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A Fantasy Life by Janet Quinn Cornelow

January 27, 2010 by in category Archives



I have finally finished Sam’s story. At several points I didn’t think I would ever finish, but, his story has come to an end, been sold, and will be out June 6th under the name of Freedom’s Treasure.

Now it is time to start a new book – an alternative universe book. I have been working on how to make the reader know that the characters are moving into an alternate universe. There has to be something that is the same in both universes. In this universe, both sides are in Manhattan. Central Park is the same in both. The difference is that one universe is magical and the other is not. In the non-magical universe, there is city hall and the mayor’s abode. In the magical universe, there is a prince and a palace.

Both universes have police and detectives. That is because the hero is from our universe and is a police detective. The heroine is from the alternate universe and is a police detective. They have something in common, except he carries a gun and she uses magic. Since they are in her universe, he only has a limited supply of ammunition while her magic is never ending.

I have spent so much time figuring out how to make the alternate universe, I suddenly realized I really don’t have a story to go with the universe. There is an evil wizard slipping between universes and killing people in the hero’s world. He has to be stopped. Of course, he also has to have a reason for killing. He has to want something.

That is what plot group is for.

When creating a new world, sometimes the little things matter. In my world of Augeas, the guards play a dice game. The picture is of the dice for the game.

Art work by Loki Cornelow

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February Online Class: “Fast Draft and Revision Hell” with Candace Havens

January 26, 2010 by in category Archives

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Hi everyone! Check out the exciting online classes offered by the
Orange County Chapter of RWA!

“Fast Draft and Revision Hell”
with Candace Havens
February 15 – March 13, 2010
Enrollment Information at http://www.occrwa.org/onlineclassFeb10.html
COST: $20 for OCC members, $30 for non-members
If you have specific questions, email occrwaonlineclass@yahoo.com

ABOUT THE CLASS:
Fast Draft: It’s easy to come up with excuses why you can’t finish your manuscript. You’re busy, life is crazy, there is always something. The truth is there are no real excuses. If you want to sell a book, you have to finish. There’s no time like the present. Author Candace Havens has developed a step-by-step process to help you finish your work in progress in just two weeks. At the end of the two weeks, you’ll have your first draft.
Revision Hell: It can be daunting going back in and editing, tightening and cleaning up your manuscript. That’s why author Candace Havens developed a system to help get through that process step-by-step. In two weeks you’ll have a polished manuscript that is ready to sell.

ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR:

Candace “Candy” Havens is a bestselling and award-winning author. Her novels include “Charmed & Dangerous”, “Charmed & Ready”, “Charmed & Deadly”, “Like A Charm” and “The Demon King and I”. She is known for writing strong female characters, who save the world, but aren’t exactly perfect. She is a two-time RITA, Write Touch Reader and Holt Medallion finalist. She is also the winner of the Barbara Wilson award, and the 2009 Pro Mentor of the Year. Candy is a nationally syndicated entertainment columnist for FYI Television. A veteran journalist she has interviewed just about everyone in Hollywood from George Clooney and Orlando Bloom to Nicole Kidman and Kate Beckinsale. You can hear Candy weekly on 96.3 KSCS in the Dallas Fort Worth Area. Her popular online Writer’s Workshop has more than 1300 students and provides free classes to professional and aspiring writers.
Enrollment Information at http://www.occrwa.org/onlineclassFeb10.html
COST: $20 for OCC members, $30 for non-members

Coming in March 2010–
“The Regency Women” with Nancy Mayer
This workshop will focus on Regency woman and their roles, expectations, rights, and power. Including common myths and mistakes writers make in their stories. (Like can or how do woman obtain financial independence, and can they maintain it in marriage.)

http://www.occrwa.org/onlineclasses.html. Check out our full list of workshops.

Want to be notified personally two weeks before each class? Be sure
you’re signed up for our Online Class Notices Yahoo Group! Sign up at
the bottom of http://www.occrwa.org/onlineclasses.html or send a blank
email to OCCRWAOnlineClassNotices-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

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Some of Harlequin Editor-at-Large Leslie Wainger’s Pets–presented by Isabel Swift

January 24, 2010 by in category Archives tagged as ,

In response to the classic “Wassup?” Harlequin’s Editor-at-Large Leslie Wainger had this to say:

“I’m mostly being surrounded by pets. I still have cats (three), and attached are pics of my puppy, Kaiya:
Top Model 1.JPG

and my sugar gliders, Bug and Gobo:
LWBathroom 2a.jpg

There are definite advantages to working from home!”

And I said…WHAT are sugar gliders? Aside of the cutest things ever! Kaiya is pretty adorable too—looks smaller than a Chow—just young or something different?

And Leslie said, “Sugar gliders are tiny Australian possums. They’re marsupials, like our possums, but otherwise very different. They glide (like flying squirrels) and have been kept as pets over here for about 15 years. In this picture you can see the gliding membrane folded up along their sides.
Bug and Gobo 1.JPG

And Kaiya’s a Shiba Inu (a Japanese breed). She’s 10 months old and small for a female, but not by a lot. The perfect female is 14″ at the shoulder and around 17 lbs., so they’re a bit like very mini Akitas. They have big-dog attitude, though. She has no idea how small she is.
K14DP.JPG

…And I think—yes, it’s all about attitude. On the other hand, cuteness does count!

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Romance in A Time of Tragedy by Monica Stoner Member at Large

January 19, 2010 by in category Archives tagged as ,

How many of us wonder, as we’re pounding out the lives of our hero and heroine, if there can be justification for Romance writing such times as terrorist attacks in war zones the tsunami in the Indian Ocean or the earthquake in Haiti. Can we justify spending so much time at our keyboards with, to be honest, very little hope of remuneration? Shouldn’t we be doing something?

The same questions come up for anyone deeply involved in what some might call a non productive hobby or career or avocation. And we who feel deeply worry the most about our place in the world. We each do what we can in our own way.

Spinning tales out of mid air is a time honored method of dealing with difficult times. “Tell me a story,” whispers the frightened child, looking for distraction from the sounds in their closet. “Tell us a tale,” commands the King when a new Bard comes to visit. “Make our heroes bigger and braver, our villains more evil, and our princesses even more beautiful.” Tell us a tale, and take us away, if briefly, from our every day world. Give us something else to think about, if only for the next few minutes.

I know I’ve certainly thought this more than once, and said so to someone whose opinion was very important to me. She asked back: “If you stopped writing or showing dogs or riding horses would those tragedies go away?” She did have a great way of cutting an issue down to basics, and also reminding me very few people are so important their actions influence the world. A lot of people might think they are that important but that’s a matter for another time. None of us can stop the ocean or earth from expressing themselves.

Andre Norton wrote of heroes from the unlikeliest backgrounds, mostly what might be considered “throw away” people in the slums left over from horrific intergalactic wars. I wonder if this was her method of dealing with the lost children and lost people after governments have rolled over top of citizens? Certainly her “ordinary people” did extraordinary things, once they recognized their own value. Could some of this also have to do with why some of us create characters who can stop the ocean and who can communicate with the earth to convince her not to shrug so hard, or in such a vulnerable place?

We each do what we can, in our own way, to deal with tragedy. Whatever we do, we also reach out to each other, to the other spinners of tales, for the comfort of at least a few hours of relief from the unrelenting worry. And perhaps our words are read by someone who needed that particular story at that particular time. Hug your loved ones.

Monica Stoner
tsent@ix.netcom.com

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e-maginings: Passion, Heat & Ecstasy

January 16, 2010 by in category Archives tagged as , , ,

Next month, I’ll be teaching an online class on writing erotic romance with Dee Ann Palmer w/a Carolina Valdez. Passion, Heat & Ecstasy: Writing the Erotic Romance is sponsored by the Yosemite chapter of RWA and runs from Feb. 1 to 26. Details are at http://www.yosemiteromancewriters.com/6.html; scroll down to find our class.

I’ve been compiling my section of the bibliography for the class, and decided to pull out a couple of books to recommend here. Both books are available at Amazon.com if you can’t find them in the bookstore.

Passionate Ink: A Guide to Writing Erotic Romance by Angela Knight, Loose Id, LLC, 2007. In my opinion, this is the best book to get if you want to write erotic romance. Knight understands the genre and has some useful tips, like her “romantic conflict” chart.

Knight distinguishes between sensual and erotic romance by looking at what drives the story. In her opionion, what drives sensual romances “isn’t sex, but not having sex”. In order to maintain sexual tension between hero and heroine, the writer devises external and internal reasons why going to bed with each other is a bad idea. The actual act of making love often signals a significant drop in sexual tension and the writer then has to find a way to make the conflict kick in again.

Erotic romance is driven by what she calls “romantic tension”, in other words the central conflict that makes the HEA ending seem problematic. This means strong conflict, esp. in a full-length novel.

Conflicting Desires: Notes on the Craft of Writing Erotic Stories by Han Li Thorn, Velluminous Press, 2007. A good how-to book geared to mainstream erotica but not romance. Chapter 4 on The Erotic Promise is particularly useful and there are several appendices, including an Erotic Lexicon.

In the above chapter 4, Thorn posits that writers of erotic literature make three promises to their readers: to arouse, to entertain and to offer something deeper, whether in depth of charaterization, complexity of plot, or eliciting an intellectual or emotional depth. In erotica, the first promise must be kept, but if you can deliver on the other two promises, you work will stand out.

He also states that “erotic conflict is at the heart of erotic story”. Otherwise it’s a spiced-up romance or mystery or whatever, but it doesn’t qualify as “erotica”. This is often easier said than done.

If you’ll forgive a bit of blatant self-promotion, I think my novella Alliance: Cosmic Scandal is a good example of erotic conflict. Here’s the blurb:

When Myrek, heir to the Ziganese throne, becomes ambassador to the planet Mhajav, he hopes to find a cure for his son’s hereditary illness. Then he meets a lovely young geneticist and passion overwhelms his sense of duty. All he can think of is making Khira his own.

Khira is a rarity, a Mhajavi virgin of 25. A child prodigy, she skipped several grades and was underage when most of her classmates went off to sex camp before attending university. Though hopelessly in love with Myrek, she knows their love is doomed. Under Ziganese law Myrek must wed a virgin, but Mhajavi law forbids virgins from marrying.

An erotic encounter in a brothel leads to a fateful decision that defies the laws of two worlds and causes a cosmic scandal.

In this story, the couple fall in love but are unable to marry because of the respective laws of their worlds. Prince Myrek is legally required to wed a virgin, something prohibited by Kira’s world Mhajav. Their solutions to the problem are creative as well as sensual.

As the title of our class says, erotic romance calls for Passion, Heat and Ecstasy.

Have a good weekend.

Lyndi Lamont
website: http://www.lyndilamont.com/

(Disclaimer: Both writing books recommended in this blog were purchased by me personally, not provided gratis for endorsement. LL)

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