Top 10 Tips for Writers by Lynn Lovegreen

As you may know, this month is the tenth anniversary of Romancing the Genres. I’m so proud to be a part of this amazing group of bloggers. Happy anniversary and a big thank you to Judith and Sarah, our fearless leaders!

Since this month’s theme is “10” and we have a lot of followers who are writers, here are my top 10 tips for writers of any age or genre.

1.     There are no rules, just guidelines. Never believe anyone who says “always” or “never.” (See what I did there?! 😉) Sometimes guidelines are important; you probably need a plot and characters to write a book. But sometimes they sound like the law when they aren’t; you have my permission to try using adverbs or whatever other “never” you’ve been told to avoid.

 

2.     Write often! Some writers write every day, and some make time in their weekly or monthly calendar. But writing is a practice, and the best way to get better at it is to practice as much as you can. Once you find a schedule that works for you, incorporate it into your regular routine and stick to it.

 

3.     Read often! Reading is fun for many of us, but it also lets you see great examples of writing and notice what works in structure, character, and so on. Read widely and make it part of your writing life.

 

4.     Discover your own writing style. This kind of goes with #1 above, but there’s more than one right answer to the question of how to write. Your writing voice is unique, and your style may be different from your favorite author’s. Don’t feel like you have to copy them to be a good writer.

 

5.     Organize your writing thoughts. If you’re a pantser (write by the seat of your pants), then you’ll want to take notes as things occur to you. If you’re a plotter (plan things out), you’ll want to write down your outline or whatever system you use. Or maybe you do a little of both. At any rate, have a place to keep notes, drafts, and such, whether it’s in a notebook, phone, laptop, etc. It’s frustrating to lose a brilliant idea before you capture it, or not be able to find that piece of paper later.

  

6.     Back up your electronic writing. You don’t want to lose weeks or months of work when your computer dies, so save and back up your writing on a USB drive, on the Cloud, whatever system is easy for you to use. 

 

7.     Join a writing group. It might be in a particular genre, like RWA for romance writers or SCBWI for kidlit and YA writers, or it might be a general writing group. But it’s helpful to work with other writers to find fellowship and learn more about the writing craft.

 

8.     Share critiques. One of the best ways to sharpen your writing skills is to critique with a partner or small group. Showing others your work and writing critiques for your peers is an excellent way to refine your writing and help others. (To find a critique partner or group and learn how to give constructive critiques, check with writing groups as mentioned above.)

 

9.     Write-revise-repeat. Keep in mind that most writers make many revisions to turn their messy first drafts into polished prose or poetry. Don’t compare your early draft to what you see on the printed page or on your Kindle. Be prepared to put in many hours of work to get your writing to that stage.

 

10.  Never give up! Most of us write for years before we are published. I worked on my first novel for about three years, and I learned a lot from that project. It’s still unpublished, but that’s okay—that was part of my writing education. My first published novel took seven years from first draft to book in hand.  Your mileage may vary, but you should be in it for the long haul. As they say, writing is a marathon, not a sprint. At the same time, it’s worth it. I love what I do, and I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

 

Keep on writing! 

Do you have any questions, or tips to share? Please comment below.

Lynn Lovegreen has lived in Alaska for over fifty years. After twenty years in the classroom, she retired to make more time for writing. She enjoys her friends and family, reading, and volunteering at her local library. Her young adult historical fiction is set in Alaska, a great place for drama, romance, and independent characters. See her website at www.lynnlovegreen.com. You can also find her on Facebook and Instagram.

What's Cooking?

 Hi everyone :-)

This month, I'm going to talk about something I love - food! We are foodie family...

We make all the things - even Milo's treats

And as such food always finds it way into my books (sort of like murder - people are going to die, eat, and have steamy sex in my books). I often use food as a way to reveal character traits. 

Leigh in Taking a Risk loves peanut M&M's. S he's slightly OCD... and a health nut so she buys a share size bag of M&M's every week and divides them out by color. Monday she eats all the red. Tuesday is blue and so one. When she's in really stressful situation she buys another package east extra of that day's color - just that day's color because that's part of her character.

Kelsey in my upcoming release Bayou Viper (Book 1 - Follow the Numbers series) eats BBQ chips dipped into jalapeno flavored cream cheese when she's thinking about a case. And will not eat food with the letter 'k' in it (a character reveal you need to read the book to find out).

Not only do I enjoy using food as way to add deepth to my characters but I use it add to the story overall. 

Cajun Stuff Shells is a meal Nic makes for her but before she'll eat it she needs to know all the ingredients (can't have things with the letter 'k'). The scene adds to Nic and Kelsey's relationship. A reminder they are in the south. 

Bayou Viper will be up for pre-order April 20th and released June 1st. BUT the cooking book - that includes Cajun Stuffed Shells will be a free download :-)

Interesting fact - while my love for doughnuts is well known, none of my characters share this love :-)

I guess I don't like to share ... even with fictional characters. 

Thanks for stopping by and see you next month.

 

Disaster Turned Blessing

By Courtney Pierce

A bountiful and delicious Thanksgiving ushered in a promising Christmas season. Let the games begin! Lights, wreaths, decorating, and a daily dose of Christmas movies.

My husband, stepdaughter, and I gladly handed over the $5.00 permit fee to cut our wild Christmas tree on Montana state land. Deal of the century. There’s a lot of shopping acreage here in the Kalispell area, so we bundled up for the hunt under a gentle mountain snowfall. The tree we found wasn’t all perfect by retail standards, but that’s what gave it infinite appeal. We even snagged a small one for my stepdaughter’s bedroom. No worries about having enough decorations. Collectively, my husband and I have an ornament count that spans over forty Christmas seasons. I guess that amounts to eighty Christmases worth of decorations. We selected the best of the best, and we still had an embarrassing excess.

Over the holiday, I had planned to make huge progress on my next book, BIG SKY TALK. I was nine chapters in and excited to pick up where I left off.

Then disaster struck. 

The hard drive in my mere seven-month-old laptop crashed with a bang. I couldn’t access any of my files, including the first nine chapters of my book-in-progress, never mind the manuscripts of my previous six books.

I got a windburn zooming to my local computer to a repair shop. Two days later, the news made my stomach drop to subzero. I needed a new hard drive, and nothing on it could be saved. The squeaky-clean new drive held none of my files. However, the tech gave me back my dead one with a glimmer of hope. He suggested that I contact a specialty data recovery company with more sophisticated equipment to attempt to find my files. Luckily, there was a reputable one in Missoula.

I know, I know. I can hear your voices chastising me for not backing up my files and documents for the last six months. I never had a problem before, so I had become complacent. Shame on me. And shame on Scrivener, my writing program, for switching from storing the proprietary files in the cloud to saving them on my hard drive. The company never informed me about the change in their process.

I should’ve figured that computers aren’t the work horses they used to be. They’ve gone the way of televisions and cell phones. Count on them lasting about a year ̶ or seven months in my case ̶ with more plastic parts to lower the price tag.

After a promising discussion of my situation with the data recovery company, I mailed off my blown hard drive and crossed my fingers. I resigned myself to the real possibility that I would need to start over with my novel. After all, my head held the story. No one could take that away from me.

Then something started to happen: I actually got excited about re-writing those first nine chapters. It was a chance to start fresh. In a quandary, I had written three different opening chapters and couldn’t decide which one worked best. I had nothing to lose by shaking out the Etch-A-Sketch.

Some writing coaches recommend chucking your first drafts in order to breathe new life into a blank page. And as painful as it can be, Stephen King recommends we should “kill our darlings.” First drafts are an indulgence of the author; second and third ones are for the readers.

Maybe there was a higher purpose for my data woes. But all those hours. All those outlines. And all those imaginative brain cells I had killed off. Was I being lazy? Was I trying to be a speed demon to make my own fake deadline? Possibly.

I sucked it up and started my book over while I waited to hear the verdict from the tech pros. The longer the silence loomed, the faster I wrote, convinced those draft chapters were lost. In the new ones, I incorporated more detail, evened out the flow, and cut what I thought was superfluous. The characters started to bloom with personality. My brain fired on all pistons with the freshness of it all. It was like going into a new job with oodles of direct experience. I made better decisions. I dug in with instinct, not superficial details. I let the characters lead me to bring them to life. All five senses came alive with vivid imagery. I didn't have to monitor the small stuff: the color of the protagonist's eyes, what kind of car she drove, or the style of her clothes. I was now creating living, breathing people.

As I dove into the new Chapter Four, my cell phone rang. The data recovery company calling, just like Avon.

“Good news, Courtney! Your data is 98% there,” the Tech said. "But it's going to take us about a week to extract it." 

“That’s great,” I said. "I hope my new manuscript isn't part of the 2% of roadkill. Is this going to cost me my first born child that I can't have at sixty?"

He laughed out loud. "This is a Level 2, so it'll be about $700."

Don't get me wrong, I was thrilled to get back my files, but my writing bubble deflated a bit, and not just about the price. The original drafts of those nine chapters sent my mind into a scramble. Sorting out all of the versions would be like re-installing the old toilet in a newly remodeled bathroom.

When I downloaded my Scrivner files, I created a new folder for those old chapters, but I don't think I'll open it. I'll keep going with the new version. That folder will only be a crutch in the event I get stuck.

And in the meantime, I'll enjoy the holiday with my original plan to spend the time with my family, go out for a snowshoe hike, target shoot to practice for next hunting season, and move forward writing BIG SKY TALK.

And I promise to back up my work at least once a week. The mega-capacity thumb drive I purchased should do the trick, along with the additional external hard drive my husband gave me. I’m also going to email myself the most important files as back-up to the back-up to back-up.

Happy Holidays to you all! Stay safe and warm, and I'll catch up with you in the New Year.

Photo: Micah Brooks

Courtney Pierce is a fiction writer living in Kalispell, Montana with her husband, stepdaughter, and their brainiac cat, Princeton. Courtney writes for the baby boomer audience. She spent 28 years as an executive in the entertainment industry and used her time in a theater seat to create stories that are filled with heart, humor, and mystery. She studied craft and storytelling at the Attic Institute and has completed the Hawthorne Fellows Program for writing and publishing. Active in the writing community, Courtney is a board member of the Northwest Independent Writers Association and on the Advisory Council of the Independent Publishing Resource Center. She is a member of Willamette Writers, Pacific Northwest Writers Association, and She Writes. The Executrix received the Library Journal Self-E recommendation seal.

Print and E-books are available through most major online retailers, including Amazon.com.

Check out all of Courtney's books: 

courtney-pierce.com and windtreepress.com 

Audiobook now Available!

Available Now!
Book 3 of the
Dushane Sisters
Trilogy

Audio book coming soon!

New York Times best-selling author Karen Karbo says, "Courtney Pierce spins a madcap tale of family grudges, sisterly love, unexpected romance, mysterious mobsters and dog love. Reading Indigo Lake is like drinking champagne with a chaser of Mountain Dew. Pure Delight."

Coming in 2020!

When Aubrey Cenderon moves to Montana after the death of her father, the peace and quiet of Big Sky Country becomes complicated with a knock on the door from the sheriff. An injured grizzly bear is on the loose and must be eliminated before it kills again. The sheriff's insistence that she buy a gun for protection will present Aubrey with some serious soul-searching, because the grizzly-on-the-run is hunting for her too . . . for a different reason.

WRITE FROM WITHIN by Michelle Somers

Just recently, a fellow author asked me to contribute to a book she's writing for beginner writers. She wanted one tip I believe newbie writers should keep in mind when they sit down to write. A small paragraph, no more.

Wow.

Never mind the ‘short paragraph’, I could write an entire book.

So, what would I tell her?

The question got me thinking, and reflecting back to the beginning of my writing journey. And I asked myself what is the one thing I know now that I’d have liked to know back then. One thing to have made my journey more expedient, more fruitful. My writing more meaningful.

O-kay.

Ideas bombarded me from left, right and center.

Yet another book I could write.

So many things I’ve learned through trial and error, through more experienced writers sharing their expertise and knowledge; words of wisdom around finding like-minded writers, joining writing groups, forming critique circles; learning and practicing craft, and in those spare moments in between, reading to continually fill the well of creativity.

Then there’s the actual sitting down and writing part.

I wish I’d realized the importance of voice. From those first few moments when I began to write, I thought my story – and the tone of my story – should sound like other successful authors. After all, the way they wrote was what made them successful, right?

So, instead of writing in a way that was natural and reflective of me, I tempered my tone and tried to write like someone else. Tried to sound like someone else.

Big mistake.

HUGE.

Not only did my stories sound stilted and unnatural, but they lacked the edge and special something that would make them unique – the voice that would make them stand out and scream ‘Michelle Somers wrote this’ to anyone who read them.

Through a gradual progression, and five complete novels, I slowly found my voice, and I’m happy to say, I love it! Imagine how different those five – unpublished, unpublishable – stories would have been had I written and, dare I say, embraced my voice back when I first started writing?

Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

There are other lessons I wish I’d known – the ‘show don’t tell’ doctrine, how to thread in backstory, how to layer characters and give them depth, how to construct GMC (goal, motivation, conflict) and make those very same characters 3-dimensional and believable.

But above all these tips that I would have found exceptionally useful back in the beginning, there is one that stands out in my mind, one that I’ve found a lot of authors tend to overlook or forget to do…

Write from within your characters.

Okay, I can see you squinting and shooting me a wary ‘what is she on about?’ sideways stare.  What do you mean ‘write from within your characters’? you ask.

It’s simply this: when you write a scene, put yourself in the place of your characters. Don their skin, their mind, their thoughts, their experiences.

Walk the journey that is their story in their shoes.

If your character is trekking through blistering heat, their body dusty and sweat-slicked, their brand new, unbroken-in hiking boots rubbing their heels raw, step right inside and write from within their experience. And write from within yours.

In a situation just like theirs, what would you think? Feel? Say? Do?

Write as if their experience is your experience. If they hate trekking, fear it even, ask why? Maybe it’s because the last time they slipped into their hiking boots their best friend died after falling into a crevice. Feel what they would feel. Find a parallel in your life.

Then ask more questions. Why are they out there now? Why would they put themselves through that trauma? That pain? Maybe it’s because their child is lost and they must find them before they meet the same fate as their friend?

Now feel those emotions.

Find more parallels. When did you last feel scared? Stressed? Panicked even?

What thoughts battered through your mind at the time? What visceral reactions racked your body?

Write from a place of experience and understanding. Write from your character’s point of view but draw from your own life to give the writing depth.

If your character laughs, think of the last time you laughed.

If they cry, think about the last time you cried.

For my debut, Lethal in Love, my central character lost someone they loved. Someone who meant the world to them. Those moments when they felt that loss were some of the most challenging I’ve had to write. There was one scene in particular, just moments after the death. I have to admit, I struggled over this scene. I wrote draft after draft, until finally one made me cry.

And how?

I drew from experience. I remembered the day my father died. Remembered the shock, the pain, the utter and unbearable loss, and then I wrote.

Writing can be a painful business. It can dredge up memories and emotions that we’d rather leave buried deep beneath the surface of normalcy. But those memories, those emotions, are what makes a great writer. They allow us to write from a place of understanding, a place of empathy, a place so deep inside our characters, the line between us and them blurs.

They become real. Three-dimensional. They take us to a place where fact and fiction collide. And they make us feel with every fiber of our being.

So, what advice would I give to a budding writer above all other advice?

Write from within your characters.

Make your characters feel. Make them hurt, laugh and love.

Make them grab the attention and heart of the reader and never let go.

What about you?

For the writers out there, I’d love to know the one tip you know now that you wish you’d known when you first started writing.

And for readers, what is it about characters and an author’s style that drags you into their story so you don’t want to stop until the very last page. I’d love to know!

Thanks so much for reading and commenting and general awesomeness! I look forward to seeing you all back here again the first Thursday of next month 😄

Until then, have a fabulous month, and MAY THE FORTH BE WITH YOU 😊

Michelle Somers is a bookworm from way back. An ex-Kiwi who now calls Australia home, she’s a professional killer and matchmaker, a storyteller and a romantic. Words are her power and her passion. Her heroes and heroines always get their happy ever after, but she’ll put them through one hell of a journey to get there.

Michelle lives in Melbourne, Australia, with her real life hero and three little heroes in the making. And a cheeky, furry feline called Emerald. Her debut novel, Lethal in Love won the Romance Writers of Australia’s 2016 Romantic Book of the Year (RuBY) and the 2013 Valerie Parv Award. Her second book, Murder Most Unusual was released February this year.

I love hearing from readers, and I’d love you to visit my website www.michelle-somers.com, but it’s currently under construction, soon to be filled with awesomeness 😊 So, if you’d like to stay in touch, find and follow me on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, or email me at michelle-somers@bigpond.com to sign up for my newsletter and a FREE copy of my novelette, Cold Case, Warm Heart.

Three deaths, one clue, and twenty-four hours before it's too late...

Homicide detective Calamity Dresden has twenty-four hours to catch a killer before he kills and disappears underground. Estranged lover Sebastian Rourke wants justice for his father and every other victim of Melbourne’s sadistic Trifecta Terror.

But can the pair overcome past hurts and catch the killer before he catches them?

Practical Tips for Surviving the Road to Publication by Sarah Raplee

Hi, I'm Sarah Raplee, author of Paranormal  and Steampunk Romance.

In order to smooth your seemingly-endless trek to Author-dom, I’m sharing some tips I’ve learned The Hard Way.

Time Management Tips

If you must have a perfectly clean, quiet area to work, buy earplugs and go to the local library or coffee shop to write. 

I own a sign that says, “An immaculate house is the sign of a misspent life.” The writer’s corollary is, “An immaculate desk is the sign of a procrastinating writer.”

When writing in a coffee shop or other public place, never tell a stranger you are a writer. Chances are they will spend the next hour or two telling you all about the story they will never write, but you should. Or they will have written a story they want you to read and tell them if it’s any good. (Believe it or not, once someone gave me a notebook detailing a story they’d “thought up” that had an amazing plot, which unfortunately was already the plot of a bestselling author’s book.) 

Avoid eye contact to avoid conversations. If directly asked if you are a writer, LIE. It’s best to plan and rehearse the lie ahead of time, just in case this situation arises. "What, me? I'm working on a class assignment."

Never Leave Home Without…

(These are pretty self-explanatory.)

Earplugs

Spare mouse batteries

Your computer glasses

Your (fully charged) laptop or notebook computer

Chocolate

Eye drops

Pain reliever

Keeping Your Sanity Tips

SARAH AND FRECKLES

Never leave your cat alone in your office. My cat steals shiny metallic objects like paperclips and thumb drives. He also loves to send cryptic messages to my friends (&*’7poitionnnn). Sometimes he decides to lay on my keyboard when I’ve left a document open (aszxzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz).He’s also been known to hold down the backspace key long enough to delete a half hour’s work.

Never leave your child alone on your computer. Your work is, to quote Golem, “Precioussss.” Treat it as such. Avoid unnecessary risks.

Never give your cat or your child your password. See above.

Always save frequently. There’s no terror greater than the panic of losing a day’s work. Sooner or later bad computer magic happens to every writer. Saving is like a protective spell.

Always back up your work frequently. Computers get hacked, infected by viruses, stolen, burned in house fires. See above and multiply the panic by a thousand.

Fail Safe

If you DO lose a chunk of your work, take a brief moment to feel terrified, but then DON’T PANIC! I once lost a whole chapter of a novel. I had no idea what happened to it. Searched and browsed but couldn’t locate the blasted thing anywhere. After a week, I bit the bullet and wrote the chapter a second time.

Fast forward three months. While accessing a research file folder, guess what I found? My original chapter! No idea how it ended up there. Out of curiosity, I compared the two versions of my chapter. They were nearly word-for-word identical! So if you lose some work and have to recreate it, chances are your second version will be very similar in awesomeness to your first.

I hope you find these tips helpful on your writer’s journey. Do you have a practical tip to share?

One Thing I Wish All Writer's Knew Before They Published

By Kelly Schaub

What time is it? What day is this? What time of year? How much time has passed?

You know the answer—it's all in your head, in your planning for the story. But did your timeline make it accurately into the text that a reader will see? Your editor points out how five days passed and it's only two calendar dates later and you think, "How did I miss that?"

Timeline truly is easy to track. Take one read-through and concentrate on only timeline clues. Make a notation or highlight the relevant words, whatever method works best for you.

Any mention  of time of day, angle of the sun, day of the week, season, month of the year, temperature or event related to the season, holidays, weekends, the span of time between now and another event—all the stuff you mark on a calendar or clock is timeline information. Make a notation.

Did you choose to set the story in a specific year? Go online and find that year's calendar to check days of the week against the dates you name to be sure they coincide. Check for any anachronistic displays of technology, jargon, costume, or cultural norms unexplained by the storyline. Readers who know history will shun you if they see this. Bad review juju.

Mark down when your characters eat (along with what meal it is—breakfast, lunch, dinner) and when they sleep. If your heroine goes to bed at the end of a long Monday, and the next scene begins with her rising out of bed in the morning, readers will assume it is now Tuesday. If it is in fact Friday because something important to the plot will happen on Friday and the prior days were unimportant, make sure your reader knows right away about the change in time. Does your character eat three square meals in one day...or did he somehow fit in five? We might have missed a day change.

Did your character spontaneously decide to fly across the whole country and is somehow at her destination in three hours? Most of us can't even pack, get to the airport, purchase a ticket and make it through TSA screening in that amount of time, never mind the wait at the other end for transportation, traffic, etc. Go to any bargain travel site that offers airline tickets and punch in the time, date and route to see likely itineraries. And don't forget time zone changes or delays typical of seasonal weather patterns at either origin or destination; every airport has a webpage where you can look this up. Character traveling out of the country? Research passport and visa information, including how long it takes to secure this before travel. Write that in.

After you've marked up all the timeline clues, if you find any that don't jive with the story, fix them. Right now. Before you allow yourself to be distracted by any other sort of fix needed.

______

A former zookeeper turned author and freelance editor, Kelly Lynne Schaub has published over 100 non-fiction articles, three short stories, and two novels (as Kelly McCrady).

Focusing on developmental fiction editing as well as stylistic edits needed to bring a writer's vision to the attention of agents and publishers is what Kelly does best; she has shepherded more than 120 novels and short stories to publication.

Kelly is a member of Willamette Writers and the Editorial Freelancers Association.

Learn more about Kelly at 

EFA: http://www.the-efa.org/dir/memberinfo.php?mid=8345

One Thing I Wish Writers Knew

By Courtney Pierce

This month’s subject is a fun one. I’ve learned tons of tips. I could wax on about the importance of honing craft. I often beat the drum of discipline for the long hours of focus needed to produce an engaging novel. I could talk forever about the cerebral dexterity we employ to write a book versus sell one. But these are the basics required of all authors. No secrets here. A few well-chosen workshops by reputable instructors can teach these technical skills.

Photo: Stuart Miles

But one aspect of writing comes from living long enough. At the ripe age of 55, it sparked for me after my first book. Yep. I’m a baby boomer. Here's my tip:

All great fiction is threaded with truth—not the litigious kind, but inner truth.

Writers come to the profession with a compost pile of life experiences. The older we are, the bigger the pile. People, relationships, places, bonehead decisions, and dinner-table stories get shoved into the grinder, then they steam and percolate. Out shoots rich fertilizer for fictional prose. While my characters are born from imagination, they only become real when infused with truth. Some characters receive physical attributes and quirks of people I know; others speak with unique turns of phrase or expose the inner fears of those who've crossed my path.

A former corporate colleague phoned me after she’d read one of my books and said, “I know who your antagonist is.”

“Do you now?” I said, and laughed. “I’m not talking.” The name, gender, and physical description of this person had been changed in the book. The only clues to a real identity were the inclusion of a few key personality traits—but they were real. I drew from those days of driving home in tears after being undermined, lied to, and pushed aside by a boss with a vicious, competitive ego. My private hell. Poisonous venom oozed through of my fingers and into one of my characters. Is that literary revenge?

On the flip side, my husband of 36 years got a twinge of jealousy with my new book Indigo Lake, due out later this year. One of my characters gets a love interest. This man looks nothing like my husband, so it took some finesse to make him realize I wasn’t fantasizing about another.

Photo: Stuart Miles

“Look closer, you goof,” I said. “He’s you in a different skin. My character responds to his predicament like you would. When Olivia meets Woody, the chemistry is me meeting you.”

My elderly mother ran into herself in my fourth book, The Executrix. As one of my toughest beta readers, Mom gave me “the call” after the second chapter.

“Hey! You killed me off before the book even got started?” she said.

I rolled my eyes. “No, Ma. It’s fiction. She’s not you.”

“I know it’s me. Ellen Dushane says things the way I do.”

Of course, Mom was right. Aren't all Moms right? While I didn’t exactly lift my mother from life, I infused a slow drip of her in my book. I wove the character of Ellen Dushane with tiny stitches of gold truth thread—fine stitches only visible under a magnification loop. Ellen becomes three-dimensional as the book progresses, even though she dies on page thirty. In the end, my Mom laughed and took it all in stride. I expressed “the real” at the safe distance of fictional prose, which crystallized my own fear of losing her. Beneath the outrageous humor in The Executrix, I confronted the ever-present lump in my throat for the inevitability of becoming a middle-age orphan.

The greatest compliment a writer can receive is when readers say their fictional characters are real. That they identify with their attitudes, moral dilemmas, and chemistry. My latest book spawned these comments, which is why The Executrix is now a trilogy about the Dushane sisters. The enthusiastic response allowed me to expand the arc of the three colorful sisters. Yes, they’re modeled after my own two siblings. At signings where my mother attends, readers ask her to autograph the book. Mom writes, Truth is stranger than fiction in jiggly scrawl.

Some stuff you can’t make up, and as a writer it takes courage to slip truth on the fictional page. Dig deep into the compost pile. That’s why my favorite T-shirt displays the saying, Careful . . . you’ll end up in my novel.

Courtney Pierce is a fiction writer living in Oregon with her husband of 36 years and bossy cat. She writes for baby boomers. Her novels are filled with heart, humor, and mystery. Courtney has studied craft and storytelling at the Attic Institute and has completed the Hawthorne Fellows Program for writing and publishing. She is a board member of the Northwest Independent Writers Association and is a member of Willamette Writers, Pacific Northwest Writers Association, and Sisters in Crime.

Colorful characters come alive in Courtney's latest novel, The Executrix. When three middle-aged sisters find a manuscript for a murder mystery in their dead mother’s safe, their view of Mom take a whole new turn. Is it truth? Or fiction? Sibling blood becomes thicker than baggage, while Mom looms larger in death than she was in life.

Look for the second book in the trilogy, Indigo Lake. Due out in fall, 2015. Visit Courtney's website at www.courtney-pierce.com. Her books can be purchased at Windtree Press, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo Books, and at several independent bookstores in the Portland and Salem area..