It’s Friday, and I thought it would be fun to do something a little different. We had a great discussion about books with Terrio’s blog earlier in the week, so I decided to open the discussion today with a book meme. I hope you play along, because I always love new perspectives on books.

One Book that changed your life?

The Bible- I view it as the book of life. It gives me direction, salvation, hope, and grace.

One book you have read more than once.

The Black Swan by Day Taylor. An epic romance that forever changed my view on historical romance.  Wonderfully written, what is not to love about a hero who is a pirate, and a protagonist who is just as hot and complex? Other added bonuses- a strong heroine and a deep south setting in Civil War time.

One book you would want on a desert island.

I picked 2, both important to my sanity.

The Bible- for obvious reasons. To keep the faith.

The Book of Survival by Anthony Greenback Which hopefully contains some easy coconut recipesJ

One book that made you laugh.

To the Nines  by Janet Evanovich. This is the funniest Stephanie Plum book for me. Favorite scenes- Lula hanging upside down like a piñata, and refusing to give up her bacon in the dog chase scene.

One book that made you cry.

The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks. The love in this book is palpable.

One Book you consistently recommend.

I can never narrow it down to one.

Sugar Daddy and Blue Eyed Devil by Lisa Kleypas

Blue Willow by Deborah Smith- a contemporary romance author I just discovered and absolutely love. This woman does angst to perfection.

One book you wish had never been written.

Fearless Fourteen by Janet Evanovich- a rehashed visit of earlier books in the Stephanie Plum series.

One book you are currently reading.

The Wicked Ways of a Duke by Laura Lee Guhrke. A very predictable plot, but interesting characters.

One book you have been meaning to read.

Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet. This book has been recommended to me more than once, but I always pass it up for more romance.

Tag you’re it! If you don’t have time to answer them all choose a couple you wish to share.

Scenes from yesterday, with some liberties taken with actual times and actual conversation.  Ok, some liberties taken with all of it.  This is, however, based on a true story.

Cast:

Marnee – the slightly frazzled stay-at-home mother of one attempting to make headway in her latest manuscript.

Sarah – the heroine of said latest manuscript, a prophet who reads the future by staring in other’s eyes.

Nik – Sarah’s hunka, hunka burning love.

9:02 AM

*Marnee sits down with a cup of coffee to check email, comment on blogs, and reread what she wrote on her WIP yesterday.  She places fingers to keyboard.*

Marnee:  Ok, Sarah, you are going to have to try to keep Nik from kidnapping you.

Sarah:  *sighs* I’m tired.  I told you these premonitions take a lot out of me and I really don’t have the strength to fight with him right now.

M:  Tough it out, missie.  I got you this far.

S:  *heavier sigh* Fine….

9:43 AM

*Marnee sits in the same spot with her hair all askew from tugging at it in frustration.  Three cups of caffeine are coursing through her veins and making her fidget like she has to pee.*

Sarah, whining:  I told you that I just want to see into his future so I can see if going with him is the best way.  If it isn’t, I’ll fight him.

Marnee, screeching:  And I told you that you shouldn’t see his future for another chapter or two!  Why aren’t you listening to me!?

S:  Because your way is difficult.  I’m wussing out here.  I’m tired.  This is the easiest way.

M, whining now:  But that isn’t how I saw the story going.

S:  And I’m telling you that it IS how the story goes.

*Marnee closes her computer in frustration and goes off to color with her son*

Sarah and I battled it out for the rest of the day yesterday.  I’d try to force her into submission but she ended up being more stubborn than me.  By last night, I gave up.  She’s going to see whatever is in their future whether I wanted it to be like that or not.  I’m going to have to find out what happens and rearrange my story accordingly.

I’m a plotter.  These character rebellions drive me bonkers.  I spend a lot of time in the beginning of my writing process asking my characters what they think is going to happen between them. Inevitably something comes up that they hadn’t made clear to me on the onset and I end up rearranging to accommodate them.

People who don’t write don’t understand this entire phenomenon.  I told my husband last night at dinner that Sarah was giving me a hard time and that she wouldn’t do what she was told.  He smiled, chewed his chicken thoughtfully and said nothing.  But the rise in his eyebrow said clearly that he was once again questioning my sanity and the prudence of leaving our impressionable young son alone with me all day.

But I mentioned the same occurrence to our lovely Coxswain late last night and she said, “Don’t you hate it when that happens?”  I sighed in relief and smiled in communion.  We both know that it’s the kind of hate that we love.

Because even though we say we hate it when that happens, we also know that it’s a great sign and bodes well for my story.  It means that the characters are so strong in my head and that they’re characterized so clearly for me that I’ll intuitively know if something “works” with them or not.   And that I’m on the right track.

And that I’m not, in fact, losing my mind.

Do you hear your characters in your head?  How do you deal with character rebellions?  Are you happy or annoyed when they take things over?

It wasn’t easy. The shadows did little to hide me from curious eyes as I made my way down the sidewalk without shoes, my skin black and blue and what little was left of my clothes hanging on me by a thread. The rain beat down on me and each drop felt like nails being driven into my skin. I couldn’t remember the last time I felt this bad.

It was all because I couldn’t let go of him.

I turned onto the darkened street, and looked up. My eyes lit up the sidewalk in front of me and I kept putting one foot in front of the other by sheer force of will. My head throbbed with each step and I slowed my pace and closed my eyes. I felt Caed watching me, laughing at my weakness, enjoying my pain. The longer I pushed forward, the faster his power grew. He leached every bit of my strength and waited for me to squirm like a worm in a mud puddle, slowly drowning but unable to help myself. I wasn’t that weak. Yet.

Thunder clapped and I weaved unsteady on my feet and tripped onto the concrete steps. I brought my hand up to my forehead, the throbbing intensified until bile rushed up my throat. Electricity charged the sky, and goosebumps raced along my naked flesh. I didn’t have to do this. I could ignite my flame and stick my hand in the water. It wouldn’t be a painless death, but merciful compared with what I was about to do.

Instead I was selfish and stuck my finger in the doorbell.

I wrapped my hand around the wrought iron rail and hauled myself to my feet. My fingers clenched around the metal, pain radiated down my spine. I could feel my power welling up inside of me, threatening to overflow and I clenched my jaw until my teeth started to giveaway.

I never heard him come to the door. He opened it enough for me to see the firelight behind him, haloed around his dark head. Water dripped from my hair into my eyes and made my sight blurry. The rain kept coming down, soaking into me but as his eyes swept over me, I did not feel chilled.

He raised his black eyes until they met mine and I took a step into him. His hand brushed my cheekbone, thumb traced my lower lip. I trembled at the thought of what was to come next. He pressed the gun into my temple and his lips brushed against my ear.

“There is another way.”

I choked on the words I wanted to say to him- my savior, my killer. Instead the only words I could push past my lips were, “Maybe next time.”

I closed my eyes as I pressed my hand into his chest. Blue fire flickered to my fingertips and skittered along his chest just as he pulled the trigger.

****

I love the rain. There is something very pure and cynical about the rain. You might be wondering what I mean, and I’m not sure I can explain it. The rain is a way to cleanse, to purify, yet, the rain inspires me to do many things that go against this very nature. Many of the blackest moments I’ve ever thought of have to do with rain. It’s almost as if you’re being violated twice with the black moment, not only by the very thing that causes the black moment but also by power behind nature.

One of my favorite romance novel moments involves the rain. Sixteen years ago, I read my first rain scene in a novel, Masque of Betrayal (Andrea Kane, 1993) and I fell in love. I wore the pages out of that library book. It was a very awe-inspiring moment for a girl who’d not noticed black moments or really ever thought about particular scenes in a book. There’s something about the way the heroine, Jacquie Holt, finds her way to the hero’s doorstep in the middle of the night in the down pouring rain. She’s soaked to the very marrow of her being, afraid, yet not afraid- I just can’t explain the feeling and emotion behind this scene.

I still remember it sixteen years later. Not to mention I’ve had to rubber cement my pages back to the spine of that book. That scene inspires me to write the right dark moment (not black moment, mind you, because there was nothing black about it, only that Dane, the hero, thinks Jacquie is a spy for the French.). Their relationship was so full of ups and downs but that moment was the perfect fit.   

For me, there are three parts of dark moments in a novel. There is the dark moment in the first third of the book that brings the hero and heroine together. There is the dark moment that seals our hero and heroine’s fate together and then there is the ultimate dark/black moment that resolves the whole plot. Now, I like to refer to them as dark moments, because I’m still under the impression that black moments should involved death of the hero/heroine, or another main character.

Dark moments are my favorite kind of scenes in a book and I love writing them. There’s always enough room for a little angst in the plot.

How many dark/black moments do you like to work into your writing? Readers, what are your favorite dark/black moments and which ones do you think are overdone? And can you remember any books that you’ve read where dark/black moments have stuck with you?

Influence this week-

The Bottom (Under The Flood, The Witness, 2006)

Hi, I’m Hells, and I over write.  Fortunately I’m pretty sure I’m not alone here. I think there are a lot of over writers out there. We fear empty space. We fear not explaining our characters enough, making them lovable enough to our readers. We all want our characters to be loved as much as we love them; and sometimes I think we over compensate trying to “sell” them to the reader by over writing. It’s not the worse writing sin in The 10 Commandments, but it probably ranks as one of the top ten. (The Golden Rule Commandment being, of course, don’t bore your reader.)

Now we all have our own specialties in writing. I know when you write, you have strengths. Maybe you’re great with description or setting (like Teresa Medeiros) or sexual tension (like Lisa Kleypas) or bad sex that leads to great sex (like Eloisa James—doesn’t that fried chicken scene in Your Wicked Ways crack you up?) Me, I like dialogue. Banter and wit is my idea of foreplay in real life as well as the written word. If I’m writing a scene and completely blowing character, plot, and description and setting, I try to get a conversation going just so I rebuild my writer’s self-esteem before it shreds entirely.

However, dialogue is not exactly the meat and potatoes of the story. It’s more like the frosting. It’s fun; it’s flavorful; and for many, it’s their favorite part, but it’s probably the nutritional equivalent of ho-ho’s. Possibly it’s most important value is how it paces a novel. Dialogue is quick and feels like action even when the characters are sitting in a coffee shop. Because talking is an action; and action is good.

However, consider the other part of dialogue: what isn’t said.

We put thirty spokes together and call it a wheel;

But it is on the space where there is nothing that the usefulness of the wheel depends.

We turn clay to make a vessel;

But it is on the space where there is nothing that the usefulness of the vessel depends.

We pierce doors and windows to make a house;

And it is on these spaces where there is nothing that the usefulness of the house depends.

Therefore just as we take advantage of what is, we should recognize the usefulness of what is not.

–Tao Te Ching, Chap 11, tr. Waley.

So if witty banter is not your forte, remember that’s not necessarily the important part of dialogue. Think about every Black Moment you’ve ever read. It’s all the things your hero didn’t tell the heroine until it was too late that is revealed in the Black Moment. Like he loved her. Or oops, it was her he wanted to marry all along, not that hussy he’d been engaged to for the last 300 pages. Or he was a jerk, but he didn’t know how to apologize for it because who is good at apologizing? No one, exactly. We hold our cards to our chest just as closely as we play them. It’s human nature not to reveal too much because, frankly, there are things we just won’t even admit to ourselves. That empty dialogue reveals just as much character as anything spoken aloud.

What about you? Do you think dialogue is a meat-and-potatoes sort of aspect of writing, or do you too think it’s more frosting? Who are your go-to authors for the best banter and dialogue? Does anyone else watch TV shows for dialogue tips? (I get some of my best dialogue and “plotting” (braiding) tips from watching re-runs of Friends.)  If so, which shows do you enjoy watching for this?

I’ve never considered myself an addictive personality.  I’m a creature of habit, but I have no problem with change and don’t have much trouble giving things up.  I’ve even managed to give up chocolate before.  Not permanently as I have no desire to bring about the end of the world, but still, I’ve been on the Hershey wagon once or twice.  I’d still be on there if my co-worker hadn’t given me that bag of Dove chocolates for Christmas.

Some people collect things.  John Wayne plates (my sister needs an intervention), figurines (who in the hell wants to dust that much?), or maybe Harry Potter memorabilia (not naming names here).  To me, collections are just stuff that take up space.  They usually have to be moved or cleaned or stored, all of which requires time and energy.  Two things I have very little of.

But if you ever see the inside of my house…errr…cabin, you’ll probably notice that I do have a collection.  Books.  I remember when my collection consisted of five Judith McNaught books only took up one corner of my little nightstand.  That was six bookshelves (and more years than I care to mention) ago and I’m seriously considering buying another shelf.  Mostly because of the trip I made to the used book store (UBS) this weekend. 

I never meant to actually buy more books.  At least not regular Romances.  I had a large bag of books to trade and after buying some YA for the daughter of a (former…long story) friend of mine, I was just going to carry the credit.  I started with $20 credit and ended up paying the credit plus $30 for the very large bag of books now sitting on my dining room floor.  Because, uhm, there’s no place to put them on the current bookshelves.

There’s something about a book that I can’t resist.  The chance to be somewhere else.  To be someone else.  To say things I’d never have the nerve to say or take a risk I’d never have the courage to take.  But most of all, the chance to fall in love over and over again.  That’s why I read them and that’s why I want to write them.  And that’s why Romances will never go out of style.

Why do you read them?  Why do you write them?  Where are some of the favorite places books have taken you?  And if you’re a writer, how do you decide where you’re going to take your readers?

Where were we?  We’ve talked eyes and hair.  I think it’s time to work our way down.  NOT DOWN THAT FAR!  Sheesh. 

Most women have that one thing on a man they just love. (Would y’all stop getting ahead of me?  I know what you’re thinking…)  There’s the eyes, the tush, the smile.  For me, it’s the shoulders.  Broad, well-defined shoulders that give a girl something solid to hold onto.  You never know when you might find your feet off the floor and your arse teetering on a banister.  Those shoulders come in handy in those moments.

But the rest leaves a little space for personal preference.  Since we’re building this Hottie to our own specifications, what kind of body do you like best?  Captain would say the ones I like don’t have necks.  But I’d say the ones she likes look like they’d easily be snapped in half.  This actually works out for both of us as we never have to worry we’ll fight over the same Hottie. J

So do you like them built, as I do, like a brick shithouse (you just can’t find a better descriptor than that) or more like the Captain prefers, tall and lanky?  Do you like a bare chest, a light dusting of hair, or Italian.  Come on, have you seen an Italian guy’s chest?  I remember this guy I knew in college.  Gabes.  Hmmmm…..there was this time….uhm…nevermind.

Time to put a body on this Hottie.  And I vote we add Brick Shithouse to the drink menu.

* 2^nd Chance hauls self out of the watery deep onto the deck, water dripping liberally from her clothes. She shivers and glares at the gathering crew “You have any idea of the water temp of Monterey Bay right now? 51 degrees!”

 - Marnee - “Why is she wet?”

- Terri - “It’s a bit early for swimming…”

- Lisa, – “Chance, you want a towel?”

- 2^nd stares at the rest of them - “Wait! I thought I had to go through the initiation swim afore I could start me blog!”

- Cap’n Hellion snorts - “That would be a first!”

- 2^nd turns her ire on Sin - “You sneaky, nasty, ninja loving offspring of a sea slug!”

- Sin snickers - “I love ‘em when they’re so gullible…”

* 2^nd excuses self, goes below and rings out wet clothing on Sin’s hammock, then returns, rolls out her rum barrel, climbs to the top and begins…

 Appropriate beginning to my topic of the day…the newbie experience. I may look all weather-beaten and experienced. I may sound a learned veteran of the writer’s life. But I’m not. Despite the library of books I’ve read (most forgotten in my life-change memory sinkhole) I am new to writing. I began three years ago and only after my daring dance with death did I step up to the challenge of looking for publishers…or take myself seriously as a writer.

 My first challenge came at the Romantic Times Convention, Pittsburgh. I signed up for the beginning writer’s workshop; I joined the corresponding yahoo group and chatted. I read the RT bulletin board. I flew to Pittsburgh. I made friends, I learned a lot. I came home completely overwhelmed and half-way convinced this wasn’t something I was going to be able to accomplish… (Got over that, but there were some dark days ‘fore I shook meself free of the gloominess.)

 I surfaced, scoured the magazines, lurked online…and found the language everyone spoke was about as foreign to me as the heavily laden name badges I found so intimidating at RT! (What does all that jewelry signify? Do they know if they fell of the ship, they’d sink like a rock?) The shorthand, the acronyms… PAN? PRO? H/H? HEA?

 Got worse when I went to the big RWA conference in San Francisco. Talk about intimidation and feeling like an imposter! What the hell was I doing here?

 My head spun. I e-mailed Judi McCoy, who led the beginning workshop in Pittsburgh… “I missed the initiation somewhere, didn’t I? When they handed out the code book…the secret decoder ring? What does it all mean?” She cackled. Re-e-e-al helpful.

 I’m still floundering. But I’m planning…building my own code book of all these secret, enigmatic phrases I hear. I’m sneakin’ a camera to RT, Orlando, and takin’ pics of all those bits of glitter on the badges. I want to know! I got me a cohort. We be determined! (Yes, I could ask. But that is scarier than hell when you’re a fragile newbie…though maybe at Orlando I be braver…)

 So the question/topic of the day… Share your newbie stories and maybe, somewhere, we can figure this all out. And expose the sacred rites of the romance grand-poobahs… Where do they meet? What do they wear during their arcane midnight rituals? What are they drinking? Anyone else find themselves feeling like an imposter? Is there a book of guidelines? If so, share!

Congratulate our brilliance! We have added to our crew (and not just half-clothed hotties who fetch us drinks…though, well, perhaps they too ARE half-clothed hotties now that I look at them…)–and we would love you to welcome our two newest bloggers: Loader 2nd Chance and Coxswain Haleigh!

Get it, because 2nd Chance makes all our frou-frou drinks and gets us “loaded”…she’s…never mind. We might tweak her title if we find something else that fits more perfectly.

Hal is our new Cox. Yes, you got it. We gave her that title just so we could say that. But you have to admit it’s perfect.

2nd Chance will doing her debut blog Friday, January 23–please make her feel welcome. She and Lisa will be alternating Fridays. And this February and March, Hal will be alternating blogs with the Bosun on Mondays.

Unfortunately there is no one to alternate Tuesdays with me yet so you’re stuck with updates about how soon the next Harry Potter movie is coming to theaters. 175 days, folks. 175 DAYS.

Happy Friday and thanks for being such a great readership!

I’ve spent the last month plotting.  I plotted a contemporary about a girl whose husband left her pregnant to go off with one of his band’s groupies.   I paired her up with the guy who grew up with a single mom and who gets it on with anything that moves – except women who have kids.  After that, I’ve been plotting a paranormal.   

But now that my plotting (plodding?) has wound down, I’m starting to think about writing these stories.  And after all this prep work, I’m struck again with the realization that no matter how great my plot is, that’s not everything when it comes to storytelling.

It’s the difference between listening to the teacher taking roll call in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (“Bueller?  Bueller?”) and the teacher in the Dead Poet’s Society (“O Captain my Captain!”).  It’s Professor Binns versus Professor Lupin.   Or the difference between watching the old version of Romeo and Juliet and the one with Leonardo and Claire Danes in it (I love that version).

It’s the reason I could sit and listen to my father tell the same story over and over.   It’s because he was a consummate storyteller.   He knew how to milk his audience, how to keep people listening.

All the details of storytelling are hard.  Painting those characters in a readers mind, pacing the story to keep things interesting, and writing dialogue that sounds convincing is more difficult than setting up a plot.  A plot is decided once, maybe tweaked or adjusted occasionally, but it remains fairly static.  But characterization, pacing, conflict, motivation?  Those things have to be dealt with every single time you’re at the keyboard.  That’s why plotting is helpful, but it doesn’t guarantee a bestseller.   Because a plot can’t guarantee that the story will come alive in every line.

I think it’s still easier than not having one, but I have no desire to open the pantser/plotter debate up today.

Instead, tell me what storytelling element (characterization, setting, pacing, conflict, motivation) etc you think is the hardest to master in writing?  Which do you think you do the best?

*Sin rummages through a wooden chest and starts throwing things out over her head*

-Ter- “What the hell is she doing?”

-Marn- “I think she’s looking for the glitter.”

-Lis- *puts her hand over her eyes and grimaces* “Or she’s looking for the missing part of her skirt. Full moon alert.”

*Pirates are snorting with laughter*

-Hellion- *eye roll at the mess* “Maybe she lost Ranger in that mess.”

*Sin shoots Hellion the death stare from over her shoulder* “Don’t go there.”

The pile of junk grew higher and higher until it started to sway in the wind. Lightening cracked over the sky and Sin’s triumphant battle cry echoed over the sea. “Ah-ha! I found it.”

She held it in the air, almost like a scene right out of Lion King. It was solid black. Marabou feathers adorned the edges of wood, silver glitter puff paint on the top spelled out “Sin”. Sin brushed it off and blew on it until all traces of dust were gone.

“This,” Sin said, strutting away from the pile of junk in the middle of the top deck. “I’ve been looking for this everywhere. I can’t have a proper soapbox rant without my soapbox.”

I don’t need a microphone for what I’m about to say. In fact, if you’re past the point of listening to soapboxes, you might want to skip to the bold print below. It’s about to get ugly ‘round here.

I am a faithful reader. I have been since I was old enough to learn what I liked and disliked about books. The first time I realized I loved romance novels, it was an accident. Purely accidently. The historical was mixed in with the pre-teen books. I fell in love with the cover art of a castle on the cliff, a girl with black hair and gorgeous blue eyes being swept away into the sea. I picked it up and snuck it home. I poured over the pages of that book. The second time I got my hands on a romance novel, it was a contemporary (I didn’t know it at the time) and it bored the living socks off me. The difference between the two books was the writing. The author. The amount of feeling and passion and emotion put into the words behind every sentence.

I’m drawn to books that pull me in and make me feel like I’m there. Does that make me crazy? Maybe, but the jury’s been out on that a long time now.

Lately I find myself falling off the bandwagon of faithful readership. Why you might ask? Well, I love authors. I realize the more I meet regardless if it’s in person or through email or interaction online that they are people too. They are just like you, the reader, even though they are the author. They know how to appreciate their readers because they treat them HOW they’d want to be treated if the role was reversed. But it only takes one author to ruin the whole apple cart. One author to act like an ass and pretend like it’s okay to offend her readers because her readership is so vast, who cares if it upsets someone or a group of people who read her books.

I am NOT crazy. I’m offended that you, the author of the series about a character you created and the readers who happen to love this character you’ve created, deems them crazy. That seems a little redundant to me. Shouldn’t you be thrilled that you have readers who love anything you create?

Maybe that’s the problem. Yup, I’ve hit the nail on the head.

Now, I’m not going to name names. Trust me, I want to in the worst way. This author has been on my $*#T list for the past two years now. It’s okay to flaunt that you think you’re readers will pick up and read anything you put out. It’s okay to not give a flying @u*k about story integrity.  Where is the loyalty to your readers! The people who put money in your pocket and keep you an author! That’s right! An author !! That’s why you started writing in the first place, wasn’t it?! Have you forgotten already that it takes readers to keep you being an author? And if you don’t want it anymore- STOP writing.

I know I’ve stopped buying.

At this point, there is nothing this author can do to make me want to buy or read another one of her books. She has pushed me so far past my tolerance line that all I do now is hope and pray that other readers will eventually come to the conclusion she just doesn’t give a $*#T anymore.

And I don’t either. I’m done.

*Sin saunters over to her wooden chest and places the soapbox neatly at the bottom. Then quietly closes the top, leaving the rest of the crap out*

We’re not going to name names today. In fact, I’ve probably manage to offend tons of people with this blog. I can’t say I’m sorry.  I want to know what you think about authors. Have you ever met an author (online or in person) who seemed very dismissive and it killed your desire to read their books?  Any really great author/reader stories to share today?

Remember NO NAMES!

Influenced by this week:  I don’t give a f**k, Lil Jon and the Eastside Boys- Kings of Crunk

Word.