Tag: writing

writing romance

Brewing Up a Book with Guest Author Liz Crowe

Today I’m doing a little something different on the blog…I have a guest. Please welcome Liz Crowe, best selling author, soccer fan and beer expert. She’s got some words of wisdom about brews, and writing. She’s brought a few excerpts to entertain you and is having a SALE on her books! Meanwhile, for today you can find me over at her place. Check out my post out at Liz’s blog HERE. BOOK BREWING 101 by Liz Crowe There is a “regulation” in Germany—the Reinheitsgebot—that states: “Beer is made up 4 ingredients, and 4 ingredients ONLY: Water—Barley—Hops—Yeast” The Germans invented the lager style of beer, using yeasts they discovered, the create a different sort of beer than had been brewed before. Ale beer was truly an ancient form of sustenance, had been around since Egyptian times and was consumed in leiu of water on many continents. Since the advent of the “American craft beer movement” in the late ‘90s, that regulation has been tossed right out the window in the quest for unique flavors and a sort of one-up-manship among the (now) thousands of brewers seeking an audience of drinkers. Everything from corriandor and orange peel, hot peppers, coffee, and chocolate to […]

Cowboys, Romance Novels, writing romance

In defense of Jace EXCERPT #2 Three Weeks with a Bull Rider…

It’s interesting to sit back as an author and watch readers react to your characters. I’m finding that particularly so with Jace from the Oklahoma Nights series. He’s not perfect. I know. I wrote him that way. There are reasons for his flaws and for his behavior, but you, the readers don’t get to see all that until his book, Three Weeks with a Bull Rider. Some readers of Book 2 complained about Jace as a character. What I would hope is that readers realize that if I can make him bother you in Book 2, I have the skill to turn both your opinion and his character around in Book 3. In real life no one should judge another person until they’ve walked a mile in their shoes because what we see of each other is only the tip of the iceberg of a complete world that makes up each of us. More than that, not one of us is perfect. George RR Martin, author of Game of Thrones, says his favorite characters to write are the ‘gray’ characters because they are the most true to life, and I think, more interesting. I want to throttle perfect characters. They are cardboard, […]

Writers' Tools of the Trade

TOOLS OF MY TRADE: SmartEdit Update & Review

SmartEdit has had two product updates since my initial review of the product so I figured it was also time for an updated review. I had some PC issues so I never actually got to try version 2, so I skipped directly to SmartEdit 3.011 (released August 8, 2013) and opened  my current Work in Progress (due to the publisher in 4 days, while I leave for a convention in Savannah, GA in 2 days–fyi). The first thing I noticed upon opening the updated interface was the Word Processor feature and the New Document option, so you can write directly into the SmartEdit window. And where the first version I’d tried required I save my Word .doc as an RTF, the program now supports the Word .doc (and I read, also OpenOffice). This will save me a step and some time. The Adverb Usage List still remains my favorite feature and that’s the function I go to first to purge my manuscript of junk words. I usually end up cutting over a hundred unneeded words from a full length novel. The other things I loved in the original version–the Repeated Words, and Repeated Phrases, and the Proper Nouns checks are all still there […]