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A Fantasy Life

June 28, 2009 by in category A Fantasy Life by Janet Cornelow tagged as ,

by Janet Quinn Cornelow

I hope everyone is having a great weekend.

Me. I’ve been laid up with a pinched nerve in my back for the last week. Now, I am having a strange reaction to the pills they gave me and can’t breath.

However, I did want everyone to think I just forgot it was my day to blog, so this is it.

Have a great July 4th also.

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OCCRWA July Online Workshop – “Writing Cozy Mysteries” w Emily Brightwell

June 26, 2009 by in category Archives

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

“Writing Cozy Mysteries”
With Cheryl Arguile w/a Emily Brightwell
July 13, 2009 – August 8, 2009

Enrollment Information at http://www.occrwa.org/onlineclassJul09.html
COST: $20 for OCC members, $30 for non-members
Enrollment deadline: July 12, 2009

If you have specific questions, email occrwaonlineclass@yahoo.com

ABOUT THE CLASS:
In Cozy Writing 101, Emily Brightwell will share the method she uses to plot her “Inspector and Mrs. Jeffries” Victorian mystery series. In this class, Emily will cover everything from how to come up with a real killer of an idea to how to get to the solution of the crime. Topics covered will include : coming up with your protagonist, how to find the very best suspects, the kind of setting needed for a cozy, how to plant clues and red herrings and finally, the final resolution.
This is the same great class Emily taught here in 2006!

ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR:
Emily Brightwell is the author of the best-selling Victorian London Murder Mysteries featuring the detective team of Mrs. Jeffries and Inspector Witherspoon. She has written twenty-five novels in this cozy mystery series and is busy working on the next.Born in West Virginia, her family moved to Los Angeles when she was ten. After high school, she attended California State University at Fullerton and earned a Degree in American Studies.In addition to writing the Mrs. Jeffries’ series, she has also written six Young Adult novels for Berkley under her maiden name, Cheryl Lanham. Emily and her family live in Southern California.

Enrollment Information at http://www.occrwa.org/onlineclassJul09.html
COST: $20 for OCC members, $30 for non-members
Enrollment deadline: July 12, 2009

Coming in August – Using Body Language and Vocal Gestures to Create More Believable Characters with Bill Edmunds
We will learn how to better stir the blood of our readers by creating more believable romance characters through descriptions of body language and vocal gestures.

http://www.occrwa.org/onlineclasses.html.

Check out our full 2009 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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Check out Harlequin Insider

June 24, 2009 by in category Archives tagged as , , , ,

Harlequin announces the launch of Harlequin Insider, a desktop application that brings the interactive world of eHarlequin.com right to you. Get all the latest news from eHarlequin.com delivered directly to your computer desktop.

It’s easy to set up and in just a few minutes, Harlequin Insider will be available at your fingertips. You’ll get regular updates of new releases, hot titles, community events, daily reads, special offers and more…

You can also check out Harlequin’s interactive daily polls and hero of the day feature.

Enjoy!

Sign up here!

Also Check out Harlequin on MySpace
Silhouette on MySpace
Harlequin on Twitter

Get Harlequinized! Too much is never enough….

Best,

Isabel Swift
my blog

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Advice to Myself as a Newbie Author

June 22, 2009 by in category Advice to Myself as a Newbie Author by Shauna Roberts tagged as ,

by Shauna Roberts
http://ShaunaRoberts.blogspot.com

Today’s Guest: Deanna Cameron

If you could travel back in time to before you were first published, what advice would you give yourself?

The first thing I’d tell myself is this: 1. There’s no silver bullet to writing a good novel. I’m sure this is obvious to most writers starting out, but it was a surprisingly difficult lesson for me to learn because I’m the kind of person who thinks you can do just about anything if you learn the right rules.

I love rules. I love organization. I cling to clearly defined goals, and I take intense pleasure in being able to track progress. So when I set my mind to the task of writing a novel, my first and strongest instinct was to search out the set of writing rules I thought would pave the way.

I enrolled in classes, I signed up for workshops, I read craft books, and I attended conferences. I absorbed as much knowledge as possible, assuming it would naturally lead to great writing. Then I’d sit at the keyboard, and I’d wait for the captivating words and an elegantly composed storyline to magically appear beneath my fingertips. And I’d wait. Eventually I’d type something, and inevitably it fell short of the kind of brilliance I was expecting.

I told myself that could only mean one thing: I hadn’t yet found the right rules. So I took more classes, signed up for more workshops, read more books, and attended more conferences. Then I tried again. By then I was so full of rules, I froze at the keyboard. Instead of letting the story flow, I analyzed and overanalyzed every word I wrote. You can imagine the number that did on my creativity.

I would have saved myself a lot of time—and frustration—if I could tell my earlier self that writing is just plain hard work, and there are no rules or shortcuts that will erase that fact. The only way to produce good writing is to write—a lot—and to find your own rhythm and style in the words.

Here are a few other things I’d tell myself:

2. Hard and fast rules don’t exist when it comes to writing fiction. For every rule out there, you can find examples of brilliant stories that break that rule. Look at the classics or scan through the bestsellers, and you’re sure to find these novels break some rule or another. A better goal is to be aware of the rules, but write knowing that you must stay true to your own sense of what works for your story and your characters.

3. Forget the old adage “write what you know.” I’ve found it’s more important to write about what you love, what excites you, or what you’re dying to learn more about. Writing about something that excites you or that is a new discovery for you will naturally elevate your writing. If it’s a topic that is truly brand new to you, however, research it well enough to write about it authoritatively.

4. Don’t settle for getting your manuscript in reasonably good shape with the belief that an agent and editor will see the potential and help you perfect it. If you’re lucky enough to get interest from an agent and/or an editor, he or she is looking for work that is already polished. Don’t be tempted to send out a manuscript that isn’t ready.

5. Remember why you started writing in the first place. If you’re like me, you began writing because you took pleasure in the act of writing itself. Yet somewhere along the line—after we’ve taken a bunch of classes and workshops and joined critique groups and stumbled through multiple drafts—you might become convinced that getting the story into print is The Most Important Thing. But it isn’t, not really. Building a world with nothing more than words and your imagination is an amazing and tremendously gratifying thing in and of itself, and that should be honored whether it leads to publication or not.

✥✥✥✥✥

To learn more about DeAnna Cameron, please visit her Web page at http://www.DeAnnaCameron.com or her blog at http://DeAnnaCameron.blogspot.com. You can preorder her July 7 release, The Belly Dancer, at your local bookstore or online at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and Borders.

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Staying Grounded While in the Air

June 19, 2009 by in category Archives tagged as ,

by
Monica Stoner, Member at Large

Since the end of May I have been in four states, flying back and forth from my New Mexico home. I’ve visited three new towns and encountered four new airports. I wonder how people can do this month after month, I’m certainly looking forward to staying in one spot, sleeping every night in my own bed and eating New Mexico food. There truly is no place like home. The supporting thread in all of this is, guess what?, books. I check for book stores in every airport – there’s actually a used book kiosk in the Raleigh Durham airport. Every airport has at least one chain book store, some stocked better than others. Looking around in the waiting areas and on the planes, in every row at least one person has their nose firmly planted in a book. Yesterday I watched a professionally dressed gentleman at the courtesy vehicle stand with his attention firmly on the hard backed book in his hands.

Certainly the first thing I pack is reading material, and I often make a trip to the local book store to stock up for a trip. At one time I tried to bring along an “important” book, thinking this was an opportunity to read something I “should” read. But I also bring along books I want to read, and those are the ones I reach for first. After a while I decided to save the weight.

This is a thankyousomuch to all those who get their books finished and published. They keep us going through times bad and good. Their imagination takes us away from ourselves for at least that brief period of time, and often beyond that. I was reading the Mercy Thompson books while in Washington state, and found a connection to the dense forests I drove through. Of course this also means I plot scenarios in new locations. If you hear about bizarre things happening to people forced to spend the night in an airport, there’s a possibility I finally stopped long enough to finish a thought, finish a book and get it to a publisher. Keep writing!

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