How I wrote the Villain

In Love and Honor you got to meet Jeff, Sarah's ruthless manipulative ex husband. For me writing the villain and fight scenes were the hardest. Jeff had to be gut wrenching you had to hate him from the get go. When I wrote the fight scenes between Jeff and Sarah I put myself in her place. I felt her pain and I felt her fear. I used that and translated it onto paper. I am very proud of how it turned out. The actor I pictured in my mind as Jeff was Christian Bale. Have you seen him in American Psycho. OMG! That's why I choose him. When you write your villain you have to be able to despise him. A friend of mine once told me that she hated Jeff, that Jeff was so evil. That made me very happy, I wrote Jeff well that is what I wanted the reader to feel. I did have to watch one thing in writing Jeff. I had to try an not go overboard with his anger and cruelty. After all it is a romance novel.

Query Letters

You've heard me mention Love and Honor in other postings. Love and Honor is my first book. Right now I'm trying to find the right Agent to represent me. Finding the correct agent to represent you I feel is the hardest and most agonizing thing about being a writer. I've gotten many positive reviews on my book, but the only thing that matters to an agent is "THE LETTER". Yes I'm talking about the query letter. If the agent does not like your letter they will not want to look at your manuscript. Talk about PRESSURE! I have tested the waters with Love and Honor. I've gotten very generic responses back. Examples are: We are not looking for new writers or Your manuscript is not the right fit for what we represent.
I will be attending the query workshop next month before I persue any agents.

A great workshop for writers who want to be published

I found a great workshop I wanted to share with everyone.

Get your Foot In the Door: Query Letter and Synopsis Workshop

Sponsored by: Yellow Rose Romance Writers

Fee: $15-$25

Date May 31st-June 11th, 2010

http://www.yellowroserwa.com/

I will be taking this online workshop. I suggest it to all writers.

Paranormal Romance

The hottest ticket in books today are books categorized as paranormal romance. Since the phenomenon which is Twilight, it's become the more hip thing to read and write about. It has gotten many teens to put down the remote and pick up a book! We can all rejoice in that. Vampire's have a forbbiden sex appeal. But I was not convinced to read a book about teenagers. I'm more hard core I want sex in my books. My best friend Belinda convinced me to give it a try. Once I started reading I was hooked. Now I'm a big TEAM EDWARD fan. I love the fact that Stephenie Meyers took a dream she had and was able to write a novel from it. That is what I feel I have done with Love and Honor. Since the twilight series I've branched out to other paranormal romance such as Jessica Andersons' "The Final Prophecy" series. Which is also a kick butt sexy book! I'm seriously thinking about trying my hand at paranormal romance. I love writing contempoary but why not branch out and do both.

What to write next?

Now that I've finished my first novel, it's time to start my next magical creation. During one of my D.A.R.A meetings the key note speaker Christie Craig suggested to start your new novel as you try and get your first novel published. Agents will want more then one book and you will want to be prepared.

I've got a lot of ideas and I've already started writing at least 10 pages of 3 of them. All of the star my new hero, but sorry I'm not ready to revel him just yet.

Okay now that Love and Honor is finished it's time to send out to the agents. This is the part of writing that makes me nervious. So much pressure on one letter. I've read many websites on "how to" write a query letter, some have been helpful but I sure could use someone's opinion on how I did.

Visualize your Charaters

When I write I have to visualize my characters. To be able to get into their emotions I have to see them in my mind acting out my scene. I try and pick out the actors I want to cast in my "movie" before I start a new project. In Love and Honor I did start with one hero but as I continued to write Max, the charater I had "cast" no longer fit the charater I was writing. I feel that it is okay to recast, remember you are writing the story not the charater. For the role of Max I orginally cast Josh Hartnet. But as I wrote it became clear he no longer fit how my charater evolved. In the end Max was awarded to Ben Browder.

My first time

When I was single I use to have this reoccuring dream about meeting a tall sexy stranger on the beach of an unknown tropical island. It was always love at first site between me and the stranger. He was always faceless. I started to write my dreams down on paper. I was surprised at what I had done. I wrote my first short story. I was amazed as I questioned myself. Did I really write this? It was such a thrill. A dream was born! From then on I knew I could not rest till I became a published romance novelist. I do not want to write just one book, I want to be just like Danielle Steel. The women who inspired me many years ago.

In the beginning

I love writing and reading about romance and sex. I rememeber the first romance novel that I read. I was in middle school and a classmate introduced me to Danielle Steel's "Jewels". That changed my life forever. I didn't actually pick up a pen and paper until after my divorce in 2002. While going though my divorce, I wrote many emotional poems. I entered them into the International Libary of Poetry. From what I hear now, they were a scam, but they helped build my confidence by giving me awards. My feelings were not just garbage, people actually understood what I was feeling; they understood my words, and they understood me.

I never thought I would want to pursue writing. I mean look, I have horrific grammer and spelling! But writing is about dreams and feelings for me. Writing is a way to escape everyday life. It's a fantasy. But I can touch more on all of that later. For right now, I just want to say thank you for taking the time and interest in me!