Kiss and Tell

Hi, everyone. It’s my first time posting here so I’m going straight for the juicy stuff. I want to know the intimate details of your first time. Oooh, that’s right, baby! I’ll tell you if you tell me.

So let’s go.

My husband and I are building a house.

I know, I've heard the horror stories about divorce. In fact, I know a couple who DID divorce after building a house. I'd like to think that they had lots of problems before they got to the arguments about granite vs. formica, but those who have built tell me the housebuilding probably exacerbated those problems, kind of like hitting an existing wound until it turned a papercut into a broken arm.

One not so small secret about me is that I LOVE paranormals. I really, really do. And, though I'm scared out of my wee mind, I've got a story I can't pass up. I'm just going to have to write them. More scary, because then I'm going to have to sell them. And trust me, this is "get an agent" stuff, thus scary stuff. But, the important part is that I have to get the stories done before any of the scary stuff takes form.

So I'm sitting there, probably frowning and glassy eyed because Hubby wants to know what I'm thinking.

Brace yourself, we're about to head into trouble.

You Want Fries with that Beefcake?

So I was up at the gym the other day. Okay, okay, you caught me. I go every day. And, no, it’s not just to check out the guys. That’s a great bonus, but I really do exercise. Working from home, sitting at my desk all day writing, I need to get out. I confess, though, that while I’m at the gym I do get bored. I read, listen to music, watch the TV screens, and, of course, check out the guys. I can’t help myself. I may be middle-aged, but I’m not dead. Yet.

So here I am, in Connecticut for the week, part of a team sent here to conduct an audit of the Government folks who work at a major defense contractor’s plant. It’s not a fun undertaking, as most of the people are convinced we’re there to eliminate their jobs, or rat them out to their supervisors about something perceived or real (we’re not). To make it worse, the weather has been absolutely miserable, with constant rain and gray skies. The days have been long, beginning around 7 a.m. and continuing until 6 p.m. or later, with more number crunching and stats to pull together after we’ve returned to our hotel. Worse, I leave here on Friday and head directly to upstate New York (no offense to any New Yorkers intended) to conduct a similar audit at another office we have there, beginning on Monday. No passing “Go” and collecting $200. Go directly to Owego, NY.

Okay, so it's only two weeks later, but I'm only now recovering from RT. That's the Romantic Times Convention for those who don't know about it. This year it was held in Pittsburgh, it was my second time attending, and I'm already looking forward to going next year.

My husband made eggplant parmesan yesterday. It was, in a word, spectacular. It’s good to have a man that cooks and cooks often. The only problem is that we now have enough eggplant parmesan to feed a small army. I think it’s a man thing. The man in my life fears a phenomenon known as Not Having Enough.

We were talking about dialogue a little while ago, and how effective it has to be in books, and this morning, I tripped across an email on one of my loops about the never-ending battle of how romance readers/writers respond to the snarky comments we often receive from others who think romance novels and romance readers are silly, etc. I gave up worrying about that a while ago. My niece is a lawyer, and we all know what abuse lawyers take. I mean, are there any real jokes about romance writers? The poor lawyers and dentists really get socked. So, I don't feel so bad. And anyone who reads/watches anything, the sci-fi readers, the fantasy readers, etc, everyone gets picked on for something, so I don't worry much about defending my choices or my profession anymore. (I just ask them what they read and then mock theirs, LOL. . .no, not really. Even I am not that immature...)

Wait... where was I? (It's that kind of morning...). Oh, dialogue. Right. The thing about dialogue I realized, though is that it's part of the fantasy of a book, the same way beautiful people, beautiful clothes, incredible locations, perfect, sex, and heroes are.

One of the current big buzz topics in the fictional writing world is world building or world creation. It perhaps started with fantasy but really it is applicable to every type of fiction writing. And it is a particularly hot topic in historical circles and so I thought I’d share my thoughts..

One of the major aims of the writer is draw the reader into a world and keep her there for the duration of the novel. But because I write historical romance, this means that my world is always going to be anachronistic. To write in a historical time period means that you have had to research the period, rather than directly experiencing some aspect of the world. And the themes and situations that attract me as someone living in 2008 are probably different from someone living during that time period. The things I notice may be different as well.