The Value of Hope...

I can remember the moment as if it were yesterday…

It was a brisk spring morning. The air seemed to crackle with the chill but the birds were singing…spring was on the way. And I was ‘stalking’ the mail carrier. Yelp, had a string of rejections from my favorite publisher and very much feared I would soon receive another.

I was tired of waiting and exhausted by the lack of encouragement missing in form rejections. I expected practice to make perfect. That’s what I’d been taught. What I passed on. What I still believed. I had been studying and practicing the craft of writing for three years…surely I had made progress. So I tried to focus on the joyous songs of the birds as I approached the highway.

And the long awaited envelope was in the mailbox. Finally! I dreaded what I might find inside, but unable to wait, I stood at the end of the driveway and ripped the envelope open. Another R…

I couldn’t allow my disappointment to show, the neighbors might see. Even at a distance they could see if I stomped my foot or hear if I yelled in frustration. But they couldn’t see the tears that filled my eyes as I forced my feet back along the drive. Nor could they hear the silent pray I sent winging heaven ward. “I’ve tried. Really tried. Dear God, please send me a sign to show I’m not wasting my time in vain.”

I stumbled on a gravel and opened my eyes to watch were I was going…and then I saw it. In the sunlight it sparkled bright as an icicle. Yet even with the crisp mornings, I knew it wasn’t ice. But it was silver and sparkling like a gem. How I missed the pen when I started down the drive, I’ll never know. I would guess it was because I was staring at the mailbox, my goal, and not paying attention to the steps I needed to take to get there.

Isn’t that true with many of the things we do in life? We forget the process…the baby steps.  I picked up that silver pen, read the publisher’s name printed on the side, and started trembling. My dream publisher…and not one in my life could have dropped that pen. It was a sign. It had to be. At least two vehicles had driven up and down that drive and not crushed the pen. How could I cave in after a few short years of trying to sell to this publisher?

I never expect to be one of the ‘big girls’ but I want to write stories.  I still have that shinny pen. I pulled it out today. It’s a new year, with renewed hopes and who knows; perhaps drafting my outline in ink from that pen will bring me luck.  Or perhaps the real lesson is that we should never give up hope.

Happy January to you all and here’s wishing you a very successful year!

 

 

WHEN CHARACTERS ATTACK

Just finished the edits for my new release Bachelor.com, and sent them off to the editor - Yay me! Now onto the next project.


A good friend of mine told me that beginning a new book is easy.  You just stare at the computer screen until beads of blood form on your brow. Seemed logical, so I thought I would try.  Except what happened was that I channeled some on my characters.

Hero: "Hey, you know you left me in a jungle in Africa surrounded by mercenaries, don't you?"

Me: "I've been busy with the holidays."

Hero: "And look what you gave me - dehydration, broken bones, bug bites, not even a fruit cake to quell my hunger.  Nice gifts if you're working with the bad guy.  Hey, are you?"

Me: "You know I have to do that."

Antagonist: "She's very good at springing me on you."

Hero: "Where did he come from?"

Antagonist: "Grimm Protectors, and oh, I have the girl."

Heroine to the hero: "When am I getting rescued?"

Hero: "I'm in Africa. Where are you?"

Heroine: "New York."

Hero to me: "Are my miles points up to date? I'm going to need a plane."

Heroine: "I'm in a basement in New York with Snidely Whiplash. Someone get me out of here."

Antagonist: "It's Lucian Davelos, and it is a very nice basement."

Me: "Wait! You are all not even the same book."

Hero: "We're all in the same head, though, and if you would finish one book before you started another, everything would be fine."

Me: "It doesn't work like that for me. Sometimes I get a flash of brilliance and have to go with it."

Hero: "Like the time I was in a crashing plane one minute, and the next, I'm in stage with a guitar in my hand.

Me: "Relax, you lived didn't you?"

Hero: "I get the feeling that might be only until you get back to the book."

Me: "Maybe. I haven't thought about that much."

All three: "Get us out of here."

Me: "Okay. Stop talking and let me think. Hero pulls semi automatic out of his backpack and cleanly cuts down all the mercenaries. He jumps into one of the jeeps and speeds away to complete his mission in Tanzania."

Hero: "Well all right.  That's much better."


Me:  "Heroine uses the self-defense technique taught to her by her love interest...."

Hero: "I didn't teach her anything. We just met."

Me: "The love interest isn't you."

Heroine: "Good he isn't my type anyway."

Hero: "I resent that. I do believe I am the perfect romance hero - handsome, resourceful, good body with brains to match."

Heroine: "So that's why you were stuck in a jungle for three weeks?"

Hero: "You're in a basement with some guy in a black hat."

Antagonist: "We brilliant anti-heroes rarely wear hats any more."

Me: "May I finish?"

All three:  "By all means."

Me: "Heroine uses the techniques she learned to incapacitate her captor and gets away."

Heroine: "A bit cliché, but I can live with it until you get to the rewrite."

Antagonist: "Wouldn't I have a henchman that would hear her and stop her?"

Me: "Humm, that would be a nice plot point.  I may use that.  Thanks, Lucian,"

Antagonist: "My pleasure."

All three: "So now what?"

Me: "Not sure.  I left a secondary character inside a hidden base in Oregon.  I think I need to find out what happened to him."

Hero: "What? Not another book."

Me: "The start of one."

Hero: "Can we get back to my book?"

Me: "Okay."

Hero: "Wait  that isn't me."

Me: "Sigh.  It is today."








Kathryn Quick is the author of 19 books in contemporary romance, historical romance, urban fantasy with writing partner Patt Milhailoff, and non-fiction.  Her newest series Bachelors Three to be release by the Wild Rose Press begins with Bachelor.com, a geek to chic romantic comedy with life-changing consequences.

When Life Gets in the Way

What happened to April?

I swear an hour ago it was April 1 and I was making a list of all the things I had to do before the end of the month:

     do the taxes

     get the Hub's trucking business invoices out and get the March books on the computer

     Schedule time for a major yard clean up

     turn the clocks ahead - all of them this time

     change the sheets

     recharge the Clarisonic and the toothbrushes

     refill the prescriptions
     car is due for inspection
     make a list of people needing greeting cards sent to them in April and try not to forget to mail them
     YIKES - Easter is in April - the family brouhaha approaches
     schedule a hair appointmen - gray is showing
     Lose weight - in other words, begin your 4th diet this year

And don;t forget the usual  - job (two night meetings a month normally, but this month I have 4 becasue we have to adopt a budget for 2014), laundry - wash the clothes, dry the clothes, fold the cloths. (note - there is no iron the clothes.  If it wrinkles, it does not live here), food shopping (Question - why is the food market with the best organic produce so far away?  Answer - Becasue it is.  Quit whining and drive), load the dishwasher, unload the dishwasher, clean, cook, reserve Sunday night for Game of Thrones

And the unexpected.  Sis said the Newsboys are in town for a concert.  Let's see now - hear Michael Tait and company sing and lift my spirits or clean the dead leaves out of the mulch?  No contest.  Michael, here I come.  And I do hope he does hit the Restart so I can get back on track..      

So what am I forgetting?  I know there's something - Oh yeah -  make time to write.

For me, that last entry is getting harder and harder ro do, the older I get.  When I was  a child, a year lasted forever.  Now it's over in a blink.  By the time I get home from work and do what needs to be done before I can relax, it's 9PM.  I rationalize away the writing by asking myself something like "Who can be creative when she is this tired?" But I know the answer.  We all know the answer.  The successful multi-published, award winning, NY Tiemes best selling authors can be creative anytime day or night.  It is the only answer that makes sense and brings success.

There is one of those authors inside each one of us.  I know that becasue it can feel her trying to claw her way through the guilt when I realize that a month has gone by and I haven't made a dent in my WIP.

I met Janet Evanoxich at a writers conference many years back and we talked about just this sort of thing.  Her advice was to write at least 3 pages a day.  3 pages a day is about 100 pages (give or take) a month.  In three months you have a book.  Brilliant!!!  If one would only listen, that is.

So it's now May (give or take).  I will write 3 pages a day and in 3 months I will have the book that the editor from Berkely wants to see thanks to the New Jersey Fiction Writers Conference in March.    That will be July.  One month to self edit - August.  Then a contract by the end of the year (give or take).

3 pags a day.  I can do that.

     

Oh and I did go to the Newsboys concert.  Here's proof.

Music and Writing

  

When I first thought about submitting a sweet romance manuscript, I knew the emotions of the characters had to be  felt deeply by the reader. This was the challenge; make the reader feel every emotion we wanted them to feel using only words. 

Love, hate, fear, passion, sadness. I think I can safely say we all have gone through something in life and have felt these basic emotions to some degree to be able to express them in our writing.  But we write about so much more – Revenge, betrayal, terror, unrequited love, abandonment, ecstasy, rapture. How can we experience these at the time we need to write about them?

Enter music.

Music is an easily overlooked, yet incredibly important tool to help us write.  Music is so fundamental to us we often don’t even consciously acknowledge how much it actually affects us.  Music is sticky.  From a simple, but catchy jingle to a brilliant musical movie score, music surrounds us and gets locked in our minds to be recalled over and over again.

Would JAWS be as scary without the tension created by the theme song that signaled impending doom?  Do you immediately picture Indiana Jones running through cobwebs holding the crystal skull in his hand when you hear the theme song from RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK?  Do you feel the pain when Lancelot seals his fate and Guinevere’s when he sings If Ever I would Leave You  in CAMELOT?

Yes to all of the above.  Because of the music.

Using music, we can experience emotion almost on an as-needed basis.
Music is a powerful medium to express and experience emotion. It recreates aspects of lives that are recognizable and can be experience to some degree just by listening. By recreating patterns associated with human emotion, it recreates the emotion. Then listening, we are able to grasp the emotional content, and react emotionally to it. As an embodiment of the emotion, we are able to perceive it directly.
 
For instance, a piece of music may be quick moving, expressing energy, purposefulness, or excitement. When we listen to a piece like that, more often than not, we can feel it.  When we feel the emotion, we are more able to put it down on paper in a way that can be felt and experienced bu our readers  through our writing.

I know you all have a particular song that makes you cry, or gets you to remember certain periods in your life. Take those songs and stash them in the USB drive in your mind. When necessary, hit the play button and use them next time you get stuck in a scene that is flat and lacking the emotional response you need to get the reader to turns those pages.

I’ve listed a few of my favorite songs that help get me from blank page to emotional genius. Well, maybe not genius; maybe just not one dimensional.

Here goes –
Abandonment - ­I Who Have Nothing by Tom Jones
Loving someone from afar – Invisible by Clay Aiken
Pain of Loss – Tears in Heaven by Eric Clapton
Love – Let Me Love You –Tim McGraw
Passion – Keep Coming Back - Richard Marx
Intense Attraction – Touch of Heaven – Richard Marx
Despair – Unbreak my Heart – Toni Braxton
Lost Love - Even Now - – Barry Manilow
Questioning your Heart – Measure of a Man – Clay Aiken
Losing a Love – Somewhere Down The Road – Barry Manilow
The First Time – Somewhere in the Night – Barry Manilow
Unrequited Love - – Melody for a Memory – Hall and Oates
Hopelessness – What About Now – Daughtry (Chris Daughtry)
Regret – I Go Crazy – Paul Davis

All oldies, but all I need sometimes to remind me what one of my characters need to feel.

When you have time, take one of your favorite songs and listen for the emotion. Tag it, bag it, and save it for an emergency. You’ll be glad you did.

Kathye Quick has been writing since the sister’s of St. Casmir’s School in Shenandoah, PA gave her a #2 pencil, ruled paper and taught her what vowels and consonants were.   Now she is the author of fifteen books with a lot more stories still stuck inside her head.

Visit her at www.kathrynquick.com .

Loving the Story.. With Your Eyes or Your Ears?

Lately, my life has been amazingly busy, and that has drastically cut down on my “reading for enjoyment” time.  My TBR pile had been hovering in skyscraper proportions.
Sometimes it takes desperation for me to make changes in my life.  Feeling withdrawal from the joy of reading good stories, I finally investigated the world of audio books.  What a thrill!  Maybe this is not new news to you, but it was a new discovery for me.  While I love the feel of a book (or my Kindle) in my hands, audio books has become a great alternative in those busy days.

                                                           

I can listen to a story while on the stationary bike at the gym. I can enjoy a chapter while sorting the bottomless basket of granddaughters’ socks, or folding towels, or scrubbing pots.  The time flies by while sitting in the car pickup line at school.  In truth, I love the feel of a book (or my Kindle) in my hands. But when time is an issue, it is a great multi tasking solution to these mundane tasks, and I love it.

But I am discovering two things. First of all, many of my favorite authors do not yet have books available in an audio format. I hope that changes.  I am also exploring issuing some of my own stories as audio books. 

Secondly, I’m finding that the narrator/ reader of a book is key to my enjoyment.  Some are male, some are female, some young, some old.  It’s hard for me to decipher what exactly makes the book work. What do you think?  I’d love to hear your opinion of audio books.  Do you prefer a male or female voice? Or multi voices? In a series, is it important that the voice be the same in all of the books?  Do you have a favorite reader?  Does this format work better for you in some genres vs. others? 

Audio books? What do you think?       

Christine Bush is the award winning author of many books and novellas of sweet romance and light mystery. She also writes Middle Grade Fiction. When she isn’t writing, she can be found working with clients as a Marriage and Family Therapist in private practice, or teaching Psychology at a local college.  She lives with her family and two crazy cats in northeastern Pennsylvania, and loves to hear from readers and aspiring writers.

Her latest book “Cindy’s Prince” can be found at 

 http://www.amazon.com/Cindys-Prince-Christine-Bush-ebook/dp/B00IFSRVJ2/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1393781746&sr=1-1&keywords=christine+bush+cindy%27s+prince

www.ChristineBush.com

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Christine-Bush-Author/213919128638762

http://www.amazon.com/Christine-Bush/e/B001KHSLRG/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1392688497&sr=1-2-ent

PAINTING YOUR BOOK

 

Thinking back on my last vacation and if you factor out the great spa and all the massages, if you can, the best part of the trip was the Norman Rockwell Museum. I went on the tour and discovered that painting and writing are a lot like

Now at first that might sound strange, but if you think about it, writing and painting are closely connected. The painter is telling a story with his brush strokes much like we are telling a story with our keystrokes. And in both cases, it is up to the artist - whether it be the painter or the writer - to make sure that the details are strong enough to make the story being told connect with the observer or the reader and have he or she engage in the characters and feel the emotion.

Take this painting by Norman Rockwell. What do you see? A family dinner. Thanksgiving perhaps. It's actually one of the four paintings that compose Rockwell's majestic "The Four Freedoms" series. Maybe you'd stop a minute and look at the picture and then walk on. But let's look closely at this painting and "see" the story Rockwell is telling us.

In the painting is a large family gathered around their table. The occasion is probably Thanksgiving because of the huge turkey being served. Both the good china and the good silver are on the table. It’s probably Grandmother who cooked all day to make the feast.

The man in the center left is talking and everyone seems to be smiling in reaction to what he has said. The man in the lower right corner is looking at you, as though waiting for your reaction to the comment.

Grandpa is at the head of the table and has his carving tools ready to slice and serve the turkey. Grandma is placing the turkey in its place. She is still wearing her apron in case something spills and ruins her dress. The turkey appears to be cooked to perfection.

The table extends past the bottom of the canvas, giving the perception that the viewer is actually at the table. The man in the lower right corner of the painting also seems to be inviting you to join in the feast.

Rockwell used white as the main color on the table. But look at the details; the ice in the water, the ironed-in creases still visible in the tablecloth, the light and shadows on the crisp white dishes and serving pieces.

Another painting that tells an incredible story “in the moment” is called “Moving In” it is an example of how Rockwell used his artwork to spark thought and intrigue. The image focuses on a moving truck parked in the driveway as some resident children greet their new neighbors. It seems like an ordinary scene, but it tells an entire story in the matter of one single instant. Look closely.

Both girls are wearing pink to indicate similarities. Two boys have baseball gloves, one a baseball uniform – common interests. The black children have a white cat; the white children a black dog. Do you see the separation on the sidewalk? Two children are ready to cross the line. Very typical of the time frame. Do you see six figures in the painting? There are actually seven. One is in a window to the rear left, peeking out and ready to report to the neighbors. What happens next? Who makes the first more toward friendship?

Norman Rockwell had the gift of inviting us into his work and allowing us to share the story he was trying to tell. Isn’t that what we, as writers, hope to do also?

The advice we can gleam from a Rockwell painting is this – the details are very important, but they should never tell the observer or the reader what he is to experience. The details need to be subtle enough to set the scene and allow the observer to share the story with the artist (or writer) creating it.

How I Met My Valentine

by Jean C. Gordon

Say February and what comes to mind? Why, Valentine's Day and love. So for my inaugural Classic and Cozy blog, I thought I'd tell you how I met my Valentine. After all, first meets are an important scene in any romance.

We were college freshman at Genessee Community College taking a beginning painting class. He was the artist. I thought it would be a fun class. Little did I know how fun. Since the supplies needed for the art class were expensive, the art instructor suggested we split the costs by teaming up and sharing supplies. After the first class, some of us were talking about where we were from, lived, whatever. He came over and asked if I wanted to split the supplies with him. He said he could pick them up after classes that day and drop them off at my parents' house where I lived on his way home. I could pay my half then. I figured he'd heard me say where I lived and that he lived nearby.

Leaving for on honeymoon

He stopped by that evening with the supplies. Turned out, he lived several towns away. Our house wasn't on his way home from the college by any stretch of the imagination. But that's the kind of guy he is, willing to go out of his way to help someone. We married a year and a half later.


 And here we are now.



How did you meet your Valentine?



Jean C. Gordon’s writing is a natural extension of her love of reading. From that day in first grade when she realized t-h-e was the word “the,” she’s been reading everything she can put her hands on. A professional financial planner and editor for a financial publisher, Jean is as at home writing retirement- and investment-planning advice as she is writing romance novels, but finds novels a lot more fun.

She and her college-sweetheart husband tried the city life in Los Angeles, but quickly returned home to their native Upstate New York. They share a 170-year-old farmhouse just south of Albany, NY, with their daughter and son-in-law, two grandchildren, and a menagerie of pets. Their son lives nearby. While Jean creates stories, her family grows organic fruits and vegetables and tends the livestock de jour.

Although her day job, writing and family don’t leave her a lot of spare time, Jean likes to give back when she can. She and her husband team-taught a seventh-and-eighth-grade Sunday school class for several years and currently serve on her church’s Evangelism Committee. She also shares her love of books with others by volunteering at the church’s Book Nook.

You can keep in touch with her at www.Facebook.com/JeanCGordon.Author, www.JeanCGordon.com,  @JeanCGordon or  PO Box 113, Selkirk, NY 12158.