Pamela Roller's Blog, page 2

Potpourri for the Holidays

(Holiday Series)
Making potpourri is fun and so easy to personalize for that special recipient. You’ll need dried flowers, leaves, roots, bark, seeds, etc., available through many stores such as the San Francisco Herb Co. or the Atlantic Spice Company. Be sure to also select the essential oils or fragrance oils you want for the scents. Essential oils are those extracted from the plant, and fragrance oils are blended from other oils to make a special fragrance. You'll also need a fixative, whi...

Potpourri for the Holidays

(Holiday Series)
Making potpourri is fun and so easy to personalize for that special recipient. You’ll need dried flowers, leaves, roots, bark, seeds, etc., available through many stores such as the San Francisco Herb Co. or the Atlantic Spice Company. Be sure to also select the essential oils or fragrance oils you want for the scents. Essential oils are those extracted from the plant, and fragrance oils are blended from other oils to make a special fragrance. You'll also need a fixative, w...

Changing Times

Last night I went through some storage containers holding old writing stuff to see what was in there and what I no longer needed.

I found manuscripts, contest entries, award certificates, agent/editor submissions, and rejection letters and cards. I found my first and second manuscripts, written with such joy and ignorance of the “rules”, and a novice expectation that these stories would be snatched up by publishers and tossed right to the top of the NYT bestseller list. (Multiple rejections...

Scented Waxed Pine Cones

(Holiday Series)
Scented waxed pine cones look great in a basket with other gift items. The cones send a delightful scent throughout the room when used in a wood-burning fireplace, but the paraffin is flammable, so do be careful. Create these for your personal use or give as a lovely gift.

Gather together:
Pine cones - the usual size is three to five inches.
Three or four bars of paraffin wax (available at craft stores) – see the notes at the end of this post about the use of paraffin wax.
A...

Scented Waxed Pine Cones

(Holiday Series)
Scented waxed pine cones look great in a basket with other gift items. The cones send a delightful scent throughout the room when used in a wood-burning fireplace, but the paraffin is flammable, so do be careful. Create these for your personal use or give as a lovely gift.

Gather together:
Pine cones - the usual size is three to five inches.
Three or four bars of paraffin wax (available at craft stores) – see the notes at the end of this post about the use of paraffin wax....

Easy Cordials and Liqueurs for Gift Giving

(Holiday Series)
For a lovely homemade gift, consider giving a cordial or liqueur. They’re fun to make and even more fun to sample.

The basics
Sweeteners
Sugar syrup: boil 1 cup sugar with ½ cup water for 3 minutes. Cool before using. Makes 1 cup of sugar syrup.
For medium-sweet liqueurs, add 1 cup sugar syrup to a 3-cup liqueur base. For crème-type liqueurs, add 2 cups sugar syrup.
If you use honey, clover is best.
Brown sugar adds a distinct molasses flavor.

Glycerin is used to increase bod...

Easy Cordials and Liqueurs for Gift-giving

(Holiday Series)
For a lovely homemade gift, consider giving a cordial or liqueur. They’re fun to make and even more fun to sample.

The basics
Sweeteners
Sugar syrup: boil 1 cup sugar with ½ cup water for 3 minutes. Cool before using. Makes 1 cup of sugar syrup.
For medium-sweet liqueurs, add 1 cup sugar syrup to a 3-cup liqueur base. For crème-type liqueurs, add 2 cups sugar syrup.
If you use honey, clover is best.
Brown sugar adds a distinct molasses flavor.

Glycerin is used to increase...

Novel Notes for Her Lord and Protector

I wrote Her Lord and Protector (formerly titled On Silent Wings) over a span of two years, when I was depressed. Hence, it’s full of angst–some rather over-the-top angst, but it’s a Gothic novel, so turmoil in that regard is a given. The book ends on a happy note full of hope and love, but the path to that end is wrought with dark dread, apprehension, and distress. The heroine is claustrophobic, and she can’t speak for a good way through the story due to a throat injury. The hero’s insane wife killed herself and at first, he wants to marry off the heroine as soon as he can. One of the secondary characters dies by the sword of the man who loves her. Yup. Pretty darn angsty, I think.

After it was published I went on depression meds, and after about a month I could no longer write angst-filled stories. That was good in a way, because writing Her Lord and Protector delved so deeply into my darkest emotions that I really needed to snap out of it. Depression meds, however, cut the edge off my writing style. My characters were so blissful! Nothing was wrong. They sing-songed their way through the plot. Conflict? Naah. My characters popped a Lexapro, and all was well.

I weaned myself off the meds, and my writing has responded. (Personal note: positive energy, exercise, and self-hypnosis has gone a long way in helping me.) My next book, Romancing the Thief, is not nearly so dark and foreboding. In fact, it’s not a Gothic-style story at all. Emotions are strong and themes of betrayal and distrust are prevalent, but, overall, it’s much lighter. This book, too, is set in 17th century England and will be out this summer.

Writing!

Using Visuals to Write Descriptions

We all pick up information in different ways. It depends on what type of learner we are, I think. I know I’m a visual learner. I get on Google and search for, say, 17th century English inns, and click on Images. When I find what I want, I copy and paste the image into my WIP (work in progress) at the part where I’m describing the inn my hero and heroine will be spending the night. Seeing the image helps with my description. After I’m finished describing the inn, I put it on my Pinterest board to credit the websites I used for research and to have an interesting (pinteresting?) record of my visual research.

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Characterization Point of View and Head-Hopping

One of the first writing classes I took was “Writing the Historical Romance” with Linda Shertzer. One of the lessons was on character point of view. Linda asked us to give her a sample dialogue scene for review, and for the first time in my life heard the term head-hopping. What the heck was that?

Here is an example of head-hopping from an early, unedited version of Her Lord and Protector:

Alex thought he would hit the high ceiling. “Guard!” he roared, and Katherine quickly turned to the door where John, her escort for her journey here, entered immediately and went to his master’s side. Alex’s voice was a low growl. “Remove this woman from my table.”

Quickly Katherine stood. She would not allow the wolf to humiliate her further by having his guard drag her out of the room like a sack of grain. Giving him as haughty a look as she could, she grabbed her bread, and with her head held high sailed gracefully through the room and out the door.

Alex, absently moving his hand so a servant could lay a cloth over the spilled wine and replace his broken goblet with another, took a deep breath as he watched the woman leave. Her quick reactions and direct defiance of his orders confirmed his guess that she was not at all dim.

And certainly not old.

Can you see the point of view switches?  If not, look at the same passage below with the colored font. Green denotes Alex’s point of view (POV) and red is Katherine’s.

Alex thought he would hit the high ceiling. “Guard!” he roared, and Katherine quickly turned to the door where John, her escort for her journey here, entered immediately and went to his master’s side. Alex’s voice was a low growl. “Remove this woman from my table.”

Quickly Katherine stood. She would not allow the wolf to humiliate her further by having his guard drag her out of the room like a sack of grain. Giving him as haughty a look as she could, she grabbed her bread, and with her head held high sailed gracefully through the room and out the door.

Alex, absently moving his hand so a servant could lay a cloth over the spilled wine and replace his broken goblet with another, took a deep breath as he watched the woman leave. Her quick reactions and direct defiance of his orders confirmed his guess that she was not at all dim.

And certainly not old.

If you’re not sure which character’s point of view you’re in or should be in, imagine yourself inside his or her head. You have no idea what the other character is thinking, but you can glean what they may be thinking by their gestures, expressions, and words. This guessing game is what brings out the sexual tension because in one character’s POV, she might be saying, “I can’t stand the sight of you” while wondering how the soft hair on his chest would feel against the palm of her hand.

When do you switch points of view? Generally, a scene or chapter belongs to one character, and the reader is in that character’s head for the entire scene or chapter. I say generally because it’s okay to jump to another character’s head if the scene and action warrant it; ask yourself who has the most to lose in the scene.

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Show me the Money

Being a nosy curious sort, I like to read about how much Indie authors make. On Joe Konrath’s blog for March 24, he answers some questions he gets on a regular basis. Here is one:

Q: You keep bragging about all the money you’re making. I think you’re a liar.
 
A: I don’t consider it bragging. I post my numbers to show what is possible.
 
And he does. Read his post to see how much he made on Kindle sales in 6 weeks. Got me all excited.
 

A couple of weeks ago, Amazon deposited $1,800.00 in my account. This is for a book I made a couple hundred dollars on over a five-year span until I got my rights back, redid the cover, and published it. I don’t condone hate speech toward traditional publishing because an individual is going to do what is best for him/herself, but I will say that I wish I’d listened to my heart a couple of years ago instead of being afraid of going it alone until I made the leap last fall.

So much has changed in the world of self-publishing, and I’m not really qualified to discuss it other than relate my own experience. I love to read expert opinions, though, and if you do also, let me point you to these fine people:

Joanna Penn: http://www.thecreativepenn.com/2013/05/04/bestselling-indie-authors/

Joe Konrath: http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/

Bob Mayer: http://www.bobmayer.org/

Kristen Lamb: http://warriorwriters.wordpress.com/

David Gaughran: http://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/

Does the Power of Positive Thinking Really Work?

Most, if not all, of us have these naysayers in our head who show up sometimes, often when things are going well and our guard is down. These killjoys, wet blankets, prophets of doom—whatever you want to call them—pop in just to show us the bad things that could happen in our circumstances and give discouraging outlooks on our hopes, dreams, and plans. We try to ignore the bad thoughts, but they grow. Self doubt jabs us with small, soft balls of worry, or slams us repeatedly with devastating...