Been reading an old book of essays by well known writers and finding interesting tidbits. Today's was by Ken Follett. "The object is to have the plot and character fit together like ball and socket." Hard to do but with care it can be done.
I started looking at they way I write. I find the seeds of the plot often help me make choices as to the kind of character I will use for the story. What about you? Or does your choice of character make the decision about the direction of the plot?
For me, it's a combination of the two. The idea for the plot gives me a kick start and I may have some ideas about the direction I choose to go. Then I begin to build the character who might play a rose in the story. As the character takes shape, elements of the plot come into view and there are some changes. Why?
Always my characters become real to me and the plot changes because the character wouldn't do that or go there. Before long, at least for me the plot and the character have joined hands and are off on an adventure seeking a goal they will either reach or not. Though I like happy endings when I write, some stories don't end happily but they do have to reach a satisfactory ending.
So when you're writing, look at your characters and also your plot. Do they fit together like two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle?
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Monday, January 30, 2012
30 January - Week Behind and week ahead - Sold - Contest winner
SOLD - The Chosen of Horu contract arrived and I even received a mock up of the new cover and the first round of edits. Book should be out in February.
The winner of Shortcut To Love is Christy. I'll be sending her an email later today for more information. I do hope she doesn't mind that the book isn't self-published.
Last week found me tearing up the first two chapters of my current WIP. The story, not the idea, seemed to be going nowhere. What to do? Putting those chapters away, I spent a day just not doing much writing and a lot of reading. Then the problem unraveled. I had started the story with the wrong character in the lead role. Since this is a novella starting in the right place with the right person is important. Once solved, I started with the heroine. She has the most to gain and the most to lose during the story. While the hero has both gains and losses possible in the story why didn't starting with him work? I'm not sure. All I know is it didn't. The upshot of this is that with the heroine in the start I was able to rough draft the first four chapters. There will need to be revisions and re-writing done to flesh out the story but that will happen in further drafts.
During the coming week I hope to be able to do at least 4 more chapters and there is the possibility that I will manage to complete the rough draft of the story. That would feel amazing. It's short, spicy and fun. The Surprising Seduction is a lot about assumptions. Heard that two of my poems will be in a promo ebook from my publisher - Vanilla Heart.
The winner of Shortcut To Love is Christy. I'll be sending her an email later today for more information. I do hope she doesn't mind that the book isn't self-published.
Last week found me tearing up the first two chapters of my current WIP. The story, not the idea, seemed to be going nowhere. What to do? Putting those chapters away, I spent a day just not doing much writing and a lot of reading. Then the problem unraveled. I had started the story with the wrong character in the lead role. Since this is a novella starting in the right place with the right person is important. Once solved, I started with the heroine. She has the most to gain and the most to lose during the story. While the hero has both gains and losses possible in the story why didn't starting with him work? I'm not sure. All I know is it didn't. The upshot of this is that with the heroine in the start I was able to rough draft the first four chapters. There will need to be revisions and re-writing done to flesh out the story but that will happen in further drafts.
During the coming week I hope to be able to do at least 4 more chapters and there is the possibility that I will manage to complete the rough draft of the story. That would feel amazing. It's short, spicy and fun. The Surprising Seduction is a lot about assumptions. Heard that two of my poems will be in a promo ebook from my publisher - Vanilla Heart.
Sunday, January 29, 2012
3 Blog Visit Sunday
http://janiceseagraves.org/2012/01/23/affect-or-is-it-effect/ This is a good lesson but the Aussie slang also was of interest.
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http://romancebooksrus.blogspot.com/
http://sapphirephelanspassioncorner.blogspot.com/2012/01/romancing-on-friday-life-lessons-from.html?zx=f4fbebd4185cbf8a
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http://romancebooksrus.blogspot.com/
http://sapphirephelanspassioncorner.blogspot.com/2012/01/romancing-on-friday-life-lessons-from.html?zx=f4fbebd4185cbf8a
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Saturday's Chapter -- Blood on the Roses Robert Hays
Blood on the Roses
by
Robert Hays
Vanilla Heart Publishing
USA
Copyright 2011 Robert Hay
One will rarely err if extreme actions be ascribed to vanity, ordinary actions to habit,and mean actions to fear.
—Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
ONE
THE TENNESSEE BEND Motel squatted on a level strip of land carved into the side of a steep Appalachian ridge like a thin slice pared from a luscious apple. All around it, the trees were well into their September colors, leaves on the tall oaks and hickories ranging from dull browns to brilliant reds and oranges mixed with scattered splotches of lingering summer green. There was a busy highway in front, but it was at the bottom of the slope, some hundred yards distant. It carried traffic heading north from Knoxville and south from Kingsport and was an everyday path for the constant comings and goings of locals.
The ample grounds of the Tennessee Bend posed a stark contrast to its surroundings. There was no formal landscaping. Shortleaf pine and black oak trees appeared to have been planted haphazardly to provide shade for chosen areas of the parking lot, and the only touch of elegance was a rose garden that stretched across the crown of the incline, along the edge of parking spaces adjacent to the front row of motel rooms. The summer roses that welcomed visitors were still vibrant and from inside the lobby, looking down the slope toward the east, the garden made an appealing foreground in a picture-postcard view of Cherokee Lake.
Although only a narrow neck of the lake was visible, the scene was a stunning sample of the region’s ubiquitous natural beauty. The Bays Mountains and the foothills of the Great Smokys lay in the distance, while to the west the forested hills rising behind the motel gave way to the razor-spined, peakless pleats of the picturesque Clinch Mountains, which stretched northward toward the Cumberlands.
Rachel Feigen was tired when she checked into the Tennessee Bend, after the long drive from Baltimore, and unsure where to begin. She already had a deep emotional attachment to this assignment and had come to face it with a sense of dread. This one did not hold much prospect for a pleasant outcome.
Not that Feigen was accustomed to happy endings. She had just spent a grueling three weeks piecing together a story on the effects of the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education ruling, and was left discouraged if not downright despondent by what she’d found. In the several months since the court had struck down “separate but equal” as a legal basis for racial segregation in the schools, little had been done to implement the court’s decree. This was not what she had hoped to find.
Her disappointment in the investigation’s outcome pleased Bill Skyles, her editor at the Associated Press. Skyles demanded absolute impartiality when his reporters’ work went to print, but he wanted them to understand and feel the impact of their stories.
Her editor was sufficiently impressed with Feigen’s performance on the story to hand her a new assignment that he called the most important one he had. He said it could be her biggest challenge since joining the AP national reporting team and she’d dug into the story just deep enough to see that he was right.
Feigen had barely managed to get three days off. Skyles wanted her to get onto the story immediately. She was eager to tackle this new project, but she had an accumulation of personal things to attend to and she wanted at least one day when she could sleep in and have nothing to do. Reluctantly, Skyles gave in.
Friday was the first of her precious days of freedom. She slept late, took a long, luxurious shower, and had breakfast at lunchtime. Then she called her father in New York. As usual, Judge Max Feigen skipped the pleasantries and got straight to the point.
“Your series on school integration was very perceptive,” he told her. “I’m proud of you, Rachel. But not surprised. I knew you’d make a good journalist.”
“I owe it all to you, Daddy. We grew up thinking the New York Times was the gospel and journalists were the last best hope for the world—after the law, of course. You never even finished your first cup of coffee until you’d read every word of the front section of the Times.”
Her father chuckled. “I still do pretty much the same thing, but it takes me quite a while longer. My eyes aren’t as good as they used to be. That’s one of the prices of old age, I’m afraid.”
“You can’t imagine how hard it is for me to associate old age with you,” she said. “To me you’re still that stern, uncompromising judge that must have scared the hell out of evil-doers when you wore your robes and then turned into a loveable old softy when you got home to Morrie and me.”
“That was the happiest time of my life, Rachel, but we have to live in the present. It seems like I’ve been retired forever. Your mother and I just rattle around now in this big old empty house.”
There was a clear note of melancholy in his voice. It had been one of her biggest worries that after all the years when he’d put in endless hours to keep up with the law, insisting there was no margin for error in his determination to hand out justice in his courtroom, her father would find retirement difficult. He had told her once that retirement was nothing less than a fast track to senility and he didn’t look forward to it.
“But now you have time to read all those books you never could get to before,” she said, hoping to give him at least a modest shot of encouragement.
“Yes, of course. And I do more reading than these old eyes are up to. But bring me up to date on you. What kind of story are you off on now? Something in-depth like the school integration story?”
“That’s exactly why I called you,” she told him. “Have you heard anything about a missing man from Baltimore named Guy Saillot?”
“I don’t think so. Who is he?”
“Nobody who’s very important, as far as I can tell. But his family is.”
“And so what’s your story?”
“Saillot’s been missing for more than two weeks. He left Baltimore to visit a friend at the University of Tennessee, as I understand it, but he never showed up there. His family is prominent here and the Sun has run a couple of stories on it, but the authorities don’t seem to be pushing it very hard. Anyway, my editor is sending me to look for him.”
“His name sounds French.”
“Yes. His father’s a big shot with the Franco-American Transatlantic Company’s Baltimore office.”
“The University of Tennessee, that’s in Knoxville?”
“Yes.”
Now there was concern in his voice: “There’s a lot going on in the South these days, Rachel. This isn’t going to be dangerous, is it?”
“I don’t see how it could be,” she answered, trying her best to sound confident. “But I’ll call you every few days and let you know what’s happening. Okay?”
“You be sure and do that, angel. And take good care of yourself.”
Feigen felt guilty for not having told her father what she already knew about the Guy Saillot case. But she still held out some slight hope that she was mistaken in her first impressions of Anton Schuler, the FBI agent in charge. There was no way she could have said much without getting into what Schuler had told her, and being as perceptive as he was her father would have picked up on her doubts in an instant.
She also had deliberately avoided mentioning another big thing coming up in her life, one that was much more pleasant. It had been a mantra of the Feigen family for as long as anyone could remember that pride in personal possessions, no matter what they were, was selfish. She would have been embarrassed to let her father know that she was as excited as a little girl at a birthday party because she was about to get her first new car.
Feigen had set her heart on one of the new 1955 Chevrolets the instant she saw the line introduced in a Life magazine advertisement. Her old Plymouth was just about done for and Skyles had recommended she see Mike Sodeman, a salesman he said wouldn’t talk down to her just because she was a woman.
Mike turned out to be an agreeable young man and, true to Skyles’s promise, he began at the outset to talk about things like V-8 engines and horsepower and transmissions and not colors and upholstery fabrics. He helped make her purchase easier than she expected and the car would be ready for her to pick up first thing in the morning.
For now, though, she needed to push aside all thoughts of the new car and her father and Feigen family mantras and whatever, and force herself to refocus on the Guy Saillot story. This meant going back over her notes and looking for any detail she might have missed. Agent Anton Schuler had irritated her to the level that she felt lucky to have any information at all.
It had been clear from the minute she walked into his office that Agent Schuler was not especially concerned about finding this particular missing person. “The FBI has a lot of important things to do,” he told her flatly, “and I’ll give it to you straight. Looking for a queer little Frenchman who probably found a boyfriend and decided to hide out for a while and have fun isn’t real high on our list.”
His attitude had taken Feigen by surprise. It took her a moment to recover and get back on track with the questions she wanted to ask.
“Who was he visiting in Knoxville?”
“We haven’t released that information,” Agent Schuler said matter-of-factly. “It wouldn’t do you any good anyway. He says Frenchie never got there.”
“He called him ‘Frenchie’?”
“He may have called him ‘Darling’ for all I know. The point is, we’ve checked him out and his story holds up. He’s not involved.”
Feigen’s patience was at an end. “If Guy Saillot weren’t homosexual, would you assume he’d found a girlfriend and was shacked up somewhere, not worth your time to look for? That’s a pathetic way to operate, Mister Schuler. I’d expect more from the FBI.”
She had left Schuler’s office more angry than she’d been in a very long time.
It took only a few minutes for her to go over her skimpy notes. Guy Saillot was twenty years old. He was a slight man, barely five feet, four inches tall and weighing about a hundred and thirty pounds. He had a sallow complexion, green eyes, and black hair. Nothing on what he might have been wearing, nothing about his habits—except his sexuality. The FBI wasn’t even sure how long the young Frenchman had been missing.
Feigen had no intention of working on her free time, and she had two more days off before she left for Tennessee. But she couldn’t get Guy Saillot out of her mind. When she couldn’t stand it any longer she picked up the phone and dialed the number of the Saillot home for probably the twentieth time. This time there was an answer.
“This is the Saillot residence. Hello.”
Surprised finally to have someone pick up the phone, Feigen fumbled for words. “I’m sorry,” she said, “may I ask who I’m speaking with?”
“This is Marie Saillot.”
“Miss Saillot, or missus, my name is Rachel Feigen. I work for the Associated Press and I’m doing a story about Guy. Are you a member of the family?”
There was a lengthy pause. “I’m Guy’s mother,” the woman said then. “How can I help you, Miss Feigen?”
Feigen was nearly breathless with anticipation. “Missus Saillot, would it be possible for me to come and talk with you? Anything you can tell me about Guy might help us find him. Anything at all. I’ve talked with the police and the FBI, and my editor is sending me to Tennessee to see if I can track down something they may be missing. I truly apologize for intruding on your privacy, but you could be very helpful to us if I could have just a few minutes of your time.”
After another pause, but this time a shorter one, Guy Saillot’s mother consented. Could Feigen come by her house tomorrow afternoon? And please don’t bring a photographer.
Feigen skipped dinner and made a list of questions for tomorrow. There was so much she didn’t know. Marie Saillot obviously was her best hope, yet she felt guilty for invading a mother’s private grief. Surely to have a son missing, a son who apparently had never been in the least bit of trouble, would be as difficult as anything a mother could face. The uncertainty must be terrible. On the one hand Feigen was eager to learn more about Guy Saillot, the person, but on the other she dreaded looking into the eyes of Marie.
She hardly slept that night. She had interviewed people faced with tragedy before, and it always left her with a hurt inside that sometimes lasted for days. This one might be the worst.
In the morning she got up early, eager for her meeting with Marie Saillot and mildly excited about picking up her new car. She had a quick breakfast, then got into her old Plymouth for the last time and drove to Coastal Chevrolet, a much-advertised suburban dealership where it looked like there were dozens of new automobiles on a spacious lot bounded by red and white pennants on tall poles. She was determined to keep her composure and act as if this was all routine and not her first time.
Mike Sodeman hurried out to meet her, welcomed her with a big smile, and said her car was waiting. They went directly to the gleaming BelAir hardtop faux convertible Mike had ordered for her.
On her first visit to the dealer, Feigen had looked at a car like this except that it was two-toned. It had a cream-colored top and red bottom and she told Mike she wanted one just like it except all cream. She’d paid no attention to the interior. When her car came it was bright red inside and she had been very much put out with herself for such a foolish oversight. But now she liked it. Others might find it gaudy, but she preferred to think of it as a flamboyant expression of her good taste.
Mike handed her the keys. She managed to stay calm until she drove off the lot, back onto the highway. In a final gesture of good salesmanship, Mike had tuned the car radio to her favorite station and the metallic notes of Perez Prado’s melodic and cheerful instrumental, “Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White,” drifted from the speaker. She pumped her fist in the air and shouted, “Yes, Rachel, it’s yours!” So much for the Feigen mantra.
When it came time for her to meet Marie Saillot she was still in high spirits, although it was no longer because of the car. She was at last going to learn more about Guy. Not merely Guy Saillot the missing person, but Guy Saillot the individual human being—this mother’s son. She was barely aware that she was driving a new Chevrolet as she set out for her appointment
by
Robert Hays
Vanilla Heart Publishing
USA
Copyright 2011 Robert Hay
One will rarely err if extreme actions be ascribed to vanity, ordinary actions to habit,and mean actions to fear.
—Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
ONE
THE TENNESSEE BEND Motel squatted on a level strip of land carved into the side of a steep Appalachian ridge like a thin slice pared from a luscious apple. All around it, the trees were well into their September colors, leaves on the tall oaks and hickories ranging from dull browns to brilliant reds and oranges mixed with scattered splotches of lingering summer green. There was a busy highway in front, but it was at the bottom of the slope, some hundred yards distant. It carried traffic heading north from Knoxville and south from Kingsport and was an everyday path for the constant comings and goings of locals.
The ample grounds of the Tennessee Bend posed a stark contrast to its surroundings. There was no formal landscaping. Shortleaf pine and black oak trees appeared to have been planted haphazardly to provide shade for chosen areas of the parking lot, and the only touch of elegance was a rose garden that stretched across the crown of the incline, along the edge of parking spaces adjacent to the front row of motel rooms. The summer roses that welcomed visitors were still vibrant and from inside the lobby, looking down the slope toward the east, the garden made an appealing foreground in a picture-postcard view of Cherokee Lake.
Although only a narrow neck of the lake was visible, the scene was a stunning sample of the region’s ubiquitous natural beauty. The Bays Mountains and the foothills of the Great Smokys lay in the distance, while to the west the forested hills rising behind the motel gave way to the razor-spined, peakless pleats of the picturesque Clinch Mountains, which stretched northward toward the Cumberlands.
Rachel Feigen was tired when she checked into the Tennessee Bend, after the long drive from Baltimore, and unsure where to begin. She already had a deep emotional attachment to this assignment and had come to face it with a sense of dread. This one did not hold much prospect for a pleasant outcome.
Not that Feigen was accustomed to happy endings. She had just spent a grueling three weeks piecing together a story on the effects of the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education ruling, and was left discouraged if not downright despondent by what she’d found. In the several months since the court had struck down “separate but equal” as a legal basis for racial segregation in the schools, little had been done to implement the court’s decree. This was not what she had hoped to find.
Her disappointment in the investigation’s outcome pleased Bill Skyles, her editor at the Associated Press. Skyles demanded absolute impartiality when his reporters’ work went to print, but he wanted them to understand and feel the impact of their stories.
Her editor was sufficiently impressed with Feigen’s performance on the story to hand her a new assignment that he called the most important one he had. He said it could be her biggest challenge since joining the AP national reporting team and she’d dug into the story just deep enough to see that he was right.
Feigen had barely managed to get three days off. Skyles wanted her to get onto the story immediately. She was eager to tackle this new project, but she had an accumulation of personal things to attend to and she wanted at least one day when she could sleep in and have nothing to do. Reluctantly, Skyles gave in.
Friday was the first of her precious days of freedom. She slept late, took a long, luxurious shower, and had breakfast at lunchtime. Then she called her father in New York. As usual, Judge Max Feigen skipped the pleasantries and got straight to the point.
“Your series on school integration was very perceptive,” he told her. “I’m proud of you, Rachel. But not surprised. I knew you’d make a good journalist.”
“I owe it all to you, Daddy. We grew up thinking the New York Times was the gospel and journalists were the last best hope for the world—after the law, of course. You never even finished your first cup of coffee until you’d read every word of the front section of the Times.”
Her father chuckled. “I still do pretty much the same thing, but it takes me quite a while longer. My eyes aren’t as good as they used to be. That’s one of the prices of old age, I’m afraid.”
“You can’t imagine how hard it is for me to associate old age with you,” she said. “To me you’re still that stern, uncompromising judge that must have scared the hell out of evil-doers when you wore your robes and then turned into a loveable old softy when you got home to Morrie and me.”
“That was the happiest time of my life, Rachel, but we have to live in the present. It seems like I’ve been retired forever. Your mother and I just rattle around now in this big old empty house.”
There was a clear note of melancholy in his voice. It had been one of her biggest worries that after all the years when he’d put in endless hours to keep up with the law, insisting there was no margin for error in his determination to hand out justice in his courtroom, her father would find retirement difficult. He had told her once that retirement was nothing less than a fast track to senility and he didn’t look forward to it.
“But now you have time to read all those books you never could get to before,” she said, hoping to give him at least a modest shot of encouragement.
“Yes, of course. And I do more reading than these old eyes are up to. But bring me up to date on you. What kind of story are you off on now? Something in-depth like the school integration story?”
“That’s exactly why I called you,” she told him. “Have you heard anything about a missing man from Baltimore named Guy Saillot?”
“I don’t think so. Who is he?”
“Nobody who’s very important, as far as I can tell. But his family is.”
“And so what’s your story?”
“Saillot’s been missing for more than two weeks. He left Baltimore to visit a friend at the University of Tennessee, as I understand it, but he never showed up there. His family is prominent here and the Sun has run a couple of stories on it, but the authorities don’t seem to be pushing it very hard. Anyway, my editor is sending me to look for him.”
“His name sounds French.”
“Yes. His father’s a big shot with the Franco-American Transatlantic Company’s Baltimore office.”
“The University of Tennessee, that’s in Knoxville?”
“Yes.”
Now there was concern in his voice: “There’s a lot going on in the South these days, Rachel. This isn’t going to be dangerous, is it?”
“I don’t see how it could be,” she answered, trying her best to sound confident. “But I’ll call you every few days and let you know what’s happening. Okay?”
“You be sure and do that, angel. And take good care of yourself.”
Feigen felt guilty for not having told her father what she already knew about the Guy Saillot case. But she still held out some slight hope that she was mistaken in her first impressions of Anton Schuler, the FBI agent in charge. There was no way she could have said much without getting into what Schuler had told her, and being as perceptive as he was her father would have picked up on her doubts in an instant.
She also had deliberately avoided mentioning another big thing coming up in her life, one that was much more pleasant. It had been a mantra of the Feigen family for as long as anyone could remember that pride in personal possessions, no matter what they were, was selfish. She would have been embarrassed to let her father know that she was as excited as a little girl at a birthday party because she was about to get her first new car.
Feigen had set her heart on one of the new 1955 Chevrolets the instant she saw the line introduced in a Life magazine advertisement. Her old Plymouth was just about done for and Skyles had recommended she see Mike Sodeman, a salesman he said wouldn’t talk down to her just because she was a woman.
Mike turned out to be an agreeable young man and, true to Skyles’s promise, he began at the outset to talk about things like V-8 engines and horsepower and transmissions and not colors and upholstery fabrics. He helped make her purchase easier than she expected and the car would be ready for her to pick up first thing in the morning.
For now, though, she needed to push aside all thoughts of the new car and her father and Feigen family mantras and whatever, and force herself to refocus on the Guy Saillot story. This meant going back over her notes and looking for any detail she might have missed. Agent Anton Schuler had irritated her to the level that she felt lucky to have any information at all.
It had been clear from the minute she walked into his office that Agent Schuler was not especially concerned about finding this particular missing person. “The FBI has a lot of important things to do,” he told her flatly, “and I’ll give it to you straight. Looking for a queer little Frenchman who probably found a boyfriend and decided to hide out for a while and have fun isn’t real high on our list.”
His attitude had taken Feigen by surprise. It took her a moment to recover and get back on track with the questions she wanted to ask.
“Who was he visiting in Knoxville?”
“We haven’t released that information,” Agent Schuler said matter-of-factly. “It wouldn’t do you any good anyway. He says Frenchie never got there.”
“He called him ‘Frenchie’?”
“He may have called him ‘Darling’ for all I know. The point is, we’ve checked him out and his story holds up. He’s not involved.”
Feigen’s patience was at an end. “If Guy Saillot weren’t homosexual, would you assume he’d found a girlfriend and was shacked up somewhere, not worth your time to look for? That’s a pathetic way to operate, Mister Schuler. I’d expect more from the FBI.”
She had left Schuler’s office more angry than she’d been in a very long time.
It took only a few minutes for her to go over her skimpy notes. Guy Saillot was twenty years old. He was a slight man, barely five feet, four inches tall and weighing about a hundred and thirty pounds. He had a sallow complexion, green eyes, and black hair. Nothing on what he might have been wearing, nothing about his habits—except his sexuality. The FBI wasn’t even sure how long the young Frenchman had been missing.
Feigen had no intention of working on her free time, and she had two more days off before she left for Tennessee. But she couldn’t get Guy Saillot out of her mind. When she couldn’t stand it any longer she picked up the phone and dialed the number of the Saillot home for probably the twentieth time. This time there was an answer.
“This is the Saillot residence. Hello.”
Surprised finally to have someone pick up the phone, Feigen fumbled for words. “I’m sorry,” she said, “may I ask who I’m speaking with?”
“This is Marie Saillot.”
“Miss Saillot, or missus, my name is Rachel Feigen. I work for the Associated Press and I’m doing a story about Guy. Are you a member of the family?”
There was a lengthy pause. “I’m Guy’s mother,” the woman said then. “How can I help you, Miss Feigen?”
Feigen was nearly breathless with anticipation. “Missus Saillot, would it be possible for me to come and talk with you? Anything you can tell me about Guy might help us find him. Anything at all. I’ve talked with the police and the FBI, and my editor is sending me to Tennessee to see if I can track down something they may be missing. I truly apologize for intruding on your privacy, but you could be very helpful to us if I could have just a few minutes of your time.”
After another pause, but this time a shorter one, Guy Saillot’s mother consented. Could Feigen come by her house tomorrow afternoon? And please don’t bring a photographer.
Feigen skipped dinner and made a list of questions for tomorrow. There was so much she didn’t know. Marie Saillot obviously was her best hope, yet she felt guilty for invading a mother’s private grief. Surely to have a son missing, a son who apparently had never been in the least bit of trouble, would be as difficult as anything a mother could face. The uncertainty must be terrible. On the one hand Feigen was eager to learn more about Guy Saillot, the person, but on the other she dreaded looking into the eyes of Marie.
She hardly slept that night. She had interviewed people faced with tragedy before, and it always left her with a hurt inside that sometimes lasted for days. This one might be the worst.
In the morning she got up early, eager for her meeting with Marie Saillot and mildly excited about picking up her new car. She had a quick breakfast, then got into her old Plymouth for the last time and drove to Coastal Chevrolet, a much-advertised suburban dealership where it looked like there were dozens of new automobiles on a spacious lot bounded by red and white pennants on tall poles. She was determined to keep her composure and act as if this was all routine and not her first time.
Mike Sodeman hurried out to meet her, welcomed her with a big smile, and said her car was waiting. They went directly to the gleaming BelAir hardtop faux convertible Mike had ordered for her.
On her first visit to the dealer, Feigen had looked at a car like this except that it was two-toned. It had a cream-colored top and red bottom and she told Mike she wanted one just like it except all cream. She’d paid no attention to the interior. When her car came it was bright red inside and she had been very much put out with herself for such a foolish oversight. But now she liked it. Others might find it gaudy, but she preferred to think of it as a flamboyant expression of her good taste.
Mike handed her the keys. She managed to stay calm until she drove off the lot, back onto the highway. In a final gesture of good salesmanship, Mike had tuned the car radio to her favorite station and the metallic notes of Perez Prado’s melodic and cheerful instrumental, “Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White,” drifted from the speaker. She pumped her fist in the air and shouted, “Yes, Rachel, it’s yours!” So much for the Feigen mantra.
When it came time for her to meet Marie Saillot she was still in high spirits, although it was no longer because of the car. She was at last going to learn more about Guy. Not merely Guy Saillot the missing person, but Guy Saillot the individual human being—this mother’s son. She was barely aware that she was driving a new Chevrolet as she set out for her appointment
Friday, January 27, 2012
Friday - How He Does It - Robert Hays
We all know there are six elements in writing fiction and often fact. Who, What, When, Where, Why and How. I believe the first five lead to the sixth which for me is the plot. What's your take on this?
I agree in general, but with a slight difference. In my years as a newspaper reporter and even more years teaching journalism, I’ve always emphasized the so-called “five Ws and an H.” When we report news—factual information—we often are describing events that already have happened. The city passed a stiff zoning ordinance. There was an accident and someone was hurt. These are the “who,” “what,” “when,” and “where.” The “why” and “how” may be unknown or they may be obvious. In either case, this leaves the emphasis on the first four elements. We strive to tell the reader these, clearly and concisely, right at the beginning. News reports often are one-time stories, so that we never come back to the “why” and “how.” We move on to new stories.
In writing fiction, on the other hand, we have ample time to develop characters and setting. These are the “who” (characters), the “when” and “where” (setting). The “what” could be part of either the setting or the plot, and the “why” and “how” are likely to be integral to the plot. The plot is how we get from the beginning to the end of our story, so that what happens to our characters and why, and how events affect their lives become the story.
1.How do you create your characters? Do you have a specific process?
This is an excellent question, and one I never really thought about before. I don’t have a specific process. I usually have the principal characters in mind when I start writing, then develop them as seems appropriate. I usually do not try to model a character on an actual person or persons, though they may be composites of more than one person I’ve known. The first real exception to this is a character in Blood on the Roses, FBI Agent Charlie Monroe. I wanted him to be a true Southern gentleman and I modeled him after my wife’s great uncle from Columbia, South Carolina. Everything Agent Wilson says or does, I hope, is reasonably close to the way Uncle Frank would have said it or done it and his physical description fits Uncle Frank (who passed away a good many years ago but is still remembered fondly).
2. Do your characters come before the plot? Do you sketch out your plot or do you let the characters develop the route to the end?
For me, characters and plot come hand-in-hand. That is, I know when I begin a story who the principal characters are and how the story is going to play out. Sometimes I find I need to add additional characters to help carry the story and flesh out the plot, but I normally expect these to be minor characters. I have been surprised, though, when a “minor” character I like becomes more significant than I had planned. For example, the character Mack Brown in Circles in the Water was added merely to facilitate the plot but became one of my favorite characters.
3. Do you know how the story will end before you begin? In a general way or a specific one?
I usually know precisely how the story will end. I write a beginning and an ending, then bring the two together. In my four novels, the only exception to this is The Baby River Angel. I knew in a general way how it would end, but I was well into the story before I decided to make Baby Angel a real angel. The alternative—because I wanted her to stay with her new family—would have required some sort of tragedy that separated her from her biological family and I wanted this to be a light-hearted story all the way.
4. Do you choose settings you know or do you have books of settings and plans of houses sitting around?
I’m more comfortable working in settings I know. But this often means researching a place that I haven’t visited for a long while to see how it’s changed. Or I may transport a detailed setting—a house or a room, for example—to a different location. I feel safe in generalizing settings like a cheap motel room or a school classroom, which I can assume will be pretty much the same wherever it is located. I want the reader to be able to “see” the setting very much as I see it. A friend who wrote in-depth personality profiles for the Washington Post carried a camera when he did his interviewing and snapped photos of the setting, then looked back at the pictures when he wrote to make sure he was describing the setting in accurate detail. My hope is to accomplish the same realism.
5. Where do you do your research? On line or from books?
Both. The Internet is a wonderful resource that allows us to visualize places virtually in a way that is almost as good as visiting them in person. I can get a street view of Paris or a bird’s-eye view of the Alps on my computer screen. However, when it comes to factual data, we have to be careful using Internet sources because we know they often are not reliable. Also, to get a true “feel,” I’m not comfortable until I read about a place or thing. This probably is essential if you are writing an historical novel, in which case I prefer contemporary sources as my reference. When I wanted authentic World War II combat detail for The Life and Death of Lizzie Morris, I turned to actual military battle reports from the U.S. Seventh Army invasion of Sicily and official U.S. Marine Corps histories of the war in Vietnam. As a former newspaper reporter, I enjoy getting into the newspaper library and studying contemporary accounts of events that may fit into my storylines.
Thanks very much for your great questions, and for giving me this opportunity.
Cheers, Robert
I agree in general, but with a slight difference. In my years as a newspaper reporter and even more years teaching journalism, I’ve always emphasized the so-called “five Ws and an H.” When we report news—factual information—we often are describing events that already have happened. The city passed a stiff zoning ordinance. There was an accident and someone was hurt. These are the “who,” “what,” “when,” and “where.” The “why” and “how” may be unknown or they may be obvious. In either case, this leaves the emphasis on the first four elements. We strive to tell the reader these, clearly and concisely, right at the beginning. News reports often are one-time stories, so that we never come back to the “why” and “how.” We move on to new stories.
In writing fiction, on the other hand, we have ample time to develop characters and setting. These are the “who” (characters), the “when” and “where” (setting). The “what” could be part of either the setting or the plot, and the “why” and “how” are likely to be integral to the plot. The plot is how we get from the beginning to the end of our story, so that what happens to our characters and why, and how events affect their lives become the story.
1.How do you create your characters? Do you have a specific process?
This is an excellent question, and one I never really thought about before. I don’t have a specific process. I usually have the principal characters in mind when I start writing, then develop them as seems appropriate. I usually do not try to model a character on an actual person or persons, though they may be composites of more than one person I’ve known. The first real exception to this is a character in Blood on the Roses, FBI Agent Charlie Monroe. I wanted him to be a true Southern gentleman and I modeled him after my wife’s great uncle from Columbia, South Carolina. Everything Agent Wilson says or does, I hope, is reasonably close to the way Uncle Frank would have said it or done it and his physical description fits Uncle Frank (who passed away a good many years ago but is still remembered fondly).
2. Do your characters come before the plot? Do you sketch out your plot or do you let the characters develop the route to the end?
For me, characters and plot come hand-in-hand. That is, I know when I begin a story who the principal characters are and how the story is going to play out. Sometimes I find I need to add additional characters to help carry the story and flesh out the plot, but I normally expect these to be minor characters. I have been surprised, though, when a “minor” character I like becomes more significant than I had planned. For example, the character Mack Brown in Circles in the Water was added merely to facilitate the plot but became one of my favorite characters.
3. Do you know how the story will end before you begin? In a general way or a specific one?
I usually know precisely how the story will end. I write a beginning and an ending, then bring the two together. In my four novels, the only exception to this is The Baby River Angel. I knew in a general way how it would end, but I was well into the story before I decided to make Baby Angel a real angel. The alternative—because I wanted her to stay with her new family—would have required some sort of tragedy that separated her from her biological family and I wanted this to be a light-hearted story all the way.
4. Do you choose settings you know or do you have books of settings and plans of houses sitting around?
I’m more comfortable working in settings I know. But this often means researching a place that I haven’t visited for a long while to see how it’s changed. Or I may transport a detailed setting—a house or a room, for example—to a different location. I feel safe in generalizing settings like a cheap motel room or a school classroom, which I can assume will be pretty much the same wherever it is located. I want the reader to be able to “see” the setting very much as I see it. A friend who wrote in-depth personality profiles for the Washington Post carried a camera when he did his interviewing and snapped photos of the setting, then looked back at the pictures when he wrote to make sure he was describing the setting in accurate detail. My hope is to accomplish the same realism.
5. Where do you do your research? On line or from books?
Both. The Internet is a wonderful resource that allows us to visualize places virtually in a way that is almost as good as visiting them in person. I can get a street view of Paris or a bird’s-eye view of the Alps on my computer screen. However, when it comes to factual data, we have to be careful using Internet sources because we know they often are not reliable. Also, to get a true “feel,” I’m not comfortable until I read about a place or thing. This probably is essential if you are writing an historical novel, in which case I prefer contemporary sources as my reference. When I wanted authentic World War II combat detail for The Life and Death of Lizzie Morris, I turned to actual military battle reports from the U.S. Seventh Army invasion of Sicily and official U.S. Marine Corps histories of the war in Vietnam. As a former newspaper reporter, I enjoy getting into the newspaper library and studying contemporary accounts of events that may fit into my storylines.
Thanks very much for your great questions, and for giving me this opportunity.
Cheers, Robert
Thursday, January 26, 2012
The Story Behind - Shortcut To Love - Contest
Beginning a new and soon to be weekly event on the blog. Usually this is a day of interviews but today's guest never sent her interview and I was looking to start something new there so I thought I'd start with putting up a book each week or in the case of a series and give away an autographed print copy of each book, starting with the publisher with the fewest books.
How did this book come apart. I wanted to write something funny. Not realizing how difficult this was I began with the premise of Zelda who loved Michael who seemed to be going through the alphabet. Where does she fall, at the very end. Then at that time, all my stories were set in the medical world in some fashion I devised the situation. Their childhood encounters were fraught with events that put Michael on the receiving end. I decided Zelda would be the one or most of the time. I was off and running.
Unfortunately the publishers I was trying looked on him as a womanizer and never read much beyond the opening pages. Then I discovered epublishing and somehow I now have maybe the only romance at Clocktower. They're really into science fiction. But they have kept the book and it turned out that what I've really written is a farce. a tongue and cheek look at Medical romances.
Zelda has loved Michael for most of her life, but he seems to be working through the alphabet in his search for a wife. She's a Z and it will be years before he reaches her. Besides, when they're together, strange things happen, usually to him. How can this nurse show the doctor, she's what he ordered to make him complete? The author calls this a "doctor nurse spoof" and we think you'll really enjoy it!
Shortcut To Love by Janet Lane Walters is the best romance novel I’ve read in a long time. Why? Because it has everything I crave when I sit down to read a romance.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3AJanet+Lane+Walters+-+Shortcut+To+Love&keywords=Janet+Lane+Walters+-+Shortcut+To+Love&ie=UTF8
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/Shortcut-To-Love---Janet-Lane-Walters?keyword=Shortcut+To+Love+-+Janet+Lane+Walters&store=nookstore
How did this book come apart. I wanted to write something funny. Not realizing how difficult this was I began with the premise of Zelda who loved Michael who seemed to be going through the alphabet. Where does she fall, at the very end. Then at that time, all my stories were set in the medical world in some fashion I devised the situation. Their childhood encounters were fraught with events that put Michael on the receiving end. I decided Zelda would be the one or most of the time. I was off and running.
Unfortunately the publishers I was trying looked on him as a womanizer and never read much beyond the opening pages. Then I discovered epublishing and somehow I now have maybe the only romance at Clocktower. They're really into science fiction. But they have kept the book and it turned out that what I've really written is a farce. a tongue and cheek look at Medical romances.
Zelda has loved Michael for most of her life, but he seems to be working through the alphabet in his search for a wife. She's a Z and it will be years before he reaches her. Besides, when they're together, strange things happen, usually to him. How can this nurse show the doctor, she's what he ordered to make him complete? The author calls this a "doctor nurse spoof" and we think you'll really enjoy it!
Shortcut To Love by Janet Lane Walters is the best romance novel I’ve read in a long time. Why? Because it has everything I crave when I sit down to read a romance.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3AJanet+Lane+Walters+-+Shortcut+To+Love&keywords=Janet+Lane+Walters+-+Shortcut+To+Love&ie=UTF8
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/Shortcut-To-Love---Janet-Lane-Walters?keyword=Shortcut+To+Love+-+Janet+Lane+Walters&store=nookstore
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Wednesday - About Plot - Puzzles
A puzzle plot or a device used in writing a book means mystery. Who done it? Who's going to do it? Why did it happen? What happened? Where did it happen? When did it happen? How did it happen?
One of the tricks is to hide the evidence in plain sight. This means clues given to the readers to solve the mystery. The writer is challenging the reader. Can they solve the puzzle before the hero or heroine in the story does? If not can they have one of those "of course" moments and wonder why they didn't see the solution first.
Begin with introducing the characters, and all that goes with this. Let the reader see what they think will happen. Perhaps it will or maybe it won't. From there go into the action of the story, showing the main characters finding clues, some may be true and some false. Following a false lead will add tension. This story can end with the mystery solved, the criminal punished or with an open end leaving the reader to speculate.
One of the tricks is to hide the evidence in plain sight. This means clues given to the readers to solve the mystery. The writer is challenging the reader. Can they solve the puzzle before the hero or heroine in the story does? If not can they have one of those "of course" moments and wonder why they didn't see the solution first.
Begin with introducing the characters, and all that goes with this. Let the reader see what they think will happen. Perhaps it will or maybe it won't. From there go into the action of the story, showing the main characters finding clues, some may be true and some false. Following a false lead will add tension. This story can end with the mystery solved, the criminal punished or with an open end leaving the reader to speculate.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Tuesday's Inspiration - Muse or Not
Reading through an old Writer's Handbook I came upon a short piece by Sidney Sheldon. One part caught my attention. The importance of having a schedule and to sit down and write even if the muse was absent. This calls for organization and setting a certain time to write. This led me to thoughts of the "Muse." I think I'm a writer without one. The story ideas come and I sit down to write. There is no creature on my shoulder telling me what to put down on the paper. I write even on those days when I would rather not.
I do wish I could understand what role a muse played in a writer's career. Waiting for some inspiration and writing only when this inspiration is hot wouldn't get much writing done. I've found at times forcing myself to face a segment in a story when I don't feel like writing brings some very good segments.
Yesterday, I began typing in the first chapter of a story and suddenly I realized it was, not all wrong but that the story had begun in the wrong place for the kind of story I intended to tell. Not all of the chapter is lost work, some pieces will be saved and worked into the new beginning. The point here is that I didn't wait to be inspired by a mythical muse but by my knowledge of the characters and the way the story should be told. I also know if I wait for a Muse, I'd never get any writing done.
What about you? Do you write every day or sit and wait for the "Muse" to tap you on the shoulder?
I do wish I could understand what role a muse played in a writer's career. Waiting for some inspiration and writing only when this inspiration is hot wouldn't get much writing done. I've found at times forcing myself to face a segment in a story when I don't feel like writing brings some very good segments.
Yesterday, I began typing in the first chapter of a story and suddenly I realized it was, not all wrong but that the story had begun in the wrong place for the kind of story I intended to tell. Not all of the chapter is lost work, some pieces will be saved and worked into the new beginning. The point here is that I didn't wait to be inspired by a mythical muse but by my knowledge of the characters and the way the story should be told. I also know if I wait for a Muse, I'd never get any writing done.
What about you? Do you write every day or sit and wait for the "Muse" to tap you on the shoulder?
Monday, January 23, 2012
23 January - Week Behind and Week Ahead
Finished the edits for The Chosen of Horu and sent it off. What really psyched me was the note from the publisher saying she'd revised her schedule so she could read the book. Hopefully I'll hear something soon about it being publishable. That project took the whole week and hopefully I found all the typos etc.
This week I'll be doing the rough draft of a Surprising Seduction. So far the story is blocked in and I'm typing the first chapter in now. Going amazingly well but who knows what will happen next.
This week I'll be doing the rough draft of a Surprising Seduction. So far the story is blocked in and I'm typing the first chapter in now. Going amazingly well but who knows what will happen next.
Sunday, January 22, 2012
3 Blog Visit Sunday
http://terryodell.blogspot.com/
http://www.rinkworks.com/fnovel/
http://karenselliott.wordpress.com
http://www.rinkworks.com/fnovel/
http://karenselliott.wordpress.com
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