Marabou and Glitter
*Sin rummages through a wooden chest and starts throwing things out over her head*
-Ter- “What the hell is she doing?”
-Marn- “I think she’s looking for the glitter.”
-Lis- *puts her hand over her eyes and grimaces* "Or she's looking for the missing part of her skirt. Full moon alert."
*Pirates are snorting with laughter*
-Hellion- *eye roll at the mess* “Maybe she lost Ranger in that mess.”
*Sin shoots Hellion the death stare from over her shoulder* “Don’t go there.”
The pile of junk grew higher and higher until it started to sway in the wind. Lightening cracked over the sky and Sin’s triumphant battle cry echoed over the sea. “Ah-ha! I found it.”
She held it in the air, almost like a scene right out of Lion King. It was solid black. Marabou feathers adorned the edges of wood, silver glitter puff paint on the top spelled out “Sin”. Sin brushed it off and blew on it until all traces of dust were gone.
“This,” Sin said, strutting away from the pile of junk in the middle of the top deck. “I’ve been looking for this everywhere. I can’t have a proper soapbox rant without my soapbox.”
I don’t need a microphone for what I’m about to say. In fact, if you’re past the point of listening to soapboxes, you might want to skip to the bold print below. It’s about to get ugly ‘round here.
I am a faithful reader. I have been since I was old enough to learn what I liked and disliked about books. The first time I realized I loved romance novels, it was an accident. Purely accidently. The historical was mixed in with the pre-teen books. I fell in love with the cover art of a castle on the cliff, a girl with black hair and gorgeous blue eyes being swept away into the sea. I picked it up and snuck it home. I poured over the pages of that book. The second time I got my hands on a romance novel, it was a contemporary (I didn’t know it at the time) and it bored the living socks off me. The difference between the two books was the writing. The author. The amount of feeling and passion and emotion put into the words behind every sentence.
I’m drawn to books that pull me in and make me feel like I’m there. Does that make me crazy? Maybe, but the jury’s been out on that a long time now.
Lately I find myself falling off the bandwagon of faithful readership. Why you might ask? Well, I love authors. I realize the more I meet regardless if it’s in person or through email or interaction online that they are people too. They are just like you, the reader, even though they are the author. They know how to appreciate their readers because they treat them HOW they’d want to be treated if the role was reversed. But it only takes one author to ruin the whole apple cart. One author to act like an ass and pretend like it’s okay to offend her readers because her readership is so vast, who cares if it upsets someone or a group of people who read her books.
I am NOT crazy. I’m offended that you, the author of the series about a character you created and the readers who happen to love this character you’ve created, deems them crazy. That seems a little redundant to me. Shouldn’t you be thrilled that you have readers who love anything you create?
Maybe that’s the problem. Yup, I’ve hit the nail on the head.
Now, I’m not going to name names. Trust me, I want to in the worst way. This author has been on my $*#T list for the past two years now. It’s okay to flaunt that you think you’re readers will pick up and read anything you put out. It’s okay to not give a flying @u*k about story integrity. Where is the loyalty to your readers! The people who put money in your pocket and keep you an author! That’s right! An author !! That’s why you started writing in the first place, wasn’t it?! Have you forgotten already that it takes readers to keep you being an author? And if you don’t want it anymore- STOP writing.
I know I’ve stopped buying.
At this point, there is nothing this author can do to make me want to buy or read another one of her books. She has pushed me so far past my tolerance line that all I do now is hope and pray that other readers will eventually come to the conclusion she just doesn’t give a $*#T anymore.
And I don’t either. I’m done.
*Sin saunters over to her wooden chest and places the soapbox neatly at the bottom. Then quietly closes the top, leaving the rest of the crap out*
We’re not going to name names today. In fact, I’ve probably manage to offend tons of people with this blog. I can’t say I’m sorry. I want to know what you think about authors. Have you ever met an author (online or in person) who seemed very dismissive and it killed your desire to read their books? Any really great author/reader stories to share today?
Remember NO NAMES!
Influenced by this week: I don't give a f**k, Lil Jon and the Eastside Boys- Kings of Crunk
Word.
The Thin Line Between Hatred and Lust
Love is meant to be celebrated every day of the year through gestures that come from the heart and can be enjoyed together no matter what day it is on the calendar. If you truly loved someone, you would show them everyday how much they meant to you.
But let’s not get me started on my soapbox this morning. I just redecorated it, and the black paint is still wet. Not to mention my rhinestone crown isn’t set yet. But the black feather boa looks nice.
Today, even though I wanted to talk about how much I despise V-day, I’m going to take the high road and talk about passion in your writing. Not just for love scenes, I’m talking throughout the entire novel. Packing that emotional punch each paragraph. Each page. Each chapter and ultimately to the HEA ending.
During the course of writing an original, you run into wild emotions. Emotions that you haven’t thought much of before you get to them, emotions that you could bank on when you started out to sea. Sometimes it comes on slowly, building up and letting the reader know just what to expect. And sometimes, well the emotion just seems to blow up. It’s explosive. It’s hot. It’s tantalizing and it’s uninhibited. It’s just the type of emotion that makes your heart thump like a drum. Your blood to heat up like molten lava. Your body lights up like a Christmas tree. You go from fighting to having sex in point zero seconds.
Now that’s what I love about writing.
Writing emotion is much like living it. Our character live through our direction. They act out mini fantasies and move through life with a passion for everything that they do. No matter if they absolutely hate what they are about to do, there’s a certain underlying passion about they way they hate. And that’s all because of the emotional impact you make through your character.
Passion is a very strong emotion. Passion can put you in several different places throughout your life. You can be passionate about something and there could be passion between you and another. Even if you’re arguing, on the border of hating, there’s passion behind every word, behind every emotional pull between the two of you. Between your hero and heroine even what’s lying just below the surface of a fight is passion for one another. Passion for the argument. Passion for the heat between them. Using the fight to pit their will against each other, getting their blood heated, their hearts pounding. It’s all the lead into the desire you’re showing and that the reader is starting to feel.
You have to have passion between your characters to make them work. Otherwise, it’s a weak and boring read that gets sat down 75 pages into the book and only glanced at once a year before they haul it off to the used bookstore for something better. Even if that passion isn’t sexual, passion makes a character stand out. Makes your reader remember your story and come back for more even after the last page is turned.
Passion can make you do stupid thing. And can make you do remarkable things in the heat of the moment. And passion is the reason behind every good love story. Ultimately there is passion in love. And there is passion in hate. Blurring the lines between the two can be a very tricky maneuver.
The easiest way for me to blur the lines is for the fight to be something that happened in the past. Something neither of them has gotten over. Something that needs to be dealt with before they can move on. But they never get that far. There’s always lust bubbling underneath the surface of their fight. It only takes one look for someone to take control and push them against the nearest wall and well… you know what happens next. It doesn’t make the fight go away but the aggression between them hovers back down at the simmering point. You get one thing out of the way and then they can think semi-rationally and have a chance at working it out.
Though, I could argue that love isn’t rational. Neither is lust. Nor is any emotion. But that’s all another blog for another day.
So I suppose my question of the day is: What do you do to amp up the passion between your characters? Any tips? Advice? Picture manuals?
What Makes the Writer? The Heart or the Content.
If you remember last week, I spoke about procrastination. And if you were getting your daily dose of the wenches (which shame on you if you weren’t!) you’ll remember that the Boatswain, Terrio, says that she calls her procrastination the daily multi-tasking. I do so much multi-tasking; I have to multi-task my multi-tasking. I think about writing while I’m in the shower. I think about writing while I’m on my drive both to and from. I think about writing while I’m logging in my daily run. I constantly think about writing. And I think that’s what makes me what kind of writer I am.
I’m a fly by the night, fingers moving like the wind, totally zoned in, type of writer. I don’t plot. I don’t outline. I don’t character build. I don’t do anything ahead of my fingers. I make up a name. I make up a shell of this person in my mind, and I go for it. I’ve heard Capt’n call this the Pantser (okay, which makes me giggle), and it really makes me sound very unprofessional, but I can’t outline. As soon as I outline a story, it’s gone. This might seem silly to you, you little outliner you, but I assure you, there is nothing more satisfying than seeing the written word finally on the screen for the first time. To let your imagination go where it will with no written boundaries. Freedom. This is where I get my freedom. Everyday I’m in the grind, but when I write, I’m finally free. No obligations. No worries. Just me and my brain writing whatever flows out of me. Working out the plot as we go along. Letting the story unfold right in front of my eyes. It’s the best feeling ever.
There are some drawbacks to the way that I write. There is a lot of angst in my stories, and as the Capt’n blogged yesterday, you need that in your story to keep your reader tsking you and turning the page. But I write what I like to read. I like the story to pull at me emotionally. I like to connect on a deeper emotional level to the character and for me to do that as the writer, is to write what I know. For that, it’s my heart in every word. It’s not just the content your reading when you open my pages, you’re reading actually what’s in my heart. It’s not just the content on the pages,
You have to have heart to be a writer. Being a writer is a tough and challenging world. But the content is what the reader bases the book on. Is there a difference to you? I know that you want both (you greedy little wench) but if you could have one or the other, which would you choose…? The emotion of each word, making your heart hurt and feel like you’re right there in the scene. Or do you want the content, an unfailing plot, the best subplot, great character development.
If you’re like me, you know that they come hand in hand. But we’re playing devil’s advocate today. Humor me.
Books by the Crew
