Florence Witkop's Blog, page 47

A VERY BLACK CAT

 

 A Very Black Cat!

It’s done, sent to the publishers, and is now on Amazon!

I’m talking about my latest novel, of course, A Very Black Cat, and you can see the black cat on the fence if you look between the hero and heroine on the book cover. (Nice cover,  Cynthia! Thanks!)

Here’s the link to Amazon to check it out for yourself.

So what’s it about? It’s the second in the Johns Falls series of clean, wholesome romances and here’s the back cover blurb:

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Welcome to Johns Falls, Minnesota, where everyone knows everything about everybody, often before they know it themselves.

So it’s not surprising that two people who are falling in love are the last to know, even though everyone’s talking about their romance and asking them personally for the lurid, juicy details. (Of which there aren’t any because this is a clean, fun romance.)

But for the lovers to deny there’s a romance even after being told straight out that they are in love? That’s beyond belief.

Meet Becky, dedicated small-town career girl following her pre-determined course to be the best bookkeeper in the area and now, with the blessings of her boss and all-around nice guy Tobias Whittaker, she’ll also be a genuine business consultant with a framed diploma on the wall as soon as she finishes an online course that she’ll fail without help from someone who understands the nuances of the people side of small town businesses.

Enter Jackson, hunky, former football jock and newish, charismatic owner of the lumberyard in town whose charm can convince the must obstinate customer to buy something, whether that customer knew he wanted it or not, and whose boyish smile can subdue even the most stubborn heart but who can’t keep his books straight no matter how hard he tries.

Add one small, black cat with a mind of its own into the mix that’s not about to watch his two favorite people live without each other one second longer than necessary.

Then, along with the entire town of Johns Falls, Minnesota, sit back and enjoy the action.

Sound like something you’d like to read? Again, here’s the link to Amazon. And reviews are always appreciated!

 

Should I plan the novel or just start writing?

 Depends ——-

There are two kinds of writers of novels:

‘Pantsers’ write by the seat of their pants. They just sit down and start writing. They normally end up doing a whole lot of revision and rewriting and, occasionally, even changing the thrust of the story, but they say this method allows their mind free rein and results in a better product.

‘Plotters’ outline their novel and describe their characters and often describe and research the setting before beginning. They are comfortable doing this because they know who the story is about, where it’s going, how it’s going to get there, and why they are writing it in the first place. They usually spend less time changing and rewriting but that’s balanced by the extra time they put in before beginning.

So it just depends on which kind of writer you are.

I started out being a ‘pantser’ and ended up being a ‘plotter’ when I realized I was writing pages and pages of beautifully worded fluff that said nothing and went nowhere.

Do authors hijack other’s ideas due to their better narrative?

This is an interesting question because of the way it’s worded.

Authors hijack each other’s ideas all the time. Just as artists hijack each other’s ideas all the time and all creative types hijack everyone else’s ideas all the time.

 

The thing is, they hijack the IDEAS but they don’t hijack the way the idea has been presented. If they do so, it’s called plagiarism and it’s illegal.

What they do is use the idea that someone else had and then spin that idea into something else that is uniquely theirs and that is often unrecognizable as the original idea. This makes perfect sense because that original idea has usually changed so much that by the time it’s presented to the public it actually is a new idea entirely.

Because one way creativity grows is by rubbing against other creativity and the greater the friction the greater the creativity.

What is your motivation for writing?

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My original motivation for writing was to earn a paycheck from home doing something I enjoyed. And it worked for many years. Then Amazon turned the bricks and mortar publishing industry on its head and the magazines I wrote for went belly up and I found myself without that paycheck.

 

I tried other means of making money writing. Ghostwriting. Book doctoring. Editing. Etc. They all brought in some money and a lot of headaches. Did you know that it’s easy to lose money doing those things? Very easy! And it’s hard work. So I decided I didn’t want to work my butt off to lose money.

So I found a publisher and started writing novels and I enjoy it greatly. Only problem is that I also must do the marketing and I suck at marketing.

But I’ve found that I want to continue writing whether I get that paycheck or not. Not because I have some fundamental, gut-deep urge to write because I don’t and never did. Nor because I must write or die because I can do many other things and be happy, thank you very much.

Rather I find I wish to continue because I’ve learned a lot about the craft and art of writing during the many years I’ve been at it and I find that I wish to continue to use those skills until they begin to wane. (Which, at my age, could be any day.)

I know how to put a story together. How to create viable characters. How to create a character arc that works. How to both create and describe a setting without the description intruding on the pace of the story. I know how to pace for best effect. I know how to do all the things that, put together, make up a decent story.

In other words, I know how to write and, darn it, I like doing something that I’m good at!

THE BEST THING SINCE SLICED BREAD

“It’s the best thing since sliced bread.”

Everyone knows that the standard of greatness against which all great things are measured is sliced bread.

What you probably didn’t know (unless you live in Northwest Missouri) is that Missouri is the home of sliced bread. I’m not making this up! Of course, people have been cutting bread into slices forever, but the first time you could buy a loaf of bread that was already sliced was 90 years ago, in a small town called Chillicothe, just thirty minutes down the road from Hamilton. That’s where Otto Frederick Rohwedder invented the first commercial bread slicing machine.

I really am grateful to Otto’s bread-slicing machine for making our lives a little easier. It allows for doing all sorts of other things besides slicing bread. Like writing clean, small-town, chick-lit romances, which is a fun thing to do and are fun books to read. No ‘big problems’ that will ruin lives unless they are solved. No horrid, dark monsters waiting in the wings to wreck everything unless they are defeated. Just nice people falling in love in wonderful, beautiful places and living happily ever after.

At least I hope they live happily ever after.

I write their stories so that they can do so.

I assume they do.

WHY WE WRITE

Did you know?

Written language was invented independently by the Egyptians, Sumerians, Chinese, and Mayans.

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Which just goes to show that people from many cultures in widely differing parts of the world have felt compelled to write for a very long time.

Including me, though I never realized that writing was a compulsion until I reached a place in my life when it wasn’t required to bring in a check, but rather was something I did ‘just because.’

Because I knew how to put a story together and how to create viable characters and how to weave words together to say something intelligible.

And so I still do it, even though I’ve reached the age of retirement. (Or passed it years ago.)

But that’s me and I’m not everyone and there are as many reasons why writers write as there are writers sitting at their laptops – or scribbling in their journals – or dictating into their speech recognition software gadgets.

So now you know my reason for writing.

What’s yours?

 

 

Meet Brandi Boddie

MEET BRANDI BODDIE, AUTHOR OF CONTEMPORARY AND HISTORICAL ROMANCES, ONE OF EVERYONE’S FAVORITE FORGET ME NOT ROMANCE AUTHORS, AND ALL-AROUND TALENTED PERSON

Okay, I admit it. They are all my favorite authors. But Brandi Boddi has some pretty impressive credentials in more than one area of expertise. So, though I love showcasing all kinds of authors, Brandi Boddie is one of the easiest ever because she’s so talented in so many areas.

She writes historical and contemporary romance. She holds a juris doctorate from Howard University School of Law and a bachelor’s degree in political science from Youngstown State University. She lives in Texas with her husband and two rambunctious canines who aspire to be food critics. When she’s not writing or playing dress up in Victorian/steampunk/1940s garb, you can find her swing dancing or getting her daily fill of antioxidants through coffee and dark chocolate.

Check out these Forget Me Not Romances. If you like historical romance I doubt you’ll be able to resist reading them. I couldn’t, and I freely admit that I loved, loved, loved Across the Miles.

 

Deadwood, Dakota Territory, 1879 — Phoebe Riley is an agent with the Orphan’s Aid Society in New York. When an assignment takes her to Dakota Territory, she discovers that Micah, one of the children, has gone missing. She searches for him in Deadwood, a gold rush town with a reputation for debauchery. More problems arise when the railroad shuts down. Now stranded, she must find a way to provide for herself and Micah until they can safely travel back East.

When general store owner Blane Desmond comes to Phoebe’s aid, he quickly learns just how determined she is. But she doesn’t see the dangers facing her, including a notorious outlaw gang on the loose. Can Blane put aside his desire for revenge in order to protect her, and find peace and love at last? AMAZON

A dying town populated by miners eager to settle down. . .but not a single marriageable woman lives in Angel Vale, Wyoming. The women of Merville, Maine, have lost too many men to the Civil War and to the sea. When the Ladies Aid Society receives the request for mail order brides, eleven matches are made. Enjoy the first six novellas in the collection by Darlene Franklin, Susan Page Davis, Cynthia Hickey, Brandi Boddie, Jennifer AlLee, and Teresa Ives Lilly. BUY NOW

 

SPRING IS HERE! ENJOY!

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SPRING IS HERE! ENJOY!

Spring comes to the USA in increments.

So how do you know when spring has begun? There is a way. It’s the appearance of the first tiny leaves on the trees, or the first crocus plants peeping through the snow. The Spring Leaf Index is an official measure of these early season events that you can find in plants as well as the experts.

Did you know you can track the progression of spring across the country? And that over-the-road truckers say one nice thing about their job is that they can follow spring and the flowering shrubs and trees as it moves from south to north and they travel along with it?

I know this because my husband was an over-the-road trucker at one time in our lives and early one spring he asked me to go with him. For a special reason. I couldn’t imagine what that reason was until we ended up in the South and started north once more.

He’d checked his route and knew that we’d be going through some of the loveliest country imaginable. I watched forsythia and other wildflowers and shrubs blooming from South to North and he told me in advance what I’d be seeing next because he’d seen spring arrive before on previous trips.

I’ll never forget that trip following spring as it made its way north and I’ve watched for it in my own area ever since.

I think that some day I’ll write a story about spring. Maybe make spring a character. It’s so full of life and promise that it would make a great character.

Can we change the order of writing the sections?

Writers can and do write in any order they feel like writing.

Most writers who choose to skip around and write sections out of sequence make sure that they first outline the complete work so they won’t be writing scenes that later must be eliminated or changed because they don’t fit.

They are more likely to be changed (instead of eliminated) because of changes in the story that the author didn’t anticipate when making the outline.

I once story-doctored a wonderful science fiction book that had sections that were moved all over the place even after the entire book was written and it worked for that book because they could be moved without affecting the story itself.

So go for it. Just make sure you don’t spin your wheels unnecessarily.

Back cover blurb for ‘A Very Black Cat’

Here it is, a different kind of back cover blurb that focuses on the town first and only gets to the main characters and the story halfway through.

—————————————————————————————————————————————–

Welcome to Johns Falls, the small town in the northern Minnesota wilderness where everyone knows everything about everybody, often before they know it themselves.

So it’s not surprising that the two people busily falling in love are the last to know, even when they are the very lovers everyone’s talking about and asking for the lurid, juicy details. (Of which there aren’t any because this is a clean, fun romance.)

But for the lovers to deny they are in love when they are told straight out? That’s a tad far-fetched, even for Johns Falls.

So meet Becky, dedicated small-town career gal following her pre-determined course to be the best bookkeeper in the area and now, with the blessings of her boss and all-around nice guy Tobias Whittaker, a genuine business consultant with a framed diploma on the wall as soon as she finishes an online course that she’ll fail without help from someone who understands the nuances of the people side of small town businesses.

Also meet Jackson, the hunky, former football jock and newish, charismatic owner of the lumberyard in town whose charm can convince the must obstinate customer to buy something, whether that customer knew he wanted it or not, and whose boyish smile can subdue even the most stubborn heart but who can’t keep his books straight no matter how hard he tries.

Add one small, black cat with a mind of its own into the mix that’s not content to watch his two favorite people live without each other one second longer than necessary.

Put them all together and watch what happens, along with the entire town of Johns Falls, Minnesota

 

So what do you think? Will it fly? Should I make it official? Or do you suggest any changes or eliminating it altogether and replacing it with a more traditional type blurb? Let me know, I’m flying blind here!