Welcome back, dear
readers!
I've been away from the Round Robin Fest as well as from blogging for a little while now due to
life's misadventures, but I'm back and writing again!
This month's Round Robin question is: How emotionally involved are you
in reading or writing some scenes?
Yesterday I had a friend, who is also a fan!, tell me how much she loved
my books except for one thing - they're too short! An avid reader, she went on
to say how she got so caught up in my characters and the story that she couldn't
put the book down and was disappointed when it ended.
Way back in a high school psychology class, I had to write a paper on the
central nervous system versus the peripheral nervous system and used writing as
an example of how to describe each. I use my brain, a part of the central
nervous system, to create the work. When I re-read and edit, I use my
peripheral nervous system since my hands sweat, my heart beats faster, and my
body twitches in response to what I have read. This allows me to build a scene as
though I am the character I've written and make the story more real to my
readers.
As a writer, I also get caught up in the emotions of my scenes and
characters. My palms would sweat when I wrote about Lucy and her ex-husband's
relationship in The Mystery Lady as
well about Katie's life with Maddox in The
Bookstore Lady:
She’d never awakened in a motel room alone and naked before.
Someone had always taken her home. Usually Maddox. She pushed that thought out
of her head and splashed water on her face. In the mirror, her skin seemed
almost green in the bad lighting. Someone had beaten her, probably Maddox,
judging from the bruise on her cheek and the cut on her lower lip. Probably
from the diamond he wore on his pinky.
Beside the toilet, bright blue fabric speckled with purple
spots along the hem hung over the shower rod. Her favorite dress. The one she
wore yesterday. At least she thought it was yesterday. She fingered the spots
and fought off a wave of dizziness.
Blood stains. Whose blood?
(click on photo to order!)
In The
Mystery Lady, Lucy becomes paranoid when she spots a car parked on her street for several days then strange men in her neighbourhood. Her concern for
the well-being of she and her children actually left me a bit on edge and I
found myself peering out the window a few times as well!
Roger always said
she’d make a good writer because she was such a drama queen, but maybe she was
a drama queen because she was a writer. In truth, her mood was more about Roger
and her deep down reluctance to let her kids go with him for the week.
Normally, she’d probably have a hard time staying mad at someone like Clancy.
“Look, sweetheart.”
He chuckled. “You go back to whatever it is you do all day and have fun with
your kids. I’ll pad my tools with bubble wrap so you can relax.”
“You are such a jerk.” She snapped.
“That’s quite an
observation considering you just met me. Maybe you should give me a chance to
actually be a jerk before you accuse me of such a heinous crime.” He toyed with
a wrench.
Fondled? Stroked?
Darn her writer’s brain. What was wrong with her? Lucy blew out a frustrated
breath then rolled her eyes and stomped away. “Men.”
(click on photo to order!)
One of my favourite characters in the Wild
Blue Mysteries series is Leo Blue. I find it easy to put myself in his place to
see what he sees and think what he thinks. Leo looks at life a little
differently than most, which makes him a lot of fun to write and great foil for Danny since he will say and do
pretty much whatever he wants.
The scenes with Leo and Christina in The Bakery Lady were some of my favourite
(and steamiest!) to write. I allowed my emotions to run wild and tried to take
inventory as I wrote to capture the moment as realistically as I could. In
fact, one of the best ways for me to develop a scene, is to write a rough draft
then go back and "feel" the emotions and "live" the scene
in my head. Here's one example:
Leo clenched his hands at
his sides to keep from reaching out to push back the damp hairs off her neck
for a better view of the butterfly. “You’re right, she is cute. And funny.”
She spun around and knocked
a steel bowl full of cookie cutters off the counter. The bowl clanged on the
painted concrete floor and rolled toward the oven while the cookie cutters
clattered to the white tile floor. Her freckled elfin face was dusted with
flour, some of which rose off her lips as she huffed. When she glared at Clancy,
her eyes reminded Leo of the slate gray-green Himalayan Mountains at sunset.
Her red lips shone like the juicy flesh of a watermelon. He’d forgotten how
much he liked watermelon.
(click on photo to order!)
I find
that the more I write, the more emotional my writing becomes as I become more
connected to my characters and learn more about them. Currently, I am working
on a new book in the series, The Painted Lady, which should be ready for
release in 2017.
All three of m
y Wild Blue Mysteries are available through Amazon & BWL as well as at Coles/Chapters/Indigo in Canada by special order!
On that note, let's move along to Beverley
Bateman and see how emotionally involved
she gets in her writing!
