Bell Bridge Books

Writer’s Unblock

By Eve Gaddy

I was thinking about what to blog about and nothing was coming to me.  That made me think of something I’ve faced many times in my writing career.  I know some writers who don’t believe there is any such thing as writer’s block.  All I can say is be happy you haven’t experienced it because I’m here to tell you, writer’s block is real.  And it’s not fun.

There are many reasons for writer’s block and I’ve experienced a number of them.  Burnout, death of family or friends, health issues, moving, divorce, family issues, all of the above.  I’m sure there are many more.  Most of the time I wanted to write but just couldn’t for various reasons.  My last bout with it I was convinced I’d retired.  In fact, I didn’t write at all (other than emailJ) for a long time.  I didn’t think I’d ever write again.  When I finally did start again, it was a book that was a departure for me from what I’d been writing for so long.  Maybe I just needed to write something completely different.  A book for me, one that I didn’t worry about selling but just wrote it the way it needed to be written.  A book of the heart.

Many times I think the problem underlying writer’s block is burnout.  Some of us tend to be a bit obsessive (what, me obsessive?).  We might concentrate so much on writing we don’t do much else.  And eventually we burn out.  I felt as if my creativity had absolutely dried up.  So I decided I’d go back to the creative things I used to do before I started writing. 

I took up needlework again.  I used to do a lot of needlepoint but quit soon after I first published.  I stopped with just a small amount left of a very complex project, a landscape of the Seine River.  I’d always wanted to finish it because it was gorgeous.  So I picked it up again and finished.  Since then I have needlepointed numerous Christmas stockings, some of them working from a counted cross stitch pattern translated to needlepoint.  I’ve also made some Christmas ornaments and various other things in the past few years. 

I still couldn’t write.  So I took up another craft I’d given up.  In fact, I hadn’t done it since high school.  My daughter found out she was having twin girls.  What better time to pick up knitting again?  I knitted all sorts of things, including a number of baby blankets.  Since then I’ve knitted many different things, ranging from afghans to socks.  Now I alternate working on needlepoint or knitting and usually have several different projects going.  I could never do that with writing.  I have to totally immerse myself in a book until I finish it.  I don’t have to do that with needlework and it’s fun. 

For me, needlework lets me be creative, but in a different way from writing.  I have to think, but again, in a different way than writing.  But somehow that sort of creativity allows my writer’s brain to start working again.  Sometimes the solutions to problems I’m having with my current manuscript come to me when I’m doing needlework. 

There are a lot of ways to jump start your creativity.  These are just some things that helped me, and that I enjoy a lot.  Have you ever had writer’s block?  If you have, what did you do to help you get started again?  What are your tricks for dealing with it?

Music—Does It Inspire You?
By Lindi Peterson

Music has always been a huge part of my life. Just like I can’t remember a time when I haven’t been reading a book, I can’t remember a time when I haven’t had a favorite song. Over the years I’ve listened to a wide variety of music. There are so many talented artists in every genre.

Music evokes a lot of emotion. A certain song can bring back memories, good or bad. There are certain songs I relate to certain events. When I hear the song, I Will Survive, I think of my step-daughter  Lisa’s wedding. All the ladies were in a circle and we would take turns dancing in the middle. My son, who was about 13 at the time, snuck in and had us all clapping and laughing.  Good memories.

Whenever I hear the song Babe, by Styx, I always remember crying in my family room and explaining to my grandma, who was just visiting from out of state, about how my boyfriend and I had broken up and hearing that song reminded me of him.

I wonder what Grandma was thinking?

Speaking of those angsty teenage years, my favorite band was The Rolling Stones.

Born in 1961, I’ve been listening to them since I was in elementary school. I never saw them in concert until the 90’s when my husband bought tickets to their show. I love me some Mick Jagger. (No comments on that statement please!! I know he’s not for everybody, but there’s something about him that makes me smile! And I know you have a favorite, too!)

Fast  forward  a lot of years. I am now a mom, grandma, (Gigi) and a novelist. And I still love my music.

When I start writing a novel I usually have a ‘novel’ song. A song that either inspires me, or has the words that encompasses  what my novel is about. I print the words out to the song and tack them to my bulletin board above my computer along with the visual images of my characters that I’ve found in magazines.

Here is a link to the song that inspired my June release, Summer’s Song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuAGfImZAq0

There is also a song in my book Summer’s Song, which I wrote.  A friend of mine put music to it and we sing it in church sometimes.  We made a video, but it’s not uploaded to You Tube yet. I can’t wait to see it.

Does music inspire you? If so, what’s your favorite now?

THAT GUY IN THE NEW BOOK IS ME
Kathleen Eagle

My standard answer—it’s usually to one of my brothers-in-law—is if you say so.  And very often they do say so, which means I’ve succeeded.  I’ve created a character readers not only can but willingly do identify with, a character that is both universal in his humanity and as individual as any of my brothers-in-law.  And, believe me, my dear brothers are individuals.  I’m so glad we have a huge Eagle family because they are some of my most loyal readers.  And, yes, I do put them in my books.  Not the whole person, of course, but bits and pieces.  A quip here, a trait there.  The more books I write, the more likely it becomes that anyone I’ve ever known can find a bit of himself somewhere on those pages.

That’s where good characters come from.  They don’t come third-hand from Hollywood.  They don’t come floating through the office ready to be plucked out of thin air and plugged into a plot.  They come from a writer’s life, from people we’ve known.  We chop them up and make fiction salad.  Maybe not by design—probably more by instinct—but that’s how it works.  When a character is fully fleshed out, when the book is finished and I’m working on some stage of edits, that’s when I’ll fully realize where details of character might have come from.

YOU NEVER CAN TELL is about an American Indian activist and a journalist who wants to tell his story.  Having lived on the reservation and worked as a teacher during the heyday of the American Indian Movement, I’ve known lots of AIM members.  Hero Kole Kills Crow’s back story was inspired by a couple of people—one idealistic, another reckless—while his personality grew from the seeds planted by his fictitious but reality-based back story and fertilized by those bits and pieces I was talking about, bits that come from time well spent with interesting people.  The idea for the situation Kole finds himself in—he’s hiding out while his former rebel sidekick has made himself a career in Hollywood—has roots in reality, “ripped from the headlines,” as they say.  That’s a lot of juicy stuff to be mixed into the story pot, and that’s only one character.

Now I add the heroine, the successful journalist who’s a fish out of water when she barges into Kole’s territory.  She’s the idealist who’s just as reckless as Kole used to be.  She’s an outsider and a true believer and she serves as a catalyst.  I know her pretty well.  I like her, and I can identify with her.  Details of her character come from a variety of women I’ve known along with one I’ve seen in the mirror.  Not that any of them ever found herself in Heather’s situation, but a part of each of them could have and might still.  And really, it wouldn’t matter whether was a lady’s maid or a mermaid, Heather Reardon is a woman with whom readers willingly travel.  She’s a lot like us and then some.  We’re apt to say, “That woman could be me.”  And she’ll take us on an exhilarating journey.

Could our characters be related to real people?  You never can tell.

A Writer’s Thought Process
By Eve Gaddy

During my morning ritual, drinking a cup of coffee and playing that ridiculously addicting online game, Mahjong Connect, while checking email, I tried to think of a blog topic.  I thought about the writing process and where we get ideas.  I remembered a conversation I had with my husband the other day as we were driving.

“Why does meth make people’s teeth fall out?”

Bob gave me the look that either means, writers are really weird or, you are really weird, I never know which.  “I suppose it has more to do with the gums and lack of blood supply to the gums than teeth.”  He then went into a more detailed explanation to which I paid no attention because I’d already moved on.

“You’re wondering why I asked you that, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”  Another mystified glance at me.  “I guess there’s some sort of logic to it.”  He sounded extremely doubtful.

“I’ve told you before, it’s a logical process.  You just can’t follow it.”  We’ve been married thirty-six years.  You’d think he’d understand by now.  “Would you like me to explain to you how I got there?”

“Okay.”  He didn’t sound at all sure but he knew he had no choice.  He was going to hear the explanation whether he wanted to or not.

“I saw the Tae Kwon Do sign on that building we passed.  I remembered how I took Chris (our son) there when we first came to town.  I have a friend who has recently gotten her black belt and it sounded like fun but I didn’t like that guy here much, so I guess I won’t do that.  Then I remembered a friend of mine had a nephew who had a brown belt but she said she was never sure how he got it because he was a wimp.  Then I remembered she’d said that a dentist had offered to fix his mouth because he’d kicked a meth habit but had terrible meth mouth.  Which led me to wonder why people’s teeth fall out from meth.”

“I always thought you just came up with this stuff out of the blue.”

“Of course not.  There’s always a convoluted logic to it.”  Always is a slight exaggeration but he doesn’t need to know that.

A few days later I was telling my daughter, Diana, this story and she said that she arrived at things that same way.  Doesn’t everyone?

“No.  I think it might be just women because my non-writer female friends don’t have much trouble following me.  Of course, I haven’t actually asked any male writers I know.”

“I agree,” she said.  “I think it’s women.  Of course, your logic is always a little more off the wall than mine, but it’s still similar.”

Off the wall?  Me?

“Which reminds me.  Why don’t you ever hear about women inventors?  Why are they always men?  If women think outside the box, you’d think there would be more of them.  Maybe there are and nobody talks about them.”

I probably won’t use what I learned about meth mouth in a book, although I write romantic suspense so you never can tell.  But a woman inventor sounds interesting.  In fact, I read something recently about Hedy Lamarr, a famous actress who invented the basics of WiFi during World War II.  Hmm.  More research coming up.

Click the pictures to pre-order!

Because I write urban fantasy and romance, people often ask where I get my ideas. They usually put it like this:  “Oh my God, what’s going on in that head of yours?”  In order to explain how ideas occur to me, you’re invited to take a little trip through my brain. Warning: Buckle up. I’m not responsible for unplanned side trips.

Earlier today, I was getting ready to go shopping when I remembered I had a small check from an insurance company to deposit. I trotted back to my office to look for the check. Pawing through random stacks of mail marked “important stuff – don’t throw away,” I spotted the car license renewal notice. Oh, crap! I’d completely forgotten about it. I set the notice next to my computer so I could renew it on-line when I got home. That’s when I realized my camera software CD was still in the computer. I popped it out, put it in its protective sleeve and lifted the lid on the camera box to put it away. The USB cord that connects the camera to the computer sprang out of the box and jumped on top  of my iPhone USB cord as if to say, “Hey, dude! This is my territory.”  Yes! Attack of the Killer Cord.

An eerie feeling skittered down my spine. My writing room was a veritable jungle of cords. I could feel them pulsating with impatience, waiting for the right moment to spring into action. One cord would be victorious, vanquishing all the others, in order to be the Supreme Ruler of theCordKingdom. Yes, the War of the Cords would be breaking out at any moment.

Still pondering the idea of electrical cords engaged in prong-to-prong combat, I headed for the door only to stop dead in my tracks when a spider skittered across the wall. It’s possible I may be slightly arachnophobic.  Who am I kidding? Spiders totally freak me out—chill me to the bone—make the hair on my arms stand at attention. Clearly, I couldn’t leave without dealing with the spider. No telling where the little creepy crawler might be when I returned home. Not knowing is the worst. Dealing with the spider gave me an idea for a poem. Back to the computer to write spider poem.

Several hours later, I drove to the store, picked up my groceries and then looked in my purse so I could deposit the check. It wasn’t there, of course. It was still lying on my desk where I’d left it while I went on a little trip toFantasyLand.

I think of my brain as a labyrinth full of magical twists and turns that lead to places only I can see. Speaking of brains, when I was a little girl, my dad carefully removed the shell from a walnut, so that it came out in one piece. He held it in his palm and said, “Marilee, this is what your brain looks like. See all the little cracks and crevices?”

He snapped it in half. “Your brain has a left side and a right side just like this walnut.”

Unfortunately, my dad failed to mention one teensy but crucial bit of information. For years, when I conceptualized the idea of brain, I saw that walnut. Consequently, I thought my brain was the size of a walnut, rattling around in my empty skull like a lone pea in a tin can. Way to go, Dad.

So, there you have it. A trip through Marilee’s brain. Be glad you don’t live there. If you did, you’d probably be in my next book.

Striking Back owes a debt to the inappropriateness of my mother. She was quite a story teller, alternately funny and sentimental, even maudlin. The saga of her childhood, which she delivered episodically over casseroles at the dinner table, invariably veered to the brutality of her father.

Along with my ever-increasing number of siblings, I would sit with some manner of pasta hanging off my fork, drenched in some manner of sauce, as mother regaled us with detailed accounts of the beatings her father had perpetrated on her mother. These were often presented in novelistic detail: “Then he took his arm and swept everything off the table. It crashed to the floor, and he grabbed grandma by the hair and dragged her through the food and plates and forks and spoons into the bedroom of that cold water flat…”

Mother gripped us with suspense, even as she repeated the same stories. There was nothing like being invested emotionally in characters whom you knew so well.

These tales were utterly appalling, hardly the material that young children should have heard, and yet I have to say – in the spirit of let’s try to find something redemptive – that they helped form me both as a writer and as a person. I developed a deep distaste for bullies, whether at the personal or national level, as well as a strong sense of what constituted compelling storytelling, although little that was gray ever intruded on my mother’s accounts. Years later, I would sort out the gray in psychotherapy when I began to understand the perverse mingling of my mother’s unquestioned love for her children with the violence she directed toward one of my sisters and me.

It followed, of course, that I became intensely interested in the work that my wife undertook as a spousal abuse counselor back in the ‘90s. She and a colleague ran a weekly group for men who had battered their wives or girlfriends. To my knowledge, they did not have same sex batterers in their group; although I knew in general the nature of my wife’s work, she maintained the strict confidentiality of her clients.

That didn’t stop my imagination, sparked by memories of my mother’s stories of my grandmother’s plight. And in the way stories sometimes present themselves, the protagonist of Striking Back, Gwyn Sanders, arrived on roller blades in the heart of the UCLA campus. Why L.A.? I don’t know. I didn’t choose the location, but L.A. and Hollywood turned out to be perfect settings for Striking Back. At least that’s my judgment, now that the tale’s been told.

I did live in Hollywood for long stretches while writing and directing at Paramount Studios on a very successful TV series, Hard Copy. It came as no comfort to me to realize, after having a distinguished career in broadcast journalism – four Emmys for investigative reporting for my on-camera work for NBC News – that I had an uncanny ability to write tabloid TV. It was as if I’d been born to do it. 

But the story that became Striking Back didn’t appear right after I left Hollywood for the mountain home I had in Oregon at the time; characters and plots often don’t arise in such linear fashion. It took a good ten years before Gwyn started blading down the wide pathways of the UCLA campus, and more than a year to write the mystery and romance that formed the heart of the novel.

But the origins of Striking Back were easy for me to divine. They began decades ago at a dinner table with my mother’s own stories.

Visit Mark at: Mark Nykanen

Read an excerpt of Striking Back at : STRIKING BACK

Buy Striking Back at:

AMAZON

BARNES & NOBLE

Technorati Tags: Mark Nykanen,Striking Back,Thriller,Murder Mystery,domestic violence,Fiction

I LOVE WHEN THAT HAPPENS

As a novelist, I’m often asked, “How do you create your characters? Are they based on real people or do you just make them up?”

Most of them, I just make up. Sometimes they are composites of people I’ve known or met in my journey through life, but more often than not they are merely products of my imagination.

Take my novel, EYEWALL, for example. The character of Dr. Nicholas Obermeyer, or Obie as he’s called in the book, is based in very small part on Dr. Steve Lyons, the former tropical weather expert at The Weather Channel. I wanted a character who possessed the vast knowledge of hurricanes and hurricane behavior that Steve does. But I also wanted a character who was essentially “over the top.”

Steve, while he holds strong opinions, is controlled and professional when it comes to expressing them. Obie isn’t. He’s an outspoken maverick. His mouth and actions get him into trouble, a lot of trouble. He’s well-intended in what he does, but he’s just too “in your face” when it comes to executing what he wants to do or say.

The character of Karlyn Hill, the aerial reconnaissance weather officer (ARWO) in the novel, was inspired by a former on-camera meteorologist I worked with at The Weather Channel, NIcole Mitchell. Having a female in a key role of the book opened up a lot of romantic possibilities to me as an author.

Nicole, like my fictional Karlyn, is an ARWO with the 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron, the famed Hurricane Hunters featured in EYEWALL. But Karlyn, unlike Nicole, is a free-wheeling, edgy character who doesn’t display all the best moral qualities.

Nicole was afraid the character would be viewed as reflective of her. But nothing could be further from the truth. Nicole is a mature, responsible antithesis to Karlyn. Nicole, besides her jobs at The Weather Channel and with the Air Force Reserve, performed community outreach work and put herself through law school.

The name Karlyn, by the way, is one I’ve always liked. I went to high school with a girl named Karlyn who was smart and attractive and later became, many years ago, Miss Oregon. The Karlyn in the book is smart and attractive, too, but needs some “adult supervision.” Again, the fictional Karlyn bears no resemblance in terms of behavior to the real-life Karlyn after whom she is named.

Speaking of names, there’s a mean-spirited, churlish executive vice president in the novel by the name of Robbie McSwanson. He’s the quasi-namesake of a friend of mine, Bob Swanson. Bob badly wanted a character in the novel to be named after him. I told him all I had left was a Scotsman who’s a real jerk (I might have used a stronger description than that.) “Okay, okay,” Bob said, “that’s fine.” I wonder if he still feels the same way.

Bob, by the way, is not a jerk. He’s a cool guy who’s also known as Stormin’ Bob Swanson, the Singing Weatherman.

One final anecdote about a character in my book, Sherrie Willis. Sherrie, an on-camera meteorologist at the fictional network in the story, was not originally meant to be a key player in the novel. She was designed to be a mere walk-on, a stereotypical dumb blonde about whom Obie could fire off some one-liners. After that, gonzo.

But the first line out of her mouth surprised me and I thought, “That was clever. I have to keep her around. I kind of like her.” Sherrie not only became an important character, she pulled off the most shocking scene in the book. Shocking because it wasn’t in the “script,” my outline of the novel.

After I wrote the scene, I was stunned. “Where in the heck did that come from?” I think I actually said that aloud.

It wasn’t me. It was Sherrie, startling the author. I love when that happens.

Visit Buzz at: www.BuzzBernard.com

Read an excerpt of  EYEWALL at : EYEWALL

AMAZON

BARNES & NOBLE

Technorati Tags: Buzz Bernard,Eyewall,hurricane,natural disaster,suspense,St. Simons Island,writing advice,character creation

I had a conversation with my wife some time ago. It went something like this:

“What time are we supposed to meet the Jones’s for dinner?”

Mary replied, “I still have to feed the horses.”

“O-k-a-y,” I drawled. “So what time are we supposed to meet them?”

“I have to buy grain first.”

“So what time?” I persisted.

“Feeding won’t take me long. Shirley’s going to help me?”

I was glad to hear that. “So what time?”

Now Mary was getting exasperated. “As soon as I’m finished I’ll shower, change clothes and we can go.”

“And what time will that be?”

She gazed at me with raised eyebrows. “I should be ready by a quarter to six.”

“Is that when they’re going to pick us up?”

“They’re not picking us up,” she explained patiently. “We’re going to meet them there.”

I knew I was getting closer to an answer, if I could just be patient. “Um, what time?”

“Hilda and I decided around six.”

“Thank you.”

She looked at me, realized what she’d just done, and we both got a good laugh out of it.

Chances are you and your spouse, significant other, or friend of the opposite sex, have had similar conversations. The point I’m trying to make is that men and women are different.

“Well, duh,” you say.

Some people have one-track minds. “In the way they speak,” I hasten to clarify.

“Okay, smarty pants. Explain that. What do you mean?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

Keep in mind that I’m speaking in general about men and women in our Western culture, and not specifically about any one person. Nor am I suggesting each of us is always consistent. But there are some general rules:

Women tend to give an explanation first, and sometimes don’t even bother to actually answering the question because by then it should be obvious what the answer is. The result can be a major source of misunderstanding and conflict in real life, in a fictitious scene or even an entire book. This is a frequent devise for short stories—and humor.

Men, on the other hand, tend to answer the question in as few words as possible and stop. As a result they can often come across as curt, even unfriendly—another source of real and imagined conflict.

Portraying this in a story can be difficult, but if it’s done right, it can also be very effective. Just as you may not have been aware of this paradigm before I told you (you’ll notice it more now, I promise), the reader probably isn’t either. Therefore he or she isn’t likely to realize why a particular exchange of dialogue feels right, only that it does.

Here are some other tips for differentiating between men and woman in dialogue:

– Men rarely ask directions or advice—especially from women (I suspect women are far more aware of this than men are!)

– Men rarely end sentences with a question, e.g. “Nice day, isn’t it?”

– Men avoid hedging or showing signs of indecision with phrases like: “I don’t know, but…”, “I’m not sure if…”

– Men don’t like to ask permission: “Would it be all right if we…”, “Do you mind if I…”

– Men tend to be blunt in their speech and forceful in their opinions, rather than conciliatory. Consensus building only seems to count in politics where we often think of men in those positions as manipulative or dishonest! (Oops! Did I say that?)

– And of course this biggie, that men answer a question first, then give an explanation only if it’s requested. The consequence of all this is that men can come across as abrupt or dictatorial, and women as evasive or deceitful.

Okay, I’ve solved one of the great mysteries of life: what is the difference between men and women. Now I ask you: will you ever listen to or participate in a conversation with a person of the opposite sex the same way again?

See? I’ve changed your life!

Visit Ken at:  www.KenCasper.com

Read an excerpt of AS THE CROW DIES at:  As The Crow Dies
Amazon
Barnes & Noble

Our fabulous Adrianne Ambrose, author of the terrific middle-grade book WHAT I LEARNED FROM BEING A CHEERLEADER, has now added another honor (she also writes for Fraggle Rock) to her career list: she’s writing for the Archie gang! 

Coming out May 12, 2011:

XOXO Betty and Veronica

We’re with the Band (Archie Comics)

Grosset and Dunlap

Middle Grade

It’s summer in Riverdale and best friends Betty and Veronica decide that it would be fun to start up their own all-girl pop band, The Candy Hearts. What starts off as an excuse to hang out with their friends quickly becomes an overwhelming phenomenon. The two girls learn that success is not as important as friendship in this middle-grade novel featuring classic Archie Comics characters.