Archive for the 'Writing--craft' Category

Lost in the Digital Conversion?

Thursday, February 4th, 2010

Yesterday I realized I didn’t have a copy of No Surrender on my iPod Touch. I like to have previous books in a series at my fingertips so I can refer back to descriptions of characters and events while writing the current book. The problem—my author copies weren’t on the Macbook.
How much do I detest [...]

Identity & waiting too long

Sunday, January 31st, 2010

Last night, the husband and I watched Identity, a 2003 movie I’d never heard of. In flipping through the on-screen guide, I stumbled across it and recorded it on a whim. An hour and a half later, after the kids went to bed, we watched it. What made me hit record on a movie I’d [...]

The "Yeah, but…" method of plotting

Thursday, January 7th, 2010

On the weekends, we eat out a lot. Dinner Friday night through breakfast on Sunday morning, generally. While it’s nice to think it’s because my husband wants me to have weekends off, it’s actually more like he wants “real” meals that taste good at least a couple of times a week.
Very often, sitting around the [...]

Way of the Cheetah

Thursday, December 31st, 2009

On her blog this morning, PBW announced that, due to the inability of overseas folks to buy it, she’ll be removing Way of the Cheetah from Scribd tomorrow.
That means today is your last day to get it for $1.00. (If you live in the US, I guess.)
That’s right—$1.00.
What is Way of the Cheetah? It’s more [...]

A question of dialogue structure

Thursday, November 12th, 2009

When it comes to certain aspects of writing, I can be a bit of a…traditionalist. (Though some might say old-fashioned stick-in-the-mud.) It’s one of the things Maya loves best about me. (Not. *g*)
One of the things driving me batshit crazy I’ve been noticing of late is a change in the structure of dialogue passages. To [...]

Retro Shan: Secret babies

Monday, October 26th, 2009

(I’m grinding along under a self-imposed deadline and the project happens to be a reunion/secret baby—because I love me some secret babies—so here’s a post I originally wrote in April of ‘08.)
My unabashed adoration for secret baby romances isn’t something I keep buried behind the bassinet. I’ve even written two of them myself. As a [...]

When your own heroine's unlikeable

Wednesday, October 14th, 2009

I’ve been thinking about 72 HOURS a lot in the last day or so. Not only because it’s currently a Kindle freebie, but because of Dear Author’s blog post, The Case of the Unlikeable Heroine.
I had some issues with Grace, the heroine of 72 Hours—issues that brought the writing of the book to a grinding [...]

A scene from DG4

Thursday, October 1st, 2009

I’m choreographing an action scene from DG4 today. Last time I broke out the Legos to choreograph a scene, I was going to share, but the scene was built on my desk and you could read my bank statements in the picture. I deleted it.
Sadly, now that school is back in session, most of the [...]

When stupid attacks

Thursday, September 10th, 2009

I’ve been slowly chugging along on my non-DG action-adventure romance, also known as the most flat, boring book ever written. Insert big, dramatic sigh here.
I know it’s the first draft. First drafts are allowed to suck because otherwise it wouldn’t be a first draft. But, for me, a flat story with no discernable voice usually [...]

A Slave to Structure

Thursday, July 30th, 2009

So Tuesday morning I spent several hours at the computer working. Notice how I didn’t say writing? I wasn’t writing, I was obsessing. Obsessing is something I’m fairly good at it, but Tuesday morning was excessive, even for me.
What was I obsessing over? Structure. I had my little chart and was calculating word counts of [...]