My good friend Alexandra Sokoloff, who blogged here the other week, commented once over at Murderati that everyone plotted to a certain degree, and that my first drafts were actually a detailed outline. Right. All 80,000 words of my first draft in a book that usually ends up around 105,000 words. At first, I was willing to concede the point, but recently I was struck by the fact that I really don’t plot my books. It’s not a method of writing I recommend or don’t recommend. It’s simply the way it is. I give a workshop called NO PLOTTERS ALLOWED… Read More

Okay, I’ll admit, I’m a news addict. When I worked in the legislature, one of the things I did every morning was read the headlines. My excuse: it was part of my job to keep informed on the important news and events of the day. I used facts in my writing about crime, education, taxes . . . and I liked to use anecdotal stories to illustrate or prove my facts. When I sold, I switched my news obsession to the publishing industry. It may surprise you to know that I now have to rely on my husband for important… Read More

I’m in the middle of reading CREATION IN DEATH, the latest JD Robb romantic suspense, and want to throw it against the wall. Not because the book sucks, but because after what? 24, 25, 26 books in this series this book is THE BEST. How in the world can she keep getting BETTER? Isn’t this like Seinfeld or The X-Files when you know the show is one of the best in history . . . but they just went a couple seasons too long? Well, take it from an IN DEATH fan, this series continues to get better and as… Read More

This one is for Jennifer . . . Over at my own blog the other day, I asked readers to post questions they want me to answer for my Q&A. Regular visitor Jennifer came up with one that is more appropriate to this forum. It’s something I’ve talked about in workshops I’ve given about romantic suspense, but really, this is relevant to ANY antagonist–even if they are not a serial killer. Jennifer asked if it was difficult to get into the mindset of my killers, who are decidedly creepy. My quick answer was: sometimes. But after I get to know… Read More

I’ve been thinking about pacing a lot lately. It started when I began revisions on TEMPTING EVIL. My editor liked the book, but felt the pacing in the first 100 pages was off–too slow, too much set-up. She had other comments and suggestions throughout, but the only MAJOR change was in the beginning. The thing is, you change the beginning and everything else changes. The last 350 pages could have been perfect, but by changing the beginning, most of the rest of the book had to completely go or be extensively rewritten. One editor once told me that there were… Read More

I’m listening to Stephen King’s ON WRITING on my iPod in the car. It’s not something I can listen to while writing–too interesting and distracting. For writing, I mostly listen to rock-and-roll or Irish folk music. I have my iPod divided into music “tone” by that I mean “hard” (Led Zeppelin, Lynard Skynard, Dropkick Murphys) to “medium” (U2, The Police, The Who) to “soft” (Elvis Costello, the Beatles, Pink Floyd.) I have an “Irish” group, dominated by Celtic Storm, Enya and Tommy Makem, and a “Faves” group which is quite eclectic and mixes my groups around. But for driving, I… Read More

I’m putting together my workshops to pitch to RWA National, and one of them is on pacing. Well, I think it’s going to be on pacing. Roxanne St. Claire and I were talking about doing a workshop together in San Francisco (the next RWA conference) and were flirting with the idea of romantic suspense. She writes very emotional, sexy, romancy-romantic suspense and I write darker, more suspency romantic suspense. We write completely different in tone and style, yet we both write romantic suspense. So we were playing with that, doing a workshop and the breadth and depth of the RS… Read More

A couple weeks ago I asked a question of the guest author on the “Ask the Author All” loop. First: EVERYONE who has a good online workshop should donate a week of their time to the fabulous AAA-ALL or AAA-PRO loops. They are valuable to so many writers, particularly those who might not have the extra money for a plethora of online classes. I’m not going to give the responses verbatim because that would be against the rules. And, even though I was critical of the answer I received, most of the author’s advice was fantastic. My question was essentially:… Read More

Last weekend I spoke to the local Sisters In Crime chapter and sat between two unpublished writers. The first has been revising endlessly the same book. Over and over and over. Especially the first few chapters. The second has written seventeen complete manuscript and has yet to send one out to an agent or editor. Seventeen! This week I’m going to talk about killing your manuscript, so it’s addressed more to the first writer. Next week I’ll talk about fear of failure and fear of success. Right now, I’m revising KILLING FEAR, my February 08 release. This is Will Hooper’s… Read More

I have several workshops I’ve developed, but hands down my favorite is NO PLOTTERS ALLOWED. Okay, I love the title. It says it all, doesn’t it? The workshop is for everyone. It’s subtitled: Solutions to writer’s block for those who can’t, won’t or don’t plot. But that doesn’t mean that plotters can’t benefit from some of the ideas. Last week I talked about the War of Art and how I’m incorporating some of Pressfield’s ideas into my workshop. This week I thought, based on Toni’s comment on Nat’s Tuesday blog, I’d talk about PLOTTING. Everyone plots. It’s just, do you… Read More