It’s been over a month since I’ve had anything to say. Well, perhaps that’s not precisely true. I’ve had a few things to say, but nothing could drag me back to the blog.

It’s been a month of busy busy busy for me. I’m in the fifteenth week of Holly Lisle’s HTRYN which has been a terrific course btw. I’m editing on page 209, much of this version (2nd) is hand written which is a first for me. I expect to make it to week sixteen by the middle of May. (HTRYN weeks are like dog years - non-linear or something).

The MARA Retreat, which was awesome if trimmed up with pinking shears (to keep from fraying).

April Ash presents workshop on promotions at MARA Retreat

Yes, I got the camper out for the first camping trip of the season and am thinking hard about where to go next. No major surprises except that one of the propane tanks was empty.

Didn’t remember using it that much but I guess we did. It was cool in October now that I think about it.

My niece had her bridal shower, and Steve actually suggested he needed to go buy a suit for the wedding. I didn’t expect that.

I made videos and am learning to do crazy things with photographs and Gimp.

Gimp

Have been focused on getting the next thing done (and sometimes do)  Next month?  Who knows.  I do have a bit of humor for you though.  I read something on twitter that took me to a blog that talked about why your erotica may not sell.  Curious to see what words of wisdom I might see there (though, I don’t write erotica - don’t get me wrong some of my best friends do…) it said in part

“I know a lot of strong, independent women who have trouble reconciling themselves to their liking for bodice rippers.”

So I wondered what would come up when I googled the term “bodice rippers” and found that while there were references to romance novels there was also this:

And then when I followed the link  (because by now I was Really curious)

it would be my guess, since most of these products are in what appear to be three to five gallon cans, that the bodice to be ripped could be quite large.  I’m just saying.

Mater tam antiquior ut linguam latine loquatur - Your mother is so old she speaks Latin

My latin is only as good as Google’s.

Wildcard characters you can use when searching (displayed at right below)

Note that wildcard search and replace can be very tricky so be careful.

I did a wild card search for sas and it returned every PARAGRAPH that ended with sas. Even <*sas which should (in my mind) have returned each word ending in sas instead returned SENTENCES that ended in sas.  I should have used <(*sas) I think or even better (sas)> for words that end in sas. (looking for the word Kansas if you’re curious).

So a search using wildcards for the word condo would be formatted <(condo)> I think. (Starts and ends with condo).  That should return condo but not condolences.  Helpful when doing a search and replace.  Play with it in a COPY of your manuscript or some other document.

You can get really complicated with this if you want to. You have to check the “use wildcards” box below the search and replace box.

Be very careful and make a copy of your work before doing a search and replace using wildcards or any big risky search and replace.

Incidentally I’ve been using MS Word for more years than I can remember and this is the first time I’ve ever gotten wildcards to work.  I’ve got a degree in computers so it’s not particularly intuitive.  (or I might be a moron – you never can tell)

This has been a week of getting things done. Yes I have indulged in a bit of self congratulatory behavior this week. I think I may have even strained my shoulder from patting myself on the back. Not really, but if I had it wouldn’t have been a surprise.

First I turned 29, well add twenty to that and you’re closer. Whether that’s an accomplishment I’m not sure, but it does say something about my endurance. I’m not 50 yet, but I can definitely hit it with a rock from here.

For my next feat of derring do, I completed the first draft of my manuscript. Lone Survivor. This is the second manuscript I’ve written. The first one went to live with the dust bunnies under my bed after I struggled with it for three years. Now to do cleanup and polishing and plot repair required to get it ready to sell and give it a shot. Every bit of work I do I learn from so if this one doesn’t sell, it just gives me more lessons to apply to my next one.

I started Lone Survivor in January 2009 after thinking about it all December and finished the draft November 25th. Just 11 months. Yea me!

My usual book gobbling habit is still working.  First reading Holiday in Death (Nora’s J.D. Robb Series) on my kindle. Eve Dallas and Roarke were fabulous as usual.

And I also read a terrific Shannon K. Butcher book today.

Burning Alive. It’s the first in a series - Paranormal Romance and I was hooked from the first page. Next one out is Finding the Lost by the way.

I had put off reading Burning Alive because I’m a snob about books I get for free and I got it at a book signing at Nationals in DC.

Stupid I know but I have so many free books around here, some even left over from the 2008 RWA Nationals. It’s hard for me to pick them up and get started. I suppose it doesn’t help that I’ve probably also got fifteen books on my Kindle lined up to read. {Sigh} Being a reader is such a burden.

Anyway Burning Alive really delivers on action, romance, and paranormal world building. The hero is a hunk the heroine courageous when it counts, the sex is hot, the supporting characters (mostly hot guys, one hot chick for a future installment no doubt, a couple martyrs, a crotchety yet loveable grandma schoolmarm, and a couple of magical women whose true natures shall be revealed in good time) and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I’ll be buying more in the series for sure. Doesn’t hurt that there’s a shiny hunky guy on the cover with a big sword.  He’s definitely do-able, but alas taken by a woman who would frighten me if met alone in a dark alley.

And finally I got to get my hands dirty today. If you follow the blog you probably know I have a camper.

A few weeks ago when we took it out for the last camping weekend of the season I had all kinds of problems with the water system. The filler hose for the tank was cracked in several places and it took a trip to the hardware store, several buy it by the foot lengths of tubing, hose clamps and a not insubstantial amount of packing tape to get the antifreeze into the tank so I could winterize it.

Here in Kansas City the winters can be very cold and water lines freeze and split if you don’t put propylene glycol in there. It’s the pink stuff and non-toxic not like what you put in your car. Today I swapped out the filler hose (obtained during a second trip to the hardware store and a visit down the buy it by the foot aisle), the filler cap assembly and fashioned a cushion out of tubing scrap to protect the hose from the sharp edges of the bracket that protects the hose from road grit (Fleetwoood’s marginal design). All in all a very satisfying repair. I also broke out the multi-meter and verified that my battery is charging from the 18 watt solar panel I have hooked up. I’ll connect it periodically over the winter to make certain it stays charged. I had to replace the battery at Winfield this year and I’d like to make this one last.

So this is the hand of a writer, a reader, an RV enthusiast and a woman. Dirt, grime and all…hmmm needs a manicure bad. Oh well, hear me roar.

It’s your first day as a novelist, the day you put down that novel you’ve been reading and say to yourself “I can do better than that”.  You decide that you can fly.  So you step to the edge of the cliff and look over the edge, but the clouds below look so soft and fluffy that you forget about gravity.  You look above and see an eagle soaring overhead.  It’s close enough to see individual feathers flex and part where the thermals caress the trailing edge of the graceful predator’s wingspan.  By now you’re sure it is meant to be.  You are convinced that as soon as you step off the edge you will be lifted and soar along your words to some place high above mere mortals. 

You are convinced that this is the moment, the place where your life changes forever.  Slowly you lean forward nudging your toes toward the edge of the earth and prepare to lift yourself into the skies unfettered by ties to the soil beneath. You begin to gain momentum, that sense of falling you that will carry you into the stratosphere and you raise your face to the greet the sun.  One moment away one step into the chasm and you are away, off to meet your destiny.  

A hand from behind you grabs you by the collar and yanks you back from the edge.  A flutter of activity rattles around you as other authors chatter and rumble as they begin to strap you and clothe you and check to see all your catches are caught.  Someone tells you you’re so lucky to have been saved.  They turn you back to the edge and show you a space where the clouds have parted in the canyon below, revealing rocks, trees and hundreds of feet below an icy river hidden in the shadows.  ”See…See…” they say. You feel rescued and terrified all at the same time as you process the separate and conflicting instructions that pass in front of you like a parade.

Someone hands you a helmet, an axe and a book of survival skills.  They fill your pack with snacks, a thermos of coffee, maybe chocolate, a length of rope sufficient to hang yourself or lash yourself to a raft if things got desperate.   A tiny jar of commas goes into the duffle containing the tools of your trade, which magically appears at your side.  In one pocket is a gift certificate to an office supply store, another holds a map.  You are offered a hundred titles from Strunk and White, Sol Stein, and a chorus of published heavy weights touting “on writing”, “for dummies”, with themes of dialog, characterization and pace.  All the while the others beside you are gearing up for the same adventure. 

Now you can approach the precipice with the tools and knowledge to take that step.  Reach up, tighten your straps, check your watch for the time and place a finger into the wind to see which way it blows.  Once again you step to the edge, this time aware of all the pitfalls that may await you as you reach up to touch the sky.  Left and right, beside you are the others.  You look from expectant face to confident eyes and on three… 

In 1986 or so I bought my first pc.  A 386sx I believe from Northgate, on the monthly plan.  Northgate has long since gone the way of the albatross, and the 386 it sold me for that matter. 

Back in the early days of home computing we dialed up the internet determined to exchange bits and bytes with other stalwart interweb users.  We waited for hours and hours to download things like e-mail and bulletin board messages, at blazing speeds of 1200… 2400… wait for it…4800 baud.  I’m not sure I remember what a baud is anymore, my bachelors degree is in IT so that tells you how irrelevant they are now (or how bad my memory is, or how little I care).   I’ll add ‘baud’ to the above list of the expired and fading.

So today (my fifth day observing Twitter) I came across a post from Daniel S. Baum.  He pretty regularly amuses me with his tweets.  This one in particular caught my eye.  I approximate how to retweet it properly here. 

RT @danielsbaum The techno-fix to internet distraction to which I was directed is http://macfreedom.com/
I imagine there’s a PC solution as well

 

 
That took me to a website that touted:

Freedom is an application that disables networking on an Apple computer for up to eight hours at a time. Freedom will free you from the distractions of the internet, allowing you time to code, write, or create. At the end of your selected offline period, Freedom re-enables your network, restoring everything as normal.

This just about sent me into an apoplexy. 

Enter (CUE SOUND TRACK - CHOIR OF ANGELS VOICES) macfreedom.com who will disconnect you and force you to get some work done. 

Er…maybe.

Shoot, this ability to make you disconnect from the network is half the reason I quit PC’s and bought a Mac. 

TO OVERCOME INTERNET CONNECTIVITY ISSUES!

Just in case you’re wondering, I don’t live in a cave. I am aware of the chatter of my writer friends and acquaintences who bemoan their inability to keep the tempting distraction of the internet at bay. They mysteriously lack the ability to keep their mouse-burdened appendages away from their desktop browser’s start button.  More power to them if they avail themselves of this tool.   I too suffer from a browser addiction.  However, I think it unlikely I will ever give in to the extremely minor temptation to pay someone to enforce my parole to the state of incommunicado. 

Hmmm… macfreedom doesn’t disable solitaire now does it?

At retreat last month - geeze is it already last month?  I made a new writing goal to hit page 100 in Lone Survivor by the end of May.  Fortunately the MARA meeting is on the 30th this month so I’ve got an extra week to pull it off.  

I had a rough start.  A quick burst got me from page 58 to 68 where I stalled for several weeks.  It was a combination of not being able to see where to go next and general malaise.  Oh, and I had a tooth pulled in the middle of it, so that was a really good excuse.  Medical.  A medical excuse is always good.

But it was an excuse.  To not write and not mind not writing, makes me question whether I have the burning desire necessary in order to be a professional writer.  Everyone I know who is published (and many who are pre-published) sit down and write whether they feel like it or not.  It’s a discipline thing they say.  You have to commit yourself to the end game in order to make it work.  But then I have never in my life been like the other people I know.  I don’t react to pressure in the same way, I don’t respond to the same stimulation.

So, is it a character flaw that my word counts ebb and flow with my motivation?  I don’t think so.  After my experience with Maxine (my previous WIP now languishing under the bed) I wanted to do things differently.  I laid aside the self guilt for those days when I did not write and let my need and desire to write drive my output instead of the need to have something for critique group for the following week.  Once the pressure to perform was off I addressed my other problem, dishonesty.  I had been dishonest in my writing and I knew it.  It was time to come clean.   

For my new manuscript I threw away all the pratfalls and slapstick that I had relied on to get me from one scene to another. I decided to go serious and dark.  Once I did that, the plot came crawling to me on a monkey’s paw.  It felt almost too easy.

Several weeks later I hit my first major bump in the road. And as usual it was all resistance in my head. Instead of trying to fight my way through, I let the story sit for almost two months, until I came to terms with the direction I really wanted to go. Not the direction that my friends wanted me to go, or that my strangled sense of self preservation wanted me to go, but the way that felt natural.  The way that didn’t feel like fighting a bar brawl every time I turned on my computer.

I don’t know whether the story will be marketable when I’m done with it.  I vascillate between thinking my writing has great promise and that it can’t possibly be any good. But one thing I have determined is that I am unable to make the distinction.  I cannot possibly know whether another person will enjoy reading what I write.  I just have to do my best and assume there’s a reader out there with my name on him/her.

I have an idea that I could turn this story into a series if I make it through this first manuscript alive.  It has that potential and I’m writing it with that in mind.  But nothing is certain and I’m leaving the pressure to succeed to those who need that particular emotion to motivate them.  I’m not one of them.  I’m only just now learning to set goals and keep them.  Thank,s Carla, for laying down the line.  Now I’m trying to get serious about writing and I think it’s working for me.

When I said before that I threw away all the pratfalls and the slapstick, it wasn’t my first time abandoning that approach.  I have always used humor as a shield against the world.  My armor of gags and word play honed to an art form from years of dodging the darts and spears of others who would vote me off the island.   I vividly remember being the class clown at riding school and having the instructor stop and lecture me on taking my craft seriously.  I took it to heart and focused on technique.  And I never forgot that lesson.  Now I’m doing it all over again.   I will never be a great rider, my days as an equestrienne are long past, but perhaps with a lot of work and a sense of humor rather than a gag and a whoopie cushion, I may someday become a published writer.  And that would be greatness enough for me.

Those of you who know me well understand that I am a compulsive book buyer.  I buy books and sometimes forget to read them, or at least procrastinate about it.  I think sometimes that osmosis will do the trick and by buying the book that I’ll learn something without even opening it. Talk about magical thinking!

Well, after Thanksgiving I was heading over to Sunny’s for a girls weekend and picked up a couple of those - write a book in 30 days - books.  It’s not as crazy as it sounds.  I don’t really expect to do it in 30 days but maybe glean some technique or insight that will help me with my mondo problem (cue scary organ music here)…PLOTTING. 

Plotting is the classic “how to eat an elephant problem” for me.  The job is so large that I don’t know where to start and once I do there are some parts that when you get it all cut up you just go “eww” I’m not putting that in my mouth, or all spread out over the driveway in big gory hunks it just doesn’t look so much like food anymore. (Sorry about the imagery there.  Note to PETA - Just kidding - No elephants were harmed in the blogging of this topic nor do I condone such behavior).

So I went through the first of the two books and wasn’t really inspired.  I liked the “workbook” aspect of it but I always hate to write in a book like that.  It will somehow ruin it for me the next time I want to use it.  I forgot about the other one until late last week when I was doing an archeology dig in my office and came across it in a bag with a couple of others and some office toys like this Travel Operation game.

(Odd, I’ve never thought of that as a charlie horse hmmm…) 

Unexpectedly it inspired me and I began working through the chapters.   The author provides good examples and the worksheets are exposition prompts, which I prefer over lists (in case you couldn’t tell from my verbose posts here). 

I managed to get an actual outline  draft, brief and concise.  That was a major crazy success and I really feel like I can go forward from here.

The book is called: First Draft in 30 Days by Karen S. Wiesner for those of you who are interested. I thought it was helpful. Still is.  Unfortunately I’m not terribly good at follow through so we’ll see if I get all the way through it.  But I’ve already gained a LOT of insight into my characters and story prompted by her useful format and questions. 

First Draft in 30 Days

So I turned the page and was stunned to see what looked to me like a use case or workflow diagram of sorts. 

What’s that you ask?  Well, at my day job I’m in the software development business.  One thing that people do during the process of collecting requirements and designing software systems is to do all sorts of different charts and diagrams that describe the system and user interaction among other things. 

Basically the user does W the system responds with X which prompts the user to do Y and the system does Z.  In a way it’s like a catechism, address and response, a conversation with the user.

Now apply that to noveling and what have you got?  A roadmap of how you want the reader to experience your book.  I know, sounds crazy. (Admittedly not an original thought but without the visual prompt I didn’t “get” it.)
 

Don’t have a good sense of it yet?  I’ll give you an example:

The idea that you would plan what you want your reader’s reaction to be at a particular point in time was a big light bulb moment for me. 

I have heard people ask “what is the point of this scene?” Now for some reason instead of my answer being “for the nice people to read” I get it.  It’s to elicit a specific response from the reader.  Intellectually I knew that, but emotionally?  Not so much.

Here’s a better example:

Think about it.  Here is about half an episode of Lassie from the time Timmy falls into the well until the HEA.  At each critical point we identify how we want the reader to respond to the material we’re presenting.  Yes, it’s manipulating the reader in the most fundamental way.  The way they want to be manipulated.  Then you actually have a target to shoot for. A scene goal and it didn’t hurt hardly at all.  

So now we have a new concept, we (the imperial we by the way) are selling the reader their own manipulation.  And the suckers want to buy it,  It’s what they crave.  (By the way I’m including myself in the suckers group as an avid reader, so technically that makes it self-deprecating humor and not a slight at the emotional proclivities of my future readership).

I will still have to find the tipping point between construction of the plan and construction of the book.  How do I determine exactly how far to take the plot before I reach the point where the cost exceeds it’s value.  But that’s a blog post for another day.

So now I have a goal, delivery of first class manipulation.  That’s what I’m going to give them.   

Well, one can hope…

Now there is one diagram you don’t want to see.  I’ve used it below as an example of the action/reaction you don’t want.

Lucky for me your computer is too expensive for you to throw against the wall.

This month I’ve been taking an online class on serial killers with Katherine Ramsland.  One of her goals in this course is to educate authors on the realities of serial killers and the criminal justice professionals who hunt them so that they are portrayed more accurately.   I can see how inaccurate portrayals would annoy someone in the know.  I get that way when I hear people waxing poetic about Krispy Kreme donuts - As someone who has worked in the donut “biz”- it’s my opinion that their whole philosophy is wrong.  

I had submitted the scenario I’m currently working on to Ms. Ramsland, to see if it was “flawed” per her comments.  She responded that she didn’t want to get into analyzing characters but… then she had some comments for me that gave me serious pause about my characters and their motivations vis-a-vis reality.  Which is why I took the class in the first place - to get her expert insight.  

So then I made a squinchy face and despaired for a moment over how adopting her suggestions would impact my current plot.  Admittedly I am not an expert on serial killers and she certainly is.  This resulted in another squinchy face and considerable grumbling.  Then I had an epiphany, I didn’t owe her anything.  I didn’t have to make any changes at all.  It’s fiction after all. Intellectually I know that you can choose whether or not to adopt the recommendations of a critiquer but emotionally when someone tells me that my stuff is “wrong” I feel compelled to fix it. It’s a character flaw I have. Hello, my name is Gretchen and I’m a “fixer”.  

That got me wondering, what exactly is the responsibility of the author to represent characters realistically?

My initial thoughts were that it is necessary for the characters to be minimally plausible in their behaviors and attitudes.  If they aren’t the book is subject to wall banging and that can’t be good.  So I thought I’d ask a few authors I’m acquainted with to see what they thought their responsibility was to portray reality in fiction. 

When I asked the question “Exactly what does creative license entitle you to do?” here’s what I found.

Fiction is a little bit like magic.  We use “slight of hand” in an attempt to fashion characters that are believable, interesting, and that readers can identify with.  In the case of serial killers, or  certain other “villains” this is particularly difficult.  Most real life fiends are motivated by emotions and chemical elements that the “non-fiend” never experiences.  The average reader just does not have the biology to understand how these twisted individuals think and justify their actions.  So in an attempt to align our characters with our readers experience in a way they can appreciate, we take liberties with behavior, motivations and goals. 

The downside is that you run the risk of alienating those people who do have experience with the type of villain or victim in real life.  I think it takes a really skilled author to pull off something that reflects real life and isn’t a boring rehash of historical events or clinical facts.  It may be easier and more plausible to grossly exaggerate reality beyond the experience of the typical reader.  For example, I never heard  anyone say Stephen King’s villain in his novel Misery, was too over the top. Readers loved it.  Probably his experience in light of his celebrity made that character all too plausible to him.  I can imagine that William Shatner would have had much the same reaction to King’s book given the legendary enthusiasm of Star Trek fans.  If the author believes in the character’s villainy and has the skills to tell the tale, in all likelihood the reader will accept the premise.  Even if the characters are way outside the bounds of reality.

It’s difficult to account for the variety of experience and the individual tastes of the reader.  One published author I know worked on a young adult paranormal.  She had teenagers read an advance copy to vet her realism.  Some of the feedback she got was that the character’s dialog was not realistic.  She has a teen daughter, and the dialog and language she used reflected the language she heard from her kid and the kid’s friends.  Whether her text reflected an adults perspective of what kids are like, or whether the advance readers had a skewed perception of their own language and behavior is an open question.  Perhaps she didn’t ask kids who read a lot of paranormal.  I suspect experienced readers are better at the suspension of disbelief required to truly enjoy another person’s writing.  Regardless, there probably wasn’t anything she could have done to achieve a different outcome.  Sometimes you’re just stuck with feedback that indicates too much change is needed to satisfy the critiquer.  Like it or not the decision to fix or not to fix is left up to you.  Then you have to live with your decision.

As authors we also have to contend with issues of creativity and originality.  In order for our work to not be derivative it is sometimes necessary for us to take a walk on the wild side and use ideas that dangle from the edge of a cliff in order to surprise the reader.  We all want to do that even in a comedy or a non-mystery plot.  To give that element of suspense we take risks with our characters and have them do things that are unexpected, original.  How can an author do that if not by creating characters with motivations that are outside the norm and everyday experience, yet remain relatable to our readers, or ourselves?  

Everyone I asked seemed to agree that there are limits to creative license.  Characters need to be plausible, believable, and have motivations that the reader can at least accept.  Certainly that is the “happy path” to publication (notice I didn’t say easy).  To that end most writers do at least some research into the topics they address in their fiction.  Their efforts are focused on the goal of being true to the subject matter.  Honoring it in effect.  Like the author writing about a character who was an adult survivor of child sexual abuse.  Her concern with “getting it right” showed a sincere appreciation of the problem and a forthright attempt to avoid demeaning the victims of abuse while telling a compelling story.  The story is not about survivors of sexual abuse, it’s about vampires, human beings, werewolves, or other creatures and what makes them tick.  The sexual abuse thread was simply one facet of the character’s construction.  Much like the case of the adult survivor in the real world.  The sexual abuse does not define their identity even if it contributes to aspects of their character. I’m not terribly worried about insulting serial killers, though maybe I should be?  Let’s hope not.  

Those among us who take risks by choosing not to exhaustively research may focus their stories on other elements.  They may use the un-researched aspects as an underlying theme rather than a focal point of their fiction.  They concentrate the reader’s attention on the emotional impact of the interaction between the main characters and de-emphasize the events that put the characters in peril.  

An alternate approach is to produce such lively and outrageous stories that the reader is distracted from being critical of the details.  Whether it’s likely that a character would sit still long enough to be killed in a particular manner is inconsequential if the other details around the murder are so flamboyant as to deflect doubt about the character’s actions. When Claire fell through the stones in Outlander no one cared if the laws of physics supported the premise of her journey. They were focused on the character’s problem of being a modern woman in a 18th century world.   That slight of hand takes considerable skill to achieve.

So to answer the question, Yes, you can pretty much count on being ticketed for reckless driving when using creative license.  But that shouldn’t keep parked at the curb.  Risk is part of the business of writing fiction.  Exactly how much risk are you able to tolerate and how well you execute the maneuver will determine your success.    Yet it still falls under the category of you can’t please all of the people all of the time no matter how carefully you pull out into traffic.

This week I’ve been taking a synopsis course with Laurie Schnebly-Campbell. It is different than the last course on this subject I took because, she focuses on marketing. That I think is a useful skill to have. The competition is fierce and there is value in understanding your product and your customer. Ultimately, that customer is the reader, but you’ll never get a reader unless the book is published and that required one or more very particular customers to come on board. You guessed it, an agent and/or editor (not to mention all the others who may sit on committee deciding your books fate in the publishing schedule-should you manage to get that far).

Lest you think I’m becoming cynical about writing, please note that I’ve almost got a split personality about the whole thing. There’s the side of me that writes and that process is (on a good day) excessively creative, sometimes too much so. I think there’s a little bit of lizard brain involved there. The other side feeds my puzzler brain, the one who loves to analyze all the parts to see how they fit together. You’d think that side would help occasionally, pitch in with plotting, but so far no such luck.

So this week we did an exercise where we put together a summary in under 100 words. There was a structured lead in so we would all sort of have the same components in our summary. It’s basically like a cover blurb. My first effort yielded a response from Laurie that was mixed. She did a terrifically helpful thing. As she read each line she jotted down her thoughts in the context of a buyer. What that revealed to me is that my blurb was not homogenous. It didn’t stay on theme throughout. First it was funny then serious then funny then serious. So the reader couldn’t really tell whether this was a romantic suspense or a romantic comedy. Ok, so maybe it’s both but the decision I needed to make was whether I am a master suspense plotter or have a uniquely funny voice. What is the selling point of my product?

With so many really suspenseful storytellers out there I would never have a chance in pure romantic suspense. Not against the likes of my friend Carla Cassidy, or the rest of the RWA gang such as Amy J. Fetzer, Christine Feehan, Lisa Jackson. These women are so good at what they do that I can’t hope to compete.

But as I stated last week, that’s not my strength anyway. My strength is my peculiar brand of humor, so it is that that I will use to sell my product. Knock off the seriousness and get on with the laughs. Someday I may change my mind and become some kind of master suspense story teller but until then I’ll stick with what I know, and focus on learning something new every day.

It’s so odd how you’ll say something and then it gets totally flipped on your head.  For example yesterday I said I’d never write romantic suspense.  Well as it turns out maybe I already am and just didn’t think about it that way.

How can I not know what I’m writing you ask? Well, I guess I’m a dunce. Apparently since I have a good guy, a bad guy, and not everyone knows what’s going on and they have to figure it out that sort of makes it a suspense plot. Go figure. But I still contend the main focus is on zany characters doing things that are sometimes just silly. So maybe I’ll have to think some more about putting together a plot featuring a team of Black Ops spooks running a donut shop. If you think about it, the filling hole of a longjohn is the perfect place to hide a fiberoptic camera. At least until someone comes along and takes a bite.

For anyone unfamiliar with the american donut delicacies, a longjohn is a bar donut sometimes injected with custard (avoid that weird white frosting filling stuff - ick!), topped with chocolate icing - in it’s frosted state it is sometimes called an eclair though not in the french sense. And may I just say - ummmmmm.