Muligans!

Okay, this weeks topic has us talking about muligans - do overs. Was there every anything that we did (or didn't do) that we regretted?

Of course! Many things! But, I won't embarass myself here and stick to just the writing side. *wink*

I have to think really hard on this because I don't really remember anything I have done or didn't do when it came to writing that I regretted later. Even if the project I started bombed or ended or closed or whatever the case was, I didn't regret starting it in the first place. Sure, I was sad it didn't work out, but I didn't actually feel regret over the situation.

I guess I do regret dragging The Faery's Tale series around for so long, not admitting what the real problem with the series was. But then again, I really don't. I learned SO much during that time and applied to my other works - that have turned out great!

No, The Faery's Tale series still is not anywhere near ready for publication. I feel terrible I made my crit partners read the first book as it is OMG terrible. Sideplots run amuck all over the place and just took over the series entirely! But like I said, I don't regret the years I spent struggling with it. I learned a lot and honed my craft and was able to craft many other books written with better quality for sure.

So, do I want to call "Muligan!" on anything in my writing career? No. Maybe because I have so many regrets in the other areas of my life because of my past with alcohol and drug addiction, I just don't have the energy to feel regret in my writing life. I learn from my mistakes and move on. How can I regret a situation that helped me be a better writer? I can't and so I don't.

Romance and Fashion of Olden Times

I'm so glad to write about this weeks topic - on my birthday! The topic this week asks the question "If we could live in any point of history, when would it be and why?"

Those of you who have read my books will most likely know the answer to this question already. The Medieval Ages.

Okay, so before any real historians go jumping down my throat hear, yes I am well aware that the time period isn't all romantic and beautiful the way it is depicted often times. There was no electricity, no clean water, no real medical technology, etc etc. I get that. My mother is a history teacher mmkay? I know! :)

Now that that is out of the way, let's talk about the reason why I love that time period. And yes I hate to say it has to do with out how movies and books protray the period. I guess really you could say I'm more in love with the legends and stories that came from that time, rather than the time itself - if one wanted to get technical.

The legends of knights in shining armor, death before dishonor, and yes, the somewhat romanticism of the time. But where is the real romance of the time you ask? Since ya know, it didn't really happen the way it did in the movies? Well, I'm totally weird (like you didn't already know) and I find it oddly romantic that during the time women would get married to a man they hardly new and yet people made it work. (And don't tell me it was perfect all the time, because when it history is it ever?) I guess really it's more mysterious, and that's what I'm drawn to. It's not really romantic...just mysterious and it peaks my interest I guess.

And, despite the fact that I do not bother to keep up with current fashion trends and really don't care what I wear from day to day - I LOVE the fashion from the medieval ages, especially the dresses women wore. Such beautiful designs!

When I was a kid, my parents belonged to this group that, well basically they dressed up from the time period and had huge jousts and fights and fairs and all that. It was a lot of fun. My parents - and my and my sister made our own garb! I loved wearing the flowing gowns with the super long sleeves, and the ackward headdresses! It was so much fun. I wish I could wear gowns like that now without people trying to lock me up in the looney bin, but I digress.

Now to answer the real question - would I live during that time? Eh, probably not. While I may love the ideals and fashion I would hate to not have clean water! I might be able to be without electricity or my computer (gulp!) but clean water? Heck to the no!

In the end, I'm happy to live in the present. While I do love certain periods in history, I don't think I'd want to actually live during those times. I can live in them vicariously through my writing - and that works perfectly as I can return to the present whenever I'm ready!

Reading What I Write - Sort Of

This weeks topic asks us what we read vs what we write. I write High Fantasy and, I've admitted this before, I don't read much High Fantasy.

It's not that I'm afraid I'll 'copy' an idea or anything like that. It's the point that quite frankly, I hate the way the majority of High Fantasy novels are written. I know that sounds terrible as a High Fantasy writer myself, but it's true.

I do love to watch fantasy movies however, as it takes away the flowery language to describe the new world - it's just there in picture. This might also be due to the fact that I'm naturally a character driven writer. I want to know about the characters, how they act, their quirks, etc not read paragraphs of flowery adjectives about their house.

I absolutely love to read mysteries! Mary Higgins Clark is my favorite mystery/suspense writer and I own many of her books. I read her books over and over again because the tension is so great that even when I'm reading it for the 10th or 20th time, I still feel my breath caught in my throat in anticipation for what happens next. I don't think I could ever write one though - or anything contemporary for that matter. It's just not in me to write about the world I already live in I guess.

My novels do have a hint of mystery and suspense in them though. I love writing about the many twists and turns of solving some mystery - especially in my series The Kinir Elite Chroicles. The elves are elite warriors and it's their job to bring down the bad guy - much like a cop would! So the mystery element is definitely there.

I also enjoy reading romance novel - but not straight romance. It needs to have another main plot going for me to enjoy it. The romance is the side plot not the main point of the story. I eat those stories up. And as far as my writing is concerned, I always have a romance element in it as well.

Frankly, when it comes to what I like to read - I'll read almost anything. Horror is a definite no in my book and with fantasy it all depends on the voice and style of the writer. Sorry to any horror writers out there but I just can't do it LOL. One of two things happens when it comes to reading (or watching) horror 1 - it's so cheesy I feel like I wasted my money or 2 - it's so scary I can't sleep for a month. Which I know is the point of horror, I just prefer to NOT lose sleep thank you. :P

Since I feel like I've rambled through this post, let's recap. I write High Fantasy but don't read too much of it. My stories also have a hint of mystery and romance. I don't read horror, ever, and I'll read most anything else but my favorite is mystery novels. :) I want to write Sci-Fi some day, and I do read a lot of that.

What about you? What do you like read? Writers, do you read the same as you write? Why or why not?

A Solitary Life

This week’s prompt asked the question whether writing was a lonely proposition or not. Originally, I spent quite a lot of time trying to see the potential two sides of this subject. I looked at the traditional writer sitting at a table, pounding typewriter keys by candlelight. I pictured this person spending many hours in the quiet solitude of a library, doing research. I saw them walking the city streets with their head down, deeply lost in thought. Next, I began contemplating the other side of this. Soon it became evident that the first side was a picture of a time gone by. At least it should be….

Certainly, the creative part of writing is done alone. We might be alone with our laptop or computer, alone with our thoughts, alone with the muse or alone with music. I find classical music works best for me if I need to drown out home noise; my kid yelling into his Xbox 360 wireless microphone, calling in reinforcements, for instance.

I understand that sometimes we can be surrounded and yet still feel alone. Unless our spouse or other family members are writers, they probably don’t get it. Recently, I was told that I really didn’t need to reply to every comment that I received. Rather than argue against that opinion, I just let it go.

Personally, I really don’t see how one can expect to write well, if they do not interact with others. I think it’s important for seeing the world as well as to help build believable characters. It is certainly critical for support. With the rise of the internet, it is so easy to find groups of people with which to interact, and not only that, but to build great friendships.

Let’s take a look at the first point: seeing the world. There are some things that I can research on my own. I learned recently about the stages of light just before sunrise and just after sunset. I also learned about police equipment. For my second novel, I had to learn about fishing boats, about the real city that I was using as a location as well as other items of interest. Yet, current fashion and style of communication are examples of things that I can’t know, unless I get out and people-watch.

The next point: support. If you are blessed with a supportive family, whether they are blood or just great friends, you’re still going to need a group of folks that understand what can happen to the psyche when one’s work has been rejected frequently, what it feels to be sleep-deprived because of a deadline or perhaps what it’s like to have a fight with one’s muse. They can be local buddies or they can be like some of mine who are literally everywhere in the world (and many of you are reading these words now).

I have said this before and I will say it many times before I am through, but I have met some wonderful people in this writing journey that only began about a year ago; men and women across every spectrum. Some which sound as if they might be my long lost twin and some who I share only a writing life. They have been mentors, counselors, shoulders to lean against, a wall to bounce ideas off of and an occasional flirt (purely for research, I assure you). The point is there is a group of people out there who know what the writing life is like, and everyone is always welcome in that club. If a writer feels as if he or she is alone, it seems to me that it really is a shame-on-you kind of thing.

The Magic World of Being a Writer

This weeks topic, about the seeming lonliness of the writing industry I think is left over from the days without internet. Like JD said in her post yesterday, I have SO many people I talk to on a daily basis from twitter, crit groups, blogs, writing sites, etc it's not even funny. I'm hardly alone by any stretch of the imagination.

So why do people still see writing as a lonely occupation? I think it comes from the idea - or illusion - of a writer, hunched over the type writer or paper furiously putting that story onto the page. Locked inside their office ignoring the world around them. Getting caught up in the story and the characters and forgetting there are real people around them too.

While that vision is still true to a certain point (I do lock myself in my office and I'm sure my husband sees me as all hunched over the keyboard typing away, lost in my own world) but is that really lonely or just a sign of pure dedication?

Then of course there are the non-writer's out there that don't GET it. They still see the writer locked away for days on end - alone - in their offices and lost in the world of make believe. They don't see the other side where we network, meet people, attend conferences, and actually come out of la-la land to talk with real live people. The side where we worry about trends and marketing and promotion. Because that takes away the magic of writing to them. It's a magical, awe inspiring vision of the writer plugging away at the typewriter/computer/paper, because as a non-writer they can't imagine doing it themselves. The energy it must take, the dedication, the imagination. Magic.

But in truth, no, writing is not a lonely occupation. I am always 'surrounded' by other people through blogs, writing sites, workshops, twitter, facebook - the list goes on.

Sure, there are times where I turn all that stuff off (surprising I know), I do lock my husband and son out of the office and I do nothing but write or edit on my own in some semblance of peace. I drift away to the lands of my stories and I'm no longer in my office. (And with all my character there I'm hardly alone either!)

I have never met an actual writer that seriously feels lonely in this industry! Even as a writer though, I still have the vision of the dedicated writer all hold up away from the real world - of course always alone. I never have the vision of the author surrounded by people cheering, offering advice, or just talking about every day silly things. It doesn't fit the image in my head of a writer is.

So is writing a lonely occupation? The magical mysterious side to the non-writer folks - perhaps. But to the actual writers, it's anything but. (Heck, even in la-la land we have plenty of characters to keep up company too!)

A Noun Martini, My Good Man. Shaken, Not Stirred…

When I first announced to friends and family that I'd been working on a novel, I got a lot of blank looks. They probably thought "you can write?" or maybe they thought the opposite, that I'd secretly been flying off to party with Bono in New York or something. How does one describe the writing life? Bestselling thriller novelist and chairman of this year's ThrillerFest, Shane Gericke, shares a typical day for him.

Birds chirping.

Faint light leaking around the window shades.

Dawn.

I'm rolling out of my satin sheets, ready to do battle with the forces of Evil that threaten our world as we know it ...

Or I would be if the woman next to me, bejeweled in gold and very little else, wasn't reaching for me, moaning, "Shane, master, darling, you can't leave, I need you so badly ..."

"Later, baby," I say, flipping my fedora end over end and watching it land on her heaving chest. "Gotta go save the world."

"At least it smells like you," she murmurs, clutching my hat to her face and waving goodbye. "Hurry home. We're due at the White House at 6 for cocktails."

"Does the president know to shake them?" I ask.

"I told him."

"Good girl," I say, patting her behind. She purrs fetchingly.

Whereupon I slip a Walther PPK into my tuxedo holster, slide through the mansion, and waltz into the garage, where my Aston Martin purrs with horsepower.

"Where to, Sir Gericke?" my chauffeur asks, his flinty British voice echoing off metal so perfectly polished and waxed that each syllable breaks crisp as his starched cuffs.

"My publisher," I say.

"Which one, sir? You have so many . . ."

"Ah, right. Random House. The new owner's flying in from Hong Kong, and I said I'd try to make time to meet him."

"Very good, sir." He opened the door. "Your martini is chilling inside, next to your laptop and research notes. Shaken, not stirred . . ."

Well.

That's how I'd like my writing day to go.

The reality, as you might imagine, is a wee different.

I roll out of bed at 8. Cotton sheets, not satin. The babe, who is my wife, and she is a babe, make no mistake, even suffering the likes of me for thirty years, has been at her workplace for hours. I pull on my writing attire--surfer pants, T-shirt, crew socks--and rumble down the stairs for coffee.

Which is cold. She brews it at 6 when she leaves, and these newfangled coffeemakers, unlike the percolators I grew up on, shut themselves off after two hours. Safety first. Me, I'd rather have the occasional kitchen fire than suffer cold coffee. But hey, insurance lawyers.

So, coffee, mug, no-fat cream, microwave, bleh.

Repeat.

Then it's back upstairs, to the spare bedroom that serves as my Bat Cave. I read e-mails, looking for stuff I gotta do NOW. There is none. Everything screams of now-cessity on the Internet these days, but I won't be fooled; most is bullshit, safely ignored.

So I head for a workout. Three days a week at the gym, lifting weights; two days hiking in whatever woods I feel like driving to. Only in movies do novelists live in rambling, charm-ridden homes pouting languidly into forest and lake. Rest of us gotta drive. Herb Alpert and Black Sabbath on the iPod, please ...

Exercise finished, I head to Grandma Sally's for breakfast. I've always longed to eat at a place regularly enough to have a usual. As in, "The usual, hon?" Grandma's is it. My usual: Denver omelette with EggBeaters; side of low-cal cottage cheese; side of pancakes with sugar-free syrup. Used to be full-fat everything. I used to be young. I devour a couple newspapers. They aren't what they used to be. Too much celebrity vomitus. But I used to be a newsman, and still read them religiously. Spill coffee on the funnies. Drip syrup on the editorials. Doesn't matter. It's newsprint, not a Kindle.

Head back home in my ten-year-old Civic. No Jeeves, drive myself. Reheat more coffee--fuckin' pot went cold again--wander back into the Bat Cave.

Where I write the day's words.

I don't have a set amount. Some authors insist on a thousand words a day, or five thousand, or three hundred. Others say, "Three hours in the saddle or I've failed." Me, as long as I write something most every day--emphasis on "most"; some days I just don't, needing to concentrate on ThrillerFest, blogging, marketing, or the hundred-and-one other things that Modern Authors are obliged to do besides write. Or, I cut the grass. Fix the sink. Go to the gun range and shoot paper zombies. Physical movement unrusts my brain, which spurs my writing, so it all comes full circle into the words.

But at this moment, I'm BISCW. (Butt In Swivel Chair Writing. My acronym. Pronounced "Bisquick," like the pancake batter, bringing the words full circle back to Grandma's; side of bacon, hon? No, thanks, I musn't ...) I'll type madly for an hour, which turns into four, which sometimes turns to all day. (Rarely, though. Too many hours at one time, my back aches like granny's bunions.) Mostly, the time is productive. Sometimes, it's like that famous writer--Oscar Wilde?--said about his writing day: "This morning, I put in a comma. This afternoon, I took it out."

I rewrite as I go, so the scene might be redone a dozen times before I think it's polished enough to leave alone for awhile. Then, it's on to the next scene. I write chronologically, Pages 1 to 415. (I tried 515 once, but my editor got fumey; those extra words needed pages to put them on, bucko, and that costs a truckload of money. So I cut back.) I think in scenes and keep a bunch fully formed in my head, like little movies on freeze-frame. But I don't write them until it's time chronologically. Don't know why; it just is. I don't worry about forgetting them. If they don't stay in my head like a neural Post-It, they're too weak for the book anyway, and good riddance.

When the manuscript is finished, I make a printout and stuff it in a drawer with the Kleenex box and spare mouse batteries. Why? Well, if I proofread it immediately after the first draft, I'd think, "Why, that's a darn fine job, chum, how could I change anything?" Let it sit a few weeks, and the potholes, warts and butt-uglies jump me like so many vampires loosed from their coffins.

Which is the opening bell for the rewrite(s) process.

I'll redraft a book three or four times before I'm satisfied. Then I e-mail it, and my editor points out the stuff that works, and doesn't. I beam at the what-works. I grimace at the doesn't. But she's got an excellent ear for this stuff, so I do the redrafting without complaining. My name's on the book, so I'll get the praise for the miracle that is partly my editor's sharp eyeballs. Thus, it'd be stupid to turn down her sage advice. And, I want the rest of my advance. Publishers hold them like bank hostages to ensure Darn Good Cooperation.

We're supposed to write better with each book. Fortunately, that seems to hold true for me. I'll never be perfect, because perfection doesn't exist, except maybe in a John Sandford book. But "better" is obtainable with hard work and sound advice. Case in point: My editor loved the first half of my debut, Blown Away, but thought the second half sucked dead mice. Lots o'rewriting on that puppy. My second book, Cut to the Bone, brought the comment that the premise was divine but the crime I chose to wrap the premise around was a four-letter word--dull--so could I pretty please find a better crime? She was right, and I did. Fair amount of rewriting on that one, but much less than the debut.

My upcoming book, Torn Apart, is the first that's entirely mine. I e-mailed the manuscript, immediately figured out eight major ways it could be better (why oh why can't I think of that stuff before hitting Send, right?), and suggested all the edits before she could find them. She agreed with my assessment, I got to work, she accepted it as final draft. So this book, for better or worse, is me without an editor's parachute.

I can't wait to see what you think on July 6, when it goes on sale at a favorite bookstore near you! (In the business, that's known as SSP, or Shameless Self-Promotion. Become familiar with that term, as you will probably see it again as July 6 draws near. I need the sales.)

Oh, and then I'm done writing for the day, and so I answer the e-mails and update Facebook and recruit literary agents for ThrillerFest and worry that I haven't talked to my sisters for much too long but God there's just no time and then The Babe comes home from work, and we eat dinner in front of Law & Order cause we love the show even though we've seen every rerun a thousand million damn times, then clean up, then hit the hay, then before you know it, I'm rolling out of bed at 8 o'clock. Time to make the doughnuts ...

Shaken, not stirred.

This post first appeared on Criminal Minds, and is re-posted here with Shane's permission. Shane Gericke would love you to join him in New York this summer for ThrillerFest V, as (a) it'd be fun to see you, and (b) he's this year's chairman and his peers will tease him unmercifully if he fails to break last year's attendance record. So take pity on his poor soul and check it out at www.ThrillerFest.org. He also invites you to visit www.ShaneGericke.com. He paid a lot of money to make his new site spiffy and bright, and it'd be a shame if you didn't come check out the drapes and furniture.

Shane, thanks for sharing your story with us and allowing us to re-post it! I look forward to meeting you at ThrillerFest this summer. Please send the limo for pickup. ;)