Sara Jayne Townsend's Blog, page 23

Monday’s Friend: Penny Estelle

Today I am pleased to welcome fellow MuseItUp author Penny Estelle to the blog.

SJT:  When did you first know you were destined to be a writer?

PE:  I retired from working as a school secretary at the age of 56.  I started writing my first story, Hike Up Devil’s Mountain, the year before I retired.  I was so excited when Solstice Publishing offered me a contract.  Since then I have been lucky enough to have eleven more stories picked up.  I say this because even having several stories published, I’m not sure if I’m destined to be a writer!!!  But it is my hope – LOL

SJT:  Who would you cite as your influences?

PE:  HMMMM – I never read as a kid/teen, so I really have no influences as far as writing, but my ideas have come from either my real life memories or from my grandkids.  I have my first historical romance coming out in April.  Rosemary Rogers, Kathleen Woodwiss, Johanna Lindsey – The best!!!!

SJT:  What advice would you pass on to beginner writers that you wish someone had told you when you were first starting out?

PE:  Writing your story is the east part. Money will not come flooding in because you have a contract. Write for the love of writing. Marketing will become your life!!!

SJT:  You have written many novels for children.  What inspires you to write for the particular age group you do?

PE:  This is an easy one.  There is soooooo much material.  Kids in the middle grades are fun, talk crazy, and are sarcastic.  I really like sarcasm!!!!

SJT:  On your website you say that working as a school secretary for many years inspired you to write stories about kids.  Have you ever put anyone you met in real life into one of your stories?

PE:  Being secretary to the principal, we had lots of kids through the office.  I actually liked sparring with them about why they were in trouble, etc.  I had a few favourites and I use some of them for my characters.

SJT:  You also write novels for adults.  Does your approach to writing a novel differ depending on the age of the target audience?

PE:  I think so.  The ones I have written so far don’t have a lot of humor.  I have a family drama and two love stories with a touch of tragedy mixed in.  I have to watch my wording so I don’t revert to, “Hey Dude!”   LOL

SJT:  Tell us about your latest release.

PE: Well my latest release was THE UNWANTED CHRISTMAS GUEST.  I really liked writing this one as it has a two year old little Downs Syndrome girl in it and I copied her right from my own granddaughter – Caity.  It’s a love/hate relationship involving an attorney and a reporter.  It also has a secret that must be kept at all costs!

SJT:  What’s next for you, writing-wise?

PE:  Just started a new story – It will be for kids and it involves a brother, sister, jigsaw puzzle, and a wizard.  That’s all you get for now!!!

Thanks, Penny, for being my guest this week!

Buy THE UNWANTED CHRISTMAS GUEST from Amazon, or direct from MuseItUp Publishing.

Author Bio:

My name is Penny Estelle.  I was a school secretary for 21 years and retired in 2009.  We moved to our retirement home in Kingman, AZ and we live on 54 acres in a very rural area.  Actually we live “off the grid”.  We live on solar and wind.  A real adjustment for a city girl.  I must say – I love it.  Nothing like walking out your front door and hear coyotes howling in the distance and seeing a sky bursting with stars.  It is breathtaking!

Catch up with me online at any of the following links:

Amazon

www.pennystales.com

www.pennyestelle.blogspot.com

Twitter

Goodreads

Pinterest

Blurb for REVENGE, THE COWBOY WAY

When Brian Thornton is taken by surprise at gunpoint, while in the bed of a beautiful, wealthy woman, he swears his revenge.  But when he learns his humiliation was at the hands of a young woman and a boy, his vengeance knows no bounds.

Joanna Simmons finds herself snatched out of her home and taken to Thornton’s ship.  Against her will, she travels to Texas, and then by wagon train to Bastrop, Brian’s home town.  Joanna finds acceptance and genuine friendship with the people of the town, down to Brian’s sister, but the emotional war that wages between Brian and Joanna, keeps any kind of happiness at bay.

REVENGE, THE COWBOY WAY is the story of hate, love and revenge.  The question is whose revenge is it?

The Shara Summers Series

(Cross-posted on the WriteClub blog)

When I started shopping DEAD COOL to publishers, I made mention of the fact that it was the second book in a series and that the first, though published, was due to have rights revert back to me fairly soon.  This was entirely true, but I had no idea whether or not the information would help.  I didn’t think, at the time, that any publisher would be interested in taking on a book that was effectively a back list title.  In fact I’d already started thinking about possibly self-publishing DEATH SCENE when the rights came back.  What else was I going to do with it?

And then when MuseItUp Publishing took on DEAD COOL they also expressed interest in the first book in the series when the rights became available.

And so it is that DEATH SCENE, though not currently available, will be released by MuseItUp later this year.  Before DEAD COOL, as it happens.

DEATH SCENE is to be released Spring/Summer (which I gather can mean any time between March and August), with DEAD COOL scheduled for release in Autumn (September-November).  Once I have a better idea of dates, I will of course publicise this.

The irony in all this is that the when I was shopping DEAD COOL around to publishers, at the same time as my horror novel, the amateur sleuth novel was the one I was least confident about.  And yet, in the end, not only did I get a request for a full manuscript from every single publisher I sent the first three chapters to, in the end it got picked up first.  Thus proving that sometimes writers get far too close to their own work to be able to offer a balanced viewpoint.

So the Shara Summers books are now officially a series.  And with books 1 and 2 having a home together, I’m seriously thinking about writing book 3.

Up to now Shara’s been largely ignored.  Let’s hope that with her first two adventures being released into the wide world this year, she’ll finally start to make an impact.  I think there’s life in the old girl yet.

Monday’s Friend: Elle Druskin

Today I am pleased to welcome another MuseItUp author, Elle Druskin, to the blog.

 SJT :  When did you first know you were destined to be a writer?

ED:  I don’t think there was any particular epiphany or a day that I woke up and said, “I think I’m going to be a writer.” I’ve always been interested in writing, enjoyed it in school and I had the good fortune to be an editor on my school newspaper and was editor in chief of the yearbook. An award winning yearbook, at that. My best friend was editor in chief of the paper. I say fortunate, because we had a fabulous faculty moderator, the late Cecilia Whitehouse. She was much more than an English teacher. She had been an award winning journalist and became an award winning teacher. She truly understood teenagers and always listened to whatever issue, problem or concerns we had without making judgement but importantly in this context, taught all of us how to write. News, features, headlines, captions. That was incredibly useful training which served me well in college for those continual essays and the dreaded blue books. I still remember getting a final exam essay book back with a scrawled comment from the professor–“Finally someone who understands the meaning of concise!”

In my professional life as a professor, I’ve written and published a fair number of academic articles. It’s a necessity and again, a different style of writing but still writing and it is thrilling to have an article or book chapter published. I can’t remember when exactly, but I did know I had a story in my head. Since I’d never written fiction and didn’t know much about one goes about writing fiction, I decided to just sit down and write to see if I could figure out HOW to write a novel. Nobody was going to see it so it didn’t matter what I wrote. I finished the book, put it aside for a while, joined a few critique groups where I learned more about the craft of writing fiction, went back and revised the book that was never going to see light of day, put it away again, and did a final revision. At that point, I thought, what the heck, get some feedback. I asked several people with writing backgrounds, in one case, a very successful writer of thrillers to have a look. I wasn’t expecting anything positive. Imagine my surprise when all three loved the book. One thought it was a romance, another, a mystery and the third a combination romance and a bit of thriller. I honestly had no idea what I had written but I didn’t think it mattered. The important thing was they all enjoyed the story, loved the characters and found it entertaining. Imagine my shock when To Catch A Cop was published and nominated as Best Romantic Comedy of 2010.

Since then, I’ve continued my academic research and writing (we have this peculiar habit at my house. We call it eating and like it) which pays the bills but I continued writing fiction. I think over time I’ve gotten a lot better. I was always good with dialogue, but I did learn more about pace, balance of narrative and dialogue, and most of all, finding a tension line. That’s a critical element. Find that line and keep twisting it rather than confusing readers with more elements.

In the final analysis, I think of myself as a storyteller more than a writer. I come from a family of some great raconteurs. If you don’t have a great story with excellent timing, you don’t have much. You can have all the elements of a novel but at the heart is a great story.

SJT:  Who would you cite as your influences?

 ED:  Far too many to list here. Certainly the first was that great teacher. I’ve always been a voracious reader. Read pretty much anything and everything and in general, I read about 3—4 books a week. Reading to me is essential for a writer. It’s the place where you learn what works and what doesn’t. Pace, tension, hook, realistic dialogue. So I guess you would say a lot of writers. That doesn’t mean I make any attempt to imitate their styles. Every writer has a unique voice and it’s pointless to try to be something you are not. Some, but not all, of the writers I love are Amy Tan, J. K. Rowling (who doesn’t love Harry Potter?), Pat Conroy, Lawrence Block, Louise Penny, R. F. Delderfield, Jane Austen, and countless others. If I had to pick the one writer who was most influential, it has to be Diana Gabaldon. I don’t pretend to have her incredible facility, elegance and talent but she is very supportive and accessible to writers. Her consistent advice is that Persistence Pays. Start writing, keep reading, don’t give up. It’s pretty sound advice and I’m grateful to her. I would also add to that advice that it is important to accept constructive criticism. It’s fatal for a writer to fall in love with his or her own work and become blind to faults or weaknesses that must be addressed. Criticism isn’t personal. Nobody is complaining about your hair or your kids. Look, if this whole thing was easy, wouldn’t everyone do it?

SJT:  What do you know now that you wish you’d have known when you first started writing?

ED:  Big grin! I wish I had understood that concept of twisting the same tension line all the way through the story. I think it’s critical. I also think I had a tendency to give away too much too soon. It’s a common fault. Readers don’t need an information dump and too much back story. Let it unfold over time, just give a hint. That already starts to set up that all-important tension. Lawrence Block, who writes terrifically witty and entertaining novels advises flipping the first two chapters. Make chapter two into chapter one. He means start immediately with the action. Someone is already captured by terrorists for example. It immediately hooks the reader who has to read on to find out how the heck this happened. You can reveal the back story in the next chapter or further along as needed. I think that’s excellent advice. If you can’t hook the reader in that first chapter, you’re toast.

SJT:  When it comes to your writing projects, would you describe yourself as a meticulous planner, or a ‘seat-of-the-pantser’?

ED:  Not one or the other. I usually start with an idea of what a book might be about. I let the idea percolate in my head for a while. Sometimes, scenes come to me quickly while at other times, I have to wait. My general approach is to write scenes as they unfold in my head. I really need to see, hear and in some cases smell and taste the action. I clearly hear the characters talking in my head. Yeah, I know, if you tell the wrong people about hearing voices, they might decide you need medication.  It sounds nuts but I’ve met many writers over the years and no surprise, they all say the same thing. Over time, those scenes coalesce into sections that make sense sequentially. At some point, I start to assemble these scenes in order and determine where there are gaps that require a filler scene to link them. I generally know what I am writing toward, that is, I know the ending so everything is geared toward arriving at that point, no matter how many twists a story may take.

Does that mean I don’t prepare a synopsis? No, I don’t but the story is in my head. Do I use character sheets? Again, no. Particularly with the Liberty Heights series, I might have to refer back to an earlier book to check eye color or little details. Readers are quick to find inconsistencies but that’s all. I know these characters quite well, how they will respond, their speech patterns, their normal behavioral patterns so I don’t need to refer to extensive notes.  Does that make me a “pantser?” I don’t think so because the master plan is in my head rather than written out in clear notes. I don’t think it matters much which approach a writer takes as long as it results in a great story. In the final analysis, that’s all that matters.

 SJT:  Tell us about your latest release.

ED:  I’m dithering between the most recent releases in late 2013 and upcoming for 2014 so I’ll talk a bit about both. I thought it would be fun to explore holidays in Liberty Heights in stories that are shorter than the series novels. The stories are around 15,000 words and priced accordingly compared to the 50,000 word length of novels. The two holidays that seemed natural were Halloween and Thanksgiving.

In Adams and Eve, everyone’s favorite ditzy resident, LouAnn Freedbush invites the town to her party. Dress as an Adams, says the invitation. Everyone in Liberty Heights scrounges to come up with a costume representing an Adams—Don Adams, Abigail Adams, Ansel Adams and more. LouAnn isn’t very good at spelling. She meant Addams as in Addams Family with Wayne the psychic beagle decked out as Cousin Itt. Sister BettyAnn, the witch, arrives dragging a monster boyfriend who’s practicing to be a vampire. One problem—Simon faints at the sight of blood.  Could be an allergy. Go figure. Meanwhile, LouAnn’s long missing husband Calvin secretly arrives in town. The party should be excellent cover to get rid of LouAnn permanently but this is Liberty Heights where nothing ever goes to plan. So grab a costume and join the party!

Kidnapped! Or is that birdnapped? In Pranksgiving, B-grade movie actress and well known animal lover Paulette Stone kidnaps Jerome the turkey, star of the Ledbetter Turkey Farm commercials. Paulette figures with the holiday coming, Jerome is slated for the chop and she’s determined to rescue the bird. The New Jersey cops are out all over the state looking for turkey, anonymous callers are phoning to demand ransom and Paulette’s got one teensy problem. Make that a big fat problem; Jerome’s flown the coop. Vamoosed. He’s gone and to complicate things, Hayley Marx (heroine of Animal Crackers, Book 1 in the series) is in big trouble, thanks to Paulette. She’s responsible for the PR turkey campaign and now her star is gone. Yikes!  Suffice to say, I had lots of fun with Pranksgiving too with the usual Liberty Heights mayhem and fun.

In 2014, there will be a new Liberty Heights novel (Book 7) entitled Wait Watchers. Straight laced literary agent Portia Hart is hiding out in Liberty Heights. So far, she’s sprained an ankle, lost her eyeglasses and can’t see a darned thing, and the worst is yet to come. Portia has the dubious distinction of being the first guest at LouAnn’s newly opened bed and breakfast and going nuts from the other residents. LouAnn’s boyfriend Howie, the accident prone magician, sister BettyAnn who’s been evicted from Registered Witches of America and in hysterics, and the Valentine family—John, Paul, George, Rocky and Eve who have interesting methods of getting their way. This is New Jersey, after all. Portia’s on a collision course with newly widowed Truman Wilder. The last thing Truman wants is another woman in his life. It’s enough dealing with a teenage daughter. Oh yeah, then there’s Uncle Rupert Freedbush whose nursing home has been condemned. Nothing wrong with Uncle Rufus, other than his delusion that he’s Ernest Hemingway. Oh boy. Men definitely make passes at gals who don’t wear glasses! Join me in more Liberty Heights fun, romance and mayhem later this year.

 SJT:   Many of your books are set in the fictional town of Liberty Heights.  Were you inspired by a real-life place for this location?

ED:  Big grin. Yes, in a way. I’m a Jersey Girl although I haven’t lived there for many years. I won’t reveal the name of the town but it isn’t my hometown. Not far away, and it’s a combination of stories my mom told me about growing up in another Jersey town and an over-active imagination that generally asks questions, “What if this happened? What would that trigger?”

I should admit that skating lake in the park that features in the books, especially Hanky Panky is definitely based on my hometown. Yes, the scene with a new resident complaining to the police about flying the Japanese flag is true—I couldn’t make that up. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, read the book.

All the towns near Liberty Heights that are mentioned in the books are real. Check any map of New Jersey.  I guess if you bother looking at that map you might figure out which town it is.  I had a real laugh when a reader wrote to me how much she enjoyed the books, was going to be in Pennsylvania and thought she would drive over to Liberty Heights only she couldn’t find it on the map. Could I please give her driving instructions? Hah! I had to explain that the only map to Liberty Heights is in my head. That doesn’t make it less real to me—I know the town so well. I can see Main Street and every shop, see all the characters. I know the taste of the food at the Wok and Woll, smell the lavender at Andre’s hair salon, see all the wonderful toys at Babes in Toyland. Like I said, it’s real to me.

SJT:  What’s next for you, writing-wise?

ED:  Good question. I honestly don’t know. You don’t know what might serve as a catalyst for a story. I’m still deriving incredible amusement from Liberty Heights. In truth, the town is a character as much as the people. As long as the town has more stories to tell, I’m happy to be their voice. I’ve written a few stand alone books, like Going To the Dogs, so I might write another one. I can’t predict so stay tuned for further developments!

You can keep up with Liberty Heights and find my books at:

Amazon:  http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&field-keywords=elle+druskin

At Barnes and Noble for Nook:  http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/elle-druskin?keyword=elle+druskin&store=nookstore

The Liberty Heights series in order:

Animal Crackers

Life of the Party

Hanky Panky

Light My Fire

Rodeo Daze

Adams and Eve, A Liberty Heights Halloween

Pranksgiving, A Liberty Heights Thanksgiving

 AUTHOR BIO:

Born and bred in New Jersey, Elle Druskin is the original Jersey Girl. Jersey might be just a quick hop over the Hudson River to New York but there’s something different about Jersey people. Could be the toxic fumes. Or the Jersey Shore. Or a Jersey claim to fame as The Diner State. Whatever it is, there’s something different about the place.  Having traveled the world and lived in Australia and Israel, Elle still says there’s no place like Jersey. Her Liberty Heights series is a love letter to growing up in the Garden State where life is a little—okay—more than a little—offbeat.

You can find her website and blog with book excerpts, reviews, news, free bookmarks and recipes, at: www.elledruskin.com and you can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.  She also hangs out at Books and Writers Community, a great place for writers and readers. It’s free, it’s fun and everything you can possibly imagine is discussed.

The Writing Process Blog Hop

(Cross-posted on the Write Club blog)

I’m a bit late to this party.  I was tagged by Christopher Mannino earlier this month to participate in a blog hop on the writing process.

Actually ‘blog hop’ is a bit of a misnomer for this one - it’s more a blog chain, as the three people you tag then have to take the same questions to their own blog.

Hence, here is my shout-out to Christopher – you can learn more about him on his blog and his website.

And here are my answers to the four questions.

1) What am I working on?

I’m working on a historical crime thriller that I am collaborating on with my husband.  It’s set in the 1960s, and is about a young woman who aspires to be a bass player, searching for her friend who’s disappeared whilst exploring the vibrant London music scene of the era.

2) How does my work differ from others of its genre?

I love strong women, and am drawn to writing about independent-minded female characters.  My amateur sleuths always have something a little bit different about them.  My forthcoming release with MuseItUp, DEAD COOL, features a Canadian actress who lives in London and notices cultural differences here and there (while solving murders, of course).  In the current work in progress my heroine, Alex, comes to London because she longs to join a band and she is learning to play bass guitar, but it is set in 1967 and she encounters a lot of prejudice – there weren’t too many women bass players in those days.

I like satisfactory endings, but I’m not fond of ‘happy ever after’.  To me, an ending must resolve the plot satisfactorily and tie up all relevant loose ends, but things don’t always go the way my characters want them to, and sometimes they have to deal with the consequences of their actions or simply that life isn’t always fair.

3) Why do I write what I do?

My writing is often cathartic.  Sometimes the only way I can deal with unpleasant or negative feelings is to write about them.  Which is generally why my stories tend to be quite dark.  Happy feelings I don’t write about because I try to hold on to them.  It’s only the bad feelings I want to exorcise, by putting them into my writing.

4) How does my writing process work?

I tend to spend a lot of time on plotting before I start working on a novel.  I’ve learned the hard way that’s the best way for me to work – I’ve got too many half-finished novels languishing in drawers because I couldn’t figure out how they were going to end.

I will try and work out a rough outline of the plot first, and then I will take this and break it down further into a chapter-by-chapter outline before I start writing chapter 1.  This plan is not set in stone - as I start to write the first draft I will often find the characters will take me places I hadn’t thought about in the plot outline, but it means when I sit down to write, I’ve got a good idea about what happens next, and it makes it easier to get to the end of draft 1.  Once draft 1 is done, I go back over the novel and work on as many revisions as it takes before it’s done.  I’m a big believer of ‘fixing it in the rewrite’.  It’s OK for the early drafts to be rubbish.  There’s always room to sort out those plot holes or tighten up that dialogue in the next draft.

I have a day job, and a long commute into London to get to it, so finding time to write can often be a challenge.  I find my most productive sessions are done on my NetBook, in coffee shops, before work.  Sometimes I get up at 5:30am and take the early train in to London so I can get an hour of writing in before heading to the office.  I never considered myself a morning person, and I hate setting the alarm so early, but it works for me so I stick with it.

Here are my three tagged authors, who will be picking up the baton over the next couple of weeks.  Do go and check them out.

Janie Fratz (http://janiefranz.fourfour.com/home)
Suzanne de Montigny (www.suzannedemontigny.com)
Rosemary Morris (http://www.rosemarymorris.blogspot.co.uk/

2013 in Blogging

So I’ve had a summary of activity on my blog in 2013.  And it got 2,300 views – not too shabby!

There’s no doubt that having guest bloggers attracts more traffic to my blog, so I won’t be stopping that feature any time soon.  The most commented-on posts have been from guest bloggers.

Except on 10 September, when nothing in particular was going on, the blog was viewed 53 times and apparently the post with the most hits was the Fashion Fix post from four years ago.  Not quite sure what was going on there.

Anyway, if you’re interested in more stats regarding Imaginary Friends, the link is below.

Click here to see the complete report.

Here’s to more blog activity in 2014!

Monday’s Friend: Bryan Fields

I have several MuseItUp authors lined up as guests for 2014.  I am pleased to introduce the first as today’s Monday’s Friend – Bryan Fields.  Welcome, Bryan!

SJT:  When did you first know you were destined to be a writer?

BF:  I think the first sign was a great roar in the depths, a mighty shaking of things, and the earth became as water…  no, wait, that was just the underground blast Mom got to watch at the atomic testing range in Nevada.

The first proper stories I wrote were in elementary school, so that would be the earliest point where I thought of being a writer.  It wasn’t until I started running D&D in high school that I learned there were rules and structure and technique to telling stories, and that I needed to practice them in order to become good at it.

This I did.

SJT:  Who would you cite as your influences?

BF:  Richard Bach, Charles DeLint, Anne McCaffrey, Robert Heinlein, Neil Gaiman, Andre Norton, Zenna Henderson, H. Rider Haggard, Scheherazade… I think that covers the major literary ones.

I was also heavily influenced by a number of movies from the ‘60s and ‘70s.  “The Hallelujah Trail”, “Death Race 2000”, “Kelly’s Heroes”, “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” – movies that went beyond jokes in the dialog and into the area of comedic storytelling.

The opening song to “Forum”, ‘Comedy Tonight’, is a guideline I try to keep in mind:

‘Nothing with kings, nothing with crowns

Bring on the lovers, liars and clowns

Old situations, new complications

Nothing portentous or polite

Tragedy tomorrow, comedy tonight’

SJT:  What advice would you pass on to beginner writers that you wish someone had told you when you were first starting out?

BF:  I’m going to steal one from Neil Gaiman:  “Whenever you’re not sure what to do, pretend you are someone who knows what they’re doing, and do what they would do.”

SJT:  Tell us about your new release.

BF:  LIFE WITH A FIRE-BREATHING GIRLFRIEND is a modern fantasy about a database administrator, David, and his girlfriend Rose, who is a Dragoness from a high-fantasy world.  She is spending three years on Earth, in Human form, soaking up all the love, wonder, and joy David can generate.  She needs that energy to make her children stronger and better able to survive to adulthood.  The spell which transfers that energy keeps them mentally, physically, and emotionally balanced.  They can’t fight.  Their moods, needs, and desires are all perfectly matched.  They know where each other is and how the other feels at all times.  The spell is even designed to prevent them from going crazy from living like that.

The part David didn’t count on is really what happens to him.  Up until now, he’s only pretended to be a Hero in games.  When he bonds with Rose, he becomes an actual Hero.  He missed that part of the fine print.  Of course, when you have a Hero enjoying a perfect, peaceful life, some shmuck has to come along and try to ruin it.  That’s in the fine print, too.

For David, it starts when someone murders a childhood friend of his.  The also get into a fight with their homeowners’ association, which is just rife with bad decisions all around.  Some of those bad decisions get totally out of hand, leaving David and Rose scrambling to stop a genocidal unicorn from giving Earth an extreme makeover.

SJT:  I know you’re a fellow table-top gamer.  Tell us about your best-ever character.

BF:  The character I loved playing most was in a play-by-email game.  It was a post-apocalyptic setting running on D&D 3.5 rules.  My character was Targh, an Australian cattle dog.  He levelled as a barbarian, with teeth as his only weapon.  In-game, I had to communicate by whining, scratching, barking, and occasionally grabbing someone’s sleeve and dragging them.  It was very ‘Lassie’ and ‘Rin-Tin-Tin’ where the other players were concerned.

I also ignored commands from everyone but my wife Noelle’s character, Max.  Max was Targh’s human and everyone else was one bad day from being a pile of fresh kibble and chew bones for me.

“Life am good” was Targh’s motto.  Most of my moves were about playing with kids, stalking people with food and trying to trip them, scoring free range kibble, and chasing things Max would throw.  He was a great character from a role play perspective and an absolute maniac in combat.

Yes, one of my inspirations with him was Dogmeat, from the Fallout 1 & 2 games.  Woof, baby.

SJT:  Do you have specific rituals or routines for writing?

BF:  Does making coffee and taking anti-ADHD medication count as a ritual, or would I need to add candles and chanting?

I do my best to get distractions like Facebook out of the way early, and save tasks like washing dishes or doing laundry for points when I get stuck on something.  I prefer to have music or a movie playing (it makes my ADHD happy) while I’m writing.  Too much quiet and my brain starts looking for ways to amuse itself-none of them productive.

Other kinds of preparedness: I like to have a mental storyboard of events and scenes when I start a chapter.  It helps pacing and keeps me from getting lost in dialog and exposition.

I use Scrivener to stay organized and keep track of where I am in the plot.  Great tool, worth the money.

For getting unstuck, I have a box of Storymatic cards and a steampunk tarot deck.  I don’t actually do readings with the tarot deck; I draw a card and try to apply some aspect of the symbolism to the story issue I’m having.  The Storymatic is more direct, and occasionally has some though-provoking responses.

SJT:  What do you like to do when you’re not writing?

BF:  Read, watch bad movies (I have a collection), watch a small selection of specific TV shows.  I have to stop working during Bronco games and Doctor Who, of course.  The whole family has WoW accounts, though my preferred game is Fallen Earth.  My favourite game franchise is Fallout, and I’m still hopeful that one day we’ll see an online version.

I enjoy cooking, especially outdoors.  I have a propane grill and a Char-Griller offset smoker.  Sitting out on the deck with a cold limeade and a good book while a few pounds of charcoal and hickory work their alchemy on a mess of pork ribs – that’s pretty much an ideal afternoon.  Life am good.

AUTHOR BIO – BRYAN FIELDS

By day, I’m a mild-mannered IT tech; by night, a writer who spends too much time in online games.  I grew up reading classical authors such as Verne, Burroughs, Wells, Haggard, and Lovecraft, often in conjunction with large doses of Monty Python, Wild Wild West, and Hee-Haw.  My current influences include Doctor Who, Girl Genius, and An Idiot Abroad.

I began writing professionally as a member of the content design team for the MMORPG Istaria: Chronicles of the Gifted.  My first published short stories appeared in the anthologies The Mystical Cat and Gears and Levers III in 2012.

I live in Denver with my wife Noelle and daughter Alissa.  The three of us can often be found prowling around Istaria, Wizard City, and the wilds of Azeroth.  I also make occasional side jaunts to scavenge bits of ancient technology in the radioactive ruins of the Grand Canyon Province.

Learn more about me by following my FB page: https://www.facebook.com/BryanFieldsAuthor or my Blog: http://laughingotterslair.blogspot.com/

 Excerpt from LIFE WITH A FIRE-BREATHING GIRLFRIEND:

Our street borders on a large lake with a golf course on the far side of it.  The lake isn’t big enough for power boats, but it has a nice play area and a paddle-boat rental.  Ducks and geese are common, as are groups of children.  One of our neighbors, Mary, does daycare in her home.  She lives across the street from the playground and was happy to run into us when she brought the kids over to feed the ducks.

Nine kids hurling chunks of stale hot dog bun can attract a lot of ducks.  It was only a matter of time before one of the kids pulled out a cell phone and started making a video of the feeding frenzy.  As soon as the film was running, Rose introduced the little blue hatchie we called Azul.

A sky-blue snout popped out of the water, blew spray everywhere, and snapped up a piece of bread before going back under.  A quick flash of blue scales and a stubby tail tip cutting through the water away from shore caused an immediate hush, followed by a cascade of questions.  I reassured the kids that crocodiles aren’t blue, but Mary didn’t want to take any chances.  She started pulling the kids back from the water—exactly what we didn’t want.

Rose concentrated, and Azul emerged onto a patch of matted cattails and shook herself off.  She looked at the kids, cocked her head to the side, and made a warbling noise intended to make her sound cute (and therefore harmless).  She had cream-colored chest scales, matching back fins, puppy dog-brown eyes, and an iridescent sheen to her wing membranes.  Our baby Dragon looked about as threatening as a blueberry muffin.

I pointed. “See, kids?  I told you that wasn’t a crocodile.”  Azul reinforced the point by kneading the ground with her fore claws and going onto a very feline stretch—claws spread, chest on the ground and backside in the air, wings flared out and up.

The adults in the park were staring and taking pictures, just as we wanted them to.  By the time Azul finished her yawn and plopped down on the matted cattails, half a dozen pictures were posted to social media.  One person even had the good manners to email a few pictures directly to one of the local television stations.  The adults were critical to our plan’s success, but Rose really wanted the children to be drawn in.

The kids were kind of clustered together, not sure what to do, when one boy stepped to the water’s edge.  His superhero t-shirt and boy wizard eyeglasses told me all I needed to know about the years of teasing and harassment he’d endured already, and how many more he was undoubtedly facing.  None of that mattered right now.  He sat at the water’s edge. “I knew it.” he shouted, “I knew you were real!  I knew it!”

Mary started to reach for him, but I touched her arm and shook my head.  The boy looked over his shoulder at a bigger, beefy-looking kid.  “I told you so.  That’s a dragon, and it’s real!”

I had to look away for a moment.  Merciful Creator, please make his parents as proud of him as I am.

Azul stood up, shuffled forward a few steps, and ducked down behind a patch of cattail leaves.  She peeked around the edge, then held up one foreclaw and waved at the kids.  “Heh…  Heh… Hello,” she said.  I tried not to laugh; Rose was making her voice sound like a certain blue-furred space alien who has his own TV show and an army of trigger-happy lawyers.  Azul waved again, and all the kids waved back this time.  Even a few of the adults joined in.

Two police cars pulled up, one parking so that its dashboard camera was aimed at the lake.  Rose had Azul step out so everyone got a clear view of her.  The boy wizard stood up and cupped his hands around his mouth.  “What’s your name?  What do you want us to call you?”

Azul pointed to herself. “AHHH-zhul.  Aaa-zul!  Azhul!”

One of the cops shook his head.  “Did that thing say, ‘Zuul’?”

“No, no,” I said “I think it said ‘Azul’, the Spanish word for ‘blue’.”

“Spanish, huh?”  He shook his head.  “Someone else can ask that thing for its green card.  I’m not getting near it.”  He went back to his car and started calling for animal control to come out.

Next to me, Rose shook her head.  She wouldn’t be able to maintain the illusion much longer.  I patted her hand and twirled my finger in a ‘wrap it up’ gesture.  She took a deep breath.  Azul reared back, pointed her snout up in the air, and exhaled a twenty-foot jet of flame before slipping into the lake.  With a last splash and flick of her tail, Azul vanished.  The kids cheered and jumped around all over the place, the adults replayed the footage on their cell phones, and Rose all but collapsed in my arms.

LIFE WITH A FIRE-BREATHING GIRLFRIEND is available now from the MuseItUp store and Amazon.

Best Books of 2013

As usual, over the past year I have been using Goodreads to log the books I read, and rate them using a scale of one to five stars.  About this time every year I use this to review the books I have read and which ones I have rated highest.

A book has to be pretty exceptional for me to give it five stars, but as it happens there were five books I rated five stars in 2013, so these are the books as I am citing as my best reads of the year.  Three of them are written by the same author:

Killing Orders/Bitter Medicine/Toxic Shock – Sara Paretsky.

This demonstrates why I don’t have a favourite book, I only have favourite authors.  I can never choose just one.

In 2013 I decided to re-read Sara Paretsky’s series about Chicago private eye V.I. Warshawski from the beginning.  Some of these early books I have not read in nearly 20 years, but I was reminded why Sara Paretsky remains one of my all-time favourite authors.  It takes her a little while to get into the series.  The three books listed above are numbers 3, 4 and 5 in the series respectively (the first two books I gave four stars to).  But once she does, I can find no fault.  The stories are tightly plotted, the clues are carefully and often subtly placed.  V.I. is a brash, outspoken heroine with left-wing politics and a keen social conscience.  She has no patience with arrogant mysogynistic men – who it must be said she meets a lot of – and she doesn’t care what people think.  And I love her for it.  I love her outspoken-ness, I love the way she refuses to be inimidated, I even love the way she puts people’s backs up.  I especially love that she’s a woman with no particular desire to get married or have kids (V.I.’s back story sets out that she was once a lawyer, briefly married to a man she met in law school, but that ended when he cheated on her and she has no desire to repeat the experience).

I re-read the first five books in 2013 and there are 16 – thus far – in the series.  It’s not going out on a limb too much to predict that Sara Paretsky will also feature in my ‘best books of 2014′ list.

I also realised in re-reading these books how much my own writing style is similar to Sara Paretsky’s.  The conversational style of the narrative, the brief descriptions of day to day activities that fill the character’s time between key plot points and most significantly the technique of leading characters to the bedroom and then closing the door before the sex scenes are all present in my Shara Summers series.

Anyway.  That’s enough of my fan-girl wibbling.  In brief, I am re-reading the series and finding it as wonderful now as I did the first time around.  On to the other two books I rank as best reads of 2013:

Dracula – Bram Stoker

Joyland – Stephen King

‘Dracula’ I re-read to refresh my memory ahead of the panel I was doing on Dracula vs Frankenstein at EasterCon.  What can be said about this book?  It’s a gothic horror classic, and even though it was written over a hundred years ago it still packs a punch.

‘Joyland’ is the only recently written book on my list, by another one of my all-time favourite authors.  And in my view it’s one of his best, though I would categorise it as supernatural crime rather than horror.  I did a review of this book on Goodreads which I won’t repeat – if you’re interested, you can find it here.

Goodreads also allows you to set yourself an annual challenge of the number of books you want to read in a year.  Last year I challenged myself to read 60, and managed 63.  I spend over two hours a day on public transport going to and from work, and that’s where I get most of my reading done.

I’ve decided to push the boat out a bit this year and aim to read 65 books.  That is a bit of a challenge, but I think it’s achievable.  I’m looking forward to reading more great books in 2014.

Happy New Year

(Cross-posted on the WriteClub blog)

As 2014 dawns, it’s time to take stock of the writing goals I set myself for 2013 and assess how I did.

In summary, I had two goals last year – to finish both DEAD COOL and the horror novel and get them out on sub.  Happily, I can report that I have achieved both of these goals.  In addition, DEAD COOL has been accepted and will be published this year.  The horror novel, THE WHISPERING DEATH is out on sub, but I am optimistic that I can find a publisher for it this year.

I feel I did not do so well on the self-promotion last year.  I found it a bit hard to get into pimping mode without a forthcoming release, and it is sometimes difficult to stay positive in the face of rejection.  However, with another book coming out, it’s time to get back on the horse, as it were.

I also made good progress in 2013 with the current work in progress – the 1960s crime thriller I am working on with Hubby.

With this in mind, these are my goals for 2014:

1. Find a publisher for THE WHISPERING DEATH

2.  Have at least one promotional event per month in 2014

3.  Get to the final draft of the current WIP

4.  Start the first draft of a new WIP

I begin 2014 feeling fairly positive about the writing.  Let’s hope it continues.

I wish you a Happy New Year, and whatever your own goals are for 2014, I hope you achieve them.

Gadgets

I got an iPad mini for Christmas. I am still figuring out how it works. And it has made me think about how many gadgets I actually own, and how important Internet connectivity has become to daily life.  At home I have a laptop, a NetBook, a Kindle, a PSP, a Playstation 3, a mobile phone and an iPad that all connect to my wifi.

I cannot imagine life without email, or Internet access. Whenever we go away anywhere, the first thing I do is find out how to connect to the hotel’s wifi – and whether or not it has wifi influences whether or not we choose to book it.

I also cannot imagine life without my NetBook.  This little gadget I take everywhere with me, and I do most of my writing on it.  It has become such a part of my life now that I find it difficult to write without it.  I certainly could not go back to the days of scribbling stories in pencil in the back of school exercise books, which is how I did it in my teenage years, and indeed back then could not imagine writing a first draft any other way.

The Internet has changed the world.  We can all connect with each other through cyberspace.  It has incited revolution in countries where oppressed citizens can see what life is like in other places, and collectively decide they don’t want to put up with this anymore.

It has made research a great deal easier.  In the old days, if you wanted to write a book set in, say, the French revolution, you had to go to the library and make use of the card catalogue to find books on the subject.  Now you just do a Google search.

It has made self publishing easier.  Anyone can upload a manuscript to Kindle Direct Publishing and publish a novel.  Whether or not they should is a whole other story, but I’ve already blogged about this recently so I won’t go into it again (see my post here if you want to know my views on this).

My mobile phone I have also become hugely reliant on.  I still have a paper pocket diary, but I find myself keeping track of appointments on the calendar on my mobile phone far more often than I refer to my diary.  I don’t leave the house, even briefly, without my mobile phone, just in case something happens and I need to phone for help.  In fact, the mobile phone has proved to be an even more world-changing invention than the Internet.  Just about everyone in the world has one.  We’ve been to remote villages in third world countries where people live very basic lives, but still everyone has a mobile phone.  From what I understand, the charities that work on trying to improve communications for people in poor remote villages across the world find it easier to distribute the old handsets that are thrown out to the people in these villages than to dig up the landscape in order to install cables for land lines.  There are now more mobile phones in the world than people, apparently.

Of course, technology often fails, and every time there’s a power cut, whether it be at home or at work, I am reminded how dangerous it can be to completely depend on technology.  I have more than one alarm clock set just in case the power fails in the night and the alarm fails to go off.  I back up my writing on several computers, and to Dropbox which I can access from pretty much every mobile device.  So if one computer goes kaput I can access my files from elsewhere, including battery-operated devices in case the power fails.  This is also why I have a paper address book and a paper diary – if technology fails, I don’t lose everything.

The speed at which the world has changed in the last thirty years is frightening.  But changed it has, and whether we like it or not we have to adapt to the changes.  We all have houses full of gadgets.  That’s the way things are these days. For most people in the Western world, the energy required to power these devices is taken for granted.  But what if the electricity ran out?  Permanently?  How devastating would that be for this changed world?

There’s a story in there somewhere…

 

A Home for Shara Summers

(Cross-posted on the WriteClub blog)

I’m very pleased to be able to announce that the second novel in my amateur sleuth series has found a home with MuseItUp Publishing.

The first book the series, DEATH SCENE, introduced my amateur sleuth – Canadian actress Shara Summers, summoned back to England because of a family crisis.  One of the things I wanted to explore in the series was the concept of cultural alienation.  Shara makes observations throughout about things that are different in England, compared to her home in Toronto.

It proved a tough sell.  One of the most common reason for rejection for both books was the fact that my contemporary amateur sleuth was not based in America.  I got told many times over that such things do not sell in America, and therefore there was no market for the book.  Americans like books set in America, apparently, or historical English mysteries featuring people like Miss Marple or Sherlock Holmes.

When Lyrical Press took the first book I started writing the second.  Officially titled DEAD COOL, my working title for it was “The Case of the Defenestrated Rock Star”.  Mostly because “defenestrated” is such a great word, and how often do you get the opportunity to use it in a sentence?

However, by the time LPI released DEATH SCENE, they’d stopped taking mysteries and were focusing on romance and erotica, so I knew there was no market with them for the sequel.  And so Shara Summers was adrift, without a publisher.

Not to mention that by the time I finished the third draft of the second book, I’d developed some serious insecurities about it.  You know how it goes.  It’s rubbish.  It’s full of plot holes that can’t be fixed.  Why am I deluding myself that I’m trying to be writer?  I crawled into a hole with the book and didn’t want to come out again.

Then on holiday in France a couple of years ago, I met a retired London Metropolitan Police copper who used to be on the Murder Squad, and I asked him if he would read my crime book, to pick up any glaring procedural errors.  He agreed.  When he came back to me, he told me he’d really enjoyed it.  It was a good holiday read, he said.  And he hadn’t picked up any major problems with my procedurals.

Which is exactly what I need to hear, and it gave me the confidence to finish the book.  Said retired copper will be getting a mention in the credits, but I owe him a lot more than that.

Now I am delighted that my Canadian amateur sleuth has come home to Canadian publishers.  No release date has yet been set, but it is likely to be the latter half of 2014.

I am very much looking forward to working with my new publishers, on Shara’s continuing journey.  I hope you will come along with me for the ride.