First of all, just let me say, I'm sure no one is surprised to hear this.  And yes, it's kinda, sorta, technically true.  There is a dead body in my family room - in the form of my late father's ashes.

See, my mom moved a week ago - and we helped her.  She downsized from her adorable, too large house to a smaller, one story house on my side of the river.  This means she had to downsize a lot of stuff.

My mom's a bit of a hoarder - of cuteness.  She hoards beanie babies (who knew they'd go bust?), cirque de soliel weirdness and two-foot tall German nutcrackers.  She spent most of the day giving me stuff, like a creepy doll from the WPA era, a giant brass pig with wings, and yes, my father's cremains.

I've already pawned the flying pig off on my boss as a sort of travelling trophy.  The doll is behind the couch in a child's chair where no one can see her.  My father, is in a white marble urn by the fireplace. 

I was happy to take him.  The urn was way to heavy for mom and I was really close to my father.  So, I buckled him up in the front seat of my little, orange Kia Soul and away we went.

A week later, I'm out at girl scout camp running the zip line for a troop, and my daughter and her friends are at home.  Her friend...we'll call her 'Betty,' opens the urn, thinking it's a vase.  She sticks her hand in (cuz that's what you do when you come across a weird object with ashes in it, right?) and pulls it out, asking if I kept the fireplace ashes there.  Margaret didn't know, because I hadn't yet told her that Grandpa had moved in with us.

We get home and Margaret asks about the big white vase filled with ashes.  We tell her.  She calls 'Betty' to tell her she had my deceased father all over her hand.  Betty (which is, in fact, her real name) screams.  Then texts everyone to say that Margaret has a dead body in her house.

It's a bit morbid and gross.  And stretches the truth a bit.  But I have to say, if my father was still alive, he'd get a huge kick out of the whole thing.

(And no, Margaret, we aren't going to get rid of him anytime soon.)

The Assassin

So Hellie wrote an awesome post on Commitment on Monday and here I am about to lay it all out there and be honest that my commitment has disappeared the past 2 weeks. 

I haven't written a single word in a little over a week. 

Sigh. My life is always crazy, but recently I knew something had to give. If it didn't, then my brain was seriously going to short circuit. I was putting too much pressure on myself. There's a difference between challenging yourself and pushing yourself to the next level and just plan out expecting the impossible. 

So, I found myself taking a break from writing. Everyday I was berating myself for not sitting down to write and in turn, was making myself feel miserable. Like I was a horrible person who would never, ever reach my goals. 

A week later, and I feel recharged. Refreshed. And those ideas for the new book I was struggling with? They've suddenly started falling into place without me even thinking about them specifically. 

So I ask you, do you take complete mental breaks from your WIP and writing every now and then? Do you feel guilty when you do, or do you discover as I did that it renews your fire and passion for your story? 

I'm hoping to use this holiday weekend to kick-start myself back into the groove and I'm honestly  proud of myself for the time I gave my mind off. I needed that time to give my self-confidence both a break and some much needed relief from putting too much pressure on myself. 

Would it scare you to totally step away for a week? To not even spend time thinking of your writing?

I literally gave myself a pass to completely forget about it and man, it's been one of the best exercises for me. I feel full of a new energy for writing. Like it's proven to me that I'll be okay if I don't write everyday. That it doesn't make me a failure, that there is always another day to write. The idea is to recharge and then charge forward. Just don't let one week turn into two and then three. :) 

Anyone out there had any experience with this? Ever felt better after a REAL break from writing? Or did the guilt become too much to bear. Are you holding yourself to too high of a standard everyday or is it the writing everyday that gives you that high? I'm learning there's no right or wrong way! 

Susan Mallery's books set in Fool's Gold is one of my favorite (and typically automatic) reads. This summer's selection includes: SUMMER DAYS, SUMMER NIGHTS, and ALL SUMMER LONG.

SUMMER DAYS is the one I read earlier this summer and I wasn't "in love" with the story enough to recommend it. The story itself wasn't bad; and the characters weren't "annoying" or one of the other colorful descriptions I normally have about characters I don't like. I think, looking back, my disappointment with this book is that the hero is basically a CEO (and I'm not a fan of CEOs, period) and the heroine is a girl who raises goats...and her name is Heidi. Which admittedly I was not a fan of that little literary joke. Again, I think this was a personal choice on my part. If Susan had managed to tie her characters to a Harry Potter reference, I would probably praise it for days. So in and of itself, not a bad story, but due to my personal prejudices, not one with my glowing recommendation.

SUMMER NIGHTS is the next in the series, which features a flirty librarian and a handsome cowboy with horses. This went much better for me. I mean, there's a gorgeous stallion (and I'm not talking about the hero) and I fell in love with the hero's horse. There was also a lovely substory where a little girl who had been burned in a previous book is taking riding therapy lessons--I love this sort of stuff in Susan's books. I love the town she has built. This book totally restored my faith in this series--and I was happily looking forward to the third in the series....

ALL SUMMER LONG is the final in the trilogy featuring these heroine friends and brother heroes. The firefighter heroine ends up falling for the ex-underwear model brother. The firefighter has an interesting backstory; she'd been raped in college (her virginity) and no one believed her because the guy was popular and good-looking and she was neither of those. Her sexual experience is extremely limited; and due to the assault, she is clearly loathe to get close to another man. Her transformation in the book is wonderful--I really loved how it was handled. The ex-underwear model is SO good. I think he's officially my favorite hero of Fool's Gold now. I'm tempted to re-read this one--and I've definitely dogearred some of the "special scenes" for later. Because they were really exceptional.

Anyway, now I'm all keyed up for the next trilogy for Fool's Gold. And the Christmas in Fool's Gold that's coming out this Fall.

What series do you most enjoy keeping up with? Do you keep going in a series even if one or two books isn't as great as the rest? What author do you enjoy reading that handles "real life" situations admirably in their writing?

Writing takes all kinds of traits, and none of them are particularly talent. Talent helps in that if you think you have a knack for writing, you’ll keep going. It’s like a built in ego boost, and writing is one of those life’s endeavors where you need a lot of ego boosts because most of the time you feel like a hack.

But there are several things that are more important than talent. Persistence being the biggest one, I believe, but commitment is something that can be overlooked or at least relegated to being in the Persistence camp. But commitment is its own entity; and there are varying forms of commitment within writing. The commitment to write so many words a week; or the commitment to read so many craft books or attend so many conferences to improve your writing.

But then there is the most important kind of commitment—the commitment to story. The art of the follow through, like a batter who commits to swinging with all his might and connecting with the ball, never hesitating but hitting all the way through. When the bat and ball do connect and it is hit through with the kind of wallop that rings up your arms and felt through your legs, you know you’ve got a homerun. We all swing in the hope of a homerun.

However, we’ve all watched games and seen the big hitters and they don’t hit a homerun every time they come to bat. More often it seems they strike out, but they always commit to the swing. Their heart is always in the game. They always do their best and show up.

My commitment isn’t as great as a baseball game. I’m no Pujols, but I know it’s just as important if not more so for a writer to commit to their game as a baseball player does. If your heart belongs to this story, then swing big. Commit and follow through. Don’t decide mid-pitch you need to do a few more practice swings and redo your prologue or first three chapters. You’ll be struck out without you ever swinging the bat; you’ll demoralize yourself and spend your energy doing something that does not need to be done right now.

That’s my commitment problem anyway. I’ll get the first few chapters down, laugh at my own wit, and then start to fall apart at the wheels because not every paragraph or page I’m writing is full of clever, witty, perfect writing that enchants me. And if it doesn’t enchant me, it couldn’t possibly enchant anyone else. And then I hate my characters who aren’t being witty anymore; and I don’t know if I like this story even. And I take myself out of the game.

Hell, even Deerhunter is aware of it and the man lives in another state and I usually keep my writing life pretty quiet from him. I had texted him this week with my progress with the pirates’ writing month and how I had written 16 pages (actually it was 18 total) and I had written 10 the week before (26 pages total). He called to say how proud he was of me and then he made a comment that, “I’m so glad you have that many pages. I know how you like to delete seven for every eight you write.” I just stopped on the phone and was like, Yup, that’s me, terrified of commitment. Yet another thing Deerhunter would know so well since it took him fifteen years to get me to agree to date him.

So I’m doing myself a favor this time—at least as much as I am able—and I’m not deleting. I’m writing; I’m pressing on. If I don’t love it, I’ll sort it out later when the book is all done. If the story isn’t quite progressing where I think it should, but the words are flowing, I’ll flow with them, even if they aren’t where I thought the story was going. It could turn out for the best. That’s the thing about commitment. It’s about hanging on and rolling with it, not stifling something into what you thought it should be without compromise. And with my new commitment plan, I have finally topped over the 100 page mark. Now I just need to keep going until I hit the 200 page mark. And the 300 page mark. Ah, I hear the Rawhide theme song in my head now—just keep rollin’, rollin’, rollin’….

How do you keep your commitment to writing? What do you do when you’re slammed with the pressing need to redo the first three chapters…or six chapters…or whatever? How do you keep from massive revising before you’ve gotten it complete? (I leave out tiny revising—word corrections, addition or deletion of a few sentences as relatively harmless.)

So if you're tired of reading yet another review about a YA novel, DAUGHTER OF SMOKE & BONE, (by Laini Taylor) the short version is this: Go buy this book. Don't pass GO, do collect your library card and check out this book immediately. I don't care how you read this book--you can steal it for all I care (okay I would care, borrow or buy, but NO stealing)--and READ IT. Read it immediately.

The slightly longer version is that Karou is an 17 year old art student in Prague (a unique setting!). She has blue hair, a snarky mouth, and lives with a chimeara. Actually a bunch of them. And if you're not familiar with what chimearas are, they're like part beast and part man. The one she interacts with most, Brimstone, has a ram's head, a man's torso, and a lion's bottom half, complete with tuffed tail that swishes angrily much of the time. Brimstone collects teeth--but he never tells Karou why. He just say it's important. (Hey, at least it's not vampires--am I right or am I right?)

So we spend some time in Karou's ordinary world, which is only ordinary to her (I mean, seriously, a ram's head? The girl chimeara is worse, she's half cobra), and as good stories go, everything literally goes to hell in a handbasket. Because of course, this is a matter of life and death, a matter of Heaven and Hell. And Karou spends her time trying to right things back to their norm.

It's a beautiful book--many beautiful lyrical lines. One of the characters says, "Love is a luxury" and another contradicts, "No, love is an element." (I really should have used more post its to mark lines, but I was too busy reading at lightning speed.) And it's a funny book--we learn in the beginning that Karou has slept with a boy-man-asshat she knows and thoroughly regrets it. When Brimstone learns of it, all he says is, "I don't know of many rules to live by...But here's one. It's simple. Don't put anything unnecessary into yourself. No poisons or chemicals, no fumes or smoke or alcohol, no sharp objects, no inessential needles--drug or tattoo--and...no inessential penises, either."

I mean the book is worth owning with that line alone.

It's a bit of a dark book--as most YA novels seem to be nowadays--but it's hopeful. Which I'm sure it was meant to be since Karou means "Hope" in the chimeara language. I can't tell you much more for fear of giving too much away, but it's a book about love at its core. Love and sacrifice.

I've got the second book pre-ordered at Amazon. It comes out on November 6th, so you can expect another review then.

So...what is your favorite dark and angsty book that was also hopeful?

To spare you from yet another YA novel--I'll save that for next week--I read something a little different, just to reassure you all that I'm capable of reviewing books that don't feature teenagers and some paranormal creatures. (Again, I'm saving that for next week.)

Another type of book I'm fascinated with are books about other cultures, mostly Asian or Muslim settings. All that family and duty and rules.

THE BUDDHA IN THE ATTIC by Julie Otsuka is a book about the Japanese immigrants in America in the 1920s to 1940s. It's broken into eight sections, talking about the women immigrating to America to become wives to men here. It talks about their lives in America, the children they bear, and the terrible hardscrabble lives they lead in the land of opportunity and how they are treated by their husbands as well as Americans who treat them like vermin. The final section is about the Japanese being moved to confinement camps during World War II.

So it's a cheerful book.

Well, yes, it's painful in parts, but yet, it's interesting how these women make the best of their lives, the friendships they make, their strength and their survival. Maybe that's why I read these books about other cultures, to read about the strength of women and how they prevail in strict circumstances.

What books do you like read when you don't read romances? Do you still seek out books about strong women? What's your favorite "strong woman" book?

Between writing and spurts of fiction novels, I’ve been immersed in a lovely new craft book called: THE STORY WITHIN by Laura Oliver. When I read Chapter 4: The Science of Inspiration, I immediately thought of Q. Mostly that he’d say, “See! Isn’t that what I’ve been saying all along?”

Laura talks about the difference between your right and left brain. Your right brain is the creative side, the one who sees princes and maidens in cloud shapes. Your left brain is the one that looks at a cloud and sees rain and bugs you into go and get your umbrella. The right brain is your muse half—your muse never really goes anywhere, but it can easily get drowned out by the Greek chorus of your left brain, constantly bombarding you with unnecessary information, linear information like your kitchen is dirty, your bills are unpaid, and the current solution you’ve come up for your plot problem couldn’t possibly work. Who would ever believe such a load of rubbish? And furthermore, who would read such a load of rubbish?

Incidentally this is around the time your right brain (and muse) check out and go hang out with more positive entities. Or sticks her fingers in her ears and goes “Lalalalalalalalalaa” and refuse to listen anymore, or even behave.

This is incidentally why your inspiration strikes when you’re washing dishes, vacuuming, driving, walking, or doing anything that doesn’t require a lot of attention but keeps your left brain properly distracted and your right brain to go, “Oh, thank God, he shut up. As I was saying, I think you should do X, Y, Z in your story.”

The muse is always with you.

In Chapter 2: Point of Origin, Laura talks about quantum mechanics. She talks about how everything in the universe is composed of teeny tiny atoms—and then she compares this to writing. We’ve all got to start somewhere; and your story is composed of many things, many scenes, that may or may not seem related, but when you get the whole, you see how it all works together. (Reminded me a bit about that blog I did about Jason.)

This book also talks specifics in craft like plot, character, setting, and backstory. She also talks about taking care of yourself as a writer, finding time to write if you have children, to not punish yourself if you’re not writing as much as you think you should if you do have children (or other family matters) in your life. There’s not a time limit on this stuff is basically what she’s saying, and beating yourself up for taking time away from your family isn’t exactly helping your writing or your muse. Still, if writing does make you happier, it does seem family is more than happy to let you have a bit of time of your own to do it. And who knows? Eventually it may just be the sort of thing that pays for Disney World—and you can bet your sweet ass those kids aren’t going to mind about a few hours of self-entertainment now if they know Disney World is in the offing.

Reading this book was a lot like sitting with a life coach who was telling me all the things I knew, but presenting old things in new ways with refreshing anecdotes and re-inspiring me to keep writing and plowing along.

What’s your favorite writing advice you’ve ever read? Any favorite writing books or articles, or just a quote? What re-inspires you and keeps you plugging along?

Routine...

How I need thee.

But I have a goal. (That isn’t the same as a routine, so shut up, blathering child inside my head! Quit threatening to haul out the paper and make picket signs! Stop it!)

I don’t know what it is about that word that just, I don’t know…brings out the tantrum throwing aspect of my inner child, but it’s tough. I want to not need a routine! In the beginning, when I wrote like Niagara Falls flows, I didn’t need a routine! (Of course, I got up early every morning and went to Starbucks and wrote for an hour before I went to work…but that wasn’t a routine!)
(Yes, it was!)

As you can see, I have some issues with this word.

And I know I will continue to have issues with the entire concept, because it just goes contrary to how I want life to be. So, now and then, it’s gonna be war between me and my as-yet-established routine. So, I’m trying to ease into it.

The thing is, we finally hired an official come-to-the-house-and-work-next-to-us-clutter-helper. Mr. Clutter. I like him, I think this is going to work!

And on the list of projects is my office/sewing room/study. I want a real desk to write from. A standing desk, with a big monitor and a keyboard in the correct ergonomic position so that my back and neck quit protesting. (I just can’t sit on the couch bent over the laptop anymore, it’s killing me.) I want shelves for my research books…you know, all those pirate books and sex books. I want a floor heater in this room and I want to paint the walls something energizing. Maybe watermelon…

But once I do, it’s game on! And I figure it will be October before I have it together…the plan is to start the day with an e-mail check, blog stuff…than an hour of writing before walking the dog and leaving for Starbucks. Might even consider getting one of those espresso machines at home so I can make my own Americano. Plan on writing some in the evening and literally taking one day off a week. Maybe, two. One with the husband, one on my own.

I'm working on beefing up the suspense in my WIP. As many of you know, I've been revising this thing for years. YEARS. I've concentrated on the characters and the relationships and the angst . . . but this is a romantic thriller, and so far all my focus as been on the romance side, rather than the thriller side.

So I need to add more thrill. Or more specifically, I need to add some false trails. The thriller plot is good, it's just obvious. There are no clues to lead them the wrong way, paths with dead ends, or red herrings.

Think about some good mystery plots (either mystery/thriller novels, TV shows, or the mystery plot inside a good romantic suspense). They all have red herrings: those clues that pop out and scream "I"m important! Follow me!," but then don't actually lead to the truth.

For  instance, it's pretty obvious, early on in my WIP, that the bad guy is a middle-aged white guy. The problem? There's only one of those in the book. Obvious, right?  It's clear early on that a military general with a lot of power is pulling the strings. My villain is called "the General." Obvious, right?

So now I'm going back through and adding red herrings. Another middle-aged white guy, this time a gun-runner from South Africa, who is charming and funny . . . but could be the bad guy.

Another army dude, this time from the Spanish military instead of British. Easy to confuse the uniforms if you're not familiar with them. He could be the bad guy.

A thug named Neil who is also middle-aged and white, a driver who people talk in front of without thinking, who fixes problems for his bosses and is loyal no matter what he's ordered to do. He could be the bad guy.

It's all very fun to add in these characters, to weave their stories through the narrative, and mix them in with the more primary characters. And seeing how I was about 15,000 words short anyway, this is good. On the whole, I'm very pleased with these decisions.

But I can't help but feel like I'm cheating. Like this is a paint-by-numbers set, and I'm just filling in with the right color. I worry that it won't come together organically, that it will be obvious that these characters were tacked on at the end in order to throw off the reader.

Have you ever tried to add whole threads, plot-lines, and new characters to a finished book? How'd it go? Ever read a book where you could tell that's what had been done? Do you add red herrings to your suspense? Any suspense or thriller plot that particularly stands out in your mind as one where you didn't figure out the bad guy until the very last second?

You gotta say this for Susan Elizabeth Phillips. That woman can seriously create characters you love to hate. Remember Sugar Beth from AIN'T SHE SWEET--and she was anything but sweet? Remember the perfect, incomparable Ted Beaudine from CALL ME IRRESISTIBLE who is God's gift to women, but he was such a complete asshat, I wanted to set the book on fire before Susan could show me what a great guy Ted really was?

Well, she's done it again, folks. She's accomplished the miracle of miracles. She has redeemed that heartless groom-jilter Lucy Jorvik and paired her off with the perfect punishment, a complete douche canoe named Panda, who rides a motorcycle, has the table manners of a 3 year old, and whose idea of a charming pick up line is, "Are we going to do it or not?"

Seriously, I thought I was going to light this book, THE GREAT ESCAPE, on fire even quicker than I was going to light Ted's book. Susan just is that masterful at creating characters that seem so real that if they did walk off the page, the first thing you'd do is bitch slap them for being such utter tools.

Fortunately I just managed to keep my fiction and reality separate long enough for Susan to pull this rig around again, and by the end of the book, I was all, "Panda is awesome." Okay, I probably wouldn't go that far. I still wanted to light him on fire a little bit, but at least I understood what was going on with him and he was totally in his right to be a big fat douche. Lucy I adored, even if she did jilt Ted. Then again, I was still remembering what a freaking little tool he'd been in the last book and I wasn't too worried about his broken heart or ego as it were. What I liked most was visiting with the characters from FIRST LADY, a book I adored, even if I think Matt was also a bit of a tool.

A theme perhaps? I'm not sure.

Still all told, this is a skill. The hero you love to hate. Usually if I hate a hero, I don't really care for him even after the story is all wrapped but with Susan's books, we're okay in the end. It's good. And I also felt that way in Lisa Kleypas' SUGAR DADDY, and if anyone had told me Gage was going to be the hero of that book, I would have scoffed in their face. It's a skill...and a talent. Taking a very flawed human being and revealing how he is lovable. I couldn't put the book down and I was satisfied with the ending and how everything turned out.

Has anyone else read SEP's latest? Anyone agree or disagree with me about Ted...and her latest gift to womankind, Panda? What's your favorite SEP book? Any heroes you love to hate you want to talk about?

Jill Shalvis, me, Kristan Higgins

Chance & me!

And the crew answered, huzzah!

Scape addressed the things we need to be aware of as we move forward on Wednesday and now it’s my turn…to talk about a song I’ve used to help me reach the climax I needed with the newest of my mss, some months back. Dare Youto Move, by Switchfoot. I believe this came to me from an earlier blog, from P. Kirby, a land bound pirate with a horse.

Why does it work for my scifi romance? Well, the opening line, when my lead is waking up to the new place she finds herself works quite well…

Welcome to the planet
Welcome to existence
Everyone's here
Everyone's here

Everybody's watching you now
Everybody waits for you now
What happens next?
What happens next?

Now, Ria is the heroine of Almost Human. At the point in this book, she’s on the floor of a therapist’s office, curled into a ball, her entire past with every sad and terribly moment weighing her down.

I dare you to move
I dare you to move
I dare you to lift
Yourself up off by the floor

I dare you to move
I dare you to move
Like today never happened
Today never happened before

I like this line, ‘today never happened before’ because it’s wonderful. The idea that today is brand new, really brand new, is a great one. There is a slight pause before they sing the word before and it so works to add tension to the lyric.

Welcome to the fallout
Welcome to resistance
The tension is here
The tension is here

Between who you are
And who you could be
Between how it is
And how it should be yeah

Doesn’t this say it all? Ria hears this and realizes the past is done with, if she chooses to go that way.

I dare you to move
I dare you to move
I dare you to lift
Yourself up off by the floor

I dare you to move
I dare you to move
Like today never happened
Today never happened

Maybe redemption has stories to tell
Maybe forgiveness is right where you fell
Where can you run to escape from yourself?
Where you gonna go? Where you gonna go?
Salvation is here

Stories to tell!? HA! Can this get any better? Now, Ria threw herself off the stern of a cruise ship, in a suicide attempt and fell on the bow of an underwater alien ship… I love serendipity with music!

I dare you to move
I dare you to move
I dare you to lift yourself
To lift yourself up off by the floor

I dare you to move
I dare you to move
Like today never happened
Today never happened
Today never happened
Today never happened before

And the song goes on and it’s good… I found a way to lift Ria off the floor with this song and though she isn’t ‘cured’ of her depression, this is the beginning of her journey back to sanity. Though at this point in the story, a crisis rises and she comes off the floor to help save the hero…