Bev Pettersen's Blog, page 22

Happy Holidays!

The Rubies are taking a short break to celebrate the season with our families, but we’ll be back in the New Year with new content and our annual Winter Writing Festival!  It starts the second week of January and runs through February to get those writing wheels turning again after the holidays – so get ready to dive into writing in 2019 and, in the mean time, we here at the Ruby Slippered Sisterhood wish you and all your loved ones a very happy, healthy, and joyous holiday season.

 

My Second Favorite Word

Like many writers, I love words, and when I started pursuing publication yes quickly became my favorite word.  Yes, I like your pages. Yes, you are a Golden Heart Finalist.  Yes, I want to represent you.  Yes, I want to publish your book.  Yes, you are number one in the kindle store.  That yes feeling is a euphoria I could ride for days, but what I didn’t realize at first was that my second favorite word would become no.

Maybe it’s just a weird thing about me, but lately I find rejections sur...

Using Holidays to Help You Promote

Happy Holidays, everyone! As authors, we are always looking for ways to promote our work in a non-in-your-face type of way. Holidays are an easy way to help you gain some personal and professional exposure. Here are a few ideas for using holidays as your promotional theme. New Years goals setting post on a blog 10 ways to woo your love on a St. Valentine’s Day FB post Sharing how the Leprechaun visits your house Easter Egg hunt on your website with a prize for the most eggs found M...

Do you believe in writer’s block?

I was on a writer’s panel last week, with authors from a mix of genres. Children’s books. Memoirs. Poetry. Romance. One of the questions the moderator asked was: Do you believe in writer’s block? If so, how do you get past it?

After the votes were counted, we had three who believed and four who didn’t. But two interesting things happened in the seven answers.

We all explained how we got past writer’s block. Those who didn’t believe were more emphatic about stating their opinion as fact.

Ge...

Building A 17th Century Costume

Have you ever wondered exactly what it feels like to wear the huge ensembles of silk and embroidery that the ladies in the English court used to don in the 17th century? I think about it often, because I write about women wearing stays and layers of draped fabric in my books.

At a reader conference this past year, I was fortunate enough to meet Victoria Vane, fabulous author and amazing creator of historically accurate costumes. After watching her creations on Facebook for months, I commissi...

Laughing in the Face of Danger Pt. II

The Hows and Whys of Using Humor to Freshen your Prose, Strengthen your Story and Deepen your Characterization. Oh, and hook your reader!

DRAMA APPEALS TO EMOTION, WHEREAS COMEDY APPEALS TO THE INTELLECT In LAUGHING IN THE FACE OF DANGER PT I, we talked about the key principles of comedy and how to incorporate them into your work. In Part II, we are going to discuss WHY you should do that very thing. (No, really, you should.) COMEDY IS TRAGEDY HAPPENING TO SOMEONE ELSE I know what you’...

Anniversaries – Powerful in Life, Powerful in Books

We all experience anniversaries, dates that come around every year. In fact, we are born with one! Our birthday. Anniversaries fall into two main categories: celebratory and remembrance. Celebratory anniversaries are easy to spot: birthdays, wedding anniversaries, adoption days, first kiss date, day your book releases… Remembrance anniversaries are trickier. We’ve all had days we don’t want to ever relive, and yet we don’t necessarily want to forget them. When I was diagnosed with cancer on A...

Thankful Beyond the Usual

Tomorrow’s the day. Many of us in the US have been rushing around gathering food, packing it away in every little inch of our over-worked refrigerators. Others of us have been filling suitcases and making travel arrangements, bravely venturing out on the road during the busiest travel-time of the year. We find ourselves frantic, exhausted, and downright ornery. And yet this is also a time when we are supposed to be thankful. We are expected to have something to write on a paper leaf to read...

The Ingredients of a Christmas Romance

Romances have often been accused of being formulaic, and Christmas romances?  Oh baby, those might be the most formulaic of all – but I still devour them every holiday season, both in book form and on the Hallmark Countdown to Christmas.  And I am certainly not the only one.  Those suckers are successful because they are satisfying.  And this has me thinking that it isn’t a formula for a satisfying romance that we’re talking about.  It’s a recipe.  

No one ever accuses an excellent souffle of...

Laughing in the Face of Danger Pt. I

KEY PRINCIPLES OF COMEDY

“Make it dark, make it grim, make it tough, but then, for the love of God, tell a joke.”

—Joss Whedon

Comedy, like romance, is an art form that is oft maligned. And while most comedy has the advantage of added elements like facial expression, voice intonation, timing, and body language, comedy in the written word has no such luxury. In other words, comedic writing is not for the faint of heart. The cool thing about writing comedy, however, is that there are no rules...