Posted by: Debora on: September 7 2010 • Categorized in: Daily Scoop
"All of us, from time to time, need a plunge into freedom and novelty, after which routine and discipline will seem delightful by contast." ~ Andre Maurois
This quote is spot on the money this morning. I love the summer - sleeping later, no set schedules during the day - but by the time September rolls around I yearn for the routine of fall.
When I set that alarm clock last night for 5:30am, I thought for sure when it went off I would groan and hit the snooze button a time or two.
But, no. I was ready. My brain was ready for my early morning writing routine! My eyes were open at 5:15 and I turned off the alarm before it even went off.
And the biggest surprise of the morning - no trouble rousing the kids from their slumber either! Everyone it seems is ready for the Fall.
(Okay, so it's only day one and I'm no fool. Next week will bring the cranky mornings, the chaos of remembering homework, books, lunches and what the schedule is for that particular day...but I'm lingering in my bliss for the moment...LOL)
Welcome to Writing Inspiration Friday here at the Saucy Scribe Blog! Today I've got romance author Rachel Brimble in the house.
My Inspiration
‘Where do you get your ideas from?’ has to be the most common questions writers are asked when people find out what we do.
My answer?...I don’t know!
And that is exactly what it’s like for me. I genuinely don’t know where the inspiration for each story comes from. I refuse to acknowledge that Writers Block exists because if I do, then there is a huge chance I won’t write a thing. It might become my reason, my excuse not to sit my butt in the chair everyday and write.
And believe me some days what I write is nothing short of total rubbish! But at least I’m writing and once I’ve got words on the page, I’ve got something to edit and that is how my stories are written.
One word at a time. That’s how all stories are written, isn’t it?
I have written six novels in total, four already published, the fifth due for release in January next year and the sixth currently under consideration and the inspiration for each came differently.
This is the most important thing I think all aspiring writers need to accept – inspiration is all around us but unless you listen, you never ‘hear’ it.
Novels one or two came from newspaper headlines and ended being romantic suspense, the third came as my heroine’s voice. She popped into my head when I was food shopping with the kids and never shut up! Hannah from ‘The Sharp Points of a Triangle’ is funny, feisty and full of spunk. I loved her from the start. She came to me fully formed and my third novel, a romantic comedy, was the quickest I have ever written since and before.
I stepped inside this beautiful house (www.lucknampark.co.uk) and knew it was my hero’s home. Now I just had to figure out his story – a few weeks later, I heard his heroine in my head. She didn’t want to get married but could see no way out. I struggled with her, couldn’t quite understand her story and then I realized she was Victorian and things began to take shape. Her voice was upper class yet she hated her privileged life – BAM! I’d make her a housemaid at Lucknam Park!
At the mention of an arranged marriage, Elizabeth Caughley feels her life is over at the age of three and twenty….so she hatches an escape plan.She will reinvent herself as a housemaid.Overnight, Elizabeth becomes Lily…
Viscount Westrop wants nothing more than his legacy to be passed to his own son one day.Even though he feels insurmountable pity for the unborn child already, he knows how much pain a broken promise can cause and will do what is right.But with the arrival of his new housemaid, his plans are thrown into disarray.Lily is funny, feisty and the most beautiful creature on earth – Andrew is thunderstruck.But if anyone suspects how much he wants to ravish her and endlessly love her, Andrew’s lineage will be in peril.And he cannot let that happen…
Welcome to Writing Inspiration Friday! Today the Saucy Scribe is excited to have author Angela Henry in the house to share a true tale of writing inspiration. Welcome Angela!
Inspiration & Playing the What If Game
The inspiration for my novels comes from many different places. Sometimes, as was the case with my very first mystery, it comes from "ripped from the headlines" stories from the news. And other times, a phrase has gotten stuck in my head and I've built entire novels or short stories around them. But no matter where the spark comes from, the next step is always the same. Like many authors, I play the "what if" game.
In September of 2007, I went on a solo trip to Paris. While I was there, I toured the Palace of Versailles and heard a story from my tour guide about a French queen who gave birth in the palace to a child fathered by her African lover. I was so intrigued by this story that I put my day job as a librarian to good use and I started researching it as soon as I got home.
The child in question was a girl named Louise-Marie Therese and she was allegedly the result of an affair between Louis XIV's wife, Maria Theresa of Spain and her lover an African dwarf named Nabo. Louise-Marie spent her entire life hidden away in a convent in Moret-Sur-Loing France, and finally became a nun at age 31. She was known as the Black Nun of Moret. Most historians doubt that Louise-Marie's mother was really Queen Maria Theresa and point out many inconsistencies in the myth surrounding the Black Nun of Moret. But as an author all I could think was: what if the story was true?
Needless to say, the seed for a novel was planted in my mind. Intially, the book started out as a YA fantasy novel. I wrote about 50 pages and showed it to my agent. He wasn't exactly bowled over. So I scrapped it and decided to take all the elements of the story that I loved and go back to what I knew best: mystery/suspense. But I still didn't have a main plot. Or so I thought. Turns out I already had the perfect plot. After all, I was a librarian and I had been on a solo trip to Paris. Clearly, it was time to play the what if game.
So, what if an American librarian on a solo trip to Paris had an adventure? What is she got mixed up in murder, mayhem, and the search for a priceless book hidden centuries ago by the secret daughter of a French Queen? What if she was forced to go on the run with an infuriating Frenchman who set her senses on fire? Well, that's the plot for the book that because The Paris Secret. The Paris Secret will be released in the fall of 2010 by Harlequin's digital-first imprint, Carina Press.
CONTEST! And what if you commented on this post and told me where you get your inspiration? You might win an autographed copy of my most recent Kendra Clayton novel, Schooled in Lies!
Schooled in Lies, book #4 in the Kendra Clayton Mystery series, is now available! GED instructor Kendra Clayton's high school days were nothing to brag about. So she's not too thrilled when on top of having to take a class to renew her teaching certificate or be fired, she gets roped into serving on her high school's reunion committee. Then to make matters worse, Kendra and the other committee members start receiving strange messages and having freak accidents. When one of the accidents results in a death, Kendra is convinced it's murder...
Thanks for coming by the blog today and sharing in Writing Inspiration Friday! By subscribing to the blog and/or GoogleFriending the Saucy Scribe, you increase your chances of winning. Winners are chosen at random from the commenters. Contest remains open until 11:59pm Sunday August 22nd. Winner is announced in my Monday morning blog - come on back to see if it's you!
Today is my once a month blog stop at The Otherworld Diner, come on by. Enjoy the pie while you read why I think playgrounds are great for your imagination.
(adj) Exuberant, enthusiastic; boiling up and over
I'm going to admit to my geek side this morning. I am ebullient over the fact that I searched the web and found a wordpress plugin that will let me direct a page to another site! (Yes, sometimes it's the small things that rock my world.)
A few months ago I updated my theme to the newer version and was thrilled to find it came with drop-down menus for my navigation bar up top (if you move your cursor over the navigation bar, when you get to blog and books, a drop down menu will appear - with clickable links to those pages!)
Since I will now be splitting my blog time with several author group blogs, I wanted to make it easy for readers to track me all over the web...I wanted an easy link to those blogs.
A few minutes with google and I'd found what I was looking for. A plugin that does just that.
I was ebullient at the moment I installed the plugin (and found it worked) and am still pretty darn ebullient about it this morning.
What's made you ebullient lately?
Writing Inspiration Friday WINNER!
DARLA
*To claim your free ebook courtesy of Writing Inspiration Friday Guest Blogger, Kaily Hart, please use my "contact" link and provide your email and preferred ebook format.*
"Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts." ~ Arnold Bennett
Any friend or family member of mine would wholeheartedly agree with the statement that I am not a creature of habit. I don't like to continually do things the same way, I embrace change at every opportunity.
I don't see it is as being a personality flaw or as being "flighty." I see as more as being optimistic that a new way of doing anything might be better than the old. That roads fork for a reason - and temptation to try something new isn't always bad.
One of the workshops I attended at the RWA National Conference was on "Twitter, Facebook and Websites" with Jayne Ann Krentz (I adore her, btw!) I sat with my trusty notebook and checked off my list. Website - yes. Blog - yes. Twitter - yes. Facebook - yes.
While I have all the ingredients for a successful online persona, I'm not getting the most bang for my bucks.
Which brings me here to my very own blog.
If you've been to my website before and are a frequent reader of my blog - you may skip the rest of my website and come straight to the blog. If you do happen to land on my homepage, you'd notice a change. My latest release is now front and center, with an excerpt and buy link easily spotted! You also might notice my sidebar has a Facebook widget - a suggestion I heard several times during that workshop.
Facebook seems to be a great tool for an author to connect with readers and it's easier for them to comment and connect with authors by being logged into their own facebook account. If you haven't "liked" me yet - please take a minute and click on the yellow facebook button on the top right of the blog sidebar!
And now on to the toughest part for me - the blog. Having my own blog is fun and has given me an outlet to vent and stretch my fingers in the early morning hours when the coffee is just beginning to flow through my veins. But it's time for me to admit it might not be the best use of my creative time.
I am NOT shutting down the blog, but I will not be blogging as often as before. Instead, I've decided that the best thing for me might to be share the blogging experience with other bloggers on the same path with me. Fellow authors. I already blog once a month at the Otherworld Diner (a paranormal romance author group blog) and now I will be blogging more on two other group blogs - Dunes & Dreams RWA and Passionate Critters.
I'll be adding links to all the blogs into my navigation bar across the top of my website, so my readers will always know where to find me.
To my faithful readers, I'll still be here. And thank you for reading.
Welcome to Writing Inspiration Friday with my guest blogger, Kaily Hart! Thanks to Kaily for stopping by today to spread a little bit of inspiration with readers of the Saucy Scribe! As usual, there's a contest after the post for commenters, don't forget to come back Monday to see if you're the lucky winner!
Inspiration. It’s a funny thing, for me anyway. Sometimes it’s difficult to say where it comes from. Sometimes it’s really hard to pinpoint the birth of an idea, a concept or a premise. Sometimes when people ask me ‘how did you come up with that?’, I just have to say I have absolutely no idea. LOL.
I can certainly pinpoint specific things in the story and know where they originated from. It’s usually from my own background or history, it could be something I’ve seen or heard, something I’ve read about and it layers itself in somehow. But it’s the feel of the story, the characters and the tone of their journey, that really stumps me because they’re not anyone I’ve ever met or come across before. Often their struggles are not mine. They’ve been developed solely from my imagination.
Picture This, my first book from Ellora’s Cave was like that. I can highlight very specific things in the book and know exactly where I drew them from, but the premise? I don’t know. It just ‘formulated’ in my head somehow. The characters? I’m not sure, they just came to me and started talking. Actually, they insisted I write their story (in very loud voices) and I had no choice. I’m not nuts. Really! I’m not one of these people who always knew deep in their hearts or their souls that they were meant to be a writer. I’m not one of these people who have always been driven to write, often from when they were children. I was on a very different path, both personally and professionally when I found myself taking a ninety degree turn and ended up writing a hot and steamy romance.
That was only just under two years ago. Now, it lives in me, the need to create and craft and shape the stories I have clamoring in my head and I couldn’t imagine doing anything else. I guess it might have been there all the time, just very successfully masked. Where ever the heck it comes from? I just hope it continues so I can keep doing what I’ve come to crave and to love!
Picture This
Desperate and young, Jillian Moore did something she knew would one day come back to bite her in the ass. She’d posed nude. For money. Years later, and on the fast track to a successful career, she’s still haunted by her mistake. She can’t help but wonder when her past will catch up with her.
Samuel Steele is not short on female attention, but the women who warm his bed pale in comparison to the fantasy he’s created of the seductive temptress in the painting hanging prominently in his bedroom. A fantasy that has ruined his once satisfying sex life. When he discovers that her exact likeness works in his building—for him—things get…interesting.
Kaily is giving away a free download of her book, Picture This, randomly to a commenter on this post. Contest is open through midnight Sunday August 8. (For extra chance to win, subscribe to the Saucy Scribe blog by email and/or GoogleFriend me on the sidebar!)
The Saucy Scribe, proudly serving up the Sauce since June 2005! One bold writer telling it like it is.
Thanks for stopping by the blogging home of romance author Debora Dennis! I'm a wife, mother of three great kids (one on the autism spectrum) and a writer. This is the place I hang my hat to let my hair down and ramble on about my life.
Grab a chair and drink and get ready to Dish with Debora, saucy style. All comments, rants and raves contained in this blog are strictly my unvarnished opinions or delusions that are alive and well in the vast recesses of my own wild imagination.
I love comments, but lurkers are welcome too! Just know I'm glad you found me and hope you come back again soon!
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