Annie Burrows's Blog - Posts Tagged "writing-romance"

I is for...internet
(because I'm rambling through the discoveries I've made since becoming an author in alphabetical order)

When I first started writing, I used a small word processor which I got second hand. I used floppy discs (which regularly got corrupted) to save my work. And when I wanted to do any research I went to my local library.
I used to spend hours browsing around the stacks, desperately searching for that one nugget of information I needed, and getting pretty frustrated in the process. I never did find a book that could tell me where troops used to embark during the Peninsular War, or how often injured officers got sent home - though there were half a dozen biographies of Lord Wellington.
Eventually I realized I was going to have to cut back on the time I spent doing this sort of research, and concentrate on writing the story, or I was never going to get anywhere. So - I couldn't find out where the troops disembarked from - did I really need to put it in my story? Couldn't my heroine just receive a letter saying that her brother/uncle/sweetheart had sailed?
I still spent a lot of time going through second-hand bookshops, hoping to find that one book which would have the specific bit of information I wanted, and in the process learning all sorts of things that might come in useful one day (and subsequently have).
The next computer I bought (again, second hand so it was practically on its last legs) had a button I could press which would connect me to the internet. Which opened up a whole new world of research possibilities. Whatever I wanted to know about, you could bet someone had written an article (or blog, as online articles are known - mad, eh?) about it.
And now came a whole new form of time-wasting. Instead of getting on a bus and going into town, where I would spend hours finding out virtually nothing useful, I could now waste an entire morning finding out a whole lot more than I ever actually needed to know. Because every article (sorry, blog) seemed to have a link to another blog about something connected to the topic, which looked absolutely fascinating. So I may have started out wanting to find what kind of rifle a soldier would have carried in 1815, and instead found a page which told me all about the parlour games people would have played during Christmas of 1814,
and then stumbled upon all the information I'd wanted to find out about troop movements in the Peninsula three books ago!
I now regularly use one site to find colourful phrases for my characters to use,another to make sure that the language I put into my character's mouths was actually in use at the time they were alive, and another whenever I want to describe a Regency dance.
So - internet - good for research? Yes, in that it's easier to find out exactly what I want to know.
However, I now have to be careful that I don't just end up wandering through the stacks of knowledge available to me from my own armchair, instead of getting on with the story.
And don't get me started on facebook. Yes, it's a great way to keep in touch with readers and friends. But do I really need to watch that video of a dog going berserk in obedience school? Again?
Or post a picture of myself in the style of a French impressionist?
Or take another quiz?

The kind of stories I enjoy the most are ones in which the main character changes and grows, emotionally, during the course of whatever adventure the author has sent them on. There are various ways of describing this aspect of story-telling. Often writers refer to it as "the character arc". I prefer to think of it as the "emotional journey", (probably because the word "arc" conjures up an image in my head of an object which curves right up, then ends up on the same level as where it started.) I like to think I'm sending my characters on a journey, in which they not only have an adventure, but also learn to abandon their prejudices and hang-ups along the way, and end up better people.
Perhaps the most obvious example of a story like this is "A Christmas Carol", by Charles Dickens. At the start, Scrooge is a miserable skinflint - a man who makes everyone around him almost equally as miserable. By the end, he's giving away turkeys, raising his clerk's wages, and generally spreading Christmas cheer. The story is so powerful, and spreads such a touching message of hope for even the most hardened cynic, that it has been adapted over and over again, for retelling to a modern audience. Last Christmas season, I noticed at least four different adaptations aired on TV (including my family's favourite - A Muppet Christmas Carol). The story of this one man's emotional transformation never seems to grow stale.
It is particularly suited to telling at Christmas time. Don't we all make New Year's resolutions? Isn't the turn of the year the time when we examine ourselves, take stock, and vow that this is the year when we'll do better? Stories such as A Christmas Carol, that show a character overcoming his own flaws and weaknesses, give us hope that we can do something similar. Though I have to confess, I'd broken every one of my resolutions before the end of January 1st this year. (And yes, they did all involve eating habits, and exercise.)

Scrooge changed (literally overnight!) because of intervention by supernatural beings - the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future. But there are many other classic stories where the central character is transformed by the (often healing) power of love. As a writer of romance, these are the ones that have always particularly inspired me. As a child I couldn't get enough of fairy stories, such as Rapunzel - where the hero's blindness is cured by the tears of his beloved falling onto his eyes, and The Snow Queen, where Gerda's tears wash the splinters of the troll mirror from his heart. (Oh, dear, it's always tears, isn't it?), or Beauty and the Beast, where the heroine learns not to judge by outward appearances, and breaks the curse to find the Prince inside the Beast.

Then, as I grew older, it was stories that contained a more romantic love, that I enjoyed the most. The ones where the hero's character and actions helped to unfreeze the heroine's heart in some way. Or vice versa. I think that is one reason why I love reading Harlequin romances - fairly often the heroine's integrity is what persuades the cynical hero to soften and open his own heart to love. She "rescues" him from a life of cynical isolation.

On reflection that's probably what I love about Rapunzel, and Beauty and the Beast, and The Snow Queen. Although the hero starts out with all the notional power, it is the woman who comes to the rescue in the end. Rapunzel cures the Prince's blindness, Beauty breaks the curse holding the Beast in thrall, and Gerda travels through the Arctic to rescue Kai from the Queen's ice palace.

Gerda is the one fairy tale heroine who goes on an actual journey. My own characters rarely do. It is their inner journey, often from a dark place, that I love to describe. I was half way through writing A Mistress for Major Bartlett (release date June 2015) before I realized my heroine was very like Rapunzel. Although she isn't under a real curse, she has shut herself up in a psychological tower, into which nobody has access, apart from her beloved twin brother. It takes a real shock to jolt her out of her self-imposed isolation, set out on a path to self-awareness, and open her heart and mind to the possibility of love.

Her hero, the Major Bartlett of the title, also has his own emotional journey to undertake. Like the prince in Rapunzel, he has been wandering in darkness for a very long time. And it (sort of) takes the heroine's tears to open his eyes to not only what he is, but what he could become.
A Mistress for Major Bartlett

While I was trying to get my first book published, I read a very helpful "how to" book called "The 1st 5 pages", by Noah Lukeman, which contained a piece of writing advice that stunned me. It suggested that before I even started my story, I ought to decide from whose viewpoint I was going to tell it, and whether to do so in 1st, 2nd, or 3rd person.
Er...what?
What is a viewpoint character, I wondered, and what is the difference between first, second or third person narration?

In a nutshell, in case you didn't know either, the viewpoint character is the person through whose eyes a reader will experience the story. The person whose story it is. If it is written in 1st person, it will be "I" did this that or the other. I'm currently reading a fabulous thriller by Dick Francis, who always seems to tell his story in the first person, and comes up with some amazing opening lines because of it. Because he uses the first person, you always feel as if you are experiencing the story alongside someone who has only just gone through it themselves, and is telling you all about it.

2nd person is "you" did it. Apparently this is the hardest of all to write and is rarely used. I can't think of a single example to give you - sorry! 3rd person is "she/he" did this that or the other, and is the most commonly used.

I knew that writing a story is a kind of world-building exercise. I'd always thought of it as painting a picture with words. But this chapter likened it to playing a piece of music, in which any inconsistency with the viewpoint would sound like a clashing, crashing discord, shattering the harmony.

So I read the single chapter dealing with viewpoint very carefully, and then looked at my own current manuscript, as recommended. Firstly, I discovered that I had been writing from my heroine's viewpoint (mostly) in 3rd person all along. Which, coincidentally, turned out to be what Mills & Boon recommended in their guidelines at the time. And since Mills & Boon was the publisher I was targeting, it was a jolly good job too.

I also learnt about the various ways I could make mistakes with handling viewpoint. I could change from the viewpoint of one character to another with bewildering rapidity, I could tell sections of the story from the viewpoint of characters who really didn't matter, and shouldn't have come to the fore, or I could fumble it altogether by having a character say or think something she couldn't possibly have known.

I'd thought my writing was pretty good, before then, but after reading the chapter on viewpoint, that story suddenly seemed full of discordant notes. I had indeed switched viewpoint so quickly any reader would have had trouble keeping up with who was the main player in a scene. I had also written substantial chunks from the point of view of characters who shouldn't have been speaking directly to my reader.

Those errors wouldn't have been errors at all if I was writing the kind of story where it is fine to have several people giving their account of the story. In crime novels, for example, one incident can be related by several witnesses. I've also read family sagas
where the thread gets taken up by someone from the next generation. So long as the change from one character's viewpoint to another is made clear and doesn't confuse the reader, that method can suit certain types of story.

However, since I'm writing romance, and I want to create an intense emotional experience for my reader, it is far better to get right inside my heroine's head, and stay there (unless I need to let people know what the hero is thinking). When the reader knows what my heroine knows, understand what motivates her to act the way she does, it creates empathy. Even if the heroine acts badly, the readers should know why she did what she did, and will therefore still keep rooting for her. Same goes for the hero.

But if I introduce scenes from anyone else's point of view, and take the focus off the main characters, it dilutes the intense emotion I want my reader to feel. There was no need for the woman my heroine (Amity) met in the dressmaker to suddenly start talking to the reader. It was Amity's story, not Mrs Kirkham's. Similarly, I shouldn't have written anything from Amity's brother's point of view, particularly since he was going to die in chapter 4.

Nor should I have had Amity knowing exactly what her brother was thinking, no matter how close they'd been as children, except by reading his body language and taking her best guess.

In fact the only viewpoint mistake I hadn't made was switching from first (which I'd never used) to second or third.

So, once I'd learned about the various types of viewpoint, I then began to think a bit harder about whose viewpoint to use in any scene. To create the most impact for the reader, it's best to think about which character will have the most invested at the time. Who has the most to lose or gain? Since I write romance, I really only have the choice between the hero or the heroine, but it is a point that still needs careful consideration. Do I focus on the heroine's determination to resist the hero, whose rakish reputation has already made her turn down his proposal of marriage more than once, in spite of the almost overwhelming attraction she feels for him? Or do I get inside the hero's head, and let the reader know that this time, he has really fallen in love, and his devil-may-care smile hides his fear of rejection?

Once I'd got the hang of considering point of view, it made a huge difference to my writing. Once I stopped digressing into the mind of the heroine's brother, his commanding officer, a woman Amity met in the dressmaker, or anyone else, the story focussed more closely on my heroine, and her journey of discovery, and therefore became more interesting.

Amity still hasn't found a publisher - but I'm working on it!

On the first Friday of every month, I've been sharing a very personal view of what it is like to be a writer. And dealing with themes in alphabetical order. This month, I've reached S...so I'll be talking about whether to write Series or Stand alone.

I have taken part in a couple of series, where each book has been written by a different author, but never, so far, created one of my own.

Harlequin quite often create mini-series, where each author is assigned a small part of a longer, over arching plot, whilst also writing a story which can stand alone. And I've been involved in a couple for the Historical line. I was responsible for part 5 of the Regency Silk and Scandal series, in which a couple of aristocratic families search for the man responsible for a murder committed in the previous generation. My instalment, The Viscount and the Virgin, dealt with the fate of the Murdered Man's daughter. I found it tremendous fun brainstorming the murder mystery plot, which became the backdrop for 8 individual love stories, with the other authors involved. We drew up a complicated family tree, and created spreadsheets galore to keep track of who was doing what, when, and with whom.

There's a tremendous amount of extra work involved in taking part in such a series, and both times I've done one, although I've really enjoyed it, I've also found it a bit of a relief to coming back to writing just one story, about just one couple.

However, I often find that a minor character in one book will wander into another one. And that the more often they appear, the more real they become, until I have to give them their own story. Captain Fawley, for example, first appeared in "His Cinderella Bride" at a ball. Then took a larger role in "The Earl's Untouched Bride." So large a part, in fact, that my editor at the time made me cut him back severely. But I did get permission to write his story (even though he had only one eye, one arm, and a wooden leg!)

A similar thing happened with Lord Havelock. He appeared as a minor character in a Christmas novella, where he strode into a men's club and set the cat among the pigeons by asking them to help him draw up a list of qualities they thought would make a perfect wife. I didn't know, then, why he needed such a list, but I couldn't stop wondering. And eventually I had to write him a book to explain his odd behaviour - Lord Havelock's List. The book I'm writing now is the story of one of the other men who helped him compile the list - the one who said his wife would have to be intelligent, because he couldn't bear the thought of giving up his bachelor freedoms only to beget a brood of idiots.

But anyway, earlier this year I went down to London to visit the new London offices of my publisher, Harlequin UK, and to have a serious chat with my editor.
I'd just been awarded a four book contract, you see, but only had one full length book and one novella completely outlined and agreed upon. I had a lot of vague ideas...dramatic meetings between characters who had tortured back stories...but no real idea of where to take them.

I sent these rough outlines to my editor and during lunch, (during which some wine may have been consumed), she gave me the most insightful feedback. In one of the rough outline openings, I'd suggested that the hero pursue the heroine as part of a wager between himself and a group of his friends. And she asked me whether I'd considered writing stories about these friends, and tying them together as a trilogy.
The moment she made the suggestion it became obvious how other snippets that I'd had floating about in the back of my mind for a while could become parts 2 and 3 of a trilogy. It would probably have happened naturally, the way it's happened before. But this time, as I set out to deliberately write a set of linked stories, I can actually plan my own overarching story which will tie them together more firmly, rather than having the loose connections I've come up with before.

And, more importantly, I can actually let readers know in advance that it's going be a trilogy.

Do you know, I feel as if I'm finally getting my writing life organized!
(It has only taken me until S!)

On the first Friday of every month, I've been sharing a very personal view of what it is like to be a writer. And dealing with themes in alphabetical order. This month, I've reached T...so I'll be talking about how I manage my time.

I'm supposed to write two books a year, at 75,000 words each. Every time I get a new deadline, one of the first things I do is to sit down and work out a timetable which will ensure how I get my story in on time.
My last one went something like this:

Due August 31st.
75,000 at 10k per week (or 2 chapters per week) for 1st draft. = 2k per day. Will take 7 and a half weeks.
If start 4th March, should be done by April 30th.

2nd draft - revise 3 chapters per week = 8 weeks (assuming 15 chapters)
should take until June 17th

That should have given me a full two and a half months to do a third draft, which is when I usually have only a few little tweaks to iron out. I was hoping I would be able to get the commissioned story finished, and then spend some time on a book I'd like to self-publish.

But what happened? Well, to start with, my first draft was over 30,000 words short. I'd written all the story I could think of, and the only way I could have put in anything else would have been shameless padding.

Fortunately, the Novelistas helped me with some brainstorming, during which we came up with a new ending. So that my second draft, with a completely new ending, which I managed to finish on June 29th, came in at 64,000 words. Still a bit short, but not too far off for that stage of my drafts, so I was reasonably happy. I still had a full two months before the deadline, although I was by then two weeks behind where I wanted to be.

However, I was going to the Romance Writers of America conference at the end of July, which would mean two weeks off, plus any time necessary to recover from jet lag which always turns my brain to mush. So I thought it would be a good idea to get my 3rd draft done before I flew out.

But then I had an unexpected visitor, who stayed a week. And a teacher husband at home for school holidays underfoot. So by the time I flew out I had achieved practically nothing.

My next entry in my "progress with wip" file reads:
returned to work on August 10th.
Have until 31st to deadline = 3 weeks.
Need to revise 13 chapters = min 1 chapter per day.

I finally submitted the book on September 4th, having spent the previous week hunched over my laptop feverishly typing. And ended up with back spasm, followed by a migraine.

So what had gone wrong with my brilliant plan? Ok - I knew there would be a couple of weeks out at the end of July for the trip to New York, but I shouldn't have had to end up frantically trying to finish by the deadline. I'd worked out that I'd have plenty of free time - I'd even hoped I could work on that self-published book that has been on the back burner for what feels like forever. And this isn't the first time it's happened either. The last few books I have produced have all gone the same way. I've started off with a brilliant timetable, which appears to give me plenty of time, and end up begging my editor for an extension. I'm on my 21st book at the moment, so you'd think by now I would have learned how to write a bit faster than I did to start off with.

So this time, on the recommendation of a blog I read that suggested I should be able to write 10,000 words a day if I followed their advice (cue hollow laughter) I kept a writing diary. To see if I could pick out patterns. Which would show me where I was going wrong. Wasn't I spending enough time at my laptop? I certainly felt as if I was working as hard as I could. So perhaps I was taking too many days off to gallivant - although time spent with the Novelistas wouldn't count, I promised myself. I frequently need their input. (And the home-made cake).

Anyway, what I discovered when I read through my writing diary was this deadly phrase:
Revisions landed.

And everything made sense. Because, when I counted how much time I'd spent on revisions to my previous book, when I should have been ploughing forward with my next one, it came to a shocking total of 6 weeks.

The revisions came in two rounds, the first of which took me four weeks, and the second, two.

Even when I did get back to my wip, I found phrases in my writing diary like:
Spent an hour in afternoon just trying to get my head round chapter 10 again
and
All gone to hell in a handcart coz of revisions. Now need to re date all targets

So, it's revisions that are the culprit. If I hadn't had those revisions, my book would have been submitted in plenty of time, and I could have worked on my own personal project.

So, clearly, when I'm making my timetable for my next book, I'm going to have to factor in those 6 weeks for revisions. And next time, hopefully my writing diary won't have comments like:

Change of plan -
So now I am officially only 1 week behind revised schedule.
Wow. It's going to be tight.

Every month, I've has been sharing a very personal view of what it is like to be a writer. And dealing with themes in alphabetical order. This month, I've reached V...which I've decided should stand for Voice.

In some ways, this article continues from the one I posted last month, about your Unique Selling Point. Because your voice is going to be a part of what makes you unique.

Publisher's websites are always saying they are looking for fresh new voices. But what do they mean by "voice", I've often wondered? And how am I going to get a fresh new one?

Well, having read a lot of articles about it recently, I've discovered that actually it's quite simple. My "voice" is simply the thing that makes readers recognize me as the writer. It is my personality coming through in my writing.

This explains something that happened when I had my first book published. My husband was rather impressed, and agreed to read it. Even though it was a historical romance, and had a cover with a picture of a couple in a clinch, he read it during his daily commute to work on the train. (Which earned him lots of brownie points.)

When I asked what he thought of it, he said, in amazement, that it sounded just like me. Well, of course it sounded like me - I wrote it! When I asked what he meant, exactly, he explained that the things the heroine said were just the sorts of things he could imagine me saying.
(Which was fine, until a couple of chapters later, he mentioned that he thought the heroine was "a stroppy cow". Half the brownie points earned for reading my book at all promptly deducted.)

But there you have it. Your voice is just your personality shining through in your writing. Your attitudes, your take on life, your values. And in my case, my tendency to stroppiness (apparently - though I think I'm very easy-going.)

Another thing which helped me understand what a writer's "voice" is, happened during a writer's workshop I held, in the days when I thought that because I'd had a book published, it qualified me to teach writing as well. I set the students a very simple writing task - to describe their hero. Every single person in that class came up with a wildly different article. Not only their heroes were different, but so were the reasons for picking them, and the way they described them. Each article told me as much about the person who'd written it, as the hero they'd picked.

Every single writer has their own distinct take on the world, because of the way they were brought up, their values, their interests, and so on. If you were to ask six people in the room where you are now, to describe the room, you'd probably get six wildly different accounts. Some of the writers would describe the room in detail, right down to the style of architrave round the door. Others would focus on the other people in the room. Even the ones who wrote about the other people would each come up with something different. Some would be more interested in what the others were wearing, some on what they were doing. Someone might even take the opportunity to have a dig at you for making them do all the work when they'd paid good money to learn how to write.

So, your "voice" is just you. Your way of putting things.

However, when you first start writing, you will probably emulate writers you admire. It can take time, and practice, to gain the confidence to just be yourself, to allow your own, unique voice to come through in your writing.

Unless of course you happen to be naturally stroppy and opinionated.

About once a month, I've been sharing a very personal view of what it is like to be a writer. And dealing with themes in alphabetical order. This month, I've reached Y which is for...

Ok, I have to confess that I resorted to going through the dictionary to find a word that began with Y, round which to write this month's blog. I could have cheated, and gone with "Why" which would have given me a lot of leeway. But I didn't want to do that.

Anyway, there aren't that many words in the dictionary beginning with Y, so I knew it wouldn't take me long to read through them.

Thankfully, it took only a few seconds to discover this little gem:
"Yesteryear" which is a poetical or archaic form for "a time in the past". Which seemed appropriate, as that is where I set my stories.

I've always had a fascination for yesteryear. It started when I was a little girl, with family trips to various stately homes. When we got home, my sister and I would dress up as ladies of the manor, and romp round the garden on imaginary horses - or, if it was wet, we'd draw plans of our ideal stately home, complete with dungeons, secret passages, and of course, massive libraries.

I started reading historical romances at school, although I didn't know it then. I thought I was studying Jane Austen, and Thomas Hardy. I still thought I was studying English literature at University, without realizing that reading all those stories, written in the past, had given me a love of reading about people from the past. After I left university, I didn't want to keep on studying great literature, but I did still find myself gravitating towards stories set in the past.

At first, I devoured books by writers such as Norah Lofts. I absolutely loved the way she took us into the lives of relatively ordinary people and brought an era to life. And then carried that story to the next generation.

Then I discovered Georgette Heyer, and learned that historical stories didn't need to be dark and melodramatic, they could be amusing romps.

And then, much later, when I was doing a writing course and I began to research the market, I discovered historical romances produced by Mills & Boon, which in those days went under the name of "masquerades". And I fell in love with historical romance - as a reader and as a writer. These were the kind of stories that were already forming in my imagination - where simple country misses won the heart of an apparently cold, aloof, brooding aristocrat. Or survived kidnap by pirates, or ran away from evil guardians disguised as boys, and generally discovered they were far stronger and braver than they'd been given credit for.

So I began to write stories set primarily in the Regency era. Why Regency? Because there was an established market for that type of story, and because I thought I knew most about that era, having read so many others set in that time. Stories, I feel, should provide an escape from real life. And the Regency is a great place for many of us to escape to, since it is far enough away from Nowadays to feel really exotic, but familiar enough so that we don't feel all adrift when we get there.

The only trouble is, once I began to write Regency romance, in earnest, I began to discover just how little I knew. When I sent my first heroine on a journey to find her long-lost brother in Spain, for example, I had no idea what route she might take, or how she'd get back to England once he died, either. I didn't know a thing about troop movements in the Peninsula, or how wounded soldiers were looked after, or what happened to their effects once they'd died. What was worse, it was extremely difficult to find out. I would go to the library for a book on a specific topic, and read lots and lots of them without finding out the one thing I wanted to learn. (Although I picked up a lot of other interesting facts instead). The only way round it, at that time, was to plough on, and hope for the best. Anything I didn't know, I skirted round, but even so, I'm sure I made a lot of mistakes.

Fortunately, nowadays, I have access to the internet. If I want to know how long it would take to travel by stagecoach from Yorkshire to London, I can probably find out within a matter of minutes. And what coaching inns my characters would be likely to have changed their horses, too.

Thank you all for following my blog here on Goodreads, where I have been sharing a very personal view of what it is like to be a writer. And dealing with themes in alphabetical order. This month, I've finally reached Z...and zombie kittens!

Last month, you may recall, I had to resort to looking in the dictionary to find a word beginning with "y" that I could use to talk about the writer's life. At that point, I thought I'd have as much difficulty finding a "z" word.

But then I had the nightmare about zombie kittens.

The zombie kittens got my son, my daughter, and my husband. I was left alone in a clearing, swirling a medieval mace round my head to stave them off, and began to yell - because although normal kittens are cute and fluffy, zombie kittens have glowing red eyes, and lots of sharp pointy teeth, not to mention the fact they can climb trees and then dive off branches onto your head. I yelled so loud as a particularly terrifying tortoiseshell launched itself at my face, its lethal claws flexed, that I woke myself up. I also woke up my long-suffering husband.

Next morning, when he asked what my nightmare had been about, and I told him, he couldn't stop laughing. He can never remember what he's dreamed about, let alone have a dream so vivid and terrifying it wakes him up shouting.

And that brings me round to the point. Even my nightmares aren't your average run-of-the mill ones that everyone has about finding you've gone to the shops with no clothes on, or all your teeth are falling out. (You do all have nightmares like that, right?) Because I have a rather overactive imagination. Which never switches off, not even when I'm asleep.

And that's what makes me a writer of fiction. When people ask me where I get all my ideas for stories from, I have never known what to tell them. Because ideas just come. And they come from the same place that those zombie kittens came from. The fervid depths of my imagination.

It isn't something I have studied to acquire. It's just the way I'm made. It started in childhood. On the way home from school, I'd chatter away to my imaginary friends. In the playground, I'd gallop round in an imaginary episode of The Virginian, (in which I starred) or hide from Daleks (saving the world in the process). People who have imaginations like mine look at the person sitting opposite them on a train, and instead of asking them what they do for a living, imagine a conversation in which they offer to murder someone you hate in exchange for murdering someone they hate. Or describe entire worlds that can be reached through a wardrobe in a spare room, or create a language spoken by a race of immortal beings who live in an enchanted forest.

We can't help it. We don't have to strive for plots, or characters, or scenes. They are continuously dancing about in our heads. And if we don't write them down, or act them out, then they keep on dancing, and shouting, and nagging, until we tell their story to somebody, in some way.

Even the zombie kittens.

My latest release is The Debutante's Daring Proposal (which contains neither zombies nor kittens)
But if you are interested, you will discover that I also dream up stories about Regency rakes and innocent country misses.