Shelley Munro Blog

Tomorrow is the first day of December and also the start of my Birthday Bash celebration. For the next twenty-one days I have friends and favorite authors visiting me to help celebrate my birthday. I hope you’ll come along to join in the fun. We’re going to discuss all sorts of things and there are lots of prizes on offer.

I also have a special contest at my website. Click on the extras tab above to take you to the contest page where you will find all the details on how to enter. Good luck!

Our news is full of David Beckham at the moment since he arrived in Wellington, New Zealand along with the rest of the Galaxy football team yesterday. I must admit I’ve been impressed with the man. I don’t know how he manages to live in the full glare of publicity all the time and still show such charm. Tomorrow the Galaxy play our team the Phoenix and interest is high despite football being a less popular sport down this end of the world. We’re all about the rugby, and I can’t wait for the new season to start early next year.

Our local council has just finished laying new footpaths along a part of the seafront that was previously grass. Good and bad. Good because I can ride my bike along the paths and hardly meet anyone. The scenery is great. Bad because I tend to go for longer bike rides. Too much fitness can be a bad thing!

And in great news, one of my favorite writers, Lori Armstrong (who also writes as Lorelei James) has signed a two book contract with Touchstone Fireside. Congrats, Lori! Check out the special announcement video here.

I’ve enjoyed sci-fi romance for a long time, and I wish there were more NY publishers publishing this genre. Here are some of my favorite reads.

1. Contact by Susan Grant.

2. Ravyn’s Flight by Patti O’Shea.

3. Too Close to the Sun by Robin T. Popp.

4. The Ties That Bind Us by Christine d’Abo. I’d like to read another - no pressure or anything, Christine

5. Stardoc by SL Viehl - this isn’t really a romance but it’s the first book in an amazing series. There is a romantic subplot.

6. Unmasked by CJ Barry.

7. Overnight Alien by Robin Rotham. Ms. Robin - another please

8. Tripping through the Universe - anthology including a story by me!

9. Planet X by Evangeline Anderson. I’m pretty sure this one won a RT Reviewers’ Choice award.

10. Ghosthunter by Jayne Castle. Some people might argue this isn’t sci-fi but I’m putting it in my list. I love the cover.

11. Hold by Zannie Adams. I read this book recently. Zannie is a wonderful writer.

12. Stranded by Shelley Munro - part of the No Holes Barred anthology. Here’s the link for the print version.

13. Romancing the Alien by Shelley Munro - you didn’t think I’d leave off my talking dogs books, did you? An anthology featuring Talking Dogs, Aliens and Purple People Eaters and Never Send a Dog to do a Woman’s Job. My first two EC books. Talking Dogs finalled in the Eppies and won an eCataromance Reviewers’ chocie award. Both scored great reviews. Yeah, you definitely should check them out

Does anyone else have other recommendations? I know I haven’t mentioned Linnea Sinclair’s or Michelle Pillow’s books. They’re both worth looking at if you enjoy sci-fi romances.

Blast in the New Year with the Blast in the New Scavenger Hunt!

47 individual prizes and one GRAND PRIZE of ALL the E-Books to one lucky entrant!

Blast in the New

Here’s the dealio… Each author has hidden this image somewhere on their websites:

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Here’s the press release for the writing competition I mentioned in yesterday’s post.

A brand new writing competition from the world’s best-selling romance series is about to hit the blogosphere!

It’s an exciting time for Harlequin Presents: from January 2008, there will be 12 of our intensely passionate romances available every month. And with this increase of titles comes a great opportunity for aspiring authors – we will be looking to buy more books for publication!

The old saying goes that first impressions are lasting impressions – and when it comes to reading a Harlequin Presents, that certainly holds true. If the first chapter doesn’t immediately grip the reader with its pace, passion and intensity, then she won’t continue to turn the pages.
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Brush up your cover/query letters and send them to Redlines and Deadlines for a chance of a critique and maybe win a download of an Ellora’s Cave or Cerridwen Press book.

Anna Campbell is doing a workshop at Sandra’s Goings On about lifting the drama in your writing.

At IHeartPresents there’s a post from editor Bryony Green about what they’re looking for in the new Modern Extra line. These books are sold as Sensation Sexy in Australia and New Zealand, and I believe in the US some have come out as part of the Presents line. They’re younger feeling with lots of dialogue and are fairly hot. I’ve enjoyed the ones I’ve read. Also check out the contests they are having for Presents and Modern Extra - write a chapter plus a synopsis by mid-February.

And finally, it’s my birthday in December. I’m having a birthday bash right here with guest bloggers from 1 Dec to 21 Dec. Lots of fun and prizes. I hope you’ll come along and join in the fun. I have a special birthday contest on my contest page. Guess the date of my birthday and win!

I had a hiccup in my blogging schedule last night in the way of Mr. Munro. He wanted to use the computer and in the interests of fairness, I had to let him. The end result was that I went to bed without getting near the computer again or blogging.

I’ve sold another story to Ellora’s Cave. I really loved this story from the get-go. It came together really well and didn’t give me fits as some of my stories do. LOVERS AT LAST is a Quickie and it will be out next year. Yahoo! Color me excited.

Over at the Dynamic Trio we have a contest going. Check out the details here. It’s a fun contest and TJ has done a wonderful job putting it all together. Authors are welcome to play as well as readers.

Anyway, I’m off to post my contract and meet my sister for coffee. I hope everyone has a fun day.

The other day in my post about plotting Gabriele mentioned she does a lot of plotting in her head. I do a lot of plotting and mulling over character motivation in my head, too, especially when I’m walking the dog or cycling or in the shower. It made me wonder exactly what the inside of a writer’s head looks like.

I mean my head is rather full of sex and sex-related things. Given that I write erotic romance I’m fine with this. I have a host of paranormal creatures running around there, no doubt tripping over sex toys and the like. There’s cartons of condoms since responsible writers use them in their love scenes. At the moment I have wizards snarling at feline shifters, a taniwha or two plus of all things, a vampire. That’s a bit odd since I don’t like seeing or thinking about blood and vampires tend to live on the stuff. I’m avoiding him at the moment. There’s a cowboy competing at a rodeo plus a pen of bulls with sharp horns. And then there’s the threesome… Let’s hope they’re being responsible and using some of my condom supplies. They’re certainly using everything else! And then floating around in there are random thoughts about food. What on earth are we going to have for dinner? Then one of the threesome fall off the bed, all hell breaks loose and it’s back to sex. Again.

What does the inside of your head look like?

Tirau is a small New Zealand town. It’s pronounced Tee-rau

1. Tirau, originally referred to a hill three miles southwest of the village, is covered with cabbage trees where Maori trapped the keruru (wood pigeon). It was first settled by the Ngati Raukawa, although various tribes won the area in battle before Europeans purchased the surrounding district in 1868.

2. Tirau has always been a rest stop for travellers with the Oxford Royal Hotel operating as a staging post between Rotorua, Cambridge, Lichfield and later Taupo.

3. The benefits of its central location continue today. In fact Kate and Lane from PLAYING TO WIN stopped here for a break during their drive to Taupo. These days the town is unique for its corrugated iron sculptures.

4. A shop disguised as a sheep.

5. A dog.

6. Poppies

7. A book shop.

8. The toy shop.

9. Me standing outside the tourist center.

10. Gourmet Food shop.

11. A garage.

12. A dairy.

13. A gift shop with a pukeko (bird).

There are lots of ways to write a book. When I was a brand new writer, I had an idea and I sat down and wrote. A month later I had my book and I started on the next. The more I delved into the world of writing the more I realized that people had different ways to write their books. Writers tend to fall into three camps.

They:

1. Plot - where the writer thinks about his or her characters beforehand and has a framework in place before they start writing. They know the turning points, what happens in the black moment of the book and how everything is resolved. There are advantages to this method because any plot problems are caught right at the start before any time is wasted. Events can be foreshadowed because you, the writer, know what’s going to happen. A disadvantage of preplotting is that some of the spontaneity is lost and a tightly plotted book can feel like a steel cage after a while.

2. Pantser or Fly-into-the-mist - the writer might start with a vague idea or a starting scene and they sit down and start writing with no idea about what will happen next. For this type of writer, life is full of surprises, but it can also be full of pitfalls if your plot takes a sudden wrong turn or you write yourself into a corner.

3. A combination of the two - the writer might nail down her conflicts before she starts but the framework of the plot isn’t set in stone.

As I mentioned earlier, I’m in the number two camp or I was. I’ve found that now I’m published editors want to know what is happening in my story, mostly before I’ve completed the book. I’ve had to adapt the method that works for me and actively try to plot a little more. I’ll admit, I find this difficult.

Recently I took an online class through Passionate Ink on storyboarding with the wonderful Shelley Bradley. Storyboarding is where you have a large poster-sized board plus different colored post-it notes and use these to plot out your stories. The beauty of this method is that it’s very visual and therefore it’s easy to construct your book. You know roughly where the turning points are in your story and with post-it notes it’s easy to shift things around if necessary. That’s a very basic description. I’m sure Shelley is doing more classes in storyboarding and I’d recommend you check them out. I found it really interesting, and if I’m honest, a little scary to my freewheeling ways, but I have my supplies - my posterboard and a pile of post-its - and my notes. I’m all ready to plot once I’ve finished my current story.

Are you a plotter? A fly-into-the-mist writer? Or something in between? Have you tried storyboarding? How long did it take you to work out which camp you belonged in? If you have any advice or comments on plotting I’d love to hear them.