Today I’m a guest over at Tracey H. Kitts’ blog, and I’m talking about leopards and Middlemarch.
Literary agent, Nathan Bransford has a good post about plotting and how to decide if your story has a plot.
Author, Joanna Bourne has a useful post, with examples, about how to avoid some of the common writing mistakes. (scroll down past the excerpt)
Agent, Lucienne Diver has a post about dos and don’ts when writing a query letter. I shook my head while reading this one. I can’t believe people actually do some of these things.
Agent, Rachelle Gardner has a post about how long is your book. These days publishers and agents consider the length of a book because of cost considerations.
And finally, here’s a fun site with some time-waster games. It’s called Addicting Games, so be warned!
If you have any excellent posts to add to my list, post them in the comments section.
I had no idea what I was doing for my TT this week. I thought about it while eating my porridge. I glanced around my kitchen and my gaze lit on it–inspiration in the form of one lonely banana. I hereby dedicate my TT to the humble banana.
1. Bananas are originally from Malaysia, but they have spread throughout the world and grow well in tropical areas.
2. Bananas plants are not trees but are actually herbs.
3. Bananas are high in potassium. They also contain protein, Vitamins A, B & C and have trace elements of iron and zinc. In other words, they’re good for you. Read the rest of this entry ?
My special guest today is author Josh Lanyon. Josh writes for several publishers including Loose Id and MLR Press.
I read one of Josh’s books early this year, enjoyed it very much, and since I’m a huge mystery fan, I immediately went off to download the first in Josh’s Adrien English series. I loved this story so much that I purchased the rest of the series and read them one after the other. That’s the great thing about discovering a new author with an established series–being able to enjoy all the books without waiting!
I’m now eagerly awaiting the August release of Death of a Pirate King, the fourth story in the Adrien English series. And all this brings me neatly to the topic of the day–writing a series.
This is the cover for my next release, Price of Love, which is due out on 2 July. I really like this gem cover. This is my favorite so far, although the pearl one is a close second. Price of Love is a feline shifter story and here’s a link to an excerpt.
Things are pretty busy in the Munro household at the moment. I’m busy with writing–someone please tell me why I thought it was a good idea to sell three books before I left on holiday, because after sales, the edits arrive. I worked on edits for most of the weekend. Mr. Munro had to work for part of one day and went off to play golf for the other day. He arrived back home with a meat pack and was very pleased with himself. Today I worked on my current work-in-progress. I’m not following any of the “so-called” writing rules, and I’m having a ball. Writing for the sheer joy of it is so liberating, although it’s not always practical when it comes to selling the manuscript. Sales equals income. I always need to factor that into the equation.
This year I’ve done a lot of soul-searching when it comes to my writing. I’ve analyzed my strengths, my weaknesses (I swear my commas move around like loose cannons every time I hit send), and I’m working to a plan of attack. I’ll let you know this time next year if it works.
I’ll leave you with a video of an ad, which I love. It’s about success and was filmed in New Zealand. The beach in the first and last frames is in Auckland and looks out over Rangitoto Island. It’s one of my favorite views.
A good romance needs conflict to make it memorable. Our characters need motivation and goals, otherwise why are we bothering? For a beginner writer, conflict is often a difficult thing to grasp. It’s more than mere bickering.
The turning point for me came when I read Debra Dixon’s book GMC: Goal, Motivation and Conflict. I don’t read a lot of craft books, especially when I’m writing, since I start to second-guess myself. However, this is one of the books I found really useful. Here’s the link to the book.
Debra does charts and talks about internal and external conflict. I still use her method, but I also answer the questions below.
When I’m writing, I always work out the GMC of my two main characters and any important secondary characters before I write a word. Often I’ll layer in more conflict as I write, to strengthen my story, but the basics are in place before I start.
If I can answer the following five questions about my characters, then I know my story is workable, and I’m ready to start.
1. What do my characters want?
2. Why do they want it?
3. How do they plan to get it?
4. What’s standing in their way?
5. What will happen if they don’t get it?
I try to arrange the answers to the above questions so that my hero and heroine want the opposite, and during the course of the book, I try to make things worse. I throw in road blocks, and the characters need to work out another way to get what they want or buckle under the pressure.
How do you go about working out your goals, motivation and conflict for your characters? Do you have any favorite how-to books that help you in this area?
1. In ancient times, there was no money. People bartered or traded goods, that they had produced themselves.
2. In the past, customers were served by the shopkeeper, who would retrieve all the goods on their shopping list. Shops would often deliver the goods to the customers’ homes.
3. This changed to self-serve shopping where customers selected the goods, retrieved them off the shelves and packed their own goods. Customers deliver their own goods.
4. These days many of us shop on the internet, our goods are packed by the shopkeeper or his staff and delivered to us. We’ve come a full circle!
5. Sylvan Goldman invented the first shopping cart in 1936. He invented the first shopping cart by adding two wire basket and wheels to a folding chair.
6. The first shopping mall was the Country Club Plaza, founded by the J.C. Nichols Company and opened near Kansas City, Mo., in 1922.
7. At the start of the nineteenth century a form of mass produced clothing developed. It was of a simple basic style, mainly for ordinary men and women and unsuitable for the high fashion market of the upper classes. The only acceptable ready made items for the wealthy were free size garments like mantles, cloaks and shawls.
8. The American, Gordon Selfridge, invested in building a huge store in Oxford Street, London in 1909. Staff were hired months before it opened. They were trained in selling the Selfridge way. Shoppers flocked to the store when they heard of the delights inside such as make up and perfume. Clothes departments sold all manner of goods and hard to find items. Music greeted the shoppers and browsing there could be an all day experience. Shopping there was intended to be a recreation.
9. A Philadelphia pharmacist named Asa Candler invented the coupon in 1895. Candler bought the Coca-Cola company from the original inventor Dr. John Pemberton, an Atlanta pharmacist. Candler placed coupons in newspaper for a free Coke from any fountain – to help promote the new soft drink.
10. The first patent for bar code (US Patent #2,612,994) was issued to inventors Joseph Woodland and Bernard Silver on October 7, 1952.
11. Shopping can be a disease – Compulsive shopping or spending can be a seasonal balm for the depression, anxiety and loneliness during the December holiday season. It also can occur when a person feels depressed, lonely and angry. Shopping and spending will not assure more love, bolster self-esteem, or heal the hurts, regrets, stress, and the problems of daily living. It generally makes these feelings worse because of the increased financial debt the person has obtained from compulsive shopping.
12. Whoever said money can’t buy happiness simply didn’t know where to go shopping. ~ Bo Derek
13. Shopping is a woman thing. It’s a contact sport like football. Women enjoy the scrimmage, the noisy crowds, the danger of being trampled to death, and the ecstasy of the purchase. ~ Erma Bombeck
Extra: Shopping is better than sex. If you’re not satisfied after shopping you can make an exchange for something you really like. ~ Adrienne Gusoff
Do you prefer to shop online or do you like to shop in person at a department store or mall?
The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others’ comments. It’s easy, and fun! Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted! View More Thursday Thirteen Participants
My special guest today is Sandra Cox. Sandra writes for several publishers including Cerridwen Press, Wings ePress and Highland Press. A vegetarian and animal lover, Sandra is an Administrative Assistant by day and an author by night. She hopes to write full time in the not too distant future.
If you enjoy paranormal romances check out Sandra’s Amulet series at Cerridwen Press. Just as an aside, the cover Gods have been smiling at her because Sandra’s covers are stunning. This is the cover for her most recent release, book three in the Amulet series. Isn’t it great?
Today Sandra is talking about a topic dear to many of our hearts – shopping.
Woohoo! Midnight Treat is officially out today. It’s a paranormal anthology featuring a gagoyle, a vampire and a werewolf. I’m looking at my own copy right now. In fact, I’ve stroked it a couple of times. It’s very pretty!
WANTED: Kissable bachelor with fangs seeks soft, sexy lady for a kinky good time. Meet me at midnight….
SALLY PAINTER
To Kiss a Gargoyle
Tempted by the half-man/half-lion statue perched outside her high-rise office window, Marcy puts her hot lips on his rock-hard body, bringing the towering, muscular stud to life — along with her wildest fantasies.
MARGARET L. CARTER
Tall, Dark and Deadly
After a business meeting with irresistible leading man Claude Darvell ends in carnal ecstasy, Eloise learns he’s no actor — he’s a vampire — and his seductive bite arouses her erotic appetite.
SHELLEY MUNRO
Curse of Brandon Lupinus
The gorgeous hunk who haunts Jess’s dreams shows up in the flesh, claiming to be a ghostly eighteenth-century werewolf — and together they indulge in some naughty bedroom play that leaves both of them panting for more.
About Gargoyles and To Kiss a Gargoyle by Sally Painter:
To Kiss a Gargoyle is pure fantasy. The idea came to me one day when I was thinking about gargoyles and how I’d like to write a story about them. That was in 2000 and I didn’t send the book out until nearly six years when I brushed it off to revamp for an erotic romance. I always enjoyed the gargoyle cartoons and the idea of being trapped inside a stone statue, specifically a gargoyle statue, intrigued me. Gargoyles are rather unknown creatures of the night and therefore very mysterious. They lend themselves to many stories and each can be very different. Some I’ve written were born as gargoyles, while others have been held spellbound. Also, the rules of their world can all be different. There’s a lot to work with when writing about a gargoyle.
So when I wrote To Kiss a Gargoyle, I thought what if a woman had an office overlooking a sexy half-man, half-lion gargoyle statue hanging off a ledge. For the past three years she’s talked to him as though he’s a real man and her fascination evolves into sexual fantasies about him coming to life and transforming into the man of her dreams. Marcy was the perfect heroine for such a scenario only her fantasies escalate until the statue she’s named Leonardo, becomes an obsession. She’s consumed by a compulsion to climb outside her high-rise onto the narrow ledge to kiss him. Just one kiss is all she craves. So, in that respect, the story is a kind of reverse-gender sleeping beauty – only with a gargoyle twist.
“Tall, Dark, and Deadly” belongs to my “Vanishing Breed” vampire universe, about a nonhuman, non-supernatural species of vampires living secretly among us. I’ve been an ardent vampire fan ever since reading DRACULA at the age of twelve, and even then, I wondered about the “monster’s” viewpoint on the story. Not only did the motif of sharing blood appeal to me as intimate and sensual, I was intrigued by the mental and emotional inner life of a creature who is almost human and yet, in some essential ways, alien. So I’ve always written fiction about sympathetic vampires. When my husband’s SF story “Vanishing Breed” appeared in my first published book, an anthology called CURSE OF THE UNDEAD (1970), I loved the idea of vampires as a natural species and was eventually inspired to convert my fictional vampires from the traditional undead into the SF type.
Claude in “Tall, Dark, and Deadly” is the half-brother of Roger Darvell, the vampire-human hybrid protagonist of my first vampire novel, DARK CHANGELING. Claude, however, was originally created independently in a short wish-fulfillment tale many years earlier, about a writer who meets an actor at a convention and finds out he’s a ravishing vampire. Claude began as a sort of Christopher Lee type of actor, and I still visualize his physical appearance as a cross between Lee in the early Hammer Dracula films and a young Lord Byron. The female writer in that story was a pure Mary Sue character. Eloise, as she eventually grew into the character who now appears in “Tall, Dark, and Deadly” as well as in CHILD OF TWILIGHT (sequel to DARK CHANGELING), remained an idealized version of myself—better looking, more confident, and more successful.
The complete chronology of the “Vanishing Breed” universe appears on my website.
About Werewolves, Ghosts and Curse of Brandon Lupinus by Shelley Munro:
I love ghost stories. I also love werewolf stories, and it came to me one day in a flash of brilliance. Why don’t I combine the two story elements? Once the original idea came to me, I embellished it in my head, as I do during the plotting stage. I thought about a man and a curse. I thought about the setting and decided an old estate in a British village would work nicely. I thought about my favorite historical time period, which is Georgian, by the way. I thought about an old ghost poem my mother used to read to her classes when she was a schoolteacher. Finally, I stirred all these ideas together and Curse of Brandon Lupinus was born.
Brandon Lupinus suffers from a curse and is forced to stay at his old estate, never seen, but sometimes his howls echo through the hills. The locals whisper of ghosts and wolves. None of this frightens Jess Whittlebury who falls in love with the estate and spends time lovingly restoring the old house. Jess fascinates Brandon and then he discovers she can sense him, feel his presence. If only he could break the curse…
My special guest today is author 
My special guest today is 
