I’ve written several single title length romances that have all been rejected and I’m tired of investing so much time in them so I’m trying a novella instead. I have a couple of questions, if that’s not cheating.
How do you break up the chapters in a novella? Are the about the same length as in […]

The question for this weekend is…
Would telling my editor where to shove her red pen kill my career? She corrected my grammar and caught my typos and pointed out plot inconsistencies, but then she goes on to “suggest” rewrites that change sentence structure. She likes long flowery sentences and this is a romantic suspense. Another […]

Okay, here we go! The first weekend question. Just as a reminder, this post will stay at the top through the weekend, and I also wanted to add one thing for any authors who want to chime in. If you know of a blog post or article, either your own or somebody else’s, that you […]

I’ve been thinking about this for a while, so I guess I’ll just get on with it.
One of my favorite things about the romance community is how generous authors are in sharing their experiences, advice and such. I can’t even begin to quantify the impact authors such as Karen Templeton, Patricia McLinn, and Deborah […]

Based upon the small pile of “DNF” books in front of my filing cabinet (story details changed to a point):
1) We all know the key to holding a reader’s interest is to ask questions. In romances, the primary question is “How will these two people overcome these seemingly overwhelming obstacles in order to live […]

Gasp. I know. There are no rules, only things the author does or doesn’t make work, right?
So I’ve been unhappy with the opening of DG3 for quite a while now. I couldn’t find the balance between the reader saying “OMG, what’s going on, I HAVE to know!” and the reader saying “Who are these […]

Michelle asks:
I want to know, when you’re writing a series, how do you keep all the information straight. Do you have a journal where you write notes on each of the characters (ie from the Devlin group) and what they do, what they look like, whether they were shot or stabbed, etc. Or do you […]

This was originally drafted as a Thursday Thirteen, but it grew to an epic length and you can’t really use the more link in the TT table. So I’ll use it today in lieu of babbling. (Okay, it’s still babbling, but at least it’s writing related.)
13 Reasons Why I’ve Listened to “RWA Idol” from […]

Last week, I tried to draft a Thursday Thirteen list called “Thirteen Bits of Writing Advice I Totally Ignore (Usually)”, but I got stuck on #9. While I’m sure I’ll finish that draft at some point, one of them has been sticking in my head, especially as I work through the rough draft of Taming […]

I love the BS-sketch. It’s a very, very huge part of the process for me, but it’s something I don’t do until some of the book is already written. Here’s the sketch so far for Wings of Death:

It’s so…free. I find if I try to plot with lined paper or on the […]