Debra
www.debrastjohnromance.com

An Unexpected Blessing - coming November 21.