I’ve been slightly remiss on posting links to my True Blood recaps over at Romance@Random.
The shining lights of the last two weeks of True Blood have been the Eric and Pam backstory about the birth of Fangtasia and the unresolved sexual tension between Lafayette and James.
Read all about episode 3 and episode 4 while the blood’s still warm. There’s major character death all over the place.
We all know that distractions are huge obstacles to getting done whatever it is we need or want to get done — whether that’s writing a book or doing the laundry. After all, I’m writing this and you’re reading this on the Internet.
But when it comes to procrastination distractions, I can’t offer you a lot of help. It’s a demon I wrestle with because I love deadlines and eventually I get done what I need to do by the moment I need to do it. It’s stressful and weird and another challenge for another day.
Because there’s another type of distraction out there, the one that comes in the form of self-doubt and criticism. Now, it would be easy for me to just tell you that you are awesome and to get over that right now. I have before, and I will again. But let’s get real, sometimes we have long-standing worries and we need regular infusions of pep-talks and reassurances to get past them.
The problem is those aren’t always available to us. So, for me, labeling as a distraction self-doubt or negative obsession with stuff that isn’t really for me (i.e., reviews, which can be useful to me as a writer whether negative or positive, but are geared to the needs of readers), let’s me figure out a way to get past the problem quickly while I do the long-term work of self-confidence bit by slower bit.
Because a distraction, I can dismiss. I can say, it’s unimportant and not worth my time. I can give myself permission to indulge it or five minutes, take a walk to get it out of my system, and then I can declare it beneath my notice to get done what I need to get done.
Is this a solution that will bring you or me one step closer to healthy living? Maybe, maybe not. There’s certainly something to be said for at least sometimes deprioritizing self-hate, impostor syndrome, or just plain over-reacting to legitimate but not-for-you criticism, even when you should probably spend some time examining the origin of those feelings.
So while lots of time here we focus on a sort of Go Go Gadget Go that can be a little brutal, this one is sort of the opposite. This about handwaving and saying that doesn’t matter at all so you can get the work done versus chewing on your literal or virtual nails.
Got some stuff you want us to tell you to blow off? You know what to do. Got some tools to help with that other form of distraction, procrastination? Let’s face it, we probably need those too and they are more than welcome in the comments.
If you follow us on Twitter or tumblr, you’ve probably noticed our kvetching about our latest round of edits. Racheline and I have spent a large chunk of June, and a sizeable chunk of July, in editing various books in the Love in Los Angeles series. We’ll probably be spending August doing some as well. It’s hard work and it’s definitely not as fun or satisfying as plowing through the first draft of something, but it’s giving us some pretty interesting opportunities.
Racheline and I are both fast writers, and there are two of us, which means that we’re working on the third book (and beyond) in the Love in Los Angeles series while we’re doing publisher’s edits on the first book.
Also, as a rule, we write linearly/chronologically, but we brainstorm all over the damn place. While we were in the middle of writing Doves, for instance, we were sending emails back and forth about things that happen in the last book of the series. Sometimes, threads aren’t even about the books at all but the events that happen in between them that still have an impact down the road. (Some of those inter-book events, we plan to write up as short stories and post here on the blog as free bonus content, so keep an eye out for those!)
What that all means is that sometimes, the things that find happen in later books can inform and even change what happens or needs to happen in earlier books.
Some of that is because characters develop as we write them, and things we thought were true at the time, we now know are not. Some of it is because writing is spooky, and we have characters who hide and lie, even from us. (Alex, and what happened in Indiana, we’re looking at you.)
So going back and doing edits on Book 1 while we’re polishing up Book 3 for submission, gives us a lot of opportunities to do everything from correct inconsistencies (Seriously. There is nothing like a round of edits to make you go THIS SENTENCE IS COMPLETELY UNTRUE HOW DID I EVER EVEN WRITE IT I AM THE WORST WRITER IN THE WORLD) to seeding themes and storylines we discovered after the initial writing.
And really, for all its misery, the editing process is exactly for catching the dumb shit you only notice after coming back to a manuscript that’s been sitting in a drawer for eight months, even if the process is often pure misery. So we’re lucky, really, to be so far ahead with the story, and have the opportunity to go back and add hints and seeds for what is to come.
While Erin & I continue to get ourselves back on schedule after the holiday weekend and the Great June 2014 Edit (which is currently being followed by the Lesser July 2014 Edit), we wanted to being you one more preview of a new book from Totally Bound, Mountains to Climb.
We basically couldn’t resist, because while it’s not necessarily a major part of the plot (although it brings us two key moments in Doves) Alex takes up rock climbing himself, and we couldn’t help but ponder what might be on his bookshelves.
Sometimes the past can be the biggest mountain to climb.
Toby Schwartzel has never forgotten Jensen Brockhoff, the man he loved and the one who disappeared six years ago. He thinks he’s moved on, but when Jensen appears again and wants to explain what happened, Toby realises he hasn’t gotten over Jensen. He’d only built up walls to keep from being hurt again.
Jensen Brockhoff left New York City and Toby Schwartzel for several reasons. All of them had to do with drugs and alcohol. He’s clean now and the only thing he’s addicted to is mountain climbing. His passion for the sport has got him through the last six years. But after a particularly harrowing fall on Denali, Jensen knows he has to go back to tell Toby the truth.
Will Toby and Jensen discover they’d never moved past the love they had for each other all those years ago? Or are the mountains between them too high to climb?
The author, T.A. Chase, also gave us some content about their process. Since we talk about how we do things a lot, we thought you might be interested in how other people do stuff too. The non-chronological order thing interested us in particular, because while Starling and Doves were written fairly linearly, writing a series means sometimes you have to go back and stitch up some gaps (Erin will be posted about the series process later today), and our drafting process on book three of the series (it has a title, we’re just not telling it to you yet) has been far less linear.
Thank you for having me here today. I’m T.A. Chase and I write m/m romance. I’m here to tell you the way I write. Hope you’re interested in that.
How do I come up with the ideas for my stories? I get them from everywhere. Movies. TV. Real life conversations and situations. But I have to say a majority of them come from songs. I love music and a lot of my stories start from a lyric.
Sometimes a character pops into my head and demands his story be told. He might be loud and obnoxious or soft spoken and self-effacing. He knows that his story will interest people, so he decides he wants me to tell it.
Other times, I read an article or watch a TV show and a little bit of trivia will spark my interest. Like for Mountains to Climb, I’d been watching a show on mountain climbing and I thought how it could become a passion or obsession with people, so it would fit in with the whole idea behind What’s His Passion? imprint.
Then there are the times when I hear a lyric or a song and something starts coming together in my mind. It works because a lot of songs do tell a story, we just have to listen closely to figure out what it is.
I don’t always write in chronological order either. A lot of times I write the first two chapters then skip to the last chapter. Once the last scene is written, I go back and fill in the middle section. Sometimes it all comes together perfectly and I don’t have to rework the ending to fit what my characters did during the middle. Other times, I do have to fix things because they didn’t go where I wanted them to go. Characters have a mind of their own, and zig when we want them to zag.
I don’t tend to outline or plot anything out. I like finding out the story the same way the readers do. Most of the time, I’m surprised by what my characters say or do and that makes me happy.
If you want to win this and/or other free books from Totally Bound, they are doing a big giveaway right now, so do the clicky clicky thing to enter to win free stuff!
Hope you’re having a great Sunday.
Welcome to our series of posts on the amazing women of the Love in Los Angeles series. Starling and its sequel may be ostensibly about the relationship between two guys, but there are way more characters in the universe, and way more relationships than just the one between Paul and Alex.
In light of that, we want to give our women some love, because they are fabulous, fierce, fucked up people in their own rights. None of them are anybody’s sidekicks and all of them will call you out (some sooner than others) if you start treating them that way.
One of the first women you’ll meet is Gemma, Alex’s roommate and best friend. They met online while they were in high school — yes, they are fandom friends, though Alex will never cop to it — and bonded over the shows they both loved. Alex wanted to know about sound design and what kind of lens they used on the tight shots. Gemma wanted to be the star in front of the camera.
Gemma’s crush on Alex lasted exactly until the first time they ever Skyped. And as soon as she was over it, they hatched their plan. Alex wanted out of Paragon, Indiana as soon as he graduated so he could go to L.A. to make movie magic; Gemma, meanwhile, applied to and got in to college there, but knew she wasn’t planning to wait four years to start her acting career.
Graduating a few weeks before Alex, Gemma moved out to L.A., found them an apartment, got a waitressing gig, and promptly dropped out of college, keeping the tuition refund to live on. Her parents hit the roof, but she started going to auditions only to discover, much to her disgust, that most of the roles she was asked to read for were prostitutes or nail salon employees.
She and Alex didn’t meet in person until he knocked on the door at three in the morning several weeks later, having just completed his cross-country drive from Indiana. They didn’t even really talk until the next morning, because Alex passed out pretty much immediately on the terrible futon that passed for a couch.
Gemma spent the next day showing him around the neighborhood and convincing him that no, he really did need to open a bank account because keeping his cash in a sock at the bottom of a drawer was terrible choices.
Of course, then she had to explain how to open a bank account (“You can talk endlessly about film vs digital how the fuck have you never had a PIN number?”)
By the time Starling opens, Alex and Gemma have been roommates for two years and change. Alex is working as a P.A. and Gemma is still waitressing and auditioning. They’re closer than they’ve ever been, and Gemma is one of the few people in the world, aside from his mother (who you’ll meet in a few weeks), that Alex can actually stand spending extended amounts of time with.
Gemma is ambitious and persistent, and he respects that — among other things, so is he — even if the things they are ambitious about are very different.
When Starling opens they are what Gemma refers to as Only Partially Heterosexual Lifemates. Alex suspects this just confuses other people more, but has long since given up worrying about it.
Erin and I have a fun thing up at The Snarkology today. Melissa got permission from TV Tropes to do a promo where authors construct story molecules out of the Periodic Table of Storytelling.
Since our book is about TV, this was irresistibly funny to us, so we got to take a look at about how Starling fits into that utter time sinkhole that is TV Tropes.
We were tempted to do ones for all the fictional shows in the book(s) (Most significantly, but not limited to, The Fourth Estate in Starling and Winsome, Arizona in Doves), but that’s the dangerous lure of TV Tropes right there.
Also a danger? When you write scripts and you have to put fake TV in your books. Which ones are good enough to pitch and which ones just prop up your romance novel’s narrative? And what do you do when you possibly start to change your mind? (Winsome, Arizona is a flirt).
But all of that is a problem for another day. For now, go enjoy some TV Tropes madness and be sure to check out the other story molecules being hosted this month.
During the World Cup, the U.S. slogan was I believe that we will win. This, both before and after the U.S. was knocked out of the tournament, generated a lot of discussion both about the arrogance of Americans and the dubious power of positive thinking.
I’m not here to tell you that if you just believe good things that good stuff will happen. After all, I’m a pessimist and a lot of my successes have come from the aggression and advance planning that come with pessimism.
I also think the whole positive thinking thing can lead us quickly into dangerous territory. Let’s not go around accusing people of getting cancer because they weren’t fucking cheerful enough, all right?
But positive — or at least forward-oriented thinking — is what we often need to get started. Why compete if you don’t believe you can win? If you don’t believe you could be cast in a role? Or sell a story? Or get the job?
And going after a thing you want, while it can be casual, often isn’t. For me, it’s rarely, “let’s see what’ll happen” and more “all right, this is how it’s going to be.”
I believe that I will win, largely because I have to.
Not because that statement changes the laws of the universe (witchiness is a topic for another time), or because optimism and a good attitude will always get you riches (a good attitude helps, but really, fuck optimism). Rather, if I want a thing, I have to engage with it like a fact, or else it’s very hard for me to get started, and hard for me to keep going if I don’t get it the first time.
We believe that we will win isn’t about the power of positive thinking. It’s about the power of being crazy enough to go for our dreams, and stubborn enough to try again and again and again, until we get them or until we’re dreaming something else.
So it’s Monday. And Mondays suck. But we believe that you can win. Now tell us what you’re fighting for, with, or against, because specificity is a powerful tool too.
While Erin & I continue to recover from the Great Editing Adventure of July 2014 (and various holiday activities), it’s time to talk about other people’s books again. I think the blurb alone will tell anyone who knows us, exactly why we’re sharing this book from Ethan Stone with you (Hint: Comic Books).
Additionally Totally Bound has just launched a new imprint, What’s His Passion? focusing on M/M books. To celebrate, their having a contest and giving away lots of prizes, which you can enter to win on their site.
Vegas Hustle
A business trip to Las Vegas becomes a life or death situation for a comic book fan.
Comic book geek Adam Brand is young, good-looking and wealthy. He’s also a virgin because he’s not skilled at picking up guys. While in Vegas with his friend Dean to finalize a real estate deal, he throws caution to the wind and hires a professional. Hustler Javier Campos is just Adam’s type and his first time is perfect.
If you want to read an excerpt and pick up Vegas Hustle, follow the link (and let us know how it is, we are desperately dreaming of leisure reading right now!)
Meanwhile we’ll be back with some more of our own content soon, including a super fun project we’re participating in with Snarkology and TV Tropes!
This week I have two pieces up at Romance @ Random, both of which are a little more relevant to what Erin and I write than usual.
The first is a review of Begin Again, a quasi-romantic comedy from the creator of Once, featuring Keira Knightly and Mark Ruffalo. Everything you need to know is in the review, but the TL;DR version is that it’s deeply flawed, not what you are expecting, and charming anyway. The relevant to this blog version is that the film is entirely about collaboration and the toxicity of fame. For all its flaws, I was excited just by the movie existing and delineating these types of relationships and the impact of their context.
The second is this week’s True Blood recap, which features Jason Stackhouse having a sex dream about Eric Northman that is both hot and a highlight of just how terrible at everything Jason is. Other features include a long sequence that can most kindly be called an homage to 28 Days Later and a former primary school teacher melting into a puddle of goo between Arlene’s legs in the worst possible way.
As many of you know, the drama between Amazon and Hachette (among others) continues. We don’t want to tell people to buy or not buy at Amazon. There are pluses and minuses for authors, Amazon employees, and consumers. Just because a book is listed here and from Hachette, doesn’t mean it’s not available on Amazon, just that the Hachette/Amazon spat has put it at potential risk and we want to give those authors a little extra boost.
But after our last little featurette on Hachette authors, we heard from a few others, and we thought we’d share those books with you. These are M/F romances, and while we write mainly LGBTQ romance here, we know readers are omnivorous and we’re not interested in isolating LGBTQ romance from the larger genre.
This time we’re starting with Kennedy Ryan’s When You Are Mine, which is launching a new series.
Forever is a heartbeat away . . .Kerris Moreton knows how to make things work. Bounced from foster home to foster home as a kid, she adapted; when opportunity arose, she thrived. Now, about to open her own business and accept a marriage proposal, Kerris is ready to build the life she’s always wanted. The only thing missing? A passionate connection with her would-be fiancé, Cam. Kerris wants to believe that sparks are overrated-until Walsh Bennett lights her up like the Fourth of July.
. . . but what about love?
As one of the East Coast’s most eligible bachelors, Walsh enjoys financial independence, fulfilling work with his family’s nonprofit, and plenty of female attention. But lately he’s been distracted by the one woman he can’t have. Lovely to look at and even sweeter to know, Kerris is the soul mate Walsh never thought he would find. The problem is, his best friend found her first.
Meanwhile, this blog has been somewhat low on the supernatural, despite some works in progress involving vampires and demons and our ongoing hints about magical realism. But next up we have Angie Sandro, and she’s here to change that with Dark Paradise.
DARK LEGACY
Mala LaCroix has spent her whole life trying to escape her destiny. As the last in a long line of “witch women,” she rejects the notion of spirits and hoodoo and instead does her best to blend in. But when she finds a dead body floating in the bayou behind her house, Mala taps into powers she never knew she had. She’s haunted by visions of the dead girl, demanding justice and vengeance.
DEADLY SECRETS
Landry Prince has always had a crush on Mala, but when Mala discovers his sister, murdered and marked in some sort of Satanic ritual, he wonders if all the rumors about the LaCroix family are true. Yet after Mala uses her connection to the spirit world to identify his sister’s killer, he starts to form his own bond to her . . . a very physical one. As they move closer to each other and closer to the truth, Mala and Landry must risk everything—their families, their love, and even their lives.
Lia Riley also has a new release starting a new series. Upside Down is in the New Adult category and takes place in Australia. For those who don’t know, I studied in Sydney for a little bit, so this tickles me!
Twenty-one-year-old Natalia Stolfi is saying good-bye to the past-and turning her life upside down with a trip to the land down under. For the next six months, she’ll act like a carefree exchange student, not a girl sinking under the weight of painful memories. Everything is going according to plan until she meets a brooding surfer with hypnotic green eyes and the troubling ability to see straight through her act.
Bran Lockhart is having the worst year on record. After the girl of his dreams turned into a nightmare, he moved back home to Melbourne to piece his life together. Yet no amount of disappointment could blind him to the pretty California girl who gets past all his defenses. He’s never wanted anyone the way he wants Talia. But when Bran gets a stark reminder of why he stopped believing in love, he and Talia must decide if what they have is once in a lifetime . . . of if they were meant to live a world apart.
You can order Upside Down from Barnes & Noble and other major retailers.
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