Wednesday Forgotten Dreams #MFRWHooks #BWLAuthor #romance contemporary #Hollywood

Join the authors at #MFRWHooks here   http://mfrwbookhooks.blogspot.com  for some great excerpts Mine is from the Moon Child series

BLURB:

Chad Morgan is tired of his Hollywood life and his role as action hero Storm. He's ignoring the contracts for two more movies in the franchise. He wants to take a different direction and make a movie of his friend's book. He has bought the rights. But his agent and the studio want more Storm. His personal life is also bouncing from one woman to another. His thoughts have turned to Emma Grassi, the woman he left behind in his quest for fame. He decides to return to Fern Lake and speak to his friend and renew his friendship with Emma.

Emma is now a nurse practitioner sharing an office with her doctor friend. She has waited for Chad to return and has decided this isn't going to happen. She's decided to confront him and put an end to the dream she has remembered and he has forgotten. Life takes a twist when Chad 's auto accident on the outskirts of Fern Lake bring them together. She wants out. He wants in.



Excerpt:

Chad strode to his car. He wasn’t toeing any line, not as Storm. Hollywood no longer held the glamour he’d embraced ten years ago when he’d arrived. He could have chosen a different road. His athletic abilities could have earned him a college scholarship but the acting virus had invaded his life. Four years of drama in high school and multiple roles in the local theater group had brought him here.

He’d followed that dream but there had been other dreams. Could he find them again? Smiling chocolate eyes in a lovely face surrounded by dark curls flashed in his thoughts. Had she found a dream different from the one they’d shared and he’d forgotten? He slid behind the wheel and drove to his large and lonely home behind stone walls. There were decisions to be made but not tonight. He would remember her…Emma.

In an unusual move, the moment he reached the house, he mixed a second rum and cola.

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Wednesday The Children of Fyre #MFRWHooks #BWLPublishingLTD #Fantasy #Dragons

Join the authors at #MFRWHooks to see what stories they're featuring and find some new reads here  http://mfrwbookhooks.blogspot.com Mine introduces the second hero at http:wwweclectricwriter.blogspot.com The Children of Fyre. Available for pre-order.

BLURB:

In this return to the Island of Fyre, each of the heros and heroines of the three previous books have children. Lorton is the youngest son of the Wizards of Fyre and he has bonded with the yellow dragon. The dragon through the magic of the stones has been rejuvenated and is now green. Dragon sends Lorton to travel to where the Dragons of Fyre are raised. There he meets Arkon son of the hero and heroine of the Dragons of Fyre. There have been four eggs laid and there must be two young men and two young women found to bond with them. On the island where the evil wizards were exiled, Cerene has grown up as little more than a slave. She can use all the fyrestones unlike her father. She learns about the kidnapping of Riara, daughter of the hero and heroine of the Temple of Fyre and vows to save her. The four must unite with their dragons and finally destroy the evil.

EXCERPT:

The sun moved to the west. Arkon studied the long rows of fyrethorn bushes. Most of the scarlet berries and the dark red thorns had been harvested.

As the youngest son of the dragon riders, he had been sent to supervise the harvest of a bountiful crop. There had been a mating of one of the four pair of dragons living at High Peaks. The riders had been shocked to learn the red would produce a blue and a red. There would be no green to guide them. This event was unheard of. Since Arkon would ride the blue, he was to examine the young women of the village for one to ride the red.

He wiped sweat from his brow. What did this mean? Was one of the older dragon pairs about to die? He rubbed his arms. Though riding a dragon had been his dream, not with death as the price.

He looked again at the young women. None suited him and none of them had ever mentioned hearing Verde speak in their heads.

With a groan, Arkon stripped berries into a sack. Once the harvest finished, he would have to visit other villages to find his mate. He didn’t want to do this but he would.

There had never been an event like the coming one. According to the records, the first three dragons had appeared at High Peaks eons ago. They were the source of all the dragons of the land. When the four pairs resided in the cavern, a new green had appeared and a new keep established. For generations the pattern had followed. Only when the green became dark amber was a new green hatched. Not this time.

Without a green, how could the red and blue learn to perform the tasks they must perform? Though smaller, the green dragons were the leaders.

He crammed a few more berries into the sack and carried the leather bag to a cart. Enough berries for more dragons than lived at High Peaks filled two carts. His sack finished the third. Five carts held packed thorns. Just one remained to be filled. He joined the workers stripping them from the bushes.

At dusk, the harvesters walked to the village square for a feast. Arkon loaded a plate with selections from the many dishes. He stopped at the fire pit for a slice of roast beef and one of shoat. A group of villagers played music. Some of the villagers gathered around a bonfire.

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Wednesday's Writer's Tip - Story Connectors in Series #MFRWauthor

Inspired by Writing The Fiction Series by Karen Wiesner." For the series where the connection isn't a tight one, the type of series that depends on something other than the quest for a particular object, there need to be ties or story connectors. These stories may be those that can be read without having read the others in the series. For this kind of a series, a tie or probably ties are needed.

The characters in each story come from the same town. If this is the case, there can be a number of story connectors. The name of the town, the places in town that are unique and that the characters visit frequently. This will cause the reader to suddenly feel like they are someone visiting a familiar place.

The connectors in this kind of story could be something else like the use of a particular word in a series. Mysteries often use this The Murder, The Case of... This often shows the reader that perhaps the main character is the same but this is a new case. Often done in mysteries. This can be the use of the main character's name in the title. The reader sees this kind of thing in the title and they say, "Oh, yes."

In my own loosely connected series one story consistently uses a Maine Coon cat as the connector. Even when he's not physically present in the story there are mentions to the cat. Another though the connector is the birth sign of the heroines, there are such things as the name of the town, a favorite eating place, the local hospital. These things are in most of the stories and they help the reader know these stories are part of a series,

So story connectors are needed and especially in the series that aren't tightly woven.

Meandering on Monday with Janet Lane Walters #MFRWauthor

Meander 1 - Prices - Recently went to check out one of my favorite authors on Kindle and the price of his new book in the electronic form made me blink many times. I will not pay $13.99 for the electronic version of a book. Maybe I'm cheap but that's the way I see this. The highest I will go is $7.99 and even that doesn't sit right with me. The one thing I will never do is find one of those sites where one can find a sharer and download the book for free. I don't even enter contests where the prize is a free ebook. When I judge them in a contest, the moment the contest ends, I remove them from my computer. So this is my price protest for the day.

Meander 2 - The case of the spider. She came from the powder room, her face white with fear. There's a huge spider in there. I grabbed by handy can of bug spray and went inside expecting to see a spider at least the size of a tarantula or larger. I aimed the spray at the creature that was about the size of the nail on my pinkie. The moral of the story is when you're afraid of something it always seems larger than life. Must remember this when writing.

Meander 3 - Toth's Priest is moving forward, Have less that 10,000 words until the book is finished. Then it will be on to another story. This draft is the filling in of details that have been skimmed over or caught by the critique group,

Wednesday's Writer's Tip - Researching The Facts, #MFRWauthor

The odd thing about researching the facts for your stories is there's either too much or too little. I've been a victim of both. The trick is to do just enough. That can be hard, very hard. First let's talk about too much.

You're writing a story that needs the facts to make the story seem to have occurred in the world you've created and you set out to do the research to dig up some facts to let the world know you understand what you're writing. The journey begins and one fact leads to another and you become so involved in finding those facts that you forget the story. This has happened to me. I have shelves of research books from the days before the internet that I've used and still use when I'm working. While working on All Our Yesterdays, I was writing about a number of cultures and spend hour after hour in the college library. One fact led to another and another. I must have spend months digging out facts. Somewhere along the road, the research became more important than the story. One day, I decided enough is enough. I began writing and suddenly all those things I had discovered found their way into the story. Instead of fiction to be enjoyed what I wrote sounded like a research paper. The problem was too much research.

At the other end of the spectrum comes too little research. I've been guilty of this as well. As a nurse, I knew a bit about medical issues and set out to write a medical romance. Finished the book and sat down to read what I'd written and found this sounded more like a fantasy than a contemporary story set in the real world. The reason was clear. I'd glossed over those bits that made the story seem real so I had to go back and find the facts I needed for the story. What does an ICU look like? What are the symptoms of a particular disease? All these things were needed to be there in bits and pieces to make the story seem real.

So we come to doing just enough. I've found a way that works most of the time. At least for me. I barrel ahead with the rough draft and anytime I need some fact I write, "Look up salukis" or "choreograph a fight scene" or "love scene goes here." This doesn't work all the time because sometimes finding one of the books I need to use for research or hitting sites on the internet provide me with facts I need to use lead me to read just one more bit.

What about you? Do you do too much research and forget the story or do you end up with too little and find the story doesn't ring true?