I’m pretty straightforward about writing. At its best, it is truly magical but most of the time it’s a matter of hard work and perseverence. I don’t personally subscribe to the idea of muses or of a lot of writing rituals. Most of my writing rituals revolve around notebooks and colored 3×5 cards with character notes and story points on them, LOL.

One thing I do truly subscribe to is that each story has a good sense of itself if you just let it. By that I mean, I can plot a story and I usually do have a somewhat solid structure in mind when I write, even an outline in many cases these days because when you sell on a partial or a proposal, you need to sell the idea so you have to write an outline of some sort. So I can have that outline but I know, as I write, things will reveal themselves to me that I had no idea of at the outset. This is something I can’t plan ahead on, it’s something I personally find magical and I never know what or when it will happen in any given story but it always does in some way.

Most often this is about character details, things I didn’t know about my characters until I began to write them. Liv Davis in Chased for instance - I didn’t know her mother had died when she was young and that she’d walled a part of herself off because of it. I didn’t know it until I got about halfway into the writing and it just came out. It happened to me recently with Relentless when I got to know Abbie and her real motivations, who she really was, came to me. It changes the book, layers in it ways you can’t plan in advance.

That’s the beauty of the creative process, it’s like alchemy and I truly love it when it happens. Well sometimes I get annoyed because I’ll have to go back and alter the earlier stuff to adjust for something I learn later on, LOL, but still, it’s wonderful and I love it.

Right now, I’m writing Outshined, a contemporary erotic romance for Berkley and something I hadn’t planned on AT ALL just jumped at me so many times, no matter how many times I tried to fend it off, that I’ve finally given in and let it happen. I now have to hope it works, LOL. Sometimes you have to fight off a story idea that tries to invade your book but other times, I give my story her lead and in the end, I think the story is better for it.

I’m nearing 64,000 words so I’ll let you know when I finish the first draft and go in to edit.

BTW, you have until noon pacific today, August 11 to enter a contest at my blog to win a copy of my upcoming Cascadia Wolves book - Fated.

Summer is here. Which means my kids are home and my time is taken up differently so I have to guard my schedule more carefully or I won’t get my work done. And I have a book due July 31 and another one in September so I can’t give in to the long, bright, hot lure of summer lethargy.

Sometimes when you’re caught up in a bunch of deadlines, your to do list takes over your life and you forget the wonder of popsicles and playing in the backyard and a cold margarita or beer on a hot day. So I try, very hard, to remember the magic of sunsets at ten pm and to squirt my kids with the hose for no other reason than to glory in the sound of their suprised, joyful giggles.

In an around three summer book releases and my deadlines. Because goodness, why do this if I can’t be joyful?

Happy summer to you all. Don’t forget to keep some money near the door so you can run with the kids when you hear the ice cream man!

Lauren

(oh and you wanna check out those releases - check my website) To celebrate summer - in this hemisphere anyway - I’m giving away a print copy of Making Chase or What Happens In Vegas - winner’s choice. Just comment here with your favorite thing to do in summer. I’ll choose a winner at six pm pacific/nine eastern, today June 30

**WINNER - is GRETA! Send me your mailing address and your preference between What Happens in Vegas or Making Chase and I’ll get the book your way! laurendane at laurendane dot com

I had a whole blog started about bathing suits and blogs and how they’re alike in that you want both to make you look GOOD and not make people want to throw up into their mouths, but I figured we’d all heard that before and we knew better than to be morons in public on our blogs, so I’ll just stop right there and talk about something else, ‘kay?

Now if only I had something to talk about. 

We’ve covered hot guys, we’ve covered writing about sex, and we’ve talked about inspiration, the muse (or lack thereof) and the fact that as professional writers it’s our job to put our butts in the chair and hands on the keyboard and write instead of farting around all day on the ‘net or playing the Sims 2 or Guitar Hero on the Wii. We’ve covered music and movies and upcoming books. 

What’s left?

Well, I’d like to talk about all of that again and then some — how being a writer means that everything  you do, every moment, is somehow always tied into the work. At least it is for me. I collect stories the way some women collect shoes. I want to learn about people because listening to them talk about their lives and what’s going on in them helps me find new inspiration every single day. Because even though I have a pretty deep well, not everything I pull up out of it is fit to see the light. Sometimes what comes up in the bucket stinks and falls apart into sludge and I have to throw it away. It really helps, sometimes, to have someone else’s bucket to scoop from.

Something as simple as the story of how a couple met can springboard me into a whole, vast wonderland of WHAT IF. A comment, a phrase, a casual mention of someone’s favorite song can all lead me to add the small details to a character that make him real to me (and hopefully, to you.)

My best friend since junior high got me a t-shirt that says “Be careful, or I’ll put you in my novel.” And that’s so true. Everything I see and hear finds its way, somehow, into the work. Most of the time I change it to protect the not-so-innocent, but it still came from something I came across in my day.

I look at the world through a filter. I listen. I pay attention. And then I get lost in the world inside my head; I let down the bucket and pull it up and sift through the contents and hope to find something worth using. Sometimes I remember where it came from. Sometimes I don’t. But in the end, it’s all big jumbled mess inside my head and I do my best to mash it all together into something palatable.

I can’t imagine what it would be like NOT to be a writer. I can’t imagine how it would feel not to spend so much time taking WHAT IF and turning it into AND THIS IS WHAT HAPPENED NEXT. I can’t imagine not…imagining. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

What is one thing about yourself you can’t imagine ever changing?

M

I found Denise’s topic on inspiration yesterday very timely. Lately, I have struggled with my writing and coming up with anything that isn’t total drek. Or at least in my mind it seems that way. I have come up with a number of ideas that my critique partners really liked and encouraged me to write, but I just couldn’t. Something about them didn’t feel right.  Well, I think as of this morning I might finally have found my inspiration. It is actually a story I plotted a long time ago but certain elements were not working for me. For some reason that story came flashing back to me as did the reasons it wasn’t working. So…tonight, or at least this weekend, I am going to do my best to get back to writing.

Going with the whole confessions topic, I have to admit it really has been a long time since I’ve written. Several weeks, which for me feels like years. It wasn’t just motivation lacking, but I’ve been feeling like quite the slug. I, too, went to Lori Foster’s Annual Event this last weekend and…slept.

Argh! That was SO not the plan. I had so many people I wanted to spend time with. Some of them I did get to meet in person and visit with a bit—Sasha, Laura J., Rhonda and Deb F. to name a few. But I missed the opportunity to chat with a lot of others—both readers and authors—and I apologize for that.

The long and short of it, as many of you know, is that I am three months pregnant.   I don’t remember feeling this exhausted and out of it with my daughter, but I am constantly reminded I did not have a 2 year old (or a ‘tween boy, for that matter) when I was expecting her, and I also wasn’t trying to work two mostly full time jobs. So I guess there is reason. Still, I feel like a slug.

On a good note, I do have this inspiration that has finally struck and I plan to do my best to start getting those words down. I also hope to start picking up slack in all the other places I have been letting it go lately. In the meantime, summer is finally here in Michigan! That does mean we have been hit with storms and power outages left and right, but also that the kids can finally get out of the house and give mom a break.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

~ jodi

Well, I’m finally recovering from RT 2008. By this I mean I’ve unpacked my suitcase, paid some bills and organized (though not cleaned off my desk,) and started to get back into the swing of family life.  You know. Yelling at the kids, doing laundry, generally being the domestic diva I am.

I didn’t feel well at the convention, unfortunately, and I wasn’t alone. But even so, I came back energized, writing-wise. No, I didn’t come up with a brand-new, shiny, full-fledged idea the way I did last year when Lauren and I brainstormed Taking Care of Business while standing in line. (Though we did talk about a followup to that book!) But I did come home with inspiration and ideas for layering some themes into the edits for my current WIP, Switch. 

I finished SWITCH before I left for RT and had planned to let it sit for awhile while I worked on some other things, but while there my mind kept turning back to it. Switch hasn’t been an easy book for me for many reasons. For one, it took me a lot longer to write than usual, partly because I stopped a few times to work on other things and partly because I struggled with the writing of it. I was really glad to have finished the first draft because it meant I could take a break from it, so to discover when I got back from RT that I really wanted to dive back in was…suprising.

Here’s the thing: I take a lot of my work from my life — not things that have happened to me, necessarily, but feelings and emotions and situations that make me THINK about “what if.” I don’t live everything I write about (my goodness, who has time?) but I do…FEEL it. I do feel what I write. Sometimes I feel it first and hold onto that and use it. Sometimes during the writing I start to feel the work, instead, which is also interesting.

I’d had an inkling about what Switch was meant to be for a few months, and it was pretty far from what I’d first anticipated the book to be. In its first incarnation it was a story about dominance and submission, a woman who finds misplaced notes in her mailbox meant for an anonymous person being given increasingly erotic commands. She discovers she likes the content of the notes — craves it, in fact. But when she discovers who the notes are really for, everything changes and she becomes the note WRITER instead of the note receiver.

The book is still “about” that — it’s what happens, anyway. But somewhere along the way a minor, throwaway character became more important, and now he’s an irreplaceable part of the story. I didn’t expect that.

And somewhere, somehow, the book became about choices. The ones we make, good or bad, right or wrong, and how sometimes no matter how much you think you want something, in the end you don’t take it because not having it is better for you. Sometimes, as Paige, the heroine says, you walk away.

So now I have to finish entering all my receipts and put some laundry away and take a shower and have some breakfast, and then I need to crank up the iTunes and get lost in this world again. But you know what?

I feel it.

M

PS — I was so happy to hang with my lurvely agent the glorious Laura Bradford (or LB as I like to call her) and Lauren Dane, Anya Bast and Ann Aguirre and Vivi Anna, and we missed Cynthia! NEXT YEAR IN ORLANDO!!!!!!!!!!!

Some of my favorite photos –

Right now I’m writing a book in my Cascadia Wolves universe so I’m in a paranormal state of mind afer having written some futuristics and a contemp or two. I love paranormals, they’re such great fun to read and write.

I’ve always been fascinated by the unexplained and the paranormal. I remember, back in the stone ages when I was growing up, there was a show called In Search Of hosted by Leonard Nimoy. Man oh man did I love that show!

            It’s the question I think. The idea that there are things out there in the world that we can’t explain. I’m also totally enamored of shows about deep sea trenches because of all the cool stuff down there seven miles deep that we simply just guess about because there aren’t enough answers yet. Mysteries are delicious! The dark is just a big question, isn’t it?

            So it’s no surprise to me that I love writing paranormal books. Part of it is the way a lot of paranormal mythology connects with deep seated cultural and societal ideas. We’re afraid of what is different even as it compels us. We want to know, even though we have to peek through our fingers, heart beating fast, stomach churning with fear and yet, excitement about the unknown.

Vampires are the uber-villain—even as they’ve become the uber-sexy alpha hero. The teeth sliding over the skin is an ultimately intimate and dangerous act, especially in today’s climate. To give someone the very thing that keeps you alive is romantic as well as something that could also rob you of your existence. A vampire can be very strong and yet filled with anxiety over what he or she is. It’s fodder for the best kind of wounded hero, for the male who will move heaven and earth to protect his mate and of the woman (or man) who’ll give up their life for that love. How much more of an epic tale of love can you get?

The challenge is in how to get the human and the vampire together. Or how to bring two vampires or supernatural creatures together and make it work. It’s a great twist on the general romance conflict trope.

And werewolves, oh sigh. Werewolves are wonderful to write because they’re about embracing touchstone ideas - the strong male, the mate bond, feral sexuality, etc. There are people who don’t like the one true mate storyline (preferences folks, everyone’s got em!) but I love it. I love the idea of *knowing* someone is meant for you.  I also love the whole wildness, and uber-protectiveness of the alpha werewolf male (and female). I love that pushy, big guy arrogance and control freak attitude almost as much as I love writing the woman who will knock him down a few pegs. 

I love the foundational love of creation and nature the Fae represent. I can delve into Celtic or Slavic mythology and bring out the same basic stories about the shining folk. The Fae are about earth, they’re about nature and what I find the most fun is dealing with balancing responsibility of being so powerful with protection. Protection of love and family and protection of humans.

And all these ideas give you great villains. Because in a real sense, the paranormal isn’t so supernatural at all. It’s part of our subconsciousness as human beings. So we’re scared because who hasn’t had some sort of experience they couldn’t explain, be it lights in the sky, something mysterious happening in a graveyard or at home, that sort of thing? Being scared by a story is nearly as delicious as being titillated by one so the combination of the two is like a lemon cupcake – perfection.

What do you all like?  Tell me and I’ll enter you in a contest to win a bunch o goodies I pick up at RT! I’ll choose a winner upon my return April 21. Most likely I’ll pick more than one because there’s loads of books and swag. But at the very least one! 

(You’ll all see this on Thursday morning but as I write it, it’s Wednesday night) 

I’m sitting here after hitting “send” on my revisions for Undercover, my December release for Berkley. My kids have migrated upstairs for “quiet time” (yeah right) and I’m listening to Oasis’ Wonderwall (I’ve heard it a million times and yet I still love it just as much every time I hear it again)

The revisions were pretty light but I wanted to be sure they were as good as possible so I was extremely careful with them. Whew. Now I’m on to a last polish of Sensual Magic, which is due to Harlequin April 1, that shouldn’t take more than a day or so, and finally I can get back to Unexpected. Yay!

I have to say, I got pretty sweaty when I read back over the sex scenes in Undercover. It’s hard when you’re writing something and then editing the first time. You’re very close to the book so you can’t really gauge. But reading it over again, some months later I was like, “wow!” I think this is the hottest book I’ve ever written but also, I was pleased to see the emotional depth in places too. I feel better about it and I already liked it before. Sweet relief.

I ordered some goodies for RT for our Love Shack reader party on Friday (don’t miss it folks - as it stands it’s all Bradford Authors - me, Anya, Ann, Cynthia-who sadly can’t be there in person but will be in sprit and goodies, and Megan Hart!) This party will have goodie bags filled with excellent swag that’ll be exclusive to the party including books from the participating authors. I also ordered postcards for Undercover and Vegas and they turned out so pretty.

I wanted to take a moment to say thank you to Frauke, the person behind the creation of this website (and also the hosting service for it, Janus Portal Hosting) and a great many other websites you you see around. As well as the person who designs my bookmarks, my RT ads and other various graphics like business cards etc. She is truly wonderful. I will give her a few elements and she always turns them into something wonderful. I’ve been a client of hers for several years now and I’m always just so awed by her talent. Plus she helps me with technical stuff when I just can’t figure it out. She always takes pity on me and with good humor. So thank you, Frauke - truly, you make my job so much easier and you do it with style.

Totally UNconnected to any of the above - did you know there was Fraggle Rock fic? I sat in a corner and rocked for a while once I found that out. And then I saw a guy in a furry suit with black leather assless chaps. Don’t ask where I found it. But, well just don’t ask. I think I may have bad dreams.

Now, I’m off to catch up on the stuff I let slide today to finish up with Undercover. Happy Hump Day!!!

In closing, to combat bad dreams - my dreamboat, let me show you him…

Marcus Patrick

 I am really bowled under with deadlines right now—two at the day job and two writing deadlines, all of April 1. In other words, I am in need of lots of inspiration to help me keep my head above water. One thing that always helps with the day job is just knowing I need a paycheck, so I have to do the work to get paid. With the night job (writing), inspiration comes from the obvious of happy readers, getting paid again (always a much-needed blessing), and also keeping my muse happy.

Of course, my muse doesn’t always make it easy for me to keep her happy. She likes to be fickle and make it hard to impossible for me to concentrate enough to get my work done. Or make me focus more on being tired than on the end goal of meeting these deadlines so I can take off a week for pure R&R when all is wrapped up. In these moments, I need all the added inspiration I can get. I have always loved inspirational quotes in these times. A handful of some of my favorites follow…

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” -Eleanor Roosevelt

“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” -Eleanor Roosevelt

“The best way out is always through.” -Robert Frost

“Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising every time we fall.” -Confucius

Do you have any favorite inspirational quotes, be they from famous people or family, friends or even yourself? Share them with me, and I will draw a random commenter to receive an e-ARC of Hot For It, which releases from SPICE Brief April 1st… just on time for my week of R&R to kick off!   :grin: 

~ jodi

Tomorrow, Standoff, the last book in this story arc of my Cascadia Wolves series, releases from Samhain.

I love this cover! Anne Caine does a great job but I must say I’ve loved every single cover in this series. They’ve all been so pretty and done so well - I’ve had great cover mojo.But it’s over. In the last year I’ve ended two series - this one, my Cascadia Wolves and my Chase Brothers books. I’ll continue on with both worlds. In fact I’ve already contracted Unexpected, Megan’s story for August and I really want to write Nathan Murphy’s story to revisit Petal. But while I love series and the sense of home I can build with a cast of characters readers can revisit time and again, I think it’s best if they don’t drag on too long. I want to end when readers want more, not when they’re reading and thinking, “Gah, she really neededed to stop this series two books ago!”

Series enable an author to really dig deep, to create a world built over many books. What that means is I can take a town like Petal and breathe real life into her. I can give Petal traditions like Homecoming, which I’ve come back to in every story. Or in the case of this particular family, the Christmas proposal or wedding. I love that. I love that as a reader! I love how I can take werewolves and create government. Law and order and lawlessness too. I’ve had four books to build a paranormal universe in, which has been a treat. Four books to build the suspense with the werewolf mafia. I’m spoiled and it’s been a great ride.

I think about Nora Roberts’ trilogies and I think she as the right idea. She builds enough to give readers a sense of something big and sweeping and yet intimate at the same time. Very few authors can take it more than four books in the same story setting and make it work over and over. Kim Harrison can (I just finished The Outlaw Demon Wails this last week and OMG! it was fab), Nora as JD Robb can do it with her In Death books - but in a fully realized romance world you don’t see it as often and after book five, it begins to seem all a big stretch (sister’s best friend’s baby sitter’s brother in law’s best friend).  I do love spin offs though! Like I love cupcakes. I’ll eat up every book related to the family Jenny Cruisie introduces us to in Welcome To Temptation (and Davy’s story was so good!), or the Chesapeake books from Nora, or SEP’s Chicago Stars.  There’s something really special about returning to a world you’ve loved so much.

What about you all? What do you like best about series? Do you read them? Which ones?

I’ll give something away and announce the winner next Wednesday.

How about an excerpt?  Behind the jump…
Read the rest of this entry >

It’s just before the time when I need to leave my warm house again and take my middle kiddo to school. Madonna’s Ray of Light is playing and I’m drinking coffee and taking vitamins. 

When I get back I need to finish up some revisions and get them back to Megan so we can turn Taking Care of Business around and get it to readers.  Each book is its own journey and I have to say, Kate (my heroine) was hard to learn at first. Part of it was that I’d been interrupted a dozen times so each time I had to put the story aside to finish up something else, I had to re-learn her all over again. But each story has a sweet spot, at least for me. And that sweet spot is like an epiphany. All the sudden it’s clear - whatever it is that’s been lacking. You see it. You know your hero, or your heroine. You finally get what her big problem is, or you know what happened to him in the past and why it’s making him a dick now, or whatever.

It’s not necessarily writing blind - it’s like tasting the book and suddenly the full bouquet of it comes to you and it’s so vivid. I love that moment! Sometimes it doesn’t even come to me when I’m writing. I can be driving and see something out the window or hear a song on the radio or it comes to me while ironing. With Tri-Mates I had no real outline, I just had the idea of this tri mate bond thing and started writing (the concept came to me when I was writing Enforcer but I don’t do brother menages) and I’d planned on making Tracy good friends with Sarah, the Alpha female of her new Pack. but suddenly Tracy and Nick were fighting about Sarah and Sarah was not the character I’d imagined. She was such a fun villain to write because she was so totally unexpected. The whole money laundering storyline was something that just fell into my head as I was writing the first scene at the Pacific Pack House.

Other times, I plot very carefully and follow the synopsis I craft. But even then I still have the epiphany moment at some point or other. Because for me, the process is a surprise. I love that! I love that I find new things I hadn’t even imagined no matter how much planning I do. And sometimes I have to go back and re-craft something, other times it changes the ending a bit. It’s flying through my brain fast and furious or slow and sensual but it’s part of me and I couldn’t ask for a job I loved more.