Why I read

Posted by: Jessa Slade

Currently working on: The last 48 hours of Book 2 revisions -- hooah!

Mood: Utterly sugared out

Once upon a time...

I love those words. They launch me in ways and to places few other words can. The promise embedded in those words makes me ignore family members, eschew sleep, even -- gasp! -- sign off Twitter.

It's not just that a good book takes me away from real life. I actually like real life quite fine. But I find reading a good book is like looking out at bright sun on the ocean. The world seems so vast and sparkling that even when I look down again, that perspective, those sparkles, stay in my eyes, changing the way I see the world at my feet.

Once upon a time...



Those words are also why I write.

I haven't quite launched into the wide open ocean yet. In fact, I'm still sort of floundering around with water wings. But I have my maps and a compass that points... Well, anyway, I have maps. I'm eager to walk new shores, meet the natives (who hopefully go easy on the spears), maybe unearth some treasure. I imagine I'll get lost a time or two, maybe sail off an edge occasionally. It happens to all of us.

And it makes a better story, you know. Which is why I write.

Once upon a time...

THE WEATHER WAS PERFECT AND SO WAS THE COMPANY OF OTHER AUTHORS!

Posted by: Genene Valleau
Working on: Final edits of a novella, CHASING RAINBOWS
Mood: Joyful!


Since I totally spaced blogging on Saturday, the day of the 1st Annual NW Book Festival, this will be a short post. The festival was fun; the weather was pretty much perfect and I had a wonderful time talking to others who were there. It was great to see some fellow RCRW authors--both signing books and who stopped by to say hello.

Many thanks to Veronica Esagui, who coordinated the event and to Minnette Meador, who did a wonderful job of getting our romance group organized. Also, thanks to the authors who attended and those who stopped by to say hello and offer support!

If I had remembered to take my camera, I could have shared some pictures. Hopefully, others who were there will share photos on the loop or here on the blog.

Summertime Blues

Posted By: Lisa Hendrix

Currently Celebrating: Release of IMMORTAL OUTLAW

Mood: Overheated

I'm happy, really. IMMORTAL OUTLAW is out and doing well, everyone in the family's healthy, it's all good. And yet, there they are. The Summertime Blues. To quote Eddie Cochrane:

I'm gonna raise a fuss, I'm gonna raise a holler

About a workin' all summer just to try to earn a dollar

I'm with Eddie. In my mind, summer is not for work. I was raised by parents who believed that summers were for sleeping in late, spending afternoons in a hammock under a tree with a large iced tea, and passing the evenings in a cool, still house with friends so good that no one has to talk, listening to the crickets.

Somehow writing doesn't fit into that idyllic scenario. It's hard to write in a hammock. The angle's wrong, and the heat from a laptop makes you want to throw yourself into an ice bucket. Writing is brain work, and summer is a season that relaxes a brain so much as to make it useless. I know this, I plan every year to have my ducks lined up in nice, tidy rows so that I can have the summer free, and still I once more find myself working my tuchas off (tuchas, that's Yiddish for "ever-expanding rear"), polishing off a proposal I should have had in ages ago, and setting myself up to have to work seriously all summer long.

And it's not just writing that lines up to steal my summer: I just completed a blog tour and with all the other promotion I've been trying to squeeze in, summer is a third over and I have yet to enjoy more than five minutes of it. Latter parts of the summer will involve repeated trips to Portland and Seattle for signings—like the this Saturday's NW Book Festival—and to do college stuff for my son. [Speaking of which, which of the Jesuit Fathers of Seattle U decided it was smart to force families to waste money and time to travel to Seattle in the middle of July for a 2-day freshman orientation instead of just having them show up 2-days early in September? May I watch while he scourges himself for idiocy, please? Pretty please?]

Worst of all is the knowledge that it my own blasted spring fever procrastination that put my in this fix, and that is going to force me to dig deep for enough discipline to stay in and get the writing done. No summer for Lisa. //Whine//

All is not midnight darkness, however. There are a few rays of hope. The 4th of July is coming up, and that's a guaranteed break complete with fireworks and watermelon. Then there will be the occasional weekend at my mother-in-law's. She has a house in the Hood River Valley that comes complete with cherry orchard, that hammock I crave, and a porch swing that looks out toward Mt. Hood from like, 3 ft away.

Very cool. And one of those trips to Portland will include at least a few hours at the Oregon Zoo, and I may work in Woodland Park or Point Defiance, too, while I'm in Seattle. Zoos are one of my favorite summertime indulgences, and have been for years: I've been to 12 major zoos in the US (13 if you count Disney World's Animal Kingdom), plus the Ueno Park Zoo in Tokyo. Toss all those beasts together with the Norwegian fisheries prof I worked for, and you'll find a good deal of the basis for the Immortal Brotherhood series. Zoos have enabled me to see and hear lions in full morning roar, twice--quite useful when I needed to describe what Marian heard during the nights, when Steinarr never seemed to be around...

Somewhere in the midst of summer, we'll also work in a long weekend at the beach. Nothing refreshes, relaxes, utterly re-sets me like ocean air and sandy socks and those long, amazing Oregon beaches. And each time I return from one of these summer interludes, I'll be that much more ready to make myself sit down. Once I'm down, of course, its fun, just like it is in the winter. It's just a matter of getting the tuchas down in the seat.

So yes, I'll get the writing done, and I'll love it, and with any luck, so will my editor.

I just had to whine a little first, but I'm all better now. See, there is a cure for the Summertime Blues.

Lisa

--------

Lisa Hendrix

IMMORTAL OUTLAW (June 2009)

4-1/2 Stars, Top Pick and K.I.S.S. Hero Award from RT

Buy Immortal Outlaw at Amazon

The 1st ANNUAL NW BOOK FESTIVAL

Where: 21860 Willamette Dr, West Linn, OR
When: Saturday, June 27th, 2009
Time: 10:00-4:00pm
Admission: Free

Meet over 40 award-winning and critically acclaimed NW authors.

21 selected authors' speaking schedule 10:15 - 3:45pm
10:15 - Ron Lovell - Mystery - Turning Facts into fiction
10:30 - Bob Wilson - Weight Management/ Holistic Weight Loss
10:45 - Patricia H Rushford - Mystery/Non Fiction/ Self-help
11:00 - Paty Jager - Western Contemporary Romance
11:15 - Earlene Grey - Tea Poetry
11:30 - Laurence Overmire (Sci-fi poetry) - Report from X Star 10
11:45 - Ann Amies - Children books/Illustrations
12:00 - Genene Valleau (Rock Stars Heroes) - Stories/statistics
12:15 - Arlene Sachitano (Mystery) - Quilting with a Thread of Murder
12:30 - Alan Lohner/Jason Savage (Inspirational Books)
12:45 - Jean Braden (Historical/ Adventure/ Memoirs) - The writing process
1:00 - Amalie J Rush Hill (Metaphysical Science Fiction) - Readings
1:15 - Veronica Esagui, DC (Scoliosis/health) - Diagnosis and Treatment
1:30 - David Ash (Humorous Haiku Gift Books) - Readings
1:45 - Rachael Law Schuetz - Children
2:00 - Dan Raphael - Poetry
2:15 - Howard Franklin - Travel
2:30 - Joan Maiers - Poetry
2:45 - Ken Reger/Ruby Allen - Psychology/Romance novel
3:00 - Suzanne Jauchius - Memoir
3:15 - Keely Alexandra - Children books
3:30 - SharonMartini - Children Books/Illustrator

Why Write? Suzanne Macpherson

I tried to quit, really I did. I tried to become a gardener, but my soil is just so unforgiving. I tried to become a housewife but I’m very, very bad at it. Just when you get everything cleaned up it all goes to hell in a hand basket again. What kind of a job is that? Where is the THE END part? Hey, I was taking a self-inflicted break from the relentless deadline and crazy market trends, and maybe a permanent one! I thought about getting a secretarial job. The part where I can type 2000 words a minute with the UPS man standing in the hallway waiting for my manuscript was a big asset. I’m a cheery person, I’m computer hardwired, I could learn Microsoft Access! But hmm would I be able to steal some writing time? I considered a job at a storage facility. Lots of down time and maybe even some story lines from the contents of abandon storage units?

One day I said to myself, what if I just wrote whatever came out of me instead of manually twisting and forcing my muse into the current "Hunt for High Concept” shape?
So I sat down and just let her rip. I even sat down at a computer that wasn’t my normal computer. Change of scenery. I got eight pages of really amazing stuff. I won't tell you how long it stayed at eight pages, and how excited I got a couple of agents about those eight pages. But the rest of the story hadn't evolved yet. My imagination sparked like a flint- but the twigs weren’t quite dry enough yet. I had to keep trying to twist things up into pretzel shapes.
The Summer of 2009 will go down as the summer I packed my virtual suitcase full of research and inspiration and moved into the hotel Kathryn. Kathryn is the main character in the young adult trilogy I have been crafting for two years. Some of you might know my muse. Her name is Maggie Grover. By sheer chance (ha ha) we connected last fall. Sometimes you need an expert like Maggie to get the flint to ignite all the way. There is nothing that woman does not know about Scottish/English/Roman history. Turns out we were on a bigger journey than just books, and we’ve opened up our lives to all kinds of amazing adventures. Scotland and England here we come!
Birthing the full concepts for these three books was like well, birthing another kid, and I’ve had four already. If you count my seven other books, that makes eleven! I can honestly say it was a c-section too, because I had to cut all the self-doubt and old negatives out of my head to get this train on its track. (talk about your mixed metaphors!)
So. I admit it. I’m a writer. Well, we all knew that, didn’t we. I watched Wonder Boys yesterday. (I love Toby Maguire btw) There was a line from the crusty old writer/ professor where they asked him why he wrote the book he wrote ( the one that flew into the river) and he said. . .
“Because I couldn’t stop.”

The last shot...for now!

Status: At the hospital, but baby Andy is in deep sleep so I got to pull out my laptop for a few minutes. Only 3 days behind in email!

Writing: Good grief, no. But if the baby comes home next week, maybe I'll have time in July!

But still...I had one last release a bit ago, the last story I finished before all the craziness began, and it's up for something this weekend. If you want to vote, here is the info:

Playing Lycan Games from Scarlet Rose is up for "best read of the week" at Whipped Cream erotic romance reviews.

Voting runs from Saturday, 6/13, through Sunday, 6/14). The link is here:

http://www.longandshortreviews.com/WC/recentrev.htm

Please vote if you have time!

Heather Hiestand/Anh Leod
www.anhleod.com

Vote here

RESUSCITATING THE MUSE

Lately, due to circumstances beyond my control, I’ve been in a funk as far as writing goes. I literally have to drag myself to MS Word to get myself going. Facebook and Twitter call to me, emails beckon, and I know I’m in trouble when “Relax this Spring, knowing where your credit lies” sounds more appealing to me than going back to my book. This is the life of a writer. It’s fraught with danger and not for the faint of heart.

PROCRASTINATION is defined as: to defer action; delay: to put off till another day or time. That’s been me in a nutshell, put off. Now some may say with my husband sick, I have a great excuse. Problem is that’s not what my muse is saying. She’s calling me a lazy sod who better get off her butt or she’ll give me a reason to regret it.

So, okay. It’s time to revisit why I write. Maybe that will get the spark going on this bonfire:

WHY I WRITE:


1. To get the demons out of my head before they really start running things.

2. To legally torture people who are not actually alive. To do so on living people would be wrong, right?

3. To feel that adrenalin rush every time the Muse shouts into my ear, keep going…keep going…

4. To give my fingers a daily work out and my brain a little calisthenics (that’s exercise to you young whipper snappers).

5. To be amazed every time someone actually likes what I write. It’s like, My God, they bought it. I can’t believe I got away with it.

6. To leave my mark, however small, upon a world that has been nurturing me from day one. After all, it’s where I keep my stuff.

7. To give my children and their children a legacy, something they can be proud of.

So, how about you. Why do you write? What helps you to drag yourself back to the keyboard, typewriter, or pencil and paper day after day?

Well, that did it for me. I’m revved up now. Watch out world…Mimi’s back in town!

Minnette Meador
www.minnettemeador.com
http://minnettemeador.blogspot.com
2008 Releases: Starsight, Vol. I, Starsight, Vol. II, The Centurion & The Queen The Edge of Honor, A Cup of Comfort for Single Mothers
2009 Releases: A Boy & His Wizard
2010 Releases:Starsight III: The Restless Seed, Starsight Prequel: The God Wars, A Boy & His Lizard
Other Releases: The Gladiator Prince - TBA, Keenan's Dilemma - TBA