Ute Carbone's Blog, page 15

#8Sunday Opening Lines--Dancing in the White Room #amwriting

Welcome to Weekend Writing Warriors, the blog hop where writers post eight to ten lines of their work. Over the past weeks, I've been posting the opening of my books. 
Dancing in the White Room is a book set in winter and centered around skiing. Since I'm writing this post on the hottest day of the year so far,  snow seems a very distant thing. But, then again, maybe a reminder of cooler temperatures is just what's needed. 
In the book, Mallory must decide if her relationship with PD Bell is worth fighting for. It begins with a fight--the challenge here is to show two people who care about each other, but are having some real trouble in figuring things out. The alarm goes off at four-thirty, and I stare at the skylight of our sleeping loft. Bell
bangs on the clock to keep it from singing out again. I turn my back and nestle under the
blankets. It’s almost March and it shouldn’t be as cold as it is—five below last night according to
the thermometer propped outside the kitchen window. The temperature inside’s not much
warmer. Bell would probably say I’m the one causing the freeze. We spent the past few days
fighting. I did my share of pleading and cursing. I refused to help him pack his gear.Read more about Dancing in the White RoomFind your next great read! Check out all the authors at Weekend Writing WarriorsClickto set custom HTML

#8Sunday--Opening Lines The P-Town Queen #RomCom

Welcome back, Sunday eighters. I'm doing a series of my opening lines, since openings are what will get the reader to keep on reading. I'm featuring one of my favorite openings today, the first lines of The P-Town Queen, a romantic comedy featuring a woman who is trying to fix her career as a shark researcher and a guy who is running from the mob. They meet in Provincetown Massachusetts and the rest is, as they say comedy. 
The opening began as a bit of joke, as I'd read somewhere you ought to begin a story with a bang. So I did--


I did not blow up the Mona Lisa. Not only did I not blow up the Mona Lisa—an old leaker of a boat whose blowing up could be construed as a favor to the aptly named Rusty Cook—I did not blow up any part of Rusty’s marina. My brothers will, of course, say otherwise, they had quite the laugh at my expense over coffee at Ella’s Place.
Rusty had been on the lookout for a boat for me. It had taken a lot of gumption and crow-eating to get to a place where I could consider buying a boat-- I needed a cheap one, because God only knew how much money I’d be able to squeeze out of the Massachusetts Bay Commission via the research grant proposal I’d spent three long months laboring to produce. 
The head of the commission was Ned Anderson. Ned, a brilliant shark researcher in his own right, had tumbled a long way: to full time administrator of a bullshit state commission. Though to hear Ned say it, it wasn’t a tumble but a reward for all the years he’d spent roughing it on a California channel island—an island that only had electricity every other day— in order to unlock the mystery of white shark feeding behavior. I had spent five years on that island with Ned. We were married at the time.More about The P-Town QueenFind your next great read! Click the Weekend Writing Warriors button for more great snippets. 

In the Garret --Second Hand Love

I've finally gotten back down into nuts and bolts writing.  The actual work of creating a new book is why I keep this writing gig, so these days I'm pretty happy to be sitting in the garret and dreaming up a story. I've been working on a romantic comedy, tentatively called "Second Hand Love', which takes place in the same 'world' as the book I recently finished, called "Georgette Alden Starts Over". Georgette and the main character of the new book, Zoe Markham, don't know each other, but Zoe has met Georgette's friend and neighbor, Peggy, because Peggy has begun dating Zoe's grandfather, Kent (who also plays a part in Georgette's story). 
It's fun having cross over characters and the scene I've just finished features Peggy and Zoe. Peggy and Kent are having some trouble and Zoe is trying to get them back together. Here's a peek--(still in rough form)


Peggy was sitting by herself, staring into her cup in a way that made me wonder if tea leaves really could predict the future. She glanced up when I walked in and judging by the way she sat on the edge of the chair, I figured she'd picked a spot near the door so she could run out quickly if she needed to.  

The first thing she said to me after I'd gotten my coffee and sat down across from her was "I think this is a terrible idea."

"Why?" I concentrated on stirring sugar into my coffee. It was a dumb question, I already knew the answer.

"Did you want to interview me for one of those blogs? You want to write one about me and Kent?"

This wasn't something I had even considered and the question caught me so far off guard that I stopped stirring and stared at her. "I have plenty of  stories to pick from, so no I wasn't planning on writing about you."

Peggy sat back in the chair. "Well, good." Maybe she wouldn't run out after all. 

"It's just..." I wanted to choose my words carefully, but there wasn't any careful way to say it. "Grandpa sounded miserable and he was so happy with you. I don't understand why you'd take a break."

#8Sunday Opening Lines: Afterglow #Romantic Comedy

Since it's important to get the reader into the story fairly quickly, a good opening line is essential. Afterglow is a romantic comedy featuring a heroine of a certain age, a kind of book sometimes called hen lit, which is a term I'm not particularly fond of, so lets just call it a funny story about a woman named India, whose life has gone along a predictable path up until now, when it hit the skids. As the book opens, she's left her husband of thirty one years and she's feeling a bit out of sorts (to say the least).  

My first affair with Cherry Garcia lasted nearly three weeks. It ended when my best friend, Eva, threw a shoe at my head. My Reebok sneaker to be exact. “Enough,” said Eva from the bedroom door. “You cannot wallow forever. Besides which, I am getting very
tired of walking alone. I’ve started talking to myself, for God's sake. I’ve started talking to the dogs along the way.” She raised her arms like a conductor ready to strike up the band. “Get your hiney downstairs in five minutes or I will dress you myself.”More About AfterglowFind your next great read! Visit Weekend Writing Warriors for more Sunday Snippets

#8Sunday: Opening Lines--Searching for Superman

Welcome to another Weekend Warriors Sunday. I'm continuing my opening lines series with another eight from the start of Searching for Superman. The book is a romantic comedy with the emphasis on sweet romance, as you'll see by the start.



If the perfect man existed, why did he keep eluding her?
Stephanie Holbrook felt a yearning for romance as she watched the couple tucked into the corner of the Starbucks in which she and her sister, Liz, sat with their coffee. The couple had their heads together, his knee touching against hers, the man dipping his finger into the foam of his drink and holding it out so the woman could lick it off. They might as well have held a sign that said, ‘We’re crazy about each other.’
“You haven’t heard three words I’ve said.” Liz brought Stephanie back from her reverie while rocking Max’s stroller with her foot.
Stephanie smiled at her sister. “Sure I have. Sophie’s birthday party.”Add to GoodReadsDiscover a great new read! Click the weekend writing warriors button for more snippets

#8Sunday Opening Lines--Confessions of the Sausage Queen

Over the next few weeks, I'm going to feature the openings of my romantic comedies.  Confessions of the Sausage Queen isn't so much a romantic comedy as it is chick lit. Then again, it isn't really chick lit either. The main character, Mandy, isn't much interested in shoes, though she does take a great interest in saving the town's sausage factory and the jobs of the folks who work there. She's not interested in getting a man either, she's already got Randy, her on-again off-again husband, it's more a question of not quite knowing what to do with him.  If I had to file it into a genre, I guess I'd go with crazy fun book. That's a category, isn't it?



Click cover for more about this bookYou might think driving all the way out to Over’s Pond, to the little bend where Randy kept the Airstream parked, somewhat illegally, on Big Bill Ludowski’s land, was overkill. It was eight miles out of town. On that day, of all days, I didn’t have eight miles to spare. Besides which, Randy, despite the transient look of an Airstream with a chemical toilet, was pretty much a permanent fixture in my life. He had a cell phone. A cell phone whose number was on my speed dial as three, one being Gran Lila’s house and two
being Sammy’s school. Given all this, you’d no doubt think driving all the way up an old dirt road to remind Randy to pick up Sammy from kindergarten was overkill. You could have just called, you are probably inclined to say. Which is, pretty much word-for-word, exactly what Randy said. Buy at Amazon Discover a great new read!
Click button for more snippets

#8Sunday Opening Lines--The Whisper of Time

I'm continuing to feature the opening lines of my books today with the first eight lines of The Whisper of Time. This novella is the story of Gwynn Powell, a woman who buys a farm in the Green Mountains of Vermont and gets a lot more than she bargained for.

It figured that I would get lost. Kyle was always telling me I had a terrible sense of direction. “Turn left,” I would say, and he would answer “Which left, Gwynn, yours or mine?” I used to think everything Kyle said was charming.
I’d since found out that Kyle, like GPS, had a limited range. Out here, in the middle of Vermont farm country, my GPS had stopped functioning. A signal kept insisting the phone was searching for a satellite, but it was becoming pretty clear that the satellite was nowhere to be found. It was hiding, perhaps, from the snippy woman’s voice that commanded me to turn left when I wanted to turn right.
Luckily, the real estate agent had given me directions. I’d scribbled them down on the back of an envelope and was now trying to decode them.When fate offers Gwynn Powell a chance to start over, she jumps at the opportunity. Laid off and living with a husband whose gambling problem has eaten through a good part of their savings, Gwynn buys a farmhouse sight unseen, leaving both her marriage and her old home behind.

But fate has more in mind for Gwynn than just a new home. The farmhouse, tucked away in the Green Mountains of Vermont where even GPS can’t find it, is also a step back in time. And Slate Peck, the farm’s caretaker and part owner, is tied to Gwynn’s destiny in ways she never expected.  
For more great #8 Sunday Snippets, please visit http://www.wewriwa.com/

#8Sunday Opening Lines--The Tender Bonds

Opening lines, the very first part of a story, are crucial to setting the tone and pulling the reader into the story. Over the next few weeks, I'm going to share the first eight to ten sentences of my books with you.  I hope you enjoy them. I'm starting today with my new release. The Tender Bonds is a story about going back to reconcile the pawhen she was a child.st in order to move on into the future. Patty's journey begins with the discovery of letters from a father she thought had abandoned her when she was a child.  



My Aunt Ruby resurrected my father the month after she died. She didn’t do it on purpose. Given a choice, Ruby would not have given such a gift to a man she despised. And she must have despised him. How else could she have kept a secret that would have changed my life had I known? That did, in fact, end up changing my life? No, given a choice, it’s far more likely my aunt would have chosen my mother, who had died a few years earlier, for resurrection. Given a choice, I would have done the sameRead More about The Tender Bonds Be sure to visit Weekend Writing Warriors for more great Sunday snippets

#FridayFlashback--I Live in my Own Little World

Over the past few years, I've done quite a bit of guest blogging and I was a regular blogger at The Writer's Vineyard. While looking over some of these old blog posts the other day, I thought it might be fun to republish them here at the Garret and so I'm beginning a new feature called Friday Flashback.
This inaugural installment was first published at The Writer's Vineyard back in 2013.

Time Out I have a t-shirt the reads “I live in my own little world. It’s okay, they know me there.” It’s meant to be funny, but there’s a lot of truth in the statement.

I love spending time in the worlds I create. A lot of writers feel the same way. One of my favorite authors once thanked his wife and daughters for allowing him to spend so much time with his imaginary family while he was writing his novel.

Creating a fictional world is like living in an alternate universe. One of the things I’ve learned as a writer is that I need to honor the time spent in made up words with made up people. The more time I spend in the little world of my creation, the more real I  can make it for the reader.

This can be difficult in today’s face-paced on-line tuned-in world. It’s easy to get caught up in reading tweets and status updates and e-mails. These things are important to a working writer. Equally important is shutting the door and letting yourself dream.

I have to remind myself that staring out the window is part of the job. To imagine is what I do, and the better I imagine the more deeply human the characters that come from imagining. If I don’t honor time out for imagining, I’m left feeling anxious and bereft. I’m learning to listen to the signals. I’m learning to carve out time each day to spend in my own little world. After all, they know me there.

In the Garret-- Polishing Georgette

Does the title sound funny? It did to me, because it brought up a picture of me with a cloth buffing a woman named Georgette, who, for some reason I will leave to the psychoanalysts to figure out, is dressed up like 3CPO in my imagination. To clarify, I'm polishing a book, a romantic comedy, called Georgette Alden Starts Over. It's the story of a woman named, as you might have guessed from the title, Georgette Alden, who has played the same character on the daytime drama Our Time Tomorrow for thirty years. When the character is killed off, Georgette doesn't know what to do with herself and she needs to, as you might have guessed from the title, restart and reshape her life. 
I'm having a lot of fun hanging out with my character. She's very dramatic, has a lot of energy, and is more self assured than I'll ever be. I'm hoping to find her a good home, and, someday, a place on my shelf of published books. Wish me luck.