With all the recaps of RWA and the discussions afterward on all manner of topic regarding authors and behavior and what they wear and what they write and etc, I’ve been having a lot of discussions about what I get from conferences and why I go to them.

What I love most is the chance to be Lauren Dane the writer. Not much else context. My schedule is mostly my own. I don’t have to bug anyone to eat or go to bed or stop touching their brother’s gameboy or tell anyone to get their finger out of their nose. It’s total bliss.

Nora Roberts made the comment yesterday that conferences were work and she’s totally right (on a blog, she and I weren’t shoe shopping or anything, sighs sadly, don’t you think it’d be a hoot to shoe shop with her?)

Conferences, even really fun ones like RT, are work. You’re there in your professional capacity and you’re networking and meeting people and generally carrying around who you are while trying to learn and meet folks and promote your books. While it is extremely enjoyable to see old friends and meet new ones, it’s still work. To that end, when it’s over, you’re exhausted and you don’t quite know what to do with yourself for the next few days because life goes on while you’re in the conference bubble and you have laundry to do and deadlines and kids to take to school, etc.

I remember coming back from RT and being in a daze for a while because I’d been overwhelmed by how amazing it had been to receive the validation of my writing as a career I’d gotten there. People actually bought my book at the signing! Other people brought copies from home, schlepped Triad or Giving Chase some hundreds or thousands of miles to have me sign. That still totally amazes me. All the times when someone looked at my nametag and said, “oh, you’re Lauren, I read X and I loved it. When’s the next book coming?” or something along those lines. All those moments meant the writing gig was real outside my head. All the late night conversations about plotting and character development and writing in general with people I admire - that filled me up and every once in a while I dip into that feeling to get me through.

This was me before the public was let in to the signing at RT. Maya/Sharon took this shot and I just love her to death and she’s one of the people I was so glad I finally got to hug in person. Don’t worry, I moved my diet coke and didn’t throw out the devil horns once they let people in. Still? The whole thing was NUTS! I had a great time and thank goodness I wasn’t twiddling my thumbs the whole time but after several hours I was tired and felt like one giant exposed nerve. It was wonderful but overwhelming. Perhaps next year I’ll be an old hand at it.

Right now, I’m doing the 70 Days of Sweat Writing Challenge. Creatively, this is one of the richest periods I’ve had in a while. Every night when I start writing, I look forward to it. I’m not stressed or hopping around anxiously about whether the stuff I have out will sell. I’m just writing and feeling totally relaxed. I’m reading some great books, spending time with my family and thinking about my upcoming no kids vacation with my dude in Las Vegas. I’ll have finished my upcoming deadline books and will have the time to not do anything at all for a few days. My plan is to eat a lot of great food, catch up on my reading, get a massage and a manicure and enjoy my husband. Now, that’s a non-working vacation.

The winner of last week’s blog contest for a download of any of my available titles is: Jessie! Jessie, email me with your title and format preference!

Next week’s contest: Winner receives a Samhain Gift Certificate! Just respond here and tell me what you do to creatively recharge!

WINNERS HAVE SEVEN DAYS TO CLAIM YOUR PRIZE. IF YOU HAVEN’T CLAIMED IT WITHIN SEVEN DAYS IT’LL BE AWARDED TO SOMEONE ELSE. THANK YOU!!!

So I’m doing the 70 Days of Sweat Challenge and so far I’ve written over 12K words in four days - pretty darned productive if I do say so. But I’ve also been able to sneak in a little reading, some good and some not so good.

What I like best are the surprises. For instance, Karen Marie Moning’s Darkfever. Now a lot of people were not happy this book wasn’t a romance and I recall seeing a lot of people ordering KMM to get back to writing her highlanders. And while I love her highlanders (Daegus MacKeltar anyone? Dark Highlander is one of the sexiest romances ever!), I love that she had the freedom to try something new. And it worked. A first person paranormal thriller of sorts with a young, sort of ditzy heroine who has her life turned upside down and stumbles. A lot. Unlike some novels, she doesn’t immediately get used to her new life. At the same time she’s not a quitter.

I love those characters we have a general disposition to start off disliking but we love by the end. Sugar Beth from Ain’t She Sweet is another example. I picked the book up, read the blurb and put it back down what had to have been a dozen times over a year. Who the heck wants to read about some chick who used to be the girl in high school we all hated? And yet, I gave in and that book made me a Susan Elizabeth Phillips fangirl forever. Through deft writing but more than anything, clever characterization, SEP gave us a girl who was redeemed. By the end of the book I liked Sugar Beth. I didn’t like who she was in high school, but you know what? I liked who she was as a woman. SEP does this quite frequently and I happen to think she’s a genius with her characterization, especially her heroines.

Jenny Crusie delivers the best characters. I love that they’re all sort of weird, flawed, bent and bizarre. But they’re real and you love them for their flaws. Welcome To Temptation and Faking It have such great characters who are, um, morally blurry on certain things but never on what truly counts - family and the people they love. You can root for a grifter who saves his sister, or the woman reluctantly making a film quickly turning soft core because it’s her sister’s big chance. Crusie also peppers in small touches of flavor to flesh out the story as a whole - quirky town, dove bars, funky music, whatever - you connect because she’s giving you real people on the page.

When an author gives us a character who is three dimensional, it’s like the best box of chocolates you’ve ever had. Rich, sometimes surprising and unexpected, delicious and at the end, you’re satisfied but you know you’ll always be up for more.

On the flip side, I read a book last week that I seriously hated when I closed. I only finished it because it had stuff at the end that tied up a series. The book had a hero who was emotionally and physically abusive to the heroine and there was a last minute (like last 20 pages) change of heart but you’re not sure why and after several scenes of forced sexual contact, the last one where the heroine woke up the next day and decided she loved it (cringe), in addition to threats to harm, to take the heroine’s child, etc. I just hated the heroine for taking all that abuse! Who stays with a man who threatens to steal her child like that? This is a romance, give me a hero worth loving. He can be a dominant, controlling dude but don’t make him treat the heroine like a whore and if he does, he’d better grovel for redemption. The heroine, well, like I said, not very likeable. Worst of all, there was a child in it. Now look, I know some folks don’t like children as characters in romances at all. I don’t mind them. Back to Crusie a bit, there’s a little girl in Welcome to Temptation and she’s a great character. she’s not just an accessory to tell us all the guy is a dad, she’s a character who stands alone and adds something to the story. But if you hate bratty kids in real life, they’re not going to flip your switch as characters if they’re drawn that way.

Characters should be there for a reason. And if you put them on the page, draw them well. Don’t make them two dimensional. Flawed is wonderful, abusive is not unless they’re the villain. Don’t tell the reader your heroine is sassy when she’s just a tool who takes way too much shit from her boyfriend, or who is just sort of dumb and wanders around aimlessly waiting to be saved. That’s not sassy, that’s dumb.

WINNER of the Sexy Summer Fun Contest: Is commenter #29 - Shelly. Shelly, email me with your mailing address and I’ll send you your book!

New Contest! Next Thursday I’ll draw a winner for the download of their choice from my available titles. Just tell me here who some of your favorite literary characters are and why. Easy!

Yesterday I was chatting with Megan Hart about process and writing and how authors spoke about writing. Some authors talk about it in that “one true way” sense, like their process is “THE” process. Others are more of the “this is what works for me” school and still more find it hard to put what they do into a frame of reference. Me? I tend to be in the “I don’t know if it makes sense but this is what works for me, try your own thing though because your mileage may vary.”

Talking about writing is an odd thing because it’s like a unique language for every writer. How many words are there for writing or process as they’re seen through the lens of different authors? They’re just words and they hold meaning to me with regard to process but not so much to other people. I don’t think about writing in technical terms at all. I just write.

I have notebooks in stacks in and on my desk. Each notebook is for a different book or story idea. Some of them have detailed notes about characters, snippets of dialog or other text, research notations, and others have the story kernel - the whatever it was that tickled my fancy to give me the idea - just a line, a picture from a magazine, etc.

I’m working on being more organized with this, we’ll see if that happens or not. Right now, I’m writing on a deadline. Reading Between the Lines is due by August 1 and I’m pretty sure, given my current pace, I’ll be finished with the first draft by this time next week. This gives me plenty of time then, to leave it for a few days and then to come back and edit, revise and turn in.

This is my process when I work on timelines. I used to just plow through, draft, edit, revise and turn in but now I like to have a bit to let the book sit when I finish so when I come back to it later. For me, I can see it through more objective eyes with a little bit of distance.

Inevitably, when I’m working on a book, more book ideas come to me. Right now I’ve got two other books in progress but I forced myself to stop working on them until I finish with RBTL. Sometimes though, I have to get stuff down so I treat myself like I do my kids, I set a goal (pages or words) before I can stop and work on anything else. (I don’t normally do page or word counts unless I’m hard on deadline or something like this happens)

Anyway, a little illustration of how that works for me:

Last night I’m on the exercise bike (where I read and sometimes plot, etc) and I’m listening to The Prodigy. Suddenly, an image comes to me and as I’m pedaling away, sweating, more of the scene begins to unfold. And the line of dialog, just one.

Bang. My new story unfolds just like that. I finish my 45 minutes and jump off, write that line of dialog down and after I shower and get my goal met for the day, I wrote it. I now have to figure out the rest, the length, the meat of the story, etc, but essentially, that’s how this works for me. An image, a lyric, a smell, a sound, someone’s voice - little triggers and a bizarre movie begins in my head and a book is born.

And A Contest:

This one will run for two weeks - the winner will receive a signed copy of my newest print release Sexy Summer Fun featuring my quickie contemporary, Sudden Desire.

All you need to do is comment and tell me what your favorite genres are and why. Easy. I’ll choose a winner at random and announce it on July 12. Good luck!!

The winner of last week’s contest is:

Rubyd!

Please check out my booklist at my website and email me your title and format preference. If it’s a book in print, be sure to include your mailing address.

Lauren

Well Jodi grabbed covers first, darn it! So I’ll talk about heroes instead because it involves pictures of beautiful men and I never claimed to be above such things…

I get asked one question more than any other (well other than people who want to lay claim on the Chase boys and I have to tell them Renee has claimed them already and TJ Michaels has claimed Cade Warden and I’m pretty sure both women will cut you if you try to make a claim). Where do you get your inspiration for your heroes?

Archetype Alpha:

I’m an unabashed fan of the alpha male. And I don’t mean an asshole who we’re told is an alpha to try to gloss over his abusiveness. I mean, a big, bad, arrogant, masculine man who is rough around the edges. Now I like a man who can clean up well but just beneath the cumberbund you know the bad boy lurks.

I like warriors and kings, cops and firefighters - men who get their hands dirty but who use their minds too. There’s something about a hero with these qualities that connects with something elemental inside my imagination. My husband is this man (well, not Gerard Butler but an alpha). He’s strong and silent, brilliant but very arrogant in his own way. Totally self assured and he adores me while giving me the space to be my own person. That’s very sexy.

Often the alpha hero is a ladies man who’s never lost his heart. Or he did that one time to the completely inappropriate woman and she’s made him bitter. He’s all overprotective and controlling and it takes the right woman to iron out his issues. If this hero is paired up with the wrong woman it ruins the book. The complimentary heroine also has to be strong. Not necessarily an alpha herself but she has to fend him off while giving in to certain elements of his personality and do it without totally compromising who she or turning him into an emasculated shadow either.

Eve and Roarke - fabulous example. Roarke is that bad, bad man, barely reformed but he loves Eve and he’s careful of her because he cherishes her. Now he’s controlling and he needed a smack upside his head in the last book for being so damned stupid about his ex, but overall, they’re a good match because he pushes and Eve pushes back. At the same time, he makes her a better person and she does the same with him. They’ve both changed as characters but in ways that allow them to retain their core character.

Good god isn’t he pretty? Even with that nose you know has been broken a time or two. He can totally handle himself in a fight but he’s got really soft calvins in his underwear drawer and that soap that costs like 30 bucks a bar but smells really good in his shower. He smokes the occasional cigar and knows his Scotch but he’d be down with beers on a blanket at a picnic too.

I’ll admit that probably over half my heroes are the alpha. Lex Warden, Alex Carter, Andreas Phinney, Shane Chase, Kael Gardener and most definitely Ash and Brandt (who you haven’t met yet)

But alphas aren’t the only appealing hero out there

Archetype Beta/Gamma:

Some might pull these two apart and classify them separately but I prefer not to. The beta/gamma hero is still a strong man but he’s not as controlling and overbearing as the alpha. In many ways, he’s a far better match because his approach is less rigid (heh) and he tends to be more emotive.

Matt Chase is my favorite example of the beta hero. He’ll punch a guy out for talking trash about Tate, but he’ll step back and let Tate work through her stuff and not push until it’s absolutely necessary or he feels as if he’s losing her.

The beta is often the best friend (although I’d like to point out my dude is alpha and my best friend but still). He’s a great dad. He’s patient, cool and collected under pressure and a lot of the time, he’s brainy. Oh god how I love a smart man!

Phin Tucker in Jenny Crusie’s Welcome to Temptation is a beta and anyone who’s read that dock scene will be unable to deny the raw sex appeal of the beta.

Mmmmm, Patrick Dempsey. He’s your best friend. The guy you’ve crushed on for years but he’s a serial monogamist and you’ve never hooked up until that one night. You’d both just broken up with other people, it started with a bottle of tequila and well, you know how the rest goes. Brad Pitt would also fit into this category as well.

More of my heroes who are beta? Kyle Chase, Marc Chase, Zach from Second Chances, Trevor from Sudden Desire, Sid from Reluctant, Aidan from Triad.

Sorry, I was off in my happy place for a few moments there. How about a contest then? I’ll give away a copy of any of my available titles in whatever format they’re available in (including paper where applicable).

Just answer with what type of hero appeals to you and why. And if you’ve got great example throw one out because I always love new book suggestions!

I’ll choose a winner at random next Thursday the 28th!