With my book done and vacation coming, I will be taking a break from my blog for a few weeks. Plus I'm still fighting this stubborn cold. So here's wishing y'all a happy Fourth of July.  I'll be back in touch later. In the meantime, since I need a book in my head to keep me sane, I will likely start thinking about the next project and whatever research may be required. You can always reach me via personal email. I'd also like to hear from you about what you want me to talk about here, what type of posts you enjoy the most. In other words, it's feedback time!  Your turn to write to me, folks.

Have a great JULY 4th!

I’m done! I finished the rough draft for my WIP at page 449. Hurray! Now I’ll work through critique group corrections, fill in descriptive details, then start my read-throughs to make sure I’ve covered everything. My nose cold is on its way out, so my brain is clear, and I’m eager to get back to normal. I’ll make these minor revisions now. Our vacation comes at the perfect time so I can get some distance from the story, then start reading it fresh when we return. What a wondrous feeling to be finished with the creative process. I don’t feel a sense of let-down yet, because I still have all the polishing to do. I’ll stay in this imaginary world until I am completely satisfied with the story. Then the manuscript gets sent to my agent, and it’s on to the next project. Onward and upward!

No, I am not talking about floods or tornadoes, hunger or pain. I mean the Common Cold. I have a cold. I hate colds. The scratchy throat that heralds its arrival. The sore throat that hurts when you talk or swallow. Next comes the stuffy nose along with the postnasal drip that keeps you up at night. How about the sinus pressure, that cottony feeling in your head that removes your ability to reason?

We of the human species have suffered from this malady for ages, and there still is no cure. I took my Airborne and zinc lozenges and got sick anyway. So here I sit, knowing I have to endure for ten days or so, before symptoms start to lift. And if they don’t, or you get worse, good luck getting an appointment with the doctor. Two weeks of breathing through your mouth. It’s good for reading, if you can concentrate, or watching movies on TV. And I really needed these two weeks to finish my WIP before we leave town to visit relatives. I’m on the last chapter. The story is in my head, plaguing me to reach the finish line. But this cold plagues me more. I must follow the Prime Directive for people who have colds: Rest, drink lots of fluids, sip chicken soup, catch up on your favorite TV shows, and enjoy reading someone else’s books.

Stay healthy!

I am down to the final battle scene in my WIP at page 425. Yes, I’m over my word count. Oh well. So it’ll give the reader more story to enjoy. Anyway, my heroes have to blow up a jamming device. I’ve decided where it’s located, so now I have to lay out the scene. It has to play in my head before I can put it on paper. Sometimes, I’ll use action figures at this stage. It helps me place the players on the field and move them through their parts. Scouting out a similar location can add sensory details. Since I lack military training, the rest I’ll make up. If I play it out through my heroine’s viewpoint, she’s a normal citizen like me (albeit with special powers), so I don’t have to use special ops jargon if I’m in her head. Then we’ll need the final romantic resolution, and I’m done. Almost. I’ve been working on critique group revisions. Once I finish those, I will do a line edit, followed by a thorough read-through to tie up all loose ends. Whew. Still a lot of work, but I find revisions a heck of a lot easier than facing a blank page.

If this seems an odd topic for my blog, keep reading. Yesterday, I wrote one page instead of my usual five. Besides taking time off to pay bills and carry out other mundane tasks, I needed to do some research before proceeding. My heroine, at page 382 in my WIP, is captured by the enemy. Uh oh. What do I call the enemy commander?

Since my story is based on Norse mythology, I went to Wikepedia and first looked up the common military ranks for the U.S. Armed Forces. O-kay. Are we dealing with an army or a navy? Probably an army, since they’re ground troops. So then I looked up ranks for army officers and army enlisted personnel in Norway and Denmark.

So far, so good. But how large a contingent would be stationed where my heroine is? And what do I call it? I needed the designations for military commands. The British battle groups were very clearly defined, so I used them. After all, the Vikings would have invaded Britain back in the old days, right? It sort of makes sense, although my villains predate the invaders. But it serves my purpose. I refined the ranks for my enemy army and began writing again.

This is all part of the World Building process. So was watching an old movie from 1986 on television called Troll  starring June Lockhart, Shelley Hack, and Sonny Bono. Get this: One of the characters is named Harry Potter. Truly. And another character, a small person, wishes he were special and able to do magic. Trolls, dwarves, and a witch create havoc in this strange tale. Interesting, huh, when we think of that other story about You Know Who written by Ms Bestselling Author. Wikepedia says about her series, "the idea for which was conceived whilst on a train trip from Manchester to London in 1990." AFTER the Troll movie. As a writer, you never know when something you’ve seen or heard will pop into your subconscious. Or else, as the saying goes, great minds think alike.

As a morning person, I like to start writing early in the day, before reading the newspaper, turning on the TV, or answering phone calls. Coffee heightens mental alertness, so after downing a mug, I’m ready to enter my fictional world.

Slipping inside the Zone isn’t easy. A writer has to block all interference, including mental To Do lists, traffic and lawnmower noises, concerns about the economy, etc. If you get me going about grocery prices, I’ll veer away from the clear mind I need to join my characters in their adventure. So it’s best for a writer not to read or watch the news at the start of the day. It is better to practice BICHOK: Butt in Chair, Hands on Keyboard. It’s even more inspiring if you can resist checking email first thing, and definitely don’t go on Facebook or any other social networking site until the writing quota for the day is done. Set yourself a daily or weekly goal and stick to it, rewarding yourself as you meet small milestones.

My WIP is zipping along. I have only 25 pages remaining to hit my target word count, although I’ll likely spill over. My hero and heroine have had their dark moment and gone their separate ways. I’m using Bait and Switch tactics to move between them, leaving each one at a suspenseful point until the scene returns to them. Then I have to get them together for the final battle and romantic resolution. That’s going to take more than 25 pages. The story is in my head, just waiting to come out. It’s what I think about when I wake up and when I lay in bed at night. This is the most joyous part of writing, putting down on paper a story that’s already there, waiting for the writer to snatch it from the Zone.

I wrote about the crystal skulls long before the new Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull movie and before Mysteries of the Crystal Skulls aired on the sci fi channel. In KILLER KNOTS, my latest Bad Hair Day mystery novel, hairstylist Marla Shore and her fiancé Dalton Vail sail away on their first Caribbean cruise with a killer on board. They visit all the ports in the Caribbean to which I’ve traveled while on twenty plus voyages. The locations in the story are real, and my descriptions are based on notes and photos I took in these ports.

One of the most interesting places is the island of Roatan off the coast of Honduras. Here’s an excerpt of what I say about it in my story:

From KILLER KNOTS, Chapter 17:

Roatan had been a pirate stronghold for Captain Henry Morgan who plundered Spanish ships carrying gold from mainland Honduras. In the 1920's, British archaeologist Mitchell Hedges explored the ruins of a pirate fortress at Old Port Royal. He discovered four wooden chests filled with gold doubloons. Back in New York, he sold off his loot for six million dollars and bought himself a castle in England.

As for my heroine, Marla Shore, other thoughts of a more immediate nature occupied her mind:

Tabyana Beach is one of the most lovely beaches I’ve visited. Crystal clear water, soft grains of sand, rum punches, and a steel band. What more could you want?

Roatan is a magical place, full of hidden treasures, pirate history, lush foliage, and beautiful beaches. No wonder the pirates harbored here. Was the crystal skull found by Hedges created by the ancient Atlanteans as he surmised? Or was it a gift from aliens? Could the Mayans have crafted it using tools known to them at the time?  Is Hedges's skull part of thirteen skulls that must be found and aligned in order to save the world in 2012? Or do the crystal depths hide the knowledge of the ages? Mysteries abound, many of which no doubt are still hidden by the creeping vines and majestic splendor of this tropical isle.

A fan wrote me recently mentioning an error she’d found in PERISH BY PEDICURE, book number eight in my Bad Hair Day mystery series featuring hairstylist Marla Shore:

I looked it up, and Maria is in the hardcover version, page 153. But in the paperback, it reads Marla on the equivalent page 181. Obviously, I’d noticed it or a fan had already alerted me, and I got the mistake corrected for the mass market version.

Then I went back to my original manuscript. On page 196, it reads thus:

"She decided to pull together a quick lasagna dinner when Dalton called to say he’d stop by with Brianna."

In the copy edited version, the editor changed it to this: "When Dalton called to say he’d stop by with Brianna, she decided to pull together a quick lasagna dinner."

Okay, so where did Maria come from?

Next, I went to the page proofs for the hardcover edition, page 153. It read the same as above.

No Maria or Marla. So how did this sentence get changed?

Then I looked up the page proofs for the paperback version. This one says, "When Dalton called to say he’d stop by with Brianna, Marla decided to pull together a quick lasagna dinner."

Obviously, I’d made the correction by then.

The puzzle remains: How did Maria insert herself into the final hardcover when it wasn’t in the page proofs?

A ghost must have added it. That’s the only explanation.

The point of this lesson: It’s not always the author’s fault. Sometimes, yes, mistakes do get past us, no matter how many read throughs we do. We’re only human. But sometimes errors will occur in the editorial process and then we’re lucky if we catch them.

Now for a confession. There’s one at the beginning of KILLER KNOTS. Gold stars to you if you’ve caught it.  Don’t worry, though. I’ve alerted my editor to make the correction for the mass market edition, thanks to some diligent fans. Now let’s hope my request is granted.

I’ve never joined a local book club for the simple reason that I like to choose what I read. I don’t want a group leader telling me to read a novel that has no appeal to me, one that I would never pick up to read otherwise. Some may say this is the perfect reason to join a readers’ circle, to be introduced to new writers. It can be a good way to make new friends. But thanks, I don’t care for forced reading when I have plenty of new writers on my own list to try and more titles on my TBR (To Be Read) shelf than I can get to in a lifetime.

Another deterrent to my joining one of these clubs is their focus. Often the group selects literary fiction or bestsellers. If I mention a title by one of my writer friends, or–gasp–one of my own, they roll their eyes or mention those fated words: "We don’t read that stuff/those kind of books/or Is it on the bestseller list?" They’d rather read a story with a sad ending because it’s, you know, literature.

So what’s the solution if I want the comradery of fellow readers, aside from the writers groups to which I already belong? Why, start my own club, of course. Here are my rules:

1. Participants choose their own book to read.

2. Books must be genre fiction: mystery/suspense, romance, or sci fi/fantasy.

3. Titles may not be on any bestseller list. If we don’t support midlist writers, the choices will narrow further than they have already. Look at the chain bookstore shelves: Rows of backlist titles by known authors means less shelf space for new and upcoming writers. If you want variety, you have to seek an independent bookstore. Support your indies! Or even consider having your meetings there if you’re lucky enough to have one close by.

4. At each monthly meeting, members will have the opportunity to discuss their read: why they liked it, what made them choose that title, what elements appealed to them, etc. I have written a detailed guide for booklovers to use as an aid to discussions. Email me privately if you would like a copy of this guide. It applies to any fiction title.

5. Books that are finished but are not destined for the keeper shelf may be offered to members first before being donated elsewhere (i.e. BookCrossing.com). Preferably, do not trade recently published books at used bookstores or sell them online. Used books do not count toward an author’s royalties and these sales, while they may help an author gain new readers, do not count toward current sales figures that publishers use to assess an author’s track record before offering a new contract. If another member doesn’t want the book, consider donating it to a women’s shelter or a library or leave it in the wild through bookcrossing.com.

6. Provide refreshments. People always want to come when food is offered.

Hopefully, this type of book club will appeal to independent readers who want to make new friends and discuss books but don’t want to be told what to read. It’s also a great way to learn about new authors. If your friend raves about a work, you might want to try it. So what could be better than making a recommendation based on what you choose to read?

Let me know if you find this idea compelling.

One writer’s trash may be a researcher’s treasure.

Recently, I read another author’s blog about how she sorted through her early rejection letters and tossed them out along with other items gathering dust in her home office. Think about all those old manuscripts taking up shelf space. I don’t know about you, my fellow authors, but we’re talking reams of paper here. For each one of my mystery titles, I have the original manuscript, sometimes a revised draft, a copy edited manuscript, plus page proofs. Consider that there are nine books in my Bad Hair Day series. Then add in a novella and the four romance novels I’d published before switching to mysteries. That’s 14 books times three or so manuscripts each!

Bitten by the cleaning bug, I figured I’m not going to need all those rubber-banded piles of paper ever again. Why not toss them?

Because I found another way to make these items useful. I am donating them to the Browne Popular Culture Library at Bowling Green State University. Here I’ve started a manuscript collection, joining such masters as Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Marcia Muller, and Romance Writers of America who archive their accumulated papers there as well.

It’s better than my husband or kids throwing everything in the trash after I’m gone. It’s better that I made this choice now, so I could put instructions in my Trust for the rest of my materials to be sent there when the time comes. It’s better that I feel great satisfaction that my work will live on, serving a useful purpose. So for any writers out there considering cleaning your office, think twice about filling your trash bags and consider donating your materials to a worthy library.

For more information on Browne Popular Culture Library, visit http://www.bgsu.edu/colleges/library/pcl/page38304.html