What's New in 2022

 So here I am, at it again. Writing, that is. The current work in progress is Those Regency Belles Book 3, Phoebe Fisher. Here's the premise:

Phoebe Fisher’s generous dowry attracts many suitors. When they discover Phoebe’s one notable and outstanding flaw, they depart as quickly as they arrive, and she loses hope of ever finding a suitor who will love her just as she is.

After an absence of ten years, Andrew Fitzgibbon returns home to discover he is the sole heir to his deceased uncle’s title and estates, but it will take a fortune to save it. Although reluctant to press his suit to a young lady simply for her wealth, Andrew finds her intriguing and suggests a union that might suit them both. Phoebe agrees, but then events from Andrew’s past cloud their new life together.

Will these threats make or break them? Will their marriage of convenience grow into a love match, or will Pheobe never know what it is to love and be loved?

Today I'm also designing Phoebe's wedding gown. I'll show you that next week.

 

Our May Round Robin Blog

Our May Round Robin challenge is: What would you like to tell your readers about your novels and their purpose?

I would love to be able to answer this with a noble, high-brow, reply. However, first and foremost, I wanted to write books like those I enjoyed reading. Now, how self-serving is that? Nothing noble or high-brow there. I wrote purely for my own pleasure and satisfaction.

That only lasted until I got the itch for publication, and then everything changed. I had to let my babies out of my sight while they were perused by critique partners and beta readers. Handing over my first ever novel to an editor was gut-wrenching but I was lucky enough to receive great feedback which empowered me and so I kept writing. 

My books are mostly historical romantic fiction. I say mostly as I have penned two Regency romances (my favourite historical era), an Edwardian trilogy, a more recent romance set in 1935 and one contemporary western romance. I may attempt more contemporary western romances. If my books have a purpose, it is to entertain my reader. Hopefully, they will enjoy the romance, find some intriguing historical fact that they might not have known before, and be satisfied when they get to the last line.

Reviews on all my titles are, for the main part, favourable. I have met people in libraries who have rushed off to see if any of my books are on the shelf and have later received messages on how much they have enjoyed whichever book they have read. I have talked to people at book-signings and recommended whichever of my titles fit with their reading tastes or what they might like to give as a gift. Sales remain steady and I like to think that I now have a happy and contented readership, which is all I ever really wanted from my books.

I’m going to be interested in what these authors have to say.

Diane Bator http://dbator.blogspot.ca/
Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_the_sea
Beverley Bateman http://beverleybateman.blogspot.ca/
A.J. Maguire  http://ajmaguire.wordpress.com/
Fiona McGier http://www.fionamcgier.com/
Dr. Bob Rich https://wp.me/p3Xihq-1BC
Connie Vines http://mizging.blogspot.com/
Rhobin Courtright http://www.rhobincourtright.com

Our first Round Robin blog for 2019 asks: How do you develop different personalities in your main characters? How about secondary characters? Do you have a favorite secondary character or one who has moved on into their own story?

I just love building characters and use several techniques for developing them once they have introduced themselves to me. That might sound odd, but I see my characters and know their names and physical details before I even start writing. But for ‘the rest of the story?’ Ah. That’s where the character building and developing comes in.

My first go-to is to give them a birthday. From that, I use their astrological signs to determine their strengths and weaknesses. I don’t necessarily include their birthdates in my text, I just get to know them better and definitely pay attention to their weaknesses as this is often where I find my characters’ flaws. If my characters have siblings, I’ll refer to The Birth Order Book to see what else I might discover about them depending on where they come in their family's line-up. I do a character interview, and this can be a surprising exercise as I find totally unexpected aspects of my characters, which all add up to a more rounded, fully three-dimensional character.

One of my secondary characters was Lady Juliana Clifton from my first Regency title, His Dark Enchantress. She was my hero’s sister and kept intruding at every turn, especially when Lord

Clifton’s love interest, Emmaline, was on the page. I think there might have been some rivalry going on there, each vying for His Lordship’s attention! Once I promised Juliana her own book, she went away. She got her own book, His Ocean Vixen, the second book in my Berkeley Square series. The third book in the series, His Unexpected Muse, will be released this coming March and again, the characters featured are secondary characters from the first book, Lady Olivia Darnley and Lord Peter Skeffington.

The characters who populate our pages are with us for far longer than it takes to write the book they feature in, and I know I’m reluctant to let them go. See what these other authors have to say about their characters.

Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_the_sea
Margaret Fieland http://margaretfieland.wordpress.com
Helena Fairfax http://helenafairfax.com/blog
Dr. Bob Rich https://wp.me/p3Xihq.1tc
Fiona McGier http://www,fionamcgier.com/
Beverley Bateman http://beverleybateman.blogspot.ca/
Connie Vines http;//mizging.blogspot.com/
Judith Copek http://lynx-sis.blogspot.com/
Rhobin L Courtright http://www.rhobincourtright.com/

How Do You Handle the Nasties?

This month our Round Robin blog topic is: How do you handle/use violence, or any type of danger, in your stories?

For me, being a non-violent person (read mile-wide yellow streak down my spine) I find it very difficult to write villains and villainy into my stories. Murder mysteries and thrillers with graphic content tend to make me squirm or give up reading or watching them. That’s not to say that I can’t appreciate good writing or great acting, just that I’d rather not have my sleep disturbed by bad dreams after experiencing it. Case in point – I had to stop watching Criminal Minds because of the nightmares it gave me. Yes, folks, that’s just how much it upset me.

However, conflict is a must-have to write a good story. Without conflict there really is no story. I think of the example I have given to writing classes in the past of a couple cleaning their teeth. They go into the bathroom. He takes the cap off the tube of toothpaste, squeezes the tube in the middle to get the required amount of paste on his brush, gives her the tube. She squeezes the tube in the same place and as soon as her toothbrush is loaded, she screws the cap back on. It's routine. It’s boring. Nothing happens. It does not move the story forward. Heck, it isn’t even a story.

BUT – what if they don’t go into the bathroom together? What if he goes in first, showers, shaves, cleans his teeth?

What if he squeezes the tube in the middle and she squeezed the tube from the bottom, rolling it up as each part of it becomes flattened? What if he always throws the tube on the side of the basin and leaves the cap off, allowing just a bit of toothpaste to escape and make a mess on the porcelain which causes her to yell at him? And he yells right back “it’s only frigging toothpaste!” What if this happens morning after morning until she could just shoot him? Oh, oh. Did I say, ‘shoot him’? This is not routine. It’s not boring. We have conflict. We have a story.  

When I write my own stories, I write the ‘nice’ bits first – the characters and things that come easily to me. Then I have to weave in the nefarious stuff. The nasty cousin, the thief in the night, or the blackmailer. But I work out their character lines as much as I do for my hero or heroine. I want to know what has made my characters the way they are, nice, naughty or just plain nasty. The results may never grace a page, but at least I know what makes them tick and can convey as much as is necessary through introspection or dialogue. I have to have some measure of empathy for my villains and hope my readers understand that. 

Two books that I have read a couple of times each for spine-tingling, edge-of-my-seat suspense and examples of how to build tension are Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot and Dean Koontz’s Innocence. Neither has the kind of graphic, visual hit that makes me want to peer through my fingers. Rather, it is a slow build-up of little details that draw me in. If it’s an out and out fight scene, I don’t think anyone sets that up as well as Lee Child does in his Jack Reacher books. I mostly write Regency romance, but the basics apply to any era. In my second Regency I needed to set up a sword-fight scene so went to my local sword fencing club and got so much more information than if I had just read about it or watched YouTube clips – although I have to admit I find YouTube an enormously useful tool.  

Writers are a resourceful lot and what works for one may not work for another. Let’s visit the authors listed her and see what works for them.

Dr. Bob Rich https://wp.me/p3Xihq-1i2
Victoria Chatham http://www.victoriachatham.com
Connie Vines http://mizging.blogspot.com/
Anne Stenhouse  http://annestenhousenovelist.wordpress.com/
A.J. Maguire  http://ajmaguire.wordpress.com/
Marci Baun  http://www.marcibaun.com/blog/
Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_the_sea
Fiona McGier http://www.fionamcgier.com/
Anne de Gruchy https://annedegruchy.co.uk/category/blog/
Rhobin L Courtright http://www.rhobinleecourtright.com