 Most writers have a favorite writing method. For instance, some swear by Scrivener (me), while others write in Word or Google docs. Some prefer to draft longhand (me as well depending on my mood), using fountain pens with purple ink and notebooks. Many of us have a favorite writing book, too. I have three shelves devoted to craft books that have helped me understand storytelling, and demystify several aspects of writing. Today I'm helping to usher a new writing guide into the world: The Emotion Thesaurus (Second Edition). You may have heard of The Emotion Thesaurus before, or even own a copy. The original's lists of body language, thoughts, and visceral sensations for 75 unique emotions made brainstorming character expressions and reactions so much easier, and were immensely helpful in the editing process. It deservedly became a bestseller. Now, there's a bigger, better second edition. Huzzah! Angela and Becca have added 55 NEW emotions such as Euphoria, Vindicated, and Schadenfreude. So many new ways to mess with our characters! (And that's not all that's new, either...the book is almost twice the size as the original. More words and ideas with which to play.) Anyway, if you're interested in checking it out, and you really should be, you can read some of the reviews on Goodreads or find information here. But that’s not all...are you ready for this?  GIVEAWAY ALERT!
Wish you could attend a free writing retreat, go to a conference, snag a seat at a workshop, or have your professional membership to a writing organization paid for? Of course you do! Well, at Writers Helping Writers, one lucky winner will get one of the above, up to a $500 US value. How cool is that?!? This is the giveaway of a lifetime, so hurry over to enter!
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Hi everyone! Today's an exciting day because I've been helping Angela and Becca at Writers Helping Writers keep a BIG secret: what the next book in their thesaurus series will be. It might seem strange for an author to not tell their readers about the book they plan to release...unless your names are Becca and Angela. They are known for writing books on showing, not telling, and couldn't pass up a chance to do just that by waiting for the cover reveal, which is today! So without further ado, I give you...The Emotion Thesaurus Second Edition!  You might have heard of The Emotion Thesaurus before, or even have a copy. The original released in 2012 and quickly became the go-to guide on expressing character emotion. The book's lists of body language, thoughts, and visceral sensations for 75 unique emotions made brainstorming character expressions and reactions so much easier. In this second edition, the authors have added 55 entries, bringing the total to 130 emotions. That's not all, either. This book is almost double in size with lots of new content. You can find a full write up for it HERE and a list of all the entries (plus some samples!) HERE. Plus, this book is available for preorder! You can find it right now on Amazon, Kobo, Apple Books (iTunes) and Indiebound. One last thing I wanted to mention... Angela & Becca are giving away a free webinar recording of one of their popular workshops on Emotion, so head over if this is an area of struggle for you. It might really help! I can't wait to get my hands on a copy! Full disclosure: the Amazon link above is Angela's affiliate link.
 A few weeks ago I was a guest on Love Romance Reads sharing my favourite Christmas cookie recipe (you can read it here) in which I mentioned the difficulty I had in choosing a favourite candy bar. I’m a firm believer in the use of rewards and chocolate is my go-to reward for achieving a writing goal. Or as comfort should I receive a four-page, single-spaced editing letter for my latest romance novel. If I could have only one specific chocolate bar for the rest of my days, it would be a Nestlé Coffee Crisp. No, wait, I’d choose a Cadbury Fruit & Nut bar. I tell a lie, I’d pick a Lowney Cherry Blossom. Actually… I think you see my problem. Thinking of that last one, the Cherry Blossom, reminds me that I do have a firm favourite within a box of chocolates. If you were to share from your box of chocolates, perhaps that box of mixed chocolates you bought just in case guests dropped in as they are wont to do this time of year, and if the variety contained a chocolate covered cherry, be assured that I would choose the chocolate covered cherry. Every. Time. Certainly, I enjoy the pecan clusters, and the toffee, and the hazelnut thingies, but my first love in the boxed chocolate world is the chocolate covered cherry. Now I must confess to a bit of skulduggery. If the box of chocolates is one of those with two layers, as most are, and the chocolate covered cherry has already been eaten from the top layer, I’ve been known to sneak into the second layer, before the top layer is completely eaten, and take the chocolate covered cherry. I know this breaks a long-held tenet of boxed chocolate eating etiquette but I can’t help myself. Perhaps this requires a public service announcement. Ahem… If I’m anywhere near your box of chocolates, and if, upon exposing the second layer for the first time (or so you think) you discover the chocolate covered cherry is missing, be assured it was not an error in the packaging. DO NOT send an angry email or letter or telegram to the chocolate company demanding a refund or some other form of redress. Also, if chocolate covered cherries are your favourite you might consider removing them from the box of chocolates, both layers, before offering the box to me. What is your favourite candy bar? Or if you no longer eat sugary treats, which treat do you fondly recall from your childhood? Don't forget to sign up for my monthly newsletter - exciting news will be coming soon! Slowly but surely the new house is coming together. More importantly, my study/office is taking shape. I still need storage units of some sort (for paper type stuff and for yarn type stuff) and a worktable. But I bought a proper chair for typing. Now my butt won’t fall asleep after sitting for more than seventeen minutes. No, I haven’t timed the interval before butt sleep but I think seventeen minutes is a good guess. I’d hoped to get an all-mesh chair – seat and back – but the only one of that style at the store had a headrest that just got in my way. It could be removed by taking out a few screws, but why pay for something I wasn’t going to use? So the chair I bought has a cloth seat and a mesh back. Quite comfy and with good lumbar support. For the second addition to my study, let me tell you a little story. Once upon a time, a long, long time ago – about seven months back – I had a writing cave on the main floor of our former house. But the printer was located in Hubby’s office on the lower floor, connected to my computer via wi-fi. However, sometimes my computer didn’t play nicely with the printer. I’d click “print”, trot downstairs, only to find – nothing. Blergh. So, up I’d go, try to figure out what happened (a futile proposition given my Luddite tendencies), press “print” again, and again trot downstairs only to find – you got it – nothing. BLERGH! So, up I’d go, grab my laptop and take it to the printer, swearing quite colourfully along the way, and finally get the darn thing to print. Frustrating to say the least. Well, new house = new rules. I got my own printer right next to my desk (a treasured heirloom) so I need only spin my chair a hair and there it is. I’m approaching “the end” of the third book, Love & Redemption, in my historical series. Which means it’ll soon be time to print the manuscript for the final edit before sending to my publisher. (I use “final” in the broadest of senses. Final for that week. Final for the time being. Final only until the next round.). I always find typos in the printed manuscript that snuck by me on the screen. And if I need to do a more rigorous edit, I do a better job working with pen and paper. So much more satisfying to slash with a pen than to hit the delete key a few times. Cheers! The life of an author ain’t easy. When I’m not actually writing new words, I’m revising or editing already-written words. But that’s only half the job. The other half is trying to get my books into the hands of readers.
The mother of uphill battles. The good news is that I’m not alone in my travails. The community of romance writers is the nicest group of people ever. Always willing to share advice, experience, ideas, or just a kind word. I’m so lucky to have wonderful critique partners to provide feedback, bounce ideas off of, and hold the occasional bitch session. I’m also lucky to have close friends who are also fellow authors. The fact that they live in a different country in a different time zone matters not. We chat online daily. But it’s not just idle chit-chat. We chat with a purpose, which is to be successful as authors, self-published and with traditional publishers. To that end we took advantage of the new year – with that whole resolution malarkey – and we set goals. Not wishes, not dreams (become the next Nora Roberts AND land a movie deal), but sensible, achievable goals. (I won’t turn down that movie deal should it arise.) The key to sticking with goals, for me, is to break them down into manageable chunks. Saying I want to have the first draft of a new book written by April 30 does me no good. But with a little math and a little cogitating, I can set the goal of writing two thousand words a day, Monday to Friday. That will get me to my goal of a first draft by the end of April even if I have a sick day, or I take a day off to choose paint colours for all the white walls in this house. I know I can write 2K words in a day because I’ve done it many times. Another thing about goals, they work better if you’re publicly accountable. Which is where my author friends come in. We “meet” online every Sunday at 8:00 pm AST to report on our progress for the week. Some weeks we applaud and cheer everyone’s success. Some weeks we discuss what went wrong and brainstorm ways to make the coming week better. We are not alone. This past week I read a fellow writer’s blog (my apologies for not remembering who that was) in which she recommended including a word count widget on one's blog to keep track of writing progress. Another way to be publicly accountable. So I’m going to dig around on this blog thingie and try to come up with a suitable widget. (Heavens, the newfangled words we use nowadays!) Cheers! P.S. Newsletter subscribing opportunity is located here. Book launch day! Love and Turmoil is available for purchase! At The Wild Rose Press, Amazon and at Barnes & Noble.  Is any day more fabulous than this? Aside from giving birth, of course. And getting married. That was a fabulous day. Also when our kids graduated from high school and university. More fabulous days. But after all that, seeing my book out in the real world is pretty darn special. Knowing that other people are going to meet the characters and hopefully enjoy their antics is thrilling. But also a little nerve-wracking. Like sending your kid off on the first day of school and hoping they make friends. The characters in my books are very real to me and hold a special place in my heart and I want other people to like them as much as I do. Or hate them as much as I do if the character in question is a bad guy/gal. I still think about the characters in my previous books and wonder how they’re doing.
I can’t wait for you to meet Arabella and Sam and discover how they met, why they’re attracted to each other, and witness the troubles they face. Boy oh boy, they face some tough times. <insert maniacal laugh> I’m guest blogging at Night Owl Reviews today and sharing an old family recipe for the most delicious cookies. Stop by to grab the recipe and whip up a batch. Your friends and family will think you’re more brilliant than usual! Here’s the last excerpt I’ll be sharing for Love and Turmoil (NOW RELEASED!!!) “Please stay a bit longer. This will take but a minute, and then we will find somewhere to be alone.” He touched her cheek. “You haven’t eaten your supper.” He rested his hand on her waist and pulled her close. “I could survive feasting on you.” He kissed her neck, his warm breath heating her entire body. She leaned into him, turned her head, and captured his lips. He was indeed hungry, and she gave him all she could, teasing his lips with her tongue, biting his lower lip before sucking it into her mouth. She grasped his shoulders and pressed closer, wanting to absorb him into her skin. He trailed his kiss along her jaw and nipped her earlobe. “Yes?” She nodded before resting her head on his chest. She’d been seconds away from pushing him to the ground and mounting him like a horse. Here’s the story premise, aka the blurb, aka the back-cover copy: Six months after burying her wastrel husband, Lady Arabella Woodbridge has resigned herself to a lonely life in the countryside with only her two adopted nieces for company. Being a young, respectable widow is – frustrating. Then the charming and wickedly handsome Samuel Payn takes up residence in the neighboring manor house. Retired explorer and occasional pirate Samuel Payn is on a two-fold mission – retrieve buried loot, and locate the father who abandoned his mother to a life of poverty. But a gang of murderous villains is also after the buried treasure. And someone is threatening to tear apart the lovely widow’s family. Will Sam’s single-minded determination to uncover his true identity threaten Arabella’s happiness - and his life? Cheers! |