Nicole Helm's Blog, page 12
July 29, 2012
Sunday Six: Hitman
One of my favorite parts of writing All’s Fair in Love and Politics was writing Doug and Abby’s bantering back and forth before they really trust each other. Here’s a Sunday six of that banter.
“What are you working on there?”
“Oh, every time you make me mad I add it to this little list,” she said. “Once you hit one hundred, I hire a hit man.”
She said it with such a complete straight face he was almost obliged to believe her. If she could dish it out, so could he. “Can’t stop thinking about me, huh?”
Filed under: All's Fair in Love and Politics, excerpts, six sentence sunday
July 25, 2012
What I’m Up To: Homebody Needs Home
I’ve been on a crazy social schedule the past week, which is pretty unusual for me. I’m a hermit homebody at heart and the parade of things-to-do were fun, but now I’m glad to be home ALL day today. My iPad and I need some quality time together.
All of this go-go-go has meant I haven’t gotten as much written as I was hoping, but I should hit the halfway point on my WIP today. My goal was to have it done by the end of July, but the middle has given me a lot of problems. My new goal is to have it finished before my first round of edits for Seven Night Stand hit (Septemberish). That should give me time to finish, break, reread/revise.
I have a new series idea brewing that I’d love to start on, but my Kansan pilots and their Hollywood heroines have to take precedence.
Filed under: life, What I'm Up To
July 23, 2012
Monday Weird
These are the kinds of emails I get from my Mom:
—-
To: Nicole
Subject: Welcome to the B & B…..such a lovely place…….such a lovely face
You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave……….because the dolls won’t let you…………..they are watching you!…………..their eyes are following you……….
—-
It’s no wonder I have a crazy imagination.
Filed under: life
July 22, 2012
Six Sunday: Staying on the Farm
I realized I haven’t posted anything much from my first book that came out back in May, so for the next couple Sundays I’ll be sharing sixes from All’s Fair in Love and Politics.
I’ve been talking a bit about farmers and flyover states the past two weeks, so it seems fitting. Though Doug isn’t a farmer, he was raised on a farm (which was what this snippet refers to) and the whole story is set in my home state of Iowa.
***
“Well, what do you know about it?” she demanded
Doug tapped his thumb on the laptop as it booted up, tried to keep focused, but it was a losing battle. What did he know about it? He knew the feel of dirt under his fingernails and how to jury-rig a tractor with wire and string. He knew the money spent never quite equaled the money earned. Oh, he knew quite a lot about family farming, sustainable agriculture—including that no amount of genes could make it for him.
***
Check out the other Sunday Sixers here.
Filed under: All's Fair in Love and Politics, excerpts, six sentence sunday
July 20, 2012
Friday Reads: Weirdly Awesome?
Last weekend I read a book by a new-to-me author. I read it because of two things and two things only. 1. Iowa. 2. Hero is a farmer.
Check and mate.
It has a suspense plot in there with a dead ex-wife, something that I would normally avoid, but, did I mention the hero is a farmer? In IOWA.
(I may or may not have mentioned it here, but the very first romance I wrote and finished featured a hero who was an Iowan farmer).
Anyway, I ended up reading American Dreamer by Theresa Weir in two days. It’s a weird book. There were quite a few moments where I was truly baffled. Not like, this book is so stupid baffled, more like am I really reading this baffled. But there were also some really beautiful moments, and a great love story at the very central of everything else that was kind of weird.
There are definitely some “this would never happen” moments, but I overlooked them because the hero and heroine felt realistically drawn and I cared about their relationship and how they helped each other and grew together.
Filed under: Friday Reads
July 18, 2012
What I’m Up To: Groovin’
I am not an early bird. I have never been much of a morning person. I’d like to be, but no matter what time I go to bed, no matter how little sleep I’ve gotten, it’s hard for me to actually fall asleep any time before eleven at night.
That being said, Baby is very much an early bird. 5am? All smiles and cooing! Some days, it’s 4am. One unfortunate day last week it was 3:30am. Baby likes his mornings.
I’m trying to make this work for me, by staying up even when he goes back to sleep and getting some writing in.
This has required me to adopt two things:
1. Coffee (Of course, by the time I’m done with it the coffee has sugar, cocoa powder, and milk in it).
2. Listening to a lot of music. Music gets me moving and that helps me wake up and feel less like a zombie. My song of choice this week is “Country Man” by Luke Bryan because how can you resist a song that says, “I can grow my own groceries and salt cure a ham”?
Filed under: What I'm Up To, writing
July 16, 2012
Fly Over States
One of my favorite songs right now is “Fly Over States” by Jason Aldean. I love the lyrics and the message. Not so much that LA or NYC is bad, I am just a fly over states kind of girl. I’ve grown up in the Midwest and I really like setting my stories here.
It’s what I know. It’s a beautiful landscape. Some people find beauty in skyscrapers and traffic, and sometimes I like that too. But, for me, you really can’t beat a farm midsummer, a cottonwood tree along a creek, a sunset of color over flat, green land.
I was thinking about doing a cowboy book next, but then we went apple picking in a small river town in Illinois and my next idea took root. A series about three sisters and the small businesses they run in a small Mississippi River town.
Of course, I have to finish my Kansan pilot and his movie star heroine first.
Filed under: life, writing
July 15, 2012
6 Sunday: Banter
My six sentences this Sunday are from a WIP that’s been neglected the past few weeks as I worked on revisions. I love pairing this straight-laced hero with my live-life-to-the-fullest heroine.
—
“You do realize I am older than both of you. That penis between your legs doesn’t magically make men the protector of all female kind.”
“No, but perhaps it gives us an illusion of such.”
She blinked at him. “Was that a joke?”
“Perhaps.”
—
Check out the other participants at Six Sentence Sunday
Filed under: excerpts, six sentence sunday, writing
July 13, 2012
Friday Reads: Flawed Heroines FTW
I’ve talked (perhaps ad naseum) about tough heroines on my blog. How I like to write them, read them. How hard they are to write. So on, so forth.
So, it should probably come as no surprise that I loved Can’t Buy Me Love by Molly O’Keefe. I read a Superromance of O’Keefe’s a while back that I couldn’t get behind, but I recognized her voice and characters as something I would likely enjoy under the right (for me, the reader) circumstances.
Anyway, in this book the characters are flawed and damaged and not always nice to each other. The heroine has had a tough past and makes up for it by being strong, playing into other’s expectations, and being really unsure she’s worthy of being loved. My heroine trifecta!
There’s a lot of plot choices I normally don’t enjoy, but this story has this unidentifiable thing that made me care–deeply–about these characters and not bat an eye at events that normally have me rolling my eyes.
I’ve noticed that this is where my writer/reader self overlap. As a writer, I am so impressed by writers that make me like something I’ve never liked before. It makes me enjoy the book more knowing they’ve used this skill to get me to expand my enjoyment.
Filed under: Friday Reads
July 11, 2012
Wednesday What I’m Up To: Brain Scramble
July is proving to be a crazy month despite my usual hermit status. Weekends are packed, and then I stumble through the week trying to recover, only to go through it all over again.
When I can get my head on straight, I’m working on revisions for my upcoming Entangled book or writing the other (though uncontracted) book in the series.
Yesterday, Hubby and I took the kids peach & blackberry picking, which requires a bit of a drive and a ferry ride across a river. Which meant I was fighting away story ideas I can’t work on right now. Like a heroine who’s a ferry worker, and maybe a hero who…
No, no, no! Too many other stories to write first. 
Filed under: Entangled, What I'm Up To, writing
