Z: Zone

Every runner and writer has experienced it, being in 'the zone.'  For the runner, everything is easy.  Your breathing is in perfect rhythm to your steps.  Your legs feel strong and your feet seem to bounce off the ground.  Your body feels like it could run forever. 

For writers, it's those times when your fingers can't keep up with the thoughts tumbling from the bottomless well of creativity in your mind.  You always come up with the perfect verb and not one adverb sneaks its way into the prose.  Scenes come alive on the computer screen with descriptions better than a picture.  This is the zone and if you're lucky it could last for days.  Even a few hours of the zone can produce thousands of words.

How does one find the zone?  For runners I believe training and pushing yourself each time you tie on your sneakers can lead to those workouts where your slip into the zone.  For writers?  I think knowing where your story is going, knowing your characters and finding enough hours to write can take you to the zone.

Have you ever found the zone while writing?  What the best production day you ever had writing?

Y: Yahoo: Book Release

Yippee, my book is available today. Tiger's Mate is the sixth fantasy romance I've released.  I thought about trying to publish this one myself through some of the new programs, but I'm very happy with my current publisher, New Concepts Publishing.  They do a great job editing and on the covers for my books. One of my covers missed the mark but the others were pretty great.

My first writing love if pure sword and sorcery fantasy but I dabbled in writing romance before I sold that first fantasy book.  Why?  I like a good love story as do many people.  Many, many people.  Romance outsells all other genres of commercial fiction.  I write romances to make money.  But when you read my romances, you'll see my love of fantasy there.  Probably the fantasy elements in my romance novels take up a greater share of the plot than some typical romances. 

In my Tiger's of Salubria series, the Tigers are legendary race of warriors.  In the distant past, a curse was put upon these warriors so they have to form a magical bond with a person of magic when they reach maturity or they will die.  The person of magic then has some control over their fierce will.  You can believe these proud men of war resent their magical tethers as they move through society unprepared to meet them. 

The first book in the series, To Tame a Tiger, begins the tale and gives some background as to the origin of the curse.  It's available in print and ebook.  The book released today, Tiger's Mate, follows another of the swordsmen as he fights his way toward his lost homeland.  Please take a chance by entering this medieval world of sorcery, adventure and of course, love. 

I hope you don't mind my unabashed self-promotion but I have two kids and college.  Very expensive investment, those offspring. 

Will I make any money on these books? Every little bit helps.  I'm a long way from quitting the day job.  How about you? Can you or are you close to making a living off your writing? Do you think you will sometime in the future or is it a rewarding past time for you  and the money doesn't matter?

X: X Marks the Spot

In the third and perhaps the best Indiana Jones movie, Jones and his friends are searching for clues in a historic library and they find a large roman numeral ten, X, on the floor.  Jones observes, 'X marks the spot' in his wry way.  It was funny in the movie and was quite clever but when writing a book, X usually shouldn't mark the spot.

Hopefully as I write my fantasy novels, I include many twists and surprises.  The answers sought by my characters need to be difficult to find.  Victory must be earned and not by something so easy as finding the X marking the spot.  Wrong turns must be taken along the incorrect fork in the road. 

I'm sure you've read books or watched movies where the hero stumbles on something way too conveniently.  I remember a scene from one of the CSI shows where one of the investigators is buying a cup of coffee from a street vendor and a crow flying over drops an eyeball in her cup.  Of course, this leads to the discovery of a body and the show goes on.  What are the chances such a coincident would occur?

Can you give an example where a mystery was solved without the hero working for the answers? Or have you read a book or seen a movie recently where the story ending was so obvious it seemed marked with a big X?

W: Wild Wednesday

It has been a month of wild Wednesday from the weather to challenge of blogging six days a week. 

The weather caused a number of changes in some athletic schedules so every day the evening events were up in the air until the last moment.  The torrential rains also sent some surface water into our basement.  It rained so hard the water ran in around the sliding glass door.  We save one section of carpet but the other needs replaced.  I know parts of the country have suffered much worse so I'm going to stop whining about it.  I only hope we go an entire day without thunderstorms for this wild Wednesday.

Blogging has challenged me.  Though I had almost all my subjects selected ahead of time, I didn't have all of them written when April started.  So each weekend has been busy as I make sure everything is ready for the upcoming week and try to catch up on commenting on other participants' blogs.  Wildly busy.

I've also had a wild time trying to prepare for Friday's release of my next fantasy romance, Tiger's Mate.  Today I'm participating in a chat at my publisher, New Concepts Publishing, as a way to promote this book and all my back list.  This live chat is a first for me, so I don't know what to expect.  I also have no idea how effective it is as a promotional tool. 

Have you ever participated in a chat as a promotional tool for a book with as the author or a reader? Do you think it has promotional benefits?

V: Vanguard

Not long ago my daughter and I were watching a movie and someone was being honored by riding in the vanguard.  She didn't know what a vanguard was and we had a long discussion about it.  Later I thought about some of the trail blazers who were the vanguard for today's popular fiction in books and movies.

No doubt JRR Tolkien led the way for many of today's fantasy authors.  JK Rowling did the same for the upsurge in YA fantasy.  I believe she inspired an entire generation of eager readers.  Nora Roberts set a standard for prolific and versatile writers of romance and suspense, earning success and fame beyond most who came before her.

The original Star Wars began a new era in movie series. The Superman movies of the late 70's revived the super hero genre and we're still enjoying that today.  I would call both those franchises the vanguard of their genres.

What book or movies would you say led the way in their field either today or yesterday?

U: Unrepentant

It's been so much fun on A to Z this month but this week, starting today, I need to do some unrepentant self-promotion.  My sixth published fantasy romance will be released Friday, April 29th.  Tiger's Mate is the second book in a series that started out with one publisher but I moved the second book to a different publisher.

New Concepts Publishing contracted my first four romance novels and now are taking on Tiger's Mate.  NCP is one of the oldest ebook publishers out there.  They've been successful for a long time when many other smaller publishers have folded.  Lately they've been doing more and more to help their authors with promotion unlike so many big publishers who promote only the big names at their houses.

But all authors, especially me, must still do our share of shameless, unrepentant self promotion.  I'm not a shy person but I don't easily speak and write loudly to put my work forward. Like most writers, I'd rather just write.  But I also want to sell my books.  I want people to read them.  Therefore they must know about them.

So today at my publisher, New Concepts, I've the featured author on their Manic Monday Promotion.  From noon until midnight,  all my books are 30% off.  A good price on what I think are good books, perhaps even excellent books.  How did I do with shameless?

How good are you with self-promotion? Does your publisher help you?  What kind of things has your publisher done for you?

T: TSTL

We've all seen it on TV or at the movies.  Someone is home alone and hears a sound in the house, perhaps the basement.  They go to investigate, try the light switch and it doesn't work, or course.  Our intrepid hero or heroine doesn't let that stop them.  He or she continues down the steps, calling out 'Who's there?'  Can they be any dumber.  Dumberer?

The soon to be victim has become someone who is TSTL.  That's what authors call it.  Too Stupid To Live.  In that movie or TV show, they probably will die a gruesome death by a mass murderer, supernatural horror, or something evil and ugly.  We expect it even as we watch and think why would any one be so stupid as to go down those dark steps or into the water at night or into the woods on a moon less night.

The movie people get it right when they knock off those idiots and we as writers have to learn from this.  Sure our protagonists have to stumble and get into trouble, but they can't do so because of complete incompetence or lack of common sense.  Readers want to like the characters in our books and if we're lucky, they'll love them.  But most of us won't fall in love with a fictional character who is 'too stupid to live.'

I've put books aside because I didn't care about the characters.  Sometimes they were whiny or selfish and they did things I couldn't fathom.  And I make a point to figure out how I would have made the character different.  I want my character to be lovable.

So have you read a book with a TSTL character? What behavior by a character in a movie or book puts them in the TSTL category in your opinion?