Many Thanks to Authors Who Pay It Forward by Dari LaRoche

I have kept a gratitude journal for years. It is full of so many wonderful things that bring a smile when I reread them—family, friends, butterflies, the doe that brings her twin fawns to my pond, hummingbirds, good food, good books, my health—so very much.

But the thing that keeps popping up in one way or another is all the writing groups that I am a part of and the author friends I treasure who have been willing to share their time and knowledge with those of us just starting out—me being one. 

When I first took up creative writing seriously in December 2015, my instructor introduced us to The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. We all actively wrote our “Morning Pages” between class sessions and met each other for Artists’ Dates that expanded our creative minds. I joined the local romance chapter in Florida where I lived and Romance Writers of America (RWA) and even managed to take a writing workshop on a three-day cruise to the Bahamas. My first book, which I plan to publish late this fall, had its beginnings in that initial creative writing class.

I took a break of several months to pack up and sell my home on the west coast of Florida and move back to southwest Washington state, where I returned to writing in February 2017. Trust me, that was an endeavor and will make it into a book one of these years.

Finding My Writing Tribe

Here, I found my writing home and the generous friends and authors who have helped me along the
way. I joined Rose City Romance Writers https://rosecityromancewriters.com/ in Portland, OR when I first got here. The following year, I joined Willamette Writers  https://willamettewriters.org/, also in Portland, and most recently, Wordcrafters  https://wordcrafters.org/ in Eugene, OR. Each of these groups has helped me along my journey and, for that, I am humbly grateful.

Author friends have shared their contacts for cover artists, editors, great classes that are offered, writing craft books that are “must haves.” They have invited me onto email loops focused on encouraging us all to complete projects and to set and track our writing goals. One special group is a professional writers’ workshop called WORDOS http://www.wordos.com/. WORDOS is a short-story sci-fi/fantasy/horror group, that began over thirty years ago and continues today with a goal of helping members produce fiction that sells. We critique each other’s work and discuss the craft and business of writing.

Instructors with Major Impact on Me

There are three current instructors in my life for whom I am especially grateful. The first is Eric 
Witchey https://wordcrafters.org/fiction-fluency-master-seminar-series/, an award-winning author, who teaches a year-long course based out of Wordcrafters. It is called Fiction Fluency, which is exactly what it sounds like. Learning and practice until the doing becomes subconscious and the results are a product that affects the readers emotions, like all good writing should. This is my second year to take it, and I am absorbing more this year than I did the first year, when it was all new to me. His classes have truly changed what I do and how I do it—for the better, I hasten to say.

The second teacher is Nina Kiriki Hoffman who has given me the gift of a newfound love of writing short fiction—from flash to novellas. She teaches out of Wordcrafters and Fairfield County Writers’ Studio http://fcwritersstudio.com/2021/02/28/writing-fantasy-science-fiction-and-horror/. Nina is an award-winning author who is willing to share her time, knowledge, and resources to teach writing Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Horror. Her classes are small, fun, interactive workshops. Her feedback critiques, as well as those of other class members, are infinitely valuable.

The third is Maggie Lynch of POV Author Services https://povauthorservices.com/. She teaches courses in Foundations necessary for running a writing business, SEO for writers, Social Media for writers, and Building an Email List, along with other classes. Maggie is a talented writer, very knowledgeable, and always willing to share.

All three are gems in my writing world. This blog, Romancing the Genres, is another. So many authors, instructors, and groups that have become a regular part of my life have enriched it and helped me grow to the point that this is the year I will publish my first book and perhaps even the second. The drafts are written and are in the editing process as I write this. Someday I hope to be one of the authors who will be paying it forward to other writers coming up behind me. That will truly be a joyous day.

Last, but not least, I am thankful for my sister, Kat, who always encourages me in all things creative, and is a writer herself. She urged me to explore creative outlets in Florida in an effort to help me recover from a traumatic loss in my life. Kat always believes I can do anything that I commit to, and I intend to prove her right!

My Writing and Contacts

I write contemporary romance and romantic suspense. My Rescue Series will launch this fall with the first book, When the Night Comes, which takes place on the island of St. Eustatius in the Caribbean. I have been diving in the crystalline waters there and have walked the cobblestone streets up to Fort Oranje. From the ramparts, one can look up at The Quill, a dormant volcano with a rainforest in the crater at the bottom, or down to the harbor below Oranjestad, the only town on the island. St. Eustatius played an important part in our own history on November 16, 1776, a fact I suspect very few Americans know. If you are curious, check out https://www.statiagovernment.com/about-st.-eustatius/first-salute

For writers: What little known facts have you come across in your research that provided glowing nuggets in your own writing?

For readers: Do you find that these morsels of knowledge in whatever books you read, if not overdone, enrich your reading pleasure? They certainly do for me.

I would love to hear from you, either below in the comments, or on Facebook or Instagram.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Dari-LaRoche-Author-100106852361696 

Instagram: Instagram.com/darilarocheauthor

Website (live first week of September):  https://darilaroche.com

Newsletter Signup if you would like to hear more from me:
Will be on my website.

 

Happy New Year Dear Readers! by Gina Fluharty

Happy New Year Dear Readers!

This month’s theme is about First Book and the road to publication. I have a secret: Technically, this published First Book is actually the second in my Preternatural Portland series. Which seems off but hey, it was the best book I’d written so far and it was the one that got the ‘YES!’ from a publisher. I really needed that ‘YES!’

Writing is the toughest job I never want to quit. And after writing for a few years and hearing a string of ‘no’ from several publishers on two separate works, the ‘YES!’ from Loose Id was exactly what I needed to hear. Not to keep going, not to keep writing, not to feel worthy. I needed to hear the ‘YES!’ to feel like I finally, maybe, know what I’m doing. I needed the ‘YES!’ so that I didn’t feel like a fraud as president of Rose City Romance Writers, the local chapter of Romance Writers of America. I needed that ‘YES!’ so that I knew how to build another better book.

I’m sure none of you are unaware that writing is often lonely, difficult to figure out how to do well, time consuming, and somewhat difficult to manage while working a full-time job. I don’t know many writers that can claim this occupation as their sole means of income but I aim to be one of them.

So how did I get here? How did I get that very-important (to me) ‘YES!’?

For one, belief in myself and my willingness to commit to this dream I’ve always had. My mom was a huge influence in my love of the written word. My earliest memories are of us reading together. That shared love of books and my admittedly twisted imagination lead to me telling myself stories in order to get back to sleep after a nightmare.

Fast forward to the next crucial step: Support. I had the great fortune to fall in love with the most fantastic person currently in existence. His unwavering support allow me to write stories that hopefully, make the reader know what it is to be loved wholly and passionately without reservation.

Finding Rose City Romance Writers and RWA were absolutely necessary pieces that shortened my journey considerably. Without RCRW, I wouldn’t have known about various writing books like Save the Cat! By Blake Snyder and The Emotions Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman & Becca Puglisi. Without my Roses, I wouldn’t have companionship, support, and the joy of being with people that love the HEA as much as I do.

Because that’s what this is all about, yes? Happily Ever After. Our quest to write it, read it, discover it in real life. Our chance to escape into a world that it not our norm. The ability to not leave our environment but still get to taste something from another galaxy, smell leather and metal on a medieval battlefield, hear the exotic music of the rain forest, see the world from someone else’s point of view. To fall in love every time we visit the blank page or crack open a book from a debut author.

www.GinaFluharty.com on Twitter @GinaFluharty

Embrace the beast within.

Gina Fluharty never met a piece of profanity that didn’t taste like sin-soaked heaven. She’s lived in a lot of places: Australia, New Zealand, Alaska, Small Town America, but nowhere has called to her like Portland, OR. It’s there that she wrestles all of her personal demons and turns them into playmates. After all, why exorcise such good source material when she can use it as research instead?

Don't Go It Alone

By Mercer Addison

Author, Heather Graham actually started me writing.  Not that she sat beside me and encouraged me or even knew that she did.  She didn’t.  My writer’s journey started over 16 years ago, on a treadmill, reading one of Graham’s medieval paperbacks I had picked up in a used book store.  While reading Graham’s worn and creased book, I thought that writing was an easy thing to do.  I figured I could write just as well or better than HG.  I visualized my hero scaling a wall to save the damsel.  I thought I was going to write a best seller, retire before I turned fifty-five, and say hello to Florida!  Thus, I let my gym fees expire, and started writing my own medieval and doing it alone.



Mercer Addison

I wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote (on my first book).  Ending up with over 180,000 words, (possibly more), I titled it, Twice the Pleasure, and later thought of it as Twice the Length it Should Be.  What was wrong here is that I didn’t bother to learn how to write, or even craft a story that an editor wanted.  I knew nothing about formatting a manuscript, plot, GMC, word count (limiting it), characterization, and the dreaded synopsis.  

I’m not sure how I found Romance Writers of America, stumbled onto it somehow.  Get it? Romance?  And this was another mistake of mine, not knowing diddly about writing a romance, of which none of my stories were at the time. 

I can’t even remember how Rose City Romance Writers (with emphasis on the third word) came into my life; think it was through RWA’s list of chapters.  So I joined RCRW.  A fellow chapter member, and my very first critique partner, pointed out to me that I had over 50 different POV’s in my story’s first chapter alone.  I even switched POV between sentences and paragraphs.  Yikes!  I just wanted every one of my characters to voice their own opinion.  What in the heck was POV anyway?  Another blaring mistake exposing that little old me didn’t know the craft of writing. Thus, in the year 2000, I went to my first RWA conference in Washington, DC.  There, I learned about POV by taking a workshop on POV.  Novel idea!  Just want to say that in the ensuing years I’ve been writing, I did learn my craft, I entered so many contests I was known as a contest slut, I won many first places, and I also have an agent. 

I have witnessed many changes within the publishing community and self-publishing is one of the biggest.  Along with my despair of ever being published with the big four, or even with an e-publisher taking me on, I decided to do it myself.  My age is also one big catalyst, as I wanted to see my name in print before I croak or lose my mind, whichever comes first.  With the help of fellow chapter-mates, forums on RWA, and workshops, I’ve been able to learn how to self-publish my work, Even Nectar is Poison, of which is not a romance, but a good old-fashioned love story. 

My journey is a good example of why we need to dispel the notion of the lonely writer plugging away and all by their lonesome.  Because if you’re going to go it alone, you’re going to make many mistakes, you’re going to miss out on working with your peers.  You’re going to miss out on a great many opportunities that each and all of us need to be successful.

And this is where I say, it takes a village folks, it takes a village.

 

Learn more about Mercer Addison at www.MercerAddison.com