Am I crazy…or just a writer? by Jina Bacarr
November 11, 2016 by Jina Bacarr in category Jina’s Book Chat tagged as bride, Cinderella, Confessions of a Podcast Goddess, fairy tale, prince, princess, romance, royal
I’m exhausted.
I finished a nearly 70,000 new Royals of Monterra novel, ROYAL BRIDE, edited it, formatted it, did the cover, and made three videos.
All in the past week.
(No, I didn’t write the novel in a week…but I was editing up to the last second).
Which makes me wonder, why do we do it?
Are we crazy, insane, both?
Yes, we’re writers.
It’s how we work. Think. Create.
Even more wild, the morning after I uploaded the manuscript for Royal Bride, I woke up with the next story zipping through my brain like a live current of electricity.
I wrote it all down and put it away.
Why?
Because the brain like the body needs rest. I love the idea I have for the next novel, but beyond that initial spurt of inspiration, my brain is….well, fried.
So this month, I’m on vacay, holiday, on the road…whatever it takes to, as the saying goes, to let the wells fill up again.
Somtimes you just gotta…
~Jina
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Here’s my new Royals of Monterra novel: ROYAL BRIDE
Royal Bride: “I’m not your ordinary Cinderella…” from Jina Bacarr on Vimeo.
She’s a Cinderella with a past she can’t forget.
He’s a charming prince with his own dark secret.
They fall in love, but what if the glass slipper doesn’t fit?
At thirty-six, Zoey St. John may not be your ordinary Cinderella, but when Prince Maximiliano Risconti di Montevecchio dances with her at a royal ball in Monterra, taking a chance on love is so much better than being alone.
She’s at a crossroads in her life and being the heroine in a good, old-fashioned fairy tale is just what she needs. With his dashing good looks and brooding dark eyes, the Alpha Royal makes her feel alive again after living alone for years with a tragic secret from her past.
Prince Max is a man born to duty and thrives on routine since that’s how everything has been done
since his royal title was granted centuries ago. He’s devoted to his family, he just doesn’t understand them until the pretty signorina makes him confront the truth about himself and question why he can’t stop thinking about her.
He’s drawn to her even if he won’t admithttp://wp.me/p2DHSo-N1 it and finds out he can’t let her go. The only problem is, the prince has no idea he needs a glass slipper to win her.
When an unexpected turn of events sends the prince’s royal household into chaos and threatens to destroy his family, Zoey takes on the prince and his old-fashioned methods to save them. She pursues her passion for helping others, even if it means the prince may break her heart in the process.
But when her painful past is revealed and turns this fairy tale upside down, can her love for the prince triumph and turn this story into a happily ever after?
PS **************
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Website: www.jinabacarr.com
Blog: www.jinabacarr.wordpress.com
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California Dreamin’
November 10, 2016 by A Slice of Orange in category Writing Conferences tagged as Orange County, Writing conferences
Have you registered yet for the 2017 California Dreamin’ Writers’ Conference?
When the conference committee held its first meeting in the summer of 2015, March of 2017 seemed a long way off. But time gets away from us, and the conference is only a little over four months from now!
From Friday’s Book Camp, presented by Debra Dixon, through our Sunday afternoon keynote speaker, Sarah MacLean, the conference offers something for writers at all stages of their careers.
Jann Audiss and I will be at the November 12th OCCRWA meeting and will be happy to answer your questions. Or, you can always submit questions via the California Dreamin’ website, https://caldreaminwriters.com/contact-us/ and a committee member will get back to you.
Hotel rooms are filling up quickly, and registration discounts for RWA and chapter members end January 15, 2017. If you’ve been thinking about registering, why not add the conference to your holiday wish list? You don’t want to miss it!
Alina K. Field
I’m Here This Month
November 6, 2016 by Linda O. Johnston in category Pets, Romance & Lots of Suspense by Linda O. Johnston tagged as Linda O. Johnston
COUNTING DOWN TO NUMBER 12
November 5, 2016 by Tracy Reed in category Pink Pad by Tracy Reed tagged as 12 Titles in 12 months, Edgy Christian Fiction, Tracy Reed
She sighed deeply as she wrote the title of her blog post.
I thought it would be fun to start off with a little writer humor. It’s been a long writing year for me, so I’ll try and keep it short.
This is the eleven month of my 12 TITLES IN 12 MONTHS challenge. If you’ve been following me, you know I started the year with this idea that I would write and publish a title a month for a year. Mainly to see if I could do it. Which I could. I say could because technically, I completed the challenge last month.
However, I feel a little dishonest in claiming a booklet I wrote for my other business as part of the challenge. Yes, I wrote it, and true I didn’t say all the titles had to be fiction, but for me, I want to stay true to the genre.
So here’s this months update.
I barely got last month’s title out, which had me a lot nervous. When I received my comments from my beta readers, I noticed some things I wanted to tweak and did another round of edits and sent the file to my editor. However, my computer decided it was full or a little tired. For whatever reason, every time I went in to accept or reject on of the edits, it would take approximately 6 seconds. I know this because I timed it. I contacted Apple, and the prognosis was, “You need more ram.†What the crap! I was about a week from my deadline. But before my call to Apple, I tried a little self-medicating and did a software update, which took up a lot of time that I didn’t have.
I was very nervous, and as a result, I failed to launch the title as I wanted. I did get the file loaded before the end of the month, put up a Facebook ad, sent out an email to my mailing list and a couple of blog posts. I’m disappointed I didn’t get to do any other ads, but I heard Joanna Penn say, “It’s s marathon, not a sprint and don’t worry about a huge launch.†I like that because that will give me more time to acquire some reviews and hopefully book some ads in time for the holiday buying season.
Book Number 11 in its original form, was the second book I’d written. However, the finished book barely resembles the original book. I kept the original copy and have to admit, that book was in no way ready to be share with anyone. I’m surprised the beta readers didn’t laugh at me. After a lot of revisions, a new cover, and a second round of beta reading, I had a book I liked. More importantly, I had a book I felt comfortable sharing.
Funny thing, when I changed book one, the characters and story lines became a little more sophisticated. Therefore, the original cover didn’t work, neither did the second book. Nor the third which I’m not going to look at until sometime next year. Chalk all of this up as a costly lesson learned as a new indie author.
Thank God for the email loop. Elena Dillion put up a post about a subscription special at DepositPhotos.com. I jumped on it, and I found the image for WHAT MY FRIENDS NEED TO KNOW. I found the image for WHAT MY FRIENDS DON’T KNOW at Masterfile. Ironically, it was also available at DepositPhotos.com, but I’d purchased that image several months prior to getting my Deposit Photos subscription.
Note the cover changes. What a difference a few revisions and growth can make.
And what about that booklet for my lingerie business? Here’s the cover. I find interesting that the two smallest books I wrote this year were also two of the most challenging. I completed my lingerie book at the beginning of the year but had to do a major re-write at the urging of some business associates. I value their input because it made me write a better book.
And the book that technically claims the 12th Title Prize is my November release is A SOUTHERN GENTLEMAN. This book started as a novella featuring characters that were mentioned in WHAT MY FRIENDS NEED TO KNOW. While I was at RWA National, I learned about “guest stars,†characters from a book you spin off into their own story. When I heard that, it stuck with me. I went back to my room buzzing about who I could “spin off.†I decided to spin Avery and Jeremiah into their own novella…I thought.
I was going for a short novella, approximately 20,000 words, but the story kept going and ended up being 45,000+ words. The story also gave me an idea for a series. I really like where this series is going. But like The Alex Chronicles covers, I did a slight cover modification. I like the sepia tone, but the other morning, the cover started to not feel right. I spent the day, literally, looking for and making up a new cover. Only to come back to the original cover with a little tweaking. I like it a lot better.
That only leaves one title, the official #12. I’ll let you in on a secret. I don’t know what it is, but I will before the end of December.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Fiction for Women Who Love God, Couture and Cute Guys
What Eccentric Writing Habits Have I Never Mentioned? By Connie Vines
October 13, 2016 by A Slice of Orange in category Archives tagged as #connie vines, #Rodeo Romance #the writing process, #writing, #writing voice, #ZombiesMost authors, of course, have personal eccentric writing practices. Fueled, no doubt by his or her personal muse. Agatha Christie munched on apples in the bathtub while pondering murder plots, Flannery O’Connor crunched vanilla wafers, and Vladimir Nabokov fueled his “prefatory glow†with molasses.
Then there was the color-coding of the muses: Alexandre Dumas, for decades, he penned all of his fiction on a particular shade of blue paper, his poetry on yellow, and his articles on pink; on one occasion, while traveling in Europe, he ran out of his precious blue paper and was forced to write on a cream-colored pad, which he was convinced made his fiction suffer. Charles Dickens was partial to blue ink, but not for superstitious reasons — because it dried faster than other colors, it allowed him to pen his fiction and letters without the drudgery of blotting. Virginia Woolf used different-colored inks in her pens — greens, blues, and purples. Purple was her favorite, reserved for letters (including her love letters to Vita Sackville-West, diary entries, and manuscript drafts. Lewis Carroll also preferred purple ink, but for much more pragmatic reasons: During his years teaching mathematics at Oxford, teachers were expected to use purple ink to correct students’ work — a habit that carried over to Carroll’s fiction.
So how do my little eccentric (or never before mentioned) writing practices measure up? Is my personal muse quirky, dull, or out of control?
Since my quirks are normal for me, I had to think about this for a bit.
• I always drink coffee that is part of my current ‘setting’. When my setting is New Orleans I mail order my coffee from my favorite spot.
Café du Monde. I have my cup and saucer, and a portable mug when I writing outdoors. I have a blue coffee pot and matching tin cup when I writing westerns (yes, the coffee is VERY strong and black). And of course, a Starbucks cup or a Disneyland mug when my novels take place in So.Cal.
• My music and my menu planning also is linked to my settings. All within the range of normal. Though I have more than my fair share of coffee mugs and cups.
• I listen to diction videos on YouTube so that I am not relying on my memory for the sound of a Cajun accent, Texan’s drawl, etc.
• I visit areas on Google Earth and Zillow. Even if I have lived or vacationed there, I may have forgotten an interesting ‘something’ I can insert into dialogue, or find a way to describe a scene.
• I talk to myself. Or not simple little sentences. I’m talking about a two- way conversation: “Do you think that might work?†“No. No one is that stupid!†“How about. . .†This is the time my husband walks by to find out who’s on the phone, or if I’m asking him a question. The dog even pokes her head in to see what’s going on. I’m thinking this is a bit outside of the ‘normal’ range.
• When I write I have to make certain my work space in in perfect order. I have colored folders/pens/notebooks that match and are exclusive to the story I’m working on at the moment.
• I never enroll in an online class when I’m writing—it’s guaranteed writers’ block. I never talk about my WIP because I mentally clock that as writing time and lose interest in the story before it’s completed.
• Whatever story I’m am working on is my favorite.
• I survive on 3 hours sleep when I am deep in a story. I know I drink coffee, but seem to run the story in my mind when I sleep too.
• I also pick up the quirks of my heroines. I have several friends who are in theater and said it’s a bit like ‘method acting’. Fortunately, I’m back to my state of normal a couple of weeks after typing THE END.
I think all of this part of a writer’s voice. It is what we, as readers, look for in a story. Hopefully, it is what my readers, enjoy about the novels, short-stories and novellas that I write too.
Happy Reading and Writing!
Connie
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