my books

Four Days and Counting

annabowling Leave a comment

Things I am never allowed to buy more of, ever again, ever:

  • Mini staplers and/or staple removers
  • staples for mini staplers and/or staple removers
  • Pencils
  • Sticky notes (except for the really big ones)
  • Paper clips (except for rose gold ones)

These restrictions come from my current packapalooza. All of the above have popped out at me from unexpected places, even, and maybe especially when I have already packed the office supplies, but wouldn’t you know it, there they are. This is where the plasticware I insisted on keeping comes in handy. Random small stuff busting out of nowhere? Pop that sucker into a container with those of its kind, slap a lid on it, label that lid (silver Sharpies are my friends) and we’re good to go.  Put smaller things in bigger things, find creative ways to lift the edge of packing tape when it falls back onto the roll, and keep on going.

Yesterday, Housemate reserved a storage unit. Today, we find out how soon we can start stuffing things into it. This move is leveling up, and, at the same time, a small village is taking shape. Not in a sit it down and plan it idea (though I do love planning) but more of a looking around and seeing who’s there approach.

I’ve always been character driven, and the stories almost always start with the characters for me. From the start, I knew A Moment Past Midnight would have a heroine, the two men she loved, and the choice she has to make. The first draft is kind of white-room-y, because I am pantsing this story a lot more than I usually do, but I am okay with that. As long as I get to hunker down in my remote village, and put my imaginary friends through their paces, I’m fine.

Today is the day for packing notebooks that I am actually using, and, effectively, putting my office (or this iteration of my office) to bed. In the next couple of days, we will be putting things in storage, and moving things to different destinations. I am firmly of the conviction that we don’t know exactly what material things we have, until we have to move them. At some point, I will be unboxing the vast majority of this stuff, and setting up a new office, then getting back to novel work.

Working on something shorter makes sense right now, and I like getting into the flow of opening a notebook, putting pen to paper, and letting the story take me where it will. I’m aiming for novella length, because the story problem is a relatively small one (my characters may disagree on the size of the problem, because it’s happening to them, and they were fine before I came along and messed with their status quo. Okay, two of them were doing fine. For the other, their current situation is somewhat of an improvement, though to what degree, is debatable.) I know where this story is going, but  how it gets there, that still has a few surprises.

I don’t have a Pinterest board for AMPM, though I do have properly sized page protectors for when/if I do print out any images of people, places, or things, but, right now, the village, and its inhabitants, live only in my head, and on the pink pages I fill every night. I’ve cleared the thirty page mark, which impresses me, because this is one wild ride on the domestic monsoon, but maybe the chaos is part of the process.

There’s a certain amount of free-floating of the story brain while doing uncreative things, like packing (though deciding what goes where, and how things can arrive at their next destination in the same amount in the same number of pieces with which they departed their last one, certainly takes  a special sort of creativity.) I wrap things, secure them, put them where they’re going to go, make labels for inside and outside the box, so we know what goes where, and what to expect when we slide the tape and lift out the items we want.

There will probably be some brain free-floating on that end of the move, as well. Since I’ve been reading more e-books lately, there aren’t as many physical books to deal with as there were for the last move, but there’s still a good number of them to place into the little free libraries within walking distance. Donation bins are waiting for clothing items we can no longer use, and other items will be dispersed other ways. I don’t want to blog only about the move, because I would rather talk about other things, but, on the other hand, it’s kind of hard to ignore.

Right now, time for blogging is done for this session, and time to put on Spotify and stick things in boxes is back. We’ll see which imaginary friends drop by to wander around my brainpan while I pack.

 

 

Six Days and Counting

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Six days now, until move-out day, and the pressure is most assuredly upon us. We’ll be turning in our cable box, which also takes care of our internet, on Friday, so internet access may be libraries and coffee shops for a little while. I still plan to keep as closely to the regular blog schedule as possible, but if you’re following the moving saga, and don’t already follow me on Twitter, you can do that right here.

I will admit to strong feelings when it comes to taking apart my desktop and getting it ready to move to short term storage. This means the laptop will be called back to regular duty, which means tipping it back a wee bit, because the screen goes black if I hold it upright (I have no idea why this is; machine works fine, but needs to be at an angle if I want to actually see anything.) The flip side of this will be setting up my desk in its new home, and carving out my writing space once more. Until then, the world is my office.

This is one way that being a longhand-first writer comes in handy. The notebooks I use most (see picture above) will go in a special bag that will travel with me, personally, because I am not in the mood to have these notebooks go walkabout in the moving process. Entertaining as they might be to any random person who stumbles up on them and can read my handwriting, I’d rather keep them close. I can’t speak for all writers having special relationships with their tools, but, for this writer, the answer is most definitely yes.

Case in point: this weekend, I attended a leadership meeting (say what you will about an organization that allows me to lead anything) and we were all encouraged to take notes. I did not need the offered pen or paper, because I had Big Pink, and my pen case, but I did make a troubling discovery. Said discovery being the kind that trikes terror into the heart of a notebook lover. My notes filled the last pages of my Moleskine Volant, with its perforated pages. Normally, I would swap this insert for another, but (you may want to grab onto something heavy, for support) I had already packed my inserts. All. Of. Them.

Going into a move when I do not have perforated pages is not going to work, and running out to purchase another pack of inserts is not on the schedule, but packing mode has sped up the making connections part of my brain. On that same day, I also had filled the last non-perforated page in my cahier. There was an unopened hardcover Moleskine, lined, in my bookcase-made-from-milk-crates in the living room. Move cahier to Volant’s place, put hardcover where cahier used to be, all purposes fulfilled, back to alternating between calculated confidence and running around in circles, flailing arms and screaming.

More calculated competence, when it comes to packing, and, oddly enough, in writing, as I am on track with my Camp NaNo progress. If I keep up at my current rate, I may very well finish before the end of the month, with room to spare. The story problem is a smaller one (or is it?) – get heroine back with the man she loves, and send her would-have-been second husband off into the sunset, eventually to land in a companion story. We’ll see how that goes.

Novel projects are on pause (or are they?) while we’re in transition, but part of packing includes digging up bones. One of these bones comes in a navy blue binder. Said binder is not the kind with space for me to put my own cover image behind a clear film, so I had no idea what I’d find, when I opened it. What I did find yanked me firmly into novel land. In Nothing Short of Heaven, which  initial version was, itself, a NaNo project (though regular or camp version, I cannot say) is, like Her Last First Kiss, set in Georgian England, and I won’t say I forgot about Slate and Melanie (because how could I?) but seeing them again, when I didn’t expect them, well that was something else.

Slate has no sense of self, while Melanie knows exactly who she is. Her theme song is “So What,” by P!nk. Her BS meter is set to zero, which serves her well, because Slate, well, he has some baggage. This book also has probably my favorite villain I’ve written so far, who prefers the title of Master to his actual name. I’m still planning on finishing the second draft of Her Last First Kiss first, but I wouldn’t mind getting reacquainted with Slate and Melanie, at all, when I’m done with this one.

Right now, I’m doing the thing in front of me -which is, apart from my nightly Camp NaNo pages, packing- and, at the same time, keeping an eye on the end goal. New apartment. Finished draft. New release. New notebook. (Hey, small perks can have big effects.) Later today, I’ll be viewing an apartment that is not only basically across the street from our current place, but the next door neighbor would be a takeout calzone restaurant. I will count that as an amenity.

020418deskscape2

Typing With Wet Claws: Mostly Through March Edition

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Hello, all. Skye here, for another Feline Friday. Anty and I would like to say hello to our new readers. If you are new, you may not know that I, Skye, who am a kitty, blog for my Anty on Fridays. This is partly to help her out and partly because I take my duties as a mews very seriously. That means that I have to make sure she is doing what she needs to be doing, to get books written, so that she can share them with readers.

First of all, before I am allowed to talk about anything else (though let’s be real, it is mostly Anty’s writing  that I talk about, anyway) I have to tell readers where to find Anty’s writing on the interwebs this week, other than here. If you are reading this, you are already here, and do not need directions. As always, she was at Buried Under Romance on Saturday (that is the day after I blog, if you need a temporal landmark.) This week, she talked about experienced heroines. That post is here, and it looks like this:

BURissheexperienced

There is no frame around that picture, because I forgot. Also, I have special paws, and it is not always easy to hit the right keys. Pretend the frame is there, and that is almost the same thing.

Next comes the part where I bring readers up to date on Anty’s Goodreads challenge. Anty’s goal is to read ninety books by the end of the year, and have at least half of those be historical romance. Historical fiction with strong romantic elements also counts. As of this morning, Anty has read nineteen out of ninety books, which puts her at twenty-one percent of the way to her goal, and one book behind schedule. It is the weekend, though, so there is time to get back on track. I will also point out that, out of the top row of Anty’s read books, four out of the five are historical romance, so good job on that.

The book Anty read and reviewed this week, is this one:

 

Anty liked this book very much, and will start on its companion book, Lady ni White, very soon. Probably later tonight, actually. Once Anty is done with her Skye-athalon (he books, not the kitty) she will then embark on a Denise Domning binge. I think I will call that “Domning-nation,” because I like coming up with names for things. It is part of my job as a mews. Unless that is already the name of Miss Denise’s fan club. Then, I would have to think of something else.

Another part of being a mews is to make sure Anty lays the proper groundwork for upcoming projects. As she will be participating in this year’s April Camp NaNo session, she has about a week to get things ready for that. In case anybody was wondering what Anty’s brainstorms about creating a whole village look like, they look pretty much like this:

Typepadscribbleoneversion

Note: work in progress

 

Anty has added a few other things to the page since this picture was taken, including shading in the letters in the word, “village,” because shading letters is a very good way for Anty to procrastinate and still say that she is actually working. We will see how that goes. So far, she has figured out there is a road to the village (always helpful, for trade and expanding the gene pool, among other things) and some houses (I am highly in favor of living inside) and some natural things, like trees and water and maybe some mountains. She is not sure about the mountains yet.

That is okay, because this is not a story about mountains. Anty has not said, yet, if there are any cats in this book, but it does take place in a village where a lot of people work in grain fields, which means grain gets stored somewhere, which means mice and rats want to eat the grain, which means the humans do not want the mice and rats to eat the grain, so that means cats. If Anty needs a mice-catching consultant, I am ready to fill that role. I think that she might, because a new mousie game was on the glowy box today, and I tried it, and I did So Good that I got head scritches. I know whereof I speak.

In other news, I think one of the reasons Anty only finished one book this week (besides that it is a big book, over five hundred pages, but Anty considers that a good thing) is that Anty discovered a storytelling game on her phone, called Choices: Stories You Play, and she has been playing that kind of a lot. It is a fun game, and many of the stories are romances, or have romances (or chances for romance) in the, but they do not count toward her reading challenge.

That is kind of unfortunate, because Anty likes them a lot, but they also do another thing. They help her with plotting this new story, because, at several points in the game stories, there is a choice that the point of view character must make, and that will change certain things about the story. Sometimes, it is big, like which human the character would like to have as their mate, or it is sometimes something seemingly small, like what clothes to wear, but or where to sit, but they do turn out to be important later. in fight scenes, there are choices to dodge, or attack, or hide (I would probably always pick hide, because I am super good at hiding. Lie super, super good, as long as I remember to tuck in my tail.) These choices remind Anty that, when she is not sure what a character should do next, think of three possible things they could do, and then pick one. Maybe she will change it later, but, for a rough draft, what is important is to keep moving forward. In that, it is like when I lead her to my dish. Keep moving toward the goal, and good things await at the end.

That is about it for this week, so, until next time, I remain very truly yours,

skyebyenew

see you next week

It Takes a Village, or, Anna, Creator of Worlds

annabowling 2 Comments

World-buildimg and I have a complicated relationship. For one thing, I write historical romance,. and the first genres that come to mind when many think of world-building are science fiction and/or fantasy, where one very well may have to build a literal world (or multiple worlds) from scratch, complete with alien species, advanced technology, and/or magic systems that require careful recordkeeping, with checks and balances, governmental structures, possibly changing the laws of physics, and…eep. That all sounds like a lot.

My story people live in the really real world, albeit a long time ago, but I don’t have actual historical figures (apart from a couple of brief cameos by Charles II, in Orphans in the Storm.) in on the action, an the focus is on the romance, so I often feel like I’m in the wrong room when I look at world-building resources that are created for SF/F authors. They’d probably feel equally out of place when it comes to resources geared toward romance authors (who do not write SF/F or paranormal romance) but that’s beside the point. All genres require world-building, even contemporary, which I co-write with Melva Michealian.

Right now, I’m getting my ducks in a row to create a small village, in the North of England, sometime in the eighteenth century, probably corresponding to the American Revolution, but that’s not a huge part of it, and this is not a story about the American Revolution, so, no, it is not like Hamilton, so back off with all the pressure, okay? (Oh, wait, I’m the one with the pressure. Still, back off, me.) In my workshop, Play in Your Own Sandbox, Keep All The Toys, there’s one segment called “Everybody Has to be Somewhere.”  Theoretically, that’s the part about world-building, for which I feel at once both optimistic (of course I’ve got this) and completely unqualified (please don’t ask me about magic systems, and I don’t know anything about aliens, nor have I memorized all of the Scottish clan names) but I had the world-building thing on my mind, because, well, everybody does have to be somewhere. “Hogmanay” is not a setting in itself; I have to do more.

The other thing that pushes me into slightly uncomfortable territory is that, this time, I know I’m purposely creating a story world that I will be using for more than one story. I love standalone stories the best, and they are my favorites to read and to write, but series, or at least linked books, sell better, and that feeds into the “commercial” part of “commercial fiction,” and of course the gentleman in A Moment Past Midnight (abbreviated AMPM) the heroine does not pick, is going to go :makes vague gesture: way the heck over there and find the love of his life (who is not at all like the heroine of AMPM) in another story, maybe for the second Camp NaNo of the year. Possibly. We’ll see. That’s the plan. (No, I have not figured out where, as of yet. One story at a time, okay?)

So. I need a village. I need a small village, for that small town feel (but in 18th century England) which means that the village has to be based around something. It needs an economy. Why do people live there? What are its resources? North of England is all well and good for a start, but where in the North? Coast? Inland? Mountains? Forests? What’s the water source? My story people need the same things we all do: food, water, shelter, companionship, but how do they get them? It’s winter, so it’s cold, so how do they stay warm? What do they eat? why did the heroine’s husband, a healthy, able-bodied man, leave the village, and why did heroine’s (second) betrothed, also a healthy, able-bodied man, of the same age, stay? What do the villagers need, that they don’t have, and where and how do they get it?

This doesn’t strike me as much as world-building, but as answering questions. I have a lot of questions. The village isn’t a place as much as it is the people who live there. How many of them there might be is certainly one of the considerations, but it’s the individuals that come to me the strongest. I have my leads, but who else might live there?  What are the necessary jobs, and who does them?  Right now, I know that, since it’s a small community, some of the people are better identified by bynames, rather than the names their parents wrote in the parish register.  Asking after Mary Jones, for example, might have a follow-up question of which Mary Jones one wants.  Did one mean Molly Cook, who works in the manor house kitchen, or Big Mamie, who’s taller than all the men in her family, or maybe Mary Smart, who can add any numbers in her head, without chalk or slate. Then there’s Old Mary, Baby Mary, etc.

Once I had that settled, that was when the as-yet-unnamed village clicked, and became “real.” That’s when the real work begins, and where I get to pull out the notebook that will help me make sense out of it all.

210318typepad

I’ve had this pad for a few years now, and no idea what to do with it. It’s typewriter shaped, I obviously need it, but for what purpose? Today, it goes toward world-building. Write down stuff that occurs to me about the village, its inhabitants, its history, and possible future. Things are still nebulous at this point. There will be at least one poorly drawn map, with lots of erasures and revisions, and then…then it will welcome me home.

TheWriterIsOut

A Moment Past Midnight (probably)

annabowling 2 Comments

Yesterday, I had my weekly breakfast with N, at our local Panera. Coffee for her, tea for me, each with our breakfast item of choice. Asiago cheese bagel, with butter, for me, this week, and I have learned that holding the foil cover of the butter packets against the side of the paper cup that holds my tea melts the near-frozen butter much better than tromping over to the microwave beneath the coffee urns. This is not a post about Panera, I promise. (Unless they’d like to make me a spokesperson, in which case I am listening, and being paid in bagels is a viable option.)

The first part of our time together is always for getting current on the other’s life over the past week; domestic tornado management, how real life romance heroes and feline companions are doing, etc. There’s a transition period of geeking out over pens and notebooks, especially if one or both of us have acquired a new toy since we saw each other last. There is the obligatory petting of notebooks, trying out of any new pens, highlighters, or other mark-making implements, and then the talk turns to writing.

Though we both write in different genres -contemporary romance and paranormal YA, as well as general fiction for her; historical and contemporary romance for me- we’re both juggling multiple projects, and both want to increase our productivity this year. We know how to write books. What we need to do is write more books, closer together. This is one of the reasons I’m doing Camp NaNo this April. The other reason is that I accidentally signed myself up for this. The other-other reason is that I need a win, and, since I can set my own goal, I should have a fighting chance.

Yesterday, I gave N the bare bones of my idea for my Camp NaNo project, which I am calling A Moment Past Midnight. I did debate calling it Untitled Hogmanay Story, but that is probably one of the least romantic working titles for a historical romance, ever, at least that I, personally, have almost used. Nobody has any names yet; I am still in the phase of calling them Hero, Heroine, Heroine’s Parent, That Guy, etc. I’ve done some cursory looking around at various name resources, but no names have stuck yet. I fully expect that at least the principal players will tell me what their names are, before I start actually writing. Since this will start on April first, they get one day to tell me they’re joking, and provide actual names, or I’m picking for them. Nobody has faces yet, either, but that’s not important at this stage of the game. I have other projects that need my attention, so I can’t spend too long on one thing. When I do that, I get too far into my own head, and there comes a point when the weeds choke the flowers out of the garden, so to speak. I’m done with that.

Today, I woke to this:

Snowscape140318

Don’t ask me how long I stood there, head under the blinds, staring out at All That Whtie, but that is a lot of snow. The snow on the actual power lines did give me some pause, but where my eye went, naturally, was all the fluffy white stuff on the bare tree branches, the railing of the balcony on the house next door, the roof of the building across the street. There is every possibility that there will be shoveling today, but this looks like the soft, floofy kind of snow, so it should be possible to move it without back injury, and, besides, this stuff is flat out gorgeous.

I can’t look at a snowfall like this without thinking of that snowy night Real Life Romance Hero and I bailed on our plans, and I navigated unfamiliar, hilly territory in stiletto heels, while a whole world put itself together inside my head. I don’t know if  this new story will have any snow in it, because I’ll have to dig around and see what the weather actually was like in the general area where I put my fictional village, in the year when the story takes place (once I figure out what year that is) before I deal with any weather related ramifications, but that will come, in time.

The world of Her Last First Kiss is sliding into early spring at present, and I’ve skipped ahead a bit to when spring is in full flower. That’s a bit different inside my head than what’s outside my window, but I’m not complaining. My mind compartmentalizes that kind of thing fairly easily. For these people, it’s spring, and Ruby’s hero does blow into her life on a cold March wind, so rather timely on that one.

The calendar says really real world spring is right around the corner, so I’m going to bask in this snow while I can. Maybe, if I meet my writing goals for the day, I can byndle myself in knitted layers and waterproof boots and go out to tromp through the white stuff. The park near our house is beyond gorgeous with this kind of snowfall, so it may happen. Even if it doesn’t, I want to harness the feeling of that night with stilettoes in the snow, that feeling that anything is possible, and the rules of how things “ought” to be are, for the time being, suspended. That’s where some of the best stuff comes from, after all.

Hogmanay, They Said

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We’re almost halfway through the month, which means Camp NaNo is only a smidge over two weeks away, and I need some idea of what ,my project is going to be. Since I’d wanted to write a Christmas story for a while now, that seemed like a good idea (insert N’s comment that it doesn’t have to be Christmas) but then there came two shadowy figures who drifted into my office, drew close, and whispered into my ear.

Them: Hogmanay.

Me: What?

Them: Hogmanay. It has to be.

Me: Oh it does, does it? Let’s see what our old friend, Google, has to say about that. Hm. Scots word, referring to the last day of the year. December thirty-first, then, still close enough to Christmas, caps off Christmas week, part of the whole twelve days thing. Okay, New Year’s Eve, I can do. I was going for more of a Christmas Eve kind of vibe, but endings, beginnings, I can work with that. We have to talk about the Scotland thing, though.

Them: ….

Me: Yeah, see, the last time I tried to write a Scottish story, it did not go well. Book down in flames, me creatively paralyzed, lots of crying. I mean, that was before your time, so you probably couldn’t have known about that, unless you had to go through the backburnered characters waiting room, in which case, who knows what you heard, but the whole Scotland thing…yeah, no.

Them: …

Me: I mean, Scotland is great, and all. Essential part of the British Isles. Great Britain. United Kingdom. Tartan. Bagpipes. Shortbread. Kilts. Neighbors. The closest neighbors when w moved into our first house, were Scots. I don’t remember my first impression of them, because I was nine months old, but, from about age four and onward, I remember them as lovely people. Um. Um. Hannah Howell. Now, there’s your gal for Highland stories. Not that all Scots are Highlanders. Far from it. Lowlands. Borders. The colonies. Pamela Clare sent her Scotsmen to the American colonies. She’s mostly doing contemporaries and romantic suspense these days, but I’m sure she’d–

Them: Hogmanay.

Me: :sigh:  You two aren’t going to budge on this one, are you?

Them: :both shake heads: Hogmanay.

Me: Fine. Have it your way. Hogmanay has to be the least romantic name of a holiday, ever, but sure. Hogmanay it is. Let’s see, what are we working with, here? Hm, first footing.  That sounds — oh, don’t look at me like that. I know what first footing is. Hm. I could work with that. Tall, dark-haired male, that’s pretty standard, so no problems there, but what if it was the wrong tall, dark-haired male? Huh. That could have potential. Gifts are involved. That’s pretty Christmassy. This could happen.

Word of warning, though. I am not creating an entire clan this time. That’s kind of ambitious. Says here, they have Hogmanay in northern England, too. Similar concept on the Isle of Man, even. So, theoretically, I could put this in a remote English village. I can give somebody a Scots parent, if we’re being particular about this whole Hogmanay thing. No chance I can turn this into a New Year’s Story, is there?

Them:  Hogmanay.

Me: Can you two say anything other than “Hogmanay?” If either of you answers that with “Hogmanay,” I am deleting your file. Okay, first, I have to create a file, but then I’m putting this entire conversation in it, and then deleting it. Anything else would be great, though. Names, what year it is where you come from. Name of the village; that would be good, too. How you two know each other, because you definitely know each other.

Them:  ….

Me: Why am I not surprised, here? I’m sitting here, in my office chair, candle burning, cherry seltzer at hand, I have an online workshop that needs my attention, and then you two wander in, and the only thing you have to say to me is the name of a holiday that is different from the holiday I actually intended to write about. Not giving me a lot to go on with an attitude like that. New Year’s Eve, basically, gifts, wrong dude at the door. Do I at least get to see your faces?

Them: Hogmanay.

Me: If you mean I actually have to wait until December thirty-first of this year (2018, by the way, in case we’re exchanging what year it is in our respective realities. Throwing that out there as an icebreaker. Feel free to reciprocate at any time.)  that is not going to work. I’m writing historical romance. Faces are going to come into play at some point.

Them: Hogm–

Me: Don’t say it. I get what you’re after. Your story plays out over Hogmanay. Fine. Here’s how this venture of ours is going to work. I’m going to head on over to Camp NaNo and create the project. I will, by choice or happenstance, be put into a cabin with other writers, hopefully of historical romance. You guys get a notebook, maybe a legal pad, and a pen. When the calendar flips over to April, I start writing. You guys have until then to get chatty, or I’m doing my own thing. Got it?

Them:  :both nod:

Me: Okay, then. Glad we had this conversation. You two do your part, I will do mine, and we’ll see what we have at the end of the month.

TheWriterIsOut

Typing With Wet Claws: I Do Not Play In Sandboxes Edition

annabowling 1 Comment

Hello, all. Skye here, for another Feline Friday. It is currently snowing here in New York’s Capitol Region, but I do not know if we will get as much snow this time, as we did a couple of days ago. On the one paw, I am an indoor kitty who sleeps in front of the heater (except for when I am sleeping near my humans’ beds, to make sure they are only sleeping and not actually dead, but on the other paw, weather can be unpredictable this time of year. Either way, it is good weather to stay inside and write, if you are a writer, or read, if you are a reader. I, personally, am a kitty, so I like taking naps in front of the heater, and listening to the sounds coming from Anty’s glowy box.

Before I talk about anything  else, which is usually Anty’s writing anyway, I have to tell where to find Anty’s writing, besides here, on the interwebs, this week. As usual, Anty was at Buried Under Romance, this past Saturday. Since March is International Women’s Month, Anty will be focusing on heroines in romance fiction. She starts off the month by asking what makes a romance heroine. That post is here, and it looks like this:

BURromanceheroine

Now is the part of the post where I bring everybody up to date with Anty’s Goodreads challenge. Her goal is to read ninety books this year, and to have at least fifty percent of that be historical romance. I have decided that I will allow historical fiction with strong romantic elements, and time travel romance, where at least some of the story takes place in the past. As of today, Anty is at nineteen percent of the way to her goal, having read seventeen out of ninety books. So far, six of those are historical romance. Still a ways to go, but that is good progress. Keep going, Anty.

The books Anty read and reviewed this week are:

 

 

Anty’s workshop, Play in Your Own Sandbox, Keep All The Toys, is in full swing, and Anty hopes that the people taking the workshop are having as much fun as she is, giving it. Personally, being a kitty, a sandbox is not something I would like to play in, and I do not want to keep or play with anything I might find (or put) in there,  (certainly not my toys)but I suppose it is different with humans. I prefer playing my mousie game on the glowy box, and batting at strips of paper that are left over from when Anty cuts fancy paper for her art things. Those things are the best. I get on my hind legs and then I  lift my paws and go batbatbatbatbatbatbat, Sometimes, I bite the paper strips, and, sometimes, I can even get the strips away from Anty. I am not that interested in the strips once I get them away from her,  because they stop moving, but, until then, it is super fun.

Do you know what else is fun? Reading is fun. Writing is also fun. Anty has been doing a lot of both lately, and she has figured out, more or less, what she would like to work on for her Camp NaNo story in April. By more or less, I mean she has a trope, and it may be more of a New Year’s story than a Christmas story, but she will have to do some research first. She also has to figure out what the setting of the story will be, and who, exactly, the characters are, but at least she has the seed of an idea, so we will see how that goes. It is probably about time for her to create her project, so that she can get into a good cabin. I will share more details on that as they become available, and keep readers apprised of Anty’s progress. We are almost halfway through the month, so the clock is ticking.

Today, while Anty washed a lot of laundry, she did not bring a book to read. Okay, she did bring her Kindle, and there is a Kindle app on her phone, but she did not read any of those things. Instead, she took out Big Pink, and a fineliner pen, and she wrote part of a scene for Her Last First Kiss. It was an out of order scene, but that is okay, because Anty is what writer humans call a puzzler. She likes to work on one bit of something over here, one bit of something over there, something else in this other place, and then smush them all together, in the right order, when she is done. Because she did this writing on the detachable pages from Big Pink, she will need to tear those out and attach them to the pretty legal pad she wrote the start of the scene on, and then transcribe it all into her glowy box, then print it, so that she can show it to Miss N. That means that one of the humans has to get the printer working again, since it was on the old modem, and we now have a new, faster one. This may have exciting ramifications for my mousie game, but the humans are more concerned with printing things like Anty’s stories.

That is about it for this week, so, until next time, I remain very truly yours,

skyebye2018

Whiteout (not the office supply)

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This still counts as Wednesday’s entry. I’m writing it on Wednesday, for one thing. Okay, it’s near the end of the day (4:25 by my clock) rather than the beginning, as I’d planned, but there is white stuff falling from the sky outside, at an impressive rate, and the day had to be re-apportioned accordingly. This meant a morning spent at the laundromat, oddly deserted for the morning of a storm, and other domestic matters. It’s all good, though, as we are amply stocked with tea and candles, I have a fluffy blanket on my lap, and a perfectly firm pillow in the small of my back. and a few things on my mind.

Most of them are related to reading and/or writing, specifically historical romance, so I still count this as technically on time and on topic. Though my immediate to=be-read list stood at twenty-seven as of yesterday, it has grown since then. Other books by two of the authors on my shortlist are partly responsible for that growth. Another contributor is my recent viewing of an Australian TV series, Glitch, that made me remember how much I love reading a good Australian historical romance (of which there are far too few available these days, hint, hint, especially Australian writers, hint, hint) and the fact that I am but one chair swivel away from some select Candace Proctor titles in my TBR bookcase. I am currently reading two Tudor-era titles right now, one historical fiction with romantic elements, and one historical romance. The historical fiction has six subsequent books (to date) and the historical romance, one more. Then there’s my upcoming O’Malley binge, and who knows what after that.

Yesterday, at my weekly breakfast with N, I rambled about a vague idea for a holiday historical romance. This is the vaguest of ideas, at present, no historical period attached as of yet, but hey, a blizzard could work in there, sure. I’ve been wanting to write a Christmas story for ages, but this one might actually work better as a New Year’s story (still counts as during the Twelve Days of Christmas, so I may still be on task.) I don’t know who my hero and heroine are. I don’t know what era their story takes place in, but I know it’s a winter holiday; that’s a start. It’s also probably going to be my Camp NaNo story, but I’m not quite ready to declare at the moment. Give me a couple more days of pretending there’s an out.

There isn’t, of course. Getting a story from vague wisp of an idea, to bullet point draft, in a specified period of time, scares the stuffing out of me, so of course that’s what I’m looking forward to doing. Kind of like a twenty-seven item and counting “short’ list for the foreseeable reading future. Right now, I’m listening to songs from a playlist I’ve been studiously ignoring for coughty-cough months now, because a story (or two) is haunting me (not the Christmas/New Year/Camp NaNo story, because that would make sense) and I’m not sure what I’m going to do with that.

Write it, of course, because the not-writing has not worked out terribly well. Goes hand in hand, is my educated guess, with the re-examination of favorite books, and books I’ve been wanting to read long enough for said desires to be old enough to vote. Apparently, they did, and the vote was to quit messing around, and get down to business. Maybe it’s the snow. I have fond memories of walking around a town whose name and location I have long since forgotten, with Real Life Romance Hero, after we bailed on the evening’s planned activity.

I was not equipped for tromping through heavy snow that night, in a pair of stiletto heels and knee length skirt, but my coat was warm, and I had RLRH. The night was dark, the falling snow glittered in the streetlights, and, somehow, though the streets we wandered (never too far from the venue from which we bailed, because the other couple we came with was our ride) up and down unfamiliar hills, an idea took shape. That idea eventually became a story that became my first novel length fan fiction, and unleashed a whole lot of writing, and paved the way to my first published novel (no relation to the stilettos in the snow story.) We did eventually return to the venue, and I’m still not sure if the other couple knew we were gone. They asked if we had a good time, we said we did. I vaguely recall diner food after that, and then we went home.

Right now, it’s white outside my office window. A quick check of a weather app says we are due for upwards of twelve inches of snow. I do have stilettoes, and RLRH is home, but we’re staying inside tonight. There will be comfort food, and there will be reading, and there will be writing, and then we will see what the morning brings. My educated guess is that it will bring the shoveling of aforementioned snow. Depending on whether our downstairs neighbors, young men who have a step troupe, are home, I may not have to be the one wielding said shovel. If I am, that’s fine, because shovel time is mull over story stuff time. I could do with some of that.

If it’s (Almost) March, These Must Be Llamas

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Spring and I have a complicated relationship. We don’t like each other much, but I live with two spring-lovers, Real Life Romance Hero (for him, spring is tied with fall for his favorite) and Housemate. I’m happy for them, that their favorite season is almost here, but for me, it means my lovely, cozy autumn and winter are done, and the season of avoiding the burny orange thing in the sky Is right around  the corner. On the other hand, spring is also baby ducks season, I have my upcoming online workshop starting March 5th, and, though it looks like I won’t be able to make NECRWA’s conference this year, plans are in place for some out of state writing besties to converge upon my domicile (and possibly the Schuyler Mansion) later in the season.

Said writing besties are the same critique/accountability group I had been in for coughty-cough years, the same one where I was the only person who never came to the table without some sort of pages, the same one where I would feel like I was flying on the car ride home, full of, well, pure, top grade love of writing. Plus, they’re all pretty darned nifty in their own rights, and write in genres as diverse as historical YA fiction, cozy romantic suspense, and picture books. I can promise there will not be a dull moment, there will be hugs, and at least one of us is going to cry when it’s time for them to go home at the end of the day.

The other bright spot that comes from staring a new season in the face is that I get to start a new planner.

WAIT A MINUTE! YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT NOTEBOOKS AGAIN! WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THIS SO-CALLED “WRITING BLOG?”

Oh hey, there, Hypercritical Gremlins. It’s been a while. What’s up?

NOT YOUR WORD COUNT, THAT’S FOR SURE. ALSO, NOTEBOOK TALK, AGAIN?

My blog, my topics. It’s writing related, I promise.

WE’VE HEARD THAT BEFORE.

As I was saying, I finished my last February pages in my current planner, last night, which means time to start a new one, at the start of March. As a true Leuhtrumm convert, I planned to get another notebook by the same maker, but there was one small problem; I did not get anywhere near the one store, locally, that sells them (to my knowledge.) Quelle horror. That’s when my eyes drifted to my unused notebook shelf, and spotted the orange Exceed book I didn’t end up using last fall. Love the pages, sturdy book, but it’s orange.

NOTEBOOK POST. CALLED IT.

Ahem.  Anyway, I’d been vacillating on the theme for March pages. I’d originally wanted gray, but then remembered there’s St. Patrick’s Day. I’d feel weird having an orange planner in a month when Irish heritage and culture is at the forefront, and, besides, orange and green, together, remind me of peas and carrots, specifically the canned variety, and, um, nothankyouplease. I will cut through the craft shop trawling for washi tape for another, unrelated project (my O’Malley saga reread; have to prepare for something of that magnitude) and go straight to the moment I saw these puppies on an endcap, at one third the usual going rate:

01llamatape

Cue heart-skip. Yes. This. Black, white, gray, and red, smidgen of green, a few sparklies. Also, llamas. Llamas make me think of my friend, H, whose favorite animal is the llama, and who is always great for some tough writing love. Other tapes include elephants and hippos, both gray, some flowers, some geometric shapes, some glitter. Boom. Perfect. Layouts unfolded in my head, and I couldn’t wait to get home and put those plans into action. One of the tapes even says “wild and free,” over and over, in different fonts.

:COUGH; NOTEBOOK POST :COUGH:

Did I ask for your input?

NO.

What did you say?

NO, MA’AM?

Better. This morning, I had the same heart-skip while scrolling through Facebook. A post from Susan Elizabeth Phillips showed on my feed, asking for recommendations of genre romance novels, happy ending and all, with elements that broke away from some of the conventions of the genre. My mind raced. Simple Jess, by Pamela Morsi, with a mentally slow hero, Morning Glory, by LaVyrle Spencer, with an ex-con hero, and, shall we say working class heroine, who is already pregnant with baby number three when they meet, in the years around WWII. Laura Kinsale’s heroes who survive strokes and PTSD and the heroines who see the whole person, not only one aspect. Yes. This.

This kind of thing gets my motor running. Granted, exactly what the “norm” is, will differ from person to person, depending on whom one asks, but that kind of thing gets me excited. Do my characters and my stories fit under that umbrella? Right now, Drama King has a grumpy actor-turned-line-cook intent on emotional self-flagellation, and the optimistic literary agent who is sure she can turn almost any mess into something beautiful. Her Last First Kiss has a heroine who is already another character’s mistress when the story begins, and a “portrait painter” hero (the air quotes are important) with family issues, plus the mutual friend caught in the middle. Chasing Prince Charming, which Melva and I are preparing to resubmit, has a hero who is a passionate advocate of the romance genre, and a heroine who may need some convincing. A Heart Most Errant has a jaded knight-errant, and the extroverted (and possibly delusional) baker whom he has to escort to a destination that may or may not exist. It also has a monastery that is not as abandoned as they thought it was. (Oopsie.) Did I mention this is after the Black Plague knocked out half the population of the British Isles in around twenty years?

NONE OF THAT HAD ANYTHING TO DO WITH LLAMAS.

:Ah, but it does. There are, as of yet, no llamas in any of my stories, historical or contemporary, solo or co-written, but the spirit of the llamas is there. Bullet journaling has taught me a few things that carry over into the writing of commercial fiction. Mistakes happen. Inspiration will lag. When it does, it may be time to take a long walk through a favorite craft or office supply store. Stop and smell the Post-Its (or maybe just look at them. The vast majority are not scented.) Stroke the creamy ivory pages of notebooks far outside your pay grade. Quickly grab an awesome roll of clearance washi before anybody else gets a chance to know it exists. Be open to new ideas, and, when all else fails, go back to the well. Re-read old favorites. Play with an idea that always seemed like fun. Do what you need to refill the well, so that you can draw from it. If the method of choice involves llamas, well, that’s a bonus.

OKAY, THAT KIND OF FITS TOGETHER>HMPH.

Thank you, it does. Now back in the basement, you go. I have writing to do.

WE LIKE THE CLOSET.

You can’t have the closet anymore; I keep my bullet journal stuff there now. Out the back door, all the way down the stairs, to the room with the dirt floor and the hot water heater.

HEY! THAT’S WHERE YOUR STEPPER NEIGHBORS REHEARSE, WITH ALL THE STOMPING AND THE SHOUTING.

I know. :puts in earbuds, opens document:

 

 

 

The Queen’s Lady, the Hipster Kitty, and Me: A Love Story

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Today does not feel like a Monday. My planner says it is, so we’ll go with that and get at least seven hundred words of blabber into this text box, within the next hour, because crossing a task off my to-do list is one of the very best ways to kick off a Monday (or any other day, come to think of it.) Maybe I’m still riding on weekend fumes, because this was a pretty good weekend, especially for my focus on reconnecting with historical romance and growing the blog.

Friday nights are BFF nights, which means Housemate and I grab some sort of dinner, then trawl craft stores for geeking out over art supplies. Watercolor pencils for her (though she has yet to actually use them as watercolors) and anything bujo/art journal related for me. This week, that included picking up a copy of Artful Blogging magazine. Articles on connecting with one’s creative side and particular bloggy “voice,” be that writing or photography, resonated. I actually started petting the magazine while still in the store, so that’s a sign that the issue had to come home. This has a few different levels to it; there’s the drooling over pictures level, the taking in advice I probably already know but have made excuses not to act upon, because acting on such knowledge would be scary level, and the actually applying what I’ve learned to my actual blog level.

Saturday meant sneaking in more craft store trawling in the midst of errands (Housemate has a life goal of owning all the watercolor pencils in the world. I support her in this, because A) I want my friend to be happy, and B) I have permission to use them when she is not using them.) Saturday also meant that I got to take out the magazine and lay it on the table between us at lunch, and natter endlessly over how gorgeous the pictures are, and how I want to get to that level with my own blog, or possibly blogs, as I’ve been thinking of starting a second blog, devoted to all things pen and paper, while this one would be reserved  for writing talk. We will see how things go.

Sunday found me, along with Real Life Romance Hero, and Housemate, at our friend, M.P. Barker‘s annual book swap party. The most important thing about these parties is that the bacon-wrapped figs are mine, mine, mine. Okay, maybe that is not the most important thing, but it is a strong contender for the number two spot. They are stuffed with goat cheese, and are delicious, and I would happily pay whoever makes them, to make me a small batch. A truckload or two would do. For starters. I would say I am digressing here, but these are extremely good bacon wrapped figs. Or maybe they’re dates. I get the two confused sometimes.

Enough of that. The really important thing about this party, every year, is that it gives me a chance to reconnect with my best writing self. M.P., my contemporary co-writer, Melva Michaelian, and I spent many years’ worth of Wednesday nights, gathered around the same dining room table where, yesterday, I scarfed bacon-wrapped figs (or dates) and gabbed with Mona, a reader friend, about our shared love of reading historical romance. What we like, what we don’t, how we had each finished reading (two different) Harlequin Historical romances within the last twenty-four hours, and needed to choose our next reads pretty darned quick. This is where my love of reading and my love of planning come together and make beautiful reading plan babies.

Before the start of the new year, I made a list of books to re-read, and books to finally read, all historical romance. First up from the TFR list is The Queen’s Lady, by Barbara Kyle:

BarbaraKylethequeenslady

 

Tudor era, start of a family saga, plot that unfolds over years instead of months or weeks, and a heroine name to make me sigh with happiness. Honor Larke. Yep, I’m sold. I’m not sure why I haven’t read this before, and I’m intrigued that it was, IIRC, originally published as historical romance, though the spine on this edition classes it as historical fiction. We shall see how this goes.  After that, it’s back to the well, and a small detour from my TBRR list, as I plan to reread the entire O’Malley/Skye’s Legacy series, by Bertrice Small. That’s twelve books, with both series combined, so picking out historical romances to read is not going to be that difficult a task for me in the foreseeable future.

My heart is already going a little pitty-pat at the reading journey ahead of me, and what it’s going to do for my writing, this spring. (Can you believe it’s almost spring already? Has to be, though, as, in the next two weeks, I will be starting both a new morning pages book, and a new daily planner book.) That’s where the Hipster Kitty comes into play:

1902hipsterkitty

See how perfectly he fits with the rest of my “me” stuff? I normally don’t seek out things that are yellow, or books with white pages, but this book has me completely heart-eyes over it. I already know I want to write with black pen, and use yellow highlighter, and, since I want to take notes o n my epic O’Malley re-read, well, this seems like perfect timing. There’s still a chance I might end up using a different book for that, but even if that’s what happens, this is for something special. Maybe it’s for notes on the proposed cyber-revival Melva, M.P. and I talked about, of the weekly critique/nag group meetings that got us all through multiple manuscripts.

The weekend just past was wonderful, filled with re-filling, and re-connection, bringing me to the start of a new week, with the challenge of putting all that good stuff into practice. That’s still a little scary, but scary in the good way. I did get an offer of beta-reading from my reader friend, so I have to give her something to read, don’t I? Thought so. time to make another cup of tea, and slip back in time a few centuries.