All is Revealed - My Writing Process (blog hop)

Many thanks to Stacy Juba, whose forthcoming romantic comedy Fooling Around With Cinderella, I'm very much looking forward to reading, for including me in the Writing Process blog hop.  This seemed an interesting way to explore how I approach my writing from story idea to printed page, and to share my latest project.  Next week Misty Beller and Deborah Court will post their responses to the questions below.

1) What am I working on?


Due for release next week, my latest story is a contemporary romance with suspense The Nightclub.  Here
is the blurb: 

Trying to make a living for her teenage sister and herself, Laura Hamilton accepts a job offer as a hostess at an infamous nightclub. As she struggles to survive in a world of sex, drugs and corruption, she certainly doesn't expect to find her own knight in shining armour in the club's owner, Julian. But will he really save her from a future as a fallen woman? And is he involved in the criminal organisation that threatens not only her sister's life, but will change her own fate forever?

2) How does my work differ from others of its genre?

Like Stacy, I've published in a variety of genres, contemporary romance, romantic suspense, a psychological thriller and a modern ghost story.  I've even co-written a short science fiction story with my darling son.  All my stories involve people facing a dramatic emotional journey, which I try to make as realistic as possible to allow my readers to identify with them.  Although I like to include emotional or sexual tension, I don't write erotica and consider my romances to be 'clean'.  The Nightclub probably goes one step further than the rest, and I'll leave it to my readers to decide if that's a step too far.

3) Why do I write what I do?

I like to write the kind of stories I enjoy reading involving characters with whom I can really empathise, since I want readers to do the same.  That's not to say they are without flaws—Ellis Crawford in Killing Jenna Crane, for example, is one of the most unlikeable men imaginable; he's deeply flawed and his journey to self-discovery is fraught with difficulties.  Despite his faults, readers still manage to understand him and some even like him.  I'm not sure if I do, though.

4) How my writing process works

I used to need to have the whole story mapped out in my head before I began writing, but nowadays I've been known to sit at my computer with only the sketchiest of ideas and let the story evolve according to its own whimsy.  I wrote my best-seller Wishful Thinking that way.  It's great fun as it allows stories to evolve organically.  When I'm not writing, my brain is still swamped with ideas.  I have packs of pens and Post-It notes in every room in my house so I can grab one and scribble down ideas as they come to me.  I stick all these into an exercise book on my desk that I use for jotting down relevant names, places, dates, any details likely to recur throughout the story.  Once I've finished with each sticky note, it goes in the bin—nice and tidy—though believe me, I'm anything but a tidy worker!

Do be sure to catch the two great writers nominated to continue the hop next week—just click on their names to take you to their blogs:

Misty Beller was raised on a farm in South Carolina, so her Southern roots run deep, as does her love for Christian novels. Misty is a semi-finalist in the American Christian Fiction Writers 2014 Genesis Contest in the Historical Romance category, and is looking forward to the upcoming release of her debut Historical Romance novel by Prism Book Group.

Deborah Court lives in a picturesque European small town. A health

professional by day, at night she loves to write romances about elven warriors of deadly beauty, capable of making a woman die from sheer pleasure - or stories to awaken the deepest, most secret fantasies of her readers.

Deborah's bestselling debut novel Bound to the Prince, a fantasy romance featuring an Elven hero, was nominated "Best Book of 2011" by The Romance Review. Writing in both English and German, her favourite genres are fantasy/paranormal, erotic and historical romance; she also publishes young adult mysteries for Harlequin Books, Germany.

The Apple Tree and Bound to the Prince

 

[Please see previous blog entry]

The Apple Tree by Lynette Sofras is a contemporary romance of approximately 58,000 words

Escaping from your past is never easy, as young hospital doctor Juliet discovers when she tries to start afresh, leaving both her marriage and her career behind.  Love blossoms rapidly when she meets the mysterious and forthright gardener, Nicholas, who seems to herald the new beginning she craves.  The past quickly dissolves into insignificance as their all-consuming romance propels them forward but Juliet has to learn the price of happiness in the cruellest way possible.  Will she be able face the painful roots of her past in order for her future to grow strong and healthy?

Bound to the Prince by Deborah Court is a fantasy/erotic romance of approximately 100,000 words

Once a proud warrior, elven prince Elathan is living in exile, fallen from grace and separated from his own people. When he beholds a compelling mortal woman on a London bridge one night, he hunts her down and abducts her to be his slave of pleasure. Bound by magic and desire, Igraine Chandler finds herself in a world beyond her wildest dreams, fighting at her prince's side to reclaim his throne.

Feeding the Mechanical Cannibal

Friends always seem interested in the types of writing I get asked to do as a freelance writer and always ask me what I’ve been working on.  The short answer to their question is ‘anything and everything’ because there is not a single topic about which you can’t find some information on the internet – and all that information has to written by someone like me.

Every article needs to be informative and as accurate as possible (although I’m only too well aware that is not always the case with everything you read on the World Wide Web).  Needless to say, my knowledge is not encyclopaedic (if it only were, I would be applying as an understudy for the legendary Stephen Fry!) and of course worthwhile articles require painstaking research to give them any commercial value at all.  That, of course, means that I spend most of my day browsing the internet, sifting through the billions of words in search of reliable, verifiable facts.

I have two visions of the internet: one as something vaguely incestuous with interrelated links like a massively extended Eastenders family; and the other like a gigantic mechanical cannibal as it constantly feeds off its own kind, regurgitating the same information to be re-devoured and regurgitated in a slightly different way in order to evade accusations of plagiarism.  There are numerous devices available to check for copyright infringements, but after a few years of writing articles it become easy to trace these back to their source through their sometimes tortuous literary umbilical cords.  I have seen my own material re-created in this way and no longer feel indignant about what at school was once called ‘cheating’ but which has now become standard internet practice.  After all, it’s only words, and the spirit of the internet is to make knowledge accessible, which can only be a good thing.

Still, it does make general article-writing pall after a while.  Thinking up new things to say on a subject becomes more and more difficult as the internet expands at such a fast and mind-boggling rate.  Do we need one more article parroting the same information on this over-burdened super highway?  This is one of the reasons I have moved slightly sideways into editing and am finding this much more satisfying.

Most interesting of all is editing creative work.  With the growing popularity of ebooks, more and more writers are taking advantage of this platform to self-publish.  They say everyone has a book in them and just a quick glance at Amazon’s Kindle store seems to corroborate this urban myth.  However the internet also encourages brutal honesty and readers will write reviews telling you exactly what they think and one thing readers definitely dislike is reading a book with glaring errors of grammar, punctuation, syntax etc.  And this is where I come in.

I feel truly privileged to work with really creative people and help them to realise their ideas by tidying up a well-crafted story so that it flows properly and does not hinder its readers’ enjoyment of the narrative.  With my own aspirations to be a published writer, I can honestly say that this is a dream job – only one step away from enjoying success in my own right (or should I say write?)

Creativity and ambition are infectious too, it seems.  One particular writer for whom I edited an ebook quickly became a very good friend who began to encourage me in my own writing endeavours in a positive and helpful way.  The result was that within a week, thanks entirely to her, I published my first ebook on Kindle and that was a truly thrilling event for me!  It was something I had simply not considered for myself before.  The short blog to follow this will contain brief descriptions and links to both Deb’s debut novel (Bound to the Prince) and my own (The Apple Tree) and I would be equally thrilled if you chose to read either of them, as one shows my editing skills and one my writing.