More Voices

The voices are back.

I think the wild wind we’re having this month is keeping them in my brain. And wild is the truth. It’s the middle of February, for goodness sake, and the sun is shining, temps are in the seventies and everything outside is being pushed by a steady blast of air.

The weather is messing with my writing process. My desk faces a window, giving me a peaceful view of trees, shrubs, and the occasional bird. When it’s thinking time, I contemplate the great outdoors and come up with some decent ideas.

Not working for me today.

Maybe the problem is my story. Make that both stories.  Juggling two manuscripts is a new job for me and I’ve yet to work out a schedule to maximize my work day. Both involve BDSM clubs, but the characters are very different.

It’s almost impossible to get words on the page when characters from another book whisper in my ear and tell me what they want to happen next in their story.

Maybe a good dose of chocolate will encourage one group to keep quiet while I finish up the other story.

 

A Life of Leisure

As I sit here staring at a blank page, I can’t help but wish I was a cat. Not a lion or jaguar, nothing exotic or ferocious. Just a house cat.

My reason?

The yearning for a life of leisure.

When I look over the top of my laptop, I have a clear view of a big fluffy black and white cat as she lays upside down in a chair near the window. She’s asleep for now, and when she wakes, she’ll groom herself, wander into the kitchen for a snack, and then find someone in the house to love on her. She might chase a toy across the floor or sit in the window and watch birds flit around in the tree just outside.

Behind my office chair, a grey tabby, the newest addition to our family, is stretched out on her own blanket on the sofa. She’s four months old and shifts between dead asleep to wild and crazy jungle cat in an instant. After a hard day (or twenty minutes) of killing a cloth mouse or her favorite hockey puck in the form of a piece of dog chow, she collapses into another deep sleep.

When both are awake, the cats stalk and attack each other, zipping through the house while having fun. Their lives revolve around sleeping, eating, playing, and getting a little loving from their owners.

No mortgage payment. No grocery shopping. No taxes to pay.

Who wouldn’t want that life?

Sure, I might miss opposable thumbs and a really juicy love story now and then, but I wouldn’t miss housework or gardening. And laundry isn’t high on my list of favorite things to do, either.

If I was a house cat, no one would accuse me of being a procrastinator (which is what I’m doing now, avoiding my WIP when I should be adding words to the total).

As far as I know, there isn’t a machine to change me into a kitten when I don’t want to work. Guess that means I need to get back to the business of writing and let my cats have their naps.

Developing Multiple Personalities

 

I finally finished the first installment of my new BDSM series. I love the characters and the interaction between this book and the others I have planned. Most have ready-to-go bios and one or two more are still in the sketch stage.

However...

I woke up yesterday with an idea I couldn’t resist. A fast paced chase story about a lady lawyer whose irate client is trying to kill her and the smoking hot guy she contacts to protect her.

Sounds great. Fun. Tons of possibilities.

But now the people in my head are fighting about who gets on the page first. They’re interrupting my sleep and my typing. They’re putting a stop to my housework (what little I do) and my shopping. The cats are getting irritable about the same old kibble and the hubby is grumbly but trying to be supportive of the creative process.

Not sure which characters will win the war to be first. Right now, I’m trying to juggle all of them. It might sound strange, but they’re all important to me. Friends on paper that speak to me, begging to get their stories told.

At what point does this go from creative process to psych ward?

Distractions

     Strange goings on at my house lately.  Tigger, the new kitten, is disrupting the household. Not surprising, but with so many projects in the works, she’s a distraction I didn’t need. Between finishing Stranded at the Rodeo and starting my new BDSM project, baking for Thanksgiving, and wondering where I’m going to put the Christmas tree now that the study is my office, the conflict between Sassy and Tigger is a tad irritating.

Sassy has ruled the house for three years, her only competition for attention being Zelda, the seventy pound lab. She sees herself as Queen Sassy, in charge of her own destiny and purveyor of affection on her terms only. An overstuffed feline handing out opportunities for affection only when she feels compelled to socialize. A true fat cat.

Tigger is the exact opposite.

She runs, climbs, skids and explores. The minute she comes into contact with a human, the motor goes on high alert and can be heard across the room.

Sassy spends much of her time these days hissing and growling. Tigger wants to play, so she stalks the big cat. Funniest thing I’ve seen is the little squirt of a kitten chasing my ten pound monster up the stairs.

It happens at least once a day.

I know they’ll become friends eventually.

Meanwhile...

The Christmas tree goes up Friday.

 

Let's Play Tag

 

Life’s been busy around here. I took an online class on prewriting from a fellow NTRWA member. It was designed to help jump start NANOWriMo. I didn’t participate in that, but I wanted to learn how to be more productive. And let me tell you, I am forever grateful for Heather’s class! I had my first 9000 word weekend and I feel like the words are flying onto the page these days.

In the midst of all that writing, I was tagged for this blog hop by two writing friends, Clover Autrey (http://clovercheryl.blogspot.com) and  Gina Lee Nelson (http://ginaleenelson.wordpress.com)

 Here are the questions everyone is asking and answering.  Don’t forget to check out the other other’s blogs. You might find your next favorite book!

What is the working title of your book?

Stranded at the Rodeo

Where did the idea come from for the book?

Q.  This is the third book in a series, and the idea came to me while I attended a gun show with my husband. I was leaning on a wall with no idea where hubby was, just watching the crowd, and the idea for the first book, Kidnapped at the Gun Show, came to me. The two sequels  became imperative after the first chapter of Kidnapped was written.

A.        What genre does your book fall under?

Erotic Romance. I write hot love scenes surrounded by story, often bordering on romantic suspense.

Q.  Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

Emma –Paige Turco. She’s just lovely and self-assured.   

Noah –Kevin McKidd. Tall, roughly handsome and self-contained,

he’d be perfect for domineering Noah.         

Ryan –Chris Pine. He’s just adorably cocky and movie star handsome.  

Q.  What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

A.    An innocent young woman on the run takes shelter with a dominant man who then introduces her to BDSM and to his best friend.

Q.  Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

A.    The first two books were published by Siren Bookstrand, and since this will be a sequel, they have first dibs. 

Q.  How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

A.    About two months, give or take a few weeks.  I worked on a few other projects in between chapters of Stranded.

Q.  What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

A.        What a hard question! Maybe early Lora Leigh, her SEALs books.

Q.  Who or what inspired you to write this book?

A.    I’m fascinated by the psychology of the BDSM lifestyle.  While the practitioners are a widely diverse population, the fantasy of being in that lifestyle appeals to many women.

Q.  What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

A.    Well, if you like BDSM and/or ménage, you will enjoy this story. There’s also a good bit of suspense.

 

Okay, for all you authors out there…here are the rules:

• Give credit to the person/blog that tagged you
• Post the rules for this hop
• Answer these ten questions about your Next Big Thing on your blog
• Tag two or more writers/bloggers and add their links so we can hop over and meet them.

I tagged these wonderful authors.

http://jenfitzgerald.blogspot.com/

http://www.caszarekwriter.blogspot.com 

http://chasingsomeday.blogspot.com/

 

 

 

Love Stories

 

     I’ve been reading my big book of BDSM, (yes, I have one but that’s not its true title,) and I’ve learned quite a bit. It isn’t about spanking or hurting your partner. It’s about control. Self-control, control of the environment, control of the pleasure you give your partner.

Tons of control.

There’s an amazing amount of behavioral science in the book, research listing some of the big names in psychology like Skinner, Pavlov, and Wilson.

Not really what I expected when I ordered this thing from Amazon. A friend, who shall remain nameless, recommended the book when she and I discussed some of the themes I used in my little romance books.  One of her very former boyfriends was into BDSM and she’d read this book many years ago.

Alas, the boyfriend fell by the wayside, but very few things (men) last forever.

My dear hubby laughed the first time I referred to the book as ‘My Big Book of BDSM’. Yes, he knows what I write, and he tells me all the time that men don’t want a threesome with a woman and another man.  The ratio is reversed in the male fantasy. And I quickly tell him I write with women in mind and hot men are just part of the fantasy.

With all the media hype about 50 Shades, and all the books I’ve read about the lifestyle, I was impressed with the simplicity and caring taken by the couple who wrote this book. It was enlightening.

While I don’t think I’d like to participate in all the activities they tout, I do find that handing over the decision-making to my hubby makes my life easier. Take a minute and think about the male-female relationships between Ward & June Cleaver, Ricky & Lucy Ricardo, and any other TV couple from that era. The husband worked, took care of the wife, and she took care of the house and the hubby. He made all the decisions.

Sure, we’ve come a long way as far as equality between the sexes, but sometimes...can’t we dream of a day or even an hour when we didn’t have to decide what to have for dinner, what color to paint the house, what type of gas to put in our car, whether we wanted to be on top or on the bottom, tied to the bed or just lying there waiting for it to be over so we can sleep?

Think about it....

A Little Lite Rant

 

     Everyone seems to have something to complain about these days.  The media is full of ‘analysts’ who complain about what the politicians are doing. Voters are complaining about the money being spent, or not spent, considering their economic status. Everyone is protesting or griping about the state of public education. And yet, no one wants to fix anything.

 I’ve decided that the biggest problem we have in this country is that everyone likes to complain, but no one wants to help fix things.

We are a nation of enthusiasts.

Why hasn’t someone come along and rallied the troops to fix our country? We’ve been trying to fix everybody else’s countries for years. It’s time to focus on America.

Money is not the way to go.

Throwing money at a problem never works, and often it makes the problem worse.

What we need are people willing to work for America.  We’ve seen an increase in ‘Made in America’ products. Now it is time to make our country the product.

 We can fix the political system by voting. If you don’t vote, you don’t get to complain. Every citizen over the age of 18 needs to set aside enough time to study the issues and the candidates and vote.

If you want to fix education, find a school and volunteer. Teachers work every day, whether school is in or out. Don’t let the hours fool you. Teachers have year-round homework. Students need good role models. They need individualized help. But school budgets are falling while enrollment skyrockets. Volunteer and decide for yourself if legislatures are playing fair with the money they are taking away from our future.

Get involved. It’s the only way to change things in your community, your school, and your country.