In my recent workshop, The Character Arc, for Women Writing the West and the Surrey International Writer’s Conference, I referenced several books and a blog post/video that I would encourage everyone to check out.

Books:

Build Better Characters by Eileen Cook

Writing the Breakout Novel and The Emotional Craft of Fiction, both by Donald Maass

The Character Arc  by K.M. Weiland

Write Your Novel From the Middle by James Scott Bell

Blog/Video post:

How to Plot Your Novel in One Page

More Books:

Because more books is never wrong. Am I right?

Here is a list of my … Read more »

Are you ready to be off and writing? NaNoWriMo–National Novel Writing Month–which challenges a writer to draft a book in a month–begins next week and so before you begin furiously writing your story, I have three tips to ensure your story keeps moving forward for NaNoWriMo success.

1. Before You Start

Prewrite. Over this weekend, consider jotting down an outline for your story. It can be as simple as setting up your Scrivener files and filling your Corkboard with all the ideas you have brimming around inside of you! You’ll find as you fill out your story, more ideas … Read more »

This house, the Parkison House, at the Grand Encampment Museum absolutely steals my heart. I am utterly in love with it and the way it invites me to come inside, teased its way into my heart and just begs me to tell my story here. Inside these walls.

And in my own way, I am.

I am using this house for my characters, Savannah and Inola–I knew it was their home the moment I walked in. In its day, it was considered a very nice, fancy house, what with two parlors and a dining room and three bedrooms overhead, … Read more »

You can never presume that you know how things were done in the past. Never. Take something ordinary like skiing.

You’ve been watching the Olympics, or perhaps you actually ski. I used to. So I know how to do it. And most likely how it was done 120 years ago. I mean, it’s skiing.

Or do you?

Because as much as you think you know a thing, you’ll be researching along and come to a picture that sets all your beliefs, your descriptions of skiing on their ear. Drops you in a snowbank, on your head and laughs at your … Read more »

Since I am getting this question a lot lately, I’ve decided to start talking about what I’m working on–since it is not a romance. Not per se. It is more of a historical fiction. And a quirky one at that. The story is set at the turn of the century (1907, thereabout) in a very fictional mining town in Wyoming.

Yes, that is a bit of a departure from Regency England. Okay, make that a HUGE departure from Regency England.

But I had to write this book. This story. It has been rattling inside my head for about 7 years, … Read more »

One of the most overlooked parts in romance novels is the M word: Marriage. We write and write about the parts that lead up to that commitment

, but how often do books look at what happens after the “I do” except in romances that are slated as “Marriages of Convenience.”

I never set out to write Six Impossible Things as a Marriage of Convenience story–it isn’t by my way of thinking, more of a “Marriage-That-Had-to-Be”. In fact, in my original synopsis Roselie and Brody marry where weddings usually occur in historical romances, about two pages from the ending. … Read more »

Counting Down to 20

So when I got to this point in my writing, I decided I wanted to write about a collection of spinsters from a small village who had no hope of ever getting married. They weren’t great beauties, they weren’t fabulously rich, or well-connected. Just ordinary girls from a village.

I could see this trio of friends so clearly: Tabitha-smart, kind and hard-working, Daphne–all full of opinions and grand aspirations, and finally, Harriet–loyal to a fault, utterly sensible and a secret romantic. Okay, maybe not so secret–but don’t tell her brothers, they would tease her to the … Read more »

Countdown to 20

Sometimes books just belong together, and these three, HOW I MET MY COUNTESS #13, MAD ABOUT THE DUKE #14, LORD LANGLEY IS BACK IN TOWN #15

, isn’t so much three separate stories but one large bit of inspiration, connected by a web of links to so many of my other books that at times it made my head swim, and at their heart, these three books are about finding friendship in the most unlikely of places.

Inspiration

As I was writing Love Letters from a Duke, I had come up with a detailed family … Read more »

Countdown to 20

So after dishing yesterday about the covers I, u-hum, don’t like, I get to rave and rave about this one. I nearly swooned when I saw the artwork for TEMPTED BY THE NIGHT. In fact, the next thing I did was contact the artist, Jon Paul, and beg him to let me buy it for my office.

It hangs there to this day. What I love about the full artwork that you don’t really see on the cover of the book are all the wonderful details of this night scene. The carriage, the shadowy street. … Read more »

Countdown to 20

Where do I start with SOMETHING ABOUT EMMALINE

, my sixth Avon Romance? One of my favorite of favorites–if authors are allowed such things. I absolutely ADORE this story. But as much as I fell in love with Alex and Emmaline, it is the inspiration that is wild.

The spark for SOMETHING ABOUT EMMALINE came from, of all places, an exit sign on State Route 16 in Washington for the following: Sedgwick Rd, Tremont St, and Clifton Rd. Sedgwick, Clifton and Tremont. Those names just haunted me with heroic possibilities. I had to write their stories, … Read more »