Ten things I learned while writing my novel

Posted on May 8, 2012 by

Anachronism – “the representation of an event, person, or thing in a historical context in which it could not have occurred or existed.”
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/anachronism?s=t

As I poured words into the first draft of my novel, I often made an educated guess – okay, sometimes I just made things up – about certain events or things and added a comment to do the fact checking when I started my revisions.

Anachronisms gone wild

1. Eternity was introduced by Calvin Klein in 1988.
My protagonist learned his mother wore this fragrance – 10 years before it was introduced…doh!

2. Cell phones weren’t in most college students’ pockets in 1992.
My original outline referenced use of a cell phone in a call between 2 siblings. Nope, I don’t think so. In 2012, yes. In 1992? Whoops.

3. Desktop PCs weren’t everyday household items in 1992.
I got my first one in late 1993. It was an HP. But I needed one (in the novel) in 1992 and needed to know when the Windows operating system came out. When did you get your first Windows PC? (Or are you a MAC person?)

I’m sure I fixed a few other things but those three were stand-outs.

Other interesting tidbits and trivia

Continuing my top 10:

4. Want your characters to sing a line or two from a pop song? You probably need permission to use those lines. You don’t want to get hit for a copyright violation.

5. The USS Enterprise (CVN-65) ran aground in San Francisco Bay in 1983. George Takei was on board!

6. Italicize ship names, like Enterprise, but not the USS part.
So is it the Starship Enterprise, starship Enterpirse, Starship Enterprise??? It is USS Enterprise (NCC-1701).

7. Using brand names in fiction. Trademark issues. @RightsofWriters has a nice article covering some of the things that might get a writer in trouble.  I also found a few articles discussing references to famous characters from fiction or movies, like a certain roguish-space pirate-smuggler type from a hit sci-fi movie from the 1970s… Dang! You mean my protagonist can’t use his favorite action figures to stage medieval battles unless I ask permission to use the name?! *sigh* (Okay – you can use said character’s name but if you don’t ask permission, you potentially could find yourself in legal troubles.)

8. College traditions such as climbing the Herndon Monument at the US Naval Academy; or bicker at Princeton. Who knew?

9. Baseball – a low ERA is better than high ERA. :)
I knew this. Honest. It was a speeding-through-the-writing brain fart.

10. There was a ’64 Mustang on display at the New York World’s Fair.
Giving away my age: I was at the ’64 World’s Fair but all I remember seeing was Michelangelo’s sculpture, Pietà, and the big globe thing – or was that Epcot…

And now you’re wondering…

What the heck is Keeping the Family Peace about? How do all those disparate ideas fit into one novel? Keep watching this blog for information about my debut novel later this year!

Readers – have you ever spotted an anachronism in a book? Did it bother you? And writer friends – tell us about interesting things you learned or fact-checked while working on your books.

Posted in research, revising | 2 Comments

The book blurb

Posted on April 30, 2012 by

How do you distill a 93,000 word manuscript down to 2 paragraphs? While my novel is off in beta hands, I’ve been writing, editing, scrapping, and re-writing my book blurb, or as it’s called on Amazon, the “product description”. That’s not very romantic, is it? If I was buying a blender or a new laptop, sure, “product description” seems to fit. But for a book?

I suppose that in the online environment our books don’t really have a book jacket or a back cover. Will kids in the future even know those terms? Most will be introduced to the smart phone, iPAD or Kindle before they start kindergarten. Will the touch and feel of a paperback (or hardcover), the smell of old paper, be foreign to them?

But I procrastinate. Product description. Why not  something as simple as “about this book”? Too boring I suppose.

But boring is NOT what the book blurb can be. It has to grab the reader immediately. A voice in their head says I must take a closer look at this book, which leads to “Buy now with 1-click” and makes us writer-ly types happy.

The advice about writing the book blurb here and here makes it sound like it should be  simple. Writers know that this is not a piece of cake. Think of all the plots and subplots in a novel. I know what the most important thing is; I can tell you what’s at stake for my protagonist. But keeping it short, punchy, and to the point without revealing the details – that’s the trick.

I posted my 4th attempt at the blurb for my upcoming novel here. I’ve already worked up 2 different versions, including one that went over really well at my writers group last week.

I’d love to hear from you and I know my non-writer readership would be interested in your tales! How many rewrites did it take you to finalize your own book blurb? Feedback on my current blurb is welcome, too!

Posted in marketing, writing | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Book excerpt – tagged for #luckyseven

Posted on April 23, 2012 by

Writers do interesting things to support each other while trying to sludge through the writing, revising, publishing process. Twitter is one refuge, even when you get tagged – a la hashtag – to participate in a mini-exercise. Marie Loughin included me on #luckyseven and as she notes, it’s a way for readers to get a glimpse of our writing.

The rules for #luckyseven are:

  • Go to page 7 or 77 in your current manuscript
  • Go to line 7
  • Post on your blog the next 7 lines or sentences – as they are!!
  • Tag 7 other people to do the same

So here goes. This is a little more than 7 lines from Keeping the Family Peace – aren’t you lucky! The setting: it is Thanksgiving 1992 and Admiral Chuck Bailey, an old friend, is visiting the family…

Chuck cuddled Jamie in the crook of his arm and wandered across the room to look over Pete’s shoulder. “They gave my assistant one of these new-fangled machines a few months ago. When she realized she could throw away the white-out, you’d have thought she’d won the lottery.” He shook his head. “I had one of those old dedicated terminals back in the seventies. At the NSA. A roomful of power and memory – probably what this one little machine holds.”

“And Windows 3.1. No more DOS,” Pete said. “Internet access. I’m going to buy one of these babies for Christmas.”

“You are?” Emma asked, surprised.

“Windows?” Chuck appeared to take it all in stride and held his own against Pete’s computer-speak. “That’s the operating software, right?”

Pete nodded.

“There goes my diamond necklace,” Emma sighed.

You’ll have to wait for the rest! But if current mainstream family sagas aren’t your cup of tea, how about a little historical fiction? A bonus! I can’t give you lines from p. 7 of this one because, in it’s current state, it’s a 5 page short story. But I will give you a taste of Battle Scars: England, one of 3 short stories set during the 1190s, where Henry, a young knight, has recently returned from Outremer where he served Richard the Lionheart during the Third Crusade:

Pulling his cap down tightly, Henry stared across the fog certain there was a low, deep hum coming from somewhere on the water. Ships, troops—Prince John’s mercenaries.

He buried his head in his hands. His heart beat rapidly throbbing loudly in his ears. It drowned the thrum of noise around him but the nightmares of fighting the king’s enemies and the sounds of battle remained, painted vividly in his mind. How often had he awakened with sweat beaded across his forehead remembering the times they’d come within a whisper of dying?

Memories stirred of Saracen war cries in the Holy Land, scars from that godforsaken desert. They were as clear as if they’d come off the water.

Oh God’s heaven, the chanting. Stop the awful chanting.

Watch for Battle Scars in 2013.

Check out many other authors participating in #luckyseven via links from Twitter at the hashtag here. And I know I’m supposed to tag 7 authors but most of those I follow have already participated.

Posted in writing | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Letting go of my manuscript

Posted on April 21, 2012 by

I quit.

Yes, I’m done. I quit. Revising the novel, that is. It’s hard to let go, to turn your manuscript over to someone for critique, to send it to agents or publishers. It’s a scary thing even if you’ve been sharing your work with a critique group. But it is something a writer must do to move on. It’s easy to say “I’ll just go back and revise that paragraph, that chapter, the whole damn book, one more time”. You can repeat that for years. And never get published.

So, it’s time to move on. I’ve shipped the 93K word manuscript to 2 beta readers. Barring plot holes or their downright boredom, I hope to get the cover art complete this summer. I’m going to concentrate on the blurb & hook that will appear on Amazon and elsewhere while the betas have the book. With any luck, Keeping the Family Peace will be coming your way this fall.
++++++++++++

Inspired by Kristen’s Lamb The Secret to Success–Quitting. http://warriorwriters.wordpress.com/2012/04/16/the-secret-to-success-quitting/
Check out her books: We Are Not Alone–The Writer’s Guide to Social Media and Are You There, Blog? It’s Me,

Posted in writing | 2 Comments

trying to write when life throws trees in your path

Posted on April 14, 2012 by

Kansas in the springtime. Colors pop from flowering pear trees in shades of pinks and purples and bulbs poke their heads through the soil; prairie pastureland turns black from (mostly) controlled burning and the air smells of smoke. Within days, lush green spikes appear. Bradford pears bloom white for a day or two until a storm with 40mph gusts blow the flowers away. It’s a gorgeous time of year – except for the tornadoes.

The weather guys introduced a new term to me yesterday – Tor Con – tornado condition. (Has this term been around forever?) Apparently, northeast Kansas is on the edge of the greatest threat of tornado activity today – 7 or 8 on a scale of 10. Ugh.

Yesterday was a quiet day. No wind to speak of. So imagine my surprise when I opened the garage this morning and saw this:

half of my bradford pear treeHalf my lovely Bradford Pear fell across my driveway. Sigh. I’m hoping the tree guys, who can’t get here until 2pm, can beat the storms that are predicted to move in this afternoon. I don’t know if the tree can be saved. How sad. Don’t you hate to see downed trees?

Needless to say this put a slight dent in my writing plans this morning. My brain got a bit sidetracked. I’m at my desk now and watching the winds pick up. Time to hit those revisions. Both laptops are fully charged, so I’ll be able to revise away for several hours if we lose power tonight (though it’s hard to type when you’re squished into a closet with pillows & blankets over your head during a tornado warning). Fingers crossed that it won’t come to that. Now…on to chapter 17.

May you & yours stay safe from storms.

Posted in life, revising, writing | 6 Comments

the art of negotiating…

Posted on April 5, 2012 by

I bought a new car a few weeks ago. I hate negotiating. I hate conflict. I hadn’t bought a car for myself since 2000. I helped 2 of my 3 children buy their first cars and those weren’t pleasant experiences. We looked up car values on the Internet each time. I tossed out the ‘fair price’ figure to the car salesman. He liked Star Wars. It was hopeless. I quoted the trade-in value of my 12 year old Mazda, even opting to go for the ‘fair’ rather than good category. (I know – sucker!) Did I expect them to give me top dollar? No, of course not. But below ‘fair’? Ugh. Too bad they took it for a drive. If they hadn’t I might have done better but I would have felt so guilty! (For a moment or two anyway.) The only bright spot – besides the new vehicle – was the interest rate they finally offered.

Don’t you hate it when they leave you sitting there for 10-15 minutes while the salesman goes to talk with his boss about what they can offer? I put the time to good use and said ‘thank you’ to the smart phone gods. I pulled out my iPhone and after seeing the ad on my bank’s website, I called them to verify that I could get the 3.5% interest rate. When the finance guy offered me 4.75%, I said ‘no way’. He dug through his notebook and suggested 2.75%. I imagine I could have done better with more research and better negotiating skills. Please don’t tell me. I do not want to know. I’m happy about everything except for the monthly payments that begin in 2 weeks.

Do you have a new car buying horror story? Or have you whipped those car salesmen with your own amazing negotiating skills?

Posted in life | 1 Comment

I didn’t know I was going to York…

Posted on March 29, 2012 by

YorkminsterLast year, yes. This year? The Visit York tourist information database must have a bit of a glitch in it. I did a double-take when their email popped into my inbox yesterday. It thanked me for booking at the “Judges Lodgings Hotel on 20 Aug 2011 in York” – great hotel, fantastic location, by the way. It’s about 2 blocks from York Minster. I highly recommend it. I’d love to go back. “Let us help you prepare for your trip to York! Check out our Plan my visit pages and start planning your perfect holiday now.”

Oh so enticing…

Next year. That’s the plan. My $$ are already spoken for this year. The 12 year old vehicle went to the great car junkyard in the sky. I gave into my desire to own a blue SUV with a moonroof. Hands-free bluetooth – oh yeah! Then there’s this little matter of a wedding later this year. My daughter has chosen wisely. :)

So Visit York tourist board, thank you for offering to help. I might take you up on that next year.

What travel plans do you have for this year or next? Have you been to Nashville? I’m headed there this summer for a work-related conference. What, besides the Grand Ole Opry, must I plan to see?  Cheers!

~~~

“Blogging isn’t a chore, it is a demo tape of our artist voice. It is a free performance at a local mall.” via Kristen Lamb’s super inspirational posts.

Posted in travel | 1 Comment