Dianna Love | Walk the Land

Research is the strength of all stories, regardless if it is contemporary, historical, fantasy or futuristic. So how does an author create real settings in all of these worlds?

I like to walk the land every time I can to pick up details we don’t see in a casual passing or on the internet. When Sherrilyn Kenyon and I were writing our new romantic-suspense story PHANTOM IN THE NIGHT (Pocket/June 10, 2008) last fall, we spent time in New Orleans (NO) surveying areas specifically for the story in spite of our joint knowledge of Louisiana. Sherrilyn knows New Orleans well since her Dark-Hunter series is set primarily there, KCON (Kenyon Convention) is in or around the French Quarter each year and she lived in NO at one time. I had family in Louisiana at one time and still do in Biloxi, Mississippi, plus friends in NO. I’ve fished from many of the coastal Louisiana towns along the Gulf of Mexico and had a business in NO at one time, so Louisiana has been a favorite location of mine for many years.

Even with all this background, we spent time there last fall “walking the land” so we had fresh images of law enforcement locations and proximity of residences to the French Quarter, exit routes, airports (small ones, too) and shipping container storage facilities. I photographed areas and wrote notes pertinent to the story. And we always talk to people wherever we go. All this played a part in creating realistic scenes. When I wrote my RITA award-winning book, WORTH EVERY RISK, I had a lot of emails from readers saying how the setting in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida felt so real. That wasn’t too hard to do since I grew up in Florida and chose that city for many reasons that fit the story.

What about paranormal or fantasy stories – where do those settings come from? Sherrilyn has created such realistic sounding locations her books that fans often ask about the actual location of Sanctuary (Were Bear Bar) that will appear again in the upcoming ACHERON book (St. Martin’s Press/August 5, 2008), even though it is a fabricated establishment. She gives fans a walking tour through the French Quarter each year at KCON so they can see where different scenes occurred.

I have a paranormal novella coming out this fall that leans heavily toward fantasy. The setting is midtown Atlanta, Georgia – not far from where I live in Peachtree City. Even though I’ve lived here for many years and visit midtown quite often I still spent time walking through Piedmont Park just for the story, visualizing major scenes then traveling between different locations to get a good feel for time and place. But one setting is under a mystical mountain that is part of the actual Hindu mythology, another blend of mythical history with fictitious properties. I hope you’ll get a chance to read MIDNIGHT KISS GOODBYE (in the Dead After Dark Anthology by St. Martins Press/December 2, 2008) to see how I used real locations with fantasy elements.

~ Do you have a favorite story setting?

~ Did you ever read something that felt so real you wanted to go find that location…and did you try?

~ Have you read about a paranormal, fantasy or futuristic location you’d like to visit? Please tell us.

Visit my ONE DAY ONLY blog contest for a chance to win a copy of PHANTOM IN THE NIGHT. Two winners!!

Dianna Love

Dianna Love writes a romantic-thriller series with #1 NYT best seller Sherrilyn Kenyon. For more on PHANTOM IN THE NIGHT and Dianna please visit www.authordiannalove.com/, and for information on Dianna’s nonfiction book Break Into Fiction™: Power Plot YOUR Novel coming out in 2009 visit www.breakintofiction.com/

Barbara Bretton | Escape Isn't A Dirty Word

I did something yesterday I haven't done in a very long time: I took myself out on a date.

A movie date, to be precise. I had been hard at work on my current manuscript (the second in my new paranormal series) and by early afternoon I was feeling restless and more than a little brain dead. "Cabin fever," my husband said and he was right.

And we both knew the cure.

I jumped in the car, rattled over the back roads between our house and the new movie theater in town, and got there just in time to buy myself a Diet Coke and a small popcorn before the previews started. I settled down in an aisle seat, feeling that delicious shiver of anticipation I always get when the lights dim and the candy bars on the screen start dancing. (Okay, so I'm easily entertained. What can I say? I'm a writer. I don't get out much.)

The funny thing is I wouldn't recognize a Manolo Blahnik if I tripped over one. My favorite sweater is almost twenty years old and I'm fifty-seven. I'd rather spend my money on yarn and books.

And I married the first boy I ever dated.

I am far from being the demographic movie producers were aiming for but what can I tell you? I love SEX AND THE CITY and I was delighted to be there on opening weekend to see what Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda, and Samantha had been up to.

I wasn't alone. The theater was packed with females of all ages. There were a number of mother/daughter pairings and a few three generational groups that made me smile. And, like Carrie Bradshaw, I found myself wondering what exactly had brought them there.

Was it for the Sex? The City? The raunchy humor? The clothes? The shoes?

That might be part of the fun but it wasn't the reason. The women in that theater with me were there because they wanted a happy ending. Yes, a happy ending! The very thing romance writers have been criticized for delivering for at least the twenty-five years I've been in this business. They laughed at the jokes and giggled at the naked men but it was the love stories that made them cry.

Love.

The same emotion we write about every day and savor in the books we read. Proposals. Weddings. Break-ups. Broken hearts. Second chances. Babies. Miracles. And even a Cinderella moment that made an audience sigh loudly in unison.

I was watching a classic romance novel being played out on the screen and I wanted to jump up and say, "If you like this, you'll love our books!" but—well, you know. I was too busy sniffling into my Kleenex during the Auld Lang Syne montage to say much of anything.

I remember one of the episodes from the TV series where the girls trek down to Atlantic City for a weekend that doesn't go quite as planned. Carrie is feeling jaded and cynical about men, about love, and she's ready to give up the search for a soul mate. "Who needs the drama?" she says with a shrug. "I do!" Charlotte shoots back. "That's life, that's everything! Love and babies and family, I want all of that."

Apparently there's a little Charlotte in a lot of us.

We want our happy endings.

We deserve them.

They're what we write about. They're what we're shooting for when we sit down at the computer and wait for those voices to start chattering inside our heads.

Times are tough. The world we live in is a dangerous place. Sometimes we need to slip away for a few hours with a book or a movie and (yes!) escape.

Escape isn't a dirty word. Sometimes that's all that keeps you sane in a crazy world.

Yesterday I watched as a few hundred women rose to their feet and gave happily-ever-after a standing ovation.

Not to mention a $55 million opening weekend.

Maybe happy endings are finally back in style.

It's enough to warm a romance writer's heart.

Barbara Bretton

CASTING SPELLS – November 2008



JUST DESSERTS - available now
Website: http://www.barbarabretton.com/
Blog: http://bmafb.blogspot.com/
Group Blog: http://romancingtheyarn.blogspot.com/

Patti O'Shea | Risky Business

One of the things that satisfies me most about writing is exploring the characters’ fears, their hopes, and dreams. Each book has had something new for me and I’ve enjoyed stretching myself—and I’ve especially enjoyed torturing—um, I mean pushing—the hero and heroine. It isn’t always deliberate, but if I have a heroine who’s afraid she’s going to fall to the dark side in her magical world, you can bet she’s going to end up in a situation where that’s tested.

IN TWILIGHT’S SHADOW (Jun 3, 2008) gave me something different to think about—risk.

I’d explored the idea of courage in an earlier book, but I never thought about risk until Maia and Creed’s story. Maia was a troubleshooter for a society of magic users and she gambled her job, her standing, even her life by playing with black magic.

She lost.

Certain that her sister, Ryne, would be sent to hunt her, Maia gave up her magic, but she also gave up the only world she’s ever known. Considered an outsider among her people, she lives a human life. She has a job she hates, a mortgage, and bills. And she’s playing it safe now, afraid to take a chance again, afraid to lose more than she already has. So she stays in the job and endures it.

Of course, that’s a guarantee that she was going to find herself in a situation where she couldn’t play it safe. If Maia doesn’t take the risk, her sister could be killed. Since she would do anything to protect her, Maia wasn’t about to stand back when Ryne was in danger.

But Maia threw a twist at me—she wasn’t all that worried about the physical risk. She didn’t want to die, of course, but she’d been a troubleshooter and had lived with that threat for years. She was used to it.

What scared her was emotional risk.

Not just fear of getting involved with Creed, her hero, but fear of pursuing her dreams. Maia loves art, she knows a lot about it, and she’d always wanted to work in a museum, but instead she became a troubleshooter and never bothered to attend college. Now that she’s no longer a player, there’s no reason why she can’t explore that dream. But she doesn’t.

This immediately intrigued me. Why doesn’t she go after something she’s always wanted now that she has a chance? Fear of the risk. What if she fails? My job was to get her to see things a little differently—what if she succeeds?

IN TWILIGHT’S SHADOW is focused on the action/adventure, the paranormal aspects, and the romance, of course, but the underlying story is about something riskier—taking a chance on a dream.

Patti O’Shea



Patti’s website: http://www.pattioshea.com/
To find out more about In Twilight’s Shadow: http://www.pattioshea.com/twilight.shtml

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Patti on Twitter: http://twitter.com/Patti_OShea

Linda Conrad | Why Do It?

I had every intention of writing a blog about my latest release for Silhouette Romantic Suspense, SAFE WITH A STRANGER (the first book in my new trilogy called The Safekeepers.) The Safekeepers is a series of suspense novels about bodyguards for children--with the fun addition of Mexican witchcraft and a family curse. Or maybe I could’ve blogged about connected books. That seems to be my thing lately. My last series for Silhouette was six books long! I just don’t seem to be able to write single books anymore. I like fleshing out characters over several books and really enjoy revealing a series-long connection inside each book.

But as I was sitting here at my desk, my mind wandered off (as it usually does,) and I began thinking about why I write at all. As I have said before, I hate to write. Really I do. Oh, I love telling stories. I love getting into the heads of my characters. I love doing research. And I love finding just the right word to make a sentence sing. But the process of sitting my back end into a chair and shoveling out the words makes me want to cringe. In fact, right now I am avoiding beginning a new work that has a looming deadline date.

So why do it? I can’t say it’s because I’ve always wanted to be a writer. I haven’t. What I’ve always wanted to be was a reader. I guess I should’ve been an editor. Or maybe a librarian. But no, those weren’t really right either. Actually, what I have always, always, been is a dreamer. I make up stories in my head. And have done so since I was two or three years old. Reading is just an excuse to tweak my stories into something better—in my head.

If my father was still alive, he might be surprised to find that at this point I have written twenty-three books (all in the category lines for Silhouette.) Many times while I was a teenager he would look at me with my head in the clouds and call me lazy. He couldn’t see how I would ever accomplish anything when all I ever did was daydream.

My mother knew better. She was the real reader in the family. I can remember as a little girl being frustrated with trying to get her attention only to find that she was so absorbed in a book she couldn’t even hear her name being called. I can do that too, by the way. Get lost in a book.

Mother knew in her heart what I should do, even when I didn’t. In high school she nudged me toward creative writing, but I was so wrapped up in earning a living that I couldn’t see my way clear to giving it a try. Not me. Nah uh. I became a stockbroker. I did fairly well at it too, but I was never totally happy and I didn’t know why.

Not until my mother had a stroke. My father was gone by then and I became Mom’s main caregiver. I took a leave of absence from my job and worked with her everyday. She could no longer read or watch TV, her eyesight betrayed her. So in an effort to make her hours more pleasant, my sister and I found books on tape. But that wasn’t a perfect solution either. Her mind wandered too much. In fact, she began daydreaming stories about all of us. So I went along with her and helped make up the story lines. While she was in the nursing home, the nurses would become fascinated to hear our stories. The hours went by quickly and I found I enjoyed entertaining people by doing what I’ve always done—daydreaming things in my head.

Still, I might not have given it a second thought if in the week before my mother passed away she hadn’t asked me to consider writing books as a career. She knew how much I loved giving others pleasure and taking them away from their troubles for a while. And bless her heart, she was just positive I would be good at writing the stories down. I didn’t know it for sure, and my husband was completely unconvinced. But I made the promise and then did my best to make it happen.

So to all of you mothers out there, nudge your children to do what’s in their hearts—even if they can’t see it. And to all of you dreamers out there, I’ll be the mother and say maybe it’s time to stop dreaming and make it happen.

I dream in Technicolor and with dialog and scenes fully formed. What do you dream about?

With all my very best,
Linda

Linda’s latest release from Silhouette Romantic Suspense is Safe With A Stranger, now available on stands and online from eharlequin.com, Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please visit her at http://www.lindaconrad.com/ for the latest news, extras, contests and a complete Behind the Book description of The Safekeepers series!

Allison Brennan | Where do you get your ideas?

That's the single most common question I receive when I speak to reading groups. The thing is, it's not an easy question to answer. There's not one repository of ideas, nor can I point to one source of inspiration. My stories come from multiple sources--snippets of ideas, views, sounds, articles--that simmer in the slow cooker of my muse. Then wham! I have the story beginning and I start writing.

Take my current trilogy. "An earthquake at San Quentin Prison precipitates the escape of several death row inmates." Sounds easy, right? Well . . . it took me weeks to come up with the premise. The only thing I knew when I started KILLING FEAR (Feb 08) was that Detective Will Hooper, the partner of my heroine in SPEAK NO EVIL (Feb 07) was the hero.

An article I read mentioned some California legislators talking about selling San Quentin--437 acres of prime real estate on the San Francisco Bay. I remembered that in SPEAK NO EVIL, I'd had Will testify at an appeal hearing against Theodore Glenn, a killer on death row who Will had put away seven years before for murdering four strippers. I re-read the scene where Will tells Carina he has to leave while they're in the middle of an investigation, and there was maybe two paragraphs about Glenn. But already he intrigued me, and I wondered how I could get him out of prison.

It's rare to escape from San Quentin. I heard a news report about California sending prisoners to other states for incarceration because of prison overcrowding. I wondered if Glenn would be a candidate for transport--but thought it would be too contrived. Train wreck, plane crash, bunch of killers survive. Been there. I researched the history of San Quentin just to become familiar with it, trying to see if there was at least a possible way to escape--even if it wasn't probable. Then I came across a seismic report about the structural integrity of San Quentin buildings and all of the sudden wham! I had it. Earthquake.

A dozen prisoners escape and most are caught off page in KILLING FEAR, except of course Theodore Glenn who returns to San Diego to seek revenge on all those who put him in prison--including Will Hooper who arrested him and Robin McKenna, the former stripper who testified against him and had been Will's lover.

In TEMPTING EVIL (on sale now), two killers are trapped in a secluded resort during a blizzard in Montana, and one of them is obsessed with romance writer Joanna Sutton who is seeking peace at her family lodge four years after the murder of her husband and son.

And in the upcoming PLAYING DEAD (Oct 08), the one innocent escapee--Tom O'Brien, an ex-cop who was responsible for capturing most of the remaining fugitives--has to convince his daughter that he didn't kill his wife--her mother--and to help him find the real killer. Claire, who at 14 testified against her father, is now a no-nonsense fraud investigator who doesn't believe her father is innocent, but her curiosity compels her to at least follow-up on his claims.

The premise alone isn't the whole story--just the spark that gets me started. Similar disparate threads and ideas get woven together to create the hero and heroine, their individual histories, and different plot points.

It's impossible to point to any one thing that ignites the story, so being asked Where do you get your ideas is never an easy question to answer, but I guarantee every book has a different backstory. And that’s part of the fun of writing--I never know where my ideas really come from, I just hope and pray they keep coming!

Allison Brennan




Allison's website (and trailer for Killing Fear): http://allisonbrennan.com/
Radio Ad for Tempting Evil: http://allisonbrennan.com/index2.html
Excerpts: http://allisonbrennan.com/books.html

Blogs:
Personal: http://allisonbrennan.com/blog
Group: http://murdershewrites.com/
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