Robyn DeHart's Blog, page 7

I’m in charge!

Okay so my webmaster asked me last year sometime if I was ready to switch to the WordPress format and for whatever reason I wasn’t. But when she asked again this year I jumped at the chance. Now I can manage my blog from here, update more frequently and just be more present around here more often. The lack of updates has been my fault, not my lovely designers so now I should be more on the ball since I can do it whenever I think of something to put on the page.

So let’s start with the most recent news, I have a new Regency short story available for download on Kindle and Nook for only $0.99! This story, Her Gentleman Thief, was originally part of the Mammoth Book of Regency Romance. The first day it was available on Amazon it cracked the Top 100 in Regency romance. I do hope you’ll check it out. Readers are already saying how delightful and fun it is.

For any of you fans who are on Facebook, I have a new author fan page which has links to my Goodreads page and a cool author page gadget with excerpts and whatnot of my books. Check it out and like me, really like me.

Romance Trading Cards

Okay kids, here they are. Aren't they so pretty? You can find me at RWA in NYC (June) and at RomCon in Denver (August.) And of course you can request them from here, just send a SASE to me at PO Box 160531 Austin TX 78716.

I'll also be collecting them myself as giveaways so stay tuned.

[image error] [image error]

[image error] [image error]

[image error] [image error]

One week in

I'm still rocking along with my NaNo and things are going well. As in I'm adding words, not that the book is necessarily going well. But this is natural for me. I've hit the stage where I'm realizing that I don't know these characters yet, at least I haven't found what I call their "essence" just that thing about them that makes them unique, makes them pop off the page. I'll find it, but haven't yet. Because I haven't found that though I'm also stumbling through with virtually no character chemistry, not good for a romance. But that too will come eventually.

In the meantime I just keep moving forward knowing that any moment now I could hit upon the magic. And that's when it's really exciting. Writing that one scene that really nails it. That one moment in the book where everything crystalizes in my mind and I have that perfect feeling of who these characters truly are. But for now I'll just keep adding words and maybe, just maybe I'll find the magic tomorrow.

So far, so good

Well, today is day 1 of NaNoWriMo and things are going swimmingly. It's a good thing for a variety of reasons – (1) November is a busy month so front loading it seems smart so I have less words to write the closer we get to holiday/family time, (2) I hate beginnings, the start of a book is always the worst part for me, so I'm trying to plow through so I don't notice how much I hate this part, (3) I looked last night at my previous books to see my previous rough draft word counts and I've only ever written one book that hit 50k at the rough draft stage. The good news, I have done that once so theoretically I can do it again. Also my books always end up 80-90k when I'm finally done so I should be able to keep going until I hit 50k this time around.

So far I've been in my hero's POV more than anyone else and he's nice and alpha and gruff and needs softening, perfect for my heroine to tame. And my villain is creepy in a dark icky way so I'm loving that.

Trials to come in the days ahead, I feel certain of that. After writing so many books you begin to develop patterns and I know I haven't hit the "I've written these characters before" stage or the "this book is so boring" stage or any number of other neuroses I normally go through during writing. But today was a good writing day and I'm enjoying the book, that doesn't always happen so I'm going to hang on to the for now.

Last minute details

[image error]We're getting down to the wire and I'm getting excited. There's something thrilling about not allowing myself to write to prepare for the next month of craziness. That's not to say I haven't been writing other things, I've been working on synopses for some other books. But not working on the book I'm about to write when all the scenes are there waiting for me, well it's certainly whetting my appetite. I suppose this is all part of the frenzy.

I still have a few things to do to get ready, mostly house related stuff like clean my office and catch up on some laundry. And I really need to go to the grocery store. I've got my crock pot all ready to go and plan to use that several times a week to make dinners easy. I also need to stock up on Diet Big Red, pretzel sticks and Tootsie Pops, my go-to writing snacks.

I find November an interesting month of choice for NaNo and I have plenty of things on my calendar already that could interfere with my progress. But I will focus on getting my pages down early so that things like Thanksgiving won't make my word count suffer.

T-minus 4 days

I've decided to do NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month – a challenge to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days) this year for the first time. I've wanted to participate for the last several years, but my deadlines have always gotten in the way. But this year things have aligned perfectly. I've got my book plotted and I'm eager to get started. I doubt this will serve as a blog where I update daily, as I won't have time while I'm buried in my wip. But I wanted a place to share word counts and whatnot with anyone who might be curious.

My Scrivener file is set up, I've got my characters casted, color-coded scene cards are done (though I'm sure I'll have to add more) and I'm reading everything I can find about the NaNo process. Granted I've written several books and my writing process is fairly similar to the NaNo suggestions – ignoring that internal editor and just getting that rough draft out. It's kind of my natural inclination as a writer and it has served me well for the past several years. Still kinda cool to make it public and enjoy the camaraderie within the writing frenzy.

The book I'll be writing will hopefully be the first in a new trilogy by me, but that will be my editor's decision. But for now, the story is mine and I am really looking forward to tackling it. I've always had a fair bit of suspense in my books, but this one is really historical romantic suspense, definitely heavier on the suspense. My working title is The Secrets of Minna Danvers.

Wish me luck!