Five Fun Facts - Tory Richards

1 - I was a twin

2 - I once raced my car 110 miles an hour

3 - I won a six grade school spelling bee competition

4 - I was on a plane on 9/11

5 - My soul mate is 30 years older than me
 

Multi-published, best selling author has a new sizzling romance in print with The Wild Rose Press!

All the Right Moves

Annie McCall finds a patient dead in her office, and now she's on the run for her life. Detective Marshall Thomas is willing to break the rules to protect the beautiful doctor, but who will protect her from him? It isn't long before the only danger Annie's facing is the sizzling heat between the sheets.

Check it out at: www.toryrichards.com

Tory Richards

Author of sizzling romances!

Website

Blog

And the Winner is

And the winner of my two stories, His Ship, Her Fantasy and His Hope, Her Salvation, along with two TWRP eBooks of her choice is...

Gale Stanley

Thanks to everyone who stopped by. And, for those curious about which of my lies was actually the truth...

a. I've worked on the hardware/software integration for the International Space Station. I was offered the job, but didn't actually take it.

b. I've been involved in a high speed police chase. Truth. I was minding my own business, driving down the freeway when I look in my rearview mirror and see a car riding my bumper. All of a sudden, the driver swerves into the next lane, barely missing the car in the next lane. Then he's back in my lane.

 

Knuckles white. I'm left wondering, "What the #%@#!" 

I relax, but then suddenly I'm surrounded by police cars. 

Everything is happening so fast. Cars speed by at 70-80 miles an hour. All I can do is drive and pray I don't get hit by the crazy maneuvering of all the drivers.

c. I used to drag race my Camaro SS. I never did, but I attended some road rally events.

d. I've played in the World Series of Poker. Haha. In my dreams.

e. I am one of twenty children. The actual number is 16. (Dad had 14 kids. Mom had 5. Together they had 3.)

f. I missed getting the free Big Texan 72 oz steak by five minutes. Can anyone really eat that much meat in one day?

g. I've sunbathed topless in Europe. I have been to Europe, but no topless sunbathing.

Five Fun Facts - Brenda Whiteside

1. I have a huge crush on Nathan Fillion (Rick Castle) and I don’t even try to hide it from my husband.

2. I like to write in first person about a heroine on a journey of self-discovery. I was warned away from first person when I first began writing Sleeping with the Lights On. I’m glad I didn’t listen.

3. Although I prefer to fish with lures, I can bait a hook with a slimy, squiggly creature if I have to.

4. I belly danced during halftime of a Phoenix Sun’s basketball game.

5. If I could have only 3 things to wear in my closet, they would be a long denim skirt, a pair of jeans, and a white tee shirt from Eddie Bauer. If I could have only two pair of shoes (I can hear my husband laughing at that number), they would be a pair of brown leather knee high boots and flat leather sandals.

Blurb:

After two failed marriages and countless relationships, Sandra Holiday thinks she’s met the man to end her years of less than perfect choices; choices that not only derailed her travel-related career plans but also left her single and broke. 

Carson Holiday, a Las Vegas country crooner with swoon-inducing good looks, spent his adult life pursuing a recording contract and love, never holding on to either. After eighteen years, he drops back into Sandra’s life, reigniting an attraction he can’t deny.

When Carson reappears, Sandra must choose again.  Only this time, nothing’s as it seems.  A secret admirer, a redheaded stalker, and an eccentric millionaire throw her on a dangerous path, with Carson her only truth.

As life confronts her with yet another turning point, will her decisions find her eternally sleeping with the lights on – or will she finally discover a way to turn them off?

 

Excerpt:

“Man, this weather is good chili weather.” He stretched his arms in appreciation of a Minnesota spring night. The phrase rang pure Texan. I guess you can’t take Texas out of the Texan no matter how long he’s been a Las Vegas entertainer. “Let’s do this again tomorrow night.”

“I have plans,” I said relieved. Sort of. This evening, supposedly a one-time meeting should be a brief hello. I had a life.

“Your caller?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

He actually said good. Why did he find every aspect of my life so pleasing?

“Then lunch?” He found my hand in the darkness, our fingers spontaneously interlaced. “We haven’t had nearly enough time to talk. Unless, we extend this night.”

“I don’t think that would be such a good idea.” Actually, extending the night would be a great idea for all the wrong reasons. “I have to get up early for work.” I needed to call Wesley and put Carson out of my mind. Carson Holiday needed to slip back into my past.

“Then I’ll take you to lunch tomorrow.” He affectionately nudged me with his shoulder.

“When do you go back to Vegas?”

He hesitated. “In a day or two.”

“You sound rather vague.” And still allusive. What could be the big secret about this charity gig he couldn’t divulge?

“I have a few more things to find out. I’ll be out of here as soon as I get all my questions answered. It’s complicated.”

We’d reached the edge of my apartment complex.

“Carson, honestly, how complicated can a gig—”

Pulling me around, we stopped, facing each other. My head said run like hell, but my legs wouldn’t respond. Mushy from wine or Carson and moonlight. I couldn’t be sure which.

“Have lunch with me tomorrow, darlin’.” His fingers slipped from mine to gingerly brush along my forearm. The moonlight caught in his eyes. “Another hour of your time with a long lost friend?”

“Yes.” My voice went all husky and come-hither. I wanted to kick myself for being so easy.

“Good.” Grasping my hand again, he led me toward the door. “What’s the address of your office?”

I struggled to shake off the moon shadows and to remember where I worked. Once inside the building, I took a scrap of paper from my purse and wrote the address.

“I’ll walk you to your door and say goodnight,” he said, tucking the scrap of paper in his pocket. “Unless you want to have me in for a goodnight drink.”

I didn’t answer. If he’d only known the extent of my uncertainty at that moment, a little persistence might have made me cave. “Okay, then—” His mouth gaped.

I followed his bewildered look to my apartment door.

       TRAMP

Creative Writer Blogger Award

The rules are as follows: 

1. Thank the person who gave this to you.
 

Thank you to Kerri Nelson for the outrageous award!

2. Copy the logo and place it on your blog.

3. Link to the person who nominated you.

4. Tell up to six outrageous lies about yourself, and at least one
outrageous truth – or – switch it around and tell six outrageous
truths and one outrageous lie.

a. I've worked on the hardware/software integration for the International Space Station.

b. I've been involved in a high speed police chase.

c. I used to drag race my Camaro SS.

d. I've played in the World Series of Poker.

e. I am one of twenty children.

f. I missed getting the free Big Texan 72 oz steak by five minutes.

g. I've sunbathed topless in Europe.

5. Nominate seven “Creative Writers” who might have fun coming up with outrageous lies.

a. Catherine Bybee

b. Cate Masters

c. Sarah Simas

d. Lynne Roberts

e. Jennifer Johnson

f. Debra St. John

g. Mary Ricksen

6. Post links to the seven blogs you nominate.
 

7. Leave a comment on each of the blogs letting them know you nominated them.

Five Fun Facts - Alison Chambers

Five Fun Facts about Me

1. The first creative writing I can recall doing involved an exercise in sixth grade. The teacher said write a story about the Lost Moon. Everyone else wrote about the cow jumping over the moon. I wrote a story about buried pirate treasure in a cave.

2. Nancy Drew was my hero. She inspired me to write mystery and suspense stories when I was fifteen. She was always smart, tough and rescuing others: the perfect portrait of a romantic suspense heroine.

3. I love Alfred Hitchcock, Clive Cussler and Dan Brown.

4. I am fascinated by unsolved mysteries and historical what-ifs, which always play a large part in my stories.

5. I am a Pisces and enjoy all things nautical (go cruising twice a year to escape the long Wisconsin winters) even though I get seasick.

The Secret Sentinel Blurb

Three lost keys to untold riches. Three cryptic rhymes. A secret society's deadly plot.When museum curator Savannah Rutledge steals her father's treasure map to impress her boss, Winston Gale, and his handsome son Eric, she unleashes a Pandora's box of horror. Her father is killed and she is framed for murder. To atone for her father's death, she sets off on a cross-country chase for the treasure that ends with a dangerous showdown in the Superstition Mountains near Phoenix. To get there she and a sexy stranger, Antonio Desada, follow a perplexing trail of clues that lead them to the keys that will unlock the mystery. Constantly moving, they must elude the police and the vicious Gales, hot on their trail once they realize they're missing a critical part of the map. Seductive and mysterious, Desada also provides the keys to a treasure of another kind. Will Savannah find the treasure—and love--before it's too late?

 

The Secret Sentinel Excerpt

"Do not keep anything from me. Something tells me you are. Still protecting your father?" 

"Right, and when did you get your psychology degree?" She got to her feet and stalked off, combing every room of the second floor, bravely opening closed doors, for the moment unafraid of what she would find.
 

Desada had touched a nerve, accusing her of holding back, and she didn't like it. Not because he said it, but because she believed it herself.
 

Had she buried something her father had told her in her subconscious? Was she intentionally sabotaging the effort out of cowardice or fear?
 

The rooms she searched were empty except for cobwebs, lizards, and a few pieces of crumbling furniture--rocking chairs, a threadbare sofa, a urine-stained mattress, discarded beer bottles.
 

She felt Desada's brooding presence looming behind her. "Don't go off like that again. Wait for me."
 

"A lot of help you'd be. Probably let me take the first bullet."
 

"You know that's not true."
 

"How do I know that? You’re only using me to get what you want!"
 

He grabbed her arm. "Listen, if we're going to continue in this together, we need to set a few rules. Rule one, no emotions. Absolutely none. That's one thing we don't need. We need cold detachment. We need to survive, Savannah. Don't you understand what we're up against here? We've got death facing us around every corner. We can't afford to--"
 

"I don't need you dictating to me. That's one thing I don't need. Do you understand? That's not going to guarantee my allegiance to you. What we need is a little equality, a little fifty-fifty deal. Besides, you're the one who keeps trying to kiss me."

Jim Gilbert and the Writing Process

THE WRITING PROCESS

By

Jim Gilbert

Many authors refer to the writing process as an almost magical means of getting their thoughts onto paper for eventual publication. I say “magical” because each author seems to have his or her own way of translating those thoughts into the wonderful prose we all treasure. They expound on their individual methods at conferences and conventions, pointing out both the benefits and, often, the drawbacks of their techniques. However, if each author has his or her own writing process, how is a budding author with dreams of book signings, library visits, and being featured at the above mentioned conferences and conventions ever to find the way that suits them? It is my hope that this article will offer a little hope to those suffering in the wasteland that writer’s block often feels like.

The most common piece of advice that new writers usually receive from seasoned professionals is “write what you know.” That’s fine, in as far as it goes; you can’t very well write about something you know nothing about, so stick with things you do know intimately and/or in which you have a strong interest. However, I don’t feel that “write what you know” goes far enough. I think a better bit of advice is the old adage “know thyself.” If this seems a little too broad to be of real practical value, please bear with me. Some authors have been able to make writing their primary source of income, and they treat writing like a regular job. In fact, a very prolific science fiction/fantasy author makes writing a 9-to-5 job: he enters his home office at 9 AM sharp, spends the first hour on correspondence (fan mail, emails from his agent and publisher, etc.) and phone calls; writes at his computer for three hours, takes an hour for lunch, writes at his computer for three-and-a-half hours, uses the last half-hour for more correspondence, and leaves his office at 5 PM sharp. Now, while this is great for him, most of us just haven’t reached the point where we can depend solely on the income from writing (at least not yet, but I still have hope). If you have not yet hit it big, you have to work your writing time around your regular work schedule, household chores, family issues, etc. Besides finding the time to write, there are other things to consider. Do you like to write in a quiet atmosphere, or do you prefer to have music or some other noise in the background? Do you have a special room or corner that is your “office,” or do you write anywhere you can find the space amidst all of your family’s stuff? Do you write in spits and spurts, or do you have nonstop, marathon writing sessions? Do you wing it, or do you have a plot outline written down that you stick to rigidly? As for myself, I use a laptop computer on a small table at my couch, have the TV running to listen to in the background, use a flexible plot outline (I know key points in the story and where they fit in, and I fill in the “spaces” in between those points in moving from one point to the next), and when I hit a patch of writer’s block (knowing what I want to say, but not exactly how I want to word it), I pause and play a few hands of spider solitaire before going back to writing (letting it percolate in the back of my mind as I play the card game). So you can see it’s not “just write what you know,” but also “know thyself” that’s important to today’s author. Of course, I also need to know what to write, and for that I need to do some research.

No matter how much you think you know about a topic, you can always do with learning some more. You never know when some little tidbit that you learned in some book or from a class or even from some conversation may be useful. I thought I knew a lot about ghosts from reading stories about real ghost, documentaries, and even a couple of encounters of my own, but I learned something new about ghosts in Charleston, South Carolina, while watching another documentary on TV. Lo and behold, I was able to devote a whole chapter in my novel, A Host of Ghosts, based on one of the ghostly legends of Charleston. For another example, I already knew a good deal about motorcycles when I needed one for a chapter in my novel, The Once and Future Now. I needed a bike that was fast and light, but powerful enough to carry two people while handling the stunts I required of it. The answer? Research. And despite what I had already learned about the Irish Republican Army and its efforts to expel the British from Ireland and eventually seek a peaceful resolution to the conflict, I need more information on the key players and operations of the IRA, as well as information on MI6, particular towns and locations in Ireland, France, and England, and the Hellfire Club. What did I do? Research. With a little studying of the information I collected, I was able to see the novel play out in my head as if I had a movie screen in my mind playing the action in front of me. All I had to do was write down what I saw as it happened. Even if you’re creating a world or universe from whole cloth, what happens in that world/universe still have to make sense within the rules you set up for it as well as rules that your readers will understand. Willing suspension of disbelief (which you expect your readers to adopt if you write science fiction, fantasy, horror, or some combination of them) only goes so far. Learn something about ecology, sword fighting techniques, battle tactics, medieval technology, blacksmithing, farming, woodscraft, etc. if you are going to write a fantasy novel. After all, you can’t believably have deadly swarms of giant monsters attacking and wiping out whole towns in a medieval setting without understanding why they are attacking, what they normally feed on when not attacking a town (is there enough wildlife in their normal territory to support those large numbers), what kind of organizational system do they use (pack, flock, herd, etc.), how they have been repelled if this has happened before, etc. You also need to know something about how a large city and a small village work in a medieval setting in order to make your settings and characters more real for your readers. For example, is the town/city large enough to have a mayor, a healer/doctor, a priest (or even more than one temple/church and, thus, more than one priest), a tavern, an inn, a town guard or militia, etc? The same is true for science fiction settings and characters. To be consistent in your rules for your universe, you have to have the background information firmly in place and in mind before you write. Research, research, research.

That sounds like the advice Isaac Asimov used to give to new writers trying to break into the business: “Write, write, write.” The only way to perfect your craft is to write. After all, practice makes perfect. The reason some things become a cliché is because they are all too often true. You can’t become good at something if you don’t practice at it. That is why they have spring training for baseball players and summer camp for football players to get back into fighting trim. Your mind is also something that needs to be used, and often, if you wish to become good at something, especially writing, wherein your greatest tool is your mind. So write, write, write. Write stories for fanzines, magazines created, written, edited, and illustrated by fans of a particular literary genre or even a particular author. Write stories and articles for local magazines, as well as e-magazines (magazines available only on the Internet). Take a writing class. Join a writers’ group, a collection of local authors/writers who get together regularly to critique one another’s work. (There is a difference between being critical and doing a critique; one is finding fault with someone’s work, the other is pointing out ways to improve someone’s work by showing that someone how the mistakes can be improved. You want the latter kind of group, because they will help you improve your writing (grammar, structure, phrasing, word choice, etc.), and, amazingly, as you learn to identify mistakes that need correcting in their work, you learn to watch out for those same mistakes in your own work. A good group will also help you maintain your focus so that you always have something to present to the group; in other words, they help you keep writing, writing, writing.)

I hope that this helps you find the way to your own writing process, your own method, steps, and procedures for writing your articles, short stories, and novels.

Visit Jim at his blog, Jim Gilbert at large , on Amazon.com.

You may also fin him via his publicist at Heetr Public Relations, www.heetr.com