Category: Writing

Home > Writing

Pre-order promo!

February 4, 2018 by H. O. Charles in category Art, Cover, Design by H. O. Charles, Writing tagged as fantasy, HO Charles, pre-orders, Sci-fi

H. O. Charles | A Slice of Orange I’m briefly detaching my nose from the keyboarded grindstone of novel prep to promote my next book. It’s the final instalment (installment for my U.S. friends) of The Fireblade Array. Not sure how I feel about it – sad that it’s over and I’ll be saying goodbye to some favourite characters for a while, but also excited to have the opportunity to begin new projects.

This series has been so experimental, so weird, and such a fantastic way for me to learn about the craft of writing. I truly hope everyone reading it has enjoyed it. Oh, and one of the book bundles in the series hit no.2 in the iTunes, B&N and Amazon sci-fi categories the other week, so that’s cool.

Ascent of Ice (Volume 7) is out on 27th-28th February. If you pre-order, you can get it for the reduced price of $1.99. Woo.

2 0 Read more

Food: Adding Flavor to Stories

January 10, 2018 by Tari Jewett in category Charmed Writer by Tari Lynn Jewett, Writing tagged as Charmed Writer, cookbooks, decription, food, rain, research, Tari Lynn Jewett, writing

Rain has been pouring off and on for two days. My driveway is a small pond, the backyard is more than saturated, all of our plants look perky and happy, and so am I. As long as I know that my guys are all safe, and I don’t have to go anywhere, I love a rainy day. When I was a little girl, cold rainy days meant that my mother probably had a simmering pot of soup on the stove, meatball, chicken noodle or navy bean…meatball was my favorite… and more importantly, there would be warm cookies waiting when I got off the bus from school. My boys could count on much the same when they were growing up.

It’s funny how a rainy day makes me think of my mother’s cookies, or my own little boys walking in the door inhaling deeply hoping for the aroma of their favorite chocolate chip, peanut butter or snickerdoodle cookies.

I just finished a Valentine’s novella, that will be releasing next month, and I’m working on my 1920’s historical women’s fiction novel, and even while I’m writing, food comes up. Some of my characters love to cook, others eat in fine restaurants, others eat absentmindedly at their desks while they work.

As a former food writer, it’s not surprising that I love to write about the dishes my characters enjoy…or not. Some of my favorite research is looking for recipes in antique cookbooks, new cookbooks, online or perusing restaurant menus. Old restaurant menus can give you a real taste of the times, great descriptions and even prices. And antique recipe cards or cookbooks can tell you how differently we cook today. The ingredients, cooking tools, and terminology all can be clues to the era or region of a story.

Since I love both books and cooking, I have a ridiculous number of cookbooks. I have culled the number after a couple of recent moves, but I look for them whenever I’m in used bookstores, and people often give them to me for gifts. One of my favorites is The One Maid Cookery Book, printed in London in 1913. I found this in an antique store. The minute I saw the title I knew I had to have the book. One maid, I have no maid! Oh, wait, I might be the maid!

Another is The American Woman’s Cook Book edited by Ruth Berolzheimer, and published by Garden City Publishing Company in New York, 1943. This book was left behind in a house my husband and I rented years ago. It’s filled with information on table setting, entertaining, menu planning for every day, holidays, or a limited budget. The pictures are wonderful and set a real flavor for the time.

The rain seems to have slowed outside, and my husband and youngest son will be home soon. I think I’ll go get something warm in the oven. Today I think I’ll go with the chocolate brownies that are loved by Lucy, the main character in my Valentine’s romance #PleaseSayYes.

What are your favorite food memories? Do you use food to set the scene or add to the story when you write? When you read do you skip the food descriptions or do they speak to you? Can you be found sitting in the bathtub reading a cookbook like a novel? Or maybe that’s just me…

0 0 Read more

NEW YEAR, NEW GOALS

January 5, 2018 by Tracy Reed in category Writing

Happy New Year.

I’m almost embarrassed to admit I have yet to write my goals for the new year. Okay, that may not necessarily be the truth. I have a few things I want to accomplish this year, I just haven’t committed them to paper. There’s a scripture I like and keep posted near my computer…Habakkuk 2:2-3, “And the Lord answered me: Write the vision, and make it plain on tablets, that he who reads it may run. For the vision is yet for an appointed time; but it speaks of the end, and does not lie. If it delays, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay.”

I cherish this scripture. Yet, last year when I made my goal list, I failed to really consult myself and God. I heard a joke that went something like this, “If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans.” I’m pretty sure I gave God a lot of things to laugh about last year.

I started out 2017 with these grandiose plans. I was going to write something like 7 books, a couple of novellas, 3 non-fiction books and 5 flash fiction pieces. Ha, Ha, Ha. I forgot I had just come off a very busy year…12 Titles in 12 Months. I foolishly thought it would be easy to complete the task I wrote out. I did good to get two titles out last year.

Midway through 2017, I realized a very important fact, I was tired. I had worked so hard the previous year, that I was mentally burned out. Funny thing, all while I was doing the challenge, I was fine. I had ideas bouncing off the sides of my brain. Seems like when I got to December and hit publish on my last title, my brain said, “Now I can rest.”

Although I published 12 Titles in 2016, I had written a little more. [I’m not going to rehash the project, you can visit past posts for details.] I wrote a book for my lingerie business, plus I had started two other books. One with 5,000+ words and the other with 3,600+ words. I really thought I was going to complete those books, but they just didn’t make it. Plus I was approximately thirty percent away from completion on the book I’m releasing this month, which was supposed to release last month. Insert God laughing here.

How did I fair out with my 2017 goals? I figuratively burned the production schedule and vowed to commit to complete one novel and my non-fiction book. We won’t even discuss the personal things on the list I wanted to accomplish. Thank God for another year and opportunity to start over.

Back to my 2018 writing goals. A couple of days ago, after meeting with my accountability group, I took a long look at my production schedule. I deleted anything that hadn’t been started or wasn’t the next book in a series and added the books that were completed but weren’t quite ready to be released last year. Boldly pressing the delete key left me with a very scary production schedule.

When I did my challenge, instead of writing books in one or two series, I wrote the first or second books, and some stand alone novellas. The titles were well received. However, I started getting emails from people asking “What happens next?”. Holy crap. I like writing cliff hangers and books setting up the next book. So when I looked at my schedule I knew what I had to do, “Write, a lot.”

My proposed 2018 Production Schedule is scary. If I can muster up the create juices and energy, I’ll finish the year with nine titles. Don’t call the crazy writer police on me just yet. I said “titles”. Here’s how things look.

Title One : Completed, and releasing at the end of the month

Title Two: Completed, needs to be set up as an ebook

Title Three: Completed, it’s a print only book, so I need to review the proof

Title Four: Completed, needs a major edit

Title Five: 30% complete

Titles Six – Nine: Need to be written

It’s not as bad as it seems. I have learned my lesson. If I see where something needs to be pushed back, I’ll do it.

Back to the scripture I mentioned earlier. I believe in writing down goals because it seems when you write things down, you give life to them. However, in order for them to grow they need to be nourished and that’s where I failed. I was too tired to nourish my goals.

I know things will be better this year, because I’ve started talking to my characters as well as eavesdropping on their conversations. Could it be, they needed a break from me last year?

Well, whatever the reason for a slightly less productive 2017, I feel like 2018 will be booming with stories to tell.

I’ll keep you posted. Here’s to an amazingly creative writing year.

2 0 Read more

You Have My Permission

December 15, 2017 by Rebecca Forster in category Writing tagged as cruise, inspiration, journey, permission, Travel, writing

Anyone who knows me knows that I love an adventure. Being asked to speak aboard a ship was definitely on my bucket list, so I jumped at the chance when I was asked to be an onboard lecturer. I prepared five talks that I thought were rather compelling: Peek Behind the Covers, a Look at Publishing, The Caribbean Influence on Popular Literature and Movies, The Five People You Should Meet in the Caribbean, How to Travel like an Author and Everyone has a Story: What’s Yours?.

Since I had sailed on this ship as a passenger, I knew the people coming to listen to me were well traveled, curious, intelligent and fun. On my speaking days, they gathered to hear me in the big theatre to watch my PowerPoint presentations and see me slide hither and yon on the dance floor when the sea got rough. At the end of each of my presentations, I asked if there were questions. There weren’t – at least not questions for public consumption. Instead, many in the audience came to speak to me privately. They wanted to talk about their own writing ambitions. There was a surgeon who wanted to write a children’s book, a woman in her nineties whose own children were asking that she write a memoir. There was a man who had written a business book a decade ago but he had always wanted to write a novel. And there was a composer who, as he listened to me, thought to combine lyrics and a story to create a unique novel.

After listening to every person who spoke to me after my lecture, or caught me on deck, or sat with me in the dining room it finally dawned on me what they were after. They wanted my permission to follow their dreams.

[tweetshare tweet=”@Rebecca_Forster: You have my permission . . .follow your dreams.” username=”A_SliceofOrange”]

Strangely, when it comes to fiction or memoir, many of us believe that our words are not as valuable as the next persons. We convince ourselves that writing with honesty and passion will somehow diminish us in the eyes of the world – or at least those we care about. We offer our writing up with caveats like ‘it is silly’, ‘you probably won’t like it’, and ‘promise not to laugh’.

I heard these things in the voices of the people on that ship, but when we were done talking I heard something else. I heard confidence. I heard the excitement. I heard their brains turning as they planned their books. By taking that first step – admitting they harbored dreams of authorship to someone who was already there – they had given themselves permission to write. When we all parted, I knew exactly where they were going. They were going home to put pen to paper or fingers to keyboards. They had taken more than a cruise, they had taken a journey and I have no doubt that by the end of that journey they will have written their book.

Give yourself permission to do whatever it is you dream of doing. If your dream is to write a book, do it with honesty and passion – and don’t forget to share it with the rest of us.

Rebecca

1 0 Read more

Royal Noel: This ain’t your mama’s Little Red Riding Hood by Jina Bacarr

December 11, 2017 by Jina Bacarr in category Jina’s Book Chat, Writing

Royal Noel: a fairy tale romance with a twist from Jina Bacarr on Vimeo.

What if Little Riding Hood had other plans than going to Grandma’s house . . . like a castle with a handsome duke?

It’s Christmas and what could be more fun than a new Twisted Tiara story in my Princesses with a Past series for the Kindle Worlds Royals of Monterra.

ROYAL NOEL is a sweet romance fairy tale with a heroine with a past . . . she’s an international jewel thief called The Princess.

Had so much fun writing this with Gennie and her duke . . . and there’s a royal baby, too!

This is Book 4 in my Twisted Tiaras series featuring the Risconti Family in Sariah Wilson‘s Royals of Monterra KW series.