How to Handle strong emotion - Writing tip

When you need to give a character a strong emotion, try to find a moment in your own past when you felt that emotion.

Once I needed to find shock and horror for a character in a story. To do that I remembered a day when I'd taken clothes in off the line, folding them into the basket as I went. When I started to put them away, a snake crawled out from between the towels and landed between me and the door. I am terrified of snakes. I took all the sick, palpitating, screaming horror I felt when I saw the snake and gave those emotions to the my character.

Her palms sweat, here hands shook, the room seemed to come and go. And I used what I had felt, to understand how she would feel when she walked into that horrifying situation.

Oh, by the way, I phoned my late sister-in-law and she came right over, found and removed the snake. I disposed of all her spiders in return -- we were a good team.

Tuna Noodle Salad - Recipe

Terry White’s Tuna Noodle Salad

2 cups macaroni, uncooked
½ cup low-fat mayonnaise
1 can tuna packed in water, drained
1 can peas drained, or 1 cup leftover peas
1 cup diced celery, or 1 tsp celery seed
½ teaspoon coarse ground pepper
½ teaspoon salt
Diced onion to taste.

Boil macaroni in salted water, drain and chill. Add other ingredients and mix well. A good one-dish meal on a hot day. Most of the salt goes down the drain. This will keep in the refrigerator for two or three days. Makes enough for four.

Contributed by Terry L. White author of The Last Priestess...Qwana is The Last Priestess to The Mother for the Temple of the Moon.... Can she survive when a visitor from space plunges her world into war, and opens Qwana to the possibilities of eternal love. A compelling story set on the Nazca Plain at the foot of the mighty Andes.First in a series of Three.

Milk the Action - Writing tip

It never hurts to "milk the action." That's a tip I picked up from Alice Orr who has written many books (including some Nancy Drews), worked as an editor at Walker Books, had her own agency, and is now a nationally known speaker.

Alice talks in her workshop about how Charlie Chaplin, as the little tramp, was going to have a fistfight with a very large bully. Now we know they are going to fight, but first Charlie takes off his hat and hangs it on the peg. The bully charges at him and Charlie holds up one hand, then takes off his coat and hangs it up very carefully. The bully charges at him again and Charlie again signals for time and proceeds to very precisely roll up the sleeves of his shirt, displaying very skinny arms. It never hurts to keep the reader (or the filmgoer) sitting on the edge of the seat, wanting more.

Thanks Alice, for this and for all you taught me! Hope you are feeling better.

Arline

Ray Morand's Chicken Kebabs -Recipe

Author Ray Morand shares the following recipe from our anthology, WHAT'S COOKING?

Ray Morand’s Chicken Kebabs
(Yakitori)

2 pounds chicken
16 small onions
8 green peppers
sansho powder (optional)
(Alternative: add carrots)

Sauce:
½ cup soy sauce
½ cup mirin
1-2 tbsp. Sugar

Cut vegetables into bite sized pieces. Cut chicken in bite sized pieces. Place on skewers. Simmer sauce. Grill kebabs and brush sauce over them as they cook. Sprinkle with sansho powder if desired and serve.

Ray Morand* is the author of Modified... The year is 2106 and the human race finally united under one world government, but a slave race of Artificial Intelligence Clones want their freedom and genetically engineered soldiers were created to combat them. The Space Marines are fighting a losing battle and one genetically engineered female Navy Seal may be the secret to winning the war.

* Ray Morand is the pen name of Raye Carchia

Good to be back - News on Promotion from ARE

Feeling much better after a week of being under the weather.

Here's some news about promotional from AllRomanceEbooks.com

All Romance eBooks (ARe) is currently in the process of booking interviews, filling our guest author spots for the next quarter for our Wildfire newsletter and scheduling authors to appear on the ARe What's Hot In Romance radio show. Spaces do tend to fill quickly so please respond as soon as possible if you are interested.



The Wildfire is released every Tuesday and Friday to our customers who have opted to receive it via email, then archived on our site for up to two years. Currently we are sending to over 27,000 readers and this number grows each week.



This is a fabulous free promo opportunity. Queries specifying which option(s) you are interested in should be sent to: julie.cummings@allromanceebooks.com



*Behind The Books Interview Opportunity:

Interviews are conducted via email. You will be asked to answer 10 questions and provide a short bio, your backlist, a list of any upcoming releases, and relevant links that you would like us to post (i.e. website, blog, newsletter). (We have a limited number of newsletters spots available this quarter so if you are interested in the other opportunities as well, please let me know.)



*Please note there is currently a waiting list for interviews. However, we are working through the list quickly and if you have a new release arriving at All Romance or OmnILit in the next quarter we will do everything we can to work you in.



The Sizzle Free Read Column:

We feature one guest author each week who provides a free short read. This can be something previously published or something you intend to publish elsewhere, but it should not be an excerpt. We are open to all sensuality levels and all romance sub-genres. Preferred length is 200-2000 words.



If your submission is accepted, a contract will be sent to you. Established authors may be granted a reserved slot in advance of the manuscript being delivered based on a query. The intent of the contract is to establish that you own the rights to the work and that you are giving us non-exclusive permission to publish it in our newsletter and post it in our archive.



Many authors have used this opportunity to promote upcoming releases by writing a piece related to it. If you don't have a new work that you are promoting, this is also a good opportunity to remind readers of your work. We always follow the story with a short bio, your backlist, a list of any upcoming releases, and relevant links that you would like us to post (i.e. website, blog, newsletter).



Guest authors are given a free "What's Hot" spot for one week on our home page, which at this time receives approximately 8,000 hits per day.



ARe Radio: What's Hot in Romance

All Romance eBooks accepts requests from authors wishing to be features on their radio show What's Hot in Romance that airs live on BlogTalkRadio Mondays at 9:30 pm EST. Links to the podcast will be published in our weekly Wildfire newsletter, on our website, and listed in the show's archives. Each of the segments will focus on a recent ARe eBook release in the romance genre and will consist of a 30-minute phone in interview between the author and the host and usually includes a reading done by the author.





In addition to the above listed free opportunities we also offer several low cost options.



Our customer demographic is your ideal target demographic. The ARe site currently receives approximately 2.5 million impressions with 225,000 visits each month from customers who are intending to purchase romance/erotica and are just a click away from doing so.



What's Hot Cover spots on the home page of All Romance and OmniLit.

The What's Hot area of the All Romance and OmniLit home pages have several spots set aside each week for paid advertising. Slots are filled on a first-come-first-serve basis. Each spot is for one week for a rate of $15.



Book Video spotlight on the home page of All Romance.

For a week the video spotlight can be reserved for your book trailer, which will include a link to the full detail book page. These spots are reserved on a first-come-first-serve basis at a rate of $30. Book videos are pre approved by staff prior to reservation.



Advertising spots in our twice-weekly newsletter.

Each newsletter edition we reserve a prominent sidebar section of our newsletter for those authors or publishers who wish to advertise to our Wildfire readers at a rate of $10. The mailing currently goes out to 27,000 readers and this number grows weekly.



Send query to julie.cummings@allromanceebooks.com



In your query please specify which option(s) you are interested in.



To view all of these options and others we offer from time to time be sure to visit and bookmark our advertising page at http://www.allromanceebooks.com/advertising.html



Thanks,



Julie Cummings

Manager, Marketing and Promotions

All Romance

Dredge Boat Coffee - Recipe

With all that white stuff outside, I thought I might share Barfer Robinson's recipe for Dredge Boat Coffee. Barfer (nicknamed for his predeliction for seasickness) is the cook upon the Hope V. Rogers in my books Killraven and Drowned Land.


In a large percolator pot, fill basket with about as much ground coffee as it will hold – add a dash of salt and throw an empty egg shell in the bottom of the pot. Fill the coffee pot up with water level to the basket.

Percolate on high heat until liquid in the bubble top is good and dark. Remove from fire and when it has stopped perking, remove the percolator basket. Fill up the rest of the pot with white lightning, if there’s no white lighting, bourbon or dark rum will do.

Serve black to six hungry crewmen along with bacon, eggs, and pancakes smothered in molasses and it will help keep them warm even when sailing against the wind on a frosty morning.

Contributed by Arline Chase, whose character, Barfer Robinson is ship’s cook aboard the Hope V. Rogers. “Barfer”, so called by his mates because he is often seasick, made his first appearance in The Drowned Land...The novella won The Governor's Award in 1984 in Maryland, and the short story collection was an Eppie Finalist in 1999. Many of the same characters appear in the later novel Killraven.

What's Cooking - Recipe

Some time back we put out WHAT'S COOKING? an anthology of recipes contributed by the authors at Write Words. You can receive a copy WHAT'S COOKING free for the next month, by e-mailing me at arline@mail.com and asking.


This RECIPE was sent in by Dorothy Bible Kawaguchi, who wrote HER NAME WAS MARY, about her mother's struggle to keep her family together during the Great Depression.

Mary Bible was Dorothy's mother and below is her recipe for Appalachian Green Beans.

Mary Bible’s Green Beans with Potatoes or Okra.

*Mary always believed in parboiling all green vegetables. She said if you didn't you could get sick from botulism.

4 cups of green beans broke or cut into small pieces about one inch. Parboiled for three minutes and rinsed in cold water.
3/4 teaspoon salt.
3 strips of bacon or a small piece of ham.

Put beans and meat into a large pot and cover with hot water. Stir salt in the beans and add bacon. While beans and meat are cooking, peel and quarter two medium size potatoes.

Cook the beans until water is almost gone. The last twenty minutes place the potatoes on top of beans and cook until the potatoes are done. You can cook okra on top of beans the same way. Good with cornbread.

Contributed by Dorothy Bible Kawaguchi, author of HER NAME WAS MARY...the story of a mountain woman’s struggle to raise her children alone, during the Great Depression.

Still snowed in!!!

This !@#$%^&* SNOW has already worn out its welcome here. We had two feet Friday a week ago (we are about 15 minutes from Washington D.C. by helicopter) and then it snowed again, another 15 inches or so on top of what's in the picture Mary Pace, author of CHRISTMAS IN THE COUNTRY, sent us. Though we had a couple of days of melting temps, it never melted enough to disappear or reveal any ground below.

We are about 100 yards from the closest road and some drifts are four or five feet high. Our son, Sid, came yesterday with the tractor and got the driveway clear. Until then we had been snowbound. Roger has gone to the store this morning -- with luck we'll have milk for the first time in 5 days. Thank goodness I had stuff to make bread with, so we still had bread. Cat food was running low, too, so we were getting some dirty looks from Jack (see above) about the rationing.

Jack is doing much better. Did I tell you he got an infection where one of the others scratched him? He was quite sick for several weeks. Such fun, giving him the antibiotic pills. One side is still bald, though.

E-book or Ebook??? + Galley News

There has been a flurry of recent questions about which is correct on some of the lists lately with some folks arguing both ways adamantly!, but nowhere did I see anyone who had looked in the dictionary for the correct spelling.

The Webster's Dictionary at www.m-w.com says both are DEFINITELY hyphenated. So while you may casually check your email every morning, if you write it down, you "Check your e-mail." Neither is capitalized unless it's at the beginning of a sentence as they are ordinary, not proper nouns, just like mail and mailbox.

E-book galleys went out for Terry L. White's CHESAPEAKE VISIONS, the fourth in her Chesapeake Series, this week.

And also for Shel Damsky's DEATH ON APPEAL, for the second in his Gideon Pomeroy series. With luck, both will be done and for sale in March.


Gone BACK to press Print books include:

JENNY'S LEGACY, by Cassandra Barnes (held up in production and in the final process at LAST!!!)

TIME RIFT by Elena Bowman, that had an error on the cover and needed a re-up.

Print book publication for new efforts will be somewhat delayed due to the crash of Sandy's computer, where the software for making bar codes lived.(And died!) She has a new one on order but who knows when she'll get it with all the SNOW???? ;P

We will still be working on the next batch of print books, but can't go to press with any of them until we get the bar codes. ;) Like the boy scouts, be prepared for a wait.

Those titles on that list include:

DEMONCHASER, by David Berardelli

CHESAPEAKE VISIONS, Chesapeake Series, vol. 4, by Terry L. White

POSTCARDS FROM MR. PISH, by K.S. Brooks

HEIRARCHY OF TERROR, Arbiter Series, Vol. 4, by Matthew L. Schoonover

HUNTED, Hope Falls series, vol. 2, by Jamieson Wolf

LOST MEMORIES, Red Knight Chronicles, vol. 3, by Ray Morand

KISS OF NIGHT, by K. S. Brooks

MURDEROUS ROOTS, by Virginia Winters

THROUGH THE CLOUDS by Erin Aslin

CALL SIGN LOVE by Carlene Dater

and

GHOST MEETS AN ANGEL, Shannon Delaney series, vol. 4, by Elizabeth Eagan-Cox

More, MORE Pirates!

The person to whom you would normally complain about a pirate site offering free downloads of your books is the registrant who owns the domain.

The registrant of the domain offering free downloads of our books at, http://megauploadbot.com, is:

Please note: the registrant of the domain name is specified
in the "registrant" field. In most cases, GoDaddy.com, Inc.
is not the registrant of domain names listed in this database.


Registrant:
erdem baysal
adnan kahveci bulv. yagmur
istanbul, 34180
Turkey

Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: LYRICSTO.COM
Created on: 14-May-09
Expires on: 14-May-11
Last Updated on: 13-Oct-09


Again he Registered through GoDaddy, but they do not own the domain, OR have any control over the content thereof. Some guy in Turkey owns it and he says he is only providing a search engine, not the free downloads and has made provisions to prevent improper downloads as quoted earlier from his customer service agreement.

He has no control over the people who lie to him in order to get something for nothing. In doing so they do risk having their information. If someone steals it, should we cry for them?

People who expect to get something for nothing on the Internet usually get what they deserve.

MORE, Pirates Again!

Sorry, spoke too soon!

The site I mentioned earlier today

http://megauploadbot.com

is only a search engine, that promises to get you a free copy download if:


1. You give them all your info, like address, email address, and pertinent numbers when you "Register." If you do give them all that info, it can be used to send you spam, or steal your identity, but they don't seem to mention those options. Many pirate sites today are only trolling for customer information and this seems to be another one.

2. You can only download if you swear you OWN the copyright or have permission to copy the file. In their terms of agreement, quoted below, they say the downloader MUST have the copyright holder's permission to download, but I doubt they check if you lie about it.

Also apologies to GoDaddy.com who registered the domain, but have NO control over the content of the site.

Here's the "Official" terms of service:

Please Share Responsibly!

Your purchase of a membership is expressly conditioned upon your agreement to not knowingly use our member’s area or any software therein to share files that are protected by copyrights. Use of our services constitutes your acceptance and agreement with all of the terms of the license.

We do not provide a license to upload and/or download copyrighted materials, thus you are still required to abide by local and international copyright laws and regulations.

To use our services legally, you must have the permission of the owner of the copyrights for each file in your possession.

Please choose an option below and click the "Submit" button to continue.

I understand and agree to the above mentioned terms and conditions

I do not agree to the terms and conditions

Pirates, Again!

Dorice Nelson, author of CLAN GUNN: GERICK, LOST SON OF IRELAND, and SARATOGA SUMMER, 1863, writes to warn us about the following Pirate website

http://megauploadbot.com

Like many other publishers and authors we have already registered our complaint with their webhost, GoDaddy.com. Check to see if your books are listed.

If they are, you can direct your take-down requests to the following email:

CopyrightClaims@godaddy.com

It's a white-OUT!

Gonna keep on being a bear for awhile. Plan to sleep through the whole thing.

arline

Snow, Snow, and YET MORE Snow!

Bears DEFinitely have the right idea about winter!!


This is what it looked like here on Monday, thanks to WWI author Mary Cox-Pace for the image.

Today and tomorrow we are looking at up to 12 more inches.

Personal Opinion - Writing TIP

Personal Opinion, Baloney!

The two easiest kinds of articles to write are Personal Experience and Opinion essays. Each of us has a lifetime of personal experiences from which to draw. Opinions are like noses. Everyone has one.

Personal experiences can be shared with your children and grandchildren, with old friends, on blogs like this one, or just with yourself as a journal entry. They also, if you are willing to share them with others, may make good columns for publications from national magazines right down to your local newspaper.

Leads:

The lead is the most important thing you have to say about the subject. If you can tie it up with a hook, so much the better. A good lead for an article on how paramedics saved your life would be, “I died twice last August and lived to tell about it.” The unspoken hook here is, "HOW?"

The Body:

Then put the details of the medical emergency and the Certified Emergency Technicians response in the second paragraph. Then just tell the story as it happened to you, with your own thoughts and feelings -- then make your POINT.

The Point:

Every article has a point. The personal experience / medical emergency article outlined above might be used to point out the importance of funding for local emergency services.


Personal Opinion differs very little, except instead of writing about yourself, you would choose to write about an issue – Say, baloney. Here’s the outline:

The lead: Make a statement about something

The price of baloney is $5.89 a pound. and write a couple of lines about how it used to be 10 cents a pound, and was still expensive during the Great Depression when the average man’s salary was $1 a day, if he was lucky enough to have a job.

The body: Give examples and tell anecdotes

People used to say they were spreading baloney when people told lies or exaggerated the truth. (And give some examples of people who have told lies, some amusing, some serious. Girls who’ve lied, or to whom guys lie, politicians and how many lies they tell, the way government cuts medicare, and SSI, but buys $800 toilet seats.)

Make your point:

Lots of people will hand you baloney.

The conclusion: Use the lead to confirm your point and make the piece come full circle.

Think about the baloney people slice for you every day. Even when people give it away for nothing, baloney can be very expensive.

More than a foot and STILL Snowing!!

Bears have the right idea about winter.

"There's a Blizzard Coming on"

Twenty-four inches predicted for our area. This is the third major winter storm this winter. It's been so bad, none of the cats have even tried to get out.

BEWARE PAYPAL MESSAGES

Today I received a FALSE message purportedly from PAYPAL saying a company had refunded money to my account.

I was advised to click on the information so I could collect the refund. THIS IS JUST ANOTHER SCAM!!! Though it's set up to look as if you had ordered something, paid, and the item was out of stock.

Fortunately, although I had recently ordered quite a few things, I knew none of them was from this company OR in this amount, so I went straight to Paypal.com. I did not pass Go. I did not collect $316, Thank Heaven!!

Because if I had they would have had access to my account.

BE VERY LEERY OF MESSAGES SUPPOSEDLY FROM PAYPAL.COM

ALWAYS go to the site and check your account out. NEVER click on the LINKS.

False messages with PayPal logos in them are nothing new, but couching them as a refund from a supposedly reputable company is different.

Scene Structure -- Writing Tip

The first good advice I was given by my then agent, Denise Marcil, was "write in scenes."

Unfortunately, I didn't know what she meant, exactly. That's why she didn't remain my agent very long, though she sold lots of good books by lots of other good authors.

Still, her advice is as good now as it was then. Your story should be structured in scenes and each scene has the same structure within the story. Here it is:

1. Transition, preferably with hook. (Who, when, where, and end with an unanswered question)

2. Rising action and dialogue

3. Turning point of the scene (the place where something important changes)
(if there's no point, the scene goes, no matter how well written)

4. End/resolution of the scene, preferably with another hook. When we come to the end of a scene,


* * *


we indicate it with the double line break of "white space" AND three stars, or some other indication, in case the line break falls at the bottom of a page. Once the turning point is reached, then a final hook for that scene is set, and the scene ends. The Scene Ends Right There! Yes, as soon as the point is made, regardless of what else might have really happened later.

Say for instance a medical examiner is called to the scene of a murder. He looks at the corpse and at the uniformed cop on standby, then says, "He's done it again. This is the same as the last one."

That's the final point of the scene, because we have let the reader know a serial killer is on the loose. Now after this line, the criminalists may descend, take photographs and fingerprints, pick up blood samples, and eventually the body will be removed leaving the inevitable tape outline on the floor, but to show the reader all that would be anticlimactic, because the point had already been established. Once your serial killer is on the loose, end the scene, and get on to the next scene where your detective is hot on the trail instead of wasting your and the readers time on pointless action, however well written. Most short stories have three major turning points and coincidentally three major scenes.

Then and Now stories -Writing Tip

If your story takes place in two different times, you can always use a time key just above the beginning of the text to set time and place, and eliminate all those tediously alike transitions that say:


Meanwhile back in 1938 a new baby boy had been born, in June, to Robert and Lisa who were proud parents indeed.

Forty years later, Robert Junior celebrated his birthday on June 9th...and similar bad examples.


Or if you do a historical book or short story you can just:

put the time key in below the title to set time and place, like this:

name
address




KILLRAVEN

by Arline Chase

Killraven Island

Chesapeake Bay

April 1897

Story starts here....

Hank LeGrand III's RAMPAGE is Out!!

Hank asked me to post his message. See below:

I just received my copy of RAMPAGE...it looks GREAT!If anyone likes a suspense / thriller check it out here at Write Words Inc. If you'd like a signed copy please purchase it at Write Words Inc., then contact me at hjlmbl@zoominternet.net and tell me who to make it out to. Arline can tell you about shipping and handling charge.
> Thank you,
> Hank LeGrand

List price on the site is $16.95 plus shipping charge of $5.50, Hank. But I have no objections if you want to sell some autographed copies to fans by mail OR at book signings. No problem.

In fact I'm proud to see you out there marketing!