The Werewolf and the Rancher is done!
It is on Kindle now and will be on Amazon within two weeks. I'm so happy.
Now, to the next book. :) I still plan on touching my teen novel up and publishing it soon.
I have to get back to actually writing though. I've done a little play writing, simple scenes that are not part of any story, but nothing real. I have one book about sixty pages in that I was really enjoying, but it stalled a while back when I got busy in the real world. I really must get back to Serenity, I left the poor girl in the hands of slavers.
Her story is actually the second in a set of four. The Jordon sisters are Witches and each get their own story, of course. Harmony's story is written, just needs formatting.
Anyway, I'm taking a break from working on books. I want to sit and do some writing (which is not really work if I'm not struggling), but I am not editing or reformatting. It's going to be a busy two weeks so I may not even get much writing done. We are going on vacation next weekend, leaving Saturday for Disney. So many things need to be done for our vacation. Of course, there is a Girl Scout meeting tomorrow, a ceremony night.
It's been a nice weekend though. Saturday I went to two birthday parties, one for a child and the other for her mom. The mom's party was much more fun.  Yesterday we went to a pool party at a different friend's. And today, we went to the beach. It's been a really nice family weekend. (the adult party was not a family thing, but still good)
So, I think I'm going to stop rambling. Maybe I can do a little writing.
Check out my website for the links to but my book, or just search on Amazon.
Let me know what you think, please.

Doing the final edit of The Werewolf and the Rancher. Hoping to have it ready to send back in a day or two. Hopefully that means it will be on sale within a month. I wrote this story three years ago and have had it set aside, as just a silly romance. Pulling it back out though, I fell back in love with Kayla and Randy.
Aside from doing a final edit on The Rancher, I've done little writing this past week. My house has been busy, between Girls Scouts, two different camping trips, schooling the children, and all the other demands of running a home. :) I hope this week will be a little slow, but it doesn't look like it. Already, we have two Girl Scout meetings, two birthday parties this weekend (One for a kid and one for an adult :) ) and grocery shopping of course. I hope that will be all the running around I have to do. I plan on spending the rest of the day with the kids, doing their school work.
I plan on pulling my teen novel back out soon. I've read it recently and believe she is ready to print. I love this girl and her friends. It has all the classical monsters; a witch, werewolf, vampire, ghosts, zombies. I feel this story is a teen novel like that ones I read as a teen. There is no sex, no cussing, ect. The content is appropriate for young teenagers.

Free Flow Writing

Originally posted on April 23, 2011

Revised May 8 2013

So I have a new story going. It started out as a ten page short story, just a quick little thing, but it’s already thirty-four pages and haven’t decided how the two main characters are going to fall together; it is a romance, though some mystery too. Stories like this one can sometimes turn out to be some of my best because I’m not trying to force myself to figure the plot out, I’m just letting it go where it will. Sometimes stories like this stay short and easy, sometimes they end up full length books, and sometimes 70-100 pagers. Most of my best work is when I don’t really have a plan for the characters, other than an idea or two. I work best when I let the story fall out as it happens, let my people make their own choices, and not try to figure the plot out before I start writing. This is the problem I’ve been having with my PI series. Her first book flowed out because i was just expanding on a short story. The second one was a little hard, but not by much. I had the obstacle in mind, but still let the characters live the story to me (even though doing so screwed with my plans a little). I’ve found now that I want to write her third book, I’m having trouble. I can’t just start another book with her without knowing at least a little of what’s going to happen, but every time I try to start writing with an outline for the book, I screw it up completely or hate the work within pages of starting. Romance is easiest to write in the free flowing style I do best, which is why so much of my work is romance, but my PI is my fav character, my biggest outlet of my violent side. This new story is a romance, but it’s about a cop so there is mystery to it too. I don’t know how long the story will be, but I’m enjoying writing it. I’m actually writing solely from the male’s point-of-view, not first person, but staying with the man instead of the woman as I do with most of my works. Well, I’m going to go back to my male witch and see if he’s solved his murder case yet. 

Character Decisions

Original Post: May 22 2010
Revised May 8 2013

I don’t decide how my characters live their lives. I create them, give them personality, then they live. When I’m writing a book, I come up with some sort of idea of what may happen, then jump into their lives at some point. They decide what they do and how the story goes. Just because I think something will happen, doesn’t mean it does. Many times I’ve wanted to have something happen, but the characters make decisions that end up leading away from my idea. I fully believe in letting my characters run the show, after all it is their lives, I’m just writing it. I rarely know what’s going to happen next in any of the stories. And it’s not just the main characters that do this to me, most of the minor characters do it too, just less often since they are minor parts. I write like life, you never know what’s going to happen next, and you can’t make someone do something they don’t want to, and you can’t make them change it once they have.

Speaking of my characters making their own choices. I had the next ten to twenty pages planned out for Blair and Erik (the lead characters in one of my books). It was going great, then Erik had to go and do something unexpected, changing everything. I’ve had to go back and reread everything I’ve wrote on the book to figure out how to make his decision and following consequences fit in with the plot I had set out in my head. Well, to be fair to Erik, it wasn’t just him. A new character jumped in from nowhere and helped force Erik’s hand so to speak.  Sometimes it’s hard when your characters rule and you’re just riding along. Makes for interesting writing though, except for when it ruins what you were planning.

Scenes

Original Post: June 25 2010

Revised May 8 2013

Sometimes I get these scenes in my head that don’t happen for awhile. I usually have to let theses scenes play out in my head, I’ve found it’s easier than trying to fight my mind back on track and takes less time. Some of these scenes take place so far in the future that they probably would not even be anywhere in the series. I used to try to write these scenes so they would be done when I got there, if it was within the book’s time frame. I’ve found I cannot do this. It’s like trying to write out a five hour span of your life six months in advance, you can’t. There are so many factors going on that what you think will happen, may never come to pass. For example, when I sat down to start the second book in my Kat series, the one after Blood Natured, I wrote the ending to the book before I even finished the first page. I thought it was a good thing, I knew where I wanted the story to go, I just had to figure out how to make that ending happen. That ending never happened. By the time I got about two thirds of the way through Halloween Blood, I knew I couldn’t use the ending I wrote. It just would not work the way I originally wanted. I had a couple scenes in Halloween that were like that. I stopped trying to advance write and just go with the natural flow, living minute to minute with my characters. I still get these advance scenes, and I do go over them in my head, watching them unfold, but I don’t write them, just store them away. If it’s something that can be part of a book, I put the idea on my board, but that’s it.

Music and Writing

Original Post: May 25 2010

Revised May 8 2013

Like a lot of writers, I listen to music while I write. Certain genres go with certain stories for me, help me separate the different worlds.  If I’m listening to the wrong music, I have trouble getting into the story, to concentrate properly. Like I can’t listen to rock while I’m working with Kat (romance character). She is more mellow, so more country to me. Now Blair (action/horror), I can only write her to rock. (I mean rock from the eighties and nineties, though maybe 2004, and hard rock) The type and artist change throughout her stories. Some scenes I listen to the same few songs over and over until I finish the scene because those songs put my mind in the right mindset for the scene. With Kat I’m not so particular, as long as I’m not listening to rock/rock.  I wrote my witch to country too. Most of my short stories I write to a mix of all my music, though one of them I wrote completely to a selection of New Age. Music just helps my muse, gives me a background, a rhythm for my head to nod to.