2T Repeat Performance - Do You Hear What I Hear

I've done a number of blog tours over the years, posting on different sites. Now I'm bringing them to you!

Originally published February 6, 2014 for Magical Musings

Do You Hear What I Hear

My thanks to Edie Ramer and Magical Musings for having me here today!

Musicians are like cats—we don’t come when we’re called. In just a bit, I’ll tell you why.

We’re also a tad weird, and not only because, as Pat McCurdy sings in “I’m Artistic”, our clothes are blacker than yours. We’re wired differently.

Picture an mp3 player. See the ear buds? Plug them into your ears—and leave them there. Music on. Forever.

Now you know why we don’t always answer when we’re called, and why some of us float around like we’re in a state with legalized marijuana. We have tunage going through our heads 24/7. All radio, all the time.

The good news is, it makes us interesting authors. Smell, touch, taste. Sensory detail snaps a story to life. We put in lots of aural detail because we’re trained listeners. The foosh of the bazooka, the swish of the air going by on a kick are as natural as the word choice to capture the song that is a Welsh accent.

Speech is a marvel of music. Here’s an excerpt from Biting Nixie:

Bo’s words were a symphony of meaning. Detective had a lilt that told of deep affection. Bo said detective the way another man might have said sweetheart or love.

But the word gang had deep, ominous overtones.

One thing musicians and authors have in common—our aim is to give the audience an emotional ride. Ordinary flutist Rocky toots in an average community orchestra. Then conducting superstar Dragan Zajicek mounts the podium. From Downbeat, coming March 4.

Zajicek lifted his baton. An all-embracing sweep of his black gaze gathered our eyes up to him. We waited, our breath and very hearts in his fine hands, ready to leap to our deaths if he bid it.

 

He gave the downbeat.

 

Normally we crank out the first note of a rehearsal like a car grumbling to life on a sub-zero morning. We putter along well enough once we get going, melody recognizable, harmonies not so much. […]

 

Zajicek pulled music from us. We played better than ever before, better than we knew we could, swept along in a tide of almost perfect music.

Magic. That’s the only word that comes close. From our dross he spun emotional gold using only his fine hands. We responded with everything we had, everything we were.

Thanks for listening!

(Written to the Overture to The Marriage of Figaro, playing in my head while the cat snoozed in the chair next to me. Edited to “I’m Artistic”, which became an earworm that ate out my brains. Luckily, people expect me to be a tad strange.

Striking the right note could shatter more than their hearts.

After an attack that slaughtered his family, vampire Dragan Zajicek walled off his heart and went on a sixteen-hundred-year rampage with the bad boys of history.

Now a rock star of the concert podium and master freelance spy, he’s taken the baton for a small orchestra near Chicago to investigate rumors of a monstrous, undefeatable vampire dubbed the Soul Stealer.

But it’s the lovely, unassuming Raquel “Rocky” Hrbek who mesmerizes him from the first touch of her luscious lips on her flute.

Rocky, a shy shadow scarred by middle school cruelty, is mystified as to why core-meltingly gorgeous Dragan would notice a mouse like her. As his stolen kisses draw her dangerously close to the edge of her carefully constructed comfort zone, he exposes her secret—she’s investigating the monster herself.

As their quest draws them closer together, the monster zeroes in on the woman Dragan’s rebellious heart tells him is his mate. Now they must find a way to destroy the indestructible before Rocky is utterly consumed. And Chicago is bathed in the blood of innocents.

Warning: Contains a master of seduction and symphonies, an awkward and innocent flutist, small-town humor, heart-stopping action, and an exodus to Iowa. Oh, and the cheese balls are ba-a-ack—and deadlier than ever.

 

Enjoy the following excerpt for Downbeat:

“May I accompany you, Ms. Hrbek?”

I jumped and nearly tripped. Zajicek caught my wrist to steady me. His fingers were long and slender but amazingly strong—and fiercely warm. Like iron filings to a magnet, my skin aligned instantly to him. Hot sensation juddered through me, knocking me even more off balance. I scrambled to regain my equilibrium, only to have my feet scud into one of the semi-vertical sidewalk stones. My flute bag slipped off my shoulder and nosedived into the crook of my arm, yanking me sideways. I went down.

Powerful arms wrapped around me and saved me from severe pavement burn. The arms were gentle righting me, and I stood in their comforting embrace a moment to get my breath back. A strong heart beat under my cheek. My palms pressed against warm, crisp cotton. The body under the cotton was a solid, cloth-covered cliff, so unlike my own soft limbs. I shivered.

“Are you all right, Ms. Hrbek?” Zajicek’s deep honeyed tones, tinged with amusement, came from somewhere over my head.

“Huh?” Not the snappiest of rejoinders but I was cheek-to-massive-chest with Dragan Zajicek, the posterboy I’d had the hots for half my life.

He was definitely not pasteboard now. The longer I stood there the more I felt. Every ridge of his taut abdomen, the roped muscles of his long thighs, the poke of his belt buckle; they all became alarmingly three-dimensional. His warm breath stirred my hair. Something else stirred too, at hip level…and silent laughter rippled through him.

My brain churned. The intimate way he held me made no sense, but the laughter, well, my clumsiness had lightened the room on more than one occasion.

Then Zajicek’s long fingers slid under my chin, raising my face. His brilliant eyes were shuttered by slumberous lids. I stared in bemusement as his face expanded in my vision…

His lips found mine.

Warm. Smooth. Exciting. “Some Enchanted Evening” sang through my right brain.

My left brain locked up in utter confusion. A man was kissing me. Zajicek was kissing me. The sum of my kissing experience was a slobbery grandmother and a few rushed awkward sexual encounters. I never really saw what the fuss was about. Until Zajicek.

 

2T Repeat Performance

 I've done a number of blog tours over the years, posting on different sites. Now I'm bringing them to you!

Originally published sometime in 2013 for Ali's Bookshelf

Thank you to Ali and Ali’s Bookshelf for having me here today!

Day in the Life of Mary Hughes

Rise and Shine: My husband’s the early riser. I’d sleep until 9 if he let me (before kids that was noon J ). He’s wonderful enough to bring me a cup of coffee (he says it’s in self-defense). The usual shower, etc.

Commute: Down the hallway to the office. Hug husband, who goes downstairs while I boot the computer. Husband, having gathered lunch and coat, appears at foot of stairs with “I love you”, to which I reply “I love you too! Drive safe.” I have to add the Drive Safe because he tends to use his knee to steer and has a following distance of three postage stamps. He leaves. I go into office and rattle the doorknob. Clingy cat runs in last minute and I shut the door and get on with my day.

Work: Email and online tasks. Then close all browsers—very important because Internets is Shiny—and write. The occasional game of Spider Solitaire clears my brain. Practice flute.

After work: Glass of wine or juice with dinner unless it’s Thursday, which is beer & pizza night. Relax with television, which is also a great way to experience visuals for writing stories. Brush both cats (if they let us).

What's on your Bookshelf

Fiction

Elizabeth Peters

Janet Evanovich

J.D. Robb

Rex Stout

David Eddings

Charles Stross

Sunshine by Robin McKinley

Nonfiction

Bossypants by Tina Fey

Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg

Writing books enough to make the shelves sag.

 

 

3T Writing Tidbit - lucking fuvely wordplay

April showers bring may flowers, and Mayflowers bring pilgrims.

As writers, we each have our own ways of expressing ourselves. In other words, though we all tell stories, we each have our own styles.

Still, there are some common tools in our tool kits. One is wordplay.

Wordplay is the thing that allows you to take the sentence, "I had a dog and his name was Blue," and morph it to, "I had a dog and he sang the blues," or "I had a frog and he croaked the blues," or...

Wordplay creates a phrase like "lucking fuvely" from an -ahem- less pristine saying.

It takes the stock (and therefore probably boring) idiom, "Create a dissent among the ranks," and spins it into the Sopranos bit of fun, "Create a little dysentery among the ranks."

AI enumerates several different types of wordplay, puns, double entendres, Spoonerisms, malapropisms, alliterations and portmanteaus (my social media creation, TwitFace, falls into this camp). But in the end, it's all about playing with language in order to tickle the reader. 

I write action/humor romance, so it's a tool I find easier to fit in with my style. What about you? How can you use wordplay to enliven your prose and delight your reader? 

Published since 2009, over the years I've accumulated various items of writing wisdom. The Third Tuesday Writing Tidbit showcases these items in no particular order. Click here to see all 3T Tidbits.   

3T Writing Tidbit - Synopsis in a Snap

I have probably posted this before, but I came across it while going through the blog tours I've done (2013, if anyone's counting) and it bears repeating.

Synopsis in a Snap

You’ve just spend weeks (or months or years) writing, honing, and polishing your story. But to sell it, you need to write a full synopsis. Condense your 30-120K down to 500 words or less. Does your heart pound and your mouth? Does your whole being rebel against the thought?

Well, of course. A synopsis is like putting your story on an X-treme diet. Who likes diets, especially ones that reduce to a bare 1% of the total?

But it doesn’t have to be that way. You can ease the stress and write a synopsis in a snap by flipping your thinking around.

Build the synopsis from the ground up.

You simply have to know the traditional five turning points of your story: the catalyst, the big event, the pinch, the crisis, and the climax. (This technique is for the synopsis, complete with ending, that you send an editor, publisher, or agent. The teaser synopsis or blurb is another animal.)

Let’s build a synopsis using these five points from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. If you haven’t read the book or seen the movie, you’ll still be able to follow along.

Here are the turning points. If you don’t understand the story from the raw points, that’s okay. It’ll become clearer as we go.

Catalyst: Dorothy Gale’s dog Toto is seized by her wicked neighbor. When Toto escapes, Dorothy and Toto run away from home.

Big Event: A cyclone hits, sweeping Dorothy’s house, Toto and Dorothy away.

Pinch: Dorothy and her friends reach the Wizard, only to be told she must destroy the Wicked Witch (or bring him her broomstick in the film).

Crisis: The Witch captures Dorothy and her friends, and imprisons her away from her friends.

Climax: The hot air balloon takes off without Dorothy. She must rely on herself to get back home.

Note that the book jumps right to the Big Event, but that’s a normal difference between books and movies. Authors are taught to get right into the story. Screenplays include a setup that’s usually ten percent of the finished film.

Now we write our synopsis. Add a sentence or two before the point to orient the reader, and between the points to transition smoothly between. You can also add in one or two points of color. In this case, I’ll expand “Dorothy’s friends” to include their very lively names, and add the yellow brick road. Another addition is the theme, which I’ll added at the end.

Dorothy Gale is a young girl living with her aunt and uncle on a small, old, and gray farm; only her dog Toto makes her laugh. Then Toto is seized by her wicked neighbor, so when Dorothy recovers Toto, the pair runs away from home.

Dorothy meets a carnival man who convinces her to go home. But when she gets there a cyclone hits. Before Dorothy can hide, the wind sweeps away Dorothy’s house with Toto and Dorothy in it.

The house lands in a colorful countryside—on top of a Wicked Witch, killing her.  A good witch appears and tells Dorothy only the great wizard Oz can send her home. She gives Dorothy the dead witch’s Silver Shoes (ruby slippers in the movie). Dorothy follows a road of yellow brick to Oz’s city, and along the way rescues three friends: the Scarecrow; the Tin Woodman; and the Cowardly Lion. But when Dorothy and her friends reach the Wizard, he will only help her if she destroys another witch, the Wicked Witch of the West.

But the Wicked Witch sees them coming and sends the Winged Monkeys at them. The Monkeys capture Dorothy and Toto (and the Lion in the book) and take her to the Witch, who incarcerates her (enslaves her in the book). Dorothy is alone and friendless.

But when the Witch tries to steal Dorothy’s lovely slippers, Dorothy throws a bucket of water on her in anger, which melts the Witch. Dorothy is freed. She collects her friends and returns to the Wizard to claim her reward.

The Wizard tries to get out of his promise, and when Dorothy and her friends confront him, is proven to be merely a man. But he has a hot air balloon and take Dorothy back to Kansas in it.

Then the day of the launch, the hot air balloon takes off without Dorothy. She must rely on herself to get back home. The good witch tells Dorothy the Silver Shoes (ruby slippers) will take her and Toto home. She’s had the power all along but without her adventure she wouldn’t have known that there truly is no place like home.

Easier than whittling down a hundred or so pages, right? Only items which are essential to making the plot points make sense are added, such as the slippers which trigger Dorothy’s anger (melting the Witch) and get her home. Only the main characters or those who infuse extreme color are named.

If you’ve read the book or seen the movie, you’ll note I haven’t included the friends’ stories. That’s why this is such a great tool. The Scarecrow’s brain, the Tin Woodsman’s heart, and the Cowardly Lion’s courage are important, but they’re not critical to the plot points, so I know I can safely exclude them.

Need more? If you’re asked for a longer synopsis, you can simply list the five plot points for any secondary stories and weave them in. This also works for romance, where you have plot points for hero and heroine each.

Published since 2009, over the years I've accumulated various items of writing wisdom. The Third Tuesday Writing Tidbit showcases these items in no particular order. Click here to see all 3T Tidbits.    

2T Repeat Performance

I've done a number of blog tours over the years, posting on different sites. Now I'm bringing them to you!

Originally published September 6, 2013 for Guilty Pleasures

The Future of the Biting Love Series

Thank you to DiDi and Guilty Pleasures for having me back!

Picture a rainbow, or better yet, the St. Louis Gateway Arch. The Biting Love series is a set of blocks fitting together to make an overall arc.

Each block is a hot romance between a strong vampire and the human woman who claims him, and each can stand alone.

Put them together, though, and they form a story of good versus evil, the Alliance versus the Coterie. Granted, at the start of the series, the bad guys are more bumbling and inept than a bunch of storm troopers. But hey, the books also have humor. By the end we’ll see something a little more like a boss.

The first several books laid the foundations of quirky little Meiers Corners and dealt with local problems, only hinting at wider issues.

The newly released Beauty Bites, Biting Love Book 6, takes us outside the small town and broadens the conflict by introducing two unaligned vampires, Ric Holiday and Aiden Blackthorne, who don’t want to bow to either master. It also has a heart-rending scene which deepens our understanding of vampires.

I’m very excited that the next book, Downbeat, Biting Love Book 7, is scheduled for March 2014. Downbeat is about halfway through the series. It’s Rocky’s story, and I actually started it in 2008 before the first Biting Love book was even released, but its place in the series arc meant I didn’t get to finish it until this year. I’m glad it was delayed though, because this story is near to my heart, and my readers, editors, and the writing community has made me a better writer and the story benefits from that.

I’m in the planning stages for Book 8, Aiden’s story. Aiden was a character who leaped out of my psyche onto the page and demanded his own story. Frankly that one will be a hoot because it pairs the sexy, smooth assassin with an inept but loveable Ruffles.

The final book? The faceoff between the boss villain and the head of the Alliance, naturally.

If everything goes as planned, that is. Since Murphy sees all and FUBARs all, things may change. Stay tuned :) .

3T Writing Tidbit - Planning the Villain

Plotting with Goal Conflict Disaster is primarily from the protagonist's point of view and keeps the hero front and center.

But let's zoom in on the conflict. What stands in the protagonist's way? It's usually the bad guy/gal (or their minions).

Now, a good baddy will have their own character arc that puts them organically in opposition to the hero. But let's zoom in another level and think about how that opposition manifests.

What's in your villain's character? Are they a ninja and do things by stealth? Gun enthusiast and will meet the hero at high noon? Maybe they're a planner like Moriarty. Or is fisticuffs or dueling more their style? Perhaps they just chuck the minions at the hero and run under cover of the brawl. (Throw in pies if you're writing a comedy :) .) There's nothing like good, old-fashioned bullying and intimidation, but the hero has to have a good reason to back down -- maybe the baddy is bullying those around the hero instead.

Each one gives us a different slant on the baddy, showing, not telling, a bit of their character.

Published since 2009, over the years I've accumulated various items of writing wisdom. The Third Tuesday Writing Tidbit showcases these items in no particular order. Click here to see all 3T Tidbits.