Bev Pettersen's Blog, page 102

Superstitions: Find a Penny, Pick It Up

Hurray! Today is the book birthday of CURSED BY LOVE, the second book in my Good Riders Series. While writing this book, I studied long lists of good luck/bad luck superstitions. And believe me, there are some odd ones out there.

In CURSED BY LOVE, the heroine, Molly Webber, is a superstitious schoolteacher who doesn’t walk under ladders or open umbrellas in the house. She wears numerous lucky charms on a bracelet, visits fortune-tellers, and she believes the piece of ancient Chinese erotica s...

Keep It Up!

It’s November 12th which means folks are nearly halfway through NANO. For those of you racing toward your 50,000 word goal, I salute you and wish you continued success and a productive, daily word count.

For those who have set different goals for the month, I salute you as well. We all write at our own pace and for some, NANO invigorates. For others, the thought of writing in that fashion stifles.

Regardless of how you feel about the “month o’ words” that is NaNoWriMo, there’s something that NA...

Just Say “No” to NaNoWriMo: In Defense of Writing Slowly

Two books and a novella.

That’s what I remembered being “normal,” back in 2011, before my son was born. It felt like a lot, but as an unpublished author, I didn’t think I had much say in the matter. Swim with the big fish or get left in the shoals. And before my baby was born, I could keep up. I mean, I wasn’t writing the sort of books that I absolutely love to read, but doing so would have required a much lengthier research period, and I didn’t feel like that was possible. Not with the pressu...

To Buy or Not to Buy: That is the Question

Partial Nora Roberts Collection

To massacre a phrase from Hamlet’s Soliloquy beyond all earthly recognition, have you ever thought about the factors that influence you to buy a book?

This blog post started off as an analysis of authors whose work I pre-order and auto-buy, but then, looking at my Amazon Cart and seeing so few books there , I started thinking about the topic in greater depth. What alchemic combination of author, genre, length, format, price point, and release timing makes me buy...

The Series Addiction

I love reading books in series. Nalini Singh’s Psi/Changelings, Julia Quinn’s Bridgertons, Julie James’s interlocked contemporaries – I will wait in line to snag the next book in a series I love. And it looks like I’m not alone.

Conventional wisdom in the world of self-publishing is that your books MUST be in series. Some of the Rubies recently went to writing conferences (please shout out in the comments with your stories!) and came back telling tales of how books 4 and 5 of a series are when...

It’s a Mystery.

As most of you know, I write romance–romantic comedy to be precise. But…I’ve been cheating on my first love, romance, for a while now. That’s right, I’m considering genre-hopping to mystery. There I admitted it. Hello, my name is Katie Graykowski and I am a mystery writer. OR at least I think I am. You be the judge. Here is the first chapter of my WIP, Kindergarten Killer. I warn you, it’s LONG, but if you can brave the grammar issues and my quirky sense of humor, I’d love your vote on whethe...

Spice Up the Romance

This is a hectic time of year. After September, it’s a slippery slope right into the winter holidays. So we often forget that most important someone in our lives. Taking the time to remember why and how you love someone is incredibly important and can also be lots of fun!

Now I know you know (my eyebrows raised as I take on a well-meaning lecture pose) that the heroes in all the books you read and/or write are not the type of guys you see on the street or in the Lazy Boy next to you in the fam...

Happily Ever After. And After. And After.

The idea for this blog came to me as I was reading a book by my newest favorite romance author. This was her fourth book, and just as awesome as the first three. But one thing that stuck out for me in the not-so-awesome category was the guest appearances by couples from books 1-3. They didn’t have any reason to be in the story, but that didn’t stop them from strolling onto the page for a minute or two to assure the reader that—yes—they were still blissfully happy together.

Now, granted, I may...

What Makes You Weird?

I have a clear memory from when I was nine or ten years old of being in theback seatof a carand looking over to my right. There was a man driving next to us, and he was just staring straight ahead of himself, not looking at me, not doing anything at all but waiting for the light to turn green. But he didn’t look bored. He looked preoccupied. He was thinking about something, but I would never know what it was. I would never know this man. He would never know me. I didn’t matter to him.

It struc...

It’s Time to NaNo!!!

Warm up those keyboard fingers, writers, it’s TIME TO NANO!!!
It’s all I can do today to keep from bouncing up and down and hugging every stranger I see. And it’s not even because I’m amped up on Halloween candy (though, not in the least surprisingly, I am).
Nope, I’m as excited as a twelve-year-old on a rollercoaster because NANOWRIMO STARTS TOMORROW!!!! (If for some reason you’re new to NaNoWriMo—the yearly epic international challenge to write 50,000 words of a novel in 30 days–bop over to t...