Lorie O’Clare

I’d like to introduce everyone to Lorie O’Clare. An incredibly talented and prolific writer. She has written ten, yes ten, books this year. Some have already been released through Ellora’s Cave. (Click here to see her page there.) And more will be published next year in print with St. Martin’s and Kensington. One of which is Tall, Dark, and Deadly.



Click to go to Amazon and read the reviews!

Congratulations to my wonderfully talented friend Leah. Her first book coming out in January! There will no doubt be many, many more.

Look at her Gorgeous cover:



Go here to check it out. I’ve read the pre editor version and let me tell you it is HOT!!! I fell in love with the secondary character and my heart was overjoyed when she devoted her next book to him, complicating his love life in the most delicious ways.

I’ve been back about three weeks now from our vacation and life hasn’t slowed a bit. Utter exhaustion took over the first week. Why is it when you go on vacation with kids you come home with less energy than when you decided you needed said vacation? Once we started feeling like ourselves the pollen count hit over 2,000 here. The whole family got sick. So we are just now getting over all of that too and now it’s time for Miss M’s Birthday. We don’t have any family coming into town this year and while that makes me a little sad to not be able to hang out with my sisters, I’m glad to not have to run around like a crazy woman cleaning my house. Then Thanksgiving and Christmas. I do have family coming in for Christmas, so I’ll be doing the mad scramble then.

On the writing front, I just haven’t done anything. I’ve thought about it, just not any actual writing. I know I’m getting really bad. This time of year for the real job is usually slow for me and leaves me time to write, but I have three MAJOR projects going on that seems to be sucking all my time. However, I came across this blog last month: http://fivescribes.blogspot.com/2008/10/online-writing-workshops-best-ones-ive.html

I signed up for the announcements and decided to take a couple of online courses to kick start that side of my brain again. So while I was on vacation I checked my emails and decided to take a few courses this month. When all was said and done how many did I actually sign up for? 1, 2? Nah, that would be too easy for me. Apparently I signed up for 5. Maybe I need a lecture on moderation?

Not TSTL, more like TSfP

What is TSfP you ask? Well, in much haggling over the issues I thought were my heroine developing a bad case of TSTL that I didn’t see coming. I discovered that it wasn’t my heroine, I was getting really disappointed in her you know. It was ME. That’s right folks, the blame was mine. I’m sure DH is staggering in shock somewhere now that I’ve admitted fault. ;) I made blunders in the plot outline. Part of the whole ‘pantser’ problem that can arise. Too Stupid for Plotting, that’s me. Or at least my problem. So I plan to spend the next free hour I can reworking the timing of events in the first half of my story. I’m not going to dig in right now and rewrite all of it. Most of what I have is fine for the first draft, just needs to be placed in a different order to make the major conflicts make better sense. Sometimes in getting from A to Z you skip several letters in the excitement of the story. Turns out that I just had a few out of order as well.

Have you gotten through a third to a half of your story and realize you royally screwed something up?

Viva Las Vegas

I’m back! My sister got married this past weekend in Vegas. Don't get excited, it’s not like it sounds. She lives there. And I’m from there too. So it’s not like going to Vegas to party for the weekend. Some of my friends back home seemed disappointed in me. What did I do? Mainly hung out with my sis, new BIL and the kids. His, hers, and mine. Four total, two 13 year olds and two 5 year olds. And I had the best weekend. The wedding went smooth, shocking but true, one of those things where you go in expecting the worst and just happy when it doesn’t get that bad.

This was one of the few times I’ve been back to Vegas (I moved to Texas just over 16 years ago) that I felt truly relaxed. The childhood baggage seemed to be gone, or at least didn’t rear its ugly head this time. I got to take my daughter just outside of town and show her the mountains. She wants me to take her camping out there and I’m really considering it for the next time I come out. The Valley of Fire is one of the most beautiful and serene places I’ve been too. I try to get there as often as I can, but it seems I’ve managed it only one about every five years. I didn't make it this trip, but if I relent and take her camping I'll have to take her there to do it.

So back to work for me and preparing for the next trip. We are so busy in the summer time that we don’t really get to go anywhere. In a month we are taking our very first cruise. I’m so anxious and excited but DH is a bit of a paranoid freak. (That’s going lightly.) But mostly it’s used to give me a hard time. He bugs me all day with things like: Do you know we’re going during hurricane season? They have computers to monitor that. I just watched Titanic; do you think we might hit an iceberg? Not in the Caribbean. What about this? What about that? It’ll be fine dear. Now quit bugging me! I’ll let you know some of the other questions he bugs me with, if I listen to him. :)

Writing front: Not much writing, plotting the next scene in my head. I did go over what I’ve already written and discovered I haven’t skipped as many scenes as I thought. I have one transition that needs to be written, one scene I started but wasn’t quite sure how much info to give so truthfully that scene is about a third written and then this last scene that I skipped entirely. I don’t think it’s that bad considering I thought I skipped over more than twice that.

How to make your smart heroine do something stupid?

Well, Leah will be proud of me. I’ve been writing forward. My word count hasn’t really changed. (Took away notes as I wrote. :) ) But it is going forward, now I’m at another integral part where I need my heroine do something completely stupid and get herself in trouble. She quick tempered, stubborn and will do stupid things when someone tries to ‘tell’ her what to do. Got that figured out, hero is going to order her to stay put. And in a huff she goes anyway.

Dilemma – I know where I want to end up, but I haven’t decided out how they are going to get there. I haven't quite figured out how to get him to be so pushy with her that he will start ordering her around. While I do know men get that way all the time, but doing it on paper where the female audience will get it is another thing. Any suggestions?

And I know Leah, just skip it and write forward, but I’ve just skipped over several other key scenes that now I’m starting to hate doing it. So far I have passed over at least four key scenes and I’m only a third into the draft. Some of it is necessary. I want to make sure my ending will fit the beginning. I like seeing where my characters take me, so while I have a plan, I leave a lot for inspiration from the voices in my head.

How many major scenes do you skip in a first draft?

And while I’m asking, how many drafts do you go through before you let others critique?

Oh, go check out The Goddess Blogs. This is a great, fun blog. Plus they are always doing contests for free books. I commented on the appeal of Pirates the other day and won a signed book by Sabrina Jeffries. Work has been sucking the life out of me so I didn’t even know I won. She graciously emailed me this morning to see if I wanted her book. Uh, YES! Anyone want my unsigned copy? I’ll send it to you.

Finally a Post

I know, I know, two months since my last post. What can I say? Summer is crazy busy around here for me. Work is always intense during the hot season and we seem to discover new ways customers try to abuse us. I’m telling you, I could write a whole column on some of the ‘interesting’ things that I’ve experienced with customers. 95% of our customers are great, but unfortunately it’s the 5% that stand out the most. Sad, but true.

Little Miss M is officially a Kindergartener. Everyone asked how I took it. One word, Great. She’s been at this school for their Preschool program and the Pre K, so by the time the Big K rolled in, it was old stuff for us. Now come talk to me in May and we’ll see. She is in a separate building right now and in May they have a graduation ceremony where the students (first grade through twelfth) from the other building line up the road and the Kindergarteners walk the way to the big school. I don’t think there will be many dry eyes that day.

You want to hear irony? I took Little Miss M up north for a quick weekend to spend with her Grandma before we started the Big K. Before I went up north the weather here was HOT, even my nephew that lives in the southwestern desert that came and stayed for two weeks this summer complained about our heat. The quick weekend I was away? It rained the WHOLE time. Twenty degrees cooler. Can you believe that? Now that I’m home again, HOT. One of life’s little jokes I’m sure.

Writing front – Not much happening. I’m stuck a bit on a scene and finally decided to just ignore it for now and start writing after that scene. I think that will help me figure out what to put into that one and what I shouldn’t. I finally decided who’s POV to put it in, it’s an integral scene where the hero realizes the heroine is truly a force to be reckoned with, where before he saw her as someone that needed him to rescue and shelter her. Not seeing that she has been doing for herself already for the last decade plus without him. I really like strong women and want to portray the special dynamic that entails those two headstrong personalities.

Reading – Well, that is something I’ve been doing a lot of. I have just discovered Anita Blake. I know I came to it late. But my, what a series. I’m on the eighth book now and I just love her. She’s smart and ruthless while still vulnerable enough that you want to see her have that happily ever after. But she’s smart enough to know that the HEA is just for stories, not her, she causes too much trouble along with being a smart ass from hell. I like cynical people. And her mouth gets her in trouble ALL the time. I can so relate.

What are you reading? Writing? Any trips lately?

POV

No news means I’m busy. At least in the real job anyways. Not much to report there, just trying to keep my head above water. What can I say, some days are better than others.

I’m still working on my reads for another writer. She has a crazy writing schedule this year. My heartfelt respect goes out to her. She is insanely prolific right now. I haven’t known her for a long time, but her hard work is obvious and a huge part of her getting six books on contract. A lot of people say they want to write full time and everything, but this is one woman that has actually done it.

On my own writing front, I haven’t gotten too much done. I wrote two scenes that I’ve been stuck on. I’m happy with the first writing of it, though it needs a ton of work, adding in the layers of emotion and tension I’m trying to keep up. My marker only shows I wrote about 2,000 words but it was more like 3,500. I have all kinds of notes throughout telling me where to put certain bits of info. Once I write the scene I delete the notes. It works for me, but it’s somewhat self defeating when my numbers don’t show better than that.

I have a scene that needs to go in between these that I was waiting on some info for. Now I have the info and I’m tettering on whose POV to put it in. Which one will give me more bang for the buck? So now I need to look at the other two scenes that I wrote and then rethink all three. I’m not going to lose sleep over it, but I’d like to get the POV right the first time. Leah, I promise I won’t spend too much time on this. : ) She is always reminding me to just keep writing, that’s what the edits are for. So as soon as I have some extra time one evening this week I’m going to look over it and write it.

Are there any tricks you use to help you figure out POV?