Paths of Desire – October Project

 

I have traveled the paths of desire
Gathering flowers and carrying fire
Raising a grace to the reasons behind me
Looking for strength as you live to remind me
I'm drawn to you
I'm caught in you

I am the fly who dreams of the spider
The path to the web becomes deeper and wider
I dream of the silk that is tangled inside you
And know that I want to be somewhere beside you
I'm drawn to you
I'm caught in you

In your eyes
All of the promises
All the lies
Will you keep all of the promises
In your eyes

I am crossing the bridges of sorrow
Empty with yearning and full of tomorrow
The river is high and the bridges are burning
I know I've been hurt but I keep on returning
I'm drawn to you
I'm caught in you

I have traveled the paths of desire
Following smoke and remembering fire
The night is falling, the path is receding
I don't need to see it to know where it's leading

Lies, what would we do without ‘em? They drive the books we read, the books we write. Whether our hero lies, or the heroine…someone always lies. White lies, lie by omission, deliberate lie, protecting-you lie, the internal lie. A lie of the past, parental lies…they drive the conflict. Even more than simple misunderstandings. The classic misunderstanding might linger, but a lie? Ah, a lie festers.

 

The lyrics above are from a song by October Project. Alas, they are no more, but the words say it all. Even when she knows he’s lied, she is drawn to him. The lie lives in her, it colors her life…or sucks the color out of it. She looks at everyone, wondering if they lie…if they would lie to her. She longs to untangle the lies inside him. Or does she simply live with the lies? Has she fallen in love with the lies?

 

But the truth? We all lie. Some, at least a little. Even if it’s just to ourselves as we eat the cookie dough off the spoon. “Doesn’t count.” We justify the treat to ourselves. But we know better.

 

Lies can serve a bigger truth. I lie to myself all the time. It’s all about fooling myself. I’ll take motivation where I can find it.

 

So, why do you lie? What lie drives your latest MS? My hero lies as a matter of pride. He’s a pirate, lies are his by right of birth. She knows he lies, but prays he doesn’t lie to her. Of course, he does. She lies, but her lies fall under those of omission. And she lies to herself, lies she doesn’t even know are lies…those are the sneaky ones.

 

Do lies serve a purpose? Are they ever justified? Have you seen a lie serve the truth? Do you write a well told lie in your stories as a matter of course? I do. I admit it. (2^nd Chance doesn’t lie. But I do… Bwah ha ha!)

 

 

 

I found out this week that I’m a finalist in the Fool For Love Contest.  Squee!  I’m really excited.   

The coordinator wouldn’t let me mess with my entry but she said if I want to look at my synopsis, she’d take that.  Well, I’ve adjusted the plot since entering the contest and I decided to take her up on the offer, despite the near physical pain revising my synopsis causes.

But, that sent me back to my synopsis prep stuff and I started to think that those of you out there approaching the end of your stories or thinking about entering contests with synopsis requirements might benefit from my little torture exercise as well.

I’ve heard over and over that when it comes to synopses, the shorter the better.  This makes sense to me on a basic level:  synopses are BORING.  I mean really, it takes me back to days in the classroom when I was forced to read book reports for summer reading assignments.  Ugh.  Talk about taking the fun out of a story plot.  But when you boil 90K words down to a few pages, well, I don’t think it’s meant to be riveting, just barebones and “just the facts.” 

This is the recipe that I use for writing my synopsis.  I think this helps me to really ferret out my main points so I hope that it helps you.  It still isn’t easy but I always feel better when I have a game plan.  This “recipe” is not mine.  It was passed along to me by Wanda Richards-Seaman who is a member of a critique group I belong to.  Just giving credit where it’s due.

Paragraph 1:  A hook.  1-2 sentences of what the story is about in as high concept, quick hit way as you can manage it.  If you can’t get it, I would leave it off.

Paragraph 2:  Heroine’s GMC with a characteristic and job/attribute.  Don’t run screaming away yet.  Ie.  An prophet wants (goal) … because (motivation)… (but) conflict.  I sort of think of this paragraph as the background paragraph about my heroine.  Give the reader where she’s come from, what drives her, and what’s keeping her from her desires.

Paragraph 3:  Hero’s GMC with a characteristic and job/attribute.  Same as the heroine’s paragraph above.

Paragraphs 4-7:  These four paragraphs are about the plot.  The best points, main action.  I write in a four act style (and I’m a pretty serious plotter) so I usually use that.  I devote the fourth paragraph to the first act, the fifth to the second act (which usually ends in some sort ‘gray moment’).  The sixth paragraph is how they deal with that conflict, and the seventh leads up to the major black moment.   (If it doesn’t take you 4 paragraphs to do this, I think that’s cool.  I think it just shouldn’t take more than four).

Paragraph 8:  Climax/Black moment.

Paragraph 9:  The HEA/Ending/Falling action.

This usually puts me at a synopsis between 3-5 pages and though some places suggest that a synopsis as much as 10 pages is ok, I believe most agents/editors prefer them shorter.

I hope this helped someone out.  J 

Have you written a synopsis before?  Any suggestions for everyone else?  Any advice that you’ve heard that can help us?

This week's influence:

 

Eyes on Fire- Blue Foundation

 

There is something child-like to dreams. Even if they are nightmares they seem so real and tangible. Even when I wake up I still can't shake the feeling like I just killed someone, got chased by someone, fell down the stairs, saw something I shouldn't have... etctera etctera.

Dreams are the memories you've forgotten to suppress, forgotten they were there. Hidden, shoved in the back of the closet until you dig through the muck and find the treasure. My reasoning being there are some you never forget and some you try hard to forget but can't. Some are more treasured than others. A lot of my dreams are reoccurring. Dreams that I write into fiction, weaving spider webs around until reality escapes the sanity. I dream Sadie's dream often. Drowning. The fear of dying like her sister. I've had it for so long that if I suddenly never had it again, I'd wonder what had changed in my life to make it go away.

The other day I told the story of Mattycakes and the little girl. I've wondered what made him think of a purple unicorn. Subliminal messaging from my brain to his? I asked for a unicorn for Christmas for as long as I could remember and couldn't figure out why I never got a real unicorn. I didn't figure it was too much to ask for- All princesses had them and I thought myself a fairy tale princess waiting for a prince on a white unicorn to come save the day and take me away from icky Ricky. But every Christmas passed and I never got one. I finally decided when I was six that I would ask Santa what the deal was. I put my hand on my hip and demanded to know where my unicorn was. He asked me if I'd been good and I told him no. Because honestly I hadn't been and I was quite the forthright child. Then he asked, were you good last year? And I said no, because lets face it, I was the devil's spawn. He laughed and asked if that's what I wanted for Christmas and I told him I wanted an apology.

I never did get the unicorn.

And I still want one.

The point is that even as a child you don't know the lines between what is real and what is imaginary. I believed for a long time that I could have a real unicorn. I still to this day dream maybe one day I'll be a published writer and have book signings with people lining up to have a book signed by me. The fact is you dream every day. You dream about the little things and the big things. If you didn't dream then life as you know it wouldn't exist. It would be this dull, gray existence where you would only put one foot in front of the other and conform to the expectations thrusted upon you. Dreaming is one thing. To pretend is another. If you couldn't dream, what would you be like now? I know that I would be hollow, withering in self-pity and lost in the wind.

I got out of the habit of spending most of my nights writing. I've lost that connection into a world of the imaginary that seems so real to me that it's hard to not think that way all day long. I get into this mode of looking at everything from a writer's prospective. From the way you take a shower to the way that you shout at someone. I memorize the facial expressions, the noncommittal words; stuff like that until everything is about writing. I ask people for their reactions and categorize it in a compartment in my brain for future use (mostly at 2AM when I'm dead tired and my brain is nonfunctional).I even catalog conversations for later modifications to work into the story lines if I deem them appropriate.

So does this mean that my everyday life is just like one big dream after another? I've often contemplated this. How do I really know when I'm awake and when I'm dreaming if my dreams are so vivid that I feel awake while having them? Like the movie "Vanilla Sky". That was a strange movie; but oddly enough, I couldn't stop watching it. Like the dreaded train wreck, it's so horrible you want to tear your eyes away, but your held spellbound. I had a feeling of deja-vu watching it.

The brain works in mysterious ways and I've had days where I felt like I was still dreaming but I wasn't. Or maybe I was. Or maybe I'm just so mixed up I don't know which way from Sunday. Anyway, the point is (and yes, I'm trying to make a point) why should we limit ourselves to living in reality when we really don't know if this is it or not. Life is meant to be lived and enjoyed. Dreams make that happen. Imagination makes that happen. Life without all of this would be a pale existence of nothing. And you may say, "Well she'll never grow up" and hey, that's fine. But at least I'm living my life to as how I see fit. Can you say that?

Today was going to be an exercise in learning how to channel that inner dreamer, but I couldn't find a way to exercise it. So, do you journal your dreams for further exploration in writing? What was one of your most vivid dreams you can remember (that you can actually write about in the comments without us getting too wicked today, *g*)? What tricks do you use to capture that right amount of emotion?

I know it’s hard to imagine but I spend a lot of time in Barnes & Noble; and I enjoy items besides books. There is a little plaque that I want to buy, but I’m too cheap to part my money with called “The ABCs of Love” and they’d be things like, “Accept yourself” and “Be kind to others.” I think one was dance in the rain and kiss under park benches. It was really quite sassy and I was very much tempted to go out and do those 26 ABCs of Love, just on the hope it might enhance my love life in some way.

 

So I thought about it from a writing point of view. Lord knows there are books aplenty that tell you how to write the perfect blockbuster or romance. Of course we all know those books are full of crap, as all books of this nature are. Just ask Stephen King. In fact, Mr. King said something along the lines that the less said about the topic of writing the more useful it probably was.

 

Well, for me, long-winded windbag I tend to be, this is positively pithy. Here are my ABCs of Writing—yours may differ according to what you think matters most:

 

Accentuate your strengths. Boldly break new ground. Cultivate charismatic characters. Dive into first drafts. Embrace enthusiasm. Fondle your muse. Give up perfection. Humbly listen to critiques. Ignore the Internal Editor. Just write it. Kiss your frogs. Laugh at your own jokes. Master the basics. Never give up. Open yourself. Passion is everything. Quests are imperative.

Resist fiddling. Sex isn’t what your book is about; sexual tension is. Tell the truth. Understand your characters. Victory comes through persistence. Write anyway. eXpect rejection. Yes, you can. Zip along already—revision is everything.

 

Of course, several of these are the same theme, like “don’t quit” and “perfection doesn’t exist”, but that’s okay. I know for a fact there are several things I have to be told a dozen times a day, in a dozen different ways before I’m going to listen, so it doesn’t hurt to have them feature in my ABCs three or four times.

 

What are your ABCs of Writing? Did anyone get any writing done over the Memorial Day holiday? What advice do you have to tell yourself a dozen times a day, in a dozen different ways, in a bid to follow it? (I’m not limited to writing. I have to do this with dieting too.)

Happy Memorial Day Pirates!  The day when we commemorate sacrifice, bravery and honor. Memorial Day always feels like an awkward holiday to me. It’s a solemn day, the day we pay respects to those we honor, and yet it’s a happy day. The day we welcome summer, have bar-b-ques with family and friends, and celebrate what we love.

 

So let’s give Memorial Day a writerly twist. We all sacrifice to write – time, energy, sanity (opps, was that just me?  Forget that last one, then). And courage, well, writing takes courage in abundance. Not just the courage to first put your fingers on the keyboard, but courage to show yourself, to keep writing when you know your inner most thoughts and emotions are bleeding onto the page. To keep writing when you know it’s not good enough. To keep writing when you know you’ve finally gotten good enough, and now it gets really scary because someone’s going to see it. And someone’s going to criticize it.

 

And it takes a certain level of personal bravery and honor to keep writing about love, even on those days our relationships don’t feel loving. To keep writing good triumphing over evil, even when the news tells us it doesn’t. And to keep writing the truth, because there are enough lies around us already.

 

And why do we keep doing this? Why do we soldier on, despite all the rejection, the criticism, the lack of sleep? The stakes aren’t as high for us as they are for the soldiers on the ground this morning in Baghdad and Kabul. Writing isn’t life or death. But the personal stakes are enormous. Writing is part of who we are, it’s what we do. And maybe someday we’ll all be published, and maybe we’ll simply still be writing in the quiet hours of the night, because that’s what’s in our hearts. But either way, it’ll continue to take sacrifice and bravery and honor from all of us.

 

Yet, Memorial Day is also about celebrating what we love. So, what is that you love about writing?  What is it that keeps you coming back, year after year, in spite of the sacrifice required? Describe your perfect writing day. Is it the kind of day where you have no distractions and the words just pour onto the page? Or the kind when the writing wrings your emotions dry and you fight over every word, but in the end you know it’s as close to the truth as you can get?

 

Happy Memorial Day!

     

      Pirates, all! I want to welcome to the Revenge my friend and mentor, Judi McCoy. Judi is a longtime author, beginning with what I would call light paranormal romance and recently graduating to romantic mystery. Her newest series features a dog walker in New York City who can talk to dogs!

I’m going to crow a bit about Judi here. The royalties from her first book in this series, Hounding the Pavement, are being donated to the Best Friends Animal Society. This is the group that took in the Michael Vick dogs and is featured in the program, Dogtown, every Friday night on the National Geographic Channel. The second book in this series, Heir of the Dog, will be available in October.

She is a true dog lover and an excellent teacher, having taken over the Beginners Writing Program at the Romantic Times Booklovers Convention some years ago. Her students all adore her and she makes herself available to them for years after the classes.

Lady Jane and I just adore Judi and would walk on coals for her. Please welcome Judi. She is a font of information, but new to blogging. (I’ll be helpin’ her out today.) 2^nd Chance aka, Maureen

 

I’d like to thank Maureen for inviting me on this site. I understand the members who blog are a lot of fun, which is great. Everyone needs a bit of laughter in their lives, and it’s wonderful when you have a group of friends to share that laughter.

     I think Maureen already told you about her time in Pittsburgh and her first writing course and the time she spent in Orlando, but just to recap: She’s a fantastic person and she’s grown into a good writer. I’m very proud of how far she’s come. And Terri O, too. She’s a member of my Chesapeake Romance Writers’ chapter and, if we can get her to finish a book, will also have great success.

     I want to tell you about the very kind thing Maureen and Jane (who is also a dear friend) did for me in Orlando. They showed up with gifts that took me completely by surprise. They put together ‘Judi McCoy survival kits’; adorable bags full of goodies not only to make it through my class, but also to promote my book. Maureen made chocolate puppy paws and Jane’s husband bought each student a copy of my new book, Hounding the Pavement. I was so in awe, I started to cry. I don’t think anyone has ever done that nice a thing for me before.

     So here I am, ready to comment or answer questions on whatever is asked. Actually, I’m a terrible blogger, so I have my yorkiepoo Rudy, the star of Hounding the Pavement, write the blog for me. I know it’s a cop out, but Rudy can say things I can only think, and he does give a doggie perspective on the world around him. His blogs are available on my website www.judimccoy.com so check it out. I’m running a contest and posting pictures, so feel free to join the fun.

 

Well, pirates? Feel free ta ask Judi bout her years of experience, her love of dogs, her new series, what she thought a’ me Fairy Dogmother costume at RT…

 

 

The key to the mystery of a great artist is that for reasons unknown, he will
give away his energies and his life just to make sure that one note follows
another. . . and leaves us with the feeling that something is right in the world.
~Leonard Bernstein~

~*~

I once wanted to be a ballerina.

Ballerinas are world renowned for their superior grace and beauty, their lines perfectly symmetrical to the ballerina standing on either side of them. Ballerinas are perfection in the dancing world. As children they are weeding through and only the best are left in the class. The ones that will grow to tall, their lines aren't proportionate or won't become that way, weak legs or ankles, all history. Perfection comes with a price. A price that you have to decide if it's worth it or not to take that risk and go all in.

Writing is the same way.

Now, once I learned that I would never make it in the dancing world, (my ankles are weak and have been broken several times plus the lack of money never made it a possible dream for me), I turned to poetry. Poetry is a different kind of perfection. One that you seek within yourself and never find. Poetry is about heart and soul, the darkness you have trying to escape, the feeling of the pen between your fingers, the smell of the breeze as it flutters past you... All these things embody poetry at it's finest. Poetry is about feeling. Fiction is about gut instincts and timing and plots... very intricate and tricky. There is no difference in the amount of perfection or the quality, but all writing is different.

Writing is as different as the person who wrote the piece. Whether it be a paragraph or a hundred thousand word book, our personality shines within our words. We eat, breathe and sleep words, plots, timing, characters and their characterizations. You cry over lost notes, bleed over plots, sweat the small stuff. Even the smallest of imperfections in your plot can ruin a whole book, years of work down the drain. Much like a ballerina. Ballerinas practice their whole lives for one moment of glory and only one misstep can take that away from them. We practice and practice and practice for one moment as well. That moment we walk out of the darkness with a book in hand, gingerly carrying it, hoping not to crush our dreams in one single swoop. It only takes one thread of doubt in an authors mind to crush everything they've spent their lives doing. One judgment or opinion to put that seed of doubt there. And then you've lost it.

Writing is an art form. Many people will disagree with this, but writing in any form is an art. It's an abstract vision in your mind that once you find the will, you can put it down for all to see. It's beautiful in its individuality, unique in its presence, daunting in its power. A whole book, something that started so small in your mind, becomes a massive undertaking. It consumes you with the fire of creating, wills you to do better, try harder, push a little longer... Until you finally win the battle and then you find that you still aren't satisfied. Writers are notorious pickers. We pick and pick and pick, until there is nothing left to pick at. Perfection is never achieved, no matter how good the reviews or how great you thought it was the night before. We all go through this on some level. Writers never see perfection. It could be staring us in the face but we're blind, not by choice, but by instinct. You're told as a writer that you can never be perfect. Never give up, always tweak and fix and prune until it's close to perfection and then try again.

Perfection is different in everyone eyes. Ideas born of visions and thoughts should be perfection it's purest form, but it's not so. Has there ever been a time when you thought something was so beautiful that it was perfection in your eyes?

For me, it's that first line of prose, the beauty of dusk in the countryside, the look in a child's eyes when they look up to you, the way a ballerina's footwork and lines contrast the backdrop, contra-posing or mimicking... art is beautiful in any form. Take a look around you, enjoy yourself, the things around you more often. Trust in your abilities and those around you. Live and breath without perfection constantly on your minds. Perfection should be a freedom, not a weight holding you down.

 

What are you passionate about? What was the first thing you ever wanted to be perfect at?

 

Influence this week (And I'm about to blow some minds)

Make You Feel My Love- Adele - 19

Finally- Fergie- The Dutchess (That's right, I said it.)

And last but not least (if I'm going to ruin my rep, I might as well go all out)

All Around Me (Acoustic Version)- Flyleaf - All Around Me EP

Generally speaking, I think whatever men can do women can do, and in a lot of cases, we can do it better. However, there is one area that as a whole, women are notoriously bad at doing.

 

Telling jokes.

 

The reasons vary. There are those of us who laugh before we get to the punch line. And there are those of us who don’t remember the punch line. And even those of us who don’t even understand the punch line. But even more so than any of these joke-killers, it’s this: we can’t tell a joke without unnecessary details. We absolutely can’t stand it.

 

For instance, let me use my married friends Sarah and Mike. Mike loves to tell jokes; and he’s good at it (he’s a guy.) And generally he’ll tell his jokes to Sarah, his much adoring wife. This is a slightly dramatized example of how such a joke telling might go.

 

Sarah: That sounds funny! What are you laughing at?

Mike: Hellion forwarded me a joke.

Sarah: Do tell. I could use a good laugh.

Mike: Okay. A drunk blonde Irish woman….

Sarah: Why does she have to be blonde?

Mike: What? It’s a blonde joke, darling. That’s just the way it is.

Sarah: Why can’t she be a brunette or a redhead? Or chestnut haired? That’s a blend, you know.

Mike: It’s a blonde joke.

Sarah: Fine. Please continue.
Mike: A drunk blonde Irish woman walks into a casino and says she wants to bet $10,000 on one roll of the dice….

Sarah: Why? Is she in desperate straights?

Mike: Huh?

Sarah: I don’t understand her motivation. Is she trying to save her family or her house or is she just some gold-digging harpy who stole $10,000 and is trying to….

Mike: Are you going to let me tell this joke, sugar pie?

Sarah: Of course, I’m going to let you tell it. Aren’t I letting you tell it? It just doesn’t sound like a very good joke is all. A stereotypical blonde woman and no explanation where she got her $10,000….

 

As you can imagine, the rest of this conversation goes downhill; and the joke loses its punch. Getting obsessed in explaining every detail slows pacing and can make you feel like you’re in a very bad episode of 24. I know this. Boy, do I know this. And yet, here I am, writing my scenes like I’m writing a chick-lit version of Jack Bauer. I manage to leave out potty breaks and brushing one’s teeth, but it’s a very close thing.

 

My day-to-day storytelling revolves around the mundane detail. As does my friend Sarah. In fact it’s why she likes to talk with me. She says I really listen, like every detail really does matter. We’ll talk about an incident at work and end up inserting details about what we happened to be wearing that day—and yes, we did get our new shoes at DSW. So it shouldn’t be surprising that my writing is a lot like my day-to-day storytelling with my friends. Where it does have the benefit of being deep POV with my character, I get bogged down creating the sort of detail that doesn’t matter to the scene at hand. Or worse, creating entire scenes that don’t matter to the story I’m telling.

 

Terri was asking me where I was on my revisions on Girl on a Grecian Urn; and I explained I was at the same engagement party dinner that I was at months ago. I don’t know what to do with that scene. I couldn’t carry it, but I couldn’t go on until I’d written the scene.

 

But I didn’t need that particular scene. There was no reason to have that scene. It didn’t move anything forward. It didn’t impart any necessary knowledge about my heroine or hero…or even about the secondary characters that was absolutely needed at this time or that hadn’t already been related in previous or later scenes. So why couldn’t I move on?

 

I think it’s because I’m a horrible joke teller who tries to insert more detail than is really necessary to get the point across.

 

Dee, one of my superfabulous CPs, would simply say I’m an overwriter, which is what she claims she is. And I’m betting there are a lot of overwriters out there.

 

Are you an overwriter? And if so, how do you make yourself stay on task and keep your scenes trim and well-paced? What is your best advice for making a great scene or deciding what scenes are necessary to have? Any books you’d recommend that cover this? (I can always use a new book.) Help a fellow overwriter!

 

The morning was a bright one. The sun all but shattered eyes as it danced across the surface to strike the Revenge. Hellion groaned as she stirred from the captain’s cabin, a hand at her forehead.

 

When she was able to open her eyes again, she saw Chance setting up the bar, humming a happy tune and dancing as she did so.

 

Chance looked up to see the Captain gazing at her. “Mornin’, Cap’n! Grand day has begun. Would ya like ta try me new drink? I call it Jane’s Common Sense. It be full a’ fruit juice and the dark spicy rum I know ya loves.”

 

“You named a drink after Lady Jane?” Hellion took the proffered tankard and sipped with appreciation. “A nice one, Chance! Why the honor?”

 

“Well, ya ‘member how I returned from me Orlando convention brimmin’ with success and confidence? Today, I be payin’ tribute ta the lady whose straight talkin’ ways and sureness set me on that course.” Chance tapped a button on her shirt. It sported a take on an oft bandied about faith based statement.

 

“What Would Jane Do?” Hellion chuckled. “How did that go over with the Lady?”

 

“Oh, she growled at me, but she were secretly flattered.” Chance smiled. “I follered me own advice and it made me braver, Cap’n. Ev’ryone needs a friend like Jane!”

 

Chances enthusiasm mad the Cap’n smile, it was truly contagious.

 

Aye crew, I be talking ‘bout the friends ya make as a writer. The ones who share yer successes, talk ya through the failures, pour the rum, share the chocolate. They read yer missives and offer sensible critique, whether what ya write be a normal part a’ their library or no.

 

I gots Jane. Who I met at the Romantic Times Booklovers Convention in Pittsburgh, just last year. We both took the beginner writer’s course, met first through the bulletin board Judi McCoy set up. And we hit it off afore we met in Pittsburgh. I was feelin’ a bit peevish in Pittsburgh, first foray after me brush wit’ death and all. Jane and I, we both went home a bit overwhelmed, but stayed in touch.

 

I celebrated her success wit’ enterin’ contests, though found meself wonderin’ why she got all the nice judges! And she held me hand over the internet when I was crushed by ‘nother contest. She read me stuff. I read ‘er stuff. Neither of us is great at grammar, but we knew how ta talk ‘bout what was missin’ and we ‘elped each other out.

 

Jane-o and I, we don’t write the same stuff. We don’t read the same stuff. But we wanted ta be there, one ta the other. So’s we made it work. Havin’ different interests ‘elped us keep some distance. And so we worked tagether. And we played together. (Else why would I be wearin’ me red bad dog pajamas and a tiara ta the Saturday book fair?)

 

And in Orlando, we both got requests after pitchin’. I looked at an editor, sittin’ in a hallway and thought… “I can’t bother ‘er. She’s busy. But she said ta pitch ta ‘er wherever she be…” I looked at me button and read it. “What Would Jane Do?” And I walked over, asked ta pitch.

 

No, she weren’t interested, but it got me ready fer the agent pitch, minutes later. And it got me the name a’ another editor ta query. And it made me feel powerful. I had done what Jane would do. And it felt right. I went on ta other successes, sharing me new motto wit’ those I met.

 

Because Jane? She’s brave. She pushes forward, she politely finds her way till she be sittin’ ‘cross from famous authors at lunch, getting’ advice. Jane ain’t stymied by bein’ a newbie. As she say, we all starts somewhere. She’s gonna be famous one day. And there I’ll be, wit’ me pin, right next ta ‘er.

 

Sing the praise a’ yer partner, crew! Today be BFF day! Do ya have one like Jane? Will she let ya take ‘er picture without smirkin’ at the camera? I tell Jane-o, she gots ta learn how ta relax, ‘cause ‘er fans be wantin’ ta take ‘er picture one day.

 

Do ya have a critique partner that makes yer day? Someone yer able ta share the ups and downs a’ yer writin’? Or jus’ someone ya can talk books wit’ who understands the madness? Do they read or write what ya read or write? Do that ‘elp? Have they ever given ya advice that rings so true, ya feel like ya could touch the stars after readin’ how great yer next edit be? Share!

 

 

I have been busily plugging away on my WIP and the further I go into the recesses of it, the better I get to know my characters. Oh, some out there would say that I should get to know my characters before I attempt to write them. I beg to differ.

First of all, I feel the best way to get to know anyone is through what they say. This holds true in real life and it holds true in romance. It isn't until my characters start talking that I really get a feel for their personalities.

I think the second part of getting to know my characters comes out in the way they act. Because just talking is bologne if it isn't backed up by action (again, true in both real life and fiction).  After my characters start mouthing off, so to speak, I start to picture what they're doing while they are mouthing off.  I feel like it takes about half the book for me to get a good read on how they react in situations.

So, at this halfway point, I paused to evaluate how they were doing.  I read through the whole first half and I adjusted a few things.  I did this the last time as well.  Apparently, I get up to the top of the hill and I need to look back at my climb to make sure that the ride down the other side is smooth sailing.  At this pause, I tweaked a few things with my heroine – toughened her up a bit and adjusted her motivation – and adjusted my hero’s reactions to her.  I also included a new external conflict that I’d been tiptoeing around but that puts them together in the second half of the book in a more realistic way.

This whole processed required some cutting (10-15K words, ouch) and some additions (about 10K that replaced what was lost). 

But now, after I reread the first half again, I believe I like them even better now than I did before. 

I know I could have probably finished the book up without this pause, gone back and redid the beginning at the end with the ending clearly in place, but I’m just not that type of writer.  I need to make sure my foundation is firm before I can keep building.

How long does it take for you to get to “know” your characters?  Do you pause in the “dreaded middle?”   Are you more the revise at the end or revise as you go sort?

I wish I could be witty like the rest of the crew and make a blog that would truly honor this type of title, but honestly, it was all I could think of.

 

Influence this week- Big Tree- Desperate for Compromise- Coalescence

"Trying to live, I'm trying to live, trying to live, trying to live through this... life."

 

 

This isn't much of a confession coming from me. I like characters who are self destructive, the darker the better.

 

In fact, my favorite characteristic in my favorite heroine is that she is always willing to take it on herself because she feels like she's not worthy of the people in her life.

 

My next favorite heroine is in love with the one person she can't have. She kills herself because she hates who she is, who she was born as, and who she will become.

 

And it seems to be the trend in my reading selection to pick the heroine with the least amount of self worth. The series that I tend to stick to-

 

The heroine lost her job, got a crappy job, lives hand to mouth- worse than paycheck to paycheck, has a jerk off ex, has a boyfriend she loves to hate, has a partner who's like the wind and she can't figure out and constantly blows up things.

 

The heroine lost her job (hm, this seems to be my theme), had a contract put out on her life, not once by a demon but this is a reoccurring thing. Her boyfriend used her then ditched her. Her next boyfriend was murdered. She constantly puts herself in harms way and not to mention every time she turns around she has to give up something she wants more than anything to keep someone she loves alive and breathing.

 

But these are the type of heroines you can really root for. I could stand beside one and know that I was doing the right thing. Here's the thing. I was thinking about this on my way home today (because Sadie was yelling in my ear to stick my foot in it and flip my moon roof open- she had a bad day apparently) and all I could hear was, "faster, faster, pass them, get in the other lane, honk your horn, flip them off, where is your gun? Blow the tires on that piece of shit. M-O-V-E."

 

And tonight, I've been trying to chill and she's on the edge. My foot keeps twitching like it's thumping to the beat of a hardcore metal song. I feel the need to run, or yell, or scream or punch something or someone. She needs to feel something and I just don't know how to give it to her. And that's what I love about a character, that need; the very raw feeling of emotion bleeding out and self-sacrificing. When I can't capture this feeling, I feel lost within myself, lost within my characters and uninspired. When I hear my heroines, I feel alive within the story and I just haven't felt that inspiration lately with my characters.

 

So after months of self destruction wading through the writing rivers of doubt and insecurity, it's like a blast of cold wind shivering down my spine. She's standing on the other side of the river, back straight, fingers loose at her sides. Her wild blonde hair is dancing in the wind and she's shivering wet but her will keeps her from showing weakness. I know that she doesn't want me, doesn't need me, but I can't keep myself from gauging the depth of the raging river, gauging the desperation in her emotions and before I can second guess myself, I jump in. The water is quicksand and worse than frigid. My legs seize, my brain shuts down. All I can hear is her yelling for me to go away but I can't turn back now, I'm in too deep. The water is deeper, swallowing my cries, swallowing my hope. I pray not to trip and let her down. The sun is fading fast, the sounds of cars getting closer, and my heart trips double time.

 

I pull myself up onto the bank, lungs gasping for air. I don't have time for a breakdown; I can't let her down this time. I make it to my feet, and even the smallest of steps seem like a huge feat; but when my fingers touch hers, and I slip my hand into hers, there is power there. Maybe there is no hope, and no way to make it out alive, but I'd be damned if she faced it all on her own.

 

This is how I feel and writing connects me into a world where self-destruction turns into self-sacrificing love and honor for someone that you love and teaches you all those valuable morals that's really true to character within yourself. It's not until you reach those depths within your own character that you can tap into those of your hero/heroine.

 

Tell me what characteristic you write most often in your hero/heroine and when you're reading do you identify with a certain characteristic that keeps you picking up the same kind of books over and over again? How has learning about yourself helped you as you've continued your self exploration of character depth? And in case this is completely rambling, what is the darkest characteristic you like about main characters?

I’m not keen on flying. Aerodynamics is not one of those sciences that’s very logical to me. When I got off the plane in Virginia and called my boyfriend, he asked, “Did you have a good flight?” “Yep!” I chirped, “I kissed the ground as soon as I got here.” He invoked concern. “Bad flight? Turbulence?” “Not really. Just not a fan of hovering a few miles up in the air for long distances. Makes me nervous.”

 

Admittedly everything makes me nervous.

 

“Ah,” he said, “I can understand that. I don’t like it either….” And here is where he went into some logical, scientific, engineer speak about how the plane was held up off the ground. I believe he might have said something about the air above the wing is actually what gives it the lift and keeps the airplane supported, and I remember thinking, that is the craziest thing I have ever heard.

 

I cut him off after about thirty seconds. “Sweetie, I have no idea what you just said. I’m not doubting you’re correct, but unless we’re together in a room and you can draw me simple pictures, this is only going to be a lesson in frustration for you.” And being he’s had to draw me simple diagrams about how other scientific things work, he knows I’m not kidding. “Got it,” he said, “have fun and call me later.” Thus ended my brief lesson about flying.

 

Thursday—our first full day at the Outer Banks—we went to Kitty Hawk and toured the Wright Brothers’ museum and site of the first flight. I even marched to the top of the hill (felt more like a small mountain) where the monument was and read the words: Conceived in Genius, Accomplished by Dauntless Resolution and Unconquerable Faith.

 

Good quote.

 

So here’s the tale of how the first flight happened (and my apologies to the tour guide if I bollocks up any of the details.) When the boys were young, their father brought them back a toy, which was a lot like a helicopter, long before helicopters would ever be invented. They played with it until it broke, then recreated it and figured out how it was made. (Though they never really figured out how it worked.) This was pretty much the determining incident of their curiosity for flying objects. They weren’t the only people during that period who was curious about learning to fly. In fact, they followed a particular inventor who was written about quite a bit for his experiments. Unfortunately this fellow died during ones of his tests.

 

This incident was the other determining factor for the brothers. Surely there was a way to make it safer. They were going to figure out a way to fly—and make it safe to do.

 

In order to do experiments, they had to have money. So the fellas decide to open a bicycle shop because bicycles are getting popular, and the parts on them are going to break and people are going to need skilled mechanics to fix them. Voila, they have some money to practice their experiments. In their spare time, they work on their airplane experiment. However, Ohio is not exactly ideal weather conditions to fly anything. They need a windy place. A soft place. A cheap place.

 

They wrote the Weather Bureau to find out the locations for specific conditions like: high wind, sand, fair weather, et al. And the Weather Bureau gives them a list of the places that meet those conditions. They write several of the towns, and the first one to write them back was Kitty Hawk, NC. The postmaster paints a rather ideal setting for their experiments—and also offers them free lodging and help with their projects if they need it. They decide to come down.

 

The first year, 1900, they do the experiment it goes wrong. Way wrong. After about 6 weeks and nearly killing themselves in the process, they get back on the train and say, “This was completely mental. We are not doing this again. Man will never, ever fly. It’s not possible.” Then by the end of the train trip home they decide, “Well, geez, if we give up now, that’ll be total crap. What would anyone accomplish if they gave up after the first failure?”

 

So they go back to Kitty Hawk in 1901 and the same exact thing happens: they nearly kill themselves. After about 6 weeks, they pack it in and head home, muttering they are never doing this again. Insanity! And by the end of the train trip, they decide, “We can’t give up now. It’s too soon.” Also, they make a marked change. I think it was this year that Orville points out, “You know, the problem is we keep trying techniques everyone else is doing and thinking somehow we’ll succeed.”

 

And what’s the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. The boys decide to create something different.

 

So in 1902, they have a really, really great glider. They take it down to Kitty Hawk, get it all together, and take it out for a run. It works great. And then I’m pretty sure they crashed the hell out of it while trying to make it turn. They had yet to figure out how to make that work. They’d worked out a system to make it go up and down, but now they had to figure out how to make it go left or right. They plan to figure out that little quirk for next year’s run; however, Wilbur wakes up and finds Orville has sat up all night, drinking coffee, and saying, “I’ve got it.” The up-and-down system came from putting a horizontal rudder-like thing in the front of the glider. Depending how you shifted the rudder, it would raise or lower. Orville decided a vertical version of this is what they needed in the back of the plane to make it go left or right.

 

So they did. And it worked. Their glider really worked.

 

Now they were pysched. However, making a really great glider is not the same as a plane. In order to do something truly revolutionary, they’d have to take off from flat ground and then land on flat ground, some distance away. So they put a motor on their glider. It’s really quite comical to look at it. The gas tank looks like a narrow little funnel; and the cooling system is a little rectangular part tied to one of the wood pieces. There are a couple motorcycle chains and one little gear shift for your left hand to use for the up-and-down rudder. To make the plan go left or right, you have to use the hip cradle. Your right hand is needed for hanging onto the airplane.

 

They return in 1903 with their plane. It’s late in the year. They’d meant to be home by Thankgiving, but here it was December 14^th, and they were way behind. They are finally ready to test their airplane. Wilbur wins the coin-toss and gets to go first. The plane takes off—so to speak—but Wilbur is so excited by the liftoff, he accidentally crashes it within three seconds. One of those, “Holy crap, I can’t believe you walked away from that” things.

 

They spend the next three days putting the plane back together before they’re able to give it a second run. Then on December 17, 1903, Orville flies the first airplane successfully for 12 seconds and lands it. Distance: 120 feet. Everyone is so excited that the guy who is supposed to be snapping the photo to document all this is jumping up and down. They don’t know until some days later that the picture was even taken.

 

They fly three more times that day, and the final flight is for 852 feet. Success.

 

So there you go, the Wright Brothers Method of Success in a nutshell: Never give up and Stop doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results—if something isn’t working, do something new.

Have you ever been to the Wright Brothers’ museum? How do you feel about flying? Do you like to visit historical places when you vacation? And do you pick up writing advice from the weirdest places, too?

Hello, I'm Coxswain Hal, and I have a potty mouth.

Who's with me? Anybody else find horribly filthy things flying out of their mouth with shocking regularity? I've realized this comes out in my writing. I had a critique partner tell me, "I know this is set in Ireland and all, and they use the f-word more than us, but I still think you might have overdone it."

I tried to write one heroine who didn't swear, and I was surprised just how much more difficult her dialog became, when I couldn't fall back on a good, "damn," or anything else.

In my current WIP, I have a lot of different cultures going on. I have American characters, Irish characters, Palestinian characters, some Brits thrown in...and it's taken a lot of research to make each nationality sound authentic in their dialog, without over doing it.

This week, I needed a good, virulent curse in Arabic. I had a baddie who was going to spit on the ground and say something really...bad. And the only thing I could think of was "f--- you", so I checked how to translate that. And wow, do Arab speakers have a lot of ways to say that.

***Warning:  Graphic language ahead***

In English, I don't feel like we have a lot of really creative curses. We throw around "fuck you" a lot, and "ass hat." I've been known to combine those when cut off on the highway by a particularly pathetic driver.  But it wasn't until I started looking at those Arabic curses that I realized just how boring we are when it comes to being mean.

For instance, when looking up Arabic curses, I stumbled upon this gem:

I will stick my dick in your god and pray he ejaculates on your head.

Seriously. The blasphemous nature aside, that's pretty freakin creative.

Here's a couple more great ones:

May a thousand rabid monkeys beat the drums on your mother's vagina.

May angry camels mount you from both sides. (I'm sorry, but that one just sounds painful!).

I will cut off your cock and use it instead of an onion on my grill.

I hope that 60,000 dicks will dance on your mother's pussy.

And these are just the ones in Arabic!  How about those Italians?  They even have hand gestures to along with the curses (and some pretty inventive hand gestures at that).  When looking at Irish curses, I found this little beauty:

May the cat eat you and the devil eat the cat.

In English, I feel like we rely on just stringing together the worst curse words we can think of into one long stream. It's dirty, a bit funny, but not nearly as entertaining as some of these. I've managed to work several of these into my writing, and I can't wait until I can find some room for some more.

So, let's have some fun to liven up our Monday morning. What's the best curse you've heard? Or better yet, let's see you make one up! What's the worst thing you could imagine happening to someone? (personally, I think the whole grilling someone's penis like an onion might take the cake on the painful front, though the camel-mounting isn't good either). So ladies, what have you got?

Hahaha, I always love when you suckers come here to the ship and find out it's not Ter who's posted, but it is I, the Sinner.

 

Ter and the Hellion are off dressing up like Indians and drinking all the good rum. Probably dancing around the mast buck naked and calling on the moon gods. Don't mind me, I'd had a little of the rum myself.

 



 

Oh, oops. Darn. How did he get there. My bad.

 

Not.

 

Hotties, hotties, hotties. Every week Ter brings us the finest beefcake on the open seas. When Mr. Mattycakes heard the message left by the Hellion for me to take over this week, he was offended. Offended mostly because not only is it my sworn duty to find the hottest of hot new pirate crew today, but I told him that I was going to type hot underwear models into google and see what it turned up. Honestly this job is tough, but someone's gotta do it.

 



 

I just finished reading Lover Avenged, a novel of the Black Dagger Brotherhood by J.R. Ward (love those books). There is nothing better than a dark, demented hero with a mohawk and amethyst eyes. This hottie is hot in a whole other way. Inked back, buns of steel, dark gleam in his eyes. I just want to run my fingers through his hair and claw my way down his back.

 

 

Now, this hotties blog can't be complete without a shout out to my Twilight fixation. I could stare at this picture all day and never go cross eyed.

 



 

I hope everyone has a great mother's day. Happy Mama's day, mama.

 

 

And only because I wouldn't want my own personal hottie to be offended by me writing a hotties blog and not including him.



 Have a happy hotties day.

Here’s ten questions geared toward the writer in you.  

How old were you when you discovered you wanted to write?

I was eleven when I wrote my first story. I was 39 when I wrote the first story with the intent to publish. 

Do you prefer to write in first person or third?  



 



First person all the way baby! Deep first person POV is the best for me. 

Do you write straight through, or tackle the scenes out of order?

I tackle whatever scene is tickling my muse. 

Where do you write? 

At my desk, or on my laptop in the living room. I write better with no background noise. 

How do you come up with the names for your characters?

I pick favorite names, or cruise the name reference books. 

Have you ever changed a character’s name in the middle of the story? 

No.


Name two authors who are your biggest influence as a writer?

Lisa Kleypas and Jane Green. 

Is there a genre you want to tackle other than the one you are presently writing? 

I would love to write a historical romance. 






 



 

 

 

 

 

I live on the East Coast and over the past week or so we’ve been bombarded with wave after wave of rain systems.  As I type this, lightning streaks the sky outside and thunder shakes my walls.

While long rainy days, even a week of rainy days, wouldn’t have bothered me three years ago (what self-respecting bookie doesn’t love to cuddle up on the couch/bed with a good book?), the little pirate does not grasp the concept of rain = not playing in the backyard or at the park.  So while I insist that it’s rainy and wet and we can’t go out, he stands at out sliding glass door, pining away at the toys in our backyard.

And if being trapped inside with a restless two year old isn’t enough, it’s so dark and dreary I’ve begun to wonder if this isn’t a repeat of the Great Flood.  Or, perhaps less dramatically, if maybe my husband moved our home from South Jersey to Seattle while I wasn’t watching.  (He’s sneaky like that.)

All this rain has got me thinking about settings.  Weather is its own setting, really.  But I don’t remember using rain in my writing.  Maybe, since it’s my world and I’ll do what I want, I’ve just nixed out rain completely.   I am the queen after all.  But maybe I just never thought about what rain could do to my story.  While rain is wet, and well, makes people wet and ruins hairdos and gives the shivers if it’s cold, it also makes me feel closed in.  Like when I’m driving and the windshield wipers are on.  I can see clearly the brief moments the wipers go by, but then my surroundings are obscured again by droplets until the next swipe.  Everything that remains untouched by wipers - the side windows, those weird spaces on the windshield the wipers don’t hit that make the windshield look like two mountain peaks - it all has that beaded water thing going on, so I get splashes of color but the world in my peripheral is indistinct.  And the sound rain makes on the roof of the car, that pounding, like it’s trying to press you into the pavement.  I end up sitting closer to the steering wheel, squinting, so I can maximize my outside-the-car view.

Sometimes I feel like weather’s only important in stories if it’s a plot device.  A car slips on a wet road.  Someone gets snowed in on a mountaintop.  A heat wave ruins air conditioning at an ice cream shop.  But that feeling of claustrophobia could add to a character's anxiety.  Or a perfectly sunny day could brighten another character's outlook. 

Have you used the weather in your writing?  If so, how?  Notice any weather in any of your favorite books?  Anyone else trapped in the deluge in the East? 

Purify- Lacuna Coil- Unleashed Memories (In honor of their newest CD release, Shallow Life on the 21^st of this month. Can't wait to get it.)

 

 

I'm an impatient perfectionist. You might say that this is one and the same; but it's not. I get my impatience from my daddy, who flips through TV channels so fast it makes your head spin. Someone who will ask you a question and if you pause to breathe before answering you've already made him wait too long.

 

I'm a Sagittarius born to Virgo parents. Perfectionism is a family trait. Perfection takes time to create but it's also a honed skill. Since I'm impatient, perfectionism annoys the hell out of me. So you can see my dilemma when I'm working on something. I'm too impatient to wait it out, and every fiber of my being demands perfection. It's a double edged sword. Years and years of perfecting something is still not good enough. Never good enough.

 

When I was a child, penmanship was actually a graded part of schooling. We spent hours and hours learning how to properly curve cursive "S"s, "I"s, "T"s and how to connect our letters just right. I *obsessed* about getting this right. I wasn't great at math. I wasn't special at science. But reading- I rocked. Penmanship? I was equally determined to be awesome. I wanted to be the best in the class. Penmanship was the first thing a teacher saw when it came to homework. So every time a written assignment had to be turned in, you bet your pretty little ass that my handwriting was tops.

 

In the age of technology, computers have pretty much made penmanship obsolete. With each new gadget or software we lose that little piece of our past because we now have something to double check our mistakes. Times New Roman is the new perfect handwritten report. Spellcheck searches each document like a hound dog on a fox trail. Doesn't mean it's always perfect, which in lies the problem. I need perfection. I crave it. Goes back to the editing while writing. I try to catch everything as I'm typing. Typing is a new art form ever evolving. You can always be more accurate. Always faster. I'm not bad. I'm about 120wpm if the wind is blowing the right way.

 

But there is something about the feel of a pen between your fingers, nestled into the curve between your thumb and index finger. The way the pen glides along the paper, so smooth, so perfect. Each letter is art, your individual footprint on page.

 

My grandmother and I have written letters back and forth for the past ten years. I can usually tell what type of day she's having by the way the cursive slants across the notebook page. How shaky her hand is. How tired she's feeling. There's a lot of feeling and emotion you get by looking at ink. You can tell if it's a fresh pen, almost smell that strong ink before you open the envelope. It's therapeutic to feel the slide of the pen as you spell out everything on your mind. It's not the same with the disconnect of the keys. Keys underneath your fingertips is a completely different experience. You can convey the same type of emotion, but you can't see the evidence. It's clean. Concise. A ninja mechanism. The keyboard is a way of hiding your true feelings from the world around you. You can read my words, but you can't see my mood. My emotions bleeding from my fingertips or feel the pain as my penmanship starts to fade.

 

Me typing these words is not the same as me writing them. My penmanship is my signature, my keyboard is a device. You can hear my voice; but you hear what I want you to hear. Whereas, when I write with a pen and send you a handwritten letter, you see the evidence of my despair, joy, sadness, triumph. It's very apparent in the way you write. Disguising something like that isn't as easy as you would think. It's another learned trait. Like having a poker face. You aren't born with it.

 

I wrote my first story by hand. I spend hours a day on the computer, working until my eyes are bloodshot and dry, painful to blink. The last thing I want to do when I get home is turn on the computer and stare at the screen more. Not to mention flying fingers over a keyboard is kind of noisy.

 

The first page, turns into three, turns into nine and turns into thirty. Your hand cramps. Ink blackens your fingertips. But the smell of fresh ink on a page and your handwriting keeps you going. It's humbling to see something you've created on page, in your own handwriting. And I think I've forgotten that.

 

Which do you prefer, handwritten or typed? How is your penmanship? When was the last time you truly sat down and wrote something other than bills?

Last week, I had to rent a car at the airport.  We were in a major hurry, we’d missed a flight, the hubby was (rightfully) thoroughly pissy with me, and it was just a mess.  So I rent this car, race to the little stall it’s waiting in, shove my luggage in the back, jump in the driver’s seat, and we take off.

 

And about 20 minutes down the highway, I realize I don’t have the slightest idea what kind of car I’m driving. Now, I’m a car person. I’ve been known to pace behind a BMW on the highway, just so I can stare at it longer. I need to know what kind of car I’m in, what kind of engine I’m working with, what the horsepower is. I want to know if this is a car I can soar around people in, or if I’m going to push the gas and slowly creep forward.

 

And I’ve got no clue.  This was very disconcerting for me.  I could conclude I was in a Chevy, from the markings on the horn. I knew it was red from looking at the hood.  I knew it’s a teeny-tiny four door from trying to shoe-horn my luggage in the back seat. That’s all I had.

 

Recently, I had a contest judge mention in her comments that I was excellent at description, but terrible at setting.  This kind of stumped me for a while, as you normally hear those words together.  Description & setting – they go hand in hand.  Kind of like PB&J.  Nobody eats a jelly sandwich (though I have been known to eat peanut butter sandwiches….)

 

Anyway, my point is that this experience in an unknown rental car really drove home for me the difference.  I had all sorts of description available to me:  the April sun glinting off the cheery red paint on the hood; the gold trapezoid Chevy emblem blazing on the horn; the soft gray, velvet texture of the seats.  But I had no setting.  No big picture. And it drove me nuts that I had no idea what car I was in (it was a Cobalt, I finally figured out later). 

 

I had a critique partner complain about this very thing.  After reading my prologue, she knew they were in a loud, dusty city. She noticed the head scarves and the soldiers. But she was still working under the assumption that the book was based somewhere in the United States, and just assumed I was talking about somewhere out in Nevada or Arizona. When I said no, they’re in Baghdad, she cracked up laughing, because it was so obvious *after* she got the setting.  But without it, she was driving down the road in a red car, with no other information.

 

So which are you better at, description or setting?  Is there one that’s easier for you to write?  Do you prefer more of one to the other when reading?  Got any examples of authors that make the setting come alive for you? Any tricks for remembering to add in the big picture through setting so I no longer have readers thinking my Iraqi soldiers are in Albuquerque?