Writing A Series

by Jennifer Conner

I have at least eight series that I am currently involved in or have completed. Writing a series can be just as much fun for the readers as it is for the writers. As a reader, I love books that don’t end when you turn the last page. My favorites often continue with the same characters. My favorites are Clarie and Jamie from the Outlander books or Eve and Roarke from Nora Roberts In Death Series. Both married couples who argue, make mistakes and are madly in love after MANY books.

I may not have started with the concept of making a story a series, but as I wrote, I started to think of story lines with brothers, sisters, or best-friends who were introduced. What was there story? Was it worth telling?

For the first time, I am involved in three different series this year. Where as in the past I have written all the books in a series, this time, I will only write one.

With my new release, The Empress of Ireland, in the Places to See series, Laila Byrne made a final promise to her friend. She will travel more and work less.

After sticking a pin in a map of the world, she heads off to Ireland. This is my story, the other four authors will take the same concept and take their girls there for an adventure.

I’m working on the first in a series called, Uncorked and In Love, about a small wine shop in Eastern Washington. These series have been a kick to write with other authors. You don’t know how fun something is until you try it!

Sometimes my stories are stand-alone with the thread being a concept. With my Dog Tails series the characters in the various stories are not related, but have a common thread, they are all dog owners. Book one, Central Bark at Christmas addresses abandoned pets and shelters, Book two, Christmas Gift that Keeps Wagging, covers trained seizure dogs and a single dad with a special need little boy. Book three, Dog Tags, will be an Army man with a dog he is trying to get home that he rescues in Afghanistan.

But in my Regimental Heroes series, they are all friends who suffer from PTSD in Victorian England. Best-friends, and then his brother and another friend with dyslexia. All brought together by the common thread of war and the era that does not understand what they are going through.

What do you like to read? Stand-alone stories or if you enjoy it, do you want it to go on and on like I do?

The Empress of Ireland is available in Ebook-Paperback and soon in Audio Book.

Find out more about Jennifer Conner by visiting her
Author Page at BooksToGoNow.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jennifer.conner2

Washed Away in the UK

Hi, I'm Pippa Jay, author of science fiction and the supernatural with a romantic soul. When I first saw the blog topic of Headlines for March, I thought I'd struggle to find something to write about. Not so. While the US has shivered under a polar vortex, the UK has had one of the mildest but also the wettest and most stormy winters that I can remember in my lifetime. While I've been lucky to live in one of the few places relatively untouched by any of it, apart from a garden that resembled a swamp than a lawn and had my chickens wishing for webbed feet if their little face were anything to go by, it still had an affect. The East Anglian coastline took a hammering and coastal defences were overrun. Hardly surprising when this is the kind of battering they took.

 Though we live a half hour drive from the coast, it's one of our favourite places to go with the family, weather permitting. Mersea Island is one of our frequent haunts, and has provided inspiration for several scenes/stories in my work (including a scifi short - The Bones of the Sea). But even here you can see the weather has had an impact.

I count my blessings that a boggy garden has been the worst we suffered, while my heart goes out to those who have lost everything in the flooding, many of whom still can't even return to their homes. And I'm even more grateful that spring appears to have arrived! I've already had a couple of warm sunny days sat out in the garden with my laptop or my lunch while my girls peck their way round the undergrowth. Let's hope there'll be no more storms hitting the headlines...or hitting us!

Find me at:
Website
Blog

Top Hat Travesty

I write Regency Romance and I’m always researching the time period. I recently stumbled upon a tantalizing tidbit of history that I couldn’t wait to share.

In dressing the hero for the third book of The Wallflower Wedding Series, I wanted to portray Griffin Croft as someone who liked to be in control at all times. Not necessarily buttoned-up, but also not the kind of gentleman who would ever let his hair grow unfashionably long, as many rakes are want to do. Therefore, Mr. Croft would never think of leaving his stately townhouse without his top hat. And that’s when I found this gem of an article (www.victoriana.com)  http://www.victoriana.com/Mens-Clothing/tophats.htm by Ms. Lou Carver, “Top This…The Story of Top Hats.”

Apparently, starting a new trend in fashion was far more dangerous than you could imagine. “When the first top hat was worn by the haberdasher John Hetherington in 1797, it caused a near riot,” Ms. Carver writes. “According to a newspaper account, ‘passersby panicked at the sight. Several women fainted, children screamed, dogs yelped, and an errand boy’s arm was broken when he was trampled by the mob.’  So Hetherington was taken to court for wearing ‘a tall structure having a shining luster calculated to frighten timid people.’”

Of course, this report sparks my imagination for future characters, timid or otherwise. And while I’m not certain I believe Hetherington was necessarily a “calculated” individual,  I do think he meant to cause a stir.

Apparently, he did. The top hat is still worn to this day.

Carver also informs us that, “What Hetherington designed was a modified riding hat of the day, widening the brim and lengthening the top area.  In 1823, Antoine Gibus came along and modified it even more to a collapsible opera hat; which made traveling with it much easier and during the opera could be stored flat, under the seat.”

Yet, after reading this article, a smirk curves my lips as I wonder what type of riot would ensue if our modern day Lady Gaga could travel back in time wearing one of her fashions.

Now, there’s a story. J

~
If you're interested in a little Regency Era romance, check out "Tempting Mr. Weatherstone," available now in Five Golden Rings: A Christmas Collection. Or you can preorder your copy of Daring Miss Danvers, the first book in The Wallflower Wedding Series. For more information on the series, visit www.vivlorret.net

available May 6th, 2014

Stranger than fiction

Often, the news is all doom and gloom. I don’t like watching it. Economic disasters, natural disasters, famines, wars, ineffectual politicians bickering about issues that don't ever seem to get resolved to anyone's advantage. And there's always someone on there banging on about how things aren't as good as they used to be and how it's Someone's Fault, whether the guilty parties are rich people, poor people, strange people, stupid people, smart people, unhealthy people or even just The Government.

But sometimes, the news can be inspirational for writers. Especially if you've got a penchant for the gruesome.

Take the recent Saga of the Missing Airliner. That 777 that 'vanished' in South East Asia. I don't wish to make light of tragedy, and I feel for the families of all the deceased. It's a terrible situation.

But it's intriguing, too. Apparently, someone in the cockpit of this aircraft has calmly switched off the transponder, turned the aircraft away from its planned course and flown it into the middle of nowhere.

No emergency, no engine fire or explosion or loss of cabin pressure. No radio calls. No squawking 7500 for 'hijack'. No shenanigans on the flight data the plane's systems automatically send back to the airline. All, apparently, was smooth and sweatless. And then…

Hijackers, hell. Do you know how to turn a high-tech, glass cockpit, almost fully automated airliner and fly a new heading? To switch off the transponder? Hell, I wouldn't even know which switch was the transponder. Besides, the cockpit is locked, and inaccessible from the cabin. Since 9/11, they don't open the door for anyone, no matter what havoc they're wreaking.

So who flew this plane to its death?

The flight crew, that's who.

There are so many cool and creepy explanations why someone would do this, I hardly know where to begin. An outbreak of zombies in the cabin, obviously. Insanity. A contagious disease that would have wiped out the world. A suicide pact among the flight crew. Mind control by abducting aliens. Possession by demons. Inspiration from on high. Maybe the captain was the hijacking nutbag. I can hardly wait.

Here's another one for you. I was watching a doco about a future manned mission to Mars, and they said that one of the limiting factors is how much exposure an astronaut can stand to the background radiation in space.

This radiation is cumulatively deadly, so this program said, and unlike solar radiation, we have no substance that can shield against it. But maybe there will be some humans who are genetically immune to the radiation, or at least slower to die from it. The 'right stuff', in the future, might be genetically determined.

An awesome story pretext to put a bunch of really wrong people in space for an emergency long-haul space mission to save humanity. Because they're the only ones who can possibly survive it. A genetically predisposed idiot. An agoraphobic who's never left the house. A claustrophobic. Someone with their own agenda. Or a madman…

Anyway. Inspiration is everywhere. Just let your imagination run wild. And if all else fails, add zombies and/or serial killers. They're a sure winner.

xx
Erica
www.ericahayes.net

Headlines as Story Inspiration

by Christy Carlyle

Most writers I know have been asked at least once, if not many times, where they get their ideas. The answer is that writers get their ideas from virtually everywhere—personal experiences, history, literature, mythology, an overheard conversation at a coffee shop, and even from news headlines.

Current headlines include a missing jetliner, the loss of lives and homes after century old gas mains caused an explosion in New York City, and the trial of Olympic and Paralympic sprinter Oscar Pistorius, who is accused of murdering his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp. The intensity and tragedy of the events that make up news headlines often set writers’ minds spinning, and those events inspire stories or serve as elements of setting in their novels.

In a recent interview in the Bend Bulletin, bestselling American crime fiction writer Patricia Cornwell acknowledged that the 2012 school shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, as well as recent Wall Street scandals, served as key elements in her recent novel, Dust.

As a historical romance author, modern headlines might not be applicable to my stories, but I can still be inspired by historical headlines. My favorite place and era to use as a setting is 1880s London, and there are few news headlines from the period more famous than those related to the still unidentified killer who came to be known as Jack the Ripper.

Fascinated with unsolved mysteries and London from the time I was a teenager, I’ve read several book about the Ripper mystery and always thought the period, the events, and the conundrum of the cases would make for a fascinating story backdrop. At the time of the crimes, several authors were inspired by the tragic events. The Lodger, a novel by Marie Belloc Lowndes, is based on the Ripper mystery and tells the story of a London family who suspects their lodger is guilty of heinous crimes. The novel inspired four film adaptations, including one by Alfred Hitchcock.

When I began developing ideas for my Whitechapel Wagers historical romance series, I knew I wanted to include the Ripper mystery as a backdrop for the stories. Though my characters aren’t directly involved in the crimes, as in Scandalous Wager, the first novella in the series, they do inhabit the same area of London where they took place. Using real events as a backdrop to the series not only grounds them in history, but it also allowed me to explore a bit beyond the headlines.

Do headlines ever inspire story ideas for you? Have you read a story that was inspired by headline news?

What Inspires a Short Story?

by Kelly McCrady

 

I have an author friend—with whom I just published a co-written novel (Canyon Hearts)—who has concluded she is more of a "long" writer than a "short" writer. She has a handful of successful short stories that serve as companion pieces to her Echo Falls series of novels, but she published one novella that no matter what she did to it, the manuscript kept growing. Readers have complained about it feeling unfinished, and she agrees, but was unsure what the solution might be.

As her editor, as well as coauthor, I find the issue to lie with that particular story, not her skill level as a writer. She and I put our heads together and decided rather than "unfinished," it was "unbegun" instead. Her characters gave her a view on their black moment first, and she constructed the story from that point forward. Now she is keen on the idea of delving back into their immediate past to show what led up to that moment. Most importantly, she plans to show it as real-time action on stage, rather than reliance on flashback to tell backstory, which is a common problem among less experienced writers. Her refusal to use such an amateur device is likely the culprit for this story's structure issues to begin with, as her characters are stubborn, prideful people and *insisted* she begin where they had their biggest strife. Now that they've had their moment in the spotlight, she can whip them into shape and tell their story properly. Some characters are like that.

Writers learn the basic structure of narrative, with inciting incident, rising action, climax, and descending action to the conclusion. This structure holds true over both long stories and short. The climax of a romance, often directly after the "black moment" in a relationship, is usually placed around ¾ of the way into the manuscript.

When a short story romance occurs to me, it is often at the moment the hero and heroine meet. I'll see a scene such as the opening to my latest short story, Hearts in Bloom, where the heroine is minding her business (ordinary world) and another woman complains to her about a man who strikes the heroine as extraordinary, and someone she wants to meet. Or the hero might enter the picture later, such as in my first short story Sweet Cicely, where at the end of a very long, "off" day for my heroine, the hero rescues her from her own klutziness.

 

 

 

In my second short story, Martial Hearts, the hero and heroine already know each other as teacher and student, but she needs to devise a way to see him alone, to learn whether she has a chance at being more to him than a student.

Writing short means to focus on one plot, one character (or couple), one conflict. In reality, people are more complicated. The joy of writing and reading a short story is to have a moment with as few complications as possible. In a romance, I like to conclude the short story when the protagonist decides to set herself free to love and be loved, to risk the pain and toss caution aside. Yes, there is much more to the story, but I leave their future to the reader's imagination.

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Kelly McCrady grew up with two passions: animals and writing. She enjoys campfires, hiking in Cascade Mountain streams, and playing with her microscope. Kelly lives in Western Oregon with her husband, daughter, and golden retriever.

Please visit her author blog and her website at kellymccrady.com