Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

Hi, all!

I'm celebrating the second book in my romantic urban fantasy series, OUT OF THE DARKNESS (Avon), with my Kick Butt First Line contest. Shocking, suspenseful…make us want more! Cash prizes! Contest runs from through November 1, 2009. For aspiring authors, it's a chance to get your name out there and add a "win" to your bio. For readers, it's a chance to play at being a writer. Even if you're not inclined to write a line, check out the entries—they're a lot of fun! For details, go to and click on the Contest link.

Cheers,
Jaime Rush (aka Tina Wainscott)
Check out the Offspring series,
where X-Files meets Friends!

The good news is that I just got the okay on my revised proposal to jump on writing book 4 of my Offspring series. Yahoo! I've been jonesing to write this book, which is funny because neither of the main characters was on my "main character" radar when I first conceived my series. That's the fun of writing a series!

The bad news is I don't read fiction while I'm writing. Time is the biggest factor. But there's that osmosis thing, too. I don't want to absorb someone else's style/words/etc. into my writing. Horrors!

I look longingly at my TBR shelf...we shall meet again, another day soon. I can't wait!

Cheers,
Jaime

Seeing the date on my last blog post...sheesh. Okay, so since then I've written my book, and now just finished the second round of edits. I *love* this book. Considering that the two main characters weren't even people I'd planned to feature, well, that's just the way the muse goes. She was right, considering how much fun I had writing it.

I also had to read a bucketful of books for a contest, but unfortunately I didn't love most of them. ::SIGH:: And being an author, I just can't post a negative review. I mean, I know we can't please everyone. I've come to terms with that, but not all authors have. So I'm a softy, what can I say?

Well, back to work! My boss is a real bee-atch, don't you know!

When people ask me what kind of books I write, I tend to toss out different answers: paranormal romantic suspense; supernatural romantic thrillers; psychic romantic suspense; urban fantasy romance. It really embodies all of that.

Paranormal, yes. My characters possess psychic abilities. But when I call it paranormal, some readers think vampires, werewolves, or other creatures. I call it psychic suspense, but it's not like Medium where a mystery is solved because a character "sees" the future. My characters do more than that. One has pyrokinesis (setting fires), one gets storms of images that tear his brain apart, one has telekinesis (moving things), one can see ten seconds into the future…you get the idea. The easier part is the thriller or suspense tag, because either works.

By definition, paranormal means beyond normal, and that certainly describes my books, as well as my interests since I was a kid. I love ghost stories, unusual phenomena, unexplained mysteries. My favorite show was Unsolved Mysteries. I was never so much into creatures (Chupacabra romance, anyone?) but I ate up X-Files, Highlander, and Roswell (a not as well known but cult fave about three teens who are aliens).

My earlier books (written as Tina Wainscott) played with themes such as body switching, near death experiences, twin connections, cellular memory, and psychic connections. I love that it could be real. It's on the edge, accessible to all of us. Who hasn't had a whoo-whoo experience? A knowing? If you haven't, someone you know has, I'll bet. Just recently a man I met, upon hearing what I write about, recounted an out of body experience he'd had. I believe we all have the ability to expand past our five senses. What could be more fascinating, more mysterious, than the human brain? Our soul? We are amazing creatures. If we don't get in our own way, think of the things we can accomplish.

I often meet people who are amazed at the writer's mind. To be honest, so am I, and I've been doing it since I was a kid. That people, scenarios, worlds come out of that mysterious place in our brain (or is it our soul?), is like magic. Artists of all kinds do the same thing. We create so that we can share our magic with you. We honor you with our words, our pictures.


Uh…so what do I write? The one consistent tagline I have used for my series is that it's X-Files meets Lost. Government conspiracies, a group of outcasts who band together, and the hope of finding what you've always been looking for: acceptance. And something you might not have been looking for: love. That's what I write.

After many months, the kid has finally come out � both joy and relief!
We love to hear how beautiful and brilliant our baby is.
We want to show pictures and good reviews to everyone ad nauseum.
It's our publicist shouting, "Push! Push!" instead of a doctor. (No, not really!)
Holding our baby in our hand � priceless. ::SIGH::

Blog post:

Writers usually fall into one of two categories. Those who write by the seats of their pants are called Pantsers. Those who plot ahead are called Plotters. Frankly, I don't think either word sounds good, but maybe that's just me.

Speaking of "me"...I guess I'd be considered a Plotter. I like to have a handle on how the story unfolds, twists and turns, and the characters (everything from their childhoods, vulnerabilities, to what's in their fridge). My synopses tend to run about 4-5 pages, so there is not a lot of detail, nor is anything set in stone.

Not only is the synopsis a good planning tool for my writing, ensuring that I don’t write myself into a corner, it’s also something my editor wants to see before I proceed. Synopsis writing can be hair-pulling, yes, with some of the biggest decisions centering on how much to include and how much to leave out while being clear.

But at the beginning of this year, I had the fun and yet hair-pulling task of figuring out where the Offspring series was going in the next three books and working on connected novellas in a whole new world/series. It’s hard enough to figure out one book, much less connected books. I knew the characters somewhat, knew the overall plots somewhat, and yet I could not get farther than that. I spent days with my notepad looking at the lake, scribbling a word here or there, looking at the birds, another word � you get the idea. At the end of the day, I was no further than I’d been at the beginning. Frustrating to say the least, because I loved what I knew, and I’m stoked about the new world. But there are a lot (and I mean a LOT) of details to figure out.

Plotting wasn’t working for me. So I decided to become a Pantser. Pantsing is in me. For instance, there were aspects of my Offspring series that remained a mystery to me for several books. Specifically, though I knew my Offsprings� parents had been given a mysterious substance that enhanced their psychic abilities in a top-secret government program, I had no idea what the substance was or where it came from. A character named Pope played into the series from the first book, making a brief appearance here and there, and I had no idea who he was. It was a lot of fun to let it flow as the series evolved, and the answers were a scream.

I had no answers with the new projects, so I looked at the questions. What was going on in the plot? How would the romance start and progress and what would keep it from going smoothly?

What helped in these two new projects was having a sense of how they started. So I sat down and started writing the opening scene of both.

This is what I got from the novella I was to write in my new world:

Kirin lifted his head and looked at the clock. Who the hell was calling at six on a Sunday morning? Snarl in place, he yanked up his cell phone and squinted at the number. His twin sister. She didn’t usually call at ungodly hours, which meant something was up.
The word “Yeah?� scratched out of his throat.
“You have to come home,� Lyra said without preamble.
The order prickled across his skin. “Like hell.�
“Pop’s missing.�
He sat up. “Oh, is there a celebration then?�
“Kirin, please. He’s been missing for two days. You know that’s not like him, whatever his faults.� Taking his silence as more resistance, she added, “Ellie’s back in town, too.�

Hmm. Pop’s missing, and Kirin’s really pissed at him. Why? What’s happened to Pop? And what happened with Ellie? It was fun finding out those answers, but what I needed to begin with were the right questions, the ones that tantalized me.

I got about forty pages into the next Offspring story and then things started to click. More like CLICK. It’s a feeling, like stepping through the portal into the world, feeling it and the characters. That’s when I start getting spacey and forget that I’ve put broccoli in the steamer until I see the light on the contraption the next morning. I love the spacey feeling.

What I learned is that it’s okay to change the process, even if you’ve been using it for several books successfully. I'll probably go back to it, but maybe I'll be a � Plotser? That’s what writing is all about, the flow, and going with it. Heck, that’s what life is about.

Go with the flow, my friends and see where it takes you.

A couple of years ago my publisher invited me to participate in an anthology (Bitten by Cupid, Avon Books). I jumped at the change, for many reasons. But I have to admit, I was a bit nervous. Okay, I started my writing with short stories, so short format was easy for me. But I hadn't looked back since I wrote that first too-long-to-be-a-short story book, which was a category romance of about 55,000 words. My subsequent twenty-three books tend to be 90,000-110,000 words, always depending on the story that needs to be told. I wrote four Harlequin category romances that were about 55,000 words a long time ago. I'd never written a roughly 25,000 word story.

Well, I did, and found that I really enjoyed it. Yes, it was hard to pack in a full romance AND a suspense plot in that length of a book. But it was nice not to have to plot out the many ups and downs and twists that occur in a full-length book. Plus, editing was so much nicer. I do three rounds of edits before the book is sent to my editor. Editing 120 pages is a lot quicker than 400 pages. Especially that last edit.

Now I've written four more novellas. Maybe I'm an addict, since I was the one who took the initiative to do them. Two are in my Offspring world (The Darkness Within came out in March 2012) and two introduce readers to a whole new series (The Hidden). The problem usually lies in that I want to explore the characters and their stories more, or I think that I'd like to now develop these particular characters in a full length book � only I've already committed them to the storyline (each set of novellas is tied together).

The nice thing is that because they're released in electronic form, there really is no limit. I know they have to be meaty and long enough to engage the reader. They also should be short enough to still be a novella. But short and sweet is pretty nice. A great price point, a good way for new readers to try out an author's world/voice, and fun for the author!

What do you think of novellas? What do you like and dislike about them?

My writing process: 40% planning/research-20% writing-40% edit, edit, edit :?

Some non-writers think that writers just...write. Mostly, though, it's a LOT of editing, planning, research, and promoting.

The writing's the fun part :)

Sometimes I really lurve my job. Like when I have to troll the lists of hot male actors to find guys to base my heroes on. And I inevitably find other neat stuff, like this really funny restaurant review by Anson Mount (who is definitely a hottie candidate):

An author's angst: spending all morning editing ONE scene.

An author's joy: getting it just right. :)