Month: July 2015

Office Reclamation

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It was nearly a year ago when I started my office reclamation project. And while it has been on hiatus for a while, at least I’ve managed to keep the clutter at bay.

While going through some papers earlier this spring, I came across print-outs of my novels. Now I’m wondering why I need to keep them? All of my books are stored on the cloud. Several are published. I also e-mail the final manuscripts to a special e-mail account I have just for that purpose.

I think that before the county has its next Shred-a-thon/Shred-O-Rama, I’m going to revisit those files and purge them.

Unless you can think of a reason I should keep them.

 

 

Laughter and Romance Writers

I belong to my local chapter of Romance Writers of America. We meet monthly at a local library. Sometimes, the “big” room isn’t available for our day-long meeting, so our sessions are split–mornings in a smaller meeting room, afternoons in the big room.

This happened a few months ago. As we were leaving the smaller room, I noticed a group of women sitting at a table outside the smaller room. “Are you ladies waiting to get into this room?” I asked.

“Yes,” several of them replied.

I stuck my head in the door and told the stragglers the next group was waiting to get in there.

“What group are you?” one of the ladies asked.

“We’re the Central New York Romance Writers,” I replied.

“You certainly laugh a lot. What was so funny?”

“Love is funny. Life is funny. Romance goes for the happy ending!” I replied.

According to RWA (and we are the last word in romance fiction) a novel must have two elements to be considered a romance: a central love story and an emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending.

I read an article in Publisher’s Weekly  not too long ago:  “When did happiness fall out of fashion?” The author of the article concluded with, “Books with happy endings are a gift of hope.”

Isn’t that a wonderful thing?

Happiness Happens month starts on August 1. I’m going to start my list a little early: Happiness Happens when one of the books I write gives someone hope.

 

 

Story Bibles

One thing I cannot do without while writing my Toke Lobo & the Pack werewolf series is my story bible. I wish I’d kept it up to date a little better than I did. I’m correcting that now.

The story bible is a 3-ring binder that contains all the pertinent information about the series in one place:

  • how the characters are related to each other
  • hair and eye color; build; etc.
  • who plays which instrument in the band
  • pack status
  • all of my wolf, werewolf, and country music research
  • casual mentions of people in one book who might actually show up in another–example: in Moonlight Serenade, the character Luke mentions his cousin Drioni is the band’s webmistress. My first draft of Luke’s story mentioned Drioni was related to another character. Oops! Glad I thought to check that.
  • The physical sensations a human experiences when in the energy field of a shifting werewolf.

I have read series where the author changes something three or four books into the series, and I always find that discombobulating.

Solution: a story bible.

 

 

Slice of Life Sundae!

Today is National Ice Cream Day.

I will admit, I am an ice cream addict. I stopped bothering with scoops and bowls years ago. I simply sit with the carton and my spoon.

Over the years, I’ve had a lot of favorite flavors.

  • Heavenly Hash was probably the first “grown-up” ice cream I loved.
  • Lady Borden used to make Tin Roof Swirl (fudge ripple with peanuts), and when I had a bad day at then-current-day-job, a quart of that would be lunch.
  • Fell in love with Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia.
  • My daughter was gestated on Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Fudge Brownie (which probably explains why she loathes chocolate).
  • Panda Paws and Moose Tracks have become recent favorites.
  • My local supermarket chain, Wegmans (one of the America’s top 10 employers, according to Forbes), has an amazing Peanut Butter Sundae: a lightly flavored peanut butter ice cream with peanut better cups, fudge swirl, and peanut butter swirls.
  • Byrne, a local dairy, makes Midnight Madness, which I discovered quite by accident. Creamy Chocolate Ice Cream with Chocolate Fudge Swirl & White Chocolate Chunks. How can you go wrong?
  • Ben & Jerry’s Vanilla Caramel Fudge is a new favorite.

What’s your favorite ice cream flavor?

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

I am on vacation from Day Job this week. That does not mean I am not working. I am. So far, I’ve written 20 pages every day since Sunday. That’s a lot of words. And in my local RWA chapter, every 20-page day is also a purple rose in our annual end-of-the-year rose ceremony. Twenty pages is about 5,000 words.

I’m also re-reading a favorite summer book — one I forgot to include on my summer reading list the other day. The Happy Summer Days by Sue Kaufman (perhaps best known for Diary of a Mad Housewife) is another book I tend to re-read  each summer. I came across a quote in it that describes what’s been going on with the writing:

If only she’d come some other time instead of now, when she had stumbled onto one of those periods creative people dream about–mind all lost, world receded, only cramping muscles, a dryness of the mouth, reminding one that time has passed and passed and one has worked enough.

And that is how I’m spending my summer vacation.