My New Cover!

I'm thrilled to show you the cover for my upcoming book "The Girl Most Likely" which will be part of the Class of '85 series from The Wild Rose Press.  Here's a blurb and an excerpt:

Cara McLeod, the girl most likely to have the perfect marriage, is now divorced and, in her own words, “fat, frumpy, and over forty.” The thought of facing former classmates—and the ex-husband who dumped her—at her high school reunion terrifies her. Cajoled into attending by her kids and her best friend, Cara enlists help at the gym to lose weight and look great for the reunion. Personal Trainer Finn Cooper is more than willing to help—but does he have to be so to-die-for gorgeous?
Finn thinks Cara is perfect just the way she is. She’s everything he wants in a woman, except for one thing—she can’t get past the fact that he's eight years younger. To Finn, age and weight are just numbers. But can he convince Cara the numbers she worries about add up to only one thing for him—love?

Excerpt:

He chuckled. “Jessica better watch her back. You could give her a run for her money.”


He heard Cara’s throaty laugh, and various parts of his anatomy tingled in response. “Yes, that’s my evil plan. Take over Rochester Noon, then the world.”


“If you set your mind to it, I’m sure you could do it.”


“Thanks Finn.”


“For what?”


“For believing in me.”


“Are you going to be okay now?”


“Yes, I’m fine. Thanks to you.”


He wanted so badly to tell her he loved her, adored her, thought she was the most amazing woman in the world. But fear stopped him. Was she truly over her ex-husband? Why else would losing weight for the reunion be so important to her if not to impress Peter?

“I’ve got to run. Thanks again. I’ll talk to you later at my condo, right?”


“Absolutely. I can hardly wait to hear about your big TV debut. Break a leg. Isn’t that what they say in show biz?”

She laughed. “Yeah, that’s what they say. Bye.”

 

Finn replaced the receiver and closed his eyes. He hoped everything went well with this interview. Cara deserved to realize how amazing she was.

 

If she did come to that realization, would there still be room in her life for him?

So, no release date as yet, but I'm getting close to finding out. I can hardly wait. Yay!

Book Review - "Hooked" by Les Edgerton

The subtitle for this book is “Write fiction that grabs readers at page one and never lets them go”.  Isn’t this what we all want to do? We all know that if the opening to a book doesn’t grab an editor or agent in the first few lines, they’ll stop reading. This book aims to show writers how it’s done.

“Hooked” should be required reading for every writer. Les Edgerton does a great job of explaining what an opening scene has to accomplish and gives us detailed information as to how to craft that opening scene. I thought I knew a fair bit about openings, but this book taught me much more. Edgerton breaks down the parts of an opening into two components and ten distinct areas:

The primary components:

1. The inciting incident – The event or trouble that creates the character’s initial surface problem and hints at deeper problems under the surface. This is the problem that gets the story rolling.

2. The Story-Worthy problem – I’ve sometimes heard of this part of the story that operates on a more psychological level referred to as the internal conflict. The inciting incident may be the event that starts the story, but the story-worthy problem is what the novel or short story is all about.

3. The Initial Surface Problem – This is the problem that occurs as a direct result of the inciting incident. It may seem at first that this is what the story is about, but it’s not. There’s a deeper, more complicated story-worthy problem underneath that must be dealt with. The surface problem exists to propel the protagonist forward and take action and assists in the eventual revelation of the story-worthy problem.
 
4. The Setup – It ‘sets up’ the opening scene by giving information  that allows what will take place in the following scene to be clear to the reader. But don’t overdo. The general rule is to only give what’s absolutely necessary for the reader to understand the scene that will follow.

For example, in my own work, “Flawless” the inciting incident occurs when an agent from the Special Operations Executive springs jewel thief Hunter Smith from prison in England so that he can steal a priceless diamond, Le Coeur Bleu, from the Nazis in occupied France. This incident changes the course of Hunter’s life. The surface problem he faces is of course trying to find a way to steal the diamond without being caught. But along the way, as Hunter falls in love with French Resistance fighter Madeleine, he faces his real story-worthy problem; his inner belief that he is unworthy of love and will never be as good a man as Madeleine’s late husband, his friend Jean Philippe. I set up the opening scene by showing Hunter in an English jail, being interviewed by British spymaster Alastair Campbell. In the opening scene we learn he’s been in jail for jewel theft, that he’s American, and that his best friend Jean Philippe died trying to keep Le Coeur Bleu from the Nazis.

The Secondary Components:

5. Backstory – Backstory includes everything that’s happened up to the time of the inciting incident. A little backstory may be necessary in your opening scene, but Edgerton warns that putting too much backstory in your opening is dangerous; it can easily bog down readers in detail and worse, turn off editors and agents. Trust the reader to ‘get’ what’s going on without providing lengthy backstory.

6. The Opening Line – Edgerton says writers should spend a lot of time crafting this line. He says to make sure it creates a strong first impression.

7. Language – The opening is where you should create your most memorable language. Use original verbs and concrete nouns. Don’t overuse adjectives and adverbs.

8. Character Introduction – Introduce your characters by showing their reactions to the inciting incident. Those reactions reveal their personalities and create a first impression for the reader. Resist giving the character’s life story in the opening.

9. Setting – A glimpse of the setting should be included in the opening since it’s important to be grounded physically.

10. Foreshadowing – This means hinting at the action or obstacles to come. Foreshadowing may or may not be important to your novel, depending on the genre. For mysteries and thrillers, foreshadowing may be very important.

What I enjoyed most about “Hooked”, aside from all the good information, is that it is so readable. Edgerton uses lots of examples, and his style of writing is humorous and easy to read. Even though it’s a book on the craft of writing, and craft books can sometimes be a little dry, it’s an enjoyable book.
I highly recommend this book for writers of any genre. I know it’s one I’m going to refer to again and again. "Hooked" can be purchased at Amazon and at Writer's Digest Books.

Do you have a favorite opening line from a book?

Time and Space to Write



St. Michael's Hall

A couple of weeks ago I was fortunate enough to go on a writing retreat. My writing group, the Saskatchewan Romance Writers, goes on an annual retreat each spring at St. Peter's Abbey, a monastery and school in the Saskatchewan countryside. For three and a half days, I got to write, talk about writing, and spend time with writing friends.

The minute I step onto the grounds of St. Peter's I relax. It's quiet and peaceful, probably the most peaceful place I know. The only thing that breaks the silence is the sound of the occassional tractor or the singing of the birds.

St. Scholastica, the former convent where we stay.

I've written previously about retreats and how much I enjoy them. Even if you can't go away, you can still create a mini-retreat for yourself. For some ideas about how to get that retreat feel, even if you stay at home, please click here. For me, a retreat is a way to 'fill the well' of my creativity and a chance to simply think.

I enjoy going for walks and communing with nature while I'm at St. Peter's. I also like to visit the cemetary where monks have been buried as long as there's been a St. Peter's. It's my way of paying my respects. But mostly I'm there to write. And write I did. I finished the first draft of a new novella I'm working on. Yay! I was probably able to complete the novella because I could concentrate solely on the work without the rest of the world interrupting. Not once did I have stop to cook a meal, put laundry in the dryer or take the dog for a walk. Perhaps that's selfish, but I think a writer needs to be selfish once in a while so she can hear the voices in her head clamering to be heard. Every writer needs a little space and time.



Saskatchewan countryside with St. Peter's in the background.

I hope you enjoy my pictures of St. Peter's Abbey. I know whenever I look at them I'll remember friends, good conversations and ideas rushing through my brain! Have you ever gone on a writing retreat? Would you like to if given the chance?

Guest Blogging with Cherie LeClare

This week I'm being interviewed by author Cherie LeClare at  http://cherieleclare.com/blog  I'm talking about my latest release, "Flawless" and about what I'm up to now. I hope you can drop by!

Targeting My Audience

Photo Credit: Melissa Gray

I’m taking a class from Writer U right now called “Growing Your Audience: For Published, Unpublished, and Under-published Authors”. The whole concept is about finding an audience for my books and selling more copies.

We’re talking at present about targeting our audience for our books, a concept I have not even considered before. The idea is to focus our promotion efforts into identifying and finding those people who would be most inclined to read our books. One of the examples that Ann Charles, one of the co-presenters gives is of comedian Jeff Foxworthy, best known for his “You might be a redneck if…” schick. Ann says “Do you think he's interested in attracting white-collar urbanites of any age? Or gangsters? Or sticky-handed, Disney-loving munchkins? No. His target is the heartland of America-whether rural or blue-collar, and those from the low to medium income bracket. He's not so interested in age groups as a socio-economic target audience.”

So, as an exercise for the class, Ann and her partner Jacquie Rogers have asked us to write down who we think makes up the target audience for one of our books. Notice I say “one of our books”. Turns out that in promotion, one size does not fit all.  Patricia Fry, in her article “Your Book Promotion Plan” says “The point is that every promotional method does not necessarily work for every book. In fact, it might take an author several weeks or months of experimentation to develop a plan that’s appropriate for his or her title.” For example, for her book The Mainland Luau, How to Capture the Flavor of Hawaii in Your Own Backyard, Patricia targeted reviews in cooking magazines and cooking sections of newspapers. If her next book was How to Create a Hawaiian Garden, she’d have to take a totally different approach.

But I digress. First we have to figure out who are target audience is before we can aim our promotion towards them. Patricia Fry’s article “How to Determine your Target Audience” urges writers to take a close look at their book, whether it is fiction or non-fiction, and find some aspect of it that can be used to target an audience. For example, if your heroine is an animal lover and animals figure prominently in your work of fiction, you could target groups on the web devoted to animals and animal welfare, such as shelters, humane societies, kennels clubs etc.

It doesn’t hurt to have marketing in mind when you’re writing your book. For instance, Ann Charles wrote a series of mysteries set in Deadwood, South Dakota, knowing there would be a built-in audience for a story set in this historic western town. Jacquie writes: “Some authors will tell you that you should write the book of your heart. This is great advice, and we wholeheartedly agree. Write that book with your audience in mind, making sure to include the "what's in it for me" concept, giving them more bang for their buck than just 200+ pages of sentences.”

The book I’m targeting for this class is called “Flawless”. It is a historical romantic suspense set during World War Two in occupied France. A priceless blue diamond, “Le Bleu Coeur” has been stolen by the Nazis. They plan to barter it for weapons and supplies that could crush the Allies. The French Resistance, with help from a spy from the British Operations Executive, plans to steal back the diamond from the Nazis.

So, based on that, my target audience will be:

- readers of romantic suspense
- readers of historical novels
- readers of spy novels
- people who are interested in stories about WW2

I’m not sure whether I have listed all my targets, and at this point I have no idea how to find this audience on the Internet or anywhere else. Finding the audience I have identified will be the next part of this class, I’m sure.

Have you thought about targeting your audience? If you have, who are they? By the way, our presenters say that even if you are not published you can begin to target your audience, as long as you have a publishable product ready to go.

Taglines

My writing group, the Saskatchewan Romance Writers, is putting together an anthology of romantic short stories set in our province. Most of us in the group have contributed a story or two, and now as we prepare for publication, each of us is attempting to write a tagline for our story. I’ve never written a tagline before and oh my goodness, am I ever finding it difficult! How do you boil down the essence of a 1,500 short story (or a 50,000 word novel) to one succinct line? This line must tell a bit of the story, hint at the conflicts, and entice the reader. That’s a lot to ask of one little line!

Fortunately, Kat Aubrey, our intrepid editor for this project, has posted some helpful articles on our private blog to give us guidance. So liberally borrowing knowledge from these articles, written by people much better at creating taglines then I am, here’s what I learned:

1. From Michelle McLean, at the Query Tracker blog, I learned that a tagline doesn’t have to boil the whole book down to one line, but it does have to convey some important information, such as characters, conflict, distinction, setting and action. A tagline has to let us know a little something about who is in the story (the characters), and what problems (conflicts) they’re facing. Distinction refers to what distinguishes this book from all the rest; what makes it unique? Nathan Bransford calls this the flavor. According to Joanna Stampfel-Volpe of Nancy Coffey Literary it should let us know where the story is taking place, what genre it belongs to, and what kind of tone the book has; is it comedic, farcical, suspenseful, horrific? Lastly, the tagline should give a hint of the action we’ll see in the book/short story.

So with these things in mind, here’s my first attempt at writing a tagline for my story “Wings of Fire”:

Sometimes love finds you in the most unlikely places, like in the middle of the Canadian prairies in the middle of a war.

So going over the previous list, I think I’ve let the reader know the genre is romance (“love finds you”) and that the setting is on the Canadian prairies during a war, but which war? I haven’t made it clear whether we’re talking about the First World War or the war in Afghanistan. And I haven’t said a word about my characters or the action. And yes, I know I repeated the word middle. Back to the drawing board.

2. Next I checked out Nathan Bransford blog “How to Write the One Sentence Pitch”  He breaks down the pitch, or in this case the tagline, like this:

- The opening conflict – the first step in character’s quest
- The obstacle – whatever is standing in character’s way
- The quest – may be an physical of interior journey but it’s basically what happens to character during the story.

Bransford says that the basic pitch should go together something like this:  When OPENING CONFLICT happens to CHARACTER(s), they have to OVERCOME CONFLICT (obstacle) to COMPLETE QUEST.

Bransford also says that a good tagline is a description of what actually happens (the plot) rather than the theme of the novel (what the novel is about). The problem with theme as tagline (A young man comes of age and finds the meaning of life) is that it is very generic and doesn’t really tell us anything unique about this particular story.

Okay, so I’m going to try my tagline again.

A British pilot training in Saskatchewan crashes his plane in a farmer's field and unexpectedly finds a reason to believe in a future after World War Two.

This time I’ve got the character (the British pilot), the inciting incident, (crashing his plane), the setting and time frame (Saskatchewan in World War Two), the quest (surviving the war) but I think I may have lost the genre. Is it still a romance? Let’s try this one more time.

When a British pilot training in Saskatchewan crashes his plane in a farmer's field, he unexpectedly falls in love and finds a reason to fight for a future after World War Two.

Does this tell you something about my story? Does it make you want to read it? Let me know what you think in the comments.

3. Hilari Bell had some great tips. The one I liked best of all is “Don’t go it alone”. Sometimes we writers are so close to our stories that we can’t see the best tagline. For this same reason, the Saskatchewan Romance Writers are posting taglines on our private blog and asking for critiques. It’s great to have friends.

Like Nathan Bransford says, mastering the tagline won’t make or break or your writing career, but it’s a handy tool for quickly describing your novel or short story to editors, readers, or your pesky relative who keeps asking what you’re writing. And it’s a great exercise for learning to distill your story down to its basic elements.Check out movies trailers at The Internet Movie Database for examples of how the movies create taglines.

Do you like creating taglines? Do they come easily to you or do they fight you all the way like they do for me? I’d love to read some of your examples.

In other business, the winner of a download copy of “Flawless” for commenting on my post at Judy Nickles blog, The Word Place on April 26, is (drum roll please!!) Karyn! Congratulations! I hope you enjoy it.

I'm Guest Blogging This Week

This week I'm over at Judy Nickles' blog on April 27, 2011. I'll be taking my turn with other Class of '85 writers from the Wild Rose Press to talk about my contribution to the series, a story I call "The Girl Most  Likely".  Have you ever attended a high school reunion, either your own or someone else's? Tell me your story (or just say hello) and you'll be eligible to win a copy of my latest release, "Flawless". Come on by! I'll return to Jana's Journey on May 5 with a new blog.