Great to be back!

After a few long months of tax season keeping me from writing, I am back working on Amoret!…Sitting on the back porch, “soundtrack” music playing in the background, fountain gently tinkling, Clairabelle napping beside me, and words pouring out into my laptop…Bliss!

Great Book!~The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

I have ventured outside of my preferred Regency world long enough to start The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. I have heard rave reviews about this book…and now I know why! It is a charmingly written with a heroine one wishes was your best friend. It’s amazing the historical details that are packed into the book but done so in such a way that the reader doesn’t realize the education he is obtaining! Even though there isn’t a bonnet or rake to be had, I am still thoroughly enjoying the book!

The Art of Patience

“Learn the art of patience. Apply discipline to your thoughts when they become anxious over the outcome of a goal. Impatience breeds anxiety, fear, discouragement and failure. Patience creates confidence, decisiveness, and a rational outlook, which eventually leads to success.”~Brian Adams

Mood Music

My sweet husband set up a “Pride & Prejudice” Pandora station for me. I can play it over the TV as I write. I am one of those writers that has to have music playing in the background for the creativity to flow…but not just any music. It has to set the atmosphere for the book I am writing. I wore out my Broadside Band Country Dances CD while writing Peals and Moonstones, and even used a couple of the tunes from it for ball scenes. The music became the “score” for the book. I haven’t yet settled on a “score” for Amoret. And so, with Pandora streaming, and Clairabelle snuggled beside me, I think I’ll do a little writing till the girls come home from school!

2011 RWA Golden Heart Contest

It’s official! I am entered into RWA’s 2011 Golden Heart Contest for Pearls and Moonstones. This is my first writing contest. I am surprised at how nervous I was at the post office as I slipped all of the required materials into the box and sent it off to Texas. Now is the hard part…waiting till March 25th to learn if I am a finalist!

3,000 Words Down, 87,000 More To Go!!!

After being sidetracked with an end of summer vacation on Bald Head Island (Paradise!), my daughters starting back to school, and landing a part-time job at a CPA firm in record time, things have finally calmed down a bit and I have started back writing. I just finished the first chapter of my second novel, Amoret, and am really excited about it! It’s a bit chillier here in North Carolina (relatively speaking that is!), so, with the fire going in the fireplace, the perfect strains of English Country Dances by The Broadside Band waltzing on the air, and my precious Shih-Tzu puppy, Clairabelle curled up next to me, I have sunk down in the chair and effortlessly slid into a world of all things Regency England!…Carriages, gowns, and Cads, Oh, my!!!… A couple things I have noticed about starting another book…I am much more realistic, yet still confident, in what I am doing, and, I am conscious of the technical aspects of the craft. It is good, indeed, to be back writing!

A MFA in a Book

Creating Fiction, a collection of essays by writing instructors around the country, edited by Julie Checkoway, is a great resource for new writers. Not only does it cover the basics of the craft, but it serves as a great inspiration. Some instructors are really funny, and at least one dishes some dirt. One particular tidbit got my attention as it hits close to home…in the chapter titled “Sympathy for the Devil: What to do About Difficult Characters,” Robin Hemley tells the story of a Bank CEO who secretly worked on a dry novel about a barge caught in a hurricane, arriving at the instructor’s office after dark, and wearing dark glasses. He quit coming to the sessions over his moral outrage of a story the instructor used. His moral outrage apparently didn’t extend to the low-income housing for which he funded the bulldozing of, all for urban renewal. He was succeeded by another bank CEO who, it was said, tossed a disarmed grenade between his hands during meetings, only to pull the pin at the end of it…”Who can’t love such an unsympathetic character as that?” indeed!

Starting My Next Book!

I am excited to be starting my second novel, with Amoret as the working title. It is the first in a planned trilogy revolving around three sisters. The unusual name comes from Edmund Spenser’s epic poem, The Faerie Queene. Spenser was an Elizabethan poet whom Charles Lamb called “the poet’s poet.” So what does an Elizabethan poet have to do with a Regency romance? Nothing, other than an eccentric, intellectual father, obsessed with Elizabethan writers, naming his children after characters in The Faerie Queene!

One of the things I love about writing is the huge amount of research that goes on behind the story. Every day is an opportunity to learn something new, whether it’s French perfume, famous gardens of the Regency period, horses, or a reintroduction to famous Elizabethan poets. My problem is that I often get immersed in the research and have to tell myself to get back to writing!

Anyway, each book is like birthing a baby. I’ve just delivered my first, and now I am excited to announce that I am pregnant again! Give me a few months, then the excitement will wear off and I will be feeling like a heavily pregnant woman in the throes of a hot, humid summer like we have had here in the southeast! Sweating, lethargic, and wondering what did I get myself into! My self-doubt and procrastination, driven by my perfectionism, will kick in. Luckily, my stubborn streak will serve me well in seeing my baby through to delivery. Wish me luck!

Neurotic Authors

Just finished a wonderfully informative and encouraging book called The Forest for the Trees by Betsy Lerner, former editor, and current partner with Dunow, Carlson, and Lerner Literary Agency. Perhaps I would have been dismayed to discover how close to home her writer portrayals were had I been able to stop laughing long enough to own my own neurosis! I loved the inside stories of writers and agents, and editors and publishers. The story of an author at his first reading had me laughing so hard tears were streaming down, I woke up my kids, and the dog was looking at me like I had gone crazy…which apparently is a prerequisite for being a writer.

In regard to a writer’s neurosis, as Jane Austen says: “For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors and laugh at them in our turn?”

Should I have the thrill of having a book published…I promise, Ms. Lerner, that I will not show up at a reading in a bathrobe, and with hand towels pinned to a safari hat, and…I will be nice to my publicist.

Want to to Know What Famous Author You Write Like?….

Nathan Bransford, an agent with Curtis Brown LTD in San Francisco, posted about a fun app that, after analyzing the word choice and structure of your writing, will tell you which famous writer you write like.

I tried it with two separate sections from my novel and my results were: Margaret Mitchell (Gone With the Wind) and Ann Rice (Interview With a Vampire). What?…Not Jane Austen?!!!

My conspiracy theorist husband (usually my role) said the app was probably by someone looking to steal other people’s plots! Anyway, take it for what it’s worth (it’s free and…you get what you pay for). Here’s the link. Let me know what your results are!

I Write Like…