My Favorite Time of Year

Posted by on Oct 8, 2015 in Fun Stuff | 8 comments

October Treats and a Giveaway Fall has arrived here in southern Ohio, and though the leaves haven’t begun to change, I can feel the difference in the air.  I love this time of year.  The weather is awesome and at the end of the month, we celebrate my favorite holiday: Halloween.  (I bet you didn’t see that coming.) But Halloween isn’t the only thing I’ll be celebrating this month.  The Final Formula just turned two.  (It’s hard to believe it’s been two years since I released it.)  In celebration, I’m putting together a few fun things to share on my website this month.  I’ve got a new alternative point-of-view scene from The Final Formula.  This scene is in Rowan’s POV and immediately follows the last scene I did in his POV.  I’ll be posting it as soon as beta readers give it a look for typos.  (If you didn’t get to read the first one, it’s offered as a bonus when you sign up for my newsletter.  If you’d like to learn more about my newsletter, I did a post about it here.) I’m also putting together another character interview.  I’ll be chatting with Addie this time, so if you have a question for her, please leave it in the comments section below.  I’ve also been soliciting questions over on my Facebook page if you like to hang out there. During the final week of October, I’ll be doing a giveaway over at The Fussy Librarian.  Five winners will get their choice of a signed paperback copy of The Final Formula or an ebook copy of my bundle, The Final Formula Collection.  The giveaway goes live on October 25th and runs through October 31st.  I’ll post a reminder when it gets closer. Finally, I’m working on a Halloween themed short story.  I hesitate to even mention it because sometimes these things don’t come together like I envision, but if it does, I would love to share it as a Halloween treat for all my awesome fans.  Wish me luck! Oh, if you’re wondering about the picture…  That’s a shot of the pumpkin growing in the middle of our sidewalk.  Apparently, a stray seed from one of last year’s pumpkins made it...

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A Sweet Ride

Posted by on Oct 2, 2015 in Random Ramblings | 1 comment

The great thing about writing fiction is that I get to do things, go places, and own things that I will probably never do, go, or own. One of the things I have the most fun with is picking out cars for my characters to drive. Sometimes, the character’s personality or circumstances dictates the car, but when I get to choose, I lean toward my love of the old American muscle cars. I come by my love of those old cars honestly: I get it from my dad. He used to take me to car shows when I was a kid. He would know the make and model of every car in the place. I got pretty decent at naming a lot of those old cars myself, but never as good as Dad. Even now, if we see an old car on the road and none of us can name it, my son points out that Grandad would know. (Now that Dad has a smartphone, I just text him a picture and ask.) My first car was a 1966 Ford Mustang. I had been wanting one for a while when Dad found one in Columbus (two hours away) that was in good shape and mostly road worthy. Not a bad find considering that the car was almost twenty-five years old at the time. We brought it home and Dad worked on it for a month replacing the entire braking system until he felt it was safe enough to drive. I was so excited when he finally gave me the keys. I could’t wait to drive it around town. The second day I had it out, I wrapped it around a tree. Those were the days before cell phones, and as luck would have it, my mom was at my sister’s ballgame, my boyfriend (now husband) was out of town, and Dad was working at a new house that didn’t have a phone installed. I had to have my best friend’s mom drive me to him. That was the longest ride of my life. When I told Dad, he just looked at me and said, “You didn’t.” And that was the end of it. He...

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Better With Age: Maturing as a Writer

Posted by on Sep 11, 2015 in Writing | Comments Off on Better With Age: Maturing as a Writer

Aging is a gradual process. It’s not something you really notice until something changes. As a kid, you’ll pull on a pair of pants you wore last week, and they’re suddenly too short. As an adult, you realize it’s becoming harder and harder to make out the text on a page unless you find that perfect focal point. (No, I do not need bifocals. That’s what old people wear.) But it’s not just our physical bodies that change. As I’ve mentioned several times before, I have another series that I’ve been writing since I was in my teens. It currently stands at ten novels and lots of partials stories. One of these days, I would love to get this series off my shelf and out into the world, but it’ll take some work. The other day, I decided to start the process by creating the working file and importing some of the original book one. I couldn’t help reading it as I did, and oh my goodness, was it bad! It was so…childish. The immaturity of this first book really surprised me. I expected to find poor examples of the craft: bad grammar, passive voice, etc. (And I did.) But I thought the story itself would hold up to a certain extent. In my mind, it was still the great tale I wrote when I was in my late teens/early twenties. Now I still dig the premise, the basic plot, and the characters, but the execution…ugh. I’m so glad I didn’t publish anything back then. I had to mature as a writer. Now that’s not to say that there aren’t some incredible young writers out there. Young folks who can tell a story in a mature, insightful fashion. Me? Nope. I didn’t have the skill back then. There’s some debate as to whether I have it now. I still get an occasional reviewer who calls my characters juvenile. And since my characters are me (read my last post on write what you know), does that mean I’m young at heart? 😛 This whole experience got me thinking. (Yeah, scary I know.) What is mature writing? Why do my characters from twenty years ago act...

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Write What You Know: My Take

Posted by on Aug 30, 2015 in Writing | 2 comments

Write what you know. If you’ve been writing for any amount of time, you’ve probably stumbled upon this phrase. But what does it really mean? That can vary from author to author, but here’s my take on it… When I first heard write what you know, I was intimidated. What the heck did I know? My life was rather mundane. I didn’t have a tormented childhood to draw from. I hadn’t survived a life-threatening illness, got lost in the desert, or had to fend off a pack of zombies (except on the Xbox). Not that anyone would wish for tragedy, but it seemed that I was always hearing about writers who had these incredible life experiences that inspired their writing. Me, not so much. To take this argument one step further, I write fantasy. What do I know about magic? I’ve never experienced it, so how can I truly know anything about it. Ironically, it was the fantasy aspect that helped me figure it out. A writer friend challenged me to write what I know, but with a fantasy twist. I decided to give it a try. I would write about my dull life and throw in some magic. I started with my career. I’m a chemist, so my character should be…an alchemist. If you’ve read my books, you know what happened next. Yep, Addie was born. And because this was in response to that prompt, I wrote it in first person and set it in my everyday world. Up until this point, I had been writing in third person in a secondary world fantasy setting. I wrote the opening chapter with no real idea what the story was about. It was just a fun exercise that was little more than a character sketch. When I went back and read it later, I was stunned. It didn’t suck. For the first time in my life, I wanted to share something I had written. Add a couple of years, an online workshop, and a big dollop of courage, and I was ready to send The Final Formula out into the world. In the process, Addie taught me what write what you know really meant. I might not have experienced the adventures that she...

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The Sound of Inspiration

Posted by on Aug 15, 2015 in Writing | 5 comments

Today I thought I’d chat about something that, for me at least, is very important to the writing process, but one that readers never see—or hear, in this case. That something is…   Nothing gets me in that special place where the characters come alive better than listening to my favorite tunes. If I’m stuck or need to get that next scene rolling, I pop in my earbuds and let the music take me somewhere else. I don’t typically write with music playing. I prefer quiet for that. But if I’m in a noisy environment, I will let my tunes drown out the distractions. Most of the time, music serves as a catalyst to get the creative juices flowing. I can use it in a controlled manner, or just let it take me where it will. For example, if a scene is giving me trouble, I will put on a song that gives me the feel I’m trying to capture, then force myself to imagine that particular scene. It doesn’t work every time, and sometimes it helps to change songs, but eventually the block will break free and the story movie will start rolling in my mind. Other times, I let the music take me to a new place in the story I haven’t yet imagined. In this case, I’ll choose a song at random, zone out, and let it take me where it will. I choose songs more for the feel it gives me rather than the actual lyrics. That’s not to say that the lyrics don’t influence me. Some remind me of a certain scene in a story, or a particular character. But I don’t get hung up on what the song is saying. Often, I’m so caught up in my imaginary world that I don’t even hear the words anymore. It’s just the pure feel the song inspires that carries me forward. Now you’re probably curious about what type of music serves as the soundtrack to my Final Formula series—or maybe you’ve figured that out already. Obviously, it’s not happy songs, sung in a major key about flowers and sunshine. I like it dark. I’ve always been a metal head—much to...

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