Celebrating Choices

We find ourselves facing choices every day from the time you get up and decide what you're having for breakfast. Ham and eggs, muffins and fruit, oatmeal? I've been known to choose leftover pizza or Chinese food. If either one of those are in my refrigerator, they're usually my first choice.

But when it comes to writing, I find my choices have sometimes become overwhelming. Do I write something new or work on editing the old stuff? Keep the old material or throw it out and start over?
Writing something fresh is always exhilarating, but then why keep starting new stories over if I'm not going to finish something? Ah, so many choices.

What to do?

One of the best choices is when I can see a story going in a new direction. Then I usually decide to follow that lead and that is usually a much better choice than continuing to stick with the old plan.

For instance, several years ago I submitted a short story that turned out not to be long enough for the market so I decided to re-write it, but I just couldn't get that longer version to work. Then several months ago our Heart of Denver Romance Writers decided to offer an anthology and several of us decided to participate.

As we discussed story ideas I remembered my old story that I had started and that hadn't worked. Suddenly I realized I wanted to bring that back, but as we brainstormed I got a whole new idea for the old story. I decided to give my heroine a new choice. The original premise was that she wanted one more romance in her life. She was in her 50s and wanted something new. But I had no reason she wanted it -- she just did. Then I gave her a real reason, and now I am off and running. I'll finish the story today in time to make the anthology deadline.

I made a choice, my heroine made a choice, and just making that choice made the story work again. It was like unplugging a drain. Make a choice and let the creativity flow.

Today I am celebrating those choices we all make every day. Sometimes we decide without really thinking about them, and often those turn out to be the best, including what to have for breakfast. Hmmm, I think I deserve a mimosa, just for making that choice.

Celebrating a Spooky Story

by Rebecca Grace

It’s always fun to celebrate and as this month comes to a close I have something wonderful to celebrate – the world wide release of my new book, Dead Man’s Rules.  This is one of those books whose inner story grabbed hold of me while I was still in college and never let go.  I wrote the original version of it when I was in my early twenties on in pencil on notebook paper and then finished it typing on my first manual portable typewriter.  I revised it on my first Selectric typewriter and kept reworking it until I finally finished it many years later on my computer.

But even as I finished it, I knew tragic love stories set in the 50s and 60s weren’t going to sell, so I ended up updating it to the present and telling it through a modern heroine’s eyes.

I’ve told the story of how I came up with Dead Man over and over – it was one of those strange ghost-type stories you hear in high school or college-some mysterious building being haunted, some mysterious person being killed.  And that was how I first came up with the story of Marco Gonzales. There was supposed to be a bloody handprint on a wall left by a dying man – at least the story went that he died. And he was supposed to haunt this old building.  The building was real enough and my college friends and I set off to see it.

We had to do it in daytime, since back in my college days, girls didn’t get to be out of the dorm past ten and it took at least a couple of hours to drive out there. That was just as well. The final drive to the old building was over dirt roads and the building was boarded up. I remember being impressed with my first view of the building I later turned into the Palladium dance hall. It was an old company store that was two stories high and stood all by itself. It was boarded up and we had to climb through a broken door to get inside. And then we had to climb a rickety set of stairs up to the second floor. All the windows were boarded up and we had brought no flashlight so we had to do this all in near darkness, with the only light from broken pieces of wood in the windows.

But somehow we found the right room and somehow we found the hand print. It actually existed—just like we’d been told. Like Cere Medina in Dead Man, I wasn’t that impressed with what we were seeing. But it was there. And it was spooky, even if it was faint. There were splotches around it, which could have been more blood. We didn’t even know if it had been made from a bloody hand. It could have been made from a greasy hand. But we all wanted to believe the story that it had been blood and it had been made by a dying man. There was nothing written under it (yes, writers must have creative license for a good story.) But it was eerie and we were all very quiet as we looked at it. All laughter stopped, all joking stopped. All I could hear was the eerie sound of the wind whistling through the boarded up windows.  

We saw no ghost or anything else scary, but I remembered being afraid of being locked inside that room. After a few moments of silence we made our way downstairs and regained our voices. On the way back to town during the long drive we all came up with stories about how the handprint had been made. One of the guys figured it had been made by someone who had not paid a gambling debt. Someone else thought it was a fight over a woman. My story was Marco’s love story, or at least the start of the story was. It eventually evolved into the foundation for Dead Man’s Rules.

That wasn’t the only time I visited that location or the handprint. Years later I took my parents and younger brother up there and saw it again. It was still just as spooky and only made me want more to write my story about the handprint on the wall.

While the building still stands in the mountains of southern Colorado near the New Mexico state line, it is impossible to get close to now.  It’s on private, fenced in property, though I supposed a bunch of kids on a late night outing might still try to do it at times.

I don’t know if the hand print is still visible, but the building itself is still spooky. And if the man who made that handprint haunts the place, he’s all alone these days.

So here's a toast to spooky stories and visits to (possibly) haunted houses! And another to Dead Man's Rules and its World Wide release.  (see below for a blurb and excerpt)

Buy Links:

 Amazon: http://amzn.com/B00I28UXFY  

The Wild Rose Press:  http://bit.ly/1kp7eUN

Blurb:

A woman on a mission, a man with secrets to hide...
When tabloid reporter Cere Medina decides to dig into the mysterious cold case death of Marco Gonzales, she hopes it will save her career. Instead, she unearths enough secrets to make a small town explode. Not to mention putting her on the wrong side of the town's fascinating sheriff.

Sheriff Rafe Tafoya doesn't need anyone digging up the past. He's come back to his hometown of Rio Rojo, New Mexico seeking peace and quiet. But Cere's arrival puts his town—and his heart—in danger.

Behind it all lurks the ghostly presence of Marco, who has everyone playing by a dead man's rules...

Excerpt:

Cere caught hold of his arm. “Maybe you should take me to the Palladium, Sheriff. I’d like to see the bloody hand print for myself.”

Damn, she was persistent. Rafe shook his head, again hoping to discourage her. “I chase people out. I don’t give tours. Enjoy your vacation.”

“I didn’t come for vacation.” Her eyes flashed with irritation. “I want to do a story on the handprint. I need to.”

His stomach knotted, as his breakfast churned in his stomach. He didn’t ask why she needed to do the story. He knew. Ego.

Reaching down, Cere pulled a reporter’s notebook from her bag. “If you won’t do an interview, do you know anyone who might talk to me?”

Why had he wondered what she might think about him? Or hope that she might be interested in him? She was only after her damn story. Acid boiled in his stomach. This woman would pry until eventually she might uncover some ugly truths. And she would spill it all out on national television. She could hurt a good many people, people he knew and loved. 

Rafe gritted his teeth as he forced an answer, hoping for one final chance at dissuading her. “No one will talk to you. My advice is to let it go. Relax. Take your vacation.”

He might as well have struck her. Her chin snapped up and her body grew rigid. He drew back at the determination he saw grow in her bright eyes.

“Don’t try to tell me what I should do. It’s time someone found out who murdered Marco Gonzales. Yes, I said,murdered, Sheriff. If you don’t want to help me investigate his death, I’ll do it on my own.”

 

 

 

 

Celebrating why we Write

Writing conferences are always stimulating for me and I am a big fan of smaller conferences where the smaller venue gives writers a better chance to talk and to visit with the headline authors who are giving workshops. Last week I had the opportunity to attend the Tony Hillerman Writer's Conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a smaller conference with several hundred writers and would be writers in attendance. What a great experience!  I only attended for one day, but it was so jam packed with information, I came home with my head spinning.

Perhaps one of my favorite parts of the day was hearing from the "the father of Rambo," David Morrell, but action-packed military thrillers were not on his agenda for that day. He discussed his latest book,  Murder as a Fine Art, which is historical mystery, but still packs plenty of action. As part of that discussion he provided a fine lesson in writing and being a writer. He told us there should be one of three reasons for writing and none of them had anything to do with making money or simply chasing the market place, which so many aspiring writers do.


The three reasons can be very fulfilling to any writer, even if you don't get sold or make millions:

1. Write for yourself. This had to do with having a story you want to tell, something you want to impart to others. He has written plenty of thrillers, but he wanted to try something different so he turned to Victorian England for his latest book. It was a personal choice that spurred him, and he says you as a writer should look for those sort of personal decisions.  Look for what you want to write or experiment with and go for it.

2.  Write to learn something.  If you want to do research on something, or if you want to explore a topic, what better way to do that than to do research and then write about it. He is well known for his well-researched books and just from the way he described the work he put into Murder, it was obvious he wanted to learn something about the period, the people and the setting in Victorian London.  He urged us to look for something we want to know and then to learn about it and write about it.

3.  Write to express a part of yourself. This can be a good way of letting go of the past, or searching for the future or digging deep inside of yourself to say things you might not be able to say in another way. I've always felt that writing can help a person (me) express things I might not otherwise do. Want to tell off a nasty boss? Kill him off in your mystery.  Wish there were things you had said to an old boyfriend? Put them into a romantic scene.  Wish you had been stronger in a certain situation or wish you had just broken down and cried your eyes out?  Let your characters do it in a book. All the emotion can be useful when you're writing a story. 

All three made perfect sense as he discussed how he had started researching his book from one angle, as research on writer Thomas de  Quincey, a friend of Samuel Coleridge and William Wordsworth who was known for writing Confession of an English Opium Eater.  de Quincey was an influence on writers like Edgar Allan Poe and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. But the more research he did, the more he found himself going in a different direction until in the end he pulled in de Quincey's daughter as one of his main characters, telling the story from her eyes, using her perspective.

But what struck me was his willingness to stop and talk to everyone and to provide advice to writers of all ages. When I stopped in the book store he was talking writing to a group of young people.  Earlier he had been very willing to discuss with me and a friend why he finds short story writing so difficult, but why he likes to do it. She was expressing a concern about attempting to write a short story and his advice was, "go for it." I'll be writing more on what he had to say about short story writing in a future blog.

In fact I'll be writing more about the entire day.  But at the end of the day the main thing I kept thinking about was Morrell's comments. Write for yourself. Make that your goal and you won't be disappointed if the sales aren't there or if the reviews are bad. Know at the end of the day you've learned something and you've improved and pleased yourself. I went home ready to write!

Celebrating Writers

By Becky Martinez

Writing conferences can be invigorating. I recently just returned from Left Coast Crime in Colorado Springs, Colorado. I always come home from gatherings like this feeling like I can hardly wait to sit down at the keyboard and get to work.  To me, a writing conference is a wonderful way to rejuvenate yourself.

Why?

The answer is simple.  It's always fun to meet other writers -- like best selling author Craig Johnson.

And it's not only fun to listen to the processes some of the others writers use, but it always interesting to hear their publishing success stories. And who wouldn’t want to listen to an award-winning, best-selling suspense writer like Laura Lippman talk about why she thinks women writers deserve more credit for their work?  That discussion was inspiring on many levels. 

For instance she noted that the book, “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” deserves every bit as much acclaim as “Catcher in the Rye.” That was a book many young girls still read and can relate to. She’s right. It stands out as one of those books that inspired many young women. She says it was the book that made her want to be a writer, and I’ll bet it inspired a good many other young writers as well.

It was also interesting to listen to Craig Johnson, who has reached a high level of success with his Longmire mystery series. It features longtime lawman Walt Longmire who keeps law and order in a Wyoming county. The series is being made into a television drama series by A&E. He told us about starting to research his series many years ago, talking to a sheriff about his story idea. Ten years later the sheriff came up to him and asked him how the story was going. Well, he hadn’t finished it. But he did. He went back and began writing and eventually was able to finish and get his work published.

Ten years!

 

But some writers take longer, as many published authors will attest to. How many writers start out and then shove their book in a drawer and never come back to it? But how many do come back? And how many eventually succeed? Those kind of stories are inspirational. You don’t fail if you keep trying. Perseverance and hard work and continued drive can often make the difference in whether you succeed eventually.

I started out writing as a teenager and it took years before I considered trying the publishing world. When I did, I was immediately sent several rejections. I still have them. What bothers me most about those rejections is what they said and what I didn’t understand at the time. The editors liked the story. They even said they might look at my work again, but it needed work. All I saw was the part that said they didn’t want this story. I put it away and it’s still in a drawer somewhere.

Years later I tried again. This time when I got a rejection, I read it more carefully. It said my work lacked polish. That was some of what the other editor said. She kept questioning my POV – I didn’t know what POV was. But this time around, I was determined to find out what “lacked polish” meant. I went to a writing group. I went to writing classes, and I kept writing.

This time I was much more determined. And eventually it happened. I got short stories published and eventually a novel.

My success has not reached that of Craig Johnson or Laura Lippman, but my determination is there and I won’t quit writing this time. And I heard similar stories from other writers at the conference as well. We’re not best sellers – yet – but we’ve got stories to tell and we’re going to tell them. And sell them!

  

Celebrating 2011 - A Little Late

Okay, 2012 hasn’t started out so well. My car battery keeps dying, the cat has scratched her eyeball and my diet has resulted in a two pound gain. My exercise program is going nowhere and I can’t find my new pedometer. My calendar for keeping track of everything is lost in a pile on my desk--a pile that was going to be sorted before the end of the old year.

Now January is starting out with Friday the 13th. Grrr...  I refuse to give in to bad luck! In the spirit of looking on the bright side, and thumbing my nose at evil spirits I’m going back to a blog I was supposed to have written two weeks ago to end the old year -- looking at all I got accomplished in 2011 and some of the rewards I witnessed.

145,069 new words. That’s how much I wrote in 2011. That is one book or two at least. Of course, 52,484 were for NaNoWriMo. I used those words in Part two of a suspense series I am writing. That leaves another 92,585 words unaccounted for. Those went into re-working other books, blogs and new classes. But it still means I was writing and that is what counts. It is something to applaud!

One good habit I started last year (and I’m sticking to this year) is keeping track of how many words I write every day. I put it on a spread sheet so it totals itself at the end of the month. I also write down all the pages of editing that I get done. When I looked back, I discovered I didn’t do too badly with my writing last year. I finished editing one novella, sent it in and ended up with another publishing contract with The Wild Rose Press. I did re-edits with my editor and then went through the galleys and final galleys. The final result is Shadows from the Past, a gothic suspense story that will be published in March.

Dreams may take time but they can come true! Sharing important events with friends is also a good way to celebrate life. 2011 saw two of my good friends reach for their dreams and I was happy to share great moments with them. For my friend Liz, it was joining the Peace Corp after years of wanting to join and then going off to Azerbijan to teach. I got a chance to visit her in California for a champagne goodbye at our favorite Chinese restaurant.  

For my Cary, it was building her dream house with a fantastic view atop a Colorado hillside.  We celebrated early with champagne as she gave me a preview in June. It is now finished and the pictures look gorgeous. I can hardly wait to visit again for a guided tour and celebrate with mimosas.

Looking Forward. Speaking of dreams, that brings me back to the new year and reaching forward to making more of my own dreams come true. Last week I ran across a blog that said you need to touch the ball every day. I realized I’ve been taking practicing that idea because of my writing spreadsheet. I like being able to look back and see the progress.  

I’m continuing to keep track and suggesting the idea to others. It only takes a couple of minutes every day and it’s great to be able to go back and get a good look at how much you’re actually doing. Start by writing down the number of pages you edit and keep track of your new word count. Try it for a day, a week, a month. It can pay off on those days when you feel you haven’t accomplished anything or you will never accomplish anything. We’re often so hard on ourselves that we don’t pay attention to what we do accomplish.

Rewards, Rewards, Rewards!  And don’t forget to reward yourself! I’m a big believer in celebrating success. Last year I rewarded myself with major league baseball! I followed a trip to Spring Training with tickets to Opening Day at Coors Field and then the great experience of my third All Star Game.

This year, well, who knows? I’m keeping the champagne cold just in case anything comes along.

Good luck.