Gifting with Gratitude by Christa Allan

I’m so grateful to take a break from my post-retirement from teaching, newly assigned position as the unpaid receptionist at my husband’s veterinary clinic where my duties consist of saying, “Hello, how are you? Hold on…” and taking detailed chart notes to feed my longing for my non-existent writing time.

Since my reading as of late consists of deciphering scribbles to write prescription labels, I’m quite excited about the new cycle in GBC blog-land, which is talking about books. And how cool is it that it coincides with the holidays, as in hint-hint-hint…gift-giving.

So, now the happy chance to suggest some titles from out GBC list:

THE IN-BETWEEN HOUR (coming December 31) by Barbara Claypole White What could we worse than losing your child? Having to pretend he's still alive…

SCOT ON THE ROCKS by Brenda Janowitz (chick lit/ women's fiction)

It's the story of a woman who goes to her ex-boyfriend's wedding.  Hilarity ensues.  

THE OTHER WOMAN  by Hank Phillippi Ryan  Winner of the Mary Higgins Clark award, nominated for Agatha, Anthony, Daphne, Shamus and Macavity awards.  It’s The Good Wife meets Law and Order! A Boston reporter on the trail of an ex-governors secret mistress—and a detective on the trail of a possible serial killer. 

FATHER FOUND by Judith Arnold   Jamie McCoy's syndicated column, "Guy Stuff," keeps thousands of men in a macho frame of mind. But the day Jamie finds Samantha on his doorstep, his life changes drastically. Samantha is a baby. Jamie knows nothing about babies. He phones Allison Winslow, a nurse who runs the Daddy School, for advice. But when he actually meets Allison, he finds he wants much more than her assistance. Winner of the RT Magazine Reviewers Choice Award for Best Superromance of the Year.

PERFECT TIMING by Laura Spinella   There’s rock, there’s a hard place, then there’s Aidan & Isabel.   What’s a Jersey Girl to do when she moves to Catswallow, Alabama ? Isabel Lang finds the answer in friendship, an unlikely bond with the musically gifted Aidan Roycroft. The two share everything from a first kiss to startling family secrets. But when Aidan is accused of a violent crime, they flee to Las Vegas where Isabel’s future comes tumbling down.  

 LITTLE WOMEN AND ME by Lauren Baratz-Logsted (for teens) Emily is sick and tired of being a middle sister. So when she gets an assignment to describe what she'd change about a classic novel, Emily pounces on Little Women. After all, if she can't change things in her own family, maybe she can bring a little justice to the March sisters. (Kill off Beth? Have cute Laurie wind up with Amy instead of Jo? What was Louisa May Alcott thinking?!) But when Emily gets mysteriously transported into the 1860s world of the book, she discovers that righting fictional wrongs won't be easy.

WHAT A MOTHER KNOWS by Leslie Lehr When a woman recovers from a deadly car crash and is accused of murder, she learns that her 16 year-old-daughter, the only one who might know the truth of what happened that day, is missing.

PRIDE, PREJUDICE, AND THE PERFECT MATCH by Marilyn Brant  A single mother and an ER doctor meet on an Internet dating site—each for reasons that have little to do with finding their perfect match—in this modern, Austen-inspired story. It’s a tribute to the power of both “pride” and “prejudice” in bringing two people romantically together, despite their mutual insistence that they should stay apart…

HOLLYWOOD GIRLS CLUB by Maggie Marr  Four friends; A-List actress Cici Solange, Producer Lydia Albright, Agent Jessica Caulfield, and Screenplay Writer Mary Anne Meyers try to get their film made in the treacherous cut-throat town that is Hollywood.  

A Happy Thanksgiving to all the GBCers and our readers everywhere!

Christa Allan's newest novel, A Test of Faith, will release in March of 2014. You can track her down at Facebook, and Twitter while she awaits the re-invention of her website. You can find her other novels here. She and her husband are looking forward to Thanksgiving surrounded by family, laughter, and--of course--football.

Writing Walks

by Carleen Brice

Need a clue? Take a hike.

I get some of my best ideas while I’m “not working.” Washing dishes, raking, weeding, walking. In fact, I often write while walking whether I intend to or not. There’s something about moving the body that gets the brain working creatively, and, for many writers, there’s something specifically about walking that works.

But I find that getting an idea isn’t the hard part. Read all the rest of the blog posts here for excellent tips on where to find ideas or how to generate them from your own life. For me the hard part is how to nourish that idea—how to keep feeding it so it stays alive and grows into something more.

For me, holding a whole story in my mind and heart is hard. With 300 or 400 pages of thoughts and actions, stuff gets lost. I can’t count the number of times (don’t even want to know!) I have written a scene only later to go back and find that scene doesn’t make sense because of something that came before it. One of the ways I know to keep the whole story fresh in my mind is to tell it to myself as I would tell it to a friend. And the best way I’ve found to do that is to put on my sneakers and start walking. As I walk, I imagine a good friend next to me, and I tell her the story like I’d tell the story of another book I read and really loved.

Over the course of a year or two or three or however long it takes to write that story, I will have to tell it to myself over and over again.

What about when I don’t know the whole thing? How does a writing walk help then? Well, I tell myself what I know so far about the people in the story and what’s happening to them. Walking while imagining my people lets me get out of my own head and my own way and immerse myself in the world of my story. On a good day I can write an entire scene in an hour walk.

Next time you’re feeling stuck or feel like you could use some fresh energy, hit the trails. (Don’t forget to take a small notebook or a smartphone!)

FYI, this is my last post as a member of the Girlfriends Book Club. Thanks Karin and all the members for the insights you’ve shared and for your support! I’ll still be a reader of the blog and hope to be back as a guest when my next book comes out. If you want to keep in touch in the meantime, please follow me on Twitter or friend me on Facebook.

Tales of a Reluctant Mover by Sara Rosett

I’ve moved a lot. I’ve moved so many times that I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve moved. I know it’s over fifteen times, which is rather ironic because I spent most of the first twenty years of my life in the same city. Then I married a man in the Air Force and life hasn’t been quite so settled. Ironically, I’m not a person who craves change and new things. I prefer to be in familiar surroundings. With each military move, I went reluctantly, but once the boxes were unpacked and we settled into our new life, I grew to like the new place—well, that’s a true statement for most of the places we’ve lived. There were a few locales I couldn’t wait to leave—and that’s the good thing about being a military spouse, if you don’t like the assignment, you know you’ll be moving on soon.

As painful as the frequent relocations were for me, they also provided a rich background for my mystery series. I grew up in Texas and, despite what you might think, I did see snow. Great wind-blown drifts of it would pile up next to our garage when huge snowstorms swept down from the plains, but I’d never seen snow like they had in Washington state. We lived in Spokane in the inland Pacific Northwest for several years and one winter we had endless rain. The next year we had endless snow. I’d never seen snow plows push the unmelting snow higher and higher along our street, until it rose above my car window and there was only a narrow corridor wide enough for one car. I’d never had snow tires or seen wires zigzagging along roof edges to melt ice. I loved writing about this very different world in the first two books in the series, Moving is Murder and Staying Home is a Killer.

For the third book, I sent Ellie on vacation to Washington D.C., where—surprise, surprise—I’d also recently vacationed. After touring the Smithsonian museums and walking the National Mall, I thought it would be a perfect setting for a mystery about a military spouse. Little did I know, in a few years we’d be stationed in both Maryland and Virginia. We lived in a rural area in Maryland where red barns dotted the landscape of corn and tobacco fields. That’s where I discovered that I’m a suburban girl. I like the grocery store to be ten minutes away and I really need a bookstore within half an hour! I loved the hustle and bustle of Virginia. We lived outside the Beltway, but we could hop on the Metro and revisit the monuments and museums pretty much whenever we wanted.

Since I’d already written about the D.C. area, for the fourth and fifth books, Magnolias, Moonlight, and Murder, and Mint Juleps, Mayhem, and Murder, I moved Ellie to the south to a fictionalized version of Warner Robins, Georgia. I wasn’t too enamored of the humid summers, but I did enjoy the fall and winter in middle Georgia. I put all those quirky and interesting things about Georgia into the books—the roadside boiled peanut stands, the kudzu-draped power lines, the abandoned family plot graveyards scattered around the countryside, and the old-fashioned hardware store down the road with trophy heads mounted on the walls, rocking chairs by the stove, and a bucket of bubble gum under the counter for the kids.

When it came time to write the sixth in the series, Mimosas, Mischief, and Murder, I decided to send Ellie to visit her in-laws in Alabama. I spent a very happy three months at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, avoiding snow and enjoying a balmy southern winter while my husband attended a military training course called Squadron Officer School, or SOS, for short. It wasn’t an SOS situation for me. I met the nicest people and would have stayed longer if I could. Alabama wasn’t the only short trip we’ve taken that I’ve wanted to write about. Being in a military family means we’ve been able to combine work and travel to Hawaii, England, Germany and even work in a weekend trip to Paris, which wasn’t nearly long enough!

Sometimes people ask me if I’m afraid I’ll run out of things to write about. I don’t think I will. For me, many of the stories grow out of the setting and I still haven’t written about Oklahoma, southern California, Texas, and Florida.

And, there’s all those international destinations, too. The Eiffel Tower might be an ideal place for a murder…

~Sara


This post originally appeared at FreshFiction.com, but it seemed a perfect fit for our topic of where ideas come from. Sara Rosett is the author of the Ellie Avery mysteries. MIMOSAS, MISCHIEF, AND MURDER is the latest title in the series. You can learn more about Sara and her books at http://www.SaraRosett.com.

P.S. For any aspiring writers out there, I’ve just released THE NITTY GRITTY GUIDE TO FINDING A LITERARY AGENT. The ninety-nine cent e-book is available on Amazon and BN.com and is filled with advice, tips, and strategies for targeting your agent search. (If you don’t have an e-reader, you can download free software and read e-books on your computer.)

What's your story? (And a free book giveaway!) By Brenda Janowitz

SCOT ON THE ROCKS

THANKS SO MUCH TO EVERYONE FOR ENTERING THE CONTEST!  WE HAD SO MANY GREAT ENTRIES THAT I DECIDED TO PICK TWO WINNERS!  DRUM ROLL PLEASE....  CONGRATS TO LAURA KAY AND DEBBIE H!  EMAIL ME TO CLAIM YOUR PRIZE.  AND THANK YOU AGAIN TO EVERYONE FOR COMMENTING.


One of the most common things that published authors get asked about is how we come up with ideas for our stories.  The other is how they can get free copies of our books.  Generally, I'm pretty open with the advice about writing, less so with free copies of my books, but today I'm doing a book giveaway!  Yippee!!  Deets are at the bottom of this blog post.

But back to the book ideas.  For me, it always starts with a tiny germ of the truth, and then I let my imagination run wild from there.

When I was invited to my ex-boyfriend’s wedding, my life slowly but surely began to resemble some of my favorite chick lit novels, and I said to myself, ‘I’ve just gotta start writing this stuff down…'

So, I did!  And it became my first novel, SCOT ON THE ROCKS, which is subtitled: How I survived my ex-boyfriend's wedding with my dignity ever-so-slightly intact.

JACK WITH A TWIST

When I finished SCOT ON THE ROCKS, I knew that Brooke’s story had to continue.  Since both she and her love interest Jack are lawyers, I thought it would be so much fun to pit them against each other in the courtroom… all while planning their fairy-tale wedding.  Thus, the idea for JACK WITH A TWIST was born!

But writing a book is more than just coming up with your idea.  You then have to write 300 pages, and for most writers, that's the rub.  I always say that everyone has at least one book in them, but most people will never sit down to actually write a full manuscript.

To get myself started, I took a writing class, which really armed me with the tools that I'd need to write a full length novel.  Lots of people can write, but you need to learn the rules if you want to actually write a book.  Most recently, I discovered Alex Sokoloff's Screenwriting Tricks for Authors, which has become my Bible, along with her blog, The Dark Salon.  I used to think I knew a lot about three act structure and how to structure a novel, but Alex breaks down three act structure even further-- into eight distinct sequences-- and just by reading her story breakdowns, I've learned more about story structure then I did in any of the classes I've ever taken before or any of the books I've read combined.

Are you one of those people who's got a book idea in you but just hasn't sat down to write it yet?  Post your book idea in the comments below and be entered to win a copy of my novel, JACK WITH A TWIST!  I'll select the winner on June 1st, so check back on this blog entry and I'll announce the winner here.  (Don't forget to leave me your email address or some way to contact you in case you are the lucky winner!)


I’m the author of Scot on the Rocks and Jack with a Twist.  My work’s also appeared in the New York Post and Publisher’s Weekly.  You can find me at brendajanowitz.com.