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National Writing Month

November 5, 2013 by in category Writing tagged as , , , , , , , ,
Many congratulations to writers who finished the OCC/RWA’s very first Book in a Year. Beth Yarnall put together some amazing-looking certificates and pins. So, who’s going to sign up this go-round?
If you want a kick-start, November kicks off National Writing Month, AKA NaNoWriMo.  While I’ve participated for at least the last five years, this year I’m forgoing. 
The pressure has been pretty high. I’m even getting emails from “Your Novel” with the subject heading, “Please write me this November.”
Every year, I dutifully register, donate funds, go to write-ins and I get a lot done. But I never “win.”  Most often, I tend to write short. A full-length novel comes in at 50K. I’ve turned in 52K and had a copy editor suggest cuts in order to get it down to the required length. While writing, I usually “finish” at 45K and then edit, smoothing out transitions, flushing out descriptions and adding in those last 5K.
I’ve met some local (non-RWA) writers through the process and had a blast hanging out with Kara Lennox, Rob Preece, and Tari Lynn Jewett at IHOP and a local grocery store with our laptops. There’s nothing like 10 writers, clustered together working, without talking, garnering attention. Can you imagine? People stared.
Why not this year? I fully support writers signing up, and working hard to complete their novel. I’m taking a realistic approach, and know I have three projects I’d like to finish in the next month:
  1. The Vampire, The Witch & The Werewolf: A Wolfe in the City – The manuscript is about 47K right now, and it needs to be completed.
  2. Second For Men for Ellora’s Cave: The Quickie is more than halfway done, and could be finished up within a week.
  3. R&R for Decadent Publishing: Need to polish a few areas, and get it back in. It’s been on the burner for when the other two items were finished.
Plus, I have another 1Night Stand rattling around in my brain. With the recent release of A Dance with Death, this character is clamoring for a HEA.
So officially-no NaNo for me. I’ll be cheering on my chapter-mates, friends, and you can send me some good thoughts for wrapping up my projects! What do you have on slate to finish your goals before the end of the year?
 
— Louisa Bacio
http://www.facebook.com/LouisaBacio
http://www.Twitter.com/LouisaBacio
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OCCRWA Proudly Presents: November 11 –

October 26, 2013 by in category Archives
OCCRWA Proudly Presents: header

November 11 – December 12, 2013

Writing the Regency Romance

with Shannon Donnelly

About the Class:
For all that it covers an amazingly short time span (1811 to 1820) the English Regency has a remarkable allure for writers and readers. Mystery writers, including the great John Dixon Carr, have chosen this era for a setting, and the Napoleonic wars offer the setting for the popular Sharp series by Bernard Cornwell and the Aubrey/Maturin Series by Patrick O’Brian’s. In Romance writing, the Regency is perhaps the most popular historical time period, and has launched many now best-selling authors. But why should such a short time span–nine years really, although the Regency influence extends over perhaps thirty years–prove so magnetic?
This workshop covers what makes the Regency a fascinating era, and how to use this era to add wit, gallantry and elegance to your setting and your novel. We’ll look at key research resources, what do you need to get right and what can you invent. And we’ll go over a brief overview of the history of the Regency era, with its great contrast, and therefore great conflicts, rich, background, and a more romantic time.

About the Instructor:
Shannon DonnellyShannon Donnelly’s writing has won numerous awards, including a RITA nomination for Best Regency, the Grand Prize in the “Minute Maid Sensational Romance Writer” contest, judged by Nora Roberts, RWA’s Golden Heart, and others. Her writing has repeatedly earned 4½ Star Top Pick reviews from Romantic Times magazine, as well as praise from Booklist and other reviewers, who note: “simply superb”…”wonderfully uplifting”….and “beautifully written.”
Her work has been on the top seller list of Amazon.com and she recently published Paths of Desire, a Historical Regency romance, of which Romantic Historical Lovers notes: “a story where in an actress meets an adventurer wouldn’t normally be at the top of my TBR pile; but I’ve read and enjoyed other books by this author and so I thought I’d give this one a go. I’m glad I did. I was hooked and pulled right into the world of the story from the very beginning…Highly recommended.” Paths of Desire and her other Regency romances can be found as ebooks with on all ebook formats, and with Cool Gus Publishing.
Shannon can be found online at sd-writer.com, facebook.com/sdwriter, and twitter/sdwriter.

Enrollment Information
This is a 4-week online course that uses email and Yahoo Groups.  The class is open to anyone wishing to participate.  The cost is $30.00 per person or, if you are a member of OCCRWA, $20.00 per person.

Please follow the link for instructions on how to enroll.


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Sympathy Cards

October 24, 2013 by in category Archives tagged as

Sympathy letters are not easy to write, but after being on the recieving end, I think I know the secret—or at least a secret.  I hope it may help inspire you to add a little more than the store-bought “With Deepest Sympathy” to your card.

If you knew the deceased, please know that your words are a gift of memory.  They will offer the recipient a small unknown perspective of your way of seeing that person, which is unique.  Share a story, a moment, a memory, a realization—it doesn’t matter what.  It just is something you know, thought, experienced about that person.

In sharing it, you make that person come alive.  You continue to expand and grow the recipient’s knowledge of that person—something they may have felt had ended with their loss.  You give the gift of the knowledge that you too are a repository of memories that live on.  That a life was valued, had impact, was appreciated.

It does not need to be lengthy—or even positive!

It just needs to about you, about them and be shared.

With Deepest Sympathy….

Isabel Swift

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Smart Alec (Syndrome)

October 15, 2013 by in category Archives tagged as , , ,

Ingrid Bergman/Gaslight

“Are you trying to gaslight me?”
I asked a friend that when she swore I had never delivered the book I promised to loan her.  Instead of laughing, she looked at me like I was speaking another language and in a way I was. My friend had never seen the movie Gaslight in which the dashing Charles Boyer attempts to drive the vulnerable Ingrid Bergman mad by lowering the gaslights and insisting the change in lighting is all in her imagination. The plot is a bit more intricate than that, but the point is that my frame of reference was completely foreign to my friend’s and the joke fell flat.
As authors we often write with abandon when we’re in the zone. We research all sorts of things that we believe will give our work legitimacy. To us this information is perfectly sound and critical to the integrity of our novel; to the reader that same information can be confusing or, worse, interpreted as arrogant.  The last thing an author wants to do is take her reader out of the story. The other last thing an author wants is to have the story suffer because she doesn’t include critical information.
How do you walk the fine line between being a smart author or a smart Alec? Take a deep breath, recognize the pitfalls, and apply your talent to finding new ways to communicate even the most intricate information.
Genres that are most susceptible to the Smart Alec Syndrome include :
  • ·      Procedural (police, medical, legal, etc.)
  • ·      Historical
  • ·      Literary

Symptoms of the Smart Alec Syndrome are the use of:
  • ·      Foreign words and phrases
  • ·      Insider references
  • ·      Acronyms
  • ·      Historical, legal, medical references
  • ·      Rare, anachronistic, and/or exotic words

Cures for SAS (Smart Alec Syndrome) can include but are not limited to:
  • ·      Use opposing dialogue for explanation and definition. This may be accomplished  through agreement, amusement, derision, etc.
  • ·      Use the omniscient voice to explain and explore a concept
  • ·      Find another way to explain the word or references that retains the integrity of your work
  • ·      Choose the vernacular but craft a sentence that reflects the tonal uniqueness of the original choice
     Analyze and adjust your work and you will be a Smart Author not a Smart Alec.

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Why I wrote Naked Sushi by Jina Bacarr

October 11, 2013 by in category Archives tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I’ve always been a geek.

I got my first computer when the screen was black and the print orange. I was a member of an infamous BBS (bulletin board system) back in the day when I wrote a column for a computer magazine called “Sweet Savage Byte.”

I did podcasts on a video camera with a floppy disk that only allowed you to record a minute of time. I remember setting this up in a Borders bookstore in Hollywood. Yes, those were the days…

I’m also a huge James Bond fan.

And I love Covert Affairs with the fab heroine Annie Walker.

You put all that together and you get…Naked Sushi.

It’s also a story about facing the fear of rejection. We’ve all been there. Often that’s the reason we don’t finish a manuscript because we’re afraid of rejection. In Naked Sushi, Pepper O’Malley realizes with the help of the hero that’s what is keeping her from achieving her dream of becoming a spy. She poses as a naked sushi model to get the goods on her sleazy ex-boss with the hero FBI hottie getting in on the action in this excerpt from Naked Sushi.

Six days days until Naked Sushi, my Cosmo Red-Hot Read from Harlequin, is released! So here are two videos with an excerpt from my story. What’s wild is that we’ve gone from 60 seconds max in the early days of video to 6 seconds on Vine and 16 seconds on Instagram…

 

What’s fun is that the Vine video loops forever and you can take your time reading the sexy snippet. I found some hot music that adds to the fun atmos. 

The Instagram video is longer, but it doesn’t loop.

 I enjoy experimenting with new ways to present excerpts and since Pepper is a video programmer at a computer game company, this is a fun way to showcase her story.

I had a blast writing this story and I’m thrilled that here is an opportunity for all girls who consider themselves tech-heads to show they’re fun, fearless females!

Pepper hits the digital stores on October 15th.

 

PS — the silky border that I used as a frame around my videos is a remnant from ornate kimono designed by a designer I met when I was taking kimono lessons from a Japanese sensei


Coming on October 15, 2013 from Cosmo Red-Hot Reads from Harlequin:

NAKED SUSHI is available for pre-order on Amazon!
 
Text Copyright © 2013 by Jina Bacarr

Cover Art Copyright © 2013 by Harlequin Enterprises Limited
Permission to reproduce text granted by Harlequin Books S.A. Cover art used by arrangement with Harlequin Enterprises Limited. All rights reserved.
® and â„¢ are trademarks owned by Harlequin Enterprises Limited or its affiliated companies,  used under license. by Harlequin Enterprises Limited or its affiliated companies, used under license.”
Music:

He’s So Sexy
Dream Valley Music
Composer: Michael Stephen Decker Publisher: Shockwave-Sound.Com
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