Pema Donyo's Blog, page 5
June 10, 2014
{EXCLUSIVE} First two pages of THE INNOCENT ASSASSINS + two new songs to the playlist!
With the release of THE INNOCENT ASSASSINS only two weeks away – pauses for celebration -
I’m celebrating by releasing the first two pages of THE INNOCENT ASSASSINS and adding two new songs to the novel’s playlist. Without further ado, I present an exclusive first look at the romantic suspense novel.
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New Playlist Songs!
“Lock Me Up” by The Cab
Time to listen to my confession.
I’m much less th...
June 9, 2014
It’s Okay to Get Lost: Plot Development and the City
{Full article on REUTS Publications}
Pretty much sums up my feelings when I entered the city
Plot development is a lot like living in a new city. You know where you’re beginning and you know where you want to end up… but you have no idea how to get there.
And that’s okay.
It’s more than okay; it’s great, actually. Some of the best writing comes from unanticipated scenes. The more time you spend writing your story, the more you get to know your characters. With better understanding of their person...
June 3, 2014
A Hero’s Flaws: Quote from TIA, Thriller!Tom Cruise, and imperfection
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All too often characters in novels are built up as superheroes. More often than not, this “picture perfect” character is the male. He’s able to defeat the bad guy, save the girl, and scale a twenty-two floor office building using his bare hands. The woman is presented as endearingly flawed, a kind of She’s-Every-Woman for the Outta-This-World dream guy. Or worse, she’s just Fantasy Dream Girl, with no flaws and no point to the...
May 30, 2014
Rejections are amazing (I’m serious)
If you’re areader (or a Game of Thrones watcher, or a Harry Potter fan-who-never-read-the-books, or, you know, if you’ve ever even seen five minutes of a Quentin Tarantino movie ending), you know the feeling when something traumatic and devastating happens in the story you’re engrossed in, and you just go:
It happens.
That’s how I became a writer. I think that’s how a lot of readers become writers. We see something in the movie/TV show/book we don’t like, and then we re-write it. Technically it...
May 29, 2014
Writing Process: No, you’ve just got to wait
“And don’t worry about losing. If it is right, it happens — The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.”
Not everything should be published.
There, I said it. Now before you go:
Hear me out.
THE INNOCENT ASSASSINS, my first book scheduled for publication, isn’t my first manuscript. Oh, there’s been plenty where that book came from. Almost an embarrassing amount, you guys. Lots of rejections, lots of time spent querying, lots of manuscript r...
May 23, 2014
Writing Process: (Don’t) Follow the trends
If there’s a book you really want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.
-Toni Morrison
I promise this won’t happen to other genres. (Credit: Kiss Them Goodbye)
While publisher-author contracts may be pulling toward a certain genre at the moment, that doesn’t mean your other favorite genres have died anddisappeared from The Other Side, a la Vampire Diariesstyle.Trend alerts exist for writers to be cognizant of what readers want, not what writers should feel pressured to...
