Straight talk from the sisters about blood, sweat and ink
A bicentennial by definition is a 200th anniversary, although it is a landmark usually measured in years. Yet our bicentennial is barely one year old. Yesterday we posted our 200th blog post and while it might not seem like a momentous occasion to many, to us it is remarkable. We began this journey in August …
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I’m obsessed with the meet-cute. If you don’t know what a meet-cute is, it’s those quirky, funny and/or sexy ways two people meet for the first time. This is most often used for a romantic meeting, but it also works for future friends. Most people know the term meet-cute from the movie The Holiday, but …
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I am co-authoring this post today with one of my alter egos, Angelica French. Angelica writes romances of varying degrees of heat. (I have another alter ego, River Glynn. River writes paranormal, science fiction, and fantasy.) The fourth Tuesday of each month I’ll post about issues in romance, writing romances, or provide general information like …
Continue reading “Romancing the Genre”
I read a lot. And since I’m a writer, reading isn’t just entertainment, it’s instructional. I learn from every book, whether good, bad or middling. That’s what inspired “Reading For Writers 101.” Today’s lesson: Why character change makes a story worth reading. Months ago I read a book where, frankly, the main character was a …
Continue reading “Reading For Writers 101: Character Change, part 1”
If you’re like most of the writers I know, you’re not getting paid much to do what you do. You’re sitting up late at night or early in the morning. You’re writing between meetings and brainstorming quickly in the elevator on your iPhone while you rush off to make money until the day you can …
Continue reading “A Reason To Bleed”
As a young teacher I had a sign above my blackboard (back in the day when we still used chalk!) that said Class Rules: 1. The teacher …
Continue reading “Ho-Hum, I’ve Got the Editing Blues”
Everyone wants a book that explodes off the page like a supernova. The best compliment any reader can give a book is to say they couldn’t put down. It’s not easy to create a bang, which is why too many books open with a few sad sparks and no fully formed fireworks. There are some …
Continue reading “Does Your Book Open With a BANG?”
I took classical Greek in college. I loved it, sort of like doing word puzzles. What letter is this squiggle, what is the meaning of that series of squiggles? One thing I learned was that spacing between words and punctuation were relatively modern conventions meant to make literacy more accessible for larger numbers of people. …
Continue reading “Five Ways to Get to Know Your Characters”
This weekend I spoke on a panel at TAAFI (Toronto Animation Arts Festival International) about Writing for Animation, and it got me thinking about who writers write for. For example, as a screenwriter I write for the people who hire me (story editors, producers, broadcasters) and through them there’s a lot of focus on writing …
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Women’s fiction is our category this month. Just what is women’s fiction? Literature with women protagonists appear along a continuum of literary fiction to erotica. Quite a spread! Women’s fiction is closer to the literary fiction end but without the self-consciousness and pretension of literary fiction. By the same token, while there may be a love interest in …
Continue reading “What We’re Reading: Women’s Fiction”