Surprise finds and research rabbit holes

cj Sez: Meandering around my computer folders last week, I happened upon a “webarchive” document with info about some of my ancestors. It had been downloaded into my writing flash drive on Sept 2 . . . except I don’t remember doing that. Not only do I have a separate family history folder for things that I find, but I don’t have access to a Swedish church registry. Where did it come from? A computer ghost, no doubt.

The discovery started me down a rabbit hole of Googling for more information. After a few days, I found a Swedish forum conversation from 2007 that mentioned my great aunt’s name and asking for any U.S. information. So of course, I clicked on the file and sent an email to the writer, fully expecting my note to go to the little bit bucket in the sky. Guess what? I got a response! Now what? I get to develop an exciting, new relationship with a hitherto-unknown distant relative is what.

The thing is: Days and days of Google searches are pretty much how I write my novels. I like to play hide and seek with my characters. I hide an obstacle in someone’s way then seek out a logical/believable solution to it. That can take days and days of online research. The process keeps the storytelling new and exciting for me because I learn all kinds of neat things (learning something new every day is my personal goal). I admit I’m not a pre-write outliner or plotter. But once I’ve told the story, I go back over it chapter by chapter, scene by scene to chart the plot points, polish, add or delete as necessary, and make sure I haven’t dropped any threads that need to be tied up as the novel ends. I do the same thing with developing my characters, working to make them well-rounded and believable individuals.

Every writer has a special writing style. What’s yours? I’d guess that you’ve read zillions of ideas and advice on how to improve it. My advice? If it works for you (that's the key thing), don’t mess with it. 

That’s all for now. You-all guys keep on keeping on, and I’ll try to do the same.

cj

The toon is from my Facebook page . . . love it. 

Book launch day

Today is launch day for my eBook, DEADLY STAR. Available on Amazon, BN.com, iTunes, Google, Sony and other platforms. The POD is scheduled for later in the year.

      For me, writing this story, writing any story for that matter, is all about editing and change—once you get through the concept and research stage, of course. Sometimes, I see a "need" to change a character's name, a story thread, a sentence structure, or, as is true for Deadly Star, the whole genre. 

Deadly Star didn't start off as a romance. Over the years' long course of writing and editing the manuscript, one of my critique partners thought the story might be marketed as an action/adventure ... another said it was a woman-in-peril ... a third said it's a political thriller. Someone even floated the idea that it was sci fi (it isn't).

Hoping for some critiques beyond my writer's group, I recklessly entered excerpts of the manuscript into two romance contests. The judges in each though the concept and the story were good, except it needed a happily ever after ending. (One judge wrote on her evaluation sheet that she felt like throwing the pages against the wall when she got to the end! That forced me to take another long look at what I had written. Yep, there was a good love story there. Yep, it could, indeed, work as a romance novel if I made a change, or three, or four within the manuscript and, of course, changed the ending.

I reworked it and submitted it to Crimson Romance. They offered me a contract about three weeks after I first submitted my e-query and synopsis, and I knew I'd stumbled (been pushed) into the correct genre.

Today's romance fans, I think, like to see their heroines as more life-like and a little flawed, someone they can relate to and also, perhaps, admire from afar. On the other hand, they still seem to expect their heroes to be nigh-unto perfect.

Deadly Star is not about a perfectly imperfect woman or a perfectly perfect man. It's about a vaguely dysfunctional couple who, when sharing an imminent danger, find common ground in their love for each other. 

Mirabel Campbell, the protagonist, is a little flawed—she's no longer a svelte twenty-something, no longer gaga in love with a husband, hasn't been in a real relationship for a long time, and is a bit of a nerd. But she's also sassy, clever, loyal, and determined. 

Robert O'Sullivan, known to everyone as Sully, is an exciting hero, a ruggedly handsome CIA agent assigned to protect Mirabel. On the flip side, he's a bit of a bad boy, a controller, and a liar.

The connection between these two disparate people  share in the beginning of Deadly Star is Mirabel's accidental sighting of a secret government satellite and the fact that they were once married ... to each other.

In Deadly Star, Mirabel and Sully rediscover their love in the midst of a story about awesome 21st Century technology and international political gangsterism—where a sociopath's money can build a bioweapon, buy a friend's loyalty, and hire an assassin.

I was amazed when Mother Nature recently gave the book a promo. The reality of the asteroid flyby and the meteor strike in Russia that no one saw coming seem to make a Deadly Star even more possible.

I hope readers find the story as enjoyable and intriguing to read as I did to write.

Now, you-all guys keep on keeping on, and I'll try to do the same. 

cj

PS:  Maybe it picked up a cue from me changing my mind, but now I have to figure out why this blog has decided to change its own background. Sorry about that