Trust Your Subconscious

What I'm reading: French Pressed, by Cleo Coyle

We pause for these commercial messages…Digi Books Café has a 20% discount offer on all e-books. NOWHERE TO HIDE is one of those books, so if you've been contemplating reading it, this is probably the cheapest way to get it. The coupon code is e3d9d10a3c. Link to the book is here.

Of course, if you 'd rather have a personalized hard copy, you can email me and I'll send you one (or any of my other print books).

Friday's special treat of seeing one of my Free Reads, THE OTHER SIDE OF THE PAGE, get some unexpected publicity still makes me smile. If you missed it, you can see the article here. The link to the download itself is here . And, for the record, Hubster even downloaded the Kindle app for his phone so he could "buy" the story and help keep its sales ranking up there.


As you read this, contractor gods willing, our guys should be finishing up installation of the new "front" door and getting the new lights and mirrors in the bathrooms. We finally got delivery of our nightstands, so no more cardboard boxes. Next up: exterior pressure cleaning and a new coat or two of stain.

As for writing …

Learning via GPS

What I'm reading: Lady Knight, by Blair Bancroft


Workshop report – overall, I'm pleased. There were between 20 and 25 people, which is an excellent turnout considering it was Valentine's Day weekend, a holiday weekend, and Speed Week. My GPS was about 92.7% reliable. My Google Map directions didn't give me the same route, so I made the decision to listen to my GPS lady instead of having to refer to a written printout. Actually, using that GPS is a lot like the way I plot. It tells you how far you have to go to reach the next reference point, even when the directions for that point are "remain on the current road." The GPS knows where you're supposed to end up, but it doesn't give you the entire route all at once (unless you go to a different screen, but I don't usually do that, especially at highway speeds).

I did get one 'wrong' instruction near the end of the route. I dutifully remained on the current road, even though the Google Map had said to exit. As soon as I passed that exit, I got the dreaded "recalculating route" and was directed to exit and get back on going the other direction and backtrack to the point where I'd been told to keep going.

Plotting a Workshop on Plotting- Phase 3

Welcome Home! I hope everyone enjoyed their sojourn to the Giant's Causeway. Thanks again, Jessica.

Carrying on from last Thursday.

As I mentioned, the group I'm addressing is a Romance Writers of America chapter, so using my plotting board for my mystery didn't seem as appropriate as using one of my romantic suspenses. And since I'm using Hidden Fire, which is a romantic suspense, not a mystery, the book is actually much more complex. Why?

Because a romance, by "convention" must include two protagonists, often almost equal in weight. Readers want to connect with both characters, so there are two character arcs to deal with. Then, there's (of course) the romance plot. And in romantic suspense, there's the suspense (or in my books, the mystery) plot.

What I discovered was that the plots were tightly interwoven, so most scenes covered more than one of the basic sub-plots, which is the way it should be. However, I really have no recollection of doing this consciously as I wrote the book.

For example, the book opens with a scene in a restaurant. Randy and Sarah are having dinner after 6 weeks apart. They finish eating, decide to continue the evening at Sarah's apartment. Before they get there, Randy gets a call, and he goes to work.

A simple relationship scene, right? Mainly, but it goes deeper than that.

Non-Plotting Workshop, Phase 2

First, The winner of a download of Wynter Daniels' upcoming ebook is Wendy Marcus. Please email Wynter using the contact page on her website - http://WynterDaniels.com

Now, back to planning my workshop presentation.

From yesterday's post: this is my basic starting point for writing a romantic suspense, but it's not much different for any commercial fiction genre.

H/H trying to get on with their lives
They meet/interface/at cross purposes
Bad stuff happens
They fix it and have a HEA.

And then there's the character sketch GMC. (Goal, Motivation, Conflict) Their goals:

Randy wants to be a good cop.
Sarah wants to have a successful business.
Randy and Sarah want each other.

Continuing on: My next step will elaborate (very slightly) on some of the conflict potential in the book. Since this book is a sequel, most of the character back story was established, which cuts back on how much time I had to spend figuring out their basic personality traits.

It's Award Time Again

First, congrats to Mason Canyon, who won my impromptu drawing. I fed all the correct entries (had to mention WDH) into a random number generator and Mason's name came up.Mason, email me with your mailing address and I'll get your souvenir totebag from a multi-author book signing in the mail.

Since awards have been in the spotlight, with the Grammys (I didn't watch),Miss America (didn't watch that either), and the nominations for Oscars, I realized I've been remiss in thanking those who have given Terry's Place awards recently. Thanks to all And yes, I'll get to some writing "meat" later in this post.

First, from Maryann Miller of "It's Not All Gravy", the Circle of Friends Award.



From Lorel Clayton of "I'm Blogging Drowning Here":



And from Patricia Stoltey



From Marianne Evans, "A Minute With Maryann"