After a three or four month hiatus from posting (and basically from writing), I'm jumping back into it with a splash of color on my journal and lots of ideas in my head. The spring semester left little time for writing, but now that the less stressful summer semester has started, I'm regrouping. A new romantic suspense idea is slowly coming ( Read more... )

Someone pointed me to this via Romance Divas, and I thought it was definitely worth passing on. The June 4th entry titled "What Theater Taught me About Dialogue" is excellent.  Some of her suggestions make so much sense, but I never would have thought of them on my own.

I had three goals for the week, and as of today, I've got two down and one to go ( Read more... )

( Read more... )

So I did make a spreadsheet to track my progress on revising Gallery of Lies.  That sounds more impressive than it is.  Actually, I did a "save as" on an excel template and filled in the blanks.  It's pretty cool though, because it tells me things like total hours spent writing, daily words per hour, average words per hour, etc.  The best thing ( Read more... )

So far this spring break, I’m making good on my plan to catch up on movies.  I watched Jewel of the Nile and loved it almost as much as Romancing the Stone.  It contained more crazy, over the top humor and adventure with a love story thrown in for good measure.  I love movies like that.  I went to see Fool’s Gold tonight with a friend and it fits ( Read more... )

I'm dead tired and still have homework to do before getting any sleep.  I've been agonizing over the opening scene of Gallery of Lies again.  Honestly, is that a surprise to anyone?  I tweaked it.  I changed the opening line at least a half dozen times.  I finally decided enough was enough and sent it off in the e-mail.  Hopefully it will get some ( Read more... )

Was it just a week ago that I posted a slight brag about writing everyday?  Yes, I suppose it was.  Lo and behold, I haven't written any fiction since that post.  I should've been knocking (or typing) on wood at the time.  This week has been total craziness and the coming week promises to be much much worse.  My stories are in my brain.  I keep ( Read more... )

It has been one week since I've looked at my Gallery of Lies beginning.  It's been on my mind, and I've been thinking about new directions to go with it, but I have not actually done any rewriting for it yet.  I don't think I will until after Tuesday.  I'm planning to tell the Yetis about my storyline and get some advice before tackling it again-- ( Read more... )

I think writing up the post about why I want to write romance novels was good for me.  I needed a boost and a break from revisions.  Yesterday, I spent about 10 hours working on revising the beginning of Gallery of Lies.  No, it's not a typo.  It says 10.  After all that, guess what?  The beginning still sucks.  I agonized over the first beginning ( Read more... )

When I decided to write a novel, I never debated what genre I would write. I knew it would be a romance novel. Why is this?  I thought about it for a while, came to a few conclusions, and compiled a list of the romance novels and novelists I consider an inspiration. It’s a bit lengthy, so it’s under the cut.

Everyone’s heard that timeless advice, “ ( Read more... )