Look Who Got a Makeover

You might be wondering why I chose this particular artwork. The designer, Dane of Ebook Launch, talked me through the choices and asked me to give him samples of covers I liked. Of course, I wanted the book to stand out in its genre, but I couldn't find any romantic comedy covers on Amazon that I liked or that didn't look like chick-lit. (This story is most definitely not chick-lit. The characters are in their 40s, and it's definitely an unconventional romance.) But the covers I do like are for rom-com movies. So, I sent Dane samples of those, and this is what he came up with. I think it fits the bill.

What do you think?

#TakeMyHusbandPlease #Books #Covers #Promotion

Literary Sadist: Make Them Suffer

If there's one thing I relish about writing, it's making my characters suffer. Happy people with no challenges don't inspire page turning. Movies operate on the same premise. For instance, Far from the Madding Crowd, based on Thomas Hardy's 1874 novel of the same name, gives viewers the enduring question from beginning to end: What bad thing could happen next? And after that, what new horror could happen? The story is fraught with suffering and disappointments and love unrequited times three. Exactly why I liked it. I try to do the same thing with my stories.

Does that make me a literary sadist? Probably, but who doesn't enjoy seeing flawed characters reap the rewards derived from their most agonizing struggles so they can spring from the ashes of their misery into some sort of transformative happy dance. The farther they fall, the more gratifying their rise, I tell you. Of course, making them suffer requires we hurl betrayals and terror and shock and shame and all manner of bad juju at them. Muuu-ah-ah-ah. I'm getting excited just thinking about it. And then, we make them survive. What that survival looks like is one of the most rewarding aspects of telling stories. It calls on us to look inside ourselves and imagine what we would think and do in those situations, how we would feel and act if we were brave or desperate determined enough.

In my dark fantasy, Demonesse: Avarus, my protagonist is the virtuous, empathic daughter of an excommunicated nun. After months of erotic fantasies, she awakens into her new life as a seductive killer powerless to resist the moon's calling. This is everything she was raised not to be. Her idyll is shattered and she is thrust into a life-altering journey that will challenge everything she knows and mold her into the person she was born to be. It won't be easy. The rubber bands of tension are consistently stretched and tested so this character's story arc will be dramatic and, I hope, as gratifying to read as it was for me to write.

#Avarus #Demonesse #Writing #WritersCraft

The Top 11 Reasons I Love Telling Stories

I am woman. Yeah, yeah. I am also writer. The writer aptitude kicked in only a short five years after birth. Whether by nature or nurture through my father's colorful storytelling, writing is part of my DNA. And now that I've been a writer for many decades, here are my top 11 reasons for loving it.

1. I get to make up stories about quirky people in bizarre situations and conversations that make me laugh. And, like Elizabeth Bennett, "I dearly love to laugh."

2. I get to say things through my characters about people's wrongdoings that I wish I had the presence and quickness of mind to say in real life at the very moment the wrongdoing occurs.

3. I get to immerse myself in new adventures and misadventures I might never get the chance to in real life. Who doesn't relish getting into hot water from time to time? We can't always be good girls, can we? Especially when we can so easily control the outcome.

4. I can go anywhere. The world is my jalapeno popper. With a little research, some great camera shots, or a practiced imagination, I can hop a trundling train to Hungary during World War I or sail the stormy South Pacific with a swashbuckler on a pirate ship. All I need is a story in which to fit my sojourns, and I'm sort of on vacation.

5. I get to form tight bonds of friendships and relationships, and out of that sometimes I even get to fantasize sex scenes. Of course, it's much more clinical when you're writing it—the right arm goes here, the left boob goes there… But the end result is fun.

6. I get the chance to work out life's little complexities, uncovering the right words with the right nuances that give me those revealing "ah-has!" And for some time afterward, I'm happy to tell everyone that I'm quite the smarty-pants.

7. I get to figure out what motivates people to behave in ways others might not understand, and then dole out the reasons bit by bit through my characters' actions, personalities, and deep, dark, haunting secrets.

8. I get to fool people into thinking the story is going one direction and surprise them when I lead them through a doorway they weren't expecting. BOO!

9. I get to experience every range of my characters' emotions, from titillation to pain, joy to sorrow, excitement to dread. Not surprisingly, I always loved the teeter-totter when I was a kid.

10. I get to be immersed in a new romance: first flirts, first dates, first kisses, and first sex. It's actually my job to kiss and tell.

11. I am in charge. Whether my characters live or die is entirely dependent on me. From a character's appearance to his words and actions, I am the unequivocal Queen of the Universe. This is why you always want to be kind to a writer. You never know when you will end up in her story, dead.

And, I get to leave my desk after a productive writing session with a huge sense of accomplishment, especially after I've been "in flow" and the words pour out of my fingers. I like it so well, I'm going to do it again tomorrow.

#WritersCraft #Writing