Tag: Writing
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Headspace
Each character I write has a very distinct feel to them. When I’m in their POV, I share their thoughts and feelings (and hope my readers do as well!). Some characters are active and energetic, like Rachel from The Summer Park Psychics series. Others are controlled and commanding, like Adam Smith from The Department of…
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Quiet
The beginning of November is one of my favorite times of the year. There’s a stillness to it that precedes the ramp-up in activity before holiday season and after the new year starts. It’s a restful time, the calm before the storm. My life is often loud, always busy, with little time for reflection and…
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ORACon!
I’m going to my first writing convention this week! It’s called ORACon—the Ozarks Romance Authors Conference. I’m looking forward to meeting other authors and getting to talk face-to-face with my editor. It’s a very busy time with finishing the first round of edits for the second scifi romance novella, editing the third in that series…
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Self-Talk
I can keep track of dozens of books in multiple series, yet I often lose track of the scripts running in my own head. This is a problem, because my thoughts aren’t always running along the tracks I intend. Often, they’re off the rails entirely. I can lose perspective and get bogged down in minutia—things…
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Self-Doubt is Lying
Some parts of my process are really fun. The idea stage, the planning stage—mapping things out with an outline, checking my pacing, discovering themes. My absolute favorite part is formatting the finished work as an ebook and reading it through to check the readers’ experience. Other parts are not so much fun, and self-doubt is…
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What are you working toward?
Last week I talked about one of my favorite writing questions: What are you working on? There’s another question that’s just as important: What are you working toward? I think about this a lot. I make plans and goals. I break things down into manageable tasks and give myself deadlines. Sometimes I make them and…
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Why Romance?
Sometimes people ask me why I choose to write Romances. First and foremost—I am a fan of love. The initial spark of attraction, the deepening knowledge of each other that feeds the fire, the moment when the warmth of the emotion soaks in soul-deep and they know. I can’t get enough of that. Second—I am…
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It’s All in the Details
Writers are often asked about where their ideas come from. For me, that would be lightning strikes of creativity where my brain concatenates events and experience with my imaginative wanderings. Ideas are a popular focus for questions, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone ask where the details of the story develop. This is…
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The Importance of Being Holly
Finding the right agent or editor is a very important piece of the publishing puzzle. I spent several months learning about various editors and agents, following their Twitter feeds to get a feel for who they were and what they might be like to work with. Many talked about receiving queries that didn’t fit them—something…
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Letting Them Go
When I first started writing, I was so protective of my stories that it bordered on paranoia. I had spent my entire life developing a huge High Fantasy world to write in, but was only scratching the surface of what it meant to create stories that had beginnings, middles, and ends. Eventually, I realized that…
