Tag Archives: writer

May 23, 2016 · 2:58 pm

Gym Shame…

So, I want to put a disclaimer in this before we begin: I am a judgmental person. Anyone who knows me, knows this.

BUT...I never express my judginess to people I don’t know, and I never do it in public. Plus, my judgmental expressions are usually only about really stupid people, their actions, and prejudice.

ALSO… I freely admit that I am a reality show junkie when it comes to Bravo and E! Shows.

Okay, so….

Today at Planet Fitness ( and they should really start paying me for all the free publicity I give them!) I was on a treadmill  watching last night’s episode of KEEPING UP THE KARDASHIANS ( don’t judge me!), on my Ipad, minding my own business, ear plugs in place, and trying to burn off some of the delicious calories I took in over the weekend at the Angela James Conference/Workshop in Nashua. The show is 45 minutes long, which is a great treadmill workout for me because I can walk 3.5 miles in that time. Halfway through the program I happened to notice two women  talking who were….older… than me – and by older I really mean they were around my age, maybe a year or two younger/older, give or take – and very much…larger ( and you know what I mean by that!). They had stretched-to-the max-sweatpants on their more than ample backsides and concert t-shirts from a band that disbanded 40 years ago on their jiggly, un-toned, tops.  Anyway.

I happened to see one of them point to me and overheard her say “… stupid, mindless shit.”

My ears went up like Scooby Doo’s do when he hears the words Scooby Snack.

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Surreptitiously,  I lowered the volume on the Ipad and eavesdropped.  Keeping my eyes on the screen, here’s what I heard (they didn’t know I was listening!)

#1. “How anybody can watch that crap is beyond me.”

#2. “You know who she is, right?” Lowers her voice when she says this and doesn’t understand the gym is like a wind tunnel. You can hear a whisper from across the room.
***I’ll omit the next part where #2 tells #1 who I am and who I’m married to.

#1.”She writes those trashy, sex books, right? I saw it listed in the  paper when she did an appearance at the Toadstool.”

#2. “Yeah. Probably why she watches that crap.” **** I figured this meant what I was watching on my Ipad. **** “Probably gets her ideas from those kinds of shows.”

Now, those of you who know me personally can guess what I wanted to do. Would it surprise you to know I didn’t stop my treadmill, turn, and rip them each a new one?? What I did do surprised even me.

I turned the volume back up and kept walking until I timed out. Then, when I dismounted, I turned to them, looked each of them squarely in the un-made-up lots of crow-feeted eyes, gave them each a shit eating grin, said, “Enjoy your workout.”

I know: So NOT ME! I must be maturing as I age.

You’d figure I’d be fat-shamed at the gym – not reality tv shamed! The lesson I took away from this ( aside from the fact these two were mindless, judgemental, bimbos): take the high road. I know what I write aren’t trashy sex novels. It’s obvious neither one of these women had ever read anything by me – that’s assuming they have the I.Q.s to be able to read – or they’d know that.

The motto and branding of Planet Fitness is, NO JUDGMENT ZONE.

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Thing 1 and Thing 2 obviously didn’t realize that when they signed up.

‘Nuff Said for today.

For those of you who know I don’t write trashy sex stuff(!) here’s the latest:

THE VOICES OF ANGELS

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Love is the last thing Carly Lennox is looking for when she sets out on her new book tour. The independent, widowed author is content with a life spent writing and in raising her daughter. When newscaster Mike Woodard suggests they work on a television magazine profile based on her book, Carly’s thrilled, but guarded. His obvious desire to turn their relationship into something other than just a working one is more than she bargained for.

Mike Woodard is ambitious, and not only in his chosen profession. He wants Carly, maybe more than he’s ever wanted anything or anyone else. As he tells her, he’s a patient man. But the more they’re together, Mike realizes it isn’t simply desire beating within him. Carly Lennox is the missing piece in his life. Getting her to accept it-and him-may just be the toughest assignment he’s ever taken on.

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May 7, 2016 · 10:17 am

Where ideas for stories REALLY come from!!

I need to share a recent  Facebook page status  with you all as a preface to today’s blog:

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“Okay, so remember the other day when I told you about almost passing out at the gym because I hadn’t eaten anything before going? Well, here’s today’s Planet Fitness nightmare.

I’m on the treadmill, my iPod blasting in my ears and a really fast tune comes on, so I jack up the treadmill speed to match the beat of the music. Now I’m going fast and loving it. Then I remember that I should be moving my arms to the music as well so that I get a full body workout, so I start to pump my fists to the beat and I am in heaven. Well…

All of a sudden my fist connects with the earpiece string and – like a karate chop because I’m pumping my arms – I swipe it, the iPod jumps off the treadmill ledge, disconnects from the ear piece and hits the guy on the treadmill next to mine square in the center of his chest, and bounces. And I mean bounces. The universe couldn’t have seen fit to put some overweight out of shape slob like me next to me. No. I had to have Captain America next to me, all toned, and tan and hard bodied.

So, the iPod bounces of his substantially ripped chest and flies forward to land under the treadmill in front of his that has a girl running at a marathon rate on it.

So now I’ve not only maimed the guy next to me, but I have to ask the girl running like her life depended on it to stop so I can retrieve my iPod from under her machine.

I think this is the universe’s way of telling me I shouldn’t be going to the gym so I’m going to take a nap now. I just wanted to give you that I Love Lucy update before I lie down.”

ilovelucy

I garnered sososososo many comments from people telling me that this is the way my hero and heroine should meet in my next book that I’ve finally relinquished and am going to write it.

So, the title of today’s blog – Where ideas for stories really come from!!  – yeah, everyday life, people. Everyday life.

I have now answered that question for the last time EVAH!!!!

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December 1, 2015 · 10:05 am

Speak and they will listen..

Since I’ve been on the topic of mannerisms of late, how about we discuss how your characters speak and the idiosyncratic styles they each have? This is a fun topic for me any time of day or night.
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I’ve said before that I was born in Brooklyn, NY and lived in NYC for the first 27 years of my life. When I open my mouth and start to speak, you automatically can hear where I’m from. I have a tendency to drop the letter R at the ends of words ( which is why I refer to girls as sistahs), my “Th” sounds come out sounding like the letter “d”, so you’ll hear me say Dat for That. I speak as quickly as a lightning flash and use my hands expressively a great deal. All these verbal tags and mannerisms tell you I’m probably a New York kind of girl.

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Last year I was in San Antoni for the RWA conference. Most of the people who originate from that region and the ones I came in contact with at the hotel and in the city said “y’all” and “rightly so” a bunch of times in their adorable Texas twang.

Two weeks ago I was Las Vegas. Many of the employees in the hotel I was staying in were from the Philippines and addressed every person every time they came in contact with them as Ma’am or Sir. In their country this a severe sign of respect for the individual they are addressing.

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So, having shared this, some of the ways you can make your characters jump off the page to the reader and make them come alive, is to know how they speak.  Can you hear each character in your books speaking in their own style, or does every character sound the same to you? I read my dialogue out loud all the time just so I can be sure one person doesn’t sound exactly like another. Do your characters all use the same words and phrases when they speak? Again, this can get boring and confusing for the reader. For instance, doctors are highly educated people and use a certain vocabulary the average person doesn’t. You wouldn’t want your immigrant, unable-to-read-and-write character who is a patient be able to understand what a doctor is telling him. That just doesn’t ring true. Nor would a scientist and a four year be able to communicate on the same level. Unless of course the kid was a prodigy.talkingmeme

One of my favorite characters that I am currently writing is a ninety-two-year-old Irish immigrant grandmother who continually speaks in malapropisms. It gets her into some funny and outrageous situations, but it rings true when she speaks the words incorrectly, because she thinks they are correct.talkingmeme6

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, if your character is smart, does she speak like she’s educated?  Did your hero come from the South, because if he did, he’d be polite in his conversations with people, saying “please”, Ma-am, and so forth. Got a Canadian in-law? Make sure you round those vowels.

All these special little touches will make your characters more attractive, honest, appealing, and most importantly to your readers, Real.

So…you know what’s coming. How do you make your characters sound all like individuals and not robots….Let’s discuss.

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August 26, 2015 · 9:18 am

I’m not a very good waiter…..

No, I’m not talking about serving you dinner or drinks. I mean I’m not good at waiting for things to happen, people to get back to me, emails to be answered.

I guess I could have titled this piece I’m Impatient and it would have meant the same thing.

I’ve always been impatient, even as a child. I was that kid in the cartoon tootsie roll commercial with the Owl – remember? Only I was the owl. “How many licks does it take to get the middle of a tootsie pop? one..two..three.crunch.” That was me. There was no way I was waiting to lick the pop down before tasting the chocolatey tootsie center.

I’m that adult that hits the elevator button 30 times just in case it forgets to stop at my floor.

The minute I sit down in a restaurant I expect the serve staff to be jonny-on-the-spot with a drink order and menu in hand. Those 9 months of pregnancy? Yeah, not happening again. I could only handle the long wait once, hence the only child. Good thing I’m not an elephant.

I’m that person in the 10 items only checkout line who  has 9 items and will chastise the person in front of her who has 12.

I hate waiting for people to get to the point – ergo my rude habit of finishing other people’s sentences. It’s a good thing I didn’t go into politics. Or Public Relations. I’d be a nightmare to work with. Who am I kidding?? I’d be fired from any job that required me to be subtle and play the waiting game.

I haven’t called someone  on a phone in years. Know why? When you call someone, 9 times out of 10 you need to leave them a message because they’re too busy to pick up. Know what I do instead? Text. Why, you ask? Because people respond to texts IMMEDIATELY!!! I never, ever wait for a text response because I don’t have to. They are always, always answered  as soon as they are received.

Love that. LOVE THAT!

I know: obnoxious, right? To the max. That’s me.

As a writer, I have to wait all the time. I wait for query responses from editors and agents; I wait for contracts, first and last edits; galleys; advance checks. I wait anxiously for release dates and the second I know them I start publicizing them. Pre-orders are my life’s-blood.  Writing is a waiting game and the road to publication is psychologically tortuous for someone  like me who has zero patience tolerance.

I must remember to ask my mother one of these days about my toilet training. Seems that might be where all this started…..hmmmmm.

So, are you a good waiter or a bad one like me? Let’s discuss…….

 

 

 

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August 16, 2015 · 11:44 am

Reflections on August…

I’ve been writing daily, non-stop, since January of this year. My word tracker tells me I’ve logged in over 2,000,000 words. I don’t know if that’s a lot, average for a writer, or below the norm. I do know that writing makes me happy, whether it’s my blog, my wip,or a short story I’m working on. I once heard Nora Roberts liken writing to exercising. She said, if you don’t do it for a few days, like a muscle, it begins to atrophy. The “it” is the writing or the work of writing. And I agree.

But…

I decided to take a little break this month after I came back from RWA in NYC in July. I have a life outside of writing – I know, who’d have thought? – and I have several art, craft, and culinary projects that are time consuming I wanted to get started and done. The first weekend in the month I ripped apart every closet in my house, culled, restructured, tossed,  donated and generally made all my closets look like new again. It took me three days, 8 hours a day. By day three I had great closets and writing withdrawal. While I’d been culling,etc, several ideas had shot into my head and I needed to write them down, but I’d vowed to have a stay-cation from writing so…

Yeah. If you’re a writer you know where this is going.

Day 4 broke and I wanted to start on a new, large decoupage trunk project I was going to do for a friend’s birthday present. Since her b’day is in September and this was August, I needed to get a move on. 2 hours into the project  my hands started shaking because my writing-dormant brain had just solved a plot point problem I’d been having with my WIP. What to do? My non-writing vow slapped me hard in the face and…I slapped back. Yup. I broke my vow. For the next six hours I was able to rewrite a scene that had been driving me nutso for weeks. And it came out pretty damn good if I do say so. And right after that I wrote down all those ideas I’d come up with during closet cleaning. In fact, I sat at my laptop for a total of 10 hours that day -with one or two needed bathroom breaks – and got everything down that had been begging to be let out from my brain. The writing withdrawal symptoms ground me down. Like a meth addict, I was unable to control my “need” but in my case it was a need to write, not do drugs. Just clarifying, folks.

So.

Today is August 16. My word tracker tells me I have written 57,000 words during the past 10 days. That’s 5 blogs, and the rest split up between several WIP’s currently in production. I’ll have to include the 500 or so from this blog as well. Like moths drawn to flames, mosquitos pulled to bug zappers, use whatever metaphor or alliteration you want, I HAD to write. No, I HAVE to write. It is, in its purest definition, who and what I am.

There’s a reason this website is called WRITING IS MY OXYGEN. You can’t life without breathing…and I can’t live without writing.

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March 26, 2015 · 2:22 pm

Writing long…and short

I don’t think it’s a lie to say I’m verbose. As in, long winded, wordy, loquacious, garrulous…you get the message. My daughter read something of mine once and critiqued it by asking, “why do you say the same thing three times, differently? Why not just say it once, effectively?”

So happy her Dartmouth education paid off, because, really, she was right.

I write fast – no surprise there, since I talk and think fast.  Quick witted is what an admirer said of me once. My first drafts go on for hundreds of pages. Dialogue, exposition, explanation. Words and words and words. I just write whatever comes into my head while my fingers follow. I talk this way, as well, so it’s not a bombshell to admit my writing reflects this. If I got paid by the word I’d be a quadrillionaire ( if there is such a thing).

Even now, as I’m typing this, I find myself saying the same thing in different ways just  to make sure you, dear reader, get it.

Robert Parker and Elmore Leonard were two of my favorite writers when I was penning mysteries. Their dialogue was always spot on, even if it was a one word rebuke or answer to a question, and their descriptions required no more than a sentence or two for the reader to get the visual. They trusted their readers to understand what they were trying to convey and we always did. I live to write this way. The nicest compliment a reader can give me is that they “vividly saw what I wrote when they read it.”

I just submitted a story for a new series that will be coming out next Valentine’s Day. The word cap was 10-20 K, maximum. My stories are usually 85,000-100,000 words, easily. Writing this story for submission was an excellent way for me to learn to curtail my logorrhea. First draft was 27,615 words – and I thought all of them should be kept. No. They couldn’t. I had to eliminate at the very least 7,615. That’s a full scene for me.

Second draft I got it down to 22,005. Still not enough.

I had a dream one night on how to tighten a scene and BAM! the next day I got it down to roughly 14,500. This was good. I read the story at least 20 times, gave it to a friend and read little snippets to my coworkers.  They all agreed I should leave it as it stood. Don’t add. Don’t subtract.

I agreed. Today I submitted it to my Editor. We’ll see what happens, but this exercise taught me the benefit of culling extraneous words, tightening longwinded and rambling scenes, and focusing in on the specifics of the story and not worrying about the extra stuff no one needs to know about. As a writer, this is a good thing.

It’s not exactly a bad thing as a person either, since I do tend to ramble on and on and……..

 

 

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January 1, 2015 · 12:53 pm

A non-resolution resolution…

I’m not one to make New Year’s Resolutions. I’ve always believed that if you want to change something at any time – just pull a Nike and DO IT! There’s no real reason to wait until a monday to start a diet, or until the kids are out of the house to write, or anything else. If the thought occurs, put action behind it right then and there.

Can you tell I hate to wait for things??

This year, I’m changing it up a bit. While I’m not making tried and true resolutions, I do intend to change a few things to make my life and the lives of those around me better this year. I call these things INTENTIONS, not Resolutions.

First and foremost, I INTEND to devote a lot more time to blogging. I was on fire last year when I started this blog, but with the passing of the year, I waned a bit. I intend to document here at least 3 times weekly ( sometimes, hopefully, more).

I fully INTEND  to have at least one more book ready for publication by my birthday in May. I’ve got two out to the publisher now, and another one in consideration. I want my current WIP ready to go to the publisher, done and completely perfect ( or as close as I can get) by my 55th birthday.

I INTEND to do two brand new, totally non-Peggylike things this year. One of them will be trapezing, The other is a secret for now. I’ll revel it at the end of February.

I have the fullest INTENTION of being a calmer, less stressed wife and mother this year. I know: this intention is really a challenge, but hey, I’m up for it! With my retirement date set for April 30, I think I will be better able to do this since I won’t have healthcare work issues to occupy most of my time anymore.

I INTEND to live a less cluttered life – physically, emotionally and spiritually. There are many things in my life and surrounding me that I need to let go, get rid of, and not replace. More on those things in later blogs, but suffice it to say I am having a helluva garage sale this spring!

So, my intentions are now written in laptop stone so I won’t forget them or shove them to the back burner. What are your intentions for 2015?

 

 

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