The HEA Cafe

Archive for October, 2007

I’m late and I fear I only have enough brain power for idle chit chat tonight. So beware. No, not of the ghosts I promised to blog about after my post last month.

It’s quarter after ten at night and I’m finally finding time to sit down and add my post. That’s how my life’s been of late. I started a new job and I’m still trying to adjust to it all. I know it’s Saturday and I had the day off but I played catch up today. Cleaning, laundry and decided since Halloween is just around the corner I’d bake some pumpkin spice bars. 

My son said it’s not autumn to him until the house is filled with the scent of them baking. It’s a tradition of sorts in our family. I remember the night before his sister was born – he was three – he and I were cuddled in bed. My late husband was down stairs baking and my son said, “All momma’s and little boys are sleeping waiting for baby sisters to come and all daddies are baking pumpkin bars.”

So I baked and I cleaned…I even read a chapter in between switching clothes from the washer to the dryer. BUT I didn’t write. I haven’t written in weeks. I’m just hoping once I’ve become fully acclimated in the new job and have the new schedule down, I can work writing back into my days…or nights when I feel like giving up some sleep.

Before I go I thought I’d share something neat I stumbled across before I logged on for my chit chat session - the trailer for my book, The Passenger, is mentioned at SURF THE NET WITH A VIEW: Paranormal Peaks for Halloween by Cornelia Amiri

 http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.ListAll&friendID=172718342 

Ciao! Joie

It’s our Canadian Thanksgiving this weekend, so that gives me plenty to blog about. My side of the family is getting together tomorrow for turkey dinner. 25 people in all, 15 of which are kids ranging in ages from 2 – 19, and of those 15, 11 are boys. God help us all! LOL It’s becoming increasingly difficult to get everyone together now, so it’s always a huge treat when the planets align and the gods smile down on long enough for the whole crew to share a meal. Oh, don’t get me wrong – it’s not all sunshine and roses. Sure enough, there might be a tiff or two, but isn’t that what family’s all about? We fight, we make up, we eat. It’s all good!

This past week I’ve also been enormously thankful for my editor at Dorchester. Leah Hultenschmidt is an absolute angel and has helped me work small miracles on my upcoming book, The Devil’s Daughter. It will be a much better book thanks to her insight and eagle eye.

And even though Game 1 was a freakin’ nightmare, I’m very thankful the Yankees made the playoffs again. Nothing better than a couple hours in front of the tube with my kids (who really do try to enjoy the game) and Joe Torre’s boys. Go Yankees!

So whatever you’re doing this weekend, whether you celebrate Thanksgiving now or next month, I hope you have plenty to be thankful for.

Hey Everyone!

It’s that time of the month again…time for our new releases chat! Woo-Hoo! This month our new releases chat will be on a Friday night. Set your reminders for Friday, October 5 from 9pm EST to 10pm EST.

This month we will be chatting with Lyn Cote and Michele Ann Young about their newest releases. Lyn will be chatting about Blessed Assurance, and giving out a giftbasket of soaps, and Michele will be dishing about No Regrets!

Come and join us for the fun! Click on the sun flowers below and they will take you to our public chat room!


I’ll see you there!
~Marly

Last month I blogged about “writing what you know”.  This month I’m blogging about “writing what you don’t know”.

My newest novel takes place mostly aboard a British frigate during the Napoleonic Wars.  My desk is now piled high with research books, some from the library and some I’ve purchased for myself.  I am full of Royal Navy trivia, and yet I know going into this that there’s no group of reading fans more rabid than Royal Navy buffs (with the possible exception of US Civil War buffs).  They will catch your mistakes–or what they think are your mistakes–so fast it’ll make your pixels spin.

For example, I have to figure out the date of my book.  If I have it set before 1805, the person who assisted the surgeon was called the surgeon’s mate.  After 1805, he’s technically the surgeon’s assistant, but no doubt most old timers still referred to him as the surgeon’s mate.  So if I set my novel in 1811, do I have to have a snippet of explanation saying, “Well, yes, Mr. Expendable is the surgeon’s assistant, but of course we all still refer to him as the surgeon’s mate”?

Decisions, decisions….

This also shows one of the pitfalls of deep research.  What a friend calls the “I did this research and you’re going to pay for it!” syndrome, where the author believes because she finds these tidbits fascinating, you must also find them fascinating or face her wrath!

I had to take pages and pages out of my last manuscript because I realized that while I found the story of Anna Jai Kingsley fascinating (Read Anna Madgigine Jai Kingsley–African Princess, Florida Slave, Plantation Slaveowner by Daniel L. Schafer for more), writing about her wasn’t advancing my own story and I had to stay focused on my H&H, not wander off into the delights of sharing research.

And while I’m ruminating on research, I must put in a plug for one of the most underutilized yet valuable tools a writer has, Inter-Library Loan.  If there’s a book you need for research, and your local public library doesn’t have it, ILL will get it for you.  From anywhere in the US where that book is in circulation.  You might not get it this week, but eventually it will turn up.  I wanted a copy of Roderick Random by Tobias Smollett, an 18th C. Novel.  Our library didn’t have it, but within two weeks it was within my hands, shipped from a library in North Carolina.  ILL has given me access to many books published by the Naval Institute Press, books that if I had to buy them, even used, would quickly exhaust my budget.  Plus, these are often books I don’t need to keep, or just need to see a chapter or two.

Which leads me into my next thought, The Evils of the Interweb!  I’m often asked by budding young writers which websites to go to for research.  The answer is, “None of them should be a primary source.”  Oh, sure, it’s nice to be able to see pictures of the uniform of the U.S. Revenue Marine in 1845 at a website, but it’s much more valuable to read a comprehensive history of the Revenue Marine.  Here’s the thing a lot of new writers don’t realize–when you use books for research, you learn stuff you didn’t know you needed to know.  Also, books have editors.  Websites do not.  With a website it’s very much “Researcher beware!”  Sure, books can have mistakes too, but at least someone other than the author took a look at it before it got to the presses!

So when writing what you don’t know, consider your sources: visits to historical sites, if possible, are always worthwhile.  Read books.  Read some more books.  Then go to websites to see if there’s any tidbit or update you might have overlooked.  And finally, don’t make your reader pay for your pleasure.  Save your wonkiness for the next time you’re hanging with the period re-inactors.

I bought a book, Pencil Dancing; new ways to free your creative spirit, by Mari Messer. It’s the kind of book that makes me want to page through it while I sit under a shady tree and drink coffee.
Partly, it’s the size—a little wider than a normal book yet not large enough to think ‘homework.’ It’s more reminiscent of an old-fashioned schoolroom scribbler and seems to promise all sorts of secrets. There are little drawing in the book that invite flights of imagination. The format is appealing—lots of wide margins, which suggest the reader might like to make notes and comments. And throughout, in the margins, are quotes like this one, “The process has an intelligence that can be trusted, and the gift of creation is the ability to work with it,” by Shaun McNiff. From a book Trust the Process. Now I know nothing of Shaun M or his book but I like the idea of trusting the process. It’s something I am learning to do.
     Then there are the headings and chapter titles in a cursive font. “Befriending Your Beasts”, “Creating From the Inside Out”, “Dancing With You Creative Spirit.”
     It’s the sort of book that calls to the creative spirit like a whisper, a beckoning finger, promising to share secrets.
     I love the concept of pencil dancing. I dream of the day my pencil will dance over the page, leaving in its wake a stupendous story. Unfortunately I haven’t found it works that way. Instead, I have to work at my stories. Only as I whine and moan and complain does the story come out. Or maybe the whining is only a diversion. Maybe it’s sitting down and dwelling on the whole idea, arranging and rearranging elements until they click that gets the story figured out. Yet I somehow keep wishing for the dancing pencil.
     Maybe I’ll find some golden nugget in this book that will help me.
All I need is some time to dive into the book though it is perhaps the sort of book to be nibbled at and digested slowly. I’m sure it’s the latter, which is a good thing because that’s the only way I’ll be able to get at it.